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<p>FILE – This March 1, 2014 file photo shows part of the website for HealthCare.gov, seen in Washington. President Barack Obama’s health care law has become a tale of two Americas. States that fully embraced the law’s coverage expansion are experiencing a significant drop in the share of their residents who remain uninsured, according to an extensive new poll released Tuesday. States whose leaders still object to “Obamacare” are seeing much less change. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, cumulatively based on tens of thousands of interviews, found a drop of 4 percentage points in the share of uninsured residents for states that adopted the law’s Medicaid expansion and either built or helped run their own online insurance markets. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)</p>
<p>WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s health care law has become a tale of two Americas.</p>
<p>States that fully embraced the law’s coverage expansion are experiencing a significant drop in the number of uninsured residents, according to a major new survey released Tuesday. States whose leaders still object to “Obamacare” are seeing much less change.</p>
<p>The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index found an overall drop of 4 percentage points in the share of uninsured residents for states accepting the law’s core coverage provisions. Those are states that expanded their Medicaid programs and also built or took an active role managing new online insurance markets.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The drop was about half that level — 2.2 percentage points — in states that took neither of those steps, or just one of them.</p>
<p>“Those states that implement the law’s major mechanisms are seeing a significantly greater decline in their uninsured rates,” said Dan Witters, research director for the poll.</p>
<p>Medicaid expansion mainly helps low-income uninsured adults in states accepting it. Insurance exchanges operate in every state, offering taxpayer-subsidized private coverage to people who have no health plan on the job.</p>
<p>Leading the nation were two southern states where the law has found political support. Arkansas saw a drop of about 10 percentage points in its share of uninsured residents, from 22.5 percent in 2013, to 12.4 percent by the middle of this year. Kentucky experienced a drop of nearly 9 percentage points, from 20.4 percent of its residents uninsured in 2013, to 11.9 percent.</p>
<p>Although the poll’s margin of sampling error is higher for smaller states, Witters said Gallup has a high level of confidence that the numbers represent real changes.</p>
<p>The poll found contrasts among states that share a border, but have taken different paths politically on the health care law.</p>
<p>— While Arkansas had the 10-point decline in its uninsured rate, the drop in Tennessee was just 2.4 percentage points.</p>
<p>— The uninsured rate in West Virginia fell 5.7 points after the state agreed to Medicaid expansion, but there was no change for neighboring Virginia, where Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe has been blocked by a Republican-led legislature.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>— Colorado’s uninsured rated dropped 6 percentage points with Medicaid expansion and a state-run exchange, while Utah’s didn’t budge. That state has a federally-run exchange and is still weighing whether to expand Medicaid.</p>
<p>It’s unclear if emerging disparities among neighboring states will start to shift the hardened lines in the political debate over health care. Americans remain divided over Obama’s signature program, with opponents clearly outnumbering supporters.</p>
<p>Robert Blendon, a public opinion analyst at the Harvard School of Public Health, said immediate shifts are unlikely. That’s because negative views about the law are driven by people who already had insurance. They worry that the coverage expansion will raise their premiums or compromise the quality of care they receive.</p>
<p>“Why isn’t the bill more popular?” asked Blendon. “Rightly or wrongly, people who are not directly aided by it are worried.”</p>
<p>The Gallup survey found some coverage gains in several major states opposing the law that were also the focus of sign-up campaigns by the Obama administration and its supporters. Texas saw a drop of 3 percentage points in its uninsured rate, while Florida saw a slightly higher decline.</p>
<p>Some blue states that already had high levels of insurance coverage made little headway. The poll found hardly any change in Massachusetts and Vermont.</p>
<p>In deeply red Kansas, the uninsured rate actually went up by 5 percentage points this year. Witters said Gallup is taking a closer look at that finding, and it’s not clear if it represents an anomaly.</p>
<p>The Gallup-Healthways survey is important because it combines the quick turnaround of media polls with extensive outreach usually seen in government research. Pollsters interview 500 people a day, 350 days a year.</p>
<p>The 2013 margin of sampling error for most states is plus or minus 1 to 2 percentage points, but it is as high as plus or minus 3.5 points for states with smaller population sizes, such as Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, and Hawaii. For midyear 2014 results, the error range increases to as high as plus or minus 5.0 points for these smallest states.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>AP Writer Stacy Anderson contributed to this report.</p>
<p>Online:</p>
<p>Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index – <a href="http://tinyurl.com/n8rrex7" type="external">http://tinyurl.com/n8rrex7</a></p> | Poll: Obama health law is a tale of 2 Americas | false | https://abqjournal.com/441104/poll-obama-health-law-is-a-tale-of-2-americas.html | 2least
| Poll: Obama health law is a tale of 2 Americas
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>FILE – This March 1, 2014 file photo shows part of the website for HealthCare.gov, seen in Washington. President Barack Obama’s health care law has become a tale of two Americas. States that fully embraced the law’s coverage expansion are experiencing a significant drop in the share of their residents who remain uninsured, according to an extensive new poll released Tuesday. States whose leaders still object to “Obamacare” are seeing much less change. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, cumulatively based on tens of thousands of interviews, found a drop of 4 percentage points in the share of uninsured residents for states that adopted the law’s Medicaid expansion and either built or helped run their own online insurance markets. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)</p>
<p>WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s health care law has become a tale of two Americas.</p>
<p>States that fully embraced the law’s coverage expansion are experiencing a significant drop in the number of uninsured residents, according to a major new survey released Tuesday. States whose leaders still object to “Obamacare” are seeing much less change.</p>
<p>The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index found an overall drop of 4 percentage points in the share of uninsured residents for states accepting the law’s core coverage provisions. Those are states that expanded their Medicaid programs and also built or took an active role managing new online insurance markets.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The drop was about half that level — 2.2 percentage points — in states that took neither of those steps, or just one of them.</p>
<p>“Those states that implement the law’s major mechanisms are seeing a significantly greater decline in their uninsured rates,” said Dan Witters, research director for the poll.</p>
<p>Medicaid expansion mainly helps low-income uninsured adults in states accepting it. Insurance exchanges operate in every state, offering taxpayer-subsidized private coverage to people who have no health plan on the job.</p>
<p>Leading the nation were two southern states where the law has found political support. Arkansas saw a drop of about 10 percentage points in its share of uninsured residents, from 22.5 percent in 2013, to 12.4 percent by the middle of this year. Kentucky experienced a drop of nearly 9 percentage points, from 20.4 percent of its residents uninsured in 2013, to 11.9 percent.</p>
<p>Although the poll’s margin of sampling error is higher for smaller states, Witters said Gallup has a high level of confidence that the numbers represent real changes.</p>
<p>The poll found contrasts among states that share a border, but have taken different paths politically on the health care law.</p>
<p>— While Arkansas had the 10-point decline in its uninsured rate, the drop in Tennessee was just 2.4 percentage points.</p>
<p>— The uninsured rate in West Virginia fell 5.7 points after the state agreed to Medicaid expansion, but there was no change for neighboring Virginia, where Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe has been blocked by a Republican-led legislature.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>— Colorado’s uninsured rated dropped 6 percentage points with Medicaid expansion and a state-run exchange, while Utah’s didn’t budge. That state has a federally-run exchange and is still weighing whether to expand Medicaid.</p>
<p>It’s unclear if emerging disparities among neighboring states will start to shift the hardened lines in the political debate over health care. Americans remain divided over Obama’s signature program, with opponents clearly outnumbering supporters.</p>
<p>Robert Blendon, a public opinion analyst at the Harvard School of Public Health, said immediate shifts are unlikely. That’s because negative views about the law are driven by people who already had insurance. They worry that the coverage expansion will raise their premiums or compromise the quality of care they receive.</p>
<p>“Why isn’t the bill more popular?” asked Blendon. “Rightly or wrongly, people who are not directly aided by it are worried.”</p>
<p>The Gallup survey found some coverage gains in several major states opposing the law that were also the focus of sign-up campaigns by the Obama administration and its supporters. Texas saw a drop of 3 percentage points in its uninsured rate, while Florida saw a slightly higher decline.</p>
<p>Some blue states that already had high levels of insurance coverage made little headway. The poll found hardly any change in Massachusetts and Vermont.</p>
<p>In deeply red Kansas, the uninsured rate actually went up by 5 percentage points this year. Witters said Gallup is taking a closer look at that finding, and it’s not clear if it represents an anomaly.</p>
<p>The Gallup-Healthways survey is important because it combines the quick turnaround of media polls with extensive outreach usually seen in government research. Pollsters interview 500 people a day, 350 days a year.</p>
<p>The 2013 margin of sampling error for most states is plus or minus 1 to 2 percentage points, but it is as high as plus or minus 3.5 points for states with smaller population sizes, such as Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, and Hawaii. For midyear 2014 results, the error range increases to as high as plus or minus 5.0 points for these smallest states.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>AP Writer Stacy Anderson contributed to this report.</p>
<p>Online:</p>
<p>Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index – <a href="http://tinyurl.com/n8rrex7" type="external">http://tinyurl.com/n8rrex7</a></p> | 1,100 |
|
<p>According to Greek myth, the King of the Titans, Cronus (Latin: Saturnus), heard a prophecy that one of his children would overthrow him.&#160; In response to this prophecy, Cronus, father to the gods&#160;Demeter,&#160;Hestia, Hera,&#160;Hades&#160;and Poseidon&#160;by Rhea, devoured his children as soon as they were born to prevent his loss of power.&#160; Zeus narrowly escaped this fate as Zeus’ mother fed Cronus a rock dressed in baby clothes which Cronus assumed was his. This myth is immortalized by Dutch painter&#160;Peter Paul Rubens in <a href="" type="internal">Saturn Devouring His Son</a> (1636) and then almost two centuries later by Francisco Goya in one of his fourteen Black Paintings that he painted directly onto the walls of his house, Quinta del Sordo, also named <a href="" type="internal">Saturn Devouring His Son</a> (c. 1819-1823). Through artistic representation, the myth of Cronus has come to be understood as a conflict between youth and old age in addition to those with power who fear losing it to the younger generations.</p>
<p>This story of Cronus is what came to mind this past week when I found myself set upon by dozens of so-called “radical feminists.”&#160; I am obliged to put this term in quotation marks to refer to these women since this brand of radical feminism seems to have been hijacked by individuals who are very much out of touch with what feminism is about (eg. women), much less anything related to the tenets of radical feminism. &#160; By all accounts from what I have witnessed this past week, what these women believe to be feminism is merely a vindictive table-turning of history, dare I say a buffet of those women who are in any way tainted by their proximity to the male body—especially those women who have not spawned Satan’s seed: the male child.</p>
<p>What kicked this shit storm off was when a post I made last week on my timeline regarding a feminist event this summer which I might have been interested in attending.&#160; As a mother to two small children, my participation in such events is entirely related to my ability to bring my children with me, especially when an event is not a local one-day affair. So as with all logistical communications, I wrote and asked if I could bring my children aged two and five. This is the exchange I posted on my Facebook wall: I just received this as an email for a “feminist” event:</p>
<p>“It is a female-only space so we do not allow male children.”</p>
<p>My response: “You have just written the most fucked up email I have ever received in my life. Happy not to attend. Wow!!!”</p>
<p>From this post I received comments like, “Why is that fucked up?” where I was expected to explain to an adult female who considers herself a feminist why barring a two-year old because he is male might present a moral problem for any group which not only calls itself “feminist” but which seeks to liberate all females from sex-based oppression whereby the mothers of these children are necessarily excluded.&#160; The irony in posing such a question made my head reel, but no sooner could I realize the incongruence of this assertion did another woman write, “I actually don’t understand, either. I’m not being snarky. I really don’t see why it’s wrong to have female-only spaces.”&#160; I had to underscore many times in these conversations that my objection had to do with being asked not to bring a two-year-old male to a feminist event, not the fact that, as per many social events, children in general were not welcome. My disagreement had nothing to do with “female-only spaces,” but dealt with the more serious matter of excluding small male bodies because of some deeply prejudiced views of males from birth.</p>
<p>I then reminded these women of the Facebook groups I have had to leave in recent years where some feminists had actually advocated for the abortion of male fetuses to counter the historical injustices of <a href="https://oig.cepal.org/en/indicators/femicide-or-feminicide" type="external">femicide</a> and misogyny.&#160; I had left those groups upon reading this eugenical proposition and reminded these women last week that the disdain for and the planned elimination of male bodies from the site of the social is nothing other than eugenics. It was upon this basis that I protested the demonization of male bodies as a political strategy.&#160; I even, somewhat ironically, invoked the term “ <a href="" type="internal">feminazi</a>” demonstrating how a word so often misused by men’s rights activists, actually makes sense in this specific context of willing and orchestrating away males as a class, all under the guise of “safe spaces.”&#160; Certainly, “ <a href="https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/longform/a35646/women-only-spaces/" type="external">female-only spaces</a>” is the lie these “feminists” tell themselves to commit to a essentialism of male guilt through birth.</p>
<p>Some women chimed in stating that small boys under five should be acceptable to bring, but such sentiments were rarely allowed to remain unchallenged with others angrily writing about male babies “tak[e] the attention from their mothers,” that female babies “deserve to have female-only spaces,” that “[w]omen have the right to not want penis-having people of any age, in a group or gathering,” and one woman even maintained that young boys “absorb misogyny.”&#160; It is as if these women emerged from medieval&#160;alchemy&#160;whereby the site of evil, the male as misogyny par excellence, is the contagion and not the social and political structures into which we are all inculcated.</p>
<p>These responses and anger directed at males emerged this past week, all from the context of newborn and toddler males who simply cannot be tossed in the crisper for a week, or where a parent like myself—single by choice—cannot just drop this child somewhere at such a tender age.&#160; It was clear, despite the word “sister” and “sisterly” being thrown about that this sub-brand of “radical feminism” was anything but feminist.&#160; There was a clear framing of these “penis-having” bodies as abject and this abjection was extended to any woman who produced these male lives.&#160; Could the irony of such a feminism be any clearer?</p>
<p>And then things went off the rails.&#160; And when I say “off the rails” I mean Cronos eating all of his children in one spoonful off the rails.</p>
<p>The thread on my wall quickly exploded with references to toddler rapists with women writing of young children under five being sexually aggressive stating, “Small children do rape. It just wasn’t me making that assertion or using that fact in this argument in this thread,” “&#160;I’m sure 5 year old boys rape. They socialize into masculinity very fast, didn’t you feminists know that by now?” and this piece of work:&#160; “Years ago, I was with a feminist friend while she was babysitting a 2 year old boy. His mom was a swim coach at a local college. The boy was grabbing at our breasts and had this really creepy smile on his face. We both got it: it came across as sexist-creepy. At age 2, he’d already learned to objectify women. I’ve seen this in other boys at age 2.”&#160; One woman went on to post a link repeatedly to an <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3395897" type="external">article</a> which allegedly maintains that that toddlers can also rape. In reality, however, this article merely demonstrates the links between those boys who had committed sexual offenses at the age of almost nine and the co-extensive “history of sexual and physical abuse in the majority of the families of these children, as well as a history of substance abuse.”&#160; Hardly toddler rapists.&#160; Alas, the myth of the toddler rapist was born and I was horrified by both what I was reading and worried about this madness unfolding upon my wall.</p>
<p>So, from my original Facebook post—what I thought was the complete “out there” of feminist politics—was merely the Marco Rubio to these feminists’ Donald Trump, with this latter group exercising, in perfect congruence to the trope of “legitimized” racism towards Mexicans, the emotionally-charged branding of young male children as potential rapists. As these women sung their version of a fundamentalist feminism, the chorus couched their desire for female-only spaces as the “loving of other women.”&#160; It is the comic bordering on the insane, with a heavy dose of the very patriarchy these women claim to be fighting tossed into the mix.</p>
<p>I tried to dialogue with these women who kept persisting in derailing the discussion. &#160; Indeed, for many women making a humanist argument for feminism, stating that feminism is not about individuals but structures, the response was consistently U-turned back to “all-female spaces.” But for those of us alarmed by the constant references to “penis-free spaces,”&#160; it became quickly clear that this debate was never about all-female spaces.&#160; This was about enforcing patriarchy 2.0 fiercely spun against women who had any contact with males, to include those who had procreated them.&#160; I tried to reason against these women’s position writing: “You don’t make society disappear because people perceive a two-year-old as a patriarch.”&#160; Others chimed in: “Having read the original post, I’m really disturbed that this all came from the prospect of a 2 year old child (with a penis) attending an all women event. Projecting the attributes of adult males on a toddler is surely part of the problem we are fighting against and it feels to me that it is akin to the sexualization of children.”&#160; And yet another, “We want a society where each sex respects and values each other surely, not one dominance replaced by another.” The pushback to such reasoned thoughts was once again to derail the discussion with the repeated insistence of women’s individual rights to not have any “penis-bodied” humans in the mix, all the while excoriating the mothers of these male babies as having “mother privilege.”</p>
<p>Identity politics gone amok with these self-styled “radical feminists” who have basically fashioned a new ideology by stitching together neo-liberal tropes to an identity politics of victimhood.&#160; Lacking any sort of structural critique of sex-based inequality or even a coherent political narrative, these women have passed the ball to the so-called “privileged mothers” who are shamed for procreating on the one hand, and then falsely painted as bourgeois and wealthy on the other.&#160; The contradictions are so fast and furious that one could have whiplash reading through all the sexist paradigms that appear to be neatly cut-and-pasted from several generations earlier.&#160; Who knew that women having children would upset the neo-liberal “radical feminist” who views herself as emancipated merely because she has earmarked children as oppressive!</p>
<p>Then one woman let loose the nugget of truth at the heart of this matter:&#160; “Why did [these women] make more males? I know we are definitely not allowed to think or say such things because of the motherhood worship cult and myth of motherhood oppression, but seriously, the world is being destroyed by males and we are running out of time.”&#160; I was to learn that there is a “motherhood worship cult” as I was accused of having “motherhood privilege.”&#160; You can’t make this delusional nonsense up!&#160; So, in the absence of the dominant patriarch, these women had merely replaced that symbol with the next best thing: females impregnated by the patriarch.&#160; It is as if the last 100 years of feminism had never taken place, because with “feminists” like this, who needs patriarchy?</p>
<p>Many comments attempted to belittle our critiques of this tacit form of eugenics, asserting that it was our “natural attachment” to our male offspring which clouded our ability to “sympathize” with women who wanted no “penis-bodied” individuals in their midst. Other comments insinuated that we could not “understand” this “need” because of our being “handmaidens to patriarchy” as one woman wrote that we refuse “to admit that their son (Nigel) will be an oppressor, even when all evidence points to it.”&#160; Personally speaking, it was overwhelming to watch so many so-called feminists assume that I had a male partner—much less any partner. It was largely this assumption that formed their beliefs that I and my “toddler son rapist” were polluted and thus unworthy of being part of their purity feminism. It is not bad enough that women are already framed as being <a href="" type="internal">gold-diggers</a>, <a href="" type="internal">false rape</a> accusers, and <a href="" type="internal">manipulative bosses</a>, but in the absence of&#160; women must face the same sets of arguments from other women who deem that the problem of sex-based inequality is suddenly the fault of other women who reproduce with the “devil’s seed” and dare give birth to males.</p>
<p>Apparently there is a whole mini-cult of these “feminists” who pop about the Internet to inform women that all males are tyrannical, to include boys.&#160; A few such feminists have actually written a book about how males are “ <a href="" type="internal">inherently dangerous</a>” with a chapter entitled, “Boys Oppress All Females.”&#160; The authors of this text promote the belief that males are naturally oppressive, noting that giving birth does not mean that a female is not “bringing another rapist into the world” and ”that no matter what you do,&#160;if you have a boy, he will likely terrorize and assault girls and, later, adult women and Lesbians, and likely will be a rapist.” This text is comedy gold!</p>
<p>The arguments of those who view male babies as oppressors from birth are as comic as they are sad, since insinuating that young boys present a danger to grown women plays into the very rhetoric of patriarchy these women otherwise espouse. Reducing a male to a monolith of presumed guilt is no different than the historical reductions of women as <a href="http://worldpopulationhistory.org/womens-status-and-fertility-rates/" type="external">free labor</a>,&#160; <a href="https://onlinetopshops.de/" type="external">shopping</a> addicts, or <a href="https://www.girlsaskguys.com/fashion-style/a28-why-women-obsess-over-fashion" type="external">fashion-victims</a>.&#160; Such essentialism decries the necessary <a href="http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/what_is_patriarchy" type="external">structural critiques of patriarchy</a> by individualizing power such that male babies are not only born as abusers but they also present a danger to the pure-driven innocence of females.&#160; Arguments which position male violence not as a social but as a “genetic condition” only serve to duplicate the very essentialist arguments which actual feminists are fighting today where correlating certain gendered behavior to sexed bodies is not the solution, it’s the problem.</p>
<p>One person posted that male babies “aren’t primal rape seed”&#160; pointing to the the issues of class that this newly minted brand of so-called “radical feminists” blatantly ignore.&#160; She&#160; continues:</p>
<p>They don’t have capital to pay for a servant class of working people to raise their child every single day while they do&#160;Real Things Of Importance because having a child is totally an absolutely meaningless biological mechanistic thing, unless something MALE is involved and is therefore on the rape spectrum. I don’t think any of you believe your own bullshit about constructionist gender and that your real worldview is of a Darwinist hellscape in which women are biologically inferior praying for the Messiah to come in the form of virgin births. It’s highly phobic of sex and sexuality. I’m totally done with this sorry excuse for feminism.</p>
<p>The deflections of class analysis took place in tandem with the demonstrable inability to sustain an ethics of male elimination.&#160; Some women flailed so desperately for an argument that a few floated the falsehood that the event I was interested in attending actually allowed male children (it doesn’t).&#160; And while these “feminists” attempted to sound theoretical, they weren’t really saying anything except that mothers are to blame for reproducing children—mostly male children—while pointing to the audacity of these mothers who asked to bring their young children with them to an all-female event. The responses of “get a partner” were less than unhelpful; they were a stark reminder that sexism is not about individual men but is very much about the structures that both men and women adopt in marginalizing the most disempowered.</p>
<p>While I found the events of this past week shocking, I didn’t find them surprising.&#160; Last summer, I met up with a British radical feminist for brunch one Sunday morning, I was aghast by her annoyance that I had brought my two children with me. I told her, “It’s Sunday, I am a single parent. Should I have stuck them in the refrigerator?”&#160; She went on to insult me and my children insinuating my male child was patriarchal, adding, “Women who are raped by their husbands, I get them having children, but these….” she said, waving her hand in the direction of my children. She never finished her sentence but it was quite clear where she was heading.&#160; I had broken her stereotypical mold as a single woman who chose to have children on my own. There was nobody to blame, nobody to accuse of a “marital rape” which resulted in children. In this feminist’s mind, children are uniquely the result of rape, no sane woman would have anything to do with men, and women have zero agency concerning their own lives.&#160; She ranted for another ten minutes or so until I finally turned to her and said, “For someone who dislikes children so much, you behave an awful lot like one.”</p>
<p>Thinking of this encounter over the past week, I was happily reminded by many radical feminists who have not confused trauma for solidarity of the importance of including mothers in their events.&#160; And many of these women have spoken out over the past week reminding the younger feminists of the imperative to offer childcare at all events and not to exclude mothers.&#160; Somehow this message missed these other “radical feminists” whom I am forced to resign permanently to quotation marks.</p>
<p>Feminism—no matter what brand you call it—must be about structures, not individuals. We cannot create a movement for social reform and the advance of human rights of women based upon the reversal of atrocity or an “eye for an eye” type of vigilante feminism. That model has proven throughout history not to work and we are constrained to cohabiting this planet together with be-penised bodies, like it or not. Inasmuch as I am happy to support all-female spaces—something that concerns half the population—this very same half also happens to be the sex that reproduces children.&#160; It is hard to build a case for human rights when only those who do not reproduce are given any sort of social power and credibility, or where their dislike of the “penis” becomes that emblematic moment for a feminism where women who reproduce males are cannibalized for the cause.</p>
<p>Where I have been critiquing identity politics in recent years, I cannot exempt this self-appointed subset of “radical feminists” whose political claims exist uniquely as a grievance instead of as a movement fomented upon the centering of a class-based analysis.&#160; This spin on “feminism” is heavy-laden with many of the same issues that these very feminists differently oppose in other political landscapes.&#160; Their is an identitarianism driven uniquely by a politics of suffering and hyper-individualism where the rhetoric of “healthy boundaries” becomes a cover for patriarchy v1.2 as the exclusion of inconvenient bodies is collateral damage to their storefront window of “woman as utopia.”</p>
<p>As Chazz Brandon wrote to one woman, “You can keep repeating that [it’s about all-female spaces] but it’s a calculated misrepresentation and shameful. It’s about some women’s aversion to males even in diapers. Excluding women on that basis is ridiculous.” Brandon then went on to create this meme which has since amped up the kray kray while encouraging more women on the left to critique the myth of the “toddler rapist.”</p>
<p>In addition to Brandon’s meme, I received numerous emails and messages of support from women who were horrified by what was taking place.&#160; Many similarly took up the task of responding to these claims: one pointing out that “feminism is a political theory and practice” not a brand of vengeance as political action, another writing that “when feminism loses class analysis it becomes hollow,” and a feminist who threw up her hands likening these women to “cult abductees.”&#160; Daily, women have come out to voice their criticism about some of the more delusory tales of the “pervy toddler” and the narrative being spun that males are the beholders of original sin in tandem with the bizarre sexualization of both male and female children.&#160; This was a full-on reversal of the historical tables of injustice and these women were clearly using “female-only spaces” as their cover for a revenge narrative to enact their anger upon all males—infants, toddlers, and the whole gamut of born-to-be-rapists.&#160; Thankfully, many radical feminists have stood up to the bullying and the misandry in recent days, speaking out against the implications of eugenics for such a theoretical and practical intolerance of male bodies, some comparing this self-appointed brood to “cult abductees” and others questioning if trauma has played a role in the creation of such a discourse.</p>
<p>This off-shoot of the radical feminist movement is framing women as perpetual victims and men as the genetic spawn whose threat to women begins at birth.&#160; Cronus eating his children is embodied by these women who seek to locate and destroy any perceived threat to their dreamscape of “penis-free space.” &#160; Such politics shows no desire to transcend the political reality of the sexes; instead, these women opt for a victim-politics of emotion whereby the only permissible voice allowable is that of a hyper-individualized feminism which refuses to reconcile bourgeois neoliberal freedoms with their private beliefs.&#160; Or, as one woman told me, “It’s slut shaming by proxy.”</p>
<p>This off-label brand of radical feminism has driven away women because of its very internalized hatred of men—women who are polluted by their physical proximity to males, reproduction, and their male children. Such political narratives fracture any sense of solidarity and ultimately prevent any type of revolutionary action.&#160; We’ve seen this story before–and it isn’t a political narrative. It’s a religion.</p> | The Spawn: Feminism’s Misandry Problem | true | https://counterpunch.org/2018/03/30/the-spawn-feminisms-misandry-problem/ | 2018-03-30 | 4left
| The Spawn: Feminism’s Misandry Problem
<p>According to Greek myth, the King of the Titans, Cronus (Latin: Saturnus), heard a prophecy that one of his children would overthrow him.&#160; In response to this prophecy, Cronus, father to the gods&#160;Demeter,&#160;Hestia, Hera,&#160;Hades&#160;and Poseidon&#160;by Rhea, devoured his children as soon as they were born to prevent his loss of power.&#160; Zeus narrowly escaped this fate as Zeus’ mother fed Cronus a rock dressed in baby clothes which Cronus assumed was his. This myth is immortalized by Dutch painter&#160;Peter Paul Rubens in <a href="" type="internal">Saturn Devouring His Son</a> (1636) and then almost two centuries later by Francisco Goya in one of his fourteen Black Paintings that he painted directly onto the walls of his house, Quinta del Sordo, also named <a href="" type="internal">Saturn Devouring His Son</a> (c. 1819-1823). Through artistic representation, the myth of Cronus has come to be understood as a conflict between youth and old age in addition to those with power who fear losing it to the younger generations.</p>
<p>This story of Cronus is what came to mind this past week when I found myself set upon by dozens of so-called “radical feminists.”&#160; I am obliged to put this term in quotation marks to refer to these women since this brand of radical feminism seems to have been hijacked by individuals who are very much out of touch with what feminism is about (eg. women), much less anything related to the tenets of radical feminism. &#160; By all accounts from what I have witnessed this past week, what these women believe to be feminism is merely a vindictive table-turning of history, dare I say a buffet of those women who are in any way tainted by their proximity to the male body—especially those women who have not spawned Satan’s seed: the male child.</p>
<p>What kicked this shit storm off was when a post I made last week on my timeline regarding a feminist event this summer which I might have been interested in attending.&#160; As a mother to two small children, my participation in such events is entirely related to my ability to bring my children with me, especially when an event is not a local one-day affair. So as with all logistical communications, I wrote and asked if I could bring my children aged two and five. This is the exchange I posted on my Facebook wall: I just received this as an email for a “feminist” event:</p>
<p>“It is a female-only space so we do not allow male children.”</p>
<p>My response: “You have just written the most fucked up email I have ever received in my life. Happy not to attend. Wow!!!”</p>
<p>From this post I received comments like, “Why is that fucked up?” where I was expected to explain to an adult female who considers herself a feminist why barring a two-year old because he is male might present a moral problem for any group which not only calls itself “feminist” but which seeks to liberate all females from sex-based oppression whereby the mothers of these children are necessarily excluded.&#160; The irony in posing such a question made my head reel, but no sooner could I realize the incongruence of this assertion did another woman write, “I actually don’t understand, either. I’m not being snarky. I really don’t see why it’s wrong to have female-only spaces.”&#160; I had to underscore many times in these conversations that my objection had to do with being asked not to bring a two-year-old male to a feminist event, not the fact that, as per many social events, children in general were not welcome. My disagreement had nothing to do with “female-only spaces,” but dealt with the more serious matter of excluding small male bodies because of some deeply prejudiced views of males from birth.</p>
<p>I then reminded these women of the Facebook groups I have had to leave in recent years where some feminists had actually advocated for the abortion of male fetuses to counter the historical injustices of <a href="https://oig.cepal.org/en/indicators/femicide-or-feminicide" type="external">femicide</a> and misogyny.&#160; I had left those groups upon reading this eugenical proposition and reminded these women last week that the disdain for and the planned elimination of male bodies from the site of the social is nothing other than eugenics. It was upon this basis that I protested the demonization of male bodies as a political strategy.&#160; I even, somewhat ironically, invoked the term “ <a href="" type="internal">feminazi</a>” demonstrating how a word so often misused by men’s rights activists, actually makes sense in this specific context of willing and orchestrating away males as a class, all under the guise of “safe spaces.”&#160; Certainly, “ <a href="https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/longform/a35646/women-only-spaces/" type="external">female-only spaces</a>” is the lie these “feminists” tell themselves to commit to a essentialism of male guilt through birth.</p>
<p>Some women chimed in stating that small boys under five should be acceptable to bring, but such sentiments were rarely allowed to remain unchallenged with others angrily writing about male babies “tak[e] the attention from their mothers,” that female babies “deserve to have female-only spaces,” that “[w]omen have the right to not want penis-having people of any age, in a group or gathering,” and one woman even maintained that young boys “absorb misogyny.”&#160; It is as if these women emerged from medieval&#160;alchemy&#160;whereby the site of evil, the male as misogyny par excellence, is the contagion and not the social and political structures into which we are all inculcated.</p>
<p>These responses and anger directed at males emerged this past week, all from the context of newborn and toddler males who simply cannot be tossed in the crisper for a week, or where a parent like myself—single by choice—cannot just drop this child somewhere at such a tender age.&#160; It was clear, despite the word “sister” and “sisterly” being thrown about that this sub-brand of “radical feminism” was anything but feminist.&#160; There was a clear framing of these “penis-having” bodies as abject and this abjection was extended to any woman who produced these male lives.&#160; Could the irony of such a feminism be any clearer?</p>
<p>And then things went off the rails.&#160; And when I say “off the rails” I mean Cronos eating all of his children in one spoonful off the rails.</p>
<p>The thread on my wall quickly exploded with references to toddler rapists with women writing of young children under five being sexually aggressive stating, “Small children do rape. It just wasn’t me making that assertion or using that fact in this argument in this thread,” “&#160;I’m sure 5 year old boys rape. They socialize into masculinity very fast, didn’t you feminists know that by now?” and this piece of work:&#160; “Years ago, I was with a feminist friend while she was babysitting a 2 year old boy. His mom was a swim coach at a local college. The boy was grabbing at our breasts and had this really creepy smile on his face. We both got it: it came across as sexist-creepy. At age 2, he’d already learned to objectify women. I’ve seen this in other boys at age 2.”&#160; One woman went on to post a link repeatedly to an <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3395897" type="external">article</a> which allegedly maintains that that toddlers can also rape. In reality, however, this article merely demonstrates the links between those boys who had committed sexual offenses at the age of almost nine and the co-extensive “history of sexual and physical abuse in the majority of the families of these children, as well as a history of substance abuse.”&#160; Hardly toddler rapists.&#160; Alas, the myth of the toddler rapist was born and I was horrified by both what I was reading and worried about this madness unfolding upon my wall.</p>
<p>So, from my original Facebook post—what I thought was the complete “out there” of feminist politics—was merely the Marco Rubio to these feminists’ Donald Trump, with this latter group exercising, in perfect congruence to the trope of “legitimized” racism towards Mexicans, the emotionally-charged branding of young male children as potential rapists. As these women sung their version of a fundamentalist feminism, the chorus couched their desire for female-only spaces as the “loving of other women.”&#160; It is the comic bordering on the insane, with a heavy dose of the very patriarchy these women claim to be fighting tossed into the mix.</p>
<p>I tried to dialogue with these women who kept persisting in derailing the discussion. &#160; Indeed, for many women making a humanist argument for feminism, stating that feminism is not about individuals but structures, the response was consistently U-turned back to “all-female spaces.” But for those of us alarmed by the constant references to “penis-free spaces,”&#160; it became quickly clear that this debate was never about all-female spaces.&#160; This was about enforcing patriarchy 2.0 fiercely spun against women who had any contact with males, to include those who had procreated them.&#160; I tried to reason against these women’s position writing: “You don’t make society disappear because people perceive a two-year-old as a patriarch.”&#160; Others chimed in: “Having read the original post, I’m really disturbed that this all came from the prospect of a 2 year old child (with a penis) attending an all women event. Projecting the attributes of adult males on a toddler is surely part of the problem we are fighting against and it feels to me that it is akin to the sexualization of children.”&#160; And yet another, “We want a society where each sex respects and values each other surely, not one dominance replaced by another.” The pushback to such reasoned thoughts was once again to derail the discussion with the repeated insistence of women’s individual rights to not have any “penis-bodied” humans in the mix, all the while excoriating the mothers of these male babies as having “mother privilege.”</p>
<p>Identity politics gone amok with these self-styled “radical feminists” who have basically fashioned a new ideology by stitching together neo-liberal tropes to an identity politics of victimhood.&#160; Lacking any sort of structural critique of sex-based inequality or even a coherent political narrative, these women have passed the ball to the so-called “privileged mothers” who are shamed for procreating on the one hand, and then falsely painted as bourgeois and wealthy on the other.&#160; The contradictions are so fast and furious that one could have whiplash reading through all the sexist paradigms that appear to be neatly cut-and-pasted from several generations earlier.&#160; Who knew that women having children would upset the neo-liberal “radical feminist” who views herself as emancipated merely because she has earmarked children as oppressive!</p>
<p>Then one woman let loose the nugget of truth at the heart of this matter:&#160; “Why did [these women] make more males? I know we are definitely not allowed to think or say such things because of the motherhood worship cult and myth of motherhood oppression, but seriously, the world is being destroyed by males and we are running out of time.”&#160; I was to learn that there is a “motherhood worship cult” as I was accused of having “motherhood privilege.”&#160; You can’t make this delusional nonsense up!&#160; So, in the absence of the dominant patriarch, these women had merely replaced that symbol with the next best thing: females impregnated by the patriarch.&#160; It is as if the last 100 years of feminism had never taken place, because with “feminists” like this, who needs patriarchy?</p>
<p>Many comments attempted to belittle our critiques of this tacit form of eugenics, asserting that it was our “natural attachment” to our male offspring which clouded our ability to “sympathize” with women who wanted no “penis-bodied” individuals in their midst. Other comments insinuated that we could not “understand” this “need” because of our being “handmaidens to patriarchy” as one woman wrote that we refuse “to admit that their son (Nigel) will be an oppressor, even when all evidence points to it.”&#160; Personally speaking, it was overwhelming to watch so many so-called feminists assume that I had a male partner—much less any partner. It was largely this assumption that formed their beliefs that I and my “toddler son rapist” were polluted and thus unworthy of being part of their purity feminism. It is not bad enough that women are already framed as being <a href="" type="internal">gold-diggers</a>, <a href="" type="internal">false rape</a> accusers, and <a href="" type="internal">manipulative bosses</a>, but in the absence of&#160; women must face the same sets of arguments from other women who deem that the problem of sex-based inequality is suddenly the fault of other women who reproduce with the “devil’s seed” and dare give birth to males.</p>
<p>Apparently there is a whole mini-cult of these “feminists” who pop about the Internet to inform women that all males are tyrannical, to include boys.&#160; A few such feminists have actually written a book about how males are “ <a href="" type="internal">inherently dangerous</a>” with a chapter entitled, “Boys Oppress All Females.”&#160; The authors of this text promote the belief that males are naturally oppressive, noting that giving birth does not mean that a female is not “bringing another rapist into the world” and ”that no matter what you do,&#160;if you have a boy, he will likely terrorize and assault girls and, later, adult women and Lesbians, and likely will be a rapist.” This text is comedy gold!</p>
<p>The arguments of those who view male babies as oppressors from birth are as comic as they are sad, since insinuating that young boys present a danger to grown women plays into the very rhetoric of patriarchy these women otherwise espouse. Reducing a male to a monolith of presumed guilt is no different than the historical reductions of women as <a href="http://worldpopulationhistory.org/womens-status-and-fertility-rates/" type="external">free labor</a>,&#160; <a href="https://onlinetopshops.de/" type="external">shopping</a> addicts, or <a href="https://www.girlsaskguys.com/fashion-style/a28-why-women-obsess-over-fashion" type="external">fashion-victims</a>.&#160; Such essentialism decries the necessary <a href="http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/what_is_patriarchy" type="external">structural critiques of patriarchy</a> by individualizing power such that male babies are not only born as abusers but they also present a danger to the pure-driven innocence of females.&#160; Arguments which position male violence not as a social but as a “genetic condition” only serve to duplicate the very essentialist arguments which actual feminists are fighting today where correlating certain gendered behavior to sexed bodies is not the solution, it’s the problem.</p>
<p>One person posted that male babies “aren’t primal rape seed”&#160; pointing to the the issues of class that this newly minted brand of so-called “radical feminists” blatantly ignore.&#160; She&#160; continues:</p>
<p>They don’t have capital to pay for a servant class of working people to raise their child every single day while they do&#160;Real Things Of Importance because having a child is totally an absolutely meaningless biological mechanistic thing, unless something MALE is involved and is therefore on the rape spectrum. I don’t think any of you believe your own bullshit about constructionist gender and that your real worldview is of a Darwinist hellscape in which women are biologically inferior praying for the Messiah to come in the form of virgin births. It’s highly phobic of sex and sexuality. I’m totally done with this sorry excuse for feminism.</p>
<p>The deflections of class analysis took place in tandem with the demonstrable inability to sustain an ethics of male elimination.&#160; Some women flailed so desperately for an argument that a few floated the falsehood that the event I was interested in attending actually allowed male children (it doesn’t).&#160; And while these “feminists” attempted to sound theoretical, they weren’t really saying anything except that mothers are to blame for reproducing children—mostly male children—while pointing to the audacity of these mothers who asked to bring their young children with them to an all-female event. The responses of “get a partner” were less than unhelpful; they were a stark reminder that sexism is not about individual men but is very much about the structures that both men and women adopt in marginalizing the most disempowered.</p>
<p>While I found the events of this past week shocking, I didn’t find them surprising.&#160; Last summer, I met up with a British radical feminist for brunch one Sunday morning, I was aghast by her annoyance that I had brought my two children with me. I told her, “It’s Sunday, I am a single parent. Should I have stuck them in the refrigerator?”&#160; She went on to insult me and my children insinuating my male child was patriarchal, adding, “Women who are raped by their husbands, I get them having children, but these….” she said, waving her hand in the direction of my children. She never finished her sentence but it was quite clear where she was heading.&#160; I had broken her stereotypical mold as a single woman who chose to have children on my own. There was nobody to blame, nobody to accuse of a “marital rape” which resulted in children. In this feminist’s mind, children are uniquely the result of rape, no sane woman would have anything to do with men, and women have zero agency concerning their own lives.&#160; She ranted for another ten minutes or so until I finally turned to her and said, “For someone who dislikes children so much, you behave an awful lot like one.”</p>
<p>Thinking of this encounter over the past week, I was happily reminded by many radical feminists who have not confused trauma for solidarity of the importance of including mothers in their events.&#160; And many of these women have spoken out over the past week reminding the younger feminists of the imperative to offer childcare at all events and not to exclude mothers.&#160; Somehow this message missed these other “radical feminists” whom I am forced to resign permanently to quotation marks.</p>
<p>Feminism—no matter what brand you call it—must be about structures, not individuals. We cannot create a movement for social reform and the advance of human rights of women based upon the reversal of atrocity or an “eye for an eye” type of vigilante feminism. That model has proven throughout history not to work and we are constrained to cohabiting this planet together with be-penised bodies, like it or not. Inasmuch as I am happy to support all-female spaces—something that concerns half the population—this very same half also happens to be the sex that reproduces children.&#160; It is hard to build a case for human rights when only those who do not reproduce are given any sort of social power and credibility, or where their dislike of the “penis” becomes that emblematic moment for a feminism where women who reproduce males are cannibalized for the cause.</p>
<p>Where I have been critiquing identity politics in recent years, I cannot exempt this self-appointed subset of “radical feminists” whose political claims exist uniquely as a grievance instead of as a movement fomented upon the centering of a class-based analysis.&#160; This spin on “feminism” is heavy-laden with many of the same issues that these very feminists differently oppose in other political landscapes.&#160; Their is an identitarianism driven uniquely by a politics of suffering and hyper-individualism where the rhetoric of “healthy boundaries” becomes a cover for patriarchy v1.2 as the exclusion of inconvenient bodies is collateral damage to their storefront window of “woman as utopia.”</p>
<p>As Chazz Brandon wrote to one woman, “You can keep repeating that [it’s about all-female spaces] but it’s a calculated misrepresentation and shameful. It’s about some women’s aversion to males even in diapers. Excluding women on that basis is ridiculous.” Brandon then went on to create this meme which has since amped up the kray kray while encouraging more women on the left to critique the myth of the “toddler rapist.”</p>
<p>In addition to Brandon’s meme, I received numerous emails and messages of support from women who were horrified by what was taking place.&#160; Many similarly took up the task of responding to these claims: one pointing out that “feminism is a political theory and practice” not a brand of vengeance as political action, another writing that “when feminism loses class analysis it becomes hollow,” and a feminist who threw up her hands likening these women to “cult abductees.”&#160; Daily, women have come out to voice their criticism about some of the more delusory tales of the “pervy toddler” and the narrative being spun that males are the beholders of original sin in tandem with the bizarre sexualization of both male and female children.&#160; This was a full-on reversal of the historical tables of injustice and these women were clearly using “female-only spaces” as their cover for a revenge narrative to enact their anger upon all males—infants, toddlers, and the whole gamut of born-to-be-rapists.&#160; Thankfully, many radical feminists have stood up to the bullying and the misandry in recent days, speaking out against the implications of eugenics for such a theoretical and practical intolerance of male bodies, some comparing this self-appointed brood to “cult abductees” and others questioning if trauma has played a role in the creation of such a discourse.</p>
<p>This off-shoot of the radical feminist movement is framing women as perpetual victims and men as the genetic spawn whose threat to women begins at birth.&#160; Cronus eating his children is embodied by these women who seek to locate and destroy any perceived threat to their dreamscape of “penis-free space.” &#160; Such politics shows no desire to transcend the political reality of the sexes; instead, these women opt for a victim-politics of emotion whereby the only permissible voice allowable is that of a hyper-individualized feminism which refuses to reconcile bourgeois neoliberal freedoms with their private beliefs.&#160; Or, as one woman told me, “It’s slut shaming by proxy.”</p>
<p>This off-label brand of radical feminism has driven away women because of its very internalized hatred of men—women who are polluted by their physical proximity to males, reproduction, and their male children. Such political narratives fracture any sense of solidarity and ultimately prevent any type of revolutionary action.&#160; We’ve seen this story before–and it isn’t a political narrative. It’s a religion.</p> | 1,101 |
<p />
<p>Falcon 9 launch and landing streaks from December. Image source: SpaceX.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>In the last few years, Elon Musk's roller-coaster career has really taken off. Both of Musk's companies nearly died at the onset of the Great Recession, and both of bounced back with a vengeance. Tesla , SpaceX, and Musk have had a few jam-packed weeks.</p>
<p>Tesla unveiled the highly anticipated Model 3, garnering over 325,000 reservations over the course of a week. SpaceX then proceeded to successfully land its second Falcon 9 booster, which was the first successful sea landing. Regardless of how you feel about either Tesla's or SpaceX's prospects, you have to admit that it's incredibly exciting just to witness what both companies are accomplishing in their respective industries.</p>
<p>And Musk hopes that eventually, you'll get bored with it.</p>
<p>Boredom is the goalFollowing the Dragon CRS-8 launch and landing earlier this month, NASA hosted a press conference to discuss the mission results. Musk fielded the vast majority of the media questions, discussing a variety of topics such as technical details of the mission and SpaceX's future. He reiterated that the fundamental goal of SpaceX was to achieve rapid reusability of rockets, which would lead to a hundredfold decrease in the marginal costs associated with space travel.</p>
<p>This is how he framed what success would look like for SpaceX in the future: "We'll be successful, ironically, when it becomes boring." He added that when the public's response is, "Oh yeah, another landing, no news there," then SpaceX will have achieved its goal.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Right now, watching the Falcon 9 landings is far from boring.</p>
<p>But if rocket landings eventuallybecome commonplace -- for SpaceX and its peers -- then the company will have accomplished its goal of transitioning toward a model of rapid reusability, instead of the outgoing model of simply discarding every rocket booster after a single use.</p>
<p>Compare this framework to aircraft. Nowadays, tens of thousands of commercial airliners take off and land every single day, and no one thinks twice about it. In the U.S. alone, there are 87,000 flights per day. Only a third of these are commercial flights. But Kitty Hawk was a big deal back in the day.</p>
<p>How this thinking applies to TeslaWhile EVs don't inspire the same kind of reactions as a rocket landing itself intact, there's still something to be said about a day when EVs are commonplace.</p>
<p>Model S is one of the few exciting EVs on the market right now. Image source: Tesla.</p>
<p>Part of the reason why EVs aren't as exciting as a product category is because most EVs have been compromised in some way -- either range, acceleration, or price. Most mainstream EVs to date compromised on range and acceleration in order to hit an affordable price. Tesla took the opposite approach, offering plenty of range and acceleration in order to excite consumers, but that performance initially came at a high price.</p>
<p>More broadly, the auto industry is now entering what will also likely go down in history as an incredibly exciting period of time. Tesla has catalyzed the transition to EVs, and every major automaker is on the cusp of launching mainstream EVs. The transition will take decades, but eventually seeing a bunch of EVs drive down the street will be as boring as it gets.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/16/elon-musk-wants-to-bore-you.aspx" type="external">Elon Musk Wants to Bore You Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFNewCow/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Evan Niu, CFA Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Tesla Motors, andhas the following options: long January 2018 $180 calls on Tesla Motors. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Tesla Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Elon Musk Wants to Bore You | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/04/16/elon-musk-wants-to-bore.html | 2016-04-18 | 0right
| Elon Musk Wants to Bore You
<p />
<p>Falcon 9 launch and landing streaks from December. Image source: SpaceX.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>In the last few years, Elon Musk's roller-coaster career has really taken off. Both of Musk's companies nearly died at the onset of the Great Recession, and both of bounced back with a vengeance. Tesla , SpaceX, and Musk have had a few jam-packed weeks.</p>
<p>Tesla unveiled the highly anticipated Model 3, garnering over 325,000 reservations over the course of a week. SpaceX then proceeded to successfully land its second Falcon 9 booster, which was the first successful sea landing. Regardless of how you feel about either Tesla's or SpaceX's prospects, you have to admit that it's incredibly exciting just to witness what both companies are accomplishing in their respective industries.</p>
<p>And Musk hopes that eventually, you'll get bored with it.</p>
<p>Boredom is the goalFollowing the Dragon CRS-8 launch and landing earlier this month, NASA hosted a press conference to discuss the mission results. Musk fielded the vast majority of the media questions, discussing a variety of topics such as technical details of the mission and SpaceX's future. He reiterated that the fundamental goal of SpaceX was to achieve rapid reusability of rockets, which would lead to a hundredfold decrease in the marginal costs associated with space travel.</p>
<p>This is how he framed what success would look like for SpaceX in the future: "We'll be successful, ironically, when it becomes boring." He added that when the public's response is, "Oh yeah, another landing, no news there," then SpaceX will have achieved its goal.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Right now, watching the Falcon 9 landings is far from boring.</p>
<p>But if rocket landings eventuallybecome commonplace -- for SpaceX and its peers -- then the company will have accomplished its goal of transitioning toward a model of rapid reusability, instead of the outgoing model of simply discarding every rocket booster after a single use.</p>
<p>Compare this framework to aircraft. Nowadays, tens of thousands of commercial airliners take off and land every single day, and no one thinks twice about it. In the U.S. alone, there are 87,000 flights per day. Only a third of these are commercial flights. But Kitty Hawk was a big deal back in the day.</p>
<p>How this thinking applies to TeslaWhile EVs don't inspire the same kind of reactions as a rocket landing itself intact, there's still something to be said about a day when EVs are commonplace.</p>
<p>Model S is one of the few exciting EVs on the market right now. Image source: Tesla.</p>
<p>Part of the reason why EVs aren't as exciting as a product category is because most EVs have been compromised in some way -- either range, acceleration, or price. Most mainstream EVs to date compromised on range and acceleration in order to hit an affordable price. Tesla took the opposite approach, offering plenty of range and acceleration in order to excite consumers, but that performance initially came at a high price.</p>
<p>More broadly, the auto industry is now entering what will also likely go down in history as an incredibly exciting period of time. Tesla has catalyzed the transition to EVs, and every major automaker is on the cusp of launching mainstream EVs. The transition will take decades, but eventually seeing a bunch of EVs drive down the street will be as boring as it gets.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/16/elon-musk-wants-to-bore-you.aspx" type="external">Elon Musk Wants to Bore You Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFNewCow/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Evan Niu, CFA Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Tesla Motors, andhas the following options: long January 2018 $180 calls on Tesla Motors. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Tesla Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 1,102 |
<p>By Daniel Ramos</p>
<p>VALLEGRANDE, Bolivia (Reuters) – Thousands gathered on Monday in a small town in southern Bolivia, where the leader of the Cuban revolution Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed by CIA-backed Bolivian soldiers 50 years earlier.</p>
<p>Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, one of few remaining leftist leaders in a region that has shifted to the political right, camped in a sleeping bag and tent and welcomed dignitaries from allies Cuba and Venezuela.</p>
<p>“50 years later, the legend of Ernesto Che Guevara lives in the young people, in their unquestionable struggle for equality and liberation,” Morales wrote on Twitter ahead of a scheduled speech.</p>
<p>Over the weekend artists, activists, veterans of the Cuban revolution and Guevara’s descendants gathered to commemorate the revolutionary hero in Vallegrande, where he was buried in a hidden, unmarked grave in 1967 before his remains were moved to Cuba 30 years later.</p>
<p>The Argentine-born doctor met Fidel Castro in Mexico, where they trained and bought guns in preparation for the Cuban revolution before setting sail for the island on Nov. 25, 1956, to start the insurgency that toppled U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista two years later.</p>
<p>Guevara rose to become one of the most important men in the rebel force and later in Cuba’s revolutionary government, heading the central bank and industry ministry.</p>
<p>He had hoped to replicate the revolution in Congo and then in Bolivia, but his call to arms largely failed and he was surrounded by U.S.-trained soldiers and caught in a ravine near La Higuera on Oct. 8, 1967.</p>
<p>The next day he was taken to Vallegrande, 60 km (37 miles) away and Bolivia’s then-President René Barrientos ordered his execution, avoiding a trial. Guevara was 39.</p>
<p>His remains were exhumed and reburied in Santa Clara, Cuba, in 1997, when the Cuban Communism he helped build was struggling to survive after the Soviet Union collapsed.</p>
<p>Commemorative ceremonies were held in Santa Clara on Sunday, and Cuba’s Vice President Ramiro Valdés joined Morales in Bolivia on Monday.</p>
<p>Guevara remains an anti-imperialist hero to many, especially in Latin America and Africa. In Cuba he is remembered for promoting unpaid voluntary work by toiling shirtless on building sites and hauling sacks of sugar.</p>
<p>But in the town of Rosario, Argentina, where he was born, some residents have been collecting signatures to have his statue removed, protesting what they call his violent means to promote communism and lack of human rights in today’s Cuba.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | Bolivia's Morales leads 'Che' homage 50 years after execution | false | https://newsline.com/bolivia039s-morales-leads-039che039-homage-50-years-after-execution/ | 2017-10-09 | 1right-center
| Bolivia's Morales leads 'Che' homage 50 years after execution
<p>By Daniel Ramos</p>
<p>VALLEGRANDE, Bolivia (Reuters) – Thousands gathered on Monday in a small town in southern Bolivia, where the leader of the Cuban revolution Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed by CIA-backed Bolivian soldiers 50 years earlier.</p>
<p>Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, one of few remaining leftist leaders in a region that has shifted to the political right, camped in a sleeping bag and tent and welcomed dignitaries from allies Cuba and Venezuela.</p>
<p>“50 years later, the legend of Ernesto Che Guevara lives in the young people, in their unquestionable struggle for equality and liberation,” Morales wrote on Twitter ahead of a scheduled speech.</p>
<p>Over the weekend artists, activists, veterans of the Cuban revolution and Guevara’s descendants gathered to commemorate the revolutionary hero in Vallegrande, where he was buried in a hidden, unmarked grave in 1967 before his remains were moved to Cuba 30 years later.</p>
<p>The Argentine-born doctor met Fidel Castro in Mexico, where they trained and bought guns in preparation for the Cuban revolution before setting sail for the island on Nov. 25, 1956, to start the insurgency that toppled U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista two years later.</p>
<p>Guevara rose to become one of the most important men in the rebel force and later in Cuba’s revolutionary government, heading the central bank and industry ministry.</p>
<p>He had hoped to replicate the revolution in Congo and then in Bolivia, but his call to arms largely failed and he was surrounded by U.S.-trained soldiers and caught in a ravine near La Higuera on Oct. 8, 1967.</p>
<p>The next day he was taken to Vallegrande, 60 km (37 miles) away and Bolivia’s then-President René Barrientos ordered his execution, avoiding a trial. Guevara was 39.</p>
<p>His remains were exhumed and reburied in Santa Clara, Cuba, in 1997, when the Cuban Communism he helped build was struggling to survive after the Soviet Union collapsed.</p>
<p>Commemorative ceremonies were held in Santa Clara on Sunday, and Cuba’s Vice President Ramiro Valdés joined Morales in Bolivia on Monday.</p>
<p>Guevara remains an anti-imperialist hero to many, especially in Latin America and Africa. In Cuba he is remembered for promoting unpaid voluntary work by toiling shirtless on building sites and hauling sacks of sugar.</p>
<p>But in the town of Rosario, Argentina, where he was born, some residents have been collecting signatures to have his statue removed, protesting what they call his violent means to promote communism and lack of human rights in today’s Cuba.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | 1,103 |
<p>Vice President Joe Biden criticized Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's foreign policy stance on Thursday during a speech in New York City, <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75661.html" type="external">according to Politico</a>.</p>
<p>Biden said, "If you are looking for a bumper sticker to sum up how President Obama has handled what we inherited, it's pretty simple: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive," <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75661.html" type="external">according to Politico</a>.</p>
<p>He focused on Romney's comments on Russia, saying that the former governor had a "cold war mindset" and was "out of touch," <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/04/joe-biden-blasts-mitt-romney-for-cold-war-mindset/" type="external">according to ABC News</a>. He added, "Gov. Romney, I think, is counting on collective amnesia of the American people," saying, "Americans know that we cannot afford to go back to the future."</p>
<p>Speaking about President Barack Obama's handling of the attack on Osama bin Laden's compound, Biden said, "He made one of the most courageous decisions I've seen a president make in my lifetime, and I would argue in a long time," <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-la-pn-biden-romney-foreign-policy-20120426,0,5809679.story" type="external">according to The Chicago Tribune</a>. Casting Romney as the unknown quantity, Biden said, "We can't say for certain what Gov. Romney would have done."</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/iraq/120426/iraqs-diyala-multi-ethnic-province-hit-twin-bomb-attac" type="external">Iraq's Diyala, a multi-ethnic province, hit by twin bomb attack</a></p>
<p>The part of the speech garnering the most attention, though, was Biden's insistence that "I promise you, the president has a big stick." When he said again, "I promise you," the audience laughed, though he was referring to President Theodore Roosevelt's famous maxim, "Speak softly and carry a big stick."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/joe-biden-and-the-presidents-big-stick/2012/04/26/gIQARWMUjT_blog.html" type="external">Political commentators</a> and the internet caught on to the statement and <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/04/biden-big-stick-obama-president.html" type="external">New York magazine published a collection of photos of Obama with big sticks</a>.</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/120425/protesters-disrupt-general-electrics-annual-meet" type="external">Protesters disrupt General Electric's annual meeting</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/behind-the-numbers/post/poll-romney-weaker-than-obama-on-foreign-policy/2012/04/11/gIQAPDHLBT_blog.html" type="external">According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll</a>, released on April 11, 53 percent of those surveyed trusted Obama on the handling of international affairs, compared to 36 percent who trusted Romney. In the same poll, Obama also had a huge lead in likability, at 64 percent, compared to Romney's 26 percent.</p>
<p>Republican National Committee spokesperson Kirsten Kukowski said, "It's clear Biden has amnesia about the Obama administration's foreign policy failures whether it's alienating allies like Israel, the failed Russia reset, and emboldening adversaries like Iran and Syria that seek to undermine our nation's security," <a href="http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/04/obamas-foreign-policy-throws-gop-for-a-loop-121778.html" type="external">according to Politico</a>.</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/120420/hotdesking-office-space-the-latest-growing-office-trend-workplace-culture" type="external">Hotdesking, the latest office trend to annoy employees</a></p>
<p>Here is a clip from the speech, courtesy of the Associated Press:</p>
<p />
<p /> | Biden's speech takes aim at Mitt Romney's foreign policy (VIDEO) | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-04-26/bidens-speech-takes-aim-mitt-romneys-foreign-policy-video | 2012-04-26 | 3left-center
| Biden's speech takes aim at Mitt Romney's foreign policy (VIDEO)
<p>Vice President Joe Biden criticized Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's foreign policy stance on Thursday during a speech in New York City, <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75661.html" type="external">according to Politico</a>.</p>
<p>Biden said, "If you are looking for a bumper sticker to sum up how President Obama has handled what we inherited, it's pretty simple: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive," <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75661.html" type="external">according to Politico</a>.</p>
<p>He focused on Romney's comments on Russia, saying that the former governor had a "cold war mindset" and was "out of touch," <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/04/joe-biden-blasts-mitt-romney-for-cold-war-mindset/" type="external">according to ABC News</a>. He added, "Gov. Romney, I think, is counting on collective amnesia of the American people," saying, "Americans know that we cannot afford to go back to the future."</p>
<p>Speaking about President Barack Obama's handling of the attack on Osama bin Laden's compound, Biden said, "He made one of the most courageous decisions I've seen a president make in my lifetime, and I would argue in a long time," <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-la-pn-biden-romney-foreign-policy-20120426,0,5809679.story" type="external">according to The Chicago Tribune</a>. Casting Romney as the unknown quantity, Biden said, "We can't say for certain what Gov. Romney would have done."</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/iraq/120426/iraqs-diyala-multi-ethnic-province-hit-twin-bomb-attac" type="external">Iraq's Diyala, a multi-ethnic province, hit by twin bomb attack</a></p>
<p>The part of the speech garnering the most attention, though, was Biden's insistence that "I promise you, the president has a big stick." When he said again, "I promise you," the audience laughed, though he was referring to President Theodore Roosevelt's famous maxim, "Speak softly and carry a big stick."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/joe-biden-and-the-presidents-big-stick/2012/04/26/gIQARWMUjT_blog.html" type="external">Political commentators</a> and the internet caught on to the statement and <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/04/biden-big-stick-obama-president.html" type="external">New York magazine published a collection of photos of Obama with big sticks</a>.</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/120425/protesters-disrupt-general-electrics-annual-meet" type="external">Protesters disrupt General Electric's annual meeting</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/behind-the-numbers/post/poll-romney-weaker-than-obama-on-foreign-policy/2012/04/11/gIQAPDHLBT_blog.html" type="external">According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll</a>, released on April 11, 53 percent of those surveyed trusted Obama on the handling of international affairs, compared to 36 percent who trusted Romney. In the same poll, Obama also had a huge lead in likability, at 64 percent, compared to Romney's 26 percent.</p>
<p>Republican National Committee spokesperson Kirsten Kukowski said, "It's clear Biden has amnesia about the Obama administration's foreign policy failures whether it's alienating allies like Israel, the failed Russia reset, and emboldening adversaries like Iran and Syria that seek to undermine our nation's security," <a href="http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/04/obamas-foreign-policy-throws-gop-for-a-loop-121778.html" type="external">according to Politico</a>.</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/120420/hotdesking-office-space-the-latest-growing-office-trend-workplace-culture" type="external">Hotdesking, the latest office trend to annoy employees</a></p>
<p>Here is a clip from the speech, courtesy of the Associated Press:</p>
<p />
<p /> | 1,104 |
<p>The Jordan government says it has signed a $10 billion deal with Russia for the construction of two nuclear reactors in the kingdom.</p>
<p>The deal was signed on Tuesday in the Jordanian capital, Amman.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The kingdom's state-run Petra news agency said Russia's state-owned firm "Rosatom will construct two 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactors" at the country's plant in Amra in northern Jordan.</p>
<p>Jordan lacks any local energy sources and imports 96 percent of its electricity, which is subsidized at great costs by the government.</p>
<p>The energy-poor nation hopes to finish building the two reactors by 2022 and use uranium that is being mined in in Jordan.</p> | Jordan says it has signed a $10 billion deal with Russia to build 2 nuclear reactors | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/03/24/jordan-says-it-has-signed-10-billion-deal-with-russia-to-build-2-nuclear.html | 2016-03-05 | 0right
| Jordan says it has signed a $10 billion deal with Russia to build 2 nuclear reactors
<p>The Jordan government says it has signed a $10 billion deal with Russia for the construction of two nuclear reactors in the kingdom.</p>
<p>The deal was signed on Tuesday in the Jordanian capital, Amman.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The kingdom's state-run Petra news agency said Russia's state-owned firm "Rosatom will construct two 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactors" at the country's plant in Amra in northern Jordan.</p>
<p>Jordan lacks any local energy sources and imports 96 percent of its electricity, which is subsidized at great costs by the government.</p>
<p>The energy-poor nation hopes to finish building the two reactors by 2022 and use uranium that is being mined in in Jordan.</p> | 1,105 |
<p>By Patturaja Murugaboopathy</p>
<p>(Reuters) – Foreign outflows accelerated in Asian equities in August as tensions in North Korea prompted global investors to book profits, but analysts predicted money would return on the back of positive earnings momentum and attractive valuations.</p>
<p>Data from seven Asian exchanges including India, Indonesia and Thailand showed foreign investors sold about $4 billion in total in August, the highest amount this year.</p>
<p>Graphic for Foreign flows into Asian equities: http://reut.rs/2f5dmfQ</p>
<p>“Tensions on the Korea peninsula increased, causing investors to book profit (in August),” said Jim McCafferty, head of equity research for Asia Pacific at Nomura.</p>
<p>“We are still optimistic for the second half of the year. Earnings momentum has been good and Asia is cheap compared to the US.”</p>
<p>Thomson Reuters data showed Asian companies’ total earnings beat their estimated earnings by 7 percent in the June quarter, with South Korea, Japan and Chinese firms taking the lead.</p>
<p>Graphic for Earnings surprise percent for Asian companies in June quarter: http://reut.rs/2jocQeh</p>
<p>According to the data, China’s industrial firms posted more higher profits, as the building boom fueled demand and lifted prices for everything from cement and steel to glass and wiring.</p>
<p>“China’s economy continues to grow strongly. Consumer confidence in Japan is improving and Japan’s earnings season has been strong,” said Nomura’s McCafferty.</p>
<p>Private purchasing managers’ indexes (PMIs) for August increased for Taiwan, Singapore, India, Indonesia and South Korea, and in all cases except South Korea, the numbers showed an expansion of manufacturing activity.</p>
<p>At the end of August, the MSCI Asia-Pacific index () had a forward price earnings ratio of 13.9, lower than the MSCI United States index’s () 18.4 and MSCI Europe’s 14.9. Some analysts say this indicated global funds were still under-invested in the region.</p>
<p>Graphic for Asia’s P/E ratio compared with world indexes: http://reut.rs/2f3wMlq</p>
<p>And with global liquidity still higher, analysts said Asian equities will benefit from that.</p>
<p>“Cash levels remain elevated, suggesting markets can remain in an Icarus upside mode for risk assets,” said Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at BofA Merrill Lynch.</p>
<p>While foreign investment has slowed in the region, domestic investors have pitched in to support some equity markets.</p>
<p>Domestic investment in Indian markets stood at $2.5 billion for August, which was much higher than the foreign inflows in the month.</p>
<p>Graphic for Domestic institutional investment in India: http://reut.rs/2jnzi7m</p>
<p>“The rising weight of domestic investors is a powerful one,” said Frank Benzimra, head of Asia equity strategy at Societe Generale (PA:) in Hong Kong.</p>
<p>“Japan domestic investors’ flows also take the lead and China investors on the Chinese stocks listed in Hong Kong through the Southbound flows.”</p> | Foreign outflows from Asian equities rise in August; analysts stay bullish | false | https://newsline.com/foreign-outflows-from-asian-equities-rise-in-august-analysts-stay-bullish/ | 2017-09-13 | 1right-center
| Foreign outflows from Asian equities rise in August; analysts stay bullish
<p>By Patturaja Murugaboopathy</p>
<p>(Reuters) – Foreign outflows accelerated in Asian equities in August as tensions in North Korea prompted global investors to book profits, but analysts predicted money would return on the back of positive earnings momentum and attractive valuations.</p>
<p>Data from seven Asian exchanges including India, Indonesia and Thailand showed foreign investors sold about $4 billion in total in August, the highest amount this year.</p>
<p>Graphic for Foreign flows into Asian equities: http://reut.rs/2f5dmfQ</p>
<p>“Tensions on the Korea peninsula increased, causing investors to book profit (in August),” said Jim McCafferty, head of equity research for Asia Pacific at Nomura.</p>
<p>“We are still optimistic for the second half of the year. Earnings momentum has been good and Asia is cheap compared to the US.”</p>
<p>Thomson Reuters data showed Asian companies’ total earnings beat their estimated earnings by 7 percent in the June quarter, with South Korea, Japan and Chinese firms taking the lead.</p>
<p>Graphic for Earnings surprise percent for Asian companies in June quarter: http://reut.rs/2jocQeh</p>
<p>According to the data, China’s industrial firms posted more higher profits, as the building boom fueled demand and lifted prices for everything from cement and steel to glass and wiring.</p>
<p>“China’s economy continues to grow strongly. Consumer confidence in Japan is improving and Japan’s earnings season has been strong,” said Nomura’s McCafferty.</p>
<p>Private purchasing managers’ indexes (PMIs) for August increased for Taiwan, Singapore, India, Indonesia and South Korea, and in all cases except South Korea, the numbers showed an expansion of manufacturing activity.</p>
<p>At the end of August, the MSCI Asia-Pacific index () had a forward price earnings ratio of 13.9, lower than the MSCI United States index’s () 18.4 and MSCI Europe’s 14.9. Some analysts say this indicated global funds were still under-invested in the region.</p>
<p>Graphic for Asia’s P/E ratio compared with world indexes: http://reut.rs/2f3wMlq</p>
<p>And with global liquidity still higher, analysts said Asian equities will benefit from that.</p>
<p>“Cash levels remain elevated, suggesting markets can remain in an Icarus upside mode for risk assets,” said Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at BofA Merrill Lynch.</p>
<p>While foreign investment has slowed in the region, domestic investors have pitched in to support some equity markets.</p>
<p>Domestic investment in Indian markets stood at $2.5 billion for August, which was much higher than the foreign inflows in the month.</p>
<p>Graphic for Domestic institutional investment in India: http://reut.rs/2jnzi7m</p>
<p>“The rising weight of domestic investors is a powerful one,” said Frank Benzimra, head of Asia equity strategy at Societe Generale (PA:) in Hong Kong.</p>
<p>“Japan domestic investors’ flows also take the lead and China investors on the Chinese stocks listed in Hong Kong through the Southbound flows.”</p> | 1,106 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>A coffee sweetener, a headache medicine, a new type of margarine?</p>
<p>Nusenda, the name the former New Mexico Educators Federal Credit Union unveiled with great fanfare Tuesday, has definitely created some buzz – but maybe not quite what was expected.</p>
<p>The name change provoked a flurry of comments on websites and social media Tuesday and Wednesday, much of it less than complimentary.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Nuestra? Nusenda? Sounds like a new drug for female incontinence – you know, the ones with the commercials with all the side effects,” Tiefa Cathleen commented on the Journal website.</p>
<p>“I have a headache, think taking some ‘nusenda’ will help?” quipped Don Brown on Twitter.</p>
<p>Another member of the Twitterati, David Cameron, wrote this: “NM Educators Credit Union changes name to Nusenda. If overdraft persists more than 4 hrs. call your banker. #nubrandfail”</p>
<p>Anneliese Elrod, the credit union’s senior vice president of strategic marketing and development, said Wednesday that she’d seen some of the online comments, but she said the majority of member responses she has heard have been favorable.</p>
<p>“They love the look, love the colors. They say it’s shorter and easier to remember,” Elrod said.</p>
<p>New Mexico Educators Federal Credit Union unveils its new name, Nusenda Credit Union, on Tuesday. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>The name was chosen to invoke a “new direction in banking” officials said in announcing it Tuesday. It is not an acronym and has no particular meaning. Officials said some people found the old name too complicated.</p>
<p>The credit union hired a national firm, The Brand Consultancy, to help craft the new image. The Washington, D.C.-based firm’s website mentions Staples, National Geographic and the NFL among its clients.</p>
<p>Elrod said the credit union also consulted with legal experts for help in creating the name to ensure that it could avoid a potentially lengthy and costly legal battle.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We used trademark attorneys who gave us their opinions on a number of options and that one (nusenda) was the one with the highest probabilities of being able to protect,” Elrod said.</p>
<p>Some of the online comments also complained about being surprised by the name change.</p>
<p>Amanda Ostler said she found it strange that she didn’t get any notification until after the change. “The email reads we are still owned by you, our members. So shouldn’t the members have a say in the name?” Ostler wrote on the Journal website.</p>
<p>Elrod said the credit union conducted four member surveys since 2012 asking about perceptions of the credit union that revealed some people thought the former name was too complicated or indicated that membership was restricted to educators, New Mexico residents, federal employees or union members. The surveys, which did not mention the possibility of a name change, were sent out to 160,000 members or potential members, mostly by email, Elrod said.</p>
<p />
<p /> | You want some Nusenda with your coffee? | false | https://abqjournal.com/540279/nu-name-generates-bu-zzfor-cu.html | 2least
| You want some Nusenda with your coffee?
