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<p>Photo by Paul Siarkowski | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>In “How America’s identity politics went from inclusion to division” (Guardian, March 1, 2018), Amy Chua argues that the U.S. left has given us the U.S. right, or at least has provided opportunities for the political right to rise to power. Chua makes the case that identity politics on the left and right makes the U.S. a less inclusive society.</p>
<p>She is right to some extent about some kinds of identity politics, but it’s there where the equivalency ends because identity politics on the right has led to murder, mayhem at the highest levels of government, and a return to racism that is supported by the right’s enormous wealth. Identifying with their own best interests gave the gay community medicines that made AIDS less than a certain death sentence.</p>
<p>Black Lives Matter gave the police something to consider. But solidarity across group interests has generally been lacking on the left. Chua’s article seems to be an attempt to lay the debacle that is contemporary politics in the U.S. at the feet of the left. The right’s deep pockets need constant replenishing and greed has no bounds. When jobs are outsourced and what’s left of unions is constantly under attack, where is the economy that will foster inclusiveness?</p>
<p>Chua’s argument against what she calls “political tribalism” includes a lengthy testimonial from a person identified as a white male who considers himself as lower-middle class despite the fact that he thinks of himself as an intellectual. It is possible to be in the lower middle class of the socioeconomic scale and be a self-indentified intellectual, but is that a verifiable fact in this man’s case? He reports that his economic situation has tempted him to side with the alt-right rather than aligning himself with the left.&#160;”… consider this blog post in the&#160; American Conservative, worth quoting at length because of the light it sheds”:</p>
<p>I’m a white guy. I’m a well-educated intellectual who enjoys small arthouse movies, coffeehouses and classic blues. If you didn’t know any better, you’d probably mistake me for a lefty urban hipster. And yet. I find some of the alt-right stuff exerts a pull even on me. Even though I’m smart and informed enough to see through it. It’s seductive because I am not a person with any power or privilege, and yet I am constantly bombarded with messages telling me that I’m a cancer, I’m a problem, everything is my fault.</p>
<p>I am very lower middle class. I’ve never owned a new car, and do my own home repairs as much as I can to save money. I cut my own grass, wash my own dishes, buy my clothes from Walmart. I have no clue how I will ever be able to retire. But oh, brother, to hear the media tell it, I am just drowning in unearned power and privilege, and America will be a much brighter, more loving, more peaceful nation when I finally just keel over and die.</p>
<p>Trust me: After all that, some of the alt-right stuff feels like a warm, soothing bath. A “safe space,” if you will. I recoil from the uglier stuff, but some of it— the “hey, white guys are actually okay, you know! Be proud of yourself, white man!” stuff is really VERY seductive, and it is only with some intellectual effort that I can resist the pull … If it’s a struggle for someone like me to resist the pull, I imagine it’s probably impossible for someone with less education or cultural exposure.</p>
<p>This is not exactly the struggle of a black or Latino/Latina man or woman who has been stopped by the police for a defective taillight and has a chance of either being arrested,&#160;harassed, or shot. Or maybe being thrown in jail as part of the system of oppression. White people are not as a rule shot at coffee shops or arthouse cinemas.</p>
<p>There is something about the political, economic, and social right that does indeed have to do with “political tribalism” and it’s been a very effective tool in mobilizing factions of the far right over the last several decades. The left has been marginally effective at countering such forces as nuclear proliferation, the destruction of civil rights and civil liberties, militarism, environmental destruction, and the burgeoning gulf of income inequality. But the right has had decades in which to do its evil and change the entire fabric of this society for the worse. Money and power not only speak: they swear!</p>
<p>An example of how effective the right has been is the ascension of the fundamentalist religious right to the office of the vice presidency in the person of Mike Pence. It seemed that with the departure of George W. Bush from the White House that the religious right’s time had come and gone after years of success dating back to Ronald Reagan. The far right has combined God, guns, inequality and hate and they have a receptive audience.</p>
<p>The religious right is still going strong. In a society where isolation can be the rule, religious fundamentalists have kept their flock and their political and social agenda quite alive. Ask anyone who volunteers as a escort at a reproductive health clinic.</p>
<p>The effects of solidarity and “political tribalism” on the right have been most apparent in an organization like the National Rifle Association, once a group of hunting enthusiasts and now the major obstacle for sane gun control legislation in the U.S. How is it that children can be murdered in schools with military-style assault rifles capable of holding large rounds of ammunition, and the left is relegated to the sidelines of protest about gun control? Follow the money: follow its influence on those in power.</p>
<p>In a society of “political tribalism,” perhaps it is that very feature of tribalism that draws so many to the NRA. The NRA knows that it can increase its membership (and political clout), and those who identify with its values of unlimited so-called gun rights, by fostering social connections among its members. There are shooting programs, perks for insurance, reduced rates for car rentals, etc., and a national convention and the feeling of belonging in a society where opportunities to belong in a personal way are limited. When was the last time people on the left connected with one another after a demonstration was over or felt lasting ties for those at one of the endless marches that have been organized out of necessity as Trump ascended the throne? We march and we organize and we work for the best and then we, for the most part, go on with our individual and atomized lives. The NRA membership does not and it has sometimes been able to take advantage of the sentiments reflected above by the struggling guy. While he may not feel the draw that some do to groups like the NRA or religious fundamentalist churches, it’s sentiments like the ones that he makes that move some others to identify with the right.</p>
<p>There was a time in the middle to late 1960s and early 1970s that the left in the U.S. did connect and empathize with one another, and again in the 1980s in the face of Reagan and nuclear proliferation and war, and then again while George W. Bush was president. What amazes most is that a monster and incompetent who far surpasses both Reagan and Bush has garnered only sporadic and atomized protest! Here’s a president who threatens millions of Koreans with nuclear annihilation.&#160; Protest has had only a limited effect. On March 24, 2018 (March for Our Lives), people all across the U.S. will take to the streets in a protest against the insanity of gun murders in the U.S. The Washington, D.C.-based demonstrations are an opportunity to get off of the soft couches and chairs of fancy, overpriced coffeehouses and demand an end to one part of the right-wing juggernaut that values dollars over people and especially dollars over innocent young lives.</p> | Political Tribalism: Why the Right is So Successful | true | https://counterpunch.org/2018/03/05/political-tribalism-why-the-right-is-so-successful/ | 2018-03-05 | 4left
| Political Tribalism: Why the Right is So Successful
<p>Photo by Paul Siarkowski | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>In “How America’s identity politics went from inclusion to division” (Guardian, March 1, 2018), Amy Chua argues that the U.S. left has given us the U.S. right, or at least has provided opportunities for the political right to rise to power. Chua makes the case that identity politics on the left and right makes the U.S. a less inclusive society.</p>
<p>She is right to some extent about some kinds of identity politics, but it’s there where the equivalency ends because identity politics on the right has led to murder, mayhem at the highest levels of government, and a return to racism that is supported by the right’s enormous wealth. Identifying with their own best interests gave the gay community medicines that made AIDS less than a certain death sentence.</p>
<p>Black Lives Matter gave the police something to consider. But solidarity across group interests has generally been lacking on the left. Chua’s article seems to be an attempt to lay the debacle that is contemporary politics in the U.S. at the feet of the left. The right’s deep pockets need constant replenishing and greed has no bounds. When jobs are outsourced and what’s left of unions is constantly under attack, where is the economy that will foster inclusiveness?</p>
<p>Chua’s argument against what she calls “political tribalism” includes a lengthy testimonial from a person identified as a white male who considers himself as lower-middle class despite the fact that he thinks of himself as an intellectual. It is possible to be in the lower middle class of the socioeconomic scale and be a self-indentified intellectual, but is that a verifiable fact in this man’s case? He reports that his economic situation has tempted him to side with the alt-right rather than aligning himself with the left.&#160;”… consider this blog post in the&#160; American Conservative, worth quoting at length because of the light it sheds”:</p>
<p>I’m a white guy. I’m a well-educated intellectual who enjoys small arthouse movies, coffeehouses and classic blues. If you didn’t know any better, you’d probably mistake me for a lefty urban hipster. And yet. I find some of the alt-right stuff exerts a pull even on me. Even though I’m smart and informed enough to see through it. It’s seductive because I am not a person with any power or privilege, and yet I am constantly bombarded with messages telling me that I’m a cancer, I’m a problem, everything is my fault.</p>
<p>I am very lower middle class. I’ve never owned a new car, and do my own home repairs as much as I can to save money. I cut my own grass, wash my own dishes, buy my clothes from Walmart. I have no clue how I will ever be able to retire. But oh, brother, to hear the media tell it, I am just drowning in unearned power and privilege, and America will be a much brighter, more loving, more peaceful nation when I finally just keel over and die.</p>
<p>Trust me: After all that, some of the alt-right stuff feels like a warm, soothing bath. A “safe space,” if you will. I recoil from the uglier stuff, but some of it— the “hey, white guys are actually okay, you know! Be proud of yourself, white man!” stuff is really VERY seductive, and it is only with some intellectual effort that I can resist the pull … If it’s a struggle for someone like me to resist the pull, I imagine it’s probably impossible for someone with less education or cultural exposure.</p>
<p>This is not exactly the struggle of a black or Latino/Latina man or woman who has been stopped by the police for a defective taillight and has a chance of either being arrested,&#160;harassed, or shot. Or maybe being thrown in jail as part of the system of oppression. White people are not as a rule shot at coffee shops or arthouse cinemas.</p>
<p>There is something about the political, economic, and social right that does indeed have to do with “political tribalism” and it’s been a very effective tool in mobilizing factions of the far right over the last several decades. The left has been marginally effective at countering such forces as nuclear proliferation, the destruction of civil rights and civil liberties, militarism, environmental destruction, and the burgeoning gulf of income inequality. But the right has had decades in which to do its evil and change the entire fabric of this society for the worse. Money and power not only speak: they swear!</p>
<p>An example of how effective the right has been is the ascension of the fundamentalist religious right to the office of the vice presidency in the person of Mike Pence. It seemed that with the departure of George W. Bush from the White House that the religious right’s time had come and gone after years of success dating back to Ronald Reagan. The far right has combined God, guns, inequality and hate and they have a receptive audience.</p>
<p>The religious right is still going strong. In a society where isolation can be the rule, religious fundamentalists have kept their flock and their political and social agenda quite alive. Ask anyone who volunteers as a escort at a reproductive health clinic.</p>
<p>The effects of solidarity and “political tribalism” on the right have been most apparent in an organization like the National Rifle Association, once a group of hunting enthusiasts and now the major obstacle for sane gun control legislation in the U.S. How is it that children can be murdered in schools with military-style assault rifles capable of holding large rounds of ammunition, and the left is relegated to the sidelines of protest about gun control? Follow the money: follow its influence on those in power.</p>
<p>In a society of “political tribalism,” perhaps it is that very feature of tribalism that draws so many to the NRA. The NRA knows that it can increase its membership (and political clout), and those who identify with its values of unlimited so-called gun rights, by fostering social connections among its members. There are shooting programs, perks for insurance, reduced rates for car rentals, etc., and a national convention and the feeling of belonging in a society where opportunities to belong in a personal way are limited. When was the last time people on the left connected with one another after a demonstration was over or felt lasting ties for those at one of the endless marches that have been organized out of necessity as Trump ascended the throne? We march and we organize and we work for the best and then we, for the most part, go on with our individual and atomized lives. The NRA membership does not and it has sometimes been able to take advantage of the sentiments reflected above by the struggling guy. While he may not feel the draw that some do to groups like the NRA or religious fundamentalist churches, it’s sentiments like the ones that he makes that move some others to identify with the right.</p>
<p>There was a time in the middle to late 1960s and early 1970s that the left in the U.S. did connect and empathize with one another, and again in the 1980s in the face of Reagan and nuclear proliferation and war, and then again while George W. Bush was president. What amazes most is that a monster and incompetent who far surpasses both Reagan and Bush has garnered only sporadic and atomized protest! Here’s a president who threatens millions of Koreans with nuclear annihilation.&#160; Protest has had only a limited effect. On March 24, 2018 (March for Our Lives), people all across the U.S. will take to the streets in a protest against the insanity of gun murders in the U.S. The Washington, D.C.-based demonstrations are an opportunity to get off of the soft couches and chairs of fancy, overpriced coffeehouses and demand an end to one part of the right-wing juggernaut that values dollars over people and especially dollars over innocent young lives.</p> | 3,000 |
<p>The political battle over <a href="" type="internal">a hotly controversial memo</a> involving surveillance entered a new phase on Wednesday as Democrats announced they have drafted their own, competing document.&#160;</p>
<p>The original, classified memo was prepared by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a Tulare Republican, and made available to every member of Congress last week. Republicans who read the four-page document said it reveals shocking information about the investigation into President Trump, which began during the campaign, but Democrats have dismissed it as a distortion.</p>
<p>Now that Republicans are pushing to make their memo public, Democrats want their own version available as well.&#160;</p> | Democrats prepare their own memo on surveillance to counter Republican document | false | http://latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-essential-washington-updates-democrats-prepare-their-own-memo-on-1516827374-htmlstory.html | 2018-01-24 | 3left-center
| Democrats prepare their own memo on surveillance to counter Republican document
<p>The political battle over <a href="" type="internal">a hotly controversial memo</a> involving surveillance entered a new phase on Wednesday as Democrats announced they have drafted their own, competing document.&#160;</p>
<p>The original, classified memo was prepared by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a Tulare Republican, and made available to every member of Congress last week. Republicans who read the four-page document said it reveals shocking information about the investigation into President Trump, which began during the campaign, but Democrats have dismissed it as a distortion.</p>
<p>Now that Republicans are pushing to make their memo public, Democrats want their own version available as well.&#160;</p> | 3,001 |
<p>People are waiting longer than they should for an answer when they petition the government to open an investigation into what could be serious safety problems.</p>
<p>The Associated Press reviewed all 15 petitions filed by drivers with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration since 2010 and found the agency missed the legal deadline to grant or deny the requests 12 times. One petition from 2012 has yet to be resolved.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A 1974 law passed to make the agency move faster requires a decision within four months of receiving a petition. But even though the agency has fined automakers such as General Motors and Toyota millions for missing deadlines to disclose safety issues, there is no penalty when it's tardy itself.</p>
<p>NHTSA concedes it has missed the deadlines but says it often must ask petitioners for more data to complete its analysis. Still, in eight petitions reviewed by the AP, it took more than a year to open an investigation or close the case.</p>
<p>Safety advocates say a delay that long can put lives at risk. And given the recent criticism of the agency for its role in GM's delayed recall of cars with defective ignition switches, these advocates question whether it is functioning well enough to protect the public.</p>
<p>"Everything is just really slow," says Matt Oliver, executive director of the North Carolina Consumers Council, which petitioned the government in February 2012 on behalf of drivers seeking an investigation of Nissan truck transmission failures. It has yet to get a decision. "You have to ask is everything going as efficiently as it can?"</p>
<p>Car owners have two ways to ask safety regulators for action. They can file a complaint, or submit a petition. A complaint has information about a single incident and usually is filed via the agency's website. Petitions are formal requests for investigations, with evidence of a problem in many vehicles.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Often petitions are a last resort for drivers frustrated by intransigent automakers. Many drivers seek help from safety advocates to complete the petition. And even if an investigation is opened, it can take months or years before a recall is announced.</p>
<p>Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center For Auto Safety, a nonprofit founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, petitioned in November of 2009 for an investigation into fires in Jeep SUVs with gas tanks behind the rear axle. Despite reports of 12 fires, nine injuries and one death at the time, it took the agency more than nine months to grant the petition and open a formal investigation - five months after the legal deadline.</p>
<p>The agency's probe found 51 fire deaths as of last June, when a recall was finally announced. Ditlow says that since the petition was filed, at least 31 people died in fiery rear crashes involving the SUVs.</p>
<p>Chrysler, the maker of Jeeps, maintains the SUVs perform no worse than comparable vehicles. It agreed to install trailer hitches to protect the tanks in low-speed crashes.</p>
<p>Realistically, the agency may need more than 120 days for complex petitions, says former NHTSA administrator Joan Claybrook. Legislators should extend the deadlines and take funding from the agency or the administrator's salary if they aren't met, she says.</p>
<p>NHTSA has been criticized for failing to connect the dots among thousands of consumer complaints it received last decade about General Motors small cars with defective ignition switches. GM finally recalled the cars this year. The faulty switches have been linked to at least 13 deaths.</p>
<p>While GM withheld details of the problem from the public and the government for more than 10 years, critics say the safety agency still collected plenty of evidence to open an investigation and order a recall sooner. No petitions were filed in the GM case.</p>
<p>During hearings into the GM recall, some lawmakers suggested the agency's staff and budget are too small to monitor the 238 million cars and trucks on the road today. Plus, the agency regulates heavy trucks, buses, motorcycles, tires and auto parts. Its Office of Defects Investigation has only 50 investigators and a budget that's been about $10 million for a decade. By comparison, General Motors alone has at least 60 safety investigators.</p>
<p>NHTSA's investigation budget is only about 7 percent of the $134 million the agency spends per year on vehicle safety research, testing and enforcement. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, has introduced a bill that would double the $134 million over six years.</p>
<p>Petitioners often point out potential life-threatening problems that haven't been addressed by safety regulators. The North Carolina group, for instance, complained that coolant can leak and mix with transmission fluid in 2005-2010 Nissan Frontier, Xterra and Pathfinder trucks. That can cause the transmissions to fail.</p>
<p>The petition was filed after consumer complaints to Nissan went nowhere, Oliver says. In a statement, Nissan says the coolant leak is not a safety problem since it hasn't been tied to any injuries. The company extended the transmission warranty to 10 years or 100,000 miles, which it says addresses a customer satisfaction issue.</p>
<p>Since the filing, the group has received 500 to 600 complaints of similar problems. Oliver isn't aware of any injuries, but maintains that the agency's delay still risks lives because transmissions can fail on freeways, leaving people stuck amid heavy traffic.</p>
<p>"Anytime you have anything that will affect the safety of the vehicle, any kind of a delay on top of that is always going to put somebody at risk," he says.</p>
<p>Donald Friedman, co-founder of a California firm that investigates crashes for attorneys, filed a petition in November seeking an investigation into the air bag systems in big General Motors cars such as the Chevrolet Impala. Friedman says the passenger weight-sensing system in the cars can malfunction, causing the air bags not to inflate.</p>
<p>NHTSA has yet to make a decision.</p>
<p>In a statement, the safety agency denies dragging its feet on petitions such as Friedman's, saying it often needs more than 120 days to examine them thoroughly. "Most do not provide sufficient data for NHTSA to evaluate the issues raised without further data collection and analysis," the agency says.</p>
<p>Addressing consumer safety concerns in a timely manner is likely to be debated when agency chief David Friedman makes a second appearance in the fall before House and Senate subcommittees investigating the GM recall.</p>
<p>Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said during a June hearing that NHTSA "shrugged" as evidence mounted that ignition switches were causing deaths in GM cars such as the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion.</p> | US road safety agency moves slowly when drivers spot problems and petition for investigations | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/08/11/us-road-safety-agency-moves-slowly-when-drivers-spot-problems-and-petition-for.html | 2016-03-09 | 0right
| US road safety agency moves slowly when drivers spot problems and petition for investigations
<p>People are waiting longer than they should for an answer when they petition the government to open an investigation into what could be serious safety problems.</p>
<p>The Associated Press reviewed all 15 petitions filed by drivers with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration since 2010 and found the agency missed the legal deadline to grant or deny the requests 12 times. One petition from 2012 has yet to be resolved.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A 1974 law passed to make the agency move faster requires a decision within four months of receiving a petition. But even though the agency has fined automakers such as General Motors and Toyota millions for missing deadlines to disclose safety issues, there is no penalty when it's tardy itself.</p>
<p>NHTSA concedes it has missed the deadlines but says it often must ask petitioners for more data to complete its analysis. Still, in eight petitions reviewed by the AP, it took more than a year to open an investigation or close the case.</p>
<p>Safety advocates say a delay that long can put lives at risk. And given the recent criticism of the agency for its role in GM's delayed recall of cars with defective ignition switches, these advocates question whether it is functioning well enough to protect the public.</p>
<p>"Everything is just really slow," says Matt Oliver, executive director of the North Carolina Consumers Council, which petitioned the government in February 2012 on behalf of drivers seeking an investigation of Nissan truck transmission failures. It has yet to get a decision. "You have to ask is everything going as efficiently as it can?"</p>
<p>Car owners have two ways to ask safety regulators for action. They can file a complaint, or submit a petition. A complaint has information about a single incident and usually is filed via the agency's website. Petitions are formal requests for investigations, with evidence of a problem in many vehicles.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Often petitions are a last resort for drivers frustrated by intransigent automakers. Many drivers seek help from safety advocates to complete the petition. And even if an investigation is opened, it can take months or years before a recall is announced.</p>
<p>Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center For Auto Safety, a nonprofit founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, petitioned in November of 2009 for an investigation into fires in Jeep SUVs with gas tanks behind the rear axle. Despite reports of 12 fires, nine injuries and one death at the time, it took the agency more than nine months to grant the petition and open a formal investigation - five months after the legal deadline.</p>
<p>The agency's probe found 51 fire deaths as of last June, when a recall was finally announced. Ditlow says that since the petition was filed, at least 31 people died in fiery rear crashes involving the SUVs.</p>
<p>Chrysler, the maker of Jeeps, maintains the SUVs perform no worse than comparable vehicles. It agreed to install trailer hitches to protect the tanks in low-speed crashes.</p>
<p>Realistically, the agency may need more than 120 days for complex petitions, says former NHTSA administrator Joan Claybrook. Legislators should extend the deadlines and take funding from the agency or the administrator's salary if they aren't met, she says.</p>
<p>NHTSA has been criticized for failing to connect the dots among thousands of consumer complaints it received last decade about General Motors small cars with defective ignition switches. GM finally recalled the cars this year. The faulty switches have been linked to at least 13 deaths.</p>
<p>While GM withheld details of the problem from the public and the government for more than 10 years, critics say the safety agency still collected plenty of evidence to open an investigation and order a recall sooner. No petitions were filed in the GM case.</p>
<p>During hearings into the GM recall, some lawmakers suggested the agency's staff and budget are too small to monitor the 238 million cars and trucks on the road today. Plus, the agency regulates heavy trucks, buses, motorcycles, tires and auto parts. Its Office of Defects Investigation has only 50 investigators and a budget that's been about $10 million for a decade. By comparison, General Motors alone has at least 60 safety investigators.</p>
<p>NHTSA's investigation budget is only about 7 percent of the $134 million the agency spends per year on vehicle safety research, testing and enforcement. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, has introduced a bill that would double the $134 million over six years.</p>
<p>Petitioners often point out potential life-threatening problems that haven't been addressed by safety regulators. The North Carolina group, for instance, complained that coolant can leak and mix with transmission fluid in 2005-2010 Nissan Frontier, Xterra and Pathfinder trucks. That can cause the transmissions to fail.</p>
<p>The petition was filed after consumer complaints to Nissan went nowhere, Oliver says. In a statement, Nissan says the coolant leak is not a safety problem since it hasn't been tied to any injuries. The company extended the transmission warranty to 10 years or 100,000 miles, which it says addresses a customer satisfaction issue.</p>
<p>Since the filing, the group has received 500 to 600 complaints of similar problems. Oliver isn't aware of any injuries, but maintains that the agency's delay still risks lives because transmissions can fail on freeways, leaving people stuck amid heavy traffic.</p>
<p>"Anytime you have anything that will affect the safety of the vehicle, any kind of a delay on top of that is always going to put somebody at risk," he says.</p>
<p>Donald Friedman, co-founder of a California firm that investigates crashes for attorneys, filed a petition in November seeking an investigation into the air bag systems in big General Motors cars such as the Chevrolet Impala. Friedman says the passenger weight-sensing system in the cars can malfunction, causing the air bags not to inflate.</p>
<p>NHTSA has yet to make a decision.</p>
<p>In a statement, the safety agency denies dragging its feet on petitions such as Friedman's, saying it often needs more than 120 days to examine them thoroughly. "Most do not provide sufficient data for NHTSA to evaluate the issues raised without further data collection and analysis," the agency says.</p>
<p>Addressing consumer safety concerns in a timely manner is likely to be debated when agency chief David Friedman makes a second appearance in the fall before House and Senate subcommittees investigating the GM recall.</p>
<p>Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said during a June hearing that NHTSA "shrugged" as evidence mounted that ignition switches were causing deaths in GM cars such as the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion.</p> | 3,002 |
<p>Tax cuts have become the panacea of conservative economic thinking, but curiously, the AP reports Republicans are now <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44218846/ns/politics/" type="external">lining up</a> to raise taxes on nearly half of all Americans. In his <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/08/20/weekly-address-putting-country-ahead-party" type="external">radio address</a> this weekend, President Obama called for an extension to the payroll tax holiday he <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/138049-white-house-payroll-tax-cut-benefits-have-begun" type="external">signed into law</a> last year, which benefits every working American, lowering the 6.2 percent tax that funds Social Security to 4.2 percent. The tax cut will expire in January, and many of the same Republican lawmakers who fought tooth and nail to preserve the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are now coming out against an extension of the payroll tax holiday.</p>
<p>Why? Social Security payroll taxes mainly benefit middle- and working-class Americans, as the tax <a href="http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=172179,00.html" type="external">only applies</a> to the first $106,800 of a worker’s wages. Thus, no matter how much money someone makes, they will see a maximum benefit of $2,136 from the holiday — a pittance compared to the savings for the wealthy from the Bush income tax cuts. Republicans claim these cuts for lower-income earners <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44218846/ns/politics/" type="external">will do less</a> to stimulate the economy than cuts for the wealthy or employers:</p>
<p>“It’s always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn,” says Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), “but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again.”</p>
<p>Hensarling, the House’ fourth-ranking Republican, is right — some tax cuts do more than others to “get the economy moving again.” He just has it backwards about which cuts do that. Tax cuts for wealthy, such as those in the Bush tax cuts, are the single “ <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/business/economy/11tax.html" type="external">least effective way</a> to spur the economy and reduce unemployment,” according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, because wealthy Americans were more likely to save their money than spend it.</p>
<p>Conversely, payroll tax cuts are one of the most efficient ways to stimulate economic growth, because low- and middle-income earners are more likely to spend their extra cash right away. But this analysis and similar ones from <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/16/news/economy/tax_cuts_economic_impact/index.htm" type="external">Moody’s</a> and <a href="http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&amp;id=3241" type="external">other experts</a> has not disuaded Republicans from their myopic focus on tax cuts for the the wealthy only.</p>
<p>GOP budget guru Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) dismissed a payroll tax holiday in June as nothing but “ <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/166837-paul-ryan-payroll-tax-cuts-nothing-but-qsugar-highq" type="external">sugar-high economics</a>.” Meanwhile, presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he “would prefer to see the payroll tax cut on the employer side,” instead of for the employee. Both sides pay an equal amount for a total contribution of 12.4 percent per worker.</p>
<p>Indeed, the conservative dogma on taxes seems to flip for low-income earners, as many conservatives have explicitly called for the poor and middle-class <a href="" type="internal">to pay more in taxes</a>.</p> | Republicans To Oppose Tax Cut For Working People | true | http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/22/300832/republicans-to-oppose-tax-cut-for-working-people/ | 2011-08-22 | 4left
| Republicans To Oppose Tax Cut For Working People
<p>Tax cuts have become the panacea of conservative economic thinking, but curiously, the AP reports Republicans are now <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44218846/ns/politics/" type="external">lining up</a> to raise taxes on nearly half of all Americans. In his <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/08/20/weekly-address-putting-country-ahead-party" type="external">radio address</a> this weekend, President Obama called for an extension to the payroll tax holiday he <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/138049-white-house-payroll-tax-cut-benefits-have-begun" type="external">signed into law</a> last year, which benefits every working American, lowering the 6.2 percent tax that funds Social Security to 4.2 percent. The tax cut will expire in January, and many of the same Republican lawmakers who fought tooth and nail to preserve the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are now coming out against an extension of the payroll tax holiday.</p>
<p>Why? Social Security payroll taxes mainly benefit middle- and working-class Americans, as the tax <a href="http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=172179,00.html" type="external">only applies</a> to the first $106,800 of a worker’s wages. Thus, no matter how much money someone makes, they will see a maximum benefit of $2,136 from the holiday — a pittance compared to the savings for the wealthy from the Bush income tax cuts. Republicans claim these cuts for lower-income earners <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44218846/ns/politics/" type="external">will do less</a> to stimulate the economy than cuts for the wealthy or employers:</p>
<p>“It’s always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn,” says Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), “but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again.”</p>
<p>Hensarling, the House’ fourth-ranking Republican, is right — some tax cuts do more than others to “get the economy moving again.” He just has it backwards about which cuts do that. Tax cuts for wealthy, such as those in the Bush tax cuts, are the single “ <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/business/economy/11tax.html" type="external">least effective way</a> to spur the economy and reduce unemployment,” according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, because wealthy Americans were more likely to save their money than spend it.</p>
<p>Conversely, payroll tax cuts are one of the most efficient ways to stimulate economic growth, because low- and middle-income earners are more likely to spend their extra cash right away. But this analysis and similar ones from <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/16/news/economy/tax_cuts_economic_impact/index.htm" type="external">Moody’s</a> and <a href="http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&amp;id=3241" type="external">other experts</a> has not disuaded Republicans from their myopic focus on tax cuts for the the wealthy only.</p>
<p>GOP budget guru Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) dismissed a payroll tax holiday in June as nothing but “ <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/166837-paul-ryan-payroll-tax-cuts-nothing-but-qsugar-highq" type="external">sugar-high economics</a>.” Meanwhile, presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he “would prefer to see the payroll tax cut on the employer side,” instead of for the employee. Both sides pay an equal amount for a total contribution of 12.4 percent per worker.</p>
<p>Indeed, the conservative dogma on taxes seems to flip for low-income earners, as many conservatives have explicitly called for the poor and middle-class <a href="" type="internal">to pay more in taxes</a>.</p> | 3,003 |
<p>Press Secretary Sean Spicer was just asked about the hate crime which resulted in the brutal murder of an elderly black man, and his lengthy response essentially boiled down to "no comment."</p>
<p>His full response can be seen here:</p>
<p />
<p>A 28-year-old white supremacist from Baltimore traveled to New York City with the specific intention "to kill as many black men as he could," according to authorities who heard his confession. He murdered 66-year-old Timothy Caughman with a sword for the "rush." He admitted to the crime and said he wished he had killed a "young thug."</p>
<p>Spicer, however, would not outright condemn the crime.</p>
<p>"I want to be very clear that I'm not going to reference any particular case before the DOJ right now," Spicer said. "I will say that the president has recognized that we need to bring the country together. He wants to unite this country, he wants to bring people together."</p>
<p>Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks&#160;April Ryan pressed him again to respond more specifically, and Spicer spoke&#160;generally about "denouncing hate" without going&#160;so far as to actually denounce the recent hate crime, saying he did not "know all the details."</p>
<p>"Hate crimes and anti-Semitic crimes of any nature should be called out in the most reprehensible way," Spicer said.</p>
<p>An issue that is equally important as calling out hate crimes? Calling out liberals who ask conservatives to condemn hate crimes.</p>
<p>Spicer cited a recent example of the mentally ill 19-year-old Israeli-American <a href="http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/local_news/what-does-arrest-of-jcc-bomb-threat-suspect-mean/article_c816f918-1318-11e7-b6a1-8bf273f82350.html" type="external">who sent more than 150 bomb threats to various Jewish institutions</a> since the beginning of 2017. As of now, he has not been confirmed to be&#160;a Trump supporter as originally suspected by many liberals, given <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2017/02/15/hate-groups-increase-second-consecutive-year-trump-electrifies-radical-right" type="external">the rise in hate crimes&#160;and hate groups that have coincided&#160;with&#160;the rise of Trump's anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric.</a></p>
<p>"That is something that equally needs to be called out," Spicer continued. "When people are charging something of someone that's not true, there has been nothing to go back to those individuals. Nothing on the left, who came and asked everyone on the right to denounce something that they weren't guilty of. And I think there needs to be an equal go-back-in-time and call out those individuals for rushing to judgment and calling out those individuals."</p>
<p>Nathan Wellman is a Los Angeles-based journalist, author, and playwright. His less-political Youtube channel&#160; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgTX2M68DdRvR5Jd2YHEH7A" type="external">can be found here</a>.&#160;Follow him on Twitter: @LightningWOW</p> | Sean Spicer responds to murder by white supremacist in the most bizarre way possible | true | http://resistancereport.com/news/sean-spicer-responds-murder-white-supremacist-bizarre-way-possible/ | 2017-03-27 | 4left
| Sean Spicer responds to murder by white supremacist in the most bizarre way possible
<p>Press Secretary Sean Spicer was just asked about the hate crime which resulted in the brutal murder of an elderly black man, and his lengthy response essentially boiled down to "no comment."</p>
<p>His full response can be seen here:</p>
<p />
<p>A 28-year-old white supremacist from Baltimore traveled to New York City with the specific intention "to kill as many black men as he could," according to authorities who heard his confession. He murdered 66-year-old Timothy Caughman with a sword for the "rush." He admitted to the crime and said he wished he had killed a "young thug."</p>
<p>Spicer, however, would not outright condemn the crime.</p>
<p>"I want to be very clear that I'm not going to reference any particular case before the DOJ right now," Spicer said. "I will say that the president has recognized that we need to bring the country together. He wants to unite this country, he wants to bring people together."</p>
<p>Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks&#160;April Ryan pressed him again to respond more specifically, and Spicer spoke&#160;generally about "denouncing hate" without going&#160;so far as to actually denounce the recent hate crime, saying he did not "know all the details."</p>
<p>"Hate crimes and anti-Semitic crimes of any nature should be called out in the most reprehensible way," Spicer said.</p>
<p>An issue that is equally important as calling out hate crimes? Calling out liberals who ask conservatives to condemn hate crimes.</p>
<p>Spicer cited a recent example of the mentally ill 19-year-old Israeli-American <a href="http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/local_news/what-does-arrest-of-jcc-bomb-threat-suspect-mean/article_c816f918-1318-11e7-b6a1-8bf273f82350.html" type="external">who sent more than 150 bomb threats to various Jewish institutions</a> since the beginning of 2017. As of now, he has not been confirmed to be&#160;a Trump supporter as originally suspected by many liberals, given <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2017/02/15/hate-groups-increase-second-consecutive-year-trump-electrifies-radical-right" type="external">the rise in hate crimes&#160;and hate groups that have coincided&#160;with&#160;the rise of Trump's anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric.</a></p>
<p>"That is something that equally needs to be called out," Spicer continued. "When people are charging something of someone that's not true, there has been nothing to go back to those individuals. Nothing on the left, who came and asked everyone on the right to denounce something that they weren't guilty of. And I think there needs to be an equal go-back-in-time and call out those individuals for rushing to judgment and calling out those individuals."</p>
<p>Nathan Wellman is a Los Angeles-based journalist, author, and playwright. His less-political Youtube channel&#160; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgTX2M68DdRvR5Jd2YHEH7A" type="external">can be found here</a>.&#160;Follow him on Twitter: @LightningWOW</p> | 3,004 |
<p>PARIS (AP) — The same Russian government-aligned hackers who penetrated the Democratic Party have spent the past few months laying the groundwork for an espionage campaign against the U.S. Senate, a cybersecurity firm said in <a href="http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/update-pawn-storm-new-targets-politically-motivated-campaigns/" type="external">a report</a> Friday.</p>
<p>The revelation suggests the group often nicknamed Fancy Bear, whose hacking campaign scrambled the 2016 U.S. electoral contest, is still busy trying to gather the emails of America’s political elite.</p>
<p>“They’re still very active — in making preparations at least — to influence public opinion again,” said Feike Hacquebord, a security researcher at Trend Micro Inc. who authoered the report. “They are looking for information they might leak later.”</p>
<p>The Senate Sergeant at Arms office, which is responsible for the upper house’s security, declined to comment, but Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said it was time for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to return to Congress to say what action had been taken to help ensure lawmakers’ digital safety.</p>
<p>“The Administration needs to take urgent action to ensure that our adversaries cannot undermine the framework of our political debates,” he said in a statement.</p>
<p>Trend Micro based its report on the discovery of a clutch of suspicious-looking websites dressed up to look like the U.S. Senate’s internal email system. The Tokyo-based firm then cross-referenced digital fingerprints associated with those sites to ones used almost exclusively by Fancy Bear, which it dubs “Pawn Storm.”</p>
<p>Trend Micro previously drew international attention when it used an identical technique to uncover a set of decoy websites apparently set up to harvest emails from the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign <a href="" type="internal">in April 2017</a> . The sites’ discovery was followed two months later by a <a href="" type="internal">still-unexplained publication of private emails</a> from several Macron staffers in the final days of the race.</p>
<p>Hacquebord said the rogue Senate sites — which were set up in June and September of 2017 — matched their French counterparts.</p>
<p>“That is exactly the way they attacked the Macron campaign in France,” he said.</p>
<p>Attribution is extremely tricky in the world of cybersecurity, where hackers routinely use misdirection and red herrings to fool their adversaries. But Tend Micro, which has followed Fancy Bear for years, said there could be no doubt.</p>
<p>“We are 100 percent sure that it can attributed to the Pawn Storm group,” said Rik Ferguson, one of the Hacquebord’s colleagues.</p>
<p>Like many cybersecurity companies, Trend Micro refuses to speculate publicly on who is behind such groups, referring to Pawn Storm only as having “Russia-related interests.” But the U.S. intelligence community <a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf" type="external">alleges</a> that Russia’s military intelligence service pulls the hackers’ strings and a months-long Associated Press <a href="" type="internal">investigation</a> into the group, drawing on a vast database of targets supplied by the cybersecurity firm Secureworks, has determined that the group is closely attuned to the Kremlin’s objectives.</p>
<p>If Fancy Bear has targeted the Senate over the past few months, it wouldn’t be the first time. An AP analysis of Secureworks’ list shows that several staffers there were targeted between 2015 and 2016.</p>
<p>Among them: Robert Zarate, now the foreign policy adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who now runs a Washington consultancy; and Jason Thielman, the chief of staff to Montana Sen. Steve Daines. A Congressional researcher specializing in national security issues was also targeted.</p>
<p>Fancy Bear’s interests aren’t limited to U.S. politics; the group also appears to have the Olympics in mind.</p>
<p>Trend Micro’s report said the group had set up infrastructure aimed at collecting emails from a series of Olympic winter sports federations, including the International Ski Federation, the International Ice Hockey Federation, the International Bobsleigh &amp; Skeleton Federation, the International Luge Federation and the International Biathlon Union.</p>
<p>The targeting of Olympic groups comes as relations between Russia and the International Olympic Committee are particularly fraught. Russian athletes are being forced to compete under a neutral flag in the upcoming Pyeongchang Olympics following an extraordinary doping scandal that has seen 43 athletes and several Russian officials banned for life. Amid speculation that Russia could retaliate by orchestrating the leak of prominent Olympic officials’ emails, cybersecurity firms including <a href="https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/mcafee-labs/malicious-document-targets-pyeongchang-olympics/" type="external">McAfee</a> and <a href="https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/duping-doping-domains/" type="external">ThreatConnect</a> have picked up on signs that state-backed hackers are making moves against winter sports staff and anti-doping officials.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, a group that has brazenly adopted the Fancy Bear nickname <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/sports/olympics/russian-hackers-emails-doping.html" type="external">began publishing</a> what appeared to be Olympics- and doping-related emails from between September 2016 and March 2017. The contents were largely unremarkable but their publication was covered extensively by Russian state media and some read the leak as a warning to Olympic officials not to press Moscow too hard over the doping scandal.</p>
<p>Whether any Senate emails could be published in such a way isn’t clear. Previous <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/hacked-information-bomb-under-germanys-election/" type="external">warnings</a> that German lawmakers’ correspondence might be leaked by Fancy Bear ahead of last year’s election there appear to have come to nothing.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the group has previously dumped at least one U.S. legislator’s correspondence onto the web.</p>
<p>One of the targets on Secureworks’ list was Colorado State Senator Andy Kerr, who said thousands of his emails were <a href="https://www.infowars.com/exclusive-dem-senators-private-email-hacked/" type="external">posted</a> to an obscure section of the website DCLeaks — a web portal better known for publishing emails belonging to retired Gen. Colin Powell and various members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign — in late 2016.</p>
<p>Kerr said he was still bewildered as to why he was targeted. He said that while he supported transparency, “there should be some process and some system to it.</p>
<p>“It shouldn’t be up to a foreign government or some hacker to say what gets released and what shouldn’t.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer James Ellingworth in Moscow contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Raphael Satter can be reached at: <a href="http://raphaelsatter.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://raphaelsatter.com" type="external">http://raphaelsatter.com</a></p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Online:</p>
<p>Trend Micro’s report: <a href="https://goo.gl/ZpHJuJ" type="external" /> <a href="https://goo.gl/ZpHJuJ" type="external">https://goo.gl/ZpHJuJ</a></p>
<p>PARIS (AP) — The same Russian government-aligned hackers who penetrated the Democratic Party have spent the past few months laying the groundwork for an espionage campaign against the U.S. Senate, a cybersecurity firm said in <a href="http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/update-pawn-storm-new-targets-politically-motivated-campaigns/" type="external">a report</a> Friday.</p>
<p>The revelation suggests the group often nicknamed Fancy Bear, whose hacking campaign scrambled the 2016 U.S. electoral contest, is still busy trying to gather the emails of America’s political elite.</p>
<p>“They’re still very active — in making preparations at least — to influence public opinion again,” said Feike Hacquebord, a security researcher at Trend Micro Inc. who authoered the report. “They are looking for information they might leak later.”</p>
<p>The Senate Sergeant at Arms office, which is responsible for the upper house’s security, declined to comment, but Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said it was time for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to return to Congress to say what action had been taken to help ensure lawmakers’ digital safety.</p>
<p>“The Administration needs to take urgent action to ensure that our adversaries cannot undermine the framework of our political debates,” he said in a statement.</p>
<p>Trend Micro based its report on the discovery of a clutch of suspicious-looking websites dressed up to look like the U.S. Senate’s internal email system. The Tokyo-based firm then cross-referenced digital fingerprints associated with those sites to ones used almost exclusively by Fancy Bear, which it dubs “Pawn Storm.”</p>
<p>Trend Micro previously drew international attention when it used an identical technique to uncover a set of decoy websites apparently set up to harvest emails from the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign <a href="" type="internal">in April 2017</a> . The sites’ discovery was followed two months later by a <a href="" type="internal">still-unexplained publication of private emails</a> from several Macron staffers in the final days of the race.</p>
<p>Hacquebord said the rogue Senate sites — which were set up in June and September of 2017 — matched their French counterparts.</p>
<p>“That is exactly the way they attacked the Macron campaign in France,” he said.</p>
<p>Attribution is extremely tricky in the world of cybersecurity, where hackers routinely use misdirection and red herrings to fool their adversaries. But Tend Micro, which has followed Fancy Bear for years, said there could be no doubt.</p>
<p>“We are 100 percent sure that it can attributed to the Pawn Storm group,” said Rik Ferguson, one of the Hacquebord’s colleagues.</p>
<p>Like many cybersecurity companies, Trend Micro refuses to speculate publicly on who is behind such groups, referring to Pawn Storm only as having “Russia-related interests.” But the U.S. intelligence community <a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf" type="external">alleges</a> that Russia’s military intelligence service pulls the hackers’ strings and a months-long Associated Press <a href="" type="internal">investigation</a> into the group, drawing on a vast database of targets supplied by the cybersecurity firm Secureworks, has determined that the group is closely attuned to the Kremlin’s objectives.</p>
<p>If Fancy Bear has targeted the Senate over the past few months, it wouldn’t be the first time. An AP analysis of Secureworks’ list shows that several staffers there were targeted between 2015 and 2016.</p>
<p>Among them: Robert Zarate, now the foreign policy adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who now runs a Washington consultancy; and Jason Thielman, the chief of staff to Montana Sen. Steve Daines. A Congressional researcher specializing in national security issues was also targeted.</p>
<p>Fancy Bear’s interests aren’t limited to U.S. politics; the group also appears to have the Olympics in mind.</p>
<p>Trend Micro’s report said the group had set up infrastructure aimed at collecting emails from a series of Olympic winter sports federations, including the International Ski Federation, the International Ice Hockey Federation, the International Bobsleigh &amp; Skeleton Federation, the International Luge Federation and the International Biathlon Union.</p>
<p>The targeting of Olympic groups comes as relations between Russia and the International Olympic Committee are particularly fraught. Russian athletes are being forced to compete under a neutral flag in the upcoming Pyeongchang Olympics following an extraordinary doping scandal that has seen 43 athletes and several Russian officials banned for life. Amid speculation that Russia could retaliate by orchestrating the leak of prominent Olympic officials’ emails, cybersecurity firms including <a href="https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/mcafee-labs/malicious-document-targets-pyeongchang-olympics/" type="external">McAfee</a> and <a href="https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/duping-doping-domains/" type="external">ThreatConnect</a> have picked up on signs that state-backed hackers are making moves against winter sports staff and anti-doping officials.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, a group that has brazenly adopted the Fancy Bear nickname <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/sports/olympics/russian-hackers-emails-doping.html" type="external">began publishing</a> what appeared to be Olympics- and doping-related emails from between September 2016 and March 2017. The contents were largely unremarkable but their publication was covered extensively by Russian state media and some read the leak as a warning to Olympic officials not to press Moscow too hard over the doping scandal.</p>
<p>Whether any Senate emails could be published in such a way isn’t clear. Previous <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/hacked-information-bomb-under-germanys-election/" type="external">warnings</a> that German lawmakers’ correspondence might be leaked by Fancy Bear ahead of last year’s election there appear to have come to nothing.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the group has previously dumped at least one U.S. legislator’s correspondence onto the web.</p>
<p>One of the targets on Secureworks’ list was Colorado State Senator Andy Kerr, who said thousands of his emails were <a href="https://www.infowars.com/exclusive-dem-senators-private-email-hacked/" type="external">posted</a> to an obscure section of the website DCLeaks — a web portal better known for publishing emails belonging to retired Gen. Colin Powell and various members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign — in late 2016.</p>
<p>Kerr said he was still bewildered as to why he was targeted. He said that while he supported transparency, “there should be some process and some system to it.</p>
<p>“It shouldn’t be up to a foreign government or some hacker to say what gets released and what shouldn’t.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer James Ellingworth in Moscow contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Raphael Satter can be reached at: <a href="http://raphaelsatter.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://raphaelsatter.com" type="external">http://raphaelsatter.com</a></p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Online:</p>
<p>Trend Micro’s report: <a href="https://goo.gl/ZpHJuJ" type="external" /> <a href="https://goo.gl/ZpHJuJ" type="external">https://goo.gl/ZpHJuJ</a></p> | Cybersecurity firm: US Senate in Russian hackers’ crosshairs | false | https://apnews.com/9a6888c2163f43a7913c808e8cf9bc6e | 2018-01-13 | 2least
| Cybersecurity firm: US Senate in Russian hackers’ crosshairs
<p>PARIS (AP) — The same Russian government-aligned hackers who penetrated the Democratic Party have spent the past few months laying the groundwork for an espionage campaign against the U.S. Senate, a cybersecurity firm said in <a href="http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/update-pawn-storm-new-targets-politically-motivated-campaigns/" type="external">a report</a> Friday.</p>
<p>The revelation suggests the group often nicknamed Fancy Bear, whose hacking campaign scrambled the 2016 U.S. electoral contest, is still busy trying to gather the emails of America’s political elite.</p>
<p>“They’re still very active — in making preparations at least — to influence public opinion again,” said Feike Hacquebord, a security researcher at Trend Micro Inc. who authoered the report. “They are looking for information they might leak later.”</p>
<p>The Senate Sergeant at Arms office, which is responsible for the upper house’s security, declined to comment, but Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said it was time for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to return to Congress to say what action had been taken to help ensure lawmakers’ digital safety.</p>
<p>“The Administration needs to take urgent action to ensure that our adversaries cannot undermine the framework of our political debates,” he said in a statement.</p>
<p>Trend Micro based its report on the discovery of a clutch of suspicious-looking websites dressed up to look like the U.S. Senate’s internal email system. The Tokyo-based firm then cross-referenced digital fingerprints associated with those sites to ones used almost exclusively by Fancy Bear, which it dubs “Pawn Storm.”</p>
<p>Trend Micro previously drew international attention when it used an identical technique to uncover a set of decoy websites apparently set up to harvest emails from the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign <a href="" type="internal">in April 2017</a> . The sites’ discovery was followed two months later by a <a href="" type="internal">still-unexplained publication of private emails</a> from several Macron staffers in the final days of the race.</p>
<p>Hacquebord said the rogue Senate sites — which were set up in June and September of 2017 — matched their French counterparts.</p>
<p>“That is exactly the way they attacked the Macron campaign in France,” he said.</p>
<p>Attribution is extremely tricky in the world of cybersecurity, where hackers routinely use misdirection and red herrings to fool their adversaries. But Tend Micro, which has followed Fancy Bear for years, said there could be no doubt.</p>
<p>“We are 100 percent sure that it can attributed to the Pawn Storm group,” said Rik Ferguson, one of the Hacquebord’s colleagues.</p>
<p>Like many cybersecurity companies, Trend Micro refuses to speculate publicly on who is behind such groups, referring to Pawn Storm only as having “Russia-related interests.” But the U.S. intelligence community <a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf" type="external">alleges</a> that Russia’s military intelligence service pulls the hackers’ strings and a months-long Associated Press <a href="" type="internal">investigation</a> into the group, drawing on a vast database of targets supplied by the cybersecurity firm Secureworks, has determined that the group is closely attuned to the Kremlin’s objectives.</p>
<p>If Fancy Bear has targeted the Senate over the past few months, it wouldn’t be the first time. An AP analysis of Secureworks’ list shows that several staffers there were targeted between 2015 and 2016.</p>
<p>Among them: Robert Zarate, now the foreign policy adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who now runs a Washington consultancy; and Jason Thielman, the chief of staff to Montana Sen. Steve Daines. A Congressional researcher specializing in national security issues was also targeted.</p>
<p>Fancy Bear’s interests aren’t limited to U.S. politics; the group also appears to have the Olympics in mind.</p>
<p>Trend Micro’s report said the group had set up infrastructure aimed at collecting emails from a series of Olympic winter sports federations, including the International Ski Federation, the International Ice Hockey Federation, the International Bobsleigh &amp; Skeleton Federation, the International Luge Federation and the International Biathlon Union.</p>
<p>The targeting of Olympic groups comes as relations between Russia and the International Olympic Committee are particularly fraught. Russian athletes are being forced to compete under a neutral flag in the upcoming Pyeongchang Olympics following an extraordinary doping scandal that has seen 43 athletes and several Russian officials banned for life. Amid speculation that Russia could retaliate by orchestrating the leak of prominent Olympic officials’ emails, cybersecurity firms including <a href="https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/mcafee-labs/malicious-document-targets-pyeongchang-olympics/" type="external">McAfee</a> and <a href="https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/duping-doping-domains/" type="external">ThreatConnect</a> have picked up on signs that state-backed hackers are making moves against winter sports staff and anti-doping officials.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, a group that has brazenly adopted the Fancy Bear nickname <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/sports/olympics/russian-hackers-emails-doping.html" type="external">began publishing</a> what appeared to be Olympics- and doping-related emails from between September 2016 and March 2017. The contents were largely unremarkable but their publication was covered extensively by Russian state media and some read the leak as a warning to Olympic officials not to press Moscow too hard over the doping scandal.</p>
<p>Whether any Senate emails could be published in such a way isn’t clear. Previous <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/hacked-information-bomb-under-germanys-election/" type="external">warnings</a> that German lawmakers’ correspondence might be leaked by Fancy Bear ahead of last year’s election there appear to have come to nothing.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the group has previously dumped at least one U.S. legislator’s correspondence onto the web.</p>
<p>One of the targets on Secureworks’ list was Colorado State Senator Andy Kerr, who said thousands of his emails were <a href="https://www.infowars.com/exclusive-dem-senators-private-email-hacked/" type="external">posted</a> to an obscure section of the website DCLeaks — a web portal better known for publishing emails belonging to retired Gen. Colin Powell and various members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign — in late 2016.</p>
<p>Kerr said he was still bewildered as to why he was targeted. He said that while he supported transparency, “there should be some process and some system to it.</p>
<p>“It shouldn’t be up to a foreign government or some hacker to say what gets released and what shouldn’t.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer James Ellingworth in Moscow contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Raphael Satter can be reached at: <a href="http://raphaelsatter.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://raphaelsatter.com" type="external">http://raphaelsatter.com</a></p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Online:</p>
<p>Trend Micro’s report: <a href="https://goo.gl/ZpHJuJ" type="external" /> <a href="https://goo.gl/ZpHJuJ" type="external">https://goo.gl/ZpHJuJ</a></p>
<p>PARIS (AP) — The same Russian government-aligned hackers who penetrated the Democratic Party have spent the past few months laying the groundwork for an espionage campaign against the U.S. Senate, a cybersecurity firm said in <a href="http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/update-pawn-storm-new-targets-politically-motivated-campaigns/" type="external">a report</a> Friday.</p>
<p>The revelation suggests the group often nicknamed Fancy Bear, whose hacking campaign scrambled the 2016 U.S. electoral contest, is still busy trying to gather the emails of America’s political elite.</p>
<p>“They’re still very active — in making preparations at least — to influence public opinion again,” said Feike Hacquebord, a security researcher at Trend Micro Inc. who authoered the report. “They are looking for information they might leak later.”</p>
<p>The Senate Sergeant at Arms office, which is responsible for the upper house’s security, declined to comment, but Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said it was time for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to return to Congress to say what action had been taken to help ensure lawmakers’ digital safety.</p>
<p>“The Administration needs to take urgent action to ensure that our adversaries cannot undermine the framework of our political debates,” he said in a statement.</p>
<p>Trend Micro based its report on the discovery of a clutch of suspicious-looking websites dressed up to look like the U.S. Senate’s internal email system. The Tokyo-based firm then cross-referenced digital fingerprints associated with those sites to ones used almost exclusively by Fancy Bear, which it dubs “Pawn Storm.”</p>
<p>Trend Micro previously drew international attention when it used an identical technique to uncover a set of decoy websites apparently set up to harvest emails from the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign <a href="" type="internal">in April 2017</a> . The sites’ discovery was followed two months later by a <a href="" type="internal">still-unexplained publication of private emails</a> from several Macron staffers in the final days of the race.</p>
<p>Hacquebord said the rogue Senate sites — which were set up in June and September of 2017 — matched their French counterparts.</p>
<p>“That is exactly the way they attacked the Macron campaign in France,” he said.</p>
<p>Attribution is extremely tricky in the world of cybersecurity, where hackers routinely use misdirection and red herrings to fool their adversaries. But Tend Micro, which has followed Fancy Bear for years, said there could be no doubt.</p>
<p>“We are 100 percent sure that it can attributed to the Pawn Storm group,” said Rik Ferguson, one of the Hacquebord’s colleagues.</p>
<p>Like many cybersecurity companies, Trend Micro refuses to speculate publicly on who is behind such groups, referring to Pawn Storm only as having “Russia-related interests.” But the U.S. intelligence community <a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf" type="external">alleges</a> that Russia’s military intelligence service pulls the hackers’ strings and a months-long Associated Press <a href="" type="internal">investigation</a> into the group, drawing on a vast database of targets supplied by the cybersecurity firm Secureworks, has determined that the group is closely attuned to the Kremlin’s objectives.</p>
<p>If Fancy Bear has targeted the Senate over the past few months, it wouldn’t be the first time. An AP analysis of Secureworks’ list shows that several staffers there were targeted between 2015 and 2016.</p>
<p>Among them: Robert Zarate, now the foreign policy adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who now runs a Washington consultancy; and Jason Thielman, the chief of staff to Montana Sen. Steve Daines. A Congressional researcher specializing in national security issues was also targeted.</p>
<p>Fancy Bear’s interests aren’t limited to U.S. politics; the group also appears to have the Olympics in mind.</p>
<p>Trend Micro’s report said the group had set up infrastructure aimed at collecting emails from a series of Olympic winter sports federations, including the International Ski Federation, the International Ice Hockey Federation, the International Bobsleigh &amp; Skeleton Federation, the International Luge Federation and the International Biathlon Union.</p>
<p>The targeting of Olympic groups comes as relations between Russia and the International Olympic Committee are particularly fraught. Russian athletes are being forced to compete under a neutral flag in the upcoming Pyeongchang Olympics following an extraordinary doping scandal that has seen 43 athletes and several Russian officials banned for life. Amid speculation that Russia could retaliate by orchestrating the leak of prominent Olympic officials’ emails, cybersecurity firms including <a href="https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/mcafee-labs/malicious-document-targets-pyeongchang-olympics/" type="external">McAfee</a> and <a href="https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/duping-doping-domains/" type="external">ThreatConnect</a> have picked up on signs that state-backed hackers are making moves against winter sports staff and anti-doping officials.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, a group that has brazenly adopted the Fancy Bear nickname <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/sports/olympics/russian-hackers-emails-doping.html" type="external">began publishing</a> what appeared to be Olympics- and doping-related emails from between September 2016 and March 2017. The contents were largely unremarkable but their publication was covered extensively by Russian state media and some read the leak as a warning to Olympic officials not to press Moscow too hard over the doping scandal.</p>
<p>Whether any Senate emails could be published in such a way isn’t clear. Previous <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/hacked-information-bomb-under-germanys-election/" type="external">warnings</a> that German lawmakers’ correspondence might be leaked by Fancy Bear ahead of last year’s election there appear to have come to nothing.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the group has previously dumped at least one U.S. legislator’s correspondence onto the web.</p>
<p>One of the targets on Secureworks’ list was Colorado State Senator Andy Kerr, who said thousands of his emails were <a href="https://www.infowars.com/exclusive-dem-senators-private-email-hacked/" type="external">posted</a> to an obscure section of the website DCLeaks — a web portal better known for publishing emails belonging to retired Gen. Colin Powell and various members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign — in late 2016.</p>
<p>Kerr said he was still bewildered as to why he was targeted. He said that while he supported transparency, “there should be some process and some system to it.</p>
<p>“It shouldn’t be up to a foreign government or some hacker to say what gets released and what shouldn’t.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer James Ellingworth in Moscow contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Raphael Satter can be reached at: <a href="http://raphaelsatter.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://raphaelsatter.com" type="external">http://raphaelsatter.com</a></p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Online:</p>
<p>Trend Micro’s report: <a href="https://goo.gl/ZpHJuJ" type="external" /> <a href="https://goo.gl/ZpHJuJ" type="external">https://goo.gl/ZpHJuJ</a></p> | 3,005 |
<p>TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) _ These Kansas lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>Lotto America</p>
<p>04-30-38-47-48, Star Ball: 3, ASB: 2</p>
<p>(four, thirty, thirty-eight, forty-seven, forty-eight; Star Ball: three; ASB: two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $17.23 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Midday</p>
<p>1-7-0</p>
<p>(one, seven, zero)</p>
<p>Daily Pick 3</p>
<p>7-3-8</p>
<p>(seven, three, eight)</p>
<p>Super Kansas Cash</p>
<p>02-06-10-22-26, Cash Ball: 22</p>
<p>(two, six, ten, twenty-two, twenty-six; Cash Ball: twenty-two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $260,000</p>
<p>2 By 2</p>
<p>Red Balls: 7-14, White Balls: 23-24</p>
<p>(Red Balls: seven, fourteen; White Balls: twenty-three, twenty-four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $22,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $306 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>03-09-16-56-60, Powerball: 3, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(three, nine, sixteen, fifty-six, sixty; Powerball: three; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $337 million</p>
<p>TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) _ These Kansas lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>Lotto America</p>
<p>04-30-38-47-48, Star Ball: 3, ASB: 2</p>
<p>(four, thirty, thirty-eight, forty-seven, forty-eight; Star Ball: three; ASB: two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $17.23 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Midday</p>
<p>1-7-0</p>
<p>(one, seven, zero)</p>
<p>Daily Pick 3</p>
<p>7-3-8</p>
<p>(seven, three, eight)</p>
<p>Super Kansas Cash</p>
<p>02-06-10-22-26, Cash Ball: 22</p>
<p>(two, six, ten, twenty-two, twenty-six; Cash Ball: twenty-two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $260,000</p>
<p>2 By 2</p>
<p>Red Balls: 7-14, White Balls: 23-24</p>
<p>(Red Balls: seven, fourteen; White Balls: twenty-three, twenty-four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $22,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $306 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>03-09-16-56-60, Powerball: 3, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(three, nine, sixteen, fifty-six, sixty; Powerball: three; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $337 million</p> | KS Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/amp/fbbc3ac56f5646ab87540be304285bbb | 2017-12-28 | 2least
| KS Lottery
<p>TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) _ These Kansas lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>Lotto America</p>
<p>04-30-38-47-48, Star Ball: 3, ASB: 2</p>
<p>(four, thirty, thirty-eight, forty-seven, forty-eight; Star Ball: three; ASB: two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $17.23 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Midday</p>
<p>1-7-0</p>
<p>(one, seven, zero)</p>
<p>Daily Pick 3</p>
<p>7-3-8</p>
<p>(seven, three, eight)</p>
<p>Super Kansas Cash</p>
<p>02-06-10-22-26, Cash Ball: 22</p>
<p>(two, six, ten, twenty-two, twenty-six; Cash Ball: twenty-two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $260,000</p>
<p>2 By 2</p>
<p>Red Balls: 7-14, White Balls: 23-24</p>
<p>(Red Balls: seven, fourteen; White Balls: twenty-three, twenty-four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $22,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $306 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>03-09-16-56-60, Powerball: 3, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(three, nine, sixteen, fifty-six, sixty; Powerball: three; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $337 million</p>
<p>TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) _ These Kansas lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>Lotto America</p>
<p>04-30-38-47-48, Star Ball: 3, ASB: 2</p>
<p>(four, thirty, thirty-eight, forty-seven, forty-eight; Star Ball: three; ASB: two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $17.23 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Midday</p>
<p>1-7-0</p>
<p>(one, seven, zero)</p>
<p>Daily Pick 3</p>
<p>7-3-8</p>
<p>(seven, three, eight)</p>
<p>Super Kansas Cash</p>
<p>02-06-10-22-26, Cash Ball: 22</p>
<p>(two, six, ten, twenty-two, twenty-six; Cash Ball: twenty-two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $260,000</p>
<p>2 By 2</p>
<p>Red Balls: 7-14, White Balls: 23-24</p>
<p>(Red Balls: seven, fourteen; White Balls: twenty-three, twenty-four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $22,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $306 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>03-09-16-56-60, Powerball: 3, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(three, nine, sixteen, fifty-six, sixty; Powerball: three; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $337 million</p> | 3,006 |
<p>Photo by Orin Zebest | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>The Doomsday Clock has been edging closer to midnight since Donald Trump got his hands on the nuclear codes – not for ideological reasons, as would have been the case had Hillary Clinton not blown her chance to become Commander-in-Chief, but because he is morally inert and psychologically unhinged.&#160; Giving such a miscreant control over a nuclear arsenal is like handing a troubled teenager a loaded gun.</p>
<p>And although he has yet to score even one major legislative victory after eight months in office, he and the hyper-rich, ideologically driven troglodytes he installed in key cabinet and agency positions have already done grave, perhaps irreversible, harm to America’s feeble efforts to address the catastrophic problem of global warming.&#160; &#160;Their record on other environmental issues has been similarly appalling.</p>
<p>Trump’s appointments to the federal judiciary have done irreparable harm as well; Neil Gorsuch is only the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, credit where credit is due: to the dismay of guardians of the status quo, Trump has diminished the majesty of the office he occupies and has undermined the moral standing of the United States in the world.&#160; He has also done severe, probably irreparable, harm to the Republican Party.</p>
<p>Cutting the imperial presidency down to size is a necessary step in the democratization of the regime.&#160; The situation was a little better for a few years after Watergate, but these days there are no significant political forces opposing the powers assumed by the executive branch since the end of World War II.&#160; Ironically, with Congress being bought and paid for as it is, this may actually be a good thing.</p>
<p>Ultimately, though, (small-d) democracy is about according “power to the people,” not to the people’s leaders.&#160; Therefore, even under present conditions, knocking the office of&#160; President down a notch or two has its progressive side.</p>
<p>How ironic that a buffoonish autocrat wannabe would be a means to that end!</p>
<p>How ironic too that the man who says he wants to ‘make America great again’ would do so much to undermine its moral standing throughout the world.&#160; Peoples struggling to break free from American domination have reason to be grateful.</p>
<p>Might is indispensible for global or even regional hegemony, but right is more important still.&#160; Without it, the kind of cultural influence upon which the exercise of “soft power” depends lies beyond reach.&#160; Hegemons must be moral leaders; military stockpiles are not enough.</p>
<p>No doubt, within the military-industrial complex, there are those who are grateful for Trump’s support and largesse. &#160;Nevertheless, for the empire’s more thoughtful stewards, his presidency has been a nightmare. &#160;&#160;If only for this reason, it has not been entirely without redeeming features.</p>
<p>Trump is doing it all unintentionally, of course; and, under his aegis, the cure is worse than the disease.&#160; He is, as it were, an accidental nihilist.&#160; How pathetic that, in our “bipartisan” political universe, bereft as it is of&#160; (small-d) democrats and principled anti-imperialists, this can almost seem, and perhaps sometimes even is, as good as it gets.</p>
<p>Despite the efforts of Clintonite Democrats to revive and then ratchet up the Cold War, the GOP is still the more noxious of our two semi-established, neoliberal political parties.&#160; This being the case, whatever harms them is not to be despised.</p>
<p>The benefit is diminished, however, not just because their rival’s malign neglect of the (many hued) working class has made it all but irrelevant, but also because its leaders are disinclined to upset the status quo even to the extent that they can; Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and the others actually seem to view the Donald as a godsend.&#160; Why wouldn’t they? Democrats have nothing else to offer, at this point, except milquetoast opposition to Trump.&#160; They call it “resistance.”</p>
<p>This is why, to remove the Trumpian menace in the Constitutionally prescribed way, Republicans are going to have to lead the way, and carry it through to completion.</p>
<p>This isn’t going to happen, however, as long as their leaders think that they can get more of what they want by working with Trump than by working against him.</p>
<p>What they want is what the capitalists they work for want; and, after Charlottesville, those capitalists have been running away from Trump like rats fleeing a sinking ship.&#160; One would think that this would seal his fate.&#160; It doesn’t in this case, however, for reasons peculiar to the Trump phenomenon itself.</p>
<p>Many of the people who thought that Trump would somehow improve their material conditions have already defected, and others will surely follow before long; reality always exacts its toll.</p>
<p>But there seems to be a hard core of what are essentially Trump cultists who will never defect – unless Trump, at age seventy-one, somehow changes his personality completely and stops going rogue.</p>
<p>For them, there seems to be nothing that Trump could do that would cause them to turn on him; not even, as Trump once bragged, were he to shoot someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue.</p>
<p>These are the people who are most likely to turn out in large numbers to vote in the mid-term election next year — because they are energized, while no other segment of the electorate is.&#160; &#160;Trump cultists are therefore able to call the shots,within Republican ranks.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, what Congressional incumbents want more than anything is their own re-election.&#160;&#160; They want that even more than they want to serve their corporate and Wall Street paymasters or to advance the causes to which they are ideologically or opportunistically committed.</p>
<p>Thanks to voluntary population sorting (people like living among people like themselves) and gerrymandering, most Republican incumbents nowadays are unlikely to lose their seats to Democrats.&#160; However, they could easily lose their seats to challengers in next year’s primaries.</p>
<p>Democrats are, of course, in the same position, but it is unlikely that many of them will be sent packing by challengers running to their left.&#160; The will is there, but Democrats are inherently pusillanimous and cautious to a fault.&#160; Most incumbent Democrats have little cause to worry.</p>
<p>But Republicans who cross Trump do have cause; they are all but guaranteed primary challenges that they could very well lose.</p>
<p>Therefore, even though Trump is a problem not just for the country and the world but for them as well, expect them to be reluctant to rattle his cage.</p>
<p>In twelve or thirteen months time, when the threat of primary challengers will have faded, the calculation will be different.&#160; For now, though, much as they might like to see Trump go, don’t count on many of them doing anything about it.</p>
<p>Needless to say, this could change in the bat of an eye.&#160; Life under Trump is life on the edge, and potential tipping points abound.&#160;&#160; Charlottesville might yet turn out to have been a tipping point; if it is followed by two, three, many Charlottesvilles, all bets are off.</p>
<p>At this point, though, it all depends on the attitudes of likely Republican voters in states that could go either way, and in so-called red states where Republican victories are all but assured.</p>
<p>Even moderate Republicans are not, by any means, people whose good sense and moral decency can be assumed&#160;&#160; Sadly, however, the fate of the world depends on what Republican voters think.</p>
<p>And that depends, in turn, on the extent to which they are able to resist what might be called WTF fatigue (WTF, that is, as in “what the fuck”?)</p>
<p>This never used to be a factor in our politics, but under Trump it has become a problem for everybody – not only Republicans who are coming to understand what Trump is all about, but everyone else as well.</p>
<p>Thus what seemed outrageous a year or even eight months ago now seems barely worth mentioning.&#160; One, comparatively innocent, example will illustrate what I mean.</p>
<p>In 1988, Joe Biden, seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for President, stole a line from the Leader of the opposition Labor Party in the UK, Neil Kinnock, and forever after became “Plagiarism Joe.”</p>
<p>When Melania Trump spoke at the Republican Convention in Cleveland last year, she or whoever wrote the words she read on the teleprompter did Biden one better; she plagiarized from Michelle Obama, the First Lady at the time.&#160; For this she was widely derided, though, with Trump himself already flaunting ethical norms more egregiously day by day, the incident got sucked down into the memory hole and was soon forgotten.</p>
<p>Then, last week, she did it again, after the murder of Heather Heyer by the twenty-year old self-described Nazi, James Alex Field Jr.&#160; Before Melania’s husband had tweeted a word about Heyer or anything else pertaining to the white supremacist, neo-Nazi assault on Charlottesville, she or her speechwriters put out a statement, taken almost verbatim again, from Michelle Obama.&#160; Hardly anyone cared or even noticed.</p>
<p>Why would they?&#160; With unbelievable WTF outrages piling on daily, sometimes even hourly, plagiarism is small potatoes.</p>
<p>This is the mentality one has to break through to get to the point where Republicans will turn on Trump.&#160; If his presidency continues to disintegrate, along with his mind, this could happen.&#160; But since it is up to the likes of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan whether or not it does, the chances, though getting better all the time, remain poor.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>It is, in fact, more likely that, some combination of financial and legal jeopardy, along with humiliation and embarrassment, will cause Trump to “self-impeach.”&#160;&#160; This isn’t likely either, however, because Trump is too much of an egotist to cut and run in full public view.</p>
<p>But this is surely what he would do if he still had the sense he was born with, if indeed he was born with any sense at all.&#160; Trump has so many more reasons to flee than to stay.</p>
<p>Were he to remove himself from office “voluntarily,” as Richard Nixon did, he would save himself and the Republican Party a lot of trouble.&#160; Trump could care less about the Republican Party.&#160; But he does care a great deal about himself.</p>
<p>And, with six bankruptcies under his sizeable belt, it is plain that flight is in his nature.&#160; To be sure, those bankruptcies were, for the most part, good for his bottom line, even as they were disastrous for his workers, contractors, and investors.&#160; But they nevertheless do reveal character traits that could well come into play now.</p>
<p>If, as is likely, the Mueller investigation is closing in on legally actionable crimes committed by Trump, his family members, and his close associates – money laundering, for example — he could probably “negotiate” pardons for all concerned parties in exchange for his resignation, but it is far from clear that even he could finagle any financial gain out of leaving the White House in disgrace.&#160;&#160; If anybody can, however, he is the one; cashing in by running away is one of the few things he is good at.</p>
<p>Legal jeopardy is not the only consideration that could get Trump to budge; financial losses and mounting challenges to his self-esteem could do the job as well.</p>
<p>If even those CEOs who fled Trumpland after Charlottesville could see how jumping off that sinking ship was in their interest, how much harder could it be to get the Donald to see for himself that his brand is becoming toxic — that his presidency is not only bad for his fellow capitalists and for business generally, but bad for his own businesses as well?</p>
<p>Although he could care less, it is bad for the GOP too.&#160; The poltroons in charge of that nefarious operation may be among the last to realize that their party would be better off going after Trump than standing by him, but even some of them are already seeing the light.&#160; That is how bright that light has become.</p>
<p>Therefore expect more and more Republican incumbents to realize that their worries about primary challengers in 2018 are misguided — that the harm Trump is doing to all Republicans, themselves included, is a more important determinant of their electoral fates.</p>
<p>Those of them who do have the sense they were born must now be salivating at the prospect of replacing Trump with one of their own, Vice President Mike Pence.</p>
<p>It must surely have occurred to those Republicans how easy it would be to find cause for dumping the Donald; he has given them many times more grounds to work with than they need.</p>
<p>But, again: don’t except Ryan and McConnell et. al. to move against Trump until they have exhausted all other alternatives.&#160; After Charlottesville, they were good only for a few pious banalities.&#160; It will take a lot more of “Trump being Trump” to get more out of them.</p>
<p>However, don’t despair if it takes Trump a while, or forever, to figure out the message of the writing on the wall.&#160;&#160; Pence is no prize; compared to Trump, he may not even be a lesser evil.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Unlike Trump, who has foul instincts but no fixed ideas, Pence is a bona fide reactionary whose views are retrograde even by Republican standards.</p>
<p>Were he to take over, there would be a groundswell of relief that, for a while at least, would likely break through the gridlock paralyzing Washington.&#160; The liberal pieties of cable news pundits notwithstanding, that would not be a good thing at all. With a political class comprised of Clintonite Democrats and Republicans, gridlock has been a blessing.&#160; When it goes, if it ever does, it will be sorely missed.</p>
<p>With Trump out and Pence in, Republican reactionaries will be back in business, “independents” will resume their quiescence, and the anti-Trump “resistance” in the Democratic Party will dissipate just as quickly as the anti-war movement did when arch-war maker and Nobel laureate Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush.</p>
<p>On the do-no-harm – or as little harm as possible – principle, immobility under Trump might therefore be preferable to retrograde movement under Pence.</p>
<p>It is impossible to say for sure because it is impossible to know in how much greater peril we are with Trump in charge of nuclear weapons or what the consequences will be of his penchant for bringing out the inner fascist in an appallingly large segment of the American public.</p>
<p>Pence is awful on immigration and his Islamophobic credentials are beyond dispute, but at least he is not an epigone of neo-fascists and the KKK.&#160; &#160;After Charlottesville, we know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Trump is.</p>
<p>In the end, though, there are too many incommensurable factors to take into account, and too much indeterminacy, to say, with any confidence, which of the two is worse.&#160;&#160; The only sure thing is that with either Trump or Pence in charge, expect trouble ahead.</p>
<p>An urgent duty, for anyone with a progressive bone in his or her body, is to work to transform the conditions that make Trump-Clinton elections and Trump-Pence administrations possible.</p>
<p>This is hardly a radical objective, though it might seem so from within the purview of the Democratic Party.&#160; &#160;We can do better than we did in 2016 – maybe not without transforming the Democratic Party beyond recognition, but certainly within the confines of actually existing capitalism.&#160; Even those damnable CEOs whom liberal pundits have been praising so exuberantly since Charlottesville understand this well.</p>
<p>The job has needed doing for a long time — since long before anyone took Trump seriously or even knew whom he was.</p>
<p>Now, with Trump and/or Pence calling the shots, there is another, more immediately urgent task: damage control.</p>
<p>Given the very limited options our not very democratic Constitution accords, and in light of how useless Democrats have become, probably the best we can do at this point, at least while President WTF is still around, is to shame and, whenever possible, shun any person or organization that in any way supports the Trump brand.</p>
<p>In the right conditions, and with the right support behind them, boycotts work.</p>
<p>The CEOs who broke with Trump after Charlottesville understood this; fearing boycotts and other expressions of public disapproval, they prudently put on a preemptive display of moral rectitude.</p>
<p>The Israeli government and its supporters abroad understand this too.&#160; Why else would their realization that the BDS movement is growing, despite their efforts to crush it, drive them bat shit crazy?</p>
<p>Would boycotting all things Trump drive Trump crazy too?&#160; How could one tell?&#160; But even someone as narcissistic and deluded as the Donald could hardly fail to notice the Trump name being transformed from an asset to a liability.</p>
<p>For good or ill, we probably won’t get to see the back of him on this account alone.&#160; But the more tied up he is with it, the better off we all will be.</p> | Will Nothing Rid Us of President WTF? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/08/23/will-nothing-rid-us-of-president-wtf/ | 2017-08-23 | 4left
| Will Nothing Rid Us of President WTF?
