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Written by Daniel McAdams We were told that we had to attack Iraq because the Saddam Hussein government made us less safe. We were told we had to bomb and kill Gaddafi in Libya because his regime made us less safe. Ditto with the Taliban in Afghanistan and Assad in Syria. Now. 15 years after 9/11, Americans are seeing through the endless wars that have lasted through the Bush and Obama Administrations. Trillions spent, untold thousands killed, societies destroyed, people displaced. A new poll sponsored by the Center for the National Interest and the Charles Koch Institute has found that Americans feel less, not more safe after a decade and a half of war. We are reaching the critical mass where Americans begin to demand a change in our interventionist foreign policy. More on the encouraging poll in today's Liberty Report: Copyright © 2016 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given. | 0 |
Freitag, 18. November 2016 "Zu unseriös": Auch Lothar Matthäus sagt HSV als Sportdirektor ab Hamburg (dpo) - Der krisengeschüttelte HSV muss auf der Suche nach einem neuen Sportdirektor erneut schlechte Nachrichten verkraften: Wie zuvor schon Jonas Boldt, Christian Hochstätter, Nico-Jan Hoogma und Horst Heldt hat nun auch Lothar Matthäus eine Anstellung beim Hamburger SV abgelehnt, weil ihm das Umfeld im Verein zu unseriös erschien. "Ich habe als international bekannter Star an meinen guten Ruf zu denken", erklärte Matthäus die Absage. "Klar, ich wollte schon immer gerne in die sportliche Leitung eines Bundesliga-Vereins wechseln, aber so verzweifelt bin ich auch wieder nicht." Der Rekordnationalspieler habe ernsthafte Sorge, zur Lachnummer zu werden, falls er zum HSV wechsle. "Und das darf nicht passieren!", so Matthäus, während er gerade ein Kamerateam für den Dreh einer Homestory empfing. "Anasdasiaaaa! Die von VOX sind da!" Augenzeugenberichten zufolge soll HSV-Chef Dietmar Beiersdorfer nach Matthäus' Absage dazu übergegangen sein, wildfremden Menschen auf der Straße den gutbezahlten Posten als Sportdirektor anzubieten – bislang vergeblich. Idee: sha; dan, ssi; Foto: Shutterstock Artikel teilen: | 0 |
WASHINGTON — The F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, told Congress on Sunday that he had seen no evidence in a recently discovered trove of emails to change his conclusion that Hillary Clinton should face no charges over her handling of classified information. Mr. Comey’s announcement, just two days before the election, was an effort to clear the cloud of suspicion he had publicly placed over her presidential campaign late last month when he alerted Congress that the F. B. I. would examine the emails. “Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton,” Mr. Comey wrote in a letter to the leaders of several congressional committees. He said agents had reviewed all communications to and from Mrs. Clinton in the new trove from when she was secretary of state. The letter was a dramatic final twist in a tumultuous nine days for both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Comey, who drew widespread criticism for announcing that the F. B. I. had discovered new emails that might be relevant to its investigation of Mrs. Clinton, which ended in July with no charges. That criticism of Mr. Comey from both parties is likely to persist after the election. While the new letter was clear as it related to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Comey’s message was otherwise vague. He did not say that agents had completed their review of the emails, or that they were abandoning the matter in regard to her aides. But federal law enforcement officials said that they considered the review of emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s server complete, and that Mr. Comey’s letter was intended to convey that. One senior law enforcement official said that as recently as Friday, it was not clear whether the review would be completed by Election Day. But after days of working in shifts around the clock, teams of counterintelligence agents and technology specialists at the bureau’s headquarters in Washington finished their examination of the thousands of emails. Officials had decided to make their decision public as soon as they had reached it, to avoid any suggestion that they were suppressing information. According to the law enforcement official, many of the emails were personal messages or duplicates of ones that the bureau had previously examined during the original inquiry. Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said in a post on Twitter that the campaign had always believed she would be cleared of any wrongdoing. “We were always confident nothing would cause the July decision to be revisited,” Mr. Fallon said. “Now Director Comey has confirmed it. ” Kellyanne Conway, Donald J. Trump’s campaign manager, lamented the fact that Mr. Comey had again inserted himself into the election, but she predicted that his conclusion would have no effect on the outcome. “The investigation has been mishandled from the beginning,” Ms. Conway said on MSNBC, arguing that Mrs. Clinton had wasted taxpayer money and federal resources because of her email practices. “She was reckless, she was careless, she was selfish. ” The new review began after agents discovered a cache of emails in early October in an unrelated investigation into the disgraced former congressman Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of one of Mrs. Clinton’s closest aides. When searching Mr. Weiner’s laptop for evidence of whether he had exchanged illicit messages with a teenage girl, they discovered emails belonging to the aide, Huma Abedin. That announcement renewed talk of an investigation that had shadowed Mrs. Clinton for much of the Democratic primary campaign. She and her aides had been under investigation for improperly storing classified information on Mrs. Clinton’s private email server. The discovery of new emails raised the prospect that the laptop might have new information that would renew the F. B. I. inquiry. Federal law enforcement officials had said for the past week that only something astounding would change their conclusion that nobody should be charged. But the mere potential for legal trouble was enough to make Republicans gleeful, and Mr. Trump highlighted the F. B. I. ’s actions in campaign ads. At the end of a rocky week for Mrs. Clinton that included wild, false speculation about looming indictments and shocking discoveries in the emails, Mr. Comey’s letter swept away her largest and most immediate problem. Republicans immediately accused Mr. Comey of making his announcement prematurely. “Comey must be under enormous political pressure to cave like this and announce something he can’t possibly know,” Newt Gingrich, a Trump adviser, wrote on Twitter. Mr. Comey’s move is also sure to prompt questions from Democrats. Most important among them: Why did Mr. Comey raise the specter of wrongdoing before agents had even read the emails, especially since it took only days to determine that they were not significant? Just hours before Mr. Comey sent the letter to Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats said hearings should be held to examine how Mr. Comey had handled the matter. After the letter’s release, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said the Justice Department “needs to take a look at its procedures to prevent similar actions that could influence future elections. ” “There’s no doubt that it created a false impression about the nature of the agency’s inquiry,” she added. The F. B. I. director’s vague, brief announcement on Oct. 28 left Mrs. Clinton with few details to rebut and little time to do it. Many current and former F. B. I. agents and Justice Department officials said Mr. Comey had needlessly plunged the F. B. I. into the politics of a presidential election, with no clear way out. A long list of former Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. chided Mr. Comey. Despite the fact that the bureau did not find anything that changed its original conclusion about Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Comey has insisted that he had no choice but to inform Congress about the new emails because the investigation had been completed and he had pledged transparency, according to senior F. B. I. officials. Because of Mr. Comey’s Oct. 28 letter, Attorney General Loretta Lynch made completing a review of the emails a top priority. Late last month, Mr. Comey ordered agents to work around the clock to sift through the messages. That process, senior F. B. I. officials said, was painstaking, because each message that had been sent to Mrs. Clinton had to be reviewed to determine whether it had sensitive national security materials. In Mr. Comey’s short letter to Congress on Sunday, he said he was “very grateful to the professionals at the F. B. I. for doing an extraordinary amount of work in a short period of time. ” | 1 |
A new effort to pass the Republican health care bill has been propelled by an amendment that would allow states to waive certain insurance regulations in Obamacare. We examined the probable effects when the idea surfaced in April. Now that those ideas have become part of the legislative package, we’ve updated our analysis. Throughout the debate to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, President Trump and Republican congressional leaders have insisted they would retain a crucial, popular part of the health law: the promise that people can buy insurance even if they’ve had illnesses in the past. Their efforts foundered in March, when a House health bill had to be pulled from the floor after it failed to attract enough support. But now, the bill appears back from the dead, because of a compromise meant to attract votes from the conservative Freedom Caucus. The proposed changes would effectively cast aside the Affordable Care Act’s protection of people with conditions. The terms of the new amendment, go something like this: States would have the option to jettison two major parts of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance regulations. They could decide to opt out of provisions that require insurers to cover a standard, minimum package of benefits, known as the essential health benefits. And they could decide to do away with a rule that requires insurance companies to charge the same price to everyone who is the same age, a provision called community rating. In exchange, states would be required to set up special arrangements for patients. The ability to opt out of the benefit requirements could substantially reduce the value of insurance on the market. A patient with cancer might, for example, still be allowed to buy a plan, but it wouldn’t do her much good if that plan was not required to cover chemotherapy drugs. The second would make the insurance options for those with conditions even more meaningless. Technically, the deal would still prevent insurers from denying coverage to people with a history of illness. But without community rating, health plans would be free to charge those patients as much as they wanted. If both of the Obamacare provisions went away, the hypothetical cancer patient might be able to buy only a plan, without chemotherapy coverage, that costs many times more than a similar plan costs a healthy customer. Only cancer patients with extraordinary financial resources and little interest in the fine print would be likely to sign up. Under the amendment, customers would be subject to community rating only if they’d had a lapse in coverage of more than 63 days, but, in practice, the change would be likely to result in nearly everyone paying a price based on their health status, as Matt Fiedler, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former Obama administration official, has written. There is a reason that many conservatives want to do away with these provisions. Because they help people with substantial health care needs buy relatively affordable coverage, they drive up the price of insurance for people who are healthy. An insurance market that did not include cancer care — or even any cancer patients — would be one where premiums for the remaining customers were much lower. The result might be a market that is much more affordable for people with a clean bill of health. But it would become largely inaccessible to anyone who really needs help paying for medical care. We do not have to speculate to know what the world looks like without essential health benefits and community rating. It was how most state insurance markets worked before Obamacare. Back in 2009, most sick people who did not get insurance through work or a government program were excluded from coverage if they had a history of health problems like allergies or arthritis. Plans that did not cover pregnancy care or drug addiction treatment were widespread. (The data about individual market insurance premiums is a little spotty, but it appears that they were substantially lower in most states.) One idea Republicans have about how to care for the sick was also in effect . Many states had “ pools,” where people shut out of the traditional insurance markets could buy special plans with the help of state subsidies. The Freedom Caucus proposal is likely to include some money that states could use to set up such pools. “The fundamental idea is that marginally sick people would pay with risk associated with their coverage,” Mr. Meadows said when the idea was first discussed. “Those that have, you know, premiums that would be driven up because of catastrophic illness or illnesses, we’ve been dealing with that for a long time with pools. ” But insurance in the old pools tended to be expensive, and often came with long waiting periods or benefit limitations, even for the very sick. The main difference between the policy environment in 2009 and today is that the federal government would now be offering tax credits to help healthy people buy what would probably be relatively skimpy plans. That would mean that more Americans would probably have health coverage than before the Affordable Care Act, since the combination of policies would tend to make insurance much more affordable for people who are young and healthy. What states would choose to do with this set of options is hard to predict. Before Obamacare, few states required community rating of health plans. And few states required insurers to cover all of the benefits deemed essential under Obamacare, though most did require a few types of treatments to be covered. State governments would face a difficult choice: either take away the requirements, and leave sick patients without insurance options, or keep them and see people unable to afford coverage under the new subsidy system. Under Obamacare, states can already waive many of the law’s insurance rules if they can show that an alternative program would cover as many people with comprehensive coverage at a lower cost to the government. But that standard is difficult to meet. Mr. Meadows has suggested that the waivers under discussion should be “very easily granted” to states. The language of the amendment requires little proof of effects from the states, and indicates that all applications would be considered presumptively approved after 60 days. The politics of health care in the United States have shifted since the Affordable Care Act was passed seven years ago. In recent months, the law has grown more popular, and the conditions policy is among its protections. That could create political pressure for states to keep the insurance rules, even if they are not required by law. But it is likely that at least some states might decide to eliminate them if they are made optional. Shifting norms about health insurance regulation may also affect the idea’s reception in Congress. The version of the health bill currently under discussion would retain the conditions policy. But that would be true in only the most literal sense. The mix of policies could allow insurance companies to charge sick people prices that few of them could pay. And it could allow them to exclude benefits that many healthy people need when they get sick. The result could be a world where people with conditions would struggle to buy comprehensive health insurance — just like before Obamacare. | 1 |
RIO DE JANEIRO — Ryan Lochte, an Olympic gold medalist in swimming, and three of his United States teammates were held up at gunpoint here early Sunday, according to the United States Olympic Committee, heightening anxiety over violent crime in the host city of the Summer Games. The American swimmers and United States Olympic officials provided few details about what happened, and the state police said they were trying Sunday night to learn more about the episode. Crime was already a top concern before the Rio Games began, as Brazil’s economic crisis deepened, pushing up unemployment and poverty rates. The Rio de Janeiro state government deployed a huge security force, and the streets surrounding the Olympic Park and the athletes’ village sometimes look like a military compound. Nonetheless, crimes have occurred more frequently than at other recent Olympics. On the night of the opening ceremony, the chief of security was mugged at knifepoint. Two coaches for Australia’s rowing team were attacked and robbed in the Ipanema neighborhood, while some Olympians were robbed of belongings in the athletes’ village during a fire drill. Bullets have landed in the equestrian venue, and a bus carrying members of the news media was attacked, its windows shattered. On Sunday, Rio Olympics officials were confronted with the most crime yet. Besides Lochte, the other swimmers robbed, according to a statement from the committee, were Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and Jimmy Feigen. “Their taxi was stopped by individuals posing as armed police officers who demanded the athletes’ money and other personal belongings,” a spokesman for the United States Olympic Committee said. “All four athletes are safe and cooperating with authorities. ” The American swimmers robbed on Sunday had left a party at Club France, a French hospitality house established during the Rio Games in the upscale Lagoa neighborhood, the spokesman said. Hugo Sppezapria, a spokesman for Club France, confirmed that the swimmers had spent several hours at a party there, which began at 11:30 p. m. Saturday and lasted until 5 a. m. The party featured electronic house music, he said, and the group had attended to celebrate another swimmer’s birthday. He said the Americans had left around 3 a. m. Sppezapria distanced the party from the episode, saying that a police car had been stationed outside Club France all night. “It sounds like a rough situation,” he said. “But it didn’t happen here. ” The civil police in the state of Rio said they were investigating. One of the swimmers had spoken with the police, they said, and given a report of the episode. That swimmer, who was not named by the civil police, said he and his teammates were in a taxi when they were stopped and held up. He told the police he did not know precisely where the robbery took place. The civil police said the other swimmers would be asked to provide separate accounts. The police were also trying to track down the taxi driver. Bentz, one of the swimmers who was robbed, declined to comment when reached by The New York Times on Sunday. Lochte initially denied reports of the robbery through Olympic officials. He later told NBC News that one of the men had put a cocked gun to his head. “I think they’re all shaken up,” Ileana Lochte, the swimmer’s mother, told USA Today. “They just took their wallets, and basically that was it. ” Bentz and Conger participated in the heats of the freestyle relay, but not the final. Feigen did the same in the relay. Lochte won a gold medal in the freestyle relay and finished fifth in the individual medley, his only individual event. The swimming competition at the Rio Games had concluded Saturday night. At a news conference on Sunday, another American swimmer, Ryan Murphy, mentioned the security briefings the team had received before the Games. “I think we all trust our security guys, and they’ve done a great job,” he said. A spokesman for U. S. A. Swimming declined at the news conference to specify what instructions those briefings had provided but noted that they had included tips on transportation in Rio. Conflicting accounts of the taxi episode had swirled on Sunday morning, after a spokesman for the International Olympic Committee said that reports of the robbery were “absolutely not true,” citing information that had been provided by the United States committee. After Ileana Lochte’s statements that her son had indeed been robbed, the spokesman for the International Olympic Committee said he had simply passed along information from the American Olympic officials. Ryan Lochte did not respond Sunday to a request for comment. However, in a post on Instagram, he said, “While it is true that my teammates and I were the victims of a robbery early Sunday morning, what is most important is that we are safe and unharmed. ” David Marsh, Ryan Lochte’s coach, referred inquiries to U. S. A. Swimming, which did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Brazil’s minister of sport, Leonardo Picciani, seemed to suggest to reporters on Sunday that the swimmers bore some responsibility for venturing out beyond the heavily fortified Olympics zone. “Security in the Games has been absolutely efficient,” Picciani was quoted as saying by the newspaper Estadão. “The delegations have not had problems. Those who have bought tickets have not had problems. “Certainly no athletes have had problems in their places of accommodation, their training facilities and the athletes’ village. ” | 1 |
Soros Paid Al Gore MILLIONS to Push ‘Aggressive US Action’ on Global Warming Liberal billionaire George Soros gave former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental group millions o... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/soros-paid-al-gore-millions-to-push.html Liberal billionaire George Soros gave former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental group millions of dollars over three years to create a “political space for aggressive U.S. action” on global warming, according to leaked documents. A document published by DC Leaks shows Soros, a Hungarian-born liberal financier, wanted his nonprofit Open Society Institute (OSI) to do more to support global warming policies in the U.S. That included budgeting $10 million in annual support to Gore’s climate group over three years.“U.S. Programs Global Warming Grants U.S. Programs became engaged on the global warming issue about four years ago, at George Soros’s suggestion,” reads a leaked OSI memo.“There has been a budget of $11 million for global warming grants in the U.S. Programs budget for the last several years,” the memo reads. “This budget item captures George Soros’s commitment of $10 million per year for three years to Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, which conducts public education on the climate issue in pursuit of creating political space for aggressive U.S. action in line with what scientists say is necessary to put our nation on a path to reducing its outsize carbon dioxide emissions.”It’s unclear what year the memo was sent, but the Gore co-founded Alliance for Climate Protection (ACP) was established in 2006 and lasted until it became The Climate Reality Project in July 2011. In 2008, the Alliance launched a $300 million campaign to encourage “Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” The Washington Post reported . Global Warming is NOT caused by humans: 10 Prominent Scientists Refuting 'Manmade Global Warming' with Solid Research ACP got $10 million from the Open Society Institute (OSI) in 2008, according to the nonprofit’s tax filings. OSI handed over another $5 million to ACP in 2009, according to tax filings. The investigative reporting group ProPublica keeps a database that has OSI tax returns from 2000 to 2013. TheDCNF could not find other years where OSI gave money to ACP.OSI is primarily a grant-making nonprofit that hands out millions of dollars every year to mostly left-wing causes. Now called the Open Society Foundations, Soros’s nonprofit has handed out more than $13 billion over the last three decades.OSI didn’t only plan to fund Gore’s climate group to promote global warming policies in the U.S., OSI also planned on giving millions of dollars to spur the “youth climate movement.” Greenpeace Founder: Humans Not to Blame for Global Warming “This budget item also allows for the renewal of U.S. Programs’ long-standing support of the Energy Action Coalition, which is the lead organizer of the youth climate movement in the U.S., the memo reads.“We are also including a placeholder for an additional $2 million, pending discussion about and development of OSI’s global warming agenda,” the memo reads. “There is a memo from Nancy Youman in the strategic plans binder that recommends pathways forward for OSI on the climate issue – in the U.S., as well as in other parts of the Open Society Network.” By Michael Bastasch | 0 |
Donald J. Trump and his transition team unveiled an extensive plan to avoid conflicts of interest between his private business empire and his public office at a press conference at Trump Town in Manhattan on Wednesday morning. [The plan was presented by Sheri Dillon, a tax attorney at the Morgan, Lewis and Bockius firm. The goal of the plan, she said, was to ensure that Americans could “rest assured that all of [Trump’s] efforts are directed to pursuing the people’s business and not his own. ” She said that Trump’s business empire was “not dissimilar to the fortunes of Nelson Rockefeller when he became Vice President — but at that time, no one was so concerned. ” While Trump would not divest himself entirely of his assets — a process, Dillon argued, that would itself involve conflicts of interest because of the people buying his assets or lending the money for their purchase — he had directed the attorneys at the firm to create a structure that would “completely isolate him from the management of the company. ” She pointed out that Trump’s plan was voluntary, since laws governing conflicts of interest did not apply to the president or vice president, but he wanted to avoid even an appearance of impropriety. The plan involves several major elements, the first of which is Trump’s decision to place all of his business assets, liquid and illiquid, in a trust by the time he is sworn in Jan. 20, and to hand control of the family business to his sons, Eric and Donald, Jr. along with Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg. Trump himself would resign from all his posts in the family business, and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, would also resign from, and have “no further involvement with,” the Trump Organization, due to her husband, Jared Kushner, taking an advisory role in the White House. Furthermore, the management of the new family business entity, Dillon explained, would appoint an Ethics Advisor, whose written approval would be required for any dealing “that could potentially raise ethics or conflicts of interest concerns. ” The Trump Organization had also created the position of “Chief Compliance Counsel” to oversee conformity with ethics rules. Dillon also revealed that Trump had ordered that all of his pending business deals terminated, resulting in millions of dollars in losses. She added: “No new foreign deals will be made whatsoever during the duration of President Trump’s presidency. New domestic deals will be allowed, but they will go through a vigorous vetting process. ” Trump would not have any role in such deals, but would only learn about them through the media like everyone else, in order to avoid the appearance of any conflicts of interest. The Trump Organization would only report profits and losses to Trump, not particular business details. She also argued that creating a blind trust would have been ineffective, since Trump knows what his “iconic assets” are, and that turning the Trump Organization into a company would have been too lengthy and cumbersome to work. In answer to critics who argued that foreign payments to Trump’s businesses — such as hotel bills paid by overseas guests — violated the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, Dillon pointed out that the courts had never interpreted that clause to apply to fair market value exchanged for goods or services. Nevertheless, she said, Trump had arranged that any profits from foreign customers of the Trump hotel chain would be donated to the U. S. Treasury to prevent appearances of foreign influence. Critics might observe that all of the arrangements above are voluntary — that is, the chain of accountability is entirely within the Trump Organization. However, Dillon would likely argue Trump’s commitments exceed what is required under the law. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
President Donald Trump responded swiftly to Thursday’s ruling by the Ninth Circuit upholding a temporary restraining order against his executive order restricting travel from countries: “SEE YOU IN COURT. ”[Experts, like Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, suggest Trump should rescind the first order and issue a new one. If the original order were indeed a matter of pressing national security — which the Ninth Circuit doubted — that would reinforce the point. According to that logic, there might only be two reasons for Trump to persist in appealing the Ninth Circuit ruling to the Supreme Court. One is that the Ninth Circuit ruling is so bad — it makes no reference to the underlying statute, and would give even a hijacker the right to sue to come to the U. S. — that it deserves to be publicly rejected. However, it is not going to be persuasive to other courts, and would likely be overturned or limited to the facts of this particular case, eventually. The other reason for Trump to go to the Supreme Court is that he has said publicly said he would do so. He would lose some credibility, and perhaps suffer some embarrassment, were he to withdraw. Yet ego alone should not trump national security. But the reality is that Trump actually has no choice: he has to go to the Supreme Court, because the left would likely sue to stop any executive order he issued on the subject. Given the left’s determination to oppose anything and everything he does — even blocking new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos from visiting a school on Friday — it is a safe bet that they would simply sue in a Ninth Circuit court again, and Trump would likely be forced to appeal to the Supreme Court in any case. So even if there is an extremely urgent national security threat, Trump might have to wait months, even to improve on the first order. And so it is ugly to say, but is likely true, that the courts may have increased the threat of terror to our country. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
The Drought That Was Prophesied To Hit The Southern United States Is Now Here 15th, 2016
A record-setting drought has gripped the southern United States, but most people have no idea that this drought is the fulfillment of a prophecy that was given four years ago. Back in 2008, John Paul Jackson released a DVD entitled “ The Perfect Storm ” in which he detailed many of the prophetic events that God showed him would soon come to America. In 2012, he released a video update to “The Perfect Storm” that you can view on YouTube right here . In that update, he shared a list of future headlines that God had revealed to him over the years. Some of these headlines have already happened since that time, and now we are watching another be fulfilled right in front of our eyes.
Specifically, I am referring to this headline: “Record High Temps Accompany Record Drought Swept South” .
In an article entitled “ July’s Extreme Heat Breaks Records Across South “, weather.com detailed many of the high temperature records that have been broken in the South in recent months, but in this article I am going to focus on the crippling drought that is plaguing the region.
In addition to the headline above, John Paul Jackson was shown several other headlines regarding drought and famine coming to America…
“Drought Continues to Cause Prayer to Rise”
“Demand for Classic Seeds Skyrockets”
“Food Prices Lead Nation’s Escalating Inflation Woes”
“Sysco and Kraft Consider Guards on Delivery Trucks as Food Nears 40% of the Family Budget”
And of course John Paul Jackson is not the only one that has been shown that these things are coming to this nation.
The following is a very small portion of what Terry Bennett was shown in April 2011 …
I was also warned, by the appearing of the black horse and its rider, about famine. The angel said, “There will be a famine of food in your nation!” Not only this, but also the prices of food, particularly grains, will dramatically rise. We will see not only shortages and high prices, but I was shown significant starvation occurring during this time. Death followed this black horse!
Dr. Patricia Green correctly prophesied the election victories of Barack Obama and Donald Trump in advance, and she was also shown that famine is going to hit America …
“I’m instructing my children to begin to fill up their storehouses before the famine strikes just as I instructed Joseph while he was in Egypt.”
With those prophecies in mind, it is extremely alarming to see what is happening all across the southern portion of the United States right now. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor , most of the southern half of the country is experiencing some level of drought at this moment…
The drought in California has been raging for quite some time, but what has surprised the experts is how dry it has been in the Southeast lately. The following is from an EcoWatch article entitled “ Record-Breaking Drought and Wildfires Plague Southeast “…
The atmospheric spigots have been turned off across most of the U.S. over the last several weeks. According to the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor report from Nov. 10, more than 27 percent of the contiguous U.S. has been enveloped by at least moderate drought (categories D1 through D4). This is the largest percentage value in more than a year, since late October 2015 .
The upward trend of the last month is worrisome given the outlook for the coming winter: Drier-than-average conditions are projected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration across the southern half of the contiguous U.S., a frequent outcome during La Niña winters.
To say that the drought in the Southeast is severe would be a tremendous understatement. At this point, some cities in the Southeast haven’t seen any measurable rain in about 50 days …
No measurable rain (at least .01 inches) has been tallied at Birmingham’s Shuttlesworth International Airport since Sept. 18, approaching a two-month-long dry streak, topping their previous longest dry streak on record – 52 straight days – from fall 1924.
Nine minutes of sprinkles Nov. 4 and another bout of sprinkles on Oct. 16 has been the entirety of Birmingham’s rainfall so far this fall.
Anniston, Alabama, and Rome, Georgia, have dry streaks now approaching 50 days.
And unfortunately, it appears that there is not going to be any substantial rain for the region any time soon …
There are no signs of any significant rainfall through the end of the month across the Southeast, AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Henry Margusity said.
The region needs days and weeks of a steady, soaking rain to completely eliminate the drought.
“Things will only get worse before they get better,” Margusity explained.
Whenever conditions are this dry, it is inevitable that there will be wildfires.
Right now more than 100 major wildfires are raging across the Southeast, and some of the worst are in the mountains of North Carolina.
As you read this article, more than 1,000 firefighters are battling dozens of large wildfires in the North Carolina mountains. Governor Pat McCrory is referring to these fires as “ California wildfires in North Carolina “, and he is not exaggerating one bit.
If what we are witnessing is truly the beginning of the fulfillment of what God showed John Paul Jackson, Terry Bennett and Patricia Green, then we should expect drought conditions to continue to intensify in the months ahead.
And as you can see above, they are saying that things will eventually get so bad that famine will strike America.
Most of us couldn’t imagine something like that ever happening in this nation. But these are men and women of God with very long track records. As I noted above, Dr. Patricia Green correctly prophesied the election victories by Barack Obama and Donald Trump in advance, and John Paul Jackson has a track record of correctly fulfilled prophecies that is exceedingly long.
As I end this article, I also want to remind everyone of what God showed Heidi Baker regarding the future of America not too long ago …
I saw bread lines, soup kitchens, and I saw people wearing beautiful clothing. Their clothing was not worn out. Now in my nation when people are hungry you can tell. I mean they are in shredded rags. They don’t have shoes or they have flip flops. Most of them [have] no shoes. They are hungry and they know they are hungry. They come for food, not because they are beggars, but because they are hungry.
These days a lot of Americans have become complacent and are feeling pretty good about things.
But the events that are warned about in this article are coming, and I would encourage everyone to get prepared while they still can. | 0 |
Wednesday 9 November 2016 by Davywavy Obi-Wan Kenobi reports great disturbance in the force
Obi-Wan Kenobi has reported a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
The wise old man felt the disturbance whilst chatting to his young apprentice and felt a sudden need for a sit down, muttering ‘something terrible has happened’.
Jedi Master Kenobi, who fought with Bail Organa in the Clone Wars, is currently uncertain of the cause of the disturbance but suggests some sort of planet-busting doomsday event may have occurred.
“I’m hoping it’s just a giant space-laser obliterating an entire civilisation; that’s probably the least-worst possible cause,” he confirmed.
“Failing that, it’s likely something dark side-y. Some kinda of colossal use of the mind trick, maybe?
“Something something dark side something,” he added.
Upon investigation, it turns out that’s no moon, it’s Donald Trump’s bald patch. Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently | 0 |
Joe McKnight, who played three seasons for the Jets and was a standout at the University of Southern California, was fatally shot in Louisiana on Thursday in a possible episode of road rage, the authorities said. McKnight, 28, was shot “multiple times,” Col. John N. Fortunato, a spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, said in an interview. The shooting occurred around 2:45 p. m. at Behrman Highway and Holmes Boulevard in Terrytown, La. about five miles southeast of New Orleans, the office said in a statement. McKnight was pronounced dead at the scene. A suspect, Ronald Gasser, 54, was taken into custody at the scene and was being questioned by detectives, the sheriff’s office said. The events leading up to the shooting were not immediately clear but the office said it may be related to “a possible road rage incident. ” The Jets, for whom McKnight played from 2010 to 2012, wrote on Twitter: “Rest in peace, Joe McKnight. Our thoughts and condolences are with his loved ones. ” Others also reacted on Twitter: McKnight arrived at Southern California as one of the more promising recruits in the nation, eliciting comparisons to the former Trojans star Reggie Bush, but his production never matched the hype. The Jets, seduced by his speed and versatility, traded up to select him in the fourth round of the 2010 draft. McKnight had trouble cracking the Jets’ running back rotation but revealed value as a returner, running back kickoffs for touchdowns in 2011 and 2012, his final full season with the team. He spent three seasons with the team, starting once in 39 games and gaining 505 yards rushing and 177 receiving. In 2011, his 31. 6 yards per kickoff return led the N. F. L. and his touchdown in Baltimore remains the longest play in team history. The end of his tenure with the Jets was defined by turbulence: a failed conditioning test, an arrest on traffic warrants and a concussion. The team released him among their final cuts in August 2013, and McKnight played only two more games in the N. F. L. both with Kansas City in 2014. McKnight continued his career in the Canadian Football League, where he started in February and played with the Edmonton Eskimos and, most recently, the Saskatchewan Roughriders. | 1 |
A recent psychological study concluded that moral outrage is sometimes a symptom of personal guilt rather than genuine empathy for the situation of others. [The study, which was conducted by Bowdoin psychology Professor Zachary Rothschild and University of Southern Mississippi psychology Professor Lucas A. Keefer, concludes that the research on guilt suggests that moral outrage over issues is sometimes . According to the study: Feelings of guilt are a direct threat to one’s sense that they are a moral person and, accordingly, research on guilt finds that this emotion elicits strategies aimed at alleviating guilt that do not always involve undoing one’s actions. Furthermore, research shows that individuals respond to reminders of their group’s moral culpability with feelings of outrage at . These findings suggest that feelings of moral outrage, long thought to be grounded solely in concerns with maintaining justice, may sometimes reflect efforts to maintain a moral identity. Rothschild and Keefer conducted an experiment in which they assessed the relationship of various emotions. The first portion of their research concluded that the level of a subject’s personal guilt uniquely predicted that individual’s level of moral outrage in response to a controversial stimulus. “Study 1 showed that personal guilt uniquely predicted moral outrage at corporate and support for retributive punishment,” the research concludes. Based on their findings, the study’s authors argue that “outrage driven by moral identity concerns serves to compensate for the threat of personal or collective immorality. ” According to the research’s abstract, one of the several studies conducted by Rothschild and Keefer concluded that outrage is often driven by a desire to affirm a certain moral identity in an unrelated societal context: “Study 5 showed that outrage was attenuated by an affirmation of moral identity in an unrelated context. ” Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about education and social justice for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 1 |
An Australian Islamic group wants “safe spaces” provided for young Muslims to discuss “inflammatory” issues away from broader public scrutiny. [In a submission to an Australian parliamentary inquiry into freedom of religion, the Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV) said such forums enabled opinions to be “respectfully and intelligently debated and challenged” while also helping to combat alleged “mental health” problems in the young Muslim community in the State of Victoria. The ICV claimed “Muslim Victorians experience religious intolerance in the form of Islamophobia, racial abuse and breaches of our universal human rights. ” The alleged inability of Muslim adherents to safely practice their religion without feeling subject to surveillance is a “human rights issue,” according to the ICV. The call comes just days after Somali refugee Yacub Khayre took a hostage, killed a man, and wounded three police officers in Melbourne. The terrorist explicitly dedicated the attack to the Islamic State and while Islamic State swiftly claimed him as a “soldier” of the caliphate. ICV spokesman Adel Salman said they did not consider the “safe space” proposal controversial, because it is a practice he claimed — without providing evidence — is already used with young people in other countries. “This is about good practice because the youth require an avenue to express their views in a safe environment … where they feel their views are valued, where they can be respectfully challenged and counter views presented,” Mr. Salman said. He said such spaces would be “conducted with experts who are familiar with the methodology, and understand the way the conversation can be guided”. Victoria State Premier Daniel Andrews ruled out any possibility of funding such an initiative. “I am very troubled by the suggestion that we might have a space where people could be radical as part of a programme. That makes no sense to me whatsoever”. | 1 |
PARIS — On Saturday, the New York City Ballet will wrap up a season at Théâtre du Châtelet here, the company’s longest international tour to one city since 1976. City Ballet was presented by Les Etés de la Danse, an annual summer festival that brings dance companies — often American ones — to the French capital. “I spent a lot of time here with Balanchine, listening to him talk about his experiences in Paris,” said Peter Martins, the company’s ballet master in chief, referring to George Balanchine, the of City Ballet, whose groundbreaking choreography forms the backbone of the company’s repertory. “Balanchine didn’t get good reviews here they liked Jerry Robbins, and Balanchine knew that,” Mr. Martins added. “So our first week was all Balanchine because I wanted to say, this choreographer is not only arguably the greatest choreographer in history, but our choreographer. ” The logistics are impressive: 150 people came from New York, including 94 dancers an additional 60 board members and patrons came for the opening and a gala dinner. Four sea freight containers were sent, containing costumes, scenery, props, lighting booms, physical therapy equipment, orchestra music and stage management supplies. (These include floor tape, tissues, ammonia, mops, Sharpies, bandages and Altoids.) Houses have been full, critics have been fulsome, and audiences rapturously appreciative. Meanwhile, the dancers have been enjoying Parisian life, sightseeing on their days off, hanging out in cafes and occasionally proposing marriage. Here are some snapshots of City Ballet in Paris, and edited excerpts from conversations with the dancers. Justin Peck, a soloist with City Ballet as well as its resident choreographer, came to Paris a month earlier than his colleagues to work with the Paris Opera Ballet. His “Entre Chien et Loup” for Paris Opera has been running at the same time as the City Ballet season. “It’s my first experience working in Europe, and it has been so nice to be living here and not feel so much like a tourist,” Mr. Peck said over a coffee on Monday. “I stayed in the Marais, which was great because I could walk to work every day. Sometimes I did class with the Paris Opera Ballet, other times I’d warm up by myself and listen to my music to get into the right head space. “Basically in any off time, I’ve tried to eat my way through Paris. I’d go with [the choreographer] Bill Forsythe, who was also working at the Opera, to this great French place near the Palais Garnier, and I have a favorite new wave place. ” He added: “The Picasso and Rodin museums are my favorites, but it’s crazy, because I’ve been here for so long, and I keep thinking I’m going to get to things. Now it’s the last week, and there is so much I still haven’t done. ” Dancing at Châtelet was a homecoming for Robert Fairchild, a City Ballet principal who starred in Christopher Wheeldon’s production of “An American in Paris,” which appeared at the Châtelet in 2014 before opening on Broadway in April 2015. “The first day, after class, we ran over to the stage, and I got the chills seeing that house again,” said Mr. Fairchild, who left the show in March. “But I’ve tried not to compare the experiences. One was making a Broadway show here we were in the theater all day long, and you only went out to get a sandwich. This time has been more about living here and doing things in Paris. It’s nice to be here with Tiler [Peck, Mr. Fairchild’s wife, also a City Ballet principal]. We also went back to a lovely restaurant at the top of the Musée du Quai Branly, because after I proposed we had gone there for dinner, but we were so tired that we were falling asleep at the table. It was good to go back there and be awake this time!” “I feel almost Parisian by now!” Ms Hyltin said after company class on Monday. “I’m on the Metro, I know where I’m going, I’m practically a local. I go for lunch every day to one place, because I love their . This one is so big that I keep a third of it to eat just before the show. ” Ms. Hyltin said that the rehearsal schedule was as intensive as it is in New York, partly because the company is preparing for its annual summer season in Saratoga Springs, immediately after the Paris tour. She has performed almost every night, but has made the most of company days off. “I’ve been up the Eiffel Tower to the Musée d’Orsay the Rodin museum a great architectural museum, Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine and to twice,” she said, adding that she loved the Rodin especially, “looking at the musculature and elegance of those sculptures. It really hit me how rich the culture is here everywhere you look there is history. ” Mr. Martins doesn’t teach company class every day, but when he does, there is always a turnout of dancers, and on Tuesday morning, almost 90 bodies were crammed into the studio space at Théâtre de la Ville, where the dancers do their daily class and rehearse. (It’s across the plaza from Châtelet.) Mr. Martins gives instructions, indicating steps by motioning silently with his hands the dancers seem to pick it up by osmosis or telepathy. Unusual rhythmic accents and quick differences in dynamics (from fast to slow, sharp to soft) give some clues about why the City Ballet style is so specific to this company. The dancers worked with concentration, finishing with a partnering sequence. “I notice how hard you work,” Mr. Martins told a corps de ballet dancer after the class. “I always notice. ” Silas Farley, a corps de ballet dancer, proposed to Cassia Wilson, a dancer with Ballet Austin, on Sunday. (She accepted.) On Monday, Mr. Farley recounted the story. “Cassia’s favorite movie is ‘Funny Face,’ and her sister suggested that I propose at the Château de la Reine Blanche, which is in it. I didn’t tell her where we were going, and we took the train out there. It was picture perfect, sunny, blue sky, blue lake, swans. We had lunch there, and at one point I told our waiter, I’m going to propose, please take my phone and video it. Then I got down on one knee in front of the chateau and asked Cassia to marry me. The waiter got it perfectly he turned out to be a wedding photographer in his spare time!” Indiana Woodward, a corps dancer, is half French and came to Paris to stay with her father during every school break while growing up. She said she had always dreamed of performing with City Ballet for her French family. “My face hurt from smiling after the first show I danced here,” she said. “And I’m staying at home, in my room!” Ms. Woodward said she had taken her City Ballet friends to all her top Paris spots — the Jardin du Luxembourg, a small park at the top of Montmartre, the banks of Seine — and handed out “a giant list of vintage shops. ” Paris, she added, feels more relaxed than New York. “People sit around having a coffee. You take that for granted when you are here. ” Craig Hall, a soloist, is retiring this season and performing some of his last shows in Paris, although he will remain with the company as a ballet master. “It’s a really great way to end off,” he said, as he, Lauren Lovette and Brittany Pollack set off for the Île in search of the famed Berthillon ice cream. Ms. Lovette, a principal, said that she had visited the Normandy war memorial on an off day, and had been very moved at the sight of thousands of graves. “It’s part of our history too,” she added. She had a more upbeat excursion to the Champagne region to visit Ruinart, which supplies the bubbly stuff to City Ballet. “They gave us an amazing vintage Champagne to try, then more over lunch,” she said. “Probably not so wise of us, but we figured, we’re in France!” | 1 |
LAGOS, Nigeria — One of the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram more than two years ago during a mass abduction at a school in Nigeria has been found, community leaders in the area said on Wednesday. The girl, Amina Ali, was wandering in the forest when members of a vigilante group lying in wait to ambush a Boko Haram camp came across her, said Aboku Gaji, a local vigilante commander. The kidnapping of nearly 300 girls during exam time at their boarding school in the Nigerian town of Chibok shocked the world and helped galvanize pressure on the government to fight Boko Haram, an Islamist militant group that has terrorized parts of northern Nigeria for years. Some girls managed to escape shortly after the fighters stormed their school and hauled their classmates away. But Ms. Ali is the first girl to be found since the early days of the episode. More than 200 girls who were taken from the school on April 14, 2014, are still missing. The mass abduction was one of the most notorious acts by a group that has rampaged through the north of Nigeria, burning entire villages and carrying out rapes, beheadings, lootings and other acts of violence. The inability to find and rescue the girls has been a political embarrassment for President Muhammadu Buhari and for the Nigerian military, which has made recent gains in fighting Boko Haram and releasing entire towns from its control. Mr. Buhari planned to meet with Ms. Ali in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, on Thursday. A military spokesman on Wednesday said that one of the Chibok girls was among a group of people rescued by troops, claiming credit for the recovery. According to the vigilante commander, Ms. Ali was with a baby and a man described as her husband. The commander said that the husband had been captured by militants as well, and that the two married while being held by Boko Haram. The couple apparently escaped the militants’ camp. But in a news release late Wednesday, the military said the man was in fact a suspected Boko Haram terrorist who claimed to be the girl’s husband. The release described Ms. Ali as a nursing mother with a baby, a girl named Safiya. Members of the vigilante group took Ms. Ali to Chibok, where her mother saw her and confirmed her identity, Mr. Aboku said. Other members of the community of Chibok also confirmed that Ms. Ali had been found. She told her family that the other girls from Chibok were still in the forest but that six of them had died. Ms. Ali was in the custody of the Nigerian military in the town of Damboa, according to Mr. Aboku. Hassan Usman, a Chibok resident whose niece is among the abducted schoolgirls, said he had seen the rescued girl arrive in Chibok in a car driven by local vigilante members from the neighboring town of Mbalala, where her family lives. The vigilantes took Ms. Ali to the marketplace in the town’s center, the same place a suicide bombing took place earlier this year. “She was so happy to see her people,” Mr. Usman said. “People were so happy, so happy that, yes, there is hope these girls are alive. And once the government puts more effort, we will see some of them. ” Some local residents who saw her started crying. Holding her baby, Ms. Ali talked with residents for about a telling them she had been held in a village in the Sambisa Forest along with about 60 other female captives. Some of them were her classmates from Chibok others were from other communities. American officials have said that clusters of the schoolgirls have been located at times using a combination of local intelligence gathering, intercepted communications and drone footage. But rescue operations have not been carried out, the officials said, because of fears that any ensuing battle with Boko Haram fighters would put the captives at risk, or incite retaliation against hostages still being held in other areas. Mr. Usman said the rescued girl had described how Boko Haram tried to shield the hostages from aerial surveillance. “Anytime they sighted a fighter jet or any helicopter or military aircraft, they hide them under the ground so that it will prevent the military from seeing,” she told villagers, Mr. Usman said. Ms. Ali was able to escape because the military began bombing the forest and the militants scattered, leaving her unguarded. Nigeria’s military this month launched a push into Sambisa called “Operation Sambisa Crackdown. ” Ms. Ali was in the custody of the Nigerian military and being taken to Maiduguri for questioning, according to the military. | 1 |
Even the Democrats don’t trust Hillary. The stats are amazing and it goes to show that this election is not even close. The details are in the following video.
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One Twitter user once asked me, “Is it too much to hope that *one* of our parties would pick someone with no links to a pedophile sex-slave island?”
Apparently, it is too much to ask for.
Both presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton have ties to convicted pedophile and Democratic donor, billionaire Jeffery Epstein and “Sex Slave Island.”
Note: President Bill Clinton is not merely the husband of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, either. Bill is currently campaigning for his wife, plus Hillary recently unveiled that Bill with be in charge of “ revitalizing the economy ” if she were to take office.
It has been uncovered that Clinton, known for his trouble-making libido, has even stronger ties to Epstein than previously reported. As noted by The Free Beacon , “Clinton was aboard the infamous Lolita Express owned by a billionaire pedophile at least 26 times,” not the initially reported 11 times.
Fox News reports :
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…Official flight logs filed with the Federal Aviation Administration show Clinton traveled on some of the trips with as many as 10 U.S. Secret Service agents. However, on a five-leg Asia trip between May 22 and May 25, 2002, not a single Secret Service agent is listed.
The Republican presumptive nominee apparently got in on the action, too. Trump’s ties to Epstein — a man Trump once called a “terrific guy” — and Sex Slave Island have been chronicled by The Daily Wire here .
Per The Political Insider, Trump is accused of threatening and raping a 13-year-old girl on the private island . Epstein is also named in the suit for sexual misconduct. The lawsuit accusations have been vehemently denied by the Trump camp, alleging that the filing is a “hoax” and that there is “no evidence” that the plaintiff in question “actually exists.”
Sex Slave Island, sometimes referred to as “Orgy Island,” (both lovely names), is one deranged place, allegedly rife with solicited sex, often from minors “ groomed ” by Epstein.
“Terrific guy” Epstein, of course, was convicted for soliciting sex from a minor in 2008; the billionaire served 13 months in prison.