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>A coffee sweetener, a headache medicine, a new type of margarine?</p>
<p>Nusenda, the name the former New Mexico Educators Federal Credit Union unveiled with great fanfare Tuesday, has definitely created some buzz – but maybe not quite what was expected.</p>
<p>The name change provoked a flurry of comments on websites and social media Tuesday and Wednesday, much of it less than complimentary.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Nuestra? Nusenda? Sounds like a new drug for female incontinence – you know, the ones with the commercials with all the side effects,” Tiefa Cathleen commented on the Journal website.</p>
<p>“I have a headache, think taking some ‘nusenda’ will help?” quipped Don Brown on Twitter.</p>
<p>Another member of the Twitterati, David Cameron, wrote this: “NM Educators Credit Union changes name to Nusenda. If overdraft persists more than 4 hrs. call your banker. #nubrandfail”</p>
<p>Anneliese Elrod, the credit union’s senior vice president of strategic marketing and development, said Wednesday that she’d seen some of the online comments, but she said the majority of member responses she has heard have been favorable.</p>
<p>“They love the look, love the colors. They say it’s shorter and easier to remember,” Elrod said.</p>
<p>New Mexico Educators Federal Credit Union unveils its new name, Nusenda Credit Union, on Tuesday. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>The name was chosen to invoke a “new direction in banking” officials said in announcing it Tuesday. It is not an acronym and has no particular meaning. Officials said some people found the old name too complicated.</p>
<p>The credit union hired a national firm, The Brand Consultancy, to help craft the new image. The Washington, D.C.-based firm’s website mentions Staples, National Geographic and the NFL among its clients.</p>
<p>Elrod said the credit union also consulted with legal experts for help in creating the name to ensure that it could avoid a potentially lengthy and costly legal battle.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We used trademark attorneys who gave us their opinions on a number of options and that one (nusenda) was the one with the highest probabilities of being able to protect,” Elrod said.</p>
<p>Some of the online comments also complained about being surprised by the name change.</p>
<p>Amanda Ostler said she found it strange that she didn’t get any notification until after the change. “The email reads we are still owned by you, our members. So shouldn’t the members have a say in the name?” Ostler wrote on the Journal website.</p>
<p>Elrod said the credit union conducted four member surveys since 2012 asking about perceptions of the credit union that revealed some people thought the former name was too complicated or indicated that membership was restricted to educators, New Mexico residents, federal employees or union members. The surveys, which did not mention the possibility of a name change, were sent out to 160,000 members or potential members, mostly by email, Elrod said.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 1,107 |
|
<p />
<p>U.S. equity markets jumped on Tuesday thanks to a rally in technology shares.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average was&#160;221 points higher, or 1.39% to 16195. The S&amp;P 500 gained 30 points, or 1.66% to 1895, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 97 points, or 2.25% to 4434.</p>
<p>Technology and consumer discretionary led all 10 S&amp;P 500 sectors into positive territory.</p>
<p>Today's Markets</p>
<p>Wall Street extended a rally from Friday as traders returned from the President's Day holiday to a slew of headlines driving upward momentum.</p>
<p>Big-cap technology names led the Nasdaq Composite higher on Tuesday. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) was one of the biggest point gainers on the index, jumping 2.7% on the session after the company announced the acquisition of an Indian payments processor, and said its Prime Now service in San Diego would add restaurant delivery.</p>
<p>Shares of Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), and a jump up in the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index also contributed to momentum.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, after a closed-door meeting, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, and Qatar said they agreed to cap oil production at January levels. The move is seen as likely to ease the swift downward pace of oil prices, but it wasn't enough to quell global market concerns about worldwide oversupply.&#160;However, the deal was contingent on other oil producers joining the pledge.</p>
<p>Still, the two global oil benchmarks bounced between gains and losses through the session on the heels of the announcement.</p>
<p>West Texas Intermediate crude dropped 1.36% to settle at $29.04 a barrel, while Brent, the international benchmark, sank 3.62% to $32.18.</p>
<p>Investors have been anxiously awaiting word from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries that member nations would agree to curb output in order to help prices recover from nearly 12-year lows. Since peaking in the summer of 2008, global oil prices have dropped more than 75%.</p>
<p>"Quite frankly, a production cut was never going to happen, with the recent Saudi-Iran dispute meaning it would be political suicide for either to concede market share. We have never heard anything to indicate that either Iran or Saudi [Arabia] are even considering any reduction in production,&#160;and perhaps today’s fall in oil prices reflects the realization of this fact," Joshua Mahony, IG market analyst, said in a note.</p>
<p>Analysts at Barclays said while the move by the four nations is a start, the real key to curbing output and increasing prices would be when Iran and Iraq, the two places were big increases are most likely this year, join in on the cuts.</p>
<p>“It is vital to note that there was not much incremental production expected from Russia, Qatar, and Venezuela for the rest of the year, given these countries are already stretching their production limits. Russian output, although currently near a post-Soviet peak, is expected to remain flat this year as decline rate catches up,” they explained.</p>
<p>As for the energy sector overall, &#160;Sam Stovall, U.S. equity strategist at S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence, said in a note that while he believes the worst of the pressure in the energy sector is likely behind the market, prices could slip further at a slower pace.</p>
<p>“If the (lack of) recovery in the financials sector since the 2007-09 bear market is any guide, it may take the energy group some time before getting back to breakeven,” he explained.</p>
<p>The energy sector is so far down 6.6% year to date, and the sixth-worst performer of the 10 sectors.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in the market, safe-haven assets continued to come under pressure Tuesday as investors flocked to riskier assets like equities. Gold prices dropped 2.55% &#160;to settle at $1,207 a troy ounce.</p>
<p>The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury bond rose 0.037 percentage point to 1.783%. Yields move in the opposite direction of prices.</p>
<p>The U.S. dollar rose 1% against a basket of global currencies.</p>
<p>On the economic data front: The latest regional manufacturing data didn’t give investors much hope that the factory sector would improve any time soon. The New York Federal Reserve’s Empire State manufacturing gauge came in worse than expected in February as it remained rooted in contraction territory. It rose to -16.64 during the month from -19.37 in January. Wall Street anticipated a bigger rise to -10. Readings above 0 point to expansion, while those below indicate contraction.</p>
<p>Homebuilder sentiment declined this month, according to data from the National Association of Home Builders. The gauge slipped to 58 for the month from 61 in January, the lowest level since May. Wall Street expected a decline to 60.</p>
<p>Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari, in a speech at the Brookings Institution, took a shot at Wall Street, saying he believes the nation’s biggest banks are still too big to fail. He said Congress should consider passing banking reform legislation that goes far beyond Dodd-Frank by either breaking up the banks, forcing them to hold more capital, or taxing leverage to reduce risk.</p>
<p>It was Kashari’s first speech since taking over the regional Fed bank in January, and unusual in the sense that generally Fed officials limit public remarks to monetary policy.</p>
<p>Part of the market's momentum came from remarks by ECB President Mario Draghi on Monday. He appeared before the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee and again reiterated his position the central bank is ready to take whatever action necessary to boost inflation in the region. Draghi said the central bank will analyze the effectiveness of its monetary policy efforts and how it has impacted the overall financial system and banks in particular.</p>
<p>The ECB's next meeting comes in March, a gathering at which some speculate policy makers could drop rates further into negative territory.</p>
<p>Stocks in Europe rallied on the news Monday, which helped fuel momentum in the U.S., but switched gears Tuesday after word from four of the world's largest oil producers sent markets lower.</p>
<p>The Euro Stoxx 50, which tracks large-cap companies in the eurozone, and the UK’s FTSE 100 were mostly flat, while the French CAC traded slightly higher, and the German Dax dipped into negative territory.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Technology Shares Lead Wall Street Higher | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/02/16/technology-shares-lead-wall-street-higher.html | 2016-02-16 | 0right
| Technology Shares Lead Wall Street Higher
<p />
<p>U.S. equity markets jumped on Tuesday thanks to a rally in technology shares.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average was&#160;221 points higher, or 1.39% to 16195. The S&amp;P 500 gained 30 points, or 1.66% to 1895, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 97 points, or 2.25% to 4434.</p>
<p>Technology and consumer discretionary led all 10 S&amp;P 500 sectors into positive territory.</p>
<p>Today's Markets</p>
<p>Wall Street extended a rally from Friday as traders returned from the President's Day holiday to a slew of headlines driving upward momentum.</p>
<p>Big-cap technology names led the Nasdaq Composite higher on Tuesday. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) was one of the biggest point gainers on the index, jumping 2.7% on the session after the company announced the acquisition of an Indian payments processor, and said its Prime Now service in San Diego would add restaurant delivery.</p>
<p>Shares of Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), and a jump up in the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index also contributed to momentum.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, after a closed-door meeting, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, and Qatar said they agreed to cap oil production at January levels. The move is seen as likely to ease the swift downward pace of oil prices, but it wasn't enough to quell global market concerns about worldwide oversupply.&#160;However, the deal was contingent on other oil producers joining the pledge.</p>
<p>Still, the two global oil benchmarks bounced between gains and losses through the session on the heels of the announcement.</p>
<p>West Texas Intermediate crude dropped 1.36% to settle at $29.04 a barrel, while Brent, the international benchmark, sank 3.62% to $32.18.</p>
<p>Investors have been anxiously awaiting word from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries that member nations would agree to curb output in order to help prices recover from nearly 12-year lows. Since peaking in the summer of 2008, global oil prices have dropped more than 75%.</p>
<p>"Quite frankly, a production cut was never going to happen, with the recent Saudi-Iran dispute meaning it would be political suicide for either to concede market share. We have never heard anything to indicate that either Iran or Saudi [Arabia] are even considering any reduction in production,&#160;and perhaps today’s fall in oil prices reflects the realization of this fact," Joshua Mahony, IG market analyst, said in a note.</p>
<p>Analysts at Barclays said while the move by the four nations is a start, the real key to curbing output and increasing prices would be when Iran and Iraq, the two places were big increases are most likely this year, join in on the cuts.</p>
<p>“It is vital to note that there was not much incremental production expected from Russia, Qatar, and Venezuela for the rest of the year, given these countries are already stretching their production limits. Russian output, although currently near a post-Soviet peak, is expected to remain flat this year as decline rate catches up,” they explained.</p>
<p>As for the energy sector overall, &#160;Sam Stovall, U.S. equity strategist at S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence, said in a note that while he believes the worst of the pressure in the energy sector is likely behind the market, prices could slip further at a slower pace.</p>
<p>“If the (lack of) recovery in the financials sector since the 2007-09 bear market is any guide, it may take the energy group some time before getting back to breakeven,” he explained.</p>
<p>The energy sector is so far down 6.6% year to date, and the sixth-worst performer of the 10 sectors.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in the market, safe-haven assets continued to come under pressure Tuesday as investors flocked to riskier assets like equities. Gold prices dropped 2.55% &#160;to settle at $1,207 a troy ounce.</p>
<p>The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury bond rose 0.037 percentage point to 1.783%. Yields move in the opposite direction of prices.</p>
<p>The U.S. dollar rose 1% against a basket of global currencies.</p>
<p>On the economic data front: The latest regional manufacturing data didn’t give investors much hope that the factory sector would improve any time soon. The New York Federal Reserve’s Empire State manufacturing gauge came in worse than expected in February as it remained rooted in contraction territory. It rose to -16.64 during the month from -19.37 in January. Wall Street anticipated a bigger rise to -10. Readings above 0 point to expansion, while those below indicate contraction.</p>
<p>Homebuilder sentiment declined this month, according to data from the National Association of Home Builders. The gauge slipped to 58 for the month from 61 in January, the lowest level since May. Wall Street expected a decline to 60.</p>
<p>Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari, in a speech at the Brookings Institution, took a shot at Wall Street, saying he believes the nation’s biggest banks are still too big to fail. He said Congress should consider passing banking reform legislation that goes far beyond Dodd-Frank by either breaking up the banks, forcing them to hold more capital, or taxing leverage to reduce risk.</p>
<p>It was Kashari’s first speech since taking over the regional Fed bank in January, and unusual in the sense that generally Fed officials limit public remarks to monetary policy.</p>
<p>Part of the market's momentum came from remarks by ECB President Mario Draghi on Monday. He appeared before the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee and again reiterated his position the central bank is ready to take whatever action necessary to boost inflation in the region. Draghi said the central bank will analyze the effectiveness of its monetary policy efforts and how it has impacted the overall financial system and banks in particular.</p>
<p>The ECB's next meeting comes in March, a gathering at which some speculate policy makers could drop rates further into negative territory.</p>
<p>Stocks in Europe rallied on the news Monday, which helped fuel momentum in the U.S., but switched gears Tuesday after word from four of the world's largest oil producers sent markets lower.</p>
<p>The Euro Stoxx 50, which tracks large-cap companies in the eurozone, and the UK’s FTSE 100 were mostly flat, while the French CAC traded slightly higher, and the German Dax dipped into negative territory.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | 1,108 |
<p>“Say it with me, drain the swamp.”</p>
<p>Amid plenty of consternation from detractors, President-elect Donald Trump gave an early indication Tuesday that he has every intention to <a href="" type="internal">make good on his campaign pledge</a> to shake up the status quo in Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>In a move to ensure people are not using government to enrich themselves, Trump began the process of purging lobbyists from his transition team and will ban potential appointees from lobbying for five years after leaving office, according to The Hill.</p>
<p />
<p>“All appointees will have to sign a document that signifies they either are not a registered lobbyist or have terminated any lobbying ties, as well as a pledge to not go back&#160;within five years,” The Hill reported.</p>
<p>The reaction on social media to the news shows the spirit that served to elect Trump remains alive and well, with his supporters expecting big things from the president-elect.</p>
<p>Here’s a sampling of responses from Twitter:</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/thehill" type="external">@thehill</a> Love this guy.</p>
<p>— Ron Arcaro (@ronarcaro) <a href="https://twitter.com/ronarcaro/status/799216640550309888" type="external">November 17, 2016</a></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/thehill" type="external">@thehill</a> let the Drain begin!!!!!</p>
<p>— TRUMP IS 45 🇺🇸 (@GeorgeHarvey019) <a href="https://twitter.com/GeorgeHarvey019/status/799217966021832704" type="external">November 17, 2016</a></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/FoxNews" type="external">@FoxNews</a> This is VERY VERY good news. Christie does not have the moral character. Pence does, and Pence is Great for Tech Disruptors.</p>
<p>— Julian Cox (@Julian_A_Cox) <a href="https://twitter.com/Julian_A_Cox/status/798848164635635714" type="external">November 16, 2016</a></p>
<p /> | The cleansing begins! Trump makes bold move to ban admin officials from lobbying for 5 years | true | http://bizpacreview.com/2016/11/17/cleansing-begins-trump-makes-bold-move-ban-admin-officials-lobbying-5-years-413435 | 2016-11-17 | 0right
| The cleansing begins! Trump makes bold move to ban admin officials from lobbying for 5 years
<p>“Say it with me, drain the swamp.”</p>
<p>Amid plenty of consternation from detractors, President-elect Donald Trump gave an early indication Tuesday that he has every intention to <a href="" type="internal">make good on his campaign pledge</a> to shake up the status quo in Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>In a move to ensure people are not using government to enrich themselves, Trump began the process of purging lobbyists from his transition team and will ban potential appointees from lobbying for five years after leaving office, according to The Hill.</p>
<p />
<p>“All appointees will have to sign a document that signifies they either are not a registered lobbyist or have terminated any lobbying ties, as well as a pledge to not go back&#160;within five years,” The Hill reported.</p>
<p>The reaction on social media to the news shows the spirit that served to elect Trump remains alive and well, with his supporters expecting big things from the president-elect.</p>
<p>Here’s a sampling of responses from Twitter:</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/thehill" type="external">@thehill</a> Love this guy.</p>
<p>— Ron Arcaro (@ronarcaro) <a href="https://twitter.com/ronarcaro/status/799216640550309888" type="external">November 17, 2016</a></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/thehill" type="external">@thehill</a> let the Drain begin!!!!!</p>
<p>— TRUMP IS 45 🇺🇸 (@GeorgeHarvey019) <a href="https://twitter.com/GeorgeHarvey019/status/799217966021832704" type="external">November 17, 2016</a></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/FoxNews" type="external">@FoxNews</a> This is VERY VERY good news. Christie does not have the moral character. Pence does, and Pence is Great for Tech Disruptors.</p>
<p>— Julian Cox (@Julian_A_Cox) <a href="https://twitter.com/Julian_A_Cox/status/798848164635635714" type="external">November 16, 2016</a></p>
<p /> | 1,109 |
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Latest on a lawsuit over publicly funded abortions in Illinois (all times local):</p>
<p>3:40 p.m.</p>
<p>An Illinois judge has dismissed a challenge to a state law that would expand Medicaid and state-employee group health insurance to cover abortions.</p>
<p>Associate Circuit Judge Jennifer Ascher ruled Thursday that the judiciary should not intervene in "political questions" in the General Assembly such as a law's effective date or whether there's an appropriation to fund it.</p>
<p>State Rep. Peter Breen is a Republican from Lombard and a <a href="https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/" type="external">Thomas More Society</a> lawyer who challenged <a href="http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/100/PDF/100-0538.pdf" type="external">the law</a> , which is set to take effect Monday.</p>
<p>He argues that lawmakers didn't adopt the legislation in time for it to take effect by Jan. 1, nor did they appropriate money to pay for the procedures.</p>
<p>Breen says his clients will file an appeal in state appellate court Friday and seek an injunction to halt the law.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:35 a.m.</p>
<p>Conservative activists and legislators pressing a lawsuit against publicly funded abortions in Illinois are seeking an emergency injunction to prevent the law from taking effect Monday.</p>
<p>The Catholic Thomas More Society will appear in Sangamon County Circuit Court Thursday to ask for the injunction. The group says it would stop "tens of thousands of taxpayer-funded abortions in the New Year."</p>
<p>State Rep. Peter Breen is a Republican from Lombard and Thomas More Society special counsel. He says the law which expands Medicaid and state-employee group health insurance coverage to abortions will mean taxpayers will have to pay for as many as 30,000 abortions in Illinois annually.</p>
<p>Breen says many taxpayers have a "sincere moral objection" to paying for abortions. He says Illinois' budget crisis also makes financing them a problem.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>This story has been corrected to show Peter Breen said many taxpayers have a sincere moral objection to funding abortions, not an obligation to fund them.</p>
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Latest on a lawsuit over publicly funded abortions in Illinois (all times local):</p>
<p>3:40 p.m.</p>
<p>An Illinois judge has dismissed a challenge to a state law that would expand Medicaid and state-employee group health insurance to cover abortions.</p>
<p>Associate Circuit Judge Jennifer Ascher ruled Thursday that the judiciary should not intervene in "political questions" in the General Assembly such as a law's effective date or whether there's an appropriation to fund it.</p>
<p>State Rep. Peter Breen is a Republican from Lombard and a <a href="https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/" type="external">Thomas More Society</a> lawyer who challenged <a href="http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/100/PDF/100-0538.pdf" type="external">the law</a> , which is set to take effect Monday.</p>
<p>He argues that lawmakers didn't adopt the legislation in time for it to take effect by Jan. 1, nor did they appropriate money to pay for the procedures.</p>
<p>Breen says his clients will file an appeal in state appellate court Friday and seek an injunction to halt the law.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:35 a.m.</p>
<p>Conservative activists and legislators pressing a lawsuit against publicly funded abortions in Illinois are seeking an emergency injunction to prevent the law from taking effect Monday.</p>
<p>The Catholic Thomas More Society will appear in Sangamon County Circuit Court Thursday to ask for the injunction. The group says it would stop "tens of thousands of taxpayer-funded abortions in the New Year."</p>
<p>State Rep. Peter Breen is a Republican from Lombard and Thomas More Society special counsel. He says the law which expands Medicaid and state-employee group health insurance coverage to abortions will mean taxpayers will have to pay for as many as 30,000 abortions in Illinois annually.</p>
<p>Breen says many taxpayers have a "sincere moral objection" to paying for abortions. He says Illinois' budget crisis also makes financing them a problem.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>This story has been corrected to show Peter Breen said many taxpayers have a sincere moral objection to funding abortions, not an obligation to fund them.</p> | The Latest: Judge tosses public abortion-funding challenge | false | https://apnews.com/amp/03f204d8caa24482af35d900f9b18170 | 2017-12-28 | 2least
| The Latest: Judge tosses public abortion-funding challenge
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Latest on a lawsuit over publicly funded abortions in Illinois (all times local):</p>
<p>3:40 p.m.</p>
<p>An Illinois judge has dismissed a challenge to a state law that would expand Medicaid and state-employee group health insurance to cover abortions.</p>
<p>Associate Circuit Judge Jennifer Ascher ruled Thursday that the judiciary should not intervene in "political questions" in the General Assembly such as a law's effective date or whether there's an appropriation to fund it.</p>
<p>State Rep. Peter Breen is a Republican from Lombard and a <a href="https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/" type="external">Thomas More Society</a> lawyer who challenged <a href="http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/100/PDF/100-0538.pdf" type="external">the law</a> , which is set to take effect Monday.</p>
<p>He argues that lawmakers didn't adopt the legislation in time for it to take effect by Jan. 1, nor did they appropriate money to pay for the procedures.</p>
<p>Breen says his clients will file an appeal in state appellate court Friday and seek an injunction to halt the law.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:35 a.m.</p>
<p>Conservative activists and legislators pressing a lawsuit against publicly funded abortions in Illinois are seeking an emergency injunction to prevent the law from taking effect Monday.</p>
<p>The Catholic Thomas More Society will appear in Sangamon County Circuit Court Thursday to ask for the injunction. The group says it would stop "tens of thousands of taxpayer-funded abortions in the New Year."</p>
<p>State Rep. Peter Breen is a Republican from Lombard and Thomas More Society special counsel. He says the law which expands Medicaid and state-employee group health insurance coverage to abortions will mean taxpayers will have to pay for as many as 30,000 abortions in Illinois annually.</p>
<p>Breen says many taxpayers have a "sincere moral objection" to paying for abortions. He says Illinois' budget crisis also makes financing them a problem.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>This story has been corrected to show Peter Breen said many taxpayers have a sincere moral objection to funding abortions, not an obligation to fund them.</p>
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Latest on a lawsuit over publicly funded abortions in Illinois (all times local):</p>
<p>3:40 p.m.</p>
<p>An Illinois judge has dismissed a challenge to a state law that would expand Medicaid and state-employee group health insurance to cover abortions.</p>
<p>Associate Circuit Judge Jennifer Ascher ruled Thursday that the judiciary should not intervene in "political questions" in the General Assembly such as a law's effective date or whether there's an appropriation to fund it.</p>
<p>State Rep. Peter Breen is a Republican from Lombard and a <a href="https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/" type="external">Thomas More Society</a> lawyer who challenged <a href="http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/100/PDF/100-0538.pdf" type="external">the law</a> , which is set to take effect Monday.</p>
<p>He argues that lawmakers didn't adopt the legislation in time for it to take effect by Jan. 1, nor did they appropriate money to pay for the procedures.</p>
<p>Breen says his clients will file an appeal in state appellate court Friday and seek an injunction to halt the law.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:35 a.m.</p>
<p>Conservative activists and legislators pressing a lawsuit against publicly funded abortions in Illinois are seeking an emergency injunction to prevent the law from taking effect Monday.</p>
<p>The Catholic Thomas More Society will appear in Sangamon County Circuit Court Thursday to ask for the injunction. The group says it would stop "tens of thousands of taxpayer-funded abortions in the New Year."</p>
<p>State Rep. Peter Breen is a Republican from Lombard and Thomas More Society special counsel. He says the law which expands Medicaid and state-employee group health insurance coverage to abortions will mean taxpayers will have to pay for as many as 30,000 abortions in Illinois annually.</p>
<p>Breen says many taxpayers have a "sincere moral objection" to paying for abortions. He says Illinois' budget crisis also makes financing them a problem.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>This story has been corrected to show Peter Breen said many taxpayers have a sincere moral objection to funding abortions, not an obligation to fund them.</p> | 1,110 |
<p />
<p>Businesses looking to make the most of the busy holiday season better be sure to not turn consumers off with their email marketing campaigns.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>While tools such as email, mobile and social media marketing can significantly help in communicating the right message, to the right person, at the right time, Robert Burko, president of <a href="http://www.eliteemail.com/" type="external">Elite Email Opens a New Window.</a>, said without a proper strategy in place, businesses can easily lose customers.</p>
<p>"For business owners, especially in the consumer products or not-for-profit industries, it's selling season," Burko said. "It's a pivotal time to maximize spending and engage their customers or donors."</p>
<p>To help business owners, Elite Email offers some of the worst holiday <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4488-email-marketing-guide.html" type="external">email marketing Opens a New Window.</a> mistakes and how to avoid them:</p>
<p>When done right, Burko said, using the right online tools appropriately can significantly boost sales, donations and brand awareness.</p>
<p>"Try to engage your contacts using the communication method they prefer, on a schedule that suits them best this holiday [season]," Burko said.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Originally published on <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5573-12-email-marketing-mistakes-to-avoid-over-the-holidays.html" type="external">BusinessNewsDaily. Opens a New Window.</a></p> | 12 Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid Over the Holidays | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/12/06/12-email-marketing-mistakes-to-avoid-over-holidays.html | 2016-03-23 | 0right
| 12 Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid Over the Holidays
<p />
<p>Businesses looking to make the most of the busy holiday season better be sure to not turn consumers off with their email marketing campaigns.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>While tools such as email, mobile and social media marketing can significantly help in communicating the right message, to the right person, at the right time, Robert Burko, president of <a href="http://www.eliteemail.com/" type="external">Elite Email Opens a New Window.</a>, said without a proper strategy in place, businesses can easily lose customers.</p>
<p>"For business owners, especially in the consumer products or not-for-profit industries, it's selling season," Burko said. "It's a pivotal time to maximize spending and engage their customers or donors."</p>
<p>To help business owners, Elite Email offers some of the worst holiday <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4488-email-marketing-guide.html" type="external">email marketing Opens a New Window.</a> mistakes and how to avoid them:</p>
<p>When done right, Burko said, using the right online tools appropriately can significantly boost sales, donations and brand awareness.</p>
<p>"Try to engage your contacts using the communication method they prefer, on a schedule that suits them best this holiday [season]," Burko said.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Originally published on <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5573-12-email-marketing-mistakes-to-avoid-over-the-holidays.html" type="external">BusinessNewsDaily. Opens a New Window.</a></p> | 1,111 |
<p>In the wake of the horrific Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama sent the students a heartfelt, handwritten note, expressing how inspired they were by the determination and resilience of student protesters demanding gun control.</p>
<p>The letter, dated March 10, <a href="https://mic.com/articles/188548/obamas-to-parkland-students-youve-helped-awaken-the-conscience-of-the-nation#.bFViFLVWt" type="external">was originally obtained by Mic</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>The first couple wrote:</p>
<p>We wanted to let you know how inspired we have been by the resilience, resolve and solidarity that you have all shown in the wake of unspeakable tragedy.</p>
<p>Not only have you supported and comforted each other, but you've helped awaken the conscience of the nation, and challenged decision-makers to make the safety of our children the country's top priority.</p>
<p>Throughout our history, young people like you have led the way in making America better. There may be setbacks; you may sometimes feel like progress is too slow in coming. But we have no doubt you are going to make an enormous difference in the days and years to come, and we will be there for you.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p />
<p>It is a sentiment that Barack Obama has expressed before, tweeting out just days after the shooting that "young people have helped lead all our great movements," adding that "we've got your backs."</p>
<p /> | ?Young People Like You Have Led the Way in Making America Better?: Barack and Michelle Obama Write Letter to Parkland, Fla., Students | true | https://theroot.com/young-people-like-you-have-led-the-way-in-making-americ-1823981384 | 2018-03-22 | 4left
| ?Young People Like You Have Led the Way in Making America Better?: Barack and Michelle Obama Write Letter to Parkland, Fla., Students
<p>In the wake of the horrific Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama sent the students a heartfelt, handwritten note, expressing how inspired they were by the determination and resilience of student protesters demanding gun control.</p>
<p>The letter, dated March 10, <a href="https://mic.com/articles/188548/obamas-to-parkland-students-youve-helped-awaken-the-conscience-of-the-nation#.bFViFLVWt" type="external">was originally obtained by Mic</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>The first couple wrote:</p>
<p>We wanted to let you know how inspired we have been by the resilience, resolve and solidarity that you have all shown in the wake of unspeakable tragedy.</p>
<p>Not only have you supported and comforted each other, but you've helped awaken the conscience of the nation, and challenged decision-makers to make the safety of our children the country's top priority.</p>
<p>Throughout our history, young people like you have led the way in making America better. There may be setbacks; you may sometimes feel like progress is too slow in coming. But we have no doubt you are going to make an enormous difference in the days and years to come, and we will be there for you.</p>
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<p />
<p>It is a sentiment that Barack Obama has expressed before, tweeting out just days after the shooting that "young people have helped lead all our great movements," adding that "we've got your backs."</p>
<p /> | 1,112 |
<p>The following is a letter to pastors and church leaders.</p>
<p>Colleagues:</p>
<p>Sunday found us waking to the confluence of so many streams of hatred and vitriol in our society — homophobia, islamophobia, fear of the other in any form. “Here we find ourselves again,” we shake our heads in numb, benign dismay. It was yet another occasion, another in a long and bloody list, for us to publicly lament the violent loss of life and offer our thoughts and prayers, if we mentioned the tragedy at all. Such a shame, a real downer for Sunday morning worship.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, we would be dreadfully wrong if we did not admit there is something deeper going on here than one horrific incident. There is something in the soul of our country that is festering, ugly, evil: a proliferation of hatred, intolerance, misappropriated religion, damaging political rhetoric, and many of us bear some responsibility for this evil.</p>
<p>Scripture tells us that all things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial — that the measure of our humanity is not whether we have freedom, but how we use it. In this country, we have enshrined in our founding inalienable freedoms each of us has by virtue of our common humanity. First among these is the freedom of speech.</p>
<p>Sometimes in our speaking we have been the voices of division breeding hatred; sometimes we have looked away, silent and void of courage; sometimes we have neglected to use our voices and our platforms to tell the truth with courage and conviction.</p>
<p>Whatever our personal failures, it’s abundantly clear that we have neglected to use this freedom to preach words of love loud or often enough, our silence making space for hateful rhetoric from the pulpit and from the campaign trail and from so many other public pedestals. This devastating and increasingly deafening soundtrack of American life is drowning our weak protestations and building walls between people, chasms that separate us from each other, breed fear and instigate violence.</p>
<p>And because we have not stepped with courage into the task of preaching love, we have contributed as our country has brutally expressed its second freedom, the freedom to arm itself. We’ve stood by watching while our fellow Americans have armed ourselves with ideologies of hatred and fear, prejudice and bigotry. And then, after the sowing of these seeds of sin, we have nurtured them to full bloom, arming ourselves with assault rifles and high capacity magazines.</p>
<p>Our words, or our silences, have consequences. We cannot carelessly toss about brutal, hurtful words without bearing their deep and deadly mark on our souls. And we cannot be silent in the face of evil, lest we become an expression of that evil ourselves.</p>
<p>Let us exercise our freedom of speech to preach a gospel of love. Let us arm ourselves, not with weapons, but with all that our faith has taught us and all that has made this country strong — justice, tolerance, diversity, the audacious belief that we can embody God’s highest hopes for our world. And let us boldly insist on a complete rejection of any ideology that even suggests anything other than this: every person is a beloved child of God, always welcomed into relationship and community.</p>
<p>Such a tragedy has occurred in Orlando this week. May our voices rise in lament, again. May we pledge our prayers for the victims and the families one more time. But most of all, may we grieve our hatred or our apathy or our lack of courage — or all three.</p>
<p>Ministers of the gospel, proclaimed bigotry, silence, or indifference should now be named malpractice. Or perhaps, more aptly, sin. We, of all people, should stand with courage to proclaim loudly and perpetually that this way of living and dying together will not be our future; that the power of love must embolden us to chart a new course; and that love will be the thing that saves us.</p>
<p>Pastor, if you have never publicly welcomed the LGBTQ community to church or spoken out against hatred and bigotry toward Muslims, if you have kept silent about the deadly culture of gun violence in our country, then you bear some responsibility for this place in which we find ourselves. Please, please: no more worship services that never mention this tragic incident and the LGBTQ victims so brutally murdered. No more thoughts and prayers. No more silence in the face of evil.</p>
<p>It’s time for all of us to take up the prophetic mantle and speak of the power of love before we lose our ability to speak to anything at all.</p> | Speak the power of love before we lose ability to speak at all | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/speak-the-power-of-love-before-we-lose-ability-to-speak-at-all/ | 3left-center
| Speak the power of love before we lose ability to speak at all
<p>The following is a letter to pastors and church leaders.</p>
<p>Colleagues:</p>
<p>Sunday found us waking to the confluence of so many streams of hatred and vitriol in our society — homophobia, islamophobia, fear of the other in any form. “Here we find ourselves again,” we shake our heads in numb, benign dismay. It was yet another occasion, another in a long and bloody list, for us to publicly lament the violent loss of life and offer our thoughts and prayers, if we mentioned the tragedy at all. Such a shame, a real downer for Sunday morning worship.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, we would be dreadfully wrong if we did not admit there is something deeper going on here than one horrific incident. There is something in the soul of our country that is festering, ugly, evil: a proliferation of hatred, intolerance, misappropriated religion, damaging political rhetoric, and many of us bear some responsibility for this evil.</p>
<p>Scripture tells us that all things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial — that the measure of our humanity is not whether we have freedom, but how we use it. In this country, we have enshrined in our founding inalienable freedoms each of us has by virtue of our common humanity. First among these is the freedom of speech.</p>
<p>Sometimes in our speaking we have been the voices of division breeding hatred; sometimes we have looked away, silent and void of courage; sometimes we have neglected to use our voices and our platforms to tell the truth with courage and conviction.</p>
<p>Whatever our personal failures, it’s abundantly clear that we have neglected to use this freedom to preach words of love loud or often enough, our silence making space for hateful rhetoric from the pulpit and from the campaign trail and from so many other public pedestals. This devastating and increasingly deafening soundtrack of American life is drowning our weak protestations and building walls between people, chasms that separate us from each other, breed fear and instigate violence.</p>
<p>And because we have not stepped with courage into the task of preaching love, we have contributed as our country has brutally expressed its second freedom, the freedom to arm itself. We’ve stood by watching while our fellow Americans have armed ourselves with ideologies of hatred and fear, prejudice and bigotry. And then, after the sowing of these seeds of sin, we have nurtured them to full bloom, arming ourselves with assault rifles and high capacity magazines.</p>
<p>Our words, or our silences, have consequences. We cannot carelessly toss about brutal, hurtful words without bearing their deep and deadly mark on our souls. And we cannot be silent in the face of evil, lest we become an expression of that evil ourselves.</p>
<p>Let us exercise our freedom of speech to preach a gospel of love. Let us arm ourselves, not with weapons, but with all that our faith has taught us and all that has made this country strong — justice, tolerance, diversity, the audacious belief that we can embody God’s highest hopes for our world. And let us boldly insist on a complete rejection of any ideology that even suggests anything other than this: every person is a beloved child of God, always welcomed into relationship and community.</p>
<p>Such a tragedy has occurred in Orlando this week. May our voices rise in lament, again. May we pledge our prayers for the victims and the families one more time. But most of all, may we grieve our hatred or our apathy or our lack of courage — or all three.</p>
<p>Ministers of the gospel, proclaimed bigotry, silence, or indifference should now be named malpractice. Or perhaps, more aptly, sin. We, of all people, should stand with courage to proclaim loudly and perpetually that this way of living and dying together will not be our future; that the power of love must embolden us to chart a new course; and that love will be the thing that saves us.</p>
<p>Pastor, if you have never publicly welcomed the LGBTQ community to church or spoken out against hatred and bigotry toward Muslims, if you have kept silent about the deadly culture of gun violence in our country, then you bear some responsibility for this place in which we find ourselves. Please, please: no more worship services that never mention this tragic incident and the LGBTQ victims so brutally murdered. No more thoughts and prayers. No more silence in the face of evil.</p>
<p>It’s time for all of us to take up the prophetic mantle and speak of the power of love before we lose our ability to speak to anything at all.</p> | 1,113 |
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<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The Rev. Gerald Robinson, 76, had been serving a sentence of 15 years to life in what church historians have characterized as the only documented case of a Catholic priest killing a nun.</p>
<p>ROBINSON: Convicted of killing a nun in 1980 (AP Photo/Andy Morrison, Pool, File)</p>
<p>He had been in a hospice unit since the end of May after suffering a heart attack. A federal judge on Thursday refused to release him to relatives, concluding that the court didn’t have jurisdiction to grant such compassionate release.</p>
<p>Robinson was arrested 24 years after the nun’s death and was found guilty in 2006 of stabbing and strangling Sister Margaret Ann Pahl at a Toledo hospital where they both worked.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Robinson and Pahl had worked closely together at the hospital where he was a chaplain and she was caretaker of the chapel. He presided at the funeral Mass for her.</p>
<p>The 71-year-old nun was killed while she was preparing the chapel for Easter services in 1980. She was choked, then stabbed 31 times.</p>
<p>Robinson emerged as a suspect when police found a sword-shaped letter opener in his desk drawer two weeks after the killing. He also admitted lying to police, making up a story that someone else confessed to the murder. Yet he was not charged and remained a priest. A year after the killing, he was transferred out of the hospital.</p>
<p>Robinson developed a faithful following in his hometown of Toledo, where he delivered sermons and heard confessions in Polish. He ministered to the sick and dying at nursing homes and hospitals after retiring.</p>
<p>Police arrested him in 2004 after investigators reopened the murder case when a letter surfaced that accused Robinson and other priests of molestation. Police weren’t able to substantiate the allegations of sexual abuse, but it led them back to the nun’s murder.</p>
<p>Investigators said blood stains on an altar cloth seemed to match the patterns of the letter opener found in Robinson’s apartment. New technology not available in 1980 allowed them to connect the killing with the letter opener.</p>
<p>Prosecutors said Robinson tried to humiliate Pahl in her death, her stab wounds formed an upside down cross and a smudge of blood on her forehead meant as a mock anointing.</p>
<p>They blamed the murder on Robinson’s simmering anger over Pahl’s domineering ways, saying their relationship was strained and that Pahl was upset over the shortening of Good Friday services a day before she was killed.</p>
<p>Robinson, who wore his priest’s collar throughout his trial, maintained his innocence while losing several attempts to overturn his conviction. His attorneys said DNA evidence didn’t link Robinson to the crime.</p>
<p>A new defense team argued that a now-deceased serial killer could have been the one who stabbed and strangled Pahl. Prosecutors dismissed the theory, saying investigators and even the priest’s original attorneys didn’t think there was a connection.</p>
<p>Robinson remained a priest after he was convicted, but he was barred from ministry. He said in an interview three years after the trial that he was stunned by testimony linking him to the murder. He also said other prisoners called him “Father” and would tell him their sins.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Priest convicted of murder dies in prison | false | https://abqjournal.com/425215/priest-convicted-of-murder-dies-in-prison.html | 2least
| Priest convicted of murder dies in prison
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The Rev. Gerald Robinson, 76, had been serving a sentence of 15 years to life in what church historians have characterized as the only documented case of a Catholic priest killing a nun.</p>
<p>ROBINSON: Convicted of killing a nun in 1980 (AP Photo/Andy Morrison, Pool, File)</p>
<p>He had been in a hospice unit since the end of May after suffering a heart attack. A federal judge on Thursday refused to release him to relatives, concluding that the court didn’t have jurisdiction to grant such compassionate release.</p>
<p>Robinson was arrested 24 years after the nun’s death and was found guilty in 2006 of stabbing and strangling Sister Margaret Ann Pahl at a Toledo hospital where they both worked.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Robinson and Pahl had worked closely together at the hospital where he was a chaplain and she was caretaker of the chapel. He presided at the funeral Mass for her.</p>
<p>The 71-year-old nun was killed while she was preparing the chapel for Easter services in 1980. She was choked, then stabbed 31 times.</p>
<p>Robinson emerged as a suspect when police found a sword-shaped letter opener in his desk drawer two weeks after the killing. He also admitted lying to police, making up a story that someone else confessed to the murder. Yet he was not charged and remained a priest. A year after the killing, he was transferred out of the hospital.</p>
<p>Robinson developed a faithful following in his hometown of Toledo, where he delivered sermons and heard confessions in Polish. He ministered to the sick and dying at nursing homes and hospitals after retiring.</p>
<p>Police arrested him in 2004 after investigators reopened the murder case when a letter surfaced that accused Robinson and other priests of molestation. Police weren’t able to substantiate the allegations of sexual abuse, but it led them back to the nun’s murder.</p>
<p>Investigators said blood stains on an altar cloth seemed to match the patterns of the letter opener found in Robinson’s apartment. New technology not available in 1980 allowed them to connect the killing with the letter opener.</p>
<p>Prosecutors said Robinson tried to humiliate Pahl in her death, her stab wounds formed an upside down cross and a smudge of blood on her forehead meant as a mock anointing.</p>
<p>They blamed the murder on Robinson’s simmering anger over Pahl’s domineering ways, saying their relationship was strained and that Pahl was upset over the shortening of Good Friday services a day before she was killed.</p>
<p>Robinson, who wore his priest’s collar throughout his trial, maintained his innocence while losing several attempts to overturn his conviction. His attorneys said DNA evidence didn’t link Robinson to the crime.</p>
<p>A new defense team argued that a now-deceased serial killer could have been the one who stabbed and strangled Pahl. Prosecutors dismissed the theory, saying investigators and even the priest’s original attorneys didn’t think there was a connection.</p>
<p>Robinson remained a priest after he was convicted, but he was barred from ministry. He said in an interview three years after the trial that he was stunned by testimony linking him to the murder. He also said other prisoners called him “Father” and would tell him their sins.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 1,114 |
|
<p>Billboard at the Pentagon subway station bought by the Oath KeepersCourtesy Brant Houston</p>
<p />
<p>NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden&#160;has earned quite a following, sometimes in unlikely quarters. The latest evidence comes in the form of this billboard recently installed inside the subway station that serves the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. The billboard was paid for by <a href="" type="internal">the Oath Keepers,</a> a “patriot” group founded in 2009 not long after President Obama took office. The controversial&#160;organization, founded by a former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) staffer and associated with former militia leaders, encourages members of the military and law enforcement to swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution, and not necessarily to the Commander in Chief. The Oath Keepers pledge to essentially turn on the US government if they think they’re being ordered to do things that they think are unconstitutional, such as, for instance, taking people’s guns away.</p>
<p>They arrived on the scene with much fanfare and were often staples at tea party and Second Amendment rallies organized around opposition to the tyrannical&#160;Obama administration. Their ranks are filled with Birthers, Truthers, and others who see black helicopters lurking at every turn. Their highest profile associates have been people like <a href="" type="internal">Mike Vanderboegh,</a> the former Alabama militia leader who urged followers to throw bricks through the windows of Democratic offices to protest the passage of healthcare reform. (Some actually did.) But the Oath Keepers have since dropped out of the limelight, the dictatorship they were preparing for never quite materializing.&#160;</p>
<p>But the group has reemerged with a new project, which involves billboards like the Snowden&#160;one at the Pentagon Metro station. The Oath Keepers initially set out to&#160;put up billboards around military bases to “Educate Troops About Their Oath Bound Duty to Refuse Unconstitutional Orders,” and to “counter the propaganda of the domestic enemies of the Constitution,” according to their website. So far this year, they’ve installed one near the Twenty Nine Palms Marine base in California, with plans to target Ft. Hood, in Texas, and Ft. Rucker in Alabama.</p>
<p>The first billboard went up last year across from Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, in&#160;response to a retired Army colonel who enraged tea partiers and gun activists with a <a href="http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/full-spectrum-operations-in-the-homeland-a-%E2%80%9Cvision%E2%80%9D-of-the-future" type="external">paper he wrote</a>&#160;describing a hypothetical scenario in which the military might have to intervene on US soil. The hypothetical involves an “extremist militia motivated by the goals of the “tea party” movement” that takes over a town in South Carolina and starts an insurrection. The “tea party insurrectionists” in the paper sound a lot like the Oath Keepers, who took great offense to the paper and responded with a <a href="http://oathkeepers.org/oath/billboard/" type="external">billboard screaming</a>, “Colonel ‘Red Coat’ Benson, The Tea Party is Not the Enemy. Soldiers! Honor Your Oath. Refuse To Fire On Americans.”</p>
<p>Apparently the Oath Keepers have found a hero in Snowden, and decided to jump to his defense before moving on to billboards at Ft. Hood and elsewhere. The Pentagon billboard says that Snowden&#160;“honored his oath,” and it urges others (presumably all the spies and military officers on the Metro) to follow their oath to the Constitution, too. Last month, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/14/the-oath-keepers-on-edward-snowden" type="external">explained to Reason</a> why the group might be so sympathetic to Snowden (who, like Rhodes, was a Paulite):</p>
<p>He is an example of what needs to be done by anyone who has knowledge of such gross violations of our rights. We need more to stand up, because this is surely the mere tip of the iceberg of the infrastructure for a police state that is being built over us.</p>
<p>This is about far more than supposed attempts to ferry out al Qaeda operatives. This is part of a growing Stasi and Checka style surveillance police state which tags, tracks, and prepares plans to detain dissidents with the “Main Core” database of millions of Americans who the regime considers a “threat.”…</p>
<p>Unless we the people purge out these oath breakers from BOTH parties, we will find ourselves in a nightmare dictatorship and we will have to fight to throw it off. Sweat now or bleed later. Purge them all.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | Oath Keepers Heart Edward Snowden! | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/oath-keepers-heart-snowden/ | 2013-07-19 | 4left
| Oath Keepers Heart Edward Snowden!
<p>Billboard at the Pentagon subway station bought by the Oath KeepersCourtesy Brant Houston</p>
<p />
<p>NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden&#160;has earned quite a following, sometimes in unlikely quarters. The latest evidence comes in the form of this billboard recently installed inside the subway station that serves the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. The billboard was paid for by <a href="" type="internal">the Oath Keepers,</a> a “patriot” group founded in 2009 not long after President Obama took office. The controversial&#160;organization, founded by a former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) staffer and associated with former militia leaders, encourages members of the military and law enforcement to swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution, and not necessarily to the Commander in Chief. The Oath Keepers pledge to essentially turn on the US government if they think they’re being ordered to do things that they think are unconstitutional, such as, for instance, taking people’s guns away.</p>
<p>They arrived on the scene with much fanfare and were often staples at tea party and Second Amendment rallies organized around opposition to the tyrannical&#160;Obama administration. Their ranks are filled with Birthers, Truthers, and others who see black helicopters lurking at every turn. Their highest profile associates have been people like <a href="" type="internal">Mike Vanderboegh,</a> the former Alabama militia leader who urged followers to throw bricks through the windows of Democratic offices to protest the passage of healthcare reform. (Some actually did.) But the Oath Keepers have since dropped out of the limelight, the dictatorship they were preparing for never quite materializing.&#160;</p>
<p>But the group has reemerged with a new project, which involves billboards like the Snowden&#160;one at the Pentagon Metro station. The Oath Keepers initially set out to&#160;put up billboards around military bases to “Educate Troops About Their Oath Bound Duty to Refuse Unconstitutional Orders,” and to “counter the propaganda of the domestic enemies of the Constitution,” according to their website. So far this year, they’ve installed one near the Twenty Nine Palms Marine base in California, with plans to target Ft. Hood, in Texas, and Ft. Rucker in Alabama.</p>
<p>The first billboard went up last year across from Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, in&#160;response to a retired Army colonel who enraged tea partiers and gun activists with a <a href="http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/full-spectrum-operations-in-the-homeland-a-%E2%80%9Cvision%E2%80%9D-of-the-future" type="external">paper he wrote</a>&#160;describing a hypothetical scenario in which the military might have to intervene on US soil. The hypothetical involves an “extremist militia motivated by the goals of the “tea party” movement” that takes over a town in South Carolina and starts an insurrection. The “tea party insurrectionists” in the paper sound a lot like the Oath Keepers, who took great offense to the paper and responded with a <a href="http://oathkeepers.org/oath/billboard/" type="external">billboard screaming</a>, “Colonel ‘Red Coat’ Benson, The Tea Party is Not the Enemy. Soldiers! Honor Your Oath. Refuse To Fire On Americans.”</p>
<p>Apparently the Oath Keepers have found a hero in Snowden, and decided to jump to his defense before moving on to billboards at Ft. Hood and elsewhere. The Pentagon billboard says that Snowden&#160;“honored his oath,” and it urges others (presumably all the spies and military officers on the Metro) to follow their oath to the Constitution, too. Last month, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/14/the-oath-keepers-on-edward-snowden" type="external">explained to Reason</a> why the group might be so sympathetic to Snowden (who, like Rhodes, was a Paulite):</p>
<p>He is an example of what needs to be done by anyone who has knowledge of such gross violations of our rights. We need more to stand up, because this is surely the mere tip of the iceberg of the infrastructure for a police state that is being built over us.</p>
<p>This is about far more than supposed attempts to ferry out al Qaeda operatives. This is part of a growing Stasi and Checka style surveillance police state which tags, tracks, and prepares plans to detain dissidents with the “Main Core” database of millions of Americans who the regime considers a “threat.”…</p>
<p>Unless we the people purge out these oath breakers from BOTH parties, we will find ourselves in a nightmare dictatorship and we will have to fight to throw it off. Sweat now or bleed later. Purge them all.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | 1,115 |
<p>Every year, think tanks, auditors, investigators, and even Uncle Sam’s own Government Accountability Office crank out report after report concluding the same thing – too many federal government programs are inefficient, costly, ineffective or all of the above.</p>
<p>And yet every year, these conclusions are largely ignored.&#160; As a consequence, the federal government unnecessarily wastes billions of dollars a year while many government programs continue to operate without concrete goals or standards for success.&#160;</p>
<p>Well, I want to put an end to that and save your hard-earned tax dollars from waste – while also protecting middle class priorities.</p>
<p>That's why Republican Senator Mark Kirk and I recently partnered to put forth the Government Transformation Act, which has been incorporated into No Labels’ Make Government Work! initiative that was unveiled late last month.&#160;</p>
<p>Our common sense bill establishes a new bipartisan Commission for Government Transformation, which would oversee and affect the transformation of various federal government programs and functions so they will be more economical, efficient, and effective.&#160;</p>
<p>The Commission would feature seven members – appointed by the President and the leadership of both parties in the House and the Senate – and a dedicated expert staff that would review all activities of government and develop specific legislative recommendations.</p>
<p>Numerous facets of the federal government’s operations demand reform, and the Commission would examine issues including: government management practices, financial controls, the&#160;alignment of specific programs with strategic goals and the elimination of failed programs.&#160;</p>
<p>Any recommendations from the Commission would be sent to Congress for a simple up or down vote.&#160;</p>
<p>The plan would save taxpayers billions of dollars by rooting out government waste and eliminating duplicative programs, and at the same time making sure that the important services that middle class families rely on are protected.</p>
<p>To give you just one example, the federal government has 47 job training programs, 44 of which overlap. By consolidating these programs, we can save tens of billions of dollars while not affecting their quality.&#160;</p>
<p>My bipartisan bill attacks government waste and helps ensure government programs are more economical, efficient, and effective.</p>
<p>I think this is a common sense idea that Democrats and Republicans can both agree on.</p>
<p>Congresswoman Cheri Bustos represents Illinois' 17th Congressional District and is a member of No Labels and a Congressional Problem Solver.&#160; She lives in East Moline with her husband, Gerry.&#160; They have three grown sons.&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | A common sense, bipartisan approach to cutting government waste | false | https://nolabels.org/blog/a-common-sense-bipartisan-approach-to-cutting-government-waste/ | 2013-08-15 | 2least
| A common sense, bipartisan approach to cutting government waste
<p>Every year, think tanks, auditors, investigators, and even Uncle Sam’s own Government Accountability Office crank out report after report concluding the same thing – too many federal government programs are inefficient, costly, ineffective or all of the above.</p>
<p>And yet every year, these conclusions are largely ignored.&#160; As a consequence, the federal government unnecessarily wastes billions of dollars a year while many government programs continue to operate without concrete goals or standards for success.&#160;</p>
<p>Well, I want to put an end to that and save your hard-earned tax dollars from waste – while also protecting middle class priorities.</p>
<p>That's why Republican Senator Mark Kirk and I recently partnered to put forth the Government Transformation Act, which has been incorporated into No Labels’ Make Government Work! initiative that was unveiled late last month.&#160;</p>
<p>Our common sense bill establishes a new bipartisan Commission for Government Transformation, which would oversee and affect the transformation of various federal government programs and functions so they will be more economical, efficient, and effective.&#160;</p>
<p>The Commission would feature seven members – appointed by the President and the leadership of both parties in the House and the Senate – and a dedicated expert staff that would review all activities of government and develop specific legislative recommendations.</p>
<p>Numerous facets of the federal government’s operations demand reform, and the Commission would examine issues including: government management practices, financial controls, the&#160;alignment of specific programs with strategic goals and the elimination of failed programs.&#160;</p>
<p>Any recommendations from the Commission would be sent to Congress for a simple up or down vote.&#160;</p>
<p>The plan would save taxpayers billions of dollars by rooting out government waste and eliminating duplicative programs, and at the same time making sure that the important services that middle class families rely on are protected.</p>
<p>To give you just one example, the federal government has 47 job training programs, 44 of which overlap. By consolidating these programs, we can save tens of billions of dollars while not affecting their quality.&#160;</p>
<p>My bipartisan bill attacks government waste and helps ensure government programs are more economical, efficient, and effective.</p>
<p>I think this is a common sense idea that Democrats and Republicans can both agree on.</p>
<p>Congresswoman Cheri Bustos represents Illinois' 17th Congressional District and is a member of No Labels and a Congressional Problem Solver.&#160; She lives in East Moline with her husband, Gerry.&#160; They have three grown sons.&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 1,116 |
<p>A Facebook video of an elderly Florida man has gone viral.</p>
<p>In it you can see an obviously upset man storming over to two AT&amp;T trucks, revolver in hand, and start unloading on the tires of one truck.</p>
<p>He proceeds to the second truck and shoots at the engine multiple time.</p>
<p>The video was recorded by an AT&amp;T worker on the scene in Hialeah, FL, which is south Miami.</p>
<p>Hialeah is known for its gang violence, but this is a whole other level.</p>
<p>Jorge Jove was arrested on Wednesday after he opened fire on two AT&amp;T trucks parked outside his Hialeah, Fla., home. Cellphone video shot during the rampage shows the 64-year-old shooting out the vehicle’s tires and engine.</p>
<p>Hialeah Police Detective Carl Zogby told the <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/hialeah/article162574858.html" type="external">Miami Herald</a>&#160;that Jove “was upset the trucks were parked in front of his driveway.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>The man who recorded the video is&#160;AT&amp;T technician Derrick Taylor and can be heard talking with police as Jove shoots the&#160;trucks with his Ruger .357 revolver.</p>
<p>“He’s shooting the truck right now,” Taylor said in the clip. “There’s a guy shooting the tires and shooting the engines and everything.”</p>
<p>According to an affidavit, obtained by the Miami Herald, Jove doesn’t have a concealed weapons permit. Police responding to the call seized his gun.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Clearly this man was completely wrong to do this and was rightly arrested.</p>
<p>He gives all gun owners a bad name.</p>
<p>Should he have his rights to own a gun revoked?</p>
<p>Give us your thoughts below.</p> | Watch: Elderly Man Shoots Tires of AT&T Truck — Is This Wrong? | true | http://girlsjustwannahaveguns.com/watch-elderly-man-shoots-tires-att-truck-wrong/ | 0right
| Watch: Elderly Man Shoots Tires of AT&T Truck — Is This Wrong?
<p>A Facebook video of an elderly Florida man has gone viral.</p>
<p>In it you can see an obviously upset man storming over to two AT&amp;T trucks, revolver in hand, and start unloading on the tires of one truck.</p>
<p>He proceeds to the second truck and shoots at the engine multiple time.</p>
<p>The video was recorded by an AT&amp;T worker on the scene in Hialeah, FL, which is south Miami.</p>
<p>Hialeah is known for its gang violence, but this is a whole other level.</p>
<p>Jorge Jove was arrested on Wednesday after he opened fire on two AT&amp;T trucks parked outside his Hialeah, Fla., home. Cellphone video shot during the rampage shows the 64-year-old shooting out the vehicle’s tires and engine.</p>
<p>Hialeah Police Detective Carl Zogby told the <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/hialeah/article162574858.html" type="external">Miami Herald</a>&#160;that Jove “was upset the trucks were parked in front of his driveway.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>The man who recorded the video is&#160;AT&amp;T technician Derrick Taylor and can be heard talking with police as Jove shoots the&#160;trucks with his Ruger .357 revolver.</p>
<p>“He’s shooting the truck right now,” Taylor said in the clip. “There’s a guy shooting the tires and shooting the engines and everything.”</p>
<p>According to an affidavit, obtained by the Miami Herald, Jove doesn’t have a concealed weapons permit. Police responding to the call seized his gun.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Clearly this man was completely wrong to do this and was rightly arrested.</p>
<p>He gives all gun owners a bad name.</p>
<p>Should he have his rights to own a gun revoked?</p>
<p>Give us your thoughts below.</p> | 1,117 |
|
<p>It should be a given that no memoir is inherently “strange.” Every life is lived uniquely and has its own special qualities, drawn out at length (or not) by the writer. In <a href="" type="internal">The Lost Traveller’s Dream,</a> Kovel has managed to summon up a spirit that transcends as well as living within its, or his, own time. This is a life “beyond,” something possible at any time but valuable especially in an era of collapse, catastrophe, and perhaps improbable hope.</p>
<p>Joel Kovel, to be brief, has been a prestigious and best-selling writer on psychotherapy, a militant left activist from the middle 1960s onward, an eco-theorist and an explorer of the world just beyond our sense perceptions. He offers us the details most precious to him, the saga of his own family (or families), his shift from one intellectual emphasis to another, his growth in politics but also his political conflicts.</p>
<p>Memorably, more than few times in this memory book, he steals mainstream prestige away from himself. This is not exactly self-sabotage, although careerists would surely think so. He contemplates the rewards alongside the political (and personal) costs and chooses…not to be rewarded. Indeed, he sometimes chooses to be anti-rewarded, not perversely but with political purpose.</p>
<p>Thus we come back to the middle class secular Jewish lad&#160;&#160;from Long Island going off to Yale in the later 1950s. His identity group is mildly leftwing, including future New Press founder Andre Schffrin. His future is in the budding psychotherapy field, and in&#160; <a href="" type="internal">A Complete Guide&#160;to Therapy</a>, he is on the literary (and career) fast track. Alas, he does not like where it seems to be taking him.</p>
<p>The US invasion of Vietnam, as for some of his generation but more of the ones following shortly, distances him from his liberal sponsors. He enrolls in <a href="" type="internal" />the Left, carrying him and his would-be career to far places. His second marriage, to left media activist Dee Dee Halleck, settles the matter, in a sense.</p>
<p>But there is that professorship later on, at Bard College, traditional home of bohemian intellectuals. He does his work and likes his job. And then the College becomes the plaything of a high powered neoconservative, with the financial connections that nearly extinguish faculty resistance around Kovel.</p>
<p>Add to this Kovel’s commitments to ecosocialism, his intellectual explorations and editorial energy, and you have a professor who seems, to conservatives and many liberals alike, to be the sore thumb that sticks out. He became an ecological theorist of note, shocking those academics whose inclinations are never really toward “radical” solutions to global warming or the death cry of rivers. He offered, more and more, a philosophy of struggle and transcendence. No wonder he finds himself cashiered, bounced, in time to live a retirement of militant resistance.</p>
<p>Some of the many details of this heavily detailed book carry us toward St. Francis on the one hand and the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua on the other. Or rather, to his own surprise, these two seemed to be the same hand after all. A militant atheist since youth, Kovel was taken with the connection of ecological visionaries from the distant past and present. St. Francis had, after all, broken with his own wealthy family and set himself for a life with the poor. This saint did not actually defect to the heretics suffering persecution or break with the Pope persecuting them. His was, finally, a sort of in-house rebellion. The Sandinistas would certainly have preferred this option, but faced a scolding Pope who desperately feared Liberation Theology and the “People’s Church” that had arisen during the Revolution.</p>
<p>Kovel is drawn, understandably, to the charisma of Ernesto Cardenal in particular, and through that connection, ponders a leftwing religious mysticism that still intrigues him. Given the sad fate of a Central American revolution too close to the US to win like the Vietnamese, Kovel had another paradise of sorts, far further North. That is: Vermont, also full of utopians. The Bread and Puppet Theater had and has a creative vitality that could easily be called spiritual. That Kovel never quite relocated politically to Vermont is attributed, in part, to the well-known fractious sentiments of eco-anarchist Murray Bookchin, the sage of Burlington known best, in later days, for personal attacks on Bernie Sanders. It would not have been a happy partnership.</p>
<p>Kovel chose instead upstate New York. This brought him into the Green Party, reaching ballot status in the state by the late 1990s. The Greens possessed wonderfully odd characters, the oddest perhaps Al Lewis (of The Munsters)—when out of disguise an ancient Red. Kovel himself ran for the US Senate against Alphonse D’Amato and Chuck Schumer, the latter an emerging Democratic centrist in the pocket of the Israel Lobby. At a high point of Green activity, Kovel dreamed of running for president on the Green ticket. This time, in 2000, Ralph Nader stood implacably in the way.</p>
<p>That Kovel afterward took over&#160;Capitalism, Nature, Socialism&#160;from James O’Connor (reviewer acknowledgment: I have had an intermittent column in this journal for twenty years) in 2003, seeing the journal through rocky times to another editorial team. By the end of his tenure, Kovel had done his work. Travel, socialist and ecological discussions across geographical zones, and more rumination have all followed.&#160;T <a href="" type="internal">he Lost Traveler’s Dream</a>&#160;ends up as close to William Blake as to Marx, a logic embedded in this book from its first pages.</p>
<p>Paul Buhle’s latest comic is&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Johnny Appleseed</a>.</p> | The Ecosocialism of Joel Kovel | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/10/02/the-ecosocialism-of-joel-kovel/ | 2017-10-02 | 4left
| The Ecosocialism of Joel Kovel
<p>It should be a given that no memoir is inherently “strange.” Every life is lived uniquely and has its own special qualities, drawn out at length (or not) by the writer. In <a href="" type="internal">The Lost Traveller’s Dream,</a> Kovel has managed to summon up a spirit that transcends as well as living within its, or his, own time. This is a life “beyond,” something possible at any time but valuable especially in an era of collapse, catastrophe, and perhaps improbable hope.</p>
<p>Joel Kovel, to be brief, has been a prestigious and best-selling writer on psychotherapy, a militant left activist from the middle 1960s onward, an eco-theorist and an explorer of the world just beyond our sense perceptions. He offers us the details most precious to him, the saga of his own family (or families), his shift from one intellectual emphasis to another, his growth in politics but also his political conflicts.</p>
<p>Memorably, more than few times in this memory book, he steals mainstream prestige away from himself. This is not exactly self-sabotage, although careerists would surely think so. He contemplates the rewards alongside the political (and personal) costs and chooses…not to be rewarded. Indeed, he sometimes chooses to be anti-rewarded, not perversely but with political purpose.</p>
<p>Thus we come back to the middle class secular Jewish lad&#160;&#160;from Long Island going off to Yale in the later 1950s. His identity group is mildly leftwing, including future New Press founder Andre Schffrin. His future is in the budding psychotherapy field, and in&#160; <a href="" type="internal">A Complete Guide&#160;to Therapy</a>, he is on the literary (and career) fast track. Alas, he does not like where it seems to be taking him.</p>
<p>The US invasion of Vietnam, as for some of his generation but more of the ones following shortly, distances him from his liberal sponsors. He enrolls in <a href="" type="internal" />the Left, carrying him and his would-be career to far places. His second marriage, to left media activist Dee Dee Halleck, settles the matter, in a sense.</p>
<p>But there is that professorship later on, at Bard College, traditional home of bohemian intellectuals. He does his work and likes his job. And then the College becomes the plaything of a high powered neoconservative, with the financial connections that nearly extinguish faculty resistance around Kovel.</p>
<p>Add to this Kovel’s commitments to ecosocialism, his intellectual explorations and editorial energy, and you have a professor who seems, to conservatives and many liberals alike, to be the sore thumb that sticks out. He became an ecological theorist of note, shocking those academics whose inclinations are never really toward “radical” solutions to global warming or the death cry of rivers. He offered, more and more, a philosophy of struggle and transcendence. No wonder he finds himself cashiered, bounced, in time to live a retirement of militant resistance.</p>
<p>Some of the many details of this heavily detailed book carry us toward St. Francis on the one hand and the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua on the other. Or rather, to his own surprise, these two seemed to be the same hand after all. A militant atheist since youth, Kovel was taken with the connection of ecological visionaries from the distant past and present. St. Francis had, after all, broken with his own wealthy family and set himself for a life with the poor. This saint did not actually defect to the heretics suffering persecution or break with the Pope persecuting them. His was, finally, a sort of in-house rebellion. The Sandinistas would certainly have preferred this option, but faced a scolding Pope who desperately feared Liberation Theology and the “People’s Church” that had arisen during the Revolution.</p>
<p>Kovel is drawn, understandably, to the charisma of Ernesto Cardenal in particular, and through that connection, ponders a leftwing religious mysticism that still intrigues him. Given the sad fate of a Central American revolution too close to the US to win like the Vietnamese, Kovel had another paradise of sorts, far further North. That is: Vermont, also full of utopians. The Bread and Puppet Theater had and has a creative vitality that could easily be called spiritual. That Kovel never quite relocated politically to Vermont is attributed, in part, to the well-known fractious sentiments of eco-anarchist Murray Bookchin, the sage of Burlington known best, in later days, for personal attacks on Bernie Sanders. It would not have been a happy partnership.</p>
<p>Kovel chose instead upstate New York. This brought him into the Green Party, reaching ballot status in the state by the late 1990s. The Greens possessed wonderfully odd characters, the oddest perhaps Al Lewis (of The Munsters)—when out of disguise an ancient Red. Kovel himself ran for the US Senate against Alphonse D’Amato and Chuck Schumer, the latter an emerging Democratic centrist in the pocket of the Israel Lobby. At a high point of Green activity, Kovel dreamed of running for president on the Green ticket. This time, in 2000, Ralph Nader stood implacably in the way.</p>
<p>That Kovel afterward took over&#160;Capitalism, Nature, Socialism&#160;from James O’Connor (reviewer acknowledgment: I have had an intermittent column in this journal for twenty years) in 2003, seeing the journal through rocky times to another editorial team. By the end of his tenure, Kovel had done his work. Travel, socialist and ecological discussions across geographical zones, and more rumination have all followed.&#160;T <a href="" type="internal">he Lost Traveler’s Dream</a>&#160;ends up as close to William Blake as to Marx, a logic embedded in this book from its first pages.</p>
<p>Paul Buhle’s latest comic is&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Johnny Appleseed</a>.</p> | 1,118 |
<p />
<p>It is rumored that some of the wealthiest Americans manage to pay less in taxes than some of their employees. They achieve this by one of two methods: doing their own financial and tax planning or paying someone to do it for them. Simple, isn’t it?</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The point is that the rich are able to avoid taxes through legal processes. Some mega-rich may use sketchy methods to avoid taxes, and everyone’s definition of sketchy is different. However, most of the mega-rich use superior understanding of the tax laws to take advantage of all of the legal methods available to reduce their taxes. Here are just a few of those methods.</p>
<p>Capital Gains Management&#160;– Assets that are considered long-term capital gains (held for more than a year) are taxed at a 15% rate, or for the wealthiest Americans, a 20% rate that was recently introduced. Short-term capital gains are taxed at the ordinary income tax rate, which for the mega-rich is 39.6%. That’s almost a 50% tax savings.&#160; Any monetary stream that can be classified as a capital gain will be classified that way in order to take advantage of the rates. Gains will be timed to bring the greatest tax advantage.&#160; Losing ventures that result in capital losses can be used to offset capital gains.&#160; <a href="http://www.moneytips.com/tax-loss-harvesting-101" type="external">Tax-loss harvesting Opens a New Window.</a>, or the strategy of selling off poorly performing investments at strategic times and using the losses to offset capital gains, optimizes the positive tax effects.</p>
<p>Income Modification&#160;– The mega-rich are adept at keeping their taxable income and applicable tax rates as low as possible.</p>
<p>By incorporating and paying themselves a reasonable, smaller salary, the mega-rich can take a higher portion of their income as dividends. Dividend income is generally taxed at the same 15%–20% capital gains rate. Another tactic is to take a portion of compensation as stock options, which are generally taxed only when the options are exercised.</p>
<p>Once you reach the mega-rich status, it is possible to take a significant portion of your income in dividends and receive a much smaller portion in traditional income taxed at normal rates.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Tax Deferral&#160;– The mega-rich enjoy the same tax-deferred benefits of retirement programs such as IRAs and 401(k)s as you do. Because of their wealth, they are in the position to max them out annually and take full advantage to the limits allowed by law.</p>
<p>There are other methods of tax deferral, such as with the stock option path listed above or deferred compensation plans that allow earnings to grow tax-free.</p>
<p>Borrowing Tactics&#160;– Strategic borrowing methods can actually earn money. Because of the leverage the mega-rich hold, they are able to borrow money in ways that can literally make money for them when they spot an opportunity.</p>
<p>One example is to purchase stock options at a fixed rate, then use those options as collateral to borrow money, which is used to make money off other opportunities. The loan is then paid off with those proceeds or by handing over the shares, thus avoiding capital gains.</p>
<p>Taxes Upon Death&#160;– Estate taxes can be dealt with by establishing an irrevocable trust where certain assets are no longer owned by the taxpayer. The trusts provide income while shielding the assets from taxes, and upon death, heirs will inherit the assets tax-free.</p>
<p>The “step-up” in basis is another method where capital gains taxes are avoided upon inheritance. The step-up refers to the value, or basis, of an asset. Consider a home you purchase for $200,000 that is worth $500,000 twenty years later upon your death. The $300,000 in extra value is not subject to capital gains because the basis is “stepped-up” or raised to its current market value for your heirs.</p>
<p>Otherwise, heirs would be stuck with a massive tax bill just to inherit the home, and those at lower incomes might not be able to keep the home. However, for the mega-rich, the step-up just becomes another nice tax break (albeit one that requires their death).</p>
<p>Perhaps someday you will be among the mega-rich and incorporate these and other tax-limiting methods in your financial strategy. If so, all we ask is that you keep the methods legal — and please do not forget about us if our advice helped you gain your mega-rich status.</p>
<p>More from <a href="http://www.MoneyTips.com" type="external">MoneyTips.com Opens a New Window.</a>:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.moneytips.com/end-of-year-portfolio-strategies" type="external">End-of-Year Portfolio Strategies Opens a New Window.</a> <a href="http://www.moneytips.com/tax-shelters-101" type="external">Tax Shelters 101 Opens a New Window.</a> <a href="http://www.moneytips.com/more-money-spent-on-tax-breaks-than-on-discretionary-spending" type="external">More $ Spent on Tax Breaks than on Discretionary Spending in U.S. Budget Opens a New Window.</a></p> | How the Mega-Rich Avoid Paying Taxes | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2015/04/17/how-mega-rich-avoid-paying-taxes.html | 2016-03-06 | 0right
| How the Mega-Rich Avoid Paying Taxes
<p />
<p>It is rumored that some of the wealthiest Americans manage to pay less in taxes than some of their employees. They achieve this by one of two methods: doing their own financial and tax planning or paying someone to do it for them. Simple, isn’t it?</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The point is that the rich are able to avoid taxes through legal processes. Some mega-rich may use sketchy methods to avoid taxes, and everyone’s definition of sketchy is different. However, most of the mega-rich use superior understanding of the tax laws to take advantage of all of the legal methods available to reduce their taxes. Here are just a few of those methods.</p>
<p>Capital Gains Management&#160;– Assets that are considered long-term capital gains (held for more than a year) are taxed at a 15% rate, or for the wealthiest Americans, a 20% rate that was recently introduced. Short-term capital gains are taxed at the ordinary income tax rate, which for the mega-rich is 39.6%. That’s almost a 50% tax savings.&#160; Any monetary stream that can be classified as a capital gain will be classified that way in order to take advantage of the rates. Gains will be timed to bring the greatest tax advantage.&#160; Losing ventures that result in capital losses can be used to offset capital gains.&#160; <a href="http://www.moneytips.com/tax-loss-harvesting-101" type="external">Tax-loss harvesting Opens a New Window.</a>, or the strategy of selling off poorly performing investments at strategic times and using the losses to offset capital gains, optimizes the positive tax effects.</p>
<p>Income Modification&#160;– The mega-rich are adept at keeping their taxable income and applicable tax rates as low as possible.</p>
<p>By incorporating and paying themselves a reasonable, smaller salary, the mega-rich can take a higher portion of their income as dividends. Dividend income is generally taxed at the same 15%–20% capital gains rate. Another tactic is to take a portion of compensation as stock options, which are generally taxed only when the options are exercised.</p>
<p>Once you reach the mega-rich status, it is possible to take a significant portion of your income in dividends and receive a much smaller portion in traditional income taxed at normal rates.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Tax Deferral&#160;– The mega-rich enjoy the same tax-deferred benefits of retirement programs such as IRAs and 401(k)s as you do. Because of their wealth, they are in the position to max them out annually and take full advantage to the limits allowed by law.</p>
<p>There are other methods of tax deferral, such as with the stock option path listed above or deferred compensation plans that allow earnings to grow tax-free.</p>
<p>Borrowing Tactics&#160;– Strategic borrowing methods can actually earn money. Because of the leverage the mega-rich hold, they are able to borrow money in ways that can literally make money for them when they spot an opportunity.</p>
<p>One example is to purchase stock options at a fixed rate, then use those options as collateral to borrow money, which is used to make money off other opportunities. The loan is then paid off with those proceeds or by handing over the shares, thus avoiding capital gains.</p>
<p>Taxes Upon Death&#160;– Estate taxes can be dealt with by establishing an irrevocable trust where certain assets are no longer owned by the taxpayer. The trusts provide income while shielding the assets from taxes, and upon death, heirs will inherit the assets tax-free.</p>
<p>The “step-up” in basis is another method where capital gains taxes are avoided upon inheritance. The step-up refers to the value, or basis, of an asset. Consider a home you purchase for $200,000 that is worth $500,000 twenty years later upon your death. The $300,000 in extra value is not subject to capital gains because the basis is “stepped-up” or raised to its current market value for your heirs.</p>
<p>Otherwise, heirs would be stuck with a massive tax bill just to inherit the home, and those at lower incomes might not be able to keep the home. However, for the mega-rich, the step-up just becomes another nice tax break (albeit one that requires their death).</p>
<p>Perhaps someday you will be among the mega-rich and incorporate these and other tax-limiting methods in your financial strategy. If so, all we ask is that you keep the methods legal — and please do not forget about us if our advice helped you gain your mega-rich status.</p>
<p>More from <a href="http://www.MoneyTips.com" type="external">MoneyTips.com Opens a New Window.</a>:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.moneytips.com/end-of-year-portfolio-strategies" type="external">End-of-Year Portfolio Strategies Opens a New Window.</a> <a href="http://www.moneytips.com/tax-shelters-101" type="external">Tax Shelters 101 Opens a New Window.</a> <a href="http://www.moneytips.com/more-money-spent-on-tax-breaks-than-on-discretionary-spending" type="external">More $ Spent on Tax Breaks than on Discretionary Spending in U.S. Budget Opens a New Window.</a></p> | 1,119 |
<p>Oil prices set new highs going back nearly two months, but a strong rally has stalled with analysts and brokers warning there may not be enough big buyers to keep up momentum from recent inventory declines.</p>
<p>Light, sweet crude for September delivery recently gained 10 cents, or 0.2%, to $48.85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It briefly surged to $49.08 -- its highest intraday price since June 1 -- after the traditional start of U.S. trading hours then almost immediately retreated to unchanged. Brent, the global benchmark, gained 20 cents, or 0.4%, to $51.17 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The Energy Information Administration said Wednesday that U.S. crude stockpiles fell by a larger-than-expected 7.2 million barrels last week -- the fourth-straight weekly drop. Supplies of gasoline and distillates also fell, while output abated slightly.</p>
<p>"Recent inventory draws have been favorable and suggest we are beginning to rebalance," analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Thursday in a note to clients.</p>
<p>However, they warned that prices are still likely locked into a range between $45 and $50 a barrel because higher prices would probably support an oversupply from new drilling in the U.S. Signs of more inventory declines in other industrialized nations are also likely necessary before it is clear that a glut is gone from storage, which has been at historically high levels, they added.</p>
<p>Demand has been strong in the U.S. and abroad. U.S. gasoline demand is rising and likely to break record highs soon, ING Bank said Thursday. And U.S. exports abroad showed a "meaningful increase," said Piper Jaffray Cos.' Simmons &amp; Co. International.</p>
<p>But there, too, are questions. International demand could simply be from international buyers refilling their storage. And increasing exports are necessary to keep easing a glut in U.S. storage, the Simmons analysts said.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>"We've run out of more bullish news. For the market to move higher, it needs some new impetus," said Warren Patterson, commodities strategist at ING.</p>
<p>Crude demand by U.S. refiners will likely recede in September and October when seasonal maintenance work begins, Société Générale noted. Meanwhile, long-term Chinese oil demand is expected to lose some steam as the country veers toward green energy and natural gas, said BMI Research.</p>
<p>Some of Thursday's selling is likely from producers taking advantage of higher prices to sell future production, Scott Shelton, broker at ICAP PLC, said in a note. And, as the other analysts suggested, the market will need new buyers to balance that out.</p>
<p>"I am not convinced that these kinds of buyers will show up," Mr. Shelton added. "I don't see the next incremental buyer and I see more natural sellers. I am still bullish, but overall I could see this being a grind."</p>
<p>Gasoline futures recently gained 1%, to $1.6328 a gallon, and diesel futures gained 0.3%, to $1.6006 a gallon.</p>
<p>--Justin Yang and Jenny W. Hsu contributed to this article.</p>
<p>Write to Timothy Puko at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>July 27, 2017 10:53 ET (14:53 GMT)</p> | Oil Price's Advance Slows Amid Falling U.S. Inventories | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/07/27/oil-prices-advance-slows-amid-falling-u-s-inventories.html | 2017-07-27 | 0right
| Oil Price's Advance Slows Amid Falling U.S. Inventories
<p>Oil prices set new highs going back nearly two months, but a strong rally has stalled with analysts and brokers warning there may not be enough big buyers to keep up momentum from recent inventory declines.</p>
<p>Light, sweet crude for September delivery recently gained 10 cents, or 0.2%, to $48.85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It briefly surged to $49.08 -- its highest intraday price since June 1 -- after the traditional start of U.S. trading hours then almost immediately retreated to unchanged. Brent, the global benchmark, gained 20 cents, or 0.4%, to $51.17 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The Energy Information Administration said Wednesday that U.S. crude stockpiles fell by a larger-than-expected 7.2 million barrels last week -- the fourth-straight weekly drop. Supplies of gasoline and distillates also fell, while output abated slightly.</p>
<p>"Recent inventory draws have been favorable and suggest we are beginning to rebalance," analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Thursday in a note to clients.</p>
<p>However, they warned that prices are still likely locked into a range between $45 and $50 a barrel because higher prices would probably support an oversupply from new drilling in the U.S. Signs of more inventory declines in other industrialized nations are also likely necessary before it is clear that a glut is gone from storage, which has been at historically high levels, they added.</p>
<p>Demand has been strong in the U.S. and abroad. U.S. gasoline demand is rising and likely to break record highs soon, ING Bank said Thursday. And U.S. exports abroad showed a "meaningful increase," said Piper Jaffray Cos.' Simmons &amp; Co. International.</p>
<p>But there, too, are questions. International demand could simply be from international buyers refilling their storage. And increasing exports are necessary to keep easing a glut in U.S. storage, the Simmons analysts said.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>"We've run out of more bullish news. For the market to move higher, it needs some new impetus," said Warren Patterson, commodities strategist at ING.</p>
<p>Crude demand by U.S. refiners will likely recede in September and October when seasonal maintenance work begins, Société Générale noted. Meanwhile, long-term Chinese oil demand is expected to lose some steam as the country veers toward green energy and natural gas, said BMI Research.</p>
<p>Some of Thursday's selling is likely from producers taking advantage of higher prices to sell future production, Scott Shelton, broker at ICAP PLC, said in a note. And, as the other analysts suggested, the market will need new buyers to balance that out.</p>
<p>"I am not convinced that these kinds of buyers will show up," Mr. Shelton added. "I don't see the next incremental buyer and I see more natural sellers. I am still bullish, but overall I could see this being a grind."</p>
<p>Gasoline futures recently gained 1%, to $1.6328 a gallon, and diesel futures gained 0.3%, to $1.6006 a gallon.</p>
<p>--Justin Yang and Jenny W. Hsu contributed to this article.</p>
<p>Write to Timothy Puko at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>July 27, 2017 10:53 ET (14:53 GMT)</p> | 1,120 |
<p><a href="http://michael-hudson.com/" type="external">Michael Hudson</a> is Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and president of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET). This is the first chapter of his book “ <a href="http://michael-hudson.com/2012/12/finance-capitalism-and-its-discontents/" type="external">Finance Capitalism and its Discontents</a>,” published by ISLET in November 2012.</p>
<p>Suppose you were alive back in 1945 and were told about all the new technology that would be invented between then and now: the computers and internet, mobile phones and other consumer electronics, faster and cheaper air travel, super trains and even outer space exploration, higher gas mileage on the ground, plastics, medical breakthroughs and science in general. You would have imagined what nearly all futurists expected: that we would be living in a life of leisure society by this time. Rising productivity would raise wages and living standards, enabling people to work shorter hours under more relaxed and less pressured workplace conditions.</p>
<p>Why hasn’t this occurred in recent years? In light of the enormous productivity gains since the end of World War II – and especially since 1980 – why isn’t everyone rich and enjoying the leisure economy that was promised? If the 99% is not getting the fruits of higher productivity, who is? Where has it gone?</p>
<p>Under Stalinism the surplus went to the state, which used it to increase tangible capital investment – in factories, power production, transportation and other basic industry and infrastructure. But where is it going under today’s finance capitalism? Much of it has gone into industry, construction and infrastructure, as it would in any kind of political economy. And much also is consumed in military overhead, in luxury production for the wealthy, and invested abroad. But most of the gains have gone to the financial sector – higher loans for real estate, and purchases of stocks and bonds.</p>
<p />
<p>Loans need to be repaid, and stocks and bonds receive dividends and interest. For the economy at large, people are working longer just to maintain their living standards, which are being squeezed. Women have entered the labor force in unprecedented numbers over the past half-century – and of course, this has raised the status of women. Mechanization of housework and other tasks at home has freed them for professional life outside the home. But on balance, work has increased.</p>
<p>What also has increased has been debt. When World War II ended, John Maynard Keynes and other economists worried that as societies got richer, people would save more. For them, the problem was to keep market demand high enough to buy all the output that was being produced.</p>
<p>And indeed today, markets are shrinking in many countries. But not because people are saving out of prosperity. The jump in reported “saving” in the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) in recent years has resulted from repaying debts. It is a negation of a negation – and hence, a statistical “positive.”</p>
<p>Paying off a debt is not the same as building up liquid savings in a bank. It reflects something that only a very few economists have worried about over the past century: the prospect of debts rising faster than income, leading to financial crashes that transfer property from debtors to creditors, and indeed polarize society between what the Occupy Wall Street movement calls the 1% and the 99%.</p>
<p>What also was expected universally fifty years ago – indeed, until about 1980 – was that governments would play an increasingly important economic role, not only as forward planners but as direct investors in infrastructure. To Keynesians, government spending served to pump money into the economy, maintaining demand and employment in cyclical downturns. And for hundreds of years, governments have undertaken basic infrastructure spending so that private owners would not use monopoly privileges to charge economic rent.</p>
<p>Nearly all observers expected the fruits of technology to trickle down, not be siphoned up to the top, to the banking sector whose “financial engineering” played no directly technological role in the production process. Textbook models describe – or rather, assume – that rising productivity will be passed on to labor in the form of lower prices (reflecting falling costs of production, enabling wages to buy more) or, if prices are “sticky,” higher wages.</p>
<p>According to what the textbooks called Say’s Law, there is a circular flow between producers and consumers. Workers must be able to buy the results of what they produce. This correlation between output and consumption goes back to the Physiocrats prior to the French Revolution, who created economics and account keeping. Their founder, François Quesnay, was a medical doctor and a surgeon. He created the basic format of national income accounting on the analogy of the circulation of blood within the body. An increase in production had to find its counterpart in increased consumption, creating its market by paying workers who spent their wages on buying the products they produced.Working harder, producing more, but going into debt to buy it</p>
<p>After World War II many women stayed home and raised families. But since the 1950s they have been forced increasingly into the labour force for what are called two-job families – and now, three-job families (with only two family members). If you project labor participation rates, by the year 2020 every woman will have to work 18 hours a day or economic trends will falter.</p>
<p>What was applauded as a post-industrial economy has turned into a financialized economy. The reason you have to work so much harder than before, even when wages rise, is to carry your debt overhead. You’re unable to buy the goods you produce because you need to pay your bankers. And the only way that you can barely maintain your living standards is to borrow even more. This means having to pay back even more in years to come.</p>
<p>That is the Eurozone plan in a nutshell for its economic future. It is a financial plan that is replacing industrial capitalism – with finance capitalism.</p>
<p>Industrial capitalism was based on increasing production and expanding markets. Industrialists were supposed to use their profits to build more factories, buy more machinery and hire more labor. But this is not what happens under finance capitalism. Banks lend out their receipt of interest, fees and penalties (which now yield credit card companies as much as interest) in new loans.</p>
<p>The problem is that income used to pay debts cannot simultaneously be used to buy the goods and services that labor produces. So when wages and living standards do not rise, how are producers to sell – unless they find new markets abroad? The gains have been siphoned off by finance. And the financial dynamic ends up in austerity.</p>
<p>And to make matters worse, it is not the fat that is cut. The fat is the financial sector. What is cut is the bone: the industrial sector. So when writers refer to a post-industrial economy led by the banks, they imply deindustrialization. And for you it means unemployment and lower wages.&#160;</p>
<p>Financial dynamics vs. industrial dynamics</p>
<p>The accumulation of payments on interest-bearing debt leads companies to search for new loan markets, just as industrialists seek out new markets for their expanding output. This search means looking for assets in place to be pledged as collateral. The largest asset in any economy is real estate – mainly the land’s site value. So about 80 percent of bank loans are mortgage loans. But by 1980 property prices had turned down as interest rates rose during the Vietnam War and the general Cold War buildup throughout the world. Overseas military spending obliged the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to borrow abroad to prevent the dollar’s exchange rate from declining.</p>
<p>So in the 1980s banks found a new market: corporate raiders treated companies much like real estate, to be bought on credit and managed to create a capital gain. The rise in interest rates to 20 percent by 1980 forced most states to revoke their usury laws, and credit card companies played states against each other in a race to the bottom when it came to protecting consumer rights. So the high-interest junk bond was born, largely at the hands of Michael Milken’s gang at Drexel Burnham.</p>
<p>American industry began to be financialized (and in the process, criminalized). But running a company to make a financial gain is different from running an industrial firm to expand production. Cash flow that was not paid to bankers and bondholders for the credit to buy out stock holders was used for purposes other than direct capital investment – above all for stock buybacks to support their price, and for mergers and acquisitions to acquire yet more companies.</p>
<p>The aim was not to increase production but to increase balance-sheet wealth – while extracting revenue from companies much like landlords bleeding a building. That is the time frame of finance capital, in contrast to industrial capital. It is short-term, not long term. This is why it is extractive rather than productive. The revenue has no counterpart in new direct investment in output, but rather in overhead debt extracting a rising flow of interest from the economy.</p>
<p>“Wealth creation” by debt leveraging – that is, asset-price inflation – was celebrated as a post-industrial economy, as if this were a positive and natural evolution. But in reality it is a lapse back into a rentier economy, and even into a kind of neofeudalism. The post-2008 bailouts have vested a new rentier elite to lord it over the 21st century, thanks to the fact that most gains since 1980 have gone to the 1% – mainly the financial sector, not to the 99%.</p>
<p>In the end this shrinks the economy – and that means that more and more loans will go bad, until crisis levels are reached at the point where lenders realize that there is no more room to extract more, and stop lending. But in the absence of government budget deficits, bank lending is the only support for demand – so the financial rug is pulled out from under the economy. That is the point at which banks demand bailouts – giving them the money, rather than giving the economy the revenue to spend and pull itself out of depression. So government debt is increased by giveaways to the banks, not by spending into the “real” economy.Economics textbooks teach supply and demand curves. Every marginal increase in supply lowers the price of what is being supplied. For the job market this means that the higher the unemployment rate, the lower wages will fall. Conversely, the more workers you hire, the more you have to pay to attract workers. Government officials and bankers are indoctrinated in these textbooks and conclude that the less employment there is, the more wages will fall – thereby presumably leaving a wider profit margin, assuming that the goods can still be sold at a steady price. So employers seek to earn more by keeping employment low enough to prevent wages from rising. This maximizes the power of wealth over labor.</p>
<p>Economists conclude that to make economies more competitive, they need to keep wages low so as to undersell other countries. So a race to the bottom develops. But what seems to help countries compete actually hurts their domestic market.</p>
<p>Back in the 19th century this was called the reserve army of the unemployed. Unemployment keeps labour down. And even more important, to the extent that incomes do rise, they are paid out as debt service. A dynamic is put in place in which debt keeps labor down – not only by eating up its wages in debt service, but in making workers suffer sharp increases in the interest rates they have to pay or even risk losing their homes if they miss a payment by going on strike or being fired. Alan Greenspan explained that unemployment was not needed to keep labor down these days. All that is needed is to traumatize and disable them politically by debt leverage. (Quote his Senate testimony)</p>
<p>This is why, despite the fact that productivity has risen so dramatically, the real economy and its wage levels have tapered off in an S curve. The magic of compound interest has increased debt (and the savings of the 1%) to more than absorb the productivity gains. And this financial overgrowth has accrued to the 1%, not to the 99%.</p>
<p>Finance is what makes today’s economy different from that of 1945. We are at the end of a long cycle. Back in 1945 the private sector in every country was relatively free of debt. There was little civilian output for consumers to buy during the wartime years. Companies had little reason to invest, except for the government’s military demand. So most families had little debt – and a lot of savings, and good job opportunities after the return to peace. But today the economy is in reverse. Savings have been run down and consumers, real estate and industry is left in debt.</p>
<p>Untaxing land rent and monopoly rent so that it can be paid to the bankers, not to government</p>
<p>"?"To stop this reversal, it is necessary to understand its causes. They are not only financial. The banking interests have gained sufficient power to distort tax policy, creating a dual fiscal-financial problem. Taxes have been shifted off the major bank customers – real estate and monopolies – onto labor and consumers. In the United States, two-thirds of state and local tax revenues in the 1930s came from the property tax. Today the proportion has fallen to only one-sixth. States and cities replaced property taxes with income and sales taxes. Europe and the post-Soviet economies have adopted the most anti-labour tax of all – the value added tax.</p>
<p>The rationale is that it is easy to collect. But it falls on consumers, not on the economy’s free lunch of economic rent as advocated by classical free market economists. The value added tax adds to consumer prices and shrinks the market, preventing labor from buying the goods it produces. This is done simply to free more land rent, natural resource rent and monopoly rent from taxation so that it can be paid to bankers as interest.</p>
<p>When voters threaten to elect politicians to pursue less bank-friendly policies, the EU announces that the country needs a technocrat to impose more taxes to bail out the banks for their bad loans. It is all in vain without changing the system, because today’s financial business plan cannot work for more than a short time. Being extractive rather than productive, it leaves a swath of bankruptcy in its wake. Yet it is the banks that the technocrats are saving, not labor and industry, the “real” economy’s employment, social spending and public wealth.</p>
<p>Changing Social Security from being paid out of progressive taxation to a regressive labor tax</p>
<p>In 1982, bank lobbyist Alan Greenspan was appointed to head a U.S. commission to shift Social Security out of the public budget (where it was funded largely by progressive taxation) and fund it by user fees that fall on employees and employers. The aim was to privatize it Chilean style. Wall Street’s dream is to turn wage set-asides over to money managers to buy stocks and create a stock market boom (and in the end, siphon off commissions and push contributors into high-risk bets on the losing side of the deal with large financial institutions, Goldman Sachs style). In effect, Mr. Greenspan’s position was that Social Security should not be a public service. It should be a user fee, so that prospective retirees would pay for it in advance. Their savings were to be lent to the government to enable the Treasury to slash taxes on the higher income and wealth brackets. So the effect was to reverse the long trend toward progressive taxation.The upshot of the Greenspan tax increases (only on labor, not on wealthy earners) was to create a budget surplus for the Social Security Administration, enabling the government to cut taxes on real estate, on finance, and for the rich in general. Capital gains taxes in particular were cut in half. And real estate investors (absentee owners, not homeowners) were allowed to pretend that the value of their holdings were depreciating rather than rising in price, by junk accounting based on junk economics.</p>
<p>The end game came when the Bush and Obama administrations announced, in effect, “We’re broke. So now we have to balance the budget by cutting social spending and raising the Social Security tax further. We’ve cut taxes on the rich by so much that the workers have not paid enough to cover this give-away, not to mention fighting the Bush-Cheney war in Iraq and the Obama Administration’s war in Afghanistan – or for that matter, the class war against labour.</p>
<p>Under Pension Fund Capitalism, employees are encouraged to think of themselves as capitalists in miniature – and provide for their retirement by employee stock ownership programs rather than saving up their wages themselves or having pensions financed on a pay-as-you-go basis out of future production. The idea is to make money from money (M-&gt;M’), not by producing commodities (M-C-M’). In America, half the employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) have gone bankrupt, mainly by being grabbed by the corporate employers. Corporate raiders borrow credit from bankers and bond investors to fund management buyouts. The plan is to buy out stockholders, pledging the earnings to pay out as interest. And not only earnings; they loot the employee pension plans. George Akerlof won the 20– Nobel Prize for describing this. But novelists have recognized it more than economists. It was Balzac who said that behind every great family fortune is a great theft, often long forgotten to be sure.</p>
<p>Today’s economy is based on theft under the euphemism of “free enterprise.” It’s sometimes called “socialism for the rich” because they receive most government subsidy. But it’s not the kind of socialism that people talked about a hundred years ago. It is a travesty of social democracy and socialism. In a word, it’s oligarchy. But we’re living in an Orwellian world. No party calls themselves fascist today, or even anti-labor. They call themselves social democracy. But it’s the opposite of what social democracy meant in the 19th and early 20th century.</p>
<p>Social Security has not yet been privatized, but education has – not only privatized, but financialized. Students no longer get free or low-priced education. In order to qualify for professional jobs in America, they have to take out loans that put them deeply in debt. Then, when it comes time to start a family, they have to take on a lifetime 30-year mortgage debt. They need to take out an auto loan to buy an automobile to drive to work, especially where public transportation has been dismantled as in Los Angeles. And when their paychecks are squeezed more, they can maintain their living standards and social status only by taking on credit card debt.</p>
<p>Paying the carrying charges on this debt diverts spending away from the goods and services that employees produce. The result is debt deflation. Employees have less and less ability to buy what they produce – except by taking on even more debt. That’s why banks and bondholders have ended up with the increase in productivity – almost synonymous with the 1%. They are the core of the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) sector that now absorbs most of the economic surplus in the form of various types of economic rent: land and natural resource rent, monopoly privilege and financial overhead.</p>
<p>The inversion of classical free market reform to its diametric opposite</p>
<p>Classical political economy sought to mobilize democratic government to tax the rentiers: landlord, monopolists and bankers. The objective was to create an industrial surplus and, in the process, raise productivity, wage levels and living standards. To keep prices low and hence national economies competitive, governments were to undertake society’s largest spending programs: basic infrastructure such as transportation, power production, communications – all of which happen to be natural monopolies as well. So the aim was not only to provide basic infrastructure needs freely or at subsidized prices, but to prevent private owners from erecting tollbooths on roads and charging monopoly prices for power, phone systems (as in Telmex in Mexico or similar phone monopolies in the post-Soviet kleptocracies).</p>
<p>Post-classical economics (deceptively called neoclassical) seeks to untax the rentiers, and shift the costs of government onto labor and even onto industry. To achieve this, democracy is rolled back to oligarchies. But this time they are controlled not by landlords as in the case of Europe’s landed aristocracies, but bankers and financiers. And their aim is to privatize the public domain with its monopolies. Bankers advance the credit to buyers, who install tollbooths and raise prices for basic needs. By paying out their revenue in a tax-exempt form, as interest, they keep their income out of the hands of government – forcing national treasuries to tax labor and industry, consumers and producers rather than finance, insurance and real estate. Governments thus become the protectors of monopoly and its financing.</p>
<p>It is a short-term policy. By raising domestic price levels, financialized economies price themselves out of global markets – unless than can create a world order in which all economies are symmetrically debt-burdened. This is where the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization are brought into play – to financialize globalization, excluding countries as pariahs if they do not join this self-destructive and self-terminating system.</p>
<p>An object lesson of the shift from classical democracy to post-classical oligarchy is a country that is held out to you as a success story: Latvia, where neoliberals had a completely free hand, as they did in Russia. What they call a neoliberal paradise turned out to be debt-ridden kleptocracy. The country has a set of flat taxes on employment of 59 percent – and only a 1 percent real estate tax.</p>
<p>You can imagine what happened with real estate taxed so low and labor taxed so high. Employment was high-cost – but there was a real estate bubble. When I was Research Director at the Riga Graduate School of Law, I visited the government agency in charge of property assessments, and asked how they got the 1 percent. I was told that they based it on the most recent real estate appraisal they had. This turned out to be back in 1917, before the Russian Revolution. (The lead assessor had written her doctoral dissertation on this survey.) Whatever the tax collector gives up and relinquishes in taxes, is available to be paid to the banks as interest. So housing prices are bid up in price – on credit – while the tax collector has to turn to labor and industry for the revenue that has been given up. Instead of paying taxes, new homebuyers pay interest to the bankers. The upshot is that the banks end up with the rent that used to accrue to the landed aristocracies of Europe. This is making bankers the new aristocracy.When I headed an international investigative economic team in 2010, we visited Latvia’s bank insurance agency and were told that they had anticipated a collapse of the bubble. Their response was to advise banks to back their mortgage loans not only with the property as collateral, but to get as many family members as possible to co-sign the loan. That way, if and when default occurred, the parents, siblings or other relatives would be personally liable.?? The bank regulators did not urge the government to tax real estate more. That would have squeezed homeowners on their bank loans – and left less new rental income to be capitalized into new bank loans. But it would have enabled the government to reduce its heavy taxes on employment. This was not the bank regulators’ concern – and bankers themselves saw their main business in lending to fuel real estate, not industry, given what the neoliberals did to Latvia’s economy and that of the other Baltic states!</p>
<p>Unfair? Economically polarizing and destructive? Of course. But the bank insurers said that their task was to protect bank solvency, not create an optimum economic structure.</p>
<p>One result is that a recent EU survey found that one-third of Latvia’s population between the age of 20 and 35 either had emigrated or was planning to do so. As of 2012 the country’s population recently has shrunk by 15 percent. Marriage and birth rates are falling off, as they are throughout the post-Soviet economies. After all, who can marry and buy a house when your wages are taxed at 59 percent and you have to take on a debt?</p>
<p>Iceland provides another object lesson. Even more than Latvia, it became a rogue banker’s paradise – and also one for vulture banks. Their loans are indexed to the consumer price index – which means in practice to the foreign exchange rate. The krónur plunged after the banks crashed in 2008. The result a 1,000 krónur debt has become perhaps 1,800 – against property that has fallen from the equivalent of 1000 krónur down to perhaps 400 krónur. This leaves many families in negative equity. And they are personally liable.</p>
<p>When the crooked banks of Iceland went under (and they’ve only recently begun to arrest some of the crooks) the government took them over and, on European advice, sold them to vulture investors, for around ten cents on the dollar. Despite the fact that Iceland’s constitution said that they were not allowed to increase debts by indexing, this is just what the banks did. If the government had taken over, it could have written down the debts to the ability to pay. But the new vulture banks have not done this. And the Social Democratic government backed their rights to make as much as they can, rather than giving priority to the welfare of the Icelandic people.</p>
<p>What I find so striking is how far to the right wing of the political spectrum the Social Democratic and Labour parties have moved. Iceland’s Social Democratic leadership explained that it wanted to be part of Europe. But this meant acting on behalf of the British and Dutch bankers, not democratically on behalf of Icelanders. They acted on behalf of the emerging financial oligarchy.</p>
<p>I’ve known many of the social democratic leaders of America and the world since I was a young boy. My father was a socialist labor leader and political prisoner from Minneapolis, which was the high point of American labor history as a result of its great General Strike in the 1930s. I was told by a Socialist Party leader (Terence McCarthy) in the early 1960s that the travel and hotel expenses of nearly every member of the Socialist International (the Second International, of which Dmitri Papandreou of Greece is President as of autumn 2011) was paid for by the CIA or its front organizations. I watched the Socialist Party in America come to support the Vietnam War, and Michael Harrington ban criticism of the war in its youth magazine – driving it to quickly lose most of its members.</p>
<p>Harrington and his mentor, Max Shachtman, took this position because they believed that the West could not be persuaded to be Marxist until the world was freed from the Stalinist travesty that claimed to be Marxist. So the Social Democratic Party of America joined the Cold War effort. Politics was turned upside down by the triangulation of socialism, Stalinism and the ability of the United States to back and finance European social democrats to support the banks and “centrists.” This became the tragedy of the old non-Stalinist left in America and other countries. So the Social Democratic leadership imagined (or simply sold out to pretend to believe) that “free financial markets” would lead the world into economic progress.</p>
<p>This was just the opposite from the Progressive Era and indeed, what industrial capitalism promised. The Social Democratic parties of Iceland, Britain, Greece, Scandinavia and other European countries have adopted the position that the way to re-employ labor is to impose austerity. Budgets are to be balanced by lowering wages by 30 percent, and shifting taxes off the finance, insurance and real estate sector onto consumers.</p>
<p>Taxes on labor add to its cost. So competitive power would be maximized by untaxing labor and consumer goods, by getting rid of the value-added tax. But not all taxes are bad. The classical free market economists endorsed taxes on unearned income: land rent and natural resources, monopoly rent and financial privilege. These categories of income have no counterpart in a cost of production undertaken by the rent recipient. The more that governments can shift the tax burden onto land and property, the lower housing prices will be – and the less governments will need to tax labor by income and sales taxes.</p>
<p>Bankers back anti-government ideology because they want to obtain all of the untaxed rental revenue as interest. So taxes that otherwise would be paid to the government will be paid to the bankers. The result – what you’re seeing today in Europe and North America – is an economic grab that is in many ways like that which gave birth to European feudalism. But this time around it is financial, not military.</p>
<p /> | Productivity, Compound Interest and Poverty | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/productivity-compound-interest-and-poverty/ | 2013-02-10 | 4left
| Productivity, Compound Interest and Poverty
<p><a href="http://michael-hudson.com/" type="external">Michael Hudson</a> is Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and president of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET). This is the first chapter of his book “ <a href="http://michael-hudson.com/2012/12/finance-capitalism-and-its-discontents/" type="external">Finance Capitalism and its Discontents</a>,” published by ISLET in November 2012.</p>
<p>Suppose you were alive back in 1945 and were told about all the new technology that would be invented between then and now: the computers and internet, mobile phones and other consumer electronics, faster and cheaper air travel, super trains and even outer space exploration, higher gas mileage on the ground, plastics, medical breakthroughs and science in general. You would have imagined what nearly all futurists expected: that we would be living in a life of leisure society by this time. Rising productivity would raise wages and living standards, enabling people to work shorter hours under more relaxed and less pressured workplace conditions.</p>
<p>Why hasn’t this occurred in recent years? In light of the enormous productivity gains since the end of World War II – and especially since 1980 – why isn’t everyone rich and enjoying the leisure economy that was promised? If the 99% is not getting the fruits of higher productivity, who is? Where has it gone?</p>
<p>Under Stalinism the surplus went to the state, which used it to increase tangible capital investment – in factories, power production, transportation and other basic industry and infrastructure. But where is it going under today’s finance capitalism? Much of it has gone into industry, construction and infrastructure, as it would in any kind of political economy. And much also is consumed in military overhead, in luxury production for the wealthy, and invested abroad. But most of the gains have gone to the financial sector – higher loans for real estate, and purchases of stocks and bonds.</p>
<p />
<p>Loans need to be repaid, and stocks and bonds receive dividends and interest. For the economy at large, people are working longer just to maintain their living standards, which are being squeezed. Women have entered the labor force in unprecedented numbers over the past half-century – and of course, this has raised the status of women. Mechanization of housework and other tasks at home has freed them for professional life outside the home. But on balance, work has increased.</p>
<p>What also has increased has been debt. When World War II ended, John Maynard Keynes and other economists worried that as societies got richer, people would save more. For them, the problem was to keep market demand high enough to buy all the output that was being produced.</p>
<p>And indeed today, markets are shrinking in many countries. But not because people are saving out of prosperity. The jump in reported “saving” in the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) in recent years has resulted from repaying debts. It is a negation of a negation – and hence, a statistical “positive.”</p>
<p>Paying off a debt is not the same as building up liquid savings in a bank. It reflects something that only a very few economists have worried about over the past century: the prospect of debts rising faster than income, leading to financial crashes that transfer property from debtors to creditors, and indeed polarize society between what the Occupy Wall Street movement calls the 1% and the 99%.</p>
<p>What also was expected universally fifty years ago – indeed, until about 1980 – was that governments would play an increasingly important economic role, not only as forward planners but as direct investors in infrastructure. To Keynesians, government spending served to pump money into the economy, maintaining demand and employment in cyclical downturns. And for hundreds of years, governments have undertaken basic infrastructure spending so that private owners would not use monopoly privileges to charge economic rent.</p>
<p>Nearly all observers expected the fruits of technology to trickle down, not be siphoned up to the top, to the banking sector whose “financial engineering” played no directly technological role in the production process. Textbook models describe – or rather, assume – that rising productivity will be passed on to labor in the form of lower prices (reflecting falling costs of production, enabling wages to buy more) or, if prices are “sticky,” higher wages.</p>
<p>According to what the textbooks called Say’s Law, there is a circular flow between producers and consumers. Workers must be able to buy the results of what they produce. This correlation between output and consumption goes back to the Physiocrats prior to the French Revolution, who created economics and account keeping. Their founder, François Quesnay, was a medical doctor and a surgeon. He created the basic format of national income accounting on the analogy of the circulation of blood within the body. An increase in production had to find its counterpart in increased consumption, creating its market by paying workers who spent their wages on buying the products they produced.Working harder, producing more, but going into debt to buy it</p>
<p>After World War II many women stayed home and raised families. But since the 1950s they have been forced increasingly into the labour force for what are called two-job families – and now, three-job families (with only two family members). If you project labor participation rates, by the year 2020 every woman will have to work 18 hours a day or economic trends will falter.</p>
<p>What was applauded as a post-industrial economy has turned into a financialized economy. The reason you have to work so much harder than before, even when wages rise, is to carry your debt overhead. You’re unable to buy the goods you produce because you need to pay your bankers. And the only way that you can barely maintain your living standards is to borrow even more. This means having to pay back even more in years to come.</p>
<p>That is the Eurozone plan in a nutshell for its economic future. It is a financial plan that is replacing industrial capitalism – with finance capitalism.</p>
<p>Industrial capitalism was based on increasing production and expanding markets. Industrialists were supposed to use their profits to build more factories, buy more machinery and hire more labor. But this is not what happens under finance capitalism. Banks lend out their receipt of interest, fees and penalties (which now yield credit card companies as much as interest) in new loans.</p>
<p>The problem is that income used to pay debts cannot simultaneously be used to buy the goods and services that labor produces. So when wages and living standards do not rise, how are producers to sell – unless they find new markets abroad? The gains have been siphoned off by finance. And the financial dynamic ends up in austerity.</p>
<p>And to make matters worse, it is not the fat that is cut. The fat is the financial sector. What is cut is the bone: the industrial sector. So when writers refer to a post-industrial economy led by the banks, they imply deindustrialization. And for you it means unemployment and lower wages.&#160;</p>
<p>Financial dynamics vs. industrial dynamics</p>
<p>The accumulation of payments on interest-bearing debt leads companies to search for new loan markets, just as industrialists seek out new markets for their expanding output. This search means looking for assets in place to be pledged as collateral. The largest asset in any economy is real estate – mainly the land’s site value. So about 80 percent of bank loans are mortgage loans. But by 1980 property prices had turned down as interest rates rose during the Vietnam War and the general Cold War buildup throughout the world. Overseas military spending obliged the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to borrow abroad to prevent the dollar’s exchange rate from declining.</p>
<p>So in the 1980s banks found a new market: corporate raiders treated companies much like real estate, to be bought on credit and managed to create a capital gain. The rise in interest rates to 20 percent by 1980 forced most states to revoke their usury laws, and credit card companies played states against each other in a race to the bottom when it came to protecting consumer rights. So the high-interest junk bond was born, largely at the hands of Michael Milken’s gang at Drexel Burnham.</p>
<p>American industry began to be financialized (and in the process, criminalized). But running a company to make a financial gain is different from running an industrial firm to expand production. Cash flow that was not paid to bankers and bondholders for the credit to buy out stock holders was used for purposes other than direct capital investment – above all for stock buybacks to support their price, and for mergers and acquisitions to acquire yet more companies.</p>
<p>The aim was not to increase production but to increase balance-sheet wealth – while extracting revenue from companies much like landlords bleeding a building. That is the time frame of finance capital, in contrast to industrial capital. It is short-term, not long term. This is why it is extractive rather than productive. The revenue has no counterpart in new direct investment in output, but rather in overhead debt extracting a rising flow of interest from the economy.</p>
<p>“Wealth creation” by debt leveraging – that is, asset-price inflation – was celebrated as a post-industrial economy, as if this were a positive and natural evolution. But in reality it is a lapse back into a rentier economy, and even into a kind of neofeudalism. The post-2008 bailouts have vested a new rentier elite to lord it over the 21st century, thanks to the fact that most gains since 1980 have gone to the 1% – mainly the financial sector, not to the 99%.</p>