<p>Photo by Orin Zebest | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>The Doomsday Clock has been edging closer to midnight since Donald Trump got his hands on the nuclear codes – not for ideological reasons, as would have been the case had Hillary Clinton not blown her chance to become Commander-in-Chief, but because he is morally inert and psychologically unhinged.&#160; Giving such a miscreant control over a nuclear arsenal is like handing a troubled teenager a loaded gun.</p>
<p>And although he has yet to score even one major legislative victory after eight months in office, he and the hyper-rich, ideologically driven troglodytes he installed in key cabinet and agency positions have already done grave, perhaps irreversible, harm to America’s feeble efforts to address the catastrophic problem of global warming.&#160; &#160;Their record on other environmental issues has been similarly appalling.</p>
<p>Trump’s appointments to the federal judiciary have done irreparable harm as well; Neil Gorsuch is only the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, credit where credit is due: to the dismay of guardians of the status quo, Trump has diminished the majesty of the office he occupies and has undermined the moral standing of the United States in the world.&#160; He has also done severe, probably irreparable, harm to the Republican Party.</p>
<p>Cutting the imperial presidency down to size is a necessary step in the democratization of the regime.&#160; The situation was a little better for a few years after Watergate, but these days there are no significant political forces opposing the powers assumed by the executive branch since the end of World War II.&#160; Ironically, with Congress being bought and paid for as it is, this may actually be a good thing.</p>
<p>Ultimately, though, (small-d) democracy is about according “power to the people,” not to the people’s leaders.&#160; Therefore, even under present conditions, knocking the office of&#160; President down a notch or two has its progressive side.</p>
<p>How ironic that a buffoonish autocrat wannabe would be a means to that end!</p>
<p>How ironic too that the man who says he wants to ‘make America great again’ would do so much to undermine its moral standing throughout the world.&#160; Peoples struggling to break free from American domination have reason to be grateful.</p>
<p>Might is indispensible for global or even regional hegemony, but right is more important still.&#160; Without it, the kind of cultural influence upon which the exercise of “soft power” depends lies beyond reach.&#160; Hegemons must be moral leaders; military stockpiles are not enough.</p>
<p>No doubt, within the military-industrial complex, there are those who are grateful for Trump’s support and largesse. &#160;Nevertheless, for the empire’s more thoughtful stewards, his presidency has been a nightmare. &#160;&#160;If only for this reason, it has not been entirely without redeeming features.</p>
<p>Trump is doing it all unintentionally, of course; and, under his aegis, the cure is worse than the disease.&#160; He is, as it were, an accidental nihilist.&#160; How pathetic that, in our “bipartisan” political universe, bereft as it is of&#160; (small-d) democrats and principled anti-imperialists, this can almost seem, and perhaps sometimes even is, as good as it gets.</p>
<p>Despite the efforts of Clintonite Democrats to revive and then ratchet up the Cold War, the GOP is still the more noxious of our two semi-established, neoliberal political parties.&#160; This being the case, whatever harms them is not to be despised.</p>
<p>The benefit is diminished, however, not just because their rival’s malign neglect of the (many hued) working class has made it all but irrelevant, but also because its leaders are disinclined to upset the status quo even to the extent that they can; Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and the others actually seem to view the Donald as a godsend.&#160; Why wouldn’t they? Democrats have nothing else to offer, at this point, except milquetoast opposition to Trump.&#160; They call it “resistance.”</p>
<p>This is why, to remove the Trumpian menace in the Constitutionally prescribed way, Republicans are going to have to lead the way, and carry it through to completion.</p>
<p>This isn’t going to happen, however, as long as their leaders think that they can get more of what they want by working with Trump than by working against him.</p>
<p>What they want is what the capitalists they work for want; and, after Charlottesville, those capitalists have been running away from Trump like rats fleeing a sinking ship.&#160; One would think that this would seal his fate.&#160; It doesn’t in this case, however, for reasons peculiar to the Trump phenomenon itself.</p>
<p>Many of the people who thought that Trump would somehow improve their material conditions have already defected, and others will surely follow before long; reality always exacts its toll.</p>
<p>But there seems to be a hard core of what are essentially Trump cultists who will never defect – unless Trump, at age seventy-one, somehow changes his personality completely and stops going rogue.</p>
<p>For them, there seems to be nothing that Trump could do that would cause them to turn on him; not even, as Trump once bragged, were he to shoot someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue.</p>
<p>These are the people who are most likely to turn out in large numbers to vote in the mid-term election next year — because they are energized, while no other segment of the electorate is.&#160; &#160;Trump cultists are therefore able to call the shots,within Republican ranks.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, what Congressional incumbents want more than anything is their own re-election.&#160;&#160; They want that even more than they want to serve their corporate and Wall Street paymasters or to advance the causes to which they are ideologically or opportunistically committed.</p>
<p>Thanks to voluntary population sorting (people like living among people like themselves) and gerrymandering, most Republican incumbents nowadays are unlikely to lose their seats to Democrats.&#160; However, they could easily lose their seats to challengers in next year’s primaries.</p>
<p>Democrats are, of course, in the same position, but it is unlikely that many of them will be sent packing by challengers running to their left.&#160; The will is there, but Democrats are inherently pusillanimous and cautious to a fault.&#160; Most incumbent Democrats have little cause to worry.</p>
<p>But Republicans who cross Trump do have cause; they are all but guaranteed primary challenges that they could very well lose.</p>
<p>Therefore, even though Trump is a problem not just for the country and the world but for them as well, expect them to be reluctant to rattle his cage.</p>
<p>In twelve or thirteen months time, when the threat of primary challengers will have faded, the calculation will be different.&#160; For now, though, much as they might like to see Trump go, don’t count on many of them doing anything about it.</p>
<p>Needless to say, this could change in the bat of an eye.&#160; Life under Trump is life on the edge, and potential tipping points abound.&#160;&#160; Charlottesville might yet turn out to have been a tipping point; if it is followed by two, three, many Charlottesvilles, all bets are off.</p>
<p>At this point, though, it all depends on the attitudes of likely Republican voters in states that could go either way, and in so-called red states where Republican victories are all but assured.</p>
<p>Even moderate Republicans are not, by any means, people whose good sense and moral decency can be assumed&#160;&#160; Sadly, however, the fate of the world depends on what Republican voters think.</p>
<p>And that depends, in turn, on the extent to which they are able to resist what might be called WTF fatigue (WTF, that is, as in “what the fuck”?)</p>
<p>This never used to be a factor in our politics, but under Trump it has become a problem for everybody – not only Republicans who are coming to understand what Trump is all about, but everyone else as well.</p>
<p>Thus what seemed outrageous a year or even eight months ago now seems barely worth mentioning.&#160; One, comparatively innocent, example will illustrate what I mean.</p>
<p>In 1988, Joe Biden, seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for President, stole a line from the Leader of the opposition Labor Party in the UK, Neil Kinnock, and forever after became “Plagiarism Joe.”</p>
<p>When Melania Trump spoke at the Republican Convention in Cleveland last year, she or whoever wrote the words she read on the teleprompter did Biden one better; she plagiarized from Michelle Obama, the First Lady at the time.&#160; For this she was widely derided, though, with Trump himself already flaunting ethical norms more egregiously day by day, the incident got sucked down into the memory hole and was soon forgotten.</p>
<p>Then, last week, she did it again, after the murder of Heather Heyer by the twenty-year old self-described Nazi, James Alex Field Jr.&#160; Before Melania’s husband had tweeted a word about Heyer or anything else pertaining to the white supremacist, neo-Nazi assault on Charlottesville, she or her speechwriters put out a statement, taken almost verbatim again, from Michelle Obama.&#160; Hardly anyone cared or even noticed.</p>
<p>Why would they?&#160; With unbelievable WTF outrages piling on daily, sometimes even hourly, plagiarism is small potatoes.</p>
<p>This is the mentality one has to break through to get to the point where Republicans will turn on Trump.&#160; If his presidency continues to disintegrate, along with his mind, this could happen.&#160; But since it is up to the likes of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan whether or not it does, the chances, though getting better all the time, remain poor.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>It is, in fact, more likely that, some combination of financial and legal jeopardy, along with humiliation and embarrassment, will cause Trump to “self-impeach.”&#160;&#160; This isn’t likely either, however, because Trump is too much of an egotist to cut and run in full public view.</p>
<p>But this is surely what he would do if he still had the sense he was born with, if indeed he was born with any sense at all.&#160; Trump has so many more reasons to flee than to stay.</p>
<p>Were he to remove himself from office “voluntarily,” as Richard Nixon did, he would save himself and the Republican Party a lot of trouble.&#160; Trump could care less about the Republican Party.&#160; But he does care a great deal about himself.</p>
<p>And, with six bankruptcies under his sizeable belt, it is plain that flight is in his nature.&#160; To be sure, those bankruptcies were, for the most part, good for his bottom line, even as they were disastrous for his workers, contractors, and investors.&#160; But they nevertheless do reveal character traits that could well come into play now.</p>
<p>If, as is likely, the Mueller investigation is closing in on legally actionable crimes committed by Trump, his family members, and his close associates – money laundering, for example — he could probably “negotiate” pardons for all concerned parties in exchange for his resignation, but it is far from clear that even he could finagle any financial gain out of leaving the White House in disgrace.&#160;&#160; If anybody can, however, he is the one; cashing in by running away is one of the few things he is good at.</p>
<p>Legal jeopardy is not the only consideration that could get Trump to budge; financial losses and mounting challenges to his self-esteem could do the job as well.</p>
<p>If even those CEOs who fled Trumpland after Charlottesville could see how jumping off that sinking ship was in their interest, how much harder could it be to get the Donald to see for himself that his brand is becoming toxic — that his presidency is not only bad for his fellow capitalists and for business generally, but bad for his own businesses as well?</p>
<p>Although he could care less, it is bad for the GOP too.&#160; The poltroons in charge of that nefarious operation may be among the last to realize that their party would be better off going after Trump than standing by him, but even some of them are already seeing the light.&#160; That is how bright that light has become.</p>
<p>Therefore expect more and more Republican incumbents to realize that their worries about primary challengers in 2018 are misguided — that the harm Trump is doing to all Republicans, themselves included, is a more important determinant of their electoral fates.</p>
<p>Those of them who do have the sense they were born must now be salivating at the prospect of replacing Trump with one of their own, Vice President Mike Pence.</p>
<p>It must surely have occurred to those Republicans how easy it would be to find cause for dumping the Donald; he has given them many times more grounds to work with than they need.</p>
<p>But, again: don’t except Ryan and McConnell et. al. to move against Trump until they have exhausted all other alternatives.&#160; After Charlottesville, they were good only for a few pious banalities.&#160; It will take a lot more of “Trump being Trump” to get more out of them.</p>
<p>However, don’t despair if it takes Trump a while, or forever, to figure out the message of the writing on the wall.&#160;&#160; Pence is no prize; compared to Trump, he may not even be a lesser evil.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Unlike Trump, who has foul instincts but no fixed ideas, Pence is a bona fide reactionary whose views are retrograde even by Republican standards.</p>
<p>Were he to take over, there would be a groundswell of relief that, for a while at least, would likely break through the gridlock paralyzing Washington.&#160; The liberal pieties of cable news pundits notwithstanding, that would not be a good thing at all. With a political class comprised of Clintonite Democrats and Republicans, gridlock has been a blessing.&#160; When it goes, if it ever does, it will be sorely missed.</p>
<p>With Trump out and Pence in, Republican reactionaries will be back in business, “independents” will resume their quiescence, and the anti-Trump “resistance” in the Democratic Party will dissipate just as quickly as the anti-war movement did when arch-war maker and Nobel laureate Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush.</p>
<p>On the do-no-harm – or as little harm as possible – principle, immobility under Trump might therefore be preferable to retrograde movement under Pence.</p>
<p>It is impossible to say for sure because it is impossible to know in how much greater peril we are with Trump in charge of nuclear weapons or what the consequences will be of his penchant for bringing out the inner fascist in an appallingly large segment of the American public.</p>
<p>Pence is awful on immigration and his Islamophobic credentials are beyond dispute, but at least he is not an epigone of neo-fascists and the KKK.&#160; &#160;After Charlottesville, we know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Trump is.</p>
<p>In the end, though, there are too many incommensurable factors to take into account, and too much indeterminacy, to say, with any confidence, which of the two is worse.&#160;&#160; The only sure thing is that with either Trump or Pence in charge, expect trouble ahead.</p>
<p>An urgent duty, for anyone with a progressive bone in his or her body, is to work to transform the conditions that make Trump-Clinton elections and Trump-Pence administrations possible.</p>
<p>This is hardly a radical objective, though it might seem so from within the purview of the Democratic Party.&#160; &#160;We can do better than we did in 2016 – maybe not without transforming the Democratic Party beyond recognition, but certainly within the confines of actually existing capitalism.&#160; Even those damnable CEOs whom liberal pundits have been praising so exuberantly since Charlottesville understand this well.</p>
<p>The job has needed doing for a long time — since long before anyone took Trump seriously or even knew whom he was.</p>
<p>Now, with Trump and/or Pence calling the shots, there is another, more immediately urgent task: damage control.</p>
<p>Given the very limited options our not very democratic Constitution accords, and in light of how useless Democrats have become, probably the best we can do at this point, at least while President WTF is still around, is to shame and, whenever possible, shun any person or organization that in any way supports the Trump brand.</p>
<p>In the right conditions, and with the right support behind them, boycotts work.</p>
<p>The CEOs who broke with Trump after Charlottesville understood this; fearing boycotts and other expressions of public disapproval, they prudently put on a preemptive display of moral rectitude.</p>
<p>The Israeli government and its supporters abroad understand this too.&#160; Why else would their realization that the BDS movement is growing, despite their efforts to crush it, drive them bat shit crazy?</p>
<p>Would boycotting all things Trump drive Trump crazy too?&#160; How could one tell?&#160; But even someone as narcissistic and deluded as the Donald could hardly fail to notice the Trump name being transformed from an asset to a liability.</p>
<p>For good or ill, we probably won’t get to see the back of him on this account alone.&#160; But the more tied up he is with it, the better off we all will be.</p> | 3,007 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>NEW YORK — Pregnancy affects not only a woman’s body: It changes parts of her brain too, a new study says.</p>
<p>When researchers compared brain scans of women before and after pregnancy, they spotted some differences in 11 locations. They also found hints that the alterations help women prepare for motherhood.</p>
<p>For example, they might help a mother understand the needs of her infant, Elseline Hoekzema, a study author at Leiden University in the Netherlands, explained via email.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The women were also given memory tests, and they showed no signs of decline.</p>
<p>Hoekzema, a neuroscientist, began working on the study while at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. She and colleagues present the results in a paper released Monday by the journal Nature Neuroscience.</p>
<p>The study includes data on 25 Spanish women scanned before and after their first pregnancies, along with 20 women who didn’t get pregnant during the study. The brain changes in the pregnancy group emerged from comparisons of those two groups.</p>
<p>The results were consistent: A computer program could tell which women had gotten pregnant just by looking at results of the MRI scans.</p>
<p>And the changes, first documented an average of 10 weeks after giving birth, were mostly still present two years after childbirth. That’s based on follow-up with 11 study participants.</p>
<p>Further work showed they’re a motherhood thing: No brain changes were seen in first-time fathers.</p>
<p>Based on prior research findings, the researchers think the brain changes happened during pregnancy rather than after childbirth.</p>
<p>What’s going on? Hoekzema and colleagues think the differences result from sex hormones that flood the brain of a pregnant woman. In the 11 places, the MRI data indicate reductions in volume of the brain’s gray matter, but it’s not clear what that means. For example, it could reflect loss of brain cells or a pruning of the places where brain cells communicate, called synapses.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Losing some synapses is not necessarily a bad thing. It happens during a hormonal surge in adolescence, producing more specialized and efficient brain circuits. The researchers suspect that could be happening in the pregnant women.</p>
<p>Some study results hint that such upgrades may prepare a woman for motherhood. One analysis linked brain changes to how strongly a woman felt emotionally attached to her infant. And when women viewed pictures of their babies, several brain regions that reacted the most were ones that showed pregnancy-related change.</p>
<p>In addition, the affected brain areas overlapped with circuitry that’s involved in figuring out what another person is thinking and feeling. That’s a handy ability for a mother tending to an infant.</p>
<p>The idea of synapses being pruned in pregnancy makes a lot of sense, commented Bruce McEwen of Rockefeller University in New York, who studies hormonal effects on the brain but didn’t participate in what he called a terrific study.</p>
<p>“The brain is being shaped all the time,” he said, and “sex hormones are part of the whole orchestra of processes that change the brain structurally.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Malcolm Ritter at <a href="http://twitter.com/malcolmritter" type="external">http://twitter.com/malcolmritter</a> His recent work can be found at <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/content/malcolm-ritter" type="external">http://bigstory.ap.org/content/malcolm-ritter</a></p> | Brain changes seen in pregnancy, may help preparing for baby | false | https://abqjournal.com/911964/brain-changes-seen-in-pregnancy-may-help-preparing-for-baby.html | 2016-12-19 | 2least
| Brain changes seen in pregnancy, may help preparing for baby
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>NEW YORK — Pregnancy affects not only a woman’s body: It changes parts of her brain too, a new study says.</p>
<p>When researchers compared brain scans of women before and after pregnancy, they spotted some differences in 11 locations. They also found hints that the alterations help women prepare for motherhood.</p>
<p>For example, they might help a mother understand the needs of her infant, Elseline Hoekzema, a study author at Leiden University in the Netherlands, explained via email.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The women were also given memory tests, and they showed no signs of decline.</p>
<p>Hoekzema, a neuroscientist, began working on the study while at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. She and colleagues present the results in a paper released Monday by the journal Nature Neuroscience.</p>
<p>The study includes data on 25 Spanish women scanned before and after their first pregnancies, along with 20 women who didn’t get pregnant during the study. The brain changes in the pregnancy group emerged from comparisons of those two groups.</p>
<p>The results were consistent: A computer program could tell which women had gotten pregnant just by looking at results of the MRI scans.</p>
<p>And the changes, first documented an average of 10 weeks after giving birth, were mostly still present two years after childbirth. That’s based on follow-up with 11 study participants.</p>
<p>Further work showed they’re a motherhood thing: No brain changes were seen in first-time fathers.</p>
<p>Based on prior research findings, the researchers think the brain changes happened during pregnancy rather than after childbirth.</p>
<p>What’s going on? Hoekzema and colleagues think the differences result from sex hormones that flood the brain of a pregnant woman. In the 11 places, the MRI data indicate reductions in volume of the brain’s gray matter, but it’s not clear what that means. For example, it could reflect loss of brain cells or a pruning of the places where brain cells communicate, called synapses.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Losing some synapses is not necessarily a bad thing. It happens during a hormonal surge in adolescence, producing more specialized and efficient brain circuits. The researchers suspect that could be happening in the pregnant women.</p>
<p>Some study results hint that such upgrades may prepare a woman for motherhood. One analysis linked brain changes to how strongly a woman felt emotionally attached to her infant. And when women viewed pictures of their babies, several brain regions that reacted the most were ones that showed pregnancy-related change.</p>
<p>In addition, the affected brain areas overlapped with circuitry that’s involved in figuring out what another person is thinking and feeling. That’s a handy ability for a mother tending to an infant.</p>
<p>The idea of synapses being pruned in pregnancy makes a lot of sense, commented Bruce McEwen of Rockefeller University in New York, who studies hormonal effects on the brain but didn’t participate in what he called a terrific study.</p>
<p>“The brain is being shaped all the time,” he said, and “sex hormones are part of the whole orchestra of processes that change the brain structurally.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Malcolm Ritter at <a href="http://twitter.com/malcolmritter" type="external">http://twitter.com/malcolmritter</a> His recent work can be found at <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/content/malcolm-ritter" type="external">http://bigstory.ap.org/content/malcolm-ritter</a></p> | 3,008 |
<p>Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is an African American graduate of Barnard College and MIT.</p>
<p>She worked for years at the Environmental Protection Agency.</p>
<p>And paradoxically, she thinks more highly of former EPA head William Reilly – a white male Republican – than she does of Carol Browner – a white woman Democrat – or the current head of the EPA – Lisa Jackson – an African American woman.</p>
<p>Because of Coleman-Adebayo’s history at the agency, this is remarkable.</p>
<p>She sued the agency for race and sex discrimination and won the largest yet jury verdict – $600,000 – against the EPA in such a case.</p>
<p>In the wake of that lawsuit, she worked to pass a whistleblower protection law – the No Fear Act – and stood behind President George Bush as he signed the bill into law at the White House.</p>
<p>And she is currently suing the EPA for wrongful termination. Settlement negotiations broke off last week when Lisa Jackson refused to settle.</p>
<p>The case is going to trial soon, according to Coleman-Adebayo.</p>
<p>She lays out her story in a new book – <a href="" type="internal">&#160;No Fear: A Whistleblower’s Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA&#160;</a>(Lawrence Hill Books, 2011, with a forward by Noam Chomsky).</p>
<p>Coleman-Adebayo came to the EPA with Republican Reilly. But she was pleased with Bill Clinton’s election in 1992.</p>
<p>“I liked Bill Reilly,” Coleman-Adebayo told&#160;Corporate Crime Reporter&#160;in an interview last week. “I thought he was extremely committed to the environment. But members of my family for generations have been Democrats. I was actually quite happy when the Democrats came to power. And certainly I was one of thousands of people inside EPA celebrating when the Democrats took power from the Republicans.”</p>
<p>And when Carol Browner was appointed to head the EPA?</p>
<p>“I was delighted,” she says. “One – she was a young woman. We were about the same age. She had a reputation for being committed to the environment. And she was a Democrat.”</p>
<p>“I was being called a lot of distasteful names. And as soon as Carol Browner’s staff was in place, I went to the administrator’s office and I told them what was happening to me, about the names I was being called. They promised me that under their administration, this kind of behavior would stop.”</p>
<p>Did it stop?</p>
<p>“No,” Coleman-Adebayo says. “It didn’t stop. The name calling did not stop. But I still felt that there were people who were more open to discussion, more open to dialogue under Browner than I had found under the Republicans.”</p>
<p>“So while things had not totally eased up for me, the openness that I initially experienced was better.”</p>
<p>“Here’s an example. There was a conference being held in Beijing, China – the Fourth UN Conference on Women.”</p>
<p>“I spoke to my supervisors about it. Everybody thought it was the most ridiculous idea ever to waste precious EPA resources on such a conference.”</p>
<p>“I was appalled at that kind of discussion. And I went to Browner’s office. And I found people there who were receptive. In fact, Browner herself overturned a decision by my supervisor and assigned me the position of agency coordinator for women’s issues and the coordinator for the Fourth UN Conference on Women.”</p>
<p>“My guess is that never would have happened under the Republicans, not even with Bill Reilly.”</p>
<p>“Browner became head of the EPA to a large extent because women were pressing this administration to promote more women to higher level positions.”</p>
<p>“Browner rode in as head of the EPA on that good will of women’s organizations. And one of her first opportunities to show and thank women for the support they provided her was to support the Beijing Conference on Women.”</p>
<p>The initial signs were good.</p>
<p>“But after the Beijing Conference, things started to go downhill for me,” she said.</p>
<p>“I tried to reach out to Carol Browner after that conference to try to get to her, but she was very cold and distant about it.”</p>
<p>“Once the people around me realized that I didn’t have the ear of the administrator, all of the other behavior – the name calling, the threats – re-emerged. At this point, there was no one to help me.”</p>
<p>“A good example is after I returned from Beijing, after getting recommendations from Hillary Clinton, Madeline Albright, and Carol Browner herself, I was the only person in my office who did not receive a bonus.”</p>
<p>“In the U.S. government, bonuses are not that big. They are given as a symbolic gesture, as a way of the agency saying – job well done. They are not like the Wall Street bonuses. These are federal government bonuses – maybe $2,000 or $3,000. They are symbolic. They are important in the context of that culture.”</p>
<p>“I found out that I was the only professional in my office that did not receive a bonus. One of my colleagues said to me – the lights have gone off after Beijing. Carol Browner is not going to save you. Now you are back here with us.”</p>
<p>In 1995, Coleman-Adebayo filed a sex and race discrimination lawsuit against the EPA. And five years later a jury awarded her $600,000 – the highest such award ever against the EPA.</p>
<p>“We have a ceiling for federal government workers – so it was reduced to $300,000,” Coleman-Adebayo said.</p>
<p>Coleman-Adebayo was appointed to the Gore-Mbeki Commission. The goal of the Commission was to assist the South African government from the impact of decades of white racist rule in South Africa.</p>
<p>Coleman-Adebayo took her job seriously. She was approached with information about a Union Carbide vanadium pentoxide mine in South Africa.</p>
<p>“I was told by Jacob Ngkane, who was a union representative to this small community, that the health effects to this community were devastating,” Coleman-Adebayo said. “Within six months to a year, a significant number of the men were impotent. These were young men in the prime of their lives. I was told that they would start bleeding from every orifice in their body – their eyes, their ears. They defecated blood, they urinated blood. I was told that they developed terrible cancers – cancer of the esophagus, cancer of the liver.”</p>
<p>But when she went to her supervisors at the Commission, they did nothing.</p>
<p>“The Commission could have written about it,” she said. “We could have picked up the phone and called Union Carbide and said – we understand there is this situation in South Africa. Could you look into it and get back to us? There are a number of informal processes that could have taken place.”</p>
<p>Instead what did they do?</p>
<p>“They removed me,” she said.</p>
<p>When she raised the issue at the EPA, she was told to “shut up.”</p>
<p>“When I heard about it, I wasn’t sure how to handle his demand that we do something about this community that was being poisoned by a US multinational,” she said. “When I spoke to my supervisor about this, I was told to shut up. Literally told to shut up.”</p>
<p>“When I asked her – why are you telling me to shut up? – she told me – shut up. She said – Marsha, you have a brand new, nice large office. Why don’t you spend your time decorating your office as opposed to worrying about this?”</p>
<p>“It was very curious that I would tell a supervisor at the EPA that there were reports of a community being poisoned by a US multinational and her response to me was to shut up. I went to my husband who is an engineer. He started researching the issue and came back to me with information about the use of vanadium pentoxide. He explained that it was a strategic mineral. He said – look around the room – the television, the forks and knives, the refrigerator, the stove – it was in everything.”</p>
<p>When Barack Obama was elected President on November 3, 2008, he appointed Carol Browner as his EPA transition chief.</p>
<p>“I was fired two weeks later,” Coleman-Adebayo says.</p>
<p>She has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the EPA. It will go to trial soon.</p>
<p>She now believes she was better off under Bill Reilly than under Carol Browner.</p>
<p>“No question about that,” she says “When Carol Browner became head of the transition, the team included Lisa Jackson.”</p>
<p>“To a large extent, there is no correlation between the color or gender of someone and whether or not these people truly embody the nobility of believing in justice.”</p>
<p>Russell Mokhiber edits the Corporate Crime Reporter.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>[For the complete transcript of the Interview with Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, see 25 Corporate Crime Reporter 40, October 24, 2011, <a href="http://corporatecrimereporter.com/aboutccr.html" type="external">print edition only</a>.]</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Taking On the EPA | true | https://counterpunch.org/2011/10/25/taking-on-the-epa/ | 2011-10-25 | 4left
| Taking On the EPA
<p>Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is an African American graduate of Barnard College and MIT.</p>
<p>She worked for years at the Environmental Protection Agency.</p>
<p>And paradoxically, she thinks more highly of former EPA head William Reilly – a white male Republican – than she does of Carol Browner – a white woman Democrat – or the current head of the EPA – Lisa Jackson – an African American woman.</p>
<p>Because of Coleman-Adebayo’s history at the agency, this is remarkable.</p>
<p>She sued the agency for race and sex discrimination and won the largest yet jury verdict – $600,000 – against the EPA in such a case.</p>
<p>In the wake of that lawsuit, she worked to pass a whistleblower protection law – the No Fear Act – and stood behind President George Bush as he signed the bill into law at the White House.</p>
<p>And she is currently suing the EPA for wrongful termination. Settlement negotiations broke off last week when Lisa Jackson refused to settle.</p>
<p>The case is going to trial soon, according to Coleman-Adebayo.</p>
<p>She lays out her story in a new book – <a href="" type="internal">&#160;No Fear: A Whistleblower’s Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA&#160;</a>(Lawrence Hill Books, 2011, with a forward by Noam Chomsky).</p>
<p>Coleman-Adebayo came to the EPA with Republican Reilly. But she was pleased with Bill Clinton’s election in 1992.</p>
<p>“I liked Bill Reilly,” Coleman-Adebayo told&#160;Corporate Crime Reporter&#160;in an interview last week. “I thought he was extremely committed to the environment. But members of my family for generations have been Democrats. I was actually quite happy when the Democrats came to power. And certainly I was one of thousands of people inside EPA celebrating when the Democrats took power from the Republicans.”</p>
<p>And when Carol Browner was appointed to head the EPA?</p>
<p>“I was delighted,” she says. “One – she was a young woman. We were about the same age. She had a reputation for being committed to the environment. And she was a Democrat.”</p>
<p>“I was being called a lot of distasteful names. And as soon as Carol Browner’s staff was in place, I went to the administrator’s office and I told them what was happening to me, about the names I was being called. They promised me that under their administration, this kind of behavior would stop.”</p>
<p>Did it stop?</p>
<p>“No,” Coleman-Adebayo says. “It didn’t stop. The name calling did not stop. But I still felt that there were people who were more open to discussion, more open to dialogue under Browner than I had found under the Republicans.”</p>
<p>“So while things had not totally eased up for me, the openness that I initially experienced was better.”</p>
<p>“Here’s an example. There was a conference being held in Beijing, China – the Fourth UN Conference on Women.”</p>
<p>“I spoke to my supervisors about it. Everybody thought it was the most ridiculous idea ever to waste precious EPA resources on such a conference.”</p>
<p>“I was appalled at that kind of discussion. And I went to Browner’s office. And I found people there who were receptive. In fact, Browner herself overturned a decision by my supervisor and assigned me the position of agency coordinator for women’s issues and the coordinator for the Fourth UN Conference on Women.”</p>
<p>“My guess is that never would have happened under the Republicans, not even with Bill Reilly.”</p>
<p>“Browner became head of the EPA to a large extent because women were pressing this administration to promote more women to higher level positions.”</p>
<p>“Browner rode in as head of the EPA on that good will of women’s organizations. And one of her first opportunities to show and thank women for the support they provided her was to support the Beijing Conference on Women.”</p>
<p>The initial signs were good.</p>
<p>“But after the Beijing Conference, things started to go downhill for me,” she said.</p>
<p>“I tried to reach out to Carol Browner after that conference to try to get to her, but she was very cold and distant about it.”</p>
<p>“Once the people around me realized that I didn’t have the ear of the administrator, all of the other behavior – the name calling, the threats – re-emerged. At this point, there was no one to help me.”</p>
<p>“A good example is after I returned from Beijing, after getting recommendations from Hillary Clinton, Madeline Albright, and Carol Browner herself, I was the only person in my office who did not receive a bonus.”</p>
<p>“In the U.S. government, bonuses are not that big. They are given as a symbolic gesture, as a way of the agency saying – job well done. They are not like the Wall Street bonuses. These are federal government bonuses – maybe $2,000 or $3,000. They are symbolic. They are important in the context of that culture.”</p>
<p>“I found out that I was the only professional in my office that did not receive a bonus. One of my colleagues said to me – the lights have gone off after Beijing. Carol Browner is not going to save you. Now you are back here with us.”</p>
<p>In 1995, Coleman-Adebayo filed a sex and race discrimination lawsuit against the EPA. And five years later a jury awarded her $600,000 – the highest such award ever against the EPA.</p>
<p>“We have a ceiling for federal government workers – so it was reduced to $300,000,” Coleman-Adebayo said.</p>
<p>Coleman-Adebayo was appointed to the Gore-Mbeki Commission. The goal of the Commission was to assist the South African government from the impact of decades of white racist rule in South Africa.</p>
<p>Coleman-Adebayo took her job seriously. She was approached with information about a Union Carbide vanadium pentoxide mine in South Africa.</p>
<p>“I was told by Jacob Ngkane, who was a union representative to this small community, that the health effects to this community were devastating,” Coleman-Adebayo said. “Within six months to a year, a significant number of the men were impotent. These were young men in the prime of their lives. I was told that they would start bleeding from every orifice in their body – their eyes, their ears. They defecated blood, they urinated blood. I was told that they developed terrible cancers – cancer of the esophagus, cancer of the liver.”</p>
<p>But when she went to her supervisors at the Commission, they did nothing.</p>
<p>“The Commission could have written about it,” she said. “We could have picked up the phone and called Union Carbide and said – we understand there is this situation in South Africa. Could you look into it and get back to us? There are a number of informal processes that could have taken place.”</p>
<p>Instead what did they do?</p>
<p>“They removed me,” she said.</p>
<p>When she raised the issue at the EPA, she was told to “shut up.”</p>
<p>“When I heard about it, I wasn’t sure how to handle his demand that we do something about this community that was being poisoned by a US multinational,” she said. “When I spoke to my supervisor about this, I was told to shut up. Literally told to shut up.”</p>
<p>“When I asked her – why are you telling me to shut up? – she told me – shut up. She said – Marsha, you have a brand new, nice large office. Why don’t you spend your time decorating your office as opposed to worrying about this?”</p>
<p>“It was very curious that I would tell a supervisor at the EPA that there were reports of a community being poisoned by a US multinational and her response to me was to shut up. I went to my husband who is an engineer. He started researching the issue and came back to me with information about the use of vanadium pentoxide. He explained that it was a strategic mineral. He said – look around the room – the television, the forks and knives, the refrigerator, the stove – it was in everything.”</p>
<p>When Barack Obama was elected President on November 3, 2008, he appointed Carol Browner as his EPA transition chief.</p>
<p>“I was fired two weeks later,” Coleman-Adebayo says.</p>
<p>She has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the EPA. It will go to trial soon.</p>
<p>She now believes she was better off under Bill Reilly than under Carol Browner.</p>
<p>“No question about that,” she says “When Carol Browner became head of the transition, the team included Lisa Jackson.”</p>
<p>“To a large extent, there is no correlation between the color or gender of someone and whether or not these people truly embody the nobility of believing in justice.”</p>
<p>Russell Mokhiber edits the Corporate Crime Reporter.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>[For the complete transcript of the Interview with Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, see 25 Corporate Crime Reporter 40, October 24, 2011, <a href="http://corporatecrimereporter.com/aboutccr.html" type="external">print edition only</a>.]</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 3,009 |
<p>Oil futures were little changed in Asian trading, maintaining overnight gains caused by relief buying following in-line weekly data from the U.S.</p>
<p>--On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light sweet crude futures for delivery in October was recently down 3 cents at $48.36 a barrel in the Globex electronic session. October Brent on London's ICE Futures was up 2 cents at $52.59.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>--Range-bound trading is seen continuing as U.S. oil production continues to rise, limiting the impact of declining inventories there, while the ongoing production caps led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries start to be felt, said Gnanasekar Thiagarajan of Commtrendz Risk Management.</p>
<p>Write to Biman Mukherji at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 24, 2017 00:23 ET (04:23 GMT)</p> | Oil Futures Little Changed After Overnight Rebound | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/24/oil-futures-little-changed-after-overnight-rebound.html | 2017-08-24 | 0right
| Oil Futures Little Changed After Overnight Rebound
<p>Oil futures were little changed in Asian trading, maintaining overnight gains caused by relief buying following in-line weekly data from the U.S.</p>
<p>--On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light sweet crude futures for delivery in October was recently down 3 cents at $48.36 a barrel in the Globex electronic session. October Brent on London's ICE Futures was up 2 cents at $52.59.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>--Range-bound trading is seen continuing as U.S. oil production continues to rise, limiting the impact of declining inventories there, while the ongoing production caps led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries start to be felt, said Gnanasekar Thiagarajan of Commtrendz Risk Management.</p>
<p>Write to Biman Mukherji at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 24, 2017 00:23 ET (04:23 GMT)</p> | 3,010 |
<p>She had begun her life of captivity known as Chocolate. But unlike the dessert, which denotes images of sweetness and experiences of delight, this elephant could be anything but. She did, in fact, resemble the food’s more controversial side – its stimulant side. For Chocolate was high-sprinted, independently-minded, and resistant. If somebody pushed her, she would push right back. If somebody hit her with a bull-hook, she would make that person regret ever doing so. This was one elephant not to be underestimated or messed with. In the end, Chocolate would be kicked out of two zoos for misbehavior and be placed in a specialized facility.</p>
<p>Born in Southeastern Asia, Chocolate was first brought to Europe in 1965. Her new home was to be the regional zoo in Kolmarden, Sweden. It was, most would say, an odd place for an elephant to live. Located on Lake Mälaren, this park sat less than 100 miles from the Baltic Sea. Here, winters could last four to five months. The skies would remain overcast, as the sun kept hidden behind the clouds. The temperatures during this season rarely rose beyond the freezing mark. All of this meant that the elephants had to spend nearly half of the year indoors, living in small, cramped quarters. If they did venture outside for any extended period, they were exposed to the cold, damp air. This could easily get into their lungs, joints, and feet making the animals sick, arthritic, and diseased. Overall, this type of climate is horrible for elephants. They do not get to walk or even get much of a good stretch for months at a time. There is no stimulation. There is no sunlight. These conditions lead to depression and despair. This was especially the situation for Maggie, an elephant from the state zoo in Alaska.</p>
<p>In 1983, this South African arrived to the city of Anchorage. She was the sole survivor of a family that had been culled only months earlier, and the event must have been traumatizing. At the zoo, there was one other pachyderm, Annabelle, who had been there alone for the past 17 years. She would die of a foot infection in 1997. Maggie, in turn, spent the next decade by herself. Isolation is very hard on female elephants. They are highly social creatures and need each other for companionship. In Africa or Asia, their families are extended to include a matriarch, six to twenty related females, and an assortment of calves. Even the dead are long remembered in their society. Furthermore, elephants enjoy interacting with fellow animals. It is odd how we tend to think of other species as being segregated or divorced from those around them. But this is simply not the case. They, like humans, need to create and develop these kinds of holistic relationships. Animals have a culture all to their own.</p>
<p>Maggie, unfortunately, had none of this. In fact, the best that the Alaskan Zoo could come up with to ease her discomfort was a giant treadmill. On this $100,000 machine, the elephant could exercise her way to good physical and mental health. Ironically, this was not a new idea. The 18th-century policy wonk, Jeremy Bentham, advocated just such a device in his essay on the Panopticon. Here, the Queen’s elephants would be put to work: spending eighteen out of twenty-four hours a day treading a wheel. Not only would this project be advantageous for the animals, but it would also produce mechanical power and revenue for the mill’s owner. Maggie, however, was not so convinced, and she refused to ever use her machine. In 2007, under growing pressure by citizen groups, park administrators agreed to send Maggie to the PAWS (Performing Animal Welfare Society) Sanctuary in Galt, California. Our elephant Chocolate could only have imagined such joys.</p>
<p>For fifteen years, she remained at her Swedish zoo – enduring many frigid winters and appreciating, the best that a tropical animal could, the mild Scandinavian summers. She watched as Kolmarden became the country’s leading zoological institution, a feat which Chocolate herself played not small part in accomplishing. Yet, behind the scenes, the situation was not so rosy. The elephant was maturing and becoming more self-aware. She would no longer acquiesce to any order or demand. Her attitude had begun to shift from ‘to go along, to get along’ to open defiance. It would come to a point where she became so difficult that the zoo could no longer handle her safely. She was simply too aggressive and too dangerous. Chocolate had already injured several keepers, and officials knew that it was just a matter of time before she killed someone. Kolmarden threw up its hands. Chocolate had won the battle of wills.</p>
<p>By 1980, the elephant had been sold and shipped off to the States. Her new home was the more temperate Tampa, Florida. For a while, the association between Chocolate and the zoo remained amicable. Perhaps it was the return to the heat and humidity which did the trick. This climate change put the elephant at ease. Or maybe it took awhile for Chocolate to figure out that, when the Tampa handlers screamed out “Tillie,” they were referring, not to another elephant, but to her. Apparently, she had a new name. In either case, years went by. Tillie became a mother. The zoo filled its pockets with money made from her and her calf’s presence. It made cash on the side by featuring the elephant in local television commercials. In time, though, Tillie became less tolerant of this life.</p>
<p>Troubles first flared in June of 1993. Tillie and another pachyderm were being led on their daily walk, when, suddenly, they sprinted away from their handler. Tillie plowed over a gate, and, together, the two wandered outside of the grounds. Elephants remain, despite all of the efforts by zoological parks, opposed to sedentary life. Whether in Asia or Africa, these animals will cover many miles per day. Their typical range can be anywhere from 9 to 31 square miles. And this is not merely about finding food or water. Elephants love to walk and to roam on their own accord. They enjoy being constantly on the go, seeing new sights, and interacting with fellow creatures. They are social travelers. In zoos, indoor facilities are measured in feet (not miles), and outdoor sites might, at most, reach 2 or 3 acres. Indeed, this incidence in Tampa was not the first occasion, or the last, that an elephant or two escaped from a zoo.</p>
<p>A decade previous, for example, Misty fled her Irvine, California facility. Running over her trainer and busting through a security fence, she strolled by a nearby swap-meet, caused a traffic-jam on a freeway, and avoided capture for over three hours. In 1997, Cally and Tonya took off from a Maine zoo. A gate was either left open by accident or it was opened by the elephants themselves – officials could not determine which. Nevertheless, the pair used this opportunity to do some exploring. Tonya was the first to be caught. But Cally was nowhere to be found. She had plain disappeared. It was not until hours later that employees stumbled upon her in a wooden area. Cally was in the process of taking a much deserved mud-bath – a pleasure that the elephant never had in captivity. As for Tillie and her partner, they would also be located and brought back to their enclosure. Yet this was just a foreshadowing of events to come.</p>
<p>One early July day, while Tillie was in the middle of a training exercise, she paused and refused to continue. When pushed by her handler, she pushed back and sent the woman tumbling into an adjacent pool of water. There was no doubt that this was an intentional act, and the trainer, while not hurt physically, was shaken emotionally. For their part, zoo administrators chose to view this action not as a second warning by the elephant but rather as an isolated incidence. At the very least, they believed, it was Tillie having some fun at the expense of another. At most, it was normal interplay between a handler and an animal – each wanting to have dominance over the other.</p>
<p>Significantly, zoos and circuses will on occasion admit to this fact: that the relations between themselves and their elephants are primarily antagonistic, coercive, and, often, violent. This is a question of domination and resistance; the answer of which is played out every day behind the doors of these institutions. In other words, we can think of these relations as a dynamic, whose outcomes are determined through a process of negotiation. On the one side, there are the zoos and circuses. They attempt to impose control by using everything from repetitive action, to physical abuse, to gastronomic bribes, to verbal intimidation: the goal of which is to create obedience, servility, and profitability among the captive animals. Theirs is a management of exploitation. On the other side of the equation are the elephants. They seek to survive this predicament, and, if possible, obtain some influence over it. Theirs is a struggle against exploitation, and it can take many forms: ignoring commands, slowing down, refusing to work without adequate food and water, taking unofficial breaks, breaking equipment, damaging enclosures, fighting back, or escaping. Much of the time, it is the institutions who ultimately win out in these negotiations. But, occasionally, the elephants do succeed in their quest. The victory may be ephemeral: extra hay or carrots. It could be partial: long-term change in training techniques. Or it might be historic: release to a sanctuary. In the case of Tillie and her latest outburst, the Tampa zoo quickly sought to regain dominance. The elephant was taken to “the privacy of the barn,” chained, and disciplined. After this was complete, Tillie was put through a set of commands to see if she would obey. She did and was placed back on display. The relative calm, however, did not last long.</p>
<p>During a final day in July, as Tillie was being led towards the barn, she was told to pause and to hold “steady.” The elephant, instead, marched directly towards the trainer – the same woman who had been pushed down only weeks before. The command, “move over,” was given and cued with a strike of a bull-hook. The elephant responded with some slaps and kicks of her own. When the handler tried to flee the scene, Tillie pulled the woman back for more punishment. There was an assistant on hand, who tugged on and beat the elephant. But Tillie ignored the person and the pain. She would not stop kicking until the target of her rage was dead.</p>
<p>Tillie’s resistance followed a pattern of many zoo elephants: trouble comes in stages. There was, for instance, JoJo at the Lion Country Safari in West Palm Beach, Florida. She charged her keeper twice in the same year. The third time, in March of 1990, she gored the man – crushing five ribs, causing liver damage, and requiring a transfusion of 23 pints of blood. “I told her to back up,” the trainer later told a newspaper, “and I saw it come into her eyes.” This was the look of anger, and it was not to be forgotten. Then there was Tamba at the Washington Park Zoo in Portland, Oregon. She slammed her handler against a wall in 1991. Administrators, though, dismissed this as an accident. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ was their attitude. Seven months later, Tamba fractured the man’s skull. After this, the press demanded a better answer. A park curator gave them one. Tamba, the official stated plainly, “just didn’t like him.” Finally, there was the case of Misha at Six Flags in Vallejo, California. She “took advantage” an employee in 2001 by shoving the unsuspecting person into a bush. A year afterwards, she tried to hit another with her trunk. Misha missed but the message was sent. Unfortunately, no one at the park was paying attention. In 2004, she gored a third in the abdomen. The tusks, a fireman explained in graphic fashion, went “all the way through.”</p>
<p>But to return to Tillie, she was sold immediately after the killing. It was her third strike, and she was, quite literally, out of the Tampa zoo. As with her previous owner in Sweden, this park also came to realize that it could no longer hold nor control the elephant. Tillie would kill again and officials knew it. Her message, it seems, had been received. In actuality, if it had been only two decades earlier, Tillie would have been executed – as this was, for over a century, standard procedure for habitual offenders. Resist beyond a certain point, and you would be put to death. Yet, with the reburgeoning of the animal rights movement in the 1970s, these institutions no longer operated with impunity, and this method of punishment had become all but unacceptable. Hence, the Tampa Zoo ended up placing the elephant in a “better equipped” facility: the Two Tails Ranch.</p>
<p>Opened in 1984 and located in Williston, Florida, Two Tails is a working ranch with a broad mission. First, in partnership with Ringling Brothers, it serves as a breeding program for the reproduction of circus elephants. As we discussed in an earlier essay, these “conservation” centers were started in response to stricter laws and regulations regarding the exportation of elephants from foreign countries. Zoos and circuses simply needed a new, more reliable source of labor. Second, the ranch is a training facility. In fact, its current owner and operator is Patricia Zerbini – one of the foremost pachyderm trainers in the world. If anyone could keep Tillie in line, it would be her. Finally, Two Tails is home to a number of older elephants. But this is no retirement community. Under the guise of “education,” these animals are used to entertain visitors, furnish rides, pose for photographs, and give demonstrations and clinics. Moreover, they are required to travel and perform at fairs, exhibitions, and special events. For many elephants, work is something that is never done.</p>
<p>In 2000, we would hear from Tillie again, but the news was not so encouraging. She had become the subject of a USDA investigation. The federal bureau discovered that the elephant was ill and suffering. Evidently, she had contracted tuberculosis and was receiving no veterinary care for the disease. Tillie remains at the ranch.</p>
<p>JASON HRIBAL can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Tillie, Elephants and the Zoo | true | https://counterpunch.org/2008/06/28/tillie-elephants-and-the-zoo/ | 2008-06-28 | 4left
| Tillie, Elephants and the Zoo
<p>She had begun her life of captivity known as Chocolate. But unlike the dessert, which denotes images of sweetness and experiences of delight, this elephant could be anything but. She did, in fact, resemble the food’s more controversial side – its stimulant side. For Chocolate was high-sprinted, independently-minded, and resistant. If somebody pushed her, she would push right back. If somebody hit her with a bull-hook, she would make that person regret ever doing so. This was one elephant not to be underestimated or messed with. In the end, Chocolate would be kicked out of two zoos for misbehavior and be placed in a specialized facility.</p>
<p>Born in Southeastern Asia, Chocolate was first brought to Europe in 1965. Her new home was to be the regional zoo in Kolmarden, Sweden. It was, most would say, an odd place for an elephant to live. Located on Lake Mälaren, this park sat less than 100 miles from the Baltic Sea. Here, winters could last four to five months. The skies would remain overcast, as the sun kept hidden behind the clouds. The temperatures during this season rarely rose beyond the freezing mark. All of this meant that the elephants had to spend nearly half of the year indoors, living in small, cramped quarters. If they did venture outside for any extended period, they were exposed to the cold, damp air. This could easily get into their lungs, joints, and feet making the animals sick, arthritic, and diseased. Overall, this type of climate is horrible for elephants. They do not get to walk or even get much of a good stretch for months at a time. There is no stimulation. There is no sunlight. These conditions lead to depression and despair. This was especially the situation for Maggie, an elephant from the state zoo in Alaska.</p>
<p>In 1983, this South African arrived to the city of Anchorage. She was the sole survivor of a family that had been culled only months earlier, and the event must have been traumatizing. At the zoo, there was one other pachyderm, Annabelle, who had been there alone for the past 17 years. She would die of a foot infection in 1997. Maggie, in turn, spent the next decade by herself. Isolation is very hard on female elephants. They are highly social creatures and need each other for companionship. In Africa or Asia, their families are extended to include a matriarch, six to twenty related females, and an assortment of calves. Even the dead are long remembered in their society. Furthermore, elephants enjoy interacting with fellow animals. It is odd how we tend to think of other species as being segregated or divorced from those around them. But this is simply not the case. They, like humans, need to create and develop these kinds of holistic relationships. Animals have a culture all to their own.</p>
<p>Maggie, unfortunately, had none of this. In fact, the best that the Alaskan Zoo could come up with to ease her discomfort was a giant treadmill. On this $100,000 machine, the elephant could exercise her way to good physical and mental health. Ironically, this was not a new idea. The 18th-century policy wonk, Jeremy Bentham, advocated just such a device in his essay on the Panopticon. Here, the Queen’s elephants would be put to work: spending eighteen out of twenty-four hours a day treading a wheel. Not only would this project be advantageous for the animals, but it would also produce mechanical power and revenue for the mill’s owner. Maggie, however, was not so convinced, and she refused to ever use her machine. In 2007, under growing pressure by citizen groups, park administrators agreed to send Maggie to the PAWS (Performing Animal Welfare Society) Sanctuary in Galt, California. Our elephant Chocolate could only have imagined such joys.</p>
<p>For fifteen years, she remained at her Swedish zoo – enduring many frigid winters and appreciating, the best that a tropical animal could, the mild Scandinavian summers. She watched as Kolmarden became the country’s leading zoological institution, a feat which Chocolate herself played not small part in accomplishing. Yet, behind the scenes, the situation was not so rosy. The elephant was maturing and becoming more self-aware. She would no longer acquiesce to any order or demand. Her attitude had begun to shift from ‘to go along, to get along’ to open defiance. It would come to a point where she became so difficult that the zoo could no longer handle her safely. She was simply too aggressive and too dangerous. Chocolate had already injured several keepers, and officials knew that it was just a matter of time before she killed someone. Kolmarden threw up its hands. Chocolate had won the battle of wills.</p>
<p>By 1980, the elephant had been sold and shipped off to the States. Her new home was the more temperate Tampa, Florida. For a while, the association between Chocolate and the zoo remained amicable. Perhaps it was the return to the heat and humidity which did the trick. This climate change put the elephant at ease. Or maybe it took awhile for Chocolate to figure out that, when the Tampa handlers screamed out “Tillie,” they were referring, not to another elephant, but to her. Apparently, she had a new name. In either case, years went by. Tillie became a mother. The zoo filled its pockets with money made from her and her calf’s presence. It made cash on the side by featuring the elephant in local television commercials. In time, though, Tillie became less tolerant of this life.</p>
<p>Troubles first flared in June of 1993. Tillie and another pachyderm were being led on their daily walk, when, suddenly, they sprinted away from their handler. Tillie plowed over a gate, and, together, the two wandered outside of the grounds. Elephants remain, despite all of the efforts by zoological parks, opposed to sedentary life. Whether in Asia or Africa, these animals will cover many miles per day. Their typical range can be anywhere from 9 to 31 square miles. And this is not merely about finding food or water. Elephants love to walk and to roam on their own accord. They enjoy being constantly on the go, seeing new sights, and interacting with fellow creatures. They are social travelers. In zoos, indoor facilities are measured in feet (not miles), and outdoor sites might, at most, reach 2 or 3 acres. Indeed, this incidence in Tampa was not the first occasion, or the last, that an elephant or two escaped from a zoo.</p>
<p>A decade previous, for example, Misty fled her Irvine, California facility. Running over her trainer and busting through a security fence, she strolled by a nearby swap-meet, caused a traffic-jam on a freeway, and avoided capture for over three hours. In 1997, Cally and Tonya took off from a Maine zoo. A gate was either left open by accident or it was opened by the elephants themselves – officials could not determine which. Nevertheless, the pair used this opportunity to do some exploring. Tonya was the first to be caught. But Cally was nowhere to be found. She had plain disappeared. It was not until hours later that employees stumbled upon her in a wooden area. Cally was in the process of taking a much deserved mud-bath – a pleasure that the elephant never had in captivity. As for Tillie and her partner, they would also be located and brought back to their enclosure. Yet this was just a foreshadowing of events to come.</p>
<p>One early July day, while Tillie was in the middle of a training exercise, she paused and refused to continue. When pushed by her handler, she pushed back and sent the woman tumbling into an adjacent pool of water. There was no doubt that this was an intentional act, and the trainer, while not hurt physically, was shaken emotionally. For their part, zoo administrators chose to view this action not as a second warning by the elephant but rather as an isolated incidence. At the very least, they believed, it was Tillie having some fun at the expense of another. At most, it was normal interplay between a handler and an animal – each wanting to have dominance over the other.</p>
<p>Significantly, zoos and circuses will on occasion admit to this fact: that the relations between themselves and their elephants are primarily antagonistic, coercive, and, often, violent. This is a question of domination and resistance; the answer of which is played out every day behind the doors of these institutions. In other words, we can think of these relations as a dynamic, whose outcomes are determined through a process of negotiation. On the one side, there are the zoos and circuses. They attempt to impose control by using everything from repetitive action, to physical abuse, to gastronomic bribes, to verbal intimidation: the goal of which is to create obedience, servility, and profitability among the captive animals. Theirs is a management of exploitation. On the other side of the equation are the elephants. They seek to survive this predicament, and, if possible, obtain some influence over it. Theirs is a struggle against exploitation, and it can take many forms: ignoring commands, slowing down, refusing to work without adequate food and water, taking unofficial breaks, breaking equipment, damaging enclosures, fighting back, or escaping. Much of the time, it is the institutions who ultimately win out in these negotiations. But, occasionally, the elephants do succeed in their quest. The victory may be ephemeral: extra hay or carrots. It could be partial: long-term change in training techniques. Or it might be historic: release to a sanctuary. In the case of Tillie and her latest outburst, the Tampa zoo quickly sought to regain dominance. The elephant was taken to “the privacy of the barn,” chained, and disciplined. After this was complete, Tillie was put through a set of commands to see if she would obey. She did and was placed back on display. The relative calm, however, did not last long.</p>
<p>During a final day in July, as Tillie was being led towards the barn, she was told to pause and to hold “steady.” The elephant, instead, marched directly towards the trainer – the same woman who had been pushed down only weeks before. The command, “move over,” was given and cued with a strike of a bull-hook. The elephant responded with some slaps and kicks of her own. When the handler tried to flee the scene, Tillie pulled the woman back for more punishment. There was an assistant on hand, who tugged on and beat the elephant. But Tillie ignored the person and the pain. She would not stop kicking until the target of her rage was dead.</p>
<p>Tillie’s resistance followed a pattern of many zoo elephants: trouble comes in stages. There was, for instance, JoJo at the Lion Country Safari in West Palm Beach, Florida. She charged her keeper twice in the same year. The third time, in March of 1990, she gored the man – crushing five ribs, causing liver damage, and requiring a transfusion of 23 pints of blood. “I told her to back up,” the trainer later told a newspaper, “and I saw it come into her eyes.” This was the look of anger, and it was not to be forgotten. Then there was Tamba at the Washington Park Zoo in Portland, Oregon. She slammed her handler against a wall in 1991. Administrators, though, dismissed this as an accident. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ was their attitude. Seven months later, Tamba fractured the man’s skull. After this, the press demanded a better answer. A park curator gave them one. Tamba, the official stated plainly, “just didn’t like him.” Finally, there was the case of Misha at Six Flags in Vallejo, California. She “took advantage” an employee in 2001 by shoving the unsuspecting person into a bush. A year afterwards, she tried to hit another with her trunk. Misha missed but the message was sent. Unfortunately, no one at the park was paying attention. In 2004, she gored a third in the abdomen. The tusks, a fireman explained in graphic fashion, went “all the way through.”</p>
<p>But to return to Tillie, she was sold immediately after the killing. It was her third strike, and she was, quite literally, out of the Tampa zoo. As with her previous owner in Sweden, this park also came to realize that it could no longer hold nor control the elephant. Tillie would kill again and officials knew it. Her message, it seems, had been received. In actuality, if it had been only two decades earlier, Tillie would have been executed – as this was, for over a century, standard procedure for habitual offenders. Resist beyond a certain point, and you would be put to death. Yet, with the reburgeoning of the animal rights movement in the 1970s, these institutions no longer operated with impunity, and this method of punishment had become all but unacceptable. Hence, the Tampa Zoo ended up placing the elephant in a “better equipped” facility: the Two Tails Ranch.</p>
<p>Opened in 1984 and located in Williston, Florida, Two Tails is a working ranch with a broad mission. First, in partnership with Ringling Brothers, it serves as a breeding program for the reproduction of circus elephants. As we discussed in an earlier essay, these “conservation” centers were started in response to stricter laws and regulations regarding the exportation of elephants from foreign countries. Zoos and circuses simply needed a new, more reliable source of labor. Second, the ranch is a training facility. In fact, its current owner and operator is Patricia Zerbini – one of the foremost pachyderm trainers in the world. If anyone could keep Tillie in line, it would be her. Finally, Two Tails is home to a number of older elephants. But this is no retirement community. Under the guise of “education,” these animals are used to entertain visitors, furnish rides, pose for photographs, and give demonstrations and clinics. Moreover, they are required to travel and perform at fairs, exhibitions, and special events. For many elephants, work is something that is never done.</p>
<p>In 2000, we would hear from Tillie again, but the news was not so encouraging. She had become the subject of a USDA investigation. The federal bureau discovered that the elephant was ill and suffering. Evidently, she had contracted tuberculosis and was receiving no veterinary care for the disease. Tillie remains at the ranch.</p>
<p>JASON HRIBAL can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | 3,011 |
<p>Health nuts, take heed: A sweeping review of almost 70 scientific studies of the health benefits of vitamins and, in particular, those trendy antioxidants, has found “no convincing evidence” of increased lifespan. In fact, vitamins A, E and beta-carotene could even increase a person’s chances of dying prematurely, according to scientists at Copenhagen University.</p>
<p>BBC:</p>
<p>A review of 67 studies found “no convincing evidence” that antioxidant supplements cut the risk of dying.</p>
<p>Scientists at Copenhagen University said vitamins A and E could interfere with the body’s natural defences.</p>
<p />
<p>“Even more, beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E seem to increase mortality,” according to the review by the respected Cochrane Collaboration.</p>
<p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7349980.stm" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Study: Beware of Vitamins | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/study-beware-of-vitamins/ | 2008-04-16 | 4left
| Study: Beware of Vitamins
<p>Health nuts, take heed: A sweeping review of almost 70 scientific studies of the health benefits of vitamins and, in particular, those trendy antioxidants, has found “no convincing evidence” of increased lifespan. In fact, vitamins A, E and beta-carotene could even increase a person’s chances of dying prematurely, according to scientists at Copenhagen University.</p>
<p>BBC:</p>
<p>A review of 67 studies found “no convincing evidence” that antioxidant supplements cut the risk of dying.</p>
<p>Scientists at Copenhagen University said vitamins A and E could interfere with the body’s natural defences.</p>
<p />
<p>“Even more, beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E seem to increase mortality,” according to the review by the respected Cochrane Collaboration.</p>
<p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7349980.stm" type="external">Read more</a></p> | 3,012 |
<p>The following is not a full transcript; for full story, listen to audio.</p>
<p>In his hometown growing up, Withers says that coal mining jobs played a big part.&#160; "When you grew up, you made that choice.&#160; I made the choice go in the Navy.&#160; The coal mines held no particular fascination for me." He continues, "Not a lot of people in my generation, or the people that I knew went into the coal mines, because you saw what it did to your father."</p>
<p>Music was not really part of Withers' life when he was in the Navy.&#160; After his discharge, he held some regular jobs, but hadn't yet resolved to become a musician.&#160; "When you have a talent like that, you know you have it when you are five years old; it's just getting to it.&#160; You know?&#160; It's getting around to it."</p>
<p>Withers finally got around to it in his thirties when he recorded his first demos.&#160; "You see, I've been 'most people.'&#160; I spent some part of my life as 'most people.'&#160; Once I transitioned out of that 'most people' category, and did something, whatever it was, then, a different set of rules apply."</p>
<p>The analogy of the armchair quarterback comes to mind for Withers: "You figure on Sunday, there is maybe 20 or 40 million guys watching football.&#160; A thousand of them think, or maybey 10,000 of them think that if they got the chance then they could play quarterback.&#160; Three of them probably could.&#160; So, I was one of those guys that was living, running, and I saw these guys and I'd think, 'you know, I think I could do that."</p>
<p>Withers retired from the music industry in the mid 1980s, and with the exception of a few songs penned for other artists, has stayed out of the public eye. He's featured in the new documentary and concert film "Soul Power," which follows a music festival in Zaire in 1974. The film hits theaters in New York and LA on July 14th, and opens across the country thereafter.</p>
<p>The brainchild of host and producer Jesse Thorn, "The Sound of Young America" is an irreverent weekly arts and entertainment interview program, described by its creator as "a public radio show about things that are awesome."</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">More "Sound of Young America"</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Soul singer-songwriter Bill Withers | false | https://pri.org/stories/2009-07-06/soul-singer-songwriter-bill-withers | 2009-07-06 | 3left-center
| Soul singer-songwriter Bill Withers
<p>The following is not a full transcript; for full story, listen to audio.</p>
<p>In his hometown growing up, Withers says that coal mining jobs played a big part.&#160; "When you grew up, you made that choice.&#160; I made the choice go in the Navy.&#160; The coal mines held no particular fascination for me." He continues, "Not a lot of people in my generation, or the people that I knew went into the coal mines, because you saw what it did to your father."</p>
<p>Music was not really part of Withers' life when he was in the Navy.&#160; After his discharge, he held some regular jobs, but hadn't yet resolved to become a musician.&#160; "When you have a talent like that, you know you have it when you are five years old; it's just getting to it.&#160; You know?&#160; It's getting around to it."</p>
<p>Withers finally got around to it in his thirties when he recorded his first demos.&#160; "You see, I've been 'most people.'&#160; I spent some part of my life as 'most people.'&#160; Once I transitioned out of that 'most people' category, and did something, whatever it was, then, a different set of rules apply."</p>
<p>The analogy of the armchair quarterback comes to mind for Withers: "You figure on Sunday, there is maybe 20 or 40 million guys watching football.&#160; A thousand of them think, or maybey 10,000 of them think that if they got the chance then they could play quarterback.&#160; Three of them probably could.&#160; So, I was one of those guys that was living, running, and I saw these guys and I'd think, 'you know, I think I could do that."</p>
<p>Withers retired from the music industry in the mid 1980s, and with the exception of a few songs penned for other artists, has stayed out of the public eye. He's featured in the new documentary and concert film "Soul Power," which follows a music festival in Zaire in 1974. The film hits theaters in New York and LA on July 14th, and opens across the country thereafter.</p>
<p>The brainchild of host and producer Jesse Thorn, "The Sound of Young America" is an irreverent weekly arts and entertainment interview program, described by its creator as "a public radio show about things that are awesome."</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">More "Sound of Young America"</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 3,013 |
<p>The suburban town of Boutchai is a quiet community of handsome condos and villas nestled among the pine trees of Mt. Lebanon, with a view of Beirut and the Mediterranean below.</p>
<p>Like many small towns in Lebanon, it’s the kind of place where residents know each other. But the arrival of hundreds of Syrian refugees has shaken people here, like Sami Jakour, 45, who owns a car repair shop. He says the town has become unsafe.</p>
<p>“You see (Syrians) at all hours of the night outside, at 2 a.m. and even at 5 a.m.,” Jakour said. “If you see three or four guys in the street, looking around suspiciously, it’s obvious they’re up to no good.”</p>
<p>Joseph Mallouf, who owns a bakery nearby, says young Syrian men were gathering on the town’s streets at night, drinking, starting fights and harassing young women. Thefts increased, and he says he heard about rapes in nearby villages.</p>
<p>“There are many strange people, we don’t know who are here,” Mallouf said. “And we have a different culture. Our culture is different from theirs.”</p>
<p>As a response to these complaints, fears and rumors, the municipal council here instituted a curfew requiring that all “foreigners’ in town be off the streets by 8:30 p.m. Everyone here says that really means “Syrians,” and other non-Lebanese laborers.</p>
<p>Jakour is all for it.</p>
<p>“I think it’s fantastic. The fact is we couldn’t even put a towel or a chair outside,” he said.</p>
<p>The curfew is a warning for those who come to do something bad, Mallouf says.</p>
<p>There are more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees in countries surrounding the war-ravaged country. At least 600,000 of them have gone to Lebanon — the number may be as high as one million. And that’s in a country with a population of only 4 million. There are no refugee camps in Lebanon, so the refugees are spread around the country — in cities, towns and villages.</p>
<p>In some places, there are more refugees than natives, and that’s putting a burden on everything from water and electricity, to jobs and education — and security.</p>
<p>Across the country, and among Lebanon’s usually divided religious and political groups, many agree on one thing: Syrian refugees are upsetting the normal order of things. The curfew offers an answer.</p>
<p>Farid Nassar, the treasurer of the nearby municipality of Ramhallah, says his city council instituted a curfew after the number of Syrians mushroomed from three dozen to more than 500 in just a few months.</p>
<p>“First of all, they used to be around 10 people, without their family, then they started bringing their family, their kids, their wife, their mother, their grandparents, cousin, relatives. So the area is getting to be a little bit packed more than usual,” he said.</p>
<p>The curfew lasts from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., and is enforced by a local police force. Human rights groups here say the curfews are racist — and classist. Lebanon’s Interior Minister even said the curfews have “no legal basis.”</p>
<p>But the practice goes on, mainly because the Lebanese state is too weak to stop it. Or to offer a paranoid public any alternative.</p>
<p>“There’s no discrimination here,” said Sami Jakour. “We have workers from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia, they’re never an issue. We only have problems with the Syrians here. It’s not discrimination; we were forced to do this. The fact is it’s about safety. These people are going around and we want to be safe.”</p>
<p>There have also been unconfirmed reports of vigilantes beating up Syrians caught violating the curfew. Nassar says that’s not true, at least in his town, though he said it wouldn’t be a big deal if a few Syrians, “fall on their faces” — as he recalled Syria’s vicious treatment of locals during its 30 year occupation of Lebanon.</p>
<p>Police brutality is not unusual in Lebanon. A Human Rights Watch investigation in June found that abuse is “common” in Lebanese police stations, and vulnerable groups are more likely to be mistreated by Lebanese authorities.</p>
<p>Back in the town of Betchay, Naji, a 28-year-old from the Syrian town of Deir Ezzour, works in Jakour’s car repair shop and says he’s OK with the curfew. He asked his last name not be used.</p>
<p>“All of us are happy about the curfew, because the fact is no problems are happening, we hear about problems happening in other villages, but not here,” he said.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a few doors down at Joseph Mallouf’s bakery, an Egyptian employee is clearly not pleased. He’s been here six years and is now subject to the curfew. He declined to give his name as he made Lebanese flat bread with cheese and Thyme.</p>
<p>“Some of us have faced problems with the curfew, and I’m sure if I had some kind of emergency, or had to go to the pharmacy or hospital, then I would face some trouble. I guess I’d have to go ask the police for permission,” he said, rolling his eyes.</p>
<p>A woman named Mariam picks up bread and says she supports the curfew, but points to the larger issues Lebanon is facing due to the Syrian presence, beyond just security worries.</p>
<p>“There’s a large number, and it’s been putting a massive burden, and causing massive pressure, on the state, and on the towns, on the economy, on the electricity, on water, and now the Lebanese person can’t find work,” she said.</p>
<p>Lebanon’s uneducated working class are facing the hardest time — their jobs are being taken by Syrians who are receiving aid and are thus willing to work for lower wages than their Lebanese counterparts, according to a recent study conducted by the Issam Fares institute at the American University of Beirut.</p>
<p>That study also found that half of Lebanese polled believe no more Syrian refugees should be allowed into Lebanon.</p>
<p>Syrians at all levels of society are now competing with Lebanese for the same jobs. They are opening up shops, restaurants and businesses here. And that’s upsetting many Lebanese, whose economy is already negatively affected by the war next door.</p>
<p>With no end in sight for the Syria conflict, those problems, and others, are only likely to intensify.</p> | Influx of Syrian refugees causing fresh tension in Lebanon | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-07-25/influx-syrian-refugees-causing-fresh-tension-lebanon | 2013-07-25 | 3left-center
| Influx of Syrian refugees causing fresh tension in Lebanon
<p>The suburban town of Boutchai is a quiet community of handsome condos and villas nestled among the pine trees of Mt. Lebanon, with a view of Beirut and the Mediterranean below.</p>
<p>Like many small towns in Lebanon, it’s the kind of place where residents know each other. But the arrival of hundreds of Syrian refugees has shaken people here, like Sami Jakour, 45, who owns a car repair shop. He says the town has become unsafe.</p>
<p>“You see (Syrians) at all hours of the night outside, at 2 a.m. and even at 5 a.m.,” Jakour said. “If you see three or four guys in the street, looking around suspiciously, it’s obvious they’re up to no good.”</p>
<p>Joseph Mallouf, who owns a bakery nearby, says young Syrian men were gathering on the town’s streets at night, drinking, starting fights and harassing young women. Thefts increased, and he says he heard about rapes in nearby villages.</p>
<p>“There are many strange people, we don’t know who are here,” Mallouf said. “And we have a different culture. Our culture is different from theirs.”</p>
<p>As a response to these complaints, fears and rumors, the municipal council here instituted a curfew requiring that all “foreigners’ in town be off the streets by 8:30 p.m. Everyone here says that really means “Syrians,” and other non-Lebanese laborers.</p>
<p>Jakour is all for it.</p>
<p>“I think it’s fantastic. The fact is we couldn’t even put a towel or a chair outside,” he said.</p>
<p>The curfew is a warning for those who come to do something bad, Mallouf says.</p>
<p>There are more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees in countries surrounding the war-ravaged country. At least 600,000 of them have gone to Lebanon — the number may be as high as one million. And that’s in a country with a population of only 4 million. There are no refugee camps in Lebanon, so the refugees are spread around the country — in cities, towns and villages.</p>
<p>In some places, there are more refugees than natives, and that’s putting a burden on everything from water and electricity, to jobs and education — and security.</p>
<p>Across the country, and among Lebanon’s usually divided religious and political groups, many agree on one thing: Syrian refugees are upsetting the normal order of things. The curfew offers an answer.</p>
<p>Farid Nassar, the treasurer of the nearby municipality of Ramhallah, says his city council instituted a curfew after the number of Syrians mushroomed from three dozen to more than 500 in just a few months.</p>
<p>“First of all, they used to be around 10 people, without their family, then they started bringing their family, their kids, their wife, their mother, their grandparents, cousin, relatives. So the area is getting to be a little bit packed more than usual,” he said.</p>
<p>The curfew lasts from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., and is enforced by a local police force. Human rights groups here say the curfews are racist — and classist. Lebanon’s Interior Minister even said the curfews have “no legal basis.”</p>
<p>But the practice goes on, mainly because the Lebanese state is too weak to stop it. Or to offer a paranoid public any alternative.</p>
<p>“There’s no discrimination here,” said Sami Jakour. “We have workers from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia, they’re never an issue. We only have problems with the Syrians here. It’s not discrimination; we were forced to do this. The fact is it’s about safety. These people are going around and we want to be safe.”</p>
<p>There have also been unconfirmed reports of vigilantes beating up Syrians caught violating the curfew. Nassar says that’s not true, at least in his town, though he said it wouldn’t be a big deal if a few Syrians, “fall on their faces” — as he recalled Syria’s vicious treatment of locals during its 30 year occupation of Lebanon.</p>
<p>Police brutality is not unusual in Lebanon. A Human Rights Watch investigation in June found that abuse is “common” in Lebanese police stations, and vulnerable groups are more likely to be mistreated by Lebanese authorities.</p>
<p>Back in the town of Betchay, Naji, a 28-year-old from the Syrian town of Deir Ezzour, works in Jakour’s car repair shop and says he’s OK with the curfew. He asked his last name not be used.</p>
<p>“All of us are happy about the curfew, because the fact is no problems are happening, we hear about problems happening in other villages, but not here,” he said.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a few doors down at Joseph Mallouf’s bakery, an Egyptian employee is clearly not pleased. He’s been here six years and is now subject to the curfew. He declined to give his name as he made Lebanese flat bread with cheese and Thyme.</p>
<p>“Some of us have faced problems with the curfew, and I’m sure if I had some kind of emergency, or had to go to the pharmacy or hospital, then I would face some trouble. I guess I’d have to go ask the police for permission,” he said, rolling his eyes.</p>
<p>A woman named Mariam picks up bread and says she supports the curfew, but points to the larger issues Lebanon is facing due to the Syrian presence, beyond just security worries.</p>
<p>“There’s a large number, and it’s been putting a massive burden, and causing massive pressure, on the state, and on the towns, on the economy, on the electricity, on water, and now the Lebanese person can’t find work,” she said.</p>
<p>Lebanon’s uneducated working class are facing the hardest time — their jobs are being taken by Syrians who are receiving aid and are thus willing to work for lower wages than their Lebanese counterparts, according to a recent study conducted by the Issam Fares institute at the American University of Beirut.</p>
<p>That study also found that half of Lebanese polled believe no more Syrian refugees should be allowed into Lebanon.</p>
<p>Syrians at all levels of society are now competing with Lebanese for the same jobs. They are opening up shops, restaurants and businesses here. And that’s upsetting many Lebanese, whose economy is already negatively affected by the war next door.</p>
<p>With no end in sight for the Syria conflict, those problems, and others, are only likely to intensify.</p> | 3,014 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" />After I watched Sarah Palin’s <a href="" type="internal">now infamous Iowa Freedom Summit speech</a>, one of the first thoughts that went through my mind (after my brain tried to process the insanity) was that I really hope Jon Stewart dedicates at least part of his show on Monday to this absurd nonsense. Thankfully my prayers were answered as last night he absolutely tore apart <a href="" type="internal">Palin’s incoherent babbling</a>.</p>
<p>Though before he could even get to her idiocy he made sure to address several of the other featured speakers at this conservative event. And, wow, did this “freedom summit” provide writers, political commentators and comedians with tons of material.</p>
<p>“A lot of Republicans who will never be president met this weekend,” Stewart began.</p>
<p>He then poked fun at Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s “go big and go bold” line from the speech, asking, “Wait, isn’t that the tagline for Tide?”</p>
<p>Following Walker’s remarks he showed a clip of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), comparing him to Ned Flanders from The Simpsons for his bizarre attempt to seem extremely over-the-top folksy in his address to the crowd.</p>
<p>Next up was Mike Huckabee who went on for quite a while on some strange rant about pig killing and making sausage that led Stewart to the logical&#160;conclusion that he must have been hungry and really wanted some sausage.</p>
<p>But it got even better when he played Rick Perry’s absurd comments where the former Texas governor seemed to be trying to outdo Howard Dean circa 2004 when the former Democratic presidential candidate more or less destroyed his campaign <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwkNnMrsx7Q" type="external">following his famous yell</a>.</p>
<p>And while all of the aforementioned Republican speeches were indeed ludicrous, none of them came anywhere close to the stupidity that Sarah Palin exhibited during her speech.</p>
<p>“Ladies and gentlemen, I believe it may be the rare brown-haired Alaskan podium seeker,” Stewart said as he began playing parts of Palin’s embarrassing speech.</p>
<p>“Well, it was all going fine, until her subjects stopped talking to her verbs,” he mocked.</p>
<p>After playing another clip of Palin’s unintelligible gibberish, Stewart quipped, “You know, that’s the kind of talk you normally hear right before the pharmacist says, ‘Ma’am you’ve got to leave the Walgreens.’&#160;Now we know what it’s like to get cornered by Palin at an open bar wedding.”</p>
<p>He then hilariously played Matthew McConaughey’s Lincoln commercial with Palin superimposed over him giving part of her speech. It’s something that just has to be seen&#160;to be fully appreciated.</p>
<p>This was easily one Stewart’s best segments in recent memory. Then again, it’s hard not to have a great comedic segment when a large group of 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls all appear at the same event. And the saddest part is, all Stewart really had to do was play clips of&#160;exactly&#160;what these GOP presidential hopefuls said. The best comedy writers in the world often can’t come up with anything as hilarious as&#160;quoting Republicans verbatim.</p>
<p>Watch the segment below <a href="http://dailyshow.cc.com" type="external">via Comedy Central</a>:</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://thedailyshow.cc.com/" type="external">The Daily Show</a>Get More: <a href="http://thedailyshow.cc.com/full-episodes/" type="external">Daily Show Full Episodes</a>, <a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/indecision" type="external">Indecision Political Humor</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow" type="external">The Daily Show on Facebook</a></p>
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">These 5 Moments Show Why We're Going To Desperately Miss Jon Stewart On 'The Daily Show'</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Bent Back Mountain: Sarah Palin's Iowa Speech Translated</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">The DNC Responds to Sarah Palin's Embarrassing Iowa Gibberish with Two Words</a></p>
<p>0 Facebook comments</p> | Jon Stewart Mocks Sarah Palin’s Iowa Gibberish: ‘Ma’am You’ve Got To Leave The Walgreens’ (Video) | true | http://forwardprogressives.com/jon-stewart-mocks-sarah-palins-iowa-gibberish-maam-leave-walgreens-video/ | 2015-01-27 | 4left
| Jon Stewart Mocks Sarah Palin’s Iowa Gibberish: ‘Ma’am You’ve Got To Leave The Walgreens’ (Video)
<p><a href="" type="internal" />After I watched Sarah Palin’s <a href="" type="internal">now infamous Iowa Freedom Summit speech</a>, one of the first thoughts that went through my mind (after my brain tried to process the insanity) was that I really hope Jon Stewart dedicates at least part of his show on Monday to this absurd nonsense. Thankfully my prayers were answered as last night he absolutely tore apart <a href="" type="internal">Palin’s incoherent babbling</a>.</p>
<p>Though before he could even get to her idiocy he made sure to address several of the other featured speakers at this conservative event. And, wow, did this “freedom summit” provide writers, political commentators and comedians with tons of material.</p>
<p>“A lot of Republicans who will never be president met this weekend,” Stewart began.</p>
<p>He then poked fun at Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s “go big and go bold” line from the speech, asking, “Wait, isn’t that the tagline for Tide?”</p>
<p>Following Walker’s remarks he showed a clip of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), comparing him to Ned Flanders from The Simpsons for his bizarre attempt to seem extremely over-the-top folksy in his address to the crowd.</p>
<p>Next up was Mike Huckabee who went on for quite a while on some strange rant about pig killing and making sausage that led Stewart to the logical&#160;conclusion that he must have been hungry and really wanted some sausage.</p>
<p>But it got even better when he played Rick Perry’s absurd comments where the former Texas governor seemed to be trying to outdo Howard Dean circa 2004 when the former Democratic presidential candidate more or less destroyed his campaign <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwkNnMrsx7Q" type="external">following his famous yell</a>.</p>
<p>And while all of the aforementioned Republican speeches were indeed ludicrous, none of them came anywhere close to the stupidity that Sarah Palin exhibited during her speech.</p>
<p>“Ladies and gentlemen, I believe it may be the rare brown-haired Alaskan podium seeker,” Stewart said as he began playing parts of Palin’s embarrassing speech.</p>
<p>“Well, it was all going fine, until her subjects stopped talking to her verbs,” he mocked.</p>
<p>After playing another clip of Palin’s unintelligible gibberish, Stewart quipped, “You know, that’s the kind of talk you normally hear right before the pharmacist says, ‘Ma’am you’ve got to leave the Walgreens.’&#160;Now we know what it’s like to get cornered by Palin at an open bar wedding.”</p>
<p>He then hilariously played Matthew McConaughey’s Lincoln commercial with Palin superimposed over him giving part of her speech. It’s something that just has to be seen&#160;to be fully appreciated.</p>
<p>This was easily one Stewart’s best segments in recent memory. Then again, it’s hard not to have a great comedic segment when a large group of 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls all appear at the same event. And the saddest part is, all Stewart really had to do was play clips of&#160;exactly&#160;what these GOP presidential hopefuls said. The best comedy writers in the world often can’t come up with anything as hilarious as&#160;quoting Republicans verbatim.</p>
<p>Watch the segment below <a href="http://dailyshow.cc.com" type="external">via Comedy Central</a>:</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://thedailyshow.cc.com/" type="external">The Daily Show</a>Get More: <a href="http://thedailyshow.cc.com/full-episodes/" type="external">Daily Show Full Episodes</a>, <a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/indecision" type="external">Indecision Political Humor</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow" type="external">The Daily Show on Facebook</a></p>
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">These 5 Moments Show Why We're Going To Desperately Miss Jon Stewart On 'The Daily Show'</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Bent Back Mountain: Sarah Palin's Iowa Speech Translated</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">The DNC Responds to Sarah Palin's Embarrassing Iowa Gibberish with Two Words</a></p>
<p>0 Facebook comments</p> | 3,015 |
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<p />
<p>"It's a breathtaking scenic view," she said. "The value of the scenery here is pretty astounding."</p>
<p>Hiking, photography, camping, picnicking and even sledding are some of the fun activities available, Burghart said.</p>
<p>A view of the exhibits at the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo. (Courtesy Of The New Mexico Museum Of Space History)</p>
<p>"What's great about White Sands is it's a place of discovery," she said. "Everybody has an opportunity to discover something of interest to them. At Whites Sands, you can form it to what you're looking for."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Alamogordo itself is home to a number of different attractions, not the least of which is the New Mexico Museum of Space History, nmspacemuseum.org.</p>
<p>Once known as the Space Center and International Space Hall of Fame, it opened in 1976, said spokeswoman Cathy Harper.</p>
<p>Among the many highlights of a visit is the chance to explore a mock up of the 2001 space station, as well as to see the planetarium on the 40-foot, wrap-around OMNIMAX screen, she said.</p>
<p>And the museum has recently added new interactive displays, including a "rocket rumbler," Harper said. "You stand on it, pick out your favorite rocket and you hear the launch and feel the launch because it literally rumbles around you."</p>
<p>Getting a chance to don a space suit has become a popular exhibit.</p>
<p>"You would be amazed how much fun people, kids and adults, have with that," Harper said. "Somebody put a couple of little dogs in one of the suits. Everybody seemed to enjoy that."</p>
<p>Taking a step back to days of future passed, the Toy Train Depot, toytraindepot.homestead.com, brings out the kid in everybody. A model railroaders' delight, hundreds of model trains and toy trains are on display within the 100-year-old depot. A 1,000-square-foot HO layout of Alamogordo circa 1940 is among the displays, as is the smallest scaled working train in the world.</p>
<p>Locals and visitors have the railroad to thank for the Alameda Park &amp; Zoo, alamogordo.nm.us/Zoo/coa, which was established in 1898 and is the oldest in the Southwest, said zoo employee Kathy Chase.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The zoo houses more than 300 animals of 90 different species, but the monkeys are the top draw, she said.</p>
<p>"People like the monkeys," she said. "Capuchin monkeys. We have a nice little troupe, and we're expanding and upgrading the exhibit."</p>
<p>The zoo is enclosed within a green park perfect for letting children run out their energies, Chase said.</p>
<p>"It's very pleasant," she said. "I've always thought of it as an oasis in the desert."</p>
<p>With a year-round creek in Dog Canyon, the Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, www.emnrd.state.nm.us/nmparks, is also something of an oasis in the desert just south of Alamogordo, said park ranger Howard Thomas.</p>
<p>In addition to being the trailhead for a breath-robbing, 5.5-mile one-way hike through Dog Canyon that gains 3,500 feet, the park's visitor center depicts the eras of the area's habitation, particularly when it was a Mescalero Apache stronghold. Numerous battles were fought in the area as the U.S. government tried to subdue the Apaches.</p>
<p>Also, just outside of town, the Eagle Ranch Pistachio Groves Farm, heartofthedesert.com/farm_tour/farm_tour.asp, offers a free tour of its facilities. The 45-minute tour covers all aspects of the pistachio industry, said Marianne Scheers, one of the farm's owners.</p>
<p>The tour includes an excursion into the processing plant and the salting and roasting areas, as well the packaging plant.</p>
<p>And, of course, there are available plenty of products that other vendors make from Eagle Ranch products, she said, including a wine from grapes that are grown at the farm.</p>
<p>"We sell a good line of wine," Scheers said. "We don't make our wines but we grow the grapes, and we have a customer crush (them). Then Southwest Wines in Deming gets our grapes and makes a wine, Pistachio Ros?, a ros?-blush that's flavored with our pistachios. We call it our conversation wine. It's different but really popular. It has a nutty flavor."</p>
<p /> | Out-of-this-world Alamogordo | false | https://abqjournal.com/672044/out-of-this-world-alamogordo.html | 2least
| Out-of-this-world Alamogordo
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>"It's a breathtaking scenic view," she said. "The value of the scenery here is pretty astounding."</p>
<p>Hiking, photography, camping, picnicking and even sledding are some of the fun activities available, Burghart said.</p>
<p>A view of the exhibits at the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo. (Courtesy Of The New Mexico Museum Of Space History)</p>
<p>"What's great about White Sands is it's a place of discovery," she said. "Everybody has an opportunity to discover something of interest to them. At Whites Sands, you can form it to what you're looking for."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Alamogordo itself is home to a number of different attractions, not the least of which is the New Mexico Museum of Space History, nmspacemuseum.org.</p>
<p>Once known as the Space Center and International Space Hall of Fame, it opened in 1976, said spokeswoman Cathy Harper.</p>
<p>Among the many highlights of a visit is the chance to explore a mock up of the 2001 space station, as well as to see the planetarium on the 40-foot, wrap-around OMNIMAX screen, she said.</p>
<p>And the museum has recently added new interactive displays, including a "rocket rumbler," Harper said. "You stand on it, pick out your favorite rocket and you hear the launch and feel the launch because it literally rumbles around you."</p>
<p>Getting a chance to don a space suit has become a popular exhibit.</p>
<p>"You would be amazed how much fun people, kids and adults, have with that," Harper said. "Somebody put a couple of little dogs in one of the suits. Everybody seemed to enjoy that."</p>
<p>Taking a step back to days of future passed, the Toy Train Depot, toytraindepot.homestead.com, brings out the kid in everybody. A model railroaders' delight, hundreds of model trains and toy trains are on display within the 100-year-old depot. A 1,000-square-foot HO layout of Alamogordo circa 1940 is among the displays, as is the smallest scaled working train in the world.</p>
<p>Locals and visitors have the railroad to thank for the Alameda Park &amp; Zoo, alamogordo.nm.us/Zoo/coa, which was established in 1898 and is the oldest in the Southwest, said zoo employee Kathy Chase.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The zoo houses more than 300 animals of 90 different species, but the monkeys are the top draw, she said.</p>
<p>"People like the monkeys," she said. "Capuchin monkeys. We have a nice little troupe, and we're expanding and upgrading the exhibit."</p>
<p>The zoo is enclosed within a green park perfect for letting children run out their energies, Chase said.</p>
<p>"It's very pleasant," she said. "I've always thought of it as an oasis in the desert."</p>
<p>With a year-round creek in Dog Canyon, the Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, www.emnrd.state.nm.us/nmparks, is also something of an oasis in the desert just south of Alamogordo, said park ranger Howard Thomas.</p>
<p>In addition to being the trailhead for a breath-robbing, 5.5-mile one-way hike through Dog Canyon that gains 3,500 feet, the park's visitor center depicts the eras of the area's habitation, particularly when it was a Mescalero Apache stronghold. Numerous battles were fought in the area as the U.S. government tried to subdue the Apaches.</p>
<p>Also, just outside of town, the Eagle Ranch Pistachio Groves Farm, heartofthedesert.com/farm_tour/farm_tour.asp, offers a free tour of its facilities. The 45-minute tour covers all aspects of the pistachio industry, said Marianne Scheers, one of the farm's owners.</p>
<p>The tour includes an excursion into the processing plant and the salting and roasting areas, as well the packaging plant.</p>
<p>And, of course, there are available plenty of products that other vendors make from Eagle Ranch products, she said, including a wine from grapes that are grown at the farm.</p>
<p>"We sell a good line of wine," Scheers said. "We don't make our wines but we grow the grapes, and we have a customer crush (them). Then Southwest Wines in Deming gets our grapes and makes a wine, Pistachio Ros?, a ros?-blush that's flavored with our pistachios. We call it our conversation wine. It's different but really popular. It has a nutty flavor."</p>
<p /> | 3,016 |
|
<p>In 1996, "The Simpsons" did a "Treehouse of Horror" episode featuring Bill Clinton running against Bob Dole. Halfway through the episode, during a presidential debate, Homer Simpson reveals that both candidates are "hideous space reptiles," complete with dripping fangs, tentacles and one eye each: Kodos and Kang. The crowd screams in shock and horror. Then one of the aliens, Kodos, speaks: "It's true; we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system. You have to vote for one of us." The crowd mutters in stunned agreement. One fellow speaks up: "Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate!" "Go ahead," says Kang, "throw your vote away." Both aliens laugh hysterically as the crowd frets.</p>
<p>Welcome to election 2016.</p>
<p>But this election does raise a serious question for people of all political affiliations: Do the political ends justify the means? Is there anyone who agrees with you on policy for whom you would not vote?</p>
<p>The myth of the binary vote would force a "no" answer. If you must choose between two candidates, you choose the one who best reflects your policy priorities. But what if the candidate who best reflects your policy priorities is utterly unpalatable as a politician or a human being? What do you do then?</p>
<p>You vote for him or her anyway.</p>
<p>Take, as a hypothetical, a David Duke senatorial candidacy in Louisiana. A vicious racist and anti-Semite, former Ku Klux Klan head Duke is indeed running for Senate, and he's garnering some 5 percent of the vote there; he'll be included in the broadcast debate. Assume, for a moment, that Duke were the prospective 60th vote in the Senate to repeal Obamacare. Would Republicans vote for him?</p>
<p>Most Republicans, asked about voting for David Duke, would likely say no to his candidacy no matter the circumstances. But some wouldn't. They'd simply say that Duke on policy would be better than his Democratic opponent. Why lose a Senate seat to prove a point?</p>
<p>This is precisely the argument now taking place over Donald Trump on the Republican side of the aisle. No, Trump isn't David Duke, of course. But that's not the point: The argument in favor of Trump has had little to do with his qualities, and much to do with his status as the Not Hillary. That's dangerous moral territory, at best. It's basic "ends justify the means" logic. And that logic approves of any action by a candidate so long as that candidate votes the right way on an issue about which you care.</p>
<p>Conservatives used to mock such thinking. We used to scoff at Democrats calling Sen. Teddy Kennedy, D-Mass, a man who left a woman to drown in the back of his car, the "lion of the Senate." We used to sneer at the Democratic notion that Bill Clinton could get away with sexual assault so long as he backed abortion-on-demand.</p>
<p>Perhaps years of Democratic rule from the White House has forced Republicans to abandon the notion that character matters in the slightest; perhaps we've just decided to become Democrats of the right. If so, let's be honest about it. But let's also recognize where such voting logic leads: directly to the worst people in positions of the greatest power. Many Trump supporters are fond of saying that they'd back Stalin to stop Hitler. But that's not the question. The real question is whether they'd vote for Hitler to stop the Communist threat in 1933 Germany, or vote for the Communists to stop Hitler. After all, it was a binary choice.</p>
<p>Or perhaps it wasn't. Perhaps more people should have stood up and said "no" to the available choices.</p>
<p>COPYRIGHT CREATORS 2016</p> | An Honest Question For All Voting Americans | true | https://dailywire.com/news/10265/honest-question-all-voting-americans-ben-shapiro | 2016-10-27 | 0right
| An Honest Question For All Voting Americans
<p>In 1996, "The Simpsons" did a "Treehouse of Horror" episode featuring Bill Clinton running against Bob Dole. Halfway through the episode, during a presidential debate, Homer Simpson reveals that both candidates are "hideous space reptiles," complete with dripping fangs, tentacles and one eye each: Kodos and Kang. The crowd screams in shock and horror. Then one of the aliens, Kodos, speaks: "It's true; we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system. You have to vote for one of us." The crowd mutters in stunned agreement. One fellow speaks up: "Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate!" "Go ahead," says Kang, "throw your vote away." Both aliens laugh hysterically as the crowd frets.</p>
<p>Welcome to election 2016.</p>
<p>But this election does raise a serious question for people of all political affiliations: Do the political ends justify the means? Is there anyone who agrees with you on policy for whom you would not vote?</p>
<p>The myth of the binary vote would force a "no" answer. If you must choose between two candidates, you choose the one who best reflects your policy priorities. But what if the candidate who best reflects your policy priorities is utterly unpalatable as a politician or a human being? What do you do then?</p>
<p>You vote for him or her anyway.</p>
<p>Take, as a hypothetical, a David Duke senatorial candidacy in Louisiana. A vicious racist and anti-Semite, former Ku Klux Klan head Duke is indeed running for Senate, and he's garnering some 5 percent of the vote there; he'll be included in the broadcast debate. Assume, for a moment, that Duke were the prospective 60th vote in the Senate to repeal Obamacare. Would Republicans vote for him?</p>
<p>Most Republicans, asked about voting for David Duke, would likely say no to his candidacy no matter the circumstances. But some wouldn't. They'd simply say that Duke on policy would be better than his Democratic opponent. Why lose a Senate seat to prove a point?</p>
<p>This is precisely the argument now taking place over Donald Trump on the Republican side of the aisle. No, Trump isn't David Duke, of course. But that's not the point: The argument in favor of Trump has had little to do with his qualities, and much to do with his status as the Not Hillary. That's dangerous moral territory, at best. It's basic "ends justify the means" logic. And that logic approves of any action by a candidate so long as that candidate votes the right way on an issue about which you care.</p>
<p>Conservatives used to mock such thinking. We used to scoff at Democrats calling Sen. Teddy Kennedy, D-Mass, a man who left a woman to drown in the back of his car, the "lion of the Senate." We used to sneer at the Democratic notion that Bill Clinton could get away with sexual assault so long as he backed abortion-on-demand.</p>
<p>Perhaps years of Democratic rule from the White House has forced Republicans to abandon the notion that character matters in the slightest; perhaps we've just decided to become Democrats of the right. If so, let's be honest about it. But let's also recognize where such voting logic leads: directly to the worst people in positions of the greatest power. Many Trump supporters are fond of saying that they'd back Stalin to stop Hitler. But that's not the question. The real question is whether they'd vote for Hitler to stop the Communist threat in 1933 Germany, or vote for the Communists to stop Hitler. After all, it was a binary choice.</p>
<p>Or perhaps it wasn't. Perhaps more people should have stood up and said "no" to the available choices.</p>
<p>COPYRIGHT CREATORS 2016</p> | 3,017 |
<p />
<p>American aluminum producers have filed a complaint accusing Chinese smelters of exporting at improperly low prices in the first case of its kind for the administration of President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>An industry group, the Aluminum Association, said it filed the case Thursday with U.S. regulators accusing Chinese producers of receiving improper subsidies and selling at unfairly low prices that hurt foreign competitors. It asked the government to impose anti-dumping duties of 38 percent to 134 percent on aluminum foil for consumer and industrial uses.</p>
<p>A flood of low-cost Chinese aluminum exports has pushed global prices so low that U.S. and European smelters are closing. Producers say thousands of jobs are at risk.</p>
<p>Trump promised during his campaign to raise duties on Chinese imports to offset what he was unfair action by Beijing but has yet to take action.</p>
<p>Aluminum is one of an array of Chinese industries including steel, coal and glass whose production mushroomed over the past decade until supply vastly exceeded demand.</p>
<p>The ruling Communist Party is shrinking steel and coal production but has yet to announce plans for aluminum.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Chinese smelters that make more than half the world's aluminum are adding millions of tons of capacity, supported by what Western competitors say are improper subsidies.</p>
<p>After a dip in early 2016, Chinese aluminum production rebounded to a new high of 2.95 million tons in the month ending in mid-February, according to data compiled by the International Aluminum Institute in London.</p>
<p>The Aluminum Association said it was the first trade case it has filed in the group's 85-year history. The complaint was filed with the U.S. Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission.</p>
<p>"This unprecedented action reflects both the intensive injury being suffered by U.S. aluminum foil producers and also our commitment to ensuring that trade laws are enforced to create a level playing field for domestic producers," said the association president, Heidi Brock, in a statement.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Aluminum Association: www.aluminum.org</p> | US aluminum group files trade complaint against China | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/09/us-aluminum-group-files-trade-complaint-against-china.html | 2017-03-17 | 0right
| US aluminum group files trade complaint against China
<p />
<p>American aluminum producers have filed a complaint accusing Chinese smelters of exporting at improperly low prices in the first case of its kind for the administration of President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>An industry group, the Aluminum Association, said it filed the case Thursday with U.S. regulators accusing Chinese producers of receiving improper subsidies and selling at unfairly low prices that hurt foreign competitors. It asked the government to impose anti-dumping duties of 38 percent to 134 percent on aluminum foil for consumer and industrial uses.</p>
<p>A flood of low-cost Chinese aluminum exports has pushed global prices so low that U.S. and European smelters are closing. Producers say thousands of jobs are at risk.</p>
<p>Trump promised during his campaign to raise duties on Chinese imports to offset what he was unfair action by Beijing but has yet to take action.</p>
<p>Aluminum is one of an array of Chinese industries including steel, coal and glass whose production mushroomed over the past decade until supply vastly exceeded demand.</p>
<p>The ruling Communist Party is shrinking steel and coal production but has yet to announce plans for aluminum.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Chinese smelters that make more than half the world's aluminum are adding millions of tons of capacity, supported by what Western competitors say are improper subsidies.</p>
<p>After a dip in early 2016, Chinese aluminum production rebounded to a new high of 2.95 million tons in the month ending in mid-February, according to data compiled by the International Aluminum Institute in London.</p>
<p>The Aluminum Association said it was the first trade case it has filed in the group's 85-year history. The complaint was filed with the U.S. Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission.</p>
<p>"This unprecedented action reflects both the intensive injury being suffered by U.S. aluminum foil producers and also our commitment to ensuring that trade laws are enforced to create a level playing field for domestic producers," said the association president, Heidi Brock, in a statement.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Aluminum Association: www.aluminum.org</p> | 3,018 |
<p><a href="http://politicalblindspot.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/MurfreesboroProtest1-against-right.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>We are approaching the third anniversary of a community counter-protest to a march against the planned construction of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The march followed on the heels of one in a series of anti-Muslim bigotry around the country.</p>
<p>In Murfreesboro, a grassroots coalition called Middle Tennesseans for Religious Freedom (MTRF) quickly formed in response and organized a 500 person-strong counter-protest, outnumbering the bigots and asserting the right of Muslims in Murfreesboro to practice their religion free of demonization, harassment and threats.</p>
<p>Jase Short, a member of Middle Tennesseans for Religious Freedom and the socialist group Solidarity, talked to&#160;Safia Albaiti&#160;about the organizing against the right-wing bigots and for religious freedom.</p>
<p>The Rutherford County Regional Planning Commission approved the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro’s request to build a 52,000-square-foot facility. After a decade of construction, there will be a 10,000-square-foot mosque, a gym, classrooms and a place for the Imam to live.</p>
<p>At the next meeting of the Commission, several hundred members of the World Outreach Church – a mega-church here that is in the midst of constructing its fourth sanctuary, this one alone at 125,000 square feet – filled up City Hall and monopolized all the time allotted for citizens to speak to the commission.</p>
<p>Though World Outreach denies any relationship with the group that came to City Hall, the lead pastor and quite a few associate pastors were on site to speak out against Islam. Officially led by Kevin Fisher, the group proclaimed that their protests were about the size of the facility and concerns over traffic, rather than a religious issue–this despite the speakers who were talking about Islam.</p>
<p>Also connected here is a Tea Party favorite for Congress, Lou Ann Zelenik, who famously asked, “Is it a church or a training camp?”</p>
<p>The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro was tucked away in the industrial sector of town and is very small for its 250 families. Thus, it has needed to expand for quite some time. The area it purchased is outside the city limits–unlike the massive World Outreach facility, which regularly shuts down one of our main roads, New Salem Highway–and was already zoned for a church. This would be the first mosque in Murfreesboro where there are almost 200 churches.</p>
<p>After this commission meeting, it came out in the local paper that this group would be leading a march down Main Street. Several members of the Murfreesboro branch of Solidarity got together and created a Facebook page (Middle Tennesseans For Religious Freedom) and invited people via phone, door knocking, social networking sites, etc., to a public meeting.</p>
<p>Today the bigotry, xenophobia, racism and Islamaphobia continue, but we have seen few counter-protests organized as effectively as what we saw nearly three years ago in Tennessee. The media was vastly deficient in reporting on this grassroots activity. Perhaps many throughout the country think that their voices don’t matter, or imagine that the community could not be mobilized in support of the general Muslim community and their right to assemble and practice their religion without harassment. The grassroots victory at Murfreesboro proves otherwise. On the eve of the anniversary of this victory, we should ask ourselves what we will do and how we can mobilize the next time the ugly face of hatred raises its head.</p> | Approaching the Anniversary of the Community VICTORY Against Islamophobia in Tennessee… | true | http://politicalblindspot.com/approaching-the-anniversary-of-the-community-victory-against-islamophobia-in-tennessee/ | 2013-06-13 | 4left
| Approaching the Anniversary of the Community VICTORY Against Islamophobia in Tennessee…
<p><a href="http://politicalblindspot.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/MurfreesboroProtest1-against-right.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>We are approaching the third anniversary of a community counter-protest to a march against the planned construction of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The march followed on the heels of one in a series of anti-Muslim bigotry around the country.</p>
<p>In Murfreesboro, a grassroots coalition called Middle Tennesseans for Religious Freedom (MTRF) quickly formed in response and organized a 500 person-strong counter-protest, outnumbering the bigots and asserting the right of Muslims in Murfreesboro to practice their religion free of demonization, harassment and threats.</p>
<p>Jase Short, a member of Middle Tennesseans for Religious Freedom and the socialist group Solidarity, talked to&#160;Safia Albaiti&#160;about the organizing against the right-wing bigots and for religious freedom.</p>
<p>The Rutherford County Regional Planning Commission approved the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro’s request to build a 52,000-square-foot facility. After a decade of construction, there will be a 10,000-square-foot mosque, a gym, classrooms and a place for the Imam to live.</p>
<p>At the next meeting of the Commission, several hundred members of the World Outreach Church – a mega-church here that is in the midst of constructing its fourth sanctuary, this one alone at 125,000 square feet – filled up City Hall and monopolized all the time allotted for citizens to speak to the commission.</p>
<p>Though World Outreach denies any relationship with the group that came to City Hall, the lead pastor and quite a few associate pastors were on site to speak out against Islam. Officially led by Kevin Fisher, the group proclaimed that their protests were about the size of the facility and concerns over traffic, rather than a religious issue–this despite the speakers who were talking about Islam.</p>
<p>Also connected here is a Tea Party favorite for Congress, Lou Ann Zelenik, who famously asked, “Is it a church or a training camp?”</p>
<p>The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro was tucked away in the industrial sector of town and is very small for its 250 families. Thus, it has needed to expand for quite some time. The area it purchased is outside the city limits–unlike the massive World Outreach facility, which regularly shuts down one of our main roads, New Salem Highway–and was already zoned for a church. This would be the first mosque in Murfreesboro where there are almost 200 churches.</p>
<p>After this commission meeting, it came out in the local paper that this group would be leading a march down Main Street. Several members of the Murfreesboro branch of Solidarity got together and created a Facebook page (Middle Tennesseans For Religious Freedom) and invited people via phone, door knocking, social networking sites, etc., to a public meeting.</p>
<p>Today the bigotry, xenophobia, racism and Islamaphobia continue, but we have seen few counter-protests organized as effectively as what we saw nearly three years ago in Tennessee. The media was vastly deficient in reporting on this grassroots activity. Perhaps many throughout the country think that their voices don’t matter, or imagine that the community could not be mobilized in support of the general Muslim community and their right to assemble and practice their religion without harassment. The grassroots victory at Murfreesboro proves otherwise. On the eve of the anniversary of this victory, we should ask ourselves what we will do and how we can mobilize the next time the ugly face of hatred raises its head.</p> | 3,019 |
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday launching a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression, building upon his unsubstantiated claims that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.</p>
<p>The White House said the president’s “Advisory Commission on Election Integrity” would examine allegations of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration in states and across the nation. Vice President Mike Pence will chair the panel and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will be vice chair of the commission, which will report back to Trump by 2018.</p>
<p>Trump has alleged, without evidence, that 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally in his 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. He has vowed since the start of his administration to investigate voter fraud, a process that has been delayed for months.</p>
<p>Democrats and voting rights groups called the panel a sham, arguing there are few, if any, credible allegations of significant voter fraud. They warned that the panel would be used to lay the groundwork for stricter voting requirements that could make it more difficult for poor and minority voters to access the ballot box.</p>
<p>“The sole purpose of this commission is to propagate a myth and to give encouragement to Republican governors and state legislators to increase voter suppression,” said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who challenged Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.</p>
<p><a href="https://bit.ly/RuralAK" type="external">“An Act of Courage: The Fight to Vote in Gould”</a></p>
<p>Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said it was a “clear front for constricting the access to vote to poor Americans, older Americans, and — above all — African-Americans and Latinos.”</p>
<p>White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the commission would be bipartisan and composed of about a dozen members, including current and former state election officials and experts.</p>
<p>“The president is committed to the thorough review of registration and voting issues in federal elections and that’s exactly what this commission is tasked with doing,” Sanders said.</p>
<p>The panel will aim to ensure confidence in the integrity of federal elections while looking at vulnerabilities in the system and the possibility of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration and voting, officials said.</p>
<p>The commission will include two Republicans, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, and two Democrats, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner and Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap.</p>
<p>Christy McCormick, a former Justice Department attorney and a member of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, will also be on the panel, and others will be named soon.</p>
<p>Trump repeatedly alleged that the election system was “rigged” during his campaign and later argued that massive, widespread fraud kept him from winning the popular vote. Trump won the presidency with an Electoral College victory even though Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes.</p>
<p>Voting experts and many lawmakers, including House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, have said they haven’t seen anything to suggest that millions of people voted illegally. The Utah Republican said his committee won’t be investigating voter fraud.</p>
<p>But in a lunch meeting with senators in February, Trump said he and former Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte would have won in New Hampshire if not for voters bused in from out of state. New Hampshire officials have said there was no evidence of major voter fraud in the state.</p>
<p>Michael Waldman, president of the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, said the commission was formed to “find proof of the president’s absurd claim” about millions of people voting illegally. He noted that it came in the aftermath of Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday.</p>
<p>“He fired the person investigating a real threat to election integrity, and set up a probe of an imaginary threat,” Waldman said.</p>
<p>Asian Americans Advancing Justice, which is made up of five civil rights organizations, voiced concerns about this executive order. The organizations also called on the Trump administration to fully restore the Voting Rights Act to truly serve U.S. citizens.</p>
<p>“The desire to ‘study vulnerabilities’ is pretext for finding ways to intimidate and suppress voting in communities of color, particularly among Asian American, African American and Latino voters,” the organizations said in a statement.</p>
<p>“Asian American voters have often been discriminated against for being seen as ‘perpetual foreigners’ and have additional hurdles to reaching the ballot box, such as being asked for additional proof of citizenship or being denied language assistance.”</p>
<p>Trump had previously identified Pence as the person to oversee the commission. Kobach advised Trump’s transition team and has been a leading GOP proponent of tighter voting regulations.</p>
<p>The secretary of state championed Kansas’ proof-of-citizenship requirement as an anti-fraud measure that keeps noncitizens from voting, including immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.</p>
<p>Critics contend it suppresses voter turnout, particularly among young and minority voters, and that there have been few cases of fraud.</p>
<p>After the announcement, the American Civil Liberties Union said it had filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information on what the Trump administration was using as the basis for its voter fraud claims.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>Ken Thomas of The Associated Press wrote this report. Equal Voice News contributed to it.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Contact author</a></p>
<p>&#160;&#160; <a href="" type="internal">African Americans</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Asian Americans Advancing Justice</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Brennan Center for Justice</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Latinos</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Michael Waldman</a>, <a href="" type="internal">President Donald Trump</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Restoring and Protecting Voting Rights</a>, <a href="" type="internal">voter suppression</a>, <a href="" type="internal">voting</a></p> | Critics: Will Voter Fraud Commission End Up Restricting Access for Poor? | true | http://equalvoiceforfamilies.org/critics-will-voter-fraud-commission-end-up-restricting-access-for-poor/ | 4left
| Critics: Will Voter Fraud Commission End Up Restricting Access for Poor?