Election 2016: Where both candidates have ties to a convicted pedophile, the Lolita Express and Sex Slave Island. | 0 |
Anunnaki - Man and the family gods # Timotei Simon 38
Anunnaki, Sumerian, but also the ancient Egyptian gods were earthly creators of modern Homo sapiens sapiens, which, according to Sitchin dating coincides with archaeological finds in geological layers dating. Sudden appearance of advanced human remains about 450,000 pr. n. l. and other branches of the disappearance of primitive apes with which scientists so long wondered just be explained by genetic modification Anunnaki transferred. Of course, when for the first time colonized by Celestial Battle Marduk and Tiamat, the Sumerian Epic of Creation, led by Enki and Enlil the earth, they not hit on uninhabited planets. Many Asian, Tibetan, and one based on ancient sources state even before modern man other races who inhabited the antediluvian empire, being more like ethereal beings to higher levels than the people incarnated in the gross fixed box. Tags | 0 |
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Russia signed a agreement on Friday to greatly enlarge its military presence in Syria, more than doubling the space for warships in Russia’s only Mediterranean port and securing rights to an air base that may already be adding a second runway. The agreement covers the port in Tartus and an air base near Latakia, which have been pivotal in Russian assistance to President Bashar of Syria in fighting an array of insurgents. It ensures Russia’s ability to deploy forces in Syria for the next and perhaps beyond. News of the agreement came as Mr. Assad received what appeared to be another positive development: A Turkish official suggested publicly for the first time that Turkey would accept a peace deal in Syria’s war that would allow Mr. Assad to stay in power. The remarks by the official, Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, indicated that Turkey — Syria’s northern neighbor and one of Mr. Assad’s most implacable foes — had softened its position in the interest of finding a solution. While Turkey’s government later said that Mr. Simsek’s remarks had been misconstrued, it was clear that he had said a settlement without Mr. Assad would be “not, you know, realistic. ” Both developments came as Russia, Turkey and Iran prepared to convene Syrian peace talks in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, on Monday. For the first time, it looked likely that the main Syrian opposition, along with many other factions, would sit down with Mr. Assad’s government for peace talks. The last effort at such negotiations was held by the United Nations in Geneva in February, and it collapsed in days. The new Russian military agreement with Syria provides for an expansion of Russia’s Tartus naval base on the Syrian coast under a lease that could automatically renew for a further 25 years, according to Tass, the Russian news agency. Tass said the expansion would provide simultaneous berthing for up to 11 warships, including vessels, more than doubling its present known capacity there. Tass reported that the agreement also provided for a similar commitment for the Russians to use the Khmeimim Air Base in the Latakia area, which the Russians built in 2015 as they mobilized to help Mr. Assad’s forces. There were news reports that the Russians were building a second runway at the air base. The military agreement came despite Russia’s announcement this month that it was drawing down its forces in Syria after successes by the Assad government against Syrian rebels, which were achieved with much help from the Russians. The rebels were ousted from their strongholds in Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, late last year, partly because of Russian air support. The agreement came as momentum grew among dissidents to join the peace talks in Astana, although it was a foregone conclusion that any deal from those negotiations would be rejected by jihadists. At least 14 rebel factions are participating. At the Turkish government’s insistence, however, Kurdish groups fighting the Islamic State in the east of the country and backed by the United States were not invited. Turkey’s government has accused those Kurdish groups of affiliations with militant Kurdish separatists in Turkey. Mr. Simsek’s remarks were made at a World Economic Forum session titled “Syria and Iraq: Ending the Conflict. ” He suggested that Turkey would accept continued rule by Mr. Assad. “As far as our position on Assad is concerned,” Mr. Simsek said, “we think that the suffering of the Syrian people and the tragedies, clearly the blame is squarely on Assad. ” “But we have to be pragmatic, realistic,” he said. “The facts on the ground have changed dramatically, and so Turkey can no longer insist on, you know, a settlement without Assad, and it’s not, you know, realistic. We just have to work with what we have. ” Hours later, Mr. Simsek’s office in Ankara issued a statement saying news accounts had distorted Mr. Simsek’s remarks and “tried to create the perception that our deputy P. M. said, ‘Turkey cannot insist anymore on an agreement without Assad. ’” But a review of the videotape of the session left no doubt that that was what he had said. The Astana talks are the outcome of a throughout Syria that began at the end of December. It has been widely observed except in areas where extreme jihadist factions prevail — but with many accusations of breaches elsewhere as well. “The priority for us is to put an end to human tragedy, human suffering in Syria and Iraq,” Mr. Simsek said in Davos. “The process is to make sure we translate the current lull into a more lasting and then talk about more mundane stuff of settling the conflict. ” Russia is the lead host of the talks in the Kazakh capital, with support from Turkey and Iran. Over the last week, Turkey and Russia have also invited the United States and the United Nations to attend the Astana negotiations. | 1 |
. Surgeons Admit That Mammography is Outdated and Harmful to Women Every year, millions of women flock to their doctors to get their annual mammograms, a breast cancer... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/10/surgeons-admit-that-mammography-is.html Every year, millions of women flock to their doctors to get their annual mammograms, a breast cancer screening procedure that involves pressing a woman's breasts between two metal platforms to scope out tumors. But surgeons everywhere are starting to question the controversial practice , which studies show isn't even an effective screening tool, and is actually harmful to the bodies of women who receive it. The public is told that mammograms are the only way to catch breast cancer early, but a review of eight scientific trials evaluating the procedure, found that mammography is neither effective nor safe. After looking at data on more than 600,000 women between the ages of 39 and 74 who underwent the procedure on a routine basis, researchers found that many women are misdiagnosed. Many of these same women are consequently mistreated with chemotherapy , resulting in their rapid demise.As published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, the review concluded that mammography causes more harm than good, because many more women end up being misdiagnosed and mistreated than those actually avoiding the development of terminal breast cancer. Thus, the procedure known as mammography is an outdated scourge that belongs in the history books of failed medical treatments, and not at the forefront of women's medicine. "If we assume that screening reduces breast cancer mortality by 15% and that overdiagnosis and overtreatment is at 30%, it means that for every 2000 women invited for screening throughout 10 years, one will avoid dying of breast cancer and 10 healthy women, who would not have been diagnosed if there had not been screening, will be treated unnecessarily," the authors concluded. Read: Largest & Longest Study on Mammograms Again Finds No Benefit Group of top medical experts admits mammography does more harm than good One year after this review was published, a second one published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) came to a similar conclusion. A team of medical professionals that included a medical ethicist, a clinical epidemiologist, a pharmacologist, an oncologic surgeon, a nurse scientist, a lawyer and a health economist, decided that the medical industry's claims about the benefits of mammography are essentially bunk. They found that for every 1,000 women screened in the U.S. over a 10-year annual screening period beginning at age 50, one breast cancer death would be prevented, while a shocking 490 to 670 women would have a false positive, while 70 to 100 would undergo an unnecessary biopsy. Between three and 14 of these women, the study found, would also be over-diagnosed for a non-malignant form of cancer that never even would have become "clinically apparent." This study out of Switzerland corroborates another out of Canada – the 2014 Canadian National Breast Screening Study – which concluded in lockstep with the others that mammography screenings do not reduce mortality rates from breast cancer any better than a simple physical examination. In other words, the procedure is completely unnecessary, and in many cases exceptionally harmful. NCI Shocking Admission: Tens of Millions of 'Cancer Cases' Aren't Cancer at All And on and on the list goes, with data out of Norway and elsewhere confirming that mammography isn't all that it's cracked up to be. U.S. data spanning the course of nearly 40 years shows that more women are over — or misdiagnosed with breast cancer because of mammograms than are successfully early-diagnosed with breast cancer in such a way as to protect against metastasization. This represents an exceptionally poor track record that calls into question why mammography continues to be used when it clearly doesn't work. "I believe that if you did have a tumor, the last thing you would want to do is crush that tumor between two plates, because that would spread it," says general practitioner Dr. Sarah Mybill, as quoted in the documentary film The Promise. Source and references: Naturalnews.com ; NaturalBlaze.com ; NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov ; NEJM.org ; Collective-Evolution.com Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue.
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On Monday, Oct. 24, 2016, the United States (U.S.) Register of Copyrights at the Library of Congress, Maria Pallante, resigned suddenly. Pallante’s letter of resignation, leaked to “The Hollywood Reporter,” came after the newly appointed Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, announced that Pallante had been moved to another position, senior advisor for digital strategy. At this same time, Hayden confirmed that Karyn Temple Claggett will act as Register of Copyrights. The Register of Copyright has not been dismissed in 119 years.
Pallante, the former U.S. Register of Copyrights at the Library of Congress, claims that she resigned suddenly because she was locked out of her computer on Monday after being demoted. The Register provides expert advice to Congress on matters concerning intellectual property. In the past, Pallante has been critical of some of the big Silicon Valley companies, such as Google, who have pushed for more lenient laws related to copyrights to music and video. This connection between Hayden’s past as an advocate for antitrust laws and the demotion of Pallante leads some to question the value of intellectual property in Washington.
There are two recommendations Pallante has made to Congress that may have set her in direct opposition to Google. The first of these came in January 2016, when Pallante warned Congress that a new method of licensing music called “100 percent licensing” would be devastating for songwriters who wish to retain control over their product. The licensing scheme was proposed by Renata Hesse, a former Google antitrust attorney who has become Acting Attorney General for antitrust cases at the Department of Justice. Essentially, the rule would allow anyone with partial ownership of a song, whether it is 2 percent or 99 percent, to sell the rights to that song to a user, such as Pandora. The U.S. Copyright Office heeded Pallante’s warning and stood against the implementation of the rule.
A second piece of advice Pallente offered, that could have frustrated Google, relates to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) desire to update CableCARD. CableCARD is a Personal Computer (PC) card device that allows consumers to watch shows digitally on their PCs, with a newer system. The industry offered an app-based solution but apparently FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler opposed this plan in favor of a plan proposed by an organization called Public Knowledge who is reportedly funded by Google. The problem, as Pallante explains, was this:
Rather than being passive conduits. . . it seems that a broad array of the third-party devices and services would be enabled by the Proposed Rule and would essentially be given access to a valuable bundle of copyright works, and could repackage and retransmit those works for profit.
When an U.S. Register of Copyrights at the Library of Congress suddenly resigns after being locked out of her computer, questions will be asked. Librarian of Congress Hayden was only appointed to her position in mid-September by President Obama and she is wasting no time in making changes. The exact reason for moving Pallante to a new position has not been disclosed. Hayden did say on Monday in her announcement that Karyn, the new Register, “is a skilled intellectual property lawyer and manager, and I am confident she will provide excellent leadership for the Copyright Office in the interim.”
By Joel Wickwire
(Edited by Leigh Haugh)
Sources:
Billboard –100 Percent Licensing: U.S. Copyright Office Argues New Proposal Threatens Song Owners’ Rights
Fortune –U.S. Copyright Office Is in Turmoil Amid a Firing and Lobbying Controversy
IP Pro –Library of Congress Appoints Register of Copyrights
The Hollywood Reporter –Maria Pallante’s Departure From the Copyright Office: What It Meant and Why It Matters
The Register –Murder in the Library of Congress
The Register –FCC Death Vote Looms for the Golden Age of American TV
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Every week or so during the spring, I met with Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, at the party headquarters on Capitol Hill. We fell into a familiar routine. I would enter his office, usually chaperoned by Sean Spicer, the R. N. C. ’s chief strategist and head of communications. Priebus has a healthy appreciation for gallows humor, which is not a bad thing for an R. N. C. chairman these days. “I haven’t started pouring Baileys in my cereal yet,” he says often enough that it has become a signature line. I would regularly break the ice with something sarcastic, like asking Priebus how his party’s Hispanic outreach program was going on the morning after the committee’s head of Hispanic outreach resigned rather than work another day for Donald Trump’s election. “The scent of party unity is in the air,” I said in May when Paul Ryan reported that he was “not there yet” on supporting Trump. “No, that’s incense,” Priebus said, pointing out that he had been burning some behind his desk. As suits a man occupying what might be the toughest political job in America, Priebus does his best to stay availed of serene distractions. He plays jazz piano at home late at night and gazes into the saltwater fish tank that he keeps next to his desk. “You see that big eel?” Priebus asked one day, pointing out a black slithery creature on the bottom, before noting others. “That’s a yellow tang, hippo tang, a spotted puffer. There’s an anemone. An urchin. An orange clown fish. ” He took a hunk of shrimp from a refrigerator and dangled it with a set of tongs into the water. A race to the bottom ensued as bits fell away and the fish vied for pieces of flesh. It was difficult to look away from the feeding frenzy. The big orange clown fish flailed at front and center. I asked Priebus if it reminded him of anyone. “That’s not funny,” he said with something between a slight grunt and chuckle. No matter how much Trump has roiled the Republican water, it remained Priebus’s job to carry it. The presumed Republican nominee appears on many days to be at open war with the party that is about to nominate him. The entire campaign, meanwhile, has been a proxy battle for the proverbial “soul of the party” that has been escalating between the G. O. P. ’s populist grass roots (captured by Trump) and “party leaders” (embodied by Priebus, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell). Is the G. O. P. now the “party of Trump”? Priebus bristles when people ask him this — or taunt him. I asked Priebus some variation on this question during each of my visits. “Donald Trump is Donald Trump,” Priebus says. “And the party is the party. ” “Priebus” is a German name, pronounced like the Toyota Prius with a “b” stuck in the middle. Reince (short for Reinhold, rhymes with “pints”) is 44 but has an ’s vibe. He is often underslept, has the beginnings of jowls and tiny goose pimples clustered under his eyes like those on the belly of a toad. He speaks in the slow and slightly manner of an adolescent whose parents are always hassling him about the nightmare house guest. The Trump issue, in other words. It’s never far from anything, and really, these days, what else is there? Plenty, Priebus kept trying to convince me. The Republican Party had its own distinct identity and principles and points of pride. It controls both chambers of Congress and holds more federal and statewide seats than at any time since 1900, he said. What keeps eluding Republicans is the White House. They have lost the popular vote in five of the last six national elections. “Cultural elections,” Priebus calls them — “the big ones. ” A chief reason for this is that many voters dismiss Republicans as being culturally and demographically stuck in 1900. It was Priebus who commissioned and endorsed the findings of the G. O. P. “autopsy” after Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012. Formally christened as the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” the report warned that the G. O. P. was “increasingly marginalizing itself” to a point where it would be “increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future. ” That is, the report concluded, unless the party expanded its aging white base to include more immigrants, ethnic minorities and women, precisely the groups the next likely has so splendidly repelled. Priebus refers to himself as a “party guy. ” He spent much of his youth in Kenosha, Wis. organizing pizza parties for Republican volunteers, putting up yard signs and listening to Newt Gingrich speeches on cassettes in his car — things. His first date with his future wife included a trip to a Republican Lincoln Day dinner, an evening sexed up by the presence of two Republican congressmen: James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin and Henry Hyde of Illinois. Being a “party guy” can come off sounding a little nerdy, like being a guy. But Priebus speaks of this identity with sincere pride, and his allegiance is clear: to “the party,” not any one nominee. Still, our meetings sometimes took on the feel of therapy sessions, with Priebus playing the role of the betrayed spouse trying to convince me that his tormentor really could change. Trump would soon be “pivoting” into a more “presidential” mode, Priebus kept promising. But after a while it became clear that Trump’s outrages would continue unabated. Within the space of a few weeks, he suggested that Bill Clinton had committed rape and (along with Hillary) might have killed his former aide Vince Foster and that Ted Cruz’s father might have associated with Lee Harvey Oswald and that Mitt Romney walked like a penguin and. . .. Priebus pretty much stopped bothering with “presidential. ” On this particular day, cable news was with stories: the surfacing of an audio tape of someone sounding a lot like Trump claiming to be a Trump “spokesman” the discovery of a Facebook post from Trump’s longtime butler calling for President Obama to be killed and news that the Trump campaign had selected a white nationalist leader to be a California delegate (the delegate wound up resigning). Priebus eventually pivoted to Trump’s supposed “authenticity. ” Yes, “authenticity” was a better word, more latitude. He settled on the idea that Trump was a “unique” candidate who had created a new standard for what a politician could say and get away with. “He’s carved out this idea that he’s this earthquake in a box,” Priebus says. Priebus was saying in effect that it would be possible to build a wall around Donald Trump and not have the G. O. P. pay for it. Trump did not define its values in the long term, even if he might temporarily defile them. “We’re the party of the ‘open door,’’u2009” Priebus told me, as he often does. Not big, beautiful walls. For a while this spring, it seemed possible to contain the earthquake. Trump showed flickering signs of “maturing” as a candidate, and Republicans seemed willing to “support the nominee,” if not endorse him. The “normalization” of Donald Trump became a media watchword, the idea that his daily affronts could be integrated into the routine paces of a quadrennial exercise. Formerly hostile primary opponents like Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal and Rick Perry all at various points said they would support Trump or were at least no longer (in Rubio’s case) deriding him as a “fraud,” “con man” and “lunatic” or (in Graham’s) a “ xenophobic, religious bigot” or (in Jindal’s) a “madman who must be stopped” or (in Perry’s) a “barking carnival act. ” I imagined Trump laughing at how easy it was to get Republicans to submit to him after he had savaged so many of them during the primaries. Actually there was no need to imagine because Trump was doing exactly that. “I’ve never seen people able to pivot like politicians,” he said at a rally in California in late May while boasting of his support from Perry. In an interview, I asked Trump if it was harder to flip politicians or the real estate people he has dealt with over the years. His smirk was audible over the phone. “Well, I’m not referring to any politicians in particular, but I’ve said many times that businesspeople are much tougher,” Trump said. “Politicians tend to be much more deceptive and deceiving and more willing to break a deal. But they are not as tough. ” Priebus, meanwhile, kept working the phones, trying to coax Republicans back to the party line and persuade — beg — Trump to lay off the elected Republicans he kept dumping on. “I have encouraged him to constantly offer grace to people that he doesn’t think are deserving of grace,” Priebus said. Trump, in turn, calls Priebus “Mr. Switzerland” and speaks well of him. “Reince is a peacemaker, a very good person for getting people together,” he said. Trump was calling me from his limo after a rally in Anaheim, Calif. He was in the midst of an intrapartisan grudge tour of the American West, during which he disparaged, among other Republicans, Jeb Bush, the South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, and the New Mexico governor, Susana Martinez, who is one of the Hispanic elected officials in the G. O. P. He also reiterated that Romney was a “loser” and a “choker” and for good measure boasted that “I have a store that’s worth more money than he is. ” Priebus’s mother is Greek, which he says trains him for dealing with whatever the Greek word for mishegas is. “Ever see ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’?” he asked. “That’s my family, that’s my life. The arguing starts at 7:30 in the morning, everyone’s in each other’s business. It was good family chaos. ” I asked if what the G. O. P. was going through now was “good family chaos. ” “It depends how it turns out,” he said. At this point in the calendar four and eight years ago, Romney and John McCain had built massive campaign operations and networks that were orders of magnitude larger than Trump’s. They had accumulated armies of elected officials promoting them and were diligently making peace with vanquished opponents and paying courtesy calls to party dignitaries and congressional leaders in the name of “unity. ” The period between the end of the primaries and the start of the conventions is typically one of consolidation, harvesting and turning full attention to the opponent — all of which Trump has succeeded in achieving the opposite of. Trump would of course be the first to point out that both McCain and Romney lost and that he has been doubted at every step of his campaign. But the degree to which he seems unconcerned with his pariah status among name Republicans remains a key feature of his pursuit. To a comical extent, top Republicans willed themselves invisible when I reached out to them for this article, fearing, not incorrectly, that the conversation would turn to Trump. This included some of the most typically quotable Republicans, including former Trump challengers like Graham (“He’s sorta had his fill talking about Trump,” a spokesman emailed) Perry (“Thanks for thinking of him”) and Ted Cruz (“Not great timing on our end”) the previous nominee Mitt Romney (“You are kind to think of me,” he wrote) Trump stalwarts like Chris Christie (“We are going to take a pass this time”) Republican governors like Charlie Baker of Massachusetts (“The governor won’t be available”) and senators like Mike Lee, of Utah (“Senator Lee would love to talk to you about the state of the G. O. P. and conservatism in general. We are free anytime after Nov 8. ”). I tried Rubio, who has undergone more public agony than perhaps anyone about Trump. Rubio looks nauseated whenever someone asks him about the man he called “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency” but who later said he would be “honored” to speak for at the Republican convention before clarifying that if he did speak, he would only “speak about things I believe in, not somebody else’s platform. ” Rubio also holds the astonishing position of saying he’ll vote for someone he has previously declared unfit to hold the American nuclear codes. You envision him under a mushroom cloud, assuring his kids that it could be even worse — at least he didn’t vote for Clinton. There’s a palpable weariness among Republicans, and it’s still only June. Every day, it’s something else. “What it does is suck all the oxygen out of the chamber,” Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, told me. “I’m trying to do my job as a senator, which does not end because we have a contentious and bizarre presidential candidate. ” Trump, after accumulating enough delegates to win the nomination with almost no visible operation or recognizable strategy, has only nominally scaled his campaign beyond where it was a few months ago. There is barely any or field apparatus to speak of, and Trump has outsourced a great deal of the of an enormous campaign to the overtasked R. N. C. Priebus has won praise for revamping the data and field infrastructure that he inherited from his embattled predecessor, Michael Steele, in 2011. But no national committee in recent memory has been called upon to pick up as much operational slack in a general election. I asked Priebus if he was frustrated that so much has been thrown into the R. N. C. ’s lap. “It’s more frustrating for us when a campaign comes in and layers over our field staff,” is how he spun it. In addition to celebrating the presidential nominee, national conventions are a showcase for party eminences, rising stars and elected officials. Not so here. The last nominee, Romney, and two living former presidents, George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush, have said they are not supporting Trump or will not campaign for him. McCain has said he would be skipping the convention and is pursuing his senate in Arizona with characteristically gritted teeth: the familiar “it pains me to do this” routine. Three of the top five in the primaries — Cruz, Jeb Bush and the Ohio governor John Kasich — have either made no commitment to support Trump or, in Bush’s case, said definitively he would not support him. A fourth, Rubio, in addition to his prolonged and winding agony over Trump, has said he does “not want to be considered” as Trump’s running mate. This is a popular distancing trick doubling as a nifty among reluctant Trump endorsers. “To the members of the press who are asking, while I am flattered to be mentioned,” Nikki Haley said, “my plate is full, and I am not interested in serving as vice president. ” (For the record, Trump finds these expressions annoying. “They were never asked,” Trump told me. “I don’t like it when they do that, because it’s very dishonest. If they’ve taken themselves out, it means they’re not being asked. ”) There is a distinct sense among leading Republicans that if you take proper precautions — — it’s possible to avoid contagion. Ryan agreed to be interviewed for a Father’s Day feature in People Magazine but only on the condition that no Trump questions be asked. Trump seems to fundamentally welcome the party’s revulsion. As Ryan wavered over supporting him, Trump was privately saying that Ryan’s rejection might actually help him, that he was just the kind of political lifer whom Trump positioned his campaign against. His director (and a former caddie) Dan Scavino Jr. actually went public with this, tweeting out a link to a column in Breitbart headlined, “Paul Ryan Is the Reason the G. O. P. Is Losing America. ” While Ryan is trying to refashion and sell the G. O. P. as a party of innovation and heart, Trump is a creature of mouth and gut and other drivers. They can try to operate in parallel G. O. P. universes, but the two styles are often in obvious conflict. On the sunny morning of June 7 in Washington, Ryan and a group of seven House colleagues visited the mostly black neighborhood Anacostia to highlight a central idea of Ryan’s agenda. After a meeting at a residential center, the representatives took turns giving testimonials on why Republican policies — lower taxes, entitlement reform, less regulation — would better address the intractable problems of urban poverty. This was Ryan at his most earnest and . His concern for the urban poor derives heavily from his intellectual mentor, Jack Kemp, the former Republican congressman, housing secretary and patron saint of conservatism. Poverty is the first item of Ryan’s policy plan. He spoke at a lectern, surrounded by community leaders, and then invited questions from the press. Did Ryan have any regrets about endorsing Trump? “I told you,” Ryan said, smiling, turning to one of his hosts. The first six or so questions were about Trump. He was then in the midst of a furor over his repeated claims that Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the jurist presiding in a civil case against Trump University, could not rule fairly because he was “Mexican. ” Ryan was blunt on the Curiel matter. “Claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment,” he said. That was the headline. Ryan expressed great frustration that such comments by Trump “undercut these things,” meaning this event. When we spoke, Ryan was most eager to discuss Priebus, his old friend and fellow Wisconsinite. Along with the governor, Scott Walker, the trio form a formidable G. O. P. axis of cheese heads. I asked Ryan how he, as the elected Republican, would distinguish his mission as a party leader from Priebus’s. “I see my role as helping to define the standard, which are the issues,” Ryan told me. Priebus’s role is building the party’s apparatus to be ready for the . “Reince is basically being the adult in calming the situation,” he added. “He is protecting that process. Reince is protecting that from being disfigured or hijacked. ” Ryan views himself as a guardian of conservative “ideas. ” “Ideas” is one of those fetish words, popular among ambitious young pols (conservative are constantly dropping Kemp’s name). As the speaker of the Florida House, Rubio published a book in 2006 of “100 innovative ideas” and spoke about his love of ideas during his presidential campaign, before he started making jokes about Trump. Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana governor who was then considered one of the innovators of the party, warned after Romney’s defeat in 2012 that the G. O. P. must stop being “the stupid party” and urged fellow Republicans to talk “like adults” and swear off “offensive and bizarre” rhetoric. He then embarked on a presidential campaign in which his most memorable “idea” was suggesting that Trump “looks like he’s got a squirrel sitting on his head. ” (Jindal dropped out in November Trump barely bothered to insult him.) Jindal’s “stupid party” remark reflected a concern among idea conservatives that was marinating well before Trump came along: that the Republican Party has taken on an increasingly bent. There has been a strong populist allergy to elitism within the G. O. P. coalition for a long time. But Sarah Palin’s emergence as the nominee in 2008 and subsequent tenure as a party celebrity was a benchmark. Lesser imitators like Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain took turns as Republican in 2012. Trump made his name as a national political figure in 2011 and 2012 with his flamboyant campaign to prove that Obama was not born in the United States, an notion that was especially offensive to . Four years later, the leader of what many Republicans had hoped was a nativist fringe movement is the party’s presumed nominee. Ryan believed that he and fellow in Congress could preserve the party’s substantive core. This would be the laboratory from which he could remake the party’s conservative identity while attracting new Republicans, including young and minority voters. “I have to protect conservatism from being disfigured,” Ryan told me. His focus, he said, is on “ideas, temperament and the future of conservatism. ” Ryan has little confidence that Trump cares at all about his ideas, possessed that temperament or had thought at all about the future of conservatism. Trump almost never talks about “ideas,” unless you count blustery promises to “build a wall and make Mexico pay for it,” end lousy trade deals and “win” again. When, after considerable public hesitation, Ryan finally did say he would “vote for” Trump, he wrote a column in a newspaper in Janesville, Wis. reiterating his view that “politics can be a battle of ideas, not insults” and that “if we’re going to unite, it has to be over ideas. ” He said he had become convinced that Trump “would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws. ” What Trump had going for him more than anything, in Ryan’s eyes, was his willingness to outsource the conservative “idea” architecture of his administration to Ryan and Republicans in the same way that he’s farming out much of his campaign to the R. N. C. Even so, there’s no avoiding that Trump has over the last year been the ubiquitous voice of the G. O. P. to most voters, many of them new ones. He can cut a problematic image, to say the least. (In a June 15 Bloomberg poll, just 32 percent of Americans view the Republican Party favorably, the lowest figure since the survey’s 2009 inception.) Priebus and Ryan were relatively powerless during the primaries as Trump undertook his systematic disfiguring of the R. N. C. ’s plans for a more inclusive party. Last summer, during the relatively innocent months of Trump’s campaign, Priebus called and urged him to tone down his remarks (about “Mexican rapists,” for example). Trump scoffed at the idea that such a puny figure, a party guy, would ever try such a thing. “We’re not dealing with a Army general,” Trump said. Priebus paid a debasing house call to Trump Tower last fall to accompany Trump as he signed a loyalty pledge to the eventual nominee. He listened this spring to Trump predict “riots” in Cleveland and complain about the “rigged” system that might deny him his rightful nomination. (“Give us all a break,” Priebus tweeted at one point.) He has endured an outpouring from a gallery of who are urging the R. N. C. to take extraordinary measures and disavow its extraordinary nominee. “If Priebus ends up blessing the Trump nomination,” wrote the Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, the head White House speechwriter for George W. Bush, “it would turn the sins of Trump into the sins of the G. O. P. And Priebus would go down as the head of the party who squandered the legacy of Lincoln, the legacy of Reagan, in a squalid and hopeless political effort. ” Priebus is not a man for extraordinary measures. He is an organization man in a time of disruption, runaway and selfie campaigns. Party guys go along. It’s not always a fair fight. Political parties have seen better days in America. They are like many big and traditional institutions that way: the government, the church, among others. Signing on with the Donkeys and Elephants would seem a tired construct in a disintermediated culture of free agents and personal brand customization. Identities have replaced affiliations. In the course of reporting this article, I asked many Republicans of varied perspective why a young person today should consider joining a major political party. The question elicited sighs and head shakes, as if I were asking them why a millennial would join a Kiwanis Club, except that Kiwanis Clubs aren’t actively being resisted the way the Democratic and Republican parties are. Based on data from a 2014 Pew survey, 39 percent of the electorate identify as independents, compared with 32 percent as Democrats and 23 percent as Republicans (that’s the highest proportion of independents in nearly eight decades of surveys despite the fact that the country remains heavily partisan). It’s certainly worth pointing out that people have been predicting the death of the system in America for years and also the demise of individual parties at various low points. The G. O. P. was supposedly terminal after Barry Goldwater’s landslide defeat of 1964, as were the Democrats following the rout of George McGovern in 1972 each party came back to win the White House four years later. Priebus, not surprisingly, is a defender of the party status quo. “The reality is, there’s two doors that people can walk through in this country,” he told me. “It’s not Italy. We don’t have 12 different parties where everyone can fit into their exact box. ” Still, the culture and speed of technological change has fueled an accelerated shift in how voters engage with and perceive political institutions and politicians. When I asked Trump the “why join a party?” question, he said, “I think the whole system is changing. ” His toggling between parties over the years has been well documented. Likewise, his embrace of atypical Republican positions during the primaries — his support for some aspects of Planned Parenthood — did nothing to thwart his nomination. It would indicate that voters might not be as wedded to the assumed conservative orthodoxies as G. O. P. leaders might think. “You have people who are socially conservative and fiscally nonconservative and vice versa,” Trump told me. “You have so many different permutations now. ” Trump’s embrace of this à la carte approach comports to a sensibility of voters’ choosing between models of disruption rather than a singular ideology. In a sense, disruption in and of itself has become an ideology. Whoever swings the biggest wrecking ball wins. “Washington is so broken and needs to be disrupted, and a lot of what could happen in this disruption would be good,” said Ben Sasse, a freshman Republican senator from Nebraska. “Unfortunately, it has to be someone who takes seriously the stewarding of a whole nation. And who cares about facts. And who is trustworthy. ” Sasse was pointedly not talking about Trump. He has said that he could not support him as his party nominee. He would not be voting for Clinton either. “There are Dumpster fires in my town more popular than these two ‘leaders,’’u2009” he wrote in a Facebook post in which he predicted the imminent breakup of both parties. He was harsher on Trump. Everywhere he goes in Nebraska, Sasse told me, people ask him for advice. “People say: ‘I’m distraught. I’m opposed to everything Hillary Clinton stands for, and yet I think I have to vote for her. How do you make sense of this? What should I do? ’’u2009” he said. “These are young evangelical women, teary sometimes. They say, ‘I can never tell my kids I voted for that man. ’’u2009” Sasse, who is 44, became an instant luminary of the Never Trump movement after he unloaded on Trump. He is mostly avoiding interviews, though in a classic bit of politician took this as an opportunity to share with me that “I’ve turned down something like 45 Sunday shows in a row. ” I asked Sasse if America’s fascination with celebrity might help explain the rise of Trump. No, he said. “There is such crisis of shared vision for what America means right now,” Sasse, a former college president and business consultant, said. “People desperately seek shallower pop culture as a form of escape rather than finding actual meaning. ” For politics to be satisfying, it requires deeper ideals. And to partake of it as just another celebrity snack food leads a citizen to feel, after a while, “like you’ve eaten a of cotton candy. ” In a tweet from early May, Sasse tried to nudge the former senator Tom Coburn into making a bid. Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and physician, left the Senate in 2015 after spending his career — six years in the House, 10 in the Senate — as one of Washington’s proudest conservative mavericks and procedural troublemakers. Sasse told me that Coburn is one of his political idols. He also mentioned Paul Ryan. “If Tom Coburn and Paul Ryan have a baby,” Sasse said, “I’m their hideous offspring. ” All things being equal, Coburn would welcome having a superdisrupter in Washington. He has never been a party guy. “I don’t think it really matters, the parties,” Coburn, now retired and living in Tulsa, said. But Trump has been “repulsive to me,” he said, adding that Trump’s ability to win a party nomination “kind of fits with the modern social decline of America. ” I asked Coburn what Trump’s nomination signaled about the state of G. O. P. He was characteristically glib, apocalyptic and idealistic. “Either Trump is going to totally destroy the Republican Party,” Coburn said. “Or in the aftermath of him possibly losing an election, we’re going to rebuild it stronger than ever. ” The option is predicated on Trump’s losing. Several Republicans I spoke to seemed to hope for this, if not explicitly. It is politically fraught, obviously, to say they will not support their party’s presidential nominee. But based on my discussions, I’m willing to bet a good portion of the elected Republicans who claim minimal allegiance to “the nominee” will wind up voting for Clinton in the privacy of their voting booths while rooting for Trump’s complete humiliation. “We’re just going to have to swallow it,” said Mark Salter, the longtime chief of staff and confidant of John McCain. “He’s just unfit for the office,” referring to Trump. As for Clinton, he said, “I mean, the worst thing you can say about her is, she’s kind of a hack. ” Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist and veteran of the Reagan and George H. W. Bush White Houses, calls himself a “not yet Republican,” meaning he is “not yet” ready to support Trump and has in fact moved in the opposite direction since Trump clinched the nomination last month. Rogers, a longtime business partner of the former Mississippi governor and R. N. C. chairman Haley Barbour, acknowledged that the Republicans tend to exaggerate Clinton’s flaws as a trade prerogative. “The Clintons have never been the demons ideologically that we’ve made them out to be,” Rogers told me. “From a character standpoint, they’re pretty bad, but Hillary isn’t the frightening offensive character that Trump is. ” If Republicans rebelled against the “establishment” in the primaries, Trump has provided the establishment with mounting ammunition to fight back in the 11th hour. The first half of June has been a running train wreck for Trump, beginning with his crusade against Judge Curiel. Trump has been provoking increasing alarm among Republicans at the moment he should be proving himself nominally “presidential. ” The Republican senator Mark Kirk of Illinois announced that he could no longer support Trump in the aftermath of Curiel (“I think he’s too bigoted and racist for the Land of Lincoln”) Lindsey Graham did the same and urged other Republicans backing Trump to rescind their endorsements. Top Republicans voiced widespread opposition to Trump’s reiterated calls for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. Trump in turn called party leaders “weak” and pounded them for not falling in line behind him. “Just please be quiet, don’t talk,” he railed at them at a June 15 rally in Atlanta. “We have to have our Republicans either stick together or let me do it by myself,” Trump said. “I’ll do very well. ” He would be banking on the system being sufficiently hobbled that allegiance to him would prevail over partisan loyalty. Republicans wouldn’t hold it against Trump that he’s anathema to their establishment while Democrats would feel no loyalty to their traditional home team, let alone to Hillary Clinton. Trump appeared at this moment prepared to begin an independent campaign under the nominal banner of the Republican Party, while using their abundant resources. This looked more like a jail break than a pivot. The second week of June was shaping up as another one of those “Baileys in my cereal” stretches for Reince Priebus. We were two days past the mass shooting in Orlando, a horrific event that moved Trump to tweet immediate thanks to all those who sent him “congrats” for predicting it. He also called on Obama to resign and later seemed to suggest that the president might have even been complicit in the tragedy. This invited swift repudiations from Republicans and Democrats, including a furious Obama, whose presidential stature seems to grow the longer Trump dominates news cycles. Obama’s net rating has risen nearly 20 points since Trump became the G. O. P. and the party’s inescapable face last summer. Priebus spent the weekend in Utah at an annual “ideas” gathering that Mitt Romney hosts for Republican luminaries, donors and business leaders. In a normal year, this would serve as a Republican unity confab before the convention: party bonding in the mountains. But this year’s edition was more of a rock slide. It convened a huddle of the Never Trumps, disaffected and increasingly skittish party notables like Ryan and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. Romney set the tone for the weekend when he told Wolf Blitzer on CNN that Trump in the White House could “change the character of the generations of Americans that are following” and might result in “ racism,” “ misogyny” and “ bigotry. ” In a session with Ryan, the chief executive Meg Whitman, who was the G. O. P. nominee for governor of California in 2010, questioned how Ryan could endorse such an appalling figure. She placed Trump in the company of Hitler and Mussolini. Romney appeared to tear up at one point, according to an account in Politico. “Seeing this just breaks your heart,” he said. Priebus played the good party soldier. “Respect Mitt and differences but couldn’t disagree more,” he tweeted at Romney after his remarks. “Let’s stop this and unify. ” Priebus told Trump opponents at the retreat that Trump would win “with or without their help. ” He conveyed the exasperation of a substitute teacher being pelted with flying erasers. In almost every visit, Priebus and I had engaged in some variation on the same discussion. I kept asking him: “Whose party is this anyway? Who gets to define the G. O. P. ?” “It’s the party’s party,” he always answered. “The party defines the party. ” Convention delegates write the platform that lays out the party’s tenets. Trump can’t really change those: It’s a common refrain these days among Republicans. “Trump is not going to change the institution,” the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, told Politico last month, referring to the G. O. P. “He’s not going to change the basic philosophy of the party. ” Priebus and others might try to shape Trump’s behavior. They talk every day, Priebus and Trump. And tens of millions of people are having their impressions formed, shaped or solidified about today’s Republican Party by watching Donald Trump. They will vote for or against him in droves, not based on anything they read in the platform, whose readership probably amounts to less than 1 percent of Trump’s Twitter following. As I waited for Priebus in the lobby of the R. N. C. I noticed a tweet from an Associated Press reporter saying that Lamar Alexander, a Republican senator, had just suggested Trump might not be the surefire nominee after all. “We do not have a nominee until after the convention,” Alexander said. “That’s what you say,” Alexander added in response to a reminder that Trump was in fact the “presumptive nominee. ” It would seem ridiculously late in the process to be haggling over modifiers, at least it would be in a mythical normal year. When I walked into Priebus’s office, he sat on his couch and soldiered forth like a good party guy. If Ryan and McConnell tried to remain boxed off from the earthquake, Priebus occupied another shelter, constructed of armor, alternate reality and denial. “I’m feeling good about things,” Priebus told me. His voice was flat and deliberate, mode. It was hard to resist a few pokes at the organization man. How’s that Trump pivot working out? “I think it’s a work in progress,” Priebus said. He was trying to be upbeat. “I have Hillary Clinton on the other side,” he said, clinging to her as a lifeline. He was hoarse. I noticed him fiddling with a drink coaster. The coaster bore a cartoon rendition, sure enough, of Donald Trump: the only physical likeness I noticed anywhere in the building. Priebus had swiped a couple of these coasters from the bar at the Hotel and found them amusing. He set them on a side table in his office, next to the fish tank. He predicted that Clinton’s campaign would be a “race to the bottom. ” Well, yes. There’s nothing like claims of moral high ground on a campaign. But I couldn’t help reminding Priebus that Trump recently accused President Bill Clinton of rape, Obama of treason, Hillary Clinton of murdering Vince Foster, Cruz’s dad of associating with assassins, Romney of not being a “real” Mormon and the rest of the litany. Where did the bottom even begin, and where could it possibly end? Priebus said that the rape and Vince Foster things were “sort of just warning shots to the Hillary campaign. ” He also claimed that Trump and Clinton were running “tied in the polls,” though this was being contradicted as we spoke. Clinton led Trump by 12 points in a new Bloomberg survey, with 55 percent of respondents saying they would never vote for the Republican and in an ABC Post poll, seven in 10 Americans viewed Trump unfavorably, up 10 points in just the last month. A few days earlier, the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt said that Republicans’ accepting Trump as the nominee was “like ignoring Stage IV cancer. ” There was a new wave of “Dump Trump” stories in the media, mostly featuring the same band of Never Trumpers who seem to spend vast amounts of time on Twitter. I asked Priebus about any convention situation that could deny Trump the nomination. He did not reject the possibility, but it’s remote. It would require an alternative candidate (none currently) an organizing effort and a confluence of highly unlikely rule changes, delegate votes and procedural whose likelihood Priebus compared to drawing an inside straight three times in a row. “I think people are living in Fantasy Land,” he said, not saying whether he shared in the fantasy. Priebus was heading out to catch a flight to Greensboro, N. C. for a event with Trump that night. He was playing a role, the party guy, the proprietor of the china shop in the time of the bull. There was something oddly comforting to me about this presence, as thankless and unenviable as the life of Priebus might seem these days. What could be better for a lifer apparatchik? Priebus made a perfect foil to a new politics of blazing chaos. “It could be a great moment or a bad moment,” Priebus told me. “But it’s going to be a moment. ” I thanked Priebus for his time. He was still fumbling with the cartoon Donald Trump coasters. “Your party’s made this story fun for me,” I told him. “Have I made it fun?” he asked, almost plaintively. “Or have I made it less fun?” | 1 |
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A report released by Israeli researchers says violent attacks on Jews dropped for a second straight year in 2016, while other forms of are on the rise worldwide, particularly on U. S. campuses. [Researchers at Tel Aviv University said Sunday that assaults specifically targeting Jews, vandalism and other violent incidents fell 12 percent last year. They recorded 361 cases compared to 410 in 2015, which had already been the lowest number in a decade. The report attributed much of the drop to increased security measures in European countries. The numbers on violence were not mirrored by a decrease in cases of general . On U. S. university campuses, there was a 45 percent increase in incidents, mostly insults and harassment of Jewish students, the report says. | 1 |
Home / News / TRUMP TSUNAMI INCOMING: What Trump Did In Florida Today Will Make Him President! TRUMP TSUNAMI INCOMING: What Trump Did In Florida Today Will Make Him President! fisher 5 mins ago News Comments Off on TRUMP TSUNAMI INCOMING: What Trump Did In Florida Today Will Make Him President! TRUMP TSUNAMI INCOMING: What Trump Did In Florida Today Will Make Him President!
Breaking! Breaking! Bad news for Hillary in Florida. Early voting numbers from Florida are showing that Republicans have cast 17,000 more votes than Democrats.
*** 6 days before the Election in 2012, Democrats in Florida cast 39,000 more votes than Republicans.
*** Today, six days before the election, Republicans have now cast 17,000 more votes than Democrats.
Watch Trump in Miami, FL today:
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In an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “America’s News HQ” on Sunday, Rep. Louis Gohmert ( ) said that if anyone interfered with the 2016 presidential election, it wasn’t the Russians but the Department of Justice. He specifically named former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former FBI Director James Comey. Gohmert referred to Comey’s testimony last week before the Senate Intelligence Committee where he said Lynch had told him to refer to the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information as a “matter,” rather than an “investigation,” even though Clinton was under investigation. Comey said that led him to publicly announce the end of the Clinton investigation in July 2016. “At best, it was an attempt to manipulate the election, not by the Russians in this case, but by the Department of Justice — the Attorney General herself — because that came from Comey,” Gohmert said. “[Comey] totally ruined his own credibility — or what was left of it,” Gohmert said. “He did vast damage and raised big red flags and questions over Loretta Lynch’s job as head of the Justice Department. “[Lynch] was using her official position to help the campaign of Hillary Clinton and that didn’t seem to bother him enough to do a memo,” Gohmert said. Gohmert said this should be the subject of a congressional investigation. “We need to round up all those people [Comey] talked to — because we have a conspiracy remaining afoot in the Department of Justice that is going to be out to destroy this president and they’ve got to be fired if not worse. ” Follow Penny Starr on Twitter @PennyStarrDC | 1 |
A new type of mosquito trap running on solar electricity and using human odor as bait has cut mosquito populations by 70 percent in a test on a island in Kenya, according to a new study. The study, published in The Lancet last week, also found 30 percent fewer malaria victims in houses that had traps than in those that did not. The total number of malaria cases was so small during the testing period, however, that the researchers did not conclude that the traps were only 30 percent effective. Although the traps appeared quite effective at lowering mosquito populations, they had some significant drawbacks. Because they need power from rooftop solar panels, they are relatively expensive. Still, the panels appealed to residents who could also use them to power a light bulb or charge a cellphone. Also, the traps — which resemble lampshades and hang just outside the house — lured in Anopheles funestus mosquitoes, which are the most important malaria vector on Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, where the test was conducted. But they did not attract Anopheles gambiae or Anopheles arabiensis, which are much more important malaria vectors in most of Africa, where more than 400, 000 children die of the disease each year. Also, the traps needed regular rebaiting with a blend of five chemical constituents of human odor along with a chemical that mimicked the carbon dioxide plume created by human breath. Mosquito traps releasing carbon dioxide are available in the United States, but they can cost hundreds of dollars can sometimes require propane tanks, electricity or dry ice and may not be effective. The test was led by scientists from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, along with Kenyan and Swiss scientists. An editorial accompanying the study praised the traps as a “groundbreaking lead technology,” that nonetheless has “obvious shortcomings. ” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently tested simple bucket traps that caught females by using only water and hay as bait and sticky paper to kill. The traps lowered mosquito populations by 80 percent in the four Puerto Rican towns where they were tested, and they appeared to cut chikungunya transmission by almost half. But the millions that would have been needed to fight the Zika epidemic there were not ready in time. | 1 |
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Special to Occupy Democrats by Carlos Miller of PINAC News.
It was only last month that Scott Michael Greene accused a group of black teenagers of being “cop haters” because they did not stand for the National Anthem during a high school football game. This morning, he shot and killed two cops in cold blood as they sat in their patrol cars. Greene, 46, was arrested a few hours later after an intense manhunt.
Below is a video he posted on YouTube, along with a screenshot of his comment referring to the black teens as cop haters for not standing during the national anthem at high school game, which caused him to throw a fit of rage leading to him eventually being kicked out of the stadium.
He was angry at police after they had kicked him out of the football game for waving a Confederate flag in front of a group of black students in Urbandale on October 14, 2016. Two days later, he posted the infamous video to YouTube from the encounter titled, “Police Abuse, Civil Rights Violation at Urbandale High School 10/14/16.”
Of course, neither Trump nor his campaign have said anything about the killings except a tweet offering the old tired “thoughts and prayers.”
In the video, he tries to explain to the cops kicking him out that he was doing nothing more than expressing his First Amendment rights to wave the Confederate flag. He also said he was assaulted and had his flag stolen from him. However, police said he was causing a disturbance and that he would be arrested for trespassing on school property if he did not leave. They also returned his flag to him.
While they agreed he had a Constitutional right to wave the flag, they informed him that on school grounds, he was subject to school policies that did not allow the waving of the Confederate flag. Less than a week ago, he stated in the comments section of his video that he was “offended by the blacks sitting through our anthem” and referred to them as being “cop haters.” Now, he is a suspected cop killer. Greene has a long history of arrests, including one incident where he threatened to kill a black man after calling him a racial slur. He also went though mental evaluation and was placed on medication.
According to the Des Moines Register:
He was charged with a simple misdemeanor count of interference with official acts on April 10, 2014, when he resisted an attempt by officers to pat him down for weapons at an Urbandale residence on Colby Parkway, according to a criminal complaint. The officers wanted to search Greene after noticing that he had a pouch on his belt that resembled a holster.
Greene was “noncompliant, hostile, combative and made furtive movements toward his pockets” before the arrest, Officer Chris Greenfield wrote in the complaint. Greene pleaded guilty to the charge about two weeks later.
The complaint does not indicate why officers initially came into contact with Greene. But two days later he reportedly threatened to kill a man in the parking lot of the same apartment complex and he was charged with first-degree harassment, according to another complaint.
In that incident, Greene was accused of approaching a man in the parking lot and shined a flashlight in his eyes. Greene, who lived in the apartments, called the man the N-word and told the man “I will kill you, (expletive) kill you,” according to the complaint. Greene pleaded guilty to a lesser harassment charge on June 30, 2014, and was sentenced to one year of probation.
In a discharge report filed in June 2015 a probation officer wrote that Greene had received a mental health evaluation and “reports to have complied with the medication recommendations.”
Watch this confederate flag obsessed cop-killer’s YouTube video: | 0 |
Twitter announced a new video deal with the National Football League (NFL) but the platform won’t be streaming games anymore. [Tech Crunch reports that Twitter “lost the deal to stream the NFL’s Thursday Night Football games this year to Amazon. ” Instead, the social media site “will stream official NFL video and other content to fans including a new live digital show that will air on Twitter five nights per week, during football season. ” “The show will be hosted by NFL Network talent and will focus on covering ‘breaking news, game highlights, key storylines, fantasy projections, team power rankings, updates,’” they continued, adding, “In addition, the live coverage will include Periscope broadcasts like play and sideline interviews, designed to give football fans access to teams on game days. ” In a statement, Twitter expressed excitement at the opportunity to work with the NFL. “We are very excited to offer football fans around the world even more content on Twitter from the NFL,” said Twitter COO Anthony Noto. “This new collaboration will bring compelling live studio programs that discuss what’s happening in the NFL, unique live broadcasts before games, and the best NFL highlights to Twitter, alongside the NFL conversation. ” The NFL also added that they have “every expectation” that the partnership will become “some of the most popular programming on Twitter. ” “Twitter continues to be an important partner in accessing millions of highly engaged fans on digital media,” said the NFL’s chief media and business officer, Brian Rolapp. “We have every expectation that the new daily live show, produced by NFL Network and featuring some of our top analysts, will quickly become some of the most popular programming on Twitter. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
On the morning of Feb. 23, 1987, a couple of dozen subatomic particles known as neutrinos zinged through specially instrumented underground sensors in Japan, Ohio and Russia. The particles had squirted from the core of a collapsing star 163, 000 light years away in a small galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud. They were the heralds of doom. On their heels, a couple of hours later came a rising blitzkrieg of light, heat, shock waves, and rings and knots of gas and all manner of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum — all the panoply of a star devouring itself in one of the great cataclysms of nature, a supernova explosion. SN1987A, as it is known, was the nearest supernova to be discovered since humans started using telescopes, and it sent astronomers rushing to observatories in Chile and Australia where the star was dying straight overhead. Since then, it has been studied by telescopes in space and on every continent, including Antarctica. And the show is still going on, as can be seen in new images obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope and released in honor of the event’s 30th anniversary. “There’s the shredded star in the center, the circumstellar ring that looks like a string of pearls,” Robert Kirshner, a longtime Harvard professor and currently science program director for the Moore Foundation, who has studied the supernova for 30 years, mused in an email. At its peak, SN1987A was radiating more energy than 100 million suns and was visible to the naked eye. Among other things, astronomers traced the explosion to a blue supergiant star that has now disappeared. The observations have allowed scientists to recreate the steps by which it started coming apart tens of thousands of years before the final cataclysm. The data confirmed that most of the light from the supernova was caused by the decay of radioactive cobalt produced as the star shrank catastrophically and then rebounded even more catastrophically in a thermonuclear fury. But another mystery remains. According to theory, the emission of neutrinos should have meant that the core of the doomed star was collapsing into a neutron star, a ball about the size of Manhattan but dense as an atomic nucleus, whose magnetic fields spinning and sweeping space like a lighthouse beam produce the clocklike signals known as pulsars. But there is no sign that a neutron star has been seen yet. “We’ve looked, but we don’t see any little dot in the center,” Dr. Kirshner said. Maybe it is hidden by dust, or maybe enough star material fell back onto the star to nudge it into collapsing into a black hole. The end of the story of this star is still unwritten. “The most interesting thing to test is whether we understand correctly how a star explodes and which elements it forms, by looking directly at the shredded star,” Dr. Kirshner said. “After all, you and the Earth are made of supernova debris. ” | 1 |
Hillary Shows Her Guilt After Hearing Trump Supporters Chant 3-Brutal Words Alisha Rich
After decades of scandals, Hillary Clinton’s corruption seems to be finally catching up to her. Unfortunately for her, it’s all going down mere days before the election for her desired presidency. As she faces this harsh but deserved reality, she encountered several Trump supporters in Pompano Beach, Florida, who chanted 3 brutal words, and her reaction is proof that she’s guilty of it all.