<p>In the end this shrinks the economy – and that means that more and more loans will go bad, until crisis levels are reached at the point where lenders realize that there is no more room to extract more, and stop lending. But in the absence of government budget deficits, bank lending is the only support for demand – so the financial rug is pulled out from under the economy. That is the point at which banks demand bailouts – giving them the money, rather than giving the economy the revenue to spend and pull itself out of depression. So government debt is increased by giveaways to the banks, not by spending into the “real” economy.Economics textbooks teach supply and demand curves. Every marginal increase in supply lowers the price of what is being supplied. For the job market this means that the higher the unemployment rate, the lower wages will fall. Conversely, the more workers you hire, the more you have to pay to attract workers. Government officials and bankers are indoctrinated in these textbooks and conclude that the less employment there is, the more wages will fall – thereby presumably leaving a wider profit margin, assuming that the goods can still be sold at a steady price. So employers seek to earn more by keeping employment low enough to prevent wages from rising. This maximizes the power of wealth over labor.</p>
<p>Economists conclude that to make economies more competitive, they need to keep wages low so as to undersell other countries. So a race to the bottom develops. But what seems to help countries compete actually hurts their domestic market.</p>
<p>Back in the 19th century this was called the reserve army of the unemployed. Unemployment keeps labour down. And even more important, to the extent that incomes do rise, they are paid out as debt service. A dynamic is put in place in which debt keeps labor down – not only by eating up its wages in debt service, but in making workers suffer sharp increases in the interest rates they have to pay or even risk losing their homes if they miss a payment by going on strike or being fired. Alan Greenspan explained that unemployment was not needed to keep labor down these days. All that is needed is to traumatize and disable them politically by debt leverage. (Quote his Senate testimony)</p>
<p>This is why, despite the fact that productivity has risen so dramatically, the real economy and its wage levels have tapered off in an S curve. The magic of compound interest has increased debt (and the savings of the 1%) to more than absorb the productivity gains. And this financial overgrowth has accrued to the 1%, not to the 99%.</p>
<p>Finance is what makes today’s economy different from that of 1945. We are at the end of a long cycle. Back in 1945 the private sector in every country was relatively free of debt. There was little civilian output for consumers to buy during the wartime years. Companies had little reason to invest, except for the government’s military demand. So most families had little debt – and a lot of savings, and good job opportunities after the return to peace. But today the economy is in reverse. Savings have been run down and consumers, real estate and industry is left in debt.</p>
<p>Untaxing land rent and monopoly rent so that it can be paid to the bankers, not to government</p>
<p>"?"To stop this reversal, it is necessary to understand its causes. They are not only financial. The banking interests have gained sufficient power to distort tax policy, creating a dual fiscal-financial problem. Taxes have been shifted off the major bank customers – real estate and monopolies – onto labor and consumers. In the United States, two-thirds of state and local tax revenues in the 1930s came from the property tax. Today the proportion has fallen to only one-sixth. States and cities replaced property taxes with income and sales taxes. Europe and the post-Soviet economies have adopted the most anti-labour tax of all – the value added tax.</p>
<p>The rationale is that it is easy to collect. But it falls on consumers, not on the economy’s free lunch of economic rent as advocated by classical free market economists. The value added tax adds to consumer prices and shrinks the market, preventing labor from buying the goods it produces. This is done simply to free more land rent, natural resource rent and monopoly rent from taxation so that it can be paid to bankers as interest.</p>
<p>When voters threaten to elect politicians to pursue less bank-friendly policies, the EU announces that the country needs a technocrat to impose more taxes to bail out the banks for their bad loans. It is all in vain without changing the system, because today’s financial business plan cannot work for more than a short time. Being extractive rather than productive, it leaves a swath of bankruptcy in its wake. Yet it is the banks that the technocrats are saving, not labor and industry, the “real” economy’s employment, social spending and public wealth.</p>
<p>Changing Social Security from being paid out of progressive taxation to a regressive labor tax</p>
<p>In 1982, bank lobbyist Alan Greenspan was appointed to head a U.S. commission to shift Social Security out of the public budget (where it was funded largely by progressive taxation) and fund it by user fees that fall on employees and employers. The aim was to privatize it Chilean style. Wall Street’s dream is to turn wage set-asides over to money managers to buy stocks and create a stock market boom (and in the end, siphon off commissions and push contributors into high-risk bets on the losing side of the deal with large financial institutions, Goldman Sachs style). In effect, Mr. Greenspan’s position was that Social Security should not be a public service. It should be a user fee, so that prospective retirees would pay for it in advance. Their savings were to be lent to the government to enable the Treasury to slash taxes on the higher income and wealth brackets. So the effect was to reverse the long trend toward progressive taxation.The upshot of the Greenspan tax increases (only on labor, not on wealthy earners) was to create a budget surplus for the Social Security Administration, enabling the government to cut taxes on real estate, on finance, and for the rich in general. Capital gains taxes in particular were cut in half. And real estate investors (absentee owners, not homeowners) were allowed to pretend that the value of their holdings were depreciating rather than rising in price, by junk accounting based on junk economics.</p>
<p>The end game came when the Bush and Obama administrations announced, in effect, “We’re broke. So now we have to balance the budget by cutting social spending and raising the Social Security tax further. We’ve cut taxes on the rich by so much that the workers have not paid enough to cover this give-away, not to mention fighting the Bush-Cheney war in Iraq and the Obama Administration’s war in Afghanistan – or for that matter, the class war against labour.</p>
<p>Under Pension Fund Capitalism, employees are encouraged to think of themselves as capitalists in miniature – and provide for their retirement by employee stock ownership programs rather than saving up their wages themselves or having pensions financed on a pay-as-you-go basis out of future production. The idea is to make money from money (M-&gt;M’), not by producing commodities (M-C-M’). In America, half the employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) have gone bankrupt, mainly by being grabbed by the corporate employers. Corporate raiders borrow credit from bankers and bond investors to fund management buyouts. The plan is to buy out stockholders, pledging the earnings to pay out as interest. And not only earnings; they loot the employee pension plans. George Akerlof won the 20– Nobel Prize for describing this. But novelists have recognized it more than economists. It was Balzac who said that behind every great family fortune is a great theft, often long forgotten to be sure.</p>
<p>Today’s economy is based on theft under the euphemism of “free enterprise.” It’s sometimes called “socialism for the rich” because they receive most government subsidy. But it’s not the kind of socialism that people talked about a hundred years ago. It is a travesty of social democracy and socialism. In a word, it’s oligarchy. But we’re living in an Orwellian world. No party calls themselves fascist today, or even anti-labor. They call themselves social democracy. But it’s the opposite of what social democracy meant in the 19th and early 20th century.</p>
<p>Social Security has not yet been privatized, but education has – not only privatized, but financialized. Students no longer get free or low-priced education. In order to qualify for professional jobs in America, they have to take out loans that put them deeply in debt. Then, when it comes time to start a family, they have to take on a lifetime 30-year mortgage debt. They need to take out an auto loan to buy an automobile to drive to work, especially where public transportation has been dismantled as in Los Angeles. And when their paychecks are squeezed more, they can maintain their living standards and social status only by taking on credit card debt.</p>
<p>Paying the carrying charges on this debt diverts spending away from the goods and services that employees produce. The result is debt deflation. Employees have less and less ability to buy what they produce – except by taking on even more debt. That’s why banks and bondholders have ended up with the increase in productivity – almost synonymous with the 1%. They are the core of the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) sector that now absorbs most of the economic surplus in the form of various types of economic rent: land and natural resource rent, monopoly privilege and financial overhead.</p>
<p>The inversion of classical free market reform to its diametric opposite</p>
<p>Classical political economy sought to mobilize democratic government to tax the rentiers: landlord, monopolists and bankers. The objective was to create an industrial surplus and, in the process, raise productivity, wage levels and living standards. To keep prices low and hence national economies competitive, governments were to undertake society’s largest spending programs: basic infrastructure such as transportation, power production, communications – all of which happen to be natural monopolies as well. So the aim was not only to provide basic infrastructure needs freely or at subsidized prices, but to prevent private owners from erecting tollbooths on roads and charging monopoly prices for power, phone systems (as in Telmex in Mexico or similar phone monopolies in the post-Soviet kleptocracies).</p>
<p>Post-classical economics (deceptively called neoclassical) seeks to untax the rentiers, and shift the costs of government onto labor and even onto industry. To achieve this, democracy is rolled back to oligarchies. But this time they are controlled not by landlords as in the case of Europe’s landed aristocracies, but bankers and financiers. And their aim is to privatize the public domain with its monopolies. Bankers advance the credit to buyers, who install tollbooths and raise prices for basic needs. By paying out their revenue in a tax-exempt form, as interest, they keep their income out of the hands of government – forcing national treasuries to tax labor and industry, consumers and producers rather than finance, insurance and real estate. Governments thus become the protectors of monopoly and its financing.</p>
<p>It is a short-term policy. By raising domestic price levels, financialized economies price themselves out of global markets – unless than can create a world order in which all economies are symmetrically debt-burdened. This is where the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization are brought into play – to financialize globalization, excluding countries as pariahs if they do not join this self-destructive and self-terminating system.</p>
<p>An object lesson of the shift from classical democracy to post-classical oligarchy is a country that is held out to you as a success story: Latvia, where neoliberals had a completely free hand, as they did in Russia. What they call a neoliberal paradise turned out to be debt-ridden kleptocracy. The country has a set of flat taxes on employment of 59 percent – and only a 1 percent real estate tax.</p>
<p>You can imagine what happened with real estate taxed so low and labor taxed so high. Employment was high-cost – but there was a real estate bubble. When I was Research Director at the Riga Graduate School of Law, I visited the government agency in charge of property assessments, and asked how they got the 1 percent. I was told that they based it on the most recent real estate appraisal they had. This turned out to be back in 1917, before the Russian Revolution. (The lead assessor had written her doctoral dissertation on this survey.) Whatever the tax collector gives up and relinquishes in taxes, is available to be paid to the banks as interest. So housing prices are bid up in price – on credit – while the tax collector has to turn to labor and industry for the revenue that has been given up. Instead of paying taxes, new homebuyers pay interest to the bankers. The upshot is that the banks end up with the rent that used to accrue to the landed aristocracies of Europe. This is making bankers the new aristocracy.When I headed an international investigative economic team in 2010, we visited Latvia’s bank insurance agency and were told that they had anticipated a collapse of the bubble. Their response was to advise banks to back their mortgage loans not only with the property as collateral, but to get as many family members as possible to co-sign the loan. That way, if and when default occurred, the parents, siblings or other relatives would be personally liable.?? The bank regulators did not urge the government to tax real estate more. That would have squeezed homeowners on their bank loans – and left less new rental income to be capitalized into new bank loans. But it would have enabled the government to reduce its heavy taxes on employment. This was not the bank regulators’ concern – and bankers themselves saw their main business in lending to fuel real estate, not industry, given what the neoliberals did to Latvia’s economy and that of the other Baltic states!</p>
<p>Unfair? Economically polarizing and destructive? Of course. But the bank insurers said that their task was to protect bank solvency, not create an optimum economic structure.</p>
<p>One result is that a recent EU survey found that one-third of Latvia’s population between the age of 20 and 35 either had emigrated or was planning to do so. As of 2012 the country’s population recently has shrunk by 15 percent. Marriage and birth rates are falling off, as they are throughout the post-Soviet economies. After all, who can marry and buy a house when your wages are taxed at 59 percent and you have to take on a debt?</p>
<p>Iceland provides another object lesson. Even more than Latvia, it became a rogue banker’s paradise – and also one for vulture banks. Their loans are indexed to the consumer price index – which means in practice to the foreign exchange rate. The krónur plunged after the banks crashed in 2008. The result a 1,000 krónur debt has become perhaps 1,800 – against property that has fallen from the equivalent of 1000 krónur down to perhaps 400 krónur. This leaves many families in negative equity. And they are personally liable.</p>
<p>When the crooked banks of Iceland went under (and they’ve only recently begun to arrest some of the crooks) the government took them over and, on European advice, sold them to vulture investors, for around ten cents on the dollar. Despite the fact that Iceland’s constitution said that they were not allowed to increase debts by indexing, this is just what the banks did. If the government had taken over, it could have written down the debts to the ability to pay. But the new vulture banks have not done this. And the Social Democratic government backed their rights to make as much as they can, rather than giving priority to the welfare of the Icelandic people.</p>
<p>What I find so striking is how far to the right wing of the political spectrum the Social Democratic and Labour parties have moved. Iceland’s Social Democratic leadership explained that it wanted to be part of Europe. But this meant acting on behalf of the British and Dutch bankers, not democratically on behalf of Icelanders. They acted on behalf of the emerging financial oligarchy.</p>
<p>I’ve known many of the social democratic leaders of America and the world since I was a young boy. My father was a socialist labor leader and political prisoner from Minneapolis, which was the high point of American labor history as a result of its great General Strike in the 1930s. I was told by a Socialist Party leader (Terence McCarthy) in the early 1960s that the travel and hotel expenses of nearly every member of the Socialist International (the Second International, of which Dmitri Papandreou of Greece is President as of autumn 2011) was paid for by the CIA or its front organizations. I watched the Socialist Party in America come to support the Vietnam War, and Michael Harrington ban criticism of the war in its youth magazine – driving it to quickly lose most of its members.</p>
<p>Harrington and his mentor, Max Shachtman, took this position because they believed that the West could not be persuaded to be Marxist until the world was freed from the Stalinist travesty that claimed to be Marxist. So the Social Democratic Party of America joined the Cold War effort. Politics was turned upside down by the triangulation of socialism, Stalinism and the ability of the United States to back and finance European social democrats to support the banks and “centrists.” This became the tragedy of the old non-Stalinist left in America and other countries. So the Social Democratic leadership imagined (or simply sold out to pretend to believe) that “free financial markets” would lead the world into economic progress.</p>
<p>This was just the opposite from the Progressive Era and indeed, what industrial capitalism promised. The Social Democratic parties of Iceland, Britain, Greece, Scandinavia and other European countries have adopted the position that the way to re-employ labor is to impose austerity. Budgets are to be balanced by lowering wages by 30 percent, and shifting taxes off the finance, insurance and real estate sector onto consumers.</p>
<p>Taxes on labor add to its cost. So competitive power would be maximized by untaxing labor and consumer goods, by getting rid of the value-added tax. But not all taxes are bad. The classical free market economists endorsed taxes on unearned income: land rent and natural resources, monopoly rent and financial privilege. These categories of income have no counterpart in a cost of production undertaken by the rent recipient. The more that governments can shift the tax burden onto land and property, the lower housing prices will be – and the less governments will need to tax labor by income and sales taxes.</p>
<p>Bankers back anti-government ideology because they want to obtain all of the untaxed rental revenue as interest. So taxes that otherwise would be paid to the government will be paid to the bankers. The result – what you’re seeing today in Europe and North America – is an economic grab that is in many ways like that which gave birth to European feudalism. But this time around it is financial, not military.</p>
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<p>Colombo’s International Financial City land reclamation project. Photo: Kenneth Surin.</p>
<p>After spending nearly a week in India, Chennai to be precise, I came to Sri Lanka for the first time.&#160; Before coming, we asked a friend of ours who is a historian of South Asia, a frequent visitor to India and Sri Lanka over the course of decades, what we should expect when coming to Sri Lanka.</p>
<p>He replied laconically: “Somewhat like India, but more organized”.&#160; Sri Lanka is a diverse country ethnically and culturally, but even so it lacks India’s sheer mass and heterogeneity.&#160; The contrast in population size may also account for this (perceived) difference in organizational levels:&#160; Sri Lanka’s 21 million people against India’s 1,324 million.</p>
<p>Sri Lanka’s post-independence history has been marked by periodic communal strife between its Sinhalese majority (70% of the population) and its Tamil minority (13% of the population).&#160; This communalism, sponsored by the post-independence state until recently, has ensued in intermittent anti-Tamil pogroms, with ethnic riots taking place in 1956, 1958, 1977, 1981 and 1983.</p>
<p>Some of the Tamils I spoke with describe these pogroms, especially the most recent one which amounted to a civil war, as “genocidal”.</p>
<p>Ethnic-communal-religious divisions, as was the case nearly everywhere in its empire, are an enduring legacy of British rule.&#160; The colonial master premised whatever limited local political representation it permitted on such demarcations, from Ireland to India.&#160; The almost inevitable outcomes were disastrous partitions and separations—for instance, between the north and south of Ireland, and between Pakistan and India.&#160; And let’s not forget Palestine-Israel.</p>
<p>Other former British colonies still dealing with the legacy of communalisms and separatisms include Malaya (as it then was), Sarawak and North Borneo (now part of Malaysia), Fiji, South Africa, Nigeria, Myanmar, Cyprus, the Maldives, and the islands of the British Caribbean.&#160; In addition to these, there are divisions between peoples of the first nations and their obtrusive colonial settlers (in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand).</p>
<p>This point was brought home to me on a visit last year to one of Canada’s first nations, where I was told the US-Canadian border, imposed of course by the colonial power, divided the Iroquois nation, so that “Canadian” Iroquois now need a passport to visit family members in the part of their nation that is now “US” territory.&#160; This arbitrary border was seen as deeply symptomatic by the “Canadian” Iroquois I encountered in the three days I spent on their reservation.&#160; Their counterparts in the “US” would in all probability have said the same.</p>
<p>“Canada”, for the first-nation people I met, was thus a cruel foreign invention.</p>
<p>The 1983 ethnic riots in Sri Lanka heralded the start of a 26-year civil war, which ended in May 2009 when Sri Lankan military forces finally defeated the Tamil Tigers armed militia (which had been demanding a separate Tamil state).</p>
<p>The brutal civil war was a massive burden on the civilian population, and greatly damaged Sri Lanka’s environment and economy.&#160; &#160;An initial estimate put the number of civilians killed during the war at 80,000–100,000.</p>
<p>In 2013, the UN raised this figure by taking into account additional civilian deaths occurring in the closing stages of the war: “Around 40,000 died while other independent reports estimated the number of civilians dead to exceed 100,000”.&#160; The final stages of the war also displaced 294,000 people.</p>
<p>Both sides in the war have been accused of serious human rights abuses, arbitrary and illegal detentions, attacks on non-combatant civilians, and summary executions.&#160; The Sri Lankan army has also been accused of “disappearing” both civilians and captured combatants, while the Tamil Tigers have been charged with suicide bombings and the recruitment of child soldiers.&#160; The war zones are riddled with landmines.</p>
<p>Sri Lanka has set up a domestic commission to review these charges, but many Tamils have little faith in such a commission, and would prefer a UN investigative commission instead.&#160; The Sri Lankan government has refused to cooperate with a UN investigation, and has banned foreigners from entering the former war zones.</p>
<p>Shortly after I left, communal conflict returned to Sri Lanka, this time between Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist groups and Muslims.&#160; So far, this conflict has been confined to the Kandy district, even though a national emergency has been declared, and social media banned (a curfew has also been imposed in Kandy).</p>
<p>It does not take much to instigate such communal violence.&#160; According to <a href="" type="internal">The Guardian</a>: “Last week groups of people set fire to Muslim-owned businesses and attacked a mosque in the east of the country after rumours that a Muslim chef was adding contraceptives to food served to Sinhala customers”.</p>
<p>It is an enduring myth in the west that Buddhists are inherently peaceable, even though much evidence to the contrary exists in the ethnocidal way Myanmar’s Buddhists have treated the Rohingya Muslim minority, the similar violence enacted by Thai Buddhists against the Muslim minority in the southern part of their country, as well as the conduct of Sri Lanka’s Buddhist sectarians towards its Hindu and Muslim minorities.</p>
<p>In addition to the civil war, further devastation was inflicted by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed over 35,000 people and destroyed 90,000 buildings in Sri Lanka.</p>
<p>Economic prosperity has returned to Sri Lanka after the tsunami and civil war.&#160; GDP growth in 2017 was an impressive 4.72%, with per capita income doubling since 2005, while poverty dropped from 15.2% to 7.6%, and the unemployment rate dropped from 7.2% to 4.9%, in the same period.</p>
<p>According to the 2017 <a href="http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/life-expectancy-by-country/" type="external">World Population Review</a>, Sri Lankan life expectancy at birth is 75.4 years and increasing (the figure for the US is 78.6 years, and falling).&#160; Healthcare is universal and free at point of delivery.</p>
<p>Sri Lanka’s Constitution recognizes free education from the elementary to the tertiary levels as a fundamental right.&#160; According to <a href="https://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/sri_lanka_statistics.html" type="external">UNICEF</a> its adult literacy rate (2008-2012) is 91.2%, whereas a <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/naal/estimates/overview.aspx#1" type="external">study</a> by the US Department of Education showed that&#160;1 in 7 adults in the US are not able to read, indicating an adult literacy rate of slightly under 86%.</p>
<p>This increased prosperity was evident in the capital, Colombo.&#160; Near our seaside hotel 660 acres are being reclaimed from the sea– such reclamation projects allow Sri Lanka to add to its land mass in the way that islands such as Dubai and Singapore have done.</p>
<p>The reclaimed land will be the location of the Colombo International Financial City (CIFC), a joint project with China, designed to be a special financial zone that ostensibly will fill the vacuum for such a zone existing between Dubai and Singapore.</p>
<p>The CIFC project has had its setbacks.&#160; Mooted by Sri Lanka’s previous president Mahinda Rajapaksa, it was halted when the current president took power, on the grounds that the original agreement with China lacked adequate environmental safeguards, and did not take Sri Lanka’s sovereignty sufficiently into account.</p>
<p>A new agreement has now been signed with China, incorporating more stringent environmental safeguards, and with protocols for land ownership and use that better secure Sri Lankan sovereignty over the reclaimed land.</p>
<p>For the sake of ordinary Sri Lankans, one hopes the CIFC project will help the country in general, as opposed to being a boondoggle existing solely for the benefit of an all-too-familiar alliance between multinational capital and local elites.</p>
<p>Moreover, the world is littered with mega-development projects that have bit the dust– from bridges and highways “to nowhere” (Americans are familiar with these pork barrel projects in their own country), to the unflyable airport on St Helena in the middle of the Atlantic, where year-round blustery winds mean that planes can only land there once in a blue moon, and a number of dam-building projects that have not been a success (the Teton Dam in Idaho; Brazil’s 1970s Itaipu dam, built at a 240%&#160;cost overrun which makes it unlikely Itaipu will ever pay back the costs incurred to build it; Nigeria’s Kainji Dam has fallen short of its electricity production targets by as much as 70% due to vastly incorrect estimates of the available water flow;&#160; and the Three Gorges Dam in China is now admitted by its government to be causing “problems”).</p>
<p>In addition, there is the MOSE mobile flood-barrier project in Venice which has not stopped that city from flooding and sinking; the unfinished and abandoned superconducting Super Collider in a tunnel under Waxahachie, Texas, in the 1980s; the Montreal-Mirabel airport in Quebec which opened in 1975 and closed in 2004, before being earmarked for demolition in 2014; the numerous financial scandals and building failures associated with Homex, once Mexico’s biggest housing developer (the LA Times has done a fine <a href="http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-mexico-housing/" type="external">report</a> on this housing fiasco); and so forth.</p>
<p>As for Colombo’s International Financial City, we’ll just have to wait and see.</p>
<p>Emulating Singapore and Dubai is certainly possible, while remaining something of a tall order.&#160; Singapore has been a commercial hub for centuries, and Dubai has a vast reservoir of Gulf oil money as its backstop.&#160; Also, Mumbai will no doubt present itself as a significant financial-sector competitor in the region.</p>
<p>Sri Lanka is however taking steps to diversify its economy. &#160;With a remarkable ecological diversity in a relatively limited space, beautiful beaches and areas of great natural beauty, it has long been a destination for visitors– Marco Polo came in the 12th century– though the civil war caused a lull in tourism.</p>
<p>Between the end of the war in 2009 and 2015, tourist arrivals grew by over 300%.&#160; The government is placing an emphasis on eco-friendly tourism.</p>
<p>Investment in infrastructure is aiding not just tourism, but is also enabling the creation of a network of bonded areas and free ports.&#160; The aim here is for Sri Lanka to become an international hub for the reprocessing and export of its agricultural products—its famous tea is of course a major export earner and Sri Lanka is the world’s largest producer of cinnamon.</p>
<p>A certain French Marxist philosopher said the future lasts a long time, but it was hard not to discern a certain optimism on the part of most of the people I met– from taxi-drivers and waiters to the archivists at the Sri Lanka National Archive.</p> | Brief Impressions of the Sri Lankan Conjuncture | true | https://counterpunch.org/2018/03/09/brief-impressions-of-the-sri-lankan-conjuncture/ | 2018-03-09 | 4left
| Brief Impressions of the Sri Lankan Conjuncture
<p>Colombo’s International Financial City land reclamation project. Photo: Kenneth Surin.</p>
<p>After spending nearly a week in India, Chennai to be precise, I came to Sri Lanka for the first time.&#160; Before coming, we asked a friend of ours who is a historian of South Asia, a frequent visitor to India and Sri Lanka over the course of decades, what we should expect when coming to Sri Lanka.</p>
<p>He replied laconically: “Somewhat like India, but more organized”.&#160; Sri Lanka is a diverse country ethnically and culturally, but even so it lacks India’s sheer mass and heterogeneity.&#160; The contrast in population size may also account for this (perceived) difference in organizational levels:&#160; Sri Lanka’s 21 million people against India’s 1,324 million.</p>
<p>Sri Lanka’s post-independence history has been marked by periodic communal strife between its Sinhalese majority (70% of the population) and its Tamil minority (13% of the population).&#160; This communalism, sponsored by the post-independence state until recently, has ensued in intermittent anti-Tamil pogroms, with ethnic riots taking place in 1956, 1958, 1977, 1981 and 1983.</p>
<p>Some of the Tamils I spoke with describe these pogroms, especially the most recent one which amounted to a civil war, as “genocidal”.</p>
<p>Ethnic-communal-religious divisions, as was the case nearly everywhere in its empire, are an enduring legacy of British rule.&#160; The colonial master premised whatever limited local political representation it permitted on such demarcations, from Ireland to India.&#160; The almost inevitable outcomes were disastrous partitions and separations—for instance, between the north and south of Ireland, and between Pakistan and India.&#160; And let’s not forget Palestine-Israel.</p>
<p>Other former British colonies still dealing with the legacy of communalisms and separatisms include Malaya (as it then was), Sarawak and North Borneo (now part of Malaysia), Fiji, South Africa, Nigeria, Myanmar, Cyprus, the Maldives, and the islands of the British Caribbean.&#160; In addition to these, there are divisions between peoples of the first nations and their obtrusive colonial settlers (in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand).</p>
<p>This point was brought home to me on a visit last year to one of Canada’s first nations, where I was told the US-Canadian border, imposed of course by the colonial power, divided the Iroquois nation, so that “Canadian” Iroquois now need a passport to visit family members in the part of their nation that is now “US” territory.&#160; This arbitrary border was seen as deeply symptomatic by the “Canadian” Iroquois I encountered in the three days I spent on their reservation.&#160; Their counterparts in the “US” would in all probability have said the same.</p>
<p>“Canada”, for the first-nation people I met, was thus a cruel foreign invention.</p>
<p>The 1983 ethnic riots in Sri Lanka heralded the start of a 26-year civil war, which ended in May 2009 when Sri Lankan military forces finally defeated the Tamil Tigers armed militia (which had been demanding a separate Tamil state).</p>
<p>The brutal civil war was a massive burden on the civilian population, and greatly damaged Sri Lanka’s environment and economy.&#160; &#160;An initial estimate put the number of civilians killed during the war at 80,000–100,000.</p>
<p>In 2013, the UN raised this figure by taking into account additional civilian deaths occurring in the closing stages of the war: “Around 40,000 died while other independent reports estimated the number of civilians dead to exceed 100,000”.&#160; The final stages of the war also displaced 294,000 people.</p>
<p>Both sides in the war have been accused of serious human rights abuses, arbitrary and illegal detentions, attacks on non-combatant civilians, and summary executions.&#160; The Sri Lankan army has also been accused of “disappearing” both civilians and captured combatants, while the Tamil Tigers have been charged with suicide bombings and the recruitment of child soldiers.&#160; The war zones are riddled with landmines.</p>
<p>Sri Lanka has set up a domestic commission to review these charges, but many Tamils have little faith in such a commission, and would prefer a UN investigative commission instead.&#160; The Sri Lankan government has refused to cooperate with a UN investigation, and has banned foreigners from entering the former war zones.</p>
<p>Shortly after I left, communal conflict returned to Sri Lanka, this time between Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist groups and Muslims.&#160; So far, this conflict has been confined to the Kandy district, even though a national emergency has been declared, and social media banned (a curfew has also been imposed in Kandy).</p>
<p>It does not take much to instigate such communal violence.&#160; According to <a href="" type="internal">The Guardian</a>: “Last week groups of people set fire to Muslim-owned businesses and attacked a mosque in the east of the country after rumours that a Muslim chef was adding contraceptives to food served to Sinhala customers”.</p>
<p>It is an enduring myth in the west that Buddhists are inherently peaceable, even though much evidence to the contrary exists in the ethnocidal way Myanmar’s Buddhists have treated the Rohingya Muslim minority, the similar violence enacted by Thai Buddhists against the Muslim minority in the southern part of their country, as well as the conduct of Sri Lanka’s Buddhist sectarians towards its Hindu and Muslim minorities.</p>
<p>In addition to the civil war, further devastation was inflicted by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed over 35,000 people and destroyed 90,000 buildings in Sri Lanka.</p>
<p>Economic prosperity has returned to Sri Lanka after the tsunami and civil war.&#160; GDP growth in 2017 was an impressive 4.72%, with per capita income doubling since 2005, while poverty dropped from 15.2% to 7.6%, and the unemployment rate dropped from 7.2% to 4.9%, in the same period.</p>
<p>According to the 2017 <a href="http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/life-expectancy-by-country/" type="external">World Population Review</a>, Sri Lankan life expectancy at birth is 75.4 years and increasing (the figure for the US is 78.6 years, and falling).&#160; Healthcare is universal and free at point of delivery.</p>
<p>Sri Lanka’s Constitution recognizes free education from the elementary to the tertiary levels as a fundamental right.&#160; According to <a href="https://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/sri_lanka_statistics.html" type="external">UNICEF</a> its adult literacy rate (2008-2012) is 91.2%, whereas a <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/naal/estimates/overview.aspx#1" type="external">study</a> by the US Department of Education showed that&#160;1 in 7 adults in the US are not able to read, indicating an adult literacy rate of slightly under 86%.</p>
<p>This increased prosperity was evident in the capital, Colombo.&#160; Near our seaside hotel 660 acres are being reclaimed from the sea– such reclamation projects allow Sri Lanka to add to its land mass in the way that islands such as Dubai and Singapore have done.</p>
<p>The reclaimed land will be the location of the Colombo International Financial City (CIFC), a joint project with China, designed to be a special financial zone that ostensibly will fill the vacuum for such a zone existing between Dubai and Singapore.</p>
<p>The CIFC project has had its setbacks.&#160; Mooted by Sri Lanka’s previous president Mahinda Rajapaksa, it was halted when the current president took power, on the grounds that the original agreement with China lacked adequate environmental safeguards, and did not take Sri Lanka’s sovereignty sufficiently into account.</p>
<p>A new agreement has now been signed with China, incorporating more stringent environmental safeguards, and with protocols for land ownership and use that better secure Sri Lankan sovereignty over the reclaimed land.</p>
<p>For the sake of ordinary Sri Lankans, one hopes the CIFC project will help the country in general, as opposed to being a boondoggle existing solely for the benefit of an all-too-familiar alliance between multinational capital and local elites.</p>
<p>Moreover, the world is littered with mega-development projects that have bit the dust– from bridges and highways “to nowhere” (Americans are familiar with these pork barrel projects in their own country), to the unflyable airport on St Helena in the middle of the Atlantic, where year-round blustery winds mean that planes can only land there once in a blue moon, and a number of dam-building projects that have not been a success (the Teton Dam in Idaho; Brazil’s 1970s Itaipu dam, built at a 240%&#160;cost overrun which makes it unlikely Itaipu will ever pay back the costs incurred to build it; Nigeria’s Kainji Dam has fallen short of its electricity production targets by as much as 70% due to vastly incorrect estimates of the available water flow;&#160; and the Three Gorges Dam in China is now admitted by its government to be causing “problems”).</p>
<p>In addition, there is the MOSE mobile flood-barrier project in Venice which has not stopped that city from flooding and sinking; the unfinished and abandoned superconducting Super Collider in a tunnel under Waxahachie, Texas, in the 1980s; the Montreal-Mirabel airport in Quebec which opened in 1975 and closed in 2004, before being earmarked for demolition in 2014; the numerous financial scandals and building failures associated with Homex, once Mexico’s biggest housing developer (the LA Times has done a fine <a href="http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-mexico-housing/" type="external">report</a> on this housing fiasco); and so forth.</p>
<p>As for Colombo’s International Financial City, we’ll just have to wait and see.</p>
<p>Emulating Singapore and Dubai is certainly possible, while remaining something of a tall order.&#160; Singapore has been a commercial hub for centuries, and Dubai has a vast reservoir of Gulf oil money as its backstop.&#160; Also, Mumbai will no doubt present itself as a significant financial-sector competitor in the region.</p>
<p>Sri Lanka is however taking steps to diversify its economy. &#160;With a remarkable ecological diversity in a relatively limited space, beautiful beaches and areas of great natural beauty, it has long been a destination for visitors– Marco Polo came in the 12th century– though the civil war caused a lull in tourism.</p>
<p>Between the end of the war in 2009 and 2015, tourist arrivals grew by over 300%.&#160; The government is placing an emphasis on eco-friendly tourism.</p>
<p>Investment in infrastructure is aiding not just tourism, but is also enabling the creation of a network of bonded areas and free ports.&#160; The aim here is for Sri Lanka to become an international hub for the reprocessing and export of its agricultural products—its famous tea is of course a major export earner and Sri Lanka is the world’s largest producer of cinnamon.</p>
<p>A certain French Marxist philosopher said the future lasts a long time, but it was hard not to discern a certain optimism on the part of most of the people I met– from taxi-drivers and waiters to the archivists at the Sri Lanka National Archive.</p> | 1,122 |
<p>Kenyans are anxiously awaiting a Supreme Court verdict expected on Saturday that will go a long way to determining who will be their president.</p>
<p>Earlier this month, the son of Kenya's first president Uhuru Kenyatta was declared the winner by a razor-thin margin.</p>
<p>But his opponent, Prime Minister Raila Odinga charged the election commission bungled the vote.</p>
<p>With the court ruling on the validity of the vote just hours away, Larry Madowo of Kenya's NTV says the entire nation is "on stand by."?</p> | Kenyans 'On Stand By,' Awaiting Supreme Court Ruling on Vote Saturday | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-03-29/kenyans-stand-awaiting-supreme-court-ruling-vote-saturday | 2013-03-29 | 3left-center
| Kenyans 'On Stand By,' Awaiting Supreme Court Ruling on Vote Saturday
<p>Kenyans are anxiously awaiting a Supreme Court verdict expected on Saturday that will go a long way to determining who will be their president.</p>
<p>Earlier this month, the son of Kenya's first president Uhuru Kenyatta was declared the winner by a razor-thin margin.</p>
<p>But his opponent, Prime Minister Raila Odinga charged the election commission bungled the vote.</p>
<p>With the court ruling on the validity of the vote just hours away, Larry Madowo of Kenya's NTV says the entire nation is "on stand by."?</p> | 1,123 |
<p>Joe Allen <a href="http://socialistworker.org/2013/05/02/what-harrington-shows-us" type="external">recounts a story</a> from 1980s, in which he asks a question to then leading <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Harrington" type="external">democratic socialist Michael Harrington</a> only to be glibly dismissed as the “Trot in the room.” That seems likely. Harrington engaged substantively with people like Peter Camejo, but his patience with others to his left often faltered. And not exactly uniquely — the history of the twentieth century is littered with curmudgeonly radicals.</p>
<p>In this case, it’s not clear what prompted the rudeness. From the account, it sounds like Harrington didn’t know Allen personally beforehand. He was perhaps tipped off by the language he used, its mode of thought, and style. There is no doubt that “Trots” can be singled out in a room full of leftists. And normally for good reasons: whatever its blemishes, American Trotskyism has been marked by rigor and seriousness, and record of being right on the major political questions of the twentieth century.</p>
<p>So while I appreciate the comradely tone of Allen’s response, it was disappointing to see it filled with inaccuracies. Billed as a substantive consideration, his piece is instead a polemic.</p>
<p>Allen claims that he was a “Harringtonite,” but when he started college in the late seventies, he quickly saw the error of his ways. He notes, correctly, that the posture adopted by Harrington and his co-thinkers like Irving Howe, the founding editor of Dissent, towards the emerging New Left was unproductive. Tom Hayden and the other leaders of the young movement didn’t fully grapple with the dynamics of Stalinism, but sniping from outside did those forces no good. It was an error that Harrington would later recognize and lament in the aftermath of the 1960s. That evolution occurred even before Allen went to college.</p>
<p>But what’s wrong is Allen’s mentions of Harrington’s “support for the Vietnam War, long after even capitalist institutions like the New York Times came out against it.” <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Ym-qm7i5WHYC&amp;lpg=PA267&amp;ots=xK9mXbdaxe&amp;dq=michael%20harrington%20support%20vietnam%20war&amp;pg=PA256#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false" type="external">This didn’t happen</a>. Harrington never came out in favor of the Vietnam War — despite being handicapped by membership in an increasingly reactionary Socialist Party of America, he was a&#160;voice for peace from the very beginning.</p>
<p>This was Harrington’s political failure. Being for “peace” in Vietnam, was not the same thing as calling for the victory of national liberation forces. Harrington’s reflexive anti-Stalinism served him poorly. He should have applied the old distinction between “Stalinism in power” and “Stalinism in opposition” — the difference between Communist Party members fighting against racism in the Jim Crow south and Joseph Stalin in Russia — to the struggle of a flawed anti-imperialist force and more uncritically supported the Vietnamese resistance.</p>
<p>But whatever his politics there, at no point did Harrington ever embrace the United States’ foreign wars. He remained firmly in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_camp" type="external">Third Camp tradition</a> that Allen implies was somehow unique to the Trotskyist movement.</p>
<p>What’s more, his labeling of Harrington as a “social democrat” is either a polemical device or reflects a frightening lack of clarity. Through his life, Harrington advocated not just for socialism within capitalism, but for socialism after capitalism — a definitive break with class society. As someone who read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Twilight-Capitalism-Michael-Harrington/dp/0671227599" type="external">The Twilight of Capitalism</a>, Allen should know that Harrington even saw the welfare state as a “an ambiguous and transitional phenomenon, the temporary salvation of the system, but also the portent of its end.” There is plenty to critique about the particularities of his vision, but it’s not analytically useful to lump his perspectives with those of, say, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.</p>
<p>None of this is to act as lawyer for Harrington. My own political perspectives align better with more dynamic thinkers like England’s <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1985/xx/beyondsd.htm" type="external">Ralph Miliband</a>. But if we keep in mind that for most of his life Harrington was writing in a specific historical context — one that featured a booming post-war capitalism, a labor movement strong enough to force a social democratic class compromise of sorts, and the existence of a state-socialist Eastern Bloc — some value can be gleaned from his work.</p>
<p>As far as the <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/14873/lean_socialist/" type="external">substance of my piece</a>, which Allen doesn’t engage much with, it makes arguments and reflects an operative politics not at odds with those of Socialist Worker contributors. Our points of emphasis might differ, but that compatibility should be taken as a sign that the fissures of the twentieth century should give way to renewed political practice in the twenty-first.</p> | Like Mike? | true | http://jacobinmag.com/2013/05/like-mike/ | 2018-10-04 | 4left
| Like Mike?
<p>Joe Allen <a href="http://socialistworker.org/2013/05/02/what-harrington-shows-us" type="external">recounts a story</a> from 1980s, in which he asks a question to then leading <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Harrington" type="external">democratic socialist Michael Harrington</a> only to be glibly dismissed as the “Trot in the room.” That seems likely. Harrington engaged substantively with people like Peter Camejo, but his patience with others to his left often faltered. And not exactly uniquely — the history of the twentieth century is littered with curmudgeonly radicals.</p>
<p>In this case, it’s not clear what prompted the rudeness. From the account, it sounds like Harrington didn’t know Allen personally beforehand. He was perhaps tipped off by the language he used, its mode of thought, and style. There is no doubt that “Trots” can be singled out in a room full of leftists. And normally for good reasons: whatever its blemishes, American Trotskyism has been marked by rigor and seriousness, and record of being right on the major political questions of the twentieth century.</p>
<p>So while I appreciate the comradely tone of Allen’s response, it was disappointing to see it filled with inaccuracies. Billed as a substantive consideration, his piece is instead a polemic.</p>
<p>Allen claims that he was a “Harringtonite,” but when he started college in the late seventies, he quickly saw the error of his ways. He notes, correctly, that the posture adopted by Harrington and his co-thinkers like Irving Howe, the founding editor of Dissent, towards the emerging New Left was unproductive. Tom Hayden and the other leaders of the young movement didn’t fully grapple with the dynamics of Stalinism, but sniping from outside did those forces no good. It was an error that Harrington would later recognize and lament in the aftermath of the 1960s. That evolution occurred even before Allen went to college.</p>
<p>But what’s wrong is Allen’s mentions of Harrington’s “support for the Vietnam War, long after even capitalist institutions like the New York Times came out against it.” <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Ym-qm7i5WHYC&amp;lpg=PA267&amp;ots=xK9mXbdaxe&amp;dq=michael%20harrington%20support%20vietnam%20war&amp;pg=PA256#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false" type="external">This didn’t happen</a>. Harrington never came out in favor of the Vietnam War — despite being handicapped by membership in an increasingly reactionary Socialist Party of America, he was a&#160;voice for peace from the very beginning.</p>
<p>This was Harrington’s political failure. Being for “peace” in Vietnam, was not the same thing as calling for the victory of national liberation forces. Harrington’s reflexive anti-Stalinism served him poorly. He should have applied the old distinction between “Stalinism in power” and “Stalinism in opposition” — the difference between Communist Party members fighting against racism in the Jim Crow south and Joseph Stalin in Russia — to the struggle of a flawed anti-imperialist force and more uncritically supported the Vietnamese resistance.</p>
<p>But whatever his politics there, at no point did Harrington ever embrace the United States’ foreign wars. He remained firmly in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_camp" type="external">Third Camp tradition</a> that Allen implies was somehow unique to the Trotskyist movement.</p>
<p>What’s more, his labeling of Harrington as a “social democrat” is either a polemical device or reflects a frightening lack of clarity. Through his life, Harrington advocated not just for socialism within capitalism, but for socialism after capitalism — a definitive break with class society. As someone who read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Twilight-Capitalism-Michael-Harrington/dp/0671227599" type="external">The Twilight of Capitalism</a>, Allen should know that Harrington even saw the welfare state as a “an ambiguous and transitional phenomenon, the temporary salvation of the system, but also the portent of its end.” There is plenty to critique about the particularities of his vision, but it’s not analytically useful to lump his perspectives with those of, say, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.</p>
<p>None of this is to act as lawyer for Harrington. My own political perspectives align better with more dynamic thinkers like England’s <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1985/xx/beyondsd.htm" type="external">Ralph Miliband</a>. But if we keep in mind that for most of his life Harrington was writing in a specific historical context — one that featured a booming post-war capitalism, a labor movement strong enough to force a social democratic class compromise of sorts, and the existence of a state-socialist Eastern Bloc — some value can be gleaned from his work.</p>
<p>As far as the <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/14873/lean_socialist/" type="external">substance of my piece</a>, which Allen doesn’t engage much with, it makes arguments and reflects an operative politics not at odds with those of Socialist Worker contributors. Our points of emphasis might differ, but that compatibility should be taken as a sign that the fissures of the twentieth century should give way to renewed political practice in the twenty-first.</p> | 1,124 |
<p />
<p><a href="http://firedoglake.com/2009/02/19/orszag-confirms-road-to-fiscal-responsibility-goes-through-social-security-benefit-reduction/" type="external">Liberals are worried</a> that next Monday’s “fiscal responsibility summit,” hosted by the Obama Administration, will be two things they don’t like: (1) yet another sop to conservatives, and (2) the beginning of a rightward shift on entitlement reform. Will the Obama team embrace the center-right consensus that Social Security is in crisis and that the only way to fix it is to cut benefits?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=02&amp;year=2009&amp;base_name=the_end_of_the_entitlement_sca" type="external">Ezra Klein</a> argues that the Obama folks understand that Social Security has <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/the-social-security-obsession-again/" type="external">little bearing on America’s long-term financial solvency</a>, and that they will use the summit to make the case that health care reform is the way to ease our entitlement problems.</p>
<p />
<p>That, basically, has been Orszag’s project: Talk a lot about the health care crisis and longer-term problems in the budget and get people to stop talking about an illusory crisis in a made-up program called socialsecurityandmedicareandmedicaid. Because what Orszag and Krugman both realize is that Social Security’s unfunded liabilities only look like the sort of problem you need to “fix” if you’re mixing it in with Medicare’s unfunded liabilities. If there’s an “entitlements problem” that requires an “entitlements commission” then that will cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. If there’s no “entitlements problem” and instead a health reform problem and some small questions about a politically electric program, then what you get is health reform — which is also a way to slow Medicaid and Medicare growth without resorting to cuts — and an end to the fear-mongering on Social Security.</p>
<p>Let’s hope the Obama team is this savvy. It would be pretty remarkable if they can channel the Social-Security-is-a-crisis! hysteria and turn it into even more energy behind the cause of universal health care.</p>
<p /> | Is Obama’s “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” a Sneak Attack? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/02/obamas-fiscal-responsibility-summit-sneak-attack/ | 2009-02-20 | 4left
| Is Obama’s “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” a Sneak Attack?
<p />
<p><a href="http://firedoglake.com/2009/02/19/orszag-confirms-road-to-fiscal-responsibility-goes-through-social-security-benefit-reduction/" type="external">Liberals are worried</a> that next Monday’s “fiscal responsibility summit,” hosted by the Obama Administration, will be two things they don’t like: (1) yet another sop to conservatives, and (2) the beginning of a rightward shift on entitlement reform. Will the Obama team embrace the center-right consensus that Social Security is in crisis and that the only way to fix it is to cut benefits?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=02&amp;year=2009&amp;base_name=the_end_of_the_entitlement_sca" type="external">Ezra Klein</a> argues that the Obama folks understand that Social Security has <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/the-social-security-obsession-again/" type="external">little bearing on America’s long-term financial solvency</a>, and that they will use the summit to make the case that health care reform is the way to ease our entitlement problems.</p>
<p />
<p>That, basically, has been Orszag’s project: Talk a lot about the health care crisis and longer-term problems in the budget and get people to stop talking about an illusory crisis in a made-up program called socialsecurityandmedicareandmedicaid. Because what Orszag and Krugman both realize is that Social Security’s unfunded liabilities only look like the sort of problem you need to “fix” if you’re mixing it in with Medicare’s unfunded liabilities. If there’s an “entitlements problem” that requires an “entitlements commission” then that will cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. If there’s no “entitlements problem” and instead a health reform problem and some small questions about a politically electric program, then what you get is health reform — which is also a way to slow Medicaid and Medicare growth without resorting to cuts — and an end to the fear-mongering on Social Security.</p>
<p>Let’s hope the Obama team is this savvy. It would be pretty remarkable if they can channel the Social-Security-is-a-crisis! hysteria and turn it into even more energy behind the cause of universal health care.</p>
<p /> | 1,125 |
<p>The current state of American politics must make us question whether any of our leaders in the Beltway can be described as “grown-ups”, i.e., fully mature and sane individuals. Between the endless war crimes, corporate corruption, lobbyists who bribe congressmen and write legislation, and the ineptitude of federal entities who are supposed to protect our health such as the FDA, EPA, and CDC, it would appear that leaders in all three branches of government, as well as the leaders of the corporate world, are either insane, suffer from various psychological disorders, as well as suffering from a type of collective hallucination, the common denominator being an utter lack of empathy for others humans, or respect for the Earth.</p>
<p>Further, we must at least question whether collectively, we the citizenry, are as susceptible to mass delusions as our psychopathic leaders are. Our society can be effectively generalized as forming what Paulo Freire calls a culture of silence, many of whom see no problems with exploiting and despoiling other countries, looting wealth, and killing millions; and many more that are simply afraid to speak out against the indignity of the US empire, in fear of socio-cultural reprisals. This culture of silence, which we are taught at a young age, indoctrinates and effectively eliminates the ability of people to form critiques of our rotten political and economic systems. This is who Richard Nixon was really referring to, when he spoke of the “Silent Majority”: citizens too naïve, dumb, childlike, and afraid to confront the injustices inherent to our system were exactly who Tricky Dick was appealing to.</p>
<p>While many of us pretend that something as silly as “American exceptionalism” exists, and fall victim to the myth of rugged individualism that permeates all aspects of civic life and economics, the sad truth is that we’ve become a nation of petulant children. While we fantasize about Jeffersonian notions of small businesses and republicanism guiding our way of life, transnational conglomerates control our <a href="" type="internal">agricultural output</a> (killing us slowly with GMOs and pesticides) and our <a href="http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/democracyondeadline/mediaownership.html" type="external">media landscape</a> (brainwashing us with neoliberalism and black propaganda). <a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Marx and Engels tuned us into the ideological war imposed by capitalism, which distorts and confuses workers’ belief systems, alienates workers from themselves and their work, and attempts by subterfuge to shift the blame of ruthless exploitation away from the ruling class. This was called false consciousness, and later, Sartre used the term mauvaise foi (“bad faith”). Gramsci defined the ideological control of capitalists over the socioeconomic system as cultural hegemony. Many readers are intimately familiar with these ideas. So why does this critique of the left from John Steinbeck still ring so true:</p>
<p>“I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.”</p>
<p>As Paul Goodman explained so lucidly, we’ve all been <a href="" type="internal">Growing Up Absurd</a> for generations, trapping many in the chrysalis of adolescence for their entire lives. As he pointed out:</p>
<p>“The accumulation of the missed and compromised revolutions of modern times, with their consequent ambiguities and social imbalances, has fallen, and must fall, most heavily on the young, making it hard to grow up.”</p>
<p>There is no mystery why Goodman entitles his chapter on missed revolutions in the fields of the physical environment, the socioeconomic model, political and constitutional reform, morality, and reforms dealing with children and youth, “The Missing Community”. For youth today, just as in his day, have few responsible role models, a repressive and prison-like atmosphere in schools, with consumerism and technology determining every aspect of a child’s search for joy and wonder, and now, the artificial edifices of social media and “augmented reality” is replacing genuine interaction. Indoctrinated to fit into a system of war, corporate monopolies, vapid pop culture, and not encouraged to think critical about their country or world cultures, children become jaded as soon as they realize that the notions of freedom, equality, and sharing that their parents and teachers taught them were based on lies. We must reverse this tide, lest we forget Walter Benjamin’s saying that:&#160;“Behind every fascism, there is a failed revolution.”</p>
<p>As Derrick Jensen says, our society suffers from a form of complex PTSD:</p>
<p>“PTSD is an embodied response to extreme trauma, to extreme terror, to the loss of control, connection, and meaning…Faced with any emotionally threatening situation, these people may freeze, failing to resist even when resistance becomes feasible or necessary”. (1)</p>
<p>This condition permeates every aspect of society, and reinforces our deepest ideological confusions: the line between personal property and coercive private property is purposely blurred by the bourgeoisie, fulfillment is replaced by “fun”, civic duty is replaced by retreating into the shell of private life, and diplomacy is usurped by war. Brought up in such a totality of fear and violence, it is no surprise that many never progress psychically beyond the stage of the child, or to seek out fulfillment instead of base entertainment.</p>
<p>The wit of the novelist Trevanian is instructive when addressing the Western symptoms of ennui and anomie:</p>
<p>“It’s not Americans I find annoying, its Americanism: a social disease of the post-industrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called ‘American’ only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu…Its symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant efforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experience. In the latter stages, the sufferer is reduced to seeking that most trivial of activities: fun.” (2)</p>
<p>This is corroborated by Jean Liedloff, whose experiences with the Yequana and Sanema tribes of Venezuela allows her to contrast their indigenous traditions and child-rearing with the failure of civilized parents, and the resulting insipid, infantile behavior of Western adults and general culture:</p>
<p>“Novelty…is so much a part of the present phase in our culture that our natural resistance to change has been distorted…Nothing is ever allowed to be good enough, nothing ever satisfactory. Our underlying discontent is channeled into desire for the latest things…Among the things high on the list are those that save labor…When success as a passive baby has not been experienced, there is a penchant for button-pushing, for labor-saving, as an assurance that everything is being done for, and nothing expected of, the subject…The impulse to work, necessarily a strong one in a healthy continuum, is stunted…Work becomes what it is to most of us: a resented necessity. And the labor-saving gadget gleams with a promise of lost comfort. In the meantime, a solution to the discrepancy between the adult desire to utilize one’s abilities and the infantile desire to be useless is often found in something aptly called recreation.” (3)</p>
<p>The implications are clear: our culture does not allow us to grow up, because to do so would invoke a critical response and a revolution against the forces of tyranny. Recently, <a href="" type="internal">Henry Giroux asked</a>:</p>
<p>“Where are the agents of democracy and the public spaces that offer hope in such dark times? What role will progressives play at a time when the very ability of the public’s ability to translate private troubles into broader systemic issues is disappearing? How might politics itself be rethought in order to address the pedagogical and structural conditions that contribute to the growing intensification of violence in all spheres of American society? What role should intellectuals, cultural workers, artists, writers, journalists, and others play as part of a broader struggle to reclaim a democratic imaginary and exercise a collective sense of civic courage?”</p>
<p>First, we must accept the fact that each of us is an agent of democracy, and we must reclaim the public spaces, and smack down the harmful myth regarding “The Tragedy of the Commons”. The answers to Giroux’s plea lie in our ability to raise healthy, strong children who are not seduced by the siren calls of capitalism and patriotic-approved state violence. This should be supplemented by alternative education programs for children and adults, and basic life and practical lessons passed down from parents, grandparents, etc. &#160;This doesn’t mean each parent has to teach their kid trigonometry. It means each town has to model itself to promote a viable village atmosphere, and foster a sense of community, with renewable energy, grassroots arts and music, and small to medium scale organic agriculture. It will mean embracing the truth that industrial civilization is destroying the world, and rather than wallowing in self-pity at having our illusions destroyed, rising up and embracing a culture based on ecology, enlightenment, and virtuous edification of our youth.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Notes.</p>
<p>1.) Jensen, Derrick. Endgame: The Problem of Civilization, Vol. 1. Seven Stories Press, 2006. p. 69-70.</p>
<p>2.) Trevanian. Shibumi. Three Rivers Press, 1979. p. 306</p>
<p>3.) Liedloff, Jean. The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost. Da Capo Press, 1975. p. 114-115.</p> | Growing Up Insane | true | https://counterpunch.org/2016/08/19/growing-up-insane/ | 2016-08-19 | 4left
| Growing Up Insane
<p>The current state of American politics must make us question whether any of our leaders in the Beltway can be described as “grown-ups”, i.e., fully mature and sane individuals. Between the endless war crimes, corporate corruption, lobbyists who bribe congressmen and write legislation, and the ineptitude of federal entities who are supposed to protect our health such as the FDA, EPA, and CDC, it would appear that leaders in all three branches of government, as well as the leaders of the corporate world, are either insane, suffer from various psychological disorders, as well as suffering from a type of collective hallucination, the common denominator being an utter lack of empathy for others humans, or respect for the Earth.</p>
<p>Further, we must at least question whether collectively, we the citizenry, are as susceptible to mass delusions as our psychopathic leaders are. Our society can be effectively generalized as forming what Paulo Freire calls a culture of silence, many of whom see no problems with exploiting and despoiling other countries, looting wealth, and killing millions; and many more that are simply afraid to speak out against the indignity of the US empire, in fear of socio-cultural reprisals. This culture of silence, which we are taught at a young age, indoctrinates and effectively eliminates the ability of people to form critiques of our rotten political and economic systems. This is who Richard Nixon was really referring to, when he spoke of the “Silent Majority”: citizens too naïve, dumb, childlike, and afraid to confront the injustices inherent to our system were exactly who Tricky Dick was appealing to.</p>
<p>While many of us pretend that something as silly as “American exceptionalism” exists, and fall victim to the myth of rugged individualism that permeates all aspects of civic life and economics, the sad truth is that we’ve become a nation of petulant children. While we fantasize about Jeffersonian notions of small businesses and republicanism guiding our way of life, transnational conglomerates control our <a href="" type="internal">agricultural output</a> (killing us slowly with GMOs and pesticides) and our <a href="http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/democracyondeadline/mediaownership.html" type="external">media landscape</a> (brainwashing us with neoliberalism and black propaganda). <a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Marx and Engels tuned us into the ideological war imposed by capitalism, which distorts and confuses workers’ belief systems, alienates workers from themselves and their work, and attempts by subterfuge to shift the blame of ruthless exploitation away from the ruling class. This was called false consciousness, and later, Sartre used the term mauvaise foi (“bad faith”). Gramsci defined the ideological control of capitalists over the socioeconomic system as cultural hegemony. Many readers are intimately familiar with these ideas. So why does this critique of the left from John Steinbeck still ring so true:</p>
<p>“I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.”</p>
<p>As Paul Goodman explained so lucidly, we’ve all been <a href="" type="internal">Growing Up Absurd</a> for generations, trapping many in the chrysalis of adolescence for their entire lives. As he pointed out:</p>
<p>“The accumulation of the missed and compromised revolutions of modern times, with their consequent ambiguities and social imbalances, has fallen, and must fall, most heavily on the young, making it hard to grow up.”</p>
<p>There is no mystery why Goodman entitles his chapter on missed revolutions in the fields of the physical environment, the socioeconomic model, political and constitutional reform, morality, and reforms dealing with children and youth, “The Missing Community”. For youth today, just as in his day, have few responsible role models, a repressive and prison-like atmosphere in schools, with consumerism and technology determining every aspect of a child’s search for joy and wonder, and now, the artificial edifices of social media and “augmented reality” is replacing genuine interaction. Indoctrinated to fit into a system of war, corporate monopolies, vapid pop culture, and not encouraged to think critical about their country or world cultures, children become jaded as soon as they realize that the notions of freedom, equality, and sharing that their parents and teachers taught them were based on lies. We must reverse this tide, lest we forget Walter Benjamin’s saying that:&#160;“Behind every fascism, there is a failed revolution.”</p>
<p>As Derrick Jensen says, our society suffers from a form of complex PTSD:</p>
<p>“PTSD is an embodied response to extreme trauma, to extreme terror, to the loss of control, connection, and meaning…Faced with any emotionally threatening situation, these people may freeze, failing to resist even when resistance becomes feasible or necessary”. (1)</p>
<p>This condition permeates every aspect of society, and reinforces our deepest ideological confusions: the line between personal property and coercive private property is purposely blurred by the bourgeoisie, fulfillment is replaced by “fun”, civic duty is replaced by retreating into the shell of private life, and diplomacy is usurped by war. Brought up in such a totality of fear and violence, it is no surprise that many never progress psychically beyond the stage of the child, or to seek out fulfillment instead of base entertainment.</p>
<p>The wit of the novelist Trevanian is instructive when addressing the Western symptoms of ennui and anomie:</p>
<p>“It’s not Americans I find annoying, its Americanism: a social disease of the post-industrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called ‘American’ only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu…Its symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant efforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experience. In the latter stages, the sufferer is reduced to seeking that most trivial of activities: fun.” (2)</p>
<p>This is corroborated by Jean Liedloff, whose experiences with the Yequana and Sanema tribes of Venezuela allows her to contrast their indigenous traditions and child-rearing with the failure of civilized parents, and the resulting insipid, infantile behavior of Western adults and general culture:</p>
<p>“Novelty…is so much a part of the present phase in our culture that our natural resistance to change has been distorted…Nothing is ever allowed to be good enough, nothing ever satisfactory. Our underlying discontent is channeled into desire for the latest things…Among the things high on the list are those that save labor…When success as a passive baby has not been experienced, there is a penchant for button-pushing, for labor-saving, as an assurance that everything is being done for, and nothing expected of, the subject…The impulse to work, necessarily a strong one in a healthy continuum, is stunted…Work becomes what it is to most of us: a resented necessity. And the labor-saving gadget gleams with a promise of lost comfort. In the meantime, a solution to the discrepancy between the adult desire to utilize one’s abilities and the infantile desire to be useless is often found in something aptly called recreation.” (3)</p>
<p>The implications are clear: our culture does not allow us to grow up, because to do so would invoke a critical response and a revolution against the forces of tyranny. Recently, <a href="" type="internal">Henry Giroux asked</a>:</p>
<p>“Where are the agents of democracy and the public spaces that offer hope in such dark times? What role will progressives play at a time when the very ability of the public’s ability to translate private troubles into broader systemic issues is disappearing? How might politics itself be rethought in order to address the pedagogical and structural conditions that contribute to the growing intensification of violence in all spheres of American society? What role should intellectuals, cultural workers, artists, writers, journalists, and others play as part of a broader struggle to reclaim a democratic imaginary and exercise a collective sense of civic courage?”</p>
<p>First, we must accept the fact that each of us is an agent of democracy, and we must reclaim the public spaces, and smack down the harmful myth regarding “The Tragedy of the Commons”. The answers to Giroux’s plea lie in our ability to raise healthy, strong children who are not seduced by the siren calls of capitalism and patriotic-approved state violence. This should be supplemented by alternative education programs for children and adults, and basic life and practical lessons passed down from parents, grandparents, etc. &#160;This doesn’t mean each parent has to teach their kid trigonometry. It means each town has to model itself to promote a viable village atmosphere, and foster a sense of community, with renewable energy, grassroots arts and music, and small to medium scale organic agriculture. It will mean embracing the truth that industrial civilization is destroying the world, and rather than wallowing in self-pity at having our illusions destroyed, rising up and embracing a culture based on ecology, enlightenment, and virtuous edification of our youth.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Notes.</p>
<p>1.) Jensen, Derrick. Endgame: The Problem of Civilization, Vol. 1. Seven Stories Press, 2006. p. 69-70.</p>
<p>2.) Trevanian. Shibumi. Three Rivers Press, 1979. p. 306</p>
<p>3.) Liedloff, Jean. The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost. Da Capo Press, 1975. p. 114-115.</p> | 1,126 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>No! There is something we could do right now that would make a world of difference: reduce national unemployment. We still have over 9 million people looking for jobs.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Here's the connection: Unemployment doesn't just affect the unemployed, it hurts the entire labor force because it reduces the bargaining power of all job holders. Studies show that this negative impact is largest for those at the bottom of the wage scale who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.</p>
<p>What is the evidence? Before 1979, the unemployment rate was low much of the time, and incomes for the top and the bottom grew closer together. But, since 1980, unemployment has been high (except for the late 1990s), and high and low incomes have grown apart - contributing greatly to the inequality that is plaguing us today.</p>
<p>The late 1990s - an exception to the post-1980 trend - provides more evidence. The booming economy made for tight job markets. Workers could demand better pay and benefits or threaten to go find another job. This dynamic led to real family-income growth at all income levels.</p>
<p>Note that the factors that people say are hurting middle- and low-wage workers, such as globalization and technology, were in play in those years. Yet strong labor demand created enough pressure to ensure that low- and middle-wage workers were able to get ahead.</p>
<p>So increasing employment opportunities should be at the top of the agenda of everyone who cares about unacceptable inequality. But how do we do that?</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>We have known how to do this since the 1930s: Increase investment spending by the federal government. We have tons of work to do in this country. Congress should invest the money to get it done and put people to work at the same time.</p>
<p>America's once world-class roads, bridges, railroads, airports, power grid, water supply, schools, research and development are deteriorating, and it is hurting our productivity and our living standards. We could also create well-paying jobs by making our homes, cars, offices and other buildings more energy efficient. We should be investing much more in our people by funding quality pre-school for lower-income families and rehiring the teachers who have been laid off in the Great Recession to reduce class sizes.</p>
<p>Interest rates are now at record lows. This is exactly the time that an intelligent company would borrow money to make investments that will pay off down the line (and Apple, Intel and other technology companies are doing exactly that). An intelligent family would seize this time to invest in education. This is what an intelligent country should do, too.</p>
<p>Will this additional borrowing increase our budget deficits? Of course. That's exactly what we should be doing right now. When the economy is back to full employment, we can and should reduce deficits and let the private economy fully take the lead again.</p>
<p>Borrowing at low interest rates and spending these funds will temporarily replace the private spending that went south in 2008 and has stayed there. Americans lost $8 trillion (!) in housing wealth at the start of the recession and quite understandably reduced their spending. Businesses understandably followed suit.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>While both consumption and investment are almost back to normal levels as a percentage of our gross domestic product, these are percentages of a much lower GDP than our potential: about one trillion dollars per year less than we could produce if we had full employment.</p>
<p>Returning to full employment is the best thing we could do to attack inequality in America. It would reduce the income stagnation that has beset the middle class and reduce poverty rates among working-age families.</p>
<p>Increasing government investment right now is by far the most effective thing we can do to get back to full employment, and move toward the more equal and just society we all hope to see.</p>
<p>Nick Estes is a former deputy policy director of New Mexico Voices for Children.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Employment a cure for inequality | false | https://abqjournal.com/361770/employment-a-cure-for-inequality.html | 2least
| Employment a cure for inequality
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>No! There is something we could do right now that would make a world of difference: reduce national unemployment. We still have over 9 million people looking for jobs.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Here's the connection: Unemployment doesn't just affect the unemployed, it hurts the entire labor force because it reduces the bargaining power of all job holders. Studies show that this negative impact is largest for those at the bottom of the wage scale who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.</p>
<p>What is the evidence? Before 1979, the unemployment rate was low much of the time, and incomes for the top and the bottom grew closer together. But, since 1980, unemployment has been high (except for the late 1990s), and high and low incomes have grown apart - contributing greatly to the inequality that is plaguing us today.</p>
<p>The late 1990s - an exception to the post-1980 trend - provides more evidence. The booming economy made for tight job markets. Workers could demand better pay and benefits or threaten to go find another job. This dynamic led to real family-income growth at all income levels.</p>
<p>Note that the factors that people say are hurting middle- and low-wage workers, such as globalization and technology, were in play in those years. Yet strong labor demand created enough pressure to ensure that low- and middle-wage workers were able to get ahead.</p>
<p>So increasing employment opportunities should be at the top of the agenda of everyone who cares about unacceptable inequality. But how do we do that?</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>We have known how to do this since the 1930s: Increase investment spending by the federal government. We have tons of work to do in this country. Congress should invest the money to get it done and put people to work at the same time.</p>
<p>America's once world-class roads, bridges, railroads, airports, power grid, water supply, schools, research and development are deteriorating, and it is hurting our productivity and our living standards. We could also create well-paying jobs by making our homes, cars, offices and other buildings more energy efficient. We should be investing much more in our people by funding quality pre-school for lower-income families and rehiring the teachers who have been laid off in the Great Recession to reduce class sizes.</p>
<p>Interest rates are now at record lows. This is exactly the time that an intelligent company would borrow money to make investments that will pay off down the line (and Apple, Intel and other technology companies are doing exactly that). An intelligent family would seize this time to invest in education. This is what an intelligent country should do, too.</p>
<p>Will this additional borrowing increase our budget deficits? Of course. That's exactly what we should be doing right now. When the economy is back to full employment, we can and should reduce deficits and let the private economy fully take the lead again.</p>
<p>Borrowing at low interest rates and spending these funds will temporarily replace the private spending that went south in 2008 and has stayed there. Americans lost $8 trillion (!) in housing wealth at the start of the recession and quite understandably reduced their spending. Businesses understandably followed suit.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>While both consumption and investment are almost back to normal levels as a percentage of our gross domestic product, these are percentages of a much lower GDP than our potential: about one trillion dollars per year less than we could produce if we had full employment.</p>
<p>Returning to full employment is the best thing we could do to attack inequality in America. It would reduce the income stagnation that has beset the middle class and reduce poverty rates among working-age families.</p>
<p>Increasing government investment right now is by far the most effective thing we can do to get back to full employment, and move toward the more equal and just society we all hope to see.</p>
<p>Nick Estes is a former deputy policy director of New Mexico Voices for Children.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 1,127 |
|
<p>BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — California coach Sonny Dykes says he was disappointed and surprised when assistant coach Pierre Ingram was arrested for solicitation.</p>
<p>Ingram was arrested April 16 during a prostitution sting in Oakland. He was immediately placed on administrative leave before the school fired him last week.</p>
<p>"It's hard when somebody you know goes through a hard time in their life," Dykes said Thursday. "Especially somebody that you know well."</p>
<p>Dykes called the arrest a "very serious matter" and said the school dealt with it as quickly as possible and moved forward. He said he quickly contacted players, recruits and their families to explain what had happened.</p>
<p>"We got out in front of it and basically tried to address it with all the recruits with phone calls and sent emails to current people and didn't get anything back other than support," Dykes said. "I think everybody was surprised that knew Pierre. But you have to move on."</p>
<p>Ingram was Cal's recruiting coordinator, wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator. He spent the previous two seasons as running backs coach. He also worked three years under Dykes at Louisiana Tech.</p>
<p>With Ingram no longer on staff, special teams quality control and assistant inside receivers coach Burl Toler III has been activated to recruit off campus. Toler previously had been limited to talking to potential recruits on campus but could not call them or make visits.</p>
<p>Toler, a former receiver at Cal, will be a candidate for Ingram's job. Dykes said the rest of the staff has taken over Ingram's recruiting coordinator responsibilities and he hoped to have someone hired to take the job as soon as possible.</p>
<p>"It's an unusual time of year to hire a coach," Dykes said. "But I've been really pleased with the people who are interested in the job. I think it speaks to how people view the program. We're kind of up and coming by the amount of interest we've had in the job and some surprising interest. We'll find the guy who fits the best and make a determination here quickly."</p>
<p>BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — California coach Sonny Dykes says he was disappointed and surprised when assistant coach Pierre Ingram was arrested for solicitation.</p>
<p>Ingram was arrested April 16 during a prostitution sting in Oakland. He was immediately placed on administrative leave before the school fired him last week.</p>
<p>"It's hard when somebody you know goes through a hard time in their life," Dykes said Thursday. "Especially somebody that you know well."</p>
<p>Dykes called the arrest a "very serious matter" and said the school dealt with it as quickly as possible and moved forward. He said he quickly contacted players, recruits and their families to explain what had happened.</p>
<p>"We got out in front of it and basically tried to address it with all the recruits with phone calls and sent emails to current people and didn't get anything back other than support," Dykes said. "I think everybody was surprised that knew Pierre. But you have to move on."</p>
<p>Ingram was Cal's recruiting coordinator, wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator. He spent the previous two seasons as running backs coach. He also worked three years under Dykes at Louisiana Tech.</p>
<p>With Ingram no longer on staff, special teams quality control and assistant inside receivers coach Burl Toler III has been activated to recruit off campus. Toler previously had been limited to talking to potential recruits on campus but could not call them or make visits.</p>
<p>Toler, a former receiver at Cal, will be a candidate for Ingram's job. Dykes said the rest of the staff has taken over Ingram's recruiting coordinator responsibilities and he hoped to have someone hired to take the job as soon as possible.</p>
<p>"It's an unusual time of year to hire a coach," Dykes said. "But I've been really pleased with the people who are interested in the job. I think it speaks to how people view the program. We're kind of up and coming by the amount of interest we've had in the job and some surprising interest. We'll find the guy who fits the best and make a determination here quickly."</p> | Cal coach Sonny Dykes disappointed in former assistant | false | https://apnews.com/amp/2f41793a7a68481dbb7849300b22797a | 2015-04-30 | 2least
| Cal coach Sonny Dykes disappointed in former assistant
<p>BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — California coach Sonny Dykes says he was disappointed and surprised when assistant coach Pierre Ingram was arrested for solicitation.</p>
<p>Ingram was arrested April 16 during a prostitution sting in Oakland. He was immediately placed on administrative leave before the school fired him last week.</p>
<p>"It's hard when somebody you know goes through a hard time in their life," Dykes said Thursday. "Especially somebody that you know well."</p>
<p>Dykes called the arrest a "very serious matter" and said the school dealt with it as quickly as possible and moved forward. He said he quickly contacted players, recruits and their families to explain what had happened.</p>
<p>"We got out in front of it and basically tried to address it with all the recruits with phone calls and sent emails to current people and didn't get anything back other than support," Dykes said. "I think everybody was surprised that knew Pierre. But you have to move on."</p>
<p>Ingram was Cal's recruiting coordinator, wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator. He spent the previous two seasons as running backs coach. He also worked three years under Dykes at Louisiana Tech.</p>
<p>With Ingram no longer on staff, special teams quality control and assistant inside receivers coach Burl Toler III has been activated to recruit off campus. Toler previously had been limited to talking to potential recruits on campus but could not call them or make visits.</p>
<p>Toler, a former receiver at Cal, will be a candidate for Ingram's job. Dykes said the rest of the staff has taken over Ingram's recruiting coordinator responsibilities and he hoped to have someone hired to take the job as soon as possible.</p>
<p>"It's an unusual time of year to hire a coach," Dykes said. "But I've been really pleased with the people who are interested in the job. I think it speaks to how people view the program. We're kind of up and coming by the amount of interest we've had in the job and some surprising interest. We'll find the guy who fits the best and make a determination here quickly."</p>
<p>BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — California coach Sonny Dykes says he was disappointed and surprised when assistant coach Pierre Ingram was arrested for solicitation.</p>
<p>Ingram was arrested April 16 during a prostitution sting in Oakland. He was immediately placed on administrative leave before the school fired him last week.</p>
<p>"It's hard when somebody you know goes through a hard time in their life," Dykes said Thursday. "Especially somebody that you know well."</p>
<p>Dykes called the arrest a "very serious matter" and said the school dealt with it as quickly as possible and moved forward. He said he quickly contacted players, recruits and their families to explain what had happened.</p>
<p>"We got out in front of it and basically tried to address it with all the recruits with phone calls and sent emails to current people and didn't get anything back other than support," Dykes said. "I think everybody was surprised that knew Pierre. But you have to move on."</p>
<p>Ingram was Cal's recruiting coordinator, wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator. He spent the previous two seasons as running backs coach. He also worked three years under Dykes at Louisiana Tech.</p>
<p>With Ingram no longer on staff, special teams quality control and assistant inside receivers coach Burl Toler III has been activated to recruit off campus. Toler previously had been limited to talking to potential recruits on campus but could not call them or make visits.</p>
<p>Toler, a former receiver at Cal, will be a candidate for Ingram's job. Dykes said the rest of the staff has taken over Ingram's recruiting coordinator responsibilities and he hoped to have someone hired to take the job as soon as possible.</p>
<p>"It's an unusual time of year to hire a coach," Dykes said. "But I've been really pleased with the people who are interested in the job. I think it speaks to how people view the program. We're kind of up and coming by the amount of interest we've had in the job and some surprising interest. We'll find the guy who fits the best and make a determination here quickly."</p> | 1,128 |
<p>Shares of telecommunications companies rose slightly after a major deal appeared to hit a snag. Time Warner shares dropped after the Justice Department told AT&amp;T that it would have to agree to sell either the unit that produces CNN or its DirecTV business before the U.S. would approve a merger with Time Warner, according to media reports. But AT&amp;T's chief executive said he is prepared to go to court to defend the telecom giant's proposed takeover and that he had no intention of selling the Time Warner unit that produces CNN. Dish Network shares rose after the satellite-television operator's earnings were not as pressured by competition from streaming services as some investors had feared. Magazine publisher Time said revenue slid 9% in the latest quarter as sales of print ads and magazine subscriptions continued to shrink and digital ad sales edged up only slightly.</p>
<p>-Rob Curran, [email protected]</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Corrections &amp; Amplifications</p>
<p>This item was corrected at 6:37 p.m. ET to clarify that the Justice Department told AT&amp;T that it would have to agree to sell either the unit that produces CNN or its DirecTV business before the U.S. would approve a merger with Time Warner. The original incorrectly stated the Justice Department blocked the deal.</p>
<p>Shares of telecommunications companies rose slightly after a major deal appeared to hit a snag. Time Warner shares dropped after the Justice Department told AT&amp;T that it would have to agree to sell either the unit that produces CNN or its DirecTV business before the U.S. would approve a merger with Time Warner, according to media reports.</p>
<p>"DOJ Blocks AT&amp;T, Time Warner Deal - Telecoms Roundup," published at 4:26 p.m. ET, incorrectly stated in the headline and first sentence that the Justice Department had blocked the AT&amp;T-Time Warner deal.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>November 09, 2017 18:51 ET (23:51 GMT)</p> | Correct: Telecoms Mixed as AT&T-Time Warner Deal Hits Snag - Telecoms Roundup | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/11/09/telecoms-mixed-as-doj-blocks-at-t-time-warner-deal-telecoms-roundup.html | 2017-11-09 | 0right
| Correct: Telecoms Mixed as AT&T-Time Warner Deal Hits Snag - Telecoms Roundup
<p>Shares of telecommunications companies rose slightly after a major deal appeared to hit a snag. Time Warner shares dropped after the Justice Department told AT&amp;T that it would have to agree to sell either the unit that produces CNN or its DirecTV business before the U.S. would approve a merger with Time Warner, according to media reports. But AT&amp;T's chief executive said he is prepared to go to court to defend the telecom giant's proposed takeover and that he had no intention of selling the Time Warner unit that produces CNN. Dish Network shares rose after the satellite-television operator's earnings were not as pressured by competition from streaming services as some investors had feared. Magazine publisher Time said revenue slid 9% in the latest quarter as sales of print ads and magazine subscriptions continued to shrink and digital ad sales edged up only slightly.</p>
<p>-Rob Curran, [email protected]</p>
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<p>Corrections &amp; Amplifications</p>
<p>This item was corrected at 6:37 p.m. ET to clarify that the Justice Department told AT&amp;T that it would have to agree to sell either the unit that produces CNN or its DirecTV business before the U.S. would approve a merger with Time Warner. The original incorrectly stated the Justice Department blocked the deal.</p>
<p>Shares of telecommunications companies rose slightly after a major deal appeared to hit a snag. Time Warner shares dropped after the Justice Department told AT&amp;T that it would have to agree to sell either the unit that produces CNN or its DirecTV business before the U.S. would approve a merger with Time Warner, according to media reports.</p>
<p>"DOJ Blocks AT&amp;T, Time Warner Deal - Telecoms Roundup," published at 4:26 p.m. ET, incorrectly stated in the headline and first sentence that the Justice Department had blocked the AT&amp;T-Time Warner deal.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
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<p>November 09, 2017 18:51 ET (23:51 GMT)</p> | 1,129 |
<p />
<p>Tired of the election coverage—who isn’t?—and the sound of Wolf Blitzer’s voice, I reached out to someone on the inside, to get another take, and received the enclosed email, which began: “I figured between WikiLeaks, John Podesta, the Russians, Judicial Watch, the NSA, and the Clinton work-from-home server that this ought to find you…”</p>
<p>I take it you watched the second debate? Or at least some of the beginning? Or at least the highlights? Or you read some of the press accounts that put it down as the “ugliest debate in American history?”</p>
<p>In general, these posts were written by those who would struggle to explain, without some CliffsNotes, James Callender, Mark Hanna, or the insults hurled at the 1856 Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont. (A leading American newspaper summed up his platform as “Free n——s, free women, free land and Frémont…”)</p>
<p>And in 1864, here are some of the words that were used to describe Father Abraham Lincoln: “Filthy story-teller; Ignoramus Abe; Despot; Old scoundrel; big secessionist; perjurer; liar; robber; thief; swindler; braggart; tyrant; buffoon; fiend; usurper; butcher; monster; land-pirate; a long, lean, lank, lantern-jawed, high-cheeked-boned, spavined, rail-splitting stallion.”</p>
<p>Actually, I found the second presidential debate refreshing in that both candidates “hooked on” and fired broadsides at the opposing navy. Hillary went after Donald for racism, bigotry, misogyny, sexism, tax dodging, deceit, and wanting to scrap Obamacare, while Donald (yes, he often looked like a professional wrestler coming over the ropes with a chair) went after her for cookie-cutter liberalism, Wall Street pandering, her e-mail delete button, a tax-and-deficit spend mentality, talking the talk, and enabling her husband’s degrading of women.</p>
<p>Visually, the stage, with deep blue carpeting and subdued lighting, looked like a cross between a mortuary and the set of The Price is Right. (Monty Hall would be an improvement on the sanctimonious Anderson Cooper.) I guess everyone kept watching in the hope that behind door number three there might be a violated woman or 33,000 emails about Chelsea’s wedding or her yoga class. (Huma to HRC: “How come all we ever do is the Staff Pose?”)</p>
<p>Under the town hall format, the candidates were allowed to stroll around a conversation pit while answering the questions, most of which were filtered through the moderators.</p>
<p>Both Cooper and Martha Raddatz wore the scowl of the Spanish Inquisition, at least when asking questions of Donald Trump about his sex confessional, which cast the Republican candidate in the remake of that great campaign musical, My Fair Willie Horton.</p>
<p>When not responding or interrupting, Trump had the look of a man at an IRS audit (maybe he was?) while Clinton’s handlers insisted that she smile and laugh cheerfully no matter how insulting Trump became or how biting were her answers, which gave her the slightly crazed air of a Hitchcock character getting ready to do in her tormentor with scissors. Dial T for Trump?</p>
<p>You might hate one or both candidates (most people do), but at least in the second debate the lines were correctly drawn between each of the their policies and historical antecedents.</p>
<p>If you strip away all the tweets and bluster, Republican Trump is a “hard-money” man, a bit like William McKinley, eager to return American to the gold standard and raise tariffs to ward off foreign competition.</p>
<p>At least in her scripted pronouncements, Clinton imagines herself as the spiritual heir of the Progressives, the likes of William Jennings Bryant or maybe “Sockless” Jerry Simpson, although neither man ever pulled down $22 million by giving speeches to stock jobbers on Wall Street.</p>
<p>Who won the second debate? None of the above would be my answer. If you started watching the show thinking that Trump is a gutter candidate, you left the debate feeling the same way. He did not disappoint.</p>
<p>And if you think the Clintons have gotten away with murder since Vince Foster’s bloodless suicide, I doubt her performance will have changed your mind.</p>
<p>In some ways it was one of those heavyweight fights that goes 15 rounds and ends in a draw. Trump avoided a knockdown and added some details to his policies; Hillary did well technically and with her jab, but failed to get a decision, despite mentioning Muhammad Ali by name. (I was a little surprised that Trump didn’t mimic Arsenio Hall and say: “His momma named him Clay, I’m gonna call him Clay.”)</p>
<p>In presidential debates, a tie favors the leader in the polls, so presumably Hillary left St. Louis feeling that the race is hers to win. As Mrs. Willy Loman says at the end of play: “We’re free and clear.”</p>
<p>Among the subjects omitted from the debate, except maybe in passing, were the Arab Spring, Israel’s $38 billion in new American aid, Egypt’s coup, the war in Gaza, welfare reform, Brexit, the European Union, the failures of American education, social security insolvency, China, Japan, infrastructure decay, youth unemployment, heroin addiction, global warming, Saudi Arabia and 9/11, banking reform, agricultural prices, high-speed rail, mental health, alcoholism, violence against children, the Keystone pipeline, pornography, and Deflategate.</p>
<p>So, really, who was the loser?</p>
<p>Can Trump get back into the race? I don’t see how. He has most Republican officials calling for his extended scalp, dropping poll numbers in such swing states as Ohio and Pennsylvania, reluctant donors of the Koch variety, and the dubious distinction (at least among presidential candidates) of caring more about the weight gains of Miss Universe than how to end the civil war in Syria.</p>
<p>By contrast, Hillary can play a prevent defense for all of October, at least enough to win her the election. She need not make too many appearances (a few Oprah interviews ought to do the trick) nor take any radical positions (“I want to be president of all Americans”).</p>
<p>She can chant the doxology about health insurance, the war on terror, or income inequality, and as long as she “sounds presidential,” she ought to convince enough voters that she is up to the job.</p>
<p>Not even the traveling bevy of scorned mistresses, dressed up as tricoteuses beside Bill’s guillotine, will sway many voters.</p>
<p>Even if Hillary has another public health scare, I doubt that it would cost her the election, for the simple reason that the Clinton feel-good team has gotten too proficient at propping her up for the big games.</p>
<p>Clinton starring in Weekend at Hillary’s has more box office appeal than Donald’s appearance in Citizen Trump. (“You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.”)</p>
<p>Whatever the root medical cause of her dizziness and coughing, her staff has learned enough to keep both at bay, at least for ninety minutes during the primetime debates and a few speeches.</p>
<p>If, later in the campaign, she chucks a sickie here and there, no one will notice, especially if her staff mixes into the downtime some cable interviews and tweets from her fainting couch.</p>
<p>After all, not even Hillary’s cringe-worthy appearance on the faux talk show Between Two Ferns caused her any criticism. (Zach Galifianakis: “What’s the best way to reach you? Email?”)</p>
<p>Does it mean that her health can withstand the rigors of the presidency? Although I am not a doctor (nor do I play one on television), in person I can tell you that Hillary has ghostly qualities.</p>
<p>Remember that weird press conference on the tarmac at Westchester County Airport, where she stood in front of humming jet engines and took unscripted questions for the first time in almost a year? To the voting public, that was a little one-act play meant to show the candidate ever on-the-go, about to board her chariot to distant coliseums.</p>
<p>In fact, the runway Potemkin theater was a work of genius on the part of her staff, to keep the candidate from getting startled by the noise of cameras or press questions, and possibly putting her into one of those catatonic trances that are all over the Internet.</p>
<p>The plane engines were white noise, like those waterfall tapes some people use to fall asleep, only in this case it was the voters who were sleepwalking beside Hillary.</p>
<p>Not that Donald Trump should get a pass on his health, as he has been no more forthcoming than Hillary in releasing his medical records. At least she came up with a form letter from her family doctor and could toss around the phrase “seasonal allergies,” which the Clinton campaign would trot out in press releases if she were mauled by a tiger.</p>
<p>For his part Trump let his doctor check him out in his limo and then went over the results with Dr. Oz on afternoon television. (A checkup on TV isn’t something that comes with Obamacare.)</p>
<p>Trump’s borderline obesity, however, rated almost no mention in campaign coverage, just as neither candidate (Hillary is almost 69; Trump is 70) was asked during either debate about their health issues.</p>
<p>That Hillary managed to dodge a public neurological exam after keeling over at the World Trade Center is testament to the savviness of her campaign staff, which by comparison makes those around Trump look as though they are auditioning for an amateur hour. In addition, Trump has gone through campaign directors as if they were Mar-a-Lago caddies.</p>
<p>Neither candidate is much good at listening to their staff, but at least Hillary has a real one while those around Trump have the air of apprentices. It explains why his campaign, at best, is a traveling circus limited to the big tents that will squeeze aboard his gilded Boeing 757.</p>
<p>Trump won the Republican nomination because of his midnight tweets and off-the-cuff insults (“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”), which played well to a primary electorate weaned on the howling of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Laura Ingraham. But a national campaign needs more than a few Fox &amp; Friends.</p>
<p>Part of the reason Trump’s campaign came apart over the sex tape is because it’s a one-man band. Since the summer, the pros in the Republican party have been waiting for Hillary’s campaign to dig up the Howard Stern interviews or to put Trump’s taxes in primetime. (You have to admire them: the leaked 1040 forms were mailed to the Times in a “Trump Organization” envelope.)</p>
<p>Everyone knew they were coming, just as Hillary ought to have known that somewhere a transcript of her Wall Street encomiums or deleted e-mails would surface. But Trump always knows more than his campaign operatives (“If he’s so smart, how come he is willing to work for $75K?”), and he ignored the advice to develop a strategy for either disclosure.</p>
<p>You can be sure that Clinton’s staff has enough raunchy revelations to fill the news cycle from now until election day, for there to be a daily “Trump outrage.” (Great moments in journalism, this from the Huffington Post: “There Are Transcripts Of Trump’s Unaired Moments On The Apprentice…”)</p>
<p>In the 1990s Donald told Howard Stern how women approach him: “They’ll walk up, and they’ll flip their top, and they’ll flip their panties.” This was years before he was popping Tic Tacs with Billy Bush.</p>
<p>The irony of Pussygate, for Trump anyway, is that it was a form of Swift boating, but in reverse, this time going from the Democrats to the Republicans.</p>
<p>During much of the campaign, the great unanswered question was whether Trump could make any electoral mileage from Bill Clinton’s sexual wanderlust. Or if he might hint broadly that Hillary—to use an old Hollywood expression—is “a gal with her own library card.”</p>
<p>In his free-form interviews and speeches, Trump is always alluding to such fixtures of the road as Gennifer Flowers, Juanita Broderick, Paula Jones, and The Energizer, not to mention Bill’s global joyriding (some 26 flights) on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane, nicknamed the Lolita Express for the age and in-flight entertainment of its hostesses.</p>
<p>But now Hillary’s A-team of campaign pros has managed to dress Trump in the open raincoat of a sexual predator, much the way W’s team made war hero John Kerry look like a deserter in the Vietnam War, although it was George W. Bush who went AWOL from his National Guard unit in Alabama.</p>
<p>From now until election day, however, it will be impossible for Trump to play the sex card on either Clinton.</p>
<p>In thinking about the fall, Donald thought he would be campaigning from Atlantic City, dealing strip poker; instead all he has is a cold hand of Go Fish.</p>
<p>Why is Hillary so good at the blame game? Look at how she uses Putin’s Russia as a whipping boy for whatever problem plagues her campaign. Mention the e-mail scandal, and right away Hillary is on about the Russians hacking “the system” to influence the election.</p>
<p>On one hand she says that none of her unprotected, home-brewed e-mails—those with the words “top secret” on the subject line—were ever stolen. On the other, mention anything about cyber security, and she’s blaming Putin and Russia for wanting to tilt the roulette wheel of the American election.</p>
<p>By extension, Hillary casts the Putin-loving Trump as a fellow-traveler—in the great McCarthyite tradition of naming names.</p>
<p>Putin is also to blame for all of the violence in Syria and the Middle East, not to mention fluoride in the water system, Bill’s account at Ashley Madison, and why Goldman Sachs paid her $675,00 to recycle some stump speeches in the corporate boardroom.</p>
<p>By the way, if you read the transcripts on WikiLeaks, what stands out is how little Hillary understands about finance. The $225,000-a-pop speeches, chock full of platitudes, read like Chamber of Commerce brochures or My Weekly Reader editorials. I am a little surprised the banks didn’t ask for a refund, what in the trade is called “unjust enrichment.”</p>
<p>Is there anything to the rumor that Mike Pence will abandon the ticket over Trump’s furniture shopping with the Miss America host Nancy O’Dell? I am sure he’s had some discussions with his staff about jumping off the sinking ship, and leaving the rats behind.</p>
<p>If he did, and were Trump to lose to general election, Pence would become the front runner for 2020, when presumably the country will be tired of yet another President Clinton and an unimpeachable Congress.</p>
<p>Pence on the moral high road would certainly look better than Ted Cruz, who, in a career move, finally endorsed Donald about an hour before Trump was overheard recounting his Playboy lust-for-life moves in the recorded bus conversation.</p>
<p>The reason I don’t think Pence will bolt the ticket is because he might become the lightning rod for all the GOP establishmentarians who gave up on Trump after the sex tape and withdrew their endorsements. That list is a mile long (see Ryan, Paul et al.), but it remains to be seen if they will emerge from the electoral wreckage of the Trump campaign as traitors or idealists.</p>
<p>Presumably the Trump doubters have bolted to save their own skin—that is especially the case with many Republican senators up for re-election, including senators John McCain, Marco Rubio, and Kelly Ayotte. But imagine if Trump somehow wins or at least holds serve, and if he emerges as the leader of the party after the election. (Let’s hope those Republicans have fire insurance.)</p>
<p>Yes, I find a Trump resurrection almost impossible to imagine, but 2016 is a strange year so don’t overlook the unimaginable, and the fault line between candidate Trump and the Republican establishment could well be the line that will eventually split the party into two new parties, Conservatives and Republicans.</p>
<p>For me, the interesting aspect of Trump’s sex confessions isn’t that he’s a groper (ever since Warren Harding most presidential candidates have had something warm in their closets), but that it is the issue that highlights how the election is a watershed between mainstream media, which is effectively dead, and the populism of social media.</p>
<p>The 2016 election belongs to Twitter and BuzzFeed, which at best are the captions to cartoons. The boys on the bus are not Timesmen so much as bloggers, and Trump’s sex tape has all the ingredients of an Instagram scoop—video that could play in thirty-seconds, eavesdropping, furtive sex of the Tinder kind, horny Page Six celebrities, and, in response, moral outrage that can be expressed in 140 characters. What more can a democracy want? Who has time to read de Tocqueville anyway?</p>
<p>For all I know, the affair might actually swing millennials to Trump, much the way that scandal hasn’t exactly done in the Kardashians.</p>
<p>Look at the crowds flocking to Trump rallies after the debate while Hillary still has to bus in her claque.</p>
<p>According to electoral orthodoxy, Trump is road kill, hoist, so to speak, by his own petard. He will lose Ohio, North Carolina and Florida, and thus the presidency. His hope of a new coalition that would turn Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina into red states is dead.</p>
<p>In those swing states, the moral majority will recoil at his boorish sexism and elect Hillary Clinton. On her side, presumably, are women, minorities, and college-educated voters, few of whom ever tried to grope the host of the Miss America pageant.</p>
<p>Trump will only manage to carry the Second Amendment crowd and those who think that Hillary wants to deliver America to what, in the lingua franca of the right, is called “globalism”—a loose confederation that includes the UN and Agenda 21, gun controllers, the New York Times, abortionists, atheists, George Soros, the EU, Iranian sympathizers, the Federal Reserve Bank, Davos, married gays, and Angela Merkel.</p>
<p>In the language of Star Wars, this could be the Trade Federation that Darth Trump is pledged to eliminate, at least in his fervid, 3 a.m. imagination. I can’t see him winning—not during this year’s ratings sweep anyway—but what will happen when the standard-bearer for Trumpism isn’t someone as capricious as The Donald. Then you might want to hide the china.</p>
<p>That’s all for now. Write me in a day or two. By then, the world will have changed.</p> | The Blame Game: Two Clintons No Trump | true | https://counterpunch.org/2016/10/12/the-blame-game-two-clintons-no-trump/ | 2016-10-12 | 4left
| The Blame Game: Two Clintons No Trump
<p />
<p>Tired of the election coverage—who isn’t?—and the sound of Wolf Blitzer’s voice, I reached out to someone on the inside, to get another take, and received the enclosed email, which began: “I figured between WikiLeaks, John Podesta, the Russians, Judicial Watch, the NSA, and the Clinton work-from-home server that this ought to find you…”</p>
<p>I take it you watched the second debate? Or at least some of the beginning? Or at least the highlights? Or you read some of the press accounts that put it down as the “ugliest debate in American history?”</p>
<p>In general, these posts were written by those who would struggle to explain, without some CliffsNotes, James Callender, Mark Hanna, or the insults hurled at the 1856 Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont. (A leading American newspaper summed up his platform as “Free n——s, free women, free land and Frémont…”)</p>
<p>And in 1864, here are some of the words that were used to describe Father Abraham Lincoln: “Filthy story-teller; Ignoramus Abe; Despot; Old scoundrel; big secessionist; perjurer; liar; robber; thief; swindler; braggart; tyrant; buffoon; fiend; usurper; butcher; monster; land-pirate; a long, lean, lank, lantern-jawed, high-cheeked-boned, spavined, rail-splitting stallion.”</p>
<p>Actually, I found the second presidential debate refreshing in that both candidates “hooked on” and fired broadsides at the opposing navy. Hillary went after Donald for racism, bigotry, misogyny, sexism, tax dodging, deceit, and wanting to scrap Obamacare, while Donald (yes, he often looked like a professional wrestler coming over the ropes with a chair) went after her for cookie-cutter liberalism, Wall Street pandering, her e-mail delete button, a tax-and-deficit spend mentality, talking the talk, and enabling her husband’s degrading of women.</p>
<p>Visually, the stage, with deep blue carpeting and subdued lighting, looked like a cross between a mortuary and the set of The Price is Right. (Monty Hall would be an improvement on the sanctimonious Anderson Cooper.) I guess everyone kept watching in the hope that behind door number three there might be a violated woman or 33,000 emails about Chelsea’s wedding or her yoga class. (Huma to HRC: “How come all we ever do is the Staff Pose?”)</p>
<p>Under the town hall format, the candidates were allowed to stroll around a conversation pit while answering the questions, most of which were filtered through the moderators.</p>
<p>Both Cooper and Martha Raddatz wore the scowl of the Spanish Inquisition, at least when asking questions of Donald Trump about his sex confessional, which cast the Republican candidate in the remake of that great campaign musical, My Fair Willie Horton.</p>
<p>When not responding or interrupting, Trump had the look of a man at an IRS audit (maybe he was?) while Clinton’s handlers insisted that she smile and laugh cheerfully no matter how insulting Trump became or how biting were her answers, which gave her the slightly crazed air of a Hitchcock character getting ready to do in her tormentor with scissors. Dial T for Trump?</p>
<p>You might hate one or both candidates (most people do), but at least in the second debate the lines were correctly drawn between each of the their policies and historical antecedents.</p>
<p>If you strip away all the tweets and bluster, Republican Trump is a “hard-money” man, a bit like William McKinley, eager to return American to the gold standard and raise tariffs to ward off foreign competition.</p>
<p>At least in her scripted pronouncements, Clinton imagines herself as the spiritual heir of the Progressives, the likes of William Jennings Bryant or maybe “Sockless” Jerry Simpson, although neither man ever pulled down $22 million by giving speeches to stock jobbers on Wall Street.</p>
<p>Who won the second debate? None of the above would be my answer. If you started watching the show thinking that Trump is a gutter candidate, you left the debate feeling the same way. He did not disappoint.</p>
<p>And if you think the Clintons have gotten away with murder since Vince Foster’s bloodless suicide, I doubt her performance will have changed your mind.</p>
<p>In some ways it was one of those heavyweight fights that goes 15 rounds and ends in a draw. Trump avoided a knockdown and added some details to his policies; Hillary did well technically and with her jab, but failed to get a decision, despite mentioning Muhammad Ali by name. (I was a little surprised that Trump didn’t mimic Arsenio Hall and say: “His momma named him Clay, I’m gonna call him Clay.”)</p>
<p>In presidential debates, a tie favors the leader in the polls, so presumably Hillary left St. Louis feeling that the race is hers to win. As Mrs. Willy Loman says at the end of play: “We’re free and clear.”</p>
<p>Among the subjects omitted from the debate, except maybe in passing, were the Arab Spring, Israel’s $38 billion in new American aid, Egypt’s coup, the war in Gaza, welfare reform, Brexit, the European Union, the failures of American education, social security insolvency, China, Japan, infrastructure decay, youth unemployment, heroin addiction, global warming, Saudi Arabia and 9/11, banking reform, agricultural prices, high-speed rail, mental health, alcoholism, violence against children, the Keystone pipeline, pornography, and Deflategate.</p>
<p>So, really, who was the loser?</p>
<p>Can Trump get back into the race? I don’t see how. He has most Republican officials calling for his extended scalp, dropping poll numbers in such swing states as Ohio and Pennsylvania, reluctant donors of the Koch variety, and the dubious distinction (at least among presidential candidates) of caring more about the weight gains of Miss Universe than how to end the civil war in Syria.</p>
<p>By contrast, Hillary can play a prevent defense for all of October, at least enough to win her the election. She need not make too many appearances (a few Oprah interviews ought to do the trick) nor take any radical positions (“I want to be president of all Americans”).</p>
<p>She can chant the doxology about health insurance, the war on terror, or income inequality, and as long as she “sounds presidential,” she ought to convince enough voters that she is up to the job.</p>
<p>Not even the traveling bevy of scorned mistresses, dressed up as tricoteuses beside Bill’s guillotine, will sway many voters.</p>
<p>Even if Hillary has another public health scare, I doubt that it would cost her the election, for the simple reason that the Clinton feel-good team has gotten too proficient at propping her up for the big games.</p>
<p>Clinton starring in Weekend at Hillary’s has more box office appeal than Donald’s appearance in Citizen Trump. (“You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.”)</p>
<p>Whatever the root medical cause of her dizziness and coughing, her staff has learned enough to keep both at bay, at least for ninety minutes during the primetime debates and a few speeches.</p>
<p>If, later in the campaign, she chucks a sickie here and there, no one will notice, especially if her staff mixes into the downtime some cable interviews and tweets from her fainting couch.</p>
<p>After all, not even Hillary’s cringe-worthy appearance on the faux talk show Between Two Ferns caused her any criticism. (Zach Galifianakis: “What’s the best way to reach you? Email?”)</p>
<p>Does it mean that her health can withstand the rigors of the presidency? Although I am not a doctor (nor do I play one on television), in person I can tell you that Hillary has ghostly qualities.</p>
<p>Remember that weird press conference on the tarmac at Westchester County Airport, where she stood in front of humming jet engines and took unscripted questions for the first time in almost a year? To the voting public, that was a little one-act play meant to show the candidate ever on-the-go, about to board her chariot to distant coliseums.</p>
<p>In fact, the runway Potemkin theater was a work of genius on the part of her staff, to keep the candidate from getting startled by the noise of cameras or press questions, and possibly putting her into one of those catatonic trances that are all over the Internet.</p>
<p>The plane engines were white noise, like those waterfall tapes some people use to fall asleep, only in this case it was the voters who were sleepwalking beside Hillary.</p>
<p>Not that Donald Trump should get a pass on his health, as he has been no more forthcoming than Hillary in releasing his medical records. At least she came up with a form letter from her family doctor and could toss around the phrase “seasonal allergies,” which the Clinton campaign would trot out in press releases if she were mauled by a tiger.</p>
<p>For his part Trump let his doctor check him out in his limo and then went over the results with Dr. Oz on afternoon television. (A checkup on TV isn’t something that comes with Obamacare.)</p>
<p>Trump’s borderline obesity, however, rated almost no mention in campaign coverage, just as neither candidate (Hillary is almost 69; Trump is 70) was asked during either debate about their health issues.</p>
<p>That Hillary managed to dodge a public neurological exam after keeling over at the World Trade Center is testament to the savviness of her campaign staff, which by comparison makes those around Trump look as though they are auditioning for an amateur hour. In addition, Trump has gone through campaign directors as if they were Mar-a-Lago caddies.</p>
<p>Neither candidate is much good at listening to their staff, but at least Hillary has a real one while those around Trump have the air of apprentices. It explains why his campaign, at best, is a traveling circus limited to the big tents that will squeeze aboard his gilded Boeing 757.</p>
<p>Trump won the Republican nomination because of his midnight tweets and off-the-cuff insults (“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”), which played well to a primary electorate weaned on the howling of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Laura Ingraham. But a national campaign needs more than a few Fox &amp; Friends.</p>
<p>Part of the reason Trump’s campaign came apart over the sex tape is because it’s a one-man band. Since the summer, the pros in the Republican party have been waiting for Hillary’s campaign to dig up the Howard Stern interviews or to put Trump’s taxes in primetime. (You have to admire them: the leaked 1040 forms were mailed to the Times in a “Trump Organization” envelope.)</p>
<p>Everyone knew they were coming, just as Hillary ought to have known that somewhere a transcript of her Wall Street encomiums or deleted e-mails would surface. But Trump always knows more than his campaign operatives (“If he’s so smart, how come he is willing to work for $75K?”), and he ignored the advice to develop a strategy for either disclosure.</p>
<p>You can be sure that Clinton’s staff has enough raunchy revelations to fill the news cycle from now until election day, for there to be a daily “Trump outrage.” (Great moments in journalism, this from the Huffington Post: “There Are Transcripts Of Trump’s Unaired Moments On The Apprentice…”)</p>
<p>In the 1990s Donald told Howard Stern how women approach him: “They’ll walk up, and they’ll flip their top, and they’ll flip their panties.” This was years before he was popping Tic Tacs with Billy Bush.</p>
<p>The irony of Pussygate, for Trump anyway, is that it was a form of Swift boating, but in reverse, this time going from the Democrats to the Republicans.</p>
<p>During much of the campaign, the great unanswered question was whether Trump could make any electoral mileage from Bill Clinton’s sexual wanderlust. Or if he might hint broadly that Hillary—to use an old Hollywood expression—is “a gal with her own library card.”</p>
<p>In his free-form interviews and speeches, Trump is always alluding to such fixtures of the road as Gennifer Flowers, Juanita Broderick, Paula Jones, and The Energizer, not to mention Bill’s global joyriding (some 26 flights) on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane, nicknamed the Lolita Express for the age and in-flight entertainment of its hostesses.</p>
<p>But now Hillary’s A-team of campaign pros has managed to dress Trump in the open raincoat of a sexual predator, much the way W’s team made war hero John Kerry look like a deserter in the Vietnam War, although it was George W. Bush who went AWOL from his National Guard unit in Alabama.</p>
<p>From now until election day, however, it will be impossible for Trump to play the sex card on either Clinton.</p>
<p>In thinking about the fall, Donald thought he would be campaigning from Atlantic City, dealing strip poker; instead all he has is a cold hand of Go Fish.</p>
<p>Why is Hillary so good at the blame game? Look at how she uses Putin’s Russia as a whipping boy for whatever problem plagues her campaign. Mention the e-mail scandal, and right away Hillary is on about the Russians hacking “the system” to influence the election.</p>
<p>On one hand she says that none of her unprotected, home-brewed e-mails—those with the words “top secret” on the subject line—were ever stolen. On the other, mention anything about cyber security, and she’s blaming Putin and Russia for wanting to tilt the roulette wheel of the American election.</p>
<p>By extension, Hillary casts the Putin-loving Trump as a fellow-traveler—in the great McCarthyite tradition of naming names.</p>
<p>Putin is also to blame for all of the violence in Syria and the Middle East, not to mention fluoride in the water system, Bill’s account at Ashley Madison, and why Goldman Sachs paid her $675,00 to recycle some stump speeches in the corporate boardroom.</p>
<p>By the way, if you read the transcripts on WikiLeaks, what stands out is how little Hillary understands about finance. The $225,000-a-pop speeches, chock full of platitudes, read like Chamber of Commerce brochures or My Weekly Reader editorials. I am a little surprised the banks didn’t ask for a refund, what in the trade is called “unjust enrichment.”</p>
<p>Is there anything to the rumor that Mike Pence will abandon the ticket over Trump’s furniture shopping with the Miss America host Nancy O’Dell? I am sure he’s had some discussions with his staff about jumping off the sinking ship, and leaving the rats behind.</p>
<p>If he did, and were Trump to lose to general election, Pence would become the front runner for 2020, when presumably the country will be tired of yet another President Clinton and an unimpeachable Congress.</p>
<p>Pence on the moral high road would certainly look better than Ted Cruz, who, in a career move, finally endorsed Donald about an hour before Trump was overheard recounting his Playboy lust-for-life moves in the recorded bus conversation.</p>
<p>The reason I don’t think Pence will bolt the ticket is because he might become the lightning rod for all the GOP establishmentarians who gave up on Trump after the sex tape and withdrew their endorsements. That list is a mile long (see Ryan, Paul et al.), but it remains to be seen if they will emerge from the electoral wreckage of the Trump campaign as traitors or idealists.</p>
<p>Presumably the Trump doubters have bolted to save their own skin—that is especially the case with many Republican senators up for re-election, including senators John McCain, Marco Rubio, and Kelly Ayotte. But imagine if Trump somehow wins or at least holds serve, and if he emerges as the leader of the party after the election. (Let’s hope those Republicans have fire insurance.)</p>
<p>Yes, I find a Trump resurrection almost impossible to imagine, but 2016 is a strange year so don’t overlook the unimaginable, and the fault line between candidate Trump and the Republican establishment could well be the line that will eventually split the party into two new parties, Conservatives and Republicans.</p>
<p>For me, the interesting aspect of Trump’s sex confessions isn’t that he’s a groper (ever since Warren Harding most presidential candidates have had something warm in their closets), but that it is the issue that highlights how the election is a watershed between mainstream media, which is effectively dead, and the populism of social media.</p>
<p>The 2016 election belongs to Twitter and BuzzFeed, which at best are the captions to cartoons. The boys on the bus are not Timesmen so much as bloggers, and Trump’s sex tape has all the ingredients of an Instagram scoop—video that could play in thirty-seconds, eavesdropping, furtive sex of the Tinder kind, horny Page Six celebrities, and, in response, moral outrage that can be expressed in 140 characters. What more can a democracy want? Who has time to read de Tocqueville anyway?</p>
<p>For all I know, the affair might actually swing millennials to Trump, much the way that scandal hasn’t exactly done in the Kardashians.</p>
<p>Look at the crowds flocking to Trump rallies after the debate while Hillary still has to bus in her claque.</p>
<p>According to electoral orthodoxy, Trump is road kill, hoist, so to speak, by his own petard. He will lose Ohio, North Carolina and Florida, and thus the presidency. His hope of a new coalition that would turn Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina into red states is dead.</p>
<p>In those swing states, the moral majority will recoil at his boorish sexism and elect Hillary Clinton. On her side, presumably, are women, minorities, and college-educated voters, few of whom ever tried to grope the host of the Miss America pageant.</p>
<p>Trump will only manage to carry the Second Amendment crowd and those who think that Hillary wants to deliver America to what, in the lingua franca of the right, is called “globalism”—a loose confederation that includes the UN and Agenda 21, gun controllers, the New York Times, abortionists, atheists, George Soros, the EU, Iranian sympathizers, the Federal Reserve Bank, Davos, married gays, and Angela Merkel.</p>
<p>In the language of Star Wars, this could be the Trade Federation that Darth Trump is pledged to eliminate, at least in his fervid, 3 a.m. imagination. I can’t see him winning—not during this year’s ratings sweep anyway—but what will happen when the standard-bearer for Trumpism isn’t someone as capricious as The Donald. Then you might want to hide the china.</p>
<p>That’s all for now. Write me in a day or two. By then, the world will have changed.</p> | 1,130 |
<p>A young woman only identifying herself as a Stanford student in <a href="http://www.stanforddaily.com/2016/03/22/making-the-personal-political-one-girls-decision-to-have-an-abortion/" type="external">The Stanford Daily</a> boasted about how smart she was for having an abortion.</p>
<p>The student began her essay by acknowledging that she knew that she had always known she was smarter that any traditional strictures her faith presented, writing, “I have always considered myself to be a feminist. Growing up Catholic, my non-traditional beliefs occasionally got me into trouble with teachers, fights with peers and a few detentions along the way. From an early age, I never questioned that should I need to make a choice that went against my religious upbringing, I would make it without regret.”</p>
<p>By high school, she admits, “I made the assumption that most young people make — that I was infallible and invincible and would remain untouched by the darker side of fate. After all, I was accepted to Stanford, one of the most prestigious schools in the country, and my GPA now proves that, to at least some degree, I’m succeeding here.”</p>
<p>Note the equating of one’s GPA with wisdom.</p>
<p>Continuing: “My life changed in a bathroom stall. I knew before looking at it what the pregnancy test would say. I knew what it would say, and I knew what I would have to do after.”</p>
<p>Of course she did. She was smart, as she freely brags: “I knew I was smart. I know I am smart. I have been told by parents, educators and mentors that I am smart. Tests and transcripts only further serve to confirm that.”</p>
<p>Since her GPA was so high … “I knew the smart decision. I made the smart decision immediately upon seeing those two lines. I called Planned Parenthood and set up the soonest appointment possible.”</p>
<p>Of course, the thought of the baby plagued her a little: “I had my abortion on a Tuesday morning. I had known I was pregnant for five days, and I thought about that baby every minute during each one of those.”</p>
<p>That baby.</p>
<p>Then, of course, because murder does tend to leave one spiritually alone, she found commonality: “But when it came time to purge the phrases I wanted to express from myself, I realized the reality was the exact opposite. Every woman who has had an abortion comes with a different story, many from more desperate and infinitely less supportive situations than mine; many go alone, and to them I say: You are the bravest women I may never have the pleasure to know. But every woman who has an abortion and comes to the conclusion of her own volition knows that this is the smart decision.”</p>
<p>Doubling down: “It might not feel like the right one, or the moral one, or even the one you want to make, but it is the smart one. It might be that no one ever tells you that you or your decision is smart. But you are, and it was.”</p>
<p>"I knew I was smart. I know I am smart."</p>
<p>Stanford student who had an abortion</p>
<p>But look at what she’s learned: “While relieving, my abortion has caused me to undergo a process of reliving and relearning. I relive aspects of the procedure or think about what would have happened had I made other decisions. I relearn ways to forgive, love and move on.”</p>
<p>How much does murdering her unborn child affect her? “Above all, know that the decision is not made lightly. It is something that will stay with me like a gentle bruise on my brain — sensitive, but a reminder that all things heal in time.”</p>
<p>Not all things.</p> | Stanford Student: I'm Smart. Aborting My Baby Was Smart. | true | https://dailywire.com/news/4302/stanford-student-im-smart-aborting-my-baby-was-hank-berrien | 2016-03-22 | 0right
| Stanford Student: I'm Smart. Aborting My Baby Was Smart.