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday launching a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression, building upon his unsubstantiated claims that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.</p>
<p>The White House said the president’s “Advisory Commission on Election Integrity” would examine allegations of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration in states and across the nation. Vice President Mike Pence will chair the panel and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will be vice chair of the commission, which will report back to Trump by 2018.</p>
<p>Trump has alleged, without evidence, that 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally in his 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. He has vowed since the start of his administration to investigate voter fraud, a process that has been delayed for months.</p>
<p>Democrats and voting rights groups called the panel a sham, arguing there are few, if any, credible allegations of significant voter fraud. They warned that the panel would be used to lay the groundwork for stricter voting requirements that could make it more difficult for poor and minority voters to access the ballot box.</p>
<p>“The sole purpose of this commission is to propagate a myth and to give encouragement to Republican governors and state legislators to increase voter suppression,” said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who challenged Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.</p>
<p><a href="https://bit.ly/RuralAK" type="external">“An Act of Courage: The Fight to Vote in Gould”</a></p>
<p>Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said it was a “clear front for constricting the access to vote to poor Americans, older Americans, and — above all — African-Americans and Latinos.”</p>
<p>White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the commission would be bipartisan and composed of about a dozen members, including current and former state election officials and experts.</p>
<p>“The president is committed to the thorough review of registration and voting issues in federal elections and that’s exactly what this commission is tasked with doing,” Sanders said.</p>
<p>The panel will aim to ensure confidence in the integrity of federal elections while looking at vulnerabilities in the system and the possibility of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration and voting, officials said.</p>
<p>The commission will include two Republicans, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, and two Democrats, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner and Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap.</p>
<p>Christy McCormick, a former Justice Department attorney and a member of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, will also be on the panel, and others will be named soon.</p>
<p>Trump repeatedly alleged that the election system was “rigged” during his campaign and later argued that massive, widespread fraud kept him from winning the popular vote. Trump won the presidency with an Electoral College victory even though Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes.</p>
<p>Voting experts and many lawmakers, including House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, have said they haven’t seen anything to suggest that millions of people voted illegally. The Utah Republican said his committee won’t be investigating voter fraud.</p>
<p>But in a lunch meeting with senators in February, Trump said he and former Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte would have won in New Hampshire if not for voters bused in from out of state. New Hampshire officials have said there was no evidence of major voter fraud in the state.</p>
<p>Michael Waldman, president of the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, said the commission was formed to “find proof of the president’s absurd claim” about millions of people voting illegally. He noted that it came in the aftermath of Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday.</p>
<p>“He fired the person investigating a real threat to election integrity, and set up a probe of an imaginary threat,” Waldman said.</p>
<p>Asian Americans Advancing Justice, which is made up of five civil rights organizations, voiced concerns about this executive order. The organizations also called on the Trump administration to fully restore the Voting Rights Act to truly serve U.S. citizens.</p>
<p>“The desire to ‘study vulnerabilities’ is pretext for finding ways to intimidate and suppress voting in communities of color, particularly among Asian American, African American and Latino voters,” the organizations said in a statement.</p>
<p>“Asian American voters have often been discriminated against for being seen as ‘perpetual foreigners’ and have additional hurdles to reaching the ballot box, such as being asked for additional proof of citizenship or being denied language assistance.”</p>
<p>Trump had previously identified Pence as the person to oversee the commission. Kobach advised Trump’s transition team and has been a leading GOP proponent of tighter voting regulations.</p>
<p>The secretary of state championed Kansas’ proof-of-citizenship requirement as an anti-fraud measure that keeps noncitizens from voting, including immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.</p>
<p>Critics contend it suppresses voter turnout, particularly among young and minority voters, and that there have been few cases of fraud.</p>
<p>After the announcement, the American Civil Liberties Union said it had filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information on what the Trump administration was using as the basis for its voter fraud claims.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>Ken Thomas of The Associated Press wrote this report. Equal Voice News contributed to it.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Contact author</a></p>
<p>&#160;&#160; <a href="" type="internal">African Americans</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Asian Americans Advancing Justice</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Brennan Center for Justice</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Latinos</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Michael Waldman</a>, <a href="" type="internal">President Donald Trump</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Restoring and Protecting Voting Rights</a>, <a href="" type="internal">voter suppression</a>, <a href="" type="internal">voting</a></p> | 3,020 |
|
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>One freshman assemblyman in&#160;California&#160;who has emerged in recent months as a leading immigration hawk is forcing the state’s legislators to confront a chronic problem.</p>
<p>Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of California’s 59th district, whom I’ve <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;ved=0CBkQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caivn.org%2Farticle%2F2011%2F01%2F04%2Fcalifornia-immigration-reform-group-banks-grassroots-support-legislative-victory&amp;ei=iL6KTfvANoagsQOQwKSsCg&amp;usg=AFQjCNHvLBqyAU4fxqngT0kEXw6NX4Oo8g&amp;sig2=JaSp9UdYQ5NaPvn8x9YTHg" type="external">mentioned</a> before, seems to be a rare voice in the Tea Party movement. That’s because, from its inception, the Tea Party has been primarily focused on the platforms of limited government and restrained spending. Being in California and representing a rather conservative demographic whose concerns aren’t limited to these traditional stances, however, Donnelly has come forward to tackle California’s biggest challenge besides its $26 billion budget deficit.</p>
<p>Since he’s taken office,&#160;Donnelly has <a href="http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/mar/22/assembly-member-introduces-california-version-ariz/" type="external">proposed</a>&#160;an Arizona-style law making it a misdemeanor to be in the state without hard copy proof. With AB 26, citizens could sue cities that operate under a sanctuary status and would also require all employers to check the work eligibility of applicants with the E-Verify federal program. In addition, the bill would make it illegal to smuggle children from Mexico. In more recent activity up in Sacramento, he’s come out against the California Dream Act.</p>
<p>While some may want to label Donnelly’s efforts as being racially motivated given his former involvement in the Minutemen, the assemblyman has <a href="http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_17585740" type="external">made it clear</a>&#160;in the past&#160;that there is a difference between legal immigration and illegal immigration. Furthermore, he’s on record as recognizing the important role that legal minorities like Latinos can play in elections, tactfully pointing out that not all Latinos are in favor of illegal immigration.&#160; He also stated that the” fundamental human yearning for freedom” is not confined to one color.</p>
<p>Questioning the illegal immigration status quo in California is not limited to Donnelly’s leadership in Sacramento, but also has spread&#160;to local municipalities in San Bernardino County as early as last year and <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/14/local/la-me-0212-e-verify-20110214" type="external">more concretely</a> this year. Latino and Asian communities, according to the latest Census data, have grown by 50% and 59% in San Bernardino County respectively.</p>
<p>According to the AP,&#160;the city of Escondido is&#160; <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_17683368?nclick_check=1" type="external">joining</a> this string of California cities looking to guard jobs from being taken by illegal immigrants through more stringent employment laws.&#160; It seems as if the tide is turning to some extent as more cities and states are realizing the negative fiscal effect that illegal immigration is having on their local communities.&#160; As witnessed in the Middle East in the past few months, revolutions are contagious. Here in the homeland, there’s a revolution of its own that’s seemingly gaining momentum with states confronting illegal immigration.&#160;</p>
<p>With the nation’s highest illegal immigrant population and a record-breaking deficit, it’s about time that California legislators were forced to answer some tough questions on the subject. Mindful of the political reality, legislation introduced by Donnelly isn’t going very far in a Democratic-controlled state, but proposing these solutions is necessary to spark a much-needed conversation on this crucial topic.</p> | Assemblyman Tim Donnelly soaring as California immigration hawk | false | https://ivn.us/2011/03/25/assemblyman-tim-donnelly-soaring-california-immigration-hawk/ | 2011-03-25 | 2least
| Assemblyman Tim Donnelly soaring as California immigration hawk
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>One freshman assemblyman in&#160;California&#160;who has emerged in recent months as a leading immigration hawk is forcing the state’s legislators to confront a chronic problem.</p>
<p>Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of California’s 59th district, whom I’ve <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;ved=0CBkQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.caivn.org%2Farticle%2F2011%2F01%2F04%2Fcalifornia-immigration-reform-group-banks-grassroots-support-legislative-victory&amp;ei=iL6KTfvANoagsQOQwKSsCg&amp;usg=AFQjCNHvLBqyAU4fxqngT0kEXw6NX4Oo8g&amp;sig2=JaSp9UdYQ5NaPvn8x9YTHg" type="external">mentioned</a> before, seems to be a rare voice in the Tea Party movement. That’s because, from its inception, the Tea Party has been primarily focused on the platforms of limited government and restrained spending. Being in California and representing a rather conservative demographic whose concerns aren’t limited to these traditional stances, however, Donnelly has come forward to tackle California’s biggest challenge besides its $26 billion budget deficit.</p>
<p>Since he’s taken office,&#160;Donnelly has <a href="http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/mar/22/assembly-member-introduces-california-version-ariz/" type="external">proposed</a>&#160;an Arizona-style law making it a misdemeanor to be in the state without hard copy proof. With AB 26, citizens could sue cities that operate under a sanctuary status and would also require all employers to check the work eligibility of applicants with the E-Verify federal program. In addition, the bill would make it illegal to smuggle children from Mexico. In more recent activity up in Sacramento, he’s come out against the California Dream Act.</p>
<p>While some may want to label Donnelly’s efforts as being racially motivated given his former involvement in the Minutemen, the assemblyman has <a href="http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_17585740" type="external">made it clear</a>&#160;in the past&#160;that there is a difference between legal immigration and illegal immigration. Furthermore, he’s on record as recognizing the important role that legal minorities like Latinos can play in elections, tactfully pointing out that not all Latinos are in favor of illegal immigration.&#160; He also stated that the” fundamental human yearning for freedom” is not confined to one color.</p>
<p>Questioning the illegal immigration status quo in California is not limited to Donnelly’s leadership in Sacramento, but also has spread&#160;to local municipalities in San Bernardino County as early as last year and <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/14/local/la-me-0212-e-verify-20110214" type="external">more concretely</a> this year. Latino and Asian communities, according to the latest Census data, have grown by 50% and 59% in San Bernardino County respectively.</p>
<p>According to the AP,&#160;the city of Escondido is&#160; <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_17683368?nclick_check=1" type="external">joining</a> this string of California cities looking to guard jobs from being taken by illegal immigrants through more stringent employment laws.&#160; It seems as if the tide is turning to some extent as more cities and states are realizing the negative fiscal effect that illegal immigration is having on their local communities.&#160; As witnessed in the Middle East in the past few months, revolutions are contagious. Here in the homeland, there’s a revolution of its own that’s seemingly gaining momentum with states confronting illegal immigration.&#160;</p>
<p>With the nation’s highest illegal immigrant population and a record-breaking deficit, it’s about time that California legislators were forced to answer some tough questions on the subject. Mindful of the political reality, legislation introduced by Donnelly isn’t going very far in a Democratic-controlled state, but proposing these solutions is necessary to spark a much-needed conversation on this crucial topic.</p> | 3,021 |
<p>ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings on Thursday as production ramped up in the key Eagle Ford shale and the oil giant continued to reposition itself to take advantage of the U.S. shale boom.</p>
<p>However, earnings were down 9.6% as it struggled with a lack of production from the spun-off Phillips 66 unit, which contributed to a 4.7% decline in revenues to $14 billion.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The Houston-based oil and natural gas explorer reported net income of $2.1 billion, or $1.65 a share, down from a year-earlier profit of $2.3 billion, or $1.80.</p>
<p>Excluding one-time items related to the sold-off downstream operations, ConocoPhillips said it earned $1.41 a share, topping average analyst estimates of $1.23 in a Thomson Reuters poll.</p>
<p>The oil giant also posted strong adjusted production performance of 1,510 millions of barrels of oil equivalent a day, up from 1,489 MBOED a year ago, thanks in large part to the doubling of production in the Eagle Ford shale, and raised its full-year production guidance.</p>
<p>The company has been undergoing a three-year overhaul that has led to the axing of billions of dollars in assets and operational costs. It is looking to reposition itself so that it can take advantage of the shale boom in the U.S.</p>
<p>"We had a very strong quarter, with our base operations and turnaround activity performing as planned," ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance said in a statement. “Our exploration momentum also continues, with drilling activity ongoing in deepwater, conventional and unconventional plays around the world."</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>ConocoPhillips has four major projects on tracks for startups by year end in the North Sea and Malaysia and said exploration momentum continues with drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Australia’s Browse Basin and unconventional plays in Canada.</p>
<p>The shares are up about 1.5% Thursday afternoon.</p>
<p>ConocoPhillips also said on Thursday that it has reached an agreement to pull out of the Freeport LNG project in Texas, which could help it save as much as $60 million annually in costs over the next 19 years.</p> | ConocoPhillips 2Q Profit Beats as Shale Production Heats Up | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/08/01/conocophillips-2q-profit-beats-as-shale-production-ramps-up.html | 2016-01-25 | 0right
| ConocoPhillips 2Q Profit Beats as Shale Production Heats Up
<p>ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings on Thursday as production ramped up in the key Eagle Ford shale and the oil giant continued to reposition itself to take advantage of the U.S. shale boom.</p>
<p>However, earnings were down 9.6% as it struggled with a lack of production from the spun-off Phillips 66 unit, which contributed to a 4.7% decline in revenues to $14 billion.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The Houston-based oil and natural gas explorer reported net income of $2.1 billion, or $1.65 a share, down from a year-earlier profit of $2.3 billion, or $1.80.</p>
<p>Excluding one-time items related to the sold-off downstream operations, ConocoPhillips said it earned $1.41 a share, topping average analyst estimates of $1.23 in a Thomson Reuters poll.</p>
<p>The oil giant also posted strong adjusted production performance of 1,510 millions of barrels of oil equivalent a day, up from 1,489 MBOED a year ago, thanks in large part to the doubling of production in the Eagle Ford shale, and raised its full-year production guidance.</p>
<p>The company has been undergoing a three-year overhaul that has led to the axing of billions of dollars in assets and operational costs. It is looking to reposition itself so that it can take advantage of the shale boom in the U.S.</p>
<p>"We had a very strong quarter, with our base operations and turnaround activity performing as planned," ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance said in a statement. “Our exploration momentum also continues, with drilling activity ongoing in deepwater, conventional and unconventional plays around the world."</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>ConocoPhillips has four major projects on tracks for startups by year end in the North Sea and Malaysia and said exploration momentum continues with drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Australia’s Browse Basin and unconventional plays in Canada.</p>
<p>The shares are up about 1.5% Thursday afternoon.</p>
<p>ConocoPhillips also said on Thursday that it has reached an agreement to pull out of the Freeport LNG project in Texas, which could help it save as much as $60 million annually in costs over the next 19 years.</p> | 3,022 |
<p>It’s hard to read Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s assessment of the Afghanistan war without hearing one of those horror-movie voices that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, a voice that grows louder and more insistent with every page: “Get out. Get out. Get out.”</p>
<p>According to the confidential report prepared for President Barack Obama — obtained by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post — the situation in Afghanistan is “deteriorating.” The Taliban insurgency is “resilient and growing.” Afghans have a “crisis of confidence” in both their own government and the U.S.-led NATO occupation force. The next 12 months will be “decisive,” and “failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum … risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”</p>
<p>Obama said consistently during the election campaign that Afghanistan, not Iraq, was the right place for the United States to fight al-Qaida and its allies. Now the messy conflict in Afghanistan has become Obama’s war, and the president faces his most consequential decision thus far: whether he still believes his war can be “won” by military means.</p>
<p>“The mission is achievable,” McChrystal writes. The bulk of his report, however, strongly suggests it’s not.</p>
<p />
<p>As if on cue, the leader of the Taliban, Mohammad Omar, issued a taunting statement reminding Obama that for more than a millennium would-be conquerors have tried and failed to subdue the mountain fastness known as the “graveyard of empires” — Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C., the British in the 1800s, the Soviets from 1979 to 1989.</p>
<p>“The invaders should study the history of Afghanistan,” Omar said in a message marking the end of Ramadan, reported the Financial Times. “The more the enemy resorts to increasing forces, the more they will face an unequivocal defeat.”</p>
<p>As galling as it is to accept tutelage from one of Osama bin Laden’s key enablers, this does seem to be what history teaches. Pouring forces into Afghanistan has always proved counterproductive. The presence of large numbers of foreign troops is the one thing that reliably unites Afghans — if only for long enough to drive the foreigners out.</p>
<p>Yet an additional surge in U.S. forces is precisely what McChrystal recommends — he calls it a “jump” in resources, presumably since “surge” is such a Bush-era word, but the effect would be the same. Declining to send more troops — troops that would provide a “bridge capability” until the Afghan army can be further expanded, equipped and trained — would “lead to failure,” the general writes.</p>
<p>Already, there are about 62,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with the number set to rise to 68,000 — more than double the U.S. commitment of a year ago. McChrystal doesn’t specify numbers in his report, but his predecessor asked for an additional 10,000 troops. As a comparison, the Soviet Union’s military presence in Afghanistan peaked at just over 100,000 troops — a number that proved pitifully too small to pacify a country larger than France and with a population now estimated at nearly 30 million.</p>
<p>McChrystal at least tries to outline a clear mission in Afghanistan: strengthening the Afghan state to the point where it can “sufficiently control its territory to support regional stability and prevent its use for international terrorism.”</p>
<p>He proposes a counterinsurgency strategy that could indeed inflict serious damage on the Taliban. In the process, though, McChrystal’s plan seems unlikely to boost confidence in the weak and corrupt Afghan government, especially following the recent elections that saw widespread, credible allegations of fraud. And as unpopular as the Taliban may be, does anyone believe that Afghans are really going to side with foreigners? Do we think that civilian casualties from aerial attacks — which would have to continue, given the size of the country and the ruggedness of its terrain — are helping to win Afghan hearts and minds? Can 1,400 years of history be so blithely ignored?</p>
<p>What Obama needs to do is downsize the mission. Our only goals should be to satisfy ourselves that Afghanistan will not again be a terrorist haven, and to leave as quickly as possible. We need to use not just force but also diplomacy — which means, yes, talking to the Taliban.</p>
<p>Some will say this shows weakness, but the ultimate sign of weakness is failure. If we send in more troops, I fear that’s where we’re headed.</p>
<p>Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.</p>
<p>© 2009, Washington Post Writers Group</p> | It Came From Afghanistan | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/it-came-from-afghanistan/ | 2009-09-22 | 4left
| It Came From Afghanistan
<p>It’s hard to read Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s assessment of the Afghanistan war without hearing one of those horror-movie voices that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, a voice that grows louder and more insistent with every page: “Get out. Get out. Get out.”</p>
<p>According to the confidential report prepared for President Barack Obama — obtained by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post — the situation in Afghanistan is “deteriorating.” The Taliban insurgency is “resilient and growing.” Afghans have a “crisis of confidence” in both their own government and the U.S.-led NATO occupation force. The next 12 months will be “decisive,” and “failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum … risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”</p>
<p>Obama said consistently during the election campaign that Afghanistan, not Iraq, was the right place for the United States to fight al-Qaida and its allies. Now the messy conflict in Afghanistan has become Obama’s war, and the president faces his most consequential decision thus far: whether he still believes his war can be “won” by military means.</p>
<p>“The mission is achievable,” McChrystal writes. The bulk of his report, however, strongly suggests it’s not.</p>
<p />
<p>As if on cue, the leader of the Taliban, Mohammad Omar, issued a taunting statement reminding Obama that for more than a millennium would-be conquerors have tried and failed to subdue the mountain fastness known as the “graveyard of empires” — Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C., the British in the 1800s, the Soviets from 1979 to 1989.</p>
<p>“The invaders should study the history of Afghanistan,” Omar said in a message marking the end of Ramadan, reported the Financial Times. “The more the enemy resorts to increasing forces, the more they will face an unequivocal defeat.”</p>
<p>As galling as it is to accept tutelage from one of Osama bin Laden’s key enablers, this does seem to be what history teaches. Pouring forces into Afghanistan has always proved counterproductive. The presence of large numbers of foreign troops is the one thing that reliably unites Afghans — if only for long enough to drive the foreigners out.</p>
<p>Yet an additional surge in U.S. forces is precisely what McChrystal recommends — he calls it a “jump” in resources, presumably since “surge” is such a Bush-era word, but the effect would be the same. Declining to send more troops — troops that would provide a “bridge capability” until the Afghan army can be further expanded, equipped and trained — would “lead to failure,” the general writes.</p>
<p>Already, there are about 62,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with the number set to rise to 68,000 — more than double the U.S. commitment of a year ago. McChrystal doesn’t specify numbers in his report, but his predecessor asked for an additional 10,000 troops. As a comparison, the Soviet Union’s military presence in Afghanistan peaked at just over 100,000 troops — a number that proved pitifully too small to pacify a country larger than France and with a population now estimated at nearly 30 million.</p>
<p>McChrystal at least tries to outline a clear mission in Afghanistan: strengthening the Afghan state to the point where it can “sufficiently control its territory to support regional stability and prevent its use for international terrorism.”</p>
<p>He proposes a counterinsurgency strategy that could indeed inflict serious damage on the Taliban. In the process, though, McChrystal’s plan seems unlikely to boost confidence in the weak and corrupt Afghan government, especially following the recent elections that saw widespread, credible allegations of fraud. And as unpopular as the Taliban may be, does anyone believe that Afghans are really going to side with foreigners? Do we think that civilian casualties from aerial attacks — which would have to continue, given the size of the country and the ruggedness of its terrain — are helping to win Afghan hearts and minds? Can 1,400 years of history be so blithely ignored?</p>
<p>What Obama needs to do is downsize the mission. Our only goals should be to satisfy ourselves that Afghanistan will not again be a terrorist haven, and to leave as quickly as possible. We need to use not just force but also diplomacy — which means, yes, talking to the Taliban.</p>
<p>Some will say this shows weakness, but the ultimate sign of weakness is failure. If we send in more troops, I fear that’s where we’re headed.</p>
<p>Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.</p>
<p>© 2009, Washington Post Writers Group</p> | 3,023 |
<p>The election season in the United States has seen the presidential candidates winding their way around a collapsing economy and an endless occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have just published a new book entitled <a href="" type="internal">The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.</a> The military conflict in Iraq alone will cost the U.S. $12 billion a month, money that could have been spent to shore up the dollar and protect those people whose homes are being foreclosed.</p>
<p>The U.S. Congress, if it could not stop the fiscal bleeding into the military, at least blocked the George W. Bush administration’s attempt to make permanent Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. The Republican candidate, John McCain, backs the Bush tax cuts, as he does the occupation.</p>
<p>The Democrats are loath to support the tax cuts but cannot find their way around stopping the occupation. Their economic message is equal parts populism and demagogy. On trade, the Democrats rightly criticize the free trade agreements and out-of-control globalization, but their emphasis is not so much on the power given over to corporations as to the countries that are now home to manufacturing (China, Mexico) or business process outsourcing (India). China and India are the scapegoats for the loss of jobs in the heartland of the U.S. (in States such as Ohio).</p>
<p>On the Republican side there is less anxiety about outsourcing and more about immigration. The debate here is toxic. Tom Tancredo, who led the charge in the early months of the presidential primary, framed the discussion around how best to keep “illegal immigrants” out of the U.S. and to deport those who are already here. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the construction firms that won contracts to rebuild the city hired many temporary migrants and some undocumented workers.</p>
<p>The city’s Mayor, Ray Nagin, took a Tancredo turn when he asked, “How do I make sure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers?” Much the same kind of anti-immigrant sentiment came from Louisiana’s Senator Mary Landrieu, who said, “While my State experiences unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression, it is unconscionable that illegal workers would be brought into Louisiana aggravating our employment crisis and depressing earnings for our workers.”</p>
<p>Both Nagin and Mary Landrieu are Democrats, but their animus to illegal workers shows how pervasive the Republican discussion on immigration has become. The system that benefits from reconstruction on the cheap is never part of the discussion.</p>
<p>On outsourcing and on immigration, the two parties tend to blame either foreign countries or undocumented workers. The corporations that move their capital overseas or that chose to bring in undocumented workers get off with minimal censure. Too much discussion about corporate responsibility for this mess might mean fewer dollars into the campaign coffers of the two major parties.</p>
<p>A worker engaged in demolition in New Orleans, Louisiana. After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the construction firms that won contracts to rebuild the city hired temporary migrants and some undocumented workers instead of the displaced African-Americans.</p>
<p>Breaking news from Louisiana confounds this arid debate on immigration and outsourcing. On March 6, a hundred workers from a Pascagoula shipyard walked off the job. These skilled workers came to the U.S. from India (mainly Kerala) to work for Signal International, an oil services firm that overhauls and repairs oil rigs. Signal did not directly seek out these workers. Rather, an Indian jobber, Dewan Consultants, advertised for these jobs, recruited and assembled the workers who then came to the U.S.</p>
<p>The workers’ grievances are against Signal and Dewan. They claim that Signal houses them poorly and treats them as illegal laborers. Dewan promised them that they would be on the road to the green card (or permanent residency); this has not come to pass. To get here, the workers paid $20,000, and if they leave their jobs with Signal, they would have to return to India. In other words, their right to express their opinions is circumscribed by a system that virtually indentures them to the company.</p>
<p>A year ago, Signal fired Sabulal Vijayan when he voiced his complaints. “I slit my wrists to kill myself. There was no option for me.” Vijayan is now working with the U.S. authorities and with the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice (NOWCRJ) on the case. Signal denies any culpability, and so does Dewan Consultants. This Mumbai-based firm told Hindustan Times: “If they found the living conditions unfit, they should have come back then, instead of making a hue and cry now.” Dewan is off the job. It has been replaced by S. Mansur &amp; Company, which The Times of India suggests might be a front for Dewan itself. Now the U.S. and Indian governments are looking into the case.</p>
<p>Signal’s story is not novel to New Orleans and Louisiana. In recent years, similar stories have been brought to the fore by the NOWCRJ, which itself was formed in 2005 by local activists who were alarmed by the miserable state of labor relations in the State around the post-Hurricane Katrina reconstruction.</p>
<p>Shortly after the hurricane, the federal government suspended the laws that forced employers in disaster-hit areas to pay workers the prevailing wage rates. In addition, the contracts for the reconstruction went to firms that had no intention of hiring the displaced population of the city. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, all signs indicated that the property owners and the political class wanted to take advantage of the moment to cleanse the city of its African-American poor and to make the city a park for tourism and commerce. Stuck in Houston or in federal disaster relief trailers, working-class African-Americans were not able to return to the city. The few choices for these displaced workers got even fewer when the contractors refused to hire them.</p>
<p>In a valuable study (And Injustice for All: Workers’ Lives in the Reconstruction of New Orleans) published in 2006, the NOWCRJ assembled stories of African-American workers who had been shut out from reconstruction. Marlon Tibbs, a construction worker, told the NOWCRJ: “I was trying to find work. They looked over the people who were born and raised here.” Drawing from such interviews, the NOWCRJ concluded, “Blacks have been and are being excluded from employment in redevelopment jobs, particularly in the construction industry.”</p>
<p>Instead of hiring local residents and helping them get back on their feet, the construction firms and local industries turned to migrant workers, mainly from Mexico and Latin America, and also from Asia.</p>
<p>There are an estimated hundred thousand such workers in the Gulf region, working in the construction trades and in places such as various ports along the Gulf coast. The firms that hired these immigrants, many without legal documents, used their vulnerable status to pay them less-than-minimum wages and treat them appallingly.</p>
<p>One study found that “a quarter of the workers rebuilding the city were immigrants lacking papers, almost all of them Hispanic, making far less money than legal workers.”</p>
<p>Workers at a Halliburton job site said that their subcontractors would threaten them with deportation as a way to make them live in constant fear. Journalist Naomi Klein recounts, “Most workers fled to avoid arrest; after all, they could end up in one of the new immigration prisons that Halliburton/KBR had been contracted to build for the federal government.”</p>
<p>The workers at Signal were hired in India or in the Persian Gulf, many of them veterans of the guest worker networks. Just as they have begun to protest the bad work conditions in Dubai, skilled Indian workers are now standing up for their rights in the U.S. too. The striking workers carried signs that read “Dignity” and “I Am a Man”, phrases used by Black workers during the strike wave of the late 1960s.</p>
<p>The displaced African-American workers support these Indian workers, both groups having been carefully organised by the NOWCRJ into the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity. The linkage between the displaced black workers and the exploited Indian workers is one step away from the divides produced by the political class: from Nagin and Tancredo one gets the view that one set of workers creates problems for another. This view is rejected by the vibrant alliance knit together by the NOWCRJ.</p>
<p>The NOWCRJ and the 500 workers have sued Signal. The NOWCRJ’s Saket Soni said: “The U.S. State Department calls it a ‘repulsive crime’ when recruiters and employers in other parts of the world bind guest workers with crushing debts and threats of deportation. This is precisely what is happening on the Gulf coast.” Vijayan put it plainly: “We are saying that this is modern-day slavery.”</p>
<p>Late last year, Louisiana’s voters put an Indian-American, Bobby Jindal, into the Governor’s mansion. The workers felt that he might be sympathetic to them. The Indian community in the State felt that he would make some special statement when an Indian graduate student was killed in Louisiana State University in December 2007.</p>
<p>Jindal remains silent. So do the main political candidates for President, trapped by a discussion that does not seem to listen to the black displaced workers and the striking Indian workers, both of whom point their hard hats at the corporations and not at each other.</p>
<p>VIJAY PRASHAD is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His new book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565847857/counterpunchmaga" type="external">The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World,</a> New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>This essay originally ran on India’s Frontline.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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<p>&#160;</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast | true | https://counterpunch.org/2008/03/24/a-glimmer-of-hope-from-the-gulf-coast/ | 2008-03-24 | 4left
| A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast
<p>The election season in the United States has seen the presidential candidates winding their way around a collapsing economy and an endless occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have just published a new book entitled <a href="" type="internal">The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.</a> The military conflict in Iraq alone will cost the U.S. $12 billion a month, money that could have been spent to shore up the dollar and protect those people whose homes are being foreclosed.</p>
<p>The U.S. Congress, if it could not stop the fiscal bleeding into the military, at least blocked the George W. Bush administration’s attempt to make permanent Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. The Republican candidate, John McCain, backs the Bush tax cuts, as he does the occupation.</p>
<p>The Democrats are loath to support the tax cuts but cannot find their way around stopping the occupation. Their economic message is equal parts populism and demagogy. On trade, the Democrats rightly criticize the free trade agreements and out-of-control globalization, but their emphasis is not so much on the power given over to corporations as to the countries that are now home to manufacturing (China, Mexico) or business process outsourcing (India). China and India are the scapegoats for the loss of jobs in the heartland of the U.S. (in States such as Ohio).</p>
<p>On the Republican side there is less anxiety about outsourcing and more about immigration. The debate here is toxic. Tom Tancredo, who led the charge in the early months of the presidential primary, framed the discussion around how best to keep “illegal immigrants” out of the U.S. and to deport those who are already here. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the construction firms that won contracts to rebuild the city hired many temporary migrants and some undocumented workers.</p>
<p>The city’s Mayor, Ray Nagin, took a Tancredo turn when he asked, “How do I make sure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers?” Much the same kind of anti-immigrant sentiment came from Louisiana’s Senator Mary Landrieu, who said, “While my State experiences unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression, it is unconscionable that illegal workers would be brought into Louisiana aggravating our employment crisis and depressing earnings for our workers.”</p>
<p>Both Nagin and Mary Landrieu are Democrats, but their animus to illegal workers shows how pervasive the Republican discussion on immigration has become. The system that benefits from reconstruction on the cheap is never part of the discussion.</p>
<p>On outsourcing and on immigration, the two parties tend to blame either foreign countries or undocumented workers. The corporations that move their capital overseas or that chose to bring in undocumented workers get off with minimal censure. Too much discussion about corporate responsibility for this mess might mean fewer dollars into the campaign coffers of the two major parties.</p>
<p>A worker engaged in demolition in New Orleans, Louisiana. After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the construction firms that won contracts to rebuild the city hired temporary migrants and some undocumented workers instead of the displaced African-Americans.</p>
<p>Breaking news from Louisiana confounds this arid debate on immigration and outsourcing. On March 6, a hundred workers from a Pascagoula shipyard walked off the job. These skilled workers came to the U.S. from India (mainly Kerala) to work for Signal International, an oil services firm that overhauls and repairs oil rigs. Signal did not directly seek out these workers. Rather, an Indian jobber, Dewan Consultants, advertised for these jobs, recruited and assembled the workers who then came to the U.S.</p>
<p>The workers’ grievances are against Signal and Dewan. They claim that Signal houses them poorly and treats them as illegal laborers. Dewan promised them that they would be on the road to the green card (or permanent residency); this has not come to pass. To get here, the workers paid $20,000, and if they leave their jobs with Signal, they would have to return to India. In other words, their right to express their opinions is circumscribed by a system that virtually indentures them to the company.</p>
<p>A year ago, Signal fired Sabulal Vijayan when he voiced his complaints. “I slit my wrists to kill myself. There was no option for me.” Vijayan is now working with the U.S. authorities and with the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice (NOWCRJ) on the case. Signal denies any culpability, and so does Dewan Consultants. This Mumbai-based firm told Hindustan Times: “If they found the living conditions unfit, they should have come back then, instead of making a hue and cry now.” Dewan is off the job. It has been replaced by S. Mansur &amp; Company, which The Times of India suggests might be a front for Dewan itself. Now the U.S. and Indian governments are looking into the case.</p>
<p>Signal’s story is not novel to New Orleans and Louisiana. In recent years, similar stories have been brought to the fore by the NOWCRJ, which itself was formed in 2005 by local activists who were alarmed by the miserable state of labor relations in the State around the post-Hurricane Katrina reconstruction.</p>
<p>Shortly after the hurricane, the federal government suspended the laws that forced employers in disaster-hit areas to pay workers the prevailing wage rates. In addition, the contracts for the reconstruction went to firms that had no intention of hiring the displaced population of the city. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, all signs indicated that the property owners and the political class wanted to take advantage of the moment to cleanse the city of its African-American poor and to make the city a park for tourism and commerce. Stuck in Houston or in federal disaster relief trailers, working-class African-Americans were not able to return to the city. The few choices for these displaced workers got even fewer when the contractors refused to hire them.</p>
<p>In a valuable study (And Injustice for All: Workers’ Lives in the Reconstruction of New Orleans) published in 2006, the NOWCRJ assembled stories of African-American workers who had been shut out from reconstruction. Marlon Tibbs, a construction worker, told the NOWCRJ: “I was trying to find work. They looked over the people who were born and raised here.” Drawing from such interviews, the NOWCRJ concluded, “Blacks have been and are being excluded from employment in redevelopment jobs, particularly in the construction industry.”</p>
<p>Instead of hiring local residents and helping them get back on their feet, the construction firms and local industries turned to migrant workers, mainly from Mexico and Latin America, and also from Asia.</p>
<p>There are an estimated hundred thousand such workers in the Gulf region, working in the construction trades and in places such as various ports along the Gulf coast. The firms that hired these immigrants, many without legal documents, used their vulnerable status to pay them less-than-minimum wages and treat them appallingly.</p>
<p>One study found that “a quarter of the workers rebuilding the city were immigrants lacking papers, almost all of them Hispanic, making far less money than legal workers.”</p>
<p>Workers at a Halliburton job site said that their subcontractors would threaten them with deportation as a way to make them live in constant fear. Journalist Naomi Klein recounts, “Most workers fled to avoid arrest; after all, they could end up in one of the new immigration prisons that Halliburton/KBR had been contracted to build for the federal government.”</p>
<p>The workers at Signal were hired in India or in the Persian Gulf, many of them veterans of the guest worker networks. Just as they have begun to protest the bad work conditions in Dubai, skilled Indian workers are now standing up for their rights in the U.S. too. The striking workers carried signs that read “Dignity” and “I Am a Man”, phrases used by Black workers during the strike wave of the late 1960s.</p>
<p>The displaced African-American workers support these Indian workers, both groups having been carefully organised by the NOWCRJ into the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity. The linkage between the displaced black workers and the exploited Indian workers is one step away from the divides produced by the political class: from Nagin and Tancredo one gets the view that one set of workers creates problems for another. This view is rejected by the vibrant alliance knit together by the NOWCRJ.</p>
<p>The NOWCRJ and the 500 workers have sued Signal. The NOWCRJ’s Saket Soni said: “The U.S. State Department calls it a ‘repulsive crime’ when recruiters and employers in other parts of the world bind guest workers with crushing debts and threats of deportation. This is precisely what is happening on the Gulf coast.” Vijayan put it plainly: “We are saying that this is modern-day slavery.”</p>
<p>Late last year, Louisiana’s voters put an Indian-American, Bobby Jindal, into the Governor’s mansion. The workers felt that he might be sympathetic to them. The Indian community in the State felt that he would make some special statement when an Indian graduate student was killed in Louisiana State University in December 2007.</p>
<p>Jindal remains silent. So do the main political candidates for President, trapped by a discussion that does not seem to listen to the black displaced workers and the striking Indian workers, both of whom point their hard hats at the corporations and not at each other.</p>
<p>VIJAY PRASHAD is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His new book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565847857/counterpunchmaga" type="external">The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World,</a> New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>This essay originally ran on India’s Frontline.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 3,024 |
<p />
<p>Oil futures eased on Friday, as traders adopted a wait-and-see stance ahead of next week's crucial OPEC meeting, where the cartel is expected to strike a deal to cut output.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell 0.98% to $48.52 a barrel on London's ICE Futures exchange. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas Intermediate futures were trading down 0.79% at $47.58 a barrel.</p>
<p>Trading has been subdued in recent sessions because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. this week. In addition, uncertainty about the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries reaching an agreement to cut oil production has kept some investors on the sidelines.</p>
<p>Expectations for a sizable production cut from OPEC have been building, with Saudi Arabia backing an effort to cut output by over 1 million barrels to 32.5 million barrels, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. OPEC agreed in principle in September to cap output at 32.5 million to 33 million barrels a day, but details with be hammered out on Nov.30.</p>
<p>A large number of short positions, or bets on lower oil prices, mean crude could rise sharply if OPEC delivers a cut, according to consultancy Energy Aspects.</p>
<p>"With managed money short positions across WTI and Brent at record highs, the market is setting itself up for a possibly sharp short-covering rally--should OPEC deliver an output cut of around 1 million barrels a day," Energy Aspects said in a note to clients.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Discussions of a cut have been heating up this week as OPEC delegates begin gathering in Vienna. The Saudi-backed proposal is the most concrete plan so far, but Iran and Iraq have had misgivings. Iraq is in need of oil revenue to help fund its war with Islamic State, while Iran is trying to ramp up exports after years of international sanctions.</p>
<p>Ole Hanson, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, said that Saudi's proposal implies they expect all producers, apart from Libya and Nigeria, to contribute.</p>
<p>"Therefore once again (they are) throwing the baton to Iran who has to, at a bare minimum, agree to a freeze and preferably also join in with the 4 to 4.5% cut to achieve that level," he said.</p>
<p>Nymex reformulated gasoline blendstock--the benchmark gasoline contract--fell 0.4% to $1.42 a gallon. ICE gas oil changed hands at $440.50 a metric ton, down $3.50 from the previous settlement.</p> | Oil Prices Fall Ahead of OPEC Meeting | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/25/oil-prices-fall-ahead-opec-meeting.html | 2016-11-25 | 0right
| Oil Prices Fall Ahead of OPEC Meeting
<p />
<p>Oil futures eased on Friday, as traders adopted a wait-and-see stance ahead of next week's crucial OPEC meeting, where the cartel is expected to strike a deal to cut output.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell 0.98% to $48.52 a barrel on London's ICE Futures exchange. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas Intermediate futures were trading down 0.79% at $47.58 a barrel.</p>
<p>Trading has been subdued in recent sessions because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. this week. In addition, uncertainty about the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries reaching an agreement to cut oil production has kept some investors on the sidelines.</p>
<p>Expectations for a sizable production cut from OPEC have been building, with Saudi Arabia backing an effort to cut output by over 1 million barrels to 32.5 million barrels, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. OPEC agreed in principle in September to cap output at 32.5 million to 33 million barrels a day, but details with be hammered out on Nov.30.</p>
<p>A large number of short positions, or bets on lower oil prices, mean crude could rise sharply if OPEC delivers a cut, according to consultancy Energy Aspects.</p>
<p>"With managed money short positions across WTI and Brent at record highs, the market is setting itself up for a possibly sharp short-covering rally--should OPEC deliver an output cut of around 1 million barrels a day," Energy Aspects said in a note to clients.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Discussions of a cut have been heating up this week as OPEC delegates begin gathering in Vienna. The Saudi-backed proposal is the most concrete plan so far, but Iran and Iraq have had misgivings. Iraq is in need of oil revenue to help fund its war with Islamic State, while Iran is trying to ramp up exports after years of international sanctions.</p>
<p>Ole Hanson, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, said that Saudi's proposal implies they expect all producers, apart from Libya and Nigeria, to contribute.</p>
<p>"Therefore once again (they are) throwing the baton to Iran who has to, at a bare minimum, agree to a freeze and preferably also join in with the 4 to 4.5% cut to achieve that level," he said.</p>
<p>Nymex reformulated gasoline blendstock--the benchmark gasoline contract--fell 0.4% to $1.42 a gallon. ICE gas oil changed hands at $440.50 a metric ton, down $3.50 from the previous settlement.</p> | 3,025 |
<p>With the holiday work-party season upon us, many of us are heading out to gift shop for fellow office employees, and the boss.</p>
<p>Before hitting the malls or e-commerce highway, here’s some advice for this season’s workplace gifts. Jacqueline Whitmore, author of Business Class: Etiquette Essentials for Success at Work, said whether you are an office employee or the head honcho, you should tailor to taste, and put some thought into your gift-giving practices.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>“The best gift is a functional one as opposed to one that just looks attractive and collects dust and a few compliments,” Whitmore said.</p>
<p>This season, <a href="" type="internal">FOXBusiness.com Opens a New Window.</a> is running a special series on holiday giving in the office. Stay tuned. For starters, we take a look at <a href="http://www.foxsmallbusinesscenter.com/slideshow/sbc/2009/11/12/small-biz-holiday-guide?slide=1" type="external">what to get for the one who signs your paychecks Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Holiday Shopping Guide for Office Gifts | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2009/11/12/secret-santa-holiday-shopping-tips.html | 2016-03-23 | 0right
| Holiday Shopping Guide for Office Gifts
<p>With the holiday work-party season upon us, many of us are heading out to gift shop for fellow office employees, and the boss.</p>
<p>Before hitting the malls or e-commerce highway, here’s some advice for this season’s workplace gifts. Jacqueline Whitmore, author of Business Class: Etiquette Essentials for Success at Work, said whether you are an office employee or the head honcho, you should tailor to taste, and put some thought into your gift-giving practices.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>“The best gift is a functional one as opposed to one that just looks attractive and collects dust and a few compliments,” Whitmore said.</p>
<p>This season, <a href="" type="internal">FOXBusiness.com Opens a New Window.</a> is running a special series on holiday giving in the office. Stay tuned. For starters, we take a look at <a href="http://www.foxsmallbusinesscenter.com/slideshow/sbc/2009/11/12/small-biz-holiday-guide?slide=1" type="external">what to get for the one who signs your paychecks Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 3,026 |
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<p />
<p>Abdullah Abdullah, who emerged as the front-runner with 45 percent of the vote in the first round, faced Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, an ex-World Bank official and finance minister. Neither garnered the majority needed to win outright, but previous candidates and their supporters have since offered endorsements to each, making the final outcome unpredictable.</p>
<p>The two men differ more in personality than policy. Both promise to sign a long-delayed security pact with the United States, which President Hamid Karzai has rebuffed. That would allow nearly 10,000 American troops to remain in the country for two more years to conduct counterterrorism operations and continue training and advising the ill-prepared Afghan army and police. And both pledge to fight for peace and against corruption.</p>
<p>But their different ethnic backgrounds have highlighted the tribal fault lines in this country of 30 million ravaged by decades of war.</p>
<p>“I voted today for my future, because it is still not clear – the country is at war, and corruption is everywhere, and security is terrible. I want the next president to bring security above all and jobs,” said Marya Nazami, who voted for Ahmadzai.</p>
<p>The White House praised Afghan voters for their “courage and resolve” in the second round.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“These elections are a significant step forward on Afghanistan’s democratic path,” it said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the next government chosen by the Afghan people.”</p>
<p>U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry praised Afghans for “laying the groundwork for the first democratic transition” in their country’s history.</p>
<p>“These brave Afghans from all walks of life again defied the threat of violence and went to the ballot box and voted because they want to set the course for a more inclusive, prosperous, and stable future,” Kerry said in a statement. He said it is essential that the process of tallying the votes, adjudicating complaints and finalizing the results “be transparent and accountable.”</p>
<p>Observer groups said the balloting was relatively smooth, although both candidates and observers said they had evidence of fraud ranging from ballot box stuffing to proxy voting. Several polling stations also opened late or failed to open at all because of security concerns, and many voters complained of ballot shortages.</p>
<p /> | Afghans brave Taliban threats to choose new leader | false | https://abqjournal.com/415730/afghans-brave-taliban-threats-to-pick-new-leader.html | 2least
| Afghans brave Taliban threats to choose new leader
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<p />
<p>Abdullah Abdullah, who emerged as the front-runner with 45 percent of the vote in the first round, faced Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, an ex-World Bank official and finance minister. Neither garnered the majority needed to win outright, but previous candidates and their supporters have since offered endorsements to each, making the final outcome unpredictable.</p>
<p>The two men differ more in personality than policy. Both promise to sign a long-delayed security pact with the United States, which President Hamid Karzai has rebuffed. That would allow nearly 10,000 American troops to remain in the country for two more years to conduct counterterrorism operations and continue training and advising the ill-prepared Afghan army and police. And both pledge to fight for peace and against corruption.</p>
<p>But their different ethnic backgrounds have highlighted the tribal fault lines in this country of 30 million ravaged by decades of war.</p>
<p>“I voted today for my future, because it is still not clear – the country is at war, and corruption is everywhere, and security is terrible. I want the next president to bring security above all and jobs,” said Marya Nazami, who voted for Ahmadzai.</p>
<p>The White House praised Afghan voters for their “courage and resolve” in the second round.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“These elections are a significant step forward on Afghanistan’s democratic path,” it said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the next government chosen by the Afghan people.”</p>
<p>U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry praised Afghans for “laying the groundwork for the first democratic transition” in their country’s history.</p>
<p>“These brave Afghans from all walks of life again defied the threat of violence and went to the ballot box and voted because they want to set the course for a more inclusive, prosperous, and stable future,” Kerry said in a statement. He said it is essential that the process of tallying the votes, adjudicating complaints and finalizing the results “be transparent and accountable.”</p>
<p>Observer groups said the balloting was relatively smooth, although both candidates and observers said they had evidence of fraud ranging from ballot box stuffing to proxy voting. Several polling stations also opened late or failed to open at all because of security concerns, and many voters complained of ballot shortages.</p>
<p /> | 3,027 |
|
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — In a difficult season for the Cleveland Indians, the return of Josh Tomlin has become a bright spot.</p>
<p>Tomlin had his second straight impressive start since returning from shoulder surgery, Cody Allen worked out of his own jam in the ninth inning Thursday night and the Indians held on for a 3-2 victory over the New York Yankees.</p>
<p>“It’s fun to talk about him,” manager Terry Francona said. “We’ve talked about, just in the short period he’s been here, how much we’re pulling for him.”</p>
<p>Tomlin (1-1) only allowed Alex Rodriguez’s 680th career home run leading off the fourth and a double to Chase Headley in seven deliberate innings. The right-hander has been touched for just three runs and seven hits in 13 1-3 innings since coming back from his second major operation since 2012.</p>
<p>“Obviously you don’t want to have the injuries,” Tomlin said. “Sometimes it gets in your head but for the most part when you’re out there and you’re throwing the ball pretty well, it really doesn’t creep into your head.”</p>
<p>Allen took over in the ninth with the score 3-1 and gave up a leadoff single to A-Rod, who surprised most everyone in the ballpark and stole second.</p>
<p>Several players took exception with umpire Dan Iassogna’s strike zone throughout the night, right into the ninth: After Brian McCann was called out on strikes and had a brief conversation with Iassogna, manager Joe Girardi raced from the dugout and was instantly ejected. He proceeded to dig a line in the dirt near home plate and yell at Iassogna.</p>
<p>“I ejected him for leaving his position to argue balls and strikes,” Iassogna told a pool reporter.</p>
<p>Carlos Beltran then singled in a run and rookie Greg Bird walked, with the crowd of 36,129 finally making some noise. But Headley grounded to first for the second out and Allen got Didi Gregorius to fly to left field for his 24th save.</p>
<p>“I hurt myself a little bit, getting behind in the count, left some pitches over the plate, but they hit some balls at some guys,” said.</p>
<p>Lonnie Chisenhall hit an RBI double, and Michael Brantley — still limited to designated hitter because of a sore shoulder — and Jose Ramirez had RBI singles off Ivan Nova (5-5).</p>
<p>Losers of four of five coming in, the Indians got help from their new-look outfield of converted infielders Ramirez and Chisenhall and newcomer Abraham Almonte. They took two of three from the AL East leaders last week in Cleveland, and won the opener of this four-game series.</p>
<p>Almonte made a running, leaping catch at the wall in right-center in the sixth on a drive by Brett Gardner. Chisenhall made a diving catch of Carlos Beltran’s sinking liner to open the seventh.</p>
<p>Feeling “better and better every day,” Chisenhall said of the position where he’s made only 14 starts. “I’m still going to new ballparks ... just learning that, learning the pitchers and reading the hitters’ swings out there.”</p>
<p>Working as slowly as Tomlin, Nova got in trouble twice because of walks. Chisenhall hit a hot shot to right-center to score Carlos Santana from first in the second, and Ramirez drove in Almonte after the center fielder walked in the fourth.</p>
<p>Nova had won four of his previous five starts, but he failed to get to the sixth Thursday, needing 94 pitches for five innings.</p>
<p>“You’re going to have days like this,” Nova said. “Not going to feel perfect every time you go out there.”</p>
<p>TRAINER’S ROOM</p>
<p>Indians: RHP Gavin Floyd (elbow surgery) gave up four runs while getting one out in his first rehab start. He’s been out all season. General manager Chris Antonetti said Floyd was healthy and felt great. He also said Floyd could possibly return late this season, but “there are a number of things that need to happen before that. But Gavin deserves a ton of credit for the way he has embraced the rehab process.”</p>
<p>Yankees: RHP Michael Pineda (forearm strain) is scheduled to throw about 65 pitches for Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes/Barre in his second and likely final rehab start.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Indians: RHP Carlos Carrasco (11-9) has the lowest average against (.184) when pitching on the road. He’s 4-1 with a 1.55 ERA in his last seven outings away from Progressive Field. He gave up two runs and four hits over eight innings against New York in Cleveland on Aug. 11.</p>
<p>Yankees: RHP Masahiro Tanaka is coming off a complete game win at Toronto. He was tagged for five runs and 10 hits over 6 2-3 innings in his only start against Cleveland, last season.</p>
<p>SURPISING SIGHT</p>
<p>Antonetti on the Indians’ outfield of Ramirez, Chisenhall and Almonte: “You could’ve given me 1,000 guesses and I wouldn’t have come up with that.”</p>
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — In a difficult season for the Cleveland Indians, the return of Josh Tomlin has become a bright spot.</p>
<p>Tomlin had his second straight impressive start since returning from shoulder surgery, Cody Allen worked out of his own jam in the ninth inning Thursday night and the Indians held on for a 3-2 victory over the New York Yankees.</p>
<p>“It’s fun to talk about him,” manager Terry Francona said. “We’ve talked about, just in the short period he’s been here, how much we’re pulling for him.”</p>
<p>Tomlin (1-1) only allowed Alex Rodriguez’s 680th career home run leading off the fourth and a double to Chase Headley in seven deliberate innings. The right-hander has been touched for just three runs and seven hits in 13 1-3 innings since coming back from his second major operation since 2012.</p>
<p>“Obviously you don’t want to have the injuries,” Tomlin said. “Sometimes it gets in your head but for the most part when you’re out there and you’re throwing the ball pretty well, it really doesn’t creep into your head.”</p>
<p>Allen took over in the ninth with the score 3-1 and gave up a leadoff single to A-Rod, who surprised most everyone in the ballpark and stole second.</p>
<p>Several players took exception with umpire Dan Iassogna’s strike zone throughout the night, right into the ninth: After Brian McCann was called out on strikes and had a brief conversation with Iassogna, manager Joe Girardi raced from the dugout and was instantly ejected. He proceeded to dig a line in the dirt near home plate and yell at Iassogna.</p>
<p>“I ejected him for leaving his position to argue balls and strikes,” Iassogna told a pool reporter.</p>
<p>Carlos Beltran then singled in a run and rookie Greg Bird walked, with the crowd of 36,129 finally making some noise. But Headley grounded to first for the second out and Allen got Didi Gregorius to fly to left field for his 24th save.</p>
<p>“I hurt myself a little bit, getting behind in the count, left some pitches over the plate, but they hit some balls at some guys,” said.</p>
<p>Lonnie Chisenhall hit an RBI double, and Michael Brantley — still limited to designated hitter because of a sore shoulder — and Jose Ramirez had RBI singles off Ivan Nova (5-5).</p>
<p>Losers of four of five coming in, the Indians got help from their new-look outfield of converted infielders Ramirez and Chisenhall and newcomer Abraham Almonte. They took two of three from the AL East leaders last week in Cleveland, and won the opener of this four-game series.</p>
<p>Almonte made a running, leaping catch at the wall in right-center in the sixth on a drive by Brett Gardner. Chisenhall made a diving catch of Carlos Beltran’s sinking liner to open the seventh.</p>
<p>Feeling “better and better every day,” Chisenhall said of the position where he’s made only 14 starts. “I’m still going to new ballparks ... just learning that, learning the pitchers and reading the hitters’ swings out there.”</p>
<p>Working as slowly as Tomlin, Nova got in trouble twice because of walks. Chisenhall hit a hot shot to right-center to score Carlos Santana from first in the second, and Ramirez drove in Almonte after the center fielder walked in the fourth.</p>
<p>Nova had won four of his previous five starts, but he failed to get to the sixth Thursday, needing 94 pitches for five innings.</p>
<p>“You’re going to have days like this,” Nova said. “Not going to feel perfect every time you go out there.”</p>
<p>TRAINER’S ROOM</p>
<p>Indians: RHP Gavin Floyd (elbow surgery) gave up four runs while getting one out in his first rehab start. He’s been out all season. General manager Chris Antonetti said Floyd was healthy and felt great. He also said Floyd could possibly return late this season, but “there are a number of things that need to happen before that. But Gavin deserves a ton of credit for the way he has embraced the rehab process.”</p>
<p>Yankees: RHP Michael Pineda (forearm strain) is scheduled to throw about 65 pitches for Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes/Barre in his second and likely final rehab start.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Indians: RHP Carlos Carrasco (11-9) has the lowest average against (.184) when pitching on the road. He’s 4-1 with a 1.55 ERA in his last seven outings away from Progressive Field. He gave up two runs and four hits over eight innings against New York in Cleveland on Aug. 11.</p>
<p>Yankees: RHP Masahiro Tanaka is coming off a complete game win at Toronto. He was tagged for five runs and 10 hits over 6 2-3 innings in his only start against Cleveland, last season.</p>
<p>SURPISING SIGHT</p>
<p>Antonetti on the Indians’ outfield of Ramirez, Chisenhall and Almonte: “You could’ve given me 1,000 guesses and I wouldn’t have come up with that.”</p> | Tomlin has another solid start, Indians beat Yankees | false | https://apnews.com/8443799b88b4451b80a8f30695e7a982 | 2015-08-21 | 2least
| Tomlin has another solid start, Indians beat Yankees
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — In a difficult season for the Cleveland Indians, the return of Josh Tomlin has become a bright spot.</p>
<p>Tomlin had his second straight impressive start since returning from shoulder surgery, Cody Allen worked out of his own jam in the ninth inning Thursday night and the Indians held on for a 3-2 victory over the New York Yankees.</p>
<p>“It’s fun to talk about him,” manager Terry Francona said. “We’ve talked about, just in the short period he’s been here, how much we’re pulling for him.”</p>
<p>Tomlin (1-1) only allowed Alex Rodriguez’s 680th career home run leading off the fourth and a double to Chase Headley in seven deliberate innings. The right-hander has been touched for just three runs and seven hits in 13 1-3 innings since coming back from his second major operation since 2012.</p>
<p>“Obviously you don’t want to have the injuries,” Tomlin said. “Sometimes it gets in your head but for the most part when you’re out there and you’re throwing the ball pretty well, it really doesn’t creep into your head.”</p>
<p>Allen took over in the ninth with the score 3-1 and gave up a leadoff single to A-Rod, who surprised most everyone in the ballpark and stole second.</p>
<p>Several players took exception with umpire Dan Iassogna’s strike zone throughout the night, right into the ninth: After Brian McCann was called out on strikes and had a brief conversation with Iassogna, manager Joe Girardi raced from the dugout and was instantly ejected. He proceeded to dig a line in the dirt near home plate and yell at Iassogna.</p>
<p>“I ejected him for leaving his position to argue balls and strikes,” Iassogna told a pool reporter.</p>
<p>Carlos Beltran then singled in a run and rookie Greg Bird walked, with the crowd of 36,129 finally making some noise. But Headley grounded to first for the second out and Allen got Didi Gregorius to fly to left field for his 24th save.</p>
<p>“I hurt myself a little bit, getting behind in the count, left some pitches over the plate, but they hit some balls at some guys,” said.</p>
<p>Lonnie Chisenhall hit an RBI double, and Michael Brantley — still limited to designated hitter because of a sore shoulder — and Jose Ramirez had RBI singles off Ivan Nova (5-5).</p>
<p>Losers of four of five coming in, the Indians got help from their new-look outfield of converted infielders Ramirez and Chisenhall and newcomer Abraham Almonte. They took two of three from the AL East leaders last week in Cleveland, and won the opener of this four-game series.</p>
<p>Almonte made a running, leaping catch at the wall in right-center in the sixth on a drive by Brett Gardner. Chisenhall made a diving catch of Carlos Beltran’s sinking liner to open the seventh.</p>
<p>Feeling “better and better every day,” Chisenhall said of the position where he’s made only 14 starts. “I’m still going to new ballparks ... just learning that, learning the pitchers and reading the hitters’ swings out there.”</p>
<p>Working as slowly as Tomlin, Nova got in trouble twice because of walks. Chisenhall hit a hot shot to right-center to score Carlos Santana from first in the second, and Ramirez drove in Almonte after the center fielder walked in the fourth.</p>
<p>Nova had won four of his previous five starts, but he failed to get to the sixth Thursday, needing 94 pitches for five innings.</p>
<p>“You’re going to have days like this,” Nova said. “Not going to feel perfect every time you go out there.”</p>
<p>TRAINER’S ROOM</p>
<p>Indians: RHP Gavin Floyd (elbow surgery) gave up four runs while getting one out in his first rehab start. He’s been out all season. General manager Chris Antonetti said Floyd was healthy and felt great. He also said Floyd could possibly return late this season, but “there are a number of things that need to happen before that. But Gavin deserves a ton of credit for the way he has embraced the rehab process.”</p>
<p>Yankees: RHP Michael Pineda (forearm strain) is scheduled to throw about 65 pitches for Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes/Barre in his second and likely final rehab start.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Indians: RHP Carlos Carrasco (11-9) has the lowest average against (.184) when pitching on the road. He’s 4-1 with a 1.55 ERA in his last seven outings away from Progressive Field. He gave up two runs and four hits over eight innings against New York in Cleveland on Aug. 11.</p>
<p>Yankees: RHP Masahiro Tanaka is coming off a complete game win at Toronto. He was tagged for five runs and 10 hits over 6 2-3 innings in his only start against Cleveland, last season.</p>
<p>SURPISING SIGHT</p>
<p>Antonetti on the Indians’ outfield of Ramirez, Chisenhall and Almonte: “You could’ve given me 1,000 guesses and I wouldn’t have come up with that.”</p>
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — In a difficult season for the Cleveland Indians, the return of Josh Tomlin has become a bright spot.</p>
<p>Tomlin had his second straight impressive start since returning from shoulder surgery, Cody Allen worked out of his own jam in the ninth inning Thursday night and the Indians held on for a 3-2 victory over the New York Yankees.</p>
<p>“It’s fun to talk about him,” manager Terry Francona said. “We’ve talked about, just in the short period he’s been here, how much we’re pulling for him.”</p>
<p>Tomlin (1-1) only allowed Alex Rodriguez’s 680th career home run leading off the fourth and a double to Chase Headley in seven deliberate innings. The right-hander has been touched for just three runs and seven hits in 13 1-3 innings since coming back from his second major operation since 2012.</p>
<p>“Obviously you don’t want to have the injuries,” Tomlin said. “Sometimes it gets in your head but for the most part when you’re out there and you’re throwing the ball pretty well, it really doesn’t creep into your head.”</p>
<p>Allen took over in the ninth with the score 3-1 and gave up a leadoff single to A-Rod, who surprised most everyone in the ballpark and stole second.</p>
<p>Several players took exception with umpire Dan Iassogna’s strike zone throughout the night, right into the ninth: After Brian McCann was called out on strikes and had a brief conversation with Iassogna, manager Joe Girardi raced from the dugout and was instantly ejected. He proceeded to dig a line in the dirt near home plate and yell at Iassogna.</p>
<p>“I ejected him for leaving his position to argue balls and strikes,” Iassogna told a pool reporter.</p>
<p>Carlos Beltran then singled in a run and rookie Greg Bird walked, with the crowd of 36,129 finally making some noise. But Headley grounded to first for the second out and Allen got Didi Gregorius to fly to left field for his 24th save.</p>
<p>“I hurt myself a little bit, getting behind in the count, left some pitches over the plate, but they hit some balls at some guys,” said.</p>
<p>Lonnie Chisenhall hit an RBI double, and Michael Brantley — still limited to designated hitter because of a sore shoulder — and Jose Ramirez had RBI singles off Ivan Nova (5-5).</p>
<p>Losers of four of five coming in, the Indians got help from their new-look outfield of converted infielders Ramirez and Chisenhall and newcomer Abraham Almonte. They took two of three from the AL East leaders last week in Cleveland, and won the opener of this four-game series.</p>
<p>Almonte made a running, leaping catch at the wall in right-center in the sixth on a drive by Brett Gardner. Chisenhall made a diving catch of Carlos Beltran’s sinking liner to open the seventh.</p>
<p>Feeling “better and better every day,” Chisenhall said of the position where he’s made only 14 starts. “I’m still going to new ballparks ... just learning that, learning the pitchers and reading the hitters’ swings out there.”</p>
<p>Working as slowly as Tomlin, Nova got in trouble twice because of walks. Chisenhall hit a hot shot to right-center to score Carlos Santana from first in the second, and Ramirez drove in Almonte after the center fielder walked in the fourth.</p>
<p>Nova had won four of his previous five starts, but he failed to get to the sixth Thursday, needing 94 pitches for five innings.</p>
<p>“You’re going to have days like this,” Nova said. “Not going to feel perfect every time you go out there.”</p>
<p>TRAINER’S ROOM</p>
<p>Indians: RHP Gavin Floyd (elbow surgery) gave up four runs while getting one out in his first rehab start. He’s been out all season. General manager Chris Antonetti said Floyd was healthy and felt great. He also said Floyd could possibly return late this season, but “there are a number of things that need to happen before that. But Gavin deserves a ton of credit for the way he has embraced the rehab process.”</p>
<p>Yankees: RHP Michael Pineda (forearm strain) is scheduled to throw about 65 pitches for Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes/Barre in his second and likely final rehab start.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Indians: RHP Carlos Carrasco (11-9) has the lowest average against (.184) when pitching on the road. He’s 4-1 with a 1.55 ERA in his last seven outings away from Progressive Field. He gave up two runs and four hits over eight innings against New York in Cleveland on Aug. 11.</p>
<p>Yankees: RHP Masahiro Tanaka is coming off a complete game win at Toronto. He was tagged for five runs and 10 hits over 6 2-3 innings in his only start against Cleveland, last season.</p>
<p>SURPISING SIGHT</p>
<p>Antonetti on the Indians’ outfield of Ramirez, Chisenhall and Almonte: “You could’ve given me 1,000 guesses and I wouldn’t have come up with that.”</p> | 3,028 |
<p />
<p>Image source: Disney.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>We're starting to see earnings reports trickle in from the operators behind some of the country's largest theme parks and regional amusement parks. Shares of Cedar Fair (NYSE: FUN) moved 4% higher yesterday -- bucking the market's downward trend -- after posting financial results for the seasonally beefy third quarter.</p>
<p>It wasn't a blowout performance. Net revenue climbed less than 1% to $650.3 million, the product of a 1% increase in in-park guest per capita spending and a 5% uptick in out-of-park revenue narrowly offsetting a less-than-1% dip in attendance. Cedar Fair's profit of $3.10 per unit was ahead of last year's $2.92 showing, but well short of the $3.54 per unit that analysts were expecting.</p>
<p>The miss isn't a surprise. Cedar Fair has fallen short on the bottom line in four of the past five quarters. The stock still moved higher on the report, asCedar Fair's upbeat outlook was enough to warrant yet another increase to its already meaty quarterly distributions. Cedar Fair also issued an encouraging financial update through the end of October, where attendance through the first 10 months of the year are up a more encouraging 2%.</p>
<p>A week earlier it was Six Flags (NYSE: SIX) moving 5% higher after also posting a big earnings miss. Six Flags blamed its 2% downtick in turnstile clicks on crummy weather earlier in the season. Investors dismissed the summertime weakness at Six Flags and Cedar Fair, encouraged by robust season-pass sales and a future that includes more virtual reality at Six Flags and more on-site lodging capacity at Cedar Fair.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>With Disney (NYSE: DIS) set to report quarterly results next week -- and theme parks being the the media giant's second-largest business -- it's easy to see why the market's reception to smaller attractions operators is noteworthy. Disney reported a 4% dip in attendance at its domestic theme parks in its previous quarter, and with Disney World attendance also down during the first quarter, it won't be a shock to see a third straight quarterly decline for the the summer season.</p>
<p>Revenue and segment operating profitability should still inch higher for Disney's theme parks and resorts division. Just as Cedar Fair has overcome a slight downturn in attendance by generating more revenue out of folks at its parks, Disney has been able to push through hearty price and hotel rate increases.</p>
<p>Disney doesn't need to see attendance grow to succeed, for now. We know that this won't be Disney World at its best in terms of guest counts. Florida theme park operators outside of Universal Orlando parentComcast(NASDAQ: CMCSA)have struggled with traffic this year, and even Comcast may have proven mortal this summer.</p>
<p>Comcast's pro forma revenue grew 16% at its domestic theme parks during the third quarter. No one else is going to be posting double-digit growth on the top line, but Universal was helped by the springtime opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Hollywood and the summertime debut of the Sapphire Falls hotel at Universal Studios Orlando. Comcast has also been as aggressive as Disney (if not more so) with its hikes for one-day tickets and annual passes. Comcast didn't break out attendance at Universal Orlando this time, but it likely slowed from the big gains it had experienced in recent years after the Florida parks were treated to Potter-centric makeovers.</p>
<p>Disney will want to study the success that the amusement park operators already had this earnings season. Cedar Fair and Six Flags rose despite announcing lower attendance levels, defying gravity by spelling out the catalysts for improvement. Comcast stock moved lower after reporting its results, but there are a lot more moving parts at the cable giant than its NBCUniversal-owned theme parks.</p>
<p>It would be great if this is the quarter that Disney finally becomes more transparent about attendance figures, affording it the chance to spin the turnstile deficiencies in a favorable light. It worked for Cedar Fair yesterday and Six Flags last week. Let's see if it will do the trick for Disney next Thursday.</p>
<p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2667&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBreakerRick/info.aspx" type="external">Rick Munarriz Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Walt Disney. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Walt Disney. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" 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://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" 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?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Can Disney Follow the Lead of Cedar Fair and Six Flags? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/03/can-disney-follow-lead-cedar-fair-and-six-flags.html | 2016-11-03 | 0right
| Can Disney Follow the Lead of Cedar Fair and Six Flags?
<p />
<p>Image source: Disney.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>We're starting to see earnings reports trickle in from the operators behind some of the country's largest theme parks and regional amusement parks. Shares of Cedar Fair (NYSE: FUN) moved 4% higher yesterday -- bucking the market's downward trend -- after posting financial results for the seasonally beefy third quarter.</p>
<p>It wasn't a blowout performance. Net revenue climbed less than 1% to $650.3 million, the product of a 1% increase in in-park guest per capita spending and a 5% uptick in out-of-park revenue narrowly offsetting a less-than-1% dip in attendance. Cedar Fair's profit of $3.10 per unit was ahead of last year's $2.92 showing, but well short of the $3.54 per unit that analysts were expecting.</p>
<p>The miss isn't a surprise. Cedar Fair has fallen short on the bottom line in four of the past five quarters. The stock still moved higher on the report, asCedar Fair's upbeat outlook was enough to warrant yet another increase to its already meaty quarterly distributions. Cedar Fair also issued an encouraging financial update through the end of October, where attendance through the first 10 months of the year are up a more encouraging 2%.</p>
<p>A week earlier it was Six Flags (NYSE: SIX) moving 5% higher after also posting a big earnings miss. Six Flags blamed its 2% downtick in turnstile clicks on crummy weather earlier in the season. Investors dismissed the summertime weakness at Six Flags and Cedar Fair, encouraged by robust season-pass sales and a future that includes more virtual reality at Six Flags and more on-site lodging capacity at Cedar Fair.</p>
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<p>With Disney (NYSE: DIS) set to report quarterly results next week -- and theme parks being the the media giant's second-largest business -- it's easy to see why the market's reception to smaller attractions operators is noteworthy. Disney reported a 4% dip in attendance at its domestic theme parks in its previous quarter, and with Disney World attendance also down during the first quarter, it won't be a shock to see a third straight quarterly decline for the the summer season.</p>
<p>Revenue and segment operating profitability should still inch higher for Disney's theme parks and resorts division. Just as Cedar Fair has overcome a slight downturn in attendance by generating more revenue out of folks at its parks, Disney has been able to push through hearty price and hotel rate increases.</p>
<p>Disney doesn't need to see attendance grow to succeed, for now. We know that this won't be Disney World at its best in terms of guest counts. Florida theme park operators outside of Universal Orlando parentComcast(NASDAQ: CMCSA)have struggled with traffic this year, and even Comcast may have proven mortal this summer.</p>
<p>Comcast's pro forma revenue grew 16% at its domestic theme parks during the third quarter. No one else is going to be posting double-digit growth on the top line, but Universal was helped by the springtime opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Hollywood and the summertime debut of the Sapphire Falls hotel at Universal Studios Orlando. Comcast has also been as aggressive as Disney (if not more so) with its hikes for one-day tickets and annual passes. Comcast didn't break out attendance at Universal Orlando this time, but it likely slowed from the big gains it had experienced in recent years after the Florida parks were treated to Potter-centric makeovers.</p>
<p>Disney will want to study the success that the amusement park operators already had this earnings season. Cedar Fair and Six Flags rose despite announcing lower attendance levels, defying gravity by spelling out the catalysts for improvement. Comcast stock moved lower after reporting its results, but there are a lot more moving parts at the cable giant than its NBCUniversal-owned theme parks.</p>
<p>It would be great if this is the quarter that Disney finally becomes more transparent about attendance figures, affording it the chance to spin the turnstile deficiencies in a favorable light. It worked for Cedar Fair yesterday and Six Flags last week. Let's see if it will do the trick for Disney next Thursday.</p>
<p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2667&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBreakerRick/info.aspx" type="external">Rick Munarriz Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Walt Disney. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Walt Disney. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" 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://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" 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?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 3,029 |
<p>I attended the Sacramento County Republican Party Crab Feed this evening. The event was fun and very well attended.</p>
<p>There were plenty of sincere Republicans present, candidates, party regulars, young and old.</p>
<p>Congressman Dan Lungren spoke… for too long… and it went on… and on… a total stump speech. People kept talking because the information has been heard before. A Lungren operative went from table to table insisting that everyone cease their discussions and listen, but there was not anything new or pertinent or even relevant in what Congressman Lungren was saying. And then he promptly left the party.</p>
<p>Assembly member Ted Gaines attended. He sat at tables and chatted with folks he knew… like a guy attending a party. Crazy. What a concept.</p>
<p>I talked to two young Senate fellow, media personalities, friends, Facebook friends I’ve never met face-to-face, old friends and new acquaintances.</p>
<p>Opportunities to speak are plentiful for politicians, but making the most of a situation with sincerity and relevance never falls short on the folks in attendance, regardless of the event.</p>
<p>The disturbing evidence of living in a bubble in congress, in Washington D.C. is evident in both parties, even if you are ideologically in sync… or not.</p>
<p>Red Rover, red rover… here in the district… remember us?</p>
<p>-Katy Grimes</p> | Another Republican Message. Or Not. | false | https://calwatchdog.com/2010/02/28/another-republican-message-or-not/ | 2018-02-20 | 3left-center
| Another Republican Message. Or Not.
<p>I attended the Sacramento County Republican Party Crab Feed this evening. The event was fun and very well attended.</p>
<p>There were plenty of sincere Republicans present, candidates, party regulars, young and old.</p>
<p>Congressman Dan Lungren spoke… for too long… and it went on… and on… a total stump speech. People kept talking because the information has been heard before. A Lungren operative went from table to table insisting that everyone cease their discussions and listen, but there was not anything new or pertinent or even relevant in what Congressman Lungren was saying. And then he promptly left the party.</p>
<p>Assembly member Ted Gaines attended. He sat at tables and chatted with folks he knew… like a guy attending a party. Crazy. What a concept.</p>
<p>I talked to two young Senate fellow, media personalities, friends, Facebook friends I’ve never met face-to-face, old friends and new acquaintances.</p>
<p>Opportunities to speak are plentiful for politicians, but making the most of a situation with sincerity and relevance never falls short on the folks in attendance, regardless of the event.</p>
<p>The disturbing evidence of living in a bubble in congress, in Washington D.C. is evident in both parties, even if you are ideologically in sync… or not.</p>
<p>Red Rover, red rover… here in the district… remember us?</p>
<p>-Katy Grimes</p> | 3,030 |
<p>The country that has long been known to abuse its powers and privileges in the United Nations is now leading a campaign to reform the same organization. While UN reforms are welcomed, if not demanded, by many of its member states, there is little reason to believe the recent US crusade is actually genuine. Rather, it seems a clear attempt to stifle any semblance of democracy in the world’s leading international institution.</p>
<p>Most American politicians actually despise the UN. While the Security Council is directed or tamed by the US veto (often to shield the US and its close ally Israel from any criticism), other UN bodies are not as easily intimidated. When the UN education and science agency, UNESCO, accepted Palestine’s bid for full membership last October, following a democratic vote by its members, the US could do little do stall the process. Still, it immediately cut funding to the agency (about 20 percent of its total budget).</p>
<p>The move was devoid of any humanitarian considerations. The UNESCO provides vital services to underprivileged communities all over the world, including the United States. Yet, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, insisted on <a href="" type="internal" />sugarcoating what was an entirely injudicious political act. “Today’s vote by the member states of UNESCO to admit Palestine as member is regrettable, premature and undermines our shared goal of a comprehensive just and lasting peace in the Middle East,” said Nuland (CNN, October 31).</p>
<p>The fact is, there has been much sabre-rattling in the US Congress targeting the UN. The campaign, led by Republican congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, is threatening the UN with all sorts of punishment if the organization does not cease its criticism of Israel and tighten the noose around Iran. Naturally, the UN is not meeting the expectations of Ros-Lehtinen and her peers. It happens to be a body that represents the interests of all its member states. Some US politicians, however, see the world through the distorted logic of former president George W. Bush: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”</p>
<p>The late British author and humanitarian doctor Theodore MacDonald showed that the US actually has a love-hate relationship with the UN. In his final book, <a href="" type="internal">Preserving the United Nations; Our Best Hope for Mediating Human Right</a>s, MacDonald reveals a strange reality: that the US and its allies labor to undermine the UN, while also using it to further their own military, political and economic objectives. Expectedly, successive US governments had mastered the art of political manipulation at the UN. When successfully co-opted to accommodate US military designs, the UN suddenly becomes true to its mission – per Washington’s account, of course. However, when US pressures failed to yield a unified front against Iraq in late 2002, President Bush asked in his first address to the United Nations, on September 12, 2002: “Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?”</p>
<p>The Bush years were rife with such ultimatums – to the UN and the whole world. However, a similar attitude continues to define the administration of Barack Obama. The US latest assault on the UN is now happening under the guise of reforms, but no ‘reforms’ are possible without first creating the needed polarization aimed at pushing for an American agenda. Joe Torsella, the US Deputy Ambassador for Management and Reform of the United Nation, spoke of the latest US efforts at reining in the 47-nation Geneva-based Human Rights Council. “The US will work to forge a new coalition at the UN in New York, a kind of ‘credibility caucus’ to promote truly competitive elections, rigorous application of membership criteria, and other reforms aimed at keeping the worst offenders on the sidelines,” he said (Reuters, Jan 20).</p>
<p>UNHRC is an outspoken critic of human rights violations. As of late, the organization has been particularity vocal regarding the rights violations underway in Syria. It is also very critical of Israel and its one-sided wars and human rights violations in Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories. For years, the US has conspired to undercut, intimidate and silence this criticism.</p>
<p>The Reuters report on the US latest push for the supposed reforms states: “Council members include China, Russia and other countries where rights groups say abuses are commonplace.” To offset the seeming inconsistency – between UNHRC mission and its members’ records – the US, according to Torsella, wants to “hold Human Rights Council members to the same standard of truly free and fair elections that the U.N. promotes around the world, and insist on the highest standards of integrity for the Council and all its members.” Viewed without context, it is a noble endeavor indeed. However, it becomes a tainted statement when one considers that the US status at the UN has been achieved through the least democratic of all means: a disproportionate political power (the veto) and money (used for arm-twisting).</p>
<p>Attempting to curb and contain the UN, as opposed to punishing and boycotting the international body, is basically what sets Democrats apart from Republicans. Unlike Republicans, “the other side of the debate (mostly Democrats) believes that achieving these reforms requires strong American leadership – and strong leadership is demonstrated by paying dues on time and in full. You can call this side ‘constructive engagement,’” wrote Mark Leon Goldberg in the UN Dispatch (January 20). Practically, both approaches are aimed at achieving similar outcomes: realizing US policies, rewarding allies and punishing foes – even at the expense of the noble mission once championed by the UN over 65 years ago.</p>
<p>While the latest push for ‘reforms’ is being hailed by Washington’s media cheerleaders, no honest commentator could possibly believe the US campaign against UNESCO, UNHRC and the UN as a whole represents a genuine democratic endeavor. In fact, the truly urgent reforms required right now are ones that aim at correcting what MacDonald described in his book as the UN’s “foundational defects”.</p>
<p>MacDonald counseled for immediate addressing of the “issue of permanent membership and the use of the veto”. He also recommended the granting of greater power to the General Assembly and eliminating the “imposed use of the US dollar” in mediating UN transitional affairs. MacDonald’s guidelines for reforms are comprehensive, and rely on the concept of equality, guided by humanitarian and moral urgencies.</p>
<p>The same can hardly be said of Washington’s latest UN intrigues and shady politics.</p>
<p>Ramzy Baroud&#160;is editor of&#160; <a href="http://www.PalestineChronicle.com/" type="external">PalestineChronicle.com</a>. He is the author of&#160; <a href="" type="internal">The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle</a>&#160;&#160;and &#160;“ <a href="" type="internal">My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story</a>” (Pluto Press, London).&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | The US vs. Genuine Reforms at the UN | true | https://counterpunch.org/2012/01/27/the-us-vs-genuine-reforms-at-the-un/ | 2012-01-27 | 4left
| The US vs. Genuine Reforms at the UN
<p>The country that has long been known to abuse its powers and privileges in the United Nations is now leading a campaign to reform the same organization. While UN reforms are welcomed, if not demanded, by many of its member states, there is little reason to believe the recent US crusade is actually genuine. Rather, it seems a clear attempt to stifle any semblance of democracy in the world’s leading international institution.</p>
<p>Most American politicians actually despise the UN. While the Security Council is directed or tamed by the US veto (often to shield the US and its close ally Israel from any criticism), other UN bodies are not as easily intimidated. When the UN education and science agency, UNESCO, accepted Palestine’s bid for full membership last October, following a democratic vote by its members, the US could do little do stall the process. Still, it immediately cut funding to the agency (about 20 percent of its total budget).</p>
<p>The move was devoid of any humanitarian considerations. The UNESCO provides vital services to underprivileged communities all over the world, including the United States. Yet, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, insisted on <a href="" type="internal" />sugarcoating what was an entirely injudicious political act. “Today’s vote by the member states of UNESCO to admit Palestine as member is regrettable, premature and undermines our shared goal of a comprehensive just and lasting peace in the Middle East,” said Nuland (CNN, October 31).</p>
<p>The fact is, there has been much sabre-rattling in the US Congress targeting the UN. The campaign, led by Republican congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, is threatening the UN with all sorts of punishment if the organization does not cease its criticism of Israel and tighten the noose around Iran. Naturally, the UN is not meeting the expectations of Ros-Lehtinen and her peers. It happens to be a body that represents the interests of all its member states. Some US politicians, however, see the world through the distorted logic of former president George W. Bush: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”</p>
<p>The late British author and humanitarian doctor Theodore MacDonald showed that the US actually has a love-hate relationship with the UN. In his final book, <a href="" type="internal">Preserving the United Nations; Our Best Hope for Mediating Human Right</a>s, MacDonald reveals a strange reality: that the US and its allies labor to undermine the UN, while also using it to further their own military, political and economic objectives. Expectedly, successive US governments had mastered the art of political manipulation at the UN. When successfully co-opted to accommodate US military designs, the UN suddenly becomes true to its mission – per Washington’s account, of course. However, when US pressures failed to yield a unified front against Iraq in late 2002, President Bush asked in his first address to the United Nations, on September 12, 2002: “Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?”</p>
<p>The Bush years were rife with such ultimatums – to the UN and the whole world. However, a similar attitude continues to define the administration of Barack Obama. The US latest assault on the UN is now happening under the guise of reforms, but no ‘reforms’ are possible without first creating the needed polarization aimed at pushing for an American agenda. Joe Torsella, the US Deputy Ambassador for Management and Reform of the United Nation, spoke of the latest US efforts at reining in the 47-nation Geneva-based Human Rights Council. “The US will work to forge a new coalition at the UN in New York, a kind of ‘credibility caucus’ to promote truly competitive elections, rigorous application of membership criteria, and other reforms aimed at keeping the worst offenders on the sidelines,” he said (Reuters, Jan 20).</p>
<p>UNHRC is an outspoken critic of human rights violations. As of late, the organization has been particularity vocal regarding the rights violations underway in Syria. It is also very critical of Israel and its one-sided wars and human rights violations in Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories. For years, the US has conspired to undercut, intimidate and silence this criticism.</p>
<p>The Reuters report on the US latest push for the supposed reforms states: “Council members include China, Russia and other countries where rights groups say abuses are commonplace.” To offset the seeming inconsistency – between UNHRC mission and its members’ records – the US, according to Torsella, wants to “hold Human Rights Council members to the same standard of truly free and fair elections that the U.N. promotes around the world, and insist on the highest standards of integrity for the Council and all its members.” Viewed without context, it is a noble endeavor indeed. However, it becomes a tainted statement when one considers that the US status at the UN has been achieved through the least democratic of all means: a disproportionate political power (the veto) and money (used for arm-twisting).</p>
<p>Attempting to curb and contain the UN, as opposed to punishing and boycotting the international body, is basically what sets Democrats apart from Republicans. Unlike Republicans, “the other side of the debate (mostly Democrats) believes that achieving these reforms requires strong American leadership – and strong leadership is demonstrated by paying dues on time and in full. You can call this side ‘constructive engagement,’” wrote Mark Leon Goldberg in the UN Dispatch (January 20). Practically, both approaches are aimed at achieving similar outcomes: realizing US policies, rewarding allies and punishing foes – even at the expense of the noble mission once championed by the UN over 65 years ago.</p>
<p>While the latest push for ‘reforms’ is being hailed by Washington’s media cheerleaders, no honest commentator could possibly believe the US campaign against UNESCO, UNHRC and the UN as a whole represents a genuine democratic endeavor. In fact, the truly urgent reforms required right now are ones that aim at correcting what MacDonald described in his book as the UN’s “foundational defects”.</p>
<p>MacDonald counseled for immediate addressing of the “issue of permanent membership and the use of the veto”. He also recommended the granting of greater power to the General Assembly and eliminating the “imposed use of the US dollar” in mediating UN transitional affairs. MacDonald’s guidelines for reforms are comprehensive, and rely on the concept of equality, guided by humanitarian and moral urgencies.</p>
<p>The same can hardly be said of Washington’s latest UN intrigues and shady politics.</p>
<p>Ramzy Baroud&#160;is editor of&#160; <a href="http://www.PalestineChronicle.com/" type="external">PalestineChronicle.com</a>. He is the author of&#160; <a href="" type="internal">The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle</a>&#160;&#160;and &#160;“ <a href="" type="internal">My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story</a>” (Pluto Press, London).&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 3,031 |
<p>Santiago.</p>
<p>At a September 14th symposium on the Chilean anti-terrorism law, the lawyer Julio Cortes pointed out that the frequent use of the law despite the absence of any real terrorism in Chile illuminates its fundamentally political, persecutorial character. Historically, terrorism was first used by the new bourgeois state against the old order. Only later did the phenomenon of terrorism from below emerge.</p>
<p>September 11th in Chile is an interesting day. While much of the rest of the world follows the US-driven discourse of the War on Terror, Chileans remember the state terrorism at work in the 1973 military coup by General Pinochet against the socialist president, Salvador Allende. Ultimately thousands of political opponents of the new regime would be tortured, disappeared, or executed. Once the dictatorship transferred seamlessly into democracy, with many of the same people remaining in power, and without revoking any of the neoliberal economic changes violently forced through by the dictatorship and under the direction of economists trained at the University of Chicago, people began commemorating September 11th with massive protest marches. The marches typically go from the city center to the General Cemetery, where there is a memorial to the victims of the regime, and where the day usually ends in heavy rioting against the police. At night, in the poorer neighborhoods, which received the brunt of state terrorism under Pinochet and continue to be the prime targets for pólice violence under democracy, people traditionally set up burning barricades and fight the carabineros and military special forces that come to antagonize them.</p>
<p>This year, the media and the government made a concerted effort to minimize the disturbances. On September 18th, the state is set to celebrate its bicentennial annivesary, and it has already spent millions on whipping up the population into a fervor of patriotism and national unity. President Piñera, whose rightwing National Renewal party supported Pinochet in its early days, has made the facile declaration that this September 18th would mark the final unification of the Chilean people and the resolution of “past” problems. This unification has been based on a heavy dose of state terrorism, in which usage of the anti-terrorist law has played an important role.</p>
<p>The problem is, from its inception Chile has been a violent fiction. Much of its territory stolen from Peru and Bolivia and all of it stolen from indigenous nations, in the 1880s the Chilean state finally accomplished what the Spanish conquistadors failed at in 300 years of warfare: the violent conquest of the Mapuche nation. And throughout the early 20th century, a government led by robber barons and close with American and British investors carried out some of the worst massacres ever visited on the radical labor movement. Neither of these conflicts have gone away.</p>
<p>The Mapuche are still fighting for their territorial integrity against white landowners, the Chilean military, and forestry transnationals. Some Mapuche groups are seeking greater autonomy within the Chilean state, while others are struggling for full sovereignty. And the movement of people fighting against the ravages of capitalism is becoming increasingly libertarian, as the communist and socialist parties all renounced the struggle and scrambled for positions in government after the transition to democracy. A hundred years ago anarchists played a major role in the workers’ movement, and starting in the ’90s they became prominent again, as punk music spread new forms of cultural resistance the traditional left wouldn’t touch, and as many ex-combatants from the armed leftwing groups that struggled against Pinochet developed a critique of their own internal authoritarianism.</p>
<p>To squash the Mapuche struggle, the state has frequently used the Pinochet-era anti-terrorism law against activists and warriors accused of such light acts as setting logging trucks ablaze or threatening landowners. The situation has reached such absurd proportions that after one altercation in which a landowner sustained what could only be categorized as “minor injuries,” prosecutors subsequently spoke of “terroristic minor injury.”</p>
<p>Thirty-four Mapuche prisoners are currently on hunger strike, most of them since July 12, with a list of four demands:</p>
<p>– An end to the anti-terrorist law and its application in cases against the Mapuche.</p>
<p>– An end to the double jeopardy by which Mapuche can be tried in civil and military court.</p>
<p>– Freedom for all Mapuche political prisoners.</p>
<p>– A demilitarization of Mapuche lands.</p>
<p>Their struggle has received support across Walmapu (the Mapuche lands), from anarchists, and from the broader Chilean left. In Santiago, the capital of Chile, which has never been a bastion of the Mapuche struggle, the walls are covered in graffiti and posters calling for their freedom, and there are weekly protest marches and Mapuche cultural festivals that regularly draw over a thousand people.</p>
<p>In order to defuse the situation before the bicentenary, the government proposed a modification of the anti-terrorist law. When the Mapuche prisoners and their supporters rejected the reform, declaring that it did not meet their demands and would only make things worse, the government retracted the carrot and brought out the stick. On the weekend of September 11th, police arrested three spokespeople for the hungerstrikers while they were on their way to the hospital in Concepcion to visit some of the prisoners who had been transferred there so they could be force fed intraveneously. The arrests have been widely denounced, as they make it impossible for the coordinating committee of supporters to make joint decisions and declarations. It seems certain that the hunger strike will continue through the bicentenary celebrations.</p>
<p>On August 14 of this year, police in Santiago and Valparaiso raided seventeen houses and three anarchist social centers, two of which they closed down, in the process destroying one of the country’s most important anarchist libraries. Police arrested fourteen people, accusing them of “illegal association” and the “planting of explosive devices.” Over the past couple years, a number of clandestine groups have taken responsibility for a string of small bombings targeting government institutions, banks, multinationals, the media, and other targets. The bombings were all carried out at night, and no one was ever hurt. In May, 2009, one anarchist, Mauricio Morales, died while transporting a bomb. Over the same time period, the media have consistently tried to mobilize fear and panic, and present the anarchists as public enemy number one.</p>
<p>Enabling the police to make their case despite a total lack of evidence, the media described the open social centers and libraries as “command centers.” During the raids, no explosives were found, but the media reported “traces of TNT,” which in reality were nitrate traces that could have come from a plethora of benign sources. The people arrested were public anarchist organizers, many of whom did not know each other, but the media portrayed them as a hierarchical clandestine organization (a necessary component for the “illegal organization” charge) with leaders and followers, and a detailed chain of command. In fact, Chile’s leading newspapers were somehow able to release more information about this terrorist organization than the police could present in their accusation.</p>
<p>After the initial bombardment, there has been something of a media blackout on the case. Ten of the detainees are in maximum security prison awaiting trial, and the other four are on conditional release. Their supporters are trying to spread the word about their case and build solidarity.</p>
<p>The Chilean government, which is building close ties with the European Union and the United States, is especially concerned with its public image abroad. After the collapse of the Argentine economy, relatively prosperous Chile has taken over the role of neoliberal poster child for South America. But as is true everywhere, that prosperity comes with an ugly underside. What the politicians in Santiago are wishing for more than anything else this September 18th, their independence day, is that the citizens keep waving their flags, keep believing in the illusion of national unity and social peace, and that they believe in the myth of only one kind of terrorism, the kind from below, and trust their government to protect them from it. Despite the opposing histories that manifest on September 11th between the US and Chile, it’s really not so different here, on the other side of the world.</p> | In Chile, Two Kinds of Terrorism | true | https://counterpunch.org/2010/09/16/in-chile-two-kinds-of-terrorism/ | 2010-09-16 | 4left
| In Chile, Two Kinds of Terrorism
<p>Santiago.</p>
<p>At a September 14th symposium on the Chilean anti-terrorism law, the lawyer Julio Cortes pointed out that the frequent use of the law despite the absence of any real terrorism in Chile illuminates its fundamentally political, persecutorial character. Historically, terrorism was first used by the new bourgeois state against the old order. Only later did the phenomenon of terrorism from below emerge.</p>
<p>September 11th in Chile is an interesting day. While much of the rest of the world follows the US-driven discourse of the War on Terror, Chileans remember the state terrorism at work in the 1973 military coup by General Pinochet against the socialist president, Salvador Allende. Ultimately thousands of political opponents of the new regime would be tortured, disappeared, or executed. Once the dictatorship transferred seamlessly into democracy, with many of the same people remaining in power, and without revoking any of the neoliberal economic changes violently forced through by the dictatorship and under the direction of economists trained at the University of Chicago, people began commemorating September 11th with massive protest marches. The marches typically go from the city center to the General Cemetery, where there is a memorial to the victims of the regime, and where the day usually ends in heavy rioting against the police. At night, in the poorer neighborhoods, which received the brunt of state terrorism under Pinochet and continue to be the prime targets for pólice violence under democracy, people traditionally set up burning barricades and fight the carabineros and military special forces that come to antagonize them.</p>
<p>This year, the media and the government made a concerted effort to minimize the disturbances. On September 18th, the state is set to celebrate its bicentennial annivesary, and it has already spent millions on whipping up the population into a fervor of patriotism and national unity. President Piñera, whose rightwing National Renewal party supported Pinochet in its early days, has made the facile declaration that this September 18th would mark the final unification of the Chilean people and the resolution of “past” problems. This unification has been based on a heavy dose of state terrorism, in which usage of the anti-terrorist law has played an important role.</p>
<p>The problem is, from its inception Chile has been a violent fiction. Much of its territory stolen from Peru and Bolivia and all of it stolen from indigenous nations, in the 1880s the Chilean state finally accomplished what the Spanish conquistadors failed at in 300 years of warfare: the violent conquest of the Mapuche nation. And throughout the early 20th century, a government led by robber barons and close with American and British investors carried out some of the worst massacres ever visited on the radical labor movement. Neither of these conflicts have gone away.</p>
<p>The Mapuche are still fighting for their territorial integrity against white landowners, the Chilean military, and forestry transnationals. Some Mapuche groups are seeking greater autonomy within the Chilean state, while others are struggling for full sovereignty. And the movement of people fighting against the ravages of capitalism is becoming increasingly libertarian, as the communist and socialist parties all renounced the struggle and scrambled for positions in government after the transition to democracy. A hundred years ago anarchists played a major role in the workers’ movement, and starting in the ’90s they became prominent again, as punk music spread new forms of cultural resistance the traditional left wouldn’t touch, and as many ex-combatants from the armed leftwing groups that struggled against Pinochet developed a critique of their own internal authoritarianism.</p>
<p>To squash the Mapuche struggle, the state has frequently used the Pinochet-era anti-terrorism law against activists and warriors accused of such light acts as setting logging trucks ablaze or threatening landowners. The situation has reached such absurd proportions that after one altercation in which a landowner sustained what could only be categorized as “minor injuries,” prosecutors subsequently spoke of “terroristic minor injury.”</p>
<p>Thirty-four Mapuche prisoners are currently on hunger strike, most of them since July 12, with a list of four demands:</p>
<p>– An end to the anti-terrorist law and its application in cases against the Mapuche.</p>
<p>– An end to the double jeopardy by which Mapuche can be tried in civil and military court.</p>
<p>– Freedom for all Mapuche political prisoners.</p>
<p>– A demilitarization of Mapuche lands.</p>
<p>Their struggle has received support across Walmapu (the Mapuche lands), from anarchists, and from the broader Chilean left. In Santiago, the capital of Chile, which has never been a bastion of the Mapuche struggle, the walls are covered in graffiti and posters calling for their freedom, and there are weekly protest marches and Mapuche cultural festivals that regularly draw over a thousand people.</p>
<p>In order to defuse the situation before the bicentenary, the government proposed a modification of the anti-terrorist law. When the Mapuche prisoners and their supporters rejected the reform, declaring that it did not meet their demands and would only make things worse, the government retracted the carrot and brought out the stick. On the weekend of September 11th, police arrested three spokespeople for the hungerstrikers while they were on their way to the hospital in Concepcion to visit some of the prisoners who had been transferred there so they could be force fed intraveneously. The arrests have been widely denounced, as they make it impossible for the coordinating committee of supporters to make joint decisions and declarations. It seems certain that the hunger strike will continue through the bicentenary celebrations.</p>
<p>On August 14 of this year, police in Santiago and Valparaiso raided seventeen houses and three anarchist social centers, two of which they closed down, in the process destroying one of the country’s most important anarchist libraries. Police arrested fourteen people, accusing them of “illegal association” and the “planting of explosive devices.” Over the past couple years, a number of clandestine groups have taken responsibility for a string of small bombings targeting government institutions, banks, multinationals, the media, and other targets. The bombings were all carried out at night, and no one was ever hurt. In May, 2009, one anarchist, Mauricio Morales, died while transporting a bomb. Over the same time period, the media have consistently tried to mobilize fear and panic, and present the anarchists as public enemy number one.</p>
<p>Enabling the police to make their case despite a total lack of evidence, the media described the open social centers and libraries as “command centers.” During the raids, no explosives were found, but the media reported “traces of TNT,” which in reality were nitrate traces that could have come from a plethora of benign sources. The people arrested were public anarchist organizers, many of whom did not know each other, but the media portrayed them as a hierarchical clandestine organization (a necessary component for the “illegal organization” charge) with leaders and followers, and a detailed chain of command. In fact, Chile’s leading newspapers were somehow able to release more information about this terrorist organization than the police could present in their accusation.</p>
<p>After the initial bombardment, there has been something of a media blackout on the case. Ten of the detainees are in maximum security prison awaiting trial, and the other four are on conditional release. Their supporters are trying to spread the word about their case and build solidarity.</p>
<p>The Chilean government, which is building close ties with the European Union and the United States, is especially concerned with its public image abroad. After the collapse of the Argentine economy, relatively prosperous Chile has taken over the role of neoliberal poster child for South America. But as is true everywhere, that prosperity comes with an ugly underside. What the politicians in Santiago are wishing for more than anything else this September 18th, their independence day, is that the citizens keep waving their flags, keep believing in the illusion of national unity and social peace, and that they believe in the myth of only one kind of terrorism, the kind from below, and trust their government to protect them from it. Despite the opposing histories that manifest on September 11th between the US and Chile, it’s really not so different here, on the other side of the world.</p> | 3,032 |
<p>There is reason to suspect that higher dosages of a certain type of antidepressant has the potential to increase the risk of suicide in younger persons, according to a new study. Published in JAMA Internal Medicine on April 28, the study concluded that higher dosages of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) could bring about an increase in the suicide rates of children, teens and young adults seeking treatment for depression.</p>
<p>There has been concern regarding whether or not SSRIs have this effect on suicidal tendencies in youth for many years. SSRIs have had a black box warning on their labels since 2004, when the FDA released a report that showed the rate of suicide among teens and children nearly doubled with the use of SSRIs, as compared to a placebo. Since 2007, this warning has extended to young adults under the age of 25.</p>
<p>Other research from 2007 indicated that suicide rates continued to climb, even though SSRIs were being prescribed to children and teens 22 percent less often. That study concluded that SSRIs seemed to have been helping reduce suicide occurrences, not elevate them. A review of research literature from that same year came to a similar conclusion and stated that there was more to gain from the use of SSRIs than there were risks.</p>
<p>This latest study approached the issue from a new angle and examined the relationship between elevated doses and suicidal behavior. Researchers examined data from 162,000 patients who received a prescription for an SSRI to treat depression from 1998 to 2010. The patients ranged in age from 10 through 64 years. The study focused on prescriptions for three major drugs, Prozac, Zoloft and Celexa. Each medication has a recommended dosage of 20 mg, 50 mg, and 20 mg, per day, respectively.</p>
<p>After analyzing the data, a clear trend was found among the 18 percent who had been prescribed higher than recommended dosages of the drug. Those under 24 years of age were twice as likely to harm themselves within a year of beginning treatment, the highest rate of which occurred within 90 days of starting the SSRI.</p>
<p>When controlling for age, history of depression, anxiety and suicide attempts, the pattern stood firm as a youth specific phenomena. While researchers do not deny that other factors could influence the rates of suicide among younger populations, they do urge doctors to initiate treatment at lower dosages for young adults and minors.</p>
<p /> | Study links high doses of antidepressants to suicide risk in youth | false | http://natmonitor.com/2014/04/28/study-links-high-doses-of-antidepressants-to-suicide-risk-in-youth/ | 2014-04-28 | 3left-center
| Study links high doses of antidepressants to suicide risk in youth
<p>There is reason to suspect that higher dosages of a certain type of antidepressant has the potential to increase the risk of suicide in younger persons, according to a new study. Published in JAMA Internal Medicine on April 28, the study concluded that higher dosages of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) could bring about an increase in the suicide rates of children, teens and young adults seeking treatment for depression.</p>
<p>There has been concern regarding whether or not SSRIs have this effect on suicidal tendencies in youth for many years. SSRIs have had a black box warning on their labels since 2004, when the FDA released a report that showed the rate of suicide among teens and children nearly doubled with the use of SSRIs, as compared to a placebo. Since 2007, this warning has extended to young adults under the age of 25.</p>
<p>Other research from 2007 indicated that suicide rates continued to climb, even though SSRIs were being prescribed to children and teens 22 percent less often. That study concluded that SSRIs seemed to have been helping reduce suicide occurrences, not elevate them. A review of research literature from that same year came to a similar conclusion and stated that there was more to gain from the use of SSRIs than there were risks.</p>
<p>This latest study approached the issue from a new angle and examined the relationship between elevated doses and suicidal behavior. Researchers examined data from 162,000 patients who received a prescription for an SSRI to treat depression from 1998 to 2010. The patients ranged in age from 10 through 64 years. The study focused on prescriptions for three major drugs, Prozac, Zoloft and Celexa. Each medication has a recommended dosage of 20 mg, 50 mg, and 20 mg, per day, respectively.</p>
<p>After analyzing the data, a clear trend was found among the 18 percent who had been prescribed higher than recommended dosages of the drug. Those under 24 years of age were twice as likely to harm themselves within a year of beginning treatment, the highest rate of which occurred within 90 days of starting the SSRI.</p>
<p>When controlling for age, history of depression, anxiety and suicide attempts, the pattern stood firm as a youth specific phenomena. While researchers do not deny that other factors could influence the rates of suicide among younger populations, they do urge doctors to initiate treatment at lower dosages for young adults and minors.</p>
<p /> | 3,033 |
<p>A former miner turned DJ and TV presenter, Sir Jimmy Savile OBE was one of Britain’s most revered postwar pop icons. Through his dedication to charity work, he became a <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2012/10/31/jimmy-savile-sex-abuse-scandal-taints-entire-era-in-britain.html" type="external">confidant of Prince Charles and friend of the longest-serving prime minister of the U.K., Margaret Thatcher</a>. But Friday, following a three-month police investigation into allegations of sexual abuse, the late icon’s reputation came crumbling down. The new report released Friday, co-authored by the Metropolitan Police and the child-protection agency <a href="http://www.nspcc.org.uk/" type="external">the NSPCC</a> exposes Savile as a “prolific sex offender” who preyed on hundreds of young boys and girls during his 50-year career, exploiting the laxity and negligence of key pillars of British society in the process.</p>
<p>Titled <a href="http://www.nspcc.org.uk/news-and-views/our-news/child-protection-news/13-01-11-yewtree-report/yewtree-report_wda93650.html" type="external">Giving Victims a Voice</a> the 30-page testimony proves that a large number of Savile’s sexual assaults on minors took place on BBC premises. With elevated celebrity status as a presenter of the chart show Top of the Pops and massively popular primetime show Jim’ll Fix It, Savile was given access to his own private rooms. The failure of the BBC to fully investigate the allegations about Savile after his death in October 2011 (they ran three tribute shows instead) has already <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2012/10/23/bbc-director-general-faces-parliament-in-jimmy-saville-affair-can-the-bbc-restore-its-reputation.html" type="external">rocked the famous public-service broadcaster</a>, prompting the <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2012/11/10/bbc-scandal-blows-up-as-director-george-entwistle-resigns.html" type="external">resignation of its newly appointed director general, George Entwistle</a>, and raising questions about his predecessor, Mark Thompson, who took over the helm of The New York Times last year.</p>
<p>However, at Friday’s press conference, Scotland Yard Commander Peter Spindler told journalists that Savile had “groomed the nation” while using his fame to “hide in plain sight.” “His offending footprint was vast, predatory, and opportunistic,” Spindler said.</p>
<p>Of the 450 interviews and the more than 200 sexually related crimes, many took place in health-service or home-office premises where Savile enjoyed special status and access, often his own rooms, and considerable administrative power. Included in the report is a map and index of the alleged locations where the sexual abuse took place. Among the more prominent locations are Britain’s premier spinal-injuries unit, Stoke Mandeville, and its top high-security psychiatric hospital, Broadmoor. The list also includes 14 hospitals, 14 assaults in schools, and even a hospice for the dying. Nearly 73 percent of his victims were children, some of them as young as 8. One of the young boys was reportedly a terminally ill patient in Great Ormond Street Hospital during the 1970s. Out of the more than 200 crimes recorded, 126 were indecent assaults, 34 rapes.</p>
<p>Over a dozen internal inquiries have now been set up—from the BBC to the Prison Service—to investigate how Savile’s abuses went undetected for so long. The Crown Prosecution Service apologized today for failing to charge Savile in the 1970s, and issued new guidelines for investigating allegations of abuse. Meanwhile, Operation Yewtree, Scotland Yard’s investigation into “Savile and Others” has questioned 10 men, with one file of a 60-year-old man being sent to the crown prosecutors on Wednesday. Though Savile, who died in 2011 after a bout with pneumonia, is beyond justice, his $7 million estate could be subject to legal claims from victims.</p>
<p>But Friday’s press conference and report emphasized the most important compensation for most of the victims was simply having their traumatic experiences vindicated by a proper investigation, after years of skepticism, doubt, and disbelief. Trevor Sterling, a lawyer who represents 45 of Savile’s victims, explained their motivation for publishing the report to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/10/jimmy-savile-abuse-inquiry-published" type="external">The Guardian</a>. “They really want this report to be a cultural shift. But it still remains to be seen. The victims have had a very difficult time because all of this has been so public, and that has to some extent compounded their sense of distress. But the inquiry has been handled sensitively by the police and [the victims] feel this report marks an enormous release because they have been able to tell their stories and to be believed.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the story doesn’t stop with this report. The publicity around Savile has created a chain reaction, triggering other dormant child-abuse scandals from the ’80s and ’90s to rear their ugly heads. In October last year, the Labour MP Tom Watson—a key campaigner in exposing the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s News International newspaper group—used parliamentary privilege to demand Prime Minister David Cameron open up the police files on Peter Righton, a senior social worker and child-protection expert, who was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/was-there-a-paedophile-ring-in-no-10-mp-tom-watson-demands-probe-8224702.html" type="external">convicted</a> of possession of child pornography in 1995. Watson asserted that former child-protection officers had told him the police files suggested “clear intelligence of a widespread pedophile ring” with “of a link to a senior aide of a former prime minister.” Scotland Yard is taking these allegations seriously, and has opened a scoping investigation, Operation Fairbank, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/scotland-yard-investigating-allegations-senior-politicians-abused-children-in-the-1980s-and-used-connections-to-escape-justice-8411989.html" type="external">into claims</a> by some adults that they were sexually abused as children in a pedophile ring.</p>
<p>Even if there proves to be no evidence of organized pedophile activity in senior political circles, Friday’s reports into Savile’s abuses points to a systematic failure. According to Peter Garsden, a Manchester-based lawyer who heads up the <a href="http://www.childabuselawyers.com" type="external">Association of Child Abuse Lawyers</a> and has spent 20 years representing victims of institutional abuse, the report will be painful for the victims. “The news of the report will be of interest to other survivors of abuse, who will be triggered into past memories of pain, which they have left buried for too long,” Gardsen told The Daily Beast. Still, he hopes the report will prove a powerful vehicle for change. “What we need is a system that allows all survivors to be heard when they want to complain, something which is sadly lacking in our system of government.”</p>
