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How to Love: Legendary Zen Buddhist Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on Mastering the Art of "Interbeing" “To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love.” By Maria Popova / brainpickings.org
What does love mean, exactly? We have applied to it our finest definitions ; we have examined its psychology and outlined it in philosophical frameworks ; we have even devised a mathematical formula for attaining it. And yet anyone who has ever taken this wholehearted leap of faith knows that love remains a mystery — perhaps the mystery of the human experience.
Learning to meet this mystery with the full realness of our being — to show up for it with absolute clarity of intention — is the dance of life.
That’s what legendary Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh (b. October 11, 1926) explores in How to Love ( public library ) — a slim, simply worded collection of his immeasurably wise insights on the most complex and most rewarding human potentiality.
Indeed, in accordance with the general praxis of Buddhist teachings, Nhat Hanh delivers distilled infusions of clarity, using elementary language and metaphor to address the most elemental concerns of the soul. To receive his teachings one must make an active commitment not to succumb to the Western pathology of cynicism , our flawed self-protection mechanism that readily dismisses anything sincere and true as simplistic or naïve — even if, or precisely because, we know that all real truth and sincerity are simple by virtue of being true and sincere.
At the heart of Nhat Hanh’s teachings is the idea that “understanding is love’s other name”— that to love another means to fully understand his or her suffering. (“Suffering” sounds rather dramatic, but in Buddhism it refers to any source of profound dissatisfaction — be it physical or psychoemotional or spiritual.) Understanding, after all, is what everybody needs — but even if we grasp this on a theoretical level, we habitually get too caught in the smallness of our fixations to be able to offer such expansive understanding. He illustrates this mismatch of scales with an apt metaphor:
If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform. Illustration from Hug Me by Simona Ciraolo
The question then becomes how to grow our own hearts, which begins with a commitment to understand and bear witness to our own suffering:
When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.
Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love.
And yet because love is a learned “dynamic interaction,” we form our patterns of understanding — and misunderstanding — early in life, by osmosis and imitation rather than conscious creation. Echoing what Western developmental psychology knows about the role of “positivity resonance” in learning love, Nhat Hanh writes:
If our parents didn’t love and understand each other, how are we to know what love looks like? … The most precious inheritance that parents can give their children is their own happiness. Our parents may be able to leave us money, houses, and land, but they may not be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all. Illustration by Maurice Sendak from Open House for Butterflies by Ruth Krauss
Nhat Hanh points out the crucial difference between infatuation, which replaces any real understanding of the other with a fantasy of who he or she can be for us, and true love:
Often, we get crushes on others not because we truly love and understand them, but to distract ourselves from our suffering. When we learn to love and understand ourselves and have true compassion for ourselves, then we can truly love and understand another person.
Out of this incomplete understanding of ourselves spring our illusory infatuations, which Nhat Hanh captures with equal parts wisdom and wit:
Sometimes we feel empty; we feel a vacuum, a great lack of something. We don’t know the cause; it’s very vague, but that feeling of being empty inside is very strong. We expect and hope for something much better so we’ll feel less alone, less empty. The desire to understand ourselves and to understand life is a deep thirst. There’s also the deep thirst to be loved and to love. We are ready to love and be loved. It’s very natural. But because we feel empty, we try to find an object of our love. Sometimes we haven’t had the time to understand ourselves, yet we’ve already found the object of our love. When we realize that all our hopes and expectations of course can’t be fulfilled by that person, we continue to feel empty. You want to find something, but you don’t know what to search for. In everyone there’s a continuous desire and expectation; deep inside, you still expect something better to happen. That is why you check your email many times a day! Illustration from The Missing Piece Meets the Big O , Shel Silverstein’s minimalist allegory of true love
Real, truthful love, he argues, is rooted in four elements — loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity — fostering which lends love “the element of holiness.” The first of them addresses this dialogic relationship between our own suffering and our capacity to fully understand our loved ones:
The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. You can be the sunshine for another person. You can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment. Then you have something to offer the other person.
[…]
If you have enough understanding and love, then every moment — whether it’s spent making breakfast, driving the car, watering the garden, or doing anything else in your day — can be a moment of joy.
This interrelatedness of self and other is manifested in the fourth element as well, equanimity, the Sanskrit word for which — upeksha — is also translated as “inclusiveness” and “nondiscrimination”:
In a deep relationship, there’s no longer a boundary between you and the other person. You are her and she is you. Your suffering is her suffering. Your understanding of your own suffering helps your loved one to suffer less. Suffering and happiness are no longer individual matters. What happens to your loved one happens to you. What happens to you happens to your loved one.
[…]
In true love, there’s no more separation or discrimination. His happiness is your happiness. Your suffering is his suffering. You can no longer say, “That’s your problem.”
Supplementing the four core elements are also the subsidiary elements of trust and respect , the currency of love’s deep mutuality:
When you love someone, you have to have trust and confidence. Love without trust is not yet love. Of course, first you have to have trust, respect, and confidence in yourself. Trust that you have a good and compassionate nature. You are part of the universe; you are made of stars. When you look at your loved one, you see that he is also made of stars and carries eternity inside. Looking in this way, we naturally feel reverence. True love cannot be without trust and respect for oneself and for the other person. Illustration by Julie Paschkis from Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People by Monica Brown
The essential mechanism for establishing such trust and respect is listening — something so frequently extolled by Western psychologists, therapists, and sage grandparents that we’ve developed a special immunity to hearing it. And yet when Nhat Hanh reframes this obvious insight with the gentle elegance of his poetics, it somehow bypasses the rational cynicism of the jaded modern mind and registers directly in the soul:
To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love. To know how to love someone, we have to understand them. To understand, we need to listen.
[…]
When you love someone, you should bring relief and help him to suffer less. This is an art. If you don’t understand the roots of his suffering, you can’t help, just as a doctor can’t help heal your illness if she doesn’t know the cause. You need to understand the cause of your loved one’s suffering in order to help bring relief.
[…]
The more you understand, the more you love; the more you love, the more you understand. They are two sides of one reality. The mind of love and the mind of understanding are the same.
Echoing legendary Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki’s memorable aphorism that “the ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow,” Nhat Hanh considers how the notion of the separate, egoic “I” interrupts the dialogic flow of understanding — the “interbeing,” to use his wonderfully poetic and wonderfully precise term, that is love:
Often, when we say, “I love you” we focus mostly on the idea of the “I” who is doing the loving and less on the quality of the love that’s being offered. This is because we are caught by the idea of self. We think we have a self. But there is no such thing as an individual separate self. A flower is made only of non-flower elements, such as chlorophyll, sunlight, and water. If we were to remove all the non-flower elements from the flower, there would be no flower left. A flower cannot be by herself alone. A flower can only inter-be with all of us… Humans are like this too. We can’t exist by ourselves alone. We can only inter-be. I am made only of non-me elements, such as the Earth, the sun, parents, and ancestors. In a relationship, if you can see the nature of interbeing between you and the other person, you can see that his suffering is your own suffering, and your happiness is his own happiness. With this way of seeing, you speak and act differently. This in itself can relieve so much suffering.
The remainder of How to Love explores the simple, profoundly transformative daily practices of love and understanding, which apply not only to romantic relationships but to all forms of “interbeing.” Complement it with John Steinbeck’s exquisite letter of advice on love to his teenage son and Susan Sontag’s lifetime of reflections on the subject , then revisit the great D.T. Suzuki on how Zen can help us cultivate our character .
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After what appeared to be a refusal to concede late last night (via John Podesta), followed by Trump’s victory speech, in which he referred to a concession call by his opponent, Hillary Clinton finally issued her concession speech at around 11:30 AM Eastern time.
The tone was clearly bitter, though it was cloaked in the hopeful language of continued efforts.
After questions about whether or not Donald Trump would have the wherewithal to admit defeat and accept election results, it turned out to be Hillary who had apparent difficulty in giving up.
SEE: Is Something Wrong With Hillary? Will NOT Concede Tonight – Refuses To Speak To Crowd – Health Episode?
But reality set in, and she went on stage, albeit more than an hour after she was scheduled to do so, to admit her loss.
She played to what might have been her largest and most enthusiastic crowd to date on the 2016 campaign trail.
Partial transcript:
Thank you so very much for being here. I love you all, too. Last night I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country.
I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans. This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for, and I’m sorry we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country.
But I feel pride and gratitude for this wonderful campaign that we built together. This vast diverse creative unruly energized campaign. You represent the best of America and being your candidate has been one of the greatest honors of my life.
I know how disappointed you feel because I feel it, too. And so do tens of millions of Americans who invested their hopes and dreams in this effort. This is painful, and it will be for a long time. But I want you to remember this.
Our campaign was never about one person, or even one election. It was about the country we love and building an America that is hopeful, inclusive, and big-hearted. We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America, and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power.
[…]
To anyone that sent contributions, even as small as $5, that kept us going, thank you. To all of us, and to the young people in particular, I hope you will hear this — I have, as Tim said, I have spent my entire life fighting for what I believe in.
I’ve had successes and setbacks and sometimes painful ones. Many of you are at the beginning of your professional, public, and political careers — you will have successes and setbacks too.
This loss hurts, but please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it.
[…]
And so we need — we need you to keep up these fights now and for the rest of your lives. And to all the women, and especially the young women, who put their faith in this campaign and in me: I want you to know that nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion.
Now, I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but someday someone will — and hopefully sooner than we might think right now. [Cheers and applause]
And to all of the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams. [Cheers and applause]
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Science Alert Tue, 25 Oct 2016 Hints of an unidentified, extinct human species have been found in the DNA of modern Melanesians – those living in a region of the South Pacific, northeast of Australia. According to new genetic modelling, the species is unlikely to be Neanderthal or Denisovan – two ancient species that are represented in the fossil record – but could represent a third, unknown human relative that has so far eluded archaeologists.
“We’re missing a population, or we’re misunderstanding something about the relationships,” Ryan Bohlender, a statistical geneticist from the University of Texas, told Tina Hesman Saey at Science News. Bohlender and his team have been investigating the percentages of extinct hominid DNA that modern humans still carry today, and say they’ve found discrepancies in previous analyses that suggest our mingling with Neanderthals and Denisovans isn’t the whole story.
It’s thought that between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago, our early ancestors migrated out of Africa, and first made contact with other hominid species living on the Eurasian landmass. This contact left a mark on our species that can still be found today, with Europeans and Asians carrying distinct genetic variants of Neanderthal DNA in their own genomes. And that’s not all they’ve given us.
Earlier this year, researchers investigated certain genetic variants that people of European descent inherited from Neanderthals , and found that they’re associated with several health problems, including a slightly increased risk of depression, heart attack, and a number of skin disorders. And a separate study published earlier this month found evidence that modern genital warts – otherwise known as the human papillomavirus (HPV) – were sexually transmitted to Homo sapiens after our ancestors slept with Neanderthals and Denisovans once they left Africa.
While our relationship with Neanderthals has been widely researched, how we interacted with the Denisovans – the distant cousins of Neanderthals – is less clear. The problem is that Neanderthals are well represented in the fossil record, with many remains having been uncovered across Europe and Asia, but all we have of the Denisovans is a lone finger bone and a couple of teeth that were found in a Siberian cave in 2008 .
Using a new computer model to figure out the amount of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA carried by modern humans, Bohlender and his colleague found that Europeans and Chinese people carry a similar amount of Neanderthal DNA: about 2.8 percent. That result is pretty similar to previous studies have estimated that Europeans and Asians carry, on average, between 1.5 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA.
But when they got to Denisovan DNA, things were a bit more complicated, particularly when it came to modern populations living in Melanesia – a region of the South Pacific that includes Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, West Papua, and the Maluku Islands.
As Hesman Saey explains for Science News:
“Europeans have no hint of Denisovan ancestry, and people in China have a tiny amount – 0.1 percent, according to Bohlender’s calculations. But 2.74 percent of the DNA in people in Papua New Guinea comes from Neanderthals. And Bohlender estimates the amount of Denisovan DNA in Melanesians is about 1.11 percent, not the 3 to 6 percent estimated by other researchers.
While investigating the Denisovan discrepancy, Bohlender and colleagues came to the conclusion that a third group of hominids may have bred with the ancestors of Melanesians.”
“Human history is a lot more complicated than we thought it was,” he told her.
This find is supported by a separate study by researchers from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, who analysed DNA from 83 Aboriginal Australians and 25 locals from the Papua New Guinea highlands.
As we reported last month, this was the most comprehensive genetic study of Indigenous Australians to date, and it indicated that they are the oldest continuous civilisation on Earth, dating back more than 50,000 years ago. But the results revealed something else – DNA that was very similar to that of the Denisovans, but distinct enough for the researchers to suggest that it could have come from a third, unidentified hominid . “Who this group is we don’t know,” lead researcher Eske Willerslev told Hesman Saey.
Until we have more concrete evidence of this hypothesised third human species (some fossils would be nice), we can’t prove this , and we should point out that Bohlender’s estimates have yet to be formally peer-reviewed , so they might shift with further scrutiny. And it could be that our identification of Denisovan DNA is more ambiguous than we think, given that our only source is a finger bone and a couple of teeth.
But the evidence is mounting that our interactions with ancient humans were far more complex than we’d assumed, which shouldn’t be much of a surprise, when you think about it. Just because we don’t see them in the fossil record doesn’t mean they didn’t exist – preserving the remains of something for tens of thousands of years isn’t easy, and then someone has to be in the right place at the right time to dig them up.
Hopefully, the more we investigate the genetic make-up of our most ancient societies, the more hints we’ll get of the rich and complicated history our species shared with those that didn’t make it to modern times.
The results of Bohlender’s analysis were presented last week at the 2016 American Society of Human Genetics meeting in Canada. © Guido Amrein Switzerland/Shutterstock Melanesian children of Papua New Guinea Share: | 0 |
I'm referring to all the gentleman's ability for advocacy. We need a tough team to take apart trusts and corporate conglomerates. Just a quip, but I never kid unless i mean it. | 0 |
=By= Jimmie Moglia Editor's Note The mechanism of control of the population is hiding in plain sight. It is the unwavering focus on self. Whether it is self-help, self-exploration, the inner self, the inner child, the focus is inward and a lifetime of training in narcissism. However, it is the planting of a seed that roots so deep that is on one hand and uncertainty of self, and on the other is a gut level distrust of the world. Then it is all muxed so thoroughly that there is a constant need of reassurance and the psycho babble self help self first over all. Welcome to faux individualism twenty-first century style. “… I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air And more inconstant than the wind
Romeo and Juliet, act 1, sc. 4 W e know of the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on crime and sundry others. Less known is the war on common sense. It is waged daily on the victims and preys of the Self-help and Actualization Movement, or SHAM. It is a 9 billion $/year industry selling verbal fluff, illusion and fraud with total impunity.
The impunity is guaranteed by the implicit and indirect association of the self-help industry with organized religion. The difference being that whereas religion sells happiness in the next life, self-help sells success in the current, under the guise of fulfilling the customer’s dreams. For, taking issue with the claims of the former is unthinkable. Hence organized religion provides a wide umbrella for all kinds of activities promising results without proof of delivery.
The army of the self-help salesmen consists of instructors with over-inflated and/or non existing credentials, veritable “riddling merchants for the nonce,” (1) promising to buyers that the winter of their discontent (2) will bloom into the summer of their satisfaction, if they purchase their advice at a considerable price.
They flatter the imagination with glittering ideas of wealth, power and ultimate fulfillment, easily obtainable by just wishing for them. Their ‘recipes’ for self-help are like Polonius’ “ springes to catch woodcocks ” (3) and those woodcocked by television, tabloid magazines and infomercials.
The self-help “instructors” are thousands – they deliver their pearls of wisdom, with statements like, for example, “Ya gotta want it!” The utterer of this profound truth was Tommy Lasorda, an ex baseball player turned helper for the self-helpless. He charges or charged $30,000 an hour for advice as follows, “The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person’s determination.”
The encyclopedia of platitudes and nonsense-in-drags supplied by self-help providers would be thick – I can only quote some examples.
Here is an extract from the manual “Stop Selling, Start Partnering – The New Thinking About Finding and Keeping Customers.”
Customers learn the new mode of thought at the Pecos River Learning Center in New Mexico. The three-day course combines classroom-style learning with physically challenging outdoor activities, such as falling off walls and descending mountain walls attached to a rope. Other similar centers include self-confidence building by resisting starvation or thirst. But here is a winning ticket from the Pecos River Learning Center (italics as in the original) “Playing to Win. We called this spirit, visit life strategy, playing to win. Playing to Win is the alternative strategy to playing not to lose. Playing to Win has nothing to do with the conventional understanding of winning, which is that if I win, someone else has to lose. Playing to win is a personal strategy defined as going as far as you can with all that you’ve got. The underlying tenet of blank to win is that life is about growing, accepting challenges, and never giving up. The most fulfilled, productive, and loving lives are those in which people have overcome challenges, have grown as a result, and constantly go as far as they can with everything they’ve got. Make no mistake. Playing to win is by far the more difficult strategy, because we often need to endure a short term pain to achieve long-term gain. For example saying you want to start your own business. That usually means you must quit your current job, get a second mortgage on your home, run the risk of failing, and struggle for a few years before it pays off. In the end, if it does stay off, you get to enjoy feelings of fulfillment and success. Yet, most people, when considering the choice, shy away from commitment, from the risk and the possibility of discomfort.”
Anyone can see that “Playing to win” compounds obviousness with emptiness. Here, and in hundred similar cases, we are witnessing evidence that “The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.” (4)
And yet, it is emptiness that survives even death. When the founder of the “Pecos River Learning Center” died, in his obituary it was possible to read, “Larry Wilson, who provided training through Wilson Learning and Pecos River Learning Center to a wide range of organizations that included Disney, the Minnesota Vikings and the CIA, has died.”
Unsaid was, however, that after the Minnesota Vikings undertook the extremely expensive training, the team arrived last in the championship of that year. We must shudder to think what results the CIA achieved, after mastering the art of “Playing to Win.”
The Pecos River Learning Center was later sold to another similar conglomerate for 16 million $.
Self-Help organizations, or self-helper individuals posing as organizations are in the thousands. I choose at random the “Option Institute.” Among many different “courses” here is the “Inner Strength Boot Camp” – a week-long program that will lighten the purse of each student of 4,650 dollars.
Baffled about a boot camp for “Inner Strength”? No problem. Here is the explanation, quote We’re all familiar with the term “boot camp.” An intensive, no-holds-barred, all-out, 8-cylinder experience where participants walk through the fires of deep personal challenge. And, in the end, they have rebuilt themselves into something – someone – vastly stronger and more powerful. Inner Strength BOOT CAMP takes this concept deeper. In truth, we can go through an “outer” strength boot camp, but no amount of physical exercise prepares us for the heavy lifting we face in our lives – financially, with our health, in our relationships, and within our careers. In the end it all comes down to Inner Strength – creating a way for ourselves to think and feel so that we have an unwavering, unstoppable, indestructible sense of our own strength, confidence, self-acceptance, and clarity. To accomplish this, we’ve constructed a course that powers through nine straight days of intensive work on you. (But you’re still only away for one workweek.) In this course, we help you to dig deep into every aspect of yourself. Once you’ve done that, we can (lovingly and non-judgmentally) challenge you to build who you are into the version of yourself that you always wanted to be, always thought you could be, but haven’t quite seen yet. In the end, we may not be able to control everything. But we can become people who determine how we handle everything. We can gain the tools to construct a core of strength, confidence, and clarity on the inside that’s impervious to events on the outside. We can be our own rock. And that’s why Inner Strength BOOT CAMP isn’t about changing the world. It’s about changing YOUR world. Would you like to: *** Remain truly relaxed and unfazed in the face of the judgments and criticism of others? *** Know who you are – without taking what others do personally or needing them to validate you? *** Create more loving relationships with the people that matter most to you? *** Overcome the obstacles that keep you from being present to what’s really important in your life? *** Speak authentically without fear? *** Sustain a sense of peace and comfort with an unpredictable world? *** Stay strong in what you believe and what you want? *** Understand exactly how you work…so you can change and rebuild the parts that don’t? If so, Inner Strength BOOT CAMP is for you. The way it works is that you arrive on Friday night, and then go full-blast from Saturday until the next Sunday. You will be shocked at how far you can get by taking a course in this totally immersive style (while still only being away for one workweek). Some special methods unique to Inner Strength BOOT CAMP: *** The Inner Strength Diary:A unique method of tracking your changes – and keeping yourself accountable *** Happiness Interaction Training Tactics (HITTS): Practical strategies getting people to treat you the way you want to be treated while living what you’ve learned *** The Book:The most powerful interactive exercise we’ve ever taught for learning to be totally present and focused *** The Two Sides of You: A special activity where we use digital enhancement technology to show you sides of yourself you might never have imagined *** What If???:A navigational path we help you create for yourself that allows you to completely trust your ability to take care of yourself – no matter what *** The “Ask Anything” Project: A method allow you to to get to know your fellow participants – and anyone else in your life – in a unique way unquote
And, should you still have doubts about the uniqueness of all this obviousness, there is an abundance of “testimonials.” People providing them span the range of human characters and are engaged in all pursuits that swarm upon the earth, from chef/caterers to software engineers. Here is the testimonial from a chef/caterer. quote I signed up for Inner Strength with a feeling that if it didn’t help, I’d be lost. Not only did the program give me practical, easy-to-use tools to help build my inner strength, it also helped me discover strengths I did not know I had. I’m now equipped to face anything in my path, and to deal with all issues with clarity and happiness. My life is no longer a battleground – it’s a playground! unquote
But where are the roots and which are the reasons for the extraordinary success of this ultimate industry of fluff?
It is a case of “Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied…” (5) For, the idea of obtaining instructions on the ways of the world is as old as the Bible, the Greeks and the Romans. In my view, the best “self-help” manual ever written is still Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations.”
More recently, in 1937 Dale Carnegie published “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” The appeal of the book, in my view, consists not so much in the advice, which is sound, but in making the reader feel better emotionally. In fact, though by and large people do not behave at all as the manual suggests, the reader realizes that cultivating humanitarian and genteel feelings towards others has some kind of official sanction – even if, in practice and too often, kindness and openness are rated as symptoms of weakness. Unless, of course the “influenced people” see profit in being influenced.
The same considerations apply to N.V. Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking.” It is amply proven that when man is no longer cold, hungry or fearful, he becomes unhappy. It is “… the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul.” (6) The book suggests measures to alleviate the symptoms.
Nevertheless, the seminal event, triggering the chain reaction of self-help mania, was the 1967 book “I’m OK – You are OK.” Which, by the way, prompted the much more realistic publication of “I am dysfunctional, you are dysfunctional.”
Yet, “There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things.” (7) It is not by chance that the blossoming of the self-help industry coincided with the de-industrialization of the country, the “downsizings”, the “consolidations” and the explosive growth of part-time jobs. In essence, the factual impoverishment of the country paralleled the enrichment of the financial industry, which essentially is air, or rather paper, for practical reasons. Paper can be more easily manhandled, maneuvered, hidden, stolen and monopolized, hence the dramatic divergence in prosperity between the 1% and the rest.
Unable to fight back, “the miserable have no other medicine but only hope.” (8) Searching for solutions, large sections of the populace became the natural target (or victims) of the self-help industry. Whose psychological modus operandi is as follows: Dissecting the meaning of basic ideas such as right and wrong, good and bad, winning and losing etc. Giving alternative new connotations to words and concepts, e.g. family, love, discipline, blame, excellence and self-esteem.
Afterwards, or as a result of this lexical sleigh-of-hand, the ‘market’ is split into two segments: The victims, whose motto is “It’s not my fault”, and The empowerers, whose motto is “I think, therefore I win, I daydream, therefore I accomplish.”
The victimhood syndrome has found acceptance even outside the realm of the self-help industry. As I was writing this article, the daily newspaper of where I live, told the story of a criminal just condemned to 10 years in jail. He had stolen someone’s car, and a few days later, by chance, the rightful owner of the car spotted it in the parking lot of a store. Having another set of key, he opened the door of his car. Whereupon the thief reached him, threw him to the ground, stomped on his head and almost killed him – leaving him permanently disabled.
I think the sentence was lenient. But the defendant, with a 30-year long career in crime, brought up in his defense, his troubled childhood (i.e. “It’s not my fault.”)
But I digress.
The victimhood syndrome has also successfully instilled into people, especially women, worry, guilt, insecurity and inadequacy, turning an otherwise (possibly) uneventful life into a permanent winter of discontent.
The empowerers, or rather the sense of empowerment has convinced people that simply aspiring to do something is the same as achieving it. “Feeling good” about oneself and “positive self-worth” are more important than the much more challenging task of acquiring the skills required to gain recognition.
The “self-help” mania has a kind of counterpart, for example, in the “Jesus Festivals” held by prosperous and opulent preachers in the mega-churches of the US Bible Belt.
Yet, the desire to unquestionably accept the unbelievable runs deep in the American soul. In 1830, Frances Trollope, mother of the successful English novelist Anthony Trollope undertook a 2-year voyage to America, followed by the publication of a fascinating book, “The Domestic Manners of the Americans,” in which she also describes a religious “revival.” “The preacher described with ghastly minuteness, the last feeble fainting moments of human life, and then the gradual progress of decay after death, which he followed through every process up to the last loathsome stage of decomposition… Suddenly he bent forward as if to gaze on some object beneath the pulpit… And the preacher made known to us what he saw in the pit that seemed to open before him. The device was certainly a happy one for giving the effect to his description of hell. Repeatedly he invited and exhorted the young girls of the congregation not to be ashamed of Jesus, but to put themselves upon “the anxious benches” and lay their heads on his bosom. After that, three priests walked down and began whispering to the poor girls seated at the “anxious benches”. These whispers were inaudible to us, but the sobs and groans increased to a frightful excess. Young creatures, with features pale and distorted, fell on their knees on the pavement and soon sunk forward on their faces; the most violent cries and shrieks followed, while from time to time a voice was heard in convulsive accents exclaiming, “Oh Lord, Oh Lord Jesus, help me Jesus” and the like. Violent hysterics and compulsions seized many of them, and when the tumult was at the highest, the priest who remained above, again gave out a hymn as if to drown it.”
Trollope concludes, “It was a frightful sight to behold innocent young creatures, in the gay morning of existence, thus seized upon, horror-struck and rendered feeble and enervated for ever. … For myself, I confess that I think the coarsest comedy ever written would be a less detestable exhibition for the eyes of youth and innocence than such a scene.”
Returning to the present, the self-help movement has evolved from the personal realm to include the political. It is a contributing factor, for example in the adherence to the so-called political correctness, daughter of both victimization, or the culture of blame, and the self-esteem movement, a product of empowerment.
But, inspired by the vision of large profits at little or no cost, self-help (in the sense of platitudinal advise sold at high price), has branched even into hospitals and universities.
The World Health Organization now defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Starting from this platform, any reader can deduce that the sky is the limit. The Organization allocates funds to “wellness-based” models, which include research on loneliness and special after-school play programs, all aimed at achieving the ‘state of perfect health.’
Through the same reasoning, public health official have invested millions in so-called “outreach programs” for drug abusers. Here is a declaration by an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, on the subject of women of color contracting HIV from dirty needles and unprotected sex, “In response to daily assault of racial prejudice and denial of dignity, women may turn to readily available mind-altering substance for relief. Seeking sanctuary from racial hatred through sexual connection as a way to enhance self-esteem, also may offer rewards so compelling that condom use becomes less of a priority.” It’s pure victimization at work, and out go the millions for other self-help programs, as their respective deliverers laugh all the way to the bank.
Even mid-sized companies engage high-priced lecturers to inspire motivation through ‘positive thinking,’ though there is no evidence of any positive effect. Considering that often, the company promoters of these program are the very ones who contradict the principles that the programs are supposed to inspire.
Or take the case of the sales seminar where the trainer tells 250 real-estate professionals from the same company that all of them could be the number one salesmen of the year. Self-help can even defy the most simple of mathematics. One of the salesmen will be, the others won’t.
Self-help has surreptitiously changed at large the general outlook on life. From, “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill go together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not, and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues” (9) to the philosophy embodied in the popular bumper sticker ‘BADASSE’ – Blame All Disappointments And Setbacks On Someone Else.”
By default, design, skill or luck, the self-help industry has found the formula for ‘success.’ Familiar sounding words applied in a different context puzzle the will (as in the example above, “Inner Strength Boot Camp.”) And hyperbolical images that fire the imagination prompt the willing victim to believe the unbelievable rather than accepting the inherent uncertainties of life.
In the end, self-help makes cowards of its victims, whose hue of resolution is sicklied over by the pale cast of thought, (10) or rather, by the evanescent and ridiculous promises destined to melt into air, into thin air. While the baseless fabric of the self-help visions, (11 ) the promised successes, praises, glories, wealth and happiness, dissolve, and leave only expensive bills behind.
And, as writer Steve Salerno has aptly concluded in his book SHAM, from where I extracted some of the examples, “The Self Help Industry has made America Helpless.”
** 1. King Henry IV, part 1 ** 2. from King Richard III ** 3. Hamlet | 0 |
In what is being hailed as a ‘ truly astonishing ‘ verdict, a jury has found 7 Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupiers ‘not guilty’ of federal conspiracy charges stemming from a weeks long standoff with the Bureau of Land Management in Burns, Oregon earlier this year.
Thursday, the Oregon jury ruled in favor of the defense who argued that the six week standoff led by the infamous Bundy brother’s was a constitutionally protected act of protest against the treatment of two imprisoned Oregon ranchers.
For those unfamiliar with the case, here is a brief recap:
January 2016 – Militia members from across the country began a six week long armed protest at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in protest over the arrests of ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond who were accused of arson after lighting a controlled burn on their private property.
The federal government alleged that the controlled burn which was started on the Hammond’s property grow out of control and subsequently damaged federal lands outside of the ranch’s property line.
Following the government’s decision to prosecute the Hammond’s for arson, a protest in the town of Burns took place which ultimately lead to the seizure of the refuge by militia members.
Via OregonLive
A jury Thursday delivered a stunning across-the-board acquittal to the leaders and participants in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation and a remarkable blow to the federal government as it tries to tamp down a national movement led by a Nevada family to open public lands to ranchers, miners and loggers.
The verdicts finding Ammon Bundy, older brother Ryan Bundy and five others not guilty of a federal conspiracy drew elation from defense attorneys who spent five weeks arguing that the armed takeover amounted to a time-honored tradition of First Amendment protest and civil disobedience.
“Maybe this is a lesson that that’s not the way to engage with these people, who want nothing more than just to be heard, just to have a forum to talk about the injustices like the case of the Hammonds and the treatment of ranchers,” said Lisa Ludwig, standby counsel for Ryan Bundy.
The high-profile case riveted the state and drew national and international attention to the isolated bird sanctuary in rural eastern Oregon. The jury’s decision proved no less dramatic and sets up a showdown in the next stage of the land-rights movement.
The Bundy brothers still face prosecution in Nevada with their father, Cliven Bundy, all accused in the 2014 standoff at the patriarch’s ranch over unpaid grazing fees that pitted the family and their supporters against federal Bureau of Land Management agents.
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Trump “Will Probably Win” and Gold “May Rise $100” Overnight – Jim Rickards Posted on Tweet Home » Gold » Gold News » Trump “Will Probably Win” and Gold “May Rise $100” Overnight – Jim Rickards
In stunning remarks made yesterday, Jim Rickards says that Trump “will probably win” and, if he does, stock markets will crash 10% and gold will rise $100 over night. “If Hillary wins nothing happens, if Trump wins you will have an earthquake.”
From Mark Obyrne :
Jim Rickards: Trump “Will Probably Win” and Gold “May Rise $100” Overnight
The US election is just two weeks away on November 8th, and one of Hillary Clinton’s most vocal critics on the business side is finance commentator and monetary expert Jim Rickards. Jim is in Sydney this week, armed with his latest book, hot off the press entitled ‘The Road to Ruin – The Global Elites’ Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis’ and gave an interesting television interview to ‘The Business’ on ABC Australia.
Rickards says that Trump “will probably win” and, if he does, stock markets will crash 10% and gold will rise $100 over night.
The markets and polls believe Clinton will win and t hat is priced into markets in the same way that a ‘Bremain’ was priced into markets prior to the ‘Brexit’ vote.
Kilkenomics 2016 – Where Comedy Meets Economics
“If Hillary wins nothing happens, if Trump wins you will have an earthquake.”
Should Trump win, which looking at the polls is not an impossibility, gold would likely surge $100 per ounce overnight, says Rickards.
What Hillary did was appalling Rickards says in relation to the Clinton email scandal. There will be ‘another reckoning on November 8th’ which the market has failed to price in, creating a good scenario for gold. He says you don’t have to agree that Trump will win, but agree that that in reality he could win.
For Rickards, this is an excellent opportunity for investors, particularly those who have an allocation to physical gold which he believes is set to rise in the coming months and years.
Jim is editor of Strategic Intelligence for Agora Financial as well as the founder of the James Rickards Project: an inquiry into complex dynamics of geopolitics and capital. He is also the author of New York Times bestsellers The New Case for Gold, Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis and The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Financial System.
Jim’s newest book, The Road to Ruin will be published in November and he is appearing at Kilkenomics 2016 where he will speak at a number of events. | 0 |
The Powerful Act Immoral as they Also Suffer from Herd Mentality Nov 7, 2016 2 0
The people at or near the top of the power pyramid are just as vulnerable to being sheep as we all are. In fact, they’re even more likely to fall to pressure from their peers because they have so much more at stake if they make the wrong choice.
That stake is money, power and other forms of capital. It’s their entire lifestyle at risk. If they rock the boat, there goes their business deals, their favors, their prioritization.
And these aspects of their life most likely define their identity, as sad as that might be.
That’s because all these consequences are of a nature which do not account for honor, integrity and morality. Connecting with the self to become an authentic man or woman is one of the real successes in life, so if they disregard this basic tenet to being human, then they’ve sold their soul for nothing less than a false path.
These sorts of people have a lot of influence that they’re failing to utilize for the benefit of humanity, as well as the environment. The core effect they could achieve is based in helping people to expand their understanding, and therefore their consciousness, to facilitate bringing about an era of truth, justice, peace and abundance for humankind.
Who exactly is being referenced here? They include celebrities, politicians, bureaucrats, military and police personnel, journalists, business moguls, so-called self-help gurus and pretty much anyone who is connected to the oligarchical families that are orchestrating the grand plan of global governance.
Now of course not all of them are alike. But let’s face it; how many of those with a massive social influence are speaking out against not just the peripheral problems, but the core ones such as the scams embedded into our system itself?
Fuck all; that how’s many.
Entering into their minds, it’s easy for them to be persuaded by the fear if they talk about some of the seriously uncomfortable truths of the world they’d be labeled as a conspiracy theorist. Yet the reality is that many conspiracy ‘facts’ are backed up with so much evidence they are simply ‘matter as fact’.
Like so many of us do, the truth needs to be shared. We all need to hear, understand and embody it into our thoughts and actions.
Simply, it stands to reason that we all need to play our part, especially those who have taken on a role with societal responsibility.
In any case, there are obviously many other reasons why these people don’t speak up. Examples include that they’re: subtly pretending to themselves that nothing is happening, ensuring they are a very unconscious person; turning a blind eye, even though they know and feel it; just simply ignorant of how the world works, like most people; psychopaths and/or sociopaths, where they’re involved in deeply disgraceful ideologies and practices; programmed and conditioned to support the status quo; dazed and confused in an overwhelming game of so-called power; a fake and weak human being; and/or in the drift of an existential crisis, which means their tide might actually turn. Final Thoughts
In the awakening community, we talk a lot about the people having the ultimate power, because we’ve got the numbers. So, if we want the sham of our system to cease, then all we have to do is organize to at least some degree to bring about the next steps of our societal evolution.
Well, what about all these people embedded in the parasitic culture that has hijacked humanity’s future? Can’t they be a beacon of light too?
Of course they can. To do so, they, like all of us, need to do their proper research and open their minds and hearts to both the madness and magic that permeates our existence of duality. If they do, they’ll deeply connect with their true role as a light shining into the darkness.
After all, no shadows exist when the light is shone from all angles.
A B OUT THE AUTHOR
Phillip J. Watt lives on the Mid North Coast of NSW Australia. His written and film work deals with topics from ideology to society, as well as self-development. Follow him on Facebook , watch his interviews with an array of inspiring guests at his YouTube Channel or visit his website . | 0 |
US admits Afghan strike likely caused civilian deaths Sat Nov 5, 2016 8:17PM Military In this photograph taken on September 29, 2016, an Afghan pilot stands next to a line of US-made MD-530 Helicopters in Kabul. (photo by AFP)
The commander of US forces in Afghanistan has promised an investigation into the recent death of more than 30 Afghan civilians, including women and children, in an airstrike.
General John Nicholson said Saturday that the airstrike on the village of Buz Kandahari, just outside the northern city of Kunduz on Thursday, would be probed.
Three Taliban leaders were supposed to be targeted in the raid, but the forces met “significant enemy fire from multiple locations" and called for help from a US aircraft, which left 33 civilians, including 17 children, dead.
"An initial investigation has determined that efforts near Kunduz on November 3 to defend Afghan National Defense and Security Forces likely resulted in civilian casualties," Nicholson said in a statement. "We will work with our Afghan partners to investigate and determine the facts and we will work with the government of Afghanistan to provide assistance."
The targets were high-ranking elements of the Takfiri group that were supposed to be hit in their houses, according to Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri.
"They weren't ordinary people who had gathered. They were leading fighting in Kunduz. They were the commanders of their military commission," Waziri said.
Taliban militants were removed from power following the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, but they have stepped up their activities in recent months, attempting to overrun several provinces.
Afghan forces have been engaged in fierce clashes with Taliban to contain the ongoing insurgency across various parts of the violence-wrecked country.
The rising violence in Afghanistan comes despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops in the country. Loading ... | 0 |
Hillary Clinton Seeks Even More Unfit Secretary of State Than Her October 28, 2016 Daniel Greenfield
Having never read any medieval German folk tales, Hillary Clinton is counting her chickens before they've hatched and preparing to hand out jobs that no one has handed her to hand out. She's busy planning her fantasy cabinet for her fantasy administration.
And her big pick makes sense.
Reportedly she would like to make Joe Biden the Secretary of State. Biden is the obvious choice. He's arrogant, dumb and brimming with bright ideas like just giving Iran money or splitting Iraq into little pieces. Obviously this wouldn't be a competency pick. The last time we had someone qualified as Secretary of State was during President Bush's time in office.
Then Democrats decided they would give the job as a consolation prize to failed presidential candidates. Because our foreign policy is just that important.
And who could be counted on to make an even bigger mess than Hillary Clinton or John Kerry... Joe Biden. It's a perfect plan. If you want a fall guy to blame everything on, they don't come any more obvious than Joe Biden.
And if you want someone shadowed by the soft bigotry of low expectations, you've gotta go Joe.
Joe Biden could accidentally start WW3 and everyone would shrug and say, "That's just Joe." | 0 |
ROME — A homeless man was detained on Tuesday in connection with the death of a student from Wisconsin who disappeared just hours after he landed in Rome, the Italian authorities said. The man, Massimo Galioto, 40, of Rome is suspected of involvement in what the police in Rome said was the murder of Beau Solomon, a visiting student from the University of who was found in the Tiber River on Monday with a head wound and blood on his shirt. Mr. Solomon disappeared after going to a pub Thursday night, not long after he arrived in the city for a summer program at John Cabot University, an American school in central Rome. The university said in a statement that Mr. Solomon’s roommate, who has not been identified, was with him at a pub in Trastevere, an area near the university known for its night life, and that he lost contact with him around 1 a. m. He alerted administrators at the university when Mr. Solomon failed to appear at orientation the next morning, it said. More than $1, 700 was charged to Mr. Solomon’s credit card after he disappeared, according to Italian news reports, including a large purchase on Friday in a Milan store, about 350 miles north of Rome. His cellphone is missing. Mr. Solomon’s body was found about 2½ miles south of the Garibaldi Bridge, roughly 2, 000 feet from the pub where he left his friends. The crowds in the area are even larger at this time of year because of a summer fair along the river, where food and goods are sold from stalls along the waterfront. A picture of a smiling Mr. Solomon in his football uniform dominated the front pages of many papers on Tuesday, and representatives of the University of Wisconsin and John Cabot University expressed their condolences. “Beau Solomon was a bright and caring young man who lived the Wisconsin Idea. All of us at are greatly saddened by this loss,” Rebecca Blank, chancellor of the University of wrote on Twitter. Soldiers and police officers are regularly stationed near the Piazza Trilussa, which gives access to the cobblestones and labyrinthlike streets of Trastevere. But this is not the first time an American student has encountered trouble in Rome, where alcohol can be easily obtained in bars, restaurants and supermarkets, even for those under 21. Last year, an American student was raped in a bathroom of a bar in the area. In 2013, after a night of drinking, an American student died as he fell from a bridge on the river, and another American student was found dead near the train tracks of a tunnel after leaving a bar the next year. | 1 |
The number of migrants illegally coming across the U. S. southern border in March dropped to the lowest level in 17 years, says a leaked agency statement given to the Associated Press. [The statement is included in testimony slated for delivery on Wednesday, April 5, by Gen. John Kelly, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Typically, routine testimony is provided early to the legislators so they can prepare questions for the witness, but it is rarely leaked. According to the Associated Press: Another report on Tuesday said the data showed a 67 percent drop in migrants seeking to cross the border. David V. Aguilar, former U. S. Border Patrol and acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that March 2017 figures he reviewed indicate illegal border crossings are down 67 percent [compared to March 2016] … . “It’s actually up to 67 percent drop compared to last year,” Aguilar told the Senate committee. During his tenure, former President Barack Obama reduced border barriers and allowed at least 300, 000 migrants from Central America to cross the border and get temporary residency, plus work permits and access to Americans’ schools. That wave of migrants helped solidify public opposition to immigration, aided Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and helped cause many extra crimes in the United States. However, the flow of new illegal immigrants is only a small part of the nation’s oversupply. Currently, at least 11 million illegal immigrants are living in the United States, of which at least 8 million hold jobs. Many of the recent illegal immigrants arrive legally as tourists or workers but fail to leave when their visas expire. In 2015, for example, almost 500, 000 people overstayed their visas and remained for some time as illegal immigrants. Also, the federal government annually invites 1 million people to legally immigrate to the United States, and provides work permits to a shifting population of up to 1. 45 million plus at least 200, 000 . The immigrants and contract workers compete for jobs sought by the 4 million young Americans who join the workforce each year. Overall, the huge inflow of migrants, both legal and illegal, help lower Americans’ salaries and wages by roughly $500 billion per year. In turn, that money is scooped up by employers and Wall Street investors as higher profits. President Trump has promised to toughen border security by building a barrier along most of the border, and he has already directed border officers to end Obama’s “catch and release” policy. He has also rejuvenated repatriation policies and has promised to curb business’ use of temporary contract workers in place of Americans. | 1 |
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TEENAGERS in the county Tipperary town of Clonmel have today called for a public apology from adults, politicians and gardaí after they were incorrectly blamed for murdering a local cat with a firework.
Reputable news publications originally reported the claim as fact, but have since taken down their misinformed story without a correction, which said the cat was ‘targeted by unknown individuals who strapped a firework to its mouth, killing it’. Pictures of the dead cat were then circulated online for maximum effect. However, a post-mortem this morning has revealed the cat was in fact killed in a hit and run incident – a conclusion backed up by Gardaí, who reviewed CCTV of the incident which revealed the cat was struck by a car.
“Too be honest, I do be too skagged out of me head to be chasin’ cats and wasting heroin money on fireworks,” Clonmel teen Martin Dunphy told WWN today, “T’was gas how quick all de straight heads pointed the finger at us, and then it turns out it was one of their own drivin’ a car. We demand an apology… or a few euro for the bus if ye have it?”