With only a little over a week to go before America votes for our next president, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is publically imploding. It seems even her most devoted fans are questioning her actions, and their uneasiness will only increase once they see what she did when she encountered several Trump supporters chanting, “Lock her up.” Pompano Beach – Clinton ran into some Trump supporters at an early voting site. pic.twitter.com/Lzbz1Pga1g
— Roberta Rampton (@robertarampton) October 30, 2016
Obviously, she’s been living in her own corrupt world for many years and believes she’s untouchable. However, people are now finally seeing who the real Hillary Clinton is — a crook and a criminal. When she encountered the vocal Trump supporters at an early voting site and heard what they were implicating, her reaction is exactly how a guilty person would respond – she ignored them, plastering that fake grin across her face. She ignored the folks screaming "Lock her up!" pic.twitter.com/SpgHvawvUr
— Roberta Rampton (@robertarampton) October 30, 2016
Of course, some people may argue that her reaction is what anyone would do, but I believe the contrary. If you’re innocent, you’re going to want everyone to know you didn’t do it and vocally deny any unexpected accusations. Of course, Hillary does the opposite as she has many years of practice on how to ignore people who call her out for her wrongdoings.
Clearly, when FBI Director James Comey dropped his bombshell, reopening her criminal investigation, Hillary became frantic and desperate. She knows what she’s done and how guilty she is.
Now, all she can do is pray nothing more comes to light before the big election. Sorry Hillary, not even your followers can be that dumb. I think it’s safe to say, Comey just handed Donald Trump the presidency. | 0 |
Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Sign up.) Let’s turn it over to Jennifer Medina, a national correspondent based in Los Angeles, for today’s introduction. The automated voice mail went out to every public school parent in San Francisco. “We are committed to providing a safe space for learning for each and every one of our students, including recent immigrants regardless of immigration status. We will continue to uphold San Francisco’s sanctuary city for all immigrants. ” Like major cities around the country, San Francisco city leaders have vowed to maintain their status as a “sanctuary city” for undocumented immigrants, limiting local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities. But students and parents continued to express anxiety over the election of Donald J. Trump. “A lot of students are coming to school with a lot of distress, there are students who genuinely fear for their future stability in the community based on the things they heard during the campaign,” said Gentle Blythe, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Unified School District. “I don’t think any of those students or those families are in any way reassured about any potential risk that would come in the new administration. ” The message, along with a lengthy letter, was sent in English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Vietnamese and Tagalog. Roughly of the district’s students are immigrants, but there is no way to know how many are undocumented. San Francisco is not alone in its efforts to reassure students. The Los Angeles Unified School District is opening additional centers to direct parents to social services and legal help in light of the election. The University of California also reaffirmed its commitment to help undocumented students last week, saying it would not hand over any information about undocumented students without court orders. And the university’s president, Janet Napolitano, urged Mr. Trump to keep the program that grants temporary reprieve to young undocumented immigrants brought here as children. And on Monday, Kevin de León, the Senate president pro tem, introduced a package of bills intended to help undocumented immigrants by helping to provide legal representation, further limit local law enforcement cooperation and train public defenders on immigration law. It seems clear this is just the beginning of the state’s battle with a Trump administration over undocumented immigrants. • Oakland’s warehouse fire shows how rising rents can push desperate people toward unsafe housing. [The New York Times] • Derick Ion Almena, the manager of the Ghost Ship warehouse, gave an anguished interview: “I’m so sorry. I’m incredibly sorry. ” [Today] • Santa Ana declared itself a sanctuary city, making it the first in Orange County to do so. [Orange County Register] • A California Ku Klux Klan leader was arrested in a North Carolina stabbing hours before a Klan parade celebrating Donald Trump’s election. [Los Angeles Times] • Formerly incarcerated undergraduates at U. C. Berkeley started a group to offer support to other former inmates. [The New Yorker] • Last year, Google used as much energy as San Francisco. In 2017, Google says, it will run on renewable energy alone. [The New York Times] • Donald Trump is summoning tech leaders to a meeting. [The New York Times] • Wells Fargo, based in San Francisco, is trying to kill customer lawsuits over fake accounts by moving them to arbitration. [The New York Times] • After four painful years, San Bernardino will soon emerge from bankruptcy. [Los Angeles Times] • Rashaan Salaam, a Heisman Trophy winner from San Diego, was found dead in Colorado. He was 42. [The New York Times] • With nine nods for “Lemonade,” Beyoncé has more Grammy nominations than any other artist. [The New York Times] • Alia Shawkat, the actress, grew up working in Hollywood but never fell prey to its homogeneous beauty standards. [The New York Times] • TV Review: Hulu’s “Shut Eye” follows a scheming, psychic in Los Angeles. [The New York Times] In running, the lighter your gear the better. So two runners who embarked last week on a relay to Sacramento from Los Angeles were in a world of hurt given their unorthodox clothing — full police uniforms. Pain, however, was part of the idea. Known as Project Endure, the run by Officers Joe Cirrito and Kristina Tudor of the Los Angeles Police Department was devised to honor slain officers and raise money for their families. Late Monday, in Sacramento cheered the officers along as they reached their final destination at a police memorial near the State Capitol. There, after eight consecutive days of running, they both wept, Officer Cirrito, 47, said on Tuesday. “I’ve never felt that kind of emotion before. ” The officers each averaged 20 or so miles a day, sleeping in shifts of roughly four hours in a recreational vehicle and the occasional hotel room or firehouse. By about Day 4, Officer Cirrito was in dire straits, he said. His feet were bleeding inside his tactical boots. At one point he stopped to say hello to a man who turned up along the route with his daughter. “He said: ‘This is my daughter and she’s fighting cancer. She’s my warrior. And it was important for me to come out here so she could meet another warrior,’” Officer Cirrito said. “My heart broke. I didn’t know what to say. And I just pushed. I pushed more and more that night. ” According to records kept by the Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks killings of police officers, 11 law enforcement officers have died in the line of duty this year in California. The most recent case was on Nov. 13 in the city of Hughson, near Modesto, where Deputy Dennis Wallace of the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department was fatally shot. When Officers Cirrito and Tudor ran through the county over the weekend they were given an escort of police and fire vehicles with flashing lights. California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U. C. Berkeley. | 1 |
Western Lynch Mob on Russia Ties Itself up in Absurd Knots By Finian Cunningham
October 31, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " RT " - The Western lynch mob-like campaign to get Russia goes on, with the gathering this week of the United Nations Human Rights Council. By trying to suspend Russia from the council, the flagrant intent is to discredit and further demonize. The 47-member UNHRC, based in Geneva, is the United Nations premier inter-governmental forum on human rights. Members are selected on a rotational basis. On Friday, 14 seats on the council are up for renewal.
This week 80 mainly Western non-governmental organizations associated with human rights reportedly urged the UNHRC to drop Russias membership, citing allegations of war crimes committed during military operations to capture the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Over 80 NGOs call for Russia to be dropped from UN rights council over Syria https://t.co/uKTfWXWOLn
RT (@RT_com) 24 октября 2016 г. Among the anti-Russia lobby were US-based and George Soros-funded Human Rights Watch. Notably, billionaire financier Soros is an open advocate for regime change in Russia.
The campaign to undermine Russia at the UNHRC was preceded last week when Britain also a member of the council convened a summit in Geneva. The council issued a resolution which pointedly condemned bombing of civilians in Syria, and implicitly laid the blame on Russia and allied Syrian state forces.
Russias permanent representative in Geneva Alexey Borodavkin rebuked the UNHRC for a one-sided, politicized statement, which he said sought to solely impugn Russia and Syria. He noted the rank hypocrisy of the United States, Britain and France, along with Gulf Arab states, which lobbied for the resolution.
Radar data proves Belgian F-16s attacked village near Aleppo, killing 6 - Russian military https://t.co/Aj8mgT39ri pic.twitter.com/XHU4ljZb4H
RT (@RT_com) 20 октября 2016 г. These states have been arming and funding terrorist groups in Syria since the eruption of the war in March 2011. They are also sending their air forces on illegal bombing raids across the country in the name of fighting terrorism which has resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties and the destruction of social infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, public buildings and residential homes.
In recent months, warplanes dispatched by the US, France and Belgium (the latter two current members of the UNHRC) have carried out air strikes on Syria causing dozens of civilian casualties.
So, of course, Western-orchestrated claims against Russia over alleged human rights violations in Syria are patently hypocritical and belie their own criminality.
The contrived effort to delist Russia from the UNHRC has the same hallmark as other Western media campaigns to discredit Moscow, such as the banning of Russian athletes from the Rio Olympics on dubious drug-abuse charges, or the pseudo-probe into the downing of the Malaysian airliner in 2014 over Ukraine, or overblown claims that Russian aggression is threatening the security of Europe. We can also include baseless accusations made by shadowy US intelligence agencies that Russia is hacking into computer systems to somehow disrupt the American presidential elections next month.
Saudi Arabia poised to be reelected to UN Human Rights Council https://t.co/sqWeSwjg48 #UNHR #SaudiArabia #humanrights
RT (@RT_com) 27 октября 2016 г. The UNHRC debacle is one strand in a bundle of psychological operations aimed at isolating, demonizing and delegitimizing Russia.
Perhaps the knock out absurdity in the latest rush by the Western lynch mob is the relation of Britain and Saudi Arabia, both of which are current members of the UNHRC seeking renewal of their seats.
That Saudi Arabia widely seen as the most repressive regime on Earth is even a member of the prestigious Geneva council is due to Britain engaging in underhand vote rigging to help its oil-rich ally gain a seat, according to documents released last year by WikiLeaks.
A Saudi-led military coalition continues to slaughter thousands of Yemeni civilians by bombing schools, hospitals, mosques, marketplaces, funeral halls, factories and residential homes. Human rights groups like HRW and UN agencies are well aware of this Saudi campaign of mass murder in Yemen. It is also well documented that US, British, French and German weaponry worth billions of dollars is assisting the Saudi regime in its war crimes. That makes these Western states fully complicit.
Moscow summons Belgian ambassador, presents data on F-16s bombing of Syrian civilians https://t.co/WzwvworaZd pic.twitter.com/cHlKvzaeUD
RT (@RT_com) 21 октября 2016 г. Germany, for example, which is also a current member of the UNHRC, has seen its arms exports to Saudi Arabia jump by 250 percent over the past two years, according to a report last week.
Britain, the ringleader of the media campaign to denigrate Russia in Geneva, has sold over $4 billion worth of armaments to Saudi Arabia since the oil kingdom launched its aggression on its southern neighbor in March 2015. Even while Saudi Arabia is committing the most egregious crimes against humanity, the British government continues to send Royal Air Force pilots to help train Saudi counterparts, brazenly denying that there is any breach of international law.
There is little or no protest from the 80 NGO rights groups about these applicant states to the next cohort of the UNHRC.
The hypocrisy and double standards of serial human rights violators make their condemnations against Russia null and void.
Importantly too, is to not merely rebut the accusers as hypocrites, but to also elucidate the anti-Russia claims as fabrications.
The information that Western governments, rights groups and media base their claims of Russia bombing civilians is garnered from entirely dubious and partisan sources. Endless reports on Syria and the battle for the northern city of Aleppo broadcast by multibillion dollar Western news organizations are based, incongruously, either on claims issued by the British-located so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, or by activist groups within terrorist-held east Aleppo, which are funded by Western governments, such as the purported rescue workers of the White Helmets and the Aleppo Media Center.
BREAKING: UN Human Rights Council votes to open probe into #Aleppo war crimes https://t.co/xrdojTxO3v pic.twitter.com/2gKhTiMovH
RT (@RT_com) 21 октября 2016 г. In other words, Western governments, media, rights groups, and, sadly, UN agencies are promulgating an anti-Russia narrative that is recycled terrorist propaganda.Good proof of this is seen on the TV station called Free Syria broadcast across the Middle East and North Africa on Saudi-owned satellite platform ArabSat.
Free Syria is a crude propaganda channel funded by the Saudi monarchy. It features jingoistic images of Saudi King Salman, along with Saudi troops, warplanes and tanks.
Free Syria also features links to the militant group Ahrar al-Sham, which is implicated in countless terrorist crimes along with Nusra and ISIS. Bearded militants are routinely shown firing mortars while shouting Islamist slogans.
Another regular contributor to the images and reports on this Saudi-funded, terrorist-supporting channel are the White Helmets and the Aleppo Media Center. Thus, on this publicly available Free Syria channel what we see in stark reality is how state sponsor, terrorist networks and propaganda machine come together in a self-incriminating amalgam.
What is even more damning is that the same information is disseminated albeit in a more polished form through Western news outlets, such as CNN, BBC, France 24 and a gamut of supposedly respectable newspapers, like the New York Times and British Guardian.
Its an astounding feat how reality can be so inverted. Russias military is legally justified in assisting the allied sovereign government of Syria to defeat a covert war to topple the state. That war is a criminal enterprise fueled by Washington, London and Paris through the deployment of myriad terrorist proxies.
And to add insult to injury, these terrorist-sponsoring rogue states then turn around and accuse Russia at a UN Human Rights Council based on propaganda sourced from their terrorist proxies.
The utter insanity of it all. But maybe the Western lynch mob will eventually get hoisted on their own coiling ropes of deception. | 0 |
ISTANBUL — Turkish officials accused the United States of abetting a failed coup last summer. When the Russian ambassador to Turkey was assassinated last month, the Turkish press said the United States was behind the attack. And once again, after a gunman walked into an Istanbul nightclub early on New Year’s Day and killed dozens, the news media pointed a finger at the United States. “America Chief Suspect,” one headline blared after the attack. On Twitter, a Turkish lawmaker, referring to the name of the nightclub, wrote: “Whoever the triggerman is, Reina attack is an act of CIA. Period. ” Turkey has been confronted with a cascade of crises that seem to have only accelerated as the Syrian civil war has spilled across the border. But the events have not pushed Turkey closer to its NATO allies. Conversely, they have drifted further apart as the nation lashes out at Washington and moves closer to Moscow, working with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, to secure a in Syria. One story in the Turkish press, based on a routine travel warning issued by the American Embassy in Turkey, was that the United States had advance knowledge of the nightclub attack, which the Islamic State later claimed responsibility for. Another suggested that stun grenades used by the gunman had come from stocks held by the American military. Still another claimed the assault was a plot by the United States to sow divisions in Turkey between the secular and the religious. Rather than bringing the United States and Turkey together in the common fight against terrorism, the nightclub attack, even with the gunman still on the run, appears to have only accelerated Turkey’s shift away from the West, at a time when its democracy is eroding amid a growing crackdown on civil society. All of this is a reflection, many critics say, of what they call the paranoia and authoritarianism of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose leadership has so deeply divided the country that, instead of unifying to confront terrorism, Turkish society is fracturing further with each attack. The West, symbolized by the United States, is the perennial bogeyman. While seeming to pile on the Obama administration in its waning days — by accusing it of supporting Turkey’s enemies, including the Islamic State Kurdish militants and supporters of an exiled Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, whom Mr. Erdogan blamed for directing the coup — Turkish officials are also telegraphing something else: that they are willing to open the door and improve relations with the United States once Donald J. Trump takes office. “Our expectation from the new administration is to end this shame,” Turkey’s prime minister, Binali Yildirim, said this week while accusing the United States of providing weapons to Kurdish militants in Syria who are fighting the Islamic State, but are also an enemy of Turkey. “We are not holding the new administration responsible for this,” Mr. Yildirim said. “Because this is the work of the Obama administration. ” Meanwhile, the nightclub assailant is on the loose. The Turkish authorities said on Wednesday that they had identified the killer, but refused to release any other details, although photographs of the man, from surveillance cameras, have been released. Also, a video surfaced that appeared to show the assailant recording himself in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. A senior United States official, who has been briefed on the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential details, said the Turks had recovered the video from a raid on a house in Istanbul. The official said the Turks now believed the killer was from Uzbekistan, not Kyrgyzstan, as many reports this week had first suggested. The official expressed alarm at the growing in Turkey, which seems to accumulate after each crisis here, and said it put the lives of Americans in the country in jeopardy. The chaotic investigation has added to the anxiety on Istanbul’s streets, with vehicle checkpoints, night raids on houses and helicopters. “There is significant fear in ordinary people,” said Aydin Engin, a columnist at the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, who was detained last year as part of the government’s crackdown on the news media. “Fear prevails when it comes to going to an entertainment place, being in a crowd, going to a shopping mall, getting on the metro. ” With each passing day, public life descends deeper into what many Turks concede is a mix of darkness and seeming absurdity, with growing fears of violence and expressions of xenophobia set next to repressions on civic life. In the days before and after the nightclub massacre on the shores of the Bosporus, nationalists staged a mock execution of Santa Claus in the name of defending Islam a reporter for The Wall Street Journal was detained, and placed in solitary confinement — for, according to the newspaper’s account, “violating a government ban on publication of images from an Islamic State video” and a fashion designer was beaten up at the Istanbul airport and arrested for his social media posts. “In a way, it’s basically a breakdown of order,” said Soli Ozel, a Turkish columnist and academic, seeking to explain the tumult in society. “Everyone feels entitled to do whatever they want to do and how they want to do it. ” Tugrul Eryilmaz, another longtime Turkish journalist, recalled the country’s military coup in 1980 and the crackdown on civil society that followed, and said, “I have never been in such a situation like today. ” He brought up the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, who was known for surreal and absurd themes. “I feel like I am in his movies,” he said. While Turkey faces a growing terrorism threat, the country is also largely at war with itself, with deep divisions along many lines — religion, class, ethnicity — that make unity difficult even in a time of crisis. Perhaps the greatest source of division is between supporters of Mr. Erdogan, about half the country, and opponents who assert that he has become too powerful. “Turkey is so deeply polarized around the powerful persona of Erdogan that, instead of asking why terror attacks are happening and how they can be stopped, the and blocks in the country are blaming each other,” said Soner Cagaptay, a specialist on Turkey at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “This is why I am deeply worried about Turkey and the country’s ability to stymie further terror attacks. ” Parliament voted overnight to extend by three months the state of emergency that went into effect last summer after the failed coup. The emergency grants Mr. Erdogan’s government extraordinary powers to detain perceived opponents and hold them in pretrial detention. Tens of thousands of people have either been arrested or been purged from their jobs, on suspicion of having links to Mr. Gulen, who now lives in Pennsylvania. Mr. Erdogan on Wednesday made his first public remarks since the attack on Sunday morning, a striking period of silence for a man who is normally ubiquitous in the public sphere, often giving speeches daily. Mr. Erdogan, an Islamist, rejected criticism that his government, in pushing an Islamist agenda, had deepened divisions between the secular and the pious. Many on social media, in the aftermath of the nightclub attack, noted that the Turkish government’s religious authorities had denounced New Year’s celebrations as . “As the president of all 79 million citizens,” Mr. Erdogan said, “it is my duty to protect everyone’s rights, law and spaces of freedom. ” Mr. Erdogan, who spoke this week with President Obama in a condolence call, also told his audience what he believed Turkey, in facing so many terrorist attacks, was really up against: a plot by the West. Invoking the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the subsequent Turkish war against Western armies and their proxies, he said, “Today Turkey is in a new struggle for independence. ” | 1 |
Регион: США в мире Как отмечает в своей статье американский политический активист Калеб Маупин, в то время как рекордные урожаи гниют сегодня в амбарах по всем Соединенным Штатам, американские фермы сливают тысячи галлонов молока в сточные канавы в надежде хоть как-то повысить цены на этот продовольственный продукт. В то время как в США банкротятся малые фермерские хозяйства, крупные супермаркеты вроде WallMart закрывают десятки торговых точек, выгоняя своих работников на улицы. В то же время, пока в США зверствует продовольственный кризис, 13% американских семей находятся на грани голодания. Однако Вашингтон, который продолжает проводить учения НАТО у российских границ, платит за тысячи военных баз по всему миру и оказывает «экономическую помощь» таким государствам, как Израиль. Но американские власти все это мало беспокоит, ведь дотации малоимущим семьям в США продолжают снижаться. Конечно, Вашингтону мог бы крайне сильно помочь такой рынок продовольственного сбыта, как Россия, но он предпочел от него отказаться в пользу поддержки фашиствующего режима на Украине. Тем не менее режим экономических санкций, который Вашингтон и Брюссель ввели из-за нежелания России бросить на произвол судьбы этническое русское население Донбасса, оказал весьма благотворное влияние на российскую экономику. Сегодня российское фермерское хозяйство переживает настоящий бум, в то время как за океаном фермеры вынуждены уничтожать свои урожаи, чтобы хоть как-то повысить цены на продовольственное сырье. Автор отмечает, что-то должно быть не так с администрацией Обамы, если она предпочитает поддерживать иностранных фашистов, а не собственных фермеров. С полной версией статьи вы можете ознакомиться здесь . Популярные статьи | 0 |
posted by Eddie While the sky-high potency may scare some away, Crystalline provides a surprisingly clean, focused, and inspired high. There’s a new kid on the block; her name is Crystalline, and she’s from the Hash Family. Crystalline hash is the latest craze in the hash community, and everyone wants a taste. The demand is so high that THC-A Crystalline is going for $200 a gram in southern California dispensaries . Testing in at an astonishing 99.9% THC, Crystalline is officially the strongest hash on the market. Other concentrates such as ice hash , rosin , and BHO range from 50-80% THC. Macro image of THC Crystalline. Photo courtesy of Allie Beckett. Cannabis concentrates are known for their variety of textures and forms, from shatter to wax to crumble, there’s something for everyone to enjoy. What many extract lovers don’t realize is that these various textures develop from the solvent used to make the concentrate and the methods of purging the solvent out of the final product. However, when THC is reduced to its purest state, it crystallizes, creating crystal ‘rocks’ which look very different than any other marijuana concentrate on the market. Crystalline turns many people off just because of its looks. The internet is filled with scornful reviews of its meth-like appearance, and this criticism is entirely valid. But don’t judge a book by its cover because cannabis crystalline is the purest form of THC and provides sufficient relief for many patients suffering from debilitating and fatal illnesses. And hey, it’s not THC’s fault that it’s a compound with a crystal structure. Guild Extracts, a Southern California extraction company, is the current leader of crystalline production. Their crystallizing process is kept under lock and key, but they claim the ability to make THC-A Crystalline out of any starting material ranging from hydrocarbon extract, CO2 extract, and ice water concentrate. One thing Guild Extracts has made clear is that they are not using a solvent to create this hash, rather, they are extracting pure THC from their starting materials. You may be wondering, what exactly is THC-A Crystalline? Well, before THC is combusted (lit on fire or vaporized) it sits in its raw acidic form, also known as THC-A. THC-A by itself is completely inactive, meaning if it is ingested it will not get you high (but it does have an extraordinary amount of medicinal benefits). When THC-A is activated through heat in a process called decarboxylation, the acidic carbon atom (the “A” in THC-A) is removed leaving behind the psychoactive THC that so many of us know and love. Macro image of THC Crystalline produced by Atom Labs. Photo courtesy of Allie Beckett. Now remember, this pure THC does not contain terpenes (the magical compounds that give cannabis strains their distinctive aroma and flavor profiles while contributing to their therapeutic effects). To make up for the lack of flavor, Guild Extracts has become famous for the “dip n dab,” dipping the crystalline concentrate into terpenes extracted from strains like Goji OG, Tangie, and Sherbert. While the sky-high potency may scare some away, Crystalline provides a surprisingly clean, focused, and inspired high. Plus, health nuts can rest easy knowing that THC-A Crystalline is completely free of any chemical inputs (think butane). source: | 0 |
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Quietly, the number of Russians who have received a positive H. I. V. diagnosis passed the one million mark this year. There is, however, little indication that the government will commit adequate resources to stem the acceleration of the virus from groups into the general population. About 850, 000 Russians carry H. I. V. and an additional 220, 000 have died since the late 1980s, said Vadim Pokrovsky, the longtime head of the Federal AIDS Center, who estimated that at least another 500, 000 cases of H. I. V. have gone undiagnosed. Although the label “epidemic” prompts denials from some senior officials, experts on the front lines like Mr. Pokrovsky are calling it just that. The overall estimate of victims constitutes about 1 percent of Russia’s population of 143 million, enough to be considered an epidemic, they argued. Beyond that, they said that heterosexual sex would soon top intravenous drug use as the main means of infection. “This can already be considered a threat to the entire nation,” Mr. Pokrovsky said, noting that the caseload is increasing by about 10 percent a year. In 2016, 100, 000 new infections are anticipated, about 275 daily. It is the largest H. I. V. epidemic in Europe and among the highest rates of infection globally. Despite the grim milestone, experts do not expect much change in Russia, where victims still face the kind of stigma prevalent in the 1980s in the West and where continuing trench warfare between the Kremlin and independent nongovernmental organizations saps collective efforts. In addition, some prominent voices push “family values” as the ideal prevention program. In many ways, Russia’s fight against H. I. V. is a case study in the constant tension between civil society and a Kremlin under President Vladimir V. Putin public activity outside government control is considered inherently suspect. Tensions heightened this year after the Justice Ministry blackballed a number of bantam N. G. O.s involved in combating H. I. V. as “foreign agents” because they received grants from abroad. Anton Krasovsky, a prominent talk show host fired in January 2013 after coming out as gay on air, says he has spent his personal savings building an N. G. O. that tries to bridge that divide. “Since we are not talking about fighting Putin, but fighting a virus, people have to understand that they can fight this virus only if they are on the same side as Putin,” Mr. Krasovsky said. “It is impossible to change the situation without coming to some kind of an agreement. ” The president has remained largely silent on H. I. V. Over all, activists said, the combination of indifference toward victims, government financial austerity, hostility toward foreign funds and a powerful camp of AIDS deniers all amounts to the lack of a coherent national effort. Experts criticized a new, rather vague Russian government strategy on fighting H. I. V. that was released in October for lacking a plan of execution or any new money. Despite that, both sides in the H. I. V. battle agree that Russia has made some progress. The fact that a national strategy exists — as well as an advertising program promoting H. I. V. tests backed by Svetlana Medvedeva, the wife of the prime minister — at least implies some interest. In St. Petersburg, one married couple, Dr. Tatiana N. Vinogradova and Andrei Skvortsov, straddles the . G. O. divide on the issue. Dr. Vinogradova, slim beneath her white coat, with bobbed brown hair and beige stilettos, is a H. I. V. warrior. Her grandmother, an specialist, treated one of the first patients in St. Petersburg in the late 1980s and pushed the city to establish an AIDS Center. Dr. Vinogradova’s mother ran it, and she herself is now its deputy head of scientific research. Mr. Skvortsov, wiry, scrappy and H. I. V. positive — a reformed drug addict and — runs a small N. G. O. called Patients in Control. It was founded in 2010 to try to cajole, pressure and embarrass both federal and local governments into providing treatment. At the St. Petersburg AIDS Center, Dr. Vinogradova, 41, has seen the prevalence among drug addicts shrink while cases among heterosexual couples soar. “Calling it an epidemic would be akin to admitting that the government let the problem get out of control over the past 30 years,” she said, explaining why the government avoids the term. But she uses the national strategy and any official statements she can find to try to wring more money out of politicians. “This is Russia, so everything has to be top down to get anything done. ” The couple has tried to use their marriage to help break the stigma that the disease is an untreatable plague limited to drug addicts, homosexuals or others likely to die anyway. “I watch people jump back a meter when he says he is living with H. I. V. ,” Dr. Vinogradova said, with older medical professionals particularly still fearful despite the raft of evidence that anyone taking antiviral drugs is not infectious. “Now whenever I hear about H. I. V. discrimination, I take it as a personal offense. ” When her husband needed an operation last year to repair with a metal implant a collarbone broken in a motorcycle accident, the surgeon refused after discovering his H. I. V. status. Mr. Skvortsov, 37, recently appeared on a talk show with Evgeniya Prokhoda, an H. I. V. activist in the southern city of Krasnodar, and one of the first Russians to speak about carrying the virus on national television without hiding her face. She detailed the gantlet of fear and discrimination she had faced, including when authorities put her son in an orphanage for about a year after her own mother sued to have him removed from home. The day after she appeared on television, Mrs. Prokhoda was fired. Activists and experts always come back to the lack of government support as the root problem. Under World Health Organization guidelines, to reduce the spread of the disease, at least 90 percent of H. I. V. patients should receive antiviral drugs. In Russia, a little more than 37 percent receive such treatment, according to government statistics. “The prevention programs are not working, the coverage is not sufficient to break the curve,” said Vinay P. Saldanha, the Unaids regional director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Russia is among five countries that account for almost half the new infections globally the others are South Africa, Nigeria, India and Uganda, according to Unaids figures, although in some of them, a much higher percentage of the overall population is infected. Most of the $338 million annual Russian federal H. I. V. budget is spent on medicine, and almost nothing goes to preventive education. Veronika Skvortsova, the health minister, has repeatedly called expanding treatment programs a government priority. (The minister is not related to Andrei Skvortsov.) After a deep recession, however, little new money has materialized. At the same time, the Russian Orthodox Church and some politicians promote “conservative values” as the best way to combat H. I. V. Patriarch Kirill called for “moral education,” stressing that the “establishment of family values, ideals of chastity and marital fidelity” should be at the forefront of curbing the virus. Both the government and the church staunchly oppose sex education for children. One senior government official stated that classical literature was the best teacher. The state also adamantly opposes methadone for drug addicts, sometimes denigrated as a “narcoliberal” scheme. In other countries, methadone programs are used both to treat and to monitor patients infected by intravenous needles. The emphasis on traditional values dismays those fighting the disease. “Traditional values just means leaving everything as it is,” Mr. Pokrovsky said. “If we have traditional values and do nothing, the epidemic will keep spreading. ” Compounding the problems, the federal government has tried to silence organizations that challenged its policies, labeling them “foreign agents” for receiving grants from abroad, forcing some to close. The Andrey Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice, which hands out free needles and condoms in southern Moscow, now has to staple a small label to its plastic bags saying “Foreign Agent” as required by law. Recipients said they could not care less, but it means that the foundation cannot work with government organizations. “H. I. V. is not a personal problem, it is a social problem, and it should be solved as a social problem,” Elena Plotnikova, who works for the foundation, said as she handed out supplies. “The basic attitude of the government is: You made a bad decision and we are not going to help you. ” N. G. O.s are considered crucial to reaching populations that avoid government contact, including drug addicts, prostitutes and gay men. Help varies widely from city to city. St. Petersburg is perhaps the most enlightened, treating all comers to its clinic and sponsoring an advertising campaign. Dr. Vinogradova and Mr. Skvortsov appear together on one poster encouraging people to get tested. The couple is startlingly open about their sex life, stressing that his being on antiviral drugs means that she remains H. I. V. negative even though they do not use condoms. In the poster, wearing navy blue shirts, they stare into each other’s eyes. “I know that there are no barriers to my love,” reads the text. “H. I. V. is not an obstacle to creating a family it’s possible to live a long life with H. I. V. ” | 1 |
October 28, 2016 Jeff
Maybe the russians made the video?? Just to show that we are living in america with a state run media…there is no evidence showing who hacked anything, and if someone is so stupid to have years of emails running a presidential campaign using gmail and falling for phishing scams then they deserve to have their emails hacked. Sad part is when the media lies with the Hillary campaign to try to trick stupid people into thinking someone it takes ‘the russians’ to get into a gmail account. The only evidence when you look about Russia hacking anything is ‘we think it is russia cause that is the kind of thing they would do’ How much more of the manufacturing base of the u.s. has to be lost before someone stops supporting the people the destroyed it? How much more middle class needs to vanish? All of it? before people figure out that the current politicians do not care one bit about anything put their own power and party. October 26, 2016 DEPLORABLE PA
+Mofasa Denu Except basic flash skills can’t explain finding 500,000 filled in ballots for Hillary Clinton in a Warehouse in Columbus, Ohio…..now in the possession of the State Attorney General and entered into States Evidence by a Democrat; You’re theory would only hold water if its a single example, or one of two or three examples. There are thousands of pieces of evidence of fraud throughout the country, in all fifty States. Couple that with the fact that George Soros owns and operates, including updates to the software, the voting machines being used in 16 states, including all of the swing states. A simple update to the software already operating those machines, will cause a flip to Hillary Clinton. And finally we have Wikileak emails showing Clinton and her staff discussing back and forth how and where they will do massive voter fraud campaigns across the Nation. YOU HAVE TO BE FROM ANOTHER PLANET NOT TO PUT ALL OF THIS TOGETHER AND COME UP WITH THE OBVIOUS CONCLUSION; THAT, OR ELSE YOU ARE ONE OF THE IDIOTS THAT THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN ARE PAYING TO GO ON FORUMS LIKE TRUTHFEED, YOUTUBE, TWITTER, ETC…..TO TRY TO DEBUNK THE FACT THAT MASSIVE FRAUD EXISTS AND IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW. OH, AND BY THE WAY: TRUMP IS UP THREE POINTS NATIONALLY ACCORDING TO EVERY REPUTABLE POLL, INCLUDING RASMUSSEN. THE ONLY BS PROPAGANDA THAT IS BEING USED IS COMING OUT OF THE CLINTON CAMP AND THE MSM. October 26, 2016 robbo
The ballt box find was a hoax. the photo used fort e media is clearly a faked | 0 |
posted by Eddie
A White House petition to remove Soros-owned electronic voting machines has passed the 100k votes necessary for a response. Will America finally stand up to global elite rigging our elections? The U.K.-based company Smartmatic has sent voting machines to important battleground states across the US including Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia. “Other jurisdictions affected are California, District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin,” noted the Daily Caller . “Smartmatic Chairman Mark Malloch-Brown is a former U.N. official and sits on the board of Soros’ Open Society Foundations.” The discovery has caused concern among the US voting populace given Soros’ deep ties with Clinton. Soros Linked Voting Machines To Be Used In Key Battleground States
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Как пишет РИА Новости, состав в итоге прибудет в северную столицу на 2,5-3 часа позже указанного в расписании времени.
Следовавший из Москвы в Санкт-Петербург поезд из-за образовавшейся на путях наледи застрял в Новгородской области, отмечает издание. По данным Октябрьской железной дороги (ОЖД), "к месту остановки состава выслан вспомогательный локомотив и резервный «Сапсан». Опоздание поезда составит ориентировочно 2,5-3 часа".
Издание отмечает, что в Санкт-Петербурге пассажиров опоздавшего «Сапсана» развезут по домам три автобуса.
Напомним, "Сапсан" № 778 был задержан в среду в 22:21 мск на станции Мстинский Мост в Новгородской области. При этом в 22:45 мск по техническим причинам там же был остановлен еще один «Сапсан», который прибудет в Санкт-Петербург на полчаса позже запланированного времени.
На той же станции в Новгородской области в 22:45 мск по техническим причинам остановлен еще один "Сапсан". Он прибудет в Санкт-Петербург на 30 минут позже запланированного времени.
"Специалисты Октябрьской железной дороги делают все возможное для скорейшего ввода поездов в график", - отмечает железная дорога.
Правда.ру ранее писала, что спешившая на скоростной поезд "Сапсан" пассажирка разбила стеклянную дверь автобуса во время движения по Невскому проспекту в Петербурге.
Согласно информации пресс-службы предприятия "Пассажиравтотранс", инцидент произошел в среду вечером, когда маршрутный автобус № 3 подъезжал к остановке на Невском проспекте около дома № 77. В тот момент пассажирка автобуса, сильно торопясь успеть на свой рейс и не дожидаясь плановой остановки, выбила стеклянную дверь ногой и сбежала. На опубликованном в социальных сетях фото с места событий видно, что стекло в двери автобуса отсутствует полностью.
По словам представителя "Пассажиравтотранс", поймать девушку на месте сразу не удалось, поэтому предприятие обратилось за помощью к полиции. О задержании спешившей пассажирки информации пока не поступало, как и том, успела ли девушка на "Сапсан".
А недавно высокоскоростной "Сапсан", проезжая этот участок по пути из Петербурга в Москву, насмерть сбил двух мужчин. Скорость состава была 200 километров в час. По мере приближения к платформе, заметив двух людей, переходящих пути, машинист нажал тревожную кнопку, однако те не отреагировали на сигнал и не отошли, в результате чего их буквально затянуло воздушной волной.
Как сообщили в местном управлении МВД, после экстренного торможения и наезда на людей машинист не остановился и продолжал маршрут. Погибшими оказались двое мужчин из Карелии, подрабатывавшими в этой области в электричках. Они были глухонемыми и не услышали важного сигнала.
По факту инцидента проводится проверка.
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This is completely disgraceful. Obama is advocating committing VOTER FRAUD on live television as ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS are not permitted to vote.
Via AlternativeNews
Barack Obama has gone on record encouraging illegal immigrants to vote in the United States presidential election.
Appearing on MiTu, a YouTube channel aimed at Latino millenials, Obama was asked by the host Gina Rodriguez if undocumented immigrants should be fearful of voting. But rather than setting her straight and telling her that voting is a sacred right of citizens, and if you are an undocumented immigrant you are not a citizen, Obama actually encourages illegals to sneak into a booth somehow and vote.
How desperate are the Democrats? As the polls tighten and Hillary’s campaign lurches from one scandal to another, the president of the United States, making the rules up as he goes along, is urging non-citizens to vote.
Source : (Truth Feed)
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CAIRO — One of Egypt’s highest courts overturned a death sentence imposed on Mohamed Morsi, who was the country’s first democratically elected president and was ousted in 2013 by the military. Mr. Morsi, who is serving a life sentence in prison for offenses related to espionage and inciting violence, is likely to remain in prison indefinitely. The annulment of his death sentence — as well as the sentences against five other leaders of Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement — suggests the government’s reluctance to execute leaders of the Brotherhood, which still maintains some public support after its role in the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. The Brotherhood, which held power for just over a year, has been classified as a terrorist group by the government of Abdel Fattah the president and a former military leader, and thousands of the group’s leaders and members have been jailed or killed or have gone into exile. Even so, observers widely believe that executing top leaders like Mr. Morsi could lead to a new surge of violence. The Court of Cassation, an appellate panel that interprets and applies Egyptian law, ordered a retrial of a case in which Mr. Morsi was charged with orchestrating a prison break during the chaotic days of the 2011 uprising against Mr. Mubarak. The case must be heard again in the courts. Mr. Morsi may again be given the death sentence, said Khaled Nashar, the spokesman for the Ministry of Justice. “The Court of Cassation’s job is to make sure the courts followed the law,” Mr. Nashar said. “They have to redo the procedures now and then. They can issue whatever verdict they see fit. ” But even if Mr. Morsi is again sentenced to death, the penalty is unlikely to be carried out, “if only for the reaction it would provoke within Egypt,” said H. A. Hellyer, a scholar at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington. If Mr. Morsi were executed, he said, it could undo the uneasy calm that has settled in Egypt since 2013, when Mr. Sisi, who was then commander of Egypt’s armed forces, deposed Mr. Morsi amid a popular wave of anger against the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Morsi had been democratically elected president the year before. Mr. Sisi led a crackdown against the group, including killing at least 800 people, and possibly as many as 1, 000, when security forces dispersed a in Cairo in August 2013. Executing Mr. Morsi would very likely make him a martyr to millions of Islamists and provide fuel for violence. It was that concern, rather than any desire for reconciliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, that would keep him alive, Mr. Hellyer said. “They are crazy, but they are not that crazy,” Mr. Hellyer said of the Egyptian authorities. “I don’t think they want to execute him, but it doesn’t mean he is getting out. ” Mr. Morsi has been sentenced several times to life in prison. One of those sentences, on charges arising from the killing of protesters outside the presidential palace in December 2012, does not permit parole. Last year, he was given lengthy prison terms on charges of spying for Qatar for Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza and for Hezbollah, the Shiite Lebanese group. He also is facing trial for another case involving insulting the judiciary. The next hearing is set for December, said Nicholas Piachaud, a researcher on Egyptian affairs at the human rights group Amnesty International. The Court of Cassation rules only on matters of law, not matters of fact. one of Mr. Morsi’s lawyers, had argued that the death penalty should be overturned “because the initial trial was deeply flawed. ” Mr. added: “It’s not like he is going home today. He already has a final sentence of 20 years in prison. But at least today he gets to take off the red suit. ” Prisoners awaiting the death penalty in Egypt wear red jumpsuits other prisoners wear blue. | 1 |
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President Barack Obama has been campaigning hard for the woman who is supposedly going to extend his legacy four more years. The only problem with stumping for Hillary Clinton, however, is she’s not exactly a candidate easy to get too enthused about. | 0 |
The president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) says President Donald Trump’s budget blueprint “takes a meat cleaver to public education. ”[At a press conference Thursday, Randi Weingarten said to members of the media, “Budgets tell you priorities, and what you have here is a budget that tells you that President Trump’s priority is not public education. The budget takes a meat cleaver to public education. ” Trump’s budget hurts the working poor. From taking a meat cleaver to pub ed to job cuts, this is wrong. #SkinnyBudget https: . — Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) March 16, 2017, Weingarten and public education advocates have condemned Trump’s push since the end of his campaign for school choice programs as a means to bring about social justice for families living in areas. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos worked in her home state of Michigan to develop school voucher programs that allowed parents to use taxpayer funds to have their children attend public charter, private and religious schools. Trump’s nomination of DeVos signaled his pivot toward school choice as the primary theme of his education agenda. Teachers’ unions especially say that school choice will draw taxpayer funding away from traditional public schools and toward public charter schools as well as private and religious schools. Trump’s 2018 budget calls for an increase in federal spending on school choice programs by $1. 4 billion, ultimately reaching an annual total of $20 billion. Additional spending in 2018 on school choice would include: A $168 million increase for charter schools, $250 million for a new private school choice program, and a $1 billion increase for Title I, dedicated to encouraging districts to adopt a system of based budgeting and open enrollment that enables Federal, State, and local funding to follow the student to the public school of his or her choice. “The budget also includes both and voucher programs that further an ideological crusade against public education,” Weingarten said during the press conference. She continued: What we have here is what we feared when Betsy DeVos was nominated for this job. That — just like she did in Michigan — she tried to defund public schools with the aim of destabilizing and destroying them, and then lifting up other things that had really shoddy … track records. That’s exactly what the Title I portability proposal does. It’s a voucher scheme which, frankly, was expressly rejected in the recently enacted bipartisan federal education law. Trump’s budget plan also calls for either eliminating or reducing “over 20 categorical programs that do not address national needs, duplicate other programs, or are more appropriately supported with State, local, or private funds. ” Among those programs mentioned are: Striving Readers, Teacher Quality Partnership, Impact Aid Support Payments for Federal Property, and International Education programs. The plan also eliminates $3. 6 billion in support for programs for instruction support, before and and summer programs — all of which the blueprint observes, “lack evidence” of meeting the goals of improving student achievement. Overall, Trump’s budget for next year offers $59 billion in discretionary funding for the federal Department of Education, an amount the plan says represents “a $9 billion or 13 percent reduction below the 2017 annualized CR level. ” More than $1. 2B on vouchers backdoor vouchers, while $1. 2B cut to programs. This hurts working families #SkinnyBudget, — Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) March 16, 2017, “The cuts to community schools mean that we are not going to take poverty on head on, we’re not going to meet children’s needs,” Weingarten said. “The cuts in terms of lower class size mean that we are not going to be able to meet the needs of individual children, and cuts to professional development mean the things that teachers need to learn on an ongoing basis — there’s going to be fewer people for them to learn that. ” Breitbart News asked Weingarten if she had any comment about the fact that Trump’s budget blueprint maintains the current funding levels of $13 billion for students with disabilities under the IDEA program, and $492 million for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Institutions. “The funding for IDEA and the funding for Title I are not discretionary funding,” Weingarten responded. “It is required funding, and that is very important to have. ” “The HBCUs have asked for more funding,” she added. “They needed more funding, not less funding. And you can’t just have a with HBCUs and not create more funding for them. These schools have been under austerity for years, and if they’re going to compete with others, they definitely need more funding. ” | 1 |
Purchasing Loyalty with Foreign Aid By Jacob G. Hornberger
FFF " - A dispute that is taking place between Saudi Arabia and Egypt indirectly demonstrates the nature of U.S. foreign aid. After dumping a walloping $25 billion in foreign aid to help the Egyptian military dictatorships economic woes, the Saudis are hopping mad.
Why?
Because last month in the United Nations, contrary to Saudi Arabias wishes, Egypt voted in favor of a Russian resolution on Syria.
In the world of foreign aid, thats a super no-no. When a regime has received $25 billion from another regime, it is expected to vote the way its benefactor wants it to vote.
In a remarkable admission regarding foreign aid, at least in this particular case, the New York Times , in an article on the matter, wrote, The Saudis may have thought they were buying loyalty . The Times article pointed out that to punish the Egyptians for their independence, The state-owned Saudi oil company, Aramco, postponed a promised shipment of 700,000 tons of discounted oil in October, and the spokesman for Egypts oil ministry said the fate of Novembers shipment remains unknown.
Although the New York Times would probably be reluctant to describe U.S. foreign aid in the same way, thats precisely what it is a way to purchase loyalty from foreign regimes, including dictatorships. The U.S. government loves to put foreign regimes on the federal dole because once that happens, U.S. officials know that they have bought them, lock, stock, and barrel. Once a regime is on the dole, it inevitably becomes dependent on it.
The racket works like this: The IRS collects money from hard-pressed U.S. taxpayers, which U.S. officials use to send millions of dollars in foreign aid to foreign regimes.
The foreign regimes then use the money to buy weaponry to fortify their hold on power or to just to line the pockets of government officials.
It doesnt matter to U.S. officials what the tyrants do to people within their country. They can abuse them, incarcerate them, torture them, or kill them. None of that matters to U.S. officials.
What matters to U.S. officials is the international arena. Like votes in the UN. Or public support for U.S. invasions, coups, interventions, assassinations, kidnappings, and the like. Or joining coalitions of the willing. Thats when U.S. officials expect loyalty, in the form of blind support, which was what Saudi Arabia was expecting from the Egyptian tyrants.
And heaven help any nation that takes the wrong position. The U.S. will respond in the same way the Saudis have responded to the Egyptians. It will threaten to do very bad things to the nation that opposes a U.S invasion, coup, or resolution within the UN. When a nation is on the U.S. dole, U.S. officials expect loyalty.
Americans cant do anything about foreign aid by the Saudi government. But they can do something about U.S. foreign aid. What they should do is demand that it be ended, immediately.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. | 0 |
November 3, 2016 Obama Faults F.B.I. on Emails, Citing ‘Incomplete Information’
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — President Obama threw the power of the White House behind Hillary Clinton on Wednesday. He faulted how the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, handled new emails related to the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s private server, and then shouted out to college students here in a pivotal battleground state that it was crucial that they vote because the “fate of the world is teetering.”
Mr. Obama’s comments about Mr. Comey, broadcast early in the day as recent polls showed a tightening race, were striking for a president who has insisted he does not comment on F.B.I. investigations. But Mr. Obama appeared to be doing exactly that in implicitly criticizing Mr. Comey’s decision to send a vague letter last week to Congress — and by extension, the public — informing lawmakers about a discovery of new emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private server as secretary of state.
