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NASHVILLE, Tennessee — “We’ve got to get the health care done,” President Donald Trump told an enthusiastic crowd of 8, 000 Tennesseans at the beginning of his address to a rally in the Nashville Municipal Auditorium on Monday night. [He turned to the theme of health care toward the very end of his speech. “The House has put forward a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare based on the principles I outlined in my joint address,” the president said. “Let me tell you, we’re going to arbitrate, we’re going to all get together, we’re going to get something done,” he added. The president also blasted the culture of Washington and Democratic recalcitrance. “Remember this — if we didn’t do it the way we’re doing it … we need 60 votes. So we have to get the Democrats involved. They won’t vote, no matter what we do,” he said. “We’re doing it a different way, a complex way, it’s fine. The end result is — when you have Phase One, Phase Two, Phase Three, it’s going to be great,” the president added. “And then we get on to tax reduction,” he concluded. While he heaped praise on a number of Tennessee Republican politicians in his speech, another name was noticeable for its absence in his talk: Speaker Paul Ryan. Ryan’s healthcare reform bill, referred to as by some, has been panned by Democrats and conservatives alike. The president’s remarks in Nashville on Monday did little to suggest he is committed to the specifics of the Ryan proposal. In addition to his use of the term “arbitrate” he used another term to describe how he would approach getting a health care bill through Congress: “negotiate. ” While he firmly stood behind his campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, the president made it clear that the healthcare bill currently on the table may be substantially different from the bill he finally signs. “The bill I will ultimately sign will repeal and replace Obamacare,” the president told the cheering crowd. Trump focused more on the failures of Obamacare than the specifics of the current proposals under consideration. “Remember all of the broken promises? You can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan? Remember the wise guy that essentially said … the architect … the American people are stupid?” he asked. “Those in Congress who made these promises have no credibility whatsoever,” he told the cheering crowd. Trump also criticized “the level of hatred and divisiveness with the politicians” in Washington. “If we submitted the Democrats’ plan … we wouldn’t get one vote from the Democrats. That’s how much divisiveness and other things there are,” he added. “But we’re going to get it by,” Trump said of a revised health care bill. “I’ve talked to so many victims of Obamacare. At the very core of Obamacare was a fatal flaw. The government forcing people to buy a product,” he added. Trump said that when health care has been fixed, Americans “will be able to purchase the health insurance plans they want, not the plans forced on them by our government. ” | 1 |
Rapper Kanye West has come out in support of Republican President-elect Donald Trump, drawing boos and whistles from fans.
Kanye West has always been something of a provocateur and a nihilist, and is staunchly anti-political correctness.
Last night he stirred a maybe unprecedented level of controversy, however, declaring at a Saint Pablo Tour show in San Jose: “I would have voted on Trump”. West told the audience at a concert in San Jose, California on Thursday night that he didn’t vote in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential elections “but if I would have voted, I would have voted for Trump.”
“This is my platform and I’m going to talk about the paradigm shift that’s happening right now,” he said at the top of a 40-minute political speech that came at the cost of several songs.
It’s hard to ascertain exactly the point he was trying to make as we only have tweets and videos from attendees, not a transcript, to go off, but it sounds as though he was mostly praising the disruptive nature of Trump’s campaign, which ‘inspired racists to reveal themselves’. “I would’ve voted for Trump”– @kanyewest pic.twitter.com/XtyUteCgUZ
— albertoreyes (@albertoreyes) November 18, 2016
“Whether you voted for Hillary or Trump, this is a safe space for both of you,” he told the audience, asking any Trump voters to make themselves known. He also reiterated his desire to run for president in 2020, saying his focus would be on education and that his campaign would use a different political model.
“Stop focusing on racism,” he added, declaring sombrely: “We are in a racist country – period.” His stance stands in stark contrast to 2005 Kanye, who famously declared that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” in the wake of the devestating Hurricane Katrina.
The concert received an understandably mixed response.
Kanye was apparently happy when one woman screamed that she loved him in spite of his appreciation of Trump’s campaign, but there was also a lot of booing, stunned silence and even a few projectiles – one of which was a Yeezy shoe, which Kanye promptly signed and returned to the thrower. (h/t:independent) Search | 0 |
Federal judge charges Sheriff Joe with contempt Arpaio seeking 7th term, faces up to 6 months jail Published: 1 min ago
(ABC15) — The longtime sheriff of metropolitan Phoenix was charged Tuesday with criminal contempt-of-court for ignoring a judge’s order in a racial-profiling case, leaving the 84-year-old lawman in a tough spot two weeks before Election Day as he seeks a seventh term.
Prosecutors promised two weeks ago that they would charge Sheriff Joe Arpaio, but the misdemeanor count wasn’t officially filed against him until U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton signed it.
A formal trial date is scheduled for Dec. 6 On Wednesday, a federal judge set a Nov. 3 status conference — five days before the election — in the sheriff’s racial profiling case. | 0 |
Home / News / FOR SALE: Hillary’s State Department FOR SALE: Hillary’s State Department fisher 8 mins ago News Comments Off on FOR SALE: Hillary’s State Department FOR SALE: Hillary ‘s State Department
As new revelations continue to unfold regarding Hillary ’s time as Secretary of State, it has become clear that her State Department was highly influenced by donors to the Clinton Foundation. Before Hillary became Secretary of State, she had to sign an agreement with the Obama administration restricting the ability of the Clinton Foundation to accept foreign donations. In February of this year the Clinton Foundation admitted that the agreement had in fact been broken.
Now it has been discovered that over half of non-government officials who met with Hillary while she was Secretary of State gave money to the Clinton Foundation. What they received in return is just one of the questions Hillary has refused to answer byavoiding the press for the past eight months. In newly released emails there are details of donors being granted access to ambassadors due to their interest in the region, the Foundation putting pressure on Hillary ’s staff to hire a former employee, and the Clinton Global Initiative leader demanding a top Foundation donor be connected with the State Department.
This is beyond the appearance of a conflict and Americans have seen through the facade. A majority of voters say they believe Clinton gave special treatment to Foundation donors while she was Secretary of State. As the president of Judicial Watch accurately pointed out, “There was no daylight between the two under Mrs. Clinton, and this was contrary to her promises.”
After ignoring previous ethics guidelines, the Clintons are now trying to reassure Americans by saying the Foundation will change if Hillary is elected. The last ditch effort to gloss over ethics violations and possibly cover up corruption within Hillary ’s State Department is much too little and far too late. Americans are tired of being lied to by the Clintons. Since the American people have a right to a full view of Hillary ’s record before they head to the polls, the Clinton Foundation should immediately release all of Hillary ’s State Department emails. | 0 |
CLEVELAND — Donald J. Trump, on the eve of accepting the Republican nomination for president, explicitly raised new questions on Wednesday about his commitment to automatically defending NATO allies if they are attacked, saying he would first look at their contributions to the alliance. Asked about Russia’s threatening activities, which have unnerved the small Baltic States that are among the more recent entrants into NATO, Mr. Trump said that if Russia attacked them, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing if those nations have “fulfilled their obligations to us. ” “If they fulfill their obligations to us,” he added, “the answer is yes. ” Mr. Trump’s statement appeared to be the first time that a major candidate for president had suggested conditioning the United States’ defense of its major allies. It was consistent, however, with his previous threat to withdraw American forces from Europe and Asia if those allies fail to pay more for American protection. Mr. Trump also said he would not pressure Turkey or other authoritarian allies about conducting purges of their political adversaries or cracking down on civil liberties. The United States, he said, has to “fix our own mess” before trying to alter the behavior of other nations. “I don’t think we have a right to lecture,” Mr. Trump said in a interview in his suite in a downtown hotel here, while keeping an eye on television broadcasts from the Republican National Convention. “Look at what is happening in our country,” he said. “How are we going to lecture when people are shooting policemen in cold blood?” (Read the full transcript.) During a conversation, Mr. Trump the nationalist approach that has marked his improbable candidacy, describing how he would force allies to shoulder defense costs that the United States has borne for decades, cancel longstanding treaties he views as unfavorable, and redefine what it means to be a partner of the United States. He said the rest of the world would learn to adjust to his approach. “I would prefer to be able to continue” existing agreements, he said, but only if allies stopped taking advantage of what he called an era of American largess that was no longer affordable. Giving a preview of his address to the convention on Thursday night, he said that he would press the theme of “America First,” his rallying cry for the past four months, and that he was prepared to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada if he could not negotiate radically better terms. Within hours of Mr. Trump’s remarks calling into question whether, as president, he would automatically defend NATO allies, European officials who were already nervous about American commitments appeared a little stunned by his comments. “Solidarity among allies is a key value for NATO,” Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general and a former prime minister of Norway, said in a statement. He said he did not wish to “interfere” with the American election, but added: “Two world wars have shown that peace in Europe is also important for the security of the United States. ” The United States created the alliance, and Article 5 of the NATO treaty, signed by President Truman, requires any member to come to the aid of another that NATO declares was attacked. It has been invoked only once: NATO pledged to defend the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. That commitment has long been considered a central element of deterring attacks in Europe, especially against smaller and weaker nations like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which joined after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The president of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, one of the most allies in the region, quickly posted on Twitter evidence that his small country was meeting its defense commitments, and noted it had contributed to the mission in Afghanistan. Mr. Trump also said he was pleased that the controversy over similarities between passages in a speech by his wife, Melania, to the convention on Monday night and one that Michelle Obama gave eight years ago appeared to be subsiding. “In retrospect,” he said, it would have been better to explain what had happened — that an aide had incorporated the comments — a day earlier. When asked what he hoped people would take away from the convention, Mr. Trump said, “The fact that I’m very well liked. ” Mr. Trump conceded that his approach to dealing with the United States’ allies and adversaries was radically different from the traditions of the Republican Party — whose candidates, since the end of World War II, have almost all pressed for an internationalist approach in which the United States is the keeper of the peace, the “indispensable nation. ” “This is not 40 years ago,” Mr. Trump said, rejecting comparisons of his approaches to issues and global affairs to Richard Nixon’s. Reiterating his threat to pull back United States troops deployed around the world, he said, “We are spending a fortune on military in order to lose $800 billion,” citing what he called America’s trade losses. “That doesn’t sound very smart to me. ” Mr. Trump repeatedly defined American global interests almost purely in economic terms. Its roles as a peacekeeper, as a provider of a nuclear deterrent against adversaries like North Korea, as an advocate of human rights and as a guarantor of allies’ borders were each quickly reduced to questions of economic benefit to the United States. No presidential candidate in modern times has ordered American priorities that way, and even here, several speakers have called for a far more interventionist policy, more reminiscent of George W. Bush’s party than of Mr. Trump’s. But Mr. Trump gave no ground, whether the subject was countering North Korea’s missile and nuclear threats or dealing with China in the South China Sea. The forward deployment of American troops abroad, he said, while preferable, was not necessary. “If we decide we have to defend the United States, we can always deploy” from American soil, Mr. Trump said, “and it will be a lot less expensive. ” Many military experts dispute that view, saying the best place to keep missile defenses against North Korea is in Japan and the Korean Peninsula. Maintaining such bases only in the United States can be more expensive because of the financial support provided by Asian nations. Mr. Trump’s discussion of the crisis in Turkey was telling, because it unfolded at a moment in which he could plainly imagine himself in the White House, handling an uprising that could threaten a crucial ally in the Middle East. The United States has a major air base at Incirlik in Turkey, where it carries out attacks on the Islamic State and keeps a force of drones and about 50 nuclear weapons. Mr. Trump had nothing but praise for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s increasingly authoritarian but democratically elected leader. “I give great credit to him for being able to turn that around,” Mr. Trump said of the coup attempt on Friday night. “Some people say that it was staged, you know that,” he said. “I don’t think so. ” Asked if Mr. Erdogan was exploiting the coup attempt to purge his political enemies, Mr. Trump did not call for the Turkish leader to observe the rule of law, or Western standards of justice. “When the world sees how bad the United States is and we start talking about civil liberties, I don’t think we are a very good messenger,” he said. The Obama administration has refrained from any concrete measures to pressure Turkey, fearing for the stability of a crucial ally in a volatile region. But Secretary of State John F. Kerry has issued several statements urging Mr. Erdogan to follow the rule of law. Mr. Trump offered no such caution for restraint to Turkey and nations like it. However, his argument about America’s moral authority is not a new one: Russia, China, North Korea and other autocratic nations frequently cite violence and disorder on American streets to justify their own practices, and to make the case that the United States has no standing to criticize them. Mr. Trump said he was convinced that he could persuade Mr. Erdogan to put more effort into fighting the Islamic State. But the Obama administration has run up, daily, against the reality that the Kurds — among the most effective forces the United States is supporting against the Islamic State — are being attacked by Turkey, which fears they will create a breakaway nation. Asked how he would solve that problem, Mr. Trump paused, then said: “Meetings. ” Ousting President Bashar of Syria, he said, was a far lower priority than fighting the Islamic State — a conclusion the White House has also reached, but has not voiced publicly. “Assad is a bad man,” Mr. Trump said. “He has done horrible things. ” But the Islamic State, he said, poses a far greater threat to the United States. He said he had consulted two former Republican secretaries of state, James A. Baker III and Henry Kissinger, saying he had gained “a lot of knowledge,” but did not describe any new ideas about national security that they had encouraged him to explore. Mr. Trump emphatically underscored his willingness to drop out of Nafta unless Mexico and Canada agreed to negotiate new terms that would discourage American companies from moving manufacturing out of the United States. “I would pull out of Nafta in a split second,” he said. He talked of funding a major military buildup, starting with a modernization of America’s nuclear arsenal. “We have a lot of obsolete weapons,” he said. “We have nuclear that we don’t even know if it works. ” The Obama administration has a major modernization program underway, focused on making the nuclear arsenal more reliable, though it has begun to confront the huge cost of upgrading bombers and submarines. That staggering bill, estimated at $500 billion or more, will land on the desk of the next president. Mr. Trump used the “America First” slogan in an earlier interview with The New York Times, but on Wednesday he insisted he did not mean it in the way that Charles A. Lindbergh and other isolationists used it before World War II. “To me, ‘America First’ is a modern term,” he said. “I never related it to the past. ” He paused a moment when asked what it meant to him. “We are going to take care of this country first,” he said, “before we worry about everyone else in the world. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump moved swiftly on Wednesday to diversify his cabinet and try to heal lingering rifts in the Republican Party, reaching out to Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina and Betsy DeVos, a prominent Republican both of whom opposed him during the campaign, as well as Ben Carson, who challenged Mr. Trump for the Republican nomination. Ms. Haley, who was named ambassador to the United Nations, and Ms. DeVos, who was named education secretary, would be the first women in Mr. Trump’s cabinet. Mr. Carson, whose selection as secretary of housing and urban development is expected to be announced on Friday, would be the first . But none of these choices suggest a who is reaching beyond reliably conservative precincts to fill his administration. Ms. Haley, 44, an who is a rising star in Republican politics, pushed for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina State House after the deadly church shooting in Charleston in June 2015. During the Republican primary, she was a frequent and vocal critic of Mr. Trump and supported Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Ms. DeVos, 58, is one of the nation’s most avid supporters of school choice, a subject she and Mr. Trump discussed last week at his country club in Bedminster, N. J. But Ms. DeVos also sharply criticized him during the campaign and spent much of the year raising money for other Republicans on the ballot. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump rolled out their appointments with unstinting praise. Ms. Haley, he said in a statement, was “a proven deal maker, and we look to be making plenty of deals. ” Ms. DeVos, he said, was a “brilliant and passionate education advocate. ” For Mr. Trump, who was spending a quiet day before Thanksgiving at his estate in Palm Beach, Fla. the appointments ended a breathless sprint since his stunning victory. In a videotaped holiday greeting to the American people on Wednesday, he acknowledged the wounds left by a “long and bruising political campaign. ” His aides said he would resume meeting with potential cabinet members on Friday, when they said he would announce Mr. Carson, the retired neurosurgeon with whom Mr. Trump bitterly clashed and lavishly praised during the campaign. Soon afterward, Mr. Trump is expected to name Gen. James N. Mattis as defense secretary. But the search for a secretary of state has become less clear, people involved in the transition said. Aides are divided between Rudolph W. Giuliani, who staunchly backed Mr. Trump’s candidacy but whose business dealings have drawn scrutiny, and Mitt Romney, viewed by many as a safe pick but who harshly criticized Mr. Trump during the campaign. Mr. Giuliani, who has lobbied publicly for the position, confided to associates that he believed the job was his and told Mr. Trump’s top advisers that it was the only post he was interested in, according to the people briefed on the discussions. But Mr. Trump grew concerned both with the attention Mr. Giuliani has been drawing to himself and the reports about potential business conflicts. Some in the ’s circle voiced concerns about whether Mr. Giuliani would be the subject of a messy confirmation battle. Their attention turned to an unlikely alternative: Mr. Romney. Advisers who favored Mr. Giuliani believed Mr. Trump could send a unifying message by holding a perfunctory meeting with a vocal critic like Mr. Romney. But Mr. Trump liked him and was intrigued by the prospect of a emissary of the United States around the world. Mr. Giuliani met with Mr. Trump a day later, urging him to make a decision. Mr. Romney has not signaled to Mr. Trump directly that he would accept the job if offered, a person close to the transition said. Mr. Trump has also been warned by several advisers against choosing Mr. Romney because he might pursue his own agenda. The tension has left some on the team looking for a third choice, like Gen. John F. Kelly of the Marines, the former head of the United States Southern Command, which oversees the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba David H. Petraeus, the retired Army general who was director of the C. I. A. or, a particular long shot, former Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, who could be the lone Democrat in the cabinet after having briefly run for the party’s presidential nomination last year. Choosing Mr. Petraeus, who resigned in 2012 in a scandal over his leaking of classified information, would be somewhat easier after Mr. Trump said he would not pursue a case against Hillary Clinton over her handling of classified emails on a private email server, one person close to the transition said. The debate over secretary of state is a microcosm of the balance Mr. Trump is trying to strike in all of his appointments — between loyalists who will appeal to his base and more mainstream Republicans, many of whom stridently opposed his candidacy. In Ms. DeVos, Ms. Haley and Mr. Carson, he is trying to appeal to several of these constituencies, from Midwestern ultraconservatives to the diverse society that Republicans have tried to reach, with mixed results. Mr. Trump’s selections could blunt criticism that his early picks came from a homogeneous bloc of older, white men. If confirmed, Ms. Haley would step down as governor and be replaced by the state’s lieutenant governor, Henry McMaster, who was an early supporter of Mr. Trump. Mr. Carson is a familiar face to Americans after a Republican primary campaign in which he briefly rose to the top of the polls. Neither he nor Ms. Haley is particularly experienced for the posts they have been offered. Mr. Carson had even seemed to take himself out of the running for a cabinet position last week, with his friends putting out word that he had concluded he was not qualified to run a vast federal bureaucracy. Some pointed to Ms. Haley’s experience as a legislator and trade ambassador for South Carolina as credentials for the United Nations post. John D. Negroponte, a former ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush who opposed Mr. Trump’s candidacy, said Ms. Haley was an “intriguing and very good choice. ” “She’s not an ideologue,” he said. “She’ll quickly grasp that there are aspects of the United Nations’ work that can benefit the United States. ” Ms. DeVos, a former finance chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, won the support of Senator Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who is chairman of the Senate Education Committee. He called her an “excellent choice. ” She favors charter schools, which are publicly funded but typically run independently of local school boards and teachers’ unions, and school vouchers, which give students tax dollars to apply toward tuition. Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, criticized the nomination, saying that Ms. DeVos’s efforts over the years had “done more to undermine public education than support students. ” “She has lobbied for failed schemes, like vouchers — which take away funding and local control from our public schools — to fund private schools at taxpayers’ expense,” she said. “These schemes do nothing to help our most vulnerable students while they ignore or exacerbate glaring opportunity gaps. ” | 1 |
HOUSTON — During his presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump repeatedly hailed the Keystone XL pipeline as a vital jobs program and one that sharply contrasted his vision for the economy with that of Hillary Clinton. “Today we begin to make things right,” President Trump said Friday morning shortly after the State Department granted the pipeline giant TransCanada a permit for Keystone construction, a reversal of Obama administration policy. The pipeline would link oil producers in Canada and North Dakota with refiners and export terminals on the Gulf Coast. It has long been an object of contention, with environmentalists saying it would contribute to climate change and the project’s proponents — Republicans, some labor unions and the oil industry — contending that it would help guarantee national energy security for decades to come. When President Barack Obama rejected the project in late 2015, he said it would undermine American leadership in curbing reliance on carbon fuels. The announcement on Friday said the State Department “considered a range of factors, including, but not limited to, foreign policy energy security environmental, cultural and economic impacts and compliance with applicable law and policy. ” The new secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, formerly the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, had recused himself from the decision. The announcement said the permit was signed by the under secretary of state for political affairs, Thomas A. Shannon Jr. The pipeline still faces hurdles before it can be built. It needs the approval of the Nebraska Public Service Commission and local landowners who are concerned about their water and land rights. Protests are likely since the project has become an important symbol for the environmental movement, with the Canadian oil sands among the most oil supplies. Mining the oil sands requires vast amounts of energy for extraction and processing. In addition, interest among many oil companies in the oil sands is waning amid sluggish oil prices. Extraction from the oil sands, situated in the boreal forest, is expensive. Statoil and Total, two European energy giants, have abandoned their production projects. In recent weeks, Royal Dutch Shell agreed to sell most of its oil sands assets for $8. 5 billion. And Exxon Mobil wrote down 3. 5 billion barrels of reserves, conceding the oil sands were not economically attractive enough to develop for the next few years at least. Nevertheless, Canadian production continues to grow as projects that were conceived when prices were higher begin to operate. And the Keystone effort is central to the future of TransCanada, a major force in the Canadian oil patch. The United States Chamber of Commerce and other business groups applauded the administration’s action. Jack Gerard, the president and chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, the primary industry lobbying arm, said the decision was “welcome news” and was “critical to creating American jobs, growing the economy and making our nation more energy secure. ’’ Opponents say the pipeline is unnecessary at a time when American oil production is soaring and future demand has been put in question by increasingly efficient cars, electric cars and growing concerns over climate change. “The Keystone pipeline would be a straw running through the heart of America to transport the dirtiest oil in the world to the thirstiest foreign markets,” said Senator Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat. Originally planned to open in 2012, the Keystone XL would transport up to 830, 000 barrels a day of Canadian and North Dakota crude to Steele City, Neb. where it would connect with existing pipelines to deliver the sludgy oil to refineries in Texas and Louisiana for processing. Most of the refined product would probably be exported, or it might enable domestic producers to export more oil produced in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. When the project was in the planning stages, the United States was highly dependent on oil from the Middle East. The drilling boom in shale fields in Texas, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Colorado was still in its infancy. But in recent years, domestic production has nearly doubled, and the United States now exports increasing amounts of oil and natural gas. Oil prices have been slashed in half over the last three years, although many analysts predict that petroleum prices will rebound in the next decade, when the pipeline would begin to operate. For Canada, and especially Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the pipeline represents a mixed blessing. The pipeline would most likely raise the price of Canadian oil, which is now even more depressed than other international grades. Mr. Trudeau publicly supports the pipeline as a tool to give Canada’s economy a lift, but an increase in oil sands production could undercut his commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as promised in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. “We are pleased with the U. S. decision,” said the natural resources minister of Canada, Jim Carr. “Keystone XL will create thousands of good jobs for Canadians during construction. ’’ Though Mr. Obama ultimately took a different stand, his State Department concluded in an statement that the pipeline project would not add to carbon pollution because the oil would find its way to market one way or another. Proponents have argued that rail or truck transport is more polluting and dangerous than pipelines. That argument has been weakened somewhat with the fall in oil prices in recent years that has made oil sands production less attractive on oil markets. Protests helped sway the Obama administration to reject the project, and environmentalists have been further emboldened by demonstrations last year in North Dakota, mostly by Native American groups, that have delayed another project, the Dakota Access Pipeline. Environmental groups are already promising to aid local groups in blocking the Keystone pipeline’s construction. “We’ll use every tool in the kit to stop this dangerous tar sands oil pipeline project,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The project would provide for thousands of construction jobs, and it has attracted the support of several labor unions. Mr. Trump has made a centerpiece of his efforts to spur economic growth. “The fact is that this $8 billion investment in American energy was delayed for so long demonstrates how the American government has failed the American people,” Mr. Trump said on Friday as he met with his National Economic Council at the White House. At the beginning of his term, he instructed the Commerce Department to establish a plan requiring that new pipelines be constructed with materials like steel. But the White House has since suggested that the Keystone project would not be subjected to those rules because it is not a new project. | 1 |
An article published by the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, entitled “Why Milo Scares Students, and Faculty Even More,” explains exactly why Breitbart Senior Editor MILO causes panic on college campuses across the country. [Rachel Fulton Brown, an Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Chicago, writes about why MILO is feared on college campuses in the article published by the University of Chicago: The issues that Milo talks about are usually considered political, but in fact have to do with people’s deepest convictions: the proper relations between women and men, the definition of community, the role of beauty, access to truth. Milo professes himself a Catholic and wears a pair of gold crosses around his neck. He speaks about the importance of Christianity for the values of Western civilization. As he put it in one interview: “[Western civilization] has created a religion in which love and and giving are the highest possible virtues … That’s a good thing … But when you remove discipline and sacrifice from religion you get a cult. ” None of these issues, most especially the civilizational roots of culture and virtue in religious faith, are typically addressed in modern college education in America. Rather, they are, for the most part, purposefully avoided. Judging from my own experience of over 30 years in the academy, it is considered a terrible breach of etiquette, horribly rude even, to mention your religious faith if you are a Christian, never mind suggest that it in any way affects your work as a scholar. This relic of the of the late 19th century is now so deeply embedded in American academic culture that most people are not even conscious of it. The real problem, however, is that while discussion of Christian theology may no longer be at the center of university education, religion still is — we just don’t call it that anymore. Not to address these issues openly does not allow students to keep an open mind. Their minds are already open — and being filled with what they are given in place of religion: multiculturalism race, class, gender the purportedly secular ideals of socialism and Marxism. Particularly for those students, and faculty, who have little to no religious education outside of school, these ideals have become their faith. This is why students and faculty find Milo so threatening. He not only challenges them to examine beliefs they have never been taught to question. Thanks to his near charismatic appeal as a speaker, at least for those who attend his talks rather than stand outside protesting, he holds out the possibility of conversion, of changing hearts and minds. You can read the piece in its entirety here. Professor Rachel Fulton Brown previously wrote “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to MILO,” for Breitbart News. | 1 |
With 12 days to go until the election, all eyes are on who the next president will be.
And there’s no “lamer” duck than a president whose just days away from being replaced.
Perhaps that’s the perfect opportunity for what’s really happening while nobody’s looking:
A massive spike illegal immigrants streaming through the southern border – mainly in the border town of McAllen, Texas. They’re coming on a daily basis and being trucked to a migrant center at a Catholic Church.
They’re fitted with ankle monitors and told to sit. Sit and wait while they file for asylum.
Apparently, the illegals are being told that Hillary Clinton will win the election and that when she does, she will grant amnesty to illegals who are already here by the time she’s elected. So they’re flooding in for that reason.
On the other hand, some illegals are being told that Donald Trump will win, build a massive border wall and once it’s up, nobody will ever get in again. So they’re flooding in for that reason as well.
Some days, CBS Local reports , the McAllen stretch of the border sees 1,000 illegal crossers per day.
“We’re getting mass spikes of people crossing and turning themselves in,” he said.
Experts told CBS News the number of immigrants crossing the border won’t drop after Election Day.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly said as president the U.S. will build a wall along the Mexico border to keep out immigrants trying to enter the country illegally.
Earlier this month, Trump claimed the U.S. government is speeding up the citizenship process for immigrants on the waiting list so they can vote.
“They’re letting people pour into the country so they can go and vote,” Trump said during a meeting with the National Border Patrol Council.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has promised to propose immigration legislation in her first 100 days as president that would include a route to citizenship. Her approach is largely in line with that approved by Democrats and Republicans in the Senate in 2013 but turned aside by the House.
Trump has said that he opposes any pathway to legal status for immigrants in the U.S. illegally. They would have to return to their home countries and apply for legal entry should they wish to come back.
He has not said what would happen to those who choose to stay, but said they are subject to deportation. Trump has also called for an end to “birthright citizenship,” currently granted to anyone born in the U.S. as per the 14 th Amendment. | 0 |
Earlier today, users on Twitter reported that tweets from the official account of the Drudge Report were being hidden from users behind a “sensitive content” filter. [A screenshot published on the British news site Westmonster revealed the filtering of the Drudge Report, one of the largest and conservative sites on the web. The only way to unblock tweets marked as “sensitive” by Twitter is to by checking a box in your account’s “safety” settings. By making the system rather than Twitter provides a censored, filtered service to its users by default. Reports of the Drudge Report’s account being put behind the filter were confirmed by a Breitbart reporter and by ZeroHedge, which reported that “hardly any tweets were visible” from the Report’s account when they logged in to Twitter earlier today. The censorship was lifted later in the day, and tweets from the Drudge Report are now visible, even when users to Twitter’s “sensitive content” filtering. However, Twitter has not explained why the Drudge Report was placed behind the filter in the first place, and has not responded to a request for comment from Breitbart News at this time. Twitter started experimenting with labelling entire user accounts as “sensitive” earlier this month. Recently, we reported that the social media company is using IBM’s “Watson” supercomputer to identify “abusive” accounts on Twitter. Twitter’s bias against conservatives is . The company frequently bans or locks the accounts of conservative users who have not broken its terms of service, while allowing threats of violence against the President and First Lady to run rampant on the platform. You can follow Allum Bokhari on Twitter, add him on Facebook, and download Milo Alert! for Android to be kept up to date on his latest articles. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Advocates of trophy hunting, and even the United States government, have long justified the killing of protected wildlife in Africa by saying that taxes and fees from the hunts help pay for larger conservation efforts. But a new report by the Democratic staff of the House Natural Resources Committee challenges those claims, finding little evidence that the money is being used to help threatened species, mostly because of rampant corruption in some countries and poorly managed wildlife programs. It concludes that trophy hunting may be contributing to the extinction of certain animals. It has been almost a year since an American hunter killed a beloved lion named Cecil in Zimbabwe, setting off an international debate over sport hunting and widespread anger on the internet. Since then, the Obama administration has placed lions in Africa under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, France has banned the import of lion trophies, and more than 40 airlines have said they will no longer transport hunting trophies. The House report, called “Missing the Mark,” says that while poaching remains the gravest threat to animals like lions, rhinoceroses and leopards, “trophy hunting also removes a significant number of animals from these rapidly declining populations. ” “As the tragic death of Cecil the lion showed us,” the report says, “trophy hunters do not always play by the rules, and the trophy hunting industry needs to be regulated and held accountable for there to be any hope of a consistent conservation benefit. ” In theory, elaborate hunts — which can cost tens of thousands of dollars, including trophy fees, professional guide payments, transportation and lodging — could help poor countries maintain robust conservation programs and give aid to residents. In the past, the money has been used to repair degraded environments, and the revenue from trophy hunting has been seen as deterring local residents from killing animals because they consider them a nuisance or a danger. However, the report says, “In assessing the flow of trophy hunting revenue to conservation efforts, we found many troubling examples of funds’ either being diverted from their purpose or not being dedicated to conservation in the first place. ” The Endangered Species Act says hunted trophies can be brought to the United States only if they do not contribute to the extinction of a species. That standard is not always met, the report says, and it recommends that the Fish and Wildlife Service improve its permitting process so that only trophies that actually enhance the survival of species are allowed into the country. The service has the authority to require an import permit for any species listed as threatened or endangered. In 2014, the agency suspended imports of elephant trophies from Tanzania and Zimbabwe because of “catastrophic population declines. ” But, according to the study, it has been reluctant to use its authority to restrict other trophy imports that do not meet the standards on protecting species. The agency has also used special rules to exempt from permitting requirements many imports of animals listed under the Endangered Species Act, the report says. For the species covered in the House report, the Fish and Wildlife Service required only one import permit from 2010 to 2014, though more than 2, 700 trophies eligible for permitting were imported during that time. For the 1, 469 leopard trophies that could have required an import permit, the agency required none. Because Americans bring home more trophies of protected species than hunters from any other country, some conservationists believe that the United States government has the responsibility and the leverage to force a change. The urgency for such change, however, can be largely credited to Cecil the lion. “Before Cecil, there was a certain complacency surrounding what to do about the lion, almost an indifference,” said Craig Packer, a lion expert who ran the Serengeti Lion Project in Tanzania for 35 years and has been critical of hunting practices in that country. “After Cecil, it became clear that the public was much more skeptical of sport hunting,” he said. “It shows the power of public opinion. ” | 1 |
According to ABC Eye Witness News, on Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, in Newark, New Jersey, seven people were stabbed. The stabbing occurred shortly before 4:00 p.m. ET.
It has been reported some the victims have life-threatening injuries. So far the police have reported there is no clear motive for the stabbing, and there are no suspects in custody.
Updates on this story will be provided as they come available.
Another Stabbing Earlier This Year According to ABC Eye Witness News, on July 29, 2016, there was another stabbing. This victim was in critical condition was stabbed by her husband. Which lead to a standoff.
The 59-year-old victim was stabbed multiple times by the 64-year-old suspect. At the time of the stabbing, their nine-year-old grandson was in the home. He was not injured, and he was able to get help.
Neighbors came in and pulled the woman onto the grass until paramedics arrived. The suspect sat behind the front door of the home talking to police since about 11:20 a.m., and the standoff ended at about 3:40 p.m. with the man taken into custody.
During the standoff, the suspect threatened to commit suicide. Residents of the area were told to stay in their homes while officials negotiated with the suspect.
By Brady Combs
Edited by Cathy Milne
Sources:
ABC EyeWitness News: 7 People Stabbed inside Newark home; police searching for suspect
ABC EyeWitness News: Woman Stabbed by her husband in a Newark Home, police say
Image courtesy of ER24 EMS’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License stabbing | 0 |
Waking Times – by Alex Pietrowski
The most important ecological crisis of the world has ever seen has been underway since March 11th, 2011, yet there is nary a mention of it in the corporate media, and no political body in the world is championing its resolution. Widespread Denial and Willful Ignorance
The effects on nature are already being seen, yet even among the environmentalist factions of media, there is strong denial of the damage already done and of what is to come as the crisis approaches its sixth year. Some 300 tons of radioactive water are dumped into the Pacific Ocean each day , and signs are showing that this catastrophe is gravely affecting sea-life and wildlife in and around the Pacific .
The FDA maintains that there is no evidence of contamination by Fukushima borne radionuclides in the American food supply, yet this opinion is contested by some independent researchers. A report by the Fairewinds Energy Education says that cancer is on the rise in areas around the failed power plant, and that millions will die in coming years as a result. “[T]he second report received from Japan proves that the incidence of thyroid cancer is approximately 230 times higher than normal in Fukushima Prefecture… So what’s the bottom line? The cancers already occurring in Japan are just the tip of the iceberg. I’m sorry to say that the worst is yet to come.” [ Source ]
As election year in the U.S. approaches its dramatic climax, it has been striking to observe that neither of the major two-party candidates, or third-party candidates for that matter, have mentioned this crisis at all during the entire election run up. It is a non-issue in American politics, and if you’re listening, the silence is deafening. The 40-Year-Plan
Thus far, all plans to stop radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean and the Japanese Islands have failed, the most impressive of which is the construction of a $320 million underground wall of frozen dirt to block the seepage of groundwater into surrounding areas. 1oo feet deep and over a mile long, the ‘ land-side impermeable wall ‘ is already failing as rainfall from recent typhoons has caused partial melting of sections of the ‘ice wall.’ Workers examine pipes for the wall of frozen soil at the embattled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Image Credit: http://www.asahi.com/
A previous and ongoing cleanup effort requires the on site storage of contaminated water near the Fukushima Daiichi is merely a band-aid as radioactive water continues to accumulate by the day , with no long term plan for proper disposal.
“…the filtered water is still full of tritium , a radioactive version of hydrogen. (When two neutrons are added to the element, it becomes unstable, prone to emitting electrons.) Tritium bonds with oxygen just like normal hydrogen does, to produce radioactive “tritiated water.” It’s impractical—or at least extremely difficult and expensive—to separate tritiated water from normal water.” [ Source ] Storage tanks at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.
The reality here is that this crisis is untouchable in its scope and unparalleled in its lethality, and TEPCO’s 40-year-plan to decommission the plant will be a failure. Final Thoughts
No one of significant import is talking about this crisis or working to elevate it as a national and international priority. The American political scene is focused instead on the selection of the next president being chosen between two candidates who clearly have zero interest in addressing this dire issue.
Is this because nothing can be done about it? Is this because the energy industry is controlling the conversation and covering up the truth ? Or is this because the agenda for the U.S. at present is geared to destabilization and a push for expansion of the Orwellian Permanent War , and ecological disasters are supportive of the global depopulation scheme in play?
In any case, the Fukushima meltdown is a slow-burning apocalyptic event that desperately needs our attention.
For more background, please view the following video summary:
Read more articles from Alex Pietrowski . About the Author
Alex Pietrowski is an artist and writer concerned with preserving good health and the basic freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and Offgrid Outpost , a provider of storable food and emergency kits . Alex is an avid student of Yoga and life.
This article ( Fukushima – The Untouchable Eco-Apocalypse No One is Talking About ) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to AlexPietrowski and WakingTimes.com . It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement. | 0 |
The Philadelphia sound will sound again. The Philadelphia Orchestra ended a brief strike on Sunday, two days after its musicians sent a shock wave through the classical music world by walking off the job just before a gala. The players went on strike Friday to protest a contract offer that they said did not do enough to restore the pay and benefits lost amid the orchestra’s bankruptcy, which ended a little over four years ago. But after returning to the bargaining table with a mediator on Saturday, the musicians and management agreed early on Sunday to a contract that included a 2 percent raise in the first year and raises of 2½ percent in the second and third years. The contract will bring the players’ base pay to $137, 800 by the final year, the orchestra said, though many players make more. As part of the contract deal, the orchestra said, the musicians agreed to play more Sunday concerts and to give management more flexibility to stage concerts. The musicians, who had planned to picket on Sunday, instead met to ratify the deal. “There is some grave disappointment that the offer does not get us to where we need to be,” John Koen, a cellist who is chairman of the musicians’ negotiating committee, said. At the same time, he said, the final deal was an improvement over management’s original offer, and the players were eager to return to work. “We wanted to avoid harming the institution. ” Crucial committees of the orchestra’s board of directors voted unanimously to recommend the contract to the full board, which is expected to vote on it Tuesday. Allison Vulgamore, the orchestra’s chief executive, said in a statement, “We now have a tentative agreement that will immediately restore our music to our audiences and provide our outstanding musicians with a compensation plan that both increases their base salaries and provides additional financial reward as we continue to build resources for a vibrant and exciting future. ” The agreement would also increase the orchestra’s size. Though the Philadelphia Orchestra historically had 105 musicians, it imposed a hiring freeze during the bankruptcy that initially held that number at 95, and then 96. The new contract calls for hiring a 97th player in the third year. The orchestra’s season will resume on Thursday in Philadelphia, when Simon Rattle will conduct Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in a program that the orchestra, known for its plush sound, will repeat on Oct. 10 at Carnegie Hall. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, which also walked out Friday, remained on strike Sunday. | 1 |
Donald J. Trump says the abstruse Republican delegate system distorts the will of the people. Senator Ted Cruz says the party’s nominating rules have been in place from the beginning. Mr. Cruz is right, and he may be losing the public argument anyway. With polls showing a strong preference for nominating the candidate with the most popular votes — even if he fails to secure a majority of delegates before the convention in July — Mr. Cruz has brushed up this week against an uncomfortable reality: His only road to victory is a messy one. As he slogs through a merciless stretch of the primary calendar, straining to pick off delegates from Northeastern voters who seem disinclined to embrace his conservatism, Mr. Cruz, of Texas, has appeared increasingly frustrated amid questions about his path. He has lashed out at Sean Hannity of Fox News, a onetime friend in conservative news media whom Cruz allies have accused of cozying up to Mr. Trump. “I cannot help that the Donald Trump campaign does not seem capable of running a lemonade stand,” Mr. Cruz said in a radio interview Tuesday, after telling an angered Mr. Hannity that his questions about the delegate system were a concern only to “ Donald Trump supporters. ” Mr. Cruz has struggled to formulate a concise argument rebutting Mr. Trump’s claim that the top deserves the nomination, alternately citing the number of former Republican presidential hopefuls now supporting him, general election polls and Mr. Trump’s “hard ceiling” of support. On Wednesday, Mr. Cruz told reporters at the Republican National Committee’s spring meeting in Florida that only Mr. Trump’s loyalists believed that the candidate with the most votes should be awarded the nomination. When it was pointed out that a majority of Republican voters seemed to agree — 62 percent, according to an NBC Street Journal poll last week — Mr. Cruz largely ignored that fact. “We want to win, Republicans want to win,” he said, before turning to a new talking point: Even Abraham Lincoln, the greatest Republican of them all, lagged in delegates at the outset of the party’s 1860 convention. Mr. Cruz and his aides have also chafed recently at what they view as insufficient news media attention to his success in state delegate elections — feats of organizational strength that have heightened his chances of beating Mr. Trump at a contested convention. (If no candidate wins 1, 237 delegates on the first convention ballot, which largely reflects the primary and caucus votes, many delegates will be unbound and able to switch on subsequent ballots.) At a rally in Maryland on Thursday, Mr. Cruz knocked the “breathless coverage” of Mr. Trump’s blowout victory in New York. “Goodness gracious!” he said, impersonating television networks. “Donald Trump won his home state!” For the most part, the Cruz campaign has dismissed concerns about the public’s perception of the nominating process, with aides questioning whether the wording of the NBC Street Journal survey truly captured voter sentiment. Bob Vander Plaats, an Iowa religious leader and a national chairman for Mr. Cruz, said Mr. Trump’s complaints had heightened doubts about his managerial acumen. “They’re just completely irrelevant. They’re a waste of time and money,” Mr. Vander Plaats said of the polls. “It is not being stolen. Every state has their own rules. If anything, I think it’s an admission on Trump’s part that he went into a presidential campaign without understanding the rules. ” Stuart Stevens, the chief strategist for Mitt Romney in 2012, said that many aspects of the primary process — holding the first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, for instance — would appear widely unpopular if posed to voters in a poll. “None of this tests well,” he said. “It’s like a bowling league. Do the rules of bowling make sense?” But other Republicans, even those disinclined to support Mr. Trump initially, have worried about the appearance of denying Mr. Trump the nomination on technical grounds. Anthony Scaramucci, a member of Mr. Romney’s New York finance team in 2012, said his party remained in denial about its voters’ preferences. “There’s the spirit of something, and then there’s the letter of something,” he said. “I was a Scott Walker supporter. And then I was a Jeb Bush supporter. So I feel like I have some level of credibility. Donald Trump may not have been my first choice, but if he is in fact the people’s choice, I think my establishment friends are making a very big mistake by not acknowledging that. ” Mr. Cruz, who had argued for months that he could win a majority of delegates before the summer, has bowed to the math this week, acknowledging that a convention is his only option as he seeks to keep Mr. Trump from clinching the nomination. Mr. Cruz has targeted Maryland and Pennsylvania, two of the five states that vote on Tuesday, as potential sources of delegates, and is holding rallies in both states. But his campaign views two other contests as more critical: Indiana, which votes on May 3, and California — “the big enchilada,” Mr. Cruz said — which votes on June 7, the last day of primaries. In a sign of Indiana’s importance, Mr. Cruz campaigned there Thursday, ordering a pastrami sandwich at an Indianapolis deli and quoting the movie “Hoosiers” at a state party dinner. He also met with Gov. Mike Pence. The senator has warned reporters against underestimating him. “At every stage in this primary, folks in the press have reported that we couldn’t win,” he said in Florida, “and then we won over and over and over again. ” | 1 |
Ryan McMaken https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/public-faith-elections-falls-state-grows/
The more powerful the state becomes, the higher the stakes are in each election. Thus, people become more fearful and suspicious of election outcomes. 4:38 pm on October 31, 2016 | 0 |
A recent study conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School concluded that minimum wage laws increase the likelihood that restaurants will go out of business. [The study, which was conducted by the team of Dara Lee Luca and Michael Luca, looked at data on “tens of thousands of restaurants in the San Francisco area. ” They concluded that restaurants are disproportionately more likely than four or restaurants to go out of business as a result of minimum wage laws. The evidence suggests that higher minimum wages increase overall exit rates for restaurants. However, lower quality restaurants, which are already closer to the margin of exit, are disproportionately impacted by increases to the minimum wage. Their data on the San restaurants studied concluded that a $1 increase in the minimum wage increased the likelihood of a restaurant going out of business by four to 10 percent. A 10 percent increase in the minimum wage led to a 24 percent increase in the likelihood that a restaurant would go out of business. This paper presents several new findings. First, we provide suggestive evidence that higher minimum wage increases overall exit rates among restaurants, where a $1 increase in the minimum wage leads to approximately a 4 to 10 percent increase in the likelihood of exit, although statistical significance falls with the inclusion of characteristics and time trends. The research revealed that restaurants were more likely than restaurants to go out of business in response to minimum wage laws. Economically, this is somewhat intuitive, because four and restaurants aren’t constrained by minimum wage policy as they typically pay their wait staff well and diners often leave generous tips. Our point estimates suggest that a increase in the minimum wage leads to a 14 percent increase in the likelihood of exit for a 3. restaurant (which is the median rating) but has no discernible impact for a restaurant (on a 1 to 5 star scale). This is an important conclusion because it reveals that minimum wage policies often hurt those that they are intended to help. Minimum wage hikes put employees of restaurants at risk of losing their jobs. Owners of restaurants are put at risk of having to shut down their businesses in response to the mandated increases in the cost of labor. And patrons of eateries can lose dining choices. Those who eat out at the top of the food chain, the elite restaurants might never even notice. 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 |
The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee told Breitbart News Thursday evening he is looking for a compromise that will allow Speaker Paul Ryan (R. )’s American Health Care Act to move forward for a vote on the House floor. [“We are listening to our colleagues, from those who are the most conservative to those who are the most moderate, about what are the final solutions that we need to achieve, so we can reach consensus,” said Rep. Kevin Brady (R. ) whose committee approved the RyanCare bill March 9. Brady is one of the committee chairmen who approved the “manager’s amendments” Monday, which made modest changes to the bill. Thursday’s vote on the bill was canceled by Ryan after a bloc of conservatives, led by the House Freedom Caucus, secured north of 25 “no” votes. With 237 GOP congressman, Ryan cannot lose more 22 votes to reach the 216 votes required for passage. The Ryancare bill is still a work in progress, Brady said. “While it’s clear we do not have the votes, no one is walking away from the table — that means our members here in the House and certainly not in the White House as well, so let’s stay at the table,” he said. “There are a number of new solutions to try to reach that common ground let’s just keep working towards it,” he said. Breitbart News spoke to the chairman less than 100 feet from Ryan’s office, where the speaker was meeting with members of the House Freedom Caucus and senior aides to President Donald Trump. | 1 |
Law enforcement in North Dakota is running out of money protecting the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
A legislative committee will be reviewing an emergency request to borrow more money from the Bank of North Dakota to cover the cost of law enforcement’s involvement in the Dakota Access pipeline protests.
The department has used an increasing amount of money since the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which was supposed to be saved for natural disasters, but is now used to protect the pipeline that is planned to go through 1851 treaty land.
To fight for companies behind the DAPL, officers from at least 6 states have been deployed. North Dakota is responsible for reimbursing out-of-state police agencies for costs that have to do with wages, overtime, officer benefits, meals while on duty, a per diem while off duty, lodging and mileage for the communities that sent vehicles.
Governor Jack Dalrymple will vote on Tuesday, November 8th on whether to borrow $4 million from the state-owned bank.
The panel has already borrowed and spent $6 million from the bank in September.
North Dakota officials have also requested federal officials to reimburse the state for the additional law enforcement costs.
All of this money going towards the police brings a lot into question. How much taxpayer money will be used to protect the investment of a company over investments on human health? How much money is given to law enforcement, military, and corporations in order to silence the people fighting for justice?
| 0 |
Orangutan.
Rigged. Worth trying but its not a fair game. Smartmatic style Diebold type machines and software will count the votes and the corporate controlled media will announce the results. No mention of Election Fraud or the problems of the past. Long live Mike Connell, Clint Curtis, Bev Harris, Brad Friedman, RFK Jr. and other whistleblowers who have tried to fight for our democracy. Will only get worse from here it seems. Always hopeful though. David S
Government will win as always. Freedom will lose as always. The ruling elite control most elected officials and hundreds of thousands of government bureaucrats legislate unconstitutionally from their offices. We sit upon $20 Trillion in real debt and another $250+Trillion in unfunded liabilities. Trump wishes to increase military spending and Hillary never met a war she didn’t support (on behalf of her puppetmasters of course). Our medical system is nearly completely destroyed by over a century of government micromanagement and collusion with the AMA. We have more people incarcerated than nearly every other country on earth – mostly for non-violent drug offenses – and neither candidate looks to have the courage or the desire to truly allow freedom in this area (though Trump shows the greatest hope). Our government/CIA/other black ops groups, etc. are working tirelessly to undermine governments around the world, incite violence, and provoke armed conflict – maybe even nuclear – all for the benefit of the arms cartel and banksters who profit from every war. The people of America clearly have NO interest in restoring freedom, liberty, private property rights, business rights, sound money, etc. anymore. This “rebellion” that has gotten behind Trump still needs to bear fruit with regards to demanding REAL change at the federal and state levels. What will come of the following months is to be seen, but I suspect, as with so many previous “rebellions,” these folks will go back to their televisions, iPads, and Playstations and will forget about the fundamental corruption and crony capitalism that is destroying this country so long as they get a few bones thrown their way to pacify them. Let us hope something far more profound comes of it all. Time for a drink. kimyo
fwiw: a screencap of ‘final’ results displayed on 11/2 (apparently by accident) by nbc station wrcb-tv shows: popular vote: clinton 41,765,317 / trump 40,124,438, electoral college: clinton 343 / trump 195.
although the early reporting showing trump with a commanding lead matches my take on american sentiment, my cynical side suspects that it is the msm’s way of getting out the later-voting clinton supporters
if anonymous were a real thing, today’s show would be have been completely different. real hackers don’t waste their precious time defacing websites.
ps: if trump does win, i picture zuesse as the dog, who, after years of chasing, has finally caught that darn UPS truck. growling, jowls full of brown bumper, but with a dawning comprehension on his brow, realizing ‘well, exactly what do i do now?’ Orangutan.
