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Between 2012 and 2015, 1, 565 refugees were diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) in the United States, according to annual reports published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). [The CDC data, which has been public but obscure until now, shows that the number of refugees diagnosed with active TB in recent years is more than three times greater than previously reported by any media outlet. The number of refugees diagnosed with TB in the United States has increased every year since 2012, the first year the CDC began publishing data on cases of the disease by category, when 358 were diagnosed. In 2013, 396 refugees were diagnosed with TB. The following year, 2014, 402 refugees were diagnosed with TB, and in 2015, the number of refugees diagnosed with TB rose again to 409. Data for 2016 has not yet been reported. In October, Breitbart News reported that 476 cases of active TB among refugees have been reported in the fifteen states that made that data available. states did not make the data available, even though they had apparently reported it to the CDC: At least eight cases of active TB were diagnosed among refugees upon their arrival in Minnesota in 2015, bringing the total number of cases of active TB among refugees in Minnesota over the past six years to at least 304. That also increases the number of active TB cases diagnosed among refugees over the past six years in the fifteen states in which Breitbart News has been able to obtain data to 476, broken down as follows: Minnesota (304) Wisconsin (27) Nebraska (21) Louisiana (21) Michigan (19) Vermont (17) Colorado (16) Florida (11) Ohio (11 in one county) Idaho (7) Kentucky (9 in one county) North Dakota (4 in one county) Indiana (4) California (3) and Tennessee, where two refugees have been diagnosed with the very dangerous, resistant (MDR) TB. Until Breitbart News discovered the public, but effectively hidden, CDC reports, the scale of the TB problem among refugees was underreported by more than 1, 000 cases over recent years — off by a factor of more than three. The number of refugees resettled annually in the United States increased from 58, 238 in FY 2012 to 69, 933 in FY 2015, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The number of refugees resettled in FY 2016 increased to 84, 995, according to the Department of State’s interactive website. During the first three months of FY 2017, the number of refugees resettled in the country increased to 25, 671, almost double the 13, 791 resettled during the first three months of FY 2016. The increase in the number of refugees diagnosed with active TB from 358 in 2012 to 409 in 2015 was partially responsible for the increase in the total number of cases of active TB increased from 6, 274 to 6, 350 during those four years. Other categories of cases of TB that increased included those who arrived under regular immigrant visas, which increased from 1, 437 in 2012 to 1, 670 in 2015, those who arrived in the “other” category, which includes illegal immigrants (called “undocumented immigrants” in the CDC reports) which increased from 1, 312 in 2012 to 1, 408 in 2015, and those who arrived under student visas, which increased from 158 in 2012 to 191 in 2015. TB cases as a percentage of all TB cases diagnosed in the United States increased from 63. 1 percent in 2012 to 66. 4 percent in 2015. The total number of TB cases diagnosed in the United States declined from 9, 945 in 2012 to 9, 421 in 2014. In 2015, however, for the first time in 23 years, the number of TB cases diagnosed in the United States increased, instead of declined, to 9, 557. Two other important findings arise from the CDC data: (1) Several of the 35 states for which no data was previously available about the number of active TB cases among refugees have a significant, and previously unreported, public health problem associated with unusually high rates of active TB among refugees. (2) The number of cases of active TB among refugees in several of the 15 states for which complete or partial data was reported by those states significantly and inaccurately under reported the true incidence of active TB among refugees, Georgia, for instance, is the most surprising untold story. During the four years between 2012 and 2015, 96 cases of active TB were diagnosed among refugees in the Peach State. On a per capita basis, Georgia has one of the highest instances of refugee TB of any state in the country. Yet nowhere has this important story been reported. Texas is known to have one of the highest rates of TB in the country. What was not previously reported, however, is the significant role refugees have played in that phenomenon. During the four years between 2012 and 2015, 186 cases of active TB were diagnosed among refugees in the Lone Star State. Similarly, it has been widely reported that TB is a public health issue in California. Breitbart News was unable to obtain the full story from the California Department of Public Health about the number of refugees diagnosed with active TB in California until discovering the CDC annual reports. We had only been able to document three cases of active TB among refugees in California based upon publicly available data from the state. The CDC data, however, makes clear that California has a significant problem with active TB among refugees. During the four years between 2012 and 2015, 251 cases of active TB were diagnosed among refugees, which is 248 more than the three cases previously reported. Breitbart News will provide a number of additional reports based on the data contained in these annual CDC reports in the coming weeks. | 1 |
New Report Finds Voters Have No Idea How Outraged They Supposed To Be About Anything Anymore WASHINGTON—Saying that at this point, they were just taking their best guesses at how they should react to each new scandal that emerged about the presidential nominees, voters across the country admitted Monday they had no clue how outraged they are supposed to be about anything anymore. Anthony Weiner Sends Apology Sext To Entire Clinton Campaign BROOKLYN, NY—In response to the FBI’s announcement that its investigation of him had produced new evidence that could pertain to its probe of the Democratic presidential nominee, Anthony Weiner reportedly sent an apology sext early Monday morning to the entire Hillary Clinton campaign. | 0 |
Jake Gyllenhaal will return to Broadway next year in a brief revival of “Sunday in the Park With George. ” The production, a more fully developed version of a City Center benefit concert that Mr. Gyllenhaal anchored in October, will be the first show in 49 years at Hudson Theater, which is being reconverted into a stage after decades of other uses. Mr. Gyllenhaal’s concert performances wowed critics and sold out. “This is one of those shows that seems destined to be forever spoken of with bragging rights by anyone who sees it,” Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times. Mr. Gyllenhaal’s City Center Annaleigh Ashford, will join him on Broadway. The production will be shorter than the usual Broadway run, at 10 weeks, with previews beginning Feb. 11 and the opening on Feb. 23 it will close on April 23. The show will be produced by Ambassador Theater Group, the British company that is restoring the theater for Broadway, along with New York City Center Jeanine Tesori, who produced the City Center staging and Riva Marker, who runs Mr. Gyllenhaal’s company, Nine Stories Productions. The short run in a theater will make it difficult to recoup capitalization costs, but a spokeswoman said that the company believed it could be done. The company has been eager to land a starry first production that would bring attention to the theater, which is on West 44th Street and most recently has been used as a hotel event space. The spokeswoman said that the Broadway staging would be “fully memorized,” unlike the concert, and that the show’s sets and costumes would be “deepened. ” “Sunday in the Park With George,” with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine, is one of the most beloved musicals in the canon, and in 1985 it won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The show, inspired by the painting “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,” has a first act imagining the artwork’s creation by the painter Georges Seurat, and a second act, set a century later, imagining the artistic struggles of the painter’s . The revival will be directed by Sarna Lapine, who is Mr. Lapine’s niece, and who will be making her Broadway debut as a director. She directed the City Center concert performance, and has been associate or assistant director on other Broadway shows. “Sunday in the Park” was first presented on Broadway in 1984 there was a revival in 2008. Mr. Gyllenhaal, whose only previous Broadway role was last year in the play “Constellations,” will play Seurat and his (Georges and George). Ms. Ashford, who won a Tony Award last year for her role in “You Can’t Take It With You,” will play Seurat’s lover, Dot, as well as their daughter, Marie. The rest of the cast has not been announced. Mr. Gyllenhaal, a frequent film star, previously agreed to star in a play, “Burn This,” that was to have opened the theater but postponed, citing unspecified scheduling conflicts. He was able to do “Sunday” instead because it requires less of a time commitment. | 1 |
As someone old enough to remember the “Stop Pay TV!” campaigns that movie theaters and affiliated parties mounted in the late 1960s — “Don’t let Pay TV be the monster in your living room,” blared one such ad — I am occasionally amused that paying for televised entertainment is now pretty much a fact of life. As multidevice streaming rapidly evolves into something like the norm, the concept of has started becoming a reality for some viewers. It’s difficult to find reliable data on how many households have given up cable TV and now get all their television via a streaming like Roku, Amazon Fire or Google Chromecast. I know two couples who have done this. One of them had a viewing party on election night last November and hoo, boy, things got interesting when a glitch occurred around 10 p. m. Eastern time. (One thing you should make sure you have before any kind of cable is reliable internet, without which there’s no streaming.) In any event, it appears that the situation for many consumers involves keeping cable and shuffling various streaming services. So in addition to all the other monthly bills, we are also, in this scenario, forced to keep up with individual fees for streaming services. Bundling is part of why people opt for cable in the first place, and it’s becoming a feature of certain streaming services Amazon Video is one of several that lets you piggyback various other services, usually at a slightly reduced fee. “Watching TV is more complicated than ever,” a pitchman on a broadcast ad for TV Guide announced in the 1980s. Wherever that fellow is now, I bet he’s terribly confused. With all this in mind, I’ve assembled three discrete monthly streaming “packages” for dedicated movie watchers to consider. It’s worth remembering that almost all of the services come with free trials. And with some notable exceptions, almost all the services offer more than just movies. PACKAGE 1: ‘THE MAINSTREAMER’ Its foundational pillars are Amazon Video ($8. 99) and Netflix ($9. 99). (For the sake of coherence, I’m going to stick to monthly rates, before taxes note that Amazon’s video service comes with Amazon Prime’s $99 annual fee.) Hulu carries more television shows than movies, but it’s not light on movies, particularly popular ones. Unless you like to watch commercials, in which case your Hulu will run $7. 99, the desirable option will be version at $11. 99. Add HBO Now ($14. 99) Starz ($8. 99) and Showtime ($10. 99). That’s $65. 94 worth of monthly streaming. (Explorers of Amazon Prime will point out that there’s a good deal of HBO programming already free through the service this doesn’t include movies currently on HBO, or the most recent original programming, including movies. This is worth considering when determining whether or not to add HBO Now.) But if you want to rent or purchase a film on demand, either a classic or something recently released in theaters, there are also movies available à la carte, from $2. 99 to $14. 99, available on Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, iTunes and more. Let’s postulate that each month you spend $2. 99, $4. 99 and $14. 99 on a single movie from one of these — that’s $22. 97. So the services and a few potentially purchases, you’re looking at $88. 91. Not exactly cheap, but were I to pitch it to you with the proviso “Less Than $100 a Month,” you might think, “Not bad. ” PACKAGE 2: ‘THE BUFF’ These are or sites that offer cinema of a more artistic, esoteric, possibly obscure bent, and reject American cultural hegemony by, in most cases, going around the world for their fare. I’d say the foundation would be FilmStruck with the Criterion Channel option at $10. 99 a month. It’s $6. 99 a month without Criterion, but you’ll want Criterion, for its smartly chosen array of largely foreign cinematic milestones. Warner Archive ($9. 99) is the odds and ends of a great American studio, not a very global concern but still full of enticing options. Then there’s the streaming art house Mubi ($5. 99) which has, during special promotions, offered enticing yearly subscription discounts ($34. 99 as opposed to $47. 99). Fandor, an eclectic and often exciting service with thousands of movies ranging from martial arts romps such as “Master of the Flying Guillotine” to expansive, obscure French brainteasers like “Out 1,” is $10 a month. And the solid indie provider Sundance Now, which also offers original series, is $6. 99. That’s about $44 a month. PACKAGE 3: ‘THE FRINGE’ If you like genre movies above all, or like digging for cinematic thrills in obscure but not necessarily arty corners, this might be a good option. You’ll need Warner Archive ($9. 99) the blaxploitation service Brown Sugar ($3. 99) and the horror specialist Screamhouse ($4. 99) which runs scary gamuts each with its own menu subheading, including “Extreme,” which has the indeed highly unpleasant “Cannibal Ferox. ” Shudder, another horror service ($4. 99) recently made waves by offering the controversial Ken Russell film “The Devils” finicky horror lovers almost immediately protested on social media that it was not the uncut version. (In fairness to Shudder, the actual provenance of an uncut version of this movie is highly obscure.) Amazon’s video service is rife with noir titles in various states of disrepair or restoration. A lot of genre stuff in the public domain (until a copyright owner can effectively yell “Foul! ”) is on YouTube, which is free for the sake of argument, we’ll add YouTubeRed ($9. 99) to this bill of fare. Crunchyroll has an membership for $6. 95. And the Urban Movie Channel ($4. 99) is not as as Brown Sugar, but it doesn’t exactly lack, either, especially when it comes to genre variants like the Southern 2009 thriller “In the Electric Mist” or the tale “The Sickle” (2015). Total: a little over $45 with Amazon added as a digging option, a little under $55. All this of course can be supplemented by free services other than YouTube, like the site of DVD label Shout! Factory and Vimeo. If only there was a service that would allow one to buy leisure time, we’d be all set. | 1 |
What is at stake as Congress considers the E. P. A. budget? Far more than climate change. The Trump administration’s proposed cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency budget are deep and . It seeks to shrink spending by 31 percent, to $5. 7 billion from $8. 1 billion, and to eliminate a quarter of the agency’s 15, 000 jobs. The cuts are so deep that even Republican lawmakers are expected to push back. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the chairwoman of the Interior and Environment Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, pointedly reminded Mr. Trump last month that his budget request was just “the first step in a long process. ” Here are some proposed cuts that are likely to face resistance when the budget reaches Congress. Flint, Mich. is still reeling from its tainted water crisis, and unsafe levels of lead have turned up in tap water in city after city. Still, the E. P. A. is looking to decrease grants that help states monitor public water systems by almost a third, to $71 million from $102 million, according to an internal agency memo first obtained by The Washington Post. The Public Water System Supervision Grant Program has been critical in making sure communities have access to safe drinking water. In Texas, for example, workers collect drinking water samples across the state, an effort funded in part by federal grants. Much of the risk to the country’s water supply stems from its crumbling public water infrastructure: a network of pipes, treatment plants and other facilities built decades ago. Although Congress banned lead pipes in 1986, between 3. 3 million and 10 million older ones remain, primed to leach lead into tap water. Sharp cuts in the agency’s enforcement programs could curtail its ability to police environmental offenders and impose penalties. The budget proposal reduces spending on civil and criminal enforcement by almost 60 percent, to $4 million from a combined $10 million. It also eliminates 200 jobs. Just last week, the agency fined Sunoco Pipeline, a subsidiary of the operator behind the Dakota Access pipeline, nearly $1 million over a 2012 spill. The spill sent 1, 950 barrels of gasoline into two waterways near Wellington, Ohio, forcing the evacuation of 70 people. One enforcement activity that could be set for an increase: security for Scott Pruitt, the new E. P. A. administrator. The agency has asked for 10 additional staff members for a security detail — a first for an E. P. A. chief, who usually has only protection — and more than doubling the agency’s infrastructure and operations staff. The agency is taking an approach to regional cleanup programs, proposing to virtually eliminate all of them: Chesapeake Bay, Gulf of Mexico, Lake Champlain, Long Island Sound, Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay, South Florida, the Great Lakes. Together, those projects amount to a loss of more than $400 million in federal funding for the regions involved. The largest part of that goes to the Great Lakes restoration effort, which is helping revive wetland habitats, clean up toxic pollution, combat invasive species and prevent runoff from farms and cities. The E. P. A. ’s defunding of these projects could backfire. Much of the federal money has gone toward helping bring affected communities to the table to find solutions. Absent that route, communities could sue the E. P. A. for failing to act, ultimately running up the agency’s legal bills and slowing remediation as cases wind their way through the courts. Superfund is as as environmental programs get. It makes federal funds available for the cleanup of sites contaminated by hazardous substances and pollutants, like the Chemical Company in Queens, in New York City, which was designated a Superfund site in 2014. The site is heavily contaminated with thorium, a radioactive metal with a of 14 billion years that has been linked to a higher incidence of lung, pancreatic and bone cancer. Superfund money is helping clean up the thorium. The Superfund program can actually save taxpayers money, because it lets the E. P. A. identify polluters and compel them to pay for the cleanup. But the proposed budget reduces its enforcement and remedial components by 45 percent, bringing it to $221 million from $404 million. E. P. A. officials call Brownfields, a program that helps towns and cities redevelop former industrial sites, one of the agency’s most popular programs. The E. P. A. website still lists its success stories: refashioning an old textile mill in Hickory, N. C. into a retail, dining and event space, and redeveloping former factory sites on the banks of Iowa’s Cedar River into riverfront condominiums. Funding to states under the Brownfields program is set for a reduction of 30 percent, to $33 million from $48 million. The exact science behind, and health consequences of, a class of chemicals called endocrine disrupters remains unsettled. With the proposed cuts to research at the E. P. A. it could stay that way. The budget eliminates a $6 million research and screening effort targeting the chemicals, which are found widely in pesticides, plastics, shampoos and cosmetics, cash register receipts, food can linings and other products. The chemicals have been linked to breast cancer in women and hypospadias, a birth defect in boys. Ending the program, which would result in the loss of nine jobs, would curtail the agency’s ability to review medical data and work with environmental lawyers to fashion an agency response. It is no surprise that the new E. P. A. is targeting climate change initiatives, given the Trump administration’s hostility toward the science of global warming and a bent. But many of the programs that fall under the $70 million Climate Protection Program — which would be eliminated under the White House proposal — are industry favorites. Take the Energy Star program for televisions, washers, dryers, lights and other consumer goods. Companies say Energy Star helps give their products a competitive edge, and also helps them sell overseas, where the standard has been adopted by the European Union, Japan, Australia and Canada, among major markets. And the SmartWay program works with logistics companies to make their operations more climate friendly. SmartWay helps trucking companies fit their trucks with aerodynamic flaps and tires, for example, that save fuel and reduce emissions. It has been barely a year since Volkswagen agreed to pay as much as $14. 7 billion to settle claims stemming from its diesel emissions cheating scandal, and the E. P. A. has accused a second automaker, Fiat Chrysler, of evading emissions standards. But the proposed budget cuts would all but eliminate the $48. 7 million federal budget for vehicle tests and certification. The budget foresees getting automakers themselves to pay for testing through fees. But that takes time to set up, and any funding shortfall in the meantime would mean a significant paring back of the work at E. P. A. ’s emissions testing labs. The Trump administration has declared its intent to roll back regulations. But the item eliminated from the proposed budget, after the Great Lakes Restoration project, exists precisely because federal regulations do not cover all pollutants. The $165 million Nonpoint Source Grant program helps states deal with pollutants from sources that are not directly regulated under the Clean Water Act — like the phosphorus that flows into Lake Erie from fertilizer, which feeds algae and weeds that starve the water of oxygen, harming fish and other wildlife. Among other remedies, the nonpoint source grants have been used to help states create “buffer strips” — areas of thick vegetation that help filter the contaminated runoff. The proposed budget would eliminate the grants. When the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan sent radioactive plumes across the Pacific, the E. P. A. ’s RadNet system monitored the fallout on America’s shores, deploying additional air monitors in Alaska and Hawaii and ordering accelerated samplings of rain, tap water and milk. Over the next two months, laboratory analyses detected very low amounts of iodine and other radionuclides across the country. Levels remained far below the safety threshold, and the E. P. A. determined that no action was needed. But in the case of another nuclear accident, RadNet could help officials make decisions on how to protect the public. The proposed budget would defund the agency’s $3. 3 million Radiation Protection program and eliminate 60 jobs. It would also remove four jobs from the Radiation Response Preparedness program despite those job cuts, funding for that modest program would increase by $177, 000, to just over $500, 0000, to be used for “essential preparedness work only. ” | 1 |
By Jason Easley on Fri, Oct 28th, 2016 at 6:36 pm The reason why the Clinton email scandal is getting pushed 11 days before the election has nothing to with Trump's DOA White House bid, and everything to do with helping Republicans keep control of Congress. Share on Twitter Print This Post
The reason why the Clinton email scandal is getting pushed 11 days before the election has nothing to with Trump’s DOA White House bid, and everything to do with helping Republicans keep control of Congress.
On the surface, the sudden revival of Hillary Clinton’s emails looks like an October surprise designed to help Republican nominee Donald Trump. The problem with this theory is that both Democrats and Republicans acknowledge that Trump is toast.
Unless Hillary Clinton’s emails say, “LOL. I was the shooter on the grassy knoll,” there is nothing that would stop her from winning the election. In fact, the emails FBI Director was investigating did not come from Clinton or her server. They seem to have very little to do with Hillary Clinton or her presidential campaign.
The emails are like catnip to Republican voters, who have been promised for years that if they keep sending Republicans to Congress, they’ll bring down a Democratic president, and that is the real reason behind the email scandal revival.
For the next ten days, Republican Congressional candidates are going to be able to campaign on investigating Hillary Clinton. The Republican candidates can pretend like Trump doesn’t exist because their new pitch to voters is, “Vote for me and I’ll bring down Hillary.”
Donald Trump is a lost cause. Millions of ballots have already been cast in swing states. Trump is being out organized and trounced by Clinton on the ground.
To understand the real value of the email scandal to the Republican Party, look down the ballot.
The Hillary Clinton email scandal is nothing more Republican get out the vote operation to save their majorities in Congress. | 0 |
Christopher Guest has mined quirky cultures like amateur thespians (“Waiting for Guffman”) and participants (“Best in Show”) and transformed them into cheerfully comedy. Now he tackles the performers beneath the plush in “Mascots,” his first film in a decade, which is streaming on Netflix and also in limited theatrical release. The faux documentary, as he prefers to call his work, follows a global menagerie of mascots to Anaheim, Calif. where they compete for the Golden Fluffy, the pursuit’s top prize. To his veteran posse — Parker Posey, Jane Lynch, Ed Begley Jr. Jennifer Coolidge and Fred Willard — he introduces a few gifted newcomers, like Zach Woods of HBO’s “Silicon Valley. ” “I myself delve into very arcane things,” Mr. Guest said, waxing gleeful about a website dedicated solely to shoelaces. It’s the kind of subject, he admitted — looking these days more like the fifth Baron his British title, than Nigel Tufnel of “This Is Spinal Tap” — that most people might roll their eyes at and sigh, “Who cares?” “But someone does clearly, and those people have a dynamic in their lives that interests me. ” In an interview in a suite at Le Parker Meridien with a glorious Central Park view, the droll Mr. Guest, 68, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Jamie Lee Curtis, talked about his process, his passions and the word that shall not be spoken. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. So why mascots? Well, I watch sporting events, and it occurred to me that it was an interesting idea that people are performing but they’re hidden. In a normal scenario with actors, you might say there’s some narcissism in terms of people being seen. But in this case, people are wearing a big bear head and working hard. But then they take that off, and no one knows who they are. So what’s happening inside is a curious dynamic. Did you meet any mascots during your research? Oh, yes. I knew Dave Raymond, who was the original Phillie Phanatic. The man who played the Oregon Duck was one of our expert helpers on the film. Some teams, like [the University of California] Santa Cruz Banana Slugs, have a sense of humor. But there are a lot of bears and lions and tigers because they’re supposed to be ferocious. In England, they revere the hedgehog. It’s not menacing in any way. Your films typically focus on unusual endeavors. Are you a member of any — — Secret societies? Of course, if I was, could I tell you? I’m a fly fisherman. I make flies. They’re imitations of insects at different stages in their development. And my character did that in “Best in Show. ” Your films are improvised rather than scripted. How does that work? This is the hardest thing to describe. Jim Piddock and I wrote an outline, about 25 pages. There is a document that has the back histories of every single character, where they went to school, their upbringing, everything about them. What’s not written is any dialogue. And there’s no rehearsal. But the actors know what happens in every single scene. This is more rigid than you can imagine. It takes longer to lay this out than to write a conventional screenplay. Did the actors perform mascot routines? [Sid the Hedgehog on the] ladder was a clown, and I don’t mean a clown that was scaring people in the woods or whatever the hell that is. The Fist was a stuntman rollerblading. And there was a dancer in the Armadillo. You resurrected Corky St. Clair from “Waiting for Guffman. ” It was a whim. I just thought, Wouldn’t it be weird if he pops in, especially in the Parker Posey scene? Because obviously it’s the same actress, but it’s a different character. It doesn’t make any sense. I know you detest the word “mockumentary. ” I do, and you’ve said it. | 1 |
Applying for financial aid for college got a lot harder this month, in the thick of application season, but it took federal agencies nearly a week to explain what was happening. To get aid for college from federal or state governments, as well as from colleges, students and their parents must fill out the Fafsa (the Free Application for Federal Student Aid). The notoriously complicated form, which is longer than the typical 1040 tax form, collects detailed information from students and families about income, expenses and taxes. On March 3, families logging onto the website for federal aid found that a key component of the online application had stopped functioning. The component, known as the Data Retrieval Tool, automatically fills in a Fafsa application with information from an applicant’s tax return, via a data connection with the Internal Revenue Service. Without the tool, applicants have to transcribe tax information from their old returns or order tax transcripts from the I. R. S. (which can take several weeks). Twitter started to fill with frustrated messages from applicants wondering when the tool would be back up. Student advocacy organizations, such as the National College Access Network (N. C. A. N.) pleaded with the Department of Education and the I. R. S. to explain the situation and resolve it as quickly as possible, but received no response. N. C. A. N. and others began urging families to contact their elected representatives. Six days later, on Thursday morning, the Department of Education and the I. R. S. jointly released a statement saying that the I. R. S. had “decided to temporarily suspend the Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) as a precautionary step following concerns that information from the tool could potentially be misused by identity thieves. ” The agencies declined to elaborate, and it was unclear whether a breach had occurred or had only been feared. The tool has been in use for five years, with no reports of identity theft stemming from its use. If the move was, as the statement said, a precautionary step, waiting to repair it until after the peak of the aid application season would have been far less disruptive. Students can still apply for student aid, and it seems they should not postpone their application in hopes that the data tool will return anytime soon. While the agencies have provided no specific date, they have indicated it will be down at least several weeks. Completing the Fafsa is now going to require more legwork, more paperwork and more time, and applicants will be putting themselves in a difficult position if they wait until the last minute to apply. Fafsas completed without using the data tool are more likely to be chosen for “verification,” an audit that requires applicants to submit additional paperwork to prove that their tax information is accurate. This further slows the process. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators has asked the Department of Education to scale back verification requirements given the data tool outage. Federal aid such as Pell grants and Stafford loans have no firm deadline students can apply all year. But many states have limited aid budgets that are rationed on a basis. And colleges have deadlines for their own aid, which is drawn from endowments and tuition revenue and which is limited at most schools. Delayed applications may mean, for many students, no aid from states or school. The unannounced suspension of the data tool comes at a critical moment in the aid cycle. March is a peak time for aid applications, second only to February in the volume of Fafsa submissions. The deadlines for 19 state aid programs are approaching, according to Sarah Pingel of the Education Commission of the States. The I. R. S. suspended the data tool just as it was benefiting more applicants than ever before. In past years, the Fafsa application called for tax data from the previous year, even though most filers wouldn’t have had returns processed by this point. But now those applying for aid for the academic year are allowed to submit information from their 2015 tax return (in fact, it’s a requirement to use 2015 and not 2016 returns) — a change made in part to allow many more people to use the data tool. It is not just current students who are affected by the shutdown. Borrowers applying for or renewing their eligibility for repayment plans such as Pay as You Earn use the data tool to verify their income information, which is used to calculate payments. The Trump administration has tightened social media and other communications from agencies. Coordinating communication across multiple agencies may be particularly challenging, as the administration may require approvals from political appointees who are not yet fully in place. This may explain the silence from the education department while the tool was disabled for a week. The problem with this approach is that it takes a broad network of financial aid offices, aid professionals and advocacy groups to keep the aid system functioning. College offices put together aid packages and communicate with students, for example. If this intricate infrastructure is not kept informed about changes, the aid system will grind to a halt. | 1 |
The Clintons are turning up the heat on their bubbas in government. It will be interesting to see how things play out, pre and post selection…err…election. Kim Dotcom is saying there is more still yet to come, and President Obama is saying the same thing.
Could we see a game changing event as Jeremiah Johnson muses over at SHTFPlan.com?
Could it be economic… cosmic?
Only time will tell!
Watch on YouTube
Sources:
Internet Mogul Kim Dotcom: More Leaks Coming, “Clinton is in Serious Trouble”
Something Big Is Underway On All Fronts: “Within The Next Few Weeks The Future Of The United States Will Be Decided”
EYE in the SKY Conspiracy Theorists Claim Plan to Create Asgardia ‘Space Nation’ in Orbit Above Earth Is Secret Illuminati Plot to Take Over the World
Former State Department Official Steve Pieczenik May Have Sent the Most Important Message in American History
Objections Raised Over Ohio Troopers Sent to Protests in North Dakota
‘The Fate of the Republic Rests on Your Shoulders’: Obama Delivers Impassioned Plea to America to Reject Trump Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
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Hailed a success by its organisers for reducing the number of violent crimes committed on New Year’s Eve from over 1, 000 last year to less than a dozen, Cologne police are now being criticised for using “racial” methods.[ activists, including members of the local Green party, have criticised the police for focusing their security efforts too clearly at the same groups which were identified as the main perpetrators of the 2016 attacks. The comments came after Cologne police controlled thousands of ‘Nafris’ — North Africans — as they attempted to enter the city centre ring of steel. Germany’s Deutsche Welle reports the remarks of Green party chairman Simone Peter who noted that while the measures had worked, he doubted the legality of the police’s actions. He said: “It raises the question of proportionality and legality when around 1, 000 people were checked and partially detained based on their appearance alone. ” Meanwhile politician Christopher Lauer, active at times with the Social Democrats and Pirate Protest Party, said of the terms used by Cologne police that it was “sweeping prejudice against an entire group of people based on their appearance”. “I regard this term as highly dehumanizing. ” Despite the ill feeling over the approach, Cologne’s local Express newspaper reports the arrest of a Syrian on New Year’s Eve as police believed “urgent” action was necessary following intelligence he was planning a terror attack that evening. The migrant had previously been arrested for offences. Cologne police gave regular updates through the night and local newspapers carried updates from the force reporting the number of Nafris who had been stopped, searched, and turned away. Upon arriving, hundreds of potential migrant troublemakers and even individuals known to have been involved in the 2016 attacks were immediately turned around and escorted to trains out of the centre. In all, 1, 200 Nafris were controlled by Cologne police. In addition, the force recorded two sexual assaults, six thefts, and 29 individuals were arrested. One train coming into the city which police learnt had 300 North Africans was stopped and turned back just before it reached the centre. This contrasts with the 2016 celebrations when over 500 women were recorded as victims of sexual assault and 28 were raped. Including other crimes such as thefts and assaults, there were some 1, 300 victims. Cologne’s police chief was forced to retire early after the policing failure, which saw less than 100 officers on patrol for the whole city. Now defending the force from having policed the event too thoroughly instead, chief Jürgen Mathies said that while they had deliberately targeted Nafris for searches and identity checks, of the hundreds met in this way “there was a clear threat of criminal activity present”. He said “We had groups of people who were comparably aggressive” to those that police encountered last year. The police chief also emphasised the fact that police hadn’t only performed security checks on North Africans, but had investigated other groups as well. The city’s mayor called the measures “necessary”. The force also defended the ‘Nafri’ term, which was admitted to be an internal policing term. An internal document describing Nafris revealed in the German press briefs police officers that they come from Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, are generally between 15 and and are violent. The document states: “The clientele behaves very aggressively against intervening police officers and city colleagues … Armaments (folding knives) are regularly carried. ” | 1 |
Photo by Diego Torres Silvestre | CC BY 2.0
The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda.
The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term “public relations” as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions.
In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women by smoking in the New York Easter Parade – behaviour then considered outlandish. One feminist, Ruth Booth, declared, “Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!”
Bernays’ influence extended far beyond advertising. His greatest success was his role in convincing the American public to join the slaughter of the First World War. The secret, he said, was “engineering the consent” of people in order to “control and regiment [them] according to our will without their knowing about it”.
He described this as “the true ruling power in our society” and called it an “invisible government”.
Today, the invisible government has never been more powerful and less understood. In my career as a journalist and film-maker, I have never known propaganda to insinuate our lives and as it does now and to go unchallenged.
Imagine two cities.
Both are under siege by the forces of the government of that country. Both cities are occupied by fanatics, who commit terrible atrocities, such as beheading people.
But there is a vital difference. In one siege, the government soldiers are described as liberators by Western reporters embedded with them, who enthusiastically report their battles and air strikes. There are front page pictures of these heroic soldiers giving a V-sign for victory. There is scant mention of civilian casualties.
In the second city – in another country nearby – almost exactly the same is happening. Government forces are laying siege to a city controlled by the same breed of fanatics.
The difference is that these fanatics are supported, supplied and armed by “us” – by the United States and Britain. They even have a media centre that is funded by Britain and America.
Another difference is that the government soldiers laying siege to this city are the bad guys, condemned for assaulting and bombing the city – which is exactly what the good soldiers do in the first city.
Confusing? Not really. Such is the basic double standard that is the essence of propaganda. I am referring, of course, to the current siege of the city of Mosul by the government forces of Iraq, who are backed by the United States and Britain and to the siege of Aleppo by the government forces of Syria, backed by Russia. One is good; the other is bad.
What is seldom reported is that both cities would not be occupied by fanatics and ravaged by war if Britain and the United States had not invaded Iraq in 2003. That criminal enterprise was launched on lies strikingly similar to the propaganda that now distorts our understanding of the civil war in Syria.
Without this drumbeat of propaganda dressed up as news, the monstrous ISIS and Al-Qaida and al-Nusra and the rest of the jihadist gang might not exist, and the people of Syria might not be fighting for their lives today.
Some may remember in 2003 a succession of BBC reporters turning to the camera and telling us that Blair was “vindicated” for what turned out to be the crime of the century. The US television networks produced the same validation for George W. Bush. Fox News brought on Henry Kissinger to effuse over Colin Powell’s fabrications.
The same year, soon after the invasion, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the renowned American investigative journalist. I asked him, “What would have happened if the freest media in the world had seriously challenged what turned out to be crude propaganda?”
He replied that if journalists had done their job, “there is a very, very good chance we would not have gone to war in Iraq”.
It was a shocking statement, and one supported by other famous journalists to whom I put the same question — Dan Rather of CBS, David Rose of the Observer and journalists and producers in the BBC, who wished to remain anonymous.
In other words, had journalists done their job, had they challenged and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today, and there would be no ISIS and no siege of Aleppo or Mosul.
There would have been no atrocity on the London Underground on 7 th July 2005. There would have been no flight of millions of refugees; there would be no miserable camps.
When the terrorist atrocity happened in Paris last November, President Francoise Hollande immediately sent planes to bomb Syria – and more terrorism followed, predictably, the product of Hollande’s bombast about France being “at war” and “showing no mercy”. That state violence and jihadist violence feed off each other is the truth that no national leader has the courage to speak.
“When the truth is replaced by silence,” said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.”
The attack on Iraq, the attack on Libya, the attack on Syria happened because the leader in each of these countries was not a puppet of the West. The human rights record of a Saddam or a Gaddafi was irrelevant. They did not obey orders and surrender control of their country.
The same fate awaited Slobodan Milosevic once he had refused to sign an “agreement” that demanded the occupation of Serbia and its conversion to a market economy. His people were bombed, and he was prosecuted in The Hague. Independence of this kind is intolerable.
As WikLeaks has revealed, it was only when the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2009 rejected an oil pipeline, running through his country from Qatar to Europe, that he was attacked.
From that moment, the CIA planned to destroy the government of Syria with jihadist fanatics – the same fanatics currently holding the people of Mosul and eastern Aleppo hostage.
Why is this not news? The former British Foreign Office official Carne Ross, who was responsible for operating sanctions against Iraq, told me: “We would feed journalists factoids of sanitised intelligence, or we would freeze them out. That is how it worked.”
The West’s medieval client, Saudi Arabia – to which the US and Britain sell billions of dollars’ worth of arms – is at present destroying Yemen, a country so poor that in the best of times, half the children are malnourished.
Look on YouTube and you will see the kind of massive bombs – “our” bombs – that the Saudis use against dirt-poor villages, and against weddings, and funerals.
The explosions look like small atomic bombs. The bomb aimers in Saudi Arabia work side-by-side with British officers. This fact is not on the evening news.
Propaganda is most effective when our consent is engineered by those with a fine education – Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia — and with careers on the BBC, the Guardia n, the New York Times , the Washington Post .
These organisations are known as the liberal media. They present themselves as enlightened, progressive tribunes of the moral zeitgeist. They are anti-racist, pro-feminist and pro-LGBT.
And they love war.
While they speak up for feminism, they support rapacious wars that deny the rights of countless women, including the right to life.
In 2011, Libya, then a modern state, was destroyed on the pretext that Muammar Gaddafi was about to commit genocide on his own people. That was the incessant news; and there was no evidence. It was a lie.
In fact, Britain, Europe and the United States wanted what they like to call “regime change” in Libya, the biggest oil producer in Africa. Gaddafi’s influence in the continent and, above all, his independence were intolerable.
So he was murdered with a knife in his rear by fanatics, backed by America, Britain and France. Hillary Clinton cheered his gruesome death for the camera, declaring, “We came, we saw, he died!”
The destruction of Libya was a media triumph. As the war drums were beaten, Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian : “Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong.”
Intervention — what a polite, benign, Guardian word, whose real meaning, for Libya, was death and destruction.
According to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. They included missiles with uranium warheads. Look at the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. The Unicef report on the children killed says, “most [of them] under the age of ten”.
As a direct consequence, Sirte became the capital of ISIS.
Ukraine is another media triumph. Respectable liberal newspapers such as the New York Times , the Washington Post and the Guardian , and mainstream broadcasters such as the BBC, NBC, CBS, CNN have played a critical role in conditioning their viewers to accept a new and dangerous cold war.
All have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia when, in fact, the coup in Ukraine in 2014 was the work of the United States, aided by Germany and Nato.
This inversion of reality is so pervasive that Washington’s military intimidation of Russia is not news; it is suppressed behind a smear and scare campaign of the kind I grew up with during the first cold war. Once again, the Ruskies are coming to get us, led by another Stalin, whom The Economist depicts as the devil.
The suppression of the truth about Ukraine is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember. The fascists who engineered the coup in Kiev are the same breed that backed the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Of all the scares about the rise of fascist anti-Semitism in Europe, no leader ever mentions the fascists in Ukraine – except Vladimir Putin, but he does not count.
Many in the Western media have worked hard to present the ethnic Russian-speaking population of Ukraine as outsiders in their own country, as agents of Moscow, almost never as Ukrainians seeking a federation within Ukraine and as Ukrainian citizens resisting a foreign-orchestrated coup against their elected government.
There is almost the joie d’esprit of a class reunion of warmongers.
The drum-beaters of the Washington Post inciting war with Russia are the very same editorial writers who published the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
To most of us, the American presidential campaign is a media freak show, in which Donald Trump is the arch villain.
But Trump is loathed by those with power in the United States for reasons that have little to do with his obnoxious behaviour and opinions. To the invisible government in Washington, the unpredictable Trump is an obstacle to America’s design for the 21 st century.
This is to maintain the dominance of the United States and to subjugate Russia, and, if possible, China.
To the militarists in Washington, the real problem with Trump is that, in his lucid moments, he seems not to want a war with Russia; he wants to talk with the Russian president, not fight him; he says he wants to talk with the president of China.
In the first debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump promised not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into a conflict. He said, “I would certainly not do first strike. Once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over.” That was not news.
Did he really mean it? Who knows? He often contradicts himself. But what is clear is that Trump is considered a serious threat to the status quo maintained by the vast national security machine that runs the United States, regardless of who is in the White House.
The CIA wants him beaten. The Pentagon wants him beaten. The media wants him beaten. Even his own party wants him beaten. He is a threat to the rulers of the world – unlike Clinton who has left no doubt she is prepared to go to war with nuclear-armed Russia and China.
Clinton has the form, as she often boasts. Indeed, her record is proven. As a senator, she backed the bloodbath in Iraq. When she ran against Obama in 2008, she threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran. As Secretary of State, she colluded in the destruction of governments in Libya and Honduras and set in train the baiting of China.
She has now pledged to support a No Fly Zone in Syria — a direct provocation for war with Russia. Clinton may well become the most dangerous president of the United States in my lifetime –a distinction for which the competition is fierce.
Without a shred of evidence, she has accused Russia of supporting Trump and hacking her emails. Released by WikiLeaks, these emails tell us that what Clinton says in private, in speeches to the rich and powerful, is the opposite of what she says in public.
That is why silencing and threatening Julian Assange is so important. As the editor of WikiLeaks, Assange knows the truth. And let me assure those who are concerned, he is well, and WikiLeaks is operating on all cylinders.
Today, the greatest build-up of American-led forces since World War Two is under way – in the Caucasus and eastern Europe, on the border with Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, where China is the target.
Keep that in mind when the presidential election circus reaches its finale on November 8 th, If the winner is Clinton, a Greek chorus of witless commentators will celebrate her coronation as a great step forward for women. None will mention Clinton’s victims: the women of Syria, the women of Iraq, the women of Libya. None will mention the civil defence drills being conducted in Russia. None will recall Edward Bernays’ “torches of freedom”.
George Bush’s press spokesman once called the media “complicit enablers”.
Coming from a senior official in an administration whose lies, enabled by the media, caused such suffering, that description is a warning from history.
In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: “Before every major aggression, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack. In the propaganda system, it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.”