<p>A young woman only identifying herself as a Stanford student in <a href="http://www.stanforddaily.com/2016/03/22/making-the-personal-political-one-girls-decision-to-have-an-abortion/" type="external">The Stanford Daily</a> boasted about how smart she was for having an abortion.</p>
<p>The student began her essay by acknowledging that she knew that she had always known she was smarter that any traditional strictures her faith presented, writing, “I have always considered myself to be a feminist. Growing up Catholic, my non-traditional beliefs occasionally got me into trouble with teachers, fights with peers and a few detentions along the way. From an early age, I never questioned that should I need to make a choice that went against my religious upbringing, I would make it without regret.”</p>
<p>By high school, she admits, “I made the assumption that most young people make — that I was infallible and invincible and would remain untouched by the darker side of fate. After all, I was accepted to Stanford, one of the most prestigious schools in the country, and my GPA now proves that, to at least some degree, I’m succeeding here.”</p>
<p>Note the equating of one’s GPA with wisdom.</p>
<p>Continuing: “My life changed in a bathroom stall. I knew before looking at it what the pregnancy test would say. I knew what it would say, and I knew what I would have to do after.”</p>
<p>Of course she did. She was smart, as she freely brags: “I knew I was smart. I know I am smart. I have been told by parents, educators and mentors that I am smart. Tests and transcripts only further serve to confirm that.”</p>
<p>Since her GPA was so high … “I knew the smart decision. I made the smart decision immediately upon seeing those two lines. I called Planned Parenthood and set up the soonest appointment possible.”</p>
<p>Of course, the thought of the baby plagued her a little: “I had my abortion on a Tuesday morning. I had known I was pregnant for five days, and I thought about that baby every minute during each one of those.”</p>
<p>That baby.</p>
<p>Then, of course, because murder does tend to leave one spiritually alone, she found commonality: “But when it came time to purge the phrases I wanted to express from myself, I realized the reality was the exact opposite. Every woman who has had an abortion comes with a different story, many from more desperate and infinitely less supportive situations than mine; many go alone, and to them I say: You are the bravest women I may never have the pleasure to know. But every woman who has an abortion and comes to the conclusion of her own volition knows that this is the smart decision.”</p>
<p>Doubling down: “It might not feel like the right one, or the moral one, or even the one you want to make, but it is the smart one. It might be that no one ever tells you that you or your decision is smart. But you are, and it was.”</p>
<p>"I knew I was smart. I know I am smart."</p>
<p>Stanford student who had an abortion</p>
<p>But look at what she’s learned: “While relieving, my abortion has caused me to undergo a process of reliving and relearning. I relive aspects of the procedure or think about what would have happened had I made other decisions. I relearn ways to forgive, love and move on.”</p>
<p>How much does murdering her unborn child affect her? “Above all, know that the decision is not made lightly. It is something that will stay with me like a gentle bruise on my brain — sensitive, but a reminder that all things heal in time.”</p>
<p>Not all things.</p> | 1,131 |
<p>Britain's chief Brexit negotiator faced a jeering House of Commons on Tuesday, as lawmakers returning from summer recess challenged government plans to "intensify" talks with the European Union.</p>
<p>David Davis ticked off what he described as accomplishments thus far in the negotiations and described Britain's position as "flexible and pragmatic." As the heckles rose, a languid Davis leaned against the dispatch box and said his message to the European Commission had always been to "put people above process."</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"Ultimately, businesses and citizens on both sides want us to move swiftly on to discussing the future partnership and we want that to happen after the European Council in October, if possible," he said.</p>
<p>Britain wants to persuade the 27 other EU nations to start negotiating a future relationship that would include a free trade deal between Britain and the EU by the fall.</p>
<p>The EU says those negotiations can't start until sufficient progress has been made on three initial issues: how much money the U.K. will have to pay to leave the bloc; whether security checks and customs duties will be instituted on the Irish border; and the status of EU nationals living in Britain.</p>
<p>Brussels has expressed frustration on the course of the talks.</p>
<p>As Davis argued progress had been made on citizens' rights, financial settlements, Ireland and Northern Ireland, the chamber erupted into laughter and still more jeers. Unfazed, Davis pressed on.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>"Nobody has ever pretended this would be simple or easy," he said.</p>
<p>The opposition Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, argued that "too many promises" had been made about Brexit which "can't be kept."</p>
<p>"It is a fantasy to think that you can have a deep and comprehensive trade deal without shared institution and the sooner we face up to that the better," Starmer said.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Theresa May is bracing for the first test of the government's new term of office. Lawmakers this week will begin debating the Brexit Repeal Bill, which will effectively transfer EU law to U.K. statute books on the day Britain leaves the bloc.</p>
<p>Opposition Labour Party members have said they will vote against the bill, arguing it would allow ministers to "grab power from Parliament."</p>
<p>Some members of May's Conservative Party are suggesting they may vote against the bill in the later stages of the legislative process.</p> | UK Brexit chief faces jeering lawmakers during talks update | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/09/05/uk-brexit-chief-faces-lawmakers-after-summer-recess.html | 2017-09-05 | 0right
| UK Brexit chief faces jeering lawmakers during talks update
<p>Britain's chief Brexit negotiator faced a jeering House of Commons on Tuesday, as lawmakers returning from summer recess challenged government plans to "intensify" talks with the European Union.</p>
<p>David Davis ticked off what he described as accomplishments thus far in the negotiations and described Britain's position as "flexible and pragmatic." As the heckles rose, a languid Davis leaned against the dispatch box and said his message to the European Commission had always been to "put people above process."</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"Ultimately, businesses and citizens on both sides want us to move swiftly on to discussing the future partnership and we want that to happen after the European Council in October, if possible," he said.</p>
<p>Britain wants to persuade the 27 other EU nations to start negotiating a future relationship that would include a free trade deal between Britain and the EU by the fall.</p>
<p>The EU says those negotiations can't start until sufficient progress has been made on three initial issues: how much money the U.K. will have to pay to leave the bloc; whether security checks and customs duties will be instituted on the Irish border; and the status of EU nationals living in Britain.</p>
<p>Brussels has expressed frustration on the course of the talks.</p>
<p>As Davis argued progress had been made on citizens' rights, financial settlements, Ireland and Northern Ireland, the chamber erupted into laughter and still more jeers. Unfazed, Davis pressed on.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>"Nobody has ever pretended this would be simple or easy," he said.</p>
<p>The opposition Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, argued that "too many promises" had been made about Brexit which "can't be kept."</p>
<p>"It is a fantasy to think that you can have a deep and comprehensive trade deal without shared institution and the sooner we face up to that the better," Starmer said.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Theresa May is bracing for the first test of the government's new term of office. Lawmakers this week will begin debating the Brexit Repeal Bill, which will effectively transfer EU law to U.K. statute books on the day Britain leaves the bloc.</p>
<p>Opposition Labour Party members have said they will vote against the bill, arguing it would allow ministers to "grab power from Parliament."</p>
<p>Some members of May's Conservative Party are suggesting they may vote against the bill in the later stages of the legislative process.</p> | 1,132 |
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Police in Madison, Wisconsin, arrested a hairstylist after he gave a customer a very unwanted Larry Fine hairdo.</p>
<p>Police spokesman Joel DeSpain says the 22-year-old victim told officers the stylist asked him to stop fidgeting and moving his head during the Friday haircut. <a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime/police-madison-hair-stylist-arrested-for-allegedly-snipping-customer-s/article_38feb0ea-1cfb-50b0-957e-3f32f32a76f3.html" type="external">The Wisconsin State Journal</a> reports that DeSpain says the stylist then nicked the customer’s ear with his clippers before running them down the middle of the man’s head on their shortest attachment, “leaving him looking a bit like Larry from ‘The Three Stooges.’”</p>
<p>DeSpain says officers arrested the 46-year-old hairstylist, Khaled A. Shabani, who pleaded not guilty to disorderly conduct Wednesday. DeSpain says Shabani told officers it was an accident.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external">http://www.madison.com/wsj</a></p>
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Police in Madison, Wisconsin, arrested a hairstylist after he gave a customer a very unwanted Larry Fine hairdo.</p>
<p>Police spokesman Joel DeSpain says the 22-year-old victim told officers the stylist asked him to stop fidgeting and moving his head during the Friday haircut. <a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime/police-madison-hair-stylist-arrested-for-allegedly-snipping-customer-s/article_38feb0ea-1cfb-50b0-957e-3f32f32a76f3.html" type="external">The Wisconsin State Journal</a> reports that DeSpain says the stylist then nicked the customer’s ear with his clippers before running them down the middle of the man’s head on their shortest attachment, “leaving him looking a bit like Larry from ‘The Three Stooges.’”</p>
<p>DeSpain says officers arrested the 46-year-old hairstylist, Khaled A. Shabani, who pleaded not guilty to disorderly conduct Wednesday. DeSpain says Shabani told officers it was an accident.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external">http://www.madison.com/wsj</a></p> | Stylist accused of giving man unwanted ‘Stooges’ hairdo | false | https://apnews.com/cc85c11d9e1d490c80ae4dbfe0263c72 | 2017-12-27 | 2least
| Stylist accused of giving man unwanted ‘Stooges’ hairdo
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Police in Madison, Wisconsin, arrested a hairstylist after he gave a customer a very unwanted Larry Fine hairdo.</p>
<p>Police spokesman Joel DeSpain says the 22-year-old victim told officers the stylist asked him to stop fidgeting and moving his head during the Friday haircut. <a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime/police-madison-hair-stylist-arrested-for-allegedly-snipping-customer-s/article_38feb0ea-1cfb-50b0-957e-3f32f32a76f3.html" type="external">The Wisconsin State Journal</a> reports that DeSpain says the stylist then nicked the customer’s ear with his clippers before running them down the middle of the man’s head on their shortest attachment, “leaving him looking a bit like Larry from ‘The Three Stooges.’”</p>
<p>DeSpain says officers arrested the 46-year-old hairstylist, Khaled A. Shabani, who pleaded not guilty to disorderly conduct Wednesday. DeSpain says Shabani told officers it was an accident.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external">http://www.madison.com/wsj</a></p>
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Police in Madison, Wisconsin, arrested a hairstylist after he gave a customer a very unwanted Larry Fine hairdo.</p>
<p>Police spokesman Joel DeSpain says the 22-year-old victim told officers the stylist asked him to stop fidgeting and moving his head during the Friday haircut. <a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime/police-madison-hair-stylist-arrested-for-allegedly-snipping-customer-s/article_38feb0ea-1cfb-50b0-957e-3f32f32a76f3.html" type="external">The Wisconsin State Journal</a> reports that DeSpain says the stylist then nicked the customer’s ear with his clippers before running them down the middle of the man’s head on their shortest attachment, “leaving him looking a bit like Larry from ‘The Three Stooges.’”</p>
<p>DeSpain says officers arrested the 46-year-old hairstylist, Khaled A. Shabani, who pleaded not guilty to disorderly conduct Wednesday. DeSpain says Shabani told officers it was an accident.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external">http://www.madison.com/wsj</a></p> | 1,133 |
<p>As the son of Mexican immigrants, in the current climate of hyper-xenophobia in the U.S., I often ask myself: Where’s our Gandhi who will stage a prolonged hunger strike for the humanity of undocumented workers?&#160; Where’s our Martin Luther King with the magnificent oratory skills capable of moving a country in the right direction for those who toil in our agricultural fields, front yards, homes and kitchens?</p>
<p>These perilous times seem to bring out the worst in many Americans.&#160; In the heat of the healthcare debate, for example, conservatives have found their favorite piñata to hit when they no longer have an argument to derail universal healthcare.&#160; While the Republican Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina made a fool of himself by shouting “You Lie!” in the middle of President Obama’s eloquent speech in a joint session of Congress, most of the attention surrounding Wilson’s outburst centered on issues of civility and respect for the office of the president.</p>
<p>While Democrats and average Americans have the right to be outraged at Wilson and fellow Republicans for disrespecting Obama by yelling at him like a drunken heckler in a comedy club and continuously calling him a racist, socialist and fascist, I’ve heard virtually nothing in defense of immigrants.&#160; Republicans and those blind followers who attend town hall meetings to rant and rave about the government “killing granny,” about Obama implementing a “socialist-type” healthcare system and, now, picking on immigrants should be ashamed of themselves.</p>
<p>What about the estimated 47 million Americans in this country without health insurance who run a higher risk of getting life threatening diseases and resorting to bankruptcy when they can’t afford their medical bills?&#160; How does the saying go?: “If a heart attack doesn’t kill you, the medical bill will.”&#160; Where are these same Americans who rant and rave at the town hall meeting when the insurance companies “kill granny” because she lost her medical benefits due to a pre-existing medical condition?&#160; And what about those countless immigrants who care for elderly Americans yet they themselves lack healthcare during their golden years?</p>
<p>This is not the time for Obama and the Democrats to reach across the political aisle to get Republicans on board with universal healthcare when conservatives have repeatedly rejected the notion that healthcare should be a right enjoyed by everyone in this country.&#160; It seems that the Republicans are perfectly content with the free market, despite the fact that those who benefit from the market care mostly about market shares and profit margins at the expense of those who have been left to suffer without access to affordable healthcare.</p>
<p>And this is diffidently not the time for Obama and the Democrats to get the Republicans on board when it comes to issues of immigration vis-à-vis healthcare issues.&#160; If we are to believe the written words of the late Senator Ted Kennedy that access to healthcare is above all a moral issue, then why should it matter if someone lacks legal status in this country?&#160; Aren’t immigrants, with or without legal documents, also human?&#160; Don’t they have a right to live a healthy life too, especially since Americans benefit tremendously from the sweat and labor of undocumented immigrants in this country?&#160; Are immigrants truly free riders, to use an economist’s terminology, if they put into the system more than they receive?&#160; Immigrants, for example, can’t file for tax returns or receive Social Security benefits, yet they pay into the system through their labor and purchase power.</p>
<p>Let’s stop with the hypocrisy!&#160; Immigrants have historically contributed to making this nation the most powerful and affluent country in the world.&#160; From building the railroads to the freeways, from making the bricks to the buildings, from growing our food to serving it, from raising the children of the affluent classes to cleaning their homes, immigrants continue to perform the most dangerous and stigmatized jobs in this country.&#160; And what do they get in return?: “You lie!”</p>
<p>It’s time for both Democrats and Republicans, along with average Americans, to acknowledge, appreciate and incorporate the over 12 million undocumented workers in this country into the mainstream system so that los de abajo (those on the bottom) can also enjoy the fruits of their labor with a sense of dignity and respect that they’ve earned.</p>
<p>ALVARO HUERTA is a doctoral student at UC Berkeley. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | In Defense of the Undocumented | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/09/14/in-defense-of-the-undocumented/ | 2009-09-14 | 4left
| In Defense of the Undocumented
<p>As the son of Mexican immigrants, in the current climate of hyper-xenophobia in the U.S., I often ask myself: Where’s our Gandhi who will stage a prolonged hunger strike for the humanity of undocumented workers?&#160; Where’s our Martin Luther King with the magnificent oratory skills capable of moving a country in the right direction for those who toil in our agricultural fields, front yards, homes and kitchens?</p>
<p>These perilous times seem to bring out the worst in many Americans.&#160; In the heat of the healthcare debate, for example, conservatives have found their favorite piñata to hit when they no longer have an argument to derail universal healthcare.&#160; While the Republican Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina made a fool of himself by shouting “You Lie!” in the middle of President Obama’s eloquent speech in a joint session of Congress, most of the attention surrounding Wilson’s outburst centered on issues of civility and respect for the office of the president.</p>
<p>While Democrats and average Americans have the right to be outraged at Wilson and fellow Republicans for disrespecting Obama by yelling at him like a drunken heckler in a comedy club and continuously calling him a racist, socialist and fascist, I’ve heard virtually nothing in defense of immigrants.&#160; Republicans and those blind followers who attend town hall meetings to rant and rave about the government “killing granny,” about Obama implementing a “socialist-type” healthcare system and, now, picking on immigrants should be ashamed of themselves.</p>
<p>What about the estimated 47 million Americans in this country without health insurance who run a higher risk of getting life threatening diseases and resorting to bankruptcy when they can’t afford their medical bills?&#160; How does the saying go?: “If a heart attack doesn’t kill you, the medical bill will.”&#160; Where are these same Americans who rant and rave at the town hall meeting when the insurance companies “kill granny” because she lost her medical benefits due to a pre-existing medical condition?&#160; And what about those countless immigrants who care for elderly Americans yet they themselves lack healthcare during their golden years?</p>
<p>This is not the time for Obama and the Democrats to reach across the political aisle to get Republicans on board with universal healthcare when conservatives have repeatedly rejected the notion that healthcare should be a right enjoyed by everyone in this country.&#160; It seems that the Republicans are perfectly content with the free market, despite the fact that those who benefit from the market care mostly about market shares and profit margins at the expense of those who have been left to suffer without access to affordable healthcare.</p>
<p>And this is diffidently not the time for Obama and the Democrats to get the Republicans on board when it comes to issues of immigration vis-à-vis healthcare issues.&#160; If we are to believe the written words of the late Senator Ted Kennedy that access to healthcare is above all a moral issue, then why should it matter if someone lacks legal status in this country?&#160; Aren’t immigrants, with or without legal documents, also human?&#160; Don’t they have a right to live a healthy life too, especially since Americans benefit tremendously from the sweat and labor of undocumented immigrants in this country?&#160; Are immigrants truly free riders, to use an economist’s terminology, if they put into the system more than they receive?&#160; Immigrants, for example, can’t file for tax returns or receive Social Security benefits, yet they pay into the system through their labor and purchase power.</p>
<p>Let’s stop with the hypocrisy!&#160; Immigrants have historically contributed to making this nation the most powerful and affluent country in the world.&#160; From building the railroads to the freeways, from making the bricks to the buildings, from growing our food to serving it, from raising the children of the affluent classes to cleaning their homes, immigrants continue to perform the most dangerous and stigmatized jobs in this country.&#160; And what do they get in return?: “You lie!”</p>
<p>It’s time for both Democrats and Republicans, along with average Americans, to acknowledge, appreciate and incorporate the over 12 million undocumented workers in this country into the mainstream system so that los de abajo (those on the bottom) can also enjoy the fruits of their labor with a sense of dignity and respect that they’ve earned.</p>
<p>ALVARO HUERTA is a doctoral student at UC Berkeley. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 1,134 |
<p>While the problems facing George Dubya and Parson Blair, are receiving world-wide attention,the rising sea of problems surrounding their Australian ally, John Howard haven’t been widely reported outside Australia, although they are now starting to follow a similar pattern.</p>
<p>Howard, it will be recalled,was the most passionate and sycophantic of Bush’s allies in the co-called Coalition. of the Willing. In this he followed the past traditions of Australian conservatism,which has always been more than ready to respond to the call of the Imperial Power whether in London or Washington. Howard is in many ways, a man of the 1950’s, still recalling an Australia that has long since vanished.</p>
<p>Never at home with the multi-cultural nation that has emerged in the past generation, Howard was happy to profit from the meteoric rise (and later fall) of the far-right, racist One Nation Party and its populist leader Pauline Hanson. Later of course one of Howard’s Ministers, Abbot (know as the Mad Monk to his critics), masterminded an attack on Hanson, which eventually saw her jailed for electoral fraud, then cleared on appeal.</p>
<p>Howard has rejected an apology to the Aboriginal people, an idea widely supported by the previous Labor Government, and he led a clever campaign which saw the referendum on the Republic defeated because of divisions amongst the republican movement.</p>
<p>When he came to power in 1996 Howard and Bill Clinton had a rather cool relationship, and indeed on the occasion of Clinton’s visit to Sydney in 1998, there was a famous clash between Hilary Clinton and Howard’s extremely conservative wife Janet, over the guest list for a Sydney function, which Hilary quietly subverted. The original guest list having been stacked with conservative friends of Mrs Howard,while Hilary Clinton wanted to meet a swath of Sydney’s left-liberal and feminist groups.</p>
<p>When Bush came to power Howard and Dubya became instant best buddies (Howard also warmed at the same time to Silvio Berlusconi which says a lot about his political tastes). By a quirk Howard was in Washington on 9-11, and was afterwards filled with an almost religious zeal for the Bush-Rumsfeld Agenda. He supported the plans for the war with Iraq and committed troops in the teeth of the largest anti-war demonstrations ever seen in Australia, and overwhelming opposition in the opinion polls. He even was emboldened to claim that Australian Intelligence input played an important role in shaping the US-British decision to go to war, a statement which has now come back to haunt him Howard showed clever footwork after May 2003.</p>
<p>Taking Dubya’s proclamation of an end to hostilities as his base, Howard removed the Australians from Iraq, save for a small presence still there. This, he must have assumed, would save him from the troubles resulting from the continuing hostilities. However he has been caught up in the growing debate at home and abroad about the WMDs. His line has been to say that Australia doesn’t actually gather much intelligence information, but relies on our great and powerful friends, a disingenuous argument now beginning to become hard to defend, as it tends to paint Australia as the dumb, junior partner in the Coalition.</p>
<p>Worse, the Labor Party opposition in a recent party coup, dumped its rather lack-lustre leader Crean,and went for a maverick, Mark Latham, who in the debate in the House of Representatives on the war last April, described Bush, as “the most dangerous, man ever to be president of the USA” and his Cabinet as “a Conga Line of Suckholes.” (Yes. Australian politicians have a rather earthy style!) These statements brought cries of protests from the US Embassy in Canberra, when they were made. Little did the Ambassador know that within months Latham would be Labor leader.</p>
<p>Latham’s first months in office have been marked by a Honeymoon with the media and the voters, and the latest polls put Labor 8% ahead (54-46), with an election looming later in the year.</p>
<p>A few days ago Latham got a standing ovation from the national Convention of the Australian labor Party,w hen he said “Australia will be nobody’s Deputy”. This was a direct shot at Howard’s notorious statement last year when he said he would be Dubya’s Deputy in South east Asia, a remark that brought outrage from Asian leaders who detest Howard by and large, and which came only months before the Bali bombing, which killed many Australian tourists, and seems to have been a terrorist attack clearly intended to target Australians.</p>
<p>Howard now faces demands for an Inquiry into a whole range of Iraq related matters,and will certainly face trouble in the Senate, where his Government if outnumbered by the Labor Party and several other minor parties on the centre-left. Howard must be hoping wistfully for some assistance from his now beleaguered friends in London and Washington, assistance which is unlikely in the months ahead as Australia moves towards a federal Election.</p>
<p>BRIAN McKINLAY is an Historian,and author of a number of books on Australian History,most notably a three-volume “Documentary History of the Australian Labor Movement” and “Australia,1942: An end of Innocence.” He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Howard’s Last Round-Up? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2004/02/04/howard-s-last-round-up/ | 2004-02-04 | 4left
| Howard’s Last Round-Up?
<p>While the problems facing George Dubya and Parson Blair, are receiving world-wide attention,the rising sea of problems surrounding their Australian ally, John Howard haven’t been widely reported outside Australia, although they are now starting to follow a similar pattern.</p>
<p>Howard, it will be recalled,was the most passionate and sycophantic of Bush’s allies in the co-called Coalition. of the Willing. In this he followed the past traditions of Australian conservatism,which has always been more than ready to respond to the call of the Imperial Power whether in London or Washington. Howard is in many ways, a man of the 1950’s, still recalling an Australia that has long since vanished.</p>
<p>Never at home with the multi-cultural nation that has emerged in the past generation, Howard was happy to profit from the meteoric rise (and later fall) of the far-right, racist One Nation Party and its populist leader Pauline Hanson. Later of course one of Howard’s Ministers, Abbot (know as the Mad Monk to his critics), masterminded an attack on Hanson, which eventually saw her jailed for electoral fraud, then cleared on appeal.</p>
<p>Howard has rejected an apology to the Aboriginal people, an idea widely supported by the previous Labor Government, and he led a clever campaign which saw the referendum on the Republic defeated because of divisions amongst the republican movement.</p>
<p>When he came to power in 1996 Howard and Bill Clinton had a rather cool relationship, and indeed on the occasion of Clinton’s visit to Sydney in 1998, there was a famous clash between Hilary Clinton and Howard’s extremely conservative wife Janet, over the guest list for a Sydney function, which Hilary quietly subverted. The original guest list having been stacked with conservative friends of Mrs Howard,while Hilary Clinton wanted to meet a swath of Sydney’s left-liberal and feminist groups.</p>
<p>When Bush came to power Howard and Dubya became instant best buddies (Howard also warmed at the same time to Silvio Berlusconi which says a lot about his political tastes). By a quirk Howard was in Washington on 9-11, and was afterwards filled with an almost religious zeal for the Bush-Rumsfeld Agenda. He supported the plans for the war with Iraq and committed troops in the teeth of the largest anti-war demonstrations ever seen in Australia, and overwhelming opposition in the opinion polls. He even was emboldened to claim that Australian Intelligence input played an important role in shaping the US-British decision to go to war, a statement which has now come back to haunt him Howard showed clever footwork after May 2003.</p>
<p>Taking Dubya’s proclamation of an end to hostilities as his base, Howard removed the Australians from Iraq, save for a small presence still there. This, he must have assumed, would save him from the troubles resulting from the continuing hostilities. However he has been caught up in the growing debate at home and abroad about the WMDs. His line has been to say that Australia doesn’t actually gather much intelligence information, but relies on our great and powerful friends, a disingenuous argument now beginning to become hard to defend, as it tends to paint Australia as the dumb, junior partner in the Coalition.</p>
<p>Worse, the Labor Party opposition in a recent party coup, dumped its rather lack-lustre leader Crean,and went for a maverick, Mark Latham, who in the debate in the House of Representatives on the war last April, described Bush, as “the most dangerous, man ever to be president of the USA” and his Cabinet as “a Conga Line of Suckholes.” (Yes. Australian politicians have a rather earthy style!) These statements brought cries of protests from the US Embassy in Canberra, when they were made. Little did the Ambassador know that within months Latham would be Labor leader.</p>
<p>Latham’s first months in office have been marked by a Honeymoon with the media and the voters, and the latest polls put Labor 8% ahead (54-46), with an election looming later in the year.</p>
<p>A few days ago Latham got a standing ovation from the national Convention of the Australian labor Party,w hen he said “Australia will be nobody’s Deputy”. This was a direct shot at Howard’s notorious statement last year when he said he would be Dubya’s Deputy in South east Asia, a remark that brought outrage from Asian leaders who detest Howard by and large, and which came only months before the Bali bombing, which killed many Australian tourists, and seems to have been a terrorist attack clearly intended to target Australians.</p>
<p>Howard now faces demands for an Inquiry into a whole range of Iraq related matters,and will certainly face trouble in the Senate, where his Government if outnumbered by the Labor Party and several other minor parties on the centre-left. Howard must be hoping wistfully for some assistance from his now beleaguered friends in London and Washington, assistance which is unlikely in the months ahead as Australia moves towards a federal Election.</p>
<p>BRIAN McKINLAY is an Historian,and author of a number of books on Australian History,most notably a three-volume “Documentary History of the Australian Labor Movement” and “Australia,1942: An end of Innocence.” He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 1,135 |
<p />
<p />
<p>Earlier this week, Julian Assange reportedly sent out a cryptic message debunking rumors that the WikiLeaks organization has been attacked and dismantled by shadow intelligence operatives. The message also claims that the stories circulating on image board website 8chan are fake.</p>
<p>For a couple of days now, Assange, the famed whistleblower and founder of WikiLeaks, has been presumed missing while some even believed that he's already dead.</p>
<p>These speculations emerged shortly after reports of Pizzagate, which refers to the controversial link between Hillary Clinton's Clinton Foundation and a child prostitution ring in Haiti, surfaced. This reportedly prompted Assistant Director Monica Peterson of the Human Trafficking Center to travel to Haiti to investigate the allegations. However, sources claimed that upon reaching the Caribbean state, Peterson turned up dead.</p>
<p>Then, an individual claiming to be a staff member of WikiLeaks revealed that the organization's facilities were raided during the same time that the Ecuadorian Embassy decided to cut off Assange's Internet access. According to this person, following these events, all of the WikiLeaks staffers lost contact with Assange.</p>
<p>"We had several contingency communication plans in place, and I have been unable to contact Julian or any WikiLeaks personnel except for one through our alternative communication channels," the person claimed through the 8chan post. "Julian is missing as are most of the WikiLeaks personnel that I had regular communications with. WikiLeaks personnel are not in control of the official Twitter account. The WikiLeaks IAMA on Reddit was not conducted by WikiLeaks personnel."</p>
<p>The post strengthened the speculations surrounding Assange's status and even confirmed the worst fears of his supporters.</p>
<p>But, on Nov. 20, a couple of days after the 8chan post was publicized, a cryptic message appeared on Blockchain, an online platform that monitors Bitcoin transactions. Through a series of transactions, the message "We're fine 8chan post fake" appeared.</p>
<p>Many believe that the message came from Assange himself. It also seems to serve as a confirmation that WikiLeaks is still operational and has not been taken over by covert agencies. More importantly, it is an indication that Assange is still alive.</p> | Julian Assange Uses Cryptic Message to Debunk WikiLeaks Post on 8chan | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/554-Julian-Assange-Uses-Cryptic-Message-to-Debunk-WikiLeaks-Post-on-8chan | 2016-11-22 | 0right
| Julian Assange Uses Cryptic Message to Debunk WikiLeaks Post on 8chan
<p />
<p />
<p>Earlier this week, Julian Assange reportedly sent out a cryptic message debunking rumors that the WikiLeaks organization has been attacked and dismantled by shadow intelligence operatives. The message also claims that the stories circulating on image board website 8chan are fake.</p>
<p>For a couple of days now, Assange, the famed whistleblower and founder of WikiLeaks, has been presumed missing while some even believed that he's already dead.</p>
<p>These speculations emerged shortly after reports of Pizzagate, which refers to the controversial link between Hillary Clinton's Clinton Foundation and a child prostitution ring in Haiti, surfaced. This reportedly prompted Assistant Director Monica Peterson of the Human Trafficking Center to travel to Haiti to investigate the allegations. However, sources claimed that upon reaching the Caribbean state, Peterson turned up dead.</p>
<p>Then, an individual claiming to be a staff member of WikiLeaks revealed that the organization's facilities were raided during the same time that the Ecuadorian Embassy decided to cut off Assange's Internet access. According to this person, following these events, all of the WikiLeaks staffers lost contact with Assange.</p>
<p>"We had several contingency communication plans in place, and I have been unable to contact Julian or any WikiLeaks personnel except for one through our alternative communication channels," the person claimed through the 8chan post. "Julian is missing as are most of the WikiLeaks personnel that I had regular communications with. WikiLeaks personnel are not in control of the official Twitter account. The WikiLeaks IAMA on Reddit was not conducted by WikiLeaks personnel."</p>
<p>The post strengthened the speculations surrounding Assange's status and even confirmed the worst fears of his supporters.</p>
<p>But, on Nov. 20, a couple of days after the 8chan post was publicized, a cryptic message appeared on Blockchain, an online platform that monitors Bitcoin transactions. Through a series of transactions, the message "We're fine 8chan post fake" appeared.</p>
<p>Many believe that the message came from Assange himself. It also seems to serve as a confirmation that WikiLeaks is still operational and has not been taken over by covert agencies. More importantly, it is an indication that Assange is still alive.</p> | 1,136 |
<p>Plus, join Howard Kurtz and The Daily Beast team for a <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2010/11/02/election-night-live-chat-w-editors-of-the-daily-beast.html" type="external">live chat on the elections</a> tonight at 8 p.m. EST, read your <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2010/11/01/your-2010-election-guide.html" type="external">election guide</a>, and <a href="" type="internal">check the Election Oracle for predictions</a>.</p>
<p>At rallies today in Pennsylvania and Nevada, First Lady Michelle Obama—known as “The Closer” on the 2008 campaign trail—is making a last-ditch closing argument for the Democrats.</p>
<p>She's hit eight cities in the last two weeks, emerging from months of political hibernation—OK, speaking out for healthy food and better schools—in an 11th-hour push aimed at staving off a scheduled landslide. Making whistle stops in New York, California, Illinois, Colorado, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Washington State, she's determined to rally the base. “We can’t stop now; we’ve come too far,” she told a dinner crowd in Seattle—adding a “Yes we can!" fist pump as an afterthought.</p>
<p>If anybody can, Michelle can—at least on paper. At a time when her husband's approval rating has plummeted, hers stand strong at 70 percent—making her one of the most popular figures in Washington. And she appeals to a crucial constituency—female voters, a decisive bloc this fall. "She’s a terrific asset to Democrats this cycle,” says Jen Bluestein, communications director at Emily’s List. It helps that Mrs. Obama projects that purple glow her husband used to talk about. “She’s very popular with Democrats but she’s also increasingly popular with Republicans and Independents,” adds Hari Sevugan, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee.</p>
<p>The woman who conspicuously coined the term “mom-in-chief” has yet to embrace the trend toward unapologetic female political empowerment.</p>
<p>But on the trail, Obama has yet to embrace the trend toward bare-knuckled female political empowerment.</p>
<p>Which raises a tough question: Could the country’s most popular female political figure have started earlier, shouted louder, and helped turn the straying sisters around? Or has the first lady—who famously coined the title “mom-in-chief”—relinquished the feminist brand, to the detriment of the Democrats?</p>
<p>As far as the East Wing is concerned, Obama has played ball. “She always wants to be value added toward what the administration is doing,” says Katherine McCormick-Lelyveld, Obama’s press secretary. “The midterms are a key part of that.”</p>
<p>But “She’s become perhaps more guarded and more cautious in her presentation,” says Patrice Yursik, a black beauty blogger who attended a California women’s conference at which Michelle Obama spoke last month. “There was no mention that we’re even in an election season.”</p>
<p>There’s no doubt the Dems need help. If the trendlines showing up in regional polling hold true on Election Day, the Republicans will be the party making gains with female voters and candidates. In 1992, there were 140 Democrats and 82 Republican women running for the House; in 2010, the GOP has fielded an equal number of women—many of whom are poised to win. Forget Christine O’Donnell: Gubernatorial candidates Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Susana Martinez of New Mexico and New Hampshire senator-in-waiting Kelly Ayotte are just three female politicians now expected to expand the GOP map.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, prominent Democratic women—senators Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Patty Murray in Washington—are on the ropes. First-term House members Betsey Markey and Ann Kirkpatrick <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2010/06/09/kamala-harris-the-female-obama-wins-primary-for-california-attorney-general.html" type="external">face tough challenges</a> as well. Kamala Harris, a rising Democratic star running for attorney general in California, is in the fight of her life.</p>
<p>The irony is that the losing team has long supported policies that help women. The White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have stepped up their rhetoric on women and the economy in the last two weeks. But Michelle Obama may have missed an opportunity to lead the charge.</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>The political potency of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has led progressive women to call for one of their own to match the ex-governor’s volume and reach. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29traister.html?pagewanted=all" type="external">Writing in The New York Times</a>, Rebecca Traister and Anna Holmes sought “a smart, unrelenting female, who, unlike Ms. Palin, wants to tear down, not reinforce, traditional ways of looking at women.” Palin has her “Mama Grizzly” candidates—why not “Obama Grizzlies?”</p>
<p>Members of the White House political team conceded that Republicans have regained ground in the suburbs, where many of Obama’s biggest fans reside. In Illinois, losses in counties ringing the first lady’s hometown have put the governorship and the president’s former Senate seat in jeopardy. What’s more, traditionally Democratic women are tuned out. “We always have trouble with lower-income women—they trend Democratic, but they have so many things to think about," says Dick Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois. Durbin added that Obama has been very effective in connecting with the economic and social needs of working women and families, in small groups at the White House.</p>
<p>But the woman who conspicuously coined the term “mom-in-chief” has yet to embrace the trend toward unapologetic female political empowerment.</p>
<p>Indeed, Obama’s current popularity rests on perceptions of her commitment to gauzy personal issues. “What we hear the most from the field is her commitment to helping families,” says Sevugan. “[Voters] see her as someone who has the same concerns, a regular person who’s a mom and who is a wife.”</p>
<p>“She is demonstrating a tremendous sensitivity to issues that one would consider to be extremely important to children,” adds House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn. “People love her for it.”</p>
<p>But her home-and-hearth appeal hasn’t closed the deal in this noisy campaign season. Murray, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senators Russ Feingold and Michael Bennet, and Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulas all rallied with the first lady, yet are even or trailing in recent polls.</p>
<p>Of course, Mrs. Obama isn’t a magician—she isn’t even an elected official. And there may only be so much any first lady can do to move the electoral needle. But while the Democrats have many female surrogates—Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, DNC Co-Chair Donna Brazile, even Obama’s close friend Valerie Jarrett—none have been able to pack the punch of Palin. (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, arguably the party’s most influential female leader, is legally barred from campaigning.) As not just mom but woman-in-chief, Obama seemed the most likely voice to break through.</p>
<p>Part of the difficulty in converting Obama’s warm fuzzies into Democratic votes is her general approach to campaigning. On the trail, she has tended to cast political arguments in terms of family. “When I think about the issues facing our nation right now, I think about what that means for our girls,” she told a crowd in Ohio, where she made her first joint appearance with the president since 2008. “I think about what that means for the world that we’re leaving for them and, quite frankly, for all of our children.” During the flurry of debate over Arizona’s controversial immigration policy, she deflected a question from a second grader whose mother was in the United States illegally with a “yes, sweetie.”</p>
<p>When she hit up an October women’s conference in California, <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2010/10/27/meg-whitmans-other-opponent-arnold-schwarzenegger.html" type="external">capped by a debate between gubernatorial candidates Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman</a>, she spoke for 25 minutes, not about the economy that’s driving voters from Democrats, but about military families—an area of deep commitment for both Obama and second lady Jill Biden. “Michelle Obama has become very astute about what the public is going to say about her and the reaction of their political opponents will be to things that she wears, things that she says, and especially appearances she makes,” says Yursik. “It was a genuine plea, but who in their right mind is going to say something negative about her talking about military families?”</p>
<p>Courtney Martin, writing in The American Prospect, took the critique further: “Unlike Palin, who is aggravating because she's all style and no substance, the first lady is driving many a feminist batty because she's got so much substance but is shrouding it in nonthreatening style.”</p>
<p>There are those in both the East and West wings who feel more aggressive politics would be inappropriate. “I think she’s been wise to be careful and cautious,” says Juleanna Glover Weiss, a Bush administration alumnus now consulting for the Ashcroft Group. “This is not her world, it’s her husband’s world.” What’s more, this behavior is not surprising for first ladies, who are typically “not involved in the sort of horse trading that you see when we’re talking about partisan politics,” says Hilary Shelton, NAACP Washington bureau director and senior vice president for advocacy.</p>
<p>But the former nonprofit executive knows how to turn the screws when it counts. Behind the scenes of her hula-hooping and harvesting, Obama has been a tenacious lobbyist for healthy living policies to match her personal effort. When she invited members of Congress to the White House to discuss school lunch policy, they were skeptical that a bill could be passed in the face of food and soft drink industry opposition. But the first lady had done her homework—personally lobbying industry executives and including them in the conversation. “Last time we did a child nutrition bill, you couldn’t even discuss much less win a vote on the question of healthy foods and soda pop,” says Education Committee Chairman George Miller. “She was our icebreaker.”</p>
<p>And, in 2008, Obama was known for her willingness to “go there” when her husband could not. Nearly three years ago, she addressed a group of black women in South Carolina who were worried that her husband was too good to be true:</p>
<p>I equate it to that aunt or that grandmother that bought all that new furniture—spent her life savings on it and then what does she do? She puts plastic on it to protect it. That plastic gets yellow and scratches up your leg and it’s hot and sticky. But see grandma is just trying to protect that furniture—the problem is—it’s that she doesn’t get the full enjoyment—the benefit from the furniture because she’s trying to protect it. I think folks just want to protect us from the possibility of being let down—not by us—but by the world as it is. A world—they fear—is not ready for a decent man like Barack. Sometimes it seems better not to try at all than to try and fail.</p>
<p>The frank and funny speech was a hit, and marked the beginning of the surge in black voter support for her husband in the state that would lead to his securing the Democratic nomination for president.</p>
<p>The protective plastic is also a metaphor for Obama’s engagement since taking “office.” The mom-in-chief message just hasn’t roused the country—including its male half—that seems ready for strong women to lead well.</p>
<p>The DNC estimates that today’s rallies will draw tens of thousands more to hear Obama’s closing argument. It may be that 2010 hasn’t gotten the best of Obama. “She's done what she can but a lot of what she can do is limited by family—and that's not going to change," says senior White House adviser David Axelrod, who adds that 2012 will show a return to fighting form. “It's always different when you're campaigning for your husband."</p>
<p>And for Obama, it could be just the beginning: On one of the first lady’s summer trips to the Gulf Coast, residents waved “Michelle 2016” signs as a greeting.</p>
<p>Dayo Olopade is a political reporter for The Daily Beast and a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation.</p> | Michelle Obama and the Women’s Vote in 2010 Elections | true | https://thedailybeast.com/michelle-obama-and-the-womens-vote-in-2010-elections | 2018-10-07 | 4left
| Michelle Obama and the Women’s Vote in 2010 Elections
<p>Plus, join Howard Kurtz and The Daily Beast team for a <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2010/11/02/election-night-live-chat-w-editors-of-the-daily-beast.html" type="external">live chat on the elections</a> tonight at 8 p.m. EST, read your <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2010/11/01/your-2010-election-guide.html" type="external">election guide</a>, and <a href="" type="internal">check the Election Oracle for predictions</a>.</p>
<p>At rallies today in Pennsylvania and Nevada, First Lady Michelle Obama—known as “The Closer” on the 2008 campaign trail—is making a last-ditch closing argument for the Democrats.</p>
<p>She's hit eight cities in the last two weeks, emerging from months of political hibernation—OK, speaking out for healthy food and better schools—in an 11th-hour push aimed at staving off a scheduled landslide. Making whistle stops in New York, California, Illinois, Colorado, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Washington State, she's determined to rally the base. “We can’t stop now; we’ve come too far,” she told a dinner crowd in Seattle—adding a “Yes we can!" fist pump as an afterthought.</p>
<p>If anybody can, Michelle can—at least on paper. At a time when her husband's approval rating has plummeted, hers stand strong at 70 percent—making her one of the most popular figures in Washington. And she appeals to a crucial constituency—female voters, a decisive bloc this fall. "She’s a terrific asset to Democrats this cycle,” says Jen Bluestein, communications director at Emily’s List. It helps that Mrs. Obama projects that purple glow her husband used to talk about. “She’s very popular with Democrats but she’s also increasingly popular with Republicans and Independents,” adds Hari Sevugan, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee.</p>
<p>The woman who conspicuously coined the term “mom-in-chief” has yet to embrace the trend toward unapologetic female political empowerment.</p>
<p>But on the trail, Obama has yet to embrace the trend toward bare-knuckled female political empowerment.</p>
<p>Which raises a tough question: Could the country’s most popular female political figure have started earlier, shouted louder, and helped turn the straying sisters around? Or has the first lady—who famously coined the title “mom-in-chief”—relinquished the feminist brand, to the detriment of the Democrats?</p>
<p>As far as the East Wing is concerned, Obama has played ball. “She always wants to be value added toward what the administration is doing,” says Katherine McCormick-Lelyveld, Obama’s press secretary. “The midterms are a key part of that.”</p>
<p>But “She’s become perhaps more guarded and more cautious in her presentation,” says Patrice Yursik, a black beauty blogger who attended a California women’s conference at which Michelle Obama spoke last month. “There was no mention that we’re even in an election season.”</p>
<p>There’s no doubt the Dems need help. If the trendlines showing up in regional polling hold true on Election Day, the Republicans will be the party making gains with female voters and candidates. In 1992, there were 140 Democrats and 82 Republican women running for the House; in 2010, the GOP has fielded an equal number of women—many of whom are poised to win. Forget Christine O’Donnell: Gubernatorial candidates Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Susana Martinez of New Mexico and New Hampshire senator-in-waiting Kelly Ayotte are just three female politicians now expected to expand the GOP map.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, prominent Democratic women—senators Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Patty Murray in Washington—are on the ropes. First-term House members Betsey Markey and Ann Kirkpatrick <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2010/06/09/kamala-harris-the-female-obama-wins-primary-for-california-attorney-general.html" type="external">face tough challenges</a> as well. Kamala Harris, a rising Democratic star running for attorney general in California, is in the fight of her life.</p>
<p>The irony is that the losing team has long supported policies that help women. The White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have stepped up their rhetoric on women and the economy in the last two weeks. But Michelle Obama may have missed an opportunity to lead the charge.</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>The political potency of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has led progressive women to call for one of their own to match the ex-governor’s volume and reach. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29traister.html?pagewanted=all" type="external">Writing in The New York Times</a>, Rebecca Traister and Anna Holmes sought “a smart, unrelenting female, who, unlike Ms. Palin, wants to tear down, not reinforce, traditional ways of looking at women.” Palin has her “Mama Grizzly” candidates—why not “Obama Grizzlies?”</p>
<p>Members of the White House political team conceded that Republicans have regained ground in the suburbs, where many of Obama’s biggest fans reside. In Illinois, losses in counties ringing the first lady’s hometown have put the governorship and the president’s former Senate seat in jeopardy. What’s more, traditionally Democratic women are tuned out. “We always have trouble with lower-income women—they trend Democratic, but they have so many things to think about," says Dick Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois. Durbin added that Obama has been very effective in connecting with the economic and social needs of working women and families, in small groups at the White House.</p>
<p>But the woman who conspicuously coined the term “mom-in-chief” has yet to embrace the trend toward unapologetic female political empowerment.</p>
<p>Indeed, Obama’s current popularity rests on perceptions of her commitment to gauzy personal issues. “What we hear the most from the field is her commitment to helping families,” says Sevugan. “[Voters] see her as someone who has the same concerns, a regular person who’s a mom and who is a wife.”</p>
<p>“She is demonstrating a tremendous sensitivity to issues that one would consider to be extremely important to children,” adds House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn. “People love her for it.”</p>
<p>But her home-and-hearth appeal hasn’t closed the deal in this noisy campaign season. Murray, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senators Russ Feingold and Michael Bennet, and Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulas all rallied with the first lady, yet are even or trailing in recent polls.</p>
<p>Of course, Mrs. Obama isn’t a magician—she isn’t even an elected official. And there may only be so much any first lady can do to move the electoral needle. But while the Democrats have many female surrogates—Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, DNC Co-Chair Donna Brazile, even Obama’s close friend Valerie Jarrett—none have been able to pack the punch of Palin. (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, arguably the party’s most influential female leader, is legally barred from campaigning.) As not just mom but woman-in-chief, Obama seemed the most likely voice to break through.</p>
<p>Part of the difficulty in converting Obama’s warm fuzzies into Democratic votes is her general approach to campaigning. On the trail, she has tended to cast political arguments in terms of family. “When I think about the issues facing our nation right now, I think about what that means for our girls,” she told a crowd in Ohio, where she made her first joint appearance with the president since 2008. “I think about what that means for the world that we’re leaving for them and, quite frankly, for all of our children.” During the flurry of debate over Arizona’s controversial immigration policy, she deflected a question from a second grader whose mother was in the United States illegally with a “yes, sweetie.”</p>
<p>When she hit up an October women’s conference in California, <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2010/10/27/meg-whitmans-other-opponent-arnold-schwarzenegger.html" type="external">capped by a debate between gubernatorial candidates Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman</a>, she spoke for 25 minutes, not about the economy that’s driving voters from Democrats, but about military families—an area of deep commitment for both Obama and second lady Jill Biden. “Michelle Obama has become very astute about what the public is going to say about her and the reaction of their political opponents will be to things that she wears, things that she says, and especially appearances she makes,” says Yursik. “It was a genuine plea, but who in their right mind is going to say something negative about her talking about military families?”</p>
<p>Courtney Martin, writing in The American Prospect, took the critique further: “Unlike Palin, who is aggravating because she's all style and no substance, the first lady is driving many a feminist batty because she's got so much substance but is shrouding it in nonthreatening style.”</p>
<p>There are those in both the East and West wings who feel more aggressive politics would be inappropriate. “I think she’s been wise to be careful and cautious,” says Juleanna Glover Weiss, a Bush administration alumnus now consulting for the Ashcroft Group. “This is not her world, it’s her husband’s world.” What’s more, this behavior is not surprising for first ladies, who are typically “not involved in the sort of horse trading that you see when we’re talking about partisan politics,” says Hilary Shelton, NAACP Washington bureau director and senior vice president for advocacy.</p>
<p>But the former nonprofit executive knows how to turn the screws when it counts. Behind the scenes of her hula-hooping and harvesting, Obama has been a tenacious lobbyist for healthy living policies to match her personal effort. When she invited members of Congress to the White House to discuss school lunch policy, they were skeptical that a bill could be passed in the face of food and soft drink industry opposition. But the first lady had done her homework—personally lobbying industry executives and including them in the conversation. “Last time we did a child nutrition bill, you couldn’t even discuss much less win a vote on the question of healthy foods and soda pop,” says Education Committee Chairman George Miller. “She was our icebreaker.”</p>
<p>And, in 2008, Obama was known for her willingness to “go there” when her husband could not. Nearly three years ago, she addressed a group of black women in South Carolina who were worried that her husband was too good to be true:</p>
<p>I equate it to that aunt or that grandmother that bought all that new furniture—spent her life savings on it and then what does she do? She puts plastic on it to protect it. That plastic gets yellow and scratches up your leg and it’s hot and sticky. But see grandma is just trying to protect that furniture—the problem is—it’s that she doesn’t get the full enjoyment—the benefit from the furniture because she’s trying to protect it. I think folks just want to protect us from the possibility of being let down—not by us—but by the world as it is. A world—they fear—is not ready for a decent man like Barack. Sometimes it seems better not to try at all than to try and fail.</p>
<p>The frank and funny speech was a hit, and marked the beginning of the surge in black voter support for her husband in the state that would lead to his securing the Democratic nomination for president.</p>
<p>The protective plastic is also a metaphor for Obama’s engagement since taking “office.” The mom-in-chief message just hasn’t roused the country—including its male half—that seems ready for strong women to lead well.</p>
<p>The DNC estimates that today’s rallies will draw tens of thousands more to hear Obama’s closing argument. It may be that 2010 hasn’t gotten the best of Obama. “She's done what she can but a lot of what she can do is limited by family—and that's not going to change," says senior White House adviser David Axelrod, who adds that 2012 will show a return to fighting form. “It's always different when you're campaigning for your husband."</p>
<p>And for Obama, it could be just the beginning: On one of the first lady’s summer trips to the Gulf Coast, residents waved “Michelle 2016” signs as a greeting.</p>
<p>Dayo Olopade is a political reporter for The Daily Beast and a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation.</p> | 1,137 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Sometimes, taking risks is less risky than avoiding them. The front-runners for the 2008 presidential nominations are being too careful for their own good.</p>
<p>Among the Republicans, Sen. John McCain has done everything possible to make himself safe for the party’s conservatives, abandoning the edgy, maverick personality that captured imaginations if not victory seven years ago. His reward: He’s lost the lead to Rudy Giuliani.</p>
<p>But the former New York City mayor has played down what makes him different from most in his party — his moderate to liberal views on social issues, his support for gun control — in order to appease those same conservatives.</p>
<p>For a while, Giuliani soared. But there’s evidence that his bubble is bursting. In the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll released earlier this week, he still led McCain, 31 percent to 22 percent. But Giuliani was down 13 percentage points since the beginning of the month.</p>
<p />
<p>Much of that support appears to have shifted to Fred Thompson, the former senator and actor included in the poll’s listings for the first time now that he’s said he might run. Thompson opened at an impressive 12 percent. His strength is a sign of the fragility of Giuliani’s lead — and an expression of doubt about the current Republican field.</p>
<p>Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, the great hope of so many Washington establishmentarians, came in at a miserable 3 percent. Romney’s sharp shifts rightward on abortion and gay rights have done him little good so far among conservatives and have hurt his credibility with everyone else.</p>
<p>Among Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton maintains a seemingly healthy advantage over Barack Obama, who has rocketed from nowhere into second place. The two senators lead former Vice President Al Gore (who is not even running) and former Sen. John Edwards, who gained sympathetic attention after he and his wife Elizabeth announced he would stay in the race despite the return of her cancer.</p>
<p>So far, Edwards is the Democrat who has taken risks by endorsing tax increases and arguing that a balanced budget is less of a priority for him than universal health coverage and energy development. He also gave an important, little-noticed speech a couple of weeks ago calling on the United States to take the lead in fighting global poverty.</p>
<p>As the underdog, Edwards has every reason to be bold. But the continuing interest in his candidacy and Gore’s strength as a would-be candidate suggest that Clinton and Obama may have more to worry about than they realize.</p>
<p>Clinton faces repeated sniping for seeming to be so carefully calculated and calibrated. Antiwar Democrats still hold it against her that she won’t apologize for voting in favor of the Iraq War resolution. In truth, as Michael Crowley argues in a revealing article in the current New Republic, Clinton has strong, deeply held, carefully thought-out views about America’s role in the world. I came away from the piece wanting her to be more open in saying what’s really on her mind. Doing so could force the debate on foreign policy that Democrats need.</p>
<p>Of all the candidates in either party, Obama has offered the clearest expression of the country’s desire for a new departure. But he needs to join Edwards in a specificity contest by standing up for policies and not just themes.</p>
<p>David Kusnet, who was the chief White House speechwriter in the early years of Bill Clinton’s presidency, sees Obama and Clinton as having opposite problems.</p>
<p>“A presidential campaign is a contest to define the historic moment and winning candidates are usually the ones who best do that,” says Kusnet, who on the whole likes this year’s Democratic field. “Obama has the best definition of the moment but doesn’t yet have the substance underneath it. Hillary brings a wealth of experience and ideas to the table but she needs to offer a definition of the moment.” Both have to get out of their current comfort zones.</p>
<p>That’s even truer of the Republicans. After the failures of the Bush presidency, the country is veering away from the kind of conservatism that has defined the Republican Party for a quarter-century. Because Giuliani, McCain and Romney are so unlike Bush, they are all well-positioned to offer something different. But each seems intent on kowtowing to orthodoxy and running a campaign better suited to the decade’s beginning than its end.</p>
<p>American voters want to shake things up. My hunch is that they will reward candidates who take chances. This time, being safe will mean being sorry.</p>
<p>E.J. Dionne’s e-mail address is postchat(at symbol)aol.com.</p>
<p>© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group</p> | Risks Might Pay Off in '08 Race | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/risks-might-pay-off-in-08-race/ | 2007-03-30 | 4left
| Risks Might Pay Off in '08 Race
<p>WASHINGTON — Sometimes, taking risks is less risky than avoiding them. The front-runners for the 2008 presidential nominations are being too careful for their own good.</p>
<p>Among the Republicans, Sen. John McCain has done everything possible to make himself safe for the party’s conservatives, abandoning the edgy, maverick personality that captured imaginations if not victory seven years ago. His reward: He’s lost the lead to Rudy Giuliani.</p>
<p>But the former New York City mayor has played down what makes him different from most in his party — his moderate to liberal views on social issues, his support for gun control — in order to appease those same conservatives.</p>
<p>For a while, Giuliani soared. But there’s evidence that his bubble is bursting. In the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll released earlier this week, he still led McCain, 31 percent to 22 percent. But Giuliani was down 13 percentage points since the beginning of the month.</p>
<p />
<p>Much of that support appears to have shifted to Fred Thompson, the former senator and actor included in the poll’s listings for the first time now that he’s said he might run. Thompson opened at an impressive 12 percent. His strength is a sign of the fragility of Giuliani’s lead — and an expression of doubt about the current Republican field.</p>
<p>Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, the great hope of so many Washington establishmentarians, came in at a miserable 3 percent. Romney’s sharp shifts rightward on abortion and gay rights have done him little good so far among conservatives and have hurt his credibility with everyone else.</p>
<p>Among Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton maintains a seemingly healthy advantage over Barack Obama, who has rocketed from nowhere into second place. The two senators lead former Vice President Al Gore (who is not even running) and former Sen. John Edwards, who gained sympathetic attention after he and his wife Elizabeth announced he would stay in the race despite the return of her cancer.</p>
<p>So far, Edwards is the Democrat who has taken risks by endorsing tax increases and arguing that a balanced budget is less of a priority for him than universal health coverage and energy development. He also gave an important, little-noticed speech a couple of weeks ago calling on the United States to take the lead in fighting global poverty.</p>
<p>As the underdog, Edwards has every reason to be bold. But the continuing interest in his candidacy and Gore’s strength as a would-be candidate suggest that Clinton and Obama may have more to worry about than they realize.</p>
<p>Clinton faces repeated sniping for seeming to be so carefully calculated and calibrated. Antiwar Democrats still hold it against her that she won’t apologize for voting in favor of the Iraq War resolution. In truth, as Michael Crowley argues in a revealing article in the current New Republic, Clinton has strong, deeply held, carefully thought-out views about America’s role in the world. I came away from the piece wanting her to be more open in saying what’s really on her mind. Doing so could force the debate on foreign policy that Democrats need.</p>
<p>Of all the candidates in either party, Obama has offered the clearest expression of the country’s desire for a new departure. But he needs to join Edwards in a specificity contest by standing up for policies and not just themes.</p>
<p>David Kusnet, who was the chief White House speechwriter in the early years of Bill Clinton’s presidency, sees Obama and Clinton as having opposite problems.</p>
<p>“A presidential campaign is a contest to define the historic moment and winning candidates are usually the ones who best do that,” says Kusnet, who on the whole likes this year’s Democratic field. “Obama has the best definition of the moment but doesn’t yet have the substance underneath it. Hillary brings a wealth of experience and ideas to the table but she needs to offer a definition of the moment.” Both have to get out of their current comfort zones.</p>
<p>That’s even truer of the Republicans. After the failures of the Bush presidency, the country is veering away from the kind of conservatism that has defined the Republican Party for a quarter-century. Because Giuliani, McCain and Romney are so unlike Bush, they are all well-positioned to offer something different. But each seems intent on kowtowing to orthodoxy and running a campaign better suited to the decade’s beginning than its end.</p>
<p>American voters want to shake things up. My hunch is that they will reward candidates who take chances. This time, being safe will mean being sorry.</p>
<p>E.J. Dionne’s e-mail address is postchat(at symbol)aol.com.</p>
<p>© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group</p> | 1,138 |
<p />
<p>A Palestinian walks away from his house, destroyed by an Israeli strike, in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shijaiyah. AP/Lefteris Pitarakis</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWYrtwUO52I&amp;noredirect=1%20" type="external">By clicking here</a> you can see Chris Hedges deliver his speech (transcript below) in a video made by <a href="http://www.leighacohenvideo.com/" type="external">Leigha Cohen</a>. Hedges spoke Saturday at a New York City rally and march in support of the people of Gaza. The address was inspired in part by a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/naomi.wolf.author/posts/10152548360004476%20" type="external">short essay on Facebook</a> by Naomi Wolf.</p>
<p>God’s covenant in the Promised Land was not made with those who pilot F-16 fighter jets that drop 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs over the concrete hovels of Gaza. It was not made with those operating Apache or Cobra attack helicopters that unleash lethal fire over crowded refugee camps. It was not made with drone operators that clinically kill children … outside mosques. It was not made with M-60 tank units and artillery crews that murder families huddled in terror in their homes. It was not made with those on gunboats that <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/16/us-palestinians-israel-idUSKBN0FI04420140716%20" type="external">slaughter boys</a> playing on a beach. It was not made with those that fire Sidewinder missiles and drop 250-pound “smart bombs” on apartment blocks. It was not made with snipers from the Golani Brigade <a href="http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2014/07/29/gazaunderattack-israeli-soldier-leaks-accounts-of-revenge-attacks-against-civilians-by-troops-in-gaza/%20" type="external">that gun down</a> unarmed men and women for sport. It was not made with occupiers that reduce an entire people to a starvation diet — indeed <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/17/israeli-military-calorie-limit-gaza%20" type="external">count the calories</a> to keep them barely alive — or to those who use words like <a href="http://www.alternet.org/world/killing-people-mowing-lawn-how-israeli-hardliners-and-official-washington-dehumanize-people" type="external">“mowing the lawn”</a> to justify the indiscriminant slaughter of innocents.</p>
<p />
<p>God’s covenant in the Promised Land was not made with politicians — including every member of the U.S. Senate — that mouth words for peace and perpetuate war, that call for justice and perpetuate injustice, that refuse to stand up for the rule of law and the right of a captive people to be free.</p>
<p>God’s covenant in the Promised Land was not made, finally, with any race or religion. It was not made with the Jews. It was not made with the Muslims. It was not made with the Christians. God’s covenant — in the Bible and the Koran — was made with the righteous. When Ibrahim asked in the holy Koran if the covenant could be inherited, he was told bluntly: “My covenant is not given to oppressors.” And God’s iron requirement to stand with the oppressed occurs as well in the Hebrew and Greek bibles. Those who turn away from righteousness — be they Jew, Christian or Muslim — violate that covenant. They are not God’s people.</p>
<p>God’s covenant is made with those who love mercy and do justice, with those who care for the stranger, the orphan and the widow, with those who frustrate the ways of the wicked, with those who bring good news to the oppressed, who bind up the brokenhearted, who proclaim liberty to the captives and release to all those in prison, including those imprisoned in Gaza. God’s covenant is with those men and women — Jews, Christians and Muslims, believers and nonbelievers — who say, “Let my people go, oppressed so hard they could not stand. Let my people go.” And God calls these people oaks of righteousness. And they are God’s people.</p>
<p>Why does God weep in the Promised Land?</p>
<p>God weeps because families, huddled in terror in their homes, are dismembered and killed by Israeli bombs. God weeps because mothers howl in grief over the bodies of their children in <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/gaza-un-school-hit-201473041918975321.html%20" type="external">U.N. schools hit</a> by Israeli shells. God weeps because the old and disabled, who could not flee the deadly Israeli advance, died helpless and afraid. God weeps because the powerful, here and in Israel, lie and dissemble to justify murder. And God weeps for all those who stand by and do nothing.</p>
<p>God weeps because the assault on Gaza is not about Israel’s right to self-defense or about removing Hamas from power. It is not about achieving peace. God weeps because the assault on Gaza is about the decades-long campaign to destroy and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their land. God weeps because Israel is constructing squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos where life for Palestinians is barely sustainable. God weeps because Israel restricts or shuts off movement, food, medicine and goods to accentuate the human misery. God weeps because Israel has turned Gaza, now largely without power, running water and sewage [systems], into a vast gulag.</p>
<p>God weeps because the failure to condemn Israeli war crimes by our political establishment and our compliant media betrays the memory of those killed in other genocides, from the Holocaust to Cambodia to Rwanda to Bosnia. God weeps because we have failed to learn the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which is not that Jews are unique or eternal victims, but that when you have the capacity to stop genocide, and you do not, you are culpable. And we [Americans], who provide 95 percent of Israel’s weapons, are very culpable.All tyrants fall under the weight of their own depravity. Justice does come. The captives are set free. There will be a day when the instruments of war will no longer leave our shores to be delivered into the hands of killers. Not one bullet. And those who have broken God’s covenant will feel the blast of justice, the fury of the righteous who will rise up on behalf of the oppressed.</p>
<p>Peace in the Promised Land is in our hands. It will not come from politicians here or in Jerusalem. It will not come from courts of law. It will not come from international bodies.</p>
<p>Peace in the Promised Land will come when those who love mercy and do justice build a sustained mass movement — as we did against the apartheid regime in South Africa — week after week, month after month, year after year until the captives are set free. Peace in the Promised Land will come when we force, through boycotts, divestments and sanctions, the powerful to end the blockade of Gaza and deny the instruments of death to Israel. But it is up to us. We are all that stands between the Palestinians and obliteration.</p>
<p>The road to justice will be long and hard. It will require sacrifice, including personal sacrifice. Those who worship power cling furiously to it. And they will use that power against us. Our names will be reviled. Our voices will be marginalized. Our motives will be impugned. Our character will be assaulted. Our bodies will be taxed. We will be jailed. And we will know frustration and despair.</p>
<p>The road to justice will be long and hard. But there is no turning back, for we are no longer driven by a vision of suffering but possessed by it. We hear the cries from Gaza. We carry these cries within us. We will not rest until there is a balm to anoint the afflicted. We will not rest until there is comfort and justice for the oppressed. We will not rest until the children of Gaza have their childhood returned to them. We will not rest until the people of Gaza, no longer imprisoned, live in a free and independent Palestine.</p>
<p>Let my people go, Oppress’d so hard they could not stand, Let my People go. Go down, Moses, Way down in Egypt’s land, Tell old Pharaoh, Let my people go.</p> | Let My People Go | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/let-my-people-go/ | 2014-08-11 | 4left
| Let My People Go
<p />
<p>A Palestinian walks away from his house, destroyed by an Israeli strike, in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shijaiyah. AP/Lefteris Pitarakis</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWYrtwUO52I&amp;noredirect=1%20" type="external">By clicking here</a> you can see Chris Hedges deliver his speech (transcript below) in a video made by <a href="http://www.leighacohenvideo.com/" type="external">Leigha Cohen</a>. Hedges spoke Saturday at a New York City rally and march in support of the people of Gaza. The address was inspired in part by a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/naomi.wolf.author/posts/10152548360004476%20" type="external">short essay on Facebook</a> by Naomi Wolf.</p>
<p>God’s covenant in the Promised Land was not made with those who pilot F-16 fighter jets that drop 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs over the concrete hovels of Gaza. It was not made with those operating Apache or Cobra attack helicopters that unleash lethal fire over crowded refugee camps. It was not made with drone operators that clinically kill children … outside mosques. It was not made with M-60 tank units and artillery crews that murder families huddled in terror in their homes. It was not made with those on gunboats that <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/16/us-palestinians-israel-idUSKBN0FI04420140716%20" type="external">slaughter boys</a> playing on a beach. It was not made with those that fire Sidewinder missiles and drop 250-pound “smart bombs” on apartment blocks. It was not made with snipers from the Golani Brigade <a href="http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2014/07/29/gazaunderattack-israeli-soldier-leaks-accounts-of-revenge-attacks-against-civilians-by-troops-in-gaza/%20" type="external">that gun down</a> unarmed men and women for sport. It was not made with occupiers that reduce an entire people to a starvation diet — indeed <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/17/israeli-military-calorie-limit-gaza%20" type="external">count the calories</a> to keep them barely alive — or to those who use words like <a href="http://www.alternet.org/world/killing-people-mowing-lawn-how-israeli-hardliners-and-official-washington-dehumanize-people" type="external">“mowing the lawn”</a> to justify the indiscriminant slaughter of innocents.</p>
<p />
<p>God’s covenant in the Promised Land was not made with politicians — including every member of the U.S. Senate — that mouth words for peace and perpetuate war, that call for justice and perpetuate injustice, that refuse to stand up for the rule of law and the right of a captive people to be free.</p>
<p>God’s covenant in the Promised Land was not made, finally, with any race or religion. It was not made with the Jews. It was not made with the Muslims. It was not made with the Christians. God’s covenant — in the Bible and the Koran — was made with the righteous. When Ibrahim asked in the holy Koran if the covenant could be inherited, he was told bluntly: “My covenant is not given to oppressors.” And God’s iron requirement to stand with the oppressed occurs as well in the Hebrew and Greek bibles. Those who turn away from righteousness — be they Jew, Christian or Muslim — violate that covenant. They are not God’s people.</p>
<p>God’s covenant is made with those who love mercy and do justice, with those who care for the stranger, the orphan and the widow, with those who frustrate the ways of the wicked, with those who bring good news to the oppressed, who bind up the brokenhearted, who proclaim liberty to the captives and release to all those in prison, including those imprisoned in Gaza. God’s covenant is with those men and women — Jews, Christians and Muslims, believers and nonbelievers — who say, “Let my people go, oppressed so hard they could not stand. Let my people go.” And God calls these people oaks of righteousness. And they are God’s people.</p>
<p>Why does God weep in the Promised Land?</p>
<p>God weeps because families, huddled in terror in their homes, are dismembered and killed by Israeli bombs. God weeps because mothers howl in grief over the bodies of their children in <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/gaza-un-school-hit-201473041918975321.html%20" type="external">U.N. schools hit</a> by Israeli shells. God weeps because the old and disabled, who could not flee the deadly Israeli advance, died helpless and afraid. God weeps because the powerful, here and in Israel, lie and dissemble to justify murder. And God weeps for all those who stand by and do nothing.</p>
<p>God weeps because the assault on Gaza is not about Israel’s right to self-defense or about removing Hamas from power. It is not about achieving peace. God weeps because the assault on Gaza is about the decades-long campaign to destroy and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their land. God weeps because Israel is constructing squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos where life for Palestinians is barely sustainable. God weeps because Israel restricts or shuts off movement, food, medicine and goods to accentuate the human misery. God weeps because Israel has turned Gaza, now largely without power, running water and sewage [systems], into a vast gulag.</p>
<p>God weeps because the failure to condemn Israeli war crimes by our political establishment and our compliant media betrays the memory of those killed in other genocides, from the Holocaust to Cambodia to Rwanda to Bosnia. God weeps because we have failed to learn the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which is not that Jews are unique or eternal victims, but that when you have the capacity to stop genocide, and you do not, you are culpable. And we [Americans], who provide 95 percent of Israel’s weapons, are very culpable.All tyrants fall under the weight of their own depravity. Justice does come. The captives are set free. There will be a day when the instruments of war will no longer leave our shores to be delivered into the hands of killers. Not one bullet. And those who have broken God’s covenant will feel the blast of justice, the fury of the righteous who will rise up on behalf of the oppressed.</p>
<p>Peace in the Promised Land is in our hands. It will not come from politicians here or in Jerusalem. It will not come from courts of law. It will not come from international bodies.</p>
<p>Peace in the Promised Land will come when those who love mercy and do justice build a sustained mass movement — as we did against the apartheid regime in South Africa — week after week, month after month, year after year until the captives are set free. Peace in the Promised Land will come when we force, through boycotts, divestments and sanctions, the powerful to end the blockade of Gaza and deny the instruments of death to Israel. But it is up to us. We are all that stands between the Palestinians and obliteration.</p>
<p>The road to justice will be long and hard. It will require sacrifice, including personal sacrifice. Those who worship power cling furiously to it. And they will use that power against us. Our names will be reviled. Our voices will be marginalized. Our motives will be impugned. Our character will be assaulted. Our bodies will be taxed. We will be jailed. And we will know frustration and despair.</p>
<p>The road to justice will be long and hard. But there is no turning back, for we are no longer driven by a vision of suffering but possessed by it. We hear the cries from Gaza. We carry these cries within us. We will not rest until there is a balm to anoint the afflicted. We will not rest until there is comfort and justice for the oppressed. We will not rest until the children of Gaza have their childhood returned to them. We will not rest until the people of Gaza, no longer imprisoned, live in a free and independent Palestine.</p>
<p>Let my people go, Oppress’d so hard they could not stand, Let my People go. Go down, Moses, Way down in Egypt’s land, Tell old Pharaoh, Let my people go.</p> | 1,139 |
<p>PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Portland Trail Blazers were more concerned about themselves than the struggling Los Angeles Lakers.</p>
<p>Wary of a letdown following a win on the road and with the All-Star break looming, the Blazers jumped on the Lakers early and never let up in a 102-86 victory Wednesday night.</p>
<p>The loss was the 11th straight on the road for the Lakers, a franchise record.</p>
<p>"We were focused," Portland's Nicolas Batum said. "Those games can sometimes be like a trap or tricky game, and maybe we could focus on the break. But we were focused. We knew we had a job to do tonight."</p>
<p>LaMarcus Aldridge had 18 points and 12 rebounds, while Wesley Matthews added 20 points for the Blazers, who won their second straight before heading into the break.</p>
<p>It was the sixth straight loss overall for the struggling Lakers, who trailed by as many as 23. Los Angeles was hurt late in the third quarter when Nick Young appeared to injure his left ankle on a jumper and did not return.</p>
<p>"He didn't seem to be overly concerned about it," coach Byron Scott said about Young. "I don't know if he's going to need treatment the next three or four days or not."</p>
<p>Mired in second-to-last place in the Western Conference, the Lakers (13-40) began their road losing streak in Portland with a 98-94 loss on Jan. 5.</p>
<p>Wayne Ellington had 16 points and eight rebounds for the Lakers and Jordan Clarkson had 17 points.</p>
<p>The Blazers also won the previous two meetings with the Lakers this season and have taken four straight overall. All those wins have come with Kobe Bryant sitting out because of injuries.</p>
<p>Portland, coming off a 109-98 victory at Houston, was without center Chris Kaman because of a sprained right ankle.</p>
<p>The Blazers jumped out to a 30-20 lead in the first quarter and stayed in front for the rest of the game. Nicolas Batum's 20-foot jumper off a pass from Aldridge gave Portland a 50-39 lead, and the Blazers went into the break ahead 54-46.</p>
<p>Portland extended the lead in the third quarter to 77-56 following Matthews' 3-pointer and a fast-break layup from Aldridge.</p>
<p>Damian Lillard finished with 15 points and eight assists, becoming the only NBA player to score in double figures in all of his team's games this season. He and Aldridge sat out the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>"Everybody did their part, everybody understood that we had to be the team that we've been the last couple games to win it and we did that," Lillard said.</p>
<p>Portland's 36-17 record is identical to their record going into last year's All-Star break.</p>
<p>"Hopefully, you reflect a little bit on the first 50 games and you come back with a different sense of purpose as well," Scott said. "It's always good to get a little bit of a break."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>TIP-INS</p>
<p>Trail Blazers: Team owner Paul Allen and general manager Neil Olshey presented Aldridge and Lillard with their All-Star jerseys before the game. ... It was Aldridge's 27th double-double of the season.</p>
<p>Lakers: Coach Byron Scott suggested before the game that the best way to stop Aldridge was to lock him in the locker room. ... Scott also joked that he's not really buying Young's assertion that a dolphin tried to drown him on a snorkeling excursion with girlfriend Iggy Azalea in Cabo San Lucas. Azalea posted on Twitter that Young was afraid of dolphins, and the matter took on a life of its own from there.</p>
<p>READY FOR THE REST</p>
<p>Following the game, Young was pretty emphatic about the need for some time off. He said he's headed for Hawaii. He didn't mention dolphins.</p>
<p>"I'll get back Monday or Tuesday and get back in the gym, but for now I think I just need to get away," he said.</p>
<p>BESTING THE LAKERS</p>
<p>The Blazers haven't won four straight games against the Lakers since 1997. With three wins this season and only one more game to go, Portland has won back-to-back season series against the Lakers for the first time since 1993-94.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Lakers: host the Nets on Feb. 20.</p>
<p>Trail Blazers: visit the Jazz on Feb. 20.</p>
<p>PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Portland Trail Blazers were more concerned about themselves than the struggling Los Angeles Lakers.</p>
<p>Wary of a letdown following a win on the road and with the All-Star break looming, the Blazers jumped on the Lakers early and never let up in a 102-86 victory Wednesday night.</p>
<p>The loss was the 11th straight on the road for the Lakers, a franchise record.</p>
<p>"We were focused," Portland's Nicolas Batum said. "Those games can sometimes be like a trap or tricky game, and maybe we could focus on the break. But we were focused. We knew we had a job to do tonight."</p>
<p>LaMarcus Aldridge had 18 points and 12 rebounds, while Wesley Matthews added 20 points for the Blazers, who won their second straight before heading into the break.</p>
<p>It was the sixth straight loss overall for the struggling Lakers, who trailed by as many as 23. Los Angeles was hurt late in the third quarter when Nick Young appeared to injure his left ankle on a jumper and did not return.</p>
<p>"He didn't seem to be overly concerned about it," coach Byron Scott said about Young. "I don't know if he's going to need treatment the next three or four days or not."</p>
<p>Mired in second-to-last place in the Western Conference, the Lakers (13-40) began their road losing streak in Portland with a 98-94 loss on Jan. 5.</p>
<p>Wayne Ellington had 16 points and eight rebounds for the Lakers and Jordan Clarkson had 17 points.</p>
<p>The Blazers also won the previous two meetings with the Lakers this season and have taken four straight overall. All those wins have come with Kobe Bryant sitting out because of injuries.</p>
<p>Portland, coming off a 109-98 victory at Houston, was without center Chris Kaman because of a sprained right ankle.</p>
<p>The Blazers jumped out to a 30-20 lead in the first quarter and stayed in front for the rest of the game. Nicolas Batum's 20-foot jumper off a pass from Aldridge gave Portland a 50-39 lead, and the Blazers went into the break ahead 54-46.</p>
<p>Portland extended the lead in the third quarter to 77-56 following Matthews' 3-pointer and a fast-break layup from Aldridge.</p>
<p>Damian Lillard finished with 15 points and eight assists, becoming the only NBA player to score in double figures in all of his team's games this season. He and Aldridge sat out the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>"Everybody did their part, everybody understood that we had to be the team that we've been the last couple games to win it and we did that," Lillard said.</p>
<p>Portland's 36-17 record is identical to their record going into last year's All-Star break.</p>
<p>"Hopefully, you reflect a little bit on the first 50 games and you come back with a different sense of purpose as well," Scott said. "It's always good to get a little bit of a break."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>TIP-INS</p>
<p>Trail Blazers: Team owner Paul Allen and general manager Neil Olshey presented Aldridge and Lillard with their All-Star jerseys before the game. ... It was Aldridge's 27th double-double of the season.</p>
<p>Lakers: Coach Byron Scott suggested before the game that the best way to stop Aldridge was to lock him in the locker room. ... Scott also joked that he's not really buying Young's assertion that a dolphin tried to drown him on a snorkeling excursion with girlfriend Iggy Azalea in Cabo San Lucas. Azalea posted on Twitter that Young was afraid of dolphins, and the matter took on a life of its own from there.</p>
<p>READY FOR THE REST</p>
<p>Following the game, Young was pretty emphatic about the need for some time off. He said he's headed for Hawaii. He didn't mention dolphins.</p>
<p>"I'll get back Monday or Tuesday and get back in the gym, but for now I think I just need to get away," he said.</p>
<p>BESTING THE LAKERS</p>
<p>The Blazers haven't won four straight games against the Lakers since 1997. With three wins this season and only one more game to go, Portland has won back-to-back season series against the Lakers for the first time since 1993-94.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Lakers: host the Nets on Feb. 20.</p>
<p>Trail Blazers: visit the Jazz on Feb. 20.</p> | Trail Blazers hand Lakers 11th straight road loss, 102-86 | false | https://apnews.com/amp/ddd478aeedab4089b507c99b7be369c3 | 2015-02-12 | 2least
| Trail Blazers hand Lakers 11th straight road loss, 102-86
<p>PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Portland Trail Blazers were more concerned about themselves than the struggling Los Angeles Lakers.</p>
<p>Wary of a letdown following a win on the road and with the All-Star break looming, the Blazers jumped on the Lakers early and never let up in a 102-86 victory Wednesday night.</p>
<p>The loss was the 11th straight on the road for the Lakers, a franchise record.</p>
<p>"We were focused," Portland's Nicolas Batum said. "Those games can sometimes be like a trap or tricky game, and maybe we could focus on the break. But we were focused. We knew we had a job to do tonight."</p>
<p>LaMarcus Aldridge had 18 points and 12 rebounds, while Wesley Matthews added 20 points for the Blazers, who won their second straight before heading into the break.</p>
<p>It was the sixth straight loss overall for the struggling Lakers, who trailed by as many as 23. Los Angeles was hurt late in the third quarter when Nick Young appeared to injure his left ankle on a jumper and did not return.</p>
<p>"He didn't seem to be overly concerned about it," coach Byron Scott said about Young. "I don't know if he's going to need treatment the next three or four days or not."</p>
<p>Mired in second-to-last place in the Western Conference, the Lakers (13-40) began their road losing streak in Portland with a 98-94 loss on Jan. 5.</p>
<p>Wayne Ellington had 16 points and eight rebounds for the Lakers and Jordan Clarkson had 17 points.</p>
<p>The Blazers also won the previous two meetings with the Lakers this season and have taken four straight overall. All those wins have come with Kobe Bryant sitting out because of injuries.</p>
<p>Portland, coming off a 109-98 victory at Houston, was without center Chris Kaman because of a sprained right ankle.</p>
<p>The Blazers jumped out to a 30-20 lead in the first quarter and stayed in front for the rest of the game. Nicolas Batum's 20-foot jumper off a pass from Aldridge gave Portland a 50-39 lead, and the Blazers went into the break ahead 54-46.</p>
<p>Portland extended the lead in the third quarter to 77-56 following Matthews' 3-pointer and a fast-break layup from Aldridge.</p>
<p>Damian Lillard finished with 15 points and eight assists, becoming the only NBA player to score in double figures in all of his team's games this season. He and Aldridge sat out the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>"Everybody did their part, everybody understood that we had to be the team that we've been the last couple games to win it and we did that," Lillard said.</p>
<p>Portland's 36-17 record is identical to their record going into last year's All-Star break.</p>
<p>"Hopefully, you reflect a little bit on the first 50 games and you come back with a different sense of purpose as well," Scott said. "It's always good to get a little bit of a break."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>TIP-INS</p>
<p>Trail Blazers: Team owner Paul Allen and general manager Neil Olshey presented Aldridge and Lillard with their All-Star jerseys before the game. ... It was Aldridge's 27th double-double of the season.</p>
<p>Lakers: Coach Byron Scott suggested before the game that the best way to stop Aldridge was to lock him in the locker room. ... Scott also joked that he's not really buying Young's assertion that a dolphin tried to drown him on a snorkeling excursion with girlfriend Iggy Azalea in Cabo San Lucas. Azalea posted on Twitter that Young was afraid of dolphins, and the matter took on a life of its own from there.</p>
<p>READY FOR THE REST</p>
<p>Following the game, Young was pretty emphatic about the need for some time off. He said he's headed for Hawaii. He didn't mention dolphins.</p>
<p>"I'll get back Monday or Tuesday and get back in the gym, but for now I think I just need to get away," he said.</p>
<p>BESTING THE LAKERS</p>
<p>The Blazers haven't won four straight games against the Lakers since 1997. With three wins this season and only one more game to go, Portland has won back-to-back season series against the Lakers for the first time since 1993-94.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Lakers: host the Nets on Feb. 20.</p>
<p>Trail Blazers: visit the Jazz on Feb. 20.</p>
<p>PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Portland Trail Blazers were more concerned about themselves than the struggling Los Angeles Lakers.</p>
<p>Wary of a letdown following a win on the road and with the All-Star break looming, the Blazers jumped on the Lakers early and never let up in a 102-86 victory Wednesday night.</p>
<p>The loss was the 11th straight on the road for the Lakers, a franchise record.</p>
<p>"We were focused," Portland's Nicolas Batum said. "Those games can sometimes be like a trap or tricky game, and maybe we could focus on the break. But we were focused. We knew we had a job to do tonight."</p>
<p>LaMarcus Aldridge had 18 points and 12 rebounds, while Wesley Matthews added 20 points for the Blazers, who won their second straight before heading into the break.</p>
<p>It was the sixth straight loss overall for the struggling Lakers, who trailed by as many as 23. Los Angeles was hurt late in the third quarter when Nick Young appeared to injure his left ankle on a jumper and did not return.</p>
<p>"He didn't seem to be overly concerned about it," coach Byron Scott said about Young. "I don't know if he's going to need treatment the next three or four days or not."</p>
<p>Mired in second-to-last place in the Western Conference, the Lakers (13-40) began their road losing streak in Portland with a 98-94 loss on Jan. 5.</p>
<p>Wayne Ellington had 16 points and eight rebounds for the Lakers and Jordan Clarkson had 17 points.</p>
<p>The Blazers also won the previous two meetings with the Lakers this season and have taken four straight overall. All those wins have come with Kobe Bryant sitting out because of injuries.</p>
<p>Portland, coming off a 109-98 victory at Houston, was without center Chris Kaman because of a sprained right ankle.</p>
<p>The Blazers jumped out to a 30-20 lead in the first quarter and stayed in front for the rest of the game. Nicolas Batum's 20-foot jumper off a pass from Aldridge gave Portland a 50-39 lead, and the Blazers went into the break ahead 54-46.</p>
<p>Portland extended the lead in the third quarter to 77-56 following Matthews' 3-pointer and a fast-break layup from Aldridge.</p>
<p>Damian Lillard finished with 15 points and eight assists, becoming the only NBA player to score in double figures in all of his team's games this season. He and Aldridge sat out the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>"Everybody did their part, everybody understood that we had to be the team that we've been the last couple games to win it and we did that," Lillard said.</p>
<p>Portland's 36-17 record is identical to their record going into last year's All-Star break.</p>
<p>"Hopefully, you reflect a little bit on the first 50 games and you come back with a different sense of purpose as well," Scott said. "It's always good to get a little bit of a break."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>TIP-INS</p>
<p>Trail Blazers: Team owner Paul Allen and general manager Neil Olshey presented Aldridge and Lillard with their All-Star jerseys before the game. ... It was Aldridge's 27th double-double of the season.</p>
<p>Lakers: Coach Byron Scott suggested before the game that the best way to stop Aldridge was to lock him in the locker room. ... Scott also joked that he's not really buying Young's assertion that a dolphin tried to drown him on a snorkeling excursion with girlfriend Iggy Azalea in Cabo San Lucas. Azalea posted on Twitter that Young was afraid of dolphins, and the matter took on a life of its own from there.</p>
<p>READY FOR THE REST</p>
<p>Following the game, Young was pretty emphatic about the need for some time off. He said he's headed for Hawaii. He didn't mention dolphins.</p>
<p>"I'll get back Monday or Tuesday and get back in the gym, but for now I think I just need to get away," he said.</p>
<p>BESTING THE LAKERS</p>
<p>The Blazers haven't won four straight games against the Lakers since 1997. With three wins this season and only one more game to go, Portland has won back-to-back season series against the Lakers for the first time since 1993-94.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Lakers: host the Nets on Feb. 20.</p>
<p>Trail Blazers: visit the Jazz on Feb. 20.</p> | 1,140 |
<p>Boris Johnson has had quite a week. But, unlike his fellow cabinet ministers, the foreign secretary’s blunders have gone unpunished. For him at least, as a woman is expected to start paying a heavier price for his latest fluff. And it is not Theresa May.</p>
<p>Today, authorities in Iran reacted to Johnson’s erroneous statement made to MPs in London, that British mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was working to train journalists in Iran when arrested in April 2016.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/409367-brexit-theresa-may-fall/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The woman was in fact on holiday, as she told the Iranian government when she was charged with ‘spreading propaganda against the regime’.</p>
<p>Johnson’s statement has been seized upon and on Thursday, Iran said he had provided the evidence they need to lock her up for another five years.</p>
<p>“Boris Johnson’s unintended confession confirming training some Iranian journalists by Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe was a goof that the British government could not cover up,” Iran’s state media said.</p>
<p>“Some are even asking the foreign minister to resign.”</p>
<p>“Boris Johnson’s remarks voided all efforts by the British Government and media over the past one and half year who said Zaghari had been in Iran for humanitarian work.”</p>
<p>Johnson later said there was “no doubt that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was on holiday in Iran, and that was the sole purpose of her visit.”</p>
<p>However, it now appears to be too little, too late.The foreign secretary called his Iranian counterpart and apologised, but it has had no impact.</p>
<p>Both Zaghari and her husband have called for Johnson to visit her in prison.</p>
<p>Angry opposition and demands for Johnson’s resignation have grown, a move which could completely fracture Theresa May’s crumbling cabinet.</p>
<p>In one week, Sir Michael Fallon resigned as defense secretary after being named in the Westminster “dirty dossier” accusing him of inappropriate behaviour towards women.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/409171-boris-johnson-libya-refugees/" type="external" /></p>
<p>And International Development Secretary Priti Patel resigned following revelations that she had been holding secret meetings with the Israeli Government.</p>
<p>Johnson, however, is yet to face the music.</p>
<p>Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy criticized May for her handling of the crisis.</p>
<p>“This is sickening,” she said.</p>
<p>“Boris’ behaviour being tolerated creates not just diplomatic nightmares, but a life and death moment for Nazanin Radcliffe. A stronger PM would have forced him to apologise. A decent man would without asking.”</p>
<p>Undeterred, Johnson also went live on TV to praise Donald Trump.</p>
<p>The former Mayor of London said Trump was able to communicate with people in ways “previous presidents” have failed to.</p>
<p>“I think you’ve got to realise the American President is just one of the huge great global brands – he is penetrating corners of the global consciousness that I think few other presidents have ever done,” he said.</p> | Iranian media says Boris Johnson's gaffe was proof of 'cover-up' over jailed British woman | false | https://newsline.com/iranian-media-says-boris-johnson039s-gaffe-was-proof-of-039cover-up039-over-jailed-british-woman/ | 2017-11-09 | 1right-center
| Iranian media says Boris Johnson's gaffe was proof of 'cover-up' over jailed British woman
<p>Boris Johnson has had quite a week. But, unlike his fellow cabinet ministers, the foreign secretary’s blunders have gone unpunished. For him at least, as a woman is expected to start paying a heavier price for his latest fluff. And it is not Theresa May.</p>
<p>Today, authorities in Iran reacted to Johnson’s erroneous statement made to MPs in London, that British mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was working to train journalists in Iran when arrested in April 2016.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/409367-brexit-theresa-may-fall/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The woman was in fact on holiday, as she told the Iranian government when she was charged with ‘spreading propaganda against the regime’.</p>
<p>Johnson’s statement has been seized upon and on Thursday, Iran said he had provided the evidence they need to lock her up for another five years.</p>
<p>“Boris Johnson’s unintended confession confirming training some Iranian journalists by Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe was a goof that the British government could not cover up,” Iran’s state media said.</p>
<p>“Some are even asking the foreign minister to resign.”</p>
<p>“Boris Johnson’s remarks voided all efforts by the British Government and media over the past one and half year who said Zaghari had been in Iran for humanitarian work.”</p>
<p>Johnson later said there was “no doubt that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was on holiday in Iran, and that was the sole purpose of her visit.”</p>
<p>However, it now appears to be too little, too late.The foreign secretary called his Iranian counterpart and apologised, but it has had no impact.</p>
<p>Both Zaghari and her husband have called for Johnson to visit her in prison.</p>
<p>Angry opposition and demands for Johnson’s resignation have grown, a move which could completely fracture Theresa May’s crumbling cabinet.</p>
<p>In one week, Sir Michael Fallon resigned as defense secretary after being named in the Westminster “dirty dossier” accusing him of inappropriate behaviour towards women.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/409171-boris-johnson-libya-refugees/" type="external" /></p>
<p>And International Development Secretary Priti Patel resigned following revelations that she had been holding secret meetings with the Israeli Government.</p>
<p>Johnson, however, is yet to face the music.</p>
<p>Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy criticized May for her handling of the crisis.</p>
<p>“This is sickening,” she said.</p>
<p>“Boris’ behaviour being tolerated creates not just diplomatic nightmares, but a life and death moment for Nazanin Radcliffe. A stronger PM would have forced him to apologise. A decent man would without asking.”</p>
<p>Undeterred, Johnson also went live on TV to praise Donald Trump.</p>
<p>The former Mayor of London said Trump was able to communicate with people in ways “previous presidents” have failed to.</p>