Clonmel gardaí have since closed the investigation, despite the driver of the vehicle being at large in the area, sparking conspiracy claims around the town.
“It’s one law for us, and another for them,” voiced another teenager, “If they can do this to an animal, the worry is what they’ll do to a person”.
Since the revelation, youth campaigners have set up a Facebook page, Cats Lives Matter, calling for justice for the animal, urging gardaí to relaunch a full investigation into the “hit and run”. | 0 |
Morgen in PamS 46/2016: Kommt die nächste Flüchtlingswelle aus dem Westen? Außerdem in dieser Ausgabe: Hillary wieder zu Hause: Bill freut sich endlich wieder über warme Malzeit und frische Wäsche - Große Homestory auf Seite 14-17 So füllen Sie Ihr Magazin mit Schwachsinn - Seite 18-89 Stiftung Warentest: So gut ist deine Mutter im Bett - Seite 91 Rezension der letzten Ausgabe auf Postillleaks: PamS 45/2016 Artikel teilen: | 0 |
Mike Pence Purges Transition Team of Registered Lobbyists
Choose the term you like the best: “Drain the Swamp,”“Clear the Decks,”“Throw the Bums Out,”“Clean House,” or just plain “Purge.” They are all good descriptors of what Mr. Trump has assured us would happen to the leftists when he arrived in DC.
It looks like it’s more than just Donald Trump who is cleaning house. Mike Pence is now handing out pink slips to transition team members as they get the group ready to do its work of moving Trump into the Oval Office. It’s a breath of fresh air in an environment that has been politically and ethically toxic for the past eight years.
More the purge on page two. | 0 |
Share on Facebook In 2008, on a dig in the First Nation’s Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin, archaeologists made a small but stunning discovery: a tiny clay pot. Though it might not have seemed very impressive at first glimpse, this little piece of pottery was determined to be about 800 years old. And inside that pot? Something that changes how we're looking at extinction, preservation, and food storage, as well as how humans have influenced the planet in their time on it. It's amazing to think that a little clay pot buried in the ground 800 years ago would still be relevant today, but it's true! It's actually brought an extinct species of squash that was presumed to be lost forever. Thank our Indigenous Ancestors! Even they knew what preservation meant. They knew the importance of the future, Is it not amazing that they are affecting our walks of life even to this day? Here it is! The pot was unearthed on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin, where it had laid buried for the past 800 years. Inside, archaeologists found a stash of seeds. The seeds were probably buried in the pot as a method of storing food supplies. They were determined to be an old, now-extinct species of squash. Now, seven years after making this stunning discovery, students in Winnipeg decided to plant the 800-year-old seeds… to everyone's amazement, something grew! The squash was named Gete-Okosomin. It means “cool old squash” in the Menominee language. (Respect to the science people for respecting the indigenous people who's land this was found on, we see your good nature!) Now, they're working to cultivate the squash so that it doesn't go extinct… again. It may be just a humble squash, but it's also a symbol of first nations' community and history, as well as a fascinating look into how amazing plants can be. It just goes to show you that plants can be pretty incredible… and that sometimes, history has a funny way of coming back around. The Wheel of Life really stands out in this instance of history. Our Indigenous roots are strong and very much tied to the land. I was taught once that the people of Turtle Island were keepers of the land, not owners. I feel like this Squash is proof of that teaching. Check out the original story & the role of White Earth Land Recovery Project (where seed keepers tend to these seeds) or Winona LaDuke (who named the squash)! Related: | 0 |
ASKING for a raise is the type of conversation that can make even the most confident among us uncomfortable. Women, however, may have good reason to feel that way. Discrimination persists in the workplace and it isn’t necessarily intentional or overt, experts on gender and negotiation say. But it can emerge when women act in ways that aren’t considered sufficiently feminine, and when women advocate for themselves, these experts say, some people find it unseemly, if on a subconscious level. As a result, women need to take a more calibrated approach, whether in asking for a higher salary or a new position. Otherwise, they can risk being perceived as overly demanding and unlikable, experts say, and their requests can backfire. “We are asking women to juggle while they are on the tightrope,” said Linda C. Babcock, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and founder of its gender equity program. “It’s totally unfair because we don’t require the same thing of men. But if women want to be successful in this domain, they need to pay attention to this. ” Research on gender and negotiation has largely focused on requests for a raise, but the same strategies can — and probably should — be applied to a broad range of requests, including negotiating for a new position or job title. “How women negotiate their career paths is arguably a more important determinant of lifetime earnings than negotiating a little extra money,” said Hannah Riley Bowles, a senior lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, who has conducted many studies on gender and negotiation. Some women may bridle — justifiably — at adjusting their behavior to conform to stereotypes. But the negotiation experts say that they think about these strategies pragmatically. “These stereotypes will hold us back, so we might as well use them to move forward,” added Joan C. Williams, a of “What Works for Women at Work. ” Here are some strategies for approaching negotiations at work: Groundwork Asking for a raise shouldn’t be rushed or boiled down to one short conversation. To prepare, keep a record of every piece of positive feedback you receive over time, and catalog any objective metrics that help illustrate your contributions. This is easy to overlook when you’re busy. Be careful about how you present the information — in a performance review might be more effective instead of naked . Women also benefit when other people highlight their accomplishments with the experts said. That’s why it’s important for women to seek not only mentors, but also what some call sponsors, professionals who actively trumpet your work. Women tend to negotiate less for themselves than men, when there aren’t clear standards on what they should be asking for, studies found. In fact, women worked longer and made fewer errors but paid themselves less than men did for similar tasks, according to another study. But that effect went away when women were given data on what others paid themselves. There are several ways to gather objective numbers supporting why a particular salary is merited. “The next time a recruiter calls you up, she is your new best friend, even if you don’t want to move,” said Ms. Williams, also founding director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings College of Law. Or seek one out. “Talk to her because she is the one who knows what you are worth on the open market. ” Women need to speak with men about salaries, too. If they network only with other women, experts said, they are more likely to come up with numbers that are systematically less. Specific Language When negotiating for higher pay, research has found that it is not enough for women to act in a way that conforms to stereotypes. Acting feminine enough — that is, showing they care about maintaining good relationships as well as the communal good over themselves, for instance — helps women in the likability department. And that’s important. But that doesn’t necessarily make the person in the position of power any more likely to grant a woman’s request. Women also need to legitimize their requests, or find ways to make them seem more appropriate, according to a study that Prof. Riley Bowles and Prof. Babcock published in 2012. That means saying something like, “My supervisor suggested that I to talk to you about raising my compensation. ” Women should also frame requests from the employer’s perspective. “The key thing is to turn it around and think about what it is legitimate to this person and what they value,” Professor Riley Bowles added. She refers to this as the “ ” strategy: You might be thinking about something from your perspective, but when you make the pitch, it should come out as “we. ” This, she says, is good advice for men, too. It just may be particularly important for women. Negotiate in Person Negotiation by email can backfire. “It comes across very cold, very hard and very direct, so all of the things that women tend to do in conversation that soften their approach are impossible to do in email,” Professor Babcock said. Email also requires waiting for a response. “If you are having a conversation, you can judge more accurately about how your request is going over,” she added, “and you can adjust your request as you see the reaction. ” That’s what may have caused one woman to have a recent job offer rescinded, a situation that recently made the rounds in the blogosphere and media. The candidate, known only as W. was offered a position as a philosophy professor at Nazareth College in Rochester. In response, she emailed the job search committee and listed items that would “make my decision easier. ” W. also said in the email that she knew some requests would be easier to grant than others, indicating that she knew she wouldn’t get everything. Nazareth says it declines comment on personnel issues. In a blog post, W. said she figured asking couldn’t hurt. But it apparently did: In response, the college reportedly emailed her back and said it had determined that she was more interested in teaching at a research university. “It is impossible to say in any particular case whether” gender played a role, Professor Babcock said. “The research could not be more clear in that we tolerate more aggressive or assertive behavior by men more than women. ” Outside Offers Receiving an offer for a more lucrative position may seem like a prime opportunity to negotiate. But this tactic may harm women because it can be perceived as a threat, experts said, “Every negotiation textbook says to use an outside offer, except for mine,” said Professor Babcock, who with Professor Riley Bowles, studied the effects of using outside offers in an experimental setting. “That is seen as aggressive when used by a woman. ” If you do want to use this strategy, she said you have to be careful about how you craft your language. Approach the situation as a dialogue instead of a negotiation. She said women might say something like, “Hey, there is something I really want to talk about. I want to stay. Is there a way to make this happen for me?” Keeping all this in mind isn’t easy, which is why experts suggest the situation with a friend or partner. Practice how you might present yourself to make sure your request appears appropriate and persuasive, while also demonstrating that you are concerned about communal goals. “When you are personally inflamed or nervous, helps to get into someone else’s perspective,” Professor Riley Bowles said. “It takes a lot of practice. ” | 1 |
Starting in the 1970s, eight prosecutors in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section set up a standing meeting. Once a year, they would gather in the deputy attorney general’s conference room and run an elaborate pool for the N. C. A. A. men’s basketball tournament. “We mostly followed the law,” said Reid Weingarten, one of the pool’s charter members. The pool lasted decades, surviving long after the colleagues had left for other jobs. Like most N. C. A. A. tournament pools, it brought friends together for good fun. Any financial stakes paled in comparison to the competitive ones. Participants got carried away with preselection research. And they were merciless in lambasting one another’s pet predilections. “Eric” — that would be Eric H. Holder Jr. the future attorney general — “would always pick U. C. L. A. because he was a Kareem guy,” Weingarten said, referring to Kareem ’s alma mater. “And he would always pick the Ivy League team, because he went to Columbia. ” But what made the bracket truly unusual was its structure. The participants did not pick games rather, they drafted teams. (Random selection dictated the drafting order.) Owning the team that won it all merited the largest reward, of course, but it also was worth something to have a team that made the Final Four or the team to make the round of 16. This was not, in other words, your ordinary office pool. “I find blind pool picking tedious, ridiculous and not fun,” Weingarten said. That is not to say there is anything wrong with simple pools millions of Americans take part in one every March, often merely for the prize of office or family bragging rights. In fact, one recently existed in a place even higher than the Justice Department. For the previous six N. C. A. A. tournaments, Kyle Lierman, then of the White House Office of Public Engagement, ran BOTUS — Bracket of the United States — for hundreds of members of President Barack Obama’s staff. (He will run the pool again this year it has been rechristened BOTUS 44.) There were no financial stakes, Lierman said, and the president’s bracket, publicly filled out on ESPN, was automatically entered every year. “He did well a couple years,” Lierman said. “Other years, not so well. ” The N. C. A. A. tournament, which kicks off Tuesday, is the Super Bowl of sports wagering. Actually, it is the Super Bowl twice over. The American Gaming Association, a trade group for the casino industry, estimated that Americans will wager more than $10 billion on the tournament this year, most of it illegally, compared with $4. 7 billion on the Super Bowl. And that figure does not include the multitudes of office pools, with their $5 or $10 entry fees. Officially, the N. C. A. A. opposes “all forms of legal and illegal sports wagering. ” “Despite the N. C. A. A.’s protests against gambling,” said Geoff Freeman, the chief executive of the gaming association, which supports the broad legalization of sports wagering, “they’ve created the biggest gambling event in American history. They wisely did it with great marketing, tremendous use of the bracket and infiltration into the American cultural lifestyle. ” Most pools are straightforward: Take a blank bracket, predict winners for every game and submit it before the first one tips off. But for a certain breed of fan, like those aforementioned anticorruption lawyers, the standard pool is not enough. Several have devised sophisticated, even byzantine alterations on the theme. Noah Chestnut, a product manager at the sports website Bleacher Report, crafted a pool several years ago that is similar to the one used by the lawyers. In his pool, drafting is . Entrants are allocated a $100 budget that must be spent on four to six teams whoever offers the most for a given team buys it. (When Kentucky entered the 2015 tournament undefeated, the successful draftee paid $96 for the privilege of selecting the Wildcats, who lost in the semifinals.) “I’ve always preferred to draft to everything else in life,” Chestnut said. “I don’t actually enjoy the games as much as the time before the games. ” A common tweak in irregular pools is to adjust how many points a participant receives for picking an underdog in order to make every game closer to an effective tossup. Picking a 14th seed that wins its first game, some reason, should be worth more than picking a No. 3 seed that holds serve. Chestnut, for example, weighted the scoring so that additional points were available when a team upset a favorite: 3 points, for instance, when a No. 10 beat a No. 7. And The Wall Street Journal reported several years ago on a biostatistician who used sophisticated mathematical formulas to determine point values for every matchup based on how previous, similar matchups had turned out. Similarly, in the early 1980s, Stephen Brown raided the microfiche at the University of Virginia where he was a graduate student. Armed with pencil and paper, he consulted past bracket results from The New York Times and, based on previous outcomes, calculated upset bonus points, which increased as the bracket narrowed. “I was supposed to be writing my dissertation on an poet named Edward Young,” said Brown, now an English professor at Rhode Island College. The bonus points, though, were secondary to Brown’s core innovation: picking. Instead of filling out an entire bracket before the first game, participants picked games in the second round after knowing the results in the first, and so on. The structure keeps more participants in the running, as anyone with a bad first round, say, can make up for it with a good second round — particularly if there are more upsets, and thus more available upset bonus points. “I never liked the idea of filling out the brackets,” he said, adding, “It makes so much more sense, and would take more judgment and skill, if you knew who was actually playing every game. ” Brown’s pool survives to this day, administered by his nephew. So does a offshoot centered in the Washington area. (Full disclosure: The offshoot is this reporter’s annual pool of choice.) Finally, for those who prefer getting ready for the party to the party itself, Bryan Cimorelli’s pool, the Conference Tournament Challenge, is for you. It covers not the one N. C. A. A. championship tournament, but the 32 Division I conference tournaments, which this season comprised 294 games, per his calculation. Each tournament is treated like the N. C. A. A. tournament, with point values increasing each round. Additional points are awarded for upsets, calculated by a method too exasperating to explain here. Values are additionally multiplied depending on how prominent the conference is: Conferences like the Southwestern Athletic are the baseline, while points in the Ivy League are multiplied by 3. 5 the Atlantic 10 by 4. 5 and the six power conferences by 5. “I like things that are really complicated and take a lot of thought,” said Cimorelli, perhaps stating the obvious. Cimorelli, whose day job in budgeting also involves spreadsheets, emails a preview every morning and a recap every night to ensure his pool’s 40 participants remain engaged. A recent preview was more than 15, 000 words. It informed competitors that only one had picked Richmond to win the Atlantic 10, discussed coaching seniority in the Southeastern Conference and made the observation that while more than half the pool had picked Rice to upset Paso in one game, none had the Owls reaching the Conference USA final. On Sunday, the C. T. C. ended and, soon after, the selection committee handed down the N. C. A. A. tournament bracket. For Cimorelli, it always is perhaps the year’s biggest letdown. “I don’t even want to look at a bracket,” he said. “I fill one out because it’s my sports fan’s obligation, but after 300 games in 13 days, I get to the actual tournament and I’m like, This is boring. ” | 1 |
It was on the minds of New Yorkers, who immediately drew comparisons to Sept. 11, 2001. It could be felt in the police response, which included teams of heavily armed officers stationed at key targets and the Joint Terrorism Task Force of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Police Department. But for Mayor Bill de Blasio and top city officials, terrorism was the word that could not be spoken on Sunday. Seeking to project a responsible and measured reaction, the mayor pointedly avoided calling the bombing in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan on Saturday that injured 29 people — and the presence of a seemingly related but undetonated device a few blocks away — a possible act of terror, declining at several points on Sunday to do so. He emphasized that there would be no “easy answers” and that no suspect had yet been apprehended. Absent a motivation, Mr. de Blasio suggested the word terrorism should not be used, shaking his head in disapproval at the notion that the basic facts of the bombing could be described that way. “Here is what we know: It was intentional, it was a violent act, it was certainly a criminal act, it was a bombing — that’s what we know,” he said on Sunday, flanked by law enforcement officials at Police Headquarters in Lower Manhattan. “To understand there were any specific motivations, political motivations, any connection to an organization — that’s what we don’t know. ” The approach appeared to be aimed at calming nerves in a city on edge, and at avoiding a rush to conclusions, both in New York City and across the country. Unlike other past events that were labeled terrorism, including a 2014 ax attack on police officers in Queens by a man said to have been inspired by the Islamic State, the authorities have yet to identify a suspect or suspects in the bombing that would allow them to determine — through interviews or a history of online activity — the underlying reason for the attack. The F. B. I. as of late Sunday, had not officially labeled the attack as terrorism, though Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president who is supported by Mr. de Blasio, released a statement that characterized it as among three “apparent terror attacks” on Saturday, including an explosion in New Jersey and a knife attack in Minnesota. “It could have been something personally motivated,” Mr. de Blasio said. “We don’t know yet. ” The approach by Mr. de Blasio at news conferences over the weekend appeared similar to the initial response to another recent explosion in Manhattan, in which a man from Virginia was seriously injured in July when he jumped on a device similar to a homemade firework in Central Park. City officials quickly tried to dissociate that explosion from any broad terrorism plot, instead labeling it the act of a hobbyist experimenting with fireworks. This drew criticism from some New Yorkers, who felt officials did so in haste simply to quell fears. No one has been arrested for placing or assembling the Central Park device, and the police have not wavered from their initial hypothesis about the explosion. The police later announced the device contained substances “which are commonly and legally available for sale in certain hardware stores. ” One of the chemicals was TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, which has been used to detonate bombs in terror attacks overseas and has become the Islamic State’s explosive of choice. On Sunday, police officials said there was no link between the Central Park explosion and the one in Chelsea. In striking a tone of deliberation on Sunday, Mr. de Blasio risked creating a dissonance between the dictionary definition of terrorism — violence with a political motive — and the creeping sense of inevitability that the terror attacks more common elsewhere in the world would find their way to New York. To some, Mr. de Blasio also appeared to conflate terrorism in general — a deadly tactic with many political motives — with terrorism motivated or carried out by the Islamic State and other radical Muslim groups. “I believe the mayor was saying there was no connection with international terrorism and that is correct,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, said on Sunday, referring to the mayor’s comments the night before, when he said there was no initial indication the bombing was terrorism. ”A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism,” Mr. Cuomo added. “But it’s not linked to international terrorism. In other words, we find no ISIS connection. ” The city has experienced bombings with a variety of motivations over the years, from the Weather Underground, which opposed the Vietnam War, to George P. Metesky, the Mad Bomber who in the 1940s and ’50s terrorized the city with bombs in subway stations, movie theaters and a Macy’s department store. His motive appeared to be anger at the electric company Consolidated Edison. Of late, however, many episodes later deemed terror attacks have been committed by homegrown extremists inspired by the Islamic State or Al Qaeda. Before the news conference at Police Headquarters on Sunday, Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Cuomo toured the bombing scene on West 23rd Street near Avenue of the Americas and spoke with residents and visitors at a diner, a barbershop and inside a Starbucks. The two men — bitter political rivals — embraced before their tour and offered words of reassurance to tourists and locals alike. “Don’t let them scare us,” Mr. Cuomo said to a woman from the neighborhood. Mr. de Blasio applauded a woman who made her regular Sunday trip to church in Chelsea. “We don’t even know what this is yet,” he told her. | 1 |
The U. S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) offers a grim assessment of the state of religious liberty worldwide in its 2017 report, noting that the state of affairs “is worsening in both the depth and breadth of violations. ”[“The blatant assaults have become so frightening — attempted genocide, the slaughter of innocents, and wholesale destruction of places of worship — that less egregious abuses go unnoticed or at least unappreciated,” the report states. The report goes on to lament that many observers “have become numb to violations of the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion” and now simply take them for granted. The USCIRF takes care to distinguish religious liberty from mere freedom of worship, to include the freedom — either alone or in community with others and in public or private — to manifest one’s religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. Along with its appraisal of the global situation regarding religious freedom, the Council also offers an evaluation of individual nations in its 2017 report. Noteworthy in this regard is its inclusion of Russia for the first time ever in its list of “Countries of Particular Concern” (CPC) for “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom. ” The report makes note of a decision by the Russian Supreme Court to ban the existence of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in that country as a particularly egregious example of these violations. Their right to religious freedom, the report observes, is being eliminated thoroughly — and yet “legally” under Russian law. Russia’s continued use of its “ ” law as “a tool to curtail religious freedoms” is one of the reasons USCIRF has recommended that Russia be designated as a “country of particular concern,” the report stated. Not long ago, the Pew Research Center reported that Egypt is now the country with the highest level of government restrictions of religion in the entire world, yet despite this distinction, the 2017 USCIRF report removed Egypt as a CPC, placing the country on its “Tier 2,” its former “Watch List. ” Curiously, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been banned in Egypt since 1960 — the very crime the USCIRF adduced for placing Russia on its list of CPCs. Religious persecution in Egypt has been under scrutiny of late, due to the heightened presence of the Islamic State in the region of North Sinai and elsewhere. On Palm Sunday, Islamic State suicide bombers bombed two Christian churches near Cairo, killing at least 45 worshipers and injuring scores more. The USCIRF report acknowledges “the government’s widespread repression of human rights,” while claiming that religious freedom conditions improved in several areas over the past year. As positive signs, the report states that President Abdel Fattah Sisi consistently condemned sectarian attacks and pressed for assistance for victims and accountability for perpetrators, pushed for reform in religious discourse, and attended a Coptic Christmas Eve mass for the third consecutive year. By early 2017, the government also completed rebuilding and restoring more than 50 churches destroyed by extremists in 2013. Egyptian courts have made some progress in bringing to justice perpetrators of past attacks, the report states, and in 2016, prosecutions, convictions, and imprisonment of Egyptian citizens for blasphemy and related charges decreased. As an independent, bipartisan U. S. federal government advisory body, the USCIRF is uniquely positioned to offer counsel to the President and the State Department. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter | 1 |
The GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare is still moving forward, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan confirmed in London Wednesday. [Ryan answered questions at the Policy Exchange think tank in London Wednesday. When asked about plans to move forward with a Republican Health care plan, the Speaker was unequivocal. “Health care is not dead, we’re still working on it,” he said. “We have to step in front of this crisis,” Ryan said about the future of president Barack Obama’s signature piece of legislation, the Affordable Healthcare Act, commonly called “Obamacare. ” Ryan characterized the current system as “collapsing under its own weight” and pointed to numerous states and counties in which only a single insurance company is still offering coverage. “We’re talking about a system in dire need of reform,” he cautioned. The plan Ryan himself wholeheartedly pushed to replace Obamacare, the “American Health Care Act (AHCA),” had to be withdrawn before it reached a vote due to insufficient support on the House floor and even less favorable public polling. In the intervening weeks, however, there have been indications the different factions within the House Republican majority, including the Freedom Caucus so instrumental in defeating the AHCA, have been readying a second attempt at repeal and replace. Speaker Ryan seemed to confirm that such a regrouping is in the works. “We’re in the midst of negotiating sorta finishing touches,” he said of an unannounced plan. “It’s difficult to do. We’re very close. It’s basically ‘make good on the promises that were made. ’” While details were skant, Ryan offered up what he considered the goals of the next Republican effort to make good on one of the party’s standing campaign issues. “We want to have a system in America where everyone has affordable access to good health insurance … including people with conditions. That is not what the current law does and it’s just gonna take us a little time to make good on that,” Ryan said. Ryan also explained his reasoning for keeping the order of his legislative priorities unchanged: finishing health care first before moving on to tax reform. “It makes it much easier for us to do tax reform if we first do health care reform,” Ryan said. According to him, repealing Obamacare will necessarily repeal nearly $1 trillion in taxes. “The way that works in our numbers is ten points of corporate tax rate reduction. ” | 1 |
Rory McIlroy joined President Donald Trump on Sunday morning for a round of golf at Florida’s Trump International Golf course. [The Irish golfer, now ranked #3 in the world behind Dustin Johnson and Jason Day, got a chance to watch the newly elected president air out that $3700 golden driver gifted to him last week by Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Although former President Barack Obama forbade anyone to release his scores to the public, McIlroy revealed to No Laying Up that America’s 45th president shot about 80 and was a “decent player for a guy in his 70’s!” major champion McIlroy, who is recovering from a rib fracture, got a call from Trump on Saturday night. Rory wasn’t planning to play until next weekend’s Championship but decided to accelerate his schedule so he could to tee it up with the president. McIlroy joined the New York billionaire and played from the forward tees, requiring minimal use of his driver. Using the TrackMan swing speed device, McIlroy concluded that his swing speed is almost back to where it was before the injury. According to WH spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, initially Trump only “intended to play a few holes” with the Northern Ireland native, who now permanently resides in Florida. But, the president was enjoying the day so much that he “decided to play longer. ” Nick Mullen from ISM and a friend of the president Rich Levine completed the illustrious foursome. Big battle today at Trump International with Clear CEO Garry Singer @McIlroyRory @PaulONeillYES @realDonaldTrump Drain the putt … pic. twitter. — ClearSports (@ClearSportsLLC) February 19, 2017, A picture posted by Clear Sports, showed Paul O’Neill and Clear Sports CEO Garry Singer posing with Trump on the same day. The short guy in the picture needs a victory at the Masters in April to complete the prestigious grand slam of golf, accomplished by only five players: Gene Sarazen, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan and Tiger Woods. | 1 |
BREAKING: Hillary’s ‘LOCKER ROOM’ Moment…Hidden Cam Catches EXPLOSIVE Video! [WATCH] Oct 28, 2016 Previous post
Project Veritas is releasing one video each day until the election, but their latest video is damning enough to take out Hillary—or at least lose millions of independents in the process.
Her own campaign, in two separate events shown in the video below, show her complete hypocrisy, dirty dealings and illegal actions to suppress Republican voters.
But what’s even worse is that for as much as Hillary attacked Trump’s comments released on video from a decade ago , getting her media attack dogs to go after him full force, her own people do exactly the same thing.
And Project Veritas has brought us the proof. From Political Insider:
It’s official! Hillary Clinton and her campaign just had their own “locker room moment.” Watch (below) as this hidden camera video from Project Veritas shows Hillary Clinton campaign field organizer Wylie Mao, laughing and bragging about being able to grab a “co-worker’s” ass and not get fired.
The video was filmed of Mao at a bar in West Palm Beach, and he explained just how acceptable harassment is on Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
WARNING: Contains adult language and content.
FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE CLICK LINK | 0 |
And this is,why every single American needs to vote for Trump.
His first order of business would probably be to pardon Assange.
Vote Trump, America, vote Trump!!! | 0 |
WASHINGTON — When Donald J. Trump goes low, congressional Republicans go quiet. Their tolerance of Mr. Trump, even at the risk of humiliation, stems from a complex brew of political, policy and personal calculations that differ somewhat between party leaders and officials up for . But on one point, all sides agree: They have never seen a comparable situation, with a presidential nominee in open warfare with party leaders after a nominating convention. And Mr. Trump’s provocations are making the Republicans’ control of the Senate, perhaps even the House, more tenuous. Many Republicans, even those whose contempt for Mr. Trump matches their ill will for President Obama, still view the choice between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton as a binary one, with implications for every policy area they care about, from judicial appointments to the economy to immigration. They believe that Mr. Trump, guided by a Congress, will break their way more than Mrs. Clinton ever would. For others, the vacancy on the Supreme Court — and its potential to reshape the high court’s rulings for years — overshadow almost everything else, even their nominee’s increasingly erratic statements and grasp of basic facts. “The Supreme Court is probably the choice that will have the single most effect on the nation,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, where Mr. Trump is struggling to win over an overwhelmingly Republican state. Congressional Republicans who are up for — especially the handful like Senators John McCain of Arizona and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire who still face primaries — have made a basic calculation. They have criticized Mr. Trump, but not withdrawn their endorsements. And party leaders have decided the more distance they put between themselves and Mr. Trump, the more likely they are to lose their congressional majorities. Alienating Mr. Trump’s supporters would cost them just enough votes to lose their seats. Their fears at this point appear justified. A poll conducted the last week of July by CBS News found that support for Mr. Trump among Republican voters rose to 81 percent from 79 percent. So the leaders largely responded to Mr. Trump’s attacks with feigned indifference. “Republican elected officials are in a tough spot,” said Nathan L. Gonzales, the editor of The Rothenberg Gonzales Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter. “They are criticized for not listening to the grass roots and criticized for not denouncing the nominee chosen by the grass roots. Some Republicans are reluctant to attack Donald Trump because they’d risk alienating 35 to 40 percent of the party who supported him in the primaries. ” Mr. Trump pointedly declined on Tuesday to endorse Speaker Paul D. Ryan, the nation’s elected Republican, and verged on outright opposition to Mr. McCain and Ms. Ayotte, just hours after Mr. Obama challenged Republicans to denounce their nominee. Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump have put Republicans into an untenable position: Criticizing their nominee could be seen as taking the advice of a president whom their core voters strongly dislike, potentially alienating the very people they need for — but sitting idly as Mr. Trump attacks them and makes inflammatory comments might alienate more moderate voters. “If you are repeatedly having to say, in very strong terms, that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him?” Mr. Obama asked during a news conference on Tuesday. Mr. Ryan’s spokesman tersely responded that the speaker had never sought Mr. Trump’s endorsement, and Ms. Ayotte more or less brushed off the matter, saying, “I call it like I see it,” in reference to her defense of a fallen Army captain whose family Mr. Trump had derided. While many Republicans are hoping for ticket splitters — those who might vote Democrat for president but Republican on the rest of the ticket — the parsing is all the more difficult. Many experts are skeptical that the approach can work. “In 2008 and 2010, voters did not draw distinctions,” said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. “It was not like Passover, where the door was marked, ‘This one should be spared.’ No, the Angel of Death came in and said no ‘Let’s kill them all.’ ” It is not just a question of individual desires to win — although that certainly drives many of the statements about Mr. Trump that come short of rescinding an endorsement. Republicans believe they need to maintain the House and the Senate, through a blend of votes from their base and split tickets, to pursue a policy agenda. “The speaker’s goal, one that you set collectively with members of your conference, is to promote ideas and enact policies that make a difference,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican operative who once worked for former Speaker John A. Boehner. “The political reality, though, is that this goal can only be reached if members are not put at risk because the top of the national ticket underperforms. ” Republican leaders also know that in an election cycle, the core of the party would most likely be disposed to reject candidates who embody the Washington establishment. This was the lesson Senator Ted Cruz of Texas learned when he was booed from the stage at the Republican convention last month for declining to get behind Mr. Trump, and accounts for some of the heat that Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a founder of the Never Trump movement, has taken from his party back home this year. Then, there is the vehement opposition to Mrs. Clinton, especially how they view her role in the Benghazi attacks, that has dominated the airwaves for years among Republicans. “I happen to think that lying to the American people is a step way above and beyond some of the disappointing rhetoric of Donald Trump,” said Mr. Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee. He added: “Nothing united Republicans more than Hillary Clinton. ” Some still may pull away. On Tuesday, Representative Richard Hanna, Republican of New York, said he would endorse Mrs. Clinton for president, calling Mr. Trump “unfit to serve. ” But Mr. Hanna is not representative of the broader Republican conference. “He came to Congress as an outsider and never fit neatly into the typical boxes,” Mr. Gonzales said. “He would have had another serious primary challenge this year, if he had decided to seek . But since he’s retiring, he apparently feels even more freedom to say what’s on his mind. ” But if Mr. Trump falls in the polls and Republicans running for start to realize they would do better separating from him and digging deeper for voters, Mr. Hanna might not be alone. | 1 |
Non-GMO 'crop circles' showing up in corn fields in Nebraska
Daniel Barker Tags: anti-GMO , crop circles , Our Little Rebellion (NaturalNews) An American company has hit on a novel way to promote its non-GMO corn snacks while raising awareness concerning the dominance of GM agriculture in the country – by using crop circles as an advertising medium.Our Little Rebellion – a company that sells a line of non-GMO corn snack products called PopCorners – has joined up with Nebraska farmer Jim McGowan to create a giant message in his cornfield urging people to "Join The Corn Revolution."The 9-acre crop artwork also features a large-scale version of the PopCorners website address and the logo of the Non-GMO Project, an organization that verifies Our Little Rebellion's products.Courtney Pineau, associate director of the Non-GMO Project, said:"It's super creative – we're really excited about it. I've never really seen a brand undertake an endeavor like this, so that's one of the things that we really loved about it."The project involved some high-tech GPS mapping, a crop circle artist and a week of hand-cutting corn by a team of 15 people.A drone camera captured the creation of the artwork, as seen in the video below:Fifth-generation farmer McGowan said:"We're really excited to be able to see the whole circle here come into effect. Most of the time in production agriculture, it's treated as a regular raw commodity and you don't even know what happens to it. To see the actual chain complete with this product from that field is really special."From Eco Salon :"The project seeks to draw attention to the baffling 92 percent of American corn acreage currently being grown with genetically modified seeds – and to Our Little Rebellion's efforts to source the 20 million pounds of corn it uses annually from the other eight percent." Meeting a growing demand for non-GMO foods To manufacture its products, Our Little Rebellion has had to take a creative approach, partnering with dozens of small farmers like McGowan to restructure supply chains so that they can obtain enough non-GMO corn to keep production steady.The Non-GMO Project says that the growing demand for non-GMO corn, soybean and canola is encouraging more farmers to plant non-GMO crops.Despite massive lobbying and propaganda campaigns on the part of the GM agriculture industry, Americans have consistently spoken out in favor of GMO labeling and the right to have a choice between purchasing GMO and non-GMO foods.There is a market for natural, organic, GMO-free foods , and those who are willing to put the time and effort into developing these products and the supply chains to support them are likely to be rewarded in the long run. GMO industry lies exposed, public now facing the truth Public awareness of the issues surrounding GMOs is growing. More people than ever now realize that the industry has failed to live up to its promise to "feed a hungry world."GMO crop yields are not bigger, the GM agricultural model hurts small farmers and poisons the planet with glyphosate, and GM cross-contamination and the development of herbicide-resistant superweeds are threatening the entire agricultural spectrum – and the public is finding out about it.The GMO deception is no longer sustainable, just as GM crops are not a part of a truly sustainable agricultural system. The sooner food producers realize that and begin giving the public what it wants – i.e. healthy, organically-raised , sustainable food products – the more chance they will have to survive and thrive in an evolving and highly competitive marketplace.Smaller companies like Our Little Rebellion and established food giants like Dannon (which recently made a pledge towards GMO-labeling transparency and introducing non-GMO products) are likely to benefit over the long haul for having joined the "non-GMO rebellion" early on.The demand for healthy food is real, and the market will eventually be forced to meet that demand. Sources: | 0 |
• “Moonlight” is best picture. In a bewildering end to the show, “La La Land” was first announced as the winner before its jubilant cast and crew were interrupted with a scarcely believable correction. • Emma Stone won best actress for “La La Land. ” Casey Affleck won best actor for “Manchester by the Sea. ” • “La La Land” won six Oscars, including best director, best original score and best song (denying Miranda an EGOT in the process). The film had 14 nominations, tied for the most ever. • Jimmy Kimmel hosted the show. • Here’s a red carpet slide show and a fashion review. LOS ANGELES — In an epic flub that drew gasps of horror — and joy — at the Dolby Theater here, Faye Dunaway mistakenly named “La La Land” best picture at the 89th Academy Awards on Sunday night, but in reality “Moonlight” won the top prize. The producers of “La La Land” were still thanking their families and fellow artists when the interjection came that “Moonlight” had in fact won, as everyone wondered if that was a joke. But it wasn’t, and the “La La Land” people quickly exited the stage as producers and stars of “Moonlight,” just as stunned as everyone else, walked on. Warren Beatty and Ms. Dunaway had presented the best picture award. When Mr. Beatty opened the envelope, he took an extended pause before showing the card to Ms. Dunaway, who then announced “La La Land” as the winner. “I want to tell you what happened,” Mr. Beatty said in the chaotic moments after “Moonlight” was announced as the winner. “I opened the envelope, and it said ‘Emma Stone, La La Land.’ That’s why I took such a long look at Faye and at you. I wasn’t trying to be funny. This is ‘Moonlight,’ the best picture. ” “Moonlight,” the story of a young, gay, black man, won three statuettes in total, including best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor. “Very clearly, even in my dreams this could not be true,” said Barry Jenkins, the director of “Moonlight. ” “But to hell with dreams, I’m done with it, because this is true. Oh my goodness. ” Held up as an escapist, antidote for the times, the “La La Land” won six Oscars, including statuettes for Damien Chazelle’s directing and Ms. Stone’s acting, during a jaunty ceremony that swung between and political acrimony — before its wild ending. “It threw me more than a bit,” Mahershala Ali, who won best supporting actor for “Moonlight,” said backstage. “I just didn’t want to go up there and take anything from somebody, you know?” PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that handles the Oscars balloting, took responsibility for the mixup. “We sincerely apologize to ‘Moonlight,’ ‘La La Land,’ Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and Oscar viewers for the error,” the firm said in a statement. “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. ” ABC News tweeted out a photo that showed that the envelope in Mr. Beatty’s hand read “Actress in a Leading Role. ” After the show, Ms. Stone said on ABC that she had held onto the envelope with the card bearing her name after she won best actress. In a blog post published on Medium this month, Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz of the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, explained the process of handling the envelopes for the Oscars. Mr. Cullinan wrote that he and Ms. Ruiz each had a full set of envelopes and stood on opposite sides of the stage, where they handed envelopes to presenters. “It doesn’t sound very complicated,” Mr. Cullinan said, “but you have to make sure you’re giving the presenter the right envelope. ” Here are other notable moments from the show: “Hacksaw Ridge,” the true story of a heroic World War II medic, won Oscars for sound mixing and film editing, a category that is often predictive of the best picture winner. Kenneth Lonergan won the best screenplay statuette for his “Manchester by the Sea,” the story of a grieving New England handyman. Casey Affleck, who played the lead role in Mr. Lonergan’s film, beat Denzel Washington (“Fences”) for best actor. “I’m just dumbfound I’m included,” Mr. Affleck said. The supporting acting prizes went to Viola Davis for her work in “Fences,” about a Pittsburgh family in the 1950s, and Mr. Ali for his portrayal of a sympathetic drug dealer in “Moonlight,” which also collected the adapted screenplay Oscar, for Mr. Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney. “All you people out there who feel like there’s no mirror for you, that your life is not reflected, the academy has your back, the A. C. L. U. has your back, we have your back — and for the next four years, we will not leave you alone, we will not forget you,” Mr. Jenkins said from the stage. Among the nominees leaving with nothing: “Lion,” an adoption with six nominations, and the box office hit “Hidden Figures,” which had three nods. As expected, Ms. Davis won the best supporting actress Oscar — her first — for playing a housewife in “Fences. ” (She won best actress at the 2010 Tony Awards for playing the same role onstage. She was the one who decided to drop to the supporting category for the Oscars.) An intense, nearly overcome Ms. Davis touched on her family, her industry “cheerleaders,” the film’s director (Mr. Washington) graveyards, dashed dreams and the playwright August Wilson, who adapted his “Fences” for the screen and whom Ms. Viola praised as someone who “exhumed and exalted the ordinary people. ” The night’s first award went to Mr. Ali, who tearfully thanked the cast and crew of “Moonlight” and his own family. “Peace and blessings,” he said, avoiding a repeat of the pointed comments he made at previous awards shows about the Trump administration’s travel ban. After two years when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was criticized as racist for overlooking black actors and films about experiences, this year’s nominee list was remarkably diverse. Six black actors received nominations, a record. The foreign film and documentary races were notably relevant this year. Among foreign films, the German satire “Toni Erdmann” initially had the momentum. But Mr. Trump’s travel ban put the spotlight on Iran’s entry, “The Salesman,” whose director, Asghar Farhadi, said that he would boycott the ceremony in protest — a decision that may have ultimately helped his film win. Anousheh Ansari, an businesswoman, accepted the award for “The Salesman” and read a message from Mr. Farhadi. The note said that he was not attending in solidarity with immigrants “who have been disrespected by the inhumane law,” referring to the Trump administration’s travel ban. Among nonfiction films, Ava DuVernay’s look at mass incarceration, “13th,” was campaigned for aggressively by Netflix, and the civil “I Am Not Your Negro” surged late in the season. But the nearly “O. J.: Made in America” was named best documentary. In accepting the award, Ezra Edelman, the film’s director, dedicated the Oscar to Nicole Brown Simpson, Ronald Goldman and “the victims of police violence, police brutality, racially motivated violence and criminal injustice. ” Mr. Kimmel, an Everyman schtick carefully in place, opened his monologue by asking viewers, both conservative and liberal, to come together in a calm conversation. “If we could all do that we could make America great again, we really could,” he said, to applause. Mr. Kimmel, appearing confident and calm — and with the audience, munching on Red Vines and Junior Mints, now firmly on his side — soon took sharper aim. In a reference to President Trump, Mr. Kimmel said, “Remember last year, when it seemed like the Oscars were racist?” As the ceremony went on, organizers played up Hollywood glamour and paid homage to Academy Awards history. Music interludes were taken from the scores of “Top Gun” and “Tootsie. ” Shirley MacLaine appeared as a presenter, joking that the standing ovation was “the nicest reception I’ve had in 250, 000 years. ” At one point, Mr. Kimmel trotted out a tour bus full of unsuspecting tourists, to mixed results. But politics was a consistent topic. Gael García Bernal, presenting best animated film to “Zootopia,” said, “As a Mexican, as a Latin American, as a migrant worker, as a human being, I am against any form of wall that wants to separate us. ” Left to bridge the gap between people watching from their sofas in Kansas City and the theater filled with coastal elites was Mr. Kimmel. In a moment that certainly checked the populist box, the busload of unsuspecting Hollywood tourists, selfie sticks aloft, found themselves ushered into the Dolby Theater, and shuffled before Hollywood and the world. The bit, which went on at some length, drew a polarizing response on social media, with some viewers criticizing Mr. Kimmel for exploiting the tourists and mocking an Asian woman’s name. Later, Mr. Kimmel joked that President Trump had not tweeted about the show. So Mr. Kimmel typed out a tweet to the president on his phone: “Hey @realDonaldTrump u up?” | 1 |
Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Sign up.) Ten days have passed since a fire ripped through an Oakland warehouse during an electronic music show and killed 36 people. The Times is chasing a number of questions that arose after the fire. The latest of what we know: • The victims: On Wednesday, firefighters ended their search of the structure that had housed a rambling artists’ colony. The final toll made it the country’s deadliest structure fire since 2003, when 100 people died at a nightclub in West Warwick, R. I. The Oakland victims, many of them artists and musicians who ranged in age from 17 to 61, have been profiled in The Times, The Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and East Bay Times, among other publications. On Sunday, the first funerals were held for two of the victims — Jonathan Bernbaum, 34, and Draven McGill, 17 — the Chronicle reported. • The cause: Investigators have not figured out how the fire erupted, but no evidence has suggested arson, they say. Scrutiny has centered on a possible electrical source. On Friday, officials ruled out an appliance that had seemed a likely culprit: a faulty refrigerator. Jake Jacobitz, who did electrical work at the warehouse, told East Bay Times that all of the structure’s power came from a single line threaded through a wall. Electrical breakers blew out frequently, he said. The authorities have warned we may never know for certain what caused the Dec. 2 blaze. Reporters from The Times’s graphics department illustrated how the mazelike layout of the warehouse complicated escape from the fire. • The owner: Chor Nar Siu Ng, the warehouse owner since 1988, has not been heard from. Examining city records, The Times’s Julie Turkewitz learned that Ms. Ng owns a number of properties in Oakland and has been fined in the past for “nuisance or substandard or hazardous or injurious” conditions. Several people who have stayed at the Ghost Ship said Ms. Ng had visited the warehouse, which was not permitted for residents. But it was unclear if she knew what was going on inside. • The master tenants: Derick Ion Almena and his wife, Micah Allison, who ran the Ghost Ship, have also avoided the public eye. Friends, associates and former tenants speaking in the news media have variously depicted the couple as misunderstood or manipulative. In an anguished interview on “Today” last week, Mr. Almena was asked whether he should be held accountable. “Should I be held accountable?” he said. “I can barely stand here right now. ” • The aftermath: Artists dwelling in illegal structures across the Bay Area are worried that inspectors would target them after the fire. The crackdown has been nationwide. There have been reports of spaces scrutinized or shut down in Baltimore, Nashville, Philadelphia, Dallas, Austin, Indianapolis, New Haven and Dubuque. Libby Schaaf, the Oakland mayor, said the city was weighing new measures to address fire safety, among them stricter requirements for smoke alarms and emergency exits. A criminal investigation into the fire is continuing. As Times reporters investigate the Ghost Ship fire, we are doing something new: posting regular updates on our findings. To share a tip or suggestion, email oaklandfire@nytimes. com. • Family members of victims killed in the 2011 Seal Beach salon shooting pleaded for a conclusion to the case. [Orange County Register] • San Jose drinking water is going to receive fluoride, years behind other Bay Area cities. [The Mercury News] • In college, but without a home: California students describe living in cars and sneaking into campus buildings to spend the night. [KQED] • Restorative justice practices at Fresno schools have curbed harsh punishments. But some teachers say their classes are out of control. [Fresno Bee] • Nina Jacobson is a Hollywood power player who brings the underrepresented to the big screen. [The New York Times] • Rabbi David Wolpe on sharing biblical stories and 100 years of life lessons with Kirk Douglas. [Opinion | Los Angeles Times] • No American company of Los Angeles Opera’s size is more committed to new and unusual work. [New Yorker] • Stanford University’s marching band was suspended after administrators found “a systemic cultural problem. ” [SFGate. com] • Property values have risen rapidly in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights, but there’s still a communal vibe. [The New York Times] • The best hot springs in California: Big Sur, Ojai and beyond. [Vogue] • On Sunday, “La La Land” won big at the Critics’ Choice Awards. The Golden Globe Awards nominees will be announced on Monday morning, followed by the Screen Actors Guild Awards nominees on Wednesday. • Catch performances of “The Nutcracker” in San Diego, Costa Mesa, Los Angeles, Modesto, San Francisco, Sacramento and Ukiah. • The California Economic Summit begins in Sacramento on Tuesday. The gathering of public and private leaders will discuss how the state can meet its water, housing and work force needs. • Can’t get to the snow? Winter Fest at the OC Fair and Event Center in Costa Mesa has you covered. Along with a snow play area, the festival offers lights, rides and ice skating. Opens Friday. Admission: $10. It’s getting close to that time when we start to ponder the year gone by. In that spirit, we’d like to inaugurate a contest, “Californian of the Year” — with you as judge. We’d love to know who you think deserves the recognition. Who can you nominate? Anyone. The nominee could be someone who made an impact in your community or on a larger stage. It could be a professor or an athlete, a librarian or a politician. In short: Tell us the Californian, in your view, who defined 2016. Email CAtoday@nytimes. com, and please be sure to include: • The name of your nominee. • A brief description of why you think he or she deserves the title. We’ll present a slate of finalists later this week and ask for your votes, then reveal the winner by the end of the year. 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 |
We Are about to Witness the Biggest Supermoon Since 1948 Nov 10, 2016 0 0
We are to witness something amazing on the eve of November 14 . On that day, the distance between our planet and the moon will be the shortest in almost 70 years! The last time it happened was in January 1948.