This is adapted from an address to the Sheffield Festival of Words, Sheffield, England. | 0 |
Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while answering questions about President Donald Trump’s “America First Budget,” Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney said the Trump administration was showing “compassion” in terms of where the money comes from by no longer asking coal miners in West Virginia to pay for the National Endowment for the Arts. Mulvaney said, “The president knows who the voters are. His voters are folks who pay taxes as well. And I think or the first time in a long time, you have an administration looking at the compassion of both sides of the equation. Not just the compassion in terms of where the money go but in terms of where the money comes from. Could we as an administration, could I as a budget director look at a coal miner in West Virginia and say I want you to give money to the federal government so I can give it to the National Endowment for the Arts. We finally got to the point in the administration where we couldn’t do that. You owe $60, 000 to the government. So do I in terms of the debt. The president said let’s take care of both sides of the equation. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
in: Consciousness , Sleuth Journal , Society , Special Interests , US News With the long awaited controversial US presidential election day inching closer and as the Hillary ship threatens to sink with every passing day and every new revelation , here is a question all truth seekers should ponder. What if after all is said and done a frightening and shocking Hillary declared “victory” is the very thing required in this human consciousness journey we call life in order to truly trigger mass awakening above and beyond the awakening to political corruption we have now? This scenario is very plausible given the nature of our political system and the now normalized very intense propaganda that is being displayed today by the mainstream media , Hollywood and the many Soros funded non-profit political organizations involved in this presidential race like Moveon.org whose job it is to keep feeding their followers the lies, deceit and propaganda using celebrity voices (see shocking image below) equating a Hillary vote as a show of “love”. And since this scenario (of mass awakening and mass action) is now very plausible, perhaps everyone who cares about individual rights and America should pay attention to the events that are about to unfold. Bear with me as we imagine we are all standing in front of the large screen that offers all the answers to life. On this screen we have the privilege of seeing with our own eyes and ears the journey our species has been through. This presentation thus acts as an instructional manual for us (humanity, truth seekers) to use as an instructional guide. Imagine that on this movie screen we can easily look for patterns in previous human behaviors, analyze cause and effect and see how governments and the ruling elite do their tricks on the masses to ensure their control over us. Imagine how easy life would be if we had a screen to show us all the answers. Imagine being able to see these easily observed patterns on the video screen and their immediate effects on the species. This front row view into the journey of humanity would not only be instructional for those observing, it would be the primary instructional guide by which we would be able to make rather safe, high probability, minimal risk decisions on current political situations. Well guess what? We have that screen available to us. It’s called the documented account of history. Ancient history as well as modern history is available to us in today’s information age. We have now reached a point where very little is hidden. The occult ruling elite are now fully exposed for who they are, for their devious and deceitful tactics on the masses and their criminal plans for dominating humanity one overthrown nation state at a time with limitless eternal unchecked power. The official birth of this historic moment will be embodied in a Hillary Clinton “victory” selection which could very well take place very soon here in the US. The thing that everyone must recognize is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In fact, the ruling elite know this very well. This is why they have armed themselves to the teeth with military weaponry including 1.6 billion (yes billion!) rounds of hollow point bullets, militarized DHS and FEMA camps. This is the true reason for the police state, the race toward AI technology, the surveillance state, the deployment of the JADE AI based conventional asymmetric warfare software and the in-your-face criminality, lies and deceit of the Hillary-mainstream media-Hollywood team. They’re acting like bullies who can taste the new world order because they know it’s so close to them at this point. THIS is where we are today and all truth seekers, Bernie supporters, Trump supporters and anyone else who has felt the sting of this new world order operation known as the Hillary campaign needs to acknowledge this reality now. I could be wrong about this but I highly suspect that this point in history will prove to be the last stand or should I say the last meaningful opportunity for people to wake up at a mass scale to what is happening both globally and domestically. The movie screen I was talking about before is real. We have it playing before us. Again, it’s called history. Today more than ever any idiot can easily verify that the US has thousands of military bases around the world. You can easily verify that today the US empire rules the world, that the 9/11 operation was an activation of their PNAC plans and final global takeover. You can easily verify how the US and it’s CIA , economic terrorists and “special forces” has strong-armed almost every nation on earth to exert its domination on it and insert its own puppet president. You can easily look up at the screen of history and see how the enslavement of humanity was planned long ago with a process of mass propaganda, consumerism, mass medication, mass entertainment and brainwashing and mass indoctrination via the board of education. There are of course far too many moving parts to this new world order plan to list here but you get the picture, it was all planned out to lead us to where we are today. Understanding and seeing this easily available information we’ve considered so far then allows us to see the next phase of where we are heading. Frankly, this next phase I wholeheartedly believe will be exponentially accelerated with a Hillary Clinton declared “victory” on November 8th 2016. I say “victory” because I believe that without interference by the ruling elite (DNC, mainstream media, DHS etc) Donald Trump would win by a landslide. Hopefully I’m wrong but I suspect there is little chance if any of the TRUE results holding up. The ruling elite simply didn’t come this far to let the people actually have a say in who wins. With that said, I call on all truth seekers and everyone else who is hoping to see Hillary Clinton go away forever to hold still and realize that this upcoming moment in history may actually be the moment of truth for humanity. Realize that throughout history (the movie screen we talked about earlier) we see that all major events in human history are associated with major realizations and major emotional pivotal points of absolute conviction and purpose. This point of absolute conviction and purpose is here. We all see the blatant criminality being waved in all our faces. We know who they (the ruling elite) are. We are all salivating in some way to see them go down by being arrested, imprisoned, punished, exposed, embarrassed and cast from our society. Before you target a criminal you have to identify who they are. Today humanity can celebrate one of several major accomplishments. One of them being that we have come a long way at actually exposing and identifying who these criminals are. Today we know their names, we have entire databases and factual findings confirming the criminality of all of these people from the ones at the very top of the power structure all the way down to the scum bag crisis actors like the Sandy Hook criminals (Gene Rosen, Lenny Pozner etc) and others. The hard reality today is that a Hillary “victory” more than any other scenario will mobilize people to take action to take back their country. Naturally the criminal Left, the DNC and the Hillary-mainstream media complex would LOVE to stage some kind of violent act to blame on the possibly soon to be discontent Trump followers but at this stage there is nothing the liberal left can do that won’t be suspected of being staged. The Hillary crime team won’t have anyone to blame when they are busted staging violence since they are already on record discussing staging violence to be blamed on Trump supporters. Planning ahead So as we approach election day I invite all Americans who understand the level of criminality and evil that Hillary represents to think how they would channel their energy in case of a Hillary selection in the upcoming election. Will you continue to do what you are doing now? If not, then what will you do differently? Will you vote again? Will you stand by and watch Hillary support and re-arm a dying ISIS CIA army in Syria so that the US can finally overthrow president Assad? Will you stand by and watch Hillary cement the Agenda 2030 plans, the global climate taxes, the illegal TTIP and TTP agreements that undermine national sovereignty? Will you watch her trigger WW3 with Russia and cement the global police state? Will you stand by and watch her run the country knowing how much of a criminal she herself is? Will you stand by and watch the Clinton body count sky rocket and watch more journalist murdered left and right for exposing this criminal empire? A Hillary global regime will officially represent the arrival of the new world order (though in many ways that is what the Obama and Bush administration has done) and anyone seeing her criminality today knows this. There is a lot of blood waiting to be shed somewhere out there. Whether it’s the brutal Hillary led first official global regime or resistance to this regime locally or globally (WW3). There is however, also a narrow yet still realistic path by which minimal blood will be shed. It will likely be determined by how many people actually take action (especially those in uniforms- police and military). By action I’m referring to the American way of supporting true journalism, removing your consent, openly speaking your mind without fear of retribution, resisting tyranny, pursuing democracy, sharing information and self-sustaining solutions and being involved in peace activism based on conviction and strong belief in humanity, nature, justice and morality. Finally, humanity and all the values it believes in are all potentially in jeopardy. Everything is now threatened. Who will protect these values and how much sense of urgency there will be to do so will be determined this upcoming election day, for better or for worse. Help spread the word. One way or another paradigm shift is here. Submit your review | 0 |
STORE Trump’s blueprint may soon cross the pond to effect Europe’s elections
Perhaps one of the biggest ironies in this year’s historic election was how often the media and the pundits tried to both tell and get Donald Trump to ‘act’ more presidential. And at the heart of this irony was the fact that Trump’s demeanor was no different than some of the greatest Presidents in America’s history when you study the likes of Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt.
In the end however, Donald Trump’s personality was a perfect mixture of determination coupled with a dash of bombastic that helped create a whirlwind which energized a nation into pulling off the greatest upset in political history.
In times of political and societal change it is charisma, far more than ability, that most often wins the race. And in a year where the world was shocked by the Brexit vote in the UK, and the Chicago Cubs coming back from a 3-1 deficit to win the world series, those who can tap into the ethereal energy of that change will accomplish the impossible no matter what people think or believe.
And going forward the ongoing frequency shift that has is occurring right now, just as it has occurred in a cyclical fashion throughout history, still has a long way to playing itself out. And with that in mind the next potential nexus point of extreme change is emerging in the scheduled referendums and elections over in Europe that will take place over the next six months.
Daniela Schwarzer, director of research at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), said Trump’s bare-fisted tactics against his opponents and the media provided a model for populist European parties that have exercised comparative restraint on a continent that still remembers World War Two. “The broken taboos, the extent of political conflict, the aggression that we’ve seen from Trump, this can widen the scope of what becomes thinkable in our own political culture, ” Schwarzer said.
Perhaps it is not the “political conflict” or aggression from Trump that Daniela is worried about; perhaps it is the threat of a truly democratic vote in a world in which all the benefits of crony capitalism and suppressed representation have gone exclusively to the 1%, something which is now openly known and resented by the rest of the increasingly angry population. And, as both Brexit and Trump have shown, an angry, education population is the worst possible enemy of any elitist, globalist clique.
Italy and Austria
Europe will get the first taste of its own “Trump Moment” as early as next month, when on December 4 Austrians will vote in a presidential election that could see Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party become the first far-right head of state to be freely elected in western Europe since 1945. On the same day, a constitutional reform referendum on which Prime Minister Renzi has staked his future could upset the political order in Italy, pushing Grillo’s left-wing 5-Star movement closer to the reins of power.
Channeling Donald Trump, local Euroskeptic politician and comedian, Beppe Grillo said that “an epoch has gone up in flames . The real demagogues are the press, intellectuals, who are anchored to a world that no longer exists.” – Zerohedge
Politics today is most often ruled by tradition and expectations, with things like lies, obfuscation, and corruption being accepted parts of the process. But as Donald Trump proved in the last two years leading up to the results of Nov. 8, the right person or movement can not only supersede establishment machines, but in very real ways it can also destroy them.
Six months ago no one would have imagined that Britain would have voted to leave the European Union, especially after nations such as Greece willingly stayed in the coalition despite the treatment they were given by member states and banking interests. But we are no longer in a frequency of normal, and before this paradigm shift is finally completed impossible phenomenons like Trump winning the Presidency will be just one of many changes that will alter the entire landscape of Europe, America, and the world.
Kenneth Schortgen Jr is a writer for The Daily Economist , Secretsofthefed.com , Roguemoney.net , and Viral Liberty , and hosts the popular youtube podcast on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Ken can also be heard Wednesday afternoons giving an weekly economic report on the Angel Clark radio show . | 0 |
The thing is I’ve told them I’m prime minister, admits Farage 15-11-16 NIGEL Farage has admitted that he may accidentally have told Donald Trump he is Britain’s prime minister. The former UKIP leader confessed that he failed to correct an early misunderstanding which has now snowballed into a new transatlantic alliance. He said: “I went over, and Mr Trump congratulated me on running the UK after Brexit, and we were about to go on stage so I joked ‘Certainly a big responsibility, ha ha!’ “After a few fizzy Yank beers I found myself claiming that UKIP had been made the ruling party following an intervention by my friend, the Queen, and also that my wife was a former Miss Germany and Playboy model. “You’ve not met him, it’s like he makes you say these things. “Anyway he really seems to like me and it’s probably just easier for everyone if I just take over.” Farage added: “The ironic thing is, neither of us actually ever intended to lead a country because it’s a massive pain in the arse.”
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actress Ellen Burstyn will play Sen. Elizabeth Warren ( ) in a play based on the contentious Cabinet confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump’s administration, according to a report. [All the President’s Men? Scenes from the Senate Confirmation Hearings of President Trump’s Cabinet will run for just one night at Town Hall in New York City on May 11, according to Entertainment Weekly. The “documentary theater” play was previously performed April 24 at the Vaudeville Theater in London’s West End district. New actors have been added for the New York staging, many of whom will apparently be playing multiple characters. According to EW, the updated cast for the added performance includes Ron Rifkin as Bernie Sanders, Joe Morton as Ben Cardin, James Inhofe and Patrick J. Leahy, Aasif Mandvi as Scott Pruitt and Todd Young, Denis O’Hare as Orrin Hatch and Lindsey Graham, David Costabile as Tom Price and Chris Coons, and Staceyann Chin as Mazie K. Hirono. Also joining the cast is New Yorker editor David Remnick, who is set to play Sen. Al Franken. Additional casting was set be announced at a later date. The play — which will reportedly use a script with verbatim transcripts from the confirmation hearings — is edited and directed by Nicolas Kent. “The theater is not always a medium, but when it can be, it’s electrifying,” Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis told EW in a statement. “This is a portrait of the American government, and it is as riveting as the headlines and far, far more revelatory. It’s like reading the news lit by lightning. ” As of Monday evening, tickets for the event were still on sale through Vivid Seats. All The President’s Men? is the latest production to tackle Trump and his administration using the theater stage. On Monday, documentary filmmaker and activist Michael Moore announced he will mount a Broadway show, titled The Terms of My Surrender, that he hopes will be able to “bring down” the president. Moore’s play is set to run for 12 weeks at New York City’s Belasco Theater this summer. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 1 |
The UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, told investors on Tuesday that it continued to lose hundreds of millions of dollars selling individual policies under the federal health care law. The company said it planned to pull out of a majority of states where it offered coverage and would offer policies on the public exchanges in “only a handful of states” for 2017. UnitedHealth, which was a late and seemingly reluctant participant in the public exchanges, surprised investors last year when it announced its sizable losses, now estimated at more than a combined $1 billion for 2015 and 2016, because of its poor performance in the public exchanges. Policy analysts have been watching UnitedHealth closely as an indicator of whether the new individual market developed under the Affordable Care Act is sustainable. Addressing investors, Stephen J. Hemsley, the company’s chief executive, continued to offer a pessimistic view. “The smaller overall market size and profile within this market segment continue to suggest we cannot broadly serve it on an effective and sustainable basis,” he said. UnitedHealth estimated its losses from the exchanges would be $650 million this year. UnitedHealth reported overall earnings from operations of $3 billion on revenue of $44. 5 billion for the first quarter of 2016, compared with earnings of $2. 6 billion on revenue of $35. 8 billion for the 2015 quarter. The company would not specify which states it planned to exit. It appears to be staying in Virginia and Nevada next year, but it is not known what other states remain attractive. A small unit of UnitedHealth, which offers exchange plans that feature a primary care clinic, is being tested in some states, including Georgia, where United says it is pulling out. Despite the concerns over United’s decision, just how much of its struggles are because of a lackluster embrace of the market and small presence is unclear. The company has 795, 000 people in its plans, a small fraction of the roughly 13 million people who have signed up for 2016. Without large numbers of customers, insurers are unable to demand low prices from hospitals and doctors. They also cannot balance the high cost of very sick patients with the low expense of more healthy customers. The number of insurance carriers for every state has increased every year, Ben Wakana, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the exchanges, said in a statement. “With millions of Americans insured through the marketplaces, it’s clear that this is a growing business for insurers,” he said. While United is not alone in finding the new market challenging, some insurers, especially those that have traditionally served customers in Medicaid programs, appear to be more successful. “This is still a new market, and both entrants and exits come with the territory,” Cynthia Cox, one of the authors of a recent analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, said of the impact if UnitedHealth were to leave all of its markets. While the analysis found the overall impact to be modest, if UnitedHealth left all the markets and was not replaced by another carrier, the Kaiser analysis found, “the effect on insurer competition could be significant in some markets — particularly in rural areas and Southern states. ” | 1 |
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Judge warns of dangers of appointed judiciary 'Unelected and unaccountable' ... rule on 'their empathetic feelings' Published: 4 mins ago About | | Archive Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially. Print
A member of the increasingly divided and disputatious Alabama Supreme Court is warning that judges need to be elected and thus accountable to the voters or their decisions end up being based on “their empathetic feelings” instead of the law.
“Alabama’s judges are elected and accountable,” wrote Justice Tom Parker this week. “Federal judges, as recently noted by Chief Justice Roberts in his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges … a case in which ‘five lawyers’ on the United States Supreme Court announced a fundamental right to same-sex marriage, are ‘unaccountable and unelected.’
He pointed out that three of the four dissenting U.S. Supreme Court justices in Obergefell “noted on eight different occasions that the ‘five lawyers’ who decided Obergefell were unelected. Chief Justice Roberts said on two occasions that those unelected ‘five lawyers’ were, consequently, unaccountable.”
Parker previously commented that the “five lawyers” failed to “base their decision ‘on legal reasoning, history, tradition, the court’s own rules, or the rule of law, but upon the[ir] empathetic feelings.'”
“Obergefell is the product of unelected and unaccountable judges,” he said.
He was arguing over a decision by the state court on its next move in a case brought by Chief Justice Roy Moore, who was suspended for his actions regarding a marriage-based case that the court was reviewing when the Obergefell case, which created same-sex “marriage” nationwide, was announced.
Moore, who is challenging the punishment, insisted that the state court justices who previously were involved in his case recuse themselves. They did, with the exception of the acting chief justice who was allowed to work with the governor to pick a panel of retired judges to hear Moore’s arguments.
Parker said active judges should have been included in the panel, because retired judges, too, are “unelected and unaccountable.”
“Unelected and unaccountable judges are empowered to impose their agenda, instead of faithfully applying the rule of law,” Parker warned. “Obergefell is not the first case concerning same-sex marriage to prove this principle true. Before the United States Supreme Court decided Obergefell, the constitutionality of state laws defining marriage as between one man and one woman had been litigated before numerous courts throughout the United States.
Don’t miss Phyllis Schlafly’s book, now available autographed at the WND Superstore: “Who Killed The American Family?”
“Before Obergefell, 40 states passed laws affirming traditional marriage. In 37 of those states, the traditional marriage laws were challenged in the courts as unconstitutional. Of the 37 state laws affirming traditional marriage that were challenged in the courts, 24 of those laws were struck down by the judiciary as unconstitutional. Each of the 24 courts that struck down the traditional marriage laws as unconstitutional was composed of judges who were unelected and thus unacountable.”
He explained what happens when activist judges are held to account, citing the situation that developed in Iowa.
“The Supreme Court of Iowa was one of the unelected courts that struck down Iowa’s traditional marriage law as unconstitutional. The judges of the Supreme Court of Iowa are appointed by the governor of Iowa. However, although the judges are initially appointed, they must stand for retention elections once their initial term expires.”
He explained that after the Iowa Legislature adopted one-man-one-woman marriage as law, in April 2009, in “a decision largely viewed as judicial activism, the Supreme Court of Iowa unanimously overruled the democratic will of the people of Iowa and held [the law] unconstitutional.”
“The very next year, three of the judges … who had concurred in Varnum had to stand for a retention election; all three were removed from office by vote of the people of Iowa. This was the first time since Iowa adopted its retention-election system that any judge had ever failed to be retained. The people of Iowa held accountable those judges who failed to uphold the rule of law.”
Mathew Staver, chairman of of Liberty Counsel, which is representing Moore, said huge questions remain of impropriety regarding the judicial system’s handling of Moore’s case.
“Chief Justice Moore is merely asking for the same thing any citizen is entitled to receive – equal justice under the law. He wants his case to be heard by an objective and fair panel of judges who will adhere to the rule of law,” he said.
“The people of Alabama have increasingly called upon their judges to be accountable. At every turn, this case presents new twists and turns that have never occurred in the history of Alabama. Never has there been a requirement that replacement judges all be retired. We hope this case moves quickly to a final and just resolution. The Court of the Judiciary violated the law when it suspended Chief Justice Moore for life even though it lacked the 9-0 vote. Never before under the unanimity requirement of COJ Rule 16 has any judge ever been suspended for the rest of the term. A sexting judge gets six months and a judge who writes a four-page order that is not unethical or unlawful gets suspended for life. This is not right.”
Supporters of Moore also have filed an ethics complaint against Lyn Stuart, who has been acting as Alabama’s chief justice.
She is accused of “violating multiple cannons of ethics in her mishandling of the cases surrounding Chief Justice Roy Moore.”
The complaint comes from the Sanctity of Marriage Alabama organization.
“If the Judicial Inquiry commission really cares about ethics, fairness and upholding the integrity and impartiality of the Alabama judiciary, they will no doubt take our complaint seriously, as will organizations which filed ethics complaints on Chief Justice Moore,” said Tom Ford, a spokesman for the group.
The complaints, the group said, outline “how acting Chief Justice Lyn Stuart has repeatedly failed to avoid impropriety or the appearance of impropriety, failed to perform the duties of her office impartially, failed to avoid conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brings the judicial office into disrepute, and failed to conduct herself at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
Parker was not the first to cite the dangers of the judiciary.
Daniel Horowitz , senior editor at Conservative Review, told WND that the nation is going through a “social transformation without representation.”
“It is the unelected branches of government that are deciding our most important issues, whether it’s the bureaucrats, whether it’s the courts, and as it relates to even religious liberty, even property rights, immigration, our voting rights, who gets to vote,” he said.
Horowitz tackles the topic of “social transformation without representation” in his book “Stolen Sovereignty: How to Stop Unelected Judges From Transforming America.”
“How did we get here?” Horowitz asked rhetorically. “And the sad reality is nobody ever voted for this. This was all foisted upon the people by unelected judges, the legal profession, and unelected bureaucrats. That is social transformation without representation, which, as Scalia warned, is something much worse than even taxation without representation that served as the impetus for our first American Revolution.”
Same-sex marriage was mandated for the nation in 2015 by the bare 5-4 majority made up of Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and the late Antonin Scalia opposed it.
The majority found in the Constitution a right to same-sex marriage, overturning millennia of established legal precedent regarding marriage as well as the will of tens of millions of voters in dozens of states.
It elicited remarkably harsh criticism of the five justices in the U.S. Supreme Court majority.
For one, two of the justices in the majority, Kagan and Ginsburg, were asked to recuse themselves from the case because they had openly advocated for same-sex marriage, apparently violating standards to preserve judicial impartiality. Without their votes, the case would have gone the other way.
They refused.
Then there was the U.S. Supreme Court’s own opinion just two years earlier, in the Defense of Marriage Act case, in which the court said states have exclusive power over marriage.
And there also are those who point out that the Constitution doesn’t mention marriage but does dictate that everything not mentioned in the document is left to the states and the people.
As WND reported , Ginsburg, who voted in favor of same-sex marriage, has performed same-sex wedding ceremonies and made supportive public statements. Justice Elena Kagan also has performed same-sex weddings and promoted “gay” rights at Harvard’s law school while she was at its helm.
Critics contend the two justice appear to be violating judicial ethics rules that require recusal from a case in which there is even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
The Foundation for Moral Law asked the justices to excuse themselves from the case, but they refused to acknowledge the request. The Foundation explained that Canon 3A(6) of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges provides: “A judge should not make public comment on the merits of a matter pending or impending in any court.” 28 U.S.C. sec 455(a) mandates that a justice “shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, author of the New York Times bestseller “The Harbinger” and the inspiration behind the “Isaiah 9:10 Judgment” movie, has criticized the Supreme Court’s assumption that it has the authority to redefine marriage.
At a prayer event in Washington, he said: “The justices of the Supreme Court took up their seats [in a hearing] on whether they should strike down the biblical and historic definition of marriage. That the event should even take place is a sign this is America of [George] Washington’s warning … a nation at war against its own foundation.”
Washington warned the smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation “that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself hath ordained.”
“Justices, can you judge the ways of God? There is another court and there is another judge, where all men and all judges will give account,” he warned.
“If a nation’s high court should pass judgment on the Almighty, should you then be surprised God will pass judgment on the court and that nation? We are doing that which Israel did on the altars of Baal,” he said.
See Jonathan’s Cahn’s message at Washington: Man of Prayer event at the Capitol.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is calling “same-sex marriage” an “intrinsic evil.”
And officials from several counties in Tennessee have adopted statements opposing the Supreme Court.
WND also reported when dozens of top legal scholars from the likes of Washington & Lee, Boston College, Kansas State, Notre Dame, University of Texas, Villanova, Vanderbilt, Hillsdale, University of Nebraska, Catholic University and Regent University issued a statement encouraging all state and federal officials to treat the Supreme Court’s recent creation of “same-sex marriage” as “anti-constitutional and illegitimate.”
“It cannot … be taken to have settled the law of the United States,” said the statement from the American Principles Project .
“We call on all federal and state officeholders: To refuse to accept Obergefell as binding precedent for all but the specific plaintiffs in that case. To recognize the authority of states to define marriage, and the right of federal and state officeholders to act in accordance with those definitions. To pledge full and mutual legal and political assistance to anyone who refuses to follow Obergefell for constitutionally protected reasons. To open forthwith a broad and honest conversation on the means by which Americans may constitutionally resist and overturn the judicial usurpations evidence in Obergefell.” | 0 |
Mainstream Media Calls Real News “Fake” Because Their Narrative Is Collapsing Mainstream Media Calls Real News “Fake” Because Their Narrative Is Collapsing Relampago Furioso
Relampago is the author of The New Modern Man blog. He is a former member of the mainstream media turned dissident. He enjoys striking at the Establishment using politically incorrect truths and electrifying SJWs with logic. He is now living the expat dream in the Caribbean and does not want to come back to The Matrix. Relampago also maintains a library of Red Pill Book and Film recommendations and is a Red Pill Life Coach , helping other men realize the dream of getting laid on the regular, getting out of debt, and traveling the world.
Facebook | Twitter November 23, 2016 Manosphere
There are those who think we should only get our news from “official” sources. You know, like the blonde telling you what to believe in between hocking a hockey game.
If there’s anything the 2016 election showed us, it’s that the American people are increasingly distrustful of and not listening to the commands laid out by the once mainstream media. They’re increasingly reticent to commit national and demographic suicide under the guise of “diversity” and other nebulous ideals. They’re desperate not only to “drain the swamp” but to restore some sense of national pride and stability to the declining USA.
In response, the controllers of the presstitutes (the people who really run the world) are already hard at work trying to find some way to create a false narrative about “fake news” sites in order to lay the ground work for censorship and control. The Internet has all but destroyed the corporate-government narrative, and there is a shit fit happening at the highest levels of the propaganda ministry (i.e. CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, et. al.) because they have learned the American people know how full of shit they really are.
Sites like Return Of Kings are on the front lines of this war in support of free speech and it is vitally important we stay on top of our game to avoid a reversion to the managed propaganda the centralized control of mass media gave us over the last 50 years. Hackers and leakers play right into the hands of the censorship narrative
Make no mistake, one of the reasons leakers of misdeeds done by politicians and the elite they work for have been allowed to continue leaking dirty laundry is because it plays into the hands of those with designs on censorship and re-gaining control of the information the sheeple get to listen to. Having Julian Assange and Edward Snowden doing leaks of information and giving them extensive press coverage plays right into the hands of the censorship brigade because they can also play the protecting national security game when the time to silence dissent comes .
Fake news is only the first assault in what is sure to become a full scale war on free speech on the Internet. We can be thankful Trump won the election rather than The Bitch since his election will slow the process of censorship, but the aggressiveness of the “fake news” narrative shows us how determined some people are to shut us up and shut us down.
The New York Times is already on the front lines of this assault on free speech on the Internet. Only days after The Bitch lost the election, publisher Arthur Sulzberger published a Mea Culpa and promised to rededicate the newspaper to “honest” reporting.
We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers… [The New York Times promises to] give the news impartially, without fear or favor… We also approach the incoming Trump administration without bias.
Don’t buy into it. This is what’s known in Public Relations as a diversion tactic. While we focus on our seeming victory, they’re already moving on to their next false narrative – so-called fake news. No sooner than the ink dried on the promise to give Trump a chance, The New York Times was moving to shut up the very people who made possible his rise to power – the alt-right and alternative news web sites.
While some fake news is produced purposefully by teenagers in the Balkans or entrepreneurs in the United States seeking to make money from advertising, false information can also arise from misinformed social media posts by regular people that are seized on and spread through a hyperpartisan blogosphere.
They did a spurious case study on how a “rumor” got started about protesters being bussed in to protest at Trump rallies. Never mind the mainstream media is a business that runs lock, stock and barrel on fake news. Almost every narrative they create is a false one. One need do no more than a Google search to discredit many, if not most of the mainstream media’s stories. The hypocrisy is astounding. Pulling The Plug Facebook censorship algorithms are nothing compared to the elite’s agenda of eliminating free speech online
Whether or not the “fake news” narrative gains traction, the next step will be for the elite to create a problem that affects millions of people online, then follow through with the Hegelian Dialectic with a pre-ordained “solution” to “make everyone safer online” and to “stop the spread of false information” while “protecting free speech” online by destroying it.
Look for no less than a figurative “Internet 9/11” if the elite become desperate enough.
They’ll pull the plug on the backbone of the Internet, shutting down e-commerce and communication online for a few days, blame it on a “fake news” story (just like Benghazi was blamed on a YouTube video) then spring in to save us from ourselves by passing all sorts of creative laws and restrictions aimed at nothing more than eliminating competition to the corporate-government narrative and gutting yet another of our Bill of Rights protections.
Make no mistake, Freedom of Speech is the most important of Amendments to the Constitution. Once that is taken away, it’s Game Over. Obama has already floated the idea of silencing those of us who “cling to our guns and religion” and continues this narrative even after the election of Trump
Obama has already been floating the idea of official news web sites. This is nothing more than proposing the creation of the American equivalent of Pravda in the Soviet Union, in which only the state-approved newspaper was considered the truth and everything else was considered lies. Obviously, the New World Order socialist narrative would be the only truth under a system such as this, and traditional and conservative views would be relentlessly silenced
Check out what The Messiah said in Berlin recently.
In an age where there’s so much active misinformation, and it’s packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television, where some overzealousness on the part of a US official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere, if everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect. If we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.
The fact he is saying these things should frighten you. It should also make you angry. This statement is a PC way of saying the goal of the power structure is to shut us the fuck up. They want us to listen to clueless “journalists” who encourage the idea of microchipping your children and later, yourselves so every aspect of your life can be controlled by the government.
We must fight back by discrediting the “fake news” narrative at every turn and informing those who will listen of the possibility of a fake “Internet 9/11” designed to give the government a reason to curb free expression on the very Libertarian Internet of today. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — President Obama came into office seven years ago pledging to end the wars of his predecessor, George W. Bush. On May 6, with eight months left before he vacates the White House, Mr. Obama passed a somber, milestone: He has now been at war longer than Mr. Bush, or any other American president. If the United States remains in combat in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria until the end of Mr. Obama’s term — a given the president’s recent announcement that he will send 250 additional Special Operations forces to Syria — he will leave behind an improbable legacy as the only president in American history to serve two complete terms with the nation at war. Mr. Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 and spent his years in the White House trying to fulfill the promises he made as an antiwar candidate, would have a longer tour of duty as a wartime president than Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon or his hero Abraham Lincoln. Granted, Mr. Obama is leaving far fewer soldiers in harm’s way — at least 4, 087 in Iraq and 9, 800 in Afghanistan — than the 200, 000 troops he inherited from Mr. Bush in the two countries. But Mr. Obama has also approved strikes against terrorist groups in Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, for a total of seven countries where his administration has taken military action. “No president wants to be a war president,” said Eliot A. Cohen, a military historian at Johns Hopkins University who backed the war in Iraq and whose son served there twice. “Obama thinks of war as an instrument he has to use very reluctantly. But we’re waging these long, rather strange wars. We’re killing lots of people. We’re taking casualties. ” Mr. Obama has wrestled with this immutable reality from his first year in the White House, when he went for a walk among the tombstones at Arlington National Cemetery before giving the order to send 30, 000 additional troops into Afghanistan. His closest advisers say he has relied so heavily on limited covert operations and drone strikes because he is mindful of the dangers of escalation and has long been skeptical that American military interventions work. Publicly, Mr. Obama acknowledged early on the contradiction between his campaign message and the realities of governing. When he accepted the Nobel in December 2009, he declared that humanity needed to reconcile “two seemingly irreconcilable truths — that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly. ” The president has tried to reconcile these truths by approaching his wars in narrow terms, as a chronic but manageable security challenge rather than as an national campaign, in the tradition of World War II or, to a lesser degree, Vietnam. The longevity of his war record, military historians say, also reflects the changing definition of war. “It’s the difference between being a war president and a president at war,” said Derek Chollet, who served in the State Department and the White House during Mr. Obama’s first term and as the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 2012 to 2015. “Being a war president means that all elements of American power and foreign policy are subservient to fighting the war,” Mr. Chollet said. “What Obama has tried to do, which is why he’s careful about ratcheting up the number of forces, is not to have it overwhelm other priorities. ” But Mr. Obama has found those conflicts maddeningly hard to end. On Oct. 21, 2011, he announced that the last combat soldier would leave Iraq by the end of that year, drawing that war to a close. “Our troops will definitely be home for the holidays,” Mr. Obama said at the White House. Less than three years later, he told a national television audience that he would send 475 military advisers back to Iraq to help in the battle against the Islamic State, the brutal terrorist group that swept into the security vacuum left by the absent Americans. By last month, more than 5, 000 American troops were in Iraq. A furious firefight this month between Islamic State fighters and Navy SEALs in northern Iraq, in which Special Warfare Operator First Class Charles Keating IV became the third American to die since the campaign against the Islamic State began, harked back to the bloodiest days of the Iraq war. It also made the administration’s argument that the Americans were only advising and assisting Iraqi forces seem ever less plausible. Afghanistan followed a similar cycle of hope and disappointment. In May 2014, Mr. Obama announced that the United States would withdraw the last combat soldier from the country by the end of 2016. “Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them,” the president said in the Rose Garden. “Yet this is how wars end in the 21st century. ” Seventeen months later, Mr. Obama halted the withdrawal, telling Americans that he planned to leave more than 5, 000 troops in Afghanistan until early 2017, the end of his presidency. By then, the Taliban controlled more territory in the country than at any time since 2001. Taliban fighters even briefly conquered the northern city of Kunduz. In the bitter battle for control, an American warplane mistakenly fired its missiles into a Doctors Without Borders hospital, killing 42 people and prompting accusations that the United States had committed a war crime. Critics of Mr. Obama have long said his clinical approach to wars weakened the ability of the nation to fight them. “He hasn’t tried to mobilize the country,” Dr. Cohen said. “He hasn’t even tried to explain to the country what the stakes are, why these wars have gone the way they have. ” Mr. Bush was also criticized for failing to ask the American people to make any sacrifices during the Iraq war. But, Dr. Cohen said, “for all his faults, with Bush, there was this visceral desire to win. ” Vincent DeGeorge, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who collected the data on presidents at war, said Mr. Obama’s tone mattered less than the decisions he made. “Does the rhetoric a president uses at home matter to the soldiers who come back wounded or get caught in the crossfire?” he asked in an interview. Mr. DeGeorge acknowledged the complications in measuring Mr. Obama’s wars. The phase of the Afghanistan war, for example, ended formally in December 2014, though thousands of troops remain there. For his analysis, he considered a state of war to exist when less than a month passed between either American casualties or an American airstrike. More so than Mr. Bush or President Bill Clinton, Mr. Obama has fought a multifront war against militants. Officials at the Pentagon referred to the situation as “the new normal. ” But for those who worked in the Obama administration, it made for an unrelenting experience. “As the Middle East coordinator, I certainly felt like it was a wartime pace,” said Philip H. Gordon, who worked in the White House from 2013 to 2015. Still, Mr. Gordon and other former officials drew a distinction between the wars of the 21st century and those of the 20th century. For one, Congress has not specifically authorized any of Mr. Obama’s military campaigns, let alone issued a declaration of war — something that it has not done since World War II. “War doesn’t exist anymore, in our official vocabulary,” Mr. Gordon said. It is not clear that Mr. Obama’s successor will take the same approach. The for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, has been more receptive to conventional military engagements than Mr. Obama. The presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, has pledged to bomb the Islamic State into oblivion, though he has sent contradictory messages about his willingness to dispatch American ground troops into foreign conflicts. Military historians said presidents would probably continue to shrink or stretch the definition of war to suit their political purposes. “Neither Clinton nor Obama identified themselves as war presidents, but Bush did,” said Richard H. Kohn, professor emeritus of history and peace, war and defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “War goes back in human experience thousands of years,” he said. “We know that it has an enormous variation of definitions. ” | 1 |
Love Him or Hate Him Love Him or Hate Him By 52
The U.S. Elections: The Latest Crack in the System
The 2016 U.S. presidential elections are unprecedented: I don’t believe we have ever witnessed before a campaign year so toxic, so dangerously divisive and full of ad hominem attacks. Both camps have vilified the opposition and their followers, creating a schism in society. There has been no rational dialogue on the issues that truly concern the American public.
Instead, we have witnessed personal insults and petty attacks, rumors and gossip. At this point, as a result of this catastrophic campaign, the public will not vote in favor of the candidate they agree with the most or the one they like, but against the one they hate!
In this article, we do not focus on comparisons between Clinton and Trump; enough has been said and written about the candidates themselves. Here, we look at their supporters – the crowd behind the candidates, those that will in fact shape American policy making in the coming four years.
Hillary Clinton: The Establishment Remains in Control
Current Prices on popular forms of Gold Bullion
The most important and formidable group within those backing Clinton belong to the upper echelon of society: Wall Street’s movers and shakers, big business, the top of the political pyramid and the servants and profiteers of the public sector. In one word: the establishment.
Clinton’s support base includes therefore practically everyone who profits from government regulations and government corruption – they have everything to lose if Hillary doesn’t win. It is the same group that advocates and leads the political correctness movement ; they are those state-bred and fed intellectuals who poison the university campus and mass media circus with their belief that they can transform the U.S. into a “utopia”.
In reality, this “utopia” will be created through intense centralization, endless wars and plundering, only to create a totalitarian government where the political elite enforces its will and instructs the public on how to live a happy life, which only benefits the top strata of society that designed it in the first place. Years ago, Jewish American philosopher Hannah Arendt summarized the toxic impact of political correctness as follows:
“There is no thought process without freedom. To deprive man of his liberty is to deprive him of his own ideas, and if one is not allowed to think, only subjugation and slavery remain.”
This can only be achieved through a strong foothold on the centralized state and its propaganda engine, the mass media, operating under the doctrine of Edward Bernays, the father of propaganda, better known as public relations.
Then there’s the other extreme of Clinton’s supporters: the artificially created underprivileged minorities. These groups have come to depend on the state for support and protection, which has also made it easy for the state to indoctrinate them and reset their mindset to its advantage.
Those are the people who have fallen in the trap of thinking that only the state can provide them with what they need for a good life, when in reality it only disempowered them. The globalist Clinton herself accuses Trump of “populism”, casting “nationalism” in a negative light, but she is actually the one promising free lunches for everyone: lenient immigration laws, higher minimum wages, universal healthcare, etc.
Clinton also preaches against income inequality and condemns Wall Street greed in her speeches, while her campaign cashes in from Wall Street’s finest: JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Under those circumstances… what can you possibly do? Ms. Clinton’s top five donors are Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, DLA Piper, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley. Somehow we don’t think Wall Street has reason to fear her much. Cartoon by Cataslino
Trump – the Greatest Politically Incorrect Shock in Decades?
Whenever people are forced by the government to accept and pay for things they do not want, the outcome is discontent and opposition, typically suppressed and downplayed by the mainstream media in accordance with the state’s agenda of political correctness. This further escalates the situation and things often take unpleasant turns, including the fostering of racist and bigoted subsections that we see within the Trump voting base.
But they are not the majority, not by long shot! One might get this impression, because the mainstream media tend to focus exclusively on this sub-set of supporters through footage and interviews at Trump rallies, because they are considered “interesting” material; after all, they say outrageously horrible things and are therefore great for TV sensationalism.
What does Donald Trump stand for? From my perspective, for anything and everything! He stands for everyone who is sick and tired of the current system and the political elite who have grown out of touch with ordinary American citizens. You will find them among the working class, small business owners, and the segment of society that used to be known as the middle class before the crisis; they all harbor grievances against the establishment.
These are people who understand that the slogan “the Union and the Constitution forever” has been under attack and downgraded to nothing more than an empty phrase by the power elite and the Deep State. We see first hand how the Patriot Act directly violates not only the first amendment’s guarantee of free speech, but also the fourth and fifth amendments, thereby tearing apart the very foundation of a country once based on respect for civil liberties.
There is no doubt that the second amendment will be crushed under Clinton as well, “regulating to extinction” the natural right to self-defense and personal sovereignty. We must never forget that we are born with inherent rights, that can neither be granted nor taken away from us by the State. As Judge Napolitano once put it:
“Natural law teaches that our freedoms are pre-political and come from our humanity and not from the government. As our humanity is ultimately divine in origin, the government, even by majority vote, cannot morally take natural rights away from us. A natural right is an area of individual human behavior – like thought, speech, worship, travel, self-defense, privacy, ownership and use of property, consensual personal intimacy – immune from government interference and for the exercise of which we don’t need the government’s permission.”
Even though polls suggest that Trump is trailing nationally, they probably underestimate exactly how big the Trump wave is, and it is significant: between 74% and 83% of Republicans said they will support him (according to polls conducted between Oct 9 th -11 th ). But there is also the silent majority that has been present at his rallies. This silent majority does not necessarily consist of Trump fans, but they do not want to see the country falling into the abyss of state centralization and political correctness.
They want to discontinue the economic system that has taken them from bad to worse – they are the American version of the European anti-establishment movement. They are well aware of Trump’s coarse character and crude remarks, but feel they can overlook that, for the sake of his main strategic advantage: Trump’s promise that he does not want America to be controlled by the establishment anymore.
A Tale of Two Hatreds
“Politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching… then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.” Hillary Clinton, National Multi-Housing Council, April 2013
One key reason behind the peoples’ hostility towards Clinton is that she personally embodies the hypocrisy and the hubris of the U.S. federal government itself: a government that maims and kills millions with its war on terror, it arms and supports murderous regimes and ideological fanatics and it is known to deploy chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. And yet, it somehow pretends to hold the moral high ground and lectures others on human rights.
Just as America is an “exceptional” country, for which normal standards don’t apply, Clinton is its “exceptional” candidate. She accuses her opponent of populism, when her own platform is entirely based on crowd-pleasing promises.
She calls Trump’s policies fascistic while her own would put the final nail on the coffin of free speech. She claims to stand up for the little guy, while she funds her campaign with Wall Street money. She positions herself as the defender of minorities’ and women’s rights, while her Foundation accepts donations from the most oppressive regimes on the planet.
At the same time, the American electorate also feels hostility for Trump; that hate is not equivalent though, as few would argue he is trying to hide who he is. The reason why so many dislike him is very different, and it has to do with the identity he projects. He is the ultimate “anti-intellectual”.
Of course the term “intellectual” is quite broad these days, and many intellectuals dislike Trump solely because of what it would say about who they are (in the eyes of their like-minded peers). But these people share a common denominator: they are educated beyond their intelligence and critically depend on repeating what other “intellectual” people say, as they feel (consciously or not) their ignorance would be exposed if they dared to express an original idea. Trump’s world, according to a recent NYT cartoon. The statist intelligentsia certainly feels threatened by Trump. Cartoon by Chappatte
The Day After: The Legacy of a Bitter Campaign Year
Unfortunately, whoever wins, the nation will pay a price for this “divide and conquer” rhetoric. Americans today are too polarized and the tensions that are brewing in the background will not just go away the day after the election: racial and social divisions, as well as the split caused by the choice between a planned vs. a free market economy, a big or a small government.
Under Trump, we can only hope that America will be given time to heal and to overcome these divisions. Free speech is key: Society can only heal if it returns to a culture of debate with a willingness to agree to disagree.
From what we know from modern American history, we shouldn’t be surprised that the financial markets appear to prefer Hillary over Trump. Wall Street, the bankers and the military industrial complex are expected to continue to thrive under President Clinton. The establishment will live on. Right now the establishment is seemingly pushing for war against Russia and Clinton is undeniably on board with this aggressive narrative.
And then we have Trump, who is certainly far from perfect. His objectification of women, his comments about Muslims and minorities, his crass demeanor: All these have made it very hard for him to find support for his genuine policy points.
Even if the actual net effect of his policies were to benefit women, he won’t get them on his side by calling them pigs – there is a difference between free speech and just being plain rude, uncivil and vulgar. We may disagree with his infamous “wall” with Mexico and demands for “a new budget to rebuild our depleted military” (which makes him no different from Clinton). But he is an outsider, a businessman, and most importantly, a crack in system!
He challenges the status quo, and that’s why the status quo attacks him, by trying to ridicule both him and his voters, by painting them as extremists, or as ignorant and racist. The question is, why don’t we just let Trump be Trump?
As he himself said: “It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to!”. Consider the boldness of this statement – regardless of whether one agrees with him, he stands confidently for his principles and ideas, even against his own party’s leaders (many of which have withdrawn their support). This is a clear projection of power and independence; it says that no one can dictate their demands to him. It says that he is unafraid to speak his mind.
I say, we should trust his followers. It seems clear that most Trump voters are striving to defend the essence of the constitution and its original intent – to be the basis of a free society. And for me as a believer in civil rights and sovereignty, this is enough to give him or let me rather say, his voters, the benefit of the doubt. | 0 |
Edmondo Burr in Middle East , News , World // 0 Comments For the first time ever China and U.S. ally Saudi Arabia have held joint military drills.
In an effort to expand security ties and combat international terrorism, China and Saudi Arabia have held their first joint military drills, Chinese state media reported Thursday.
Anti Media reports:
“ Special forces from China and Saudi Arabia have held their first joint anti-terrorism drills, state media reported on Thursday, ” Reuters writes , in what amounts to “ China’s latest effort to expand security ties with countries in the Middle East and its Muslim neighbors. ”
While this may be the first time special forces from the two countries have worked together to fight terrorism, it isn’t the first time such elite troops have coordinated. In fact, it isn’t even the first time this month.
From an October 14 report by Arab News :
“ Saudi and Chinese armed forces began the ‘Exploration 2016’ joint military exercise on Wednesday.
“Special Forces of the Royal Saudi Land Forces and their counterparts in the Red Army were involved in the war games in the Chinese city of Chengdu. ”
In a speech given during the drill’s launching ceremony, Lieutenant Colonel Walid Ettalhi “ stressed that the two countries’ relationship is based on ties of brotherhood, friendship and the great history, ” according to Arab News .
“ The exercises aim to exchange experiences between the two sides in specialized areas. This comes within the framework of military cooperation between the two countries, and is an extension of the strong relationship between the Kingdom and the People’s Republic of China, ” the Lt. Col. said.