<p>“I think you’ve got to realise the American President is just one of the huge great global brands – he is penetrating corners of the global consciousness that I think few other presidents have ever done,” he said.</p> | 1,141 |
<p>Monday’s “deadline” for signing up for the Affordable Care Act triggered bad headlines for the federal health exchanges, which had an encore of last fall’s computer nightmares.</p>
<p>But in California, Covered California enjoyed the usual upbeat happy talk in its media coverage. The San Francisco Chronicle is a <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Deadline-time-signups-for-Covered-California-jam-5365042.php" type="external">good example</a>:</p>
<p>“A last-minute surge of Californians trying to sign up for health insurance before Monday’s midnight deadline slowed down the state’s enrollment website and lengthened wait times for people who called the agency’s toll-free number for&#160;help.</p>
<p>“More than 155,000 people signed up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act from March 24 through 2 a.m. Monday, pushing total enrollment in the state health exchange past 1.2 million Californians.”</p>
<p>In the Chronicle’s lengthy article, it never even mentioned such basic distinctions as how many people had paid their premiums versus merely “enrolling.” Nor did it try to determine how many of the sign-ups would be subsidized by taxpayers and how many were paying full price. This angle is absolutely crucial to the long-term viability of Covered California.</p>
<p>Why isn’t this stuff covered? My assumption after 24 years as a California journalist is that it’s a mix of bias, peer pressure and incompetence.</p>
<p>For properly skeptical coverage of the Affordable Care Act, nobody’s done better than former Wall Street analyst Avik Roy. Here’s&#160; part of what he <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/03/31/rand-only-one-third-of-obamacare-exchange-sign-ups-were-from-the-previously-uninsured/" type="external">posted Monday</a> on Forbes.com:</p>
<p>“Today is March 31, 2014: in theory, the last day you can sign up for coverage under the subsidized Obamacare insurance exchanges. If you’ve been a regular reader of this space, you know that the numbers routinely paraded by the Obama administration regarding Obamacare website sign-ups don’t tell us much about the actual number of uninsured individuals who have gained coverage. A new study from the RAND Corporation indicates that only one-third of exchange sign-ups were previously uninsured. …</p>
<p>“The RAND report appears to corroborate the work of other surveys. Earlier this month, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/03/08/mckinsey-only-14-of-obamacare-exchange-sign-ups-are-previously-uninsured-enrollees/" type="external">McKinsey reported</a> that 27 percent of those signing up for coverage on the individual market were previously uninsured.</p>
<p>“One important finding of the McKinsey survey was that the proportion of those who had formally enrolled in coverage, by paying their first month’s premium, was considerably lower among the previously uninsured, relative to the previously insured. 86 percent of those who were previously insured who had ‘selected a marketplace plan’ on the exchanges had paid, whereas only 53 percent of the previously uninsured had. …</p>
<p>“What’s important to remember is that this is not how Obamacare was supposed to work. The Congressional Budget Office, in its original estimates, predicted that the vast majority of the people eligible for subsidies on the exchanges would be previously uninsured individuals.</p>
<p>“Instead, the vast majority are previously insured people, many of whom are getting a better deal on the exchanges because they either qualify for subsidies, or because they’re older individuals who benefit from the law’s <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2012/03/22/how-obamacare-dramatically-increases-the-cost-of-insurance-for-young-workers/" type="external">steep rate hikes on the young</a>.”</p>
<p>So while we don’t know what’s going on in California, nationally, the overwhelming number of people who are actually paid enrollees in the federal exchanges are people who had to get new policies because of Obamacare — not people who were previously uninsured.</p>
<p>You know, the folks who are the core central focus of Obamacare.</p>
<p>Maybe eventually the San Francisco Chronicle will get around to reporting on this angle in California.</p> | Covered California continues to benefit from cheerleading media | false | https://calwatchdog.com/2014/04/01/covered-california-continues-to-benefit-from-cheerleading-media/ | 2018-04-20 | 3left-center
| Covered California continues to benefit from cheerleading media
<p>Monday’s “deadline” for signing up for the Affordable Care Act triggered bad headlines for the federal health exchanges, which had an encore of last fall’s computer nightmares.</p>
<p>But in California, Covered California enjoyed the usual upbeat happy talk in its media coverage. The San Francisco Chronicle is a <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Deadline-time-signups-for-Covered-California-jam-5365042.php" type="external">good example</a>:</p>
<p>“A last-minute surge of Californians trying to sign up for health insurance before Monday’s midnight deadline slowed down the state’s enrollment website and lengthened wait times for people who called the agency’s toll-free number for&#160;help.</p>
<p>“More than 155,000 people signed up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act from March 24 through 2 a.m. Monday, pushing total enrollment in the state health exchange past 1.2 million Californians.”</p>
<p>In the Chronicle’s lengthy article, it never even mentioned such basic distinctions as how many people had paid their premiums versus merely “enrolling.” Nor did it try to determine how many of the sign-ups would be subsidized by taxpayers and how many were paying full price. This angle is absolutely crucial to the long-term viability of Covered California.</p>
<p>Why isn’t this stuff covered? My assumption after 24 years as a California journalist is that it’s a mix of bias, peer pressure and incompetence.</p>
<p>For properly skeptical coverage of the Affordable Care Act, nobody’s done better than former Wall Street analyst Avik Roy. Here’s&#160; part of what he <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/03/31/rand-only-one-third-of-obamacare-exchange-sign-ups-were-from-the-previously-uninsured/" type="external">posted Monday</a> on Forbes.com:</p>
<p>“Today is March 31, 2014: in theory, the last day you can sign up for coverage under the subsidized Obamacare insurance exchanges. If you’ve been a regular reader of this space, you know that the numbers routinely paraded by the Obama administration regarding Obamacare website sign-ups don’t tell us much about the actual number of uninsured individuals who have gained coverage. A new study from the RAND Corporation indicates that only one-third of exchange sign-ups were previously uninsured. …</p>
<p>“The RAND report appears to corroborate the work of other surveys. Earlier this month, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/03/08/mckinsey-only-14-of-obamacare-exchange-sign-ups-are-previously-uninsured-enrollees/" type="external">McKinsey reported</a> that 27 percent of those signing up for coverage on the individual market were previously uninsured.</p>
<p>“One important finding of the McKinsey survey was that the proportion of those who had formally enrolled in coverage, by paying their first month’s premium, was considerably lower among the previously uninsured, relative to the previously insured. 86 percent of those who were previously insured who had ‘selected a marketplace plan’ on the exchanges had paid, whereas only 53 percent of the previously uninsured had. …</p>
<p>“What’s important to remember is that this is not how Obamacare was supposed to work. The Congressional Budget Office, in its original estimates, predicted that the vast majority of the people eligible for subsidies on the exchanges would be previously uninsured individuals.</p>
<p>“Instead, the vast majority are previously insured people, many of whom are getting a better deal on the exchanges because they either qualify for subsidies, or because they’re older individuals who benefit from the law’s <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2012/03/22/how-obamacare-dramatically-increases-the-cost-of-insurance-for-young-workers/" type="external">steep rate hikes on the young</a>.”</p>
<p>So while we don’t know what’s going on in California, nationally, the overwhelming number of people who are actually paid enrollees in the federal exchanges are people who had to get new policies because of Obamacare — not people who were previously uninsured.</p>
<p>You know, the folks who are the core central focus of Obamacare.</p>
<p>Maybe eventually the San Francisco Chronicle will get around to reporting on this angle in California.</p> | 1,142 |
<p>Last year South Africa’s bountiful Wild Coast saw the assassination of Sikhosiphi Rhadebe, activist against proposed dune mining on his homeland. The commemoration of Rhadebe who went by the name Bozooka coincided with this year’s Human Rights day. At least 500 people came to stand together in solidarity to call for an end to violence under the glaring sun of the Wild Coast far off the tarred national roads.</p>
<p>Saluting the deceased Rhadebe, leader of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, gun shots were fired in the air giving a vivid demonstration of the sound of death that was heard on the Wild Coast a year ago. Mark Caruso, CEO of the company that applied for a permit for titanium mining on the Wild Coast had (according to local media) previously bragged in an internal email: “I am enlivened by [the] opportunity to grind all resistance to my presence.”</p>
<p>Violence and mining do not meet spontaneously – they are uncanny bedfellows.</p>
<p>Acclaimed mining scholar Anthony Bebbington calls the choice communities are facing when mining companies approach “Faustian in the extreme”. Companies offer compensation (mostly money) for multiple forms of dispossessions; namely dispossession of “land, territory, landscape and natural resources”. According to Bebbington no matter if mining is to go ahead or not it will irrevocably divide communities over the question. Defying the notion of win-win situations invoked by mining companies’ global examples show that mine-affected communities typically lose while a class of investors, CEOs and some local managers wine and dine on the generous revenues.</p>
<p>Blockadia in the making?</p>
<p>But as the Wild Coast people testify quite a number of activists are not shying away to take on mining Goliaths. Environmental justice activists are putting themselves in the frontlines of a global battle that Naomi Klein calls “Blockadia” – a new conflict zone “cropping up with increasing frequency and intensity wherever extractive projects are attempting to dig and drill, whether for open-pit mines, or gas fracking, or tar sands oil pipelines.” The struggle of Standing Rock is a case in point where indigenous activists faced the heavily armoured police.</p>
<p>But media attention to extractive struggles is rarely that persistent. And even in cases in which the media reports diligently from these conflict zones, time seems to be on the side of mining companies and oil firms. If extractive operations face resistance the nature of mineral resources allows companies to change strategies and come back when resistance is at its weakest.</p>
<p>Death toll of mining</p>
<p>The imbalance of resource also plays to the hands of companies as they have the means to bring delinquents on their side. In an academic paper entitled Conflict and Astroturfing in Niyamgiri, which is very instructive beyond the confines of academia, Romy Kraemer and others tell the story of a young tribal activist who received global attention for his fight against bauxide mining in India. In the cause of the struggle however the company manages to buy the activist out and provide him with a scholarship away from his native land. This is a rather peaceful case if one considers how many violent conflicts are reported around extraction worldwide. Ken Saro-Wiwa who died in the struggle against Shell as well as environmental justice activist Berta Cáceres from Honduras paid with their lives for their vocal oppositions. Their names, just as much as Sikhosiphi Rhadebe’s, echo in the struggles against exploitative extractivism of today.</p>
<p>The number of casualties in operating mines should not be forgotten either. In a single accident in the Turkish coal mine in Soma in 2014, at least 301 miners died in an underground fire. Even in the absence of major accidents miners are pressured to take ever higher risks in anticipation of the ever greater emphasis on production.</p>
<p>Increasingly struggles over mining are fought under environmental banners. The Environmental Atlas mapping of the social and environmental impacts of mining and other invasive developmental projects counts 158 conflicts over coal as well as 105 reported escalations over natural gas – the list is far too long to complete it. To get an overview it is certainly worthwhile to have a look at the globe full of colourful dots marking conflicts in virtually every region of the planet.</p>
<p>Consent or choice?</p>
<p>Is this just another case of the resource curse thesis suggesting that countries with large amounts of mineral endowment are worse off than their resource-poor counterparts? The answer is not that straightforward. In an ideal world communities could decide freely on whether or not they opt for mining in their community. In cases in which they opt in favour of mining communities should benefit from operation at every stage which would require the involvement of local entrepreneurs and schemes to upskill locals (I am still talking about an ideal world). Initiatives such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples demand free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). This might not go far enough as critics argue that “consent” should be replaced by “choice”. This seems easier said than done in the face of cosy relationships between mining capital and elite politicians.</p>
<p>South Africa’s impasse</p>
<p>Let me go back to South Africa where I currently do research on popular mobilization around the extractive industries. According to Corruption Watch, South Africa’s mining industry is at high risk of corrupt practices. Evidence certainly suggests that companies and governing African National Congress (ANC) politicians are working together quite closely.</p>
<p>President Jacob Zuma’s son is heavily and controversially involved in mining ventures. Vice-president Cyril Ramaphosa held large shares of the mining company which saw 34 of its miners shot down in 2012. It is because of these conflicting interests that political economy professor Patrick Bond does not trust South Africa’s decision-makers to oversee mining relations. He likens them to a drunk nephew who “finds the key to the cupboard containing the family jewels, and he takes them all away, then finds a sleazy foreign buyer on the street corner who pays him a small portion of the value of the jewels, at which point the nephew goes to the bottle store and gets the most vile booze available, swigs it down and comes home to the same house, and vomits it all up, passing out and leaving the Auntie to clean up the mess.”</p>
<p>So the challenge will be to become sober about how to manage mining relations in a country in which close to 10 percent GDP comes from mining operations and where countless other sectors are connected to mining. Under the current fast-tracking methodology Phakisa, the South African government is currently embarking on streamlining decision-making processes in mining. To many this sounds like more top-down decision-making at the expense of communities that will have to host mines.</p>
<p>The T-shirts on Human Rights day on the Wild Coast read: “No mining on our land”.</p>
<p>We will see more of those where people’s freedom of choice becomes violated.</p>
<p>Jasper Finkeldey is a PhD researcher at the University of Essex studying social and environmental impacts of mining in South Africa. He is currently based at the Centre for Civil Society in Durban.</p>
<p>This essay was written as a special report for <a href="http://www.theecologist.org/" type="external">The Ecologist</a>.</p> | The Inextricable Links Between Mining and Violence | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/04/03/the-inextricable-links-between-mining-and-violence/ | 2017-04-03 | 4left
| The Inextricable Links Between Mining and Violence
<p>Last year South Africa’s bountiful Wild Coast saw the assassination of Sikhosiphi Rhadebe, activist against proposed dune mining on his homeland. The commemoration of Rhadebe who went by the name Bozooka coincided with this year’s Human Rights day. At least 500 people came to stand together in solidarity to call for an end to violence under the glaring sun of the Wild Coast far off the tarred national roads.</p>
<p>Saluting the deceased Rhadebe, leader of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, gun shots were fired in the air giving a vivid demonstration of the sound of death that was heard on the Wild Coast a year ago. Mark Caruso, CEO of the company that applied for a permit for titanium mining on the Wild Coast had (according to local media) previously bragged in an internal email: “I am enlivened by [the] opportunity to grind all resistance to my presence.”</p>
<p>Violence and mining do not meet spontaneously – they are uncanny bedfellows.</p>
<p>Acclaimed mining scholar Anthony Bebbington calls the choice communities are facing when mining companies approach “Faustian in the extreme”. Companies offer compensation (mostly money) for multiple forms of dispossessions; namely dispossession of “land, territory, landscape and natural resources”. According to Bebbington no matter if mining is to go ahead or not it will irrevocably divide communities over the question. Defying the notion of win-win situations invoked by mining companies’ global examples show that mine-affected communities typically lose while a class of investors, CEOs and some local managers wine and dine on the generous revenues.</p>
<p>Blockadia in the making?</p>
<p>But as the Wild Coast people testify quite a number of activists are not shying away to take on mining Goliaths. Environmental justice activists are putting themselves in the frontlines of a global battle that Naomi Klein calls “Blockadia” – a new conflict zone “cropping up with increasing frequency and intensity wherever extractive projects are attempting to dig and drill, whether for open-pit mines, or gas fracking, or tar sands oil pipelines.” The struggle of Standing Rock is a case in point where indigenous activists faced the heavily armoured police.</p>
<p>But media attention to extractive struggles is rarely that persistent. And even in cases in which the media reports diligently from these conflict zones, time seems to be on the side of mining companies and oil firms. If extractive operations face resistance the nature of mineral resources allows companies to change strategies and come back when resistance is at its weakest.</p>
<p>Death toll of mining</p>
<p>The imbalance of resource also plays to the hands of companies as they have the means to bring delinquents on their side. In an academic paper entitled Conflict and Astroturfing in Niyamgiri, which is very instructive beyond the confines of academia, Romy Kraemer and others tell the story of a young tribal activist who received global attention for his fight against bauxide mining in India. In the cause of the struggle however the company manages to buy the activist out and provide him with a scholarship away from his native land. This is a rather peaceful case if one considers how many violent conflicts are reported around extraction worldwide. Ken Saro-Wiwa who died in the struggle against Shell as well as environmental justice activist Berta Cáceres from Honduras paid with their lives for their vocal oppositions. Their names, just as much as Sikhosiphi Rhadebe’s, echo in the struggles against exploitative extractivism of today.</p>
<p>The number of casualties in operating mines should not be forgotten either. In a single accident in the Turkish coal mine in Soma in 2014, at least 301 miners died in an underground fire. Even in the absence of major accidents miners are pressured to take ever higher risks in anticipation of the ever greater emphasis on production.</p>
<p>Increasingly struggles over mining are fought under environmental banners. The Environmental Atlas mapping of the social and environmental impacts of mining and other invasive developmental projects counts 158 conflicts over coal as well as 105 reported escalations over natural gas – the list is far too long to complete it. To get an overview it is certainly worthwhile to have a look at the globe full of colourful dots marking conflicts in virtually every region of the planet.</p>
<p>Consent or choice?</p>
<p>Is this just another case of the resource curse thesis suggesting that countries with large amounts of mineral endowment are worse off than their resource-poor counterparts? The answer is not that straightforward. In an ideal world communities could decide freely on whether or not they opt for mining in their community. In cases in which they opt in favour of mining communities should benefit from operation at every stage which would require the involvement of local entrepreneurs and schemes to upskill locals (I am still talking about an ideal world). Initiatives such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples demand free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). This might not go far enough as critics argue that “consent” should be replaced by “choice”. This seems easier said than done in the face of cosy relationships between mining capital and elite politicians.</p>
<p>South Africa’s impasse</p>
<p>Let me go back to South Africa where I currently do research on popular mobilization around the extractive industries. According to Corruption Watch, South Africa’s mining industry is at high risk of corrupt practices. Evidence certainly suggests that companies and governing African National Congress (ANC) politicians are working together quite closely.</p>
<p>President Jacob Zuma’s son is heavily and controversially involved in mining ventures. Vice-president Cyril Ramaphosa held large shares of the mining company which saw 34 of its miners shot down in 2012. It is because of these conflicting interests that political economy professor Patrick Bond does not trust South Africa’s decision-makers to oversee mining relations. He likens them to a drunk nephew who “finds the key to the cupboard containing the family jewels, and he takes them all away, then finds a sleazy foreign buyer on the street corner who pays him a small portion of the value of the jewels, at which point the nephew goes to the bottle store and gets the most vile booze available, swigs it down and comes home to the same house, and vomits it all up, passing out and leaving the Auntie to clean up the mess.”</p>
<p>So the challenge will be to become sober about how to manage mining relations in a country in which close to 10 percent GDP comes from mining operations and where countless other sectors are connected to mining. Under the current fast-tracking methodology Phakisa, the South African government is currently embarking on streamlining decision-making processes in mining. To many this sounds like more top-down decision-making at the expense of communities that will have to host mines.</p>
<p>The T-shirts on Human Rights day on the Wild Coast read: “No mining on our land”.</p>
<p>We will see more of those where people’s freedom of choice becomes violated.</p>
<p>Jasper Finkeldey is a PhD researcher at the University of Essex studying social and environmental impacts of mining in South Africa. He is currently based at the Centre for Civil Society in Durban.</p>
<p>This essay was written as a special report for <a href="http://www.theecologist.org/" type="external">The Ecologist</a>.</p> | 1,143 |
<p>The "Gangnam Style" music video by South Korean musician PSY is now the most watched online video ever. But what most viewers don't know is that "Gangnam Style" is just the tip of the iceberg in a massive government-backed effort to export Korean pop music, or K-pop, all over the globe.</p> | South Korea's K-Pop Beyond Gangnam Style | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-12-07/south-koreas-k-pop-beyond-gangnam-style | 2012-12-07 | 3left-center
| South Korea's K-Pop Beyond Gangnam Style
<p>The "Gangnam Style" music video by South Korean musician PSY is now the most watched online video ever. But what most viewers don't know is that "Gangnam Style" is just the tip of the iceberg in a massive government-backed effort to export Korean pop music, or K-pop, all over the globe.</p> | 1,144 |
<p />
<p>The newly released tape of Osama bin Ladan marks the second time in two years that that the al-Qa’eda leader has offered a “truce” to the West in the war on terror in return for various changes in policy towards the Muslim world, particularly in Iraq, Palestine and Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>Quite rightly, bin Laden’s truce offers have been rejected by European and American leaders alike. But while rejecting the messenger, Americans would be wrong to dismiss the idea of a truce with the Muslim world, even with radical Islam.</p>
<p>A truce does not equal capitulation to terrorists or letting Muslims off the hook for crimes committed in the name of their religion. Criminals such as bin Laden and his terrorist colleagues can no more offer a truce than could Al Capone or Pablo Escobar; they are murderers whom the world community must bring to justice.</p>
<p>But states, and even communities and cultures can make truces. And in so doing they can make demands of the other side that are crucial to resolving the conflicts that spawned the violence a truce is meant to stop.</p>
<p>Indeed, there is ample precedent for this kind of truce in Islam. The Prophet Mohammed agreed to the first Muslim truce in 628. Known as the Treaty of Hudaybiyah, it was between the nascent Muslim community and the Meccan pagans, and lasted for two years before being broken by the Meccans. More recently, during the past three decades an increasingly permanent Muslim presence in Europe has led Muslims to consider that region not as dar al-harb (the Abode of War, the traditional Muslim categorization of all non-Muslim lands), but rather as dar al-hudna, a land of truce, and even dar al-Islam, a land of peace. Despite the growing sense of alienation among many young Muslims, religiously inspired Muslim violence is still the rare exception among Europe’s 12 millions Muslims.</p>
<p>What would a “Muslim-American truce” consist of? On the American side, it must begin with an admission of how much US policies have violated our country’s founding ideals. For Muslims, the psychological impact of hearing us own up to the significant pain our policies have caused to their societies would be hard to overestimate.</p>
<p>Second, the US and NATO should halt all offensive military actions in the Muslim world and outline a plan for the removal of troops from all Muslim countries. We may be trying to kill al-Qa’eda second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri, but it’s hard to argue with his claim that “there will never be peace” as long as the US occupies Muslim countries and supports corrupt and authoritarian regimes.</p>
<p>Third, the hunt for Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and related terror networks must be transformed from an perpetual state of war into what it always should have been: a vigorous international effort to apprehend, prosecute and punish those involved in the September 11, 2001, assaults and similar attacks.</p>
<p>Finally, military and non-humanitarian aid to all Middle Eastern countries that are not democratic or don’t respect the rights of the peoples under their control should be suspended. Yes, this means Israel; but also Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other so-called “moderate” American allies. Such a step is crucial to stopping the regional arms race, systematic oppression, and cycle of violence that together make peace and democratic reform impossible.</p>
<p>As the weaker party, the Muslim world might have less to offer, but its obligations would be no less important than those of the other side. They would include, first, owning up to the incredible damage that terrorism has done to its victims, and a commitment to use non-violence to pursue the often well-justified opposition to policies of their own and other governments. Second, Muslim leaders must recognize that the continual Israel-, Jew- and US-bashing that defines much of the political discourse in the Muslim world is as ugly and immoral as it is inaccurate and unhelpful.</p>
<p>Finally, both sides must commit to making the Middle East a nuclear free region as the cornerstone of any commitment to stop the violence.</p>
<p>Sadly, neither the Bush Administration, with its Manichean world view, unwillingness to admit mistakes or compromise, and commitment to “full- spectrum dominance” of the region, nor most autocratic and corrupt Muslim leaders, have an interest in calling a truce in a war that is the foundation of their power. That means that it’s up to the millions of ordinary citizens of the US and Muslim world to call our own truce and begin a much-needed discussion about how to heal our increasingly fragile planet. The alternative is a long and ultimately catastrophic conflict between the West and Muslim world, exactly what Osama bin Laden had in mind on September 11, 2001.</p>
<p /> | A Truce, Yes, But Not With bin Laden | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2006/01/truce-yes-not-bin-laden/ | 2006-01-24 | 4left
| A Truce, Yes, But Not With bin Laden
<p />
<p>The newly released tape of Osama bin Ladan marks the second time in two years that that the al-Qa’eda leader has offered a “truce” to the West in the war on terror in return for various changes in policy towards the Muslim world, particularly in Iraq, Palestine and Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>Quite rightly, bin Laden’s truce offers have been rejected by European and American leaders alike. But while rejecting the messenger, Americans would be wrong to dismiss the idea of a truce with the Muslim world, even with radical Islam.</p>
<p>A truce does not equal capitulation to terrorists or letting Muslims off the hook for crimes committed in the name of their religion. Criminals such as bin Laden and his terrorist colleagues can no more offer a truce than could Al Capone or Pablo Escobar; they are murderers whom the world community must bring to justice.</p>
<p>But states, and even communities and cultures can make truces. And in so doing they can make demands of the other side that are crucial to resolving the conflicts that spawned the violence a truce is meant to stop.</p>
<p>Indeed, there is ample precedent for this kind of truce in Islam. The Prophet Mohammed agreed to the first Muslim truce in 628. Known as the Treaty of Hudaybiyah, it was between the nascent Muslim community and the Meccan pagans, and lasted for two years before being broken by the Meccans. More recently, during the past three decades an increasingly permanent Muslim presence in Europe has led Muslims to consider that region not as dar al-harb (the Abode of War, the traditional Muslim categorization of all non-Muslim lands), but rather as dar al-hudna, a land of truce, and even dar al-Islam, a land of peace. Despite the growing sense of alienation among many young Muslims, religiously inspired Muslim violence is still the rare exception among Europe’s 12 millions Muslims.</p>
<p>What would a “Muslim-American truce” consist of? On the American side, it must begin with an admission of how much US policies have violated our country’s founding ideals. For Muslims, the psychological impact of hearing us own up to the significant pain our policies have caused to their societies would be hard to overestimate.</p>
<p>Second, the US and NATO should halt all offensive military actions in the Muslim world and outline a plan for the removal of troops from all Muslim countries. We may be trying to kill al-Qa’eda second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri, but it’s hard to argue with his claim that “there will never be peace” as long as the US occupies Muslim countries and supports corrupt and authoritarian regimes.</p>
<p>Third, the hunt for Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and related terror networks must be transformed from an perpetual state of war into what it always should have been: a vigorous international effort to apprehend, prosecute and punish those involved in the September 11, 2001, assaults and similar attacks.</p>
<p>Finally, military and non-humanitarian aid to all Middle Eastern countries that are not democratic or don’t respect the rights of the peoples under their control should be suspended. Yes, this means Israel; but also Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other so-called “moderate” American allies. Such a step is crucial to stopping the regional arms race, systematic oppression, and cycle of violence that together make peace and democratic reform impossible.</p>
<p>As the weaker party, the Muslim world might have less to offer, but its obligations would be no less important than those of the other side. They would include, first, owning up to the incredible damage that terrorism has done to its victims, and a commitment to use non-violence to pursue the often well-justified opposition to policies of their own and other governments. Second, Muslim leaders must recognize that the continual Israel-, Jew- and US-bashing that defines much of the political discourse in the Muslim world is as ugly and immoral as it is inaccurate and unhelpful.</p>
<p>Finally, both sides must commit to making the Middle East a nuclear free region as the cornerstone of any commitment to stop the violence.</p>
<p>Sadly, neither the Bush Administration, with its Manichean world view, unwillingness to admit mistakes or compromise, and commitment to “full- spectrum dominance” of the region, nor most autocratic and corrupt Muslim leaders, have an interest in calling a truce in a war that is the foundation of their power. That means that it’s up to the millions of ordinary citizens of the US and Muslim world to call our own truce and begin a much-needed discussion about how to heal our increasingly fragile planet. The alternative is a long and ultimately catastrophic conflict between the West and Muslim world, exactly what Osama bin Laden had in mind on September 11, 2001.</p>
<p /> | 1,145 |
<p>The arrest in Toronto of seventeen men, mostly quite young, for conspiracy to bomb places in Southern Ontario has raised a storm of comment. Unfortunately, much of it has been either premature or wrong.</p>
<p>A Congressman from Northern New York, uninformed but still generous with his opinions, declared that Canada was thick with al Qaeda cells owing to its liberal (a truly filthy word in the United States) immigration and refugee laws. Sadly, the Congressman’s big red-nose talents are appreciated only in Canada, his ignorance being taken for insight in many parts of the United States.</p>
<p>Pat Buchanan parodies are also taken seriously by some in Canada, particularly in Alberta, and there are people here eager for any opportunity to prove their anti-terror bone fides to America’s unsmiling leaders. This strain in our society should alert us to the possibility, however remote, of skewed investigations where terror is concerned.</p>
<p>The New York Times, that tea-sipping, wealthy widow of American newspapers, went out of her way to recognize The Toronto Star for substantial coverage of events. That is not praise clear-headed people welcome, The Times often having been on the wrong side of human rights issues as well as having served as the official Wal-Mart Greeter on the path to war.</p>
<p>Condoleezza Rice, too, took approving note of events in Toronto, but that surely is the moral equivalent of a twinkle from the eyes of Joachim von Ribbentrop.</p>
<p>Members of any security and intelligence apparatus are not immune to such blandishments. Results or seeming results bring praise, promotion, and budget increases to establishments that normally enjoy little public recognition. I have no reason to believe there has been inappropriate behavior by officials here, but I emphasize the importance of healthy skepticism until a clear picture emerges. The lack of healthy skepticism in America is precisely what has reduced that society to a spineless acceptance of whatever authority says, no matter how uninformed or unreasonable.</p>
<p>The known facts of the Toronto case are simple. CSIS, Canada’s intelligence agency, identified one or more of these fellows on an Internet chat room about two years ago. This prompted additional investigation, and a group of young men sharing angry dreams was discovered. Finally, when a 3-ton load of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be used as a component for an explosive, was offered by the watchers and accepted by someone in the group, a wave of arrests quickly followed.</p>
<p>My first observation is that any group of young men thoughtless enough to reveal violent intentions on an Internet chat site represent a pretty low-level threat. After all, these chat sites are monitored constantly by police and intelligence services of many countries for child predators, traders in child porn, threats to governments, and for extreme political statements of every kind. Doing what these young men supposedly did is comparable to trying to build a bomb in a department-store display window on a busy avenue.</p>
<p>Well, maybe they are not very bright, and we do still need to be protected from people who are not very bright, but the bizarre nature of the accusations against them is suggested by statements from a lawyer for one of the accused.</p>
<p>While formal charges have not been produced and lawyers for the accused have received no discovery information, the lawyers were permitted, in a Darkness at Noon fashion, to read (but not copy) a synopsis of accusations which I understand is typically prepared by police. Apparently, such synopses have a history of great inaccuracy when compared to actual legal charges finally submitted in court. I believe that it was with this in mind and with the intention of alerting the thinking public to some odd stuff that a lawyer for one of the accused stood outside the court and recited some of the accusations. The points include a wish to behead the Prime Minister, take government hostages, blow up part of Parliament, and attack the CBC.</p>
<p>Behead the Prime Minister? Doesn’t that just sound like what you would expect from angry young men discussing violent fantasies in a chat room? How many pimply-faced young men annually express dire wishes for school principals, teachers, girlfriends’ fathers or others with some authority?</p>
<p>It may not be much of a legal charge, but it’s great stuff for the press, and we’ve had the words cell, al Quaeda, and terrorism repeated countless times. There is not the least justification yet for any of these words.</p>
<p>We must keep in mind that a group of unhappy young men can easily be manipulated by a clever intelligence agent or policeman. Seduction and psychological manipulation are at the very heart of producing what is called human intelligence. There is often a rather fine line between young conspirators being observed by undercover agents and foolish young men being manipulated into incriminating themselves.</p>
<p>The press loves turning to someone resembling authority at such times for incisive comments, so mysterious “terror experts” suddenly are everywhere on Canada’s airwaves. God, they seem to have descended like a great ugly flock of grief counselors, another questionable kind of expert, following a school killing.</p>
<p>I heard two terror experts on CBC radio. One an ex-British soldier and another an ex-CSIS official, both earning their livings now by selling security to private firms and governments. Ask an insurance agent whether you have enough life insurance and what response can you anticipate with virtually one-hundred percent certainty?</p>
<p>These experts warn of undefined fears, as in, who knows how many others are “out there”? Well, who knows how many dishonest terror experts there are out there hawking fear? The ex-CSIS man did it more subtly and gracefully than the ex-soldier, but shadowy nonsense remains shadowy nonsense, no matter the tone and vocabulary. The ex-CSIS man questioned the future application to Canada of a favorite expression of mine, “the peaceable kingdom,” while offering absolutely nothing of substance to warrant his statement.</p>
<p>Even if these young men are guilty of crimes, how is their case so different to that of a man in Montreal who shot fourteen women one day or a pig farmer outside Vancouver whose hobby for years was luring with drugs dozens of prostitutes to their deaths? Does political anger make it different? Religion? A violent crime is a crime, and those found guilty should be separated from society. What we have here is the demonstrated wisdom of keeping an eye on Internet chat sites and on people doing questionable activities, but that is the case for many crimes we emphasize more than we once did, as with child pornography. There is no reason for a special fear to take hold when the subject is terror. It is dangerous and destructive of our best values.</p>
<p>I’ve often wondered where people go to become “terror experts.” Is there a graduate degree offered by Bob Jones University or at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty U? We know that a true and effective terrorist organization like the IRA always keeps its business utterly secret. Those suspected of informing are murdered without hesitation.</p>
<p>Some of these “experts” have experience in Israel, but everything that comes out of Israel on the subject of terror resembles a script prepared by the state security apparatus. Israel vigorously promotes the idea of terror in the world the way some countries promote tourism. It is simply in its interest.</p>
<p>Many of the firms for which the experts work were founded by men like Henry Kissinger and William Colby as ways of keeping a high income in retirement and an oar in the waters of intrigue. The intentions of such firms are entirely suspect. In some cases the firms may well serve as ways for American intelligence to penetrate the existing security of unsuspecting firms and governments, at home and abroad.</p>
<p>America’s extreme, erratic, and often-uninformed attitudes towards terror provide the powerful gravitational field influencing and distorting current events. Why do I describe American attitudes as erratic and uninformed? First, terror did not begin with 9/11. Outfits like the IRA, ETA, and The Shining Path have decades of history, much of it unknown to average Americans who remain indifferent to what does not directly affect them.</p>
<p>America’s own history is rich with tolerated internal terrorist organizations. This starts at the beginning with the Sons of Liberty before the American Revolution beating and tar-and-feathering officials in the colonies who were just doing their duty for what was then the legal government. Often officials’ homes were attacked and either burnt or torn down. The same fate fell to Loyalists after the war. They were beaten, often burned-out, always run from their homes, and had their property stolen.</p>
<p>The tradition of internal terror vigorously continued with the Klu Klux Klan, an organization active for about a century, and it continued down through the fascist Bund of the 1930s and to the many armed, private militias that were so popular for decades until Timothy McVeigh’s shadow fell across them. There are many, many examples of this kind of terror in American history, another notable one being Cosa Nostra, whose violent operations were long ignored by an FBI busy tracking left-leaning school teachers.</p>
<p>America has never winced at supporting terror in other places for causes with which it felt sympathy. The greatest example of this was decades of lavish support for the IRA. Collections were openly made in Irish bars in Chicago, New York, and Boston to buy the IRA’s guns and bombs. Politicians and police were aware of this and did nothing, indeed some of them undoubtedly were contributors.</p>
<p>The most dreadful terror associated with America has been the state terror of its long series of colonial wars after World War II. Sometimes the terror is delegated to proxies, financed, trained, and given weapons and intelligence by the American government. This was the case in Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, and a dozen other hells. Millions were spent by the CIA subsidizing thugs in Florida who carried out bombings and shootings in Cuba.</p>
<p>In Indonesia, with the end of Sukarno’s government in 1965, the U.S. supported what was then the greatest holocaust since Hitler’s, with five-hundred thousand Indonesians having their throats cut and their bodies dumped into rivers just because they were suspected of being communists. State Department officials are reported to have been on phones late into the night transmitting lists of names for the slaughter.</p>
<p>Vietnam was “hands-on” terror. Countless carpet bombings, search-and-destroy missions, napalmings, night-crawler assassinations, and other horrors chalked up maybe three million victims in an undeclared war against people in their own land. Along the way, interrogated suspects were thrown from helicopters and unknown thousands of helpless village women were raped and murdered. The terror spread to Cambodia when America’s secret bombings and incursions destabilized its government and gave the world “the killing fields” of Pol Pot.</p>
<p>The point of reciting these dark parts of American history is to demonstrate forcefully how often that nation has turned to inappropriate, violent responses, and it proved no different in the case of 9/11. A great crime was committed, and any criminals who survived deserved to be brought to justice. But that was not what happened. Instead two Muslim nations were invaded, tens of thousands killed, a giant, secret kidnapping-and-torture organization established, and many civil liberties cast aside. This is not a model for Canada or any civilized society.</p>
<p>No thinking person believes that Canada’s foreign policy should be driven by threats from any group. However, that is not the same thing as recognizing that great numbers of angry young men, here and abroad, are a symptom of something being very wrong.</p>
<p>Unless they are psychopaths, people do not just suddenly decide to blow things up. If they are psychopaths, then what they do cannot be called political and cannot be labeled as terrorism. America was advised privately, before its invasions, by many who understood that one result would be a huge wave of anger and alienation in the Muslim world. As with so many other wise words, this advice was ignored by Bush’s fanatics.</p>
<p>Canada’s new participation in Afghanistan is a ghastly mistake. It associates Canada’s good name with a failed, disastrous policy. The fact is that U.S. is already slowly, quietly withdrawing from the mess it created in Afghanistan. It has pressured a number of allies, notably Canada and Great Britain, to help cover this gradual withdrawal. That really is Canada’s dirty task in Afghanistan. Canada is not there to help people find peace and stability (although I am confident that Canada’s troops will do some of this wherever the possibility exists) because the truth is that the U.S. has already quietly given the task up as lost. It fought a “cheap” war in Afghanistan, using warlords every bit as nasty as the Taleban to gain a quick victory, and there is almost no possibility of constructing a modern democratic state from the remains.</p>
<p>I do believe we will see justice for the young men in Canada with nothing but facts determining their fate. Canadians are a sensible and decent people. All the rash and uninformed comments made in recent days will fade like yesterday’s headlines about miracles and aliens in The National Inquirer.</p>
<p>At the same time, I hope Canadians consider more carefully the deeply flawed policies Bush has imposed on the world. Two ancient Muslim nations are occupied and smoldering with resentment amidst economic ruin. A great, world cultural treasure has been pillaged and destroyed, making the Taleban’s thuggish destruction of statues some years ago seem small by comparison. Iraq has been driven into the destructive beginnings of civil war. The country still does not have even dependable water or electricity. The U.S. threatens a third Muslim country almost weekly. Palestinians are treated worse today by Israel, with smiling American acquiescence, than black Africans were under apartheid, and there is no hint of a just end to the situation. And the learning curve in guerilla fighting means nothing but more intense attacks against foreign armies in Afghanistan and Iraq.</p>
<p>Robert Fisk, the superb British journalist on Middle East affairs, had a fascinating column recently. He explained how at the Baghdad morgue, one of whose officials he knows, there are standing orders that bodies brought in by Americans are not to be autopsied. The bodies often come tagged with a cursory description of the cause of death along the lines of extreme trauma. This is the kind of gruesome, revealing detail you will never see broadcast on American networks.</p>
<p>Not only do America’s trigger-happy soldiers shoot innocent people regularly at roadblocks and in raids, but there is a secret dirty war going on in which political Iraqis are assassinated by America’s private mercenary forces. A large number of Iraqi scientists previously associated with weapons programs have been mysteriously murdered, almost certainly the work of Mossad being given a free hand in the country. Americans may be unaware of what is being done in their name, but the people of Western Asia are well aware of it, and memories in the Middle East are long.</p>
<p>The argument that Canada’s withdrawal from Afghanistan would make no difference is utterly false because the most important difference to be made involves our integrity and deepest principles.</p>
<p>JOHN CHUCKMAN lives in Ontario.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Terror in Toronto or Tempest in a Teapot | true | https://counterpunch.org/2006/06/10/terror-in-toronto-or-tempest-in-a-teapot/ | 2006-06-10 | 4left
| Terror in Toronto or Tempest in a Teapot
<p>The arrest in Toronto of seventeen men, mostly quite young, for conspiracy to bomb places in Southern Ontario has raised a storm of comment. Unfortunately, much of it has been either premature or wrong.</p>
<p>A Congressman from Northern New York, uninformed but still generous with his opinions, declared that Canada was thick with al Qaeda cells owing to its liberal (a truly filthy word in the United States) immigration and refugee laws. Sadly, the Congressman’s big red-nose talents are appreciated only in Canada, his ignorance being taken for insight in many parts of the United States.</p>
<p>Pat Buchanan parodies are also taken seriously by some in Canada, particularly in Alberta, and there are people here eager for any opportunity to prove their anti-terror bone fides to America’s unsmiling leaders. This strain in our society should alert us to the possibility, however remote, of skewed investigations where terror is concerned.</p>
<p>The New York Times, that tea-sipping, wealthy widow of American newspapers, went out of her way to recognize The Toronto Star for substantial coverage of events. That is not praise clear-headed people welcome, The Times often having been on the wrong side of human rights issues as well as having served as the official Wal-Mart Greeter on the path to war.</p>
<p>Condoleezza Rice, too, took approving note of events in Toronto, but that surely is the moral equivalent of a twinkle from the eyes of Joachim von Ribbentrop.</p>
<p>Members of any security and intelligence apparatus are not immune to such blandishments. Results or seeming results bring praise, promotion, and budget increases to establishments that normally enjoy little public recognition. I have no reason to believe there has been inappropriate behavior by officials here, but I emphasize the importance of healthy skepticism until a clear picture emerges. The lack of healthy skepticism in America is precisely what has reduced that society to a spineless acceptance of whatever authority says, no matter how uninformed or unreasonable.</p>
<p>The known facts of the Toronto case are simple. CSIS, Canada’s intelligence agency, identified one or more of these fellows on an Internet chat room about two years ago. This prompted additional investigation, and a group of young men sharing angry dreams was discovered. Finally, when a 3-ton load of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be used as a component for an explosive, was offered by the watchers and accepted by someone in the group, a wave of arrests quickly followed.</p>
<p>My first observation is that any group of young men thoughtless enough to reveal violent intentions on an Internet chat site represent a pretty low-level threat. After all, these chat sites are monitored constantly by police and intelligence services of many countries for child predators, traders in child porn, threats to governments, and for extreme political statements of every kind. Doing what these young men supposedly did is comparable to trying to build a bomb in a department-store display window on a busy avenue.</p>
<p>Well, maybe they are not very bright, and we do still need to be protected from people who are not very bright, but the bizarre nature of the accusations against them is suggested by statements from a lawyer for one of the accused.</p>
<p>While formal charges have not been produced and lawyers for the accused have received no discovery information, the lawyers were permitted, in a Darkness at Noon fashion, to read (but not copy) a synopsis of accusations which I understand is typically prepared by police. Apparently, such synopses have a history of great inaccuracy when compared to actual legal charges finally submitted in court. I believe that it was with this in mind and with the intention of alerting the thinking public to some odd stuff that a lawyer for one of the accused stood outside the court and recited some of the accusations. The points include a wish to behead the Prime Minister, take government hostages, blow up part of Parliament, and attack the CBC.</p>
<p>Behead the Prime Minister? Doesn’t that just sound like what you would expect from angry young men discussing violent fantasies in a chat room? How many pimply-faced young men annually express dire wishes for school principals, teachers, girlfriends’ fathers or others with some authority?</p>
<p>It may not be much of a legal charge, but it’s great stuff for the press, and we’ve had the words cell, al Quaeda, and terrorism repeated countless times. There is not the least justification yet for any of these words.</p>
<p>We must keep in mind that a group of unhappy young men can easily be manipulated by a clever intelligence agent or policeman. Seduction and psychological manipulation are at the very heart of producing what is called human intelligence. There is often a rather fine line between young conspirators being observed by undercover agents and foolish young men being manipulated into incriminating themselves.</p>
<p>The press loves turning to someone resembling authority at such times for incisive comments, so mysterious “terror experts” suddenly are everywhere on Canada’s airwaves. God, they seem to have descended like a great ugly flock of grief counselors, another questionable kind of expert, following a school killing.</p>
<p>I heard two terror experts on CBC radio. One an ex-British soldier and another an ex-CSIS official, both earning their livings now by selling security to private firms and governments. Ask an insurance agent whether you have enough life insurance and what response can you anticipate with virtually one-hundred percent certainty?</p>
<p>These experts warn of undefined fears, as in, who knows how many others are “out there”? Well, who knows how many dishonest terror experts there are out there hawking fear? The ex-CSIS man did it more subtly and gracefully than the ex-soldier, but shadowy nonsense remains shadowy nonsense, no matter the tone and vocabulary. The ex-CSIS man questioned the future application to Canada of a favorite expression of mine, “the peaceable kingdom,” while offering absolutely nothing of substance to warrant his statement.</p>
<p>Even if these young men are guilty of crimes, how is their case so different to that of a man in Montreal who shot fourteen women one day or a pig farmer outside Vancouver whose hobby for years was luring with drugs dozens of prostitutes to their deaths? Does political anger make it different? Religion? A violent crime is a crime, and those found guilty should be separated from society. What we have here is the demonstrated wisdom of keeping an eye on Internet chat sites and on people doing questionable activities, but that is the case for many crimes we emphasize more than we once did, as with child pornography. There is no reason for a special fear to take hold when the subject is terror. It is dangerous and destructive of our best values.</p>
<p>I’ve often wondered where people go to become “terror experts.” Is there a graduate degree offered by Bob Jones University or at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty U? We know that a true and effective terrorist organization like the IRA always keeps its business utterly secret. Those suspected of informing are murdered without hesitation.</p>
<p>Some of these “experts” have experience in Israel, but everything that comes out of Israel on the subject of terror resembles a script prepared by the state security apparatus. Israel vigorously promotes the idea of terror in the world the way some countries promote tourism. It is simply in its interest.</p>
<p>Many of the firms for which the experts work were founded by men like Henry Kissinger and William Colby as ways of keeping a high income in retirement and an oar in the waters of intrigue. The intentions of such firms are entirely suspect. In some cases the firms may well serve as ways for American intelligence to penetrate the existing security of unsuspecting firms and governments, at home and abroad.</p>
<p>America’s extreme, erratic, and often-uninformed attitudes towards terror provide the powerful gravitational field influencing and distorting current events. Why do I describe American attitudes as erratic and uninformed? First, terror did not begin with 9/11. Outfits like the IRA, ETA, and The Shining Path have decades of history, much of it unknown to average Americans who remain indifferent to what does not directly affect them.</p>
<p>America’s own history is rich with tolerated internal terrorist organizations. This starts at the beginning with the Sons of Liberty before the American Revolution beating and tar-and-feathering officials in the colonies who were just doing their duty for what was then the legal government. Often officials’ homes were attacked and either burnt or torn down. The same fate fell to Loyalists after the war. They were beaten, often burned-out, always run from their homes, and had their property stolen.</p>
<p>The tradition of internal terror vigorously continued with the Klu Klux Klan, an organization active for about a century, and it continued down through the fascist Bund of the 1930s and to the many armed, private militias that were so popular for decades until Timothy McVeigh’s shadow fell across them. There are many, many examples of this kind of terror in American history, another notable one being Cosa Nostra, whose violent operations were long ignored by an FBI busy tracking left-leaning school teachers.</p>
<p>America has never winced at supporting terror in other places for causes with which it felt sympathy. The greatest example of this was decades of lavish support for the IRA. Collections were openly made in Irish bars in Chicago, New York, and Boston to buy the IRA’s guns and bombs. Politicians and police were aware of this and did nothing, indeed some of them undoubtedly were contributors.</p>
<p>The most dreadful terror associated with America has been the state terror of its long series of colonial wars after World War II. Sometimes the terror is delegated to proxies, financed, trained, and given weapons and intelligence by the American government. This was the case in Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, and a dozen other hells. Millions were spent by the CIA subsidizing thugs in Florida who carried out bombings and shootings in Cuba.</p>
<p>In Indonesia, with the end of Sukarno’s government in 1965, the U.S. supported what was then the greatest holocaust since Hitler’s, with five-hundred thousand Indonesians having their throats cut and their bodies dumped into rivers just because they were suspected of being communists. State Department officials are reported to have been on phones late into the night transmitting lists of names for the slaughter.</p>
<p>Vietnam was “hands-on” terror. Countless carpet bombings, search-and-destroy missions, napalmings, night-crawler assassinations, and other horrors chalked up maybe three million victims in an undeclared war against people in their own land. Along the way, interrogated suspects were thrown from helicopters and unknown thousands of helpless village women were raped and murdered. The terror spread to Cambodia when America’s secret bombings and incursions destabilized its government and gave the world “the killing fields” of Pol Pot.</p>
<p>The point of reciting these dark parts of American history is to demonstrate forcefully how often that nation has turned to inappropriate, violent responses, and it proved no different in the case of 9/11. A great crime was committed, and any criminals who survived deserved to be brought to justice. But that was not what happened. Instead two Muslim nations were invaded, tens of thousands killed, a giant, secret kidnapping-and-torture organization established, and many civil liberties cast aside. This is not a model for Canada or any civilized society.</p>
<p>No thinking person believes that Canada’s foreign policy should be driven by threats from any group. However, that is not the same thing as recognizing that great numbers of angry young men, here and abroad, are a symptom of something being very wrong.</p>
<p>Unless they are psychopaths, people do not just suddenly decide to blow things up. If they are psychopaths, then what they do cannot be called political and cannot be labeled as terrorism. America was advised privately, before its invasions, by many who understood that one result would be a huge wave of anger and alienation in the Muslim world. As with so many other wise words, this advice was ignored by Bush’s fanatics.</p>
<p>Canada’s new participation in Afghanistan is a ghastly mistake. It associates Canada’s good name with a failed, disastrous policy. The fact is that U.S. is already slowly, quietly withdrawing from the mess it created in Afghanistan. It has pressured a number of allies, notably Canada and Great Britain, to help cover this gradual withdrawal. That really is Canada’s dirty task in Afghanistan. Canada is not there to help people find peace and stability (although I am confident that Canada’s troops will do some of this wherever the possibility exists) because the truth is that the U.S. has already quietly given the task up as lost. It fought a “cheap” war in Afghanistan, using warlords every bit as nasty as the Taleban to gain a quick victory, and there is almost no possibility of constructing a modern democratic state from the remains.</p>
<p>I do believe we will see justice for the young men in Canada with nothing but facts determining their fate. Canadians are a sensible and decent people. All the rash and uninformed comments made in recent days will fade like yesterday’s headlines about miracles and aliens in The National Inquirer.</p>
<p>At the same time, I hope Canadians consider more carefully the deeply flawed policies Bush has imposed on the world. Two ancient Muslim nations are occupied and smoldering with resentment amidst economic ruin. A great, world cultural treasure has been pillaged and destroyed, making the Taleban’s thuggish destruction of statues some years ago seem small by comparison. Iraq has been driven into the destructive beginnings of civil war. The country still does not have even dependable water or electricity. The U.S. threatens a third Muslim country almost weekly. Palestinians are treated worse today by Israel, with smiling American acquiescence, than black Africans were under apartheid, and there is no hint of a just end to the situation. And the learning curve in guerilla fighting means nothing but more intense attacks against foreign armies in Afghanistan and Iraq.</p>
<p>Robert Fisk, the superb British journalist on Middle East affairs, had a fascinating column recently. He explained how at the Baghdad morgue, one of whose officials he knows, there are standing orders that bodies brought in by Americans are not to be autopsied. The bodies often come tagged with a cursory description of the cause of death along the lines of extreme trauma. This is the kind of gruesome, revealing detail you will never see broadcast on American networks.</p>
<p>Not only do America’s trigger-happy soldiers shoot innocent people regularly at roadblocks and in raids, but there is a secret dirty war going on in which political Iraqis are assassinated by America’s private mercenary forces. A large number of Iraqi scientists previously associated with weapons programs have been mysteriously murdered, almost certainly the work of Mossad being given a free hand in the country. Americans may be unaware of what is being done in their name, but the people of Western Asia are well aware of it, and memories in the Middle East are long.</p>
<p>The argument that Canada’s withdrawal from Afghanistan would make no difference is utterly false because the most important difference to be made involves our integrity and deepest principles.</p>
<p>JOHN CHUCKMAN lives in Ontario.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | 1,146 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickperry/6005594084/sizes/l/in/photostream/"&gt;Rick Perry&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p />
<p>On Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced that he won’t run for re-election for a third time. That leaves the former presidential candidate with a little bit of free time on his hands, and now, by way of an interview with the <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/11/perry-trip-israel-sign-another-white-house-bid/?page=all#pagebreak" type="external">Washington Times</a>, we know he plans to spend it: international conflict resolution.</p>
<p>“We will be going to Israel to bring together Arabs, Christians and Jews in an educational forum,” Mr. Perry told The Washington Times in an interview just three days after he announced he would not seek an unprecedented fourth term as Texas governor.</p>
<p>Most Christians living in the Middle East are Arabs. The people Perry should be inviting are called Muslims. Then again, counting to three has never really been his forte.</p>
<p /> | Rick Perry’s New Quest: Middle East Peace | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/rick-perrys-new-quest-middle-east-peace/ | 2013-07-12 | 4left
| Rick Perry’s New Quest: Middle East Peace
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickperry/6005594084/sizes/l/in/photostream/"&gt;Rick Perry&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p />
<p>On Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced that he won’t run for re-election for a third time. That leaves the former presidential candidate with a little bit of free time on his hands, and now, by way of an interview with the <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/11/perry-trip-israel-sign-another-white-house-bid/?page=all#pagebreak" type="external">Washington Times</a>, we know he plans to spend it: international conflict resolution.</p>
<p>“We will be going to Israel to bring together Arabs, Christians and Jews in an educational forum,” Mr. Perry told The Washington Times in an interview just three days after he announced he would not seek an unprecedented fourth term as Texas governor.</p>
<p>Most Christians living in the Middle East are Arabs. The people Perry should be inviting are called Muslims. Then again, counting to three has never really been his forte.</p>
<p /> | 1,147 |
<p>In January 2013, the Los Angeles Times ( <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/03/local/la-me-0104-lapd-women-20130104" type="external">1/4/13</a>) published an explosive story about alleged criminality in the L.A. Police Department. Two veteran officers, Luis Valenzuela and James Nichols, were under investigation for using the threat of jail to force at least four different women they had previously arrested to have sex with them.</p>
<p>Such crimes are legally known as “rape.” But the Times avoided using that term, inexplicably employing every other word and phrase imaginable—including “sex crimes,” “sexual favors” and “forced sex”—to describe what the officers were accused of.</p>
<p>Worse still, the Times unquestioningly regurgitated police excuses for why it took the department three years to take action on the accusations against Valenzuela and Nichols.</p>
<p>The first accuser came forward in 2010, but nothing was done because “the detective assigned to the case was unable to locate her,” a claim that went unchallenged by the paper. When a second accuser came forward the following year, rather than immediately investigate, the LAPD separated and reassigned the accused.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, accuser No. 2’s claims of abuse were dismissed as irrational by the LAPD, which the Times dutifully echoed: “Police noted that the [second victim] displayed erratic behavior while recounting the events. Later, she made violent threats while in custody and was transported to a hospital.” Apparently women must remain calm and collected when recounting trauma if they are to be believed.</p>
<p>Bob Chamberlin/ Los Angeles TimesIn January 2014, the LAPD settled a lawsuit with one of the women who accused two LAPD officers of raping her – and once again the L.A. Times ( <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/15/local/la-me-lapd-settlement-20140115" type="external">1/15/14</a>) failed to use the word “rape” to describe what the officers were accused of.</p>
<p>Months later, a follow-up piece ( <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/04/local/la-me-lapd-misconduct-20131105#axzz2n3LpbqQi" type="external">11/5/13</a>) managed to sanitize the alleged rapes even further. According to the Times, the LAPD had determined that the officers “pressured women to engage in sex acts with them” and “sought sexual favors in exchange for leniency.” This is a strange use of the word “exchange,” which suggests a fair trade between two consenting individuals rather than an act of violence.</p>
<p>Perhaps the Times felt that because accusers three and four were sex workers they were not capable of being raped, a dangerously common belief that dehumanizes sex workers and makes them prime targets for sexual predators.</p>
<p>Or maybe the Times is just confused about what exactly constitutes rape in the state of California. Luckily, the law is easy to look up. Here is how <a href="http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/PEN/3/1/9/1/s261" type="external">California Penal Code (Section 261(a)(7))</a> defines “rape” as it might apply to this case:</p>
<p>Where the act is accomplished against the victim’s will by threatening to use the authority of a public official to incarcerate, arrest or deport the victim or another, and the victim has a reasonable belief that the perpetrator is a public official. As used in this paragraph, “public official” means a person employed by a governmental agency who has the authority, as part of that position, to incarcerate, arrest or deport another.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident; failing to call rape by its proper name when those accused of it are police officers appears to be a pattern for the L.A. Times:</p>
<p>• In September, the Times ( <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/05/local/la-me-0906-cop-arrested-20130906" type="external">9/6/13</a>) reported on the indictment of a San Bernardino police officer charged with raping two sex workers. Instead of calling it “rape,” the paper went with “sex charges,” “sexual assault” and “forcing two prostitutes to have sex with him.”</p>
<p>• In another case, the behavior of a San Diego police officer convicted of sexually abusing at least seven women during traffic stops was described by the Times (LATimes.com, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-cop-lawsuit-20130927,0,1176238.story#axzz2mG2GE7yk" type="external">9/27/13</a>) as “demanding sexual favors.”</p>
<p>• Not long after that, the Times (LATimes.com, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/22/local/la-me-ln-no-contest-plea-20131122#axzz2mG2GE7yk" type="external">11/22/13</a>) described a Metropolitan Hospital police officer who committed statutory rape as “engaging in a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl.”</p>
<p>It’s not as though the Times is incapable using the word “rape”; it does so regularly for perpetrators without a badge (e.g., LA Times.com, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/28/local/la-me-ln-el-monte-rape-20131028" type="external">10/28/13</a>, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/20/sports/la-sp-sn-jameis-winston-20131120" type="external">11/20/13</a>, <a href="" type="external">11/26/13</a>).</p>
<p>In California, rape is punishable by three to six years in state prison ( <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&amp;group=00001-01000&amp;file=261-269" type="external">California Penal Code 264(a)</a>), though it has yet to be seen whether these officers will ever be charged. Meanwhile, the fourth rape accuser from the first story ( <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/03/local/la-me-0104-lapd-women-20130104" type="external">1/3/13</a>) is currently serving over seven years in prison “for possession of cocaine with intent to sell and identity theft,” despite what the Times calls “the officers’ promises” to keep her out of jail in “exchange” for sex. Last I checked, “promises” and “threats,” like “sex” and “rape,” have very different meanings.</p>
<p>With its evasive language, the Times is engaging in a dangerous form of rape culture that excuses sexual violence committed by those in uniform. As a major media outlet in a country where just four of every 10 rapes are ever even reported to police ( <a href="http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates" type="external">Rape Abuse and Incest National Network</a>), the paper has a responsibility to name the crime.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Extra! February 2014</a></p> | Calling Rape by Its Right Name | true | http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/calling-rape-by-its-right-name/ | 2014-02-01 | 4left
| Calling Rape by Its Right Name
<p>In January 2013, the Los Angeles Times ( <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/03/local/la-me-0104-lapd-women-20130104" type="external">1/4/13</a>) published an explosive story about alleged criminality in the L.A. Police Department. Two veteran officers, Luis Valenzuela and James Nichols, were under investigation for using the threat of jail to force at least four different women they had previously arrested to have sex with them.</p>
<p>Such crimes are legally known as “rape.” But the Times avoided using that term, inexplicably employing every other word and phrase imaginable—including “sex crimes,” “sexual favors” and “forced sex”—to describe what the officers were accused of.</p>
<p>Worse still, the Times unquestioningly regurgitated police excuses for why it took the department three years to take action on the accusations against Valenzuela and Nichols.</p>
<p>The first accuser came forward in 2010, but nothing was done because “the detective assigned to the case was unable to locate her,” a claim that went unchallenged by the paper. When a second accuser came forward the following year, rather than immediately investigate, the LAPD separated and reassigned the accused.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, accuser No. 2’s claims of abuse were dismissed as irrational by the LAPD, which the Times dutifully echoed: “Police noted that the [second victim] displayed erratic behavior while recounting the events. Later, she made violent threats while in custody and was transported to a hospital.” Apparently women must remain calm and collected when recounting trauma if they are to be believed.</p>
<p>Bob Chamberlin/ Los Angeles TimesIn January 2014, the LAPD settled a lawsuit with one of the women who accused two LAPD officers of raping her – and once again the L.A. Times ( <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/15/local/la-me-lapd-settlement-20140115" type="external">1/15/14</a>) failed to use the word “rape” to describe what the officers were accused of.</p>
<p>Months later, a follow-up piece ( <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/04/local/la-me-lapd-misconduct-20131105#axzz2n3LpbqQi" type="external">11/5/13</a>) managed to sanitize the alleged rapes even further. According to the Times, the LAPD had determined that the officers “pressured women to engage in sex acts with them” and “sought sexual favors in exchange for leniency.” This is a strange use of the word “exchange,” which suggests a fair trade between two consenting individuals rather than an act of violence.</p>
<p>Perhaps the Times felt that because accusers three and four were sex workers they were not capable of being raped, a dangerously common belief that dehumanizes sex workers and makes them prime targets for sexual predators.</p>
<p>Or maybe the Times is just confused about what exactly constitutes rape in the state of California. Luckily, the law is easy to look up. Here is how <a href="http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/PEN/3/1/9/1/s261" type="external">California Penal Code (Section 261(a)(7))</a> defines “rape” as it might apply to this case:</p>
<p>Where the act is accomplished against the victim’s will by threatening to use the authority of a public official to incarcerate, arrest or deport the victim or another, and the victim has a reasonable belief that the perpetrator is a public official. As used in this paragraph, “public official” means a person employed by a governmental agency who has the authority, as part of that position, to incarcerate, arrest or deport another.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident; failing to call rape by its proper name when those accused of it are police officers appears to be a pattern for the L.A. Times:</p>
<p>• In September, the Times ( <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/05/local/la-me-0906-cop-arrested-20130906" type="external">9/6/13</a>) reported on the indictment of a San Bernardino police officer charged with raping two sex workers. Instead of calling it “rape,” the paper went with “sex charges,” “sexual assault” and “forcing two prostitutes to have sex with him.”</p>
<p>• In another case, the behavior of a San Diego police officer convicted of sexually abusing at least seven women during traffic stops was described by the Times (LATimes.com, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-cop-lawsuit-20130927,0,1176238.story#axzz2mG2GE7yk" type="external">9/27/13</a>) as “demanding sexual favors.”</p>
<p>• Not long after that, the Times (LATimes.com, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/22/local/la-me-ln-no-contest-plea-20131122#axzz2mG2GE7yk" type="external">11/22/13</a>) described a Metropolitan Hospital police officer who committed statutory rape as “engaging in a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl.”</p>
<p>It’s not as though the Times is incapable using the word “rape”; it does so regularly for perpetrators without a badge (e.g., LA Times.com, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/28/local/la-me-ln-el-monte-rape-20131028" type="external">10/28/13</a>, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/20/sports/la-sp-sn-jameis-winston-20131120" type="external">11/20/13</a>, <a href="" type="external">11/26/13</a>).</p>
<p>In California, rape is punishable by three to six years in state prison ( <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&amp;group=00001-01000&amp;file=261-269" type="external">California Penal Code 264(a)</a>), though it has yet to be seen whether these officers will ever be charged. Meanwhile, the fourth rape accuser from the first story ( <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/03/local/la-me-0104-lapd-women-20130104" type="external">1/3/13</a>) is currently serving over seven years in prison “for possession of cocaine with intent to sell and identity theft,” despite what the Times calls “the officers’ promises” to keep her out of jail in “exchange” for sex. Last I checked, “promises” and “threats,” like “sex” and “rape,” have very different meanings.</p>
<p>With its evasive language, the Times is engaging in a dangerous form of rape culture that excuses sexual violence committed by those in uniform. As a major media outlet in a country where just four of every 10 rapes are ever even reported to police ( <a href="http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates" type="external">Rape Abuse and Incest National Network</a>), the paper has a responsibility to name the crime.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Extra! February 2014</a></p> | 1,148 |
<p>Russia is stepping up its military assistance to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.</p>
<p>Speaking Tuesday at a summit of pro-Russian states in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Russian President&#160;Vladimir Putin defended the assistance to Assad. He said it was necessary "to defeat terrorism,"&#160;and he called on other countries to join in.</p>
<p>The US has expressed concern, with Secretary of State&#160;John Kerry&#160;calling Moscow after Putin’s comments. It was the third such call from Kerry in 10 days.</p>
<p>The build-up is very real, says Reva Bhalla, vice&#160;president of analysis with the geopolitical intelligence corporation, Stratfor. “From the satellite imagery so far,” she says, “we can see that they’re focussing very much at Latakia, in addition to their naval depot at Tartus, building up their assets, preparing essentially to station aerial assets on these bases along the coast. And in Tartus and Latakia that basically means we’re seeing things like newly renovated runways, possible control towers, housing for Russian forces. So nothing indicating that this is a temporary preparation by any means. It seems like Russia is here for the longer haul."</p>
<p>Russia has long sent financial aid and hardware to Damascus. Assad’s Syria has been an ally of Moscow since the Cold War. But there are now reports of military advisers on the ground, and clear preparations for providing close air support.</p>
<p>Bhalla says many observers are concluding that Syria is in danger of breaking up into smaller de facto statelets. Russia is keen to protect its foothold in the Mediterranean, and that means propping up a pro-Assad statelet along the coast, with direct military assistance if necessary.</p>
<p>But there are other motives, says Bhalla. “What Russia is doing is very much related to what is happening in this broader dynamic with the United States, where Russia and the United States are in direct confrontation with each other as the US and NATO are building up assets on Russia’s doorstep, and Russia needs bargaining leverage and Syria is a place they can find that.”</p> | What Russia is up to in Syria — and why | false | https://pri.org/stories/2015-09-15/what-russia-syria-and-why | 2015-09-15 | 3left-center
| What Russia is up to in Syria — and why
<p>Russia is stepping up its military assistance to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.</p>
<p>Speaking Tuesday at a summit of pro-Russian states in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Russian President&#160;Vladimir Putin defended the assistance to Assad. He said it was necessary "to defeat terrorism,"&#160;and he called on other countries to join in.</p>
<p>The US has expressed concern, with Secretary of State&#160;John Kerry&#160;calling Moscow after Putin’s comments. It was the third such call from Kerry in 10 days.</p>
<p>The build-up is very real, says Reva Bhalla, vice&#160;president of analysis with the geopolitical intelligence corporation, Stratfor. “From the satellite imagery so far,” she says, “we can see that they’re focussing very much at Latakia, in addition to their naval depot at Tartus, building up their assets, preparing essentially to station aerial assets on these bases along the coast. And in Tartus and Latakia that basically means we’re seeing things like newly renovated runways, possible control towers, housing for Russian forces. So nothing indicating that this is a temporary preparation by any means. It seems like Russia is here for the longer haul."</p>
<p>Russia has long sent financial aid and hardware to Damascus. Assad’s Syria has been an ally of Moscow since the Cold War. But there are now reports of military advisers on the ground, and clear preparations for providing close air support.</p>
<p>Bhalla says many observers are concluding that Syria is in danger of breaking up into smaller de facto statelets. Russia is keen to protect its foothold in the Mediterranean, and that means propping up a pro-Assad statelet along the coast, with direct military assistance if necessary.</p>
<p>But there are other motives, says Bhalla. “What Russia is doing is very much related to what is happening in this broader dynamic with the United States, where Russia and the United States are in direct confrontation with each other as the US and NATO are building up assets on Russia’s doorstep, and Russia needs bargaining leverage and Syria is a place they can find that.”</p> | 1,149 |
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<p />
<p>A Valencia County grand jury found no probable cause he committed the crime, according to 13th Judicial Deputy District Attorney Ron Lopez.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Lopez said the grand jury failed to come back with an indictment against Michael Wrobel, who was accused of getting into a physical altercation with his father, Henry Wrobel, over the family’s dog and negative comments directed to the father’s girlfriend at their residence on Juniper Avenue.</p>
<p>Henry Wrobel, 56, was transported to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, where he was pronounced dead about 2:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day.</p>
<p>But Lopez said the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator determined the older Wrobel died from a medical episode, not from being pushed down as the police report alleged.</p>
<p>According to the report, Wrobel said he got into a verbal argument with his father over the comments he made to his girlfriend. He said his father struck him twice in the face with a closed fist.</p>
<p>When he attempted to hit him a third time, Michael Wrobel told police he pushed his father’s arm away and then pushed him.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>He said he thought his father was joking when he hit the floor and didn’t get up, the report said.</p>
<p>“The autopsy found that the victim passed away due to a heart attack,” Lopez said. “It didn’t appear that there was a physical altercation whatsoever.”</p>
<p>Assistant District Attorney Brian McKay said OMI investigators determined the man’s injuries could have resulted from the heart attack.</p>
<p>The criminal complaint, filed in Los Lunas Magistrate Court, said the two men had been drinking at the residence throughout the day.</p>
<p>The complaint said at some point, the younger Wrobel told his father he shouldn’t make negative comments about his girlfriend’s former spouse. Eventually, Henry Wrobel apologized to the woman, the complaint said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The girlfriend told deputies she was awakened by Michael Wrobel asking her to help him with his father. She administered CPR until medical personnel arrived.</p>
<p>When medical personnel arrived, Henry Wrobel’s left eye was protruding from its socket and he had a “massive amount” of bruising on his neck, the report said.</p>
<p>The girlfriend’s 15-year-old son told deputies he heard the verbal argument and that “things in the home calmed down.” Later that night, the boy heard arguing and turned up his music before he heard glass breaking.</p>
<p>The girlfriend of the man told deputies Michael Wrobel had a bad temper and said he is bipolar and not on his medication.</p>
<p>He also had recently been hospitalized for a psychiatric evaluation, she said, according to the complaint.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In an phone interview, Michael Wrobel said the charges against him were dropped and that he was released from custody on Monday. He said there was no physical altercation between he and his father that day.</p>
<p>Wrobel said he doesn’t want to be deemed a “social pariah,” and said he thought his father was lying on the floor as he often did when he listened to music.</p>
<p>He said the “story” from deputies about a physical fight wasn’t accurate.</p>
<p>“That was their story,” Wrobel said. “My story is that I came into the room and he was passed out on the floor. He wasn’t breathing and his pulse was irregular. I tried to do CPR, but it didn’t work.”</p>
<p>He said deputies told him it was “procedure” to arrest him after the incident. He said he wants to clear his name and “go on living his life.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I was the one who called police and yet, they arrested me.”</p>
<p>The man said his father’s neck was red “all the time” from having high blood pressure. He said police didn’t find his DNA on Henry Wrobel.</p>
<p>He said there are plans to have his father cremated.</p>
<p>Valencia County Sheriff’s Capt. Gary Hall said deputies believed there was “some type” of altercation at the residence that day.</p>
<p>“We charged based on evidence we had at the scene,” Hall said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>3:20pm 1/2/13 — Valencia County Man Held in Father’s Death</p>
<p>By Brent Ruffner/Valencia County News-Bulletin</p>
<p>LAS MARAVILLAS —&#160; A 23-year-old Las Maravillas man has been arrested on an open count of murder in the death of his father during a New Year’s Day altercation about the family dog.</p>
<p>Michael Wrobel told Valencia County sheriff’s deputies that he was arguing with his father, Henry Wrobel,&#160; because the family’s German shepherd knocked him down and caused him to drop a bottle of wine, the report said.</p>
<p>Wrobel told deputies he began cussing at the dog and shortly after was confronted by his father. He said his father attacked him in the den, punching him in the face and trying to strangle him.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>He said he pushed his father “with enough force that he fell on his back and did not move,” the report said.</p>
<p>Henry Wrobel, 56, was transported to UNM Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.</p>
<p>Michael Wrobel is being held at the Valencia County Detention Center on a $500,000 cash-only bond.</p>
<p>The investigation is ongoing.</p> | UPDATED: Las Maravillas Man Not Charged in Dad’s Death | false | https://abqjournal.com/160767/updated-son-not-indicted-in-dads-death.html | 2013-01-16 | 2least
| UPDATED: Las Maravillas Man Not Charged in Dad’s Death
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>A Valencia County grand jury found no probable cause he committed the crime, according to 13th Judicial Deputy District Attorney Ron Lopez.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Lopez said the grand jury failed to come back with an indictment against Michael Wrobel, who was accused of getting into a physical altercation with his father, Henry Wrobel, over the family’s dog and negative comments directed to the father’s girlfriend at their residence on Juniper Avenue.</p>
<p>Henry Wrobel, 56, was transported to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, where he was pronounced dead about 2:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day.</p>
<p>But Lopez said the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator determined the older Wrobel died from a medical episode, not from being pushed down as the police report alleged.</p>
<p>According to the report, Wrobel said he got into a verbal argument with his father over the comments he made to his girlfriend. He said his father struck him twice in the face with a closed fist.</p>
<p>When he attempted to hit him a third time, Michael Wrobel told police he pushed his father’s arm away and then pushed him.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>He said he thought his father was joking when he hit the floor and didn’t get up, the report said.</p>
<p>“The autopsy found that the victim passed away due to a heart attack,” Lopez said. “It didn’t appear that there was a physical altercation whatsoever.”</p>
<p>Assistant District Attorney Brian McKay said OMI investigators determined the man’s injuries could have resulted from the heart attack.</p>
<p>The criminal complaint, filed in Los Lunas Magistrate Court, said the two men had been drinking at the residence throughout the day.</p>
<p>The complaint said at some point, the younger Wrobel told his father he shouldn’t make negative comments about his girlfriend’s former spouse. Eventually, Henry Wrobel apologized to the woman, the complaint said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The girlfriend told deputies she was awakened by Michael Wrobel asking her to help him with his father. She administered CPR until medical personnel arrived.</p>
<p>When medical personnel arrived, Henry Wrobel’s left eye was protruding from its socket and he had a “massive amount” of bruising on his neck, the report said.</p>
<p>The girlfriend’s 15-year-old son told deputies he heard the verbal argument and that “things in the home calmed down.” Later that night, the boy heard arguing and turned up his music before he heard glass breaking.</p>
<p>The girlfriend of the man told deputies Michael Wrobel had a bad temper and said he is bipolar and not on his medication.</p>
<p>He also had recently been hospitalized for a psychiatric evaluation, she said, according to the complaint.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In an phone interview, Michael Wrobel said the charges against him were dropped and that he was released from custody on Monday. He said there was no physical altercation between he and his father that day.</p>
<p>Wrobel said he doesn’t want to be deemed a “social pariah,” and said he thought his father was lying on the floor as he often did when he listened to music.</p>
<p>He said the “story” from deputies about a physical fight wasn’t accurate.</p>
<p>“That was their story,” Wrobel said. “My story is that I came into the room and he was passed out on the floor. He wasn’t breathing and his pulse was irregular. I tried to do CPR, but it didn’t work.”</p>
<p>He said deputies told him it was “procedure” to arrest him after the incident. He said he wants to clear his name and “go on living his life.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I was the one who called police and yet, they arrested me.”</p>
<p>The man said his father’s neck was red “all the time” from having high blood pressure. He said police didn’t find his DNA on Henry Wrobel.</p>
<p>He said there are plans to have his father cremated.</p>
<p>Valencia County Sheriff’s Capt. Gary Hall said deputies believed there was “some type” of altercation at the residence that day.</p>
<p>“We charged based on evidence we had at the scene,” Hall said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>3:20pm 1/2/13 — Valencia County Man Held in Father’s Death</p>
<p>By Brent Ruffner/Valencia County News-Bulletin</p>
<p>LAS MARAVILLAS —&#160; A 23-year-old Las Maravillas man has been arrested on an open count of murder in the death of his father during a New Year’s Day altercation about the family dog.</p>
<p>Michael Wrobel told Valencia County sheriff’s deputies that he was arguing with his father, Henry Wrobel,&#160; because the family’s German shepherd knocked him down and caused him to drop a bottle of wine, the report said.</p>
<p>Wrobel told deputies he began cussing at the dog and shortly after was confronted by his father. He said his father attacked him in the den, punching him in the face and trying to strangle him.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>He said he pushed his father “with enough force that he fell on his back and did not move,” the report said.</p>
<p>Henry Wrobel, 56, was transported to UNM Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.</p>
<p>Michael Wrobel is being held at the Valencia County Detention Center on a $500,000 cash-only bond.</p>
<p>The investigation is ongoing.</p> | 1,150 |
<p />
<p>Donald Trump has won the Republican primary in Washington state, helping him inch closer to claiming the GOP nomination for president.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>&#160;The billionaire businessman's victory Tuesday pulls him within 44 delegates of the number needed to become the Republican nominee.</p>
<p>&#160;Trump won at least 24 delegates in Washington state, with 20 still left to be allocated. He has 1,193 delegates. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the GOP nomination.</p>
<p>&#160;There are no more Republican contests until June 7, when the last five states vote. With a total of 303 delegates at stake in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota, Trump should easily clinch the nomination that day.</p> | Trump Wins GOP Presidential Primary in Washington | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/05/25/trump-wins-gop-presidential-primary-in-washington.html | 2016-05-25 | 0right
| Trump Wins GOP Presidential Primary in Washington
<p />
<p>Donald Trump has won the Republican primary in Washington state, helping him inch closer to claiming the GOP nomination for president.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>&#160;The billionaire businessman's victory Tuesday pulls him within 44 delegates of the number needed to become the Republican nominee.</p>
<p>&#160;Trump won at least 24 delegates in Washington state, with 20 still left to be allocated. He has 1,193 delegates. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the GOP nomination.</p>
<p>&#160;There are no more Republican contests until June 7, when the last five states vote. With a total of 303 delegates at stake in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota, Trump should easily clinch the nomination that day.</p> | 1,151 |
<p>Senate floor speech, December 19, 2005</p>
<p>Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country’s law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution.</p>
<p>We have been stunned to hear reports about the Pentagon gathering information and creating databases to spy on ordinary Americans whose only sin is choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. Those Americans who choose to question the Administration’s flawed policy in Iraq are labeled by this Administration as “domestic terrorists.”</p>
<p>We now know that the F.B.I.’s use of National Security Letters on American citizens has increased one hundred fold, requiring tens of thousands of individuals to turn over personal information and records. These letters are issued without prior judicial review, and provide no real means for an individual to challenge a permanent gag order.</p>
<p>Through news reports, we have been shocked to learn of the CIA’s practice of rendition, and the so-called “black sites,” secret locations in foreign countries, where abuse and interrogation have been exported, to escape the reach of U.S. laws protecting against human rights abuses.</p>
<p>We know that Vice President Dick Cheney has asked for exemptions for the CIA from the language contained in the McCain torture amendment banning cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. Thank God his pleas have been rejected by this Congress.</p>
<p>Now comes the stomach-churning revelation through an executive order, that President Bush has circumvented both the Congress and the courts. He has usurped the Third Branch of government ­ the branch charged with protecting the civil liberties of our people ­ by directing the National Security Agency to intercept and eavesdrop on the phone conversations and e-mails of American citizens without a warrant, which is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. He has stiff-armed the People’s Branch of government. He has rationalized the use of domestic, civilian surveillance with a flimsy claim that he has such authority because we are at war. The executive order, which has been acknowledged by the President, is an end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which makes it unlawful for any official to monitor the communications of an individual on American soil without the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.</p>
<p>What is the President thinking? Congress has provided for the very situations which the President is blatantly exploiting. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, housed in the Department of Justice, reviews requests for warrants for domestic surveillance. The Court can review these requests expeditiously and in times of great emergency. In extreme cases, where time is of the essence and national security is at stake, surveillance can be conducted before the warrant is even applied for.</p>
<p>This secret court was established so that sensitive surveillance could be conducted, and information could be gathered without compromising the security of the investigation. The purpose of the FISA Court is to balance the government’s role in fighting the war on terror with the Fourth Amendment rights afforded to each and every American.</p>
<p>The American public is given vague and empty assurances by the President that amount to little more than “trust me.” But, we are a nation of laws and not of men. Where is the source of that authority he claims? I defy the Administration to show me where in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or the U.S. Constitution, they are allowed to steal into the lives of innocent America citizens and spy.</p>
<p>When asked yesterday what the source of this authority was, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had no answer. Secretary Rice seemed to insinuate that eavesdropping on Americans was acceptable because FISA was an outdated law, and could not address the needs of the government in combating the new war on terror. This is a patent falsehood. The USA Patriot Act expanded FISA significantly, equipping the government with the tools it needed to fight terrorism. Further amendments to FISA were granted under the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2002 and the Homeland Security Act of 2002. In fact, in its final report, the 9/11 Commission noted that the removal of the pre-9/11 “wall” between intelligence officials and law enforcement was significant in that it “opened up new opportunities for cooperative action.”</p>
<p>The President claims that these powers are within his role as Commander in Chief. Make no mistake, the powers granted to the Commander in Chief are specifically those as head of the Armed Forces. These warrantless searches are conducted not against a foreign power, but against unsuspecting and unknowing American citizens. They are conducted against individuals living on American soil, not in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is nothing within the powers granted in the Commander in Chief clause that grants the President the ability to conduct clandestine surveillance of American civilians. We must not allow such groundless, foolish claims to stand.</p>
<p>The President claims a boundless authority through the resolution that authorized the war on those who perpetrated the September 11th attacks. But that resolution does not give the President unchecked power to spy on our own people. That resolution does not give the Administration the power to create covert prisons for secret prisoners. That resolution does not authorize the torture of prisoners to extract information from them. That resolution does not authorize running black-hole secret prisons in foreign countries to get around U.S. law. That resolution does not give the President the powers reserved only for kings and potentates.</p>
<p>I continue to be shocked and astounded by the breadth with which the Administration undermines the constitutional protections afforded to the people, and the arrogance with which it rebukes the powers held by the Legislative and Judicial Branches. The President has cast off federal law, enacted by Congress, often bearing his own signature, as mere formality. He has rebuffed the rule of law, and he has trivialized and trampled upon the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizures guaranteed to Americans by the United States Constitution.</p>
<p>We are supposed to accept these dirty little secrets. We are told that it is irresponsible to draw attention to President Bush’s gross abuse of power and Constitutional violations. But what is truly irresponsible is to neglect to uphold the rule of law. We listened to the President speak last night on the potential for democracy in Iraq. He claims to want to instill in the Iraqi people a tangible freedom and a working democracy, at the same time he violates our own U.S. laws and checks and balances? President Bush called the recent Iraqi election “a landmark day in the history of liberty.” I dare say in this country we may have reached our own sort of landmark. Never have the promises and protections of Liberty seemed so illusory. Never have the freedoms we cherish seemed so imperiled.</p>
<p>These renegade assaults on the Constitution and our system of laws strike at the very core of our values, and foster a sense of mistrust and apprehension about the reach of government.</p>
<p>I am reminded of Thomas Payne’s famous words, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”</p>
<p>These astounding revelations about the bending and contorting of the Constitution to justify a grasping, irresponsible Administration under the banner of “national security” are an outrage. Congress can no longer sit on the sidelines. It is time to ask hard questions of the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of the CIA. The White House should not be allowed to exempt itself from answering the same questions simply because it might assert some kind of “executive privilege” in order to avoid further embarrassment.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | No President is Above the Law | true | https://counterpunch.org/2005/12/20/no-president-is-above-the-law/ | 2005-12-20 | 4left
| No President is Above the Law
<p>Senate floor speech, December 19, 2005</p>
<p>Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country’s law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution.</p>
<p>We have been stunned to hear reports about the Pentagon gathering information and creating databases to spy on ordinary Americans whose only sin is choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. Those Americans who choose to question the Administration’s flawed policy in Iraq are labeled by this Administration as “domestic terrorists.”</p>
<p>We now know that the F.B.I.’s use of National Security Letters on American citizens has increased one hundred fold, requiring tens of thousands of individuals to turn over personal information and records. These letters are issued without prior judicial review, and provide no real means for an individual to challenge a permanent gag order.</p>
<p>Through news reports, we have been shocked to learn of the CIA’s practice of rendition, and the so-called “black sites,” secret locations in foreign countries, where abuse and interrogation have been exported, to escape the reach of U.S. laws protecting against human rights abuses.</p>
<p>We know that Vice President Dick Cheney has asked for exemptions for the CIA from the language contained in the McCain torture amendment banning cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. Thank God his pleas have been rejected by this Congress.</p>
<p>Now comes the stomach-churning revelation through an executive order, that President Bush has circumvented both the Congress and the courts. He has usurped the Third Branch of government ­ the branch charged with protecting the civil liberties of our people ­ by directing the National Security Agency to intercept and eavesdrop on the phone conversations and e-mails of American citizens without a warrant, which is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. He has stiff-armed the People’s Branch of government. He has rationalized the use of domestic, civilian surveillance with a flimsy claim that he has such authority because we are at war. The executive order, which has been acknowledged by the President, is an end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which makes it unlawful for any official to monitor the communications of an individual on American soil without the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.</p>
<p>What is the President thinking? Congress has provided for the very situations which the President is blatantly exploiting. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, housed in the Department of Justice, reviews requests for warrants for domestic surveillance. The Court can review these requests expeditiously and in times of great emergency. In extreme cases, where time is of the essence and national security is at stake, surveillance can be conducted before the warrant is even applied for.</p>
<p>This secret court was established so that sensitive surveillance could be conducted, and information could be gathered without compromising the security of the investigation. The purpose of the FISA Court is to balance the government’s role in fighting the war on terror with the Fourth Amendment rights afforded to each and every American.</p>
<p>The American public is given vague and empty assurances by the President that amount to little more than “trust me.” But, we are a nation of laws and not of men. Where is the source of that authority he claims? I defy the Administration to show me where in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or the U.S. Constitution, they are allowed to steal into the lives of innocent America citizens and spy.</p>
<p>When asked yesterday what the source of this authority was, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had no answer. Secretary Rice seemed to insinuate that eavesdropping on Americans was acceptable because FISA was an outdated law, and could not address the needs of the government in combating the new war on terror. This is a patent falsehood. The USA Patriot Act expanded FISA significantly, equipping the government with the tools it needed to fight terrorism. Further amendments to FISA were granted under the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2002 and the Homeland Security Act of 2002. In fact, in its final report, the 9/11 Commission noted that the removal of the pre-9/11 “wall” between intelligence officials and law enforcement was significant in that it “opened up new opportunities for cooperative action.”</p>
<p>The President claims that these powers are within his role as Commander in Chief. Make no mistake, the powers granted to the Commander in Chief are specifically those as head of the Armed Forces. These warrantless searches are conducted not against a foreign power, but against unsuspecting and unknowing American citizens. They are conducted against individuals living on American soil, not in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is nothing within the powers granted in the Commander in Chief clause that grants the President the ability to conduct clandestine surveillance of American civilians. We must not allow such groundless, foolish claims to stand.</p>