Continuity of Gov’t plans have been implemented and in place. Dept of Homeland Security is now running our elections. The results will not be publicly available for review anymore according to Bev Harris. Similar to the results in California where the primary was announced for Hillary but Bernie may have actually ended up winning there. Welcome to the 1984 style Continuity of Government plan and Department of Homeland Security run elections thanks to the public’s refusal to emotionally or intellectually acknowledge the truth about 9/11 or the false flag anthrax attacks that followed. TruthTime
Especially agree with the comment about the Anthrax attack. The criminals are still at large for that blatantly, obvious state-sponsored crime. I laughed when Obama’s Administration decided to shut down any investigation into it.
America is a Nation of subjects who are continually subjected to the lies and falsehoods of their elected leaders. We have state crimes going far back to the era of JFK. People that still think Corruption isn’t really that bad in Washington, that it’s all a “conspiracy theory.” Carl_Herman
Thank you for asking, GW. It’s not an “election” when it fails to meet that definition due to multiple methods for election fraud. It’s not for a “US president” therefore, but an appointed “leader.” And, it’s not reported by media, but the appointers’ propaganda minions.
Of course, if we continue this argument with ~100 other points centered in lie-started Wars of Aggression, bankster-looting, and lying about near everything important, we can’t even call it the US as defined by our Constitution.
So, where do we go from here?
Start with truth. Then see what develops. Charlie Primero
Carl, this vote shows that all the people you have been trying to “wake up” to the corruption and graft are waking up.
This is just the beginning. Be happy. MyWikiDisQus
It does not matter what we think or do or say anymore. The republic has been overthrown by the plutocrats who remain in power as long as the citizenry believe in the concocted and fraudulent electoral system they fabricated that selects the candidate who serves them, not the people. Participation of the masses is necessary to grant them the mandate to ensure the continuity of their reign that has continually impoverished the majority of the nation.
In the beginning representative government in America was a wonderful experiment that has since devolved, brick by brick, decade by decade into a shell of its former creation to become a bastion of despotism. The poor are still slaves, indentured to the government by onerous debt as Negros were to their 19 century plantations masters; only the title of ownership has changed. The middle class, once a foundation of prosperity has now become an economic ghost, relegated to the status of freemen of the peasant class.
The wealthy are richer in material possession, millionaires become billionaires and the government siphons off from the upper class to enrich itself by political favor, by statute and regulation, by ignoring the rule of equal justice under the law.
How long will the people tolerate this abomination of corrupt authority? What will be the future event that triggers the entire country to say, “Enough!”? Will it be a complete economic breakdown of society or the devastation of nuclear war on our soil?
“We the People” have the power, we have always possessed it. The time of reconciliation is upon us, we must balance the ledger of liberty back in our favor. The only way to peacefully do it is reject the system that oppresses us. Do not engage with them, do not obey them, tell them their lies carry no truth, we see through the veil of falsity and reject it and demand a new path to opportunity and happiness for all who are willing to work towards it. TruthTime
The U.S. is fucked.
But it needs to collapse now or within 100 years for people to totally realize they were duped. It is the only way to start anew. kimyo
according to zh, trump has ohio, florida and north carolina.
my top 3 questions: 1) will there be a thorough investigation of the clinton foundation? 2) what will he do if the next 9/11 happens on his watch? 3) will he kill cop21 and defund global warming research? diogenes
One thing is utterly clear: if Trump wins, the wholly Wall Street owned Democratic Party gave it to him by rigging primaries to put the Clinton criminal gang on the ballot.
Because Bernie would have won — won with the votes not only of millions of nominally “Democratic” voters who rightly can’t stomach Clinton and didn’t vote for her (whether we voted Green, or Libertarian or Trump or stayed home) — but also with the votes of millions who are voting Trump because he appears to at least not be part of the Wall Street criminal gang of hereditary oligarchs. Tim Chambers
Looks like Trump will be President and free to do as he pleases. The Repug’s bet on Scalia’s seat has been made good. The Democrats will now have to rethink identity politics and third way neoliberalism. I wonder if Obama will try to ram through the trade agreements and a few other monstrosities now during the lame duck session.
Bye, Bye, Hillary, bye bye. It’s the one silver lining to the overhanging clouds. What a disaster of a candidate! Such arrogant over-confidence. And what a comeuppance for the party and its big money backers! It is going to cost them a lot of money to into Trumps good graces.
All we need now is for Trump to sell out his working class supporters for the Democrats to return to a sincere class-based politics that brings back the independent voters. They should have given Bernie his rightful chance.
Unfortunately, what we are likely to see is another attempt by the Clintons 4 years from now against Warren. Two losses isn’t likely to dissuade that bitch in the least.
I told you back in April and again 2 weeks ago that Trump would win!! http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/10/donald-j-trump-will-win.html Tim Chambers
fuggetaboutit Evil Genius
Who knows the Clintons and Waltons better than Arkansas? My favorite part was Arkansas voted 2-1 against Clinton. Ha ha ha!
(BTW GW: There’s an error in Robert Parry’s bio…the word “broke” is missing (i.e., “broke stories”).) kimyo
imagine if tomorrow trump says ‘yes, absolutely, we’re going to build that wall, but while we’re waiting for the check from mexico why don’t we find 500 out-of-work engineers and architects and 5,000 out-of-work construction folk and send them to flint to fix the water system. (costs him nothing, delivers grand justice)
cnn had a bad day today, but they’d be totally f’d tomorrow.
trump should hire some guy (me!) whose only job is to make cnn miserable, each day worse than the last.
ps: arpaio gone is nice. cali cannabis is nice. why is this thread so inactive? Jack
It’s time to collapse this mess and start new. Charlie Primero | 0 |
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An important question is on the 2016 election state-wide ballot in Massachusetts. Question 2 deals with the state’s charter school cap. Without the cap, upwards of 12 charter schools could be approved by the state district in the next fiscal year. The charter school scam has spread its tentacles into the state ofMassachusetts in large part due to the Obama Administration. A vote "no" is thus critical toward halting the march of privatization in the education system occurring nation-wide. As Massachusetts residents gear up to vote for the next President of the United States, it is important to remember that the transformation of public education into a private good will not cease as long as popular opposition fails to confront its roots in Washington.
The Obama Administration immediately created the Race to the Top program after the 2008 election. This program paved a direct path toward the elimination of public education as we know it. The Department of Education funneled billions of US dollars into incentive schemes to privatize public schools district by district. Federal funds were dangled in front of mostly poor, mostly Black cities as long as these districts met the "mandates" of the program. These mandates included the closure of "failing schools," mergers with for-profit charter schools, and the complete transformation of public schools into charter laboratories. Race to the Top created favorable conditions for private capitalists to engulf the entire US public education system.
The results have been disastrous. Hundreds of public schools have closed around the country. Tens of thousands of public school teachers have been fired. In New Orleans, nearly every school operating in the district is a privately owned by " publicly funded" charter schools .The Chicago teachers union recently averted a strike but has been dealing with the consequences of the closure of fifty schools in the city in 2013 .
The impact of charter schools has extended beyond teacher layoffs and school closures. Charter schools have also promoted segregation based on race and class. The Civil Rights Project of UCLA has found that seventy percent of black charter school students attend intensely segregated charter schools . Furthermore, charter schools also demand an even more intense policy of standardized testing withcurriculums that are often guided by the test corporations themselves. All the while, these institutions have found ample time to discriminate against ELS and disabled students.
In addition, charter schools have been found to cheat students from a quality education. Charter schools are even more militarized than traditional public schools and sport higher rates of suspension and expulsion rates. Corporate charter operators also "cream" students from the top and toss the rest. Even so, charters have not proven to do any better than public schools in terms of test scores . What the charter school movement does possess is the backing of the elite, which has masterfully used media and non-profit manipulation to demonize public education.
The usual capitalist players have been the primary leaders in the drive to rid of the charter school cap in Massachusetts. The New York Lobbying group "Families for Excellent Schools" is controlled by Hedge Fund managers whose funds stem from donations from the Walton Family (i.e. Wal-Mart). Another organization, "Education Reform Now Advocacy," has received upwards of 11 million dollars from the same source . Charter schools are often labeled "public" because they receive tax payer dollars. However, the schools are accountable to no one except the corporate interests that back them.
A "Yes" vote on Question two would place the education of students in Massachusetts firmly in the hands of the kingpins of privatization. Not only would twelve charter schools per year be subject to approval, but forty-five public schools would be in danger of closure. Over 100 million more dollars per year would be siphoned from public schools across the state. At the moment, the charter school cap allows the state to operate no more than 72 charter schools. If the cap islifted, however, this restriction would no longer apply and leave the students, families, and educatorsvictimto the "shock and awe" privatization which has characterized national policy for over two decades.
Opposition to privatization is being led by the organization Save Our Schools. Save Our Schools consists of families, teachers, students, and unions that are looking to prevent an era of unbridled privatization in the Massachusetts public education system. Charter schools already drain 450 million from public education in the stateeach year as it currently stands. A vote "no" would protect public schools and thus the unions that representtheir educators.
A "no" vote would build upon numerous labor victories in the Massachusetts area over the last few years. The Boston School Bus Drivers union Local 8751 won a historic victory against the Veolia Corporation in 2015. The Harvard Dining Workers of Local 26 UNITE HERE followed by defeating Harvard's bid to raise healthcare costs in October of 2016. Now it is time to stand with teachers across the state in their effort to prevent full-scale privatization.
Doing so will not be easy. The model of union-management cooperationwith theDemocratic Party continues to prevent workers in Massachusetts and across the country from taking offensive action against the privatization assault. A vote "no" on question 2 in Massachusetts would show that community and union members can organize a successful push-back against the forces behind privatization. However, a vision of transformation and radical change must be articulated if defense of public education is to materialize into a people's movement. The fight against privatization must be placed in the contextof the larger struggle to build a world that working and oppressed people would vote "yes" to. | 0 |
Bullion Banks Pass the Parcel On El Salvador’s Gold Reserves Posted on Tweet Home » Gold » Gold News » Bullion Banks Pass the Parcel On El Salvador’s Gold Reserves
All central banks still report gold as one line item of “ gold and gold receivables”, which allow bullion banks to increase their unallocated balances which can then be used in myriad leveraged and hypothecated ‘gold’ trading transactions. If you think 4 LBMA bullion banks passing a parcel of central bank gold claims around between them is excessive, wait until you see 28 bullion banks doing the same thing…
Submitted by Ronan Manly:
Eighteen months ago I wrote a short synopsis of a gold sales transaction by the central bank of El Salvador wherein it had sold 80% (about 5.5 tonnes) of its official gold reserves. The title of the post was “El Salvador’s gold reserves, the BIS, and the bullion banks“. If you thought, why the focus on the Banco Central de Reserva de El Salvador ( BCR ), it’s not a major player on the world gold market, you’d be correct, it’s not in its own right that important.
However, the point of the article was not to profile the gold transactions of a relatively obscure central bank in Central America, but to introduce the topic of central bank gold lending to LBMA bullion banks, and the use of short-term ‘ gold deposits ‘ offered by these bullion banks.
The reason being is this is a very under-analysed topic and one which I will be devoting more time to in the future. Gold loans by central banks to bullion banks are one of the most opaque areas of the global gold market. The fact that I’m using the central bank of El Salvador as the example is immaterial, it’s just convenient since the BCR happens to report the details of its gold lending operations, unlike most central banks. A Quick Recap
At the end of September 2014, the BCR claimed to hold 223,113 ozs of gold (6.94 tonnes), of which 189,646 ozs (5.9 tonnes) was held in the form of “ deposits of physical gold ” with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and 33,467 ozs (1.04 tonnes) which was held as “ time deposits ” of gold (up to 31 days) with 2 commercial bullion banks, namely Barclays Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia .
The following table and all similar tables below are taken from the BCR’s ‘Statement of Assets backing the Liquidity Reserve’, or ‘Estado de Los Activos Que Respaldan la Reserva de Liquidez ’, which it publishes every 3 months. BCR gold position as of 30 September 2014
In November 2014, the BCR executed a small sale of 5007 ozs of its gold from its quantity held with the BIS, leaving a holding of 218,106 ozs (6.784 tonnes) as of 31 December 2014, comprising 184,639 ozs held in “ deposits of physical gold ” with the BIS, and 33,467 ozs of “ time deposits ” (of between 2 and 14 days duration) with 2 bullion banks, namely BNP Paribas and the Bank of Nova Scotia. Notice that as of the end of 2014, BNP Paribas was now holding one of the time deposits of gold, and that Barclays was not listed. BCR gold position as of 31 December 2014
Notice also in the above table the tiny residual time deposit gold holding attributed to Standard Chartered Bank Plc. Rewind for a moment to 30 June 2014. At the end of June 2014, the BCR’s gold deposits were placed with 3 LBMA bullion banks, namely, Barclays, Bank of Nova Scotia, and Standard Chartered.
This is the way short-term gold deposit transactions work. A central bank places the short-term gold deposit with one of a small number of bullion banks, most likely at the Bank of England, and when the deposit expires after e.g. 1 month, the central bank places the deposit again, but not necessarily with the same bullion bank. The deposit rates on offer (by the bullion banks) and the placements by the central banks are communicated over a combination of Bloomberg terminals, or by phone and then the transactions are settled by Swift messages. More about the actual mechanics of this process in a future article. BCR gold position as of 30 June 2014 BCR sold its gold at the BIS, put the rest on deposit
In March 2015, the BCR sold 174,000 ozs (5.412 tonnes ) of gold, which left El Salvador with 44,000 ozs. When I wrote about this transaction 18 months ago I had speculated that:
“Since the Salvadoreans had 189,646 ozs on deposit with the BIS and needed to sell 179,000 ozs, the gold sold was most definitely sold to the BIS or to another party with the BIS acting as agent.
It would not make sense to sell some or all of the time deposits that are out with the bullion banks such as Barclays and Scotia , since a large chunk of the BCR gold at the BIS would have to be sold also. It would be far easier to just deal with one set of transactions at the BIS.
The above would leave the time deposits of 33,467 ozs (and accrued interest) out with the bullion banks, rolling over each month as usual. The other roughly 11,000 ozs that the BCR held with the BIS could be left with the BIS,or else this too could be put out on deposit with the bullion banks.”
This speculation turns out to have been correct. By 31 March 2015, the BCR held 10,639 ozs of gold “ deposits of physical gold ” with the BIS, and the same 33,467 ozs of “ time deposits “, but this time split evenly between BNP Paribas and Barclays. The entire 174,000 ozs of gold sold came from the “ deposits of physical gold ” that El Salvador held with the BIS. BCR gold position as of 30 March 2015
By 30 June 2015, the central bank of El Salvador had moved its remaining 10,639 ozs of “ deposits of physical gold ” from the BIS, and placed it into “ time deposits ” with bullion banks, with the entire 44,106 ozs being evenly split across Bank of Nova Scotia, BNP Parias and Standard Chartered, each holding 14,702 ozs. BCR gold position as of 30 June 2015
Over the 12 months from end of June 2014 to 30 June 2015, a combination of at least 4 LBMA bullion banks, namely, Barclays, Bank of Nova Scotia, Standard Chartered and BNP Paribas were holding short-term gold deposits on behalf of the central bank of El Salvador. I say at least 4 banks, because there could have been more. The snapshots every 3 months only reveal which banks held gold deposits on those dates, not the full list of deposits that could have been placed and matured over each 3 month period.
These time deposits are essentially obligations by the bullion bank in question to repay the central bank that amount of gold. The original gold which was first deposited into the LBMA system could have been sold, lent or otherwise encumbered. It has become a credit in the LBMA unallocated gold system. Ultimately it needs to be paid back to the central bank by whichever bullion bank holds the deposit when the central bank decides that it no longer wants to roll its short-term deposits. This is why the anology of pass the parcel is a suitable one.
Looking at the more recent 3 monthly snapshots from September 2015 to June 2016, the same 4 LBMA bullion bank names were still holding the BCR’s gold deposits, namely Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays, Standard Chartered and BNP Paribas.
As of 30 September 2015 – Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays and BNP Paribas, evenly split between the 3 of them. BCR gold position as of 30 September 2015
On 31 December 2015 – Bank of Nova Scotia, BNP Paribas, and Standard Chartered, evenly split between the 3 of them. BCR gold position as of 30 December 2015
On 30 March 2016 – Bank of Nova Scotia and BNP Paribas, evenly split between the 2 of them. BCR gold position as of 30 March 2016
On 30 June 2016, the BCR gold deposits were held by Bank of Nova Scotia and BNP Paribas, evenly spilt between the 2. The 30 June 2016 file on the BCR website doesn’t open correctly so this data was taken from the Google cache of the file. IMF Reporting standards
Finally, let’s take a quick look at what monetary gold and gold deposits actually are, as defined by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“Monetary gold is gold owned by the authorities and held as a reserve asset. Monetary Gold is a reserve asset for which there is no outstanding financial liability”, IMF Balance of Payments Manual (BPM)
In April 2006, Hidetoshi Takeda, of the IMF Statistics Department published a short opinion paper on the ‘Treatment of Gold Swaps and Gold Deposits (loans)‘ on behalf of the Reserve Assets Technical Expert Group (RESTEG) of the IMF Committee on Balance of Payments (BoP) Statistics. The paper was called “ Issues Paper (RESTEG) #11 “. In the Issues paper, Takeda states:
“monetary authority make g old deposits ‘to have their bullion physically deposited with a bullion bank , which may use the gold for trading purpose in world gold markets ‘”
“‘The ownership of the gold effectively remains with the monetary authorities, which earn interest on the deposits, and the gold is returned to the monetary authorities on maturity of the deposits’”
” Balance of Payments Manual, fifth Edition (BPM5) is silent on the treatment of gold deposits/loans. However, the Guidelines states that, “To qualify as reserve assets, gold deposits must be available upon demand to the monetary authorities ”
You can see from the above that once the gold balance that is represented by the gold deposit is under the control of a bullion bank as a unallocated balance, then it becomes an asset of the bullion bank and can be used in subsequent bullion bank transactions, such as being lent again, or used to support its trading book, etc.
The big question is whether the gold as represented by the gold deposit is available on demand by the central bank which lent it. For ‘available on demand’ think using an ATM or walking into your local bank and withdrawing some cash from your account. It’s as simple as that.
Takeda said:
“Regarding the statistical treatment of gold deposits/loans, keeping the status quo is suggested. That is, if the deposited/loaned gold is available upon demand to the monetary authorities, it can be included in reserve assets as monetary gold. However, if the gold is not available upon demand, it should be removed from reserve assets “
Takeda’s paper also covers the topic of “ Double counting of gold from outright sales of gold acquired through gold swaps or gold deposits/loans” where he says logically:
“double counting of gold can occur when a bullion bank sells outright gold acquired through gold deposits/loans from… monetary authorities”
If the gold sold is not removed from the central bank’s balance sheet, it could:
“pose a problem when international statistical standards allow swapped/deposited gold to remain in the reserve assets of the gold provider.”
Given that nothing has changed in the IMF’s reporting standards since 2006, i.e. the IMF did not take on board Takeda’s recommendations on gold loan accounting treatment, and given that all central banks still report gold as one line item of “ gold and gold receivables” , then you can see how these gold deposits that are being continually rolled over by central banks using a small number of LBMA bullion banks based in London a) are being double counted if the gold involved has been sold, b) only represent claims by a central bank on a bullion bank, and c) allow bullion banks to increase their unallocated balances which can then be used in myriad leveraged and hypothecated ‘gold’ trading transactions
If you think 4 LBMA bullion banks passing a parcel of central bank gold claims around between them is excessive, wait until you see 28 bullion banks doing the same thing! Coming soon in a future article.
Ronan Manly | 0 |
INDIANAPOLIS — Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, desperate to alter the course of a presidential primary fight in which Donald J. Trump is closing in on victory, announced Wednesday that Carly Fiorina would be his running mate if he won the Republican nomination. The move, a day after Mr. Trump scored unexpectedly wide victory margins in sweeping five East Coast states, amounted to the grandest diversionary tactic a presidential candidate can stage — or at least the grandest one available to a candidate trailing by about 400 delegates who failed to win more than 25 percent of the vote in any state on Tuesday. Taking the stage after 4 p. m. before a modest but spirited crowd in a cavernous pavilion here, Mr. Cruz described Mrs. Fiorina, the former presidential candidate and chief executive, as “brilliant and capable” and deeply principled, and praised her for having “shattered glass ceilings. ” Mr. Cruz’s criteria for a pick, in his telling, seemed to be aimed squarely at Mr. Trump. “Do they think through decisions in a rash and impulsive way?” he asked. “Do they pop off the handle at whatever strikes them at any given moment?” He held up Mrs. Fiorina as someone who knows “where jobs come from. ” “Born in Texas,” he added, grinning, “the very first thing I liked about her. ” Mr. Cruz’s decision to rush out a pick before next week’s primary in Indiana, which is becoming for his candidacy, was the political equivalent of a student pulling a fire alarm to avoid an exam: It was certain to draw attention and carried the possibility of meeting its immediate goal, but seemed unlikely to forestall the eventual reckoning. Still, for Mr. Cruz, it could serve to shift the focus away from Mr. Trump’s success and from his own wheezing alliance with Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who agreed to clear out of Indiana if Mr. Cruz withdrew from competition in Oregon and New Mexico. And since endorsing Mr. Cruz last month, Mrs. Fiorina has proved to be an eager surrogate, attacking both Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton with zeal. On Wednesday, Mrs. Fiorina quickly seized on the role of faithful sidekick, singing a song to Mr. Cruz’s daughters from the stage, appraising the senator as “a lot of fun” and repeatedly hammering home the Cruz campaign argument that Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton are essentially indistinguishable on policy. “They’re not going to challenge the system,” she said. “They are the system. ” Mr. Cruz’s announcement was prompted by the same countervailing forces that pushed him to strike the nonaggression pact with Mr. Kasich on Sunday: Mr. Cruz’s polling in Indiana showed him down in Indiana last week, according to two Republicans familiar with the findings. He has edged closer to Mr. Trump in nightly surveys this week, but remains behind. “If the election were held today, we’d lose but not get crushed,” said a Republican familiar with Mr. Cruz’s polling. What is striking, though, is that Mr. Cruz decided to tap Mrs. Fiorina even after his own surveys indicated she would offer only a modest boost. In Indiana and subsequent states, Mr. Cruz’s campaign tested the impact if Mr. Cruz named Mrs. Fiorina as his running mate and found it was only worth “a couple of points,” said a Republican briefed on the polling results. “Voters like her. They don’t love her,” said this Republican, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the . Yet Mr. Cruz’s gambit may present a perilous challenge for Mr. Trump, who faces mounting criticism for his derisive remarks about women, including his repeated claims that Mrs. Clinton’s sole political asset is “the woman’s card. ” Already viewed unfavorably by a majority of women in general election polls, Mr. Trump has clashed savagely with Mrs. Fiorina in the past. He has mocked her business record, her voice and even her looks. “Look at that face,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine last summer. “Would anyone vote for that?” Another slashing comment directed at Mrs. Fiorina’s appearance or gender could have grave consequences for Mr. Trump, especially with female voters he would need to win over to compete in the fall. Current and former advisers to Mr. Trump said he has long found Mrs. Fiorina an agitating presence and described her in public and private as an unworthy opponent with dubious business credentials. And Mr. Trump has repeatedly disregarded advisers who urged him steer clear of conflict with a comparatively obscure rival, no matter how fervent his distaste for her. Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide who was dismissed from the campaign last summer, said Mr. Trump’s advisers warned him that his treatment of Mrs. Fiorina would be perceived as a test of his discipline for the general election. “We had already anticipated that there would be attacks of sexism, that there would be attacks that you don’t respect women,” said Mr. Nunberg, who now opposes Mr. Trump, paraphrasing the Trump campaign’s counsel to the candidate. “This was a major test to show you can compete as a presidential candidate. ” Mr. Nunberg added, “Unfortunately, Donald failed that test miserably. ” For Mr. Cruz, the drawbacks to naming Mrs. Fiorina are many: A pick designed to change momentum in a primary could prove less than optimal for a general election. Voters might find it presumptuous for a candidate to name his prospective running mate while trailing by several hundred delegates. Then there are the taunts from Mr. Trump. “He’s wasting his time,” the told reporters Tuesday night, when asked about Mr. Cruz’s preparations for a possible selection. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump responded dismissively to reports of a ticket: On Twitter he posted a clip of Mrs. Fiorina on television, earlier in the campaign, calling Mr. Cruz a politician who “says whatever he needs to say to get elected. ” (A “super PAC” supporting Mr. Kasich circulated a memo listing Mrs. Fiorina’s past criticisms of Mr. Cruz in greater detail.) For those inclined to cast Mr. Cruz’s Senate tenure as a triumph of principle, the selection and its unusual timing could register as the kind of unconventional move of a Republican who has made a career of bucking the party’s establishment. But among Republicans in Washington, where skirmishes with Mr. Cruz have focused more often on tactics than policy substance, the maneuver appeared likely to reinforce the perception among his detractors that he is cynical and calculating. Either way, in Mrs. Fiorina, Mr. Cruz has turned to a credible outsider and an expert attack dog who has sparred often with the senator’s rivals in both parties. She will surely be deployed in California, where the June 7 primary could determine whether Mr. Trump captures the delegates needed to clinch the nomination before the convention. Mrs. Fiorina has statewide political experience there, having been the Republican nominee against Senator Barbara Boxer in 2010. Her connections with the sort of party activists likely to vote in the primary there could give Mr. Cruz a valuable surrogate in the weeks leading up to it. She did, however, lose her one California campaign by 10 points and has since left the state to live in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. Mindful of the gender gap often evident in Mr. Trump’s polling, Cruz allies hope that Mrs. Fiorina will prove a capable foil to him, as she did while besting him in a series of debate exchanges during her own candidacy. In recent weeks, she has again relished the role, disparaging Mr. Trump in interviews and urging him to “man up” and debate Mr. Cruz . She has also shown a habit of answering questions addressed to Mr. Cruz at news conferences, interjecting to sing his praises or defend his actions. In the past, though, Mrs. Fiorina has chafed at being described as material. Last year, she called it “sexist” that she was often asked whether she was running for president in the hopes of being chosen as someone’s running mate. More recently, she had hedged when asked about her interest. As Mrs. Fiorina sat beside Mr. Cruz for a Fox News interview last month, the Texas senator was asked whether he would consider Mrs. Fiorina for the role. A live audience cheered, and Mrs. Fiorina answered before Mr. Cruz could. “Let’s win the nomination first,” she said. Mr. Cruz’s selection of Mrs. Fiorina was also reminiscent of a candidate whom he revered. In his 1976 primary against President Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan — lagging and needing to change the subject — announced his choice of a running mate before the Republican convention. The gamble paid off in the short term. His selection of Senator Richard S. Schweiker of Pennsylvania led the evening news, slowed the news media’s rush to declare Ford the presumptive nominee and allowed Reagan to continue wooing delegates. But Reagan’s announcement came after the primaries had ended, not with 10 states remaining, and he was closer behind Ford in the delegate count than Mr. Cruz is today to Mr. Trump. Mr. Schweiker carried the promise of winning over a clear constituency, the Pennsylvania delegation, while it is unclear which voters Mrs. Fiorina could deliver. And Reagan still lost to Ford. | 1 |
Michael Moore calls anyone voting for Donald Trump a ‘legal terrorist’ Oct 28, 2016 Previous post
While doing press for his surprise Donald Trump movie that he released on Tuesday after making it in secret, “Michael Moore in TrumpLand,” Michael Moore made it very clear what he thinks about those voting for Donald Trump.
While talking to Rolling Stone , the Oscar-winning director said that he made his movie in an attempt to convince undecideds that voting for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton isn’t a bad idea. And that Trump supporters will be hurting the country.
“I want them to think about the damage they could do by being a legal terrorist on November 8,” Moore said.
When Rolling Stone asked him to explain what a “legal terrorist” means and if it’s a catch-all for Trump voters, Moore responded:
“Any. Legally, you have a right to vote on November 8. You can go in there and even though you’re not necessarily in favor of Trump and you don’t like him that much and you know he’s a little crazy, you also know he’s going to blow up the system. The system that took your job and house away from you. You get to get back at the system now and blow it up and this is the only day you can do it legally. He’s told everybody that’s what he’s going to do. He’s the outsider who is going to ride into town and blow up the old way. So you, as a voter, get to participate in the detonation. He’s going to get a lot of votes from people who actually just want to sit back and watch the
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AP photo Many social networkers urge Michelle Obama to run for president in 2020."They want the Obamas back. After Donald Trump's shock win over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 on Tuesday, November 8, some people are already urging Michelle Obama to run for president in 2020," US Magazine wrote. A new hashtag has emerged in social media #Michelle2020. Some believe that it is already time to start a campaign for Michelle Obama. Some others say that in case of victory, Michelle Obama will be able to shatter two glass ceilings, as she would be able to become the first-ever black woman president. At the same time, Michelle Obama has repeatedly stated before that she would never run for president. Pravda.Ru Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru Which business Putin and Trump contrive | 0 |
Let’s say Donald J. Trump wants to make good on his promise to improve the lives of American workers. Let’s imagine this White House, which came to power free from the political debts typically owed to unions or Wall Street, is genuinely focused on helping the nation’s miners, waitresses and Uber drivers. What, then, should President Trump do? The question might seem fanciful given the continuing chaos in Washington. But with Mr. Trump’s new choice for labor secretary, R. Alexander Acosta, heading toward a likely confirmation, at some point the president’s cabinet will actually start governing. And then, it will face an unusual opportunity: the freedom to create policies potentially beholden only to the American workers who put Mr. Trump into office. This is a potentially transformative moment, not just within politics, but also inside millions of companies grappling with a changing economy and expanding worker demands. So over the past few weeks, I asked more than two dozen labor thinkers — from both the right and left former officials and government skeptics union leaders and strident capitalists — what kinds of federal innovations could remake American working life. I particularly asked for bipartisan ideas. In general, and surprisingly, there is broad enthusiasm about the future of American work (even as there are sharp disagreements about whether this president’s policies will help or hurt workers). “There are lots of new opportunities we wouldn’t have even dreamed about a few decades ago,” said Andy Stern, former president of the S. E. I. U. one of the largest labor unions. “There are great ideas out there, and people who want to experiment. But so much depends on what the government is willing to encourage. ” In particular, say both corporate chieftains and organized labor advocates, there is an opportunity for agencies like the Labor Department to become innovation catalysts, using technology to rethink how workers are trained and find jobs. The government could revolutionize employee benefits by making them more portable. And federal departments could become knowledge centers, spreading good ideas from state to state. Many of these ideas draw on the creativity that has remade places like Silicon Valley. Take, for instance, how the internet has changed the way workers find jobs. “You don’t find a lot of workers on LinkedIn,” said Seth Harris, deputy labor secretary under President Barack Obama. “But the unemployment system reaches tens of millions of workers each year. If government got more sophisticated about using technology to train workers with the skills companies need, and to encourage online job matching, that could transform things. ” Improving job training isn’t a concept. Nearly every major university and college now offers online curriculums that evolve, semester to semester, in response to new technologies or what employers say they are looking for. But those innovations have not much influenced how the Labor Department spends billions each year on training for unemployed workers. “There’s strong bipartisan support for work force development,” Mr. Harris said. “But right now, the private sector changes so quickly that by the time we get a training program in place to help truck drivers learn computer programming, what we’re teaching is out of date. We can change that. ” What’s more, the Labor Department is perfectly poised to use technology to reduce what is known as “frictional unemployment” — in which jobs go unfilled because workers and companies have trouble finding each other. Most online career marketplaces, like LinkedIn, cater to professionals. But, as Mr. Harris pointed out, LinkedIn is not primarily designed to help waiters or home health aides find work. And because such workers often have less money to pay for online memberships, those kinds of networks are less likely to emerge on their own. However, Mr. Trump’s new labor secretary could create those marketplaces, as well as encourage companies to train people on the job. “We need more apprenticeship programs,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. Right now, such programs are hobbled by regulations that make it hard for companies to take on midcareer interns. But “there’s support from both parties for helping workers learn,” Ms. Collins said. “That’s not a partisan issue. ” This White House could also expand the concept of employment to benefit the millions of Americans who are freelancers, independent contractors or otherwise part of the “gig economy. ” “If you make it easier to hire more people, that’s both and ” said Oren Cass, the domestic policy director of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. But in recent decades, as courts and regulators tussled over what, exactly, constitutes an employee, “we’ve made it harder to hire, even as it’s gotten easier to become Uber, a company that succeeds with hardly any formal employees,” Mr. Cass said. Companies like Uber are terrified to offer benefits like health care. At Uber, for example, that increases the chances that a court will declare a driver an employee, which requires Uber to pay insurance and taxes, and makes the company liable if a driver harasses a passenger or causes an accident. “But what if there was a category of employment that was somewhere between a employee and an independent contractor?” Mr. Cass asked. “What if Uber could say to a driver, ‘We’re willing to contribute to your health care costs, but we don’t want to be on the hook for everything. ’” Creating a new category of employment could be risky for workers. Companies could opt to do away with formal employees altogether, and make it harder for workers to organize to fight for their rights. But such innovations could also be paired with flexible protections for workers, like “portable benefits. ” Government policies could let employees transfer their health care plans or 401( k) accounts as easily as they switch cellphone carriers. That might push companies to compete for workers with the same ferocity that Verizon battles ATT. Ideas like these have been around for a while, but have been stymied by old political divisions. Mr. Trump, however, is a disruptive force. “There’s an opportunity right now for the Labor Department to redefine its role, to help people stop thinking about the relationship between companies and workers as always ” said Eric Liu, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton and author of the forthcoming “You’re More Powerful Than You Think: A Citizen’s Guide to Making Change Happen. ” “If Trump is smart, he’ll start stealing ideas from the right and left,” Mr. Liu added. He could also steal from successful companies by publicizing good ideas. Companies like Costco and Allstate, which have prospered by giving employees higher wages and better benefits, deserve more attention. They haven’t been feted by this administration yet, but they should be. The White House should also propagandize the workplace nudges and experiments that help both workers and a company’s bottom line. It is, of course, unclear if these are the kinds of ideas Mr. Trump or his cabinet will embrace. But there are strong reasons to hope they might. Mr. Trump was elected largely by workers. He is, uniquely, a president not beholden to union orthodoxies or industrial dogmas. “I’ve always referred to the Department of Labor as the Department of Opportunity,” said Thomas E. Perez, who served as secretary of labor under Mr. Obama and is now running to head the Democratic National Committee. In the most recent election, workers showed how powerfully they can upend political prognostications when they want to — and how much they are willing to cross party lines to get what they want. “I’m not at all convinced Trump actually cares about workers,” Mr. Perez said. “But I’m willing to be surprised. ” | 1 |
The man who the Dallas police say killed five officers in a barrage of bullets on Thursday was a troubled Army reservist who left Afghanistan under a cloud of sexual harassment charges made by a fellow soldier who sought an order of protection against him and said he needed mental health counseling. Micah Johnson, 25, left the service in 2015, moving back to the Dallas area, where he had grown up. There, he gravitated toward black power groups, displaying his affinity for them on Facebook. His profile page, which has since been taken down, paid homage to black pride, featuring images of a raised fist and pictures of the red, black and green flag. Both have been symbols of nonviolent black empowerment for decades, but have also been by extremist groups with racist views. And when the authorities searched Mr. Johnson’s home on Friday, after he had been killed by the police, they said they found “ materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and a personal journal of combat tactics. ” Mr. Johnson, who the police said acted alone, served in the Army Reserve from 2009 to 2015, leaving as a private first class, according to Army records. He was deployed to Afghanistan in November 2013 with the 420th Engineer Brigade, based in Seagoville, Tex. His job specialty was as a mason and carpenter. Nothing in his records suggests that he saw combat or was injured. While he was in Afghanistan, a female soldier in Mr. Johnson’s unit accused him of sexual harassment, according to Bradford Glendening, the military lawyer assigned to represent Mr. Johnson when he returned to Texas. Quoting from Mr. Johnson’s file, which was dated May 2014, Mr. Glendening said that Mr. Johnson’s accuser recommended that he receive “mental help. ” She also requested “a protective order against Pfc. Johnson pertaining to myself, my family, home, restaurant and any other place of residence I may reside at. ” According to Mr. Glendening, the Army initiated proceedings to kick Mr. Johnson out of the military for what is known as an other than honorable discharge. “They didn’t like him, that was very clear from talking to his commander,” Mr. Glendening said. On Mr. Glendening’s advice, Mr. Johnson waived his right to a hearing in exchange for a lesser charge. On his Facebook page, Mr. Johnson “liked” two groups that seem to shed light on his ideological views. One was the New Black Panther Party, which was founded in Dallas, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The League calls it “the largest organized and racist black militant group in the United States. ” The other group was the African American Defense League, which was formed in 2014 by a man named Millere. “Millere is known for calling for violence against police specifically, on a regular basis,” said Oren Segal, the director of the League’s Center on Extremism. “Usually after a high profile shooting he takes to social media to encourage violence against police. ” After the killing of Laquan McDonald in Chicago, Mr. Millere called for “death to every blue, bastard, hypocrites, killer pig across the nation,” according to Mr. Segal. Mr. Johnson’s Facebook page also included a picture of himself with Richard Griffin of the rap group Public Enemy. Mr. Griffin, known as Professor Griff, made headlines in the 1980s for comments and has been a longtime supporter of the New Black Panther Party. In a series of posts on Twitter, Mr. Griffin said that he did not know Mr. Johnson and that he did not “advocate killing cops. ” Only days before the shootings, after a police officer fatally shot a black man during a routine traffic stop in Minnesota, Mr. Johnson’s younger sister, Nicole, had taken to social media to express outrage. “White ppl have and will continue to kill us off,” she wrote on Facebook. “The only difference is they serve the system hiding behind that blue suit and get off easy murdering civilians. Everything coming into the light and i for one think these cops need to get a taste of the life we now fear. ” After Mr. Johnson was identified as the gunman in Dallas, she returned to her Facebook page to express anguish: “I keep saying its not true. ..my eyes hurt from crying. Y him? ??” Mr. Johnson graduated in 2009 from John Horn High School in Mesquite, Tex. where he was a part of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, according to Allison Lewallyn, a spokeswoman for the Mesquite Independent School District. He joined the Army Reserve after graduation. A résumé that Mr. Johnson circulated among potential employers in January said he had worked since September 2014 for an organization called Touch of Kindness, transporting “mentally challenged” children and adults to appointments and helping teach them “basic living skills. ” He also listed himself as a former shift manager and driver at a Jimmy John’s sandwich shop and as a foreman at a company that distributed fliers. The community where Mr. Johnson lived with his mother is a quiet suburban subdivision with brick homes. The family’s house sits across from a large empty, grassy field. Hundreds of reporters swarmed the neighborhood. A police car parked in front of the home kept journalists away. During a lengthy standoff on Thursday, Mr. Johnson told police negotiators that he was “upset about Black Lives Matter,” as well as the recent police shootings of black men, according to David O. Brown, the Dallas police chief. “The suspect said he was upset at white people,” Chief Brown said. “The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers. ” A local activist, Yafeuh Balogun, said that he had spotted Mr. Johnson at demonstrations, but described him as more of a lone wolf. “He was part of a group of citizens that feel there needs to be some change that needs to take place,” Mr. Balogun said. “The difference is Micah took an extreme position. ” | 1 |
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According to CBS News , a Des Moines woman has been charged a woman with election misconduct, a Class D felony, after officials said she voted twice.
Des Moines police Sgt. Paul Parizek says officers charged 55-year-old Terri Rote with first-degree election misconduct on Thursday after being notified by elections officials that she had submitted two absentee ballots.
The real bombshell comes in paragraph 3:
According to an Iowa Public Radio report, Rote voted two times for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
After quoting Trump’s “oft-repeated line on the … campaign trail: ‘The polls are rigged,'” the CBS reporters note that Thursday’s development is not a one-off deal. They quote Polk County Attorney John Sarcone as saying, “This [is] maybe the third [time] we’ve had some irregularity that’s resulted in a criminal charge.”
From there, the writers go on to express their newfound support of voter ID laws, adding that Republicans have been right all along and some method for keeping elections honest is long overdue.
Oh, wait a seond: No they don’t. That would be the logical conclusion, but since when are liberals capable of logical thought? 1 shares | 0 |
LONDON — Asked to vote in or out, Britain has chosen decisively to cast off its membership in the European Union, leaving it to face a more complex question: What kind of nation will it be now? Will Britain be the entrepreneurial, confident country that makes its independent way in the world, as the leaders of the “Leave” campaign insisted it could be? Or will it retreat to become a Little England, nationalist and a touch xenophobic, responding to the voters that drove it to quit the European Union? Even more important: Will it even hold together? With Scotland deeply pressure will increase for another independence referendum that could bring an end to the United Kingdom. Britain, a nation whose storied history has encompassed the birth of constitutional government, global empire, royal pageantry and heroic defense against fascism, is entering unknown territory. The questions about its new path could remain unresolved for years. On Friday morning, at least, Britain remained a member of the European Union in full standing, just as it was 24 hours earlier. But the impact of this plebiscite is likely to be profound and well beyond the immediate tumult in the financial markets, and the questions about Britain’s future will be answered against the backdrop of potential political, legal and economic upheaval. A Conservative government with its first majority since 1992 has ripped itself apart on a global stage and is badly damaged. Prime Minister David Cameron promptly announced that he would step aside once his party settled on a successor, setting up a potentially leadership battle. An early general election is not out of the question. Once Britain begins the formal process of withdrawing from the European Union by exercising Article 50 of the treaty that governs membership in the bloc — a step Mr. Cameron said he would leave to the next prime minister — it will set off a clock on negotiations, a period in which Britain (including millions of European citizens living in Britain and British citizens living in the European Union) will be in limbo. And if the British Treasury, the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund and the Institute for Fiscal Studies are to be believed, the British economy is in for a severe shock. The Treasury estimates that the British gross domestic product, representing the size of the economy, will fall by 3. 5 percent, clobbering tax receipts that half a million people will lose their jobs and that housing prices (and thus personal wealth of homeowners) will fall by 10 percent. Those estimates were criticized by the Leave campaign, including senior members of government, as unfounded fear mongering. Now Britain will find out how accurate they are. This vote was a severe shock to Britain’s political class from voters who are angry, confused and deeply distrustful of elites. The Labour Party joined Mr. Cameron in campaigning to stay in Europe, as did nearly all the other parties represented in Parliament, with the exception of the Democratic Unionists and the U. K. Independence Party, which was founded on a platform of leaving the European Union. Yet despite that solid wall of establishment voices — or perhaps because of them — Britain voted for a fundamental change in direction. “The British political class should pay attention,” said Tony Travers, professor of government at the London School of Economics. “There is a lot of disaffection with both main parties,” he said. In 1955, the Conservatives and Labour won 97. 5 percent of the vote, but in last two elections, the two won only about 66 percent of the vote, he said. “Into that vacuum something else has to move, but what?” Mr. Travers asked. “The political class has to wonder how to appeal to those who increasingly feel left out of the system, how to stop large numbers of voters feeling cut out of economic change and success. ” The Conservative Party is already split between traditional establishment figures like Mr. Cameron and others who embraced the posture of the Leave campaign, most prominently the former mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and one of Mr. Cameron’s senior cabinet members, Michael Gove. Mr. Cameron also had more centrist views than many in his party’s grass roots, having pushed the Conservatives to back social issues like marriage and adopt unifying themes like “ Conservatism. ” He is likely to be replaced by someone more to the right and more like Theresa May, the home secretary, or Mr. Johnson, who also thinks of himself as a “ Tory,” but in the Churchillian mode, and has made no secret of his ambition. And the Labour Party must find a way to embrace those voters who are clearly unhappy about the effects of globalization and immigration on their lives and found themselves swayed by the Leave campaign. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was somewhat halfhearted in his support for the “Remain” camp, reflecting his ambivalence about whether staying in Europe would be the right focus when it comes to helping working people. This referendum has also displayed a major fissure between Britain’s metropolitan elite and the rest of the country, essentially pitting rich versus poor across the normal party divide. “Two nations, in short, are staring at each other across a political chasm,” wrote John Harris in the Guardian, which supported Remain, but James Bartholomew made the same point in the Spectator magazine, which supported Leave. Those with a university degree supported Remain in large numbers, according to polls those with little higher education supported Leave in equally large numbers. Major cities, multicultural and replete with immigrants, tended to support Remain, while the countryside and poorer areas along the eastern coast were strongly for Leave. People over 45, and especially retirees, strongly supported Leave, while younger Britons strongly supported Remain. Those with cosmopolitan lives and money were afraid to lose it those whose lives are bounded by England and are struggling with the pressures of globalization and immigration looked for a return to a calmer, more homogeneous past. So the divisions are just as much cultural as economic, and they raise serious questions about Britain’s political coherence and unity, and about how long it may take to heal the wounds made or reopened in this noisy, often vicious campaign. The referendum also sharply exacerbated tensions within the four countries of the United Kingdom and gave a jolt to English nationalism, already on the rise since the Scottish independence referendum failed in 2014. In addition to intensifying demands for another referendum on independence for Scotland, the outcome of the European Union vote may also increase demands in England, which makes up 85 percent of the British population, for its own devolved Parliament to vote on laws concerning only England, just as Parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do now for their regions. Amid the overwhelming confusion about the next few years, it will take more than a few reassuring words about a festival of democracy to begin to bring Britain back together. As Mr. Harris warned, “We are in a terrible mess, and it is probably going to take decades to even begin to put things right. ” | 1 |
All that was missing from the Connecticut women’s basketball team’s shattering of its own N. C. A. A. winning streak on Saturday was a sense of drama and amazement. victories in a row with no end to the winning in sight? “Honestly, I don’t sit here and figure out how many games we’re going to win in a row,” Coach Geno Auriemma said before the Huskies broke out to a lead and obliterated Southern Methodist in Dallas, to write the latest chapter in the program’s illustrious history. “We’ve done it before. ” From 2008 to 2010, his team, powered by Maya Moore, chased and overtook the streak set by the U. C. L. A. men’s team in 1974, peaking at 90 straight before losing to Stanford. Given Connecticut’s dominance of the college women’s game — the Huskies have won the last four national titles and a record 11 in all under Auriemma — the notion of another lengthy streak was never a question. But when Connecticut finished an unbeaten season last April by routing Syracuse in the national title game for its 75th straight victory, the widespread belief in women’s basketball circles was that the latest streak would quickly end, and that the next edition of the team could lose multiple games. In the 2016 W. N. B. A. draft, the graduating portion of the UConn roster provided the top three picks, including Breanna Stewart, who was named the most outstanding player all four years she played in the Final Four. Going into this season, the Huskies for once lacked a preseason and they had an undersized front line, a shallow bench and uncertainty at the point guard position. But they did begin with a belief in the system generated by so much success and by Auriemma, who seldom lacks in . “Everybody in the whole country has talked about what we’ve lost,” said Kia Nurse, a junior and national champion. “I personally like playing with a chip on our shoulder. ” That chip has turned into a steamrollering boulder. The streak nearly ended on opening night, at Florida State, when the Seminoles had a shot in the air for the win. The shot fell short, and nobody has pushed the Huskies that hard since. It wasn’t as if they took the path of least resistance to victory No. 91. Auriemma had joked that everyone was eager to schedule Connecticut this season, when seven of its first 12 games were against Top 25 teams, including road games against No. 2 Notre Dame and No. 4 Maryland, and a home game against No. 3 Baylor. Only the Baylor game was close in the final minutes. Along the way, the Huskies have developed a new Big Three, in the sophomores Katie Lou Samuelson and Napheesa Collier and the junior Gabby Williams. They have never lost a game in the American Athletic Conference their next formidable challenge figures to be a nonconference game at home on Feb. 13 against South Carolina, which is ranked No. 5 in the Associated Press and USA Today Coaches polls. “Women’s basketball is always a little bit under the radar,” Auriemma said after the new record was secured. “But people that follow the game appreciate what this program has done. ” If the streak lasts until the South Carolina game, the Huskies will be shooting for a No. 100. “Some things you just can’t really explain,” Auriemma said. “You just have to enjoy it. ” | 1 |
Standing in ruin on Monday near Madison Square Park was not only a hub of Serbian life in New York City. Standing in ruin was a landmark of old New York. Standing in ruin, too, was a symbol of restless Manhattan a spiritual home for wealthy Episcopalians, the lost souls of the notorious Tenderloin and generations of Orthodox Christians, who knew it as the Cathedral of St. Sava. Peter II, the last king of Yugoslavia, attended services there. In this brownstone house of worship at 15 West 25th Street — now scorched and roofless after a fire on Sunday — Edith Newbold Jones was married in April 1885 to Edward Robbins Wharton. At the time, the building was a “chapel of ease,” built and run by the parish of Trinity Church on Wall Street to serve the gentry Mrs. Wharton would later write about: society families who had deserted Lower Manhattan for the pleasant upper reaches of the city, in the East and West 20s. “To provide for the return of a portion at least of our faithful and friends, it was thought expedient to build a new church at their very door,” the rector of Trinity Church, the Rev. William Berrian, said at the dedication of Trinity Chapel in April 1855. Richard Upjohn was the architect of both the Wall Street mother church and the 25th Street chapel, which the Landmarks Preservation Commission called a rugged version of English Gothic Revival, “reinforced with large buttresses which give it both durability and permanence. ” Prophetically, Trinity Chapel was the setting in 1865 for what The New York Times described as the “first public celebration of the Russian (or Greek) church, not only in this city, but on the American continent. ” The wedding in 1885 of Pussy Jones and Teddy Wharton, as they were called by family and friends, was a quiet affair. It may have been the happiest day of the troubled marriage, which ended in divorce in 1913. It was in 1914 that Trinity’s leaders decided to close the chapel, which was now surrounded by the bad elements of the Tenderloin, a shadowy realm of hotels, saloons, gambling dens and whorehouses. The Rev. Joseph Wilson Sutton was supposed to wind things down as the priest in charge. Instead, surprising everyone, he breathed new life into Trinity Chapel. Enrollment grew. A Sunday school was . Spiritual healing services were introduced, as was a school for organists. By the start of World War II, however, Trinity parish could no longer afford to keep the chapel open. The property was sold in 1943 to the fledgling Serbian Eastern Orthodox Church of St. Sava, led by the Very Rev. Doushan J. Shoukletovich. A year later, it was elevated to become the first Serbian Orthodox cathedral in America. Lending instant luster to the new cathedral were King Peter II and Queen Alexandra, in exile from Yugoslavia, which abolished the monarchy in 1945. “The thousands of displaced Serbians who are starving and homeless in Europe look to this king as a symbol of unity,” Father Shoukletovich said at the Easter service of 1948. St. Sava suffered its first big structural trauma in 1966, when a bomb exploded at Communist Party headquarters, across West 26th Street from the north side of the cathedral. Whole sections of were shattered by the blast. But they were later replaced with windows. Resilience seems to play a large role in the history of St. Sava’s. Make of this what you will, but on Monday the great cross over the entrance was still standing against the sky. | 1 |
in: Multimedia , Politics (image: Gage Skidmore) Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall (King James Bible). Throughout recorded history, hubris has been the Achilles’ Heel of political despots. Hillary Clinton and her political crime machine has been operating above the law for decades, stretching back at least to when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas. “Hillary Clinton is a toilet scrubber for Goldman Sachs” – John Titus on the Shadow of Truth During her 2016 Presidential Campaign, it became routine for her get in front the public and lie with convincing ease. In Greek tragedy, “hubris” was an anti-hero’s excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to the character’s unforeseen demise. When Hillary was deposed by the FBI about the 33,000 emails on her private server that were wiped clean forever using BleachBit, she assumed her tracks were irrevocably covered up. But it wasn’t just 33,000 emails that were incinerated, reams of evidence including laptops, server back-ups and Blackberries either “disappeared” or were wiped clean. But out of the blue, as if sent to earth from a Higher Power, the FBI in its child pornography investigation of Anthony Weiner stumbled on to a laptop with 650,000 emails that appeared to have been downloaded from Hillary Clinton’s private server. It is highly probable that among this treasure trough of emails will be copies of the 33,000 emails that Hillary arrogantly assumed were wiped from the Universe. Hubris gets ’em every time. But it gets better than that. 650,000 is decade’s worth of emails. It’s also possible that Weiner’s laptop will finally shed the light of Truth on Benghazi. “Jim Comey did not re-open this investigation of to go over old ground. Worse infractions were discovered.” – John Titus In addition to exposing Hillary to all sorts of felonies, here statement to the FBI under oath could be undermined by this unforeseen “Black Swan” event that has engulfed her campaign. The Shadow of Truth is pleased to present John Titus of Best Evidence productions and his unique insight into this event. The two-part podcast covers analysis that has not been presented in either the mainstream or alternative media: Part 1 | 0 |
Questions Re Kim DotCom and Wikileaks Still no sign of 33K emails. So what Scenario is it?Sceanrio 1: Wikileaks still under Assange Control and DotCom is telling the truth. Kim DotCom Sent Hillary's Emails to Wikileaks. Wikileaks will release the emails to public today.- So where are the emails? - Why didn't wikileaks say we received the emails?Scenario 2: Wikileaks still under Assange Control and DotCom is not telling the truth. Kim DotCom did not Send anything to Wikileaks. - Why didn't wikileaks say we didn't get anything?Sceanrio 3: Wikileaks under .GOV Control and DotCom is telling the truth. Kim DotCom Sent Hillary's Emails to Wikileaks. Wikileaks doesn't release the emails to public today.- If Wikileaks doesn't release mail we know Assange no longer in control- DotCom will have to release the emails to public today or he loses all credibility.Scenario 4: Wikileaks under .Gov control and DotCom is not telling the truth. Kim DotCom did not Send anything to Wikileaks. - We don't see any emails and we have been rick rolled Page 1 | 0 |
Transgender lifestyles and relationships should be ‘promoted’ to children as young as two to reduce hate crime, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) has said. [Delegates at the union’s national conference in Cardiff on Monday voted for its members to teach about ‘LGBT+’ issues and lifestyles to toddlers starting from nursery school. Teachers bemoaned a “lack of policies which promote LGBT+ within schools” which they allege has a “significant negative impact” on the of students and teachers who are homosexual or transgender. It was revealed last month that primary schools will likely be legally obliged to teach pupils about couples as part of the mandatory relationships curriculum that is due to begin from 2019. But the NUT says the amendment to the Children and Social Work Bill doesn’t go far enough, calling for “ content” on the subject at an even younger age, and for secondary school pupils to be taught more about safe sex in gay relationships. NUT executive committee member Annette Pryce slammed a “right wing, religious lobby” which she blamed for having prevented ministers from proposing a more “inclusive” agenda for sex education. “Generations of young LGBT+ people who have been failed by the system are still not told explicitly in the law that their lives are important too,” Pryce said. They urged ministers to make proposed sex and relationship education (SRE) “inclusive” to so that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students “are told explicitly in the law that their lives are important too”. “It is high time that PSHE and SRE — including LGBT+ education — is recognised as an essential part of the school curriculum,” NUT general secretary Kevin Courtney told the conference. “It is important for a modern society to understand and embrace differences within our communities. “The alternative is many pupils being isolated, bullied or misinformed and, for many, there is an impact on health and that can last well beyond school years,” he warned. While teaching sex and relationships is not compulsory for nurseries, it is thought that NUT members working in daycare facilities for two to could introduce it voluntarily. The Church of England announced that they support the introduction of statutory sex education in schools, and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has previously said that children should be taught to “revere” and “honour” LGBT people despite the Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are a sin. Chief executive at Christian Concern Andrea Williams, however, argued that teaching sex and relationships education (SRE) to would be “devastating” and risks “robbing them of their innocence”. | 1 |
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Избрание Дональда Трампа президентом США достаточно сильно шокировало весь мир, в том числе, самих американцев. В последние дни сразу в нескольких городах Штатов начали проводиться шумные акции протеста против новоявленного главы государства. Как и всегда в подобных случаях, протесты должен кто-то координировать и финансировать, поскольку сами по себе люди в одно время и в одном месте не соберутся. Если, конечно, это не пункты продажи седьмых Айфонов. Как сообщил информационный портал «Daily Caller», решивший разобраться в ситуации, на этот раз в роли организатора акций выступает некая организация под названием «Progress Unity Found».