Earth’s natural satellite will appear about 14% bigger and 30% brighter in comparison with an average full moon. It is estimated that the next supermoon of this size will take place on 25 November 2034 , so make sure you don’t miss this beautiful celestial event (if the weather conditions in your region are favorable for skywatching, of course)!
As NASA reports:
“The full moon of November 14 is not only the closest full moon of 2016 but also the closest full moon to date in the 21 st century. The full moon won’t come this close to Earth again until 25 November 2034.” What Is a Supermoon
Almost all celestial bodies have elliptical orbits; that’s why the distance between our planet and the moon is not always the same. The further side of the moon’s orbit is called apogee and the closer one is called perigee. In short, when a full moon occurs on the perigee, then we get a supermoon phenomenon , which causes our natural satellite to appear closer and brighter in the night sky.
While supermoons are quite frequent (this year, we will have three of those), the full moon of November 14 will be within approximately 2 hours of perigee , which makes it a truly rare phenomenon. How to Watch a Supermoon
A perfect location to enjoy the coming supermoon (as well as any other astronomical phenomenon) is somewhere away from the city so that the urban lights don’t interfere with skywatching.
Don’t forget that the difference between a regular full moon and a supermoon is best seen to the human eye when the moon is close to the horizon.
According to NASA, “ When the moon is near the horizon, it can look unnaturally large when viewed through trees, buildings, or other foreground objects.”
The moon will be at the peak of its full phase and, therefore, will appear the biggest at 8:52am EST. For those of you living in Australia, the moon will reach its full phase at 12:52 a.m. AEST on November 15. Vote Up Anna LeMind Anna is the owner and lead editor of the websites Learning-mind.com and Lifeadvancer.com , and staff writer for The Mind Unleashed . She is passionate about learning new things and reflecting on thought-provoking ideas. She writes about technology, science, psychology and other related topics. She is particularly interested in topics regarding introversion, consciousness and subconscious, perception, human mind's potential, as well as the nature of reality and the universe. | 0 |
The Philippines has threatened to protest the launch of a building project on the Scarborough Shoal, a land formation within the Philippines’ sovereign territory that also falls within China’s “ line,” a territorial claim struck down by an international tribunal. [In a bizarre twist, however, the Chinese government denied any projects planned for the Scarborough Shoal and distanced itself from the Hainan Daily newspaper report claiming otherwise. That regional newspaper reported that Sansha City mayor Xiao Jie had announced new development projects in the Scarborough Shoal, including a new monitoring station. The Philippine Star notes that “Sansha” is a name typically used for a number of islands and shoals within Philippine and Vietnamese sovereign territory, including the Spratly Islands and the Scarborough Shoal. The newspaper adds that China has controlled the Scarborough Shoal since 2012 and not handed it over after the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague issued a ruling in the Philippines’ favor on the territorial dispute. While the Star identifies the Hainan Daily as a state newspaper, the Chinese government has denied the report. “We have checked with relevant authorities that the recent reports about building an environmental monitoring station on Huangyan Dao are false. There is no such a thing,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters on Wednesday. “China places great importance on its relationship with the Philippines and cherishes the sound momentum relations are enjoying now. ” The loudest protests to the Hainan Daily report came from Philippine legal authorities. Justice Minister Vitaliano Aguirre said Tuesday that the government was planning to lodge a formal protest against China for any construction in the region, a case that Aguirre predicted would be “fairly strong. ” Aguirre added that his country was “strengthening the relationship with the United States” in response to China’s reported move. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio also weighed in, stating that, if the report is true, “the least the President should do” was file an official complaint. Carpio has previously threatened to impeach Duterte if he did not adequately defend the territorial integrity of the Philippines against China’s expansionist moves in the region. Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella took a more conciliatory tone, merely stating that President Rodrigo Duterte “has repeatedly asserted that the Philippines is not giving up its claims and our entitlements over the area. ” Acting Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo told reporters that the Philippines was waiting for an official government statement before deciding how to respond. “We’ll be awaiting a reply from China before we consider what to do next … All we can really do is wait for China’s clarification,” he said. Manalo added that the Philippines was “maintaining a regular and close watch” over the area. President Duterte himself issued a statement on Thursday local time (Wednesday in the United States) acknowledging Hua’s denial. “I was informed that they are not going to do anything at Panatag [Scarborough Shoal] out of respect for our friendship,” he told reporters. “‘We will build nothing there’ — that was the assurance given by the Chinese government. ” China, he added “has a word of honour. ” Duterte’s conciliatory attitude towards the report comes after a weekend in which the Philippine president announced his desire to work with the Trump administration in America, promising to “give all, whatever it is” to the United States except for a military alliance against China. A recent poll of Philippine nationals found that Duterte’s hesitance to confront China on the nation’s territorial integrity was wildly unpopular, as 84 percent of respondents said they wanted the government to “uphold its rights in the disputed waters” in the South China Sea. | 1 |
LIKE it or not, winter is coming. Apart from layering up, you can turn to your phone to help you brave the rain, wind or snow ahead. Weather apps are abundant in mobile app stores, and my new favorite is Fire + Rain. Unlike many other weather apps, it keeps weather data simple. Built on information from the Weather Network, the app’s display is streamlined and easy to understand. The screen’s color corresponds with the forecast, and the temperature is displayed in large type. Alongside this are a small icon and a simple phrase describing the weather, like “light rain” or “cloudy with showers. ” You get, at a glance, everything you need to know about the coming weather where you are. Swipe down the screen to see hourly and daily forecasts tap to swap between a detailed forecast and a forecast. If you see the words “heavy snow” in tomorrow morning’s forecast, you’ll know to make the necessary preparations tonight. Fire + Rain is free on iOS. For people who like detailed weather forecasts, there is RainAware. This app belongs to the new breed of weather apps that try to deliver extremely accurate weather data based on the time and your precise location. The app uses GPS to detect where you are, and then it pulls forecast data from its system, including detailed radar scans. Instead of the typical approximation other weather apps might offer, like “50 percent chance of storms,” RainAware has concrete alerts, like “It’s going to rain in 30 minutes. ” The app’s radar maps are also neat: They show how rain clouds are moving near you and predict where they will go next, so you can see how the weather is going to change. RainAware has a lot of features, including a weather clock showing the forecast in increments, so it may take some getting used to. But it’s an excellent option. It costs $5 on iOS and $4 on Android. Another app, Storm Radar from Weather Underground, is a source that television weather forecasters consult before they step in front of the camera. This weather app has radar maps and algorithms to figure out if you are in the path of a nearby weather event. It even has lightning alerts for a radius around your location. Data on variables like dew point and humidity can be viewed as colored patterns on a map, or as graphs or charts. You can also get highly localized weather alerts — for example, the app told me there were two “coastal event” alerts as high winds and high tides threatened the seafront zone near my home. If you prefer a forecast, Storm Radar offers that too. There is a lot to discover in this app, and if you plan to use it you may need to spend some time on Google to get a full understanding of what all the data means. But it is free on iOS, and its interface is both attractive and easy to interact with. MeteoEarth, another scientific weather forecast app, shows animated maps that contain a wealth of forecasting information for your location. The maps can show data on rainfall, wind, temperature and pressure, and can even track tropical storms. The app also offers access to live weather webcams around the world that give a sense of the conditions in a particular location. MeteoEarth takes some figuring out, but its slick graphical interface is satisfying to use. It’s free on iOS and Android. Lastly, it may be worth keeping the free FEMA app (iOS, Android) on your phone in case your home is subjected to the worst of the winter weather. In addition to an alert system from the National Weather Service, the app offers guidance about what to do before, during and after a disaster. The naturalist Sir David Attenborough has been making television programs about the wonders of life for 60 years, and now over 1, 000 clips from his body of work are available in a new app: Attenborough’s Story of Life (free on iOS, Android). Browse it with your children and enjoy learning about nature from the soothing voice of Sir David himself. | 1 |
I love all women, except for the fat ones, the ugly ones and the feminists! | 0 |
TUCSON — After a long, scary trek through three countries to escape the gang violence in El Salvador, a boy found himself scared again a few months back, this time in a federal immigration court here. There was an immigration judge in front of him and a federal prosecutor to his right. But there was no one helping him understand the charges against him. “I was afraid I was going to make a mistake,” the boy said in Spanish from his uncle’s living room, in a modest house on the south side of this city. “When the judge asked me questions, I just shook my head yes and no. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing. ” Every week in immigration courts around the country, thousands of children act as their own lawyers, pleading for asylum or other type of relief in a legal system they do not understand. Suspected killers, kidnappers and others facing federal felony charges, no matter their ages, are entitled to lawyers if they cannot afford them. But children accused of violating immigration laws, a civil offense, do not have the same right. In immigration court, people face charges from the government, but the government has no obligation to provide lawyers for poor children and adults, as it does in criminal cases, legal experts say. Having a lawyer makes a difference. Between October 2004 and June of this year, more than half the children who did not have lawyers were deported. Only one in 10 children who had legal representation were sent back, according to federal data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group connected to Syracuse University. “We have looked for any legal system in the United States where children are required to represent themselves against a government lawyer — child welfare proceedings, juvenile delinquency proceedings. We have not yet found one, and the government hasn’t found one either,” Stephen Kang, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Right Project, said in an interview. “What we have in immigration court is an system,” Mr. Kang said. “Children face federal prosecutors at adversarial court hearings that can have consequences for the children involved. ” A lawsuit, filed by the A. C. L. U. and other civil rights organizations, is trying to change that. In a brief filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where the federal government is contesting the court’s authority to hear the case, Justice Department lawyers insisted that “aliens in civil administrative removal proceedings have the privilege of being represented by retained counsel, but do not possess either a constitutional or statutory right to appointed counsel at taxpayer expense. ” Yet the government has also spent millions of dollars paying for lawyers to represent unaccompanied children in immigration courts — from modest programs in Baltimore and Tennessee to a $55 million effort by the Department of Health and Human Services in cities throughout the United States. In remarks to the Hispanic National Bar Association in 2014, General Eric H. Holder Jr. said, “Though these children may not have a constitutional right to a lawyer, we have policy reasons and a moral obligation to ensure the presence of counsel. ” Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, a part of the Justice Department that oversees the nation’s immigration courts, reiterated the position in an interview this month, saying in an email, “In general, legal representation enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of immigration proceedings. ” Most of the children appearing in immigration courts are from Central America, escapees of the poverty and street violence that make El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras some of the most dangerous countries in the world. Two summers ago, the children captured headlines when they surged across the United border, surprising the authorities and overwhelming a system that was not prepared to absorb them. They were detained in a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Tex. and a warehouse in Nogales, Ariz. sleeping side by side behind fences, on thin mattresses spread on the concrete floor. A crackdown by the Mexican authorities stemmed the flow, but the numbers are rising again, especially in the Big Bend region of Texas and around Yuma, Ariz. as smugglers have adjusted their routes to evade the authorities. The 37, 714 Central American children apprehended along the southern border between Oct. 1 and July 31, or the first 10 months of the current fiscal year, was 33 percent higher than the 28, 387 children caught during all of the 2015 fiscal year and not far from the 2014 record of 51, 705, according to Border Patrol statistics. The number of children in shelters changes daily, said Victoria Palmer, a spokeswoman for the Office of Refugee Resettlement. As of Aug. 1, 7, 900 unaccompanied children were under federal government supervision, with 2, 300 beds still available in the shelters, she said. The challenge has been helping these children once they go to court. “Our waiting list got to be so long, it wasn’t fair to put anyone else on a waiting list,” said Sara Van Hofwegen, a lawyer who represents unaccompanied children for Public Counsel, a law firm in Los Angeles. “We tell the kids, ‘Sorry, call in six months, call some other time.’ It’s pretty common they’ll call five, six places and none of them is accepting new cases. ” In 2014, Matt Adams, legal director for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project in Seattle, joined Public Counsel, the A. C. L. U. and other civil rights groups in suing the federal government on behalf of nine Central American children, ages 10 to 17, who were representing themselves in deportation hearings. Earlier this year, a judge gave one of the children, an indigenous boy from Guatemala, an ultimatum: Find a lawyer or come to his next hearing prepared to petition for asylum on his own. (The lawsuit gained status in June.) The boy from El Salvador — whose family allowed him to be interviewed only if his name was not used, because they did not want to jeopardize his pending asylum case — tried to hire his own lawyer. His uncle and legal guardian said one lawyer had offered to take the case for $6, 000 the family decided against paying when the lawyer seemed hesitant about the boy’s chances of success. The uncle took the boy, his dark hair styled in a mohawk that droops along the nape of his neck, to his first immigration hearing in April, hoping to stand up and speak for him. But, the uncle said, the judge did not let him. So the boy plopped himself in the defendant’s chair, slipped on the headphones that piped in the translation, and shook his head as much as he could until the judge told him he had to speak. On their way out, a lawyer from the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which has been representing young people facing deportation for years, handed the uncle a business card. “Our overall goal is to represent every child that comes through immigration court,” said Lauren Dasse, the project’s executive director. The lawyers gave 7, 500 presentations to children in Arizona shelters last year, she said. Lawyers tell the children about the role immigration judges play and what happens in court. They also handed the children business cards, at the shelters and outside courtrooms, and encouraged them to call. The uncle said he was suspicious when the lawyer approached his nephew, and wondered why anyone would want to do this for free. Still, his nephew made an appointment. On Aug. 5, the judge gave the boy an extension so that his application for relief could be prepared and presented. He will be back to court in October. This time, with a lawyer. | 1 |
Support Us Illuminati Mind Control Documentary 2016 PART 2 | 0 |
During a debate between Rep. Tammy Duckworth and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) for his U.S. Senate seat in Springfield, Illinois, Kirk mocked Duckworth’s ancestry, saying in rebuttal of her comments on the true cost of war,
“I had forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.”
His remark came in response to her statement that, “My family has served this nation in uniform going back to the Revolution. I am a Daughter of the American Revolution.”
Watch courtesy of Deadspin : Senator Mark Kirk mocks disabled Iraq war vet Tammy Duckworth in debate for her mixed-race heritage: https://t.co/3Znpd2Uvfq pic.twitter.com/cpWYBKri4l
— Deadspin (@Deadspin) October 28, 2016
Kirk, of course, has claimed to receive military honors he did not, in fact, receive. For him to attack Duckworth is not only the height of hypocrisy but mocking her ancestry is appalling.
The Republican position, as restated here by Kirk, is that it’s okay to come from another country as long as you’re white. Neither Kirk nor his campaign has apologized. Kirk has said Trump should quit over his misogynist comments; apparently, it’s okay to make racist comments.
When Duckworth said her family had served since the American Revolution, she wasn’t joking, and she set Kirk straight in a tweet : My mom is an immigrant and my dad and his family have served this nation in uniform since the Revolution #ILSEN pic.twitter.com/ehEBHswFMs
— Tammy Duckworth (@TammyforIL) October 28, 2016
The Illinois senator has unendorsed Donald Trump, one malignant clown calling another a malignant clown , and this latest move has given Kellyanne Conway a rare opportunity to gloat, tweeting , The same Mark Kirk that unendorsed his party's presidential nominee and called him out in paid ads? Gotcha. Good luck. https://t.co/IV7miL317s
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) October 28, 2016
With a single sentence, Mark Kirk proved you don’t have to support Donald Trump to be a deplorable. | 0 |
Share This After a homeless black Trump supporter was brutally set upon by an intolerant liberal mob, Donald Trump made an incredible announcement.
A homeless black woman who has been guarding Donald Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star from vandals was recently set upon by ruthless liberals, ripping up her signs and assaulting the helpless woman. However, as soon as Trump heard about what the leftist thugs had done, he immediately issued a special announcement that has us cheering.
After privileged millionaire James Otis obliterated the Donald’s sidewalk star on Wednesday, an unnamed homeless woman boldly took it upon herself to act as guardian, making the cold slab her new temporary home. Utilizing her sleeping spot as her own political platform, the courageous vagrant created signs to peacefully showcase her support for Trump. Unfortunately, she underestimated just how savage and intolerant liberals are, especially when it comes to the minorities they claim to champion expressing a different opinion.
Just one day after the homeless woman set up residence next to Trump’s star, a mob of vicious anti-Trump thugs attacked her, RT reports. After pushing her around and stealing her signs, some of the only property she owns, the animals knocked her and her cart down, continuing to hurl sickening insults and snatch things.
Video captured the enraging assault, showing the woman lying on the ground, shaking, and holding back tears. Fortunately, the heart-breaking story quickly made its way to Trump, the only politician concerned with this transient’s well-being. Now, the Republican nominee has made an incredible announcement befitting of a U.S. president.
The Gateway Pundit reports that Trump was so appalled by the mob’s treatment of this destitute woman that he has not only announced that he has a special “gift” for the victim but promises to seek justice for her barbaric abusers. The presidential candidate’s attorney, Michael Cohen, proclaimed on Friday that Trump promises the woman will have “the last laugh on these thugs.” . @DiamondandSilk @realDonaldTrump someone please help me locate this woman as Mr. Trump has a gift for her…
— Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) October 28, 2016
At Trump’s behest, Cohen exploded on Twitter, repeatedly requesting followers to find the homeless woman. He explained that they have checked, but she is no longer staying on Trump’s star. However, the candidate wants to “change her life” when he finds her.
Proving just how passionate Trump is about helping the woman, Cohen spent much of Friday responding to tweets, hoping to find some clue as to the woman’s current whereabouts. One user asserted that the woman is Marsha Lee , a resident of Santa Monica. However, it is unclear if this information is accurate.
Cohen assured that the police are investigating the incident and he and Trump will do everything possible to see that the thugs responsible for the assault are brought to justice. It’s truly heart-warming to see such a powerful man going out of his way to do something significant for someone considered “the least of these.”
Hopefully, this woman will receive the mystery gift Trump has waiting for her and the savages who bullied an innocent homeless person will be punished for their cowardly behavior. Of course, don’t expect Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to say that her black life matters or even apologize for the thuggery of their own supporters. In fact, neither of them has come forward to help the unfortunate victim of their national policies that never helped her off the streets in the first place.
This stomach-churning incident just goes to show how tolerant the left is when it comes to blacks, or anyone else for that matter, simply having an opinion with which they disagree. | 0 |
Will President Trump seek to have his likeness added to Mount Rushmore? Will he announce the existence of alien life? Whimsical as these situations might sound, there is a growing market for betting on an already unpredictable Trump presidency. Paddy Power, the Irish gambling website known for its marketing stunts, says wagers associated with Mr. Trump have been more popular than any other novelty bets it has offered in the last year, including bets associated with Britain’s referendum on whether to leave the European Union. Now, Paddy Power is hiring a “head of Trump betting” to oversee bets related to the American president and his administration. The company, which is part of Paddy Power Betfair, a bookmaking business based in Dublin, is advertising the contracted position amid sustained interest in bets. A Paddy Power spokesman insisted the job is a real one, despite the irreverent manner in which its advertisement is written. “With more than 100 special bets online, the successful candidate will monitor and manage existing Trump markets while devising new specials to launch,” the company said in its online advertisement. “They will also need to build a wall around the hub to ensure foreign bets don’t get in. ” The ad also said that “substantial experience with fake tan is preferable” and an “awareness of national security situation in Sweden” is beneficial, referring to the controversy after comments in February by Mr. Trump that implied something terrible had happened in Sweden the night before. On its website, Paddy Power offers customers a variety of potential bets tied to the Trump administration. They include which member of the Trump administration is likely to resign next — Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a favorite — and whether the president will seek to have his likeness added to Mount Rushmore this year, at 100 to 1. The likelihood that Mr. Trump will announce that alien life exists: 20 to 1. Despite the popularity of bets involving Mr. Trump, Paddy Power Betfair said in January that the unexpected victory by Mr. Trump cost the company almost 5 million pounds, or about $6 million, in the fourth quarter. Before the election, Paddy Power said that it had paid out more than $1 million in late October to customers who bet on a victory by Hillary Clinton. The company had paid out $700, 000 two days ahead of President Barack Obama’s in 2012. The company did not say how much customers had wagered on bets. Paddy Power completed an merger with its rival Betfair last year, creating an online gambling company that is now worth £7. 3 billion. The marketing for the Paddy Power brand includes a blog, irreverent television advertisements and a variety of stunts. For example, the company sent a hearse to the stadium used by the British soccer team Leicester City after the team fired its manager, Claudio Ranieri, last month, less than a year after winning the English Premier League. The unexpected title run of Leicester City last year proved costly to gambling companies in Britain, costing Paddy Power alone more than £2 million. The club had a chance of winning the league entering the season. Other marketing stunts by Paddy Power have included the unveiling of a balloon in the shape of a pair of lucky underpants at the Cheltenham Festival in 2013, and the display of a wax figure of the former Manchester United manager, Alex Ferguson, in a box labeled “In case of emergency break glass,” when the soccer club was struggling in 2014. | 1 |
They dug for revelations, extracting news nuggets — a rarity on a debate night — like Donald J. Trump’s admission that he had used a nearly loss to avoid paying federal income taxes for years. They pressed for specifics, interrupting the candidates to demand concrete strategies for handling conflict in Syria and reforming the nation’s health care system. And they posed blunt, provocative questions at a forum that typically feels more like public broadcasting than cable news: Had Mr. Trump ever sexually assaulted a woman? Did Hillary Clinton really believe that her use of a private email server was not “extremely careless”? The duo overseeing Sunday’s presidential debate, Anderson Cooper of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC News, seemed to cast off the pressures on this year’s crop of moderators — Is mandatory? Are interruptions O. K.? — and put themselves directly in the mix of a encounter. The immediate response was praise from many journalists and some grumbling from partisans. One prominent critic, in fact, was sharing the debate stage: Mr. Trump, who did not hesitate to make his complaints known in real time. “Why aren’t you bringing up the emails?” he asked Mr. Cooper, after Mr. Trump believed he had been unfairly cut off. When Mr. Cooper replied, accurately, that the moderators had asked about Mrs. Clinton’s email server, Mr. Trump threw up his hands. “One on three,” he muttered, suggesting that the panel was siding with Mrs. Clinton against him. Later, Mr. Trump again questioned the umpires. “You know what’s funny? She went a minute over, and you don’t stop her,” he said to Ms. Raddatz, who had cut him off. “When I go one second over it’s like a big deal — ” “You had many answers,” Ms. Raddatz replied. Mr. Trump did face notably sharp questions about the recording that surfaced Friday in which he boasts about kissing and grabbing women. “You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women — do you understand that?” Mr. Cooper asked. When Mr. Trump dismissed the comments as “locker ” Mr. Cooper pressed several times — “Have you ever done those things?” — until Mr. Trump finally asserted that he had not. The moderators also pushed Mrs. Clinton. Ms. Raddatz, discussing the candidate’s paid speeches to Wall Street banks, asked, “Is it O. K. for politicians to be ?” Mr. Cooper asked Mrs. Clinton how she could “unite a country” after dismissing half of Mr. Trump’s supporters as “deplorable. ” There were moments, too, where the moderators chastised the audience for cheering — and sternly cut off the candidates — as they tried to the atmosphere that seemed to quickly envelop the room. “The audience needs to calm down here,” Ms. Raddatz said, turning to the crowd. When Mr. Trump interrupted Mrs. Clinton at one point, Mr. Cooper rebuked him, saying, “She didn’t talk when you talked. ” Some conservatives were unimpressed. “I may not care for Trump, but he beat Hillary tonight fair and square even with Martha Raddatz trying to defeat him,” Erick Erickson, a commentator, wrote on Twitter. One group that appeared shortchanged was the undecided voters sitting onstage, who, between the moderators’ tough questions and the candidates’ heated exchanges, received relatively little airtime. The moderators appeared willing to buck the debate’s format when they deemed a particular interaction newsworthy or illuminating. This tactic was from the one Elaine Quijano used in the debate last week, who often cut off candidates’ answers so she could move to her next question. And the moderators eschewed the minimalist approach by Lester Holt of NBC in the first debate, who was less assertive and often remained silent for minutes at a time. If the first debate became something of a referendum on the role of the moderator — to or not to ? — the buildup to Sunday’s event was more focused on the raucous nature of the evening. Mr. Trump, a temperamental figure under the best of circumstances, walked onstage Sunday facing a growing revolt within his own party and even his own ticket: His running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, issued a statement declaring that Mr. Trump “has to show what is in his heart when he goes before the nation tomorrow night. ” Walking into this fray were Mr. Cooper and Ms. Raddatz, experienced moderators both, who were already preparing for unique challenges. The choice of Mr. Cooper, who is gay, prompted grumbling among some conservatives, who questioned his personal politics. Ms. Raddatz was the subject of a Breitbart News report on Sunday scrutinizing her coverage of President Obama. Although Ms. Raddatz moderated the debate in 2012, that event was seen by 51 million viewers. At the high end, Sunday’s event was estimated to attract nearly twice that. Network executives were predicting a huge audience, in part because many Americans are home on Sunday evenings. But the extraordinary events of the last few days significantly raised those expectations. Last month’s debate between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton was seen by about 84 million Americans — a record for presidential debates, but shy of the 100 million or more viewers that typically tune in for the Super Bowl. Typically, the second debate sees a drop in viewers. Still, in 2008, the second matchup between Barack Obama and John McCain attracted nearly 11 million more viewers than their first in 1992, the second debate among Bill Clinton, George Bush and Ross Perot outscored the first by about seven million viewers. | 1 |
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Gives you a whole new perspective on things. | 0 |
NWO Horror: Duterte says he want all Foreign Troops OUT of Phillipines!!! On NPRSeeks closer ties with China! Anonymous Coward Re: NWO Horror: Duterte says he want all Foreign Troops OUT of Phillipines!!! Page 1 Mail with questions or comments about this site. "Godlike Productions" & "GLP" are registered trademarks of Zero Point Ltd. Godlike™ Website Design Copyright © 1999 - 2015 Godlikeproductions.com Page generated in 0.011s (10 queries) | 0 |
Badass Patriot Has MASSIVE Surprise For Thieves Who Stole His Trump Sign Amanda Shea Trump supporters
It’s become a trend for Hillary Clinton-supporters with far too much time on their hands to steal any Donald Trump sign they can get their grubby hands on. There’s no returning the “favor” by taking a Hillary sign since they are practically non-existent in almost all neighborhoods. So, one proud patriot took retaliation to new heights ensuring liberals stay away from his sign.
The unnamed owner of the Trump sign, who is believed to be in Arizona, is aware that his sign may not cost a lot but is worth much more than the plastic it’s printed on based on what it represents — a chance to take America back. Hillary-supporters are an odd group of people who seem to believe that the Constitutional right to free speech is only bestowed upon them, along with the power to take it from anyone who says something that they don’t like.
Perhaps this the driving purpose behind the nationwide rash of Trump sign theft, paired with the fact that they think that they’re “helping” by removing these visual statements of support from public view. Either way, where there is a Trump sign, there’s a liberal nearby waiting for their chance to make a stupid statement of their own in stealing it.
However, this sign owner beat them to the punch by putting it in a place that was not only impossible to reach but showed his support of the GOP candidate loud and proud. It sat up high in a tall tree, keeping it out of reach for thieving liberals. Taking Trump sign to new heights to prevent it from being stolen and make a bold message at the same time.
If liberals really want to show their support for Hillary, they’ll have to climb this massive tree and tear it down, but chances are, they’re not as tough as they think they are and prefer to stick to easy to steal signs. We commend the hero for Trump who showed his bravery in putting the sign up so high, knowing that no liberal would dare to go there since it’s so far out of their safe space and more work than they are willing to perform. | 0 |
Becky Akers blog/hitlarys-halloween-mask/
“ Thanks to one historically accurate , if unscientific, presidential polling metric, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton may be in for a frightening Halloween. According to reports from national retailers, sales of Donald Trump Halloween masks lead sales of Clinton masks 55 percent to 45 percent.”
Before dismissing this just-for-fun poll, you should know that the “ best-selling presidential candidate mask has correctly forecast the outcome of every election since 1996.” 3:51 pm on October 26, 2016 | 0 |
« L’art de la guerre »
Comment voter « Non » aux armes nucléaires par Manlio Dinucci Les États-Unis viennent de faire rejeter —par leurs alliés au sein du Premier comité de l’Assemblée générale de l’Onu— une proposition visant à l’élimination totale des armes nucléaires. Cependant, il est possible pour les États abritant illégalement des bombes atomiques états-uniennes d’en exiger leur retrait de leur territoire en application de l’article 2 du Traité de non-prolifération.
Réseau Voltaire | Rome (Italie) | 2 novembre 2016 italiano « Merci, président Obama. L’Italie va continuer avec une grande détermination son engagement pour la sécurité nucléaire » : c’est ce qu’écrivait le Premier ministre Matteo Renzi dans un message tweeter historique. Six mois après, aux Nations Unies, Renzi a voté « Oui » aux armes nucléaires. Se mettant à la queue des USA, le gouvernement italien s’est rangé contre la Résolution, approuvée à grande majorité dans le premier comité de l’Assemblée générale, qui demande la convocation en 2017 d’une conférence des Nations Unies pour « négocier un outil légalement contraignant pour la prohibition des armes nucléaires, qui amène à leur élimination totale ».
Le gouvernement italien a ainsi mangé son chapeau sur ce qu’il avait promis à la Conférence de Vienne, il y a deux ans, aux mouvements antinucléaires « exigeants », en les assurant de sa volonté d’opérer pour le désarmement nucléaire en jouant un « rôle de médiation avec patience et diplomatie ». Ainsi tombe dans le vide l’appel « Exigeons le désarmement nucléaire total », dans lequel on demande au gouvernement « la poursuite cohérente de l’engagement et de la lutte pour la mise au ban des armes nucléaires », dans un parcours « humanitaire et juridique vers le désarmement nucléaire », dans lequel l’Italie pourrait jouer « un rôle plus qu’actif, possiblement de pointe ».
Par conséquence tombent dans le vide aussi les motions parlementaires de la même teneur. Les appels génériques au désarmement nucléaire sont facilement instrumentalisables : il suffit de penser que le président des USA, artisan d’un ré-armement nucléaire de 1 000 milliards de dollars, a été décoré du Prix Nobel de la Paix pour « sa vision d’un monde libéré des armes nucléaires ».
Le mode concret à travers lequel en Italie nous pouvons contribuer à l’objectif du désarmement nucléaire, énoncé dans la Résolution des Nations Unies, est celui de libérer notre pays des armes nucléaires états-uniennes. À cette fin il faut non pas en appeler au gouvernement, mais exiger qu’il respecte le Traité de non-prolifération (TNP), signé et ratifié par l’Italie, qui à l’article 2 stipule : « Chacun des États militairement non nucléaires, qui soit Partie au Traité, s’engage à ne pas recevoir de quiconque des armes nucléaires ou autres engins nucléaires explosifs, ni le contrôle sur de telles armes et engins explosifs, directement ou indirectement ». On doit exiger que l’Italie cesse de violer le TNP et demande aux États-Unis de retirer immédiatement toutes leurs armes nucléaires de notre territoire et de ne pas y installer les nouvelles bombes B61-12, fer de lance de l’escalade nucléaire USA/Otan contre la Russie, ni d’autres armes nucléaires. Il faut exiger que des pilotes italiens ne soient plus entraînés à l’utilisation d’armes nucléaires sous commandement états-unien.
C’est l’objectif de la campagne lancée par le Comité No Guerra, No Nato et d’autres sujet. La campagne a obtenu un premier résultat important : le 26 octobre, au Conseil Régional de la Toscane, a été approuvée à la majorité une motion du groupe Sì Toscana a Sinistra (Oui, Toscane à gauche) qui « engage la Junte à demander au Gouvernement de respecter le Traité de non-prolifération des armes nucléaires et faire que les État-Unis retirent immédiatement toute arme nucléaire du territoire italien et renoncent à y installer les nouvelles bombes B61-12 et autres armes nucléaires ». À travers ces initiatives et d’autres on peut créer un vaste front qui, avec une forte mobilisation, impose au gouvernement le respect du Traité de non-prolifération.
Il y a six mois nous demandions sur les pages du Manifesto s’il y avait quelqu’un au Parlement disposé à exiger, sur la base du TNP, le retrait immédiat de l’Italie des armes nucléaires états-uniennes. Nous sommes encore en attente de la réponse.