“We don’t operate on incomplete information,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with NowThis News. “We don’t operate on leaks. We operate based on concrete decisions that are made.” | 0 |
By Jay Syrmopoulos Russia lost an election to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for the first time since the council’s inception in 2006 –... | 0 |
Senior figures across the Democratic Party would like Media Matters for America founder David Brock to step back from politics as he hurts the party’s cause, according to a report from The Daily Beast. [Brock, who founded the watchdog Media Matters for America as well as Super PACs such as Correct the Record and American Bridge sees himself as a key figure in rebuilding the Democratic Party following Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency. Recently, Brock has pleaded for funding to help him build an war room, which seeks to hold the the current administration accountable on a daily basis and, in his own words, “kick Trump’s ass. ” He aspires to make his Shareblue website “the Breitbart of the Left. ” However, according to multiple sources at The Daily Beast, many Democrats believe he damages the party and just wish he would go away. Talking to The Daily Beast, Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, described Brock’s ability to improve the party’s electability as “nonexistent,” adding that “he does not have the kind of understanding of what kind of coalition you have to bring together to win national races. ” “I don’t think David Brock has been helpful to the party to date, and I don’t think he will be a big part of its future,”a former Clinton campaign official also told the news site, while another said that they “did not want to deal with Brock’s bullshit,” describing his campaign efforts as “useless,” adding that “you might as well have thrown those [tens of] millions of dollars down a well, and then set the well on fire. ” A source close to The Daily Beast also said that while Brock had reached out to various Clinton campaign staff to join his “war room” effort, they all declined because “no one wants anything to do with him. ” Other former employees of Brock also said that he tends to “overstate his level of impact and importance,” adding that “that he cares less about progressive policies and moving the ball forward, and is actually more focused on stroking his ego. ” Brock’s main project, the watchdog Media Matters for America group, was in 2012 exposed as attempting the wholesale destruction of conservative media. A leaked internal document showed that Brock’s organization hoped to “bring litigation against Fox News and its feeders. ” However, the organization now reportedly pivots its focus towards Breitbart, instead of FOX News. Another one of Brock’s organizations, Correct the Record, spent $1 million to hire online trolls to “correct” supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders ( ) across social media. Defending his record, Brock told The Daily Beast that “people are free to question my motives, but it should be pretty clear by now that the groups that I’ve created are committed to a more progressive America.“ “I’m interested in building organizational capacity to resist and oppose Donald Trump,” he continued. “I think that should be everybody’s goal on the left, to destroy Donald Trump, not to destroy each other. ” You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
Even as automakers and technology companies have been promoting a euphoric vision of the future in which cars will drive themselves and serious crashes will be rare, their engineers have been engaged in a sobering debate. Just how autonomous can and should cars become? the engineers are asking. Is there an inherent danger in technology that invites human drivers to sit back and relax — but still requires them to be ready to hit the brakes or grab the wheel at the first sign of trouble? Those questions have taken on a new urgency after the revelation this week that the driver of a Tesla Model S died in a crash in Florida while the electric car was operating in its Autopilot mode. The man, Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, was driving on a divided highway, when a truck made a left turn and crossed in front of Mr. Brown’s lane of traffic. Tesla said neither Mr. Brown nor the car’s system noticed the white truck against a bright sky, and the brakes were never applied. For now, other automakers are giving no sign of slowing down their efforts to push forward with cars that can drive themselves. But mainly they say the technology isn’t ready yet — which for many is an implicit rebuke of Tesla’s willingness to tempt drivers to turn tomorrow’s vision into today’s road reality. On Friday, even as the world was absorbing news of Mr. Brown’s death as the first known fatality of the autonomous driving revolution, the German automaker BMW said it intended to offer a “ car” — but not until 2021. And it will have much different technology than is now available on the Tesla Model S. “Today we are standing at the brink of a new revolution,” Harald Krüger, BMW chief executive, said at a news conference in Munich. Mr. Krüger added that the Tesla crash was “really very sad” and said BMW would need “the next few years” to perfect its autonomous driving system. “Today the technologies are not ready for serious production,” he said. The world’s largest carmaker, Toyota, is a notable holdout in the rush toward completely autonomous cars. Last year, the company said that it would invest $1 billion in a Silicon research effort to focus on cars that will function as “guardian angels,” saving human drivers from errors, rather than replacing them. Tesla, which started its Autopilot feature last fall, has emphasized in discussing Mr. Brown’s death that the system isn’t intended to take over complete control of the car and that drivers must keep their hands on the steering wheel and remain alert and engaged. The point highlights the difference in approach that separates companies working on technology. Ford Motor, Google, Volvo and others are aiming at offering fully autonomous cars that can operate safely without human intervention at all — an approach engineers call Level 4 automated driving. Those companies are wary of semiautonomous, or Level 3, technology that can drive the car for stretches of road under certain circumstances, but requires drivers to be ready to take over. Tesla’s Autopilot is not even a fully fledged Level 3 technology, and some experts say it is a risky approach. “There’s a huge inherent danger and it’s well proven — the computer making a mistake and the driver not taking over quickly enough,” said Mark Wakefield, a managing director at Alix Partners, a consulting firm with a large automotive practice. The trouble is that while semiautonomous systems like Tesla’s are guiding a car, human drivers can be lulled into feeling they are able to turn their attention away from the road. Mr. Brown, like some other Model S owners, posted videos showing the driver with no hands on the steering wheel. In one video, a driver climbs into the back seat. Pete Cordaro, the owner of a vending machine company from Connellsville, Pa. owns a 2013 Model S that does not have Autopilot. But he drove a loaner with the feature earlier this year while his was being repaired. He loves his car and has deposits to buy two Model 3 compacts when that car is available, yet he is “on the fence” about getting Autopilot. While the technology “was the greatest thing” on closed highways like the Pennsylvania Turnpike, it could become confused in more complicated environments like construction zones, Mr. Cordaro said. “My experience is it’s really not completely safe except in highways,” he said. “It gives you a false sense of security. You get comfortable and think you can take your hands off the wheel but you really can’t. It should be called instead of Autopilot, because that’s all it is. ” Even Amnon Shashua, an executive whose technology is part of Tesla’s feature, said on Friday that he did not think ’s time had yet come. Mr. Shashua is and chairman of Mobileye, an Israeli company that makes camera and sensing technology. According to the Tesla website, Tesla uses Mobileye components but developed the system in the Model S itself. Mobileye, along with the chip maker Intel, is at work in a partnership with BMW on the car that the German automaker described in Munich on Friday that is supposed to be available in 2021. Mr. Shashua suggested that technology was close, but still not quite ready for actual use without human drivers remaining engaged. “Five years is a very short time,” Mr. Shashua said. “On the other hand, it is a sufficient time to do the types of validations that are needed. ” The BMW car Mobileye is collaborating on will be capable of piloting itself on highways, but not necessarily in complex urban settings. Automakers and technology companies still need to do “hundreds of thousands or millions of kilometers of validation and simulations” in closed testing environments to be certain the technology is safe, Mr. Shashua said. “I think it is very important, especially given this accident and what we hear in the news, that companies are very transparent about the limitations of the system,” he said. Although Tesla has publicly said that it has enhanced the Mobileye technology, the company has not commented on whether it has enhanced the system to protect against what the industry describes as “lateral turn across path” — the type of situation in the Florida accident. Others in the automotive industry are working on sensor technologies meant to detect vehicles from all angles. One approach is lidar — a system that uses rotating laser beams. Lidar is being used in the experimental autonomous vehicle being developed by BMW, as well as those by Google, Nissan and Apple. But it remains unclear whether the laser system will come down enough in price to use in cars. | 1 |
7 Ways To Relieve Post-Election Stress Disorder Nov 9, 2016 0 0
With the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election now at an end and with emotions running rampant throughout social media and throughout the world, post-election stress disorder is becoming a serious issue that many will need to address in the coming days and weeks.
To begin, post-election stress disorder is an actual medically-established disorder, which Dr. Asim Shah is not well known, but is a serious issue. Dr. Shah is the vice chair for community psychiatry at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas and says that symptoms of the disorder include sweaty palms, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, loss of appetite and trouble sleeping. Post-election stress disorder can cause a great deal of stress.
How We Can Deal With The Stress
Whether you feel you actually suffer from post-election stress disorder or are just in general stressed out over the election period, there are some simple ways to deal with the stress in a healthy way. Go for a walk : Spiritual teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says that the best way to deal with strong emotions is to go for a walk and to walk until you are physically tired and you are emotionally calm again. Getting fresh air, sunlight and oxygen flowing through your veins and into your brain is an excellent way to help you regain control over your emotions and to relieve pent up stress. Use essential oils: When we smell essential oils, the molecules of the oil travel to the limbic system of our brain through the olfactory senses. The limbic system is the part of the brain that controls emotions, memory, blood pressure and stress hormone release. If you are stressed, cope with your stress in this healthy way by smelling and or applying essential oils. Good oils for relaxing are lavender, rose and geranium. Take Media Breaks: Take some time away from all forms of media, including social media. Reflect on the things that are important to you and refocus your energy on your dreams and wishes for you life. Essential oils can dramatically help improve emotional states of mind. Keep things in perspective: We live on a tiny blue planet traveling throughout the universe at incredible speeds with a neighboring star (the Sun) who gives us the opportunity for life each and every day. For the most part, things are okay. Reclaim personal sovereignty: We each have the choice as to how we react to situations in our life. One situation that might be viewed as troubling for one person can be viewed as peace for another. How can you shift your thoughts around situations to see the positive in it? Will this election not motivate even more people to be better people? Will it not catalyze more action from people around the world to create changes they wish to see? Deep breathing: Though it is simple, it is profound in helping to release emotions and deal with stress in a healthy and effective way. Breath slowly in for a couple seconds and breath out for a couple seconds. Oxygenating the brain helps to shift our emotions in a positive direction. Herbs: Instead of using alcohol or mind-numbing pharmaceuticals, look into the benefits of herbs like Passionflower, California Poppy, Lemon Balm, Rhodiola, Kava Kava and Chamomile.
We are all learning and processing a lot of information right now as the election period has come to an end. Take care of yourself and deal with any stress in healthy ways. What are other healthy ways you are dealing with election stress or stress in general?
Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science and practices health coaching through his website Orgonlight Health . You can follow the Orgonlight Health facebook page or visit the website for more information on how to receive health coaching for yourself, a family member or a friend as well as view other inspiring articles. | 0 |
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This has to be one of the stupidest things we’ve ever seen. It’s probably connected to George Soros since he is the sugar daddy to almost all of the paid anti-Trump protests.
Here’s an example of a Soros employee literally “posing” as a protester. Not all that “grass roots.”
In this case, a Craigslist ad in Los Angeles shows that activists are wanted to block traffic in the heavy traffic intersection of Highlands and Hollywood.
This an idiotic move for multiple reasons. First of all, California did go for Hillary and Hollywood in particular is a very liberal city. So what on earth do you gain protesting Trump by pissing off your own liberals by blocking traffic? They will probably inspire some pissed of Angelenos to join the Trump Train while they are annoyed the road is blocked.
Here is a screen shot of the ad.
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Generally Confusing Accounting Principles | 0 |
With the January jobs report released Friday by the Labor Department, we know that President Trump took office amid a relatively low unemployment rate (it ticked up to 4. 8 percent in January) strong job growth (227, 000 positions added that month) and weak wage growth (average hourly earnings up 0. 1 percent in January and 2. 5 percent over the past year). There was even some welcome progress in the number of people who count themselves as part of the labor force. But Mr. Trump made amply clear in his campaign that he doesn’t care for the way that government agencies and mainstream economists summarize the state of the job market. The unemployment rate, he said in December, is “totally fiction. ” He claimed at one point during the campaign that the real jobless rate was not the number below 5 percent widely cited by economists, but something like 42 percent. There is certainly a filament of truth in that. The unemployment rate counts only people who say they want a job and have looked for one in the last month — meaning that millions of Americans who dropped out of the labor force during the aftermath of the 2008 recession do not count as unemployed by the standard definition. But we have some exciting news for the president. The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t just issue the widely cited headline unemployment rate (again, 4. 8 percent in January). This month’s jobs report, for example, offers 42 pages’ worth of figures that allow anyone who knows how to read them an infinite variety of ways to examine the labor market. No one forces you to treat the standard unemployment rate as gospel it’s just a convention, and any economic analysts worthy of their spreadsheets use a wide range of data to assess how things are going. So if the White House wants to choose a different measure of job market health to emphasize on the first Friday of every month, we’re all ears. The nice thing about a convention is you can change it. Here, in fact, is a menu of labor market measures that might be plausible alternatives to the main number — and why the Trump administration may, or may not, want the world to watch it. Underemployment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes six different unemployment rates, from a relatively narrow definition to relatively broad. The jobless rate most often cited is the third of the six, known in bureaucratese as and includes only people who say they want a job and have actively looked for one in the last month. The broadest of these unemployment rates, also includes people who want a job but haven’t looked in the last month and people who have a job but want work. That rate: 9. 4 percent. Share of population not employed. If Mr. Trump really believes the 42 percent unemployment rate he floated last year is a useful measure of joblessness, here’s the math that almost gets him there. The proportion of the adult population that is working is 59. 9 percent, so the remainder of that — the share of American adults not working — was 40. 1 percent in January. Think of it as a measure of not the more precisely defined unemployment. There are some problems with that measure. It includes people who are not working and who have no desire whatsoever to do so. It includes 17 high school students, retirees, disabled adults and parents who voluntarily stay home with their children. Moreover, if Mr. Trump wants to focus on this measure, he may not be pleased with the results. Because the baby boom generation is hitting retirement age and voluntarily stepping out of the labor force, this measure of is likely to rise in the years ahead. Share of population not employed. One way to avoid the most obvious problems with that measure is simply to limit the age bracket you look at. Jordan Weissmann at Slate argues that a better measure of the health of the job market is the share of the population between ages 25 to 54 who are working. That number was 78. 2 percent in January, so its remainder implies a 21. 8 percent jobless rate. This still isn’t perfect — it includes people who fall in that age bracket who have no desire to work, and also fails to include people under 25 or over 54 who really do want a job but can’t find one. But as a measure of the health of the labor market, Mr. Weissmann is right that you could do a lot worse. Average hourly earnings. A common complaint about media focus on how many jobs are being created is that it doesn’t account for whether they are good jobs. But this is a tricky concept to measure everyone can agree that a position is not as ideal as a highly paid computer programming gig, but it’s hard to get at more subtle differences. Is a job as a truck driver better or worse than one as a hotel assistant manager? It’s pretty subjective. What isn’t subjective is compensation. And data on average hourly earnings helps convey not just whether people are getting raises for existing jobs, but also whether the composition of jobs in the economy is shifting toward higher pay. Average hourly earnings for all private sector employees was $26 in January, and for nonmanagerial private sector employees it was $21. 84. An economy in which those numbers rise significantly faster than inflation is an economy in which people are feeling better about the world and are seeing greater rewards for their labor. There are plenty more options for the Trump administration to consider as job market measures to emphasize. Unemployment in the construction sector (currently 9. 4 percent)? The jobless rate among people who didn’t go to college (currently 5. 8 percent)? The options are nearly endless. But — and this is important — if the president wants to set a different measure of the job market for his administration to focus on and improve, it would be best if he could let us know what it is now, so that we can really assess whether things are getting better or worse during his presidency. | 1 |
Is genetics destiny when it comes to heart disease? A new analysis of data from more than 55, 000 people provides an answer. It finds that by living right — by not smoking, by exercising moderately and by eating a healthy diet heavy in fruits, vegetables and grains — people can tamp down even the worst genetic risk. “DNA is not destiny it is not deterministic for this disease,” said Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, the director of the Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. “You do have control over the problem, even if you have been dealt a bad genetic hand. ” The research, by Dr. Kathiresan and his colleagues, is the first attempt to use large data sets to tease apart the effects of genes and lifestyle in heart disease, researchers said. It was published on Sunday in The New England Journal of Medicine to coincide with the presentation of the results at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association. About 365, 000 people die of coronary heart disease — the most common type — annually in the United States, and 17. 3 million worldwide, making it one of the biggest killers. The investigators found that genes can double the risk of heart disease, but a good lifestyle cuts it in half. Just as important, they found, a terrible lifestyle erases about half of the benefits of good genetics. Dr. Michael Lauer, a cardiologist who is the deputy director for extramural research at the National Institutes of Health and was not involved in the analysis, called the study impressive. Its subjects were from four large studies, yet the results were consistent and convincing, even though the populations were quite varied. That sort of research, he said, “is not something we see very often, and certainly not with this degree of rigor. ” One study the group analyzed involved black and white Americans aged 45 to 64. A good lifestyle in those with the highest genetic risk cut the likelihood of heart disease to 5. 1 percent from 10. 7 percent. Another study involved 21, 222 American women aged 45 and older who were health professionals their risk fell to 2 percent from 4. 6 percent in the group if they also had a healthy lifestyle. In a third study, Swedish participants aged 44 to 73 had a risk reduction to 5. 3 percent from 8. 2 percent. And finally, in a study of Americans aged 55 to 80, those with genetic risk but a healthy lifestyle had significantly less calcium, a sign of heart disease, in their coronary arteries. Dr. Lauer also was encouraged by the finding that the fourth study, which used imaging, showed the same pattern as the others that used heart attacks and other signs of heart disease as endpoints. “That gives us more confidence that the findings are real,” he said. The results, he said, should quell the cries of both those who emphasize genes above all and those who emphasize elements of lifestyle above all. “It’s not nature or nurture, it’s both,” he said. The study got its start after Dr. Amit V. Khera, one of Dr. Kathiresan’s postdoctoral fellows, noticed that researchers had looked at genetic risks of heart disease and had, in different studies, looked at the effect of environment and lifestyle risks. So, he wondered, why not look at lifestyles and genetics in the same populations and see how much each contributes? The researchers began about a year and a half ago, analyzing data from four large studies that not only had genetic data on participants but also had information on lifestyles and on which participants developed heart disease. The investigators developed a genetic score based on 50 genes associated with heart disease. They developed a lifestyle score based on whether people smoked, whether they exercised at least once a week, whether they followed a healthy diet — one with fruits, vegetables, fish, whole grains and nuts — and whether they were obese. An optimum lifestyle score was defined as having three or all four of these elements, which is important, Dr. Kathiresan said, because many people who are obese have enormous difficulty losing weight and maintaining their weight loss. “You can get into this group even if you are obese by not smoking, exercising and eating a healthy diet, “ he said. Even better, said Dr. Lawrence J. Appel, the director of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research at Johns Hopkins Medicine, you do not have to have an exemplary lifestyle to reap a big benefit. It looks as if the biggest protective effect by far came from going from a terrible lifestyle to one that was at least moderately good. Dr. John Michael Gaziano, a preventive cardiologist at the VA Boston Healthcare System and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said the work showed the power of large data sets. Until recently, researchers mostly used much smaller data sets, which tend to have a lot of random variation, making results hard to interpret. The Million Veteran Program, a study that he is leading, and the National Institutes of Health’s precision medicine initiative that is recruiting a million participants should provide the sort of data that can make results like Dr. Kathiresan’s more feasible and more powerful. For Dr. Gaziano, the biggest surprise was that a test based on combining 50 genes, each of which had a tiny role in heart disease, was such a powerful predictor of risk. The larger studies underway now should allow researchers to understand more about how much each of those genes contributes, he added. Meanwhile, the new study shows a new way to think about genes and lifestyle, researchers say. “It’s very important,” said Dr. David Maron, the director of preventive cardiology at Stanford, who was not involved in the new study. “If you are dealt a bad hand, there are things you can do to attenuate the risk. ” Dr. Kathiresan is already using the study’s results when he sees patients, he said. The genetic test is not available outside of research studies, he said, but he often gets an idea of who has a worrisome genetic risk when he talks to patients. “A poor man’s substitute,” he said, “is: ‘My dad died at 45 of a heart attack. I have a strong family history. ’” He now replies, “You have it in your power to change that risk. ” | 1 |
A brave mother fought off a mountain lion that attacked her 5-year-old son outside their home in northwest Aspen, Colorado. (4 hours ago)
When people asked Veronica Aguilar where her son was, she told them he had been placed in an institution in Mexico, according to court records. Only her three other children — two of whom slept on a bed just outside the closet door — knew the truth, and they said they were forbidden by their mother from saying anything, authorities say.
Yonatan Daniel Aguilar’s tortured life came to an end in August. Police later found the 11-year-old’s battered, malnourished 34-pound body in the bedroom closet of the family’s tiny Echo Park home.
The grim details are laid out in records The Times obtained from Los Angeles County Juvenile Court this week. The records help explain how the people charged with his well-being — school officials, police, social workers and therapists — lost track of him despite earlier allegations of abuse. But they also raise new questions about whether more could have been done to save the boy who, court records suggest, might have been autistic and thus was treated differently.
Los Angeles police detectives investigating the case believed Aguilar’s efforts to hide the boy were so effective that even the boy’s stepfather, Jose Pinzon, didn’t know Yonatan lived with them all along.
The day of Yonatan’s death, Moses Castillo, the supervising LAPD detective on the case, placed Pinzon and Yonatan’s siblings together in a room “to see the reaction,” Department of Children and Family Services records state. As detectives and a county social worker stood by, Pinzon “immediately confronts the children that he had no idea that minor [Yonatan] was living in the house the whole time they were there,” records state. Recommended
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“How can you do this to me?” he asked.
One of the children replied: “You were always at work, so you didn’t know.”
Pinzon then started crying.
“I carry a photo of him in my wallet,” he said, according to the records. “I’m the only one that cared for him.”
On Aug. 22, Aguilar told Pinzon that Yonatan had died and asked him to care for her other children. He assumed she would be going to Mexico to bury the boy. Recommended VIDEO: The Woman Who Has Lived Off The Grid For 30 Years In A $3000 House
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Instead, she led him to the bedroom closet. According to authorities, Yonatan’s body was wrapped in a blanket and covered in pressure sores from lying on the tile floor. There was foam in his nose and medicinal cups of pink and red liquid near his body. He was going bald.
“I took care of the problem by ruining my life,” Aguilar told Pinzon, according to the court records. Police say Pinzon then ran out of the house to a nearby 7-Eleven, where he called authorities.
Aguilar, 39, is facing murder charges and has pleaded not guilty.
R. Lawrence Tripp, Aguilar’s public defender, said Thursday that he had not yet seen a completed coroner’s report and was awaiting more information about Yonatan’s death.
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The Times petitioned the court to release DCFS case records, as well as police and coroner’s reports regarding Yonatan. Michael Levanas, the presiding judge of L.A. County’s Juvenile Court, ordered the release of more than 160 pages of partially redacted records, saying they “shed light on what was going on in the family’s home” and why the boy was left in his mother’s care.
Yonatan’s family had been the subject of six reports to DCFS alleging possible abuse or neglect, records show. Yonatan’s risk of abuse at home had been marked as “high” four times from 2009 to 2012 by a computerized program intended to gauge social workers’ level of intervention. Social workers, records show, declined to open a case, saying the allegations of physical abuse were inconclusive or unfounded.
DCFS Director Philip Browning said that the department had investigated several reports of abuse and neglect and that everyone interacting with the child and his family, including medical workers, teachers and police, thought “the child was in a safe environment.”
“We talked to the school nurse, the school doctors, school counselors, the teachers, everyone, including the LAPD investigators, who all said everything was OK,” Browning said, “We were very surprised what occurred here. Our social workers were very distraught. … There is no way to predict this occurring.”
Under the law, he said, the department has the authority to investigate abuse and neglect, but the oversight comes to an end once a determination is made that there is no ongoing issue. Recommended Father & Son Spend 41 Years Hiding In Vietnam Jungle Fearing US Airstrikes
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“We don’t have the legal authority to follow up,” Browning said.
Officials with the LAPD’s Juvenile Division said that although allegations of physical abuse regarding Yonatan also were reported to police, no police investigation was launched.
The final contact DCFS had with Yonatan came in spring 2012, when teachers made two separate reports about him, saying that he had come to school with a black eye and that he was hungry and hoarding food.
After that, the boy disappeared. He was pulled out of school and kept hidden as the family moved from home to home, documents show. DCFS officials said they received no further reports about the boy and had no legal right to inquire about him without a report.
The department’s contact with the family began in 2002, before Yonatan’s birth. Aguilar had locked herself in a bathroom and cut her wrist because she was upset with her children’s biological father over his drinking, DCFS records state. Recommended 9/11 WTC Tower Had Power Turned Off For 36 Hours Weekend Before Attack
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In recent months, the four children lived with their mother and stepfather in the cramped one-bedroom house on Santa Ynez Street. Aguilar and Pinzon slept in the living room, and one child slept in a shed in the backyard. Two children shared a bed in the bedroom, while Yonatan — who was reportedly autistic — stayed in the bedroom closet, records state.
Pinzon told detectives that he had not seen the boy in several years and that Aguilar had told him she sent him to Mexico, according to a coroner’s investigator’s report. The day before Yonatan’s death, Pinzon went to a dollar store to buy school supplies for the children, DCFS records state. Aguilar asked him to buy purple-colored jarabe, Spanish for syrup.
“He said that any time he would go to the store, the mother would ask him to bring the syrup,” DCFS records state. “He would ask her why she was buying syrup, if they did not have money.”
Yonatan’s oldest brother, who is 18, told authorities that the family recently moved to the Echo Park home but that they were able to hide Yonatan in the closet at a previous home as well.
In an interview with police the day after Yonatan’s death, the brother initially lied about knowing Yonatan’s whereabouts, saying he worked a lot and wasn’t home much, the records show. Recommended Three Mile Island Nuclear Meltdown Happened 37 Years Ago
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“My mom does not talk about him because he is a troublemaker,” the brother told police. He accused Yonatan of acting out at school and pointed to a social worker observing the interview, saying: “You guys know about it. He has done so many crazy things.”
The older sibling, whose name is redacted in the records, told police Yonatan “was very smart” and “knew what he was doing.” When he was younger, a therapist came to the home almost daily to provide services to Yonatan, the brother said. Yonatan Daniel Aguilar | 0 |
The California State Assembly passed a bill Monday to allow state employees to be communists — a surprise to observers who may have presumed many state employees were already communists. [The bill, AB 22, would amend existing laws — passed, the Sacramento Bee says, “during the ‘Red Scare’ of the 1940s and ’50s” — that allowed state employees to be fired if they were found to be members of the Communist Party. Moreover, the bill would delete existing section of the state code declaring California’s official opposition to communism. The section of the state code proposed to be deleted states: The Legislature of the State of California finds that: (a) There exists a revolutionary movement to establish a totalitarian dictatorship based upon force and violence rather than upon law. (b) This revolutionary movement is predicated upon and it is designed and intended to carry into execution the basic precepts of communism as expounded by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. (c) Pursuant to the objectives of the world communism movement, in numerous foreign countries the legally constituted governments have been overthrown and totalitarian dictatorships established therein against the will of the people, and the establishment of similar dictatorships in other countries is imminently threatening. The successful establishment of totalitarian dictatorships has consistently been aided, accompanied, or accomplished by repeated acts of treachery, deceit, teaching of false doctrines, teaching untruth, together with organized confusion, insubordination, and disloyalty, fostered, directed, instigated, or employed by communist organizations and their members in such countries. (d) Within the boundaries of the State of California there are active disciplined communist organizations presently functioning for the primary purpose of advancing the objectives of the world communism movement, which organizations promulgate, advocate, and adhere to the precepts and the principles and doctrines of the world communism movement. These communist organizations are characterized by identification of their programs, policies, and objectives with those of the world communism movement, and they regularly and consistently cooperate with and endeavor to carry into execution programs, policies and objectives substantially identical to programs, policies, and objectives of such world communism movement. (e) One of the objectives of the world communism movement is to place its members in state and local government positions and in state supported educational institutions. If this objective is successful, propaganda can be disseminated by the members of these organizations among pupils and students by those members who would have the opportunity to teach them and to whom, as teachers, they would look for guidance, authority, and leadership. The members of such groups would use their positions to advocate and teach their doctrines and teach the prescribed Communist Party line group dogma or doctrine without regard to truth or free inquiry. This type of propaganda is sufficiently subtle to escape detection. There is a clear and present danger, which the Legislature of the State of California finds is great and imminent, that in order to advance the program, policies and objectives of the world communism movement, communist organizations in the State of California and their members will engage in concerted effort to hamper, restrict, interfere with, impede, or nullify the efforts of the State and the public agencies of the State to comply with and enforce the laws of the State of California and their members will infiltrate and seek employment by the State and its public agencies. The new bill, proposed by Assemblymember Rob Bonta ( ) would leave intact the provisions of the state code that bar state employees who belong to organizations that “advocated the overthrow of the Government of the United States or of any state by force or violence. ” Several Republicans, including Assemblymembers Randy Vopel ( ) and Travis Allen ( Beach) spoke out against the bill. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
Report: Friend Has Been Going By Middle Name This Whole Fucking Time CALABASAS, CA—Astounded that it had never come up at any point in the six years they had known each other, local woman Lucy Reed, 25, reported Tuesday that her friend Nicole Silberthau had apparently been going by her middle name this whole fucking time. Cake Just Sitting There Take It CHICAGO—Assuring you that there was nothing to worry about and not a soul around who would see you, sources confirmed Tuesday that a large piece of chocolate cake was just sitting there and that you should go ahead and take it. Man Approaches Box Of Powdered Doughnuts Like Snake Discovering Unguarded Clutch Of Bird Eggs ASHEBORO, NC—Quietly slinking into his office’s break room after spying the unattended confections from afar, area marketing associate Dan Keegan reportedly approached a box of powdered doughnuts Monday like a pine snake discovering an unguarded clutch of bluebird eggs. Reality Of Fatherhood Never Truly Dawned On Man Until He Held Newborn Son’s Hospital Bill MISSOULA, MT—Describing how he suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a flood of intense emotions, local man Mike Bentzen told reporters Monday the reality of fatherhood didn’t truly set in for him until the moment he held his newborn son’s hospital bill. All-Business Adult In Halloween Shop Beelines It Straight For Pinhead Mask BROOKLINE, MA—Without so much as glancing at the seasonal store’s wide selection of other Halloween-themed merchandise, all-business 34-year-old Brian Aubin reportedly strode right past several aisles of costumes and accessories Friday and beelined it straight for the Pinhead masks. | 0 |
MIAMI (AP) — A person with direct knowledge of the negotiations says Joshua Kushner, whose older brother is an adviser to President Trump, has a preliminary agreement to buy the Miami Marlins for about $1. 6 billion. [The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Friday because the Marlins and owner Jeffrey Loria have not commented publicly on negotiations. The preliminary agreement preceded due diligence by Kushner, the person said, adding the final offer could be much lower than $1. 6 billion. Other parties are also interested in buying the Marlins, and Loria might reopen negotiations with them. Kushner is a New York City businessman and investor and part of the real estate family that also includes Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s and an adviser to the president. Any sale must be approved by at least of Major League Baseball teams. | 1 |
R.T. Home › POLITICS › HILLARY: “I’M SICK AND TIRED OF THE NEGATIVE, DARK, DIVISIVE, DANGEROUS VISION AND BEHAVIOR” OF TRUMP SUPPORTERS HILLARY: “I’M SICK AND TIRED OF THE NEGATIVE, DARK, DIVISIVE, DANGEROUS VISION AND BEHAVIOR” OF TRUMP SUPPORTERS 0 SHARES
[11/3/16] Now that her coronation appears to be escaping her grasp, Democrat Party presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is showing another side of her personality . On Tuesday night a heckler interrupted her speech, waving a sign that read “Bill Clinton is a rapist.” Her response, instead of showing her usual controlled aplomb and restraint, surprised the crowd at its intensity and ferocity. Pointing at the offender and shouting at the top of her voice, Clinton exploded:
I’m sick and tired of the negative, dark, divisive, dangerous vision and behavior of people who support Donald Trump!
The protestor was immediately led away and his sign was torn apart. It turned out that the protestor was vying for a cash prize being offered by Alex Jones of InfoWars.com to anyone appearing either on television or at a Clinton rally chanting “Bill Clinton is a rapist” and wearing a t-shirt bearing the same slogan.
NBC News tried to downplay the interruption, noting that while other protestors have shown up at rallies featuring President Obama and Bill Clinton himself, they are bringing attention to “decades-old allegations from three women who accuse Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. The former president has denied all of the allegations.” Post navigation | 0 |
Tuesday at her weekly briefing, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi ( ) said President Donald Trump’s proposed wall on the U. S. border was “an insult to our hemisphere. ” Pelosi said, “I think the wall is ineffective. It’s an immorality really, an insult to our hemisphere. And I hope that we don’t have that. Do we have the responsibility to protect our border? Yes, every country does. Can we do that using technology and our customs authorities and the rest of that? Sure. A wall? No. So I would hope they wouldn’t try that. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
HONG KONG — The digital currency Bitcoin plunged on Wednesday after Bitfinex, an exchange based in Hong Kong, said it had been hacked and funds stolen. The exchange said it had halted trading, deposits and withdrawals while it investigated which users had been affected. Bitcoin’s trading value fell about 20 percent early on Wednesday, local time in Hong Kong, but had recovered about half the loss by early afternoon. Zane Tackett, Bitfinex’s director of community and product development, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But he said in a posting on Reddit that 119, 756 Bitcoins had been stolen. Before the hacking was made public, that number of Bitcoins would have been worth about $72 million. Now that the currency has slumped, the figure is closer to $65 million. The exchange, one of the world’s largest, said in a blog post that any outstanding settlements would be made at the price before the hacking. “As we account for individualized customer losses, we may need to settle open margin positions, associated financing, collateral affected by the breach,” Bitfinex said in the post. It added that customers’ losses would be addressed later. Security breaches of this type have raised questions about the viability of Bitcoin. The most notable episode was the collapse in 2014 of Mt. Gox, an exchange based in Tokyo, in which hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins were stolen in a heist that experts and law enforcement officials are still trying to unravel. This past June, a hacker stole more than $50 million worth of Ether, another digital currency, from an experimental virtual currency project called the Decentralized Autonomous Organization. Jack Liu, chief strategy officer at OKCoin, a large digital currency exchange, said he was not concerned about the security of his company because it uses a different system. But he noted that there should be more discussion between exchanges over best practices. “We care about the health of the ecosystem,” he said, although he emphasized that nobody should be dictating how Bitcoins are secured. “Hackers are only getting better and so adoption of the same solution may not be the safest for the industry. ” Although some view Bitcoin as the future of finance, allowing for faster and cheaper transactions, the Bitcoin community has been rived with infighting over the development of the technology. The blockchain ledger, part of the coding that underlies the currency, has also gained more mainstream traction, as banks see an opportunity to use the technology to speed up trades. Bitfinex said the theft had been reported to law enforcement. | 1 |
The biggest prize payday in science came around again Sunday evening when the Breakthrough Foundation handed out more than $25 million in its annual prizes to more than a thousand physicists, life scientists and mathematicians. This year’s winners include five molecular biologists who won $3 million each for work in genetics and cell biology, one mathematician, a trio of string theorists who split one $3 million physics prize, and another 1, 015 physicists working on the LIGO gravitational wave detector split a special $3 million physics prize. In addition, there were six smaller “New Horizons” prizes totaling $600, 000 for 10 “early career” researchers, and a pair of high school students won $400, 000 apiece for making science videos. The Breakthrough Foundation was founded by Sergey Brin of Google Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe Jack Ma of Alibaba and his wife, Cathy Zhang Yuri Milner, an internet entrepreneur, and his wife, Julia Milner and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and his wife, Priscilla Chan. It sprang from Mr. Milner’s decision in 2012 to hand out $3 million apiece to nine theoretical physicists, in the belief that physicists are equal to rock stars and deserve to be paid and celebrated like them. Over the years, as more sponsors have joined, the prizes have spread to life sciences and mathematics. The winners each year are chosen by a committee of previous winners. For the last few years, the awards have been given out in an ceremony held at NASA’s Ames Research Center, with a variety of Hollywood celebrities, who this year include Morgan Freeman, Alicia Keys and Jeremy Irons. There were two physics prizes awarded this year. In May, Mr. Milner, the founder of the Breakthrough initiative, announced a special $3 million prize to the LIGO (for Laser Interferometer Observatory) experiment, which detected gravitational waves from colliding black holes last year. A third of the money will be split among the three leaders of the experiment, Ronald W. P. Drever, Kip S. Thorne and Rainer Weiss. The remainder of the award money will be split among the other 1, 012 scientists on the team. In a return to the way it originally was, the regular Breakthrough prize this year is going to a trio of theorists who have made serious advances in string theory, the alleged but still unproven theory of everything, and what it might mean for black holes and the universe. They are Andrew Strominger and Cumrun Vafa from Harvard, and Joseph Polchinski of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. According to string theory, all the forces and particles of nature are composed of tiny little wriggling strings. In 1995, Dr. Polchinski showed that the theory also contains objects of two dimensions or more, called “branes,” short for membranes. This led to a whole new branch of cosmology, in which branes could be island universes floating in an space like leaves in a fish tank, colliding and otherwise interacting with each other through a higher dimension. In a celebrated calculation in 1996, Dr. Strominger and Dr. Vafa used string theory to compute the information content, or entropy, of a black hole. Their result verified a prediction made by Stephen Hawking using more approximate methods that black holes would leak radiation and eventually explode. In a career spanning four decades, Jean Bourgain, a mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N. J. has published, on average, 10 papers a year, tackling some of the hardest problems in a range of mathematical fields. Some recent work includes a “decoupling theorem” — a sort of very abstract generalization of the Pythagorean theorem applied to oscillating waves like light or radio waves. While Pythagoras merely showed how the length of the two shorter sides of a right triangle are related to the longer hypotenuse, the decoupling theorem proven by Dr. Bourgain and Ciprian Demeter of Indiana University shows similar relationships in the superposition of waves. Stephen J. Elledge, 60, is a professor of genetics and medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher. He received the breakthrough prize for research explaining how “cells sense and respond to damage in their DNA and providing insights into the development and treatment of cancer. ” Dr. Elledge has described DNA as being constantly under attack but having the ability — he calls it a sort of chemical intelligence — to monitor its own integrity and activate various defense mechanisms. His research interests range far and wide. In 2015, he and his team reported that they had developed a test that, using less than a drop of blood, could reveal nearly every virus a person had ever been exposed to. Other scientists saw vast potential in the test, suggesting it could be used to track patterns of disease across populations and to learn more about how viruses, and the body’s immune response to them, contribute to chronic diseases and cancer. Last year, Dr. Elledge won another major prize: the Lasker Award, which is often described as the American Nobel. Harry F. Noller helped unravel the structure of ribosomes and identify the importance of RNA to their mechanics. Ribosomes are like factories that assemble proteins within a cell. They look like a tangled mess of rubber bands and coiled wires. But by decoding their twists and folds, scientists can better understand how the genetic code gets translated. Dr. Noller is a biochemist and director of the Center for Molecular Biology of RNA at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He and his colleagues used crystallography to obtain the first image of the ribosome’s molecular structure. His work also helped show that ribosomes are ribozymes, a type of RNA molecule that can facilitate chemical reactions. In this case, the ribozymes stitch amino acids together to build proteins. Roeland Nusse, professor of developmental biology at Stanford University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, helped discover the first Wnt gene in 1982. The gene is part of the larger Wnt signaling pathway, which plays a crucial role in the development of embryos, stem cells, bone growth and the progression of cancer. It is also critical for communication in adults and developing embryos. The Wnt signaling pathway is found in every branch of the animal kingdom. It is involved in things as diverse as setting off breast cancer in mice and helping orchestrate the body plan of fruit flies. It has become an important part in many aspects of biology because the molecular cascade it sets off affects the growth of the entire ecosystem of the body. Dr. Huda Zoghbi, a professor of neurology at Baylor College of Medicine, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital, discovered that a mutation to a gene known as SCA1 causes Spinocerebellar ataxia, a neurodegenerative disorder. It can rob people of their control over their hands, legs and speech. An estimated 150, 000 people in the United States currently suffer from the disease. There is no known cure and it ultimately is fatal. But insight into its inner workings may provide a way to combat its progression. Dr. Zoghbi’s findings have helped provide the groundwork to fighting the disease. Dr. Zoghbi also helped uncover the culprit behind another neurodegenerative disease, Rett syndrome. This crippling condition mostly affects young girls and is often fatal. There are fewer than 1, 000 cases a year in the United States. Her team searched for the cause behind the malady for 16 years, eventually identifying it as a mutation in the gene MECP2. By identifying the gene, she also found that it plays a part in other neurological disorders, providing a starting point to fighting the diseases. Yoshinori Ohsumi, a cell biologist and honorary professor from the Institute of Innovative Research at Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, helped pioneer our understanding of how cells recycle themselves — known as autophagy — through his research with yeast in the 1990s. Organelles, proteins and other molecules inside the cell are constantly becoming damaged or worn out, especially as the cell divides. If too much rubbish builds up, it can become toxic and kill the cell. Autophagy is also a tool that the cell uses to refuel itself if it is starving. During autophagy, the cell produces internal garbage bags called autophagosomes that capture waste. The autophagosomes are sealed by a double membrane that keeps in the junk. They then fuse with organelles called lysosomes, which carry enzymes that help dissolve whatever is inside. Researchers think that failures in autophagy could contribute to Type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, as well as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. They also think it could help us better understand the process of aging. This year, Dr. Ohsumi won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for illuminating the importance of cell cannibalism. In addition to the big $3 million prizes, there were six $100, 000 New Horizons prizes — half in physics and half in mathematics. The young physics winners are: Asimina Arvanitaki of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada, Peter Graham of Stanford and Surjeet Rajendran of the University of California, Berkeley, who split one prize Simone Giombi of Princeton and Xi Yin of Harvard who split another prize and Frans Pretorius of Princeton. In mathematics, the New Horizons winners were Mohammed Abouzaid of Columbia University Hugo of the University of Geneva and Benjamin Elias of the University of Oregon and Geordie Williamson of Kyoto University. | 1 |
Sometimes the road to diet change can be fun Ad 728×90 – HBS Account – 2149237058061490 http://blogs.naturalnews.com/sometimes-road-diet-change-can-fun/
By Hesh Goldstein
Posted Friday, October 28, 2016 at 07:36am EDT
When I was a kid, if I were told that I’d be writing a book about diet and nutrition when I was older, I would’ve thought that whoever told me that was out of their mind.
Living in Newark, New Jersey, my parents and I consumed anything and everything that had a face or a mother except for dead, rotting, pig bodies, although we did eat bacon (as if all the other decomposing flesh bodies were somehow miraculously clean). Going through high school and college it was no different. In fact, my dietary change did not come until I was in my 30’s.
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then, despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a “plastic” community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, ” let’s become vegetarians”. I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, “okay”!
At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us.
Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, “The Little Kitchen”.
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I’ll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to “The Little Kitchen”. Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, “Let’s make a deal. You do our tax return and we’ll feed you as well”. So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, eating three squares a day and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, “Hawaii”. Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called,” Mr. Natural’s”. I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at “Mr. Natural’s.” To make a long story short, that’s exactly what happened.
So, I’m working at “Mr. Natural’s” and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle – it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka’anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn’t really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that’s exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I’m asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn’t thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, “You expected anything less”? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, ‘enchilada’s at “Natural’s” tonight’. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver.
The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That’s when they found out I was an accountant and “Down to Earth” was born. “Down to Earth” became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD’s that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies.
This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii’s premier fitness clubs.
It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. She said,” If you want to be with me you’ve got to stop working on naked women”. So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a “chicken” or “egg” or “fish” or “pig” or “cow” was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, A Sane Diet For An Insane World. Hopefully, the information contained therein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices.
Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Aloha!
To learn more about Hesh, listen to and read hundreds of health related radio shows and articles, and learn about how to stay healthy and reverse degenerative diseases through the use of organic sulfur crystals and the most incredible bee pollen ever, please visit www.healthtalkhawaii.com, or email me at [email protected] or call me at (808) 258-1177. Since going on the radio in 1981 these are the only products I began to sell because they work. Oh yeah, going to www.asanediet.com will allow you to read various parts of my book – “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”, containing a wonderful comment by Mike Adams. In Hawaii, the TV stations interview local authors about the books they write and the newspapers all do book reviews. Not one would touch “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Why? Because it goes against their advertising dollars. You might also like… | 0 |
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Republican nominee and lawsuit magnet Donald Trump has found himself the target of yet another accusation of fraud and financial misconduct – this time in another country. A Mexican official has filed a criminal tax complaint against Trump in Tijuana, Mexico, over yet another failed business venture – the Trump Ocean Resort, which collapsed before it even began construction.
But before the housing market and the rest of the global economy collapsed with the onset of the Bush Recession, Trump and his partners sold $32.5 million in future properties to unwitting customers since 2006 and leaving their investors in the lurch.
In addition, Donald Trump is accused of dodging an additional $32.5 million in taxes – surprise! – but has countered that he wasn’t actually involved, but that he was just “leasing” his name on the project. The investors, however, counter that Trump’s face was on the brochure and quoted him as saying it would be “the most spectacular place in all of Mexico.”
Though Trump worked out the deal with Los Angeles-based developer Irongate Wilshire and Mexican company P.B. Impulsores, the lawsuit singles out Trump by name, calling him out “against the Mexican state because beyond defrauding investors he also committed fraud by not paying taxes in Mexico for the mercantile operations he took part in.” | 0 |
... and this is how .gov smash expectations ... >>> Failed weapons systems cost Pentagon $58 billion over two decades >>> https://www.rt.com/usa/364230-pentagon-failed-acquisitions-costs/ | 0 |
people , regions , caucasus , folk , culture Young residents of Dzuarikau village performing a dance at a folklore concert. Republic of Northern Ossetia-Ala, Russia. Source: Yakov Berliner/RIA Novosti
For Alik Pagayev, an Ossetian who manages a troupe at the Narty Theater in Vladikavkaz, creativity is in the blood of his people.
”I was born in a mountain village and we had this joke: 'Throw a balalaika out of your window, anyone who catches it can play it,” he says.
Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, a small republic on Russia’s southern edge bordering Georgia, is called the “Caucasian St. Petersburg.” No other city in the North Caucasus has so many creative people: artists, photographers, designers and performers.
Creative abilities, however, are not the only national trait of the Ossetians. Pagayev says that every Ossetian has military skills and talents for working with horses in their blood.
Creative abilities are not the only national trait of the Ossetians. Alik Pagayev says that every Ossetian has military skills and talents for working with horses in their blood. Source: Anastasia Stepanova Open-mindedness to new cultures
The Ossetians are descended from Iranian-speaking nomads – the Scythians and the Sarmatians. In historical writings from the 2nd century A.D. these tribes were known for their serious military and political might.
By the 11th century A.D. the medieval kingdom of Alania had been established in the region. Its inhabitants were famous for their military skills: The main army consisted of the cavalry. Despite their glorious reputation, the Alans could not fight off the Tatar-Mongolian invasion and in the 14th century they were practically destroyed as a people. Only few hundred Alans remained in the mountains. However, the nation managed to survive and later it successfully assimilated in Russia.
According to a 2010 census, today there are almost 700,000 Ossetians in the world, most of whom live in Russia. Most Ossetians live in North Ossetia (459,600 people), while in Moscow there are 7,900 Ossetians and in St. Petersburg slightly over 3,000.
While 45,900 Ossetians live in the disputed territory of South Ossetia (recognized by just three nations, with the rest of the world continuing to see it as part of Georgia), they also live in Russia’s other Caucasian republics. In Kabardino-Balkaria there are more than 9,000 Ossetians, in the Stavropol Territory there are almost 8,000 and there is even a separate Ossetian village in Karachay-Cherkessia with 3,100 inhabitants. There are also Ossetian diasporas in other countries. In Turkey the fraternity counts 37,000 members and in Georgia – 14,300 outside South Ossetia.
”The Caucasus started to become a part of Russia in the 18th century. Our republic was one of the first,” explains Anna Kabisova, a photographer and photojournalist.
”The Ossetians are Christians. So it is easier for them, in comparison to the Muslim republics, to find common ground with the Russian population.” Source: Archive photo, 19th century
”The Ossetians perceived these changes as a salvation since it is difficult to survive in the mountains and the intelligentsia understood that it was important to develop. A step towards Russia implied opportunity. Back then many Ossetians went to study in St. Petersburg. That is how this place acquired many artists, sculptors and then its own influential art school, its own distinguishing style,” she said.
In her view, such open-mindedness to new cultures is also a national trait. ”The reason lies in religion. The Ossetians are Christians. So it is easier for them, in comparison to the Muslim republics, to find common ground with the Russian population.” Pies, beer and offerings to the gods
Actually, the Christianity found in the republic is not entirely traditional. Pagan beliefs are also strong here. The Ossetians have dozens of popular religious celebrations with various rituals. There are symbolic peace sacrifices, for example, slaughtering a chicken or a sheep for guests at a feast.
The famous Ossetian national pies are sacred food. These round, thin pies with meat, cheese and potatoes in the Ossetian worldview represent the sun. During a holiday each family places three pies on the table. They also have local breweries.
”The Caucasus started to become a part of Russia in the 18th century. Our republic was one of the first,” explains Anna Kabisova, a photographer and photojournalist. Anna Kabisova
For many occasions women brew beer according to the national recipe. The Ossetians have their own Oktoberfest. Each October Vladikavkaz holds an Ossetian beer festival/competition, to which Ossetians come from Russia and other countries. The drink, in its aspect and taste, is similar to kvas , the Russian malt drink, and is around 1.5-2 percent alcohol.
The beer is brewed in a large cauldron over a fire. Its main ingredients are the typical ones: hops, malt. But there are also special ones such as lamb ribs and sugar – there are many different recipes. Not merchants
”Ask me what I hate doing most and I'll respond: trading,” says Alik Pagayev, describing the national character. "The Ossetians don't have an entrepreneurial spirit. We have many talented artists, good athletes, especially in freestyle wrestling, horse breeders, but commerce is really not our thing.”
”Ask me what I hate doing most and I'll respond: trading,” says Alik Pagayev, describing the national character. Source: Archive photo, 19th century
Pagayev also says that tolerance and tact are two other national traits.
”I worked in [the neighboring republic of] Kabardino-Balkaria for three years and could not get used to the fact that they speak their national language. I would go to someone's house and they would speak their own language. I wouldn't understand anything and someone would have to translate the general meaning of the conversation.
”In Ossetia it's not like that. If there’s even one guest among us, we speak Russian. A friend of mine from Chechnya would often visit us and once he heard people speaking Ossetian on a street in Vladikavkaz. He was surprised because he had thought that we always speak Russian.”
Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, a small republic on Russia’s southern edge bordering Georgia, is called the “Caucasian St. Petersburg.” Source: Lori/Legion-Media
In fact, Pagayev explains, there are some young people who do not even know their national language, which he says is sad.
”Our language must be preserved. At home my children speak only Ossetian. If I hear them speak Russian, I tell them, 'You'll speak Russian where you have to, but at home speak your native language,'” he says.