Самое интересное то, что эта организация зарегистрирована как благотворительная, и поэтому даже не платит налоги. По сути своих учредительных документов, это такая же организация, как, к примеру, «Красный Крест». Однако цели перед собой «Progress Unity Found» ставит совсем другие: «обеспечить прогрессивную альтернативу мейнстримной благотворительности». Оказывается, даже в благотворительности есть мейнстрим, который теперь уже совсем не крут, и ему нужна альтернатива. Хорошо оплачиваемая, разумеется.
Всё то же издание «Daily Caller» выяснило, что «Progress Unity Found» финансово поддерживает коалицию из нескольких правозащитных организаций «Act Now to Stop War and End Racism» («ANSWER»), которая непосредственно и занимается организацией и проведением акций протеста против избрания Трампа. Коалиция считает, что выполняет священную миссию, мобилизуя людей по всей стране и совершая экстренные протестные действия в связи с выбором американцами экстремальной, можно сказать, фанатичной программы развития государства, предложенной Дональдом Трампом.
Сторонников этой противотрамповой позиции просят активнее раскрывать свои кошельки и оказывать ANSWER финансовую помощь, дабы она могла и далее протестовать по всей стране. В том числе, провести масштабные акции планируется 20-го января будущего года, когда состоится церемония инаугурации Трампа.
Напомним, что подобные акции, нередко сопровождающиеся массовыми беспорядками и стычками с сотрудниками правоохранительных органов, начались сразу же после объявления результатов выборов. 8 лет назад, после избрания Барака Обамы, в США многие так же говорили о бесперспективности его политики. Правда, до таких масштабных мероприятий протеста под прикрытием благотворительности дело ещё не доходило. Не успели организоваться? Посмотрим, как будет развиваться ситуация, и как проявит себя миллиардер на посту президента. И ещё весьма любопытно, из каких фондов на самом деле финансируется «благотворительность» «Progress Unity Found»? | 0 |
I’m running on about an hour and a half of sleep and my nails are damn near chewed to the bone. This because, as a diehard Cubs fan, I was up until nearly 1:00 AM working to come to grips with what I had just witnessed. Once I finally went to bed I found myself tossing and turning so at 3:30 I said screw it… I’m heading to the office.
My beloved Cubbies had just won the World Series, defeating the Cleveland Indians in what is likely to go down as one of the most EPIC game 7 battles in the history of professional baseball. The Cubs haven’t won a World Series since 1908, making this Championship something we Cubs fans could only dream about until it actually happened last night.
As prediction hub FiveThirtyEight put it just a few days ago… the chances were slim. How slim? Slimmer than the odds of Trump winning next Tuesday.
An impossible scenario just become very possible. And fortunately for America, another seemingly impossible scenario is now suddenly started to look very possible.
A Hillary Clinton indictment is now likely .
This coming via FBI sources telling Fox News host Bret Baier that the FBI is moving towards what is “likely an indictment.”
Baier’s report includes the following key points .
1. The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far and has been going on for more than a year.
2. The laptops of Clinton aides Cherryl Mills and Heather Samuelson have not been destroyed, and agents are currently combing through them. The investigation has interviewed several people twice, and plans to interview some for a third time.
3. Agents have found emails believed to have originated on Hillary Clinton’s secret server on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. They say the emails are not duplicates and could potentially be classified in nature.
4. Sources within the FBI have told him that an indictment is “likely” in the case of pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation, “barring some obstruction in some way” from the Justice Department.
5. FBI sources say with 99% accuracy that Hillary Clinton’s server has been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that information had been taken from it.
That’s a pretty strong case for indictment. Of course, the corrupted DOJ can still do everything in its power to block justice, but it now appears the FBI is throwing DOJ demands out the window.
Gonna be an interesting few days ahead, folks. For those of us who are Cubs fans and news junkies sleep is not on the agenda.
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Thursday on CNN, Sen. Rand Paul ( ) said the reactions on the left to President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change were “alarmist” and “ridiculous. ” Paul said, “We should try to constrain pollution. We should try to control pollution. I think we’ve been doing that for 50 or 60 years. And I think we should continue. But your previous guest sounded like, my goodness, the sky is falling, mass extinction. Really? I don’t think we should be alarmists about this. The planet is 4. 5 billion years old. We have gone through great extremes of climate change natural and now we may have influence as well. ” “But these people, the question I always ask the alarmists is how much is nature and how much is man?” he continued. “They act as if it’s a given that man is the only source of climate change. My goodness, the great climate changes in our history happened before the industrial revolution. So is there climate change could man have an impact? Yes, but let’s not be such alarmists that if we don’t sign the Paris accord that there’s going to be mass extinction? That’s a ridiculous statement. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
CHASKA, Minn. — The first Ryder Cup singles match on Sunday was not the best singles match on Sunday. That honor belonged to the duel between the old rivals Phil Mickelson and Sergio García, who generated 19 birdies between them without generating a winner. But the first singles match — between Patrick Reed and Rory McIlory — was no doubt the most important match played at Hazeltine National Golf Club. McIlroy, Europe’s main man, needed to win it in order to lay the brickwork for another improbable comeback on American soil. Reed, now the United States’ main man in the Ryder Cup, needed to win it in order to send a clear and unmistakable message that this time would be different for a team that has been a punching bag for most of the last 20 years. “It was important to see some red on the board,” said Davis Love III, the American captain who saw far too much blue on a sunny Midwestern Sunday four years ago at Medinah Country Club, where the Europeans came from way behind to beat his team. Reed gave Love what he needed, beating McIlroy, in a match that sometimes felt closer to M. M. A. than to PGA. But then Reed, a from San Antonio, comes from a generation raised on demonstrative sports stars, and on wide receivers signaling first down after a catch. He also has none of the scar tissue from that meltdown at Medinah. He was not yet on the squad, and though he was part of the team that lost to McIlroy and the Euros in Gleneagles, Scotland, in his Ryder Cup debut in 2014, this was Reed’s first Ryder Cup at home. He was, to put it mildly, in his element. “Captain America,” said Jordan Spieth, Reed’s fellow millennial and cheerleader in chief at the tournament. Reed has yet to win a major, but there was no evidence of that at Hazeltine as he pumped fist after fist and sank putt after putt and even chipped in for an eagle on Saturday afternoon on No. 6. There was plenty more on Sunday, and the hole that had the most of everything was No. 8. First, McIlroy sank a birdie putt, celebrated by shaking more than a leaf in a Nor’easter and then cupped a hand to his ear in defiance of the crowd and the pressure. Reed answered by making a birdie putt of his own from the fringe and then wagged a finger in McIlroy’s direction. At that mutually antagonistic stage, it would have been no great shock to see Team Europe charge the mound. McIlroy instead cracked a smile, and he and Reed were soon exchanging fist bumps and slaps on the back. “It was all played in the right spirit,” McIlroy said later. “Yes, we mocked each other a little bit, but at the same time, it was all in great fun. ” Perhaps Reed should wear a Team U. S. A. golf shirt at the Masters and the United States Open, too. But then there is — for now — no replicating Ryder Cup atmosphere at any other golf tournament. “Any time I can wear red, white and blue, play for our country and it happens to be match play, it kind of all just fits in,” Reed explained. “Any time I feel like I can go one on one against somebody, it’s something I love to do. ” The Ryder Cup has no prize money no points no talented Asians or Australians in the mix. But nothing can make grown golfers weep like this biennial exhibition, which was long a mismatch until the continental Europeans joined the British and the Irish in 1979. That expansion was fully supported by American stars like Jack Nicklaus, who was inside the ropes at the tournament. He marveled at what the Ryder Cup has become, with scores of corporate tents and close to 50, 000 fans lining the greens and fairways singing, chanting and cheering from dawn until late afternoon as if this were a different sport altogether. “Can you believe all the people?” Nicklaus said. The setting had a dark side: hecklers who kept interrupting European shot routines and, worse yet, made jokes that were not funny. But it is hard to think that such a grand scene could do anything but good for a sport often seen as too slow and sedate as it struggles to reach the masses, and above all, the younger masses. The Ryder Cup is not only one of the best events in golf. It’s one of the best events in sports, and Reed grabbed it with both hands this year and refused to let it go. This victory was unquestionably a team effort. All 12 American players scored at least one point, but Reed was the trend setter and, just as important, the tone setter: clamoring for the toughest assignments and disarming the Europeans at their most dangerous. He did so first with Spieth in team play on Friday and Saturday against Europe’s pairing of Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson, winning two of their three matches. He then did it again all by his lonesome on Sunday against McIlroy, who looked just as pumped up for the occasion as Reed. “All congratulations to Patrick,” McIlroy said. “He was immense this week. ” Reed and McIlroy were collectively immense over a stretch on the front nine in which nothing but a birdie could keep them in the conversation and was not necessarily enough to win them a hole. McIlroy discovered that the hard way on the No. 5 when Reed drove the green — usually McIlroy’s forte — and then made an eagle putt to erase McIlroy’s early lead. They would then both birdie the next three holes to remain all square, but the transcendence was in the details that were not to all the elders’ taste. “Come on, Patrick,” said the veteran coach Butch Harmon, working as an analyst for Sky Sports in Britain. “Show some class. ” It was certainly not the way Nicklaus or his old rival Tony Jacklin would have played it, and surely not entirely in the spirit of Arnold Palmer, whose shadow has been long at this tournament in the wake of his death last Sunday night. But all the loud body language on Sunday was, in truth, much more in tune with the modern Ryder Cup, one in which Europe’s emotional leader has been Ian Poulter. Reduced to a vice captain’s and Sunday spectator’s role this year, he was so often a tormentor of Americans in recent years. Though McIlroy gave it his best shot, Europe ultimately had no one who could replace Poulter’s intensity. The Americans sure did, though. And though Reed and McIlroy both looked just about punched out as they made their final climb of this Ryder Cup to the 18th green on Sunday, Reed still had enough left to deliver the knockout blow: one last birdie putt followed by — what else? — one last double fist pump. | 1 |
Home / Be The Change / Flex Your rights / Residents Fed Up With ‘Overbearing Presence’ of Police — Entire Department Evicted Residents Fed Up With ‘Overbearing Presence’ of Police — Entire Department Evicted The Free Thought Project October 30, 2016 2 Comments
An East Bay police department is now looking for a new office after being kicked out by their landlord.
The Lafayette Police Department is being evicted from Desco Plaza because there are not enough parking spots for all of their police cruisers. According to city manager Steven Falk, the overbearing presence of cruisers is impacting tenants in the building, affecting their ability to park their own vehicles.
In a council meeting earlier this week, Blomstrand referenced “a growing force and too many police cars crammed into his property” as reasons for evicting the department.
Each tenant gets ten parking spaces, but the department is using forty.
Desco Plaza owner Curt Blomstrand has told the department that it must leave as soon as its lease ends at the end of the year. Contributed by Ryan Banister of The Daily Sheeple . Share screminmimi
When they call for help tell them you don’t want to jam up the parking spaces. FeshonALfliP
Good. Go terrorize somebody else. Social | 0 |
Home › VIDEO › WE NOW HAVE PROOF OBAMACARE WAS DESIGNED TO FAIL…AND HERE’S WHY WE NOW HAVE PROOF OBAMACARE WAS DESIGNED TO FAIL…AND HERE’S WHY 0 | 0 |
The Syrian army and Hezbollah resistance forces continued their military operations in Aleppo province, and managed to push back a large number of terrorists from al-Rashedeen region which is the most important concentration point of the terrorists in Southwestern Aleppo. 5 Shares
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The pro-government troops could bring the terrorists in al-Rashedeen region to verge of collapse after taking full control of Housing Project 1070 and al-Hikma school in the Southwestern part of Aleppo.
The Syrian government forces who have been trying to take back the towns of Rashedeen 4 and 5 started the new phase of their military operations on Thursday by hitting hard the terrorists' military positions in al-Rashedeen 4 and 5 towns with artillery shells.
The Syrian air force, for its part, pounded the terrorists' positions in al-Rashedeen 4 and 5 towns.
Some news media also reported the start of the Syrian army's new operations in Zahiya al-Assad and Jamiat al-Zahra to the West of Aleppo.
Also in Northwestern Aleppo, the missile and artillery units of the Syrian army hit the terrorists' positions in the towns of Andan, Kafr Hamra and Ma'aret al-Artiq as well as their surrounding areas.
MORE... Russian Navy Fleet Starts Strikes at Terrorists' Positions in Syria's Aleppo Jaish Al-Fatah Leader Admits Receiving Financial, Military Aid from Saudi Arabia Why do we only hear of the “humanitarian crisis in Aleppo” and not everywhere else in Syria? Is Maintaining Assad the Least Worst Option? Army sources disclosed on Wednesday that pro-government troops are making final coordination for a massive offensive on Jeish al-Fatah terrorists in the Eastern parts of Aleppo city.
"As the army's 24-hour ultimatum to the terrorists to leave the city came to an end and as relative calm has prevailed over the Western and Southwestern parts of Aleppo, the army, the Lebanese Hezbollah fighters and special forces are getting ready to start attacking militants' defense line from several Eastern and Southern flanks," an army officer said.
Meantime, he appreciated the Russian help, saying, "The Russian air and naval back up will speed up the Syrian army's advances in the operation."
"Government forces are about to start their operation against the terrorists in Aleppo any moment," he added.
Local sources disclosed earlier on Wednesday that civilians in the Eastern districts of Aleppo city took to the streets to oppose Jeish al-Fatah's rule in the city, calling on the militants to leave Aleppo immediately.
"Unprecedented clashes between people and terrorists have pushed the Eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo city into a new wave of tensions," sources said, adding, "People have taken part in demonstrations across the districts of Bostan al-Qasr and al-Kelaseh, calling on the terrorists to leave the city now."
"People have also attacked terrorists' food stuff warehouses, fighting with the militants for looting their food stuff from their neighborhoods," the sources added.
The sources went on to say that terrorists have arrested a number of demonstrators, hitting them badly.
Civilians in militant-held districts of Aleppo are tired of terrorist groups' measures, including suppression of people and banning food and medicine for the families who prevent their young sons from joining the terrorist groups.
Meantime, Tens of fighter jets launched airstrikes on terrorists' positions in Aleppo on Tuesday to herald the long-awaited ground operations to capture the Eastern parts of the city.
Tens of warplanes started massive air assaults on enemy targets in the Eastern parts of Aleppo on Tuesday after three weeks of lull and as Russia's Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier launched combat operations in Syria, the Arabic-language al-Mayadeen news channel reported.
The airstrikes started after several humanitarian pauses declared by the Syrian army and Russia to give a chance to the civilian population as well as the militants to leave the Eastern parts of the city through 8 corridors. Thousands of civilians left the city in the first few days, but militants blocked their exist paths, threatening to kill anyone who dares to approach the passages opened by the army. The terrorists aim to use the civilian population as a human shield.
The last such pause was declared on Monday when the army gave a 24-hour lone ultimatum to the Jeish al-Fatah coalition of terrorist groups to leave the flash point city. The deadline was not met by the militants, though.
Defense experts believe that the blitzkrieg is the first part of the long-awaited army operations in Eastern Aleppo to take back the entire city. Aleppo is halved into the government-ruled West and militant-held East. The militants rejected a guaranteed exit to relocate to Idlib or other militant-ruled territories in the hope that over 30,000 fresh forces would penetrate the city through the Southwestern front to lift the army's several-month-long siege on Eastern Aleppo.
Jeish al-Fatah lost thousands of militants in over two weeks of bloody war in Southern and Southwestern Aleppo, but failed to open a corridor for entrapped friends in the East.
The massive airstrikes in Aleppo come as Russia's Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft-carrying cruiser began combat operations in Syria.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced earlier that Russian frigate Admiral Grigorovich launched missiles on terrorist targets in Syria.
"Today, we started a major operation to launch massive strikes on ISIL and al-Nusra Front (also known as Fatah al-Sham Front) targets in the Idlib and Homs provinces in Syria," Shoigu said at a meeting with the ministry’s leadership and defense enterprises.
"For the first time in history of Russian Navy, Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft-carrying cruiser has begun military operations," Shoigu said.
Russian naval task force in Syria is reliably protected by Bastion Coastal Defense Missile Systems and Pantsir systems, the minister said.
Also, General Command of the Syrian Army announced earlier that the country's soldiers and popular forced are about to hit Jeish al-Fatah's positions in the Eastern districts of Aleppo from nine different flanks.
"Our forces, including very well trained units, are deployed in nine different fronts and are waiting for the specified deadline," the command center said in a statement.
Other informed sources disclosed that the Syrian army has prepared a large number of forces, who are expert in street battle and are equipped with lethal weapons, ready to start final the battle with the terrorist groups.
The sources also added that these forces will be backed up by the missile and air support of the Syrian and Russian force | 0 |
‹ › Debbie Menon is an independent writer based in Dubai. She is Editor-in-Chief of VeteransNewsNow.com Her main focus are the US-Mid-East Conflicts. Her writing has been featured in several print and online publications in the Middle East. She is committed to exposing (AIPAC) the Israel Lobby's control of American policy for the Middle East. Control which amounts to treason by the Zionist Lobbies in America and its stooges in Congress, and that guarantees there can never be a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflicts, only catastrophe for all, in the region and the world. Her focus is Israel’s drift towards greater oppression of the Palestinian people; the political deceptions and crisis in Syria and Ukraine; the cold hard facts about America’s so-called ‘war on terror’ and grim future; countering the propaganda war towards Iran & Russia and calling attention to, the new, developing, promising, strategic alliances as a consequence. Her mission is to inform and educate the public on issues of the US/Middle East conflicts that are unreported, underreported, or distorted in the Zionist owned American Media. Her writing reflects the incredible resilience, almost superhuman steadfastness of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, who are now facing the prospect of a final round of ethnic cleansing. Her mission is to inform and educate internet viewers seeking unfiltered information about real events on issues of the US/Middle East conflicts that are unreported, underreported, or distorted in the American media. Her purpose is to look at the current reality from a different and critical perspective, not to simply rehash the pro-US/Israel perspective, smoke and mirrors that has been allowed to utterly and completely dominate Mainstream discourse. PS: For those of her detractors that think she is being selective and even “one sided,” tough, that is the point of her work, to present an alternative view and interpretation of the US-Israel-Middle East conflict, that has been completely ignored in mainstream discourse and denied the US public. Oh, and she is not Muslim or Palestinian and not married to one either! She is practicing Roman catholic. Rep. Gowdy on the impact of the FBI’s new Clinton inquiry By Debbie Menon on October 31, 2016 BRAVO! Rep. Gowdy. Senator Trey Gowdy is an American attorney, politician and former prosecutor. He currently serves as the U.S. Representative for South Carolina’s 4th congressional district.
Senator Trey Gowdy is right, timing is consequence of decisions Hillary made period. Jim Comey’s obligation is to the public.
Senator (Harry) Reid is simply “just another” one of the political hacks who populate that massive brothel we call Capitol Hill. Senator Reid and others are aware of the treasonous and criminal nature of the Clintons.
Hillary Clinton is probably guilty of many things which have not surfaced as openly or as clearly, so lets not scapegoat Huma Abedine and her husband. Hillary is obviously guilty as sin of malfeasance of office and negligence, for the very fact that she exposed her country’s secrets to hackers, knowingly using a private server to conduct State Department business with the outside world and should be called to account for it. Period.
It is people like Bill & Hillary who have become to Big to Fall and the basic problems and causes of the fundamental failures in US Government. Two of the major rotten apples in the barrel, and these are probably two of the most obvious who should be prosecuted not only as examples to the others, but for delivery of the justice which they have earned… and which the citizens of America deserve!
Instead of rewarding them by returning them to the Oval office, they should be investigated, and they should be held accountable. Americans can live in a State of Law and Justice, or a State of suppression, injustice, corruption and subjugation to powerful politicians. It is their choice!
Published on Oct 30, 2016 Chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Rep. Gowdy, weighs in on ‘Special Report’ | 0 |
This Sucker's Rally Is Done----Soon Comes The Carnage By David Stockman. This is about as irrational as it gets. Financial markets are heading straight into a perfect storm of central bank failure, bond market carnage, a worldwide recession and a spectacular fiscal bloodbath in Washington. Investors should be heading for the hills with all deliberate speed. | 0 |
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), facing criticism over its classification of carcinogens, has reportedly been advising its scientific experts not to publish internal research data on its 2015 report on “probably carcinogenic” glyphosate. The IARC urged its scientists not to publish research documents on its 2015 weedkiller glyphosate review, according to Reuters. The agency told Reuters on Tuesday that it tried to protect the study from “external interference,” as well as protect its intellectual rights, since it was “the sole owner of such materials.”
The scientists had been asked earlier to release all the documentation on the 2015 report under US freedom of information laws.
The groundbreaking review, published in March 2015 by the IARC – a semi-autonomous agency of the World Health Organization (WHO) – labeled the glyphosate herbicide as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Glyphosate is a key ingredient of Monsanto’s flagship weedkiller well-known under the trade name ‘Roundup.’ It is one of the most heavily used herbicides in the world and is designed to go along with genetically-modified “Roundup Ready” crops, also produced by Monsanto.
The IARC’s report caused problems for both the notorious agrochemical giant and the agency itself.
The report sparked a heated debate around the use of Roundup, and caused several EU countries – including France, Sweden, and the Netherlands – to object to the renewal of the glyphosate’s EU license. The vote on prolonging the glyphosate license for 15 years failed several times in June 2016, but the license was temporarily extended for 18 months during last hours before its expiration.
The controversial report has seemingly made the IARC a target for attacks from multiple directions, and raised scientific, legal, and financial questions.
Various critics, including those in the chemical industry, said the IARC’s evaluations are fuel for “unnecessary health scares,” since the IARC allegedly studies the potentially harmful substance itself, and not a “typical human” exposure to it. It remained unclear whether the critics urged a WHO body to test the potentially carcinogenic chemical on humans.
The critics also brought up other controversial statements from the IARC, over whether such things as mobile phones, coffee, red meat, and processed meat could cause cancer.
The agency defended its methods as scientifically sound and “widely respected for their scientific rigor, standardized and transparent process and…freedom from conflicts of interest.” Numerous freedom of information requests by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), a US conservative advocacy group, have since been turned down with this reasoning.
E&E Legal told Reuters that it is pushing a legal challenge over whether the documents in question belong to the IARC or to the US federal and state institutions where some of the experts work. Basically, it’s being decided whether the IARC, as part of the WHO, is truly independent and free from “conflicts of interest.”
According to Reuters, officials from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be questioned by a congressional committee about why American taxpayers fund the cancer agency, which faces much criticism over its allegedly faulty classification of carcinogens.
“IARC’s standards and determinations for classifying substances as carcinogenic, and therefore cancer-causing, appear inconsistent with other scientific research, and have generated much controversy and alarm,” a letter from US Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz to NIH director Francis Collins states, as quoted by Reuters.
The Oversight Committee demanded a full disclosure of NIH funding of the IARC, and even money spent in relation to the cancer agency’s activities.
IARC opponents from scientific circles vowed to provide their data on the matter. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which believes glyphosate is “unlikely pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans,” promised to release its raw data on the subject as part of its “commitment to open risk assessment.” The food safety watchdog made this statement in late September, and still has to deliver the promised information.
Source: RT News
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“The Largest Unprosecuted Charity Fraud Ever Attempted”. November 07, 2016 ormer U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during a news conference at the United Nations in New York in this March 10, 2015 file photo.
Before WikiLeaks Podesta emails were released, Wall street investment analyst Charles Ortel called the Clinton Foundation “the largest unprosecuted charity fraud ever attempted”
The Wall Street investment analyst, has been looking into the Clinton Foundation since the spring of 2015. Ortel explains why he believes the Clinton Foundation is a “crooked charity cooking the books” with over $2 billion dollars in revenue, in an exclusive video interview for The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Clintons, according to Ortel, have figured out how to turn their public service into a business. This charity is “a perfect gathering place and a front” to act as if you are helping others, when in fact they bring powerful people together, concocting deals and making people rich, including the Clinton's, Ortel says.
Ortel’s charges raise the specter that the IRS and other government agencies are picking winners and losers for charities now with two sets of rules. Tea party groups, as well as Democrat Congresswoman Corrine Brown, who is facing over 300 years in prison for her $800,000 slush fund, faced the wrath of government, while the $2 billion Clinton charity that bends rules, goes without scrutiny, he says. Ortel gave a candid evaluation of the Democratic candidate, he said the Clinton's are not “worthy to clean the brass on the White House doorknobs” let alone be the leader of the free world. | 0 |
Hillary Planning Violent Mob Attacks If Trump Wins Clinton campaign will continue to pay protesters to cause chaos if she loses Infowars.com - October 28, 2016 Comments
Hillary Clinton said Trump’s words hurt people, but it was Hillary’s commands to DNC thugs on the ground that resulted in many injuries.
She then blamed the Violence on Trump’s rhetoric.
Thanks To James O’Keefe and Project Veritas we were able to show the planning that went in to inciting violence on the ground and the outcome once their plans came together. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | 0 |
Black conservative author and activist Mason Weaver says after taking a beating for civil rights, Rep. John Lewis ( .) joined his “oppressors” in the Democratic Party and has since assisted in the “destruction of black America. ”[“He was fighting Democrats. And after they beat his behind on the [Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965] and ran over him and stumped him in the ground, he got up and turned and joined,” Weaver said Monday on Tucker Carlson Tonight. “He joined the oppressors and became a stooge for them,” Weaver said of Lewis, who is “now sitting and presiding over the destruction of the black community the destruction of black men the destruction of black women, with drugs and gangs. ” “He more concerned about Trump being the illegitimate President,” Weaver said, “but John Lewis is the illegitimate Congressman. ” Weaver was responding to the war of words between Donald Trump and Rep. Lewis. On Friday, Lewis described Trump’s election as “illegitimate” because of a Russian “conspiracy. ” “I don’t see the as a legitimate president. I think there was a conspiracy on the part of the Russians, and others, that helped him get elected,” Lewis told NBC’s Chuck Todd. Trump fired back, urging the Georgia Democrat to “spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. ” However, Weaver believes the spotlight should be turned on the longtime Democratic lawmaker and his record. “He has presided over the worst school system in the world, where black people are learning to only be gang prep,” Weaver said of Lewis. “I’m outraged that the demonstration that he had early in his life has turned into a subjugation of his right and authority as a black leader. ” Weaver says not only has Lewis failed his constituents — which consist of most of Atlanta, Georgia — but the “Congressional Communist Black Caucus that has every district they own and control is a ghetto hellhole. ” Weaver challenged Rep. Lewis to “apologize” to the American people for joining the Democratic “party of abuse,” which has “always been the party of the Klan the party that went to war to keep slaves the party that’s always been the destruction of black people. ” Rep. Lewis “has gotten rich and his people have gotten poorer,” Weaver said. “The black caucus has gotten more power and influence, and the black people they preside over have gotten poorer — more drugs, more gangs, less businesses, less home ownership, less education, more jails. ” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson | 1 |
Monday 7 November 2016 by Alex Marsh Penguins and Baby Iguana ‘will not follow Planet Earth 2 to Channel Four’
Channel Four’s plans to build on the success of ‘Planet Earth 2’ have been dealt a blow with the announcement that penguins and baby iguanas will not be leaving the BBC for the commercial channel.
“The BBC have been good to us over the years,” said an iguana.
“We’ve built up good relationships, and are keen to explore other projects with them; perhaps a gardening show.”
In a concise statement, the penguins simply announced that they had decided not to ‘follow the fish’.
Scuttling land crabs to transfer
The decision by the penguins and baby iguanas leaves weird scuttling land crabs as the only creature to have committed to Channel Four.
Agents for creepy leaping snakes and icky acid-squirting ants said that their clients had been approached to fill the void, but had so far reached no agreement with the channel.
A three-toed sloth declined to comment. Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently | 0 |
KABUL, Afghanistan — Fifteen years, half a trillion dollars and 150, 000 lives since going to war, the United States is trying to extricate itself from Afghanistan. Afghans are being left to fight their own fight. A surging Taliban insurgency, meanwhile, is flush with a new inflow of money. With their nation’s future at stake, Afghan leaders have renewed a plea to one power that may hold the key to whether their country can cling to democracy or succumbs to the Taliban. But that power is not the United States. It is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is critical because of its unique position in the Afghan conflict: It is on both sides. A longtime ally of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia has backed Islamabad’s promotion of the Taliban. Over the years, wealthy Saudi sheikhs and rich philanthropists have also stoked the war by privately financing the insurgents. All the while, Saudi Arabia has officially, if coolly, supported the American mission and the Afghan government and even secretly sued for peace in clandestine negotiations on their behalf. The contradictions are hardly accidental. Rather, they balance conflicting needs within the kingdom, pursued through both official policy and private initiative. The dual tracks allow Saudi officials plausibly to deny official support for the Taliban, even as they have turned a blind eye to private funding of the Taliban and other Sunni groups. The result is that the Saudis — through private or covert channels — have tacitly supported the Taliban in ways that make the kingdom an indispensable power broker. In interviews with The New York Times, a former Taliban finance minister described how he traveled to Saudi Arabia for years raising cash while ostensibly on pilgrimage. The Taliban have also been allowed to raise millions more by extorting “taxes” by pressing hundreds of thousands of Pashtun guest workers in the kingdom and menacing their families back home, said Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser. Yet even as private Saudi money backed the Taliban, Saudi intelligence once covertly mediated a peace effort that Taliban officials and others involved described in full to The Times for the first time. Playing multiple sides of the same geopolitical equation is one way the Saudis further their own strategic interests, analysts and officials say. But it also threatens to undermine the fragile democratic advances made by the United States in the past 15 years, and perhaps undo efforts to liberalize the country. The United States now finds itself trying to persuade its putative ally to play a constructive rather than destructive role. Meanwhile, the Afghans have come to view Saudi Arabia as both friend and foe. The question now, as Afghan officials look for help, is which Saudi Arabia will they get? Prince Turki who led the Saudi intelligence agency for over 24 years and later served as ambassador to the United States until his retirement in 2007, rejected any suggestion that Saudi Arabia had ever supported the Taliban. “When I was in government, not a single penny went to the Taliban,” he wrote in emailed comments. He added that the “stringent measures taken by the kingdom to prevent any transfer of money to terrorist groups” had been recognized by Daniel L. Glaser, the United States assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the Treasury, in testimony to Congress in June. Others say the verdict is still out. “We know there has been this financing that has gone on for years,” Hanif Atmar, director of the Afghan National Security Council, said in an interview. “This sustains the terrorist war machine in Afghanistan and in the region, and it will have to be stopped. ” That may be easier said than done. Saudi Arabia remains one of the main sources of what Secretary of State John Kerry recently called “surrogate money” to support Islamist fighters and causes. Much of that largess is spread about in pursuit of what Mr. Nasr describes as a Saudi strategy of building a wall of Sunni radicalism across South and Central Asia to contain Iran, its Shia rival. That competition is being rekindled. With the Americans leaving, there is the sense that Afghanistan’s fate is up for grabs. In recent months, the Taliban has mounted a coordinated offensive with about 40, 000 fighters across eight provinces — a push financed by foreign sources at a cost of $1 billion, Afghan officials say. At the same time, Saudi Arabia is offering the Afghan government substantial defense and development agreements, while Afghans say sheikhs from Saudi Arabia and other Arab Persian Gulf states are quietly funneling billions in private money to Sunni organizations, madrasas and universities to shape the next generation of Afghans. “The Saudis are ” said Mr. Nasr, now dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, in a telephone interview. “Afghanistan is important to them, which is why they invested so much in the 1980s, and they are looking to make themselves much more relevant. ” The Taliban theocracy in Afghanistan was coming to a fiery end. It was 2001, and the Taliban government was collapsing under United States bombing unleashed in retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks. Disguising himself as a doctor, Agha Jan Motasim, the Taliban finance minister, escaped over a remote border crossing into Pakistan aboard a Red Crescent ambulance, he said in a recent interview. In the Pakistani border town of Quetta, he and other Taliban leaders regrouped and began organizing the insurgency that continues today. Mr. Motasim was appointed head of the finance committee. One of his first stops was Saudi Arabia. As home to both enormous oil wealth and Islam’s holiest sites, it was the perfect place to make appeals not only to rich Saudi sheikhs and foundations but also to important donors who traveled to the kingdom on pilgrimage from all over the Muslim world. Between 2002 and 2007, Mr. Motasim traveled to Saudi Arabia two or three times a year. Ostensibly he went on pilgrimage, but his primary purpose was to raise cash for the Taliban. “There were people coming from other countries for umrah and hajj,” he said referring to the different Muslim pilgrimages. “Also the Saudi sheikhs would come as well. I would ask them for their help for the war. ” “It was not only the Saudis who would help us but people who would come from different countries,” he recalled. “Saudi Arabia was the only country where I could meet them. ” Once secured, the money could be moved in myriad ways to Taliban coffers, officials said, including through regional banks near Pakistan’s tribal areas and the hawala system of informal . Last year, Afghan security forces even discovered families of Al Qaeda members entering eastern Afghanistan with a stash of gold bars, Rahmatullah Nabil, former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, said. The Saudi authorities often say they cannot control or always identify the millions of Muslims who travel to the kingdom every year on the hajj, said Barnett Rubin, who worked as special adviser to the United States envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban always traveled on fake Pakistani passports under assumed names and were unknown to Saudi authorities, said a security official in the region, who spoke on condition of strict anonymity, citing the extreme sensitivity to upsetting Saudi Arabia. American requests to cut the funding yielded little result. In 2009, American officials complained that the Taliban and other extremist groups were raising millions of dollars during annual pilgrimages, according to American diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. A December 2009 cable from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that donors in Saudi Arabia constituted the “most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide. ” The cables date from a period when Richard C. Holbrooke, who died in 2010, acted as special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and actively sought to curb funding to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The funding from the gulf extended well beyond that period and to other groups besides the Taliban, including the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. In a leaked email from 2014, Mrs. Clinton described the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia as “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region. ” Financing such groups, she wrote, was part of a contest between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who were in “ongoing competition to dominate the Sunni world. ” It was September 2008, the holy month of Ramadan, and King Abdullah was hosting an iftar dinner in Mecca. But this was no routine breaking of the fast at sunset. The feast was an important signal of the king’s personal support for a covert yet still evolving peace effort. Among the dozens of guests were Afghan officials and elders, as well as former Taliban members. Within months, at a more discreet venue in the Red Sea port of Jidda, the Saudi intelligence agency convened Afghanistan’s chief adversaries to hash out a peace deal. Mr. Motasim, the same man who had been collecting money for the insurgency, was named by the Taliban as its representative. On the other side, the emissary for President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan was his brother, Qayum Karzai. During three days of intense discussions — breaking at intervals when the men locked horns — a Saudi intermediary nudged the two sides forward. The peace effort had begun in 2006. The initial broker was Abdullah Anas, an Algerian who had won credibility by fighting the Soviets for 10 years in Afghanistan. In an interview, Mr. Anas said his decision to seek out the Saudis as a mediator was obvious, because of the kingdom’s special status as home to Islam’s two holiest sites and its support during the fight against the Soviet occupation. “Even in a very far village in Afghanistan, Saudi means something,” said Mr. Anas, who today runs Al Magharibia, a satellite television channel based in London. Still, getting the Saudis on board took some persuading. The events of had deeply embarrassed them. Both the kingdom and the United States had nurtured the mujahedeen to push out a Soviet occupation in the 1980s, but the subsequent behavior of the Taliban infuriated the Americans. Harboring Osama bin Laden was the last straw. For the Saudis, it was more complicated. Even when the Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden — Prince Turki, the Saudi intelligence chief, requested it in person in 1998 — the kingdom still did not break with them. Saudi Arabia supported the Taliban government up to 2001 and beyond, in alignment with Pakistan, the kingdom’s main ally to check Iranian influence in the region. “The problem is Saudi Arabia sees Afghanistan through the lenses of Pakistan,” Mr. Anas said, describing a prime challenge of his peace initiative. To achieve peace, Mr. Anas said he wanted to encourage the Saudis to build a relationship with Afghanistan directly. People involved in the effort — who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process was conducted in confidentiality — say King Abdullah was moved to back the effort out of a sense of compassion. He did so, they said, even in the face of resistance from other Saudi royals who were unhappy with the American occupation. Yet others were wary of further involvement in Afghanistan. To overcome Saudi reluctance, Mr. Anas took the Saudi emissary to Afghanistan to show that it remained a freely practicing Muslim society, despite the presence of American troops. President Karzai wrote King Abdullah, who had ascended to the throne in August 2005, a deferential letter requesting his intercession. It worked. King Abdullah met the Afghan leader at the door of his plane on a pilgrimage visit. Mr. Karzai still speaks highly of his friendship with King Abdullah, who died in 2015. “He would never, never, never leave my call unanswered,” he recounted in an interview. “The same day he would get back to me, talk to me and do all that I asked. ” The Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, personally oversaw the negotiations, sending his emissary between Mr. Motasim of the Taliban and the Afghan government for two years. But when talks neared a critical endpoint, the Taliban were gripped by a vicious power struggle. The Saudi demand that the Taliban renounce terrorism and its ties to Al Qaeda was never met. Mr. Motasim was accused of embezzlement and removed. The next year, 2010, his main protector, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s chief operational commander, was arrested in Pakistan, while an assassin shot Mr. Motasim and left him for dead outside his home in Karachi, though he survived. Both events were interpreted as Pakistan’s opposition to any peace process being negotiated without its participation, several of those involved in the process say. “It was then that this process was sabotaged,” Mr. Motasim said. King Abdullah intimated to President Karzai in 2010 that there were obstructions beyond his control. “I wish to help Afghanistan,” Mr. Karzai recalled the king’s saying. “I want it to be peaceful, I want you to sit down and talk to the Taliban, but you must recognize that all I can do is what Saudi can do. “That was a very meaningful word,” Mr. Karzai concluded, “meaning that there were other forces who were probably not willing to allow this to happen. ” Despite those covert efforts, the Saudi kingdom, publicly and officially, has been largely absent in Afghanistan. While paying lip service to the American mission, Saudi Arabia has not built a significant project in its own name in Afghanistan in 15 years. Yet official Saudi neglect stands in stark contrast to the wealth of private Saudi funding that has done more than bolster the Taliban and allied militant groups in the region. It has also spawned hundreds of universities, madrasas and radical groups that have extended Sunni influence and that Afghans fear are sowing seeds of future turmoil. One of those Afghans is Nisar Karimzai, who runs a small research office, the Organization for Research of Peace and Stability. During the Soviet occupation, Mr. Karimzai went to school in Pakistan, where he fell in with a Sunni extremist crowd. “They teach that the Shia are not Muslim,” he recalled, referring to Shiites. He eventually discarded extremist thinking. But his own experience made him wary when he saw a cousin become involved with an Islamist group called Jamiat Eslah. “I recognize the way they are training them,” Mr. Karimzai said. “It was exactly the same way they taught me. “Personally I am scared,” Mr. Karimzai added. “In five years we will face a danger from them. One day they will fight and we will have a very big problem. ” Jamiat Eslah promotes a strict Islamist worldview and describes itself as a nonpolitical organization focused on humanitarian and educational work. But the size of its operations, with 40 to 50 buildings including offices, a university and a hospital, indicates substantial outside funding, said Mr. Nabil, a former head of Afghan intelligence. The group’s bank accounts show no foreign bank transfers, according to an internal government report. Nevertheless, the report concluded that the group is financed by sources in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The group is just one of a proliferating number that have sprouted in recent years as Sunni Arabs from the Persian Gulf compete with Shiite Iran for influence here. The Iranians, too, have been busy building madrasas, universities and cultural centers for the Shiite population, and even a road to the border with Iran. The rivalry underlying the scale of such competing funding, Afghan officials and others warn, spells trouble. In 2001, Afghanistan had just 1, 000 madrasas. Today, there are more than 4, 000, the majority of them built in the last few years. After a summer and fall of violent attacks, including at the American University of Afghanistan and against Shiite gatherings, Afghans worry at the growing sectarian tilt of Sunni extremist groups. Hajji Abdul Qahar Abed, who serves as chief of staff to the chief executive of the government, Abdullah Abdullah, warns that after decades of war and dislocation, Afghans are particularly vulnerable. “My personal fear is that their associates will lead them somewhere that will hurt the people again,” he said of Jamiat Eslah. Another youth movement gaining traction is Hisb a secretive, group that has a wide underground following in Central Asia, according to several government officials. Officials and former insiders of the group said they believed it was funded by foreigners including Saudis and other gulf Arabs, as well as donors in Egypt and Europe. “They want to reach as many people as they can and bring them into the party and eventually strengthen their ranks and announce a caliphate,” said Massoud Rahimi, a student at Kabul University, who said he declined when a cousin tried to recruit him. “It is going to put Afghanistan on the road of conflict,” he said. Upon his election 2014, Afghanistan’s current president, Ashraf Ghani, chose Saudi Arabia for his first official trip. Then five months later, after a second trip to meet the new Saudi king, Salman bin Al Saud, Mr. Ghani pledged Afghan support for the Saudi military coalition for Yemen. In return, Mr. Ghani wanted Saudi Arabia’s rulers to stop the flow of funds from rich Saudi sheikhs to the Taliban and encourage the Taliban back into negotiations. “The signs are positive,” said Mr. Atmar of the National Security Council. “We have not yet seen concrete movements against this, but we believe that we have a strong commitment. ” Yet other Afghan officials and local diplomats are deeply skeptical. One diplomat in Kabul said tracking the flow of illegal money was virtually impossible. Another, who had served in Saudi Arabia, doubted that Riyadh would change, adding that the vast royal family is split into fiefs often working at odds with each other. The scale of the Taliban’s recent offensive also has left many Afghans wary. “The level of finance, the level of logistical support in terms of weapons and other materials, and the level of organizational support in terms of leadership of the war they have received is unprecedented,” said Nader Nadery, chief adviser on strategic affairs to the president. “It clearly indicates a declared war against Afghanistan,” he added, accusing Pakistan, the stalwart Saudi ally. Mr. Abdullah, Afghanistan’s chief executive, recently led a delegation to Saudi Arabia. They went seeking investment, but also asked Saudi leaders to press Pakistan to end its safe haven for terrorists, a request President Karzai also made repeatedly. “They said they will do that, and they said they will try in the gulf region to use their influence to mobilize against terrorism,” said Nasrullah Arsalai, director general of the council of ministers secretariat in Afghanistan, who was part of the delegation. “Saudi Arabia knows if we fight together, it means the Taliban will not be able to bring money from there,” he said. Yet Ruhullah Wakil, a tribal elder who is now a member of the Afghan peace council says he, too, recently beseeched Saudi officials to sponsor the work of the council, which is authorized to pursue negotiations. The Saudis were uninterested. “They are deaf,” he said. “We asked them to help. We asked them even just to give us some dates to serve to guests. “But they gave us nothing. ” | 1 |
Three women suffered severe, permanent eye damage after stem cells were injected into their eyes, in an unproven treatment at a loosely regulated clinic in Florida, doctors reported in an article published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. One, 72, went completely blind from the injections, and the others, 78 and 88, lost much of their eyesight. Before the procedure, all had some visual impairment but could see well enough to drive. The cases expose gaps in the ability of government health agencies to protect consumers from unproven treatments offered by entrepreneurs who promote the supposed healing power of stem cells. The women had macular degeneration, an eye disease that causes vision loss, and they paid $5, 000 each to receive injections in 2015 at a private clinic in Sunrise, Fla. The clinic was part of a company then called Bioheart, now called U. S. Stem Cell. Staff members there used liposuction to suck fat out of the women’s bellies, and then extracted stem cells from the fat to inject into the women’s eyes. The disastrous results were described in detail in the journal article, by doctors who were not connected to U. S. Stem Cell and treated the patients within days of the injections. An accompanying article by scientists from the Food and Drug Administration warned that stem cells from fat “are being used in practice on the basis of minimal clinical evidence of safety or efficacy, sometimes with the claims that they constitute revolutionary treatments for various conditions. ” Kristin C. Comella, the chief science officer of U. S. Stem Cell, said in an interview that the clinic did not need F. D. A. approval because it was treating patients with their own cells, which are not a drug. She said the treatments were comparable to patients’ receiving grafts of their own skin — a procedure not a drug. Two of the eye patients sued the clinic and settled, but it has faced no other penalties. Ms. Comella said it no longer treats eyes, but continues to treat five to 20 patients a week for other problems like torn knee cartilage and degenerating spinal discs. All three women found U. S. Stem Cell because it had listed a study on a government website, clinicaltrials. gov — provided by the National Institutes of Health. Two later told doctors they thought they were participating in research. But no study ever took place, and the proposed study on the site had no government endorsement. Clinical trials do not need government approval to be listed on the website. Legitimate research rarely, if ever, charges patients to participate, scientists say, so the fees should have been a red flag. But many people do not know that. Promising research in eye disease and other conditions is taking place. But researchers and health officials have been warning for years that patients are at risk from hundreds of private clinics that have sprung up around the United States and overseas, offering treatments for all manner of ailments, like injured knees, damaged spinal discs, neurological diseases and heart failure. Businesses promising “regenerative medicine” have multiplied, with little or no regulation. Stem cells, which can develop into many different types of cells, are thought to have tremendous potential to repair or replace tissue damaged by disease, injury or aging. But so far, the F. D. A. has approved only a few products to treat certain blood disorders. The women in Florida suffered detached retinas, in which the thin layer of cells that send signals to the optic nerve pulls away from the back of the eye — a condition that usually needs prompt surgery to prevent blindness. Doctors who examined the patients said they suspected that the stem cells had grown onto the retina and then contracted, pulling it off the eyeball. One woman had such high pressure inside her eyes — about three times the normal level — that it may have damaged her optic nerves. Doctors operated quickly to relieve the pressure, but she became blind. “The really horrible thing about this is that you would never, nobody practicing good medicine would ever do an experimental procedure on a patient on both eyes on the same day,” said Dr. Thomas A. Albini, an author of the article who saw two of the patients, at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Standard practice, he said, is to treat one eye at a time, usually the worse eye first, so that if something goes wrong at least the patient still has one eye left with some vision. Dr. Albini said his team alerted the F. D. A. after the second patient showed up. “They did send an investigator who took statements from us,” he said. “They apparently wrote up a report, which as far as I know is still not finished or available for public consumption. ” Andrea Fischer, a spokeswoman for the F. D. A. said the agency could not comment on whether an investigation had been conducted. Two of the women were not available for interviews because their lawsuit settlements in 2016 included nondisclosure agreements, according to their lawyer, Andrew B. Yaffa, of Coral Gables, Fla. He also was barred from discussing the case, but a publicly available complaint he filed in July 2016 details one patient’s story, and states that the injections were performed by a nurse practitioner who was introduced as a physician. The third patient did not sue, but did not respond to a request for an interview made through her doctor. (The patients were not named in the journal article.) Ms. Comella, from U. S. Stem Cell, said that an independent review board had approved the proposed eye study, including the plan to treat both eyes at once. She said a total of three patients ever received eye injections at the clinic, and were not part of a trial. She declined to confirm that they were the same three patients described in the journal article, but the article links the women to the clinic. Ms. Comella said a trial never did begin, because the first three cases “ended the way they ended, so we decided not to go forward with any additional patients. ” She declined to discuss the cases further, citing the nondisclosure agreement. But she said that U. S. Stem Cell had successfully treated thousands of patients for other conditions, and that it was misleading to draw attention to “a handful of adverse events. ” U. S. Stem Cell also makes money by training doctors to extract stem cells from fat. And in a blog post on Tuesday its chief executive, Mike Tomás, said the company expected to open clinics throughout the Middle East, in Kuwait, Dubai and Qatar. But the company, which is a penny stock, is struggling financially, and as recently as last fall warned investors that its poor financial situation put it at risk of going out of business. Clinics like U. S. Stem Cell that extract stem cells from fat fall into a gray zone. Regulations say stem cells do not have to be F. D. A. approved if they are the patient’s own and are “minimally manipulated” — but some clinics may stretch that term to suit their own purposes. The F. D. A. website has a page that warns “the hope that patients have for cures not yet available may leave them vulnerable to unscrupulous providers of treatments that are illegal and potentially harmful. ” The F. D. A. article in The New England Journal of Medicine suggested that adverse events from treatments “are probably much more common than is appreciated, because there is no reporting requirement when these therapies are administered outside clinical investigations. ” Like the Florida patients, people who consult clinicaltrials. gov may assume that the studies listed there have been approved by the F. D. A. or the National Institutes of Health, but that is not necessarily the case, Renate Myles, an N. I. H. spokeswoman, said. In an email, Ms. Myles said, “The information on ClinicalTrials. gov is provided by the study sponsor or principal investigator and posting on ClinicalTrials. gov does not necessarily reflect endorsement by the N. I. H. ClinicalTrials. gov does not independently verify the scientific validity or relevance of the trial itself beyond a limited quality control review. ” Ms. Myles said that the site urges patients to consult their own doctors about joining studies and includes caveats in multiple places. “However, we agree that such caveats need to be clearer to all users and will be adding a more prominent disclaimer in the near future,” she added. | 1 |