Manlio Dinucci Traduction
Marie-Ange Patrizio
Source
Il Manifesto (Italie) | 0 |
documentary filmmaker Michael Moore declared to thousands of protesters Saturday at the Women’s March on Washington that “We are here to vow to end the Trump carnage! ”[The Fahrenheit director offered the crowd of Trump protesters some advice on how to stop the nomination of Betty DeVos, President Trump’s pick to head the Department of Education. “On Monday, call (202) . Call your representative and your two Senators, and number one we do not accept Betty DeVos as our secretary of education,” Moore told the crowd. “That’s day one. Make it part of your daily routine. ” “I want you to make this a part of your new daily routine: Call Congress every single day,” he added. “Brush your teeth, make the coffee, walk the dog and call Congress. ” Moore also declared war on the Democratic Party, saying, “the old guard of the Democratic Party has to go. ” “We have to take over the Democratic Party,” Moore said. “God bless the Democrats who fought with us. Who’ve done so many good things. It’s no knock on them” he explained before railing against the Electoral College. “Twice now, we won the White House, yet they walked through the door!” At one point during his speech, Moore held up a copy of Saturday’s Washington Post and ripped it up. “I don’t think so!” Moore said while holding up the newspaper with a headline that read “Trump Takes Power. ” At Women’s March on Washington, Michael Moore rips up front page on Pres. Trump’s inauguration https: . pic. twitter. — ABC News (@ABC) January 21, 2017, “Look at what we’ve already accomplish here today,” Moore told the crowd. “The majority of Americans didn’t want Donald J. Trump in the White House and we’re here today as their representatives. ” | 1 |
Bye bye baby: “Jersey Boys” is closing on Jan. 15. The jukebox musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons opened on Nov. 6, 2005, and won four Tony Awards, including for best new musical, in 2006. It is now the show in Broadway history at its closing, it will have played 4, 642 performances. The show has played all over the world — in addition to Broadway, it is running in Las Vegas, where it is scheduled to close this month, and in London, and is touring in North America over its history, it has been presented in 162 cities in 11 countries. “Jersey Boys” has grossed $2 billion worldwide, according to the producers. The Broadway production, at the August Wilson Theater, has seen a considerable drop in box office receipts over time. In its early seasons, it regularly grossed more than $1 million a week last week, it grossed $538, 955. The songs featured in the show were written by Bob Gaudio with lyrics by Bob Crewe the show’s book is by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. The show began its life in 2004 at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, and was directed by Des McAnuff, who was the artistic director there the lead producer for the commercial production is Dodger Theatricals. Clint Eastwood directed a film adaptation in 2014. | 1 |
WASHINGTON, D. C. — White House chief of staff Reince Priebus told Breitbart News exclusively that he believes that President Donald Trump has been “going big league” on trade policy in his first 100 days in office. [“I think the president is going big league on trade right now,” Priebus said in an exclusive interview on Thursday afternoon, just a couple days before the mark. He went on to say: He just signed an executive order on aluminum that ends us being taken advantage of on aluminum. Last week it was steel. He’s been talking about NAFTA, and making sure that we get a good deal — and otherwise, if we don’t get a good deal, he’s willing to pull the trigger and start the process of getting out of NAFTA. One of the first things he did was get out of TPP, another campaign promise. I think the president is cooking with gas right now when it comes to trade. In the past week plus, Trump has gone hard after NAFTA — first signaling he would be open to scrapping the trade deal between the United States, Mexico, and Canada entirely, before agreeing to renegotiate the deal after phone calls with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto. Meanwhile, the president has cracked down on Canadian dairy and lumber industries — which have had a negative effect on U. S. counterparts — and zoned in on cracking down on unfair practices on the world stage with regards to the aluminum and steel industries. All of that comes after, in just his first couple weeks as president, he followed through on a campaign promise to rip up the Trans Pacific Partnership — once and for all. Priebus’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News comes as the mark looms, and it focused on the administration’s successes, setbacks, and lessons learned. Despite legacy, establishment media outlets claiming repeatedly that Trump has not delivered much in his first few months in office, the president has actually had a number of successes across government and in all facets of his agenda with more to come, Priebus pointed out: Well, look, I think that the president accomplished something that’s quite historical whether you look at deregulation or TPP — 28 pieces of legislation, he followed through on the ethics pledge to make sure that all of his staff are barred from ever lobbying for a foreign government and five years within that same department as a domestic lobbyist. He’s touched on HBCUs [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] opioids, Keystone, I could just go on and on — not to mention Gorsuch, who’s an incredible pick. Just look at the deregulation — obviously, you’ve written about it but it’s remarkable. For every new regulation, two regulations have to be dismissed which means he put our country on a permanent glide path toward deregulation on a permanent basis. There’s more — but one last thing: Look at how he’s realigned our position in the world. He’s got leverage with North Korea and China, realigning there, he’s forcing countries to pay up to NATO. We had the NATO meeting and I know some people were sort of perplexed that he was on stage with NATO but what was the first thing that came out of the Secretary General’s mouth? He said President Trump is 100 percent right that these countries have to start paying up. Look at Egypt: He was criticized for having a meeting with Egypt. What happened 10 days later? The prisoner was released, something that Barack Obama couldn’t get done. All I would tell you is I think if you look at everything President Trump could control, he’s done a remarkable job and I would say a historically good job. All of that is true: Trump has opened up the Keystone XL pipeline and Dakota Access pipeline instituted the aforementioned ethics pledge held events focused on and signed executive orders related to HBCUs and the opioid epidemic achieved that success with NATO at a meeting and joint press conference with the Secretary General secured the release of an American prisoner held by the Egyptian government and appointed and overseen the confirmation in the U. S. Senate of Neil Gorsuch to the U. S. Supreme Court. Specifically on Gorsuch, Priebus told Breitbart News, the fact that Trump nominated him and the whole process that played out should be proof Trump is “a man of his word. ” Priebus told Breitbart News: For one thing, the entire process should be totally a complete validation that President Trump is a man of his word because he put out that list, he told the world that ‘I’m going to choose a judge from this list,’ some people questioned it, but he followed through in grand fashion. That’s number one. Number two, the process of interviewing, the process of vetting started back in November after the victory and the process was methodical and he spoke to all the right people and players and groups and had meetings in the White House if you remember with Republicans and Democrats. He talked to trade groups, he talked to citizens across the country, he talked to members of the Senate, he did everything that you would expect a professional, competent operation to do and he did it every day until ultimately he made the decision to choose Justice Gorsuch. Priebus added that the execution of the Gorsuch pick rollout, among many other things — including operations at the White House, where Trump has had an overpacked schedule nearly every day with multiple events, bill signings, executive order signings, meetings with foreign dignitaries, and more since his inauguration on Jan. 20 — is a sign that the White House runs smoothly. No small feat. Priebus said: Even the mystery of who it would be up until the very time Justice Gorsuch walked out into the East Room was executed to a T, which sort of brings us to another point which is there’s a lot — you look at the here in the White House. One EO [executive order] signing, a bill signing, a meeting with a trade group, a bilateral meeting with a foreign dignitary, and you look at the amount of activity that goes on in this White House with this president — it’s not like he’s doing one event a day, he’s doing one thing after the next and he’s doing it flawlessly. Just so you know, that doesn’t happen by accident. The team here, everything from the public liaison to the political operation to the intergovernmental agency process, I’m just telling you that though the Gorsuch thing is the big shiny object that was flawless, you look at all of these events that happen, you have to say there’s not a lot of things that go wrong on a regular basis on the operation in the White House. Another point that has appeared in virtually no media roundups of Trump’s first 100 days, Priebus said, is the president’s first address to a joint session of Congress. That speech earned him universal praise, and one of the most powerful moments in modern presidential history — his exchange with Carryn Owens, the widow of fallen U. S. Navy SEAL Ryan Owens — rocked the world that night. Priebus continued: I think what you saw that night was everything that President Trump believed in — whether it be from the 1980s, the 1990s, where we are today, the feeling that he has about this country, how much better we should be and how much stronger we should be and how much more respected we should be — was captured that night,” Priebus told Breitbart News about the president’s speech that evening. “It was captured through a lot of issues. It was captured through talking about education, it was captured through talked about our position on the world stage, it was captured talking about what we need to do to repeal and replace Obamacare, but beside that it was captured in a moment of pride looking at a widow up in the balcony that lost a hero soldier and honored by a president that understood the incredible value of life and the value and respect that he has for the heroes of this country and also the respect for the United States of America at that moment where the president, the House and the Senate are getting together and talking about how great America ought to be all coming together in a stew of pride that was captured by looking at that great family up in the balcony. That’s what I was thinking about when that happened and I think that’s what a lot of people were thinking about. Since Trump won the election, and especially since he has been in office, nearly every economic indicator has been on the upswing — from the stock market to employment numbers to business development and more — something Priebus attributes to an overall message of optimism emanating from the president. Priebus’s words: I think what’s important to know is that underlying all of the things that President Trump is doing is one real basic theme which is optimism,” Priebus said. “There’s an incredible optimism among manufacturers, business groups, people that are expecting a better future. All the polling aside — I know everyone loves to talk about the polling — but one of the things that gets lost, and you touched on it, is that people are optimistic for the future. People believe that President Trump is going to follow through on his promises and that those promises are going to result in a better future for everybody. When you look at the stock market, you look at business growth, the housing market, sales getting better, people being able to buy and sell their house, all those things matter — and that sort of optimism underneath everything is I think a great foundation for President Trump’s legacy moving forward. On immigration, illegal border crossings are down, while Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly have increased efforts to enforce the law. President Trump recently, in a meeting with conservative media at the White House earlier this week, compared — the drug trafficking connected gang — to terrorist group Al Qaeda, and the administration has created an office, VOICE, designed to represent families with victims of illegal immigrant crime. Trump, meanwhile, maintains plans to build a wall along the U. S. border once and for all — despite setbacks for now in funding from the congressional side of things. Priebus, in his exclusive interview with Breitbart News, sang the president’s praises on immigration: People understand across the borders that we have a president that’s not really interested in playing games on illegal immigration. We’ve had enough illegal immigration. It’s time to get serious about putting Americans first, and legal Americans first. I think we’re in agreement that there’s not anything good about illegal immigration, and a lot of it’s that really bad like drugs, human trafficking, violence — there’s a lot of reasons for having and wanting to have a wall on the southern border. It’s not just a wall that’s a campaign promise. It’s a wall that’s there to protect Americans from something that shouldn’t be happening. So as far as this issue is concerned, the president has been very strong on illegal immigration and I think that people that have been attempting to come over the border on the mass trek across hundreds of miles maybe even through Central America and Mexico are thinking again about it saying ‘you know what? This may not be worth it because we’re going to get turned around and get returned back to where we came from.’ That may sound harsh, but it’s not. It’s about sovereignty and protecting the people of the United States. On rolling back regulations, which Trump has done via executive action, and empowering his cabinet officials to act and through the Congressional Review Act, Priebus said that Trump’s vision resembles his predecessor Ronald Reagan. Priebus said to Breitbart News, “Here’s what I think people should understand: One of the pillars of Reaganomics was deregulation. If you ask anyone about Reaganomics, you can’t have a conversation about how that economic transformation happened without talking about deregulation. If you look at the president’s earliest actions, it’s all about deregulation. It’s all about CRAs. It’s about deregulation. I think he’s at 12 CRAs now, and there’s only one that was done previous to President Trump. So when you take the executive order on deregulation two for one, you take the CRA activity, you look at what he’s doing on clean power — and obviously that’s part of it — but this unbelievable effort and focus on deregulation is part of what his vision is. The president will tell you — and you saw in his tax plan, he’s all for lowering taxes for every American and it’s going to be the biggest tax cut for all Americans that’s ever been done — but put that aside, he also understands a lot of these guys in small business who put people to work, they will tell you ‘listen the taxes are out of control, we shouldn’t be paying 35 percent, but I’ll tell you what, what’s worse is the regulations. I’m getting killed on regulations. I hate the taxes, but the regulations are worse.’ The president gets it. ” | 1 |
The lawyer who represented Hillary Clinton’s campaign and her doomed presidential election recount efforts has reportedly joined the board of a progressive super PAC financed by billionaire George Soros and focused in part on issues of voting rights. [CNN reported: The super PAC Priorities USA has brought Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias onto its board and plans to focus on fighting GOP efforts to restrict voting access in courts and legislatures. During the most recent presidential election, Priorities USA served as a super PAC. Soros provided at least $8. 5 million to the group, including $6 million in December 2015 and another $2. 5 million in August 2016, public records show. The Hill reported in January 2016 after Soros’s first contribution: In the last 6 months, the raised $25. 3 million, meaning that Soros’s contribution accounted for almost a quarter of its fundraising haul. Following the election, Priorities USA is seeking to “reposition itself as a hub of Democratic activity,” Politico reported last month. Continued Politico on the Super PAC’s new efforts: One of its primary initiatives will also be a push branded as “The BluePrint Project,” which aims to study and engage both voters who backed President Barack Obama in 2012 and then Trump in 2016, and those who supported Obama before staying home this past November. That campaign has already begun: led by pollsters Geoff Garin and Jef Pollock, Priorities will next week convene focus groups in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida, focusing on counties that saw the largest swings from Obama to Trump, and the biggest in voting rates within African American communities. Elias served as the Clinton campaign’s general counsel. In November, he announced Clinton’s losing campaign would participate in Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s recount efforts. Elias is a senior lawyer at the Perkins Coie law firm, which has also represented Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. The lawyer has previously been tied to Soros. In July, the New York Times reported Soros had pledged up to $5 million for a legal fight led by Elias against what the newspaper characterized as “restrictive voting laws enacted in recent years by state governments. ” The Times further reported on Elias’ efforts: Elias, who specializes in issues, was in contact with Mr. Soros in January 2014 when Mr. Elias was exploring a series of federal lawsuits before that year’s midterm election and in advance of the 2016 campaign, according to Mr. Soros’s political adviser, Michael Vachon. (Mr. Elias declined to comment on Friday about the funding of the lawsuits.) The goal is to try to influence voting rules in states where Republican governors and legislatures have enacted election laws since 2010, and to be ready to intervene if additional measures are passed over the next 17 months. At the time, Soros helped pay for two lawsuits in Ohio and Wisconsin, and the billionaire activist contributed funds for suits that, according to the Times, “Mr. Elias and several other groups filed last year in North Carolina. ” In August, the Washington Post spotlighted the legal work of Elias in a profile titled, “The crusade of a Democratic superlawyer with backing. ” The newspaper described Elias as the “ lawyer for Democrats in recount fights and redistricting battles. ” The Post reported on Elias’s top benefactor: With a commitment from liberal George Soros, Elias is challenging laws that, he argues, diminish the impact of important Democratic Party constituencies of African Americans, Latinos and young people. “I don’t think people should think we’re done filing lawsuits for this election cycle,” Elias said in a taxicab interview after two flights and a weather delay delivered him to Phoenix. The Post detailed the evolution of Soros’s financial backing: While Elias will not discuss the funding for his project, Soros’s spokesman Michael Vachon said Elias approached them with a set of proposals for challenging state restrictions that would be helpful “up and down the ballot. ” That was appealing to Soros, who began his political giving with voter mobilization efforts, Vachon said. And they agreed with Elias that there was work to be done beyond what the civil rights groups, to which Soros also contributes, were doing. … Soros has given $5 million to the trust that funds the litigation, Vachon said, and Elias said he has picked his shots with an eye toward “protecting the Obama coalition” of African Americans, Latinos and young people. Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott. | 1 |
All day send that shit robert | 0 |
Is North Korea irrational? Or does it just pretend to be? North Korea has given the world ample reason to ask: threats of war, occasional attacks against South Korea, eccentric leaders and propaganda. As its nuclear and missile programs have grown, this past week with a fifth nuclear test, that concern has grown more urgent. But political scientists have repeatedly investigated this question and, time and again, emerged with the same answer: North Korea’s behavior, far from crazy, is all too rational. Its belligerence, they conclude, appears calculated to maintain a weak, isolated government that would otherwise succumb to the forces of history. Its provocations introduce tremendous danger, but stave off what Pyongyang sees as the even greater threats of invasion or collapse. Denny Roy, a political scientist, wrote in a 1994 journal article that the country’s “reputation as a ‘crazy state’” and for “reckless violence” had “worked to North Korea’s advantage,” keeping more powerful enemies at bay. But this image, he concluded, was “largely a product of misunderstanding and propaganda. ” In some ways, this is more dangerous than irrationality. While the country does not want war, its calculus leads it to cultivate a permanent risk of one — and prepare to stave off defeat, should war happen, potentially with nuclear weapons. That is a subtler danger, but a grave one. When political scientists call a state rational, they are not saying its leaders always make the best or most moral choices, or that those leaders are paragons of mental fitness. Rather, they are saying the state behaves according to its perceived first of which is . When a state is rational, it will not always succeed in acting in its best interests, or in balancing against gains, but it will try. This lets the world shape a state’s incentives, steering it in the desired direction. States are irrational when they do not follow . In the “strong” form of irrationality, leaders are so deranged that they are incapable of judging their own interests. In the “soft” version, domestic factors — like ideological zeal or internal power struggles — distort incentives, making states behave in ways that are counterproductive but at least predictable. North Korea’s actions, while abhorrent, appear well within its rational according to a 2003 study by David C. Kang, a political scientist now at the University of Southern California. At home and abroad, he found, North Korean leaders shrewdly determined their interests and acted on them. (In an email, he said his conclusions still applied.) “All the evidence points to their ability to make sophisticated decisions and to manage palace, domestic and international politics with extreme precision,” Mr. Kang wrote. “It is not possible to argue these were irrational leaders, unable to make calculations. ” Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor who served as the Asian affairs director on George W. Bush’s National Security Council, has repeatedly argued that North Korea’s leadership is rational. Savage cruelty and cold calculation are not mutually exclusive, after all — and often go hand in hand. States are rarely irrational for the simple reason that irrational states can’t survive for long. The international system is too competitive and the drive for too powerful. While the North Korean state really is unlike any other on earth, the behaviors that make it appear irrational are perhaps its most rational. North Korea’s seemingly unhinged behavior begins with the country’s attempt to solve two problems that it took on with the end of the Cold War and that it should have been unable to survive. One was military. The Korean Peninsula, still in a formal state of war, had gone from a deadlock to an overwhelming tilt in the South’s favor. The North was exposed, protected only by a China that was more focused on improving ties with the West. The other problem was political. Both Koreas claimed to represent all Koreans, and for decades had enjoyed similar development levels. By the 1990s, the South was exponentially freer and more prosperous. The Pyongyang government had little reason to exist. The leadership solved both problems with something called the Songun, or “” policy. It put the country on a permanent war footing, justifying the state’s poverty as necessary to maintain its massive military, justifying its oppression as rooting out internal traitors and propping up its legitimacy with the nationalism that often comes during wartime. Of course, there was no war. Foreign powers believed the government would, like other Soviet puppets, fall on its own, and barring that wanted peace. So North Korea created the appearance of permanently imminent war, issuing flamboyant threats, staging provocations and, sometimes, deadly attacks. Its nuclear and missile tests, though erratic and often failed, stirred up one crisis after another. This militarization kept the North Korean leadership internally stable. It also kept the country’s enemies at bay. North Korea may be weaker, but it is willing to tolerate far more risk. By keeping the peninsula on the edge of conflict, Pyongyang put the onus on South Korea and the United States to pull things back. From afar, North Korea’s actions look crazy. Its domestic propaganda describes a reality that does not exist, and it appears bent on almost provoking a war it would certainly lose. But from within North Korea, these actions make perfect sense. And over time, the government’s reputation for irrationality has become an asset as well. Scholars ascribe this behavior to the “madman theory” — a strategy, coined by no less a proponent than Richard M. Nixon, in which leaders cultivate an image of belligerence and unpredictability to force adversaries to tread more carefully. Dr. Roy, in an interview, said North Korea “intentionally employs a posture of seemingly acceptance and willingness to go to war as a means of trying to intimidate its adversaries. ” But this strategy works only because, even if the belligerence is for show, the danger it creates is very real. In this way, it is North Korea’s rationality that makes it so dangerous. Because it believes it can survive only by keeping the Korean Peninsula near war, it creates a risk of sparking just that, perhaps through some accident or miscalculation. North Korea is aware of this risk but seems to believe it has no choice. For this reason, and perhaps because of the United invasion of Iraq and the NATO intervention in Libya against Col. Muammar it appears to earnestly fear an American invasion. And this is rational: Weak states that face more powerful enemies must either make peace — which North Korea cannot do without sacrificing its political legitimacy — or find a way to make any conflict survivable. North Korea’s nuclear program, some analysts believe, is designed to halt an American invasion by first striking nearby United States military bases and South Korean ports, then by threatening a missile launch against the American mainland. While North Korea does not yet have this ability, analysts believe it will within the next decade. This is the culmination of North Korea’s rationality, in something known as desperation theory. Under this theory, when states face two terrible choices, they will pick the least bad option — even if that choice would, under normal conditions, be too costly to consider. In North Korea’s case, that means creating the conditions for a war it would most likely lose. And it could mean preparing a effort to survive that war by launching multiple nuclear strikes, chancing a nuclear retaliation for the slim chance to survive. North Korea’s leaders tolerate this danger because, in their calculus, they have no other choice. The rest of us share in that risk — vanishingly small, but nonzero — whether we want to or not. | 1 |
Andrew Walther, vice president of communications for the Knights of Columbus — the world’s largest Catholic fraternal order — joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow for a special edition of Breitbart News Daily live from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to discuss his calling for Christian refugees from the Islamic State (ISIS) to be given priority consideration. [“I’ve been over to Iraq twice in the last year, the last time with Congressman Chris Smith, taking a look at how Christians were being overlooked by the aid program of the U. S. government, getting basically no money from the U. S. or the UN,” Walther said. LISTEN: “What we’ve discovered and been advocating against at this point is that these people are really being left out,” he said. “ISIS came in, killed a lot of them, drove them all from their homes in Nineveh and elsewhere. The upshot of that was the U. S. just sort of stood by, did not have a plan for helping communities. ” “Now I think we have the opportunity to change things,” said Walther. “These people faced genocide once, then they faced the sort of overlooking by the U. S. and now I’m told that there are signs that things are starting to change — that there’s a new openness among government officials there in Iraq, U. S. government officials, to helping these communities that have been overlooked for so long. ” “How this happened was simply a matter of an argument that we have to take care of everybody, so all the money goes to the big camps,” he explained. “Christians don’t go to the big camps because, of course, they get persecuted and targeted for violence at the big camps, and so, as a result, they get nothing because there’s no thought about prioritizing, or even helping, or making sure that you don’t leave out these little communities that could disappear. In the case of Christians, their numbers have declined in Iraq by almost 90 percent in the last decade. ” Walther said he found some of the reactions to President Trump’s executive order on immigration “very confusing. ” “The idea that we would prioritize people for religious persecution — people who had suffered, in the case of several of these countries, genocide — and it was religious minorities in general, let’s be clear: It wasn’t just Christians. Yazidis, Mandaeans, Shabak — I mean, there were a lot of people that were targeted like this. When you look at that, and you see this reaction, you have to wonder if these people have missed the history lesson on what the U. S. has done for the past hundred years,” he said. “After World War I, we prioritized the Christian community in the Middle East because it was almost completely destroyed by the Ottoman genocide of 1915 and ’16 and again in ’22. It was the U. S. that stepped in, partnerships, the State Department was involved, the whole bit,” Walther explained. “Second, after World War II, the U. S. takes an enormous number of Jewish refugees from Europe. Why? Not because there weren’t as many or more refugees from the German, French, and Italian populations, but because everybody understood that they had faced genocide, and they needed a special kind of priority. That didn’t mean that other refugees didn’t get in. It just meant that the Jewish refugees — and you can see this in the numbers — got some priority,” he said. “Even more recently, you’ve had Democratic sponsorship of things like the Lautenberg Amendment, which prioritizes religious minorities from Iran, which are Christians, Jews, and those of the Baha’i faith,” he noted. “Suddenly, we have an executive order that says we’re going to prioritize religious minorities, and it’s the end of the world. I really don’t understand why that is, and I don’t understand why people don’t understand that this has been the U. S. policy for a very long time. ” Marlow quoted from Walther’s a passage in which he noted that only of one percent of Syrian refugees admitted into the U. S. in 2016 were Christians, even though they make up ten percent of the Syrian population. “Certainly, it’s a de facto inequity, and I think you’ve seen a lot of the — I was looking at one this morning — that are making the case that refugees from other countries are getting in at a greater rate. Christians are getting in from Iran, Iraq, and these other places, so what the president said about Syria is wrong,” said Walther. “No, what the president said about Syria is actually right. It has been very hard for Christians to get in,” he argued. “A lot of people are saying that it’s not really discrimination they don’t want to come in. I got an email two days ago from the Syriac Catholic patriarch, who I would imagine knows what’s going on with his people, who tells me they do want to get in. They’re applying for refugee status, and they never hear back from places like the U. S. and Canada. They’re ignored, or they’re rejected. So which is it? I’ve got to believe that he knows what he’s talking about. ” “I was with the archbishop of Aleppo two years ago. He stood on our stage, and he said, ‘What’s happening, in terms of the refugee system, is unjust.’ I think these guys who are living in places like Aleppo know what’s going on,” he said. Walther was confident the CPAC audience understands “the importance of protecting religious minorities around the world, the importance of human rights” and that “threats to human rights can have a religious nature. ” “I think that people here also, you see there is support in the polling, and there is support in general, I think especially in groups like this, for making sure that we don’t overlook these minorities in the Middle East,” he added. Marlow asked if the Knights of Columbus have experienced any decline in membership or influence due to the “secularization of America. ” “No, we have found a consistent way to grow for years,” Walther replied. “The fact of the matter is that I think people get excited about the kinds of things we do. They get excited about the work we do on the issue. They get excited about the work that we do in communities around the country to help our neighbors. They get excited about issues like helping Christians in the Middle East. The persecution of Christians in the Middle East gets our guys fired up. ” “We’ve raised more than $12 million for these people on this issue,” he announced. “I think we have a very strong network in the U. S. and also internationally, of guys that are really committed to their faith and also to helping in a variety of ways. ” When Marlow asked how much of a setback the eight years of Obama were for the cause of helping persecuted Christians in the Middle East, Walther cited criticism from his friend the Archbishop of Erbil that “it was a mistake for your country to come here in 2003, and it was a bigger mistake for you to leave in 2011. ” “He’s the guy taking care of 100, 000 Christians in Erbil,” he noted. “You have a situation where once this happened in 2014, once ISIS rolled through, the U. S. basically did nothing for these minority communities. We let them die. We let the ISIS program of dechristianization and sort of radicalizing of the region just occur without any kind of input. We let the Yazidis go. We let the Mandeans go. All of these little groups that have been there for thousands of years were not prioritized, were not even paid attention to. This was a story that I heard over and over there. ” Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. Listen to the full interview audio above. | 1 |
BNI Store Oct 26 2016 Always under fire from designated terrorist group CAIR, former FBI agent and counter-terrorism expert, John Guandolo, is the go-to person for training law enforcement officers about the growing threat Islam poses to America Every time Guandolo is scheduled to give a speech or a training session, CAIR thugs try to shut him down in advance. At the recent Breaking the Silence ” conference in Colorado Springs, Guandolo warned that Muslims in America are getting jobs at airports, hotels, convenience stores and cab companies as part of a growing “insurgency” and an “intentional plan” to “occupy the land.” “Why are they building huge, $100 million mosques in areas where there are like 100 or 90 Muslims?” he asked. “Because, when they build a mosque they’re claiming territory, now all they have to do is occupy it. So they’re calling Muslims to occupy the land. All of this, they have an intentional plan and it’s based in Islamic doctrine and they’re putting it to work through what they’re doing.” CAIR’s relentless harassment of John Guandolo: | 0 |
— Pedro Lomax (((✟))) (@PedroLomax) October 28, 2016
As if today’s news couldn’t get any better … There will never be a National Cyber Security Awareness Month like this one.
— Matt Frost (@mattfrost) October 28, 2016
You’re kidding, right? | 0 |
Scientists Redefine Hurricanes and Deny Mini Ice Age will Effect Earth by IWB · October 27, 2016 Tweet
With no hurricanes making landfall in 11 years in the USA, that takes us back to a 1860 record of longest without a hurricane. Since the scary predictions of more and more powerful hurricanes didnt work out for the global warming crowd, now they want to re-define what hurricanes are to make it appear that they are more destructive to fit the narrative of CO2 causes more hurricanes. Also the same crew says that the new Mini Ice Age will have no effect on Earth. What if they are wrong??
Mini Ice Age wont stop global warming https://www.theweathernetwork.com/new… noaa global map warmest year ever 2016 Climate Alarmists Redefine ‘Hurricane’ So We’ll Have More Of Them https://www.technocracy.news/index.ph… 11 years without a major hurricane striking the U.S. mainland https://www.sott.net/article/332026-N… List of Famines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of… | 0 |
On Friday’s broadcast of PBS’ “Washington Week,” Washington Post reporter Ed O’Keefe said of President Trump’s press conferences, “I don’t think any of us here should fault the guy for taking questions from 17 different news organizations. That’s a good thing. We want that. ” O’Keefe said, “I don’t think any of us here should fault the guy for taking questions from 17 different news organizations. That’s a good thing. We want that. But it was different and it was very much a departure from what we’ve seen before. People who work at the White House are exhausted. We know that. Everyone in this town, frankly, I think is a bit exhausted. But this is what he promised. He promised to shake it up. He promised it would be different and chaotic, and it’s certainly been that way. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
Agents with the FBI and the IRS raided the private law practice of Texas State Senator Carlos Uresti ( Antonio) on Thursday morning. [The raid comes as part of an ongoing investigation into the senator’s practice by the FBI and the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service. The two agencies would only confirm they were “lawfully conducting law enforcement activity at the office,” KSAT ABC12 reported. The Democrat state senator represents Senate District 19 that covers part of San Antonio. Sen. Uresti responded to media inquiries with the following statement: Today, FBI agents are in my office, reviewing our documents as part of their broad investigation of the Four Winds matter. I have instructed my staff to fully cooperate with the federal investigators. I will help them in whatever way I can. I am now at the Capitol conducting the people’s business, working hard to achieve a good budget for the people of Texas through my continued service on the Senate Finance Committee, and to find solutions for the foster children of Texas, as the of the Health and Human Services Committee. Likewise, I continue to work diligently to solve problems on the Veterans Affairs and Border Security Committees. As always, I remain committed to serve my constituents. The Four Winds matter referred to by the senators is an ongoing investigation into FourWinds Logistics, a frac sand trading company, the San Antonio reported. The company filed bankruptcy in 2015 and investigators have alleged they were defrauded. According to a previous report by the San Antonio paper, investors claimed their money was wasted by the CEO on personal expenses, expensive gifts, exotic car rentals, and a “wild lifestyle. ” Three of the company’s officials have been charged in the fraud scheme and pleaded guilty. They are currently awaiting sentencing. Senator Uresti was allegedly involved in recruiting investors into the company. Uresti allegedly received a $27, 000 commission for a $900, 000 investment he helped bring to FourWinds. The investor, Denise Cantu of Harlingen, Texas, was one of the senator’s legal clients. He reportedly helped the woman win a lawsuit cased involving the death of two of her children. She is reported to have lost most of her money in the investment. FBI spokesperson Michelle Lee told the San Antonio newspaper they had not made any additional arrests in connection with today’s investigative activity. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX. | 1 |
The American political establishment reeled on Wednesday as leaders in both parties began coming to grips with four years of President Donald J. Trump in the White House, a scenario that has now plunged the United States and its allies and adversaries into a period of deep uncertainty about the policies and impact of his administration. Democrats, who will be out of power in both the White House and Congress for the first time since 2006, were particularly crestfallen that Hillary Clinton had a slender lead in the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College, a fate similar to Al Gore’s in 2000. On campuses nationwide, students marched against Mr. Trump with signs bearing slogans like “Not my president,” and protesters in Oakland, Calif. smashed windows and set fire to garbage bins. On Wednesday night, thousands of people protested in several cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle and New York, where demonstrators converged in Midtown Manhattan in front of Trump Tower, the home of the . With millions of other voters euphoric at the election of a true political outsider as president, the clear divide over Mr. Trump inspired pleas of unity from his two biggest opponents, President Obama and Mrs. Clinton. At separate news conferences, they urged Americans to come together for the sake of the republic, and for the good of Mr. Trump’s presidency. “We are all now rooting for his success,” said Mr. Obama, who planned to meet with Mr. Trump at the White House on Thursday. “The peaceful transfer of power is one of the hallmarks of our democracy. And over the next few months, we are going to show that to the world. ” Mrs. Clinton, in her first remarks to supporters after the election, said Americans owed Mr. Trump “an open mind and a chance to lead. ” Choking back tears at times, she said she was “sorry that we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country. ” “This is painful, and it will be for a long time,” Mrs. Clinton said, standing beside her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in a tableau that underscored the end of a nearly era in which the Clintons dominated American politics. The clash between excitement and dread was especially palpable over the likelihood that Mr. Trump, at the head of a unified Republican government, would try to reverse Obama administration policies and appoint a conservative Supreme Court justice. The House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, indicated on Wednesday that Republicans would try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and Democrats privately began strategizing to thwart that agenda. Republicans also expanded their power in state capitals, and Democrats pledged resistance. Foreign leaders who have had tense relations with Mr. Obama were particularly welcoming to Mr. Trump. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called Mr. Trump “a true friend” of Israel, while President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said he hoped to have a “constructive dialogue” with him. Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin had previously exchanged warm words, to the consternation of both Democratic and Republican leaders, but Trump advisers said on Wednesday that the two leaders had not spoken by phone yet. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, whose immigration policies Mr. Trump has dismissed as “insane,” offered her cooperation but emphasized the importance of human rights, while President François Hollande of France noted that some of Mr. Trump’s views might test “the values and the interests that we share with the United States. ” Mexican officials congratulated Mr. Trump but said they would not pay for his proposed border wall, as he has flatly insisted they will. Mr. Trump’s campaign advisers said on Wednesday that he had been fielding calls from politicians like Mr. Ryan and world leaders, while also assembling a cabinet and White House team and selecting a conservative nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy. They said Mr. Trump was inclined to roll out a few cabinet nominations at a time, rather than kicking them off with one pick for a critical department like Treasury or State. Among the candidates for cabinet secretaries and advisers are members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, aides said, including Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a crucial adviser on policy issues Steven Mnuchin, a businessman who was Mr. Trump’s national finance chairman Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House. Advisers said Mr. Trump had also started thinking about ways to unite the country. Democratic leaders quickly embraced a policy priority that he highlighted in his victory speech: infrastructure spending. Still, more than a third of Americans said in exit polls on Tuesday that they would be frightened of a Trump presidency. Among those who voted for Mrs. Clinton, the feeling was almost unanimous: 92 percent said Mr. Trump scared them. Anxieties ran strong among Hispanics, Muslims, immigrants, women and others who had felt disparaged or demonized by Mr. Trump, who used harsh and racially charged language in ways that upended mainstream politics. The fact that Mr. Trump had been endorsed by a Ku Klux Klan newspaper, even if he rejected it, symbolized the sense of shock that he would now lead a vibrantly diverse democracy. Alma Guel, 59, of El Paso, let out a long sigh as she started talking through the levels of emotional distress she had felt over the last 24 hours. She felt outrage, disbelief, then suspicion that the outcome was legitimate, then ashamed. She even started looking at property to buy in Mexico. Eventually, she just felt crushed. “I was just heartbroken,” said Ms. Guel, who works in the safety department of her local electric company. “And all day today, I’ve been in a daze. I’ve never, ever been this affected by any other election. ” Many conservatives felt just as strongly — but in the opposite direction. The conservative radio host Laura Ingraham was overcome with emotion on her show Wednesday. “You’re bringing tears to my eyes,” she told the Republican strategist Ed Rollins as she beamed over the meaning of Mr. Trump’s win. Jacob Stout, 20, who owns a small contracting business in Danville, Ky. said the result thrilled him because of the promise of bold action in Washington. “I’m excited, man. I’m not going to lie,” he said. “We’ve seen, especially the last eight years, talk but not drastic change that benefits the citizens. The idea that a citizen would be taking the presidency as opposed to a politician, I think that’s got people excited. ” His wife, Chloe Joslin, 24, was more tempered in her expectations, even though she also voted for Mr. Trump. “Oh, my goodness, you see people who are disowning friends over who they are voting for,” said Ms. Joslin, a communications instructor. “It’s been a very heated race. ” Politicians also joined business leaders, as well as the many Americans with retirement and savings accounts, in keeping a nervous eye on the world financial markets, fearing the sort of backlash that wounded Britain after its vote in June to leave the European Union. While some business leaders worried that the nation would slide into recession, others were hopeful that Mr. Trump’s proposals of tax cuts, infrastructure spending and relaxed regulations would be welcomed by the markets, which reversed sharp declines overnight. Political activity and reactions in both parties were in a surreal state of suspended animation as Republicans and Democrats began anticipating Mr. Trump’s moves. Mr. Ryan said at a news conference Wednesday that Mr. Trump had a “mandate” for his vision of government, but was sparing on the details of how they would work together. Mr. Ryan stopped campaigning for him last month after revelations that Mr. Trump had boasted about sexual assault. Mr. Ryan said that he had “spoken with Donald twice in the last 18 hours. ” “We talked about the work ahead of us, and the importance of bringing the nation together,” he said. “This needs to be a time of redemption, not a time of recrimination. ” Mr. Ryan could have been hinting at his own fate. There are more than a few restless conservatives in his conference in the House who were agitating for his ouster before the election because of his failure to fully embrace Mr. Trump. And whether that discontent will die down is far from clear. Other Republicans who made their reservations about Mr. Trump proudly known before the election tried to be gracious, though some sounded more skeptical than optimistic. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who became a public face of the faction on Capitol Hill, said he and his family had asked God to steer Mr. Trump in the right direction. “We pray that he will lead wisely and faithfully keep his oath to a Constitution of limited government,” Mr. Sasse said in a statement. Then he promised to hold Mr. Trump to his word. “Starting today, I will do everything in my power to hold the president to his promises,” he said. Elsewhere, the transition of power seemed to be unfolding in an orderly fashion. Word came from the Pentagon on Wednesday morning that Mr. Trump would begin receiving the same classified intelligence briefings as the president. And the defense secretary, Ashton B. Carter, said in a statement that he was committed to a smooth passing of power to the next commander in chief. | 1 |
42 Shoina is a village drowned up to the waist in sand. Its denizens are quite fatalistic about it, and their only means of protection is leaving their door open for the night, as they can never be sure if they can open it in the morning. The village of Shoina is situated beyond the Arctic Circle, 1,400 kilometers north of Moscow. This tiny settlement is known for its sands, which appeared here over 50 years ago and have been waging a relentless offensive against humans ever since, depriving them of living space. How did they appear, and where else in Russia can you find unusual places like this? Solve the mystery, on RTDoc. SUBSCRIBE TO RTD Channel to get documentaries firsthand! http://bit.ly/1MgFbVy FOLLOW US RTD WEBSITE: http://RTD.rt.com/ RTD ON TWITTER: http://twitter.com/RT_DOC RTD ON FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/RTDocumentary RTD ON DAILYMOTION http://www.dailymotion.com/rt_doc RTD ON INSTAGRAM http://instagram.com/rt_documentary/ RTD LIVE http://rtd.rt.com/on-air/ Leave a Reply Login with your Social ID Your email address will not be published. Name | 0 |
Financial Markets , Gold , Market Manipulation , Precious Metals , U.S. Economy Deep State , new world order , stock market bubble , war on cash admin The Oligarchs’ Plan to Monetize Humanity
The greed-diseased and power-obsessed Deep State oligarchs hate you for your freedom and love you for your money, and they are accelerating their plans to strip you of both. There are two things standing in their way: cash, and precious metals. The oligarchs are doing everything in their power to falsely discredit both of them in the eyes of the people. Cash and precious metals are physical manifestations of financial and human liberty. Liberty, which is indivisible, is the absolute last thing the oligarchs have in mind for us, as there is no profit in it for them. The oligarchs realize that the people are fast waking up to what is being done to them. While the Oligarchy remains an unimaginably dangerous enemy, it was wounded in the United States presidential election, is acting more erratically and illogically, and is starting to make serious mistakes. How we, the people, push forward from here will determine whether we remain free, or become slaves to the greatest Force of Evil ever known to mankind, the Deep State oligarchs.
While the above themes are not new to Inferential Analytics, the accurate and reliable forecasting method we have developed and use, the intensity with which the Deep State is pursuing its “dual mandate” of expropriating private wealth and enslaving the people by deliberately impoverishing them is absolutely unprecedented. If the people lose the war that the Deep State has declared against them, their futures and those of their descendants will be destroyed. The people must not and need not lose this war. In fact, the people can defeat the Deep State by using simple tools and common sense. The problem is that the people do not realize they have the power to take down the Oligarchy, so we all must work to open their eyes and show them the force of nature they truly are. That is our mission in this article, and the ones to follow.
The post-election orgy of precious metals price destruction is an open letter from the Deep State oligarchs that they couldn’t care less about the people’s desire for fundamental change, something the people shouted from the rooftops with their votes. The oligarchs have announced that there will be no change in policy or operating procedures; it is full steam ahead for them, because they know they can loot society of trillions more dollars if they can successfully implement their plans, which are well underway and inimical to the people in the extreme.
Money that flows into physical precious metals means less money in banks for the Deep State oligarchs to loot. In 2011, as gold surged to $1900 and silver to $50 per ounce, the oligarchs saw the real potential of a buying stampede breaking out among the people, which would have resulted in even greater bank withdrawals. They were simply not going to allow that to happen. Plans to gain control of the people’s money were in the formative stages, and could not be activated at that time. Not having the means to restrict the flow of money into precious metals, they decided instead to crush prices by market manipulation, both to financially punish those who had bought into the gathering stampede, and to scare away prospective buyers. The Deep State is now on the threshold of being able to implement its asset control agenda, and is certainly not going to lose bank deposits to precious metals when they are so close to their objective. Therefore, they have ratcheted up their illegal price manipulation activities to record intensity.
Post-election, the Deep State oligarchs have made it clear that they are going to continue to ram down the throats of the people the self-serving crony communist agenda they have been pursuing for the past twenty years, and particularly during the past eight, when they have had an energized communist organizer in place. If this means that they must hire phony activists on Craig’s List for $12.00 per hour and bus them around the country from one pre-arranged “demonstration” site to another, this is what they will do, as we can see. This is a small price to pay for the power and money prizes they have plotted to win.
The most profitable financial instruments ever created by the oligarchy are derivatives. These synthetic devices, designed for hedging, risk management and speculation by market players, and structured to generate guaranteed profits for the oligarchs who invent, issue and control them, include futures, options, forwards and swaps, and are a Deep State money machine.
Derivatives are layered on top of what are known as “underlying” assets, such as stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, government debt, and securitized debt and mortgages.
We believe that the oligarchs are creating a new class of financial derivatives that could produce the largest transfer of wealth in history, from the people to them.
We call them “Human Derivatives,” or “HDs.” The “underlying” asset in HDs is humanity itself; specifically, the personal wealth and future wealth-creation potential of human beings, in addition to rich, deeply personal, tradeable and exploitable information about them. With HDs, the Oligarchy intends to monetize humanity. By positioning themselves as the “House,” and giving themselves proprietary fee-setting, settlement, arbitrage and inside trading powers over HDs and bank deposits, the oligarchs intend to create a monopolized toll booth through which most monetary assets must pass. This will enable them to siphon off trillions of dollars of existing and future financial wealth from “underlying” human beings. The oligarchs plan to turn humanity into a financial asset over which they have control.
Human Derivatives will not just leverage people’s underlying financial assets, but much more important, deep personal insight into who they are, what they buy, how they behave, their medical well-being, their relationships and social networks, their susceptibility to messaging and advertising, and their overall economic “value.” This information will be codified, scored and quantified, and then converted into indexes made tradeable by HDs. The tradeable financial digitalization of the people will be worth a fortune to the Deep State “House.”
The oligarchs face a critical prerequisite to the optimization of Human Derivatives: the elimination of cash. By removing cash from the system, the oligarchs will obtain full visibility into and control over the people’s monetary transactions, which is required to maximize HD profits.
While numerous “motherhood” justifications for the elimination of cash are enunciated by the Deep State shills who are promoting it, such as fighting terrorism, crime and drug trafficking, these are misdirections and lies. The real purpose for the elimination of cash is simple: to give the Oligarchy full-spectrum control over monetary assets. The fact that Larry Summers is one of the main proselytizers for cash elimination is all that you need to know; he is a longstanding Establishment spokesperson and enabler.
Influential, non-banker elitists are now joining the battle. For example, on October 27, 2016, while speaking to reporters, Apple Computer CEO Tim Cook triumphantly stated, “We are going to kill cash.” By “we,” he does not mean Apple, which has no means by which solely to murder cash, but the Deep State elite, of which he is a peripheral member. The elimination of cash will be a boon to Apple Pay, which collects a 0.15% commission on all transactions, an amount that is guaranteed to increase by multiples and passed on to consumers in the form of price inflation once digital payments are non-optional and monopolized.
On November 8, 2016, the Indian government announced the most brazen cash reset and windfall tax generation scheme ever hatched. At 8 PM, after the banks had closed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise proclamation that as of 11:59 PM that same evening, all 500 and 1,000 rupees currency notes would be demonetized, stripped of “Legal Tender” status, and “extinguished.” In his words, “currency notes of rupees 500 and rupees 1,000 will be just paper with no value.” Rupees 500 and 1,000 notes are worth roughly $7.50 and $15.00, respectively, and they constitute 85% of India’s total currency supply. With no advance warning, Indian citizens were given 4 hours to spend 85% of India’s total money supply, or endure a massively time-consuming currency conversion ordeal.
In the few hours remaining that night, the stores were flooded with citizens trying to dump their 500 and 1,000 rupees notes. Gold spiked to the equivalent of $2,300 per ounce, before completely selling out at dealer locations, as people were willing to spend pretty much anything to get a real asset like gold in exchange for “just paper with no value.”
The government gave those unable to offload their 500 and 1,000 rupees notes during the four hour window the option of depositing them into their bank accounts (assuming they have them) until December 30, 2016. But to do that, the depositor must fill out an affidavit, explaining where the money came from. If the authorities determine that the depositor has not satisfactorily accounted for the funds, then an income tax and fines will be imposed on the depositor, or the currency will simply be seized.
The government also gave the people the ability to physically exchange at banks their rupees 500 and 1,000 notes for new currency, but only until November 24, 2016 (a period of 14 days), and only at a rate of 4,000 rupees (roughly $60.00) per day. If a person is willing to stand in a bank line for hours a day, for 14 days straight, they will be able to exchange a grand total of 56,000 rupees, or roughly $840.00.
Modi stated that the extraordinary action was taken to curb “counterfeiting,” “corruption,” “terrorism,” “black money,” and the “black economy,” the usual excuses for tyranny, but never explained how, which is typical of these Deep State gambits. While making his announcement, Modi stated: “Experience tells us that ordinary citizens are always ready to make sacrifices and face difficulties for the benefit of the nation.” As we can see, the citizens’ willing acceptance of surprise currency resets is being positioned by the Deep State as a matter of patriotism and duty.
India’s gun control laws are among the strictest in the world, and have been tightened even further by Modi since he came into office in 2014. The people are also trained from a young age to be compliant and polite. It is no wonder why India was chosen as the test site for Deep State’s first surprise, national currency reset.
Almost exactly one year ago, it was the same Modi who announced an Indian “paper gold” scheme. The Indian people were asked to turn in to their bank their physical gold, in exchange for a paper “note” that would provide 2.25 – 2.75% interest per annum on the gold’s value at the time of submission. The “investor” would not be able to get their gold back for at least 5 years. By then, of course, it would be long gone. Indian inflation is consistently above the offered interest rate. The Deep State’s scheme, promoted by their puppet Modi, flopped because the people, who are never nearly as stupid as the elitists think, saw right through it.
There are an estimated 20,000 tonnes of gold in the private hands of the Indian people, and the bullion banks wanted it for their own profit-making purposes, not the least of which was to cover their enormous naked short positions.
We believe the Indian currency reset is a test, foisted upon a compliant, disarmed people to gauge their reaction. The real drama is yet to come, and will occur throughout the West. If the oligarchs cannot trick the people into accepting the elimination of cash, then they will do the next best thing: a for-profit currency reset that nets a windfall. Most likely, they will do both, in succession: a currency reset, netting a windfall, followed by the elimination of cash, netting a second, much larger windfall.
Several prominent commentators have recommended holding cash as a financial defense mechanism. But none of them has warned of the possibility of a currency cancellation, such as the one that just occurred in India. This demonstrates how entropic, unpredictable and dangerous the current financial environment has become. We urge readers to stay highly informed via the Alternative Media, the only place where you can find the truth. Developments are happening fast, and you could get blindsided if you are inattentive and drop your guard.
All of the above begs the question: how can we financially defend ourselves from the Establishment controllers who are coming for our money and our freedom?
Even though precious metals prices are being deliberately crushed at this time, for the reasons outlined above, we view them as the best, and in certain cases, only defense against Deep State exploitation and expropriation. Gold and silver are financial Freedom Fighters, uniquely capable of protecting people from oppression. Throughout history, as people have fled persecution and sought liberty, gold has been their salvation. For millions over millennia, freedom has only been payable in gold. Precious metals provide the best escape from the Deep State’s coming financial command and control matrix, and are the only assets that cannot be canceled, demonetized or extinguished by government decree and whim. Even assets traditionally viewed as being safe, such as productive farm land, can be taxed into oblivion by a government gone rogue. It has happened in the past, and will certainly happen in the future. One cannot hide farm land, or stitch it into one’s coat.
Some people express the concern that governments will prohibit the ownership of precious metals, particularly gold, when things unhinge. We would respond by saying that if it ever comes to that, you will know, for a fact, it is game over. By issuing such an order, the Deep State would make it absolutely categorical that they intend to impoverish and enslave you. While many people might surrender to that kind of totalitarianism, hundreds of millions to billions of people worldwide will not.
Governments can create currency, but only God can create gold, and He is not in the Deep State’s back pocket. No government has the moral authority or practical ability to extinguish the value of the gold made by God. The gold and silver markets have been healthy, consensual and vibrant for more than 5,000 years, and that will never change as long as human beings still walk this earth and breathe the air. Government made currencies have catastrophically failed every single time they have been created. That, too, will never change. Soon, the exchange value of metals will be determined by people, trading one to one, and not by Deep State manipulators and criminals who now set phony prices in rigged markets that they control. You will only be able to enjoy gold and silver’s many virtues if you own them. As millions upon millions of people wake up, see monetary truth and buy, it will become harder to acquire metals at anywhere near current prices, in our view. This is not investment advice (we are not investment advisors and urge you to do your own research and make your own decisions), this is common sense. We believe your opportunities for action are diminishing, because you are battling deteriorating fiscal, economic and monetary circumstances, not to mention time.