Another important national trait is learning, he explains: ”People always wonder: A young guy from a remote mountain village goes to study in St. Petersburg or Moscow and in two years he fully integrates, speaks Russian without an accent and produces good results in his studies. This is an important trait. I think this is what helped our people survive the difficult times.” Subscribe to get the hand picked best stories every week Subscribe to our mailing list Facebook | 0 |
Broadway legend Patti LuPone says if President Donald Trump came to see her new musical, War Paint, she wouldn’t perform for the “motherf***er. ”[While on the Tony Awards red carpet Sunday, LuPone was asked by Variety reporter Gordon Cox: “Why should President Trump come see your show? “Well, I hope he doesn’t, because I won’t perform if he does,” LuPone responded. “Why? “Tell me why,” Cox pressed. “Because I hate the motherf**cker, how’s that?” LuPone answered defiantly. LuPone, however wasn’t the only nominee to take a swipe at the President. “Maybe it would give him a little bit of a soul? It’s hard not to feel things when you’re watching our performance,” Deneé Benton, star of the Dave Malloy musical Natasha, Pierre The Great Comet of 1812, told Variety. Fox’s 24 Legacy star Corey Hawkins, who was nominated for Best Actor in a Play (but didn’t win) for his role in Six Degrees of Separation, said President Trump should see the satirical parody of New York liberals “because it’s about connection. It’s about reaching out, and it’s about seeing each other for who we are, and it’s about honesty, and it’s about love. I think our country could stand to use a lot of that right now. ” Sunday night’s Tony Awards was hosted by actor Kevin Spacey. The House of Cards star cracked several jokes aimed at Bill and Hillary Clinton during the show. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 1 |
You are a liar & cheater.The DNC dismissed MILLIONS of Bernie supporters.
— Simply Irredeemable (@hrhjmm) October 27, 2016
Ouch. Perhaps there is something to this whole witch hunt, eh Donna? @donnabrazile @washingtonpost O Donna, you don't think this is all going to disappear once she wins do you? You've ruined yourself…for HRC
— PeoplesGov (@GovbyUs) October 27, 2016
Many people have ruined themselves, falling on their proverbials swords, for Hillary. @donnabrazile @washingtonpost I really think you blew it when u refused to take responsibility for providing Hillary w/ questions in advance
— Mary Rose Moskowitz (@veritasjc) October 27, 2016
They just can’t get past the idea that Donna helped Hillary in essence, cheat. And who could blame them?
Donna was really after Chaffetz today, especially after he said he would be voting for Trump. She retweeted several digs at the representative, including this one: Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you announce publicly that you are going to vote for someone that's an endorsement of that person
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) October 27, 2016
And you know what they say? You always go after the things and the people that scare you the most. | 0 |
Wednesday, 9 November 2016 Deplorable deplorables have ruined me!
Once it was certain Hillary had lost the electoral college vote, according to insiders, she unloaded on her rumored-to-be philandering husband, Bill. (She had also had choice words for her once bestest gal-pal's hubby.)
You son of a bitch, this is all your fault! You and that aptly named Weiner just couldn't keep it on the down-low, could you, huh!? Huma and I have been going at it like rabbits for years, but it never got much coverage in the conservative media! All those red-state knuckle-draggers suck that delicate stuff right up; that is, when they aren't poring through their Bibles, looking for excuses to cast aspersions on love like mine and Huma's hot-monkey sex! I HATE YOU!!
But there was a silver-lining to Hillary and Bill's tribulations; plus, balm to her followers' plight.
Hearing directly from his wife's mouth of her torrid "Huma-humpery" proved "Viagra Gold" to Mr. Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, too! He took her, right there on the floor, in front of one and all. The sight was so traumatic to the convention hall room of witnesses, mass amnesia stuck, removing all traces of the election loss anguish.
Huma "Weiner-hater" Abedin, however, turned out to be the biggest loser this election. She's out in the cold. Or, as President-Elect "The Donald" would say, "You're fired." Make W.P. Wonder's | 0 |
When Ahmad Khan Rahami returned in March 2014 from a nearly yearlong trip to Pakistan, he was flagged by customs officials, who pulled him out for a secondary screening. Still concerned about his travel, they notified the National Targeting Center, a federal agency that assesses potential threats, two law enforcement officials said. It was one of thousands of such notifications every year, and a report on Mr. Rahami was passed along to the F. B. I. and other intelligence agencies. Five months later, when Mr. Rahami’s father told the police after a domestic dispute that he was concerned about his son having terrorist sympathies, federal agents again examined his travel history. And again, despite Mr. Rahami’s now having been flagged twice for scrutiny, the concerns were not found to warrant a deeper inquiry, one of the law enforcement officials said. Ahmad Rahami was not interviewed by federal agents. But now, the travel history of Mr. Rahami, who is accused of carrying out bombings in New York and New Jersey last weekend, has become a focus of investigators, a subject made all the more urgent by details contained in a notebook that suggests he drew inspiration largely from the Islamic State. In particular, Mr. Rahami cites a founding member of the Islamic State who called on Muslims around the world to take up whatever arms they could find and spill the blood of nonbelievers. The assessment of Mr. Rahami by the F. B. I. began in August 2014, and it once again reviewed the report by the National Targeting Center. The center was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to function as an intelligence analysis agency within the Department of Homeland Security. “By identifying passengers and cargo well before they would cross our land borders, sail into our ports or touch down on our tarmacs, the N. T. C. team is on duty to protect our people and economy ” the federal government’s description of the agency says. It is unclear how much information the report contained about Mr. Rahami’s activities during the 11 months he was in Pakistan, starting in April 2013, and about any other trips he made while abroad. Investigators are interested in learning more about both a trip he made to Afghanistan and another trip he may have made to Ankara, Turkey, according to the law enforcement officials, who spoke about the continuing investigation under the condition of anonymity. The report by the targeting center did not mention any travel to Turkey, according to one of the officials. Records the New York Police Department provided to customs officials indicate that Mr. Rahami traveled to Ankara for an unspecified length of time in January 2014, according to another law enforcement official and documents obtained by The New York Times. That trip would have happened at a time when international authorities were concerned about the flow of foreign combatants to Syria to fight in the civil war there, but before the Islamic State became widely known as a source of global terrorism. The Islamic State was just making its first expansion into Iraq then, taking the city of Falluja. Mostly, the group was seen as an Islamist rebel force in the Syrian conflict that had become focused on grabbing territory from fellow opposition groups — especially the Nusra front, which, like the Islamic State, had started as a branch of Al Qaeda but instead became an enemy. The questions about where Mr. Rahami drew his inspiration and whether he had help are at the center of the investigation even as an intense legal battle takes shape over how his case is being handled. Defense lawyers are fighting to get Mr. Rahami before a judge so he can be appointed a lawyer and have charges laid out against him, while prosecutors are pushing back. The new information being gleaned from Mr. Rahami’s notebook, a copy of which was provided to The Times by another law enforcement official, who was not authorized to speak to the press, paints a substantially different picture from what could be understood by the snippets highlighted in the criminal complaint filed in federal court on Tuesday night. That summary mentioned Anwar once Al Qaeda’s leading propagandist, who is equally popular with the Islamic State’s followers, but made no mention of the ISIS spokesman and senior strategist Abu Muhammad . The pages of Mr. Rahami’s journal echo the talking points of Mr. Adnani, who in May advised followers around the world to commit violence in their home countries if travel to Syria proved too difficult. Fragments of the journal — much of it rendered illegible because of blood stains — suggest that Mr. Rahami may have himself been frustrated in his attempts to reach Syria and was using that as justification for committing terror at home. One page has the word “blocked,” followed by: “You should have let us meet death overseas. ” On a subsequent page, he wrote “back to Sham,” an archaic regional name that has come to be used for Syria. He goes on: “I looked for guidance and Alhumdulilah,” he says, using an Arabic expression praising God. “Guidance come Sheikh Anwar Brother Adnani Dawla. Said it clearly attack The Kuffar in their backyard. ” The last sentence appears to refer to Mr. Adnani’s speech this summer in which he beseeched followers to hurt unbelievers in whatever manner they could and wherever they found them. Mr. Rahami makes clear that he planned to die a martyr: In “my heart, I pray to the beautiful wise Allah to not take jihad away,” he said. “I begged for shahada,” he continued, using the Arabic for martyrdom, “and inshallah this call will be answered. ” Mr. Rahami also refers to more recent comments Mr. Adnani made. “If the tyrants have closed in your faces the door to Hijrah, then open in their face the door of jihad and make their act a source of pain to them,” Mr. Adnani said in a speech released by the Islamic State in May. “The smallest action you do in the heart of their land is dearer to us than the largest action by us, and more effective and more damaging to them. ” The authorities are also still searching for two men who apparently stumbled on one of the bombs planted in Manhattan on Saturday evening and took the explosive device out of a bag before walking away with the bag — although officials said they were not believed to be part of the plot. On Wednesday, investigators, who believe the bag may be a valuable piece of evidence, released images of the men — one wearing a pink golf shirt and the other wearing a light brown collared shirt. The images were taken from surveillance video that shows the men walking on 27th Street between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue in Chelsea between 8 and 9 p. m. on Saturday. The authorities said they did not believe the men were tied to Mr. Rahami. “We have no reason to believe they’re connected,” Chief James Waters, head of the New York Police Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, said at a news conference on Wednesday morning. The city police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, said they were considered witnesses. Mr. Rahami is recovering in Newark from wounds he sustained in a shootout with the police in Linden, N. J. on Monday morning, when he was taken into custody. The United States attorney general, Loretta E. Lynch, said on Wednesday that the government would bring Mr. Rahami to New York City to face charges. “In the near future, it is our intention to bring the defendant to the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York,” she said in remarks made in Washington. The chief federal public defender in Manhattan, David E. Patton, wrote late on Tuesday night to Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein, asking for a court hearing at the earliest possible time and proposing that if Mr. Rahami’s health did not permit his travel to Manhattan, Mr. Patton’s lawyers could represent him in New Jersey at the hearing by telephone or video. “The Sixth Amendment requires that he be given access to counsel on the federal charges, and that he be presented without delay,” Mr. Patton wrote. The United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, asked the judge to deny the request. In court papers on Wednesday, his office said that because Mr. Rahami was arrested by the local police and is being held on state charges in connection with the shootout, he is not in federal custody. That, the prosecutors argued, means that he does not yet have a right to a prompt appearance in federal court and the provision of a lawyer there. Mr. Patton responded later on Wednesday that it was “undisputed that federal law enforcement are involved in detaining and questioning” Mr. Rahami, and that his office had decided to represent Mr. Rahami after determining that he qualified as an indigent defendant. But the judge, in a ruling issued on Wednesday night, found that the court did not have the authority to appoint Mr. Rahami a lawyer or order an appearance at this time. Peter Liguori, the deputy public defender in Union County, where the shooting of the Linden police officers took place, said he had not received notification that Mr. Rahami had requested a lawyer. “We want to make sure that his constitutional rights are protected,” Mr. Liguori said. “If he or his family has requested our assistance, we will certainly help him and make sure that he gets proper representation. ” | 1 |
President Donald Trump signed a six month waiver to delay moving the U. S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, despite his campaign promise to do so. [In a statement, the White House said Trump was still committed to to his promise, but made the decision to delay the move of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for the sake of peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine. “As he has repeatedly stated his intention to move the embassy, the question is not if that move happens, but only when,” the statement from the White House read. Trump’s decision follows the precedent set by former presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama who all signed a six month waiver of the 1995 law. The delay will disappoint supporters of the president who hoped for bold action, separated from years of tired political rhetoric on the issue. “[N]o one should consider this step to be in any way a retreat from the President’s strong support for Israel and for the United alliance,” read the statement. | 1 |
“Were you on drugs?” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo asked convicted murderer Judith Clark before commuting part of her sentence. “No,” she explained. “I was on politics. ”[Clark’s addiction long predated her participation in the October 20, 1981 robbery of an armored car that left a guard and two cops dead. “There’s no question I was a red diaper baby,” she wrote in an autobiographical sketch. “I was still in diapers when my mother, Ruth, journeyed across two oceans with my brother and me to the Soviet Union to join my father in a sojourn. My father, Joe, was a CP organizer from the age fourteen. In 1949, when I was born, he was a Party leader and writer for the Daily Worker. My mother, like many Party women, was a mass organizer, working with settlement houses on the Lower East Side and on the congressional election campaigns of progressive politicians such as Vito Marcantonio. ” Like Brink’s robbery Kathy Boudin, Greenwich Village townhouse casualty Ted Gold, and Weatherman comrade Eleanor Raskin, Judy Clark grew up Old Left only to find political expression in the New Left. “Some of them were trying to repudiate their past,” former Weatherman Mark Rudd tells Breitbart News of the babies. “Some of them were trying to better their parents. ” As Clark herself explained during a 2003 appeal, “My choice of social activism and even the vehemence of my beliefs were, in some ways, consistent with my parents’ values and history. But my insistence on the need for violence represented a real break from their values. This was part of its attraction for me. While I was driven to take up their abandoned mission of transforming society, I also felt I had to atone for their failure to sustain their commitment. ” Whereas her parents displayed contempt for America by migrating to Stalin’s Russia, Judy Clark did so by taking the fight to the streets of America. Chicago cops arrested Clark at the Days of Rage, the 1969 orgy of violence that resulted in one of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s confidantes becoming a quadriparetic. Late that year at the Wargasm in Flint, where the Weathermen iconized Charles Manson, Clark created, along with future Brinks Kathy Boudin and Diana Oughton, a massive poster spelling out murdered actress Sharon Tate’s name in bullets. When the FBI caught up to Clark outside of a Manhattan movie house in late 1970, the federal fugitive ate pieces of paper while fleeing before kicking, swearing, and spitting on the arresting agents. A decade later, she greeted law enforcement similarly. Becoming the only Weatherman fugitive apprehended by authorities during the group’s heyday proved disastrous for Clark — and law enforcement. “The people aboveground tended to be pretty hardcore,” Rudd, who evaded arrest until turning himself in to the authorities in 1977, notes. Whereas members of the Weather Underground focused on staying underground, Clark and others aboveground fixated on revolution. “People found each other,” Rudd tells Breitbart News. “Somehow or another Judy must have found people aboveground, many of whom I’ve never met, who thought like she did. ” Clark ventured forth, with several Weathermen including Boudin and Dave Gilbert, in something called the May 19 Communist Movement. The group embarked on a series of bombings, helped break Assata Shakur free from a New Jersey prison, and pursued “expropriations” that resulted in numerous casualties, including, ultimately, its own members, who wasted away in prison. Clark’s group of white revolutionaries joined forces with the Puerto Rican FALN and the Black Liberation Army. On October 20, 1981, an amalgam of the BLA and May 19 calling itself The Family, robbed a Brink’s truck outside of a mall in Nanuet, New York. Earlier that year, the group robbed a Brink’s truck in the Bronx of more than a quarter of a million dollars. Tyrone Rison, who swore to Clark’s participation in the Bronx job, confessed to killing a guard in that operation. Despite understanding the risks to innocent life, Clark participated in the robbery in Nanuet that resulted in the murder of a Brink’s guard and two Nyack, New York, cops. “Shamefully,” Clark later noted of the action, “I contemplated the irony that in the name of Black Liberation, a respected black police officer, Waverly Brown, had been murdered. ” “She was armed,” Kenneth Maxwell, the FBI’s case agent on the Nanuet Brink’s robbery, points out. “The way the Family operated, every single one of them was armed going out to the scene. She was much more than a getaway driver and a lookout. She was not, as certain media and government voices purport her to be, a peripheral player. She was a leader of the May 19 Communist movement that benefitted from these robberies. ” In addition to driving the muscle to the robbery, Clark carried a gun. Maxwell notes that upon arrest, cops discovered shattered glass on her person that came from the UHaul hiding the gunmen and from a police cruiser. Rather than a momentary lapse of reason, Clark’s behavior that day fit a pattern. On June 2 of that year, a gunman alleges she played a similar role in an assault on a Brink’s truck in the Bronx that left one guard dead and another wounded, netting $250, 000 for the group’s revolutionary delusions and cocaine addictions. Two years earlier, the May 19 Communist Movement helped break Assata Shakur from prison. The indictments in that case named Clark as an uncharged . Because it looked certain that the remainder of Clark’s days would transpire behind bars, the authorities did not bother to charge her in the deadly Bronx robbery or the prison break. Her behavior in custody in 1981 mirrored her behavior after the 1970 arrest, when she spat, kicked and swore at FBI agents. “I had heard that story,” former special agent Maxwell tells Breitbart News of the resistance that earned a place in FBI lore. “It predated my entry into the FBI. It certainly was validated by her demeanor that she exhibited after she was captured fleeing the scene in Nyack in 1981. When they took her into custody — extremely uncooperative. ” No mellowing took place in Clark in the 11 or so years that transpired. “When the court ordered a lineup, here’s what she did,” Maxwell explains. “She repeatedly resisted any attempts to go into the lineup to the point where she kicked, scratched, bit, and spit in the faces of folks, hissing and screaming in a demonic way. Jim Stewart, lieutenant detective in the Rockland County district attorney’s office, said she reminded him of the character in the movie The Exorcist. That’s how Judy Clark acted. ” Her unruly conduct resulted in law enforcement placing her in a straitjacket. Her strange behavior continued in the courtroom. “I am an freedom fighter,” Clark announced at her 1983 murder trial. “I don’t recognize the legitimacy of this Court. ” The court reciprocated by not recognizing the legitimacy of the counsel’s arguments. At her 1983 trial, Clark demanded status, the right to wear armbands in solidarity with the New African Freedom Fighters, and a change of venue to another nation. She compared herself to George Washington and asked potential jurors, “Do your children play cowboys and Indians?” and “Are you a member of the Ku Klux Klan?” She refused to remain in the court upon the reading of her sentence. “The D. A. calls what happened on October 20, 1981, a robbery and murder,” Clark explained to a befuddled courtroom. “We say it was an attempted expropriation because revolutionary forces must take from the powers that be to build their capabilities to struggle against this system. ” Something got lost in translation from sixties rhetoric to eighties reality. The Hiroo Onoda of the ’t received a sentence of . She received an additional sentence of two years in solitary confinement in 1985 after evidence implicated her in an escape plot. Until Governor Cuomo cut that mandatory minimum by more than half in late December, she looked forward to a parole date past her 100th birthday. Now she could gain release this year. Like so many of her comrades from the 1960s, Judith Clark traveled on a long, strange trip. That journey, from Stalin’s Russia to the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, ended perhaps more predictably than the trips of others. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — When surveillance cameras began popping up in the 1970s and ’80s, they were welcomed as a tool, then as a way to monitor traffic congestion, factory floors and even baby cribs. Later, they were adopted for darker purposes, as authoritarian governments like China’s used them to prevent challenges to power by keeping tabs on protesters and dissidents. But now those cameras — and many other devices that today are connected to the internet — have been commandeered for an entirely different purpose: as a weapon of mass disruption. The internet slowdown that swept the East Coast on Friday, when many Americans were already jittery about the possibility that hackers could interfere with election systems, offered a glimpse of a new era of vulnerabilities confronting a highly connected society. The attack on the infrastructure of the internet, which made it all but impossible at times to check Twitter feeds or headlines, was a remarkable reminder about how billions of ordinary devices — many of them highly insecure — can be turned to vicious purposes. And the threats will continue long after Election Day for a nation that increasingly keeps its data in the cloud and has oftentimes kept its head in the sand. Remnants of the attack continued to slow some sites on Saturday, though the biggest troubles had abated. Still, to the tech community, Friday’s events were as inevitable as an earthquake along the San Andreas fault. A new kind of malicious software exploits a vulnerability in those cameras and other cheap devices that are now joining up to what has become known as the internet of things. The advantage of putting every device on the internet is obvious. It means your refrigerator can order you milk when you are running low, and the printer on your home network can tell a retailer that you need more ink. Security cameras can alert your cellphone when someone is walking up the driveway, whether it is a delivery worker or a burglar. When Google and the Detroit automakers get their driverless cars on the road, the internet of things will become your chauffeur. But hundreds of thousands, and maybe millions, of those security cameras and other devices have been infected with a fairly simple program that guessed at their passwords — often “admin” or “12345” or even, yes, “password” — and, once inside, turned them into an army of simple robots. Each one was commanded, at a coordinated time, to bombard a small company in Manchester, N. H. called Dyn DNS with messages that overloaded its circuits. Few have heard of Dyn, but it essentially acts as one of the internet’s giant switchboards. Bring it to a halt, and the problems spread instantly. It did not take long to reduce Twitter, Reddit and Airbnb — as well as the news feeds of The New York Times — to a crawl. The culprit is unclear, and it may take days or weeks to detect it. In the end, though, the answer probably does not mean much anyway. The vulnerability the country woke up to on Friday morning can be easily exploited by a such as Russia, which the Obama administration has blamed for hacking into the Democratic National Committee and the accounts of Hillary Clinton’s campaign officials. It could also be exploited by a criminal group, which was the focus of much of the guesswork about Friday’s attack, or even by teenagers. The opportunities for copycats are endless. The starkest warning came in from Bruce Schneier, an internet security expert, who posted a brief essay titled “Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet. ” The technique was hardly news: Entities like the North Korean government and extortionists have long used “distributed ” attacks to direct a flood of data at sites they do not like. “If the attacker has a bigger fire hose of data than the defender has,” he wrote, “the attacker wins. ” But in recent times, hackers have been exploring the vulnerabilities of the companies that make up the backbone of the internet — just as states recently saw examinations of the systems that hold their voter registration rolls. Attacks on the companies escalated, Mr. Schneier wrote, “as if the attack were looking for the exact point of failure. ” Think of the mighty Maginot Line, tested again and again by the German Army in 1940, until it found the weak point and rolled into Paris. The difference with the internet is that it is not clear in the United States who is supposed to be protecting it. The network does not belong to the government — or really to anyone. Instead, every organization is responsible for defending its own little piece. Banks, retailers and social media hubs are supposed to invest in protecting their websites, but that does not help much if the connections among them are severed. The Department of Homeland Security is supposed to provide the baseline of internet defense for the United States, but it is constantly playing . In recent weeks, it deployed teams to the states to help them find and patch vulnerabilities in their voter registration systems and their networks for reporting results. The F. B. I. investigates breaches, but that takes time — and, in the meantime, people want to bank online and stream television shows. On Nov. 8, Americans will have to look up where they are supposed to vote, and, in a few cases, they will cast their votes on the internet. Yet the voting system is not considered part of the nation’s “critical infrastructure. ” The head of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael Rogers, said recently that experts were looking at the problem the wrong way. “We are on places and things,” he said in a talk at Harvard. “We need to focus on the data,” and how it flows — or doesn’t flow. That is where the internet of things comes in. Most of the devices have been hooked up to the web over the past few years with little concern for security. Cheap parts, some coming from Chinese suppliers, have weak or no password protections, and it is not obvious how to change those passwords. And the problem is quickly expanding: Cisco estimates that the number of such devices could reach 50 billion by 2020, from 15 billion today. Intel puts the number at roughly 200 billion devices in the same time frame. (Assuming the global population is around 7. 7 billion people in 2020, that would be about six to 26 devices per person.) Security researchers have been warning of this problem for years, but that caution has largely been written off as hype or . Then Brian Krebs, who runs a popular site on internet security, was struck by a significant attack a few weeks ago. The company protecting him, Akamai, gave up. The malware behind the attack, called Mirai, had a dictionary of common passwords and used them to hijack devices to become attackers. Chester Wisniewski, a principal computer research scientist at Sophos, a security company, said that attacks like the one on Dyn “might be the beginning of a new era of internet attacks conducted via ‘smart’ things. ” “There are tens of millions more insecure ‘smart’ things that could cause incredible disruptions, if harnessed,” Mr. Wisniewski added in an email. It is possible, investigators say, that the attack on Dyn was conducted by a criminal group that wanted to extort the company. Or it could have been done by “hacktivists. ” Or a foreign power that wanted to remind the United States of its vulnerability. The answer may not come by Election Day, but the next wave of attacks very well could. | 1 |
DENVER — For years, voters in this swing state have rejected tax increases and efforts to expand government. But now they are flirting with a radical transformation: whether to abandon President Obama’s health care policy and instead create a new, public health system that guarantees coverage for everyone. The estimated $ proposal, which will go before Colorado voters in November, will test whether people have an appetite for a new system that goes further than the Affordable Care Act. That question is also in play in the Democratic presidential primaries. The effort, which supporters here call the ColoradoCare plan, would do away with deductibles. It would allow patients to choose doctors and specialists without distinguishing between those “in network” and those “out of network. ” It would largely be paid for with a tax increase on workers and businesses, and cover everyone in the state. Supporters say most people would end up saving money. Insurance groups, chambers of commerce and conservatives have already lined up in opposition. They say the plan’s details are vague, its size and cost galling. The proposed health system would have a budget bigger than that of Colorado’s entire state government. A new 10 percent tax on payroll and incomes to pay for the system would push Colorado’s tax rates to some of the highest in the nation. The proposal’s chance of success is dubious. Colorado has a mixed record when it comes to ballot measures, though it has passed some notable ones over the years, including marijuana legalization and the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, an constitutional amendment. But the proposal had enough support to garner 100, 000 signatures, which put it on the ballot. It has also worried insurers, and some in the medical community and the business community, enough for them to organize in opposition, even enlisting a Democratic former governor to help in their campaign. In this season of political discontent, the notion of dismantling the health insurance system has tapped an aquifer of frustration from voters. People say that even after the Affordable Care Act, they still pay too much in premiums, plus thousands in deductibles, and still have to worry about being bankrupted by a disabling car crash or an extended hospital stay. “I think insurance is one of the biggest jokes and crooks,” said Brandon Barta, 38, of Denver. He said his father, Dixon, who worked at a gas station, never received aggressive enough treatment for his prostate cancer. He died last May at the age of 64. “He was overlooked,” Mr. Barta said. Mr. Barta said he was intrigued by the idea of a universal health plan that covered maternity care, checkups, emergency room visits and hospital stays, all the way through care. Like millions of Americans, he has health insurance tied to his work. His coverage lapsed recently when he switched jobs to start working for a golf entertainment complex, and he is still waiting for his new plan to kick in. Still, he has questions about how universal coverage would work and how much it would cost taxpayers like him. The answers: If a majority of voters say yes, the system would start running in 2019, and essentially be a health cooperative bigger than companies like Nike and American Express, according to the Colorado Health Institute, an independent policy group. A elected board would set the benefits and budgets. The system would be financed by payroll taxes of 3. 3 percent for workers and 6. 7 percent for employers. It would impose a 10 percent tax on investment income, people who are and some income. In the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, echoing many moderate Democratic leaders here, has said that she wants to keep and improve the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative legacy. But her opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, who won Colorado’s Democratic caucuses last month by nearly 20 points, has advocated abandoning the health law for a “Medicare for all” approach. His proposal is similar to the ColoradoCare plan. The campaign over the Colorado initiative has had the unusual effect of putting conservative critics in the position of defending Mr. Obama’s health plan against an assault from the left. At the same time, it is energizing progressives, who say the Affordable Care Act was a giveaway to the insurance industry that, even with an estimated 20 million people newly insured, has left too many others without coverage. “No matter how long we hang in there with the Affordable Care Act, we will never cover everybody,” said Jeanne Nicholson, a former Democratic state senator and nurse who is a leading supporter of universal care here. “We don’t understand why we should compromise and say some people can have bronze coverage, some can have silver and some can have gold. Why can’t we all have platinum plus?” Nathan Wilkes, 42, who lives in the Denver suburbs, said that years of trying to get care for his son, who has hemophilia, had worn his family thin and made him an advocate for universal coverage. He said the family had spent thousands of dollars and destroyed its credit because of insufficient coverage. The Affordable Care Act offered some benefits, he said, but its gaps were still too big and “not sustainable. ” Unlike its conservative neighbors, Colorado jumped to get on board with the Affordable Care Act. It set up its own insurance marketplace and expanded Medicaid coverage for poorer residents. But there have been stumbles. People in mountain towns with few providers faced premiums for coverage. Colorado’s biggest health cooperative, Colorado HealthOP, shut down in October, forcing more than 80, 000 people to find new plans. Colorado’s plan would replace many private workplace plans, but it would sit alongside Medicare and federal health coverage for veterans, and private insurers could still sell coverage to people who wanted more. The Colorado Health Institute, an independent policy group, said the plan’s passage would be “the most health care reform in any state” since the Affordable Care Act. “It’s replacing a system that I think has become really dysfunctional,” said Irene Aguilar, a Democratic state senator and physician who is leading the effort. “The game has been rigged by the corporations to ensure they win. ” Opponents say that it could wreck the state’s humming economy and drive away doctors and businesses, and that its costs could spiral out of control. If it passes, ColoradoCare would become part of the state Constitution, and become virtually impossible to significantly alter without a statewide vote. It would also fall outside the reach of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, a 1992 amendment to the Colorado Constitution that put strict limits on spending and new taxes. “It would be a disastrous economic impact on the state,” said Walker Stapleton, Colorado’s treasurer and a of the opposition campaign. “If you think legalized pot brought a lot of people to Colorado, you should try free health care. ” Like many other Republicans here, Mr. Stapleton opposed the Affordable Care Act and continues to criticize how it has been put in place. But to defeat the new initiative, he now finds himself defending the federal health law. Sean Duffy, a Republican and a spokesman for the opposition campaign, said many of his neighbors in the conservative Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch had eagerly signed the petition to put the question on the November ballot because they saw it as a way to get rid of Obamacare. Some Democratic officials also oppose the state’s universal care effort. They include Gov. John Hickenlooper, who said during his 2014 fight that he was “no big fan of the Affordable Care Act. ” Colorado’s previous Democratic governor, Bill Ritter, also opposes it. Michelle Lucero, general counsel at Children’s Hospital Colorado, is among the health care officials lining up against the measure. (The hospital itself also opposes it.) She worries that it could threaten research dollars or drive away doctors. “They’re going to choose to go to a state that’s not hamstrung by this,” she said. | 1 |
TARRYTOWN, N. Y. — The building of the Tappan Zee Bridge, the first major new bridge in the New York area in half a century, has reached the halfway point. Already, more than a mile of concrete road deck has been laid, stretching from the bridge’s South Nyack end over the waters of the Hudson River. of the 43 pairs of piers that will hold up the 3. bridge are finished, with a framework of cornflower blue steel beams between many of them, so that more than half of the horizontal silhouette of the bridge is in place. Almost the entire steel skeleton should be completed by October, said Neil Napolitano, who manages work on the long approaches from both the Rockland and Westchester County shores. The toppling of a crane on July 19 onto the roadway of the existing bridge, an accident that shut down traffic in both directions for five hours but remarkably caused no serious injuries, seems to have been a minor problem in the progress. In late July, workers began laying the bridge’s signature feature — the thick cables that will attach the main decks at midriver to eight towers and help firmly brace them like suspenders holding up a pair of trousers. The first of 192 cables, a cord made up of strands of braided steel, was stretched from the eastern tower of the span and a projecting section of road deck, locking into anchors built into the deck. By Aug. 1, four cables were strung, in whole or in part. In all, the length of cable used will total roughly 14 miles. To passing travelers, the cables, sheathed in white plastic, might look like strings on a set of eight giant harps. “A bridge is a perfect mix of form and function,” said Sky Lee, the engineer supervising the construction of the main spans. “We are using cables to build the bridge, and ultimately it’s what everyone sees: the icon for the bridge. ” If everything goes according to plan, said Jamey Barbas, the engineer orchestrating the entire project for the New York State Thruway Authority, the first section should open to eight lanes of traffic toward the end of next year. Demolition will then begin on the present Tappan Zee Bridge, which opened in December 1955, built cheaply during Korean War austerity for just $60 million ($531. 5 million in today’s dollars). Its replacement is expected to cost just under $4 billion. Sometime in 2018, seven years after work began, the second section should be finished, carrying four lanes of traffic heading westbound toward Rockland on the northern stretch and four lanes heading east toward Westchester on the southern stretch. Bicyclists and pedestrians will have their own scenic lane, whose terminus, after some controversy, has been shifted from a residential neighborhood to a traffic circle in South Nyack. The bridge is not progressing as fast as the first optimistic schedule had it (the Thruway Authority once said the first span would be ready early next year) but a key to the relatively timely progress has been the strategic decision to prefabricate pieces of the replacement bridge on land, saving months of perilous work above the river. The large steel girders — 30 miles long in total — and 6, 000 concrete roadway panels are assembled 14 miles upriver at Tomkins Cove near Bear Mountain or at Port of Coeymans, 10 miles south of Albany. They are then shipped to the Tappan Zee site by barge, where cranes lift them up and, guided by workers, swing them slowly into place. Much of the concrete needed for piers, foundations, platforms and towers has been poured from floating plants on the river, requiring far fewer trips by truck through residential neighborhoods — 30, 000 fewer, Ms. Barbas said. On a boat tour the other day, a reporter and photographer could see three barges lined up to deliver steel beams and other modular pieces to crane operators. A team of schedulers synchronize delivery of beams, concrete deck panels, nuts and bolts and other supplies as they are needed. Mr. Lee, a civil engineer, said one challenge of the Tappan Zee’s parallel main spans was that they were “so isolated on the river. ” Other bridges he has worked on, like the replacements of Gulf Coast bridges destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, had far more land access, while the central spans of the new Tappan Zee are in the middle of a stretch of river. Work requires regular commutes by small boats from Tarrytown and deliveries by barge. “We’re in the middle of the Hudson River, so everything is multiplied by two,” he said. Because the work will take several years, his wife and sons moved with him to Westchester from the New Orleans area. A classic suspension bridge like the George Washington has cables that are anchored to the shore. A bridge like the new Tappan Zee has its cables anchored to tall towers, which bear the load. The construction of the four pairs of towers — massive concrete structures each 40 stories tall and leaning outward about 5 degrees — use an inventive engineering process that relies on what are called jump forms. The blue steel and wood forms — boxlike work rooms without a ceiling — allow carpenters and ironworkers to construct the successive concrete segments of each tower, one huge block of steel rebar encased in concrete piled atop another. Then after the concrete block is cured, or hardened, the forms can be elevated on vertical rails attached to the block, so the next block of concrete can be built atop the previous one within a safe enclosed space. The size of each block varies from 12 to 18 feet tall, with those at the top narrower than those at the bottom it takes 26 lifts of a jump form to stack all the blocks for a tower that tops off at 419 feet tall. Though the towers are only complete, crossbeams have already been extended from one tower to its sidekick to hold up the decks of the main spans. The cables, once pulled taut, will strengthen the grip. Seen from some angles, the towers look like four slender people doing an yoga exercise. Several holes in which the cables will be anchored are already visible. There will eventually be 12 holes each on flip sides of a tower, which means that 192 cables — some 11 inches in diameter, others two feet thick, with the longest segments reaching almost 800 feet — will be supporting the main deck. Depending on where it is placed and the weight it must support, a cable can be made up of 30 or 60 or 80 strands of wire, each strand — of an inch thick — itself made up of seven slim wires braided together. The cables are so heavy and stiff that they need to be threaded through the holes not by human hands but by a cranklike winch. Supervising much of the work on the jump forms and cables are field engineers like Alessandra Rosso of the Bronx and John McCullough of Piermont, N. Y. Two or three times each day, they climb metal staircases to reach work areas in the towers that are 15 stories now and keep getting higher. “If you’re not in shape you get in shape pretty quickly,” Ms. Rosso said. Still, 90 percent of her job is coordinating the ordering and delivery of materials, finding ways to get tools to where they are needed, talking to crane operators who must be nearby to hoist the materials to where they are needed but who must not be left to idle long. “Crane time is like gold around here,” she said. At times the bridge has had two dozen cranes doing various jobs. The one that collapsed, which was using a vibrating hammer to force cylindrical support piles into the river bottom, was quickly replaced. “It’s not going to impact our work,” Ms. Barbas said of the toppled crane. This is Ms. Rosso’s first bridge. She previously worked on the East Side Access project that will connect Long Island Rail Road trains to Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan. So she has had to adjust to working at daunting heights in all kinds of weather. “The first time it’s definitely scary, but then it’s just work,” she said. “I think about the task, not the heights. ” Mr. McCullough, who last worked on renovating the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey, seems simply awed by the scale of the job. “This is 400 times bigger, everything is much bigger,” he said. “You have to have a Plan B if Plan A doesn’t work and a Plan C if Plan B doesn’t work. ” | 1 |
The night of Nov. 13, 2015, Islamic State militants attacked eight places in and around Paris, killing 130 people and wounding nearly 500. It was the most lethal attack in France since World War II. Confusion gripped the city as two teams of attackers struck nearly simultaneously. One struck at the Stade de France, just outside Paris, while the other shot up cafes and bars in the hip 10th and 11th Arrondissements. About 20 minutes later, a third team of attackers entered the Bataclan concert hall in the same neighborhood, taking hostages and killing scores. The New York Times interviewed 27 people who witnessed parts of those events and asked them to recount what they experienced: suicide bombs, gunfire, the terror of near death. Two of the people interviewed, the Paris fire chief and the brigade’s chief medical doctor, had a uniquely comprehensive view as they helped oversee the response, shuttling back and forth between the attack sites and their headquarters. The chronology here is taken from an official report on the attacks that was published by a French parliamentary inquiry. These accounts have been edited and condensed. This is the story of the attacks by those who lived through them. A soccer game between the national teams of France and Germany begins at 9 p. m. It is televised and watched by millions. Some 75, 000 people are at the stadium, including President François Hollande, several government ministers and a German delegation. The first bomber explodes his vest outside the stadium at 9:19 p. m. Gen. Philippe Boutinaud, 54 The commander of the Paris Fire Brigade. He had worked at NATO and the European Union in Brussels and had been on missions in Afghanistan and the Balkans. On Nov. 13, he had been invited to watch the game and was not there in an official capacity, but he soon went to work. I was at the Stade de France when the first explosion took place. The thing that stopped me from imagining that this was an attack was that there was no blast. It was like a firecracker. I immediately asked my driver, who was outside, to see what was happening. He had also heard the explosion, he got close, and he told me he believed it was a firecracker. He told me that there was a person wounded in the leg, but at first glance it didn’t seem very serious. There was no one nearby. The first suicide bomber who blew himself up, we don’t know why, but he blew himself up in the middle of nothing. Salim Toorabally, 43 A security guard at the Stade de France. Before the game, he stopped a man trying to force his way into the stadium. Five days later, he learned from the police that the man was one of the suicide bombers. I heard the first explosion. At that point I thought to myself that this wasn’t a smoke bomb and it wasn’t firecrackers. It was much more than that. I looked behind me, toward the interior of the stadium. The president was present, the players, a fair number of important people. And I thought to myself, I hoped that I was wrong. Noël Le Graët, 74 The president of the French Football Federation. He was in the stand along with Mr. Hollande. The president was warned by his services very, very quickly. There was a whole security system around our stand, with a video camera on each gate, so the president was told discreetly to come upstairs to see what was happening. And someone came to tell me: “Don’t move, no need to show panic, but you’re going to meet the president in two minutes, but very calmly, leave with your hands in your pockets so you don’t show any sign of panic. ” 9:22 p. m. A second suicide bomber explodes his vest outside the stadium. Mr. Toorabally The second explosion was much more violent. I shook, the ground vibrated. I told everybody who was working on the exterior perimeter, my colleagues: “Guys, we are facing an attack. You need to get inside. You need to take shelter. ” Then I saw three people who were wounded, who were being carried by someone. I took the first victim, I put him on the ground. I didn’t have any gloves. He was hurting a lot. I saw a piece of flesh on his pants. I didn’t think that we were being attacked by suicide bombers. I would never have thought that we were going to see this type of attack in France. 9:24 p. m. Within five minutes, General Boutinaud is called by one of his deputies, Tourtier, the chief doctor for the Paris Fire Brigade, who has received a call himself from the operational headquarters that there were explosions at the Stade de France, as well shootings in central Paris. General Boutinaud The second explosion had just happened, and I still did not have the sense that these were attacks. I exit, because something strange is going on. But when I leave the Stade de France, I stumble on the leg of a suicide bomber. I came across his mangled body, in the middle of nothing. I see the other leg on the other side of the street, and I see the rest of the body to the left and it’s completely twisted. The second striking image was the stuffing from the anorak [one of the bombers was wearing]. The second suicide bomber had blown himself up about 30 or 40 meters to my right, and there was a lot of stuffing from the anorak’s inner lining, a kind of white cotton that the wind was blowing. For me, there are no ifs or buts, it is obvious that these were suicide bombers. Because it was one of the scenarios that we had been working on for many months. Mr. Le Graët The president asked me to speak to our players and not to tell anyone. And the game must go on because the [Interior] Ministry wanted to secure all exits. My mission was to go down to the locker rooms, make sure there was no television, nothing, not warn anyone. 9:53 p. m. A third explosion occurs near the stadium in front of a McDonald’s. A decision is made not to tell the crowd. The game is allowed to continue and ends about an hour later. Franck Bargine, 47 The announcer at the Stade de France and a radio personality known as Max. He addressed the crowd as it left. In light of external events — we keep the vocabulary soft — people can leave the stadium and a few exits are closed, and one or two parking lots are not accessible, but for the rest we’re safe, the stadium and the area around is safe. As people are evacuating the stadium, firecrackers go off nearby, and suddenly many in the crowd, aware from text messages and rumors that Paris appears to be under attack, turn and rush back into the stadium, pouring onto the field. General Boutinaud [The Stade de France] is clearly the center of gravity of the terrorist attacks. You don’t send three suicide bombers to blow themselves up in the middle of a crowd if it’s a secondary target. It was the primary objective. We asked that the stadium not be evacuated and that the match continue. It is this decision that avoided a massacre. The third terrorist, he walked around for half an hour, and then he found a target of opportunity, which was a McDonald’s, and, pardon me, but I think he chose a McDonald’s because it embodies America. But what he was waiting for during that was for us to give the order to evacuate the stadium to blow himself up. I am personally convinced of it. At the Stade de France, sadly, there was one dead and 54 wounded. As a main target for the terrorists, it was a complete failure. 9:24 p. m. The cafe attacks began at Le Carillon bar and Le Petit Cambodge restaurant when a team of three attackers opened fire with assault weapons, killing 15 people. By coincidence, General Boutinaud, Dr. Tourtier and other Paris authorities had conducted a drill for a terrorist attack just that morning involving the use of assault weapons in 13 locations. Dr. Tourtier, 48 The chief doctor for the Paris Fire Brigade. He was home with his wife and children when the attacks started. I get a phone call telling me there are explosions at the Stade de France, and almost in the same moment, I get a call telling me there is shooting in Paris, and I immediately understand that we are dealing with a complex terror attack. I make two calls. The first one is to General Boutinaud, but he was already aware of the situation. The second call I made is to Professor [Pierre] Carli, the head of the emergency services. I tell him: “Pierre, something peculiar is happening. Prepare yourself to mount a response. ” Some of the hospitals we contacted, at first, said, “So is this a to the drill we did this morning?” So we had to tell them that ‘no’ this was definitely real. 9:26 p. m. The three attackers quickly drive on and shoot at the terraces of the Casa Nostra pizzeria and of the Café Bonne Bière in the 11th Arrondissement, killing five more. Triomphe, 58 A former civil servant in the Labor Ministry. He went to the Café Bonne Bière because he thought it would be a quiet place for a drink with a friend, and was wounded there. When I got to the cafe, the waiter asked me if I wanted to be on the terrace outside or inside, and since it was a mild night, I said at first the terrace, and I don’t know why, but at the moment when I sat down I said, “No, actually, I prefer inside. ” Each time I say to myself, that saved my life. The people who died at La Bonne Bière were those who were on the terrace. Me, I was just by the window. About 9:30 p. m. General Boutinaud leaves the Stade de France to go to the Fire Department’s operational headquarters, which answered 580 calls in the first after the attacks began. Trailing in the wake of the attackers, his deputy, Dr. Tourtier, arrives at Rue Bichat, the crossroads where the carnage took place at Le Carillon bar and Le Petit Cambodge. Dr. Tourtier I find a sight close to one that I could have seen as a military doctor with a combat company under fire in Afghanistan or the Sahel with this small difference, which is that the public is not protected. So some wounds are extremely serious. We were walking on bullet cartridges from Kalashnikovs. There are already many dead, and we had to organize the chaos to do the best job possible. Mr. Triomphe The former civil servant, who was wounded at La Bonne Bière. I remember I was lying down, and I saw someone in white. For that reason, I thought it was an angel. [It was an Italian doctor.] She put on tourniquets to stop the bleeding, because I was still losing blood. She used napkins. She was the only doctor there, and she was very busy. The three attackers continue driving south through the 11th Arrondissement to another cafe, La Belle Équipe. Mandy Palmucci, 34 An American internet technology consultant. She had been in Nice to run a marathon, and then spent a couple of nights in Paris with her two best friends and the sister of one of her friends. At about 8:30, we went to a restaurant on the Rue de Charonne, Clamato, to put our names in. At about 8:45, 9:00, they told us they would call us in about 30 minutes when they had a table ready. And so we wandered down to the Belle Équipe to have a drink. Someone happened to notice a table on the patio, basically right next to the entry into the restaurant. It had three chairs, so we sat down. Myself and one of my friends shared a chair. At 9:35, the phone rang, and it was the restaurant saying our table was ready. 9:36 p. m. The shooters arrive. The carnage at La Belle Équipe is the worst of any at bars and cafes that night, leaving 19 dead. Ms. Palmucci I did not see anybody because my back was to the street, but we heard a bunch of popping noises. I glanced to my right and began to see flashes. It was the gunfire. I apparently screamed, “Get down!” and the four of us dropped to the ground. I remember linking my arm with one of my friend’s arms and one with the other one. And every time somebody shot, feeling them shake, and I must have been shaking, too. I thought they were being hit with bullets because their bodies were jerking. They shot at us for 90 seconds, and there was a pause and then they resumed shooting. In that pause, people were screaming. Just — I still remember the screams — and I remember thinking: Stop screaming or they’re going to keep shooting because they are going to know people are still alive on this patio. But they shot for another 60 seconds, and the screaming had decreased at that point. Listen to the owner of La Belle Équipe, Grégory Reibenberg, whose wife was killed, talk about returning to the bar after the attacks in a 360 video. François Vauglin, 46 The mayor of the 11th Arrondissement. It was an elected colleague, who lives above La Belle Équipe, who called me. “Listen, François, this is very serious: There are gunshots in the street. The people are wailing. It’s very serious. ” I called the commissioner of police, and I said: “I am going to go there. Apparently, there’s gunfire. ” The commissioner said to me: “No, no, no. Above all, don’t go to that place. The situation has not been stabilized. “Come to the Police Headquarters. ” General Boutinaud directs the emergency response from the Fire Department’s headquarters, receiving constant updates from fire companies on the scene. The gunmen flee, but one goes into the nearby Comptoir Voltaire, a cafe. General Boutinaud One of them blew himself up at the Comptoir Voltaire. We started to give him a heart massage. We hadn’t understood that he was a terrorist. The explosives had not completely blown up. His leg had been ripped off. When our guys opened his jacket to start the heart massage, they saw the electrical wiring. That’s when they understood that he was a suicide bomber. 9:40 p. m. The final set of three attackers arrive at the Bataclan, where an American band, the Eagles of Death Metal, took the stage around 8:45 p. m. before a crowd of about 1, 500 people. One attacker was killed by police officers who arrived within 15 minutes of when they opened fire on the crowd. Two attackers retreated upstairs with hostages. In all, 90 people were killed. Audrey Guiny, 25 A stretcher carrier for ambulances. She went to the concert with two friends. She was wounded so badly that she has been unable to return to work. I don’t remember anymore what the first songs were, but they were just super great. The atmosphere was very good, very joyous. I had my telephone in my hands to take photos, and I was receiving notifications from Le Parisien [a newspaper] that told me that there was shooting not far away. I said to my friend who was on one side of me, “Ah, there’s gunfire not far from here,” and she said to me: “We’re not at risk. We’re in a concert hall. ” Aurelia Gilbert, 43 A worker for a Swedish security company. She has two daughters, ages 13 and 15. She went to the concert with a friend. At around 9:40 at the end of the sixth song, “Kiss the Devil,” during the guitar solo we heard what sounded like a firecracker. But I knew it was not a firecracker. I knew right away it was a gunshot. Then I heard screaming coming from behind me, more gunshots and people screaming. The guys from the band froze, and the lead guitarist and singer disappeared. Julian Dorio, 34 The drummer for Eagles of Death Metal. This tour was the first time he had played with them. I heard and felt the gunfire at first. I didn’t see it initially. We were near the end of playing a song when the rounds of gunfire began, but at the time we weren’t sure what it was. One thing that will always stand out was how powerful it was. As a loud rock ’n’ roll band, there’s not much that’s louder than us. I’ll never forget how small we felt. It dwarfed the band. I was surprised I wasn’t hit, because as a drummer on a riser I’m a sitting duck. Ms. Guiny I heard noise behind me, I realized that this was gunfire. My reaction was to pull my two friends to the floor. I turned my head to be aware of what was going on. I clearly saw the terrorist with his gun. Ms. Gilbert The main entrance to the Bataclan was at our backs and I turned around, and I saw some white flashes and heard the noise of machine guns, and dived to the floor. I told my friend and his daughter to get down. My friend said, “It must be a firecracker. ” I yelled: “No! Get down on the floor! Now!” Then we heard more screaming and the sound of gun shots. I was lying on the floor and people were lying alongside me. I turned my head and saw one of them reloading his gun. I saw him clearly and was able to later identify him at the police station. We couldn’t go backward toward the main entrance and the street because the gunmen came from there. We couldn’t go toward the concert pit. So we began to crawl toward a nearby door that led to the beginning of a staircase and several staff rooms. The stairs led to the balcony. I thought to myself: I am going to die today. But if I was going to die, I preferred to die moving than to die on the floor. Ms. Guiny They shot the first magazine, and then they reloaded. For us, it went on for an eternity: It was five or 10 minutes. We saw people next to us dying. We heard the sounds. We knew everything. I knew that right next to us there was death. He was reloading. It was now or never. Except it was based just on the terrorist that was aiming in our direction. Mr. Dorio I moved off the drum riser to my left so I could take cover behind some of the guitar amps. I’ll never forget looking up and seeing the first half of the audience coming towards the stage, and the back half I couldn’t see at all. In a matter of seconds, those people had hit the floor or they are running and trampling each other. It was awful. It’s at this point I can see the shooters firing aimlessly into the crowd. I looked out, and I saw some stuff that you can’t unsee. I saw the most unpleasant things I’d ever seen in my life. Daniel Psenny, 59 A journalist who writes about television for Le Monde and lives on the opposite side of the small street, the Passage that runs alongside the Bataclan. It’s 35 years that I’ve lived here. At the end of the concerts, the artists leave by the emergency exit, and often the spectators, the fans, come to the artists’ exit. There is a bit of a scrum. I heard gunfire. I understood that it was gunfire and not fireworks. I was curious. I called the newspaper and said: “I want to alert you that there is something very serious happening at the Bataclan. People are dead. ” By reflex, I told myself I am going to film what’s happening. Listen to Mr. Psenny talk about the night of the attack in a 360 video outside the Bataclan. Ms. Guiny There were many of us, and we got up, but just then, we took fire from the other side. A person who was behind me fell on top of me, and I found myself back on the floor. I fell with him to the ground, because at that moment I was wounded and he was wounded, too. It was my left foot. Mr. Dorio I just started to crawl. I was flat on my stomach with my chin on the stage as low as I could get behind the drum riser. As I got across the stage, I was close enough to the stage door to hop up while the shooters were reloading. I made some wrong turns, but eventually I found an exterior metal door — the only way out — and braced myself even in that billionth of a second for there to be shooters outside. I didn’t hesitate — that wasn’t an option. Once I pushed open the door, there’s a side alley, and it was chaos. You can hear the gunfire. They are trying to hit people that are exiting. I remember people turning to help and asking, “Are you O. K.?” “Let’s go” and “Run. ” You see how kind and compassionate everyone is even though we’re all at risk. 9:57 p. m. Police officers, armed only with handguns, kill one of the terrorists. Mr. Psenny I was making the video from my window, trying to understand what was happening. The people would come out of the Bataclan, fall down. There was gunfire, cries. There was a father calling for his son: “Oscar, Oscar. ” There were neighbors helping the wounded. It was a war, really, not a fight. I went downstairs very carefully. I looked to see what was happening. It was a desolate landscape with many bodies lying there, some people who cried still, who were wounded. Just to the right of the entry hall, I see a man who is close. Afterward, I will know to call him Matthew and that he is American. Was he dead? Is he still living? I didn’t know. I touched him. I sense he’s alive. He speaks to me. He says something I don’t understand. A man wearing black helps me drag him into the entry hall of my building. In closing the door, I lean out a little bit to see what’s going on. It was then that I took a bullet. Afterward, I realized it was a bullet, but at the time, it burned me. It was like a firecracker had exploded on my arm. Ms. Gilbert Trying to reach an exit from the orchestra pit. When they stopped a second time to reload, someone said: “Go! Go! Go! We have to go! They are coming upstairs!” I saw two of them climbing the main stairs. People around me were dropping as they shot. There was a wounded guy on his back, and I tried to grab him. I screamed. It was 15 meters to the door, but it felt like it took hours to get there. There were 20 of us moving at that moment and 50 people on the [side] stairs when we finally arrived. A security guard told us there was no exit. When we looked back, we saw people lying on the floor. I remember yelling: “You have to move. You have to come join us. ” But they didn’t move. Before I shut the door, I saw two of the gunmen, and they were targeting individuals and shooting them. When I finally shut the door, I had the first feeling of security. 11:30 p. m. General Boutinaud, Dr. Tourtier and other members of the emergency services arrive at the Bataclan. Ms. Gilbert At 11:30 p. m. we heard a lot of people moaning and crying and crying for help. We waited. Dr. Matthieu Langlois, 46 The chief doctor for the special police unit, known by its French initials, RAID, that responds to terrorist attacks and hostage situations. He had been at a jazz concert with his wife when he got the call for duty. We enter the Bataclan with the RAID assault team. We are at the back of the column. I immediately see victims everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. In the lobby of the Bataclan, the entrance is strewn with victims, but my job is not to stop at the first victims but to have a comprehensive idea of what is going on. General Boutinaud When I entered the Bataclan, we found 78 bodies, when I went in the first time. But these were people who, the vast majority, were wounded with immediately deadly injuries. I am not a forensic doctor — but these were bullets to the head, in the lungs, with massive hemorrhages. Things that you can’t stop with a tourniquet. Dr. Langlois I am told that there are two terrorists and that they have an explosive. I tell my commander that I want to evacuate the [orchestra] pit, and they give me the authorization and tell me it’s secure and that in any case they’ll cover me. So they put shooters at the four corners of the pit. We were applying tourniquets and compressive bandages and treating collapsed lungs. There was also the human aspect where we were talking to the victims to explain to them what we were doing. Saying, “I’m a doctor, my name is Matthieu, we’re going to get you out of here. ” I remember the looks in their eyes, the words of some of the victims. One of the first things I did when I got to the pit was to shout — I have a loud voice that carries — “All the victims who can move on their own, please stand up and come over here. ” Unfortunately, all those who could move had either already fled or had hidden. Ms. Gilbert At around midnight, people heard the cops knocking at the door. People were asking, “Should we open the door?” The terrorists had gone to the bathroom where people were hiding and pretended to be special forces. So it was not obvious what to do. They opened the door, and we left to go through the exit near the stage. I saw the cops, and one was young and he looked so scared. I took one girl with me and told her to put her hands on her eyes. I walked through the central area near the stage, and it was war. Young people had been dancing two hours earlier, but now there was blood everywhere. It was horrible. Mr. Vauglin The mayor. I arrived [at Police Headquarters] to see televisions screens with images of the video protection [security cameras] of Paris that are connected to the police and that have of what was happening in different places. Then there was this whiteboard, and it had all the sites listed on it and then columns for absolute emergency, relative emergency and dead. It seemed surreal to me. There were perhaps more people in the column “deceased,” at least at the beginning, than the other columns. General Boutinaud Inside the Bataclan. I will always live with the fact that I saw ringing cellphones that said “Papa,” “Maman,” on the dead. But the parents, they will have to live with the lasting loss of their loved ones. 12:18 a. m. The French police start their assault on the two attackers who had retreated upstairs with hostages. Both are killed, all the hostages are freed, and a police officer is seriously wounded when one of the assailants detonates his explosive vest. Antoine Leiris, 35 A father who lost his wife, Hélène during the Bataclan attack, leaving him alone to raise their son, Melvil. France is still recovering. There is a real threat and a legitimate fear. Everyone feels it. This fear is there, and it is rational. These are isolated acts, but we know that behind them there are also more attacks being prepared. It is a reality. But we seldom say how remarkable it is that people are going on with their lives, and overcoming that fear. Taking the Metro, going to cafes to drink a beer, to concerts or shows — because Paris is still full of life. I don’t think we say enough how courageous this is. | 1 |
Next Prev Swipe left/right The best halloween costume ever is this guy who dressed up as a stock photo
@Trungles over on Twitter notes, “My little brother dressed up as a stock photo for Halloween, so he’s basically my hero”
“I like how he also captured the “brown face white hand” blooper one sometimes sees in touched up promotional material.” comments @root2702.