<p>The President claims a boundless authority through the resolution that authorized the war on those who perpetrated the September 11th attacks. But that resolution does not give the President unchecked power to spy on our own people. That resolution does not give the Administration the power to create covert prisons for secret prisoners. That resolution does not authorize the torture of prisoners to extract information from them. That resolution does not authorize running black-hole secret prisons in foreign countries to get around U.S. law. That resolution does not give the President the powers reserved only for kings and potentates.</p>
<p>I continue to be shocked and astounded by the breadth with which the Administration undermines the constitutional protections afforded to the people, and the arrogance with which it rebukes the powers held by the Legislative and Judicial Branches. The President has cast off federal law, enacted by Congress, often bearing his own signature, as mere formality. He has rebuffed the rule of law, and he has trivialized and trampled upon the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizures guaranteed to Americans by the United States Constitution.</p>
<p>We are supposed to accept these dirty little secrets. We are told that it is irresponsible to draw attention to President Bush’s gross abuse of power and Constitutional violations. But what is truly irresponsible is to neglect to uphold the rule of law. We listened to the President speak last night on the potential for democracy in Iraq. He claims to want to instill in the Iraqi people a tangible freedom and a working democracy, at the same time he violates our own U.S. laws and checks and balances? President Bush called the recent Iraqi election “a landmark day in the history of liberty.” I dare say in this country we may have reached our own sort of landmark. Never have the promises and protections of Liberty seemed so illusory. Never have the freedoms we cherish seemed so imperiled.</p>
<p>These renegade assaults on the Constitution and our system of laws strike at the very core of our values, and foster a sense of mistrust and apprehension about the reach of government.</p>
<p>I am reminded of Thomas Payne’s famous words, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”</p>
<p>These astounding revelations about the bending and contorting of the Constitution to justify a grasping, irresponsible Administration under the banner of “national security” are an outrage. Congress can no longer sit on the sidelines. It is time to ask hard questions of the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of the CIA. The White House should not be allowed to exempt itself from answering the same questions simply because it might assert some kind of “executive privilege” in order to avoid further embarrassment.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 1,152 |
<p>PALMDALE, Calif. (AP) — Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials have identified a person of interest in a triple killing last weekend at a home in Palmdale.</p>
<p>Deputies found the bodies Jan. 13 after a family member requested a welfare check when she couldn’t get in touch with her relatives.</p>
<p>Investigators said Wednesday they want to speak with James “Todd” Brown. They say Brown lived on the desert property where the family was found dead.</p>
<p>He is believed to be driving a 2002 silver Toyota pickup with a camper shell.</p>
<p>The victims were identified as 78-year-old Richard Gardner Jr., his 56-year-old wife Pepper Gardner and his 52-year-old son Richard Gardner III.</p>
<p>Investigators say the victims suffered some trauma to their bodies but the exact cause of death has not been determined.</p>
<p>PALMDALE, Calif. (AP) — Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials have identified a person of interest in a triple killing last weekend at a home in Palmdale.</p>
<p>Deputies found the bodies Jan. 13 after a family member requested a welfare check when she couldn’t get in touch with her relatives.</p>
<p>Investigators said Wednesday they want to speak with James “Todd” Brown. They say Brown lived on the desert property where the family was found dead.</p>
<p>He is believed to be driving a 2002 silver Toyota pickup with a camper shell.</p>
<p>The victims were identified as 78-year-old Richard Gardner Jr., his 56-year-old wife Pepper Gardner and his 52-year-old son Richard Gardner III.</p>
<p>Investigators say the victims suffered some trauma to their bodies but the exact cause of death has not been determined.</p> | Person of interest named in LA County triple killing | false | https://apnews.com/1f789a13b4ae44f290fed087d4bfebcb | 2018-01-18 | 2least
| Person of interest named in LA County triple killing
<p>PALMDALE, Calif. (AP) — Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials have identified a person of interest in a triple killing last weekend at a home in Palmdale.</p>
<p>Deputies found the bodies Jan. 13 after a family member requested a welfare check when she couldn’t get in touch with her relatives.</p>
<p>Investigators said Wednesday they want to speak with James “Todd” Brown. They say Brown lived on the desert property where the family was found dead.</p>
<p>He is believed to be driving a 2002 silver Toyota pickup with a camper shell.</p>
<p>The victims were identified as 78-year-old Richard Gardner Jr., his 56-year-old wife Pepper Gardner and his 52-year-old son Richard Gardner III.</p>
<p>Investigators say the victims suffered some trauma to their bodies but the exact cause of death has not been determined.</p>
<p>PALMDALE, Calif. (AP) — Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials have identified a person of interest in a triple killing last weekend at a home in Palmdale.</p>
<p>Deputies found the bodies Jan. 13 after a family member requested a welfare check when she couldn’t get in touch with her relatives.</p>
<p>Investigators said Wednesday they want to speak with James “Todd” Brown. They say Brown lived on the desert property where the family was found dead.</p>
<p>He is believed to be driving a 2002 silver Toyota pickup with a camper shell.</p>
<p>The victims were identified as 78-year-old Richard Gardner Jr., his 56-year-old wife Pepper Gardner and his 52-year-old son Richard Gardner III.</p>
<p>Investigators say the victims suffered some trauma to their bodies but the exact cause of death has not been determined.</p> | 1,153 |
<p>No amount of Pepto-Bismol could calm the fire in one Chinese man's stomach after eating a notoriously spicy soup.</p>
<p>The mala soup, a traditional Chinese dish that means "numbing hot," burned a hole right through the stomach of the 26-year-old man, <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/spicy-soup-burns-hole-chinese-mans-stomach-lining-105350395.html" type="external">Asian News International reported</a>.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/china-go-visit-your-elderly-parents" type="external">China: Go visit your elderly parents</a></p>
<p>The soup gets its name from the numbing sensation produced by its ingredients, which usually include Sichuan pepper, local spices and chili pepper, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/spicy-soup-burns-hole-in-stomach_n_2375733.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003" type="external">according to The Huffington Post</a>.</p>
<p>The man ordered the spiciest version of the dish, and was rushed to a local hospital after experiencing sharp pains and vomiting blood.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/englishman-wakes-coma-speaking-welsh-forgetting-english" type="external">Englishman wakes from coma speaking Welsh</a></p>
<p>Doctors found a hole in the wall of his stomach, and declared the soup was to blame, <a href="http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/spicy-soup-burns-hole-through-mans-stomach-in-china/story-fneuz8wn-1226544649572" type="external">The Daily Mail reported</a>.</p> | Spicy mala soup burns hole in stomach of Chinese man | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-12-29/spicy-mala-soup-burns-hole-stomach-chinese-man | 2012-12-29 | 3left-center
| Spicy mala soup burns hole in stomach of Chinese man
<p>No amount of Pepto-Bismol could calm the fire in one Chinese man's stomach after eating a notoriously spicy soup.</p>
<p>The mala soup, a traditional Chinese dish that means "numbing hot," burned a hole right through the stomach of the 26-year-old man, <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/spicy-soup-burns-hole-chinese-mans-stomach-lining-105350395.html" type="external">Asian News International reported</a>.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/china-go-visit-your-elderly-parents" type="external">China: Go visit your elderly parents</a></p>
<p>The soup gets its name from the numbing sensation produced by its ingredients, which usually include Sichuan pepper, local spices and chili pepper, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/spicy-soup-burns-hole-in-stomach_n_2375733.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003" type="external">according to The Huffington Post</a>.</p>
<p>The man ordered the spiciest version of the dish, and was rushed to a local hospital after experiencing sharp pains and vomiting blood.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/englishman-wakes-coma-speaking-welsh-forgetting-english" type="external">Englishman wakes from coma speaking Welsh</a></p>
<p>Doctors found a hole in the wall of his stomach, and declared the soup was to blame, <a href="http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/spicy-soup-burns-hole-through-mans-stomach-in-china/story-fneuz8wn-1226544649572" type="external">The Daily Mail reported</a>.</p> | 1,154 |
<p />
<p>CALIFORNIAOrange County RegisterBy JIM HINCH The Orange County Register</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>A former student at Mater Dei High School sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange on Tuesday, alleging that church officials covered up for a choir master who molested her from 1986 to 1988, starting when she was 15.</p>
<p>Joelle Casteix, a marketing professional in Corona Del Mar, said the choir master abused her for two years, starting soon after she tried to commit suicide. The choir master, now a music teacher at a Methodist school in Michigan, said the suit's allegations are not accurate. He is not identified by name in the lawsuit.</p>
<p>The suit says the choir master had sex with Casteix more than 200 times in a school van, on school trips and in the choir closet. The choir master gave Casteix a venereal disease and impregnated her, after which she had an abortion, the suit says.</p>
<p>Casteix said she told an assistant principal of the abuse but was encouraged to keep it secret and was told that she and the choir master were in love and that "everything is great the way it is."</p>
<p>Peter Callahan, lawyer for the diocese, said officials promptly fired the choir master and reported him to authorities when allegations of the affair surfaced. Casteix said neither child-protection nor law-enforcement authorities contacted her.</p>
<p>She did not report the abuse herself because she feared it would damage her family, she said.</p> | Ex-student sues Diocese, alleging abuse | false | https://poynter.org/news/ex-student-sues-diocese-alleging-abuse | 2003-07-09 | 2least
| Ex-student sues Diocese, alleging abuse
<p />
<p>CALIFORNIAOrange County RegisterBy JIM HINCH The Orange County Register</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>A former student at Mater Dei High School sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange on Tuesday, alleging that church officials covered up for a choir master who molested her from 1986 to 1988, starting when she was 15.</p>
<p>Joelle Casteix, a marketing professional in Corona Del Mar, said the choir master abused her for two years, starting soon after she tried to commit suicide. The choir master, now a music teacher at a Methodist school in Michigan, said the suit's allegations are not accurate. He is not identified by name in the lawsuit.</p>
<p>The suit says the choir master had sex with Casteix more than 200 times in a school van, on school trips and in the choir closet. The choir master gave Casteix a venereal disease and impregnated her, after which she had an abortion, the suit says.</p>
<p>Casteix said she told an assistant principal of the abuse but was encouraged to keep it secret and was told that she and the choir master were in love and that "everything is great the way it is."</p>
<p>Peter Callahan, lawyer for the diocese, said officials promptly fired the choir master and reported him to authorities when allegations of the affair surfaced. Casteix said neither child-protection nor law-enforcement authorities contacted her.</p>
<p>She did not report the abuse herself because she feared it would damage her family, she said.</p> | 1,155 |
<p>Protests have erupted across&#160;Mexico in the last month after the probable massacre of 43 students by a drug gang affiliated with police. Yet, hit songs in Mexico have long&#160;glorified&#160;the drug cartels and are getting ever more graphic.</p>
<p>The protests have been powered by rage over the way drug cartels have infiltrated every level of government and, indeed,&#160;every aspect of life in Mexico.&#160;Cartels are&#160;even a powerful force in Mexican pop music.&#160;</p>
<p>Songs known as narcocorridos,&#160;which relate&#160;tales of drug kingpins and smugglers, have been popular for decades. One song called&#160;" <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Contrabando-Traicion-Los-Tigres-Norte/dp/B00130T7VE/wnyc-s360-20" type="external">Contrabando y Traicion</a>," or&#160;"Contraband and Betrayal,"&#160;was such&#160;a hit for Los Tigres del Norte in 1973 that many Mexicans still <a href="" type="internal">believe its main character is a real person</a>.</p>
<p>Like gangster movies in the US, narcocorridos often tread&#160;a fine line between judging and glorifying their subjects. “There’s a little bit of the underdog, the outlaw rebel” quality in the figure of the narco, says&#160;Carolina Miranda, a staff writer for the&#160;Los Angeles Times.</p>
<p>But over time, like the gangster&#160;movies, narcocorridos have changed. The latest embrace&#160;graphic violence.</p>
<p>A new trend known as&#160;Movimiento Alterado&#160;are&#160;“narcocorridos that don’t tell cinematic, poetic stories about smuggling, the way Los Tigres do,”&#160;Miranda says. “They’re about chopping heads off, they’re about killing. The singers carry bazookas. It is as hyperviolent as violence can get."</p>
<p>Some songwriters even work on commission from drug lords. "I don't want to imply that everyone is doing this, but there is this very direct connection," Miranda says.</p>
<p>Narcocorridos are even popular in the US. In fact,&#160;many of the most popular songs are produced by the American&#160; <a href="https://www.twiinsmusicgroup.com" type="external">Twiins Music Group</a>&#160;based in Burbank, California.</p>
<p>Miranda says there are some loose parallels between narcocorridos and gangsta rap, but the context in Mexico is different: Drug cartels&#160;have infiltrated the Mexican state itself, meaning&#160;narcocorridos&#160;"almost [have]&#160;become propaganda for the narco state."</p>
<p>“The music is a symptom of a much larger problem, and the culture is a reflection of that” she says. “But we, as consumers of culture, can take a step back and think about what we’re buying, what we’re listening to, what we’re celebrating every time we hit play on iTunes.”</p>
<p>This story is based on <a href="http://www.studio360.org/story/ballad-of-a-failed-state-narcocorridos/" type="external">an&#160;interview</a>&#160;that aired on PRI's&#160; <a href="http://www.studio360.org/" type="external">Studio 360</a>&#160;with Kurt Andersen.</p> | Mexico's 'narco state' gets a cultural boost from new, more gory pop ballads | false | https://pri.org/stories/2014-11-30/mexicos-narco-state-gets-cultural-boost-new-more-gory-pop-ballads | 2014-11-30 | 3left-center
| Mexico's 'narco state' gets a cultural boost from new, more gory pop ballads
<p>Protests have erupted across&#160;Mexico in the last month after the probable massacre of 43 students by a drug gang affiliated with police. Yet, hit songs in Mexico have long&#160;glorified&#160;the drug cartels and are getting ever more graphic.</p>
<p>The protests have been powered by rage over the way drug cartels have infiltrated every level of government and, indeed,&#160;every aspect of life in Mexico.&#160;Cartels are&#160;even a powerful force in Mexican pop music.&#160;</p>
<p>Songs known as narcocorridos,&#160;which relate&#160;tales of drug kingpins and smugglers, have been popular for decades. One song called&#160;" <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Contrabando-Traicion-Los-Tigres-Norte/dp/B00130T7VE/wnyc-s360-20" type="external">Contrabando y Traicion</a>," or&#160;"Contraband and Betrayal,"&#160;was such&#160;a hit for Los Tigres del Norte in 1973 that many Mexicans still <a href="" type="internal">believe its main character is a real person</a>.</p>
<p>Like gangster movies in the US, narcocorridos often tread&#160;a fine line between judging and glorifying their subjects. “There’s a little bit of the underdog, the outlaw rebel” quality in the figure of the narco, says&#160;Carolina Miranda, a staff writer for the&#160;Los Angeles Times.</p>
<p>But over time, like the gangster&#160;movies, narcocorridos have changed. The latest embrace&#160;graphic violence.</p>
<p>A new trend known as&#160;Movimiento Alterado&#160;are&#160;“narcocorridos that don’t tell cinematic, poetic stories about smuggling, the way Los Tigres do,”&#160;Miranda says. “They’re about chopping heads off, they’re about killing. The singers carry bazookas. It is as hyperviolent as violence can get."</p>
<p>Some songwriters even work on commission from drug lords. "I don't want to imply that everyone is doing this, but there is this very direct connection," Miranda says.</p>
<p>Narcocorridos are even popular in the US. In fact,&#160;many of the most popular songs are produced by the American&#160; <a href="https://www.twiinsmusicgroup.com" type="external">Twiins Music Group</a>&#160;based in Burbank, California.</p>
<p>Miranda says there are some loose parallels between narcocorridos and gangsta rap, but the context in Mexico is different: Drug cartels&#160;have infiltrated the Mexican state itself, meaning&#160;narcocorridos&#160;"almost [have]&#160;become propaganda for the narco state."</p>
<p>“The music is a symptom of a much larger problem, and the culture is a reflection of that” she says. “But we, as consumers of culture, can take a step back and think about what we’re buying, what we’re listening to, what we’re celebrating every time we hit play on iTunes.”</p>
<p>This story is based on <a href="http://www.studio360.org/story/ballad-of-a-failed-state-narcocorridos/" type="external">an&#160;interview</a>&#160;that aired on PRI's&#160; <a href="http://www.studio360.org/" type="external">Studio 360</a>&#160;with Kurt Andersen.</p> | 1,156 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
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<p>“We’re gonna wake up the youth and introduce to them what real rock ‘n’ roll is,” frontwoman Isis Queen said in an email interview with the Journal. “They’ve been brainwashed into listening to crap music on the radio for a decade, so get ready for a wild ride into the future of music!”</p>
<p>The band’s originality and realness are forcing fans and the music industry to take notice of something truthful and raw when it comes to its grunge punk rock.</p>
<p>“People need real music that is loud and snotty just like they are,” Queen said. “People have emotions that need to be expressed, and we have the new soundtrack for their lives.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The band takes a que from its audiences when it comes to its music.</p>
<p>“We all are untrained musicians, and only as a unit are we truly powerful and creative,” Queen said. “Our inspiration comes directly from the people we meet at shows, and we are all one, so why not act like it? In unity there is power, in power there is change, and with change comes freedom. That’s what we’re all searching for in the end!”</p>
<p>Rock legend and Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister gave Barb Wire Dolls the biggest stamp of approval before his death in 2015. Other than Motörhead, Barb Wire Dolls was the first to be signed to his label, Motörhead Music.</p>
<p>“It totally changed everything!” Queen said. “Lemmy is rock ‘n’ roll and he’s seen thousands of bands in his five decade long career, so for him to see us live and tell us we’re the next generation, that’s mind blowing. He was disgusted with the current state of music, as we were too, and for him to sign us to his label, and to be the very first non Motörhead release, it’s the highest accolade and achievement any real rock band could ever dream of. If Lemmy approves your band, that’s the zenith.”</p>
<p>The band’s album “Desperate,” released by Motörhead Music in 2016, continues to garner acclaim. The band will release its new album “Rub My Mind” on July 7. It was recorded in the legendary studio in Joshua Tree, Calif., where Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal, Iggy Pop, Foo Fighters and others have made albums, according to Queen.</p>
<p>Kilmister’s words of wisdom still resonate with the band.</p>
<p>“No compromising,” Queen said Kilmister told the band. “Have principles. Stick to your guns. Share whatever you have. Don’t change for anyone or anything. Be true to yourself and your music. Always give 100 percent at every show. Words by Lemmy still echo in my brain coming from his authoritative lovely mouth.”</p>
<p>Vans Warped Tour</p>
<p>WHEN AND WHERE: 11 a.m. Wednesday, June 21, at Balloon Fiesta Park, 5000 Balloon Fiesta Parkway NE, Albuquerque; 11 a.m. Aug. 1 at New Mexico State University Intramural Field, South Locust and Wells, Las Cruces.</p>
<p>HOW MUCH: $37.50-$47.50 plus fees for Albuquerque event; $34.25 plus fees for Las Cruces event. Tickets, visit <a href="http://ticketmaster.com" type="external">ticketmaster.com</a>. Information, visit <a href="http://vanswarpedtour.com" type="external">vanswarpedtour.com</a></p>
<p /> | ‘Loud and snotty’: Barb Wire Dolls promise to ‘wake up the youth’ at Warped Tour | false | https://abqjournal.com/1017986/loud-and-snotty.html | 2least
| ‘Loud and snotty’: Barb Wire Dolls promise to ‘wake up the youth’ at Warped Tour
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<p />
<p>“We’re gonna wake up the youth and introduce to them what real rock ‘n’ roll is,” frontwoman Isis Queen said in an email interview with the Journal. “They’ve been brainwashed into listening to crap music on the radio for a decade, so get ready for a wild ride into the future of music!”</p>
<p>The band’s originality and realness are forcing fans and the music industry to take notice of something truthful and raw when it comes to its grunge punk rock.</p>
<p>“People need real music that is loud and snotty just like they are,” Queen said. “People have emotions that need to be expressed, and we have the new soundtrack for their lives.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The band takes a que from its audiences when it comes to its music.</p>
<p>“We all are untrained musicians, and only as a unit are we truly powerful and creative,” Queen said. “Our inspiration comes directly from the people we meet at shows, and we are all one, so why not act like it? In unity there is power, in power there is change, and with change comes freedom. That’s what we’re all searching for in the end!”</p>
<p>Rock legend and Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister gave Barb Wire Dolls the biggest stamp of approval before his death in 2015. Other than Motörhead, Barb Wire Dolls was the first to be signed to his label, Motörhead Music.</p>
<p>“It totally changed everything!” Queen said. “Lemmy is rock ‘n’ roll and he’s seen thousands of bands in his five decade long career, so for him to see us live and tell us we’re the next generation, that’s mind blowing. He was disgusted with the current state of music, as we were too, and for him to sign us to his label, and to be the very first non Motörhead release, it’s the highest accolade and achievement any real rock band could ever dream of. If Lemmy approves your band, that’s the zenith.”</p>
<p>The band’s album “Desperate,” released by Motörhead Music in 2016, continues to garner acclaim. The band will release its new album “Rub My Mind” on July 7. It was recorded in the legendary studio in Joshua Tree, Calif., where Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal, Iggy Pop, Foo Fighters and others have made albums, according to Queen.</p>
<p>Kilmister’s words of wisdom still resonate with the band.</p>
<p>“No compromising,” Queen said Kilmister told the band. “Have principles. Stick to your guns. Share whatever you have. Don’t change for anyone or anything. Be true to yourself and your music. Always give 100 percent at every show. Words by Lemmy still echo in my brain coming from his authoritative lovely mouth.”</p>
<p>Vans Warped Tour</p>
<p>WHEN AND WHERE: 11 a.m. Wednesday, June 21, at Balloon Fiesta Park, 5000 Balloon Fiesta Parkway NE, Albuquerque; 11 a.m. Aug. 1 at New Mexico State University Intramural Field, South Locust and Wells, Las Cruces.</p>
<p>HOW MUCH: $37.50-$47.50 plus fees for Albuquerque event; $34.25 plus fees for Las Cruces event. Tickets, visit <a href="http://ticketmaster.com" type="external">ticketmaster.com</a>. Information, visit <a href="http://vanswarpedtour.com" type="external">vanswarpedtour.com</a></p>
<p /> | 1,157 |
|
<p>(Iain Armitage as Sheldon Cooper on ‘Young Sheldon.’ Screenshot via YouTube.)</p>
<p>CBS has released the first trailer for its “The Big Bang Theory” spinoff series, “Young Sheldon.”</p>
<p>The prequel follows nine-year-old Sheldon Cooper (Iain Armitage) as he attends high school in East Texas. Set in the late ’80s, Sheldon’s twin sister (Raegan Revord), older brother (Montana Jordan), father (Lance Barber) and mother (Zoe Perry), all struggle to understand the child prodigy.</p>
<p>Jim Parsons narrates the series as adult Sheldon. “The Big Bang Theory” executive producers Chuck Lorre and Steven Molaro are also the prequel’s producers.</p>
<p>“Young Sheldon” airs a preview episode on Sept. 25. It will air regularly on Thursdays at 8:30 p.m.</p>
<p>Watch the trailer below.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">CBS</a> <a href="" type="internal">Chuck Lorre</a> <a href="" type="internal">Iain Armitage</a> <a href="" type="internal">Jim Parsons</a> <a href="" type="internal">Lance Barber</a> <a href="" type="internal">Montana Jordan</a> <a href="" type="internal">Raegan Revord</a> <a href="" type="internal">Steven Molaro</a> <a href="" type="internal">Young Sheldon</a> <a href="" type="internal">Zoe Perry</a></p> | ‘Big Bang Theory’ spinoff ‘Young Sheldon’ releases first trailer | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2017/05/18/big-bang-theory-spinoff-young-sheldon-releases-first-trailer/ | 3left-center
| ‘Big Bang Theory’ spinoff ‘Young Sheldon’ releases first trailer
<p>(Iain Armitage as Sheldon Cooper on ‘Young Sheldon.’ Screenshot via YouTube.)</p>
<p>CBS has released the first trailer for its “The Big Bang Theory” spinoff series, “Young Sheldon.”</p>
<p>The prequel follows nine-year-old Sheldon Cooper (Iain Armitage) as he attends high school in East Texas. Set in the late ’80s, Sheldon’s twin sister (Raegan Revord), older brother (Montana Jordan), father (Lance Barber) and mother (Zoe Perry), all struggle to understand the child prodigy.</p>
<p>Jim Parsons narrates the series as adult Sheldon. “The Big Bang Theory” executive producers Chuck Lorre and Steven Molaro are also the prequel’s producers.</p>
<p>“Young Sheldon” airs a preview episode on Sept. 25. It will air regularly on Thursdays at 8:30 p.m.</p>
<p>Watch the trailer below.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">CBS</a> <a href="" type="internal">Chuck Lorre</a> <a href="" type="internal">Iain Armitage</a> <a href="" type="internal">Jim Parsons</a> <a href="" type="internal">Lance Barber</a> <a href="" type="internal">Montana Jordan</a> <a href="" type="internal">Raegan Revord</a> <a href="" type="internal">Steven Molaro</a> <a href="" type="internal">Young Sheldon</a> <a href="" type="internal">Zoe Perry</a></p> | 1,158 |
|
<p />
<p>Inc.com has tips on how to work while getting away from the office. And have you thought about succession planning for your business? The New York Times shows why it’s important to put a plan into place earlier rather than later.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Passing on the business: <a href="http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/surviving-a-succession-without-a-plan/?ref=smallbusiness" type="external">The New York Times profiles Bari Jay Opens a New Window.</a>, a family business unexpectedly dealing with succession.</p>
<p>Square moves into ecommerce: <a href="http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/227195" type="external">Entrepreneur.com on Square’s new ecommerce service Opens a New Window.</a> for businesses, “Square Market.”</p>
<p>Start business begins to bloom: <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/06/25/florist-seeded-to-disrupt-blossom-trade-with-farm-to-home-delivery/?mod=WSJBlog&amp;mod=venturecapital" type="external">30Bouqs.com hopes to make Opens a New Window.</a> an impact on online flower delivery with its farm-to-home model.</p>
<p>Work from the beach? <a href="http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-ultimate-guide-to-working-vacations.html" type="external">Inc.com on how to take a productive Opens a New Window.</a>, relaxing working vacation.</p> | Is a Working ‘Vacation’ Ever Worth It? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/06/26/is-working-vacation-ever-worth-it.html | 2016-04-08 | 0right
| Is a Working ‘Vacation’ Ever Worth It?
<p />
<p>Inc.com has tips on how to work while getting away from the office. And have you thought about succession planning for your business? The New York Times shows why it’s important to put a plan into place earlier rather than later.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Passing on the business: <a href="http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/surviving-a-succession-without-a-plan/?ref=smallbusiness" type="external">The New York Times profiles Bari Jay Opens a New Window.</a>, a family business unexpectedly dealing with succession.</p>
<p>Square moves into ecommerce: <a href="http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/227195" type="external">Entrepreneur.com on Square’s new ecommerce service Opens a New Window.</a> for businesses, “Square Market.”</p>
<p>Start business begins to bloom: <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/06/25/florist-seeded-to-disrupt-blossom-trade-with-farm-to-home-delivery/?mod=WSJBlog&amp;mod=venturecapital" type="external">30Bouqs.com hopes to make Opens a New Window.</a> an impact on online flower delivery with its farm-to-home model.</p>
<p>Work from the beach? <a href="http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-ultimate-guide-to-working-vacations.html" type="external">Inc.com on how to take a productive Opens a New Window.</a>, relaxing working vacation.</p> | 1,159 |
<p>Being John Malkovich, written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze is a hilariously funny movie which also has some interesting things to say about art and artistry and love and sex and would probably even have interesting things to say about celebrity, too, if it were still possible to say anything interesting on the subject. As for art it seems to take literally the artist’s task of imagination, which is to convey to us the sense of “being inside someone else’s skin, feeling what they feel” as the puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) puts it. Schwartz himself does exactly this when he discovers a “portal” and secret passage leading off floor 7½ in the building where he works that ends, for no particular reason, somewhere inside the head of the actor, John Malkovich, who plays himself.</p>
<p>This conceit, of a kind of unexplained flaw in the space-time continuum which allows not just social but metaphysical boundaries to be crossed (or “transgressed” as the postmodernists say), is a bit like that of Groundhog Day and is similarly used for both comic and serious purposes. “Do you see what a metaphysical can of worms this is?” says a wondering Craig, alive to all sorts of possibilities. Unlike Groundhog Day, however, Being John Malkovich is something of an allegory. “Getting inside someone’s head” is a common expression among actors and writers and perhaps also puppeteers for the task of assuming alternative identities. And in a deeper, philosophical sense it could be argued that insofar as we know anything outside ourselves, we know it by getting inside other people’s heads. Reading a book or even listening to someone else talk requires us to slip the bonds of self in order to share in someone else’s experience.</p>
<p>By showing us people who suddenly discover that they can literally get inside someone else’s head, Kaufman and Jonze also cause us to ponder the question of what are legitimate and illegitimate uses of the imagination. For soon Craig and his workmate and accomplice, the beautiful but unobtainable Maxine (Catherine Keener), are selling tickets to mere voyeurs, people who want to experience life as a celebrity for fifteen minutes—before they are inexplicably expelled and deposited on the hard shoulder of the New Jersey Turnpike. John Malkovich himself, alerted to something strange going on, turns up and takes the ride inside his own head—with results that make perfect sense in terms of the crazy logic of this movie.</p>
<p>But the lives of Maxine and Craig and his wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), are transformed by the experience. Lotte decides she was meant to be a man and determines to ask her allergist (“I feel comfortable with him”) to perform “sexual reassignment surgery.” But Maxine, whom both she and Craig have fallen in love with, doesn’t want Lotte as a man. She loves her but, “Only as John,” with whom she makes love while Lotte is inside his head. Craig, though spurned by Maxine, now considers himself his wife’s rival in love, so he kidnaps her and locks her in a cage with her pet chimpanzee (she has lots of pets) while he takes her place in the weird threesome with Maxine and Malkovich. Soon he contrives a way (how is not spelled out) to avoid the drop onto the New Jersey Turnpike and to occupy Malkovich’s body permanently.</p>
<p>In this new identity he is able not only to marry Maxine but also to use Malkovich’s celebrity to enjoy the success as a puppeteer that has hitherto eluded him. The former Malkovich seems completely possessed by Craig and Craig’s desires, both artistic and sexual.Unknown to him, however, the mysterious Dr. Lester (Orson Bean) has long been planning a Malkovich takeover of his own. Lester, like Craig, is a user of other people but on a more long-term plan. Like a flea hopping from one dog to the next, he inhabits a new body in each generation as a way of cheating death. Yet he does not come off as an evil character, since he invites crowds of friends, including Lotte, to come with him into his new accommodation, so that the “real” Malkovich presumably becomes just one among the many people who inhabit his body.</p>
<p>In fact, one can imagine that an actor, someone who more than most of us is required to keep a certain number of spare personalities within easy reach, would find it very useful to have lots of different people inside himself. He might be all but indistinguishable from the actual Malkovich. But Craig’s attempt at total possession doesn’t work. “Craig’s dance of despair and disillusion,” which he developed to show off his string-pulling skills and which he somehow manages to perform from within John Malkovich (who reveals an impressively acrobatic side of himself) becomes his own final statement when Lester finds in his love for Maxine a way to turf him out of Malkovich’s body. There is an odd sense of the rightness of the conclusion. Impressive as Malkovich is as a puppeteer, we always knew that he was meant to be an actor.</p> | Being John Malkovich | false | https://eppc.org/publications/being-john-malkovich/ | 1right-center
| Being John Malkovich
<p>Being John Malkovich, written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze is a hilariously funny movie which also has some interesting things to say about art and artistry and love and sex and would probably even have interesting things to say about celebrity, too, if it were still possible to say anything interesting on the subject. As for art it seems to take literally the artist’s task of imagination, which is to convey to us the sense of “being inside someone else’s skin, feeling what they feel” as the puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) puts it. Schwartz himself does exactly this when he discovers a “portal” and secret passage leading off floor 7½ in the building where he works that ends, for no particular reason, somewhere inside the head of the actor, John Malkovich, who plays himself.</p>
<p>This conceit, of a kind of unexplained flaw in the space-time continuum which allows not just social but metaphysical boundaries to be crossed (or “transgressed” as the postmodernists say), is a bit like that of Groundhog Day and is similarly used for both comic and serious purposes. “Do you see what a metaphysical can of worms this is?” says a wondering Craig, alive to all sorts of possibilities. Unlike Groundhog Day, however, Being John Malkovich is something of an allegory. “Getting inside someone’s head” is a common expression among actors and writers and perhaps also puppeteers for the task of assuming alternative identities. And in a deeper, philosophical sense it could be argued that insofar as we know anything outside ourselves, we know it by getting inside other people’s heads. Reading a book or even listening to someone else talk requires us to slip the bonds of self in order to share in someone else’s experience.</p>
<p>By showing us people who suddenly discover that they can literally get inside someone else’s head, Kaufman and Jonze also cause us to ponder the question of what are legitimate and illegitimate uses of the imagination. For soon Craig and his workmate and accomplice, the beautiful but unobtainable Maxine (Catherine Keener), are selling tickets to mere voyeurs, people who want to experience life as a celebrity for fifteen minutes—before they are inexplicably expelled and deposited on the hard shoulder of the New Jersey Turnpike. John Malkovich himself, alerted to something strange going on, turns up and takes the ride inside his own head—with results that make perfect sense in terms of the crazy logic of this movie.</p>
<p>But the lives of Maxine and Craig and his wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), are transformed by the experience. Lotte decides she was meant to be a man and determines to ask her allergist (“I feel comfortable with him”) to perform “sexual reassignment surgery.” But Maxine, whom both she and Craig have fallen in love with, doesn’t want Lotte as a man. She loves her but, “Only as John,” with whom she makes love while Lotte is inside his head. Craig, though spurned by Maxine, now considers himself his wife’s rival in love, so he kidnaps her and locks her in a cage with her pet chimpanzee (she has lots of pets) while he takes her place in the weird threesome with Maxine and Malkovich. Soon he contrives a way (how is not spelled out) to avoid the drop onto the New Jersey Turnpike and to occupy Malkovich’s body permanently.</p>
<p>In this new identity he is able not only to marry Maxine but also to use Malkovich’s celebrity to enjoy the success as a puppeteer that has hitherto eluded him. The former Malkovich seems completely possessed by Craig and Craig’s desires, both artistic and sexual.Unknown to him, however, the mysterious Dr. Lester (Orson Bean) has long been planning a Malkovich takeover of his own. Lester, like Craig, is a user of other people but on a more long-term plan. Like a flea hopping from one dog to the next, he inhabits a new body in each generation as a way of cheating death. Yet he does not come off as an evil character, since he invites crowds of friends, including Lotte, to come with him into his new accommodation, so that the “real” Malkovich presumably becomes just one among the many people who inhabit his body.</p>
<p>In fact, one can imagine that an actor, someone who more than most of us is required to keep a certain number of spare personalities within easy reach, would find it very useful to have lots of different people inside himself. He might be all but indistinguishable from the actual Malkovich. But Craig’s attempt at total possession doesn’t work. “Craig’s dance of despair and disillusion,” which he developed to show off his string-pulling skills and which he somehow manages to perform from within John Malkovich (who reveals an impressively acrobatic side of himself) becomes his own final statement when Lester finds in his love for Maxine a way to turf him out of Malkovich’s body. There is an odd sense of the rightness of the conclusion. Impressive as Malkovich is as a puppeteer, we always knew that he was meant to be an actor.</p> | 1,160 |
|
<p>VeriFone Systems Inc. shares climbed higher in the extended session Monday after the payment card reader company topped Wall Street estimates for the quarter but its outlook fell short of consensus targets. VeriFone shares rose 1.6% to $16.70 after hours. The company reported adjusted fiscal fourth-quarter earnings of 30 cents a share on revenue of $464 million. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had estimated 29 cents a share on revenue of $460.9 million. Looking ahead, VeriFone sees adjusted fiscal first quarter earnings of 20 cents a share on revenue of $446 million, and adjusted earnings of $1.35 to $1.39 a share on revenue of $1.9 billion to $1.92 billion for the year. Analysts expect 36 cents a share on revenue of $470.7 million for the first quarter, and $1.59 a share on revenue of $2 billion for the year.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2016 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | VeriFone Shares Tick Higher As Earnings Beat, Outlook Misses | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/12/12/verifone-shares-tick-higher-as-earnings-beat-outlook-misses.html | 2016-12-12 | 0right
| VeriFone Shares Tick Higher As Earnings Beat, Outlook Misses
<p>VeriFone Systems Inc. shares climbed higher in the extended session Monday after the payment card reader company topped Wall Street estimates for the quarter but its outlook fell short of consensus targets. VeriFone shares rose 1.6% to $16.70 after hours. The company reported adjusted fiscal fourth-quarter earnings of 30 cents a share on revenue of $464 million. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had estimated 29 cents a share on revenue of $460.9 million. Looking ahead, VeriFone sees adjusted fiscal first quarter earnings of 20 cents a share on revenue of $446 million, and adjusted earnings of $1.35 to $1.39 a share on revenue of $1.9 billion to $1.92 billion for the year. Analysts expect 36 cents a share on revenue of $470.7 million for the first quarter, and $1.59 a share on revenue of $2 billion for the year.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2016 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | 1,161 |
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<p>Brown hit a 3-pointer with 42 seconds left for a 75-69 lead but Jovan Mooring answered with a deep 3. Brown was fouled in the backcourt and the 83.1 percent free-throw shooter made two for a 77-72 lead but Mooring hit another 3, this time going to his right along the arc, with 20.7 seconds to go.</p>
<p>Hunter made two free throws for a 79-75 lead and Mooring finally missed a 3 but UNLV grabbed the offensive rebound and Tyrell Green dunked it. After Hunter went 1 for 2 from the line with 6.2 seconds left, Mooring raced down the court, got a high screen for a good look but he slipped and his 3-pointer was off.</p>
<p>Obij Aget had 15 points and 11 rebounds for New Mexico (14-9, 7-4 Mountain West), which wore its turquoise uniforms.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>New Mexico was without its second-leading scorer, Tim Williams, due to a stress reaction in his left foot. The senior, who was on the bench with a walking book on his left foot, is averaging 17.9 points per game this season.</p>
<p>Green had 25 points and eight rebounds for UNLV (10-13, 3-7) and Mooring added 23 points with six assists.</p> | Hunter hits 3 of 4 FTs in final 20 seconds, New Mexico wins | false | https://abqjournal.com/941192/hunter-hits-3-of-4-fts-in-final-20-seconds-new-mexico-wins.html | 2017-02-02 | 2least
| Hunter hits 3 of 4 FTs in final 20 seconds, New Mexico wins
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<p />
<p>Brown hit a 3-pointer with 42 seconds left for a 75-69 lead but Jovan Mooring answered with a deep 3. Brown was fouled in the backcourt and the 83.1 percent free-throw shooter made two for a 77-72 lead but Mooring hit another 3, this time going to his right along the arc, with 20.7 seconds to go.</p>
<p>Hunter made two free throws for a 79-75 lead and Mooring finally missed a 3 but UNLV grabbed the offensive rebound and Tyrell Green dunked it. After Hunter went 1 for 2 from the line with 6.2 seconds left, Mooring raced down the court, got a high screen for a good look but he slipped and his 3-pointer was off.</p>
<p>Obij Aget had 15 points and 11 rebounds for New Mexico (14-9, 7-4 Mountain West), which wore its turquoise uniforms.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>New Mexico was without its second-leading scorer, Tim Williams, due to a stress reaction in his left foot. The senior, who was on the bench with a walking book on his left foot, is averaging 17.9 points per game this season.</p>
<p>Green had 25 points and eight rebounds for UNLV (10-13, 3-7) and Mooring added 23 points with six assists.</p> | 1,162 |
<p>With companies looking for new and alternative ways to reach customers, a Czech woman may have found the most eye-catching way of all.</p>
<p>A young lady has offered her breasts as advertising space.</p>
<p>For about eight dollars for one and 15 dollars for two, a company can pay her to write their logo, slogan or simply the name of their product or service on her chest.</p>
<p>She will then post the picture on the web.</p>
<p><a href="http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/10/busty-beauty-sells-adverts-on-her-boobs-3346592/" type="external">Metro reported</a> that she initially posted her ad on a Craigslist-like site in the Czech Republic and then on Facebook where it received widespread attention.</p>
<p>"I am a beautiful young girl and I offer my breasts for greeting cards and adverts," wrote the girl, <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4736700/busty-babes-novel-advertising-scheme-proving-a-real-handful.html" type="external">reported The Sun</a>.</p>
<p>"Send me your message and I’ll send you a pic with it written on my breasts," she added.</p>
<p>This is certainly not the first time breasts have been overtly used to sell things (see example below).</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/brazilian-prostitutes-prepare-world-cup-2014-language-cla" type="external">Brazilian prostitutes prepare for World Cup 2014 with language classes</a></p>
<p />
<p /> | Woman sells advertising on her large breasts (VIDEO) | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-01-10/woman-sells-advertising-her-large-breasts-video | 2013-01-10 | 3left-center
| Woman sells advertising on her large breasts (VIDEO)
<p>With companies looking for new and alternative ways to reach customers, a Czech woman may have found the most eye-catching way of all.</p>
<p>A young lady has offered her breasts as advertising space.</p>
<p>For about eight dollars for one and 15 dollars for two, a company can pay her to write their logo, slogan or simply the name of their product or service on her chest.</p>
<p>She will then post the picture on the web.</p>
<p><a href="http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/10/busty-beauty-sells-adverts-on-her-boobs-3346592/" type="external">Metro reported</a> that she initially posted her ad on a Craigslist-like site in the Czech Republic and then on Facebook where it received widespread attention.</p>
<p>"I am a beautiful young girl and I offer my breasts for greeting cards and adverts," wrote the girl, <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4736700/busty-babes-novel-advertising-scheme-proving-a-real-handful.html" type="external">reported The Sun</a>.</p>
<p>"Send me your message and I’ll send you a pic with it written on my breasts," she added.</p>
<p>This is certainly not the first time breasts have been overtly used to sell things (see example below).</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/brazilian-prostitutes-prepare-world-cup-2014-language-cla" type="external">Brazilian prostitutes prepare for World Cup 2014 with language classes</a></p>
<p />
<p /> | 1,163 |
<p>A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that investors can't sue companies for making misleading statements of opinion prior to a public stock offering, even if those statements turn out to be wrong.</p>
<p>But the ruling said some opinions in registration documents might omit important facts that could mislead investors, giving them a right to sue for securities fraud.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The narrow opinion offered a limited victory to pharmacy services provider Omnicare Inc., which was sued by two pension funds that bought stock when the company went public in 2005.</p>
<p>Investors claimed the Cincinnati-based Omnicare misled them when it said in registration documents that it "believed" its contracts with other companies were legal. Omnicare later paid $124 million to settle charges it gave kickbacks to facilities in exchange for patient referrals.</p>
<p>A federal judge dismissed the investors' lawsuit, ruling they failed to show Omnicare knowingly made false statements. But a federal appeals court reversed, saying the plaintiffs only had to allege the statements were "objectively false."</p>
<p>The high court said that wasn't the right standard. The justices sent the case back to lower courts to decide whether Omnicare's statement left out facts that would have been material to investors.</p>
<p>Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said opinion statements are not automatically immune from liability. Investors could try to show that a company did not sincerely believe the opinions it made, or that they are based on inaccurate facts.</p>
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<p>Omnicare's statements essentially boiled down to "we believe we are obeying the law," Kagan said. The pension funds did not dispute that Omnicare officials believed its contracts were legal, even though it was later discovered they weren't. Kagan said securities laws do not give investors "an invitation to Monday morning quarterback an issuer's opinions."</p>
<p>But Kagan said Omnicare could be liable if the registration statement left out critical facts, such as making an opinion about legal compliance without having consulted a lawyer, or in the face of its lawyer's contrary advice.</p>
<p>Kagan said she sees no reason the court's ruling would make companies hesitant to disclose information useful to investors.</p>
<p>"To the extent our decision today chills misleading opinions, that is all to the good," Kagan said, noting that Congress wanted investors to have better information, not simply more of it.</p>
<p>Daniel Lewis, a securities litigator in New York, said he didn't expect the ruling to produce a slew of new litigation. But he said it has the potential to create more uncertainty for companies.</p>
<p>"A plaintiff relying on hindsight could complain that a company didn't disclose enough about the basis for an opinion," Lewis said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Sam Hananel on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SamHananelAP</p> | Supreme Court limits suits brought by investors against companies making misleading claims | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/03/24/supreme-court-limits-suits-brought-by-investors-against-companies-making.html | 2016-03-06 | 0right
| Supreme Court limits suits brought by investors against companies making misleading claims
<p>A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that investors can't sue companies for making misleading statements of opinion prior to a public stock offering, even if those statements turn out to be wrong.</p>
<p>But the ruling said some opinions in registration documents might omit important facts that could mislead investors, giving them a right to sue for securities fraud.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The narrow opinion offered a limited victory to pharmacy services provider Omnicare Inc., which was sued by two pension funds that bought stock when the company went public in 2005.</p>
<p>Investors claimed the Cincinnati-based Omnicare misled them when it said in registration documents that it "believed" its contracts with other companies were legal. Omnicare later paid $124 million to settle charges it gave kickbacks to facilities in exchange for patient referrals.</p>
<p>A federal judge dismissed the investors' lawsuit, ruling they failed to show Omnicare knowingly made false statements. But a federal appeals court reversed, saying the plaintiffs only had to allege the statements were "objectively false."</p>
<p>The high court said that wasn't the right standard. The justices sent the case back to lower courts to decide whether Omnicare's statement left out facts that would have been material to investors.</p>
<p>Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said opinion statements are not automatically immune from liability. Investors could try to show that a company did not sincerely believe the opinions it made, or that they are based on inaccurate facts.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Omnicare's statements essentially boiled down to "we believe we are obeying the law," Kagan said. The pension funds did not dispute that Omnicare officials believed its contracts were legal, even though it was later discovered they weren't. Kagan said securities laws do not give investors "an invitation to Monday morning quarterback an issuer's opinions."</p>
<p>But Kagan said Omnicare could be liable if the registration statement left out critical facts, such as making an opinion about legal compliance without having consulted a lawyer, or in the face of its lawyer's contrary advice.</p>
<p>Kagan said she sees no reason the court's ruling would make companies hesitant to disclose information useful to investors.</p>
<p>"To the extent our decision today chills misleading opinions, that is all to the good," Kagan said, noting that Congress wanted investors to have better information, not simply more of it.</p>
<p>Daniel Lewis, a securities litigator in New York, said he didn't expect the ruling to produce a slew of new litigation. But he said it has the potential to create more uncertainty for companies.</p>
<p>"A plaintiff relying on hindsight could complain that a company didn't disclose enough about the basis for an opinion," Lewis said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Sam Hananel on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SamHananelAP</p> | 1,164 |
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<p>Longtime sports journalist and former Journal sports editor J.D. Kailer died Wednesday at age 92. (Journal file)</p>
<p>J.D. Kailer traded verbal jabs with Muhammad Ali. He took some high, hard ones from Little League parents. He was congenial, affable and equally comfortable rubbing elbows with the princes and the paupers.</p>
<p>The longtime fixture on the Albuquerque sports scene died Wednesday at age 92, his widow, Pat, said. Kailer suffered from dementia and had been living for the better part of the past two years at the Emeritus at the Cottages. The Kailers were one month short of their 66th wedding anniversary.</p>
<p>Kailer was Journal sports editor (1950-59), then a radio and TV broadcaster and later executive director of the Lobo Club. But he also was a driver for Meals on Wheels, a board member for the local Boys and Girls clubs and took a term as president of Thunderbird Little League when his sons were in the program.</p>
<p>“I’d say his best qualities were loyalty and really loving to be involved with people,” Pat Kailer said. “He loved doing what he did.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>J.D. Kailer was a driving force in the establishment of the Albuquerque Sports Hall of Fame some 40 years ago. He eventually was inducted into it. He also was inducted into the UNM Hall of Honor and, in 2008, the Albuquerque Professional Baseball Hall of Fame – all for journalistic achievements.</p>
<p>“J.D. will certainly be missed. He was a great character and a true legend in this community,” Albuquerque Isotopes general manager John Traub said.</p>
<p>J.D. and Pat Kailer were married in 1948 in Roswell, where they both worked at the Roswell Morning Dispatch – she as a reporter, he as an advertising director and later editor.</p>
<p>His career in sports journalism took off soon after when they came to Albuquerque. Kailer first came to the Journal as an assistant to a sports editor who left soon after.</p>
<p>For a while, the Journal sports staff consisted only of Kailer and a team of teenage correspondents recruited from high schools who grew up to be businessmen, judges and the like. Their job was to cover high schools – for the hefty sum of 10 cents a column-inch.</p>
<p>“Of course that went a lot further in those days,” Jim Carroll, a 1956 Highland grad and one of those correspondents, said with a laugh Wednesday.</p>
<p>“I have to tell you that I was afraid of J.D. for 40 years,” Carroll said. “Not because he was mean; he wasn’t. But he was no-nonsense – ‘You’re here to work’ – and he let us work. He’d get me to stick around and write headlines, and after deadline we’d go to the Court Cafe and he’d drive me home about 1 o’clock at the morning. I was probably the only kid from Highland High out that late who wasn’t in trouble.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>When Kailer covered a program, he was all in – almost to “the risk of ‘hometowning’ it a little bit, digging into his professionalism,” said Pat.</p>
<p>When it came to that profession, however, J.D. Kailer had his feather-in-his-cap moments. He secured an on-camera interview in 1970 with Muhammad Ali – whose reason for being in Albuquerque at the time isn’t clear – at a moment Ali was announcing his return to professional boxing. Ali had lost his heavyweight championship and boxing license after refusing to enter the military in 1967 and being convicted on draft-evasion charges.</p>
<p>Pat Kailer recalled that Ali gave Kailer the same needling treatment he’d have given ABC’s Howard Cosell at the time, telling Kailer: “You’re not as dumb as you look.” Without missing a beat, Kailer fired back: “I was thinking the same about you.”</p>
<p>Another time when back in his native Pennsylvania, Kailer secured a interview for radio play with the late Hall of Fame baseball player Roberto Clemente – at a time when Clemente was particularly media-shy. Kailer softened Clemente by convincing him that Albuquerque’s large Hispanic community would be interested.</p>
<p>“That was a big deal for a small-town guy,” Pat said.</p>
<p>Kailer enjoyed the small-town stuff, too. He was a fixture at Albuquerque Dukes baseball at Tingley Field, with the sounds from the zoo next door coming over the field’s walls. He embraced prep coverage and the prospect of being out front with coverage of the girls – particularly when Don Flanagan emerged as a coaching star, building state championship teams at Eldorado.</p>
<p>“As a sports writer with the Journal and a TV commentator, he was all about the kids,” said Buddy Robertson, the former APS athletic director, coach, and athlete at Highland High and UNM.</p>
<p>“He was so positive. He so enjoyed his job. He enjoyed doing things for kids. He was just a great journalist and great person.”</p>
<p>Prior to his retirement around 1990, Kailer also wrote and published sports programs for Albuquerque Public Schools.</p>
<p>John David Kailer was born in California in 1921, moved to Altoona, Pa., as a child and went to high school in nearby Pittsburgh. It was there that his love for sports blossomed; Kailer was present at Forbes Field in May 1935 and saw the game in which Babe Ruth clubbed the final three home runs of his career as a member of the Boston Braves.</p>
<p>“He wrote a wonderful story for the Journal about being there with his dad,” Carroll said.</p>
<p>Kailer’s studies at the universities of Illinois and Missouri were wrapped around a service stint during World War II, where he served in the South Pacific.</p>
<p>In Albuquerque, Kailer attended Hope Evangelical Free Church and was a member of a CBS (Christian Bible Studies) group.</p>
<p>In addition to Pat Kailer, he is survived by sons David Kailer of Albuquerque and John Kailer of Pittsburgh, daughter Ann Eversole of Albuquerque and six grandchildren.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Former Journal sports editor Kailer dies at 92 | false | https://abqjournal.com/333435/former-journal-sports-editor-kailer-dies-at-92.html | 2least
| Former Journal sports editor Kailer dies at 92
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Longtime sports journalist and former Journal sports editor J.D. Kailer died Wednesday at age 92. (Journal file)</p>
<p>J.D. Kailer traded verbal jabs with Muhammad Ali. He took some high, hard ones from Little League parents. He was congenial, affable and equally comfortable rubbing elbows with the princes and the paupers.</p>
<p>The longtime fixture on the Albuquerque sports scene died Wednesday at age 92, his widow, Pat, said. Kailer suffered from dementia and had been living for the better part of the past two years at the Emeritus at the Cottages. The Kailers were one month short of their 66th wedding anniversary.</p>
<p>Kailer was Journal sports editor (1950-59), then a radio and TV broadcaster and later executive director of the Lobo Club. But he also was a driver for Meals on Wheels, a board member for the local Boys and Girls clubs and took a term as president of Thunderbird Little League when his sons were in the program.</p>
<p>“I’d say his best qualities were loyalty and really loving to be involved with people,” Pat Kailer said. “He loved doing what he did.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>J.D. Kailer was a driving force in the establishment of the Albuquerque Sports Hall of Fame some 40 years ago. He eventually was inducted into it. He also was inducted into the UNM Hall of Honor and, in 2008, the Albuquerque Professional Baseball Hall of Fame – all for journalistic achievements.</p>
<p>“J.D. will certainly be missed. He was a great character and a true legend in this community,” Albuquerque Isotopes general manager John Traub said.</p>
<p>J.D. and Pat Kailer were married in 1948 in Roswell, where they both worked at the Roswell Morning Dispatch – she as a reporter, he as an advertising director and later editor.</p>
<p>His career in sports journalism took off soon after when they came to Albuquerque. Kailer first came to the Journal as an assistant to a sports editor who left soon after.</p>
<p>For a while, the Journal sports staff consisted only of Kailer and a team of teenage correspondents recruited from high schools who grew up to be businessmen, judges and the like. Their job was to cover high schools – for the hefty sum of 10 cents a column-inch.</p>
<p>“Of course that went a lot further in those days,” Jim Carroll, a 1956 Highland grad and one of those correspondents, said with a laugh Wednesday.</p>
<p>“I have to tell you that I was afraid of J.D. for 40 years,” Carroll said. “Not because he was mean; he wasn’t. But he was no-nonsense – ‘You’re here to work’ – and he let us work. He’d get me to stick around and write headlines, and after deadline we’d go to the Court Cafe and he’d drive me home about 1 o’clock at the morning. I was probably the only kid from Highland High out that late who wasn’t in trouble.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>When Kailer covered a program, he was all in – almost to “the risk of ‘hometowning’ it a little bit, digging into his professionalism,” said Pat.</p>
<p>When it came to that profession, however, J.D. Kailer had his feather-in-his-cap moments. He secured an on-camera interview in 1970 with Muhammad Ali – whose reason for being in Albuquerque at the time isn’t clear – at a moment Ali was announcing his return to professional boxing. Ali had lost his heavyweight championship and boxing license after refusing to enter the military in 1967 and being convicted on draft-evasion charges.</p>
<p>Pat Kailer recalled that Ali gave Kailer the same needling treatment he’d have given ABC’s Howard Cosell at the time, telling Kailer: “You’re not as dumb as you look.” Without missing a beat, Kailer fired back: “I was thinking the same about you.”</p>
<p>Another time when back in his native Pennsylvania, Kailer secured a interview for radio play with the late Hall of Fame baseball player Roberto Clemente – at a time when Clemente was particularly media-shy. Kailer softened Clemente by convincing him that Albuquerque’s large Hispanic community would be interested.</p>
<p>“That was a big deal for a small-town guy,” Pat said.</p>
<p>Kailer enjoyed the small-town stuff, too. He was a fixture at Albuquerque Dukes baseball at Tingley Field, with the sounds from the zoo next door coming over the field’s walls. He embraced prep coverage and the prospect of being out front with coverage of the girls – particularly when Don Flanagan emerged as a coaching star, building state championship teams at Eldorado.</p>
<p>“As a sports writer with the Journal and a TV commentator, he was all about the kids,” said Buddy Robertson, the former APS athletic director, coach, and athlete at Highland High and UNM.</p>
<p>“He was so positive. He so enjoyed his job. He enjoyed doing things for kids. He was just a great journalist and great person.”</p>
<p>Prior to his retirement around 1990, Kailer also wrote and published sports programs for Albuquerque Public Schools.</p>
<p>John David Kailer was born in California in 1921, moved to Altoona, Pa., as a child and went to high school in nearby Pittsburgh. It was there that his love for sports blossomed; Kailer was present at Forbes Field in May 1935 and saw the game in which Babe Ruth clubbed the final three home runs of his career as a member of the Boston Braves.</p>
<p>“He wrote a wonderful story for the Journal about being there with his dad,” Carroll said.</p>
<p>Kailer’s studies at the universities of Illinois and Missouri were wrapped around a service stint during World War II, where he served in the South Pacific.</p>
<p>In Albuquerque, Kailer attended Hope Evangelical Free Church and was a member of a CBS (Christian Bible Studies) group.</p>
<p>In addition to Pat Kailer, he is survived by sons David Kailer of Albuquerque and John Kailer of Pittsburgh, daughter Ann Eversole of Albuquerque and six grandchildren.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 1,165 |
|
<p><a href="#one" type="external">Kenya’s New Moment</a> <a href="#two" type="external">An AIDS Advance?</a></p>
<p>FOREIGN NEWS <a type="external" href="">Kenya’s New Moment</a></p>
<p>Kenya made African history this weekend by unseating its long-ruling establishment through democratic elections. The prognosis is a hopeful but uneasy one. Uhuru Kenyatta, the figurehead for Daniel arap Moi and the Kenya African National Union (KANU) — in power since independence in 1963 — has <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2612753.stm" type="external">been defeated by Mwai Kibaki’s National Rainbow Coalition (NARC)</a>.</p>
<p>Pleased by the result, the BBC‘s David Bamford offers that:</p>
<p />
<p>“The people of Kenya are showing themselves to be the instrument of a historic and rare transition in Africa — the democratic removal of a hitherto-dominant political party, and its replacement with an untested alternative.”</p>
<p>Still, Bamford warns Kenyans to “remain wary for a while yet,” as opposition parties often “adopt the negative tendencies of their predecessors.”</p>
<p>With great expectations for the new regime, the editorial board of the Globe and Mail recounts the once-shining nation’s <a href="http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/TGAM/20021227/EKENYA/Headlines/headdex/headdexEditorials_temp/2/2/2/" type="external">demise under the enduring leadership of Moi</a>: corruption, poverty, endemic rates of HIV, tribal divisions, violence, and an unemployment rate as high as 50 percent.</p>
<p>NARC, say the editors, is “essentially a new party composed of old politicians.”</p>
<p />
<p>“Some are long-time dissidents who have worked to clean up Kenyan corruption for years. Others left KANU just a few weeks ago, acting expediently as they sought to anticipate the electorate’s decision. The party is led by a political veteran, 71-year old Mwai Kibaki, who spent a decade as Mr. Moi’s vice-president. He broke with him and founded an opposition party in 1991, running twice and losing against Mr. Moi.”</p>
<p>Strongly approving of the direction “10,000,000 change-starved” Kenyan voters have taken, the editors of the East African Standard <a href="http://www.eastandard.net/commentaries/editorial/editorial1.htm" type="external">gush with hope</a>:</p>
<p />
<p>“The people have spoken unequivocally, and the avalanche of votes for the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) and its top package is decidedly a vote for change that is outstanding in its clarity and resolve.”</p>
<p>Despite the “mix-ups, slip-ups and chaos” of the election itself, the final outcome was not compromised, suggests the Standard. However,</p>
<p />
<p>“On our part, we will always reserve the right to audit the party’s pledges and delivery of the goodies of good governance to the Kenyan people as documented and on schedule.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>When they slip, or seem to veer off the rail, they will always be reminded and judged against the mannerisms of the ancien regime.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>The people have spoken. Now, Kibaki &amp; Co must deliver.”</p>
<p />
<p>HEALTH <a type="external" href="">An AIDS Advance?</a></p>
<p>Hope may be on the horizon for AIDS sufferers.</p>
<p>For the first time in history, an AIDS vaccine has <a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=365216&amp;dir=505&amp;host=3" type="external">made it through the final phase of clinical trials</a>, and results are due out early in 2003, Steve Connor reports in The Independent. While scientists are hopeful that the five-year study — carried out in North America and Europe — will lead to breakthroughs in treatment, Connor notes that great hurdles remain ahead, in particular the crafting of a vaccine that works on all of the disease’s different strains.</p>
<p />
<p>“But even if the Vaxgen trials prove a success, there still remains the question of whether the vaccine will be effective against the whole, broad range of HIV subtypes and strains in existence around the world. Dr Francis said: ‘That’s the biggest issue we’ll be facing. We don’t really understand the immunity to subtypes and that’s the biggest risk to the trial.'”</p>
<p>While the just-completed trial will mainly benefit AIDS patients in the West, another group of researchers announced that a vaccine targeted specifically at the South African strain of the HIV virus will <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,56919,00.html" type="external">begin human trials in 2003</a>, Kristen Philipkoski reports in Wired. The new drug has already proven effective in monkeys, and will be tested on subjects in South Africa — where one-third of the population is HIV-positive — and the US. Moreover, according to researchers, the technology used to develop this vaccine could be used for other diseases like Ebola, smallpox and cancer:</p>
<p />
<p>“Basically we can drop just about any gene that you think would interact well with the immune system into it and you’d have vaccine,” Young said.</p>
<p>The news for AIDS advocates is not all good, however. Last week, the Bush administration <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,866445,00.html" type="external">shot down</a> a trade deal that would have relaxed global patent rules on drug treatments and made it easier for generic drug makers to sell AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria drugs to poor countries crippled by these epidemics. Disgusted, the editors of the London Guardian called the US maneuver a “cold-hearted piece of realpolitik”:</p>
<p />
<p>“Forget the honey-coated pledges of support for development and warm declarations that global prosperity must be shared … The richest nation on the earth backed the arguments of the drug lobby over the cries of the weak and wasted. In doing so the US has emptied the current round of trade talks of a meaningful and substantial proof that globalisation could help the poor.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p /> | Mother Jones Daily: Briefing | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2002/12/mother-jones-daily-briefing-0-2/ | 2002-12-31 | 4left
| Mother Jones Daily: Briefing
<p><a href="#one" type="external">Kenya’s New Moment</a> <a href="#two" type="external">An AIDS Advance?</a></p>
<p>FOREIGN NEWS <a type="external" href="">Kenya’s New Moment</a></p>
<p>Kenya made African history this weekend by unseating its long-ruling establishment through democratic elections. The prognosis is a hopeful but uneasy one. Uhuru Kenyatta, the figurehead for Daniel arap Moi and the Kenya African National Union (KANU) — in power since independence in 1963 — has <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2612753.stm" type="external">been defeated by Mwai Kibaki’s National Rainbow Coalition (NARC)</a>.</p>
<p>Pleased by the result, the BBC‘s David Bamford offers that:</p>
<p />
<p>“The people of Kenya are showing themselves to be the instrument of a historic and rare transition in Africa — the democratic removal of a hitherto-dominant political party, and its replacement with an untested alternative.”</p>
<p>Still, Bamford warns Kenyans to “remain wary for a while yet,” as opposition parties often “adopt the negative tendencies of their predecessors.”</p>
<p>With great expectations for the new regime, the editorial board of the Globe and Mail recounts the once-shining nation’s <a href="http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/TGAM/20021227/EKENYA/Headlines/headdex/headdexEditorials_temp/2/2/2/" type="external">demise under the enduring leadership of Moi</a>: corruption, poverty, endemic rates of HIV, tribal divisions, violence, and an unemployment rate as high as 50 percent.</p>
<p>NARC, say the editors, is “essentially a new party composed of old politicians.”</p>
<p />
<p>“Some are long-time dissidents who have worked to clean up Kenyan corruption for years. Others left KANU just a few weeks ago, acting expediently as they sought to anticipate the electorate’s decision. The party is led by a political veteran, 71-year old Mwai Kibaki, who spent a decade as Mr. Moi’s vice-president. He broke with him and founded an opposition party in 1991, running twice and losing against Mr. Moi.”</p>
<p>Strongly approving of the direction “10,000,000 change-starved” Kenyan voters have taken, the editors of the East African Standard <a href="http://www.eastandard.net/commentaries/editorial/editorial1.htm" type="external">gush with hope</a>:</p>
<p />
<p>“The people have spoken unequivocally, and the avalanche of votes for the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) and its top package is decidedly a vote for change that is outstanding in its clarity and resolve.”</p>
<p>Despite the “mix-ups, slip-ups and chaos” of the election itself, the final outcome was not compromised, suggests the Standard. However,</p>
<p />
<p>“On our part, we will always reserve the right to audit the party’s pledges and delivery of the goodies of good governance to the Kenyan people as documented and on schedule.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>When they slip, or seem to veer off the rail, they will always be reminded and judged against the mannerisms of the ancien regime.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>The people have spoken. Now, Kibaki &amp; Co must deliver.”</p>
<p />
<p>HEALTH <a type="external" href="">An AIDS Advance?</a></p>
<p>Hope may be on the horizon for AIDS sufferers.</p>
<p>For the first time in history, an AIDS vaccine has <a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=365216&amp;dir=505&amp;host=3" type="external">made it through the final phase of clinical trials</a>, and results are due out early in 2003, Steve Connor reports in The Independent. While scientists are hopeful that the five-year study — carried out in North America and Europe — will lead to breakthroughs in treatment, Connor notes that great hurdles remain ahead, in particular the crafting of a vaccine that works on all of the disease’s different strains.</p>
<p />
<p>“But even if the Vaxgen trials prove a success, there still remains the question of whether the vaccine will be effective against the whole, broad range of HIV subtypes and strains in existence around the world. Dr Francis said: ‘That’s the biggest issue we’ll be facing. We don’t really understand the immunity to subtypes and that’s the biggest risk to the trial.'”</p>
<p>While the just-completed trial will mainly benefit AIDS patients in the West, another group of researchers announced that a vaccine targeted specifically at the South African strain of the HIV virus will <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,56919,00.html" type="external">begin human trials in 2003</a>, Kristen Philipkoski reports in Wired. The new drug has already proven effective in monkeys, and will be tested on subjects in South Africa — where one-third of the population is HIV-positive — and the US. Moreover, according to researchers, the technology used to develop this vaccine could be used for other diseases like Ebola, smallpox and cancer:</p>
<p />
<p>“Basically we can drop just about any gene that you think would interact well with the immune system into it and you’d have vaccine,” Young said.</p>
<p>The news for AIDS advocates is not all good, however. Last week, the Bush administration <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,866445,00.html" type="external">shot down</a> a trade deal that would have relaxed global patent rules on drug treatments and made it easier for generic drug makers to sell AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria drugs to poor countries crippled by these epidemics. Disgusted, the editors of the London Guardian called the US maneuver a “cold-hearted piece of realpolitik”:</p>
<p />
<p>“Forget the honey-coated pledges of support for development and warm declarations that global prosperity must be shared … The richest nation on the earth backed the arguments of the drug lobby over the cries of the weak and wasted. In doing so the US has emptied the current round of trade talks of a meaningful and substantial proof that globalisation could help the poor.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p /> | 1,166 |
<p>The prevailing understanding of economic troubles in the U.S. and Europe, the world’s two largest economies, is misunderstood in a number of ways. First: Imagine that you are driving a car down a road packed with snow and ice and you are worried about an accident. At the same time you are ignoring the fact that you are about to run out of gasoline, leaving you stranded and freezing in the middle of nowhere.</p>
<p>Such have been the main reactions to last week’s extreme volatility in financial markets: There has been much more fear of financial crisis than the slow strangulation that poses the greater risk. Investors’ panic attack subsided noticeably after the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) decision to reverse its prior stance and purchase some 22 billion euros of Italian and Spanish bonds, which was successful. It drove down interest rates on these bonds by more than a full percentage point, to 5 percent, and eliminated – <a href="" type="internal" />for now at least – the most immediate threat of an acute financial crisis: the one that emanated from the fear that markets would drive up interest rates on these bonds to a dangerous level.</p>
<p>The European authorities also took some action to stem the immediate crisis of the European banks, which is of course related to the sovereign debt problems: France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain banned short-selling of the stocks of financial institutions. According to some press reports, speculators were shorting these stocks partly because the ECB was committed to keeping a floor under the euro, leaving the bank stocks as a “soft target.” The ban on short selling seems also to have helped, at least temporarily.</p>
<p>But there is still a lot of fear that we are close to a repeat of 2008-2009, when the U.S. fell into a deep recession and much of the world economy was dragged down with it. For the U.S., this is not all that likely: The Great Recession was caused by the bursting of an $8 trillion housing bubble, and there is no such bubble now available to burst. The recession before that (2001) was also caused by the bursting of a big asset bubble – in the stock market, which is not currently overvalued. The three recessions before were brought on by the Federal Reserve deliberately raising interest rates in order to slow the economy; but the Fed last week committed itself to keeping interest rates “very low” for two more years.</p>
<p>Of course, if unemployment remains at 9.1 percent or worsens, it will feel like a recession to most Americans even if we don’t have negative growth. But the probability of an actual recession has been exaggerated, and the chance of a recession like the last one is very remote.</p>
<p>In Europe, where macroeconomic policy has been more right wing, recession is more likely. Portugal and Greece are already in recession, and others are not far away. In return for the ECB’s buying up Italian bonds, the European authorities extracted a promise from the Berlusconi government to close a 3.9 percent of GDP budget gap by 2013. This could easily push Italy’s $2 trillion economy into recession. The latest GDP numbers for Europe’s second quarter arrived this week, and they look dismal: just 0.2 percent growth in the second quarter in the eurozone, the worst for two years. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, was practically stalled at 0.1 percent, and France, the second largest, came in at zero.</p>
<p>The most dangerous myth, and one repeated daily in much of the major media, is that these troubles on both sides of the Atlantic are a result of a “debt crisis,” and can only be resolved through fiscal tightening. The United States is not facing any public debt crisis at all, with interest payments on the debt at just 1.4 percent of GDP. Some eurozone countries do have a “debt crisis” – for example Greece. But this is only because the European authorities have failed to take the necessary steps to resolve it, and have instead made it worse by shrinking the economy. In other words, there is no legitimate economic reason for a sovereign debt burden – even an unsustainable one – to result in years of economic stagnation and high unemployment. If the debt needs to be restructured because it is not payable, as in Greece, then that should be done as quickly as possible and with enough debt cancellation to make the resulting debt burden sustainable – as Argentina did with its successful default in 2001.</p>
<p>The eurozone is of course handicapped by the lack of a unitary fiscal authority, and many were disappointed that this week’s meeting of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel did not move toward the use of eurobonds. Much worse was their pledge to push for a Europe-wide balanced-budget amendment, starting in their own countries. This is ridiculous and – to the extent that it is not mere posturing – would only be another indicator of how far Europe’s leaders are from reality-based economic policy.</p>
<p>Mark Weisbrot&#160;is an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.&#160;He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Social Security: the Phony Crisis</a>.</p>
<p>This column was originally published by the Guardian.</p> | How the Economy Will Die | true | https://counterpunch.org/2011/08/18/how-the-economy-will-die/ | 2011-08-18 | 4left
| How the Economy Will Die
<p>The prevailing understanding of economic troubles in the U.S. and Europe, the world’s two largest economies, is misunderstood in a number of ways. First: Imagine that you are driving a car down a road packed with snow and ice and you are worried about an accident. At the same time you are ignoring the fact that you are about to run out of gasoline, leaving you stranded and freezing in the middle of nowhere.</p>
<p>Such have been the main reactions to last week’s extreme volatility in financial markets: There has been much more fear of financial crisis than the slow strangulation that poses the greater risk. Investors’ panic attack subsided noticeably after the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) decision to reverse its prior stance and purchase some 22 billion euros of Italian and Spanish bonds, which was successful. It drove down interest rates on these bonds by more than a full percentage point, to 5 percent, and eliminated – <a href="" type="internal" />for now at least – the most immediate threat of an acute financial crisis: the one that emanated from the fear that markets would drive up interest rates on these bonds to a dangerous level.</p>
<p>The European authorities also took some action to stem the immediate crisis of the European banks, which is of course related to the sovereign debt problems: France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain banned short-selling of the stocks of financial institutions. According to some press reports, speculators were shorting these stocks partly because the ECB was committed to keeping a floor under the euro, leaving the bank stocks as a “soft target.” The ban on short selling seems also to have helped, at least temporarily.</p>
<p>But there is still a lot of fear that we are close to a repeat of 2008-2009, when the U.S. fell into a deep recession and much of the world economy was dragged down with it. For the U.S., this is not all that likely: The Great Recession was caused by the bursting of an $8 trillion housing bubble, and there is no such bubble now available to burst. The recession before that (2001) was also caused by the bursting of a big asset bubble – in the stock market, which is not currently overvalued. The three recessions before were brought on by the Federal Reserve deliberately raising interest rates in order to slow the economy; but the Fed last week committed itself to keeping interest rates “very low” for two more years.</p>
<p>Of course, if unemployment remains at 9.1 percent or worsens, it will feel like a recession to most Americans even if we don’t have negative growth. But the probability of an actual recession has been exaggerated, and the chance of a recession like the last one is very remote.</p>
<p>In Europe, where macroeconomic policy has been more right wing, recession is more likely. Portugal and Greece are already in recession, and others are not far away. In return for the ECB’s buying up Italian bonds, the European authorities extracted a promise from the Berlusconi government to close a 3.9 percent of GDP budget gap by 2013. This could easily push Italy’s $2 trillion economy into recession. The latest GDP numbers for Europe’s second quarter arrived this week, and they look dismal: just 0.2 percent growth in the second quarter in the eurozone, the worst for two years. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, was practically stalled at 0.1 percent, and France, the second largest, came in at zero.</p>
<p>The most dangerous myth, and one repeated daily in much of the major media, is that these troubles on both sides of the Atlantic are a result of a “debt crisis,” and can only be resolved through fiscal tightening. The United States is not facing any public debt crisis at all, with interest payments on the debt at just 1.4 percent of GDP. Some eurozone countries do have a “debt crisis” – for example Greece. But this is only because the European authorities have failed to take the necessary steps to resolve it, and have instead made it worse by shrinking the economy. In other words, there is no legitimate economic reason for a sovereign debt burden – even an unsustainable one – to result in years of economic stagnation and high unemployment. If the debt needs to be restructured because it is not payable, as in Greece, then that should be done as quickly as possible and with enough debt cancellation to make the resulting debt burden sustainable – as Argentina did with its successful default in 2001.</p>
<p>The eurozone is of course handicapped by the lack of a unitary fiscal authority, and many were disappointed that this week’s meeting of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel did not move toward the use of eurobonds. Much worse was their pledge to push for a Europe-wide balanced-budget amendment, starting in their own countries. This is ridiculous and – to the extent that it is not mere posturing – would only be another indicator of how far Europe’s leaders are from reality-based economic policy.</p>
<p>Mark Weisbrot&#160;is an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.&#160;He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Social Security: the Phony Crisis</a>.</p>
<p>This column was originally published by the Guardian.</p> | 1,167 |
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<p />
<p>Like his father, Darius Brubeck is a jazz pianist. He’ll be in concert Sunday at Santa Fe’s Lensic Performing Arts Center.</p>
<p>The concert program will include a couple of Dave Brubeck tunes, American jazz standards, as well as jazz standards from South Africa, where the younger Brubeck spent many years as a musician and as the director of the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music.</p>
<p>“So the concert covers a spectrum of jazz. These (tunes from South Africa) are not ones you’d hear on this side (of the Atlantic),” he said in a phone interview.</p>
<p>A few of the South African tunes are by pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, also known as Dollar Brand, and by the late tenor sax player Duke Makasi.</p>
<p>“Makasi was truly a great tenor player but underdocumented. I might also do something by Pat Matchakiza. Patrick is a very talented piano player,” Brubeck said.</p>
<p>On May 11, Brubeck and his musician brothers will perform at a celebration for their father at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Other participants include Chick Corea, Branford Marsalis and Paquito d’Rivera.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Brubeck has been based in London since 2006. He has a quartet there.</p>
<p>“For me, London is the center of the world. It has a great cultural scene, great musicians to work with,” he said.</p>
<p>Joining Brubeck in the Santa Fe concert will be the Santa Fe ensemble Straight Up with drummer John Trentacosta, reed player Arlen Asher and bassist Andy Zadrozny, as well as Santa Fe jazz vocalist Maura Dhu Studi.</p>
<p>Studi and two sidemen, Zadrozny and guitarist Sean McGowan, will open the concert, which is a benefit for The Humankind Foundation.</p>
<p>The foundation supports two projects in rural east-central Africa – the African AIDS Education Organization and Kamilika, which is a school for Maasi girls. The school also serves as a sanctuary for them from female genital mutilation and early marriage.</p> | For the Brubecks, jazz is all in the family | false | https://abqjournal.com/195320/for-the-brubecks-ja-zzis-all-in-the-family.html | 2013-05-03 | 2least
| For the Brubecks, jazz is all in the family
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<p />
<p>Like his father, Darius Brubeck is a jazz pianist. He’ll be in concert Sunday at Santa Fe’s Lensic Performing Arts Center.</p>
<p>The concert program will include a couple of Dave Brubeck tunes, American jazz standards, as well as jazz standards from South Africa, where the younger Brubeck spent many years as a musician and as the director of the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music.</p>
<p>“So the concert covers a spectrum of jazz. These (tunes from South Africa) are not ones you’d hear on this side (of the Atlantic),” he said in a phone interview.</p>
<p>A few of the South African tunes are by pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, also known as Dollar Brand, and by the late tenor sax player Duke Makasi.</p>
<p>“Makasi was truly a great tenor player but underdocumented. I might also do something by Pat Matchakiza. Patrick is a very talented piano player,” Brubeck said.</p>
<p>On May 11, Brubeck and his musician brothers will perform at a celebration for their father at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Other participants include Chick Corea, Branford Marsalis and Paquito d’Rivera.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Brubeck has been based in London since 2006. He has a quartet there.</p>
<p>“For me, London is the center of the world. It has a great cultural scene, great musicians to work with,” he said.</p>
<p>Joining Brubeck in the Santa Fe concert will be the Santa Fe ensemble Straight Up with drummer John Trentacosta, reed player Arlen Asher and bassist Andy Zadrozny, as well as Santa Fe jazz vocalist Maura Dhu Studi.</p>
<p>Studi and two sidemen, Zadrozny and guitarist Sean McGowan, will open the concert, which is a benefit for The Humankind Foundation.</p>
<p>The foundation supports two projects in rural east-central Africa – the African AIDS Education Organization and Kamilika, which is a school for Maasi girls. The school also serves as a sanctuary for them from female genital mutilation and early marriage.</p> | 1,168 |
<p>On official Pentagon statistics about one per cent of members of the US armed forces today are Muslims, though the actual quotient is no doubt higher, since the 1 per cent number is based on initial declarations of religious persuasion on an official form. The Army high command bristles at demands from the Christian right that there should be some sort of loyalty review or even winnowing. General George Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, said firmly last Sunday that his concern was that Major Nidal Hasan’s lethal rampage at Fort Hood – on Thursday he was charged with killing 13 — might “cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers.”&#160;&#160; Casey went on earnestly to the effect that “It would be a shame—as great a tragedy as this was—it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well” and that a “diverse Army gives us strength.”</p>
<p>The general obviously doesn’t have Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on his bedside table. Gibbon wrote flatly that the introduction of foreigners “into Roman armies became every day more universal, more necessary and more fatal. Rome was captive before she was taken.”</p>
<p>The last time we heard rumblings about the dangers of ethnic or confessional diversity in the US military was during the Vietnam war, particularly after World Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali announced in the spring of 1967 that he was refusing to be drafted. In words that echoed round the world Ali said, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong…they never called me nigger. You want me to do what the white man says and go fight a war against some people I don’t know nothing about–get some freedom for some other people when my own people can’t get theirs?”</p>
<p>At that time Ali gave the US government this wallop on the chin, 12.1 per cent of enlisted men in the U.S. Army&#160; were black. There were innumerable reports of refusal to obey orders, acts of sabotage, assaults on officers and kindred acts of mutiny through the military, white and black.</p>
<p>Hasan’s military colleagues displayed a touching eagerness to give him the benefit of the doubt, regarding all-round steadiness of temperament. Why, they tell reporters, on every topic aside from religion he was as meek as a lamb. Granted, he would use the occasion of medical seminars to rail angrily against the US war on Islam, to laud suicide bombers as endowed with the courage of Japanese kamikaze pilots, to declare “I am a Muslim first and an American second”, to say – if we are to believe the British Telegraph’s report, that unbelievers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats – (a process evidently&#160; requiring the most exquisite timing), but withal, a “polite and gentle nature … when not discussing religion”.&#160; A decorous optimism prevailed. At Walter Reed hospital some of his colleagues thought the budding psychiatrist was possibly “psychotic” but thought to head off disaster by sending him to university lectures on terrorism, Islam and the Middle East “in the hopes of redirecting his increasing preoccupation with the conflicts felt by Muslim American soldiers on the front lines.”</p>
<p>This indulgent posture towards the omens offered by Hasan’s political and psychic profile stretched from the FBI – which saw no excessive cause for alarm in his emails to the radical Imam Anwar al Awlaki, now based in Yemen, and a vocal enthusiast for jihad in its most violent forms – to his medical colleagues who in early 2008 they discussed Hasan’s indifferent performance and, in the words of an AP report, “saw no signs of mental problems, no risk factors that would predict violent behavior.” They seized on “other factors” that suggested Hasan would continue to thrive in the military.”</p>
<p>“Don’t ask, don’t tell”, the famous summation of the Clinton-sponsored Army posture on gays seems to have become a more general&#160; maxim , whether it concerned the phone intercepted emails&#160; to the Imam, the praise for suicide bombers, the business card announcing him cryptically to be “a soldier of Allah”,&#160; or even the Arabic bumper sticker (“Allah is love”) which got his car scored with a key by a vet fresh back from the Crusades.</p>
<p>Talking of “Don’t ask”, it does seem reasonably clear that somewhat akin to some members of the Hamburg cell carrying out the 9/11 attack, if Hasan was hoping – a vulgar myth, to be sure –&#160; for the reward of virgins in the aftermath of martyrdom, their sex might have been an issue. No girlfriend; local virgins not pious enough for marriage; fainted while watching childbirth during medical training; at Walter Reed would not allow his photo to be taken with female co-workers; killed a pregnant woman in his lethal rampage (her dead embryo may constitute the fourteenth charge of homicide in the string for which he faces the death penalty); mentored 18-year old Duane Reasoner, a convert to Islam he met at the local mosque and with whom he seems to have cemented ties of loyalty and affection. Reasoner, who was with Hasan at his apartment not long before the major’s lethal excursion, declines to condemn him, saying fiercely in his BBC interview that Hasan’s victims “were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims.”</p>
<p>It’s the rationale most respectful to Hasan. No kook he, but indeed a Soldier of Allah.&#160; Of course, amid the thunderings of the Right about the army’s hospitality to a gay Palestinian terrorist&#160; General Casey retreats into the well-mannered sanctuary of “diversity”, even if there are no doubt enlisted men in Afghanistan saying right now , “No Muslims in my foxhole.” In Fort Hood the war came home with a vengeance, as it has been doing there at regular intervals with the suicides and savage domestic violence of vets driven crazy by what they’ve done in the service of Empire.</p>
<p>Too Fat to Fight (continued)</p>
<p>A big reaction from CounterPunchers to last week’s diary on America the Fat.. No reproofs for being an adiphobe– though I’ve been alerted that&#160; some worthy tract called “The Social Construction of Fatness” will soon come puffing up my driveway.</p>
<p>From Martha in Maine:</p>
<p>My husband’s Dutch cousins just visited us from Holland for the past 3 weeks. &#160;I can testify that the typical Dutch person eats the following for breakfast: &#160;FOUR slices of hearty whole-grain bread, each slice topped with butter, then cheese, then either ham, jam, Nutella (chocolate/hazelnut paste), or tomato. &#160;For good measure the Dutchman or woman also enjoys a bowl of cereal with (full-fat) milk, (full-fat) yogurt and fruit. &#160;We simply cannot believe how much our invariably tall, skinny cousins eat!!</p>
<p>The cousins do not own a car in Holland, so they ride a bike, walk or take a train everywhere. &#160;Also they have never dieted in their lives, so they have active metabolisms. &#160;From personal observation, I really believe it’s not the amount of food Americans eat so much as the built-in inactivity of our lives. &#160;If America had alternative transportation, a 35-hour workweek, and mandatory 6-week paid vacations, we’d be nearly as slim as those lucky Dutch!</p>
<p>Damn socialists……..(ha-ha)</p>
<p>From B in art school:</p>
<p>A relative who works there says that at Disneyland the employees are encouraging corporate to start charging by the square foot for people who are too lazy to walk so they bring in electric carts to drive in. Some fat couples rent carts for two and with their bulge hanging over the sides they take up a whopping 20 square feet. They’ve had to start making the rides have bigger seats and for the rollercoaster they’ve had to change safety standards because fatties have made older rides dangerous. They recently had to change the capacity allowed to make up for the mass people take up now – they can actually accept fewer people in because of the space restrictions.</p>
<p>My art has been called “size-ist” because I make sculptures of thin women-</p>
<p>From Paul:</p>
<p>When we used to live in cities where services were relatively close and we walked or took the bus or the streetcar wherever we went, we were thinner and in better shape.&#160; It is suburban life and the pervasiveness of the private auto that has had, I am convinced, a lot to do with the obesity epidemic in the US and in Canada (I think we’re not quite so bad but I haven’t checked the stats).&#160; And it’s a well-known fact (which is my excuse for not having to produce any evidence) that the more exercise you get the more you want.&#160; And the more time you devote to exercise the less you are likely to spend vegging in front of a tv.</p>
<p>Didn’t somebody write a book about the Big Petroleum/Big Auto conspiracy to promote urban sprawl?</p>
<p>Hopefully, this will all change when gas costs $20 a gallon.</p>
<p>From Tomas:</p>
<p>For the last 15 years I (a native born US) have lived in between Mexico and Havana. I get back to the States once a year to research at the University of Texas. I tell my students that each time I go back to the US everything gets bigger: the people, the cars, the houses.</p>
<p>I think there is causal connection here…bigger people=bigger cars, bigger cars=bigger garages, which equals bigger houses, etc. When I was a kid you could fit 5 Americans into a VW bug. My family of 10 lived in a house similar in space to most contemporary US suburban garages.</p>
<p>The irony of all of this is that the “other sized” movement in the US seems to blame their largess on “big bones” (in the vernacular) or their “metabolism” (the sophisticates outlet of denial).</p>
<p>When I first arrived to live in Cuba during the height of the “Special Period” one of the first things I noticed (like you in Europe) was that there were absolutely NO FAT PEOPLE in Cuba, none.</p>
<p>Year after year, after returning from skinny Cuba I would encounter people in the US whose “bones” had become progressively bigger, or whose “metabolism” had slowed to a snail’s pace, and they always bearing the same “genetic” excuse.</p>
<p>My point, extrapolating from yours, is that this whole “other sized” movement in the US is a movement in denial, and the denials and waist-lines grow bigger each time I chance a return visit. I was once fat myself. I am 100 pounds lighter than I was at my apex at 19. I have kept that weight off for 30 years through two simple things: a proper diet and daily exercise.</p>
<p>I saw my first truly obese person in Cuba in a plaza in Bayamo around three years ago. I noted this to my Bayamese family. They informed me that he was a cousin from Miami visiting relatives in Bayamo.</p>
<p>Now almost half the food we eat in Cuba is imported from the United States. And now apparently we are importing our “big boned” US relatives as well. So real obesity is returning to Cuba, but it arrives on a chartered jet plane full of US relatives at Jose Marti.</p>
<p>Cuba is an island full of people who dream of the day each night of being saddled with the affliction or the “genetic” malady of being “metabolically challenged.” &#160;I hope it never comes to that.</p>
<p>From Brito:</p>
<p>“There’s an ass for every seat”….and you can sell anything to the sheeple so long as it’s packaged properly. &#160;So I wouldn’t blame the processed food industries as quickly as you. &#160;After all, there’s no gun being put to anyone’s head to buy crap for food. &#160;Stupid does as stupid is.</p>
<p>Aside from the lack of self-control, part of the problem is too much meat in the American diet. &#160;This comes from years of affluence – now gone forever. &#160;My farmer parents in Portugal (or “peasants” if you’re a Marxist) ate meat only once a week – on Sundays after Mass. &#160;The rest of the week was spent on potatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions, black bread, sugarless coffee, and tons of fruit. When a pig was slaughtered, everything – and I mean everything was eaten – even the blood was fried.</p>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p>A Brito</p>
<p>From Chris K:</p>
<p>At Ecole Jean de La Fontaine in a suburb south of Paris, I’m asking the kids in the schoolyard about McDonald’s. “My mother she said the McDo, it’s degueulasse,” an eight-year-old says in sing-song, and sticks out her tongue and says “Bleccchh!” and starts jumping rope.&#160; Impressed, I reply “Well, goddamn!” in English, and she just looks at me — but then the afterschool flood is let, and here comes my daughter, screech-laughing and running.</p>
<p>The girl’s words were choice.&#160; If mom were present, she would have scolded her for using degueulasse – an offensive slang that more or less means ‘disgusting’ or ‘filthy,’ but also can be used to denote something ‘physically and/or morally repugnant,’ per the authoritative Robert dictionary.&#160; The mother would probably suggest her little darling use the gentler degoutant.&#160; Degueulasse has a telling etymology, deriving from degueuler, which means ‘to puke, to spew’; degueuler itself derives from gueule, defined as the ‘the mouth of certain animals, especially flesh-eaters.’&#160; It’s a freighted word – calls up the image, for me at least, of a dog vomiting meat, but it was music coming from this girl: For how often do you hear an eight-year-old anywhere sock it to the crapola that is McDonald’s?</p>
<p>It was a sign of hope for her generation, because the signs otherwise are full of grim forebodings: French kids are getting fat.&#160; You can see even fat little French girls now, you can see them in the streets of Paris where just seven or eight years ago you saw no such thing – you didn’t imagine it possible, this race of lithe, slim, trim, handsomely formed people, seemingly immune to obesity by some genetic grace.&#160; But there they are, the McDo generation: Rotund little beings in the Jardin de Luxembourg; or older, rounding out on the Metro with a 20 ounce of Coke; soon to be cursed with the affliction into young adulthood and bound, probably inexorably, toward a premature death.</p>
<p>From Bill:</p>
<p>I remember several years ago, while living in Oakland, I heard on KPFA one night a rather heated debate on whether obese citizens should have their own weekly show at the station in order to counter societal discrimination against them.</p>
<p>One particularly angry caller demanded that the hosts stop using the standard descriptive terms such as obese and overweight, and suggested a new, more neutral sobriquet which does not have so much “hateful” baggage: &#160;“Persons of size.”</p>
<p>So there we have it. Completely PC regarding gender, race, creed, political party and the digital readout on the bathroom scales.</p>
<p>Creeping Towards the Finishing Line</p>
<p>As you know, assuming that you are among the tens of thousands of people around the world who check in at this&#160; CounterPunch site every day or two, these past three weeks we’ve been featuring our annual appeal for donations and saying that without the necessary $75,00 to be raised in these weeks, we’ll have to cut back drastically on what we do and what all you site readers who don’t subscribe to our newsletter, get every day for free. But, with only a few days left, we’re still short of our target. To those who have not yet rallied to our call we say this:&#160; Please DO believe our forecasts that times will be grim indeed for CounterPunch and CounterPunchers if you don’t reconsider seriously and click on the <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Donations.html" type="external">donation link</a>.</p>
<p>Kevin Gray, Mark Rudd, Bruce Franklin … The Gang’s All Here!</p>
<p>Ten months into Obama-time, the plight of black Americans is terrible. Yet overwhelmingly they rally behind the president. In a powerful report from South Carolina Kevin Alexander Gray asks the question: what should the black political agenda be?</p>
<p>New to CounterPunch, Mark Rudd contributes an important piece on movement-building – task number one for the left today. He counterposes “organizing” with “activism” and describes what it will take to build a movement. &#160;H. Bruce Franklin gives a chronology of the march into Afghanistan.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">Subscribe today!</a></p>
<p>ALEXANDER COCKBURN can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | One in a Hundred | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/11/13/one-in-a-hundred/ | 2009-11-13 | 4left
| One in a Hundred
<p>On official Pentagon statistics about one per cent of members of the US armed forces today are Muslims, though the actual quotient is no doubt higher, since the 1 per cent number is based on initial declarations of religious persuasion on an official form. The Army high command bristles at demands from the Christian right that there should be some sort of loyalty review or even winnowing. General George Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, said firmly last Sunday that his concern was that Major Nidal Hasan’s lethal rampage at Fort Hood – on Thursday he was charged with killing 13 — might “cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers.”&#160;&#160; Casey went on earnestly to the effect that “It would be a shame—as great a tragedy as this was—it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well” and that a “diverse Army gives us strength.”</p>
<p>The general obviously doesn’t have Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on his bedside table. Gibbon wrote flatly that the introduction of foreigners “into Roman armies became every day more universal, more necessary and more fatal. Rome was captive before she was taken.”</p>
<p>The last time we heard rumblings about the dangers of ethnic or confessional diversity in the US military was during the Vietnam war, particularly after World Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali announced in the spring of 1967 that he was refusing to be drafted. In words that echoed round the world Ali said, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong…they never called me nigger. You want me to do what the white man says and go fight a war against some people I don’t know nothing about–get some freedom for some other people when my own people can’t get theirs?”</p>