<p>Whether child abuse happened in the upper echelons of British society may be an open question, but the failure to address it certainly came right from the top.</p> | Jimmy Savile Report: BBC Presenter Sexually Abused More Than 200 Minors | true | https://thedailybeast.com/jimmy-savile-report-bbc-presenter-sexually-abused-more-than-200-minors | 2018-10-05 | 4left
| Jimmy Savile Report: BBC Presenter Sexually Abused More Than 200 Minors
<p>A former miner turned DJ and TV presenter, Sir Jimmy Savile OBE was one of Britain’s most revered postwar pop icons. Through his dedication to charity work, he became a <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2012/10/31/jimmy-savile-sex-abuse-scandal-taints-entire-era-in-britain.html" type="external">confidant of Prince Charles and friend of the longest-serving prime minister of the U.K., Margaret Thatcher</a>. But Friday, following a three-month police investigation into allegations of sexual abuse, the late icon’s reputation came crumbling down. The new report released Friday, co-authored by the Metropolitan Police and the child-protection agency <a href="http://www.nspcc.org.uk/" type="external">the NSPCC</a> exposes Savile as a “prolific sex offender” who preyed on hundreds of young boys and girls during his 50-year career, exploiting the laxity and negligence of key pillars of British society in the process.</p>
<p>Titled <a href="http://www.nspcc.org.uk/news-and-views/our-news/child-protection-news/13-01-11-yewtree-report/yewtree-report_wda93650.html" type="external">Giving Victims a Voice</a> the 30-page testimony proves that a large number of Savile’s sexual assaults on minors took place on BBC premises. With elevated celebrity status as a presenter of the chart show Top of the Pops and massively popular primetime show Jim’ll Fix It, Savile was given access to his own private rooms. The failure of the BBC to fully investigate the allegations about Savile after his death in October 2011 (they ran three tribute shows instead) has already <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2012/10/23/bbc-director-general-faces-parliament-in-jimmy-saville-affair-can-the-bbc-restore-its-reputation.html" type="external">rocked the famous public-service broadcaster</a>, prompting the <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2012/11/10/bbc-scandal-blows-up-as-director-george-entwistle-resigns.html" type="external">resignation of its newly appointed director general, George Entwistle</a>, and raising questions about his predecessor, Mark Thompson, who took over the helm of The New York Times last year.</p>
<p>However, at Friday’s press conference, Scotland Yard Commander Peter Spindler told journalists that Savile had “groomed the nation” while using his fame to “hide in plain sight.” “His offending footprint was vast, predatory, and opportunistic,” Spindler said.</p>
<p>Of the 450 interviews and the more than 200 sexually related crimes, many took place in health-service or home-office premises where Savile enjoyed special status and access, often his own rooms, and considerable administrative power. Included in the report is a map and index of the alleged locations where the sexual abuse took place. Among the more prominent locations are Britain’s premier spinal-injuries unit, Stoke Mandeville, and its top high-security psychiatric hospital, Broadmoor. The list also includes 14 hospitals, 14 assaults in schools, and even a hospice for the dying. Nearly 73 percent of his victims were children, some of them as young as 8. One of the young boys was reportedly a terminally ill patient in Great Ormond Street Hospital during the 1970s. Out of the more than 200 crimes recorded, 126 were indecent assaults, 34 rapes.</p>
<p>Over a dozen internal inquiries have now been set up—from the BBC to the Prison Service—to investigate how Savile’s abuses went undetected for so long. The Crown Prosecution Service apologized today for failing to charge Savile in the 1970s, and issued new guidelines for investigating allegations of abuse. Meanwhile, Operation Yewtree, Scotland Yard’s investigation into “Savile and Others” has questioned 10 men, with one file of a 60-year-old man being sent to the crown prosecutors on Wednesday. Though Savile, who died in 2011 after a bout with pneumonia, is beyond justice, his $7 million estate could be subject to legal claims from victims.</p>
<p>But Friday’s press conference and report emphasized the most important compensation for most of the victims was simply having their traumatic experiences vindicated by a proper investigation, after years of skepticism, doubt, and disbelief. Trevor Sterling, a lawyer who represents 45 of Savile’s victims, explained their motivation for publishing the report to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/10/jimmy-savile-abuse-inquiry-published" type="external">The Guardian</a>. “They really want this report to be a cultural shift. But it still remains to be seen. The victims have had a very difficult time because all of this has been so public, and that has to some extent compounded their sense of distress. But the inquiry has been handled sensitively by the police and [the victims] feel this report marks an enormous release because they have been able to tell their stories and to be believed.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the story doesn’t stop with this report. The publicity around Savile has created a chain reaction, triggering other dormant child-abuse scandals from the ’80s and ’90s to rear their ugly heads. In October last year, the Labour MP Tom Watson—a key campaigner in exposing the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s News International newspaper group—used parliamentary privilege to demand Prime Minister David Cameron open up the police files on Peter Righton, a senior social worker and child-protection expert, who was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/was-there-a-paedophile-ring-in-no-10-mp-tom-watson-demands-probe-8224702.html" type="external">convicted</a> of possession of child pornography in 1995. Watson asserted that former child-protection officers had told him the police files suggested “clear intelligence of a widespread pedophile ring” with “of a link to a senior aide of a former prime minister.” Scotland Yard is taking these allegations seriously, and has opened a scoping investigation, Operation Fairbank, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/scotland-yard-investigating-allegations-senior-politicians-abused-children-in-the-1980s-and-used-connections-to-escape-justice-8411989.html" type="external">into claims</a> by some adults that they were sexually abused as children in a pedophile ring.</p>
<p>Even if there proves to be no evidence of organized pedophile activity in senior political circles, Friday’s reports into Savile’s abuses points to a systematic failure. According to Peter Garsden, a Manchester-based lawyer who heads up the <a href="http://www.childabuselawyers.com" type="external">Association of Child Abuse Lawyers</a> and has spent 20 years representing victims of institutional abuse, the report will be painful for the victims. “The news of the report will be of interest to other survivors of abuse, who will be triggered into past memories of pain, which they have left buried for too long,” Gardsen told The Daily Beast. Still, he hopes the report will prove a powerful vehicle for change. “What we need is a system that allows all survivors to be heard when they want to complain, something which is sadly lacking in our system of government.”</p>
<p>Whether child abuse happened in the upper echelons of British society may be an open question, but the failure to address it certainly came right from the top.</p> | 3,034 |
<p>Jan 25 (Reuters) - Elpro International Ltd:</p>
<p>* ACQUIRES 13.8 PERCENT SHAREHOLDING IN UNIT ELPRO ESTATES LIMITED Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United State announced sanctions on Thursday against 19 Russian individuals and five groups over malicious cyber activity including meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and cyber attacks, the Treasury Department said on Thursday.</p> FILE PHOTO: Voters cast their votes during the U.S. presidential election in Elyria, Ohio, U.S. November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk/File Photo
<p>“The administration is confronting and countering malign Russian cyber activity, including their attempted interference in U.S. elections, destructive cyber-attacks, and intrusions targeting critical infrastructure,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in a statement.</p>
<p>Mnuchin said additional sanctions were planned against Russian government officials and oligarchs.</p>
<p>U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign using hacking and propaganda, an effort that eventually included attempting to tilt the race in President Donald Trump’s favor. Russia denies interfering in the election.</p>
<p>Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Will Dunham</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain, the United States, Germany and France jointly called on Russia on Thursday to explain a military-grade nerve toxin attack on a former Russian double agent in England which they said threatened Western security.</p>
<p>After the first known offensive use of such a nerve agent on European soil since World War Two, Britain has pinned the blame on Russia and has given 23 Russians it said were spies working under diplomatic cover at the embassy in London a week to leave.</p>
<p>Russia has denied any involvement in the poisoning. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused London of behaving in a “boorish” way and suggested this was partly due to the problems Britain faces over its planned exit from the European Union next year.</p>
<p>Russia has refused Britain’s demands to explain how Novichok, a nerve agent first developed by the Soviet military, was used to strike down Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the southern English city of Salisbury.</p>
<p>“We call on Russia to address all questions related to the attack,” U.S. President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May said in their joint statement.</p>
<p>“It is an assault on UK sovereignty,” the leaders said. “It threatens the security of us all.”</p>
<p>While the statement signals a more coordinated response from Britain’s closest allies, it lacked any details about specific measures the West would take if Russia failed to comply.</p>
<p>The Western leaders said the use of the Novichok toxin was a clear breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention and international law.</p>
<p>They called on Russia to provide a complete disclosure of the Novichok program to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.</p>
<p>Russia says it knows nothing about the poisoning and has repeatedly asked Britain to supply a sample of the nerve agent that was used against Skripal.</p>
<p>TIT-FOR-TAT EXPULSIONS?</p> Security cameras are seen, and a flag flies outside the consular section of Russia's embassy in London, Britain, March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
<p>Skripal and his daughter have been critically ill since they were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, an elegant cathedral city, on March 4. A British policeman who was also poisoned is in a serious but stable condition.</p>
<p>May has directly accused President Vladimir Putin of being behind the attack. Putin, who casts himself as a strong leader able to stand up to a hostile West, is poised to win a fourth term in power on Sunday in Russia’s presidential election.</p>
<p>Russia is expected to respond soon to Britain’s decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats. Putin discussed relations with Britain at a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.</p>
<p>Putin, who took over as Kremlin chief from Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has tried to claw back some of the clout that Moscow lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He says the West has repeatedly tried to undermine Russia.</p> Slideshow (10 Images)
<p>Skripal, a former colonel in Russia’s GRU military intelligence, betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence before his arrest in Moscow in 2004.</p>
<p>He was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006, and in 2010 was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies. He was later granted British citizenship.</p>
<p>May on Thursday visited Salisbury, a normally sedate city where police investigators in chemical protection suits and the army have been removing evidence of the poisoning.</p>
<p>NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the attack in Britain was part of a pattern of reckless behavior from Russia over many years. He said Britain could count on NATO’s solidarity, but said there had been no request by London to activate the alliance’s mutual defense clause.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-may-salisbury/uk-pm-may-visits-city-where-russian-double-agent-was-poisoned-idUSKCN1GR1TH" type="external">UK PM May visits city where Russian double agent was poisoned</a>
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-allies/uk-u-s-france-germany-jointly-condemn-chemical-attack-on-ex-spy-idUSKCN1GR1VU" type="external">UK, U.S., France, Germany jointly condemn chemical attack on ex-spy</a>
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-lavrov/russia-hopes-ex-spy-will-recover-reveal-truth-about-poison-attack-idUSKCN1GR1KO" type="external">Russia hopes ex-spy will recover, reveal truth about poison attack</a>
<p>In London, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson defended the government’s response to the attack against critics who said it did not go far enough.</p>
<p>He suggested the authorities might also go after assets held in Britain by Russians close to Putin, though he gave no specific details.</p>
<p>His opposite number in Moscow, Lavrov, suggested that one possible motive for the poisoning was to complicate Russia’s hosting of this summer’s soccer World Cup.</p>
<p>Lavrov also said he hoped Skripal recovered from the attack so that he could shed light on what happened.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Estelle Shirbon, Elisabeth O'Leary and Costas Pitas in London and Edinburgh, William James in Salisbury, England, and Denis Pinchuk and Andrew Osborn in Moscow; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Gareth Jones</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - A Japanese Nobel-winning chemist was discovered wandering in rural Northern Illinois and his wife found dead nearby, some nine hours after they had been reported missing from their home 200 miles away, police said on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Nobel Prize winner Ei-ichi Negishi, 82, was transported to a local hospital for treatment after he was spotted walking near Rockford, Illinois, at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, the Ogle County Sheriff’s Department officials said in a written statement.</p>
<p>Deputies later found the couple’s car and the body of his wife, Sumire Negishi, at the nearby Ochard Hills Landfill, the sheriff’s department said. Rockford is about 100 miles west of Chicago.</p> Slideshow (2 Images)
<p>An autopsy was pending on the body of Sumire Negishi but foul play was not suspected in her death, the sheriff’s department said. No information was released on the condition of Ei-Ichi Negishi.</p>
<p>The couple was reported missing to the Indiana State Police at about 8 p.m. central time on Monday. They were last seen at their home in West Lafayette, near the Purdue University campus where Ei-Ichi is a professor of chemistry.</p>
<p>The scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2010.</p>
<p>Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Michael Perry</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Toys ‘R’ Us Inc, the iconic toy retailer, will shutter or sell its stores in the United States after failing to find a buyer or reach a deal to restructure billions in debt, putting at risk about 30,000 jobs.</p>
<p>The closure is a blow to hundreds of toy makers that sell their products at the chain’s U.S. stores, including Barbie maker Mattel Inc, board game company Hasbro Inc and other vendors like Lego.</p>
<p>“This is a profoundly sad day for us as well as the millions of kids and families who we have served for the past 70 years,” Chief Executive Officer Dave Brandon said.</p>
<p>With shoppers flocking to Amazon.com Inc and children choosing electronic gadgets over toys, Toys ‘R’ Us has struggled to boost sales and service debt following a $6.6 billion leveraged buyout by private equity firms in 2005.</p>
<p>Brokerage Jefferies estimated that 40 percent of the toy sales up for grabs as a result of the bankruptcy would flow to Amazon and 30 percent to Walmart.</p>
<p>Toys ‘R’ Us said on Thursday it was seeking approval to liquidate inventory in 735 U.S. stores, which debtors anticipate will close by the end of this year.</p>
<p>It is in talks to sell 200 of those stores as part of a deal to sell its 80-odd stores in Canada.</p>
<p>For its operations in Asia and Central Europe, including Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the company will pursue a reorganization and sale process. The already announced administration of its UK business will continue, the company said.</p>
<p>The wind-down follows a bruising holiday season, when the company failed to stay competitive and sales came in well below projections. The quarter accounts for 40 percent of its annual net sales.</p>
<p>Toys ‘R’ Us’ creditors said in a court filing that Target Corp, Walmart Inc and Amazon pricing toys at low-margins and a greater-than-expected decline in toy and gift card sales following its bankruptcy filing in September led to the weak performance in the quarter.</p> The logo of Toys R Us is seen on a store at Saint-Sebastien-sur-Loire near Nantes, France, March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
<p>“Even during recent store closeouts, Toys R Us failed to create any sense of excitement,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of retail research firm GlobalData Retail. “Its so-called heavy discounts remained well above the standard prices of many rivals.”</p> STORE CLOSURES
<p>Wayne, New Jersey-based Toys ‘R’ Us was already in the process of closing one fifth of its stores as part of an attempt to emerge from one of the largest ever bankruptcies by a specialty retailer.</p>
<p>In September, when the company operated more than 1,600 stores globally, with roughly 800 stores outside the United States, it got court permission to borrow more than $2 billion to start paying suppliers.</p> Slideshow (5 Images)
<p>But efforts to keep the business going collapsed after lenders decided that in the absence of a clear reorganization plan, they could recover more in a liquidation by closing stores and raising money from merchandise sales.</p>
<p>The company’s troubles mirror those of other mall-based retailers in the United States that have shut stores and fired employees in a bid to stay relevant.</p>
<p>More than 8,000 U.S. retail stores closed in 2017, roughly double the average annual store closures in the previous decade, according to data from the International Council of Shopping Centers.</p>
<p>The disappearance of Toys ‘R’ Us leaves a void for hundreds of toy makers that relied on the chain as a top customer alongside Walmart and Target.</p>
<p>Shares of Mattel and Hasbro tumbled last week on Toys ‘R’ Us’ liquidation reports. Both rely on Toys ‘R’ Us for roughly 10 percent of their revenues, according to their 2016 annual reports.</p>
<p>Jefferies cut its price targets for Hasbro, Mattel and a handful of other toymakers in a note early on Thursday, predicting the bankruptcy would depress 2018 revenue across the industry by between 2.5 percent and 5.5 percent.</p>
<p>“We ... expect the first half to be affected by reduced order flow from Toys ‘R’ Us and adjacent retailers, as companies like Target, Walmart, dollar stores, etc. reconcile inventory,” the brokerage said.</p>
<p>Reporting by Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Sayantani Ghosh</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | BRIEF-Elpro International Acquires 13.8 Pct Stake In Unit Elpro Estates U.S. hits Russians with sanctions for election meddling, cyber attacks West calls on Russia to explain nerve toxin attack on former double agent Nobel prize winner hospitalized, wife found deceased in Illinois Toys 'R' Us goes out of business, 30,000 jobs at stake | false | https://reuters.com/article/brief-elpro-international-acquires-138-p/brief-elpro-international-acquires-138-pct-stake-in-unit-elpro-estates-idUSFWN1PK0EF | 2018-01-25 | 2least
| BRIEF-Elpro International Acquires 13.8 Pct Stake In Unit Elpro Estates U.S. hits Russians with sanctions for election meddling, cyber attacks West calls on Russia to explain nerve toxin attack on former double agent Nobel prize winner hospitalized, wife found deceased in Illinois Toys 'R' Us goes out of business, 30,000 jobs at stake
<p>Jan 25 (Reuters) - Elpro International Ltd:</p>
<p>* ACQUIRES 13.8 PERCENT SHAREHOLDING IN UNIT ELPRO ESTATES LIMITED Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United State announced sanctions on Thursday against 19 Russian individuals and five groups over malicious cyber activity including meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and cyber attacks, the Treasury Department said on Thursday.</p> FILE PHOTO: Voters cast their votes during the U.S. presidential election in Elyria, Ohio, U.S. November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk/File Photo
<p>“The administration is confronting and countering malign Russian cyber activity, including their attempted interference in U.S. elections, destructive cyber-attacks, and intrusions targeting critical infrastructure,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in a statement.</p>
<p>Mnuchin said additional sanctions were planned against Russian government officials and oligarchs.</p>
<p>U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign using hacking and propaganda, an effort that eventually included attempting to tilt the race in President Donald Trump’s favor. Russia denies interfering in the election.</p>
<p>Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Will Dunham</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain, the United States, Germany and France jointly called on Russia on Thursday to explain a military-grade nerve toxin attack on a former Russian double agent in England which they said threatened Western security.</p>
<p>After the first known offensive use of such a nerve agent on European soil since World War Two, Britain has pinned the blame on Russia and has given 23 Russians it said were spies working under diplomatic cover at the embassy in London a week to leave.</p>
<p>Russia has denied any involvement in the poisoning. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused London of behaving in a “boorish” way and suggested this was partly due to the problems Britain faces over its planned exit from the European Union next year.</p>
<p>Russia has refused Britain’s demands to explain how Novichok, a nerve agent first developed by the Soviet military, was used to strike down Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the southern English city of Salisbury.</p>
<p>“We call on Russia to address all questions related to the attack,” U.S. President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May said in their joint statement.</p>
<p>“It is an assault on UK sovereignty,” the leaders said. “It threatens the security of us all.”</p>
<p>While the statement signals a more coordinated response from Britain’s closest allies, it lacked any details about specific measures the West would take if Russia failed to comply.</p>
<p>The Western leaders said the use of the Novichok toxin was a clear breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention and international law.</p>
<p>They called on Russia to provide a complete disclosure of the Novichok program to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.</p>
<p>Russia says it knows nothing about the poisoning and has repeatedly asked Britain to supply a sample of the nerve agent that was used against Skripal.</p>
<p>TIT-FOR-TAT EXPULSIONS?</p> Security cameras are seen, and a flag flies outside the consular section of Russia's embassy in London, Britain, March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
<p>Skripal and his daughter have been critically ill since they were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, an elegant cathedral city, on March 4. A British policeman who was also poisoned is in a serious but stable condition.</p>
<p>May has directly accused President Vladimir Putin of being behind the attack. Putin, who casts himself as a strong leader able to stand up to a hostile West, is poised to win a fourth term in power on Sunday in Russia’s presidential election.</p>
<p>Russia is expected to respond soon to Britain’s decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats. Putin discussed relations with Britain at a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.</p>
<p>Putin, who took over as Kremlin chief from Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has tried to claw back some of the clout that Moscow lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He says the West has repeatedly tried to undermine Russia.</p> Slideshow (10 Images)
<p>Skripal, a former colonel in Russia’s GRU military intelligence, betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence before his arrest in Moscow in 2004.</p>
<p>He was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006, and in 2010 was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies. He was later granted British citizenship.</p>
<p>May on Thursday visited Salisbury, a normally sedate city where police investigators in chemical protection suits and the army have been removing evidence of the poisoning.</p>
<p>NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the attack in Britain was part of a pattern of reckless behavior from Russia over many years. He said Britain could count on NATO’s solidarity, but said there had been no request by London to activate the alliance’s mutual defense clause.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-may-salisbury/uk-pm-may-visits-city-where-russian-double-agent-was-poisoned-idUSKCN1GR1TH" type="external">UK PM May visits city where Russian double agent was poisoned</a>
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-allies/uk-u-s-france-germany-jointly-condemn-chemical-attack-on-ex-spy-idUSKCN1GR1VU" type="external">UK, U.S., France, Germany jointly condemn chemical attack on ex-spy</a>
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-lavrov/russia-hopes-ex-spy-will-recover-reveal-truth-about-poison-attack-idUSKCN1GR1KO" type="external">Russia hopes ex-spy will recover, reveal truth about poison attack</a>
<p>In London, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson defended the government’s response to the attack against critics who said it did not go far enough.</p>
<p>He suggested the authorities might also go after assets held in Britain by Russians close to Putin, though he gave no specific details.</p>
<p>His opposite number in Moscow, Lavrov, suggested that one possible motive for the poisoning was to complicate Russia’s hosting of this summer’s soccer World Cup.</p>
<p>Lavrov also said he hoped Skripal recovered from the attack so that he could shed light on what happened.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Estelle Shirbon, Elisabeth O'Leary and Costas Pitas in London and Edinburgh, William James in Salisbury, England, and Denis Pinchuk and Andrew Osborn in Moscow; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Gareth Jones</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - A Japanese Nobel-winning chemist was discovered wandering in rural Northern Illinois and his wife found dead nearby, some nine hours after they had been reported missing from their home 200 miles away, police said on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Nobel Prize winner Ei-ichi Negishi, 82, was transported to a local hospital for treatment after he was spotted walking near Rockford, Illinois, at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, the Ogle County Sheriff’s Department officials said in a written statement.</p>
<p>Deputies later found the couple’s car and the body of his wife, Sumire Negishi, at the nearby Ochard Hills Landfill, the sheriff’s department said. Rockford is about 100 miles west of Chicago.</p> Slideshow (2 Images)
<p>An autopsy was pending on the body of Sumire Negishi but foul play was not suspected in her death, the sheriff’s department said. No information was released on the condition of Ei-Ichi Negishi.</p>
<p>The couple was reported missing to the Indiana State Police at about 8 p.m. central time on Monday. They were last seen at their home in West Lafayette, near the Purdue University campus where Ei-Ichi is a professor of chemistry.</p>
<p>The scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2010.</p>
<p>Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Michael Perry</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Toys ‘R’ Us Inc, the iconic toy retailer, will shutter or sell its stores in the United States after failing to find a buyer or reach a deal to restructure billions in debt, putting at risk about 30,000 jobs.</p>
<p>The closure is a blow to hundreds of toy makers that sell their products at the chain’s U.S. stores, including Barbie maker Mattel Inc, board game company Hasbro Inc and other vendors like Lego.</p>
<p>“This is a profoundly sad day for us as well as the millions of kids and families who we have served for the past 70 years,” Chief Executive Officer Dave Brandon said.</p>
<p>With shoppers flocking to Amazon.com Inc and children choosing electronic gadgets over toys, Toys ‘R’ Us has struggled to boost sales and service debt following a $6.6 billion leveraged buyout by private equity firms in 2005.</p>
<p>Brokerage Jefferies estimated that 40 percent of the toy sales up for grabs as a result of the bankruptcy would flow to Amazon and 30 percent to Walmart.</p>
<p>Toys ‘R’ Us said on Thursday it was seeking approval to liquidate inventory in 735 U.S. stores, which debtors anticipate will close by the end of this year.</p>
<p>It is in talks to sell 200 of those stores as part of a deal to sell its 80-odd stores in Canada.</p>
<p>For its operations in Asia and Central Europe, including Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the company will pursue a reorganization and sale process. The already announced administration of its UK business will continue, the company said.</p>
<p>The wind-down follows a bruising holiday season, when the company failed to stay competitive and sales came in well below projections. The quarter accounts for 40 percent of its annual net sales.</p>
<p>Toys ‘R’ Us’ creditors said in a court filing that Target Corp, Walmart Inc and Amazon pricing toys at low-margins and a greater-than-expected decline in toy and gift card sales following its bankruptcy filing in September led to the weak performance in the quarter.</p> The logo of Toys R Us is seen on a store at Saint-Sebastien-sur-Loire near Nantes, France, March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
<p>“Even during recent store closeouts, Toys R Us failed to create any sense of excitement,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of retail research firm GlobalData Retail. “Its so-called heavy discounts remained well above the standard prices of many rivals.”</p> STORE CLOSURES
<p>Wayne, New Jersey-based Toys ‘R’ Us was already in the process of closing one fifth of its stores as part of an attempt to emerge from one of the largest ever bankruptcies by a specialty retailer.</p>
<p>In September, when the company operated more than 1,600 stores globally, with roughly 800 stores outside the United States, it got court permission to borrow more than $2 billion to start paying suppliers.</p> Slideshow (5 Images)
<p>But efforts to keep the business going collapsed after lenders decided that in the absence of a clear reorganization plan, they could recover more in a liquidation by closing stores and raising money from merchandise sales.</p>
<p>The company’s troubles mirror those of other mall-based retailers in the United States that have shut stores and fired employees in a bid to stay relevant.</p>
<p>More than 8,000 U.S. retail stores closed in 2017, roughly double the average annual store closures in the previous decade, according to data from the International Council of Shopping Centers.</p>
<p>The disappearance of Toys ‘R’ Us leaves a void for hundreds of toy makers that relied on the chain as a top customer alongside Walmart and Target.</p>
<p>Shares of Mattel and Hasbro tumbled last week on Toys ‘R’ Us’ liquidation reports. Both rely on Toys ‘R’ Us for roughly 10 percent of their revenues, according to their 2016 annual reports.</p>
<p>Jefferies cut its price targets for Hasbro, Mattel and a handful of other toymakers in a note early on Thursday, predicting the bankruptcy would depress 2018 revenue across the industry by between 2.5 percent and 5.5 percent.</p>
<p>“We ... expect the first half to be affected by reduced order flow from Toys ‘R’ Us and adjacent retailers, as companies like Target, Walmart, dollar stores, etc. reconcile inventory,” the brokerage said.</p>
<p>Reporting by Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Sayantani Ghosh</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | 3,035 |
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<p />
<p>Spain’s airport authority, AENA, said that during the first of four strike hours, passengers had to queue for some 40 minutes to get through the security filter but that this dropped to 20 minutes when the stoppage ended.</p>
<p>Barcelona-based newspaper La Vanguardia reported queues of more than an hour long at what is the beginning of one of Spain’s peak summer holiday weekends.</p>
<p>Government-ordered minimum services of 90 percent during the strike hours reduced the effect of the stoppages.</p>
<p>The workers’ union called the periodic stoppages for Friday, Sunday and Monday after talks failed to end the dispute with the private company, Eulen, which runs the service at El Prat airport.</p>
<p>AENA officials met with the representatives of the workers Friday to try to find a solution.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Passengers flying from Barcelona have been suffering delays of several hours to reach the boarding area in recent weeks because of the dispute, which centers on demands for more staff and better salaries. The workers plan an indefinite strike as of Aug. 14 if their demands are not accepted.</p>
<p>The association of Spanish airline companies, ACETA, said some 1,000 people have missed their flights since July 24 because of the dispute.</p>
<p>Barcelona’s airport, like others in Europe, was also affected by major delays in police passport controls following new European Union regulations several weeks ago.</p>
<p>Marti Serrate, president of Spain’s travel agency association Acave, said “people are terrified,” of missing their flights.</p>
<p>“We urge them to go to the airport at least four hours early so as not to get a nasty surprise,” he said, adding that “this shouldn’t have to be tolerated in 2017.”</p> | Staff strike creates queue chaos at Barcelona airport | false | https://abqjournal.com/1043315/staff-strike-creates-queue-chaos-at-barcelona-airport.html | 2017-08-04 | 2least
| Staff strike creates queue chaos at Barcelona airport
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<p />
<p>Spain’s airport authority, AENA, said that during the first of four strike hours, passengers had to queue for some 40 minutes to get through the security filter but that this dropped to 20 minutes when the stoppage ended.</p>
<p>Barcelona-based newspaper La Vanguardia reported queues of more than an hour long at what is the beginning of one of Spain’s peak summer holiday weekends.</p>
<p>Government-ordered minimum services of 90 percent during the strike hours reduced the effect of the stoppages.</p>
<p>The workers’ union called the periodic stoppages for Friday, Sunday and Monday after talks failed to end the dispute with the private company, Eulen, which runs the service at El Prat airport.</p>
<p>AENA officials met with the representatives of the workers Friday to try to find a solution.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Passengers flying from Barcelona have been suffering delays of several hours to reach the boarding area in recent weeks because of the dispute, which centers on demands for more staff and better salaries. The workers plan an indefinite strike as of Aug. 14 if their demands are not accepted.</p>
<p>The association of Spanish airline companies, ACETA, said some 1,000 people have missed their flights since July 24 because of the dispute.</p>
<p>Barcelona’s airport, like others in Europe, was also affected by major delays in police passport controls following new European Union regulations several weeks ago.</p>
<p>Marti Serrate, president of Spain’s travel agency association Acave, said “people are terrified,” of missing their flights.</p>
<p>“We urge them to go to the airport at least four hours early so as not to get a nasty surprise,” he said, adding that “this shouldn’t have to be tolerated in 2017.”</p> | 3,036 |
<p>The storms that have swept across the middle of the U.S. in recent weeks have caused extensive damage and a number of <a href="" type="internal">deaths</a>. And there's more potential danger: Perhaps 10,000 vehicles were seriously damaged or totaled in Texas alone, according to industry experts who worry that many of those could wind up back on the U.S. car market. Unsuspecting buyers may not realize the risks they face.</p>
<p>While flood-damaged vehicles can undergo cosmetic repairs, that often masks, rather than resolves, longer-term issues, such as rust, mold and mechanical problems that could plague buyers later on, experts warn.</p>
<p>"A car that's been in a flood, with the engine emerged for any length of time, will never be the same," Carl Sullivan, a veteran inspector for California-based Alliance Inspection Management, says.</p>
<p>The actual number of vehicles impacted by the flood is likely to be significantly higher than formally reported because many older models might not have relevant insurance coverage, notes the National Insurance Crime Bureau. Legally, any vehicle damaged or declared totaled due to flooding should have that clearly marked on their titles.</p>
<p>Most of them will either be scrapped and recycled or they may be broken down for parts. "Unfortunately, some of the flooded vehicles may be purchased at bargain prices, cleaned up, and then taken out of state where the VIN (the unique Vehicle Identification Number) is switched and the car is retitled with no indication it has been damaged," noted the NICB in a warning statement.</p>
<p>Appropriately, the process is known as "title washing." Meanwhile, individuals with flood-damaged cars with no insurance coverage may simply repair the vehicles and put them on the market without disclosing that information.CarFax, a service that helps used car buyers validate title information and a vehicle's history, estimates that a large number of damaged vehicles routinely go back on the market.</p>
<p>Of the 75,000 cars, trucks and crossovers affected by 1999's Hurricane Floyd, for example, CarFax estimated half were eventually resold.</p>
<p>That's not necessarily illegal, as long as buyers are told of the damage. While a flood-damaged vehicle might undergo extensive repairs, experts stress that long-term issues could emerge. They point to rust in areas where water might have pooled. Electrical circuits, such as head and taillights are more prone to shorting out. And mold can develop in hidden places.</p>
<p>Experts warn that today's vehicles are particularly prone to long-term issues due to the extensive use of microcomputer systems for everything from engine controls to safety devices.</p>
<p>They offer several tips for shoppers:</p> | Buyer Beware: Thousands of Flood-Damaged Cars Could Inundate Market | false | http://nbcnews.com/business/autos/buyer-beware-thousands-flood-damaged-cars-could-inundate-market-n371711 | 2015-06-09 | 3left-center
| Buyer Beware: Thousands of Flood-Damaged Cars Could Inundate Market
<p>The storms that have swept across the middle of the U.S. in recent weeks have caused extensive damage and a number of <a href="" type="internal">deaths</a>. And there's more potential danger: Perhaps 10,000 vehicles were seriously damaged or totaled in Texas alone, according to industry experts who worry that many of those could wind up back on the U.S. car market. Unsuspecting buyers may not realize the risks they face.</p>
<p>While flood-damaged vehicles can undergo cosmetic repairs, that often masks, rather than resolves, longer-term issues, such as rust, mold and mechanical problems that could plague buyers later on, experts warn.</p>
<p>"A car that's been in a flood, with the engine emerged for any length of time, will never be the same," Carl Sullivan, a veteran inspector for California-based Alliance Inspection Management, says.</p>
<p>The actual number of vehicles impacted by the flood is likely to be significantly higher than formally reported because many older models might not have relevant insurance coverage, notes the National Insurance Crime Bureau. Legally, any vehicle damaged or declared totaled due to flooding should have that clearly marked on their titles.</p>
<p>Most of them will either be scrapped and recycled or they may be broken down for parts. "Unfortunately, some of the flooded vehicles may be purchased at bargain prices, cleaned up, and then taken out of state where the VIN (the unique Vehicle Identification Number) is switched and the car is retitled with no indication it has been damaged," noted the NICB in a warning statement.</p>
<p>Appropriately, the process is known as "title washing." Meanwhile, individuals with flood-damaged cars with no insurance coverage may simply repair the vehicles and put them on the market without disclosing that information.CarFax, a service that helps used car buyers validate title information and a vehicle's history, estimates that a large number of damaged vehicles routinely go back on the market.</p>
<p>Of the 75,000 cars, trucks and crossovers affected by 1999's Hurricane Floyd, for example, CarFax estimated half were eventually resold.</p>
<p>That's not necessarily illegal, as long as buyers are told of the damage. While a flood-damaged vehicle might undergo extensive repairs, experts stress that long-term issues could emerge. They point to rust in areas where water might have pooled. Electrical circuits, such as head and taillights are more prone to shorting out. And mold can develop in hidden places.</p>
<p>Experts warn that today's vehicles are particularly prone to long-term issues due to the extensive use of microcomputer systems for everything from engine controls to safety devices.</p>
<p>They offer several tips for shoppers:</p> | 3,037 |
<p>An Army veteran’s dedication to duty has saved the Fourth of July parade for a town named after the holiday’s very essence.</p>
<p>Glen Phillips, a retired staff sergeant who served in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, found out in late June that his town of Liberty, Ky., wasn’t going to be holding its annual Independence Day parade after too few people had volunteered to get it organized.</p>
<p>Phillips decided to take matters into his own hands.</p>
<p>“I thought to myself, something about this isn’t right,” Phillips told <a href="" type="external">The Advocate Messenger</a>.&#160; “‘Lack of interest?’ That doesn’t sound like the Liberty I know,” he said.</p>
<p>But it was true.</p>
<p>Local chamber of commerce Executive Director Blaine Staat said only three people had shown up for two meetings to organize the event.</p>
<p>The city would still hold a 5K race, the ringing of the Liberty Bell replica and host a fireworks show, but the parade was out.</p>
<p>“We’re a small town and the same people are called upon year after year,” he told the Advocate Messenger. “Me and three other people just couldn’t get it done.”</p>
<p>Phillips thought that was because the meetings had only been advertised in the chamber’s email and in mentions on local radio. He took to Facebook, posting an angry message about a small town’s officials letting an important occasion drop off the radar.</p>
<p>That caused a stir – and ruffled some feathers – but in the end it got the parade going as local businesses have chipped in to supply food and refreshments for the festivities, which will include a wagon parade for kids along with the main event.</p>
<p>Volunteers are also being sought from local fire department, car and tractor clubs, motorcycle groups, 4-H clubs and other organization.</p>
<p>“Independence Day is for everyone,” Phillips said.</p>
<p>And not just in Liberty.</p>
<p>“Liberty, Kentucky, is America,” Phillips said on “Fox &amp; Friends” on Wednesday. “Small-town America.”</p>
<p>Check out the interview here.&#160; (Be warned, the audio runs out of sync with the video after a few seconds.)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Watch the latest video at &lt;a href="http://video.foxnews.com"&gt;video.foxnews.com&lt;/a&gt;</p> | Veteran’s outrage saves small town’s Fourth of July parade from ‘lack of interest’ | true | http://bizpacreview.com/2014/07/02/veterans-outrage-saves-small-towns-fourth-of-july-parade-from-lack-of-interest-129285 | 2014-07-02 | 0right
| Veteran’s outrage saves small town’s Fourth of July parade from ‘lack of interest’
<p>An Army veteran’s dedication to duty has saved the Fourth of July parade for a town named after the holiday’s very essence.</p>
<p>Glen Phillips, a retired staff sergeant who served in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, found out in late June that his town of Liberty, Ky., wasn’t going to be holding its annual Independence Day parade after too few people had volunteered to get it organized.</p>
<p>Phillips decided to take matters into his own hands.</p>
<p>“I thought to myself, something about this isn’t right,” Phillips told <a href="" type="external">The Advocate Messenger</a>.&#160; “‘Lack of interest?’ That doesn’t sound like the Liberty I know,” he said.</p>
<p>But it was true.</p>
<p>Local chamber of commerce Executive Director Blaine Staat said only three people had shown up for two meetings to organize the event.</p>
<p>The city would still hold a 5K race, the ringing of the Liberty Bell replica and host a fireworks show, but the parade was out.</p>
<p>“We’re a small town and the same people are called upon year after year,” he told the Advocate Messenger. “Me and three other people just couldn’t get it done.”</p>
<p>Phillips thought that was because the meetings had only been advertised in the chamber’s email and in mentions on local radio. He took to Facebook, posting an angry message about a small town’s officials letting an important occasion drop off the radar.</p>
<p>That caused a stir – and ruffled some feathers – but in the end it got the parade going as local businesses have chipped in to supply food and refreshments for the festivities, which will include a wagon parade for kids along with the main event.</p>
<p>Volunteers are also being sought from local fire department, car and tractor clubs, motorcycle groups, 4-H clubs and other organization.</p>
<p>“Independence Day is for everyone,” Phillips said.</p>
<p>And not just in Liberty.</p>
<p>“Liberty, Kentucky, is America,” Phillips said on “Fox &amp; Friends” on Wednesday. “Small-town America.”</p>
<p>Check out the interview here.&#160; (Be warned, the audio runs out of sync with the video after a few seconds.)</p>
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<p>Watch the latest video at &lt;a href="http://video.foxnews.com"&gt;video.foxnews.com&lt;/a&gt;</p> | 3,038 |
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<p>I have for some years now harbored a secret love for Janeane Garofalo. It’s just one of those things, as Cole Porter so aptly said. When, some years into my schoolboy infatuation, she started broadcasting on ‘Air America’, the left-wing radio syndicate which her program makes tolerable, it was almost as if I could feel the silky left hand of fate beck me like a wayward child toward her bosom. I mean ‘bosom’ in the sense of ‘The security and closeness likened to being held in a warm familial embrace’ (American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed.), not in the sense of warm, soft breasts upthrust by the reach of her arms twining around my neck, drawing us into the thirst-quenching embrace for which we have so long yearned. Scratch that, read ‘I have so long yearned’, let’s be scrupulously clear about this thing. As far as I know, Janeane Garofalo knows not and cares not if I live or die, and for that matter she’s probably dating some golden-haired Swedish Greenpeace activist. Damn him.</p>
<p>But this affection is not so far-fetched as it might at first appear. I’m getting to the religion part, show some patience, you enlightenment-thirsty swine. Ms. Garofalo is a close friend of Ben Stiller, the comedic actor perhaps best known for making Luke Wilson look taller. I count myself (and this may be base flattery, but I love the man) a friend of Ben Stiller’s designated producer, Stuart Cornfeld; in the capacity of wasting Stuart’s time I have beguiled many an hour at his offices, where Mr. Stiller also can be found weekdays, reading his mail or rubbing wax into raisins, a nervous habit he shares with Zbigniew Brzezinski. Thus I met Ben Stiller. Again the hand of fate guides me, whisper-light/ toward the fearsome object of my heart’s delight. Yes, it’s rhyming couplets, I’ve got it bad. However, there’s more. Ms. Garofalo appeared in a movie you haven’t seen yclept ‘Mystery Men’; she co-starred with the estimable William H. Macy, who is perhaps best known for doing his own stunts in the motion picture ‘Fargo’. I met Mr. Macy once on the Universal Studios backlot; people on the tram tour were waving and calling and as I happened to be walking next to him, I waved and called back. We had a good laugh about that, and then he knocked me down with a rubber Oscar statuette borrowed from the prop department. There are further skeins that seem to coil about myself and the indomitable she-elf of liberal talk radio: we both shop at Trader Joe’s, we have both tried to beat traffic by cutting down San Vicente Boulevard, to no avail; we are both prone to respiratory illnesses, and we have both petted aging pugs and washed our hands afterwards to get the dog cheese off our fingers. I daresay in other ways our paths have crossed, back and forth until they are woven together like a pair of woven paths. And yet, it’s all in my head, just like my parole officer says.</p>
<p>It is just this way with God. Once a person gets the notion of an interested or personal god into his or her mind, evidences of the divine seem to crop up everywhere. Coincidence, such as the time I trolled the lunch buffet at an Indian restaurant on Melrose only three days before Ms. Garofalo went to the Chinese restaurant two blocks west, suddenly takes on the significance of a mystical portent. The shapes of clouds, a notice posted on the wall of the oil change place, the disappearance of a sock from a load of laundry that never for one instant left your sight: these things become abodements of a higher power coyly peeping through the Venetian blinds of reality to see if you can take a hint. Now if one were to put aside the idea of god and yet retain the occult aspect of things, one could turn easily enough to divination, otherwise known as areolation: acultomancy, cleidomancy, selenomancy and its trick cousin catoptromancy, icthyomancy, the challenging art of scatomancy, or if you have some frogs to hand, batraquomancy; but this sort of thing doesn’t let a fellow in on the Big Plan, the Divine Mystery. It’s rather like reading bits torn out of a book for free when one might read the entire thing by subscription. Either way, the idea is to find out how it ends.</p>
<p>Why do people need religion at all? I mean other than to get on the Creator’s good side, in case he’s got a long memory. As noted in the first part of this epic peregrination through the wilderness of faith, man or Man seeks some reassurance that there is the slightest bit of purpose or meaning to his existence. And same man, or the taller man standing to his left, wants to know whether the universe ‘just happened’ or if somebody planned the whole thing out; and if so, did he lose the instructions? That man’s wife, meanwhile, would like to know if there is life after death, and if so, will the Kirschners be there? Because she can’t stand Mrs. Kirschner. The questions we hold, the purposes we assign to religion fall into a general topic called ‘theology’ which can be broken into a few steaming chunks as follows:</p>
<p>Theology: the existence and nature of God</p>
<p>Revealed Theology: does God exist for me? And if so, how much?</p>
<p>Anthropology: what is man?</p>
<p>Soteriology: how can my soul be saved? Do I have to save the whole thing?</p>
<p>Thanatology: what comes after death?</p>
<p>Armed with these simple concepts, mankind has nearly rendered himself extinct time and time again. But it is useful to understand that the very nature of God has occupied a great deal of human thought, and as it says on the side of the box, “results may vary”.</p>
<p>Also in the previous installment (if you haven’t read it yet, it’s a corker for sheer word count alone) I made note of the fact that I am a Buddhist, and went on to explain in terms so simple only a child could understand them how the Buddhist notion of becoming an empty vessel into which life could flow unimpeded every moment would allow one to become, for lack of a less threadbare term, ‘one with the universe’. This one-ness, or ‘godhead’, as it is also known, was originally intended to serve a Hindu concept that Scrabble lovers call ‘panentheism’, or the existence of God through the collective nature of all things, as well as outside all things. This is otherwise known as the ‘All in God’ doctrine, or in street slang, ‘monistic theism’. For this purpose, what you need to understand (and if you do, you’re ahead of me) is that this concept places God within everything, and everything within God.</p>
<p>Now a Christian, even a relatively alert one, will tend to scoff at this idea. According to ‘theist’ Christian doctrine (the word ‘doctrine’ means ‘a principle or principles set forth for belief or acceptance’, from the Latin ‘doctrina’, meaning ‘horse doping’), God is just the one cat, although confusingly divided into three persons, and independent of His creation, although he takes an active interest in the doings; theism is distinct from ‘deism’, wherein God set things up and then walked away, probably in disgust, and refuses to even crack the door to see how his wee little folk are getting along. And just as well, too. We have made a hash of it. So far, so good. But mankind’s relationship with God, Gods, or whatever the Prime Mover can be said to be, is like a shattered mirror. It’s been shivered into a million little bits, each reflecting the same thing. There’s Narayana, pantheism, polytheism, henotheism (many gods, but I choose that one), dualism, its grandchild Manichaeism, the one god out of many out of one that comprise Brahman, and hundreds more variations, including good old Taoism, toward which scientific discovery seems ever to be advancing: a kind of formless metaphysical Yes and No from which come all and nothing. I said these all reflect the same thing, like bits of a broken mirror. But what is it? An immense asparagus? Cthulu? Charleton Heston? Nay. Reflected in all gods is one form: Man himself. Kapow!</p>
<p>Which leads me back to the delectable she-badger, Janeane Garofalo. No, sorry, Buddha. Buddha, who for the record was a relatively lean individual, probably similar in the beam to Ghandi, (the roly-poly gink with whom Buddha is associated is in fact a Buddhist monk that achieved Buddahood during the Liang Dynasty in China name of Pu-Tai) was wait, I lost the thread of my own sentence. Start again. Buddha was (okay, I’m back at the controls) not making any explicit proposition about the nature of God. This may be the primary reason that Buddhism seems to take root in such odd places, without the slightest missionary influence, similar to those Chinese doughnut shops. It’s something one happens upon, and some little valve inside the old noggin goes ‘click’ and one starts pursuing the subject, fervently or not, but pleasingly free of the threat of some cranky old bearded party hovering around behind the nearest cumulonimbus waiting to sling a thunderbolt or a blistering case of shingles or whatnot if we put a foot wrong. Buddhism is a trail of bread crumbs. And what you discover after a decade or two of following them around is it’s not so much a trail as it is an even coating, like cosmic Shake n’ Bake. Evidences of the Way are everywhere you look. Then you realize there is no trail; the answer is right where you’re standing, and it always has been, and there isn’t any answer in the first place: without ourselves, god cannot exist, subjectively speaking; nor ourselves without god, objectively speaking. The punch line here is of course that we may not exist in any case, because whatever proofs we have that we do exist, we only have because we think we exist in the first place. In other words, the whole thing may just be a terrible misunderstanding. This is catnip to a pseudointellectual like me. Buddha had the good sense not to put a dog in that fight. What is, is. What is not, is not. How the hell would you know? Best not to presume.</p>
<p>Quantum physics keeps working its way around to this point of view, by the way, which pleases us Buddhist types no end. The universe is really just made up of bits of energy organized into matter: hence heat, cold, mass, void, antimatter: all permutations of states of energy, or the absence thereof. But what is energy? I mean other than AA batteries and diesel fuel. It is the capacity to do work. What is work? (As if I’d know, not having held a proper job in ten years.) Work is the transfer of energy. So to put it another way, sideways in this case, tilted slightly downward at the near end, energy may be said to be the potential for something to happen. Okay, next: what does it mean to ‘happen’? To come into being. So the entire universe, from the mightiest galaxy to the lowliest crumb of earwax, is nothing more or less than the potential for beingness. If you want to get even nuttier (I swear I’m not stoned), remember that for something to come into being there are three prerequisites: a pair of states (being and not being, expressed in time) an operator (something to be or not be, expressed in space) and an observer (a medium by which both states of the operator can be known to have existed).</p>
<p>So Hamlet was a physicist, and Shakespeare beat Einstein and Steven Hawking by 500 years. To be, or not to be, that really is the question, or rather, the solution. That table is not a table, it’s a bunch of energy shaped like a table (how did I know there was a table? Batraquomancy). Science has proven everything is made of energy, insofar as there can be proof of anything. If you doubt the table’s existence, strike your head smartly against the leading edge of it, and call that proof sufficient to our purpose. Some energy is harder than other energy, but it is all energy: fire, Jupiter (the planet, not the god), cast-iron lawn jockeys, the blood running freely out of the gash on your head, even the Pia Zadora movie ‘Butterfly’ is made of energy, although not much of it. The entire universe, from stem to stern (a tremendous distance if we take infinity into account, which also explains the wait times for a table at Gramercy Tavern in Manhattan, a function of the mechanics of Relativity) is a bunch of potential for beingness, which means at any given moment (you need a really good watch with a hacking second feature for this) the universe both is, and isn’t, depending upon the state all that energy happens to be (or not be) in at that moment. Buddha sorted this out after a few weeks sitting under a tree, although he didn’t put in quite these terms. I, on the other hand, haven’t the foggiest idea what I’m talking about, despite the benefit of 2,500 years of further consideration on the subject. Slãinte!</p>
<p>Which leads me back, like a bull with a ring through his nose, to Janeane Garofalo. It is to her that the bread crumbs lead. After all, she’s made of energy just like everything else. And how. Buddha said, or at least left to assumption (we’re back to him again), in a Hindu kind of way that we are all inherently suffused with god, although God is also god, not merely the sum of us parts; but what with birth, death, the demands of physical existence (picking up the dry cleaning, choosing a good college, finding a Dick Francis novel you haven’t read yet to take on the flight to Miami, and so forth) we lose touch with that inner godness (or godhead, if the term doesn’t make you blush). But it doesn’t go away, as did the Christian pre-Original Sin state of innocence, although godhead could be said to be analogous to it (the Garden of Eden as a metaphor for a time before knowledge, before ‘I am’ took the place of ‘is’, before undergarments were invented); rather we are always already holy beings, requiring only to stop knowing or not knowing and instead simply be, at which instant there is no knowing or not knowing, there is only what there is, and there’s Vishnu, or YWH, or Gaia, or Cihuacoatl, or whatever essential god inflates your balloon, already there. Then you may live or die with equanimity, because your essential being, which is and is not throughout eternity, cannot be unmade, only obscured. On the other hand, try getting your driver’s license in that condition.</p>
<p>So what have we learned here? Theology is the study of god and man together, just as mixology is the study of alcohol and man together. The author of this piece is a Buddhist. The original Buddha was not a fat guy. Therefore, the author of this piece is not a fat guy. And the existence a priori of god or God requires the existence of man or Man in order to be observed (hence to exist, because the state of being observed is not just the effect but the cause of beingness), but is subjectively inobservable, or at least recondite to a fault, unproven or proven depending upon the observer’s interpretation of phenomena that might equally evidence or confute God; or otherwise ontological reasoning, through which logic is applied to the problem (i.e. St. Anselm’s proposition of a being than which no greater can be conceived, which can be proven by pure argument, or Plato’s dialogue proving the existence of the eternal soul based upon his ‘Doctrine of Opposites’, assuming you buy the analogy he uses that soul and body are opposites like heat and cold; one merely has to watch an early Raquel Welch movie to realize they’re all the same thing) and proofs tendered. In other words, God does exist, as well as the eternal soul of man, and I can prove it to me, which ought to prove it to you, but unfortunately this is impossible so instead I will mount a Crusade and kill you and all of your relatives and burn down your city.</p>
<p>The Bible, which this humble author has read three times right through, including the entire genealogical progression, the laws (Leviticus explains why so many Fundamentalists are blockheads: “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard”) and Revelations, which seems to have been written by Clive Barker on methamphetamine, and which he (this author, not Mr. Barker) has read (in case you forgot where this sentence started I repeated the part about me having read) yet again in bits and pieces for research purposes over the course of two score years, is not a bad book, all told. It is in fact the Good Book. Another excellent book, which the author has only read twice, on each occasion to his profit (insert prophet joke here, I will not cheapen myself) is the Koran, or as it is lately styled, ‘the Quran’, to remind us that it is favored by the terrorist group al Qaeda. Then again you could not ask for a better summer beach read than the Jewish Talmud, although I never finished that one. It’s not violent enough. Also, it is divided into the Mishnah and the Gemara, and I should warn interested readers that once you get through the Mishnah, if you think it’s going to be about a giant Japanese fire-breathing turtle monster after that, you will be sorely disappointed. The turtle’s name is Gamera.</p>
<p>Then there’s the 4 Vedas of Hindu antiquity, which I read at college under the misapprehension that there were dirty parts, the Upanishads in general, which take mental concentration that would tax Lex Luthor to absorb properly, but are the root of my good old Buddhism (shout out to Yajnavalk, neti-neti!); the list of sacred texts goes on and on. The reason I mention these books (no offense to the thousands of other essential works not specifically denigrated here, from the Tao te-Ching through the Songs of Odin) is because there is a wealth of material the eager student of the divine can explore, and if you explore enough of it, you soon begin to suspect that everybody is fooling themselves. There’s lots of good history (and terrible history, but some fine tall tales) and rich philosophy and explorations of moral and legal precepts without which civilization could never have been developed; who knows, someday it might even happen. But the religious ideas people keep killing each other about, the things they so vehemently disagree on, all have one thing in common: they are divergent interpretations of a shared, previous idea.</p>
<p>Thus Christians give it to the Jews with both barrels, their only point of agreement being that the Muslims must all be killed; the Muslim and the Jew go at it hammer and tongs even in the absence of Christian on-egging. This is because they are all children of the exact same God. The Hindu and the Sikh just can’t stop setting fire to each other because their religions spring from the same root. And so on, all around the globe. Buddhists, being Buddhists, don’t usually start wars on religious grounds; instead they engage in ferocious infighting to determine who is the most enlightened. Sutras and sutures. But every religion has somebody to loathe, and it’s pretty much always the dudes with the closest variation on the same theme. Not everybody that subscribes to every religion is this way, please make note. Just the ones with persecution complexes that lead uptight, rigid, judgmental little lives dedicated to making other people wrong. You may even have met such people yourself.</p>
<p>So maybe the atheist has it right. If the cultural role of religion is to establish a benchmark for right behavior, a moral standard upheld by the promise of a red-hot pitchfork up your bottom for all eternity if you don’t observe the rules, well and good. But right behavior predicated on the simple notion that this life is all any of us has, so every life ought to be treated with respect: that’s just as valid an approach, no heaven or hell required. If the spiritual role of religion is to help us know the nature of our souls, the possibility of eternal being and redemption, and to illuminate the nature of the Prime Mover or God, that’s dandy too. But as the last 10,000 years of religion have demonstrated, nobody knows a blind thing whatsoever. How dare we presume to know what cannot be known? This is why men won’t ask the way at a filling station when they get lost on the I-87 right around Exit 7 where it connects with the Cross Bronx Expressway: although it is unknowable, yet they believe it has been revealed, if not to them, then to the guy they got the directions from before they left. It comes down to choosing your favorite anecdote about the person that God revealed himself to in private (Zeus visits the maiden Leda kitted out as a swan, begetting the Dioscuri; YWH appears to Moses in the form of a burning bush, begetting the diaspora, and so forth) and then damning anybody that won’t go along with it. The atheist, meanwhile, sees a lot of metaphors with similar moral underpinnings, except, unlike for example Perrault’s Fairy Tales or Tolkein’s Ring Trilogy, people kill each other over them.</p>
<p>And I’m not just being obtuse. I’d like to think that there is a god or group of gods out there that are responsible for this incomprehensible madhouse we collectively call ‘existence’, and that there is a plan in place, however poorly it might be going, and furthermore that it’s such a clever plan that the appearance of utter chaos is in fact evidence of a superstructure of order so complex, so infinite in its grandeur and subtlety, that we puny humans couldn’t comprehend it even if we all joined our brains together with a good quality speaker wire such as Monster Cable and thought about nothing else for a billion years. I’d like to think that when I die, if I lived a fairly decent life and didn’t engage in baby-eating or personally extinct any major species of owl, I will be embraced by the Creator, welcomed back to the nourishing bosom of Janeane Garofalo (sorry, the nourishing bosom of Eternal Love, I meant to say) as if I were a beloved child gone out in my rubber boots and slicker for a splash in the mud puddles on a rainstormy afternoon, now returned for cocoa and a nap by the radiator.</p>
<p>Nothing would please me more than that. I’d get to see all my dead friends again, including my Aunt Ada, and my best dead friend of all, Bear the German Shepherd, who I still miss terribly though he went away to hunt the sky bunnies years ago; and I’d always have time to visit with everybody no matter what time they called or what I was supposed to be doing instead, and once I was dead I could learn an instrument and get good at playing ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’, because there is. Preferably the tenor saxophone part. I really would like to think that. But unless the Divine Personage Himself, Herself, Itself, or Unself comes along and taps me on the shoulder and hands me a written, signed, and notarized proof that is undeniable and in which no human agency has intervened, I’m fresh out of luck.</p>
<p>Then again, I cannot presume to say none of this is so, because God, like Death, is inherently inscrutable to the mortal scrutinizing apparatus with which we are equipped. I can only say that I do not know. It could turn out that some animist cult during the Pleistocene Era had it all right, and the rest of us have been completely off-base ever since. Anubis might even now be getting miffed at the sharp fall-off in numbers of his devotees and in a few months we will all get a dose of celestial whupass for not holding scarab beetles sacred. I do not know. Which is what I like about Buddhism. You can believe what you can believe: whatever the Truth is, it’s right there inside of you, it always has been, and it always will be, and you will know it when you find it, but it’s okay if you never find it, because it can’t be expressed in human terms anyway. So one more time with feeling:</p>
<p>What is the sound of one hand clapping?</p>
<p>Janeane Garofalo.</p>
<p>BEN TRIPP is an independent filmmaker and all-around swine. His book, Square In The Nuts, may be purchased here, with other outlets to follow: <a href="http://www.lulu.com/Squareinthenuts" type="external">http://www.lulu.com/Squareinthenuts</a> . Swag is available as always from <a href="http://www.cafeshops/tarantulabros" type="external">http://www.cafeshops/tarantulabros</a> . And Mr. Tripp may be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
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<p>CLARIFICATION</p>
<p>ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH</p>
<p>We published an article entitled “A Saudiless Arabia” by Wayne Madsen dated October 22, 2002 (the “Article”), on the website of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org (the “Website”).</p>
<p>Although it was not our intention, counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.</p>
<p>We do not have any evidence connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism.</p>
<p>As a result of an exchange of communications with Mr Al Amoudi’s lawyers, we have removed the Article from the Website.</p>
<p>We are pleased to clarify the position.</p>
<p>August 17, 2005</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Epistle II: the Reawakening | true | https://counterpunch.org/2005/10/15/epistle-ii-the-reawakening/ | 2005-10-15 | 4left
| Epistle II: the Reawakening
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<p>I have for some years now harbored a secret love for Janeane Garofalo. It’s just one of those things, as Cole Porter so aptly said. When, some years into my schoolboy infatuation, she started broadcasting on ‘Air America’, the left-wing radio syndicate which her program makes tolerable, it was almost as if I could feel the silky left hand of fate beck me like a wayward child toward her bosom. I mean ‘bosom’ in the sense of ‘The security and closeness likened to being held in a warm familial embrace’ (American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed.), not in the sense of warm, soft breasts upthrust by the reach of her arms twining around my neck, drawing us into the thirst-quenching embrace for which we have so long yearned. Scratch that, read ‘I have so long yearned’, let’s be scrupulously clear about this thing. As far as I know, Janeane Garofalo knows not and cares not if I live or die, and for that matter she’s probably dating some golden-haired Swedish Greenpeace activist. Damn him.</p>
<p>But this affection is not so far-fetched as it might at first appear. I’m getting to the religion part, show some patience, you enlightenment-thirsty swine. Ms. Garofalo is a close friend of Ben Stiller, the comedic actor perhaps best known for making Luke Wilson look taller. I count myself (and this may be base flattery, but I love the man) a friend of Ben Stiller’s designated producer, Stuart Cornfeld; in the capacity of wasting Stuart’s time I have beguiled many an hour at his offices, where Mr. Stiller also can be found weekdays, reading his mail or rubbing wax into raisins, a nervous habit he shares with Zbigniew Brzezinski. Thus I met Ben Stiller. Again the hand of fate guides me, whisper-light/ toward the fearsome object of my heart’s delight. Yes, it’s rhyming couplets, I’ve got it bad. However, there’s more. Ms. Garofalo appeared in a movie you haven’t seen yclept ‘Mystery Men’; she co-starred with the estimable William H. Macy, who is perhaps best known for doing his own stunts in the motion picture ‘Fargo’. I met Mr. Macy once on the Universal Studios backlot; people on the tram tour were waving and calling and as I happened to be walking next to him, I waved and called back. We had a good laugh about that, and then he knocked me down with a rubber Oscar statuette borrowed from the prop department. There are further skeins that seem to coil about myself and the indomitable she-elf of liberal talk radio: we both shop at Trader Joe’s, we have both tried to beat traffic by cutting down San Vicente Boulevard, to no avail; we are both prone to respiratory illnesses, and we have both petted aging pugs and washed our hands afterwards to get the dog cheese off our fingers. I daresay in other ways our paths have crossed, back and forth until they are woven together like a pair of woven paths. And yet, it’s all in my head, just like my parole officer says.</p>
<p>It is just this way with God. Once a person gets the notion of an interested or personal god into his or her mind, evidences of the divine seem to crop up everywhere. Coincidence, such as the time I trolled the lunch buffet at an Indian restaurant on Melrose only three days before Ms. Garofalo went to the Chinese restaurant two blocks west, suddenly takes on the significance of a mystical portent. The shapes of clouds, a notice posted on the wall of the oil change place, the disappearance of a sock from a load of laundry that never for one instant left your sight: these things become abodements of a higher power coyly peeping through the Venetian blinds of reality to see if you can take a hint. Now if one were to put aside the idea of god and yet retain the occult aspect of things, one could turn easily enough to divination, otherwise known as areolation: acultomancy, cleidomancy, selenomancy and its trick cousin catoptromancy, icthyomancy, the challenging art of scatomancy, or if you have some frogs to hand, batraquomancy; but this sort of thing doesn’t let a fellow in on the Big Plan, the Divine Mystery. It’s rather like reading bits torn out of a book for free when one might read the entire thing by subscription. Either way, the idea is to find out how it ends.</p>
<p>Why do people need religion at all? I mean other than to get on the Creator’s good side, in case he’s got a long memory. As noted in the first part of this epic peregrination through the wilderness of faith, man or Man seeks some reassurance that there is the slightest bit of purpose or meaning to his existence. And same man, or the taller man standing to his left, wants to know whether the universe ‘just happened’ or if somebody planned the whole thing out; and if so, did he lose the instructions? That man’s wife, meanwhile, would like to know if there is life after death, and if so, will the Kirschners be there? Because she can’t stand Mrs. Kirschner. The questions we hold, the purposes we assign to religion fall into a general topic called ‘theology’ which can be broken into a few steaming chunks as follows:</p>
<p>Theology: the existence and nature of God</p>
<p>Revealed Theology: does God exist for me? And if so, how much?</p>
<p>Anthropology: what is man?</p>
<p>Soteriology: how can my soul be saved? Do I have to save the whole thing?</p>
<p>Thanatology: what comes after death?</p>
<p>Armed with these simple concepts, mankind has nearly rendered himself extinct time and time again. But it is useful to understand that the very nature of God has occupied a great deal of human thought, and as it says on the side of the box, “results may vary”.</p>
<p>Also in the previous installment (if you haven’t read it yet, it’s a corker for sheer word count alone) I made note of the fact that I am a Buddhist, and went on to explain in terms so simple only a child could understand them how the Buddhist notion of becoming an empty vessel into which life could flow unimpeded every moment would allow one to become, for lack of a less threadbare term, ‘one with the universe’. This one-ness, or ‘godhead’, as it is also known, was originally intended to serve a Hindu concept that Scrabble lovers call ‘panentheism’, or the existence of God through the collective nature of all things, as well as outside all things. This is otherwise known as the ‘All in God’ doctrine, or in street slang, ‘monistic theism’. For this purpose, what you need to understand (and if you do, you’re ahead of me) is that this concept places God within everything, and everything within God.</p>
<p>Now a Christian, even a relatively alert one, will tend to scoff at this idea. According to ‘theist’ Christian doctrine (the word ‘doctrine’ means ‘a principle or principles set forth for belief or acceptance’, from the Latin ‘doctrina’, meaning ‘horse doping’), God is just the one cat, although confusingly divided into three persons, and independent of His creation, although he takes an active interest in the doings; theism is distinct from ‘deism’, wherein God set things up and then walked away, probably in disgust, and refuses to even crack the door to see how his wee little folk are getting along. And just as well, too. We have made a hash of it. So far, so good. But mankind’s relationship with God, Gods, or whatever the Prime Mover can be said to be, is like a shattered mirror. It’s been shivered into a million little bits, each reflecting the same thing. There’s Narayana, pantheism, polytheism, henotheism (many gods, but I choose that one), dualism, its grandchild Manichaeism, the one god out of many out of one that comprise Brahman, and hundreds more variations, including good old Taoism, toward which scientific discovery seems ever to be advancing: a kind of formless metaphysical Yes and No from which come all and nothing. I said these all reflect the same thing, like bits of a broken mirror. But what is it? An immense asparagus? Cthulu? Charleton Heston? Nay. Reflected in all gods is one form: Man himself. Kapow!</p>
<p>Which leads me back to the delectable she-badger, Janeane Garofalo. No, sorry, Buddha. Buddha, who for the record was a relatively lean individual, probably similar in the beam to Ghandi, (the roly-poly gink with whom Buddha is associated is in fact a Buddhist monk that achieved Buddahood during the Liang Dynasty in China name of Pu-Tai) was wait, I lost the thread of my own sentence. Start again. Buddha was (okay, I’m back at the controls) not making any explicit proposition about the nature of God. This may be the primary reason that Buddhism seems to take root in such odd places, without the slightest missionary influence, similar to those Chinese doughnut shops. It’s something one happens upon, and some little valve inside the old noggin goes ‘click’ and one starts pursuing the subject, fervently or not, but pleasingly free of the threat of some cranky old bearded party hovering around behind the nearest cumulonimbus waiting to sling a thunderbolt or a blistering case of shingles or whatnot if we put a foot wrong. Buddhism is a trail of bread crumbs. And what you discover after a decade or two of following them around is it’s not so much a trail as it is an even coating, like cosmic Shake n’ Bake. Evidences of the Way are everywhere you look. Then you realize there is no trail; the answer is right where you’re standing, and it always has been, and there isn’t any answer in the first place: without ourselves, god cannot exist, subjectively speaking; nor ourselves without god, objectively speaking. The punch line here is of course that we may not exist in any case, because whatever proofs we have that we do exist, we only have because we think we exist in the first place. In other words, the whole thing may just be a terrible misunderstanding. This is catnip to a pseudointellectual like me. Buddha had the good sense not to put a dog in that fight. What is, is. What is not, is not. How the hell would you know? Best not to presume.</p>
<p>Quantum physics keeps working its way around to this point of view, by the way, which pleases us Buddhist types no end. The universe is really just made up of bits of energy organized into matter: hence heat, cold, mass, void, antimatter: all permutations of states of energy, or the absence thereof. But what is energy? I mean other than AA batteries and diesel fuel. It is the capacity to do work. What is work? (As if I’d know, not having held a proper job in ten years.) Work is the transfer of energy. So to put it another way, sideways in this case, tilted slightly downward at the near end, energy may be said to be the potential for something to happen. Okay, next: what does it mean to ‘happen’? To come into being. So the entire universe, from the mightiest galaxy to the lowliest crumb of earwax, is nothing more or less than the potential for beingness. If you want to get even nuttier (I swear I’m not stoned), remember that for something to come into being there are three prerequisites: a pair of states (being and not being, expressed in time) an operator (something to be or not be, expressed in space) and an observer (a medium by which both states of the operator can be known to have existed).</p>
<p>So Hamlet was a physicist, and Shakespeare beat Einstein and Steven Hawking by 500 years. To be, or not to be, that really is the question, or rather, the solution. That table is not a table, it’s a bunch of energy shaped like a table (how did I know there was a table? Batraquomancy). Science has proven everything is made of energy, insofar as there can be proof of anything. If you doubt the table’s existence, strike your head smartly against the leading edge of it, and call that proof sufficient to our purpose. Some energy is harder than other energy, but it is all energy: fire, Jupiter (the planet, not the god), cast-iron lawn jockeys, the blood running freely out of the gash on your head, even the Pia Zadora movie ‘Butterfly’ is made of energy, although not much of it. The entire universe, from stem to stern (a tremendous distance if we take infinity into account, which also explains the wait times for a table at Gramercy Tavern in Manhattan, a function of the mechanics of Relativity) is a bunch of potential for beingness, which means at any given moment (you need a really good watch with a hacking second feature for this) the universe both is, and isn’t, depending upon the state all that energy happens to be (or not be) in at that moment. Buddha sorted this out after a few weeks sitting under a tree, although he didn’t put in quite these terms. I, on the other hand, haven’t the foggiest idea what I’m talking about, despite the benefit of 2,500 years of further consideration on the subject. Slãinte!</p>
<p>Which leads me back, like a bull with a ring through his nose, to Janeane Garofalo. It is to her that the bread crumbs lead. After all, she’s made of energy just like everything else. And how. Buddha said, or at least left to assumption (we’re back to him again), in a Hindu kind of way that we are all inherently suffused with god, although God is also god, not merely the sum of us parts; but what with birth, death, the demands of physical existence (picking up the dry cleaning, choosing a good college, finding a Dick Francis novel you haven’t read yet to take on the flight to Miami, and so forth) we lose touch with that inner godness (or godhead, if the term doesn’t make you blush). But it doesn’t go away, as did the Christian pre-Original Sin state of innocence, although godhead could be said to be analogous to it (the Garden of Eden as a metaphor for a time before knowledge, before ‘I am’ took the place of ‘is’, before undergarments were invented); rather we are always already holy beings, requiring only to stop knowing or not knowing and instead simply be, at which instant there is no knowing or not knowing, there is only what there is, and there’s Vishnu, or YWH, or Gaia, or Cihuacoatl, or whatever essential god inflates your balloon, already there. Then you may live or die with equanimity, because your essential being, which is and is not throughout eternity, cannot be unmade, only obscured. On the other hand, try getting your driver’s license in that condition.</p>
<p>So what have we learned here? Theology is the study of god and man together, just as mixology is the study of alcohol and man together. The author of this piece is a Buddhist. The original Buddha was not a fat guy. Therefore, the author of this piece is not a fat guy. And the existence a priori of god or God requires the existence of man or Man in order to be observed (hence to exist, because the state of being observed is not just the effect but the cause of beingness), but is subjectively inobservable, or at least recondite to a fault, unproven or proven depending upon the observer’s interpretation of phenomena that might equally evidence or confute God; or otherwise ontological reasoning, through which logic is applied to the problem (i.e. St. Anselm’s proposition of a being than which no greater can be conceived, which can be proven by pure argument, or Plato’s dialogue proving the existence of the eternal soul based upon his ‘Doctrine of Opposites’, assuming you buy the analogy he uses that soul and body are opposites like heat and cold; one merely has to watch an early Raquel Welch movie to realize they’re all the same thing) and proofs tendered. In other words, God does exist, as well as the eternal soul of man, and I can prove it to me, which ought to prove it to you, but unfortunately this is impossible so instead I will mount a Crusade and kill you and all of your relatives and burn down your city.</p>
<p>The Bible, which this humble author has read three times right through, including the entire genealogical progression, the laws (Leviticus explains why so many Fundamentalists are blockheads: “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard”) and Revelations, which seems to have been written by Clive Barker on methamphetamine, and which he (this author, not Mr. Barker) has read (in case you forgot where this sentence started I repeated the part about me having read) yet again in bits and pieces for research purposes over the course of two score years, is not a bad book, all told. It is in fact the Good Book. Another excellent book, which the author has only read twice, on each occasion to his profit (insert prophet joke here, I will not cheapen myself) is the Koran, or as it is lately styled, ‘the Quran’, to remind us that it is favored by the terrorist group al Qaeda. Then again you could not ask for a better summer beach read than the Jewish Talmud, although I never finished that one. It’s not violent enough. Also, it is divided into the Mishnah and the Gemara, and I should warn interested readers that once you get through the Mishnah, if you think it’s going to be about a giant Japanese fire-breathing turtle monster after that, you will be sorely disappointed. The turtle’s name is Gamera.</p>
<p>Then there’s the 4 Vedas of Hindu antiquity, which I read at college under the misapprehension that there were dirty parts, the Upanishads in general, which take mental concentration that would tax Lex Luthor to absorb properly, but are the root of my good old Buddhism (shout out to Yajnavalk, neti-neti!); the list of sacred texts goes on and on. The reason I mention these books (no offense to the thousands of other essential works not specifically denigrated here, from the Tao te-Ching through the Songs of Odin) is because there is a wealth of material the eager student of the divine can explore, and if you explore enough of it, you soon begin to suspect that everybody is fooling themselves. There’s lots of good history (and terrible history, but some fine tall tales) and rich philosophy and explorations of moral and legal precepts without which civilization could never have been developed; who knows, someday it might even happen. But the religious ideas people keep killing each other about, the things they so vehemently disagree on, all have one thing in common: they are divergent interpretations of a shared, previous idea.</p>
<p>Thus Christians give it to the Jews with both barrels, their only point of agreement being that the Muslims must all be killed; the Muslim and the Jew go at it hammer and tongs even in the absence of Christian on-egging. This is because they are all children of the exact same God. The Hindu and the Sikh just can’t stop setting fire to each other because their religions spring from the same root. And so on, all around the globe. Buddhists, being Buddhists, don’t usually start wars on religious grounds; instead they engage in ferocious infighting to determine who is the most enlightened. Sutras and sutures. But every religion has somebody to loathe, and it’s pretty much always the dudes with the closest variation on the same theme. Not everybody that subscribes to every religion is this way, please make note. Just the ones with persecution complexes that lead uptight, rigid, judgmental little lives dedicated to making other people wrong. You may even have met such people yourself.</p>
<p>So maybe the atheist has it right. If the cultural role of religion is to establish a benchmark for right behavior, a moral standard upheld by the promise of a red-hot pitchfork up your bottom for all eternity if you don’t observe the rules, well and good. But right behavior predicated on the simple notion that this life is all any of us has, so every life ought to be treated with respect: that’s just as valid an approach, no heaven or hell required. If the spiritual role of religion is to help us know the nature of our souls, the possibility of eternal being and redemption, and to illuminate the nature of the Prime Mover or God, that’s dandy too. But as the last 10,000 years of religion have demonstrated, nobody knows a blind thing whatsoever. How dare we presume to know what cannot be known? This is why men won’t ask the way at a filling station when they get lost on the I-87 right around Exit 7 where it connects with the Cross Bronx Expressway: although it is unknowable, yet they believe it has been revealed, if not to them, then to the guy they got the directions from before they left. It comes down to choosing your favorite anecdote about the person that God revealed himself to in private (Zeus visits the maiden Leda kitted out as a swan, begetting the Dioscuri; YWH appears to Moses in the form of a burning bush, begetting the diaspora, and so forth) and then damning anybody that won’t go along with it. The atheist, meanwhile, sees a lot of metaphors with similar moral underpinnings, except, unlike for example Perrault’s Fairy Tales or Tolkein’s Ring Trilogy, people kill each other over them.</p>
<p>And I’m not just being obtuse. I’d like to think that there is a god or group of gods out there that are responsible for this incomprehensible madhouse we collectively call ‘existence’, and that there is a plan in place, however poorly it might be going, and furthermore that it’s such a clever plan that the appearance of utter chaos is in fact evidence of a superstructure of order so complex, so infinite in its grandeur and subtlety, that we puny humans couldn’t comprehend it even if we all joined our brains together with a good quality speaker wire such as Monster Cable and thought about nothing else for a billion years. I’d like to think that when I die, if I lived a fairly decent life and didn’t engage in baby-eating or personally extinct any major species of owl, I will be embraced by the Creator, welcomed back to the nourishing bosom of Janeane Garofalo (sorry, the nourishing bosom of Eternal Love, I meant to say) as if I were a beloved child gone out in my rubber boots and slicker for a splash in the mud puddles on a rainstormy afternoon, now returned for cocoa and a nap by the radiator.</p>
<p>Nothing would please me more than that. I’d get to see all my dead friends again, including my Aunt Ada, and my best dead friend of all, Bear the German Shepherd, who I still miss terribly though he went away to hunt the sky bunnies years ago; and I’d always have time to visit with everybody no matter what time they called or what I was supposed to be doing instead, and once I was dead I could learn an instrument and get good at playing ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’, because there is. Preferably the tenor saxophone part. I really would like to think that. But unless the Divine Personage Himself, Herself, Itself, or Unself comes along and taps me on the shoulder and hands me a written, signed, and notarized proof that is undeniable and in which no human agency has intervened, I’m fresh out of luck.</p>
<p>Then again, I cannot presume to say none of this is so, because God, like Death, is inherently inscrutable to the mortal scrutinizing apparatus with which we are equipped. I can only say that I do not know. It could turn out that some animist cult during the Pleistocene Era had it all right, and the rest of us have been completely off-base ever since. Anubis might even now be getting miffed at the sharp fall-off in numbers of his devotees and in a few months we will all get a dose of celestial whupass for not holding scarab beetles sacred. I do not know. Which is what I like about Buddhism. You can believe what you can believe: whatever the Truth is, it’s right there inside of you, it always has been, and it always will be, and you will know it when you find it, but it’s okay if you never find it, because it can’t be expressed in human terms anyway. So one more time with feeling:</p>
<p>What is the sound of one hand clapping?</p>
<p>Janeane Garofalo.</p>
<p>BEN TRIPP is an independent filmmaker and all-around swine. His book, Square In The Nuts, may be purchased here, with other outlets to follow: <a href="http://www.lulu.com/Squareinthenuts" type="external">http://www.lulu.com/Squareinthenuts</a> . Swag is available as always from <a href="http://www.cafeshops/tarantulabros" type="external">http://www.cafeshops/tarantulabros</a> . And Mr. Tripp may be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
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<p>CLARIFICATION</p>
<p>ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH</p>
<p>We published an article entitled “A Saudiless Arabia” by Wayne Madsen dated October 22, 2002 (the “Article”), on the website of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org (the “Website”).</p>
<p>Although it was not our intention, counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.</p>
<p>We do not have any evidence connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism.</p>
<p>As a result of an exchange of communications with Mr Al Amoudi’s lawyers, we have removed the Article from the Website.</p>
<p>We are pleased to clarify the position.</p>
<p>August 17, 2005</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 3,039 |
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<p>General Motors Co. (NYSE:GM) has reached an agreement with the trust set up to oversee its bankruptcy claims that likely thwarts lawyers' efforts to extract an additional $1 billion from GM to settle claims stemming from faulty ignition switches.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Last week, the trust for creditors of so-called Old GM reached a proposed settlement with plaintiffs' lawyers that sought $1 billion in GM stock to help settle claims related to the defective switches. GM called the agreement an "improper scheme" to force the auto maker to pay for baseless claims.</p>
<p>In a court filing late Wednesday, GM and attorneys for the Old GM unsecured creditors trust said that they have reached a tentative agreement that calls for GM to reimburse legal costs the trust incurs to defend ignition-switch cases. In return, the trust agreed to drop the proposed settlement with plaintiffs' lawyers, which could have triggered a $1 billion payment from GM.</p>
<p>The settlement is the latest twist in legal wrangling begun more than three years ago, when GM recalled roughly 2.6 million older cars with ignition switches prone to slipping from the run position, potentially cutting power to air bags and other safety features. The defect has been linked to 124 deaths and led to GM paying more than $2 billion in settlements with federal prosecutors, shareholders and thousands of consumers.</p>
<p>Still unsettled is more than $10 billion in legal claims from accident victims and customers who blamed the defect for lost resale values, according to figures cited in court documents. Under the settlement outlined Wednesday, which must be approved by a bankruptcy court judge, GM will pay the Old GM trust legal costs associated with defending those cases.</p>
<p>Last week's tentative settlement between the Old GM trust and plaintiffs' attorneys would have accepted those $10 billion in claims. That could have led to a roughly $1 billion stock payment from GM under a complex formula in the auto maker's 2009 bankruptcy-sale order that triggers payments to the trust when claims exceed a certain amount.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>"Now the focus can return to where it belongs, which is the merits of the plaintiffs' remaining claims," GM said in a statement.</p>
<p>Steve Berman, a plaintiffs' lawyer at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP involved in putting together last week's tentative agreement with the trust, said he couldn't immediately comment.</p> | GM reaches deal with 'Old GM' trust on ignition-switch defense costs | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/17/gm-reaches-deal-with-old-gm-trust-on-ignition-switch-defense-costs.html | 2017-08-17 | 0right
| GM reaches deal with 'Old GM' trust on ignition-switch defense costs
<p />
<p>General Motors Co. (NYSE:GM) has reached an agreement with the trust set up to oversee its bankruptcy claims that likely thwarts lawyers' efforts to extract an additional $1 billion from GM to settle claims stemming from faulty ignition switches.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Last week, the trust for creditors of so-called Old GM reached a proposed settlement with plaintiffs' lawyers that sought $1 billion in GM stock to help settle claims related to the defective switches. GM called the agreement an "improper scheme" to force the auto maker to pay for baseless claims.</p>
<p>In a court filing late Wednesday, GM and attorneys for the Old GM unsecured creditors trust said that they have reached a tentative agreement that calls for GM to reimburse legal costs the trust incurs to defend ignition-switch cases. In return, the trust agreed to drop the proposed settlement with plaintiffs' lawyers, which could have triggered a $1 billion payment from GM.</p>
<p>The settlement is the latest twist in legal wrangling begun more than three years ago, when GM recalled roughly 2.6 million older cars with ignition switches prone to slipping from the run position, potentially cutting power to air bags and other safety features. The defect has been linked to 124 deaths and led to GM paying more than $2 billion in settlements with federal prosecutors, shareholders and thousands of consumers.</p>
<p>Still unsettled is more than $10 billion in legal claims from accident victims and customers who blamed the defect for lost resale values, according to figures cited in court documents. Under the settlement outlined Wednesday, which must be approved by a bankruptcy court judge, GM will pay the Old GM trust legal costs associated with defending those cases.</p>
<p>Last week's tentative settlement between the Old GM trust and plaintiffs' attorneys would have accepted those $10 billion in claims. That could have led to a roughly $1 billion stock payment from GM under a complex formula in the auto maker's 2009 bankruptcy-sale order that triggers payments to the trust when claims exceed a certain amount.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>"Now the focus can return to where it belongs, which is the merits of the plaintiffs' remaining claims," GM said in a statement.</p>
<p>Steve Berman, a plaintiffs' lawyer at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP involved in putting together last week's tentative agreement with the trust, said he couldn't immediately comment.</p> | 3,040 |
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<p>10 GIRLS METRO PLAYERS TO WATCH</p>
<p>Alexa Romano, La Cueva, sr., 5-9, G: Stanford didn’t recruit her for no reason; Romano can facilitate, score from beyond the arc and drive to the paint. A marvelous package. Natalie Zamora, St. Pius sr., 5-7, PG: Like Romano, Zamora is an all-around player who can perform most any role for the Sartans. Signed with Fairleigh Dickinson. Kristin Dearth, Cibola, sr., 6-3, P: Arguably the most physically imposing post in Class 6A, Dearth (D-I Seattle U.) isn’t flashy, just relentlessly effective. Mariah Forde, Belen, sr., 5-10, G: The last of the four metro players who have signed D-I (Air Force), Forde has averaged over 15 points her first three seasons with the Eagles. Jourden Williams, Sandia, sr., 5-6, G: After a year on the Mats’ JV because of transfer ineligibility, expect Williams to atone for her season away. Deezha Battle, Volcano Vista, jr., 5-3, PG: Battle is sneaky good in every way, and has a wonderful floater that is an impressive offensive weapon. Alyssa Yocky, La Cueva, sr., 6-0, P: Of the Bears’ posts, Yocky is the most dangerous, and on a lot of other teams, she’d be the No. 1 scorer. Alivia Lewis, Hope Christian, soph., 6-0, P: As long as Lewis’ knee is OK, she could be the most polished all-around player in Class 4A. Amaya Brown, Cibola, fresh., 5-10, SG: She is the daughter of former Lobo great guard Greg Brown, so her genes are not in question. Neither is her talent. Mandy Perea, La Cueva, jr., 5-5, SG: She exploded onto the varsity midseason as a sophomore, and represents pure offense. A fun player to watch.</p>
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| Girls metro players to watch
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<p>10 GIRLS METRO PLAYERS TO WATCH</p>
<p>Alexa Romano, La Cueva, sr., 5-9, G: Stanford didn’t recruit her for no reason; Romano can facilitate, score from beyond the arc and drive to the paint. A marvelous package. Natalie Zamora, St. Pius sr., 5-7, PG: Like Romano, Zamora is an all-around player who can perform most any role for the Sartans. Signed with Fairleigh Dickinson. Kristin Dearth, Cibola, sr., 6-3, P: Arguably the most physically imposing post in Class 6A, Dearth (D-I Seattle U.) isn’t flashy, just relentlessly effective. Mariah Forde, Belen, sr., 5-10, G: The last of the four metro players who have signed D-I (Air Force), Forde has averaged over 15 points her first three seasons with the Eagles. Jourden Williams, Sandia, sr., 5-6, G: After a year on the Mats’ JV because of transfer ineligibility, expect Williams to atone for her season away. Deezha Battle, Volcano Vista, jr., 5-3, PG: Battle is sneaky good in every way, and has a wonderful floater that is an impressive offensive weapon. Alyssa Yocky, La Cueva, sr., 6-0, P: Of the Bears’ posts, Yocky is the most dangerous, and on a lot of other teams, she’d be the No. 1 scorer. Alivia Lewis, Hope Christian, soph., 6-0, P: As long as Lewis’ knee is OK, she could be the most polished all-around player in Class 4A. Amaya Brown, Cibola, fresh., 5-10, SG: She is the daughter of former Lobo great guard Greg Brown, so her genes are not in question. Neither is her talent. Mandy Perea, La Cueva, jr., 5-5, SG: She exploded onto the varsity midseason as a sophomore, and represents pure offense. A fun player to watch.</p>
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<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 3,041 |
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<p />
<p>Michael Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. He is currently a legal adviser to Wikileaks and Julian Assange. He and CCR brought the first case challenging the Guantanamo detentions and continue in their efforts to close Guantanamo. He taught at Yale Law School, and Columbia Law School, and was President of the National Lawyers Guild. His current books include Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in the Twenty-First Century America, and Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away With Murder.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>NOTE: Mr. Ratner speaks on his own behalf and not for any organization with which he is affiliated.</p>
<p>The recent raids in Libya and Somalia expose the “utter lawlessness of the U.S. military, the U.S. government, and the CIA,” said Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights.</p>
<p>“What's shocking about it is, of course, the fact that there's so little reaction in the United States to it. Kidnapping, and now disappearances, seem to be just par for the course by the United States, despite the fact that the United States in both cases was going into sovereign countries,” said Ratner.</p>
<p>Ratner says that the kidnapping in Libya and military attack in Somalia violate international law; specifically, the UN charter and the Geneva Conventions.</p>
<p>“We are living in a different world. We're living in a place in which one of our goals as not just progressives but as human beings is to dismantle this system of illegal kidnappings, torture, interrogation without attorneys, utter lawlessness,” says Ratner.</p> JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore. And welcome to this edition of The Ratner Report.
<p />
<p />Now joining us is Michael Ratner. He is president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and he's also a board member for The Real News Network.
<p />
<p />It's always a pleasure having you on, Michael. Thanks for being with us.
<p />
<p />MICHAEL RATNER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: It's good to be with you, Jessica, and The Real News.
<p />
<p />DESVARIEUX: Michael, what are you working on this week?
<p />
<p />RATNER: You never know what's going to happen when you open the newspaper every day. Last week was October&#160;5. I was actually shocked to read that the U.S. had kidnapped a man named Abu Anas al-Liby from Tripoli in Libya, a man who was under indictment in the United States for being involved in the Nairobi embassy bombing in some way. They kidnapped him out of Tripoli. And on the same day, apparently, they did a military attack on a town in Somalia to supposedly kill or capture a man that was with Shabaab known by the name of Ikrima.
<p />
<p />And when I say you never know it's going to happen, you like to think that after 9/11 some of these incredible departures from law and into lawlessness might have started to decline. Perhaps in some way somewhere they have. But these two kidnapping [incompr.] are not an indication that we've departed from the post-9/11 utter lawlessness of the U.S. military, the U.S. government, and the CIA.
<p />
<p />And what's shocking about it is is of course the fact that there's so little reaction in the United States to it. Kidnapping, and now disappearances, seem to be just par for the course by the United States, despite the fact that the United States in both cases was going into sovereign countries with kidnappings and armed attacks. Broadly let's look first and probably [incompr.] look in most detail at the kidnapping of Abu Anas al-Liby out of Tripoli. Broadly, it says something about the war in Libya, because what the United States said and what was quoted widely is that Libya has become--Tripoli in particular, I think, maybe other parts as well--a center for jihadists and people, and it has broken down and no real government. It's lawless.
<p />
<p />And, of course, this is a war that I opposed and that many other progressive people opposed. And you see what happens. Whatever people thought of the government of Libya before the invasion, it's certainly turned out to be, seemingly, an utter disaster that's really--now the U.S. itself admits there's hardly anything left of the place in a certain way.
<p />
<p />And that goes to the first issue, really, which is, when you go into a country and you kidnap someone out of it, you need the authority of the country to cross their border. The UN Charter, international law, customary law absolutely prohibits across-border kidnapping, cross-border invasion. It's Article&#160;2.4. It's a crime, illegal. It's completely illegal without the consent of the country. And in this case there's not even a real claim by the U.S. that there was consent. They said somehow that, well, a few months ago we talked to some people in Libya or the government, whatever that was. Others have said, well, there's no point to talking to anybody, because, going back to my earlier point, there's no real government in Libya. So the first thing that was illegal about kidnapping of Abu Anas, in my view, is crossing the border of Libya and taking him.
<p />
<p />The second thing is: on what basis could they take him? Did they have the right, even assuming Libya consented, to go in and get him? Just remember, Abu Anas was indicted in an American federal court, one here in New York. Why didn't they ask for his extradition? Why didn't they ask for his arrest and take him out with legal channels? The U.S. has never come up with an explanation as to why an indicted person that--wanted in the United States, why they didn't ask for that person's extradition or legal procedures to take him out of Libya.
<p />
<p />The only other way the U.S. could actually go into a country and kidnap someone or stop them is if they were actually in a war zone as a combatant and they essentially had their finger on a button that was going to attack the United States or involved in a war against the United States. No one claims al-Liby was doing that at that point. He was living in Tripoli. He was living with his family. There's no justification that this was a war zone vis-à-vis the United States. So the U.S. has no claim here. They weren't allowed to cross into the border and take him. He was indicted. They could have taken him by extradition. And they certainly couldn't justify it by a war.
<p />
<p />Then you look at a second set of rights of al-Liby that were violated. You know, these pickups or kidnapping are not done in a peaceful way. We know how they're done. They're done with six or eight or ten--and in this case there were eyewitnesses--three trucks pulling up, guns pulled. And what they do in the normal case--I don't know all the details here--but they strip the person down, they put a suppository in them, and they get them out of the country somehow, put him in a coffin box, put him in an airplane--really, conduct that amounts to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, if not torture--to just get him out of the country.
<p />
<p />You would think that in this case, after they got him out of the country, maybe they'd bring him right to the United States because he actually is indicted in a federal court here in New York where I'm giving this interview from. But no, that's not what they did. They put him on a ship somewhere in the world, where he's going to be interrogated without a lawyer, without the warnings that anything he says can be used against him. So they're going to interrogate him rather than bring him to court for trial. Now, in my view the law is that as soon as he's taken by the United States, I don't care whether it's the Department of Justice, the CIA, the FBI, the military, whoever it is, he has a right to get a lawyer because he's been indicted. But that's not what the U.S. is doing any longer, if it ever did. It's violating the law. It's saying, we'll interrogate him first. After we interrogate him, then maybe then we'll decide what we'll do with him, even though he's indicted. And, of course, that interrogation on a boat is illegal altogether because under the Geneva Conventions, assuming the U.S. is even paying lip service, you're not allowed to be held on a boat wandering around the world. That's explicitly prohibited by Article&#160;22 of the Geneva Conventions.
<p />
<p />In this case, an interesting wrinkle happened. They put him on a boat and they expected to interrogate him about whatever they thought he might know. But apparently he wasn't talking, and apparently he went on a hunger strike and a liquid hunger strike and wasn't eating. And he, according to the news reports, has hepatitis C and was getting sicker and sicker. Therefore he couldn't really be interrogated. And a week or so later, they had to bring him into the United States, into federal court, where he was finally given a lawyer, presumably given Miranda warnings, and has pled not guilty to the various crimes for which he's been indicted.
<p />
<p />But the point is this practice of kidnapping, kidnapping violently, putting into interrogation, and then finally taking him into a federal court, it's utterly lawless and utterly illegal. And sadly, it goes along, it goes along with what we've been learning since 9/11 about what our country has been doing. It goes along with renditions to torture, Guantanamo, torture, kidnappings, and the like. And it doesn't seem that under this new Obama--or relatively new five-year-old Obama administration that these practices are changing.
<p />
<p />Really the point I think I'm making here is we are living in a different world. We're living in a place in which one of our goals as not just progressives but as human beings is to dismantle this system of illegal kidnappings, torture, interrogation without attorneys, utter lawlessness. It reminds me--and I'll end on this note--I remember how we all opposed what we called Operation Condor, which was run by Pinochet in Chile, in which he picked up people all over the world, took them to torture camps, or murdered them. Sad to say, Operation Condor, you know, you can rename it whatever we want to rename it, but it's certainly being carried out by the United States today.
<p />
<p />DESVARIEUX: Michael Ratner, always a pleasure having you on. Thanks for being with us.
<p />
<p />RATNER: Thanks for having me on The Real News.
<p />
<p />DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
<p />
<p />End
<p />
<p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. | American Raids in Libya & Somalia Expose Military Lawlessness | true | http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D31%26Itemid%3D74%26jumival%3D10888 | 2013-10-17 | 4left
| American Raids in Libya & Somalia Expose Military Lawlessness
<p />
<p>Michael Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. He is currently a legal adviser to Wikileaks and Julian Assange. He and CCR brought the first case challenging the Guantanamo detentions and continue in their efforts to close Guantanamo. He taught at Yale Law School, and Columbia Law School, and was President of the National Lawyers Guild. His current books include Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in the Twenty-First Century America, and Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away With Murder.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>NOTE: Mr. Ratner speaks on his own behalf and not for any organization with which he is affiliated.</p>
<p>The recent raids in Libya and Somalia expose the “utter lawlessness of the U.S. military, the U.S. government, and the CIA,” said Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights.</p>
<p>“What's shocking about it is, of course, the fact that there's so little reaction in the United States to it. Kidnapping, and now disappearances, seem to be just par for the course by the United States, despite the fact that the United States in both cases was going into sovereign countries,” said Ratner.</p>
<p>Ratner says that the kidnapping in Libya and military attack in Somalia violate international law; specifically, the UN charter and the Geneva Conventions.</p>
<p>“We are living in a different world. We're living in a place in which one of our goals as not just progressives but as human beings is to dismantle this system of illegal kidnappings, torture, interrogation without attorneys, utter lawlessness,” says Ratner.</p> JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore. And welcome to this edition of The Ratner Report.
<p />
<p />Now joining us is Michael Ratner. He is president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and he's also a board member for The Real News Network.
<p />
<p />It's always a pleasure having you on, Michael. Thanks for being with us.
<p />
<p />MICHAEL RATNER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: It's good to be with you, Jessica, and The Real News.
<p />
<p />DESVARIEUX: Michael, what are you working on this week?
<p />
<p />RATNER: You never know what's going to happen when you open the newspaper every day. Last week was October&#160;5. I was actually shocked to read that the U.S. had kidnapped a man named Abu Anas al-Liby from Tripoli in Libya, a man who was under indictment in the United States for being involved in the Nairobi embassy bombing in some way. They kidnapped him out of Tripoli. And on the same day, apparently, they did a military attack on a town in Somalia to supposedly kill or capture a man that was with Shabaab known by the name of Ikrima.
<p />
<p />And when I say you never know it's going to happen, you like to think that after 9/11 some of these incredible departures from law and into lawlessness might have started to decline. Perhaps in some way somewhere they have. But these two kidnapping [incompr.] are not an indication that we've departed from the post-9/11 utter lawlessness of the U.S. military, the U.S. government, and the CIA.
<p />
<p />And what's shocking about it is is of course the fact that there's so little reaction in the United States to it. Kidnapping, and now disappearances, seem to be just par for the course by the United States, despite the fact that the United States in both cases was going into sovereign countries with kidnappings and armed attacks. Broadly let's look first and probably [incompr.] look in most detail at the kidnapping of Abu Anas al-Liby out of Tripoli. Broadly, it says something about the war in Libya, because what the United States said and what was quoted widely is that Libya has become--Tripoli in particular, I think, maybe other parts as well--a center for jihadists and people, and it has broken down and no real government. It's lawless.
<p />
<p />And, of course, this is a war that I opposed and that many other progressive people opposed. And you see what happens. Whatever people thought of the government of Libya before the invasion, it's certainly turned out to be, seemingly, an utter disaster that's really--now the U.S. itself admits there's hardly anything left of the place in a certain way.
<p />
<p />And that goes to the first issue, really, which is, when you go into a country and you kidnap someone out of it, you need the authority of the country to cross their border. The UN Charter, international law, customary law absolutely prohibits across-border kidnapping, cross-border invasion. It's Article&#160;2.4. It's a crime, illegal. It's completely illegal without the consent of the country. And in this case there's not even a real claim by the U.S. that there was consent. They said somehow that, well, a few months ago we talked to some people in Libya or the government, whatever that was. Others have said, well, there's no point to talking to anybody, because, going back to my earlier point, there's no real government in Libya. So the first thing that was illegal about kidnapping of Abu Anas, in my view, is crossing the border of Libya and taking him.
<p />
<p />The second thing is: on what basis could they take him? Did they have the right, even assuming Libya consented, to go in and get him? Just remember, Abu Anas was indicted in an American federal court, one here in New York. Why didn't they ask for his extradition? Why didn't they ask for his arrest and take him out with legal channels? The U.S. has never come up with an explanation as to why an indicted person that--wanted in the United States, why they didn't ask for that person's extradition or legal procedures to take him out of Libya.
<p />
<p />The only other way the U.S. could actually go into a country and kidnap someone or stop them is if they were actually in a war zone as a combatant and they essentially had their finger on a button that was going to attack the United States or involved in a war against the United States. No one claims al-Liby was doing that at that point. He was living in Tripoli. He was living with his family. There's no justification that this was a war zone vis-à-vis the United States. So the U.S. has no claim here. They weren't allowed to cross into the border and take him. He was indicted. They could have taken him by extradition. And they certainly couldn't justify it by a war.
<p />
<p />Then you look at a second set of rights of al-Liby that were violated. You know, these pickups or kidnapping are not done in a peaceful way. We know how they're done. They're done with six or eight or ten--and in this case there were eyewitnesses--three trucks pulling up, guns pulled. And what they do in the normal case--I don't know all the details here--but they strip the person down, they put a suppository in them, and they get them out of the country somehow, put him in a coffin box, put him in an airplane--really, conduct that amounts to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, if not torture--to just get him out of the country.
<p />
<p />You would think that in this case, after they got him out of the country, maybe they'd bring him right to the United States because he actually is indicted in a federal court here in New York where I'm giving this interview from. But no, that's not what they did. They put him on a ship somewhere in the world, where he's going to be interrogated without a lawyer, without the warnings that anything he says can be used against him. So they're going to interrogate him rather than bring him to court for trial. Now, in my view the law is that as soon as he's taken by the United States, I don't care whether it's the Department of Justice, the CIA, the FBI, the military, whoever it is, he has a right to get a lawyer because he's been indicted. But that's not what the U.S. is doing any longer, if it ever did. It's violating the law. It's saying, we'll interrogate him first. After we interrogate him, then maybe then we'll decide what we'll do with him, even though he's indicted. And, of course, that interrogation on a boat is illegal altogether because under the Geneva Conventions, assuming the U.S. is even paying lip service, you're not allowed to be held on a boat wandering around the world. That's explicitly prohibited by Article&#160;22 of the Geneva Conventions.
<p />
<p />In this case, an interesting wrinkle happened. They put him on a boat and they expected to interrogate him about whatever they thought he might know. But apparently he wasn't talking, and apparently he went on a hunger strike and a liquid hunger strike and wasn't eating. And he, according to the news reports, has hepatitis C and was getting sicker and sicker. Therefore he couldn't really be interrogated. And a week or so later, they had to bring him into the United States, into federal court, where he was finally given a lawyer, presumably given Miranda warnings, and has pled not guilty to the various crimes for which he's been indicted.
<p />
<p />But the point is this practice of kidnapping, kidnapping violently, putting into interrogation, and then finally taking him into a federal court, it's utterly lawless and utterly illegal. And sadly, it goes along, it goes along with what we've been learning since 9/11 about what our country has been doing. It goes along with renditions to torture, Guantanamo, torture, kidnappings, and the like. And it doesn't seem that under this new Obama--or relatively new five-year-old Obama administration that these practices are changing.
<p />
<p />Really the point I think I'm making here is we are living in a different world. We're living in a place in which one of our goals as not just progressives but as human beings is to dismantle this system of illegal kidnappings, torture, interrogation without attorneys, utter lawlessness. It reminds me--and I'll end on this note--I remember how we all opposed what we called Operation Condor, which was run by Pinochet in Chile, in which he picked up people all over the world, took them to torture camps, or murdered them. Sad to say, Operation Condor, you know, you can rename it whatever we want to rename it, but it's certainly being carried out by the United States today.
<p />
<p />DESVARIEUX: Michael Ratner, always a pleasure having you on. Thanks for being with us.
<p />
<p />RATNER: Thanks for having me on The Real News.
<p />
<p />DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
<p />
<p />End
<p />
<p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. | 3,042 |
<p>Members of the anti-science activist group Greenpeace risked their lives Wednesday for a futile publicity stunt, climbing a 270-foot crane in downtown Washington DC to unfurl a giant 35 foot-by-75-foot orange and black anti-Trump banner that read: “Resist.” The banner was visible from the White House.</p>
<p />
<p>In recent months, far-left agitators have appropriated terms like “resist” and “revolution,” farcically conjuring up the image of jungle-dwelling anti-imperialist guerillas intent on detonating makeshift explosives near government buildings, to oppose the supposedly “fascist” reign of President Donald J. Trump.</p>
<p>Greenpeace’s “protest” had all the hallmarks of a contemporary leftist exercise in moral preening. For one, the disruptive act did nothing to change the reality on the ground. Trump is still president. Both houses of Congress are still controlled by the Republican Party. But more importantly, the self-styled environmentalist group’s theatrics only managed to harm everyday people, rather than those frolicking the halls of powers. The group was allegedly protesting the Trump administration's decision to green light the Keystone XL pipeline and Dakota Access pipeline projects.</p>
<p>DC residents were blocked from getting to work, thanks to the “resistance” fighters.</p>
<p />
<p>“D.C. police waited out the seven protesters, shutting down traffic at a major intersection through the morning commute and into the evening and suspending work on new offices for Fannie Mae at 15th and L streets NW,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/handful-of-protesters-climb-270-foot-tall-crane-in-downtown-dc-disrupt-traffic/2017/01/25/a9346920-e2ff-11e6-ba11-63c4b4fb5a63_story.html?utm_term=.2f1096f22d41" type="external">reports</a> The Washington Post. “The action is one of several protests in the District since just before the presidential inauguration, and more are planned in the coming weeks.” Great job sticking it to the man.</p>
<p>The protesters were apparently all expert climbers equipped with safety harnesses and helmets, according to Greenpeace. They remained suspended 270-feet in the air for several hours until all seven activists finally came down from the crane only to be arrested by police waiting down below. “They were charged with second-degree burglary, unlawful entry, and destruction of property,” notes The Post.</p>
<p />
<p>When the protest finally ended at 10 pm, taxpayer-funded emergency services, including firemen, paramedics, and police officers, had been stuck playing the waiting game for 18 hours.</p>
<p>Fortunately, nobody was hurt during the stunt.</p>
<p>Despite the seemingly impish nature of Wednesday’s stunt, Greenpeace’s usual modi operandi are far from innocuous.</p>
<p>Indeed, the activist group is infamous for its “resistance” against genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Propagating anti-science rhetoric and alternative facts, Greenpeace has waged a war against the scientific community and its unequivocal endorsement of GMOs as a safe and sustainable.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most vocal votary of the anti-science Left, Greenpeace has attempted to infect the body politic with ignorance and fear-mongering to peddle a conspiratorial agenda about “Frankenfoods.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the group’s activism isn’t just restricted to rhetoric.</p>
<p>Comprised of mostly over-privileged and well-fed white Westerners, Greenpeace has worked to disrupt the development and distribution of Golden Rice, a Vitamin A-infused GMO rice product that was hailed by scientists as a panacea to curing children in underdeveloped regions of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa, of blindness and death due to Vitamin A deficiency.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/26/golden_rice_attack_in_philippines_anti_gmo_activists_lie_about_protest_and.html" type="external">Vandalizing farms and harassing impoverished Golden Rice farmers in the Philippines and elsewhere</a>, Greenpeace activists delayed the developmental process only to deprive desperate, dying children of the life-saving product.</p>
<p>In addition, the group initiated a PR war against NGOs and charities, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, devoted to distributing the product to the poorest regions of the world.</p>
<p>“By 2002, <a href="http://irri.org/golden-rice" type="external">Golden Rice</a> was technically ready to go. Animal testing had found no health risks. Syngenta, which had figured out how to insert the Vitamin A–producing gene from carrots into rice, had handed all financial interests over to a <a href="http://irri.org/" type="external">non-profit organization</a>, so there would be no resistance to the life-saving technology from GMO opponents who resist genetic modification because big biotech companies profit from it,” <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/golden-rice-opponents-should-be-held-accountable-for-health-problems-linked-to-vitamain-a-deficiency/" type="external">explains</a> Scientific American’s <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/david-ropeik/" type="external">David Ropeik</a>. “Except for the regulatory approval process, Golden Rice was ready to start saving millions of lives and preventing tens of millions of cases of blindness in people around the world who suffer from <a href="http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/vad/en/" type="external">Vitamin A deficiency</a>.”</p>
<p>Today, the distribution of Golden Rice is limited, largely due to the disruptive actions of anti-GMO groups like Greenpeace.</p>
<p>Ropeik continues (emphasis added):</p>
<p>…two agricultural economists, one from the Technical University of Munich, the other from the University of California, Berkeley, have quantified the price of that opposition, in human health, and the numbers are truly frightening.</p>
<p>Their <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=6&amp;fid=9136417&amp;jid=EDE&amp;volumeId=-1&amp;issueId=-1&amp;aid=9136416&amp;bodyId=&amp;membershipNumber=&amp;societyETOCSession=&amp;fulltextType=RA&amp;fileId=S1355770X1300065X" type="external">study</a>, published in the journal Environment and Development Economics, estimates that the delayed application of Golden Rice in India alone has cost 1,424,000 life years since 2002. That odd sounding metric – not just lives but ‘life years’ - accounts not only for those who died, but also for the blindness and other health disabilities that Vitamin A deficiency causes. The majority of those who went blind or died because they did not have access to Golden Rice were children.</p>
<p>These are real deaths, real disability, real suffering, not the phantom fears about the human health effects of Golden Rice thrown around by opponents, none of which have held up to objective scientific scrutiny. It is absolutely fair to charge that opposition to this particular application of genetically modified food has contributed to the deaths of and injuries to millions of people. The opponents of Golden Rice who have caused this harm should be held accountable.</p>
<p>Greenpeace's opposition to Golden Rice has been so egregious that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/29/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance/?utm_term=.877c1b219824" type="external">107 Nobel laureates actually penned a letter</a> in the summer of 2016, condemning the activist group's macabre remonstrations.</p>
<p>"We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against 'GMOs' in general and Golden Rice in particular," the letter reads.</p>
<p>The letter campaign was organized by Richard Roberts, the chief scientific officer of New England Biolabs and Phillip Sharp, winner of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.</p>
<p>“We’re scientists. We understand the logic of science. It's easy to see what Greenpeace is doing is damaging and is anti-science," Roberts <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/29/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance/?utm_term=.877c1b219824" type="external">explained</a> in an interview with The Post. “Greenpeace initially, and then some of their allies, deliberately went out of their way to scare people. It was a way for them to raise money for their cause."</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/vad/en/" type="external">World Health Organization (WHO) details the deleterious health effects of Vitamin A deficiency:</a> “Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children and increases the risk of disease and death from severe infections. In pregnant women VAD causes night blindness and may increase the risk of maternal mortality. Vitamin A deficiency is a public health problem in more than half of all countries, especially in Africa and South-East Asia, hitting hardest young children and pregnant women in low-income countries. Crucial for maternal and child survival, supplying adequate vitamin A in high-risk areas can significantly reduce mortality. Conversely, its absence causes a needlessly high risk of disease and death.”</p>
<p>Death and blindness from Vitamin A deficiency are entirely preventable. And yet, innumerable children in dire need of the vitamin have no means of accessing cheap foods with enough Vitamin A to keep them healthy.</p>
<p>“An estimated 250 million preschool children are vitamin A deficient and it is likely that in vitamin A deficient areas a substantial proportion of pregnant women is vitamin A deficient,” notes WHO. “An estimated 250 000 to 500 000 vitamin A-deficient children become blind every year, half of them dying within 12 months of losing their sight.”</p>
<p>Sadly, Greenpeace isn’t alone in its dangerous anti-science crusade.</p>
<p>From promoting anti-vaccine hysteria to peddling homeopathy in lieu of conventional medicine to sabotaging the development of life-saving GMO products, the anti-science Left is destroying lives with a near fanatical, if not cult-like, zeal.</p>
<p>Rather than climbing tall cranes to protest a democratically elected president and block rush hour traffic, perhaps the folks at Greenpeace should sit down, shut up, and stop needlessly contributing to the deaths and disabilities of children in countries far less fortunate than the United States.</p> | Greenpeace Unfurls Giant Anti-Trump Banner From Crane. Trump Still President. | true | https://dailywire.com/news/12830/greenpeace-unfurls-giant-anti-trump-banner-crane-joshua-yasmeh | 2017-01-26 | 0right
| Greenpeace Unfurls Giant Anti-Trump Banner From Crane. Trump Still President.