Stewart Dougherty November 13, 2016
Stewart Dougherty is the developer of a privately-held, principles-based forecasting methodology named Inferential Analytics. The unique IA model assesses monetary, fiscal, financial, market, social, political, empirical and anecdotal factors to get a glimpse of tomorrow, today. He has 35 years of management, corporate strategy and business development experience. He is a graduate of Tufts University (MA) and Harvard Business School (MBA). Share this: | 0 |
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WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner will become a senior White House adviser to his Donald J. Trump, cementing the New York real estate executive’s role as a powerful and at times decisive influence on the . Mr. Kushner, 35, who married Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka in 2009, is closer to Mr. Trump than any other adviser, a steady and stabilizing presence inside an often chaotic transition team who has provided input on most of his ’s most consequential hiring and firing decisions. Mr. Trump described Mr. Kushner as “a tremendous asset and trusted adviser throughout the campaign and transition” in a statement issued early Monday evening announcing an appointment that perhaps more than any other defines the way the incoming president will govern. Mr. Kushner plans to sell some of his real estate holdings and other assets, his lawyer said. Some ethics experts have questioned whether the appointment will be legal under federal laws designed to prevent family ties from influencing the functioning of the United States government. Other presidents configured their White House hierarchies to mirror experiences in statehouses, on campaigns or at the heads of armies. Mr. Trump intends to adopt the management style of a New York real estate empire, with family at the pinnacle and staff members, however trusted or talented, somewhere below. Ms. Trump, who also participated in her father’s campaign decisions, has no immediate plans to enter the administration and will restructure her portfolio of holdings. But she plans to step down from the management of the Trump Organization and the Ivanka Trump fashion brand, said Jamie S. Gorelick, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer. Mr. Kushner’s plan is to sell assets to his brother and to a trust overseen by his mother, said Ms. Gorelick, who added that she had been consulting with federal ethics officials in an attempt to minimize opposition to Mr. Kushner’s appointment. Under the arrangement, Mr. Kushner will divest his holdings in his family real estate firm’s flagship property at 666 Fifth Avenue sell his stake in the New York Observer newspaper divest his interest in his brother’s firm, Thrive Capital and restructure other investments. He will also divest of all foreign investments, said Ms. Gorelick, who served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. He will have to recuse himself on matters that could relate to his wife’s businesses and his remaining holdings, she added. Mr. Kushner has been described by numerous transition staff members as the first among equals in Mr. Trump’s high command. His new title belies the sweeping influence he will have behind the scenes. The Mr. Kushner has often been described as having a calming effect on Mr. Trump, who is notorious for yelling at staff members during moments of tension. Mr. Kushner became the de facto campaign manager in the spring, and his influence with Mr. Trump has expanded rapidly. He is expected to play the same role in the White House, while the chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, provides the with strategic, messaging and communications advice, and Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and the incoming chief of staff, runs operations in the West Wing. Mr. Trump’s counselor, Kellyanne Conway, will have a direct line to the president on a range of issues. Despite his lack of political experience before the 2016 campaign, Mr. Kushner earned the trust of his mercurial during the campaign’s most turbulent moments, joining his wife and Mr. Trump’s adult sons, Eric and Donald Jr. in ousting Corey Lewandowski, then the campaign manager, in the heat of the primary season. Mr. Kushner was among those who pushed, campaign officials said, for the removal of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey as the head of Mr. Trump’s transition team, and pressed for his to appoint David M. Friedman, a Long Island lawyer, as ambassador to Israel. Mr. Kushner, an orthodox Jew, has also made an unlikely ally of Mr. Bannon, an icon of the nationalist movement. When Mr. Bannon, a former Breitbart executive, came under attack from Democrats after he was appointed to a White House role, Mr. Kushner assured allies that he had complete faith in Mr. Bannon and described him as a man of character. Mr. Kushner will not take a salary and plans to work on issues involving the Middle East and Israel try to forge government partnerships with the private sector and collaborate with Mr. Trump’s choice for commerce secretary, Wilbur L. Ross Jr. on matters involving free trade, Ms. Gorelick said. The scion of a prominent Democratic family active in New Jersey politics, Mr. Kushner showed few early signs that he would become a national political power player. A Harvard graduate, he is a lifelong Democrat, liberal on social issues. Like his ideologically limber he has donated to Democratic candidates. Mr. Kushner’s appointment was greeted with relief by some liberals, including Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, who views him as moderating influence in a Trump West Wing dominated by conservatives. “I respect him a lot,” Mr. de Blasio said when asked about Mr. Kushner on Monday. “I’ve known him for years and find him to be a very reasonable person. ” Still, it remains unclear if Mr. Kushner is inclined to prod the to the left. By his own account, he underwent something of a personal political transformation during the campaign, embracing Mr. Trump’s fiery and conservative economic message after spending months crisscrossing red and America. Mr. Kushner’s new role became public a day after the disclosure that he would resign as chief executive of Kushner Companies, his family’s real estate firm, and divest himself of “substantial assets,” including 666 Fifth Avenue. Mr. Kushner will divest of his holdings in The Observer and has stepped down as its publisher his the newspaper’s chairman, will assume that role. Mr. Trump is scheduled to hold a news conference on Wednesday to discuss his plans for dealing with myriad conflicts of interest raised by his sprawling international development, hotel, branding and entertainment empire. Ms. Gorelick said she was confident Mr. Kushner’s appointment would survive any legal challenge, and said Mr. Trump would seek an advisory opinion from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. “I am not saying there’s no legal argument on the other side,” she added. “I’m just saying we have the better argument and will prevail. ” Mr. Trump made it clear since he was elected that he wanted Mr. Kushner in his White House. Since December, Mr. Kushner and Ms. Gorelick’s team have consulted with the Office of Government Ethics to create a plan that would satisfy the legal requirements needed for him to serve. Mr. Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, a real estate developer who was once imprisoned for tax evasion, will take an increased role in the family company. Norman L. Eisen, who was the chief White House ethics lawyer under President Obama, said he thought Mr. Kushner’s decision to divest holdings raised pressure on Mr. Trump to follow suit. “What we are seeing now is, after the initial chaos of the Trump transition, that his nominees are now complying with the requirements of the law,” he said. “Rex Tillerson has retired from Exxon, and now Kushner is doing the same,” he added, referring to Mr. Trump’s nominee for secretary of state. “So it’s going to be hard for Trump to ignore 40 years of precedent and not do the same. ” | 1 |
Editor’s Note : If we weren’t already, as soon as our votes went virtual, we became disenfranchised. These machines are hacked every election.
With as corrupt as our system is at this point, it’d be shocking if that weren’t the case.
by Joseph Jankowski
A U.K. based company that has provided voting machines for 16 states, including important battleground states like Florida and Arizona, has direct ties with billionaire leftist and Clinton crusader George Soros.
With recent WikiLeaks emails showing that Hillary Clinton received foreign policy directives and coordinated on domestic policy with Soros , along with receiving tens of millions of dollars in presidential campaign support from the billionaire, concerns are growing that these shadowy players may pull the strings behind the curtains of the upcoming presidential election.
As Lifezette reports , the fact that the man in control of voting machines in 16 states is tied directly to the man who has given millions of dollars to the Clinton campaign and various progressive and globalist causes will surely leave a bad taste in the mouth of many a voter.
The balloting equipment tied to Soros is coming from the U.K. based Smartmatic company, whose chairman Mark Malloch-Brown is a former UN official and sits on the board of Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
According to Lifezette , Malloch-Brown was part of the Soros Advisory Committee on Bosnia and also is a member of the executive committee of the International Crisis Group, an organization he co-founded in the 1990s and built with funds from George Soros’ personal fortune.
In 2007 Soros appointed Malloch-Brown vice-president of his Quantum Funds, vice-chairman of Soros Fund Management, and vice-chairman of the Open Society Institute (former name of OSF).
Browns ties also intertwine with the Clintons as he was a partner with Sawyer-Miller, the consulting firm where close Clinton associate Mandy Grunwald worked. Brown also was also a senior advisor to FTI Consulting, a firm at which Jackson Dunn, who spent 15 years working as an aide to the Clintons, is a senior managing director. When taking that into account, along with the poor track record Smartmatic has of providing free and fair elections, this all becomes quite terrifying.
An astonishing 2006 classified U.S. diplomatic cable obtained and released by WikiLeaks reveals the extent to which Smartmatic may have played a hand in rigging the 2004 Venezuelan recall election under a section titled “A Shadow of Fraud.” The memo stated that “Smartmatic Corporation is a riddle both in ownership and operation, complicated by the fact that its machines have overseen several landslide (and contested) victories by President Hugo Chavez and his supporters.”
“The Smartmatic machines used in Venezuela are widely suspected of, though never proven conclusively to be, susceptible to fraud,” the memo continued. “The Venezuelan opposition is convinced that the Smartmatic machines robbed them of victory in the August 2004 referendum. Since then, there have been at least eight statistical analyses performed on the referendum results.”
“One study obtained the data log from the CANTV network and supposedly proved that the Smartmatic machines were bi-directional and in fact showed irregularities in how they reported their results to the CNE central server during the referendum,” it read.
With such suspicion and a study which claims to prove that the U.K. firm’s equipment tampered with the 2004 Venezuelan recall election, should be enough for states to reject these machines if they desire a fair election.
Smartmatic is providing machines to Arizona, California, Colorado, Washington DC, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, which means these Soros and Clinton linked machines are going to take the votes of thousands of Americans.
While GOP nominee Donald Trump has been voicing his opinion that the elections are indeed rigged due to media bias, and the proof that mainstream polls are heavily weighted to favor Clinton , it is needless to say that if the results show Hillary as a winner in November, there is going to be a mess to shuffle through to find signs of honesty. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
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President Donald Trump told reporters that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s condition had worsened since surgery after he was shot and wounded at a congressional baseball practice on Wednesday. [“It’s been much more difficult than people even thought at the time,” Trump said solemnly at the White House. “It’s been — he’s in some trouble. He’s a great fighter, and he’s going to be okay, we hope. ” The president said he visited Scalise at the hospital and told the family that the entire country was praying for him. He commented that Scalise’s tragedy may have brought some unity to the partisan climate in the country. “Steve, in his own way, may have brought some unity to our country,” Trump said. “I have a feeling that Steve has made a great sacrifice, but there could be some unity being brought to our great country. ” Trump made his comments before signing an executive order to spark more skill training for jobs and apprenticeships in the economy. He also praised the two Capitol Police officers who returned fire and were wounded after the shooter began shooting. “They ran right into the fire,” he said. “They ran right into those guns and the bullets, and they saved a lot of lives. ” As the event concluded, Trump shared a spirit of unity with the media. “[E]verybody in this room, including the reporters, God bless you,” he said as the people in the room laughed. “God bless America,” he concluded. | 1 |
ROME — The migrant ships kept sinking. First came a battered, vessel that flipped over on Wednesday as terrified migrants plunged into the Mediterranean Sea. The next day, a flimsy craft capsized with hundreds of people aboard. And on Friday, still another boat sank into the deceptively placid waters of the Mediterranean. Three days and three sunken ships are again confronting Europe with the horrors of its refugee crisis, as desperate people trying to reach the Continent keep dying at sea. At least 700 people from the three boats are believed to have drowned, the United Nations refugee agency announced on Sunday, in one of the deadliest weeks in the Mediterranean in recent memory. The latest drownings — which would push the death toll for the year to more than 2, 000 people — are a reminder of the cruel paradox of the Mediterranean calendar: As summer approaches with blue skies, warm weather and tranquil waters prized by tourists, human trafficking along the North African coastline traditionally kicks into a higher gear. Taking advantage of calm conditions, smugglers in Libya send out more and more migrants toward Italy, often on unseaworthy vessels. Drowning deaths are inevitable, even as Italian Coast Guard and Navy ships race to answer distress calls. Last year, more than 3, 700 migrants died in the Mediterranean, a figure that could be surpassed this year. In a statement on Sunday, the United Nations Children’s Fund said many of the migrants who drowned in the past week were believed to be unaccompanied adolescents. The grisly week also underscored the complex problem that the refugee crisis poses for Europe. The Continent’s leaders, facing an backlash in many countries, have signed a controversial deal with Turkey that so far has sharply reduced the migrant flow into Greece last year, roughly one million people marched through the Balkans toward Germany. Yet closing the Greek route has shifted attention to the longer, more dangerous sea route from Libya to Italy. As of Wednesday, roughly 41, 000 migrants had been rescued at sea after leaving Libya, nearly the same number from the same period last year, according to the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration. The potential for a sudden increase in traffic is clear: An additional 4, 000 migrants were rescued on Thursday alone, the same day that as many as 550 people died on the second migrant boat that sank. “This was a very intense and exceptional week for the number of fatalities,” said Federico Fossi, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The deaths also point to the lack of solutions to the migrant crisis, which has been exacerbated by the violent chaos in Libya and fueled by the conflict in Syria. Officials with the refugee agency have been interviewing survivors of the three shipwrecks after they have been delivered to Italian ports. Those interviews were the primary basis for the estimate of 700 deaths, though some migration specialists cautioned that the number might turn out to be higher. The Italian authorities have also released grisly video footage taken by rescue ships approaching at least two of the sunken vessels. What was apparently the deadliest episode occurred on Thursday. A boat was towed away from the Libyan coastline by a larger smuggler ship. Survivors described being crammed onto a flimsy vessel filled with 670 people. Once the larger boat dropped the towline, the smaller one capsized. There were already 100 people missing from the ship that sank on Wednesday — a wooden fishing boat that flipped within sight of the Italian Navy (which later released a video that showed desperate people clinging to the deck or being tossed into the sea). On Friday, the navy rescued 135 migrants — and recovered 45 bodies — from a sinking smuggling boat on its way from Libya to Italy. “This week was a massacre,” said Giovanna Di Benedetto, a spokeswoman in Sicily with Save the Children, the nonprofit humanitarian group. Mr. Fossi, the United Nations spokesman, warned that the death toll could grow. “And surely many of those victims will be women and children, as usual,” he added. The vast majority of migrants trying to reach Italy are coming from African nations like Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana and Nigeria. Last year, refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq poured into Europe, mostly traveling through Turkey into Greece. Now that the Greece route is largely shut down, the question is whether Syrians and Iraqis will try to reach Libya for the dangerous journey to Italy. That was the case in 2014, before smugglers began focusing on Greece. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy has tried for months to force the European Union to focus on Libya. He raised the issue again at the recent meeting of the Group of 7 nations and has proposed holding a Group of 7 meeting next year in Sicily, which has borne the brunt of Italy’s migrant crisis. Mr. Renzi also has proposed the creation of Euro bonds to help finance the response to the crisis — a move opposed by Germany so far. Much attention has been focused on Germany, as it absorbs nearly one million refugees who arrived last year. But Italy is also feeling the strain. With the summer migrant season soon to arrive, more than 115, 000 migrants are already in Italy, an enormous increase from only a few years ago. Italian news media regularly broadcasts videos and photographs of sinking boats, as well as men, women and children wrapped in thermal blankets. In one striking image, a rescue official held a girl who had lost her pregnant mother. On Saturday at the Vatican, Pope Francis showed a gathering of children a life jacket used by a Syrian girl who died while trying to reach the Greek island of Lesbos. “Migrants are not a danger — they are in danger,” Francis told his young audience. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday weighed whether cities can sue banks under the Fair Housing Act for predatory lending, even if foreclosures that stem from such loans affect a city only indirectly. The case before the justices was brought by Miami after the 2008 financial crisis. The city said that discriminatory mortgage lending practices by Bank of America and Wells Fargo had led to a disproportionate number of defaults by minority home buyers and, in turn, to financial harm to the city. “We are aggrieved in every sense of the word by the discrimination that was propounded here,” said Robert S. Peck, a lawyer for the city. The justices appeared divided over whether Miami’s asserted injuries were enough to allow it to sue under the housing law. Justice Elena Kagan said the law was a “distinctive kind of statute, which really is focusing on community harms. ” “Here the cities are standing up and saying, ‘Every time you do this redlining and this reverse redlining, essentially a community is becoming blighted.’ And who better than the city to recognize that interest and to assert it?” she asked. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appeared to disagree, telling Mr. Peck that the harms Miami claimed to have suffered were secondhand. “Your injuries are derivative of the injury to the homeowners who had the subprime mortgages and who suffered the foreclosure and so on,” the chief justice told him. “I understand your argument that you’re down the line, but I don’t see how you can say that your loss of property taxes is a direct injury. ” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy also appeared skeptical of aspects of the city’s arguments. “The statute doesn’t prohibit decreasing property tax values,” he said. Other justices worried that a ruling for Miami would allow all sorts of people and entities to sue for indirect harm from discriminatory practices. Justice Kagan asked about restaurants and dry cleaners, Justice Sonia Sotomayor about corner grocers and Justice Stephen G. Breyer about “a magazine that writes about successes in integration and wants to write about this community before it got wrecked or whatever. ” Curtis E. Gannon, a lawyer for the federal government arguing in support of the city, offered a limiting principle. He said people, businesses and local governments hurt by a decline in property values ought to be able to sue under the housing law. The law allows suits from “aggrieved persons. ” No one disputed that cities may sometimes count as persons in a legal sense, but Neal K. Katyal, a lawyer for the banks, said Miami was not aggrieved just because it asserted an indirect financial injury. He said the city had tried to piggyback on the borrowers’ interest in being free from discrimination and had “cut and paste” their grievances into its lawsuit. Miami’s asserted injuries were too remote, Mr. Katyal said, calling the city’s legal theory “ liability. ” “You have to have discriminatory loans,” he said. “Those discriminatory loans have to lead to defaults. The defaults have to lead to foreclosures. The foreclosures need to lead to increases in vacancies. The increase in vacancies needs to lead to reduction in property values. ” Mr. Peck, the city’s lawyer, said its harm was more direct. “The banks’ practice of providing minority borrowers with more expensive and riskier loans than they qualified for, or that nonminority borrowers received, actually frustrated and counteracted the city’s efforts on fair housing,” he said. The court heard a single hour of argument in two consolidated cases, Bank of America v. Miami, No. and Wells Fargo v. Miami, No. . A trial court dismissed the suits in 2014, saying the city had not demonstrated that its claims were covered by the housing law. The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, reversed those rulings last year, allowing the cases to proceed. The appeals court said it was enough for the city to contend that it had “suffered an economic injury resulting from a racially discriminatory housing policy. ” A tie in the Supreme Court, which seemed a viable prospect on Tuesday, would leave the appeals court’s ruling in place, handing a victory to Miami but setting no national precedent. | 1 |
November 15, 2016 By 21wire Leave a Comment
J.R. Smith 21st Century Wire
The election campaign might be over, but the mainstream media’s campaign against President Elect Donald Trump is in full swing.
Between all of the fake polling, intentionally pro-Clinton partisan coverage, and mainstream media collusion with the Democratic National Party and the Clinton Campaign exposed through WikiLeaks’ Podesta email dump – nearly the entire US mainstream media is now in full damage-limitation mode desperately trying to preserve any crumb of credibility and perceived authority they might have left.
It’s now become clear that the media is guilty on multiple fronts, as more proof has emerged of how they are helping to stoke violence, while promoting unfounded fears – and all the while pushing fictional ‘hate crime’ hoaxes.
CBS News flagship investigative program 60 Minutes conducted a recorded interview with Trump on Friday in which he made a direct plea on camera to any possible supporters to “Stop it,” in reference to anyone that may have written racist slogans or abusive language in public, or at schools. In light of the numerous pockets of protests and outbreaks of partisan violence which have racked America since the election results were announced last week, it would have been in the public interest to release this powerful appeal by Trump, but instead mainstream CBS buried it for 3 days until 60 Minutes was scheduled to air later on Sunday evening nationwide. If CBS had any credibility remaining, this certainly will have finished it off.
When told about alleged reports of a ‘Trump supporter’ who were said to have been harassing Latinos and Muslims following his presidential win, Trump told interviewer Leslie Stahl , “I am so saddened to hear that.” He then added, “And I say, ‘Stop it.’ If it helps, I will say this – and I will say right to the cameras: ‘Stop it.'”
One big thing in this incident that many mainstream media observers did not pick up is that at no time did Stahl give any specifics on these alleged “abuses” by Trump supporters against Muslims and Latinos, and even though it’s obvious that Trump was not responsible for directing any alleged abuses – Stahl still demanded an apology on their behalf – without offering any evidence to support her claim. This was ‘drive-by’ media at its worst. In fact, not one of these said accusations of abuse have been properly investigated by the media, and some may end up actually being media-generated rumors, or even hoaxes.
Now, it’s perfectly understandable that Trump’s victory over the establishment’s heavily inflated candidate Hillary Clinton has left many Democrats, especially millennial college-aged students upset, angry and feeling more than a little delicate due to their bruised collective egos (they are not upset that Trump won, as much as they are upset that ‘they’ lost). The real problem exists far beyond the learned immaturity of America’s politically correct-obsessed young adults. The real danger is that Democratic Party gutter operatives and their liberal media cohorts are actually staging, and fabricating “hate crime” incidents in order to propagate the idea that the President Elect and his supporters are somehow “causing many minorities fearful about the future”. In reality, much of this hype is being generated through these same liberal media outlets.
In fact, one Muslim female from Louisiana has since been forced to apologize for inventing her alleged ‘hate crime’ incident – one designed to discredit Trump, and to help stoke more nationwide protests.
Buzzfeed reported, via Religion of Peace :
A woman who claimed she was attacked and robbed by two men near the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, including one wearing a Donald Trump hat, made up the story, police said in a statement.
The woman had alleged the men yelled obscenities at her and took away her wallet and hijab, a scarf sometimes worn by Muslim women, The Advertiser reported.
Lafayette Police officials said in a statement the incident is no longer under investigation, the paper reported.
“During the course of the investigation, the female complainant admitted that she fabricated the story about her physical attack as well as the removal of her hijab and wallet by two white males,” the statement reportedly read.
NOTE: This story made national headlines and was not questioned or challenged by the hordes of self-described “journalists” who populate the news and editorial newsrooms of America’s corrupt liberal mainstream media.
That’s right – this was just another hoax:
Violent Democratic-Affiliated Street Gangs
What Leslie Stahl and the rest of the gatekeepers at CBS and 60 Minutes have obscured is the fact since Tuesday’s election, nearly all of the so-called ‘violent hate crimes’ have been carried out against Trump supporters – by street gangs who are most clearly Democrat Party supporters.
Here are just a few examples: @michellemalkin Even high school kids are not spared. Student Trump supporter attacked at Woodside High School https://t.co/e7tVvDJ6O8
— Mama Angel (@Mommysaurus75) November 11, 2016
Watch this clip taken from the radical leftist Portland protests this weekend, where Democratic Party supports attack a single woman in her car because they believed that she was a ‘Trump supporter.’ These violent incidents reveal the flavor of anarchy which the Democratic Party and the sitting President of the United States, Barack Obama – are condoning through their deaf silence over the multiple reports of street violence unleashed with the help of the Democratic Party’s online ‘community organizer’ network MoveOn.org – a digital platform partly funded by leading Clinton donor and billionaire George Soros . Watch this stunning clip:
. Here is a video of clip of a white male in Chicago, 49 yr old David Wilcox, who was driving and scraped another vehicle. When the two parties stopped at the intersection to exchange insurance information, Wilcox was greeted by a gang of African-Americans, presumably Democratic Party supporters, who began pointing and shouting, “You voted for Donald Trump!” before beating and robbing the man in the middle of the street. Wilcox was then dragged hundreds of yards as he tried to keep the gang from stealing his car in broad daylight. He was treated for multiple wounds at a local hospital.
From reports we learned that at no time before the attack took place did Wilcox display any support for Donald Trump. It appears as if they attacked him because he was white. So could one call this a case of black on white racism? Regardless, it’s political intimidation done on the street – which could also be defined as pure political fascism. In this instance, the violence was partisan, and carried out by what could be classed as unofficial Democrat foot soldiers – enforcing a type of radical political regime on the streets of America. Watch this disturbing video: . Agitator and Chief: Where is Obama?
These incidents have been mostly blacked out by a national US media who are obviously still working to discredit the Trump Presidency.
Amidst all this violence, however, where is the current President Obama, or the Democratic Party’s losing candidate Hillary Clinton – to help calm street thugs and violent ‘progressives’? It’s almost as if Obama and Clinton are enjoying the unrest. Most certainly though, Obama, Clinton and the Democratic Party are hoping to use this week’s media-generated liberal angst as future political leverage.
What used to be regarded as a reputable investigative news program, 60 minutes, has gradually become a joke. It seems disinterested in covering anything of genuine interest, opting instead for running bland People Magazine and Time Magazine-style ‘safe’ segments. Judging by its plummeting ratings, and its predictable cast of ‘job for life’ government-approved media gatekeeper-cum-commentators like Anderson Cooper and Lesley Stahl, there is little hope for this institution. You might even say it’s irredeemable .
One of the corporate mainstream’s worst offenders during the election was CNN host Brian Stelter (photo, left), whose own show is ironically titled “Reliable Sources.” Stelter is meant to be CNN’s media watchdog person, laughably given the lofty title as “senior media analyst.” After leading CNN’s own exposed efforts to obscure and derail Trump’s Presidential run, while working to cover for a hugely unpopular (even among Democrats) Hillary Clinton candidacy, Stelter has now taken it upon himself to revamp his network’s horrible reputation as an establishment gatekeeper and manipulator of US elections. But it’s too late. The damage has already been done, and CNN will not regain the hanging facade of credibility it once struggled to retain. They are a dirty media outlet, and now everyone knows it.
Now CBS News has been exposed in public view, but their crime is even worse than CNN’s which was just dirty politics in comparison. CBS News took it upon itself to compromise public safety, and put lives at risk – all for its own selfish institutional political position. Twenty years ago, this might have been considered shameful, but in today’s toxic liberal media establishment ruled by an unhealthy feeling of superiority over the unwashed masses – they are all way past shameless at this stage.
None of them can be trusted anymore – only tolerated, in the hope that they might actually report some useful news in the coming years.
More on the CBS 60 Minutes scandal from The Hill…
COSMETIC: CBS’s Stahl represents the shallow, bland irrelevance of the mainstream gatekeeping media.
Joe Concha The Hill
CBS News is under fire for holding a videotaped clip from a Friday interview with President-elect Donald Trump urging supporters not to attack minorities until a “60 Minutes” broadcast on Sunday night.
“I am very surprised to hear that. I hate to hear it,” Trump told interviewer Lesley Stahl when told of some attacks on minorities that have reportedly occurred since his election victory Tuesday.
“I am so sorry to hear it, and I say stop it,” Trump said before looking directly into the camera. “And I say right to the camera, stop it.”
“60 Minutes” did release quotes from the Friday interview in advance, but only a statement by Trump on the Affordable Care Act.
“We chose to release a quote on the issue that affects the most Americans & that was his statement on Obamacare,” a spokesperson for CBS told CNN Monday.
Kai Ryssdal, host of “Marketplace,” called that reasoning “completely underwhelming.” CBS's underwhelming answer: "We chose to release a quote on the issue that affects the most Americans & that was his statement on Obamacare"
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 14, 2016
Protests have grown in the wake of Trump’s victory in major cities across the country.
Not all protests have been peaceful. A protester was shot in Portland last Thursday and hospitalized. Hundreds of arrests have been made, property has been damaged and traffic has snarled due to roads being blocked by protesters chanting “Impeach Trump” and “Not my president.”…
READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files
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WASHINGTON — When the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace opens in two weeks, many consumers will have a new option for the law’s fourth period: standardized health plans that cover basic services without a deductible. With many health plans on the marketplace coming with deductibles in the thousands of dollars, consumers have complained that they were getting little benefit beyond coverage for catastrophic problems. The new standardized options are meant to address that concern — to ensure that “enrollees receive some upfront value for their premium dollars,” as the Obama administration said. “Too many people, especially people on plans, are still struggling to afford the care they need,” Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said, praising the new effort. But the new plans could still be costly. While the federal government specifies deductibles, and other costs for the standardized options, it does not limit premiums, which in most cases are still regulated by state insurance commissioners. The administration has said it does not expect the standardized options to have a significant effect on premiums in 2017. Federal officials say the new option will simplify shopping under the Affordable Care Act by reducing variation among plans, and consumer advocates like the idea. The standardized options will be identified on HealthCare. gov with the label “Simple Choice. ” Open enrollment begins Nov. 1 and runs through Jan. 31. People without health insurance next year face possible tax penalties that could exceed $700 a person. “This is one more tool that will make it easier for consumers to select the right plan,” said Marjorie K. Connolly, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services. Sandy H. Ahn, a researcher at the Health Policy Institute of Georgetown University, said the “standardized plans will allow consumers to make more of an comparison. ” Administration officials did not say how many such plans will be available, in which states they will be offered or how much they will cost. The government encouraged but did not require insurers to offer standardized options. The standardized version of a midlevel silver plan has a $3, 500 deductible, but primary care and specialty care visits, outpatient mental health services and prescription drugs are generally exempt from the deductible. In other words, consumers may face but they do not have to meet the deductible before the insurance company starts to pay for such services. On HealthCare. gov, the administration intends to introduce the idea of standardized options by describing Simple Choice as “the easiest way to shop for plans. ” “All Simple Choice plans in the same category (like Silver) have exactly the same core benefits, deductibles and ” states a message to be displayed on the federal website. “When viewing Simple Choice plans, you can focus on other important features that may be different: monthly premiums, additional services covered, doctor and hospital networks. ” The Obama administration is still struggling to keep the Affordable Care Act affordable for many consumers. State officials have approved rate increases of 25 percent or more for many plans in 2017, after finding that insurers lost tens of millions of dollars in the exchanges. Aetna, UnitedHealth and other insurers have pulled back from the public marketplace, leaving consumers in many states with fewer choices. Under the standardized version of a silver plan, would be $30 for a visit to a primary care doctor, $65 for a visit to a specialist, $15 for a generic prescription drug, $50 for a preferred drug and $100 for a nonpreferred drug. Consumers may be responsible for up to 40 percent of the cost of specialty drugs, including certain medicines for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. For the families, the charges would be lower. Federal officials said they had studied several exchanges — in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Vermont — that provide standardized options. Peter V. Lee, the executive director of the California exchange, said standardized options had contributed to the stability and success of the marketplace there. “Californians seeking coverage through the marketplace can easily compare health plans, knowing that every health plan has the same levels and benefits,” Mr. Lee said. Insurers generally dislike efforts to standardize health plans. Standardized options “increase the complexity of the process” by adding one more factor for consumers to consider, said America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group. In a letter this month to the Obama administration, Anthem, one of the nation’s largest insurers, said, “Standardized benefit designs threaten to commoditize insurance and stifle innovation, while potentially misleading consumers. ” The administration said insurers still had discretion to vary many features that would not be standardized. | 1 |
PALM BEACH, Fla. — Federal authorities would be empowered to immediately deport vastly more undocumented immigrants as part of a broad crackdown being developed by the Trump administration that would significantly change the way federal agencies enforce immigration laws. Two draft memos signed on Friday by John F. Kelly, the retired Marine general who is now secretary of homeland security, outline an aggressive mission for the immigration authorities that would rescind policies put in place by President Barack Obama that focused mainly on removing serious criminals. The directives appear to spare many younger immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, known as Dreamers. But some parents of children who enter unaccompanied could face prosecution under the guidelines. The approach laid out in the memos, which have not been finalized and are subject to change by the White House, reflects Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to harden the border and deport people who entered the United States illegally. He has returned to that theme in recent days: At a rally on Saturday in Melbourne, Fla. Mr. Trump highlighted a recent spate of deportations and characterized those being sent out of the country as dangerous criminals. “We will have strong borders again,” he told supporters, who cheered robustly. “You’ve seen it on television. General Kelly, now Secretary Kelly, he’s really doing the job. You’re seeing it. The gang members — bad, bad people. I said it Day 1. And they’re going out, or they’re being put in prison. But for the most part, get them the hell out of here. Bring them back to where they came from. ” Among the most significant changes in the memos, which were obtained by McClatchy newspapers and The Washington Post, would be an expansion of expedited removal proceedings to cover thousands more undocumented immigrants. Under expedited removals, agents from the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement can deport detained individuals immediately. Under Obama administration directives, expedited removal was used only within 100 miles of the border for people who had been in the country no more than 14 days. Mr. Kelly’s memos would expand that to those who have been in the country for up to two years anywhere in the nation. The memos also call for the possible prosecution of the parents of children who arrived as unaccompanied minors and are later reunited with the parents. Under Mr. Kelly’s directive, the parents could be charged with smuggling or trafficking. But the memos appear to exempt the Dreamers, the young immigrants protected under Mr. Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, called DACA. Mr. Trump has signaled that he is not eager to completely reverse that initiative, since those young immigrants were not responsible for their entering the country illegally. “The DACA situation is a very, very — it’s a very difficult thing for me, because, you know, I love these kids,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference on Thursday. “I love kids. I have kids and grandkids. And I find it very, very hard doing what the law says exactly to do. And you know the law is rough. ” The White House cautioned on Sunday that the details of the directives were still being reviewed but suggested final orders may be issued this week. “None of those are final and have not been signed off by the White House,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a deputy press secretary for Mr. Trump, told reporters in Florida, where the president was spending the weekend. The Department of Homeland Security declined to discuss the memos. The changes in immigration enforcement, outlined in executive orders signed by Mr. Trump last month, have drawn praise from agents in the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “For the first time in my 19 years, I feel like I can do the job I was hired to do, the job they tell you you’ll be doing when you leave the academy,” said Shawn Moran, a Border Patrol agent in San Diego and spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing 16, 000 of the agency’s 21, 000 agents. But immigration advocates called the policy changes dangerous and expressed disappointment in Mr. Kelly, who they had hoped would be a more moderate voice on immigration policy in the Trump administration because he had expressed sympathy for women and children arriving in the United States after fleeing violence in Central America. “That hope is now gone,” Tom Jawetz, the vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research organization, said on Twitter. “The border security memo mentions Honduran, Salvadoran and Guatemalan kids coming without pretending to care why. ” Omar Jadwat, the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he hoped the administration would rethink the approach. “All of these things are unfortunately not surprising but deeply worrisome, both for the people who are going to be directly affected and for the country as a whole,” Mr. Jadwat said. “This kind of inhumane approach and the disregard for fundamental due process values that’s embodied in these memos can do real damage to our country. ” Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said that while he supported the removal of unauthorized immigrants who are dangerous criminals, Mr. Trump’s policies seemed to lump all undocumented immigrants together. “Ultimately, anyone who is found in an undocumented status would ultimately be apprehended and deported, with due process totally eroded under the proposals that I’m hearing about,” he said on “State of the Union” on CNN. “And that’s not only going to lead to massive deportations, they are going to affect every element of our society and our economic sector as well. ” Expanding the immigration authorities’ reach would require a considerable increase in resources. With an estimated 11 million people in the country illegally, the government has long had to set narrower priorities, given the constraints on staffing and money. But Mr. Kelly’s memos envision hiring 10, 000 new immigration and customs agents, expanding detention facilities and creating an office to help families of those killed by undocumented immigrants. Mr. Trump had some of those relatives address his rallies in the campaign, and several were present when he signed an executive order on immigration last month at the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Kelly’s directives would also instruct Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, to begin reviving a program that recruits local police officers and sheriff’s deputies to help with deportation, effectively making them de facto immigration agents. The effort, called the 287g program, was scaled back during the Obama administration. The program faces resistance from many states and dozens of sanctuary cities, which have refused to allow their law enforcement workers to help round up undocumented individuals. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has said he will cut state funding for sanctuary cities and remove any elected official who promotes such policies. Mr. Abbott’s office canceled a $1. 5 million grant to Travis County because the newly elected Democratic sheriff, Sally Hernandez, said her department would not respond to requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to flag inmates for possible deportation. In Kansas, Kris Kobach, the secretary of state and a transition adviser to Mr. Trump, is promoting a bill that would require the Kansas Highway Patrol to seek agreement with the federal government to deputize state troopers to enforce immigration laws. The Highway Patrol says it was not consulted on the bill. The measure faces opposition from Democrats and some moderate Republicans. | 1 |
When democracy is at its best, elections are the civilized version of warfare: clashes of wit, personality and ideas that seek to resolve a nation’s biggest arguments. But sometimes an election is just a dirty fight. When Donald J. Trump arrived in Albuquerque last week, stepping from his jet into an aircraft hangar that was thronged with baying supporters, he held his arms aloft like a champion boxer. His speech opened with dutiful attacks on Obamacare, the Iran nuclear deal and immigration. But it was when he uttered a single word — “Hillary” — that the crowd truly erupted. “Lock her up!” The roar filled the hangar. Mr. Trump paused his speech, then smiled. Two days later and 1, 500 miles away, Hillary Clinton punched back. Slamming her rival’s “dark and divisive vision,” she alternated between mocking Mr. Trump and painting him as a threat to America and global stability. Would America’s nuclear codes be safe in his hands? she asked the crowd at her own rally in Orlando, Fla. What about black people? Latinos? A harsh, quality crept into her voice. This was the biggest election of their lives, she told supporters. “Now,” she said, “go and vote. ” I will not be voting in this election I’m Irish, and I’ve never lived in the United States. But since July, I have traversed the country to report on its extraordinary, bewildering campaign from a foreigner’s perspective. After the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, I met voters at a coal mine in West Virginia, at ranches along the Mexican border, inside casinos in Las Vegas and outside the gleaming black edifice of Trump Tower in Manhattan. Here is a video with comments from a few of them. As Nov. 8 approached, I wanted to see the candidates up close. I went to 10 rallies in six states, traveling more than 6, 000 miles (that’s nine flights in four days). After all that, I didn’t get closer than 30 yards from either candidate. The view was often better on television. Yet as they galloped down the home straight of this bitterly contentious race, the trip revealed less a snapshot of America than a measure of its temperature. Rallies felt like injections to the vein, jolts of political energy driven by voters who stood for long hours in crowded halls, cheering leaders they could barely see for promises that may never be fulfilled. But venom, not hope, was a driving force. Fear and loathing course through both campaigns, driven on one side by Mr. Trump’s populism and on the other by Mrs. Clinton’s apocalyptic warnings of the consequences if he wins. Lurid personal attacks, insinuations of rampant conspiracy theories — I might have been in Pakistan, where I lived for nine years, or at my current base in Egypt. In this election, America’s shining city on the hill, it seems, has more in common with those countries where the electricity blinks on and off. Below, some snapshots and notes from my time on the trail, first with Mr. Trump, then with Mrs. Clinton. LAS VEGAS, Oct. 30, 11:10 a. m. To see Mr. Trump speak live is to understand his wild popularity with a section of the electorate. In three nationally televised debates, he often came across as a blustering, barracking bumbler. But in the gilded ballroom of the Venetian hotel and casino, he is in complete control. He channels the energy of the crowd, listening as he speaks. When he hears the right note of approval, Mr. Trump amplifies his message and bounces it back, usually with one of his trademark catchphrases. “Drain the swamp!” the crowd yells on cue — a reference to the swamp upon which Washington, D. C. was built. Then: “Build the wall” on the Mexican border. And: “Lock her up!” 11:43 a. m. We’re standing at the ballroom side door, having been hustled out by campaign aides before Mr. Trump finished. The jaded campaign reporters who have heard this speech dozens of times say the closer in perfect sync: “Make America great again!” Then we are herded into a giant service elevator that deposits us in the bowels of the casino where, among the concrete pillars, a convoy of gleaming black vehicles and burly Secret Service agents is waiting. Mr. Trump follows within minutes. I press up against the window of the press bus. The candidate walks briskly, but his shoulders are drooped, as if deflated by the effort of the speech. He steps into a drive, and the convoy sets off for the airport. This, it turns out, is the closest I will get to him. McCARRAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, noon. The Trump press plane offers several advantages over commercial air travel: There’s no and there are no luggage limit or irksome restrictions about seatbelts or cellphone use. Every seat is business class (my bill for two days topped $5, 000). The crew is obliging, and the alcohol and are free. You can eat during takeoff. But you don’t get to see the star. In a break with campaign tradition, Mr. Trump has declined to share a plane with the traveling press. He flies in his private Boeing 757 — fancifully nicknamed Trump Force One — with its gold taps and retinue of advisers. GREELEY, Colo. 2 p. m. When a Trump crowd unleashes on Mrs. Clinton, it is hard not to think of Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” when the people were allowed to spend two minutes every day venting hatred for the party’s enemy. Yet individually, many Trump supporters are a far cry from the snarling caricatures. At the University of Northern Colorado, they are cheery and polite, an odd mix of the prim and the profane: schoolteachers and churchgoers in sensible shoes, paunchy men in tattoos and biker leathers. They seem to exult in the solidarity of the crowd, defiant in their identity as “deplorables. ” To them, Mr. Trump can do no wrong the problem is politics. Les Potts, a retired preacher, tells me that he worries about the progressives’ gaining control of the Supreme Court and the spread of communism. Is America not the global center of capitalism? No, he insists. “People are fed up,” he says. “In Washington, we need some big changes. And I don’t think we’ll have that without a revolution. ” GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. Oct. 31, 2 a. m. Confusion at means that I spend 15 minutes hunting for a room that, it turns out, is on the sixth floor. I collapse into bed. 10 a. m. It’s Halloween, so “Werewolves of London” has replaced Pavarotti as the music at Deltaplex Arena. The Statue of Liberty is posing for pictures, along with Laurie Sanger, in an orange jumpsuit, a blond wig and handcuffs: a jailbird Hillary Clinton. Ms. Sanger, who is 33 and works at a furniture factory, explains: Mrs. Clinton is a corrupt criminal, “bought and paid for by special interests — she deserves jail. ” Ms. Sanger’s placard is sponsored by infowars. com, a conspiracy website that, thanks to Mr. Trump, has leapt to prominence. It’s also a sign of the times: Thanks to Mr. Trump, fringe ideas are now aired in the mainstream, prejudice masquerading as fact. Danny Popma, a local factory owner, tells me that the Muslim community in Detroit — the largest in America — was implicated in . WARREN, Mich. 4 p. m. Winning is a big part of Mr. Trump’s sales pitch. But what he’s offering feels like a defensive victory, a retrieval of lost glory rather than anything new. At Macomb Community College, north of Detroit, he paints a dismal picture of American foreign policy, laying the chaos of the Middle East — Libya, Syria, Egypt and Iraq, and the death of four Americans in Benghazi in 2012 — at Mrs. Clinton’s doorstep. To him, the entire world is a stage of American humiliation, with a declining military and abandoned veterans. It resonates with people in the crowd. To them, Mr. Trump offers to salve fallen pride, flex American muscle and renew bruised notions of American exceptionalism. NORTH OF TAMPA, Fla. Nov. 1, 1:15 p. m. I’m in an Uber, having left the Trump bubble to meet up with the Clinton camp in Florida, the most famous of the famous swing states, where Al Gore lost it all by a sliver in 2000. Rush Limbaugh, the king, is on the radio, pouring cold water on suggestions that Mr. Trump is losing and basking in the email scandal that has exploded over the Clinton campaign — again. Nobody knows what was in these latest emails, not even the F. B. I. director, who revealed their existence. But that’s not the point. Mrs. Clinton’s emails have acquired a talismanic power in this election, a digital dung heap that embodies the negatives she has struggled to shake off: defensiveness, reflexive secrecy, the whiff of shortcuts and sharp practice. The candidates are neck and neck here in Florida, bombarding each other with negative ads. It’s hard to avoid them on TV: images of a vampirelike Mrs. Clinton, or Mr. Trump slinging insults at women. “I can’t wait till this is all over,” my Uber driver says. DADE CITY, Fla. 3:23 p. m. Waiting for Mrs. Clinton, I log on to the press network: The password is “stronger together,” the campaign slogan. Yesterday it was “Trump Train. ” Everything is an opportunity for messaging in a modern campaign. Before the candidate arrives, a few of her supporters wilt under the scorching sun and are carried out for first aid. What strikes me among the older supporters is the intensity of their animus toward Mr. Trump. He is, one man tells me, “pure evil. ” Nancy Perkins, 64, a retired nurse, says she has unfriended every Trump supporter on Facebook: “I don’t need people like that in my life. ” The act is Alicia Machado, the onetime Miss Universe who became an election argument when it emerged that Mr. Trump had once called her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping. ” Now the Clinton campaign has deployed her. Her voice quivers as she recounts how he called her ugly. “He’s the ugly one!” yells a man in a wheelchair at the back of the crowd. “Monster!” 4:34 p. m. A few hundred yards from the rally, a clutch of Trump supporters are yelling, “Lock her up!” As the press bus pulls away, the Trumpsters run around outside the window, laughing and making wild gestures. FORT INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Nov. 2, 12:13 p. m. Wheels up: In the campaign’s final sprint, candidates often move east to west, exploiting the changing time zones to fit in more events. Much has changed since Timothy Crouse wrote “The Boys on the Bus,” his gritty account of covering the 1972 presidential campaign, and it’s not just Twitter’s replacing typewriters. Today, most of the Clinton correspondents are women, so testosterone levels have fallen, too. Unlike Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton travels on the same plane as the press. But it’s a distinction without a difference: She is ensconced behind a curtain near the nose. That’s new only a few weeks ago, when the polls showed her with a comfortable lead, Mrs. Clinton sometimes strolled back to field questions. But then the F. B. I. email scandal hit. Polls tightened. Mrs. Clinton dispatched her aides to press the press. LAS VEGAS, 2 p. m. I’m back where I started with Mr. Trump. But instead of a fancy casino, Mrs. Clinton’s rally is in the rather prosaic headquarters of the city’s plumbers and pipe fitters union. Burly men walk around in “Carpenters for Hillary” there are a lot of Hispanic supporters in the crowd. Here, Mrs. Clinton’s focus is Mr. Trump’s attitude toward immigration. She talks about what his “dark and divisive vision” would mean for blacks, Mexicans and Muslims. “Imagine what it would be like to have him in the most powerful office in the world on Jan. 20,” she says. McCARRAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, 5:27 p. m. For the short hop to Phoenix, I get switched into the chase plane — an executive jet, all walnut trim and bottled beer, for the reporters who do not fit on Mrs. Clinton’s plane. The press wrangler is Andrea, a consultant from Las Vegas who artfully dodges questions about whether she wants a job in a future Clinton administration. TEMPE, Ariz. 9:50 p. m. After a rally at Arizona State University with 15, 000 people — huge by Clinton standards — her convoy is at a standstill. The Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians are heading into extra innings in the final game of the World Series. Mrs. Clinton, who was born in the suburbs of Chicago, is watching on an iPad and cheering for the Cubs, who haven’t won the championship in 108 years. On the press bus, the Twitter messages and filing of stories have halted reporters crowd over the dim glow of a laptop where someone has managed to stream a live feed. The bus erupts in cheers when the Cubs clinch the title with a final out. Mrs. Clinton allows herself to celebrate, holding aloft the Cubs’ W flag — for “ win” — as she is no doubt hoping to do for herself in a few days. | 1 |