October’s joint military drills come after China and Saudi Arabia inked 17 cooperative agreements at the tail end of August. According to China’s Xinhua news agency, deals covered a wide range of areas, including “ politics, energy, finance, investment, housing, water resources, quality inspection, science, technology and culture. ”
The news of China buddying up with Saudi Arabia in such ways may be jarring to some, as it doesn’t conform to the mainstream narrative of Saudi Arabia as an unwavering U.S. outpost in the Middle East — one that could never work with the likes of China, the principle ally of the big bad Russians.
But then, neither does the idea that the Russians would be willing to work with U.S. ally Saudi Arabia. And yet, it appears this is precisely what’s about to happen.
On Sunday, it was reported that Saudi Arabia is now ready to cooperate with Russia in an effort to stabilize global oil prices. Russia, it seems, is receptive to the idea, with its energy minister viewing the invitation as a “ clear indication of a sincere desire to continue cooperation and coordination with the oil producing and exporting countries for more stability in the market. ”
Earlier this week, Anti-Media put forth the idea that the Russian fleet now steaming toward the Mediterranean Sea may have designs far beyond the fighting in Syria. It may, in fact, be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first military step toward securing the long-desired Turkish Stream pipeline.
That report was followed up by an article on Underground Reporter that explored the notion further. Citing recent deals with India, Pakistan, and Vietnam — not to mention those with formerly staunch U.S. allies such as Turkey, Egypt and the Philippines — that piece concluded that Putin, in coordination with China, may be making a play for the coastline of the entire northern Indian Ocean.
Whether or not this is true, certain things are becoming clear. Most apparent, though, is that the mainstream narratives are breaking down. If this weren’t the case, Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be extending an olive branch to Russia — and Chinese special forces wouldn’t now training with those of the Saudis in an atmosphere of “ brotherhood, friendship and the great history. ” | 0 |
Source: Seemorerocks
November 1, 2016
John Key channels NZ taxpayers' money to Clinton Foundation
This is information that every taxpayer (or those that care) should know about but our journalists are not doing their job.
What with warships in our harbour and troops in Iraq this government of John Key is in lockstep with the most corrupt and warmongering part of the US government.
No doubt Key would approve of the Clinton's defrauding the people of Haiti. It's his style.
The Cannabis Party is calling on John Key to explain why he gave over $7 million of New Zealand tax-payer's money to the Clinton Foundation.
Legalise Cannibis Party
31 October, 2016
Wikileaks raised serious ethical concerns about the Clinton Foundation when it published a hacked email, send to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, revealing blurred lines between the foundation and the personal financial interests of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Cannabis Party leader Julian Crawford said if John Key was serious about HIV prevention, one of the Clinton Foundation's supposed goals, he should legalise medical cannabis in New Zealand.
"Hundreds of researchers have reported that THC was able to destroy the RIV virus in monkeys. That virus is nearly identical to the HIV virus found in humans," he said.
"John Key has a lot of explaining to do if the Wikileaks revelations about the Clinton Foundation are true."
Former Assistant Director of the FBI Thomas Fuentes confirmed that "the FBI has an intensive investigation ongoing into the Clinton Foundation".
New Zealand's National Business Review has reported that John Key will continue giving millions of dollars of taxpayer's money to the foundation in the future, despite the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton.
"I've met her on lots of occasions, had dinner with her at Premier House a few times," John Key said.
"As Secretary of State she was great, very engaged with New Zealand." Broadcaster Duncan Garner yesterday raised serious concerns about the ongoing payments to the Clinton Foundation, known as "pay-to-play".
"We also give money to the Clinton Foundation? Yes, we did. Gosh, who didn't get a handout?" Garner said.
"We've been feeding all these guys at the trough for years"
"pay-to-play" refers to operations where Bill and Hillary Clinton rewarded big donors to their foundation with preferential access to the US government.
The original article was in the neo-liberal NBR, behind a paywall
NZ taxpayers will continue funding Clinton Foundation's flagship
| 0 |
Force and Fanaticism : Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and Beyond Is “Wahhabism” a complete distortion of Islam? November 1, 2016 Raymond Ibrahim
Note: In what follows, Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim reviews Force and Fanaticism: Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and Beyond, by Simon Ross Valentine. A shorter version of the book review first appeared in the Middle East Quarterly (Fall, 2016, vol. 23, no. 4).
Valentine, a British Methodist pastor and teacher who taught in Saudi Arabia, has written a useful book about the desert kingdom. Most interesting is its exploration of how the monarchy is "the single greatest force in spreading Islamic fundamentalism"; it "has spent as much as $100 billion to spread Wahhabism in the West," yet "America and Britain have been, and are continuing to be, implicit supporters of Wahhabism."
Valentine discusses the background of how this "unholy alliance" came about. He warns: "If the West simply ignores it, Saudi Arabia's role in international terrorism seems likely to worsen rather than conveniently disappear." This is troubling considering that "ISIS is Saudi Arabia's latest monstrous contribution to world history."
The author explores important topics, including the mutawwa , or religious police, and provides useful historical context, discussing the origins of “Wahhabism,” its alliance with the House of Saud, and the oil discoveries that changed everything.
The book’s primary defect is standard. Valentine regularly insists that “it is of the greatest importance to distinguish between Wahhabism and Islam generally.” Anything good, positive, tolerant and peaceful is ascribed to Islam; anything bad, negative, intolerant, and violent—misogyny, draconian punishments, execution of apostates, intolerance for and discrimination against non-Muslims—is ascribed to “Wahhabism.”
This position appears to be based on the author’s own cultural presuppositions. Thus he “felt confused and puzzled” to hear of Wahhabi intolerance, including the “attempt to propagate their beliefs by force,” prompting him to wonder: Can you force someone to love God?.... In all the conversations I had with ulema, imams, Mutawa [religious police] and Saudis generally there was never a mention of “love,” the idea that God loved me, just frightful talk of hell, burning and future pain if I did not believe and accept the Wahhabi faith.”
Had Valentine engaged in a critical reading of Islamic doctrine and history—as opposed to projecting his Christian notion of God onto Islam—he would’ve known that Muhammad, followed by countless caliphs and sultans throughout the centuries, did “propagate their beliefs by force” (the overwhelming majority of today’s Muslim world was taken from non-Muslims “by force”) and that although Islam attributes 99 characteristics to God, “love” is not one of them.
Valentine's readers would’ve benefit much more had he simply laid out his useful information concerning the inner workings of the Saudi regime and its unholy alliance with the West, without trying to tackle the deeper question of what Islam really is—leading to yet another book marred by Islamic apologetics. | 0 |
PRAIRIE VILLAGE, Kan. — Dinah Sykes, a parent of two boys in a suburb of Kansas City, started noticing changes to her children’s public schools a few years ago. Class sizes were growing. The school library had stopped buying books. So she used her position as the president of the association to start a new tradition: Instead of bringing cupcakes to class for their birthdays, students were asked to bring a book to donate to the school library. Ms. Sykes is a Republican who once voted for the governor from her party, Sam Brownback. But now, she said, she is so concerned that public schools are endangered by the state’s budget crisis that she is running for a seat in the State Senate, challenging the incumbent senator in the Republican primary in August. “We’re getting a bad reputation: that our state doesn’t care about public education,” Ms. Sykes said. “We live in Kansas because of the great quality of life, the great schools, the great amenities. I want my boys to have the opportunity to have the same. ” The struggle over school funding in Kansas reached a new crisis point when the State Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Legislature had not abided by its constitutional mandate to finance public schools equitably, especially poorer districts with less property wealth. The court, in an effort to force legislative action, reiterated a deadline that gave the state until June 30 to fix the problem or face a school shutdown. The ruling exacerbated tensions over budgets enacted by Mr. Brownback and the Legislature that education officials say have led school districts to eliminate programs, lay off staff members or even shorten the school week. Officials worry that the state’s budget, which included cuts by Mr. Brownback to higher education and many state agencies, may not be able to absorb further reductions to find the level of additional funding the court is looking for — estimated at $40 million or more. Of even greater concern to many parents is a sense, they say, that the state leadership does not support the very concept of public education. “People are saying, ‘This is not the Kansas I know,’ and ‘This is not the Republican Party I know,’” said Judith Deedy, who helped start the group Game On for Kansas Schools. As in other states, the effect of reduced funding varies from one district to another. In poorer districts like Kansas City and Wichita, students are crammed into deteriorating buildings with bloated class sizes. One district in southeast Kansas, facing a budget shortfall, recently pared its school week to four days. But even in wealthier districts, like the one here, parents are watching the tighter budgets — and the disappearing contingency funds — with alarm. The issue has increased pressure on Mr. Brownback, who had already come under fire for Kansas’ budget woes and cuts to state programs after enacting the largest tax cuts in state history in 2012 and 2013. He won in 2015 against a Democratic challenger who hammered him for education cuts. But a survey in February by Fort Hays State University found that 69 percent of Kansans were dissatisfied with his job performance and 21 percent were satisfied. Three years remain in his second term and, under laws, he cannot run again. In 2015, facing large projected shortfalls, Mr. Brownback cut funding by 1. 5 percent. He and the Legislature then changed the funding formula from a distribution, which gave extra money to schools educating students, to a system of fixed block grants. But he kept a promise to protect schools from further cuts in the 2016 budget and reduced funds for many state agencies and higher education, including community colleges and technical schools. Mr. Brownback and his legislative allies say that the schools already have plenty of money and that districts could spend more prudently or dip deeper into their reserves. “Since taking office, Governor Brownback has increased state funding to schools every year, investing more than $4 billion — approximately half of the state’s budget — in funding,” said Eileen Hawley, a spokeswoman for Mr. Brownback. “At the same time, he has returned more local control to those closest to the classroom — teachers and parents — so they have more direct control over how funds are spent to benefit students. ” District officials say, however, that the funding has not kept pace with a rise in fixed costs. The Shawnee Mission School District, for instance, faces an increase of $1 million in a year for bus services. Other expenses, even for school supplies, have grown in many districts, frustrating officials who say they need more help from the state to cover costs. Under Mr. Brownback, who took office in 2011, state aid per pupil dropped to $3, 800 from $4, 400, according to the Kansas branch of the National Education Association. That reduction has come even as enrollment and the cost of health insurance have increased for many districts, said Mark Tallman of the Kansas Association of School Boards. “Since the Great Recession, when you adjust for inflation, total school funding in Kansas has been basically flat,” he said. Tensions flared when the State Supreme Court first ruled in February that unless poorer districts begin receiving more money by the end of June, the state’s public schools could be shut down. Mr. Brownback signed a bill in April intending to fix the education funding formula. But the court on Friday said the measure had not solved the problem and reiterated the deadline. What happens next is not clear. Schools in Kansas are generally finished for this academic year and Wednesday was set to be the Legislature’s last day, though it could return for a special session. Conservative lawmakers have denounced activist judges and Mr. Brownback has accused the court of “political brinksmanship. ” But the governor had hinted that he might cut funding to Medicaid and higher education if the Supreme Court ordered the state to allocate more money for schools. Without a legislative solution, school summer programs would likely be interrupted and schools would not be able to reopen in August. The continuing turmoil has turned many previously content parents into activists demanding that Mr. Brownback reverse course on his large tax cuts in order to free up money for public schools. “The overall sentiment here is, ‘We need different representation in Topeka that will stand up to the governor,’” said Cindy Neely, a registered Republican and guidance counselor who said her school district was “constantly” looking for places to trim its budget. “It feels like, in Kansas, the last two to three years have just been constant stress and constant worry. ” LeEtta Felter, a Republican and a school board member in Olathe, a large suburb of Kansas City, said her district’s budget was struggling to cover rising costs and expanding enrollment. The district has begun to tap into its reserves and has been told by elected officials not to expect any increase in funding next year, she said. “They’re in an panic,” Ms. Felter said of lawmakers in Topeka. “They love to use the term ‘buckets of money’ that the districts are hoarding. Any responsible entity has a fund, except for the State of Kansas. ” In Kansas City, school officials say they have been shortchanged by tens of millions of dollars over the past five years because the Legislature has not taken into account their needs when financing poorer districts like theirs. Ninety percent of the students in the Kansas City school district qualify for free or lunch, and 40 percent are nonnative English speakers. Cynthia Lane, the superintendent of schools in the Kansas City district, said preparations were underway in case schools are shut down, as the Supreme Court has threatened. Schools are usually busy during the summer months, with administrators and members of staff preparing for the upcoming academic year, she said. The first day of school is scheduled for Aug. 15. “If we can’t pay bills, how do we keep our utilities on, how do we keep our security system on?” she said. “Folks are really frustrated and embarrassed that Kansas is the butt of jokes across the nation. He continues to say things are fine, when they are not fine. ” The Wichita School Board voted on May 18 to eliminate more than 100 jobs and to close an alternative high school, as part of efforts to trim about $18 million from the district’s budget. At that meeting, Mike Rodee, the vice president of the board, blamed state officials for forcing budget cuts. “We need to look at all the people that are doing it to us,” he said at the school board meeting. “Our legislators, our government, our governor — we are the ones who are fighting to keep the schools alive, and they are fighting to close them. ” Some school principals say they are resigned to making do with what money they have. At Welborn Elementary School in Kansas City, classes are held in two aging buildings and students dash back and forth during the day. Teachers keep a watchful eye on them as they cross an active parking lot between the buildings. “I don’t need much,” said Jennifer Malone, the principal, one recent afternoon. “I just want a building. ” | 1 |
Posted on October 30, 2016 by Tim Brown
On Monday, a man who voted for Donald Trump was arrested for wearing a T-shirt that referenced Hillary Clinton ‘s comments about Trump supporters being “ deplorables ” to the polls.
Brett Mauthe, 55, was arrested after he went to the polls wearing a pro-Trump hat and a shirt that read, “ basket of deplorables .”
According to KSAT 12, Mauthe removed his hat at the request of those who were overseeing the polls. However, since the t-shirt did not violate the election code, he refused to turn it inside out nor remove it.
Subsequently, he was arrested and charged with electioneering.
KSAT 12 reports :
Bulverde police Chief Gary Haecker confirmed the arrest but declined to release details. Instead, he deferred to Comal County’s election coordinator, Cynthia Jaqua.
Jaqua said the offense of electioneering isn’t limited to people who stand outside polling places holding signs. Violations can be committed by voters as well.
“It can mean a T-shirt, a button, a hat, you know?” she said. “Anything related to the voting, the party, the candidate.”
Jaqua declined to release specific details about Mauthe’s arrest.
Jaqua is quoted by My San Antonio :
It’s in the election code. Electioneering is prohibited within a 100-foot marker. You cannot express views for or against a candidate or political party by wearing buttons, T-shirts, hats, whatever else or carrying signs,” she said.
Most people who make the mistake manage to avoid going to jail, she added.
“Every election we have to advise people. Even if it’s a school bond issue. They wear candidates’ shirts and we just have to remind them. ‘Please go into the restroom and turn it inside out.’ This is the first time I recall someone getting arrested,” she said, during two decades working at the county election office.
“A gentleman did walk in a little while ago with a slogan for Trump, and when I asked him to please take it off, he was real nice, and took it off,” she added, while working a polling site Thursday afternoon in New Braunfels.
So, according to this nonsense, a perfectly legal shirt could be worn to the polls one day, but if a politician makes reference to the phrase on that shirt it becomes illegal to wear it to the polls the next day? This is utterly ridiculous.
My question on all of that is, what happened to free speech? Is that recognized as a God-given right in the First Amendment? I mean, I realize that the Constitution is to restrict the federal government, but honestly, shouldn’t the states recognize the right of free speech, even in a polling place? Seems to me those kinds of laws stifle the very thing you are electing representatives to ensure are protected.
Other voters agree with me.
“I don’t feel like you should be preaching to anybody, but I do feel like you should be able to wear a shirt if you want and if it has the candidate,” Georgina Pereida said after casting her vote. “I’m kind of shocked, because I think that’s part of the freedoms that we’re voting for.”
Jose Tovar claims that you should know the rules and regulations if you are 18 and vote. Again, I ask, why are there laws and regulations restricting this freedom of speech? It’s not inflammatory. It isn’t a lie. It isn’t slander. What’s illegal about it?
I’ll tell you, politicians want to control people, and this is one of many means they use to do that. This is what happens when you don’t hold your elected officials accountable for the stupid regulations they impose.
Mauthe decided to not comment anymore after his story began to be altered in the media.
“The reason I’m not going to talk any more to the media is that the story gets twisted around, and I don’t want to give you any comment,” he said .
The charged of electioneering is a class C misdemeanor.
Courtesy of Freedom Outpost
Tim Brown is an author and Editor at FreedomOutpost.com , SonsOfLibertyMedia.com , GunsInTheNews.com and TheWashingtonStandard.com . He is husband to his “more precious than rubies” wife, father of 10 “mighty arrows”, jack of all trades, Christian and lover of liberty. He resides in the U.S. occupied Great State of South Carolina. Tim is also an affiliate for the Joshua Mark 5 AR/AK hybrid semi-automatic rifle . Follow Tim on Twitter . Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this: | 0 |
Baxter Dmitry in News , World // 0 Comments
Iceland’s anti-establishment Pirate Party have plundered an historic victory in Iceland’s general election and are set to form government as the senior partner in a coalition of alternative parties.
The remaining votes are still being counted, but reports suggest Iceland will have a centre-left coalition of the Pirates and three, or possibly four, other non-establishment parties. Governments in Iceland are usually cobbled together coalitions, but the Pirates announced they will not consider working with a mainstream party.
Birgitta Jónsdóttir, the Pirates’ parliamentary leader, said her party is willing to form a government with any party that subscribes to its agenda of “fundamental system change”, including the creation of a new, crowdsourced constitution.
The extraordinary victory for the Pirates is the latest example of an outsider gatecrashing the establishment, as voters around the world continue to reject traditional politics as unfit for purpose in the 21st century.
Founded in 2012 by former hackers, WikiLeaks collaborators, and activists, the Pirate Party won their first seat in the Althingi parliament one year later – and since then their popularity has exploded.
“We have managed to catch and capture the spirit of change with so many young people in Iceland,” said Jonsdottir, who describes herself as a “poetician.”
“We are very much about modernizing our system, so that people don’t fall through the cracks all the time.”
Support for the movement surged to 43% in an April poll after the Panama Papers revealed that former Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson held secret investments in offshore accounts — which led to some of the largest protests the country has ever seen.
Named the “Saucepan revolution” due to the making a racket in the streets with pots and pans, the massive protests removed the Prime Minister from office and kickstarted a societal change.
Jonsdottir likens Iceland to Sicily in that it has been controlled by a mafia-like handful of elite families. But Icelanders have a deep distrust of the elite, and since the financial crash in 2008 and the Panama Papers revelations last year, the society has vowed enough is enough.
Iceland has differed from the rest of Europe and the US by allowing bankers to be prosecuted as criminals , rather than treating them as a protected species. Top bankers were thrown in jail earlier this month after a long running case related to the 2008 crash. Now it seems the purge of the political class has begun. The Pirate Party flag next to the Jolly Roger.
What will Pirates in parliament actually mean?
CITIZENSHIP FOR EDWARD SNOWDEN
The Pirates are against state surveillance in any form, and Edward Snowden is a national hero in Iceland. A resolution has been put forward to grant him citizenship of the wind-swept North Atlantic island.
Are they worried granting a haven to the NSA whistleblower might rile Iceland’s NATO ally in Washington?
“Yeah, well we have done things that don’t make other nations happy before,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a case of what’s doing what is right versus what is easy.”
BITCOIN CURRENCY
The backlash against their bankers knows no bounds. Resentment runs deep, and adopting Bitcoin as the official currency will curtail the ability of banks to scam the people. The cryptocurrency is free, safe, is not inflationary, and a central government will never be able to take it off you.
DECRIMINALIZATION OF DRUGS
The Pirates want to adopt the “ Portuguese solution “. 15 years ago the Portuguese government did something that the United States and most countries around the world would find entirely alien. After many years of waging a fierce war on drugs, they decided to flip their strategy entirely. By decriminalizing all drugs, and treating addicts rather than punishing them, Portugal has drastically reduced the drug abuse in their country.
DIRECT DEMOCRACY
“We do not define ourselves as left or right but rather as a party that focuses on the systems,” Jónsdóttir has said. “In other words, we consider ourselves hackers—so to speak—of our current outdated systems of government.”
Did the Pirate Party campaign pushing any major legislation of its own? No, not really, because, according to Fortune magazine, “the official party stance on some of Iceland’s biggest political questions is unclear, in part, because its members believe in deferring to the wishes of voters.” That’s called direct democracy. For the first time in their lives, Icelanders have voted a government into power who will not betray their promises
There is a widespread hatred of central authority in Iceland, and the Pirates, with their anti-establishment beliefs and jaunty black-flag logo, are poised to take advantage of the dissident mood. They seem the perfect fit for a self-reliant country with a strong anti-authoritarian streak.
“This is a society that is very loosely organized in many ways,” said Asgeir Jonsson, a University of Iceland economist. “We don’t have an army, we never had a king. We hate all central authority.” | 0 |
Putin grants Steven Seagal Russian citizenship 11/03/2016
DAILY MAIL President Vladimir Putin signed off Thursday on a decree granting Russian citizenship to American action hero actor Steven Seagal, the latest high-profile passport handout to a Western celebrity. Hollywood star Seagal and judo-loving Kremlin tough guy Putin have struck up a bromance in recent years, with Seagal visiting Russia repeatedly and defending Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. ‘He was asking quite insistently and over a lengthy period to be granted citizenship,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists. ‘He is well known for his warm feelings towards our country and has never hidden them.’ DUAL CITIZENSHIP IN THE U.S. Americans are allowed to hold dual citizenship, such as Steven Seagal now has with Russia. U.S. law does not mention dual nationality not does it require its citizens to choose one nationality over the other. People that become U.S. citizens are asked to make a pledge of loyalty to the U.S., renouncing all previous allegiances, but the statement is more symbolic than contractual. However, there are rare cases in which a U.S. citizen can forfeit their citizenship by becoming the citizen of another nation. That can happen in instances when an American citizen joins the armed forces of a foreign nation or they make a declaration of allegiance to a foreign state with the express purpose of relinquishing their U.S. nationality. Seagal is the latest in a string of high-profile Westerners to be granted Russian citizenship after buddying up with Putin. Veteran French actor Gerard Depardieu was given a Russian passport in 2013 after the star became a tax exile in ire over rate hikes in his native country. Putin has also handed out citizenship to American boxer Roy Jones Jr after sipping tea with him in Crimea and to American mixed martial artist Jeff Monson. Seagal’s fame peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s with films such as ‘Under Siege’ and ‘Above the Law’, but he remains hugely popular in eastern Europe and was granted Serbian citizenship in January. Like Depardieu, he has previously hung out with Putin, a fellow martial arts fan, and other strongmen leaders from the former Soviet Union. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Seagal called Putin ‘one of the great living world leaders’ and even performed with his blues band in the annexed Black Sea peninsula. In August, veteran Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko made Seagal eat one of his homegrown carrots in an awkward encounter that drew mockery online. | 0 |
Posted on October 30, 2016 by Dr. Eowyn | 2 Comments
By Mark S. McGrew
In the year 4874, an ancient document was unearthed. It described how the consciousness of the inhabitants of the earth changed from evil to goodness approximately 3,000 years ago.
We have translated this to our best ability.
And it came to pass, that the world was ruled by an evil Queen. A foul stench was laid upon the peoples of the earth.
She gave the land of her people to foreigners, taking away their power. And the foreigners were arrogant with their stolen gains. They offended the citizens.
And the Queen gave the industries of her citizens to foreigners. And the foreigners were arrogant, hiring only their own kind and displacing the citizens. And the foreigners brought with them, the lazy of their families. The thieves and the liars and the most vile in the families of the foreigners, ruled over the citizens.
And to the worst of the worst, in the foreigner’s families, were given unto them, the fruits of the citizens’ labor, while the evil Queen laughed down at the citizens.
And the citizens were homeless in their own villages. And the citizens were insulted and violated at will by the foreigners.
The people had only one thing of value left to them that was impossible for the evil Queen to take from them: Their faith. The people prayed.
The people in the village of the Queen prayed. And they sent messages, as a bird tweeting, to the villages nearby and those villages sent messages to the villages nearby and those people sent messages to the villages nearby, until the whole world knew to pray for a savior. And the whole world prayed for a savior.
And it came to pass, after generations, that there was a savior, being prepared, being trained to defeat the evil Queen. And the people prayed harder and longer and more loving, now to protect their young savior and to guide him in righteousness.
And one day, when the Queen was addressing her citizens, a violent wind came from the north, blowing her pantsuit away and the people saw her secrets. And she became known for her true self.
The evil Queen tried to punish the wind and it came again, exposing her generals and she swore to conquer the wind. She ordered all of her people to not feel the wind, to deny it existed. And the wind grew harder and became stronger again.
And the wind blew over all parts of the earth and cried out to all good men, “Join me!”. And the people joined. From village to village across all the lands, they joined.
And on a dark windy night, the people were all joined in a field and the crowd was all of the good and right thinking people of the earth and it was quiet.
A lone voice cried out, “He is coming!” and he pointed to a star in the heavens. And the people saw that he was coming. On his left was a red angel and on his right was a green angel to guide and protect him. And the people saw that he was coming. They prayed for his safety.
They huddled together in fear as they felt the power of his chariot coming from the sky.
His chariot stopped in front of the multitudes and he spoke to them. They were calmed. They were excited. They knew him. They had seen him before without knowing his true purpose. And now, standing amongst them, he was unveiled and the people liked what they saw and what they were hearing. After generations of lie upon lie sent upon their lives, he spoke the truth. And the people were amazed at his truths.
And in the back of the crowd of people, several mountain ranges away, it was difficult to hear him and the people in the back whispered to the ones in front of them, “What does he say?”. And those people asked the people in front of them, “What did He say?”. And those people asked and the asking continued to the front of the crowd. And one man answered back in a whisper to the people behind him and those people whispered to the ones behind them, the words that were spoken by their savior and the whisper turned into a voice and the voice became a shout and the shout became a great noise and the great noise became like thunder echoing across all the lands of the earth, the words of the savior, “LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP!!!”
And the people knew there was a savior standing before them. And they cheered and they cried with joy, knowing that their prayers had been answered.
And he told them, before he departed in his chariot, “You must help. You must work. You must spread my words to all.”
When his chariot, with the green angel on his right and his red angel on his left began to leave, the people heard and felt the power of his wings and the people felt the warmth of his love. And the people in the back of the multitudes saw his chariot go into the Heavens, from where it had come. And the people believed him because he told them to believe in their own righteous honor. He did not say they were deplorable and irredeemable.
And the people did work and they did spread his word. And through the word of the people, the evil Queen’s soldiers lost faith and they refused to fight the people again. And the words of the savior, being repeated by the people, caused the most trusted of the evil Queen’s advisers to flee. And all of her servants fled. All the evil people of the Queen hurried to escape the people. They hid in their caves and in the forests. And she was left alone, with only her drink. And she drank.
And she drank until she was in such a stupor that the people quietly entered her palace and removed her.
And the foreigners were driven out of the lands and permitted to take nothing with them.
When all was prepared and the savior knew his people were righteous, He came back and one by one, he drained the swamp, eliminating the corrupt politicians and the corrupt lawyers and the corrupt jesters and all the corruption was destroyed. There was much destruction and much death at the hands of the savior, for he was savior only to the good and the honest and the just of this world.
The ungood, the dishonest and the unjust were sent away and prohibited from annoying the people anymore and the savior ignored them and let them die in their own time in their own way. And they died in very short time, because the people would not give them work, or food, or shelter or rest.
And he told the people, “Now you must work, and work hard, to rebuild your lives and rebuild your fortunes and to care for your children, and teach them my words and teach them my actions, for someday I must leave you.”
And for a great time, there were no wars on the earth, for most of the leaders of nations had seen that the savior was a good man, an honest man and a just man. And they came from all parts of the earth to make peace with him.
And the leaders who did not hear his words and see his actions and learn from them were destroyed. And there was peace for 1,000 years, until this was written and evil does not exist anymore. Rate this: | 0 |
Michelle Obama Promotes Lewd Rappers
From Gerald Celente’s Trend Alert
Michelle Obama’s ‘rap’ more disgusting than Trump talk
KINGSTON, NY, 26 October 2016—Hitting the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, Michelle Obama made headline news lashing out at Donald Trump’s boast on a 2005 tape that as a star he could “do anything to women.” Calling Trump’s statements so “shocking and demeaning” that “I can’t stop thinking about this; it has shaken to me to my core,” Ms. Obama said she was campaigning against “hateful language about women.”
Ms. Obama also chastised Mr. Trump for “speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior,” and “using language so obscene that many of us were worried about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV.”
Bad Rap
While Trump’s statements were offensive to women, they pale in comparison to the loud chorus of rappers’ filth and denigration of women that Michelle and Barack Obama have continually promoted, championed, wined and dined at the White House. And, while she has condemned Trump’s lewd remarks – including how “loving fathers are sickened by the thought of their daughters being exposed to this kind of vicious language” – the Obamas have hosted in the “The People’s House,” where their two daughters reside, rappers who obscenely rap about date rape and sexual predatory behavior.
Indeed, it is not the presidential race that “little girls” are tuned into to hear “about who they should look like, how they should act,” or hearing “language so obscene that many of us worry about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV,” as Obama claimed in her speech. Young people are not watching TV with mommy and daddy. They tune into the music/entertainment world that promotes “hateful language about women” performed by White House guest rappers such as:
Rick Ross, “U.O.E.N.O.”
Put Molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it
I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it…
(Molly is a street name for ecstasy, a ‘love drug’)
Big Sean, “Mona Lisa”
I believe in God and rubbers
Even if we sex you are not my lover
Hit you on the couch and not the covers
And if you bring you friend then we got to f#ck her…
When they go low, we go high
Beyond the rappers, Michelle Obama also has elevated Beyonce´ – a performer who dresses and dances in sync with her sexually explicit lyric library – as a “role model for young girls around the world,” and is “proud to have my daughter grow up in a world where she has people like you, to look up to.”
Thus, while the first lady continually brags about raising the moral bar of integrity while condemning Trump’s words and deeds, the media have ignored the far greater of two evils: The blatant hypocrisy of Michelle Obama, who supports a deplorable, debased entertainment industry drenched in debauchery that is poisoning the planet.
Publisher’s Note: We are political atheists and support neither presidential candidate.
The post Michelle Obama Promotes Lewd Rappers appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org . | 0 |
Zach Cartwright | November 6, 2016
President Obama is relentlessly mocking Donald Trump in the wake of news that the candidate has had control of his Twitter account usurped by staffers.
While on the campaign stump for Hillary Clinton in the battleground state of Florida, Obama poked fun at the GOP presidential nominee’s campaign revoking exclusive access to his Twitter account, which he has used for years as a platform to blast unfiltered 140-character missives at his political opponents and pop culture figures. The 44th President of the United States made the point that presidents require a larger degree of self-control than what Trump has shown throughout the election cycle.
“In the last two days, they had so little confidence in his self control, they said: ‘We’re just going to take away your Twitter.’ Now, if somebody cant handle a Twitter account, they can’t handle the nuclear code,” Obama said. “If somebody starts tweeting at three in the morning ’cause SNL made fun of you, then you can’t handle the nuclear code.”
The New York Times recently reported that Trump now has all of his tweets pre-screened by campaign staffers like Hope Hicks, who handles media relations for the Trump campaign. The billionaire real estate developer’s days of tweeting tirades at former beauty pageant stars are over, for the time being, with his campaign aides working overtime to keep the candidate on message in the remaining 48 hours before Americans cast their ballots on Tuesday.
Watch video of Obama’s mocking of Trump in Kissimmee, Florida below:
Florida is a contentious, must-win state for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The latest polling average from RealClearPolitics shows Clinton with a paper-thin 0.9 percent advantage over Trump.
Zach Cartwright is an activist and author from Richmond, Virginia. He enjoys writing about politics, government, and the media. Send him an email at [email protected] | 0 |
OAKMONT, Pa. — As Dustin Johnson teed off in the final round of the 116th United States Open, his was simple. He would ignore the ghosts of majors past. Forget about Shane Lowry’s lead. Ignore Jason Day and all the other players giving chase at Oakmont Country Club. “It’s just me and the course,” he told himself. But on the way to victory Sunday, it would become more complicated for Johnson, seemingly one of the most uncomplicated athletes to roam a golf course. Jordan Spieth, the defending champion, described Johnson this month as “a freak golf athlete,” and it is true. His opening drive of the fourth round traveled 378 yards. Enough said. Aside from being known as a freak athlete, Johnson had a reputation for losing majors in freaky fashion. He lost the 2015 United States Open to Spieth when he the 72nd hole from 12 feet. He lost the 2010 tournament with a 82 that was like a summons server, materializing out of nowhere. Johnson held the lead at the halfway point of last year’s British Open, but finished tied for 49th when he could not break par in the final two rounds. He lost the 2010 P. G. A. Championship when he grounded his club in a bunker on the 72nd hole and incurred a penalty that kept him out of a playoff, won by Martin Kaymer. After his brain cramp at the P. G. A. Championship, Johnson drew criticism for not summoning a rules official to assess if the spot where his ball had come to rest was in one of the hundreds of bunkers that pockmark Whistling Straits. six years to Sunday, when Johnson saw his ball move on the fifth green. He did not believe he had caused the ball to oscillate, but to be on the safe side, he called a rules official. After a brief discussion, the official determined that no infraction had occurred, and Johnson stepped up and made the par putt to remain one under for the round and four under for the tournament. Johnson made the turn in 33. On the 12th tee, he was approached by United States Golf Association officials, who explained that a video review had indicated that he might have caused the ball to move in the process of placing his putter behind it at address. He was told that he most likely would be assessed a penalty after his round. At that moment, Johnson was two strokes clear of the field, but it was not just him and the course anymore. It was him and the course and the U. S. G. A. rules committee and his record in the majors. There were enough factors to clog his head and cloud his thinking. But Johnson kept calm. Despite a bogey at the 14th hole, he played the final seven holes in even par, making clutch par putts at Nos. 16 and 17 and a birdie at the 18th, which rendered the penalty a moot point. Johnson finished four under par at 276, three strokes ahead of Jim Furyk, Scott Piercy and Lowry. In the final round at Chambers Bay last year, Johnson had hit two of his best shots of the week on the 18th hole, only to miss a putt for eagle to win and for a birdie that would have forced an playoff with Spieth. On Sunday, with the crowd lining the 18th hole chanting his initials, Johnson hit two of his best shots of the week and made the putt for birdie to finish with a 69 (with the penalty). Furyk, the 2003 champion who tied for second at the 2007 Open when it was at Oakmont, closed with a 66 and was the leader in the clubhouse for almost two hours at one under. Lowry and Piercy were the last two players with a chance to pass Johnson, but Piercy played the back nine in one over for a 69, and Lowry bogeyed three of the last five holes en route to a 76. Johnson, Furyk, Piercy and Lowry were the only players to break par. Sergio García (70) and Branden Grace (71) tied for fifth at 280. In his first major, Andrew Landry, who had been at or near the top during the first three days, closed with a 78 to finish in a tie for 15th at five over. Lee Westwood, who started the fourth round one stroke behind Johnson, with whom he was paired, posted an 80 and tied for 32nd. With his victory, Johnson, who turns 32 on Wednesday, took himself out of the running for the “best player never to have won a major” honorarium, leaving Westwood (0 for 73) and García (0 for 71) to duke it out. “Feels well deserved,” Johnson said. “I’ve had a lot of opportunities that I didn’t quite get it done. So this one definitely feels good. ” When Johnson came off the 18th green, scooped his son, Tatum, in his arms and embraced his fiancée, Paulina Gretzky, he had no idea whether he would be signing for a 68 or a 69. He was glad that it didn’t matter. “Because that would have been bad,” he said. “But you know, it worked out. ” Behind the green, waiting to welcome him to the fraternity of major winners, was Jack Nicklaus, who won the first of his record 18 major championships at the 1962 United States Open at Oakmont. Nicklaus’s playoff victory over Arnold Palmer that year was viewed as a seminal moment in the sport, the day a mantle silently passed from one superstar to his heir apparent. Johnson’s victory, at the end of a tournament turned by an almost complete washout of play on the first day, also felt as if it were greater than the sum of his four scores. At Memorial Tournament two weeks ago, Spieth said this about Johnson, who has at least one P. G. A. Tour victory in each of the past nine years: “I think he’s an incredible talent that’s going to win many more times. ” After Johnson’s first major title, earned at the end of a week in which three inches of rain fell, there was a feeling in the air that the floodgates could open. “It’s a big monkey off my back, for sure,” Johnson said, adding, “After last year to come back this year and perform like this, you know, it definitely, I think it shows what kind of golfer I am and, you know, it was awesome. ” | 1 |
REDDING, Calif. — In a speech in which he promoted the backing of in Los Angeles and called protesters at a rally in San Jose “thugs,” Donald J. Trump on Friday sought to project support from for his campaign on a single man in the audience. Mr. Trump, at a rally here, began speaking about a previous rally in Arizona in which a black supporter was arrested after punching a protester. “We had a case where we had an guy who is a fan of mine,” Mr. Trump said of an event in Arizona in March. “In fact I want to find out what’s going on with him. ” As his voice trailed off, Mr. Trump noticed a man in the crowd. “Oh look at my over here,” Mr. Trump said. “Are you the greatest? Do you know what I’m talking about?” Mr. Trump then returned to speaking about the Arizona episode. The man he had pointed to, Gregory Cheadle, a local real estate broker running for a Republican nomination for a congressional seat, said in an interview Friday night that it was “surreal” to be called out by Mr. Trump. Mr. Cheadle said he was not offended by the remark, which he at first could not hear over the noise of the crowd. “I’ve had people come to me — and these were whites — tell me that they were offended,” he said. “And I appreciate them saying that, but I wasn’t offended by it. ” He also clarified that he is not actually a Trump supporter, saying that he went to a Bernie Sanders rally the night before. “I’d describe myself as someone who is searching for answers,” Mr. Cheadle said. At the Arizona rally Mr. Trump was referring to, a Trump supporter punched a protester wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit as the person was being escorted out. “As the this guy, and this guy never knew what happened, everybody thought the was against me, and it was the opposite,” Mr. Trump said at his rally Friday. “He was like this great guy, military guy. We have tremendous support. The reason is I’m going to bring jobs back to our country. ” Mr. Trump’s comments come as his campaign is fending off charges of racism over his remarks about Gonzalo P. Curiel, the federal judge presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University. Mr. Trump has suggested that he believes the judge is biased because he “happens to be, we believe, Mexican. ” Judge Curiel was born in Indiana he is of Mexican descent. | 1 |
45 Views October 28, 2016 GOLD , KWN King World News
Today former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, warned about the Matrix of lies and exposed what the elite are about to do.
(King World News) Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: I am now convinced that the Oligarchy that rules America intends to steal the presidential election. In the past, the oligarchs have not cared which candidate won as the oligarchs owned both. But they do not own Trump… IMPORTANT: To find out which company the richest man in China has invested in, one that Rick Rule and Sprott Asset Management are pounding the table on that is quickly being recognized as one of the greatest investment opportunities in the world – CLICK HERE OR BELOW: Sponsored
Most likely you are unaware of what Trump is telling people as the media does not report it. A person who speaks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYozWHBIf8g&app=desktop is not endeared to the oligarchs.
Who are the oligarchs?
—Wall Street and the mega-banks too big to fail and their agent the Federal Reserve, a federal agency that put 5 banks ahead of millions of troubled American homeowners who the federal reserve allowed to be flushed down the toilet. In order to save the mega-banks’ balance sheets from their irresponsible behavior, the Fed has denied retirees any interest income on their savings for eight years, forcing the elderly to draw down their savings, leaving their heirs, who have been displaced from employment by corporate jobs offshoring, penniless.
—The military/security complex which has spent trillions of our taxpayer dollars on 15 years of gratuitous wars based entirely on lies in order to enrich themselves and their power.
—The neoconservartives whose crazed ideology of US world hegemony thrusts the American people into military conflict with Russia and China.
—The US global corporations that sent American jobs to China and India and elsewhere in order to enrich the One Percent with higher profits from lower labor costs.
—Agribusiness (Monsanto et.al.), corporations that poison the soil, the water, the oceans, and our food with their GMOs, herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers, while killing the bees that pollinate the crops.
—The extractive industries—energy, mining, fracking, and timber—that maximize their profits by destroying the environment and the water supply.
—The Israel Lobby that controls US Middle East policy and is committing genocide against the Palestinians just as the US committed genocide against native Americans. Israel is using the US to eliminate sovereign countries that stand in Israell’s way.
What convinces me that the Oligarchy intends to steal the election is the vast difference between the presstitutes’ reporting and the facts on the ground.
According to the presstitutes, Hillary is so far ahead that there is no point in Trump supporters bothering to vote. Hillary has won the election before the vote. Hillary has been declared a 93% sure winner.
I am yet to see one Hillary yard sign, but Trump signs are everywhere. Reports I receive are that Hillary’s public appearances are unattended but Trumps are so heavily attended that people have to be turned away. This is a report from a woman in Florida: “Trump has pulled huge numbers all over FL while campaigning here this week. I only see Trump signs and stickers in my wide travels. I dined at a Mexican restaurant last night. Two women my age sitting behind me were talking about how they had tried to see Trump when he came to Tallahassee. They left work early, arriving at the venue at 4:00 for a 6:00 rally. The place was already over capacity so they were turned away. It turned out that there were so many people there by 2:00 that the doors had to be opened to them. The women said that the crowds present were a mix of races and ages.”
I know the person who gave me this report and have no doubt whatsoever as to its veracity.
I also receive from readers similar reports from around the country.
This is how the theft of the election is supposed to work: The media concentrated in a few corporate hands has gone all out to convince not only Americans but also the world, that Donald Trump is such an unacceptable candidate that he has lost the election before the vote.
By controlling the explanation, when the election is stolen those who challenge the stolen election are without a foundation in the media. All media reports will say that it was a run away victory for Hillary over the misogynist immigrant-hating Trump.
And liberal, progressive opinion will be relieved and off guard as Hillary takes us into nuclear war.
That the Oligarchy intends to steal the election from the American people is verified by the officially reported behavior of the voting machines in early voting in Texas. The NPR presstitutes have declared that Hillary is such a favorite that even Republican Texas is up for grabs in the election.
If this is the case, why was it necessary for the voting machines to be programmed to change Trump votes to Hillary votes? Those voters who noted that they voted Trump but were recorded Hillary complained. The election officials, claiming a glitch (which only went one way), changed to paper ballots. But who will count them? No “glitches” caused Hillary votes to go to Trump, only Trump votes to go to Hillary.
The Matrix Of Lies – America’s False Reality The most brilliant movie of our time was The Matrix. This movie captured the life of Americans manipulated by a false reality, only in the real America there is insufficient awareness and no Neo, except possibly Donald Trump, to challenge the system. All of my life I have been trying to get Americans of all stripes—academics, scholars, journalists, Republicans, Democrats, right-wing, left-wing, US Representatives, US Senators, Presidents, corporate moguls and brainwashed Americans and foreigners—out of the false reality in which they exist.
In the United States today a critical presidential election is in process in which not a single important issue is addressed by Hillary and the presstitutes. This is total failure. Democracy, once the hope of the world, has totally failed in the United States of America. Trump is correct. The American people must restore the accountability of government to the people.
***ALSO RELEASED: After Correctly Predicting GDP Would Beat Estimates, Former Soros Associate Now Says Gold Headed Above $2,000 CLICK HERE.
© 2015 by King World News®. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. However, linking directly to the articles is permitted and encouraged. About author | 0 |
Home / Be The Change / Antiwar / Russia is Hoarding Gold at an Alarming Rate — The Next World War Will Be Fought with Currencies Russia is Hoarding Gold at an Alarming Rate — The Next World War Will Be Fought with Currencies Jay Syrmopoulos October 26, 2016 1 Comment
Moscow, Russia – With all eyes on Russia’s unveiling their latest nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which NATO has dubbed the “SATAN” missile , as tensions with the U.S. increase, Moscow’s most potent “weapon” may be something drastically different.
The rapidly evolving geopolitical “weapon” brandished by Russia is an ever increasing stockpile of gold, as well as Russia’s native currency, the ruble.
Take a look at the symbol below, as it could soon come to change the entire hierarchy of the international order – potentially ushering in a complete international paradigm shift – and much sooner than you might think.
The symbol is the new designation of the Russian ruble, Russia’s national currency.