After Henry Trombley died in December, a few weeks shy of his 80th birthday, his daughter, Mary Trombley, found a surprising product pitch among the newspaper clippings and Valentine cards from his youth. “Dear Toddler:” the letter begins. “A little bird told me that you’d be two years old sometime this year. If this is so, soon you will have most of your teeth. And at two years, you are just about old enough to enjoy Wrigley’s gum. ” Ms. Trombley, of Berkley, Mich. dates the letter to 1938, based on her father’s age. She sent a picture of it to her siblings, speculating that “Wrigley was trying to track down lots of babies and get them hooked on gum. ” According to the Wrigley Company, that’s exactly what William Wrigley Jr. the founder of the business, was trying to do. “Wrigley has been credited with being the father of direct marketing,” said Michelle Green, the United States marketing communications manager for Wrigley. “In the early 1900s, he actually shipped free sticks of gum to every address in the U. S. phone book, and that is thought to be the first national direct marketing campaign. ” The letter Ms. Trombley found was part of a campaign to mail free gum to every American child turning 2. Mr. Wrigley also commissioned a Mother Goose booklet starring “Sprightly Spearman,” the mascot for Spearmint gum, and sent thousands of the booklets to schools in poor areas, according to the Wrigley website. On Mr. Trombley’s letter, “we can kind of see the little glue dots where the stick was,” his daughter said. The reference to the sweet, juicy flavor and the use of the Juicy Fruit brand in the illustration in the letterhead suggest that the gum sent with the letter was Juicy Fruit, Wrigley’s oldest product. It was introduced in 1893, a few months before Wrigley’s Spearmint gum, the company’s website says. The letter claims that chewing gum “is good for children’s teeth, which need more exercise than they get with modern soft food. ” But there is no evidence for this claim or for any other oral health benefits of chewing the gum that was sold in the 1930s, all of which contained sugar, said Dr. Jade Miller, president of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry. “Back in the ‘20s and ’30s, quite honestly, there was really not a whole lot of science about whether gum had any effect on bacteria,” Dr. Miller said. But he hypothesized that perhaps people knew that gum increased saliva flow and thought the extra saliva, combined with the mechanical effect of the gum rubbing across the teeth, might have helped clean the mouth and teeth. Research now shows, though, that chewing gum containing sugar actually increases the risk of cavities. What’s more, the American Academy of Pediatrics now considers gum a choking hazard for children younger than age 5. “We also know a whole lot about how toddlers’ brains work, and simply have not yet developed the ability to think through their actions, consider consequences or consistently follow rules,” said Dr. Laura Jana, a pediatrician and author of “The Toddler Brain: Nurture the Skills Today that Will Shape Your Child’s Tomorrow. ” She added: “If you’re 2 and something tastes good, you swallow it, regardless of whether you’ve been cautioned not to. ” Dr. Miller agreed. “When a child understands they shouldn’t be swallowing — that’s the right time to allow chewing gum,” he said. The letter also suggests that chewing gum might offer relief from teething pain. “If you still have a few teeth to come through, chewing Wrigley’s gum will help you,” it says. But this advice no longer holds up. Though teething babies have been known to gnaw on anything they can get their gums on, these days the recommended remedies are usually sanctioned teething toys or timeless homemade options like a cool washcloth. (Note that experts say to avoid frozen teething items — even frozen washcloths — since they can hurt the gums and cause pain.) Dr. Jana suggests a toothbrush, which your child can chew, suck or rub on his gums to lesson discomfort. Wrigley was far from unique in promoting child care protocols that have since fallen out of favor. “There are many examples of significant shifts in parenting norms: Toddlers used to sit on parents’ laps in the front seat of cars before car seats were invented children’s hands were strapped to the side of the crib to prevent thumb sucking babies slept on their bellies and a bit of brandy for teething was a thing,” Dr. Jana said. “In all instances, we now know much better. ” Wrigley has since updated the science behind its recommendations. In 2006, the Wrigley Science Institute was founded to support research evaluating the effects of gum on health. Interestingly, Mr. Trombley grew up to be a dental technician, making crowns and bridges for people’s teeth. Ms. Trombley is not sure what her father might have thought of the Wrigley letter but she said he preferred candy to gum. As for whether or not Mr. Trombley’s mother let him chew that free stick of gum in 1938: “We don’t have any idea, but we like to think she kept it for herself,” Ms. Trombley said. Does swallowed gum really stay in your stomach for seven years? No. It’s true that our digestive system is unable to break down the synthetic gum base, but it doesn’t stay in the stomach for long. The gum eventually moves through the small intestine into the colon and is passed in the stool. Dr. Jade Miller notes that there have been rare instances in which gum has caused intestinal blockages in young children. He said the current thinking on the matter is “not to give gum to a child when they’re too young to understand not to swallow it. ” Does chewing gum build up your jaw muscles? It is conceivable that chewing gum could strengthen the muscles in and around the mouth but it’s not likely to have any effect on your jaw line. “Almost all of the muscles used for mastication are not externally visible, so it wouldn’t impact your facial contour at all,” said Dr. John Dahl, assistant professor of otolaryngology at Indiana University School of Medicine and a surgeon at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health. The more likely outcome of chewing a lot of gum is that you would get a sore jaw and exacerbate pain in the temporomandibular joint, or TMJ, the hinge that connects your jaw to the bones of your skull. Are there any health benefits to chewing gum? Over the years, dental experts have come to the conclusion that chewing gum after meals increases the flow of saliva, which can help clear sugars and bacteria from the mouth, neutralize plaque acids and strengthen teeth, all of which can help to prevent cavities. Dr. Miller said that increased salivary flow may be particularly helpful for people who have trouble with mouth dryness. “That can be caused by a lot of medications or medical problems, and increased salivary flow can really be helpful for reducing the risk of cavities,” he said. Can gum help with speech therapy? Yes. Some speech pathologists use gum and other chewy treats to exercise the mouth and improve articulation. As long as children are old enough, chewing gum helps them practice using their jaw, cheek and tongue muscles in new ways while managing saliva flow and breathing — skills that are all necessary for speaking. Therapists may also incorporate gum into sessions with children with autism because chewing offers sensory stimulation, which can help the children regulate their nervous systems. | 1 |
Like many home cooks, I gave up on steak a while ago. First, meat started showing up on every list of foods to avoid, whether for reasons of health, ethics, economics or ecology. Then, the grill jockeys who blossom in American backyards in the springtime made steak seem impossible in an ordinary kitchen at a minimum, hot and cooking areas, a dry rub and a spray bottle were required. So I never slowed to ogle the steak case until I started cooking for a family. The meat aisle seemed to narrow daily. Chicken gets boring quickly pork is dry ground beef grows depressing veal is for the 1 percent. I started tinkering with steak on the stovetop. I had a skillet and a memory of my mother sprinkling coarse salt into the pan, rather than on the meat. I’d heard rumors of a new method, a departure from the received wisdom that said to put the steak in the pan and leave it alone. After some grisly catastrophes, trying out different cuts, seasonings and heat levels, I had a new system. It turns out that you truly don’t need a grill to cook a great steak: savory, salty, encased in a barklike crust. You don’t need to marinate or . You don’t have to know your way around a chart — with its bewildering eyes, rounds, chucks and clods — to buy a good one. And at dinner time, laying a few slices of steak next to the whole grains, the roasted vegetables and the leafy greens that (usually) fill most of our plates is an excellent strategy. The preparations are simple. Buy from a butcher, or directly from a producer, whose meat comes from cattle raised in a way that you feel comfortable with. Choose boneless cuts that are thinner (at one inch thick, they cook through evenly on top of the stove) dry them well (to maximize crust) then sear them in an insanely hot pan. Salt the pan instead of the meat, and turn over the steak every 30 seconds or so after the first minute of cooking. If you don’t have a skillet, now is the time: nothing that gets as hot is also nonstick, and nothing else that is nonstick gets as hot. When and how to salt a steak has been endlessly debated. The salt in the pan clearly helped the crust develop. But when I also presalted the meat, whether for 2 days or 10 minutes, the finished steak was too salty beef has plenty of sodium on its own. I cheerfully abandoned the extra step of presalting. As long as the cooking surface is hot enough, all that turning will yield a magnificent crust and a interior: juicy and pink throughout, without the usual gray ring under the crust. According to the food scientist Harold McGee, this is because the juices keep flowing instead of collecting in the middle, which makes the interior cook evenly. Keep in mind that this is stovetop steak, not steakhouse steak it will not have the visual punch of a porterhouse. Grilling bloggers (and there are many) spend days attempting to replicate legendary cuts like the Playboy at Jess Jim’s in Kansas City, Mo. or the Longbone Cowboy at Nick Sam’s in Dallas. But steakhouses have equipment and exhaust systems. The broilers at Peter Luger in Brooklyn heat up to a rumored 1, 800 degrees. Some steaks at Carnevino in Las Vegas are for eight months. At the chef Michael Mina’s Bourbon Steak restaurants, the steaks lounge in a bath of clarified butter before touching the grill. That sounds pleasant, but all you really need is a heavy skillet and the right cut of meat. The experts on steak are not chefs but butchers — particularly butchers who were raised by butchers and grew up on a steady diet of meat. Pat LaFrieda, a meat purveyor in Manhattan, would rather you didn’t buy his sirloin steak. “Sirloin is one of my cuts,” he said it’s usually lean, making it difficult for home cooks to get just right. “It comes from the love handles of the animal on down,” one place where the fat collects under the skin, instead of working its way into the muscles. And intramuscular fat makes cooking steak at home far easier. “If it’s good quality steak, and you don’t cook it for more than five minutes per inch, you really can’t mess it up,” said Richard Schatz of Schatzie the Butcher on the Upper West Side (his bloody lineage goes back five generations). “Steak is nothing to be scared of. ” Buy steaks that are one inch thick for stovetop cooking they have just the right ratio of surface to interior. “Having the entire surface of the steak pressed against the entire surface of a pan is pretty much ideal,” said Bruce Aidells, author of “The Great Meat Cookbook. ” That contact between the meat and the hot surface of the pan forms the crust you want much more effectively than if you cooked it in the broiler, where you can’t flip the steak or press down on it to sear it. Steak from beef can be dry or gamy, but so can beef. The thing to look for is marbling, the veins of creamy fat that make steak mouthfilling and juicy. Steaks that have the United States Department of Agriculture’s highest grade, Prime, have this marbling. Choice grade is hit or miss, but usually a hit: It can have excellent taste and texture. The next step down is Select and then Standard, an unappetizing category that is rarely labeled. There is a long list of cuts that do just fine on the stovetop. Boneless New York or Kansas City strip, flat iron, and boneless are and tender. Outliers with long muscle fibers — cuts like skirt, flank and hanger — are less expensive and more flavorful. They are naturally chewy but can be tender when cooked rare and sliced across the grain. Mr. LaFrieda’s favorite cut for home cooking, and now mine, is the “outside” skirt, a cut that’s thicker than the flat “inside” skirt. “I wouldn’t want to call it ‘livery,’ ” he said. “From me that’s a compliment, but some people want their meat very mild. ” For cuts, a wedge of lemon alongside the steak can do wonders. “It won’t do a lot for filet mignon,” the chef Michael Psilakis said. “But for anything well marbled, anything with some age on it, the acid in the lemon juice just brightens up the taste. ” Around the Mediterranean, meat is rarely served without lemon. After you have bought your steaks, keep them refrigerated until 30 minutes to an hour before cooking. (When they hit the pan, they should be cool, not cold.) Pat them dry with paper towels, then set aside on more paper towels, turning occasionally. Do not worry about “losing” the juices a dry surface helps build that strong crust. Fifteen minutes before dinner, turn the heat on high under your skillet and sprinkle its surface with salt. Do not oil the pan. When you think it’s hot, let it heat some more. If it’s not smoking, it’s not ready. When the heat and the suspense become unbearable, lay your steak in the pan and prepare to flip. As you flip, move it around in the pan so it absorbs the salt. If you like black pepper (I do) add it only when the steak is almost cooked. It burns easily. The total cooking time for a steak is four to five minutes. The most accurate way to test it is with an thermometer. Insert it into the side of the steak, not through the top. The temperature will rise significantly after cooking, so 120 to 125 degrees is the range for meat. For those who don’t want to fiddle around with microtechnology when getting dinner on the table, fingers provide the best intel. The feel of a rare steak quickly becomes different from that of a one. And if all else fails, remember this: “You’re not cooking in a restaurant,” Mr. Schatz said. “You can always just cut the thing in half and see what’s going on. ” Recipe: Steak | 1 |
In 2004, France banned vending machines from schools. In 2011, it limited servings of french fries to once a week in school cafeterias. A year later, it imposed a “soda tax. ” On Friday, the government said no restaurants can offer free refills of sodas and other sugary drinks. The new regulation is the latest attempt to tackle what the government called a relentless rise in the national obesity rate. restaurants, usually foreign chains, are expected to be targeted under the new law. The law, which takes effect immediately, said it aimed to “limit, especially among the young,” the risks of obesity and diabetes. The move by France is in line with recommendations by the World Health Organization, which has urged countries to impose a tax on sugary drinks to battle an increase in obesity, presenting data in 2016 on the beneficial health effects of such a tax. The French are, on average, less overweight than other Europeans and Americans. The share of obese adults (age 18 and older) in France was 15. 3 percent in 2014, just below the European Union average, 15. 9 percent, according to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. Malta has the highest share of adult obesity of European nations, 26 percent. In the United States, it is 36. 5 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the overall adult obesity rate in France appears to be relatively low, 57 percent of men and 41 percent of women 30 to 60 years old were overweight or obese, according to a report released in October by Bulletin Épidémiologique Hebdomadaire, the French medical journal. France has been at the forefront of tackling the issue, along with countries like Japan, where a national law requires companies and local governments to measure the waistlines of people between the ages of 40 and 74, and to encourage them to exercise. Mexico added a 10 percent surcharge on sugary drinks in 2014 to reduce alarming levels of diabetes there. After one year, sales of such beverages fell as much as 12 percent, while bottled water purchases rose 4 percent, a study found. Similar efforts are underway in the United States. Philadelphia became the first major city this year to introduce a tax on soda and other sugary drinks, provoking public outrage. In 2012, the New York City health board approved Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to ban the sale of large sugary drinks in restaurants and other venues. But a court struck down the proposal in 2013. The Bloomberg administration appealed and lost. The new law has divided the French, who consume fewer soft drinks per capita than residents of most other countries. “Each person has to take responsibility,” a man told the newspaper Le Parisien. Restaurants “might as well put scales in front of each joint. ” | 1 |
Only 19 per cent of foreign rapists registered as Swedish residents were deported from the troubled Scandinavian country between 2010 and 2014, according to government figures. [The Dail Mail reports that deportations of those convicted of child rape were even lower, at 13 per cent. The figure for migrants convicted of aggravated child rape was not significantly higher, at just 17 per cent. Leniency towards foreign nationals convicted of rape and aggravated rape of adults was somewhat less common, although 37 per cent and 28 per cent of migrants convicted of those crimes respectively avoided expulsion. Deportation rates for foreign nationals who had not been registered as Swedish residents were higher. Nonetheless, some 48 per cent of illegal migrants convicted of child rape were allowed to remain in the country. In cases of aggravated child rape committed by persons, deportations were more likely, but 33 per cent of convicts were still able to stay. According to the report, the “ statistics” break down as follows: The figures emerge shortly after five “child migrants” from Afghanistan were convicted of beating and raping a boy at knifepoint after dragging him into the woods in Gottsunda, Uppsala, posting a recording of the attack on social media. The court denied the prosecution’s request to deport, deciding the rapists “would be hit very hard by the expulsion”. They were handed custodial terms of between 12 and 15 months. Rapes and gang rapes of young boys and teenagers in Sweden, often by men with Afghan roots, is a topic the mainstream media in Sweden has recently become willing to discuss. ”New phenomena” in Sweden. Gang rapes commited by Afghani men towards minor boys. Swedish MSM discusses the issue. https: . pic. twitter. — PeterSweden (@PeterSweden7) March 11, 2017, Institutional abuse of young boys in Afghanistan — by members of the Afghan National Police in particular — was exposed as an intractable cultural problem for Western forces tasked with in This Is What Winning Looks Like, a 2013 documentary by British journalist Ben Anderson. | 1 |
Tweet Home » Headlines » World News » It’s A Setup: Dems Claim Russians Will Undermine Elections With Fake Documents Showing Voter Fraud
The narrative now is that the Russians are either going to compromise the Presidential election by outright hacking it, or, they will simply pretend that they compromised the elections by posting fake documents proving voter fraud.
From Mac Slavo, SHTFPlan :
If the election fraud narrative, cyberattack and rigged voting machines haven’t yet thoroughly confused the American voting public, maybe the latest report from Reuters will do the job.
According to Reuters, U.S. voting authorities are now warning that while the Russians may not actually hack the Presidential election, they may fake hacking the Presidential election.
What they’re saying without actually saying it is that if Hillary Clinton wins the election and Trump supporters show proof of any fraudulent activity, the “proof” will have been fabricated by… The Russians.
Joe Joseph Explains:
This is the height of desperation for the mainstream media and The-Powers-That-Shouldn’t-Be because they know that they’ve been manipulating elections for a very long time now…
Watch at Youtube
It sounds almost too crazy to believe, but this is now being disseminated to the public via mainstream pipelines:
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are warning that hackers with ties to Russia’s intelligence services could try to undermine the credibility of the presidential election by posting documents online purporting to show evidence of voter fraud.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said however, that the U.S. election system is so large, diffuse and antiquated that hackers would not be able to change the outcome of the Nov. 8 election.
But hackers could post documents, some of which might be falsified, that are designed to create public perceptions of widespread voter fraud, the officials said.
They said that they did not have specific evidence of such a plan, but state and local election authorities had been warned to be vigilant for hacking attempts.
Source: Reuters
So, according to this latest report, the Russians are either going to compromise the Presidential election by outright hacking it, or, they will simply pretend that they compromised the elections by posting fake documents purporting to show voter fraud.
Either way, it was the Russians.
Trust us. On Sale At SD Bullion… This Week Only… This entry was posted in World News and tagged Donald Trump , Hillary Clinton , Hillary vote fraud , vote fraud . Bookmark the permalink . Post navigation | 0 |
The Service Employees International Union is launching a desperate campaign against Donald Trump’s nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, who is the chief executive of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. [The attacks come from the SEIU’s “Fight For 15” campaign, which has protested companies while trying to unionize the industry’s and unskilled workers. In the addition to the protests, the union is filing 33 legal complaints against Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s franchisees. The Labor Department, as Breitbart News has written, writes the workplace rules and regulations for most Americans. Under President Barack Obama’s administration, the Department of Labor effectively became the Department of Organized Labor. The Obama labor department was openly hostile to advocates of small government. In 2011 U. S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis insulted members of the Tea Party, referring to the activists as “teabaggers,” as Breitbart News reported. The SIEU’s The Fight for 15 website has slammed Andy Puzder and President Trump by claiming: Trump wants to put Puzder in charge of enforcing these very laws that he broke as CEO. He opposes the minimum wage. He thinks workers are overprotected. He is against unions. He even said he wants to fire workers and replace them with machines that can’t take vacations or sue their employers when they break the law. In fact, as a CEO, he regularly broke the laws he’d be responsible for enforcing if he gets the job. Puzder is the wrong choice for labor secretary. He is simply unfit to be put in charge protecting our nation’s workers and we’re calling on Members of the Senate to reject the nomination of Andy Puzder to lead the Department of Labor. Puzder’s spokespeople have hit back, reports Nation’s Restaurant News: “This is more fake outrage from the unions and special interests which will stop at nothing in order to push their own agenda,” a Puzder spokesman said in an email. “Fact is, Andy is a job creator and has provided opportunity for advancement for thousands of employees. His record of creating jobs is exactly what this country needs. ” A CKE spokesperson emailed a response Thursday on behalf of the company. “While we do not comment on pending litigation, we’d like to offer a reminder that CKE Restaurants is nearly 95 percent franchised,” the company said. “Each of these 2, 769 franchise stores are run independently and solely responsible for their employees, management and adherence to regulations and labor practices. ” Joe Kefauver, managing partner of the Align Public Strategies firm, told Nation’s Restaurant News that the union’s actions would “likely make little difference in the outcome,” and added: “I doubt they expect to scuttle Puzder’s confirmation, they are simply using the process to continue driving their message,” Kefauver said in an email to Nation’s Restaurant News. “Republican leadership in the Senate is wholly committed to confirming the president’s nominees, and I think this nomination is no different. Barring something unforeseen, he will likely be confirmed. ” The SIEU will be slashing its budget by 30 percent this year as a result of having to “dramatically ” its strategy in the wake of Donald Trump’s landslide victory. news site Raw Story has reported that the workers who were working for the SEIU’s Fight for 15 campaign weren’t making $15 per hour and weren’t unionized. The hearing on Puzzler’s nomination is now scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 7. Follow Breitbart News investigative reporter and Citizen Journalism School founder Lee Stranahan on Twitter at @Stranahan. | 1 |
During another week of presidential declarations that some journalists were “enemies of the people” of new steps to restrict White House press access by way of a list, and of reported moves to force national intelligence agencies to toe the administration line, a pattern set in. Journalists, their subscriptions and ratings spiking, howled about another move to undercut the role the free press plays in a democracy (which “Dies in Darkness” as the new Washington Post slogan has it). The administration doubled down on its antipress aggression, this time declaring it was “going to get worse every day” for these “globalist” and “corporatist” journalists (and other such gobbledygook from the former Goldman Sachs executive Stephen K. Bannon). And all the while, so many of the most important and credible leaders in the president’s own party more or less kept their traps shut or looked the other way. If there were ever a moment for government leaders who believe that true information unearthed by independent news sources is vital to our nation to stand up and say so, this would be it. President Trump’s argument that the national press corps is illegitimate and dishonest has emerged as one of the most consistent themes of his presidency, alongside — and seemingly as important to him — his calls for a major tax code overhaul, an end to Obamacare, a border wall and “extreme vetting. ” Those other parts of his agenda appeal to large groups of Republicans on Capitol Hill, including the leaders of the House and the Senate. So you could see the appeal of staying out of the way to let Mr. Trump do his thing against the press — no great favorite on The Hill anyway — as their other big policy dishes marinate and cook. But they might be wise to rethink that strategy. The journalism that Mr. Trump and his aides seek to delegitimize today could be the legitimate research and bipartisan data points they try to use to make policy arguments with Mr. Trump tomorrow. There’s also that part of putting your money where your mouth is after spending long careers extolling the genius of the founders who created our system to ensure our president never became an infallible king, ever cognizant that, as James Madison put it, “popular government without popular information,” is “a prologue to a farce or tragedy. ” Asked on Thursday about Mr. Trump’s first declaration that the press was “the enemy,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said, “I don’t view you guys as the enemy. ” It warms the heart. He went on to say: “I expect adversarial questions. And you rarely disappoint me. And I think it’s part of what make America function. ” It was a start, I guess. But it fell short of the “knock it off” to Mr. Trump that these times demand, at least when it comes to calling true journalism false or calling journalists dishonest enemies. The office of Representative Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker, declined to engage with me on Saturday when I asked for a comment on whether Mr. Ryan was comfortable with what I called Mr. Trump’s attempt to delegitimize the fourth estate. His office said it disputed the premise of the question. As a couple of senior congressional Republican aides told me on Saturday — on condition of anonymity, to speak candidly about private discussions — there is a view on their side of the aisle that, while Mr. Trump’s bombast is notable, the press is being too quick to hyperventilate, and that, in the end, things will be just fine. And every week I wonder about it myself — how serious are all the threats and bluster against the news media by Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon, given that news organizations continue to break big stories about the administration with help from leaks that have not abated despite the presidential pounding? None of it stopped The Washington Post from reporting on Friday that presidential aides, after failing to convince the F. B. I. to publicly dispute reports by The New York Times and CNN about contact between Trump campaign aides and Russian intelligence, went on to successfully pressure other intelligence officials and key congressmen to do the same. It didn’t keep The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal from reporting on a Department of Homeland Security assessment disputing the basis for the administration’s attempt to block travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Nor did it stop the news team at KOKH, a Fox television station in Oklahoma City, from learning and reporting that Mr. Trump’s new leader of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, conducted some state business by private email during his time as Oklahoma’s attorney general, despite denying that he did so in recent Senate testimony. On Saturday, I turned to a sage of the Washington press corps, Bob Schieffer of CBS, whose time in Washington dates to the Nixon administration, to see how seriously he took the recent threats against the press. It was his 80th birthday. “We need to be taking this very seriously — any time you undermine the press, I think that’s very dangerous for democracy,” Mr. Schieffer said. “Do we want a situation where the only source of information is the government? I mean, really? Somehow I don’t think that’s what the founders intended. ” Mr. Schieffer was struck by Mr. Trump’s declaration on Friday that the press should not rely on anonymous government sources when his administration had pushed officials to speak anonymously to reporters that very same day. Mr. Trump was quite fond of anonymous sources himself when, for instance, he promoted the lie that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States by announcing “an extremely credible source” had told him Mr. Obama’s “birth certificate is a fraud. ” All of which leaves the question of what’s to be done about it. The most obvious answer came in the statement CNN made after the network — along with The New York Times, BuzzFeed, Politico and The Los Angeles Times — was cut out of an press briefing with Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, on Friday: “We’ll keep reporting regardless,” the network declared. There should be, however, legitimate questions about whether that reporting should include blanket coverage of the next speech Mr. Trump gives in which he calls honest journalists dishonest or “the opposition. ” Those kinds of polemical statements are no longer “news” (defined as “new”) but rather part of a repetitive, antipress, negative branding campaign. Another lesson came on Friday after several news organizations went along with Mr. Spicer’s exclusive gaggle, including CBS News, ABC News, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, even as Time and The Associated Press refused. After Twitter vented proper umbrage — I was in that chorus — The Journal and Bloomberg said they wouldn’t “participate in exclusionary briefings of the sort that happened today” in the future, as the Bloomberg editor in chief John Micklethwait said. It was the thing to do. Your turn, responsible leaders of America. | 1 |
at 4:39 pm Leave a comment
The more you look into Evan Bayh’s post-Senate “career,” the dirtier it becomes (he’s running for Senate again this year).
Earlier this week, I published a lengthy article examining Bayh’s shameless cash grab since he left Congress in the article, Democratic Senate Candidate Evan Bayh Represents Everything Broken, Corrupt and Wrong With America . I wrote: Many of you will know the name Evan Bayh. He’s the son of three-term Indiana Senator Birch Bayh, and went on to become Governor of Indiana from 1983-1997, and then Senator himself from 1999-2011. Upon leaving “public service,” he did what most of these government prostitutes do — made millions and millions of dollars doing pretty much nothing. As a recent article from Politico reveals, the Bayh family had assets worth $2.1-$7.7 million when he left the Senate in 2010, but it has since surged to a range of $13.8 million-$48 million. Making that kind of money isn’t easy for anyone, and it’s particularly suspicious in the hands of a man supposedly dedicated to public service. So how did the couple make all this money? Evan, for one, joined law and lobbying firm McGuireWoods and became an advisor to private equity giant Apollo Global as upon leaving the Senate. Meanwhile, I can’t figure out for the life of me what his wife Susan does. She seems to be a “professional board member” for a variety of large companies. Just one day after I published the above, The Huffington Post came out with a piece that adds additional pieces to the very slimy post-Senate history of Evan Bayh. Here’s some of what we learn:
Evan Bayh, the former Democratic senator from Indiana and current Senate candidate, has at least $1 million in holdings with a Bermuda-based insurance company, Athene, that has a business model that a class action lawsuit is challenging as a bait-and-switch scam.
Athene’s business plan, the suit claims, is to buy up the annuities of retirees that had previously been invested in bonds and blue chip stocks, and instead pump their money into the risky bets of a private equity firm. That firm turns out to be Apollo Global Management ― where Bayh is a highly paid senior adviser ― which actually owns Athene, so if the gamble pays off, Athene’s parent company gets rich. If it flops, the retirees take the hit.
Private equity’s push into the once-boring annuity industry was the subject of a 2013 Bloomberg story, which found Apollo leading the way. “It’s a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose game,” said Lawrence Rybka, CEO of wealth-advisory firm ValMark Securities.
Bayh has been working for Apollo as a senior adviser for public policy since early 2011, shortly after he retired from the Senate. On the personal financial disclosure he filed with the Federal Election Commission earlier this month in order to run for Senate in 2016, he states that he has received between $5.7 million and $20.9 million worth of assets in the firm. He lists his holdings in Athene as valued at between $1 million and $5 million.
In 2010, when Bayh was still a senator, he went to battle on behalf of Apollo and other money managers who were working desperately to thwart attempts to close or narrow what’s known as the “carried interest loophole,” which allows private equity and hedge fund managers to pay bargain-basement tax rates.
With Bayh’s help, the effort to close the loophole was derailed. An analysis of Apollo’s security filings suggests that the maintenance of the loophole has saved executives tens of millions of dollars on their tax bills since then.
Bayh’s rapacious grab for cash since his retirement has been extraordinary even by Clintonian standards, but it is made all the more poignant by the poetic bromides he offered on his way out.
“I want to be engaged in an honorable line of work,” Bayh told Ezra Klein in October 2010. He said he wanted to find work where he could come home and tell his wife, “Dear, do you know what we got done today? I’ve got this really bright kid in my class, and do you know what he asked me, and here’s what I told him, and I think I saw a little epiphany moment go off in his mind.”
We have since learned ― thanks to the Associated Press, which obtained his Senate schedule ― that by the time he was having this heady conversation, he had already been meeting with executives at Apollo, as well as the brass at the oil company Marathon and the law firm and lobby shop McGuire Woods. He went on to take jobs with all three, joining Apollo, sitting on Marathon’s board of directors, and working as a strategic adviser at McGuire Woods.
Earlier this month, Bayh warned his supporters in a fundraising appeal that the Koch brothers, Charles and David, were hell-bent on making sure Young won the Indiana race.
While the claim is true, Bayh makes an awkward messenger: The Koch brothers are clients of McGuireWoods, where Bayh is still a partner.
“Evan Bayh was paid by Koch Industries at his lobbying firm as recently as 2016 ― and he will work for them after Election Day whether he wins or loses,” said a source who lobbies for Koch Industries, asking for anonymity in order to speak openly about somebody else on their payroll. “He calls Koch names, but he’s grateful for the retainer they paid him, and Koch knows it.”
Bayh, announcing his retirement, delivered a sermon in The New York Times that was filled with regret for the decay of the Senate, complete with hopeful recommendations for reform. But what Bayh actually did while in office has only further degraded the chamber. He used his final year to cast industry-friendly votes while interviewing for jobs with those same industries. Then he left office and became, in a very short amount of time, a wildly rich man worth somewhere between $13.9 million and $48 million. Citizens United has nothing to say about that.
A few months after helping kill the bill, Bayh was literally sleeping at the Manhattan home of an Apollo executive, according to a Senate schedule the AP obtained. It was one of several meetings with the firm he’d joined shortly after leaving the Senate. (His spokesman told the AP he was staying with a friend.)
If Bayh were truly looking for an “honorable line of work,” working for a company that bought up the retirement accounts of the elderly, shifted them to risky investments and hit them with big fees is a strange way to go about it.
Here’s my related post from earlier this week in case you missed it: Democratic Senate Candidate Evan Bayh Represents Everything Broken, Corrupt and Wrong With America .
In Liberty, | 0 |
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter “Adulthood” comes to all of us at different times in our life. It has nothing to do with the legal age we can drink, or drive a car, or get married, and it’s not signified by the job we have or the car we drive. It’s a state of mind, a way of operating in the world. Being a pretty well behaved teen, I often had people tell me from as young as 13 that I was incredibly mature for my age. In some respects, I could not argue with them. I would look at the behaviour of many of my friends and quite easily distinguish that I, for the most part, handled many things far more “responsibly” than they did. But even now, at the ripe old age of 28, I question when and if I ever truly matured. I may have always acted appropriately, taken school seriously, and respected those around me, but did that qualify me for full-blown adulthood? I certainly thought it did, until about a year ago, when I concluded that the true sign of maturity is when an individual takes full responsibility for their life. As part of identifying this conclusion (which I know is entirely subjective), I’ve reflected a lot on what comes with this fundamental step in life. Here is my list of 7 seemingly harsh realities that kick in when you decide to take full responsibility for your life : 1. The World Doesn’t Revolve Around You As much as we may like to think it does, the truth is, we are but a tiny fish in a massive soup of collective consciousness. Does this mean that we are ultimately powerless to create anything that will impact the masses? Absolutely not. But it does mean that we can no longer expect the world to cater to us. Keep Evolving Your Consciousness Inspiration and all our best content, straight to your inbox. Long gone are the days when parents, teachers, or any other caregiver is going to sit us down and remind us that everything is going to be okay. We need to find that strength within ourselves and go against the grain to create whatever it is that we are passionate about. 2. Your Reactions Are Everything In the moment, things may happen to us — some far more challenging, scary, or unwanted than others — but regardless of what that thing is, it’s our reaction to it that dictates how much it is going to impact our lives. For example, there is nothing intrinsically insulting about being called an asshole — we can choose to take it personally, or we can choose to let it roll off our backs. This is why some of us are able to let it go in one ear and out the other while carrying on with our day, while others take it as a punch to the gut and a reason to change their behaviour moving forward. 3. We Can’t All Be Famous We live in a time when instant fame has never seemed more attainable. The laughing mom in the chewbacca mask is all the evidence we need of this phenomenon. But fame still isn’t in the cards for all of us. While I’m not suggesting that we stop trying to achieve success, or even that kind of astonishing overnight success, it seems that with maturity we recognize it’s not only not worth pinning our hopes on, but also not really that desireable. 4. We’ve Been Distracting Ourselves a Lot We all have things to do — emails we avoid writing, conversations we avoid having, and issues we avoid addressing — yet we consistently choose to distract ourselves instead. Whether it be by glorifying how “busy” we are, or by choosing to turn to Netflix instead, part of taking responsiblity for our lives is acknowledging our tendency to distract ourselves. The more we acknowledge it, the more uncomfortable it becomes, and eventually, it will become so uncomfortable that we finally decide to just take action, and wonder why we didn’t do it before. 5. Haters Gonna Hate Even if you go out of your way to be a people pleaser (which I would never suggest), there will always be someone or many someones who do not support you. While this is certainly the case throughout all of our lives, it usually isn’t until we enter maturity that we acknowledge this as not only common but acceptable. In the end, it’s far better to be your true self and let some people hate that, than change who you are and have a bunch of different people hate you anyways. 6. Blaming Doesn’t Get You Anywhere “He/she did it!” It’s the infamous line we’ve heard so many children say while pointing their finger in the direction of the person they believe should take the fall for whatever happened. It may have worked, on occasion, throughout our childhood, but part of taking responsibility for your life is actually, you know, taking responsibility for your life . As much as we may feel like victims to certain things, playing the victim card rarely gets us anywhere and instead tends to prolong whatever situation or conflict we’re trying to escape. 7. You Are the Reason Why You Aren’t Where You Want to Be This one certainly goes hand in hand with the one before it, and is equally as true. If you want to own a multi-million dollar company that earns money for you even while you sleep, you have to start it and stick with it! Your life is what it is right now because of the collection of decisions you’ve made up to this point. So now is as good a time as any to start making ones that align with what you actually want. You just need to make sure you’re tough enough to handle the fears, challenges, and emotions that are bound to come along the way, and remember, no matter how hard things get, “this too shall pass.” | 0 |
Only 3 Countries Left Without a ROTHSCHILD Central Bank The Rothschild family is slowly but surely having their Central banks established in every country ... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/only-3-countries-left-without.html The Rothschild family is slowly but surely having their Central banks established in every country of this world, giving them incredible amount of wealth and power. In the year of 2000 there were seven countries without a Rothschild owned Central Bank: Afghanistan North Korea Iran It is not a coincidence that these country, which are listed above were and are still being under attack by the western media, since one of the main reasons these countries have been under attack in the first place is because they do not have a Rothschild owned Central Bank yet.The first step in having a Central Bank establish in a country is to get them to accept an outrageous loans, which puts the country in debt of the Central Bank and under the control of the Rothschilds. If the country does not accept the loan, the leader of this particular country will be assassinated and a Rothschild aligned leader will be put into the position , and if the assassination does not work, the country will be invaded and have a Central Bank established with force all under the name of terrorism. Rothschild-owned Central Bank Central banks are illegally created private banks that are owned by the Rothschild banking family . The family has been around for more than 230 years and has slithered its way into each country on this planet, threatened every world leader and their governments and cabinets with physical and economic death and destruction, and then emplaced their own people in these central banks to control and manage each country’s pocketbook. Worse, the Rothschilds also control the machinations of each government at the macro level , not concerning themselves with the daily vicissitudes of our individual personal lives. Except when we get too far out of line. The only countries left in 2003 without a Central Bank owned by the Rothschild Family were: Sudan | 0 |
Monday on CNN’s “New Day,” White House aide Sebastian Gorka battled with host Chris Cuomo for over 15 minutes in a contentious exchange. Cuomo opened the segment by saying, “Sean Spicer, everybody else around the president, scolded the media, ‘Stop calling it a travel ban — this executive order. That’s not what it is, you fake news people.’ Then President Trump says what we’ve known all along, Sebastian, it is a ban. He likes that it’s a ban. He likes the original ban and that’s what he wants everybody to know. Why play the games?” Gorka responded, “There are no games. The president can call it whatever he likes because he has the constitutional authority to control whoever comes into this country, Chris. That’s his job. The constitutional precedence and administrative law give him that right. If he wants to call it a ban, he’s the president, he’s the chief officer of this administration and he has every right to do that. ” Watch (Part 2): It went downhill from there with Cuomo accusing Gorka of being “the purveyor of spin” and Gorka shouting back that CNN is “classic fake news. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
LUCIFER in the Temple of the Dog I By Jack Heart on October 28, 2016 By Jack Heart, Orage & Friends
Every story has a beginning and an end, everything in between is just a story…
The oldest stories known come from the Aborigine people of Australia. Their stories go back at least thirty thousand years. They are passed on orally by the tribe’s elders under a rigid tradition called “the law” which ensures the preservation of the Aborigines ancient tribal narratives. Linguistic scholars who have studied them have noted the Aborigines ability to sustain “the inter-generational scaffolding needed to transmit stories over vast periods.” 1
Aborigine tribal lore has been academically documented to chronicle the thawing of the Ice Age and the flooding of the Australian coastline thirteen-thousand years ago.2 According The Wisdom Keepers an episode of Ancient Aliens, the television show purporting to document alien intervention in human history, Aborigine lore also recounts meteorite impacts, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and solar eclipses…3
What is certain is that aborigine culture ignores the brutal realities of its own existence and focuses on what is now called the dreamtime. The word dreamtime itself is a mistranslation of the Aborigine word alcheringa, which means the uncreated source; a source which was always there, which perpetually yields fresh materials from which everything that is perceived is derived.
To the aborigine the dreamtime is an altered state of consciousness that lies across the uncharted chasms of the mind, a place where everything that ever was has been imprinted forever in the aether. Nothing that was, nothing that is, can be lost and it can always be accessed by going back to the beginning through ceremonies and dreams.
According to Ancient Aliens; “in many ways the concept of dreamtime mirrors the ancient Hindu idea of the Akashic records.” 4 This may not be true…
The idea of Akashic records go back no further than Madam Blavatsky and Theosophy, a system of mysticism which she founded. Akasha simply means aether in Sanskrit.
The expansion of the microcosm into the macrocosm and contraction back of the macrocosm into the microcosm is a doctrine of just about every reputable school of mysticism. “As it is above is so it is below” to the Hermitic. “And the living creatures rush forth and return” as it is written in verse 537 of the Zohar: Concerning the Eyes of Microprosopus…
If Blavatsky and her followers got the idea from anywhere other than a library that there was an astral hall of cosmic records it was from Tibetan lamas schooled in the all but forgotten ways of the ancient Bon religion. Bon was the mysterious religion of Tibet before Buddhism, a primal type of animism that believes all things animate and inanimate are sourced from an invisible world.
Ancient Aliens is a show that is often painful to watch yet is a necessity for any serious student of human history. The show has by far its finest moment in its decade long existence when it proposes that the Aborigines concept of the dreamtime matches a leading edge property of String Theory called the “Holographic paradigm.”5
There are tears in the fabric of Mans reality that upon scrutiny open to abysses of darkness. Quantum entanglement as been proven over and over again in laboratories whose annual budget would bankrupt a small country. Einstein was wrong and his precious “particles” do react with each other by some mechanism that travels faster than light. Anyone who’s ever had a premonition should have known that…
In the Holographic universe, quantum entanglement the enigma of superluminal interaction between particles –what a baffled Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” petulantly denying its existence in the face of all the evidence (even then) 6 – is easily explained. What are being observed in particle physics are not particles at all, but different aspects of interference patterns generated by the collision of spherical frequency waves emanating from an Event Horizon.
The Holographic paradigm postulates, in fact takes it as a given, that at the threshold of the time-space continuum, what physicists call the cosmological horizon, lay the source of everything that is, ever was, or will be. The information that composes the universe is never lost or changed. It’s immutable and is broadcast in oscillating signals, generating a chaotic sea of fluctuating frequencies that are picked up by mans senses and translated by the mind into the three dimensional world in which he finds himself.
In short; consciousness takes place inside a frequency receiver and “reality” is a television show…
The empirical evidence is overwhelming that the human brain works in the exact same manner as a hologram. This is called the Holonomic brain theory by neuroscientists. Many just cannot accept its implications. But its founder Karl Pribram, who held professorships for ten years at Yale and thirty at Stanford, was the Albert Einstein of neuroscience…
Pribram died in the beginning of 2015 at the age of ninety-five after a long and distinguished career working side by side with such giants in science as BF Skinner, Jon von Neumann and David Bohm; arguably the most brilliant physicist that the Anglo-American empire produced during the twentieth century.
Bohm collaborated closely with Pribram in the formulation of the Holonomic brain theory, but his earlier radical communist political affiliations would have barred him from the inner sanctums of the Stanford Research Institute.
There at Menlo Park, in the womb of madness, Pribram would have had access to at least some of the classified material of Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ. Throughout the seventies Puthoff and Targ were weaponizing the paranormal for Americas Department of Defense. They were working in the outer limits of quantum entanglement. In fact, Pribram admits to consulting with both Puthoff and Targ about it before beginning his collaboration with Bohm…7
In the same interview, from years ago, Pribram explains that “when an input comes in through one of the senses to the brain, it has to then become encoded in some way so that there is a representation.”8 Pribram calls these representations memory traces and says they have no localized point of origin in the brain.
“If you hack away at the brain” in surgery “you would expect that whatever representational process there is and –call it a memory trace if you will– that it would really be impaired tremendously, that you would remove a memory,” like cutting off a piece of a picture. “It doesn’t work that way.”
Pribram –a highly skilled neurosurgeon– noted among other things for his experimental work at the Yerkes Primate Center, of which he became director, recounts that “when lesions occur in the brain there is never any particular memory trace that is removed.” Recalling from over a half century of experience he continues “you may remove something, like the way to retrieve, to get back out the memory. For instance; you might not be able to talk about it but you can still write a note and say what it is you mean.”9
But the overall method by which these memories are spread throughout the brain, enabling them to avoid damage from injury, has always been a mystery.
Pribram explains that it was discovered in the late fifties that the input from the retina is organized in spots, then focused into lines in the cerebral cortex suggesting that the cerebral cortex is filled with cells that act as line detectors. These cells are sensitive to lines at multiple orientations and once you have lines you can create “circles, faces, stick figures, whatever” to formulate images.10
The idea that the cerebral cortex was interpreting interference patterns can be traced back to Germany in 1906.11 Decades later, John Lashley, Pribram’s mentor at the Yerkes Primate Center, reached the same conclusion.