SPECIAL TO BUSINESS WEEK, MINDY KATZMAN, AUTH. EDITOR--Paul Craig Roberts in front of a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury. | 0 |
Melania Trump, who has been all but invisible as her husband confronts a campaign crisis over allegations that he sexually assaulted women, emerged on Monday to forcefully defend him and question the honesty of the women making the accusations. Ms. Trump, in an extensive interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, said the women who had accused Donald J. Trump of groping and kissing them were lying, and likened her husband to a teenage boy who engages in macho boasting. She echoed her husband’s complaint that he was the victim of a broad conspiracy between the news media and the Clinton campaign. “I believe my husband, I believe my husband — it was all organized from the opposition,” Ms. Trump said. “They can never check the background of these women. They don’t have any facts. ” Her appearance comes as Mr. Trump and his aides grapple with the worst stretch of the campaign so far, after the airing 10 days ago of an “Access Hollywood” recording from 2005 that captured Mr. Trump bragging to the host Billy Bush that he kisses women without invitation and that he can grab women’s genitals because he is a “star. ” Ms. Trump, 46, called the exchange between Mr. Trump and Mr. Bush “boy talk,” and said Mr. Trump had been “egged on” by the host “to say dirty and bad stuff. ” But she stressed that she believed that Mr. Trump was simply being boastful and did not engage in the behavior he described. “Sometimes I say I have two boys at home: I have my young son, and I have my husband,” she said with a slight laugh. “But I know how some men talk, and that’s how I saw it, yes. ” Mr. Trump’s aides have been eager for his wife to make a public show of support for him, especially after the “Access Hollywood” recording dominated several media cycles and drove some Republican elected officials to abandon his candidacy. A week ago, Mr. Trump’s adult children, along with aides to his campaign, urged Ms. Trump to agree to a interview with her husband, an echo of the “60 Minutes” interview that Bill and Hillary Clinton did in 1992 after sexual infidelity allegations arose against Mr. Clinton. That appearance helped stabilize Mr. Clinton’s presidential campaign. But Ms. Trump had little interest in it, and the idea died. Ms. Trump has never enjoyed the political stage, and was stung by media coverage in July, when it was revealed that her anticipated Republican National Convention speech borrowed lines from Michelle Obama’s 2008 address to the Democratic National Convention. She has been absent from the campaign trail since, save for brief appearances at the first two general election debates, and has been spending time with the couple’s young son, Barron. She put out a written statement of support for her husband after the tape surfaced. But with Mr. Trump’s favorability among women perilously low, his advisers wanted Ms. Trump to do more. Seated in the family’s penthouse atop Trump Tower, Ms. Trump seemed occasionally ill at ease but determined to convey several points: that her husband is a gentleman, that the media is out to get him and that she is staying strong despite the ugliness. She showed an ability to remain on message that her husband sometimes lacks. “I watched TV hour after hour bashing him,” Ms. Trump said of the television coverage the weekend the recording was first revealed. She said her husband was defending himself against the accusations because “they’re lies. ” She also said her husband was approached by many women who were sexually forward with him. “I see many, many women coming to him and giving the phone numbers and, you know, want to work for him or inappropriate stuff from women,” she said. “And they know he’s married. ” Ms. Trump steadily answered most of Mr. Cooper’s polite but probing questions, though she suggested that some information she would keep private, including the details of the conversation the couple had after the tape came out. She also taped an interview for “Fox and Friends” that will appear Tuesday morning. Mr. Trump has vehemently denied the claims of his accusers, calling them elements of a conspiracy led partly by news media outlets, particularly CNN and The New York Times. Yet despite Mr. Trump’s criticism of CNN and its reporting, and even as some of his supporters at a rally on Monday used an chant, Ms. Trump still selected Mr. Cooper to interview her. Asked on Fox whether it was fair for her husband to bring up Mr. Clinton’s past, Ms. Trump said, “Well, if they bring up my past, why not?” She was alluding to a television ad run during the Republican Party’s nominating fight that featured a nude photo spread from Ms. Trump’s days as a model. Speaking to Mr. Cooper, Ms. Trump repeatedly denounced what she saw as the meanness and inaccuracy of media accounts about her, and she said she would like to work to protect children from the toxic dangers of negativity and anger on social media. She has withdrawn from her own social media accounts, Ms. Trump said, rarely posting during the campaign. “I see the negativity, and it’s not healthy,” she said. But when asked whether she has advised the same to her husband, a frequent Twitter user who often attacks others on his feed, she replied, “That’s his decision. He’s an adult. ” “I give him many advices, but sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn’t, and he will do what he wants to do at the end, and I will do what I want to do,” she said. | 1 |
On Friday an Ada, Oklahoma, man shot and killed a suspect who was trying to drown two babies in a bathtub in a nearby home. [The incident occurred around 12:30 p. m. According to The Ada News, police said the suspect — Leland Foster — “forced his way into a home in the 1800 block of East 6th Street” and tried to killed his own twins. Ada Public Information Director Lisa Bratcher said Central Dispatch received a 911 call from the mother of the twins wherein the mother said she and the babies were under attack by a suspect armed with a knife. Bratcher said “dispatchers could hear the woman screaming in the background amid sounds of a struggle. ” A neighbor, Cash Freeman, was alerted to the situation by a who fled the home, frantically seeking help. Freeman grabbed his revolver and entered the home, where he found Foster allegedly holding the twins under water in the bathtub. Freeman shot Foster two times, killing him and saving the babies. The Daily Mail reports that Foster had “prior criminal charges for arson and domestic abuse by strangulation. ” The twins were treated at a hospital Friday and released on Saturday. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 |
Written by Philip Giraldi Tuesday November 8, 2016 The American people don’t know very much about war even if Washington has been fighting on multiple fronts since 9/11. The continental United States has not experienced the presence a hostile military force for more than 100 years and war for the current generation of Americans consists largely of the insights provided by video games and movies. The Pentagon’s invention of embedded journalists, which limits any independent media insight into what is going on overseas, has contributed to the rendering of war as some kind of abstraction. Gone forever is anything like the press coverage of Vietnam, with nightly news and other media presentations showing prisoners being executed and young girls screaming while racing down the street in flames. Given all of that, it is perhaps no surprise that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, neither of whom has served in uniform, should regard violence inflicted on people overseas with a considerable level of detachment. Hillary is notorious for her assessment of the brutal killing of Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi, saying “We came, we saw, he died.” They both share to an extent the dominant New York-Washington policy consensus view that dealing with foreigners can sometimes get a bit bloody, but that is a price that someone in power has to be prepared to pay. One of Hillary’s top advisers, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, famously declared that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to US led sanctions were “worth it.” In the election campaign there has, in fact, been little discussion of the issue of war and peace or even of America’s place in the world, though Trump did at one point note correctly that implementation of Hillary’s suggested foreign policy could escalate into World War III. It has been my contention that the issue of war should be more front and center in the minds of Americans when they cast their ballots as the prospect of an armed conflict in which little is actually at stake escalating and going nuclear could conceivably end life on this planet as we know it. With that in mind, it is useful to consider what the two candidates have been promising. First, Hillary, who might reasonably be designated the Establishment’s war candidate though she carefully wraps it in humanitarian “liberal interventionism.” As Senator and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has always viewed a foreign crisis as an opportunity to use aggressive measures to seek a resolution. She can always be relied upon to “do something,” a reflection of the neocon driven Washington foreign policy consensus. Hillary Clinton and her advisors, who believe strongly in Washington’s leadership role globally and embrace their own definition of American exceptionalism, have been explicit in terms of what they would do to employ our military power. She would be an extremely proactive president in foreign policy, with a particular animus directed against Russia. And, unfortunately, there would be little or no pushback against the exercise of her admittedly poor instincts regarding what to do, as was demonstrated regarding Libya and also with Benghazi. She would find little opposition in Congress and the media for an extremely risky foreign policy, and would benefit from the Washington groupthink that prevails over the alleged threats emanating from Russia, Iran, and China. Hillary has received support from foreign policy hawks, including a large number of formerly Republican neocons, to include Robert Kagan, Michael Chertoff, Michael Hayden, Eliot Cohen and Eric Edelman. James Stavridis, a retired admiral who was once vetted by Clinton as a possible vice president, recently warned of “the need to use deadly force against the Iranians. I think it’s coming. It’s going to be maritime confrontation and if it doesn’t happen immediately, I’ll bet you a dollar it’s going to be happening after the presidential election, whoever is elected.” Hillary believes that Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad is the root cause of the turmoil in that country and must be removed as the first priority. It is a foolish policy as al-Assad in no way threatens the United States while his enemy ISIS does and regime change would create a power vacuum that will benefit the latter. She has also called for a no-fly zone in Syria to protect the local population as well as the insurgent groups that the US supports, some of which had been labeled as terrorists before they were renamed by current Secretary of State John Kerry. Such a zone would dramatically raise the prospect of armed conflict with Russia and it puts Washington in an odd position vis-à-vis what is occurring in Syria. The US is not at war with the Syrian government, which, like it or not, is under international law sovereign within its own recognized borders. Damascus has invited the Russians in to help against the rebels and objects to any other foreign presence on Syrian territory. In spite of all that, Washington is asserting some kind of authority to intervene and to confront the Russians as both a humanitarian mission and as an “inherent right of self-defense.” Hillary has not recommended doing anything about Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, all of which have at one time or another for various reasons supported ISIS, but she is clearly no friend of Iran, which has been fighting ISIS. As a Senator, she threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran but she has more recently reluctantly supported the recent nuclear agreement with that country negotiated by President Barack Obama. But she has nevertheless warned that she will monitor the situation closely for possible violations and will otherwise pushback against activity by the Islamic Republic. As one of her key financial supporters is Israeli Haim Saban, who has said he is a one issue guy and that issue is Israel, she is likely to pursue aggressive policies in the Persian Gulf. She has also promised to move America’s relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a “new level” and has repeatedly declared that her support for Israel is unconditional. One of Hillary’s advisors, former CIA acting Director Michael Morell, has called for new sanctions on Tehran and has also recently recommended that the US begin intercepting Iranian ships presumed to be carrying arms to the Houthis in Yemen. Washington is not at war with either Iran or Yemen and the Houthis are not on the State Department terrorist list but our good friends the Saudis have been assiduously bombing them for reasons that seem obscure. Stopping ships in international waters without any legal pretext would be considered by many an act of piracy. Morell has also called for covertly assassinating Iranians and Russians to express our displeasure with the foreign policies of their respective governments. Hillary’s dislike for Russia’s Vladimir Putin is notorious. Syria aside, she has advocated arming Ukraine with game changing offensive weapons and also bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which would force a sharp Russian reaction. One suspects that she might be sympathetic to the views expressed recently by Carl Gershman in a Washington Post op-ed that received curiously little additional coverage in the media. Gershman is the head of the taxpayer funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which means that he is a powerful figure in Washington’s foreign-policy establishment. NED has plausibly been described as doing the sorts of things that the CIA used to do. After making a number of bumper-sticker claims about Russia and Putin that are either partially true, unproven or even ridiculous, Gershman concluded that “the United States has the power to contain and defeat this danger. The issue is whether we can summon the will to do so.” It is basically a call for the next administration to remove Putin from power—as foolish a suggestion as has ever been seen in a leading newspaper, as it implies that the risk of nuclear war is completely acceptable to bring about regime change in a country whose very popular, democratically elected leadership we disapprove of. But it is nevertheless symptomatic of the kind of thinking that goes on inside the beltway and is quite possibly a position that Hillary Clinton will embrace. She also benefits from having the perfect implementer of such a policy in Robert Kagan’s wife Victoria Nuland, her extremely dangerous protégé who is currently Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and who might wind up as Secretary of State in a Clinton Administration. Shifting to East Asia, Hillary sees the admittedly genuine threat from North Korea but her response is focused more on China. She would increase US military presence in the South China Sea to deter any further attempts by Beijing to develop disputed islands and would also “ring China with defensive missiles,” ostensibly as “protection” against Pyongyang but also to convince China to pressure North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. One wonders what Beijing might think about being surrounded by made-in-America missiles. Trump’s foreign policy is admittedly quite sketchy and he has not always been consistent. He has been appropriately enough slammed for being simple minded in saying that he would “bomb the crap out of ISIS,” but he has also taken on the Republican establishment by specifically condemning the George W. Bush invasion of Iraq and has more than once indicated that he is not interested in either being the world’s policeman or in new wars in the Middle East. He has repeatedly stated that he supports NATO but it should not be construed as hostile to Russia. He would work with Putin to address concerns over Syria and Eastern Europe. He would demand that NATO countries spend more for their own defense and also help pay for the maintenance of US bases. Trump’s controversial call to stop all Muslim immigration has been rightly condemned but it contains a kernel of truth in that the current process for vetting new arrivals in this country is far from transparent and apparently not very effective. The Obama Administration has not been very forthcoming on what might be done to fix the entire immigration process but Trump is promising to shake things up, which is overdue, though what exactly a Trump Administration would try to accomplish is far from clear. Continuing on the negative side, Trump, who is largely ignorant of the world and its leaders, has relied on a mixed bag of advisors. Former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Michael Flynn appears to be the most prominent. Flynn is associated with arch neocon Michael Ledeen and both are rabid about Iran, with Flynn suggesting that nearly all the unrest in the Middle East should be laid at Tehran’s door. Ledeen is, of course, a prominent Israel-firster who has long had Iran in his sights. The advice of Ledeen and Flynn may have been instrumental in Trump’s vehement denunciation of the Iran nuclear agreement, which he has called a “disgrace,” which he has said he would “tear up.” It is vintage dumb-think. The agreement cannot be canceled because there are five other signatories to it and the denial of a nuclear weapons program to Tehran benefits everyone in the region, including Israel. It is far better to have the agreement than to scrap it, if that were even possible. Trump has said that he would be an even-handed negotiator between Israel and the Palestinians but he has also declared that he is strongly pro-Israel and would move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, which is a bad idea, not in America’s interest, even if Netanyahu would like it. It would produce serious blowback from the Arab world and would inspire a new wave of terrorism directed against the US Regarding the rest of the Middle East, Trump would prefer strong leaders, i.e. autocrats, who are friendly rather than chaotic reformers. He rejects arming rebels as in Syria because we know little about whom we are dealing with and find that we cannot control what develops. He is against foreign aid in principle, particularly to countries like Pakistan where the US is strongly disliked. In East Asia, Trump would encourage Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear arsenals to deter North Korea. It is a very bad idea, a proliferation nightmare. Like Hillary, he would prefer that China intervene in North Korea and make Kim Jong Un “step down.” He would put pressure on China to devalue its currency because it is “bilking us of billions of dollars” and would also increase US military presence in the region to limit Beijing’s expansion in the South China Sea. So there you have it as you enter the voting booth. President Obama is going around warning that “the fate of the world is teetering” over the electoral verdict, which he intends to be a ringing endorsement of Hillary even though the choice is not nearly that clear cut. Part of the problem with Trump is that he has some very bad ideas mixed in with a few good ones and no one knows what he would actually do if he were president. Unfortunately, it is all too clear what Hillary would do. Reprinted with permission from the Unz Review . Related | 0 |
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After the FBI’s Friday announcement that they had reopened their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, many have been quick to attack director James Comey for the timing of his recent move. However, Trey Gowdy just obliterated the criticisms while also delivering a nasty surprise directly to Hillary herself.
The Democrats have come unhinged as they watch their candidate sink, with the FBI’s reopened investigation delivering a devastating blow to an already disastrous campaign. In fact, what’s coming out of their mouths as they enter panic mode is almost laughable. Take for instance Howard Dean’s claim that Comey is in cahoots with Vladimir Putin or Harry Reid’s suggestion that director Comey broke the law.
It’s rather ironic that he’s concerned about Comey following the law while, at the same time, basically suggesting Hillary should get a free pass. In fact, Reid is so concerned about the FBI director’s actions in investigating Hillary Clinton’s criminality that he had the nerve to write Comey, attempting to intimidate him. “I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act, which bars FBI officials from using their official authority to influence an election,” Reid wrote. “Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law.”
Luckily for us, Trey Gowdy was ready to call Reid out for his crap, and of course, it’s all on video for us to enjoy. Watch:
Gowdy wasn’t falling for the left’s excuses, and he said what we were all thinking. First, he laid into Huma Abedin’s excuse that she didn’t know how her emails could have ended up on a device she says belongs to her husband. As Gowdy points out, there aren’t that many ways it could happen, but it’s rather irrelevant since that’s not what the FBI is investigating.
Next, Gowdy took out John Podesta for his “blame the cops” play, and then came the nasty surprise for Hillary. Gowdy reminded viewers that Comey isn’t responsible for a single one of the facts , saying, “ He didn’t tell her to use a private server, he didn’t tell Huma not to turn over all of her devices, and God knows, he didn’t tell Anthony Weiner to send sexually explicit texts to allegedly underage people. ” Gowdy continued to put Hillary on blast, saying “ The timing is a direct and natural consequence of decisions Hillary Clinton made ,” reminding everyone of where our focus and blame should be. But, he wasn’t done there.
It was then Harry Reid’s turn to feel the Gowdy heat as the senator ripped into Reid’s asinine letter to Comey. “Thank God he’s leaving is my initial reaction,” Gowdy said about Reid before adding, “My second reaction is: I did not know Mormons used drugs, and anyone who is capable of sending out that press release has to be under the influence of something.”
Then, Gowdy went right back to putting the attention and blame where it needs to be — on Hillary Clinton. “ The person responsible for this fact pattern is Secretary Clinton ,” Gowdy explained. “Jim Comey did not tell her to use her private server. He did not say to mislead the public about whether or not you turned over all of your work emails. And he certainly didn’t say, Secretary Clinton, why don’t you say you neither sent nor received classified information.”
Trey Gowdy successfully obliterated any critics of the FBI and director James Comey while also delivering Hillary the nasty surprise she deserves. Although she’s used to skirting consequences, she has no one to blame for what’s happening besides herself, and it’s nice to see that there are those in Washington, D.C., who are more than willing to wrap up some personal accountability and drop it directly into the presidential candidate’s lap. Timing wouldn’t be an issue if her own actions didn’t lead our entire country down this path. Hillary Clinton has no one but herself to blame for what she’s facing. As for timing, now maybe Mrs. Clinton has a little idea what it’s like to be aborted just days before delivery. | 0 |
Madman Merkel Demands the Internet Publicly Release All Closed-Source Code
Andrew Anglin Daily Stormer October 27, 2016 This woman is looking haggard af. Botta start calling her Merkel Haggard. New song for refugees refusing deportation: “I think I’ll just stay here and drink, riot, rape, sell drugs and commit acts of terrorism (allah akbar remix)”
There comes a time in the life of every brutal totalitarian psychopath that they just have to lash out against everyone and everything, demand it all be shut down.
RT :
German Chancellor Angela Merkel launched a broadside at internet media giants, accusing them of ânarrowing perspective,â and demanding they disclose their privately-developed algorithms. Merkel previously blamed social media for anti-immigrant sentiment and the rise of the far right.
âThe algorithms must be made public, so that one can inform oneself as an interested citizen on questions like: what influences my behavior on the internet and that of others?” said Merkel during a media conference in Berlin on Tuesday.
âThese algorithms, when they are not transparent, can lead to a distortion of our perception, they narrow our breadth of information.â
Google uses an algorithm to decide which search results are first shown to a user, while Facebook arranges the order of the news feed, and decides to include certain posts from a userâs liked pages and friends, at the expense of others. Both sites also promote links to news articles, often based on a userâs own media interests.
I don’t know about Facebook, but Google’s algorithm is worth billions and billions of dollars. The algorithm is why people use Google instead of Bing. If they released the algorithm, it would effectively make their main product – their search engine – valueless, beyond the value of its brand name.
That’s why it’s not open-source in the first place. Because if they released it, everyone would use it, and their service would no longer have any unique value.
Asking them to release this “because I said” is completely and totally insane – the demand of a madman who thinks the universe belongs to him.
These algorithms are at the core of the intellectual property of any social media or search website, and comprise some of the most highly-protected trade secrets in the world, potentially worth billions. No internet giant has ever revealed its inner workings.
Merkel did not specifically name Facebook, Google or Twitter, but implied that the large platforms are creating âbubblesâ of self-reinforcing views, and squeezing out smaller news providers.
“The big internet platforms, via their algorithms, have become an eye of a needle which diverse media must pass through to reach users,â warned Merkel. âThis is a development that we need to pay careful attention to.â
The internet giants themselves have argued that the so-called social media bubble is largely a myth, and that online users have a wider access to differing views than under a pre-internet model, where most news would be acquired from just a handful of newspapers and one or two TV channels.
This is obviously absolutely true, and it’s absolutely why Merkel is throwing a fit.
She wants media to be limited to approved sources.
These approved sources still have an extreme amount of control, as we see with the Trump situation, but in order to maintain her multicultural utopia, Angela Merkel needs complete 1984-style control of all information the public has access to. “We’ve always been at war with Russia to protect ISIS, Winston.”
And that’s control over international (read: American and Russian) media, because in Germany, they can just go arrest anyone who is saying things they don’t like on the internet. They arrest people for Facebook posts.
This is not the first attack on social media by Merkel and her Grand Coalition government, and while the German politician advocates diversity of views, she has previously accused it of perpetrating opinions that are most at odds with those of the establishment and traditional media.
Last month, Merkel accused AfD, the recently-established anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim party, which receives overwhelmingly negative coverage in most newspapers, of âspreading their liesâ through social media , as it achieves breakthroughs in regional elections around the country.
A year ago, at the height of the refugee influx into the country, Merkel, who was first elected in 2005, was caught on a hot mic personally pressing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to clamp down on anti-migrant posts during a UN session in New York.
A fortnight ago, the leader of Merkelâs parliamentary CDU faction, Volker Kauder, said that social media should be fined âŹ50,000 for failing to remove âhate speech,â saying that a âSword of Damoclesâ has to hang over social media. Kauder also called for warnings, similar to those on cigarette packs or before entering pornographic websites, to be given to those about to go on social media.
Justice Minister Heiko Maas â who said that there had been a 77 percent increase in hate crimes following the arrival of 900,000 asylum seekers â has given internet media companies until February next year to comply with EU directives on xenophobia and racism, or face legal action.
This looks to me like the first huff of the last gasp.
Mama Merkel tried.
But Merkel Haggard has lost control.
Now, she’s about to see the fightin’ side of Germany. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump on Wednesday named a strident China critic, Peter Navarro, to lead a new White House office overseeing American trade and industrial policy, in the latest sign that Mr. Trump is moving to reshape relations between the world’s two largest economies. Mr. Trump also said the billionaire investor Carl Icahn would serve as a special adviser on regulatory issues, another area of economic policy in which the wants big changes. The appointments reflect Mr. Trump’s ambition to increase economic growth by hammering at what he regards as critical roadblocks. He has promised to expand American manufacturing by reducing federal regulation and by preventing what he has described as unfair competition from Chinese manufacturers. The choices of Mr. Navarro and Mr. Icahn also reflect Mr. Trump’s manifest preference for advisers who are loyal, and who do not have government experience. Mr. Navarro, 67, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who holds a doctorate from Harvard, is the only credentialed economist in Mr. Trump’s inner circle. He is the author of a series of jeremiads, including a 2012 documentary film, “Death by China,” in which an animation of a Chinese knife stabs a map of the United States and causes blood to run freely. Mr. Navarro has said that China is effectively waging an economic war by subsidizing exports to the United States and impeding imports from it. Mr. Trump, influenced by Mr. Navarro’s work, described this on the campaign trail as “the greatest theft in the history of the world. ” Mr. Trump has said he will persuade Beijing to change its policies by applying pressure, including designating China a currency manipulator enforcing existing trade laws more vigorously and, if necessary, imposing a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports. In a statement, Mr. Trump described Mr. Navarro as “a visionary economist” and said he would “develop trade policies that shrink our trade deficit, expand our growth and help stop the exodus of jobs from our shores. ” A wide range of economists have warned that curtailing trade with China would damage the American economy, forcing consumers to pay higher prices for goods and services. Experts on manufacturing also doubt that the government can significantly increase factory employment, noting that mechanization is the major reason fewer people are working in factories. Mr. Navarro’s appointment reinforces a basic division among Mr. Trump’s economic advisers. The people he has chosen to oversee trade policy, Mr. Navarro and Wilbur Ross, another billionaire investor, both favor increased trade restrictions. But Mr. Trump’s broader circle of advisers is dominated by proponents of free trade, including Mr. Icahn Gary D. Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs, who will lead the National Economic Council Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, who was tapped for secretary of state and Gov. Terry Branstad of Iowa, Mr. Trump’s choice for ambassador to China. Mr. Trump is also considering the appointment of Larry Kudlow, a strong proponent of trade, to lead his Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Trump has also promised to edit the federal rule book, removing what he has described as overly burdensome restrictions. He said last month that the government would eliminate two regulations for each new rule it put on the books. For Mr. Icahn, who will not draw a salary, the new role formalizes his relationship with Mr. Trump, whom he advised on economic issues throughout the campaign. Mr. Icahn, 80, has no experience in government like a growing number of Mr. Trump’s appointees, he was prized for his success as a businessman. Mr. Icahn, a brash New York billionaire who vocally supported Mr. Trump during the campaign, made his fortune as a “corporate raider,” buying stakes in corporations and demanding changes to reward shareholders. “Carl was with me from the beginning, and with his being one of the world’s great businessmen, that was something I truly appreciated,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “His help on the strangling regulations that our country is faced with will be invaluable. ” Mr. Icahn will also play a role in the selection of a new chairman for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the regulator that serves as the referee for his battles with corporations. Mr. Icahn, the child of two New York schoolteachers, was not known for political activism before the 2016 campaign, and he has insisted that he wants to help the country, not himself. But Mr. Trump’s choice of a major corporate investor to play a role in rewriting regulations that could affect those companies renewed concerns about conflicts of interest in the next administration. “The corrupt nature of this arrangement cannot be understated,” Eric Walker, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement about Mr. Icahn’s appointment. “Voters who wanted Trump to drain the swamp just got another face full of mud. ” Mr. Navarro has built a quiet career as an academic economist, publishing papers on subjects like why businesses give to charity, electricity deregulation and the economics of trash collection. He also mounted four unsuccessful political campaigns as a Democrat between 1992 and 2001, including candidacies for mayor of San Diego and a House seat in Congress. He has said that he started paying attention to China in the early 2000s because he noticed that graduates of the business school at California, Irvine, were starting to lose jobs as a result of globalization. In 2011, he wrote a letter to Mr. Trump about his book “Death by China,” which the movie was based on, and the men began to correspond. Over the past year, Mr. Navarro became an increasingly important campaign adviser on economic issues. But he and Mr. Trump had not met in person until September. | 1 |
2016 elections by Robin D.G. Kelley
The author writes: “I am not suggesting that white racism alone explains Trump’s victory. Nor am I dismissing the white working class’s very real economic grievances. It is not a matter of disaffection versus racism or sexism versus fear. Rather, racism, class anxieties, and prevailing gender ideologies operate together, inseparably, or as Kimberlé Crenshaw would say, intersectionally.” Trump Says Go Back, We Say Fight Back by Robin D.G. Kelley
This article previously appeared in Boston Review .
“We need to reject a thoroughly bankrupt Democratic Party leadership that is calling for conciliation and, in Obama’s words, “rooting for [Trump’s] success.”
“If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between antipoor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women, and resurgent violence against Black people.” — Audre Lorde, “Learning from the 60s”
Donald J. Trump’s election was a national trauma, an epic catastrophe that has left millions in the United States and around the world in a state of utter shock, uncertainty, deep depression, and genuine fear. The fear is palpable and justified, especially for those Trump and his acolytes targeted—the undocumented, Muslims, anyone who “looks” undocumented or Muslim, people of color, Jews, the LGBTQ community, the disabled, women, activists of all kinds (especially Black Lives Matter and allied movements resisting state-sanctioned violence), trade unions. . . . the list is long. And the attacks have begun; as I write these words, reports of hate crimes and racist violence are flooding my inbox.
The common refrain is that no one expected this. (Of course, the truth is that many people did expect this, just not in the elite media.) At no point, this refrain goes, could “we” imagine Trump in the Oval office surrounded by a cabinet made up of some of the most idiotic, corrupt, and authoritarian characters in modern day politics—Rudolph Giuliani, Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, John Bolton, Ben Carson, Jeff Sessions, David “Blue Lives Matter” Clarke, Joe Arpaio, to name a few. Meanwhile, paid professional pundits are scrambling to peddle their analyses and to normalize the results—on the same broadcast media that helped deliver Trump’s victory by making him their ratings-boosting spectacle rather than attending to issues, ideas, and other candidates (e.g., Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein). They deliver the same old platitudes: disaffected voters, angry white men who have suffered economically and feel forgotten, Trump’s populist message represented the nation’s deep-seated distrust of Washington, ad infinitum. Some liberal pundits have begun to speak of President-Elect Trump as thoughtful and conciliatory, and some even suggest that his unpredictability may prove to be an asset. The protests are premature or misplaced. All of this from the same folks who predicted a Clinton victory.
“Trump’s followers are attracted to his wealth as metonym of an American dream that they, too, can enjoy once America is ‘great’ again.”
But the outcome should not have surprised us. This election was, among other things, a referendum on whether the United States will be a straight, white nation reminiscent of the mythic “old days” when armed white men ruled, owned their castle, boasted of unvanquished military power, and everyone else knew their place. Henry Giroux’s new book America at War With Itself made this point with clarity and foresight two months before the election. The easy claim that Trump appeals to legitimate working-class populism driven by class anger, Giroux argues, ignores both the historical link between whiteness, citizenship, and humanity, and the American dream of wealth accumulation built on private property. Trump’s followers are not trying to redistribute the wealth, nor are they all “working class”—their annual median income is about $72,000. On the contrary, they are attracted to Trump’s wealth as metonym of an American dream that they, too, can enjoy once America is “great” again—which is to say, once the country returns to being “a white MAN’s country.” What Giroux identifies as “civic illiteracy” keeps them convinced that the descendants of unfree labor or the colonized, or those who are currently unfree, are to blame for America’s decline and for blocking their path to Trump-style success.
For the white people who voted overwhelmingly for Trump, their candidate embodied the anti-Obama backlash. Pundits who say race was not a factor point to rural, predominantly white counties that went for Obama in 2008 and 2012, but now went for Trump, and to the low black and Latinx voter turnout. However, turnout was down overall, not just among African Americans. Post-election analysis shows that as a percentage of total votes the black vote dropped only 1 percent compared with the 2012 election, even while the number of black ballots counted decreased by nearly 11 percent. (Why this happened is beyond the scope of this essay, but one might begin with Greg Palast’s findings about voter suppression and the use of “crosscheck” to invalidate ballots.) Moreover, claims that nearly a third of Latinxs went for Trump have been disputed by the website Latino Decision, whose careful research puts the figure at 18 percent. The turnout does not contradict the fact that Trump drew the clear majority of white votes. This is not startling news.
“We cannot ignore the fact that the vast majority of white men and a majority of white women, across class lines, voted for a platform and a message of white supremacy.”
If history is our guide, “whitelash” usually follows periods of expanded racial justice and democratic rights. In the aftermath of Reconstruction, there were many instances in which southern white men switched from the biracial, abolitionist Republicans to the “redeemers,” whether it be the Democrats or, in states like Texas, the “White Man’s Party.” (No ambiguity there.) Or in the 1880s and ’90s, when white Populists betrayed their Black Populist allies in a united struggle to redistribute railroad land grants to farmers, reduce debt by inflating currency, abolish private national banks, nationalize railroads and telegraphs, and impose a graduated income tax to shift the burden onto the wealthy, among other things. Many of these one-time white “allies” joined the Ku Klux Klan, defeated the Lodge Force Bill of 1890 which would have authorized federal supervision of elections to protect black voting rights, and led the efforts to disfranchise black voters. Or the late 1960s, when vibrant struggles for black, brown, American Indian, Asian American, gay and lesbian, and women’s liberation, the anti-war movement, and student demands for a democratic revolution were followed by white backlash and the election of Richard Nixon—whose rhetoric of “law and order” and the “silent majority” Trump shamelessly plagiarized.
Of course, Hilary Clinton did win the popular vote, and some are resorting to the easy lament that, were it not for the arcane Electoral College (itself a relic of slave power), we would not be here. One might add, too, that had it not been for the gutting of the Voting Rights Act opening the door for expanded strategies of voter suppression, or the permanent disfranchisement of some or all convicted felons in ten states, or the fact that virtually all people currently in cages cannot vote at all, or the persistence of misogyny in our culture, we may have had a different outcome. This is all true. But we cannot ignore the fact that the vast majority of white men and a majority of white women, across class lines, voted for a platform and a message of white supremacy, Islamophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-science, anti-Earth, militarism, torture, and policies that blatantly maintain income inequality. The vast majority of people of color voted against Trump, with black women registering the highest voting percentage for Clinton of any other demographic (93 percent). It is an astounding number when we consider that her husband’s administration oversaw the virtual destruction of the social safety net by turning welfare into workfare, cutting food stamps, preventing undocumented workers from receiving benefits, and denying former drug felons and users access to public housing; a dramatic expansion of the border patrol, immigrant detention centers, and the fence on Mexico’s border; a crime bill that escalated the war on drugs and accelerated mass incarceration; as well as NAFTA and legislation deregulating financial institutions.
Still, had Trump received only a third of the votes he did and been defeated, we still would have had ample reason to worry about our future.
“White privilege is taken for granted to the point where it need not be named and can’t be named.”
I am not suggesting that white racism alone explains Trump’s victory. Nor am I dismissing the white working class’s very real economic grievances. It is not a matter of disaffection versus racism or sexism versus fear. Rather, racism, class anxieties, and prevailing gender ideologies operate together, inseparably, or as Kimberlé Crenshaw would say, intersectionally. White working-class men understand their plight through a racial and gendered lens. For women and people of color to hold positions of privilege or power over them is simply unnatural and can only be explained by an act of unfairness—for example, affirmative action. White privilege is taken for granted to the point where it need not be named and can’t be named. So, as activist/scholar Bill Fletcher recently observed, even though Trump’s call to deport immigrants, close the borders, and reject free trade policies appealed to working-class whites’ discontent with the effects of globalization, Trump’s plans do not amount to a rejection of neoliberalism. Fletcher writes, “Trump focused on the symptoms inherent in neoliberal globalization, such as job loss, but his was not a critique of neoliberalism. He continues to advance deregulation, tax cuts, anti-unionism, etc. He was making no systemic critique at all, but the examples that he pointed to from wreckage resulting from economic and social dislocation, resonated for many whites who felt, for various reasons, that their world was collapsing.” Yet Fletcher is quick not to reduce white working-class support for Trump to class fears alone, adding, “This segment of the white population was looking in terror at the erosion of the American Dream, but they were looking at it through the prism of race.”
A New York Times poll shows that Trump supporters identified immigration and terrorism, not the economy, as the two most important issues in the campaign. Immigration and terrorism are both about race—Mexicans and Muslims. That there are “illegal” immigrants from around the globe, including Canada, Israel, and all over Europe doesn’t matter: anti-immigrant movements target those who can be racially profiled. And while Trump’s America fears “terrorism,” it does not disavow homegrown terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, despite the fact that white nationalist movements are responsible for the majority of violent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. On the contrary, Trump was not only endorsed by white nationalists and U.S.-based fascists, but during the campaign he refused to renounce their support, and Trump’s leading candidate for attorney general, Rudy Giuliani, has openly called Black Lives Matter “terrorists.”
So where do we go from here? If we really care about the world, our country, and our future, we have no choice but to resist. We need to reject a thoroughly bankrupt Democratic Party leadership that is calling for conciliation and, in Obama’s words, “rooting for [Trump’s] success.” Pay attention: Trump’s success means mass deportation; massive military spending; the continuation and escalation of global war; a conservative Supreme Court poised to roll back Roe v. Wade, marriage equality, and too many rights to name here; a justice department and FBI dedicated to growing the Bush/Obama-era surveillance state and waging COINTELPRO-style war on activists; fiscal policies that will accelerate income inequality; massive cuts in social spending; the weakening or elimination of the Affordable Care Act; and the partial dismantling and corporatization of government.
What must resistance look like? There are at least five things we have to do right now:
1. Build up the sanctuary movement.
In the 1980s, when nearly one million refugees fled U.S.-backed dictatorships in Guatemala and El Salvador, churches offered shelter, sanctuary, and assistance to those seeking political asylum, and over thirty cities were subsequently designated “sanctuary cities” by their local governments. The Obama administration’s deportations of undocumented workers rebooted the sanctuary movement, along with a vibrant immigrant rights movement that pushed the president to use executive authority to launch the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). Trump has vowed to end both programs, leaving some five million immigrants vulnerable to deportation and identifiable through their applications, and he has promised to immediately cut all federal funding for sanctuary cities. To those who argue that millions of undocumented people are not “political refugees,” I counter that Trump’s war on immigrants is driven entirely by his quest to take power—they will become casualties of his political machinations. Some states have already outlawed the longstanding principle of sanctuary status, but this should not deter us from strengthening and expanding the sanctuary movement to other institutions. For example, many of us who work in the University of California system are working to turn our campuses into sanctuaries—preferably with legal and administrative backing. But even without the law behind us, we must act on moral principle.
2. Defend all of our targeted communities.
We must defend against hate crimes, Islamophobia, anti-black racism, attacks on queer and trans people, and the erosion of reproductive rights. There is no need to reinvent the wheel since there are already hundreds of organizations across the country dedicated to the fight, including INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence, Radical Women, the Immigrant Solidarity Network, the Praxis Project, the Praxis Center, CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the African American Policy Forum, the Network Against Islamophobia, and Causa Justa, to name only a few. One of the main targets of attack, of course, is the Movement for Black Lives, along with the dozens of organizations upon which it was built—Black Lives Matter, the Dream Defenders, Million Hoodies, Black Youth Project 100, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, We Charge Genocide, and Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), among others. We need to support these movements and institutions, financially and by doing the work. And we must defend the political and cultural spaces that enable us to plot, plan, build community and sustain social movements. Here in Los Angeles this means spaces such as the L.A. Black Workers Center, the Labor/Community Strategy Center and its new community space, Strategy and Soul, the L.A. Community Action Network, the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, the Community Coalition, and Revolutionary Autonomous Communities, among many others. In New York we can point to Decolonize This Place; in Detroit, the Boggs Center; in St. Louis, Organization for Black Struggle, and so on. There are literally hundreds of centers around the country building for local power, and while none were immune to state surveillance in the past, we can expect heightened monitoring and outright attacks under this extreme right-wing regime. Now is not the time to retreat to our identity silos. We need solidarity more than ever, recognizing that all solidarities are imperfect, often fragile, temporary, and always forged in struggle and sustained through hard work. In our state of emergency, political disagreements, slights, misunderstandings, and microaggressions should not prohibit us from fighting for peoples rights, privileges, and lives.
3. Stop referring to the South as a political backwater, a distinctive site of racist right-wing reaction.
First, white supremacy, homophobia, and anti-union attitudes are national, not regional, problems. Second, black and multiracial groups in the South are at the forefront of resisting Trump’s authoritarian agenda and building power outside the mainstream Democratic Party. Among them are Project South, Southerners on New Ground (SONG), the Moral Mondays Movement, Kindred: Southern Healing Justice Collective, Jackson Rising in Mississippi, Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) in Louisville, Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Atlanta, and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights.
The frontline battles that preceded Trump’s election must not be abandoned. On the contrary, they need to be strengthened. We must redouble our fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline and support the Standing Rock Sioux Nation’s historic resistance. There is no question that Trump’s election has further empowered the corporation behind the pipeline—the Texas-based Fortune 500 company Energy Transfer Partners—to continue to build no matter what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or the Obama Justice Department says. We need to recognize Standing Rock as not only a struggle for environmental justice but an episode in Native people’s five-hundred-year resistance to colonialism. And speaking of colonialism, the crisis in Puerto Rico has not abated—not in the least. As I write, Puerto Ricans on the island and in the U.S. mainland are using every means at their disposal to resist PROMESA, the U.S. plan that empowers a seven-member, unelected board to impose austerity measures as a way of restructuring its debt—measures that include wage reductions, selling off public assets, altering retirement plans for public employees, and fast-tracking changes even if they violate existing laws.
4. Support and deepen the anti-Klan and anti-fascist movement.
We must especially support groups such as Southern Poverty Law Center, which has been on the frontlines of this movement for decades. Although the fight against white supremacist organizations has been continual since the 1860s, the federal government has never successfully outlawed the Klan and similar vigilante groups (although in the 1950s the state of Alabama succeeded in outlawing the NAACP). With Trump’s election we are likely to see a surge in white nationalist and other right-wing terrorism, including attacks on black churches, synagogues, mosques, abortion clinics; and against non-white, queer, and trans people and immigrants. Some on the left will argue that resisting the so-called “alt-right” is a secondary issue since these are fringe movements and building class unity across racial lines ought to be our priority. But with the memory of Colorado Springs and Charleston seared into our memory, this argument rings hollow. And while President Obama’s poignant rendition of “Amazing Grace” at Reverend Clementa Pinckney’s funeral moved much of the nation, the truth is that it is easier to pass laws criminalizing organizations that support the boycott of businesses and institutions complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine than it is to outlaw the Ku Klux Klan.