Similar to how the U.S. uses the dollar sign ($), the U.K. uses the pound sign (£), and the European Union uses the euro symbol (€), Russia is about to begin exporting its symbol internationally.
After the failed “reset” in U.S./Russian relations by the Obama administration, and the continued deterioration of the countries relationship, Washington began targeting entire sectors of the Russian economy, as well as specific individuals, meant to impose an economic burden so severe that it would force Moscow into compliance.
Instead of decimating Russia, what it precipitated was a Russian response of gradually weaning themselves off of the hegemony of the U.S. petrodollar, and working with China to create an alternative to the SWIFT payment system that isn’t solely controlled by Western interests (see Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank , New Development Bank).
According to the Corbett Report :
New reports indicate that China is ready to launch its SWIFT alternative, and for those who have their ear to the ground this is the most significant move yet in the unfolding process of de-dollarization that is seeing the BRICS-led “resistance bloc” breaking away from the financial stranglehold of the US-led “Washington Consensus.”
For those who don’t know, SWIFT stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication and is shorthand for the SWIFTNet Network that is used by over 10,500 financial institutions in 215 countries and territories to transmit financial transaction data around the world. SWIFT does not do any of the clearing or processing for these transactions itself, but instead sends the payment orders that are then settled by correspondent banks of the member institutions. Still, given the system’s near universality in the financial system, it means that virtually every international transaction between banking institutions goes through the SWIFT network.
This is why de-listing from the SWIFT network remains one of the primary financial weapons wielded by the US and its allies in their increasingly important financial warfare campaigns.
Recently, financial guru Jim Rickards, author of the book “Currency Wars,” wrote that “Russia is poised for a major comeback in its economy. Russian bonds and stocks and the Russian currency, the ruble, will all benefit.” Rickards believes a “strong turnaround” is coming within Russia, and that this comeback will benefit the ruble.
While still suffering from the economic warfare being waged by the U.S., Russia has realized that as long they are subservient to the petrodollar, there remains a clear and present danger of the Russian economy being devastated by the whims of Washington.
The Bank of Russia, that nation’s central bank, is extremely clear about its mission, and monetary policy declaring on its website:
Monetary policy constitutes an integral part of the state policy and is aimed at enhancing well-being of Russian citizens. The Bank of Russia implements monetary policy in the framework of inflation-targeting regime, and sees price stability, albeit sustainably low inflation, as its priority. Given structural peculiarities of the Russian economy, the target is to reduce inflation to 4% by 2017 and maintain it within that range in the medium run.
In layman’s terms, that means that monetary policy, similar to nuclear weapons and the military, are “an integral part of the state policy” in Russia. While many analysts have noted the increased build-up in Russia’s military arsenal, seemingly few have highlighted the massive build-up of Russian gold reserves over the past decade.
Below is a chart showing Russian gold reserves between 1994 and last year, 2015:
Since 2006, there has been a year-on-year increase that reveals a significant upward trend. The chart clearly reveals that Russia’s state policy of increasing state monetary assets, in the form of gold. Additionally, the Russian government has been converting state rubles into gold assets. From 2006 to 2015, Russia’s state holdings of gold tripled.
Within just the past year Russia has substantially increased its gold holdings
According to the Business Insider :
In July of this year, the central bank of Russia added 200,000 ounces of gold to its reserves. The one-month uptick in Russian gold reserves — 200,000 ounces — is approximately equal to the entire annual output of Barrick Gold’s Turquoise Ridge gold mine in Nevada.
At that same rate — 200,000 ounces per month — in a mere five months, Russia would add to state gold reserves the equivalent of the entire annual output of Barrick’s massive Goldstrike mine in Nevada.
Currently, Russian gold reserves rank seventh in the world. It’s clear that there is a concerted effort by Russian authorities to build up the country’s gold reserves as part of a national strategy to negate the effects of economic warfare waged by the United States.
Rickards, in his 2011 book “Currency Wars,” theorized that Russia and China could combine their gold reserves to form a global gold-backed currency to compete against the U.S. dollar. Currently, Russian reserves stand at roughly 1,500 tonnes, with Chinese reserves totaling over 1,800 tonnes (according to China — it’s likely more), which would amount to a combined total of roughly 3,300 tonnes of gold.
The U.S. is about to lose overarching control of policymaking within the International Monetary Fund (IMF), thus the U.S. lockup on global gold is about to vanish, according to Business Insider.
Imagine for a moment the distinctly real possibility that Russian-Chinese alliance could exercise indirect (or even direct) control over the IMF’s gold reserve of over 2,800 tonnes. Russian, Chinese and IMF gold combined would equal roughly 6,100 tonnes, and would allow for direct competition with the U.S. gold reserves, estimated at 8,100 tonnes.
Russia and China have realized that the petrodollar is wielded by Washington as it’s weapon of choice when opposing a well-armed state, and clearly see the writing on the wall – thus working together to create a new global financial paradigm.
The reality is that the United States is $20 trillion dollars in debt, and eventually the time will come when the U.S. economy begins to implode — and all the fiat currency people are stuck holding will essentially be worth nothing more than the paper it’s printed on. Hard assets, such as gold and silver, should be bought and taken custody of while there is still an opportunity to do so, as a means of hedging against the potentially disastrous results of the U.S. using the petrodollar as a “weapon.”
It’s not Russian nuclear weapons that people should fear, as the policy of mutually assured destruction essentially voids any benefit of a state launching a first-strike nuclear attack. The true threat to America is our economic house of cards, built upon the back of a neoliberal trade policy that puts the “rights” of corporations over that of people .
Ultimately, the United States, Russia and China are all controlled by centralized power-hungry tyrants attempting to command powerful global bureaucracies like the IMF, the World Bank, SWIFT, New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Share Google + T. Mohr
Tell the Red Queen and her arms manufacturing friends that. Bullets and bombs will never go out of style with these murderers. Social Trending | 0 |
posted by Eddie Angelina Jolie’s father, Jon Voight, has publicly spoken out against the Illuminati elite’s that he says are attempting to prevent Donald Trump from winning the Presidency. In a video uploaded to YouTube , Voight slammed both George Soros and Hillary Clinton, claiming they are attempting to turn America into a country of tyranny. “May God protect the real truth and may Donald Trump win this presidency. He will save our America, and he will certainly make it great again,” he said . Daily Mail reports: Voight has repeatedly supported Trump throughout the election cycle despite the business tycoon’s unprovoked attacks on his daughter Angelina Jolie’s looks. In the video, posted on Voight’s social media channels, he said: ‘We were once a country of freedom. Now we’re becoming a country of tyranny. ‘Thousands of refugees will flood our nation, and no one will know the good guys from the bad guys. It will kill our economy which is at an all time low under the years of Obama’s presidency.’ Millions of jobs have been created, unemployment has plummeted, and the economy has grown about two per cent each year under Obama’s administration, with experts grading it a ‘solid B or B+’, CNN reported. But Voight also warned that people would lose their Second Amendment rights under Hillary Clinton, even though she has repeatedly disputed similar statements. Voight went on to say: ‘Freedom of religion will be attacked…and Hillary will try to stop all conservative voices on TV and radio. ‘Our highest courts will become socialist, and she will restrict what America was founded on – our freedom to become a small business owner and pursue our own personal dreams.’ Voight also accused Soros of ‘turn[ing] hundreds of Jewish people over to the Nazis to be exterminated during World War II,’ an idea perpetuated by conservative commentator Glenn Beck. When Soros was 14, his father bribed an agriculture official in Nazi-occupied Hungary to pose as his Christian godfather. Soros once accompanied the man during an inventory of an estate left behind by the wealthy Jewish aristocrat Mor Kornfeld. In a 1998 episode of 60 Minutes, Soros said: ‘I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.’ While Voight made no reference to Trump’s comments about women in his latest video, he came out to defend the business tycoon days earlier. ‘I am so ashamed of my fellow actor Bobby DeNiro’s rant against Donald Trump…’ ‘Donald Trump’s words were not as damaging as Robert DeNiro’s ugly rant. Trump’s words did not hurt anyone.’ Voight tweeted in response to the Republican candidate’s comments that he could sexually harass women without consequence. ‘I don’t know of too many men who haven’t expressed some sort of similar sexual terms toward women, especially in their younger years,’ Voight added. Trump has since been accused of sexual harassment by six women in the days following the 2005 hot mic recording’s emergence. The presidential candidate has spoken out against Voight’s daughter over the last decade, saying in 2006: ‘[Angelina Jolie has] been with so many guys she makes me look like a baby, OK, with the other side. And, I just don’t even find her attractive.’ In 2007, Trump said: ‘Angelina Jolie is sort of amazing because everyone thinks she’s like this great beauty. ‘I really understand beauty. And I will tell you, she’s not—I do own Miss Universe. I do own Miss USA. I mean, I own a lot of different things. I do understand beauty, and she’s not.’ source: | 0 |
Trending Articles: Trending Articles: 'This is slavery': U.S. inmates strike in what activists call one of the biggest prison protests in modern history Published: October 28, 2016 Source: La Times
In his 29 years in prison, David Bonner has mopped floors, cooked hot dogs in the cafeteria and, most recently, cut sheets of aluminum into Alabama license plates.
The last job paid $2 a day — enough to buy a bar of soap at the commissary or make a short phone call.
"This is slavery," said Bonner, who is 51 and serving a life sentence for murder. "We're forced to work these jobs and we get barely anything.”
He was speaking on a mobile phone smuggled into his 8-by-12 foot cell in Alabama’s Holman Correctional Facility, where he and dozens of other inmates were on strike.
They’re among a growing national movement of prisoners who have staged work stoppages or hunger strikes this fall to protest dismal wages, abusive guards, overcrowding and poor healthcare, among other grievances.
Prisoners’ rights activists say the coordinated effort is one of the largest prison protests in modern history, drawing in at least 20,000 inmates in at least 24 prisons in 23 states.
Corrections officials have confirmed inmate protests in Michigan, South Carolina and Florida since early September. In California, at least 300 inmates have been involved in hunger strikes at jails in Santa Clara and Merced counties.
In several states, including Virginia, Ohio and Texas, officials have denied claims by activists that strikes have occurred.
Alabama officials acknowledged the protest at the Holman prison, 52 miles northeast of Mobile, though they said it was limited to a one-day strike by 60 inmates who worked in the kitchen and license plate plant — far less extensive than the 10-plus days in September and October that activists described.
"I know there are inmates who are saying there is this big, wide work stoppage but that is just not the case," said Alabama Dept. of Corrections spokesman Bob Horton.
Horton denied inmate reports that the prison had been on lockdown in response to strikes, which he described as "peaceful." But he also said he understood some of prisoners' complaints about living conditions. Holman is "overcrowded and understaffed," Horton said, adding that state officials were working to fix the problem. | 0 |
Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox Sports 1’s Jason Whitlock weighed in on his former employer ESPN’s declining viewership over recent years. Whitlock acknowledged that many people have been cord cutting over the years, but said some of the “animosity” towards ESPN is “their lurch to the left and injecting progressive victimology into the sports conversation,” which he noted is not a mentality taught in sports. Carlson then asked how the company’s employees feel about ESPN’s move to the left. According to Whitlock, conservative and moderate employees are “afraid” to express their traditional values. “I think a lot of them are just now starting to figure out the ramifications of this, and I think there’s been some complaints from some of their employees like, ‘Hey, look, we’re afraid to express that we have traditional sports culture, traditional values,” Whitlock responded. He continued, “Their ombudsman has written about a culture within ESPN where if you’re slightly conservative or moderate, you’re afraid to express an opinion inside there. It’s a real problem at ESPN and within all of major corporations and everything has gone PC. Everything. Everybody’s afraid, ‘Oh, my God, we can’t upset anybody.’ You’re silencing people — it’s a very dangerous thing. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Speaker Paul D. Ryan delivered his party’s weekly address on Friday — a rarity — giving a peek at the House Republican agenda that he and his colleagues will begin to roll out next week. That agenda was originally supposed to counter Donald J. Trump, whose views often stand apart from the party’s policy traditions. But now that Mr. Ryan has officially endorsed his party’s presumptive nominee, he says that his policy ideas will magically become Mr. Trump’s, and that the nominee will help advertise them this fall and eventually promulgate them from the White House. The six policy task forces in the House will release their prescriptions one at a time over a course of Fridays this summer, under the broad title “A Better Way. ” But perhaps it should be called “A Bedeviled Way. ” Despite Mr. Ryan’s efforts to take some control, however, here are four reasons Mr. Trump, not the House speaker, is far more likely to set the Republican agenda this summer at his party’s convention and into the fall campaign. Mr. Trump, long before he secured his party’s nomination, has shown a remarkable ability for getting television coverage of his pronouncements. His remarks about building a wall between the United States and Mexico (not embraced by Mr. Ryan) barring most Muslims from entering the country (ditto) and ending free trade deals (again) have gotten constant coverage. Mr. Ryan’s promises to end poverty and to address executive authority? Not so much. While Mr. Ryan has weekly news conferences intended to talk about the House agenda, reporters tend to ask him almost exclusively about Mr. Trump. Some Republican candidates who ran for president this year, like Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and the former Florida governor Jeb Bush, may have differed with Mr. Ryan on the margins on policy, but they hewed to the same core beliefs. Mr. Trump didn’t simply beat those candidates, he destroyed them, often in a highly personal way. The traditional Republican agenda is not selling this year. The speaker is widely viewed as endorsing Mr. Trump to provide the party with the unity necessary to get House members and to help Mr. Ryan keep his day job. But if there is any unity in the party, it stems from Mr. Trump’s agenda Mr. Ryan has struggled to get even basic legislation passed. “Trump had enough votes to win the nomination in pretty convincing fashion,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist and former aide to the House Republican leadership. “The speaker has had a tough time getting enough votes to pass a budget in the House, let alone pass the rest of his agenda,” he added. As Mr. Ryan was giving his modest endorsement to Mr. Trump, the Manhattan businessman was garnering his latest headlines by suggesting that a federal judge overseeing the suit against Trump University was biased because of his “Mexican heritage. ” Mr. Ryan, who has been a passionate voice against Mr. Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, may have a hard time pressing the “inclusive” agenda he has been promoting while at the same time promising allegiance to Mr. Trump. His voice of skepticism, not his agenda, is what got Mr. Ryan the most attention, and putting it on the shelf may not serve him well. | 1 |
With clashes over truth, lies and exaggerations dominating the prelude to the first presidential debate, The New York Times has assembled a team of at least 18 for Monday night, drawing on the expertise of some of our most seasoned reporters. (Here’s our live analysis and video of the debate, highlights and fact checks.) These reporters will assess the accuracy of assertions made by either candidate, or by the moderator, in real time as the debate unfolds, with an aim of posting each fact check within five minutes of the statement’s being made. The operation is an important dimension of an expansive coverage plan for the debate, which begins at 9 p. m. The Times will stream the debate live on its home page and will provide analysis from our regular team of reporters on political debates: Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Confessore, Adam Nagourney and Alan Rappeport. We will also provide continually updated highlights for those joining the debate after it has begun. Our in Washington and New York are: • David Sanger, Mark Landler, Eric Schmitt and Matthew Rosenberg, who have a deep background in national security issues and foreign policy • Neil Irwin and Binyamin Appelbaum, who write expertly about the economy • Steven Lee Myers and Eric Lichtblau, who have closely covered Hillary Clinton’s email issues • Julia Preston, who has covered immigration for 10 years • Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, who have reported extensively about the F. B. I. guns and terrorism • Coral Davenport, who covers the environment and climate change • Margot who writes about health care • Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court • Charlie Savage, who writes about constitutional issues • Michael D. Shear, a White House correspondent • and Steve Eder and Mike McIntire, two of our investigative reporters. On the Opinion side, The Times will publish quick responses to the debate from columnists and other prominent writers before, during and after the debate. Starting around 4 p. m. at nytimes. Gail Collins, Charles Blow and others will describe what they will be watching for from the candidates. During the debate, Paul Krugman, Roger Cohen, J. D. Vance and other observers will offer quick commentary. And once the debate concludes, columnists and contributors will provide reaction. The Times will also offer coverage through Facebook Live, which can be viewed at facebook. . At 7 p. m. the political reporters Amy Chozick, Nick Corasaniti and Jonathan Martin will offer a preview of the debate from Hofstra University on Long Island and take questions from Facebook users. When the debate begins, at 9 p. m. The Times will be live on Facebook with two streams: one showing the debate itself, and another that will pair audio of the debate with live cartooning by Bob Eckstein, an illustrator for The Times. The live streams on Facebook will incorporate other features of Times coverage, including commentary from our Opinion writers and fact checks and analysis from our reporters. When the debate ends, Donald J. Trump is scheduled to attend an and Mr. Corasaniti will cover that event live. Mr. Corasaniti also shared what to watch for on The Times’s Snapchat account this morning. | 1 |
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Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton claimed during a rally Tuesday night that she was in New York City during the 9/11 attacks. The only issue: She wasn’t.
“I know what happened, not far from here at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando,” Clinton said at a rally in Florida. “I was in New York City on 9/11, as one of the two senators. I will defeat ISIS , I will protect America.” Hillary says she was in New York City on 9/11 (She wasn’t) pic.twitter.com/3ppmncpeTI
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) November 2, 2016
But Clinton was in Washington D.C. on 9/11, which is unsurprising, as Congress was in session and she was the sitting senator for New York. In the words of Politico, which wrote about her actions that day:
She had CNN on as she talked on the phone with her legislative director when the first plane hit. Then the second. By the time she got to the Capitol, the Pentagon had been hit by a third plane. Capitol police were evacuating Senate office buildings. She dialed her daughter, who was in New York. She dialed her husband, who was in Australia. She and other senators received a briefing at the Capitol police station early in the evening. And after “a day indelibly etched in my mind,” and as nightfall approached, Clinton joined congressional colleagues on the steps of the Capitol, standing next to some of her fiercest political opponents, singing “God Bless America” with tears in her eyes.
Clinton did go back to New York, but only the following day. Since all regular air traffic was grounded, she flew on a special FEMA flight to the city with Rep. Charlie Rangel and fellow Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Article reposted with permission from The Daily Caller | 0 |
Sen. Cory Booker’s attack against Sen. Jeff Sessions was “disgraceful,” “” and motivated by political ambition, says Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton. [.@CoryBooker attacks on Jeff Sessions are so I his friend to be next witness. — Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) January 11, 2017, Cotton’s tweet refers to what has been described as Booker’s “imaginary friend. ” As National Review reported in 2013, Booker “invented a street character” named whom he frequently mentioned in his campaign stump speeches “for dramatic effect. ” “The central character in one of Booker’s stories — the drug pusher who the mayor has said threatened his life at one turn and sobbed on his shoulder the next — is a figment of his imagination,” National Review wrote. In a separate social media post, Cotton characterized Booker’s transparent political opportunism, testifying against his colleague to further his own “presidential aspirations,” as “disgraceful. ” “I’m very disappointed that Senator Booker has chosen to start his 2020 presidential campaign by testifying against Senator Sessions,” Cotton wrote on Facebook. “This disgraceful breach of custom is especially surprising since Senator Booker just last year said he was ‘honored to have partnered with Senator Sessions’ on a resolution honoring marchers. ” Cotton continued: Senator Booker says he feels compelled to speak out because Senator Session wants to keep criminals behind bars, drugs off our streets, and amnesty from becoming law. He’s welcome to oppose these policies and vote against Senator Sessions’s nomination, but what is so unique about those views to require his extraordinary testimony? Nothing. This hearing simply offers a platform for his presidential aspirations. Senator Booker is better than that, and he knows better. Cotton’s claim that Booker’s decision was motivated by his own political aspirations was echoed throughout the beltway. NBC’s Joe Scarborough noted that there was “a collective groan” — and Democratic lawmakers, in particular, were “irked” — as they watched Booker’s “obviously calculated” decision to “launc[h] his bid for the 2020 campaign” before the Senate Judiciary Committee. NPR’s Cokie Roberts described the maneuver as “ ”. Here’s how you know Cory Booker wants to run for president in 2020 https: . — Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 11, 2017, The first press conference of the 2020 Iowa caucuses pic. twitter. — Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) January 11, 2017, Sen. Booker just declared he’s running in 2020 by smearing Sen. Sessions. Stay classy, liberals. — Brent Bozell (@BrentBozell) January 11, 2017, Ever shorter Cory Booker: #Booker2020. https: . — David French (@DavidAFrench) January 11, 2017, Booker’s opposition to Sessions is a fight that pits an established corporatist against a committed populist — in that “one of Wall Street’s favorite senators [Booker] [is] attacking one of Wall Street’s least favorite [Sessions],” notes the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney. Carney writes: The top recipient of money [in the 2014 midterm election] from the financial sector was Sen. Cory Booker, who pocketed $4. 5 million from financial executives and PACs. Within that sector, Booker dominated among cash from real estate developers (almost 50 percent more than the Senate ). He also dominated in Wall Street money. Carney reports that Booker’s support for the policies of his corporatist donors has been . publications, Carney notes, have described Booker as “disturbingly tight with Wall Street and entrenched financial interests” — a politician who “shares a worldview with the financial elites who fund his campaigns,” and who “represents the interests of both Wall Street and Silicon Valley. ” By contrast, Sessions is as the intellectual of the conservative populist movement that emphasizes the need to enact an agenda that puts the interests of American workers first. Sessions, Carney writes, has clashed with the Silicon Valley tycoons and “Wall Street titans who have bankrolled Booker’s rapid rise” — most notably, on the issue of immigration, where Sessions has pushed for policies that prioritize the job and wage opportunities of working Americans over corporatists’ desire for cheap labor. In recent months, Cotton has seemed primed to take up Sessions’ mantle as the leader of this populist movement in the Senate. In particular, Cotton has become a vocal champion for American workers of all backgrounds against the policies lobbied for by corporate special interests and advanced by Washington politicians like Cory Booker, who represent the interests of the donor class. In a New York Times last month, Cotton wrote: Trump now has a clear mandate not only to stop illegal immigration, but also to finally cut the influx of immigrants that undermines American workers … For too long, our immigration policy has skewed toward the interests of the wealthy and powerful: Employers get cheaper labor, and professionals get cheaper personal services like housekeeping. We now need an immigration policy that focuses less on the most powerful and more on everyone else … In some quarters, proposals like these invoke cries of “nativism” and “xenophobia. ” But recent immigrants are the very Americans who have to compete with new immigrants for jobs. Far from being this proposal would give recent arrivals a better shot at higher wages, stable work and assimilation. Following Cotton’s clarion call for an immigration policy that benefits American workers, the Center for Immigration Studies’ Mark Krikorian wrote a piece titled “Immigration: As Sessions Moves On, Cotton Steps Up. ” In the post, Krikorian assured voters that as Sessions, Congress’s tireless advocate for an America First immigration policy, departs the Senate to join the incoming President’s cabinet, American workers should “fear not” as “Tom Cotton has reported for duty. ” | 1 |
SACRAMENTO — Over three generations, the Michael family forged a deep bond with the University of California, dating back nearly 50 years to when Jay Dee Michael Sr. was the university system’s vice president and chief lobbyist. Family members proudly displayed degrees from the campuses in Los Angeles, Davis, Berkeley and Santa Barbara. And when Mr. Michael died last year, his family asked that memorial donations go to a U. C. Davis institute. Recently, though, the relationship has soured, a victim of the economic forces buffeting public universities. Jay Dee Michael Jr. said he might never feel the same again after his son was rejected from several U. C. campuses. “I have blue and gold running through my blood,” Mr. Michael told a State Assembly hearing here in March. “But I can tell you that when I get calls now from U. C. Davis, as an alum, I’m not giving a dime. ” A state audit in March reinforced what many California parents already suspected: On a constant hunt for more revenue, the prestigious University of California system gave favorable admissions treatment to thousands of and foreign students, to the detriment of Californians. As a result, admissions to the system have become a bipartisan political issue in California, where the Legislature recently moved to link university funding to enrolling additional California residents. But at its core, the discontent in California, which is also developing in other states, reflects a broader, fundamental breakdown in the traditional operation of the public university. And it highlights troubling questions about affordability and access, much of the impetus behind the announcement by Hillary Clinton on Wednesday that she was embracing a large part of Bernie Sanders’s proposal to provide free tuition at public colleges. Since the 2008 recession, states have reduced spending on public higher education by 17 percent, while tuition has risen by 33 percent, according to a recent report by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The University of California system relied on state money for almost a quarter of its budget as recently as 2002, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Now, that figure is 9 percent, after $1 billion in cuts. Students who once could afford educations at their state public universities now pay nearly twice what they used to pay, part of the driving force behind a $1. 27 trillion student debt bill. According to the College Board, the average cost of attending a public university, including room and board, increased from $11, 655 in 2000 to $19, 548 in 2015, in dollars. In the City University of New York system, tuition at colleges is now $6, 330, having increased by $300 each year since 2011, when it was $4, 830. Mrs. Clinton’s proposal — which would use federal funds to make public tuition free for students with family incomes of up to $125, 000 — would also require states to pay matching dollars. Public higher education advocates generally agree that a federal effort to reverse the long disinvestment by states is overdue. “What Sanders figured out — it’s not the $65, 000 cost of attendance at some of our pricier privates driving the debt bubble, but rather the disinvestment and privatization of public higher ed,” said Barmak Nassirian, the director of federal relations and policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Univerities. For more than a century, the public university has been viewed as the proverbial ticket to the American dream, assuring a pathway to better jobs and a more comfortable lifestyle for generation after generation. With generous state subsidies, the public university operated on the idea that even a poor or student could acquire a education. That egalitarian notion was expressed in Michigan through the phrase “an uncommon education for the common man,” coined by the university’s former president, James B. Angell. In Wisconsin, the university’s former president, Charles Van Hise, declared that he would “never be content until the beneficent influence of the university reaches every family in the state. ” That became known as the Wisconsin Idea. Funding cuts have also changed the demographic makeup of the public universities as they seek revenues from outside the state, admitting more and more and foreign students. In California, even Mrs. Clinton weighed in. “We have got to get back to using public colleges and universities for what they were intended,” Mrs. Clinton said during a California campaign stop. “If it is in California, for the children in California. If it is in New York, for the children in New York. ” In California, nonresident enrollment has been about 15. 5 percent on U. C. campuses over all, but as high as 29 percent at the marquee Berkeley. Yet California’s enrollment is low compared with flagship universities in a number of other states. On Monday, Berkeley announced that it had offered admission to 14, 400 high school students for this fall, including 1, 000 more California residents than last year. Defending her university system after the audit’s release in March, President Janet Napolitano wrote that because of budget cuts, nearly every state in the nation had been forced to make a “Hobson’s choice, and they all have reached the same decision: Open doors to students to keep the doors open for students. ” Ms. Napolitano reeled off a list of more than a dozen big public universities whose enrollment exceeds California’s. Some, like the University of Alabama, where the student body of 37, 000 is more than 50 percent nonresident, have resorted to aggressive marketing aimed at luring including distributing million of dollars in merit aid to nonresidents, much of it to students from affluent families, not only improving its bottom line but also raising average test scores, metrics used by commercial ratings groups to rank colleges. But it is a ratings and financial game, some worry, that means university student bodies will increasingly become alienated from their state’s population. “It seems like all the incentives are going after wealthy students and leaving the students in the dust,” said Stephen Burd, a senior policy analyst with the New America Foundation who has studied the increased use of merit aid to attract nonresident students. A study found that as enrollment increases, universities admit fewer minority and students. “When you grow the share of students, you’re making the student body richer, more white and Asian and less black and Latino,” said one of the study’s Ozan Jaquette, an assistant professor of education at U. C. L. A. William Deary, who has made a fortune in the home health care business in Jackson, Mich. put himself through Michigan State by working nights in a door factory, making $28 an hour. Since then, hourly jobs have disappeared in Michigan, but tuition at Michigan State has risen sharply, Mr. Deary said, so much so that the university has become out of reach for many students. It is part of the impetus for his first political campaign — for Michigan State’s board. He is also concerned that and foreign students are squeezing out Michiganders. “Our sons and daughters should come first,” Mr. Deary’s campaign literature urges. Michigan State’s enrollment of about 50, 000 includes 7, 568 international students, placing it in the top 10 colleges for foreign student enrollment. At the nearby University of Michigan, the student body of 43, 625 is nearly 37 percent and nearly 14 percent international students. The New York Times reported in 2004 that more freshmen at the Ann Arbor campus came from families with annual income of $200, 000 or more than from families with less than the median national income of $53, 000. The university has pointed out that its admissions rate for Michigan students is higher than for . In Massachusetts, enrollment has increased by nearly 85 percent at University of Massachusetts campuses since 2008, while enrollment grew by only 19 percent, said a recent critical report by the Pioneer Institute, a Massachusetts think tank. UMass officials responded denying that students had been adversely affected. At the University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus in Madison, officials last fall lifted a cap on the enrollment of . The Wisconsin student newspaper, The Badger Herald, predicted that the university would transform into a bourgeois playground for wealthy Chicagoans, who can afford the luxury private dormitories near campus. The newest offering, Hub Madison, offers amenities including a rooftop swimming pool, sauna, a golf simulator, arcade games and billiards tables. “Rich kids value amenities — luxury recreation facilities and luxury dorms,” said Mr. Jaquette, of U. C. L. A. “These are the things that resident students or students don’t care about. ” Among concerns voiced by Mr. Jaquette, Mr. Burd and other experts is that public university campuses, often among the more elite settings in states, will become even more alienated from their state population as a whole. Elliot Spillers, from Pelham, Ala. was student body president at the University of Alabama last year — the first black student in 40 years to have held that position. He said he doubted he would have been elected if the student body, which is mostly white, had been homegrown. The university’s enrollment is now more than half . “It’s definitely shifting the culture here on campus, which is a positive thing,” Mr. Spillers said, echoing the views of many students. Others see a less positive side to the change. Of the undergraduates at Alabama’s Tuscaloosa campus, more than 3, 000 receive merit aid in the form of free or discounted tuition — an average of $19, 000 per student. In 2015, the university gave $100 million in merit aid. Mr. Burd, of the New America Foundation, wonders if that money could be better used to help needy students, particularly in a state with a poverty rate among the highest in the country. In essence, he said, some colleges have adopted the enrollment tactics of private colleges to increase revenues and enhance prestige. Devin Thompson of St. Paul, Minn. had a SAT score and realized he could save $200, 000 over four years by not attending a private college in Virgina and instead accepting the free tuition offered by Alabama, automatic to anyone with his record. The son of college professors, he will be attending this fall. By enrolling Mr. Thompson, Alabama will elevate its average SAT score, one of the metrics used in the U. S. News and World Report rankings. That, in turn, education experts say, will attract other affluent students, many of whom will get smaller merit packages from Alabama — just enough to make the college enticing compared with its peers. Meanwhile, the number of entering freshmen from Alabama high schools has declined steadily, from 3, 122 in 2009 to 2, 458 in 2015, records show. University officials say the acceptance rate for those students — 63 percent — has remained the same. About half a mile away and just across the railroad tracks from the University of Alabama’s manicured campus sits the mostly black Central High School. Few Central High students attend the University of Alabama. Ernestine Tucker, a Tuscaloosa school board member, wonders whether the university is working hard enough to recruit them. “You would think their first priority would be the local students,” Ms. Tucker said. Mr. Michael, whose son attends the University of Washington, was one of thousands of California residents who complained about admissions practices at U. C. From 2010 to 2014, the number of California residents enrolled declined by 1 percent, or 2, 200 students, while nonresidents increased by 82 percent, or 18, 000 students, the audit found. In 2015, nonresident students paid $37, 000, compared with $12, 240 for . “Over the past several years, the university has failed to put the needs of residents first,” the audit said. One of those residents was Priyanka Krishnamurthi, a math wiz from Saratoga with a SAT score. She ended up at Yale after being turned down by her desired program at Berkeley. In debating a bill in June over enrollment at the University of California, Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown told colleagues about her granddaughter, who recently graduated from high school in Sacramento, but did not bother to apply to U. C. schools. That is because a college admissions adviser told her she would be a good candidate only if she were from out of state. To Mr. Michael’s way of thinking, when it came to his son, the University of California had reneged on an unwritten contract. “In my case, three generations of Michaels have supported and funding the U. C. and the same is true for my wife’s family,” he said. “And then, when it comes time for our children to go, there’s no room. ” | 1 |
A plan by President Donald Trump’s administration to “extreme vet’ foreign refugees entering the U. S. in the hundreds every week could include an ideological test. [The Trump Administration is looking at a number of ways to vet foreigners entering the U. S. through a more rigorous, extensive process that would include asking whether or not an individual has the same values as American citizens, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. Officials working on the vetting process also said foreigners could be asked to disclose their social media passwords, past financial records and cell phone data — coupled with questions on ideology. Director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Mark Krikorian told Breitbart Texas that he thinks the vetting process being considered is “necessary. ” “The idea is that we shouldn’t just screen people who may commit violence against us, but that we should also be keeping out people who hate our values,” Krikorian said in an interview. “Especially for immigrants, people who are going to be here. It’s less important for foreign tourists. But, we should try to keep people out from our society who hate us. ” Krikorian said that unlike Trump’s twice executive order which halted travel flow into the U. S. from specific countries, the vetting process would need to apply to all newcomers. “It can’t be because you could have people who hate our values coming from any country,” Krikorian said. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Trump’s promise of extreme vetting remained important, predominantly as a national security issue. “If there is any doubt about a person’s intentions coming to the United States, they should have to overcome — really and truly prove to our satisfaction — that they are coming for legitimate reasons,” Senior Counselor to Secretary John Kelly, Gene Hamilton told the Wall Street Journal. Most recently, Breitbart News reported how the State Department is increasing the number of refugees that are admitted into the U. S. pushing that figure to about 900 per week. Refugee resettlement expert Ann Corcoran told Breitbart Texas that major reforms to the refugee program are imperative under the Trump Administration. “This is our only opportunity right now to reform the refugee program,” Corcoran said in an interview. “If it doesn’t happen now, it will never be reformed. ” Corcoran says an executive order to slow the flow of refugees being resettled from primarily nations is not necessary, telling Breitbart Texas that Trump “has enormous power over this issue. ” “I am particularly concerned that the Trump Administration doesn’t understand the program,” Corcoran said. “And I’m afraid they’re being rolled by the bureaucrats. ” John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 1 |
Trump in the White House By Noam Chomsky
November 14, CJ Polychroniou : Noam, the unthinkable has happened: in contrast to all forecasts, Donald Trump scored a decisive victory over Hillary Clinton and the man that Michael Moore described as wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full-time sociopath is the next president of the United States. In your view, what were the deciding factors that led American voters produce the biggest upset in the history of US politics?
Noam Chomsky : Before turning to this question, I think it is important to spend a few moments pondering just what happened on November 8, a date that might turn out to be one of the most important in human history, depending on how we react.
No exaggeration.
The most important news of November 8 was barely noted, a fact of some significance in itself.
On November 8, the World Meteorological Organization delivered a report at the international conference on climate change in Morocco, COP22, which was called in order to carry forward the Paris agreements of COP21. The WMO reported that the past five years were the hottest on record. It reported rising sea levels, soon to increase as a result of the unexpectedly rapid melting of polar ice, most ominously the huge Antarctic glaciers. Already Arctic sea ice over the past five years is 28 percent below the average of the previous 29 years, not only raising sea levels but also reducing the cooling effect of polar ice reflection of solar rays, thereby accelerating the grim effects of global warming. The WMO reported further that temperatures are approaching dangerously close to the goal established by COP21, along with other dire reports and forecasts.
Another event took place on November 8, which also may turn out to be of unusual historical significance for reasons that, once again, were barely noted.
On November 8, the most powerful country in world history, which will set its stamp on what comes next, had an election. The outcome placed total control of the government the executive, Congress, the Supreme Court in the hands of the Republican Party, the most dangerous organization in world history.
Apart from the last phrase, all of this is uncontroversial. The last phrase may seem outlandish, even outrageous. But is it? The facts suggest otherwise. The Party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction of organized human life. There is no historical precedent for such a stand.
Is this an exaggeration? Consider what we have just been witnessing.
During the Republican primaries, every candidate denied that what is happening is happening with the exception of the sensible moderates, like Jeb Bush, who said its all uncertain but we dont have to do anything because were producing more natural gas, thanks to fracking. Or John Kasich, who agreed that global warming is taking place but added that we are going to burn [coal] in Ohio and we are not going to apologize for it. The winning candidate, now the President-elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general racing to the cliff as fast as possible.
Trump has already taken steps to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency by placing in charge of the EPA transition a notorious (and proud) climate change denier, Myron Ebell. Trumps top adviser on energy, billionaire oil executive Harold Hamm, announced his expectations, which were predictable: dismantling regulations, tax cuts for the industry (and the wealthy and corporate sector generally), more fossil fuel production, lifting Obamas temporary block on the Dakota Access pipeline. The market reacted quickly. Shares in energy corporations boomed, including the worlds largest coal miner, Peabody Energy, which had filed for bankruptcy, but after Trumps victory registered a 50% gain.
The effects of Republican denialism had already been felt. There had been hopes that the COP21 Paris agreement would lead to a verifiable treaty, but any such thoughts were abandoned because the Republican Congress would not accept any binding commitments, so what emerged was a voluntary agreement, evidently much weaker.
Effects may soon become even more vividly apparent than they already are. In Bangladesh alone, tens of millions are expected to have to flee from low-lying plains in coming years because of sea level rise and more severe weather, creating a migrant crisis that will make todays pale into insignificance. With considerable justice, Bangladeshs leading climate scientist says that These migrants should have the right to move to the countries from which all these greenhouse gases are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States. And to the other rich countries that have grown wealthy while bringing about a new geological era, the Anthropocene, marked by radical human transformation of the environment. These catastrophic consequences can only increase, not just in Bangladesh but in all of South Asia as temperatures, already intolerable for the poor, inexorably rise and the Himalayan glaciers melt, threatening the entire water supply. Already in India some 300 million people are reported to lack drinking water. And the effects will reach far beyond.
It is hard to find words to capture the fact that humans are facing the most important question in their history whether organized human life will survive in anything like the form we know and are answering it by accelerating the race to disaster. Similar observations hold for the other huge issue concerning human survival, the threat of nuclear destruction that has been looming over our heads for 70 years, and is now increasing.
It is no less difficult to find words to capture the utterly astonishing fact that in all of the massive coverage of the electoral extravaganza, none of this receives more than passing mention. At least I am at a loss to find appropriate words.
Turning finally to the question raised, to be precise it appears that Clinton received a slight majority of the vote. The apparent decisive victory has to do with curious features of American politics: among other factors, the electoral college residue of the founding of the country as an alliance of separate states; the winner-take-all system in each state; arrangement of congressional districts (sometimes by gerrymandering) to provide greater weight to rural votes (in past elections, probably this one too, Democrats have had a comfortable margin of victory in popular vote for the House but hold a minority of seats); the very high rate of abstention (usually close to half in presidential elections, this one too). Of some significance for the future is the fact that in the 18-25 range, Clinton won handily, and Sanders had an even higher level of support. How much this matters depends on what kind of future humanity will face.
According to current information, Trump broke all records in the support he received from white voters, working class and lower middle class, particularly in the $50,000 to $90,000 income range, rural and suburban, primarily those without college education. These groups share the anger throughout the West at the centrist establishment, revealed as well in the unanticipated Brexit vote and the collapse of centrist parties in continental Europe. The angry and disaffected are victims of the neoliberal policies of the past generation, the policies described in congressional testimony by Fed chair Alan Greenspan St. Alan as he was called reverentially by the economics profession and other admirers until the miraculous economy he was supervising crashed in 2007-8, threatening to bring the whole world economy down with it. As Greenspan explained during his glory days, his successes in economic management were based substantially on growing worker insecurity. Intimidated working people would not ask for higher wages, benefits, and security but would be satisfied with the stagnating wages and reduced benefits that signal a healthy economy by neoliberal standards.
Working people who have been the subjects of these experiments in economic theory are, oddly, not particularly happy about the outcome. They are not, for example, overjoyed at the fact that in 2007, at the peak of the neoliberal miracle, real wages for non-supervisory workers were lower than they had been years earlier, or that real wages for male workers are about at 1960s levels while spectacular gains have gone to the pockets of a very few at the top, disproportionately a fraction of 1%. Not the result of market forces, achievement, or merit, but rather of definite policy decisions, matters reviewed carefully by economist Dean Baker in recently published work.
The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the 50s and 60s, the minimum wage which sets a floor for other wages tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.
With all the talk of near-full employment today, labor force participation remains below the earlier norm. And for a working man, there is a great difference between a steady job in manufacturing with union wages and benefits, as in earlier years, and a temporary job with little security in some service profession. Apart from wages, benefits, and security, there is a loss of dignity, of hope for the future, of a sense that this is a world in which I belong and play a worthwhile role.
The impact is captured well in Arlie Hochschilds sensitive and illuminating portrayal of a Trump stronghold in Louisiana, where she lived and worked for many years. She uses the image of a line in which these people are standing, expecting to move forward steadily as they work hard and keep to all the conventional values. But their position in the line has stalled. Ahead of them, they see people leaping forward, but that does not cause much distress, because it is the American way for (alleged) merit to be rewarded. What does cause real distress is what is happening behind them. Undeserving people who do not follow the rules are being moved in front of them by federal government programs designed to benefit African-Americans, immigrants, and others they often regard with contempt. All of this is exacerbated by Reagans racist fabrications about strapping young bucks and welfare queens (by implication Black) stealing your hard-earned money, and other fantasies which are sometimes tinged with shreds of reality, as is usually the case with ugly and dangerous concoctions designed to deflect attention from the real agents of distress to easy scapegoats.
Sometimes failure to explain, itself a form of contempt, plays a role. I once met a house painter in Boston who had turned bitterly against the evil government after a Washington bureaucrat who knew nothing about painting organized a meeting of painting contractors to inform them that they could no longer use lead paint, the only kind that works, as they all knew but the suit didnt understand. That destroyed his small business, compelling him to paint houses on his own with substandard stuff forced on him by government elites. Sometimes there are also some reasons. Hochschild describes a man whose family and friends are suffering bitterly from the lethal effects of chemical pollution but who despises the government, and the liberal elites, because for him, the EPA means some ignorant guy who tells him he cant fish but does nothing about the chemical plants.
These are just samples of the real lives of Trump supporters, who are deluded to believe that Trump will do something to remedy their plight, though the merest look at his fiscal and other proposals demonstrates the opposite posing a task for activists who hope to fend off the worst and to advance desperately needed changes.
Exit polls reveal that the passionate support for Trump was inspired primarily by the belief that he represented change, while Clinton was perceived as the candidate who would perpetuate their distress. The change that Trump is likely to bring will be harmful or worse, but it is understandable that the consequences are not clear to isolated people in an atomized society lacking the kinds of associations (like unions) that can educate and organize. That is a crucial difference between todays despair and the generally hopeful attitudes of many working people under much greater duress during the great depression of the 1930s.
There are other factors in Trumps success. Comparative studies show that doctrines of White Supremacy have had an even more powerful grip on American culture than in South Africa, and its no secret that the white population is declining. In a decade or two whites are projected to be a minority of the work force, and not too much later a minority of the population. The traditional conservative culture is also perceived as under attack by the successes of identity politics, regarded as the province of elites who have only contempt for hard-working patriotic church-going Americans with real family values whose country is disappearing before their eyes.
It is worth remembering that before World War II, though it had long been the richest country in the world, the US was not a major player in global affairs and was also something of a cultural backwater. Someone who wanted to study physics would go to Germany. An aspiring writer or artist would go to Paris. That changed radically with World War II, for obvious reasons, but only for part of the population. Much remained culturally traditional. To mention one example of great significance, one of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40% of the population do not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. About the same percentage believe that the world was created a few thousand years ago. If science conflicts with the Bible, so much the worse for science. It would be hard to find an analogue in other societies.
The Democratic party abandoned any real concern for working people by the 1970s, and they have therefore been drawn to the ranks of their bitter class enemies, who at least pretend to speak their language Reagans folksy style with little jokes while eating jelly beans, W. Bushs carefully cultivated image of a regular guy you could meet in a bar who loved to cut brush on the ranch in 100 degree heat and his probably faked mispronunciations (its unlikely that he talked like that at Yale), and now Trump, who gives voice to people with legitimate grievances who have lost not just jobs but also a sense of personal self-worth; and who rails against the government that they perceive as having undermined their lives (not without reason).