Interference patterns can be seen in the water if you cast two stones in a pool. When the series of concentric waves generated by each of the stones clash the resulting confused ripples or wavelets are interference patterns.
In the interview Pribram asks “what might constitute those interference patterns in the brain” and “given interference patterns, how do you get an image out of that?”12 He then answers his own questions saying both problems were solved when people started building holograms at the University of Michigan and at Stanford (around 1962). He qualifies that by saying “because a hologram is a photographic store of ripples, of interference patterns. Instead of pebbles on a pond, what you have is light beams hitting the film.” 13The light then spreads in ripples over the surface of the film.
Pribram continues “Every light beam that hits does that and the neighboring ones do it and the neighboring ones and so you got every light beam, every part of a beam essentially spread over the entire surface. That’s why mathematically it’s called a spread function.”14
In a hologram that spread function is translated into images and with every passing year in neuroscience it becomes more and more apparent, Pribram uses the word “overwhelmingly,”15 that the brain functions in the same manner.
Pribram goes on to say that “over the last thirty years or so more and more evidence has accumulated to suggest strongly that the cerebral cortex acts as a resonator. It resonates to the frequencies of energies that are being transduced by the receptors; it’s the frequencies of energies.” He emphasizes that this is not an epiphany. German scientists were talking about it in 1906…16
Holography works by using interference patterns to encode information about a three dimensional object into what is, for all intents and purposes, a two dimensional light beam. The interference patterns can then be translated back into a three dimensional object. A tremendous amount of information can be stored and transferred this way.
Another profoundly functional feature of the hologram and analogous to the non-locality of memory in the human brain, is that all information is stored throughout the entire hologram. As long as a part of the hologram is big enough to contain the interference pattern, it can recreate the entire image stored in the hologram.
Holographic technology is based on the Fourier transform, a type of integral transfer sometimes called an improper Riemann integral. The Fourier transform itself is a mathematical function originally used in the nineteenth century to show the transfer of heat between two systems. Fourier transforms are the foundation of Spectral Analysis in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.
In a Fourier transform two graphs are created; one showing the frequency domain and the other the time domain. The differential is then mapped between the two domains and through various permutations of the equations a spread sheet is achieved of all the individual frequencies that constitute a function of time, what is defined as a signal…
Often it is easier to solve a problem in the time domain by working on it in the frequency domain. Afterwards transformation of the result can be made back to the time domain by reversing the equation, what is called an inverse Fourier transform. The entire signal can be filtered simply by changing the frequencies in the frequency domain…
A Fourier transform can, theoretically, be used to send a function of the three dimensional continuum into a moving four dimensional mass or vice a versa…
The father of the Holograph is 1971 Nobel Prize recipient Dennis Gabor, who right after WW II produced the math –called windowed Fourier transforms– necessary to make one. Gabor served in a Hungarian artillery unit during WW I and in the twenties was instrumental in the development of the electron microscope in Berlin. When the National Socialists came to power in 1933 Gabor, a Hungarian Jew that had converted to Lutherism, fled Germany to England.
By the time Gabor worked with them, Fourier transforms had been infused with the genius of Bernhard Riemann, the nineteenth century German mathematician who broke the back of Euclidian geometry for good, making quantum physics and relativity possible. Erwin Schrödinger, the twentieth century Austrian physicist whose wave equation would become one of the two pillars of quantum physics and the foundation of wave mechanics.
David Hilbert, the German mathematician who taught most of the others and after whom Hilbert’s Space is named, and Werner Heisenberg the discoverer of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the other pillar of quantum physics…
Gabor would have at least had access if not worked directly with the legendary Jon von Neumann, Hilbert’s best pupil. Gabor and von Neumann were both Jews, native Hungarians and born to money, although von Neumann’s education under Hilbert had been paid for by the Rockefeller Foundation. Von Neumann was in fact titled nobility, besides being the man who named Hilbert’s Space in Hilbert’s honor.
Von Neumann was perhaps the most brilliant mathematician who ever lived. He would leave Berlin upon concluding his tutelage under Hilbert and be in Princeton by the end of 1929…
At Princeton, von Neumann delighted in playing Prussian marching music so loud on his gramophone that Einstein, who was in an adjoining office, would have to ask the authorities to intervene. In vain, there was nothing Einstein or anyone else could do about it. Von Neumann wrote the textbook for Quantum mechanics; Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik, or in English Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.
His mathematical contributions to civilization could fill a library, but his real achievements remain classified till this day. It is said that when von Neumann was dying of cancer, while under sedation he was surrounded by a Special Forces guard to insure he didn’t blurt out any of the empires secrets.
Von Neumann would tell anyone who would listen, delighted in it, that he had mathematically proven Einstein wrong. Most academics, although they could not understand his math, believed him and still do… Although they are now fonder of the experimental results of John Stewart Bell for their Einstein bashing…17
Einstein had always insisted that there were hidden variables that when discovered would reconcile quantum physics, which is indeterminate, and relativity, which is determinate. In Einstein’s vision of the future there would be just one unified field of physical phenomena and that would be determinant.
In physics, determinant means events transpire as a result of a mechanistic necessity and are therefore predictable. They follow laws. All physical phenomena should follow rules.
But they don’t. In Quantum physics, quantum entanglement is not the only enigma. There is the double slit experiment where an individual particle is fired through a slit and another through a different slit at a screen. What shows up on the screen is a wave interference pattern which could have only been made by waves passing through the slit…
There is the wave function collapse and quantum randomness in general. If the observer calculates the position of a “sub-atomic particle” in space they cannot calculate its momentum because the very act of locating it influences its trajectory. If they find its momentum, the act of their doing so prevents them from finding its position. That’s the short definition of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
It’s all about predicting probabilities in a matrix, nothing is certain and the observer is part of the equation, anathema to ‘good science…’
Erwin Schrödinger, who won the Nobel Prize in 1933 for providing the equation that makes it all work, was more than just a scientist. A philosopher and poet at heart, he was a lifelong student of the Vedas and believed individual consciousness was a manifestation of the universal whole.
Back then, Schrödinger described the prevailing interpretation of quantum physics, now called the Copenhagen interpretation, as making no distinction “between the state of a natural object and what I know about it, or perhaps better, what I can know about it if I go to some trouble. Actually — so they say — there is intrinsically only awareness, observation, measurement.”18
The Copenhagen interpretation is the prevailing school of thought in quantum physics to this very day. As George Berkeley, the father of Immaterialism and therefore the Copenhagen interpretation, said three hundred years ago; nothing can exist if there is nothing to see it, “esse est percipi,” to be is to be perceived.
After serving as an apprentice to the mysterious German scientist; Max Wien, heir of Friedrich Paschen’s late nineteenth century experimental research on hydrogen spectral lines in the infrared region, Schrödinger would begin publishing papers about atomic theory and the theory of spectra in the early twenties…
He would publish his famous equation in 1926. In the twenty-first century, it’s still the tool mathematicians use to describe a wave function. In the Copenhagen interpretation the wave function is the most complete description that can be given to a physical system.
In Quantum mechanics the Schrödinger equation predicts probability distributions from which results are drawn. A probability distribution is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon. There are no exact results and at the time Schrödinger is quoted as saying “I don’t like it, and I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with it.”19
Einstein was livid. Not only was special relativity no longer feasible but perhaps relativity itself. As every school child knows he said “God does not play dice with the universe!”
Schrödinger worked closely with Einstein in the ensuing years, attempting to formulate a unified field theory and reconcile the whole mess into one determinant science, but by the end of the forties he had abandoned those efforts. In a 1952 lecture, he made the first documentable reference to what has become known as the multiverse, prefacing it by saying that what he was about to say might “seem lunatic.” 20
Schrödinger went on to tell his perplexed audience that when his equations seem to be describing several different histories they are “not alternatives but all really happen simultaneously…”21
Famously, in 1956 Schrödinger would refuse to speak about nuclear energy at an important lecture during the World Energy Conference, giving a philosophical lecture instead because he had become skeptical about the entire subject. He would cause a great deal of controversy in the physics community after that, abandoning the idea of particles altogether and adopting the wave-only theory also put forth by Hugh Everett III in his many-worlds interpretation of the multiverse.
In the many-worlds interpretation, the wave in the quantum state is the only thing that is real and under the appropriate conditions it will exhibit particle-like behavior. In Everett’s multiverse, everything that ever could have happened in the past did and every possibility spawns its own universe where that possibility did and does occur.
After Jon von Neumann died prematurely of cancer in 1957 Hugh Everett III would become the Anglo-American empires go-to guy on Quantum physics…
Pilot Waves were first proposed by Einstein in an effort to explain the wave interference patterns produced by particles in cases like the double slit experiment. He had hoped that they could be explained deterministically if the particle were somehow guided by an electromagnetic field; “which would thus play the role of what he called a Führungsfeld or guiding field.”22
The idea of a pilot wave was picked up and made mathematically feasible by Louis de Broglie in 1927, but with little support from a physics community now enamored by Heisenberg and the Copenhagen interpretation it died a slow death from neglect.
De Broglie’s math was resurrected by David Bohm in 1952 and renamed Bohmian mechanics. Heisenberg, who had been “profoundly unsympathetic”23 to the idea from its inception in the twenties wrote in 1955 that it was nothing more than an “exact repetition” of the Copenhagen interpretation “in a different language…”24
Regardless of the value of “Bohmian mechanics” the rest of what David Bohm had to say about the holographic universe may be a summation of everything that was really learned by man in the twentieth century (outside of course all those in this account who had an above top secret clearance…).
Bohm said there were two worlds. The primary one he called the Implicate Order or the enfolded order. He said the enfolded order was “the ground out of which reality emerges.”25The other world, “reality,” the world of the human senses, the world where consciousness dwells, he called the Explicate Order or the unfolded order.
“What we take for reality, Bohm argues, are surface phenomena, explicate forms that have temporarily unfolded out of an underlying implicate order. Within this deeper order forms are enfolded within each other so systems which may well be separated in the Explicate Order are contained within each other in the Implicate Order.”26
Superficially it would appear the two worlds are “dual forms related by an integral transfer” but the reality is the unfolded order cannot exist independent of the enfolded order.27
Bohm, always a pariah to the powers that be because of his politics sometimes had his work classified before he could even finish it. In the Manhattan project he was barred access to Los Alamos and was not allowed to write the thesis for his own scattering equations.
Einstein had always been his mentor, shielding him and preventing his ostracism from academia and Bohm had always worked closely with him in Einstein’s quest to save physics as he knew it. But by the end of the war Bohm had come to the conclusion that quantum mechanics would never become a deterministic science. He stopped looking for deterministic mechanisms as the cause of quantum phenomena and set out to show that the events could be attributed to a far deeper underlying reality.
Bohm’s idea of an Implicate and Explicate order mirror the conclusions reached by Mircea Eliade, the world’s foremost theological scholar of the WW II era… Eliade said there are only the Sacred and the Profane. The Sacred is the place of mythology, where the gods and archetypes dwell together with all the things that establish the very structure of this world. The Sacred is the First Cause of the Gnostics, the alcheringa of the Aborigine and the Implicate Order of Bohmian mechanics.
The Profane is the material things of this world, the things that have nothing to do with the Sacred. They are basically just like the set in an old black and white movie story… Eliade said they “acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality.”28 In other words, it is only through its participation in the Sacred that the Profane finds validation.
Through his myths, his ceremonies and his rituals, even in his behavior and dreams, man manifests the Sacred into the Profane. It is Man himself that breaths reality into the fleeting and phantasmagorical world of the Profane…
Eliade said that in order to uphold the world of the Profane, the Scared must be manifested into it, over and over again. He called these incarnations, these places where the Sacred intersects with the Profane, the Eternal Return (not to be confused with Nietzsche’s Eternal Return, just as important but more to do with the cycle of the Yuga’s and the Mandela). Eliade called these manifestations of the Sacred into the Profane hierophanies.
Eliade maintained that all Shamanic practices in cultures uncluttered by the poisons of twentieth century rationalism, indeed the foundation of all Paleolithic spiritual practices, was an attempt to produce these hierophanies.
No one was, nor ever will be, more influential than Mircea Eliade, not even the vaunted Joseph Campbell. But present day academia with its penchant for semantics and cutting the whole up into smaller and smaller pieces till there is nothing left to see at all (both Pribram29 and Bohm30 warned the world about this), still rails against him. They say Eliade painted all cultures with too broad a brush stroke and seem to feel that their exceptions are more important than his whole, the same mistake Einstein made… But even Eliade’s staunchest critic; Geoffrey Kirk, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1974 to 1984 and prolific author himself, concedes that what Eliade said about the Eternal Return fit the culture of Australia’s aborigines like Cinderella’s slipper…
There has always been something dark and foreboding about Australia. Master of horror H P Lovecraft wrote about it in The Shadow out of Time. There is something menacing, something unspoken and threatening, a nameless fear of the stark and unforgiving land and an instinctual loathing of its native aborigine inhabitants that runs like an unseen current through the hard White men who dispossessed them.
In 1770 a British exploratory expedition led by James Cook would land in Botany Bay where the great city of Sidney now stands. They began shooting the natives immediately and the fighting would continue for over a hundred and fifty years. It finally subsided after the Coniston massacre in 1928 in the Northern Territory, which left over a hundred Aborigine dead.
Overall the fighting left thousands of Whites dead and hundreds of thousands of Aborigines. There were no pitched battles; the fighting was at close quarters, often hand to hand before repeating rifles were invented and savagely brutal, more like gang fights than military engagements. Atrocities were committed by both sides and in the interest of political correctness a well documented history of cannibalism among the Aborigine has been kept suppressed by the authorities.31
The Aborigine bore no animosity towards Whites because of their skin color. Eating the dead was strictly business in a land where distances are endless and the sun relentless. As settlers claimed the rights to all Australia’s fertile land the Stone Age hunting and gathering lifestyle of the Aborigine provided less and less sustenance. Resentment, and hunger, became inevitable.
But a journal from as late as 1849 explains how the Aborigine viewed Whites as their “ancestors who have returned to them again.”32 The archived diary describes how the Aborigine, before eating each other, would “scorch off the entire outer skin or epidermis which reveals the ‘true skin’ which in all branches of the human race is quite white.”33
“Their impression being that when they die ‘The black fellow England walk and by and by jump up white fellow.’”34 Australia is rivaled for geological anomalies only by its nearest neighbor Papua New Guinea. Both have stood in isolation for what academia says is sixty thousand years. Only their indigenous tribes, more like ghosts than men, can testify as to what cataclysmic events they may have witnessed.
In the Kimberley region of Western Australia four thousand year old cave paintings depict fantastic beings from the dreamtime called Wandgina. Local Aborigine believe the actions of the Wandgina in the dreamtime manifest themselves as features in the landscape of Australia’s Great Western Desert. They believe these beings control the wind, the rain and the lighting… The Wandgina
Rising like a specter out of the center of the Australian continent and on an otherwise almost unbroken horizon is Uluru or Ayers Rock, an isolated hill that appears like a single great stone has been imbedded into the earth. Uluru, a Mecca for tourists, is famous for its glowing red appearance at dusk and dawn and is sacred to the Aborigine.
At two miles long, over a mile wide and eleven hundred feet high Uluru is by far Australia’s best known geological anomaly. But just as striking is Kata Tjuta, fifteen and a half miles to the west and Mount Conner, slightly to the south and forty-five miles east of Uluru.
Kata Tjuta or the Olga’s consists of thirty six domes covering a little less than eight and half square miles, the tallest being Mount Olga at over seventeen hundred feet high. Mount Conner covers eight and half square miles and rises nine hundred and eighty-four feet at its highest point. All of them are conglomerates of granite-like stone and gravel cemented by a matrix of sandstone, about 50% feldspar, 25–35% quartz and up to 25% rock fragments.
Explanations abound for how the island mountains, called inselbergs by academics, got to be in the western desert. They range from the electric universe theory which postulates that they are the result of an immense electrical discharge, to creationism which of course believes they were scoured out by the deluge, all the way to academia’s old standby of a greased pig, erosion…
Local Aborigines believe most of the south face of Uluru is the result of a war fought in the dreamtime between the carpet-snakes (Kunyia) and the venomous-snakes (Liru). The northwestern corner of Uluru and most of its north face were formed as a result of the activities of the hare-wallaby’s (Mala) and the comings and goings of other dreamtime entity’s fill in the rest of Uluru’s geological features.
To the Aborigine it is the dreamtime that generates this world and with it the landscape…
Black Mountain National Park is located at the northern end of Queensland, a little over five miles from the Coral Sea. “The park” is just a restricted three square mile area around a pile of dark colored granite boulders, some the size of houses. The pile reaches almost a thousand feet in height. Academics have explanations for this striking geological anomaly but to the untrained and perhaps the more objective eye the boulders appear to have been placed there by unknown methods for unknown reasons.
Black Mountain has a sinister reputation among Whites as well as the Aborigine. The Aborigine call it Kalkajaka or place of the spear and avoid it. People disappear around Kalkajaka and the people who go looking for them disappear too.
Some believe the missing have simply been lost forever in the labyrinthine passages between the boulders. Others claim the missing were eaten or enslaved by reptilian aliens that, among other things, have been sighted around the rocks. They believe reptilian aliens have a secret base under Black Mountain where UFO sightings are a regular occurrence.
UFO’s have been receiving a lot of attention lately in Australia. An Australian himself, Duncan Roads –editor of Nexus Magazine for over a quarter century and the most respected name in the alternative media– recounts “Australia is certainly a hot spot of UFO sightings. We’ve had a phenomenal growth in the reporting of UFO sightings by the general public especially since the advent of the internet.”35
Roads points to the area around the Blue Mountains in Australia’s New South Wales “as a hotspot of UFO sightings and other mysteries. There is certainly a lot of mystery in the Blue Mountains. Campers, bushwalkers, explorers all have got tails of mystery, disappearing people, strange tunnels, strange noises and strange creature sightings…”36
According to Aboriginal tribal elder Kevin Gavi Duncan “the Blue Mountains is a very sacred area, sacred place, especially the highest places, because we would be closer to Baiame, closer to god.”37
The human disappearances in the Blue Mountains seem to be focused around Mount Yengo. Called the Uluru of the east, the flat top of Mt. Yengo rises about a thousand feet above a plateau and is believed by academics to be all that remains of an ancient volcano. Perhaps because of its prominent flat top, Aborigine tribes believe that after he was done with the act of creating this world their creator god Baiame leapt back up into the spirit world from Mt. Yengo.
Roads continues “UFO sightings of the Blue Mountains have triggered many magazine articles, radio shows and books. A lot of people have come forward over the last few decades to document and put onto the record their own experiences.”38 Rex Gilroy, author of Mysterious Australia, has unearthed accounts of UFO sightings in the Blue Mountains by nineteenth century pioneers…39
Ancient Aliens straight man David Hatcher Childress theorizes that the Blue Mountains are a “stargate, some portal to another dimension and jumping to hyperspace perhaps…”40 Childress speculates “For some reason Australia was the place where they put this hyperspace portal used by extra terrestrials.”41
Duncan continues “there are stories that elders would say, that some people have actually travelled back to the Morning Star and have come back again.”42 Earlier, standing in front of an ancient rock carving depicting Baiame about forty miles southeast of Mt. Yengo, Duncan explained “Baiame came from a place that we call the Morning Star within the Mirrabooka. Mira means stars and booka means river. That is the Milky Way that flows across the North Star. ”43 Baiame, Bulgandry Aboriginal Engraving site, Brisbane Water National Park, New South Wales, Australia
Duncan then gives his interpretation of the petroglyph. Baiame “holds the Moon in one hand and the Morning Star in the other. Which is a bit like what we call planet earth and these are the two moons which exist around the Morning Star in the Mirrabooka.”44
What the petroglyph shows is Baiame with his arms outstretched and a giant knife horizontal across his naval. The hilt is under his left arm. He is holding a circle in his right hand and a crescent in his left. Below the crescent is another circle suspended in mid air and slightly smaller than the one he holds in his right hand. To the right of the free floating circle, perfectly horizontal to it, is a much smaller almost tiny circle. Slightly to the right of the tiny circle and above it is another tiny circle.45
If the two tiny circles are rotated about two hundred and eighty degrees clockwise or ninety degrees counter clockwise so that the tiny circle that was furthest from Baiame is now in the hilt of the knife you would have close to an image of what, left to right, is in the middle of Australia. Mount Conner would be the large circle, now furthest right.
The Three Sisters rock formation is about fifty miles to the Southwest of Mt. Yengo. The three craggy pillars of sandstone tower above the lush Jamison Valley. No doubt conjuring memories in Australia’s early Anglo-Saxon settlers of the three Wyrd Sisters crouched at their cauldron casting spells on both gods and men in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Wyrd is an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning destiny, to come to pass, to become. By the fifteenth century it had come to mean having the power to control fate. In sixteenth century Scotland and northern England wyrd implied that an event was miraculous. It wasn’t till the early nineteenth century that weird came to mean something was odd. The Proto-Indo-European root is wert meaning to turn or to rotate…
In the 1965 epic science fiction novel Dune by Frank Herbert the Wyrding Way is an overwhelming close quarter fighting technique used by the story’s messianic hero and his rebel armies with devastating effectiveness. In hand to hand combat its adepts are able to maneuver around and strike their opponents at speeds that resemble teleportation to the observer and words and sounds can be amplified to become lethal weapons.
Mastery of the Wyrding Way required the adoption of a completely different concept of what the space-time continuum is and what its cause and effect are. The essence of the Wyrding Way is summed up in both the motto and the mantra of its practitioners “my mind affects my reality.”
Wyrd is a notion taken from the pre-Christian religion of the Norseman. In Old Norse the word is Urðr. It is also the name of the mother of the Norns, female beings who rule over the destiny of gods and men. There are many Norns, good and evil, who appear at a person’s side at their birth and decide upon their future.
Urðr (fate), Verðandi (present) and Skuld (karmic debt) are the most powerful of the Norns and said to have come to intervene in a time long past when the gods ruled too haughtily over men. The three beautiful maidens pour the purifying waters of the Urðarbrunnr (Well of Urðr) over the Yggdrasil (Tree of Life) to keep it eternally rejuvenated.
The Urðarbrunnr is said to be one of three wells, one under each of the three roots of the Yggdrasil. Each root reaches to a different far off land. The other two wells are Hvergelmir (bubbling boiling spring), located beneath a root in Niflheim (Abode of Mist), and Mímisbrunnr (Mímir’s well), located beneath a root near the home of the frost jötnar (Giant). It was said that Odin gave one of his eyes to drink from the Mímisbrunnr, the well of wisdom and understanding.
Aside from Tasmania and parts of New Zealand Australia’s Blue Mountains is the last real stop in the Pacific Ocean before the Antarctic. The Blue Mts. are about as far away as you can get from the land of the Norsemen on the Baltic Sea. But as Caroline Cory author of The Visible and Invisible Worlds of God notes “there are several umbilical cords on the planet. This particular location is located exactly at negative thirty-three latitude.”46
Cory then recites the standard alien enthusiast dogma about the thirty-three degree latitude of planet earth aligning with the center of the galaxy and how it is “continuously being visited from different parts of the planetary system from different parts of the galaxy and even from beyond this galaxy, from way out in the universe.”47
Most amateur UFO enthusiasts have never heard of Bruce Cathie and his book; Harmonic 33, published way back in 1968. But most professional researchers are well acquainted with the book and many new age authors use Cathie’s math to validate their Tinkerbellian speculations.
“Even while you read this interplanetary space ships are rebuilding a world grid system from which it appears they can draw motive power and they are possibly using the grid for navigational purposes.” 48
This is the cover sentence in Harmonic 33. There are rumors that the original book was immediately pulled from bookstore shelves, edited, then rereleased with Cathie put under wraps and assigned a handler, never to produce anything again of any consequence for the general public, though he would write a few more books.
Cathie, a New Zealand airline pilot, saw his first UFO in 1952. He would be fascinated till he died in 2013. He began collecting data and collating it with sightings by other pilots over New Zealand. Using techniques borrowed from French UFO researcher Aimé Michel he was able to establish two track lines where aerial anomalies were being regularly encountered. From there he “was able to form a complete grid network over the whole of the New Zealand…”49
Cathie learned that the American survey ship Eltanin had taken some of the strangest photographs of the twentieth century off the west coast of South America. There, thirteen thousand feet beneath the waves mounted on the pacific sea bed was an “aerial-like object” that was “two-to-three-feet high and had six main crossbars spaced evenly up its stem with a smaller one at the top. Each set of crossbars had a small ball at the end of each arm.”50
Later one of the scientists who had been on board the Eltanin told Cathie the object was thought to be metallic and an artifact of some kind. Cathie was able to align his New Zealand grid with the coordinates of the artifact fashioning what he reasoned was a world energy grid and perhaps used as a galactic navigational tool by extra-terrestrials.
Interestingly enough, in light of Erwin Schrödinger’s actions at the World Energy Conference in 1956, Cathie did not believe nuclear weapons could be detonated randomly but would have to be at exactly the right coordinates at exactly the right time to work. Using his world energy grid he started publically predicting the exact times and places of test sites before they got him muzzled…
In Cathie’s own words “It was only a matter of time before I realized that the energy network formed by the grid was already known to a powerful group of international interests and scientists. It became obvious that the system had many military applications, and that political advantage could be gained by those with secret knowledge of this nature. It would be possible for a comparatively small group, with this knowledge, to take over control of the world.” 51
Cathie concluded that the “whole of physical reality was in fact manifested by a complex pattern of interlocking wave-forms.”52
Aliens are a very grey area, as is reality itself. What the Explicate Order translates out of the Implicate Order, what the Sacred manifests in the Profane, they are like points in a wave that show up as a particle. Just as surely they are guided only by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle…
Something is going on in the Blue Mountains, always has been. It’s been categorized by twenty-first century academia as paranormal but it’s something Australia’s aboriginal people are well acquainted with.
Duncan Roads is the man who introduced Bruce Cathie to the general public. He knows words like von Neumann knew numbers. He says “the Australian aborigines have a connection and a relationship with what we call extra terrestrials and UFO’s which goes back tens of thousands of years. Their rather nonplussed by their existence, they have developed an awareness of individual types of visitors from what we call outer space.”53
The Three Sisters crouch at the south edge of the town of Katoomba, an Anglo-Saxon enclave of artists and artisans. They can be viewed from its golf course and are the most famous landmark in The City of Blue Mountains, a ribbon of contiguous towns, which lie on New South Wales Main Western railway line. The City of Blue Mountains has dubbed itself ‘The City within a World Heritage National Park.’ It has Sister City Relationships with Sanda City, Japan and Flagstaff, Arizona in the USA.
Located in the southwest of the Four Corners, an area famed for its paranormal activities, Flagstaff is the unofficial capital of the Navaho (Diné) Nation and the Hopi, the priestly tribe who are the keepers of the Diné’s most profound secrets.
Like a penitent kneeling at the foot of the alter Flagstaff prostrates itself at the south foot of Agassiz Peak, Freemont Peak and Doyle Peak in the Kachina Peaks Wilderness.
To the Hopi this area, part of the San Francisco Peaks, the remains of an eroded composite volcano, is the most sacred place in the Four Corners. In fact it is the most sacred place in the world…
The San Francisco Peaks are where the doorways open up for their gods, which they call Kachina, to come forth when they are called in the powerful ceremonies performed by the Hopi.
The Kachina are supernatural beings said to control the wind, the rain and the lighting…
At 11,464 feet Doyle Peak was the site of the world’s highest astronomical observation point from 1927-1932. Built by the Lowell Observatory, the stated purpose of the cabin on the south side of the summit was to scan the heavens and make spectroscopic observations, especially in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths…
In 2005 “a collaborative project team formed, the heart of which is still active today, including NASA scientists, Navajo Medicine Men, and both NASA and Navajo educators.”54 Flagstaff is the home of the Lowell Observatory, the U.S. Naval Observatory and the United States Geological Survey Flagstaff Station… Rock art from Sego Canyon at the northern frontier of the Four Corners.
Citations
1 – Reid, Nick, and Patrick D. Nunn. “Ancient Aboriginal Stories Preserve History of a Rise in Sea Level.” The Conversation. 13 Jan. 2015. Web. 25 July 2016. http://theconversation.com/ancient-aboriginal-stories-preserve-history-of-a-rise-in-sea-level-36010
2 – Ibid.
3 – “Ancient Aliens S11E07 – The Wisdom Keepers.” 11:00. YouTube, 7 July 2016. Web. 26 July 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-mX1eWoj6I
4 –Ibid. 29:33.
5 –Ibid. 30:09.
6– MARKOFF, JOHN. “Sorry, Einstein. Quantum Study Suggests ‘Spooky Action’ Is Real.” Science. New York Times, 21 Oct. 2015. Web. 3 Aug. 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/science/quantum-theory-experiment-said-to-prove-spooky-interactions.html?_r=0
7 – “Karl Pribram ‘Holographic Brain’ New Dimensions 1:12:52.” Youtube. Insightfreeman, 5 Dec. 2012. Web. 15 Aug. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awFleswtH2Y
8 –Ibid. 23:34. | 0 |
November 12, 2016 - Fort Russ
Neyromir TV (Video) - Valentin Katasonov - Translated from Russian by Kristina Kharlova
The heated discussion in the media is a diversion - focused on marginal issues appealing to emotions, while much graver issues that are at stake are hidden behind the scenes, explains Valentin Katasonov, p rofessor, associate member of the Russian Academy of Economic Science and Business.
Part 1 (00.00-14.00)
V.K: Trump understands the situation. I didn't expect him to be so open about revealing all the ills. He is revealing many of the secrets. This is better for America - to face the diagnosis, than to conceal it from the patient.
As you know interest rates in the countries of the Golden billion are below the floor. Last year when interest rates were slightly raised, this caused serious consequences . Christine Lagarde appealed to stop or the global economy will crash. They did not raise interest rates again as planned. Not in the first or the second quarter. They are in a very difficult situation. Trump said if interest rates are raised America will default, because most of the budget will go to pay for interest rates.
Trump probably wants to save capitalism, but capitalism without interest rates is nonsense. Trump is a defender of capitalism.
Host: Who is Hillary Clinton?
V.K.: She doesn't say who she is, she is focused on some marginal subjects, like rights of minorities or climate change. We understand that these are silly games.
Host: But climate change is real?
V.K.: You know I was involved in this as part of World Bank and I know their schemes. Although there might be something going on, I can assure that they don't really care about it.
Host: What about the ruble?
V.K. It depends when this apocalypse will take place. The dropping of the ruble is part of the plan of the occupation.
Only God knows when this apocalypse will happen, may be not next week, could be few months of years for sure, because all the resources have been exhausted. Trump senses this very well, and he wants to save capitalism and America, and for this he wants to negotiate with the lenders and restructure American debt. In reality America is working on new technologies which don't require any negotiations, I am taking about Iran. As you know in the beginning of 2o16 Uncle Sam said we are finally cancelling sanctions and unfreeze Iran's foreign assets.
There are many conditions, some things are written down. Iran is not happy that America is writing off $2 billion to cover losses from terrorist act in Lebanon in 1983. I looked at some documents, Iran had nothing to do with it, but Uncle Sam found them guilty, just like those in 9/11. It turns out the culprit was Saudi Arabia.
Host: But Saudi Arabia threatened to sell treasuries and was taken off the list of culprits?
V.K. Who will let them sell it? Treasuries are in the depositories, it's a double key system, Saudi Arabia has one key and Uncle Sam has another key
Host: Why is Russia buying these treasuries while in a crisis? We did mention this is a levy, but if we don't develop our industry and science nothing will help us?
V.K. You know some of our elites hope they have an second base in the USA, the 'unsinkable'. We know some people have already set up base there, like the first deputy minister of finance. Some are closer, like the former minister of agriculture is in France. It is easier to count those who did not leave. This shows we are dealing with colonial administration which receives basic guarantees for citizenship in the US, France, GB.
Host: Their policies lead to total collapse, what if the owners are not happy?
V.K.: You know, lets not overestimate the masters, they act as parasites. Parsites keep feeding not thinking that the food will run out and they may also perish. They don't see beyond their nose.
Speaking of Iran, according to Iran, their foreign reserves comprise $130 billion, according to US - $100 billion, half of them are gold and currency reserves belonging to Iran's Central bank, or the Sovereign fund of Iran. I think they will eat up these 130 billion very fast, because after the $2 billion, US announced they will demand $11.5 billion for 9/11. The appetite comes during the meal. The Iranian parliament discussed a bill to allow the government to begin a case about damages to Iran by USA. A working group will inventory all the events and estimate them.
Today the world is entering a repatriation game, this is a commercialization of international relations and monetizing of our history. This is very important to Russian Federation. Baltic countries continue to work on such demands, especially Latvia. Ukraine is a little different. While the Baltics refer to Soviet occupation, Ukraine is talking about Crimea. Monetizing losses from events in Donbass and so on. I am just saying we should be a step ahead, we must prepare the same contra-measures.
Don't get caught up in the media's agenda, dig deeper and think with your own head! - KK
Part 2 coming soon...
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United States Marine Field McConnell Plum City Online - ( AbelDanger.net ) October 26, 2016
1. Abel Danger ( AD ) claims that Hillary Clinton used DOJ Pride 8(a) actors to blackmail mentors of the Federal Bridge Certification Authority – including erstwhile directors of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman – with child pornography originating from a B.C. pig farm.
2. AD claims that in early 2001, Clinton's 8(a) companies used their pig-farm network (cf. Starnet) to set up a server to the federal bridge in the basement of her Chappaqua home where she allegedly used Serco Zulu timing signals to synchronize and watch 'the first live-broadcast mass snuff film in human history' on 9/11.
3. AD claims that Serco 8(a) companies at the US Patent and Trademark Office have issued phony keys for an electronic voting pad input device (US 7537159 B2) so the George Soros-tied company Smartmatic can switch votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton – a former patent lawyer in Little Rock, Arkansas.
4. United States Marine Field McConnell – Global Operations Director of Abel Danger – has offered to serve as a five-star general in a Trump administration and destroy Clinton's pig farm friends at DOJ Pride and the federal bridge with which they can activate weaponized devices through the Serco patent office.
Soros Linked Voting Machines To Be Used In Key Battleground States
Note the ransom equals the bonus paid by Lockheed Martin Sister Lynne Cheney to JonBenet's father
Media Coverage of Starnet Raid - August 20, 1999
Hillary Clinton vs. James Comey: Email Scandal Supercut
Copy of SERCO GROUP PLC: List of Subsidiaries AND Shareholders! [Note British and Saudi Governments, AXA, HSBC , Teachers' and Gold man Sachs]
Defense Ammunition Center [Outsourced to Serco ]
Serco ... Would you like to know more?
"Digital Fires Instructor Serco - Camp Pendleton, CA Uses information derived from all military disciplines (e.g., aviation, ground combat, command and control, combat service support, intelligence, and opposing forces) to determine changes in enemy capabilities, vulnerabilities, and probable courses of action."
" Serco Processes 2 Millionth Patent Application for U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Date: 18 Mar 2013
Serco Inc., a leading provider of professional, technology, and management services to the federal government, announced today that their Pre-Grant Publication (PGPubs) Classification Services team recently processed their 2 millionth patent application for the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). Each application was also processed within the contractually required 28-day window."
For sure, defence counsel have made much of Taylor's involvement with the missing and murdered women, all but pointing the finger at her as homicidal maniac, the real killer. What's not in dispute is that Taylor is one scary character ? street-hardened, menacing, a procurer of prostitutes lured to the Pickton farm, contemptuous of both sex-trade workers (especially street walkers) and drug addicts.
"Concern Grows Over Soros-Linked Voting Machines
Sixteen states may be using balloting equipment from a company tied to the leftist billionaire
by Edmund Kozak | Updated 24 Oct 2016 at 5:21 PM
Concern is growing over revelations that voting machines in a significant number of states could be linked to a company tied directly to billionaire leftist George Soros and his personal quest to create a nationless, borderless global state.
The U.K.-based Smartmatic company posted a flow-chart on its website that it had provided voting machines for 16 states, including important battleground states like Florida and Arizona. Smartmatic Chairman Mark Malloch-Brown is a former U.N. official and sits on the board of Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Since the story first broke, the flow-chart has disappeared from Smartmatic’s website, raising further questions about the real status of the Soros-tied voting equipment and whether it is truly being deployed in U.S. elections.
If Malloch-Brown's Soros ties weren't troubling enough, he also has ties to the Clintons through his work at two consulting firms.
According to a spokesperson for the National Association of Secretaries of State, Smartmatic is not on a list of federally certified providers for election systems and officials in several states’ have contested that their equipment came from Smartmatic. Why, then, had Smartmatic bragged about providing over 50,000 voting machines for U.S. elections?"
"Check http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/309533/opinion/why-have-all-the-digital-signatures-from-the-election-returns-been-stripped "
"Electronic voting pad input device, system and method
US 7537159
B2 ABSTRACT
In the preferred embodiment, the invention is a data entry device intended for use by voters during an election to enter selected choices. Its basic functions are to display available options and accept voter input. Its design achieves simplicity in its preparation, deployment, and operation at any given electoral event. It also furnishes accuracy, reliability, durability, and reusability. It connects in a standard protocol to a voting station's host processor. It accepts up to 300 key codes, each one potentially a unique selection. Names, symbols, or pictures identifying candidates are printed on a paper template compliant with the device's geometry, inserted prior to an election, and visible through the device's transparent cover. When the number of candidates or valid options in a contest exceeds its capacity, additional identical units can be chain-connected, until a sufficient number of voting options are available.
Publication number: US7537159 B2
Publication type: Grant
Application number: US 11/160,782
Publication date: May 26, 2009
Filing date: Jul 8, 2005
Priority date: Jul 8, 2005
Fee status: Paid
Also published as: US20070007340
Inventors: Antonio Mugica , 4 More »
Original Assignee: Smartmatic International Corporation
Export Citation: BiBTeX, EndNote, Ref Man Patent Citations (12), Referenced by (4), Classifications (7), Legal Events (7)
External Links: USPTO , USPTO Assignment , Espacenet "
"BREAKING: @HillaryClinton's E-Mail Server Company Got Almost $1 Million In Gov't Loans After Wiping E-Mails
OCTOBER 26, 2016
BY CHARLES C. JOHNSON 6 COMMENTS
Give it up already. It's over. K. J. Gillenwater was the primary researcher behind this story.
Hillary Clinton's e-mail server company got almost $1 million in government loans starting immediately after they were secretly asked to wipe Hillary Clinton's name from her e-mails.
Platte River Networks (PRN) got a $493,000 loan from the Small Business Administration in August 2014 and another $350,000 loan in September 2015:
Public government data available as USAspending.gov
The first half-million dollar loan arrived not one month after PRN employee Paul Combetta was caught accidentally revealing his company was deleting evidence at Hillary's request in July 2014 .
The second $350,000 loan came about one year later.
You won't hear this stuff from the lying mainstream media. Keep the GotNews mission alive: donate at GotNews.com/donate or send tips to [email protected]. If you'd like to join our research team, [email protected].
After getting the first loan, PRN moved to a large office space after previously working out of the owner’s condo. The head of the Small Business Administration is Maria Contreras-Sweet , a Mexican immigrant who was appointed to the office by Barack Obama two months before Hillary's PRN got the first loan.
WikiLeaks leaks have proven Hillary's corrupt pay-to-play scheme. GotNews has shined a light on how Hillary gets favors from Hispanic and Democratic government bureaucrats before .
Did Hillary Clinton pay her e-mail server company Platte River Networks (PRN) with almost $1 million in favorable government loans — given out by a political friendly — in order to alter her illegal e-mails and get her name off them?
It sure looks like it.
A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request has been lodged for more information.
Stay tuned for more.
K. J. Gillenwater was the primary researcher behind this story."
"WHY BILL CLINTON'S 26 TRIPS ON THE LOLITA EXPRESS CHILD RAPE JET MATTER May 15, 2016
Daniel Greenfield
We don't know what Bill Clinton did or didn't do in company with Jeffrey Epstein. But we certainly know what Epstein did and, almost as outrageously, what he got away with doing .
Some of the most shocking allegations against Epstein surfaced only after the conclusion of an FBI probe, in civil suits brought by his victims: for example, the claim that three 12-year-old French girls were delivered to him as a birthday present. But the feds did identify roughly 40 young women, most of them underage at the time, who described being lured to Epstein's Palm Beach home on the pretense of giving a "massage" for money, then pressured into various sex acts, as well as the "Balkan sex slave" Epstein allegedly boasted of purchasing from her family when she was just 14. More recently, a big cash payment from Mail on Sunday coaxed one of Epstein's main accusers out of anonymity to describe what she claims were her years as a teenage sex toy. This victim, Virginia Roberts, produced a photo of herself with Prince Andrew in 2001 and reported that Epstein paid her $15,000 to meet the prince. Then 17 years old, she claims that she was abused by Epstein and "loaned" to his friends from the age of 15.
Sex crimes of the kind Roberts alleges took place typically carry a term of 10 to 20 years in federal prison. Yet when all was said and done, Epstein served his scant year-plus-one-month in a private wing of the Palm Beach jail and was granted a 16-hour-per-day free pass to leave the premises for work.
In short, Epstein was never actually in jail. During his "house arrest," he flew around the country on his jets from his New York City place to his private island. At least one of Epstein's victims claimed to have met Bill Clinton. And it turns out that Bill Clinton was a much more regular passenger on the Lolita Express.
Former President Bill Clinton was a much more frequent flyer on a registered sex offender's infamous jet than previously reported, with flight logs showing the former president taking at least 26 trips aboard the "Lolita Express" -- even apparently ditching his Secret Service detail for at least five of the flights, according to records obtained by FoxNews.com.
Clinton's presence aboard Jeffrey Epstein's Boeing 727 on 11 occasions has been reported, but flight logs show the number is more than double that, and trips between 2001 and 2003 included extended junkets around the world with Epstein and fellow passengers identified on manifests by their initials or first names, including "Tatiana." The tricked-out jet earned its Nabakov-inspired nickname because it was reportedly outfitted with a bed where passengers had group sex with young girls.
It doesn't help that the Democratic establishment seems to have played a role in getting Epstein a pass on child rape, that Bill Clinton already had rape accusations in his past or that the Clintons had become notorious for their willingness to do favors for criminals in exchange for money.
Either way we've come a long way from Gary Hart being bounced for "Monkey Business" to Bill Clinton flying around on a child rapist's plane without anyone in the media seeming to care much about it.
Social conservatives often get a bad rap. But there really is no limit to how low standards can fall when any trace of a moral code vanishes out the window. What did Bill Clinton actually do? Who knows. More importantly these days, who cares
ABOUT DANIEL GREENFIELD
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam."
"For sure, defence counsel have made much of Taylor's involvement with the missing and murdered women, all but pointing the finger at her as homicidal maniac, the real killer. What's not in dispute is that Taylor is one scary character ? street-hardened, menacing, a procurer of prostitutes lured to the Pickton farm, contemptuous of both sex-trade workers (especially street walkers) and drug addicts.
"She's pure evil,'' says one outreach worker, who asked that her name not be used in any story about Taylor.
...
Court has heard that Taylor's DNA was found on 113 items retrieved from the Pickton property ? including handcuffs, condoms, clothing, syringes ? and also on items that belonged to some victims ? Brenda Wolfe's lipstick, Mona Wilson's rosary.
One witness, Pickton pal Pat Casanova, told the court he once received fellatio from a woman he knew as "Angel," who'd been brought to the farm by Taylor. He said he gave the money to Taylor, who shared some of it with "Angel."
Another witness, Gina Houston, put Taylor on the same bed with victim Sereena Abotsway, in Pickton's trailer.
In his lengthy police interview, Pickton repeatedly tells police he wants to speak with Taylor.
On the stand, Houston recounted a conversation she'd had with Pickton about Taylor, shortly before his arrest.
"Willie told me that he believed she (Taylor) would do the right thing when she came back. That she would take responsibility for what she said she would take responsibility for."
Source
Jeff Wells points to other odd things.
A week or so ago a man called Steve Remian committed suicide-by-cop but: The name "Steve Remian" surfaced at the Robert "Willie" Pickton murder trial in New Westminster, B.C., last March, when jurors were told that Remian's name ? with a Burnaby, B.C., address ? was on the label of a suitcase packed into a box found in Pickton's workshop.
In April, jurors heard further evidence that DNA testing on two hairs found on a Hudson's Bay blanket removed from Pickton's motorhome linked one to Pickton, and the other to a "Steve Remian."
A source involved in the Oakville shooting investigation told the Star that the man shot by police had been charged with sexual assault earlier in life while living in Oakville, but had been acquitted, although a co-accused was convicted.
Source
It does seem like a regular hive of activity: Robert Pickton's pig farm was a constant buzz of activity, with people and vehicles coming and going all the time, a woman who lived in Pickton's trailer for a time testified on Wednesday.
Tanya Carr, 35, told the jury in Pickton's murder trial that people were coming and going all day long at the Port Coquitlam, B.C., farm and it wasn't unusual for people to show up late at night looking for Pickton or his brother Dave.
Source
Also there are those Hells Angels and the "Piggy Palace":
"It was a rough crowd" at Piggy's Palace, said Brian, a musician who played there a few years ago with the hard-rock band South City Slam.
The nightclub, he said, was inside an old building on a property Dave Pickton and his brother Robert own at 2552 Burns Rd., near their pig farm on Dominion Road in Port Coquitlam....
"Even the women were tough- looking -- a lot of leather and denim. It wasn't a cocktail-gown kind of place ," he recalled.
Brian, who didn't want his last name used, recalled that there was a coat-check girl and a sign saying, "Check your knives and other weapons at the door." ...
The crowd at Piggy's Palace often included men wearing Hells Angels biker club colours.
"They were there a lot," said Brian. "The people who came all seemed to know one another."
"Super Serco bulldozes ahead
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER UPDATED: 23:00 GMT, 1 September 2004
SERCO has come a long way since the 1960s when it ran the 'four-minute warning' system to alert the nation to a ballistic missile attack.
Today its £10.3bn order book is bigger than many countries' defence budgets. It is bidding for a further £8bn worth of contracts and sees £16bn of 'opportunities'.
Profit growth is less ballistic. The first-half pre-tax surplus rose 4% to £28.1m, net profits just 1% to £18m. Stripping out goodwill, the rise was 17%, with dividends up 12.5% to 0.81p.
Serco runs the Docklands Light Railway, five UK prisons, airport radar and forest bulldozers in Florida."
" Serco farewell to NPL after 19 years of innovation 8 January 2015 Serco said goodbye to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) at the end of December 2014 after 19 years of extraordinary innovation and science that has seen the establishment build a world-leading reputation and deliver billions of pounds of benefit for the UK economy. During that period under Serco 's management and leadership, NPL has delivered an extraordinary variety and breadth of accomplishments for the UK's economy and industry. Some of the key achievements during that time have been:… It has been estimated that work carried out by the Centre of Carbon Measurement at NPL will save eight million tonnes of carbon emissions reductions (2% of UK footprint) and over half a billion pounds in economic benefit over the next decade…. NPL's caesium fountain atomic clock is accurate to 1 second in 158 million years and NPL is playing a key role in introducing rigour to high frequency trading [for Serco 's front running banks] in the City through NPL [Zulu] Time."
"UK Cabinet Office – Emergency Planning College – Serco …..Types of Exercise Workshop Exercises These are structured discussion events where participants can explore issues in a less pressurised environment. They are an ideal way of developing solutions, procedures and plans rather than the focus being on decision making. Table Top Exercises These involve a realistic scenario and will follow a time line, either in real-time or with time jumps to concentrate on the more important areas. The participants would be expected to be familiar with the plans and procedures that are being used although the exercise tempo and complexity can be adjusted to suit the current state of training and readiness. Simulation and media play can be used to support the exercise. Table-top exercises help develop teamwork and allow participants to gain a better understanding of their roles and that of other agencies and organisations. Command/Control Post Exercises These are designed primarily to exercise the senior leadership and support staff in collective planning and decision making within a strategic grouping. Ideally such exercises would be run from the real command and control locations and using their communications and information systems [Feeling lucky, Punk?] . This could include a mix of locations and varying levels of technical simulation support. The Gold Standard system is flexible to allow the tempo and intensity to be adjusted to ensure maximum training benefit, or to fully test and evaluate the most important aspects of a plan. Such exercises also test information flow, communications, equipment, procedures, decision making and coordination. Live Exercises These can range from testing individual components of a system or organisation through to a full-scale rehearsal. They are particularly useful where there are regulatory requirements or with high-risk situations. They are more complex and costly to organise and deliver but can be integrated with Command Post Exercises as part of a wider exercising package."
"Christopher Rajendran Hyman CBE (born 5 July 1963 in Durban, South Africa)[1] was Chief Executive of Serco Group plc from 2002 to October 2013.[2] … On graduation, he worked for Arthur Andersen. In 1989, he won an 18-month exchange with Ernst & Young in London, who employed him after four months.[1] Head hunted in 1994 by Serco , Hyman became European finance director, and in 1999 was made group finance director. In 2002, Hyman became chief executive. .. Hyman resigned from his role of Chief Executive of Serco on 25 October 2013 following allegations that Serco had overcharged government customers. .. He was [making a presentation to Serco shareholder, including British and Saudi governments] on the 47th floor of the World Trade Center [North Tower] at the time of the September 11 attacks in 2001."
"July 7, 2016 Developments in PKI occurred in the early 1970s at the British intelligence agency GCHQ , where James Ellis , Clifford Cocks and others made important discoveries related to encryption algorithms and key distribution.[ 19 ] However, as developments at GCHQ are highly classified, the results of this work were kept secret and not publicly acknowledged until the mid-1990s.