And the star of the photo Tin Nguyen says, “Getting the shutterstock logo off that image was more expensive than my whole costume.”
@Trungles photo of his brother has gone viral with nearly 40k RTs and likes, but the star Tin Nguyen only has 100 followers himself so maybe some of our readers can bump them numbers up? | 0 |
all 30,000 of the “missing” Hillary emails are on Weiner’s laptop, plus hundreds of thousands more that were deliberately ditched and we never knew existed in the first place, evidencing not only lying about the content of the 30,000 emails but the existence of hundreds of thousands more?
What if among the authenticated email traffic is John Podesta saying, just days before the Clinton campaign was compelled to produce said material they they had to “dump those emails”, apparently proving intent to obstruct justice?
What if all of the emails that came from big public cloud providers are provably, to a near-forensic standard, to be exactly as WikiLeaks has presented them and could not have been tampered with because those providers digitally sign every email that comes from them and those signatures all validate back against those cloud providers, and those emails are thus in fact already known to be authentic?
What if the evidence on that laptop adds to the already known fact that Bill Clinton took a number of trips on Epstein’s “Lolita Express” aircraft, some of them after dismissing his Secret Service detail, and implicates what was about to, or did, happen on those trips?
What if the evidence on that laptop shows that Hillary was present on at least one of those trips and either knew about or participated in those acts?
What if the evidence shows that the Clinton Foundation operated as a major pay-to-play operation and national security interests were implicated such as, for example, in the sale of uranium to the Russians.
What if some of the “pay to play” activity involves nations we have a sketchy relationship with or even those that are under some sort of active embargo, but the Foundation was able to “get around”?
What if these “pay to play” activities implicate federal Racketeering and/or bribery statutes?
What if some of the “pay to play” activity involves nations that have been implicated in international Muslim terrorism, arguably therefore rising to the act of treason since by our own government’s own statements we are in a war against said international terrorism?
What if the Clintons actively conspired with Loretta Lynch to obstruct the ongoing investigations including but not limited to Bill Clinton’s “chat about family matters” aboard Lynch’s aircraft, a meeting for which no minutes or recording has been produced for the public?
What if for the first time in known history of FBI and DOJ investigations of such serious conduct with national security implications utterly nobody was served with a subpoena, nobody had evidence seized and material witnesses were allowed to corroborate and be present when others were testifying, and those acts were undertaken by the DOJ for the explicit purpose of both crippling the investigation and preventing a Grand Jury from seeing and judging the evidence in the case?
What if the FBI Deputy Director who headed up — and is still in charge of — the Hillary email server investigation has a wife who received nearly $700,000 in political contributions from a major Clinton operative and yet despite this clear and publicly-known conflict of interest has not recused himself or been forced to step aside?
What if James Comey was browbeaten into making a public announcement that was beyond his legal authority (that “no reasonable prosecutor” would indict) through political pressure but upon being presented with the new evidence on Weiner’s laptop he couldn’t stand by his previous decision because this new evidence made him sick to his stomach, convinced him that the damage to this nation was so severe that we might not survive it — or both?
What if it turns out that Hillary’s campaign cheated multiple times during the primary season when it came to being fed debate questions and other means of tampering with the primary election process, denying her primary opponent a fair election?
What if Hillary should have never been nominated in the first place due to her cheating in the primaries and the race should be “Trump .vs. Sanders”? What does that say about the legitimacy of the upcoming election if one candidate on the ballot cheated to get there and is thus not legitimately entitled to stand for election in the general at all?
What if the evidence shows how people “divested” and transferred financial interest in foreign firms so as to evade federal reporting requirements that would have otherwise triggered scrutiny on some of the Foundation’s deals?
What if Friday afternoon comes and goes, Saturday, Sunday and Monday come and go, all or a sufficiently-damning group of the above turn out to be true and as a result the person who was at the center of all of these things stands to be able to pardon herself and everyone else associated with what would be, quite-arguably, the most outrageous series of acts of public corruption in our nation’s history?
That we are here, just a few days before an election, that we have a DOJ that has actively obstructed the investigation for at least months if not longer and has a history of doing this during Obama’s Presidency, including I remind you with “Fast-n-Furious” where a whole bunch of people got killed as a result of our government’s illegal gun-running is an outrage.
The only thing more-outrageous than what has already happened would be if we were to get to Monday night, on the eve of voting, and all of those “What Ifs” up above remained unanswered.
Oh wait, I tricked you and I admit it — some of those “what ifs” — including some truly damning ones — have already been answered in the affirmative.
If you know the answers to any of the remaining questions — not a belief of what the answers might be but you are in possession of hard facts that prove any of the above, either in the positive or negative, you have a duty to this Republic and the people in it to make those answers known.
If you do not then you stand as equally responsible for every “Yes” answer that is ultimately proved, and the harm that comes to this Republic as a consequence.
Originally posted at Market Ticker .
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Greeting us when we walked into Chaiwali, the Indian restaurant she runs on the first two floors of her brownstone in Harlem, Anita Trehan had two tables to offer. All the others were taken. It was a busy Friday night. “I have this long wood table here,” she said. “Or,” she continued, extending one arm toward the foot of the staircase leading to a dining room, “I have this beautiful little marble table right there. ” She sounded as if it were a prize she had been saving for the first people she thought would appreciate it. Now, this table sits in a tight corner. Its edges are deeply scalloped, so once our samosas and smoked eggplant arrived, it became clear that the marble surface was even smaller than it looked. But by that point, it didn’t matter. The owner, who is also the chef, the decorator and the occupant of the house’s upper stories, had proudly seated us at a piece of furniture she had bought and placed there because she liked the way it looked. What were we going to do but settle in and see what else she wanted to share with us? This must be one reason large, diverse crowds have descended on Chaiwali since it opened last year despite its fairly low profile outside the neighborhood. So many restaurants that draw more publicity seem interchangeable: Nobody would notice if they traded menu items, light fixtures or any employees short of the chef. Chaiwali does not always have their caliber of professionalism servers are genial but may forget dishes, and when it’s time to clear the table, they may disappear into the vapor. But it does have its own way of looking at the world. Ms. Trehan seems to have built the restaurant on the belief that the things she likes will make the rest of us happy, too. You see this in eccentric bits of decoration, like the stuffed peacock that perches on the upstairs bar. The whole second floor is a bit of a peacock there’s also a taxidermied antelope head and a flamboyant mural of a tigress and butterflies. A wall of glass looks out over Lenox Avenue, but the real scenery is inside. The downstairs dining room is calmer, with an intricate pattern traced on the exposed brick walls and a row of windows facing the garden, where a big communal table sits inside what looks like a giant birdcage. Maybe the peacock used to live there. The menu feels personal, too. It reminds me of the relaxed, modern food that Americans with roots in India, like Ms. Trehan, may cook at home. Her recipes probably aren’t her grandmother’s, but she pays attention to the quality and balance of saffron, fenugreek, ginger and coriander. What comes out of her kitchen looks attractive, but it hasn’t been whipped into stiff peaks of artiness. I could imagine being invited to a dinner party where Chaiwali’s smoked eggplant dip, full of garlic and juicy black olives, was put out with hot sheets of flatbread while everybody limbered up over cocktails. “Just Samosas,” as the menu calls them, might appear next. They have a filling with a decidedly peppery bite. It’s a treat to find samosa wrappers as thin and greaseless as these in a restaurant. In the winter, the first course could be Chaiwali’s silky carrot soup, intensely flavored with saffron and a few fried curry leaves that float on the surface. In summer, maybe the appetizer would be the Goa shrimp ceviche, sweetened with little cubes of mango the host would tell everybody to dump the little saucer of puffed rice and fried threads of chickpea flour over the top for crunch. Then, if you were in luck, she might carry vindaloo lamb chops to the table, having marinated the meat with vinegar for tenderness and ginger for flavor. Chaiwali makes vindaloo with complexity and nuance, nothing like the the color of a rusted tailpipe served in generic Indian restaurants. It comes with potatoes softly roasted with whole mustard seeds, a recipe that I am going to steal. Other main courses can expose the kitchen’s vulnerabilities. The small pieces of black pepper chicken were dry both times I tried the dish. The pool of lightly curried tomato gravy helped, though, and I enjoyed the nutty and firm red quinoa served in place of the traditional rice. The okra fries served with the excellent sautéed fish, seasoned with mustard seeds and herbs, then dredged in a delicate batter, sounded great in theory. In practice, their crust was going soggy one night, and while it was quite crisp and hot on another, some of the long green pods, cut lengthwise, were a little stringy. Still, I’d order either dish again, which I wouldn’t say about the Desi pasta, which changes night to night but which, when I met up with it, was tossed with a sauce. I remember nothing about it except the color, which I’d call . The clever veggie burger, a tall fritter of kale pakora with avocado, lettuce and tomato on a bun, made a more appealing meatless dinner. Desserts find a happy medium between too basic and too complicated. The one called Alice’s Jamaican rum and biscuit pudding tastes something like a tiramisù spiked with booze. Mango whipped with yogurt and goat cheese is like a lassi turned into a mousse. (There’s an actual mango lassi on the drinks menu, and it’s good, too.) The one dessert that scared me was the one I liked best: the curry cumin cookies. These little bites, crumbly like shortbreads, are refreshing and bright, with a black pepper finish that took me by surprise in the best way. The cookies worked a small miracle that nothing else has ever accomplished: They actually made me want a cup of chai. But the chai at Chaiwali is not the lukewarm broth of dirty milk in a paper cup that you get in coffee shops. It is a potent drink, like a cortado made with strong black tea and spices. It was Ms. Trehan’s desire for a cup of chai made the Indian way, the way she used to enjoy it in Delhi, that drove her to open Chaiwali. Of the many reasons people have for starting a restaurant, the desire to serve something they themselves want to eat and drink is one of the best. | 1 |
In the ambitious business of New York bridge building, it has been a tragic consequence of the work: More than 20 people, including the bridge’s lead engineer, lost their lives during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. As workers raised the Bridge in the 1960s, three people paid the ultimate price. And during construction of the original Tappan Zee Bridge in the 1950s, a worker fell to his death. But when a large crane being used to construct what will eventually be the aging Tappan Zee’s replacement came toppling down on Tuesday, landing squarely across the roadway, something astounding happened: Nobody died. “This was nothing short of a miracle,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said at an afternoon news conference in Tarrytown at the base of the bridge, citing the lack of serious injuries from the accident. At least four people received minor injuries in the collapse, including three motorists who were trying to avoid the crane, officials said. A construction worker was also injured, officials said. The crane, one of 28 being used in the construction of the bridge’s $3. 9 billion replacement — what is being called the largest infrastructure project in the country — fell around noon on the Rockland County side of the bridge, the authorities said. No vehicles were struck by the crane, the authorities said. Irving Martinez, a truck driver from New Haven, was heading home after delivering a load of cars in Blauvelt, N. Y. when, from about a quarter of a mile away, he saw the crane list and topple. “The crane was rotating normally and then it just suddenly fell sideways onto the highway,” Mr. Martinez, 25, said. “It was out of nowhere. ” While most drivers hit the brakes, he said, others accelerated to avoid the crash. “You know New Yorkers,” he quipped. “Always in a hurry. ” Aerial images showed the crane draped across all lanes of the bridge, its frame splintered into pieces as traffic was brought to a standstill. With the bridge blocked, many motorists were stranded for several hours. Some took to social media to document the travail. The collapse raised concerns about the integrity of the Tappan Zee Bridge, the state’s longest, which is used by 138, 000 vehicles traveling between Rockland and Westchester Counties on weekdays. Built on the cheap, it was designed to last for only 50 years. And it also snarled traffic along the New York State Thruway, which traverses the bridge, and feeder roads. Traffic was blocked on Interstate 287 heading west toward Rockland at least as far as the Sprain Brook Parkway exit, as well as on the Thruway heading east toward Westchester. The Tappan Zee Express Bus Service, which transports commuters between Westchester and Rockland, was suspended, as officials rearranged transit schedules and other road availabilities. But after officials inspected the bridge, they gradually reopened all of its lanes except for one southbound lane. Mr. Cuomo described the damage to that lane as significant but not extensive, saying it could take days to repair. Officials said the crane, which was new, was engaged in a routine task — wielding a vibratory hammer to install pilings. “This was not one of the operations of bridge building,” Mr. Cuomo said. Jeff J. Loughlin, the business manager of International Union of Operating Engineers Local 137, which represents the crane’s operator, said the crane was an MLC 300 manufactured by Manitowoc Cranes. An official said the crane’s boom was 256 feet long. Mr. Loughlin said the operator remained at the scene with a union representative, and was expected to undergo drug and alcohol testing. “It’s a miracle that the boom fell across six lanes of traffic, cars that are doing 60 to 70 miles an hour, and not one car was hit by the boom,” Mr. Loughlin said. Officials said they were investigating the cause of the crane’s crash. But they ruled out the wind. There have been no deaths or serious injuries involving bridge workers since construction began on the new Tappan Zee Bridge in 2013. Mr. Cuomo said that the project’s track record had been extraordinary for an undertaking of its size but noted that “things happen. ” “Somebody will drop a hammer,” he said. While Mr. Cuomo said that four people were injured in Tuesday’s accident, Ed Day, the Rockland County executive, said that five people suffered minor injuries. The crane’s collapse drew new focus to the construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge. The bridge, which is being built just north of the old bridge and is scheduled to be completed in 2018, has been mentioned by Mr. Cuomo as well as President Obama as an exemplary infrastructure project. On Monday during an event in Brooklyn, Mr. Cuomo praised the process used to contract the bridge’s construction out to private companies. But Mr. Cuomo said on Tuesday afternoon that the accident did not jeopardize the new bridge’s construction or its time frame for completion. He said it was a lucky break that the crane fell in the middle of the day when traffic was lighter. Victor Fargas, 57, a glass worker from the Bronx who had to delay some of his jobs after getting stuck in the traffic, decided to pass the time by taking a nap in his truck. “Now I’m doing all I can do,” he said, “patiently waiting and praying to the traffic gods. ” | 1 |
Welcome to Watching, The New York Times’s guide. We comb through releases big and small, famous and esoteric, to email readers twice a week with our timely recommendations. Our most recent suggestions also appear below. To receive our guide straight to your inbox, sign up here. I know seasons are increasingly de rigueur, and lots of European series have even fewer episodes than that, but I still feel a little robbed when season finales come this quickly after season premieres. This is it for “Veep?” We’ve only just begun! This weekend I’ll be watching several events — United States gymnastics championships, swimming and diving trials — because I am a total Olympics nut. Televise more, NBC! I’d watch judo. I’d watch preliminary javelin rounds. I’d watch mascot tryouts. If you have any questions you’d like to see answered here (for either me or Watching film writer Monica Castillo) we’d love to hear them: watching@nytimes. com. “Please Like Me,” on Hulu Watch if you like thoughtful, observational comedy and stories. The show’s creator Josh Thomas stars as a loose version of himself in this extraordinarily lovable Australian comedy about a college student who has just come out. He’s dealing with doofy roommates, a suicidal mother and his own (sweet) awkwardness. If you like “My Mad Fat Diary,” or if you wish quirky indie movies had more developed stories, try “Please Like Me. ” There’s even a cute dog. Hulu currently has 16 episodes but 26 have aired in Australia. “Center Stage: On Pointe,” Saturday, 8 p. m. Lifetime. Watch if you like dance movies or Peter Gallagher when he’s angry. When “Center Stage” came out in 2000, who among us would have guessed it would spawn two . This one, arriving eight years after “Center Stage: Turn It Up” aired on Oxygen, follows in its predecessors’ footsteps: It’s heavy on dance and light on convincing dialogue. If you are expecting highbrow greatness, let’s step aside and have a little talk about looking for love in all the wrong places. But if you are in search of several montages, shot after shot of muscular legs and the kinds of dirty looks you typically only encounter on a Mexican telenovela, this is your jam. “The Bureau,” available on iTunes, where the first episode is free. Watch if you like foreign thrillers and slow burns. This French series centers on a spy (Mathieu Kassovitz, “Amélie”) who returns home to Paris after six years undercover in Syria. Six years that included a serious love affair with someone he’s not quite ready to say goodbye to. There’s also another agent who has disappeared under strange circumstances, a daughter who’s not sure what to make of her father and agency who may or may not be supporting his best interests. My partner and I routinely struggle with what to watch. One of our favorite shows ever was “The Comeback. ” Lisa Kudrow’s character was nothing short of amazing (and somehow she pulled off being simultaneously funny and sad all at once). Is there any other show type thing that you’d suggest for us? Or any show with that same awkward sense of humor? — Patrick You seek “BoJack Horseman. ” And not just because Lisa Kudrow is in Season 2, though there’s also that. The Netflix animated series is about a ‘90s sitcom star with severe depression and a pathological need to be liked, but from afar like Valerie Cherish, BoJack has this gasping desperation, and it’s not clear how much of that is the fallout from them no longer being famous and how much of it is what made them want to be famous in the first place. The first six episodes of “BoJack” lay the groundwork for what the show grows into, so don’t write it off early. Trust me. In terms of the there’s a whole Christmas Special that’s an episode of BoJack’s T. G. I. F. show “Horsin’ Around. ” (Watch on Netflix) If you like your comedies with a serious dose of pathos, you might like “Getting On,” about the staff and patients of a hospital’s geriatric wing. It’s less cruel than “The Comeback,” but just as open with its characters’ frustrations. There’s a British original and an American adaptation, and both are great if you can handle sad humor. (Watch on HBOGo or see the British version on Hulu.) If you like stress humor, I’m going to assume you’ve seen “Curb Your Enthusiasm. ” So finally, if you like shows that are comfortable with discomfort — and don’t mind or maybe even enjoy that internal scream of “aaaahhh, no, oh God” — try “Nathan for You. ” The host Nathan Fielder “helps” small businesses by coming up with nutty, often completely absurd marketing schemes, but it’s never totally clear who is on the inside of this inside joke. I’m cringing just thinking about it. (Watch on Hulu.) • Most soccer fans already know, but the Copa América finals will see Argentina facing off against Chile. (8 p. m. Fox Sports 1, Univision, and Univision Deportes) • The 2013 “Dancing on the Edge,” about jazz in 1930s London and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Matthew Goode, makes its way to public broadcasting. (Part 1, 8 p. m. PBS) • It’s Shark Week. Things kick off with specials about tiger sharks and mako sharks before finally getting to the great whites. (8, 9 and 10 p. m. Discovery Channel) • “Game of Thrones,” “Veep” and “Silicon Valley” all air their season finales. Each show has already been renewed fret not. “Vinyl,” on the other hand . .. (9, 10, and 10:30 p. m. HBO) • “Ray Donovan” has its Season 4 premiere. (9 p. m. Showtime) • Alec Baldwin hosts the latest attempt to revive “The Match Game. ” (10 p. m. ABC) • “Roadies,” Cameron Crowe’s cloying new show starring Luke Wilson, about rock ’n’ roll roadies on tour, premieres. (10 p. m. Showtime) It may be the beginning of summer, but with all of these movies disappearing from HBO and Netflix, I don’t see myself at the beach quite yet. Get around to these titles that have been sitting in your queue before they’re gone late next week. — Monica Castillo Netflix (titles expiring July 1) A League of Their Own: Sadly, the Rockford Peaches are ending their season just as the weather is warming up, but this movie is a perennial choice if you’re looking for a . Geena Davis stars in this fictionalized retelling of the inaugural season of the Girls Professional Baseball League, with all the heartbreak and good cheer of a classic sports movie. Remember, “there’s no crying in baseball!” (Watch on Netflix) Best in Show: Focusing his signature mockumentary lens on another wacky realm, the director Christopher Guest (“Waiting for Guffman”) ropes in a large cast of characters for an absurd look at a regional dog show. The dogs prove to be better behaved than their owners, some of who are busy taking their pet to therapy or hiding affairs with their trainer. This is a perfect companion for dog lovers with a sense of humor. Adorable pups . (Watch on Netflix) The Quiet Man: John Wayne ditches the cowboy hat to go with a fiery Maureen O’Hara in the Irish countryside. In this 1952 romance, Wayne leaves America for Ireland to reclaim his family home when he falls for the Irish lass next door portrayed by O’Hara. (Watch on Netflix) Also: “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “Bulworth,” “The Central Park Five” HBO (titles expiring June 30) Malcolm X: Before Ava DuVernay put Martin Luther King Jr. ’s story on the big screen with “Selma,” Spike Lee gave King’s contemporary a more sprawling biopic treatment. Denzel Washington would earn an Oscar nomination for his performance as the title character. (Watch on HBO) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: If you find yourself feeling a little anarchic and want a movie to match, try this one before it escapes. Jack Nicholson pours all of his manic energy into the character of Randle Patrick McMurphy, a provocateur in a mental institution challenging every authority figure in sight. But he may have met his match in the chilling Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). (Watch on HBO) What We Do in The Shadows: This offbeat mockumentary follows a houseful of vampires as they cope with the modern world. The brainchild of “Flight of the Conchords” star Jemaine Clement and his frequent collaborator Taika Waititi looks at the lives of the undead with witty, deadpan humor. (Watch on HBO) Also: “The Godfather Epic,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Music and Lyrics” | 1 |
Following is a transcript of Donald J. Trump’s interview on Tuesday with reporters, editors and opinion columnists from The New York Times. The transcription was prepared by Liam Stack, Jonah Engel Bromwich, Karen Workman and Tim Herrera of The Times. More on the Trump transition here. ARTHUR SULZBERGER Jr. publisher of The New York Times: Thank you very much for joining us. And I want to reaffirm this is on the record. DONALD J. TRUMP, of the United States: O. K. SULZBERGER: All right, so we’re clear. We had a very nice meeting in the Churchill Room. You’re a Churchill fan, I hear? TRUMP: I am, I am. SULZBERGER: There’s a photo of the great man behind you. TRUMP: There was a big thing about the bust that was removed out of the Oval Office. SULZBERGER: I heard you’re thinking of putting it back. TRUMP: I am, indeed. I am. SULZBERGER: Wonderful. So we’ve got a good collection here from our newsroom and editorial and our columnists. I just want to say we had a good, quiet, but useful and conversation in there. So I appreciate that very much. TRUMP: I appreciate it, too. SULZBERGER: I thought maybe I’d start this off by asking if you have anything you would like to start this off with before we move to the easiest questions you’re going to get this administration. [laughter] TRUMP: O. K. Well, I just appreciate the meeting and I have great respect for The New York Times. Tremendous respect. It’s very special. Always has been very special. I think I’ve been treated very rough. It’s well out there that I’ve been treated extremely unfairly in a sense, in a true sense. I wouldn’t only complain about The Times. I would say The Times was about the roughest of all. You could make the case The Washington Post was bad, but every once in a while I’d actually get a good article. Not often, Dean, but every once in awhile. Look, I have great respect for The Times, and I’d like to turn it around. I think it would make the job I am doing much easier. We’re working very hard. We have great people coming in. I think you’ll be very impressed with the names. We’ll be announcing some very shortly. Everybody wanted to do this. People are giving up tremendous careers in order to be subject to you folks and subject to a lot of other folks. But they’re giving up a lot. I mean some are giving up tremendous businesses in order to sit for four or maybe eight or whatever the period of time is. But I think we’re going to see some tremendous talent, tremendous talent coming in. We have many people for every job. I mean no matter what the job is, we have many incredible people. I think, Reince, you can sort of just confirm that. The quality of the people is very good. REINCE PRIEBUS, Mr. Trump’s choice for chief of staff: [inaudible] TRUMP: We’re trying very hard to get the best people. Not necessarily people that will be the most politically correct people, because that hasn’t been working. So we have really experts in the field. Some are known and some are not known, but they’re known within their field as being the best. That’s very important to me. You know, I’ve been given a great honor. It’s been very tough. It’s been 18 months of brutality in a true sense, but we won it. We won it pretty big. The final numbers are coming out. Or I guess they’re coming out. Michigan’s just being confirmed. But the numbers are coming out far beyond what anybody’s wildest expectation was. I don’t know if it was us, I mean, we were seeing the kind of crowds and kind of, everything, the kind of enthusiasm we were getting from the people. As you probably know, I did many, many speeches that last period. I was just telling Arthur that I went around and did speeches in the pretty much 11 different places, that were, the massive crowds we were getting. If we had a stadium that held — and most of you, many of you were there — that held 20, 000 people, we’d have 15, 000 people outside that couldn’t get in. So we came up with a good system — we put up the big screens outside with a very good loudspeaker system and very few people left. I would do, during the last month, two or three a day. That’s a lot. Because that’s not easy when you have big crowds. Those speeches, that’s not an easy way of life, doing three a day. Then I said the last two days, I want to do six and seven. And I’m not sure anybody has ever done that. But we did six and we did seven and the last one ended at 1 o’clock in the morning in Michigan. And we had 31, 000 people, 17, 000 or 18, 000 inside and the rest outside. This massive place in Grand Rapids, I guess. And it was an incredible thing. And I left saying: ‘How do we lose Michigan? I don’t think we can lose Michigan.’ And the reason I did that, it was set up only a little while before — because we heard that day that Hillary was hearing that they’re going to lose Michigan, which hasn’t been lost in 38 years. Or something. But 38 years. And they didn’t want to lose Michigan. So they went out along with President Obama and Michelle, Bill and Hillary, they went to Michigan late that, sort of late afternoon and I said, ‘Let’s go to Michigan.’ It wasn’t on the schedule. So I finished up in New Hampshire and at 10 o’clock I went to Michigan. We got there at 12 o’clock. We started speaking around 12:45, actually, and we had 31, 000 people and I said, really, I mean, there are things happening. But we saw it everywhere. So we felt very good. we had great numbers. And we thought we’re going to win. We thought we were going to win Florida. We thought we were going to win North Carolina. We did easily, pretty easily. We thought strongly we were going to win Pennsylvania. The problem is nobody had won it and it was known, as you know, the great state that always got away. Every Republican thought they were going to win Pennsylvania for 38 years and they just couldn’t win it. And I thought we were going to win it. And we won it, we won it, you know, relatively easily, we won it by a number of points. Florida we won by 180, 000 — was that the number, 180? PRIEBUS: [inaudible] TRUMP: More than 180, 000 voted, and votes are still coming in from the military, which we are getting about 85 percent of. So we won that by a lot of votes and, you know, we had a great victory. We had a great victory. I think it would have been easier because I see every once in awhile somebody says, ‘Well, the popular vote.’ Well, the popular vote would have been a lot easier, but it’s a whole different campaign. I would have been in California, I would have been in Texas, Florida and New York, and we wouldn’t have gone anywhere else. Which is, I mean I’d rather do the popular vote from the standpoint — I’d think we’d do actually as well or better — it’s a whole different campaign. It’s like, if you’re a golfer, it’s like match play versus stroke play. It’s a whole different game. But I think the popular vote would have been easier in a true sense because you’d go to a few places. I think that’s the genius of the Electoral College. I was never a fan of the Electoral College until now. SULZBERGER: Until now. [laughter] TRUMP: Until now. I guess now I like it for two reasons. What it does do is it gets you out to see states that you’ll never see otherwise. It’s very interesting. Like Maine. I went to Maine four times. I went to Maine 2 for one, because everybody was saying you can get to 269 but there is no path to 270. We learned that was false because we ended up with what, . PRIEBUS: I’ve got to get, we’ve got to get Michigan in. TRUMP: But there is no path to 270, you have to get the one in Maine, so we kept going back to Maine and we did get the one in Maine. We kept going to Maine 2, and we went to a lot of states that you wouldn’t spend a lot of time in and it does get you — we actually went to about 22 states, whereas if you’re going for popular vote, you’d probably go to four, or three, it could be three. You wouldn’t leave New York. You’d stay in New York and you’d stay in California. So there’s a certain genius about it. And I like it either way. But it’s sort of interesting. But we had an amazing period of time. I got to know the country, we have a great country, we’re a great, great people, and the enthusiasm was really incredible. The Los Angeles Times had a poll which was interesting because I was always up in that poll. They had something that is, I guess, a technique in polling, it was called enthusiasm. They added an enthusiasm factor and my people had great enthusiasm, and Hillary’s people didn’t have enthusiasm. And in the end she didn’t get the vote and we ended up close to 15 points, as you know. We started off at one, we ended up with almost 15. And more importantly, a lot of people didn’t show up, because the community liked me. They liked what I was saying. So they didn’t necessarily vote for me, but they didn’t show up, which was a big problem that she had. I ended up doing very well with women, which was — which I never understood why I was doing poorly, because we’d go to the rallies and we’d have so many women holding up signs, “Women for Trump. ” But I kept reading polls saying that I’m not doing well with women. I think whoever is doing it here would say that we did very well with women, especially certain women. DEAN BAQUET, executive editor of The New York Times: As you describe it, you did do something really remarkable. You energized a lot of people in the country who really wanted change in Washington. But along with that — and this is going to create a tricky thing for you — you also energized presumably a smaller number of people who were evidenced at the convention in Washington this weekend. Who have a very … TRUMP: I just saw that today. BAQUET: So, I’d love to hear you talk about how you’re going to manage that group of people who actually may not be the larger group but who have an expectation for you and are angry about the country and its — along racial lines. My first question is, do you feel like you said things that energized them in particular, and how are you going to manage that? TRUMP: I don’t think so, Dean. First of all, I don’t want to energize the group. I’m not looking to energize them. I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group. They, again, I don’t know if it’s reporting or whatever. I don’t know where they were four years ago, and where they were for Romney and McCain and all of the other people that ran, so I just don’t know, I had nothing to compare it to. But it’s not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized I want to look into it and find out why. What we do want to do is we want to bring the country together, because the country is very, very divided, and that’s one thing I did see, big league. It’s very, very divided, and I’m going to work very hard to bring the country together. I mean, I’m somebody that really has gotten along with people over the years. It was interesting, my wife, I went to a big event about two years ago. Just after I started thinking about politics. And we’re walking in and some people were cheering and some people were booing, and she said, you know, ‘People have never booed for you.’ I’ve never had a person boo me, and all of a sudden people are booing me. She said, that’s never happened before. And, it’s politics. You know, all of a sudden they think I’m going to be running for office, and I’m a Republican, let’s say. So it’s something that I had never experienced before and I said, ‘Those people are booing,’ and she said, ‘Yup.’ They’d never booed before. But now they boo. You know, it was a group and another group was going the opposite. No, I want to bring the country together. It’s very important to me. We’re in a very divided country. In many ways divided. BAQUET: So I’m going to do that thing that executive editors get to do which is to invite reporters to jump in and ask questions. MAGGIE HABERMAN, political reporter: I’ll start, thank you, Dean. Mr. President, I’d like to thank you for being here. This morning, Kellyanne Conway talked about not prosecuting Hillary Clinton. We were hoping you could talk about exactly what that means — does that mean just the emails, or the emails and the foundation, and how you came to that decision. TRUMP: Well, there was a report that somebody said that I’m not enthused about it. Look, I want to move forward, I don’t want to move back. And I don’t want to hurt the Clintons. I really don’t. She went through a lot. And suffered greatly in many different ways. And I am not looking to hurt them at all. The campaign was vicious. They say it was the most vicious primary and the most vicious campaign. I guess, added together, it was definitely the most vicious probably, I assume you sold a lot of newspapers. [laughter] I would imagine. I would imagine. I’m just telling you, Maggie, I’m not looking to hurt them. I think they’ve been through a lot. They’ve gone through a lot. I’m really looking … I think we have to get the focus of the country into looking forward. SULZBERGER: If I could interject, we had a good conversation there, you and I, and it was off the record, but there was nothing secret, just wanted to make sure. The idea of looking forward was one of the themes that you were saying. That we need to now get past the election, right? MATTHEW PURDY, deputy managing editor: So you’re definitively taking that off the table? The investigation? TRUMP: No, but the question was asked. PURDY: About the emails and the foundation? TRUMP: No, no, but it’s just not something that I feel very strongly about. I feel very strongly about health care. I feel very strongly about an immigration bill that I think even the people in this room can be happy. You know, you’ve been talking about immigration bills for 50 years and nothing’s ever happened. I feel very strongly about an immigration bill that’s fair and just and a lot of other things. There are a lot of things I feel strongly about. I’m not looking to look back and go through this. This was a very painful period. This was a very painful election with all of the email things and all of the foundation things and all of the everything that they went through and the whole country went through. This was a very painful period of time. I read recently where it was, it was, they’re saying, they used to say it was Lincoln against whoever and none of us were there to see it. And there aren’t a lot of recordings of that, right? [laughter] But the fact is that there were some pretty vicious elections they say this was, this was the most. They say it was definitely the most vicious primary. And I think it’s very important to look forward. CAROLYN RYAN, senior editor for politics: Do you think it would disappoint your supporters who seemed very animated by the idea of accountability in the Clintons? What would you say to them? TRUMP: I don’t think they will be disappointed. I think I will explain it, that we have to, in many ways save our country. Because our country’s really in bad, big trouble. We have a lot of trouble. A lot of problems. And one of the big problems, I talk about, divisiveness. I think that a lot of people will appreciate … I’m not doing it for that reason. I’m doing it because it’s time to go in a different direction. There was a lot of pain, and I think that the people that supported me with such enthusiasm, where they will show up at 1 in the morning to hear a speech. It was actually Election Day, they showed up at, so that was essentially Election Day. Yeah, I think they’d understand very completely. THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, opinion columnist: Mr. can I ask a question? One of the issues that you actually were very careful not to speak about during the campaign, and haven’t spoken about yet, is one very near and dear to my heart, the whole issue of climate change, the Paris agreement, how you’ll approach it. You own some of the most beautiful links golf courses in the world … [laughter, cross talk] TRUMP: [laughing] I read your article. Some will be even better because actually like Doral is a little bit off … so it’ll be perfect. [inaudible] He doesn’t say that. He just says that the ones that are near the water will be gone, but Doral will be in great shape. [laughter] FRIEDMAN: But it’s really important to me, and I think to a lot of our readers, to know where you’re going to go with this. I don’t think anyone objects to, you know, doing all forms of energy. But are you going to take America out of the world’s lead of confronting climate change? TRUMP: I’m looking at it very closely, Tom. I’ll tell you what. I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully. It’s one issue that’s interesting because there are few things where there’s more division than climate change. You don’t tend to hear this, but there are people on the other side of that issue who are, think, don’t even … SULZBERGER: We do hear it. FRIEDMAN: I was on ‘Squawk Box’ with Joe Kernen this morning, so I got an earful of it. [laughter] TRUMP: Joe is one of them. But a lot of smart people disagree with you. I have a very open mind. And I’m going to study a lot of the things that happened on it and we’re going to look at it very carefully. But I have an open mind. SULZBERGER: Well, since we’re living on an island, sir, I want to thank you for having an open mind. We saw what these storms are now doing, right? We’ve seen it personally. Straight up. FRIEDMAN: But you have an open mind on this? TRUMP: I do have an open mind. And we’ve had storms always, Arthur. SULZBERGER: Not like this. TRUMP: You know the hottest day ever was in 98. You know, you can make lots of cases for different views. I have a totally open mind. My uncle was for 35 years a professor at M. I. T. He was a great engineer, scientist. He was a great guy. And he was … a long time ago, he had feelings — this was a long time ago — he had feelings on this subject. It’s a very complex subject. I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know. I know we have, they say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the scientists. Where was that, in Geneva or wherever five years ago? Terrible. Where they got caught, you know, so you see that and you say, what’s this all about. I absolutely have an open mind. I will tell you this: Clean air is vitally important. Clean water, crystal clean water is vitally important. Safety is vitally important. And you know, you mentioned a lot of the courses. I have some great, great, very successful golf courses. I’ve received so many environmental awards for the way I’ve done, you know. I’ve done a tremendous amount of work where I’ve received tremendous numbers. Sometimes I’ll say I’m actually an environmentalist and people will smile in some cases and other people that know me understand that’s true. Open mind. JAMES BENNET, editorial page editor: When you say an open mind, you mean you’re just not sure whether human activity causes climate change? Do you think human activity is or isn’t connected? TRUMP: I think right now … well, I think there is some connectivity. There is some, something. It depends on how much. It also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies. You have to understand, our companies are noncompetitive right now. They’re really largely noncompetitive. About four weeks ago, I started adding a certain little sentence into a lot of my speeches, that we’ve lost 70, 000 factories since W. Bush. 70, 000. When I first looked at the number, I said: ‘That must be a typo. It can’t be 70, you can’t have 70, 000, you wouldn’t think you have 70, 000 factories here.’ And it wasn’t a typo, it’s right. We’ve lost 70, 000 factories. We’re not a competitive nation with other nations anymore. We have to make ourselves competitive. We’re not competitive for a lot of reasons. That’s becoming more and more of the reason. Because a lot of these countries that we do business with, they make deals with our president, or whoever, and then they don’t adhere to the deals, you know that. And it’s much less expensive for their companies to produce products. So I’m going to be studying that very hard, and I think I have a very big voice in it. And I think my voice is listened to, especially by people that don’t believe in it. And we’ll let you know. FRIEDMAN: I’d hate to see Royal Aberdeen underwater. TRUMP: The North Sea, that could be, that’s a good one, right? ELISABETH BUMILLER, Washington bureau chief: I just wanted to follow up on the question you were asked about not pursuing any investigations into Hillary Clinton. Did you mean both the email investigation and the foundation investigation — you will not pursue either one of those? TRUMP: Yeah, look, you know we’ll have people that do things but my inclination would be, for whatever power I have on the matter, is to say let’s go forward. This has been looked at for so long. Ad nauseam. Let’s go forward. And you know, you could also make the case that some good work was done in the foundation and they could have made mistakes, etc. etc. I think it’s time, I think it’s time for people to say let’s go and solve some of the problems that we have, which are massive problems and, you know, I do think that they’ve gone through a lot. I think losing is going through a lot. It was a tough, it was a very tough evening for her. I think losing is going through a lot. So, for whatever it’s worth, my, my attitude is strongly we have to go forward, we have so many different problems to solve, I don’t think we have to delve back in the past. I also think that would be a very divisive, well I think it would be very divisive, you know I’m talking about bringing together, and then they go into all sorts of stuff, I think it would be very, very divisive for the country. SULZBERGER: I agree, I think speaking not as a journalist now, it’s very healthy. There, and then we’re going to go MICHAEL D. SHEAR, White House correspondent: Mr. Trump, Mike Shear. I cover the White House, covering your administration … TRUMP: See ya there. [laughter] SHEAR: Just one quick clarification on the climate change, do you intend to, as you said, pull out of the Paris Climate … TRUMP: I’m going to take a look at it. SHEAR [interrupts]: And if the reaction from foreign leaders is to slap tariffs on American goods to offset the carbon that the United States had pledged to reduce, is that O. K. with you? And then the second question is on your sort of mixing of your global business interests and the presidency. There’s already, even just in the 10, two weeks you’ve been instances where you’ve met with your Indian business partners … TRUMP: Sure. SHEAR: You’ve talked about the impact of the wind farms on your golf course. People, experts who are lawyers and ethics experts, say that all of that is totally inappropriate, so I guess the question for you is, what do you see as the appropriate structure for keeping those two things separate, and are there any lines that you think you won’t want to cross once you’re in the White House? TRUMP: O. K. First of all, on countries. I think that countries will not do that to us. I don’t think if they’re run by a person that understands leadership and negotiation they’re in no position to do that to us, no matter what I do. They’re in no position to do that to us, and that won’t happen, but I’m going to take a look at it. A very serious look. I want to also see how much this is costing, you know, what’s the cost to it, and I’ll be talking to you folks in the future about it, having to do with what just took place. As far as the, you know, potential conflict of interests, though, I mean I know that from the standpoint, the law is totally on my side, meaning, the president can’t have a conflict of interest. That’s been reported very widely. Despite that, I don’t want there to be a conflict of interest anyway. And the laws, the president can’t. And I understand why the president can’t have a conflict of interest now because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest, but I have, I’ve built a very great company and it’s a big company and it’s all over the world. People are starting to see, when they look at all these different jobs, like in India and other things, number one, a job like that builds great relationships with the people of India, so it’s all good. But I have to say, the partners come in, they’re very, very successful people. They come in, they’d say, they said, ‘Would it be possible to have a picture?’ Actually, my children are working on that job. So I can say to them, Arthur, ‘I don’t want to have a picture,’ or, I can take a picture. I mean, I think it’s wonderful to take a picture. I’m fine with a picture. But if it were up to some people, I would never, ever see my daughter Ivanka again. That would be like you never seeing your son again. That wouldn’t be good. That wouldn’t be good. But I’d never, ever see my daughter Ivanka. UNKNOWN: That means you’d have to make Ivanka deputy President, you know. TRUMP: I know, I know, yeah. [room laughs] Well, I couldn’t do that either. I can’t, that can’t work. I can’t do anything, I would never see my, I guess the only son I’d be allowed to see, at least for a little while, would be Barron, because he’s 10. But, but, so there has to be [unintelligible]. It’s a very interesting case. UNKNOWN: You could sell your company though, right? With all due respect, you could sell your company and then … TRUMP: Well … UNKNOWN: And then you could see them all the time. TRUMP: That’s a very hard thing to do, you know what, because I have real estate. I have real estate all over the world, which now people are understanding. When I filed my forms with the federal election, people said, ‘Wow that’s really a big company, that’s a big company.’ It really is big, it’s diverse, it’s all over the world. It’s a great company with great assets. I think that, you know, selling real estate isn’t like selling stock. Selling real estate is much different, it’s in a much different world. I’d say this, and I mean this and I said it on “60 Minutes” the other night: My company is so unimportant to me relative to what I’m doing, ’cause I don’t need money, I don’t need anything, and by the way, I’m very I have a very small percentage of my money in debt, very very small percentage of my money in debt, in fact, banks have said ‘We’d like to loan you money, we’d like to give you any amount of money.’ I’ve been there before, I’ve had it both ways, I’ve been I’ve been and, especially as you get older, is much better. UNKNOWN: Mr. … TRUMP: Just a minute, because it’s an important question. I don’t care about my company. I mean, if a partner comes in from India or if a partner comes in from Canada, where we did a beautiful big building that just opened, and they want to take a picture and come into my office, and my kids come in and, I originally made the deal with these people, I mean what am I going to say? I’m not going to talk to you, I’m not going to take pictures? You have to, you know, on a human basis, you take pictures. But I just want to say that I am given the right to do something so important in terms of so many of the issues we discussed, in terms of health care, in terms of so many different things. I don’t care about my company. It doesn’t matter. My kids run it. They’ll say I have a conflict because we just opened a beautiful hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, so every time somebody stays at that hotel, if they stay because I’m president, I guess you could say it’s a conflict of interest. It’s a conflict of interest, but again, I’m not going to have anything to do with the hotel, and they may very well. I mean it could be that occupancy at that hotel will be because, psychologically, occupancy at that hotel will be probably a more valuable asset now than it was before, O. K.? The brand is certainly a hotter brand than it was before. I can’t help that, but I don’t care. I said on “60 Minutes”: I don’t care. Because it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters to me is running our country. MICHAEL BARBARO, political reporter: Mr. can I press you a little further on what structures you would put in place to keep the presidency and the company separate and to avoid things that, for example, were reported in The Times in the past 24 hours about meeting with leaders of Brexit about wind farms … TRUMP: About meeting with who? BARBARO: Leaders of Brexit about wind farms that might interfere with the views of your golf course and how to keep, what structures, can you talk about that meeting, by the way? TRUMP: Was I involved with the wind farms recently? Or, not that I know of. I mean, I have a problem with wind … BARBARO: But you brought it up in the meeting, didn’t you? TRUMP: Which meeting? I don’t know. I might have. BARBARO: With leaders of Brexit. MANY VOICES: With Farage. TRUMP: Oh, I see. I might have brought it up. But not having to do with me, just I mean, the wind is a very deceiving thing. First of all, we don’t make the windmills in the United States. They’re made in Germany and Japan. They’re made out of massive amounts of steel, which goes into the atmosphere, whether it’s in our country or not, it goes into the atmosphere. The windmills kill birds and the windmills need massive subsidies. In other words, we’re subsidizing wind mills all over this country. I mean, for the most part they don’t work. I don’t think they work at all without subsidy, and that bothers me, and they kill all the birds. You go to a windmill, you know in California they have the, what is it? The golden eagle? And they’re like, if you shoot a golden eagle, they go to jail for five years and yet they kill them by, they actually have to get permits that they’re only allowed to kill 30 or something in one year. The windmills are devastating to the bird population, O. K. With that being said, there’s a place for them. But they do need subsidy. So, if I talk negatively. I’ve been saying the same thing for years about you know, the wind industry. I wouldn’t want to subsidize it. Some environmentalists agree with me very much because of all of the things I just said, including the birds, and some don’t. But it’s hard to explain. I don’t care about anything having to do with anything having to do with anything other than the country. BARBARO: But the structures, just to be clear, that’s the question. How do you formalize the separation of these things so that there is not a question of whether or not you as president … TRUMP: O. K. BARBARO: … are trying to influence something, like wind farms? TRUMP: O. K. I don’t want to influence anything, because it’s not that, it’s not that important to me. It’s hard to explain. BARBARO: Yes, but the structures? TRUMP: Now, according to the law, see I figured there’s something where you put something in this massive trust and there’s also — nothing is written. In other words, in theory, I can be president of the United States and run my business 100 percent, sign checks on my business, which I am phasing out of very rapidly, you know, I sign checks, I’m the type. I like to sign checks so I know what is going on as opposed to pressing a computer button, boom, and thousands of checks are automatically sent. It keeps, it tells me what’s going on a little bit and it tells contractors that I’m watching. But I am phasing that out now, and handing that to Eric Trump and Don Trump and Ivanka Trump for the most part, and some of my executives, so that’s happening right now. But in theory I could run my business perfectly, and then run the country perfectly. And there’s never been a case like this where somebody’s had, like, if you look at other people of wealth, they didn’t have this kind of asset and this kind of wealth, frankly. It’s just a different thing. But there is no — I assumed that you’d have to set up some type of trust or whatever and you know. And I was actually a little bit surprised to see it. So in theory I don’t have to do anything. But I would like to do something. I would like to try and formalize something, because I don’t care about my business. Doral is going to run very nice. We own this incredible place in Miami. We own many incredible places, including Turnberry, I guess you heard. There’s one guy that does — when I say Turnberry, you know what that is, right. Do a little [inaudible]. But they’re going to run well, we have good managers, they’re going to run really well. So I don’t have to do anything, but I want to do something if I can. If there is something. BARBARO: Can you promise us when you decide exactly what that is, you’ll come tell The New York Times about it? [laughter] TRUMP: I will. I’ve started it already. SULZBERGER: One of our great salesmen, by the way. TRUMP: I can see that. I’ve started it already by, I mean, I’ve greatly reduced the and the business. I’ve greatly reduced meetings with contractors, meetings with different people that, you know, I’ve also started by — ’cause I’ve said over the last two years, once I decided I wanted to run, I don’t want to build anything. ’Cause building, like for instance, we built the post office, you’ll be happy to hear, ahead of schedule and under budget. Substantially ahead of schedule. Almost two years ago of schedule. But ahead of schedule, under budget, and it’s a terrific place. That’s the hotel on Pennsylvania. FRIEDMAN: Just so you know, General Electric has a big wind turbine factory in South Carolina. Just so you know. TRUMP: Well that’s good. But most of ‘em are made in Germany, most of ‘em are made, you know, Siemens and the Chinese are making most of them. [cross talk] TRUMP: They may assemble — if you check, I think you’ll find that the, it’s delivered there and they do most of the assembly. JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, White House correspondent: Mr. — I’m sorry I entered late, but I did want to ask you about … BAQUET: You should introduce yourself. DAVIS: I’m Julie Davis, one of the White House correspondents. TRUMP: Hi, Julie. DAVIS: I apologize for my delayed flight. I wanted to ask you about personnel. They say personnel is policy. TRUMP: I can’t quite hear. DAVIS: Personnel. TRUMP: Personnel. DAVIS: You hired Steve Bannon to be the chief strategist for you in the White House. He is a hero of the . He’s been described by some as racist and . I wonder what message you think you have sent by elevating him to that position and what you would say to those who feel like that indicates something about the kind of country you prefer and the government you’ll run. TRUMP: Um, I’ve known Steve Bannon a long time. If I thought he was a racist, or or any of the things that we can, you know, the terms we can use, I wouldn’t even think about hiring him. First of all, I’m the one that makes the decision, not Steve Bannon or anybody else. And Kellyanne will tell you that. [laughter] KELLYANE CONWAY: 100 percent. TRUMP: And if he said something to me that, in terms of his views, or that I thought were inappropriate or bad, number one I wouldn’t do anything, and number two, he would have to be gone. But I know many people that know him, and in fact, he’s actually getting some very good press from a lot of the people that know him, and people that are on the left. But Steve went to Harvard, he was a, you know, he was very successful, he was a Naval officer, he’s, I think he’s very, very, you know, sadly, really, I think it’s very hard on him. I think he’s having a hard time with it. Because it’s not him. It’s not him. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a very, very smart guy. I think he was with Goldman Sachs on top of everything else. UNKNOWN: What do you make of the website he ran, Breitbart? TRUMP: The which? UNKNOWN: Breitbart. TRUMP: Well, Breitbart’s different. Breitbart cover things, I mean like The New York Times covers things. I mean, I could say that Arthur is because they covered an story. SULZBERGER: [laughing] I am, I am. I’ll take whatever you say. I am always right, but I’m not . [laughter, cross talk] TRUMP: The New York Times covers a lot of stories that are, you know, rough stories. And you know, they have covered some of these things, but The New York Times covers a lot of these things also. It’s just a newspaper, essentially. It’s a newspaper. I know the guy, he’s a decent guy, he’s a very smart guy. He’s done a good job. He hasn’t been with me that long. You know he really came in after the primaries. I had already won the primaries. And if I thought that his views were in that category, I would immediately let him go. And I’ll tell you why. In many respects I think his views are actually on the other side of what a lot of people might think. DAVIS: But you are aware, sir, with all due respect, that and Jews and many folks who disagree with the coverage of Breitbart and the slant that Breitbart brings to the news view him that way, aren’t you? TRUMP: Yeah, well Breitbart, first of all, is just a publication. And, you know, they cover stories like you cover stories. Now, they are certainly a much more conservative paper, to put it mildly, than The New York Times. But Breitbart really is a news organization that’s become quite successful, and it’s got readers and it does cover subjects that are on the right, but it covers subjects on the left also. I mean it’s a pretty big, it’s a pretty big thing. And he helped build it into a pretty successful news organization. Now, I’ll tell you what, I know him very well. I will say this, and I will say this, if I thought that strongly, if I thought that he was doing anything, or had any ideas that were different than the ideas that you would think, I would ask him very politely to leave. But in the meantime, I think he’s been treated very unfairly. It’s very interesting ’cause a lot of people are coming to his defense right now. PRIEBUS: We have never experienced a single episode of any of those accusations. It’s been the total opposite. It’s been a great team, and it’s just not there. And what the is saying is 100 percent true. [cross talk] TRUMP: And by the way, if you see something or get something where you feel that I’m wrong, and you have some info — I would love to hear it. You can call me, Arthur can call me, I would love to hear. The only one who can’t call me is Maureen [Dowd, opinion columnist]. She treats me too rough. I don’t know what happened to Maureen! She was so good, Gail [Collins, opinion columnist]. For years she was so good. [cross talk] SULZBERGER: As we all say about Maureen, it’s not your fault, it’s just your turn. [laughter] ROSS DOUTHAT, opinion columnist: I have a slightly different, but somewhat Steve question, I guess. It’s about the future of the Republican Party. You started out here talking about winning in so many states where no Republican has won in decades, especially Midwestern Rust Belt states. And I think many people think that one of the reasons you won was that you deliberately campaigned as a different kind of Republican. You had different things to say on trade, entitlements, foreign policy, even your daughter Ivanka’s child care plan was sort of distinctive. And now you’re in a situation where you’re governing and staffing up an administration with a Republican Party whose leaders, and Reince, may differ with me a little on this, but don’t always see on those views. TRUMP: Although right now they’re loving me. [laughter] UNKNOWN: Well, right now they are. [cross talk] TRUMP: Paul Ryan right now loves me, Mitch McConnell loves me, it’s amazing how winning can change things. I’ve liked Chuck Schumer for a long time. I’ve actually, I’ve raised a lot of money for Chuck and given him a lot of money over the years. I think I was the first person that ever contributed to Chuck Schumer. I had a Brooklyn office, a little office, in a little apartment building in Brooklyn in Sheepshead Bay where I worked with my father. And Chuck Schumer came in and I gave him, I believe, I don’t know if he’s willing to admit this, but I believe it was his first campaign contribution, $500. But Chuck Schumer’s a good guy. I think we’ll get along very well. DOUTHAT: I guess that’s my question is, how much do you expect to be able to both run an administration and negotiate with a Congress as a different kind of Republican. And do you worry that you’ll wake up three years from now and go back to campaigning in the Rust Belt and people will say, well, he governed more like Paul Ryan than like Donald Trump. TRUMP: No, I don’t worry about that. ’Cause I didn’t need to do this. I was telling Arthur before: ‘Arthur I didn’t need to do this. I’m doing this to do a good job.’ That’s what I want to do, and I think that what happened in the Rust Belt, they call it the Rust Belt for a reason. If you go through it, you look back 20 years, they didn’t used to call it the Rust Belt. You pass factory after factory after factory that’s empty and rusting. Rust is the good part, ’cause they’re worse than rusting, they’re falling down. No, I wouldn’t sacrifice that. To me more important is taking care of the people that really have proven to be, to love Donald Trump, as opposed to the political people. And frankly if the political people don’t take care of these people, they’re not going to win and you’re going to end up with maybe a total different kind of government than what you’re looking at right now. These people are really angry. They’re smart, they’re workers, and they’re angry. I call them the forgotten men and women. And I use that in speeches, I say they’re the forgotten people — they were totally forgotten. And we’re going to bring jobs back. We’re going to bring jobs back, big league. I’ve spoken to so many companies already, I say, don’t plan on moving your company, ’cause you’re not going to be able to move your company and sell us your product. You think you’re going to just sell it across what will be a strong border, you know at least we’re going to have a border. But just don’t plan on it. And I’ll tell you, I believe, and you’ll hear announcements over the next couple of months, but I believe I’ve talked numerous comp — in conversations with top people — numerous companies that have, leaving, or potentially leaving our country with thousands of jobs. FRIEDMAN: Are you worried, though, that those companies will keep their factories here, but the jobs will be replaced by robots? TRUMP: They will, and we’ll make the robots too. [laughter] TRUMP: It’s a big thing, we’ll make the robots too. Right now we don’t make the robots. We don’t make anything. But we’re going to, I mean, look, robotics is becoming very big and we’re going to do that. We’re going to have more factories. We can’t lose 70, 000 factories. Just can’t do it. We’re going to start making things. I was honored yesterday, I got a call from Bill Gates, great call, we had a great conversation, I got a call from Tim Cook at Apple, and I said, ‘Tim, you know one of the things that will be a real achievement for me is when I get Apple to build a big plant in the United States, or many big plants in the United States, where instead of going to China, and going to Vietnam, and going to the places that you go to, you’re making your product right here.’ He said, ‘I understand that.’ I said: ‘I think we’ll create the incentives for you, and I think you’re going to do it. We’re going for a very large tax cut for corporations, which you’ll be happy about.’ But we’re going for big tax cuts, we have to get rid of regulations, regulations are making it impossible. Whether you’re liberal or conservative, I mean I could sit down and show you regulations that anybody would agree are ridiculous. It’s gotten to be a . And companies can’t, they can’t even start up, they can’t expand, they’re choking. I tell you, one thing I would say, so, I’m giving a big tax cut and I’m giving big regulation cuts, and I’ve seen all of the small business owners over the United States, and all of the big business owners, I’ve met so many people. They are more excited about the regulation cut than about the tax cut. And I would’ve never said that’s possible, because the tax cut’s going to be substantial. You know we have companies leaving our country because the taxes are too high. But they’re leaving also because of the regulations. And I would say, of the two, and I would not have thought this, regulation cuts, substantial regulation cuts, are more important than, and more enthusiastically supported, than even the big tax cuts. UNKNOWN: Mr. I wanted to ask you, there was a conference this past weekend in Washington of people who pledged their allegiance to Nazism. TRUMP: Boy, you are really into this stuff, huh? PRIEBUS: I think we answered that one right off the bat. UNKNOWN: Are you going to condemn them? TRUMP: Of course I did, of course I did. PRIEBUS: He already did. UNKNOWN: Are you going to do it right now? TRUMP: Oh, I see, maybe you weren’t here. Sure. Would you like me to do it here? I’ll do it here. Of course I condemn. I disavow and condemn. SULZBERGER: We’ll go with that. I’d like to move to infrastructure, apologies, and then we’ll go back. Because a lot of the investment you are talking about, a lot of the jobs you are talking about — is infrastructure going to be the core of your first few years? TRUMP: No, it’s not the core, but it’s an important factor. We’re going for a lot of things, between taxes, between regulations, between health care replacement, we’re going to talk repeal and replace. ’Cause health care is — you know people are paying a 100 percent increase and they’re not even getting anything, the deductibles are so high, you have deductibles $16, 000. So they’re paying all of this money and they don’t even get health care. So it’s very important. So there are a lot of things. But infrastructure, Arthur, is going to be a part of it. SULZBERGER: It’s part of jobs, isn’t it? TRUMP: I don’t even think it’s a big part of it. It’s going to be a big number but I think I am doing things that are more important than infrastructure, but infrastructure is still a part of it, and we’re talking about a very infrastructure bill. And that’s not a very Republican thing — I didn’t even know that, frankly. SULZBERGER: It worked for Franklin Roosevelt. TRUMP: It didn’t work for Obama because unfortunately they didn’t spend the money last time on infrastructure. They spent it on a lot of other things. You know, nobody can find out where that last — you know, from a few years ago — where that money went. And we’re going to make sure it is spent on infrastructure and roads and highways. I have a friend, he’s a big trucker, one of the biggest. And he orders these incredible trucks, the best, I won’t mention the name but it’s a certain truck company that makes — they call them the of trucks. You know, the most expensive trucks. And he calls me up about two months ago and he goes, ‘Man, I’m going to buy the cheapest trucks I can buy.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ and — you know, and this is the biggest guy — he goes, ‘My trucks are coming back, they’re going from New York to California and they’re all busted up. The highways are in such bad shape, they’re hitting potholes, they’re hitting everything.’ He said, ‘I’m not buying these trucks anymore, I’m going to buy the cheapest stuff and the strongest tires I can get.’ That’s the exact expression he used, ‘the cheapest trucks and the strongest tires.’ We’re hitting so many bad points, we, you know, I said, ‘So tell me, you’ve been doing this how long?’ 45 years. He built it over 45 years. I said, ‘Have you ever seen it like this?’ He said, ‘The roads have never been like this.’ It’s an interesting … BAQUET: What did, what did, I’m curious what Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan said when you said, ‘I’m going to launch a infrastructure program.’ Are they reluctant to spend that? TRUMP: Honestly right now … DOUTHAT: Trillion. Trillion, I think, was the figure. BAQUET: Because they would be in the wing of the Republican Party that would say, ‘That’s great, but you’re not going to be able to do that and balance the budget.’ TRUMP: Let’s see if I get it done. Right now they’re in love with me. O. K.? Four weeks ago they weren’t in love with me. Don’t forget — if I read The New York Times, and you don’t have to put this on the record — it can be if you want, you might not want … SULZBERGER: You say if, but you do … TRUMP: Well, I do read it. Unfortunately. I would have lived about 20 years longer if I didn’t. SULZBERGER: There’s Nixon’s quote right there if you’d love to reread it — TRUMP: I know. But when you look at the different, all the newspapers, I was going to lose the presidency, I was going to take the House with me, and the Senate had no chance. It was going to be the biggest humiliation in the history of politics in this country. And instead I won the presidency, easily, and I mean easily — you look at those states, I had states where I won by 30 and 40 points. I won the presidency easily, I helped numerous senators — in fact the only senators that didn’t get elected were two — one up in New Hampshire who refused to say that she was going to vote for me, who by the way would love a job in the administration and I said, ‘No, thank you.’ That’s on the record. This is where I’m different than a politician — I know what to say, I just believe it’s sort of interesting. She’d love to have a job in the administration, I said, ‘No, thank you.’ She refused to vote for me. And a senator in Nevada who frankly said, he endorsed me then he unendorsed me, and he went down like a lead balloon. And then they called me before the race and said they wanted me to endorse him and do a big thing and I said, ‘No thank you, good luck.’ You know, let’s see what happens. I said, off the record, I hope you lose. Off the record. He was! He was up by 10 points — you know who I’m talking about. So, others — if you look at Missouri, [Senator Roy] Blunt, he was down five points a few days before the election, he called for help, I gave him help, and I think I was up like over 30 points in Missouri. I was leading by a massive amount, 28 points. I gave him help and he ended up winning by four points or something. I brought a number of them. Pennsylvania, brought over the finish line. Let’s see, we brought Johnson, in, you know, that was a good one. We brought him over the line in Wisconsin. Winning Wisconsin was big stuff, that’s something that … FRIEDMAN: Mr. I came … TRUMP: So right now I’m in very good shape, but FRIEDMAN: I came here thinking you’d be awed and overwhelmed by this job, but I feel like you are getting very comfortable with it. TRUMP: I feel comfortable. I feel comfortable. I am awed by the job, as anybody would be, but I honestly, Tom, I feel so comfortable and you know it would be, to me, a great achievement if I could come back here in a year or two years and say — and have a lot of the folks here say, ‘You’ve done a great job.’ And I don’t mean just a conservative job, ’cause I’m not talking conservative. I mean just, we’ve done a good job. SHEAR: To follow up on Matt, after you met with President Obama, he described you to folks as — that you seemed overwhelmed by what he told you. So I wonder if you are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the job that you’re about to inherit and if you can tell us anything more about that conversation with the president and the apparently subsequent conversations that you’ve had on the phone since then. And then maybe talk a little bit about foreign policy, that’s something we haven’t touched on here, and whether or not you believe in the kind of world order — a world order led by America in terms of having this country underwrite the security and the free markets of the world, which have been in place for decades. TRUMP: Sure. I had a great meeting with President Obama. I never met him before. I really liked him a lot. The meeting was supposed to be 10 minutes, 15 minutes max, because there were a lot of people waiting outside, for both of us. And it ended up being — you were there — I guess an meeting, close. And it was a great chemistry. I think if he said overwhelmed, I don’t think he meant that in a bad way. I think he meant that it is a very overwhelming job. But I’m not overwhelmed by it. You can do things and fix it, I think he meant it that way. He said very nice things after the meeting and I said very nice things about him. I really enjoyed my meeting with him. We have — you know, we come from different sides of the equation, but it’s nevertheless something that — I didn’t know if I’d like him. I probably thought that maybe I wouldn’t, but I did, I did like him. I really enjoyed him a lot. I’ve spoken to him since the meeting. SHEAR: What did you say to him? TRUMP: Just a basic conversation. I think he’s looking to do absolutely the right thing for the country in terms of transition and I really, I’m telling you, we had a meeting, Arthur, that went for an hour and a half that could have gone for three or four hours. It was a great — it was just a very good meeting. UNKNOWN: Sort of like this meeting. [cross talk, laughter] TRUMP: He told me what he thought his, what the biggest problems of the country were, which I don’t think I should reveal, I don’t mind if he reveals them. But I was actually surprised a little bit. But he told me the problems, he told me things that he considered assets, but he did tell me what he thought were the biggest problems, in particular one problem that he thought was a big problem for the country, which I’d rather have you ask him. But I really found the meeting to be very good. And I hope we can have a good — I mean, it doesn’t mean we’re going to agree on everything, but I hope that we will have a great relationship. I really liked him a lot and I’m a little bit surprised I’m telling you that I really liked him a lot. Let’s go foreign policy, sure. Sure. FRIEDMAN: What do you see as America’s role in the world? Do you believe that the role … TRUMP: That’s such a big question. FRIEDMAN: The role that we played for 50 years as kind of the global balancer, paying more for things because they were in our ultimate interest, one hears from you, I sense, is really shrinking that role. TRUMP: I don’t think we should be a nation builder. I think we’ve tried that. I happen to think that going into Iraq was perhaps … I mean you could say maybe we could have settled the civil war, O. K.? I think going into Iraq was one of the great mistakes in the history of our country. I think getting out of it — I think we got out of it wrong, then lots of bad things happened, including the formation of ISIS. We could have gotten out of it differently. FRIEDMAN: NATO, Russia? TRUMP: I think going in was a terrible, terrible mistake. Syria, we have to solve that problem because we are going to just keep fighting, fighting forever. I have a different view on Syria than everybody else. Well, not everybody else, but then a lot of people. I had to listen to [Senator] Lindsey Graham, who, give me a break. I had to listen to Lindsey Graham talk about, you know, attacking Syria and attacking, you know, and it’s like you’re now attacking Russia, you’re attacking Iran, you’re attacking. And what are we getting? We’re getting — and what are we getting? And I have some very definitive, I have some very strong ideas on Syria. I think what’s happened is a horrible, horrible thing. To look at the deaths, and I’m not just talking deaths on our side, which are horrible, but the deaths — I mean you look at these cities, Arthur, where they’re totally, they’re rubble, massive areas, and they say two people were injured. No, thousands of people have died. O. K. And I think it’s a shame. And ideally we can get — do something with Syria. I spoke to Putin, as you know, he called me, essentially … UNKNOWN: How do you see that relationship? TRUMP: Essentially everybody called me, all of the major leaders, and most of them I’ve spoken to. FRIEDMAN: Will you have a reset with Russia? TRUMP: I wouldn’t use that term after what happened, you know, previously. I think — I would love to be able to get along with Russia and I think they’d like to be able to get along with us. It’s in our mutual interest. And I don’t go in with any preconceived notion, but I will tell you, I would say — when they used to say, during the campaign, Donald Trump loves Putin, Putin loves Donald Trump, I said, huh, wouldn’t it be nice, I’d say this in front of thousands of people, wouldn’t it be nice to actually report what they said, wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with Russia, wouldn’t it be nice if we went after ISIS together, which is, by the way, aside from being dangerous, it’s very expensive, and ISIS shouldn’t have been even allowed to form, and the people will stand up and give me a massive hand. You know they thought it was bad that I was getting along with Putin or that I believe strongly if we can get along with Russia that’s a positive thing. It is a great thing that we can get along with not only Russia but that we get along with other countries. JOSEPH KAHN, managing editor: On Syria, would you mind, you said you have a very strong idea about what to do with the Syria conflict, can you describe that for us? TRUMP: I can only say this: We have to end that craziness that’s going on in Syria. One of the things that was told to me — can I say this off the record, or is everything on the record? SULZBERGER: No, if you want to … TRUMP: I don’t want to violate, I don’t want to violate a … SULZBERGER: If you want to go off the record, we have agreed you can go off the record. Ladies and gentlemen, we are off the record for this moment. [Trump speaks off the record.] TRUMP: Now we can go back on. SULZBERGER: I’m going to play the cop here. We’ve got only two and a half minutes left, because they have a hard stop at 2. And by the way, I want to thank you again, on behalf of all of us … TRUMP: Thank you. SULZBERGER: … for this meeting, and really I mean that. We are back on the record. Maggie, you get the last question. TRUMP: Is he a tough boss, folks? Is he tough? HABERMAN: I have two questions, very, very quickly. One is your vice left open the idea of returning to waterboarding. You talked about that on the campaign trail. I’m hoping you can talk about how you view torture at this point, and also what are you hoping that Jared Kushner will do in your administration and will you bring him in formally? TRUMP: O. K. O. K. So, I didn’t hear the second question. HABERMAN: Jared Kushner. What will Jared Kushner’s role be in your administration? TRUMP: Oh. Maybe nothing. Because I don’t want to have people saying ‘conflict.’ Even though the president of the United States — I hope whoever is writing this story, it’s written fairly — the president of the United States is allowed to have whatever conflicts he wants — he or she wants. But I don’t want to go by that. Jared’s a very smart guy. He’s a very good guy. The people that know him, he’s a quality person and I think he can be very helpful. I would love to be able to be the one that made peace with Israel and the Palestinians. I would love that, that would be such a great achievement. Because nobody’s been able to do it. HABERMAN: Do you think he can be part of that? TRUMP: Well, I think he’d be very good at it. I mean he knows it so well. He knows the region, knows the people, knows the players. I would love to be — and you can put that down in a list of many things that I’d like to be able to do. Now a lot of people tell me, really great people tell me, that it’s impossible, you can’t do it. I’ve had a lot of, actually, great Israeli businesspeople tell me, you can’t do that, it’s impossible. I disagree, I think you can make peace. I think people are tired now of being shot, killed. At some point, when do they come? I think we can do that. I have reason to believe I can do that. HABERMAN: And on torture? Where are you — and waterboarding? TRUMP: So, I met with General Mattis, who is a very respected guy. In fact, I met with a number of other generals, they say he’s the finest there is. He is being seriously, seriously considered for secretary of defense, which is — I think it’s time maybe, it’s time for a general. Look at what’s going on. We don’t win, we can’t beat anybody, we don’t win anymore. At anything. We don’t win on the border, we don’t win with trade, we certainly don’t win with the military. General Mattis is a strong, highly dignified man. I met with him at length and I asked him that question. I said, what do you think of waterboarding? He said — I was surprised — he said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful.’ He said, ‘I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture.’ And I was very impressed by that answer. I was surprised, because he’s known as being like the toughest guy. And when he said that, I’m not saying it changed my mind. [An earlier version made a mistake in transcription. Mr. Trump said “changed my mind,” not “changed my man. ”] Look, we have people that are chopping off heads and drowning people in steel cages and we’re not allowed to waterboard. But I’ll tell you what, I was impressed by that answer. It certainly does not — it’s not going to make the kind of a difference that maybe a lot of people think. If it’s so important to the American people, I would go for it. I would be guided by that. But General Mattis found it to be very less important, much less important than I thought he would say. I thought he would say — you know he’s known as Mad Dog Mattis, right? Mad Dog for a reason. I thought he’d say ‘It’s phenomenal, don’t lose it.’ He actually said, ‘No, give me some cigarettes and some drinks, and we’ll do better.’ SULZBERGER: So, I, with apologies, I’m going to go to our C. E. O. Mark Thompson, for the last, last question. TRUMP: Very powerful man … MARK THOMPSON: Thank you, and it’s a really short one, but after all the talk about libel and libel laws, are you committed to the First Amendment to the Constitution? TRUMP: Oh, I was hoping he wasn’t going to say that. I think you’ll be happy. I think you’ll be happy. Actually, somebody said to me on that, they said, ‘You know, it’s a great idea, softening up those laws, but you may get sued a lot more.’ I said, ‘You know, you’re right, I never thought about that.’ I said, ‘You know, I have to start thinking about that.’ So, I, I think you’ll be O. K. I think you’re going to be fine. SULZBERGER: Well, thank you very much for this. Really appreciate this. TRUMP: Thank you all, very much, it’s a great honor. I will say, The Times is, it’s a great, great American jewel. A world jewel. And I hope we can all get along. We’re looking for the same thing, and I hope we can all get along well. | 1 |
Mary Keitany, a mother of two, went out for a run on Sunday morning. She started at the foot of the Bridge on Staten Island and worked her way through the city. About 10 miles into her run, in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Keitany picked up the pace, the first signal to those running with her that she was not in the mood for a group run. She soon surged again, effectively saying, “Goodbye, everyone I’ll see you at brunch. ” It was no ordinary weekend run. Keitany, a marathon dynamo who trains at 7, 500 feet in Kenya’s western highlands, put on a virtuoso solo performance that is uncommon for the streets of New York. It resulted in her third consecutive New York City Marathon title. She was so far in front of her competitors that she could have taken a stroll through the Sheep Meadow in Central Park on her way to the finish line. Instead, Keitany took the most direct path, at a punishing pace that no one else could maintain, her body gliding along for 26. 2 miles without any apparent struggle. Keitany finished in 2 hours 24 minutes 26 seconds, with the finisher nowhere in sight. “I was not planning to do this, but I had a time I wanted to run, and I needed to keep the pace,” Keitany said of her breakaway. “I’ve run alone many times, and I trained well. And if anyone caught me, I was going to chase them. ” A from Eritrea, Ghirmay Ghebreslassie, won the men’s race. He emerged from a tight pack of three at Mile 20 and blew kisses at onlookers as he won in 2:07:51. He is the youngest winner in race history. Ghebreslassie, who won the world championship in Beijing in 2015 at 19, took fourth place in the Rio Olympics. He was followed Sunday by Lucas Rotich of Kenya (2:08:53). Abdi Abdirahman, a who is based in Arizona, finished in third (2:11:23). Keitany’s unexpected break from the lead pack threw the women’s race into early upheaval as her competitors stretched out one by one along the course, jockeying for the remaining two podium spots. Sally Kipyego of Kenya, the 2012 Olympic silver medalist in the 10, 000 meters, placed second in 2:28:01, more than three and a half minutes behind Keitany, and Molly Huddle of the United States, in her marathon debut, was third in 2:28:13. Keitany’s push so early in the race seemed to wreak mental havoc on her competitors, who were forced to either try to keep up or hope that she could be caught later. “On the breakaway, I had to decide if I go or stay,” Huddle said. “I kind of went a little harder around Mile 8 and was alone for a while. Then slowed down a little bit too much on the bridge at Mile 15, and I think that just — I need to measure myself a little better. ” Huddle held back, but that meant Keitany’s lead would grow. Joyce Chepkirui, also from Kenya, chose to follow. But that proved fatal she was unable to sustain the pace and fell back before the halfway mark. Overtaken by Huddle, she faded to fourth. Taking off alone is a risky move, particularly early in a race, when a chase pack has more than an hour to band together in pursuit. In this case, Keitany’s strategy led to the largest margin of victory in the woman’s race — 3 minutes 34. 98 seconds — since Grete Waitz won in 1980. Breakaways in this marathon are common, but early ones can ruin a as often as they carry her to victory. Many make their moves at Mile 16 when they have safely cleared the Queensboro Bridge and are in Manhattan — and they are often overtaken in wild chases through the final miles of Central Park. In 2000, Abdelkhader of Morocco ran away from the Kenyans chasing him far earlier than he was supposed to, leaving even the pacesetter behind and causing an upset. And in 1988, Steve Jones of Britain ran alone to set the fastest time in seven years, with a 3:21 margin of victory that almost rivaled Keitany’s. Meb Keflezighi, then 38, used the tactic in the 2014 Boston Marathon, when at Mile 11 he eluded a formidable field of younger athletes who figured the aging Keflezighi would fade back. Other Americans, including Ryan Hall, said they realized Keflezighi had an opportunity to win and slowed the pace of the chase pack. By the time his younger, fitter rivals realized his lead was insurmountable, it was too late. Keflezighi became the first American to win the race since 1983. Frank Shorter pulled away just beyond nine miles to take gold in the 1972 Munich Olympics. And at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Joan Benoit Samuelson took the lead early on as well, at Mile 3 in the first Olympic women’s marathon, heading to her historic victory. “I tell people all the time, you need to run your own race,” Benoit said Sunday. “That’s what Mary did if you play into somebody else’s hands, especially early on, it can foul your plans. ” Benoit’s decision to take the lead was spontaneous. “I didn’t want to take the lead that early, but I knew what I was capable of running, and I went with it,” she said. “You’ve got to go with what you know. ” It has grown less common for women to risk taking off alone in the New York City Marathon, especially after the race switched to the separate start for the women’s professional field in 2002. In a pack, runners can take turns keeping a pace and blocking headwinds. But running together often leaves the race decided by decisive breakaways in the final miles. So if a marathoner is confident that she can maintain the pace while running alone, absorbing all of the wind, she might try to break away from the pack early to avoid a tactical sprint near the finish. In the 2011 New York City Marathon, Keitany broke away but was overtaken by two Ethiopians who steadily reeled her in. Buzunesh Deba of Ethiopia, who lives in the Bronx, ran nearly the entire course minutes ahead of the rest of the professional field with her friend and teammate Tigist Tufa through bracing wind in 2013 before Priscah Jeptoo of Kenya caught her in Central Park. Deba finished second. Keitany said she did not plan to challenge the field so assertively. But of the women on the podium, she was the only one who had completed a marathon before Sunday. Kipyego, who dropped out of this race last year, said: “I wanted to run within myself and stick to something that I felt was more conservative. I kind of came in thinking that I’d rather run a much more conservative race, hold something back, and be able to have a good experience just because this a new distance for me. ” Huddle agreed. “I was kind of just surviving at the end and looking ahead and really trying to catch Joyce and trying to catch Sally, but you were too fast,” Huddle said to Kipyego. “So just kind of flailing the last 10K probably, well, probably the last 10 miles. ” Keitany became the first woman to win New York three times in a row since Waitz won five from 1982 to 1986. As her orange sneakers bounced steadily off the pavement through the five boroughs and into Central Park, Keitany showed that she had no problem running alone — provided she has a chance to start at all. Although she is the woman in history and her country’s (2:18:37) Kenya left her off its Olympic team this year. The snub left her to focus on her fall race. She chose to execute a bold maneuver against a weak field, vacated by those who had already spent themselves at the Olympics in August or at other fall marathons. Keitany acknowledged the risk in her race strategy Sunday. “Sometimes if you break off and you’re not ready to follow through, they will catch you,” she said. “But I was ready. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — As a presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump vowed to refill the cells of the Guantánamo Bay prison and said American terrorism suspects should be sent there for military prosecution. He called for targeting mosques for surveillance, escalating airstrikes aimed at terrorists and taking out their civilian family members, and bringing back waterboarding and a “hell of a lot worse” — not only because “torture works,” but because even “if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway. ” It is hard to know how much of this stark vision for throwing off constraints on the exercise of national security power was merely tough campaign talk. But if the Trump administration follows through on such ideas, it will find some assistance in a surprising source: President Obama’s approach to curbing what he saw as overreaching in the war on terrorism. Over and over, Mr. Obama has imposed limits on his use of such powers but has not closed the door on them — a flexible approach premised on the idea that he and his successors could be trusted to use them prudently. Mr. Trump can now sweep away those limits and open the throttle on policies that Mr. Obama endorsed as lawful and legitimate for sparing use, like targeted killings in drone strikes and the use of indefinite detention and military tribunals for terrorism suspects. And even in areas where Mr. Obama tried to terminate policies from the George W. Bush era — like torture and the detention of Americans and other people arrested on domestic soil as “enemy combatants” — his administration fought in court to prevent any ruling that the defunct practices had been illegal. The absence of a definitive repudiation could make it easier for Trump administration lawyers to revive the policies by invoking the same sweeping theories of executive power that were the basis for them in the Bush years. Two decisions by Mr. Obama in 2009 set the tone for his approach. They involved whether to keep indefinite wartime detentions without trial and to continue using military commission prosecutions — if not at the Guantánamo prison, which he had resolved to close, then at a replacement wartime prison. Told that several dozen detainees could not be tried for any crime but would be particularly risky to release, and that a handful might be prosecutable only under the looser rules governing evidence in a military commission, Mr. Obama decided that the responsible policy was to keep both the tribunals and the indefinite detentions available. The president refused to use either power on newly captured terrorism suspects, instead prosecuting them in civilian court. But by leaving the options open, he helped normalize them and left them on a firmer legal basis. Mr. Obama followed a similar course with several national security practices that became controversial during his first term. After his use of drones to kill terrorism suspects away from war zones led to mounting concerns over civilian casualties and other matters, he issued a “presidential policy guidance” in May 2013 that set stricter limits. They included a requirement that the target pose a threat to Americans — not just to American interests — and that there would be near certainty of no bystander deaths. But the Obama administration also successfully fought in court to establish that judges would not review the legality of such killing operations, even if an American citizen was the target. Mr. Trump — who has said he would “bomb the hell out of ISIS,” beyond what Mr. Obama is doing, and go after civilian relatives of terrorists, prevailing over any military commanders who balked — could scrap the internal limits while invoking those precedents to shield his acts from judicial review. Similarly, after a surge of criminal prosecutions against people who leaked secret information to the news media and bipartisan outrage at aggressive investigative tactics targeting journalists, the Obama Justice Department issued new guidelines for leak investigations intended to make it harder for investigators to subpoena reporters’ testimony or phone records. It also decided not to force a reporter for The New York Times to testify in a leak trial or face prison for contempt. But the Obama administration also successfully fought in court to establish that the First Amendment offers no protection to journalists whom the executive branch chooses to subpoena to testify against confidential sources. Mr. Trump, who has proposed changing libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations, could abandon the internal restraints and invoke the court precedent to adopt more aggressive policies in leak investigations. Geoffrey R. Stone, a University of Chicago law professor who is a friend and adviser to Mr. Obama, defended the president’s approach. He said that after 2010, when Republicans took over the House, internal executive branch restraints were the only option because Congress was not going to enact legislation limiting national security powers. He also said that even if Mr. Obama had gotten rid of indefinite detention or military tribunals, Mr. Trump could have brought them back. “Short of legislation that restricts things, there is not much a president could do in these matters to restrain a successor,” Professor Stone said. Still, Bruce Ackerman, a Yale University law professor who is helping with a lawsuit alleging that Mr. Obama is waging an illegal war against the Islamic State because Congress never specifically authorized it, said Mr. Obama had contributed to the growth of executive powers that Mr. Trump would inherit. That includes “the fundamental institutional legacy” of relying on executive branch lawyers to produce creative legal opinions clearing the way for preferred policies, Professor Ackerman said. The two areas where Mr. Obama broke most cleanly with practices were torture and the indefinite military detention of Americans and other terrorism suspects arrested on domestic soil. Mr. Obama issued an executive order requiring interrogators to use only techniques approved in the Army Field Manual, and he later signed a bill codifying that rule into statute. He also resisted repeated calls by Republicans to put newly captured terrorism suspects arrested in the United States into military detention. But the Obama administration also ruled out criminal investigations into officials for involvement in torture practices that the Justice Department had blessed as legal under a sweeping theory that the commander in chief could not be bound by laws. And the Obama administration fought lawsuits brought by Jose Padilla, an American terrorism suspect who had been imprisoned and interrogated as an “enemy combatant. ” The administration successfully argued that courts should dismiss the litigation without ruling on whether his treatment had been lawful, preventing any clear repudiation of the legal theory. A spokesman for Mr. Obama’s National Security Council declined to comment. But Gregory B. Craig, who was Mr. Obama’s first White House counsel and participated in early policy deliberations about what to do about policies, said that in 2009, the president “was not thinking about 10 years out, but about 10 days out. ” And he especially did not want to send signals to Republicans that he was a zealot or out for revenge, Mr. Craig said. Mr. Obama, Mr. Craig said, “was thinking about working with Republicans and developing postpartisan relations on national security issues, not about what was going to happen a decade later. ” Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has sharply criticized the Obama administration’s approach, said it was now clear that Mr. Obama had “missed an opportunity” to fundamentally reject the sort of policies that the Bush administration put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “Obama’s failure to rein in George Bush’s national security policies hands Donald Trump a fully loaded weapon,” Mr. Romero said. “The president’s failure to understand that these powers could not be entrusted in the hands of any president, not even his, have now put us in a position where they are in the hands of Donald Trump. ” | 1 |
Короткая ссылка 27 октября 2016, 04:18 Пресс-секретарь министерства обороны США Питер Кук сообщил, что 23 октября в провинции Кунар был нанесён удар по двум главарям террористической группировки «Аль-Каида»* в Афганистане.
«Целью (ударов. — RT ) были два самых высокопоставленных лидера «Аль-Каиды»* в Афганистане, Фарук аль-Катани и Билал аль-Утаби. Мы всё ещё оцениваем результаты этих ударов», — говорится в заявлении Кука, опубликованном на сайте ведомства.
По данным Пентагона, аль-Катани являлся «эмиром»«Аль-Каиды»* на северо-востоке Афганистана и вместе с аль-Утаби занимался воссозданием баз организации в стране, а также вербовкой и обучением иностранных боевиков.
Как отмечается, удар был нанесён по командным пунктам «Аль-Каиды»* в провинции. Уничтожение боевиков станет «серьёзным ударом по присутствию группировки в Афганистане, подчёркивается в заявлении.
Ранее стало известно, что в результате отдельных спецопераций на востоке Афганистана силами афганских военных было ликвидировано девять боевиков террористической группировки «Исламское государство»*.
*«Исламское государство», «Аль-Каида»— запрещённые в России террористические организации. | 0 |
*Articles of the Bound* / Abortion Extremist May Run for Top Democratic Post Abortion Extremist May Run for Top Democratic Post November 21, 2016, 7:21 am by Cliff Kincaid Leave a Comment 0
Accuracy in Media
With radical Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) already in the running for chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), another extremist is considering entering the race. Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, made a name for herself at the Democratic National Convention with a speech proclaiming that she had an abortion because a baby would interfere with her career plans.
“I wanted a family, but it was the wrong time,” Hogue said in her speech justifying her abortion.
A veteran of the “progressive” movement, she worked for David Brock’s Media Matters , a George Soros-funded group that works to push the media even further to the left by eliminating conservative news and viewers. She also worked for MoveOn.org, another Soros-funded group that got its name from a desire to “move on” from Bill Clinton’s disgraceful sexual affair with a White House intern, and stop the Republican Congress from impeaching the former president. Clinton was impeached by the House but not convicted in the Senate.
Hogue’s speech was described as the first time that a woman boasted about having an abortion at a national political party convention. Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood, which performs abortions, said she was “so proud” to watch it.
Hogue’s old employer, Media Matters, said the speech was designed to eliminate the “stigma” that abortion is morally wrong and/or socially unacceptable, and that the media should have given it more attention.
But the millions of Democrats who are pro-life, an estimated one in three, may not have appreciated the spectacle.
Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, says , “For years, Democrats have been eroding their base of pro-life voters as abortion opponents flee to the Independent category and Republican Party. Democrats for Life of America staff have done an analysis that shows a close correlation between loss of pro-life Democratic seats and the overall decline of Democrats in Congress. The recent election reflects the party’s shift to wholesale support for the abortion industry.”
She said the Democratic Party lost the November 8 election, “thanks in large part to the party’s extreme abortion position,” and that “the party is slowly dying and on the way to being irrelevant if it does not start a dialogue with its pro-life members.”
Hillary Clinton supported abortion up until the moment of birth and advocated taxpayer funding of abortion.
“Standing on a severe party platform on abortion, Hillary Clinton lost soft Republicans, anti-abortion Independents, and millions of pro-life voters in her own party,” the group said. “She lost key states, long part of the Democrats’ Blue Wall, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin…” If the Democratic Party continues moving left on the issue, she said, it risks becoming “the party of coastal, urban elites” without support in Middle America.
Hogue’s group, NARAL Pro-Choice America, was established in 1969 as the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. NARAL’s co-founder, Dr. Bernard N. Nathanson, was an abortionist who converted to the pro-life cause when he became convinced by science that the fetus was an unborn baby with the right to life. Later, he converted to Catholicism.
Another important item on Hogue’s resumé, her time serving as a “Senior Advisor” to the Soros-funded Media Matters, has become more significant after the release of one of the Clinton campaign emails by WikiLeaks. It shows staffers for Media Matters attending the national Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in order to discover and expose “truly crazy” views held by conservatives and wondering if any other liberals were there “on the sly” to secretly monitor what was going on.
The idea that women should celebrate abortion because it enables feminists to pursue careers may have been popular at the Democratic Party’s convention, but it is not considered morally acceptable by many people, including women.
“What Hogue and NARAL don’t seem to grasp is that their definition of feminism, along with the targeting of a weaker individual—a woman’s own child—diminishes women as a whole,” countered Carole Novielli at Live Action News. “The sign of a strong woman is not in how quickly she will sacrifice her own flesh and blood for personal ambition, but in how she maintains her dignity and that of her child while working through a challenging situation to find real solutions.”
Former abortionist Nathanson said in an interview that the abortion rights movement used deception and dirty tricks to make abortion legal and socially acceptable in the United States. One tactic, he said, was to depict Catholic opponents of abortion as “socially backward.” He said “the media drum-fired all this into the American people, persuading them that anyone opposing permissive abortion must be under the influence of the Catholic hierarchy and that Catholics in favor of abortion are enlightened and forward-looking.”
As revealed in the Clinton campaign emails released by WikiLeaks, the same strategy is still being used today. John Halpin, a senior fellow for the Soros-funded Center for American Progress, referred to Catholic beliefs on sexuality matters as “severely backwards.”
Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput cited this and other material in the emails as evidence that the Clinton entourage was “riddled with anti-Catholic bigots.” He noted that Sandy Newman, president of Voices for Progress, had emailed Hillary campaign chairman John Podesta to ask about whether “the bishops opposing contraceptive coverage” in Obamacare could be the tinder for a revolution. “There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages [sic] dictatorship,” Newman wrote.
“Of course it would be wonderful for the Clinton campaign to repudiate the content of these ugly WikiLeaks emails,” Chaput said. “All of us backward-thinking Catholics who actually believe what Scripture and the Church teach would be so very grateful.”
Rather than repudiate the emails, a pro-abortion feminist who is proud of her abortion is now apparently in the running for the position of DNC chair.
If she does run, The Huffington Post says the DNC contest could be seen in “progressive circles as a proxy do-over of the Sanders-Hillary Clinton Democratic primary, with all the acrimony that came with it.” Ellison backed Sanders and Hogue supported Hillary.
Hogue was photographed on the verge of tears as the news came in on election night that Clinton was going down to defeat. Cheers, not tears, greeted her news at the convention that she had an abortion because having a baby was an inconvenience. Cliff Kincaid
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid . 0 | 0 |
in Climate Change — by Nadia Prupis — November 15, 2016 The researchers say 82 percent of “core ecological processes” on land and sea have been affected by climate change in a way that has not been expected “for decades.” (Photo: Lwp Kommunikáció/flickr/cc)
Climate change is already affecting life on Earth, despite a global temperature increase of just 1°C, according to a new study published in the journal Science on Friday.
Nearly every ecosystem on the planet is being altered, and plants and animals are being so affected that scientists may soon be forced to intervene to create “human-assisted evolution,” the study, titled The Broad Footprint of Climate Change from Genes to Biomes to People , found.
The researchers say 82 percent of “core ecological processes” on land and sea have been affected by climate change in a way that had not been expected “for decades.”
Co-author and professor John Pandolfi of the University of Queensland said , “Temperature extremes are causing evolutionary adaption in many species, changing them genetically and physically. These responses include changes in tolerances to high temperatures, shifts in sex-ratios, reduced body size, and migration of species.”
“Understanding the extent to which these goods and services have been impacted allows humans to plan and adapt to changing ecosystem conditions,” he said.