One of the great achievements of the doctrinal system has been to divert anger from the corporate sector to the government that implements the programs it designs, such as the highly protectionist corporate/investor rights agreements that are uniformly mis-described as free trade agreements in the media and commentary. With all its flaws, the government is to some extent under popular influence and control, unlike the corporate sector. It is highly advantageous for the business world to foster hatred for pointy-headed government bureaucrats and to drive out of peoples minds the subversive idea that the government might become an instrument of popular will, a government of, by, and for the people.
Is Trump representing a new movement in American politics, or was the outcome of this election primarily a rejection of Hillary Clinton by voters who hate the Clintons and are fed-up with politics as usual?
Its by no means new. Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Todays New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called moderate Republicans. The political revolution that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower. The Republicans have moved so far to dedication to the wealthy and the corporate sector that they cannot hope to get votes on their actual programs, and have turned to mobilizing sectors of the population that have always been there but not as an organized political force: evangelicals, nativists, racists, and the victims of the forms of globalization designed to set working people around the world in competition with one another while protecting the privileged and undermining the legal and other measures that provided working people with some protection and with ways to influence decision-making in the closely linked public and private sectors, notably with effective labor unions.
The consequences have been evident in recent Republican primaries. Every candidate that has emerged from the base Bachmann, Cain, Santorum, has been so extreme that the Republican establishment had to use its ample resources to beat them down. The difference in 2016 is that the establishment failed, much to its chagrin, as we have seen.
Deservedly or not, Clinton represented the policies that were feared and hated while Trump was seen as the symbol of change change of what kind requires a careful look at his actual proposals, something largely missing in what reached the public. The campaign itself was remarkable in its avoidance of issues, and media commentary generally complied, keeping to the concept that true objectivity means reporting accurately what is within the beltway but not venturing beyond.
Trump said following the outcome of the election that he will represent all Americans. How is be going to do that when the nation is so divided and he has already expressed deep hatred for many groups in the United States, including women and minorities? Do you see any resemblance between Brexit and Donald Trumps victory?
There are definite similarities to Brexit, and also to the rise of the ultranationalist far-right parties in Europe whose leaders were quick to congratulate Trump on his victory, perceiving him as one of their own: Farrage, Le Pen, Orban, and others like them. And these developments are quite frightening. A look at the polls in Austria and Germany Austria and Germany cannot fail to evoke unpleasant memories for those familiar with the 1930s, even more so for those who watched directly, as I did as a child. I can still recall listening to Hitlers speeches, not understanding the words though the tone and audience reaction were chilling enough. The first article that I remember writing was in February 1939, after the fall of Barcelona, on the seemingly inexorable spread of the fascist plague. And by strange coincidence, it was in Barcelona that my wife and I watched Tuesdays events.
As to how Trump will handle what he has brought forth not created, but brought forth we cannot say. Perhaps his most striking characteristic is unpredictability. A lot will depend on the reactions of those appalled by his performance and the visions he has projected, such as they are.
Trump has no identifiable political ideology guiding his stance on economic, social, and political issues, yet there are clear authoritarian tendencies in his behavior. Therefore, do you find any validity behind the claims that Trump may represent the emergence of fascism with a friendly face? in the United States?
For many years I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States, someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what sociologist Bertram Gross called friendly fascism in a perceptive study 35 years ago. But that requires an honest ideologue, a Hitler type, not someone whose only detectable ideology is Me. The dangers however have been real for many years, perhaps even more so in the light of the forces that Trump has unleashed.
With the Republicans in the White House, but also controlling both houses and the future shape of the Supreme Court, what will America look like for at least the next four years?
A good deal depends on his appointments and circle of advisers. Early indications are unattractive, to put it mildly.
The Supreme Court will be in the hands of reactionaries for many years, with predictable consequences. If Trump follows through on his Paul Ryan-style fiscal programs, there will be huge benefits for the very rich estimated by the Tax Policy Center as a tax cut of over 14% for the top 0.1% and a substantial cut more generally at the upper end of the income scale, but with virtually no tax relief for others, who will also face major new burdens. The respected economics correspondent of the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, writes that The tax proposals would shower huge benefits on already rich Americans such as Mr Trump, while leaving others in the lurch, including of course his popular constituency. The immediate reaction of the business world reveals that big pharma, Wall Street, military industry, energy industries, and other such wonderful institutions expect a very bright future.
One positive development might be the infrastructure program that Trump has promised while (along with much reporting and commentary) concealing the fact that it is essentially the Obama stimulus program that would have been of great benefit to the economy and to the society generally, but was killed by the Republican Congress on the pretext that it would explode the deficit. While that charge was spurious at the time, given the very low interest rates, it holds in spades for Trumps program, now accompanied by radical tax cuts for the rich and corporate sector and increased Pentagon spending.
There is, however, an escape, provided by Dick Cheney when he explained to Bushs Treasury Secretary Paul ONeill that Reagan proved that deficits dont matter meaning deficits that we Republicans create in order to gain popular support, leaving it to someone else, preferably Democrats, to somehow clean up the mess. The technique might work, for a while at least.
There are also many questions about foreign policy consequences, mostly unanswered.
There is mutual admiration between Trump and Putin. How likely is it therefore that we may see a new era in US-Russia relations?
One hopeful prospect is that there might be reduction of the very dangerous and mounting tensions at the Russian border: note the Russian border, not the Mexican border. Thereby lies a tale that we cannot go into here. It is also possible that Europe might distance itself from Trumps America, as already suggested by Chancellor Merkel and other European leaders and from the British voice of American power, after Brexit. That might possibly lead to European efforts to defuse the tensions, and perhaps even efforts to move towards something like Mikhail Gorbachevs vision of an integrated Eurasian security system without military alliances, rejected by the US in favor of NATO expansion, a vision revived recently by Putin, whether seriously or not we do not know since the gesture was dismissed.
Is US foreign policy under a Trump administration likely to be more or less militaristic than what we have seen under the Obama or even the G.W. Bush administrations?
I dont think one can answer with any confidence. Trump is too unpredictable. There are too many open questions. What we can say is that popular mobilization and activism, properly organized and conducted, can make a large difference.
And we should bear in mind that the stakes are very large, as I remarked at the outset. | 0 |
Sen. John McCain ( ) has reportedly told a newspaper that he believes “American leadership” was better under President Barack Obama than President Trump — the latest in a series of shots the failed 2008 presidential candidate has taken at his fellow Republican. [According to the Guardian, McCain was “visibly irked” when asked about comments Trump made last week in the wake of the terrorist attack in London, in which he criticized London Mayor Sadiq Khan for his response to the atrocity. “What do you think the message is? The message is that America doesn’t want to lead,” McCain said. “They are not sure of American leadership, whether it be in Siberia or whether it be in Antarctica. ” Then, when asked if America’s international standing was better under Obama, McCain reportedly responded: “As far as American leadership is concerned, yes. ” McCain — who lost his 2008 presidential bid against Obama after a campaign in which he repeatedly defended Obama from his supporters’ criticisms — has been an outspoken critic of Trump and has refused to tone it down since his fellow Republican took the White House. In a recent tour of Australia, McCain told an audience in Sydney that Trump has “unsettled” allies and Americans alike. “Other American allies have similar doubts these days and this is understandable,” McCain said, according to The Associated Press at the city’s university. “I realize that some of President Trump’s actions and statements have unsettled America’s friends. They have unsettled many Americans as well. ” He went on to urge the Australians to “keep at” the Partnership deal in the hope that one day “America will decide to join you. ” He also said in an interview with an Australian TV network that Trump makes him “nervous from time to time” and said he was bothered that Trump does not always take the advice of his national security team. “Can I tell you that he does all the time? No. Does it bother me? Yes, it bothers me,” he said. Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY. | 1 |
BERLIN — Even in Germany, where consensus is highly valued, it had never happened before. On Sunday, Martin Schulz was anointed leader of the Social Democrats, Europe’s oldest democratic party, with 100 percent of the valid votes cast at a special convention. The result places Mr. Schulz, 61, a former president of the European Parliament, in pole position to unseat the world’s most powerful woman, Chancellor Angela Merkel, when the two face off on Sept. 24 in the national election, in which Ms. Merkel is seeking a fourth term. Even before that, it could increase the tensions coursing through Germany’s relationship with President Trump’s administration. Already, Mr. Trump’s actions — and Britain’s decision to leave the European Union — have had an effect here, slowing the rise of populism as voters the value of the Continent’s unity. But the rallying cries in Mr. Schulz’s address to the convention seemed destined to irk an American administration that is already demanding more from its NATO allies. His best applause lines railed against buying more weapons, or argued that even Mr. Trump should hold fast to democratic values. Anyone who tries to curb the freedom of the news media, Mr. Schulz emphasized, “is laying an ax on the roots of democracy, whether he is the president of the United States or a protester at a rally of Pegida,” the movement in Germany. “Both are unacceptable. ” After the unanimous endorsement of his election bid, Mr. Schulz jubilantly declared, “This vote is the start of capturing the chancellery. ” He was nominated as the new party leader only in late January and has since been embraced by the with an élan not seen in years. More than 13, 000 people have joined the Social Democrats in recent weeks — a fact celebrated by party leaders even though 2016 membership, at around 438, 000, was 130, 000 less than a decade earlier. Significantly, the Social Democrats have drawn level with Ms. Merkel’s bloc, with both hovering around 31 or 32 percent in polls. Currently, the two govern in a coalition led by Ms. Merkel’s conservatives. Though German politicians and voters are used to the compromises of coalition politics, the partnership seems likely to grow testier. If so, some commentators said, that would be another sign of the effect Mr. Trump is having across a continent he often scorns. Last week in the Netherlands, and in December in Austria, centrist parties beat back the rising tides of nationalist populism, not quashing the far right but denying it further claim on national leadership. Commentators say that Mr. Trump has galvanized even Europeans skeptical of the European Union, a bloc often derided as remote and unknowable to the almost 500 million people who live in its 28 member states. Unease about Mr. Trump means that he “has had a much bigger effect in Europe than in the United States,” Rolf Kleine, a senior political editor of the Bild newspaper, said on the sidelines of the Social Democrats’ convention. “Suddenly,” Mr. Kleine said, “people got frightened. ” They “have seen what the results are when you elect people you perhaps had better not have elected,” he added. Just how awkward relations already are was on full display last week when Mr. Trump received Ms. Merkel at the White House. In a subsequent post on Twitter, he claimed that Germany owed “vast sums” for past American defense. Then, on Saturday, American resistance deprived the German hosts of a Group of 20 finance ministers’ summit meeting of a usually routine declaration against protectionism. Ms. Merkel, known for her patience and for waiting out crises, has not reacted to either the NATO demands or the Group of 20 statement. But her close ally, Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen of Germany, issued a sharp statement on Sunday in which she denied Mr. Trump’s contention. “There is no debt account in NATO,” Ms. von der Leyen said, adding that it was “false” to view the 2 percent pledged for military spending by each member as exclusively for NATO. Included in the sum, which Germany is set to reach over the next decade, is support for United Nations peacekeeping missions and the fight against the Islamic State. “What we all want is fair which requires a modern understanding of security,” Ms. von der Leyen said. While Mr. Trump continues to unsettle, opponents might argue that Mr. Schulz, who failed to finish high school and is entirely untested in national politics, also represents a risk. But Mr. Schulz, a former bookseller, has a compelling personal story, more than 20 years of experience in European structures and, above all, a message that Germans appear newly eager to hear. Since he was chosen as the Social Democrats’ leader and embraced a simple slogan, “More Justice,” his party has advanced. Supporters chant “Martin! Martin!” when he appears and wave placards proclaiming that it is “time for Schulz. ” His rise has apparently blunted the advances of the Alternative for Germany party, which now runs around 9 to 10 percent in polls. The Green and Left parties are also stuck around 8 percent each, with the liberal Free Democrats hovering around the 5 percent hurdle that must be cleared to win parliamentary seats. So far, Mr. Schulz has provided almost no details of what his policies might be and says he will outline his program only in late June. Even supporters worry that this leaves him vulnerable. “At the moment, he is everybody’s darling,” said Steffen Burmeister, 54, who is active in local politics near Hamburg. “He can bring people along, and he has the right themes. ” In addition, he said, “it is a very important signal that he is someone who has worked so hard for Europe, and at the top of the structure. ” Still, Mr. Burmeister argued, more “fresh faces” are needed. Mr. Schulz sought to appeal to voters of all ages: invoking the iconic Willy Brandt, the Social Democrat who pioneered détente with the Soviets, for older generations and seeking to woo younger ones with concern for their future. Anne Wachter, 27, works for the Social Democrats. Embracing a image of Mr. Schulz, which she said she had carried nationwide to appearances in recent weeks, she rejected the idea that his advance was a result of Mr. Trump’s rise. “I think we just let Donald Trump be,” she said, “and make our own policy. ” | 1 |
Werden sich die Vereinigten Staaten reformieren oder zerreißen? von Thierry Meyssan Das Beobachten des US-Präsidentschaftswahlkampfes führt Thierry Meyssan zur Analyse des Wiederauflebens des alten und schweren zivilisatorischen Konfliktes. Hillary Clinton hat gerade erklärt, dass die Wahl sich nicht um Programme dreht, sondern um die Frage: "Wer sind die Amerikaner? Die republikanischen Führer entziehen ihrem Kandidaten, Donald Trump, nicht wegen politischen Themen ihre Unterstützung, sondern wegen seinem persönlichen Verhalten. Unserem Autor zufolge waren die Amerikaner bisher aus unterschiedlichen Gegenden kommende Einwanderer, die akzeptierten, sich der Ideologie einer bestimmten Gemeinschaft unterzuordnen. Das ist dieses Modell, das jetzt allmählich zerfällt, mit der Gefahr das Land selbst zunichte zu machen.
Voltaire Netzwerk | Damaskus (Syrien) | 26. Oktober 2016 français Español italiano русский English Português ελληνικά Türkçe عربي 73% der millenaristischen Wähler (d.h. jene die an das baldige Ende der Welt glauben) weisen den republikanischen Kandidaten Trump zurück. 68% von ihnen halten die demokratische Kandidatin für fähiger, um die Mittelklasse zu verteidigen; 64% halten sie für besser in aussenpolitischen Fragen; 61% in ökonomischen Fragen. Während des Jahres der amerikanischen Wahl-Kampagne, die wir mitgemacht haben, hat sich die Rhetorik tiefgreifend verändert und zwischen den beiden Lagern ist eine unerwartete Spaltung aufgetaucht. Wenn anfangs die Kandidaten über wirkliche politische Themen sprachen (z. B. die Verteilung des Reichtums oder die nationale Sicherheit), geht es jetzt hauptsächlich um Sex und Geld.
Es ist diese Rede und nicht die politischen Fragen, die die republikanische Partei gesprengt hat - deren Hauptführer ihrem Kandidaten die Unterstützung entzogen - und die das politische Schachbrett neugestaltet hat, indem sie eine sehr alte zivilisatorische Kluft wieder auftauchen ließen. Auf der einen Seite will Frau Clinton politisch korrekt erscheinen, während auf der anderen Seite der "Donald" die Heuchelei der ehemaligen "First Lady" in Stücke reißt.
Auf der einen Seite fördert Hillary Clinton die Gleichberechtigung von Mann und Frau, obwohl sie nie gezögert hatte, Frauen, die wissen ließen mit ihrem Ehemann Sex gehabt zu haben, anzugreifen und zu beschmutzen; obwohl sie nicht für ihre persönlichen Qualitäten Kandidatin ist, sondern als Ehefrau des ehemaligen Präsidenten, und Donald Trump der Frauenfeindlichkeit beschuldigt, weil er aus seiner Vorliebe für Frauen keinen Hehl macht. Auf der anderen Seite prangert Donald Trump die Privatisierung des Staates an, die Erpresserbande von ausländischen Persönlichkeiten durch die Clinton-Stiftung, um einen Termin im Außenministerium zu bekommen; die Schaffung von ObamaCare, die nicht im Interesse der Bürger, sondern nur der Krankenversicherung ist; und er geht selbst so weit, um die Aufrichtigkeit des Wahlsystems in Frage zu stellen.
Ich weiß sehr wohl, dass die Ausdrucksweise von Donald Trump in der Tat Rassismus fördert, aber ich denke nicht, dass dies das Herzstück der Wahldebatte ist, trotz der von den Pro-Clinton Medien gemachten Hype.
Es ist nicht gleichgültig, dass während der Lewinsky-Affäre, Präsident Bill Clinton sich bei der Nation entschuldigt und Pastoren versammelt hat, um für seine Rettung zu beten. Während Donald Trump, für ähnliches Verhalten mit einer Audio-Aufnahme in Frage gestellt, sich nur bei den verletzten Personen entschuldigte, ohne Mitglieder des Klerus miteinzubeziehen.
Die aktuelle Spaltung greift die Revolte der Werte der Katholiken, Orthodoxen und Lutheraner gegen die Calvinisten wieder auf, die in den Vereinigten Staaten vor allem durch die Presbyterianer, Baptisten und Methodisten vertreten sind.
Wenn die beiden Kandidaten auch in puritanischer Tradition (Clinton als Methodistin und Trump als Presbyterianer) erzogen wurden, kehrte Frau Clinton erst nach dem Tod ihres Vaters zur Religion zurück und beteiligt sich heute an der Gebetsgruppe des Stabschefs der Streitkräfte, the family, während Herr Trump eine mehr innerliche Spiritualität ausübt und selten in den Tempel geht.
Natürlich ist niemand in seinem Muster eingesperrt, in dem er aufgewachsen ist. Aber wenn wir ohne zu denken handeln, reproduzieren wir es ohne dessen bewusst zu sein. Die Frage des religiösen Umfeldes kann also für jedermann wichtig sein.
Um zu verstehen, worum es geht, muss man ins England des 17. Jahrhunderts zurückgehen. Oliver Cromwell stürzte König Charles I. mit einem militärischen Staatsstreich. Er behauptete, eine Republik zu etablieren, die Seele des Landes zu reinigen und ließ den ehemaligen Souveränen enthaupten. Er schuf ein sektiererisches Regime, inspiriert von den Ideen von Calvin, massakrierte massenweise die irischen Papisten und verhängte einen puritanischen Lebensstil. Er entwarf auch den Zionismus: Er rief die Juden nach England zurück und war das erste Staatsoberhaupt der Welt, das die Schaffung eines jüdischen Staates in Palästina befürwortete. Diese blutige Episode ist als der "erste britische Bürgerkrieg" bekannt.
Nach der Restauration der Monarchie flohen Cromwells Puritaner aus England. Sie ließen sich in den Niederlanden nieder, von wo manche von ihnen auf der Mayflower nach Amerika (die "Pilger") fuhren, während andere die Gemeinschaft der Afrikaneer im südlichen Afrika gründeten. Während des Unabhängigkeitskrieges der Vereinigten Staaten im 18. Jahrhundert erlebte man wieder die Konfrontation der Calvinisten gegen die britische Monarchie, die man in den derzeitigen britischen Geschichtsbüchern als "zweiten Bürgerkrieg" bezeichnet.
Im 19. Jahrhundert fand der Sezessionskrieg statt zwischen den Staaten des Südens (hauptsächlich von katholischen Siedlern bewohnt) und den des Norden (eher von protestantischen Siedlern bewohnt). Die Geschichte der Gewinner stellt diese Auseinandersetzung als einen Kampf für die Freiheit von der Sklaverei dar, was reine Propaganda ist (die südlichen Staaten schafften die Sklaverei während des Krieges ab, als sie ein Bündnis mit der britischen Monarchie schlossen). In der Tat war die Konfrontation jene der Puritaner mit dem englischen Thron, Grund, dass einige Historiker hier über den "Dritten britischen Bürgerkrieg“ sprechen.
Während des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts schien dieser innere Kampf der britischen Zivilisation überholt, außer dem Wiederaufleben der Puritaner im Vereinigten Königreich mit den "nicht-konformen Christen" von Premierminister David Lloyd George. Letztere teilten Irland und versprachen eine "jüdische nationale Heimstätte" in Palästina zu schaffen.
Wie auch immer, einer der Berater von Richard Nixon, Kevin Phillips, hat diesen Bürgerkriegen eine voluminöse Arbeit gewidmet und festgestellt, dass keines der Probleme gelöst war und hat eine vierte Runde angekündigt [ 1 ].
Die Anhänger der reformierten calvinistischen Kirchen, seit 40 Jahren mit überwältigender Mehrheit Wähler für die Republikaner, unterstützen von nun an die Demokraten.
Ich habe keinen Zweifel, dass Frau Clinton der nächste Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten werden wird, oder, dass wenn Herr Trump gewählt wurde, er schnell beseitigt werden würde. Aber in wenigen Monaten gab es eine breite Wahl-Umverteilung auf einem Hintergrund des demografischen irreversiblen Wandels. Die Puritaner Kirchen bedeuten insgesamt nur mehr ein Viertel der Bevölkerung und fallen in das demokratische Lager. Ihr Modell erscheint als ein historischer Unfall. Es verschwand in Südafrika und wird nicht viel länger überleben, weder in den USA noch in Israel.
Jenseits der Präsidentschaftswahl muss sich die US-Gesellschaft schnell entwickeln oder wird sich wieder zerreißen. In einem Land, wo die Jugend massiv den Einfluss der puritanischen Prediger ablehnt, ist es nicht möglich, das Thema der Gleichstellung aufzuschieben. Die Puritaner erwägen eine Gesellschaft, wo alle Menschen gleich sind, aber nicht gleichwertig. Lord Cromwell wollte eine Republik für die Engländer, aber erst, nachdem er die irischen Papisten niedergemacht hatte. Es sind derzeit in den Vereinigten Staaten alle Bürger vor dem Gesetz gleich, aber im Namen der gleichen Texte verurteilen die Gerichte systematisch Schwarze, während sie für Weiße, die entsprechende Straftaten begangen haben, mildernde Umstände finden. Und in der Mehrzahl der Staaten genügt eine strafrechtliche Verurteilung, ja selbst ein Geschwindigkeitsüberschreitung, um das Wahlrecht zu verlieren. Infolgedessen sind schwarz und weiß gleich, aber in einigen Bundesstaaten hat die Mehrheit der schwarzen Männer ihr Wahlrecht verloren. Das Paradigma von diesem Gedanken in der Außenpolitik, ist die "zwei-Staaten-Lösung" in Palästina: gleich, aber vor allem nicht gleichwertig.
Das ist das puritanische Denken, das die Verwaltungen des Pastors Carter, von Reagan, von Bush (Senior und Junior sind zwei direkte Nachfahren der Pilgerväter), von Clinton und Obama dazu führte, den Wahhabismus zu unterstützen, im Widerspruch mit den Idealen ihres Landes und heute selbst Daesch zu unterstützen.
Einst gründeten die Pilgerväter Gemeinschaften in Plymouth und Boston, die im kollektiven amerikanischen Gedächtnis idealisiert wurden. Die Historiker sind sich jedoch einig, sie sagten, das "neue Israel" zu bilden und wählten das "Gesetz von Moses". Sie setzten kein Kreuz in ihre Tempel, sondern die Tafeln des Gesetzes. Obwohl Christen, legen sie mehr Wert auf die jüdischen Schriften als auf die Evangelien. Sie zwangen ihre Frauen, ihren Kopf zu verschleiern und führten wieder körperliche Züchtigung ein.
Thierry Meyssan Übersetzung
Horst Frohlich | 0 |
JERUSALEM — The Syrian armed forces fired antiaircraft missiles at Israeli warplanes that had struck targets deep in Syria early Friday, in what appeared to be the most serious clash between the two militaries since the start of the Syrian civil war six years ago. The Syrian Army’s General Command asserted that its forces downed one of four Israeli aircraft that conducted operations around the ancient city of Palmyra, and hit another, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported. The Israeli military denied that assertion, saying in a statement that “at no point was the safety of Israeli civilians or the I. A. F. aircraft compromised,” referring to the Israeli Air Force. Activists opposed to the government of President Bashar ridiculed the Syrian Army’s assertion, sharing a post on social media showing the “evidence”: a photograph of a paper plane, singed at the edges, with crude drawings of a Star of David on its wings. A few months ago, Syria claimed, falsely, to have downed an Israeli warplane and a drone with missiles during a border clash. This time, however, the Syrian missiles set off Israeli air raid sirens and aerial defense systems in the Jordan Valley, and the Israeli military said its Arrow air defense system had intercepted one of the missiles that appeared to be heading toward Israeli territory — the first confirmed operational use of that antimissile system. While the Israeli aircraft may have escaped unscathed, the sirens and explosions served to thrust Israel’s yearslong shadow war in Syria uncomfortably into the limelight. Israel has repeatedly declared its neutrality in the struggle between Mr. Assad of Syria and rebel forces. At the same time, Israel has been carrying out a covert campaign to prevent the transfer of sophisticated weapons from Syrian territory to Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite organization that is aiding Mr. Assad, and against which Israel fought a fierce monthlong war in 2006. While Israel has made no secret of its policy of acting to prevent such transfers of weapons, it had thus far assiduously refused to confirm or deny involvement in any particular strikes, preferring to maintain ambiguity in the hope of lowering the pressure on the other side to retaliate. The only strikes Israel had been willing to acknowledge carrying out were those against Syrian positions near the frontier on the Golan Heights in retaliation for spillover from the Syrian civil war into territory. The Israeli military did not elaborate on the precise location or nature of the weapons stores it struck on Friday, either, but the sirens and explosions heard by civilians in the Jordan Valley — and even in parts of Jerusalem — demanded some sort of an explanation. The Israeli military stated laconically, but unusually, that its warplanes had “targeted several targets in Syria. ” SANA, citing a statement from the Syrian Army’s General Command, said the strikes had hit a military site near Palmyra, in the eastern countryside of Homs Province. Describing the incursion as a “blatant Israeli act of aggression,” the statement accused Israel of acting to support Islamic State “terrorist gangs” to raise their morale in their fight against the forces and divert attention from Syrian Army victories. | 1 |
Dr. David Duke and Andrew Anglin Red Pill and White Pill our People in an hour of ultimate Political Incorrectness! November 11, 2016 at 11:01 am
Dr. David Duke and Andrew Anglin Red Pill and White Pill our People in an hour of ultimate Political Incorrectness!
Today Dr. Duke had Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin as his guest for the hour. They talked about what needs to be done by the new Trump administration.
They also talked about the double standards of morality applied to whites and non-whites. While whites will forever be condemned by the Jewish cultural overlords for slavery and the holocaust, the massive crimes that were perpetrated by Aztecs, Zulus, Turks, Arabs, and others during the same historical time period are completely glossed over.
This is a great show to spread to your friends over the weekend.
Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern. | 0 |
Trump’s Slim Chance for Greatness November 15, 2016
Special Report: Donald Trump’s unlikely victory created the opportunity to finally break with the orthodoxy of Washington’s neocon/liberal-hawk foreign policy, but can Trump find enough fresh thinkers to do the job, asks Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Donald Trump must decide – and decide quickly – whether he wants to be a great U.S. President or a robo-signature machine affixing his name to whatever legislation comes from congressional Republicans and a nodding figurehead acquiescing to more neoconservative foreign policy adventures.
Or, to put it in a vernacular that Trump might use, does he want to be “Paul Ryan’s bitch” on domestic policies? And does he want to surrender his foreign policy to the “wise guys” of Washington’s neocon establishment. Donald Trump speaking with supporters in Phoenix, Arizona. June 18, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
Trump’s problem is that he has few fully developed ideas about how to proceed in a presidency that even many of his close followers did not expect would happen. Plus, over the past few decades, the neocons and their liberal-hawk sidekicks have marginalized almost every dissenting expert, including old-line “realists” who once were important figures.
So, the bench of “confirmable” experts who have dissented on neocon/liberal-hawk policies is very thin. To find national security leaders who would break with the prevailing “group thinks,” Trump would have go outside normal channels and take a risk on some fresh thinkers.
But most mainstream media accounts doubt that he will. That is why speculation has centered on Trump settling on several neocon retreads for Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, such as former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former CIA Director James Woolsey and ex-National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, all staunch supporters of George W. Bush’s disastrous Iraq War which Trump has denounced.
‘Team of Rivals’
If Trump is guided in that direction, he will make the same mistake that President Barack Obama made during the 2008 transition when Obama was seduced by the idea of a Lincoln-esque “Team of Rivals” and staffed key top national security jobs with hawks — keeping Bush’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates , hiring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and leaving in place top generals, such as David Petraeus .
That decision trapped the inexperienced Obama into a policy of continuity with Bush’s wars and related policies, such as domestic spying, rather than enabling Obama to achieve his promised “change.”
Faced with powerful “rivals” within his own administration, Obama was maneuvered into an ill-considered “counterinsurgency” escalation in Afghanistan in 2009 that did little more than get another 1,000 U.S. soldiers killed along with many more Afghans.
Secretary Clinton also sold out the elected progressive president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, when he was ousted in a coup in 2009, signaling to Latin America that “El Norte” hadn’t changed much.
Then, Clinton sabotaged Obama’s first attempt in 2010 to enlist the help of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to work out a deal with Iran on constraining its nuclear program. Clinton favored an escalating confrontation with Iran along the lines dictated by Israeli hardliners.
Clinton and the other hawks succeeded in thwarting Obama’s will because, as Gates wrote in his memoir Duty , Gates and Clinton were “un-fireable” in that they could challenge Obama whenever they wished while realizing that Obama would have to pay an unacceptably high price to remove them.
As clever “inside players,” Gates, Clinton and Petraeus also understood that if Obama balked at their policy prescriptions, they could undercut him by going to friends in the mainstream news media and leaking information about how Obama was “weak” in not supporting a more warlike approach to problems.
Obama’s Real Weakness
Yet, by failing to stand up to this neocon/liberal-hawk pressure , Obama did make himself weak. Essentially, he never got control of his foreign policy and even after the Gates-Clinton-Petraeus trio was gone by the start of Obama’s second term, the President still feared angering Washington’s foreign policy establishment which often followed the heed of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. President Barack Obama stands with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the President’s official arrival ceremony in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Obama was so worried about Israel that, at the apex of his power after winning reelection in 2012, Obama went on a several-day trip to visit Netanyahu in a craven attempt to show his love and obeisance to Israel. Obama took similar trips to Saudi Arabia.
Still, that was not enough to spare him the wrath of Netanyahu and the Saudi royals when Obama finally pushed successfully for an Iran nuclear deal in 2014. Netanyahu humiliated Obama by accepting a Republican invitation in 2015 to speak to a joint session of Congress where he urged U.S. lawmakers to repudiate their own President.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia demanded and got new concessions from Obama on arms sales and his grudging support for their proxy war in Syria as well as their direct aerial bombardment of Yemen – both part of a Sunni Wahhabist sectarian strategy for destroying Shiite-related regimes. (The Sunni/Shiite clash dates back to the Seventh Century.)
Indeed, the little-recognized Israeli-Saudi alliance targeting the so-called “Shiite crescent” – Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Iran – is at the heart of what has been driving U.S. policy in the Middle East since the 1990s.
And, if President-elect Trump wants to truly reverse the downward spiral of the United States as it has squandered trillions of dollars in futile Mideast wars, he will have to go up against the Israeli-Saudi tandem and make it clear that he will not be manipulated as Obama was. Saudi King Salman bids farewell to President Barack Obama at Erga Palace after a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Facing down such a powerful coalition of Israel (with its extraordinary U.S. lobbying apparatus) and Saudi Arabia (with its far-reaching financial clout) would require both imagination and courage. It would not be possible if Trump surrounds himself with senior advisers under the thumb of Prime Minister Netanyahu and King Salman.
So, we will learn a great deal about whether Trump is a real player or just a pretender when he selects his foreign policy team. Will he find imaginative new thinkers who can break the disastrous cycles of Mideast wars and reduce tensions with Russia or will he just tap into the usual suspects of Republican orthodoxy?
Sunlight on the Swamp
Trump could also show his independence from Republican orthodoxy by recognizing that government secrecy has gone way too far, a drift into opacity that dates back to Ronald Reagan and his reversal of the more open-government policies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
Trump says he wants to “drain the swamp” of Washington, but to do that first requires letting in much more sunlight and sharing much more information with the American people.
For starters – assuming that the timid Obama won’t take the risk – President Trump could pardon national security whistleblowers who have faced or could face prosecution, such as Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, John Kiriakou, Jeffrey Sterling and Edward Snowden.
That could be followed by an executive order forbidding excessive secrecy inside the federal government, recognizing that “We the People” are the nation’s true sovereigns and thus deserve as much information as possible while protecting necessary secrets.
Trump could show he means business about respecting average American citizens by sharing with them U.S. intelligence assessments on key controversies, such as the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack in Syria and the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. [See here and here. ]
The Obama administration has engaged in selective release of information about these mysteries to manipulate U.S. public opinion, not to inform and thus empower the American people. Trump could go a long way toward restoring public trust by renouncing such tricks.
He also could save many billions of dollars by shutting down U.S. propaganda agencies whose role also is to use various P.R. tricks to shape both foreign and domestic opinion, often in the cause of “regime changes” or “color revolutions.”
Trump could shut down the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy , return the U.S. Agency for International Development to its legitimate purpose of helping poor countries build schools and drill wells, and shutter the trouble-making National Endowment for Democracy .
By steering the world away from the New Cold War with nuclear-armed Russia, Trump could not only help save the future of mankind, he could save trillions of dollars that otherwise would end up in the pockets of the Military-Industrial Complex.
FDR or Coolidge?
Regarding domestic policy, some Republicans expect that Trump will simply sign off on whatever Ayn-Rand-inspired legislation that House Speaker Ryan pushes through Congress, whether turning Medicare into a voucher program or privatizing Social Security. President Franklin Roosevelt
In this area, too, Trump will have to decide whether he wants to be a great president in the mold of Franklin Roosevelt or someone more of the caliber of Calvin Coolidge.
Trump also must face the reality that he has lost the popular vote by a rather significant margin – almost a million votes in the latest tallies – and thus only has the presidency because of the archaic Electoral College. In other words, he lacks a real mandate from the people.
When confronted with a similar situation in 2000, George W. Bush chose to pretend that he had a decisive mandate for his right-wing policies, shoved them down the Democrats’ throats (such as his massive tax cut mostly for the rich that wiped out the budget surplus), and eventually saw his failed presidency sink into bitter partisanship.
Republicans will surely urge Trump to do the same, to ignore the popular vote, but he might do well to surprise people by looking for overlapping areas where Democrats and Republicans can cooperate.
For instance, many Democrats fear that Trump will undo the difficult progress made on climate change over the past eight years. After all, Trump has voiced doubts about the scientific consensus on the existential threat posed by global warming.
But Trump also wants to invest heavily in America’s infrastructure (plus he has vowed to help the inner cities). So, there’s potential common ground if Trump were to launch a major program to create a world-class mass transit system for urban and suburban areas.
Trump might even turn to one of his critics, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for Transportation Secretary with instructions to study mass transit in Japan and Europe and implement a similar system in the United States, quickly. Besides creating jobs and improving life for urban dwellers (who largely supported Hillary Clinton), quality and fast mass transit could get millions of Americans out of their cars and thus help in the fight against global warming, too.
To demonstrate a willingness to reach across the aisle on such important issues, Trump might even consider offering Energy Secretary to Al Gore.
But such bold steps would require Trump to have the courage and creativity to go against the Republican “playbook” which calls for a zero-sum game against the Democrats.
Whether Trump has such courage and foresight is the pressing question of the moment. Will he go for true greatness (both for himself and America) or will he be content to have his name and face on one of those place mats showing the 45 U.S. Presidents?
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ). | 0 |
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An influx of up to 300, 000 migrant children could overwhelm the German school system and lead to a ghettoisation of German classrooms, hindering attempts at integration. [The German Philological Association is warning German lawmakers that there could be up to 300, 000 migrants entering the school system and schools are totally unprepared. Meidinger, head of the Philological Association and the Gymnasium teachers’ union said “there is too little state support for this mammoth task” and claimed politicians had little understanding of the real issues, Die Welt reports. “Politicians believe that they have done their homework with the new formation of thousands of classes and the recruitment of 13, 000 teachers,” Mr. Meidinger said. He warned, “The transfer of children from welcome language learning to transition classes in mainstream schools has massive problems and deficiencies. ” Meidinger also noted that many of the migrant students and their families tend to live neighbourhoods already largely populated with migrants and that is reflected in the schools they go to. “The social and ethnic segregation that we know is a source of poison for both successful school and social integration. It threatens a ghettoisation in the school system. ” The comments echo a study published in December that revealed migrants were increasingly becoming more insular, rather than integrating. The largest obstacle for any teachers of migrant children is the language barrier. Meidinger said due to the language issue many of the teachers and school leaders have said the overall education outcomes of migrant children will likely suffer. Education is an important pillar for integration into German society in both a cultural and economic sense. Some academics and experts have already warned that migrants and their children will likely be a drain on the economy rather than a benefit. Education for migrants in Germany is estimated to cost more than €3 billion (£2. 55 billion) per year. Recent reports have shown the number of migrants in the German school system is rapidly increasing and has doubled in the last five years. Despite the large increase, the percentage of migrants who actually manage to finish school has gone from only 38 per cent to 43 per cent. A teacher in Austria warned migrants are on track to becoming a “lost generation” due to the difficulty they have in learning the German language. She said that it was likely the migrants would be under the care of the state most of their lives. She was silenced by the Education Ministry due to her comments. | 1 |
A heated social media battle between singer Chris Brown and rapper Soulja Boy will apparently now be settled in a reported $1 million celebrity boxing match. [“It’s going down! ,” Soulja Boy wrote on Instagram announcing the fight. “Signed my contract I’m leaving the fight with $1, 000, 000. ” Soulja Boy, whose real name is DeAndre Cortez Way, also said the fight is being promoted by world champion boxing great Floyd Mayweather Jr. and is being promoting by his Mayweather Promotions. It’s going down! Signed my contract I’m leaving the fight with $1, 000, 000 I got the best ever my big bro @floydmayweather training me damn😈👊🏾 #TMT #SODMG March in Vegas !! On TV, A photo posted by Soulja Boy (@souljaboy) on Jan 4, 2017 at 9:19pm PST, Brown confirmed the fight from his Instagram account. “Now that we have your undivided attention. Boxing match set. Legally,” the “Royalty” singer wrote. “We in the ring. Take your bets now. Challenged accepted. Earlier this week, rapper and professional boxing promoter 50 Cent encouraged Soulja Boy to settle his beef with Brown in the ring. “Tell Soulja I said stop apologizing,” 50 Cent wrote on Instagram. “Get the Draco out build up the hype for the fight. ” The New York rapper confirmed the event Wednesday in a Instagram post. “Mayweather promotions is gonna promote the fight. This is the shut up, or put the money up challenge. ” We talking money now, BIG MONEY CHAMP said he will take the bet. Mayweather promotions is gonna promote the fight. This is the shut up, or put the money up challenge. #wherethebagat, A video posted by 50 Cent (@50cent) on Jan 4, 2017 at 4:26pm PST, Maywheather shared a promotional digital flyer for the fight on Thursday. The graphic says the fight will to place in March in Las Vegas and will be available on . Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 1 |
November 16, 2016
For many years men have struggled buying clothes that are not a suit or a pair of jeans, but finally we have made some progress. A team of scientists gathered from Oxford, Cambridge and John Lewis are said to be near to a clear definition of ‘smart casual’– somewhere equidistant between bland and gimp.