The public disclosure of both secure key exchange and asymmetric key algorithms in 1976 by Diffie, Hellman , Rivest, Shamir , and Adleman changed secure communications entirely. With the further development of high-speed digital electronic communications (the Internet and its predecessors), a need became evident for ways in which users could securely communicate with each other, and as a further consequence of that, for ways in which users could be sure with whom they were actually interacting.
Assorted cryptographic protocols were invented and analyzed within which the new cryptographic primitives could be effectively used. With the invention of the World Wide Web and its rapid spread, the need for authentication and secure communication became still more acute. Commercial reasons alone (e.g., e-commerce, online access to proprietary databases from web browsers) were sufficient. Taher Elgamal and others at Netscape developed the SSL protocol ('https' in Web URLs); it included key establishment, server authentication (prior to v3, one-way only), and so on. A PKI structure was thus created for Web users/sites wishing secure communications.
Vendors and entrepreneurs saw the possibility of a large market, started companies (or new projects at existing companies), and began to agitate for legal recognition and protection from liability. An American Bar Association technology project published an extensive analysis of some of the foreseeable legal aspects of PKI operations (see ABA digital signature guidelines), and shortly thereafter, several U.S. states (Utah being the first in 1995) and other jurisdictions throughout the world began to enact laws and adopt regulations. Consumer groups raised questions about privacy, access, and liability considerations, which were more taken into consideration in some jurisdictions than in others.
The enacted laws and regulations differed, there were technical and operational problems in converting PKI schemes into successful commercial operation, and progress has been much slower than pioneers had imagined it would be.
By the first few years of the 21st century, the underlying cryptographic engineering was clearly not easy to deploy correctly. Operating procedures (manual or automatic) were not easy to correctly design (nor even if so designed, to execute perfectly, which the engineering required). The standards that existed were insufficient.
PKI vendors have found a market, but it is not quite the market envisioned in the mid-1990s, and it has grown both more slowly and in somewhat different ways than were anticipated.[20] PKIs have not solved some of the problems they were expected to, and several major vendors have gone out of business or been acquired by others. PKI has had the most success in government implementations; the largest PKI implementation to date is the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) PKI infrastructure for the Common Access Cards program."
Base One Technologies – Corporate Strategy – We are a Government Certified Women-Owned Business
We practice Diversity Recruitment and Staffing for IT positions Base One was founded in 1994 by a women engineer who had made a career in technology research for many years. Base One has been very successful in focusing on diversity recruiting and staffing for IT projects. It has been our experience that the greater the diversity mix, the more creative the solution. As in any field the more diverse the viewpoint the more thorough your analysis. Our engineers can think out of the box.
Because of our affiliations we have access to pools of resources among more diverse groups & individuals. We work with a large pool of minority professionals who specialize in IT skills. We are able to have access to these resources through our status as a D/MWBD firm and our affiliations. These affiliations assist us in working with resources among more diverse groups & individuals. We are also partnered with firms that are 8A certified as Minority firms, Disabled Veteran firms, Native American firms, Vietnam veteran firms, women owned firms.
Our hub zone location keeps us close to the professional organizations of great diversity. We are active in recruiting from and networking with these community organizations of local IT professionals. This has given us access to a large pool of diversity talent.
Base One's staff of engineers are a diverse group of professionals. This diverse network of engineers helps us to branch out to other engineers and creates an even larger network of resources for us to work with.
The greater the diversity the more complete & thorough the analysis. The broader the spectrum of points of view the broader the scope of the analysis. We feel that a diverse team gives us a greater advantage in creating cutting edge solutions. To that end we will continue to nurture these relationships to further extend our talent pool.
The greater the diversity mix, the more creative the solution.
The more diverse the viewpoint, the more thorough the analysis.
The more diverse our team, the more our engineers can think out of the box.
This is why Base One Technologies concentrates on diversity recruitment in the belief that a diverse team gives us a greater advantage in creating cutting edge solutions."
Information Security Planning is the process whereby an organization seeks to protect its operations and assets from data theft or computer hackers that seek to obtain unauthorized information or sabotage business operations.
Key Clients Benefiting From Our Information Security Expertise: Pentagon Renovation Program, FAA, Citigroup, MCI.
Base One Technologies
Expertly researches, designs, and develops information security policies that protect your data and manage your firm's information technology risk at levels acceptable to your business.
Performs architectural assessments and conducts both internal and external penetration testing. The results of these efforts culminate in an extensive risk analysis and vulnerabilities report.
Develops, implements and supports Information Security Counter measures such as honey-pots and evidence logging and incident documentation processes and solutions."
"Base One Technologies, Ltd. is a DOMESTIC BUSINESS CORPORATION, located in New York, NY and was formed on Feb 15, 1994. This file was obtained from the Secretary of State and has a file number of 1795583. "
"Serco's Office of Partner Relations (OPR) helps facilitate our aggressive small business utilization and growth strategies. Through the OPR, Serco mentors four local small businesses under formal Mentor Protégé Agreements: Three sponsored by DHS (Base One Technologies, TSymmetry, Inc., and HeiTech Services, Inc.,) and the fourth sponsored by GSA (DKW Communications, Inc.). Serco and HeiTech Services were awarded the 2007 DHS Mentor Protégé Team Award for exceeding our mentoring goals." http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/100515p.pdf
"Opened in 1994 as the successor to the Transitional Immigrant Visa Processing Center in Rosslyn, Va., the NVC centralizes all immigrant visa pre-processing and appointment scheduling for overseas posts. The NVC collects paperwork and fees before forwarding a case, ready for adjudication, to the responsible post.
The center also handles immigrant and fiancé visa petitions, and while it does not adjudicate visa applications, it provides technical assistance and support to visa-adjudicating consular officials overseas.
Only two Foreign Service officers, the director and deputy director, work at the center, along with just five Civil Service employees. They work with almost 500 contract employees doing preprocessing of visas, making the center one of the largest employers in the Portsmouth area.
The contractor, Serco , Inc., has worked with the NVC since its inception and with the Department for almost 18 years.
The NVC houses more than 2.6 million immigrant visa files, receives almost two million pieces of mail per year and received more than half a million petitions from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) in 2011. Its file rooms' high-density shelves are stacked floor-to-ceiling with files, each a collection of someone’s hopes and dreams and each requiring proper handling. ….
The NVC also preprocesses the chief of mission (COM) application required for the filing of a petition for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV). Such visas, for foreign nationals who have performed services for the U.S. government in Iraq and Afghanistan, require COM concurrence before the applicant can file a petition with USCIS. The NVC collects the requisite documents from such applicants and, when complete, forwards the package to the U.S. embassies in Baghdad or Kabul for COM approval"
Yours sincerely,
Field McConnell, United States Naval Academy, 1971; Forensic Economist; 30 year airline and 22 year military pilot; 23,000 hours of safety; Tel: 715 307 8222
David Hawkins Tel: 604 542-0891 Forensic Economist; former leader of oil-well blow-out teams; now sponsors Grand Juries in CSI Crime and Safety Investigation
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WASHINGTON — In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators. American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence. Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates. The disclosures about the contacts came as new questions were raised about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s ties to the Russians. According to a former senior American official, he met with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, twice in the past year. The details of the meetings were not clear, but the contact appeared to contradict testimony Mr. Sessions provided Congress during his confirmation hearing in January when he said he “did not have communications with the Russians. ” Mr. Sessions said in a statement late Wednesday that he “never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign. ” “I have no idea what this allegation is about,” he said. “It is false. ” Mr. Trump has denied that his campaign had any contact with Russian officials, and at one point he openly suggested that American spy agencies had cooked up intelligence suggesting that the Russian government had tried to meddle in the presidential election. Mr. Trump has accused the Obama administration of hyping the Russia story line as a way to discredit his new administration. At the Obama White House, Mr. Trump’s statements stoked fears among some that intelligence could be covered up or destroyed — or its sources exposed — once power changed hands. What followed was a push to preserve the intelligence that underscored the deep anxiety with which the White House and American intelligence agencies had come to view the threat from Moscow. It also reflected the suspicion among many in the Obama White House that the Trump campaign might have colluded with Russia on election email hacks — a suspicion that American officials say has not been confirmed. Former senior Obama administration officials said that none of the efforts were directed by Mr. Obama. Sean Spicer, the Trump White House spokesman, said, “The only new piece of information that has come to light is that political appointees in the Obama administration have sought to create a false narrative to make an excuse for their own defeat in the election. ” He added, “There continues to be no there, there. ” As Inauguration Day approached, Obama White House officials grew convinced that the intelligence was damning and that they needed to ensure that as many people as possible inside government could see it, even if people without security clearances could not. Some officials began asking specific questions at intelligence briefings, knowing the answers would be archived and could be easily unearthed by investigators — including the Senate Intelligence Committee, which in early January announced an inquiry into Russian efforts to influence the election. At intelligence agencies, there was a push to process as much raw intelligence as possible into analyses, and to keep the reports at a relatively low classification level to ensure as wide a readership as possible across the government — and, in some cases, among European allies. This allowed the upload of as much intelligence as possible to Intellipedia, a secret wiki used by American analysts to share information. There was also an effort to pass reports and other sensitive materials to Congress. In one instance, the State Department sent a cache of documents marked “secret” to Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland days before the Jan. 20 inauguration. The documents, detailing Russian efforts to intervene in elections worldwide, were sent in response to a request from Mr. Cardin, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and were shared with Republicans on the panel. “This situation was serious, as is evident by President Obama’s call for a review — and as is evident by the United States response,” said Eric Schultz, a spokesman for Mr. Obama. “When the intelligence community does that type of comprehensive review, it is standard practice that a significant amount of information would be compiled and documented. ” The opposite happened with the most sensitive intelligence, including the names of sources and the identities of foreigners who were regularly monitored. Officials tightened the already small number of people who could access that information. They knew the information could not be kept from the new president or his top advisers, but wanted to narrow the number of people who might see the information, officials said. More than a current and former officials described various aspects of the effort to preserve and distribute the intelligence, and some said they were speaking to draw attention to the material and ensure proper investigation by Congress. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified information, nearly all of which remains secret, making an independent public assessment of the competing Obama and Trump administration claims impossible. The F. B. I. is conducting a counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election, and is examining alleged links between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russian government. Separately, the House and Senate intelligence committees are conducting their own investigations, though they must rely on information collected by the F. B. I. and intelligence agencies. On Wednesday, a Justice Department official confirmed that Mr. Sessions had two conversations with Ambassador Kislyak last year, when he was still a senator, despite testifying at his Jan. 10 confirmation hearing that he had no contact with the Russians. At that hearing, Mr. Sessions was asked what he would do if it turned out to be true that anyone affiliated with the Trump team had communicated with the Russian government in the course of the campaign. He said he was “not aware of any of those activities. ” “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it,” Mr. Sessions said at the time. However, Justice officials acknowledged that Mr. Sessions had spoken with Mr. Kislyak twice: once, among a group of ambassadors who approached him at a Heritage Foundation event during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July and, separately, in an office meeting on Sept. 8. The contacts were first reported by The Washington Post. Sarah Isgur Flores, Mr. Sessions’s spokeswoman, said “there was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer” because he did not communicate with the ambassador in his capacity as a Trump campaign surrogate. She said Mr. Sessions had at least 25 conversations in 2016 with ambassadors from a range of nations — including Britain, Japan, China, Germany and Russia — while on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The revelation prompted congressional Democrats to issue a torrent of statements reiterating their demands that Mr. Sessions recuse himself from overseeing any investigation into Russia’s contacts with the Trump campaign. So far, Mr. Sessions has demurred. Representative Adam B. Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement on Wednesday that if the reports about Mr. Sessions were accurate, “it is essential that he recuse himself from any role in the investigation of Trump campaign ties to the Russians. ” Mr. Schiff added, “This is not even a close call it is a must. ” Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader of the House, called on Mr. Sessions to resign, saying on Twitter that “he is not fit to serve as the top law enforcement officer of our country. ” A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, backed up Mr. Sessions late Wednesday, calling the accusations “the latest attack against the Trump administration by partisan Democrats. ” At a CNN town hall on Wednesday, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said he did not know if there was anything between the Trump campaign and the Russians. But he added that if there was, “it is clear to me that Jeff Sessions, who is my dear friend, cannot make this decision about Trump. ” At his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, former Senator Dan Coats, Mr. Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that “I think it’s our responsibility to provide you access to all that you need. ” Some Obama White House officials had little faith that a Trump administration would make good on such pledges, and the efforts to preserve the intelligence continued until the administration’s final hours. This was partly because intelligence was still being collected and analyzed, but it also reflected the sentiment among many administration officials that they had not recognized the scale of the Russian campaign until it was too late. The warning signs had been building throughout the summer, but were far from clear. As WikiLeaks was pushing out emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee through online publication, American intelligence began picking up conversations in which Russian officials were discussing contacts with Trump associates, and European allies were starting to pass along information about people close to Mr. Trump meeting with Russians in the Netherlands, Britain and other countries. But what was going on in the meetings was unclear to the officials, and the intercepted communications did little to clarify matters — the Russians, it appeared, were arguing about how far to go in interfering in the presidential election. What intensified the alarm at the Obama White House was a campaign of cyberattacks on state electoral systems in September, which led the administration to deliver a public accusation against the Russians in October. But it wasn’t until after the election, and after more intelligence had come in, that the administration began to grasp the scope of the suspected tampering and concluded that one goal of the campaign was to help tip the election in Mr. Trump’s favor. In early December, Mr. Obama ordered the intelligence community to conduct a full assessment of the Russian campaign. In the weeks before the assessment was released in January, the intelligence community combed through databases for an array of communications and other information — some of which was months old by then — and began producing reports that showed there were contacts during the campaign between Trump associates and Russian officials. The nature of the contacts remains unknown. Several of Mr. Trump’s associates have done business in Russia, and it is unclear if any of the contacts were related to business dealings. The New York Times, citing four current and former officials, reported last month that the American authorities had obtained information of repeated contacts between Mr. Trump’s associates and senior Russian intelligence officials. The White House has dismissed the story as false. Since the Feb. 14 article appeared, more than a officials have confirmed contacts of various kinds between Russians and Trump associates. The label “intelligence official” is not always cleanly applied in Russia, where oligarchs and government officials often report back to the intelligence services and elsewhere in the Kremlin. Steven L. Hall, the former head of Russia operations at the C. I. A. said that Mr. Putin was surrounded by a cast of characters, and that it was “fair to say that a good number of them come from an intelligence or security background. Once an intel guy, always an intel guy in Russia. ” The concerns about the contacts were cemented by a series of phone calls between Mr. Kislyak and Michael T. Flynn, who had been poised to become Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. The calls began on Dec. 29, shortly after Mr. Kislyak was summoned to the State Department and informed that, in retaliation for Russian election meddling, the United States was expelling 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives and imposing other sanctions. Mr. Kislyak was irate and threatened a forceful Russia response, according to people familiar with the exchange. But a day later, Mr. Putin said his government would not retaliate, prompting a Twitter post from Mr. Trump praising the Russian president — and puzzling Obama White House officials. On Jan. 2, administration officials learned that Mr. Kislyak — after leaving the State Department meeting — called Mr. Flynn, and that the two talked multiple times in the 36 hours that followed. American intelligence agencies routinely wiretap the phones of Russian diplomats, and transcripts of the calls showed that Mr. Flynn urged the Russians not to respond, saying relations would improve once Mr. Trump was in office, according to multiple current and former officials. Beyond leaving a trail for investigators, the Obama administration also wanted to help European allies combat a threat that had caught the United States off guard. American intelligence agencies made it clear in the declassified version of the intelligence assessment released in January that they believed Russia intended to use its attacks on the United States as a template for more meddling. “We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned,” the report said, “to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U. S. allies. ” | 1 |
It’s scary to think that the lifestyle I lived through my youth will simply not exist for future generations.
Gone are the days of walking to your friend’s house and inviting yourself over to play or suffering through a busy dial tone and accepting you may not hear from that person at all that day.
I remember when we first got internet and how remarkable I found it to be able to converse on my computer with my next door neighbour on ICQ . I truly did live through the internet boom and I’m thankful for that, but it does make me think, how has this shaped who I am today, and are future generations really doomed?
Before the internet there was television, and it too played a heavy role in my upbringing. In the 1990s Dr. Teresa Belton , a visiting fellow at the University of East Anglia, studied the effects that television has on the imagination of 10-12 year old children, ultimately concluding that television negatively impacts their development: “T he ubiquity and ease of access to television and videos perhaps robs today’s children of the need to pursue their own thoughts and devise their own occupations, distracting them from inner processes and constantly demanding responses to external agendas, and suggests that this may have implications for the development of imaginative capacity.”
Another study examined the effects that television has on a child’s ability to imagine. Researchers found that children in a community with no television scored significantly higher on divergent thinking skills, a measure of imaginativeness, compared to two other communities, one of which had one TV channel and the other, four.
The scary part? Once the community gained access to television, their skills dropped to the same level as the other participants.
The obvious and alarming next question is, if regular children’s programming hinders their ability to imagine, what then is the internet doing to their young minds? And what did children do before television and the internet?
They were bored.
But since when is being bored a bad thing?
Neuroscientists have discovered that “when the brain is supposedly resting it’s actually more active. This suggests that daydreaming, or mind wandering as psychologists call it, must have a purpose” (source) .
Belton interviewed certain creative professionals to gain more insight into their childhood and found that being ‘bored’ played a vital role in their creativity as a child, and even now. One professional was writer and actress Meera Syal .
She remembers the days of gazing out her window at the rural landscape, and how ‘doing nothing’ prompted her to try new things like learning to bake cakes with the elderly woman next door. One habit she thanks her younger self for is writing in her diary, which she believes boredom inspired her to do and has helped manifest her writing career. “It’s very freeing, being creative for no other reason than that you freewheel and fill time,” she said.
According to the Wikipedia definition, imagination is considered to be the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses, such as seeing or hearing.
Would it be safe to say that imagination can inspire the pursuit of knowledge?
While we learn best through experience, it’s still important to allow our minds to wander, to be bored. It’s from this place we can learn empathy.
Our world has become so fast-paced and our lives so busy, and we often feel we need to engage with it in order to feel useful, productive, even validated — the Glorification of Busy , if you will.
But allowing our brains time to process and imagine is still ‘doing something,’ even if it doesn’t feel that way. According to Belton, it is helping to shape a strong and resilient mind:
But to get the most benefit from times of potential boredom, indeed from life in general, children also need inner resources as well as material ones. Qualities such as curiosity, perseverance, playfulness, interest and confidence allow them to explore, create and develop powers of inventiveness, observation and concentration. These also help them to learn not to be deterred if something doesn’t work the first time, and try again. By encouraging the development of such capacities, parents offer children something of lifelong value.
So for parents, the next time your child needs something to do, allow them to create and play without the use of technology. I encourage you to remember the child you used to be, the one who found fun and joy out of things like playing with sticks in the field outside your home or imagining the ground was lava as you jumped from couch to couch.
This information is more than applicable to adults, too. Spend a day without your phone, computer, or TV and see where your mind takes you.
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Today James talks to Nomi Prins , author of books like All The Presidents Bankers , about her recent article “ The Central Bank Power Shift from West to East, Game of Thrones Style .” We talk about the changing economic and monetary landscape and how the locus of central bank power is shifting to the East, with players like the People’s Bank of China gaining in prominence and former US/EU lapdogs like the IMF becoming brokers for these new power players in the new world financial order.
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BURBANK, Calif. — Behind the beige walls that enclose the Warner Bros. lot here, Kevin Tsujihara has been ruminating on perception versus reality — a classic Hollywood subject onscreen, but one that the studio is now experiencing in real life. Mr. Tsujihara, the Warner Bros. chief executive, is on track to deliver record operating profit this year, with film leading the way. Last week, Time Warner said his division — home to Batman, Clint Eastwood, Bugs Bunny, “The Middle” and TMZ. com — had income of $433 million, a 12 percent increase from a year earlier. Its corporate sibling HBO, by comparison, with $530 million in profit, grew 2 percent. Yet many people consider Warner Bros. a troubled operation, a notion that Mr. Tsujihara thinks is rooted in an underappreciation of the studio’s businesses and the lingering effect of film pipeline problems that it has moved past. “Quietly, we’ve been having an amazing year,” he said. “The narrative, over all, has not reflected that. ” Warner Bros. sits in the long shadow of HBO, a darling of the news media and Wall Street. When ATT agreed to buy Time Warner for $85 billion last month, Warner Bros. was largely a footnote in the resulting analysis — even though the studio, among other things, has promising streaming services in the works involving Harry Potter and Batman that could be supercharged by the telecommunications company. So how does Mr. Tsujihara correct the narrative? The surest way is to deliver a smash hit, and Warner’s film division may be holding one in “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. ” Arriving in theaters on Nov. 18, the $180 million movie (not including an estimated $150 million in global marketing costs) expands J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe. Ms. Rowling, who wrote the “Fantastic Beasts” screenplay, last month announced four sequels, news that elated fans. Reviews for “Fantastic Beasts” have not yet been published, but people (including this reporter) have been wowed in advance screenings. Set in New York in the 1920s and focused on the eccentric “magizoologist” Newt Scamander, the film could sell $70 million or more in tickets in its first three days in domestic theaters alone, according to analysts. More hits could follow. Over the next year, Warner Bros. will release “Wonder Woman,” “Kong: Skull Island,” “Justice League,” Christopher Nolan’s war epic “Dunkirk” and two animated Lego movies. Salted among those behemoths are entries from Warner’s New Line Cinema unit, like “Annabelle 2,” a horror movie. When it comes to recasting Warner as the giant he believes it is, Mr. Tsujihara also knows that the studio needs to do a better job of telling its own story. Warner executives tend to hunker behind those beige walls, which allows others in Hollywood — especially those who have left the studio under unhappy circumstances — to do the talking for them, at times contributing to bracingly negative news media coverage. This year, for instance, some reporters and bloggers took gleeful delight in beating up Warner over the poor critical response to “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Suicide Squad. ” Lost in the criticism, Mr. Tsujihara and other members of his executive team think, has been the films’ financial success: “Dawn of Justice” and “Suicide Squad” collected a combined $1. 6 billion worldwide. Add the box office success of “Sully” and several modestly budgeted, expertly marketed New Line films this year, including “Central Intelligence,” “Lights Out” and “The Conjuring 2,” and the studio is on pace to have one of its most profitable years ever. At a time when smaller rivals like Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment are struggling, Warner Bros. has been frustrated that its own financial success has not garnered more notice. “People overlook our consistency,” Mr. Tsujihara said. But what about those bad superhero reviews? Analysts worry that the impact of movies like “Dawn of Justice” could be felt down the line, perhaps when consumers weigh whether “Justice League” is worth their money. Mr. Tsujihara said he was confident that management changes he has been making (putting a pair of executives, Geoff Johns and Jon Berg, in charge of superhero movies, for instance) will make for more satisfied fans. With any luck, even a critic or two could come around. “The thing that really makes me confident is that I’ve seen ‘Wonder Woman,’ and it’s great,” Mr. Tsujihara said. Anthony DiClemente, a media analyst with Nomura, recently raised his financial estimates for Warner Bros. in anticipation of ticket sales for “Fantastic Beasts. ” But he noted that Time Warner “fielded exactly zero questions” from analysts on last week’s earnings call about its studio, with the attention going instead to the Turner cable networks and HBO. Warner Bros. would most likely contend that investors were not looking at its operation in full. While movies receive most of the attention, they actually make up a small part of Warner’s overall business. The studio produces nearly 80 television series, including “Westworld” for HBO and “The Big Bang Theory” for CBS. Warner has 10 shows airing this season that are based on DC Comics characters those shows alone generate more than $1 billion a year in revenue, according to Time Warner. Warner Bros. is also one of the world’s largest video game makers, cranking out titles that include Mortal Kombat and Lego Dimensions. While most of Warner’s rivals — Disney in particular — have struggled to develop a lasting gaming business, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is now big enough to pick up the slack when sibling divisions underperform, as happened last year when Warner movies like “Pan” and “Jupiter Ascending” flopped. The studio is a growing digital force, forming a new division in June dedicated to managing investments in online networks like Machinima (dedicated to games) and Uninterrupted (pro athletes) while accelerating the rollout of services dedicated to superheroes and, perhaps, Harry Potter. “Combining with ATT will allow us to go with brands like DC even faster,” Mr. Tsujihara said. Finally, Mr. Tsujihara has moved to strengthen the studio’s toys and apparel division, hiring a former Disney executive, Pam Lifford, to remake Warner Bros. Consumer Products. All those “Fantastic Beasts” movies play a big part in Ms. Lifford’s efforts — a consistent content pipeline is crucial to retail buyers — as do revitalization plans around other Warner brands, including the Looney Tunes cartoons. Mr. Tsujihara says he sees consumer products as “a real growth engine. ” Will such efforts help Warner persuade outsiders to view it more holistically? It’s unclear. But at least Mr. Tsujihara’s boss has noticed. “Kevin has a great understanding of how fast consumer behavior is changing and how the company is changing to meet their expectations,” Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Time Warner’s chief executive, said in an email. “What’s really impressed me is how he’s breaking down silos and driving greater collaboration among the businesses, which is helping the company produce the right kinds of content, for the right platforms, at the right time. ” | 1 |
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AN TAOISEACH Enda Kenny yesterday called for a national discussion on pornography, owing to its sometimes corrosive effects on people’s perception of and attitudes toward sex and sexual encounters.
Thanks to a timely freedom of information request WWN submitted recently, we can reveal that the office of the Taoiseach has been very keen on discussing pornography, and WWN can for the first time publish An Taoiseach’s computer search history.
5) “Dear Google, this is private don’t share with anyone. Sexy IRA balaclava ladies”
The Taoiseach’s 5th most popular repeated search reveals a penchant for erotic roleplay. Which is not dissimilar to many young men, whose overexposure to and repeated watching of unrealistic sexual encounters and sexual performance can often lead to several sexual dysfunctions such as impotence. However, watching milfs with great big jugs every evening will probably do you no harm, expert opinion and research be damned.
4) “Three-way coalition”
Echoing the porn habits of several political science students, who despite having their own sexual experiences, can find consistent watching of over the top scenarios and performances warps their own perception of what sex actually consists of and leave them further isolated from real and intimate personal relationships. But, it doesn’t count when it comes to watching a 16-way orgy, they’re class.
3) “Dáil bar after 2am”
Presumably searching for a porn parody of that time a sitting TD clutched at a female colleague, forcing her to sit in his lap during a late night sitting of the Dáil. Certain genres of pornography can lead people to believe other people are merely sexual objects, available to provide sexual gratification at any time of their choosing.
2) “Dear Google VERY PRIVATE. Female German dominatrix”
Unlike Enda here, who has had years to cultivate his understanding of the various genres and the fact that they are rarely if ever representative of real sex, people are now beginning to watch graphic pornography from as young as 12, paving the way for a disorientating experience while having little ability or resources available to provide real and genuine sexual education and information. Unlike yourself, who can’t remember the last time you went on to Pornhub, Redtube, Xvideo or whatever you’re having yourself.
1) “Deepthroat whistleblower”
While we put this entry, searched for 7,000 times, down to the government’s desire to weed out Garda whistleblowers who are making life difficult for the cabinet, other people, chiefly men, regularly look for various scenarios and fantasies which, when not watched in moderation and with an understanding that it is not real life, can devastate their lives and relationships on a permanent basis. ‘Tis grand if you’re just watching the odd hour or two everyday though.
For more information of what porn you should be looking up click HERE. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — President Trump sharply changed the federal government’s approach to the environment on Tuesday as he cleared the way for two major oil pipelines that had been blocked, and set in motion a plan to curb regulations that slow other building projects. In his latest moves to dismantle the legacy of his predecessor, Mr. Trump resurrected the Keystone XL pipeline that had stirred years of debate, and expedited another pipeline in the Dakotas that had become a major flash point for Native Americans. He also signed a directive ordering an end to protracted environmental reviews. “I am, to a large extent, an environmentalist, I believe in it,” Mr. Trump said during a meeting with auto industry executives. “But it’s out of control, and we’re going to make it a very short process. And we’re going to either give you your permits, or we’re not going to give you your permits. But you’re going to know very quickly. And generally speaking, we’re going to be giving you your permits. ” The decisions expanded an effort to unravel much of the policy structure left by former President Barack Obama, who made fighting climate change a central priority. Just a day earlier, Mr. Trump formally abandoned the Partnership, an ambitious trade pact negotiated by Mr. Obama. In his opening days in office, Mr. Trump has also modified or reversed Mr. Obama’s policies on health care, abortion and housing while ordering a freeze of any pending regulations left behind by the former administration. The pipelines were more about symbol than substance but generated enormous passion on both sides of the debate. Mr. Obama rejected the proposed Keystone pipeline in 2015, arguing that it would undercut American leadership in curbing the reliance on carbon energy. The Army sidetracked the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota last month in the waning days of the Obama administration. Environmental activists quickly denounced Mr. Trump’s decisions. “Donald Trump has been in office for four days, and he’s already proving to be the dangerous threat to our climate we feared he would be,” said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club. Mr. Trump made clear on the campaign trail that he saw Mr. Obama’s environmental policies as a threat to the economy and dismissed climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China. Myron Ebell, a climate change denier who headed Mr. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, has drafted a blueprint for how he could eliminate Mr. Obama’s climate change policies. “It is designed to implement all of the president’s campaign trail promises — every single one,” Mr. Ebell said this week in an interview. Mr. Trump’s biggest target may be emission rules that would force the closing of hundreds of power plants meant to be replaced by wind and solar power. But they are caught up in court battles that could run for months or years. By contrast, he could more quickly soften Mr. Obama’s rules requiring tougher vehicle emission standards. Mr. Trump met on Tuesday with executives of major American automakers, who complained that before leaving office, Mr. Obama finalized an ambitious E. P. A. rule requiring that vehicles average 54. 5 miles per gallon by 2026. Mr. Trump said he would help with burdensome regulations, but offered no specifics. Mr. Trump could lift a moratorium instituted last year by Mr. Obama on new coal mining leases on public lands. As soon as next month, the Congress may pass legislation undoing Mr. Obama’s regulations on the practice of coal mining and on leaks of methane emissions from oil and gas drilling rigs. In the meantime, the Keystone and Dakota pipelines provided Mr. Trump with visible ways to demonstrate action. As proposed by TransCanada, an Alberta firm, Keystone would carry 800, 000 barrels a day from the Canadian oil sands to the Gulf Coast. Republicans and some Democrats said that it would create jobs and expand energy resources, while environmentalists said it would encourage a form of oil extraction that produces more gases that warm the planet than normal petroleum. Studies showed that the pipeline would not have a momentous effect on jobs or the environment, but both sides made it into a symbolic test case. The State Department estimated that Keystone would support 42, 000 temporary jobs for two years — about 3, 900 of them in construction and the rest through indirect support, like food service — but only 35 permanent jobs. Similarly, the government concluded that Keystone’s carbon emissions would equal less than 1 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. “Keystone has never been a significant issue from an environmental point of view in substance, only in symbol,” said David L. Goldwyn, an energy market analyst and a former head of the State Department’s energy bureau in the Obama administration. But it was a symbol Mr. Trump found important enough to seize on early in his presidency. He signed an executive memorandum inviting TransCanada “to promptly resubmit its application to the Department of State for a presidential permit” for the pipeline, although the document did not guarantee approval. The president told reporters he would “renegotiate some of the terms” — including possibly an insistence that the pipeline be built with American steel — but left little doubt that he wanted it approved. “We’ll see if we can get that pipeline built,” he said. “A lot of jobs. ” In a statement, TransCanada accepted his invitation to seek permission again. “We are currently preparing the application and intend to do so,” the company said, vowing that it would create jobs and still protect waterways and other sensitive resources. The Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota became the focus of protests when the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe objected to its construction less than a mile from its reservation. The tribe and its allies won victory last month when the Army Corps of Engineers announced that it would look for alternative routes for the $3. 7 billion pipeline instead of allowing it to be drilled under a dammed section of the Missouri River. Mr. Trump signed an executive memorandum directing the Army “to review and approve in an expedited manner” the pipeline, “to the extent permitted by law and as warranted. ” In his session with reporters, he added, “Again, subject to terms and conditions to be negotiated by us. ” Mr. Trump owned stock in Energy Transfer Partners, the company that is building the Dakota Access pipeline, according to his most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission. Last month, a spokesman for Mr. Trump said he sold all of his stock in June, but there is no way of verifying that sale, and Mr. Trump has not provided documentation of it. Critics vowed to keep resisting the projects. Jan Hasselman, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental law group representing the tribe, said Mr. Trump was discarding the findings of a review. “They’re just ignoring the problems that the government has already found,” he said, “and that is the kind of thing that courts need to review very closely. ” In Canada, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau welcomed Mr. Trump’s decision. “We have been supportive of this since the day we were sworn into government,” Jim Carr, the natural resources minister, told reporters. Mr. Carr said the American reversal will lead “to a deepening of the relationship across the border. ” In addition to the Keystone and Dakota directives, Mr. Trump signed three others intended to ease the way for businesses and to promote American manufacturing. One instructed the Commerce Department to develop a plan to ensure that future pipelines built in the United States be constructed of materials. Another was aimed at streamlining what he called “the incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible permitting process and reducing regulatory burdens for domestic manufacturing. ” The last directive was intended to expedite environmental reviews for “ infrastructure projects” like highways and bridges. Some news reports on Tuesday said that the E. P. A. and other departments had issued orders forbidding employees from issuing news releases or posting on social media. But longtime officials in multiple agencies said the guidance was similar to that of when Mr. Obama took office eight years ago. | 1 |
Clinton crime family must be taken down... ARREST THEM ALL: Clinton, Podesta, Abedin, Lynch, Mook, Stephanopoulos and all the co-conspirators
Clinton corruption , John Podesta , crime family (NaturalNews) It's not just that the corruption and criminality of the Clintons knows no bounds; it's also that the democrat political machine trying to thrust her into power also has total disregard for democracy, truth and ethics. Their mission? Put our nation's worst political criminal into the White House by any means necessary, including systematic lying, fraud, money laundering, intimidation of opponents and even murder of those who might testify against her. The Clinton machine is a mafia operation , and every person involved in it must go to jail.That includes not just the deep operatives like Podesta, Lynch and Abedin, but also all the deep cover Clinton operatives pretending to be journalists , including Stephanopoulos, Maddow, Hayes, Milbank and all the rest ( see the list here ). Every one of these people has committed crimes of sedition against the United States of America and is guilty of attempting to defraud democracy, steal the election, and place a mafia criminal into power at the highest level of government through the deliberate pursuit of journalistic malpractice . Seditious Clinton operatives must be arrested and put behind bars to protect America We the People are beyond the stage of merely wanting to vote you out of power and turn off your broadcast networks. It's now time to seek your indictment and imprisonment so that you cannot be allowed to harm this society ever again.Every operative, journalist and co-conspirator with the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton corruption and the Clinton murders must be arrested, indicted and, if found guilty by a fair trial, sent to prison. This nation needs to heal itself from the Clinton nightmare , and the only way that's going to happen is if the criminal traitors, sellouts and corrupt backstabbers are marched away in handcuffs and put behind bars."A former FBI official said Sunday that Bill and Hillary Clinton are part of a crime family and argued top officials hindered the investigation into Hillary Clintons private email server while she was secretary of State," reports TheHill.com : Kallstrom, best known for leading the investigation into the explosion of TWA flight 800 in the late '90s, said that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, was a pathological liar.He also blasted Attorney General Loretta Lynch, claiming that she impeded the investigation into Clintons private server.The problem here is this investigation was never a real investigation, he said. Thats the problem. They never had a grand jury empanelled, and the reason they never had a grand jury empanelled, Im sure, is Loretta Lynch would not go along with that. God forbid we put someone like that in the White House, he added of Clinton.Kallstrom also said that FBI Director James Comey and the rest of the FBIs leadership were responsible for holding back the investigation, not the rest of the bureau.The agents are furious with whats going on, I know that for a fact, he said. Corrupt, pro-Clinton "journalists" should not be given any quarter in all this. Much like the propagandists of the Third Reich, they abuse their positions of power to operate in conspiracy with an outright criminal who acts against the interests of the American people. Did you know that Hillary Clinton sold off uranium mining rights to the Russians because the oligarchs who made billions off the deal turned around and donated millions to her Clinton Foundation? If you aren't aware of this, you need to watch Clinton Cash immediately . The simple truth is that the entire democrat party is a massive criminal cartel What America has now come to realize via the Wikileaks email dumps , the Project Veritas undercover videos and even the revelations of former FBI agents who know what's really happening inside the agency is that the entire democrat party is a massive criminal cartel .From the DNC (which actively conspired to sideline Bernie Sanders during the nomination process) to the left-wing media (which coordinates false smear attacks against Donald Trump), every element of the democrat party is hopelessly corrupt. Democrat political operatives abide by no laws, no ethics and no boundaries. They lie, cheat and steal their way into power at every election... and they're desperately trying to steal this election, too.It's not just that the Clinton crime family must be taken down, you see: It's that the entire democrat establishment should be disbanded or imprisoned . There isn't a high-level operative inside the DNC who isn't committing election fraud on a daily basis. The coordination and collusion, money laundering and pay-to-play "influence for sale" schemes are all illegal, yet they are the very foundation of the democrat establishment as it exists today.Every one of these people needs to be arrested, indicted and imprisoned. This is the only way genuine democracy can be restored across America. Aside from their criminality, democrats' policy ideas just don't work Even on policy alone, democrats are total failures . None of their ideas or policies actually work. Look at Obamacare, with its insurance costs now doubling every 2-3 years , with coverage options crashing nationwide and the entire failed idea now on the verge of imploding. This was hailed as an historic solution by Obama and the rest of the dummocrats who forced it through Congress and the Supreme Court. In reality, Obamacare was the dumbest idea ever attempted to solve the health care crisis, and I called it that from its inception.Democrats are parasites on society who know nothing other than how to survive as government blood suckers by promising big ideas that routinely fail. They confiscate money from taxpayers, waste it on the most stupid policy ideas ever dreamed up, while siphoning off billions for their own salaries, bonuses and luxurious lifestyles. Then, if you oppose their complete idiocy, they invoke the IRS to have you audited or arrested. This is Amerika today under Obama and the Clintons.This racket must end. The Clintons and all their co-conspirators must be sent to prison. Donald Trump is right when he says this is "Bigger than Watergate." There's no comparison. The crimes of the Clintons are a thousand times larger and more damning to democracy than anything Richard Nixon ever attempted. Corrupt leftist media still lying every hour in a desperate attempt to defeat Trump While all this is happening, the corrupt leftist media -- Washington Post, New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, Google News, Yahoo News, etc. -- has long since abandoned any pretense of engaging in journalism and is now all-in for the Clinton criminal mafia.They have thrown their reputations to the wind, betting everything on the most corrupt criminal to ever seek the office of the presidency. They're bleeding readers and viewers by the millions as fed-up Americans change the channels or turn off their cable TV altogether (who needs politicized ESPN, anyway?) to seek out more accurate news online from sites like Natural News and Breitbart.com .Even the mass censorship of political trends by Facebook and Twitter can't stop the avalanche of awakening now sweeping across America. Across every sector of society, the American people are saying ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! We will not allow the criminal democrats to steal this election and install a totalitarian dictator into the White House.We will vote against the establishment in record numbers. We will overwhelm the fraud, out-vote the brain-dead leftists and achieve a landslide victory for Donald Trump.And if the corrupt, criminal democrats still fake the numbers, bribe the electoral voters or commit massive fraud to steal the election, We the People will take to the streets and take our democracy back . We the People will NOT accept a Clinton presidency under these conditions of massive fraud, collusion and extreme media bias Based on everything we are seeing right now, there is no scenario under which Hillary Clinton will be accepted as the legitimate victor of this election. In no way has this been an open, fair and free election. It has been a warped, one-sided exercise in media collusion that isn't fooling anyone.In the minds of the real American people, Hillary Clinton is done for . The People will not stand for more corruption, collusion and criminals running our system. The revolt has begun , and it will sweep through the voting booths, the electorate and if necessary, the very streets of America to demand an end to the failed, corrupt political establishment run by sinister criminals who belong behind bars.Get ready, my friends, to take this country back. First, vote for Donald Trump as a vote against corruption and collusion of the leftist establishment.Secondly, demand the arrest of all Clinton-linked operatives , including those in the leftist lying media.Thirdly, do not tolerate the theft of your democracy by corrupt Clinton operatives who are trying to steal this election. If they steal the votes or steal the Electoral College outcome, prepare to march in the streets to take your country back .Yes, I'm calling for peaceful mass protests, everywhere across America, if the criminal democrats and corrupt leftist media steal this election through fraud. Bring plenty of rope because you may have to swing across moats and scale the walls of the castle to finally reach the inner layers of corruption and criminality in Washington D.C. (That's a metaphor, for the dumb-as-dirt left-wing media journalists who are too stupid to parse a sentence.) DEFEAT Clinton now or lose America to a totalitarian regime that will never let go of absolute power This is your LAST CHANCE to take America back. If you allow the Clintons and the corrupt democrats to seize power through widespread fraud and theft, there will never be an open, fair and free election in America ever again . All opponents of Clinton will be imprisoned or executed. All conservative media outlets will be taken offline or silenced. The borders will be opened to a massive wave of illegal aliens from all across the world, and they will overrun and occupy America, destroying it from within while the bigoted, intolerant democrats turn the entire nation into a "sanctuary nation" where illegals have absolute immunity while patriots are executed or imprisoned by the millions.That's the "American Holocaust" you're going to be witnessing if you allow these criminals -- Clinton, Abedin, Podesta, Stephanopoulos and all the rest -- to remain in power. Throw them behind bars if you want to see your country survive the next four years . | 0 |
— Kevin D. Williamson (@KevinNR) October 27, 2016
If there’s one thing the Left has proven over and over again, it’s that they’ve got science on their side: Science is proving that "extended adolescence" is real. So why is our justice system trying 25-year-olds as adults? https://t.co/8ya0TsFdSF pic.twitter.com/isRhp47J9z
— New Republic (@NewRepublic) October 27, 2016
Better question: How hot is the New Republic’s take? @NewRepublic I was 25 and providing for a wife and 2 kids on my own. These babies need to grow up | 0 |
The Council We know that most of you feel somewhat lost, at sea, and bewildered by what you see going on around you right now. The process of dismantling all that needs to be replaced has indeed begun. The thought that this is what is happening does cross your minds from time to time, but that does not make it much easier to deal with. And telling you that we forewarned you would not serve either.
Much that needed to be renewed has already been shown to you and new ways have begun to be tried. This has been very successful in places; but, as yet, this has not been given much attention. One of the things you may wish to do when success of this nature comes to your attention, is to help spread knowledge of it to the best of your ability. Your new world is being constructed by you even as the chaos appears to be on the rise.
We would love to say that the worst is over. The truth, however, is that it is not. The worst is still being hidden from you. And until one sees the truth, nothing will be done to change it. That is what is happening. You need to see what is coming to the surface to be seen. Many of you already understand, but again, the understanding does not bring much comfort.
Now, we have titled this message ‘Tipping Point’ for a reason. It is not because you are at the tipping point. The fact is that you passed that point some time ago. You are, in fact, now past the point of no return; and the old structures, and those who uphold them, are well aware that they are fighting for their very existence. If you look at what is around you in that light, you will see it is so. They see the outcome, and they do not like it. However, giving in to a possible better way of life does not look attractive from their viewpoint. They truly have nothing, but they imagine that they have everything to lose.
It is more than likely that if you are reading this, you are not under the bombs, not getting Mace in your face, and not standing in front of ‘civil’ police that look like shock troops. But all of those things exist in your world, and therefore in your field of being. You feel them. But what can you do? Is there anything you can do?
Well, many of you are offering support in many ways, not the least of which is your resolve, your prayer, and your intent. And that is exactly what we would advise. The problem is that you do not see the effect of that. We do. We see the changes in the energy of your world very clearly. And we are telling you now that this energy is rising. This is what you came for. This is what you are good at. And this is what you are doing. Those of you who do indeed feel the energy of Earth’s field know this. All of you could feel it if you trained yourselves to do so. But regardless of whether or not this appeals to you, we ask you to know that your efforts are working and to find every opportunity to raise the frequency that you can.
One thing we will remind you of once again. It is just as important for you to keep your own energies up as it is to pray or meditate for the troubled spots that you know about. If you are not in your highest frequency, you indeed cannot help much. If you are in your highest state of love and joy, and are doing all you can to reach higher, you are making major contributions to the final outcome. Fear and darkness cannot exist in an atmosphere of unconditional love. Darkness does not exist in the presence of bright light. As one of your greatest scientists once said, “This is not philosophy, it is physics.” Dearest family, it is also alchemy. It is what changes lead into gold. Buddhists call it ‘poison into medicine’.
This is what you do. It is what you do well. Pat yourselves on the back. Pat each other on the back. Take a deep breath. And do more of it.
There are two published books available on Amazon that contain the collected messages received by Ron Head (that’s me). The first is The Wisdom of Michael, available HERE , and the second is It Rings True, Available HERE . A third book is being compiled now.
It Rings True: Guidance from The Council It Rings True: Guidance from The Council by Ron Head
By Ron Head
If you are dedicated to progressing on your journey through this lifetime, this is an uplifting selection you will want to have on your bookshelf. This is Ron Head’s second book of loving, channeled messages. Another internationally well-known channel has described this book as ‘filled with gentle and oftentimes humorous, reminders for those who have or are in the process now, of awakening to their own spiritual journey’. You will find numerous messages that approach age-old topics in fresh ways. Whether you read it through from cover to cover or refer to it daily, this is one you will be glad to have.
Available on Amazon → Copyright © Ronald Head. All Rights Reserved. You may copy and redistribute this material so long as you do not alter it in any way, the content remains complete, and you include this copyright notice link: http://ronahead.com/
Source: Ron Head — Oracles & Healers
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Maryland Trump Supporter: They Switched My Vote to Hillary Yet another report of vote flipping
A woman in Hollywood, Maryland is the latest in a number of early voters to claim that her ballot was switched to Hillary Clinton after she had tried to vote for Donald Trump. Maryland Trump Supporter: They Switched My Vote to Hillary – https://t.co/FkNiEUOZHH pic.twitter.com/dalY9KBWtj
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) October 28, 2016 Noting that she had seen reports on the news of votes being flipped, the woman said, “I went in and voted a straight Republican ticket and thank God I went back and checked and they had switched my vote from Trump to (Hillary).” She said that she had to get the vote changed back by alerting election officials, who simply told her to vote for a second time. “I went back the second time and made sure they didn’t change it,” she concluded. As we reported earlier this week, voters in numerous areas of Texas have made a series of complaints that votes are being switched from Trump to Clinton. One election official responded by claiming the problems were caused by voters not understanding how to use the machines properly. “Typically, we’ve found it’s voter error with the equipment,” Frank Phillips, Tarrant County’s election administrator, told WFAA . “Sometimes they vote straight party and then click on other candidates … or do something with the wheel….There is not an issue with the equipment.” However, Trump supporters continue to point to the reports as evidence that vote fraud may be taking place.