<p>At that time Ali gave the US government this wallop on the chin, 12.1 per cent of enlisted men in the U.S. Army&#160; were black. There were innumerable reports of refusal to obey orders, acts of sabotage, assaults on officers and kindred acts of mutiny through the military, white and black.</p>
<p>Hasan’s military colleagues displayed a touching eagerness to give him the benefit of the doubt, regarding all-round steadiness of temperament. Why, they tell reporters, on every topic aside from religion he was as meek as a lamb. Granted, he would use the occasion of medical seminars to rail angrily against the US war on Islam, to laud suicide bombers as endowed with the courage of Japanese kamikaze pilots, to declare “I am a Muslim first and an American second”, to say – if we are to believe the British Telegraph’s report, that unbelievers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats – (a process evidently&#160; requiring the most exquisite timing), but withal, a “polite and gentle nature … when not discussing religion”.&#160; A decorous optimism prevailed. At Walter Reed hospital some of his colleagues thought the budding psychiatrist was possibly “psychotic” but thought to head off disaster by sending him to university lectures on terrorism, Islam and the Middle East “in the hopes of redirecting his increasing preoccupation with the conflicts felt by Muslim American soldiers on the front lines.”</p>
<p>This indulgent posture towards the omens offered by Hasan’s political and psychic profile stretched from the FBI – which saw no excessive cause for alarm in his emails to the radical Imam Anwar al Awlaki, now based in Yemen, and a vocal enthusiast for jihad in its most violent forms – to his medical colleagues who in early 2008 they discussed Hasan’s indifferent performance and, in the words of an AP report, “saw no signs of mental problems, no risk factors that would predict violent behavior.” They seized on “other factors” that suggested Hasan would continue to thrive in the military.”</p>
<p>“Don’t ask, don’t tell”, the famous summation of the Clinton-sponsored Army posture on gays seems to have become a more general&#160; maxim , whether it concerned the phone intercepted emails&#160; to the Imam, the praise for suicide bombers, the business card announcing him cryptically to be “a soldier of Allah”,&#160; or even the Arabic bumper sticker (“Allah is love”) which got his car scored with a key by a vet fresh back from the Crusades.</p>
<p>Talking of “Don’t ask”, it does seem reasonably clear that somewhat akin to some members of the Hamburg cell carrying out the 9/11 attack, if Hasan was hoping – a vulgar myth, to be sure –&#160; for the reward of virgins in the aftermath of martyrdom, their sex might have been an issue. No girlfriend; local virgins not pious enough for marriage; fainted while watching childbirth during medical training; at Walter Reed would not allow his photo to be taken with female co-workers; killed a pregnant woman in his lethal rampage (her dead embryo may constitute the fourteenth charge of homicide in the string for which he faces the death penalty); mentored 18-year old Duane Reasoner, a convert to Islam he met at the local mosque and with whom he seems to have cemented ties of loyalty and affection. Reasoner, who was with Hasan at his apartment not long before the major’s lethal excursion, declines to condemn him, saying fiercely in his BBC interview that Hasan’s victims “were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims.”</p>
<p>It’s the rationale most respectful to Hasan. No kook he, but indeed a Soldier of Allah.&#160; Of course, amid the thunderings of the Right about the army’s hospitality to a gay Palestinian terrorist&#160; General Casey retreats into the well-mannered sanctuary of “diversity”, even if there are no doubt enlisted men in Afghanistan saying right now , “No Muslims in my foxhole.” In Fort Hood the war came home with a vengeance, as it has been doing there at regular intervals with the suicides and savage domestic violence of vets driven crazy by what they’ve done in the service of Empire.</p>
<p>Too Fat to Fight (continued)</p>
<p>A big reaction from CounterPunchers to last week’s diary on America the Fat.. No reproofs for being an adiphobe– though I’ve been alerted that&#160; some worthy tract called “The Social Construction of Fatness” will soon come puffing up my driveway.</p>
<p>From Martha in Maine:</p>
<p>My husband’s Dutch cousins just visited us from Holland for the past 3 weeks. &#160;I can testify that the typical Dutch person eats the following for breakfast: &#160;FOUR slices of hearty whole-grain bread, each slice topped with butter, then cheese, then either ham, jam, Nutella (chocolate/hazelnut paste), or tomato. &#160;For good measure the Dutchman or woman also enjoys a bowl of cereal with (full-fat) milk, (full-fat) yogurt and fruit. &#160;We simply cannot believe how much our invariably tall, skinny cousins eat!!</p>
<p>The cousins do not own a car in Holland, so they ride a bike, walk or take a train everywhere. &#160;Also they have never dieted in their lives, so they have active metabolisms. &#160;From personal observation, I really believe it’s not the amount of food Americans eat so much as the built-in inactivity of our lives. &#160;If America had alternative transportation, a 35-hour workweek, and mandatory 6-week paid vacations, we’d be nearly as slim as those lucky Dutch!</p>
<p>Damn socialists……..(ha-ha)</p>
<p>From B in art school:</p>
<p>A relative who works there says that at Disneyland the employees are encouraging corporate to start charging by the square foot for people who are too lazy to walk so they bring in electric carts to drive in. Some fat couples rent carts for two and with their bulge hanging over the sides they take up a whopping 20 square feet. They’ve had to start making the rides have bigger seats and for the rollercoaster they’ve had to change safety standards because fatties have made older rides dangerous. They recently had to change the capacity allowed to make up for the mass people take up now – they can actually accept fewer people in because of the space restrictions.</p>
<p>My art has been called “size-ist” because I make sculptures of thin women-</p>
<p>From Paul:</p>
<p>When we used to live in cities where services were relatively close and we walked or took the bus or the streetcar wherever we went, we were thinner and in better shape.&#160; It is suburban life and the pervasiveness of the private auto that has had, I am convinced, a lot to do with the obesity epidemic in the US and in Canada (I think we’re not quite so bad but I haven’t checked the stats).&#160; And it’s a well-known fact (which is my excuse for not having to produce any evidence) that the more exercise you get the more you want.&#160; And the more time you devote to exercise the less you are likely to spend vegging in front of a tv.</p>
<p>Didn’t somebody write a book about the Big Petroleum/Big Auto conspiracy to promote urban sprawl?</p>
<p>Hopefully, this will all change when gas costs $20 a gallon.</p>
<p>From Tomas:</p>
<p>For the last 15 years I (a native born US) have lived in between Mexico and Havana. I get back to the States once a year to research at the University of Texas. I tell my students that each time I go back to the US everything gets bigger: the people, the cars, the houses.</p>
<p>I think there is causal connection here…bigger people=bigger cars, bigger cars=bigger garages, which equals bigger houses, etc. When I was a kid you could fit 5 Americans into a VW bug. My family of 10 lived in a house similar in space to most contemporary US suburban garages.</p>
<p>The irony of all of this is that the “other sized” movement in the US seems to blame their largess on “big bones” (in the vernacular) or their “metabolism” (the sophisticates outlet of denial).</p>
<p>When I first arrived to live in Cuba during the height of the “Special Period” one of the first things I noticed (like you in Europe) was that there were absolutely NO FAT PEOPLE in Cuba, none.</p>
<p>Year after year, after returning from skinny Cuba I would encounter people in the US whose “bones” had become progressively bigger, or whose “metabolism” had slowed to a snail’s pace, and they always bearing the same “genetic” excuse.</p>
<p>My point, extrapolating from yours, is that this whole “other sized” movement in the US is a movement in denial, and the denials and waist-lines grow bigger each time I chance a return visit. I was once fat myself. I am 100 pounds lighter than I was at my apex at 19. I have kept that weight off for 30 years through two simple things: a proper diet and daily exercise.</p>
<p>I saw my first truly obese person in Cuba in a plaza in Bayamo around three years ago. I noted this to my Bayamese family. They informed me that he was a cousin from Miami visiting relatives in Bayamo.</p>
<p>Now almost half the food we eat in Cuba is imported from the United States. And now apparently we are importing our “big boned” US relatives as well. So real obesity is returning to Cuba, but it arrives on a chartered jet plane full of US relatives at Jose Marti.</p>
<p>Cuba is an island full of people who dream of the day each night of being saddled with the affliction or the “genetic” malady of being “metabolically challenged.” &#160;I hope it never comes to that.</p>
<p>From Brito:</p>
<p>“There’s an ass for every seat”….and you can sell anything to the sheeple so long as it’s packaged properly. &#160;So I wouldn’t blame the processed food industries as quickly as you. &#160;After all, there’s no gun being put to anyone’s head to buy crap for food. &#160;Stupid does as stupid is.</p>
<p>Aside from the lack of self-control, part of the problem is too much meat in the American diet. &#160;This comes from years of affluence – now gone forever. &#160;My farmer parents in Portugal (or “peasants” if you’re a Marxist) ate meat only once a week – on Sundays after Mass. &#160;The rest of the week was spent on potatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions, black bread, sugarless coffee, and tons of fruit. When a pig was slaughtered, everything – and I mean everything was eaten – even the blood was fried.</p>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p>A Brito</p>
<p>From Chris K:</p>
<p>At Ecole Jean de La Fontaine in a suburb south of Paris, I’m asking the kids in the schoolyard about McDonald’s. “My mother she said the McDo, it’s degueulasse,” an eight-year-old says in sing-song, and sticks out her tongue and says “Bleccchh!” and starts jumping rope.&#160; Impressed, I reply “Well, goddamn!” in English, and she just looks at me — but then the afterschool flood is let, and here comes my daughter, screech-laughing and running.</p>
<p>The girl’s words were choice.&#160; If mom were present, she would have scolded her for using degueulasse – an offensive slang that more or less means ‘disgusting’ or ‘filthy,’ but also can be used to denote something ‘physically and/or morally repugnant,’ per the authoritative Robert dictionary.&#160; The mother would probably suggest her little darling use the gentler degoutant.&#160; Degueulasse has a telling etymology, deriving from degueuler, which means ‘to puke, to spew’; degueuler itself derives from gueule, defined as the ‘the mouth of certain animals, especially flesh-eaters.’&#160; It’s a freighted word – calls up the image, for me at least, of a dog vomiting meat, but it was music coming from this girl: For how often do you hear an eight-year-old anywhere sock it to the crapola that is McDonald’s?</p>
<p>It was a sign of hope for her generation, because the signs otherwise are full of grim forebodings: French kids are getting fat.&#160; You can see even fat little French girls now, you can see them in the streets of Paris where just seven or eight years ago you saw no such thing – you didn’t imagine it possible, this race of lithe, slim, trim, handsomely formed people, seemingly immune to obesity by some genetic grace.&#160; But there they are, the McDo generation: Rotund little beings in the Jardin de Luxembourg; or older, rounding out on the Metro with a 20 ounce of Coke; soon to be cursed with the affliction into young adulthood and bound, probably inexorably, toward a premature death.</p>
<p>From Bill:</p>
<p>I remember several years ago, while living in Oakland, I heard on KPFA one night a rather heated debate on whether obese citizens should have their own weekly show at the station in order to counter societal discrimination against them.</p>
<p>One particularly angry caller demanded that the hosts stop using the standard descriptive terms such as obese and overweight, and suggested a new, more neutral sobriquet which does not have so much “hateful” baggage: &#160;“Persons of size.”</p>
<p>So there we have it. Completely PC regarding gender, race, creed, political party and the digital readout on the bathroom scales.</p>
<p>Creeping Towards the Finishing Line</p>
<p>As you know, assuming that you are among the tens of thousands of people around the world who check in at this&#160; CounterPunch site every day or two, these past three weeks we’ve been featuring our annual appeal for donations and saying that without the necessary $75,00 to be raised in these weeks, we’ll have to cut back drastically on what we do and what all you site readers who don’t subscribe to our newsletter, get every day for free. But, with only a few days left, we’re still short of our target. To those who have not yet rallied to our call we say this:&#160; Please DO believe our forecasts that times will be grim indeed for CounterPunch and CounterPunchers if you don’t reconsider seriously and click on the <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Donations.html" type="external">donation link</a>.</p>
<p>Kevin Gray, Mark Rudd, Bruce Franklin … The Gang’s All Here!</p>
<p>Ten months into Obama-time, the plight of black Americans is terrible. Yet overwhelmingly they rally behind the president. In a powerful report from South Carolina Kevin Alexander Gray asks the question: what should the black political agenda be?</p>
<p>New to CounterPunch, Mark Rudd contributes an important piece on movement-building – task number one for the left today. He counterposes “organizing” with “activism” and describes what it will take to build a movement. &#160;H. Bruce Franklin gives a chronology of the march into Afghanistan.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">Subscribe today!</a></p>
<p>ALEXANDER COCKBURN can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Violent crimes detectives are investigating after police say a woman was found “in need of medical assistance” in northeast Albuquerque early New Year’s Day and later died at a local hospital.</p>
<p>Albuquerque police identified the woman as Gloria Martinez, but did not provide her age.</p>
<p>The department released very little information about her death or why they believe it was suspicious.</p>
<p>They sent out a post on the social media site Twitter Wednesday morning, four days after the incident, that said officers responded to a reported disturbance on the 12000 block of Copper NE, which is near Juan Tabo, around 1 a.m. Sunday.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>They found Martinez “in need of medical assistance” and took her to a hospital where she later died, according to the tweet.</p>
<p>Police have not said what injuries she had or what they believe she died from, and did not say when she died.</p>
<p>“This is a violent crimes investigation due to inconsistent statements police were provided during the course of the investigation and is being handled as a suspicious death investigation,” the tweet said.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Violent crimes detectives investigating woman’s New Year’s Day death | false | https://abqjournal.com/920538/violent-crimes-detectives-investigating-womans-death-on-new-years-day.html | 2017-01-04 | 2least
| Violent crimes detectives investigating woman’s New Year’s Day death
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Violent crimes detectives are investigating after police say a woman was found “in need of medical assistance” in northeast Albuquerque early New Year’s Day and later died at a local hospital.</p>
<p>Albuquerque police identified the woman as Gloria Martinez, but did not provide her age.</p>
<p>The department released very little information about her death or why they believe it was suspicious.</p>
<p>They sent out a post on the social media site Twitter Wednesday morning, four days after the incident, that said officers responded to a reported disturbance on the 12000 block of Copper NE, which is near Juan Tabo, around 1 a.m. Sunday.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>They found Martinez “in need of medical assistance” and took her to a hospital where she later died, according to the tweet.</p>
<p>Police have not said what injuries she had or what they believe she died from, and did not say when she died.</p>
<p>“This is a violent crimes investigation due to inconsistent statements police were provided during the course of the investigation and is being handled as a suspicious death investigation,” the tweet said.</p>
<p />
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<p>An independent monitor tasked with overseeing federally-ordered Albuquerque police reforms is set to release his first report.</p>
<p>Court-approved monitor James Ginger is scheduled Thursday to submit a report to a federal judge in Albuquerque at a status hearing.</p>
<p>Albuquerque is one of several U.S. cities, including Cleveland, under a court-ordered agreement with the Department of Justice following federal probes into excessive force by police.</p>
<p>Ginger was named as a monitor in January and his team is responsible for independently assessing progress on the agreement. But he has faced scrutiny for a lack of transparency during his review.</p>
<p>Earlier this month, Ginger said some changes to use-of-force polices are underway. He said a member of his team reported that more officers are being trained in how to handle crisis situations.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Federal monitor to release 1st report on Albuquerque police | false | https://abqjournal.com/685139/federal-monitor-to-release-1st-report-on-albuquerque-police.html | 2least
| Federal monitor to release 1st report on Albuquerque police
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<p>An independent monitor tasked with overseeing federally-ordered Albuquerque police reforms is set to release his first report.</p>
<p>Court-approved monitor James Ginger is scheduled Thursday to submit a report to a federal judge in Albuquerque at a status hearing.</p>
<p>Albuquerque is one of several U.S. cities, including Cleveland, under a court-ordered agreement with the Department of Justice following federal probes into excessive force by police.</p>
<p>Ginger was named as a monitor in January and his team is responsible for independently assessing progress on the agreement. But he has faced scrutiny for a lack of transparency during his review.</p>
<p>Earlier this month, Ginger said some changes to use-of-force polices are underway. He said a member of his team reported that more officers are being trained in how to handle crisis situations.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 1,171 |
|
<p>SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) - A coroner's official has identified three of four people shot to death inside a Southern California home in what investigators believe was a murder-suicide involving family members.</p>
<p>Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies found the bodies at the house in Santa Clarita Friday after getting a call from someone concerned about the family.</p>
<p>Lt. Rodney Moore said the husband and wife, their college-age daughter and pre-teen son were found shot to death in what appears to be a murder-suicide carried out by the man. Police are not looking for any suspects.</p>
<p>The coroner's office Sunday identified three of the deceased as 47-year-old Amy Suzanne Birnkrant, 20-year-old Drew Taylor Birnkrant and 11-year-old Sean Birnkrant.</p>
<p><a href="http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/01/07/santa-clarita-murder-suicide-victims/" type="external">KCBS-TV</a> reports officials have withheld the identity of the fourth individual, pending notification of next of kin.</p>
<p>SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) - A coroner's official has identified three of four people shot to death inside a Southern California home in what investigators believe was a murder-suicide involving family members.</p>
<p>Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies found the bodies at the house in Santa Clarita Friday after getting a call from someone concerned about the family.</p>
<p>Lt. Rodney Moore said the husband and wife, their college-age daughter and pre-teen son were found shot to death in what appears to be a murder-suicide carried out by the man. Police are not looking for any suspects.</p>
<p>The coroner's office Sunday identified three of the deceased as 47-year-old Amy Suzanne Birnkrant, 20-year-old Drew Taylor Birnkrant and 11-year-old Sean Birnkrant.</p>
<p><a href="http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/01/07/santa-clarita-murder-suicide-victims/" type="external">KCBS-TV</a> reports officials have withheld the identity of the fourth individual, pending notification of next of kin.</p> | California coroner IDs 3 victims in apparent murder-suicide | false | https://apnews.com/7a4356db36bc4f69b7f8984952fce96f | 2018-01-07 | 2least
| California coroner IDs 3 victims in apparent murder-suicide
<p>SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) - A coroner's official has identified three of four people shot to death inside a Southern California home in what investigators believe was a murder-suicide involving family members.</p>
<p>Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies found the bodies at the house in Santa Clarita Friday after getting a call from someone concerned about the family.</p>
<p>Lt. Rodney Moore said the husband and wife, their college-age daughter and pre-teen son were found shot to death in what appears to be a murder-suicide carried out by the man. Police are not looking for any suspects.</p>
<p>The coroner's office Sunday identified three of the deceased as 47-year-old Amy Suzanne Birnkrant, 20-year-old Drew Taylor Birnkrant and 11-year-old Sean Birnkrant.</p>
<p><a href="http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/01/07/santa-clarita-murder-suicide-victims/" type="external">KCBS-TV</a> reports officials have withheld the identity of the fourth individual, pending notification of next of kin.</p>
<p>SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) - A coroner's official has identified three of four people shot to death inside a Southern California home in what investigators believe was a murder-suicide involving family members.</p>
<p>Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies found the bodies at the house in Santa Clarita Friday after getting a call from someone concerned about the family.</p>
<p>Lt. Rodney Moore said the husband and wife, their college-age daughter and pre-teen son were found shot to death in what appears to be a murder-suicide carried out by the man. Police are not looking for any suspects.</p>
<p>The coroner's office Sunday identified three of the deceased as 47-year-old Amy Suzanne Birnkrant, 20-year-old Drew Taylor Birnkrant and 11-year-old Sean Birnkrant.</p>
<p><a href="http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/01/07/santa-clarita-murder-suicide-victims/" type="external">KCBS-TV</a> reports officials have withheld the identity of the fourth individual, pending notification of next of kin.</p> | 1,172 |
<p>By Steve Keating</p>
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) – A relentless Rafael Nadal thumped Kevin Anderson 6-3 6-3 6-4 to win the U.S. Open on Sunday, earning the Spaniard his second grand slam title of the season and 16th of his career.</p>
<p>While women’s tennis produced three first-time grand slam winners this season the old guard continues to reign supreme in the men’s game with Nadal and longtime rival Roger Federer sweeping the majors with two apiece.</p>
<p>It marked the fourth U.S. Open final and third title for Nadal but the first time that he did not have Novak Djokovic standing on the other side of the net.</p>
<p>The world number one was as brilliant as he was business-like keeping the towering South African under constant pressure while not facing a single break point.</p>
<p>For journeyman Anderson 31, a grand slam breakthrough was not to be, his booming serve having no impact while Nadal delivered a near-perfect performance for a soldout crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium committing just 11 unforced errors.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | Business-like Nadal banks third U.S. Open title | false | https://newsline.com/business-like-nadal-banks-third-u-s-open-title/ | 2017-09-10 | 1right-center
| Business-like Nadal banks third U.S. Open title
<p>By Steve Keating</p>
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) – A relentless Rafael Nadal thumped Kevin Anderson 6-3 6-3 6-4 to win the U.S. Open on Sunday, earning the Spaniard his second grand slam title of the season and 16th of his career.</p>
<p>While women’s tennis produced three first-time grand slam winners this season the old guard continues to reign supreme in the men’s game with Nadal and longtime rival Roger Federer sweeping the majors with two apiece.</p>
<p>It marked the fourth U.S. Open final and third title for Nadal but the first time that he did not have Novak Djokovic standing on the other side of the net.</p>
<p>The world number one was as brilliant as he was business-like keeping the towering South African under constant pressure while not facing a single break point.</p>
<p>For journeyman Anderson 31, a grand slam breakthrough was not to be, his booming serve having no impact while Nadal delivered a near-perfect performance for a soldout crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium committing just 11 unforced errors.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | 1,173 |
<p>Participants in the personal video revolution of the 1970s will be thrilled as they watch the credits roll at the end of <a href="http://variety.com/t/jon-alpert/" type="external">Jon Alpert</a>’s documentary “Cuba and the Cameraman,” which debuts on <a href="http://variety.com/t/netflix/" type="external">Netflix</a> and in theaters on Nov. 24.</p>
<p>Alpert, the pioneering journalist and filmmaker, has through the years reported from places like Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, China and Afghanistan and has made films for broadcast networks PBS and HBO.</p>
<p>His latest project for <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/mystery-science-theater-3000-renewed-netflix-1202621766/" type="external">Netflix</a> encapsulates his travels to Cuba over five decades, during which he shot life on the island under <a href="http://variety.com/t/fidel-castro/" type="external">Fidel Castro</a>. He used portable technology that was in its infancy when he began and became more sophisticated over the years.</p>
<p>“This documentary is basically a museum of the entire evolution of electronic image-gathering.”Jon Alpert</p>
<p>“The pot has been boiling for a long time, so to speak,” says Alpert. “We knew we wanted to make this film. I felt that it was an important mission, and we were really lucky that Netflix gave us the resources to not only do the editing but a lot of restoring as well. The early footage had started to deteriorate technically, and we needed to resuscitate it.”</p>
<p>To document Cuba, Alpert used 15 types of cameras and nearly as many editing systems. He began in 1972 with an early Sony half-inch reel-to-reel black-and-white video recorder. Two years later he traveled with a color JVC machine. The following year it was a more advanced Sony U-Matic three-quarter-inch videocassette unit.</p>
<p>As time went by, he progressively used Betacam, Video8, Hi8, DVCam, MiniDV and XAVC, mostly sticking with Sony products.</p>
<p>“This documentary is basically a museum of the entire evolution of electronic image-gathering,” says Alpert.</p>
<p>“When we first went down there with the first generation of black-and-white camcorders, we were placed under boat arrest and were only allowed on shore for about three hours after I nonstop complained and drove the people who were guarding us crazy.”</p>
<p>Alpert knew that to sell his footage he would need to shoot in color, as the networks were starting to reject black and white. On his second trip in 1974 he brought along the first JVC color Portapak in the world. “My wife’s brother had picked it up off the assembly line in Japan and sent it to us,” he says. “It was serial No. 1.”</p>
<p>Subsequently, Alpert used a Sony color Portapak system that was so heavy he carted it around Cuba in a baby carriage. “That’s what attracted Fidel’s attention,” he remembers. “He looked at us like we’d landed from Mars. We were pushing after him with this camera in a baby carriage, and it was his curiosity that led him to come over [to us].”</p>
<p>That was the beginning of a relationship that developed over the next 40 years between the Cuban leader and the documentarian. The Netflix show, which focuses on three Cuban families and their growth and struggles and screened at the Venice Film Festival, provides an intimate look at the country and its people through the eyes of evolving cameras.</p> | ‘Cuba and the Cameraman’ Documentary Captures Castro Era, Evolution of Video | false | https://newsline.com/cuba-and-the-cameraman-documentary-captures-castro-era-evolution-of-video/ | 2017-11-24 | 1right-center
| ‘Cuba and the Cameraman’ Documentary Captures Castro Era, Evolution of Video
<p>Participants in the personal video revolution of the 1970s will be thrilled as they watch the credits roll at the end of <a href="http://variety.com/t/jon-alpert/" type="external">Jon Alpert</a>’s documentary “Cuba and the Cameraman,” which debuts on <a href="http://variety.com/t/netflix/" type="external">Netflix</a> and in theaters on Nov. 24.</p>
<p>Alpert, the pioneering journalist and filmmaker, has through the years reported from places like Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, China and Afghanistan and has made films for broadcast networks PBS and HBO.</p>
<p>His latest project for <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/mystery-science-theater-3000-renewed-netflix-1202621766/" type="external">Netflix</a> encapsulates his travels to Cuba over five decades, during which he shot life on the island under <a href="http://variety.com/t/fidel-castro/" type="external">Fidel Castro</a>. He used portable technology that was in its infancy when he began and became more sophisticated over the years.</p>
<p>“This documentary is basically a museum of the entire evolution of electronic image-gathering.”Jon Alpert</p>
<p>“The pot has been boiling for a long time, so to speak,” says Alpert. “We knew we wanted to make this film. I felt that it was an important mission, and we were really lucky that Netflix gave us the resources to not only do the editing but a lot of restoring as well. The early footage had started to deteriorate technically, and we needed to resuscitate it.”</p>
<p>To document Cuba, Alpert used 15 types of cameras and nearly as many editing systems. He began in 1972 with an early Sony half-inch reel-to-reel black-and-white video recorder. Two years later he traveled with a color JVC machine. The following year it was a more advanced Sony U-Matic three-quarter-inch videocassette unit.</p>
<p>As time went by, he progressively used Betacam, Video8, Hi8, DVCam, MiniDV and XAVC, mostly sticking with Sony products.</p>
<p>“This documentary is basically a museum of the entire evolution of electronic image-gathering,” says Alpert.</p>
<p>“When we first went down there with the first generation of black-and-white camcorders, we were placed under boat arrest and were only allowed on shore for about three hours after I nonstop complained and drove the people who were guarding us crazy.”</p>
<p>Alpert knew that to sell his footage he would need to shoot in color, as the networks were starting to reject black and white. On his second trip in 1974 he brought along the first JVC color Portapak in the world. “My wife’s brother had picked it up off the assembly line in Japan and sent it to us,” he says. “It was serial No. 1.”</p>
<p>Subsequently, Alpert used a Sony color Portapak system that was so heavy he carted it around Cuba in a baby carriage. “That’s what attracted Fidel’s attention,” he remembers. “He looked at us like we’d landed from Mars. We were pushing after him with this camera in a baby carriage, and it was his curiosity that led him to come over [to us].”</p>
<p>That was the beginning of a relationship that developed over the next 40 years between the Cuban leader and the documentarian. The Netflix show, which focuses on three Cuban families and their growth and struggles and screened at the Venice Film Festival, provides an intimate look at the country and its people through the eyes of evolving cameras.</p> | 1,174 |
<p>A look at New York Stock Exchange 10 most-active stocks at the close of trading:</p>
<p>AK Steel Holding Corp. fell 7.8 percent to $3.92 with 26,056,200 shares traded.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>AT&amp;T Inc. fell .4 percent to $32.68 with 45,235,400 shares traded.</p>
<p>Bank of America Corp. fell 2.8 percent to $15.20 with 103,455,800 shares traded.</p>
<p>Citigroup Inc. fell 2.5 percent to $47.11 with 25,821,100 shares traded.</p>
<p>Ford Motor Co. fell 1.6 percent to $14.46 with 39,905,800 shares traded.</p>
<p>Freeport McMoran Inc. fell 5.2 percent to $17.42 with 26,930,600 shares traded.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>General Electric Co. fell 2.2 percent to $23.84 with 48,424,600 shares traded.</p>
<p>Peabody Energy Corp. fell 2.2 percent to $6.10 with 29,689,200 shares traded.</p>
<p>Pfizer Inc. fell 2.0 percent to $31.95 with 29,343,400 shares traded.</p>
<p>United States Steel Corp. rose 10.9 percent to $23.58 with 34,199,900 shares traded.</p> | New York Stock Exchange's 10 most active stocks at the close of trading | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/01/26/new-york-stock-exchange-10-most-active-stocks-at-close-trading.html | 2016-03-06 | 0right
| New York Stock Exchange's 10 most active stocks at the close of trading
<p>A look at New York Stock Exchange 10 most-active stocks at the close of trading:</p>
<p>AK Steel Holding Corp. fell 7.8 percent to $3.92 with 26,056,200 shares traded.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>AT&amp;T Inc. fell .4 percent to $32.68 with 45,235,400 shares traded.</p>
<p>Bank of America Corp. fell 2.8 percent to $15.20 with 103,455,800 shares traded.</p>
<p>Citigroup Inc. fell 2.5 percent to $47.11 with 25,821,100 shares traded.</p>
<p>Ford Motor Co. fell 1.6 percent to $14.46 with 39,905,800 shares traded.</p>
<p>Freeport McMoran Inc. fell 5.2 percent to $17.42 with 26,930,600 shares traded.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>General Electric Co. fell 2.2 percent to $23.84 with 48,424,600 shares traded.</p>
<p>Peabody Energy Corp. fell 2.2 percent to $6.10 with 29,689,200 shares traded.</p>
<p>Pfizer Inc. fell 2.0 percent to $31.95 with 29,343,400 shares traded.</p>
<p>United States Steel Corp. rose 10.9 percent to $23.58 with 34,199,900 shares traded.</p> | 1,175 |
<p>On Saturday night Morgan Freeman was the winner of the first ever Saturday Night Card Game <a href="" type="internal">Readers’ Choice Award</a>, for his rant on the Piers Morgan show about Tea Party racism.</p>
<p>Now a Tea Party activist has written Freeman an <a href="http://teapartybrew.com/opinion/2011/09/a-tea-party-invitation-to-morgan-freeman/" type="external">open letter</a> inviting Freeman to a Tea Party rally (emphasis in original):</p>
<p>My name is Ali Akbar. I’m a 26 year-old African-American small business owner and a tea party activist….</p>
<p>I’ve attended dozens of tea party events. I’ve helped organize them, and I’ve even spoken at a few. The tea party is not what is often depicted in the news. It is people of all colors who are terribly concerned about the direction that America is heading. We don’t trust big government to make decisions for us. And we fear that the present administration’s spending is going to lead our country down a path to insolvency, much like what Greece is currently facing.</p>
<p>Your comments about the tea party have caused me physical pain. You’ve rekindled the old painful paradigm of Uncle Tom – that any black man who votes Republican is some kind of sellout. It’s not true. I work hard, pay my taxes, love Jesus, and I’m good to my family and community. In effect, your comments have stereotyped an entire group of people. And I know in my soul that you must regret that on some level….</p>
<p>I’m hoping that you’ll come to a tea party in Tennessee — the place of your birth. Really anywhere in the country that works for you; I’ll set it up with the one of the thousands of activists I know around our great country. I’d be delighted to introduce you to good people who will welcome you with open arms, disagree with you, and then feed you some of the best barbeque you’ve ever tasted.</p>
<p>Racism is an ugly thing, but I assure you that it is part of our past, not our present.</p>
<p>It takes bravery to admit that you may have made a mistake. But, for Geel Piet, bravery is like breathing. It’s just something you do.</p>
<p>I hope you’ll take me up on my offer.</p>
<p>Let’s see if he takes up the offer.</p> | African-American Tea Party activist invites Morgan Freeman | true | http://legalinsurrection.com/2011/09/african-american-tea-party-activist-invites-morgan-freeman/ | 2011-09-28 | 0right
| African-American Tea Party activist invites Morgan Freeman
<p>On Saturday night Morgan Freeman was the winner of the first ever Saturday Night Card Game <a href="" type="internal">Readers’ Choice Award</a>, for his rant on the Piers Morgan show about Tea Party racism.</p>
<p>Now a Tea Party activist has written Freeman an <a href="http://teapartybrew.com/opinion/2011/09/a-tea-party-invitation-to-morgan-freeman/" type="external">open letter</a> inviting Freeman to a Tea Party rally (emphasis in original):</p>
<p>My name is Ali Akbar. I’m a 26 year-old African-American small business owner and a tea party activist….</p>
<p>I’ve attended dozens of tea party events. I’ve helped organize them, and I’ve even spoken at a few. The tea party is not what is often depicted in the news. It is people of all colors who are terribly concerned about the direction that America is heading. We don’t trust big government to make decisions for us. And we fear that the present administration’s spending is going to lead our country down a path to insolvency, much like what Greece is currently facing.</p>
<p>Your comments about the tea party have caused me physical pain. You’ve rekindled the old painful paradigm of Uncle Tom – that any black man who votes Republican is some kind of sellout. It’s not true. I work hard, pay my taxes, love Jesus, and I’m good to my family and community. In effect, your comments have stereotyped an entire group of people. And I know in my soul that you must regret that on some level….</p>
<p>I’m hoping that you’ll come to a tea party in Tennessee — the place of your birth. Really anywhere in the country that works for you; I’ll set it up with the one of the thousands of activists I know around our great country. I’d be delighted to introduce you to good people who will welcome you with open arms, disagree with you, and then feed you some of the best barbeque you’ve ever tasted.</p>
<p>Racism is an ugly thing, but I assure you that it is part of our past, not our present.</p>
<p>It takes bravery to admit that you may have made a mistake. But, for Geel Piet, bravery is like breathing. It’s just something you do.</p>
<p>I hope you’ll take me up on my offer.</p>
<p>Let’s see if he takes up the offer.</p> | 1,176 |
<p>The Daily Telegraph has a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/9250029/The-two-sides-in-a-state-of-perpetual-war.html" type="external">review</a> of Patriots today that captures more of the point of the book than anything I've yet seen.</p>
<p>Towards the end of this funny and alarming book, the hero, young Walter Schotzke, has a conversation with Senator Philip Hazen, the only decent man to be found on Capitol Hill. The elderly Senator advises Walter, the aimless heir to a mustard fortune, about survival in Washington. ''You have to pick a side and stick to it,?? he tells him. ''But isn't this whole idea of 'sides' kind of stupid??? asks Walter. ''Yes, it is,?? replies Hazen, ''That's exactly why it must be enforced so strictly!</p> | The Daily Telegraph Reviews "Patriots" | true | https://thedailybeast.com/the-daily-telegraph-reviews-patriots | 2018-10-04 | 4left
| The Daily Telegraph Reviews "Patriots"
<p>The Daily Telegraph has a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/9250029/The-two-sides-in-a-state-of-perpetual-war.html" type="external">review</a> of Patriots today that captures more of the point of the book than anything I've yet seen.</p>
<p>Towards the end of this funny and alarming book, the hero, young Walter Schotzke, has a conversation with Senator Philip Hazen, the only decent man to be found on Capitol Hill. The elderly Senator advises Walter, the aimless heir to a mustard fortune, about survival in Washington. ''You have to pick a side and stick to it,?? he tells him. ''But isn't this whole idea of 'sides' kind of stupid??? asks Walter. ''Yes, it is,?? replies Hazen, ''That's exactly why it must be enforced so strictly!</p> | 1,177 |
<p />
<p>A string of cyber attacks on U.S. financial institutions has created headaches this fall by slowing down or preventing online banking access for millions of Americans.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>But imagine the real economic damage that similar-style attacks would cause if they struck U.S. retailers this holiday-shopping season, potentially eating into projected online sales of $54 billion.</p>
<p>While retailers deserve credit for bolstering their defenses against credit-card-hungry organized crime rings, security professionals believe the industry is vulnerable to this different kind of onslaught aimed at crippling online sales.</p>
<p>“The gloves are off in cyber space. The reality is if they want it to get worse, it can get worse,” said Dave Aitel, a former computer scientist at the National Security Agency. “I don’t think people are really prepared mentally to what happens if Amazon goes down.”</p>
<p>Unlike the ongoing cyber attacks against U.S. banks, there doesn’t appear to be a specific cyber threat against retailers.</p>
<p>Yet there are concerns that retailers aren’t ready for denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks from a powerful state actor like Iran, which many in the U.S. government suspect had a hand in the recent attacks on financial institutions like Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM).</p>
<p>"The Iranians are in the business of making a point and the bank attacks are not likely to have the impact they need, hence retailers are the next most likely target, especially in the holiday season,” said Aitel, CEO of Immunity, a cyber security firm that works with Fortune 500 companies.</p>
<p>Online Sales Exceed $160B</p>
<p>It’s hard to overstate the importance of e-commerce in today’s smartphone and social network dominated world.</p>
<p>According to comScore (NASDAQ:CSOR), annual U.S. retail e-commerce spending has surged 143% since 2004 to $161.52 billion last year. Despite the sluggish domestic economy and tepid retail sales growth, e-commerce spending jumped 13% between 2010 and 2011.</p>
<p>Online shopping is crucial during the all-important holiday-shopping season. E-commerce spending rose 14% last holiday season to $37.2 billion, comScore said.</p>
<p>In the face of continued economic uncertainty, online spending is projected to climb 17% this season to $54.47 billion, according to MarketLive.</p>
<p>“It’s very important for any retailer to have a web presence or you risk being left out in the cold,” said Andrew Lipsman, vice president of industry analysis at comScore, who noted that even in-person purchases typically originate online.</p>
<p>Adapting to Shifting Threat</p>
<p>Security professionals believe retailers’ cyber defenses are more porous than those of financial institutions -- and even some banks succumbed to relentless DDoS attacks this fall.</p>
<p>Given their prior experience combating thieves in Russia and elsewhere trying to siphon funds or snatch credit-card numbers, retailers aren’t really positioned to halt massive DDoS attacks from powerful state actors like Iran.</p>
<p>“That’s a very different threat and in many ways is more severe,” said Aitel. “They’re not thinking: What if it’s not about the money? What if someone wants to take me out just to take me out?”</p>
<p>Cedric Leighton, a former NSA official, said he agrees that retailers are not as well prepared as their financial peers.</p>
<p>“I don’t think they’ve gotten to the point where they can truly say their whole cyber supply chain is as well secured as they need to be in this day and age,” said Leighton, CEO of a Washington, D.C.-based risk-management consultancy.</p>
<p>Leighton said hackers could also disrupt companies’ supply chains by messing with order quantities and locations, creating costly problems for retailers.</p>
<p>Just this week Barnes &amp; Noble (NYSE:BKS) fell victim to a very sophisticated criminal attack that may have resulted in stolen credit and debit card information at 63 of its stores.</p>
<p>Amazon Atop Target List</p>
<p>The importance of a robust cyber defense is even more important for online retailers like Amazon.com and Overstock (NASDAQ:OSTK).</p>
<p>“If they aren’t available online, there is no business. They don’t exist,” said Ronen Kenig, director of security product marketing at Tel Aviv-based security firm Radware (NASDQ:RDWR).</p>
<p>In a potential cyber attack on U.S. retailers, Amazon.com would clearly be the biggest prize. The Seattle company generated $17.4 billion in revenue last holiday quarter.</p>
<p>“When you attack the United States you don’t attack Topeka, Kansas,” said Aitel. “Amazon is the big boy on the block. They are of course also the best protected.”</p>
<p>Amazon.com and Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) declined to comment for this story, while Target (NYSE:TGT) didn’t respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p>“Every company is going to look at what its exposure is. The greater the company is placed at risk, then the more they are going to invest in trying to protect themselves,” said Mallory Duncan, general counsel at the National Retail Federation.</p>
<p>Noting that some companies “rely extremely heavily on the Internet,” Duncan said, “When you have a bet-the-company type of situation, they’re going to take extraordinary steps to protect that channel.”</p>
<p>Cyber Monday in Focus</p>
<p>Aitel suggested the days around Cyber Monday -- the first work day after Black Friday -- as a time when retailers need to be particularly vigilant about the cyber threat.</p>
<p>According to comScore, U.S. e-commerce spending on Cyber Monday rose 22% last year to $1.25 billion, making it the highest online spending day in history.</p>
<p>“The attackers always like to choose the worst time for the victim,” said Kenig.</p>
<p>Bolstering Cyber Defenses</p>
<p>So what specifically should retailers be doing to prevent or mitigate the impact of DDoS attacks this holiday season?</p>
<p>Leighton said it’s crucial for companies to implement redundant systems with backups that allow switching from one system to the other when necessary.</p>
<p>From a bigger picture standpoint, retailers should strive to install security programs that go above and beyond industry security standards, which Aitel said “are really the bottom bar.”</p>
<p>Security professionals have been particularly alarmed by some recent cyber attacks that inflicted damage on physical assets, including a devastating attack unleashed on Saudi Arabia’s state run oil company Saudi Aramco</p>
<p>Some believe Iran may have been behind this attack, which destroyed an estimated 30,000 computers.</p>
<p>Aitel said, “Companies have to look at what happened to Saudi Aramco and say: What would we do if that happened to us? Until they have a good answer for that, they shouldn’t be sleeping that well.”</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Could Cyber Attacks Ruin Christmas for Retailers? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/10/24/would-cyber-attacks-ruin-christmas-for-retailers.html | 2016-01-26 | 0right
| Could Cyber Attacks Ruin Christmas for Retailers?
<p />
<p>A string of cyber attacks on U.S. financial institutions has created headaches this fall by slowing down or preventing online banking access for millions of Americans.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>But imagine the real economic damage that similar-style attacks would cause if they struck U.S. retailers this holiday-shopping season, potentially eating into projected online sales of $54 billion.</p>
<p>While retailers deserve credit for bolstering their defenses against credit-card-hungry organized crime rings, security professionals believe the industry is vulnerable to this different kind of onslaught aimed at crippling online sales.</p>
<p>“The gloves are off in cyber space. The reality is if they want it to get worse, it can get worse,” said Dave Aitel, a former computer scientist at the National Security Agency. “I don’t think people are really prepared mentally to what happens if Amazon goes down.”</p>
<p>Unlike the ongoing cyber attacks against U.S. banks, there doesn’t appear to be a specific cyber threat against retailers.</p>
<p>Yet there are concerns that retailers aren’t ready for denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks from a powerful state actor like Iran, which many in the U.S. government suspect had a hand in the recent attacks on financial institutions like Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM).</p>
<p>"The Iranians are in the business of making a point and the bank attacks are not likely to have the impact they need, hence retailers are the next most likely target, especially in the holiday season,” said Aitel, CEO of Immunity, a cyber security firm that works with Fortune 500 companies.</p>
<p>Online Sales Exceed $160B</p>
<p>It’s hard to overstate the importance of e-commerce in today’s smartphone and social network dominated world.</p>
<p>According to comScore (NASDAQ:CSOR), annual U.S. retail e-commerce spending has surged 143% since 2004 to $161.52 billion last year. Despite the sluggish domestic economy and tepid retail sales growth, e-commerce spending jumped 13% between 2010 and 2011.</p>
<p>Online shopping is crucial during the all-important holiday-shopping season. E-commerce spending rose 14% last holiday season to $37.2 billion, comScore said.</p>
<p>In the face of continued economic uncertainty, online spending is projected to climb 17% this season to $54.47 billion, according to MarketLive.</p>
<p>“It’s very important for any retailer to have a web presence or you risk being left out in the cold,” said Andrew Lipsman, vice president of industry analysis at comScore, who noted that even in-person purchases typically originate online.</p>
<p>Adapting to Shifting Threat</p>
<p>Security professionals believe retailers’ cyber defenses are more porous than those of financial institutions -- and even some banks succumbed to relentless DDoS attacks this fall.</p>
<p>Given their prior experience combating thieves in Russia and elsewhere trying to siphon funds or snatch credit-card numbers, retailers aren’t really positioned to halt massive DDoS attacks from powerful state actors like Iran.</p>
<p>“That’s a very different threat and in many ways is more severe,” said Aitel. “They’re not thinking: What if it’s not about the money? What if someone wants to take me out just to take me out?”</p>
<p>Cedric Leighton, a former NSA official, said he agrees that retailers are not as well prepared as their financial peers.</p>
<p>“I don’t think they’ve gotten to the point where they can truly say their whole cyber supply chain is as well secured as they need to be in this day and age,” said Leighton, CEO of a Washington, D.C.-based risk-management consultancy.</p>
<p>Leighton said hackers could also disrupt companies’ supply chains by messing with order quantities and locations, creating costly problems for retailers.</p>
<p>Just this week Barnes &amp; Noble (NYSE:BKS) fell victim to a very sophisticated criminal attack that may have resulted in stolen credit and debit card information at 63 of its stores.</p>
<p>Amazon Atop Target List</p>
<p>The importance of a robust cyber defense is even more important for online retailers like Amazon.com and Overstock (NASDAQ:OSTK).</p>
<p>“If they aren’t available online, there is no business. They don’t exist,” said Ronen Kenig, director of security product marketing at Tel Aviv-based security firm Radware (NASDQ:RDWR).</p>
<p>In a potential cyber attack on U.S. retailers, Amazon.com would clearly be the biggest prize. The Seattle company generated $17.4 billion in revenue last holiday quarter.</p>
<p>“When you attack the United States you don’t attack Topeka, Kansas,” said Aitel. “Amazon is the big boy on the block. They are of course also the best protected.”</p>
<p>Amazon.com and Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) declined to comment for this story, while Target (NYSE:TGT) didn’t respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p>“Every company is going to look at what its exposure is. The greater the company is placed at risk, then the more they are going to invest in trying to protect themselves,” said Mallory Duncan, general counsel at the National Retail Federation.</p>
<p>Noting that some companies “rely extremely heavily on the Internet,” Duncan said, “When you have a bet-the-company type of situation, they’re going to take extraordinary steps to protect that channel.”</p>
<p>Cyber Monday in Focus</p>
<p>Aitel suggested the days around Cyber Monday -- the first work day after Black Friday -- as a time when retailers need to be particularly vigilant about the cyber threat.</p>
<p>According to comScore, U.S. e-commerce spending on Cyber Monday rose 22% last year to $1.25 billion, making it the highest online spending day in history.</p>
<p>“The attackers always like to choose the worst time for the victim,” said Kenig.</p>
<p>Bolstering Cyber Defenses</p>
<p>So what specifically should retailers be doing to prevent or mitigate the impact of DDoS attacks this holiday season?</p>
<p>Leighton said it’s crucial for companies to implement redundant systems with backups that allow switching from one system to the other when necessary.</p>
<p>From a bigger picture standpoint, retailers should strive to install security programs that go above and beyond industry security standards, which Aitel said “are really the bottom bar.”</p>
<p>Security professionals have been particularly alarmed by some recent cyber attacks that inflicted damage on physical assets, including a devastating attack unleashed on Saudi Arabia’s state run oil company Saudi Aramco</p>
<p>Some believe Iran may have been behind this attack, which destroyed an estimated 30,000 computers.</p>
<p>Aitel said, “Companies have to look at what happened to Saudi Aramco and say: What would we do if that happened to us? Until they have a good answer for that, they shouldn’t be sleeping that well.”</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | 1,178 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Historians’ opinions vary</p>
<p>CONGRATULATIONS to the Taos City Council for changing the name of Kit Carson Park. A park is supposed to be a relaxing or fun place.</p>
<p>It is not true that “historians and others see it as political correctness based on poor reading of history.” First, historians are not a monolithic group. We vary in political opinion, don’t read the same books, don’t use the same sources and don’t tell our stories in the same way.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Also, shouldn’t we also listen to Native American historians, especially Navajo and Mescalero historians? Likewise, not all history is read. Both the Navajo and Mescalero have oral tradition which should also be honored.</p>
<p>CYNTHIA E. OROZCO</p>
<p>Ruidoso</p>
<p>Kit Carson ended Navajo raids</p>
<p>NAVAJO RAIDS in New Mexico against Pueblo and Hispanic villages had been going on for centuries and no end in sight of these destructive raids. The raids mostly were for material goods and stock animals especially sheep. Slaves were taken and sold to various warring tribes. Pueblo and Hispanic children were adopted as their own, securing future warriors to be used against foes.</p>
<p>Navajos were also responsible for the destruction of a pueblo village and the Comanches had destroyed the Pecos Pueblo. There are no statistics on how many pueblo people and Hispanics were killed and impacted with economic loss.</p>
<p>When the Americans moved into the area they started to feel the pressure with Navajos raiding their ranches. No matter how many treaties were made, the raids continued. Kit Carson organized the New Mexico Hispanic volunteers into a fighting machine that finally put a stop to their main foe in their own land once and for all.</p>
<p>As Hispanic, I thank Kit Carson as one of the West’s greatest leaders. I hope some pueblos also give thanks that he put an end to the pillage and rape of their nations. … I am one of many who do not want the renaming of Kit Carson Park by people who have no idea (of) the history of New Mexico and recent arrivals to this state.</p>
<p>JOSE LUIS VALDEZ</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p> | Letters to the editor | false | https://abqjournal.com/423392/letters-to-the-editor-39.html | 2014-07-01 | 2least
| Letters to the editor
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Historians’ opinions vary</p>
<p>CONGRATULATIONS to the Taos City Council for changing the name of Kit Carson Park. A park is supposed to be a relaxing or fun place.</p>
<p>It is not true that “historians and others see it as political correctness based on poor reading of history.” First, historians are not a monolithic group. We vary in political opinion, don’t read the same books, don’t use the same sources and don’t tell our stories in the same way.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Also, shouldn’t we also listen to Native American historians, especially Navajo and Mescalero historians? Likewise, not all history is read. Both the Navajo and Mescalero have oral tradition which should also be honored.</p>
<p>CYNTHIA E. OROZCO</p>
<p>Ruidoso</p>
<p>Kit Carson ended Navajo raids</p>
<p>NAVAJO RAIDS in New Mexico against Pueblo and Hispanic villages had been going on for centuries and no end in sight of these destructive raids. The raids mostly were for material goods and stock animals especially sheep. Slaves were taken and sold to various warring tribes. Pueblo and Hispanic children were adopted as their own, securing future warriors to be used against foes.</p>
<p>Navajos were also responsible for the destruction of a pueblo village and the Comanches had destroyed the Pecos Pueblo. There are no statistics on how many pueblo people and Hispanics were killed and impacted with economic loss.</p>
<p>When the Americans moved into the area they started to feel the pressure with Navajos raiding their ranches. No matter how many treaties were made, the raids continued. Kit Carson organized the New Mexico Hispanic volunteers into a fighting machine that finally put a stop to their main foe in their own land once and for all.</p>
<p>As Hispanic, I thank Kit Carson as one of the West’s greatest leaders. I hope some pueblos also give thanks that he put an end to the pillage and rape of their nations. … I am one of many who do not want the renaming of Kit Carson Park by people who have no idea (of) the history of New Mexico and recent arrivals to this state.</p>
<p>JOSE LUIS VALDEZ</p>
<p>Albuquerque</p> | 1,179 |
<p>The company that operates twin oil pipelines in a Great Lakes waterway said Friday it knew three years ago that protective coating had been damaged in one area but didn't inform regulators, an acknowledgment that drew sharp criticism from Michigan officials.</p>
<p>Enbridge Inc. said four gaps were opened in enamel coating on a section of pipe in Michigan's Straits of Mackinac as a support anchor was installed in 2014 — one of eight spots where scratches or calcium carbonate deposits have been discovered. Environmental advocates say the gaps bolster their contention that the company's 64-year-old Line 5 should be shut down, although Enbridge insists they pose no safety threat and the pipes are in good shape.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Line 5 carries up to 23 million gallons (87 million liters) of light crude oil and liquid natural gas daily across parts of northern Wisconsin and Michigan to refineries in Sarnia, Ontario. The underwater section beneath the nearly 5-mile-long (8 kilometers) straits area is divided into two pipes.</p>
<p>Enbridge officials told the Michigan Pipeline Safety Advisory Board in March they knew of no places where bare metal was exposed on the underwater sections, which spokesman Ryan Duffy said was "accurate to the best of their awareness." The company first notified state regulators about the coating gaps in August, saying they had been found this summer during inspections required under an agreement with the federal government.</p>
<p>But on Friday, Enbridge said engineers in its pipeline integrity department had known since 2014 about the damage sustained during the support installation. The engineers concluded that the gaps, which together covered an area less than one square foot, had caused no corrosion and didn't pass the information up the chain of command, Duffy said.</p>
<p>"As our dialogue with the state continues, Enbridge has come to recognize that issues which do not present a threat to the safety of the pipeline can still present a strong concern to Michigan, and we are adjusting our communication approach accordingly," he said.</p>
<p>Valerie Brader, executive director of the Michigan Agency for Energy and co-chair of the Michigan Pipeline Safety Advisory Board, said Enbridge should apologize for not providing the information earlier.</p>
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<p>"This issue is too important to the people of Michigan not to tell the truth in a timely manner, and right now any trust we had in Enbridge has been seriously eroded," Brader said.</p>
<p>"I am concerned by Enbridge's lack of transparency when it comes to Line 5," said Capt. Chris Kelenske, deputy state director of emergency management and homeland security.</p>
<p>Enbridge said it was submitting more information about the gaps to the state Department of Environmental Quality, which is reviewing the company's application to place more anchors on the lake floor. The DEQ said it was postponing its deadline for processing the application from Nov. 2 to March 2, 2018, to allow a more thorough review.</p>
<p>Crews have repaired five of eight areas found to have coating gaps or calcium carbonate deposits, which indicate places where coating could be thin or missing, and work continues on the others, Duffy said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow John Flesher on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/johnflesher</p> | Company says it knew of pipeline coating damage 3 years ago | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/10/27/company-says-it-knew-about-oil-pipeline-damage-3-years-ago.html | 2017-10-27 | 0right
| Company says it knew of pipeline coating damage 3 years ago
<p>The company that operates twin oil pipelines in a Great Lakes waterway said Friday it knew three years ago that protective coating had been damaged in one area but didn't inform regulators, an acknowledgment that drew sharp criticism from Michigan officials.</p>
<p>Enbridge Inc. said four gaps were opened in enamel coating on a section of pipe in Michigan's Straits of Mackinac as a support anchor was installed in 2014 — one of eight spots where scratches or calcium carbonate deposits have been discovered. Environmental advocates say the gaps bolster their contention that the company's 64-year-old Line 5 should be shut down, although Enbridge insists they pose no safety threat and the pipes are in good shape.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Line 5 carries up to 23 million gallons (87 million liters) of light crude oil and liquid natural gas daily across parts of northern Wisconsin and Michigan to refineries in Sarnia, Ontario. The underwater section beneath the nearly 5-mile-long (8 kilometers) straits area is divided into two pipes.</p>
<p>Enbridge officials told the Michigan Pipeline Safety Advisory Board in March they knew of no places where bare metal was exposed on the underwater sections, which spokesman Ryan Duffy said was "accurate to the best of their awareness." The company first notified state regulators about the coating gaps in August, saying they had been found this summer during inspections required under an agreement with the federal government.</p>
<p>But on Friday, Enbridge said engineers in its pipeline integrity department had known since 2014 about the damage sustained during the support installation. The engineers concluded that the gaps, which together covered an area less than one square foot, had caused no corrosion and didn't pass the information up the chain of command, Duffy said.</p>
<p>"As our dialogue with the state continues, Enbridge has come to recognize that issues which do not present a threat to the safety of the pipeline can still present a strong concern to Michigan, and we are adjusting our communication approach accordingly," he said.</p>
<p>Valerie Brader, executive director of the Michigan Agency for Energy and co-chair of the Michigan Pipeline Safety Advisory Board, said Enbridge should apologize for not providing the information earlier.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>"This issue is too important to the people of Michigan not to tell the truth in a timely manner, and right now any trust we had in Enbridge has been seriously eroded," Brader said.</p>
<p>"I am concerned by Enbridge's lack of transparency when it comes to Line 5," said Capt. Chris Kelenske, deputy state director of emergency management and homeland security.</p>
<p>Enbridge said it was submitting more information about the gaps to the state Department of Environmental Quality, which is reviewing the company's application to place more anchors on the lake floor. The DEQ said it was postponing its deadline for processing the application from Nov. 2 to March 2, 2018, to allow a more thorough review.</p>
<p>Crews have repaired five of eight areas found to have coating gaps or calcium carbonate deposits, which indicate places where coating could be thin or missing, and work continues on the others, Duffy said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow John Flesher on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/johnflesher</p> | 1,180 |
<p>Chicago TribuneFrank Calabrese turned to page 18 of Tuesday's Chicago Tribune and saw his photo in a graphic titled "Infrastructure of a Chicago mob." Calabrese, a longtime Chicago businessman and horse owner who has no mob ties, could barely believe his eyes. "I opened it up and I said, 'God, what am I doing in the paper?'" he tells Jon Yates. "It's aggravating. People assume things." The Trib says it intended to run a head shot of another Frank Calabrese, who is a convicted mobster.</p> | Man is surprised to be listed in Chicago Tribune mob chart | false | https://poynter.org/news/man-surprised-be-listed-chicago-tribune-mob-chart | 2005-04-27 | 2least
| Man is surprised to be listed in Chicago Tribune mob chart
<p>Chicago TribuneFrank Calabrese turned to page 18 of Tuesday's Chicago Tribune and saw his photo in a graphic titled "Infrastructure of a Chicago mob." Calabrese, a longtime Chicago businessman and horse owner who has no mob ties, could barely believe his eyes. "I opened it up and I said, 'God, what am I doing in the paper?'" he tells Jon Yates. "It's aggravating. People assume things." The Trib says it intended to run a head shot of another Frank Calabrese, who is a convicted mobster.</p> | 1,181 |
<p>DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) _ These Iowa lotteries were drawn Thursday:</p>
<p>Lucky For Life</p>
<p>04-21-29-44-48, Lucky Ball: 7</p>
<p>(four, twenty-one, twenty-nine, forty-four, forty-eight; Lucky Ball: seven)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $306 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>1-8-1</p>
<p>(one, eight, one)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Midday</p>
<p>7-8-6</p>
<p>(seven, eight, six)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Evening</p>
<p>6-2-4-6</p>
<p>(six, two, four, six)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Midday</p>
<p>7-3-1-3</p>
<p>(seven, three, one, three)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $384 million</p>
<p>DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) _ These Iowa lotteries were drawn Thursday:</p>
<p>Lucky For Life</p>
<p>04-21-29-44-48, Lucky Ball: 7</p>
<p>(four, twenty-one, twenty-nine, forty-four, forty-eight; Lucky Ball: seven)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $306 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>1-8-1</p>
<p>(one, eight, one)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Midday</p>
<p>7-8-6</p>
<p>(seven, eight, six)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Evening</p>
<p>6-2-4-6</p>
<p>(six, two, four, six)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Midday</p>
<p>7-3-1-3</p>
<p>(seven, three, one, three)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $384 million</p> | IA Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/5f18e630c9134d5bb32dbb94e64cc0a0 | 2017-12-29 | 2least
| IA Lottery
<p>DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) _ These Iowa lotteries were drawn Thursday:</p>
<p>Lucky For Life</p>
<p>04-21-29-44-48, Lucky Ball: 7</p>
<p>(four, twenty-one, twenty-nine, forty-four, forty-eight; Lucky Ball: seven)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $306 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>1-8-1</p>
<p>(one, eight, one)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Midday</p>
<p>7-8-6</p>
<p>(seven, eight, six)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Evening</p>
<p>6-2-4-6</p>
<p>(six, two, four, six)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Midday</p>
<p>7-3-1-3</p>
<p>(seven, three, one, three)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $384 million</p>
<p>DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) _ These Iowa lotteries were drawn Thursday:</p>
<p>Lucky For Life</p>
<p>04-21-29-44-48, Lucky Ball: 7</p>
<p>(four, twenty-one, twenty-nine, forty-four, forty-eight; Lucky Ball: seven)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $306 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>1-8-1</p>
<p>(one, eight, one)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Midday</p>
<p>7-8-6</p>
<p>(seven, eight, six)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Evening</p>
<p>6-2-4-6</p>
<p>(six, two, four, six)</p>
<p>Pick 4 Midday</p>
<p>7-3-1-3</p>
<p>(seven, three, one, three)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $384 million</p> | 1,182 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Ricardo Diaz-Zeferino was drunk and trying to help his brother find the bike when police, told to be on the lookout for two robbers, opened fire when he wouldn't obey orders as they stopped him and two friends, according to an investigative review of the killing.</p>
<p>Video of the shooting captured on cameras in three police cars is at the center of a court fight Monday over whether the footage should be made public.</p>
<p>A lawyer for The Associated Press and two other news outlets says the public has a right to view the video that was sealed in a federal lawsuit that the city of Gardena, California, settled for $4.7 million with Diaz-Zeferino's family and another man who was wounded in the shooting.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"The burden is theirs to show they're entitled to an ongoing sealing," said Rochelle Wilcox, an attorney for AP, the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg. "We think they haven't even come close to meeting their burden. - The public policy strongly supports disclosure of this video, which was taken on a public street."</p>
<p>The hearing comes at a time of heightened scrutiny in shootings by officers and amid an ongoing debate over whether footage shot on an increasing number of police cameras should be made public.</p>
<p>More officers and patrol cars are being outfitted with cameras to record evidence. The devices are promoted as a tool for holding officers accountable and helping them defend themselves.</p>
<p>In fact, the cameras that recorded the June 2, 2013, shooting supported testimony that Diaz-Zeferino wouldn't obey officers' orders to stand still and keep his hands in the air. He was shot eight times after repeatedly reaching for his pants, according to a report by the Los Angeles district attorney.</p>
<p>Prosecutors found the shooting justified and declined to charge the four officers.</p>
<p>Lawyers for Gardena said releasing the video could lead to a "rush to judgment" against those officers, and it would make law enforcement agencies think twice about using cameras.</p>
<p>"Public agencies will be forced to wrestle with the issue of whether they wish to deploy dashboard cameras and body-worn cameras for fear that this information could be obtained, released in a distorted and sensationalistic manner, and misinterpreted, leading to acts of civil disobedience, damage to property, and the potential loss of life," according to court papers filed by the city.</p>
<p>Organizations of police chiefs and officers around the state have filed papers to keep the videos sealed.</p>
<p>A lawyer for Diaz-Zeferino's family said they want the video released so the public can see that the men did nothing wrong before being shot. "As long as the video is not released, the city of Gardena will continue to spin the facts," attorney Sonia Mercado said.</p> | News media seek videos of police killing unarmed man | false | https://abqjournal.com/611707/news-media-seek-videos-of-police-killing-unarmed-man.html | 2least
| News media seek videos of police killing unarmed man
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Ricardo Diaz-Zeferino was drunk and trying to help his brother find the bike when police, told to be on the lookout for two robbers, opened fire when he wouldn't obey orders as they stopped him and two friends, according to an investigative review of the killing.</p>
<p>Video of the shooting captured on cameras in three police cars is at the center of a court fight Monday over whether the footage should be made public.</p>
<p>A lawyer for The Associated Press and two other news outlets says the public has a right to view the video that was sealed in a federal lawsuit that the city of Gardena, California, settled for $4.7 million with Diaz-Zeferino's family and another man who was wounded in the shooting.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"The burden is theirs to show they're entitled to an ongoing sealing," said Rochelle Wilcox, an attorney for AP, the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg. "We think they haven't even come close to meeting their burden. - The public policy strongly supports disclosure of this video, which was taken on a public street."</p>
<p>The hearing comes at a time of heightened scrutiny in shootings by officers and amid an ongoing debate over whether footage shot on an increasing number of police cameras should be made public.</p>
<p>More officers and patrol cars are being outfitted with cameras to record evidence. The devices are promoted as a tool for holding officers accountable and helping them defend themselves.</p>
<p>In fact, the cameras that recorded the June 2, 2013, shooting supported testimony that Diaz-Zeferino wouldn't obey officers' orders to stand still and keep his hands in the air. He was shot eight times after repeatedly reaching for his pants, according to a report by the Los Angeles district attorney.</p>
<p>Prosecutors found the shooting justified and declined to charge the four officers.</p>
<p>Lawyers for Gardena said releasing the video could lead to a "rush to judgment" against those officers, and it would make law enforcement agencies think twice about using cameras.</p>
<p>"Public agencies will be forced to wrestle with the issue of whether they wish to deploy dashboard cameras and body-worn cameras for fear that this information could be obtained, released in a distorted and sensationalistic manner, and misinterpreted, leading to acts of civil disobedience, damage to property, and the potential loss of life," according to court papers filed by the city.</p>
<p>Organizations of police chiefs and officers around the state have filed papers to keep the videos sealed.</p>
<p>A lawyer for Diaz-Zeferino's family said they want the video released so the public can see that the men did nothing wrong before being shot. "As long as the video is not released, the city of Gardena will continue to spin the facts," attorney Sonia Mercado said.</p> | 1,183 |
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<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>This April 22, 2008 file photo shows the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The Obama administration says it will allow states to use their own money to reopen some national parks that have been closed because of the government shutdown. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)</p>
<p>Visitors to Zion National Park take in the sights after the park opened on a limited basis Friday near Springdale, Utah. (AP Photo/The Salt Lake Tribune, Trent Nelson)</p>
<p>SALT LAKE CITY – Five states have taken up the Obama administration on its offer to reopen national parks and monuments if the states foot the bill with money they likely won’t see again.</p>
<p>Governors of Arizona, Colorado, Utah, South Dakota and New York have jumped at the deal to reopen some of the parks in their states. Other states were trying to gauge Friday what would be the bigger economic hit – paying to keep the parks operating or losing the tourist money that flows when the scenic attractions are open.</p>
<p>Arizona reached a deal Friday with the Interior Department to pay for Grand Canyon National Park to completely reopen using state and local funds during the federal government shutdown.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The deal means the park should reopen today, said Andrew Wilder, spokesman for Republican Gov. Jan. Jan Brewer.</p>
<p>Arizona will pay the National Park Service $651,000 to keep the Grand Canyon open for seven days. The $93,000 a day is less than the $112,000 daily rate the federal government said this week was needed to fund the park operations.</p>
<p>In addition to state money, cash provided by the town of Tusayan and raised from private business will also be included in the funding.</p>
<p>Park spokeswoman Kirby-Lynn Shedlowski said Friday evening that officials at the park hadn’t been notified of the deal and were awaiting word.</p>
<p>Brewer had been pushing to use state money to open only a portion of the park, something the Interior Department said Thursday it would not contemplate because of the complexities of keeping some parts of parks closed while other parts were opened.</p>
<p>Utah’s five national parks began opening Friday after Gov. Gary Herbert sent $1.67 million to the U.S. government.</p>
<p>Zion National Park Superintendent Jock Whitworth said staff members began opening gates and removing barriers and expected to have the park fully operational today.</p>
<p>“This is a practical and temporary solution that will lessen the pain for some businesses and communities in Utah during this shutdown,” Interior Department Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>It was welcome news for beleaguered shop owners in the small town of Springdale, adjacent to Zion. Hotels have been vacant and rental and retail shops have seen sales plummet during the shutdown.</p>
<p>In Colorado, officials said a deal had been struck for the state to pay $360,000 to reopen Rocky Mountain National Park for 10 days to allow tourists to reach Estes Park. The visitors are needed to help the town recover from flooding.</p>
<p>South Dakota and several corporate donors worked out a deal with the National Park Service to reopen Mount Rushmore beginning Monday. Gov. Dennis Daugaard said it will cost the state $15,200 a day.</p>
<p>He said he wired four days’ worth of the donations Friday.</p>
<p>In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state will pay $61,600 a day to fully fund park service personnel and keep the Statue of Liberty open.</p>
<p>Just over 400 national parks, recreation areas and monuments – including such icons as the Grand Canyon and Yosemite – have been closed since Oct. 1 because of the partial government shutdown.</p>
<p>More than 20,000 National Park Service employees have been furloughed, and lawmakers from both parties have complained that the closures have wreaked havoc on communities that depend on tourism.</p>
<p>Officials in some states were not happy about paying to have the parks reopened.</p>
<p>Interior Department spokesman Blake Androff said Thursday that the government had no plans to reimburse states that pay to reopen parks. But members of Congress introduced legislation Friday to refund the money within 90 days.</p>
<p>Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon’s administration was working on a proposal to reopen parks in that state, including the Gateway Arch grounds in St. Louis and the Ozark National Scenic Riverways Park in southern Missouri.</p>
<p>Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said his state can’t afford to reopen its parks, as did Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval.</p>
<p>In Wyoming, Gov. Matt Mead’s office said the state would not pay to reopen two heavily visited national parks or Devil’s Tower national monument.</p>
<p>“Wyoming cannot bail out the federal government and we cannot use state money to do the work of the federal government,” Mead spokesman Renny MacKay said.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Grand Canyon, Zion, other parks reopening | false | https://abqjournal.com/280112/grand-canyon-zion-other-parks-reopening.html | 2013-10-12 | 2least
| Grand Canyon, Zion, other parks reopening
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>This April 22, 2008 file photo shows the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The Obama administration says it will allow states to use their own money to reopen some national parks that have been closed because of the government shutdown. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)</p>
<p>Visitors to Zion National Park take in the sights after the park opened on a limited basis Friday near Springdale, Utah. (AP Photo/The Salt Lake Tribune, Trent Nelson)</p>
<p>SALT LAKE CITY – Five states have taken up the Obama administration on its offer to reopen national parks and monuments if the states foot the bill with money they likely won’t see again.</p>
<p>Governors of Arizona, Colorado, Utah, South Dakota and New York have jumped at the deal to reopen some of the parks in their states. Other states were trying to gauge Friday what would be the bigger economic hit – paying to keep the parks operating or losing the tourist money that flows when the scenic attractions are open.</p>
<p>Arizona reached a deal Friday with the Interior Department to pay for Grand Canyon National Park to completely reopen using state and local funds during the federal government shutdown.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The deal means the park should reopen today, said Andrew Wilder, spokesman for Republican Gov. Jan. Jan Brewer.</p>
<p>Arizona will pay the National Park Service $651,000 to keep the Grand Canyon open for seven days. The $93,000 a day is less than the $112,000 daily rate the federal government said this week was needed to fund the park operations.</p>
<p>In addition to state money, cash provided by the town of Tusayan and raised from private business will also be included in the funding.</p>
<p>Park spokeswoman Kirby-Lynn Shedlowski said Friday evening that officials at the park hadn’t been notified of the deal and were awaiting word.</p>
<p>Brewer had been pushing to use state money to open only a portion of the park, something the Interior Department said Thursday it would not contemplate because of the complexities of keeping some parts of parks closed while other parts were opened.</p>
<p>Utah’s five national parks began opening Friday after Gov. Gary Herbert sent $1.67 million to the U.S. government.</p>
<p>Zion National Park Superintendent Jock Whitworth said staff members began opening gates and removing barriers and expected to have the park fully operational today.</p>
<p>“This is a practical and temporary solution that will lessen the pain for some businesses and communities in Utah during this shutdown,” Interior Department Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>It was welcome news for beleaguered shop owners in the small town of Springdale, adjacent to Zion. Hotels have been vacant and rental and retail shops have seen sales plummet during the shutdown.</p>
<p>In Colorado, officials said a deal had been struck for the state to pay $360,000 to reopen Rocky Mountain National Park for 10 days to allow tourists to reach Estes Park. The visitors are needed to help the town recover from flooding.</p>
<p>South Dakota and several corporate donors worked out a deal with the National Park Service to reopen Mount Rushmore beginning Monday. Gov. Dennis Daugaard said it will cost the state $15,200 a day.</p>
<p>He said he wired four days’ worth of the donations Friday.</p>
<p>In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state will pay $61,600 a day to fully fund park service personnel and keep the Statue of Liberty open.</p>
<p>Just over 400 national parks, recreation areas and monuments – including such icons as the Grand Canyon and Yosemite – have been closed since Oct. 1 because of the partial government shutdown.</p>
<p>More than 20,000 National Park Service employees have been furloughed, and lawmakers from both parties have complained that the closures have wreaked havoc on communities that depend on tourism.</p>
<p>Officials in some states were not happy about paying to have the parks reopened.</p>
<p>Interior Department spokesman Blake Androff said Thursday that the government had no plans to reimburse states that pay to reopen parks. But members of Congress introduced legislation Friday to refund the money within 90 days.</p>
<p>Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon’s administration was working on a proposal to reopen parks in that state, including the Gateway Arch grounds in St. Louis and the Ozark National Scenic Riverways Park in southern Missouri.</p>
<p>Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said his state can’t afford to reopen its parks, as did Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval.</p>
<p>In Wyoming, Gov. Matt Mead’s office said the state would not pay to reopen two heavily visited national parks or Devil’s Tower national monument.</p>
<p>“Wyoming cannot bail out the federal government and we cannot use state money to do the work of the federal government,” Mead spokesman Renny MacKay said.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 1,184 |
<p>The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is one of the heaviest drinking days of the year, rivaling even New Year’s Eve. Black Friday is part of the Thanksgiving weekend and is synonymous with shopping, and&#160;“Blackout Wednesday, ” or “Drinksgiving,” is known as a big day for drinking, as almost everyone has the next day off.</p>
<p>Binge drinking in the U.S. causes an estimated tens of thousands of deaths every year, and adds billions of dollars in health care costs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines binge drinking as five or more drinks for men, four or more drinks for women, and&#160;blood alcohol levels of 0.08 percent&#160;or higher.</p>
<p>Last year, police in Detroit arrested <a href="http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2015/11/25/its-blackout-wednesday-the-busiest-bar-night-of-the-year-2/" type="external">20 percent more</a> people for drunk driving on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving than they did on New Year’s Eve. Officers around the country will be stepping up patrols on Wednesday night and throughout the holiday break.</p>
<p>The CDC has identified the Midwest and Northeast as the homes of heavier drinkers.&#160;Wisconsin tops&#160;the list with&#160;nearly a quarter of their adult population reporting binge drinking on an average of five times per month. The national average for binge drinking is about 17 percent. Other states reporting binge drinking by over 20 percent of adults include Alaska, Washington DC, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska and Vermont. Arkansas, West Virginia and Utah report the lowest rates of binge drinkers.</p>
<p>Men&#160;consistently do the most binge drinking according to the CDC, but women are catching up. Higher percentages of women are reporting both regular and more frequent drinking.&#160;It may not be surprising to find that young people are the biggest binge drinkers, with 28.2 percent of 18 to 34-year-old adults reporting binge drinking.</p>
<p>Alcohol is a frequent accompaniment to parties and family get-togethers, but the practice can set the stage for alcohol-related problems such as binge drinking. The risks of heavy drinking include alcohol poisoning, injuries, liver disease, diabetes complications, high blood pressure, sexual dysfunction and cardiovascular disease. Binge drinkers are 14 times more likely than non-binge drinkers to report driving while impaired.</p>
<p>According to Levi Stone, chief nursing officer at Odessa Regional Medical Center, the criteria for a binge drinker has been met if the motivation for drinking is to get drunk.</p>
<p>Wednesday before Thanksgiving is considered the single day of the year most heavily traveled by road. The combination of travel and Blackout Wednesday leads to particular dangers, both for binge drinkers and sober drivers.</p>
<p /> | Binge drinking – ‘Blackout Wednesday’ becomes part of Thanksgiving weekend | false | http://natmonitor.com/2015/11/25/binge-drinking-blackout-wednesday-becomes-part-of-thanksgiving-weekend/ | 2015-11-25 | 3left-center
| Binge drinking – ‘Blackout Wednesday’ becomes part of Thanksgiving weekend
<p>The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is one of the heaviest drinking days of the year, rivaling even New Year’s Eve. Black Friday is part of the Thanksgiving weekend and is synonymous with shopping, and&#160;“Blackout Wednesday, ” or “Drinksgiving,” is known as a big day for drinking, as almost everyone has the next day off.</p>
<p>Binge drinking in the U.S. causes an estimated tens of thousands of deaths every year, and adds billions of dollars in health care costs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines binge drinking as five or more drinks for men, four or more drinks for women, and&#160;blood alcohol levels of 0.08 percent&#160;or higher.</p>
<p>Last year, police in Detroit arrested <a href="http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2015/11/25/its-blackout-wednesday-the-busiest-bar-night-of-the-year-2/" type="external">20 percent more</a> people for drunk driving on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving than they did on New Year’s Eve. Officers around the country will be stepping up patrols on Wednesday night and throughout the holiday break.</p>
<p>The CDC has identified the Midwest and Northeast as the homes of heavier drinkers.&#160;Wisconsin tops&#160;the list with&#160;nearly a quarter of their adult population reporting binge drinking on an average of five times per month. The national average for binge drinking is about 17 percent. Other states reporting binge drinking by over 20 percent of adults include Alaska, Washington DC, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska and Vermont. Arkansas, West Virginia and Utah report the lowest rates of binge drinkers.</p>
<p>Men&#160;consistently do the most binge drinking according to the CDC, but women are catching up. Higher percentages of women are reporting both regular and more frequent drinking.&#160;It may not be surprising to find that young people are the biggest binge drinkers, with 28.2 percent of 18 to 34-year-old adults reporting binge drinking.</p>
<p>Alcohol is a frequent accompaniment to parties and family get-togethers, but the practice can set the stage for alcohol-related problems such as binge drinking. The risks of heavy drinking include alcohol poisoning, injuries, liver disease, diabetes complications, high blood pressure, sexual dysfunction and cardiovascular disease. Binge drinkers are 14 times more likely than non-binge drinkers to report driving while impaired.</p>
<p>According to Levi Stone, chief nursing officer at Odessa Regional Medical Center, the criteria for a binge drinker has been met if the motivation for drinking is to get drunk.</p>
<p>Wednesday before Thanksgiving is considered the single day of the year most heavily traveled by road. The combination of travel and Blackout Wednesday leads to particular dangers, both for binge drinkers and sober drivers.</p>
<p /> | 1,185 |
<p>Stocks opened slightly higher Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average topping the 22,000 milestone as shares of Apple Inc. rose in the wake of its latest quarterly results. The Dow was up 43 points at 22,007, while the S&amp;P 500 edged 0.1% higher. The Nasdaq Composite was up 0.5% at 6,393. Apple shares rose 6%.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Stocks Open Higher; Dow Tops 22,000 Milestone | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/02/stocks-open-higher-dow-tops-22000-milestone.html | 2017-08-02 | 0right
| Stocks Open Higher; Dow Tops 22,000 Milestone
<p>Stocks opened slightly higher Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average topping the 22,000 milestone as shares of Apple Inc. rose in the wake of its latest quarterly results. The Dow was up 43 points at 22,007, while the S&amp;P 500 edged 0.1% higher. The Nasdaq Composite was up 0.5% at 6,393. Apple shares rose 6%.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | 1,186 |
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<p />
<p>A proposal on this year’s general election ballot would boost the minimum wage in Albuquerque by a dollar – to $8.50 an hour – and establish automatic increases in the future to keep up with inflation.</p>
<p>Supporters and opponents have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their message out amid the din of an already-noisy campaign season. Both sides cite the state of the economy in their arguments.</p>
<p>David Edwards, owner of New Mexico Tea Co. in Albuquerque, said the increase would give minimum wage earners more money to spend on his products and other items.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I feel that raising the minimum wage would boost Albuquerque’s economy on the whole, and a boosted economy helps my business,” Edwards said in an interview Monday.</p>
<p>Steve Paternoster, owner of Scalo Northern Italian Grill, said the timing of the proposed increase is “critically bad.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know of any business really anywhere that’s sitting on a mound of cash,” he said. “Right now, everybody’s trying to hang on.”</p>
<p>The minimum wage proposal was brought forth through a rarely used provision in the City Charter for voter initiatives. Supporters gathered thousands of petition signatures this summer to force the city to hold an election on the issue.</p>
<p>The City Council refused to act on the proposal, and after much legal wrangling, the state Supreme Court ordered it onto the ballot. The legal fight may not be over.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The petitions circulated by supporters – and the language that appears on the ballot – contain faulty wording that makes it appear as if certain employers would pay themselves, rather than their employees, the minimum wage.</p>
<p>Supporters say no one is likely to be confused because the overall meaning is clear. Opponents say it’s a critical error that changes the meaning of what is proposed.</p>
<p>Here’s how it’s supposed to work:</p>
<p>♦ The minimum would increase automatically in future years. The proposal calls for annual cost-of-living adjustments to the basic minimum wage each Jan. 1, based on percentage increases in the Consumer Price Index.</p>
<p>♦ Employees who get tips also would get a boost. They now receive a minimum wage of $2.13 an hour, plus tips. The proposal would increase the minimum for tipped employees to $3.83, starting Jan. 1, and the rate would climb to 60 percent of whatever the main minimum wage is the following year, or $5.10 if the wage is still $8.50. Opponents of the bill say tips already push the average pay up to $12 an hour.</p>
<p>Both sides have financial resources at their disposal.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In filings to the city clerk, the Committee to Keep Albuquerque Working reported more than $179,000 in contributions, about $171,000 of which came from the New Mexico Restaurant Association.</p>
<p>On the other side, a committee called Raise the Wage reported about $115,000 in contributions. The Olé Education Fund – a community group that pushed to get the proposal on the ballot – contributed more than $69,000, and union groups chipped in with $33,000.</p>
<p>Who benefits?</p>
<p>Paternoster said the minimum wage isn’t really intended for someone raising a family. Business owners want their employees to be successful and happy, he said, and the minimum wage is intended for teenagers and people just getting started.</p>
<p>“I don’t think anybody begrudges anybody else having a better standard of living, but it should be done on merit,” Paternoster said. “It should be done because it makes sense at the time.”</p>
<p>He also raised questions about the proposal’s call for tying future increases to the Consumer Price Index. That could lead to double-digit increases, depending on how the economy performs and how the federal government deals with deficits and debt.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Edwards, meanwhile, said it isn’t just teenagers who make the minimum wage. He pointed to a New Mexico Voices for Children report in support of the proposal, which cited Census data and said 90 percent of minimum-wage earners are 20 and older and 81 percent work more than 20 hours a week.</p>
<p>That report also estimated about 21,000 people make right at the minimum in Albuquerque and 19,000 more would see increases because of the “spillover” effect.</p>
<p>“Those people aren’t going to get a raise unless action is taken,” Edwards said.</p>
<p>Unemployment in Albuquerque was 6.3 percent in August, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics information posted to Google’s Public Data website.</p>
<p>As for the timing, Edwards said he doubts business groups would support an increase any other time.</p>
<p>“I don’t feel the minimum wage is at all approaching close to acceptable for what you should pay people,” he said. — This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal</p> | Minimum Wage Fight Gears Up | false | https://abqjournal.com/140702/minimum-wage-fight-gears-up.html | 2012-10-23 | 2least
| Minimum Wage Fight Gears Up
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>A proposal on this year’s general election ballot would boost the minimum wage in Albuquerque by a dollar – to $8.50 an hour – and establish automatic increases in the future to keep up with inflation.</p>
<p>Supporters and opponents have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their message out amid the din of an already-noisy campaign season. Both sides cite the state of the economy in their arguments.</p>
<p>David Edwards, owner of New Mexico Tea Co. in Albuquerque, said the increase would give minimum wage earners more money to spend on his products and other items.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I feel that raising the minimum wage would boost Albuquerque’s economy on the whole, and a boosted economy helps my business,” Edwards said in an interview Monday.</p>
<p>Steve Paternoster, owner of Scalo Northern Italian Grill, said the timing of the proposed increase is “critically bad.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know of any business really anywhere that’s sitting on a mound of cash,” he said. “Right now, everybody’s trying to hang on.”</p>
<p>The minimum wage proposal was brought forth through a rarely used provision in the City Charter for voter initiatives. Supporters gathered thousands of petition signatures this summer to force the city to hold an election on the issue.</p>
<p>The City Council refused to act on the proposal, and after much legal wrangling, the state Supreme Court ordered it onto the ballot. The legal fight may not be over.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The petitions circulated by supporters – and the language that appears on the ballot – contain faulty wording that makes it appear as if certain employers would pay themselves, rather than their employees, the minimum wage.</p>
<p>Supporters say no one is likely to be confused because the overall meaning is clear. Opponents say it’s a critical error that changes the meaning of what is proposed.</p>
<p>Here’s how it’s supposed to work:</p>
<p>♦ The minimum would increase automatically in future years. The proposal calls for annual cost-of-living adjustments to the basic minimum wage each Jan. 1, based on percentage increases in the Consumer Price Index.</p>
<p>♦ Employees who get tips also would get a boost. They now receive a minimum wage of $2.13 an hour, plus tips. The proposal would increase the minimum for tipped employees to $3.83, starting Jan. 1, and the rate would climb to 60 percent of whatever the main minimum wage is the following year, or $5.10 if the wage is still $8.50. Opponents of the bill say tips already push the average pay up to $12 an hour.</p>
<p>Both sides have financial resources at their disposal.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In filings to the city clerk, the Committee to Keep Albuquerque Working reported more than $179,000 in contributions, about $171,000 of which came from the New Mexico Restaurant Association.</p>
<p>On the other side, a committee called Raise the Wage reported about $115,000 in contributions. The Olé Education Fund – a community group that pushed to get the proposal on the ballot – contributed more than $69,000, and union groups chipped in with $33,000.</p>
<p>Who benefits?</p>
<p>Paternoster said the minimum wage isn’t really intended for someone raising a family. Business owners want their employees to be successful and happy, he said, and the minimum wage is intended for teenagers and people just getting started.</p>
<p>“I don’t think anybody begrudges anybody else having a better standard of living, but it should be done on merit,” Paternoster said. “It should be done because it makes sense at the time.”</p>
<p>He also raised questions about the proposal’s call for tying future increases to the Consumer Price Index. That could lead to double-digit increases, depending on how the economy performs and how the federal government deals with deficits and debt.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Edwards, meanwhile, said it isn’t just teenagers who make the minimum wage. He pointed to a New Mexico Voices for Children report in support of the proposal, which cited Census data and said 90 percent of minimum-wage earners are 20 and older and 81 percent work more than 20 hours a week.</p>
<p>That report also estimated about 21,000 people make right at the minimum in Albuquerque and 19,000 more would see increases because of the “spillover” effect.</p>
<p>“Those people aren’t going to get a raise unless action is taken,” Edwards said.</p>
<p>Unemployment in Albuquerque was 6.3 percent in August, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics information posted to Google’s Public Data website.</p>
<p>As for the timing, Edwards said he doubts business groups would support an increase any other time.</p>
<p>“I don’t feel the minimum wage is at all approaching close to acceptable for what you should pay people,” he said. — This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal</p> | 1,187 |
<p>PARIS, France — From the day of their first public date — at Disneyland Paris of all places — their lives have always seemed torn from the pages of a fairy tale.</p>
<p>That was back in December 2007 when the confident new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, courted the Italian-born model and French pop singer, Carla Bruni, as they wandered the pathways with Disney's fabled characters. Soon after, they wed and became an extraordinary media sensation.</p>
<p>But now it seems there might be some trouble in the magic kingdom. And if the latest rumors buzzing around the French blogosphere about them both having extramarital affairs are true, this glitzy political saga could be coming to an end. ( <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/france/100406/sarkozy-bruni" type="external">Repercussions of the Sarkozy/Bruni affair rumors</a>.)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.suchablog.com/carla-bruni-avec-benjamin-biolay-nicolas-sarkozy-avec-chantal-jouanno" type="external">Suchablog.com</a> has published posts saying that Carla Bruni fell in love with the French singer Benjamin Biolay, who just won the award for best male singer and best album of the year at the prestigious “Victoires de la musique.”</p>
<p>Bruni and Biolay have reportedly been friends for many years. And according to suchablog.com, Bruni and Biolay already live together. The same blog, which brands itself as a web magazine, also says that president Sarkozy has found “comfort in the arms” of right-wing politician Chantal Jouanno — a 40-year-old cabinet member in charge of the environment as well as a karate champion.</p>
<p>But the French establishment media is legendarily indifferent when it comes to covering the private affairs of their elected leaders. So there has been no questioning of the president about all this. The way the possible scandal has slowly emerged in France stands in stark contrast to how it would be covered in the tabloid culture of the American media, according to observers here.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/sports/091213/elin-nordegren-tiger-woods-wife-sweden" type="external">Can Elin go home again?</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/general/091224/sex-scandals-2009" type="external">Top sex scandals of 2009</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/south-africa/100209/zuma-infidelity" type="external">Zuma's love child scandalizes South Africa</a></p>
<p>Other websites to chronicle the rumor include the well-known blog <a href="" type="external">Le Post</a>, <a href="http://fr.news.yahoo.com/63/20100307/tod-sarkozy-jouanno-bruni-biolay-i-tl-ar-366b5ef.html" type="external">Yahoo News France</a> and <a href="http://www.agoravox.tv/culture-loisirs/people/article/bruni-biolay-sarko-jouanno-l-25527" type="external">Agoravoxtv</a>.</p>
<p>UPDATE:&#160;While a blog of the Sunday newspaper <a href="http://actu-videos.lejdd.fr/2010/03/09/243-rumeurs-carla-bruni-croque-benjamin-biolay-sarkozy-se-console-avec-jouanno" type="external">Le Journal du Dimanche</a> had chronicled the rumors about the Sarkozy and Bruni affairs, the post has now been removed "by the editors"&#160;because the material was "seriously detrimental to privacy." See below for more on French privacy law.</p>
<p>For now mainstream media haven’t published the rumors, which bloggers said are more likely to become public after the March 21 regional elections in France.</p>
<p>On television, only the news channel i-tele has suggested that Sarkozy and Jouanno, and Bruni and Biolay, are close. An i-tele presenter said on the air that Bruni was the first to congratulate Biolay for his awards, and wondered whether Sarkozy had had the time to congratulate minister Jouanno on her recent karate win.</p>
<p>For its part, Sarkozy’s public relations office had no comment on the rumors in response to a request from GlobalPost.</p>
<p>Most mainstream French media are likely to stay away from the rumor because the president’s personal life is a touchy topic and they worry reporting on the rumors could put their jobs at risk. Also, in France, privacy law keeps tabloids off the shelves and offers public figures a greater measure of, well, privacy, than in the U.S.</p>
<p>"Journalists often whisper a few gossips off the record, but they do not publish them, because they don't want to jeopardize their relations with politicians," said Dominique Moisi, a French political expert at the French Institute of International Relations. "That said, sometimes it is a good thing, you don't want every gossip to get published."</p>
<p>According to word of mouth, Alain Genestar, the former editor-in-chief of the magazine Paris Match, was fired after he published an article and pictures that showed that Nicolas Sarkozy’s ex-wife, Cecilia, was having an affair with the media guru Richard Attias.</p>
<p>At the time, the public was shocked, according to Nicolas Thierry, president of the journalists’ union CFDT Journalistes. “Alain Genestar received a lot of sympathy from the public after this event,” Thierry said. “The public felt that it was only fair that Sarkozy’s personal life would be exposed, after he used the image of his wife a lot during his presidential campaign.”</p>
<p>But according to Thierry, the French public “doesn’t always support the media when they disclose personal information about famous people.”</p>
<p>“The French sometimes feel that paparazzi shouldn’t go too far,” Thierry said. “They think that sometimes journalists should leave personalities alone.”</p>
<p>It is widely accepted in France that public figures shouldn't be judged on their sentimental lives but on their work, especially when it comes to politicians. Former presidents Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac reportedly had affairs, but this didn't ruin their political images, although Mitterrand's "hidden daughter" Mazarine did make the headlines when the story came out.</p>
<p>As for the current rumor, reactions from the streets of Paris seemed to show more disappointment with Sarkozy’s policies than keen interest in his love life.</p>
<p>“I couldn’t care less,” said Gauvin Leconte, a young professor. “What I care about is my everyday life and the president’s decisions. I am not happy at all with what Sarkozy does. He made things harder for us teachers.”</p>
<p>A man named Jean-Francois, who didn’t want his last name used, was chatting with a pal on a bench in front of Paris’ Saint Sulpice church and had a similar reaction.</p>
<p>“I am not interested in Sarkozy and in his huge ego,” said Jean-Francois. “At the end of the day if he did go with another chick, it would just be an expression of what he is inside ... a jerk.”</p>
<p>Raoni Moisan, a student in Paris, was a bit less harsh. “Frankly, I think that Sarkozy has other things to do,” Moisan said. “He’s probably focused on trying to keep his job and pursue his programs.”</p>
<p>As for Bruni’s alleged new choice of lover, Moisan suggested that it would definitely represent a step-down for the French-Italian diva.</p>
<p>“After Mick Jagger, Biolay is definitely a much smaller fish,” he said.</p>
<p>History — and sales — will decide on the artistic merits of singer Biolay, while the coming regional elections will surely give the French a chance to express themselves on what they apparently really care about the most: the president’s policy and its impact on the economy.</p> | Have Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni strayed? | false | https://pri.org/stories/2010-03-09/have-nicolas-sarkozy-and-carla-bruni-strayed | 2010-03-09 | 3left-center
| Have Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni strayed?