<p>Members of the anti-science activist group Greenpeace risked their lives Wednesday for a futile publicity stunt, climbing a 270-foot crane in downtown Washington DC to unfurl a giant 35 foot-by-75-foot orange and black anti-Trump banner that read: “Resist.” The banner was visible from the White House.</p>
<p />
<p>In recent months, far-left agitators have appropriated terms like “resist” and “revolution,” farcically conjuring up the image of jungle-dwelling anti-imperialist guerillas intent on detonating makeshift explosives near government buildings, to oppose the supposedly “fascist” reign of President Donald J. Trump.</p>
<p>Greenpeace’s “protest” had all the hallmarks of a contemporary leftist exercise in moral preening. For one, the disruptive act did nothing to change the reality on the ground. Trump is still president. Both houses of Congress are still controlled by the Republican Party. But more importantly, the self-styled environmentalist group’s theatrics only managed to harm everyday people, rather than those frolicking the halls of powers. The group was allegedly protesting the Trump administration's decision to green light the Keystone XL pipeline and Dakota Access pipeline projects.</p>
<p>DC residents were blocked from getting to work, thanks to the “resistance” fighters.</p>
<p />
<p>“D.C. police waited out the seven protesters, shutting down traffic at a major intersection through the morning commute and into the evening and suspending work on new offices for Fannie Mae at 15th and L streets NW,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/handful-of-protesters-climb-270-foot-tall-crane-in-downtown-dc-disrupt-traffic/2017/01/25/a9346920-e2ff-11e6-ba11-63c4b4fb5a63_story.html?utm_term=.2f1096f22d41" type="external">reports</a> The Washington Post. “The action is one of several protests in the District since just before the presidential inauguration, and more are planned in the coming weeks.” Great job sticking it to the man.</p>
<p>The protesters were apparently all expert climbers equipped with safety harnesses and helmets, according to Greenpeace. They remained suspended 270-feet in the air for several hours until all seven activists finally came down from the crane only to be arrested by police waiting down below. “They were charged with second-degree burglary, unlawful entry, and destruction of property,” notes The Post.</p>
<p />
<p>When the protest finally ended at 10 pm, taxpayer-funded emergency services, including firemen, paramedics, and police officers, had been stuck playing the waiting game for 18 hours.</p>
<p>Fortunately, nobody was hurt during the stunt.</p>
<p>Despite the seemingly impish nature of Wednesday’s stunt, Greenpeace’s usual modi operandi are far from innocuous.</p>
<p>Indeed, the activist group is infamous for its “resistance” against genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Propagating anti-science rhetoric and alternative facts, Greenpeace has waged a war against the scientific community and its unequivocal endorsement of GMOs as a safe and sustainable.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most vocal votary of the anti-science Left, Greenpeace has attempted to infect the body politic with ignorance and fear-mongering to peddle a conspiratorial agenda about “Frankenfoods.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the group’s activism isn’t just restricted to rhetoric.</p>
<p>Comprised of mostly over-privileged and well-fed white Westerners, Greenpeace has worked to disrupt the development and distribution of Golden Rice, a Vitamin A-infused GMO rice product that was hailed by scientists as a panacea to curing children in underdeveloped regions of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa, of blindness and death due to Vitamin A deficiency.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/26/golden_rice_attack_in_philippines_anti_gmo_activists_lie_about_protest_and.html" type="external">Vandalizing farms and harassing impoverished Golden Rice farmers in the Philippines and elsewhere</a>, Greenpeace activists delayed the developmental process only to deprive desperate, dying children of the life-saving product.</p>
<p>In addition, the group initiated a PR war against NGOs and charities, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, devoted to distributing the product to the poorest regions of the world.</p>
<p>“By 2002, <a href="http://irri.org/golden-rice" type="external">Golden Rice</a> was technically ready to go. Animal testing had found no health risks. Syngenta, which had figured out how to insert the Vitamin A–producing gene from carrots into rice, had handed all financial interests over to a <a href="http://irri.org/" type="external">non-profit organization</a>, so there would be no resistance to the life-saving technology from GMO opponents who resist genetic modification because big biotech companies profit from it,” <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/golden-rice-opponents-should-be-held-accountable-for-health-problems-linked-to-vitamain-a-deficiency/" type="external">explains</a> Scientific American’s <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/david-ropeik/" type="external">David Ropeik</a>. “Except for the regulatory approval process, Golden Rice was ready to start saving millions of lives and preventing tens of millions of cases of blindness in people around the world who suffer from <a href="http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/vad/en/" type="external">Vitamin A deficiency</a>.”</p>
<p>Today, the distribution of Golden Rice is limited, largely due to the disruptive actions of anti-GMO groups like Greenpeace.</p>
<p>Ropeik continues (emphasis added):</p>
<p>…two agricultural economists, one from the Technical University of Munich, the other from the University of California, Berkeley, have quantified the price of that opposition, in human health, and the numbers are truly frightening.</p>
<p>Their <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=6&amp;fid=9136417&amp;jid=EDE&amp;volumeId=-1&amp;issueId=-1&amp;aid=9136416&amp;bodyId=&amp;membershipNumber=&amp;societyETOCSession=&amp;fulltextType=RA&amp;fileId=S1355770X1300065X" type="external">study</a>, published in the journal Environment and Development Economics, estimates that the delayed application of Golden Rice in India alone has cost 1,424,000 life years since 2002. That odd sounding metric – not just lives but ‘life years’ - accounts not only for those who died, but also for the blindness and other health disabilities that Vitamin A deficiency causes. The majority of those who went blind or died because they did not have access to Golden Rice were children.</p>
<p>These are real deaths, real disability, real suffering, not the phantom fears about the human health effects of Golden Rice thrown around by opponents, none of which have held up to objective scientific scrutiny. It is absolutely fair to charge that opposition to this particular application of genetically modified food has contributed to the deaths of and injuries to millions of people. The opponents of Golden Rice who have caused this harm should be held accountable.</p>
<p>Greenpeace's opposition to Golden Rice has been so egregious that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/29/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance/?utm_term=.877c1b219824" type="external">107 Nobel laureates actually penned a letter</a> in the summer of 2016, condemning the activist group's macabre remonstrations.</p>
<p>"We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against 'GMOs' in general and Golden Rice in particular," the letter reads.</p>
<p>The letter campaign was organized by Richard Roberts, the chief scientific officer of New England Biolabs and Phillip Sharp, winner of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.</p>
<p>“We’re scientists. We understand the logic of science. It's easy to see what Greenpeace is doing is damaging and is anti-science," Roberts <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/29/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance/?utm_term=.877c1b219824" type="external">explained</a> in an interview with The Post. “Greenpeace initially, and then some of their allies, deliberately went out of their way to scare people. It was a way for them to raise money for their cause."</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/vad/en/" type="external">World Health Organization (WHO) details the deleterious health effects of Vitamin A deficiency:</a> “Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children and increases the risk of disease and death from severe infections. In pregnant women VAD causes night blindness and may increase the risk of maternal mortality. Vitamin A deficiency is a public health problem in more than half of all countries, especially in Africa and South-East Asia, hitting hardest young children and pregnant women in low-income countries. Crucial for maternal and child survival, supplying adequate vitamin A in high-risk areas can significantly reduce mortality. Conversely, its absence causes a needlessly high risk of disease and death.”</p>
<p>Death and blindness from Vitamin A deficiency are entirely preventable. And yet, innumerable children in dire need of the vitamin have no means of accessing cheap foods with enough Vitamin A to keep them healthy.</p>
<p>“An estimated 250 million preschool children are vitamin A deficient and it is likely that in vitamin A deficient areas a substantial proportion of pregnant women is vitamin A deficient,” notes WHO. “An estimated 250 000 to 500 000 vitamin A-deficient children become blind every year, half of them dying within 12 months of losing their sight.”</p>
<p>Sadly, Greenpeace isn’t alone in its dangerous anti-science crusade.</p>
<p>From promoting anti-vaccine hysteria to peddling homeopathy in lieu of conventional medicine to sabotaging the development of life-saving GMO products, the anti-science Left is destroying lives with a near fanatical, if not cult-like, zeal.</p>
<p>Rather than climbing tall cranes to protest a democratically elected president and block rush hour traffic, perhaps the folks at Greenpeace should sit down, shut up, and stop needlessly contributing to the deaths and disabilities of children in countries far less fortunate than the United States.</p> | 3,043 |
<p>The Baptist World Alliance is among some 260 Christian relief and development agencies that launched an ambitious global anti-poverty campaign Oct. 15.</p>
<p>Paul Montacute, director of Bap­tist World Aid, joined other representatives for the launching ceremony of the Micah Challenge at the United Nations headquarters building in New York City.</p>
<p>The Micah Challenge aims to cut the world’s poverty in half by 2015.</p>
<p>It takes its biblical mandate from Micah 6:8: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”</p>
<p>The BWA’s General Council endorsed the Micah Challenge at its meeting in Seoul, South Korea, last July.</p>
<p>At the U.N. opening, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, South Africa, urged churches around the world to fight global poverty.</p>
<p>“How can we claim to follow Jesus if we are not prepared to work to achieve his gospel good news for the poor?” asked Ndungane. He urged congregations to take the lead in putting pressure on governments to achieve the eight Millennium Development Goals, which were adopted by the U.N. in 2000 to “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.”</p>
<p>“Christians can play a vital role in helping global leaders meet their commitments,” he said. “When Christians work with one another, united across nationalities and races, across rich and poor, across men, women and children, we have an enormously powerful and influential voice. We must speak loud and clear.”</p>
<p>Describing poverty as “evil” and the Millennium Development Goals as the most “ambitious commitment the world has ever made to combating poverty,” Ndungane said, “There is no doubt that the world can af­ford to do all that is necessary to meet the Millennium Development Goals. But there is a large question mark against whether or not we have the will power. … Governments and business can say the words, but they need all the encouragement, all the pressure, that we can give, to deliver the goods.”</p>
<p>Montacute said he supported the Micah Challenge because “its results will lead to the alleviation of poverty in many parts of the world.”</p>
<p>“Our world leaders have already committed to this, in the Millennium Development Goals, and we now need to help them to keep their eyes on the goal,” he said. “I am delighted that the BWA General Council affirmed the Micah Chal­lenge, and so would encourage all Baptists to familiarize themselves with this challenge, and play their own part in the achievement of the Millennium goals.</p>
<p>“As I travel to some of the poorest part of the world, I see too many children lacking the basic essentials of life: food, clean water, basic medications and educations,” Montacute continued. “They deserve better than this, and achieving the Millen­nium goals will help. I was at the United Nations as a sign of my own personal commitment to the Mil­lennium goals, and also to represent many Baptists from around the world.”</p>
<p>Other Baptist leaders who attended the opening were Doug Bal­four, general director of Tearfund, the largest evangelical relief organization in Great Britain. A member of London’s Ashford Baptist Church, Balfour is considered one of the key instigators of the Micah Challenge, along with Michael Smitheram, international coordinator for the Micah Challenge and a member of Can­berra Baptist Church in Melbourne, Australia.</p>
<p>Other Baptists involved include Gwyne Milne, national president of the Baptist Union of Australia; Les Fussell, national director of Baptist World Aid Australia; Graham Paulson, chairman of the Aboriginal and Islander Baptist Conference of Australia; and Tim Costello, former pastor of Melbourne’s Collins Street Baptist Church and now director of World Vision Australia.</p> | Baptist leaders join other Christians in launching global anti-poverty project | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/baptistleadersjoinotherchristiansinlaunchingglobalanti-povertyproject/ | 3left-center
| Baptist leaders join other Christians in launching global anti-poverty project
<p>The Baptist World Alliance is among some 260 Christian relief and development agencies that launched an ambitious global anti-poverty campaign Oct. 15.</p>
<p>Paul Montacute, director of Bap­tist World Aid, joined other representatives for the launching ceremony of the Micah Challenge at the United Nations headquarters building in New York City.</p>
<p>The Micah Challenge aims to cut the world’s poverty in half by 2015.</p>
<p>It takes its biblical mandate from Micah 6:8: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”</p>
<p>The BWA’s General Council endorsed the Micah Challenge at its meeting in Seoul, South Korea, last July.</p>
<p>At the U.N. opening, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, South Africa, urged churches around the world to fight global poverty.</p>
<p>“How can we claim to follow Jesus if we are not prepared to work to achieve his gospel good news for the poor?” asked Ndungane. He urged congregations to take the lead in putting pressure on governments to achieve the eight Millennium Development Goals, which were adopted by the U.N. in 2000 to “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.”</p>
<p>“Christians can play a vital role in helping global leaders meet their commitments,” he said. “When Christians work with one another, united across nationalities and races, across rich and poor, across men, women and children, we have an enormously powerful and influential voice. We must speak loud and clear.”</p>
<p>Describing poverty as “evil” and the Millennium Development Goals as the most “ambitious commitment the world has ever made to combating poverty,” Ndungane said, “There is no doubt that the world can af­ford to do all that is necessary to meet the Millennium Development Goals. But there is a large question mark against whether or not we have the will power. … Governments and business can say the words, but they need all the encouragement, all the pressure, that we can give, to deliver the goods.”</p>
<p>Montacute said he supported the Micah Challenge because “its results will lead to the alleviation of poverty in many parts of the world.”</p>
<p>“Our world leaders have already committed to this, in the Millennium Development Goals, and we now need to help them to keep their eyes on the goal,” he said. “I am delighted that the BWA General Council affirmed the Micah Chal­lenge, and so would encourage all Baptists to familiarize themselves with this challenge, and play their own part in the achievement of the Millennium goals.</p>
<p>“As I travel to some of the poorest part of the world, I see too many children lacking the basic essentials of life: food, clean water, basic medications and educations,” Montacute continued. “They deserve better than this, and achieving the Millen­nium goals will help. I was at the United Nations as a sign of my own personal commitment to the Mil­lennium goals, and also to represent many Baptists from around the world.”</p>
<p>Other Baptist leaders who attended the opening were Doug Bal­four, general director of Tearfund, the largest evangelical relief organization in Great Britain. A member of London’s Ashford Baptist Church, Balfour is considered one of the key instigators of the Micah Challenge, along with Michael Smitheram, international coordinator for the Micah Challenge and a member of Can­berra Baptist Church in Melbourne, Australia.</p>
<p>Other Baptists involved include Gwyne Milne, national president of the Baptist Union of Australia; Les Fussell, national director of Baptist World Aid Australia; Graham Paulson, chairman of the Aboriginal and Islander Baptist Conference of Australia; and Tim Costello, former pastor of Melbourne’s Collins Street Baptist Church and now director of World Vision Australia.</p> | 3,044 |
|
<p>I've been eagerly devouring the rich diversity of Sunshine Week coverage. Here are a couple more examples of what news organizations are doing online to promote awareness of open government concerns:</p>
<p>Which other online Sunshine Week efforts have caught your attention, from news organizations or elsewhere? <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">E-mail me</a>, since I'm tracking them here on Tidbits and on <a href="http://del.icio.us/tag/" type="external">del.icio.us</a>.CORRECTION, March 16: Earlier I reported here that The Washington Post appeared to promote its Sunshine Week special section on its home page for one day. In fact, this promotion continues to run in the top-right rotating sidecar on its <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/?nav=globetop" type="external">national news home page</a>.)</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p /> | More Sunshine Week Online | false | https://poynter.org/news/more-sunshine-week-online | 2006-03-15 | 2least
| More Sunshine Week Online
<p>I've been eagerly devouring the rich diversity of Sunshine Week coverage. Here are a couple more examples of what news organizations are doing online to promote awareness of open government concerns:</p>
<p>Which other online Sunshine Week efforts have caught your attention, from news organizations or elsewhere? <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">E-mail me</a>, since I'm tracking them here on Tidbits and on <a href="http://del.icio.us/tag/" type="external">del.icio.us</a>.CORRECTION, March 16: Earlier I reported here that The Washington Post appeared to promote its Sunshine Week special section on its home page for one day. In fact, this promotion continues to run in the top-right rotating sidecar on its <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/?nav=globetop" type="external">national news home page</a>.)</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p /> | 3,045 |
<p />
<p>Mother Jones: Do you think the concept of open-source politics is overhyped?</p>
<p>John Byrne: It has allowed for a lot more people to participate. I think Daily Kos is a really great example of where it’s really worked in terms of putting the opinions of a larger group of people forward. And Kos has obviously had a huge impact on politics. I think you’re going to keep seeing that and see even more of that in 2008. Particularly with Lieberman-he’s in the Senate, but the fact that he had to run as an independent and really fight for his race-that was a testament to how effective open-source politics has been.</p>
<p>MJ: What do you consider to be the most exciting new use of technology in politics?</p>
<p>JB: YouTube, probably.</p>
<p>MJ: What is the most overhyped technology?</p>
<p>JB: The campaign chats and these controlled Washington Post discussions-anything where there is a layer of editors between the person asking the question and the person answering it. Whenever they have someone go on a Washington Post chat, you’re getting a very filtered version of what the questions were. That’s what the “1984” ad was getting at with Clinton, that these kind of conversations are just exploiting a medium to their advantage. And it’s not like Hillary’s the only one doing it. You can’t have an honest conversation, because there are people that are really upset with any given candidate. And if you answered all the questions, it would be impossible. There has to be a filtration system, but you just shouldn’t posit that it’s really a candid conversation unless you’re standing there on a street willing to take questions from anybody who’s walking by.</p>
<p>MJ: So do you think that this more open dialogue makes politicians more responsive?</p>
<p>JB: John Conyers’ office has been very responsive to citizen concerns and the Internet has presented a way to communicate them in a way that’s never before been there. They started a blog when everybody started a blog. Their office is very aggressively reading blogs and has a two-way dialogue with bloggers, but it all depends on what you call responsive. People aren’t necessarily changing their positions because we called them, but they’re responding to the questions and concerns that people have raised. Let me speak to one other thing I was thinking about, which is fundraising. Any candidate is going to respond to a fundraiser, and a lot of these blogs are major fundraisers for the party. Not necessarily on the level that a Hollywood mogul is, but politicians respond to people who raise money. You don’t want to alienate Kos or other big players because if you’re on their good list, you’re going to be able to raise more money. Online fundraising is so important to the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>MJ: In your view, how has the political landscape changed since the Dean campaign? Will campaign-run blogs have the same impact that they did in 2004?</p>
<p>JB: Blogs succeed, live, and die on personality. I think campaigns could have a blog as effective as Dean’s. But from my experience, campaigns tend to be more conservative in their approaches because they don’t want to piss somebody off.</p>
<p>MJ: What do you think open-source technologies do to old models of campaigning like canvassing, polling, flyer hanging, phone banking, and TV attack ads?</p>
<p>JB: I don’t think they take away from anything that already exists.</p>
<p>MJ: So you don’t think that they’ll replace them-they’re just supplementing them?</p>
<p>JB: You’re not going to not go to Iowa. That’s just odd. Like, “Oh, I went to the Iowa blog.” I don’t think so.</p>
<p>MJ: Do you think that open-source politics affects most Americans?</p>
<p>JB: Yes, but not necessarily directly. It affects people the way that polls affect people that aren’t polled because they are the means by which people decide what’s the majority opinion.</p>
<p>MJ: Do you think that open-source politics will bring anyone into politics for the first time?</p>
<p>JB: I’ve seen so many more people engaged, because they feel like they’re a part of the process as opposed to being talked down to.</p>
<p>MJ: What pitfalls do you see for candidates who harness these technologies?</p>
<p>JB: I think candidates who play in the online world have to be very cognizant of what they’re doing and be very sensitive to what has come before them. You can have a blogger that says something dumb and then you have Drudge and then you have Fox and then everybody else writing about it.</p>
<p>MJ: Do you think either party has an early lead in using these technologies?</p>
<p>JB: Definitely the Democrats. The right is a lot more top-down and the left is a lot more ground-up.</p>
<p>MJ: If a candidate doesn’t harness technology, does he or she really have a chance?</p>
<p>JB: If you’re running in a House race in a nonmetropolitan area.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="/interview/2007/07/index.html" type="external">More Interviews</a> &lt;&lt; &gt;&gt; <a href="/news/feature/2007/07/fight_different.html" type="external">Politics 2.0 Index</a></p>
<p /> | Interview with John Byrne: Editor and Founder of Rawstory.com | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/06/interview-john-byrne-editor-and-founder-rawstorycom/ | 2007-06-29 | 4left
| Interview with John Byrne: Editor and Founder of Rawstory.com
<p />
<p>Mother Jones: Do you think the concept of open-source politics is overhyped?</p>
<p>John Byrne: It has allowed for a lot more people to participate. I think Daily Kos is a really great example of where it’s really worked in terms of putting the opinions of a larger group of people forward. And Kos has obviously had a huge impact on politics. I think you’re going to keep seeing that and see even more of that in 2008. Particularly with Lieberman-he’s in the Senate, but the fact that he had to run as an independent and really fight for his race-that was a testament to how effective open-source politics has been.</p>
<p>MJ: What do you consider to be the most exciting new use of technology in politics?</p>
<p>JB: YouTube, probably.</p>
<p>MJ: What is the most overhyped technology?</p>
<p>JB: The campaign chats and these controlled Washington Post discussions-anything where there is a layer of editors between the person asking the question and the person answering it. Whenever they have someone go on a Washington Post chat, you’re getting a very filtered version of what the questions were. That’s what the “1984” ad was getting at with Clinton, that these kind of conversations are just exploiting a medium to their advantage. And it’s not like Hillary’s the only one doing it. You can’t have an honest conversation, because there are people that are really upset with any given candidate. And if you answered all the questions, it would be impossible. There has to be a filtration system, but you just shouldn’t posit that it’s really a candid conversation unless you’re standing there on a street willing to take questions from anybody who’s walking by.</p>
<p>MJ: So do you think that this more open dialogue makes politicians more responsive?</p>
<p>JB: John Conyers’ office has been very responsive to citizen concerns and the Internet has presented a way to communicate them in a way that’s never before been there. They started a blog when everybody started a blog. Their office is very aggressively reading blogs and has a two-way dialogue with bloggers, but it all depends on what you call responsive. People aren’t necessarily changing their positions because we called them, but they’re responding to the questions and concerns that people have raised. Let me speak to one other thing I was thinking about, which is fundraising. Any candidate is going to respond to a fundraiser, and a lot of these blogs are major fundraisers for the party. Not necessarily on the level that a Hollywood mogul is, but politicians respond to people who raise money. You don’t want to alienate Kos or other big players because if you’re on their good list, you’re going to be able to raise more money. Online fundraising is so important to the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>MJ: In your view, how has the political landscape changed since the Dean campaign? Will campaign-run blogs have the same impact that they did in 2004?</p>
<p>JB: Blogs succeed, live, and die on personality. I think campaigns could have a blog as effective as Dean’s. But from my experience, campaigns tend to be more conservative in their approaches because they don’t want to piss somebody off.</p>
<p>MJ: What do you think open-source technologies do to old models of campaigning like canvassing, polling, flyer hanging, phone banking, and TV attack ads?</p>
<p>JB: I don’t think they take away from anything that already exists.</p>
<p>MJ: So you don’t think that they’ll replace them-they’re just supplementing them?</p>
<p>JB: You’re not going to not go to Iowa. That’s just odd. Like, “Oh, I went to the Iowa blog.” I don’t think so.</p>
<p>MJ: Do you think that open-source politics affects most Americans?</p>
<p>JB: Yes, but not necessarily directly. It affects people the way that polls affect people that aren’t polled because they are the means by which people decide what’s the majority opinion.</p>
<p>MJ: Do you think that open-source politics will bring anyone into politics for the first time?</p>
<p>JB: I’ve seen so many more people engaged, because they feel like they’re a part of the process as opposed to being talked down to.</p>
<p>MJ: What pitfalls do you see for candidates who harness these technologies?</p>
<p>JB: I think candidates who play in the online world have to be very cognizant of what they’re doing and be very sensitive to what has come before them. You can have a blogger that says something dumb and then you have Drudge and then you have Fox and then everybody else writing about it.</p>
<p>MJ: Do you think either party has an early lead in using these technologies?</p>
<p>JB: Definitely the Democrats. The right is a lot more top-down and the left is a lot more ground-up.</p>
<p>MJ: If a candidate doesn’t harness technology, does he or she really have a chance?</p>
<p>JB: If you’re running in a House race in a nonmetropolitan area.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="/interview/2007/07/index.html" type="external">More Interviews</a> &lt;&lt; &gt;&gt; <a href="/news/feature/2007/07/fight_different.html" type="external">Politics 2.0 Index</a></p>
<p /> | 3,046 |
<p>The March 14 Los Angeles Times contained that rarissima avis, good news from Ramadi:</p>
<p>The commander of U.S. troops in Iraq wanted some sweets, and nothing was going to stop him. Not even the fact that he was tramping through a neighborhood that only days ago had been teeming with snipers and Al Qaeda fighters who would love nothing better that to say they had just shot Gen. David H. Petraeus.</p>
<p>With soldiers casting anxious glances along the desolate dirt road, the four-star Army general made a beeline for a tiny shop and helped himself to a bite-sized, honey-coated pastry proferred by the owner.</p>
<p>“Tell him the next time I come back to Ramadi, we’ll eat his chow,” Petraeus said as he headed into the blistering sun.</p>
<p>As someone who navigates by bakeries, I would like to see this episode as a tale of a great man willing to venture all, even his life, in pursuit of the perfect éclair. The reality is less noble, but perhaps more useful. General Petraeus was showing by personal example that our forces in Iraq should put integration with the people before force protection.</p>
<p>This flicker of light was not alone in the darkness that is Iraq. In Anbar province, home base of the Sunni insurgency, the Marines report some progress. Turning al Qaeda in Iraq’s excesses against it, they have formed working alliances with some Sunni sheiks, who in turn are going after al Qaeda. U.S. troops have moved into Sadr City in Baghdad with some care instead of kicking down doors and humiliating the locals.</p>
<p>The official reports undoubtedly overstate the good news, because that is what the U.S. military always does (for an example of the opposite, see Williamson Murray’s superb article on the German response to victory in Poland). But the reason these points of light will not overcome the Iraqi darkness is more profound. All these improvements in American forces’ performance are at the tactical level, and that is not where most wars are decided.</p>
<p>Two points of military theory are important here. First, a higher level dominates a lower. If you win on the tactical level but lose operationally, you lose. If you win on the tactical and operational levels but lose strategically — Germany’s fate in both world wars — you still lose.</p>
<p>Second, in most wars, including Fourth Generation wars, success on higher levels is not merely additive. That is not to say, you cannot win operationally or strategically just by adding up tactical victories. We tried to do that in Vietnam, and the Second Generation U.S. military still does not understand why it didn’t work. In Second Generation theory, it is supposed to work, which is why we are trying it again in Iraq and Afghanistan, and again not understanding why we are losing.</p>
<p>If we consider the operational and strategic situations in Iraq, we can easily see why no amount of tactical success can save us. Strategically, we are fighting to support a Shiite regime closely aligned with Iran, our most potent local opponent. Every tactical success merely moves us closer to giving Iran a new ally in the form of a restored Iraqi state under Shiite domination. The more tactical successes we win, the worse our strategic situation gets. This flows not from any tactical failure (though there have been plenty of those), but from botching the strategic level from the outset. Saddam’s Iraq was the main regional counterweight to Iran, which means we should not have attacked it.</p>
<p>Operationally, we have been maneuvered by Iraq’s Shiites into fighting their civil war for them, focusing our efforts against the Sunnis. As I have observed before, we are in effect the Shiites ‘unpaid Hessians. That is why Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered his Mahdi Army not to fight us in Sadr City. It is not that he is afraid of us; he is simply making a rational operational decision.</p>
<p>Our only other apparent option is to take a more even hand and fight the Shiite militias as well as the Sunnis, which is what some in Washington want our forces to do. But that would make our operational situation even worse, because the Shiites lie across our lines of communication. If we get into a fight with them, they can cut off our supplies, leaving us effectively encircled — the essence of operational defeat.</p>
<p>It should be clear that no accumulation of tactical successes can retrieve either our operational or our strategic situations. Again, most wars are not simply additive.</p>
<p>That is not to say we could not repair our positions on the strategic or operational levels. On the strategic level, we could reach a general settlement with Iran, something the Iranians have proposed, and on very generous terms.</p>
<p>This would be the equivalent of Nixon’s rapprochement with China, which rendered our defeat in Vietnam irrelevant. Unfortunately, the Bush administration, with its usual myopia, has refused even to consider the Iranian offer.</p>
<p>Operationally, we could open negotiations with all our Sunni opponents other than al Qaeda in Iraq, attempting to reach a settlement that would isolate the latter. General Petraeus has dropped hints he would like to do this. We would have to assure the nationalist opposition that we do plan to leave, and the Baathists that they would be re-legalized and given some share of political power. It would require a delicate balancing act, since any arrangement with the Baathists would enrage the Shiites, who could threaten our supply lines. It might nonetheless be possible, except that the Bush White House would again almost certainly veto it. As General Petraeus has probably already discovered, there is no position more difficult than that of minister to an idiot king.</p>
<p>In desperation, General Petraeus will probably be driven to seek operational and strategic success by fighting smarter on the tactical level. He will comfort himself that fighting smarter is at least better than fighting dumb, as we largely have to date. But it won’t work, because it can’t. Operational and strategic failures must be dealt with on their own levels and in their own terms. Anything else is lighting candles in a hurricane.</p>
<p>WILLIAM S. LIND, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Flickers of Light | true | https://counterpunch.org/2007/03/23/flickers-of-light/ | 2007-03-23 | 4left
| Flickers of Light
<p>The March 14 Los Angeles Times contained that rarissima avis, good news from Ramadi:</p>
<p>The commander of U.S. troops in Iraq wanted some sweets, and nothing was going to stop him. Not even the fact that he was tramping through a neighborhood that only days ago had been teeming with snipers and Al Qaeda fighters who would love nothing better that to say they had just shot Gen. David H. Petraeus.</p>
<p>With soldiers casting anxious glances along the desolate dirt road, the four-star Army general made a beeline for a tiny shop and helped himself to a bite-sized, honey-coated pastry proferred by the owner.</p>
<p>“Tell him the next time I come back to Ramadi, we’ll eat his chow,” Petraeus said as he headed into the blistering sun.</p>
<p>As someone who navigates by bakeries, I would like to see this episode as a tale of a great man willing to venture all, even his life, in pursuit of the perfect éclair. The reality is less noble, but perhaps more useful. General Petraeus was showing by personal example that our forces in Iraq should put integration with the people before force protection.</p>
<p>This flicker of light was not alone in the darkness that is Iraq. In Anbar province, home base of the Sunni insurgency, the Marines report some progress. Turning al Qaeda in Iraq’s excesses against it, they have formed working alliances with some Sunni sheiks, who in turn are going after al Qaeda. U.S. troops have moved into Sadr City in Baghdad with some care instead of kicking down doors and humiliating the locals.</p>
<p>The official reports undoubtedly overstate the good news, because that is what the U.S. military always does (for an example of the opposite, see Williamson Murray’s superb article on the German response to victory in Poland). But the reason these points of light will not overcome the Iraqi darkness is more profound. All these improvements in American forces’ performance are at the tactical level, and that is not where most wars are decided.</p>
<p>Two points of military theory are important here. First, a higher level dominates a lower. If you win on the tactical level but lose operationally, you lose. If you win on the tactical and operational levels but lose strategically — Germany’s fate in both world wars — you still lose.</p>
<p>Second, in most wars, including Fourth Generation wars, success on higher levels is not merely additive. That is not to say, you cannot win operationally or strategically just by adding up tactical victories. We tried to do that in Vietnam, and the Second Generation U.S. military still does not understand why it didn’t work. In Second Generation theory, it is supposed to work, which is why we are trying it again in Iraq and Afghanistan, and again not understanding why we are losing.</p>
<p>If we consider the operational and strategic situations in Iraq, we can easily see why no amount of tactical success can save us. Strategically, we are fighting to support a Shiite regime closely aligned with Iran, our most potent local opponent. Every tactical success merely moves us closer to giving Iran a new ally in the form of a restored Iraqi state under Shiite domination. The more tactical successes we win, the worse our strategic situation gets. This flows not from any tactical failure (though there have been plenty of those), but from botching the strategic level from the outset. Saddam’s Iraq was the main regional counterweight to Iran, which means we should not have attacked it.</p>
<p>Operationally, we have been maneuvered by Iraq’s Shiites into fighting their civil war for them, focusing our efforts against the Sunnis. As I have observed before, we are in effect the Shiites ‘unpaid Hessians. That is why Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered his Mahdi Army not to fight us in Sadr City. It is not that he is afraid of us; he is simply making a rational operational decision.</p>
<p>Our only other apparent option is to take a more even hand and fight the Shiite militias as well as the Sunnis, which is what some in Washington want our forces to do. But that would make our operational situation even worse, because the Shiites lie across our lines of communication. If we get into a fight with them, they can cut off our supplies, leaving us effectively encircled — the essence of operational defeat.</p>
<p>It should be clear that no accumulation of tactical successes can retrieve either our operational or our strategic situations. Again, most wars are not simply additive.</p>
<p>That is not to say we could not repair our positions on the strategic or operational levels. On the strategic level, we could reach a general settlement with Iran, something the Iranians have proposed, and on very generous terms.</p>
<p>This would be the equivalent of Nixon’s rapprochement with China, which rendered our defeat in Vietnam irrelevant. Unfortunately, the Bush administration, with its usual myopia, has refused even to consider the Iranian offer.</p>
<p>Operationally, we could open negotiations with all our Sunni opponents other than al Qaeda in Iraq, attempting to reach a settlement that would isolate the latter. General Petraeus has dropped hints he would like to do this. We would have to assure the nationalist opposition that we do plan to leave, and the Baathists that they would be re-legalized and given some share of political power. It would require a delicate balancing act, since any arrangement with the Baathists would enrage the Shiites, who could threaten our supply lines. It might nonetheless be possible, except that the Bush White House would again almost certainly veto it. As General Petraeus has probably already discovered, there is no position more difficult than that of minister to an idiot king.</p>
<p>In desperation, General Petraeus will probably be driven to seek operational and strategic success by fighting smarter on the tactical level. He will comfort himself that fighting smarter is at least better than fighting dumb, as we largely have to date. But it won’t work, because it can’t. Operational and strategic failures must be dealt with on their own levels and in their own terms. Anything else is lighting candles in a hurricane.</p>
<p>WILLIAM S. LIND, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 3,047 |
<p>Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Today I saw on Israeli TV that this morning 30 rockets fell on Israel, including some on Haifa. No one was hurt. However, the fact that Hizballah (and Hamas) can fire rockets in broad daylight on Israel is very significant.</p>
<p>Israel has spy satellites in the sky photographing every object larger than 70 cm. Israel has pilotless planes photographing rocket crews launching rockets against Israel. Israel has the best air force in the world which can hit a car from a mile up in the sky. Israel has an excellent infantry and very sophisticated tanks–which it produces by itself.</p>
<p>Israel has Atom Bombs . . .</p>
<p>AND ALL THIS MODERN EQUIPMENT CANNOT STOP HIZBALLAH AND HAMAS FROM FIRING ROCKETS IN BROAD DAYLIGHT !!!</p>
<p>Sooner or later (I think within one year) most Israelis will absorb this fact and many will conclude that the only way to abolish the threat of the rockets is to reach an agreement with Palestinians. The present government follows Sharon’s policy of unilateral withdrawals.</p>
<p>They do so because withdrawal by agreement with the Palestinians would require them to return to the 1967 borders, to hand back old Jerusalem and the whole West Bank to the Palestinians. Sharon–and Olmert –are hardline annexationists and DON’T want to return to the 1967 borders.</p>
<p>Now the Israeli public sees the results of this policy in the form of rockets.</p>
<p>Bear in mind that NEVER BEFORE, not even in 1948 during the war of independence, did rockets, or shells, fall on Haifa, Safed, and Tiberias!</p>
<p>But today–with all Israel’s A-Bombs, satellites, F-16s, drones, etc, etc, this is happening.</p>
<p>When the current wave of war hysteria subsides many Israelis will understand what this means. It means that only peace with the Palestinians, resulting from a compromise the Palestinians agree to, canguarantee Israel’s security. The existence of a Palestinian state is the best guarantee of Israel’s security.</p>
<p>This will also satisfy Hizballah. Some Israelis will decide to emigrate after this flare up. The rest will, eventually, reach the conclusion I outlined above.</p>
<p>So on the whole, the lesson drawn from this flare up is positive. All Israel’s A-Bombs, satellites, airforce, tanks cannot defend Israel from rockets fired by guerrilla groups–Only agreement with the Palestinians can do so.</p>
<p>If the Palestinian population accepts the agreement Israel will be secure.</p>
<p>Going back to the pre-67 borders will give Israel 75 per cent of the territory of Palestine whereas the UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947 gave Israel only 50%. So they gain 25%.</p>
<p>If the Israelis do not want to accept 75 per cent they must live with the permanent threat of the rockets.</p>
<p>Instead of playing the pathetic role of the “Eternal Victim” they should stand up and accept the price they have to pay for what they covet. If they don’t want to pay the price they can always sit down with the Palestinians and reach an agreement based on the pre-1967 borders.</p> | The Biggest Stick in the Middle East | true | https://counterpunch.org/2006/07/29/the-biggest-stick-in-the-middle-east/ | 2006-07-29 | 4left
| The Biggest Stick in the Middle East
<p>Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Today I saw on Israeli TV that this morning 30 rockets fell on Israel, including some on Haifa. No one was hurt. However, the fact that Hizballah (and Hamas) can fire rockets in broad daylight on Israel is very significant.</p>
<p>Israel has spy satellites in the sky photographing every object larger than 70 cm. Israel has pilotless planes photographing rocket crews launching rockets against Israel. Israel has the best air force in the world which can hit a car from a mile up in the sky. Israel has an excellent infantry and very sophisticated tanks–which it produces by itself.</p>
<p>Israel has Atom Bombs . . .</p>
<p>AND ALL THIS MODERN EQUIPMENT CANNOT STOP HIZBALLAH AND HAMAS FROM FIRING ROCKETS IN BROAD DAYLIGHT !!!</p>
<p>Sooner or later (I think within one year) most Israelis will absorb this fact and many will conclude that the only way to abolish the threat of the rockets is to reach an agreement with Palestinians. The present government follows Sharon’s policy of unilateral withdrawals.</p>
<p>They do so because withdrawal by agreement with the Palestinians would require them to return to the 1967 borders, to hand back old Jerusalem and the whole West Bank to the Palestinians. Sharon–and Olmert –are hardline annexationists and DON’T want to return to the 1967 borders.</p>
<p>Now the Israeli public sees the results of this policy in the form of rockets.</p>
<p>Bear in mind that NEVER BEFORE, not even in 1948 during the war of independence, did rockets, or shells, fall on Haifa, Safed, and Tiberias!</p>
<p>But today–with all Israel’s A-Bombs, satellites, F-16s, drones, etc, etc, this is happening.</p>
<p>When the current wave of war hysteria subsides many Israelis will understand what this means. It means that only peace with the Palestinians, resulting from a compromise the Palestinians agree to, canguarantee Israel’s security. The existence of a Palestinian state is the best guarantee of Israel’s security.</p>
<p>This will also satisfy Hizballah. Some Israelis will decide to emigrate after this flare up. The rest will, eventually, reach the conclusion I outlined above.</p>
<p>So on the whole, the lesson drawn from this flare up is positive. All Israel’s A-Bombs, satellites, airforce, tanks cannot defend Israel from rockets fired by guerrilla groups–Only agreement with the Palestinians can do so.</p>
<p>If the Palestinian population accepts the agreement Israel will be secure.</p>
<p>Going back to the pre-67 borders will give Israel 75 per cent of the territory of Palestine whereas the UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947 gave Israel only 50%. So they gain 25%.</p>
<p>If the Israelis do not want to accept 75 per cent they must live with the permanent threat of the rockets.</p>
<p>Instead of playing the pathetic role of the “Eternal Victim” they should stand up and accept the price they have to pay for what they covet. If they don’t want to pay the price they can always sit down with the Palestinians and reach an agreement based on the pre-1967 borders.</p> | 3,048 |
<p>Authorities in the province of Ontario unveiled more than a dozen measures meant to curb skyrocketing house-price gains in the Toronto region, highlighted by a surtax targeting foreign buyers.</p>
<p>Canada's most populous province said Thursday that it needed to act urgently to stabilize a frothy real-estate market that prominent economists have warned has entered bubble territory. House prices in Toronto have been on a tear in recent months, rising nearly 30% in March from a year earlier.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Bank of Canada Gov. Stephen Poloz warned last week prices in Toronto were in an "unsustainable zone" and had reached levels that didn't reflect economic fundamentals.</p>
<p>A highlight of the Ontario government's response is a 15% tax on foreign buying. The tax mimics a similar surcharge British Columbia authorities introduced last summer to curb a 30%-plus run up in prices in the west-coast city of Vancouver, after local data and research indicated foreign investment -- in particular from China -- were helping fuel a surge.</p>
<p>The Ontario tax will be effective immediately, and apply beyond Toronto to a wider region surrounding Canada's largest urban center, covering a total 12,300 square miles which an estimated nine million people call home. House prices in surrounding communities have also surged, as buyers give up on the Toronto market and head further out to find real estate within their budget.</p>
<p>Ontario officials estimated foreigners represent 8% of all real-estate transactions in the Toronto area, based on data made available to them. They added roughly 6,000 residences now sit vacant in Toronto, likely owned by foreigners and domestic speculators.</p>
<p>"These are a measured set of responses to ease the enormous pressure that people are under right now," said Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne at a news conference, where she relayed stories of families losing multiple bidding wars for houses and finding themselves priced out of the market.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>"It is a balanced plan that will increase supply and rein in speculation. It is about creating stability and addressing affordability in our housing market," she said."</p>
<p>Ontario also plans to allow municipalities, led by Toronto, to slap their own tax on vacant properties. It also introduced caps on rent increases.</p>
<p>The Vancouver foreign-buyer tax "had a noticeable moderating effect on prices," said Robert Hogue, economist at Royal Bank of Canada. Its implementation in August "coincided with the first weakening in annual price growth in more than three years," he added.</p>
<p>Analysts say Ontario had no choice but to act aggressively, given the frothy state of the Toronto market.</p>
<p>"Standing by while housing prices shot to the moon was no longer a viable option for Ontario -- the risks were simply too great," said economists at National Bank Financial, in a note to clients. The Toronto region accounts for roughly 19% of Canada's gross domestic product.</p>
<p>One economist, Jimmy Jean of Desjardins Capital Markets, said a tax on foreign buyers in Ontario could prompt nonresident investors to move elsewhere -- such as markets in Montreal and Calgary. Economists and real-estate officials say the Vancouver foreign-buyers tax prompted bubblelike conditions to migrate east to Toronto.</p>
<p>Write to David George-Cosh at [email protected] and Paul Vieira at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>April 20, 2017 12:04 ET (16:04 GMT)</p> | Ontario Takes Steps in Bid to Calm Housing Market | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/04/20/ontario-takes-steps-in-bid-to-calm-housing-market.html | 2017-04-20 | 0right
| Ontario Takes Steps in Bid to Calm Housing Market
<p>Authorities in the province of Ontario unveiled more than a dozen measures meant to curb skyrocketing house-price gains in the Toronto region, highlighted by a surtax targeting foreign buyers.</p>
<p>Canada's most populous province said Thursday that it needed to act urgently to stabilize a frothy real-estate market that prominent economists have warned has entered bubble territory. House prices in Toronto have been on a tear in recent months, rising nearly 30% in March from a year earlier.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Bank of Canada Gov. Stephen Poloz warned last week prices in Toronto were in an "unsustainable zone" and had reached levels that didn't reflect economic fundamentals.</p>
<p>A highlight of the Ontario government's response is a 15% tax on foreign buying. The tax mimics a similar surcharge British Columbia authorities introduced last summer to curb a 30%-plus run up in prices in the west-coast city of Vancouver, after local data and research indicated foreign investment -- in particular from China -- were helping fuel a surge.</p>
<p>The Ontario tax will be effective immediately, and apply beyond Toronto to a wider region surrounding Canada's largest urban center, covering a total 12,300 square miles which an estimated nine million people call home. House prices in surrounding communities have also surged, as buyers give up on the Toronto market and head further out to find real estate within their budget.</p>
<p>Ontario officials estimated foreigners represent 8% of all real-estate transactions in the Toronto area, based on data made available to them. They added roughly 6,000 residences now sit vacant in Toronto, likely owned by foreigners and domestic speculators.</p>
<p>"These are a measured set of responses to ease the enormous pressure that people are under right now," said Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne at a news conference, where she relayed stories of families losing multiple bidding wars for houses and finding themselves priced out of the market.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>"It is a balanced plan that will increase supply and rein in speculation. It is about creating stability and addressing affordability in our housing market," she said."</p>
<p>Ontario also plans to allow municipalities, led by Toronto, to slap their own tax on vacant properties. It also introduced caps on rent increases.</p>
<p>The Vancouver foreign-buyer tax "had a noticeable moderating effect on prices," said Robert Hogue, economist at Royal Bank of Canada. Its implementation in August "coincided with the first weakening in annual price growth in more than three years," he added.</p>
<p>Analysts say Ontario had no choice but to act aggressively, given the frothy state of the Toronto market.</p>
<p>"Standing by while housing prices shot to the moon was no longer a viable option for Ontario -- the risks were simply too great," said economists at National Bank Financial, in a note to clients. The Toronto region accounts for roughly 19% of Canada's gross domestic product.</p>
<p>One economist, Jimmy Jean of Desjardins Capital Markets, said a tax on foreign buyers in Ontario could prompt nonresident investors to move elsewhere -- such as markets in Montreal and Calgary. Economists and real-estate officials say the Vancouver foreign-buyers tax prompted bubblelike conditions to migrate east to Toronto.</p>
<p>Write to David George-Cosh at [email protected] and Paul Vieira at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>April 20, 2017 12:04 ET (16:04 GMT)</p> | 3,049 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>The breakfast nook of the custom home by Koinonia Architects &amp; Builders is defined by wood pillars. (Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Paul McDonald feels like he has an advantage over many builders and that has helped him have consistent success at the Home Builders Association of Central New Mexico Homes of Enchantment Parade.</p>
<p>The parade started Saturday with 35 homes by 26 builders on display throughout the Albuquerque metro area. It runs April 25-27 and May 2-4 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>(For details and a map, visit <a href="http://homesofenchantmentparade.com" type="external">homesofenchantmentparade.com</a>.)</p>
<p>Homes range from an 1,818-square-foot home by Twilight Homes for $169,990 in Los Lunas to a $1.25 million, 4,992-square house in the Northeast Heights built by All Trades Construction.</p>
<p>Architect and builder Paul McDonald stands in the courtyard of the custom home at 8894 Scarlet Knight NE. (Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>In the past, McDonald's Koinonia Architects &amp; Builders Parade homes have collected awards ranging from Buyers Choice Awards, Gold Award, Silver Award, Bronze Award, Best Master Bath and Best Kitchen.</p>
<p>McDonald is a third-generation builder who began learning the craft by tagging along with his dad to job sites as a teenager.</p>
<p>But those years of experience are not what McDonald points to when it comes to the trait that makes Koinonia different. No, it's the education and experience as an architect that he believes sets Koinonia apart.</p>
<p>"I wanted to be the best builder that I could be," McDonald said. "So I went to the University of New Mexico to study architecture, then I had my own architecture/engineering firm for 10 years while also doing construction."</p>
<p>When it came right down to it, though, the lure and family history of building was too strong to ignore.</p>
<p>A handmade chandelier graces one of the bedrooms in the Spanish-style home. (Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>"About 10 years ago I decided I liked building rather than running a medium-sized architectural and engineering firm," he said. "I love building. That's my passion."</p>
<p>That doesn't mean he's given up the architectural aspect of his life. Far from it. Now he just gets to incorporate it fully into his building business.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"What we offer our clients is a one-stop shop," McDonald said. "That's what sets ourselves apart from other builders. We don't have the traditional disconnect between the designer and the builder."</p>
<p>It also allows McDonald to keep his hand in the drawing business.</p>
<p>"I do all of the designs myself," he said. "There's a certain gratification in that. You get to see what's done on paper come alive. I see all of it from the foundation digging to occupancy. I'm involved throughout the entire process."</p>
<p>And that provides a certain flexibility when it comes to on-site modifications throughout the construction phase.</p>
<p>For instance, he said, in his Parade home this year - a 4,000-square-foot, Old World, Spanish-style home that sold for $1.175 million - sight lines to the looming Sandias nearby were blocked by the planned roof for an outdoor living space.</p>
<p>A swimming pool and covered patio are featured in the rear of Koinonia Architects &amp; Builders' entry in this year's Parade of Homes. (Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>So rather than block the views that were visible from deep in the kitchen and throughout the living space, McDonald had the roof raised high enough to provide clean lines of sight.</p>
<p>"I'm on the job site every day," he said. "Sometimes I'm here all day, doing whatever needs to be done. You'll see me oftentimes helping out with whatever task needs to be done that day."</p>
<p>That's the work ethic he gleaned from his father as teenager when he swung a hammer for framing, wielded a shovel digging footings and helped install drywall.</p>
<p>It's all part of Koinonia, McDonald said, which reflects his business philosophy.</p>
<p>Pronounced coin-o-nea, Koinonia is Greek, he explained, and means fellowship and partnership. It comes from the Greek New Testament and McDonald said it first caught his eye when he was rather young reading the Book of Acts.</p>
<p>The kitchen of Koinonia's custom home in this year's Parade of Homes features handmade knotty alder cabinets with ornamental iron accents. Granite countertops are featured throughout the home. (Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>"It reflects the relationship I like to have with my clients," he said. "It reflects the relationship I like to have with my employees and it reflects the relationship I like to have with my subcontractors."</p>
<p>Because ultimately, McDonald said, creating a house "takes a sense of fellowship to accomplish a project. Everybody needs to be playing to the same sheet of music. Architecture has eloquently been referred to as frozen music."</p>
<p>That's the way he looks at his houses and the way McDonald approaches each project. Since he only does two or three homes a year, he able to throw all of his energy into each one.</p>
<p>"The quality is extremely high," he said. "And the details are what really makes it. What I'm trying to do as an architect and a builder is evoke emotion. The home is supposed to be your refuge. It's supposed to provide you with peace and tranquility."</p>
<p /> | Custom builder evokes emotion | false | https://abqjournal.com/390298/custom-builder-evokes-emotion.html | 2014-04-27 | 2least
| Custom builder evokes emotion
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<p>The breakfast nook of the custom home by Koinonia Architects &amp; Builders is defined by wood pillars. (Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Paul McDonald feels like he has an advantage over many builders and that has helped him have consistent success at the Home Builders Association of Central New Mexico Homes of Enchantment Parade.</p>
<p>The parade started Saturday with 35 homes by 26 builders on display throughout the Albuquerque metro area. It runs April 25-27 and May 2-4 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.</p>
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<p>(For details and a map, visit <a href="http://homesofenchantmentparade.com" type="external">homesofenchantmentparade.com</a>.)</p>
<p>Homes range from an 1,818-square-foot home by Twilight Homes for $169,990 in Los Lunas to a $1.25 million, 4,992-square house in the Northeast Heights built by All Trades Construction.</p>
<p>Architect and builder Paul McDonald stands in the courtyard of the custom home at 8894 Scarlet Knight NE. (Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>In the past, McDonald's Koinonia Architects &amp; Builders Parade homes have collected awards ranging from Buyers Choice Awards, Gold Award, Silver Award, Bronze Award, Best Master Bath and Best Kitchen.</p>
<p>McDonald is a third-generation builder who began learning the craft by tagging along with his dad to job sites as a teenager.</p>
<p>But those years of experience are not what McDonald points to when it comes to the trait that makes Koinonia different. No, it's the education and experience as an architect that he believes sets Koinonia apart.</p>
<p>"I wanted to be the best builder that I could be," McDonald said. "So I went to the University of New Mexico to study architecture, then I had my own architecture/engineering firm for 10 years while also doing construction."</p>
<p>When it came right down to it, though, the lure and family history of building was too strong to ignore.</p>
<p>A handmade chandelier graces one of the bedrooms in the Spanish-style home. (Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>"About 10 years ago I decided I liked building rather than running a medium-sized architectural and engineering firm," he said. "I love building. That's my passion."</p>
<p>That doesn't mean he's given up the architectural aspect of his life. Far from it. Now he just gets to incorporate it fully into his building business.</p>
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<p>"What we offer our clients is a one-stop shop," McDonald said. "That's what sets ourselves apart from other builders. We don't have the traditional disconnect between the designer and the builder."</p>
<p>It also allows McDonald to keep his hand in the drawing business.</p>
<p>"I do all of the designs myself," he said. "There's a certain gratification in that. You get to see what's done on paper come alive. I see all of it from the foundation digging to occupancy. I'm involved throughout the entire process."</p>
<p>And that provides a certain flexibility when it comes to on-site modifications throughout the construction phase.</p>
<p>For instance, he said, in his Parade home this year - a 4,000-square-foot, Old World, Spanish-style home that sold for $1.175 million - sight lines to the looming Sandias nearby were blocked by the planned roof for an outdoor living space.</p>
<p>A swimming pool and covered patio are featured in the rear of Koinonia Architects &amp; Builders' entry in this year's Parade of Homes. (Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>So rather than block the views that were visible from deep in the kitchen and throughout the living space, McDonald had the roof raised high enough to provide clean lines of sight.</p>
<p>"I'm on the job site every day," he said. "Sometimes I'm here all day, doing whatever needs to be done. You'll see me oftentimes helping out with whatever task needs to be done that day."</p>
<p>That's the work ethic he gleaned from his father as teenager when he swung a hammer for framing, wielded a shovel digging footings and helped install drywall.</p>
<p>It's all part of Koinonia, McDonald said, which reflects his business philosophy.</p>
<p>Pronounced coin-o-nea, Koinonia is Greek, he explained, and means fellowship and partnership. It comes from the Greek New Testament and McDonald said it first caught his eye when he was rather young reading the Book of Acts.</p>
<p>The kitchen of Koinonia's custom home in this year's Parade of Homes features handmade knotty alder cabinets with ornamental iron accents. Granite countertops are featured throughout the home. (Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>"It reflects the relationship I like to have with my clients," he said. "It reflects the relationship I like to have with my employees and it reflects the relationship I like to have with my subcontractors."</p>
<p>Because ultimately, McDonald said, creating a house "takes a sense of fellowship to accomplish a project. Everybody needs to be playing to the same sheet of music. Architecture has eloquently been referred to as frozen music."</p>
<p>That's the way he looks at his houses and the way McDonald approaches each project. Since he only does two or three homes a year, he able to throw all of his energy into each one.</p>
<p>"The quality is extremely high," he said. "And the details are what really makes it. What I'm trying to do as an architect and a builder is evoke emotion. The home is supposed to be your refuge. It's supposed to provide you with peace and tranquility."</p>
<p /> | 3,050 |
<p>Credit conditions in the eurozone continue to deteriorate while yields on French, Spanish, Belgian and Italian bonds move higher. Italy’s 10-year yield increased 19 basis points to 6.89 percent on Tuesday, just a stone’s throw from the “unsustainable” 7 percent. French debt is also under increasing pressure. The spread between France’s 10-year debt and German bund hit a new high on Tuesday, widening by 174 basis points. If yields continue to&#160;rise,&#160; European Central Bank (ECB) chief Mario Draghi will be forced to either expand his bond buying program (Securities Markets Programme) or watch while defaulting sovereigns domino through the south taking most of the EU banking system along with them.</p>
<p>Germany will not permit the ECB to act as lender of last resort. As the Bundesbank’s president Jens Weidmann explained in an interview last week,&#160;unsterilized bond&#160;purchases (monetization)&#160;would violate Article 123 of the EU treaty.</p>
<p>“I cannot see how you can ensure the stability of a monetary union by violating its legal provisions.” Weidman said. “I think the prohibition of monetary financing is very important in ensuring the credibility and independence of the central bank, which allow us to deliver on our primary objective of price stability. This is a very fundamental issue. If we now overstep that mandate, we call into question our own independence.”</p>
<p>So, for now, the ECB’s hands are tied, but as bond prices continue to&#160;fall and credit markets freeze, German opposition will weaken and the ECB will asked to intervene.</p>
<p>Samsung Securities is now warning of a run on Italian banks. Here’s an excerpt from their report:</p>
<p>“A more immediate issue confronting investors is whether we are likely to soon witness a significant run on Italian-based banks. If the answer is yes, then this without question will be the end of the road for the eurozone and will confront the ECB and Germany with an inescapable choice of either providing unlimited support for all eurozone commitments (including deposits) or allowing the disintegration of the euro….</p>
<p>In the case of most countries that are starting to suffer from deposit outflow, the banks have to increasingly rely on higher interest rates to lure depositors. Is this starting to happen in Italy? The answer is yes, particularly in the case of corporate accounts….</p>
<p>One of the key leading indicators of a bank run is the bank’s increasing reliance on ECB’s refinancing facilities. Over the past three-to-four months, we have seen increasing reliance by Italian banks on eurosystem refinancing. Whereas in 2008 and 2009, Italian banks were average users of ECB facilities, accounting for only 3-4% of the total vs Italy’s share of 13.7% of the eurozone’s banking assets. However, since July, the share of ECB’s refinancing attributable to Italian banks rose to a historically high level of 18.8% (end-October)</p>
<p>….markets remain frozen…Banking refinancing markets remain largely closed. Whether one looks at OIS spreads (90bps on the euro), ECB deposits or CDS spreads between the eurozone’s senior and subordinated debt (235bps) remain at extremely elevated levels, indicating extreme reluctance of banks to lend to each other for longer than overnight or preference for depositing funds with the ECB rather than lending.” (“Samsung Securities, Prepare for the Italian bank runs”, Pragmatic Capitalism)</p>
<p>Samsung’s conclusions are no different than those of other analysts who’ve followed developments in the credit markets closely. Banks are depositing record amounts of money at the ECB rather than lending it out, funding is getting more difficult as US money markets reduce their lending to EU banks, credit gauges are&#160;steadily rising, and new capital requirements are forcing banks to dump risk-weighted assets on an already-saturated market. These are all signs of a deepening crisis. Here’s a clip from the Wall Street Journal:</p>
<p>“Worries over the fate of European nations are gumming up the intricate gears of the financial system….The rising cost of borrowing demonstrates the lack of faith investors hold in European leaders to resolve the region’s debt crisis. It also suggests that the region’s banks remain under stress, despite officials’ efforts to restore confidence. Taken as a whole, the markets show that private money is flowing only in fits and starts to select few European financial recipients.</p>
<p>“The funding market is not working properly,” said Giuseppe Maraffino, a European money-market strategist at Barclays Capital…</p>
<p>The latest sign came on Monday, when the European Central Bank reported that money going into its low-interest-rate overnight-deposit facility has been surging, effectively pulling money out of the banking system. Last week, euro-zone banks’ overnight deposits with the ECB hit €288.43 billion ($397.8 billion), the highest level since the debt crisis first erupted last year. (“Financing Markets Tighten Spigots”, Wall Street Journal)</p>
<p>So, how bad will the EU credit crunch get? That’s&#160;a question the Financial Times blog tries&#160;to answer&#160;on Monday in a post titled “It’s a capital ratio of two halves”. Here’s a clip from the article:</p>
<p>“In another sign of how bad this is looking, Commerzbank, Germany’s leading lender to central and eastern Europe, is ceasing all loan origination outside of its home country and Poland…….But assuming any adjustments to the rules will come too little to late, we could be in for €1,500bn to €2,500bn of deleveraging according to a note published by Morgan Stanley on Sunday.” (“It’s a capital ratio of two halves”, FT. Alphaville)</p>
<p>Well, now, if the banks are going to unload a hefty $3 trillion in assets, (in an effort to meet the new&#160; 9% capital requirements) then they’re not going to be doing a lot of lending now are they? And, if there’s no credit expansion (new loans) then there’s no growth, right? In that case, people would be well advised to pick a cozy spot outside the unemployment office now before the lines form.</p>
<p>Reuters blogger Felix Salmon has an excellent post (Monday) that explains the implications of the credit storm&#160;raging across&#160;the eurozone. Here’s an excerpt:</p>
<p>“Europe is in the middle of a textbook liquidity crisis. Banks are not lending to each other — and the ECB isn’t stepping in to solve the problem. This is a serious structural issue with the way that the European monetary system was constructed: the ECB is tasked only with guarding inflation, and not with ensuring the health of the banking system. Individual national central banks are meant to do that. But they can’t print money — only the ECB can. So when there’s a liquidity crisis, no one’s able to step in and solve it…..</p>
<p>There is no reasonable amount of capital that can cure a liquidity shortage. The reason why people are refusing to lend to the banks is not primarily because they fear an underlying solvency problem (although some people do), but because they fear an obvious and immediate liquidity problem. It is rational not to lend to an institution that you believe to be illiquid.</p>
<p>The real problem here is simply that banks are hoarding their cash and not lending to each other. Look at the way that bank debt issuance has fallen off a cliff…</p>
<p>And the way the banking sector works, banks have to be constantly lending to each other: in nearly every country in Europe, the amount of bank debt coming due every day is higher than the total amount of bank capital in the system. The overnight interbank market is the bloodstream of the European financial system, and the flow of blood is coming to a halt.” (” Europe’s liquidity crisis”, Felix Salmon, Reuters)</p>
<p>So, soaring yields on sovereign bonds are only a small part of a bigger and more complicated story. The&#160;real problem is in the credit markets, where plunging asset values and funding woes are paving the way for another full-blown financial meltdown.</p>
<p>MIKE WHITNEY&#160;lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to <a href="" type="internal">Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion</a>, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at&#160; <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>Exclusively in the New Print Issue of CounterPunch</p>
<p>THE SLOW DEATH OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH&#160;– Nancy Scheper-Hughes on Clerical Sex Abuse and the Vatican. PLUS Fred Gardner on Obama’s Policy on Marijuana and the Reform Leaders’ Misleading Spin. &#160; <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">SUBSCRIBE NOW</a></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">Order your subscription today and get</a> <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">CounterPunch by email for only $35 per year.</a></p> | Credit Storm Batters Europe | true | https://counterpunch.org/2011/11/16/credit-storm-batters-europe/ | 2011-11-16 | 4left
| Credit Storm Batters Europe
<p>Credit conditions in the eurozone continue to deteriorate while yields on French, Spanish, Belgian and Italian bonds move higher. Italy’s 10-year yield increased 19 basis points to 6.89 percent on Tuesday, just a stone’s throw from the “unsustainable” 7 percent. French debt is also under increasing pressure. The spread between France’s 10-year debt and German bund hit a new high on Tuesday, widening by 174 basis points. If yields continue to&#160;rise,&#160; European Central Bank (ECB) chief Mario Draghi will be forced to either expand his bond buying program (Securities Markets Programme) or watch while defaulting sovereigns domino through the south taking most of the EU banking system along with them.</p>
<p>Germany will not permit the ECB to act as lender of last resort. As the Bundesbank’s president Jens Weidmann explained in an interview last week,&#160;unsterilized bond&#160;purchases (monetization)&#160;would violate Article 123 of the EU treaty.</p>
<p>“I cannot see how you can ensure the stability of a monetary union by violating its legal provisions.” Weidman said. “I think the prohibition of monetary financing is very important in ensuring the credibility and independence of the central bank, which allow us to deliver on our primary objective of price stability. This is a very fundamental issue. If we now overstep that mandate, we call into question our own independence.”</p>
<p>So, for now, the ECB’s hands are tied, but as bond prices continue to&#160;fall and credit markets freeze, German opposition will weaken and the ECB will asked to intervene.</p>
<p>Samsung Securities is now warning of a run on Italian banks. Here’s an excerpt from their report:</p>
<p>“A more immediate issue confronting investors is whether we are likely to soon witness a significant run on Italian-based banks. If the answer is yes, then this without question will be the end of the road for the eurozone and will confront the ECB and Germany with an inescapable choice of either providing unlimited support for all eurozone commitments (including deposits) or allowing the disintegration of the euro….</p>
<p>In the case of most countries that are starting to suffer from deposit outflow, the banks have to increasingly rely on higher interest rates to lure depositors. Is this starting to happen in Italy? The answer is yes, particularly in the case of corporate accounts….</p>
<p>One of the key leading indicators of a bank run is the bank’s increasing reliance on ECB’s refinancing facilities. Over the past three-to-four months, we have seen increasing reliance by Italian banks on eurosystem refinancing. Whereas in 2008 and 2009, Italian banks were average users of ECB facilities, accounting for only 3-4% of the total vs Italy’s share of 13.7% of the eurozone’s banking assets. However, since July, the share of ECB’s refinancing attributable to Italian banks rose to a historically high level of 18.8% (end-October)</p>
<p>….markets remain frozen…Banking refinancing markets remain largely closed. Whether one looks at OIS spreads (90bps on the euro), ECB deposits or CDS spreads between the eurozone’s senior and subordinated debt (235bps) remain at extremely elevated levels, indicating extreme reluctance of banks to lend to each other for longer than overnight or preference for depositing funds with the ECB rather than lending.” (“Samsung Securities, Prepare for the Italian bank runs”, Pragmatic Capitalism)</p>
<p>Samsung’s conclusions are no different than those of other analysts who’ve followed developments in the credit markets closely. Banks are depositing record amounts of money at the ECB rather than lending it out, funding is getting more difficult as US money markets reduce their lending to EU banks, credit gauges are&#160;steadily rising, and new capital requirements are forcing banks to dump risk-weighted assets on an already-saturated market. These are all signs of a deepening crisis. Here’s a clip from the Wall Street Journal:</p>
<p>“Worries over the fate of European nations are gumming up the intricate gears of the financial system….The rising cost of borrowing demonstrates the lack of faith investors hold in European leaders to resolve the region’s debt crisis. It also suggests that the region’s banks remain under stress, despite officials’ efforts to restore confidence. Taken as a whole, the markets show that private money is flowing only in fits and starts to select few European financial recipients.</p>
<p>“The funding market is not working properly,” said Giuseppe Maraffino, a European money-market strategist at Barclays Capital…</p>
<p>The latest sign came on Monday, when the European Central Bank reported that money going into its low-interest-rate overnight-deposit facility has been surging, effectively pulling money out of the banking system. Last week, euro-zone banks’ overnight deposits with the ECB hit €288.43 billion ($397.8 billion), the highest level since the debt crisis first erupted last year. (“Financing Markets Tighten Spigots”, Wall Street Journal)</p>
<p>So, how bad will the EU credit crunch get? That’s&#160;a question the Financial Times blog tries&#160;to answer&#160;on Monday in a post titled “It’s a capital ratio of two halves”. Here’s a clip from the article:</p>
<p>“In another sign of how bad this is looking, Commerzbank, Germany’s leading lender to central and eastern Europe, is ceasing all loan origination outside of its home country and Poland…….But assuming any adjustments to the rules will come too little to late, we could be in for €1,500bn to €2,500bn of deleveraging according to a note published by Morgan Stanley on Sunday.” (“It’s a capital ratio of two halves”, FT. Alphaville)</p>
<p>Well, now, if the banks are going to unload a hefty $3 trillion in assets, (in an effort to meet the new&#160; 9% capital requirements) then they’re not going to be doing a lot of lending now are they? And, if there’s no credit expansion (new loans) then there’s no growth, right? In that case, people would be well advised to pick a cozy spot outside the unemployment office now before the lines form.</p>
<p>Reuters blogger Felix Salmon has an excellent post (Monday) that explains the implications of the credit storm&#160;raging across&#160;the eurozone. Here’s an excerpt:</p>
<p>“Europe is in the middle of a textbook liquidity crisis. Banks are not lending to each other — and the ECB isn’t stepping in to solve the problem. This is a serious structural issue with the way that the European monetary system was constructed: the ECB is tasked only with guarding inflation, and not with ensuring the health of the banking system. Individual national central banks are meant to do that. But they can’t print money — only the ECB can. So when there’s a liquidity crisis, no one’s able to step in and solve it…..</p>
<p>There is no reasonable amount of capital that can cure a liquidity shortage. The reason why people are refusing to lend to the banks is not primarily because they fear an underlying solvency problem (although some people do), but because they fear an obvious and immediate liquidity problem. It is rational not to lend to an institution that you believe to be illiquid.</p>
<p>The real problem here is simply that banks are hoarding their cash and not lending to each other. Look at the way that bank debt issuance has fallen off a cliff…</p>
<p>And the way the banking sector works, banks have to be constantly lending to each other: in nearly every country in Europe, the amount of bank debt coming due every day is higher than the total amount of bank capital in the system. The overnight interbank market is the bloodstream of the European financial system, and the flow of blood is coming to a halt.” (” Europe’s liquidity crisis”, Felix Salmon, Reuters)</p>
<p>So, soaring yields on sovereign bonds are only a small part of a bigger and more complicated story. The&#160;real problem is in the credit markets, where plunging asset values and funding woes are paving the way for another full-blown financial meltdown.</p>
<p>MIKE WHITNEY&#160;lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to <a href="" type="internal">Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion</a>, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at&#160; <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>Exclusively in the New Print Issue of CounterPunch</p>
<p>THE SLOW DEATH OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH&#160;– Nancy Scheper-Hughes on Clerical Sex Abuse and the Vatican. PLUS Fred Gardner on Obama’s Policy on Marijuana and the Reform Leaders’ Misleading Spin. &#160; <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">SUBSCRIBE NOW</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">Order your subscription today and get</a> <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">CounterPunch by email for only $35 per year.</a></p> | 3,051 |
<p>In a piece titled November 20, 2004, Poitras releases selections from her own FBI files, which she received via FOIA request.</p>
<p>Discussions of the surveillance state tend to be cerebral, but in Laura Poitras’ <a href="http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/LauraPoitras" type="external">new exhibition</a> at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Astro Noise, surveillance is made intimate, and all the more disturbing.</p>
<p>Astro Noise is the first fine art project by the documentary filmmaker and reporter best known for Citizenfour, her Academy Award-winning film depicting Edward Snowden’s reveal of NSA secrets in a Hong Kong hotel room. The tense, claustrophobic film was the final installment in Poitras’ trilogy on post–9/11 America. It followed 2006’s My Country, My Country, documenting Iraqi life under US occupation, and 2010’s The Oath, which followed two men who worked for Osama bin Laden, one as his bodyguard in San'a and the other as his driver in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>The Whitney Museum is a tremendous platform, one that Poitras could have used in confrontational or immediately thrilling ways; instead, and for the best, there are no shouts or slogans, just dim, unsettling spaces for muted feelings of anger, despair and disorientation. These are feelings familiar from her writing and films. But while news can report the facts, and films can make those facts come alive, an installation like Astro Noise can make evoke emotions in rare, powerful ways.</p>
<p>Upon entering the first darkened gallery, the viewer sees faces—caught at what Poitras calls “a moment in history at a crossroads”: September 11, 2001. They gaze at the remains of the World Trade Center, filmed by Poitras at Ground Zero in September and October of 2001. The remains are never shown, just the onlookers’ expressions, with their hints of anger, empathy, disbelief. Tourists look on with binoculars and disposable cameras, shaking their heads and wiping away tears. A young girl fumbles with an “I &lt;3 NY” button. A small boy in a Giants jersey stares on blankly.</p>
<p>These faces are the first half of a double-sided projection that comprises a piece titled “O’Say Can You See.” Walk across the gallery, and on the flip side of the screen are videos captured in dark cells in Afghanistan around the same time in the fall of 2001. These clips show the U.S. military interrogations of prisoners Said Boujaadia and Salim Hamdan, who were both later transferred to Guantánamo. Hamdan was Osama bin Laden's driver, and one of the subjects of The Oath.</p>
<p>Like the rest of Astro Noise, “O’Say Can You See” makes compelling use of sound. The national anthem from the October 2001 World Series in Yankee Stadium has been looped and layered, creepily playing in the background&#160;over the images of mournful faces. &#160;As you make your way from the first video to the second, you’ll momentarily hear those crashing, operatic sounds layered with the clinking and clanking of the prisoners’ chains and the muffled, barking voices of the U.S. officers. This ghostly juxtaposition haunted the rest of my visit to Astro Noise. It is a sonic reflection of this specific historical moment in 2001—as Poitras writes in the program notes, a moment in which many different paths could have been taken, and “15 years later, we’re now seeing the unintended consequences of the choices we made.” The rest of those consequences are on subtle display as one proceeds through the gallery.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, Poitras uses what the Whitney calls “architectural interventions,” which contribute to the show’s eerie intimacy. “Bed Down Location” encourages the viewer to lie on a soft, raised platform and stare up at projections of the dark night skies of Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan—places where the U.S. military conducts nighttime drone strikes. The piece allows for a simultaneous comfort and unease, which is further communicated through audio: the faint distortion of distant, inaudible pilot voices and humming radio static are both lulling and anxiety-inducing.</p>
<p>Later, near the exhibition’s exit, a digital screen with thermal imagery shows that you have been surveilled from above while laying in this piece. It is a moment in the show that is at once surprising and not surprising—a palpable moment of vulnerability that brings home the reality of our new culture of everyday spying.</p>
<p>“Disposition Matrix” takes visitors down two long, dark hallways lined with thin windows revealing NSA documents and video clips. Former Guantánamo prisoner Murat Kurnaz talks in vivid detail about enduring torture. A childish, cartoon line drawing by an NSA employee depicts an internet surveillance tactic. A 2002 memo from the CIA’s director George Tenet urges increased cooperation with the NSA. There is much to be learned from these windows but their newsworthiness is almost secondary here—what’s more visceral is the way Poitras has shaped space, light and sound, so that visitors are engaged in the act of viewing, turning the act of observing her show into a performance of its own. We are spying on the spies, watching the NSA’s inner workings. &#160;&#160;</p>
<p>Poitras herself has been subject to an extreme level of government surveillance.&#160;Last summer, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/07/13/laura-poitras-sues-u-s-government-find-repeatedly-stopped-border/" type="external">The Intercept</a> reported that she had been interrogated and detained over 50 times between 2006 and 2012 while traveling. In 2015, she filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out why. In Astro Noise, a piece titled November 20, 2004, Poitras releases selections from her own FBI files, which she received via that FOIA request. She learned that a secret grand jury had begun investigating her in 2007. These run alongside the video she shot in Iraq in 2004 that landed her on watchlists to begin with, as well as a looping narration by Poitras:</p>
<p>In May 2004, I traveled to Baghdad to make a film about the U.S. occupation of Iraq. I embedded with the U.S. military and lived inside the ‘Green Zone’ in Baghdad. I also filmed and stayed with an Iraqi family. On November 19, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers raided a mosque in the neighborhood where the family lived. Four civilians were killed. The next morning, I woke up to the sound of gunfire on the streets. The fighting lasted all day. One U.S. soldier was killed and others injured. At one point, the family went to the roof to see what was happening. I followed with my camera and filmed for 8 minutes and 16 seconds. These 8 minutes changed my life, but I didn’t know it at the time. After returning to the United States, I was placed on a government watchlist and detained and searched every time I crossed the U.S. border. It took me ten years to find out why.</p>
<p>At a press briefing on February 3, Whitney director Adam Weinberg introduced the show by asking, “What are the existential repercussions of a world where it is impossible to be alone?” That’s an apt point of entry for viewing Astro Noise. And yet, while news reporting is expected to answer questions, artwork often opens up more. One leaves the exhibit asking: what is this world we have created, and do we want to live in it?</p>
<p>Like what you’ve read? <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/itt-subscription-offer?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;noskip=true" type="external">Subscribe to In These Times magazine</a>, or <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/support-in-these-times?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;noskip=true" type="external">make a tax-deductible donation to fund this reporting</a>.</p>
<p>Liz Pelly is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. Her writing on music, art and culture has been published by The Guardian, Dazed, Rolling Stone and elsewhere. She co-edits an ad-free, bi-monthly web-paper, The Media.</p> | In Bed with the Surveillance State: Laura Poitras’ Intimate New Whitney Show | true | http://inthesetimes.com/article/18893/in-bed-with-the-surveillance-state-laura-poitras-intimate-new-whitney-show | 2016-02-18 | 4left
| In Bed with the Surveillance State: Laura Poitras’ Intimate New Whitney Show
<p>In a piece titled November 20, 2004, Poitras releases selections from her own FBI files, which she received via FOIA request.</p>
<p>Discussions of the surveillance state tend to be cerebral, but in Laura Poitras’ <a href="http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/LauraPoitras" type="external">new exhibition</a> at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Astro Noise, surveillance is made intimate, and all the more disturbing.</p>
<p>Astro Noise is the first fine art project by the documentary filmmaker and reporter best known for Citizenfour, her Academy Award-winning film depicting Edward Snowden’s reveal of NSA secrets in a Hong Kong hotel room. The tense, claustrophobic film was the final installment in Poitras’ trilogy on post–9/11 America. It followed 2006’s My Country, My Country, documenting Iraqi life under US occupation, and 2010’s The Oath, which followed two men who worked for Osama bin Laden, one as his bodyguard in San'a and the other as his driver in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>The Whitney Museum is a tremendous platform, one that Poitras could have used in confrontational or immediately thrilling ways; instead, and for the best, there are no shouts or slogans, just dim, unsettling spaces for muted feelings of anger, despair and disorientation. These are feelings familiar from her writing and films. But while news can report the facts, and films can make those facts come alive, an installation like Astro Noise can make evoke emotions in rare, powerful ways.</p>
<p>Upon entering the first darkened gallery, the viewer sees faces—caught at what Poitras calls “a moment in history at a crossroads”: September 11, 2001. They gaze at the remains of the World Trade Center, filmed by Poitras at Ground Zero in September and October of 2001. The remains are never shown, just the onlookers’ expressions, with their hints of anger, empathy, disbelief. Tourists look on with binoculars and disposable cameras, shaking their heads and wiping away tears. A young girl fumbles with an “I &lt;3 NY” button. A small boy in a Giants jersey stares on blankly.</p>
<p>These faces are the first half of a double-sided projection that comprises a piece titled “O’Say Can You See.” Walk across the gallery, and on the flip side of the screen are videos captured in dark cells in Afghanistan around the same time in the fall of 2001. These clips show the U.S. military interrogations of prisoners Said Boujaadia and Salim Hamdan, who were both later transferred to Guantánamo. Hamdan was Osama bin Laden's driver, and one of the subjects of The Oath.</p>
<p>Like the rest of Astro Noise, “O’Say Can You See” makes compelling use of sound. The national anthem from the October 2001 World Series in Yankee Stadium has been looped and layered, creepily playing in the background&#160;over the images of mournful faces. &#160;As you make your way from the first video to the second, you’ll momentarily hear those crashing, operatic sounds layered with the clinking and clanking of the prisoners’ chains and the muffled, barking voices of the U.S. officers. This ghostly juxtaposition haunted the rest of my visit to Astro Noise. It is a sonic reflection of this specific historical moment in 2001—as Poitras writes in the program notes, a moment in which many different paths could have been taken, and “15 years later, we’re now seeing the unintended consequences of the choices we made.” The rest of those consequences are on subtle display as one proceeds through the gallery.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, Poitras uses what the Whitney calls “architectural interventions,” which contribute to the show’s eerie intimacy. “Bed Down Location” encourages the viewer to lie on a soft, raised platform and stare up at projections of the dark night skies of Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan—places where the U.S. military conducts nighttime drone strikes. The piece allows for a simultaneous comfort and unease, which is further communicated through audio: the faint distortion of distant, inaudible pilot voices and humming radio static are both lulling and anxiety-inducing.</p>
<p>Later, near the exhibition’s exit, a digital screen with thermal imagery shows that you have been surveilled from above while laying in this piece. It is a moment in the show that is at once surprising and not surprising—a palpable moment of vulnerability that brings home the reality of our new culture of everyday spying.</p>
<p>“Disposition Matrix” takes visitors down two long, dark hallways lined with thin windows revealing NSA documents and video clips. Former Guantánamo prisoner Murat Kurnaz talks in vivid detail about enduring torture. A childish, cartoon line drawing by an NSA employee depicts an internet surveillance tactic. A 2002 memo from the CIA’s director George Tenet urges increased cooperation with the NSA. There is much to be learned from these windows but their newsworthiness is almost secondary here—what’s more visceral is the way Poitras has shaped space, light and sound, so that visitors are engaged in the act of viewing, turning the act of observing her show into a performance of its own. We are spying on the spies, watching the NSA’s inner workings. &#160;&#160;</p>
<p>Poitras herself has been subject to an extreme level of government surveillance.&#160;Last summer, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/07/13/laura-poitras-sues-u-s-government-find-repeatedly-stopped-border/" type="external">The Intercept</a> reported that she had been interrogated and detained over 50 times between 2006 and 2012 while traveling. In 2015, she filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out why. In Astro Noise, a piece titled November 20, 2004, Poitras releases selections from her own FBI files, which she received via that FOIA request. She learned that a secret grand jury had begun investigating her in 2007. These run alongside the video she shot in Iraq in 2004 that landed her on watchlists to begin with, as well as a looping narration by Poitras:</p>
<p>In May 2004, I traveled to Baghdad to make a film about the U.S. occupation of Iraq. I embedded with the U.S. military and lived inside the ‘Green Zone’ in Baghdad. I also filmed and stayed with an Iraqi family. On November 19, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers raided a mosque in the neighborhood where the family lived. Four civilians were killed. The next morning, I woke up to the sound of gunfire on the streets. The fighting lasted all day. One U.S. soldier was killed and others injured. At one point, the family went to the roof to see what was happening. I followed with my camera and filmed for 8 minutes and 16 seconds. These 8 minutes changed my life, but I didn’t know it at the time. After returning to the United States, I was placed on a government watchlist and detained and searched every time I crossed the U.S. border. It took me ten years to find out why.</p>
<p>At a press briefing on February 3, Whitney director Adam Weinberg introduced the show by asking, “What are the existential repercussions of a world where it is impossible to be alone?” That’s an apt point of entry for viewing Astro Noise. And yet, while news reporting is expected to answer questions, artwork often opens up more. One leaves the exhibit asking: what is this world we have created, and do we want to live in it?</p>
<p>Like what you’ve read? <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/itt-subscription-offer?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;noskip=true" type="external">Subscribe to In These Times magazine</a>, or <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/support-in-these-times?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;noskip=true" type="external">make a tax-deductible donation to fund this reporting</a>.</p>
<p>Liz Pelly is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. Her writing on music, art and culture has been published by The Guardian, Dazed, Rolling Stone and elsewhere. She co-edits an ad-free, bi-monthly web-paper, The Media.</p> | 3,052 |
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<p>Monica Lynn Jaramillo, 35, through her attorneys, Terrence Revo and Irwin Zalkin, filed a complaint for damages Aug. 12 in the 13th Judicial District Court. Also named as defendants in the case is Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, which oversees the church, and a former elder, who has not been charged with a crime.</p>
<p>Attempts to reach the Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall in Los Lunas for comment were unsuccessful before the News-Bulletin deadline.</p>
<p>According to the civil lawsuit, Jaramillo allegedly was sexually abused as a child by the elder, who had served as a ministerial servant and an elder, which are leadership positions in the congregation. Jaramillo said the abuse occurred in 1987 when she was 8 years old at his home.</p>
<p>The complaint alleges that the church’s elders knew of the elder’s history of previous alleged rapes of congregational members, including the alleged rape of the mother of Jaramillo at a congregation in Indiana when she was 8 years old.</p>
<p>Jaramillo’s mother, according to the lawsuit, claims she informed the church elders of her sexual assault, as well as others by the elder, but they failed to take action to remove him from his leadership position in the congregation. The lawsuit says the church’s elders told her that to be appointed as a regular pioneer of the church, she would have to prove to the elders that she had forgiven him for raping her.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“(The mother) was instructed by the elders of Los Lunas that she should demonstrate her forgiveness by hosting … (the elder) and his family in their home, and by permitting her children to spend time, including nights, at … his home under (his) supervision,” the lawsuit said.</p>
<p>Under duress, the lawsuit claims, the mother followed these directives, which allowed the defendant access to commit the alleged sexual abuse. Jaramillo claims that she was “severely sexually molested” by the elder. As a result of psychological coping mechanisms, Jaramillo repressed her memory of the abuse and did not understand that she had been sexually abused by the elder until April 2007, the lawsuit said.</p>
<p>As a result of the abuse, the complaint alleges that Jaramillo has suffered great pain and emotional distress that prevented her from the normal enjoyment of life, requiring medical and psychological treatment and also that she suffered the loss of earnings and earning capacity.</p>
<p>“This lawsuit highlights a disturbing trend of victims coming forward to tell their stories about sexual abuse within Jehovah’s Witnesses congregations,” said Zalkin. “The allegations by this victim and the victims of other cases show an alarming tolerance for abusers of children within the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion.”</p> | Woman sues Los Lunas Jehovah’s Witnesses, claims sex abuse | false | https://abqjournal.com/254868/woman-sues-los-lunas-jehovahs-witnesses-claims-sex-abuse.html | 2least
| Woman sues Los Lunas Jehovah’s Witnesses, claims sex abuse
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<p>Monica Lynn Jaramillo, 35, through her attorneys, Terrence Revo and Irwin Zalkin, filed a complaint for damages Aug. 12 in the 13th Judicial District Court. Also named as defendants in the case is Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, which oversees the church, and a former elder, who has not been charged with a crime.</p>
<p>Attempts to reach the Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall in Los Lunas for comment were unsuccessful before the News-Bulletin deadline.</p>
<p>According to the civil lawsuit, Jaramillo allegedly was sexually abused as a child by the elder, who had served as a ministerial servant and an elder, which are leadership positions in the congregation. Jaramillo said the abuse occurred in 1987 when she was 8 years old at his home.</p>
<p>The complaint alleges that the church’s elders knew of the elder’s history of previous alleged rapes of congregational members, including the alleged rape of the mother of Jaramillo at a congregation in Indiana when she was 8 years old.</p>
<p>Jaramillo’s mother, according to the lawsuit, claims she informed the church elders of her sexual assault, as well as others by the elder, but they failed to take action to remove him from his leadership position in the congregation. The lawsuit says the church’s elders told her that to be appointed as a regular pioneer of the church, she would have to prove to the elders that she had forgiven him for raping her.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“(The mother) was instructed by the elders of Los Lunas that she should demonstrate her forgiveness by hosting … (the elder) and his family in their home, and by permitting her children to spend time, including nights, at … his home under (his) supervision,” the lawsuit said.</p>
<p>Under duress, the lawsuit claims, the mother followed these directives, which allowed the defendant access to commit the alleged sexual abuse. Jaramillo claims that she was “severely sexually molested” by the elder. As a result of psychological coping mechanisms, Jaramillo repressed her memory of the abuse and did not understand that she had been sexually abused by the elder until April 2007, the lawsuit said.</p>
<p>As a result of the abuse, the complaint alleges that Jaramillo has suffered great pain and emotional distress that prevented her from the normal enjoyment of life, requiring medical and psychological treatment and also that she suffered the loss of earnings and earning capacity.</p>
<p>“This lawsuit highlights a disturbing trend of victims coming forward to tell their stories about sexual abuse within Jehovah’s Witnesses congregations,” said Zalkin. “The allegations by this victim and the victims of other cases show an alarming tolerance for abusers of children within the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion.”</p> | 3,053 |
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<p>RICHMOND — Missio Alliance, an evangelical coalition formed last year to help Christians navigate the changing religious landscape in America, will flesh out that goal at a three-day conference in April featuring a range of speakers from across the evangelical spectrum.</p>
<p>The April 11-13 “Future of the Gospel: Renewing Evangelical Imagination for Mission” will be an opportunity to “listen, learn and think through the most pressing theological and cultural issues of our day for the sake of faithfully participating in God’s mission,” said Chris Backert, executive of <a href="http://www.missioalliance.org/" type="external">Missio Alliance’s</a> directional team.</p>
<p />
<p>The conference’s plenary sessions will be held at <a href="http://www.alfredstreet.org/" type="external">Alfred Street Baptist Church</a> in Alexandria, Va., and some workshops and auxiliary events at <a href="http://www.downtownbaptist.org/" type="external">Downtown Baptist Church</a> in Alexandria.</p>
<p>Missio Alliance was <a href="http://www.religiousherald.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=6291&amp;Itemid=43" type="external">launched late last year</a> by a coalition of pastors and theological educators in response to the increasingly post-Christian cultural context churches encounter in the United States and Canada.&#160; Backert said it is “centered on the renewal of an evangelical imagination that is theologically robust, practically fruitful and oriented toward the life and mission of the Church as it seeks to meet the challenges of the changing landscape of our culture.”</p>
<p>The initiative is also, in part, an alternative to the Gospel Coalition, another evangelical renewal movement but one with a strong Reformed, or Calvinist, theological stance.</p>
<p>Among the early organizers of Missio Alliance were Jim Baucom, pastor of Columbia Baptist Church in Falls Church, Va.; Alistair Brown, president of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, Ill.; Travis Collins, pastor of Bon Air Baptist Church in Richmond; Gary Nelson, president of Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto; and Roger Olson, professor of theology at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas.</p>
<p>Though Missio Alliance is still in the early stages of developing partnerships, among the sponsors of its first conference are the Richmond-based Virginia Baptist Mission Board, the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Arlington, Va., George Fox Evangelical Seminary in Newberg, Ore., Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., Northern Baptist Theological Seminary near Chicago, Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington and Yellowstone Theological Institute in Bozeman, Mont.</p>
<p>Other sponsors include two missional church networks — Ecclesia and Fresh Expressions; the Spence Network, a leadership development group; V3, a church planting network; and InterVarsity Press, the evangelical publishing house.</p>
<p>Across denominational lines</p>
<p>Baptists have been prominent in Missio Alliance’s formation, but a wide range of denominational traditions are involved, including Wesleyans, Anglicans, Assemblies of God and the Christian and Missionary Alliance. The organization itself is grounded in the <a href="http://www.lausanne.org/en/documents/ctcommitment.html" type="external">Capetown Commitment</a>, a confession of faith developed in 2010 by the international Lausanne Movement.</p>
<p>The trans-denominational character of Missio Alliance is prevalent in American Christianity as well, said Backert.</p>
<p>“What I’m seeing is that in our shifting denominational world there are a lot of people who, though they are not from the same historical trajectory, actually have a lot in common,” he said. “That’s why you see the wide range of sponsors for this event, a range of people who you don’t immediately think of as being in conversation with each other.”</p>
<p>Backert added that when denominational families “look inward, our issues are different, but when we look outward our issues are the same. How we tackle those issues will be different, but we face the same issues.”</p>
<p>“What is coming together here is a group of people who have enough in common even if they haven’t known each other,” he said. “They may find shared answers to questions of mission and the future of North America.”</p>
<p>Presenters and workshops</p>
<p>Among the more than 50 <a href="http://www.missioalliance.org/#presenters" type="external">presenters</a> at the inaugural conference are evangelicals Dallas Willard, Scot McKnight, Alan Hirsch, Cherith Fee Nordling and Jo Saxton. Baptists Roger Olson, Winn Collier, JR Woodward, Jim Baucom, Gary Nelson and Howard-John Wesley also are set to speak.</p>
<p>About 40 <a href="http://www.missioalliance.org/#workshops" type="external">workshops</a> are grouped around four “tracks” — church, culture, leadership and theology — and will be offered in four sessions.</p>
<p>Auxiliary events include a welcome reception for JR Woodward, recently named to direct the V3 church planting network, and a gathering of women in ministry leaders.</p>
<p>Additional information is available on Missio Alliance’s website. As a sponsor of the event, the Virginia Baptist Mission Board offers a discount on the $165 registration fee for its affiliated churches. The discount code is BGAVDisc$20.</p>
<p>Robert Dilday ( <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.</p> | Inaugural conference part of Missio Alliance’s goal to navigate changing religious landscape | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/inauguralconferencepartofmissioalliancesgoaltonavigatechangingreligiouslandscape-4/ | 3left-center
| Inaugural conference part of Missio Alliance’s goal to navigate changing religious landscape
<p>RICHMOND — Missio Alliance, an evangelical coalition formed last year to help Christians navigate the changing religious landscape in America, will flesh out that goal at a three-day conference in April featuring a range of speakers from across the evangelical spectrum.</p>
<p>The April 11-13 “Future of the Gospel: Renewing Evangelical Imagination for Mission” will be an opportunity to “listen, learn and think through the most pressing theological and cultural issues of our day for the sake of faithfully participating in God’s mission,” said Chris Backert, executive of <a href="http://www.missioalliance.org/" type="external">Missio Alliance’s</a> directional team.</p>
<p />
<p>The conference’s plenary sessions will be held at <a href="http://www.alfredstreet.org/" type="external">Alfred Street Baptist Church</a> in Alexandria, Va., and some workshops and auxiliary events at <a href="http://www.downtownbaptist.org/" type="external">Downtown Baptist Church</a> in Alexandria.</p>
<p>Missio Alliance was <a href="http://www.religiousherald.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=6291&amp;Itemid=43" type="external">launched late last year</a> by a coalition of pastors and theological educators in response to the increasingly post-Christian cultural context churches encounter in the United States and Canada.&#160; Backert said it is “centered on the renewal of an evangelical imagination that is theologically robust, practically fruitful and oriented toward the life and mission of the Church as it seeks to meet the challenges of the changing landscape of our culture.”</p>
<p>The initiative is also, in part, an alternative to the Gospel Coalition, another evangelical renewal movement but one with a strong Reformed, or Calvinist, theological stance.</p>
<p>Among the early organizers of Missio Alliance were Jim Baucom, pastor of Columbia Baptist Church in Falls Church, Va.; Alistair Brown, president of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, Ill.; Travis Collins, pastor of Bon Air Baptist Church in Richmond; Gary Nelson, president of Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto; and Roger Olson, professor of theology at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas.</p>
<p>Though Missio Alliance is still in the early stages of developing partnerships, among the sponsors of its first conference are the Richmond-based Virginia Baptist Mission Board, the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Arlington, Va., George Fox Evangelical Seminary in Newberg, Ore., Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., Northern Baptist Theological Seminary near Chicago, Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington and Yellowstone Theological Institute in Bozeman, Mont.</p>
<p>Other sponsors include two missional church networks — Ecclesia and Fresh Expressions; the Spence Network, a leadership development group; V3, a church planting network; and InterVarsity Press, the evangelical publishing house.</p>
<p>Across denominational lines</p>
<p>Baptists have been prominent in Missio Alliance’s formation, but a wide range of denominational traditions are involved, including Wesleyans, Anglicans, Assemblies of God and the Christian and Missionary Alliance. The organization itself is grounded in the <a href="http://www.lausanne.org/en/documents/ctcommitment.html" type="external">Capetown Commitment</a>, a confession of faith developed in 2010 by the international Lausanne Movement.</p>
<p>The trans-denominational character of Missio Alliance is prevalent in American Christianity as well, said Backert.</p>
<p>“What I’m seeing is that in our shifting denominational world there are a lot of people who, though they are not from the same historical trajectory, actually have a lot in common,” he said. “That’s why you see the wide range of sponsors for this event, a range of people who you don’t immediately think of as being in conversation with each other.”</p>
<p>Backert added that when denominational families “look inward, our issues are different, but when we look outward our issues are the same. How we tackle those issues will be different, but we face the same issues.”</p>
<p>“What is coming together here is a group of people who have enough in common even if they haven’t known each other,” he said. “They may find shared answers to questions of mission and the future of North America.”</p>
<p>Presenters and workshops</p>
<p>Among the more than 50 <a href="http://www.missioalliance.org/#presenters" type="external">presenters</a> at the inaugural conference are evangelicals Dallas Willard, Scot McKnight, Alan Hirsch, Cherith Fee Nordling and Jo Saxton. Baptists Roger Olson, Winn Collier, JR Woodward, Jim Baucom, Gary Nelson and Howard-John Wesley also are set to speak.</p>
<p>About 40 <a href="http://www.missioalliance.org/#workshops" type="external">workshops</a> are grouped around four “tracks” — church, culture, leadership and theology — and will be offered in four sessions.</p>
<p>Auxiliary events include a welcome reception for JR Woodward, recently named to direct the V3 church planting network, and a gathering of women in ministry leaders.</p>
<p>Additional information is available on Missio Alliance’s website. As a sponsor of the event, the Virginia Baptist Mission Board offers a discount on the $165 registration fee for its affiliated churches. The discount code is BGAVDisc$20.</p>
<p>Robert Dilday ( <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.</p> | 3,054 |
|
<p />
<p>Ever wake up, turn on the news, and hear something so bizarre that you look out the window to be sure your home wasn’t transported to another planet while you were asleep?</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>It can be really disorienting to go to bed secure in the knowledge that everything important in your life will still be there in the morning, only to find an enormous crack in one of the bedrock principles you hold dear upon awakening.</p>
<p>The principle I’m referring to is the First Amendment. And what happened the other morning shook my world … and not in a good way.</p>
<p>Gawker Media – publisher of perhaps the most raucous online gossip site, Gawker.com – took down a controversial post because founding CEO Nick Denton thought it didn’t “rise to the level” of content Gawker should be publishing which, if you frequent the site, is a pretty low bar. It’s hard to imagine a bar getting much lower.</p>
<p>This is the same Nick Denton who famously asked and answered, “ <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/18/search-and-destroy-ben-mcgrath" type="external">Is there Gawker ethics? Opens a New Window.</a> I mean, I guess there’s Gawker ethics. It’s a dangerous thing to talk about.” So I’m thinking they don’t talk about it much. Gawker’s famous for its derisive, sensationalist takedowns on everyone from Elon Musk and Carly Fiorina to John Travolta and Hilary Clinton. I doubt if ethics is a common topic in the newsroom.</p>
<p>This was actually the first time the site, whose motto is “Today’s gossip is tomorrow’s news,” has “removed a significant news story for any reason other than factual error or legal settlement,” <a href="http://nick.kinja.com/taking-a-post-down-1718581684" type="external">according to Denton Opens a New Window.</a>. The unprecedented self-censorship by senior management prompted Gawker Media executive editor Tommy Craggs and Gawker.com editor-in-chief Max Read to resign in protest.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>What was so offensive about the controversial article that so crossed the line that it actually turned Denton to the light side? The <a href="http://recode.net/2015/07/20/gawker-editors-craggs-and-read-quit-after-management-yanks-controversial-conde-nast-post/" type="external">story alleged a media CFO Opens a New Window.</a> -- &#160;who also happens to be the brother of former U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner -- had solicited sex from a gay porn actor.</p>
<p>It bears mentioning that several big advertisers, including BFGoodrich and Discover, had threatened to halt ad campaigns as a result. Gawker is also fighting a $100 million lawsuit brought by former wrestler Hulk Hogan over a sex tape. If you’re wondering if dollar signs might have had anything to do with the sudden and inexplicable appearance of Denton’s conscience, I think you may very well be onto something.</p>
<p>And while media pundits ponder yet another breach of the supposedly impenetrable firewall between editors and publishers, the increasingly blurred line between news and opinion and the growing lack of journalistic integrity in the digital domain, let me tell you what I think this is really about.</p>
<p>While the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from “abridging the freedom of speech” or “infringing on the freedom of the press,” we the people are actually, shockingly and voluntarily giving up those rights by censoring ourselves.</p>
<p>In response to a social media uproar against the post, <a href="http://variety.com/2015/biz/opinion/gawker-nick-denton-conde-nast-journalism-1201543720/" type="external">Read defended his decision, tweeting Opens a New Window.</a> that “given the chance Gawker will always report on married C-suite executives of major media companies [fooling] around on their wives.” If that’s true, and I’ve no doubt that it is, then you’ve got to ask yourself what was different this time?</p>
<p>I could be wrong but it’s a reasonable bet that, if the executive in question had simply been cheating on his wife with another woman, it wouldn’t have created much of a stir and none of this would have happened. But these days, if you say anything disparaging about someone who’s anything but a heterosexual white male, the PC police will be all over you, your character, and your advertisers in a heartbeat.</p>
<p>With so many examples of this sort of politically correct self-censorship popping up left and right these days, you might wonder why I chose to write about Gawker. After all, the demise of interim Reddit CEO Ellen Pao less than two weeks ago was related to the shutting down of certain subreddits that were deemed offensive, in direct contrast to the site’s historic open and diverse user community.</p>
<p>I chose the Gawker example for a very specific reason. What began as political correctness by a minority of thin-skinned individuals who find every little thing offensive has turned into a massive cultural shift that dictates to the majority what they can and can’t say and how they can and can’t say it.</p>
<p>What I realized when I woke up the other day is that we the people – a nation built on a principle so foundational to our way of life that we made it the First Amendment to our Constitution – are willingly giving up our right to free speech. We’re willingly censoring ourselves. And we’re going down without a fight.&#160;</p>
<p>If that can happen at Gawker Media – a bastion of free speech and equal opportunity offender of anyone and everyone – it can happen anywhere. The first amendment protects us from government censorship, but who’s going to keep us from censoring ourselves?</p> | Gawker and the End of Free Speech | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2015/07/21/gawker-and-end-free-speech.html | 2016-03-04 | 0right
| Gawker and the End of Free Speech
<p />
<p>Ever wake up, turn on the news, and hear something so bizarre that you look out the window to be sure your home wasn’t transported to another planet while you were asleep?</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>It can be really disorienting to go to bed secure in the knowledge that everything important in your life will still be there in the morning, only to find an enormous crack in one of the bedrock principles you hold dear upon awakening.</p>
<p>The principle I’m referring to is the First Amendment. And what happened the other morning shook my world … and not in a good way.</p>
<p>Gawker Media – publisher of perhaps the most raucous online gossip site, Gawker.com – took down a controversial post because founding CEO Nick Denton thought it didn’t “rise to the level” of content Gawker should be publishing which, if you frequent the site, is a pretty low bar. It’s hard to imagine a bar getting much lower.</p>
<p>This is the same Nick Denton who famously asked and answered, “ <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/18/search-and-destroy-ben-mcgrath" type="external">Is there Gawker ethics? Opens a New Window.</a> I mean, I guess there’s Gawker ethics. It’s a dangerous thing to talk about.” So I’m thinking they don’t talk about it much. Gawker’s famous for its derisive, sensationalist takedowns on everyone from Elon Musk and Carly Fiorina to John Travolta and Hilary Clinton. I doubt if ethics is a common topic in the newsroom.</p>
<p>This was actually the first time the site, whose motto is “Today’s gossip is tomorrow’s news,” has “removed a significant news story for any reason other than factual error or legal settlement,” <a href="http://nick.kinja.com/taking-a-post-down-1718581684" type="external">according to Denton Opens a New Window.</a>. The unprecedented self-censorship by senior management prompted Gawker Media executive editor Tommy Craggs and Gawker.com editor-in-chief Max Read to resign in protest.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>What was so offensive about the controversial article that so crossed the line that it actually turned Denton to the light side? The <a href="http://recode.net/2015/07/20/gawker-editors-craggs-and-read-quit-after-management-yanks-controversial-conde-nast-post/" type="external">story alleged a media CFO Opens a New Window.</a> -- &#160;who also happens to be the brother of former U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner -- had solicited sex from a gay porn actor.</p>
<p>It bears mentioning that several big advertisers, including BFGoodrich and Discover, had threatened to halt ad campaigns as a result. Gawker is also fighting a $100 million lawsuit brought by former wrestler Hulk Hogan over a sex tape. If you’re wondering if dollar signs might have had anything to do with the sudden and inexplicable appearance of Denton’s conscience, I think you may very well be onto something.</p>
<p>And while media pundits ponder yet another breach of the supposedly impenetrable firewall between editors and publishers, the increasingly blurred line between news and opinion and the growing lack of journalistic integrity in the digital domain, let me tell you what I think this is really about.</p>
<p>While the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from “abridging the freedom of speech” or “infringing on the freedom of the press,” we the people are actually, shockingly and voluntarily giving up those rights by censoring ourselves.</p>
<p>In response to a social media uproar against the post, <a href="http://variety.com/2015/biz/opinion/gawker-nick-denton-conde-nast-journalism-1201543720/" type="external">Read defended his decision, tweeting Opens a New Window.</a> that “given the chance Gawker will always report on married C-suite executives of major media companies [fooling] around on their wives.” If that’s true, and I’ve no doubt that it is, then you’ve got to ask yourself what was different this time?</p>
<p>I could be wrong but it’s a reasonable bet that, if the executive in question had simply been cheating on his wife with another woman, it wouldn’t have created much of a stir and none of this would have happened. But these days, if you say anything disparaging about someone who’s anything but a heterosexual white male, the PC police will be all over you, your character, and your advertisers in a heartbeat.</p>
<p>With so many examples of this sort of politically correct self-censorship popping up left and right these days, you might wonder why I chose to write about Gawker. After all, the demise of interim Reddit CEO Ellen Pao less than two weeks ago was related to the shutting down of certain subreddits that were deemed offensive, in direct contrast to the site’s historic open and diverse user community.</p>
<p>I chose the Gawker example for a very specific reason. What began as political correctness by a minority of thin-skinned individuals who find every little thing offensive has turned into a massive cultural shift that dictates to the majority what they can and can’t say and how they can and can’t say it.</p>
<p>What I realized when I woke up the other day is that we the people – a nation built on a principle so foundational to our way of life that we made it the First Amendment to our Constitution – are willingly giving up our right to free speech. We’re willingly censoring ourselves. And we’re going down without a fight.&#160;</p>
<p>If that can happen at Gawker Media – a bastion of free speech and equal opportunity offender of anyone and everyone – it can happen anywhere. The first amendment protects us from government censorship, but who’s going to keep us from censoring ourselves?</p> | 3,055 |
<p>Image Source: KHON 2</p>
<p>Loretta Fuddy was the Health Director responsible for approving and releasing the “Certificate of Live Birth” that was sent to Barack Obama. Since that time, many have come to the conclusion that this birth record is a forgery. Fuddy died in December under bizarre circumstances.</p>
<p>As you may recall, Loretta Fuddy was the sole fatality in a Hawaiian plane crash late in 2013. The <a href="" type="internal">media narrative of those events quickly fell apart</a>:</p>
<p>In the irony to end all ironies the L.A. Times published an article entitled&#160; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hawaii-plane-crash-20131213,0,279382.story#axzz2nNkAn7Gp" type="external">Hawaii plane crash fuels Obama ‘birther’ theories</a>, on December 12th, and within the context of that article may have spilled the beans on why “birthers” should be questioning this story.</p>
<p>On the 13th I reported that&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Loretta Fuddy was the woman who was responsible for the release of Barack Obama’s long-form Hawaii birth certificate.</a>&#160;[Editor’s Note: this was not accurately stated in my original article. A birth certificate and “Certificate of Live Birth” are not the same.]&#160;Of the 9 people on the Cessna that crash landed in open&#160; <a href="" type="internal">water</a>&#160;she was the only one who died. Is it coincidence?</p>
<p>The L.A. Times&#160; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hawaii-plane-crash-20131213,0,279382.story#axzz2nNkAn7Gp" type="external">reports</a>:</p>
<p>Fuddy, 65, was among nine people in a Cessna that crashed into the ocean Wednesday, shortly after leaving Kalaupapa Airport on the&#160;island&#160;of Molokai about 3:15 p.m. The eight others on the plane, including the pilot, were rescued, but Fuddy “remained in the fuselage of the plane,” Honolulu Fire Capt. Terry Seelig told KHON-TV. “It’s always a difficult situation when you’re not able to get everybody out.”</p>
<p>Why is this paragraph important?</p>
<p>Simply because it contradicts everything that we have been told.</p>
<p>We were told two things specifically that Terry Seelig has proclaimed to be incorrect.</p>
<p>Both of the above accounts come from an&#160; <a href="http://www.maysville-online.com/news/national/coast-guard-plane-not-visible-after-hawaii-crash/article_9c4c29a6-235b-56fa-8427-16950591487a.html" type="external">Associated Press contributed article</a>. Here are the key quotes that directly contradict the report of Fire Captain Terry Seelig as quoted in the&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Los Angeles</a>&#160;Times.</p>
<p>In the final moments of her life, Hawaii&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Health</a>&#160;Director&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Loretta Fuddy</a>&#160;clung to the hand of her deputy after a small plane taking them back to Honolulu crashed in the ocean off the&#160;island&#160;of Molokai.</p>
<p>Fuddy, who gained notoriety in 2011 for her role in making&#160; <a href="" type="internal">President Barack Obama</a>’s&#160; <a href="" type="internal">birth certificate</a>&#160;public, was one of nine people onboard the flight that went down Wednesday. She was the only one who died.</p>
<p>In the water, Fuddy held hands with deputy director Keith Yamamoto as he tried to help her relax, said the Rev. Patrick Killilea, who consoled Yamamoto after the ordeal.</p>
<p>“He recounted how he said he helped Loretta into her life&#160;jacket&#160;and he held her hand for some time,” the priest said. “They were all floating together and she let go and there was no response from her.”</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>Schuman said he did not yet know why the&#160;engine&#160;failed because he has not been able to see the plane. The aircraft had no previous problems, he said.</p>
<p>Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said investigators planned to speak with the pilot, whose name was not released, and some passengers about the crash as they seek more details.</p>
<p>However, the location of the wreckage, combined with wind and wave&#160;conditions, likely means it won’t be recovered, said NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss.</p>
<p>It seems that the fire chief didn’t receive the “Fuddy talking points.”</p>
<p>Now some more bizarre allegations are circulating.</p>
<p>Could it be that Loretta Fuddy was paid for producing a “birth certificate” that never existed? <a href="http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/archives/10343" type="external">Homelandsecurityus.com</a> reports:</p>
<p>Since her death, portions related to Loretta Fuddy in the sealed affidavit filed in U.S. Federal Court have been made public. Of particular interest are her financial reports detailing her income and expenses in 2011 and 2012. Each report is filed in January for the previous year.</p>
<p>According to Mr. Vogt, a large and as yet unanswered income disparity was found between the two reports. In short, during her first year as Hawaii’s Director of Health, which is also the time she authenticated Obama’s COLB, Ms. Fuddy’s gross income was reportedly less than $100,000. Nonetheless, her financials show that she apparently paid down her mortgage and decreased her liabilities by at least $50,000 and perhaps as much as $75,000 more than what she grossed that year. Where did that money come from? While there may well be a legitimate explanation for this disparity, it was not disclosed on the financial forms she filed with the Hawaii State Ethics Commission.</p>
<p>If I understand this correctly the woman made less than $100,000 yet managed to pay down her mortgage by well over $100,000 in a single year. For example, it sounds as if she could have made $90,000 and paid $140,000 toward her mortgage. How does that happen? That money came from somewhere. Could it be legitimate? Absolutely. But it doesn’t look good.</p>
<p>The Mr. Vogt who is referenced above is <a href="http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/archives/10343" type="external">Doug Vogt who brought some&#160;attention to Fuddy’s financials in an interview just one week before her death</a>. Just one week? That seems to be a little more than coincidental.</p>
<p>You may recall that Tim Adams, a Hawaii Elections official, submitted a sworn affidavit of his own in 2011. His claim is that <a href="" type="internal">no Hawaii&#160;birth certificate ever existed</a>:</p>
<p>In a&#160; <a href="http://www.wnd.com/files/110123adams1.pdf" type="external">sworn affidavit</a>&#160;dated and witnessed on January 20, 2011 Adams states, “Senior officers in the City and County of Honolulu Elections&#160;Division&#160;told me on&#160;multiple occasions that no Hawaii long-form, hospital-generated birth&#160;certificate&#160;existed&#160;for Senator&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Obama</a>&#160;in the Hawaii Department of&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Health</a>&#160;and there was no record that any&#160;such document had ever been on file in the Hawaii Department of Health or any other&#160;branch or department of the Hawaii&#160; <a href="" type="internal">government</a>.”</p>
<p>So let’s summarize what we know to be true at this point:</p>
<p>What conclusion are we supposed to come to?</p>
<p>Why is it that <a href="" type="internal">some people</a> who appear to have vital information about Barack Obama end up dead?</p>
<p>Maybe it is just another one of those <a href="" type="internal">astounding coincidences</a>&#160;that seem to happen over and over with <a href="" type="internal">big name politicians</a>.</p>
<p>h/t <a href="http://www.birtherreport.com/2014/05/er-montgomery-sibley-updates-obama.html" type="external">Birther Report</a></p>
<p />
<p /> | Obama Birth Certificate Shocker: Evidence that Loretta Fuddy Was Paid Off? | true | http://dcclothesline.com/2014/05/08/obama-birth-certificate-shocking-evidence-loretta-fuddy-may-paid/ | 0right
| Obama Birth Certificate Shocker: Evidence that Loretta Fuddy Was Paid Off?