5. Rebuild the labor movement.
As obvious as this may seem, the entire labor movement is under attack on a global scale. Today labor unions are portrayed as corrupt, bloated, a drain on the economy, and modern-day cartels that threaten workers’ “liberty.” Corporations and the CEOs who run them are portrayed as the most efficient and effective mode of organization. In our neoliberal age, emergency financial managers are sent in to replace elected government during real or imagined economic crises; charter schools organized along corporate lines are replacing public schools; universities are being restructured along corporate lines with presidents increasingly functioning like CEOs; and a businessman with a checkered record, a history of improprieties and legal violations and allegations of sexual assault, and no experience whatsoever in government is elected president.
Today’s economic debates focus not on alternatives to capitalism but on what kind of capitalism—capitalism with a safety net for the poor or one driven by extreme free-market liberalization? A capitalism in which the state’s role is to bail out big banks and financial institutions, or one where the state imposes (or rather restores) greater regulation in order to avoid economic crises? In both of these scenarios, a weakened labor movement is a given. The once-powerful unions are doing little more than fighting to restore basic collective bargaining rights and deciding how much they are going to give back. Union leaders are struggling just to participate in crafting austerity measures. In the New Deal era, the state’s efforts to save capitalism centered on Keynesian strategies of massive state expenditures in infrastructure, job creation, a social safety net in the form of direct aid and social security, and certain protections for the right of unions to organize. All these measures were made possible by a strong labor movement. There was a level of militant organization that we did not see in our post-2008 collapse, in spite of Occupy Wall Street. While Occupy was massive, international, and built on preexisting social justice movements, it lacked the kind of institutional power base and political clout that organized labor had in the 1930s. Of course, labor unions have also been powerful engines of racial and gender exclusion, working with capital to impose glass ceilings and racially segmented wages, but the twenty-first-century labor movement has largely embraced principles of social justice, antiracism, immigrant rights, and cross-border strategies.
“I am talking about opening a path to freeing white people from the prison house of whiteness.”
Obviously there is much missing here, like abolishing the Electoral College and continuing to wage a fight for local power in the legislative and electoral arenas as well as in the streets. Local campaigns to raise the minimum wage, for example, have not only produced key victories but served to mobilize people around issues of injustice and inequality. The sites of resistance will become clearer as the political situation becomes more concrete, especially after January 20.
But I want to return to the white working class and how we might break the cycle of “whitelash.” First, we cannot change this country without winning over some portion of white working people, and I am not talking about gaining votes for the Democratic Party. I am talking about opening a path to freeing white people from the prison house of whiteness. True, with whiteness comes privilege, but many of the perceived privileges are inaccessible to most, which then generates resentment. Exposing whiteness for what it is—a foundational myth for the birth and consolidation of capitalism—is fundamental if we are to build a genuine social movement dedicated to dismantling the oppressive regimes of racism, heteropatriarchy, empire, and class exploitation that is at the root of inequality, precarity, materialism, and violence in many forms. I am not suggesting we ignore their grievances, but that we help white working people understand the source of their discontent—real and imagined.
Is this possible? The struggle to recruit the white working class is an old story. Black movement leaders have been trying to free white working people from the paltry wages of whiteness since Reconstruction, at least, and it seems to always end badly. This history is not necessarily legible because we tend to conflate populism and fascism with what Henry Giroux astutely identifies as authoritarianism. Populism is the idea that ordinary people ought to have the power to control their government and their communities, especially along lines that benefit the collective. In the 1880s and ’90s, the black populist movement adopted a vision of a new society based on cooperative economics. The great writer and activist Timothy Thomas Fortune gave their unique vision eloquent voice and plans for action in his book Black and White: Land, Labor and Politics in the South (1884), which offered a path for the emancipation of the nation as a whole, not just black people. He attacked America’s betrayal of Reconstruction, identified monopoly and private ownership of land as the central source of inequality, and articulated a vision of a democratic, caring political economy based on equity and fairness. The National Colored Alliance members had advanced beyond printing more money or demanding free silver, adopting instead a more radical redistribution of wealth and power. They wanted more than a short-term alliance just to raise wages for picking cotton or reducing debt. But Fortune understood that a genuine cooperative commonwealth is not possible unless white workers and farmers join the movement. “The hour is approaching,” he wrote, “when the laboring classes of our country, North, East, West and South, will recognize that they have a common cause, a common humanity and a common enemy; and that, therefore, if they would triumph over wrong and place the laurel wreath upon triumphant justice, without distinction of race or of previous condition they must unite!” Whatever unity they managed to create proved ephemeral. As in so many other scenarios, most whites chose white supremacy over liberation.
The lessons here are crucial. We cannot build a sustainable movement without a paradigm shift. Stopgap, utilitarian alliances to stop Trump aren’t enough. I concur with Giroux, who calls on all of us to wage “an anti-fascist struggle that is not simply about remaking economic structures, but also about refashioning identities, values, and social relations as part of a democratic project that reconfigures what it means to desire a better and more democratic future.” Robin Davis Gibran Kelley is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA. | 0 |
Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” TBS’s “Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee said America does not have a”smug liberal” problem while discussing her “Not The White House Correspondents Dinner” special. When asked if there is a smug liberal problem in the United States Bee said, “I just can’t take responsibility for the way the election turned out. I just absolutely just — I don’t, I can’t. Is there a smug liberal problem? I guess you know I don’t think there is. I do the show for me and for people like me, and I don’t really care how the rest of the world sees it, quite frankly. That’s great. We make a show for ourselves. We put it out in the world. We birth it, and then the world receives it however they want to receive it. What can I do? Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Donald J. Trump gave the sign upon making his way to the Western balcony of the Capitol on Friday. Some took it as a middle finger. [Barack Obama looked like he had just watched the end of The Sixth Sense for the first time when he saw his successor arrive. The woman he long expected to see, Hillary Clinton, displayed symptoms of really, really needing a Prozac. Bill Clinton’s smile came across as slightly more real than Chuck Schumer’s hair. Even George W. Bush appeared more amused than enthused. The baton passed not so much from a Democrat to a Republican on Friday as from the establishment to the great unwashed. Just as Trump’s followers imagined their champion as a billionaire, as though such a thing existed, his detractors regarded the mogul and star as an uncouth outsider. Even though the new First Lady makes all her predecessors look like that lady in American Gothic by comparison, Trump strangely represents the pitchfork people. Trump got into the role during his inaugural address, which put an end to eight long years in 17 short minutes. “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost,” the new president explained. “Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories, their triumphs have not been your triumphs. ” Certainly Trump’s triumph was not their triumph. It showed on the blank faces of the powerful and the blank spaces on the national mall. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow juxtaposed Barack Obama’s inauguration boasting people as far as the eye can see with Trump’s crowd failing to extend to the Washington Monument. She didn’t mention that Washington, D. C. favored Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Trump 91 percent to four percent on Election Day. Nor did she speak of the local welcome wagon, which on Inauguration Eve gored Trump supporters with flagpoles and read “Make America Great Again” on hats as “Please Throw a Battery at Me. ” Sometimes watching at home is the better part of valor. The cameras didn’t capture 44’s face when 45 lamented that “we’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own,” or 43’s face when 45 noted that the federal government “spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay. ” One imagines they grimaced, at least on the inside. It’s not merely that the new president announced a break with their policies on the most public stage possible. The very fact of him taking the oath of office directly derived from their policies. The people who most despise President Trump bear the most responsibility for President Trump. From Melania Trump effortlessly scaling the Capitol steps in heels to the clouds opening up when her husband enjoyed his grand moment to T. C. choppering the Obamas out of the spotlight, the first day of the Trump presidency offered a surreal quality, amplified for the bigwigs on the balcony long deluding themselves that the owns inaugurations. As the new occupant of the Oval Office reminded, “January 20th, 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. ” Some people liked the sound of that less than others. | 1 |
TEL AVIV — President Donald Trump is still “seriously considering” moving the U. S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday. [Speaking at an event in Washington marking Israel’s Independence Day, Pence said “the president of the United States, as we speak, is giving serious consideration to moving the American embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem” according to White House transcripts. He noted Trump’s unwavering support of the Jewish state, citing as evidence of this the appointment of David Friedman — who was in attendance at the event — as U. S. ambassador to Israel as well as Nikki Haley’s appointment as U. S. ambassador to the United Nations. Trump first made the embassy transfer pledge during his election campaign, heralding a break from decades of U. S. policy. Trump is slated to visit Israel at the end of May, coinciding with Jerusalem Day, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem in the 1967 defensive war. As Breitbart Jerusalem reported last month, the visit also comes ahead of the June 1 expiration of a congressional mandate to move the U. S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which has been extended each year since 1995. A State Department spokesman declined to comment on whether Trump would renew the waiver come June. Trump refused to comment directly on whether he would use the visit to announce an embassy move, telling Reuters in a recent interview: “Ask me in a month on that. ” In his remarks on Tuesday, Pence called the founding of the Jewish state in 1948 “nothing short of a miracle. ” “The people of Israel have turned hope into a future of security and prosperity,” he said. Pence added that “under President Donald Trump, let me assure you this, if the world knows nothing else, the world will know this — America stands with Israel. Her cause is our cause. Her values are our values. Her fight is our fight. ” | 1 |
“Hey Rhona!” Donald J. Trump screamed from behind his desk on the 26th floor of Trump Tower one day last summer, before he won the presidency. Moments later, Rhona Graff, Mr. Trump’s longtime executive assistant, popped in from her adjacent corner office. “How long have you worked for me, Rhona?” Mr. Trump asked. “A couple of dozen years — I was 10 years old at the time — I was a child prodigy,” Ms. Graff joked. “Mr. Trump discovered me. ” “Many of the people who are with me have been with me for a long time,” Mr. Trump explained. In business, as a candidate and now as president, Mr. Trump has valued loyalty as the defining attribute in family, aides or Republicans in Congress. He does not always get it, as the defection of the Freedom Caucus last week on the health bill he was trying to pass made abundantly clear. But Mr. Trump can always count on Ms. Graff’s allegiance, and that has made Ms. Graff, from her office in Trump Tower, a major figure in the operations of the White House for a simple reason: She is believed to have a direct line to the president. With her deep Queens accent and unerring deference to her boss (she has always referred to him as Mr. Trump or, usually, as Mr. T) Ms. Graff, 64, is a familiar voice to New York’s business leaders, the nation’s political reporters and now old associates hoping to circumvent the normal channels of communication to reach Mr. Trump. Ms. Graff is a senior vice president of the Trump Organization, and her unofficial role as a back channel to the president raises questions about whether Mr. Trump is skirting the Federal Records Act, which governs the preservation of schedules and correspondence from the president, something the White House denied in response to questions about her role from Politico. Reached on Sunday, Ms. Graff declined to comment. “I like staying behind the scenes,” she said in a conversation last year in which she rejected a reporter’s proposal to shadow her for a day because so much private campaign, business and personal information crossed her desk. “We’re so intertwined when he’s here,” she said. Or, as she once put it to Real Estate Weekly, “Everybody knows in order to get through to him they have to go through me. ” Ms. Graff, a Queens College graduate with a master’s degree in psychology, left a sports marketing job after college to spend more time at home with her ailing mother. Eventually in search of another job, she heard about an opening in Mr. Trump’s office, and in 1987 called cold. They hit it off. Since entering the Trump Organization’s secretarial pool, Ms. Graff has acted as Mr. Trump’s media liaison, scheduler, sometimes spokeswoman, planner, “Apprentice” and Miss Teen USA judge. And regardless of who is taking Mr. Trump’s calls in Washington, it is Ms. Graff who occupies a more central space in the Trump orbit. In 1991, during Mr. Trump’s brush with going broke, it was Ms. Graff, “my very loyal secretary,” as he put it in “The Art of the Comeback,” who came into his office to tell him that his estranged wife, Ivana, was on the phone with the message, as he put it in the book, “I vant my money now. ” In 1993, Mayor David N. Dinkins presided at the wedding of Ms. Graff to Lucius Joseph Riccio, the city’s transportation commissioner, and later nicknamed Professor Pothole by The New Yorker for pioneering the field of pothole analytics at Columbia University. For decades, Ms. Graff worked under the tutelage of Mr. Trump’s longtime personal assistant, Norma Infante Foerderer, who died in 2013 from a heart attack after a difficult eye surgery. “She’d still be here if she didn’t have that problem,” Ms. Graff lamented in Mr. Trump’s office last year. “A disaster,” Mr. Trump agreed. But by 2005, the year Ms. Foerderer retired, Ms. Graff was already ascendant in an office that loomed large among the nation’s secretaries. (A poll of secretaries by a staple company showed that Mr. Trump trailed only President George W. Bush when it came to the country’s imagined toughest bosses.) In 2004, Ms. Graff became a recurring character on “The Apprentice,” and in 2008, she was briefly listed as the secretary for a luxury golf course in Scotland before a Trump confidant, George Sorial, replaced her. In 2013, she attained boldfaced name status in Page Six of The New York Post as “Donald Trump’s right hand. ” Since Mr. Trump has technically stopped running the Trump Organization, Ms. Graff now forwards messages to Mr. Trump’s personal assistant in the White House, Madeleine Westerhout, whom Ms. Graff helped train. Sometimes she forwards messages to Katie Walsh, one of the deputy chiefs of staff a White House spokeswoman maintained that messages are routinely sent to an official point of contact, instead of directly to the president. Mr. Trump’s dedication to his secretary and hers to him is much like the relationship Fred C. Trump, his father, had with his secretary, Amy Luerssen, treating her like family. He once had workers carry her up 12 flights of stairs when her elevator stopped working, lent her nephew his wife’s pink Cadillac when his car was stolen and would see her off at the airport when she went on a trip. When Ms. Luerssen’s niece, Kathy Quigley, tried to bring her aging aunt down to Florida, she said Donald Trump and his brother, Robert, insisted that Ms. Luerssen stay until she was senile. “It was a little bit of a battle because I was thinking, ‘Gee, I’d really like her to be down here with me,’” Ms. Quigley said. “But she was very happy. ” When her aunt died in 2006, a death notice appeared in The New York Times that read, “The Trump family mourns the passing of our beloved Amy, a trusted and loyal friend and employee for over 65 years. ” Mr. Trump compared his father’s dedication to Ms. Luerssen to his own loyalty to Ms. Graff. “My father was very loyal to people,” he said last summer. “I think I am too. ” Ms. Graff was clearly touched. “Well thank you boss,” she said. “Well it works both ways obviously. I’d never leave him. ” | 1 |
Chipotle.coli Mexican Grill weighing on restaurant stawks it's on it's way down to a still ridunculous 100 p/e
http://www.barrons.com/articles/chipotle-the-latest-numbers-are-in-and-theyre-not-pretty-1477493397 | 0 |
AIG Quadruples Limits for Terrorism Insurance to $1 Billion
26 October 2016 , by Sonali Basak (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-26/aig-quadruples-limits-for-terrorism-to-1-billion-as-fear-climbs
- AIG seeks to respond to terrorist attacks worldwide
- Insurer has hired more than 600 engineers to manage risk | 0 |
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From Hillary Clinton on the electric chair to African-American effigies hung from trees , Trump supporters are clearly very passionate about their lawn displays. Add to the list a 56 year-old Michigan Man who is now facing felony weapons charges after holding six children – ages 12 to 14 – at gunpoint and forcing them to the ground for allegedly knocking down his Trump yard sign.
That’s right. The kids were terrorized at gun point over a Trump yard sign.
Michael Kubek, 56, of Allen Park, MI, said that he was angry at the children because he believed they had ‘vandalized’ his Trump sign, although he hadn’t actually seen them do it. The children told the police that they were simply walking to a local park when an unhinged Kubek “pulled out a pistol and ordered them to sit down on a neighbor’s lawn.” In any case, it appears that the ‘vandalism’ consisted in the sign simply being knocked down – perhaps Kubek should take out his anger on the wind – and the children were reportedly “traumatized” by the experience.
When police, who were called to the scene by Kubek’s mother, arrived, they found the children lying on the grass with Kubek “standing over them yelling and cursing.” The children said he had pointed a gun at them and a neighbor described Kubek using “very profane language.” According to local news channel Fox 2, “the kids said they tried to tell Kubek they did not damage his sign, but it only resulted with Kubek telling them to shut up and continue cursing at them.”
Kubek claims he felt “threatened” because he was “outnumbered” by the adolescents and invoked his second amendment right. Luckily, he was arrested by local police and had his gun confiscated — although he has now been released on a $5,000 bail.
Just another day in Trump’s America, folks. Hopefully, the nightmare will be over soon… | 0 |
Donate The American Way: Socialism for the Rich, Free Enterprise for the Rest 'It is political decisions, not invisible hands, that dictate the functioning of the market.' (Photo: Fed Up/Steve McFarland Photography) By Jake Johnson / commondreams.org
While it's not entirely clear who coined the phrase "socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the rest," its ability to provoke — and, more importantly, to describe — is beyond question.
There are numerous variations on the saying , but each articulates a reality of which we are all, in some way, aware: The bankers who wrecked the economy, for instance, understood that they would be subjected to a different set of rules than those they were scamming with subprime mortgages . While the former have enjoyed the fruits of a bailout and an uneven recovery , those deeply harmed by the crash have struggled to regain anything resembling stability.
Matt Taibbi has termed this systemic disparity " the divide "— and as the divide between the rich and the poor, between the influential and the voiceless, expands, the economic order morphs to fit the resulting power dynamic.
Thanks to Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions that have vanquished the firewall that previously separated — however tenuously and ineffectively — corporations from the political process, the "winners" have been able to seamlessly convert their tremendous wealth into tremendous political influence. As recent scholarship has demonstrated, they usually get what they want.
To call this socialism for the rich is to say that those at the top of the income distribution accrue all of the benefits and sympathies of the state, including, of course, a robust welfare apparatus . Their relationship with the state, furthermore, is effectively democratic; the views of the wealthiest are reflected in public policy.
Those outside of this privileged class, meanwhile, are forced to endure the strictures of market discipline; when they face difficult circumstances, they are lectured , not assisted. Their views are not permitted to influence public policy; they suffer what they must.
What does such a state of affairs mean for the prospects of those struggling for a more egalitarian future ? The title, as well as the substance, of economist Dean Baker's latest book does much to diagnose the severity of the problems progressive and radical movements face, even if it doesn't fully answer the question.
In Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer , as in his other work, Baker doesn't tiptoe, nor does he resort to jargon when plain language will do. He comes right out with it: The rich have rigged the economy, and we're all paying for it.
In the age of Piketty — and, indeed, in the age of Bernie Sanders, whose presidential campaign brought the notion of a rigged economy to the national stage — this is not a particularly radical claim, but it has radical implications. It suggests, in short, what we already know: That far from advocating hands-off government, the rich simply want to have their own hands, and no one else's, on the rule-making apparatus. It appears that they have achieved this goal.
George Orwell once observed that "economic laws do not operate in the same way as the law of gravity"; that is, in effect, the central point of Baker's study. There is nothing natural about the upward redistribution of wealth we have seen over the last several decades, nor is such redistribution the result of any mystical forces beyond our comprehension or control.
Rather, as Baker makes clear, the rules were written with this end in mind.
"The gainers in the top 1 percent," he writes, "have structured the market over the last four decades in ways that increase their share of income."
Systematically, Baker lays out the ways in which the wealthy are simultaneously shielded from the worst of globalization and lavished with the spoils.
Much of the professional class, he observes, has not faced the competition that has so ravaged blue-collar workers in the United States: American doctors, for instance, have not been forced to compete with the doctors of India or Western Europe, who earn far less . The result is "bloated" incomes for American doctors — and the same is true of lawyers, dentists, and, indeed, the very pundits who "earn comfortable six-figure salaries" while "remarking on the narrow-mindedness and sense of entitlement of manufacturing workers." Meanwhile, wages remain stagnant for everyone else .
That high-income professionals are protected from competition "has nothing to do with the inherent dynamics of globalization: it is about the differences in the power of these groups."
"Bloated," also, is the pay of CEOs , which is determined not by "market forces" or by performance , but by a board of directors who, Baker notes, have "little incentive to hold down pay."
"Directors are more closely tied to top management than to the shareholders they are supposed to represent," Baker adds, and they "are almost never voted out by shareholders for their lack of attention to the job or for incompetence. The market discipline that holds down the pay of ordinary workers does not apply to CEOs, since their friends determine their pay."
Baker points also to the "government-granted monopolies"— patents and copyright protections — that "impose substantial costs on the public." As recent scandals have made clear, this is particularly the case in the pharmaceutical industry.
"In the case of prescription drugs alone the cost is in the neighborhood of $380 billion a year (equal to 2.0 percent of GDP)," Baker observes. "Washington is filled with politicians and organizations that hyperventilate about government debt and the burden it imposes on our children, but they ignore the burdens imposed by patent and copyright monopolies granted by the government."
In short, it is political decisions, not invisible hands, that dictate the functioning of the market. And from trade policy designed for the benefit of capital and rich nations to the rapid deregulation and growth of the financial sector, these political decisions have disproportionately rewarded economic elites at everyone else's expense.
Baker's analysis provides much reason for pessimism: Wealth and political power are concentrated to such an extent that it will be difficult to force systemic change. It is unsurprising, then, that Baker qualifies his own proposals — from a move toward full employment to taxation of financial transactions — with the refrain, "this is not likely to happen anytime soon," given the power of those who benefit from the maintenance of the status quo.
But implicit is also reason for hope: That such concentration of economic and political power is not a natural state of affairs means that it can be radically altered.
"Neither God nor nature hands us a worked-out set of rules determining the way property relations are defined, contracts are enforced, or macroeconomic policy is implemented," Baker writes. "These matters are determined by policy choices. The elites have written these rules to redistribute income upward."
The rules, in short, can be rewritten in such a way that promotes the spread of wealth and resources — obscene inequality can be overcome. But Baker is an economist, not a polemicist: Thus it is unsurprising that the words "class struggle" do not make an appearance in his study.
It is perfectly clear, however, that class struggle must be central to the fight for a fundamentally different set of rules: The rich have for decades waged unrelenting class war, and the consequences have been staggering. The mere extraction of concessions from above will not be enough to slacken the power the wealthiest have over the political process.
"If we are going to change directions," notes sociologist Beverly Silver, "it's going to have to come from a mass political movement, rather than something coming out of capital itself."
Thomas Ferguson , the Director of Research at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, largely agrees with this sentiment; systemic change will take an "uprising on the scale of the New Deal at least," he told me in an email, "combined with some fissures within business, as in that earlier period."
Baker's analysis clearly interprets the economic context in which we find ourselves, and it is a context dictated by economic elites. "Well, of course it's an oligarchy," Ferguson told me when I asked him about the popular characterization of the United States as a representative democracy, despite the torrent of corporate money that has for decades flooded the coffers of both major political parties."The democratic element is vanishingly small at this point."
But the point of economic analysis, to adopt Marx's famous saying , is not merely to interpret the world in which we live, but also to change it. To do so, the reasonable proposals offered by Baker must be accompanied by mass politics of the kind Sanders embraced and harnessed to great effect. It must be a politics devoid of the delusions fostered by what Matt Karp has called " fortress liberalism ": The notion that change trickles down from benevolent leaders.
It's easy to be dismissive of mass movements, given the strength of the opposition: Far from diminishing under the weight of their own self-produced crises, major corporations continue to expand in both size and influence, making democratic action difficult.
"But let's not get too gloomy," Ferguson urged. "If you told me two years ago that Bernie Sanders would get hundreds of thousands of votes in many states and win many caucuses against Hillary Clinton, I'd have said you were dreaming."
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Jake Johnson is an independent writer. Follow him on Twitter: @wordsofdissent 0.0 · | 0 |
New York offers some of the world’s most famous stores, but if you want to break the chain habit, it’s also home to many locally owned businesses. It’s worth going to neighborhoods just a bit off the usual path. If you want to spend the day exploring, with a mix of stores and great food, these four neighborhoods will keep you satisfied. ________________________ Sometimes, when you get off the Bedford Avenue stop of the L train in Williamsburg and are bombarded with a crush of people, it seems like every traveler in the world has been told to get over to what’s been hyped as Brooklyn’s coolest neighborhood. But it’s worth heading that way and taking a walk north to Greenpoint, Williamsburg’s less gentrified, untouristy neighbor. You’ll find a mix of millennials, young families and longtime residents, many of them Polish. There’s an almost tangible sense of community in the neighborhood, in both businesses and openings. For shoppers, there are appealing options in each category. Explore Greenpoint » RACHEL FELDER ________________________ Shop in NoLIta and you will see that New York City is not at all impersonal. NoLIta is a small, quaint neighborhood bordered by SoHo, Little Italy and the Lower East Side. It retains a romantic and nostalgic feel. Having recently moved back to the area, I found my perfect Saturday right outside my door: coffee at the new Café Integral, followed by stops at favorites like Warm, Totokaelo and McNally Jackson, and, after running into a friend, cocktails at the Randolph at Broome. It’s easy to reach via the No. 6 train to Spring Street the B, D, F or M to or the N or R to Prince Street. Explore NoLIta » XENIA ROLLINSON ________________________ Much like each New York City neighborhood has its distinct mood, architecture and demographic, so, too, does each have its own dining and shopping. One of the most stimulating shopping districts is the Lower East Side, accessible by the F, M, J or Z trains at Street or the B and D at Grand Street. Full of small and alluring independent boutiques, it’s a for anyone who likes to shop at locally owned stores and experience the heart and charm of the city. Explore the Lower East Side » XENIA ROLLINSON ________________________ Clinton Hill, with its brownstones and streets, isn’t exactly the first place most people think of when they plan an afternoon of shopping in Brooklyn. But the neighborhood — adjacent to Fort Greene and once best known for the Pratt Institute and the Navy Yard — is worth a trip. While it’s a bit spread out, a vibrant retail scene has developed in the last few years, with dynamic stores popping up on blocks that are otherwise either residential or industrial. There’s a relaxed, unassuming sensibility to the community that makes it especially pleasant to stroll through it’s a neighborhood in the truest sense, but welcoming even on a first visit. It’s easy to get to as well: the A, C and G subways stop in Clinton Hill, about a ride from Midtown Manhattan. Explore Clinton Hill » RACHEL FELDER | 1 |
This is What Legal Weed Will Look Like in California
Amidst election madness, a proposition making marijuana legal just passed in California. Here are 10 things you need to know about what that will look like in the golden state.
Although Californians will be able to possess and grow marijuana immediately if it passes, people will not have a place to legally buy non-medical marijuana until stores become licensed. The state has until January 1, 2018 to begin issuing retail licenses. State officials believe it will take almost a year to develop the regulations that will be applied to those who grow, transport, test, and sell cannabis.
While some people are happy about this push to legalize marijuana, others worry about high taxation, and placement of the plant in the hands of wealthy corporations.
Here is an outline of what legal pot will look like in California according to what is outlined in the ballot measure.
You will have to be an adult to legally smoke weed.
The Adult Use of Marijuana Act will allow people who are 21 and older to posses, transport, and buy up to 28.5 grams of marijuana for recreational use.
This expands upon an existing law that allows cannabis to be used for medical purposes.
The initiative will allow adults to grow and use up to 6 marijuana plants on their property. Medical marijuana patients will still be allowed to possess the amount needed to meet their medical needs, even in excess pf the 28.5 gram limit.
You can’t smoke weed everywhere.
You will not be allowed to light up a joint in public areas like sidewalks or in bars. The ballot measure does not allow marijuana to be smoked in public unless it is allowed be local ordinances.
Marijuana can also not be smoke in areas where state law already prohibits tobacco smoking.
Fines will be given to those caught smoking weed while driving a motor vehicle, boat, or aircraft.
There will be fines.
People who are busted smoking in public will be given a fine up to $100. Those caught smoke in a place where tobacco is also prohibited or near a school will be fined up to $250.
21 and over.
It will be prohibited to sell marijuana to non-medical users under the age of 21. Yet, medical marijuana can still be used by people who are under 21. Cannabis products cannot be designed to appeal to children or to easily be confused with commercially sold candy.
Marijuana products will have to be packaged in child-resistant containers, and pot shops will be prohibited from allowing anyone under the age of 21 on their premises.
There won’t be weed commercials on TV.
The marketing of marijuana products to minors is prohibited which means ads will not be allowed to use symbols, language, music, or cartoon characters aimed at appealing to underage people.
It will not be allowed for marijuana to be advertised on billboards located along an interstate highway or state highway that crosses the border of any other state. Ads will not be allowed within 1,000 feet of day-care centers, schools, playgrounds, or youth centers.
Since federal law designated marijuana as an illegal drug, federally regulated television and radio will not advertise it.
If federal law ever changes, Prop 64 includes provisions that require broadcast, cable, radio, print, and digital marketing only to be displayed where at least 71.6% of the audience is expected to be 21 and older.
If you want to sell weed, tell the state.
You will need a state license to open a pot shop and to grow weed for others.
People who grow, process, transport, or sell marijuana must get a state license and pay a fee to cover the cost of the state processing and enforcing the license.
Businesses will not be allowed to sell marijuana within 600 feet of a school, day care center, or youth center.
Those running shops must undergo background checks to obtain a state license, and they can be denied if they have felony convictions involving violence, fraud, drug trafficking, or selling drugs to a minor.
Selling pot? You must abide by these rules.
The Bureau of Marijuana Control inside the state Department of Consumer Affairs will be given the job of creating, issuing, renewing, and revoking state licenses for the transportation, storage, distribution, and sale of marijuana.
Marijuana growers will have to get a license from the state Department of Food and Agriculture. Those who want to form businesses to manufacture and test marijuana products will be licensed and overseen by the state Department of Public Health.
Selling pot without a license will come with penalties and sometimes even jail time.
Selling marijuana without a license can result in a misdemeanor charge with penalties of up to six months in jail and $500 in fines.
Engaging in any commercial activity in regard to weed without a license will come with civil penalties of up to three times the amount of the license fee for each violation.
Marijuana will be taxed.
Prop 64 will allow the state to impose a 15% tax on the retail sale of marijuana. In addition, the state will be able to levy a cultivation tax on growers of $9.25 per ounce for flowers, and $2.75 per ounce for leaves.
The measure will also allow cities and counties to impose their own taxes to cover costs of services, including enforcement.
Medical marijuana patients will be exempt from paying state sales taxes.
California could make a lot of money on pot.
State analysts believe that state taxes could generate up to $1 billion annually.
Ariana Marisol is a contributing staff writer for REALfarmacy.com. She is an avid nature enthusiast, gardener, photographer, writer, hiker, dreamer, and lover of all things sustainable, wild, and free. Ariana strives to bring people closer to their true source, Mother Nature. She graduated The Evergreen State College with an undergraduate degree focusing on Sustainable Design and Environmental Science. Follow her adventures on Instagram. | 0 |
BREAKING : Bay of Pigs Veterans Association Endorses Donald Trump BREAKING : Bay of Pigs Veterans Association Endorses Donald Trump Breaking News By Amy Moreno October 26, 2016 Our vets love Trump.
They know he’s the ONLY one who can fix the broken system.
Our vets are dying in the streets and the hallways of VA hospitals, while illegals and refugees enjoy taxpayer “freebies.”
The ONLY way this will change is by getting rid of the global liberals and voting AMERICA FIRST!
In an emotional meeting, Trump spoke to the Bay of Pigs veterans, who proudly endorsed him.
Donald reassured them all that we would “Make America Great Again.”
One vet, at the end of the clip, can be seen wiping his eyes.
He knows his country is LOST and this is the last chance to get it back.
Don’t let him down, America.
Watch the video: Truly honored to receive the first ever presidential endorsement from the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association. #MAGA #ImWithYou pic.twitter.com/U7xVj1ajMs
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2016 This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
by Yves Smith
Private equity shills are readying the Blame Cannon for the industry’s widely forecast fall in returns.
Who are the allies of the private equity firms attempting to villianize as the cause of deteriorating performance? Not the 0.1% Masters of the Universe, who are always and every the sole cause of Good Things but never never to be found when Bad Things occur. No, it’s those evil “populists” interfering with the proper operation of the world according to private equity that is messing up returns.
We’re not making this up. From the Wall Street Journal :
The rise of “populist” politicians in western nations could challenge the ability of private-equity firms to do business and make money, according to a report from Hamilton Lane, one of the largest advisers to investors in the industry.
The backlash against globalization may cause higher taxes on private-equity firms, create more regulation, drive more volatility and restrict economic growth, Hamilton Lane’s annual review said.
This is utterly ludicrous if you’ve been paying attention.
From the first half of 2015, the average EBITDA multiple for PE purchases was over 10X, higher than the peak of the last cycle, in 2007. Even limited partners who are leery of saying a bad word about private equity, like CIO Chris Ailman of CalSTRS, described PE acquisitions as “priced to perfection” . The trading prices of the private equity firms that are public shows that equity market investors believe that private equity firms will not earn any carry fees over the next couple of years.
And as we’ve pointed out repeatedly, since the second half of 2015, senior officers of prominent private equity firms have increasingly been warning that private equity returns going forward will be lower than levels of the past. And none of them used Putin, um, Trump, um populism as the excuse for why returns were going to decline.
Hamilton Lane has more reason than most to blame private equity’s declining fortunes on external forces rather than the obvious factors of too much money chasing too many deals, and if the Fed ever pulls it off, rising interest rates being particularly punitive to high risk strategies like private equity, which is fundamentally levered equity. As we’ve pointed out, private equity has doubled its share of global equity from 2005 to 2014.
Hamilton Lane is not just a consultant to private equity; it is deeply conflicted by virtue of being a private equity fund of fund manager, which means it needs to play nice with the general partners in order to maintain access to funds. And the limited partners it has advised on private equity need excuses they can take to their boards and broader constituencies when private equity returns fizzle. So it’s easy to blame those nasty anti-capitalists rather than admit that private equity has always been a cyclical play and the end of a cycle is nigh. In fact, it should have occurred after the 2007 deal frenzy, but private equity was an accidental beneficiary of central banks’“rescue the financial system” emergency operations, and got a stay of execution.
In a sign that the public is getting smarter about private equity, 80% of the comments on the Wall Street Journal story were not buying what Hamilton Lane was selling. The other 20% were general criticism of populism rather than votes of support for private equity.
This skew should not be surprising given some of the strained claims Hamilton Lane made. Notice in the quote above that the first, and presumably therefore the most important problem for private equity was “higher taxes on private-equity firms,” which almost certainly refers to closing the carried interest loophole. But readers are supposed to believe that that would dent their ability to make money for investors, when those investors are almost without exception exempt from US taxes.
Now some private equity industry members have stomped their feet and said they’d quit if they had to pay more taxes. It’s hard to take this hissy fit seriously since there are not other lines of work in which they’d earn remotely comparable pay even with a bigger tax bill. At the largest firms, the typical annual pay is eight figures, and for the top dogs at big and some medium-large funds, nine figures.
And it’s not as if “talent” makes as much of a difference as the general partners would have you believe. Industry data shows that no one has a secret sauce. Top quartile funds are less likely to perform well in the next period then by chance. An investor in private equity should stop wasting time picking winners. They should try to avoid crooks and otherwise attempt to index.
So who might leave the industry if anyone? The departures are more likely to take place at the smallest funds or ones with mediocre performance, since the difference in tax treatment would have a bigger impact on the ability of the principals to maintain what is perceived to be an adequate lifestyle.
Ironically, thinning out the marginal players is if anything likely to be salutary for industry performance. With too much competition for deals, the winning bid is often made by someone who is desperate to win a deal (as in their investors perceive them to be too slow at putting money to work) or not well informed.
But the Hamilton Lane whinge is a harbinger of the sort of excuses you can expect to hear from both general partners and limited partners over the coming years, the tired old “whocoulddanode?” in new garb. 0 0 0 0 1 0 | 0 |
We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] UK Police Continue Search For Missing Paul Pogba October 26, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , SPORT Share 0 Add Comment
UK POLICE have renewed their appeal for any information as to the whereabouts of a French national who was reported missing in the Manchester area of the country in August, WWN can reveal.
“Paul Pogba was last seen in Turin and believed to have boarded a plane to Manchester to start a new job, but his employers reported he failed to turn up to work in August. We are renewing our appeal for anyone with information to come forward,” Met officer John Goodwin shared as part of the appeal.
Officers would not be drawn on the rumours that the man had robbed his employers of his salary and signing on bonus before disappearing.
“Paul also answers to ‘Pog’ and in addition to being able to play in all variety of positions he would be easily identified by his haircut, which looks like it was done by a blind man with a great sense of humour,” officer Goodwin added.
Police hope that with his employers Manchester United being back in the headlines recently following a mixed run of form, they can use the publicity surrounding it to find Paul safe and sound.
“Just come home, Paul,” Pogba’s emotional manager Jose Mourinho urged as part of the renewed search appeal.
One of the UK’s most intriguing missing persons inquiry ever, Mr. Pogba’s absence has sparked what experts have called mass hallucinations as members of the public claim to have seen him on television on multiple occasions.
Police hopes were dashed last week when they rushed to London’s Chelsea area last Sunday after sightings of the man were reported but a search of the location proved otherwise. | 0 |
Iraq’s Skies Darken as Islamic State Torches Oil Posted on Oct 28, 2016
By Kieran Cooke / Climate News Network Photo: Kuwait, 1991. Today, the Islamic State copies Saddam Hussein, threatening Iraq’s environment with oil blazes. (Lt. Steve Gozzo USN via Wikimedia Commons)
LONDON—Even at the height of the day, the skies in many parts of northern Iraq are dark as ISIS torches oil wells and oil-filled defensive trenches in its retreat. Artillery fire and bombing raids by US aircraft and others battling Isis are also causing conflagrations at oil installations. Aid teams near the town of Qayyarah, about 80 kilometres south of the Isis stronghold of Mosul, talk of escaping civilians being covered in oil residues . “Everywhere is covered in a fine dusting of black soot and grime”, one aid worker from the Save the Children charity told the BBC. “And the children we met were covered in it—their hands were black, their feet were black and their hair was matted…they were coming out in rashes, developing problems with their lungs.” Deliberate pollution There are fears that as ISIS comes under ever greater pressure it will unleash “scorched earth” tactics, setting alight ever more oil wells and deliberately polluting the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates, two of the region’s main rivers, which supply water and power to millions. Setting oil fields alight could also have wider climate-related consequences. During Saddam Hussein’s invasion and subsequent retreat from Kuwait in 1990/91, the Iraqis set alight nearly 800 Kuwaiti oil wells: at one stage—in March 1991 – it was calculated that up to six million barrels of oil were being burned each day . The result was daytime darkness and long plumes of black smoke across a wide area of the Gulf. Though the long-term impact of Kuwait’s oil fires on the climate is still being assessed, the release of vast amounts of climate-changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is considered to have added to the problems of warming, on both a regional and a global scale. The Gulf region is one of the fastest-warming in the world, with many areas forecast to be uninhabitable in the not too distant future because of higher temperatures and chronic water shortages. Long-term damage Pollution from the Kuwait oil fires and ruptured oil pipelines are also believed to have caused serious long-term damage to the waters of the Gulf. There are fears that, with pressure on the group mounting, similar developments could unfold in northern Iraq as Isis torches oil installations 25 years later. In recent years Iraq has been trying to ramp up its oil production in order to raise more revenues—partly to fund the war against Isis. But much of the development of Iraq’s fossil fuel resources has been badly planned and mismanaged . The World Bank says that, globally, approximately 140 billion cubic metres of natural gas produced together with oil are burned or flared off each year— adding 350 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere . “From exploding fuel barrels to exposure to carcinogenic chemicals and inhalational toxins, these makeshift oil refineries will have a long-lasting health impact. ...” Iraq is now one of the world’s leading gas-flaring countries: a lack of pipelines and infrastructure means that its gas is mostly burned off. Meanwhile the country has been forced to import large amounts of gas from neighbouring Iran in order to meet its energy needs. Across northern Iraq and eastern Syria—the country’s main oil-producing region—Isis controls large numbers of oil wells and derives considerable income from selling fossil fuels on the black market . A lack of maintenance and expertise means that many of these installations are a hazard to the environment. Badly-run oil facilities also cause considerable human suffering. A recent report by Pax , a Netherlands-based church grouping, says that more than 5,700 makeshift oil refineries are operating in the ISIS-controlled Deir ez-Zor area of Syria. Thousands of civilians, many of them children, are forced to work at these crude, basically-run facilities. “From exploding fuel barrels to exposure to carcinogenic chemicals and inhalational toxins, these makeshift oil refineries will have a long-lasting health impact on communities and their environment”, says the report.
Kieran Cooke, a founding editor of Climate News Network, is a former foreign correspondent for the BBC and Financial Times. He now focuses on environmental issues.
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Nordic Genius and the Central Heat Theorem Adventures in Genetics Email This Page to Someone Your Name
Today I will explain how civilization happened, to the extent that there has been any civilization to happen, or that it can be explained, and where stuff comes from, and who done what, and why. Afterward there will be no more to say on the subject. You will hear doors slamming across the nation as university departments shut down.
Now, history is littered knee-deep with literature, and art, and inventions, like gum on the underside of a theater seat. Inventions are pretty important for civilization. Where did these inventions come from? Well, there’s a group of people who clutter up the web and say that it was North Europeans. Yes. See, it’s genetic. These pale people invented everything. Nobody else did, especially Latins. It’s because northerners have creativity, and nobody else else can. The Chinese copy stuff pretty fair, and make little paper umbrellas for expensive drinks, but can’t invent. Latins can’t either. Only North Europeans.
This seemed a bit smug since, curiously, most who believed this seemed to be North Europeans. A coincidence, doubtless. Anyway, being as I am a self-appointed defender of things Latin and tired of unending nonsense on the matter, I set out to investigate. Has anybody else, I asked, ever contributed to the dim world of the mind? Even, perish forbid, Latins?
No.
After many months of arduous research, I had to concede: Damn! It was true! North Europeans really did own intellectual history. Nobody had ever approached their creativity. It was undeniable. The pattern went back a long, long way. To wit:
In the mid-Fourth Millennium BC, North Europeans in Sumeria–widely believed to be Finns, but the evidence is inconclusive–invented writing. Yes. It was later invented independently by other North Europeans, notably the Chinese and Mesoamerican Indians.
Latin peoples in particular have no creativity. The evidence supports this: Four thousand years after the Finns in Sumeria, the Latin peoples of Denmark finally succeeded, sort of 750 AD, in writing down Beowulf (real name: Beowulf Gonzalez) though in crude language and using a script stolen from North European Phoenicians. Such are Latins.
Northern Europeans of the Fifth Century BC in Athens produced Archimedes Jones and Aristotle Schwartz. This Nordic flowering continued. North Europeans of the Roman Empire invented engineering, or at least greatly improved on what the Finns of Sumeria had done. After this, Northern European Italians produced the Renaissance. Latin peoples could not have done it, because they lack creativity.
There is no need here to recapitulate the intellectual achievements of Michelangelo Hofstedter, Da Vinci Frankfurter, or Benvenuto Cellini Thor.
Perseus, by Cellini Thor, a Florentine North European born 1500 and apparent misogynist. The Nordic genius is evident in the…in the…the derivation is left as an exercise for the reader.
Now we ask, why did North Europe produce Teutonic geniuses like Galileo Schwartz? What makes one civilization flourish while another remains covered in snow? After profound thought I concluded that to have a civilization one chiefly needs heat and moisture. This is true also of the more interesting tropical plants, such as orchids.
Consider: The Sumerians got a head start on everybody because they lived in a tremendously hot climate with two big two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. They didn’t have to spend all their time looking for firewood and shoveling snow. Compare this with, say, Norway. While the North Europeans of sweltering, rainy India were writing the Gita, the Norwegians huddled around fires and shivered.
It can be shown that as you go north in Europe, the rise of intellectual achievement closely tracks the spread of central heating. This is the Central Heat Theorem. (Not to be confused with the Central Limit Theorem, which I thought says that if you throw enough coins enough times, the bar graph converges to a Gaussian. But it may say something else.)