<p>PARIS, France — From the day of their first public date — at Disneyland Paris of all places — their lives have always seemed torn from the pages of a fairy tale.</p>
<p>That was back in December 2007 when the confident new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, courted the Italian-born model and French pop singer, Carla Bruni, as they wandered the pathways with Disney's fabled characters. Soon after, they wed and became an extraordinary media sensation.</p>
<p>But now it seems there might be some trouble in the magic kingdom. And if the latest rumors buzzing around the French blogosphere about them both having extramarital affairs are true, this glitzy political saga could be coming to an end. ( <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/france/100406/sarkozy-bruni" type="external">Repercussions of the Sarkozy/Bruni affair rumors</a>.)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.suchablog.com/carla-bruni-avec-benjamin-biolay-nicolas-sarkozy-avec-chantal-jouanno" type="external">Suchablog.com</a> has published posts saying that Carla Bruni fell in love with the French singer Benjamin Biolay, who just won the award for best male singer and best album of the year at the prestigious “Victoires de la musique.”</p>
<p>Bruni and Biolay have reportedly been friends for many years. And according to suchablog.com, Bruni and Biolay already live together. The same blog, which brands itself as a web magazine, also says that president Sarkozy has found “comfort in the arms” of right-wing politician Chantal Jouanno — a 40-year-old cabinet member in charge of the environment as well as a karate champion.</p>
<p>But the French establishment media is legendarily indifferent when it comes to covering the private affairs of their elected leaders. So there has been no questioning of the president about all this. The way the possible scandal has slowly emerged in France stands in stark contrast to how it would be covered in the tabloid culture of the American media, according to observers here.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/sports/091213/elin-nordegren-tiger-woods-wife-sweden" type="external">Can Elin go home again?</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/general/091224/sex-scandals-2009" type="external">Top sex scandals of 2009</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/south-africa/100209/zuma-infidelity" type="external">Zuma's love child scandalizes South Africa</a></p>
<p>Other websites to chronicle the rumor include the well-known blog <a href="" type="external">Le Post</a>, <a href="http://fr.news.yahoo.com/63/20100307/tod-sarkozy-jouanno-bruni-biolay-i-tl-ar-366b5ef.html" type="external">Yahoo News France</a> and <a href="http://www.agoravox.tv/culture-loisirs/people/article/bruni-biolay-sarko-jouanno-l-25527" type="external">Agoravoxtv</a>.</p>
<p>UPDATE:&#160;While a blog of the Sunday newspaper <a href="http://actu-videos.lejdd.fr/2010/03/09/243-rumeurs-carla-bruni-croque-benjamin-biolay-sarkozy-se-console-avec-jouanno" type="external">Le Journal du Dimanche</a> had chronicled the rumors about the Sarkozy and Bruni affairs, the post has now been removed "by the editors"&#160;because the material was "seriously detrimental to privacy." See below for more on French privacy law.</p>
<p>For now mainstream media haven’t published the rumors, which bloggers said are more likely to become public after the March 21 regional elections in France.</p>
<p>On television, only the news channel i-tele has suggested that Sarkozy and Jouanno, and Bruni and Biolay, are close. An i-tele presenter said on the air that Bruni was the first to congratulate Biolay for his awards, and wondered whether Sarkozy had had the time to congratulate minister Jouanno on her recent karate win.</p>
<p>For its part, Sarkozy’s public relations office had no comment on the rumors in response to a request from GlobalPost.</p>
<p>Most mainstream French media are likely to stay away from the rumor because the president’s personal life is a touchy topic and they worry reporting on the rumors could put their jobs at risk. Also, in France, privacy law keeps tabloids off the shelves and offers public figures a greater measure of, well, privacy, than in the U.S.</p>
<p>"Journalists often whisper a few gossips off the record, but they do not publish them, because they don't want to jeopardize their relations with politicians," said Dominique Moisi, a French political expert at the French Institute of International Relations. "That said, sometimes it is a good thing, you don't want every gossip to get published."</p>
<p>According to word of mouth, Alain Genestar, the former editor-in-chief of the magazine Paris Match, was fired after he published an article and pictures that showed that Nicolas Sarkozy’s ex-wife, Cecilia, was having an affair with the media guru Richard Attias.</p>
<p>At the time, the public was shocked, according to Nicolas Thierry, president of the journalists’ union CFDT Journalistes. “Alain Genestar received a lot of sympathy from the public after this event,” Thierry said. “The public felt that it was only fair that Sarkozy’s personal life would be exposed, after he used the image of his wife a lot during his presidential campaign.”</p>
<p>But according to Thierry, the French public “doesn’t always support the media when they disclose personal information about famous people.”</p>
<p>“The French sometimes feel that paparazzi shouldn’t go too far,” Thierry said. “They think that sometimes journalists should leave personalities alone.”</p>
<p>It is widely accepted in France that public figures shouldn't be judged on their sentimental lives but on their work, especially when it comes to politicians. Former presidents Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac reportedly had affairs, but this didn't ruin their political images, although Mitterrand's "hidden daughter" Mazarine did make the headlines when the story came out.</p>
<p>As for the current rumor, reactions from the streets of Paris seemed to show more disappointment with Sarkozy’s policies than keen interest in his love life.</p>
<p>“I couldn’t care less,” said Gauvin Leconte, a young professor. “What I care about is my everyday life and the president’s decisions. I am not happy at all with what Sarkozy does. He made things harder for us teachers.”</p>
<p>A man named Jean-Francois, who didn’t want his last name used, was chatting with a pal on a bench in front of Paris’ Saint Sulpice church and had a similar reaction.</p>
<p>“I am not interested in Sarkozy and in his huge ego,” said Jean-Francois. “At the end of the day if he did go with another chick, it would just be an expression of what he is inside ... a jerk.”</p>
<p>Raoni Moisan, a student in Paris, was a bit less harsh. “Frankly, I think that Sarkozy has other things to do,” Moisan said. “He’s probably focused on trying to keep his job and pursue his programs.”</p>
<p>As for Bruni’s alleged new choice of lover, Moisan suggested that it would definitely represent a step-down for the French-Italian diva.</p>
<p>“After Mick Jagger, Biolay is definitely a much smaller fish,” he said.</p>
<p>History — and sales — will decide on the artistic merits of singer Biolay, while the coming regional elections will surely give the French a chance to express themselves on what they apparently really care about the most: the president’s policy and its impact on the economy.</p> | 1,188 |
<p>NEW YORK (AP) - One of the social media posts resembled a wanted poster or a missing-persons flyer: Photographs of men were arranged in rows, seeking their names and employers.</p>
<p>But the Facebook post wasn’t circulated by law enforcement in the search for a suspect or by relatives looking for a missing loved one. It was an example of ordinary people trying to harness the power of social media to identify and shame the white nationalists who attended last weekend’s violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.</p>
<p>A Twitter account dedicated to calling out racism identified people who attended the rally using photos culled from the news and social media and listed their places of employment and other information.</p>
<p>“I’m a white Jewish man. So I strongly believe that white people in particular have a responsibility to stand up against bigotry because bigotry thrives on silence,” the creator of the account, <a href="/topics/logan-smith/" type="external">Logan Smith</a> of <a href="/topics/raleigh/" type="external">Raleigh</a>, North Carolina, told The Associated Press. Using the handle YesYoureRacist, his account grew from around 64,000 followers on Saturday to more than 300,000 by Monday afternoon.</p>
<p>A website created Sunday dedicated itself to collecting the names, social media profiles, colleges and employers of people photographed at the rally. At least one person has lost his job as a result.</p>
<p>Together, the efforts showed that angry online groups can be used to renounce racism as well as promote it.</p>
<p>“The goal with online shaming is very short term and driven by people’s desire to feel as if they are fighting back and having an impact,” said Brian Reich, who’s written several books on digital communications, behavior and political influence. “They are afraid, appalled and they want to stop it.”</p>
<p>But is it helpful? Reich said the people behind these efforts “are arguably fanning the flames,” giving attention to a group - white supremacists - that feeds on attention.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>THE END OF ANONYMITY?</p>
<p>Nicholas Brody, professor of communications at the University of Puget Sound, said the events show that in the age of social media, “nothing is really anonymous anymore.”</p>
<p>People attending a white supremacist rally decades ago may have had the comfort of knowing that their schools, employers and disapproving family members probably wouldn’t find out about their activity.</p>
<p>These days, not only can information be quickly and widely shared, but a lot of data is available about people on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Image searches and facial-recognition technology, meanwhile, can make it relatively easy to identify people online. <a href="/topics/logan-smith/" type="external">Smith</a> said he called out the people pictured in photos from the rally through a combination of tips from former classmates and others and online sleuthing.</p>
<p>But the method isn’t foolproof. In 2013, users of Twitter and the website Reddit wrongly accused a man of being a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. Reddit later apologized .</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>COLLEGE STUDENT IS EXPOSED</p>
<p>Peter Cvjetanovic, a 20-year-old college student, was photographed shouting with a group of torch-wielding protesters Friday during a march through the University of Virginia campus. Cvjetanovic said in a television interview that he didn’t expect the photo to spread as widely as it did.</p>
<p>But spread it did. And thousands of people signed an online petition to have him kicked out of school. Cvjetanovic told a local TV station that he is “not the angry racist they see in that photo,” but a white nationalist who cares for all people.</p>
<p>The University of Nevada in Reno confirmed Monday that Cvjetanovic is a student there. Spokeswoman Kerri Garcia said the university is “still monitoring the situation and reviewing information.”</p>
<p>A message left for Cvjetanovic through the school was not returned. There was no telephone listing available for him in Reno.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Top Dog, a hot dog company in the San Francisco area, said one of its employees resigned after being confronted by management about participating in the rally.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>‘DOXING’ AS INVITATION TO VIOLENCE</p>
<p>The practice of publishing private or identifying information - such as an address or phone number - about people online in an attempt to hurt, shame or abuse them is known as “doxing.”</p>
<p>In the 1990s, anti-abortion hackers infamously exposed abortion providers’ home addresses, photos and other information on a now-defunct website called the “Nuremberg Files.” Names that were greyed out indicated people who had been “wounded.” A strikethrough meant they had been killed.</p>
<p>Collecting and posting publicly available information, such as a photo of a person attending a public protest, is not the same thing, even if that can still hurt or shame people.</p>
<p>Paul Levinson, a communications professor and social media expert, called it a “moral obligation” to expose white supremacists for who they are, something for which social media provides a good opportunity.</p>
<p>Gordon Coonfield, communications professor at Villanova University, said there is an important difference in the reasons people get doxed.</p>
<p>“Doxing an advocate of racial equality is an implicit - and often explicit - call for violence against them,” he said in an email. “Doxing a white nationalist is a call for accountability. Compelling individuals to be accountable for their words and deeds online or off is not a threat to freedom of expression. It is the foundation of freedom of expression.”</p>
<p>Case in point, <a href="/topics/logan-smith/" type="external">Smith</a> said, he has received many death threats because of his Twitter posts, so he’s going to consider whether to continue.</p>
<p>“They got ahold of all my personal info and have been threatening me and my family and even my wife’s family,” he said.</p>
<p>Of course, mere presence at a rally does not imply willing participation. Tiki Brand Products, whose torches were used and widely photographed during the rally, took to Facebook to distance itself from the march.</p>
<p>“We do not support their message or the use of our products in this way,” the company wrote on its Facebook page. Our products are designed to enhance backyard gatherings and to help family and friends connect with each other at home in their yard.”</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>Associated Press Writer Jonathan Drew contributed to this story from <a href="/topics/raleigh/" type="external">Raleigh</a>, North Carolina.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Social media harnessed to expose white nationalists at rally | true | http://washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/14/social-media-harnessed-to-expose-white-nationalist/ | 2017-08-14 | 0right
| Social media harnessed to expose white nationalists at rally
<p>NEW YORK (AP) - One of the social media posts resembled a wanted poster or a missing-persons flyer: Photographs of men were arranged in rows, seeking their names and employers.</p>
<p>But the Facebook post wasn’t circulated by law enforcement in the search for a suspect or by relatives looking for a missing loved one. It was an example of ordinary people trying to harness the power of social media to identify and shame the white nationalists who attended last weekend’s violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.</p>
<p>A Twitter account dedicated to calling out racism identified people who attended the rally using photos culled from the news and social media and listed their places of employment and other information.</p>
<p>“I’m a white Jewish man. So I strongly believe that white people in particular have a responsibility to stand up against bigotry because bigotry thrives on silence,” the creator of the account, <a href="/topics/logan-smith/" type="external">Logan Smith</a> of <a href="/topics/raleigh/" type="external">Raleigh</a>, North Carolina, told The Associated Press. Using the handle YesYoureRacist, his account grew from around 64,000 followers on Saturday to more than 300,000 by Monday afternoon.</p>
<p>A website created Sunday dedicated itself to collecting the names, social media profiles, colleges and employers of people photographed at the rally. At least one person has lost his job as a result.</p>
<p>Together, the efforts showed that angry online groups can be used to renounce racism as well as promote it.</p>
<p>“The goal with online shaming is very short term and driven by people’s desire to feel as if they are fighting back and having an impact,” said Brian Reich, who’s written several books on digital communications, behavior and political influence. “They are afraid, appalled and they want to stop it.”</p>
<p>But is it helpful? Reich said the people behind these efforts “are arguably fanning the flames,” giving attention to a group - white supremacists - that feeds on attention.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>THE END OF ANONYMITY?</p>
<p>Nicholas Brody, professor of communications at the University of Puget Sound, said the events show that in the age of social media, “nothing is really anonymous anymore.”</p>
<p>People attending a white supremacist rally decades ago may have had the comfort of knowing that their schools, employers and disapproving family members probably wouldn’t find out about their activity.</p>
<p>These days, not only can information be quickly and widely shared, but a lot of data is available about people on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Image searches and facial-recognition technology, meanwhile, can make it relatively easy to identify people online. <a href="/topics/logan-smith/" type="external">Smith</a> said he called out the people pictured in photos from the rally through a combination of tips from former classmates and others and online sleuthing.</p>
<p>But the method isn’t foolproof. In 2013, users of Twitter and the website Reddit wrongly accused a man of being a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. Reddit later apologized .</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>COLLEGE STUDENT IS EXPOSED</p>
<p>Peter Cvjetanovic, a 20-year-old college student, was photographed shouting with a group of torch-wielding protesters Friday during a march through the University of Virginia campus. Cvjetanovic said in a television interview that he didn’t expect the photo to spread as widely as it did.</p>
<p>But spread it did. And thousands of people signed an online petition to have him kicked out of school. Cvjetanovic told a local TV station that he is “not the angry racist they see in that photo,” but a white nationalist who cares for all people.</p>
<p>The University of Nevada in Reno confirmed Monday that Cvjetanovic is a student there. Spokeswoman Kerri Garcia said the university is “still monitoring the situation and reviewing information.”</p>
<p>A message left for Cvjetanovic through the school was not returned. There was no telephone listing available for him in Reno.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Top Dog, a hot dog company in the San Francisco area, said one of its employees resigned after being confronted by management about participating in the rally.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>‘DOXING’ AS INVITATION TO VIOLENCE</p>
<p>The practice of publishing private or identifying information - such as an address or phone number - about people online in an attempt to hurt, shame or abuse them is known as “doxing.”</p>
<p>In the 1990s, anti-abortion hackers infamously exposed abortion providers’ home addresses, photos and other information on a now-defunct website called the “Nuremberg Files.” Names that were greyed out indicated people who had been “wounded.” A strikethrough meant they had been killed.</p>
<p>Collecting and posting publicly available information, such as a photo of a person attending a public protest, is not the same thing, even if that can still hurt or shame people.</p>
<p>Paul Levinson, a communications professor and social media expert, called it a “moral obligation” to expose white supremacists for who they are, something for which social media provides a good opportunity.</p>
<p>Gordon Coonfield, communications professor at Villanova University, said there is an important difference in the reasons people get doxed.</p>
<p>“Doxing an advocate of racial equality is an implicit - and often explicit - call for violence against them,” he said in an email. “Doxing a white nationalist is a call for accountability. Compelling individuals to be accountable for their words and deeds online or off is not a threat to freedom of expression. It is the foundation of freedom of expression.”</p>
<p>Case in point, <a href="/topics/logan-smith/" type="external">Smith</a> said, he has received many death threats because of his Twitter posts, so he’s going to consider whether to continue.</p>
<p>“They got ahold of all my personal info and have been threatening me and my family and even my wife’s family,” he said.</p>
<p>Of course, mere presence at a rally does not imply willing participation. Tiki Brand Products, whose torches were used and widely photographed during the rally, took to Facebook to distance itself from the march.</p>
<p>“We do not support their message or the use of our products in this way,” the company wrote on its Facebook page. Our products are designed to enhance backyard gatherings and to help family and friends connect with each other at home in their yard.”</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>Associated Press Writer Jonathan Drew contributed to this story from <a href="/topics/raleigh/" type="external">Raleigh</a>, North Carolina.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 1,189 |
<p>University of Missouri (Photo by AdamProcter; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)</p>
<p>The issue of race relations on college campuses reemerged last week following highly publicized incidents at Yale and the University of Missouri that triggered protests at schools across the country. Much of the reaction and commentary included patronizing remarks that minimized and trivialized the plight of African-American and other minority students navigating life on majority-white campuses.</p>
<p>At Missouri, students protested a string of racist incidents that were largely ignored by administrators, leading to the resignation of University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe and Columbia campus Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin. They stepped down only after the football team threatened a boycott, jeopardizing lucrative sports revenue for the school. The athletes’ brave act of defiance should be a template for students elsewhere looking for creative and effective ways to fight back against apathetic administrators.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, at Yale, a black undergraduate student claimed that she was barred from a fraternity’s “white girls only” party. Sigma Alpha Epsilon denied the report. In another incident, a faculty member was accused of racial insensitivity after defending students’ right to wear potentially offensive Halloween costumes. The seemingly isolated incidents at Yale and Mizzou have proven anything but, with solidarity protests being staged across the country.</p>
<p>Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump predictably sided with the status quo. “I think the two people that resigned are weak, ineffective people,” he told Fox News. Ben Carson assailed the “politically correct police” for the resignations.</p>
<p>Numerous publications and commentators have weighed in, belittling the students and ignoring the larger issues. This isn’t about Halloween costumes or the coddling of spoiled elites who miss their helicopter parents. It’s about the disparate treatment of minority students everywhere who face real obstacles to obtaining their education and degrees that are mostly unknown to their white counterparts.</p>
<p>The recent incidents call to mind my own eye-opening experience with race issues as a student at Penn State University in 1992, where I served as editorial page editor for the Daily Collegian student newspaper.</p>
<p>Back then, Penn State saw protests led by black students decrying low minority enrollment and inadequate efforts by the university to retain minority students. There were sit-ins and street demonstrations. One of my regular columnists, a black student, penned a column titled, “African Americans should not trust devilish white people.” It contained some harsh language and warnings to fellow black students to bear arms to defend themselves. “White people are irredeemable racists, who have never loved or cared about black people,” he wrote.</p>
<p>The column wasn’t the most profound or original take on race, but it certainly reflected the genuine fear and isolation that many black students felt on campus. One black friend told me that when traveling to campus from home, he gassed up his car in New York City and didn’t stop again until he pulled into his dorm four and a half hours later, ever fearful of having to make an unexpected stop in rural Pennsylvania along the way to State College.</p>
<p>The university was overwhelmingly white, with just 3.1 percent black enrollment. Many students were from small towns with zero black population. I had a roommate who had never met a black person before arriving on campus. When he saw a photo of me with my black prom date from high school, he said, “You took a black girl to prom?! What did your parents say?”</p>
<p>Such was the atmosphere for minority students. And so when I edited the column, I knew it would get a lot of attention on campus but I was young and naïve and had no idea the maelstrom that it would trigger. On the day it was published, I received an early morning phone call at my apartment from the newspaper office. “Kevin, you need to get down here. There are protesters picketing the office.”</p>
<p>When I arrived, there were two white students pacing in front of my office carrying signs bearing crosshairs that read, “White Man, Shoot Here.” It was startling but hardly a mass protest. I dismissed it as minor and went about my day. Later, I got a call from an Associated Press reporter in Harrisburg who’d heard about the protest. I explained that it was a brief demonstration by just two people. He wrote a story that moved across the AP state wire that night while I was still in the office. Our news editor flagged it for me. It read that our offices were besieged by a “wave of protests” following publication of the column. I was disappointed by the irresponsible sensationalism of the AP writer but it was only the state wire. Not a huge deal. Later that night, the story moved across the national AP wire and appeared in every major newspaper in the country the next morning. All hell broke loose.</p>
<p>The office phones rang incessantly. Penn State administrators denounced us in the media as a “hate publication.” Student organizations yanked their advertising. Oprah, Donahue, Sally Jesse and Geraldo called seeking interviews with the author and me. The story was covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and every media critic and major news outlet. Death threats began arriving to our offices. The author’s life was threatened in a flier distributed across campus with a rifle’s crosshairs superimposed across his photo. I received a death threat at my apartment from the Ku Klux Klan, which operated in a nearby town. The police visited my office offering protection. Alumni canceled donations to the university and administrators searched for ways to retaliate against the newspaper, which is an independent corporation unaffiliated with Penn State. Professors denounced our actions openly in classes. Collegian staffers were harassed on the streets.</p>
<p>Despite all the fear mongering in the media about us instigating a “race war at Penn State,” the only violence we saw came in the form of death threats against newspaper staff. It’s surreal to turn on the radio or TV and hear your name being trashed by commentators. I was labeled a “drug addict,” “racist,” “crazy” and worse. I lost a job offer because of the uproar.</p>
<p>All this because I’d defended a black staff member who’d written a column from a place of fear and isolation. Yes, he wrote some inflammatory things. But on a college campus, students deserve a wide berth when exploring complicated and emotional issues for the first time on their own. As former Yale University President Benno Schmidt once said, “A university ought to be the last place where people are inhibited by fear of punishment from expressing ignorance or even hate, so long as others are left free to answer.”</p>
<p>It was a life-changing experience and I wish every practicing journalist could walk for a day in the shoes of someone being castigated by the national media. It taught me the importance of fairness. Words matter and they can hurt when applied recklessly.</p>
<p>Fast-forward nearly a quarter century, and to my dismay students are still grappling with the same issues of racism and low minority enrollment and retention. Indeed, the list of grievances from University of Missouri students is strikingly similar to a list compiled by students in the 1960s. As the Huffington Post reported last week, “The 1969 list expressed concern about the ‘nonchalant attitude on the part of the university,’ saying it made it ‘a haven for comprehensive institutionalized racist and political repression.’ Those feelings were echoed by many protesters this week.”</p>
<p>Instead of dismissing these students’ concerns, we should listen and help. The condescending response from Trump, the Wall Street Journal editorial board and others ignores the genuine fears of students who face threats of violence and racist epithets — one of which was scrawled in human excrement at Missouri.</p>
<p>Often it’s the covert manifestations of racism that sting most, like the indifferent response of administrators and media critics. Or the persistent problems with retaining minority students and faculty at major universities that are instead focused on building multi-billion dollar endowments while neglecting needs of current students.</p>
<p>There are no easy solutions to these entrenched problems, but we’ve seen the result of propagating the status quo, from Ferguson to Baltimore and beyond. At the very least, we can listen to these students respectfully and engage with them. Football players don’t boycott games and students don’t initiate hunger strikes for kicks or attention. The problems are real. As Spike Lee implored us in his 1988 film “School Daze,” “Wake up!”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Kevin Naff is editor of the Washington Blade. Reach him at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Ben Carson</a> <a href="" type="internal">Benno Schmidt</a> <a href="" type="internal">Daily Collegian</a> <a href="" type="internal">Donald Trump</a> <a href="" type="internal">Fox News</a> <a href="" type="internal">Penn State</a> <a href="" type="internal">R. Bowen Loftin</a> <a href="" type="internal">Spike Lee</a> <a href="" type="internal">Tim Wolfe</a> <a href="" type="internal">University of Missouri</a></p> | Wake up! Listen to black student protesters | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2015/11/18/wake-up-listen-to-black-student-protesters/ | 3left-center
| Wake up! Listen to black student protesters
<p>University of Missouri (Photo by AdamProcter; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)</p>
<p>The issue of race relations on college campuses reemerged last week following highly publicized incidents at Yale and the University of Missouri that triggered protests at schools across the country. Much of the reaction and commentary included patronizing remarks that minimized and trivialized the plight of African-American and other minority students navigating life on majority-white campuses.</p>
<p>At Missouri, students protested a string of racist incidents that were largely ignored by administrators, leading to the resignation of University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe and Columbia campus Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin. They stepped down only after the football team threatened a boycott, jeopardizing lucrative sports revenue for the school. The athletes’ brave act of defiance should be a template for students elsewhere looking for creative and effective ways to fight back against apathetic administrators.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, at Yale, a black undergraduate student claimed that she was barred from a fraternity’s “white girls only” party. Sigma Alpha Epsilon denied the report. In another incident, a faculty member was accused of racial insensitivity after defending students’ right to wear potentially offensive Halloween costumes. The seemingly isolated incidents at Yale and Mizzou have proven anything but, with solidarity protests being staged across the country.</p>
<p>Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump predictably sided with the status quo. “I think the two people that resigned are weak, ineffective people,” he told Fox News. Ben Carson assailed the “politically correct police” for the resignations.</p>
<p>Numerous publications and commentators have weighed in, belittling the students and ignoring the larger issues. This isn’t about Halloween costumes or the coddling of spoiled elites who miss their helicopter parents. It’s about the disparate treatment of minority students everywhere who face real obstacles to obtaining their education and degrees that are mostly unknown to their white counterparts.</p>
<p>The recent incidents call to mind my own eye-opening experience with race issues as a student at Penn State University in 1992, where I served as editorial page editor for the Daily Collegian student newspaper.</p>
<p>Back then, Penn State saw protests led by black students decrying low minority enrollment and inadequate efforts by the university to retain minority students. There were sit-ins and street demonstrations. One of my regular columnists, a black student, penned a column titled, “African Americans should not trust devilish white people.” It contained some harsh language and warnings to fellow black students to bear arms to defend themselves. “White people are irredeemable racists, who have never loved or cared about black people,” he wrote.</p>
<p>The column wasn’t the most profound or original take on race, but it certainly reflected the genuine fear and isolation that many black students felt on campus. One black friend told me that when traveling to campus from home, he gassed up his car in New York City and didn’t stop again until he pulled into his dorm four and a half hours later, ever fearful of having to make an unexpected stop in rural Pennsylvania along the way to State College.</p>
<p>The university was overwhelmingly white, with just 3.1 percent black enrollment. Many students were from small towns with zero black population. I had a roommate who had never met a black person before arriving on campus. When he saw a photo of me with my black prom date from high school, he said, “You took a black girl to prom?! What did your parents say?”</p>
<p>Such was the atmosphere for minority students. And so when I edited the column, I knew it would get a lot of attention on campus but I was young and naïve and had no idea the maelstrom that it would trigger. On the day it was published, I received an early morning phone call at my apartment from the newspaper office. “Kevin, you need to get down here. There are protesters picketing the office.”</p>
<p>When I arrived, there were two white students pacing in front of my office carrying signs bearing crosshairs that read, “White Man, Shoot Here.” It was startling but hardly a mass protest. I dismissed it as minor and went about my day. Later, I got a call from an Associated Press reporter in Harrisburg who’d heard about the protest. I explained that it was a brief demonstration by just two people. He wrote a story that moved across the AP state wire that night while I was still in the office. Our news editor flagged it for me. It read that our offices were besieged by a “wave of protests” following publication of the column. I was disappointed by the irresponsible sensationalism of the AP writer but it was only the state wire. Not a huge deal. Later that night, the story moved across the national AP wire and appeared in every major newspaper in the country the next morning. All hell broke loose.</p>
<p>The office phones rang incessantly. Penn State administrators denounced us in the media as a “hate publication.” Student organizations yanked their advertising. Oprah, Donahue, Sally Jesse and Geraldo called seeking interviews with the author and me. The story was covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and every media critic and major news outlet. Death threats began arriving to our offices. The author’s life was threatened in a flier distributed across campus with a rifle’s crosshairs superimposed across his photo. I received a death threat at my apartment from the Ku Klux Klan, which operated in a nearby town. The police visited my office offering protection. Alumni canceled donations to the university and administrators searched for ways to retaliate against the newspaper, which is an independent corporation unaffiliated with Penn State. Professors denounced our actions openly in classes. Collegian staffers were harassed on the streets.</p>
<p>Despite all the fear mongering in the media about us instigating a “race war at Penn State,” the only violence we saw came in the form of death threats against newspaper staff. It’s surreal to turn on the radio or TV and hear your name being trashed by commentators. I was labeled a “drug addict,” “racist,” “crazy” and worse. I lost a job offer because of the uproar.</p>
<p>All this because I’d defended a black staff member who’d written a column from a place of fear and isolation. Yes, he wrote some inflammatory things. But on a college campus, students deserve a wide berth when exploring complicated and emotional issues for the first time on their own. As former Yale University President Benno Schmidt once said, “A university ought to be the last place where people are inhibited by fear of punishment from expressing ignorance or even hate, so long as others are left free to answer.”</p>
<p>It was a life-changing experience and I wish every practicing journalist could walk for a day in the shoes of someone being castigated by the national media. It taught me the importance of fairness. Words matter and they can hurt when applied recklessly.</p>
<p>Fast-forward nearly a quarter century, and to my dismay students are still grappling with the same issues of racism and low minority enrollment and retention. Indeed, the list of grievances from University of Missouri students is strikingly similar to a list compiled by students in the 1960s. As the Huffington Post reported last week, “The 1969 list expressed concern about the ‘nonchalant attitude on the part of the university,’ saying it made it ‘a haven for comprehensive institutionalized racist and political repression.’ Those feelings were echoed by many protesters this week.”</p>
<p>Instead of dismissing these students’ concerns, we should listen and help. The condescending response from Trump, the Wall Street Journal editorial board and others ignores the genuine fears of students who face threats of violence and racist epithets — one of which was scrawled in human excrement at Missouri.</p>
<p>Often it’s the covert manifestations of racism that sting most, like the indifferent response of administrators and media critics. Or the persistent problems with retaining minority students and faculty at major universities that are instead focused on building multi-billion dollar endowments while neglecting needs of current students.</p>
<p>There are no easy solutions to these entrenched problems, but we’ve seen the result of propagating the status quo, from Ferguson to Baltimore and beyond. At the very least, we can listen to these students respectfully and engage with them. Football players don’t boycott games and students don’t initiate hunger strikes for kicks or attention. The problems are real. As Spike Lee implored us in his 1988 film “School Daze,” “Wake up!”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Kevin Naff is editor of the Washington Blade. Reach him at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Ben Carson</a> <a href="" type="internal">Benno Schmidt</a> <a href="" type="internal">Daily Collegian</a> <a href="" type="internal">Donald Trump</a> <a href="" type="internal">Fox News</a> <a href="" type="internal">Penn State</a> <a href="" type="internal">R. Bowen Loftin</a> <a href="" type="internal">Spike Lee</a> <a href="" type="internal">Tim Wolfe</a> <a href="" type="internal">University of Missouri</a></p> | 1,190 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>NMPolitics.net charges that the state agency that runs the spaceport violated transparency laws several times this year in response to requests for documents.</p>
<p>Heath Haussamen, NMPolitics.net’s editor and publisher, filed five complaints with the AG on Monday alleging violations and possible violations of the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act and Open Meetings Act. In some cases Haussamen is asking the AG to formally declare that the New Mexico Spaceport Authority violated transparency laws in its interactions with him. In others he’s seeking legal clarification about what the law intends.</p>
<p>The allegations include failure to release public documents, redacting information in documents released, blocking Haussamen on Twitter and failing to release minutes in a timely manner.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“My investigation found evidence that Spaceport America may finally be on the verge of realizing some of the dreams New Mexicans had a decade ago when they decided to build the facility,” Haussamen said. “But this level of secrecy is unacceptable. To earn New Mexicans’ trust, the spaceport must become more transparent. I hope the AG helps make that happen.”</p>
<p>Haussamen’s complaints are the second batch against the spaceport in recent months. Balderas’ office determined in August that the Spaceport Authority had violated IPRA four times in its interactions with KTSM-TV reporter Patrick Hayes — by improperly attempting to charge fees for public records, failing to provide records in electronic format, prohibiting the use of digitizing equipment and denying a request without explanation.</p>
<p>The Spaceport Authority responded that it had not violated IPRA and said the determination from the AG’s office contained “legal inaccuracies.” AG spokesman James Hallinan said his office “absolutely” stands by its findings in Hayes’ case.</p>
<p>Read more spaceport stories</p>
<p>Is Spaceport America taking flight?</p>
<p>Funding woes could ‘cripple’ NM spaceport as other states invest</p>
<p>Transparency problems plague Spaceport America</p>
<p>How much secrecy does Spaceport America need?</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>After years of delays, Virgin Galactic prepares for spaceflights from NM</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>©2017 the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.)</p>
<p>Visit the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.) at <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com" type="external">www.lcsun-news.com</a></p>
<p>Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.</p>
<p>_____</p> | News site seeks AG scrutiny of spaceport secrecy | false | https://abqjournal.com/1062834/news-site-seeks-ag-scrutiny-of-spaceport-secrecy.html | 2least
| News site seeks AG scrutiny of spaceport secrecy
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>NMPolitics.net charges that the state agency that runs the spaceport violated transparency laws several times this year in response to requests for documents.</p>
<p>Heath Haussamen, NMPolitics.net’s editor and publisher, filed five complaints with the AG on Monday alleging violations and possible violations of the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act and Open Meetings Act. In some cases Haussamen is asking the AG to formally declare that the New Mexico Spaceport Authority violated transparency laws in its interactions with him. In others he’s seeking legal clarification about what the law intends.</p>
<p>The allegations include failure to release public documents, redacting information in documents released, blocking Haussamen on Twitter and failing to release minutes in a timely manner.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“My investigation found evidence that Spaceport America may finally be on the verge of realizing some of the dreams New Mexicans had a decade ago when they decided to build the facility,” Haussamen said. “But this level of secrecy is unacceptable. To earn New Mexicans’ trust, the spaceport must become more transparent. I hope the AG helps make that happen.”</p>
<p>Haussamen’s complaints are the second batch against the spaceport in recent months. Balderas’ office determined in August that the Spaceport Authority had violated IPRA four times in its interactions with KTSM-TV reporter Patrick Hayes — by improperly attempting to charge fees for public records, failing to provide records in electronic format, prohibiting the use of digitizing equipment and denying a request without explanation.</p>
<p>The Spaceport Authority responded that it had not violated IPRA and said the determination from the AG’s office contained “legal inaccuracies.” AG spokesman James Hallinan said his office “absolutely” stands by its findings in Hayes’ case.</p>
<p>Read more spaceport stories</p>
<p>Is Spaceport America taking flight?</p>
<p>Funding woes could ‘cripple’ NM spaceport as other states invest</p>
<p>Transparency problems plague Spaceport America</p>
<p>How much secrecy does Spaceport America need?</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>After years of delays, Virgin Galactic prepares for spaceflights from NM</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>©2017 the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.)</p>
<p>Visit the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.) at <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com" type="external">www.lcsun-news.com</a></p>
<p>Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.</p>
<p>_____</p> | 1,191 |
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<p />
<p>The securities industry has been profitable for five consecutive years, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said. It had 165,200 workers in New York City as of December, or 12.6 percent fewer than before the crisis.</p>
<p>Profits for broker/dealer operations of some 200 New York Stock Exchange members - the traditional measure of profitability for the securities industry - totaled nearly $16.7 billion last year, down 30 percent from a year earlier.</p>
<p>"Although profits were lower than the prior year, the industry still had a good year in 2013 despite costly legal settlements and higher interest rates," DiNapoli said. "Wall Street continues to demonstrate resilience as it evolves in a changing regulatory environment."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Regulatory changes have required larger reserves, limited proprietary trading and imposed other changes intended to reduce risk. Firms now defer a larger share of bonuses, and the comptroller's report for 2013 includes money deferred from prior years.</p>
<p>The report showed the bonus pool for the city's securities employees grew 15 percent last year to $26.7 billion during the traditional December-March bonus season, with the pool increased by 44 percent over the past two years driven by deferred compensation.</p>
<p>The average salary including bonuses in 2012 was $360,700, or more than five times greater than the rest of the rest of the private sector. The industry accounted for 22 percent of all private sector city wages in 2012 and 5 percent of the jobs, the report said. The securities industry generated an estimated $3.8 billion in city taxes in fiscal year 2013 and $10.3 billion in state taxes in the state's last fiscal year.</p> | NY comptroller: Average Wall St. bonus over $164K | false | https://abqjournal.com/366877/ny-comptroller-average-wall-st-bonus-over-164k.html | 2least
| NY comptroller: Average Wall St. bonus over $164K
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The securities industry has been profitable for five consecutive years, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said. It had 165,200 workers in New York City as of December, or 12.6 percent fewer than before the crisis.</p>
<p>Profits for broker/dealer operations of some 200 New York Stock Exchange members - the traditional measure of profitability for the securities industry - totaled nearly $16.7 billion last year, down 30 percent from a year earlier.</p>
<p>"Although profits were lower than the prior year, the industry still had a good year in 2013 despite costly legal settlements and higher interest rates," DiNapoli said. "Wall Street continues to demonstrate resilience as it evolves in a changing regulatory environment."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Regulatory changes have required larger reserves, limited proprietary trading and imposed other changes intended to reduce risk. Firms now defer a larger share of bonuses, and the comptroller's report for 2013 includes money deferred from prior years.</p>
<p>The report showed the bonus pool for the city's securities employees grew 15 percent last year to $26.7 billion during the traditional December-March bonus season, with the pool increased by 44 percent over the past two years driven by deferred compensation.</p>
<p>The average salary including bonuses in 2012 was $360,700, or more than five times greater than the rest of the rest of the private sector. The industry accounted for 22 percent of all private sector city wages in 2012 and 5 percent of the jobs, the report said. The securities industry generated an estimated $3.8 billion in city taxes in fiscal year 2013 and $10.3 billion in state taxes in the state's last fiscal year.</p> | 1,192 |
|
<p>It is 48 years ago since I last felt the pain. Woke up then and woke up now in the middle of the night. Had just got my own room. When the pain came I went in to mom and dad and lay down between them. My mother woke up while my father continued sleeping as usual.</p>
<p>I was suffering from an ordinary children’s disease, an ear infection. Most people get it at some point during their childhood. All my four siblings at some point felt the burning pain. I often felt it. It began with a slight aching pain, the ear swelling up, the pain occupying half my head and forcing its way to my palate. Despite my pain my mother was calm. She gave me an aspirin. I cried intensively, feeling incredibly sorry for myself. But my mother calmed me and promised that I would soon feel better. “Tomorrow we will go to the nurse and then the pain will go away,” said mother. I was calmed and soon feel asleep against my mother’s shoulder, seven years old.</p>
<p>And now, as the pain returns 48 years later, it is my mother’s composure that I remember. My mother knew that there was help to get, knew that the help would come as soon as breakfast had been eaten and my father had gone to work.</p>
<p>In the morning, after breakfast, we went to Nurse Appelmo who examined me and referred us to Doctor Westroth. The doctor had his clinic in Värnamo, 12 km away. We went there with the bus. The doctor saw me before lunch. He examined me with his large black magnifying glass which looked like a flashlight. Doctor Westroth told my mother, “It does not look good, but go and get the medicine and the boy will soon feel better.” And my mother was the whole time filled with a sense of calm when we went to the pharmacy and bought the pills. Before we took the bus back home we celebrated at a coffee shop.</p>
<p>Now the pain has returned. I live in Jerusalem and go to St. Joseph’s hospital. Doctor G receives me. Examines me with his big black magnifying glass and says, “Oh dear, this does not look good.” He picks up the nasty suction apparatus. It hurts. I don’t scream but it’s difficult to lay still. Doctor G prescribes four different kinds of medicines, two pills, an ointment and ear drops. “Come back tomorrow,” says Doctor G, “and we’ll clean out the ear once more.”</p>
<p>I have five children who are all grown up. They all got ear infections at some point. Sara got it more often than the rest. She was a so-called “ear child.” She was operated at Sahlgrenska hospital four times. Each time she had anasthesia and the doctor put in a small red tube that drained the fluid behind the ear drum. The doctor looked at me and Sara after the operations and said, “Now you’ll soon get better.” That is how it’s done in a democracy; one ensures that a child soon gets better. On the way out, before we left the department at the hospital, Sara got to pick a sticker from a little bowl.</p>
<p>When I am examined by Doctor G and get the necessary help, I begin to think about how it’s over there, in Gaza. The place that I could recently visit. I ask Doctor G how you solve the pain with ear infections. Doctor G looks at me dejected and exclaims, “We are talking about thousands of children who are in pain. They cry themselves through the night. They fall asleep from exhaustion.” There are just moms and dads and neighbors in despair. They know that there is no help to found, they know that when the sun breaks through the clouds, they are still missing the necessary. That’s how it is under occupation when you are living in a ghetto behind walls, in war.</p>
<p>Despite constant air raids, Nayla fell asleep early but soon woke up by Fatima, her youngest daughter, crying, her ears hurts and it’s the seventh night. Soon her daughter keeps the whole family awake. The neighbors wake up. The whole family walks around as if in a daze, in the dark, frightened, in a cold room, everyone wanting to leave, to get away from all the screaming and the bombs.</p>
<p>And the calm, my mother’s composure, that I got as a child, Nayla is unable to give. Fatima looks at her mother, does not understand what is happening. Fatima asks for help, but there is no help. Fatima cries, Nayla cries. In the end, everyone cries. The family falls asleep from utter exhaustion. But the calm only lasts for a short while. Soon the bombs fall and everyone wakes up, soon you can hear the screams and the calls for help.</p>
<p>Dawn arrives, but there is no help to get. Nayla is in terrible pain. The ones who have created hell, who created the refugee camp, the ghetto, who built the wall, who closed the gates, they continue to not take responsibility. The pharmacies are almost empty. The hospital is to dangerous to go since the bombs keep falling.</p>
<p>To occupy was easy but to take the consequences and provide the most basic rights for the occupied, that was not possible, they did not want to do that.</p>
<p>BBC and CNN report hour after hour about the numbers of dead, the numbers of wounded. The numbers have now become so high that the international community must act. Not even the USA uses its veto against a new resolution.</p>
<p>While we count the dead and the wounded I cannot stop thinking about the thousands of children with ear infections. So small in the big drama, so common and ordinary. How does one deal with the pain, night after night? At the same time, I think I begin to understand what happens within all of these children. Begin to understand what the pain creates, what all the sleepless nights lead to.</p>
<p>I have very strong memories of the sense of calm. My mother’s and my father’s calm. My father never needed to wake up when my pain struck. They had total faith and confidence in knowing that there was always help to get, because they believed in a system. Believed in the democratic system. Knew that the ones in power will use it in favor of the good.</p>
<p>When the children in the Gaza Strip go out into their lives, big enough to cross the street on their own, they probably do not have my sense of calm and safety. They do not have the same faith in the society, in international rules, in diplomacy, in the police, in the military. No one has been able to tell them that tomorrow everything will become better. What they will remember and what they will talk about is all of these bombs, the high gray wall and the pain in mother’s desperate eyes, filled with tears and sadness.</p>
<p>MATS SVENSSON, a former Swedish diplomat working on the staff of SIDA, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, is presently following the ongoing occupation of Palestine. &#160;He can be reached at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | For Fatima in Gaza | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/01/19/for-fatima-in-gaza/ | 2009-01-19 | 4left
| For Fatima in Gaza
<p>It is 48 years ago since I last felt the pain. Woke up then and woke up now in the middle of the night. Had just got my own room. When the pain came I went in to mom and dad and lay down between them. My mother woke up while my father continued sleeping as usual.</p>
<p>I was suffering from an ordinary children’s disease, an ear infection. Most people get it at some point during their childhood. All my four siblings at some point felt the burning pain. I often felt it. It began with a slight aching pain, the ear swelling up, the pain occupying half my head and forcing its way to my palate. Despite my pain my mother was calm. She gave me an aspirin. I cried intensively, feeling incredibly sorry for myself. But my mother calmed me and promised that I would soon feel better. “Tomorrow we will go to the nurse and then the pain will go away,” said mother. I was calmed and soon feel asleep against my mother’s shoulder, seven years old.</p>
<p>And now, as the pain returns 48 years later, it is my mother’s composure that I remember. My mother knew that there was help to get, knew that the help would come as soon as breakfast had been eaten and my father had gone to work.</p>
<p>In the morning, after breakfast, we went to Nurse Appelmo who examined me and referred us to Doctor Westroth. The doctor had his clinic in Värnamo, 12 km away. We went there with the bus. The doctor saw me before lunch. He examined me with his large black magnifying glass which looked like a flashlight. Doctor Westroth told my mother, “It does not look good, but go and get the medicine and the boy will soon feel better.” And my mother was the whole time filled with a sense of calm when we went to the pharmacy and bought the pills. Before we took the bus back home we celebrated at a coffee shop.</p>
<p>Now the pain has returned. I live in Jerusalem and go to St. Joseph’s hospital. Doctor G receives me. Examines me with his big black magnifying glass and says, “Oh dear, this does not look good.” He picks up the nasty suction apparatus. It hurts. I don’t scream but it’s difficult to lay still. Doctor G prescribes four different kinds of medicines, two pills, an ointment and ear drops. “Come back tomorrow,” says Doctor G, “and we’ll clean out the ear once more.”</p>
<p>I have five children who are all grown up. They all got ear infections at some point. Sara got it more often than the rest. She was a so-called “ear child.” She was operated at Sahlgrenska hospital four times. Each time she had anasthesia and the doctor put in a small red tube that drained the fluid behind the ear drum. The doctor looked at me and Sara after the operations and said, “Now you’ll soon get better.” That is how it’s done in a democracy; one ensures that a child soon gets better. On the way out, before we left the department at the hospital, Sara got to pick a sticker from a little bowl.</p>
<p>When I am examined by Doctor G and get the necessary help, I begin to think about how it’s over there, in Gaza. The place that I could recently visit. I ask Doctor G how you solve the pain with ear infections. Doctor G looks at me dejected and exclaims, “We are talking about thousands of children who are in pain. They cry themselves through the night. They fall asleep from exhaustion.” There are just moms and dads and neighbors in despair. They know that there is no help to found, they know that when the sun breaks through the clouds, they are still missing the necessary. That’s how it is under occupation when you are living in a ghetto behind walls, in war.</p>
<p>Despite constant air raids, Nayla fell asleep early but soon woke up by Fatima, her youngest daughter, crying, her ears hurts and it’s the seventh night. Soon her daughter keeps the whole family awake. The neighbors wake up. The whole family walks around as if in a daze, in the dark, frightened, in a cold room, everyone wanting to leave, to get away from all the screaming and the bombs.</p>
<p>And the calm, my mother’s composure, that I got as a child, Nayla is unable to give. Fatima looks at her mother, does not understand what is happening. Fatima asks for help, but there is no help. Fatima cries, Nayla cries. In the end, everyone cries. The family falls asleep from utter exhaustion. But the calm only lasts for a short while. Soon the bombs fall and everyone wakes up, soon you can hear the screams and the calls for help.</p>
<p>Dawn arrives, but there is no help to get. Nayla is in terrible pain. The ones who have created hell, who created the refugee camp, the ghetto, who built the wall, who closed the gates, they continue to not take responsibility. The pharmacies are almost empty. The hospital is to dangerous to go since the bombs keep falling.</p>
<p>To occupy was easy but to take the consequences and provide the most basic rights for the occupied, that was not possible, they did not want to do that.</p>
<p>BBC and CNN report hour after hour about the numbers of dead, the numbers of wounded. The numbers have now become so high that the international community must act. Not even the USA uses its veto against a new resolution.</p>
<p>While we count the dead and the wounded I cannot stop thinking about the thousands of children with ear infections. So small in the big drama, so common and ordinary. How does one deal with the pain, night after night? At the same time, I think I begin to understand what happens within all of these children. Begin to understand what the pain creates, what all the sleepless nights lead to.</p>
<p>I have very strong memories of the sense of calm. My mother’s and my father’s calm. My father never needed to wake up when my pain struck. They had total faith and confidence in knowing that there was always help to get, because they believed in a system. Believed in the democratic system. Knew that the ones in power will use it in favor of the good.</p>
<p>When the children in the Gaza Strip go out into their lives, big enough to cross the street on their own, they probably do not have my sense of calm and safety. They do not have the same faith in the society, in international rules, in diplomacy, in the police, in the military. No one has been able to tell them that tomorrow everything will become better. What they will remember and what they will talk about is all of these bombs, the high gray wall and the pain in mother’s desperate eyes, filled with tears and sadness.</p>
<p>MATS SVENSSON, a former Swedish diplomat working on the staff of SIDA, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, is presently following the ongoing occupation of Palestine. &#160;He can be reached at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 1,193 |
<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/struglynshynrz/4784240662/" type="external">Flickr / CC 2.0</a></p>
<p>Every week the Truthdig editorial staff selects a Truthdigger of the Week, a person or group worthy of recognition for speaking truth to power, breaking the story or blowing the whistle. It is not a lifetime achievement award. Rather, we’re looking for newsmakers whose actions in a given week are worth celebrating.</p>
<p>As many of our readers <a href="" type="internal">know</a>, Truthdig, along with Truthout, CounterPunch, Naked Capitalism and WikiLeaks, among 200 alternative news websites from all over the political spectrum, were named as Russian propagandists on a blacklist compiled by a shadowy site called PropOrNot that was used as a source for a chilling piece by Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg on Nov. 24. The list, which some in the media have branded “McCarthyite,” has been widely criticized, particularly because Timberg and the Post did not disclose sufficient identifying details about the accusing group, which has not released its members’ names. And neither Timberg nor Post editors have provided any insight on their reasoning in publishing PropOrNot’s findings. For its part, PropOrNot continues to offer erratic, at times childish, responses to the backlash.</p>
<p>In the days after publication of the Post’s story, <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/28/journalists-denounce-wapo-fake-news-blacklist-red-scare-redux" type="external">many fellow journalists</a> have come to the defense of Truthdig and several other sites the list identified, tearing apart both the Post for its role in propagating the shameful list and PropOrNot’s careless methodology in choosing the publications it named. Below are some of the highlights of the defenders’ responses.</p>
<p />
<p>At <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/" type="external">The Intercept</a>, Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton wrote a detailed account of the entire fiasco and condemned The Washington Post’s part in disseminating so-called research by this “new, hidden, and very shady group”:</p>
<p>Even more disturbing than the Post’s shoddy journalism in this instance is the broader trend in which any wild conspiracy theory or McCarthyite attack is now permitted in U.S. discourse as long as it involves Russia and Putin — just as was true in the 1950s when stories of how the Russians were poisoning the U.S. water supply or infiltrating American institutions were commonplace. Any anti-Russia story was — and is — instantly vested with credibility, while anyone questioning its veracity or evidentiary basis is subject to attacks on their loyalties or, at best, vilified as “useful idiots.” … The Post itself — now posing as a warrior against “fake news” — published an article in September that treated with great seriousness the claim that Hillary Clinton collapsed on 9/11 Day because she was poisoned by Putin. And that’s to say nothing of the paper’s disgraceful history of convincing Americans that Saddam [Hussein] was building non-existent nuclear weapons and had cultivated a vibrant alliance with al Qaeda. As is so often the case, those who mostly loudly warn of “fake news” from others are themselves the most aggressive disseminators of it.</p>
<p>Indeed, what happened here is the essence of fake news. The Post story served the agendas of many factions: those who want to believe Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton; those who want to believe that the internet and social media are a grave menace that needs to be controlled, in contrast to the objective truth that reliable old media outlets once issued; those who want a resurrection of the Cold War. So those who saw tweets and Facebook posts promoting this Post story instantly clicked and shared and promoted the story without an iota of critical thought or examination of whether the claims were true, because they wanted the claims to be true. That behavior included countless journalists.</p>
<p>Adrian Chen outright called Timberg’s piece and PropOrNot’s list “propaganda about Russian propaganda” in a piece for <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-propaganda-about-russian-propaganda" type="external">The New Yorker</a>, in which he explained that he had passed on the very same shoddy “research” that Timberg and the Post deemed worthy of printing:</p>
<p>The story of PropOrNot should serve as a cautionary tale to those who fixate on malignant digital influences as a primary explanation for Trump’s stunning election. The story combines two of the most popular technological villains of post-election analysis—fake news and Russian subterfuge—into a single tantalizing package. Like the most effective Russian propaganda, the report weaved together truth and misinformation.</p>
<p>Bogus news stories, which overwhelmingly favored Trump, did flood social media throughout the campaign, and the hack of the Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s e-mail seems likely to have been the work of Russian intelligence services. But, as harmful as these phenomena might be, the prospect of legitimate dissenting voices being labeled fake news or Russian propaganda by mysterious groups of ex-government employees, with the help of a national newspaper, is even scarier. Vasily Gatov told me, “To blame internal social effects on external perpetrators is very Putinistic.”</p>
<p>In a piece for <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/washington-post-blacklist-story-is-shameful-disgusting-w452543" type="external">Rolling Stone</a>, Matt Taibbi called the Post’s story “shameful and disgusting”:</p>
<p>All of this is an outgrowth of this horrible election season we just lived through.</p>
<p>A lot of reporters over the summer were so scared by the prospect of a Trump presidency that they talked – in some cases publicly – about abandoning traditional ideas about journalistic “distance” from politicians, in favor of open advocacy for the Clinton campaign. “Trump is testing the norms of objectivity in journalism,” is how The Times put it.</p>
<p>These journalists seemed totally indifferent to the Pandora’s box they were opening. They didn’t understand that most politicians have no use for critical media. Many of them don’t see alternative points of view as healthy or even legitimate. If you polled a hundred politicians about the profession, 99 would say that all reporters are obstructionist scum whose removal from the planet would be a boon to society.</p>
<p>The only time politicians like the media is when we’re helping them get elected or push through certain policies, like for instance helping spread dubious stories about Iraq’s WMD capability. Otherwise, they despise us. So news outlets that get into bed with politicians are usually making a devil’s bargain they don’t fully understand.</p>
<p>They may think they’re being patriotic (as many did during the Iraq/WMD episode), but in the end what will happen is that they will adopt the point of view of their political sponsors. They will soon enough denounce other reporters and begin to see themselves as part of the power structure, as opposed to a check on it.</p>
<p>This is the ultimate in stupidity and self-annihilating behavior. The power of the press comes from its independence from politicians. Jump into bed with them and you not only won’t ever be able to get out, but you’ll win nothing but a loss of real influence and the undying loathing of audiences.</p>
<p>Joshua Frank, co-editor of “ <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/02/counterpunch-as-russian-propagandists-the-washington-posts-shallow-smear/" type="external">CounterPunch</a>,” another left-leaning site named on the blacklist, details a revealing email exchange with PropOrNot:</p>
<p>In further emails, I explained to the group that there were many other media outlets that were not tools of Russian propaganda; Truthout, Truthdig, BlackAgendaReport, Antiwar.com, among others. Here is their reply:</p>
<p>“If Truthout, Truthdig, Antiwar, BlackAgendaReport, etc, were to reach out to us like you did, things might well end up playing out very similarly to how this one has! We’ve asked people to do that on our site. Several have. Others have not.”</p>
<p>And then this gem:</p>
<p>“If someone contacts us and the resulting conversation makes clear that they understand, for example, how Putin’s Russia is a revisionist authoritarian wannabe-imperialist kleptocracy that uses ‘fake news’ as online propaganda, then we have a lot of common ground. That factors into our understanding of the merits, but more importantly, becomes a basis for constructive movement forward.”</p>
<p>Huh? That isn’t very sound methodology if you ask me, more like a shallow smear campaign manufactured by amateurs. PropOrNot will consider taking these sites off their blacklist, not based on the sites’ content but on whether or not they contacted PropOrNot directly and if “they understand” Putin is a bad hombre? The group lists these aforementioned sites right along RT and Sputnik News, both of which are openly funded by the Russian government and provide a point of view that’s in line with the Kremlin. It’s clearly a case of guilt by association.</p>
<p>See more of Frank’s, as well as Truthdig columnist Sonali Kolhatkar’s, responses to the smear in the video below.</p>
<p>The Nation’s <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/the-washington-post-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist/" type="external">James Carden</a> recalled a 2014 report by The Interpreter that can be seen as a similar attempt at blacklisting writers and organizations for supposedly putting forth “disinformation.” Carden wrote then that the fact that the media hailed the report rather instead of condemning it was a harbinger of the media’s fragile future:</p>
<p>An ominous sign, as well as a sign of things to come, since, as we have seen, throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, much of the liberal commentariat worked itself into a neo-McCarthyite frenzy from which it has not yet recovered. By this point it hardly needs pointing out that some liberal pundits have themselves been actively engaged in a disinformation campaign for some time. How else can one describe former New Republic editor Franklin Foer’s thoroughly debunked piece on the Trump Organization’s “secret email server” connected to a Russian bank.</p>
<p>Max Blumenthal decried the PropOrNot blacklist and the Post in a scathing report for <a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/washington-post-promotes-shadowy-website-accuses-200-publications-russian-propaganda-plants" type="external">AlterNet</a>, coming to the following alarming conclusion:</p>
<p>PropOrNot’s malicious agenda is clearly spelled out on its website. While denying McCarthyite intentions, the group is openly attempting to compel “formal investigations by the U.S. government, because the kind of folks who make propaganda for brutal authoritarian oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business.” The group also seeks to brand major progressive politics sites (and a number of prominent right-wing opinion outlets) as “‘gray’ fake-media propaganda outlets” influenced or directly operated by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). It can then compel Facebook and Google to ban them, denying them the ad revenue they rely on to survive. … As scrutiny of PropOrNot increases, its credibility is rapidly unraveling. But that has not stopped Beltway media wiseguys and Democratic political operatives from hyping its claims. Fake news and Russian propaganda have become the great post-election moral panic, a creeping Sharia-style conspiracy theory for shell-shocked liberals. Hoping to punish the dark foreign forces they blame for rigging the election, many of these insiders have latched onto a McCarthyite campaign that calls for government investigations of a wide array of alternative media outlets. In this case, the medicine might be worse than the disease.</p>
<p>From a different side of the political gamut, we have Philip Giraldi’s critique, published in <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-fake-news-fake-story/" type="external">The American Conservative</a>:</p>
<p>The mainstream media, which clearly is having some difficulty in explaining why anyone should pay attention to it, is eager to discover new reasons why the reporting in the lead-up to the elections was so awful. It is convenient to claim that the Russians planted false stories, and furthermore are attempting to destroy our democracy, which would be a good segue if only anyone would actually believe any of it. The fact is that the public does not trust the media because the reporting has been both intrinsically biased and selective, with Team Clinton being the beneficiary of the status quo far more often than not in the recent electoral campaign. The clearly perceived bias is precisely why the public seeks out alternative sources of information and latches on to fake stories—and while it may be true that a Russian government ministry is responsible for some of what is being produced, the allegation that there exists a plot to destroy American democracy is a bridge way too far. The Democratic and Republican parties are already doing that without any help from Moscow.</p>
<p>For more information on Truthdig’s response to the blacklist, here are Truthdig communications coordinator Sarah Wesley, left, Deputy Editor Kasia Anderson, Publisher Zuade Kaufman and Editor in Chief Robert Scheer discussing the issue in a recent Facebook Live session:</p>
<p>Meanwhile at <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/25/1604125/-Washington-Post-promotes-fake-news-blacklist-that-includes-reputable-progressive-news-sources" type="external">Daily Kos</a>, a user wrote, “The way to fight fake news is not to give credence to anonymous trolls compiling blacklists. It’s to collaborate in verification and support for news sources that have a record of applying consistent editorial standards.” And even more-mainstream publications such as <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/11/25/russian-fake-news/" type="external">Fortune</a> and <a href="https://origin-nyi.thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/media/307886-jeff-bezos-owns-the-washington-post-and-the-journalism-its" type="external">The Hill</a> discredited PropOrNot and called the Post out on its promotion of the shady organization.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, not everyone has <a href="http://fair.org/home/why-are-media-outlets-still-citing-discredited-fake-news-blacklist/" type="external">caught on to the fact</a> that, as Fortune puts it “No, Russian Agents Are Not Behind Every Piece of Fake News You See,” and <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/02/politics/russia-fake-news-reality/" type="external">CNN</a>, MSNBC and others have continued to spread the story as truth despite the many credible critiques mentioned above.</p>
<p>But this just highlights the importance of the denunciations by the many journalists who continue to speak out against this censorship attempt and in favor of investigative reporters’ work in general. At a time when freedom of the press is under fire from several directions, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. And true journalism cannot survive in an environment that favors an official version of facts and would squelch independent thinkers whose main goal is keep our nation’s leaders accountable.</p>
<p>For this reason, those who called the Post and PropOrNot out on their McCarthyite bullshit are our Truthdiggers of the Week.</p> | Truthdiggers of the Week: Journalists Who Ripped Washington Post, PropOrNot for McCarthyite Hogwash | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/truthdiggers-of-the-week-journalists-who-ripped-washington-post-propornot-for-mccarthyite-hogwash/ | 2016-12-04 | 4left
| Truthdiggers of the Week: Journalists Who Ripped Washington Post, PropOrNot for McCarthyite Hogwash
<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/struglynshynrz/4784240662/" type="external">Flickr / CC 2.0</a></p>
<p>Every week the Truthdig editorial staff selects a Truthdigger of the Week, a person or group worthy of recognition for speaking truth to power, breaking the story or blowing the whistle. It is not a lifetime achievement award. Rather, we’re looking for newsmakers whose actions in a given week are worth celebrating.</p>
<p>As many of our readers <a href="" type="internal">know</a>, Truthdig, along with Truthout, CounterPunch, Naked Capitalism and WikiLeaks, among 200 alternative news websites from all over the political spectrum, were named as Russian propagandists on a blacklist compiled by a shadowy site called PropOrNot that was used as a source for a chilling piece by Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg on Nov. 24. The list, which some in the media have branded “McCarthyite,” has been widely criticized, particularly because Timberg and the Post did not disclose sufficient identifying details about the accusing group, which has not released its members’ names. And neither Timberg nor Post editors have provided any insight on their reasoning in publishing PropOrNot’s findings. For its part, PropOrNot continues to offer erratic, at times childish, responses to the backlash.</p>
<p>In the days after publication of the Post’s story, <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/28/journalists-denounce-wapo-fake-news-blacklist-red-scare-redux" type="external">many fellow journalists</a> have come to the defense of Truthdig and several other sites the list identified, tearing apart both the Post for its role in propagating the shameful list and PropOrNot’s careless methodology in choosing the publications it named. Below are some of the highlights of the defenders’ responses.</p>
<p />
<p>At <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/" type="external">The Intercept</a>, Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton wrote a detailed account of the entire fiasco and condemned The Washington Post’s part in disseminating so-called research by this “new, hidden, and very shady group”:</p>
<p>Even more disturbing than the Post’s shoddy journalism in this instance is the broader trend in which any wild conspiracy theory or McCarthyite attack is now permitted in U.S. discourse as long as it involves Russia and Putin — just as was true in the 1950s when stories of how the Russians were poisoning the U.S. water supply or infiltrating American institutions were commonplace. Any anti-Russia story was — and is — instantly vested with credibility, while anyone questioning its veracity or evidentiary basis is subject to attacks on their loyalties or, at best, vilified as “useful idiots.” … The Post itself — now posing as a warrior against “fake news” — published an article in September that treated with great seriousness the claim that Hillary Clinton collapsed on 9/11 Day because she was poisoned by Putin. And that’s to say nothing of the paper’s disgraceful history of convincing Americans that Saddam [Hussein] was building non-existent nuclear weapons and had cultivated a vibrant alliance with al Qaeda. As is so often the case, those who mostly loudly warn of “fake news” from others are themselves the most aggressive disseminators of it.</p>
<p>Indeed, what happened here is the essence of fake news. The Post story served the agendas of many factions: those who want to believe Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton; those who want to believe that the internet and social media are a grave menace that needs to be controlled, in contrast to the objective truth that reliable old media outlets once issued; those who want a resurrection of the Cold War. So those who saw tweets and Facebook posts promoting this Post story instantly clicked and shared and promoted the story without an iota of critical thought or examination of whether the claims were true, because they wanted the claims to be true. That behavior included countless journalists.</p>
<p>Adrian Chen outright called Timberg’s piece and PropOrNot’s list “propaganda about Russian propaganda” in a piece for <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-propaganda-about-russian-propaganda" type="external">The New Yorker</a>, in which he explained that he had passed on the very same shoddy “research” that Timberg and the Post deemed worthy of printing:</p>
<p>The story of PropOrNot should serve as a cautionary tale to those who fixate on malignant digital influences as a primary explanation for Trump’s stunning election. The story combines two of the most popular technological villains of post-election analysis—fake news and Russian subterfuge—into a single tantalizing package. Like the most effective Russian propaganda, the report weaved together truth and misinformation.</p>
<p>Bogus news stories, which overwhelmingly favored Trump, did flood social media throughout the campaign, and the hack of the Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s e-mail seems likely to have been the work of Russian intelligence services. But, as harmful as these phenomena might be, the prospect of legitimate dissenting voices being labeled fake news or Russian propaganda by mysterious groups of ex-government employees, with the help of a national newspaper, is even scarier. Vasily Gatov told me, “To blame internal social effects on external perpetrators is very Putinistic.”</p>
<p>In a piece for <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/washington-post-blacklist-story-is-shameful-disgusting-w452543" type="external">Rolling Stone</a>, Matt Taibbi called the Post’s story “shameful and disgusting”:</p>
<p>All of this is an outgrowth of this horrible election season we just lived through.</p>
<p>A lot of reporters over the summer were so scared by the prospect of a Trump presidency that they talked – in some cases publicly – about abandoning traditional ideas about journalistic “distance” from politicians, in favor of open advocacy for the Clinton campaign. “Trump is testing the norms of objectivity in journalism,” is how The Times put it.</p>
<p>These journalists seemed totally indifferent to the Pandora’s box they were opening. They didn’t understand that most politicians have no use for critical media. Many of them don’t see alternative points of view as healthy or even legitimate. If you polled a hundred politicians about the profession, 99 would say that all reporters are obstructionist scum whose removal from the planet would be a boon to society.</p>
<p>The only time politicians like the media is when we’re helping them get elected or push through certain policies, like for instance helping spread dubious stories about Iraq’s WMD capability. Otherwise, they despise us. So news outlets that get into bed with politicians are usually making a devil’s bargain they don’t fully understand.</p>
<p>They may think they’re being patriotic (as many did during the Iraq/WMD episode), but in the end what will happen is that they will adopt the point of view of their political sponsors. They will soon enough denounce other reporters and begin to see themselves as part of the power structure, as opposed to a check on it.</p>
<p>This is the ultimate in stupidity and self-annihilating behavior. The power of the press comes from its independence from politicians. Jump into bed with them and you not only won’t ever be able to get out, but you’ll win nothing but a loss of real influence and the undying loathing of audiences.</p>
<p>Joshua Frank, co-editor of “ <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/02/counterpunch-as-russian-propagandists-the-washington-posts-shallow-smear/" type="external">CounterPunch</a>,” another left-leaning site named on the blacklist, details a revealing email exchange with PropOrNot:</p>
<p>In further emails, I explained to the group that there were many other media outlets that were not tools of Russian propaganda; Truthout, Truthdig, BlackAgendaReport, Antiwar.com, among others. Here is their reply:</p>
<p>“If Truthout, Truthdig, Antiwar, BlackAgendaReport, etc, were to reach out to us like you did, things might well end up playing out very similarly to how this one has! We’ve asked people to do that on our site. Several have. Others have not.”</p>
<p>And then this gem:</p>
<p>“If someone contacts us and the resulting conversation makes clear that they understand, for example, how Putin’s Russia is a revisionist authoritarian wannabe-imperialist kleptocracy that uses ‘fake news’ as online propaganda, then we have a lot of common ground. That factors into our understanding of the merits, but more importantly, becomes a basis for constructive movement forward.”</p>
<p>Huh? That isn’t very sound methodology if you ask me, more like a shallow smear campaign manufactured by amateurs. PropOrNot will consider taking these sites off their blacklist, not based on the sites’ content but on whether or not they contacted PropOrNot directly and if “they understand” Putin is a bad hombre? The group lists these aforementioned sites right along RT and Sputnik News, both of which are openly funded by the Russian government and provide a point of view that’s in line with the Kremlin. It’s clearly a case of guilt by association.</p>
<p>See more of Frank’s, as well as Truthdig columnist Sonali Kolhatkar’s, responses to the smear in the video below.</p>
<p>The Nation’s <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/the-washington-post-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist/" type="external">James Carden</a> recalled a 2014 report by The Interpreter that can be seen as a similar attempt at blacklisting writers and organizations for supposedly putting forth “disinformation.” Carden wrote then that the fact that the media hailed the report rather instead of condemning it was a harbinger of the media’s fragile future:</p>
<p>An ominous sign, as well as a sign of things to come, since, as we have seen, throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, much of the liberal commentariat worked itself into a neo-McCarthyite frenzy from which it has not yet recovered. By this point it hardly needs pointing out that some liberal pundits have themselves been actively engaged in a disinformation campaign for some time. How else can one describe former New Republic editor Franklin Foer’s thoroughly debunked piece on the Trump Organization’s “secret email server” connected to a Russian bank.</p>
<p>Max Blumenthal decried the PropOrNot blacklist and the Post in a scathing report for <a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/washington-post-promotes-shadowy-website-accuses-200-publications-russian-propaganda-plants" type="external">AlterNet</a>, coming to the following alarming conclusion:</p>
<p>PropOrNot’s malicious agenda is clearly spelled out on its website. While denying McCarthyite intentions, the group is openly attempting to compel “formal investigations by the U.S. government, because the kind of folks who make propaganda for brutal authoritarian oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business.” The group also seeks to brand major progressive politics sites (and a number of prominent right-wing opinion outlets) as “‘gray’ fake-media propaganda outlets” influenced or directly operated by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). It can then compel Facebook and Google to ban them, denying them the ad revenue they rely on to survive. … As scrutiny of PropOrNot increases, its credibility is rapidly unraveling. But that has not stopped Beltway media wiseguys and Democratic political operatives from hyping its claims. Fake news and Russian propaganda have become the great post-election moral panic, a creeping Sharia-style conspiracy theory for shell-shocked liberals. Hoping to punish the dark foreign forces they blame for rigging the election, many of these insiders have latched onto a McCarthyite campaign that calls for government investigations of a wide array of alternative media outlets. In this case, the medicine might be worse than the disease.</p>
<p>From a different side of the political gamut, we have Philip Giraldi’s critique, published in <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-fake-news-fake-story/" type="external">The American Conservative</a>:</p>
<p>The mainstream media, which clearly is having some difficulty in explaining why anyone should pay attention to it, is eager to discover new reasons why the reporting in the lead-up to the elections was so awful. It is convenient to claim that the Russians planted false stories, and furthermore are attempting to destroy our democracy, which would be a good segue if only anyone would actually believe any of it. The fact is that the public does not trust the media because the reporting has been both intrinsically biased and selective, with Team Clinton being the beneficiary of the status quo far more often than not in the recent electoral campaign. The clearly perceived bias is precisely why the public seeks out alternative sources of information and latches on to fake stories—and while it may be true that a Russian government ministry is responsible for some of what is being produced, the allegation that there exists a plot to destroy American democracy is a bridge way too far. The Democratic and Republican parties are already doing that without any help from Moscow.</p>
<p>For more information on Truthdig’s response to the blacklist, here are Truthdig communications coordinator Sarah Wesley, left, Deputy Editor Kasia Anderson, Publisher Zuade Kaufman and Editor in Chief Robert Scheer discussing the issue in a recent Facebook Live session:</p>
<p>Meanwhile at <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/25/1604125/-Washington-Post-promotes-fake-news-blacklist-that-includes-reputable-progressive-news-sources" type="external">Daily Kos</a>, a user wrote, “The way to fight fake news is not to give credence to anonymous trolls compiling blacklists. It’s to collaborate in verification and support for news sources that have a record of applying consistent editorial standards.” And even more-mainstream publications such as <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/11/25/russian-fake-news/" type="external">Fortune</a> and <a href="https://origin-nyi.thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/media/307886-jeff-bezos-owns-the-washington-post-and-the-journalism-its" type="external">The Hill</a> discredited PropOrNot and called the Post out on its promotion of the shady organization.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, not everyone has <a href="http://fair.org/home/why-are-media-outlets-still-citing-discredited-fake-news-blacklist/" type="external">caught on to the fact</a> that, as Fortune puts it “No, Russian Agents Are Not Behind Every Piece of Fake News You See,” and <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/02/politics/russia-fake-news-reality/" type="external">CNN</a>, MSNBC and others have continued to spread the story as truth despite the many credible critiques mentioned above.</p>
<p>But this just highlights the importance of the denunciations by the many journalists who continue to speak out against this censorship attempt and in favor of investigative reporters’ work in general. At a time when freedom of the press is under fire from several directions, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. And true journalism cannot survive in an environment that favors an official version of facts and would squelch independent thinkers whose main goal is keep our nation’s leaders accountable.</p>
<p>For this reason, those who called the Post and PropOrNot out on their McCarthyite bullshit are our Truthdiggers of the Week.</p> | 1,194 |
<p>Twitter has bowed to threats of substantial fines and released messages sent by Occupy Wall Street protester Malcolm Harris relating to the arrest of roughly 700 people at a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge in October 2011.</p>
<p>Harris has said police encouraged protesters onto the bridge to make it easier to arrest them. The NYPD maintains demonstrators were commanded not to cross the bridge.</p>
<p>Twitter had refused to hand over the messages for months, saying that doing so would undermine privacy laws and its commitment to its users.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>BBC:</p>
<p>As the large number of messages are no longer available online, the Manhattan district attorney took legal action to win access to Mr Harris’ account and three months’ worth of messages.</p>
<p>Mr Harris was one of about 700 protesters arrested during demonstrations in New York in October 2011. The protests spilled on to the Brooklyn Bridge and Mr Harris claims that police action prompted protesters to move on to the bridge so they could then be arrested for obstructing traffic.</p>
<p>Twitter has now surrendered the messages to the court where the trial is taking place, but they will remain uninspected while an appeal lodged by Mr Harris’ lawyer is heard. A hearing on the appeal is due to be heard within seven days.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19597437" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Twitter Hands Over Occupy Messages | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/twitter-hands-over-occupy-messages/ | 2012-09-16 | 4left
| Twitter Hands Over Occupy Messages
<p>Twitter has bowed to threats of substantial fines and released messages sent by Occupy Wall Street protester Malcolm Harris relating to the arrest of roughly 700 people at a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge in October 2011.</p>
<p>Harris has said police encouraged protesters onto the bridge to make it easier to arrest them. The NYPD maintains demonstrators were commanded not to cross the bridge.</p>
<p>Twitter had refused to hand over the messages for months, saying that doing so would undermine privacy laws and its commitment to its users.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>BBC:</p>
<p>As the large number of messages are no longer available online, the Manhattan district attorney took legal action to win access to Mr Harris’ account and three months’ worth of messages.</p>
<p>Mr Harris was one of about 700 protesters arrested during demonstrations in New York in October 2011. The protests spilled on to the Brooklyn Bridge and Mr Harris claims that police action prompted protesters to move on to the bridge so they could then be arrested for obstructing traffic.</p>
<p>Twitter has now surrendered the messages to the court where the trial is taking place, but they will remain uninspected while an appeal lodged by Mr Harris’ lawyer is heard. A hearing on the appeal is due to be heard within seven days.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19597437" type="external">Read more</a></p> | 1,195 |
<p>This morning I read an intriguing, challenging speech by Charles Warner, professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Missouri. He contends that depleted creativity is the root cause of many of today's news-business woes. See his remarks to a recent conference at that school: " <a href="http://www.mediacurmudgeon.com/archives/2005/06/solving_the_pro.html" type="external">Solving the Problem of Journalism Creativity: May the Force be with You</a>."Warner makes a strong point. The structures we've built over the last century to support traditional media have had the significant, if unintentional, side effect of stifling creativity. This is happening in all types of media, including journalism. And in many ways it's killing us. Maybe traditional media and news organizations are losing their audiences because they've become too boring and predictable.If so, then maybe citizen journalism and other forms of participatory media might offer more value than most news organizations currently realize. Why conceptually hobble citizen journalism as simply a source of free content around which you can wrap more paid ads? Why not view it as news R&amp;D? I've just written more on this <a href="http://www.ireporter.org/2005/06/how_creativity_.html" type="external">here</a>.</p> | News R&D: A Matter of Survival | false | https://poynter.org/news/news-rd-matter-survival | 2005-06-28 | 2least
| News R&D: A Matter of Survival
<p>This morning I read an intriguing, challenging speech by Charles Warner, professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Missouri. He contends that depleted creativity is the root cause of many of today's news-business woes. See his remarks to a recent conference at that school: " <a href="http://www.mediacurmudgeon.com/archives/2005/06/solving_the_pro.html" type="external">Solving the Problem of Journalism Creativity: May the Force be with You</a>."Warner makes a strong point. The structures we've built over the last century to support traditional media have had the significant, if unintentional, side effect of stifling creativity. This is happening in all types of media, including journalism. And in many ways it's killing us. Maybe traditional media and news organizations are losing their audiences because they've become too boring and predictable.If so, then maybe citizen journalism and other forms of participatory media might offer more value than most news organizations currently realize. Why conceptually hobble citizen journalism as simply a source of free content around which you can wrap more paid ads? Why not view it as news R&amp;D? I've just written more on this <a href="http://www.ireporter.org/2005/06/how_creativity_.html" type="external">here</a>.</p> | 1,196 |
<p />
<p>Organizations that prohibit Facebook in the workplace may want to reconsider that policy. A 10-minute Facebook break makes employees happier, healthier and more productive, according to new research.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>An infographic on the corporate wellness site <a href="http://keas.com/blog/case-for-facebook/?view=infographic" type="external">Keas Opens a New Window.</a>.com makes the case for Facebook by pointing out the benefits of &#160;visiting the popular social network. Chief among them comes from a recent Academy of Management study that found that employees who were allowed to use Facebook were <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/885-empowering-improve-performance-management.html" type="external">more productive Opens a New Window.</a> than co-workers who were not.</p>
<p>For the academy study, workers were divided into three groups: one that was allowed no breaks, one that was allowed to do anything but use the Internet, and one that was allowed 10 minutes to use the Internet and Facebook. The Facebook group was found to be 16 percent more productive than the group that was not allowed to use the Internet and nearly 40 percent more productive than the group that was allowed no breaks.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/1975-facebook-work-rules.html" type="external">[9 Rules for Using Facebook at Work] Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>"Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf on the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher net total concentration for a day's work, and as a result, increased productivity," said Brent Coker of the department of management and&#160; marketing at the University of Melbourne, in Australia, according &#160;in the infographic.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The infographic noted a separate survey in which half of all CEOs said they prohibit the use of Facebook and other social networks at work.</p>
<p>Besides productivity, Facebook was <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2084-exercise-good-health-career.html" type="external">indirectly linked to employee health Opens a New Window.</a> and happiness. According to the infographic, people are positively affected by the happiness of others, even if that happiness is viewed digitally. Additionally, research by the MIT Sloan School of Management found that people are more likely to continuously participate in online health forums if they see others doing so. According to the research, the online community that Facebook provides facilitates such employee behavior.</p>
<p>Good luck convincing your boss, though.</p>
<p>Reach BusinessNewsDaily staff writer David Mielach at <a href="http://mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected] Opens a New Window.</a>. Follow him on Twitter @D_M89.</p>
<p>Copyright 2012 <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/" type="external">BusinessNewsDaily Opens a New Window.</a>, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</p> | Does Facebook Make Your Employees More Productive? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/04/16/does-facebook-make-your-employees-more-productive.html | 2016-03-22 | 0right
| Does Facebook Make Your Employees More Productive?
<p />
<p>Organizations that prohibit Facebook in the workplace may want to reconsider that policy. A 10-minute Facebook break makes employees happier, healthier and more productive, according to new research.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>An infographic on the corporate wellness site <a href="http://keas.com/blog/case-for-facebook/?view=infographic" type="external">Keas Opens a New Window.</a>.com makes the case for Facebook by pointing out the benefits of &#160;visiting the popular social network. Chief among them comes from a recent Academy of Management study that found that employees who were allowed to use Facebook were <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/885-empowering-improve-performance-management.html" type="external">more productive Opens a New Window.</a> than co-workers who were not.</p>
<p>For the academy study, workers were divided into three groups: one that was allowed no breaks, one that was allowed to do anything but use the Internet, and one that was allowed 10 minutes to use the Internet and Facebook. The Facebook group was found to be 16 percent more productive than the group that was not allowed to use the Internet and nearly 40 percent more productive than the group that was allowed no breaks.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/1975-facebook-work-rules.html" type="external">[9 Rules for Using Facebook at Work] Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>"Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf on the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher net total concentration for a day's work, and as a result, increased productivity," said Brent Coker of the department of management and&#160; marketing at the University of Melbourne, in Australia, according &#160;in the infographic.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The infographic noted a separate survey in which half of all CEOs said they prohibit the use of Facebook and other social networks at work.</p>
<p>Besides productivity, Facebook was <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2084-exercise-good-health-career.html" type="external">indirectly linked to employee health Opens a New Window.</a> and happiness. According to the infographic, people are positively affected by the happiness of others, even if that happiness is viewed digitally. Additionally, research by the MIT Sloan School of Management found that people are more likely to continuously participate in online health forums if they see others doing so. According to the research, the online community that Facebook provides facilitates such employee behavior.</p>
<p>Good luck convincing your boss, though.</p>
<p>Reach BusinessNewsDaily staff writer David Mielach at <a href="http://mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected] Opens a New Window.</a>. Follow him on Twitter @D_M89.</p>
<p>Copyright 2012 <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/" type="external">BusinessNewsDaily Opens a New Window.</a>, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</p> | 1,197 |
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<p />
<p>According to a campaign finance report filed on Thursday, a political committee with ties to Republican Gov. Susana Martinez spent $2.4 million in the primary and general election campaigns. The group — Reform New Mexico Now — paid for advertising and mailings in 31 House and Senate races, including several Democratic primary contests, according to Jay McCleskey, the governor’s political adviser.</p>
<p>A Democratic-leaning political group called Patriot Majority New Mexico dumped almost $1.4 million into general election contests. The group was formed in August and received most of its money from labor unions. It backed about 20 House and Senate candidates, according to Craig Varoga, the PAC’s president and a Washington, D.C.-based Democratic strategist.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The two political committees were the biggest spenders in legislative contests, and were free to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money because they didn’t coordinate their campaign strategy with candidates.</p>
<p>Federal court rulings have given the green light to corporations, unions and other groups to operate outside of contribution restrictions if they’re spending independently on advertising that advocates the defeat or election of a candidate.</p>
<p>This was the first election in New Mexico in which legislative candidates were subject to limits on how much they could accept from donors — $5,000 per election from a political committee and $2,300 from an individual for a primary or general election. The state’s contribution limits went into effect after the 2010 general election.</p>
<p>Sen. Peter Wirth, a Santa Fe Democrat, said he expected this year’s costly campaigns to increase support among Democrats and Republicans for legislation to tighten campaign disclosure requirements on outside political groups. He said it’s not possible under federal court rulings to impose contribution limits on the groups, however.</p>
<p>“There is no question the landscape is dramatically different after this election cycle,” Wirth said in an interview. “We’re going to have 112 experts on campaigns having just been through something that I don’t think has ever been seen before at the state legislative level.”</p>
<p>All 112 seats in the House and Senate were up for election this year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The governor’s allies formed Reform New Mexico Now to chip away at Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in hopes of improving chances for her legislative agenda during the second half of her term.</p>
<p>The committee raised $122,500 from Oct. 31 through Dec. 1, including $50,000 from a Farmington company, M &amp; R Trucking, and $25,000 from Foster Friess, an investor from Jackson, Wyo.</p>
<p>Martinez also operates a political committee, Susana PAC, that directly contributed money in legislative races and was able to coordinate its political work with candidates. That group has spent almost $1.1 million since last year.</p>
<p>Some candidates stepped up their spending to try to counter the ads and mailings paid for by outside groups.</p>
<p>In southeast New Mexico, Senate President Tim Jennings, a Roswell Democrat, lost his re-election despite outspending his GOP opponent 6-to-1. Jennings spent almost $399,000 to about $66,300 by Republican Cliff Pirtle of Roswell.</p>
<p>Jennings was among the Democrats targeted by Reform New Mexico Now. The group tried unsuccessfully to defeat Senate Majority Michael Sanchez, a Belen Democrat, who spent nearly $291,800 on his campaign — nearly four times more than his GOP opponent.</p> | Outside Political Groups Spent Nearly $4M in NM | false | https://abqjournal.com/151671/outside-political-groups-spent-nearly-4m-in-nm.html | 2012-12-07 | 2least
| Outside Political Groups Spent Nearly $4M in NM
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>According to a campaign finance report filed on Thursday, a political committee with ties to Republican Gov. Susana Martinez spent $2.4 million in the primary and general election campaigns. The group — Reform New Mexico Now — paid for advertising and mailings in 31 House and Senate races, including several Democratic primary contests, according to Jay McCleskey, the governor’s political adviser.</p>
<p>A Democratic-leaning political group called Patriot Majority New Mexico dumped almost $1.4 million into general election contests. The group was formed in August and received most of its money from labor unions. It backed about 20 House and Senate candidates, according to Craig Varoga, the PAC’s president and a Washington, D.C.-based Democratic strategist.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The two political committees were the biggest spenders in legislative contests, and were free to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money because they didn’t coordinate their campaign strategy with candidates.</p>
<p>Federal court rulings have given the green light to corporations, unions and other groups to operate outside of contribution restrictions if they’re spending independently on advertising that advocates the defeat or election of a candidate.</p>
<p>This was the first election in New Mexico in which legislative candidates were subject to limits on how much they could accept from donors — $5,000 per election from a political committee and $2,300 from an individual for a primary or general election. The state’s contribution limits went into effect after the 2010 general election.</p>
<p>Sen. Peter Wirth, a Santa Fe Democrat, said he expected this year’s costly campaigns to increase support among Democrats and Republicans for legislation to tighten campaign disclosure requirements on outside political groups. He said it’s not possible under federal court rulings to impose contribution limits on the groups, however.</p>
<p>“There is no question the landscape is dramatically different after this election cycle,” Wirth said in an interview. “We’re going to have 112 experts on campaigns having just been through something that I don’t think has ever been seen before at the state legislative level.”</p>
<p>All 112 seats in the House and Senate were up for election this year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The governor’s allies formed Reform New Mexico Now to chip away at Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in hopes of improving chances for her legislative agenda during the second half of her term.</p>
<p>The committee raised $122,500 from Oct. 31 through Dec. 1, including $50,000 from a Farmington company, M &amp; R Trucking, and $25,000 from Foster Friess, an investor from Jackson, Wyo.</p>
<p>Martinez also operates a political committee, Susana PAC, that directly contributed money in legislative races and was able to coordinate its political work with candidates. That group has spent almost $1.1 million since last year.</p>
<p>Some candidates stepped up their spending to try to counter the ads and mailings paid for by outside groups.</p>
<p>In southeast New Mexico, Senate President Tim Jennings, a Roswell Democrat, lost his re-election despite outspending his GOP opponent 6-to-1. Jennings spent almost $399,000 to about $66,300 by Republican Cliff Pirtle of Roswell.</p>
<p>Jennings was among the Democrats targeted by Reform New Mexico Now. The group tried unsuccessfully to defeat Senate Majority Michael Sanchez, a Belen Democrat, who spent nearly $291,800 on his campaign — nearly four times more than his GOP opponent.</p> | 1,198 |
<p>This week, <a href="" type="internal">Colorlines reported on the top six American cities</a> in which blacks and Latinos are living in poverty that rivals that of the Great Depression. If there was ever a time to rebel against Wall Street, it's now. Yet many have observed that the OWS proceedings have been largely white, or at the very least devoid of the kind of diversity that makes New York City great. Now, two Queens men hope to change that by starting Occupy the Hood—a solidarity group that means to educate poor blacks and Latinos as to why a successful OWS will have the most significant impact on their communities. Loop21 reports:</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Founded by Malik Rhasaan, 39 of Queens, N.Y., and Ife Johari Uhuru, 35, based in Detroit, @OccupyTheHood has close to 3,500 followers on Twitter, the growing support of notable figures and a cadre of volunteers devoted to getting the word out about the cause of the protests to African Americans and Latinos.</p>
<p>Rhasaan told Loop 21, Occupy The Hood has six core volunteers, but he’s already seen "Occupy The Hood" carried by people he’s never met</p>
<p>Like many others, he was initially just curious about the protests.</p>
<p>“It was a news story and I’ve always been interested in what’s going on in our country,” Rhassan said via phone from the protests, where a police officer had asked him to move along. “I was just going down and really, just being nosy to see how honest it was. I realized there was a solid movement but that there weren’t enough black and Latinos.”</p>
<p>@OccupytheHood is Rhassan's first Twitter account, and since he created it he has linked with thousands of followers, including Cornel West. He said he wants to use the account "as a springboard to address other things, whether it be crime or health issues in our communities. But we in the inner-city doesn't know how this pertains to us. We don’t tie our issues to Wall Street." To get involved email <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>Watch a video interview:</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p><a href="//vimeo.com/30146870" type="external">@OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street</a> from <a href="//vimeo.com/adelepham" type="external">adele pham</a> on <a href="//vimeo.com" type="external">Vimeo</a>.</p> | "Occupy the Hood": Black Protesters Start Chapter to Educate, Diversify OWS | true | http://alternet.org/newsandviews/article/677498/%22occupy_the_hood%22%3A_black_protesters_start_chapter_to_educate%2C_diversify_ows/ | 4left
| "Occupy the Hood": Black Protesters Start Chapter to Educate, Diversify OWS
<p>This week, <a href="" type="internal">Colorlines reported on the top six American cities</a> in which blacks and Latinos are living in poverty that rivals that of the Great Depression. If there was ever a time to rebel against Wall Street, it's now. Yet many have observed that the OWS proceedings have been largely white, or at the very least devoid of the kind of diversity that makes New York City great. Now, two Queens men hope to change that by starting Occupy the Hood—a solidarity group that means to educate poor blacks and Latinos as to why a successful OWS will have the most significant impact on their communities. Loop21 reports:</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Founded by Malik Rhasaan, 39 of Queens, N.Y., and Ife Johari Uhuru, 35, based in Detroit, @OccupyTheHood has close to 3,500 followers on Twitter, the growing support of notable figures and a cadre of volunteers devoted to getting the word out about the cause of the protests to African Americans and Latinos.</p>
<p>Rhasaan told Loop 21, Occupy The Hood has six core volunteers, but he’s already seen "Occupy The Hood" carried by people he’s never met</p>
<p>Like many others, he was initially just curious about the protests.</p>
<p>“It was a news story and I’ve always been interested in what’s going on in our country,” Rhassan said via phone from the protests, where a police officer had asked him to move along. “I was just going down and really, just being nosy to see how honest it was. I realized there was a solid movement but that there weren’t enough black and Latinos.”</p>
<p>@OccupytheHood is Rhassan's first Twitter account, and since he created it he has linked with thousands of followers, including Cornel West. He said he wants to use the account "as a springboard to address other things, whether it be crime or health issues in our communities. But we in the inner-city doesn't know how this pertains to us. We don’t tie our issues to Wall Street." To get involved email <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>Watch a video interview:</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p><a href="//vimeo.com/30146870" type="external">@OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street</a> from <a href="//vimeo.com/adelepham" type="external">adele pham</a> on <a href="//vimeo.com" type="external">Vimeo</a>.</p> | 1,199 |
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