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Hostages Trapped Inside Walmart Insisting They Never Shop At Walmart A gunman at a Dearborn, MI Walmart is holding dozens of shoppers who say they only happened to be at the tacky megachain by coincidence. Nation Puts 2016 Election Into Perspective By Reminding Itself Some Species Of Sea Turtles Get Eaten By Birds Just Seconds After They Hatch WASHINGTON—Saying they felt anxious and overwhelmed just days before heading to the polls to decide a historically fraught presidential race, Americans throughout the country reportedly took a moment Thursday to put the 2016 election into perspective by reminding themselves that some species of sea turtles are eaten by birds just seconds after they hatch. Report: Election Day Most Americans’ Only Time In 2016 Being In Same Room With Person Supporting Other Candidate WASHINGTON—According to a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, Election Day 2016 will, for the majority of Americans, mark the only time this year they will occupy the same room as a person who supports a different presidential candidate. New Heavy-Duty Voting Machine Allows Americans To Take Out Frustration On It Before Casting Ballot WASHINGTON—Saying the circumstances of this year’s presidential race made the upgrade necessary, election commissions throughout the country were reportedly working to install new heavy-duty voting machines this week that will allow Americans to physically take out their frustrations on the devices before casting their votes. Clinton Staff Readies EMP Launch To Disable All Nation’s Electronic Devices NEW YORK—In an effort to prepare for any new revelations that might emerge about her emails during her tenure as secretary of state, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton reportedly told her staff Tuesday to ready the launch of several electromagnetic pulses to disable all of the nation’s electronic devices. New Report Finds Voters Have No Idea How Outraged They Supposed To Be About Anything Anymore WASHINGTON—Saying that at this point, they were just taking their best guesses at how they should react to each new scandal that emerged about the presidential nominees, voters across the country admitted Monday they had no clue how outraged they are supposed to be about anything anymore. Anthony Weiner Sends Apology Sext To Entire Clinton Campaign BROOKLYN, NY—In response to the FBI’s announcement that its investigation of him had produced new evidence that could pertain to its probe of the Democratic presidential nominee, Anthony Weiner reportedly sent an apology sext early Monday morning to the entire Hillary Clinton campaign. Nation Too Terrified To Look At What Trump’s Recent Rise In Polls Attributed To WASHINGTON—Claiming it felt queasy just thinking about what the cause could be, the nation’s populace said Monday it was too terrified to look at what Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s recent rise in the polls was attributed to. Anthropologists Discover Isolated Tribe Of Joyful Americans Living In Remote Village Untouched By 2016 Election WALDPORT, OR—A team of anthropologists announced Friday it had discovered an isolated tribe of blissful Americans who have never been exposed to the current presidential campaign or its candidates, noting that the newly identified population lives contentedly in a remote village completely untouched by the 2016 race. | 0 |
SAN FRANCISCO — Kirsten Green had only dabbled in investing in before she began a venture capital fund in 2012. What she had instead was years of experience covering the retail business as an analyst on Wall Street. So Ms. Green, 45, parlayed that retail knowledge into her venture capital endeavors and used it to bring specialized advice to her companies. In one of her first moves as a venture capitalist, she was part of a $1 million investment into Dollar Shave Club, then a tiny company, which sells razors to consumers online. Later, she invested in Jet. com, an that was vocal about wanting to take on Amazon. Last year, both those hit the jackpot: Unilever bought Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion, while Walmart purchased Jet. com for $3. 3 billion. For Ms. Green, that translated into a bonanza of returns. Thinking about “the acquirers, the state of the public markets, how a business is being valued — that’s an essential way to understand the overall ecosystem” of said Ms. Green, whose venture firm, Forerunner Ventures, is based in San Francisco. The Dollar Shave Club and Jet. com deals have helped vault Ms. Green this year to No. 12 among the top 50 venture capitalists in the world, according to data compiled by CB Insights, a research firm that tracks venture capital. Other venture capitalists on the list also landed their spots partly because of big sales or initial public offerings of their including the recent I. P. O. of Snap, the maker of the ephemeral messaging app Snapchat. The place of Ms. Green, who did not rank in the top 20 last year, on the list demonstrates that the real measure of success in venture capital is how much a is worth when it sells or goes public. That is especially so now as the rate of sales and I. P. O.s — known as investment exits — is expected to pick up in 2017 after a long lull, according to Renaissance Capital, which tracks public offerings. This year has already seen strong stock market debuts from Snap and corporate software maker Mulesoft. That means the venture capitalists who nurtured those businesses can finally reap some cash. “The fact that we’re seeing more exits, and a stronger opportunity for exits, is a good thing,” said Theresa S. Hajer, a managing director at Cambridge Associates, an investment advisory firm. Knowing when to sell a or take it public remains as important as deciding to sell. Founders Fund, a venture firm started by the investor Peter Thiel, had put money into Stemcentrx, which makes a drug. Last year, Stemcentrx agreed to sell itself to the drug maker AbbVie for $5. 8 billion, an amount that generated returns exceeding the $625 million fund that Founders Fund had used to invest in the company. “It’s clearly important to generate realized returns, but the question is still when,” said Brian Singerman, the Founders partner who oversaw the Stemcentrx investment and who is No. 5 on the list of top 20 venture capitalists. CB Insights put together the list using criteria such as the size of a return an investor was able to generate when his or her investments went public or were acquired. The firm focused on the performance of investors since 2009 for the list. Ms. Green is an unorthodox venture capitalist for several reasons. Apart from having never worked at a venture capital firm before starting her own in 2012, she is also a woman in a field. (Of the top 20 venture investors this year, only two were women.) And unlike many generalist venture investors, who work in a range of areas, Ms. Green focuses specifically on commerce and other . Investors have tried for years to find the next Amazon or eBay, often with little success. Recent failures include Fab. com, One Kings Lane, Shoedazzle and Gilt, all of which were financed by investment firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and General Atlantic. Ms. Green’s roots in retail run deep. She began her career as an accountant auditing retailers. In the late 1990s, she covered those companies as a stock analyst for Montgomery Securities, studying wonky measurements like customer traffic in retail locations and a store’s profitability per square foot. She also observed the rise of brands like Abercrombie Fitch, Coach and Ugg. She soon concluded that online commerce would underpin the next generation of important retail brands, but that consumers would not rely on just one way to shop. With the rise of Amazon and other online retailers, Ms. Green saw more bankruptcy filings from traditional retailers, as well as news of store closings and reports of market share shifts. But she also saw stores do well when companies could make an emotional connection with shoppers and better analyze their behavior. “Retail is now totally propelled by consumers and their needs,” she said. “People can buy what they want in any way that they want it. That trend started a long time ago, and it has really changed everything. ” In 2003, Ms. Green decided to jump from analyzing this shift to investing in it. For a time, she worked as a consultant to a private equity firm before turning to venture capital because of her interest in young companies. In 2010, she raised an angel investment fund to make investments in companies like Birchbox, a cosmetics subscription service, and Warby Parker, an eyeglasses retailer, while she studied how to raise a venture fund. In 2012, Ms. Green raised a $40 million venture fund. The investment firm Cendana Capital contributed $10 million, despite the fact that she had never worked as a traditional investor or tech entrepreneur. “When we talked to founders she had worked with, they all said that she had the best expertise and gave the best advice,” Michael Kim, a managing partner at Cendana, said of Ms. Green. With that fund, Ms. Green helped lead a $1 million investment into Dollar Shave Club when the was valued at just $5 million. She also joined the company’s board. After Ms. Green invested in Jet. com in 2014, she chatted with Jet’s executives almost weekly about matters including strategy and potential acquisitions, said Katie Finnegan, who was the online retailer’s head of corporate development. Ms. Finnegan said Jet still consults with Ms. Green even after the company’s sale to Walmart. Ms. Green has “a real instinct for brands,” said Rachel Blumenthal, the founder of the children’s apparel Rockets of Awesome, which sends subscribers a customized box of clothing for every new season. Ms. Blumenthal got to know Ms. Green from Warby Parker, which was founded by Ms. Blumenthal’s husband, Neil. Ms. Green invested in Rockets of Awesome last year and has brought her opinions about consumer behavior to the . At a recent company board meeting, Ms. Green argued that the online retailer’s subscription box needed to remain distinct from its other packaging. Ms. Blumenthal agreed, saying that making the box “the crown jewel of the customer experience” was the right decision because it was one of the most powerful ways to reach consumers and to learn about them. Ms. Green currently serves on more than 10 company boards, including for the men’s clothing company Bonobos, the makeup brand Glossier and the women’s vitamin company Ritual. She has also had her share of flops. Threadflip, an online consignment store in which she had invested, shut down last year and became part of Le Tote, a service that lets users rent clothing. As for exits, Ms. Green said she tells entrepreneurs that she expects them to take the companies public or sell to a buyer as soon as appropriate. Of the 30 companies in her first fund, eight have been acquired. In her second $75 million fund, which she raised in 2014, two companies have been acquired, including Jet. com. “Now that people are bombarded with information, we are in a golden age where brands matter,” Ms. Green said. “I want to be part of this new era. ” | 1 |
BEIRUT, Lebanon — A double bombing near Shiite shrines often visited by foreign pilgrims in Damascus, Syria, killed at least 40 people on Saturday, shattering the capital’s efforts to isolate itself from the war raging elsewhere in the country. Many of the dead were from neighboring Iraq. The Syrian state news service, SANA, said militants set off two explosive charges near the Bab cemetery, just south of the Old City. Syria’s interior minister, Mohammed who visited the site after the blasts, said they had killed 40 people and wounded 120. Other reports cited a higher death toll. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which opposes the Syrian government and monitors the conflict from Britain with the help of contacts in Syria, said that one of the blasts was from a suicide bomber and that the nature of the second was unclear. It put the death toll at 46. The spokesman for Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Jamal, said the attacks killed more than 40 Iraqi pilgrims and wounded 120. The Iraqi government said it was sending medical teams to Damascus to help care for the wounded and airplanes to transport them home. Video from the blast sites showed large buses with their windows blown out and bodies peppered with shrapnel holes, as well as blood and scattered shoes in the street nearby. The attacks were a blow to the government of President Bashar which has sought to ensure quiet in the capital. As Syria’s war enters its seventh year, Mr. Assad’s forces have rolled back rebel advances and consolidated their grip on Damascus. That has led to a rise in the number of Shiite pilgrims arriving from abroad to visit the city’s sacred shrines, from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but there are many militants in Syria who aim both to kill Shiites and to undermine Mr. Assad’s grip on the capital. They include the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda and the jihadists of the Islamic State, both of which are Sunni and consider Shiites apostates. Since neither group holds significant territory near the site of the attacks, they point to a major security breach. Last year, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a suicide attack south of Damascus near the Sayeda Zeinab shrine, which is revered by Shiites. Also Saturday, Mr. Assad said in an interview with the Hong Phoenix TV that his military planned to target the city of Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State’s caliphate, but that any foreign troops entering Syria without permission would be considered “invaders. ” forces backed by the United States are also advancing on Raqqa. When asked how he felt about President Trump, Mr. Assad said he was optimistic because Mr. Trump had said that he intended to step up the fight against the Islamic State. “I said since the beginning that this is a promising approach to what’s happening in Syria and in Iraq, because we live in the same area and we face the same enemy,” Mr. Assad said. He added that as of yet he had no direct lines of communication with the American president. | 1 |
The Broadway playwright Matthew Lombardo has sued the owner of copyrights for Dr. Seuss’s works, arguing that his new play does not infringe on the classic “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in United States District Court in Manhattan, said Mr. Lombardo’s play, “Who’s Holiday! ,” is “highly transformative,” and therefore constitutes fair use. The play, Reuters reported, features a profane woman who recently served time in prison for murdering her husband, the Grinch, with whom she has a daughter. Mr. Lombardo, whose play “High” ran on Broadway in 2010 starring Kathleen Turner, is seeking $130, 000 in damages, including costs for the cancellation of “Who’s Holiday!” It was to begin performances Off Broadway at New World Stages on Nov. 2. The production was canceled after Dr. Seuss Enterprises complained. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which has brought other copyright suits in the past, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The upshot of Mr. Lombardo’s position could be described this way: | 1 |
By Hrafnkell Haraldsson 9:24 am "We can’t do waterboarding, it’s far too tough! We’re fighting on a different level! we have to be tough...and in some cases pretty vicious"
Donald Trump complains about spending a fortune on a war in the Middle East that he supported, a war brought to us by a Republican administration that knowingly lied about the facts. Trump is also lying about the facts, which at least brings our country’s Middle East ordeal full-circle.
According to Trump, speaking at a rally in New Mexico – and you’ve no doubt seen the barrage of commercials repeating the same lie – “Hillary brought disaster to Iraq, Syria, Libya and every place that she touches. She empowered Iran and she unleashed ISIS by leaving that big vacuum.”
Of course, it was Republican President George W. Bush who negotiated the balance of forces agreement with Iraq, stipulating that America draw down its combat strength. Reneging on that agreement would have meant not peace in Iraq, or a negation of ISIS, but a second U.S. invasion on top of the rise of ISIS.
“We want peace through strength,” Trump told the crowd. “We don’t want to be in wars but these savages are chopping off heads.”
Well, in fact we DID want to be in that war. We invaded Iraq, not vice versa.
Trump went on to say,
“Drowning people in steel cages, burying people in the sand. We haven’t had – this is medieval times. This is medieval times and then we can’t do waterboarding, it’s far too tough! You know, we’re fighting on a different level! See, we’re fighting on a different level folks and we have to be tough and we have to be smart and we have to be in some cases pretty vicious, to be honest with you. Pretty vicious, but we have to take them out and then we have to get back to building our country because our country – we’ve spent $6 trillion in the Middle East. $6 trillion. And we could’ve rebuilt our country twice.”
Never mind for a moment that torture is illegal under international law; never mind that a 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee’s report said torture doesn’t work; Trump’s argument sounds once again like a child wanting to get back at another child who has aggrieved him.
This is Trump wanting to spite his enemies on an international scale, and arguing to boot that the end justifies the means.
He doesn’t, because he can’t, prove that acting like barbarians somehow doesn’t make us barbarians ourselves. He certainly can’t prove, because that Senate report says otherwise, that torturing people will win the war.
The claim of $6 million, by the way, is one Trump made last week in Charlotte, NC as well, and PolitiFact ruled it “half true” at the time, saying,
Trump is citing the high-end estimate of credible analyses of spending associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet he is confusing money that’s been spent with money that researchers say will be spent.
The point here is that this is a war begun not by Obama and certainly not by Hillary Clinton, who at least admits she supported it and has apologized for doing so, while Trump continued to deny he was ever for it, despite the facts to the contrary.
When Trump says “we have to be pretty vicious” he is also saying “we have to be pretty dishonest,” and nobody lies with such success or at such a rate as Donald Trump.
Trump has said he loves war. He has said he likes to be unpredictable. He has asked why we can’t use nuclear weapons since we have them. This is a man most national security experts say should not have the nuclear football in his hands.
This is a man who, no matter how much he claims otherwise, does not understand how the world works. And he does not understand that by promoting torture, he is only fulfilling the wildest propaganda wishes of the Islamic State, by promising to do precisely what they want him to do. | 0 |
CAIRO — The bodies of 74 migrants were recovered from a beach near the town of Zawiya in western Libya, rescuers said on Tuesday, an ominous sign before the high season for Mediterranean crossings. The bodies were believed to have come from a shipwrecked inflatable raft that was found on the same stretch of shore, said Mohammed Almosrti, a spokesman for the Libyan Red Crescent. Some of the bodies were found inside the stricken raft. The rubber boat left Libya for Italy on Saturday and appears to have been left drifting without an engine for several days, said Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration in Rome. “It’s really strange that smugglers would take off the engine,” he said. “They are becoming increasingly cruel. ” Red Crescent workers spent seven hours collecting the bodies on Monday afternoon, and the organization posted photographs of dozens of body bags lined up on a beach. Three of the dead were said to be women. Given the capacity of the boat, which could hold up to 120 people, the death toll is expected to rise, Mr. Almosrti said. The tragedy was a stark reminder about what may lie ahead during the main migration season in Libya, the principal springboard for most African migrants seeking to get to Europe. Although the illegal trade usually slows for the winter, at least 228 people died in January while trying to reach Italy, mostly in smaller boats and inflatable vessels, according to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. The bodies that washed up near Zawiya, a smuggling hub 30 miles west of Tripoli, the capital, appeared to be a further sign that greater numbers were starting to set off. “Usually they wait until April or May, and it continues until October,” Mr. Almosrti said. “If they are starting strong like this, it means we could see a lot of deaths this year. ” The route between Libya and Italy was the site of a record number of deaths last year, when at least 4, 579 people died, Fabrice Leggeri, head of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, said last week. The toll for 2015 was about 3, 000. Libya was the departure point for many of the estimated 180, 000 migrants who reached Italy last year. The migrants, most of whom are fleeing war or poverty in Africa, often arrive in Libya after arduous journeys through the desert. They entrust their lives to smuggling gangs that have set up along a stretch of coast in western Libya, which is largely controlled by an array of rival militant groups. Italy recently trained 89 members of the Libyan Coast Guard, hoping they will take distressed boats back to Libya instead of allowing them to continue to Italy. The Italian initiative is part of a broader European effort to stem the flow of migrants that includes financing for, and training to set up, holding centers for migrants in Libya. But the plan depends largely on assistance from the United unity government, one of several rival governments in Libya. The unity government has limited control in Tripoli and in a few towns along the coast. News of the Italian training program, however, may be accelerating the migrant crossings. Mr. Di Giacomo, of the International Organization for Migration, said some smugglers were urging migrants to leave now before the Libyan Coast Guard could thwart their departure. “The smugglers are using this information to convince the migrants that this is the moment to go,” Mr. Di Giacomo said. “For them, it’s a way of doing more business. ” | 1 |
Posted on October 28, 2016 by Paul Joseph Watson Another reason as to why Ryan tried to sabotage Trump’s campaign? Hillary Clinton’s campaign circulated the name of one of Paul Ryan’s relatives as a potential Supreme Court pick, suggesting a conflict of interest that could feed in to the Republican Speaker of the House’s dislike for Donald Trump. An email released in part 19 of the Wikileaks Podesta dump features an article sent by Hillary advisor Sara Solow to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and Hillary’s foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan on February 29, 2016. The piece draws attention to Ketanji Brown Jackson, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “She was confirmed by without any Republican opposition in the Senate not once, but *twice*. She was confirmed to her current position in 2013 by unanimous consent – that is, without any stated opposition. She was also previously confirmed unanimously to a seat on the U.S. Sentencing Commission (where she became vice chair),” reads the email. “Her family is impressive. She is married to a surgeon and has two young daughters. Her father is a retired lawyer and her mother a retired school principal. Her brother was a police officer (in the unit that was the basis for the television show *The Wire*) and is now a law student, and she is related by marriage to Congressman (and Speaker of the House) Paul Ryan.” Earlier this month, Ryan said that he would no longer defend or campaign for Donald Trump. A poll released this week found that nearly two thirds of Republicans trust Donald Trump more than Ryan to lead the GOP. Many Trump supporters speculated that Ryan was involved in the leaking of the infamous Billy Bush tape, in which Trump made lewd comments about women, as part of a plot to sabotage the Republican nominee’s campaign. Could the fact that one of his relatives is being touted as a likely Clinton Supreme Court pick be another reason as to why Ryan – who has been accused by many of being in bed with the Washington establishment – has abandoned his support for Donald Trump? | 0 |
Leave a reply Tom Kenyon
The Hathors – Although it may seem paradoxical to some, your timeline—your life—is only one of many simultaneous possibilities. And it is quite possible, indeed it is your birthright, to alter your timeline and the potentials of your life.
Your culture, for various reasons, has hypnotized you into believing that you are limited to one timeline. In this message we shall endeavor to discuss our understanding of timelines and how you can change them.
Whenever there is an increase of chaotic events, there is a convergence of multiple timelines. Due to the fact that your planet has entered a Chaotic Node and is experiencing ever-increasing levels of chaos, there is also an increase in what we call time nodes .
Time nodes occur when two or more timelines converge. As a result of their close proximity oscillation effects sometimes occur when the realities of one timeline bleed through , or are psychically perceived by those on a neighboring timeline. Strong timelines can also literally affect the possibilities and/or probabilities of other timelines within a time node. In other words, creative and novel effects often occur within timelines when they enter a time node (proximity to other timelines).
These are evolutionary jumpstarts that hold tremendous possibility for accelerated evolution if you understand how to utilize them. As a result of the volatile nature of events on your planet, there are multiple time nodes emerging. This is a very complicated and complex affair, and we shall endeavor to break it down into its smallest segments, for we believe that this information has vital significance for those of you engaged in the ascension process, and for its sheer survival value. Let us turn our attention to the larger picture first and then to the individual strategies we suggest. Background
Your planet is poised on the brink of utter transformation. The form of this transformation has multiple expressions, and it is you—the collective—that will affect these outcomes to a greater or lesser degree.
Some of these outcomes, these possibilities, fulfill the prophecies of planetary destruction and purification. Other timelines, other expressions, reveal a different outcome. A sudden unexpected shift in human consciousness could bring the Controllers , who have so negatively affected your destiny, to their knees. And there are hundreds of other possible timelines between these two polarities. There are vested interests in your society who wish you to remain hypnotized, which wish for you to continue in the delusion that you are limited to one timeline, one experience of life as they so deem it.
But you have, within your nature, the ability to change timelines and probabilities at the last moment of any event—whether it be personal or collective. We do not say this to be “positive.” We say this as a matter of fact concerning your evolutionary potential. Whether you will collectively reach this potential or not remains to be seen, but the path of an Initiate is to reach upward for the highest potential, regardless of what may or may not be happening around him or her. Thus, in this message we shall discuss what you can do, and how you do it.
From our perspective, your collective destiny is the summation of individual choices that you, as persons, make. This is combined with evolutionary and terrestrial forces that are far beyond your and your fellow humans’ abilities to control. This collection of forces also involves cosmic patterns of energy and intentionality from areas of the cosmos beyond your local solar system, for you are a part of a complex cosmic matrix that is your universe.
If we were to use a metaphor, we would say that you, as humanity, are on a great ocean vessel. But many of you are asleep, and there is someone at the helm directing this vessel that should not be there. For many historical and trans-historical reasons, which we won’t go into here, various beings have commandeered your ship.
But, ah, how the tides are turning. More and more of you are waking up, though some, still half-asleep, stagger across the deck as they watch the tempestuous storm of their world changing before them. The Controllers know that many of you are waking up—too many for their comfort.
It is, indeed, an interesting time to be alive!
The current ecological situation in the Gulf is one example of multiple timelines. In spite of your media’s grand attempt to dismiss the situation, many are sensing how dire the situation is, and indeed, there are complications in the Gulf region that are beneath the surface, both literally and figuratively.
In our previous message we addressed several possible timelines for this event. Which of these possible timelines will unfold into your three-dimensional reality is not written in mud or concrete, but is a changeable event or outcome. In this message we wish to discuss how you, the individual, can jump a timeline into a different destiny at a moment’s notice. This can be extrapolated to your civilization also jumping timelines, but that is a topic for another time.
For the moment we wish to turn our attention to you, the individual human and how you can jump from a disastrous timeline—from an outcome you do not wish—to something more benevolent, life-friendly, and full of evolutionary potential.
For the record, there are technological means to jump timelines, but our information here deals with human consciousness, and how you, through the power of your own awareness and intention, can jump timelines. For this endeavor, you already possess two of the greatest treasures in your very own nature— your sovereign will (to make choices) and your capacity to feel . These two, when combined properly will allow you to jump timelines as you so desire, as co-creators of your reality rather than being mere pawns on a chessboard. The Fundamental Principle
The fundamental principle, for jumping timelines, involves the coordination of a few significant fields of intentionality. 1) You identify the timeline you wish to move into. 2) You shift your vibrational state to match the timeline. 3) You lock in the vibrational state so it does not waver. 4) You take an action that is an expression of the new timeline. 5) Persevere.
In this fifth stage, you must hold the vibrational state of the new timeline you have chosen, making choices coherent with the new timeline and persevering with this despite sensory information to the contrary.
This last phase of perseverance is important, because your current timeline is an accumulation of your beliefs and intentions. Depending upon the strength of these beliefs and intentions, you may have to accumulate a vast amount of energy in order to overcome the set pattern of your life.
The information we are sharing can be used to address any timeline or expression in your life, down to the most mundane situation. In this message however, we will be addressing this methodology for jumping timelines in regards to the ascension process and how you can move into timelines different than the timeline of the culture you are currently residing in.
This is, for some, a revolutionary idea; but for us it is simply a truth about your nature. You are creator gods and goddesses, and this information we are sharing is simply your birthright. We offer it to you at this time with the anticipation and hope that many of you will jump timelines and tilt the keel of the ship you are upon and take the vessel into safe and prosperous waters.
Enough of the metaphors now, let us get to the nuts and bolts of how you jump timelines. Ascension
The ascension process, from our perspective, involves the energizing of your second body, your KA, and its elevation in vibration so that it emits more light, eventually becoming the SAHU, the Immortal Energy Body. There are many ways to raise the vibration of one’s KA. Most of your spiritual traditions have their own methods for raising your vibration, unfortunately, many of them are also riddled with dogma, taboos, and quite honestly, interference patterns from thought-forms placed by those who did not and do not desire your freedom, but who profit by your imprisonment.
And, yes, it is sad to say that some of your spiritual traditions—and especially your religions—are insidious traps, and if you are to rise upward in the ascension of your own being, you must separate truth from falsehood. Only you can undertake this task, for it is one of the necessities of mastery. This is a line in the sand of consciousness itself for those who have chosen the ascension of their own being. They become masters of truth and do not step aside from ferreting out falsehood from reality. They are not slaves to dogma. They bow to no one but their own divinity.
From an energetic standpoint, the ascension process begins when your life force, called Sekhem by the ancient Egyptians, begins its ascent up the Djed, or sacred pathway of the chakras. This is ascension in its simplest form. It is the expansion of consciousness and awareness. As your life force enters your higher brain centers and as your KA body becomes energized, you enter another phase of ascension. At this phase, you begin to metabolize light itself. By light we refer to spiritual light, a light that exists in the spiritual realms. This light feeds the KA body and increases its vibration. When the KA body reaches a certain amplitude, or strength of vibration, without wavering, it ignites with a type of etheric fire, turning it into the SAHU, or Immortal Energy Body. This could be viewed as one of the final stages of this particular form of ascension. But what we wish to make very clear is that any movement upward in consciousness and movement of life force up the djed, regardless of the method used, is part of the ascension process.
We wish now to discuss some basic concepts and training strategies that will impart a basic method for jumping timelines. We will then turn our attention to how you can create a new probability for yourself, even in the midst of what appears to be great difficulty. And most importantly, we will explore a significant evolutionary opportunity that exists within your current time node.
One of the first tasks facing you if you are to jump into a different timeline is the transcendence of fear. Most humans fear the unknown, but there is a much more insidious element involved here. The Controllers, those who wish to control your destiny and profit by it, are masters of the projection of fear and they are using vast resources of mind control and hypnosis through the media to convince the masses that there is much to fear. And while there is, quite frankly, some truth to there being reasons for fear, the higher truth is not being revealed.
The higher truth, as we view it, is your capacity to change your reality, your innate ability to use the two treasures of your sovereign will and your capacity to feel as a means to navigate into new timelines. Let us be specific here.
As we mentioned earlier, the type of ascension we are speaking about begins with the simple movement of your life force up the djed, or spine, into your higher brain centers. As this takes place, the energy wheels within your KA body, called chakras , become activated in new ways. This opens windows of new possibilities, and new insights, new forms of inspiration and creativity blossom. But if consciousness is locked into fear, it becomes imprisoned by the lower centers, the impulses for survival, sex, and power.
For various historical and trans-historical reasons, as we alluded to earlier, there has been and continues to be, a collusion to keep humanity locked into the lower centers, to perpetuate fear as a means to control destiny. Thus for any master who chooses the upward path, one of the first hurdles to pass through is the Valley of Fear —the projected thought forms of one’s culture. You must then pass through the portals of limitation that would confine you, to recognize the lies that have been perpetuated, even by some of your most sacred religions.
But let us say that you have the courage and fortitude to undertake such a passage, and let us say, for the sake of example, that the timeline you wish to live in is one of benevolence: loving kindness. Here is how you would do this, remembering that the same principal applies to any timeline you wish to create for yourself. Preparation and Training
The first step is to identify the timeline you wish to create, that you wish to live in. In this case it is a timeline of loving kindness. The second step is to move into the vibrational state that matches the timeline. In this case, it is the feeling state of loving kindness , so you would, yourself, reside in this state as much as you are capable of. By this we mean you would exhibit loving kindness to others and to yourself.
The third step is locking in the vibrational field, so it does not waver. This is an important aspect of jumping timelines because the old vibrational state has a life of its own. Just because you have chosen to create a new timeline and have stepped into a vibrational state that matches the timeline, is not a guarantee that the timeline will manifest or continue. You must lock the vibrational field in place, for this is what sustains your access to the new timeline.
The first two steps involve your sovereign will. You choose a timeline you want to experience. You choose a vibrational state that matches the timeline. And in the third step—locking in the vibrational state—you use the second treasure of your nature: your capacity to feel.
By feeling the vibrational state you wish to be in, you amplify it; you strengthen it. And if you also include a coherent emotional state such as appreciation or gratitude for the vibrational reality, you will hasten its birth.
This simple act of appreciating, or feeling gratitude, for the new timeline catalyzes its reality in ways that boggle the mind. So it is that the two treasures of your nature are joined together in these three steps. The next step requires your sovereign will again. You must persevere, to hold the vision of the new timeline and the vibrational state, regardless of what your senses are telling you. This is the passage where many fail.
The manifesting of a new timeline into your three-dimensional reality requires accumulated energy. If you persist in holding the vision of the new timeline, with the vibrational field (or feeling of it), along with gratitude for it already existing, you will accumulate energy.
The task here is to be true to your vision while paying attention to what the current reality is showing you. It is not about pretending. It is about facing reality as it presents itself to you while simultaneously holding a higher vision . In other words, you deal with the reality of your life while simultaneously holding the vision of a different life. This is the art.
Using our example, if you desire to create a life with more loving kindness, you would move into that vibrational state by exhibiting loving kindness to others. If you were able to also feel gratitude for this vibrational state, it would accelerate the creation of the new timeline.
In reality, there will be a period when you will recognize that not everyone is capable of loving kindness, nor of receiving it for that matter. Your vision will then be refined by the realities of life, and this maturation of your consciousness will take place naturally, as you deal with the realities of your current timeline along with the emergence of your new timeline.
One result from this way of proceeding is that you will become a master of loving kindness and a master in dealing with those who cannot express such vibrational states. Eventually you will experience a life of more loving kindness, where more people express that quality to you and you to them. And when you encounter someone unable to express this quality, you will be more able to deal with him or her without losing this quality in yourself.
Thus would you seed the new timeline and new reality for yourself.
Let us now return to the collective timeline.
As we said earlier time nodes are juncture points where multiple timelines converge, and you can jump from one to the other if you understand how it is done. We just explained the basic principal as it applies to individual timelines. Now let’s discuss how you can jump to a different timeline than that of any given collective.
As paradoxical as it may seem it is quite possible to live a separate timeline, having a different experience of life than those around you.
Let us say that again another way. It is possible to live in heaven while others are living in torment. At the deepest levels of consciousness it is simply a matter of choice.
We do recognize that you have been, and are continuing to be, manipulated by forces that desire to keep you imprisoned. But our choice in this communication is to give you keys to jump out of that imprisonment, not dwelling on the history of it, or the identities of those involved. For, in truth, the true Controllers are unseen by you. They are the Puppet Masters .
As chaotic events escalate you will have many opportunities to jump timelines. Our suggestion is to remember the steps we discussed earlier. You might experiment with this method by choosing to conduct an experiment. Choose something that you would like to unfold as a reality in your life and using the steps we discussed, see what you can create. Physical and Spiritual Survival
Our essential reason for imparting this message involves something of greater consequence than creating personal desires. This “something” literally has to do with your survival, both physically and spiritually.
As chaotic events escalate, your powers of intuition will be more important to you than ever before.
Some people call them “hunches.” Without knowing how you know, you suddenly know what to do in a situation.
This is how intuition works. In these moments of intuition you are at a juncture point—a time node—where you can jump into a different timeline and a different outcome.
This increase of intuitive receptivity is one of the hallmarks of personal ascension, or the movement upward in consciousness. A more developed intuition has obvious physical survival benefits.
A moment ago we said something that may be paradoxical to some individuals. We said that the ability to jump timelines had both physical and spiritual survival benefits.
What we meant here is that the ability to jump a timeline into a different outcome can result in physical survival in certain situations. By spiritual survival, we mean that there are threats to your spiritual awakening. If you lose track of your own truth, if you lose the two treasures that you possess in your nature—your sovereign will and your capacity to feel—then you are spiritually in danger. Do not lose sight of these treasures in yourself. As chaotic events increase, and they shall—for this is the birthing of a new world—the Controllers will increase their efforts. Be leery of mind-control and of any thought form that limits your sovereign will and your ability to feel, regardless of its origins—even if it comes from one of your “sacred” religions.
Any thought form, no matter how dressed up in sacred garb or political correctness that would limit your sovereign will to choose or your capacity to feel should be avoided. This is a vital necessity for those of you who wish to survive this passage spiritually intact. The Convergence of Timelines and the Alteration of Probabilities
Let us now turn our attention to the primary reason for this communication. Everything we have said up to this point is background and suggestions for the training of your own consciousness to jump timelines.
But now we turn our attention to two highly significant timelines that exist independently of your creation. They are of a different order of existence. They are not created out of your personal choice. And they exist in diametric opposition to each other.
You exist, as we have said on numerous occasions, in multiple timelines and probabilities simultaneously. One of the timelines you and humanity are living in at this moment is a fulfilling of the prophecies of doom and planetary destruction. This is a very real timeline. But, this is only one possible timeline. You are at a convergence point, a time node, where it is possible to jump from the doomsday probabilities into a new type of Earth and a new order of existence.
This timeline, which we call the New Earth , is a very different dimension of experience than your current reality. In this timeline, Earth is deeply honored and held in gratitude by the bulk of humanity, which understands and appreciates the truth that all life is interconnected.
Here, Earth is not ravaged and exploited for the sake of profit—at the detriment of her very ecosystem. Technologies have been transformed through the elevation of human consciousness. Gone are the life-threatening technologies and life damaging mindsets of your current era. Wars are a thing of the past. The Controllers who exerted negative forces upon your destiny through their manipulation of religion, economics and international affairs have relinquished their power. Life itself is held as sacred, and a new understanding of the sacredness of matter is embraced by humanity. There is no war between Heaven and Earth in this new world.
There are more things that we could say about this timeline, but you have a sense, we hope, of the difference between this timeline and the other that ultimately leads to doom and destruction.
There is one more thing we wish to say about this timeline of the New Earth. It is an attribute that we particularly appreciate. In this new timeline, the veils between the worlds are thin, and there is greater interaction between humans and intergalactic beings—such as ourselves—and with what you might call the devic and spirit worlds.
It is here that we must say it is not our intention to sway you, for we believe in non-intervention. We will not interfere with your free will. However, we are free to point out to you what we see.
In ancient Egypt there was a goddess called Maat, who held a set of scales, and upon death the heart of an Initiate would be placed upon the scales, and a feather would be placed on the other side. If the heart was as light as a feather the Initiate would be given entrance to the heavenly worlds—meaning higher states of consciousness. But if the heart was laden with negativity, regret, and sorrow, the Initiate would have to return to the lower worlds.
In a very real way humanity is at its meeting point with Maat. Every person who believes in the timeline of doom, destruction and horror will add to its reality. Everyone who holds as real the timeline of the New Earth will add to its reality.
You are not powerless in this situation. You hold in your very nature the power of radical change for yourself and the planet—especially for humanity. If you feel a resonance with this timeline of the New Earth, and if you choose to live in this new order of being, you will be adding your weight, so to speak, and helping to tip the scales.
We wish to say something we said earlier, for it is of vital importance. It is possible to live in heaven while those around you live in torment. This has little to do with your location in time and space, but more to do with your vibrational state.
If you feel the truth of what we are saying and choose to align with this New Earth, we welcome you to a new timeline and a new destiny.
Our suggestion is to go over the steps of how to jump timelines we gave earlier, and to begin the grand experiment. Enter the timeline of the New Earth and prepare yourself for the miraculous.
Finally—let the Earth speak to you. Let her caress you and transfer to you her deepest knowledge and wisdom. She shall be a great ally in the coming changes.
We shall give further information about jumping timelines and the New Earth in future communications. But for now, we hope you have a basic understanding of how to proceed.
As always, even in the midst of such great difficulties as you now face, we hold a higher vision for you, the human family. We see your hidden greatness, even though you may not see it yourself. We hold a light in this hour of darkness. It is just a reminder of the great light you hold within yourself. It is time to free this light within you. Future generations will be blessed by your ascent. May it be so. – Tom Kenyon | 0 |
NEW DELHI — Fourteen coaches of an Indian train derailed early Sunday, killing at least 108 people in one of the worst rail accidents here in recent years, the police said. At least 75 others were admitted to hospitals, many of them with head injuries and fractures, and the death toll was likely to rise, said Rahul Srivastav, a spokesman for the police in Uttar Pradesh State, where the derailment took place. The accident occurred at 3 a. m. about a mile from the Pukhrayan railway station, about 40 miles southwest of the northern city of Kanpur, on a train bound for Patna, the capital of Bihar State. Mr. Srivastav noted that passengers were sleeping at the time. The deaths and injuries occurred when people were “falling over each other and colliding against the compartment,” he said. Two coaches were crushed in the derailment, he said. The cause of the accident was unclear on Sunday. Ved Prakash, a spokesman for the railway, said he suspected that a “rail fracture,” or a crack in the train track, might have been the cause, though it was too early to be sure. Indian railways have had dozens of such cracks on various tracks, The Hindu newspaper reported. “The whole train was shaking,” a young passenger said in a televised interview with NDTV, a news channel. “My sister was there and my brothers were there. I found everyone except for my father. ” In another televised interview, a young woman said, “I became very numb and I thought, ‘What has happened here? ’” The Uttar Pradesh police, the railway police, the National Disaster Response Force and the state health department were dispatched to the scene. Rescue efforts continued on Sunday. “All kind of instruments are needed when coaches get mangled and topple over each other,” Mr. Srivastav said. India has long struggled to modernize its creaking railway system, which is one of the largest in the world but suffers from neglect and age. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the government would provide 200, 000 rupees, or nearly $3, 000, to the families of those killed in the accident, above any amount offered by the Indian railways. | 1 |
“Irresistible” is one of those adjectives that critics should handle with utmost care. No matter how universally charming or winning a movie or a performance might seem to be, there is always a chance that somebody, somewhere, will be able to resist it. For all I know that may be the case with “Queen of Katwe,” but if there is anyone out there capable of remaining unmoved by this sports story, I don’t think I want to meet that person. To be fair, the film, directed by Mira Nair, based on Tim Crothers’s book and enabled by the magical corporate synergy of Disney and ESPN, belongs to a genre that specializes in defeating skepticism and swelling the stoniest hearts. Just as surely as a creaky door or a clap of thunder will summon shivers of fright the thousandth time you hear it, so will the spectacle of a scrappy group of strivers following their unlikely coach to victory bring lumps to throats and tears to eyes. Did “Hoosiers” make you cry? “Queen of Katwe” will wreck you. Katwe is a poor township outside of Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and it is the hometown of Phiona Mutesi, a chess prodigy played by Madina Nalwanga in her film debut. Phiona lives with three siblings under the watchful, tired eye of their mother, Nakku Harriet (Lupita Nyong’o) who has lost her husband and another child and who scratches out a living selling food on the street. The family never has enough money, and Uganda is depicted as a country of stark inequalities ruled by an unforgiving cash economy. Shelter, schooling, medical treatment and transportation to the hospital after an accident must be paid for up front. Harriet, her mouth a permanent frown, is nearly consumed by worry and fatigue. Her eldest daughter, Night (Taryn Kyaze) has taken up with an unsavory guy on a motorbike. The middle children, Phiona and her younger brother, Brian (Martin Kabanza) scarcely have enough to eat. Chess enters their world thanks to Robert Katende (David Oyelowo) who teaches the game to Katwe’s children as part of a youth ministry. Robert, whose own youth was scarred by poverty and war, has an engineering degree but lacks the connections that would help land him a job working for the government or a private company. He is an inspiring coach — when Mr. Oyelowo wants to inspire you, you are darn well going to be inspired — and also a sly and cheerful class warrior. He his way into a chess tournament held at a snooty private school, and proudly leads his charges into battle against opponents who are reluctant to shake their hands. The sight of schoolboys beaten by a girl — a poor girl, at that — would be satisfying even if “Queen of Katwe” were a less vivid and engaging movie. In Ms. Nair’s hands, Phiona’s story has a richness and unpredictability that separates it from other, superficially similar movies. It also has the buoyant, cleareyed feel for the particulars of culture and place that is among this director’s great gifts, evident in films as different as “Mississippi Masala,” “Monsoon Wedding” and “Vanity Fair. ” Phiona’s circumstances are harsh, and the film hardly minimizes the brutal choices and painful limitations placed on women like Harriet and Night. Nor does it suggest that winning chess matches is a magical solution to the world’s injustice. “Hope is not a tactic,” Robert likes to say. But despair is not a strategy, and Ms. Nair and the screenwriter, William Wheeler, refuse to turn African life into a pageant of grimness and deprivation. “Queen of Katwe” is likely to be embraced by young viewers, and there is nothing here they won’t be able to handle. Adults, meanwhile, can surrender to some melodramatic pleasures, as the busy plot takes in Harriet and Robert’s struggles as well as Phiona’s. But in the end it is Ms. Nalwanga who will rivet all eyes in the way that untrained, naturally charismatic screen performers sometimes can, especially when supported by actors with the technical expertise of Ms. Nyong’o and Mr. Oyelowo. Ms. Nalwanga’s watchful, quiet presence conveys both shyness and determination, a habit of humility in tension with an almost superhuman intelligence. Phiona’s awakening sense of her talent is the engine that drives the main plot of “Queen of Katwe” and also what makes it an affecting character study. When she starts to learn chess, she can barely read, and her growing awareness of the powers of her mind is thrilling to watch. Ms. Nair makes this process as visible, as palpable — as irresistible — as any boxing match or soccer game. “Queen of Katwe” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). A few scary moments and hints of sexuality. Running time: 2 hours 4 minutes. | 1 |
Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I. ) said Trump “did not tell the truth” based on what he said during the campaign and what he has done so far as president of the United States. “Let’s be clear. I mean, the point here is that, I think, all over grassroots America, whether they’re Democrats, independents or Republicans, people are perceiving that Trump did not tell the truth in his campaign in terms of what he would do as president of the United States,” Sanders said. “He was going to drain the swamp. Well, he’s, in fact, appointed more billionaires to his Cabinet than any president in history, etc. etc. So, what I think has happened now, in Kansas, it is true that the Democratic candidate lost. It is true that the Democratic Party should have put more resources into that election. But it is also true that he ran 20 points better than the — than the Democratic candidate for president did in Kansas. ” “So, what you’re seeing in Kansas, what you’re seeing in Georgia, I believe you’re going to see it in Montana, I believe you’re going to see it all over this country, is the many red states, working people are going to wake up and say, wait a second,” he continued. “Republicans want to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and education, and they want to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 1 percent. No, that’s not what we elected Trump to do. Yes, climate change is real. It’s not a hoax. We got to move to sustainable energy. I think, all over this country, in red states and in blue states, people are beginning to stand up. They’re beginning to fight back. They’re demanding a government which does not just represent the billionaires, but represents the working class of this country. Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Alicia Rivera, a single mother with four children and big dreams, must budget her money and her time wisely. “I got my kids,” Ms. Rivera said. “I don’t want to waste my time. ” Ms. Rivera and her children — Joaquin, 17 Nelson, 16 Alyssa, 11 and Rafael, 2 — live in a apartment in the Bronx, near the southern tip of the Bronx River Parkway. The past few years have sometimes been overwhelming for her as she tries to raise her children by herself, get an education and lay the foundation for a professional career. When she was seven months pregnant with Rafael, Ms. Rivera injured her back while working as a home health aide. Soon after he was born, she switched to another job, helping people navigate complicated real estate and tax forms and other paperwork. Ms. Rivera makes about $100 every week. She also receives $216 a month in Supplemental Security Income and $506 a month in food stamps. With a monthly rent of $308, she needs to keep a frugal budget. But Ms. Rivera has a plan. She is on track to receive an associate degree from Plaza College in April. Her goal is to then earn a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree, both in business, from Metropolitan College of New York. She dreams of opening a dance studio in the Bronx. Ms. Rivera grew up in the Bronx with a mother who could not afford to send her to dance classes. But she loved dancing in front of the family’s television as they watched the variety show “Sábado Gigante. ” “And you see these kids dancing, and you see me dancing in the living room, too,” Ms. Rivera said. “I used to wear my mom’s makeup, her heels. ” Ms. Rivera passed on her love of dancing to her children, especially Joaquin, who leads a dance team at his school, the Knowledge and Power Preparatory Academy, near Fordham University in the Bronx. She watched him at a dance rehearsal at the school, and she said the students’ moves reminded her of the “Step Up” movie series. “Made me laugh, made me have a good time,” she said. “I felt like joining them,” she said, beaming. At times, Ms. Rivera has struggled to balance her obligations at home, school and work. As she devoted more time to her studies, her son Nelson, who attends the same academy as Joaquin, started having trouble at school. A counselor there contacted her, saying that Nelson did not want to go to class. The counselor referred her to the Family Assistance Program, which soon referred them to the Children’s Aid Society, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. At Children’s Aid, Ms. Rivera said, she learned how to improve her parenting. She said she used to get frustrated and yell at Nelson when he struggled to get up and get ready in the morning. A counselor told her that yelling at him was not going to solve the problem. Therapy sessions with the family also made it clear that her sons needed their own rooms. Ms. Rivera said she started to notice positive changes at home after several months of therapy. Her older sons now have their own rooms. Alyssa agreed to share a room with her mother and Rafael. Her elder sons are more focused now. Nelson comes to her with problems, not letting them linger, and they work them out together. Joaquin is starting to research colleges. The Children’s Aid Society also provided Ms. Rivera $413 in Neediest funds to replace her sons’ broken beds with new ones. Nelson and a friend put them together, she said. While still attending school, Nelson is taking some online courses, which cost $49 a month. Ms. Rivera wants to withdraw Nelson to take online classes full time so that she can monitor his schoolwork more carefully. In addition to opening a dance school, Ms. Rivera wants to start a business similar to her present workplace. While the family has learned to resolve problems, Ms. Rivera refuses to lower her expectations. She bristles when she hears her children or their friends say they cannot do something. “Don’t say, ‘I can’t,’” she said. “Joaquin never says, ‘I can’t,’ because he hears me. ” That is one way she lays the foundation for her children’s future. Ms. Rivera said Alyssa was struggling one day with homework. So she took time out of her own schoolwork, encouraged her daughter and patiently walked her through the steps of writing a essay. “It took her three hours, and when she was done, I said, ‘You see? You could do it. ’” | 1 |
In an urgent plea to car owners, federal safety regulators on Thursday warned that airbags in more than 300, 000 older Honda and Acura vehicles were at an unacceptably high risk of exploding, and needed to be replaced immediately. Laboratory tests underway on airbags collected from recalled vehicles indicate that Takata airbags in certain Honda and Acura vehicles had “as high as a 50 percent chance of a dangerous airbag inflater rupture in a crash,” the transportation secretary, Anthony Foxx, said in a bulletin. “These vehicles are unsafe and need to be repaired immediately,” Mr. Foxx said. “Folks should not drive these vehicles unless they are going straight to a dealer to have them repaired immediately, free of charge. ” The vehicles are: ■ Honda Civic■ Honda Accord■ Acura TL■ 2002 Honda ■ 2002 Honda Odyssey■ 2003 Acura CL■ 2003 Honda Pilot The bulletin adds new urgency to the effort to recall and replace defective Takata airbags, which have been linked to at least 14 deaths and more than 100 injuries. Problems with the propellant that inflates the airbag can cause a metal part to rupture when the bag is deployed in a crash, shooting metal fragments toward the car’s driver or passengers. In one recent accident, a Texas teenager was killed when a fragment shot out of her airbag in a crash and severed an artery in her neck. She was driving a 2002 Honda Civic. The defect has prompted 14 automakers to recall more than 60 million vehicles in the United States, and millions more overseas. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday repeated previous warnings that drivers in humid regions — particularly Florida, Texas, other parts of the Gulf Coast and Southern California — were at particular risk. High humidity, as well as high temperatures, causes a compound Takata uses to inflate its airbags to break down over time, and become more explosive. That puts older models at risk. More than 70 percent of the vehicles, which were recalled between 2008 and 2011, have already been repaired, according to the agency, which has been testing bags that have been replaced. But about 313, 000 of those vehicles remain unrepaired, the agency said. Car owners can check whether a car has been recalled at SaferCar. gov, and those affected should contact the nearest dealer to schedule a repair, the agency said. Replacement parts are available immediately for the vehicles, it said. Honda said on Thursday that it would more than double the size of its customer service staff to handle calls from car owners. It was also planning a targeted social media campaign to identify, and communicate with, owners of the cars. Over all, Honda has mailed almost 18 million recall notices and sent almost six million emails to urge car owners to have their vehicles repaired, the automaker said. Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat from Florida, demanded a more proactive approach. “These vehicles are death traps, and Takata and Honda have understated the risks for far too long,” Mr. Nelson, ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said in a statement on Thursday. “Merely telling people to come to dealers is not enough — they need to go out and find these vehicles and get them off the road,” Mr. Nelson said. | 1 |
Sonntag, 6. November 2016 Arbeitsministerium führt "Rente zwölf Jahre vor dem Tod" ein Berlin (Archiv) - Rente mit 65, Rente mit 67, Rente mit 75... Um die ewigen Streitereien um den Ruhestand ein für allemal zu beenden, hat Andrea Nahles (SPD) heute einen neuen Vorstoß gewagt und die sogenannte "Rente zwölf Jahre vor dem Tod" vorgestellt. Der Ansatz sieht vor, dass Arbeitnehmer unabhängig vom eigenen Alter künftig genau zwölf Jahre vor ihrem Ableben Anspruch auf die volle Rente haben. Denn nur auf diesem Wege könnten die unterschiedlichen Biographien von Arbeitnehmern berücksichtigt werden. Hat die Rentenfrage endlich gelöst: Nahles Auf einer Pressekonferenz führte Nahles ihre Pläne genauer aus: "Ein Sparkassenangestellter, der erst mit 97 stirbt, müsste künftig bis 85 arbeiten, während etwa ein Maurer, der mit 44 bei einem Motorradunfall ums Leben kommt, schon mit 32 in den Ruhestand gehen könnte – bei voller Leistung. Nur so kann volle Rentengerechtigkeit hergestellt werden." Gewerkschaften und Arbeitgeberverbände reagierten enttäuscht auf den Entwurf aus dem Arbeitsministerium. Erstere fordern, dass die Rente bereits 14 Jahre vor dem Tod ausbezahlt werden sollte, während zweitere aufgrund des demographischen Wandels die Rente erst zehn Jahre vor dem Tod durchsetzen wollen. Nahles selbst trat nach der Pressekonferenz umgehend von ihrem Amt zurück. Aufgrund einer unheilbaren Krebserkrankung, an der sie in zwölf Jahren sterben werde, wolle sie jetzt erst einmal den wohlverdienten Ruhestand im Kreise ihrer Liebsten genießen. ssi; Foto oben: Fotolia.com, Foto rechts: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung , CC BY-SA 2.0 ; Hinweis: Erstmals erschienen am 12.8.10 Artikel teilen: | 0 |