Said one customer: ‘I just want something that says fun, breezy – capable of attending a swingers a party but not afraid to put his socks in alphabetical order. The kind of guy who undoes his top button, but knows his way around a spreadsheet or double moka’. | 0 |
Following the implementation of a policy promising a crackdown on “fake news,” Google has banned as many as 200 publishers from one of their ad networks in just under 2 months. [Recode reports that many publishers have been banned from the Google AdSense network, which allows website owners to place Google approved on their website in exchange for royalties and aims to deliver appropriate ads based on the website’s content. A new policy change prohibits sites that mislead users with their content, resulting in over 200 websites being banned from the network. Google also reported that they removed 1. 7 billion ads for policy violations in 2016 compared to 780 million in 2015. Google indicated a combination of advertiser behaviour and improved automatic detection of policy violations led to the increase. Google also cracked down on websites that posed as legitimated tabloid newspapers only to redirect users to purchase pages for diet and health supplements. Approximately 1300 of these websites were suspended in 2016. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com | 1 |
On Thursday’s “Mike Gallagher Show,” Senator Lindsey Graham ( ) vowed that he would do “Whatever it takes” to get Judge Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and that if the Democrats filibuster Gorsuch, “we would have to change the rules to have the Supreme Court like everybody else. ” Graham said [relevant remarks begin around 2:00] that if there was a filibuster on Gorsuch, it would be “because politics has taken over reason, and that would be a shame. ” When asked if he would have to use the nuclear option if there was a filibuster, Graham answered, “Whatever it takes to get him on the court, I will do. ” He further stated, “[I]f my Democratic colleagues choose to filibuster this guy, then they will be telling me that they don’t accept the election results, 306 electoral votes, that they’re trying to delegitimize President Trump, and that’s not right, and we would have to change the rules to have the Supreme Court like everybody else. ” Graham further said that he thinks there are Democrats who will vote for Gorsuch, and “I hope we can get 60 votes and not change years of history. ” He continued, “I will do whatever’s necessary, and I’ve been a pretty balanced guy, and enough is enough. ” ( and audio via CNN) Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
Although the Federal Drug Administration is thought to serve American consumers by keeping them safe and well-informed, they are doing just the opposite by controlling the media and science press in... | 0 |
worldtruth.tv/36-signs-the-media-is-lying-to-you-about-how-radiation-from-fukushima-is-affecting-the-west-coast In 2011, an Earthquake caused a Tsunami that killed nearly 16,000 people in Japan and caused an estimated 210 billion dollars in damage, making it one of the costliest natural disasters in history. When a Fukushima power plant was hit by the tsunami, it began releasing the largest amount of radioactive materials. Now, 3 years later, there are serious concerns about the levels of radiation contamination leaking not only into Japan, but also into the Pacific Ocean and beyond. Seems like to me that mainstream media does not even want to cover this topic nor do they want to warn the masses. Instead they are working hard on suppressing the truth from getting out to the public. This video brings you an inside look into what’s really going on in Fukushima – and you may be extremely surprised by what you see and hear. Please SHARE this powerful video. This Video Is Shocking The Entire World From Around the Web Founder of WorldTruth.Tv and WomansVibe.com Eddie ( 8944 Posts )
Eddie L. is the founder and owner of www.WorldTruth.TV. and www.Womansvibe.com. Both website are dedicated to educating and informing people with articles on powerful and concealed information from around the world. I have spent the last 36+ years researching Bible, History, Alternative Health, Secret Societies, Symbolism and many other topics that are not reported by mainstream media. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials. American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election. The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation. But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public. The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump. On the Russian side, the contacts also included members of the government outside of the intelligence services, they said. All of the current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the continuing investigation is classified. The officials said that one of the advisers picked up on the calls was Paul Manafort, who was Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman for several months last year and had worked as a political consultant in Ukraine. The officials declined to identify the other Trump associates on the calls. The call logs and intercepted communications are part of a larger trove of information that the F. B. I. is sifting through as it investigates the links between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russian government, as well as the hacking of the D. N. C. according to federal law enforcement officials. As part of its inquiry, the F. B. I. has obtained banking and travel records and conducted interviews, the officials said. Mr. Manafort, who has not been charged with any crimes, dismissed the officials’ accounts in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “This is absurd,” he said. “I have no idea what this is referring to. I have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers, and I have never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration or any other issues under investigation today. ” He added, “It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer. ’” Several of Mr. Trump’s associates, like Mr. Manafort, have done business in Russia. And it is not unusual for American businessmen to come in contact with foreign intelligence officials, sometimes unwittingly, in countries like Russia and Ukraine, where the spy services are deeply embedded in society. Law enforcement officials did not say to what extent the contacts might have been about business. The officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, the identity of the Russian intelligence officials who participated, and how many of Mr. Trump’s advisers were talking to the Russians. It is also unclear whether the conversations had anything to do with Mr. Trump himself. A report from American intelligence agencies that was made public in January concluded that the Russian government had intervened in the election in part to help Mr. Trump, but did not address whether any members of the Trump campaign had participated in the effort. The intercepted calls are different from the wiretapped conversations last year between Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, and Sergey I. Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States. In those calls, which led to Mr. Flynn’s resignation on Monday night, the two men discussed sanctions that the Obama administration imposed on Russia in December. But the cases are part of American intelligence and law enforcement agencies’ routine electronic surveillance of the communications of foreign officials. The F. B. I. declined to comment. The White House also declined to comment Tuesday night, but earlier in the day, the press secretary, Sean Spicer, stood by Mr. Trump’s previous comments that nobody from his campaign had contact with Russian officials before the election. “There’s nothing that would conclude me that anything different has changed with respect to that time period,” Mr. Spicer said in response to a question. Two days after the election in November, Sergei A. Ryabkov, the deputy Russian foreign minister, said “there were contacts” during the campaign between Russian officials and Mr. Trump’s team. “Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage,” Mr. Ryabkov told Russia’s Interfax news agency. The Trump transition team denied Mr. Ryabkov’s statement. “This is not accurate,” Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said at the time. The National Security Agency, which monitors the communications of foreign intelligence services, initially captured the calls between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russians as part of routine foreign surveillance. After that, the F. B. I. asked the N. S. A. to collect as much information as possible about the Russian operatives on the phone calls, and to search through troves of previous intercepted communications that had not been analyzed. The F. B. I. has closely examined at least three other people close to Mr. Trump, although it is unclear if their calls were intercepted. They are Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative and Mr. Flynn. All of the men have strongly denied that they had any improper contacts with Russian officials. As part of the inquiry, the F. B. I. is also trying to assess the credibility of the information contained in a dossier that was given to the bureau last year by a former British intelligence operative. The dossier contained a raft of allegations of a broad conspiracy between Mr. Trump, his associates and the Russian government. It also included unsubstantiated claims that the Russians had embarrassing videos that could be used to blackmail Mr. Trump. The F. B. I. has spent several months investigating the leads in the dossier, but has yet to confirm any of its most explosive claims. Senior F. B. I. officials believe that the former British intelligence officer who compiled the dossier, Christopher Steele, has a credible track record, and he briefed investigators last year about how he obtained the information. One American law enforcement official said that F. B. I. agents had made contact with some of Mr. Steele’s sources. The agency’s investigation of Mr. Manafort began last spring as an outgrowth of a criminal investigation into his work for a political party in Ukraine and for the country’s former president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. It has focused on why he was in such close contact with Russian and Ukrainian intelligence officials. The bureau did not have enough evidence to obtain a warrant for a wiretap of Mr. Manafort’s communications, but it had the N. S. A. scrutinize the communications of Ukrainian officials he had met. The F. B. I. investigation is proceeding at the same time that separate investigations into Russian interference in the election are gaining momentum on Capitol Hill. Those investigations, by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, are examining not only the Russian hacking but also any contacts that Mr. Trump’s team had with Russian officials during the campaign. On Tuesday, top Republican lawmakers said that Mr. Flynn should be one focus of the investigation, and that he should be called to testify before Congress. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the news about Mr. Flynn underscored “how many questions still remain unanswered to the American people more than three months after Election Day, including who was aware of what, and when. ” Mr. Warner said Mr. Flynn’s resignation would not stop the committee “from continuing to investigate General Flynn, or any other campaign official who may have had inappropriate and improper contacts with Russian officials prior to the election. ” | 1 |
“So should I cash out of the stock market?” This is the question I’ve heard from several friends in the last few months. I get a few emails in this vein every time the stock market hits new highs, as it did on Friday. They are worried that the combination of high share prices and an erratic president mean that the only direction for stocks is down. They are considering shifting some of their assets into cash or bonds. The short and safe answer to give them is: “I don’t know. ” But there’s also a long answer. Letting one’s political opinions shape investing decisions is a good way to lose money. Whether a given chunk of your savings should be in stocks, bonds or cash depends on your appetite for risk and when you’re going to need that money. It shouldn’t be shaped by whether you love or hate the current occupant of the White House. We all have a tendency to fall for motivated reasoning. If you think President Trump and his policies are bad, there’s a natural tendency to think that this will soon be reflected in share prices. That could turn out to be true. But politics makes us stupid. It can cause us to overweight the risks and perils we want to see, and underweight the possibility that, at least in terms of markets, things could go quite well. First, much of the movement in stocks has little to do with what the president of the United States does. It would be silly to credit Bill Clinton with the boom that took place during his presidency, or to blame George W. Bush for the collapse of it. But even when the action in Washington is driving markets, it is easy to be blinded by your political opinions. The response to the financial crisis by the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve in early 2009 succeeded at ending the recession and setting the United States economy on an expansion that continues to this day. Conservatives tended to malign the stock market rally every step of the way. But those who put their money where their mouth was — that is, into cash instead of stocks — lost out on a 182 percent gain in the Standard Poor’s 500 during the Obama presidency. Liberals are just as susceptible to this motivated reasoning. Barry Ritholtz of Ritholtz Wealth Management recalls hearing friends in the hedge fund industry confidently assert in 2003 that the Bush tax cuts would be bad for markets by blowing out the budget deficit and failing to create jobs. Instead, the stock market rose steadily from that point until late 2007. There’s certainly no guarantee that the stock market will continue to rise under the Trump administration. There are ways that the outlook for investors could get better, and also plenty of ways for them to get worse. It’s very likely there will be corporate tax cuts and deregulation, both of which benefit companies’ bottom lines in a pretty direct and measurable way. It is optimism about those policy priorities that has driven the market rally since Election Day. Throw in some extra government spending on the military and public infrastructure, and you have a recipe for speedier growth. Maybe the pragmatic, figures in the Trump administration will prevail in internal battles, meaning that, whatever you think of the broader policy agenda, there could be boom times for corporate bottom lines. There are, of course, darker possibilities. President Trump could spark a trade war that could turn into a global recession. Military conflict could break out with a major trading partner like China or could disrupt oil supplies in the Middle East. And a small crisis could spiral into something bigger because of Mr. Trump’s management style. Whatever probability you assign to positive and negative outcomes, it’s hard to dispute that the range of possibilities for what the global economy will look like in four years is uncommonly large. All else being equal, more variation in the economic future means that stocks are riskier. It’s also true that by many measures stock valuations are high. Investing $100 in the S. .P 500 buys only about $4. 69 in annual earnings, down from $5. 06 before the election. There is always the possibility of a major correction — something that would be true no matter who was in the Oval Office. If that scares you, your money probably shouldn’t be in the stock market. If you are planning to tap into those investments in the next few years and a 25 percent drop would be devastating, that’s all the more reason to limit your exposure to the market. Stocks tend to offer good returns, but can deliver low or negative returns for many years at a time. Moving money out of stocks because you need it within the next few years and can’t stomach that kind of risk is one thing. But making a move just because you lack confidence in President Trump could be a case of letting ideology trump investing discipline. | 1 |
link So this is from an Argentinian conference Assange spoke with via telephone. He states Hillary campaign (or pro-Hillary government) attempted to attack Wikileaks servers. Assange claimed the release “whipped up a crazed hornet’s nest atmosphere in the Hillary Clinton campaign” leading them to attack WikiLeaks. “They attacked our servers and attempted hacking attacks and there is an amazing ongoing campaign where state documents were put in the UN and British courts to accuse me of being both a Russian spy and a pedophile,” he added. He also added that he does not think the Podesta emails will have an impact, adding the influence of MSM pushing Hillary. The Podesta emails will make no difference to the election result, according to Assange. “I don’t think there’s any chance of Donald Trump winning the election, even with the amazing material we are publishing, because most of the media organizations are strongly aligned with Hillary Clinton,” he said. sorry this is RT, but many won't cover this Interesting considering he implied he would have a bombshell before the election. This whole situation is so hard to read, with talks of Wikileaks being compromised, or pressure on to Ecuador trickling down to Assange. Just thought I'd share. | 0 |
AT&T sold access to customer data to law enforcement – report Published time: 26 Oct, 2016 18:10 Get short URL © Shannon Stapleton / Reuters New documents show telecommunications giant AT&T sold customer data to local law enforcement departments for a record-making $100k to $1 million last year. The company is currently seeking a $85 billion acquisition deal for Time Warner.
Documents show the telecommunications giant was not only working with US Drug Enforcement Agency but routinely sold customer data to local police departments who were investigating a range of crimes from murder to Medicaid fraud. The documents were first reported by The Daily Beast. AT&T provides the leads, then investigators just happen to find the exact same evidence through police work: https://t.co/d01Uc4iWYm — The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) October 25, 2016
Under its secretive program called Hemisphere, AT&T could search trillions of call records and analyze cellular data to determine where a target is located, with whom they speak and potentially why.
The documents also show the company only required an administrative subpoena, a lower-level legal document which – unlike a search warrant – does not require authorization from a judge. Police departments paid anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million a year for access to the Hemisphere program. Under the agreement, police were prohibited from disclosing use of the program to the public or even in court.
“Like other communications companies, if a government agency seeks customer call records through a subpoena, court order or other mandatory legal process, we are required by law to provide this non-content information, such as the phone numbers and the date and time of call,” AT&T told the Beast in a statement. Must read: AT&T spying on citizens to make millions mining data for police & govt surveillance w/o a warrant https://t.co/VDSqCwOqL7 pic.twitter.com/NWe1tjJC7W — Anna Massoglia (@annalecta) October 25, 2016
Because of the ban on disclosing the existence of the Hemisphere program, law enforcement agencies were covering their bases by later seeking a court order for a wiretap, or trailing a suspect to gather evidence equivalent to what they had acquired through Hemisphere.
Unlike other telecommunications providers, AT&T stores metadata – call time, duration, location data – of its customers going back to 2008. AT&T was one of the first companies to be exposed for its role in government surveillance when it shared its customer’s metadata with the NSA.
Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician and whistleblower, revealed details about the NSA installing network hardware at a San Francisco, California site known at Room 641A to monitor, capture and process American telecommunications, beginning in 2002.
“I knew this wasn’t legal because the NSA is not supposed to do domestic spying,” Klein told RT in an interview in 2015. He said the engineering documents showed “they were tapping into the main data flow on the internet and sending that data down to the secret room.”
“I knew that was totally illegal. The apparatus itself did not provide for any kind of selection it was just a vacuum cleaner sweep of everything. That violates the Fourth Amendment right there which requires warrants for specific information,” Klein said.
AT&T was also known to have a “partnership” – through its Hemisphere program – with the DEA for the purpose of counter-narcotics operations.
The revelations come as AT&T’s proposed $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner has surveillance critics and privacy advocates alarmed.
Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, told the Daily Beast he opposed the merger because it would allow AT&T "to use Time Warner’s content as bait to invade every aspect of the lives and habits of its nearly 30 million wired customers of its broadband and television services – many through its DirecTV subsidiary – and its more than 100 million wireless subscribers."
“It’s commercial surveillance,” Chester told the Beast, noting that through mobile devices, AT&T can even pinpoint the geographical locations of users. | 0 |
The 2016 US Presidential election has seen a coming together of hard-core Bush-era neocons and the anti-Bush liberal-left in support of the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The unofficial coalition, which looks likely to help propel the Democratic nominee to the White House (if the polls are to believed), will have surprised many, but it’s not the first time self-identified progressives have – wittingly or unwittingly – aided the cause of the most reactionary people in western politics.
The neocons: a group of ultra-hawkish hard-right imperialists, who are quite happy for the US to illegally invade other sovereign states and drop bombs all over the world. The liberal-left: who profess their support for human rights, internationalism and progressive causes.
At first sight, these two groups don’t appear to have much in common. But the truth is the liberal-left have for a long time been the accomplices of the endless war lobby.
Think back to 1999 and the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia. Never mind that the Balkan state was a multi-party democracy that operated an economy with very high levels of public/social ownership: the liberal-left cheered as bombs rained down on Belgrade, Nis and Kragujevac . Many ‘progressives’ swallowed hook, line and sinker the lurid claims of a ‘genocide’ being committed in the province of Kosovo, which were later dismissed by a UN court.
Although it was promoted as a ‘humanitarian’ venture, the bombing of Yugoslavia was in fact a hard-right project pushed by fiercely anti-socialist/anti-communist Cold War warriors.
It’s worth noting the names on the Executive Committee of the ‘Balkan Action Committee’ which lobbied hard for war against Yugoslavia in 1999. They included Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld – three men we would all hear a lot more from in the build-up to war with Iraq.
The liberal-left were also broadly on board for the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, an assault we were told would greatly help women’s rights.
However, in 2003, there was a break between most of the liberal-left and the neocons over the invasion of Iraq. This military aggression, unlike the one against Yugoslavia, was led by a Republican president. George W. Bush, the man at the helm, was too much of a Texan ‘redneck’ for educated liberal-leftists to support.
Progressives who had no problem with backing an illegal war against Yugoslavia, found they did have a problem backing an illegal war against Iraq.
In the end, the only ‘liberals’ who supported the Iraq invasion were neo-cons masquerading as liberals, and we all saw through their disguise.
In 2011, though it was ‘business as usual’ for the neocon/liberal-left alliance as a ‘nice’ Democrat administration helped destroy Libya – the country which had the highest living standards in Africa – and whose ‘tyrannical’ government provided free health care, education, and electricity to all of its citizens.
Again, this was a military assault which was pushed by neocons, the same crowd who’d lobbied for war against Yugoslavia and Iraq. Once again the liberal-left didn’t seem to notice, or indeed to care, who was behind it.
The toppling of Muammar Gaddafi (the latest neocon-designated ‘New Hitler’ who was hell-bent on ‘genocide’), would lead to a more democratic Libya with major advances in human rights, liberal-leftists assured us. In fact, the NATO attack on Libya turned the country into a failed state and a haven for jihadists.
Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State in 2011, played a prominent role in the destruction of Libya – so much so that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in a recent interview with John Pilger, has labelled it ‘Hillary’s war.’
But Libya has been quietly forgotten during the Presidential election campaign, as indeed has the Iraq war.
Liberal-leftists who couldn’t bear the sight of George W. Bush are lining up with pro-Iraq war hawks to try and get HRC elected.
Film-maker Michael Moore, who made the fiercely anti-Bush documentary, Fahrenheit 9-11, finds himself on the same side as Bush’s speechwriter David Frum and Robert Kagan, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century. That would have seemed unthinkable a few years back, but it’s happening today, folks.
Why are America’s liberal-left doing this? It’s not as if Trump or Clinton are the only options: Dr Jill Stein’s policies on social justice, war and peace, and climate change are far more progressive than Clinton’s. Why, instead of backing Stein, are they enabling Washington’s war lobby again, just as they did in 1999 and in 2011 during the bombing of Libya? Don’t they ever learn their lesson? How naive are liberals to be fooled by the sudden neo-con concern for ‘women’s rights’ and the rights of immigrants and gay people?
Make no mistake, the PNAC crowd are backing Clinton, not because they are appalled at sexist/racist or politically incorrect statements made by Donald Trump, but because they believe HRC will be the candidate who is more likely to continue the policy of endless war. More specifically, in regards to Syria, they want a US President who will prioritize on toppling the secular government of President Assad – not defeating ISIS. Trump’s great ‘crime’ in their eyes is that he does want to prioritize on ISIS – and horror of horrors – to work with Russia to defeat terrorism.
As America goes to the polls today, the stakes could not be higher. Clinton’s support for the imposition of a No-Fly Zone against Russian and Syrian aircraft risks starting World War Three, and the deaths of potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.
Is that what the ‘progressives’ who are lining up with the destroyers of Iraq really want?
Source
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LONDON — A camerawoman who was captured on video kicking and attempting to trip migrants near the border in the fall was charged on Wednesday with “breach of peace,” Hungarian prosecutors said, adding that her actions had not been motivated by bias or racism. Footage of the camerawoman, Petra Laszlo, who was filming migrants as they were being chased by police officers, spread quickly on social media, adding to Hungary’s reputation for hostility toward the thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Asia. The charge, breach of peace, is defined in Hungarian law as antisocial, violent behavior capable of inciting indignation or alarm, and it carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison unless there are aggravating circumstances. Ms. Laszlo was carrying a camera and wearing a surgical mask in September 2015 when she kicked two migrants and then awkwardly threw out her leg toward a man later identified as Osama Abdul Mohsen, a Syrian refugee, who was holding his child. According to an indictment released by the chief prosecutor in the county of Csongrad in southern Hungary, however, she did not make contact with Mr. Mohsen and he fell as he “wrenched himself out from the grip” of a police officer. The evidence did not suggest that Ms. Laszlo could have caused injury, the indictment said, and there was nothing to indicate that she was motivated by “ethnic considerations” or “by the migrant status of the victims. ” Ms. Laszlo apologized but has maintained that she was used as a tool to vilify Hungary’s attitude toward migrants. She was also immediately fired by her employer, N1TV, a channel affiliated with the far right. “We are faced with a modern European folk tale,” she told the weekly Heti Valasz after the incident. “On one side is the Nazi witch, on the other the anguished asylum seeker, who has a furnished home waiting for him in Spain and whose child is passing with Cristiano Ronaldo,” she said, referring to the welcome Mr. Mohsen received in Spain after the story spread. Ms. Laszlo also repeated unfounded accusations that Mr. Mohsen was a member of a terrorist organization. It was unclear whether Ms. Laszlo, who has been avoiding publicity since the episode, would appear in court. A date for the trial has not yet been established. | 1 |
Water Protectors Begin Hunger Strike In Support of Standing Rock Nov 23, 2016 1 0
“Either we die or this pipeline dies” is the message being sent from three water protectors in Iowa who are calling on the Iowa Utilities Board to shut down the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline that is running through Iowa.
The group of three began fasting on Monday morning and said they will continue until the Iowa Utilities Board shuts down the pipeline. Ed Fallon gives a speech to oppose the pipeline.
Ruby Montoya, who is the group’s spokesperson, said that more people are expected to join the hunger strike and that will will go on until “they starve to death or until the IUB does their job.”
She added that this is “a desperate act for a dire time.”
The group continues to maintain that the IUB failed to protect Iowa farmland and that the consequences of when, not if, the pipeline breaks will be catastrophic.
One of the hunger strikers, Jessica Reznicek, said:
“When the pipeline breaks, the whole state of Iowa will be fasting. It’s time the Iowa Utilities Board do the right thing and shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline.” George McCloskey meditates with other water protectors.
Hunger strikes have been long known as peaceful ways to protest certain actions, as Mahatma Gandhi completed 17 hunger strikes in India’s freedom movement throughout his lifetime. This method of protesting was paramount to Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence.
As many know, the protection of water at Standing Rock is intensifying though more help is soon to arrive with the announcement that former military veterans are organizing a movement from December 4th-7th to create an unarmed militia at Standing Rock to “defend the water protectors from assault and intimidation at the hands of militarized police force and DAPL security.” Veterans from the U.S. Army, United States Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard will be present, as well as Representative Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii, who is also a military veteran. The group has a Facebook page called Veterans Stand for Standing Rock and is encouraged to be shared with fellow veterans who want to go or who might be interested in going. So far, there is about 700 veterans confirmed to be in attendance.
Additionally, hacktivists have joined in on the movement as Anonymous has taken down the company’s website who is selling tear gas canisters, concussion grenades and other weapons to the militarized police forces.
Veteran Wes Clark Jr. said that this resistance starting December 4th is “the most important event up to this time in human history. We’re not going to go out there and get in a fight with anyone. They can feel free to beat us up, but we’re 100% nonviolence.”
Indeed, that time will be incredibly important and momentous. Will militarized police continue the behavior they’ve been enacting to former military veterans? How will the police act when they see former veterans dressed in their uniforms marching peacefully? We approach a possible turning point for the ages. While we don’t know what will happen during those days just yet, we can put the intention out there that these police drop their weapons and side with the people’s voice: which is for this pipeline to not only be stopped, but removed from the Earth.
The revolution is happening right before our eyes.
Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science and does health coaching through his website Orgonlight Health . You can follow the Orgonlight Health facebook page or visit the website for more information and other inspiring articles. | 0 |
You are here: Home / political cartoon / Why Ambassador Stevens Had a Hard Time Getting Through to Hillary Why Ambassador Stevens Had a Hard Time Getting Through to Hillary October 28, 2016
Robert Gehl reports that when one of Hillary Clinton’s political cronies referred to the four Americans killed in the Benghazi attacks as “ the four guys ,” most Americans couldn’t believe it.
And when Mike Pence found out about it, he couldn’t stay silent.
Via Breitbart and WikiLeaks , we learned about the dismissive term that Clinton advisor Mandy Grunwald used for the four American heroes. She wouldn’t even mention their names (Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, Sean Smith and Ambassador Chris Stevens).
She was talking about a discussion to include the Benghazi attacks as opening statements for a speech:
Seems odd to put the tributes to the four guys into this statement, since it is mostly the repackaged testimony. We can’t overdo the tributes to them and I think they should be done in person.
Thx
Grunwald Communications
Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence didn’t respond well, Breitbart reports :
“This just came out today…when her staff was preparing her for testimony, an opening statement for the select committee on Benghazi, one of them actually mentioned in an email that she shouldn’t focus too much on the ‘four guys’ who were killed,” said Pence.
“Those were not four guys. Those were four American heroes,” Pence said to shouts of affirmation and applause.
“When she was questioned about the reason for the attacks she actually said of those four American heroes, she actually said, ‘What difference, at this point, does it make?’
He continued, “Let me tell you something, I’m a father of a United States Marine. Anybody who said that, anybody who did that, should be disqualified from ever serving as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.”
“It was Hillary Clinton who left Americans in harm’s way in Benghazi,” Pence remarked to the New Hampshire crowd earlier in his address.
Clinton and her staff’s dismissiveness of these four heroes – who she was responsible for – is absolutely unforgivable . | 0 |
WASHINGTON — As the United States braces for an especially bloody summer fighting season in Afghanistan, President Obama inched closer this week to allowing American forces to once again directly battle the Taliban, loosening restrictions on airstrikes and on ground combat in support of Afghan forces, the administration said on Friday. The president’s decision to expand the military’s mission just seven months before he leaves office signaled just how far the United States remains from achieving his goal of ending the American military role in Afghanistan. Under the new rules, airstrikes will no longer have to be justified as necessary to defend American troops. United States commanders will now be allowed to use air power against the Taliban when they see fit, Pentagon and administration officials said. American forces will also be permitted to accompany regular Afghan troops into combat against the Taliban. The guidelines reflect what has been apparent for months: American troops, primarily Special Operations forces, have continued to actively fight the Taliban since the declared end of the American combat mission in 2014. The Afghan Army and police, riddled by corruption and hampered by poor leadership, have proved outmatched by the Taliban. The Afghan government remains weak and unstable, despite tens of billions of dollars in American aid. Mr. Obama agreed to keep 9, 800 American troops in Afghanistan after 2014 on the condition that the bulk of the force be focused on training and advising Afghan security forces. A smaller component was set aside to target militants with international ambitions, such as operatives for Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The fight against the Taliban was intended to be left to Afghan forces, not Americans, who were supposed to strike the insurgents only if under direct threat. But in the 18 months since, the administration has allowed the rationale to be stretched to its limits. was used last month as the legal basis for the airstrike that killed the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, while he traveled in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan. The American officials insisted that the new rules would not pull United States troops back into the kind of daily fighting that they saw before the end of the combat mission in 2014. American troops will only be supporting Afghan forces, not replacing them, on the battlefield, the officials said. Ground commanders will decide when and where American forces will go into battle, but the idea is that it will happen only during crucial engagements, not ordinary skirmishes. “What this would allow is U. S. forces to be more proactive in supporting conventional Afghan forces as they take the fight to the Taliban,” the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said on Friday. “But when they’re accompanying, they continue to remain focused on the mission that they’ve been carrying out for almost two years. ” The military had been clamoring for months for the expanded authority to go after the Taliban, arguing that Afghanistan was growing perilously unstable. It has also pressed Mr. Obama to abandon plans to cut the number of American forces in Afghanistan by nearly half by the beginning of 2017. Mr. Earnest said that the new rules did not indicate that Mr. Obama would approve allowing more than 5, 500 troops to remain in Afghanistan. But the administration has yet to decide on precise troop numbers, said the Pentagon and administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House has not made any public announcements yet. The expanded mission for American troops is intended to help Afghan forces get through the summer fighting season, when warm weather opens the high mountain passes and insurgents can readily move between the battlefields of Afghanistan and their safe havens in Pakistan. Afghan forces struggled against the Taliban last summer, and the insurgents are expected to push even harder this year. | 1 |
BOLZANO, Italy — When the head of a small Italian museum called Detective Inspector Alexander Horn of the Munich Police, she asked him if he investigated cold cases. “Yes I do,” Inspector Horn said, recalling their conversation. “Well, I have the coldest case of all for you,” said Angelika Fleckinger, director of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, in Bolzano, Italy. The unknown victim, nicknamed Ötzi, has literally been in cold storage in her museum for a . Often called the Iceman, he is the world’s most perfectly preserved mummy, a Copper Age fellow who had been frozen inside a glacier along the northern Italian border with Austria until warming global temperatures melted the ice and two hikers discovered him in 1991. The cause of death remained uncertain until 10 years later, when an of the mummy pointed to foul play in the form of a flint arrowhead embedded in his back, just under his shoulder. But now, armed with a wealth of new scientific information that researchers have compiled, Inspector Horn has managed to piece together a remarkably detailed picture of what befell the Iceman on that fateful day around 3300 B. C. near the crest of the Ötztal Alps. “When I was first contacted with the idea, I thought it was too difficult, too much time has passed,” said Inspector Horn, a noted profiler. “But actually he’s in better condition than recent homicide victims I’ve worked on who have been found out in the open. ” There are a few mummies in the world as old as Ötzi, but none so well preserved. Most were ritually prepared, which usually meant removal of internal organs, preservation with chemicals or exposure to destructive desert conditions. The glacier not only froze Ötzi where he had died, but the high humidity of the ice also kept his organs and skin largely intact. “Imagine, we know the stomach contents of a person 5, 000 years ago,” Inspector Horn said. “In a lot of cases we are not able to do that even now. ” Those contents, as it turned out, were critical in determining with surprising precision what happened to Ötzi and even helped shed light on the possible motive of his killer. The more scientists learn, the more recognizable the Iceman becomes. He was 5 feet 5 inches tall (about average height for his time) weighed 110 pounds, had brown eyes and dark brown hair, and a size 7½ foot. He was about 45, give or take six years, respectably old for the late Neolithic age — but still in his prime. Ötzi had the physique of a man who did a lot of strenuous walking but little work there was hardly any fat on his body. He had all of his teeth, and between his two upper front teeth was a gap, an inherited condition known as diastema, which Madonna and Elton John also have. When viewed through the window of the museum’s freezer, where he is kept now, his hands not only appear unusually small, but they also show little sign of hard use, suggesting that Ötzi was no manual laborer. Every modern murder investigation relies heavily on forensic science, but in Ötzi’s case, the techniques have been particularly high tech, involving exotic specialties like archaeobotany and paleometallurgy. From examining traces of pollen in his digestive tract, scientists were able to place the date of Ötzi’s death at sometime in late spring or early summer. In his last two days, they found, he consumed three distinct meals and walked from an elevation of about 6, 500 feet, down to the valley floor and then up into the mountains again, where he was found at the crime site, 10, 500 feet up. On his body was one prominent wound, other than the one from the arrowhead: a deep cut in his right hand between the thumb and forefinger, down to the bone and potentially disabling. By the degree of healing seen on the wound, it was one to two days old. From this, Inspector Horn surmises that Ötzi may have come down to his village and become embroiled in a violent altercation. “It was a very active defensive wound, and interesting in the context that no other injuries are found on the body, no major bruises or stab wounds, so probably he was the winner of that fight, even possibly he killed the person who tried to attack him,” he said. Then he left, fully provisioned with food, the embers of a fire preserved in maple leaf wrappings inside a cylinder, and quite a lot of other equipment, most of it probably carried in a backpack with a wooden frame. For weapons he had only a flint dagger so small it seemed to be the Copper Age equivalent of a derringer, a stave for a bow that had not yet been completed and a beautifully crafted deerskin quiver with a dozen arrows, only two of them with arrowheads attached. Inspector Horn reckons Ötzi was in no hurry. At 10, 500 feet, he made what appeared to be a camp in a protected gully on the mountain saddle, spreading his belongings around and sitting down to his last meal. “Roughly half an hour before his death he was having a proper meal, even a heavy meal,” Inspector Horn said. The Copper Age menu was well balanced, consisting of ibex meat, smoked or raw einkorn wheat (an early domesticated variety) possibly in the form of bread some sort of fat, which might have been from bacon or cheese and bracken, a common fern. There is even evidence that some of his food was recently cooked. “If you’re in a rush and the first thing is to get away from someone trying to kill you, that’s not what you do,” he said. Ötzi’s longbow was only half a day’s work from completion, he added, but there was no sign that he was working on it at the time. Half an hour after Ötzi dined, the killer came along and shot him in the back from a distance of almost 100 feet. The arrow went under his left armpit and ripped through a roughly section of his subclavian artery, a wound that would have been quickly fatal and probably not treatable even in modern times, especially where it happened. By the angle of the wound, he was either shot from below and behind, or he had been bent forward when he was hit from above and behind. “The aim of the offender was to kill him, and he decides to take a shot — could be a learning effect from what happened one or two days before,” Inspector Horn said. “Which is pretty much what you see all the time nowadays. Most homicides are personal, and follow violence and an escalation of violence. I want to follow him, find him and kill him. All the emotions we have in homicide, these things have not died out in all these years. ” Robbery can certainly be ruled out, he said. Ötzi had a copper ax, a valuable artifact only rarely seen in burials of the period. His clothing and kit were a match for the harsh alpine climate, and probably valuable, made from the leather and fur of at least 10 animals of six species. “This was not a robbery gone bad or something,” Inspector Horn said clearly, the killer was trying to cover up his act. “You go back to your village with this unusual ax, it would be pretty obvious what had happened. ” Ötzi’s cold case continues to yield surprises to scientists in many disciplines who still are studying his remains. Last year, for example, they discovered that he was infected with an unusual strain of H. pylori, the bacteria believed responsible for ulcers today. There is one thing they are unlikely to discover, as Inspector Horn noted with a chuckle. “I’m not optimistic we’ll find the offender in Ötzi’s case. ” Both in life and in death, the Iceman seems uncannily familiar to his modern descendants, said the museum’s deputy director, Katharina Hersel. “He is so close to us. He uses the same equipment as we do when he goes to the mountain, just the materials are different,” she said. “And we are still killing each other, so maybe there hasn’t been so much evolution after all. ” | 1 |
Just hours before what would have been his 70th birthday, David Bowie resurfaced. A new video for one of Mr. Bowie’s final songs and a brief EP of previously released tracks were made available late on Saturday, almost exactly a year since the release of the musician’s final album, “Blackstar,” and days before the first anniversary of his death on Jan. 10. The video, for the song “No Plan,” was directed by Tom Hingston, who also worked with Mr. Bowie on videos for the songs “I’d Rather Be High (Venetian Mix)” and “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime). ” The clip features a ghostly row of television screens flashing the lyrics of Mr. Bowie’s song, which explores themes of disembodiment and confusion. Above the screens is a sign for Newton Electrical, a reference to Thomas Jerome Newton, Mr. Bowie’s character in the film “The Man Who Fell to Earth. ” That character was resurrected as the protagonist of “Lazarus,” a musical featuring Mr. Bowie’s songs that began its run in late 2015. All of the songs on the new EP were featured on the “Lazarus” cast recording released this fall. The EP, also called “No Plan,” includes “Lazarus” from “Blackstar,” as well as “No Plan,” “Killing a Little Time” and “When I Met You. ” The four songs, all of which were recorded during sessions for “Blackstar,” are Mr. Bowie’s final studio recordings. Mr. Bowie recorded “Blackstar” with the Donny McCaslin Quartet, a jazz combo he had scouted in Greenwich Village, from January to March 2014 at the Magic Shop in SoHo. In “David Bowie: The Last Five Years,” a new documentary exploring the final period of his career that was broadcast on the BBC on Saturday night, Johan Renck, the director of the “Lazarus” video, said Mr. Bowie had learned his cancer was terminal during the filming of the clip, three months before he died. Reacting to the new release on social media, fans celebrated and mourned the musician anew. “Happy Birthday, Starman,” one Twitter user wrote. “I miss you every single day. ” | 1 |
Donald Trump Likely to End Aid for Rebels Fighting Syrian Government
By DAVID E. SANGER November 13, " NYT " - WASHINGTON President-elect Donald J. Trump said Friday that he was likely to abandon the American effort to support moderate opposition groups in Syria who are battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad, saying we have no idea who these people are.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal that dealt largely with economic issues, including his willingness to retain parts of the Affordable Care Act, he repeated a position he took often during his campaign: that the United States should focus on defeating the Islamic State, and find common ground with the Syrians and their Russian backers.
Ive had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria, Mr. Trump told The Journal. My attitude was youre fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria.
His comments suggest that once Mr. Trump begins overseeing both the public support for the opposition groups, and a far larger covert effort run by the Central Intelligence Agency, he may wind down or abandon the effort. But there are in fact two wars going on simultaneously in Syria.
One is against the Islamic State, in which the United States is supporting 30,000 Syrian-Kurdish and Syrian-Arab fighters, who last weekend announced they were opening a new phase of the battle, beginning to encircle the ISIS capital in Raqqa. There are roughly 300 United States Special Operations forces on the ground assisting these militia.
The second effort is in support of rebels fighting Mr. Assad. The C.I.A. covert program is by far the largest conduit of support, providing antitank missiles to rebels fighting the government. That is the program that Mr. Trump seems most intent on ending. If the United States pursues that line, We end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria, Mr. Trump told The Journal.
The argument for ending the support may be bolstered by the fact that, as a matter of survival, those opposition groups have entered into battlefield alliances with the affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria, formerly known as Al Nusra. This has had the effect of allowing Mr. Assad and Russia to argue that they are attacking Al Qaeda, and the United States should aid them in that effort. Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged that argument during his ultimately failed effort to reach a deal for a cease-fire and an ultimate settlement.
Mr. Trumps the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend logic is consistent with what he said during the campaign. Im not saying Assad is a good man, cause hes not, he told The New York Times in an interview in March, but our far greater problem is not Assad, its ISIS.
But it also takes a position that will gratify President Vladimir V. Putin, because it suggests that rather than pressure Russia to end its support of Mr. Assad, a Trump administration will get out of Mr. Putins way.
In another hint of a major change in policy, one of Mr. Trumps primary national security advisers, Lt. General Michael T. Flynn, the retired head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, wrote in The Hill newspaper this week that the United States should extradite Fethullah Gulen who Turkey has demanded should be sent back from his exile in Pennsylvania. The Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed him for a coup attempt over the summer.
The Justice Department has not yet concluded that there is any convincing evidence that Mr. Gulen should be sent back to almost certain confinement or execution under an extradition treaty with the United States. They see the request as part of Mr. Erdogans effort to eliminate all opposition.
Mr. Flynn adopted many of Turkeys arguments about Mr. Gulen, arguing that American taxpayers are helping finance Gulens 160 charter schools in the United States, and that it is more important to support Turkey than be hoodwinked by this masked source of terror and instability nestled comfortably in our own backyard.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting. President Assad: Syria is ready to co-operate with Donald Trump : The US is currently enmeshed in a complicated alliance in Syria with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, who would like to provide rebels among them al-Qaeda-backed factions with surface-to-air missiles. What will Trump do on Syria?: The US should get out of the war in Syria and avoid destabilising more Middle Eastern countries, and the US should work with Putin to defeat terrorist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). | 0 |
Умные вещи, да дуракам достались! 16 ноября 2016 Общество
Многие крупные интернет-сервисы на территории США 21 октября 2016 года оказались недоступными. «Лежала» социальная сеть Twitter, стриминговый сервис Netflix, интернет-магазин Amazon и другие известные сайты. А все потому, что к интернету подключаются не только компьютеры и смартфоны, но и бытовые устройства. К сожалению, уязвимостями в их программном обеспечении активно пользуются злоумышленники.
«Умный дом» — это звучит настолько заманчиво, что так и хочется купить полный набор электронной домашней утвари, объединить эту кучу приборов в общую сеть и подключить к интернету. Можно сделать им доступ туда и поодиночке. Насколько станет легче жизнь, если задать этой аппаратуре программы или посылать на нее сигналы со смартфона, а там уж эти «умники» всё сами сделают.
Атаки хакеров на кофемолку и холодильник? Да кому нужно их взламывать! Оказывается, нужно – не сами тостеры и ростеры, конечно, а путь к денежкам их хозяев. Но это мелочи по сравнению с массированной атакой через электронные кастрюли и чайники на серверы хостингов целых штатов. Да-да, речь не об Индии или Мексике: там штаты-то имеются, а вот с изобилием приборов в лачугах напряженка. Злоумышленники развили свою бурную деятельность в США – богатейшей стране, где этих «умных вещей» как грязи.
А хакеры не дремлют! Не только вычищают у доверчивых пользователей счета, но и формируют себе из их холодильников и пылесосов разветвленные сети. А потом бац! – и всё восточное побережье Соединенных Штатов сидит без интернета… Великое множество взломанных соковыжималок, грилей и других подобных агрегатов одновременно отправляли на серверы хостингов терабайты никому не нужных данных, парализовавших 21 октября работу крупнейших сайтов.
Похоже на фантастический триллер, где самообучающиеся кухонные причиндалы идут строем на человечество? К счастью, до такого уровня в массе своей эта техника еще не дошла, но поползновения к этому имеются. Недаром у Германа Грефа, возглавляющего Сбербанк, возникли опасения по поводу развития так называемых «больших данных» и искусственного интеллекта. Дескать, эти данные о нас куда обширней, чем мы себе представляем, а машины порой понимают больше, чем закладывалось в них изначально.