<p>Image Source: KHON 2</p>
<p>Loretta Fuddy was the Health Director responsible for approving and releasing the “Certificate of Live Birth” that was sent to Barack Obama. Since that time, many have come to the conclusion that this birth record is a forgery. Fuddy died in December under bizarre circumstances.</p>
<p>As you may recall, Loretta Fuddy was the sole fatality in a Hawaiian plane crash late in 2013. The <a href="" type="internal">media narrative of those events quickly fell apart</a>:</p>
<p>In the irony to end all ironies the L.A. Times published an article entitled&#160; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hawaii-plane-crash-20131213,0,279382.story#axzz2nNkAn7Gp" type="external">Hawaii plane crash fuels Obama ‘birther’ theories</a>, on December 12th, and within the context of that article may have spilled the beans on why “birthers” should be questioning this story.</p>
<p>On the 13th I reported that&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Loretta Fuddy was the woman who was responsible for the release of Barack Obama’s long-form Hawaii birth certificate.</a>&#160;[Editor’s Note: this was not accurately stated in my original article. A birth certificate and “Certificate of Live Birth” are not the same.]&#160;Of the 9 people on the Cessna that crash landed in open&#160; <a href="" type="internal">water</a>&#160;she was the only one who died. Is it coincidence?</p>
<p>The L.A. Times&#160; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hawaii-plane-crash-20131213,0,279382.story#axzz2nNkAn7Gp" type="external">reports</a>:</p>
<p>Fuddy, 65, was among nine people in a Cessna that crashed into the ocean Wednesday, shortly after leaving Kalaupapa Airport on the&#160;island&#160;of Molokai about 3:15 p.m. The eight others on the plane, including the pilot, were rescued, but Fuddy “remained in the fuselage of the plane,” Honolulu Fire Capt. Terry Seelig told KHON-TV. “It’s always a difficult situation when you’re not able to get everybody out.”</p>
<p>Why is this paragraph important?</p>
<p>Simply because it contradicts everything that we have been told.</p>
<p>We were told two things specifically that Terry Seelig has proclaimed to be incorrect.</p>
<p>Both of the above accounts come from an&#160; <a href="http://www.maysville-online.com/news/national/coast-guard-plane-not-visible-after-hawaii-crash/article_9c4c29a6-235b-56fa-8427-16950591487a.html" type="external">Associated Press contributed article</a>. Here are the key quotes that directly contradict the report of Fire Captain Terry Seelig as quoted in the&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Los Angeles</a>&#160;Times.</p>
<p>In the final moments of her life, Hawaii&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Health</a>&#160;Director&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Loretta Fuddy</a>&#160;clung to the hand of her deputy after a small plane taking them back to Honolulu crashed in the ocean off the&#160;island&#160;of Molokai.</p>
<p>Fuddy, who gained notoriety in 2011 for her role in making&#160; <a href="" type="internal">President Barack Obama</a>’s&#160; <a href="" type="internal">birth certificate</a>&#160;public, was one of nine people onboard the flight that went down Wednesday. She was the only one who died.</p>
<p>In the water, Fuddy held hands with deputy director Keith Yamamoto as he tried to help her relax, said the Rev. Patrick Killilea, who consoled Yamamoto after the ordeal.</p>
<p>“He recounted how he said he helped Loretta into her life&#160;jacket&#160;and he held her hand for some time,” the priest said. “They were all floating together and she let go and there was no response from her.”</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>Schuman said he did not yet know why the&#160;engine&#160;failed because he has not been able to see the plane. The aircraft had no previous problems, he said.</p>
<p>Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said investigators planned to speak with the pilot, whose name was not released, and some passengers about the crash as they seek more details.</p>
<p>However, the location of the wreckage, combined with wind and wave&#160;conditions, likely means it won’t be recovered, said NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss.</p>
<p>It seems that the fire chief didn’t receive the “Fuddy talking points.”</p>
<p>Now some more bizarre allegations are circulating.</p>
<p>Could it be that Loretta Fuddy was paid for producing a “birth certificate” that never existed? <a href="http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/archives/10343" type="external">Homelandsecurityus.com</a> reports:</p>
<p>Since her death, portions related to Loretta Fuddy in the sealed affidavit filed in U.S. Federal Court have been made public. Of particular interest are her financial reports detailing her income and expenses in 2011 and 2012. Each report is filed in January for the previous year.</p>
<p>According to Mr. Vogt, a large and as yet unanswered income disparity was found between the two reports. In short, during her first year as Hawaii’s Director of Health, which is also the time she authenticated Obama’s COLB, Ms. Fuddy’s gross income was reportedly less than $100,000. Nonetheless, her financials show that she apparently paid down her mortgage and decreased her liabilities by at least $50,000 and perhaps as much as $75,000 more than what she grossed that year. Where did that money come from? While there may well be a legitimate explanation for this disparity, it was not disclosed on the financial forms she filed with the Hawaii State Ethics Commission.</p>
<p>If I understand this correctly the woman made less than $100,000 yet managed to pay down her mortgage by well over $100,000 in a single year. For example, it sounds as if she could have made $90,000 and paid $140,000 toward her mortgage. How does that happen? That money came from somewhere. Could it be legitimate? Absolutely. But it doesn’t look good.</p>
<p>The Mr. Vogt who is referenced above is <a href="http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/archives/10343" type="external">Doug Vogt who brought some&#160;attention to Fuddy’s financials in an interview just one week before her death</a>. Just one week? That seems to be a little more than coincidental.</p>
<p>You may recall that Tim Adams, a Hawaii Elections official, submitted a sworn affidavit of his own in 2011. His claim is that <a href="" type="internal">no Hawaii&#160;birth certificate ever existed</a>:</p>
<p>In a&#160; <a href="http://www.wnd.com/files/110123adams1.pdf" type="external">sworn affidavit</a>&#160;dated and witnessed on January 20, 2011 Adams states, “Senior officers in the City and County of Honolulu Elections&#160;Division&#160;told me on&#160;multiple occasions that no Hawaii long-form, hospital-generated birth&#160;certificate&#160;existed&#160;for Senator&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Obama</a>&#160;in the Hawaii Department of&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Health</a>&#160;and there was no record that any&#160;such document had ever been on file in the Hawaii Department of Health or any other&#160;branch or department of the Hawaii&#160; <a href="" type="internal">government</a>.”</p>
<p>So let’s summarize what we know to be true at this point:</p>
<p>What conclusion are we supposed to come to?</p>
<p>Why is it that <a href="" type="internal">some people</a> who appear to have vital information about Barack Obama end up dead?</p>
<p>Maybe it is just another one of those <a href="" type="internal">astounding coincidences</a>&#160;that seem to happen over and over with <a href="" type="internal">big name politicians</a>.</p>
<p>h/t <a href="http://www.birtherreport.com/2014/05/er-montgomery-sibley-updates-obama.html" type="external">Birther Report</a></p>
<p />
<p /> | 3,056 |
|
<p>Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said Tuesday that the U.S. was already in a recession, despite the efforts of the U.S. government and other nations' leaders to intervene. "I have seen a lot of crises but I have never seen anything quite like this one," said Volcker, who headed up the Fed for eight years before Alan Greenspan took over in 1987.</p>
<p>AFP via Yahoo News:</p>
<p>"I'm afraid it's going to be there for a considerable period of time before it returns to normal," he said in a lecture here, painting a gloomy picture of current economic woes.</p>
<p>The crisis that began in the United States has become a global problem which needs a global solution, he said.</p>
<p />
<p>Volcker said the United States appeared to be in recession, and he feared Europe was in the same situation but he hopes a series of bailout measures announced by governments around the world will ensure any recession is manageable and short-lived.</p>
<p><a href="http://ph.news.yahoo.com/afp/20081014/tap-finance-banking-us-fed-volcker-06f3cb7.html" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Former Fed Chief: U.S. Already in a Recession | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/former-fed-chief-u-s-already-in-a-recession/ | 2008-10-15 | 4left
| Former Fed Chief: U.S. Already in a Recession
<p>Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said Tuesday that the U.S. was already in a recession, despite the efforts of the U.S. government and other nations' leaders to intervene. "I have seen a lot of crises but I have never seen anything quite like this one," said Volcker, who headed up the Fed for eight years before Alan Greenspan took over in 1987.</p>
<p>AFP via Yahoo News:</p>
<p>"I'm afraid it's going to be there for a considerable period of time before it returns to normal," he said in a lecture here, painting a gloomy picture of current economic woes.</p>
<p>The crisis that began in the United States has become a global problem which needs a global solution, he said.</p>
<p />
<p>Volcker said the United States appeared to be in recession, and he feared Europe was in the same situation but he hopes a series of bailout measures announced by governments around the world will ensure any recession is manageable and short-lived.</p>
<p><a href="http://ph.news.yahoo.com/afp/20081014/tap-finance-banking-us-fed-volcker-06f3cb7.html" type="external">Read more</a></p> | 3,057 |
<p>Onerous, business-killing, government regulations are being slashed at ‘historically low levels’ under the Trump administration.</p>
<p />
<p>One of Donald Trump’s key campaign promises was to cut the previous administration’s costly regulations. He planned to do this by <a href="" type="internal">eliminating two rules</a> for every new one placed on the books.</p>
<p />
<p>After winning the election in November, and prior to assuming office, Trump explained his plan in a video released during the transition.</p>
<p />
<p>“I will formulate a rule which says that for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated,” he announced.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Not only is the President slashing regulations, but he’s doing so at breakneck speed. In fact, according to <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-ahead-of-reagans-record-in-cutting-regulations/article/2636355" type="external">two separate reports</a> from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and American Action Forum, he’s far outpacing President Reagean who had the unenviable task of cutting through the mountain of red tape created by Jimmy Carter.</p>
<p />
<p>The CEI report indicates that the Trump administration has issued 58 percent fewer costly regulations in and of itself, but has also slashed the federal register by 32 percent.</p>
<p />
<p>American Action Forum’s Dan Goldbeck said the regulation reduction has been historic.</p>
<p />
<p>“As the Trump Administration transitions into the new fiscal year and next phase of Executive Order 13,771, it can reasonably claim net regulatory savings of roughly $560 million under the EO’s first phase,” he said. “There have been some new regulatory costs, but activity on that front remains at a historically low level.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>CEI Vice President says that for now, “Trump is moving much faster” than Reagan was when he sought to cut Carter’s expanded federal registry by 1/3rd.</p>
<p />
<p>In a speech to the National Association of Manufacturers last week, the President bragged about&#160;his efforts to repeal regulations, citing the Environmental Protection Agency as an example.</p>
<p />
<p>He promised “beautiful, fast, efficient” regulations that work well for businesses.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Neomi Rao, President Trump’s regulatory czar, said the administration is ahead of schedule in achieving President Trump’s order to cut regulations at a two-for-one pace.</p>
<p />
<p>Do you support slashing federal regulations? Share your thoughts below!</p> | Trump Is Outpacing Even Reagan When It Comes to Cutting Government Regulations | true | http://thepoliticalinsider.com/trump-outpacing-even-reagan-comes-cutting-government-regulations/ | 2017-10-03 | 0right
| Trump Is Outpacing Even Reagan When It Comes to Cutting Government Regulations
<p>Onerous, business-killing, government regulations are being slashed at ‘historically low levels’ under the Trump administration.</p>
<p />
<p>One of Donald Trump’s key campaign promises was to cut the previous administration’s costly regulations. He planned to do this by <a href="" type="internal">eliminating two rules</a> for every new one placed on the books.</p>
<p />
<p>After winning the election in November, and prior to assuming office, Trump explained his plan in a video released during the transition.</p>
<p />
<p>“I will formulate a rule which says that for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated,” he announced.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Not only is the President slashing regulations, but he’s doing so at breakneck speed. In fact, according to <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-ahead-of-reagans-record-in-cutting-regulations/article/2636355" type="external">two separate reports</a> from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and American Action Forum, he’s far outpacing President Reagean who had the unenviable task of cutting through the mountain of red tape created by Jimmy Carter.</p>
<p />
<p>The CEI report indicates that the Trump administration has issued 58 percent fewer costly regulations in and of itself, but has also slashed the federal register by 32 percent.</p>
<p />
<p>American Action Forum’s Dan Goldbeck said the regulation reduction has been historic.</p>
<p />
<p>“As the Trump Administration transitions into the new fiscal year and next phase of Executive Order 13,771, it can reasonably claim net regulatory savings of roughly $560 million under the EO’s first phase,” he said. “There have been some new regulatory costs, but activity on that front remains at a historically low level.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>CEI Vice President says that for now, “Trump is moving much faster” than Reagan was when he sought to cut Carter’s expanded federal registry by 1/3rd.</p>
<p />
<p>In a speech to the National Association of Manufacturers last week, the President bragged about&#160;his efforts to repeal regulations, citing the Environmental Protection Agency as an example.</p>
<p />
<p>He promised “beautiful, fast, efficient” regulations that work well for businesses.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Neomi Rao, President Trump’s regulatory czar, said the administration is ahead of schedule in achieving President Trump’s order to cut regulations at a two-for-one pace.</p>
<p />
<p>Do you support slashing federal regulations? Share your thoughts below!</p> | 3,058 |
<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - AVANGRID RENEWABLES :</p>
<p>* AVANGRID RENEWABLES SIGNS PPA WITH NIKE FOR PORTION OF NEW TEXAS GULF COAST WIND FARM</p>
<p>* AVANGRID RENEWABLES - SIGNED ITS SECOND MAJOR WIND CONTRACT WITH NIKE, FOR 86 MEGAWATTS OF TEXAS WIND POWER Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S.-led strikes in Syria have enforced a red line set for President Bashar al-Assad on the use of chemical weapons, an Israeli official said on Saturday.</p> A plane preparing to take off as part of the joint airstrike operation by the British, French and U.S. militaries in Syria, is seen in this picture obtained on April 14, 2018 via social media. Courtesy French Military/Twitter/via REUTERS
<p>“Last year, President Trump made clear that the use of chemical weapons crosses a red line. Tonight, under American leadership, the United States, France and the United Kingdom enforced that line,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>“Syria continues to engage in and provide a base for murderous actions, including those of Iran, that put its territory, its forces and its leadership at risk,” the official said.</p>
<p>Reporting by Maayan Lubell; editing by Richard Pullin</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday strongly condemned the U.S.-led attacks on Syria and said Washington and its allies would bear the responsibility of the raids’ consequences in the region and beyond, Iranian state media reported.</p>
<p>“Undoubtedly, the United States and its allies, which took military action against Syria despite the absence of any proven evidence ... will assume the responsibility for the regional and trans-regional consequences of this adventurism,” &#160;Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by state media.</p>
<p>Reporting by Dubai newsroom; editing by Richard Pullin</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About 10 days ago, U.S. President Donald Trump told national security aides that he wanted U.S. forces out of Syria in six months or so, adamant that it was time to bring them home after largely defeating Islamic State militants.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump makes a statement about Syria at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
<p>“Very soon, very soon, we’re coming out,” Trump said in telegraphing his thoughts to a crowd in Richfield, Ohio, on March 30. “We’re going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be.”</p>
<p>Now, Trump has abruptly deepened U.S. involvement in Syria, mustering a coalition of U.S., French and British forces to attack Syrian facilities related to production of chemical weapons after a poison gas attack last week killed dozens of people in Douma, Syria.</p>
<p>Aides said Trump’s attitude changed when he was shown images of Syrians killed by the chemical weapons last Saturday, about a year after he first ordered air strikes against Syrian targets to retaliate for an earlier use of the banned substances.</p>
<p>“When he sees these sorts of things, they outrage him,” said a source familiar with the internal debate at the White House.</p>
<p>Trump had also grown exasperated with Russia for doing nothing to stop the Syrian government from using the weapons.</p> A plane prepares to take off as part of the joint airstrike operation by the British, French and U.S. militaries in Syria, in this still image from video footage obtained on April 14, 2018 from social media. courtesy Elysee/Twitter/via REUTERS
<p>He first made clear that he intended to launch new attacks in a series of tweets earlier this week, issuing warnings against not only Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but also Russia and Iran.</p>
<p>It was an unusual strategy, a departure from the usual U.S. practice of launching surprise attacks.</p>
<p>Hounded by controversies related to a federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, Trump stayed out of the public eye much of this week, locked in White House Situation Room meetings about Syria.</p>
<p>Defense Secretary James Mattis, new national security adviser John Bolton, Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley were all involved in the talks.</p>
<p>Behind closed doors, Trump pushed for a more aggressive response than the one taken last year, wanting options that would involve attacks on targets in Syria associated with Russia and Iran, officials said.</p>
<p>His generals pushed back, not wanting to escalate tensions with those two countries, the officials said.</p>
<p>Hours after the first missiles fell on Friday night, it was not yet clear how extensive the attacks were.</p>
<p>Mattis described them as a “one-time shot” to send a strong message to Assad not to use chemical weapons again.</p> Syria air defences strike back after air strikes by U.S., British and French forces in Damascus, Syria in this still image obtained from video dated early April 14, 2018. SYRIA TV via Reuters TV
<p>That appeared to contradict Trump’s own pledge that the United States, France and Britain would sustain the military campaign until Assad stops using prohibited chemical agents.</p>
<p>While Trump was determined to respond to the chemical attack, he also said the United States “does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria, under no circumstances.”</p>
<p>As Trump announced the military action, Pence was in Peru attending the Summit of the Americas. Trump had been scheduled to attend but stayed in Washington to focus on Syria.</p>
<p>Pence abruptly left the summit’s opening ceremonies and returned to his hotel in time to make secure phone calls to congressional leaders to tell them about the strikes.</p>
<p>Pence was in constant contact with Washington on his trip, speaking multiple times to Trump and also to Bolton. He again spoke to Trump after the attacks were launched, an aide said.</p>
<p>Reporting By Steve Holland in Washington and Roberta Rampton with Pence in Lima, Peru; Editing by Kieran Murray, Toni Reinhold</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Saturday she had authorized British forces to conduct precision air-launched cruise missile strikes on Syria to degrade its chemical weapons capability, saying there was no alternative to military action.</p>
<p>Four Royal Air Force Tornado jets using Storm Shadow missiles had taken part in the attack on a military facility near Homs where it was assessed Syria had stockpiled chemicals, Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.</p>
<p>The strike, conducted with the United States and France, was “limited and targeted”, designed to minimize any civilian casualties, May said. The MoD said the initial indications were that the precision weapons and meticulous target planning had “resulted in a successful attack”.</p>
<p>“This is not about intervening in a civil war. It is not about regime change,” May said in a statement.</p>
<p>She said the strike was a response to significant evidence including intelligence showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government was responsible for attack using chemical weapons in Douma in Syria last Saturday that killed up to 75 people including children.</p>
<p>May added Britain and its allies had sought to use every diplomatic means to stop the use of chemical weapons, but had been repeatedly thwarted, citing a Russian veto of an independent investigation into the Douma attack at the UN Security Council this week.</p>
<p>“So there is no practicable alternative to the use of force to degrade and deter the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Regime,” she said.</p>
<p>The Western missile strikes demonstrate the volatile nature of the Syrian civil war, which started in March 2011 as an anti-Assad uprising but is now a proxy conflict involving a number of world and regional powers and a myriad of insurgent groups.</p>
<p>U.S. President Donald Trump said he was prepared to sustain the response until the government of Assad stopped its use of chemical weapons.</p>
<p>Russia, which intervened in the war in 2015 to back Assad, has denied there was a chemical attack and has accused Britain of helping to stage the Douma incident to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.</p> CHEMICAL WEAPONS TARGETS
<p>Britain’s defense ministry said “very careful scientific analysis” had been applied to maximize the destruction of stockpiled chemicals while minimizing any risk of contamination to surrounding areas.</p>
<p>“The facility which was struck is located some distance from any known concentrations of civilian habitation, reducing yet further any such risk,” the MoD said in a statement.</p> Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May tours Alexander Stadium in Birmingham, April 11, 2018. Christopher Furlong/Pool via Reuters
<p>May said while the strike was targeted at Syria, it sent a message to anyone who used chemical weapons. Britain has accused Russia of being behind last month’s nerve agent attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, southern England, a charge Moscow has rejected.</p>
<p>“This is the first time as prime minister that I have had to take the decision to commit our armed forces in combat – and it is not a decision I have taken lightly,” she said.</p>
<p>“I have done so because I judge this action to be in Britain’s national interest. We cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalized – within Syria, on the streets of the UK, or anywhere else in our world.”</p>
<p>Many politicians in Britain, including some in May’s own Conservative Party, had called for parliament to be recalled from a break to give authority to any military strike.</p>
<p>May is not obliged to win parliament’s approval before ordering military action, but a non-binding constitutional convention to do so has been established since a 2003 vote on joining the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.</p> A plane lands on RAF Akrotiri, a military base Britain maintains on Cyprus, April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou
<p>Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had said Britain should press for an independent U.N.-led investigation into the suspected chemical attack in Douma rather than wait for instructions from Trump on how to proceed.</p>
<p>Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | BRIEF-Avangrid Renewables Signs PPA With Nike For Portion Of New Texas Gulf Coast Wind Farm Israel says U.S.-led strikes have enforced Syria red line U.S., allies responsible for regional consequences of Syria attack: Iran After chemical weapons attack, Trump quickly changed tune on Syria Britain had no choice but to conduct missile strikes against Syria, PM May says | false | https://reuters.com/article/brief-avangrid-renewables-signs-ppa-with/brief-avangrid-renewables-signs-ppa-with-nike-for-portion-of-new-texas-gulf-coast-wind-farm-idUSFWN1PD1C1 | 2018-01-18 | 2least
| BRIEF-Avangrid Renewables Signs PPA With Nike For Portion Of New Texas Gulf Coast Wind Farm Israel says U.S.-led strikes have enforced Syria red line U.S., allies responsible for regional consequences of Syria attack: Iran After chemical weapons attack, Trump quickly changed tune on Syria Britain had no choice but to conduct missile strikes against Syria, PM May says
<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - AVANGRID RENEWABLES :</p>
<p>* AVANGRID RENEWABLES SIGNS PPA WITH NIKE FOR PORTION OF NEW TEXAS GULF COAST WIND FARM</p>
<p>* AVANGRID RENEWABLES - SIGNED ITS SECOND MAJOR WIND CONTRACT WITH NIKE, FOR 86 MEGAWATTS OF TEXAS WIND POWER Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S.-led strikes in Syria have enforced a red line set for President Bashar al-Assad on the use of chemical weapons, an Israeli official said on Saturday.</p> A plane preparing to take off as part of the joint airstrike operation by the British, French and U.S. militaries in Syria, is seen in this picture obtained on April 14, 2018 via social media. Courtesy French Military/Twitter/via REUTERS
<p>“Last year, President Trump made clear that the use of chemical weapons crosses a red line. Tonight, under American leadership, the United States, France and the United Kingdom enforced that line,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>“Syria continues to engage in and provide a base for murderous actions, including those of Iran, that put its territory, its forces and its leadership at risk,” the official said.</p>
<p>Reporting by Maayan Lubell; editing by Richard Pullin</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday strongly condemned the U.S.-led attacks on Syria and said Washington and its allies would bear the responsibility of the raids’ consequences in the region and beyond, Iranian state media reported.</p>
<p>“Undoubtedly, the United States and its allies, which took military action against Syria despite the absence of any proven evidence ... will assume the responsibility for the regional and trans-regional consequences of this adventurism,” &#160;Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by state media.</p>
<p>Reporting by Dubai newsroom; editing by Richard Pullin</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About 10 days ago, U.S. President Donald Trump told national security aides that he wanted U.S. forces out of Syria in six months or so, adamant that it was time to bring them home after largely defeating Islamic State militants.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump makes a statement about Syria at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
<p>“Very soon, very soon, we’re coming out,” Trump said in telegraphing his thoughts to a crowd in Richfield, Ohio, on March 30. “We’re going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be.”</p>
<p>Now, Trump has abruptly deepened U.S. involvement in Syria, mustering a coalition of U.S., French and British forces to attack Syrian facilities related to production of chemical weapons after a poison gas attack last week killed dozens of people in Douma, Syria.</p>
<p>Aides said Trump’s attitude changed when he was shown images of Syrians killed by the chemical weapons last Saturday, about a year after he first ordered air strikes against Syrian targets to retaliate for an earlier use of the banned substances.</p>
<p>“When he sees these sorts of things, they outrage him,” said a source familiar with the internal debate at the White House.</p>
<p>Trump had also grown exasperated with Russia for doing nothing to stop the Syrian government from using the weapons.</p> A plane prepares to take off as part of the joint airstrike operation by the British, French and U.S. militaries in Syria, in this still image from video footage obtained on April 14, 2018 from social media. courtesy Elysee/Twitter/via REUTERS
<p>He first made clear that he intended to launch new attacks in a series of tweets earlier this week, issuing warnings against not only Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but also Russia and Iran.</p>
<p>It was an unusual strategy, a departure from the usual U.S. practice of launching surprise attacks.</p>
<p>Hounded by controversies related to a federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, Trump stayed out of the public eye much of this week, locked in White House Situation Room meetings about Syria.</p>
<p>Defense Secretary James Mattis, new national security adviser John Bolton, Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley were all involved in the talks.</p>
<p>Behind closed doors, Trump pushed for a more aggressive response than the one taken last year, wanting options that would involve attacks on targets in Syria associated with Russia and Iran, officials said.</p>
<p>His generals pushed back, not wanting to escalate tensions with those two countries, the officials said.</p>
<p>Hours after the first missiles fell on Friday night, it was not yet clear how extensive the attacks were.</p>
<p>Mattis described them as a “one-time shot” to send a strong message to Assad not to use chemical weapons again.</p> Syria air defences strike back after air strikes by U.S., British and French forces in Damascus, Syria in this still image obtained from video dated early April 14, 2018. SYRIA TV via Reuters TV
<p>That appeared to contradict Trump’s own pledge that the United States, France and Britain would sustain the military campaign until Assad stops using prohibited chemical agents.</p>
<p>While Trump was determined to respond to the chemical attack, he also said the United States “does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria, under no circumstances.”</p>
<p>As Trump announced the military action, Pence was in Peru attending the Summit of the Americas. Trump had been scheduled to attend but stayed in Washington to focus on Syria.</p>
<p>Pence abruptly left the summit’s opening ceremonies and returned to his hotel in time to make secure phone calls to congressional leaders to tell them about the strikes.</p>
<p>Pence was in constant contact with Washington on his trip, speaking multiple times to Trump and also to Bolton. He again spoke to Trump after the attacks were launched, an aide said.</p>
<p>Reporting By Steve Holland in Washington and Roberta Rampton with Pence in Lima, Peru; Editing by Kieran Murray, Toni Reinhold</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Saturday she had authorized British forces to conduct precision air-launched cruise missile strikes on Syria to degrade its chemical weapons capability, saying there was no alternative to military action.</p>
<p>Four Royal Air Force Tornado jets using Storm Shadow missiles had taken part in the attack on a military facility near Homs where it was assessed Syria had stockpiled chemicals, Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.</p>
<p>The strike, conducted with the United States and France, was “limited and targeted”, designed to minimize any civilian casualties, May said. The MoD said the initial indications were that the precision weapons and meticulous target planning had “resulted in a successful attack”.</p>
<p>“This is not about intervening in a civil war. It is not about regime change,” May said in a statement.</p>
<p>She said the strike was a response to significant evidence including intelligence showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government was responsible for attack using chemical weapons in Douma in Syria last Saturday that killed up to 75 people including children.</p>
<p>May added Britain and its allies had sought to use every diplomatic means to stop the use of chemical weapons, but had been repeatedly thwarted, citing a Russian veto of an independent investigation into the Douma attack at the UN Security Council this week.</p>
<p>“So there is no practicable alternative to the use of force to degrade and deter the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Regime,” she said.</p>
<p>The Western missile strikes demonstrate the volatile nature of the Syrian civil war, which started in March 2011 as an anti-Assad uprising but is now a proxy conflict involving a number of world and regional powers and a myriad of insurgent groups.</p>
<p>U.S. President Donald Trump said he was prepared to sustain the response until the government of Assad stopped its use of chemical weapons.</p>
<p>Russia, which intervened in the war in 2015 to back Assad, has denied there was a chemical attack and has accused Britain of helping to stage the Douma incident to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.</p> CHEMICAL WEAPONS TARGETS
<p>Britain’s defense ministry said “very careful scientific analysis” had been applied to maximize the destruction of stockpiled chemicals while minimizing any risk of contamination to surrounding areas.</p>
<p>“The facility which was struck is located some distance from any known concentrations of civilian habitation, reducing yet further any such risk,” the MoD said in a statement.</p> Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May tours Alexander Stadium in Birmingham, April 11, 2018. Christopher Furlong/Pool via Reuters
<p>May said while the strike was targeted at Syria, it sent a message to anyone who used chemical weapons. Britain has accused Russia of being behind last month’s nerve agent attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, southern England, a charge Moscow has rejected.</p>
<p>“This is the first time as prime minister that I have had to take the decision to commit our armed forces in combat – and it is not a decision I have taken lightly,” she said.</p>
<p>“I have done so because I judge this action to be in Britain’s national interest. We cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalized – within Syria, on the streets of the UK, or anywhere else in our world.”</p>
<p>Many politicians in Britain, including some in May’s own Conservative Party, had called for parliament to be recalled from a break to give authority to any military strike.</p>
<p>May is not obliged to win parliament’s approval before ordering military action, but a non-binding constitutional convention to do so has been established since a 2003 vote on joining the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.</p> A plane lands on RAF Akrotiri, a military base Britain maintains on Cyprus, April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou
<p>Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had said Britain should press for an independent U.N.-led investigation into the suspected chemical attack in Douma rather than wait for instructions from Trump on how to proceed.</p>
<p>Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | 3,059 |
<p>Britain's most senior cardinal, who was forced to resign last week, has admitted to inappropriate sexual conduct.</p>
<p>In a short statement <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/03/cardinal-keith-obrien-admits-sexual-misconduct" type="external">released to The Guardian on Sunday</a>, Keith O'Brien said, “I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal".</p>
<p>O'Brien, the former archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, did not give any details about the conduct but asked for the forgiveness of the Church and those he had offended.&#160;</p>
<p>The former cardinal resigned last week after three priests and one former priest made allegations of “inappropriate” behavior against him, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cardinal-keith-obrien-apologises-for-sexual-conduct-8518371.html" type="external">reports The Independent.</a></p>
<p>O'Brien initially denied the allegations and said he did not want to be distracted from the conclave that will select the new pope after Benedict XVI resigned the papacy on Thursday, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/03/keith-obrien-cardinal-sex_n_2802073.html" type="external">reports AP.</a></p>
<p>O'Brien, 74, has stepped away from any public role in the church and will not be attending the conclave.</p>
<p>“I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland."</p>
<p>The allegations were first reported by The Observer newspaper, which reported that priest had claimed he had "inappropriate contact" with O'Brien following a visit to his parish, reports AP.</p>
<p>A second priest reported "unwanted behavior" by O'Brien after some late night drinks and a third claimed he was "taken advantage of" during a counseling session, reported the Observer.&#160;</p> | British Cardinal Keith O'Brien admits and apologizes for sexual misconduct | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-03-03/british-cardinal-keith-obrien-admits-and-apologizes-sexual-misconduct | 2013-03-03 | 3left-center
| British Cardinal Keith O'Brien admits and apologizes for sexual misconduct
<p>Britain's most senior cardinal, who was forced to resign last week, has admitted to inappropriate sexual conduct.</p>
<p>In a short statement <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/03/cardinal-keith-obrien-admits-sexual-misconduct" type="external">released to The Guardian on Sunday</a>, Keith O'Brien said, “I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal".</p>
<p>O'Brien, the former archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, did not give any details about the conduct but asked for the forgiveness of the Church and those he had offended.&#160;</p>
<p>The former cardinal resigned last week after three priests and one former priest made allegations of “inappropriate” behavior against him, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cardinal-keith-obrien-apologises-for-sexual-conduct-8518371.html" type="external">reports The Independent.</a></p>
<p>O'Brien initially denied the allegations and said he did not want to be distracted from the conclave that will select the new pope after Benedict XVI resigned the papacy on Thursday, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/03/keith-obrien-cardinal-sex_n_2802073.html" type="external">reports AP.</a></p>
<p>O'Brien, 74, has stepped away from any public role in the church and will not be attending the conclave.</p>
<p>“I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland."</p>
<p>The allegations were first reported by The Observer newspaper, which reported that priest had claimed he had "inappropriate contact" with O'Brien following a visit to his parish, reports AP.</p>
<p>A second priest reported "unwanted behavior" by O'Brien after some late night drinks and a third claimed he was "taken advantage of" during a counseling session, reported the Observer.&#160;</p> | 3,060 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>On Monday, the school board passed a pair of resolutions it plans to bring to the New Mexico School Board Association next month in hope they will be endorsed by the NMSBA and introduced during the 2014 legislative session.</p>
<p>“These are two issues we’re interested in lobbying for and we’re asking all school districts to join and support our effort,” Santa Fe School Board President Linda Trujillo said.</p>
<p>The resolution addressing increased education funding calls for an amendment to the state constitution that would permanently increase distributions of Land Grant Permanent Fund from 5 percent of the five-year market value to a minimum of 5.8 percent.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Legislature previously authorized distribution at 5.8 percent through a constitutional amendment covering fiscal years 2005-2012. But the distribution drops to 5.5 percent through 2016 and reverts back to 5.0 percent after that.</p>
<p>“That means there will be less money for the Legislature to distribute to education for things we’re required to do,” Trujillo said. “We’re not asking for more money, but to take us back up to where we have been and make sure we don’t drop back even further.”</p>
<p>Trujillo said the money would be used to cover the cost of unfunded mandates and to implement and maintain education reforms. But efforts to take more money from the land grant fund failed in the 2013 legislative session.</p>
<p>The State Investment Council, which is responsible for managing the fund, announced in February that it reached a peak in 2012, returning 14.45 percent and hit an all-time high of $16.64 billion.</p>
<p>The state school grade resolution grew out of a bill Sen. Howie Morales (D-Silver City) introduced in the Legislature last year.</p>
<p>Senate Bill 587 was intended to revamp the A-F grading system that has been in use since the 2011-2012 school year, placing less weight on the Standards-Based Achievement test students take each year.</p>
<p>The measure also failed, when it was vetoed by Gov. Susana Martinez.</p>
<p>“It touches on two points that that bill had in it,” Trujillo said of the resolution. “What we support, and what we hope the school board association will support, is the creation of a council to come up with recommendations on the grading system that are understandable by parents, teachers, administrators and staff.</p>
<p>“The second thing is the general representation of that council.”</p>
<p>The State School Grades Council would be made up of classroom teachers, instructional support providers, principals, superintendents, representatives from local school boards, charter schools, other educational experts, and business or community leaders.</p>
<p>Trujillo said the resolutions passed by the Santa Fe school board will be considered by the NMSBA’s resolution committee, of which she is a member. If endorsed by that committee, it would be put up for vote by the full membership in December.</p>
<p />
<p /> | SFPS seeks changes by state | false | https://abqjournal.com/261666/sfps-seeks-changes-by-state.html | 2least
| SFPS seeks changes by state
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>On Monday, the school board passed a pair of resolutions it plans to bring to the New Mexico School Board Association next month in hope they will be endorsed by the NMSBA and introduced during the 2014 legislative session.</p>
<p>“These are two issues we’re interested in lobbying for and we’re asking all school districts to join and support our effort,” Santa Fe School Board President Linda Trujillo said.</p>
<p>The resolution addressing increased education funding calls for an amendment to the state constitution that would permanently increase distributions of Land Grant Permanent Fund from 5 percent of the five-year market value to a minimum of 5.8 percent.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Legislature previously authorized distribution at 5.8 percent through a constitutional amendment covering fiscal years 2005-2012. But the distribution drops to 5.5 percent through 2016 and reverts back to 5.0 percent after that.</p>
<p>“That means there will be less money for the Legislature to distribute to education for things we’re required to do,” Trujillo said. “We’re not asking for more money, but to take us back up to where we have been and make sure we don’t drop back even further.”</p>
<p>Trujillo said the money would be used to cover the cost of unfunded mandates and to implement and maintain education reforms. But efforts to take more money from the land grant fund failed in the 2013 legislative session.</p>
<p>The State Investment Council, which is responsible for managing the fund, announced in February that it reached a peak in 2012, returning 14.45 percent and hit an all-time high of $16.64 billion.</p>
<p>The state school grade resolution grew out of a bill Sen. Howie Morales (D-Silver City) introduced in the Legislature last year.</p>
<p>Senate Bill 587 was intended to revamp the A-F grading system that has been in use since the 2011-2012 school year, placing less weight on the Standards-Based Achievement test students take each year.</p>
<p>The measure also failed, when it was vetoed by Gov. Susana Martinez.</p>
<p>“It touches on two points that that bill had in it,” Trujillo said of the resolution. “What we support, and what we hope the school board association will support, is the creation of a council to come up with recommendations on the grading system that are understandable by parents, teachers, administrators and staff.</p>
<p>“The second thing is the general representation of that council.”</p>
<p>The State School Grades Council would be made up of classroom teachers, instructional support providers, principals, superintendents, representatives from local school boards, charter schools, other educational experts, and business or community leaders.</p>
<p>Trujillo said the resolutions passed by the Santa Fe school board will be considered by the NMSBA’s resolution committee, of which she is a member. If endorsed by that committee, it would be put up for vote by the full membership in December.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 3,061 |
|
<p>Jan 23 (Reuters) - Scientific Games Corp:</p>
<p>* SCIENTIFIC GAMES FINALIZES ACQUISITION OF TECH ART Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union member states agreed at a summit in Brussels to take further punitive steps against Russia in the coming days for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, as Moscow accused the bloc of joining a London-driven hate campaign against it.</p>
<p>Late on Thursday, in a boost for British Prime Minister Theresa May, the 28-member EU collectively condemned the attack on a former Russian spy and said it was “highly likely” Moscow was responsible. They also recalled the EU ambassador to Russia.</p>
<p>“Additional steps are expected as early as Monday at the national level,” summit chair Donald Tusk told reporters.</p>
<p>French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris and Berlin would be among countries taking further rapid and coordinated measures which other leaders said would include the expulsion of Russian officials and possible other retaliatory actions.</p>
<p>“We consider this attack a serious challenge to our security and European sovereignty so it calls for a coordinated and determined response from the European Union and its member states,” Macron told a news conference.</p>
<p>Standing beside him, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said EU countries would debate what measures to take “and then act”.</p>
<p>One senior official familiar with discussions said the extent of measures in the coming weeks could be “surprising” and not confined to expulsions. There is no talk of more economic sanctions, whose enforcement has divided the EU in the past.</p>
<p>Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said he was likely to announce the expulsion of several people on Monday, after returning to Prague and consulting with his foreign minister.</p>
<p>Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said she was ready to expel Russian spies, whose activities she said were deeply harmful: “It is certain that a coordinated action will be taken next week, maybe at the start of it,” she said. “It’s absolutely obvious that the network exists and that it acts aggressively.”</p>
<p>Romanian President Klaus Iohannis stressed that national governments wanted to retain control of the details in an area where they guard their sovereignty from Brussels. But most of those present would go home and prepare suitable steps.</p>
<p>Russia has denied responsibility for the March 4 attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the first known offensive use of a nerve toxin in Europe since World War Two. A British judge said on Thursday that both victims may have suffered brain damage from the attack.</p> A general view shows the office of Delegation of European Commission in Russia, in central Moscow, Russia March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin BRITISH EXPELLED
<p>Moscow retaliated against May’s move to expel 23 Russians by announcing the expulsion of the same number of Britons.</p>
<p>On Friday, the Russian foreign ministry described the EU accusation as “baseless” and accused the bloc of spurning cooperation with Moscow and joining “another anti-Russian campaign deployed by London and its allies overseas with an obvious goal: to put another obstacle on the path to the normalization of the situation on the European continent”.</p>
<p>In Moscow, the expulsion of British diplomats went ahead, a convoy of minibuses speeding out of the embassy compound to applause after British embassy staff said their goodbyes in the courtyard under a light snowfall.</p> Slideshow (4 Images)
<p>A special charter flight is expected to fly the diplomats back to Britain later on Friday.&#160;&#160;&#160;</p>
<p>France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, on a visit to Kiev, signaled that Paris was considering expelling Russian diplomats in solidarity with Britain. “You will see,” he said.</p>
<p>The summit statement hardened previous EU language on Russia’s alleged role as French President Emmanuel Macron and others helped May overcome hesitation on the part of some of Moscow’s friendlier states, some of whom questioned how definitive Britain’s evidence is.</p>
<p>“What we will now consider in the coming days is whether we want to take individual action relating to Russian diplomats in Ireland,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told reporters.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-eu-babis/czech-pm-babis-says-will-probably-expel-russian-spies-idUSKBN1GZ1OC" type="external">Czech PM Babis says will 'probably' expel Russian spies</a>
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-eu-skripal/russia-says-europe-being-drawn-into-anglo-american-anti-russia-campaign-idUSKBN1GZ1BW" type="external">Russia says Europe being drawn into Anglo-American anti-Russia campaign</a>
<p>“We’re not going to expel people randomly.”</p>
<p>Welcoming the solidarity she secured from the summit, May told reporters on leaving: “The threat from Russia is one that respects no borders and I think it is clear that Russia is challenging the values we share as Europeans and it is right that we stand together in defense of those values.”</p>
<p>Still, some said they could ill afford Russian retaliation against their own Moscow embassies, some of which employ barely a handful of accredited diplomats.</p>
<p>Austria said it did not plan to expel Russians.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Dmitry Madorsky in Moscow and Richard Lough, Gabriela Baczynska, Robin Emmott and Elizabeth Piper in Brussels; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Alastair Macdonald</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders called on U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday to make permanent an EU exemption from U.S. metal import duties, saying they reserved the right to respond “in a proportionate manner” to protect the bloc’s interests.</p>
<p>The 40-day exemption granted by Washington was like U.S. President Donald Trump putting “a gun to our head”, complained French President Emmanuel Macron. The EU’s trade chief demanded that the United States drop “artificial deadlines”. Her boss, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, said he saw achieving agreement in the dispute by May 1 as unrealistic.</p>
<p>Trump said on Thursday he would suspend tariffs for the EU, the United States’ biggest trading partner, as well as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and South Korea. The tariffs are suspended until May 1 as discussions continue.</p>
<p>In a joint statement, EU heads of state and government, meeting for a summit in Brussels, said the measures could not be justified on national security grounds - the basis cited by Washington - and that the exemption should be permanent.</p>
<p>“The European Council regrets the decision by the United States to impose import tariffs on steel and aluminum,” they said. “Sector-wide protection in the U.S. is an inappropriate remedy for the real problems of overcapacity.”</p>
<p>The leaders also said they supported steps taken by the European Commission to respond to the U.S. measures “as appropriate and in a proportionate manner”.</p>
<p>Cecilia Malmstrom, the trade commissioner who negotiates on behalf of the 28 nations, said Europeans did not want to be penalized by actions prompted largely by accusations of Chinese dumping and said Washington and Brussels should be cooperating.</p>
<p>“The U.S. and EU should be tackling such issues together. We now look forward to pursuing a dialogue with the U.S. on trade issues of common concern, such as global steel overcapacity,” she said on Twitter.</p>
<p>“These discussions between allies and partners should not be subject to artificial deadlines.”</p>
<p>German industry, aware that Trump has warned he could raise duties on EU cars, welcomed the reprieve but said the threat of a trade war had not disappeared.</p> Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker attend the European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, March 23, 2018. Olivier Hoslet/Pool via Reuters
<p>“We still have the threat of escalating global trade conflict. And U.s. President Donald Trump will demand a price for the tariff exclusion,” Thilo Brodtman, head of Germany’s VDMA engineering federation said in a statement.</p>
<p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe was trying to avoid a trade war in which everyone would lose.</p>
<p>European steelmakers group Eurofer said the danger to the EU market had not disappeared, with the exemption only temporary, and that the EU needed its own quotas or tariffs to stop steel otherwise bound for the United States from flooding into Europe.</p> Slideshow (4 Images)
<p>Europe says it wants to avert a trade war but the European Commission has proposed a series of measures if the White House hits EU producers.</p>
<p>It would launch a challenge at the World Trade Organization, consider measures to prevent a surge of metal imports into Europe and impose import duties on U.S. products to “rebalance” EU-U.S. trade. Malmstrom said the EU was keeping its options open.</p>
<p>The counter-measures would include EU tariffs on U.S. orange juice, tobacco, bourbon and Harley-Davidson Inc motorcycles.</p>
<p>Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the EU did not want a trade war but would respond “firmly” if the president took “the wrong decision”.</p>
<p>Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel underlined the irritation among some EU leaders at Trump’s negotiating tactics.</p>
<p>“I have the impression that the U.S. leader wants to negotiate with the European Union by putting a gun to our head,” Michel said, in an expression later echoed by Macron.</p>
<p>“That’s a strange way to negotiate with an ally.”</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in Frankfurt and Paul Carrel in Berlin; writing by Richard Lough; editing by Noah Barkin and Philip Blenkinsop</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China urged the United States on Friday to “pull back from the brink” as President Donald Trump’s plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese goods moved the world’s two largest economies closer to a trade war.</p>
<p>The escalating tensions sent shivers through financial markets as investors foresaw dire consequences for the global economy if trade barriers start going up.</p>
<p>Trump is planning to impose the tariffs for what he says is misappropriation of U.S. intellectual property. A probe was launched last year under Section 301 of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act.</p>
<p>“China doesn’t hope to be in a trade war, but is not afraid of engaging in one,” the Chinese commerce ministry responded in a statement.</p>
<p>“China hopes the United States will pull back from the brink, make prudent decisions, and avoid dragging bilateral trade relations to a dangerous place.”</p>
<p>In a presidential memorandum signed by Trump on Thursday, there will be a 30-day consultation period that only starts once a list of Chinese goods is published. That effectively creates room for potential talks to address Trump’s allegations on intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers.</p>
<p>Though the White House has said the planned tariffs were a response to China’s “economic aggression”, Trump said he views China as “a friend” and the two sides are in negotiations.</p>
<p>A Chinese commerce ministry official said both sides were in touch.</p>
<p>Still, it is unclear under what terms China and the U.S. are willing to talk, with Beijing adamant that the U.S. tariffs constitute a unilateral move that it rejects.</p>
<p>China has always said it will not hold talks with the U.S. within the framework of the Section 301 probe, Chen Fuli, director-general of the commerce ministry’s department of treaty and law, told reporters.</p>
<p>“Currently, we are not looking to get in a negotiation again,” a senior U.S. official told reporters in Beijing.</p>
<p>If China wants to avoid U.S. tariffs, it needs to start taking concrete action, the official said, adding that Washington has not given Beijing any to-do list to remedy trade ties.</p>
<p>(U.S. imports from China: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2FMsz1Q" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2FMsz1Q</a>)</p>
<p>(U.S. trade in goods with China: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2GcOZIH" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2GcOZIH</a>)</p> READY TO RETALIATE
<p>China showed readiness to retaliate by declaring plans to levy additional duties on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports including fruit and wine in response to U.S. import tariffs on steel and aluminum, which were due to go into effect on Friday.</p>
<p>The inevitable fall in demand from a full-blown trade war would spell trouble for all economies supplying the United States and China.</p>
<p>Feeling the chill, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 2.5 percent, tracking heavy losses on Wall Street. China’s main indexes tumbled the most in six weeks, skidding up to 3.6 percent.</p> FILE PHOTO - A worker checks steel wires at a warehouse in Dalian, Liaoning province, China May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer
<p>“Today’s (U.S.) tariffs amount to no more than a slap on the wrist for China,” Mark Williams, Chief Asia Economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note. “China won’t change its ways. Worries about escalation therefore won’t go away.”</p>
<p>Williams estimated that the $506 billion that China exported to the United States drove around 2.5 percent of its total gross domestic product, and the $50-60 billion targeted by the U.S. tariffs contributed just around 0.25 percent.</p>
<p>Trump, however, appears intent on fulfilling election promises to reduce the record U.S. trade deficit with China. A commentary published by the official Xinhua news agency said the United States had adopted a “Cold War mentality”, and “panic” over China’s economic rise was driving Washington’s confrontational approach.</p>
<p>U.S. multi-nationals at a business gathering in Shanghai were warned by Stephen Roach, a Yale University economist, “to prepare for the worst” and make contingency plans until calmer heads prevail.</p>
<p>Roach said he could foresee “the Chinese government moving to restrict, in some form or another, the financial as well as the supply chain activities of American companies operating in this country.”</p>
<p>Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China would not hold back in retaliating.</p> Slideshow (4 Images)
<p>“It’s impolite not to give as good as one gets,” Hua told reporters.</p> LOW HANGING FRUIT
<p>Alarm over Trump’s protectionist leanings mounted earlier this month after he imposed hefty import tariffs on steel and aluminum under Section 232 of the 1962 U.S. Trade Expansion Act, which allows safeguards based on “national security”.</p>
<p>On Friday, Trump gave Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Korea and the European Union temporary exemptions. China was not exempted even though it was a far smaller supplier than Canada or South Korea.</p>
<p>Also omitted from the exemption list was U.S. ally Japan, though a government spokesman said Tokyo would press to be included. And Finance Minister Taro Aso expressed empathy with Washington over protecting intellectual property.</p>
<p>China’s retaliation against the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum appeared restrained.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-usa-trade-eu-reax/eu-complains-of-trumps-gun-to-our-head-over-tariffs-idUSKBN1GZ14K" type="external">EU complains of Trump's 'gun to our head' over tariffs</a>
<a href="/article/us-usa-trade-russia/russia-eyes-restrictions-on-u-s-imports-in-response-to-tariffs-idUSKBN1GZ17L" type="external">Russia eyes restrictions on U.S. imports in response to tariffs</a>
<a href="/article/us-usa-trade-wto/u-s-steel-tariffs-meet-barrage-of-criticism-at-wto-idUSKBN1GZ1XI" type="external">U.S. steel tariffs meet barrage of criticism at WTO</a>
<p>China has drawn a list of 128 U.S. products that could be hit with tariffs if the two countries are unable to reach an agreement on trade issues, the ministry said.</p>
<p>Without giving a timeframe, the commerce ministry said China was considering implementing measures in two stages: first a 15 percent tariff on 120 products including steel pipes, dried fruit and wine worth $977 million, and later, a 25 percent tariff on $1.99 billion of pork and recycled aluminum.</p>
<p>U.S. wine exports to China last year were $79 million, according to the U.S. Wine Institute, which represents Californian wine makers.</p>
<p>Fruit growers in California, Florida, Michigan and Washington all stood to lose as China’s list also included close to 80 fruit and nut products. The U.S. exported $669 million of fruit, frozen juice and nuts to China last year, and it was the top supplier of apples, cherries, walnuts and almonds.</p>
<p>“With the restrained response, China hopes Trump can realize his errors and mend his ways,” said Xu Hongcai, deputy chief economist at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a Beijing think tank.</p>
<p>“If we really want to counter, the strongest response would be to target soybean and automobiles. China is drawing its bow but not firing. We still have some cards to play.”</p>
<p>Additional reporting by John Ruwitch, Elias Glenn, Dominique Patton, Josephine Mason, Ben Blanchard, Christian Shepherd, Meng Meng, Tom Daly, Wang Jing and Lusha Zhang; Editing By Simon Cameron-Moore</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>TREBES, France (Reuters) - Three people were killed in southwestern France on Friday when a gunman held up a car, opened fire on police and then took hostages in a supermarket, screaming “Allahu Akbar”.</p>
<p>Police later stormed the supermarket in the small town of Trebes and Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said on Twitter that the attacker had been killed.</p>
<p>(Graphic: France hostages - <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2pCMp4m" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2pCMp4m</a>)</p>
<p>A source at the Interior Ministry said two had died at the hostage-taking in Trebes. “It is a provisional assessment as it could unfortunately get worse. Three people are wounded, including one of them seriously,” the source said.</p>
<p>Later, a police union official said the attacker had also killed one person with a bullet in the head in the nearby historic town of Carcassonne before the hostage-taking.</p>
<p>French President Emmanuel Macron said the incident appeared to be a terrorist attack and security forces were securing the area.</p>
<p>Eric Menassi, the mayor of Trebes, told BFM TV that the hostage-taker was now alone with one police officer in the supermarket and all other hostages were free.</p>
<p>The station reported that the hostage-taker has claimed allegiance to Islamic State and that he has demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam - the prime surviving suspect in the Islamic State attacks that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015.</p>
<p>A 45-year-old lieutenant-colonel swapped himself in exchange for one of the hostages, a source close to the investigation said later, confirming information first published by Le Figaro newspaper.</p>
<p>More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who pledged allegiance to, or were inspired by, Islamic State.</p> Police are seen at the scene of a hostage situation in a supermarket in Trebes, Aude, France March 23, 2018 in this picture obtained from a social media video. LA VIE A TREBES/via REUTERS COLD ROOM
<p>First the gunman held up a car, killing one person and wounding another. Then he fired one police officers in Carcassone, wounding an officer in the shoulder before heading to Trebes about 8 km (5 miles) to the east, where two more died in the Super-U supermarket.</p>
<p>Menassi also told LCI TV that the man had entered the shop in Trebes screaming “Allahu Akbar, (God is greatest) I’ll kill you all”.</p> Police are seen at the scene of a hostage situation in a supermarket in Trebes, Aude, France March 23, 2018 in this picture obtained from a social media video. LA VIE A TREBES/via REUTERS
<p>Carole, who was shopping at the supermarket, described how people had taken refuge in a cold room.</p>
<p>“A man shouted and fired several times. I saw a cold room door, I asked people to come and take shelter,” she told Franceinfo radio. “We were ten, and we stayed an hour. There were more gunshots and we went out the back door.”</p>
<p>French investigators believe they have identified the hostage-taker. The man is known to the intelligence services and flagged in a database of radicalized Islamist militants, Franceinfo reported.</p>
<p>Police in helmets and body armor took up positions around the Super-U supermarket.</p>
<p>The Paris prosecutor’s office said counter-terrorism prosecutors were investigating the incident but did not comment on the possible Islamic State allegiance.</p>
<p>Earlier, the Interior Ministry had said security forces were carrying out an operation at a supermarket in southern France. Interior Minister Gerard Collomb was on his way.</p>
<p>The UNSA police union also said on Twitter a police operation was underway after an individual had earlier shot at four officers in the Carcassone region, wounding one of them.</p>
<p>Reporting by Johanna Decorse in Toulouse, John Irish, Leigh Thomas, Emmanuel Jarry and Bate Felix in Paris; Writing by Ingrid Melander and David Stamp; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | BRIEF-Scientific Games Finalizes Acquisition Of Tech Art Europeans to take new steps against Russia over UK spy EU complains of Trump's 'gun to our head' over tariffs China urges U.S. away from 'brink' as Trump picks trade weapons Three killed in France in shooting, supermarket hostage-taking | false | https://reuters.com/article/brief-scientific-games-finalizes-acquisi/brief-scientific-games-finalizes-acquisition-of-tech-art-idUSASB0C1ZH | 2018-01-23 | 2least
| BRIEF-Scientific Games Finalizes Acquisition Of Tech Art Europeans to take new steps against Russia over UK spy EU complains of Trump's 'gun to our head' over tariffs China urges U.S. away from 'brink' as Trump picks trade weapons Three killed in France in shooting, supermarket hostage-taking
<p>Jan 23 (Reuters) - Scientific Games Corp:</p>
<p>* SCIENTIFIC GAMES FINALIZES ACQUISITION OF TECH ART Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
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<p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union member states agreed at a summit in Brussels to take further punitive steps against Russia in the coming days for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, as Moscow accused the bloc of joining a London-driven hate campaign against it.</p>
<p>Late on Thursday, in a boost for British Prime Minister Theresa May, the 28-member EU collectively condemned the attack on a former Russian spy and said it was “highly likely” Moscow was responsible. They also recalled the EU ambassador to Russia.</p>
<p>“Additional steps are expected as early as Monday at the national level,” summit chair Donald Tusk told reporters.</p>
<p>French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris and Berlin would be among countries taking further rapid and coordinated measures which other leaders said would include the expulsion of Russian officials and possible other retaliatory actions.</p>
<p>“We consider this attack a serious challenge to our security and European sovereignty so it calls for a coordinated and determined response from the European Union and its member states,” Macron told a news conference.</p>
<p>Standing beside him, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said EU countries would debate what measures to take “and then act”.</p>
<p>One senior official familiar with discussions said the extent of measures in the coming weeks could be “surprising” and not confined to expulsions. There is no talk of more economic sanctions, whose enforcement has divided the EU in the past.</p>
<p>Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said he was likely to announce the expulsion of several people on Monday, after returning to Prague and consulting with his foreign minister.</p>
<p>Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said she was ready to expel Russian spies, whose activities she said were deeply harmful: “It is certain that a coordinated action will be taken next week, maybe at the start of it,” she said. “It’s absolutely obvious that the network exists and that it acts aggressively.”</p>
<p>Romanian President Klaus Iohannis stressed that national governments wanted to retain control of the details in an area where they guard their sovereignty from Brussels. But most of those present would go home and prepare suitable steps.</p>
<p>Russia has denied responsibility for the March 4 attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the first known offensive use of a nerve toxin in Europe since World War Two. A British judge said on Thursday that both victims may have suffered brain damage from the attack.</p> A general view shows the office of Delegation of European Commission in Russia, in central Moscow, Russia March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin BRITISH EXPELLED
<p>Moscow retaliated against May’s move to expel 23 Russians by announcing the expulsion of the same number of Britons.</p>
<p>On Friday, the Russian foreign ministry described the EU accusation as “baseless” and accused the bloc of spurning cooperation with Moscow and joining “another anti-Russian campaign deployed by London and its allies overseas with an obvious goal: to put another obstacle on the path to the normalization of the situation on the European continent”.</p>
<p>In Moscow, the expulsion of British diplomats went ahead, a convoy of minibuses speeding out of the embassy compound to applause after British embassy staff said their goodbyes in the courtyard under a light snowfall.</p> Slideshow (4 Images)
<p>A special charter flight is expected to fly the diplomats back to Britain later on Friday.&#160;&#160;&#160;</p>
<p>France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, on a visit to Kiev, signaled that Paris was considering expelling Russian diplomats in solidarity with Britain. “You will see,” he said.</p>
<p>The summit statement hardened previous EU language on Russia’s alleged role as French President Emmanuel Macron and others helped May overcome hesitation on the part of some of Moscow’s friendlier states, some of whom questioned how definitive Britain’s evidence is.</p>
<p>“What we will now consider in the coming days is whether we want to take individual action relating to Russian diplomats in Ireland,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told reporters.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-eu-babis/czech-pm-babis-says-will-probably-expel-russian-spies-idUSKBN1GZ1OC" type="external">Czech PM Babis says will 'probably' expel Russian spies</a>
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-eu-skripal/russia-says-europe-being-drawn-into-anglo-american-anti-russia-campaign-idUSKBN1GZ1BW" type="external">Russia says Europe being drawn into Anglo-American anti-Russia campaign</a>
<p>“We’re not going to expel people randomly.”</p>
<p>Welcoming the solidarity she secured from the summit, May told reporters on leaving: “The threat from Russia is one that respects no borders and I think it is clear that Russia is challenging the values we share as Europeans and it is right that we stand together in defense of those values.”</p>
<p>Still, some said they could ill afford Russian retaliation against their own Moscow embassies, some of which employ barely a handful of accredited diplomats.</p>
<p>Austria said it did not plan to expel Russians.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Dmitry Madorsky in Moscow and Richard Lough, Gabriela Baczynska, Robin Emmott and Elizabeth Piper in Brussels; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Alastair Macdonald</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders called on U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday to make permanent an EU exemption from U.S. metal import duties, saying they reserved the right to respond “in a proportionate manner” to protect the bloc’s interests.</p>
<p>The 40-day exemption granted by Washington was like U.S. President Donald Trump putting “a gun to our head”, complained French President Emmanuel Macron. The EU’s trade chief demanded that the United States drop “artificial deadlines”. Her boss, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, said he saw achieving agreement in the dispute by May 1 as unrealistic.</p>
<p>Trump said on Thursday he would suspend tariffs for the EU, the United States’ biggest trading partner, as well as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and South Korea. The tariffs are suspended until May 1 as discussions continue.</p>
<p>In a joint statement, EU heads of state and government, meeting for a summit in Brussels, said the measures could not be justified on national security grounds - the basis cited by Washington - and that the exemption should be permanent.</p>
<p>“The European Council regrets the decision by the United States to impose import tariffs on steel and aluminum,” they said. “Sector-wide protection in the U.S. is an inappropriate remedy for the real problems of overcapacity.”</p>
<p>The leaders also said they supported steps taken by the European Commission to respond to the U.S. measures “as appropriate and in a proportionate manner”.</p>
<p>Cecilia Malmstrom, the trade commissioner who negotiates on behalf of the 28 nations, said Europeans did not want to be penalized by actions prompted largely by accusations of Chinese dumping and said Washington and Brussels should be cooperating.</p>
<p>“The U.S. and EU should be tackling such issues together. We now look forward to pursuing a dialogue with the U.S. on trade issues of common concern, such as global steel overcapacity,” she said on Twitter.</p>
<p>“These discussions between allies and partners should not be subject to artificial deadlines.”</p>
<p>German industry, aware that Trump has warned he could raise duties on EU cars, welcomed the reprieve but said the threat of a trade war had not disappeared.</p> Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker attend the European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, March 23, 2018. Olivier Hoslet/Pool via Reuters
<p>“We still have the threat of escalating global trade conflict. And U.s. President Donald Trump will demand a price for the tariff exclusion,” Thilo Brodtman, head of Germany’s VDMA engineering federation said in a statement.</p>
<p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe was trying to avoid a trade war in which everyone would lose.</p>
<p>European steelmakers group Eurofer said the danger to the EU market had not disappeared, with the exemption only temporary, and that the EU needed its own quotas or tariffs to stop steel otherwise bound for the United States from flooding into Europe.</p> Slideshow (4 Images)
<p>Europe says it wants to avert a trade war but the European Commission has proposed a series of measures if the White House hits EU producers.</p>
<p>It would launch a challenge at the World Trade Organization, consider measures to prevent a surge of metal imports into Europe and impose import duties on U.S. products to “rebalance” EU-U.S. trade. Malmstrom said the EU was keeping its options open.</p>
<p>The counter-measures would include EU tariffs on U.S. orange juice, tobacco, bourbon and Harley-Davidson Inc motorcycles.</p>
<p>Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the EU did not want a trade war but would respond “firmly” if the president took “the wrong decision”.</p>
<p>Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel underlined the irritation among some EU leaders at Trump’s negotiating tactics.</p>
<p>“I have the impression that the U.S. leader wants to negotiate with the European Union by putting a gun to our head,” Michel said, in an expression later echoed by Macron.</p>
<p>“That’s a strange way to negotiate with an ally.”</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in Frankfurt and Paul Carrel in Berlin; writing by Richard Lough; editing by Noah Barkin and Philip Blenkinsop</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China urged the United States on Friday to “pull back from the brink” as President Donald Trump’s plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese goods moved the world’s two largest economies closer to a trade war.</p>
<p>The escalating tensions sent shivers through financial markets as investors foresaw dire consequences for the global economy if trade barriers start going up.</p>
<p>Trump is planning to impose the tariffs for what he says is misappropriation of U.S. intellectual property. A probe was launched last year under Section 301 of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act.</p>
<p>“China doesn’t hope to be in a trade war, but is not afraid of engaging in one,” the Chinese commerce ministry responded in a statement.</p>
<p>“China hopes the United States will pull back from the brink, make prudent decisions, and avoid dragging bilateral trade relations to a dangerous place.”</p>
<p>In a presidential memorandum signed by Trump on Thursday, there will be a 30-day consultation period that only starts once a list of Chinese goods is published. That effectively creates room for potential talks to address Trump’s allegations on intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers.</p>
<p>Though the White House has said the planned tariffs were a response to China’s “economic aggression”, Trump said he views China as “a friend” and the two sides are in negotiations.</p>
<p>A Chinese commerce ministry official said both sides were in touch.</p>
<p>Still, it is unclear under what terms China and the U.S. are willing to talk, with Beijing adamant that the U.S. tariffs constitute a unilateral move that it rejects.</p>
<p>China has always said it will not hold talks with the U.S. within the framework of the Section 301 probe, Chen Fuli, director-general of the commerce ministry’s department of treaty and law, told reporters.</p>
<p>“Currently, we are not looking to get in a negotiation again,” a senior U.S. official told reporters in Beijing.</p>
<p>If China wants to avoid U.S. tariffs, it needs to start taking concrete action, the official said, adding that Washington has not given Beijing any to-do list to remedy trade ties.</p>
<p>(U.S. imports from China: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2FMsz1Q" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2FMsz1Q</a>)</p>
<p>(U.S. trade in goods with China: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2GcOZIH" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2GcOZIH</a>)</p> READY TO RETALIATE
<p>China showed readiness to retaliate by declaring plans to levy additional duties on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports including fruit and wine in response to U.S. import tariffs on steel and aluminum, which were due to go into effect on Friday.</p>
<p>The inevitable fall in demand from a full-blown trade war would spell trouble for all economies supplying the United States and China.</p>
<p>Feeling the chill, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 2.5 percent, tracking heavy losses on Wall Street. China’s main indexes tumbled the most in six weeks, skidding up to 3.6 percent.</p> FILE PHOTO - A worker checks steel wires at a warehouse in Dalian, Liaoning province, China May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer
<p>“Today’s (U.S.) tariffs amount to no more than a slap on the wrist for China,” Mark Williams, Chief Asia Economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note. “China won’t change its ways. Worries about escalation therefore won’t go away.”</p>
<p>Williams estimated that the $506 billion that China exported to the United States drove around 2.5 percent of its total gross domestic product, and the $50-60 billion targeted by the U.S. tariffs contributed just around 0.25 percent.</p>
<p>Trump, however, appears intent on fulfilling election promises to reduce the record U.S. trade deficit with China. A commentary published by the official Xinhua news agency said the United States had adopted a “Cold War mentality”, and “panic” over China’s economic rise was driving Washington’s confrontational approach.</p>
<p>U.S. multi-nationals at a business gathering in Shanghai were warned by Stephen Roach, a Yale University economist, “to prepare for the worst” and make contingency plans until calmer heads prevail.</p>
<p>Roach said he could foresee “the Chinese government moving to restrict, in some form or another, the financial as well as the supply chain activities of American companies operating in this country.”</p>
<p>Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China would not hold back in retaliating.</p> Slideshow (4 Images)
<p>“It’s impolite not to give as good as one gets,” Hua told reporters.</p> LOW HANGING FRUIT
<p>Alarm over Trump’s protectionist leanings mounted earlier this month after he imposed hefty import tariffs on steel and aluminum under Section 232 of the 1962 U.S. Trade Expansion Act, which allows safeguards based on “national security”.</p>
<p>On Friday, Trump gave Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Korea and the European Union temporary exemptions. China was not exempted even though it was a far smaller supplier than Canada or South Korea.</p>
<p>Also omitted from the exemption list was U.S. ally Japan, though a government spokesman said Tokyo would press to be included. And Finance Minister Taro Aso expressed empathy with Washington over protecting intellectual property.</p>
<p>China’s retaliation against the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum appeared restrained.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-usa-trade-eu-reax/eu-complains-of-trumps-gun-to-our-head-over-tariffs-idUSKBN1GZ14K" type="external">EU complains of Trump's 'gun to our head' over tariffs</a>
<a href="/article/us-usa-trade-russia/russia-eyes-restrictions-on-u-s-imports-in-response-to-tariffs-idUSKBN1GZ17L" type="external">Russia eyes restrictions on U.S. imports in response to tariffs</a>
<a href="/article/us-usa-trade-wto/u-s-steel-tariffs-meet-barrage-of-criticism-at-wto-idUSKBN1GZ1XI" type="external">U.S. steel tariffs meet barrage of criticism at WTO</a>
<p>China has drawn a list of 128 U.S. products that could be hit with tariffs if the two countries are unable to reach an agreement on trade issues, the ministry said.</p>
<p>Without giving a timeframe, the commerce ministry said China was considering implementing measures in two stages: first a 15 percent tariff on 120 products including steel pipes, dried fruit and wine worth $977 million, and later, a 25 percent tariff on $1.99 billion of pork and recycled aluminum.</p>
<p>U.S. wine exports to China last year were $79 million, according to the U.S. Wine Institute, which represents Californian wine makers.</p>
<p>Fruit growers in California, Florida, Michigan and Washington all stood to lose as China’s list also included close to 80 fruit and nut products. The U.S. exported $669 million of fruit, frozen juice and nuts to China last year, and it was the top supplier of apples, cherries, walnuts and almonds.</p>
<p>“With the restrained response, China hopes Trump can realize his errors and mend his ways,” said Xu Hongcai, deputy chief economist at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a Beijing think tank.</p>
<p>“If we really want to counter, the strongest response would be to target soybean and automobiles. China is drawing its bow but not firing. We still have some cards to play.”</p>
<p>Additional reporting by John Ruwitch, Elias Glenn, Dominique Patton, Josephine Mason, Ben Blanchard, Christian Shepherd, Meng Meng, Tom Daly, Wang Jing and Lusha Zhang; Editing By Simon Cameron-Moore</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>TREBES, France (Reuters) - Three people were killed in southwestern France on Friday when a gunman held up a car, opened fire on police and then took hostages in a supermarket, screaming “Allahu Akbar”.</p>
<p>Police later stormed the supermarket in the small town of Trebes and Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said on Twitter that the attacker had been killed.</p>
<p>(Graphic: France hostages - <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2pCMp4m" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2pCMp4m</a>)</p>
<p>A source at the Interior Ministry said two had died at the hostage-taking in Trebes. “It is a provisional assessment as it could unfortunately get worse. Three people are wounded, including one of them seriously,” the source said.</p>
<p>Later, a police union official said the attacker had also killed one person with a bullet in the head in the nearby historic town of Carcassonne before the hostage-taking.</p>
<p>French President Emmanuel Macron said the incident appeared to be a terrorist attack and security forces were securing the area.</p>
<p>Eric Menassi, the mayor of Trebes, told BFM TV that the hostage-taker was now alone with one police officer in the supermarket and all other hostages were free.</p>
<p>The station reported that the hostage-taker has claimed allegiance to Islamic State and that he has demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam - the prime surviving suspect in the Islamic State attacks that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015.</p>
<p>A 45-year-old lieutenant-colonel swapped himself in exchange for one of the hostages, a source close to the investigation said later, confirming information first published by Le Figaro newspaper.</p>
<p>More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who pledged allegiance to, or were inspired by, Islamic State.</p> Police are seen at the scene of a hostage situation in a supermarket in Trebes, Aude, France March 23, 2018 in this picture obtained from a social media video. LA VIE A TREBES/via REUTERS COLD ROOM
<p>First the gunman held up a car, killing one person and wounding another. Then he fired one police officers in Carcassone, wounding an officer in the shoulder before heading to Trebes about 8 km (5 miles) to the east, where two more died in the Super-U supermarket.</p>
<p>Menassi also told LCI TV that the man had entered the shop in Trebes screaming “Allahu Akbar, (God is greatest) I’ll kill you all”.</p> Police are seen at the scene of a hostage situation in a supermarket in Trebes, Aude, France March 23, 2018 in this picture obtained from a social media video. LA VIE A TREBES/via REUTERS
<p>Carole, who was shopping at the supermarket, described how people had taken refuge in a cold room.</p>
<p>“A man shouted and fired several times. I saw a cold room door, I asked people to come and take shelter,” she told Franceinfo radio. “We were ten, and we stayed an hour. There were more gunshots and we went out the back door.”</p>
<p>French investigators believe they have identified the hostage-taker. The man is known to the intelligence services and flagged in a database of radicalized Islamist militants, Franceinfo reported.</p>
<p>Police in helmets and body armor took up positions around the Super-U supermarket.</p>
<p>The Paris prosecutor’s office said counter-terrorism prosecutors were investigating the incident but did not comment on the possible Islamic State allegiance.</p>
<p>Earlier, the Interior Ministry had said security forces were carrying out an operation at a supermarket in southern France. Interior Minister Gerard Collomb was on his way.</p>
<p>The UNSA police union also said on Twitter a police operation was underway after an individual had earlier shot at four officers in the Carcassone region, wounding one of them.</p>
<p>Reporting by Johanna Decorse in Toulouse, John Irish, Leigh Thomas, Emmanuel Jarry and Bate Felix in Paris; Writing by Ingrid Melander and David Stamp; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | 3,062 |
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<p>New Mexico Highlands</p>
<p>Last season: 2-9, 1-8 in the RMAC</p>
<p>Predicted RMAC finish: Tied for 7th</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Opener: Sept. 6 vs. Eastern New Mexico, 6 p.m.</p>
<p>For the Cowboys, the schemes won’t change, but coach Eric Young will be counting on some new faces to make major contributions.</p>
<p>“We’ll have a lot of new names, but at the same time a decent group of guys who have been with the program,” Young said.</p>
<p>The Cowboys have turned to former New Mexico State quarterback Chase Holbrook to spruce up the offense. Holbrook, who set Aggie passing records from 2005-08, takes over as offensive coordinator. But NMHU will run the Air Raid offense it has been using.</p>
<p>“The biggest change will be the play-calling,” Young said. “The style of attack will be the same.”</p>
<p>The defense is led by senior linebacker Jared Koster, a preseason all-conference pick. Last season he had 14 tackles for loss and six pass breakups.</p>
<p>“Jared Koster is a guy we expect to be the featured guy,” Young said. “He was a great one for us last year. … We have a great deal of speed. We’ll be a little better on the defensive line with improved athleticism.”</p>
<p>Young said the Cowboys got ahead of themselves last season.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We had high expectatons last year,” the coach said. “We felt like we had the opportunity to be a playoff team. But we didn’t compete the way we thought we would.</p>
<p>“The focus this year is how we handle ourselves, and the way we come to work on the practice field and on game day. If we can execute to our ability, hopefully we’ll look at the scoreboard and be where we want to be.”</p>
<p>The Cowboys also have senior punter Patrick Carney, who led the nation with a 45.2-yard average.</p>
<p>Western New Mexico</p>
<p>Last season: 4-6, 4-5 in the RMAC</p>
<p>Predicted RMAC finish: Tied for 7th</p>
<p>Opener: Sept. 6 at University of San Diego</p>
<p>The Mustangs have changed schemes on both offense and defense.</p>
<p>“We’re really trying to be more simple, to get good at doing less things,” coach Adam Clark said. “Last year we tried to outcoach people instead of letting players play.”</p>
<p>Senior wide receiver/returner Donald Byrd and junior quarterback Mitch Glasmann will trigger the offense.</p>
<p>“Donald’s a great player and Mitch is as good as any quarterback in the conference,” Clark said.</p>
<p>Junior Michael Coe, a 300-pound offensive lineman, and senior defensive lineman Zachary Dembrowski anchor the trenches.</p>
<p>“We’ve been on the verge of being pretty good the last couple of years,” Clark said. “We’ve been stuck on four and five wins. We think we have enough experience and talent to finally achieve our goals this year. If we play well, there’s no reason we can’t contend for a conference title.”</p>
<p>Eastern New Mexico</p>
<p>Last season: 7-3, 5-1 in the Lone Star</p>
<p>Predicted Lone Star finish: Third</p>
<p>Season opener: at NMHU, 6 p.m.</p>
<p>The Greyhounds went on a 6-0 run to close the 2013 season and finished in a tie for first with Tarleton State in the Lone Star Conference.</p>
<p>Josh Lynn, in his second season as ENMU head coach, was named coach of the year for Region 4 and for the conference.</p>
<p>Key returners include senior defensive backs Kevin Reaves and Darrelyn McCloud from Manzano. Reaves had nine passes broken up and two interceptions. McCloud had 28 tackles and averaged 1.3 passes defended per game, second best in the conference.</p>
<p>Quarterback Jeremy Buurma of Las Cruces returns for his junior season and guides the triple option. He threw for 1,569 yards and 11 TDs with only three interceptions in 2013. Running back Jordan Wells ran for 652 yards and had 252 yards receiving as a junior in 2013.</p>
<p>Senior linebacker Benjamin Pedro-Langford had 10½ tackles for loss last year.</p>
<p />
<p /> | State football: Highlands, WNMU, ENMU have high hopes | false | https://abqjournal.com/444042/highlands-coach-is-excited-about-teams-speed.html | 2least
| State football: Highlands, WNMU, ENMU have high hopes
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<p>New Mexico Highlands</p>
<p>Last season: 2-9, 1-8 in the RMAC</p>
<p>Predicted RMAC finish: Tied for 7th</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Opener: Sept. 6 vs. Eastern New Mexico, 6 p.m.</p>
<p>For the Cowboys, the schemes won’t change, but coach Eric Young will be counting on some new faces to make major contributions.</p>
<p>“We’ll have a lot of new names, but at the same time a decent group of guys who have been with the program,” Young said.</p>
<p>The Cowboys have turned to former New Mexico State quarterback Chase Holbrook to spruce up the offense. Holbrook, who set Aggie passing records from 2005-08, takes over as offensive coordinator. But NMHU will run the Air Raid offense it has been using.</p>
<p>“The biggest change will be the play-calling,” Young said. “The style of attack will be the same.”</p>
<p>The defense is led by senior linebacker Jared Koster, a preseason all-conference pick. Last season he had 14 tackles for loss and six pass breakups.</p>
<p>“Jared Koster is a guy we expect to be the featured guy,” Young said. “He was a great one for us last year. … We have a great deal of speed. We’ll be a little better on the defensive line with improved athleticism.”</p>
<p>Young said the Cowboys got ahead of themselves last season.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We had high expectatons last year,” the coach said. “We felt like we had the opportunity to be a playoff team. But we didn’t compete the way we thought we would.</p>
<p>“The focus this year is how we handle ourselves, and the way we come to work on the practice field and on game day. If we can execute to our ability, hopefully we’ll look at the scoreboard and be where we want to be.”</p>
<p>The Cowboys also have senior punter Patrick Carney, who led the nation with a 45.2-yard average.</p>
<p>Western New Mexico</p>
<p>Last season: 4-6, 4-5 in the RMAC</p>
<p>Predicted RMAC finish: Tied for 7th</p>
<p>Opener: Sept. 6 at University of San Diego</p>
<p>The Mustangs have changed schemes on both offense and defense.</p>
<p>“We’re really trying to be more simple, to get good at doing less things,” coach Adam Clark said. “Last year we tried to outcoach people instead of letting players play.”</p>
<p>Senior wide receiver/returner Donald Byrd and junior quarterback Mitch Glasmann will trigger the offense.</p>
<p>“Donald’s a great player and Mitch is as good as any quarterback in the conference,” Clark said.</p>
<p>Junior Michael Coe, a 300-pound offensive lineman, and senior defensive lineman Zachary Dembrowski anchor the trenches.</p>
<p>“We’ve been on the verge of being pretty good the last couple of years,” Clark said. “We’ve been stuck on four and five wins. We think we have enough experience and talent to finally achieve our goals this year. If we play well, there’s no reason we can’t contend for a conference title.”</p>
<p>Eastern New Mexico</p>
<p>Last season: 7-3, 5-1 in the Lone Star</p>
<p>Predicted Lone Star finish: Third</p>
<p>Season opener: at NMHU, 6 p.m.</p>
<p>The Greyhounds went on a 6-0 run to close the 2013 season and finished in a tie for first with Tarleton State in the Lone Star Conference.</p>
<p>Josh Lynn, in his second season as ENMU head coach, was named coach of the year for Region 4 and for the conference.</p>
<p>Key returners include senior defensive backs Kevin Reaves and Darrelyn McCloud from Manzano. Reaves had nine passes broken up and two interceptions. McCloud had 28 tackles and averaged 1.3 passes defended per game, second best in the conference.</p>
<p>Quarterback Jeremy Buurma of Las Cruces returns for his junior season and guides the triple option. He threw for 1,569 yards and 11 TDs with only three interceptions in 2013. Running back Jordan Wells ran for 652 yards and had 252 yards receiving as a junior in 2013.</p>
<p>Senior linebacker Benjamin Pedro-Langford had 10½ tackles for loss last year.</p>
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<p /> | 3,063 |
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<p>After Hillary Clinton, speaking with Christiane Amanpour at the Women for Women International Conference on Tuesday, insisted she “took responsibility” for her failure to win the presidency but also blamed FBI Director James Comey, former Barack Obama advisor David Axelrod blasted her on CNN’s New Day, telling hosts Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo:</p>
<p>But Jim Comey didn’t tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin after the convention. Jim Comey didn’t say not to put any resources in Michigan until the final week of the campaign. And one of the things that hindered her in the campaign was a sense that she never fully was willing to take responsibility for her mistakes, particularly that server. And, you know, so if I were her, if I were advising her, I would say don’t do this, don’t go back and appear as if you are shifting responsibility off of yourself. She said the words I am responsible, but everything else suggested she doesn’t feel that way and I don’t think that helps her in the long-run. So if I were her, I would move on.</p>
<p>Axelrod has never been a fan of Hillary’s; in his 2015 book, Believer, he wrote, “For all of her advantages, she is not a healing figure. The more she tries to moderate her image … the more she compounds her exposure as an opportunist. And after two decades of the Bush-Clinton saga, making herself the candidate of the future could be a challenge.”</p>
<p>In December, speaking on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Axelrod <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/17/david-axelrod-disses-hillary-clinton-ready-for-hil/" type="external">attacked</a> Clinton's campaign mantra, saying, “What happened in 2008 was that Hillary’s candidacy got out in front of any rationale for it, and the danger is that that’s happening again, You hear ‘Ready for Hillary’; it’s like, ready for what?”</p> | Obama Advisor Axelrod HAMMERS Hillary Over Excuse-Making | true | https://dailywire.com/news/16024/obama-advisor-axelrod-hammers-hillary-over-excuse-hank-berrien | 2017-05-03 | 0right
| Obama Advisor Axelrod HAMMERS Hillary Over Excuse-Making
<p>After Hillary Clinton, speaking with Christiane Amanpour at the Women for Women International Conference on Tuesday, insisted she “took responsibility” for her failure to win the presidency but also blamed FBI Director James Comey, former Barack Obama advisor David Axelrod blasted her on CNN’s New Day, telling hosts Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo:</p>
<p>But Jim Comey didn’t tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin after the convention. Jim Comey didn’t say not to put any resources in Michigan until the final week of the campaign. And one of the things that hindered her in the campaign was a sense that she never fully was willing to take responsibility for her mistakes, particularly that server. And, you know, so if I were her, if I were advising her, I would say don’t do this, don’t go back and appear as if you are shifting responsibility off of yourself. She said the words I am responsible, but everything else suggested she doesn’t feel that way and I don’t think that helps her in the long-run. So if I were her, I would move on.</p>
<p>Axelrod has never been a fan of Hillary’s; in his 2015 book, Believer, he wrote, “For all of her advantages, she is not a healing figure. The more she tries to moderate her image … the more she compounds her exposure as an opportunist. And after two decades of the Bush-Clinton saga, making herself the candidate of the future could be a challenge.”</p>
<p>In December, speaking on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Axelrod <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/17/david-axelrod-disses-hillary-clinton-ready-for-hil/" type="external">attacked</a> Clinton's campaign mantra, saying, “What happened in 2008 was that Hillary’s candidacy got out in front of any rationale for it, and the danger is that that’s happening again, You hear ‘Ready for Hillary’; it’s like, ready for what?”</p> | 3,064 |
<p>Pardon me a moment of whimsical naivete. It’s been a rough December (I’ll get to that shortly). But wouldn’t it be cool if our government would, just occasionally, operate on behalf of the people, the constitutionally emphasized—We. The. People.—instead of perpetual transcendence into ideological beliefs that defy economic evidence or mathematical logic?</p>
<p>That’s a rhetorical question, of course.</p>
<p>Yes, this week it was the Republicans (with the exception of a few), who gleefully passed a tax bill that has the sole purpose of cutting corporate taxes by a whopping 40 percent—under the pretext of benefiting the non-CEO class. The bill’s swipes at said class are simply ways to subsidize the corporate giveaway.</p>
<p>The Democrats (with the exception of a few) are guilty of shirking responsibility to the greater population, too. Under President Obama, they couldn’t offend health insurance companies by capping their premiums—and requiring reliable coverage in return—or just abolishing them completely and expanding Medicare so our tax dollars cover our health care. They couldn’t cross big banks by reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which would separate speculative from commercial activities, after one of the most heinous financial crises of the past century.</p>
<p />
<p>But let me return to the GOP tax giveaway. Major corporations aren’t exactly chomping at the bit to divert their tax cuts into the real economy, or to their rank-and-file workers. They will not, no matter how many times Donald Trump tweets it, repatriate trillions of taxable dollars. We know this.</p>
<p>Let me remind you what JPMorgan Chase CEO and Chairman <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/13/jamie-dimon-says-tax-cut-will-cause-companies-to-buy-back-stock.html" type="external">Jamie Dimon said</a> a week before the bill was passed. And this is a millionaire who knows a thing or two about offshore shell companies, financial fraud and multibillion-dollar pay-to-play settlements with the Department of Justice.</p>
<p>An ardent supporter of the tax bill, he pontificated, “Some will raise wages. Some will buy companies. Some may do dividends and buybacks. Don’t act like that is a bad thing. That is their money. Think of it as a QE4. That money gets recirculated in the American system.”</p>
<p>You may be wondering what he means by QE4, or quantitative easing. Round QE4 is the method by which central banks, like the Federal Reserve, fabricate and then pour money into the markets by purchasing bonds, or stocks in some countries, from these markets or banks.</p>
<p>The Fed’s claim is that somehow buying government debt that has never been used to finance any government project, or buying toxic mortgage bonds that no one else wanted, in order to keep the value of these bonds up and thus rates low, stimulates the real economy.</p>
<p>Many elite economists defend this&#160; <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/bernard-madoff-466366" type="external">Madoff</a>-esque scheme, too. But the reason this is a ridiculous assumption is that those bonds or assets simply get locked up in the Fed’s books. The money is shelled out to the big banks that churn the bonds. They use it for gambling purposes, or to buy their own shares. This isn’t ideology. It’s process.</p>
<p>Yet it’s the same misplaced rationale that the GOP, President Trump and his swamp of the financial elite use to pitch the narrative that more money for them, more money in the market, and more money in the hands of people like Jamie Dimon or Jared Kushner means economic stability or financial prosperity for anyone without a seat at that shell game.</p>
<p>It’s not just Dimon, the man Obama once dubbed his favorite banker, who has spent billions of dollars in buybacks. In a recent Yale University study, just 14 percent of CEOs surveyed said their companies would make large, immediate capital investments in the U.S. if the tax bill passed with the extra money. They are not even hiding their intentions.</p>
<p>In 2016, corporations collectively paid about <a href="http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/amount-revenue-source%20%E2%80%A6" type="external">$300 billion in federal taxes</a> (or just 9 percent of all federal tax receipts). In contrast, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500_Index" type="external">Standard and Poor’s 500 companies</a> bought back over a half-trillion dollars of their own stock, indicating they were hardly hurting from undue tax burdens. Citigroup asked and received from the Fed permission to buy back $15 billion of its own stock over the year, Bank of America will <a href="https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Bank+of+America+%28BAC%29+to+Buyback+Additional+%245+Billion+in+Common+Stock/13568834.html" type="external">buy back $17 billion</a> and JPM Chase will <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/06/29/jpmorgan-chase-to-buy-back-nearly-20-billion-worth.aspx" type="external">purchase $19 billion</a> of its own shares—this in just over a year. Their choice to buy their own stock is legal manipulation of the market and a diversion of funds that could be deployed for small businesses, individual loan restructurings or long-term infrastructure or development projects that would employ more people in more secure jobs.</p>
<p>The Thomas Fire</p>
<p>That gulf between the lives and economic realities of everyday people and Washington, D.C., and the Wall Street elites could not have become any clearer for me than on Dec. 5, when I found myself at the very epicenter of the Thomas fire, now the <a href="http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/12/19/79044/thomas-fire-becomes-second-largest/" type="external">second-largest fire in California history</a>.</p>
<p>Over the years, I have retreated to Ojai to write parts of my books. So when I read on Facebook that a fire had broken out near Thomas Aquinas College, a small liberal arts school nestled between Santa Paula and Upper Ojai, surrounded by the mountains of Los Padres National Forest—about a mile from where I now live—I was concerned.</p>
<p>It’s amazing how quickly all your plans can change, beyond any control you might imagine you have over them. What began as having dinner in downtown Ojai transformed to racing back up a mountain—to save my dogs. It wasn’t clear how big the fire was, nor how fast it was spreading, but its speed and the wind forces became sadly apparent.</p>
<p>There have been a lot of natural disasters this year, not to mention those in previous years. Hurricanes in the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico, and on the U.S. East Coast and in Texas. Earthquakes in Mexico. Fires in Northern California. It’s easy to tune in and then tune out—unless you become the news cycle.</p>
<p>You never think you’ll be the one who needs to evacuate your home. Until you are backing your car as close to your door as you can and jamming the trunk with your possessions in the dark, in a blanket of smoke, winds whipping the trees at 80 mph, falling branches pelting you. Then you realize that you’re not immune—not to the elements, not to disasters caused by Mother Nature or by humans.</p>
<p>Ojai is smoky, dusty and charred, but still standing, resolute. The community spirit is alive. People are resilient. But weary. They want to return to normal. But their businesses are hurting.</p>
<p>Microeconomic Pain and Taxes</p>
<p>I’m writing this piece in a coffee shop in Ojai. The two guys at the table next to me are swapping stories about people they know who lost their homes, from young couples with toddlers to retirees whose entire nest eggs were lost along with their ranches. A man in a wheelchair is discussing an offer to rebuild his house in return for the land as collateral rather than wait for an insurance company. A woman is talking on her iPhone about how bad the air quality is.</p>
<p>Ojai has a microclimate and a microeconomy. The microclimate and the strategic bravery of firefighter heroes saved the town when it was encircled by flames that spread from the surrounding mountains. The battered microeconomy, dependent on a healthy dose of tourism along with a dedicated set of locals, might take longer to emerge from the fog of undetermined loss.</p>
<p>The mountains framing Route 150, where the Thomas fire—which has claimed 270,000 acres—first broke out, is lined with scorched branches and blackened brush. Some roads remain blocked by police cars, houses ravaged and residents displaced. Someone named Skip has a list of all the people who lost their homes.</p>
<p>The Survivors</p>
<p>The thing about local economies and communities is that they band together and support each other when necessary. There is strength in that lattice of community, whether it’s as small as Ojai or as large as New York City, where, in the wake of the World Trade Center collapse on 9/11, as I walked up Broadway from Goldman Sachs on Broad Street, bar owners offered drinks, shopkeepers offered water, and everyone shared a spirit of solidarity.</p>
<p>Two weeks after the Thomas fire broke out, I sat down with George Alem, owner of the Ojai Beverage Company, one of 10 small businesses his family owns that collectively employ 390 people in Ojai and nearby Ventura.</p>
<p>In the second week of the fire, his sales were down by a third (they were down 100 percent the first week when he was closed). So far, he hasn’t had to lay anyone off, but like other struggling local businesses, he’s had to cut back shifts, which curtail his staff’s wages and tips. He said, “I’ve never been in a state of crisis before, so it’s hard to know what that is.” Meanwhile, he has organized and contributed donations to people affected by the fires.</p>
<p>Fighting to Stand</p>
<p>No one here wants a handout. They just need time and space for business to recuperate and, meanwhile, to make payroll, pay vendors and keep the lights on. There’s no government assistance for businesses not considered directly affected by the fire. Insurance coverage presents a similar problem. Local business owners found themselves arguing with insurance companies about whether a fire barreling down to the boundaries of town, and mandatory evacuations of the entire area, constituted a direct impact.</p>
<p>And whereas a representative of one large insurance company said they are working hard to fulfill claims, people are finding claims not being honored for various reasons, such as discrepancies between their definition of fire versus wind damage, an issue that cropped up during Hurricane Katrina, too.</p>
<p>It’s similar with the big banks. Three major banks service Ojai and surrounding small towns: Wells Fargo, Chase and Bank of America. They are here to facilitate basic financial transactions, not help the local community grow. A representative of one of these banks told me that they weren’t asked to step in to help locals during this disaster because they haven’t been involved at a loan level.</p>
<p>In times like these, it’s credit unions or small personal banks like the Ojai Community Bank once was (it was recently taken over by Bank of the Sierra, a 39-branch bank conglomerate) that can move a local community past economic challenges and emergency conditions.</p>
<p>The Real Tax Dodgers</p>
<p>Which brings us back to what the federal government is or is not doing to mitigate the damage after disasters such as major wildfires—and back to the GOP tax bill. The final version eliminates tax deductions due to casualty losses unless the president declares the event to be a disaster.</p>
<p>This California fire, and the last one, were declared disasters. But it’s unnecessarily mean to have people who just lost their home, business or both have their future hinge on semantics, especially when this can be part of a political game.</p>
<p>In crises or in everyday economic hardship or growth mode, we should be able to turn to those elected to the job of protecting us to do just that. They are failing in that duty with regard to banking and insurance regulations. They are failing in the very concept of fairness.</p>
<p>Instead, people turn to citizen heroes like <a href="http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/12/19/79044/thomas-fire-becomes-second-largest/" type="external">Trevor Quirk</a>, a lawyer who organized <a href="https://upperojairelief.com/" type="external">Upper Ojai Relief</a> the day after the Thomas fire broke out. The pop-up charity has been feeding, clothing, housing and providing assistance to people who have lost everything. Quirk has been amazed at how quickly it has become a central clearinghouse and support network for everything related to the fire: pitchforks, dishes, plastic bins, even a lost pig that was detached from its owner. “I’m not kidding, it happens over and over again,” he says. “You can’t make this stuff up—I literally ask for something, and it appears.” His is one of many relief operations spawned throughout the counties impacted by the fire.</p>
<p>Through the new tax bill, large companies have been given billions of dollars in federal tax savings. With that money, they can buy their own shares, when all Trevor Quirk needs is chainsaws, for which he spent $10,000 of his own money. It’s one of many inequities brought to us courtesy of the tax bill, and it is indicative of the GOP’s need to squeeze every cent from those most in need, to fund those who need it least.</p>
<p>We, as a nation, really can and should do better than that. And if these lawmakers can’t get that right, we need to replace them with ones who can.</p> | The Thomas Fire and the Tax Bill | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/thomas-fire-tax-bill/ | 2017-12-22 | 4left
| The Thomas Fire and the Tax Bill
<p>Pardon me a moment of whimsical naivete. It’s been a rough December (I’ll get to that shortly). But wouldn’t it be cool if our government would, just occasionally, operate on behalf of the people, the constitutionally emphasized—We. The. People.—instead of perpetual transcendence into ideological beliefs that defy economic evidence or mathematical logic?</p>
<p>That’s a rhetorical question, of course.</p>
<p>Yes, this week it was the Republicans (with the exception of a few), who gleefully passed a tax bill that has the sole purpose of cutting corporate taxes by a whopping 40 percent—under the pretext of benefiting the non-CEO class. The bill’s swipes at said class are simply ways to subsidize the corporate giveaway.</p>
<p>The Democrats (with the exception of a few) are guilty of shirking responsibility to the greater population, too. Under President Obama, they couldn’t offend health insurance companies by capping their premiums—and requiring reliable coverage in return—or just abolishing them completely and expanding Medicare so our tax dollars cover our health care. They couldn’t cross big banks by reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which would separate speculative from commercial activities, after one of the most heinous financial crises of the past century.</p>
<p />
<p>But let me return to the GOP tax giveaway. Major corporations aren’t exactly chomping at the bit to divert their tax cuts into the real economy, or to their rank-and-file workers. They will not, no matter how many times Donald Trump tweets it, repatriate trillions of taxable dollars. We know this.</p>
<p>Let me remind you what JPMorgan Chase CEO and Chairman <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/13/jamie-dimon-says-tax-cut-will-cause-companies-to-buy-back-stock.html" type="external">Jamie Dimon said</a> a week before the bill was passed. And this is a millionaire who knows a thing or two about offshore shell companies, financial fraud and multibillion-dollar pay-to-play settlements with the Department of Justice.</p>
<p>An ardent supporter of the tax bill, he pontificated, “Some will raise wages. Some will buy companies. Some may do dividends and buybacks. Don’t act like that is a bad thing. That is their money. Think of it as a QE4. That money gets recirculated in the American system.”</p>
<p>You may be wondering what he means by QE4, or quantitative easing. Round QE4 is the method by which central banks, like the Federal Reserve, fabricate and then pour money into the markets by purchasing bonds, or stocks in some countries, from these markets or banks.</p>
<p>The Fed’s claim is that somehow buying government debt that has never been used to finance any government project, or buying toxic mortgage bonds that no one else wanted, in order to keep the value of these bonds up and thus rates low, stimulates the real economy.</p>
<p>Many elite economists defend this&#160; <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/bernard-madoff-466366" type="external">Madoff</a>-esque scheme, too. But the reason this is a ridiculous assumption is that those bonds or assets simply get locked up in the Fed’s books. The money is shelled out to the big banks that churn the bonds. They use it for gambling purposes, or to buy their own shares. This isn’t ideology. It’s process.</p>
<p>Yet it’s the same misplaced rationale that the GOP, President Trump and his swamp of the financial elite use to pitch the narrative that more money for them, more money in the market, and more money in the hands of people like Jamie Dimon or Jared Kushner means economic stability or financial prosperity for anyone without a seat at that shell game.</p>
<p>It’s not just Dimon, the man Obama once dubbed his favorite banker, who has spent billions of dollars in buybacks. In a recent Yale University study, just 14 percent of CEOs surveyed said their companies would make large, immediate capital investments in the U.S. if the tax bill passed with the extra money. They are not even hiding their intentions.</p>
<p>In 2016, corporations collectively paid about <a href="http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/amount-revenue-source%20%E2%80%A6" type="external">$300 billion in federal taxes</a> (or just 9 percent of all federal tax receipts). In contrast, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500_Index" type="external">Standard and Poor’s 500 companies</a> bought back over a half-trillion dollars of their own stock, indicating they were hardly hurting from undue tax burdens. Citigroup asked and received from the Fed permission to buy back $15 billion of its own stock over the year, Bank of America will <a href="https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Bank+of+America+%28BAC%29+to+Buyback+Additional+%245+Billion+in+Common+Stock/13568834.html" type="external">buy back $17 billion</a> and JPM Chase will <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/06/29/jpmorgan-chase-to-buy-back-nearly-20-billion-worth.aspx" type="external">purchase $19 billion</a> of its own shares—this in just over a year. Their choice to buy their own stock is legal manipulation of the market and a diversion of funds that could be deployed for small businesses, individual loan restructurings or long-term infrastructure or development projects that would employ more people in more secure jobs.</p>
<p>The Thomas Fire</p>
<p>That gulf between the lives and economic realities of everyday people and Washington, D.C., and the Wall Street elites could not have become any clearer for me than on Dec. 5, when I found myself at the very epicenter of the Thomas fire, now the <a href="http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/12/19/79044/thomas-fire-becomes-second-largest/" type="external">second-largest fire in California history</a>.</p>
<p>Over the years, I have retreated to Ojai to write parts of my books. So when I read on Facebook that a fire had broken out near Thomas Aquinas College, a small liberal arts school nestled between Santa Paula and Upper Ojai, surrounded by the mountains of Los Padres National Forest—about a mile from where I now live—I was concerned.</p>
<p>It’s amazing how quickly all your plans can change, beyond any control you might imagine you have over them. What began as having dinner in downtown Ojai transformed to racing back up a mountain—to save my dogs. It wasn’t clear how big the fire was, nor how fast it was spreading, but its speed and the wind forces became sadly apparent.</p>
<p>There have been a lot of natural disasters this year, not to mention those in previous years. Hurricanes in the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico, and on the U.S. East Coast and in Texas. Earthquakes in Mexico. Fires in Northern California. It’s easy to tune in and then tune out—unless you become the news cycle.</p>
<p>You never think you’ll be the one who needs to evacuate your home. Until you are backing your car as close to your door as you can and jamming the trunk with your possessions in the dark, in a blanket of smoke, winds whipping the trees at 80 mph, falling branches pelting you. Then you realize that you’re not immune—not to the elements, not to disasters caused by Mother Nature or by humans.</p>
<p>Ojai is smoky, dusty and charred, but still standing, resolute. The community spirit is alive. People are resilient. But weary. They want to return to normal. But their businesses are hurting.</p>
<p>Microeconomic Pain and Taxes</p>
<p>I’m writing this piece in a coffee shop in Ojai. The two guys at the table next to me are swapping stories about people they know who lost their homes, from young couples with toddlers to retirees whose entire nest eggs were lost along with their ranches. A man in a wheelchair is discussing an offer to rebuild his house in return for the land as collateral rather than wait for an insurance company. A woman is talking on her iPhone about how bad the air quality is.</p>
<p>Ojai has a microclimate and a microeconomy. The microclimate and the strategic bravery of firefighter heroes saved the town when it was encircled by flames that spread from the surrounding mountains. The battered microeconomy, dependent on a healthy dose of tourism along with a dedicated set of locals, might take longer to emerge from the fog of undetermined loss.</p>
<p>The mountains framing Route 150, where the Thomas fire—which has claimed 270,000 acres—first broke out, is lined with scorched branches and blackened brush. Some roads remain blocked by police cars, houses ravaged and residents displaced. Someone named Skip has a list of all the people who lost their homes.</p>
<p>The Survivors</p>
<p>The thing about local economies and communities is that they band together and support each other when necessary. There is strength in that lattice of community, whether it’s as small as Ojai or as large as New York City, where, in the wake of the World Trade Center collapse on 9/11, as I walked up Broadway from Goldman Sachs on Broad Street, bar owners offered drinks, shopkeepers offered water, and everyone shared a spirit of solidarity.</p>
<p>Two weeks after the Thomas fire broke out, I sat down with George Alem, owner of the Ojai Beverage Company, one of 10 small businesses his family owns that collectively employ 390 people in Ojai and nearby Ventura.</p>
<p>In the second week of the fire, his sales were down by a third (they were down 100 percent the first week when he was closed). So far, he hasn’t had to lay anyone off, but like other struggling local businesses, he’s had to cut back shifts, which curtail his staff’s wages and tips. He said, “I’ve never been in a state of crisis before, so it’s hard to know what that is.” Meanwhile, he has organized and contributed donations to people affected by the fires.</p>
<p>Fighting to Stand</p>
<p>No one here wants a handout. They just need time and space for business to recuperate and, meanwhile, to make payroll, pay vendors and keep the lights on. There’s no government assistance for businesses not considered directly affected by the fire. Insurance coverage presents a similar problem. Local business owners found themselves arguing with insurance companies about whether a fire barreling down to the boundaries of town, and mandatory evacuations of the entire area, constituted a direct impact.</p>
<p>And whereas a representative of one large insurance company said they are working hard to fulfill claims, people are finding claims not being honored for various reasons, such as discrepancies between their definition of fire versus wind damage, an issue that cropped up during Hurricane Katrina, too.</p>
<p>It’s similar with the big banks. Three major banks service Ojai and surrounding small towns: Wells Fargo, Chase and Bank of America. They are here to facilitate basic financial transactions, not help the local community grow. A representative of one of these banks told me that they weren’t asked to step in to help locals during this disaster because they haven’t been involved at a loan level.</p>
<p>In times like these, it’s credit unions or small personal banks like the Ojai Community Bank once was (it was recently taken over by Bank of the Sierra, a 39-branch bank conglomerate) that can move a local community past economic challenges and emergency conditions.</p>
<p>The Real Tax Dodgers</p>
<p>Which brings us back to what the federal government is or is not doing to mitigate the damage after disasters such as major wildfires—and back to the GOP tax bill. The final version eliminates tax deductions due to casualty losses unless the president declares the event to be a disaster.</p>
<p>This California fire, and the last one, were declared disasters. But it’s unnecessarily mean to have people who just lost their home, business or both have their future hinge on semantics, especially when this can be part of a political game.</p>
<p>In crises or in everyday economic hardship or growth mode, we should be able to turn to those elected to the job of protecting us to do just that. They are failing in that duty with regard to banking and insurance regulations. They are failing in the very concept of fairness.</p>
<p>Instead, people turn to citizen heroes like <a href="http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/12/19/79044/thomas-fire-becomes-second-largest/" type="external">Trevor Quirk</a>, a lawyer who organized <a href="https://upperojairelief.com/" type="external">Upper Ojai Relief</a> the day after the Thomas fire broke out. The pop-up charity has been feeding, clothing, housing and providing assistance to people who have lost everything. Quirk has been amazed at how quickly it has become a central clearinghouse and support network for everything related to the fire: pitchforks, dishes, plastic bins, even a lost pig that was detached from its owner. “I’m not kidding, it happens over and over again,” he says. “You can’t make this stuff up—I literally ask for something, and it appears.” His is one of many relief operations spawned throughout the counties impacted by the fire.</p>
<p>Through the new tax bill, large companies have been given billions of dollars in federal tax savings. With that money, they can buy their own shares, when all Trevor Quirk needs is chainsaws, for which he spent $10,000 of his own money. It’s one of many inequities brought to us courtesy of the tax bill, and it is indicative of the GOP’s need to squeeze every cent from those most in need, to fund those who need it least.</p>
<p>We, as a nation, really can and should do better than that. And if these lawmakers can’t get that right, we need to replace them with ones who can.</p> | 3,065 |
<p />
<p>When the Bush White House couldn’t find a smoking gun to link Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, they simply invented one, or so says Ron Suskind in his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Way-World-Story-Truth-Extremism/dp/0061430625/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1217942109&amp;sr=1-3" type="external">new book</a>, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. The book, released today, claims that the White House conjured up rumors that Mohammad Atta met with Iraq’s intelligence services prior to September 11—one of the “facts” that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atta_in_Prague" type="external">Dick Cheney has repeatedly cited</a> to justify the Iraq invasion.</p>
<p>From the <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/05/earlyshow/main4321003.shtml" type="external">CBS News</a>:</p>
<p>This letter, in the handwriting of Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, is dated July, 2001. It says that Iraqis hosted Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, who, “displayed extraordinary effort and showed a firm commitment to lead the team which will be responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy.”</p>
<p>The letter goes on to suggest that Iraq was importing uranium from Niger for a nuclear program.</p>
<p>The book alleges that Habbush, Saddam’s intelligence chief, was in CIA protective custody after the 2003 invasion, that the White House ordered CIA officials to have Habbush write and backdate the letter, and paid him $5 million. The author quotes two former CIA officials who claim to have seen a draft of the letter on White House stationery.</p>
<p>Listen to an NPR interview with Suskind <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93293353&amp;ft=1&amp;f=1012" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p>The White House and the CIA deny claims that they faked the letter. According to a White House spokesman, “Ron Suskind makes a living from gutter journalism. He is about selling books and making wild allegations that no one can verify, including the numerous bipartisan commissions that have reported on pre-war intelligence.”</p>
<p /> | White House, CIA Forged Pre-Invasion Iraq Intel? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2008/08/white-house-cia-forged-pre-invasion-iraq-intel/ | 2008-08-05 | 4left
| White House, CIA Forged Pre-Invasion Iraq Intel?