An article of faith among the North European claque is that peoples in colder climes are smarter than sun dwellers because. See, they had to evolve enough intelligence to remember that it got cold in the winter and they should put food somewhere. (I suspect that a cocker spaniel could do this, but never mind.) Anyway, the dumb ones froze because they couldn’t remember to come in where the fire was and it was warm. The rest bred hard because there was nothing else to do and evolved to be smart.
Another way of looking at the question: anyone witless enough to live where it snows would start with a large IQ deficit to evolve against.
In reality we see that human advance follows the Central Heat Theorem. The Esquimaux, good Asians all, have water, when they can melt it, but not heat, so they never contrived a civilization. Amerindians in places like Montana had water and some heat in the summers, but they froze in winter which discouraged them–it would me. Indians of the southern deserts had heat, heaven knows, but no water. No civilization to speak of.
But the Indians of Mesoamerica, both warm and moist, built elaborate civilizations, invented writing, and number systems. See? It’s like orchid botany.
After the Nordic Renaissance in Italy, civilization of the European variety moved to France. (You can tell that France is a Northern European culture, not an inferior Latin one, because the French speak German.)
At this point the North Europe of today, for practical purposes meaning Germany and England, kicked in. These two counties and the United States finally did produce a tremendous amount of civilization, including most math and literature and the singing commercial, though they can’t dance, and pretty much run the show today. Better late than never. Much is owed to such northern mathematicians as Fibonacci, Galois, Laplace, Lagrange, and Fermat.
I know that if I suggested that Latins had contributed anything to the arts and sciences, I would be called wrong-headed, racist, or a reverse-racist, or didn’t understand genetics, or something. Perish forbid. (From the Merriam-Fredster Dictionary: “racist”: observant, truthful, characterized by reason.) Yet, even though the evidence is against me–such monumental Germanic writers as Virgil, Dante, Machiavelli, Juvenal, and Cellini Thor himself cannot be denied–I stubbornly insist that Latins must have contributed something to civilization. The ablative absolute maybe, or tomato paste.
Fred is reachable at [email protected]. Put “pdq” in the subject line of your email will be heartlessly autodeleted. Lack of response usually due to volume, not bad manners. (Reprinted from Fred on Everything by permission of author or representative) | 0 |
© Photo: AJ Schroetlin Indigenous Americans protest the Columbus Day celebration in Denver, Colorado, on October 9, 2007.
What myths have most of us been taught about Native Americans? In a new book, All the Real Indians Died Off And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans , Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker show how generations of people in the United States have been misinformed about Indigenous Americans as part of a colonial agenda of erasure.
The following is the Truthout interview with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker.
Mark Karlin: I was profoundly enlightened when I interviewed you about your last book The Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States . Your new book, written with Dina Gilio-Whitaker debunks 21 myths about Native Americans. Before we get to the book, I want to start and ask you a truly global question, how is the Indigenous rights movement becoming increasingly transnational?
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: The international Indigenous movement is becoming increasingly visible, but it has been developing since the early 1920s, when the Haudenosaunee (six Nations of the Iroquois federation) sent a representative, Cayuga leader Deskaheh, to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1923 to address the League of Nations. From the 1930s onwards, Muskogee Creek, Cherokee and Hopi representatives built ties with Indigenous Peoples in Central Mexico, where their peoples had originated.
In 1940, The Interamerican Indian Convention was signed by the governments of the hemisphere, and the Interamerican Indian Institute was founded, which still exists today. In the 1950s, the newly established National Congress of American Indians in the United States and other Native activists actively sought ties with Indigenous Peoples in other parts of the world. But it was in 1974, with the founding of the International Indian Treaty Council by the militant American Indian Movement, and of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, that formal relations with the United Nations began.
The United Nations Sub-Commission on Racism and Racial Discrimination had taken up a study of Indigenous Peoples globally in 1972 and in 1977, the first international Indigenous Peoples conference was held at the United Nations – the delegates of Indigenous representatives organized by the International Indian Treaty Council. After four years of arduous Indigenous lobbying, a UN Working Group on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was established and met for the first time in 1982, and thereafter annually for 25 years, resulting in massive documentation and testimonies, as well as official reports, and in the 2007 UN General Assembly resolution, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples .
Early in the new millennium, a UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues were established, the latter meeting for two weeks annually at UN headquarters in New York, bringing together thousands of Indigenous Peoples’ representatives. In addition to the institutional transnational relationships are the daily exchange of communications among Indigenous Peoples on local, regional and continental issues and emergencies, particularly effective during the past 20 years of increasing Internet capacity.
What are the roles of erasure and disappearance in creating settler colonialist myth about Native Americans that then justify suppression and theft of land?
Dina Gilio-Whitaker: Disappearance of the Indigenous population was necessary for the settler project to inherit the land that they believed was rightfully theirs, by divine providence. Very early on, for example, when the Mayflower immigrants of the Plymouth colony were starving and trying to figure out how to feed themselves, we know from primary documents that some of them found villages that had been emptied out due to a disease epidemic a year or two earlier, or in some cases, were still inhabited. They raided food stores and even graves, and saw it as an expression of God’s favor on them, having gotten rid of the Indians so that they could now inhabit the land.
By the 1840s this belief crystalized into the concept of manifest destiny. Then we begin to see the emergence of anthropology and what we now call scientific racism – a science-based ideology that all non-white people are inferior to white Europeans . This Social Darwinism finds its way into Supreme Court decisions about Native lands and nations, which then become the basis for laws and policies that systematically justify extermination, forced assimilation and endless other depredations – that all have at their root the goal of transferring Native lands into white ownership. This is why we say that settler colonialism is a structure that eliminates Natives so that settlers can replace them. And it is this structure that still frames the body of federal Indian law that governs what happens to Native nations and individuals today, all guided by the impulse to eliminate.
You have a chapter on the myth that the US did not engage in a policy of genocide toward Native Americans. Given that’s a loaded term that denialists love to split hairs about, wouldn’t it just be easier to say the European conquerors maintained a policy of trying to make Native Americans vanish?
Dunbar-Ortiz: The importance of the term “genocide” for many Indigenous Peoples is that it is more than a term or an accusation; it is a word created in the wake of the Shoah in Europe to describe what happens when a people are targeted by a government for extermination, as were the Jews of Europe, and which is the term used in the most important international law related to concerned Indigenous Peoples, as the only international human rights law that pertains specifically to collectivities of people rather than individuals.
We have researched and studied only US policies and actions related to Indigenous peoples in North America, but think that the analysis of the US applies to several of the republics of the Americas, as well as Australia and New Zealand, that imposed settler-colonialism on the Indigenous Peoples, seeking to displace and disappear Indigenous communities and nations to replace them with European settlers.
As the late Australian anthropologist Patrick Wolfe wrote, “The question of genocide is never far from discussions of settler colonialism.” The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism. The objective of US authorities was to terminate their existence as peoples – not as random individuals. This is the very definition of modern genocide. The term “genocide” is often incorrectly assumed to mean extreme examples of mass murder associated with war, with the death of millions of individuals, as, for instance in Cambodia. Although clearly the Holocaust was the most extreme of all genocides, the bar set by the Nazis is not the bar required to be considered genocide. Most importantly, genocide does not have to be complete to be considered genocide. Cases of genocide carried out as policy may be found in historical documents as well as in the oral histories of Indigenous communities. An example from 1873 is typical, with General William T. Sherman writing,
“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children … during an assault, the soldiers cannot pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age.”
We talked about this in our last interview. Many historical accounts tried to make it appear that presidents and Congress viewed themselves as white saviors to Native Americans. Was that any different than the attitude of European colonialism that decimated vast populations in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East, for example?
Dunbar-Ortiz: I think there’s a great deal of similarity in this respect among various European and Euroamerican colonialisms, with attempts to justify the capitalist plunder that drove and drives the past 500 years of European and United States imperialism. One of the myths we include in the present book is on the presumed benevolence of US presidents towards Native Americans (Myth 9).
What is different is the goal of elimination of the Native in the four sites of Anglo settler-colonialism in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Whether it was an expression of the “laws of nature,” that is, the survival of the fittest as explicitly expressed by Andrew Jackson and the embrace of eugenics by Theodore Roosevelt during their presidencies, or in popular culture by Walt Whitman and other writers, or the disappearance through forced assimilation, such as the Indian boarding schools’ goal to “kill the Indian and save the man,” the stamping out and total disappearance of the Native was predominant. In the present, the way benevolence is expressed is in conceptualizing the Native as a historical relic; US people have to be constantly reminded that there are still existent Indigenous peoples and communities in North America, but whether left or right, recent immigrant or descendants of settlers, even descendants of enslaved Africans, the Native presence is not a consideration in the day to day life of individuals and municipal, state and national governments.
Since we are coming close to this holiday, can you expand on dispelling the myth that Thanksgiving proves the Indians welcomed the pilgrims?
Gilio-Whitaker: The story, as it is commonly conveyed, is a feel-good tale of a deep friendship between Pilgrims and Indians, signified by a formal, ostensibly prearranged engagement where they all sit down together to give thanks for a bountiful harvest.
There is not enough evidence to surmise anything of the sort; what there is suggests that it was a random, rather accidental occurrence in which the Wampanoag were investigating the sound of gunfire coming from the English settlement, and then were invited to stay for dinner. The actual relationship between the Wampanoag and the pilgrims can best be described as a political alliance based on desperation and the mutual need for survival. Both were extremely vulnerable.
The pilgrims needed the Indians to teach them how to live on the land, and extreme population decline due to disease had weakened the Wampanoag militarily. A treaty had been negotiated in an atmosphere of mistrust and tension. Within two years, it had completely broken down but then, after about 40 years of relative peace, by 1675 full-scale war had broken out between them, becoming what we know now as King Philip’s War, what’s been called the bloodiest war ever fought on American soil.
This is too recent for your book, but I think your opinion on the activism surrounding the Dakota Access pipeline and the expanding support for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe should be explored. Do you think it is a threshold point for a new stage of defiant, stalwart activism on behalf of reclaiming sovereignty over Indigenous lands and water?
Gilio-Whitaker: It remains to be seen, but at the moment it does seem that way. What we have to compare it to in this country is the Alcatraz occupation from 1969-1971, the Trail of Broken Treaties in 1972 and Wounded Knee in 1973.
Those movements, like this one, were youth-led (although women are much more out front these days). Those were also the days that gave birth to the ethnic studies disciplines, and growing numbers of Indians becoming lawyers. So what we have now is new generations of Natives with sophisticated educations, and savvy political and organizing skills. They understand their history, they understand they’re living with intergenerational trauma, but they still have enough of their cultures and traditions that have the power to heal them. And that makes them strong and relentless, like their ancestors before them. What’s different now is that there are greater levels of support coming from non-Natives, because it’s recognized now that Native struggles to protect land and water are everyone’s struggles. And let’s remember that this standoff at Standing Rock comes on the heels of years of climate justice activism, which is widely acknowledged to be led by Indigenous peoples. Standing Rock is only the most recent manifestation of that.
About the author
Mark Karlin is the editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout. He served as editor and publisher of BuzzFlash for 10 years before joining Truthout in 2010. BuzzFlash has won four Project Censored Awards. Karlin writes a commentary five days a week for BuzzFlash, as well as articles (ranging from the failed “war on drugs” to reviews relating to political art) for Truthout. He also interviews authors and filmmakers whose works are featured in Truthout’s Progressive Picks of the Week. Before linking with Truthout, Karlin conducted interviews with cultural figures, political progressives and innovative advocates on a weekly basis for 10 years. He authored many columns about the lies propagated to launch the Iraq War. SOTT Comment: Read more from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: The colonization of America was genocidal by plan: Yes, Native Americans were the victims of genocide
US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial period through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twentieth century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories, forced removal of Native American children to military-like boarding schools, allotment, and a policy of termination.
Within the logic of settler-colonialism, genocide was the inherent overall policy of the United States from its founding, but there are also specific documented policies of genocide on the part of US administrations that can be identified in at least four distinct periods: the Jacksonian era of forced removal; the California gold rush in Northern California; during the Civil War and in the post Civil War era of the so-called Indian Wars in the Southwest and the Great Plains; and the 1950s termination period; additionally, there is the overlapping period of compulsory boarding schools, 1870s to 1960s. The Carlisle boarding school, founded by US Army officer Richard Henry Pratt in 1879, became a model for others established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Pratt said in a speech in 1892,
“A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man.” Share: | 0 |
Interviews US Democratic presidential nominee former Hillary Clinton boards her campaign plane at Westchester County Airport on October 27, 2016 in White Plains, New York. (Photo by AFP)
One of the most important questions is will US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton rig the election to win the White House like she did in the primaries against Bernie Sanders, asks Myles Hoenig, an American political analyst and activist.
Recent polls show that Clinton’s national lead over Trump is shrinking as the Election Day is approaching.
The former secretary of state has the support of 49 percent of likely voters, while the billionaire businessman has 44 percent support, according to the CNN/ORC survey released on Monday.
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson has 3 percent support among likely voters, while Green Party nominee Jill Stein has 2 percent support.
“In every election the race tightens towards the end,” Hoenig told Press TV on Thursday.
“It’s really hard to imagine that there is any flux in this election as the supporters of both sides absolutely hate the other. With Obama and Romney, or even Gore and Bush, many of the issues were shared and the voting was often done on personalities or the historical nature of a first black president, regardless of who was pulling whose strings,” he said.
“This election is more polarized than ever. With the Podesta leaks showing Clinton’s overt racism (calling Donna Brazille a buffalo) as well as proving that President Obama lied to the public about when he learned of Clinton’s inappropriate use of her emails, and with the news of Trump’s ACCESS Hollywood tape receding into America’s short term memory span, it’s no wonder the polls are tightening,” the analyst stated.
“The question of the day is will Clinton rig the election like she did the primary, being the only way she could have won,” he asked.
“We’re also seeing both Johnson’s and Stein’s numbers dropping but so many are not polled that those numbers are harder to verify,” the commentator noted.
“This is the biggest crap shoot of an election in years!” he said in his concluding remarks. Loading ... | 0 |
Страна: КНДР Пока обсуждение в ООН сирийских проблем тормозит принятие очередной резолюции на северокорейско-ядерную тему, США и их союзники предпринимают целый комплекс мер для давления на КНДР. И хотя широко анонсированного разведками США и РК шестого ядерного испытания на день основания ТПК 10 августа не случилось, наращивать мощь, делать резкие заявления и готовить санкции это не мешает. Начнем с подготовки санкций, которые могут быть более жёсткими, чем прежние. Об этом 12 октября заявил в ходе встречи с журналистами помощник госсекретаря США Дэниел Рассел. И хотя, отвечая на вопрос о позиции Китая по санкциям, он заявил, что важно непременно достичь прогресса в этом вопросе (что на взгляд автора говорит о том, что прогресса нет), Рассел выразил уверенность, что новый проект санкционной резолюции СБ ООН позволит значительно продвинуться в деле ужесточения давления на Север: важно, чтобы все члены ООН отдельно принимали дополнительные меры для защиты своих интересов от северокорейской угрозы. Таким образом, не надеясь на СБ ООН, Америка делает ставку на односторонние меры. В рамках таковых Палата Представителей Конгресса США инициировала законопроект, направленный на полное перекрытие Пхеньяну доступа к международной финансовой системе. Предполагается вносить в список объектов санкций лица, имеющие отношение к предоставлению Северу средств межбанковского взаимодействия для осуществления различных платежей. Одним из подобных средств, к примеру, является международная система межбанковской передачи информации и совершения платежей SWIFT, которой пользуются около 10 тыс. банков из более чем двухсот стран. Ежедневно через SWIFT проходят более миллиона транзакций. Если Север будет из нее исключён, то это позволит блокировать получение Пхеньяном любых денежных средств, будь то расходы на разработку ядерной программы, оплата за уголь, идущий на экспорт, или перевод денег, заработанных северокорейскими рабочими за рубежом. США работают и над ограничением северокорейского экспорта угля и железной руды. Ежегодный доход Севера от продажи угля составляет 1 млрд долларов, что составляет треть общей суммы северокорейского экспорта. Бóльшая часть угля уходит в Китай, на который Америка пытается давить, заявляя, что ужесточение давления на Север в сотрудничестве с США отвечает интересам Китая (имеется в виду, что северокорейская угроза подогревает интерес РК и Японии к созданию собственного ядерного щита, что не желательно для Пекина). К экономическим санкциям добавляется дипломатическое давление. 21 сентября 2016 г. министры иностранных дел сорока стран-участниц Договора о всеобъемлющем запрещении ядерных испытаний (ДВЗЯИ) призвали Пхеньян свернуть ядерную программу и выполнять международные обязательства в рамках совместного заявления участников шестисторонних переговоров от 2005 года. Как отмечается в заявлении по итогам встречи министров, Север является единственной страной, которая провела в XXI веке ядерные испытания. Впрочем, на той же встрече участники призвали подписать и ратифицировать Договор о всеобъемлющем запрещении ядерных испытаний восемь стран, чьё одобрение необходимо для его вступления в силу. Это КНДР, Китай, Египет, Индия, Иран, Израиль, Пакистан и США. Почти одновременно с этим, 28 сентября, все тот же Рассел заявил, что США призвали страны мира понизить уровень дипломатического и экономического сотрудничества с Пхеньяном, либо отменить намеченные контакты, стремясь добиться максимальной изоляции КНДР от мирового сообщества. По словам Рассела, благодаря усилиям США 75 стран осудили северокорейские ядерные испытания, а некоторые страны отменили запланированные встречи с официальными лицами из КНДР. Пак Кын Хе в своих выступлениях идет дальше – по ее словам, в настоящее время вести диалог с Пхеньяном вообще не имеет смысла. В прошлом, когда шёл диалог, Пхеньян использовал это время для тайной разработки атомного оружия, и потому не стоит повторять ошибки. Сравним подобное с позицией России — 23 сентября в ходе выступления на 71-й сессии Генеральной Ассамблеи ООН министр иностранных дел РФ Сергей Лавров заявил, что Север должен прекратить ядерные испытания и призвал Пхеньян вернуться к режиму денуклеаризации. Однако в то же время Лавров указал на недопустимость использования этой ситуации в качестве предлога для массированной милитаризации Северо-Восточной Азии, развертывания там очередного позиционного района глобальной ПРО США, и отметил, что все заинтересованные стороны должны воздержаться от дальнейшей эскалации напряженности, встать на путь политико-дипломатического урегулирования ядерной проблемы Корейского полуострова через возобновление шестисторонних переговоров. Никуда не девается и бряцание оружием. 26 сентября вооружённые силы РК и США провели учения в Восточном море. Стороны отрабатывали нанесение ударов по наземным объектам КНДР, используя компьютерное моделирование. В манёврах приняли участие три южнокорейских корабля водоизмещением 7600 тонн, подлодка водоизмещением 1200 тонн, противолодочный вертолёт Lynx, патрульный самолёт P-3. С американской стороны участвовали эсминец Spruance водоизмещением 9,5 тыс. тонн и самолёт Р-3. Стороны отрабатывали нанесение ракетных ударов с кораблей, действия по нанесению высокоточных ударов, обнаружению и отслеживанию северокорейских подлодок. С 3 по 21 октября РК, США, Новая Зеландия и НATO проведут на американской авиабазе Эйлсон в штате Аляска совместные военно-воздушные учения Red Flag. В ходе учений будут отрабатываться совместные удары южнокорейских и американских ВВС по ядерным и другим ключевым военным объектам Севера с использованием управляемых авиационных бомб. Южнокорейская сторона направила для участия в учениях шесть истребителей F-15K и два транспортных самолёта C-130 Hercules. ВВС двух стран также отработают оказание огневой поддержки наземным силам и ведение воздушного боя. С 10 октября РК и США начали совместные военно-морские учения Invincible Spirit 2016 с привлечением 10 военных кораблей, включая оснащённые системой раннего обнаружения «Иджис» и атомный авианосец «Рональд Рейган». Крупномасштабные южнокорейско-американские манёвры продолжатся по 15 октября как в Желтом, так и в Японском морях и будут посвящены отработке точечных ударов по важным военным объектам и командным пунктам и уничтожению войск специального назначения противника. Аналогичные учения проводились в июле и ноябре 2010 года после обстрела северокорейской артиллерией острова Ёнпхёндо и потопления сторожевого корабля «Чхонан», и в них принимал участие авианосец «Джордж Вашингтон», но нынешние — еще более масштабны. С Invincible Spirit не стоит путать Invincible Shield. Эти совместные военные маневры ВВС Республики Корея, Великобритании и США впервые проведут с 4 по 10 ноября, и они также будут направлены на отработку авиаударов по ключевым военным объектам Северной Кореи, уничтожение резиденций руководства, а также перехват самолетов противника. Новостью тут является участие Великобритании, которая планирует направить в РК четыре самолета Eurofighter Typhoon, заправщик Voyager и транспортник C-17 Globemaster. Из Германии в РК отправили несколько десятков крылатых ракет «воздух-земля» TAURUS. Эти ракеты предназначены для нанесения высокоточных ударов по защищённым объектам противника. Они способны определять, отслеживать и поражать цели, пробивать 6-метровые бетонные стены бункеров. Об этом 15 октября сообщил представитель оборонного ведомства РК. К 2017 году Германия поэтапно передаст РК 170 ракет. Помимо этого, в связи с недавними северокорейскими ядерными испытаниями и продолжающимися пусками баллистических ракет, было принято решение о приобретении еще дополнительно 90 ракет TAURUS. Между тем расходы на приобретение и установку одной такой ракеты на южнокорейский истребитель обойдется в 2 млрд вон или примерно 1,7 млн долларов. Какова реакция на подобную политику? В случае американских провокаций Пхеньян готов к новым атакам, о чем заявил министр иностранных дел КНДР Ли Ён Хо, выступая перед участниками саммита Движения неприсоединения в Венесуэле. Также Ли Ён Хо сказал, что пятое ядерное испытание было «справедливой мерой для защиты страны от провокаций со стороны США». А что до уламывания Китая, то этому процессу мы посвятим отдельный материал. Константин Асмолов, кандидат исторических наук, ведущий научный сотрудник Центра корейских исследований Института Дальнего Востока РАН, специально для интернет-журнала «Новое Восточное Обозрение». Популярные статьи | 0 |
MEXICO CITY — For months, President Trump warned Mexicans that the Nafta they had enjoyed for decades would soon be a thing of the past. He cowed manufacturers into shifting their investments from Mexico to the United States. He told Mexican leaders that he would cancel the trade agreement and levy punishing tariffs unless they capitulated to his demands in overhauling it. So, when a draft letter suggesting a softening of his views began circulating among members of Congress this week, Mexicans expressed a range of reactions, from welcome relief to cool, wonky reason to dark mistrust. The draft letter, signed by the acting United States Trade Representative, Stephen Vaughn, seemed to propose keeping much of the agreement in place. The language was bureaucratic and technical, devoid of the emotion and invective that has characterized many of Mr. Trump’s comments about Nafta, which he has described as “the worst trade deal” ever signed by the United States. Some Mexicans welcomed the shift in tone and viewed the document, however provisional, as a constructive step in the right direction. “The tone has changed and that should calm us all,” Fernando Ruiz, head of the Mexican Council for Foreign Trade, Investment and Technology, said Friday. The generic nature of the document “helps cool the waters, it gives us more tranquillity rather than uncertainty. ” But some also warned that the draft was by nature bureaucratic, not political. They cautioned that with months to go before negotiations could begin, and with the mercurial Mr. Trump at the helm, anything could happen. “I don’t think anyone really has a clue what’s really going to happen,” said Agustín Barrios Gómez, a former Mexican congressman and the president of the Mexico Image Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting Mexico’s reputation abroad. “There’s this entire optimism that the wolf isn’t going to blow the house down, but it could be toppled over in one tweet. ” Trump administration officials seemed to encourage this caution, perhaps as a negotiating ploy, emphasizing that the draft was just a draft. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, even went so far as to seemingly disavow the document as a reflection of the administration’s objectives in the negotiation. “That is not a statement of administration policy,” he told reporters on Thursday. “That is not an accurate statement of where we are at this time. ” Mr. Spicer’s comments only replenished Mexico’s deep reservoir of wariness and resentment toward Mr. Trump, sentiments that took root with force starting with the debut of his presidential campaign, when he took shots at Mexican immigrants. His vow to build a border wall — and make Mexico pay for it — became a rhetorical motif of his candidacy, firing up his supporters and inflaming sentiment. And he has long accused Mexico of “taking advantage” of the United States under Nafta, or the North American Free Trade Agreement. This history has given some officials and business leaders pause when considering the draft letter this week. “We don’t want to let our guard down,” said Moisés Kalach, who is in charge of trade issues for Mexico’s main business alliance, the Business Coordinating Council. The Mexican business community, he added, was preparing for all negotiating proposals. The administration of Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, did not comment publicly on the letter. The Mexican government has said it is committed to preserving Nafta and protecting the $1. 4 billion in bilateral trade that crosses the border every day, though it has said it is open to modifications. The Peña Nieto administration has argued that any renegotiation of the deal be accompanied by talks over a range of bilateral issues, including border security and immigration. Mexican officials and business leaders have also said that if negotiations go downhill, they are prepared to walk away from Nafta. In the meantime — mindful of Mr. Trump’s threats — Mexico has been exploring new trade deals with other countries and updating old ones. Several seasoned trade specialists in Mexico, among them former government officials, said the document circulating this week was encouraging. “I think it’s good news for Mexico,” said Beatriz Leycegui, a partner at the consultancy SAI and a former undersecretary for foreign trade in Mexico who participated in the Nafta negotiations. “I think this is a responsible letter, something that is indicating a willingness to cooperate, to work together in the competitiveness of the region, and this is extremely important for Mexico at a time when Mexico needs to have clarity and make progress on this front. ” Others, however, said there were items in the draft letter that could be particularly difficult for Mexico and could provoke a strong response here. Antonio a senior adviser at Albright Stonebridge Group, an international consulting firm, and a former head of economic affairs at the Mexican Embassy in Washington, said he had concerns about several items in the letter, including a proposal for new tariffs if a surge of imports from one country threatens a domestic industry in another — which could be imposed if, say, one country’s goods flooded the other’s markets. “It could lead to protectionism,” Mr. said. “That particular issue would keep me up at night. ” Luz María de la Mora, professor of international studies at CIDE, a Mexico City university, and head of a consultancy focused on international commerce, said she found nothing in the letter that was “out of context, aberrant or particularly worrying. ” But she was troubled by Mr. Spicer’s comments. “Because when are we really going to know what the stance of the White House is?” she asked. “That is where all the uncertainty lies, more so than in the substance of this draft. ” | 1 |
Friday on CNN’s “New Day,” billionaire businessman and “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban said President Donald Trump was “political chemotherapy” for what the system. Cuban said, “You have to ask why do they support him and I think we’re coming to a greater understanding now. I call it political chemotherapy. One of my friends, who I always thought was really smart, I’m not saying he’s dumb, but had a different viewpoint on why he voted for Trump. I didn’t expect him to vote for him. He said ‘Mark, I’ve voted for politicians my entire life.’ He’s in his 50s. ‘Do you know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So I voted for Donald Trump. Is he poisonous in a lot of respects? Yeah, this is out chemotherapy. We hope he’s going to change the political system.’ And if that’s the way you’re evaluating Donald Trump, he’s doing a phenomenal job. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” while discussing the current Republican House bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, Sen. Tom Cotton ( ) said, “I simply think that it’s not going to work to bring down premiums in Arkansas or for working Americans around the country. ” Partial transcript as follows: TAPPER: Turning to Obamacare, you’ve been very critical of the bill supported by our previous guest Dr. Price, President Trump, House Republicans to repeal and replace Obamacare. You’ve warned that this bill could put the House Republican majority at risk. One major concern about the plan is the way it might impact lower income Americans. You come fromArkansass which is one of the poorest states in the country. If you were designing the plan on your own, would you get rid of theMedicaidd expansion that brought coverage to 250, 000 people in your state? COTTON: Jake, first, let me say I served with Tom Price in the House of Representatives and consider him a good friend. He had legislation as a congress congressman that I think is a lot better than the house bill currently under consideration. TheMedicaidd expansion I think needs to be part of Medicaid transformation and that’s what the house bill moved forward. It can be improved to some degree, but it’s about a 70% or 80% solution, Jake. the bigger problem with this legislation is on the private insurance market. I simply think that it’s not going to work to bring down premiums in Arkansas or for working Americans around the country. We need to roll our sleeves and fix those problems rear than trying to rush to some arbitrary deadline. Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
A Washington state middle school teacher received a lot of heat for her decision to pull aside a student wearing a “Build the Wall” . [The Chinook Middle School language arts teacher, after pulling the student aside, compared the shirt’s message to wearing a swastika, the Herald reported. “She asked, ‘How would you feel if someone wore a with a swastika on it?’ ” the student’s mother, Michelle Fischer, told the Herald. “He said, ‘You can’t compare my shirt to wearing a swastika. They aren’t the same thing.’ ” Fischer said the teacher asked her son Jack to stay in her class during lunch to talk about the shirt and told him that it wasn’t appropriate to wear clothing with a political message. Jack responded to the teacher that he saw a math teacher wearing a shirt with Barack Obama on it. Fischer posted her outrage over the teacher’s handling of the situation on Facebook and it went viral, especially after conservative talk show host Sean Hannity shared it to his 2. 8 million followers. Fischer is hoping that her son’s experience makes it easier for other children to speak up about political bullying. “It does happen,” said Michelle Fischer. “I think (politics) should be taught in our schools, but only in a positive way. ” Jack told her that the teacher had appeared opposed to Donald Trump since the beginning of the school year because of how she handled class discussions of the presidential election and the candidates. Fischer spoke with Chinook’s principal, Kevin Pierce, who said there was nothing wrong with the shirt. School district officials said appropriate action was taken against the teacher, but could not release details on personnel matters. The district said students are allowed to express their opinions so long as it doesn’t disrupt the education of others. “I think most parents would agree with me,” Fischer said. “If this was the other way around, I guarantee there would be some parents that were pretty upset. ” Students at other high schools around the country have also been harassed by school officials for wearing clothing in support of Trump. A student at a high school in South Portland, Oregon was harassed by school officials because he wore a hat with Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again” in April 2016. | 1 |
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The seeming perfection we see in online photos can be disheartening when compared to the flaws we see in our own appearance.
One popular blogger recently shared an honest selfie in an attempt to make a statement about happiness and beauty. A photo posted by BECK LOMAS (@becklomas) on Oct 26, 2016 at 3:42am PDT
As Today reports, the Instagram feed for Beck Lomas, an Australian fitness and beauty blogger, usually contains the kinds of images that provoke envy: A photo posted by BECK LOMAS (@becklomas) on Sep 16, 2016 at 3:28pm PDT
So when Lomas shared a decidedly unglamorous photo of herself without makeup, it stood out to her many fans: A photo posted by BECK LOMAS (@becklomas) on Sep 26, 2016 at 5:39am PDT
Lomas writes that despite appearances, even she struggles with acne and skin problems that leave her feeling insecure:
“THIS is my current situation. A pimply, bleeding, sore face. It doesn't look THAT bad, but it feels pre y bad. My skin will always be a journey in itself, I don't think I will ever be one of those girls who feels completely okay without makeup, but that's fine. Even when my skin is at its best, which does happen sometimes, when I don't have any big angry pimples and everything looks quite smooth, I'm still a little self conscious.”
In a separate Instagram post , Lomas reveals just how much her bad skin used to affect her. A photo posted by BECK LOMAS (@becklomas) on Oct 17, 2016 at 6:39pm PDT
At times, she was afraid to go out because she knew that makeup couldn't hide it completely:
“I would feel self conscious and ugly around my boyfriend, my family, my friends, everyone. Some nights I would take my makeup off before the gym and look in the mirror and just bawl my eyes out, and I wouldn't even end up working out because I was so worried about how I looked.”
Lomas goes on to explain that while she lacks confidence in her skin, she doesn't lack confidence in herself. Learning the difference, she says, was the key to feeling better about her flaws:
“I've come a long way from the girl who used to cry every single night about the way her skin looked. These days my skin is just a minor downer for me sometimes. This post is just to show you all that you should be confident despite your little flaws.”
By sharing her flaws with her fans, Lomas hopes that she can inspire them to be more forgiving of themselves. A photo posted by BECK LOMAS (@becklomas) on Sep 14, 2016 at 4:23pm PDT
She also wants to make a point about beauty. Beauty, she says, isn't bound up in your skin or your physical flaws, but in your outlook:
“Happy people are the most beautiful people, and I know it's hard to feel happy when you're focusing on your imperfections— but I just want to let you all know that you are beautiful EVEN if you have acne, or bacne, or cellulite, or your thighs touch or you've got stretch marks. You are beautiful and unique and amazing as you are, and being confident and happy and that will shine through and make you even more beautiful!”
Lomas concludes the post by urging her followers not to let their imperfections destroy their confidence in who they are. A photo posted by BECK LOMAS (@becklomas) on Aug 18, 2016 at 7:42pm PDT
Her honesty was appreciated by those who saw the photo, many of whom thanked her or spoke about how much they could relate to Lomas' struggle with her flaws. One commenter writes:
“You're a beautiful girl inside and out. I'm sure you know this but I just wanted to tell you to be certain. Thanks for your authenticity. In a world full of fake, it's very refreshing.”
Beck Lomas wants to remind her fans of an important lesson:
“To anyone else who is struggling with skin issues— you aren't alone and things will get better, so just hang in there!” | 0 |
Humans Are Free As one of the very few independent voices willing to stand up against the scientific dogma of our modern medical regime, I’ve long felt a need to communicate the dangers of flu shots to the public so that people can have better information to prevent vaccine injuries and save lives.
This doesn’t mean I’m opposed to the theory of vaccination, by the way. In fact, I’m the author of A Blueprint for Safer Vaccines , an audio guide to saving lives and preventing vaccine injuries and deaths.
To my knowledge, I’m the only independent journalist in the world who is scientifically trained to run an atomic mass spectrometry laboratory, which I’ve been running for nearly a year now and testing the heavy metals content of organic superfoods like cacao , common vaccines as well as the ability of water filers to remove toxic heavy metals .
I’m the creator of the Low Heavy Metals Verified standard and I’m the inventor of patent-pending nutritional formulas for capturing heavy metals during digestion and binding with the radioactive isotopes of cesium (such as Cesium-137) to eliminate them from the digestive tract.
Both of these patents are on file with the U.S. patent office awaiting a decision.
My independent atomic elemental analysis of flu vaccines, published in the summer of 2014, proved that flu vaccines contain over 50 ppm mercury, an extremely toxic heavy metal linked to kidney failure, birth defects, spontaneous abortions and neurological damage.
This finding has never been refuted by anyone.
In fact, it was affirmed by vaccine proponents who insisted that it is perfectly safe to inject pregnant women, young children and senior citizens with mercury even though the flu vaccine insert itself readily admits there is no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the safety and efficacy of the vaccine in such groups.
Believe it or not, there are still millions of people, doctors, pharmacists and even journalists who do not yet realize there is a very high concentration of mercury in influenza vaccines given to pregnant women, children and senior citizens.
Most people, you see, have been lied to by the media which has stated over and over again that mercury was removed from all vaccines.
That’s simply not true.
It’s still there. And toxic mercury is present in influenza vaccines at a level that’s literally 25,000 times higher than the EPA limit of mercury in drinking water. [7] It’s 100 times higher than the highest level of mercury contamination I’ve ever tested in ocean fish.
See the evidence for yourself
To prove the presence of mercury in influenza vaccines, I’m going to show you four irrefutable pieces of evidence:
1) Photographs of a 2013 / 2014 influenza vaccine box admitting, in very small print, to the addition of mercury to the vaccine as a preservative.
2) Photographs of the influenza vaccine insert once again repeating the admission that the vaccine contains mercury.
3) A screen shot from the Centers for Disease Control website which admits that vaccines still contain the following ingredients: Aluminum, Antibiotics, Egg Protein, Formaldehyde, Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) and Thimerosal, a mercury-containing chemical compound.
4) Lab results from the Natural News Forensic Food Lab which confirmed almost precisely the same level of mercury claimed by the manufacturer (GlaxoSmithKline).
Before I show you the irrefutable evidence, there is some good news in all this testing.
As part of this Natural News investigation, I tested several different vaccines, including an HPV vaccine.
Mercury levels were extremely low in these other vaccines. Only the flu shot contained extremely high mercury levels.
Influenza vaccine box admits safety never established for pregnant women As you can see below, the box for this Flulaval Influenza Virus Vaccine readily admits the use of thimerosal which contains mercury.
(Of course, you have to use a magnifying glass to see this.)
In microscopic text on the package insert, it says straight out, “Register women who receive Flulaval while pregnant in the pregnancy registry by calling 1-888-452-9622.”
Yet, at the same time, the insert also admits that “safety and efficacy have not been established in pregnant women.”
In other words, this vaccine containing mercury is being promoted for use in pregnant women even when no safety in pregnant women has ever been established.
It’s also important to note that when people are being given flu shots, they are never handed the package or the insert, so they have no opportunity to read any of this information unless they specifically ask for it.
It’s not like a food item with a “Nutrition Facts” label. Vaccines are sold in “stealth” mode where patients have no idea what’s in them and no opportunity to read possible warnings.
As further proof of this point, consider the fact that this flu vaccine comes with only one insert, yet it’s a 10-dose vial intended to be injected into 10 different people.
Clearly, if there’s only one insert but 10 people, then 9 out of 10 people can’t possibly be handed the insert.
Unethical medicine administered without informed consent (a violation of medical ethics)
In fact, from a legal perspective, vaccines are routinely injected into people without informed consent.
Virtually no one administering vaccines ever explains the risks vs. benefits of vaccines as is required under medical ethics and state medical law.
In nearly all cases, patients are simply hoodwinked and told there are no risks at all.
The second piece of evidence to reveal here is the package insert for the influenza vaccine, a document printed in microscopic text that’s almost impossible to read without a magnifying glass.
Of course, the intention is that no one ever read this document, because it contains shocking admissions of the total quackery and marketing deception behind flu shots.
As you can see from this snapshot, the package insert readily admits that each vaccine dose “contains 50 mcg thimerosal (<25 mcg=”” mercury=”” p=””><25 br=”” mcg=”” mercury=””> In case you’re wondering, “mcg” means micrograms. A microgram is 1/1000th of a milligram.
Mercury is toxic at any dose when injected into the body, even in micrograms. There is no such thing as a “safe” form of mercury when injected.
In fact, the ethyl form of mercury used in vaccines is many times more toxic than methyl form once it enters human cells.
Click here for a fascinating interview with mercury toxicity expert Dr. Chris Shade who explains this extremely important concept.
The same paragraph shown above also admits the vaccine contains formaldehyde, a potent neurotoxic chemical.
Vaccine insert admits safety and effectiveness have never been established<25 br=”” mcg=”” mercury=””> What’s even more astonishing about this insert is that it openly admits the flu shot is a complete medical hoax, backed by nothing but voodoo woo woo faith-based dogma (and clever marketing).
Here are actual words from the insert (which is much more lengthy than the snapshot shown above):
“There have been no controlled trials adequately demonstrating a decrease in influenza disease after vaccination with Flulaval.”
“Safety and effectiveness of Flulaval have not been established in pregnant women, nursing mothers or children.”
“Safety and effectiveness of Flulaval in pediatric patients have not been established.”
“Flulaval has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or for impairment of fertility.”
“Do not administer Flulaval to anyone… following previous administration of any influenza vaccine.”
CDC admits use of mercury, MSG, formaldehyde
For those “mercury denialists” who still can’t believe flu shots given to pregnant women contain high concentrations of toxic mercury, even the CDC reluctantly admits this fact on its own website.
Here’s a screen shot from the CDC’s vaccine additives page , which miraculously hasn’t yet been removed from their site:
<25 br=”” mcg=”” mercury=””> Laboratory results from the Natural News Forensic Food Lab
The final piece of irrefutable evidence on all this comes from my own scientific laboratory , where I run ICP-MS instrumentation to test foods, beverages, dietary supplements and other items for heavy metals contamination.
I was the first food researcher to document high levels of tungsten in brown rice protein , and I’ve exposed alarming levels of lead in pet treats . I’ve also exposed high lead in ginkgo biloba herbal supplements imported from China .
When I finally got around to testing vaccines, I was shocked to find over 51,000 ppb mercury in the Influenza Virus Vaccine.
Why was I shocked? Because I don’t recall ever seeing anything run through my ICP-MS instrument with that high a concentration of mercury.
The mercury in this flu vaccine was the HIGHEST concentration of mercury I’ve ever seen in anything, period!
And this is a product that’s injected directly into the bodies of pregnant women, where mercury goes right into the developing fetus.
What’s even more interesting is that this finding once again confirms the accuracy of my lab instrumentation because it’s almost in perfect agreement with the level of mercury detailed on the vaccine package insert.
Let’s do the math:
* Each dose of an influenza vaccine is 0.5 mL in volume * My lab found just over 50 ppm of mercury in the vaccine liquid. * 50 ppm (concentration) x 0.5 mL (volume) equals 25 mcg of mercury.
Guess what the package insert says? (Up to) 25 mcg of mercury per dose. Near-perfect agreement, in other words.
My finding of 51 ppm rather than 50 ppm either means my own tests were off by about 2% (which is still considered very accurate for ICP-MS testing) or that GSK put 2% extra mercury into the vaccine.
And just so you know I actually did the tests, here’s what else we found with other analytes:
Aluminum: 0.4 ppm Cadmium: zero Lead: zero
So, I can confidently say that the flu vaccine won’t poison you with lead, cadmium or arsenic because it contains none of those things.
Even the aluminum level is quite low and not a concern at this very low level. The real problem is just the mercury, at least as far as elements go.
Why won’t vaccine makers remove the mercury?
Good question. Everybody knows mercury is toxic to inject into the human body. That’s not debated except by irrational anti-science denialists who refuse to acknowledge the Table of Elements.
You have to wonder: why choose mercury as a preservative? And why do both the CDC and FDA continue to look the other way as an entire branch of modern medicine poisons our women and children with a neurotoxic heavy metal?
And if vaccine promoters, propagandists and patent holders want the world to accept all their vaccines, why don’t they just remove the mercury and be done with it?
If they take out all the toxic elements, resistance to vaccines would all but evaporate.
Why vaccines are the “anti-science” medical voodoo of the modern world Ever wonder why they don’t conduct legitimate clinical trials on flu vaccine efficacy?
Probably because they know the results would have to be faked to show any efficacy at all.
That’s what Merck did with its mumps vaccines, according to two former virologists who worked there.
They spiked human blood samples with animal antibodies to fabricate positive results.
Yep, vaccines work so poorly that even the manufacturers have to fake their own results to show any efficacy.
Vaccines are the one medicine where no scientific evidence of safety or efficacy is required by anyone: not the FDA, not the CDC and not the media.
Congress even passed a law protecting the vaccine industry with absolute legal immunity, even when they manufacture and sell defective products that injure and kill people .
How’s that for medicine we can all trust?
Think about it: this is a product that contains multiple neurotoxins in very high concentrations; a product backed by no safety trials or efficacy data; a product linked to numerous serious adverse reactions; and yet a product that enjoys absolute legal immunity thanks to the U.S. government.
If that’s not outright medical quackery, I don’t know what is.
For the record, I’m not an opponent of all vaccines. But I do believe — as do a rapidly increasing number of other clear-thinking people — that medicine should not poison our women and children .
It’s time for mercury to be removed from all vaccines, once and for all. Anything less is medical negligence.
New video interview about flu shot failures
Ultimately, We the People will be victorious in the removal of mercury from all vaccines — an idea that’s already well accepted across much of Europe.
And when that day comes, it will be yet another victory for the Natural News fan base, an amazing community of millions of remarkable people working together for the protection of our children, our health and our world.
See my recent video interview with Next News Network’s Gary Franchi on why flu shots are failures: | 0 |
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