Dr. James Watson, associate professor of planning and environmental management at UQ’s School of Geography, added, “We are simply astonished at the level of change we observed which many of us in the scientific community did not expect to see for decades.”
The changes have manifested in some species shifting to higher or lower ground as the planet heats up, while others are becoming smaller, “as a higher surface-area-to-body-mass ratio makes it easier to stay cool,” the Independent reported . The outlet wrote:
For example, six species of woodland salamander in the Appalachian Mountains have undergone an average eight per cent reduction in body size over the past 50 years.
Slightly smaller lizards might not sound like something to overly concern humans, but there is evidence this response is also affecting important sources of food.
“These multi-level biological impacts of climate change will affect humans. Increasing disease outbreaks, inconsistent crop yields, and reduced fisheries productivity all threaten our food security,” said co-author Dr. Tom Bridge.
Average global temperatures have risen 1°C since the industrial era. The study states that this has “already had broad and worrying impacts on natural systems, with accumulating consequences for people. Minimizing the impacts of climate change on core ecological processes must now be a key policy priority for all nations.”
The study called on governments to follow through on the promises made in the Paris climate agreement , which aims to keep global warming below a 1.5°C threshold—although an increasing amount of scientists are sounding the alarm that even those pledges may be too little, too late.
“Time is running out for a globally synchronized response to climate change that integrates adequate protection of biodiversity and ecosystem services,” the study continued.
“It is no longer sensible to consider this as a concern for the future—if we don’t act quickly to curb emissions it is likely that every ecosystem across Earth will fundamentally change in our lifetimes,” said Dr. Watson. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License Share this: | 0 |
DCG | 5 Comments
Ain’t multiculturalism grand?
From Daily Express : The Scandinavian country is facing an existential crisis with on average three police officers handing in their resignations a day. If the alarming trend continues, and police officers continue to resign more than 1,000 officers will have quit the service by New Years.
Since the migrant crisis began last summer, Sweden has been hit by a series of brutal crimes and violent incidents . In 2015 alone Sweden, with a population of 9.5million, received over 160,000 asylum applications and the country is expected to take as many as 190,000 refugees, or two per cent of the population, by the end of 2016.
Since the Second World War Sweden has prided itself on helping migrants who cross their borders despite some moves to the political right in recent years.
But police have now admitted the force has reached breaching point as more than 50 areas in the country have now been placed on a “no-go zone” list .
In February a report from Sweden’s National Criminal Investigation Service announced there were 52 areas where officers would not cope with the levels of crime being committed . Sex assaults , drug dealing and children carrying weapons were just some of the incidents mentioned in the report. In September, Swedish officials were forced to add another three areas to the list.
Now the Police Association have said they need at least 200 new officers to regain control in the south-east of the country.
Thomas Stjernfeldt, from the region’s police association, told SVT : “We are missing extremely many officers in the operational sector, right now we need 200 more officers to be added to the force to establish a reasonable working environment in the southeast of Götaland .” Götaland is one of the regions in the country that has been hit hard by the car fire attacks, which have been occurring throughout Sweden.
On Monday, Express.co.uk reported a number of the arsonist attacks in the city of Växjö, in Götaland, had been committed by frustrated migrants . Currently there are more than 6,000 suspected crimes that are unsolved in the area and 400 of these cases are suspected to be rapes, murder or attempted murder.
Mr. Stjernfeldt said the figures are alarming and police officers are constantly forced to work overtime in an attempt to solve the reported crimes.
The Police Association admitted it fears the public will lose faith in the force and their ability to protect citizens if the situation is not resolved.
The union’s call for more resources echoes National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson’s February warning, where he said he needed a further 4,100 officers and specialist staff to reestablish law and order in Sweden.
DCG | 0 |
Yup.. ka-boom
I know a ton of people who LOL at Russian tech. I keep telling them they got some nasty weapons. | 0 |
National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver has put North Carolina on notice that the league is not quite done extorting the state over its bathroom law. [During last weekend’s media availability at Smoothie King Center in New Orleans just ahead of Saturday night, Silver warned Texas not to pass its own bathroom bill or risk receiving the same punishment leveled by the league on North Carolina. But Silver also revisited what the league did to North Carolina last year by canceling the Game scheduled for Charlotte and moving it to Louisiana. The move was made because of North Carolina’s HB2 Law that mandates that people using bathrooms on state property use only those facilities corresponding to their birth sex, not the sex they feel like assigning to themselves. Silver noted that he is considering bringing the Game back to North Carolina if the state repeals its HB2 law. “I have talked to Governor Cooper, the new Governor of North Carolina since he was elected, really to express our desire to return to North Carolina [in 2019] for our Game,” Silver said in New Orleans. “We have a team in North Carolina. We have a development team, soon to be a team, in North Carolina. And 20 other teams will visit North Carolina this season. So we’d very much like to get back there. ” “We had a discussion so I understood, certainly, his position, when he was running for office, was the bill that ultimately led to our leaving,” Silver continued. “So I really was talking to him more to understand, from his standpoint, how he was hoping to move forward in terms of changing that law. My pain purpose of talking to him was to express our desire to return. ” This, of course, is an extortion plot with Silver directly saying that if the state’s duly elected lawmakers don’t bend to the will of a mere sports league and subvert their own political and legislative process, then the NBA will continue to hold the state’s economic hostage. The NBA isn’t the only sports league looking to extort states over political ideology, of course. The NCAA and the ACC also punished North Carolina over its bathroom law. The NFL jumped into the fray as well, by warning Texas not to pass its own version of North Carolina’s HB2 law. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy warned Texas that the league would take The Lone Star State out of the running for future Super Bowls if such a law makes the books. Needless to say, Texas Governor Greg Abbott did not take kindly to the NFL’s threats. Still, with all these threats and punishments flying around among half a dozen sports leagues, the outcome proves that none of these leagues really have the courage of their convictions. It is all Sturm und Drang signifying nothing — at least meaning no real sacrifice for the leagues. After all, notice what the leagues are doing as a protest in support of Black Lives Matter or transgender rights. These leagues are moving games that are easily moved, games that are above and beyond their regular season bouts. They are moving Games and tournaments, but notice what they aren’t doing? They aren’t taking a real stand by disenfranchising or somehow sanctioning teams in the states they want to punish. In other words, the leagues are making loud statements but making no real sacrifices to prove their convictions. Furthermore, with the always escalating demands of liberals taken as a given, how long will social justice warriors be placated by these easy shows of force by the leagues? How long will it be until they demand that the leagues stop doing all business in states with laws that run against the will of the left? How long until social justice warriors begin demanding that the leagues pull out of these states altogether? We can see a test example in the case of the Washington Redskins. Initially, the social justice warriors only demanded that the team change its name. But it wasn’t long before activists graduated to demanding that the league take action and force the team to change its name. Finally, since the league hasn’t taken any concerted action, these same activists then graduated to appealing to the city, state, and federal governments to bring a boot heel to the neck of Redskins management and ownership. The left always escalates its actions, and it won’t be long before the social warrior set realizes just how empty these moves are by the leagues that have punished North Carolina and are now threatening Texas. Are the leagues prepared to really hurt themselves financially as well as with the fans all just to uphold their proclaimed political beliefs? If not, isn’t what they are doing now empty of real conviction? Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
You are here: Home / US / HARD TRUTH About How a Country Evolves Towards Fascism [MEME] HARD TRUTH About How a Country Evolves Towards Fascism [MEME] October 27, 2016
Kimberly Morin reports that in 2015, Hillary Clinton gave a speech on Labor Day in Illinois that should seriously send shivers down your spine.
The woman sounds more like a fascist dictator than a candidate running for United States President.
In her effort to try and ‘woo’ the union crowd away from socialist Bernie Sanders, she made ridiculous claims like saying it was unions who created the middle class.
Newsflash Hillary: It was Capitalism that created the middle class, not unions. Unions are working hard to destroy it in the public sector and they are doing a damn fine job thanks to help from lunatic Democrats.
From Grabien :
Speaking at a Labor Day rally in Hampton, Ill., today Hillary Clinton threatened to imprison employers for “wage theft.”
“We’re going to go back to enforcing labor laws,” Clinton said. “I’m going to make sure that some employers go to jail for wage theft and all the other abuses that they engage in.”
“And we are going to make it harder and harder to stop what should be the right of every American: to join a union and bargain collectively through that union,” she continued. “But, I’ll tell you, we’ve got a fight on our hands.”
What is she talking about when she mentions ‘wage theft’ and how is she going to jail employers because of it? How will this help the economy? The only ‘wage theft’ that happens in the United States is by the government in the form of taxes.
The woman is clearly out of her collective mind. She continues to talk about Obama mandating federal contractor provide 7 paid sick days a year to their employees. This is more days than a majority of private sector business offer across the country. Benefits are between an employer and employee. It’s not up to the government to mandate them.
Make no mistake, just like with most Democrats, Clinton is on board with killing more jobs and hurting small businesses. All while lying through her teeth about wanting to ‘help them.’
You’ve got to watch the video here: | 0 |
Copyright Mark Taliano, Global Research, Montreal 2016.
Note to Readers: Remember to bookmark this page for future reference. Please Forward Syria’s War for Humanity, by Mark Taliano far and wide. Post it on Facebook. Scroll down for I-BOOK Table of Contents “Syria’s War for Humanity” by Mark Taliano is part of Global Research’s Online Interactive I-Book Series which brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Global Research feature articles, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter. To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here. Preface We bring to the attention of our readers Mark Taliano’s I-Book entitled Syria’s War for Humanity . In contrast to most geopolitical analysts of the Middle East, Mark Taliano focusses on what unites humanity with the people of Syria in their struggle against foreign aggression. Author: Mark Taliano Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than five years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and more than two years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes which have largely targeted Syria’s civilian infrastructure. Everybody in Syria knows that Washington is behind the terrorists, that they are financed by the US (at tax payers expense) and its allies, trained and recruited by America’s Middle East partner. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, have been financing and training the ISIS-Daesh, al Nusra terrorists on behalf of the United States. Israel is harboring the terrorists out of the occupied Golan Heights, NATO in liaison with the Turkish high command has since March 2011 been involved in coordinating the recruitment of the jihadist fighters dispatched to Syria. Moreover, the ISIS-Daesh brigades in both Syria and Iraq are integrated by Western special forces and military advisers. While all this is known to the Syrian people, Western public opinion is led to believe that the US is leading a “counter-terrorism campaign” in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh), an entity created and supported by US intelligence. Image: Damascus National Museum, M Chossudovsky, 2011 “Everything that we saw in Syria speaks of humanity’s common heritage”, says Mark Taliano. Syria is the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, the Land of Two Rivers, where the early civilizations of the fertile crescent took their roots. This is what the Washington Neocons want to destroy. But to reach their objective they need to wage a dirty propaganda campaign which conveys the illusion that America is involved in a “humanitarian” “peace-making” undertaking. The Syrian people know who the real terrorists are. “The Western assault on this country is an assault on our common humanity, and an assault on Syria’s progressive and forward-looking future”, says Taliano. Mark Taliano focusses on the truth as an instrument for building peace and counter-propaganda: “S hould the West’s “regime change” operations succeed, the secular, pluralist government of President Assad will be replaced by its opposite: a barbaric, sectarian regime, and chaos. Yet Western politicians are seemingly propagandized by their own lies. Or perhaps they see no choice but to cravenly follow diktats from above. Humanity’s better nature, however, demands that we all open our eyes, that we learn from history, and that we embrace the rule of international law rather than the diktats of a criminal Empire. Syria and Syrians must be saved, not destroyed.” Currently, my interests lie in digging for political truths in a world that is rushing headlong into war and barbarism, on a bedrock of lies. When I find such truths, their trajectories invariably lead to peace rather than war. So now, my “crusade’ is to help share the truth, to make it broad-based, and to make a positive difference. The dirty war on Syria is such a blatant example of the supremacy of war, deception — and evil — over civilization, and our common humanity, that my current research interests are defined by what does or does not happen there. If Syria wins, we all win. Right now, she is winning.” Mark Taliano refutes the mainstream media. The causes and consequences of the US-led war on Syria, not to mention the extensive war crimes and atrocities committed by the terrorists on behalf the Western military alliance are routinely obfuscated by the media. Taliano is committed to reversing the tide of media disinformation, by reaching out to Western public opinion on behalf of the Syrian people. “Syria’s stand against the Western agencies of death and destruction is a stand for all of humanity against the dark forces that fester beneath our politicians’ empty words and the courtesan media’s toxic lies.”
These twenty-seven chapters of Mark Taliano’s Syria’s War for Humanity provide an overview of life in Syria, the day to day struggle of the Syrian people to protect and sustain their national sovereignty.
Michel Chossudovsky, October 30, 2016 * * * Introduction by Mark Taliano I recently traveled to war- torn Syria because I sensed years ago that the official narratives being fed to North Americans across TV screens, in newsprint, and on the internet, were false. The invasion of Libya was based on lies; so was the Iraq war; likewise for Ukraine. All of the 9/11 wars were sold to Western audiences through a sophisticated network of interlocking governing agencies that propagandize both domestic and foreign audiences. But the dirty war on Syria is different. The degree of war propaganda leveled at Syria, and contaminating humanity at this moment, is likely unprecedented. I had already studied and written about Syria for years, so I wasn’t entirely surprised by what I saw. But what I felt was a different story.
First Impressions When I awoke on the first morning of my visit, and sat at a table on the polished marble floor beside the fountain, it was still and quiet. The walls of the hotel courtyard surrounded me — rows of hard, dark basalt stone block and intricately carved soft brown stone were woven together with alcoves and archways, all radiating ancient artistry. High vaulted windows overlooked the palazzo, with plants flowing from balconies and the railings of the narrow corridors leading to rooms. Above was the pale blue cloudless morning sky. A pigeon lumbered in and perched inside, sheltered by the ancient walls. A native bird, bluish white, swift and silent, swooped in towards the pigeon, and they were both gone, swept away into the Damascene morning. The quiet returned and the pale blue sky became darker and deeper. Syria will find peace again when this is all over. Syria is an ancient land with a proud and forward looking people. To this ancient and holy land we sent mercenaries, and hatred, and bloodshed, and destruction. We sent strange notions of “exceptionalism”, and waves upon waves of lies. As a visitor I felt shame, but Syrians welcomed me as one of them. This is their story. And these are their voices.
Testimonies from Syrians
In this video , Dr. Joseph Saddeh, standing in front of desecrated Christian icons in the ancient and holy city of Maaloula, where Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is still spoken, explains that what happened in Syria was not a “revolution”, and that the terrorists want to destroy everything that is good, and that “they want to make us like them or they will kill us.”
The terrorists did invade this ancient and holy place, they did destroy religious icons, and they did kill many people. Terrorist-damaged religious iconography at Maaloula, Syria Former al Nusra Front Headquarters, Maaloula, Syria Syrian soldier Dr. Ali Salem – a veterinarian during times of peace – explained that terrorists include “imports” from about 80 countries, street people, thieves, smugglers (diesel fuel and drugs), and those who were forced to fight under the threat of death or the death of family members.
He said that by now people must understand the truth about what is happening, despite the propaganda that demonizes the Syrian government and its people. The army is the people, he explained, and the government is not a “regime”. When this is over, he said, young people will have to be taught the truth about what happened. Terrorist-destroyed Shrine of Saint Takla, Maaloula, Syria. Listen to the video here. Religious icons were either destroyed or burned. We met soft-spoken, accommodating, Dr. Ali Haidar at at his office. He had earlier explained to Jamal Daoud, leader of the Third International Tour of Peace to Syria , that in 2011, he was offered a large sum of money from Qatar to boycott a “consultation summit” with the government. When he refused the bribe, he received threats, and his son was murdered. The process of national reconciliation, headed by Dr. Haidar, is emblematic of Syrian decision-making processes. The externally-orchestrated war is being resolved internally – by Syrians, for Syrians — and the solutions are often the fruit of a genuine democratic processes, in contrast to the fake democratic processes masquerading as “democracy” in the West, where Western politicians and citizens are heavily propagandized.
All Syrians are paying a horrible price for the sins of the West. Ammar recounted this nightmare: “As everyday morning my sister was going to the university when a bloody Takfiri Salafi Wahhabi suicide bomber blew up bomb car at the bus stop which led to the martyrdom and injury of many civilians and university students who were going to their exams, after 10 minutes another suicide bomber blew up himself at the same place taking advantage of the gathering of people and ambulance teams, usually when a terror attack happens we call all family members and friends to make sure they all are ok but this time no one answered! Then we started looking for her in hospitals … the shock was in the bloody views there; many burned bodies and human body parts were on the ground , there i saw my sister a body without soul …”
Madj explained his sentiments:
“ I am Syrian… living in Syria in the middle of everything. We have seen horrors. It was never a revolution nor a civil war. The terrorists are sent by your government. They are al Qaeda Jabhat al Nusra Wahhabi Salafists Talibans etc and the extremist jihadists sent by the West, the Saudis, Qatar and Turkey. Your Obama and whoever is behind him or above him are supporting al Qaeda and leading a proxy war on my country.
We thought you are against al Qaeda and now you support them.
The majority here loves Assad. He has never committed a crime against his own people… The chemical attack was staged by the terrorists helped by the USA and the UK, etc. Everyone knows that here.
American soldiers and people should not be supporting barbarian al Qaeda terrorists who are killing Christians, Muslims in my country and everyone.
Every massacre is committed by them. We were all happy in Syria: we had free school and university education available for everyone, free healthcare, no GMO, no fluoride, no chemtrails, no Rothschild IMF- controlled bank, state owned central bank which gives 11% interest, we are self-sufficient and have no foreign debt to any country or bank.
Life before the crisis was so beautiful here. Now it is hard and horrific in some regions.
I do not understand how the good and brave American people can accept to bomb my country which has never harmed them and therefore help the barbarian al Qaeda. These animals slit throats and behead for pleasure… they behead babies and rape young kids.
They are satanic. Our military helped by the millions of civilian militias are winning the battle against al Qaeda. But now the USA wants to bomb the shit out of us so that al Qaeda can get the upper hand.
Please help us American people. They are destroying the cradle of civilization. Stop your government.
Impeach that bankster puppet you have as president… support Ron Paul or Rand Paul (as Libertarians they have opposed foreign interventions—Editors) or anyone the like who are true American patriots. but be sure of one.thing…if they attack and I think they will….it will be hell.
Be sure that if it were to be a world war, many many will die. Syria can and will defend itself and will sink many US ships. Iran will go to war..Russia and China eventually if it escalates… and all this for what ? For the elites who created al Qaeda through the US government and use it to conduct proxy wars and destabilize countries which do not go along with their new world order agenda !!?
American people…you gotta regain control of your once admirable country. Now everyone hates you for the death you bring almost everywhere.
Ask the Iraqis…the Afghans…the Pakistanis…the Palestinians…the Syrians…the Macedonians and Serbs…the Libyans…the Somalis…the Yemenis ….all the ones you kill with drones everyday. Stop your wars. Enough wars. Use diplomacy…dialogue…help…not force.” Jad also shared his tragedy. He told me that his brother was kidnapped last year, and that the terrorists tortured him and destroyed his knees. Now he can’t walk. He also told me that his cousin, who was serving in the Syrian Arab Army, lost his leg when Wahhabi suicide bombers attacked his military vehicle, and that another cousin was kidnapped in 2012, and remains in captivity. The tragedies are legion, but all of the Syrians to whom I spoke assured me that they support the government of Bashar Al-Assad. They are unified in the battle against Western terrorists. The sanctions, the terrorists, the death and destruction, are not working. The alternative, a Western-installed Wahhabi stooge government, is not an attractive option. The ongoing dirty war on Syria is particularly odious because the elected President of Syria, Dr. Bashar Al-Assad, and his wife, represent the best of what Syria’s future promises to be. The Assads are well-educated – like all of the Syrians whom I had the pleasure of meeting – and they are moving ancient, holy Syria into a better future than that promised by the uni-polar, “exceptional” imperialists who are trying to destroy Syria with their Wahhabi-inspired terrorists.
Syrians have seen the devastation of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Ukraine. They refuse to be the next domino. Syria’s future will include the rule of international law, nation-state sovereignty, self-determination, pluralism, respect for all people, and multi-polar geo-political relationships. Syria has strong institutions, strong people, a strong military, strong allies, and a strong government; and she will not be pulled into the abyss of terrorism like the other aforementioned countries.
For this we should all be grateful.
We have just witnessed the pain and hardship that Syria and Syrians are enduring. The next question is, How did the West arrive at the point where otherwise intelligent and morally upright citizens support the illegality and barbarity of their nations’ foreign policies? The simple answer is that the collective mindset of the public has been contaminated by an unprecedented and on-going propaganda campaign that engineers consent for unspeakable crimes that “benefit” transnational elites and impoverish the rest of us. [This is the longstanding nature of US foreign policy, dating back more than a century, even prior to the Civil War, when early imperialist and “Manifest Destiny” believer James Polk seized half of Mexico under trumped-up pretexts and false flags. Meanwhile, the American media have always supported these international crimes, as they do today.—Editors.] The dreadful reality is that the Global War on Terror is actually a global war for terror. The foreign policies of Western nations are increasing the reach of terrorism exponentially, because the West uses these terror brigades as foot soldiers for illegal wars of aggression. In its Syrian campaign, as with its previous Libyan campaign, the West is literally the air force for the terrorists on the ground. This is all well documented with Western sources. US-led NATO is aligned with the Gulf Monarchies, and Israel, to flood Syria with mercenary terrorists, to balkanize and destroy the country, and to remove President Assad, so that it can advance its agenda for a New World Order of conquest under the false banner of the Global War On Terror (GWOT). Through its actions and inactions, its sanctions, its arms dealings, and its pre-planned invasions, the West and the terrorists in Syria are one and the same. We support all the imaginary “moderates”, and every other terrorist organization operating in Syria. Again, the evidence is ample, and well-documented using western sources. US-led NATO is aligned with the Gulf Monarchies, and Israel, to flood Syria with mercenary terrorists, to balkanize and destroy the country, and to remove President Assad, so that it can advance its agenda for a New World Order of conquest under the false banner of the Global War On Terror (GWOT). This on-going project necessarily entails death, destruction, and wide-spread poverty. Neo-con planners hope that the widespread destruction will enable them to control destroyed countries and open them up for predatory and parasitical economic programs — similar to domestic neoliberal economic models that are ravaging domestic economies beneath the lies and diversions. Despotic stooge puppet regimes are easier to control and manipulate than independent sovereign governments that represent the democratic will of their peoples and the rule of international law. Again, this favoured totalitarian style rule is mirrored at home, but more subtly. The notion that we live in democracies is absurd.
Tentacles of predatory neoliberal capitalism have yet to invade Syria’s famous souks/markets Spices at the Souk F alse flag terrorism is part of the apparatus of deception which serves to advance policies that are contrary to the wishes of those who are deceived.
There’s nothing new about “synthetic terrorism’; it is military doctrine, and examples of its use are legion, but it is a taboo topic and a “conspiracy theory”, so it works.
The Canada Day pressure-cooker bomber plot was a proven false flag (though not acknowledged as such by mainstream media), and it served the apparatus of deception as did other domestic terrorism cases.
Even if the Ottawa shooting crisis unfolded exactly as the official narratives described it, the conflation between the shooting and ISIS is surely unfounded, as noted by Senator Mobina Jaffer.
But the accumulated impact of these events, coupled with largely unquestioned official narratives, has the intended effect of creating a consensus of ignorance wherein otherwise intelligent people support illegal warfare, terrorism, and police state legislation.
Preeminent Constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati assesses Canada’s C-51 legislation in these words :
It takes all our private information and shares it with all government agencies, including foreign government. For some citizens that becomes an eventuality of torture and/or death when travelling abroad.
It restricts arbitrarily who can travel.
Freedom of expression and political criticism with respect to “terrorism and the government’s role” (becomes) a terrorist offence in itself. So words and thoughts become an act of terrorism under this bill.
It allows CSIS to disrupt covertly constitutionally-protected rights of association, expression, and protest.
It does all of this by taking away all and any transparent judicial oversight.
He says that “We’ve entered into the final fascist state.”
Consequently, both domestically and abroad, we are living what author Naomi Wolf describes as a “fascist shift” , wherein we unwittingly embrace our own enslavement, global war, and poverty, all for the “benefit” of transnational oligarch classes, and the known catastrophic impacts for humanity.
Syria is standing strong against these Western cancers of ignorance and evil. She, and her allies, are swooping down on these globalist interlopers. Her victory will be our victory.
Outline of This Book T he purpose of this book is to shed some light on how the propaganda works, and to decode it and other events, so that we can arrive at a better understanding of what is really happening in Syria, and why.
The degree of war propaganda leveled at Syria, and contaminating humanity at this moment is unprecedented.
I have yet to meet a single Syrian who would prefer a stooge, Wahhabi dictatorship to the current government. Every single Syrian opposition leader prefers the current government to an imperial -imposed government. The on-going campaign of lies directed at Syria is particularly odious because the elected President of Syria, Dr. Bashar Al-Assad, and his wife, represent the best of what Syria’s future promises to be.
The Assads are well-educated – like all of the Syrians whom I had the pleasure of meeting – and they are moving ancient, holy Syria into a better future than that promised by the uni-polar, “exceptional” imperialists who are trying to destroy Syria with their Wahhabi-inspired terrorists.
Syrians have seen the devastation of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Ukraine. They refuse to be the next domino.
Syrians are unified. Their future will include the rule of international law, nation-state sovereignty, self-determination, pluralism, respect for all people, and multi-polar geo-political relationships. Syria has strong institutions, strong people, a strong military, strong allies, and a strong government; she will not be pulled into the abyss of terrorism like the other aforementioned countries.
For this we should all be grateful.
The compilation of articles in this book decode the propaganda apparatus which creates an engineered consensus that serves the covert agenda of expanding the parasitical economic model called “neoliberalism”.
Neoliberalism impoverishes domestic and foreign populations, and enriches a transnational oligarch class. The transnational oligarch class — enriched by “deregulation”, “privatization” schemes, and “free trade” agreements — contaminates the collective mindset of humanity with its foundations, its lobbying, and its undue influence, so its real nature, and its very existence, remains hidden. Rarely will a mainstream publication even use the word “neoliberalism”, which is the economic foundation of the current class system.
Part One is the story of Syria as told by Syrians, unfiltered by mainstream media (MSM) propaganda. We see and hear the trauma lived by defiant, heroic Syrians, and we discover that this ancient, holy land will surely survive the current barbarian invasion, and will rise again as a beacon of civilization, hope, and dignity, in contrast to so many of those countries that seek to destroy it.
Voices from Syrian citizens are absent from mainstream media stories. Syrians are like you and me. This is what they have to say:
“We thought you are against al Qaeda and now you support them.” I Am A Syrian Living in Syria: “It was Never a Revolution nor a Civil War. The Terrorists are sent by your Government”
The externally-orchestrated war is being resolved internally – by Syrians, for Syrians — and the solutions are often the fruit of a genuine democratic processes, in contrast to the fake democratic processes masquerading as “democracy” in the West, where Western politicians and citizens are heavily propagandized.
NATO et al. terrorists destroy everything that contradicts their deviant ideology. They seek a “blank slate” that denies and negates the real Syria.
Syria insists on being a sovereign nation; it refuses Empire’s head-chopping criminality.
“Syria was prosperous, with a growing economy. It had food sovereignty, with a “strategic” stock of millions of tons of high quality wheat , not the “Franken-food” bio-tech variety; it had a strong central bank with no usurious IMF loans ; it had a popular, reformer President; it had a mostly well-educated, secular, pluralist, forward-looking population; and it was the fourth safest country in the world.”
Part Two elaborates upon the real story about Syria, and the drivers behind the current dirty war, in which the U.S-led Empire is using terror proxies to advance its predatory reach, contrary to the wishes of the vast majority of Syrians.
The alternative to Syria’s elected government is genocidal despotism and Sharia law. The (non-existent) “moderates” can’t be separated from the “extremists”, because all of the mercenary terrorists share the same goals and the same ideologies.
The predictable result of engineered deception is that domestic Western populations remain deceived and politically passive. The truth is inverted, and large swaths of the population remain deluded. Whereas the West and its allies support all the terrorists invading Syria, domestic populations think that we are fighting terrorism. This is the great fraud of the “Global War On Terror”.
The West uses mercenary terrorist proxies to advance its predatory reach; to destroy foreign countries; and to increase global terrorism exponentially, all for the benefit of the oligarch classes. There is nothing new about this.
“The secular governments of Iraq, Libya, and Syria all — prior to Western invasions — opposed terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda.” Dedication
This book is dedicated to the people of Syria, all of whom are on the front lines in the fight against international terrorism.
Your blood is being shed for our sins.
Acknowledgements
I can’t begin to thank everyone who helped me with this book, but here’s a start.
Thanks to Ken Stone, who inspired me to take the trip to Syria.
Thanks to Jamal Daoud, and the organizers of the Third International Tour of Peace To Syria, who made this trip possible, despite “external” barriers, thus giving us the chance to see and hear Syria for ourselves. Now we can better share the truth.
Thanks to my fellow travellers, who are my brothers and sisters in spirit.
Thanks to Prof. Michel Chossudovsky who helped me publish this book.
Thanks to Gerry DiSanto, at the Defensive Arts Training Centre (DATC), who encouraged me to write this book.
And last but not least, thanks to Victoria, who helped me along the way. NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS | 0 |
Get short URL 0 14 0 0 United Nations should provide evidence if it claims that Russia is conducting aerial bombardments since the introduction of moratorium on air strikes, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said at a UN Security Council meeting.
UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) — On Tuesday, the Russian General Staff said the moratorium on Russian and Syrian airstrikes in the ten-kilometer radius (6.2 mile radius) around Aleppo, effective since October 18, will be extended. © Sputnik/ Mikhail Alaeddin Russia, Syria to Extend Moratorium on Airstrikes in, Around Aleppo "The moratorium on flights has been in place for eight days. Give us at least one proof or leave those narratives for a romance you would probably write later," Churkin stated on Wednesday.
Churkin made the comments in response to allegations by UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brian earlier during the UN Security Council meeting.
The Russian ambassador further stated the parties to the conflict have not had the moral fortitude to allow medical evacuations from the besieged city, all the while "Syrian and Russian forces from air and land demonstrated a willingness to protect what meagre medical facilities still function inside eastern Aleppo." ... | 0 |
As the media focuses on a handful of contentious town hall meetings held by Republican senators, several Democrats who face campaigns this year have quietly decided to skip town halls to meet their constituents. [With the Republican Party in the majority, Senate Democrats are keeping a low profile in the hopes of giving voters fewer reasons to vote against them, the Associated Press reports. The AP notes, “The nation’s most vulnerable Senate Democrats are avoiding town hall meetings as their Republican counterparts get pummeled by an energized electorate frustrated with President Donald Trump’s early agenda. ” Missouri’s Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill, for instance, has rebuffed offers to hold a town hall in a state that went for Donald Trump by 18 points last year. “Seems to me that all these members of Congress are afraid to face their constituents,” Hillary Shields, a member of Kansas City Indivisible, said after the senator turned down its invitation. West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin has also decided to bag a town hall event for his voters. Manchin has been one of the leading Democrats to give Trump and Republicans some measure of support, and it is not too surprising to see Manchin throwing in with Republicans on some issues. After all, West Virginia voted Trump with a lopsided 68. 7 percent to Hillary Clinton’s low 26. 5 percent. But Manchin clearly understands that he is vulnerable to being challenged by a Republican in a state turning red. As to others, the AP noted that Ohio’s Sherrod Brown has only held phone conference calls that do not lend themselves to mass protests. Also, Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey promised to hold a town hall but has not scheduled any yet, and Montana Senator Jon Tester’s office noted he has already held several appearances, though none of them were town events. Democrats are forewarned, though, especially after the hostile crowd Arkansas’ Republican Senator Tom Cotton faced this week, Senator Cotton was barely allowed to get a word in edgewise as liberal protesters screamed at him, chanted at him, and berated him for the Trump administration’s agenda. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
NTEB Ads Privacy Policy Fearing Tomorrow’s WikiLeaks Bombshell, Clinton Campaign Begins Denying Before It’s Released “Friends, please remember that if you see a whopper of a Wikileaks in next two days - it’s probably a fake,” tweeted Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for the Clinton campaign. by Geoffrey Grider November 6, 2016 A spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s campaign said Sunday that if Wikileaks were to publish a bombshell email in the final two days of the election, it would likely not be authentic.
Now you know things are really bad for the Hillary Clinton campaign when they start denying the WikiLeaks emails before they’re actually released. Yesterday, I said to two friends of mine that one more huge WikiLeaks bombshell was coming, and that in all likelihood it will be tomorrow, the day before the election. Evidentially, the Clinton camp agrees with me because they have just issued a denial for something that hasn’t happened yet. Wow. Can you say “game over”?
“Friends, please remember that if you see a whopper of a Wikileaks in next two days – it’s probably a fake,” tweeted Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for the Clinton campaign. Friends, please remember that if you see a whopper of a Wikileaks in next two days – it’s probably a fake.
— Jennifer Palmieri (@jmpalmieri) November 6, 2016 Shocking Emails Exposed: WikiLeaks vs. Hillary Clinton
For the past several weeks , WikiLeaks has published emails obtained from a hack on campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal account. Many messages published have included exchanges that have caused headaches for the Clinton campaign .
The Clinton campaign has repeatedly declined to say whether any of the emails are authentic, but most reporters and political analysts have reported on them as such.
Representatives for the Clinton campaign have , instead, only said the emails were likely the result of Russia trying to use hackers to interfere with the election . The US intelligence community has publicly accused Russia of hacks on Democratic Party organizations. Hillary Clinton – Her Darkest Secrets: SHARE THIS ARTICLE Geoffrey Grider NTEB is run by end times author and editor-in-chief Geoffrey Grider. Geoffrey runs a successful web design company, and is a full-time minister of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition to running NOW THE END BEGINS, he has a dynamic street preaching outreach and tract ministry team in Saint Augustine, FL. NTEB #TRENDING | 0 |
American Thinker October 27, 2016
You’re probably appalled at the American media’s shameless whoring for Hillary Clinton, asking yourself why they would so thoroughly debase their much-touted journalistic ethics. President Obama has answered that question.
As reported by Agence France Presse, during a recent speech in Pittsburgh he postulated:
“We are going to have to rebuild within this wild-wild-west-of-information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to.
“There has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard, because they just don’t have any basis in anything that’s actually happening in the world.”
Set aside the outrageous, un-American gall in proposing that any central authority should “curate” information put out to the public, and walk with me for a minute down a meandering path of speculation.
It is, or course, the World Wide Web in which Obama’s informational “wild-wild west” exists. This is the realm of Breitbart, Cybercast News Service, the Drudge Report , World Net Daily , American Thinker , and other non-establishment outlets that persist in making the president uncomfortable.
And what has happened recently to affect the World Wide Web? The U.S. government has handed over control to ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the nonprofit agency that assigns website domain names.
Is it in the president’s mind that ICANN might someday assume the “curating function” he sees as necessary to insure “truthiness” in web-based news reporting?
Well, according to ICANN Board Chair Stephen D. Crocker, diverse membership in the organization makes such a thing unthinkable. Quoted by the tech site C/NET, Crocker said:
“This community validated the multistakeholder model of internet governance. It has shown that a governance model defined by the inclusion of all voices, including business, academics, technical experts, civil society, governments and many others is the best way to assure that the internet of tomorrow remains as free, open and accessible as the internet of today.”
His confidence is echoed by the Internet Governance Coalition, a group of technology firms that includes Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Verizon, among others. They issued a statement that lauds ICANN’s “strong accountability measures” and upholds “the bottom-up approach that embodies the very nature of the open internet we experience today.…”
Pardon the skepticism to which I’ve become increasingly prone, but this sounds very much like the “collaborative” concept of governance that prevails in the academic world.
If you’ve ever applied for a position at a college or university, you know that what a search committee wants most urgently to know about you is whether you have a “collaborative style” of working.
What exactly is a “collaborative style,” as understood in today’s academic world? It means that you won’t do anything to contradict the orthodoxy in thought and procedure reigning on campus — in other words, that you are “politically correct” in your outlook. | 0 |
Before the rapper of A Tribe Called Quest shouted “Resist! Resist! Resist!” at the top of his lungs at the Grammy Awards before Busta Rhymes called Donald J. Trump “President Agent Orange” and referenced his “unsuccessful attempt at the Muslim ban” before Tribe and Anderson . Paak kicked their way through an oversize wall and brought dozens of people of a wide range of nationalities onstage (along with a dance troupe that recalled Public Enemy’s S1Ws) introduced his group’s performance with some words of encouragement and defiance: “We’d like to say to all of those people around the world, all of those people who are pushing people who are in power to represent them: Tonight, we represent you. ” These were words for the disenfranchised from a stage that has long connoted power and influence. In the current political moment, in which membership in the American experiment is subject to greater and greater obstacles, this performance was a loud statement of pushback. That is especially true given that the Grammys find themselves in the throes of similar friction over belonging. Simply put, the Grammys, like America, have an inclusion problem — or more to the point, an exclusion problem. The 59th annual installment of the ceremony, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Sunday night, was as noteworthy for who won as who didn’t, for who attended as for who opted to sit out. It was a show about borders — who is allowed to cross, who isn’t and who doesn’t even bother trying. Adele won all five Grammys she was nominated for, including album of the year (for “25”) record of the year and song of the year (for “Hello”) besting Beyoncé in all three categories. “25” is Adele’s least impressive album, but its soul belting is the sort of classicism likely to appeal to the Recording Academy voting members, who tend to skew older and more traditional. Beyoncé’s album “Lemonade” (and the song “Formation,” nominated in the other two categories) is musically provocative and wide ranging, and rife with commentary about the meaning of blackness in the United States. At the end of the night, when Adele won album of the year, she deferred to Beyoncé: “The way that you make me and my friends feel, the way you make my black friends feel, is empowering,” Adele told her from the stage, while behind her, a huge gaggle of predominantly white male songwriters and producers clapped enthusiastically. In that moment, just a few feet separated Adele and Beyoncé, but the chasm between their treatment by the Grammys was huge, and potentially unbridgeable. It was #GrammysSoWhite come to life. For years, Kanye West has complained about how black artists — himself, but also others — are mistreated in the main Grammy categories. This year, Frank Ocean, fatigued with the Grammys’ handling of black music, opted to not even submit his music for consideration. (The other big category, best new artist, was won by a black artist, Chance the Rapper.) The Grammys’ race problem is so pernicious that some white winners have chosen contrition over exuberance — Adele’s embrace of Beyoncé, Macklemore’s apology to Kendrick Lamar in 2014 (Macklemore reportedly did not submit his most recent album for consideration this year) — demonstrating a greater understanding of the fundamental imbalance of the Grammys system than the Grammys themselves. Despite minor rule changes and lip service to the idea of better representation, the Grammys remain on the defensive. In the days leading up to this year’s telecast, the show’s longtime producer, Ken Ehrlich, deflected Mr. Ocean’s criticisms in an interview with Rolling Stone, earning a rebuke from Mr. Ocean on Tumblr: “Use the old gramophone to actually listen bro, I’m one of the best alive. And if you’re up for a discussion about the cultural bias and general nerve damage the show you produce suffers from then I’m all for it. ” The Grammys’ consistent celebration of white acts feels like rule in an evenly divided nation, while the royalty from the other side — Beyoncé and Jay Z, Jennifer Lopez, Rihanna — looks on politely from the front rows. (Or, in the case of Mr. West and Mr. Ocean, who did not attend the Grammys, not even looking on.) There was also frisson in the ceremony’s lumpy attempts to bridge the age gap: When the show tried to highlight the work of Neil Diamond, via a clumsily executed version of James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” routine, it was clear that most of the assembled stars didn’t know the words to “Sweet Caroline. ” And in a country in which around 15 percent of the population — more than 50 million people — speaks Spanish, there were no or even bilingual, performances. The language was heard only during the segment, and in a Johnnie Walker ad that featured a pointed bilingual cover of “This Land Is Your Land” by the Los Angeles band Chicano Batman. Again, strictly controlled borders. It’s in these moments that the Grammys’ lack of imagination and tolerance contrasts with the general progressive political stances of the artists it celebrates. During the show, Ms. Lopez quoted Toni Morrison on the role of art in fraught political times. Katy Perry performed “Chained to the Rhythm,” her new single, with an armband that read “PERSIST” — a reference to Elizabeth Warren’s recent Senate silencing — and concluded in front of an image of the Constitution. Beyoncé performed in a gold crown that suggested a futuristic Lady Liberty, and during her acceptance speech for best urban contemporary album, preached about the power of inclusion: “It’s important to me to show images to my children that reflect their beauty, so they can grow up in a world where they look in the mirror, first through their own families — as well as the news, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the White House and the Grammys — and see themselves, and have no doubt that they’re beautiful, intelligent and capable. ” Honoring Beyoncé in categories devoted to black music goes part of the way to fulfilling that vision, but it’s where she’s not honored that feels more pointed: She has won 22 times, but only four of those awards have been in categories. (She has lost album of the year three times, to Beck, Taylor Swift and Adele.) So long as the Grammys continue to strike a blow for the values of yesteryear over the energy of today, they will remain an agent of the status quo, not resistance or evolution. But when an institution stands still while its citizens are pressing for change, how long can the borders hold before everyone outside is let in, or everyone inside decides it’s not worth staying, and leaves? | 1 |
Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Sen. John McCain ( ) said President Donald Trump does not have “an overall strategy” on foreign policy. McCain said, “I support what he did and I support the bunker buster bomb, but we’ve got to develop a strategy. There is still not an overall strategy that he can come to congress and his advisors and say, ‘ok here is how we are going to handle Syria. Here is how we are going to handle the Iraq. We have got to have a strategy and I’ll give them some more time but so far that strategy is not apparent. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
BEIJING — In a shopping mall in southern China, a polar bear named Pizza paces past murals of icebergs in his glass enclosure. He shakes his shaggy head under artificial lights. He crouches by an air vent to sniff the outside world. All are distress behaviors, say Chinese animal welfare advocates, who on Tuesday called on Zhu Xiaodan, the governor of Guangdong Province, where Pizza lives in an aquarium at the Grandview Mall in Guangzhou, to move the bear to a more appropriate environment. Pizza has become known as “the world’s saddest polar bear,” the advocates, from 48 organizations, wrote in an open letter to Mr. Zhu. They added that they hoped that “the Guangdong government would close Grandview Polar Sea World. ” Hundreds of animals are housed in small enclosures over several floors of the mall, including arctic wolves and beluga whales. They share the retail emporium with an electronic games arcade for children, a movie theater, a supermarket and leading domestic and international clothing brands. Escalators in an atrium run past signs advertising Swarovski and Estée Lauder products, noodle restaurants and coffee shops. The activists say Pizza’s plight is part of a disturbing trend in China: exhibiting wild animals in malls to attract customers as more people turn to often cheaper and more convenient . At a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday, representatives of four of the animal welfare groups showed reporters photographs of an elephant used to sell cellphones outside a mall on the outskirts of Beijing and sea lions offered for interactions with shoppers who spend more than 500 renminbi, about $75, at another mall in Beijing. A “mall zoo” similar to Grandview is under consideration in Shijiazhuang, in Hebei Province, they said. “Animals deserve so much better than being enclosed in a glass box, with very little in it, to attract shoppers,” said Hu Chunmei of the Endangered Species Fund. “It shows a complete lack of regard for their welfare. ” In Beijing, squirrels, parrots, llamas and goats, as well as domestic animals such as cats and dogs, are sometimes displayed in cages or glass enclosures in shopping malls. At lunchtime, the crowds massed around them can be several people deep. Asked to comment this week, the Grandview Mall aquarium defended itself against the criticism, which has spread around the world. Recently, the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in England offered to take in Pizza — an offer indignantly declined by the aquarium. “Pizza is very healthy,” it said in an emailed statement, adding that the aquarium was engaged in scientific education and research and in the protection of biodiversity. “You can’t entirely separate animal welfare from these social benefits. ” The aquarium is no different from other facilities in China or the world, the statement said. It has 130 specialists caring for its hundreds of animals, it said. News reports that Pizza is suffering in inadequate conditions are distorted and have been referred to the authorities, it said, in a thinly veiled warning of possible legal action. Pizza is popular with shoppers, according to reports in the Chinese news media, with thousands of people visiting on peak days to take selfies and knock on the glass. Wild animals like polar bears require a large natural habitat to maintain their physical and mental health, said Wendy Higgins, a spokeswoman for Humane Society International. “Their environment is so unique. They’re such animals, and they start to decline quite rapidly in captivity,” Ms. Higgins said in a telephone interview. “Pizza spends every single day on his own with nowhere to hide, just subjected to people banging on the glass and taking photographs,” she said. Qin Xiaona, the director of the Capital Animal Welfare Association, said that criticism by the mall management, which has accused the activists of doing foreigners’ bidding, was an insult to China’s people and culture. “They say, ‘You are using a Western point of view’ in order to oppose us,” Ms. Qin said. “But we can’t forget that we have a tradition in China of ‘respecting heaven, caring for animals.’ ” She added, “Because of economic competition, we’ve regressed,” leading to the widespread abuse of animals — and people — in recent decades. “We want to revive our tradition,” she said. Yu Hongmei of VShine, an organization in Dalian, agreed on the impulse behind the campaign to help the animals at Grandview Mall: “It’s not foreign. It’s our tradition, too. ’’ China has not had an animal welfare law since the 1930s, under the Nationalist government of Chiang who was defeated by the Communists in 1949. A Wildlife Protection Law came into force in 1989 and was updated in July, but it allows the capture and breeding of wild animals for commercial purposes and permits the use of wild animals for public displays and performances. A draft law on animal cruelty that would extend protection to pets, farm livestock and laboratory animals was proposed in 2009 but has yet to be adopted. Practices such as the dog meat festival in Yulin continue to attract headlines. Calls to the Guangzhou provincial government and the Guangzhou Industrial and Commercial Bureau for comment on Tuesday went unanswered. | 1 |
WASHINGTON, D. C. — President Donald Trump, in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News in the Oval Office, said that the Academy Awards failure on Sunday evening was due in large part to Hollywood’s obsessive focus on politics — attacking him, generally speaking. [Trump told Breitbart News in the exclusive interview that the Oscar fail may have been avoided had Hollywood’s finest focused less on attacking him and more on getting the event’s details right. “I think they were focused so hard on politics that they didn’t get the act together at the end,” President Trump said. “It was a little sad. It took away from the glamour of the Oscars. It didn’t feel like a very glamorous evening. I’ve been to the Oscars. There was something very special missing, and then to end that way was sad. ” The Oscars comprised just one part of a lengthy interview, which ranged in topics from healthcare to tax cuts to immigration to trade and more. The rest of the interview is forthcoming here on Breitbart News. At the Oscars on Sunday evening, the Academy Award for Best Picture was read out by presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as being for La La Land — not the actual winner, Moonlight. The flub — already being dubbed the worst in the Academy Awards’ history — has forced accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to apologize after overseeing the process for 83 years. “We sincerely apologize to Moonlight, La La Land, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, and Oscar viewers for the error that was made during the award announcement for best picture,” the firm said in a release, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, was immediately corrected. We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred. We appreciate the grace with which the nominees, the Academy, ABC, and Jimmy Kimmel handled the situation. ” The Hollywood Reporter’s Erik Hayden explained the : In years past, the firm has provided two sets of winners’ envelopes in briefcases that are sent to the Dolby Theatre, one briefcase for either side of the stage. In what was was supposed to just be a memorable movie reunion, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway ended up fumbling the presentation of best picture, as they were apparently holding the best actress envelope instead. Not only did Dunaway read off La La Land as the best picture winner, the confusion wasn’t fixed until after several members of the Lionsgate movie’s team had already spoken. “I opened the envelope and it said ‘Emma Stone, La La Land.’ That’s why I looked at Faye, and at you. I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Beatty clarified, laughing nervously. The awful mistake came after hours of by the Hollywood elites, who hammered the president in joke after joke. Now, the president has got the last laugh as he hammers Hollywood for its epic fail. More from President Trump’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News is forthcoming. | 1 |
Friday on ABC’s “The View,” when asked if he wants to run for president in 2020 billionaire businessman and “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban did not rule it out. Joy Behar asked, “So Mark your name has actually been tossed around as a potential presidential candidate. Let’s make news here. Are you into it?” Cuban replied, “Definitely. No. We’ll see what happens. ” Discussing Trump’s tweets, Cuban said “He is an idiot. I don’t care what he says. Right? I got a thick skin. He doesn’t. ” Cuban said that it is not Trump’s inexperience that is the problem saying, “No one is ever totally qualified to be the president. What it takes is leadership skills, so you know what you don’t know … You’re never going to know everything to be the president. You have to be smart enough to say, here’s where my strengths are. Here’s what I don’t know, and let me find the best people to do that. And then listen to those people. You can make an argument that Donald Trump has hired some good people around him. Maybe some you don’t love. He has hired good people, but he never listens. And if you are not willing to listen, if you are not willing to learn — the entire job — the only certainty of the job of president is the uncertainty. You don’t know what’s next. ” He added that Trump was “oblivious to life. ” “He has no . He has no contextual awareness, but other than that, he is a great president. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
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