<p />
<p>When the Bush White House couldn’t find a smoking gun to link Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, they simply invented one, or so says Ron Suskind in his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Way-World-Story-Truth-Extremism/dp/0061430625/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1217942109&amp;sr=1-3" type="external">new book</a>, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. The book, released today, claims that the White House conjured up rumors that Mohammad Atta met with Iraq’s intelligence services prior to September 11—one of the “facts” that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atta_in_Prague" type="external">Dick Cheney has repeatedly cited</a> to justify the Iraq invasion.</p>
<p>From the <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/05/earlyshow/main4321003.shtml" type="external">CBS News</a>:</p>
<p>This letter, in the handwriting of Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, is dated July, 2001. It says that Iraqis hosted Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, who, “displayed extraordinary effort and showed a firm commitment to lead the team which will be responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy.”</p>
<p>The letter goes on to suggest that Iraq was importing uranium from Niger for a nuclear program.</p>
<p>The book alleges that Habbush, Saddam’s intelligence chief, was in CIA protective custody after the 2003 invasion, that the White House ordered CIA officials to have Habbush write and backdate the letter, and paid him $5 million. The author quotes two former CIA officials who claim to have seen a draft of the letter on White House stationery.</p>
<p>Listen to an NPR interview with Suskind <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93293353&amp;ft=1&amp;f=1012" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p>The White House and the CIA deny claims that they faked the letter. According to a White House spokesman, “Ron Suskind makes a living from gutter journalism. He is about selling books and making wild allegations that no one can verify, including the numerous bipartisan commissions that have reported on pre-war intelligence.”</p>
<p /> | 3,066 |
<p>Happy Labor Day!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/09/this-day-in-labor-history-september-3-1991" type="external">Lawyers, Guns and Money</a>: This day in labor history (part of a series).</p>
<p><a href="http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2016/09/trying-to-crack-old-puzzle-do-women.html" type="external">Echidne of the Snakes</a>: Do women "choose" low-paid jobs?</p>
<p><a href="https://scholarsandrogues.com/2016/08/30/hopetuesday-moving-the-goalposts-faster-than-the-ball-our-expectations-of-humanitys-progress-vs-reality/" type="external">Scholars &amp; Rogues</a>: Our expectations of progress versus reality.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/trumps-kids-try-painting-him-as-an-outsider-and-the-internet-roasts-them/" type="external">Raw Story</a>: The Trump kids' attempt to paint their dad as an "outsider" didn't go so well.</p>
<p>Finally, here’s a good rendition of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs5_gB582IM" type="external">Woody Guthrie tune</a> (video).</p>
<p>This installment by <a href="http://vagabondscholar.blogspot.com/" type="external">Batocchio</a>. E-mail tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.</p> | Mike's Blog Round Up | true | http://crooksandliars.com/2016/09/mikes-blog-round-2 | 2016-09-05 | 4left
| Mike's Blog Round Up
<p>Happy Labor Day!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/09/this-day-in-labor-history-september-3-1991" type="external">Lawyers, Guns and Money</a>: This day in labor history (part of a series).</p>
<p><a href="http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2016/09/trying-to-crack-old-puzzle-do-women.html" type="external">Echidne of the Snakes</a>: Do women "choose" low-paid jobs?</p>
<p><a href="https://scholarsandrogues.com/2016/08/30/hopetuesday-moving-the-goalposts-faster-than-the-ball-our-expectations-of-humanitys-progress-vs-reality/" type="external">Scholars &amp; Rogues</a>: Our expectations of progress versus reality.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/trumps-kids-try-painting-him-as-an-outsider-and-the-internet-roasts-them/" type="external">Raw Story</a>: The Trump kids' attempt to paint their dad as an "outsider" didn't go so well.</p>
<p>Finally, here’s a good rendition of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs5_gB582IM" type="external">Woody Guthrie tune</a> (video).</p>
<p>This installment by <a href="http://vagabondscholar.blogspot.com/" type="external">Batocchio</a>. E-mail tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.</p> | 3,067 |
<p>MOSCOW, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Russia should create a better investment climate and ease forex legislation in response to Western sanctions, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Speaking at an annual finance forum in Moscow, Siluanov also said Russia would cover its budget requirements with its own resources if the United States decides to impose sanctions on Russian state debt. (Reporting by Polina Nikolskaya and Elena Fabrichnaya; writing by Vladimir Soldatkin; editing by Jack Stubbs)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said on Wednesday it is considering how to change a decades-old armistice with North Korea into a peace agreement, as U.S. officials confirmed an unprecedented top-level meeting with the North Korean leader.</p> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets Song Tao, the head of the China's Communist Party's International Department who led a Chinese art troupe to North Korea for the April Spring Friendship Art Festival, in this handout photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on April 15, 2018. KCNA/via REUTERS
<p>U.S. Secretary of State nominee and CIA Director Mike Pompeo became the most senior U.S. official known to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when he visited Pyongyang at the end of March to discuss a planned summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Pompeo's visit provided the strongest sign yet about Trump's willingness to become the first serving U.S. president ever to meet a North Korean leader.</p>
<p>At the same time, old rivals North Korea and South Korea are preparing for their own summit, between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, on April 27, with a bid to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War a major factor in talks.</p>
<p>"As one of the plans, we are looking at a possibility of shifting the Korean peninsula's armistice to a peace regime," a high-ranking South Korean presidential official told reporters when asked about the North-South summit.</p>
<p>"But that's not a matter than can be resolved between the two Koreas alone. It requires close consultations with other concerned nations, as well as North Korea," the official said.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-armistice-explain/explainer-north-korea-peace-deal-neither-a-new-nor-a-simple-idea-idUSKBN1HP13O" type="external">Explainer: North Korea peace deal - Neither a new nor a simple idea</a>
<a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-southkorea/north-and-south-korea-agree-to-broadcast-parts-of-summit-live-report-idUSKBN1HP17W" type="external">North and South Korea agree to broadcast parts of summit live: report</a>
<p>South Korea and a U.S.-led U.N. force are technically still at war with North Korea after the Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty. The U.S.-led United Nations Command, Chinese forces and North Korea signed the 1953 armistice, to which South Korea is not a party.</p>
<p>"I do not know if any joint statement to be reached at the inter-Korean summit would include wording about ending the war, but we certainly hope to be able to include an agreement to end hostile acts between the South and North," the official said.</p>
<p>Such discussions between the two Koreas, and between North Korea and the United States, would have been unthinkable at the end of last year, after months of escalating tension, and fear of war, over the North's nuclear and missile programmes.</p>
<p>But then Kim declared in a New Year's speech his country was "a peace-loving and responsible nuclear power" and called for lower military tension and improved ties with the South.</p>
<p>He also said he was considering sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February, a visit that began a succession of steps to improve ties.</p> WAR NOT OVER
<p>Pompeo's visit to the North was arranged by South Korean intelligence chief Suh Hoon with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Yong Chol, and was intended to assess whether Kim was prepared to hold serious talks, a U.S. official said.</p>
<p>Pompeo flew from a U.S. air force base in Osan, south of Seoul, an official with the South's defence ministry said. The South's presidential office declined to comment on the trip.</p>
<p>Amid the diplomatic flurry, CNN reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping also planned to visit Pyongyang soon, after North Korean leader Kim made a surprise trip last month to China, its major sole ally.</p>
<p>Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had no information about any Xi visit to North Korea.</p>
<p>"What I can stress is that China and North Korea have a tradition of high level mutual visits," she told reporters.</p>
<p>"China is willing to strengthen high-level exchanges with North Korea, deepen strategic communications, expand talks and cooperation, and to bring out the important leading role of high-level contact in China-North Korea relations."</p>
<p>Trump said on Tuesday he backed efforts between North and South Korea aimed at ending the state of war.</p>
<p>"People don't realise the Korean War has not ended," Trump told reporters.</p>
<p>"It's going on right now. And they are discussing an end to the war. Subject to a deal, they have my blessing and they do have my blessing to discuss that."</p>
<p>Trump said he believed there was a lot of goodwill in the diplomatic push with North Korea, but added it was possible the summit - first proposed in March and which the president said could take place in late May or early June - may not happen.</p>
<p>If the summit did not happen, the United States and its allies would maintain pressure on North Korea through sanctions, he said.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Pompeo's conversations in North Korea had fuelled Trump's belief that productive negotiations were possible, according to a U.S. senior official briefed on the trip.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the two Korea's have been pressing ahead with preparations for the inter-Korean summit next week.</p>
<p>South Korea's presidential office said they had agreed to broadcast live, for the first time, parts of the summit, including the hand shake between the two leaders.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Soyoung Kim and Joyce Lee in SEOUL, John Walcott and Steve Holland in WASHINGTON, and Christian Shepherd in BEIJING; Editing by Robert Birsel</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>SHANGHAI (Reuters) - When spirits dealer Daniel Taytslin&#160;brought his first pallet of American&#160;Ragtime Rye&#160;whiskey&#160;into Shanghai in early April, the 672 bottles faced a 5 percent import tariff at China's customs.</p> A man drinks American whiskey at a bar in Shanghai, China, April 6, 2018. Picture taken April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song
<p>His next shipment from New York could be a lot more expensive as China prepares to slap a 25 percent additional tariff on hundreds of American products, including whiskey, because of a deepening trade dispute with the United States.</p>
<p>Taytslin and other U.S. whiskey importers say the worsening row is making small traders, as well as big business, very anxious. Some are accelerating shipments through customs to avoid potential tariff hikes. Others report unusual delays at customs they worry are linked to trade tensions.</p>
<p>The uncertainty gripping the niche market - U.S. whiskey imports to China were worth only $8.9 million last year - reflects the wider concern in the U.S. business community in China that the trade standoff could spark major disruption for American products in the world's second largest economy.</p>
<p>China's overall market was worth $611.5 million in 2016, according to the latest data from wine and spirits analytics firm IWSR, with Scottish whisky imports taking up virtually all of that. U.S. whiskey imports are in second place but growing rapidly.</p>
<p>Beijing last week said it would not back out of a fight with Washington, dashing hopes for an easing of tensions after Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to open China's economy further and lower import duties on some goods.</p> ANXIETY, INCONSISTENCY
<p>The U.S. is planning 25 percent tariffs on some 1,300 Chinese industrial, technology, transport and medical products. Chinese metal parts manufacturers have warned of factory closures or extra costs passed to U.S. customers.</p> A man drinks American whiskey at a bar in Shanghai, China, April 6, 2018. Picture taken April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song
<p>China has fired back with a planned 25 percent tariff on whiskey and around 100 other U.S. products, but has not yet said when it will take effect. It has already raised tariffs on some other U.S. products, including fruits and wine, in response to Washington's imposition of duties on imports of aluminum and steel.</p>
<p>Taytslin is already looking to take some of his goods out of a bonded warehouse in Shanghai, paying import taxes on them ahead of schedule to avoid being hit by increased tariffs.</p>
<p>He is also debating whether to pass on the higher prices for his future U.S. whiskey shipments to customers.</p>
<p>"We now have a potential tariff increase, and I either have to eat into my margin to keep pricing consistent so it's competitive, or we're going to... have to release a higher price."</p>
<p>The hikes could hit a growing industry of smaller craft U.S. whiskies, as well as bigger names like Brown-Forman Corp, the Louisville, Kentucky-based maker of Jack Daniels and Woodford Reserve.</p>
<p>Brown-Forman declined to comment.</p>
<p>Beam Suntory, controlled by Japan's Suntory Group, and which owns U.S. whiskey Jim Beam, did not have an immediate comment.</p>
<p>The U.S. Distilled Spirits Council said in a statement this month that it hoped for a quick solution to the trade dispute to avoid a tariff hike that would "harm Chinese consumers, its hospitality sector and U.S. whiskey exporters".</p> HOLD UPS
<p>Two industry sources told Reuters that some containers of U.S. whiskey were taking longer than expected to pass through Chinese customs, fuelling concerns among importers that this could be linked to the tariff standoff.</p> Slideshow (2 Images)
<p>James Leung, business director at Zhuhai Independent Wine &amp; Spirit Ltd, which imports U.S. bourbon whiskey brand Heaven Hill, said he had been told a container of at least one major U.S. whiskey brand was being held at a Chinese port.</p>
<p>This had prompted him to notify China customers that he may have to ration supplies, due to concern that his own container shipments could be held up.</p>
<p>"I presume my containers will be somewhere on the port for who knows how long... so I have to be prepared," he said.</p>
<p>Reuters was unable to verify the reports of delays or which brands may have been involved. Chinese customs officials in the ports of Shanghai and Gongbei, which is in Zhuhai in southern China, said there had been no policy changes relating to U.S. products like whiskey.</p>
<p>Several other people in the industry said they had not seen their goods held up at customs.</p>
<p>One U.S.-based whiskey industry source said he had heard reports from China colleagues about delays, but it was not clear if this was real or just talk for now. The person asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.</p>
<p>We're "waiting for the other shoe to drop," the person said.</p>
<p>In the low light of wood-panelled speakeasy Senator Saloon in central Shanghai, bartenders Elephant Zhang and Jeremy Yang told Reuters they expected consumers to shake off any price hikes as they mixed classic whiskey cocktails like Manhattans and Sazeracs to the sound of Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw.</p>
<p>"It's like Japanese whisky," said Yang, drawing comparisons to a tipple that has seen its price surge in recent years due to rising demand and limited supply. "If people like a drink, they will pay a higher price."</p>
<p>Reporting by Brenda Goh and Andrew Galbraith; Additional reporting by Martinne Geller in LONDON, Eric Johnson in SEATTLE, Chris Prentice in NEW YORK and SHANGHAI newsroom; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Martin Howell</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Southwest Airlines Co will speed up inspections of all related engines out of extra caution, the airline said, after a passenger was killed when an engine on one of its planes exploded and broke apart mid-air.</p>
<p>Southwest Flight 1380, which took off from New York bound for Dallas with 144 passengers and five crew members aboard, made an emergency landing in Philadelphia on Tuesday after an engine on the Boeing 737-700 ripped apart, killing bank executive Jennifer Riordan, 43.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-pennsylvania-airplane-inspection/southwest-says-aircraft-hit-by-engine-explosion-was-inspected-this-week-idUSKBN1HO3F5" type="external">Southwest says aircraft hit by engine explosion was inspected this week</a>
<p>Southwest said it was accelerating its existing engine inspection program and conducting ultrasonic inspections of fan blades of the CFM56 engines on all of its the 737 jets.</p>
<p>The airline said it expects to complete the inspections within 30 days. Minimal flight disruptions may result, it said.</p>
<p>National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt said on Tuesday at the Philadelphia airport that a preliminary investigation found an engine fan blade missing, having apparently broken off, and that there was metal fatigue at the point where it would normally be attached.</p>
<p>Sumwalt said the investigation could take 12 to 15 months to complete.</p> Emergency personnel monitor the damaged engine of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, which diverted to the Philadelphia International Airport this morning after the airline crew reported damage to one of the aircraft's engines, on a runway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania U.S. April 17, 2018. REUTERS/Mark Makela
<p>In August 2016, a Southwest flight made a safe emergency landing in Pensacola, Florida after a fan blade separated from the same type of engine and debris ripped a hole above the left wing. That incident prompted the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to propose last year that similar fan blades undergo ultrasonic inspections and be replaced if they failed.</p>
<p>Flight 1380 took off from New York's LaGuardia Airport at around 10:27 a.m. and was diverted to Philadelphia about 20 minutes later.</p> Slideshow (5 Images)
<p>The engine on the plane's left side threw off shrapnel when it blew apart, shattering a window and causing rapid cabin depressurization that nearly pulled a female passenger through the hole, according to witness accounts.</p>
<p>One passenger was taken to a hospital in critical condition and seven people were treated for minor injuries at the scene, Philadelphia Fire Department spokeswoman Kathy Matheson said.</p>
<p>Riordan's death was the first in a U.S. commercial aviation accident since 2009, according to (NTSB) statistics.</p>
<p>Riordan was a Wells Fargo banking executive and well-known community volunteer from Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to a Wells Fargo official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>She was on the way back from a New York business trip, where she had sent a tweet on Monday showing the view from her hotel in Midtown Manhattan with the caption: "Great business stay." Her Facebook page shows she was married with two children.</p>
<p>Editing by Peter Graff</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>THE HAGUE (Reuters) - A visit by international chemical weapons inspectors to the location of a suspected poison gas attack in the Syrian town of Douma has been delayed after gunfire at the site during a visit by a U.N. security team on Tuesday, sources told Reuters.</p> The United Nation vehicle carrying the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspectors is seen in Damascus, Syria April 17, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki
<p>The U.N. security team entered Douma to assess the situation ahead of the planned visit by inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) international watchdog, said the sources, who had been briefed on the team's deployment.</p>
<p>One source told Reuters the advance team had "encountered a security issue" including gunfire which led to the delay, but could not provide additional details. Another said they had been met by protesters demanding aid, and gunfire was heard. The U.N. then left.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-un/russias-lavrov-to-hold-talks-with-u-n-syria-envoy-on-friday-ria-idUSKBN1HP15T" type="external">Russia's Lavrov to hold talks with U.N. Syria envoy on Friday: RIA</a>
<p>Syria's U.N. ambassador said on Tuesday the fact-finding mission would begin its work in Douma on Wednesday if the U.N. security team deemed the situation there safe.</p>
<p>Separately, a U.N. source said the OPCW inspectors would probably not be going to Douma on Wednesday. The U.N. source did not give details of the shooting incident.</p>
<p>The U.N. source did not say when the inspectors might visit the site, or whether a planned visit to Douma on Wednesday had been postponed. The inspectors arrived in Damascus at the weekend.</p>
<p>The suspected chemical attack on April 7 killed dozens of people in Douma, medical relief organizations say. It led to the rebel group that controlled Douma agreeing to surrender control of the town to the Syrian government.</p>
<p>The government and its Russian allies say the attack was fabricated as a pretext to justify military strikes that were launched on Saturday by the United States, Britain and France.</p>
<p>France has said it was very likely that evidence of the poison gas attack was disappearing before the inspectors could reach the town.</p>
<p>The United States accused Russia on Monday of blocking international inspectors from reaching the site of the suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground.</p>
<p>Moscow denied the charge and blamed delays on retaliatory U.S.-led missile strikes on Syria at the weekend.</p>
<p>Reporting by Anthony Deutsch in The Hague; Writing by Ellen Francis/Tom Perry in Beirut, Editing by Angus MacSwan and Raissa Kasolowsky</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | Russia needs better investment climate to combat sanctions -minister South Korea says discussing peace deal with North Korea ahead of summit Whiskey sour? China importers fret over U.S. trade battle Southwest Airlines to speed up inspections after engine explodes, killing one Syria chemical weapons visit postponed after gunfire: sources | false | https://reuters.com/article/russia-investment-sanctions/russia-needs-better-investment-climate-to-combat-sanctions-minister-idUSR4N1PB007 | 2018-01-17 | 2least
| Russia needs better investment climate to combat sanctions -minister South Korea says discussing peace deal with North Korea ahead of summit Whiskey sour? China importers fret over U.S. trade battle Southwest Airlines to speed up inspections after engine explodes, killing one Syria chemical weapons visit postponed after gunfire: sources
<p>MOSCOW, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Russia should create a better investment climate and ease forex legislation in response to Western sanctions, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Speaking at an annual finance forum in Moscow, Siluanov also said Russia would cover its budget requirements with its own resources if the United States decides to impose sanctions on Russian state debt. (Reporting by Polina Nikolskaya and Elena Fabrichnaya; writing by Vladimir Soldatkin; editing by Jack Stubbs)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said on Wednesday it is considering how to change a decades-old armistice with North Korea into a peace agreement, as U.S. officials confirmed an unprecedented top-level meeting with the North Korean leader.</p> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets Song Tao, the head of the China's Communist Party's International Department who led a Chinese art troupe to North Korea for the April Spring Friendship Art Festival, in this handout photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on April 15, 2018. KCNA/via REUTERS
<p>U.S. Secretary of State nominee and CIA Director Mike Pompeo became the most senior U.S. official known to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when he visited Pyongyang at the end of March to discuss a planned summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Pompeo's visit provided the strongest sign yet about Trump's willingness to become the first serving U.S. president ever to meet a North Korean leader.</p>
<p>At the same time, old rivals North Korea and South Korea are preparing for their own summit, between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, on April 27, with a bid to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War a major factor in talks.</p>
<p>"As one of the plans, we are looking at a possibility of shifting the Korean peninsula's armistice to a peace regime," a high-ranking South Korean presidential official told reporters when asked about the North-South summit.</p>
<p>"But that's not a matter than can be resolved between the two Koreas alone. It requires close consultations with other concerned nations, as well as North Korea," the official said.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-armistice-explain/explainer-north-korea-peace-deal-neither-a-new-nor-a-simple-idea-idUSKBN1HP13O" type="external">Explainer: North Korea peace deal - Neither a new nor a simple idea</a>
<a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-southkorea/north-and-south-korea-agree-to-broadcast-parts-of-summit-live-report-idUSKBN1HP17W" type="external">North and South Korea agree to broadcast parts of summit live: report</a>
<p>South Korea and a U.S.-led U.N. force are technically still at war with North Korea after the Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty. The U.S.-led United Nations Command, Chinese forces and North Korea signed the 1953 armistice, to which South Korea is not a party.</p>
<p>"I do not know if any joint statement to be reached at the inter-Korean summit would include wording about ending the war, but we certainly hope to be able to include an agreement to end hostile acts between the South and North," the official said.</p>
<p>Such discussions between the two Koreas, and between North Korea and the United States, would have been unthinkable at the end of last year, after months of escalating tension, and fear of war, over the North's nuclear and missile programmes.</p>
<p>But then Kim declared in a New Year's speech his country was "a peace-loving and responsible nuclear power" and called for lower military tension and improved ties with the South.</p>
<p>He also said he was considering sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February, a visit that began a succession of steps to improve ties.</p> WAR NOT OVER
<p>Pompeo's visit to the North was arranged by South Korean intelligence chief Suh Hoon with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Yong Chol, and was intended to assess whether Kim was prepared to hold serious talks, a U.S. official said.</p>
<p>Pompeo flew from a U.S. air force base in Osan, south of Seoul, an official with the South's defence ministry said. The South's presidential office declined to comment on the trip.</p>
<p>Amid the diplomatic flurry, CNN reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping also planned to visit Pyongyang soon, after North Korean leader Kim made a surprise trip last month to China, its major sole ally.</p>
<p>Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had no information about any Xi visit to North Korea.</p>
<p>"What I can stress is that China and North Korea have a tradition of high level mutual visits," she told reporters.</p>
<p>"China is willing to strengthen high-level exchanges with North Korea, deepen strategic communications, expand talks and cooperation, and to bring out the important leading role of high-level contact in China-North Korea relations."</p>
<p>Trump said on Tuesday he backed efforts between North and South Korea aimed at ending the state of war.</p>
<p>"People don't realise the Korean War has not ended," Trump told reporters.</p>
<p>"It's going on right now. And they are discussing an end to the war. Subject to a deal, they have my blessing and they do have my blessing to discuss that."</p>
<p>Trump said he believed there was a lot of goodwill in the diplomatic push with North Korea, but added it was possible the summit - first proposed in March and which the president said could take place in late May or early June - may not happen.</p>
<p>If the summit did not happen, the United States and its allies would maintain pressure on North Korea through sanctions, he said.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Pompeo's conversations in North Korea had fuelled Trump's belief that productive negotiations were possible, according to a U.S. senior official briefed on the trip.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the two Korea's have been pressing ahead with preparations for the inter-Korean summit next week.</p>
<p>South Korea's presidential office said they had agreed to broadcast live, for the first time, parts of the summit, including the hand shake between the two leaders.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Soyoung Kim and Joyce Lee in SEOUL, John Walcott and Steve Holland in WASHINGTON, and Christian Shepherd in BEIJING; Editing by Robert Birsel</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>SHANGHAI (Reuters) - When spirits dealer Daniel Taytslin&#160;brought his first pallet of American&#160;Ragtime Rye&#160;whiskey&#160;into Shanghai in early April, the 672 bottles faced a 5 percent import tariff at China's customs.</p> A man drinks American whiskey at a bar in Shanghai, China, April 6, 2018. Picture taken April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song
<p>His next shipment from New York could be a lot more expensive as China prepares to slap a 25 percent additional tariff on hundreds of American products, including whiskey, because of a deepening trade dispute with the United States.</p>
<p>Taytslin and other U.S. whiskey importers say the worsening row is making small traders, as well as big business, very anxious. Some are accelerating shipments through customs to avoid potential tariff hikes. Others report unusual delays at customs they worry are linked to trade tensions.</p>
<p>The uncertainty gripping the niche market - U.S. whiskey imports to China were worth only $8.9 million last year - reflects the wider concern in the U.S. business community in China that the trade standoff could spark major disruption for American products in the world's second largest economy.</p>
<p>China's overall market was worth $611.5 million in 2016, according to the latest data from wine and spirits analytics firm IWSR, with Scottish whisky imports taking up virtually all of that. U.S. whiskey imports are in second place but growing rapidly.</p>
<p>Beijing last week said it would not back out of a fight with Washington, dashing hopes for an easing of tensions after Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to open China's economy further and lower import duties on some goods.</p> ANXIETY, INCONSISTENCY
<p>The U.S. is planning 25 percent tariffs on some 1,300 Chinese industrial, technology, transport and medical products. Chinese metal parts manufacturers have warned of factory closures or extra costs passed to U.S. customers.</p> A man drinks American whiskey at a bar in Shanghai, China, April 6, 2018. Picture taken April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song
<p>China has fired back with a planned 25 percent tariff on whiskey and around 100 other U.S. products, but has not yet said when it will take effect. It has already raised tariffs on some other U.S. products, including fruits and wine, in response to Washington's imposition of duties on imports of aluminum and steel.</p>
<p>Taytslin is already looking to take some of his goods out of a bonded warehouse in Shanghai, paying import taxes on them ahead of schedule to avoid being hit by increased tariffs.</p>
<p>He is also debating whether to pass on the higher prices for his future U.S. whiskey shipments to customers.</p>
<p>"We now have a potential tariff increase, and I either have to eat into my margin to keep pricing consistent so it's competitive, or we're going to... have to release a higher price."</p>
<p>The hikes could hit a growing industry of smaller craft U.S. whiskies, as well as bigger names like Brown-Forman Corp, the Louisville, Kentucky-based maker of Jack Daniels and Woodford Reserve.</p>
<p>Brown-Forman declined to comment.</p>
<p>Beam Suntory, controlled by Japan's Suntory Group, and which owns U.S. whiskey Jim Beam, did not have an immediate comment.</p>
<p>The U.S. Distilled Spirits Council said in a statement this month that it hoped for a quick solution to the trade dispute to avoid a tariff hike that would "harm Chinese consumers, its hospitality sector and U.S. whiskey exporters".</p> HOLD UPS
<p>Two industry sources told Reuters that some containers of U.S. whiskey were taking longer than expected to pass through Chinese customs, fuelling concerns among importers that this could be linked to the tariff standoff.</p> Slideshow (2 Images)
<p>James Leung, business director at Zhuhai Independent Wine &amp; Spirit Ltd, which imports U.S. bourbon whiskey brand Heaven Hill, said he had been told a container of at least one major U.S. whiskey brand was being held at a Chinese port.</p>
<p>This had prompted him to notify China customers that he may have to ration supplies, due to concern that his own container shipments could be held up.</p>
<p>"I presume my containers will be somewhere on the port for who knows how long... so I have to be prepared," he said.</p>
<p>Reuters was unable to verify the reports of delays or which brands may have been involved. Chinese customs officials in the ports of Shanghai and Gongbei, which is in Zhuhai in southern China, said there had been no policy changes relating to U.S. products like whiskey.</p>
<p>Several other people in the industry said they had not seen their goods held up at customs.</p>
<p>One U.S.-based whiskey industry source said he had heard reports from China colleagues about delays, but it was not clear if this was real or just talk for now. The person asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.</p>
<p>We're "waiting for the other shoe to drop," the person said.</p>
<p>In the low light of wood-panelled speakeasy Senator Saloon in central Shanghai, bartenders Elephant Zhang and Jeremy Yang told Reuters they expected consumers to shake off any price hikes as they mixed classic whiskey cocktails like Manhattans and Sazeracs to the sound of Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw.</p>
<p>"It's like Japanese whisky," said Yang, drawing comparisons to a tipple that has seen its price surge in recent years due to rising demand and limited supply. "If people like a drink, they will pay a higher price."</p>
<p>Reporting by Brenda Goh and Andrew Galbraith; Additional reporting by Martinne Geller in LONDON, Eric Johnson in SEATTLE, Chris Prentice in NEW YORK and SHANGHAI newsroom; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Martin Howell</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Southwest Airlines Co will speed up inspections of all related engines out of extra caution, the airline said, after a passenger was killed when an engine on one of its planes exploded and broke apart mid-air.</p>
<p>Southwest Flight 1380, which took off from New York bound for Dallas with 144 passengers and five crew members aboard, made an emergency landing in Philadelphia on Tuesday after an engine on the Boeing 737-700 ripped apart, killing bank executive Jennifer Riordan, 43.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-pennsylvania-airplane-inspection/southwest-says-aircraft-hit-by-engine-explosion-was-inspected-this-week-idUSKBN1HO3F5" type="external">Southwest says aircraft hit by engine explosion was inspected this week</a>
<p>Southwest said it was accelerating its existing engine inspection program and conducting ultrasonic inspections of fan blades of the CFM56 engines on all of its the 737 jets.</p>
<p>The airline said it expects to complete the inspections within 30 days. Minimal flight disruptions may result, it said.</p>
<p>National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt said on Tuesday at the Philadelphia airport that a preliminary investigation found an engine fan blade missing, having apparently broken off, and that there was metal fatigue at the point where it would normally be attached.</p>
<p>Sumwalt said the investigation could take 12 to 15 months to complete.</p> Emergency personnel monitor the damaged engine of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, which diverted to the Philadelphia International Airport this morning after the airline crew reported damage to one of the aircraft's engines, on a runway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania U.S. April 17, 2018. REUTERS/Mark Makela
<p>In August 2016, a Southwest flight made a safe emergency landing in Pensacola, Florida after a fan blade separated from the same type of engine and debris ripped a hole above the left wing. That incident prompted the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to propose last year that similar fan blades undergo ultrasonic inspections and be replaced if they failed.</p>
<p>Flight 1380 took off from New York's LaGuardia Airport at around 10:27 a.m. and was diverted to Philadelphia about 20 minutes later.</p> Slideshow (5 Images)
<p>The engine on the plane's left side threw off shrapnel when it blew apart, shattering a window and causing rapid cabin depressurization that nearly pulled a female passenger through the hole, according to witness accounts.</p>
<p>One passenger was taken to a hospital in critical condition and seven people were treated for minor injuries at the scene, Philadelphia Fire Department spokeswoman Kathy Matheson said.</p>
<p>Riordan's death was the first in a U.S. commercial aviation accident since 2009, according to (NTSB) statistics.</p>
<p>Riordan was a Wells Fargo banking executive and well-known community volunteer from Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to a Wells Fargo official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>She was on the way back from a New York business trip, where she had sent a tweet on Monday showing the view from her hotel in Midtown Manhattan with the caption: "Great business stay." Her Facebook page shows she was married with two children.</p>
<p>Editing by Peter Graff</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>THE HAGUE (Reuters) - A visit by international chemical weapons inspectors to the location of a suspected poison gas attack in the Syrian town of Douma has been delayed after gunfire at the site during a visit by a U.N. security team on Tuesday, sources told Reuters.</p> The United Nation vehicle carrying the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspectors is seen in Damascus, Syria April 17, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki
<p>The U.N. security team entered Douma to assess the situation ahead of the planned visit by inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) international watchdog, said the sources, who had been briefed on the team's deployment.</p>
<p>One source told Reuters the advance team had "encountered a security issue" including gunfire which led to the delay, but could not provide additional details. Another said they had been met by protesters demanding aid, and gunfire was heard. The U.N. then left.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-un/russias-lavrov-to-hold-talks-with-u-n-syria-envoy-on-friday-ria-idUSKBN1HP15T" type="external">Russia's Lavrov to hold talks with U.N. Syria envoy on Friday: RIA</a>
<p>Syria's U.N. ambassador said on Tuesday the fact-finding mission would begin its work in Douma on Wednesday if the U.N. security team deemed the situation there safe.</p>
<p>Separately, a U.N. source said the OPCW inspectors would probably not be going to Douma on Wednesday. The U.N. source did not give details of the shooting incident.</p>
<p>The U.N. source did not say when the inspectors might visit the site, or whether a planned visit to Douma on Wednesday had been postponed. The inspectors arrived in Damascus at the weekend.</p>
<p>The suspected chemical attack on April 7 killed dozens of people in Douma, medical relief organizations say. It led to the rebel group that controlled Douma agreeing to surrender control of the town to the Syrian government.</p>
<p>The government and its Russian allies say the attack was fabricated as a pretext to justify military strikes that were launched on Saturday by the United States, Britain and France.</p>
<p>France has said it was very likely that evidence of the poison gas attack was disappearing before the inspectors could reach the town.</p>
<p>The United States accused Russia on Monday of blocking international inspectors from reaching the site of the suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground.</p>
<p>Moscow denied the charge and blamed delays on retaliatory U.S.-led missile strikes on Syria at the weekend.</p>
<p>Reporting by Anthony Deutsch in The Hague; Writing by Ellen Francis/Tom Perry in Beirut, Editing by Angus MacSwan and Raissa Kasolowsky</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | 3,068 |
<p>Of all issues relating to black Americans, left-wing CNN’s Jake Tapper chose to discuss Donald Trump’s furthering of “birtherism” in a Sunday-aired interview with Rudy Giuliani. Responding to Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfZDKWo2LxE" type="external">Saturday event at a black church in Detroit</a>, Tapper cast the Republican presidential nominee as unpalatable to blacks by virtue of his former prominence in the “birther” movement.</p>
<p>Tapper spoke of his interviews with "many" blacks, presumably CNN employees:</p>
<p>“But, I have to say, in interviews, many African Americans say they are still troubled by Mr. Trump having suggested over and over, falsely, that the first African American president was born in Africa, and thus ineligible to be president.”</p>
<p>Tapper then asked Giuliani if Trump “should apologize” in order to “reach out the minority voters," conflating blacks with minorities writ large.</p>
<p>Tapper then spoke to his perceptions of black racial loyalty to President Barack Obama:</p>
<p>“My only point is that, many African Americans are still mad about Donald Trump having tried to invalidate Barack Obama by claiming he was born in Africa.”</p>
<p />
<p>No questions were asked about unemployment, single-parent households and the rearing of children, abortion rates, crime, drug abuse, educational underachievement, broader poverty, or any other social problems overrepresented among blacks. According to Tapper, black political priorities include a focus on Trump over his involvement in "bitherism."</p>
<p>Tapper also introduced his interview with Giuliani by hyping left-wing Democrat protests outside Great Faith Ministries International.</p>
<p>Tapper presents himself as an objective journalist. CNN presents itself as an objective news outlet.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | Tapper On Black Political Priorities: Birtherism! | true | https://dailywire.com/news/8888/tapper-black-political-priorities-birtherism-robert-kraychik | 2016-09-04 | 0right
| Tapper On Black Political Priorities: Birtherism!
<p>Of all issues relating to black Americans, left-wing CNN’s Jake Tapper chose to discuss Donald Trump’s furthering of “birtherism” in a Sunday-aired interview with Rudy Giuliani. Responding to Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfZDKWo2LxE" type="external">Saturday event at a black church in Detroit</a>, Tapper cast the Republican presidential nominee as unpalatable to blacks by virtue of his former prominence in the “birther” movement.</p>
<p>Tapper spoke of his interviews with "many" blacks, presumably CNN employees:</p>
<p>“But, I have to say, in interviews, many African Americans say they are still troubled by Mr. Trump having suggested over and over, falsely, that the first African American president was born in Africa, and thus ineligible to be president.”</p>
<p>Tapper then asked Giuliani if Trump “should apologize” in order to “reach out the minority voters," conflating blacks with minorities writ large.</p>
<p>Tapper then spoke to his perceptions of black racial loyalty to President Barack Obama:</p>
<p>“My only point is that, many African Americans are still mad about Donald Trump having tried to invalidate Barack Obama by claiming he was born in Africa.”</p>
<p />
<p>No questions were asked about unemployment, single-parent households and the rearing of children, abortion rates, crime, drug abuse, educational underachievement, broader poverty, or any other social problems overrepresented among blacks. According to Tapper, black political priorities include a focus on Trump over his involvement in "bitherism."</p>
<p>Tapper also introduced his interview with Giuliani by hyping left-wing Democrat protests outside Great Faith Ministries International.</p>
<p>Tapper presents himself as an objective journalist. CNN presents itself as an objective news outlet.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | 3,069 |
<p>MINNEAPOLIS — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Case_Keenum/" type="external">Case Keenum</a> threw for a career-high 369 yards passing and three touchdowns and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Stefon-Diggs/" type="external">Stefon Diggs</a> caught eight passes for 173 yards and two scores in the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Minnesota-Vikings/" type="external">Minnesota Vikings</a>‘ 34-17 win over the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tampa-Bay-Buccaneers/" type="external">Tampa Bay Buccaneers</a> on Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sam_Bradford/" type="external">Sam Bradford</a> missed his second straight game with a knee injury, but Keenum was much better at home against a depleted Tampa Bay defense after a road loss at Pittsburgh last week. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Adam-Thielen/" type="external">Adam Thielen</a> caught five passes for 98 yards and rookie running back <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dalvin-Cook/" type="external">Dalvin Cook</a> had 169 total yards (97 yards rushing, 72 receiving) and his first career touchdown in the win for Minnesota (2-1).</p>
<p>The Vikings’ defense intercepted <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jameis-Winston/" type="external">Jameis Winston</a> three times — Minnesota’s first takeaways of the season — and held the Buccaneers to 26 yards rushing in another decisive home victory.</p>
<p>Winston went 28 of 40 for 328 yards and tossed touchdown passes to tight end Cameron Brate and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/DeSean_Jackson/" type="external">DeSean Jackson</a> for Tampa Bay (1-1).</p>
<p>Fresh off their convincing season-opening win last week, the Buccaneers’ defense was in shambles without three defensive starters and several players leaving during the game with various injuries. Meanwhile, the offense couldn’t sustain drives and was 1 of 6 on third downs.</p>
<p>With Bradford limited during the week and missing practice on Friday, Keenum got more time to prepare for his second start and it showed.</p>
<p>Keenum, who completed 25 of 33 passes, connected with Thielen on a 45-yard gain on the third play of the game and willingly went deep several times on Sunday. Diggs caught passes for 47 and 59 yards, the two longest of his career. His weaving run after the catch led to a 59-yard touchdown to put Minnesota up 28-3 early in the third quarter.</p>
<p>Jarius Wright added a touchdown catch for the Vikings.</p>
<p>For Keenum, it’s the third time he’s beaten Tampa Bay in his career. He twice led the Rams to victories while completing 65.1 percent of his passes for a 118.8 passer rating.</p>
<p>NOTES: Tampa Bay WRs <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Evans/" type="external">Mike Evans</a> and DeSean Jackson kneeled for the national anthem while the rest of the team stood with arms locked in unity. Minnesota had a similar show with arms locked down its sideline, including owners Zygi and Mark Wilf, and general manager <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Rick-Spielman/" type="external">Rick Spielman</a>. … The Buccaneers were without three defensive starters in CB Brent Grimes (shoulder), LB Kwon Alexander (hamstring) and DT <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris-Jones/" type="external">Chris Jones</a> (illness). Tampa Bay saw several defenders leave the game. DT <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Gerald-McCoy/" type="external">Gerald McCoy</a> left in the third quarter with an ankle injury, but returned in the fourth. DE Noah Spence, DE <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Robert-Ayers/" type="external">Robert Ayers</a> and CB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Vernon-Hargreaves/" type="external">Vernon Hargreaves</a> III all left at times and later returned. LB Lavonte David was carted off with 3:14 left in the game after Vikings TE <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/David_Morgan/" type="external">David Morgan</a> fell on his left leg. … CB Trae Waynes, S Andrew Sendejo and S Harrison Smith all had interceptions for Minnesota.</p> | Case Keenum, Stefon Diggs propel Minnesota Vikings past Tampa Bay Buccaneers | false | https://newsline.com/case-keenum-stefon-diggs-propel-minnesota-vikings-past-tampa-bay-buccaneers/ | 2017-09-24 | 1right-center
| Case Keenum, Stefon Diggs propel Minnesota Vikings past Tampa Bay Buccaneers
<p>MINNEAPOLIS — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Case_Keenum/" type="external">Case Keenum</a> threw for a career-high 369 yards passing and three touchdowns and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Stefon-Diggs/" type="external">Stefon Diggs</a> caught eight passes for 173 yards and two scores in the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Minnesota-Vikings/" type="external">Minnesota Vikings</a>‘ 34-17 win over the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tampa-Bay-Buccaneers/" type="external">Tampa Bay Buccaneers</a> on Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Sam_Bradford/" type="external">Sam Bradford</a> missed his second straight game with a knee injury, but Keenum was much better at home against a depleted Tampa Bay defense after a road loss at Pittsburgh last week. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Adam-Thielen/" type="external">Adam Thielen</a> caught five passes for 98 yards and rookie running back <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dalvin-Cook/" type="external">Dalvin Cook</a> had 169 total yards (97 yards rushing, 72 receiving) and his first career touchdown in the win for Minnesota (2-1).</p>
<p>The Vikings’ defense intercepted <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jameis-Winston/" type="external">Jameis Winston</a> three times — Minnesota’s first takeaways of the season — and held the Buccaneers to 26 yards rushing in another decisive home victory.</p>
<p>Winston went 28 of 40 for 328 yards and tossed touchdown passes to tight end Cameron Brate and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/DeSean_Jackson/" type="external">DeSean Jackson</a> for Tampa Bay (1-1).</p>
<p>Fresh off their convincing season-opening win last week, the Buccaneers’ defense was in shambles without three defensive starters and several players leaving during the game with various injuries. Meanwhile, the offense couldn’t sustain drives and was 1 of 6 on third downs.</p>
<p>With Bradford limited during the week and missing practice on Friday, Keenum got more time to prepare for his second start and it showed.</p>
<p>Keenum, who completed 25 of 33 passes, connected with Thielen on a 45-yard gain on the third play of the game and willingly went deep several times on Sunday. Diggs caught passes for 47 and 59 yards, the two longest of his career. His weaving run after the catch led to a 59-yard touchdown to put Minnesota up 28-3 early in the third quarter.</p>
<p>Jarius Wright added a touchdown catch for the Vikings.</p>
<p>For Keenum, it’s the third time he’s beaten Tampa Bay in his career. He twice led the Rams to victories while completing 65.1 percent of his passes for a 118.8 passer rating.</p>
<p>NOTES: Tampa Bay WRs <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Evans/" type="external">Mike Evans</a> and DeSean Jackson kneeled for the national anthem while the rest of the team stood with arms locked in unity. Minnesota had a similar show with arms locked down its sideline, including owners Zygi and Mark Wilf, and general manager <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Rick-Spielman/" type="external">Rick Spielman</a>. … The Buccaneers were without three defensive starters in CB Brent Grimes (shoulder), LB Kwon Alexander (hamstring) and DT <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris-Jones/" type="external">Chris Jones</a> (illness). Tampa Bay saw several defenders leave the game. DT <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Gerald-McCoy/" type="external">Gerald McCoy</a> left in the third quarter with an ankle injury, but returned in the fourth. DE Noah Spence, DE <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Robert-Ayers/" type="external">Robert Ayers</a> and CB <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Vernon-Hargreaves/" type="external">Vernon Hargreaves</a> III all left at times and later returned. LB Lavonte David was carted off with 3:14 left in the game after Vikings TE <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/David_Morgan/" type="external">David Morgan</a> fell on his left leg. … CB Trae Waynes, S Andrew Sendejo and S Harrison Smith all had interceptions for Minnesota.</p> | 3,070 |
<p>Facebook once failed to buy Snapchat; ever since, it's tried to copy it, mostly without success.</p>
<p>Until now. Facebook's Instagram Stories, a clear Snapchat clone, has more daily users than Snapchat itself — and parent company Snap Inc. should be very worried.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Snap's latest earnings report isn't helping either. On Thursday, the company said user growth for the April-June period was a paltry 4 percent from the previous quarter.</p>
<p>Snap's stock, already down 44 percent since its initial public offering in May, declined 14 percent, to $11.90, in extended trading after the results came out. That's less than half of the $24.48 closing price on its first trading day.</p>
<p>While the doom doesn't spell imminent death, it's a sign that Snapchat could be relegated to the sidelines as a niche app for young people — or worse, a passing fad — rather than a major competitor for digital ad dollars like Facebook and yes, even the struggling Twitter.</p>
<p>An analyst for Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for Snap's IPO, recently cut his rating of the company's stock, citing competition from Instagram and worries that Snap's advertising offerings aren't evolving or improving. The analyst, Brian Nowak, said the company needs to do more so that advertisers don't see it as a mere experiment, but a serious player.</p>
<p>BY THE NUMBERS</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Instagram recently disclosed that Stories, which lets people share videos and snapshots in a continuous 24-hour loop, has amassed 250 million daily users in the year since it launched.</p>
<p>Snapchat, in comparison, had 173 million in the second quarter — and that's all of Snapchat, not just its version of Stories. Instagram in its entirety, meanwhile, had more than 400 million daily users as of February, the last official count.</p>
<p>Snap said Thursday that it lost $443 million, or 36 cents per share, in the second quarter. That compares with a loss of $116 million, or 14 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue grew to $182 million, more than double the $72 million a year earlier but below analysts' expectations.</p>
<p>TO GROW OR NOT TO GROW</p>
<p>"Facebook has proven themselves to be a fierce competitor ," Gartner analyst Brian Blau said. Facebook, he added, understands how to get more and more people to sign up and keep using its services.</p>
<p>Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has long defended the company's decision not to make user growth its primary mission. He doesn't even like calling Snapchat a social network; he insists it's a camera company.</p>
<p>"There's a lot of this thing in our industry called growth hacking, where you send a lot of push notifications to users or you try to get them to do things that might be unnatural or something like that," Spiegel told investors in May.</p>
<p>Although that's an easy way to grow daily users quickly, Spiegel said, Snap doesn't believe "those sorts of techniques are very sustainable over the long-term."</p>
<p>Facebook sends notifications for all sorts of things, such as a friend doing a live video or another friend posting something after an extended absence. Another might be on a new item for sale in the service's "marketplace" section. These notifications — which primarily appear in the Facebook app but can also be pushed to the phone's home screen — can conceivably keep people returning day after day.</p>
<p>While Snapchat sends fewer notifications, it encourages daily use through Snapstreak , which calls out streaks in which two friends send each other snaps at least once for more than three consecutive days. But it isn't working too well, as daily use hasn't grown much.</p>
<p>RIVALS UPON RIVALS</p>
<p>Rivals don't always succeed. Facebook recently shut down Lifestage, which lets those 21 and under share photos, selfies and videos with classmates. Lifestage was aimed at high schoolers — a big chunk of Snapchat's audience.</p>
<p>Before that, Facebook killed Slingshot, another Snapchat clone for sending disappearing messages. In turn, that followed the demise of Poke, which also let people send photos and videos. All that followed Snapchat's decision to rebuff Facebook's $3 billion offer for the service in 2013.</p>
<p>But Facebook and others kept trying and trying, until Facebook succeeded with Instagram Stories. Easy to use and piggybacking on Instagram's existing popularity, Stories expanded Snapchat's idea to a broader range of users. While Snapchat's audience is mostly teens and young people, on Instagram, anyone might send a "story."</p>
<p>It signals that even as Snapchat plays down user growth, having a strong and broad user base can be crucial to success.</p>
<p>Other messaging apps are looking to clone Snapchat, too. Google is reportedly working on Stamp, which The Wall Street Journal compared to Snapchat's Discover feature for letting people find photo and video-heavy news items. While Google isn't commenting on Stamp, published reports say the company is in talks with the likes of Vox Media and Time Inc. to create such content.</p>
<p>BEYOND USER GROWTH</p>
<p>Investors in Facebook, Twitter and now Snap care tremendously about user growth. Facebook, with its 2 billion users, is enjoying record-high stock prices. Twitter, with its growth barely budging, is not.</p>
<p>But Blau said growth doesn't necessarily have to be Snap's primary focus if the company is able to make money from the users it does attract.</p>
<p>On this front, the company has made some strides, eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson said. For example, it has launched new tools for businesses to create and distribute ads on the app.</p>
<p>These, she wrote in an email, "will help bring in new ad dollars, particularly from small and midsize marketers."</p>
<p>But, Williamson said Snap must do even more — so advertising on it is no longer just an experiment.</p> | Snapchat's not-growing pains are a boom for Instagram | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/10/snapchats-not-growing-pains-are-boom-for-instagram.html | 2017-08-10 | 0right
| Snapchat's not-growing pains are a boom for Instagram
<p>Facebook once failed to buy Snapchat; ever since, it's tried to copy it, mostly without success.</p>
<p>Until now. Facebook's Instagram Stories, a clear Snapchat clone, has more daily users than Snapchat itself — and parent company Snap Inc. should be very worried.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Snap's latest earnings report isn't helping either. On Thursday, the company said user growth for the April-June period was a paltry 4 percent from the previous quarter.</p>
<p>Snap's stock, already down 44 percent since its initial public offering in May, declined 14 percent, to $11.90, in extended trading after the results came out. That's less than half of the $24.48 closing price on its first trading day.</p>
<p>While the doom doesn't spell imminent death, it's a sign that Snapchat could be relegated to the sidelines as a niche app for young people — or worse, a passing fad — rather than a major competitor for digital ad dollars like Facebook and yes, even the struggling Twitter.</p>
<p>An analyst for Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for Snap's IPO, recently cut his rating of the company's stock, citing competition from Instagram and worries that Snap's advertising offerings aren't evolving or improving. The analyst, Brian Nowak, said the company needs to do more so that advertisers don't see it as a mere experiment, but a serious player.</p>
<p>BY THE NUMBERS</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Instagram recently disclosed that Stories, which lets people share videos and snapshots in a continuous 24-hour loop, has amassed 250 million daily users in the year since it launched.</p>
<p>Snapchat, in comparison, had 173 million in the second quarter — and that's all of Snapchat, not just its version of Stories. Instagram in its entirety, meanwhile, had more than 400 million daily users as of February, the last official count.</p>
<p>Snap said Thursday that it lost $443 million, or 36 cents per share, in the second quarter. That compares with a loss of $116 million, or 14 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue grew to $182 million, more than double the $72 million a year earlier but below analysts' expectations.</p>
<p>TO GROW OR NOT TO GROW</p>
<p>"Facebook has proven themselves to be a fierce competitor ," Gartner analyst Brian Blau said. Facebook, he added, understands how to get more and more people to sign up and keep using its services.</p>
<p>Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has long defended the company's decision not to make user growth its primary mission. He doesn't even like calling Snapchat a social network; he insists it's a camera company.</p>
<p>"There's a lot of this thing in our industry called growth hacking, where you send a lot of push notifications to users or you try to get them to do things that might be unnatural or something like that," Spiegel told investors in May.</p>
<p>Although that's an easy way to grow daily users quickly, Spiegel said, Snap doesn't believe "those sorts of techniques are very sustainable over the long-term."</p>
<p>Facebook sends notifications for all sorts of things, such as a friend doing a live video or another friend posting something after an extended absence. Another might be on a new item for sale in the service's "marketplace" section. These notifications — which primarily appear in the Facebook app but can also be pushed to the phone's home screen — can conceivably keep people returning day after day.</p>
<p>While Snapchat sends fewer notifications, it encourages daily use through Snapstreak , which calls out streaks in which two friends send each other snaps at least once for more than three consecutive days. But it isn't working too well, as daily use hasn't grown much.</p>
<p>RIVALS UPON RIVALS</p>
<p>Rivals don't always succeed. Facebook recently shut down Lifestage, which lets those 21 and under share photos, selfies and videos with classmates. Lifestage was aimed at high schoolers — a big chunk of Snapchat's audience.</p>
<p>Before that, Facebook killed Slingshot, another Snapchat clone for sending disappearing messages. In turn, that followed the demise of Poke, which also let people send photos and videos. All that followed Snapchat's decision to rebuff Facebook's $3 billion offer for the service in 2013.</p>
<p>But Facebook and others kept trying and trying, until Facebook succeeded with Instagram Stories. Easy to use and piggybacking on Instagram's existing popularity, Stories expanded Snapchat's idea to a broader range of users. While Snapchat's audience is mostly teens and young people, on Instagram, anyone might send a "story."</p>
<p>It signals that even as Snapchat plays down user growth, having a strong and broad user base can be crucial to success.</p>
<p>Other messaging apps are looking to clone Snapchat, too. Google is reportedly working on Stamp, which The Wall Street Journal compared to Snapchat's Discover feature for letting people find photo and video-heavy news items. While Google isn't commenting on Stamp, published reports say the company is in talks with the likes of Vox Media and Time Inc. to create such content.</p>
<p>BEYOND USER GROWTH</p>
<p>Investors in Facebook, Twitter and now Snap care tremendously about user growth. Facebook, with its 2 billion users, is enjoying record-high stock prices. Twitter, with its growth barely budging, is not.</p>
<p>But Blau said growth doesn't necessarily have to be Snap's primary focus if the company is able to make money from the users it does attract.</p>
<p>On this front, the company has made some strides, eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson said. For example, it has launched new tools for businesses to create and distribute ads on the app.</p>
<p>These, she wrote in an email, "will help bring in new ad dollars, particularly from small and midsize marketers."</p>
<p>But, Williamson said Snap must do even more — so advertising on it is no longer just an experiment.</p> | 3,071 |
<p>Shares of energy producers fell as the divergence between oil prices and gasoline prices caused by Tropical Storm Harvey continued.</p>
<p>Gas futures gained more than 6% after Tropical Storm Harvey shut down the largest refinery in the U.S., and has now knocked out about one-fifth of U.S. capacity. The storm dropped about a foot of rain Tuesday night on the Beaumont-Port Arthur area, about 90 miles east of Houston. The nation's largest refinery, operated by Saudi Arabian Oil Co. in Port Arthur, said Wednesday morning it has initiated a full shutdown.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Exxon said it was shutting down another major facility in Beaumont, a few days after it shut its Baytown, Texas, plant near Houston, the second-largest refinery by capacity in the U.S. The refinery shutdowns mean there is less demand for oil in the U.S. and a danger of gasoline shortages.</p>
<p>For the week ended Aug. 25, however, oil supplies in the U.S. had fallen while gasoline supplies increased, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.</p>
<p>Rob Curran, [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 30, 2017 17:11 ET (21:11 GMT)</p> | Energy Lower as Gas Prices Rise, Oil Weak on Harvey -- Energy Roundup | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/30/energy-lower-as-gas-prices-rise-oil-weak-on-harvey-energy-roundup.html | 2017-08-30 | 0right
| Energy Lower as Gas Prices Rise, Oil Weak on Harvey -- Energy Roundup
<p>Shares of energy producers fell as the divergence between oil prices and gasoline prices caused by Tropical Storm Harvey continued.</p>
<p>Gas futures gained more than 6% after Tropical Storm Harvey shut down the largest refinery in the U.S., and has now knocked out about one-fifth of U.S. capacity. The storm dropped about a foot of rain Tuesday night on the Beaumont-Port Arthur area, about 90 miles east of Houston. The nation's largest refinery, operated by Saudi Arabian Oil Co. in Port Arthur, said Wednesday morning it has initiated a full shutdown.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Exxon said it was shutting down another major facility in Beaumont, a few days after it shut its Baytown, Texas, plant near Houston, the second-largest refinery by capacity in the U.S. The refinery shutdowns mean there is less demand for oil in the U.S. and a danger of gasoline shortages.</p>
<p>For the week ended Aug. 25, however, oil supplies in the U.S. had fallen while gasoline supplies increased, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.</p>
<p>Rob Curran, [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 30, 2017 17:11 ET (21:11 GMT)</p> | 3,072 |
<p>Hillary Clinton may not know if she will become the first woman POTUS, but at least she knows where she will hold her <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/10/26/clinton-spend-election-night-under-glass-ceiling/92786722/" type="external">election night party: in a building with a glass</a> ceiling and walls. The Democratic nominee and her campaign crew will be at the <a href="http://www.javitscenter.com/about/faqs/" type="external">Jacob K. Javits Convention Center</a> in Manhattan Nov. 8. When she conceded to President Obama in 2008, she noted that she was not able to break the highest glass ceiling and become president, but now she’s really going for it! Because! As we all know, gender inequality and limitations on the upward mobility of women in the U.S. is OVER FOR GOOD once we have one rich, white lady in the White House. No more dreams to dream, guys. The war is over.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, she returned back to the <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article110687177.html" type="external">glass ceiling topic at the Democratic National Convention</a> and encouraged her supporters to continue to push until every American woman and girl can get access to the opportunities they desire. Proverbial glass ceilings that women face in various industries have been a topic of discussion for years and became even more prominent with Clinton’s first presidential run and Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book,&#160;Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.</p>
<p>Now, with her venue choice, it seems like she has kept that observation to heart and is determined to break a glass ceiling while standing under a glass ceiling. Is it coincidence? Hell nah. If Hillary wins, she just might let her petty flag fly and post an Instagram photo of her fist up against a glass panel. Or, maybe she will go ahead and throw something at the ceiling for the heck of it, because it’s obvious that she is really into this glass ceiling metaphor.</p>
<p>The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center is certainly fit for a president. It is a whopping 840,000 square feet, spreads six blocks along the Hudson River, and will offer stunning views of the starry sky as Democrats pray to all the gods that Donald Trump doesn’t become the leader of the free world.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, Trump is not a fan of the impressive convention center. Years ago, <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-javits-center" type="external">he got the option to develop the site</a> and spent years trying to convince NYC to build a convention center at that site. He also lobbied to have the building named after him in exchange for waving a $833K fee for the city. But, the city chose a different developer and Trump was pissed off. So, not only is Clinton&#160;making a direct reference to the glass ceiling women face, she is also trolling her opponent in the shadiest of ways. Bravo Mrs. Clinton.</p>
<p />
<p>By the time Clinton supporters and campaign volunteers fill the convention space, most of America’s votes will already be cast. Whether it’s out of joy or frustration, let’s hope Clinton literally breaks some glass — now that would be some election night drama to stay awake for.</p> | Hillary Clinton plans to stand under literal glass ceiling on election night. I mean, OK, sure. | true | http://thefrisky.com/2016-10-27/hillary-clinton-plans-to-stand-under-literal-glass-ceiling-on-election-night/ | 2018-10-07 | 4left
| Hillary Clinton plans to stand under literal glass ceiling on election night. I mean, OK, sure.
<p>Hillary Clinton may not know if she will become the first woman POTUS, but at least she knows where she will hold her <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/10/26/clinton-spend-election-night-under-glass-ceiling/92786722/" type="external">election night party: in a building with a glass</a> ceiling and walls. The Democratic nominee and her campaign crew will be at the <a href="http://www.javitscenter.com/about/faqs/" type="external">Jacob K. Javits Convention Center</a> in Manhattan Nov. 8. When she conceded to President Obama in 2008, she noted that she was not able to break the highest glass ceiling and become president, but now she’s really going for it! Because! As we all know, gender inequality and limitations on the upward mobility of women in the U.S. is OVER FOR GOOD once we have one rich, white lady in the White House. No more dreams to dream, guys. The war is over.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, she returned back to the <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article110687177.html" type="external">glass ceiling topic at the Democratic National Convention</a> and encouraged her supporters to continue to push until every American woman and girl can get access to the opportunities they desire. Proverbial glass ceilings that women face in various industries have been a topic of discussion for years and became even more prominent with Clinton’s first presidential run and Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book,&#160;Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.</p>
<p>Now, with her venue choice, it seems like she has kept that observation to heart and is determined to break a glass ceiling while standing under a glass ceiling. Is it coincidence? Hell nah. If Hillary wins, she just might let her petty flag fly and post an Instagram photo of her fist up against a glass panel. Or, maybe she will go ahead and throw something at the ceiling for the heck of it, because it’s obvious that she is really into this glass ceiling metaphor.</p>
<p>The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center is certainly fit for a president. It is a whopping 840,000 square feet, spreads six blocks along the Hudson River, and will offer stunning views of the starry sky as Democrats pray to all the gods that Donald Trump doesn’t become the leader of the free world.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, Trump is not a fan of the impressive convention center. Years ago, <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-javits-center" type="external">he got the option to develop the site</a> and spent years trying to convince NYC to build a convention center at that site. He also lobbied to have the building named after him in exchange for waving a $833K fee for the city. But, the city chose a different developer and Trump was pissed off. So, not only is Clinton&#160;making a direct reference to the glass ceiling women face, she is also trolling her opponent in the shadiest of ways. Bravo Mrs. Clinton.</p>
<p />
<p>By the time Clinton supporters and campaign volunteers fill the convention space, most of America’s votes will already be cast. Whether it’s out of joy or frustration, let’s hope Clinton literally breaks some glass — now that would be some election night drama to stay awake for.</p> | 3,073 |
<p>In late January, US District Judge Mark Walker struck down Florida’s rules for restoring the voting rights of former convicts, finding those rules not just unconstitutional (on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds) but “nonsensical.”</p>
<p>Why nonsensical? Because “disenfranchised citizens must kowtow before a panel of high-level government officials over which Florida’s governor has absolute veto authority.”</p>
<p>If a panel of&#160; appointed bureaucrats (or the governor) doesn’t like you, you don’t get to vote. Maybe they don’t believe you’ve truly “reformed.” Maybe they don’t like your perceived partisan affiliation. Maybe they just don’t like your skin color.</p>
<p>In fact, the system would be “nonsensical” even if it didn’t leave the decision in the hands of partisan hacks. If the Declaration of Independence is to be taken even a little bit seriously, that system is completely out of line with American values.</p>
<p>Only four states&#160; (Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia) fail to automatically restore the vote to convicts at the ends of their sentences. Maine, Vermont, and the US territory of Puerto Rico don’t just restore voting rights at end of sentence — they allow prisoners to vote.</p>
<p>The Declaration of Independence lays out a clear bottom line standard for the legitimacy of government: The consent of the governed.</p>
<p>We could argue about what consent really means, but where democracy is the form of government, the vote is traditionally deemed the instrument of that consent, and in America expanding the franchise — to former slaves, then to women, then to all citizens down to the age of 18 — has been the trend for 150 years.</p>
<p>Prisoners are certainly “governed,” and to a far greater degree than most of us. They live in cages. They’re told when to get up, when to go to sleep, and what to do in between, with draconian punishments for disobedience.&#160; Once their sentences are completed, they’ve supposedly “paid their debt to society” (would that our justice system emphasized restitution to real victims rather than the myth that “society” is or can be owed anything, but that’s a subject for another column). On what grounds can former — or, for that matter, current — be legitimately forbidden the vote if “consent of the governed” is truly the standard and the vote is truly its expression?</p>
<p>Florida’s existing voters will have an opportunity this November to pass a constitutional amendment ending their state’s “nonsensical” system and restoring voting rights automatically to felons who complete their sentences.</p>
<p>That’s a good first step.</p>
<p>Next, how about a federal voting rights suit on behalf of all those who are governed but forbidden the legal ability to supposedly consent?</p>
<p>And, finally, how about a dramatic reduction in the scope and severity of government power that we supposedly consent TO?</p> | No Voting Rights for Felons: Unfair, Anti-Democratic, and, Yes, “Nonsensical” | true | https://counterpunch.org/2018/02/13/no-voting-rights-for-felons-unfair-anti-democratic-and-yes-nonsensical-2/ | 2018-02-13 | 4left
| No Voting Rights for Felons: Unfair, Anti-Democratic, and, Yes, “Nonsensical”
<p>In late January, US District Judge Mark Walker struck down Florida’s rules for restoring the voting rights of former convicts, finding those rules not just unconstitutional (on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds) but “nonsensical.”</p>
<p>Why nonsensical? Because “disenfranchised citizens must kowtow before a panel of high-level government officials over which Florida’s governor has absolute veto authority.”</p>
<p>If a panel of&#160; appointed bureaucrats (or the governor) doesn’t like you, you don’t get to vote. Maybe they don’t believe you’ve truly “reformed.” Maybe they don’t like your perceived partisan affiliation. Maybe they just don’t like your skin color.</p>
<p>In fact, the system would be “nonsensical” even if it didn’t leave the decision in the hands of partisan hacks. If the Declaration of Independence is to be taken even a little bit seriously, that system is completely out of line with American values.</p>
<p>Only four states&#160; (Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia) fail to automatically restore the vote to convicts at the ends of their sentences. Maine, Vermont, and the US territory of Puerto Rico don’t just restore voting rights at end of sentence — they allow prisoners to vote.</p>
<p>The Declaration of Independence lays out a clear bottom line standard for the legitimacy of government: The consent of the governed.</p>
<p>We could argue about what consent really means, but where democracy is the form of government, the vote is traditionally deemed the instrument of that consent, and in America expanding the franchise — to former slaves, then to women, then to all citizens down to the age of 18 — has been the trend for 150 years.</p>
<p>Prisoners are certainly “governed,” and to a far greater degree than most of us. They live in cages. They’re told when to get up, when to go to sleep, and what to do in between, with draconian punishments for disobedience.&#160; Once their sentences are completed, they’ve supposedly “paid their debt to society” (would that our justice system emphasized restitution to real victims rather than the myth that “society” is or can be owed anything, but that’s a subject for another column). On what grounds can former — or, for that matter, current — be legitimately forbidden the vote if “consent of the governed” is truly the standard and the vote is truly its expression?</p>
<p>Florida’s existing voters will have an opportunity this November to pass a constitutional amendment ending their state’s “nonsensical” system and restoring voting rights automatically to felons who complete their sentences.</p>
<p>That’s a good first step.</p>
<p>Next, how about a federal voting rights suit on behalf of all those who are governed but forbidden the legal ability to supposedly consent?</p>
<p>And, finally, how about a dramatic reduction in the scope and severity of government power that we supposedly consent TO?</p> | 3,074 |
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<p />
<p>The resolution was introduced at Wednesday’s Public Utilities Committee meeting by City Councilor Joseph Maestas, who said the purpose was to pick up where a jointly commissioned 2012 feasibility study left off.</p>
<p>The $50,000 feasibility assessment, paid for with funds provided by both the city and county, was conducted by Santa Fe consulting firm MSA Capital Partners under a city contract with New Energy Economy – a nonprofit advocacy group for clean energy and an outspoken critic of PNM’s use of coal. The study urges policymakers to seriously consider forming a municipal electric utility, an effort the city of Boulder, Colo., has already undertaken.</p>
<p>“Since this study was done, there’s been no formal effort to continue this partnership, this journey of exploring a very worthy concept,” Maestas said. “I think it’s a concept that does have a lot of risk and, for that very reason, I feel the city should not go it alone.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Maestas said he had the support of at least two members of the five-person County Commission and expects a similar resolution to be introduced there.</p>
<p>He also had the support of two city councilors at Wednesday’s meeting. Committee chairman Chris Rivera and Peter Ives, who previously introduced a resolution later passed by the Council declaring the city’s intent to become carbon neutral by 2040. Both signed on as co-sponsors.</p>
<p>Patti Bushee abstained from the vote, saying she supported the concept but wanted to see a fiscal impact report first. “I seriously want to know what we’re getting into,” she said.</p>
<p>What’s pushing the efforts is the desire of local elected officials to reduce, and even eliminate, the use of coal-generated power and shift to cleaner sources, such as wind and solar. Currently, about 60 percent of the energy used in Santa Fe comes from PNM’s coal-fired plants in northwest New Mexico.</p>
<p>Rivera said in an interview after Wednesday’s meeting that it’s PNM’s reliance on coal that ignited the effort.</p>
<p>“The main goal of this is to protect our climate for future generations,” he said. “If PNM were incorporating more wind and solar in their long range plans, this would be a moot point.”</p>
<p>Asked for comment on the issue, PNM provided the Journal with a statement that said it’s the company’s priority to provide customers with reliable power at affordable rates while protecting the environment.</p>
<p>“We are committed to adding renewable energy to the system and, by the end of 2015, we will have enough renewable energy to power 150,000 average homes,” it said. “We add renewables responsibly, in a way that minimizes the cost to customers and maintains reliability. We currently have the largest customer-owned distributed generation program in the state, which has been a boon to the local solar industry.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>But its critics complain PNM still isn’t packaging enough renewable energy sources in its portfolio, even as the company is replacing two coal-fired units at the San Juan Generating Station in the Four Corners area and has announced plans for four new solar plants in 2015. News broke this week that PNM, which provides energy to 500,000 residential and business customers statewide, is negotiating to buy a coal mine near Farmington.</p>
<p>“The creation of a public utility in Santa Fe is an effort to set the stage for opportunities that will move us toward greater use of renewable energy,” said Councilor Ives, who also is drafting an ordinance that would create a public utility in Santa Fe. “Whether (a municipal utility) is a course Santa Fe eventually takes, it’s too early to tell.”</p>
<p>City Councilor Joseph Maestas, left, has introduced a measure calling for city and county governments to collaborate on exploring the idea of operating a local electric utility. Also discussing the idea at a Wednesday meeting were Councilors Patti Bushee, center, and Peter Ives. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>Charting a path</p>
<p>Ives said Mayor Javier Gonzales’ newly created Climate Action Task Force, of which he’s a member, will help chart the course. But an emphasis on the use of renewable energy sources and reducing or eliminating entirely the use of coal-generated energy is the objective, he said.</p>
<p>Mayor Gonzales campaigned for greater use of renewable energy, particularly tapping the city’s solar potential, prior to his election in March. He laments only 25 percent of the city’s facilities use solar power and 30 percent of street lamps have LED lighting.</p>
<p>While a public utility is part of the renewable energy conversation, he says his focus now is on tightening up energy gaps and pursuing community solar efforts.</p>
<p>“There is so much we can do when it comes to energy strategy outside of municipalization, in addition to community solar, that can really move the needle when it comes to a healthier community,” he said. “Those are the areas I’ve asked the Climate Action Task Force to look into and build a set of plans we can begin investing in.”</p>
<p>Whether those plans might include a public utility remains to be seen. It’s a complicated issue, Gonzales said.</p>
<p>“It’s not as easy as creating a power company and all of a sudden you get to deliver power,” he said. “When it comes to a power company, I think we have to look at how does it fit in with our energy strategy for the future? What is the cost to the taxpayer? And how is it going to play a role in helping mitigate the threats of climate change? And what can be done on a more immediate basis?”</p>
<p>Municipally owned utilities are far from a radical idea. There are more than 2,000 of them in the country, including city-owned electric companies in Aztec, Farmington, Gallup, Raton and Springer.</p>
<p>The city of Santa Fe operates its own water utility, and has partnered with the county on the Buckman Direct Diversion facility to pull water from the Rio Grande and on the Santa Fe Solid Waste Management Authority.</p>
<p>Gonzales and everyone at Wednesday’s committee meeting said it would be critical that any consideration of a public utility would have to involve public input.</p>
<p>That’s what happened in Boulder, where voters twice in recent years approved measures that endorsed the city’s efforts to establish its own electric utility.</p>
<p>The effort was met with resistance by the power company Xcel Energy. It sued the city after the city council took formal action to form the utility last spring.</p>
<p>‘Divisive agenda’?</p>
<p>There are two ways a municipality can take over an energy system from a power provider. One is for the company to sell off its system willingly and the other is condemnation through the state’s eminent domain statute.</p>
<p>Gonzales said the city attorney’s office has informed him that “there is no legal pathway for the city itself to condemn the existing utility. So that means PNM would have to be a willing seller and the city would have to be a willing buyer capable of putting together the funds to do all that.”</p>
<p>PNM says it isn’t interested in selling its system. Its statement says PNM is committed to serving the best interests of the people of Santa Fe. “However, we are following the discussions regarding municipalization to understand and be responsive to issues raised,” it said.</p>
<p>In a guest editorial that appeared in Journal North last month, Amy Miller, PNM’s director of community, environment and local government, said Santa Fe shouldn’t be considering starting its own electric utility. She touted PNM’s efforts to reduce its environmental impact and its contributions to the community.</p>
<p>Miller, who is also a member of the mayor’s task force, said PNM’s own plans will decrease the use of coal by 30 percent, reduce seven different emissions by 50 percent and cut water use at the generating plant by 50 percent. She noted that PNM’s plans for the San Juan station include adding more solar generation and natural gas, which will create jobs.</p>
<p>She also emphasized PNM’s contributions to the community, spending $5.1 million in taxes to the city and county, $3.4 million to support local businesses and organizations, and investing $8.2 million in electric infrastructure in 2013 alone.</p>
<p>“In any discussion about energy, it’s important to consider the facts and not be misled by myths from anyone pushing a costly divisive agenda,” she wrote.</p>
<p>How to acquire or replace the infrastructure of PNM’s existing power system is one question facing advocates for creating Santa Fe’s own electric utility. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>‘Beat this drum’</p>
<p>Still, the question of a local power company is being discussed and legislation has been introduced by the city based on the 2012 feasibility report.</p>
<p>“I realize the assessment is dated, but it’s a public investment that needs to be continued,” Maestas said of the report. “We need to have this dialogue and continue to work with the county on some of these things in the feasibility study.”</p>
<p>“We need to continue to beat this drum to phase coal out of the portfolio,” added Maestas, whose resolution asks for an analysis as to how a “Santa Fe Public Power” utility could provide “a sustainable power supply sourced entirely from natural gas, solar and wind.”</p>
<p>“And that is totally doable,” said County Commissioner Kathy Holian, who also serves on the mayor’s task force. “Especially in our area where you have a mix of other energy sources, like solar and wind, and can back it up with a natural gas plant. It can be done without coal, easily.”</p>
<p>Holian said such a goal will take years to achieve, but “we should start now. It takes time to make things happen.”</p>
<p>Holian said she was working with county staff to draft a resolution in support of Maestas’ proposal.</p>
<p>A problem, she said, was that a detailed technical-level engineering analysis of PNM’s distribution system – one of the next steps identified in the feasibility assessment and something Maestas said he wanted to see conducted – could cost $750,000 or more.</p>
<p>“It always comes down to funding,” she said.</p>
<p>Big bucks needed</p>
<p>The really big bucks would come in acquisition or building of a power system and other startup costs.</p>
<p>Estimated costs for acquisition are uncertain. The 2012 study from New Energy Economy indicated the cost would be determined by appraisal and could range from a book value of about $65 million to a replacement cost of more than $100 million.</p>
<p>But PNM says that, from 2010 to 2013 alone, the company invested $34.3 million in Santa Fe system infrastructure.</p>
<p>In addition, Santa Fe Public Power could expect to incur startup costs close to $50 million, which could rise to as much as $100 million if unforeseen legal and regulatory costs arise, the report said.</p>
<p>Funding for the acquisition, construction and expansion of facilities could be done through utility or revenue bonds, according to the 2012 assessment.</p>
<p>But a next step might be coming up with the money to conduct a more detailed study. Maestas said the resolution he introduced Wednesday would have no fiscal impact because it calls only for collaboration between city and county staff at this point.</p>
<p>“Let’s determine whether we should continue sharing costs and sharing risk to move this concept forward,” he said, adding that his resolution was really a continuation from where the city and county left off two years ago.</p>
<p>“Let’s stop messing around,” he said. “Let’s go forward.”</p>
<p /> | Power struggle: Santa Fe looks into possible local electric utility | false | https://abqjournal.com/505830/power-struggle.html | 2least
| Power struggle: Santa Fe looks into possible local electric utility
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The resolution was introduced at Wednesday’s Public Utilities Committee meeting by City Councilor Joseph Maestas, who said the purpose was to pick up where a jointly commissioned 2012 feasibility study left off.</p>
<p>The $50,000 feasibility assessment, paid for with funds provided by both the city and county, was conducted by Santa Fe consulting firm MSA Capital Partners under a city contract with New Energy Economy – a nonprofit advocacy group for clean energy and an outspoken critic of PNM’s use of coal. The study urges policymakers to seriously consider forming a municipal electric utility, an effort the city of Boulder, Colo., has already undertaken.</p>
<p>“Since this study was done, there’s been no formal effort to continue this partnership, this journey of exploring a very worthy concept,” Maestas said. “I think it’s a concept that does have a lot of risk and, for that very reason, I feel the city should not go it alone.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Maestas said he had the support of at least two members of the five-person County Commission and expects a similar resolution to be introduced there.</p>
<p>He also had the support of two city councilors at Wednesday’s meeting. Committee chairman Chris Rivera and Peter Ives, who previously introduced a resolution later passed by the Council declaring the city’s intent to become carbon neutral by 2040. Both signed on as co-sponsors.</p>
<p>Patti Bushee abstained from the vote, saying she supported the concept but wanted to see a fiscal impact report first. “I seriously want to know what we’re getting into,” she said.</p>
<p>What’s pushing the efforts is the desire of local elected officials to reduce, and even eliminate, the use of coal-generated power and shift to cleaner sources, such as wind and solar. Currently, about 60 percent of the energy used in Santa Fe comes from PNM’s coal-fired plants in northwest New Mexico.</p>
<p>Rivera said in an interview after Wednesday’s meeting that it’s PNM’s reliance on coal that ignited the effort.</p>
<p>“The main goal of this is to protect our climate for future generations,” he said. “If PNM were incorporating more wind and solar in their long range plans, this would be a moot point.”</p>
<p>Asked for comment on the issue, PNM provided the Journal with a statement that said it’s the company’s priority to provide customers with reliable power at affordable rates while protecting the environment.</p>
<p>“We are committed to adding renewable energy to the system and, by the end of 2015, we will have enough renewable energy to power 150,000 average homes,” it said. “We add renewables responsibly, in a way that minimizes the cost to customers and maintains reliability. We currently have the largest customer-owned distributed generation program in the state, which has been a boon to the local solar industry.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>But its critics complain PNM still isn’t packaging enough renewable energy sources in its portfolio, even as the company is replacing two coal-fired units at the San Juan Generating Station in the Four Corners area and has announced plans for four new solar plants in 2015. News broke this week that PNM, which provides energy to 500,000 residential and business customers statewide, is negotiating to buy a coal mine near Farmington.</p>
<p>“The creation of a public utility in Santa Fe is an effort to set the stage for opportunities that will move us toward greater use of renewable energy,” said Councilor Ives, who also is drafting an ordinance that would create a public utility in Santa Fe. “Whether (a municipal utility) is a course Santa Fe eventually takes, it’s too early to tell.”</p>
<p>City Councilor Joseph Maestas, left, has introduced a measure calling for city and county governments to collaborate on exploring the idea of operating a local electric utility. Also discussing the idea at a Wednesday meeting were Councilors Patti Bushee, center, and Peter Ives. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>Charting a path</p>
<p>Ives said Mayor Javier Gonzales’ newly created Climate Action Task Force, of which he’s a member, will help chart the course. But an emphasis on the use of renewable energy sources and reducing or eliminating entirely the use of coal-generated energy is the objective, he said.</p>
<p>Mayor Gonzales campaigned for greater use of renewable energy, particularly tapping the city’s solar potential, prior to his election in March. He laments only 25 percent of the city’s facilities use solar power and 30 percent of street lamps have LED lighting.</p>
<p>While a public utility is part of the renewable energy conversation, he says his focus now is on tightening up energy gaps and pursuing community solar efforts.</p>
<p>“There is so much we can do when it comes to energy strategy outside of municipalization, in addition to community solar, that can really move the needle when it comes to a healthier community,” he said. “Those are the areas I’ve asked the Climate Action Task Force to look into and build a set of plans we can begin investing in.”</p>
<p>Whether those plans might include a public utility remains to be seen. It’s a complicated issue, Gonzales said.</p>
<p>“It’s not as easy as creating a power company and all of a sudden you get to deliver power,” he said. “When it comes to a power company, I think we have to look at how does it fit in with our energy strategy for the future? What is the cost to the taxpayer? And how is it going to play a role in helping mitigate the threats of climate change? And what can be done on a more immediate basis?”</p>
<p>Municipally owned utilities are far from a radical idea. There are more than 2,000 of them in the country, including city-owned electric companies in Aztec, Farmington, Gallup, Raton and Springer.</p>
<p>The city of Santa Fe operates its own water utility, and has partnered with the county on the Buckman Direct Diversion facility to pull water from the Rio Grande and on the Santa Fe Solid Waste Management Authority.</p>
<p>Gonzales and everyone at Wednesday’s committee meeting said it would be critical that any consideration of a public utility would have to involve public input.</p>
<p>That’s what happened in Boulder, where voters twice in recent years approved measures that endorsed the city’s efforts to establish its own electric utility.</p>
<p>The effort was met with resistance by the power company Xcel Energy. It sued the city after the city council took formal action to form the utility last spring.</p>
<p>‘Divisive agenda’?</p>
<p>There are two ways a municipality can take over an energy system from a power provider. One is for the company to sell off its system willingly and the other is condemnation through the state’s eminent domain statute.</p>
<p>Gonzales said the city attorney’s office has informed him that “there is no legal pathway for the city itself to condemn the existing utility. So that means PNM would have to be a willing seller and the city would have to be a willing buyer capable of putting together the funds to do all that.”</p>
<p>PNM says it isn’t interested in selling its system. Its statement says PNM is committed to serving the best interests of the people of Santa Fe. “However, we are following the discussions regarding municipalization to understand and be responsive to issues raised,” it said.</p>
<p>In a guest editorial that appeared in Journal North last month, Amy Miller, PNM’s director of community, environment and local government, said Santa Fe shouldn’t be considering starting its own electric utility. She touted PNM’s efforts to reduce its environmental impact and its contributions to the community.</p>
<p>Miller, who is also a member of the mayor’s task force, said PNM’s own plans will decrease the use of coal by 30 percent, reduce seven different emissions by 50 percent and cut water use at the generating plant by 50 percent. She noted that PNM’s plans for the San Juan station include adding more solar generation and natural gas, which will create jobs.</p>
<p>She also emphasized PNM’s contributions to the community, spending $5.1 million in taxes to the city and county, $3.4 million to support local businesses and organizations, and investing $8.2 million in electric infrastructure in 2013 alone.</p>
<p>“In any discussion about energy, it’s important to consider the facts and not be misled by myths from anyone pushing a costly divisive agenda,” she wrote.</p>
<p>How to acquire or replace the infrastructure of PNM’s existing power system is one question facing advocates for creating Santa Fe’s own electric utility. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>‘Beat this drum’</p>
<p>Still, the question of a local power company is being discussed and legislation has been introduced by the city based on the 2012 feasibility report.</p>
<p>“I realize the assessment is dated, but it’s a public investment that needs to be continued,” Maestas said of the report. “We need to have this dialogue and continue to work with the county on some of these things in the feasibility study.”</p>
<p>“We need to continue to beat this drum to phase coal out of the portfolio,” added Maestas, whose resolution asks for an analysis as to how a “Santa Fe Public Power” utility could provide “a sustainable power supply sourced entirely from natural gas, solar and wind.”</p>
<p>“And that is totally doable,” said County Commissioner Kathy Holian, who also serves on the mayor’s task force. “Especially in our area where you have a mix of other energy sources, like solar and wind, and can back it up with a natural gas plant. It can be done without coal, easily.”</p>
<p>Holian said such a goal will take years to achieve, but “we should start now. It takes time to make things happen.”</p>
<p>Holian said she was working with county staff to draft a resolution in support of Maestas’ proposal.</p>
<p>A problem, she said, was that a detailed technical-level engineering analysis of PNM’s distribution system – one of the next steps identified in the feasibility assessment and something Maestas said he wanted to see conducted – could cost $750,000 or more.</p>
<p>“It always comes down to funding,” she said.</p>
<p>Big bucks needed</p>
<p>The really big bucks would come in acquisition or building of a power system and other startup costs.</p>
<p>Estimated costs for acquisition are uncertain. The 2012 study from New Energy Economy indicated the cost would be determined by appraisal and could range from a book value of about $65 million to a replacement cost of more than $100 million.</p>
<p>But PNM says that, from 2010 to 2013 alone, the company invested $34.3 million in Santa Fe system infrastructure.</p>
<p>In addition, Santa Fe Public Power could expect to incur startup costs close to $50 million, which could rise to as much as $100 million if unforeseen legal and regulatory costs arise, the report said.</p>
<p>Funding for the acquisition, construction and expansion of facilities could be done through utility or revenue bonds, according to the 2012 assessment.</p>
<p>But a next step might be coming up with the money to conduct a more detailed study. Maestas said the resolution he introduced Wednesday would have no fiscal impact because it calls only for collaboration between city and county staff at this point.</p>
<p>“Let’s determine whether we should continue sharing costs and sharing risk to move this concept forward,” he said, adding that his resolution was really a continuation from where the city and county left off two years ago.</p>
<p>“Let’s stop messing around,” he said. “Let’s go forward.”</p>
<p /> | 3,075 |
|
<p />
<p>Fresh off a $5.8 billion trading blunder, J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) is reportedly facing a lawsuit accusing the largest U.S. bank by assets of pushing underperforming in-house funds and investments on brokerage clients.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>According to Reuters, the lawsuit was filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan by a brokerage customer. The suit is seeking class-action status and compensatory and punitive damages.</p>
<p>In an effort to boost fees and profits, J.P. Morgan steered customers to invest in underperforming and unsuitable in-house funds, the lawsuit alleges, according to Reuters. The bank rewarded brokers who followed this strategy with bonuses, the suit says.</p>
<p>New York-based J.P. Morgan declined to comment on the report.</p>
<p>Shares of J.P. Morgan dipped to session lows after the Reuters report and were recently off 3.04% to $34.98. While the company’s shares have rallied about 5% so far this year, they have slumped 12.6% over the past 12 months.</p>
<p>The lawsuit comes days after J.P. Morgan told analysts and shareholders that traders may have committed fraud by hiding problems in the London whale fiasco. This failed hedging strategy has cost the company $5.8 billion so far and seriously eroded the its reputation for being safer than other big banks.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Report: J.P. Morgan Sued for Allegedly Pushing Clients to In-House Funds | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/07/16/report-jp-morgan-sued-for-allegedly-pushing-clients-to-in-house-funds.html | 2016-01-26 | 0right
| Report: J.P. Morgan Sued for Allegedly Pushing Clients to In-House Funds
<p />
<p>Fresh off a $5.8 billion trading blunder, J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) is reportedly facing a lawsuit accusing the largest U.S. bank by assets of pushing underperforming in-house funds and investments on brokerage clients.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>According to Reuters, the lawsuit was filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan by a brokerage customer. The suit is seeking class-action status and compensatory and punitive damages.</p>
<p>In an effort to boost fees and profits, J.P. Morgan steered customers to invest in underperforming and unsuitable in-house funds, the lawsuit alleges, according to Reuters. The bank rewarded brokers who followed this strategy with bonuses, the suit says.</p>
<p>New York-based J.P. Morgan declined to comment on the report.</p>
<p>Shares of J.P. Morgan dipped to session lows after the Reuters report and were recently off 3.04% to $34.98. While the company’s shares have rallied about 5% so far this year, they have slumped 12.6% over the past 12 months.</p>
<p>The lawsuit comes days after J.P. Morgan told analysts and shareholders that traders may have committed fraud by hiding problems in the London whale fiasco. This failed hedging strategy has cost the company $5.8 billion so far and seriously eroded the its reputation for being safer than other big banks.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | 3,076 |
<p>There has been a lot of ranting about Muslims in the press, as when <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2014/10/05/bill-maher-1-ben-affleck-0.html" type="external">Bill Maher</a> <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/10/03/bill_maher_vs_ben_affleck_on_islam_mafia_that_will_fucking_kill_you_if_you_say_the_wrong_thing.html" type="external">recently dissed</a> the entire religion of Islam on television: “It’s the only religion that acts like the Mafia that will fucking kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book.” This is rather a harsh indictment of a religion that has 1.6 billion followers, making up nearly <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/07/worlds-muslim-population-more-widespread-than-you-might-think" type="external">a quarter of the world’s population</a>. Can there be any justification for this kind of talk?</p>
<p>One expects to hear such talk in Israel, and one does. The 19-year-old son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently posted a <a href="http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/06/breaking-news-benjamin-netanyahus-son-hates-islam-and-muslims" type="external">message</a> on his Facebook page suggesting that Muslims “celebrate hate and death.” Like father like son, I suppose. The Israeli prime minister is no fan of Islam. He was in New York only a couple of week ago, speaking at the United Nations, where he denounced “militant Islam.” Yet he made it sound very like every Muslim in the world was somehow tainted by their extremist elements. He singled out Iran, which he says is pursuing a “ <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/09/30/netanyahu_the_global_threat_of_militant_islam.html" type="external">global mission</a>” meant to export its violent revolution “to the entire world.” That sounds very like “godless Communism,” which in the ’50s was regarded by many in the U.S. as wishing to export its “global mission … to the entire world.”</p>
<p>To be fair, Netanyahu is not entirely wrong. There are extremist groups within the Islamic community, including movements such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram in Nigera, and An-Nusrah in Syria—just to name some of the ones that appear in the news almost every day. These fanatical groups wish to create fundamentalist enclaves in which some version of Sharia law will prevail. To Western eyes and ears, Sharia law seems devoid of respect for differences of opinion or complex moral thinking. Certainly the American idea of separation between church and state is lost in Sharia-style governance.</p>
<p>That being said, it seems worth recalling that vast majority of Muslims lead peaceful lives, and—does anyone doubt this?—hope for peace in the world. It’s probably incorrect to say that Islam is “a religion of peace,” as some politicians like to say. Overstatements like that don’t clarify anything. But the Koran does suggest that Islam is a religion of peace, as in Chapter 25, verse 63: “The worshippers of the All-Merciful are they who tread gently upon the earth, and when the ignorant address them, they reply, ‘Peace!’” This is one of many similar passages, although those who wish to support violent Islam will find passages about slaying the enemies of Islam.</p>
<p>The same can be said for the Christian scriptures, which offer contradictory messages about the use of violence.</p>
<p>It might be noted, as Ruhat Husain has done, that <a href="http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/american-muslim/2014/jan/7/islam-religion-peace-or-religion-war/" type="external">American Islamic leaders</a> have repeatedly condemned terrorist acts. They did so after 9/11, and they continue to do so. Only last year, after the Boston marathon bombings, major statements condemning this horrific behavior were issued by the leading Muslim organizations in the U.S., including UMAA, ISNA, and MPAC. The sad fact is that few important media outlets in the world made much of this universal condemnation, and the idea that Muslims somehow “like” violence seems to pervade American thinking.</p>
<p>Recently in Cairo I sat at a dinner party next to an elderly Islamic businessman. He spoke so eloquently about his faith that, were I not myself a Christian, I would have been tempted to join him in the mosque for prayer! He spoke movingly about how Muslims are called five times a day to prayer. As he put it, Muslims never go for long without coming into the presence of God. Their lives are filled with the spirit, and they submit to the will of God when they bow in prayer. The word “Islam” itself means “submission,” but this isn’t a slavish submission to some horrible force. It simply means that one comes regularly into contact with the universal spirit, the creator God, the source of being—one can describe this term in any number of ways.</p>
<p>As a Christian, I try to meditate or pray at least once a day, however briefly. It’s a personal thing, a spiritual practice, and I find myself wonderfully buoyed by the experience of making contact with a deep source within myself or outside myself or wherever it lives. I envy Muslims their practice of regular and genuine prayer. It’s a beautiful practice that enriches their daily lives. (I know what you’re thinking: I should pray more often if I like it so much!)</p>
<p>My experience of talking to everyday Muslims over the years in North Africa, Jordan, Egypt, on the West Bank, and elsewhere has been uniformly uplifting. In my experience, they are humble, spiritually informed people, more often than not frustrated by the bad press that Islam gets in the West.</p>
<p>Extremists exist in every religion, and violent people will be found among all of them. The barbarism of ISIS and their ilk gets big headlines; but it’s worth reminding ourselves repeatedly that most Muslims aren’t like this. They, too, recoil at the beheading of innocents, and wish that extremism—wherever it arises—can be diminished, as it does nobody any good.</p>
<p>Jay Parini, a poet and novelist, teaches at Middlebury College. His most recent book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-The-Human-Face-Icons/dp/054402589X" type="external">Jesus: The Human Face of God</a>. Follow him at Twitter@JayParini.</p> | Can We Lose the Violent Muslim Cliche? | true | https://thedailybeast.com/can-we-lose-the-violent-muslim-cliche | 2018-10-03 | 4left
| Can We Lose the Violent Muslim Cliche?
<p>There has been a lot of ranting about Muslims in the press, as when <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2014/10/05/bill-maher-1-ben-affleck-0.html" type="external">Bill Maher</a> <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/10/03/bill_maher_vs_ben_affleck_on_islam_mafia_that_will_fucking_kill_you_if_you_say_the_wrong_thing.html" type="external">recently dissed</a> the entire religion of Islam on television: “It’s the only religion that acts like the Mafia that will fucking kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book.” This is rather a harsh indictment of a religion that has 1.6 billion followers, making up nearly <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/07/worlds-muslim-population-more-widespread-than-you-might-think" type="external">a quarter of the world’s population</a>. Can there be any justification for this kind of talk?</p>
<p>One expects to hear such talk in Israel, and one does. The 19-year-old son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently posted a <a href="http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/06/breaking-news-benjamin-netanyahus-son-hates-islam-and-muslims" type="external">message</a> on his Facebook page suggesting that Muslims “celebrate hate and death.” Like father like son, I suppose. The Israeli prime minister is no fan of Islam. He was in New York only a couple of week ago, speaking at the United Nations, where he denounced “militant Islam.” Yet he made it sound very like every Muslim in the world was somehow tainted by their extremist elements. He singled out Iran, which he says is pursuing a “ <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/09/30/netanyahu_the_global_threat_of_militant_islam.html" type="external">global mission</a>” meant to export its violent revolution “to the entire world.” That sounds very like “godless Communism,” which in the ’50s was regarded by many in the U.S. as wishing to export its “global mission … to the entire world.”</p>
<p>To be fair, Netanyahu is not entirely wrong. There are extremist groups within the Islamic community, including movements such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram in Nigera, and An-Nusrah in Syria—just to name some of the ones that appear in the news almost every day. These fanatical groups wish to create fundamentalist enclaves in which some version of Sharia law will prevail. To Western eyes and ears, Sharia law seems devoid of respect for differences of opinion or complex moral thinking. Certainly the American idea of separation between church and state is lost in Sharia-style governance.</p>
<p>That being said, it seems worth recalling that vast majority of Muslims lead peaceful lives, and—does anyone doubt this?—hope for peace in the world. It’s probably incorrect to say that Islam is “a religion of peace,” as some politicians like to say. Overstatements like that don’t clarify anything. But the Koran does suggest that Islam is a religion of peace, as in Chapter 25, verse 63: “The worshippers of the All-Merciful are they who tread gently upon the earth, and when the ignorant address them, they reply, ‘Peace!’” This is one of many similar passages, although those who wish to support violent Islam will find passages about slaying the enemies of Islam.</p>
<p>The same can be said for the Christian scriptures, which offer contradictory messages about the use of violence.</p>
<p>It might be noted, as Ruhat Husain has done, that <a href="http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/american-muslim/2014/jan/7/islam-religion-peace-or-religion-war/" type="external">American Islamic leaders</a> have repeatedly condemned terrorist acts. They did so after 9/11, and they continue to do so. Only last year, after the Boston marathon bombings, major statements condemning this horrific behavior were issued by the leading Muslim organizations in the U.S., including UMAA, ISNA, and MPAC. The sad fact is that few important media outlets in the world made much of this universal condemnation, and the idea that Muslims somehow “like” violence seems to pervade American thinking.</p>
<p>Recently in Cairo I sat at a dinner party next to an elderly Islamic businessman. He spoke so eloquently about his faith that, were I not myself a Christian, I would have been tempted to join him in the mosque for prayer! He spoke movingly about how Muslims are called five times a day to prayer. As he put it, Muslims never go for long without coming into the presence of God. Their lives are filled with the spirit, and they submit to the will of God when they bow in prayer. The word “Islam” itself means “submission,” but this isn’t a slavish submission to some horrible force. It simply means that one comes regularly into contact with the universal spirit, the creator God, the source of being—one can describe this term in any number of ways.</p>
<p>As a Christian, I try to meditate or pray at least once a day, however briefly. It’s a personal thing, a spiritual practice, and I find myself wonderfully buoyed by the experience of making contact with a deep source within myself or outside myself or wherever it lives. I envy Muslims their practice of regular and genuine prayer. It’s a beautiful practice that enriches their daily lives. (I know what you’re thinking: I should pray more often if I like it so much!)</p>
<p>My experience of talking to everyday Muslims over the years in North Africa, Jordan, Egypt, on the West Bank, and elsewhere has been uniformly uplifting. In my experience, they are humble, spiritually informed people, more often than not frustrated by the bad press that Islam gets in the West.</p>
<p>Extremists exist in every religion, and violent people will be found among all of them. The barbarism of ISIS and their ilk gets big headlines; but it’s worth reminding ourselves repeatedly that most Muslims aren’t like this. They, too, recoil at the beheading of innocents, and wish that extremism—wherever it arises—can be diminished, as it does nobody any good.</p>
<p>Jay Parini, a poet and novelist, teaches at Middlebury College. His most recent book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-The-Human-Face-Icons/dp/054402589X" type="external">Jesus: The Human Face of God</a>. Follow him at Twitter@JayParini.</p> | 3,077 |
<p>Photo by Maryland GovPics | <a href="" type="internal">CC by 2.0</a></p>
<p>Big Pharma is the culprit for the opioid crisis we have today.&#160; This is about crime in the suites.&#160;&#160; Big Pharma is the biggest legal drug pusher. The 2017 ranking of just the top 10 U.S. biotech and pharmaceutical companies equals $321 billion, based on revenue, according to a current Financial Times equity screener database. Drug overdoses, primarily from opioids are now the leading cause of death for Americans under age 50.&#160; In 2016, drug overdoses killed more people than guns or car accidents.</p>
<p>Government grants (mostly from the National Science Foundation) to university laboratories do the basic science to explore the causes of disease, which is essential before a cure can be investigated.&#160; Big Pharma then cherry picks the most promising prospects into their corporate labs to find a formula that will work to treat the disease.&#160; After they make progress through clinical trials, they apply to the FDA for approval. Then the highly sophisticated advertising begins. Mostly beautiful, young and fashionably dressed pharma reps are the drug pushers.&#160; They &#160;seduce doctors and their staff in their offices with free lunches and free samples (like street pushers do to hook addicts) and whisk doctors to exotic, tropical locations for “seminars.”</p>
<p>The “Mad Men” phenomenon of present-day drug advertising is also seductive.&#160; The actors in the ads are mostly white and middle to upper class.&#160; They live in beautiful, big homes. The long list of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are recited generally while we watch <a href="" type="internal" /> the actors play tennis, pet their dogs, play with their grandchildren, run through fields of daisies or swim in crystal clear water in slow motion.&#160;&#160; Middle-to-upper class Americans with generous company-sponsored health insurance pay very little for a wide variety of drugs.&#160; “Other” people, unable to pay for legal medicines, turn to the streets to alleviate the painful symptoms of diseases they suffer with. And where do their “prescribers” end up?&#160; Mass incarceration of mostly people of color is the answer to that question.</p>
<p>Some members of Congress are now pushing for government funding of opioid treatment centers.&#160; NO! &#160;Make Big Pharma pay!&#160; People who were damaged by legal drugs used to seek trial lawyers to bring product liability lawsuits for damages but the enormous political power of corporate lobbyists now diminishes the ability of citizens to do that.&#160; Furthermore, individual lawsuits take years to work their way through the courts before cases take on class action status.&#160; I experienced this during the 1970s in the now infamous case of the damages done to hundreds of thousands of women who, like me, fell for the pharma advertising that claimed the Dalkon Shield IUD contraceptive was 100% safe and effective. Users experienced a variety of pelvic diseases, perforated uteruses, hemorrhaging, hysterectomy, infertility, and even death. After more than ten years of suffering and mounting lawsuits, this case of egregious corporate crime was exposed.&#160; A large trust fund was eventually set up in 1999, almost 20 years after the damages took place.</p>
<p>Big Tobacco used deceptive advertising back in the day for getting people hooked on smoking. Some of the ads used actors dressed in a doctor’s white coat claiming that menthol cigarettes actually “soothed” the throat!&#160; After decades, Big Tobacco finally made multiple million dollar payouts to many state health departments to help with healthcare needs.</p>
<p>Big Pharma must pay for its sins and take responsibility for this epidemic.&#160; They must set up treatment centers and pay for rehabilitation of the unknowing patients who got hooked (or who had generous supplies of them in their medicine cabinets where teens could get easy access to them).&#160; The medical need for pain relief after major surgeries is essential.&#160; But were doctors ever instructed by Pharma to tell their patients that they must be weaned off the opioids slowly? &#160;Or did they keep writing endless prescriptions once their patients get hooked because the risks were trivialized by Big Pharma?</p> | Make Big Pharma Pay for the Opioid Crisis | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/10/19/make-big-pharma-pay-for-the-opioid-crisis/ | 2017-10-19 | 4left
| Make Big Pharma Pay for the Opioid Crisis
<p>Photo by Maryland GovPics | <a href="" type="internal">CC by 2.0</a></p>
<p>Big Pharma is the culprit for the opioid crisis we have today.&#160; This is about crime in the suites.&#160;&#160; Big Pharma is the biggest legal drug pusher. The 2017 ranking of just the top 10 U.S. biotech and pharmaceutical companies equals $321 billion, based on revenue, according to a current Financial Times equity screener database. Drug overdoses, primarily from opioids are now the leading cause of death for Americans under age 50.&#160; In 2016, drug overdoses killed more people than guns or car accidents.</p>
<p>Government grants (mostly from the National Science Foundation) to university laboratories do the basic science to explore the causes of disease, which is essential before a cure can be investigated.&#160; Big Pharma then cherry picks the most promising prospects into their corporate labs to find a formula that will work to treat the disease.&#160; After they make progress through clinical trials, they apply to the FDA for approval. Then the highly sophisticated advertising begins. Mostly beautiful, young and fashionably dressed pharma reps are the drug pushers.&#160; They &#160;seduce doctors and their staff in their offices with free lunches and free samples (like street pushers do to hook addicts) and whisk doctors to exotic, tropical locations for “seminars.”</p>
<p>The “Mad Men” phenomenon of present-day drug advertising is also seductive.&#160; The actors in the ads are mostly white and middle to upper class.&#160; They live in beautiful, big homes. The long list of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are recited generally while we watch <a href="" type="internal" /> the actors play tennis, pet their dogs, play with their grandchildren, run through fields of daisies or swim in crystal clear water in slow motion.&#160;&#160; Middle-to-upper class Americans with generous company-sponsored health insurance pay very little for a wide variety of drugs.&#160; “Other” people, unable to pay for legal medicines, turn to the streets to alleviate the painful symptoms of diseases they suffer with. And where do their “prescribers” end up?&#160; Mass incarceration of mostly people of color is the answer to that question.</p>
<p>Some members of Congress are now pushing for government funding of opioid treatment centers.&#160; NO! &#160;Make Big Pharma pay!&#160; People who were damaged by legal drugs used to seek trial lawyers to bring product liability lawsuits for damages but the enormous political power of corporate lobbyists now diminishes the ability of citizens to do that.&#160; Furthermore, individual lawsuits take years to work their way through the courts before cases take on class action status.&#160; I experienced this during the 1970s in the now infamous case of the damages done to hundreds of thousands of women who, like me, fell for the pharma advertising that claimed the Dalkon Shield IUD contraceptive was 100% safe and effective. Users experienced a variety of pelvic diseases, perforated uteruses, hemorrhaging, hysterectomy, infertility, and even death. After more than ten years of suffering and mounting lawsuits, this case of egregious corporate crime was exposed.&#160; A large trust fund was eventually set up in 1999, almost 20 years after the damages took place.</p>
<p>Big Tobacco used deceptive advertising back in the day for getting people hooked on smoking. Some of the ads used actors dressed in a doctor’s white coat claiming that menthol cigarettes actually “soothed” the throat!&#160; After decades, Big Tobacco finally made multiple million dollar payouts to many state health departments to help with healthcare needs.</p>
<p>Big Pharma must pay for its sins and take responsibility for this epidemic.&#160; They must set up treatment centers and pay for rehabilitation of the unknowing patients who got hooked (or who had generous supplies of them in their medicine cabinets where teens could get easy access to them).&#160; The medical need for pain relief after major surgeries is essential.&#160; But were doctors ever instructed by Pharma to tell their patients that they must be weaned off the opioids slowly? &#160;Or did they keep writing endless prescriptions once their patients get hooked because the risks were trivialized by Big Pharma?</p> | 3,078 |
<p />
<p>The Federal Trade Commission’s <a href="http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/08/robocalls.shtm" type="external">new rules</a> banning certain types of robocalls may have gone into effect today, but these regs won’t stop deceptive political calls like the ones blanketing Nebraska presently. The calls—the work of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity" type="external">Americans for Prosperity</a>, a right-wing group that has played a key role in organizing tea party and <a href="" type="internal">town hall</a> protests—urge Nebraskans to pressure Senator Ben Nelson, who’s come <a href="" type="internal">under fire</a> by liberal groups for his far-from-enthusiastic position on the <a href="" type="internal">public option</a>, to “kill” health care reform.</p>
<p>Greg Sargent <a href="http://ttp://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/senate-republicans/anti-reform-group-pumping-calls-into-nebraska-urging-senator-nelson-to-help-gop-kill-reform/" type="external">reports</a>:</p>
<p>The calls inform recipients that reform would “put Washington in charge of all health care,” a misleading reference to the possible inclusion of a public option, and would “cut Medicare by $500 billion,” a claim that’s also been widely denounced as misleading…</p>
<p>“Senator Ben Nelson is playing an important role in this debate,” the call says, according to a script provided to me by AFP after I was tipped off to the call. “Would you be willing to call Senator Ben Nelson and tell him to vote for the Filibuster and kill the health care bill?”</p>
<p>If the caller responds affirmatively, the operator recites a number for one of Nelson’s district offices. “Please tell Senator Ben Nelson to vote for the Filibuster and kill the health care bill,” the call continues. “Can I confirm that you will make this call within the hour?”</p>
<p>Nelson has refused to rule out joining GOP filibusters on major legislation, though he’s also suggested he probably won’t filibuster on health care. The call is a sign that anti-reform forces still view Nelson, who has refused to back a public option, as a potential ally with Republicans in the quest to “kill” reform.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, two liberal groups that targeted Nelson earlier this summer over his public option stance now have Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in their sights (even though the Gang of Six member has made clear he’s opposed to a government-run insurance plan). The <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/health-care-reform/2009/08/liberals_target_grassley_on_pu.html" type="external">Washington Post</a> reports:</p>
<p>A television ad set to debut in Iowa and the Washington area in coming weeks features an Iowan who says he voted for Grassley and other Republicans but is unhappy with their opposition to providing a public health insurance program as part of the health-care reform legislation.</p>
<p>“Senator, whose side are you on?” Kevin Shilling of Greenfield, Iowa, asks in the ad, which was put together by Howard Dean’s Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.</p>
<p>Follow Daniel Schulman on <a href="http://twitter.com/DanielSchulman" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>
<p /> | Misleading Anti-Reform Calls Target Nebraskans | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/misleading-anti-reform-calls-target-nebraskans/ | 2009-09-01 | 4left
| Misleading Anti-Reform Calls Target Nebraskans
<p />
<p>The Federal Trade Commission’s <a href="http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/08/robocalls.shtm" type="external">new rules</a> banning certain types of robocalls may have gone into effect today, but these regs won’t stop deceptive political calls like the ones blanketing Nebraska presently. The calls—the work of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity" type="external">Americans for Prosperity</a>, a right-wing group that has played a key role in organizing tea party and <a href="" type="internal">town hall</a> protests—urge Nebraskans to pressure Senator Ben Nelson, who’s come <a href="" type="internal">under fire</a> by liberal groups for his far-from-enthusiastic position on the <a href="" type="internal">public option</a>, to “kill” health care reform.</p>
<p>Greg Sargent <a href="http://ttp://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/senate-republicans/anti-reform-group-pumping-calls-into-nebraska-urging-senator-nelson-to-help-gop-kill-reform/" type="external">reports</a>:</p>
<p>The calls inform recipients that reform would “put Washington in charge of all health care,” a misleading reference to the possible inclusion of a public option, and would “cut Medicare by $500 billion,” a claim that’s also been widely denounced as misleading…</p>
<p>“Senator Ben Nelson is playing an important role in this debate,” the call says, according to a script provided to me by AFP after I was tipped off to the call. “Would you be willing to call Senator Ben Nelson and tell him to vote for the Filibuster and kill the health care bill?”</p>
<p>If the caller responds affirmatively, the operator recites a number for one of Nelson’s district offices. “Please tell Senator Ben Nelson to vote for the Filibuster and kill the health care bill,” the call continues. “Can I confirm that you will make this call within the hour?”</p>
<p>Nelson has refused to rule out joining GOP filibusters on major legislation, though he’s also suggested he probably won’t filibuster on health care. The call is a sign that anti-reform forces still view Nelson, who has refused to back a public option, as a potential ally with Republicans in the quest to “kill” reform.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, two liberal groups that targeted Nelson earlier this summer over his public option stance now have Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in their sights (even though the Gang of Six member has made clear he’s opposed to a government-run insurance plan). The <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/health-care-reform/2009/08/liberals_target_grassley_on_pu.html" type="external">Washington Post</a> reports:</p>
<p>A television ad set to debut in Iowa and the Washington area in coming weeks features an Iowan who says he voted for Grassley and other Republicans but is unhappy with their opposition to providing a public health insurance program as part of the health-care reform legislation.</p>
<p>“Senator, whose side are you on?” Kevin Shilling of Greenfield, Iowa, asks in the ad, which was put together by Howard Dean’s Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.</p>
<p>Follow Daniel Schulman on <a href="http://twitter.com/DanielSchulman" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>
<p /> | 3,079 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The strict moratoriums, which start Tuesday, give federal health officials unprecedented power to choose any region and industry with high fraud activity, and ban new Medicare and Medicaid providers from joining the programs for six months. They wouldn’t ban existing providers.</p>
<p>The administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the agency is targeting providers of home health care in eight counties in the Miami and Chicago areas. All ambulance providers would be banned in eight counties in the Houston area.</p>
<p>The moratorium, which was first reported by The Associated Press, will also extend to Children’s Health Insurance Program providers in the same areas, agency administrator Marilyn Tavenner said in a statement.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>It’s unclear how many providers will be shut out of the programs.</p>
<p>There were 662 home health agencies in Miami-Dade in 2012 and the ratio of home health agencies to Medicare beneficiaries was 1,960 percent greater in Miami Dade County than other counties, according to figures from federal health officials.</p>
<p>South Florida, long known as ground-zero for Medicare fraud, has also had several high-profile prosecutions involving that industry.</p>
<p>In February, the owners and operators of two Miami home health agencies were sentenced for their participation in a $48 million Medicare fraud scheme.</p>
<p>The number of home health providers in Cook County, Ill., increased from 301 to 509 between 2008 and 2012. There were 275 ambulance suppliers in Harris County, Texas, in 2012. The ratio of providers to patients in both regions was also several hundred times greater than in other counties, federal health officials said.</p>
<p>Top Senate Republicans have criticized the agency for not using the powerful moratoriums sooner as a tool to combat an estimated $60 billion a year in Medicare fraud. Senators Chuck Grassley, who is the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and Orrin Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, sent a letter to federal health officials in 2011 urging them to use the bans.</p>
<p>“While it’s certainly better late than never, it’s unfortunate that it took CMS three years to use the tools it’s had to protect seniors,” Hatch said in a statement Friday, adding he hoped “to see more action like this.”</p>
<p>Officials for the Department of Health and Services inspector general lobbied hard to ensure moratorium power was included under the Affordable Care Act as the Obama administration focuses on cleaning up fraud on the front end by preventing crooks from getting into the program in the first place.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“There’s no shortage of bad actors to defraud the taxpayers, and the number gets bigger all the time, so it’s good to see the administration at last using this new tool to fight fraud,” Grassley said in a statement.</p>
<p>In the past, federal health officials tried to stall new provider applications from being processed, hoping to slow the number flocking to high-fraud sectors. But when providers inevitably complained, the agency had to process their paperwork.</p>
<p>The federal agency can also revoke the IDs of suspicious providers, but those are temporary and many companies are able to re-enroll later or enroll under a different name.</p>
<p>Federal health officials have been reluctant to use one of their most powerful new tools, worrying moratoriums may harm legitimate providers and hamper patients’ access to care. Tavenner said in the statement that would not happen, but the agency didn’t elaborate. Agency officials said they intend to consider other moratoriums in different industries in other cities going forward.</p>
<p>The ability to target certain industries and cities is especially helpful as Medicare fraud has morphed into complex schemes over the years, moving from medical equipment and HIV infusion fraud to ambulance scams as crooks try to stay one step ahead of authorities. Fraudsters have also spread out across the country, bringing their scams to new cities once authorities catch onto them.</p>
<p>The scams have also grown more sophisticated, using recruiters who are paid kickbacks for finding patients, while doctors, nurses and company owners coordinate to appear to deliver medical services that they are not.</p>
<p>The moratoriums come as budget cuts are forcing federal health officials to retract its watchdog arm as it launches its largest health care expansion since the Medicare program.</p>
<p>Health and Human Services inspector general officials said they are in the process of cutting staff by 20 percent, from 1,800 at its peak to 1,400, and cancelling several high-profile projects, including an audit that would have investigated technology security in the federal and state health exchanges launching in October. The project was slated to examine issues including whether patient information was secure from hackers in the online marketplace, where individuals and small businesses can shop for health insurance.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Feds ban some Medicare providers | false | https://abqjournal.com/226335/feds-ban-some-medicare-providers.html | 2013-07-27 | 2least
| Feds ban some Medicare providers
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The strict moratoriums, which start Tuesday, give federal health officials unprecedented power to choose any region and industry with high fraud activity, and ban new Medicare and Medicaid providers from joining the programs for six months. They wouldn’t ban existing providers.</p>
<p>The administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the agency is targeting providers of home health care in eight counties in the Miami and Chicago areas. All ambulance providers would be banned in eight counties in the Houston area.</p>
<p>The moratorium, which was first reported by The Associated Press, will also extend to Children’s Health Insurance Program providers in the same areas, agency administrator Marilyn Tavenner said in a statement.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>It’s unclear how many providers will be shut out of the programs.</p>
<p>There were 662 home health agencies in Miami-Dade in 2012 and the ratio of home health agencies to Medicare beneficiaries was 1,960 percent greater in Miami Dade County than other counties, according to figures from federal health officials.</p>
<p>South Florida, long known as ground-zero for Medicare fraud, has also had several high-profile prosecutions involving that industry.</p>
<p>In February, the owners and operators of two Miami home health agencies were sentenced for their participation in a $48 million Medicare fraud scheme.</p>
<p>The number of home health providers in Cook County, Ill., increased from 301 to 509 between 2008 and 2012. There were 275 ambulance suppliers in Harris County, Texas, in 2012. The ratio of providers to patients in both regions was also several hundred times greater than in other counties, federal health officials said.</p>
<p>Top Senate Republicans have criticized the agency for not using the powerful moratoriums sooner as a tool to combat an estimated $60 billion a year in Medicare fraud. Senators Chuck Grassley, who is the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and Orrin Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, sent a letter to federal health officials in 2011 urging them to use the bans.</p>
<p>“While it’s certainly better late than never, it’s unfortunate that it took CMS three years to use the tools it’s had to protect seniors,” Hatch said in a statement Friday, adding he hoped “to see more action like this.”</p>
<p>Officials for the Department of Health and Services inspector general lobbied hard to ensure moratorium power was included under the Affordable Care Act as the Obama administration focuses on cleaning up fraud on the front end by preventing crooks from getting into the program in the first place.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“There’s no shortage of bad actors to defraud the taxpayers, and the number gets bigger all the time, so it’s good to see the administration at last using this new tool to fight fraud,” Grassley said in a statement.</p>
<p>In the past, federal health officials tried to stall new provider applications from being processed, hoping to slow the number flocking to high-fraud sectors. But when providers inevitably complained, the agency had to process their paperwork.</p>
<p>The federal agency can also revoke the IDs of suspicious providers, but those are temporary and many companies are able to re-enroll later or enroll under a different name.</p>
<p>Federal health officials have been reluctant to use one of their most powerful new tools, worrying moratoriums may harm legitimate providers and hamper patients’ access to care. Tavenner said in the statement that would not happen, but the agency didn’t elaborate. Agency officials said they intend to consider other moratoriums in different industries in other cities going forward.</p>
<p>The ability to target certain industries and cities is especially helpful as Medicare fraud has morphed into complex schemes over the years, moving from medical equipment and HIV infusion fraud to ambulance scams as crooks try to stay one step ahead of authorities. Fraudsters have also spread out across the country, bringing their scams to new cities once authorities catch onto them.</p>
<p>The scams have also grown more sophisticated, using recruiters who are paid kickbacks for finding patients, while doctors, nurses and company owners coordinate to appear to deliver medical services that they are not.</p>
<p>The moratoriums come as budget cuts are forcing federal health officials to retract its watchdog arm as it launches its largest health care expansion since the Medicare program.</p>
<p>Health and Human Services inspector general officials said they are in the process of cutting staff by 20 percent, from 1,800 at its peak to 1,400, and cancelling several high-profile projects, including an audit that would have investigated technology security in the federal and state health exchanges launching in October. The project was slated to examine issues including whether patient information was secure from hackers in the online marketplace, where individuals and small businesses can shop for health insurance.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 3,080 |
<p />
<p>I’m sure you remember one of the biggest arguments against Donald Trump is that he is somehow an Anti-Semite.</p>
<p>He was a racist, a xenophobe, a misogynist, and an Anti-Semite.</p>
<p>They wouldn’t shut the hell up about it.</p>
<p>All the Leftists who hate Jews almost as much as they hate white people were concerned that in electing Donald Trump, America elected an Anti-Semite.</p>
<p>Hillary wailed about it.</p>
<p>Celebrities kvetched over it.</p>
<p>And Donald Trump — a man who has never shown an ounce of antisemitism — suddenly becomes the biggest Anti-Semite since Heinrich Himmler.</p>
<p>It didn’t matter to them that Donald Trump’s daughter converted to Judaism. Trump was an Anti-Semite.</p>
<p>It didn’t matter to them that Donald Trump speaks forcefully in defense our greatest ally Israel. Trump was an Anti-Semite.</p>
<p>From all the screaming and caterwauling, you’d think these people on the Left have a real problem with antisemitism.</p>
<p>Don’t kid yourself. They don’t give a damn about Israel or the Jews.</p>
<p>And nothing makes that more evident than their lack of outrage over Barack Obama stabbing the nation of Israel in the back.</p>
<p>All those people who couldn’t shut up about Trump’s alleged antisemitism are strangely silent.</p>
<p>Faced with the honest-to-God Anti-Semite currently occupying the Oval Office, these warriors for the Jews can’t even muster up the energy to give a damn.</p>
<p>The truth is, they would not care one bit if Donald Trump were actually an Anti-Semite.</p>
<p>Hell, most of these people are anti-Semitic.</p>
<p>From the filthy vermin who skittered around Zuccotti Park for Occupy Wall Street to the hateful pro-Palestine psychos of Black Lives Matter, the Left is, without question, the most anti-Semitic crop of haters in the country.</p>
<p>They share Obama’s hatred for Israel and the Jooooos.</p>
<p>Their supposed concern over Trump’s mythical antisemitism was as phony as a three dollar bill.</p>
<p>That’s why, when faced with a President who actually is an Anti-Semite, these Leftists don’t say boo about it.</p>
<p>Suddenly all their concern over antisemitism evaporates like a whole lot of steam.</p>
<p>If Donald Trump were really the Anti-Semite here, he would not have spoken out forcefully against this vile UN resolution. He would not have come to the defense of Israel.</p>
<p>And if Barack Obama really weren’t an Anti-Semite, he wouldn’t have sat silently like the shiftless coward that he is when the UN stabbed our ally in the back.</p>
<p>What more evidence do you need that these attacks the Left has been launching against Donald Trump have no basis in reality?</p>
<p>They are worse than hypocrites.</p>
<p>They commit blood libel against a man who has already shown more strength of character and loyalty to an ally than Barack Obama ever has.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Please consider making a contribution to PatriotRetort.com. Hit DONATE button in the side bar. Even a few bucks can make a world of difference!</p> | Where are all the people screaming Anti-Semite? | true | http://patriotretort.com/people-screaming-anti-semite/ | 2016-12-26 | 0right
| Where are all the people screaming Anti-Semite?