The swirl of revelations and allegations about Russian involvement in the American presidential election, which has been building since the summer, can be difficult to keep straight. For example, though analysts often say that Russia “hacked the election,” this shorthand refers to something much subtler than altering the vote itself — just one of many points of growing confusion. What follows is a guide to what is known and is not, and to separating fact from misconception. • Russian security agencies infiltrated Democratic National Committee email servers last year and again this spring, according to American intelligence assessments and several independent security firms. The Russians also hacked a private email account belonging to John D. Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. • This summer, intermediaries linked to the Russian government passed the emails to WikiLeaks and to an anonymous WordPress blog called Guccifer 2. 0. Those outlets released the emails publicly, generating weeks of unfavorable coverage of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. • Initially, many analysts believed that Russia’s goal was to sow confusion and undermine Americans’ faith in their government — a common Russian tactic — rather than to steer the election’s outcome. • However, after the election, the Central Intelligence Agency concluded that Russia had released the emails with the primary goal of bolstering Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign. • No information has emerged suggesting that the C. I. A. believes that Russia’s involvement decided the election’s outcome. • There is no evidence that hackers, from Russia or elsewhere, tampered with the vote tallies. • Mr. Trump has said there was widespread voter fraud that favored Mrs. Clinton, and some liberal commentators have suggested that the election was hacked. Independent analysts say there is overwhelming evidence against both claims. • A widely circulated New York magazine article reported that two voting experts had urged Democrats to push for a recount, on fears that hackers had manipulated the vote. But one of those experts disputed that article, writing in a post on Medium that he had urged a recount but had doubted hacking. • The White House and election officials have said the vote shows no sign of tampering and accurately reflects popular will. • A recount effort led by the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, is unrelated to the revelations that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and Mr. Podesta’s emails. • It is impossible to say for sure. Because the email leaks unfolded over weeks, and concurrently with many other election dramas, polls cannot easily isolate the impact of the leaks. • Mr. Trump won three crucial Midwestern states by very small margins. So even if the leaks swung only a small percentage of votes, that could have been enough to change the election outcome. • But this same logic applies to dozens of factors, including the F. B. I. ’s investigations related to Mrs. Clinton’s private email server. Political scientists have demonstrated that even changes in weather and the performance of sports teams can alter how people vote. • All available evidence suggests that voters freely selected Mr. Trump on Election Day in sufficient numbers for him to win the presidency under the Electoral College system. But that does not diminish the seriousness of Russia’s intervention in the election, which appears to be unprecedented. • The C. I. A. ’s assessment is not public, but is thought to turn on another alleged hack. Russia also hacked data from the Republican National Committee but declined to release whatever it found, intelligence agencies told Congress. That has given credence to theories that Moscow actively favored the party’s candidate. • Mr. Trump has repeatedly promised to realign the United States with Russia and has praised its president, Vladimir V. Putin. Many in Moscow view Mrs. Clinton as hostile to Russia. • The evidence in any assessment of Russian government motives is circumstantial, and not all American intelligence agencies share the C. I. A. ’s view. • The timing suggests that, if Moscow decided to help Mr. Trump, it did so only after hacking the servers of both parties’ national committees. Both were infiltrated well before Mr. Trump’s rise. • Mr. Trump, at a July news conference, publicly urged Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton’s emails. But this could not have precipitated or encouraged the Russian hacks — they had taken place months earlier. • Russian state media outlets have favored Mr. Trump and opposed Mrs. Clinton, but their reach in the United States is limited. (Their influence in Europe is much stronger.) • A firm called PropOrNot claimed that the Russian government had flooded American social media with fake election news. But several independent analysts challenged the report’s methodology, which classified mainstream sites as Russian propaganda and did not demonstrate a link to Moscow. • Fake news is a growing problem, at times driven by companies in Eastern Europe that write and spread the articles. But those companies appear to be motivated by rather than any political agenda. • There are two schools of thought: first, that Russia sought to weaken the United States by stirring up uncertainty and miring Mrs. Clinton, who seemed all but certain to win, in scandal and second, that Russia sought specifically to elevate Mr. Trump to the presidency. • Those theories are not mutually exclusive. For instance, Moscow may have started with the first goal and then added the second as a bonus. • Russia is waging similar campaigns across Europe, at times through cyberattacks and selective leaks, with the apparent goal of undermining Western unity. • The Kremlin sees itself as under siege by a hostile West that it perceives as bent on Russia’s destruction. Russian military leaders advocate shadowy “new generation warfare” — through propaganda and cyberattacks, for example — to destabilize adversaries from within. • Not all misconceptions are directed by Moscow, however. Social media rumors that overstate Russia’s involvement in the United States election risk playing into Moscow’s goal of undermining Americans’ faith in the legitimacy and integrity of their democracy. | 1 |
Multiple experts are calling into question the validity of the World Health Organization’s proposed revisions classifying gaming behaviors as a mental disorder. [The International Classification of Diseases, published by the World Health Organization, would define “Gaming Disorder” as a “persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour (i. e. ‘digital gaming’ or ‘ ’) characterised by an impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities and continuation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences. ” In other words, a lack of regarding video games is being legitimized as a specific mental illness. This isn’t anything new. According to comment provided to Breitbart Tech by Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson of the Department of Psychology at Stetson University, “scholars have been investigating the concept of ‘video game addiction’ for probably over 2 decades now. ” Despite all efforts, Dr. Ferguson points out that we still lack “any real clarity” about “how to define the concept, assess it, or whether it even is a ‘real’ thing in the sense of it being unique to video games. ” But that hasn’t stopped anyone from trying. According to Dr. Ferguson: Despite [the lack of clarity] we’ve seen some pushes to institutionalize video game addiction as “internet gaming disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (published by the American Psychiatric Association) and, now as “gaming disorder” in the International [Classification] of Diseases (published by the World Health Organization.) The concerns among some scholars are manifest. It’s not clear why video games are being singled out as compared to many other behaviors that can become addictive (sex, food, work, exercise, etc.) That’s why Ferguson and a number of his colleagues have published an open letter to the WHO regarding this classification: Concerns about problematic gaming behaviors deserve our full attention. However, we claim that it is far from clear that these problems can or should be attributed to a new disorder. The empirical basis for a Gaming Disorder proposal, such as in the new suffers from fundamental issues. Our main concerns are the low quality of the research base, the fact that the current operationalization leans too heavily on substance use and gambling criteria, and the lack of consensus on symptomatology and assessment of problematic gaming. And this isn’t a simple matter of semantics. The ramifications of haphazardly diagnosing people with a mental illness are enormous: The act of formalizing this disorder, even as a proposal, has negative medical, scientific, societal, and human rights fallout that should be considered. Of particular concern are moral panics around the harm of video gaming. They might result in premature application of diagnosis in the medical community and the treatment of abundant cases, especially for children and adolescents. Second, research will be locked into a confirmatory approach, rather than an exploration of the boundaries of normal versus pathological. Third, the healthy majority of gamers will be affected negatively. In addition to public panic, premature diagnoses, and the tendency to approach further study with the assumption that the disorder is real — the bias of the aforementioned “confirmatory approach” — there are even more serious issues at hand. First, that “the premature inclusion of Gaming Disorder as a diagnosis in will cause significant stigma to the millions of children who play video games as a part of a normal, healthy life. ” The most serious implications of this study, Dr. Ferguson points out, are that the classification could very easily “end up as an excuse to put some kids in harsh ‘treatment’ camps or perhaps be used as an excuse for media ” especially in “ countries. ” That conclusion might be seen as mere conjecture if not for correspondence between Dr. Ferguson and Drs. Geoffrey Reed and Vladimir Poznyak, both involved in the drafting of specifically noting “enormous pressure, especially from Asian countries” and “strong request from [WHO] stakeholders” to include this definition of Gaming Disorder. Drs. Reed and Poznyak did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Breitbart Tech. The classification could have negative effects across the world, especially where labels of mental illness could rob someone of their rights. Imagine if having Angry Birds installed on your smartphone was enough of an excuse to mandate attendance at a “treatment camp,” and you’re starting to get an idea of how this could go very wrong, very quickly. But even aside from all of that, Dr. Ferguson argues the science just doesn’t back up the WHO’s conclusion: Many of the “symptoms” proposed (particularly for the DSM version) are kind of normal stuff that many studies suggest aren’t really good predictors of problems. There’s also data suggesting the whole concept of “video game addiction” isn’t really stable and tends to go away by itself over time without treatment. The concern lies in the history of using classifications of mental illness as a weapon against groups and individuals by countries’ governments. Over 6, 000 people in China — most of them teenagers — have been treated with actual electroshock therapy just because they were thought to have used the Internet too much. China also has a long history of committing whistleblowers and other dissidents to psychiatric “care” for the crime of disagreement. The subject is extensively covered in the 2002 book Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and Its Origins in the Mao Era, published by Human Rights Watch. Richard J. Bonnie’s paper “Political Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union and in China: Complexities and Controversies,” published in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law in 2002, also paints a picture of just how convenient it can be for the powerful to leverage psychological diagnoses in order to silence those who disagree. He explains that such practices are “uniformly understood to be a particularly pernicious form of repression,” citing examples in which “psychatric diagnosis was essentially an exercise of social power. ” By way of example, Bonnie explains: Under applicable laws of Russia and the other former Soviet Republics, a person charged with a crime could be subjected to “custodial measures of a medical nature” if the criminal act was proved and the person was found “nonimputable” due to mental illness. 7 Nonimputable offenders could be placed in maximum security hospitals (the notorious “special hospitals”) or in ordinary hospitals, depending on their social dangerousness. All the persons interviewed by the delegation had been found nonimputable and socially dangerous and confined in special hospitals after criminal proceedings that deviated substantially from the general requirements specified in Soviet law. Typically, the patients reported that they had been arrested, taken to jail, taken to a hospital for forensic examination, and then taken to another hospital under a compulsory treatment order, without ever seeing an attorney or appearing incourt. The delegation found that there was no clinical basis for the judicial finding of nonimputability in 17 of these cases. In fact, the delegation found no evidence of mental disorder of any kind in 14 cases. It is likely that these individuals are representative of many hundreds of others who were found nonimputable for crimes of political or religious dissent inthe Soviet Union, mainly between 1970 and 1990. And with regard to China: Munro’s research indicates, convincingly in my view, that the Soviet system of forensic psychiatry was transplanted to China during the 1950s and 1960s, thereby placing a small subset of psychiatrists at the intersection of criminal prosecution and psychiatric confinement, and importing a smoothly oiled process by which psychiatrists found that most offenders referred for assessment lacked criminal responsibility and committed them for treatment without any adjudication or judicial oversight. Eventually, in the 1980s, China also established a system of forensic hospitals (Ankang) modeled after the Soviet “special hospitals,” for confining offenders who present a “social danger. ” But lest you think that more open societies are immune to this insidious form of manipulation, consider our own messy history of psychiatric abuse. In 2010, a police officer was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward for attempting to reveal what he said was the truth about falsified crime rate statistics. He was eventually paid $600, 000 in a settlement by the City of New York after filing a $50 million human rights violation suit. Our foster care system stuffs victimized children full of psychotropic drugs in a thinly veiled attempted to make them easier to handle. Schizophrenia was allegedly used to deliberately hamper the rise of civil rights. Barry Goldwater was publicly crucified for his conservative views by a team of psychiatrists who disagreed with him politically the Goldwater Rule still exists because attacking someone’s mental fitness is such a potent weapon. In supporting diagnoses that are nebulous and unproven, the World Health Organization is giving its tacit approval of an arguably unscientific diagnosis with endless potential for abuse around the world. At best, it could be an easy platform upon which to medicate individuals instead of identifying actual behavioral issues. At worst, it could be one more tool — easily applied to just about any connected citizen — for silencing the inconvenient. Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter. | 1 |
A student at Ohio State University intentionally rammed a car into pedestrians on a busy campus sidewalk on Monday morning and then began slashing with a butcher knife, the authorities said, injuring 11 students and faculty and staff members, and setting off panic at one of the nation’s largest public universities. A university police officer fatally shot the suspect within about a minute of the attack, but the sprawling campus in Columbus, Ohio, remained on lockdown for about an hour and a half as people ran for cover and barricaded themselves in academic buildings and dorms. Investigators were looking into whether the attack was an act of terrorism and were seeking information on the student, Abdul Artan, a permanent United States resident from Somalia who was studying logistics management at Ohio State. The F. B. I. was investigating comments on Facebook indicating that he may have felt Muslims were being persecuted, an investigator said. Last summer the student newspaper, The Lantern, published an interview with Mr. Artan in which he complained about being afraid to pray in public as a Muslim, because of people’s negative perceptions of the religion. “I was kind of scared with everything going on in the media. I’m a Muslim, it’s not what media portrays me to be,” he told the newspaper. “If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen. But I don’t blame them. It’s the media that put that picture in their heads. ” The attack began at 9:50 a. m. Monday, when “this car suddenly appeared on the sidewalk,” said Angshuman Kapil, a graduate student. “It was in high speed, and it just hit whoever came in front of him. ” The car stopped only when it rammed a concrete block, he said. The driver leapt out, the authorities said, and began attacking people with a knife. A campus police officer, Alan Horujko, 28, shot Mr. Artan after he failed to follow orders to drop his weapon, and officials credited the officer with helping to save lives. All of the wounded were expected to survive, university officials said. Six people were hit by the car, and five had stab wounds or lacerations, doctors said. They were being treated at three hospitals. No evidence has emerged that Mr. Artan had any connection or allegiance to radical ideology. Though no terrorist group had claimed responsibility for the attack, the Islamic State was updating its online audiences on the rampage on Monday. Both the and the knife attacks are now established forms of aggression inspired by the Islamic State. An attacker in Nice, France, used a delivery truck to kill dozens of pedestrians in July, and chats between an attacker in Würzburg, Germany, and his Islamic State handler indicate he was initially told to use a car to carry out his assault that same month, before he settled on using an ax because he did not have a driving permit. The authorities in Ohio said that it was too soon to know what had motivated Mr. Artan, but that it was clear the attack had been deliberate. Mr. Artan’s Columbus home was surrounded by squad cars, crime scene tape and a bomb squad truck on Monday afternoon, and police officials said they were waiting for a search warrant. “This was done on purpose,” said Chief Craig Stone of the Ohio State University police. “To go over the curb and strike pedestrians and then get out and start striking with the knife — that was on purpose. ” The attack, initially reported as an “active shooter” by the university, stunned students who were returning to class after Thanksgiving break, leading to a warning and an admonition from campus officials to “Run Hide Fight. ” Haylee Gardiner, a sophomore, said she was on her way to a chemistry lab when the attack occurred. “I saw a bunch of people running, and when they were running, they were screaming and yelling,” said Ms. Gardiner, who scrambled to a residence hall for shelter. “And then all of a sudden, I heard four or five gunshots. ” Sean Cody, 23, from Akron, Ohio, was running late for his philosophy class, and after hearing a loud boom, he sprinted into a building to alert fellow students. “Then there was a bang, a dust cloud, then shouting and screaming, and people just booking it in every direction,” Mr. Cody said. “Then, 30 seconds, a minute later, there were gunshots. ” During the chaos, students huddled in locked rooms, and some took to Twitter, posting photos from inside barricaded classrooms. Ohio State administrators released little information about Mr. Artan, and parts of his background remained unclear. He was admitted to the United States in June 2014 as the child of a refugee, federal officials said, and was believed to be in his late teens or early 20s. He graduated cum laude from Columbus State Community College with an associate of arts degree, officials there said. He was on the Columbus State dean’s list in 2015. Officer Horujko, who joined the university police last year, had also been profiled in The Lantern. An Ohio native and a graduate of the university, he said he had decided to be an officer after working in campus safety as a student. As Ohio State officials took stock of the attack and made plans for classes to resume on Tuesday, they said they were thankful the injuries were not more severe and were optimistic that students would come together even if investigators discovered a link to terrorism. “Our campus community is extremely tolerant,” Michael V. Drake, the university president, said in an interview. “The concept of branding a whole community for the act of a few leads to an intolerance that can make the world a more difficult place for all of us. ” The episode was reported near Watts Hall, a building at the heart of the campus that houses materials science and engineering programs. Heavily armed SWAT teams swarmed the campus, and at one point could be seen making their way up a stairwell of a nearby parking garage. Monday’s violence followed a machete attack in February at a Mediterranean restaurant in Columbus, which also ended with the police killing the suspect. The restaurant’s owner told reporters that he believed he had been targeted because of his Israeli heritage. The attack on Monday was the latest episode over the last decade on an American college campus. Shootings at Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University and Oikos University in California, among others, have led colleges nationwide to plan how to respond to an attack. Monday’s instruction to “Run Hide Fight” came from a training program used by Ohio State and other groups for reacting to active shootings. “We prepare for situations like this,” Dr. Drake said, “but always hope never to have one. ” Muslim leaders in Ohio praised the police for their response and urged the public not to make assumptions about the attacker’s motives. “We as yet know nothing about the motivation of the attacker, but we do know of his Somali heritage, and that will be enough for some people to falsely link this tragic incident to the faith of Islam and to the Somali and Muslim communities,” said Roula Allouch, national board chairwoman of the Council on Relations. “We must not jump to conclusions. It is important to let the investigators do their jobs. ” Gov. John Kasich also praised the police response, saying it showed “how much practice, how much training, how much expertise, how much coordination” existed among local law enforcement agencies. “We are a strong, tough, resilient community,” he said. Mayor Andrew Ginther of Columbus said that Monday was “one of those days you’re grateful for good training and great people across the board,” and urged unity in the days ahead. | 1 |
When she heard that Nintendo was planning to reproduce its iconic Nintendo Entertainment System video game console for the holiday season, Emily Bradbury put a note on her calendar and set an alarm on her phone. She was not interested in buying it for her children. She wanted it for her husband. “He’s 40 years old and grew up with a Nintendo,” Ms. Bradbury said. “It’s a nostalgia thing. ” Since its release on Nov. 11, the NES Classic Edition, a smaller version of the original console introduced to North America in 1985, has become one of the hottest gift items of the year. It has struck a chord especially among older millennials and younger members of Generation X, who may have found in it a video game system to share with their children — if they don’t just keep it for themselves. It retails for $60, with one original controller, and comes preloaded with 30 classic games, including Super Mario Bros. Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda and Tecmo Bowl. But this trip down memory lane has not been without headaches. Nintendo has been sluggish in responding to the demand, resulting in huge markups on the secondary market, including on sites like eBay, where the consoles were being resold for as much as $390. Those higher prices are sure to stand out even more on Monday, when many other brands and retailers cut prices for Cyber Monday, the online version of Black Friday. On the release date, most retailers, including Amazon and GameStop, sold out almost immediately. ( had sold out over the summer.) Walmart kept a very limited supply in stock that it trickled out in online flash sales over the last two weeks. The consoles sold out within two minutes each time. Heeding her calendar warnings and alarms, Ms. Bradbury tried to order the NES online through Amazon and Walmart but could not act quickly enough. She even enlisted friends to visit nearby Target and Best Buy stores in Wichita, Kan. the closest big city to her home. But they, too, returned . “I thought it would be a bunch of us people going after it, but it won’t be much of a big deal,” said Ms. Bradbury, the member services director for the Kansas Press Association, a trade organization for Kansas newspapers. “I was shocked. ” But Michael Pachter, a Wedbush Securities analyst, said he was not surprised by the intense demand or the low supply, which he considered an intentional move by Nintendo to garner attention, knowing that it could restock before the holiday shopping season was over. “The Classic is sold out for three reasons: It’s nostalgic, it’s cheap and Nintendo clearly didn’t ship enough of them,” Mr. Pachter said in an email, adding: “There is plenty of time to stock the channel. They may miss Black Friday, but they won’t miss Xmas. ” In a statement, Nintendo said that it was “working hard to keep up with consumer demand. ” “There will be a steady flow of additional systems through the holiday shopping season and into the new year,” the statement read. The company declined to comment further. David Cole, the chief executive of DFC Intelligence, a market research firm, said there was a lot riding on Nintendo’s ability to satisfy demand in the next few weeks. The company is introducing a new product, Nintendo Switch, in 2017, which it hopes will make up for its lagging sales of the Wii U and its late entry into mobile gaming. Pokémon Go, which was released over the summer and is partially owned by Nintendo, was the company’s first major effort in mobile gaming, and it was a sensation. Mr. Cole said buyers were pursuing the NES Classic Edition mostly for nostalgia, but he thought the console could potentially make older customers interested in future Nintendo products. “They had really lost their brand identity the past two years,” Mr. Cole said. “This was the kind of thing that was perfect for bringing that back. ” But such a plan will work, Mr. Cole added, only if Nintendo manages to restock before the holidays are over. “If they don’t, they really miss out on an opportunity,” he said. “That demand might not carry over into 2017. ” Jim Silver, editor of TTPM, a toy review website, says that nostalgic items have been big this year, and that retailers are recognizing that many of the children who grew up in the 1980s are starting families of their own. He noted that Stretch Armstrong figurines, and Strawberry Shortcake and Teddy Ruxpin dolls have all begun making comebacks. The NES is no different. “This is not saying, ‘I need to have Zelda,’” Mr. Silver said. “This is adults saying, ‘These were my favorite games. I get to play them again. ’” But shopping for a hot holiday item, even online, is hardly simple today. And those who have managed to acquire the new NES at the retail price seem to have benefited from extensive planning, research and luck — even strategizing since July, when Nintendo announced its plans to release the NES. Michael Salazar, from Sacramento, Calif. managed to place a request to a console on July 22 through Amazon’s British website. When it arrived last week, shipped directly from Edinburgh, Mr. Salazar was elated. He then used a secondary site, which tracks inventory at Target stores, to monitor whether any consoles had arrived locally. When he saw that a nearby Target had received three, he rushed there at 7:30 a. m. on a Sunday to buy one as a present for his . Now, he is looking for a third to give as a gift. “I’m 38 that’s my childhood,” Mr. Salazar said. “Nintendo was always a very important piece of my life. ” Amanda Schluer, of Rocklin, Calif. had the foresight in July to set an alert on Amazon for one minute before the release date. Then she watched the seconds tick down. “I’ve sat and waited for Garth Brooks tickets the same way,” Ms. Schluer said. “Just wait until the second they go on sale and push the button. ” By acting quickly, Ms. Schluer, 38, managed to buy a console. She and her husband even took their NES to Los Angeles to play with family over Thanksgiving. “We have a Wii, and my kids never play it,” said Ms. Schluer of her two daughters, ages 6 and 10. “That’s the good thing about the old retro games,” Ms. Schluer added. “They are fun, they’re and it’s something we can all play together. ” | 1 |
LONDON — For the first time in nearly 30 years, Queen Elizabeth II failed to attend a Christmas Day church service near her English country estate because of what Buckingham Palace described as a persistent cold. In a statement, Buckingham Palace said on Sunday that the queen “continues to recover from a heavy cold and will stay indoors to assist with her recovery. ” The queen, who had already been forced to change her travel plans for the holiday period because of the illness, planned to “participate in the royal family Christmas celebrations during the day,” according to the statement. The queen and her husband, Prince Philip, 95, were scheduled to travel on Wednesday by train to their Sandringham estate in Norfolk, near England’s eastern coast. Their poor health pushed back the journey by a day, and they made the trip by helicopter. Prince Philip, who had also been ill last week, was well enough to attend the service. He was accompanied by members of the royal family, including Prince Charles, the heir to the throne. The British monarch is particularly visible during the holidays, and Buckingham Palace said that the queen had attended church services at Sandringham on Christmas Day since 1988, when the royal family began celebrating the holiday there. Her annual Christmas Day speech, which was prerecorded, was broadcast as usual. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The potential for conflicts of interest between Donald J. Trump and his family’s business ventures emerged again Thursday evening, when a photograph was distributed that showed his daughter Ivanka at a meeting between Mr. Trump and the prime minister of Japan. News reporters were not allowed to attend the session, Mr. Trump’s first with a foreign head of government, and no summary was provided about what was discussed. A separate photograph was distributed — press photographers were not allowed to cover the event — showing that Jared Kushner, Ms. Trump’s husband, was present for at least part of the gathering. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan said after the meeting that he had a “very candid discussion” with Mr. Trump. He did not discuss who else attended the gathering or elaborate on the topics discussed. Ms. Trump will be among the members of the ’s family who will be placed in charge of Mr. Trump’s business enterprises, which include an international chain of hotels with operations in Latin America, Europe and North America. She serves as vice president for development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization, and the company’s website says one of her “primary focuses has been to bring the Trump Hotel brand to global markets. ” She also owns a jewelry business, Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, with the Trump Organization describing her as “one of the most recognized and influential young businesswomen today. ” After Mr. Trump’s transition office was asked by The New York Times about allowing Ms. Trump to attend the meeting with the Japanese prime minister, an individual close to the family, who said she did not have authorization to provide her name, hinted that Ms. Trump would not be attending meetings like this in the future. “Mr. Trump has always encouraged Ivanka and his children to attend meetings with him,” the person close to the family said. “This meeting in question was very informal. However, they obviously need to adjust to the new realities at hand, which they will. ” This week, Ms. Trump’s jewelry company sent out a notice to reporters with a photograph of her wearing a $10, 800 gold bangle bracelet that she had worn during an interview her family did with “60 Minutes,” trying to use the appearance as an opportunity to sell more items. “Please find attached a style alert of Ivanka wearing her favorite bangle from the Metropolis Collection over the weekend on 60 Minutes,” Monica Marder, the vice president for sales at Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, said in the email. Abigail Klem, the president of Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, apologized for the promotion of Ms. Trump’s bracelet after the “60 Minutes” interview, attributing it to “a marketing employee. ” Ms. Klem added, “We are proactively discussing new policies and procedures with all of our partners going forward. ” Ms. Trump’s presence also disturbed some current and former State Department officials, including Moira Whelan, who left the department in July after serving as a deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs. Anyone present for such a conversation between two heads of state should, at a minimum, have security clearance, Ms. Whelan said, and should also be an expert in Japanese affairs. “Meeting of two heads of state is never an informal occurrence,” Ms. Whelan said. “Even a casual mention or a nod of agreement or an assertion left unchallenged can be interpreted in different ways. ” Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight said that regardless of what was discussed at the meeting, it was inappropriate for Ms. Trump to be present at a private meeting among such a small group of people given that she is an executive at a corporation involved in international business development. These early episodes demonstrate, Ms. Brian said, why Mr. Trump must put his assets into a blind trust, in which an independent party manages them, instead of turning them over to his children to manage, as Mr. Trump has proposed. “You can’t have people with financial conflicts of interest mixing with White House business,” Ms. Brian said. The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial on Friday, went so far as to urge Mr. Trump to sell off all his hotels, golf courses and other assets, and then take that cash and turn it over to a blind trust, as that would be the only way to avoid all possible conflicts. | 1 |
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Vice Admiral Kevin Donegan today claimed the US and other members of the Saudi-led naval blockade of Yemen had captured four ships with arms which they are claiming both came from Iran and were bound for Yemen, where they would’ve delivered the weapons to the Houthi movement.
The vice admiral claimed the US “knows” both where the ships came from and where they were going because they interviewed the crews of the captured ships. Only one of the four putative weapons ships was validated by the United Nations as being an actual smuggling attempt.
Donegan went on to claim that he believes Iran is “connected in some way” to recent incidents of missiles fired at a US ship off the Yemeni coast, though the Pentagon conceded one of those incidents likely never happened, and he offered no evidence of Iranian involvement in anything else.
The allegations were likely made by way of justifying US attacks on the Yemeni coast, as well as justifying Saudi Arabia’s ongoing naval blockade of Yemen, which Saudi Arabia recently denied is happening. | 0 |
In 1995, furious over quality problems with one of his company’s mobile phones, Lee the chairman of Samsung and arguably the most famous businessman in South Korea, set a pile of 150, 000 defective phones on fire outside a factory. The phone bonfire became a turning point for Samsung’s rise from an electronics maker associated with inexpensive knockoffs to one considered a leader in product quality, design and sales. But to the company’s critics, that employee motivational moment has also served as a wry historical foreshadowing of safety problems with one of Samsung’s smartphones. The company has temporarily halted production of its Galaxy Note 7, a answer to the latest iPhones from Apple, a person familiar with the decision said on Monday. In a statement, the company also asked retailers and telecommunication carriers to stop selling the phones until the problem is fixed, and said “consumers with either an original Galaxy Note 7 or replacement Galaxy Note 7 device should power down and stop using the device. ” The phone has been blamed for at least one house fire, a burning Jeep and several alarming moments on planes when the devices started smoking . The Federal Aviation Administration is so concerned that airline passengers are routinely warned that they should not turn on or charge the Galaxy Note 7 during a flight or stow the phone in checked baggage. Southwest Airlines, which had to evacuate a plane on Wednesday after a Samsung phone caught fire, said the details of the incident are still being investigated. The decision to stop selling the Galaxy Note 7 comes just five weeks after Samsung said it would recall 2. 5 million of them — the largest ever in the smartphone industry — after early reports of battery fires. Samsung had said it believed it had identified the issue, and allowed consumers to trade in their phones for new ones. But production was halted after the four major United States carriers said they would stop selling or replacing Galaxy Note 7 smartphones because of additional reports of fires, including with the replacement models. Three of Australia’s biggest telecom companies — Telstra, Optus and Vodafone Australia — said they had stopped shipping Galaxy Note 7 phones to customers after reports that the replacement model had caught fire in the United States. The company said it hoped to provide an update within a month. The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission praised Samsung’s move and urged consumers to stop using the phone. The missteps by Samsung, the world’s top seller of smartphones, have given a rare opportunity to competitors like Apple to close the gap with the South Korean giant as the holiday shopping season approaches. “We believe this incident has destroyed billions of dollars of Samsung brand value,” said Laura Martin, a technology analyst with Needham Company. “The consumer says, ‘Which one blows up? I’m just going to stay away from Samsung. ’” The Galaxy Note 7 featured a battery to help its increasingly sophisticated features, like an iris scanner for added security. It also supported fast wireless charging technologies. It was the most expensive phone offered by Samsung, putting it in direct competition with Apple’s iPhone. “Definitely, Apple is the biggest beneficiary” of Samsung’s problems, said Linda Sui, a director at research firm Strategy Analytics. What’s more, Google, the company whose Android software runs on nearly all of Samsung’s smartphones, is now pushing harder to sell its own phones. Last week, Google unveiled the Pixel — the first smartphone that it designed and manufactured. At the same time, aggressive smartphone manufacturers like Huawei and Xiaomi are looking for ways to expand beyond their footholds in China to compete with Samsung all over the world. It is difficult to say what the impact of the phone problems will be on the company’s overall sales. Before the recall, the research firm Strategy Analytics had estimated that Samsung would sell 15 million Note 7 units in 2016. But now, the firm is estimating that Samsung, with about $180 billion in annual revenue, could lose more than $10 billion from the ongoing troubles. Samsung’s reputation is already taking a big hit online, according to an analysis by Spredfast, a social media marketing firm that helps businesses analyze chatter on Twitter and other social networks. Since the Note 7’s problems began to receive widespread attention, negative Twitter messages about the device rose 450 percent compared to the previous five and a half weeks, the company said. “While this is itself a huge problem for Samsung, we also found a steep 186 percent rise in negative sentiment about Samsung itself,” Chris Kerns, Spredfast’s vice president of research and insights said in a statement. “Digging deeper, it’s clear that this is not just an isolated issue with one product, but is, in fact, a brand crisis. ” Like many Asian companies, Samsung struggled for years to establish a strong reputation in the West. Shortly after Apple introduced the iPhone, Samsung went headlong into the smartphone market. Samsung had been gaining some ground in smartphones with its latest Galaxy S phones, which have curved edges and offer a premium feel over the company’s budget phones. When it released the Galaxy Note 7 in August — with its 5. screen and a price tag exceeding $800 — it was supposed to add to that momentum. The recurring problem has led industry experts to wonder whether the problem went beyond sloppy production and resulted from a faulty battery or software design. Technology companies are hardly immune to manufacturing issues. In 1994, Intel was forced to recall its flagship Pentium chip because of a mathematical mistake built into it. Dell recalled more than 4 million laptop computers in 2006 because of exploding lithium ion batteries produced by Sony. And companies like Fitibit and Microsoft have had manufacturing problems over the years. Companies with strong brands can withstand product quality problems. Over a span starting in 2009, Toyota recalled about 9 million cars because of issues related to sudden, unintended acceleration. Its chief executive appeared before Congress, and Toyota paid a $1. 2 billion fine to the Justice Department for concealing information about defects from consumers and government officials. In 2015, Toyota was the world’s largest automaker. Samsung is counting on customers like Justin Brooke of Cooper City, Fla. whose family owns three Note 7 phones as well as Samsung televisions and tablets, to stay loyal to the brand. Mr. Brooke said he thinks the fire risk has been overblown. He loves the Note 7’s big screen and pen feature, which he uses to critique websites for his advertising training business, DMBI Online. “For me as a business owner, it’s the most productive phone on the market,” he said. Still, he admitted to some apprehension. He said his family never charges the batteries on their phones to 100 percent to reduce the risk of overheating. “Maybe we’re in denial,” he said. He said his father asked him for a phone recommendation on Sunday night, and he recommended another Samsung model, the S7, which has not been implicated in the fires, or a Google Pixel phone. | 1 |
After a swelling tide of protests, the president of Yale announced on Saturday that the university would change the name of a residential college commemorating John C. Calhoun, the white supremacist statesman from South Carolina. The college will be renamed for Grace Murray Hopper, a trailblazing computer scientist and Navy rear admiral who received a master’s degree and a doctorate from Yale. The decision was a stark reversal of the university’s decision last spring to maintain the name despite broad opposition. Though the president, Peter Salovey, said that he was still “concerned about erasing history,” he said that “these are exceptional circumstances. ” “I made this decision because I think it is the right thing to do on principle,” Mr. Salovey said on a conference call with reporters. “John C. Calhoun’s principles, his legacy as an ardent supporter of slavery as a positive good, are at odds with this university. ” Mr. Salovey and the other members of the Yale Corporation, the university’s governing body, made their decision after an advisory committee unanimously recommended the renaming. The school is still determining when exactly the change will be carried out, but Mr. Salovey said it would be by fall at the latest. Students reacted with joy to a change many said was long overdue. “There’s a huge sense of relief and celebration,” said Rianna 21, a senior from Ann Arbor, Mich. who was involved in the protests. “Students of color have been fighting for this change for decades and it’s hard to believe this day is finally here. ” Online, some students found inspiration in a quotation from Ms. Hopper, who died in 1992. “Humans are allergic to change,” she once said. “They love to say, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’ I try to fight that. ” Calhoun, the nation’s seventh vice president, attended Yale and was its valedictorian. The name of the college incited controversy almost as soon as it opened in 1933. Many black students staged demonstrations and referred to the college, which was decorated with depictions of slaves carrying bales of cotton, as the “Calhoun Plantation. ” Opposition may have peaked in 2015, after the massacre of nine worshipers at a black church in Charleston. The killings, by an avowed white supremacist, prompted protests that led to the removal of the Confederate battle flag outside the South Carolina Statehouse and elsewhere. Yale was seized that fall by a series of demonstrations from students, faculty and alumni who objected to the Calhoun name, as well as to what they saw as a larger climate of racial inequality on campus. Many universities, domestic and abroad, have faced similar pressure in recent years to eradicate names and symbols of racism and colonialism on campus. That resistance notwithstanding, Mr. Salovey announced last April that Yale would preserve the Calhoun name. At the same time, he revealed that the university’s two new residential colleges would be named for Benjamin Franklin and Anna Pauline Murray. The honoring of Ms. Murray, a legal scholar and civil rights activist who graduated from Yale Law School in 1965, was widely hailed as the first such distinction bestowed on either a woman or an . But the selection of Franklin, who was once a slaveholder himself, was derided by many students, particularly after it became clear that he was chosen in deference to a suggestion by Charles B. Johnson, a businessman who donated $250 million for the new buildings — the largest gift in the school’s history. Addressing a related concern, the school also decided then that the leaders of the residential colleges would no longer use the title “master,” and would instead be called “heads of college,” a recognition of the discomfort many students felt toward the previous honorific’s evocation of slavery. The Calhoun and Franklin decisions reignited protests from student activists, who held a “renaming ceremony” in front of the college in which they called it “the college formerly known as Calhoun. ” At a town meeting soon after, students showered Mr. Salovey with fake $1 million bills, a protest against what they saw as the university prioritizing its financial interests over their concerns. The dissent did not come only from students. Over the summer, a black dishwasher in Calhoun smashed a stained glass windowpane that depicted slaves working on a plantation, because he said he found the image degrading. And on Friday, four demonstrators protesting the Calhoun name were arrested for blocking the street. Still, despite their delight about the renaming, many students hope that the university will continue to move beyond symbolism to address more pressing issues of racial inequality on campus, like the dearth of black faculty members. During the fall 2015 protests, the university announced that it was committing $50 million to a initiative to confront the fact that less than 3 percent of its arts and sciences faculty is black. But since that time, several prominent black professors have left the university. About 11 percent of Yale’s roughly 5, 400 undergraduates identify themselves as black or . “This is definitely a victory, but we’re not done fighting,” Ms. said. “It’s our job to keep pushing Yale in the right direction. ” | 1 |
You could be forgiven, after five years of Syria’s war dominating front pages, for feeling lost. It is easy to track the war’s toll: It has killed 400, 000 people, displaced millions, opened space for the Islamic State, and sucked in foreign powers, including the United States. It is harder to keep track of the how and why. The basics can seem even more confusing than the details. But those basics are crucial to understanding Syria’s war — and they are far more complex than they might initially seem. As last week’s truce appears shaky after American planes bombed Syrian troops, here are straightforward answers to some of the fundamental questions about the conflict: an attempt to explain its origins, the broader context and how it relates to the refugee crisis and the rise of the Islamic State. The war makes more sense if you think of it as four overlapping conflicts. The core conflict is between forces loyal to President Bashar and the rebels who oppose him. Over time, both sides fractured into multiple militias, including local and foreign fighters, but their fundamental disagreement is over whether Mr. Assad’s government should stay in power. This opened a second conflict: Syria’s ethnic Kurdish minority took up arms amid the chaos. The Kurds carved out a de facto ministate and have gradually taken territory they see as Kurdish — sometimes with backing from the United States, which sees the Kurds as an ally against jihadist groups. While Mr. Assad has not focused on fighting the Kurdish groups, they are opposed by neighboring Turkey, which is in conflict with its own Kurdish minority. The third conflict involves the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which emerged out of infighting among jihadist groups. In 2014, the Islamic State seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, and it declared that territory its caliphate. The group has no allies and is at war with all other actors in the conflict. The fourth, and most complex, dynamic may be the crisscrossing foreign interventions, which have grown steadily. Mr. Assad receives vital support from Iran and Russia, as well as the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The rebels are backed by the United States and Arab states like Saudi Arabia. These foreign powers have different agendas, but all pursue them by ramping up Syria’s violence, helping to perpetuate the war. On the surface, the conflict began in 2011 with the Arab Spring. Syrians, like other peoples across the region, rose up peacefully against their authoritarian government. Mr. Assad cracked down violently. Communities took up arms to defend themselves, then fought back in what became a civil war. Some soldiers joined the rebels, but not enough to win. But that alone does not explain Syria’s disintegration. It is now clear that the state was weak in ways that made it inherently unstable and prone to violence. The government was dominated by a minority group. Over decades, Syria’s religious and ethnic divides had taken on greater political importance, making the ruling minority fearful and reactive. Mr. Assad had strong support among the military and security services, but not the broader population, making violence more tempting. The instability was deepened by the fact that rural Syrians had moved to cities in large numbers in recent years, driven in part by droughts linked to climate change. Fighting, once it began, was worsened by several external factors. A decade of war in neighboring Iraq had produced extremist groups that now flowed into Syria. Iraq’s political troubles in 2011 and 2012 helped open space for the Islamic State. During this time, Syria was sucked into the regional power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Five countries are playing a major role in Syria, each with different agendas. Their interventions have locked the war into an stalemate. Iran was first, sending supplies and soldiers to prop up Mr. Assad. Iran sees Syria as crucial to its regional strategy: It provides access to Lebanon and therefore Hezbollah, a group Tehran uses for regional influence and as a counterweight to Israel, whose nuclear weapons it fears. Saudi Arabia supported Syria’s rebels in the hopes of replacing Mr. Assad with a friendlier government and of countering Iran’s influence. Saudi Arabia and Iran have been rivals for decades, fighting something like a cold war for regional dominance. (Other Arab states like Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have also backed the rebels.) Their struggle has escalated for several reasons: Iran’s growing power the regional power vacuum that opened with the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 in Iraq more political vacuums opened by the Arab Spring a hawkish new king in Saudi Arabia and Saudi fears that the United States is becoming less hostile toward Iran. The United States funnels weapons to Syria’s rebels. It did so initially out of opposition to Mr. Assad, a longtime enemy, and later to encourage those groups to fight the Islamic State. The United States has also armed Kurdish groups against the Islamic State. Turkey sheltered Syrian rebels and ushered in foreign recruits, seeking to undermine and perhaps topple Mr. Assad. Later, the country also acted to counter Syrian Kurdish groups, fearing that they could strengthen Kurdish insurgents in Turkey. Russia has backed Mr. Assad from the beginning, selling him arms and providing diplomatic cover at the United Nations. Syria is one of Russia’s last remaining allies, and it is where Moscow maintains its only military bases outside the former Soviet Union. Russian forces intervened in 2015, at a time when Mr. Assad appeared to be losing ground. There have been atrocities on all sides, but forces loyal to Mr. Assad have committed by far the most. Because his government is so weak — its support base is small and its military has suffered heavy defections — Mr. Assad seems to believe he can regain control only by violently coercing Syrians into submission. That has included using chemical weapons, barrel bombs and starvation. Because neither Mr. Assad nor the rebels are strong enough to win, the battle lines push back and forth, rolling across communities in waves of destruction that kill thousands but accomplish little else. Foreign interventions have made those shifting front lines even bloodier and have deepened the stalemate. As a result, the overall violence kills more Syrians without altering the conflict’s underlying dynamics. The years of chaos have destroyed basic order in Syria. As often happens in lengthy civil wars, militias have filled the vacuum. Their leaders often behave more as warlords, forcibly extracting resources from local communities. This practice has been carried out by rebel militias and some that support the government. The rise of the Islamic State has worsened all of these trends. The jihadist group has provided another set of shifting battle lines, introduced more warlords, compelled more foreign interventions and, most of all, put communities under its tyrannical, fanatical rule. There is nothing innately religious about Syria’s war, but its broader political forces have played out along religious lines. To understand why, it helps to start about 100 years ago. After World War I, France took control of the territory of the defeated Ottoman Empire that is now Syria. France ruled through minority groups that would be too small to hold power without outside support. That included Alawites, followers of a branch of Shiite Islam, who joined the military in large numbers. The last French troops left in 1946, and a long period of turmoil followed. Syria’s military consolidated power in a 1970 coup led by Hafez an Alawite general and the father of Bashar . Syria’s authoritarian government favored Alawites and other minorities, widening social and political divides along sectarian lines. A sectarian civil war next door in Lebanon and the rise of Sunni religious politics widened them further, and Alawites continued to cluster in positions of power. The country’s Sunni Arab majority came to feel, at times, that they were underserved. Minority governments like Syria’s tend to be unstable. They sometimes fear discrimination or worse should they lose power, and can see the majority group as a potential threat rather than a base of support. This can make them more willing to use violence to hold on to power — as Mr. Assad did when his forces opened fire on peaceful protesters in 2011. As the war has worsened, many Syrians have based their allegiance on sectarian identity. But this is not because they are motived primarily by religious or ethnic concerns. Rather, it is defensive. They fear that the other side will target them for their background, so they feel safe only with their own people. This contributes to atrocities: If Alawites are seen as innately then Sunni militias could conclude that all Alawite civilians are a threat and treat them accordingly, which prompts more defensive sorting. At the same time, the Arabia proxy war is also playing out along sectarian lines, with the Saudis backing Sunnis and Iran backing Shiites across the region. For both countries, sectarianism is a tool by which they can cultivate proxy forces and stir up fear of the other side. The group has its roots in two earlier wars and the foreign occupations that followed: the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the first, Sunni Arab volunteers fought alongside Afghan rebels, later forming the global jihadist movement, including Al Qaeda. In the second, Al Qaeda and other Sunni groups flooded to Iraq to fight both the Americans and Iraq’s Shiite majority. A key name is Abu Musab a Jordanian extremist who fought in Afghanistan in the 1990s and Iraq in the 2000s. Mr. Zarqawi’s views and methods were even more extreme and theatrical than Al Qaeda’s. He flourished in Iraq’s war, using tactics now associated with the Islamic State: videotaped beheadings, mass killings of fellow Muslims deemed nonbelievers and attacks meant to incite a war. Al Qaeda invited Mr. Zarqawi to rebrand his group as Al Qaeda in Iraq, but the two factions argued over strategy and ideology, setting them up for conflict a decade later in Syria. Mr. Zarqawi was killed in 2006, and his group declined as Sunni Iraqis turned against it. Later, Iraq’s government grew increasingly authoritarian and sectarian, alienating the minority Sunni. It also purged many experienced military and security officers, replacing them with political loyalists. The successor to Mr. Zarqawi’s group, then calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq, exploited these conditions in 2011 and 2012 to reconstitute itself, for example by breaking extremists out of Iraqi prisons. Its leader, Abu Bakr combined Mr. Zarqawi’s views with an apocalypticism taking hold amid the region’s upheaval. Mr. Baghdadi sent a top officer into Syria’s war to set up a new Al Qaeda franchise: the Nusra Front, now known as the Levant Conquest Front. In 2013, Mr. Baghdadi declared himself commander of all Al Qaeda forces in Iraq and Syria. After years of tense partnership with Al Qaeda, the groups finally split. Mr. Baghdadi — his force now rebranded as the Islamic State — invaded Syria to fight his former Qaeda allies. The Islamic State carved out a ministate in Syria’s chaos, then used it as a base to invade Iraq in 2014. It repeated Mr. Zarqawi’s worst tactics on a far larger scale, committing acts of genocide and mass murder in the Middle East and abroad, and attracting foreign recruits from rich and poor countries alike. The war in Syria has produced nearly five million refugees. The exodus has created three sets of problems, all dire: a humanitarian crisis for the refugees themselves, a potential crisis for the countries that host them and a political crisis in Europe over what to do. Syrian refugees face disease and malnutrition. Host countries often bar them from working, meaning that families cannot provide for themselves. Many Syrian children are deprived of education, a problem that could hinder them for life. Most Syrian refugees are in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, neighboring countries that lack the necessary resources to help them. The influx could be destabilizing, particularly in Jordan and Lebanon where Syrian refugees now make up a large share of the population. Many refugees, unable to tolerate life in the camps, have braved the dangerous journey to Europe. But European voters have largely rejected them, supporting extreme measures to keep out Syrians and other migrants. European leaders at one point suspended missions in the Mediterranean, partly in response to complaints that saving refugees’ lives might encourage more to make the journey. Leaders of the campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union based their argument partly on opposition to accepting Syrian refugees. Europe’s attitude appears driven by a combination of economic downturn hostility toward the European Union, which allows unlimited migration among member states and demographic anxiety rooted in trends that have made populations more diverse. As a result, many refugees are stuck in camps in Italy and Greece. Many others die trying to reach Europe. European countries, along with the United States and Canada, have absorbed thousands of refugees, but not nearly enough to alter the underlying crisis. | 1 |
President Donald Trump debunked claims from the media, Muslim and critics who claim his new visitor safeguard policy and refugee reform is a blanket “Muslim ban. ”[“This is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting,” Trump said in the Sunday statement, as and Islamist groups decried his new visitor safeguards in airports around the nation, and protested his planned reduction in refugee inflow to 50, 000 per year. “This is not about religion — this is about terror and keeping our country safe. There are over 40 different countries worldwide that are majority Muslim that are not affected by this order,” Trump said. “My policy is similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months,” said Trump. “The seven countries named in the Executive Order are the same countries previously identified by the Obama administration as sources of terror,” he added. The halt in 2011 was quietly imposed by Obama when two legal refugees in Bowling Green, Ky. were discovered to have been jihad attackers in Iraq. The two jihadis had slipped through lax vetting procedures when they were invited to take refuge in the United States. Trump continued: America is a proud nation of immigrants and we will continue to show compassion to those fleeing oppression, but we will do so while protecting our own citizens and border. America has always been the land of the free and home of the brave. We will keep it free and keep it safe, as the media knows, but refuses to say … We will again be issuing visas to all countries once we are sure we have reviewed and implemented the most secure policies over the next 90 days. I have tremendous feeling for the people involved in this horrific humanitarian crisis in Syria. My first priority will always be to protect and serve our country, but as President I will find ways to help all those who are suffering. The executive order, signed by Trump on Friday, will suspend visas for 90 days for “immigrants and ” from the Islamic countries of Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Iran, and Iraq, pending the development of acceptable vetting methods. Many countries with large Muslim populations, such as Saudi Arabia, India, and Indonesia, will not be affected. The order also cuts the annual inflow of refugees back to 50, 000 per year, roughly level with the annual inflows in Obama’s first term. That reduction is strongly opposed by U. S. Islamic advocacy groups who favor Islamic migration into the United States. On Thursday, Trump said that his administration would look at creating safe zones in Syria as part of an effort to ease the country’s humanitarian crisis. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com, | 1 |
Why Iranian-American pastor held hostage in Iran is voting for Donald Trump Iranian-American Pastor Saeed Abedini is brimming with gratitude for one U.S. presidential aspirant: Donald Trump. Christian Today In a surprising revelation, Abedini said the Republican presidential nominee helped provide for the needs of his family in Boise, Idaho while he was locked up in an Iranian prison for his faith. The pastor said Trump gave his family $10,000 while he was imprisoned for three and a half years. “I am finally free in a free country. Last year on the same day I was sick and in chains for Christ, and now I can vote to choose my next president,” Abedini said in a post on his Facebook page on Sunday. “And most amazingly, I can vote for someone that I know fought for me and called my name so many times. He met my family and gave them a $10,000 gift. I think his ideas are more biblical than the other candidates,” he added. In contrast, Abedini said Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did not do or say anything to help secure his release from Iranian prison. The pastor said Clinton never spoke his name or met his family. Abedini family As a woman who says she stands for women’s rights when she was foreign minister, she never contacted my mom, wife, sister or my daughter. She never did anything to help when I was in prison as an American pastor who was detained in Iran as a hostage,” he wrote. (Probably because she was too busy figuring out how to get more Iranian Muslims into the country) Last week, Abedini said he already cast an early vote for Trump in the 2016 presidential election. | 0 |
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