Ладно, народ в Америке – как гласит поговорка – «прост до дури». Но ведь мошенники «положили» хорошо защищенные ресурсы… И что им стоит добраться до ядерной кнопки, если защиту Пентагона взламывают школьники? | 0 |
Republican Representatives and one Democrat are pushing legislation that would make Pennsylvania gun owners a “protected class. ”[Gun owners would be protected from discrimination by having their right to keep and bear arms firmly ensconced in the Pennsylvania Human Rights Act (PHRA). According to the Pennsylvania Record, the legislation — House Bill 38 — “is currently in committee,” but would protect employees from employers who want to ban firearms on workplace property. For example, HB 38 would bar such employers from preventing gun owners from keeping firearms in their cars that could be retrieved for . CeaseFirePA’s Shira Goodman opposes the proposed protections for Pennsylvania gun owners, saying, “The Second Amendment right is not overly burdened here, and so why (gun carriers) need to be in a protected class is just a little bit . ” She added, “It’s very easy to get a gun here. We’re an state, except for Philadelphia. It’s not very hard to get a concealed carry license. We don’t have waiting periods. We don’t have registration and license. ” Goodman made clear that employers ought to be able to ban employees from keeping guns for intimating that such bans can prevent “workplace violence” and “domestic instances spilling over into workplaces. ” She did not address the fact that businesses, elementary schools, and universities around the country have witnessed horrendous attacks wherein the citizens were sitting ducks rendered defenseless by employers school administrators or boards of regents. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart leNews 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 |
By Belén Fernández | FAIR PHOTO ABOVE: Hillary Clinton told Goldman Sachs that a no-fly zone is “going to kill a lot of Syrians.” (cc photo: Gage Skidmore) A s she marches toward the US presidency, Hillary Clinton has stepped up her promotion of the idea that a no-fly zone in Syria could “save lives” and “hasten the end of the conflict” that has devastated that country since 2011. It has now been revealed, of course, that Clinton hasn’t always expressed the same optimism about the no-fly zone in private. The Intercept (10/10/16 ) reported on Clinton’s recently leaked remarks in a closed-door speech to Goldman Sachs in 2013: To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk—you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians. Other relevant characters, such as US Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Joseph Dunford ( Daily Caller , 9/26/16 ), have warned that a no-fly zone in Syria would simply intensify the conflict—which presumably isn’t the best way to hasten its end. L uckily for those who prefer to rally around illogic, however, plenty of media have already rolled out the welcome mat for peddlers of the “humanitarian” vision of increased Western military interference in Syria. The New York Times ‘ Nicholas Kristof ( 10/6/16 ) argues against “Obama’s paralysis” and for “more robust strategies advocated by Hillary Clinton.” The New York Times ’ self-appointed savior of women , Nicholas Kristof ( 10/6/16 ), invoked the plight of a young Syrian girl in Aleppo to conclude that Obama’s alleged “paralysis” on Syria “has been linked to the loss of perhaps half a million lives” in the country, as well as to “the rise of extremist groups like the Islamic State,” among other unpleasant outcomes. We have no “excuse,” we’re told, for “failing to respond to mass atrocities.” Never mind that the rise of ISIS has much to do with that mass atrocity known as the US invasion of Iraq, thanks to which many young Iraqi girls and other human beings have suffered rape, mutilation and death. It’s convenient for certain industries, at least, when US weapons are deemed the solution for problems US weapons helped to create in the first place. Furthermore, plenty of US weapons continue to flow to countries known for arming and funding ISIS and similar outfits—an arrangement unlikely to be rectified by a no-fly zone targeting the Syrian government and the Russians. USA Today ( 10/8/16 ), meanwhile, ran an opinion piece by an American doctor who worked briefly at a now-destroyed hospital in Aleppo, arguing that the US “should lead the way in establishing real no-fly zones, either under United Nations auspices or with the British and the French”—because “otherwise, our inaction will continue to be an embarrassment and stand as an example of our spineless irresponsibility.” But considering that there has already been plenty of US action in Syria—including the mistaken “pulverization” of whole families with children—it would seem we’ve already exhibited a fair amount of lethal irresponsibility. Beyond the opinion pages, media figures are pushing the “humanitarian” approach with varying degrees of subtlety. Meet the Press host Chuck Todd ( 10/16/16 ) recently pressed Vice President Joe Biden on the lack of a no-fly zone over Aleppo, suggesting that the Obama administration will “look back and wonder what if? What if? What if? What if?” Of course, no campaign for saving lives with bombs would be complete without everyone’s favorite examples of feel-good destruction from the former Yugoslavia. The Washington Post ( 9/9/16 ) hosted an opinion by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first ambassador to the UN, Muhamed Sacirbey, straightforwardly headlined: “Western Military Intervention Saved Lives in Bosnia. It Can Work in Syria, Too.” Sacirbey warns that “Syria’s largest city is on the brink of starvation. Bombed from the skies and besieged on the ground, Aleppo’s 2 million residents may soon be exterminated.” Gone, apparently, are the days of factchecking, when someone at the Post might have alerted the author to the reality that the vast majority of Aleppo’s residents live in government-controlled areas and are thus not under attack by said government. Comparing Aleppo to besieged Sarajevo, Sacirbey determines that Sarajevans ultimately “escaped many of the horrors now awaiting Aleppo’s residents… because NATO opted (albeit belatedly and, too often, inadequately) to uphold its responsibility to protect Bosnian civilians.” After lauding Bosnia’s no-fly zone, Sacirbey pulls this prediction out of a hat: “Limited Syria would save civilian lives, perhaps as many as 200 a week.” In their indispensable essay for Monthly Review ( 10/07 ), “The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in In humanitarian Intervention (and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse),” Edward S. Herman and David Peterson make it unavoidably clear that the West’s business in Bosnia saving lives—and much to do with the contrary. The Bill Clinton administration, they note, actively sabotaged agreements to end the war at an earlier date, while “helping arm the Bosnian Muslims and Croatians and helping bring thousands of Mujahedin to fight in Bosnia.” America’s support in this case for jihadists—a secret alliance also discussed by scholar Tariq Ali ( Guardian , 9/9/06 )—further complicates the assumption that the US is somehow capable of fixing the current jihad problem. In predictable fashion, US media led the charge to the Bosnian intervention ( Extra! , 10-11/92 ), dutifully painting the Serbs as demonic aggressors, parroting inflated Bosnian casualty estimates and otherwise behaving as the official PR arm of the establishment. A similar performance was repeated shortly thereafter with Kosovo, where minimal regard was given to actual facts on the ground and the specter of Serbian-waged genocide was instead hysterically invoked. Noam Chomsky ( Monthly Review , 9/08 ) cited various reports, including from the British government, that the US-backed Kosovo Liberation Army was actually responsible for more killings than the Serbs in the run-up to NATO’s bombing campaign—a project that naturally also managed to kill several thousand people. While Yugoslavia has now been fully dismantled, the myth of Western humanitarian intervention there has emerged unscathed; in his recent dispatch on Syria, Kristof brought up Kosovo as an example of how “the military toolbox has saved lives.” To be sure, “saving lives” is a much nobler goal than, say, endowing NATO with a new lease on life or clearing the way for total neoliberal assault —two outcomes of the West’s Yugoslav ventures. Hence the utility, as Herman and Peterson write, of the “edifice of lies that serves and protects the Western interventions in the former Yugoslavia—and which laid the ideological foundations for the US role in Iraq and for future so-called humanitarian interventions.” In Syria’s brutal war, meanwhile, humanitarian motives will presumably be utilized as a veneer for pursuing more fundamental goals, like neutralizing resistance to US/Israeli regional designs and promoting that profitable sort of chaos that produces massive arms sales. And just as those in the West who failed to leap onto the bandwagon in Yugoslavia were denounced as “ apologists for genocide ” and the like, opponents of increased Western military action in Syria will be increasingly assailed as pro-Assad fanatics with Syrian blood on their hands. One strong candidate for fanatic-hood is Greg Shupak, who in a recent Jacobin magazine dispatch ( 10/20/16 ) dared to argue that a no-fly zone “would actually represent an escalation of war that is guaranteed to harm civilians in the name of protecting them.” Emphasizing that opposition to said zone is not meant in any way “to minimize or rationalize the torture, mass killings or severe sieges enacted by the Syrian state and its allies,” Shupak continues: “The imminent question, however, is not, ‘Is the Syrian government good?’; it’s ‘Should America drop more bombs on Syria?’” Because, at the end of the day, humanitarian war just isn’t humanly possible. PLEASE COMMENT AND DEBATE DIRECTLY ON OUR FACEBOOK GROUP CLICK HERE ABOUT THE AUTHOR Belén Fernández is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work and Martyrs Never Die: Travels through South Lebanon . | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Early in 2011, after a hectic visit to Yemen, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in the tranquil Arab sultanate of Oman. She was there to talk to Sultan Qaboos bin Said about an idea one of his envoys first pitched to the State Department in the spring of 2009: that Oman serve as a conduit for secret nuclear talks between the United States and Iran. Mrs. Clinton agreed to explore the proposal but was dubious that it would go anywhere. “Even under the best of circumstances,” she wrote later, “this was a long shot. ” It would be 18 months before she took up the sultan on his offer and dispatched a team of diplomats to Oman to meet with the Iranians. Mrs. Clinton, however, was not the only prominent American making discreet trips to Oman in those days. Senator John F. Kerry, then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later her successor as secretary of state, was holding his own meetings with Sultan Qaboos and his trusted emissary, a businessman named Salem ben Nasser . Mr. Kerry came away convinced that Oman could deliver Iranians who spoke for their top leaders, and he urged President Obama and Mrs. Clinton to open a back channel. “Hillary and company were skeptical,” he said in an interview. The president, on the other hand, was intrigued by the prospect of an Omani channel, twice telephoning the sultan to ask him about it. “He was genuinely curious about trying to find an approach to change the dynamic,” Mr. Kerry recalled. The Iran nuclear deal, signed last year after months of direct negotiations with Iranian officials, is likely to be remembered as Mr. Obama’s most consequential diplomatic achievement. In Mrs. Clinton’s campaign to succeed him, she is claiming her share of the credit for it. The multinational sanctions regime that she cobbled together helped pull Iran’s government to the bargaining table. The team she eventually sent to Oman, she likes to say, “set the table” for Mr. Kerry’s diplomatic banquet. But the story of Mrs. Clinton’s role is more complicated than her public account of it. Interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration officials paint a portrait of a highly cautious, ambivalent diplomat, less willing than Mr. Obama to take risks to open a dialogue with Iran and increasingly wary of Mr. Kerry’s freelance diplomacy. Her decision to send her own team, some officials said, was driven as much by her desire to corral Mr. Kerry as to engage the Iranians. Mrs. Clinton, who declined to comment for this article, worried that he was promising too much to lure the Iranians to the table — a worry shared by people in the White House. The senator’s aides, meanwhile, suspected that Mrs. Clinton was content to run out the clock on an opening. At one point, a frustrated Mr. Kerry told his chief of staff, David Wade, “If this is going to go anywhere, we have to get people in a room talking. ” Defenders of Mrs. Clinton say that her distrust of Iran was warranted, and that her success in lining up the sanctions makes her the best candidate to handle the next phase of the relationship: enforcing the nuclear agreement. “She’s built one coalition that was tremendously effective in imposing sanctions,” said Jake Sullivan, Mrs. Clinton’s top policy adviser at the State Department, who was a member of the team sent to Oman for the talks. “If it comes to it, she can rally the world to both deter and punish Iran. ” The secret history of the Iran nuclear diplomacy, parts of which have never been reported before, lays bare stark differences between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, going back to the 2008 campaign, over how to approach one of America’s most intractable foes. “They shared the same tactic, which was engagement, but they envisioned different endgames,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The president’s endgame was, ‘I’m a guy who can bridge differences. I’ve bridged races and countries all my life, so I’m going to be able to resolve this. ’” “Clinton had a more cynical view of the endgame,” he continued. “‘We’re going to engage them not because we think they’re going to reciprocate, but because when they rebuff us, it will expose the fact that the problem lies in Tehran, and not in Washington. ’” Few would have expected Mrs. Clinton to be in the vanguard of an overture to Iran. During the 2008 campaign, she ridiculed Mr. Obama’s pledge to hold talks with Iran’s leaders without preconditions. She warned Iran that if it ever launched a nuclear strike on Israel, the United States would “totally obliterate” it. Yet the secret channel’s origins go back to her own special adviser on Iran, Dennis B. Ross, who got a visit at the State Department on Memorial Day weekend in 2009 from Mr. Ismaily. He came bearing a sheet of paper outlining an offer by Iran to negotiate with the Obama administration on a range of issues, including the country’s nuclear program as well as its support for Hezbollah. As a general rule, Mr. Ross said, he viewed such proposals “not with a grain of salt, but a small ton of salt. ” But he had gotten to know the Omanis through his work on Middle East peace issues in the 1990s, and he knew their ties to the Iranians were genuine. He said he decided to pass along Mr. Ismaily’s proposal, with a cover memo, to Mrs. Clinton. She told Mr. Ross to keep talking to him. A few weeks later, the Iranian authorities cracked down brutally on antigovernment protesters, dashing Mr. Ismaily’s hopes to set up a channel and prompting the White House to shift from a strategy of engaging Tehran to one of pressuring it. Mrs. Clinton lobbied China and other countries in the United Nations Security Council to impose harsh new sanctions on Iran, a step widely seen as a crucial lever against the Iranians. Around that time, Mr. Ismaily got another chance to demonstrate his skills as an intermediary. He negotiated the release of three young Americans who had been arrested by Iranian guards while hiking on the border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan. Oman paid bail for the three hikers, roughly $500, 000 each. In December 2010, several weeks after the release of the first American, Mr. Ross and a senior official on the National Security Council, Puneet Talwar, secretly traveled to Oman to hear from Sultan Qaboos himself how he thought a channel could work. They were impressed by what the sultan told them: He had visited the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and was confident of the country’s seriousness in seeking a nuclear deal. The next January, Mrs. Clinton stopped in Muscat, the capital of Oman, for her own briefing. She expressed doubts that the Iranians could negotiate in good faith, but she agreed to put it to a test. Mr. Obama was more intrigued: He called Sultan Qaboos twice over the next few months to ask him about whether he could deliver Iranians who could speak with the authority of the supreme leader. The White House, intent on secrecy, did not disclose the calls. Mr. Kerry had long nourished the idea of opening lines of communication to Iran, and he saw his chance when he got involved in trying to free the hikers. That put him in contact with the sultan and his emissary. (Mr. Ismaily confirmed this account, but declined to speak on the record about his role in the nuclear talks.) Mr. Kerry visited Oman in late 2011 and the first half of 2012, spending hours with the sultan discussing the possibility of secret talks with Iran. He also met with Mr. Ismaily — sometimes in London and Rome, other times in Washington. Later, in a meeting with Mr. Obama in the Oval Office, Mr. Kerry told him that the only way to test its potential was to meet the Iranians. The State Department and the National Security Council, however, deliberated for months without making a decision. In his zeal to negotiations, Mr. Kerry passed several messages to the Iranians through Mr. Ismaily. The senator was coordinating his talking points with Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, with whom he had a close relationship. But his aggressive approach alarmed Mrs. Clinton, as well as people at the White House, several former officials said. They worried that Mr. Kerry had promised the Iranians concessions on enriching uranium that the White House was not yet willing to make. Mr. Kerry, these officials said, indicated to the Iranians that the United States would acknowledge, at the outset of the talks, that Iran had a right to enrich uranium for a civil program. Iran had long demanded that concession, claiming it was guaranteed by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But the United States had steadfastly refused, and the Obama administration was, at that moment, debating how and when to relax that position. Mr. Kerry denies ever signaling to Iran that it had a right to enrich. “We made it crystal clear to them,” he said. At the same time, he held out to the Iranians the prospect of their having a peaceful nuclear program, and he was dismissive of in Israel and the United States who demanded that Iran dismantle its nuclear infrastructure. In the fragile atmosphere of early 2012, officials said, Mr. Kerry’s style came to be viewed as a liability. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama worried that the Iranians would believe Mr. Kerry was speaking for the president. Sometime that spring, Mr. Obama decided that it was time for the executive branch to take over the negotiations. Mr. Kerry did not protest, believing that he had taken the process as far as a senator could. Three years later in Vienna, as secretary of state, he would lead weeks of grinding talks that produced a final agreement. After she left the State Department, Mrs. Clinton diverged from Mr. Obama on a central tactical question: whether to impose harsh new sanctions on the Iranians after they elected Hassan Rouhani, who had run for president seeking better relations with the West to ease Iran’s economic isolation. Mrs. Clinton was swayed by many in Congress, as well as by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who argued Iran was so desperate for a deal that tightening the vise would have extracted better terms. “She would have squeezed them again,” a person who has worked with her for several years said, “and the only debate is what they would have done. ” Mr. Obama feared that ratcheting up the pressure would undercut Mr. Rouhani, unravel the sanctions coalition and doom his diplomatic efforts. He persuaded the Senate to hold off on new sanctions. Mrs. Clinton never made her differences with Mr. Obama public, and she has publicly endorsed his nuclear deal, though with more caveats than her former boss. “It’s not enough just to say yes to this deal,” she declared last October. “We have to say, ‘Yes, and.’ Yes, and we will enforce it with vigor and vigilance. Yes, and we will embed it in a broader strategy to confront Iran’s bad behavior in the region. Yes, and we will begin from Day 1 to set the conditions so Iran knows it will never be able to get a nuclear weapon. ” | 1 |
French presidential frontrunner Marine Le Pen has criticised the Pope for pressuring Western countries to open their borders to migrants, accusing him of asking states to disregard their own citizens. [In an interview with La Croix International, the leader of the Front National chided Pope Francis for asking “that states go against the interests of their own people by not placing conditions on the acceptance of significant numbers of migrants”. The added that, in her view, the Argentine cleric’s pronouncements on immigration exceed his role as a religious leader. “To me, this falls within the realm of politics and even interference, since he is also a head of state. ” Pope Francis is technically a foreign leader as Sovereign of the Vatican — a walled with some of the strictest immigration and citizenship rules in the world. Asked about her own religious views, Ms. Le Pen said: “I have a strong faith and I am fortunate in that I have never doubted it. “However, I admit that I am angry with the Church because I think that it interferes in everything except what it should really be concerned with,” she added. Ms. Le Pen also discussed a potential showdown with in the second round of the French elections with Emmanuel Macron, a politician in the mould of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “I have always said that I’d like to be up against Emmanuel Macron in the second round because then the choice will be ” she said. “He is an unashamed globalist who wants to speed up the total opening of borders, and the evisceration of France in favour of private and financial interests. “I, on the other hand, propose a return to the the most effective structure to ensure security, prosperity, and democracy, and to protect our identity. ” | 1 |
Council of Elders Intended to Set Up Anti-ISIS Coalition by Jason Ditz, October 31, 2016 Share This
ISIS has killed a number of Afghan tribal elders and wounded several more in Nangarhar Province’s main city of Jalalabad today, with a suicide bomber from the group targeting a meeting of the council of elders in the city.
The details are still scant, but ISIS claims that the council was established in part to discuss the formation of a tribal anti-ISIS coalition in the area. They claimed 15 killed and 25 wounded, labeling the victims “apostates.”
Afghan government officials put the toll a lot lower, saying only four were killed and seven wounded in the attack. Nangarhar is the main base of operations for ISIS forces in Afghanistan, though they’ve recently begun to pop up around several other provinces.
Whether the council was at the point of establishing an anti-ISIS coalition or not, this is in keeping with the group’s reaction to any sign of growing local resistance, with ISIS having similarly made an example of tribal groups in Iraq and Syria during their establishment there. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 0 |
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It's like we are back to the 1800s when the U.S. Army rampaged against Native American tribes across the American West. The militarized police and the use of the National Guard this week in responding to the Standing Rock Sioux Native American challenge in North Dakota to big oil and its dangerous pipelines reminds one of Custer's Last Stand against Sitting Bull.
In fact, the portrait of Sitting Bull is on one of the most popular t-shirts available to supporters of the "water protectors," as those are known who protest yet one more oil pipeline that crosses sensitive watershed areas and major rivers of the United States.
Four days last week, I joined hundreds of Native Americans and social justice campaigners from around the United States and around the world, in challenging the Dakota Access Pipe Line (DAPL), the 1,172-mile, $3.7 billion dollar scar across the face of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.
Last week, I photographed the area along Highway 6 south of Bismarck where the Energy Transfer Partnership contractors were busy digging the trench for the "Black Snake" as the pipeline is called. License DMCA - Advertisement -
I also counted 24 police cars returning to Bismarck at shift change around 3 p.m., a huge number of state law enforcement personnel and vehicles dedicated to protection of corporate business, instead of the rights of citizens.
Huge machines were chewing up the earth near water sources for all of North Dakota. The pipeline was rerouted from near Bismarck so if the pipeline breaks it would not endanger the water supply of the capital city of the state. But it was relocated to where it will cross the Missouri River and will jeopardize the water supply of the Native Americans and all Americans living in southern North Dakota and downstream of the Missouri River. Security forces protecting the Dakota Access pipeline construction spray protesters with pepper spray. License DMCA - Advertisement -
On Thursday, the digging took a more confrontational turn. The huge digging equipment arrived to cut across State Highway 1806 at a spot where water protectors had set up a front-line camp several months ago, one mile north of the main encampment of over 1,000 people. As the equipment arrived, the "water protectors" blocked the highway.
In a dangerous incident, an armed private security guard of DAPL came onto the camp and was chased off into the water abutting the camp by water protectors. After a lengthy standoff, tribal agency police arrived and arrested the security guard. Water protectors set his security vehicle on fire.
On Friday more than 100 local and state police and North Dakota National Guard arrested over 140 people who blocked the highway attempting to stop the destruction of the land. Police in riot gear with automatic rifles lined up across a highway, with multiple MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush protected military vehicles), a sound cannon that can immobilize persons nearby, Humvees driven by National Guardsmen, an armored police truck and a bulldozer.
Police used mace, pepper spray, tear gas and flash-bang grenades and bean-bag rounds against Native Americans who lined up on the highway. Police reportedly shot rubber bullets at their horses and wounded one rider and his horse.
As this police mayhem was unfolding, a small herd of buffalo stampeded across a nearby field, a strong symbolic signal to the water protectors who erupted in cheers and shouts, leaving law enforcement officials wondering what was happening. The security forces protecting the Dakota Access pipeline against protesters are heavily militarized. | 0 |
Where did all the rocker guys go? In recent years, women have almost completely taken over the most highly visible gig in American pop: the Super Bowl halftime show, 12 minutes of music beamed worldwide. It is a ratings magnet, a marketing tool, a sponsor’s flagship, a cultural event and, of course, a live performance with no second chances, to be applauded or ruthlessly dissected, virtually in real time, via every internet resource. This Sunday, the halftime for the 51st Super Bowl belongs to Lady Gaga, along with, if preview video clips can be trusted, dozens of dancers for a set that will include “Bad Romance. ” Lady Gaga has neither revealed any guests nor ruled out the possibility. Nor has she telegraphed whether her set will have any direct political messages. Lady Gaga has plenty to prove. Her 2016 album, “Joanne,” made a show of being more vulnerable and less glossy than her previous pop albums, bringing back the rock guitars she had welcomed on “Born This Way,” in 2011, and set aside on “Artpop,” in 2013. “Joanne” entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1 but faded fast its lead single, “Perfect Illusion,” fell short of the Top 10. But Lady Gaga is the kind of performer the Super Bowl has relied on since 2011: a veteran hitmaker who can put on a spectacle. It’s a job category dominated by women. Women have all but taken over the Super Bowl since the Who — working hard, looking weary — headlined in 2010. Female pop stars might seem to offer the yin to football players’ yang, but in the era, these women’s work requires its own athleticism, timing, discipline and unerring performance under pressure. Katy Perry, Madonna and Beyoncé have all presented themselves at the Super Bowl — as they do in their arena tours — as strong women, attended by masses of dancing disciples. Coldplay was the nominal headliner last year, but the N. F. L. hedged its bet on the band’s earnest British rock: It brought back Bruno Mars, who played in 2014, for part of the set and added 2013’s headliner, Beyoncé. And when Beyoncé strutted onto the field, performing “Formation,” with her dancers wearing Black berets and Afros, Coldplay’s performance might as well have vaporized rock was forgotten. (Beyoncé and her dancers also leveraged the Super Bowl exposure by posting photos with references to the Black Lives Matter movement and fists raised in the Black Power salute, roiling social media.) For much of the preceding decade, the radio format for most Super Bowl headliners had been classic rock: Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney, along with the Prince in 2007. The N. F. L. had decided to treat the Super Bowl halftime as a stadium concert, and these were acts with plenty of experience headlining stadiums. The Super Bowl simply added more lights and fireworks as the rockers performed a fraction of a concert. Besides Coldplay, the only other male headliner since the Who has been Bruno Mars (joined by the even more Red Hot Chili Peppers) who played halftime as a throwback to older stadium shows. The string of rockers in the early 2000s was also a reaction to the show in 2004 with Janet Jackson’s indelible “wardrobe malfunction,” which revealed less than what might have been seen any night on HBO, or on some red carpets, but which set off a moral panic. (Moral panics are part of the Super Bowl fun M. I. A. Madonna’s guest in 2012, started one by raising her middle finger to the camera.) Grizzled classic rockers, the N. F. L. might have reasoned, were less likely to be separated from their tops (though the Red Hot Chili Peppers arrived in 2014). But a major part of the impact of a stadium rock concert comes from being there as part of the crowd: feeling the power chords vibrating the bleachers, joining the singalongs, smelling the beer. But for the millions of viewers not in the stadium, the television experience is one of distance, and the perspective that of a more detached observer. The halftime show, unlike the game, doesn’t work best as a documentary of extreme physical exertion. Musicians are expected to work hard, too, but the N. F. L. came to realize that the halftime show is not so much a as a music video shot in one take — and pop stars, far more than rockers, have both the timing and the pizazz to please the camera as well as the local stadium audience. The Black Eyed Peas (led by Will. i. am but featuring the female singer Fergie) inaugurated the Super Bowl’s new pop era with a platoon of fluorescent, robotic dancers. Since then, female Super Bowl headliners have made it their business to take over not just a big stage but also the entire field, filling it with dancers and bestriding it with outsize processions. Filling the giant field also fills the home screen. Could Lady Gaga be the one to merge the Super Bowl stadium rock concert with the pop parade? It’s an ambition she has flirted with for years, and one that on “Joanne. ” Lady Gaga’s hits have been flamboyant, dance tunes, but she has never been shy about unleashing the kind of belting she brought to songs like “The Edge of Glory. ” On Sunday the Super Bowl may also rock again — with a lady at center stage. | 1 |
Former UN ambassador John Bolton discussed the Trump administration’s top foreign policy objectives with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Friday’s Breitbart News Daily, emphasizing that radical Islam and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction through unstable regimes like North Korea need to be the priorities for the Trump administration. [“If anyone had any doubt about how crazy the regime is in North Korea,” said Bolton, “we’ve seen the assassination of the president’s in Malaysia, police reporting this morning that he was apparently killed with VX nerve agent — cousin to Sarin gas, it’s a chemical weapon. ” Continued Bolton, “This is an indication of the irrationality and therefore the danger of the North Korean regime. The threats are how to deal with china and how to deal with Russia. ” Bolton spoke extensively about the complicated relationship between China and North Korea and how best to manage that aspect of America’s foreign policy in the Trump era. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
Kathy Griffin posed with the severed head of President Donald Trump in a bloody photo shoot for artist and photographer Tyler Shields this week. [In one image, obtained by TMZ, the My Life on the comedian looks directly into the camera while hoisting up Trump’s severed head, which is covered in dark red blood. According to the gossip outlet, Griffin joked during the photo shoot that she and Shields, who is known for his shocking artwork, would need to flee the country after the pictures came out, for fear of imprisonment. Griffin has been an outspoken critic of the president in October, the comedian and television personality cut a mock campaign which featured her repeatedly telling the presidential candidate to “f*ck off. ” The gruesome photo isn’t the first “artwork” to depict Trump being beheaded in August, a cartoon version of Trump had his head cut off in an issue of the comic book Spawn, while comedian George Lopez previously tweeted a cartoon image of notorious drug lord El Chapo beheading Trump in March of last year. The Los Shields posted updates about his new project with Griffin on his Twitter account Tuesday, including a video of their photo shoot, however the YouTube link to the video appeared to be broken as of Tuesday morning. KATHY GRIFFIN: https: . via @YouTube, — Tyler Shields (@tylershields) May 30, 2017, Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 1 |
Posted on October 31, 2016 by Baxter Dmitry in News , World // 0 Comments
Iceland kicked the FBI out of the country after learning the United States authorities lied to them about the purpose of their visit and were only there to gather information about WikiLeaks.
Ogmundur Jonasson, Iceland’s former minister of the interior, says he received an urgent message from the authorities in the United States saying that “ there was an imminent attack on Icelandic government databases ” by hackers, and that they would send FBI agents to investigate. RELATED CONTENT WikiLeaks: New Evidence Shows DNC Forced Bernie Out
However upon their arrival it became apparent that there was no imminent attack and the FBI agents were only there to secretly gather intelligence on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. “Eight or nine” FBI agents were then ordered to leave the country.
WikiLeaks has many members in Iceland, a nation of activists that has swept the anti-establishment Pirate Party to the verge of forming government with similar non-mainstream parties this weekend.
Birgitta Jonsdottir, the Pirate’s nominal leader, is a former WikiLeaks member who worked with Assange on the release of Collateral Murder in 2010.
The FBI has form when it comes to investigating WikiLeaks via Iceland. In December 2010, the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia requested Twitter account information for Jonsdottir. The subpoena cited a specific conspiracy provision that may have been aimed at those thought to have assisted Private Manning. Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Member of Parliament and former WikiLeaks associate.
Herbert Snorrason, a former WikiLeaks member once close to Assange, wrote on his website that he had been provided orders, unsealed on May 2, including a search warrant served on Google for “ all e-mail associated with my GMail account, every shred of information they had on my identity, and anything I’d uploaded to a Google service .”
Snorrason says the reason for the search warrant was “ because I had a conversation or a few with a white-haired Australian guy . These kinds of orders have been served on more of the people I know than I really care to think about. “
Another young activist, Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, told a closed session of Iceland’s Parliament in 2013 that he had been cooperating with United States agents investigating WikiLeaks. Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson (known as Siggi) with Julian Assange in London.
“ He was at the time going back and forwards going to meet Julian. They were trying to get him to go there wearing a wire ,” Jonsdottir said in an interview.
Ordering the FBI agents to leave proves the self-sufficient island nation does more than pay lip service to ideals of transparency and freedom. It is also a powerful display of sovereignty that suggests they will be true to their word regarding plans to grant citizenship to Edward Snowden.
When asked by reporters if they are worried that granting a haven to the NSA whistleblower might rile their NATO ally, the United States, Jonsdottir said, “ Well, we have done things that don’t make other nations happy before. Sometimes it’s a case of doing what is right versus what is easy. ” | 0 |
Delegation from India visited Kamaz 26 October 2016 RIR There are prospects of cooperation between India and the Russian auto giant. Facebook india , kamaz , cooperation
A delegation from the Indian company KLT Automotive & Tubular Products Ltd. visited the facilities of KAMAZ PJSC (member enterprise of State Corporation Rostec).
The purpose of the Indian manufacturer’s visit was to hold talks about the prospects of cooperation with the Russian auto giant. At the talks, the Indian side was represented by Bhavini Kishorebhai Thakkar, Managing Director of KLT Automotive, while KAMAZ was represented by its General Director Sergey Kogogin.
Indian guests visited the production lines of the engine plant, press and stamping, and automobile factories. During the visit, the delegation also visited the joint venture CUMMINS KAMAZ and the KAMAZ Scientific and Technical Center, where talks were also held.
The company KLT Automotive & Tubular Products Ltd. was founded in 1994. It manufactures automotive frames, spars and stiffeners, as well as tubular products. The company’s head office is located in Mumbai. In addition to production sites in India, KLT Automotive also has operations in South Africa. Facebook | 0 |
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and 2016 presidential candidate told graduates Friday at her alma mater, Wellesley College in Massachusetts, that she and her fellow students were “furious” when Richard Nixon was elected president but that he did not remain in office. [“By the way, we were furious about the past presidential election of a man whose presidency would eventually end in disgrace with his impeachment for obstruction of justice,” Clinton said, referring to President Richard M. Nixon. She continued by saying Nixon “[fired] the person running the investigation into him at the Department of Justice,” an obvious comparison to President Donald Trump, without naming him. She also told the graduates it is appropriate to be angry but that they should “harness” that anger and use it as a tool to accomplish their goals. Wellesley College’s president, Paula A. Johnson, introduced Clinton by saying she was the first woman nominated to be a presidential candidate for a “major” political party. “And she won the popular vote,” Johnson said. Clinton, whose presidential campaign slogan was “Stronger Together,” told the graduates about her new organization, “Onward Together,” which is “a new political action group that will provide support for progressive causes in the U. S.,” the Daily Kos reported this month. Clinton gave the commencement speech as a senior at Wellesley College 48 years ago. | 1 |
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MoveOn.org is a George Soros NGO…and George Soros NGOs have nothing to do with charity or justice, and everything to do with political leverage, and in extreme cases government insurrection.
We have seen Soros begin destructive movements to remove those he deems unsuitable to govern in a variety of countries, most recently in Ukraine, with the Soros sponsored Maidan coup.
Now it looks like Soros may be setting his sights on sabotaging the forthcoming Trump presidency.
We do know, thanks to Wikileaks, that George Soros was a huge supporter of Hillary Clinton, as Hillary Clinton was always looking out of George Soros’ best interests.
We are certain Trump’s victory is a bitter pill for globalist Soros to swallow. Between Putin and Trump, Soros may finally be starting to feel his power on the world stage falter.
We will see if MoveOn.org’s call to protest has legs, or if it will gradually fizzle and fade, in much the same way we can only hope Soros will eventually do.
NBC’s Katy Tur said…
“It’s surreal in NYC. People are walking around like zombies with thousand yard stares.”
Zerohedge reports …
Seemingly unwilling to accept the results of the democratic selection of the nation’s leader for the next four years, hundreds of grieving Hillary Clinton supporters – egged on by George Soros’ MoveOn.org – are laying siege to Trump Tower in New York City. Screaming “Fuck Donald Trump”, yelling “Not My President”, chanting “Pussy Grabs Back”, and burning the American flag, it appears these young millennials are just the kind of deplorables this country should be proud of…
MoveOn.org released this press release on Wednesday, calling on people to take to the streets:
Americans to Come Together in Hundreds Peaceful Gatherings of Solidarity, Resistance, and Resolve Following Election Results
Hundreds of Americans, dozens of organizations to gather peacefully outside the White House and in cities and towns nationwide to take a continued stand against misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia.
Tonight, thousands of Americans will come together at hundreds of peaceful gatherings in cities and towns across the nation, including outside the White House, following the results of Tuesday’s presidential election.
The gatherings – organized by MoveOn.org and allies – will affirm a continued rejection of Donald Trump’s bigotry, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and misogyny and demonstrate our resolve to fight together for the America we still believe is possible.
Within two hours of the call-to-action, MoveOn members had created more than 200 gatherings nationwide, with the number continuing to grow on Wednesday afternoon.
WHAT: Hundreds of peaceful gatherings of solidarity, resistance, and resolve nationwide
WHEN / WHERE: Find local gatherings here . Major gatherings include in New York City’s Columbus Circle and outside the White House in Washington, DC .
RSVP: Please email [email protected] to confirm attendance.
“This is a disaster. We fought our hearts out to avert this reality. But now it’s here,” MoveOn.org staff wrote to members on Wednesday. “The new president-elect and many of his most prominent supporters have targeted, demeaned, and threatened millions of us—and millions of our friends, family, and loved ones. Both chambers of Congress remain in Republican hands. We are entering an era of profound and unprecedented challenge, a time of danger for our communities and our country. In this moment, we have to take care of ourselves, our families, and our friends—especially those of us who are on the front lines facing hate, including Latinos, women, immigrants, refugees, Black people, Muslims, LGBT Americans, and so many others. And we need to make it clear that we will continue to stand together.” | 0 |
SANA, Yemen — Fighter jets from a military coalition repeatedly bombed a crowded reception hall in Sana where mourners were gathered after a funeral on Saturday, killing more than 100 people and wounding hundreds of others, according to Yemeni health officials and witnesses. The strikes destroyed the hall and so overwhelmed the city’s hospitals that the Health Ministry broadcast pleas on radio stations to summon doctors to help tend to the wounded, and families beseeched outside hospitals to donate blood. Yemeni officials said the scale of the carnage made it hard to quickly compile a complete death toll. Tamim a spokesman for the Health Ministry, said at least 104 people had been killed and 550 wounded. He added that the death toll was likely to rise, as rescuers were still working to remove bodies from the rubble. “There are charred bodies, and some were cut to shreds and couldn’t be identified,” Mr. Shami said, adding that children were among the victims. “Some of the people who were carried out of the hall were headless,” said Muhammad who lives near the hall and rushed there soon after the strikes. Others had “smashed legs,” he said. Mr. Hadrami said two nearly simultaneous strikes hit the hall, followed by a third about a minute later. Some rescue workers gathered outside the hall immediately after, scared to enter for fear of another strike. “It’s a very ugly massacre,” Mr. Hadrami said. Another witness reported four strikes spread over a slightly longer period of time. When asked about the strikes, Brig. Gen. Ahmed a spokesman for the coalition, wrote in a text message that coalition officials were aware of the reports and that it was possible there were other causes for the blasts. The Al Arabiya satellite network later reported that the coalition had not carried out any strikes near the hall. General Asiri confirmed that report. But in a statement, Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, blamed airstrikes for the destruction and said he was “shocked and outraged. ” Others shared videos on social media that appeared to show a strike from the air. The Saudi bombing campaign is more than a year old, but it has been eclipsed by the wars in Syria and Iraq, and has been largely ignored by world powers. If the death toll is confirmed, the strike on Saturday would be one of the deadliest of Yemen’s war. The war began when rebels, known as the Houthis, and their allies stormed into Sana, the capital, and forced the government into exile. Since then, the conflict has fallen into a grinding stalemate, with the Houthis controlling much of the north and forces nominally loyal to the exiled president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, in the south. A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia is seeking to restore Mr. Hadi’s government and has been bombing the Houthis. More than 9, 000 people have been killed, and many Yemenis have been pushed toward famine while extremist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State have taken advantage of the chaos to step up their operations. The strikes occurred in one of Sana’s most upscale districts, at a large reception hall that residents rent for weddings and to receive condolences after funerals. The funeral on Saturday was for the father of Galal a Houthi ally who serves as the interior minister. Mr. Rawishan was not killed in the strikes, but other officials were, including Abdulqader Hilal, the mayor of Sana. Videos posted online showed dead bodies strewn about the charred interior of the hall and streets filled with ambulances rushing the wounded to hospitals. Rima Kamal, a media officer with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Sana, said the group had donated 300 body bags as well as extra medical supplies to three hospitals to help them cope with the influx of dead and wounded. Eric Jeunot, the head of the Doctors Without Borders mission in Yemen, said that at least 400 people had been wounded in the attacks but that he was unsure of the death toll. “Many patients need surgery due to burns and trauma from shrapnel,” Mr. Jeunot wrote in a text message. “Some are still in critical situation in the hospitals. ” | 1 |
ORLANDO, Fla. — The corner of Kaley Street and South Orange Avenue offers a tableau of American déjà vu, a sprawl of Subways and so common in communities across the continent. This one just happens to include a gay nightclub popular with Latinos called Pulse, where gaping holes in the exterior now reflect the infliction of a national traumatic injury. It’s easy to see Orlando as a place apart, our sanctuary of fantasy and escape, where fun trumps work and mouse ears are an accepted fashion accessory. But when a deeply aggrieved, heavily armed man burst into this unremarkable nightclub planted beside a carwash, the ensuing mayhem did not seem to occur in some distant, disconnected place. Instead, it became a sobering of so much that is contentious in American life. Guns. Gay rights. Islamic extremism. Immigration. Latinos. Guns. Playing out just 20 miles from where George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, in a state slowly receding into the rising seas, it felt like Disney Dystopia — just in time for Election 2016. Orlando is more than our preferred family vacation destination. Orlando is these fractured United States. Orlando is us. Past tragedies tended to unify Americans, said Gary R. Mormino, a retired historian at the University of South Florida with a particular expertise in his state’s experience. Here in Florida — “where roots are as shallow as Australian pines,” he wrote in an email — some people will recall how, after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s calm but assertive radio talks bonded the country, elevating hopes. Many more will remember the feeling of shared grief as the television broadcaster Walter Cronkite wiped a tear while reporting the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “But 2016 brings together the toxic elements of an election year, presidential candidates who polarize the electorate, voters who are afraid and angry, and a press eager to exploit the spectacle of division and disaster,” Mr. Mormino wrote. “Alas,” he added, “we live in a balkanized state and nation. ” On some level, there’s a chaotic, quality to the calamity at Pulse. On the previous Friday night, a young singer named Christina Grimmie — famous for having appeared on “The Voice” — was shot dead by a stalker as she signed autographs. And on the following Tuesday, an alligator killed a toddler at a Disney resort. But when Omar Seddique Mateen, 29, a security guard with thwarted law enforcement ambitions, entered the nightclub with a handgun and a rifle — both legally and swiftly purchased — he was not coming from some foreign land. He was a American, born to Afghan Muslim parents in Queens and educated in the public schools of Florida. And the community he was about to devastate was not some foreign place — not some stereotypical city of rednecks, snowbirds and hordes. It was Tomorrowland today, a booming and diverse city of 250, 000, in which the Hispanic share of the population has grown to 25 percent. “I don’t even know that I’d characterize it as a Southern city anymore,” said State Senator Darren M. Soto, a Democrat who was born to and Puerto Rican parents in New Jersey. “It’s much more of a transplant, Hispanic kind of vibe in the city. ” “We’re an town, but we’re the new America,” he said. “We have people from all backgrounds and walks of life. ” That diversity includes gay men like Eric Rollings, 47, the chairman of the Orange County Soil and Water Conservation District. He recalled moving to Orlando from Michigan in 1989 and finding a small, L. G. B. T. community still reeling from the AIDS epidemic. At the city’s first gay pride parade, a ago, he said, Ku Klux Klan members gathered at the corner of Magnolia and Pine to “greet” the marchers. Now, he said, the gay pride festival is a popular signature event in the city. And on the January day that marriage became legal in Florida last year, he noted, Mayor Buddy Dyer of Orlando officiated the marriages of dozens of couples on the steps of City Hall. Mr. Rollings recalled much of this while decompressing in a local restaurant called Santiago’s Bodega. He wore a adorned with slogans of determination — #OneOrlando, #OneHeart, #OnePulse — and an expression that changed by the minute. Now grief, now exhaustion, now disbelief, now hope, now grief again. The nightmare unleashed by Mr. Mateen is a continuation of the shared nightmare we keep reliving — from Virginia Tech to Newtown to Aurora to Charleston. The names of the victims may change, but the Greek Chorus reaction is all too familiar. Shock and grief, candlelight vigils and calls for unity, vows for change and legislative paralysis, and vitriol, and, in the end, nothing much different — other than, say, South Carolina’s vote to remove the Confederate flag from State House grounds after the Charleston shooting. It took a filibuster by Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut with searing memories of the slaughter of 26 schoolchildren and educators in Newtown, to get modest measures to the Senate floor. Yet it had no more success Monday than similar proposals did after Newtown, with the Senate, largely along party lines, failing to advance measures that called for an expansion of background checks for all gun sales and a delay in selling guns to suspected terrorists (consider that phrase, by the way). Add to that the profound displays of support for the grieving L. G. B. T. community here, offset by flashes of intolerance — a pastor in Sacramento lamenting that more hadn’t died — and statements by more than a few politicians that somehow managed not to mention that many of the victims were gay, or Latino, or both. Finally, the Pulse massacre provided more rhetorical fodder for Donald J. Trump. He suggested that President Obama was to blame. He trumpeted the positive aspects of racial profiling and reiterated his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. Mr. Trump also said the massacre highlighted the need for more guns, not fewer, and imagined a scene in which some in the nightclub had been armed. “And this son of a bitch comes out and starts shooting, and one of the people in that room happened to have it, and goes boom, boom — you know what, that would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight, folks,” said Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate for the presidency. It was too much, all this death and grief and discord, as if the horrors unleashed at the club were just another excuse to display our grievances and divisions. So respite was sought at one of the many theme parks: Epcot. The $121. 41 cost of admission was paid, as well as the $20 for parking. Then began a slog in heat through this permanent world’s fair. Past the margarita stands of fake Mexico, the pastries of fake Norway, the orange chicken with rice of fake China, the bratwurst of fake Germany, the tiramisù of fake Italy. On to the comfort of a colonial building featuring the “American Adventure” attraction. An a cappella group called the Voices of Liberty serenaded visitors with a song that gave a to every American state. Then guests were directed to some closed white doors and instructed to remain on the blue carpeting and off the gold — at least until these doors opened to the auditorium. Soon, an animatronic Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain were leading a tour of American history, beginning with the Mayflower and ending with a montage of famous American faces and moments: Marilyn Monroe and Magic Johnson, Elvis Presley and Albert Einstein, Walt Disney and Sally Ride, the “I Have a Dream” speech of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the image of firefighters raising the American flag at ground zero. The music swelled, a singer urged America to “spread your golden wings,” and the lights came on. With the show over, the audience was directed to exit to the left, past white doors and into the hot glare of what seemed like another country entirely. | 1 |
Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • President Trump’s immigration order barring refugees and citizens of seven countries from entering the United States unleashed chaos on the U. S. immigration system, prompting continuing protests and legal action, much of it by lawyers working at airport arrival halls. A White House official appeared to reverse part of the order, saying that green card holders from the barred countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — would be allowed to enter “going forward. ” Here’s what we know and don’t know about the executive order. And here’s our full coverage of the Trump administration. _____ • Several European leaders rejected the refugee ban in blunt terms, and an array of Christian leaders denounced provisions that would favor Christian immigrants as discriminatory, misguided and inhumane. Even some top Republicans objected. Mr. Trump appeared to have more pleasant exchanges with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Australia’s prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who hoped for reassurance that the U. S. would honor the refugee resettlement deal struck with the Obama administration. _____ • Myanmar was shaken by a rare and brazen assassination. The country’s most prominent Muslim lawyer, U Ko Ni, was shot dead at the airport in Yangon, after returning with a government delegation from a trip to Indonesia. He appeared to have been shot while in his family car, while holding his grandchild. A suspect was arrested, but no motive was immediately evident. _____ • As Japan moves to accommodate Emperor Akihito’s wish to give up the throne, many Japanese believe it is also time to clear the way for a woman to reign. It has been nearly 250 years since Japan had an empress. “Like Queen Elizabeth in England, if Princess Aiko becomes the emperor, things may change in society,” a woman in Kanagawa Prefecture said. _____ • And Roger Federer, 35, became the oldest man to win a Grand Slam singles title in 45 years by defeating his longtime rival, Rafael Nadal, in an epic final of the Australian Open. It was Federer’s record 18th tournament championship and his first since 2012. The victory came a day after Serena Williams, 35, defeated her sister Venus, 36, for her 23rd Grand Slam singles title, becoming the oldest female Australian Open winner in the current era. • Hong Kong’s monetary office says the city needs as many as 400 million more bank notes in circulation to handle Lunar New Year transactions and lai see distribution, which is valued at $1 billion. • Toshiba’s from its investment in a U. S. construction firm focused on nuclear power projects could rise to $4 billion to $7 billion, enough to put the company’s future at risk. • Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • Three people were killed when a boat carrying 31 people capsized in Sabah, Malaysia. people, mostly Chinese tourists, have been rescued. [Bernama] • The Philippine government’s free distribution of birth control has pitted President Rodrigo Duterte against the Catholic Church, and not for the first time. [The New York Times] • An American commando was killed in a raid on Qaeda militants in Yemen, the first counterterrorism operation approved by President Trump. [The New York Times] • North Korea appears to have resumed operation of a reactor used to produce plutonium for its nuclear weapons program, the think tank 38 North said. [Reuters] • The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, weighed in on a contentious issue, saying the U. S. Embassy “needs to be” in Jerusalem. “All embassies should come here,” he said. [The New York Times] • Thousands of Mongolians protested for the second time this winter to demand that the government address choking air pollution in the capital, Ulan Bator. [Associated Press] • Taliban militants are tapping new revenues sources beyond the opium trade, including collecting utility bills, as they take over increasingly large areas of Afghanistan. [The New York Times] • If you made a New Year’s resolution this year, there’s an 80 percent chance you’ve already given it up or you’re just about to. We want to help you stick with it — or revamp it into something you really want to achieve — so this month Smarter Living will offer tips, advice and motivation to help you. Every Monday in this space we’ll pose a new idea, offer advice for staying strong and ask you a question. Then every Thursday we’ll highlight a few of our favorite emails and offer a helping hand. To join in, email us at smarterliving@nytimes. com with the subject line “My resolution” and send us answers to the following three bullets. And, because this goes both ways, I’ll start us off: • Your name: I’m Tim Herrera, your Smarter Living Editor. • Your resolution and why you chose it (either the one you started with, or the one you really want to achieve): My resolution is to be better with money so I can save more and *gasp* maybe actually retire someday. • Two specific within your resolution: In February, I’ll order delivery for dinner one fewer night per week, and I’ll stop buying one of my daily afternoon coffees (which I buy solely out of habit, but which cost me around $500 over the course of a year). • An audacious plan to respond to climate change by building a city of floating islands in the South Pacific is moving forward, with the government of French Polynesia agreeing to consider hosting the islands in a tropical lagoon. • A song spreading fast online in China offers a bit of relief for those who dashed home for the new year only to face relentless personal questions from their families. • And we review “Behemoth,” a documentary from Zhao Liang that finds horror and surrealism in Inner Mongolia, where migrant iron and coal workers are shown as cogs in China’s economic progress. Bruce Lee, the first superstar of films, appeared to Western audiences in only five movies and a handful of TV roles before his early death in 1973. But his influence has never really stopped growing, and his legacy can be found in some remarkable places. Take, for example, the video that Tom Brady, the N. F. L. quarterback, recently posted online to motivate his team for the playoffs. It features Lee’s mantra “Be water, my friend. ” Or the impact he had on 1970s reggae music, appearing on album covers, like Lee Perry’s “Kung Fu Meets the Dragon,” and inspiring countless songs and artists, such as Dillinger. David Henry Hwang, the playwright, devoted an entire play to Lee’s life, and called him the first “ male hero. ” This week, the Museum of Modern Art in New York is screening all five of Lee’s films in a series called “Eternal Bruce Lee. ” He’s been honored in museums from Hong Kong to California, not to mention the Bruce Lee Action Museum in Seattle. Despite all the fanfare, Lee still has an aura of mystery. Did you know he was the 1958 champion of Hong Kong? _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
Neal Katyal made oral arguments for maintaining the injunction against President Donald Trump’s executive order banning migrants from certain countries Monday before the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. [“He could say, like President Bush did right after September 11th, ‘The face of Terror is not the true face of Islam, that’s not what Islam is about, Islam is Peace.’ Instead, we get ‘Islam hates us’,” Katyal told the bench, answering Judge Richard Paez’s question on what, if anything, Trump could do to make the executive order acceptable. Katyal, former President Barack Obama’s acting Solicitor General, has taken on the representation of the plaintiffs who stopped the executive order’s implementation in March when a federal court in Hawaii ruled in their favor. The Justice Department has appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit, seeking to vacate that injunction. The most controversial element of district court Judge Derrick Watson’s ruling was its justification of the injunction based not on the text or effect of the executive order, but on statements President Trump made during the 2016 campaign. According to that ruling, speaking about a “Muslim ban” and speaking negatively about the religion’s relationship with the West mean that the plaintiffs had a high enough likelihood of proving a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause to block the order. This is true even though the actual order does not take any action based on people being Muslim because, “[A] reasonable, objective observer — enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance — would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion[. ]” Katyal doubled down on this line of argument Monday, contending, as the district court had, that no reasonable objective observer could not see that the purpose of the order was to disfavor Muslims. As evidence, he rattled off an extensive list of amicus briefs submitted in favor of striking down Trump’s order. Mentioned were the usual bevy of and liberal religious groups. “Even the Cato Institute,” Katyal finished, referring to the libertarian think tank with a long history of supporting weak immigration laws. The argumentation led naturally to the question of what, if anything, could be done to save such a facially neutral order. “Does that mean that the President is forever barred from issuing an executive order along these lines?” Judge Paez asked Katyal. “What does he have to do to issue an executive order that, in your view, might pass constitutional muster?” Trump might gain more power to issue executive order if he “disavows,” Katyal argued. “One example would be what Judge Hawkins said about disavowing formally the stuff before. ” “But that’s not it, he could do a lot of things,” Katyal continued. “I’m just going to throw out some examples, I’m not trying to micromanage the president. ” In addition to suggesting Trump could save his order by telling the country “Islam is peace,” Katyal also recommended removing references, in the text of the order, to the unsavory elements of Islamic society. “It could eliminate the text which refers to honor killings,” he told the court. Katyal, in his work at the Justice Department during the Obama administration, frequentally defended presidential power to govern by executive order. He appeared to recognize the unusual nature of this suit challenging a president’s authority on religious grounds. “Our fundamental point to you is that Presidents generally don’t run into establishment clause problems. This is a very unusual case in which you have these public statements by the President,” he said. | 1 |
Bull fighting fans in Mexico were shocked this week after a matador suffered the most grievous injury imaginable, when a bull gored him in the rear end. [Bull fighter Antonio Romero suffered the horrific injury when he fell to the ground face first leaving himself vulnerable to the horns of the raging bull roaring above him, the UK Sun reported. Romero ended up with a full eleven inches of the bull’s horn piercing his rectum, reportedly causing “severe” injuries. The video of the terrible attack shows the matador initially performing his dance with the bull just as he is supposed to, but as he turns with his red cape called a muleta, the bull turns faster and from behind knocks the matador face first to the ground. And in a split second, as the matador lays vulnerable, the bull slams its horn into the prone tormentor. The bull pushes Romero several feet and only pulls back when the other matadors jump in to distract the beast. The video is shocking. The matador was rushed to the hospital with horrific injuries to his rectum. Medical technician Felipe Sánchez told the media that, “It’s a serious and deep goring about 30 centimeters deep. At this moment we will operate it in the hospital, but it does bring major damage. ” Still, a surgeon later said Romero is “fine,” According to Univision. “The patient is fine, he has endured the surgery perfectly, a serious situation that endangers his life at a time because of the severity of the injury, but the damage is already controlled,” Doctor Juan Carlos Sanchez said. “The next 24 hours for tomorrow to begin the reconstruction of the anus. ” Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
The verdict is in. Two of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s appointees, former Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Kelly and former Christie-appointed Port Authority Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni, have been convicted of all counts for their involvement in the illegal lane closures on the George Washington Bridge, popularly known as Bridgegate.
A third Christie appointee, David Wildstein, already plead guilty and was the government’s star witness in the case.
Kelly, Baroni, and Wildstein testified in court that Governor Christie was aware of the scheme despite his claims. Even more members of Christie’s staff testified Christie lied to the press in a December 2013 press conference, when he claimed he learned about the scandal from news reports. They testified he was made aware by staff beforehand.
Given those convictions and admissions, the question now becomes what to do about Governor Christie, who still has more than two years left in his term.
An answer came earlier this month when New Jersey State Senator Loretta Weinberg, who served as co-chair of the New Jersey Legislative Select Committee on Investigation, called for Governor Christie to be impeached.
That call was echoed today when Blue Jersey Editor Rosi Efthim and yours truly made the case for impeachment, citing the rules of the New Jersey Constitution and the public record of testimony and evidence gathered regarding the Bridgegate scandal.
Meanwhile, New Jersey Republican State Senator Jennifer Beck signed on to a bill that would lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor to further investigate Governor Christie’s involvement in Bridgegate.
The process in New Jersey for impeachment mirrors the one under the US Constitution, where the lower chamber votes for impeachment and the Senate conducts a trial. A two-thirds vote is needed for impeachment to pass. Former President Bill Clinton famously was impeached by the House but survived the trial in the Senate.
Both chambers in New Jersey are controlled by Democrats but there are not enough Democratic Senators in the state senate to pass impeachment on a party line vote. Three Republican Senators would have to cross the aisle. If Senator Beck’s positioning is an indication, impeachment might have a real chance.
The post With Bridgegate Convictions Comes Calls To Impeach Chris Christie appeared first on Shadowproof .
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CAIRO — In an eerie coincidence, the EgyptAir jetliner that plunged into the Mediterranean on Thursday was once the target of political vandals who wrote in Arabic on its underside, “We will bring this plane down. ” Three EgyptAir security officials said the threatening graffiti, which appeared about two years ago, had been the work of aviation workers at Cairo Airport. Playing on the phonetic similarity between the last two letters in the plane’s registration, and the surname of Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah some workers also wrote “traitor” and “murderer. ” The officials, who were interviewed separately and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the airline’s security procedures because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the graffiti had been linked to the domestic Egyptian political situation at the time rather than to a militant threat. Similar graffiti against Mr. Sisi, a former general, was scrawled across Cairo after the military ousted the elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013. Since then, the airline has put into effect a variety of new security measures in response to Egypt’s political turmoil, jihadist violence and other aviation disasters like the crash of a Russian plane that killed 224 people in October. EgyptAir has fired employees for their political leanings, stepped up crew searches and added extra unarmed security guards. Three such guards died in Thursday’s crash of Flight 804. Whether those moves were sufficient remained an open question on Saturday as experts pored over data emitted by the plane in its final minutes for clues as to what had brought it down. The French air accident investigation authority confirmed that the data showed that several smoke alarms had been activated while the plane plunged toward the sea. But they cautioned that the signals, sent by a monitoring system on board the Airbus A320 jetliner, did not offer enough information to conclude what had caused the crash. “These are not messages that enable us to interpret anything,” said Sébastien Barthe, a spokesman for France’s Bureau of Investigations and Analysis. “If there is smoke, it means that there is potentially a fire somewhere, but it doesn’t tell us where the fire is, and it doesn’t help us establish whether it is something malevolent or something technical. ” In an audio message released Saturday, Abu Muhammad the official spokesman of the Islamic State and the head of a unit dedicated to external attacks, denounced the military campaign against the group but did not mention the EgyptAir crash. EgyptAir’s security procedures last came under scrutiny in March when a passenger on a domestic flight pretended to be wearing an explosive vest and forced the plane to land in Cyprus. The crisis was resolved within hours when the man, later determined to be psychologically troubled, surrendered. The Egyptian authorities were quick to post surveillance videos that they said showed he had been searched before boarding the flight. Among the 66 people on Thursday’s flight from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris were three EgyptAir security personnel — one more than the normal team of two for reasons that were not entirely clear. EgyptAir security guards differ in several respects from the undercover air marshals who travel on American airlines. The Egyptian guards are unarmed and wear an understated uniform consisting of a dark blazer and a white shirt. When called on, they help crew members deal with unruly passengers. They come from a wide variety of backgrounds and earn a moderate wage of about $400 a month. Normally, one security officer sits in the first economy row, behind business class, and the other is at the rear of the aircraft, two members of an EgyptAir crew said. During stopovers at foreign airports, the security officers are usually responsible for searching the workers who clean the plane and checking the credentials of all crew members or employees who board. They do not monitor the baggage handlers who load the plane’s hold. Security officials said those procedures would have applied to the EgyptAir plane during short layovers it made at two African airports — in Tunis and the Eritrean capital, Asmara — in the days before the crash. But the procedure is different in Paris because European airports do not permit EgyptAir security officials to search local cleaning workers, a source of disgruntlement among Egyptian officials who feel they are being discriminated against. Colleagues described the security guards who died in Thursday’s crash — Walid Ouda, Mohammed Farag and Mahmoud el Sayed — as professionals who had exhibited no signs of unusual behavior. They described Mr. Farag as a lighthearted man who was often teased by friends for not having married, while Mr. Ouda cut a more taciturn figure and was polite to a fault. Friends and relatives also presented a uniformly untroubled picture of the pilot, Capt. Mohamed Shoukair, 36, and his Mohamed Mamdouh Assem, 24. An EgyptAir pilot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said he had worked with both and described them as professional aviators who had not exhibited any mental or social problems. At 24 years old, Mr. Assem was the average age of many at the airline, he said. EgyptAir crew members have been subjected to much stricter security measures since the crash of the Russian jetliner in October, said the pilot, who described the procedures before that crash as lax. The new procedures include personal searches that have prevented crew members from smuggling cigarettes or currency, he said. The graffiti about Mr. Sisi occurred several times for about two years after Mr. Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, was removed as president in July 2013. At the time, it was taken as a sign of the country’s bitter political divide rather than a directed threat against the plane. Nonetheless, over that period, EgyptAir fired a number of employees, mostly members of the ground staff, who were presumed to be sympathizers of the Muslim Brotherhood, security officials said. Similar purges took place in other companies in Egypt at the time. More recently, fears of terrorism have tightened security at regional airports, including Tunis, where the Airbus A320 had traveled just before its trip to Paris, the pilot said. Foreign flight crews face new restrictions on their movement and are now prevented, for example, from leaving the plane to buy items in the shop, he said. EgyptAir flights headed to Europe also face added scrutiny under a European Union program known as SAFA, or Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft, which allows for spot inspections of airplanes at European airports and penalties for violations. Although Egyptian society has been divided in the turmoil that followed the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, there has been a tangible sense of national solidarity since Thursday’s crash. Images of grieving relatives have dominated news coverage. As the official crash investigation starts, many Egyptians have reacted furiously to any suggestion that the airline crew bore any responsibility. Ezzat Shoukair, a cousin of the captain, said he was distressed by some of the coverage. “Don’t listen to the lies people have been saying since the crash,” he said, starting to weep as he spoke. “We just want to know where his body is. Otherwise, where will those who miss him go when they want to visit him?” | 1 |
LOS ANGELES — Gov. Jerry Brown of California has run three times for president. He is serving his fourth term as governor and stands as one of the most popular elected officials in the state. He has also kept a noticeably low profile as the Democratic presidential primary contest has moved to California, reflecting what aides described as the interest he had in both candidates. But that ended on Tuesday as the Democratic governor came off the sideline and endorsed Hillary Clinton as someone who has the “tenacity and skill to advance the Democratic agenda” and defeat the presumptive Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump. “Democrats have shown — by millions of votes — that they want her as their nominee,” he said in an open letter to Democrats and to independents, who are permitted to vote in the Democratic primary on June 7. Mr. Brown’s decision is the latest sign that California is shaping up as a climactic end to the Democratic nominating session. Mrs. Clinton and her opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have turned their attention to a state where Mrs. Clinton had once been confident of victory, and where one poll last week showed the two candidates essentially tied. On Tuesday, Mr. Sanders continued plowing through a heavy schedule of rallies in California, many in parts of the state where national candidates do not often go. Mrs. Clinton has scaled back plans to campaign in New Jersey to add additional events in the state, with a focus on Southern California, where she will be counting on minority voters to propel her. Nonetheless, she told MSNBC on Tuesday that she was “feeling very positive” about California. “We are competing everywhere, but I have been struck by some of the challenges California faces,” Mrs. Clinton said, criticizing Mr. Trump for denying the state’s drought. Mr. Sanders is spending about $1. 8 million on advertising in California, and Mrs. Clinton about $1 million, according to Kantar . That is not a lot of money in a state like California, where a robust media campaign can easily cost $5 million to $10 million a week. Both candidates are concentrating their advertising campaigns, focusing on places like Fresno, Sacramento and Los Angeles. Mr. Sanders, after giving a speech on health care in Emeryville, across the bay from San Francisco, told reporters Tuesday that he was not surprised by Mr. Brown’s decision, noting that governors and other elected Democrats had repeatedly endorsed Mrs. Clinton, a former senator from New York and secretary of state. “I like Jerry Brown, but people can make their own choices,” Mr. Sanders said. “What we have had to do, and we have done pretty well in every state in this country, is taken on Democratic governors, taken on Democratic senators, taken on Democratic members of the House, Democratic mayors and all of their political apparatus. And yet we have won in 20 states, and I think we are going to win here in California. ” Mr. Brown, in his letter, offered strong praise for Mr. Sanders, noting the similarities between the Sanders campaign and the one Mr. Brown waged when he ran for president in 1992. “He has driven home the message that the top 1 percent has unfairly captured way too much of America’s wealth, leaving the majority of people far behind,” he wrote. “In 1992, I attempted a similar campaign. ” Still, the governor, who lost to Bill Clinton in a contest that left lingering bitterness between the two men, offered a powerful case against Mr. Trump in arguing that Mrs. Clinton had proved not only that she had abundant support among Democrats, but the ability to win in November. Mr. Brown met privately with Mrs. Clinton in San Francisco and Mr. Clinton in Sacramento last week. Mr. Trump, Mr. Brown noted in his letter, “has called climate change a ‘hoax’ and said he will tear up the Paris Climate Agreement. ” “He has promised to deport millions of immigrants and ominously suggested that other countries may need the nuclear bomb. He has also pledged to pack the Supreme Court with only those who please the extreme right,” Mr. Brown wrote. “The stakes couldn’t be higher,” he added. Even if she loses here, Mrs. Clinton will almost certainly have enough delegates to win the nomination. But a loss in the largest state — and in a Democratic stronghold — would not only provide a dark end to what has been at times an unhappy campaign, but might also empower Mr. Sanders to stay in the race, further delaying the point when Mrs. Clinton can turn her full attention to Mr. Trump. To win the nomination, Mr. Sanders would have to persuade hundreds of superdelegates — party officials and leaders like Mr. Brown — to switch their allegiance in time for the July convention. Winning California, his aides say, can help him make that case. Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Mr. Sanders, said the senator would campaign heavily through Primary Day, going to parts of the state where he knows he can draw huge crowds and television coverage. “We think we have a very narrow path to get there,” Mr. Devine said of winning the nomination, “and California is the most important piece of that puzzle. ” A poll last week showed the two candidates essentially tied in the state. But many analysts say this is a difficult contest to poll, because there has been a huge surge in registration and because it is challenging to project how many independents, who have favored Mr. Sanders, will actually participate. | 1 |
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It was fifty-four years or so when a classmate at Bard College insisted that I read a short story by Isaac Babel titled “The Reserve Cavalry Commander” that he described to me as a Cossack soldier miraculously bringing a moribund horse to its feet. The Red Cavalry (the title of Babel’s collection of short stories written when the Jew and former Menshevik was imbedded with pro-revolution Cossacks) had been confiscating peasant horses during the Civil War and trading in nags ridden to exhaustion on the battlefield for fresh ones.
For the backward peasants, this was the sort of intrusion that would become the straw that broke the camel’s back. In about a decade, being forced into collective farms like recalcitrant horses drove them into open revolt. For the time being, however, they were inclined to tolerate the Communists who at least had come to power on the promise of peace, bread and land. It was the assault on the gentry’s land that for the time being assuaged the peasants.
Responding to an aggrieved muzhik (peasant), Dyakov, the eponymous Reserve Cavalry Commander who was a former circus rider described by Babel as “red-faced with a gray mustache, a black cape, and wide red Tatar trousers with silver stripes”, promised that he could make this “lively little mare spring to her feet again”. The idea that the horse splayed out on the ground could be described as “lively” was almost an insult. The muzhik cried out, “Lord in Heaven and Mother of God. How is this poor thing supposed to get up? It’s on its last legs!”:
Dyakov’s ability to bring the horse back on its feet was like Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead but all the more miraculous since it likely occurred. Most of Babel’s short stories were based on his experience as a war correspondent. He wrote:
“You are insulting this horse, my dear fellow!” Dyakov answered with fierce conviction. “Pure blasphemy, my dear fellow!” And he deftly swung his athlete’s body out of his saddle. Splendid and deft as if in the circus ring, he stretched his magnificent legs, his trousers girded by cords around the knees, and walked up to the dying animal. She peered at him dolefully with a severe, penetrating eye, licked some invisible command from his crimson palm, and immediately the feeble mare felt bracing power flow from this sprightly, gray, blossoming Romeo. Her muzzle lolling, her legs skidding under her, feeling the whip tickling her stomach with imperious impatience, the mare slowly and deliberate1y rose onto her legs. And then we all saw Dyakov’s slender hand with its fluttering sleeve run through her dirty mane, and his whining whip swatting her bleeding ranks. Her whole body shivering, the mare stood on four legs without moving her timid, doglike, lovestruck eyes from Dyakov.
“So you see-this is a horse,” Dyakov said to the muzhik , and added softly, “and you were complaining, my dearest of friends!”
Throwing his reins to his orderly, the commander of the Reserve Cavalry jumped the four stairs in a single leap and, swirling off his operatic cloak, disappeared into the headquarters.
Today, reading this story once again for the first time in fifty-four years, I am reminded of how important Babel was to me at the time. Like Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Thomas Mann, he was a portal into the world of modernist literature that still had an immense attraction for young bohemians in the early 60s. I never thought once about who Babel was or anything about the social reality he was trying to depict. All that mattered to me was Babel’s prose that could evoke the mysterious power of a Cossack resurrecting a dying horse.
My early connections to modernism and my later connections to Marxism that superseded it and just about all the other intellectual baggage I carried around with me from the early 60s converged as I watched a press screening of “Finding Babel” that opens on October 28 th at the Cinema Village in New York. Directed by David Novack, who has a background as a sound engineer, it is a film that will be of great interest to those whose appreciation of Babel is strictly literary as was mine long ago and to those trying to come to terms with the Soviet legacy. Given the prominence of Ukraine today as a possible trigger of WWIII according to some, Babel’s multiple identity as Jew, Ukrainian, Communist and critic of Soviet deficiencies is worth pondering.
The film is structured around the odyssey conducted by Andrei Malaev-Babel, who is the grandson of Isaac Babel and an acting professor in the theater department of the New College of Florida, to see where his grandfather lived and to speak with people who knew him or who have studied or been inspired by his work. Isaac Babel was executed for treason in 1940, having been charged with belonging to a Trotskyist group and spying for France and Austria. Babel’s wife Antonina Pirozhkova, who died at the age of 101 in 2010, is interviewed in the film and provides much of the information about Babel’s personality and his travails as a dissident. After her husband’s arrest in 1939, the Soviet cops told her to forget about him and to “regulate her life” according to the New York Times obituary. She was formidable in her own right. With her engineering degree, she helped to design the Moscow subway system. The obit notes:
Ms. Pirozhkova recalled Babel’s dismay at her haphazard reading habits, which he tried to correct by drawing up a list of the “hundred books that every educated person needs to read.” It included a volume titled “The Instincts and Morals of Insects.” She recounted evenings spent with Soviet cultural giants like the film director Sergei M. Eisenstein and visits by foreign luminaries like André Gide and André Malraux.
It was Babel’s mistake apparently to adhere to the values of the original Russian revolution rather than to fall in line as a Stalin toady.
As he travels around Ukraine, Malaev-Babel encounters intellectuals and ordinary people who revere Babel as one of their own especially for “Odessa Tales”, another collection of short stories that is as highly regarded as “Red Cavalry”. Written in 1923 and 1924, the stories focus on Jewish gangsters living in Moldavanka, an Odessa slum, hardly the material you’d expect to find written by a partisan of the Russian Revolution but certainly in keeping with the original inspiration of Soviet culture that conformed to Terence’s observation: “ Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto “, or “I am human, and nothing of that which is human is alien to me.”
Although I have never read “Odessa Tales”, I plan to as soon as I find the time since it is about the same sort of characters my grandfather Louis Proyect probably knew in Byelorussia and who like him escaped pogroms by emigrating to the USA. Unlike my grandfather who made a life out of building hotels in Sullivan County in upstate NY, Abe “Kid Twist” Reles and other members of Murder Incorporated only saw the Borscht Belt as a place where they could dump their victims in Swan Lake, about fifteen minutes from my home town.
Throughout the film we hear brief excerpts from both collections narrated by Liev Schreiber that will be a good introduction to Babel’s literary power. There are also interviews with some leading Babel scholars including Stanford professor Gregory Freidin who spent a day traveling around Paris with Malaev-Babel to see places where Babel lived for a few years before returning to Russia. We learn that although he could have avoided becoming one of Stalin’s countless victims by living in exile, he was too attached to Russian culture and language to live abroad.
While in Paris, Babel wrote a play titled “Maria” that likely put him on Stalin’s shit-list although being a free-thinking intellectual and artist might have condemned from the start. With his theater background, Malaev-Babel is ideally suited to discuss the play with fellow thespians including Marina Vlady, an acclaimed Russian-French actress, who reads a letter from the titular character.
In 2003, Gregory Freidin mounted a production of “Maria” at Stanford University. The play’s program describes major character Isaac Dymshit, a Jewish gangster, as a symbol of capitalist rationality while the eponymous Maria epitomized the pure romance of the revolution. She, like the young Babel, served in the Red Cavalry.
Never seen on stage, we only hear from Maria indirectly as her letter is recited by another character in scene five. It begins:
At dawn the bugle from squadron headquarters wakes me. By eight I have to be in the Political Propaganda Division, I’m in charge there–I edit the articles of the divisional newspaper, I run the literacy classes. Our reinforcements are all Ukrainians. They remind me of Italians, the way they talk and act. Russia has been suppressing and destroying their culture for centuries. In our house in Petersburg, opposite the Hermitage and the Winter Palace, we might as well have been living in Polynesia for we knew any thing at all about our people!
It is writing lines like this that got Babel killed rather than spying for France or Austria.
Babel was a friend and protégé of Maxim Gorky, who remained a diehard Stalinist despite sharing Babel’s inclination for writing about the lower depths of Russian society. He was deeply troubled by how “Maria” depicted political corruption, prosecution of the innocent, and black marketeering within Soviet society. Gorky accused Babel of having a “Baudelairean predilection for rotting meat.” Apparently Gorky had forgotten that Baudelaire was Marx’s favorite novelist.
David Novack, the director of “Finding Babel” has a connection to Odessa but not to its legendary Jewish gangsters. He has an ancestor named David Nowakowsky who wrote liturgical music for a synagogue there.
In an interview given to The Odessa Review , Novack sums up Isaac Babel’s relationship to the Soviet experience that resonates with my own on the left. As someone with roots in the existential “outsider” world of the 1960s that saw Albert Camus as its most eloquent spokesmen, I never found myself comfortable with the Trotskyist milieu that fostered cultish obedience to the Genius Leader. To this day, it has been these youthful affinities with outsider culture that makes it difficult for me to join any amen chorus on the left even though it is the left that remains my homeland. I think that Novack’s description of Babel’s “insider/outsider” sensibility can help me preserve my sanity in a period of deep contradictions within the left:
Babel represented the insider outsider, that’s what he was. He got himself all the way inside, up to the upper levels of the NKVD. Up to Beria who ended up supervising his torture in the end, personally. I don’t know if he was in the room, but he had an office in the St. Catharine’s Monastery where Babel was tortured. That monastery was being used as a torture prison, the Sukhanovo prison, which we note in the film, we visited it. He got himself as close to the flame as possible as an insider, but yet he was an outsider because he was from Odessa, he was Jewish. He should not even have been permitted to study under Gorky which is where he really honed his skills. The only reason that he was able to study under Gorky is that he smuggled himself illegally to St. Petersburg when he wasn’t allowed to be there, because it was outside the settlement area for Jews. So Babel was an outsider. He then found himself with Red Calvary with the Cossacks in the Red Army, running through Western Ukraine as he documented brutality against the Ukrainians and the Jews. Brutality brought on by both sides, it was a civil war essentially between the reds and the Poles. Who suffered the most? The Jews and the Ukrainians, the peasantry are the ones who suffered the most in that conflict. There he was again, the outsider insider. It’s from this very unique perspective where all his writing came from. | 0 |
CNN reported that sea records, in the Arctic and Antarctic, were at an all-time low in early October 2016, since scientist began to keep track. Research Scientist Walt Meier said it seems as though the human race is witnessing the Arctic and Antarctic Seas at record low levels for the first time on record, which is the argument for climate change.
Meier works for the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He has also traced sea ice data since 1979.
Record low sea ice data is not new to the Arctic . However, this is a shocking turn of events for the Antarctic. Although the sea ice in the Arctic has been melting over the past decade, the sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere has been increasing.
The extent of the Antarctic Sea ice reached a record high each year from 2012 to 2014. Climate change critics indicated that the ice accumulation in the South Pole is evidence that climate change is not occurring. However, the scientific community has claimed that the process is caused by flows and differences in the hemisphere.
Additionally, Meir said that it is too early to know if the recent and rapid decline in the Antarctic Sea is going to occur regularly, such as the rapid decline in the Arctic. He concluded that the decrease in the sea ice of the Southern Hemisphere defies the argument against climate change because the ice in Antarctica is rising.
However, Skeptical Science stated that the climate has changed before and is always changing. In the past, the world experienced ice ages and warmer periods. In the previous warmer times, alligators were found in Spitzbergen.
In the last 700,0000 years, ice ages have occurred in a hundred-thousand-year cycle. There has been a warmer climate than the present one, regardless of greenhouse gasses being lower than they are now. In recent history, there have been medieval warm periods and then a little ice age, which is the argument against climate change.
Greenhouse gasses were involved in most of the climate changes throughout world history. When they were reduced, the Earth became colder. However, when they were increased, the global climate grew warmer. When the greenhouse gasses rose rapidly, the global warming that resulted became highly disruptive. The drastically warmer climate also caused mass extinctions.
In certain times, the increase in greenhouse gasses caused life to flourish, such as the Cretaceous and Eocene Periods. The gasses were in balance with the carbon in the oceans and with the weathering of the rocks. Ocean chemistry, atmospheric gasses, and life had millions of years to adjust to those levels.
However, there were several moments, in the history of the planet, where the climate jumped abruptly. Just as the climate is rapidly changing today. The extreme change was caused by rapid greenhouse gas emissions.
Skeptical Science stated that the climate was changing before humans lived. Scientists also claimed that the cause was from increased carbon emissions, such as those experienced today. They concluded that the emissions are destructive to life on Earth.
Climate Neutral Now is a global community of organizations that is committed to improving the climate by the second half of the 21st century. By the end of 2015, the world joined together to sign the Paris Agreement. Climate Neutral reported that this was a global climate change agreement that placed the foundation for a low carbon future.
However, in order to make the environment livable for the future, individuals, companies, and governments must be able to work together to gain climate neutrality. The Paris Agreement is a result of the argument for climate change.
Opinion News by John A. Federico
Edited by Jeanette Smith
Sources:
CNN: Amid higher global temperatures, sea ice at record lows at poles
Skeptical Science: What does past climate change tell us about global warming?
Climate Neutral: Go Climate Neutral Now
Featured Image Courtesy of Berkeley Lab’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License Antarctic Sea , Arctic Sea , Climate Change , ice , spot | 0 |
WIMBLEDON, England — “Wimbledon,” a movie released 12 years ago, was a romantic comedy about a British tennis player on the verge of retirement who finds love, and then unlikely success at the tournament. Over the past four months, Marcus Willis, a from Slough, England, has starred in a version of the film, all but its implausible plot points on the way to his unlikely spot in the Wimbledon main draw, scheduled to begin Monday. Willis, ranked 775th before the qualifying tournament, had nearly given up on his dreams of reaching Wimbledon and was planning to move to Philadelphia, where offers of coaching jobs were waiting. “I was adamant I was going to go to America to coach,” Willis said. “I had called up someone about the visa — and then I met a girl. She basically told me I was an idiot and that I should keep going, and I’m very grateful for that. ” Shortly before he had planned to leave in February, Willis met Jennifer Bate, a dentist and a mother of two. Bate said she was out on the town with a cousin as each tried to shake off “wrong relationships” that had just ended. “We just met, and honestly, it was a blur after that,” Bate said. “We went on a little walk to get some fresh air before we’d get a cab. He said, ‘I’m meant to be going to America soon,’ and I was like: ‘What? You can’t go to America.’ The night we met, I said, ‘You’ve just met me you can’t just move to America.’ I said it jokingly, and then he told me he was a tennis player. I thought, ‘Yeah, right, whatever.’ ” After experiencing what she called “love at first sight,” Bate rushed home to tell her mother she had met “the one,” and Willis postponed his plans to leave England. With Bate’s encouragement, Willis rededicated himself to tennis, despite having endured injuries and financial hardships in recent years. In 2014, struggling with touring expenses, Willis had started a crowdfunding campaign seeking support in getting to his “childhood dream” tournament. In 2016, he had played only one event, a January tournament in Tunisia at the lowest rung of sanctioned professional tennis, earning just $356. But his falling ATP ranking was just high enough to get him the last direct entry into a Wimbledon qualifying playoffs for British players. Once there, he won three matches to reach the tournament’s main qualifying event. Though British wild cards often prove to be overmatched cannon fodder in the qualifying tournament, Willis played with confidence. In his first match, against the Yuichi Sugita, Willis came back from losing the first set, to notch his first career victory over a opponent. With his unorthodox barrage of chunked slices and Willis continued his winning ways in the next two matches, beating the Russians Andrey Rublev and Daniil Medvedev and becoming the first British player to reach the Wimbledon singles main draw through qualifying since 2008. By doing so, he guaranteed himself prize money of at least 30, 000 British pounds. Andy Murray, who ended 77 years without a British men’s singles champion at Wimbledon when he won here in 2013, had practiced with Willis at the Davis Cup years earlier and called Willis’s qualifying a “really cool story. ” “He’s an awkward player, has got quite a different sort of game style,” Murray said. “ a little bit. He’s got really good touch, good volleys, puts a lot of slice on his slice backhand, quite a spinny forehand. He’s quite an unusual player. ” Those unnerving, unconventional weapons were on display when Willis made his previous best career run, to the quarterfinals of a tournament in Knoxville, Tenn. in 2014. There, Willis also gained notice for his tubby physique, which inspired one Facebook heckler to call him Cartman, after Eric Cartman, the corpulent cartoon from “South Park. ” Willis embraced the nickname, and while he is still bulkier than many in the sport, he has dropped 55 pounds. He still readily pokes fun at himself. “It’s good banter I enjoy it,” he said. If he wins his match Monday against the Ricardas Berankis on Court 17, a possible encounter with the champion Roger Federer looms. His weekend at Wimbledon playing among the game’s best — “I saw Djokovic earlier, and my jaw dropped I’m going to act cool and pretend it’s all normal now,” he said — has proved equally invigorating. “I’m delighted, but it makes me realize I want it week in, week out now,” he said. “I’ve got to keep working, keep my head down, and get on with it. ” Bate, who was unable to cancel her Monday dental patients’ appointments, will follow his match from afar. She said she believed she would have many more opportunities to watch Willis continue toward a Hollywood ending. “Something in his mind has just clicked, and he’s ready now,” she said. “He’s taking it all in, and he’s got plenty more in him. ” | 1 |
Beneath a Close Election Contest Lie Deep Rifts Among Groups Gary Langer et al., ABC News, November 3, 2016
Profound rifts among groups lie beneath the close presidential contest, underscoring the country’s fundamental political divisions not only by gender, education, race and ethnicity but also by factors ranging from religious belief to residential area.
{snip}
There’s a 22 point gender gap in the contest, nearly double the norm in elections since 1976. And that pales compared with other gaps–44 points between college- and non-college-educated whites, 65 points between whites and nonwhites, 66 points between rural and urban residents and 97 points between white evangelicals and likely voters who don’t profess a particular religion.
{snip}
Trump is doing less well with Republicans and GOP leaners who wanted someone else to win the nomination; he has 75 percent support in this group, with 15 percent going to Clinton, 7 percent to Johnson or Stein. Two factors mitigate the damage: leaning Republicans have grown more apt to say they supported Trump in the first place (47 percent, up from 40 percent in August), and there’s no slippage evident in turnout among leaning Republicans who preferred someone else for the nomination.
{snip}
Differences among groups abound, with one of the largest between evangelical white Protestants–a core Republican constituency–and those who profess no religion. The former back Trump by 77 to 19 percent; the latter, Clinton by 64 to 25 percent. The groups are identical in size, each making up 17 percent of likely voters. The gap between them is typical.
{snip}
The racial gap, while wide, is narrower than typical. Whites support Trump by 53 to 39 percent; nonwhites favor Clinton, 72 to 21 percent. But that 65 point divide is a bit smaller than the average in exit polls since 1976, 73 points, as well as 26 points smaller than the record racial gap, 91 points, in 1984. That’s mostly because of lower support for Clinton among nonwhites who are not black or Hispanic; 48 percent back her, versus 66 percent for Barack Obama in 2012.
In a particularly prominent result in this election, gender and education continue to spell broad differences among whites. College-educated white women, consistently strong for Clinton all year, now back her by 59 to 32 percent. Non-college-educated white men, steadily one of Trump’s best groups, support him 64 to 26 percent.
White men with a college degree continue to divide closely, making them a battleground group. Non-college-educated white women–the largest of these groups, at 24 percent of likely voters–have wavered in their support, generally for Trump but by varying margins. Lately, they look more settled on Trump, now by 61 to 33 percent.
{snip} | 0 |
When Patriots quarterback Tom Brady can’t make it through a pregame news conference without talking about our president, it’s official: Donald Trump overshadows everything. Even the Super Bowl. On today’s episode of “The Daily,” we discuss what happens when the biggest story in sports meets the biggest story in politics. And a bloody mission in Yemen reminds us that a new administration doesn’t always mean a new start. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes. com. Tweet me at @mikiebarb. And if that isn’t enough, we can even text. If you are on your phone and don’t see an audio player on this page, follow the instructions below. On your iPhone or iPad: Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. If you’re reading this from your phone, tap this link, which will take you straight there. (You can also use the magnifying glass icon to search just type “The Daily. ”) Once on the series page, you can tap on the episode title to play the episode (make sure you have an internet connection) and tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone free. Or if you have another preferred podcast player, you can find “The Daily” there. (Here’s the RSS feed.) On your Android phone or tablet: Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Play Music” with an icon. If you’re reading this from your phone, tap this link, which will take you straight there. (You can also use the magnifying glass icon to search just type “The Daily. ”) Once on the series page, you can tap on the episode title to play the episode (make sure you have an internet connection) and tap on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone free. Or if you have another preferred podcast player, you can find “The Daily” there. (Here’s the RSS feed.) From a desktop or laptop: Click the “play” button above to start the show. Make sure to keep that window open on your browser if you’re doing other things, or else the audio will stop. You can always find the latest episode at nytimes. . On Amazon Echo, Echo Dot or Tap: Open your Alexa app. From the navigation panel on the left, select “Settings,” then select “Flash Briefing,” then select “Get more Flash Briefing Content. ” Look for “The New York Times” and select “Enable Skill. ” Now you can say, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?” and you will hear “The Daily. ” On Google Home: You can say “Okay, Google, play New York Times news” to listen to that day’s audio report. | 1 |
Morley Safer, a CBS television correspondent who brought the horrors of the Vietnam War into the living rooms of America in the 1960s and was a mainstay of the network’s newsmagazine “60 Minutes” for almost five decades, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 84. His wife, Jane Safer, said he died of pneumonia. Mr. Safer was one of television’s most celebrated journalists, a durable reporter familiar to millions on “60 Minutes,” the Sunday night staple whose signature is a relentlessly ticking stopwatch. By the time CBS announced his retirement on May 11, Mr. Safer had broadcast 919 “60 Minutes” reports, profiling international heroes and villains, exposing frauds and corruption, giving voice to and chronicling the trends of an America. Mr. Safer joined the program, created by Don Hewitt, in 1970, two years after its inception. His tenure eventually outlasted those of his colleagues Mike Wallace, Dan Rather, Harry Reasoner, Ed Bradley and Andy Rooney, as he became the senior star of a new repertory group of reporters on what has endured for decades as the most popular and profitable news program on television. But to an earlier generation of Americans, and to many colleagues and competitors, he was regarded as the best television journalist of the Vietnam era, an adventurer whose vivid reports exposed the nation to the hard realities of what the writer Michael J. Arlen, in the title of his 1969 book, called the “ War. ” With David Halberstam of The New York Times, Stanley Karnow of The Washington Post and a few other print reporters, Mr. Safer shunned the censored, euphemistic Saigon press briefings they called the “5 o’clock follies” and went out with the troops. Mr. Safer and his Vietnamese cameraman, Ha Thuc Can, gave Americans powerful of firefights and missions filmed hours before airtime. The news team’s helicopter was shot down once, but they were unhurt and undeterred. In August 1965, Mr. Safer covered an attack on the hamlet of Cam Ne about 10 miles west of the port city of Da Nang. Intelligence had identified Cam Ne as a Vietcong sanctuary, though it had been abandoned by the enemy before the Americans moved in. Mr. Safer’s account depicted Marines, facing no resistance, firing rockets and machine guns into the hamlet burning its thatched huts with flamethrowers, grenades and cigarette lighters as old men and women begged them to stop then destroying rice stores as the villagers were led away sobbing. “This is what the war in Vietnam is all about,” he reported. “The Vietcong were long gone. The action wounded three women, killed one baby, wounded one Marine and netted four old men as prisoners. Today’s operation is the frustration of Vietnam in miniature. To a Vietnamese peasant whose home means a lifetime of backbreaking labor, it will take more than presidential promises to convince him that we are on his side. ” Broadcast on the “CBS Evening News,” then anchored by Walter Cronkite, and widely disseminated, the report and its images stunned Americans and were among the most famous television portraits of the war. They provoked an angry outburst from President Lyndon B. Johnson, who excoriated Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, in a midnight phone call and ordered Mr. Safer investigated as a possible Communist. He was cleared. For three weeks in 1967, Mr. Safer toured China, then in the throes of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, posing as a Canadian tourist (he was born in Canada) because Western reporters were barred. Then, as CBS London bureau chief, he covered a war in the Middle East, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, strife in Northern Ireland and civil war in Nigeria, where he was expelled for reporting thefts from relief supplies intended for Biafran refugees. In 1970, he swapped the foreign correspondent’s fatigues for the dapper suits and silk handkerchiefs of “60 Minutes,” American TV’s first news and entertainment hybrid with a magazine format. He was soon contributing celebrity interviews and stylish essays to complement the investigative exposés of Mr. Wallace, the veteran CBS inquisitor, who died in April 2012. Over the next four decades Mr. Safer profiled writers, politicians, opera stars, homeless people and the unemployed, and produced features on shoddy building practices, strip mining, victims of bureaucracy, waterfront crime, Swiss bank accounts, heart attack treatments, problems of sleeplessness, cultural nabobs and other subjects, many suggested by staff members and viewers. In contrast to the often abrasive Mr. Wallace, Mr. Safer produced witty pieces on the lighter side of life: the game of croquet, Tupperware parties, children’s beauty pageants, experiments in communication with apes, and Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates — “a place,” as he put it, “with free housing, free furniture, free color television, free electricity, free telephones, no property taxes, no sales taxes — no taxes, period. ” His serious journalism included a 1983 investigative report in which he cited new evidence that helped free Lenell Geter, a black engineer wrongly convicted of an armed robbery and sentenced to life in prison in Texas. Mr. Safer’s report was not the first on the case, but it drew national attention that led to its official reconsideration. In the studio or reporting on the road — he often traveled 200, 000 miles a year for “60 Minutes” — Mr. Safer was an affable interviewer, asking questions the man in the street might if he had the chance. He was well aware of television’s power to exploit emotions and was typically moderate, if persistent, in his commentaries. Still, Mr. Safer sometimes raised hackles, as when he questioned the basic premise of abstract art in a 1993 report, calling much of it “worthless junk” destined for “the trash heap of art history” and saying it was overvalued by the “hype” of critics, art dealers and auction houses. The art world recoiled, but Mr. Safer, who described himself as a “Sunday painter,” stood his ground. In 2012, he aired another blast at modern art, visiting a Miami Beach show that he called “an upscale flea market” and complaining that “the art trade” was a “booming cutthroat commodities market. ” In a commentary, the New York Times art critic Roberta Smith called Mr. Safer’s performance “a relatively toothless, if still quite clueless, exercise,” adding: “Basically, he and his camera crew spent a few hours last December swanning around Art Basel Miami Beach, the hip art fair, and venturing nowhere else, letting the spectacle of this event, passed through quickly and superficially, stand for the whole art world. ” Suave, casual, impeccably tailored, with a long, craggy face, receding gray hair and a wide, easy smile, Mr. Safer was something of a Renaissance man. He baked pies and cakes (but swore he did not eat them) played pétanque (a French version of bocce) pounded out scripts on a manual typewriter long after computers became ubiquitous, and painted watercolors of the interiors of countless hotel and motel rooms he had occupied. In 1980, he even had a show at a SoHo gallery. Why, he was asked in 1980, create still lifes in a transient world? “It’s 11:30 at night,” he replied. “I turn on Johnny Carson, I pick up my paints, and it wipes my mind out. ” Morley Safer was born in Toronto on Nov. 8, 1931, the son of Max and Anna Cohn Safer. His father owned an upholstery shop. Mr. Safer studied at the University of Western Ontario, now Western University. He was a reporter for two small newspapers in Ontario and worked for Reuters in London before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1955. As a CBC correspondent over the next three years, he covered conflicts in the Middle East and Cyprus and the Algerian revolution. In 1958, he produced and appeared on “CBC News Magazine. ” Sent to CBC’s London bureau in 1961, he covered major events in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the early 1960s. He joined the CBS London bureau in 1964. In 1965, he went to Vietnam and soon began filing reports that changed the way many Americans perceived the war. In 1968, he married Jane Fearer, an anthropologist and author. He is also survived by their daughter, Sarah Safer a brother and sister and three grandchildren. He had homes in Manhattan and Chester, Conn. In 1989, Mr. Safer went back to Vietnam for a “60 Minutes” report and interviewed people whose lives had been touched by the war. He also wrote a book, “Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam” (1990) with a chapter on Pham Xuan An, a Time magazine war correspondent who had secretly spied for Hanoi. Mr. Safer held no grudges. “He has done his best to follow his conscience,” he wrote. Mr. Safer won many awards, including Emmys, Peabodys and the George Polk Award for career achievement. In recent years, he worked part time for “60 Minutes. ” Still, his 2009 profile of the legendary Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who rarely gave interviews, was the talk of the fashion world. When he retired, CBS broadcast an hourlong special, “Morley Safer: A Reporter’s Life,” in which he revealed that he had not really liked being on television. “It makes me uneasy,” he said. “It is not natural to be talking to a piece of machinery. But the money is very good. ” | 1 |
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