<p />
<p>I’m sure you remember one of the biggest arguments against Donald Trump is that he is somehow an Anti-Semite.</p>
<p>He was a racist, a xenophobe, a misogynist, and an Anti-Semite.</p>
<p>They wouldn’t shut the hell up about it.</p>
<p>All the Leftists who hate Jews almost as much as they hate white people were concerned that in electing Donald Trump, America elected an Anti-Semite.</p>
<p>Hillary wailed about it.</p>
<p>Celebrities kvetched over it.</p>
<p>And Donald Trump — a man who has never shown an ounce of antisemitism — suddenly becomes the biggest Anti-Semite since Heinrich Himmler.</p>
<p>It didn’t matter to them that Donald Trump’s daughter converted to Judaism. Trump was an Anti-Semite.</p>
<p>It didn’t matter to them that Donald Trump speaks forcefully in defense our greatest ally Israel. Trump was an Anti-Semite.</p>
<p>From all the screaming and caterwauling, you’d think these people on the Left have a real problem with antisemitism.</p>
<p>Don’t kid yourself. They don’t give a damn about Israel or the Jews.</p>
<p>And nothing makes that more evident than their lack of outrage over Barack Obama stabbing the nation of Israel in the back.</p>
<p>All those people who couldn’t shut up about Trump’s alleged antisemitism are strangely silent.</p>
<p>Faced with the honest-to-God Anti-Semite currently occupying the Oval Office, these warriors for the Jews can’t even muster up the energy to give a damn.</p>
<p>The truth is, they would not care one bit if Donald Trump were actually an Anti-Semite.</p>
<p>Hell, most of these people are anti-Semitic.</p>
<p>From the filthy vermin who skittered around Zuccotti Park for Occupy Wall Street to the hateful pro-Palestine psychos of Black Lives Matter, the Left is, without question, the most anti-Semitic crop of haters in the country.</p>
<p>They share Obama’s hatred for Israel and the Jooooos.</p>
<p>Their supposed concern over Trump’s mythical antisemitism was as phony as a three dollar bill.</p>
<p>That’s why, when faced with a President who actually is an Anti-Semite, these Leftists don’t say boo about it.</p>
<p>Suddenly all their concern over antisemitism evaporates like a whole lot of steam.</p>
<p>If Donald Trump were really the Anti-Semite here, he would not have spoken out forcefully against this vile UN resolution. He would not have come to the defense of Israel.</p>
<p>And if Barack Obama really weren’t an Anti-Semite, he wouldn’t have sat silently like the shiftless coward that he is when the UN stabbed our ally in the back.</p>
<p>What more evidence do you need that these attacks the Left has been launching against Donald Trump have no basis in reality?</p>
<p>They are worse than hypocrites.</p>
<p>They commit blood libel against a man who has already shown more strength of character and loyalty to an ally than Barack Obama ever has.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Please consider making a contribution to PatriotRetort.com. Hit DONATE button in the side bar. Even a few bucks can make a world of difference!</p> | 3,081 |
<p>Mimic, written by Matthew Robbins and Guillermo Del Toro and directed by Del Toro (Cronos) is almost an old-fashioned creature feature — a cross between the slime-is-alive flick and the monsters-in-the- subway flick — but it is a surprisingly watchable and suspenseful example of the kind. Del Toro, who showed his cleverness and originality in Cronos makes use of the same qualities here, plus a strong cast, to breathe new life into what might seem very tired material. Even more impressively, he does so without the kind of postmodern archness which has come to be a continual irritant if a very occasional delight in most films of this type.</p>
<p>The medium-high concept is that, two years before the action of the film begins, a new plague called Strickler’s Disease, carried by cockroaches, started killing the children of New York in terrifying numbers. The film opens with pseudo-documentary footage of the means by which a brilliant entomologist, Dr. Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) genetically engineered a new species of bug, called “the Judas breed” to wipe out the cockroaches. The Judas bugs were also engineered (this is stretching credulity a little) with a “suicide gene” so that they would proceed to wipe themselves out. Dr. Tyler and her colleague from the Center for Disease Control, Dr. Peter Mann (Jeremy Northam) have been hailed as heroes and public benefactors.</p>
<p>Now, two years later and Dr. Susan and Dr. Peter have married and are trying to start a family. At the same time, among derelicts and “mole people,” something is causing strange disappearances and, in a few cases, horrible deaths. It does not take long for the audience to put together these two strands of narrative and realize that the Judas bugs did not all self-destruct. That any watcher of horror movies will have expected. What is unexpected is that they have developed lungs, grown to human size and evolved to mimic the human form, all in the space of two years (somehow they must have “sped up its breeding cycle,” Dr Tyler theorizes). In short, beneficent science has inadvertently created a Frankenstein’s monster which is roaming wild beneath the streets of the city.</p>
<p>Del Toro wisely avoids the temptation to become too portentously philosophical about this. There is a former professor of Dr Tyler’s, played by F. Murray Abraham, who does a bit of cluck-clucking about the consequences of her messing with nature, but he hasn’t much to do. And what you might think of as the obligatory scenes in which police and potentates and politicians get involved and shout at each other and attempt to organize responses to the threat to the city are completely omitted. The battle against the bugs is fought entirely by Dr. Peter and Dr. Susan, plus an assistant to the former (Josh Brolin), a city transport cop called Leonard (Charles S. Dutton) and a wizened old Italian shoemaker (Giancarlo Giannini) and his weird son, Chuy (Alexander Goodwin) who seem to have wandered into this film from a fairy tale..</p>
<p>The good thing about the movie is that we are made to care about the main characters and therefore what happens to them, and that the suspense as to what is going to happen to them is kept up almost continually until the end. It is also a cool and very spooky idea to conceive of the big bugs as having adapted to their environment by mimicking their main predator, man. The sheer physical means by which they put on a human appearance and then kill you with their sword-like appendages is visually very impressive. The bad thing is the strain on our credulity of the accelerated evolution and the fact that, when two of the most sympathetic characters are carried off by the bugs, they are not killed, whereas everybody else to suffer this misfortune dies instantly and horribly. Lucky thing it was these two, huh? But on the whole, the skillful and original handling of the material makes this that rare thing, a contemporary horror movie that is worth seeing.0</p> | Mimic | false | https://eppc.org/publications/mimic/ | 1right-center
| Mimic
<p>Mimic, written by Matthew Robbins and Guillermo Del Toro and directed by Del Toro (Cronos) is almost an old-fashioned creature feature — a cross between the slime-is-alive flick and the monsters-in-the- subway flick — but it is a surprisingly watchable and suspenseful example of the kind. Del Toro, who showed his cleverness and originality in Cronos makes use of the same qualities here, plus a strong cast, to breathe new life into what might seem very tired material. Even more impressively, he does so without the kind of postmodern archness which has come to be a continual irritant if a very occasional delight in most films of this type.</p>
<p>The medium-high concept is that, two years before the action of the film begins, a new plague called Strickler’s Disease, carried by cockroaches, started killing the children of New York in terrifying numbers. The film opens with pseudo-documentary footage of the means by which a brilliant entomologist, Dr. Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) genetically engineered a new species of bug, called “the Judas breed” to wipe out the cockroaches. The Judas bugs were also engineered (this is stretching credulity a little) with a “suicide gene” so that they would proceed to wipe themselves out. Dr. Tyler and her colleague from the Center for Disease Control, Dr. Peter Mann (Jeremy Northam) have been hailed as heroes and public benefactors.</p>
<p>Now, two years later and Dr. Susan and Dr. Peter have married and are trying to start a family. At the same time, among derelicts and “mole people,” something is causing strange disappearances and, in a few cases, horrible deaths. It does not take long for the audience to put together these two strands of narrative and realize that the Judas bugs did not all self-destruct. That any watcher of horror movies will have expected. What is unexpected is that they have developed lungs, grown to human size and evolved to mimic the human form, all in the space of two years (somehow they must have “sped up its breeding cycle,” Dr Tyler theorizes). In short, beneficent science has inadvertently created a Frankenstein’s monster which is roaming wild beneath the streets of the city.</p>
<p>Del Toro wisely avoids the temptation to become too portentously philosophical about this. There is a former professor of Dr Tyler’s, played by F. Murray Abraham, who does a bit of cluck-clucking about the consequences of her messing with nature, but he hasn’t much to do. And what you might think of as the obligatory scenes in which police and potentates and politicians get involved and shout at each other and attempt to organize responses to the threat to the city are completely omitted. The battle against the bugs is fought entirely by Dr. Peter and Dr. Susan, plus an assistant to the former (Josh Brolin), a city transport cop called Leonard (Charles S. Dutton) and a wizened old Italian shoemaker (Giancarlo Giannini) and his weird son, Chuy (Alexander Goodwin) who seem to have wandered into this film from a fairy tale..</p>
<p>The good thing about the movie is that we are made to care about the main characters and therefore what happens to them, and that the suspense as to what is going to happen to them is kept up almost continually until the end. It is also a cool and very spooky idea to conceive of the big bugs as having adapted to their environment by mimicking their main predator, man. The sheer physical means by which they put on a human appearance and then kill you with their sword-like appendages is visually very impressive. The bad thing is the strain on our credulity of the accelerated evolution and the fact that, when two of the most sympathetic characters are carried off by the bugs, they are not killed, whereas everybody else to suffer this misfortune dies instantly and horribly. Lucky thing it was these two, huh? But on the whole, the skillful and original handling of the material makes this that rare thing, a contemporary horror movie that is worth seeing.0</p> | 3,082 |
|
<p />
<p>Lafayette,&#160;Louisiana—One of the larger themes behind this trip has always been, amorphous as it might sound, to make some sense of the map. Part of that is geographical: Do these towns with the funny names on the map really exist? Did Vermont quietly leave the Union without anyone noticing? But it’s cultural, too. You develop an odd sense of what a particular region is like if you spend your entire life reading about it without ever once walking its streets and talking to its people. For most of my childhood, for instance, my mental image of Atlanta came exclusively from old photos from Civil War anthologies: black-and-white, bustling with horse-drawn carriages, and prone to periodic outbreaks of cholera. Think of it as cultural autodidacticism.</p>
<p>So on that note, it was kind of awesome to arrive in the Cajun country of southwest Louisiana and discover that, in the heart of a region possessed by a “This is America, Speak English!” nativism, you can go to a gas station, or a convenience store, or a diner, or anywhere else locals tend to gather, and with a little bit of luck, hear people speaking an Old World tongue passed down from their exiled Canadian ancestors and kept intact over three centuries. For lack of a better analogy, it felt a bit like Samwise Gamgee’s first encounter with the elves.</p>
<p>Whether Cajun will surivive a fourth century is unclear; the handful of aging fluent speakers I talked to all had the same complaint:&#160;The younger generations just don’t feel the need to keep the tradition alive. And that’s probably true.&#160;But if Cajun&#160; fades away as a spoken dialect, it’s at least sticking around a little while longer in musical form. In Lafayette, at the epicenter of Acadiana, we caught a twinbill show at a local bar featuring two popular Cajun bands, the Pine Leaf Boys and Feufollet (which translates to something like “Will-o-the-Wisp,” I think). Both groups were young—twentysomethings, mostly—but the crowd covered a much wider range, all there to hear the distinctive accordion- and tambourine-flavored Old World rhythms.</p>
<p>Anyway, this was really just an excuse to post some cool (and pretty unique) music, so here are the Pine Leaf Boys:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>And here’s Feufollet, below the jump:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>*Note: This analogy, preposterous as it sounds, actually holds up pretty well—especially when you consider that both groups were more or less exiled to their current locations and inhabited a unique but isolated landscape that few others dared move to. And I’m done.</p>
<p /> | This is America, Speak Cajun | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/america-speak-cajun/ | 2010-08-03 | 4left
| This is America, Speak Cajun
<p />
<p>Lafayette,&#160;Louisiana—One of the larger themes behind this trip has always been, amorphous as it might sound, to make some sense of the map. Part of that is geographical: Do these towns with the funny names on the map really exist? Did Vermont quietly leave the Union without anyone noticing? But it’s cultural, too. You develop an odd sense of what a particular region is like if you spend your entire life reading about it without ever once walking its streets and talking to its people. For most of my childhood, for instance, my mental image of Atlanta came exclusively from old photos from Civil War anthologies: black-and-white, bustling with horse-drawn carriages, and prone to periodic outbreaks of cholera. Think of it as cultural autodidacticism.</p>
<p>So on that note, it was kind of awesome to arrive in the Cajun country of southwest Louisiana and discover that, in the heart of a region possessed by a “This is America, Speak English!” nativism, you can go to a gas station, or a convenience store, or a diner, or anywhere else locals tend to gather, and with a little bit of luck, hear people speaking an Old World tongue passed down from their exiled Canadian ancestors and kept intact over three centuries. For lack of a better analogy, it felt a bit like Samwise Gamgee’s first encounter with the elves.</p>
<p>Whether Cajun will surivive a fourth century is unclear; the handful of aging fluent speakers I talked to all had the same complaint:&#160;The younger generations just don’t feel the need to keep the tradition alive. And that’s probably true.&#160;But if Cajun&#160; fades away as a spoken dialect, it’s at least sticking around a little while longer in musical form. In Lafayette, at the epicenter of Acadiana, we caught a twinbill show at a local bar featuring two popular Cajun bands, the Pine Leaf Boys and Feufollet (which translates to something like “Will-o-the-Wisp,” I think). Both groups were young—twentysomethings, mostly—but the crowd covered a much wider range, all there to hear the distinctive accordion- and tambourine-flavored Old World rhythms.</p>
<p>Anyway, this was really just an excuse to post some cool (and pretty unique) music, so here are the Pine Leaf Boys:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>And here’s Feufollet, below the jump:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>*Note: This analogy, preposterous as it sounds, actually holds up pretty well—especially when you consider that both groups were more or less exiled to their current locations and inhabited a unique but isolated landscape that few others dared move to. And I’m done.</p>
<p /> | 3,083 |
<p>TOP STORIES</p>
<p>Wheat Futures Pop on Plains Drought</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A drought in the Great Plains sparked a rally in wheat prices Tuesday.</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Agriculture said that the condition of the hard red winter wheat crop, primarily grown in southern Plains states like Kansas, dropped sharply as farmers in the region struggle through dry conditions.</p>
<p>Drought Dampens South Africa's 2018 Corn Plantings -- Market Talk</p>
<p>1544 GMT -- South African corn farmers have slashed plantings for the 2018 season as Africa's top producer of the grain grapples with drought, says the government's Crop Estimates Committee. Plantings likely will drop 12% to 2.3 million hectares as the dry spell pressures growers in the main producing region in the country's west. Plantings for white corn--a regional staple--are down 22% while acreage for yellow corn--used mainly in animal feeds--is 4% higher on year. It is a reversal of fortunes for a country that posted a record crop of 16.7 million tons last year, more than double the 7.8 million tons produced in 2016 after rains aided a recovery from the 2015-2016 drought fueled by El Nino. ([email protected];@Nicholasbariyo)</p>
<p>STORIES OF INTEREST</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>USDA Says 132,000 Tons of Corn Sold to Spain in 2017-18</p>
<p>WASHINGTON--Private exporters reported to the U.S. Department of Agriculture export sales of 132,000 metric tons of corn for delivery to Spain during the 2017/2018 marketing year.</p>
<p>The marketing year for corn began Sept. 1.</p>
<p>Value Meals Drive McDonald's Sales - 2nd Update</p>
<p>McDonald's Corp. gained sales again by luring core customers to its cheapest meals and drinks.</p>
<p>The burger giant attributed U.S. sales growth in the fourth quarter to a "McPick 2" meal deal and low-price beverages, as well as to higher-priced Buttermilk Crispy Tenders. The chain introduced a new nationwide value menu this month with items priced at $1, $2 and $3, hoping consumers drawn in for cheap sodas and burgers will also order more expensive items.</p>
<p>THE MARKETS</p>
<p>Live Cattle Futures Ease</p>
<p>Cattle futures were mixed Tuesday, easing off multimonth highs.</p>
<p>The futures market started the week by hitting a two-month high, after cash prices for physical cattle rose more than expected. But analysts say futures bumped up against selling pressure after falling from those highs, with chart signals suggesting to traders that prices were headed lower.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>January 30, 2018 17:52 ET (22:52 GMT)</p> | Grain Highlights: Top Stories of the Day | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/09/18/grain-highlights-top-stories-day.html | 2018-01-30 | 0right
| Grain Highlights: Top Stories of the Day
<p>TOP STORIES</p>
<p>Wheat Futures Pop on Plains Drought</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A drought in the Great Plains sparked a rally in wheat prices Tuesday.</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Agriculture said that the condition of the hard red winter wheat crop, primarily grown in southern Plains states like Kansas, dropped sharply as farmers in the region struggle through dry conditions.</p>
<p>Drought Dampens South Africa's 2018 Corn Plantings -- Market Talk</p>
<p>1544 GMT -- South African corn farmers have slashed plantings for the 2018 season as Africa's top producer of the grain grapples with drought, says the government's Crop Estimates Committee. Plantings likely will drop 12% to 2.3 million hectares as the dry spell pressures growers in the main producing region in the country's west. Plantings for white corn--a regional staple--are down 22% while acreage for yellow corn--used mainly in animal feeds--is 4% higher on year. It is a reversal of fortunes for a country that posted a record crop of 16.7 million tons last year, more than double the 7.8 million tons produced in 2016 after rains aided a recovery from the 2015-2016 drought fueled by El Nino. ([email protected];@Nicholasbariyo)</p>
<p>STORIES OF INTEREST</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>USDA Says 132,000 Tons of Corn Sold to Spain in 2017-18</p>
<p>WASHINGTON--Private exporters reported to the U.S. Department of Agriculture export sales of 132,000 metric tons of corn for delivery to Spain during the 2017/2018 marketing year.</p>
<p>The marketing year for corn began Sept. 1.</p>
<p>Value Meals Drive McDonald's Sales - 2nd Update</p>
<p>McDonald's Corp. gained sales again by luring core customers to its cheapest meals and drinks.</p>
<p>The burger giant attributed U.S. sales growth in the fourth quarter to a "McPick 2" meal deal and low-price beverages, as well as to higher-priced Buttermilk Crispy Tenders. The chain introduced a new nationwide value menu this month with items priced at $1, $2 and $3, hoping consumers drawn in for cheap sodas and burgers will also order more expensive items.</p>
<p>THE MARKETS</p>
<p>Live Cattle Futures Ease</p>
<p>Cattle futures were mixed Tuesday, easing off multimonth highs.</p>
<p>The futures market started the week by hitting a two-month high, after cash prices for physical cattle rose more than expected. But analysts say futures bumped up against selling pressure after falling from those highs, with chart signals suggesting to traders that prices were headed lower.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>January 30, 2018 17:52 ET (22:52 GMT)</p> | 3,084 |
<p>Thirty-eight days after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded the Boeing 787, executives from the airplane maker are laying out their plan to get the Dreamliner back in the air.</p>
<p>Ray Connor, the head of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, will lead a team to Washington, DC, where they'll present specific proposals they believe will prevent lithium-ion batteries in Dreamliners from overheating.</p>
<p>At the same time, sources say the Boeing plan also calls for modifications to the 787 battery compartment that will limit or contain any damage done by batteries that may overheat or catch fire.</p>
<p>Boeing's multi-point plan</p>
<p>The Boeing plan calls for ensuring the safety of Dreamliners with several design changes, according to sources. Boeing believes the proposed remedies will add another level of prevention against battery fires and protect the plane in case the lithium-ion batteries get too hot.</p>
<p>Among the 787 solutions the company will propose:</p>
<p>* Redesigning lithium-ion batteries to insulate the cells and prevent them from overheating.</p>
<p>* Putting the batteries in a case designed to keep cells that may overheat from burning components or other parts of the Dreamliner outside the compartment.</p>
<p>* Venting battery compartments so any fumes caused by batteries that overheat will flow outside the plane.</p>
<p>* Instituting new rules requiring Dreamliner crews to closely monitor the battery and power units for potential problems.</p>
<p>FAA Under Scrutiny</p>
<p>For Michael Huerta, administrator of the FAA, the proposal to solve the Dreamliner issues and the decision to lift <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100385850" type="external">the grounding</a> add even more scrutiny to the agency.</p>
<p>After two fires on Dreamliners in January, critics raised questions about the FAA certification of the 787. In addition, the National Transportation Safety Board initiated a review of the 787 certification as part of its investigation into the Dreamliner fires.</p>
<p>How quickly will the FAA rule on Boeing's proposed Dreamliner solutions?</p>
<p>Neither Boeing nor the FAA will comment on Friday's meeting or predict when the Dreamliner might fly again. However, the close contact between Boeing and the FAA suggests the agency will not take long to make a decision.</p>
<p>Executives with airlines that have ordered the Dreamliner say Boeing is hoping to make the modifications and have the 787 flying by late March or early April.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cnbc.com/" type="external" /></p>
<p>More from our partners at <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/" type="external">CNBC</a>:</p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100484801" type="external">Economic slowdown: How serious for stocks?</a></p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100484715" type="external">Italian business leaders argue over election aftermath</a></p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100482094" type="external">Pro: 401(k)s hold risky levels of company stock</a></p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100481462" type="external">AIG posts net loss after unit sale, but results beat</a></p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100479179" type="external">Heinz earnings beat amid strength in emerging markets</a></p> | Boeing to lay out plan to fix grounded Dreamliners | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-02-22/boeing-lay-out-plan-fix-grounded-dreamliners | 2013-02-22 | 3left-center
| Boeing to lay out plan to fix grounded Dreamliners
<p>Thirty-eight days after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded the Boeing 787, executives from the airplane maker are laying out their plan to get the Dreamliner back in the air.</p>
<p>Ray Connor, the head of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, will lead a team to Washington, DC, where they'll present specific proposals they believe will prevent lithium-ion batteries in Dreamliners from overheating.</p>
<p>At the same time, sources say the Boeing plan also calls for modifications to the 787 battery compartment that will limit or contain any damage done by batteries that may overheat or catch fire.</p>
<p>Boeing's multi-point plan</p>
<p>The Boeing plan calls for ensuring the safety of Dreamliners with several design changes, according to sources. Boeing believes the proposed remedies will add another level of prevention against battery fires and protect the plane in case the lithium-ion batteries get too hot.</p>
<p>Among the 787 solutions the company will propose:</p>
<p>* Redesigning lithium-ion batteries to insulate the cells and prevent them from overheating.</p>
<p>* Putting the batteries in a case designed to keep cells that may overheat from burning components or other parts of the Dreamliner outside the compartment.</p>
<p>* Venting battery compartments so any fumes caused by batteries that overheat will flow outside the plane.</p>
<p>* Instituting new rules requiring Dreamliner crews to closely monitor the battery and power units for potential problems.</p>
<p>FAA Under Scrutiny</p>
<p>For Michael Huerta, administrator of the FAA, the proposal to solve the Dreamliner issues and the decision to lift <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100385850" type="external">the grounding</a> add even more scrutiny to the agency.</p>
<p>After two fires on Dreamliners in January, critics raised questions about the FAA certification of the 787. In addition, the National Transportation Safety Board initiated a review of the 787 certification as part of its investigation into the Dreamliner fires.</p>
<p>How quickly will the FAA rule on Boeing's proposed Dreamliner solutions?</p>
<p>Neither Boeing nor the FAA will comment on Friday's meeting or predict when the Dreamliner might fly again. However, the close contact between Boeing and the FAA suggests the agency will not take long to make a decision.</p>
<p>Executives with airlines that have ordered the Dreamliner say Boeing is hoping to make the modifications and have the 787 flying by late March or early April.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cnbc.com/" type="external" /></p>
<p>More from our partners at <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/" type="external">CNBC</a>:</p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100484801" type="external">Economic slowdown: How serious for stocks?</a></p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100484715" type="external">Italian business leaders argue over election aftermath</a></p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100482094" type="external">Pro: 401(k)s hold risky levels of company stock</a></p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100481462" type="external">AIG posts net loss after unit sale, but results beat</a></p>
<p>CNBC: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100479179" type="external">Heinz earnings beat amid strength in emerging markets</a></p> | 3,085 |
<p>WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump directed his administration Thursday to rewrite federal rules so consumers can have wider access to health insurance plans featuring lower premiums. He called his new executive order a “beginning” and promised more actions to come.</p>
<p>Frustrated by failures in Congress, Trump is moving to put his own stamp on health care. But even the limited steps the president outlined Thursday will take months for the federal bureaucracy to finalize in regulations. Experts said consumers should not expect immediate changes.</p>
<p>“With these actions, we are moving toward lower costs and more options in the health care market,” Trump said before he signed his directive in the Oval Office.</p>
<p>But the changes Trump hopes to bring about may not be finalized in time to affect coverage for 2019, let alone next year.</p>
<p />
<p>Trump said he will continue to pressure Congress to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare.”</p>
<p>One of the main ideas from the administration involves easing the way for groups and associations of employers to sponsor coverage that can be marketed across the land. That reflects Trump’s longstanding belief that interstate competition will lead to lower premiums for consumers who buy their own health insurance policies, as well as for small businesses.</p>
<p>Those “association health plans” could be shielded from some state and federal insurance requirements. But responding to concerns, the White House said participating employers could not exclude any workers from the plan, or charge more to those in poor health.</p>
<p>Other elements of the White House plan include:</p>
<p>—Easing current restrictions on short-term policies that last less than a year, an option for people making a life transition, from recent college graduates to early retirees. Those policies are not subject to current federal and state rules that require standard benefits and other consumer protections.</p>
<p>—Allowing employers to set aside pre-tax dollars so workers can use the money to buy an individual health policy.</p>
<p>“This executive order is the start of a long process as the gears of the federal bureaucracy churn, not the final word,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.</p>
<p>It’s also unlikely to reverse the trend of insurers exiting state markets. About half of U.S. counties will have only one “Obamacare” insurer next year, although it appears that no counties will be left without a carrier as was initially feared. White House officials said over time, the policies flowing from the president’s order will give consumers more options.</p>
<p>Democrats are bracing for another effort by Trump to dismantle “Obamacare,” this time with the rule-making powers of the executive branch. Staffers at the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury have been working on the options since shortly after the president took office.</p>
<p>The president’s move is also likely to encounter opposition from medical associations, consumer groups and perhaps even some insurers—the same coalition that so far has blocked congressional Republicans from repealing Obama’s Affordable Care Act.</p>
<p>State attorneys general and state insurance regulators may try to block the administration in court, seeing the plan as a challenge to their traditional oversight authority.</p>
<p>As Trump himself once said, health care is complicated and working his will won’t be as easy as signing a presidential order.</p>
<p>Experts say the executive order probably won’t have much impact on premiums for 2018, which are expected to be sharply higher in many states for people buying their own policies.</p>
<p>Sponsors would have to be found to offer and market the new style association plans, and insurers would have to step up to design and administer them. For insurers, this would come at a time when much of the industry seems to have embraced the consumer protections required by the Obama health law.</p>
<p>Depending on the scope of regulations that flow from Trump’s order, some experts say the alternatives the White House is promoting could draw healthy people away from “Obamacare” insurance markets, making them less viable for consumers and insurers alike</p>
<p>But conservatives such as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., believe the federal government has overstepped its bounds in regulating the private health insurance market. They argue that loosening federal rules would allow insurers to design plans that—although they may not cover as much—work perfectly well for many people.</p>
<p>About 17 million people buying individual health insurance policies are the main focus of Trump’s order. Nearly 9 million of those consumers receive tax credits under the Obama law and are protected from higher premiums.</p>
<p>But those who get no subsidies are exposed to the full brunt of cost increases that could reach well into the double digits in many states next year. Many in this latter group are solid middle-class, including self-employed business people and early retirees. Cutting their premiums has been a longstanding political promise for Republicans.</p> | Trump Signs Executive Order on Health Care | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/trump-signs-health-care-executive-order/ | 2017-10-12 | 4left
| Trump Signs Executive Order on Health Care
<p>WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump directed his administration Thursday to rewrite federal rules so consumers can have wider access to health insurance plans featuring lower premiums. He called his new executive order a “beginning” and promised more actions to come.</p>
<p>Frustrated by failures in Congress, Trump is moving to put his own stamp on health care. But even the limited steps the president outlined Thursday will take months for the federal bureaucracy to finalize in regulations. Experts said consumers should not expect immediate changes.</p>
<p>“With these actions, we are moving toward lower costs and more options in the health care market,” Trump said before he signed his directive in the Oval Office.</p>
<p>But the changes Trump hopes to bring about may not be finalized in time to affect coverage for 2019, let alone next year.</p>
<p />
<p>Trump said he will continue to pressure Congress to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare.”</p>
<p>One of the main ideas from the administration involves easing the way for groups and associations of employers to sponsor coverage that can be marketed across the land. That reflects Trump’s longstanding belief that interstate competition will lead to lower premiums for consumers who buy their own health insurance policies, as well as for small businesses.</p>
<p>Those “association health plans” could be shielded from some state and federal insurance requirements. But responding to concerns, the White House said participating employers could not exclude any workers from the plan, or charge more to those in poor health.</p>
<p>Other elements of the White House plan include:</p>
<p>—Easing current restrictions on short-term policies that last less than a year, an option for people making a life transition, from recent college graduates to early retirees. Those policies are not subject to current federal and state rules that require standard benefits and other consumer protections.</p>
<p>—Allowing employers to set aside pre-tax dollars so workers can use the money to buy an individual health policy.</p>
<p>“This executive order is the start of a long process as the gears of the federal bureaucracy churn, not the final word,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.</p>
<p>It’s also unlikely to reverse the trend of insurers exiting state markets. About half of U.S. counties will have only one “Obamacare” insurer next year, although it appears that no counties will be left without a carrier as was initially feared. White House officials said over time, the policies flowing from the president’s order will give consumers more options.</p>
<p>Democrats are bracing for another effort by Trump to dismantle “Obamacare,” this time with the rule-making powers of the executive branch. Staffers at the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury have been working on the options since shortly after the president took office.</p>
<p>The president’s move is also likely to encounter opposition from medical associations, consumer groups and perhaps even some insurers—the same coalition that so far has blocked congressional Republicans from repealing Obama’s Affordable Care Act.</p>
<p>State attorneys general and state insurance regulators may try to block the administration in court, seeing the plan as a challenge to their traditional oversight authority.</p>
<p>As Trump himself once said, health care is complicated and working his will won’t be as easy as signing a presidential order.</p>
<p>Experts say the executive order probably won’t have much impact on premiums for 2018, which are expected to be sharply higher in many states for people buying their own policies.</p>
<p>Sponsors would have to be found to offer and market the new style association plans, and insurers would have to step up to design and administer them. For insurers, this would come at a time when much of the industry seems to have embraced the consumer protections required by the Obama health law.</p>
<p>Depending on the scope of regulations that flow from Trump’s order, some experts say the alternatives the White House is promoting could draw healthy people away from “Obamacare” insurance markets, making them less viable for consumers and insurers alike</p>
<p>But conservatives such as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., believe the federal government has overstepped its bounds in regulating the private health insurance market. They argue that loosening federal rules would allow insurers to design plans that—although they may not cover as much—work perfectly well for many people.</p>
<p>About 17 million people buying individual health insurance policies are the main focus of Trump’s order. Nearly 9 million of those consumers receive tax credits under the Obama law and are protected from higher premiums.</p>
<p>But those who get no subsidies are exposed to the full brunt of cost increases that could reach well into the double digits in many states next year. Many in this latter group are solid middle-class, including self-employed business people and early retirees. Cutting their premiums has been a longstanding political promise for Republicans.</p> | 3,086 |
<p>The Republican dominance is not because GOP-controlled state legislatures are adept at gerrymandering congressional districts (though they are).</p>
<p>&#160;According to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/its-the-geography-stupid.html" type="external">a recent analysis by two political scientists</a>, Democrats stand no chance of recapturing the House in the near future.</p>
<p>This Republican dominance, they say, is not because GOP-controlled state legislatures are adept at gerrymandering congressional districts (though they are). “The Democrats’ geography problem is bigger than their gerrymandering problem,” write <a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jowei/" type="external">Jowei Chen</a> and <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/~jrodden/jrhome.htm" type="external">Jonathan Rodden</a> in a January <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/~jrodden/jrhome.htm" type="external">op-ed in the New York Times</a>. They explain that Democrats are densely concentrated in urban centers, while Republicans are spread out in more sparsely populated areas where a significant number of Democrats also live. Such a geographic distribution of voters makes it all but impossible to draw district lines that would result in a Democratic congressional majority.</p>
<p>Chen and Rodden go on to suggest that the only way for reformers to solve this problem is “to take more radical steps that would require a party’s seat share to approximate its vote share.” What they don’t say (but mean) is that those “radical steps” must include forcing Congress to change current federal law to require that House members be elected through a system of proportional representation—the preferred voting system in the civilized world.</p>
<p>A crazy idea? Not quite. <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/who-we-are/" type="external">The Center for Voting and Democracy</a>, a Beltway-based nonprofit, has just such legislation in the hopper and is currently deciding which Democratic member of the House would be its most effective sponsor in 2014.</p>
<p>If you are a New York Times reader, you may not have heard much about “proportional representation.” The paper is no fan, these days.</p>
<p>In the 1870s, the Times extolled proportional representation for its small-“d” democratic virtues. That changed in 1947, when the Times decided that proportional representation, which it had previously endorsed and which New York City had enjoyed for 10 years, was not such a good thing after all. The Times urged New Yorkers to vote it out in a citywide referendum because, among other reasons, it had resulted in “seating Communists and other radicals [on the City Council] who could not, by normal majority and district voting methods, have hoped to become members.” And voters did so.</p>
<p>Yet in recent years, political scientists have explored the virtues of proportional representation. <a href="https://www.rochester.edu/college/psc/people/faculty/?fid=4" type="external">G. Bingham Powell Jr.</a>of the University of Rochester has demonstrated <a href="http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300080166" type="external">that proportional representation is more successfu</a>l than majoritarian systems—like that of the United States—at creating public policies that voters favor. Northwestern University’s <a href="http://www.polisci.northwestern.edu/people/austen_smith.html" type="external">David Austen-Smith</a>has <a href="http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~iversen/PDFfiles/A-SRedistPR.pdf" type="external">shown</a> that Western European democracies with proportional representation have more progressive income-tax systems and less income inequality than countries with majority rule. But somehow this information has not reached the mainstream.</p>
<p>“It is a vicious cycle of expectations,” says Rob Richie, the executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy. “People don’t think proportional representation is possible, so they don’t suggest that it should be done, and then because no one is talking about it, people don’t think it is possible.”</p>
<p>It’s clear: If we are ever to get rid of the Tea Party Congress, one of the first steps will be for small-“d” democrats of all political persuasions to begin talking about proportional representation.</p>
<p>Like what you’ve read? <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/itt-subscription-offer?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;noskip=true" type="external">Subscribe to In These Times magazine</a>, or <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/support-in-these-times?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;noskip=true" type="external">make a tax-deductible donation to fund this reporting</a>.</p>
<p>Joel Bleifuss, a former director of the Peace Studies Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is the editor &amp; publisher of In These Times, where he has worked since October 1986.</p> | The Reform That Dare Not Speak Its Name | true | http://inthesetimes.com/article/16274/well_proportioned_reform/ | 2014-02-17 | 4left
| The Reform That Dare Not Speak Its Name
<p>The Republican dominance is not because GOP-controlled state legislatures are adept at gerrymandering congressional districts (though they are).</p>
<p>&#160;According to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/its-the-geography-stupid.html" type="external">a recent analysis by two political scientists</a>, Democrats stand no chance of recapturing the House in the near future.</p>
<p>This Republican dominance, they say, is not because GOP-controlled state legislatures are adept at gerrymandering congressional districts (though they are). “The Democrats’ geography problem is bigger than their gerrymandering problem,” write <a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jowei/" type="external">Jowei Chen</a> and <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/~jrodden/jrhome.htm" type="external">Jonathan Rodden</a> in a January <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/~jrodden/jrhome.htm" type="external">op-ed in the New York Times</a>. They explain that Democrats are densely concentrated in urban centers, while Republicans are spread out in more sparsely populated areas where a significant number of Democrats also live. Such a geographic distribution of voters makes it all but impossible to draw district lines that would result in a Democratic congressional majority.</p>
<p>Chen and Rodden go on to suggest that the only way for reformers to solve this problem is “to take more radical steps that would require a party’s seat share to approximate its vote share.” What they don’t say (but mean) is that those “radical steps” must include forcing Congress to change current federal law to require that House members be elected through a system of proportional representation—the preferred voting system in the civilized world.</p>
<p>A crazy idea? Not quite. <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/who-we-are/" type="external">The Center for Voting and Democracy</a>, a Beltway-based nonprofit, has just such legislation in the hopper and is currently deciding which Democratic member of the House would be its most effective sponsor in 2014.</p>
<p>If you are a New York Times reader, you may not have heard much about “proportional representation.” The paper is no fan, these days.</p>
<p>In the 1870s, the Times extolled proportional representation for its small-“d” democratic virtues. That changed in 1947, when the Times decided that proportional representation, which it had previously endorsed and which New York City had enjoyed for 10 years, was not such a good thing after all. The Times urged New Yorkers to vote it out in a citywide referendum because, among other reasons, it had resulted in “seating Communists and other radicals [on the City Council] who could not, by normal majority and district voting methods, have hoped to become members.” And voters did so.</p>
<p>Yet in recent years, political scientists have explored the virtues of proportional representation. <a href="https://www.rochester.edu/college/psc/people/faculty/?fid=4" type="external">G. Bingham Powell Jr.</a>of the University of Rochester has demonstrated <a href="http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300080166" type="external">that proportional representation is more successfu</a>l than majoritarian systems—like that of the United States—at creating public policies that voters favor. Northwestern University’s <a href="http://www.polisci.northwestern.edu/people/austen_smith.html" type="external">David Austen-Smith</a>has <a href="http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~iversen/PDFfiles/A-SRedistPR.pdf" type="external">shown</a> that Western European democracies with proportional representation have more progressive income-tax systems and less income inequality than countries with majority rule. But somehow this information has not reached the mainstream.</p>
<p>“It is a vicious cycle of expectations,” says Rob Richie, the executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy. “People don’t think proportional representation is possible, so they don’t suggest that it should be done, and then because no one is talking about it, people don’t think it is possible.”</p>
<p>It’s clear: If we are ever to get rid of the Tea Party Congress, one of the first steps will be for small-“d” democrats of all political persuasions to begin talking about proportional representation.</p>
<p>Like what you’ve read? <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/itt-subscription-offer?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;noskip=true" type="external">Subscribe to In These Times magazine</a>, or <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/support-in-these-times?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;noskip=true" type="external">make a tax-deductible donation to fund this reporting</a>.</p>
<p>Joel Bleifuss, a former director of the Peace Studies Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is the editor &amp; publisher of In These Times, where he has worked since October 1986.</p> | 3,087 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>FARMINGTON — Preliminary results from Mancos shale wells in northwestern New Mexico are boosting industry excitement about a new oil and gas boom in the region.</p>
<p>Companies must learn a lot more about the shale formation before any gushers explode, but some of the 22 exploratory wells drilled to date have shown solid commercial potential for oil and gas production, according to industry executives who attended a conference this week in Farmington to discuss production potential in the Mancos play, a previously untapped section of the San Juan Basin.</p>
<p>WPX Energy Inc.’s director for the San Juan Region, Ken McQueen, said two horizontal wells that WPX drilled in a dry natural gas section of the Mancos are some of the company’s best wells anywhere. Oklahoma-based WPX is one of the nation’s 10 largest natural gas producers.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“These two wells are in the top 10 best wells drilled by WPX to date,” McQueen said. “They’re quite extraordinary for us.”</p>
<p>The wells, drilled in 2010, have produced 2 billion cubic feet of gas so far, and will ultimately produce between 5 and 6 billion cubic feet each, McQueen said. That’s substantially more than the 4 billion cubic feet needed for commercial viability.</p>
<p>“That makes for a very attractive target for WPX to pursue,” McQueen said.</p>
<p>(Merrion Oil &amp; Gas)</p>
<p>Although the WPX wells are producing dry natural gas, companies are particularly upbeat about prospects for liquid natural gas, and for oil, in other sections of the Mancos, which is snuggled between soft sandstone layers in the San Juan Basin that producers have been exploiting for decades.</p>
<p>The sandstone layers contain mostly dry gas. The Mancos, however, is divided into three sections in New Mexico — the dry gas zone that WPX is exploring, a “wet” or liquid gas region, and an oil zone.</p>
<p>Until recently, those Mancos layers eluded producers because of the high cost of drilling into hard shale rock, and the difficulty of accurately pinpointing hard-to-reach pockets of hydrocarbons.</p>
<p>But modern drilling techniques are helping to crack the Mancos open. That includes three-dimensional imaging to pinpoint “sweet spots” for oil and gas before drilling begins, hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — whereby operators pump water and sand at high pressure into wells to bust up tough shale rock, and horizontal drilling to penetrate sideways into the shale to reach trapped oil and gas.</p>
<p>Given that those techniques have worked well for WPX in the dry-gas zone, industry executives are optimistic they will also succeed in the liquid regions.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I’m bullish on the Mancos,” said T. Greg Merrion, president of Merrion Oil and Gas Corp. in Farmington, which is partnering with Bill Barrett Corp. of Denver to drill exploratory oil wells in the Mancos. “We’ve already seen a number of wells drilled that are economic.”</p>
<p>Industry estimates place the Mancos oil reservoirs as high as 60 billion barrels, with 8 percent or more of that commercially recoverable, said Daniel Fine, senior analyst with the Center for Energy Policy at the New Mexico Institute for Mining and Technology in Socorro.</p>
<p>Eight companies have so far received permits to drill 45 wells in all three Mancos zones, with 22 now producing or ready to produce, Merrion said. Three companies are drilling in the oil section, the largest being Canada’s Encana Corp. with 12 oil wells to date.</p>
<p>Encana executives declined to discuss results at the conference. But Merrion compiled preliminary results for three Encana wells based on statistics from the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division, which logs monthly production by companies.</p>
<p>Based on those reports, Merrion estimates three of the Encana wells will ultimately produce between 184,000 and 207,000 barrels of oil each. That compares to 150,000 barrels needed for commercial viability.</p>
<p>“I’m ready to call (those) Encana wells economic,” Merrion said.</p>
<p>Encana is betting high on the Mancos, with $100 million already invested there and a similar amount planned this year, according to company executives.</p>
<p>But a lot more exploration must be done on the particular geology of the Mancos and the best drilling methods there compared to other shale formations before more companies move aggressively into the play, said BP America Vice President Darryl Willis.</p>
<p>“There’s a uniqueness (to each shale formation) that we need to understand,” Willis said. “Tens or even hundreds of wells are needed before we can develop an unconventional (shale) play.”</p>
<p>In addition, state regulatory authorities will have to develop new rules for horizontal drilling in the San Juan Basin, where those techniques have yet to take hold. In fact, given the prospect of a boom in the Mancos, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is working on a new environmental analysis and management plans for groundwater, air quality and surface disturbance for when production escalates, said BLM District Manager Dave Evans.</p>
<p>“This is still really in the early stage for a shale play,” Merrion said. “But I think the future is very bright.” — This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal</p> | Prospects good for N.M. oil, gas boom | false | https://abqjournal.com/181599/prospects-good-for-nm-oil-gas-boom.html | 2013-03-23 | 2least
| Prospects good for N.M. oil, gas boom
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>FARMINGTON — Preliminary results from Mancos shale wells in northwestern New Mexico are boosting industry excitement about a new oil and gas boom in the region.</p>
<p>Companies must learn a lot more about the shale formation before any gushers explode, but some of the 22 exploratory wells drilled to date have shown solid commercial potential for oil and gas production, according to industry executives who attended a conference this week in Farmington to discuss production potential in the Mancos play, a previously untapped section of the San Juan Basin.</p>
<p>WPX Energy Inc.’s director for the San Juan Region, Ken McQueen, said two horizontal wells that WPX drilled in a dry natural gas section of the Mancos are some of the company’s best wells anywhere. Oklahoma-based WPX is one of the nation’s 10 largest natural gas producers.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“These two wells are in the top 10 best wells drilled by WPX to date,” McQueen said. “They’re quite extraordinary for us.”</p>
<p>The wells, drilled in 2010, have produced 2 billion cubic feet of gas so far, and will ultimately produce between 5 and 6 billion cubic feet each, McQueen said. That’s substantially more than the 4 billion cubic feet needed for commercial viability.</p>
<p>“That makes for a very attractive target for WPX to pursue,” McQueen said.</p>
<p>(Merrion Oil &amp; Gas)</p>
<p>Although the WPX wells are producing dry natural gas, companies are particularly upbeat about prospects for liquid natural gas, and for oil, in other sections of the Mancos, which is snuggled between soft sandstone layers in the San Juan Basin that producers have been exploiting for decades.</p>
<p>The sandstone layers contain mostly dry gas. The Mancos, however, is divided into three sections in New Mexico — the dry gas zone that WPX is exploring, a “wet” or liquid gas region, and an oil zone.</p>
<p>Until recently, those Mancos layers eluded producers because of the high cost of drilling into hard shale rock, and the difficulty of accurately pinpointing hard-to-reach pockets of hydrocarbons.</p>
<p>But modern drilling techniques are helping to crack the Mancos open. That includes three-dimensional imaging to pinpoint “sweet spots” for oil and gas before drilling begins, hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — whereby operators pump water and sand at high pressure into wells to bust up tough shale rock, and horizontal drilling to penetrate sideways into the shale to reach trapped oil and gas.</p>
<p>Given that those techniques have worked well for WPX in the dry-gas zone, industry executives are optimistic they will also succeed in the liquid regions.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I’m bullish on the Mancos,” said T. Greg Merrion, president of Merrion Oil and Gas Corp. in Farmington, which is partnering with Bill Barrett Corp. of Denver to drill exploratory oil wells in the Mancos. “We’ve already seen a number of wells drilled that are economic.”</p>
<p>Industry estimates place the Mancos oil reservoirs as high as 60 billion barrels, with 8 percent or more of that commercially recoverable, said Daniel Fine, senior analyst with the Center for Energy Policy at the New Mexico Institute for Mining and Technology in Socorro.</p>
<p>Eight companies have so far received permits to drill 45 wells in all three Mancos zones, with 22 now producing or ready to produce, Merrion said. Three companies are drilling in the oil section, the largest being Canada’s Encana Corp. with 12 oil wells to date.</p>
<p>Encana executives declined to discuss results at the conference. But Merrion compiled preliminary results for three Encana wells based on statistics from the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division, which logs monthly production by companies.</p>
<p>Based on those reports, Merrion estimates three of the Encana wells will ultimately produce between 184,000 and 207,000 barrels of oil each. That compares to 150,000 barrels needed for commercial viability.</p>
<p>“I’m ready to call (those) Encana wells economic,” Merrion said.</p>
<p>Encana is betting high on the Mancos, with $100 million already invested there and a similar amount planned this year, according to company executives.</p>
<p>But a lot more exploration must be done on the particular geology of the Mancos and the best drilling methods there compared to other shale formations before more companies move aggressively into the play, said BP America Vice President Darryl Willis.</p>
<p>“There’s a uniqueness (to each shale formation) that we need to understand,” Willis said. “Tens or even hundreds of wells are needed before we can develop an unconventional (shale) play.”</p>
<p>In addition, state regulatory authorities will have to develop new rules for horizontal drilling in the San Juan Basin, where those techniques have yet to take hold. In fact, given the prospect of a boom in the Mancos, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is working on a new environmental analysis and management plans for groundwater, air quality and surface disturbance for when production escalates, said BLM District Manager Dave Evans.</p>
<p>“This is still really in the early stage for a shale play,” Merrion said. “But I think the future is very bright.” — This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal</p> | 3,088 |
<p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has awarded nearly two dozen recycling grants to groups in 20 counties.</p>
<p>The DEP says in a news release that funding for the recycling assistance grant program is generated through a $1 assessment fee per ton of solid waste disposed at in-state landfills.</p>
<p>The $1.3 million in grants will be distributed to some towns, nonprofit groups, recycling stations and solid waste authorities.</p>
<p>The grants will assist in the purchase of items such as collection bins, forklifts, trailers and other recycling vehicles, facility repairs and fuel.</p>
<p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has awarded nearly two dozen recycling grants to groups in 20 counties.</p>
<p>The DEP says in a news release that funding for the recycling assistance grant program is generated through a $1 assessment fee per ton of solid waste disposed at in-state landfills.</p>
<p>The $1.3 million in grants will be distributed to some towns, nonprofit groups, recycling stations and solid waste authorities.</p>
<p>The grants will assist in the purchase of items such as collection bins, forklifts, trailers and other recycling vehicles, facility repairs and fuel.</p> | Recycling grants awarded in 20 West Virginia counties | false | https://apnews.com/c196064c47e44665bca62b4ea8adf1d2 | 2018-01-08 | 2least
| Recycling grants awarded in 20 West Virginia counties
<p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has awarded nearly two dozen recycling grants to groups in 20 counties.</p>
<p>The DEP says in a news release that funding for the recycling assistance grant program is generated through a $1 assessment fee per ton of solid waste disposed at in-state landfills.</p>
<p>The $1.3 million in grants will be distributed to some towns, nonprofit groups, recycling stations and solid waste authorities.</p>
<p>The grants will assist in the purchase of items such as collection bins, forklifts, trailers and other recycling vehicles, facility repairs and fuel.</p>
<p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has awarded nearly two dozen recycling grants to groups in 20 counties.</p>
<p>The DEP says in a news release that funding for the recycling assistance grant program is generated through a $1 assessment fee per ton of solid waste disposed at in-state landfills.</p>
<p>The $1.3 million in grants will be distributed to some towns, nonprofit groups, recycling stations and solid waste authorities.</p>
<p>The grants will assist in the purchase of items such as collection bins, forklifts, trailers and other recycling vehicles, facility repairs and fuel.</p> | 3,089 |
<p>“The Professor of Truth” A book by James Robertson</p>
<p>“The Professor of Truth,” a novel by James Robertson, is set 21 years after a plane carrying English lecturer Alan Tealing’s wife and daughter exploded over Scotland, killing them and everyone else on board. Tealing’s grief manifests in his obsessive efforts to prove that the man convicted of the crime was not actually the man responsible. Tealing’s inability to move past the tragedy, as friends and family have long urged him to do, has left him isolated and emotionally crippled. And then, one snowy night, Nilsen, a retired American intelligence officer, arrives at Tealing’s door, claiming to have new information about a man named Parroulet, a key witness at the trial — information that will confirm Tealing’s belief that an innocent man was convicted, and Tealing cannot help but follow the clues leading, he hopes, to the truth at last.</p>
<p>The novel is written in two parts: “Ice” and “Fire.” One cannot help but think of Robert Frost’s two ways the world might end.</p>
<p />
<p>In the first part, “Ice,” Tealing is frozen in a glacier of grief. Rarely have I read prose more evocative than this passage, for example, when Tealing visits the crash site shortly after the event:</p>
<p>I pushed on a few hundred yards, then stopped to get my breath back. How carelessly we use such phrases. To get my breath back! I looked up again. It was still early afternoon, but the light was poor and the sky loomed with dull menace. It was impossible not to think of those terrible things happening above the clouds, not to see a plane full of people breaking into many pieces. I stared, searching for the first drops of human rain. I thought of the two minutes of falling, that long, brief, breathless tumble, as of parachutists without chutes, the blacking-out, the faint, feeble grapple for consciousness, the agony of cold, the bursting lungs, the rush of the air and the distortion of vision, the stars spinning and mixing with the lights of earth, that infinite, aching two minutes in which your brain is too scrambled to say no, or call for help, or reach for the child who so recently, so long ago, was beside you, or say goodbye to the man who loved you. I stood staring to heaven and nothing came from there, no mercy or redemption. Whatever had come had come already and it was not sent by God. I stood, arms outstretched and empty, like a man praying but I was not praying, I was crying, because it had come to this and I had come to this place, and they were not with me, Emily and Alice, they were gone for ever.</p>
<p>There is a great deal of wonderful prose in this novel, and stunning imagery, particularly in the first section, which is more contemplative, more elegiac than the second. I found myself reading passages aloud, they were so well crafted.</p>
<p>The second part of the novel, “Fire,” begins when Tealing heads to Australia in search of the trial’s key witness, Martin Parroulet, whose address Nilsen has provided. Here, he confronts the “fire,” both actual and metaphorical, in a conflagration that leads to a phoenix-like rising from the ashes. The tone here is far more that of a thriller than the first section, and it doesn’t hold up quite so well. In the first section Robertson’s strengths are in excavating the human psyche, but the plot in the second half of the novel seems contrived and designed to persuade.</p>
<p>And here we confront the challenge the reviewer faces: Does one review this book as a call for justice, a commentary on the historical events that inform it, or does one allow it to stand as a work of fiction, illumined by its inspiration, but not restricted by it? Since the job of the reviewer is, I believe, to discern the author’s intention for the work and to determine if and how that intention has been met, and if not, why not, I am forced here to do a little excavation of my own, and to turn away from purely literary concerns into political ones.</p>
<p>“The Professor of Truth” is undeniably inspired by the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 — the Lockerbie bombing — on Dec. 21, 1988, which cannot help but stir controversy, given the scope of the horror and the convoluted, confusing, drawn-out legal machinations surrounding the case. After much wrangling with then-Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi, former Libyan intelligence agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was eventually convicted of mass murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 27 years, but was freed in 2009 as part of a prisoner transfer agreement between Britain and Libya.</p>
<p>The character of Alan Tealing is clearly based on Dr. Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the bombing, and his unceasing efforts to prove al-Megrahi innocent. (He maintains the website <a href="http://www.lockerbietruth.com/" type="external">Lockerbietruth.com</a>.) Parroulet, the Maltese taxi driver and witness Tealing tracks down in Australia, is modeled after Tony Gauci, a Maltese shop owner and the only trial witness to connect al-Megrahi to the bomb. Robertson makes no quibble with this, and has <a href="http://www.hayfestival.com/p-6071-jim-swire-and-james-robertson-talk-to-philippe-sands.aspx" type="external">appeared publically</a> with Swire to discuss the tragedy. And so, clearly Robertson intends for the book to illuminate the Lockerbie bombing legal case, and to do so in sympathy with Swire’s position. Like Swire, Tealing’s obsession consumes his life. His belief that a miscarriage of justice has been committed amid a massive international cover-up is unwavering except for a single moment in the novel when he hears an “… insidious whisper [that] said that Khalil Khazar was indeed guilty of the crime.” Khazar is Robertson’s fictional counterpart of al-Megrahi. Tealing says the case, “condemned me again to my ancient prison, to scraping at the mouldy walls, but this time there was no hope of release and it was my own fault that I was incarcerated. What had I done wrong? I had created my own false religion, without which I could not function, could not wake and work every day, could not be. I had locked myself in a cell of delusion, of total blinkered faith in Khalil Khazar’s innocence.” It’s a moment worth pursuing and I wonder what the novel might have looked like had Robertson chosen to plumb this psychological dilemma rather than pursue a more political direction.</p>
<p>In the acknowledgments, Robertson says a version of the first half of the novel was written during his time as writer in residence at Edinburgh Napier University. This seems to indicate that perhaps the second half was written after a break, which would explain the directional and tonal shift. From a literary point of view, the “Fire” section is not as strong. In Australia, Tealing tracks down Parroulet, whom he plans to pressure into recanting his testimony. Arranging a meeting with the reclusive Parroulet is problematic and finally arranged by his tough-minded and saintly wife, Kim, who has a tragic story of her own. A terrible brush fire predictably breaks out and differences are put aside for the sake of survival. It all feels a bit contrived at this point, hammering away at the message Robertson apparently intends to make. However, the last few pages of the book return to the elegiac, contemplative tone of the first section. Still, the crisis and resolution, no matter how lyrically written, do not live up to the promises made at the beginning of the book.</p>
<p>Writers, as Maupassant said, do not create from nothing; we are not God. Writers ingest the world around them and allow it to compost down in the gut before opening a vein and making fiction out of it. But to use fiction as a bullhorn risks compromising the quality of the fiction. The great writer Harry Crews wrote about the problem of fiction composed in order to convince readers of a particular idea:</p>
<p>I don’t have the answers to the questions raised in my books. I’m not supposed to have them. If I had them I’d be writing tracts. I’d be writing things like Jehovah Witnesses hand out. They have the answers. I have no answers. And writers who have answers are usually very, very, very bad writers. No matter how well they use the language they are bad artists. An artist is outside that. In many ways the artist is apolitical and amoral, not immoral, amoral, outside it. Otherwise you’re writing tract fiction, tract literature, literature that has a point to make. Any fiction that has a point to make is bad; it’s going to be bad, because nobody knows what the fucking point is. …</p>
<p>Well, I’m not sure I’d be quite so strident as that, but Crews has a point.</p>
<p>“The Professor of Truth,” when it is not trying to holler at me about The Truth, is a brilliant portrayal of grief, loss, of how little justice there really is in the world, and how one copes, or doesn’t with that. It is a thought-provoking tragedy of someone imprisoned by his certainty. And in the final analysis, Robertson, who is one of Scotland’s more respected novelists — and deservedly so — may well have accomplished what he set out to do in revitalizing public awareness of the Lockerbie bombing.</p>
<p>To see long excerpts from “The Professor of Truth” at Google Books, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=HP-aDwlFSUYC&amp;pg=PT124&amp;dq=THE+PROFESSOR+OF+TRUTH&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=jeWxUszSEoqU2gWqvoGABQ&amp;ved=0CDIQuwUwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=THE%20PROFESSOR%20OF%20TRUTH&amp;f=false" type="external">click here</a>.</p> | The Professor of Truth | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/the-professor-of-truth/ | 2013-12-20 | 4left
| The Professor of Truth
<p>“The Professor of Truth” A book by James Robertson</p>
<p>“The Professor of Truth,” a novel by James Robertson, is set 21 years after a plane carrying English lecturer Alan Tealing’s wife and daughter exploded over Scotland, killing them and everyone else on board. Tealing’s grief manifests in his obsessive efforts to prove that the man convicted of the crime was not actually the man responsible. Tealing’s inability to move past the tragedy, as friends and family have long urged him to do, has left him isolated and emotionally crippled. And then, one snowy night, Nilsen, a retired American intelligence officer, arrives at Tealing’s door, claiming to have new information about a man named Parroulet, a key witness at the trial — information that will confirm Tealing’s belief that an innocent man was convicted, and Tealing cannot help but follow the clues leading, he hopes, to the truth at last.</p>
<p>The novel is written in two parts: “Ice” and “Fire.” One cannot help but think of Robert Frost’s two ways the world might end.</p>
<p />
<p>In the first part, “Ice,” Tealing is frozen in a glacier of grief. Rarely have I read prose more evocative than this passage, for example, when Tealing visits the crash site shortly after the event:</p>
<p>I pushed on a few hundred yards, then stopped to get my breath back. How carelessly we use such phrases. To get my breath back! I looked up again. It was still early afternoon, but the light was poor and the sky loomed with dull menace. It was impossible not to think of those terrible things happening above the clouds, not to see a plane full of people breaking into many pieces. I stared, searching for the first drops of human rain. I thought of the two minutes of falling, that long, brief, breathless tumble, as of parachutists without chutes, the blacking-out, the faint, feeble grapple for consciousness, the agony of cold, the bursting lungs, the rush of the air and the distortion of vision, the stars spinning and mixing with the lights of earth, that infinite, aching two minutes in which your brain is too scrambled to say no, or call for help, or reach for the child who so recently, so long ago, was beside you, or say goodbye to the man who loved you. I stood staring to heaven and nothing came from there, no mercy or redemption. Whatever had come had come already and it was not sent by God. I stood, arms outstretched and empty, like a man praying but I was not praying, I was crying, because it had come to this and I had come to this place, and they were not with me, Emily and Alice, they were gone for ever.</p>
<p>There is a great deal of wonderful prose in this novel, and stunning imagery, particularly in the first section, which is more contemplative, more elegiac than the second. I found myself reading passages aloud, they were so well crafted.</p>
<p>The second part of the novel, “Fire,” begins when Tealing heads to Australia in search of the trial’s key witness, Martin Parroulet, whose address Nilsen has provided. Here, he confronts the “fire,” both actual and metaphorical, in a conflagration that leads to a phoenix-like rising from the ashes. The tone here is far more that of a thriller than the first section, and it doesn’t hold up quite so well. In the first section Robertson’s strengths are in excavating the human psyche, but the plot in the second half of the novel seems contrived and designed to persuade.</p>
<p>And here we confront the challenge the reviewer faces: Does one review this book as a call for justice, a commentary on the historical events that inform it, or does one allow it to stand as a work of fiction, illumined by its inspiration, but not restricted by it? Since the job of the reviewer is, I believe, to discern the author’s intention for the work and to determine if and how that intention has been met, and if not, why not, I am forced here to do a little excavation of my own, and to turn away from purely literary concerns into political ones.</p>
<p>“The Professor of Truth” is undeniably inspired by the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 — the Lockerbie bombing — on Dec. 21, 1988, which cannot help but stir controversy, given the scope of the horror and the convoluted, confusing, drawn-out legal machinations surrounding the case. After much wrangling with then-Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi, former Libyan intelligence agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was eventually convicted of mass murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 27 years, but was freed in 2009 as part of a prisoner transfer agreement between Britain and Libya.</p>
<p>The character of Alan Tealing is clearly based on Dr. Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the bombing, and his unceasing efforts to prove al-Megrahi innocent. (He maintains the website <a href="http://www.lockerbietruth.com/" type="external">Lockerbietruth.com</a>.) Parroulet, the Maltese taxi driver and witness Tealing tracks down in Australia, is modeled after Tony Gauci, a Maltese shop owner and the only trial witness to connect al-Megrahi to the bomb. Robertson makes no quibble with this, and has <a href="http://www.hayfestival.com/p-6071-jim-swire-and-james-robertson-talk-to-philippe-sands.aspx" type="external">appeared publically</a> with Swire to discuss the tragedy. And so, clearly Robertson intends for the book to illuminate the Lockerbie bombing legal case, and to do so in sympathy with Swire’s position. Like Swire, Tealing’s obsession consumes his life. His belief that a miscarriage of justice has been committed amid a massive international cover-up is unwavering except for a single moment in the novel when he hears an “… insidious whisper [that] said that Khalil Khazar was indeed guilty of the crime.” Khazar is Robertson’s fictional counterpart of al-Megrahi. Tealing says the case, “condemned me again to my ancient prison, to scraping at the mouldy walls, but this time there was no hope of release and it was my own fault that I was incarcerated. What had I done wrong? I had created my own false religion, without which I could not function, could not wake and work every day, could not be. I had locked myself in a cell of delusion, of total blinkered faith in Khalil Khazar’s innocence.” It’s a moment worth pursuing and I wonder what the novel might have looked like had Robertson chosen to plumb this psychological dilemma rather than pursue a more political direction.</p>
<p>In the acknowledgments, Robertson says a version of the first half of the novel was written during his time as writer in residence at Edinburgh Napier University. This seems to indicate that perhaps the second half was written after a break, which would explain the directional and tonal shift. From a literary point of view, the “Fire” section is not as strong. In Australia, Tealing tracks down Parroulet, whom he plans to pressure into recanting his testimony. Arranging a meeting with the reclusive Parroulet is problematic and finally arranged by his tough-minded and saintly wife, Kim, who has a tragic story of her own. A terrible brush fire predictably breaks out and differences are put aside for the sake of survival. It all feels a bit contrived at this point, hammering away at the message Robertson apparently intends to make. However, the last few pages of the book return to the elegiac, contemplative tone of the first section. Still, the crisis and resolution, no matter how lyrically written, do not live up to the promises made at the beginning of the book.</p>
<p>Writers, as Maupassant said, do not create from nothing; we are not God. Writers ingest the world around them and allow it to compost down in the gut before opening a vein and making fiction out of it. But to use fiction as a bullhorn risks compromising the quality of the fiction. The great writer Harry Crews wrote about the problem of fiction composed in order to convince readers of a particular idea:</p>
<p>I don’t have the answers to the questions raised in my books. I’m not supposed to have them. If I had them I’d be writing tracts. I’d be writing things like Jehovah Witnesses hand out. They have the answers. I have no answers. And writers who have answers are usually very, very, very bad writers. No matter how well they use the language they are bad artists. An artist is outside that. In many ways the artist is apolitical and amoral, not immoral, amoral, outside it. Otherwise you’re writing tract fiction, tract literature, literature that has a point to make. Any fiction that has a point to make is bad; it’s going to be bad, because nobody knows what the fucking point is. …</p>
<p>Well, I’m not sure I’d be quite so strident as that, but Crews has a point.</p>
<p>“The Professor of Truth,” when it is not trying to holler at me about The Truth, is a brilliant portrayal of grief, loss, of how little justice there really is in the world, and how one copes, or doesn’t with that. It is a thought-provoking tragedy of someone imprisoned by his certainty. And in the final analysis, Robertson, who is one of Scotland’s more respected novelists — and deservedly so — may well have accomplished what he set out to do in revitalizing public awareness of the Lockerbie bombing.</p>
<p>To see long excerpts from “The Professor of Truth” at Google Books, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=HP-aDwlFSUYC&amp;pg=PT124&amp;dq=THE+PROFESSOR+OF+TRUTH&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=jeWxUszSEoqU2gWqvoGABQ&amp;ved=0CDIQuwUwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=THE%20PROFESSOR%20OF%20TRUTH&amp;f=false" type="external">click here</a>.</p> | 3,090 |
<p>Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has built a business on creating products its customers are eager to buy. There's no financial justification for someone to purchase a $100,000 Model S over a less expensive gasoline powered vehicle or EV, but that's not the point -- Teslas are sold because they're desirable in a very intangible way.</p>
<p>That intangible value is why Tesla will have a hard time moving into the semi truck market. Tesla Semi has to compete on a dollar for dollar basis with not only diesel trucks but all-electric semis from powerhouses like Daimler's Freightliner, Volvo (NASDAQOTH: VOLVY), and Paccar's (NASDAQ: PCAR) Peterbilt and Kenworth lines. That may be harder than Elon Musk thinks.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>When buyers make the decision to purchase a new semi truck, they're making a decades-long investment that needs to generate predictable returns. Rig operators aren't in the business of risking their operations on new technology or an unproven vehicle. Tesla may be able to sell a number of semis to companies like Walmart (NYSE: WMT), which reserved 15 last week, and grocery chain Loblaw, which reserved 25 units, but it'll need a proven vehicle to be more than a niche product. Tesla has already claimed that it will save rig operators money, but they'll want Tesla to prove it.</p>
<p>Evidence that it's difficult to get rig operators to make a switch to new technology, even when the investment makes sense, can be seen in the recent history of natural gas fuel. Clean Energy Fuels (NASDAQ: CLNE) and Westport Fuel Systems (NASDAQ: WPRT) built the technology and infrastructure to provide natural gas to semis at a price that would ultimately save operators money. But they <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/11/16/the-simple-reason-why-i-wont-buy-clean-energy-fuel.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b3cd6a56-ce60-11e7-b7d0-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">never got beyond niche markets Opens a New Window.</a>, because adoption was extremely low in comparison to the ~260,000 Class-8 semi trucks produced in North America each year.</p>
<p>If Tesla makes an obviously superior product at a superior cost it may be able to get a significant share of the market. But it's not clear Tesla Semi is a no-brainer for those who actually drive trucks for a living.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p><a href="https://www.autoblog.com/2017/11/19/tesla-semi-trucker-questions/" type="external">Auto Blog's Jonathon Ramsey Opens a New Window.</a> highlighted a number of the major flaws in the Tesla Semi, and there are a few that caught my eye.</p>
<p>The first is that Tesla doesn't appear to have any mirrors on the semi, which would make driving on a highway, navigating traffic in a city, or backing into a dock bay difficult, if not impossible. Musk hasn't addressed this issue directly, but it's likely Tesla thinks sensors and cameras can replace mirrors. But do you really think a typical semi driver will trust sensors rather than their years of experience in these situations?</p>
<p>Mirrors are an important consideration, because Musk highlights the 0.36 Cp drag coefficient as a major advantage of the rig. Without such a low drag, the semi would have a much shorter range than the currently advertised 500 miles, or would need to be heavier to achieve that kind of range.</p>
<p>Speaking of range, a typical semi has about 1,000 miles of range, meaning a Tesla semi would likely be used for shorter trips or transport in a small area like a dock. Those are important markets, but they constrain the current Tesla semi to niche applications. Remember that shorter trips would also mean more time spent in confined parking lots or backing into dock bays, which will require mirrors that the Tesla Semi doesn't have. And all that stopping and starting will reduce range even further than 500 miles, especially if drivers ever want to experience that fully loaded 20 second 0-60 mph time.</p>
<p>A truck that's being used every day and presumably charging multiple times per day would also run into battery life cycle issues. Tesla's auto warranty is now for unlimited miles in the <a href="https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty" type="external">first 8 years of ownership Opens a New Window.</a>, but that would be less than 1,000 full cycles under normal driving conditions (~13,500 miles per year). Battery degradation data from Maarten Steinbuch indicates it's around that 1,000th cycle that Tesla's Model S loses 10% of its capacity. As another data point, the Powerwall has a warranty for about 3,200 cycles. If we ballpark 1.5 full charges per day and assume the rig could be charged 3,200 cycles, the Tesla Semi would need to have its battery replaced every 5.8 years. That's a big expense for an owner on top of the upfront cost of the semi. It could make the economics of a Tesla Semi harder to pencil.</p>
<p>There are also infrastructure concerns like the lack of semi charging stations nationwide and the lack of a critical mass of knowledgable mechanics. For a risk-averse trucking industry, Tesla is going to need more than a sexy semi -- it's going to need hard data that it'll save companies money, and that'll take years to develop.</p>
<p>I mentioned some of the early reservations for the semi, which sound impressive on paper. But the reservation is only $5,000, a small percentage of a semi's cost and worth the free advertising for Walmart and Loblaw. On top of that, the <a href="https://livestream.tesla.com/assets/TeslaSemiReservationAgreement_v20171116.pdf" type="external">deposit can be refunded at any time Opens a New Window.</a>, so it's not binding in any way.</p>
<p>The early reservations aren't really any indication of the level of interest in the Tesla Semi one way or another. Fleet operators will certainly "kick the tires," but until they see a Tesla Semi on the road -- and what competition is making by that point -- I wouldn't expect a lot of concrete sales contracts.</p>
<p>Even if Tesla can answer all of the questions above, Tesla has to actually make a semi to industry quality standards. It hasn't proven the ability to do that on a mass scale, and Musk has a <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/06/tesla-inc-delays-its-semi-truck-unveiling.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b3cd6a56-ce60-11e7-b7d0-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">long history of delaying product launches Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Trucking manufacturers know they need to electrify their fleets and are developing their own solutions. Tesla just showed its cards earlier than anyone else. Now they know where the bar is set, and what they need to do to beat Tesla to market.</p>
<p>Until we see a Tesla Semi put hundreds of thousands of miles of testing on the tires, I'll have reservations about claims of efficiency, safety, and durability. Right now, Tesla doesn't know what it doesn't know in the large truck market, and it may find out that manufacturing semis is harder than it seems.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than TeslaWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=444b26bd-d762-4121-9829-0572351e61c4&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b3cd6a56-ce60-11e7-b7d0-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Tesla wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=444b26bd-d762-4121-9829-0572351e61c4&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b3cd6a56-ce60-11e7-b7d0-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of November 6, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFlushDraw/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b3cd6a56-ce60-11e7-b7d0-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Travis Hoium Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Clean Energy Fuels, Paccar, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b3cd6a56-ce60-11e7-b7d0-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Why Tesla Semi Faces an Uphill Battle | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/11/25/why-tesla-semi-faces-uphill-battle.html | 2017-11-25 | 0right
| Why Tesla Semi Faces an Uphill Battle
<p>Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has built a business on creating products its customers are eager to buy. There's no financial justification for someone to purchase a $100,000 Model S over a less expensive gasoline powered vehicle or EV, but that's not the point -- Teslas are sold because they're desirable in a very intangible way.</p>
<p>That intangible value is why Tesla will have a hard time moving into the semi truck market. Tesla Semi has to compete on a dollar for dollar basis with not only diesel trucks but all-electric semis from powerhouses like Daimler's Freightliner, Volvo (NASDAQOTH: VOLVY), and Paccar's (NASDAQ: PCAR) Peterbilt and Kenworth lines. That may be harder than Elon Musk thinks.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>When buyers make the decision to purchase a new semi truck, they're making a decades-long investment that needs to generate predictable returns. Rig operators aren't in the business of risking their operations on new technology or an unproven vehicle. Tesla may be able to sell a number of semis to companies like Walmart (NYSE: WMT), which reserved 15 last week, and grocery chain Loblaw, which reserved 25 units, but it'll need a proven vehicle to be more than a niche product. Tesla has already claimed that it will save rig operators money, but they'll want Tesla to prove it.</p>
<p>Evidence that it's difficult to get rig operators to make a switch to new technology, even when the investment makes sense, can be seen in the recent history of natural gas fuel. Clean Energy Fuels (NASDAQ: CLNE) and Westport Fuel Systems (NASDAQ: WPRT) built the technology and infrastructure to provide natural gas to semis at a price that would ultimately save operators money. But they <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/11/16/the-simple-reason-why-i-wont-buy-clean-energy-fuel.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b3cd6a56-ce60-11e7-b7d0-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">never got beyond niche markets Opens a New Window.</a>, because adoption was extremely low in comparison to the ~260,000 Class-8 semi trucks produced in North America each year.</p>
<p>If Tesla makes an obviously superior product at a superior cost it may be able to get a significant share of the market. But it's not clear Tesla Semi is a no-brainer for those who actually drive trucks for a living.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p><a href="https://www.autoblog.com/2017/11/19/tesla-semi-trucker-questions/" type="external">Auto Blog's Jonathon Ramsey Opens a New Window.</a> highlighted a number of the major flaws in the Tesla Semi, and there are a few that caught my eye.</p>
<p>The first is that Tesla doesn't appear to have any mirrors on the semi, which would make driving on a highway, navigating traffic in a city, or backing into a dock bay difficult, if not impossible. Musk hasn't addressed this issue directly, but it's likely Tesla thinks sensors and cameras can replace mirrors. But do you really think a typical semi driver will trust sensors rather than their years of experience in these situations?</p>
<p>Mirrors are an important consideration, because Musk highlights the 0.36 Cp drag coefficient as a major advantage of the rig. Without such a low drag, the semi would have a much shorter range than the currently advertised 500 miles, or would need to be heavier to achieve that kind of range.</p>
<p>Speaking of range, a typical semi has about 1,000 miles of range, meaning a Tesla semi would likely be used for shorter trips or transport in a small area like a dock. Those are important markets, but they constrain the current Tesla semi to niche applications. Remember that shorter trips would also mean more time spent in confined parking lots or backing into dock bays, which will require mirrors that the Tesla Semi doesn't have. And all that stopping and starting will reduce range even further than 500 miles, especially if drivers ever want to experience that fully loaded 20 second 0-60 mph time.</p>
<p>A truck that's being used every day and presumably charging multiple times per day would also run into battery life cycle issues. Tesla's auto warranty is now for unlimited miles in the <a href="https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty" type="external">first 8 years of ownership Opens a New Window.</a>, but that would be less than 1,000 full cycles under normal driving conditions (~13,500 miles per year). Battery degradation data from Maarten Steinbuch indicates it's around that 1,000th cycle that Tesla's Model S loses 10% of its capacity. As another data point, the Powerwall has a warranty for about 3,200 cycles. If we ballpark 1.5 full charges per day and assume the rig could be charged 3,200 cycles, the Tesla Semi would need to have its battery replaced every 5.8 years. That's a big expense for an owner on top of the upfront cost of the semi. It could make the economics of a Tesla Semi harder to pencil.</p>
<p>There are also infrastructure concerns like the lack of semi charging stations nationwide and the lack of a critical mass of knowledgable mechanics. For a risk-averse trucking industry, Tesla is going to need more than a sexy semi -- it's going to need hard data that it'll save companies money, and that'll take years to develop.</p>
<p>I mentioned some of the early reservations for the semi, which sound impressive on paper. But the reservation is only $5,000, a small percentage of a semi's cost and worth the free advertising for Walmart and Loblaw. On top of that, the <a href="https://livestream.tesla.com/assets/TeslaSemiReservationAgreement_v20171116.pdf" type="external">deposit can be refunded at any time Opens a New Window.</a>, so it's not binding in any way.</p>
<p>The early reservations aren't really any indication of the level of interest in the Tesla Semi one way or another. Fleet operators will certainly "kick the tires," but until they see a Tesla Semi on the road -- and what competition is making by that point -- I wouldn't expect a lot of concrete sales contracts.</p>
<p>Even if Tesla can answer all of the questions above, Tesla has to actually make a semi to industry quality standards. It hasn't proven the ability to do that on a mass scale, and Musk has a <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/06/tesla-inc-delays-its-semi-truck-unveiling.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b3cd6a56-ce60-11e7-b7d0-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">long history of delaying product launches Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Trucking manufacturers know they need to electrify their fleets and are developing their own solutions. Tesla just showed its cards earlier than anyone else. Now they know where the bar is set, and what they need to do to beat Tesla to market.</p>
<p>Until we see a Tesla Semi put hundreds of thousands of miles of testing on the tires, I'll have reservations about claims of efficiency, safety, and durability. Right now, Tesla doesn't know what it doesn't know in the large truck market, and it may find out that manufacturing semis is harder than it seems.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than TeslaWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=444b26bd-d762-4121-9829-0572351e61c4&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b3cd6a56-ce60-11e7-b7d0-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Tesla wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=444b26bd-d762-4121-9829-0572351e61c4&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b3cd6a56-ce60-11e7-b7d0-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of November 6, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFlushDraw/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b3cd6a56-ce60-11e7-b7d0-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Travis Hoium Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Clean Energy Fuels, Paccar, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b3cd6a56-ce60-11e7-b7d0-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 3,091 |
<p />
<p>Over the telephone, in jail and online, a new digital bounty is being harvested: the human voice.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Businesses and governments around the world increasingly are turning to voice biometrics, or voiceprints, to pay pensions, collect taxes, track criminals and replace passwords.</p>
<p>"We sometimes call it the invisible biometric," said Mike Goldgof, an executive at Madrid-based AGNITiO, one of about 10 leading companies in the field.</p>
<p>Those companies have helped enter more than 65 million voiceprints into corporate and government databases, according to Associated Press interviews with dozens of industry representatives and records requests in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.</p>
<p>"There's a misconception that the technology we have today is only in the domain of the intelligence services, or the domain of 'Star Trek,'" said Paul Burmester, of London-based ValidSoft, a voice biometric vendor. "The technology is here today, well-proven and commonly available."</p>
<p>And in high demand.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Dan Miller, an analyst with Opus Research in San Francisco, estimates that the industry's revenue will roughly double from just under $400 million last year to between $730 million and $900 million next year.</p>
<p>Barclays PLC recently experimented with voiceprinting as an identification for its wealthiest clients. It was so successful that Barclays is rolling it out to the rest of its 12 million retail banking customers.</p>
<p>"The general feeling is that voice biometrics will be the de facto standard in the next two or three years," said Iain Hanlon, a Barclays executive.</p>
<p>Vendors say the timbre of a person's voice is unique in a way similar to the loops and whorls at the tips of someone's fingers.</p>
<p>Their technology measures the characteristics of a person's speech as air is expelled from the lungs, across the vocal folds of the larynx, up the pharynx, over the tongue, and out through the lips, nose, and teeth. Typical speaker recognition software compares those characteristics with data held on a server. If two voiceprints are similar enough, the system declares them a match.</p>
<p>The Vanguard Group Inc., a Pennsylvania-based mutual fund manager, is among the technology's many financial users. Tens of thousands of customers log in to their accounts by speaking the phrase: "At Vanguard, my voice is my password" into the phone.</p>
<p>"We've done a lot of testing, and looked at siblings, even twins," said executive John Buhl, whose voice was a bit hoarse during a telephone interview. "Even people with colds, like I have today, we looked at that."</p>
<p>The single largest implementation identified by the AP is in Turkey, where mobile phone company Turkcell has taken the voice biometric data of some 10 million customers using technology provided by market leader Nuance Communications Inc. But government agencies are catching up.</p>
<p>In the U.S., law enforcement officials use the technology to monitor inmates and track offenders who have been paroled.</p>
<p>In New Zealand, the Internal Revenue Department celebrated its 1 millionth voiceprint, leading the revenue minister to boast that his country had "the highest level of voice biometric enrollments per capita in the world."</p>
<p>In South Africa, roughly 7 million voiceprints have been collected by the country's Social Security Agency, in part to verify that those claiming pensions are still alive.</p>
<p>Activists worry that the popularity of voiceprinting has a downside.</p>
<p>"It's more mass surveillance," said Sadhbh McCarthy, an Irish privacy researcher. "The next thing you know, that will be given to border guards, and you'll need to speak into a microphone when you get back from vacation."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Raphael Satter can be reached at http://twitter.com/razhael</p> | The Voice Harvesters: Bureaucrats, businesses gather more than 65 million people's voiceprints | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/10/13/voice-harvesters-bureaucrats-businesses-gather-more-than-65-million-people.html | 2016-03-09 | 0right
| The Voice Harvesters: Bureaucrats, businesses gather more than 65 million people's voiceprints
<p />
<p>Over the telephone, in jail and online, a new digital bounty is being harvested: the human voice.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Businesses and governments around the world increasingly are turning to voice biometrics, or voiceprints, to pay pensions, collect taxes, track criminals and replace passwords.</p>
<p>"We sometimes call it the invisible biometric," said Mike Goldgof, an executive at Madrid-based AGNITiO, one of about 10 leading companies in the field.</p>
<p>Those companies have helped enter more than 65 million voiceprints into corporate and government databases, according to Associated Press interviews with dozens of industry representatives and records requests in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.</p>
<p>"There's a misconception that the technology we have today is only in the domain of the intelligence services, or the domain of 'Star Trek,'" said Paul Burmester, of London-based ValidSoft, a voice biometric vendor. "The technology is here today, well-proven and commonly available."</p>
<p>And in high demand.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Dan Miller, an analyst with Opus Research in San Francisco, estimates that the industry's revenue will roughly double from just under $400 million last year to between $730 million and $900 million next year.</p>
<p>Barclays PLC recently experimented with voiceprinting as an identification for its wealthiest clients. It was so successful that Barclays is rolling it out to the rest of its 12 million retail banking customers.</p>
<p>"The general feeling is that voice biometrics will be the de facto standard in the next two or three years," said Iain Hanlon, a Barclays executive.</p>
<p>Vendors say the timbre of a person's voice is unique in a way similar to the loops and whorls at the tips of someone's fingers.</p>
<p>Their technology measures the characteristics of a person's speech as air is expelled from the lungs, across the vocal folds of the larynx, up the pharynx, over the tongue, and out through the lips, nose, and teeth. Typical speaker recognition software compares those characteristics with data held on a server. If two voiceprints are similar enough, the system declares them a match.</p>
<p>The Vanguard Group Inc., a Pennsylvania-based mutual fund manager, is among the technology's many financial users. Tens of thousands of customers log in to their accounts by speaking the phrase: "At Vanguard, my voice is my password" into the phone.</p>
<p>"We've done a lot of testing, and looked at siblings, even twins," said executive John Buhl, whose voice was a bit hoarse during a telephone interview. "Even people with colds, like I have today, we looked at that."</p>
<p>The single largest implementation identified by the AP is in Turkey, where mobile phone company Turkcell has taken the voice biometric data of some 10 million customers using technology provided by market leader Nuance Communications Inc. But government agencies are catching up.</p>
<p>In the U.S., law enforcement officials use the technology to monitor inmates and track offenders who have been paroled.</p>
<p>In New Zealand, the Internal Revenue Department celebrated its 1 millionth voiceprint, leading the revenue minister to boast that his country had "the highest level of voice biometric enrollments per capita in the world."</p>
<p>In South Africa, roughly 7 million voiceprints have been collected by the country's Social Security Agency, in part to verify that those claiming pensions are still alive.</p>
<p>Activists worry that the popularity of voiceprinting has a downside.</p>
<p>"It's more mass surveillance," said Sadhbh McCarthy, an Irish privacy researcher. "The next thing you know, that will be given to border guards, and you'll need to speak into a microphone when you get back from vacation."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Raphael Satter can be reached at http://twitter.com/razhael</p> | 3,092 |
<p>Under the guise of reform, Chicago’s schools are unfairly punishing thousands of innocent children whose only crime is posting a reading or math score deemed unacceptable for promotion. Somehow according to this policy, which has gained favorable national attention, failing huge numbers of children annually will solve the problems of public education. It won’t.</p>
<p>As an elementary school principal in Chicago, I presided over many graduations, and the importance of that ceremony to the children and their families was confirmed every spring. Thus the following headline from the Chicago Tribune of June 17, 1997, stunned me: “Tears of joy—and sorrow.” Above the headline: “For 8th graders at Von Humboldt School, Monday was bittersweet as 59 pupils graduated and 45 didn’t because their standardized test scores failed to make the grade.”</p>
<p>One of those 45 was Eddie, who scored a 6.8 in reading and 7.2 in math, achieving the graduation standard of 7.0 in math but just missing the 6.9 needed in reading. It was a borderline situation that the principal felt justified a waiver. The waiver wasn’t granted .</p>
<p>“It’s messed up,” Eddie said. While Eddie got that one right, he probably didn’t know that his chances of graduating high school had just been significantly reduced.</p>
<p>I feel sorry for all the Eddies of this world. They are being royally shafted by people who should know better. Scratch that. Make it, do know better. Anybody who has taken Statistics 101 or Test and Measurements 101—and that includes all professional educators—knows the limitations of norm-referenced standardized tests like the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills.</p>
<p>For those who haven’t taken Statistics 101, I offer this primer.</p>
<p>Let’s say that a group of 6,000 students has been selected as the norm group for 8th grade. Each of these students takes the test and gets a “raw” score that is equal to the number of questions he or she answered correctly. Imagine now that each student is given a placard with his raw score on it, and the children are taken to an open field. The child with the lowest score is placed on the left side of the field, and the child with the highest score on the right side of the field. The others are told to place themselves in line according to the number on their placards. Near the middle of the line, children are standing hundreds deep because their scores are very close together. But children at ends of the line are pretty lonely.</p>
<p>The chief test-maker then directs his lieutenants to start at either end of the line and begin counting off groups of 60 children. Each group of 60 now represents 1 percent of the tested population. In the future, when other children take the test, they will be graded according to where they would have stood in this line. Students whose raw scores put them at the 50th percentile are deemed popularly to be “at grade level,” even though the 50th percentile represents simply the middle scorers.</p>
<p>Test-makers also report scores by stanines, which is short for standard nine. Stanines 1, 2 and 3, which span the first 22 percentiles, are considered below average. Stanines 4, 5 and 6, which span the 23rd and 76th percentiles, are considered average. And stanines 7, 8 and 9, which span the 77th and 99th percentiles, are considered above average.</p>
<p>To make schools happy, test-makers also convert percentiles into grade-level scores, such as Eddie’s 6.8 in reading. The score Eddie got generally gets read as the eighth month of 6th grade. In reporting scores to parents and the public, school districts overwhelmingly choose grade levels even though percentiles are more accurate and stanines are vastly superior for instructional purposes. The grade-level system seems so accurate, but the perception is deceptive. An examination of Eddie’s scores shows why.</p>
<p>Eddie’s reading level of 6.8 puts him at the 24th percentile and, therefore, just inside the 4th stanine, which test-makers consider average.</p>
<p>Now look at his math score. On the 8th-grade math test, a 7.2 is at the 22nd percentile—2 points lower than Eddie’s reading rank—and, therefore, in the 3rd stanine, which test-makers consider below average.</p>
<p>So, Eddie was denied the opportunity to graduate with a 24th-percentile score in reading but deemed smart enough to graduate with a 22nd-percentile score in math. As Eddie said, things were “messed up.”</p>
<p>Whatever the classification scheme, though, some child will always be one question away from the next higher category, which is precisely why taking a year from the life of a child on the basis of one point on one test is nothing short of criminal.</p>
<p>This becomes even more apparent when the issue of test reliability is examined. As in polling, test scores have margins of error. On a test with a “reliability coefficient” of 0.95, which is highly reliable, a score of 100 could have a seven-point margin of error, meaning that a student who scores 100 could just as well have gotten a score as low as 93 or as high as 107.</p>
<p>That means that if Eddie had taken the reading test on another day, he might well have made the 6.9 minimum for graduation to high school.</p>
<p>A goodly number of the students who made the test grade after summer school likely would have done equally well simply with a retest. You can see that from the retesting at Chicago Vocational High School, where a second round of testing allowed another 89 9th-graders, half of those retested, to gain sophomore standing.</p>
<p>Nature—maturing four months between the May and August Iowa testing dates—probably helped some marginal students clear the test barrier. And some surely benefited from the wake-up call and the summer instructional program. In the end, though, the pass rate for the summer program wasn’t much different from the pass rate of the CVS retesting .</p>
<p>Convince parents</p>
<p>Forty-five percent “failed” despite small classes, individual attention and the intensive, scripted, step-by-step instructional program. They are the dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about.</p>
<p>Remember our imaginary line? Most of the 45 percent would be dispiritedly shuffling into place at the far left end. They were at the bottom of their class in the spring when they were retained, and, judging by recent studies, they were at the bottom of their class when they returned to school in the fall—one year older—repeating 3rd, 6th, or 8th grade. The 45 percent are not the Eddies, who missed promotion by one-tenth of a grade equivalent. These children are lodged solidly in the first and second stanines.</p>
<p>There is an alternative to massive retention, and it begins with an enlightened promotion and retention policy that requires schools to justify a proposed retention to the satisfaction of the child and his or her parents. That is, the child and parents must agree that retention would be a benefit.</p>
<p>No child should be retained more than once and never in 8th grade. As a general rule, retention should take place in 3rd or 4th grade or in 6th or 7th. Children should be retained only after careful monitoring for two to three years. When it is determined on an individual basis that retention is in order, the school should consider moving the child back a grade in the spring, so he could be promoted with his new classmates at the end of the semester .</p>
<p>This, in essence, was the promotion and retention policy I followed when I was the principal in a poor neighborhood school. Under this policy, it was not necessary to retain many children; when it was, no parent objected.</p>
<p>Children retained under this policy tended to be socially and/or physically immature, had a history of lengthy illnesses and excessive absences from school, were new to the urban environment or had a history of frequent transfers. These mitigating factors were easily identified, and retention was usually accepted by the child and the parent as a positive educational act done in the best interests of the child. In an ideal world, the child would not go through the same experience in which he was already unsuccessful; but in the real world, you make do with available resources.</p>
<p>In the case of marginal 8th-graders, a special summer school should be offered that would strengthen the skills students will need in high school: reading for comprehension, outlining, note-taking, writing papers, research, problem solving and improving study habits. It should be optional; enrollment should depend on schools’ convincing parents that it would help their children get a high school diploma. This same program, suitably modified, should be available to children at the lower grades as well.</p>
<p>In the zeal to push Eddie’s standardized test scores up a few points, the schools are neglecting high-scoring students like his classmate Maylene, who scored 12.4 in reading and 9.9 in math. Summer programs should be offered to these bright youngsters, too, so they can see that learning is exciting. Let them read, talk, write. Forget about advanced placement. Time enough for that in high school. Allow them, for six weeks, the joy of pure learning without concern for grades or tests or rank. And again, modified accordingly, these programs should be available at the lower grades.</p>
<p>And finally, what about those youngsters who fall at the far left of our norming line. I’m reminded of a day long ago I when I was downtown and noticed a newsboy selling papers, making change, and greeting customers with a speed and accuracy I couldn’t match. I recognized him as one of my EMH students (Educably Mentally Handicapped). A couple years later, I saw him again in my school. I was chatting with one of my clerks when he entered the office with a package. Now a delivery truck driver, he was courteous, business-like and as efficient as he had been as a newsboy.</p>
<p>These are healthy, normal, feeling youngsters in every respect; except they come up short by the arbitrary standard of standardized tests. They are valuable and valued human beings, and, yes, their self-esteem is important. They don’t need a test score to tell them they are not as swift in school as their classmates. They know this everyday of their lives.</p>
<p>For these youngsters, I also would offer a voluntary summer program, one aimed at showing them that learning can be a pleasurable experience.</p> | Chicago’s brand of retention, summer school all wrong | false | http://chicagoreporter.com/chicagos-brand-retention-summer-school-all-wrong/ | 2005-12-27 | 3left-center
| Chicago’s brand of retention, summer school all wrong
<p>Under the guise of reform, Chicago’s schools are unfairly punishing thousands of innocent children whose only crime is posting a reading or math score deemed unacceptable for promotion. Somehow according to this policy, which has gained favorable national attention, failing huge numbers of children annually will solve the problems of public education. It won’t.</p>
<p>As an elementary school principal in Chicago, I presided over many graduations, and the importance of that ceremony to the children and their families was confirmed every spring. Thus the following headline from the Chicago Tribune of June 17, 1997, stunned me: “Tears of joy—and sorrow.” Above the headline: “For 8th graders at Von Humboldt School, Monday was bittersweet as 59 pupils graduated and 45 didn’t because their standardized test scores failed to make the grade.”</p>
<p>One of those 45 was Eddie, who scored a 6.8 in reading and 7.2 in math, achieving the graduation standard of 7.0 in math but just missing the 6.9 needed in reading. It was a borderline situation that the principal felt justified a waiver. The waiver wasn’t granted .</p>
<p>“It’s messed up,” Eddie said. While Eddie got that one right, he probably didn’t know that his chances of graduating high school had just been significantly reduced.</p>
<p>I feel sorry for all the Eddies of this world. They are being royally shafted by people who should know better. Scratch that. Make it, do know better. Anybody who has taken Statistics 101 or Test and Measurements 101—and that includes all professional educators—knows the limitations of norm-referenced standardized tests like the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills.</p>
<p>For those who haven’t taken Statistics 101, I offer this primer.</p>
<p>Let’s say that a group of 6,000 students has been selected as the norm group for 8th grade. Each of these students takes the test and gets a “raw” score that is equal to the number of questions he or she answered correctly. Imagine now that each student is given a placard with his raw score on it, and the children are taken to an open field. The child with the lowest score is placed on the left side of the field, and the child with the highest score on the right side of the field. The others are told to place themselves in line according to the number on their placards. Near the middle of the line, children are standing hundreds deep because their scores are very close together. But children at ends of the line are pretty lonely.</p>
<p>The chief test-maker then directs his lieutenants to start at either end of the line and begin counting off groups of 60 children. Each group of 60 now represents 1 percent of the tested population. In the future, when other children take the test, they will be graded according to where they would have stood in this line. Students whose raw scores put them at the 50th percentile are deemed popularly to be “at grade level,” even though the 50th percentile represents simply the middle scorers.</p>
<p>Test-makers also report scores by stanines, which is short for standard nine. Stanines 1, 2 and 3, which span the first 22 percentiles, are considered below average. Stanines 4, 5 and 6, which span the 23rd and 76th percentiles, are considered average. And stanines 7, 8 and 9, which span the 77th and 99th percentiles, are considered above average.</p>
<p>To make schools happy, test-makers also convert percentiles into grade-level scores, such as Eddie’s 6.8 in reading. The score Eddie got generally gets read as the eighth month of 6th grade. In reporting scores to parents and the public, school districts overwhelmingly choose grade levels even though percentiles are more accurate and stanines are vastly superior for instructional purposes. The grade-level system seems so accurate, but the perception is deceptive. An examination of Eddie’s scores shows why.</p>
<p>Eddie’s reading level of 6.8 puts him at the 24th percentile and, therefore, just inside the 4th stanine, which test-makers consider average.</p>
<p>Now look at his math score. On the 8th-grade math test, a 7.2 is at the 22nd percentile—2 points lower than Eddie’s reading rank—and, therefore, in the 3rd stanine, which test-makers consider below average.</p>
<p>So, Eddie was denied the opportunity to graduate with a 24th-percentile score in reading but deemed smart enough to graduate with a 22nd-percentile score in math. As Eddie said, things were “messed up.”</p>
<p>Whatever the classification scheme, though, some child will always be one question away from the next higher category, which is precisely why taking a year from the life of a child on the basis of one point on one test is nothing short of criminal.</p>
<p>This becomes even more apparent when the issue of test reliability is examined. As in polling, test scores have margins of error. On a test with a “reliability coefficient” of 0.95, which is highly reliable, a score of 100 could have a seven-point margin of error, meaning that a student who scores 100 could just as well have gotten a score as low as 93 or as high as 107.</p>
<p>That means that if Eddie had taken the reading test on another day, he might well have made the 6.9 minimum for graduation to high school.</p>
<p>A goodly number of the students who made the test grade after summer school likely would have done equally well simply with a retest. You can see that from the retesting at Chicago Vocational High School, where a second round of testing allowed another 89 9th-graders, half of those retested, to gain sophomore standing.</p>
<p>Nature—maturing four months between the May and August Iowa testing dates—probably helped some marginal students clear the test barrier. And some surely benefited from the wake-up call and the summer instructional program. In the end, though, the pass rate for the summer program wasn’t much different from the pass rate of the CVS retesting .</p>
<p>Convince parents</p>
<p>Forty-five percent “failed” despite small classes, individual attention and the intensive, scripted, step-by-step instructional program. They are the dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about.</p>
<p>Remember our imaginary line? Most of the 45 percent would be dispiritedly shuffling into place at the far left end. They were at the bottom of their class in the spring when they were retained, and, judging by recent studies, they were at the bottom of their class when they returned to school in the fall—one year older—repeating 3rd, 6th, or 8th grade. The 45 percent are not the Eddies, who missed promotion by one-tenth of a grade equivalent. These children are lodged solidly in the first and second stanines.</p>
<p>There is an alternative to massive retention, and it begins with an enlightened promotion and retention policy that requires schools to justify a proposed retention to the satisfaction of the child and his or her parents. That is, the child and parents must agree that retention would be a benefit.</p>
<p>No child should be retained more than once and never in 8th grade. As a general rule, retention should take place in 3rd or 4th grade or in 6th or 7th. Children should be retained only after careful monitoring for two to three years. When it is determined on an individual basis that retention is in order, the school should consider moving the child back a grade in the spring, so he could be promoted with his new classmates at the end of the semester .</p>
<p>This, in essence, was the promotion and retention policy I followed when I was the principal in a poor neighborhood school. Under this policy, it was not necessary to retain many children; when it was, no parent objected.</p>
<p>Children retained under this policy tended to be socially and/or physically immature, had a history of lengthy illnesses and excessive absences from school, were new to the urban environment or had a history of frequent transfers. These mitigating factors were easily identified, and retention was usually accepted by the child and the parent as a positive educational act done in the best interests of the child. In an ideal world, the child would not go through the same experience in which he was already unsuccessful; but in the real world, you make do with available resources.</p>
<p>In the case of marginal 8th-graders, a special summer school should be offered that would strengthen the skills students will need in high school: reading for comprehension, outlining, note-taking, writing papers, research, problem solving and improving study habits. It should be optional; enrollment should depend on schools’ convincing parents that it would help their children get a high school diploma. This same program, suitably modified, should be available to children at the lower grades as well.</p>
<p>In the zeal to push Eddie’s standardized test scores up a few points, the schools are neglecting high-scoring students like his classmate Maylene, who scored 12.4 in reading and 9.9 in math. Summer programs should be offered to these bright youngsters, too, so they can see that learning is exciting. Let them read, talk, write. Forget about advanced placement. Time enough for that in high school. Allow them, for six weeks, the joy of pure learning without concern for grades or tests or rank. And again, modified accordingly, these programs should be available at the lower grades.</p>
<p>And finally, what about those youngsters who fall at the far left of our norming line. I’m reminded of a day long ago I when I was downtown and noticed a newsboy selling papers, making change, and greeting customers with a speed and accuracy I couldn’t match. I recognized him as one of my EMH students (Educably Mentally Handicapped). A couple years later, I saw him again in my school. I was chatting with one of my clerks when he entered the office with a package. Now a delivery truck driver, he was courteous, business-like and as efficient as he had been as a newsboy.</p>
<p>These are healthy, normal, feeling youngsters in every respect; except they come up short by the arbitrary standard of standardized tests. They are valuable and valued human beings, and, yes, their self-esteem is important. They don’t need a test score to tell them they are not as swift in school as their classmates. They know this everyday of their lives.</p>
<p>For these youngsters, I also would offer a voluntary summer program, one aimed at showing them that learning can be a pleasurable experience.</p> | 3,093 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Days after admitting that "we don't yet have a complete strategy" for training Iraqi government forces - which are supposed to ultimately defeat the Islamic State - Obama is sending an additional 450 troops to execute this unstrategized mission.</p>
<p>That will raise the number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq to about 3,500. But what, realistically, is their goal? And how are they supposed to achieve it?</p>
<p>It is understandable that the president might feel pressed to do something in response to the Islamic State's recent battlefield gains - including the rout of disorganized Iraqi forces in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>But Obama imposed such tight restrictions on the activities of American soldiers that only the sunniest optimist would believe this increase can make a military difference.</p>
<p>U.S. troops will not be allowed near the front lines, where their presence, according to Obama's critics, could stiffen the resolve of an Iraqi army that often chooses to flee rather than fight.</p>
<p>There will be no American forward air controllers, who could direct U.S. airstrikes with far greater precision. There will be no use of deadly Apache attack helicopters in support of Iraqi ground operations.</p>
<p>In essence, sending the 450 new troops is less a military move than a political gesture. After the fall of Ramadi, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi desperately needed a signal of U.S. support. In that strictly limited sense, I suppose, mission accomplished. Sort of.</p>
<p>With the added personnel, U.S. commanders will start by establishing a fifth site for training Iraqi forces.</p>
<p>The new camp will be in Anbar, the heartland of Iraq's Sunni minority, where American advisers will try to somehow inspire loyalty to the Shiite-dominated central government in Baghdad. Given the sectarian brutality of the Shiite militias that fight alongside the regular army, many Anbar tribal leaders have come to see the Islamic State as the lesser of two evils.</p>
<p>A few hundred extra U.S. soldiers, confined to their posts, are not going to turn the tide in this war. They represent just a baby step - but in a direction Obama obviously doesn't want to go.</p>
<p>When the American airstrikes failed to halt the Islamic State in its tracks, it didn't take a clairvoyant to predict a future of gradual escalation and mission creep.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Obama has resisted, however. I believe he simply does not want his legacy to include embroiling the United States in another big, tragic, expensive, open-ended Middle East war.</p>
<p>I don't blame him. Do you?</p>
<p>Critics of Obama's policies propose relatively modest steps that sound reasonable: Speed up the training. Intensify the bombing, using American spotters. Provide more arms. Let U.S. advisers stand shoulder to shoulder with Iraqi officers on the front lines.</p>
<p>But none of this deals with the central problem, which is that too many Iraqis place sectarian, ethnic and regional loyalties ahead of their allegiance to the nation. If the ideal of a unified, pacified, pluralistic Iraq is more important to us than it is to the Iraqis, even the 10,000 additional U.S. troops proposed by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., cannot possibly make a difference.</p>
<p>Yes, the United States could easily marshal the necessary forces and recapture Ramadi. But what would we do with it? Give it back to a government that the city's residents don't trust? Keep it under martial law until we could make it safe for McDonald's?</p>
<p>Here's a bigger question: Would a large, long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq - and, almost surely, Syria as well - make Americans safer? I think not, but it's an argument worth having. What makes no sense to me is believing in an Iraqi nation that doesn't believe in itself.</p>
<p>Obama's hesitancy suggests a deep skepticism about what, at this point, must be considered his war. That would explain why he keeps announcing we have no strategy. Maybe one does exist - but the president doesn't think it will work.</p>
<p>Or perhaps Obama is playing for time. Maybe he has decided to do just enough to keep the Iraqi government from collapsing, while giving his generals every chance to make their far-fetched training program work.</p>
<p>The problem is that, in any war, the enemy gets a vote. And nothing, so far, has altered the fact that the Islamic State is far more in control of events than the president.</p>
<p>Email: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>; copyright, Washington Post Writers Group.</p>
<p /> | Obama skeptical about 'his' war' | false | https://abqjournal.com/597630/obama-skeptical-about-his-war.html | 2least
| Obama skeptical about 'his' war'
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Days after admitting that "we don't yet have a complete strategy" for training Iraqi government forces - which are supposed to ultimately defeat the Islamic State - Obama is sending an additional 450 troops to execute this unstrategized mission.</p>
<p>That will raise the number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq to about 3,500. But what, realistically, is their goal? And how are they supposed to achieve it?</p>
<p>It is understandable that the president might feel pressed to do something in response to the Islamic State's recent battlefield gains - including the rout of disorganized Iraqi forces in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>But Obama imposed such tight restrictions on the activities of American soldiers that only the sunniest optimist would believe this increase can make a military difference.</p>
<p>U.S. troops will not be allowed near the front lines, where their presence, according to Obama's critics, could stiffen the resolve of an Iraqi army that often chooses to flee rather than fight.</p>
<p>There will be no American forward air controllers, who could direct U.S. airstrikes with far greater precision. There will be no use of deadly Apache attack helicopters in support of Iraqi ground operations.</p>
<p>In essence, sending the 450 new troops is less a military move than a political gesture. After the fall of Ramadi, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi desperately needed a signal of U.S. support. In that strictly limited sense, I suppose, mission accomplished. Sort of.</p>
<p>With the added personnel, U.S. commanders will start by establishing a fifth site for training Iraqi forces.</p>
<p>The new camp will be in Anbar, the heartland of Iraq's Sunni minority, where American advisers will try to somehow inspire loyalty to the Shiite-dominated central government in Baghdad. Given the sectarian brutality of the Shiite militias that fight alongside the regular army, many Anbar tribal leaders have come to see the Islamic State as the lesser of two evils.</p>
<p>A few hundred extra U.S. soldiers, confined to their posts, are not going to turn the tide in this war. They represent just a baby step - but in a direction Obama obviously doesn't want to go.</p>
<p>When the American airstrikes failed to halt the Islamic State in its tracks, it didn't take a clairvoyant to predict a future of gradual escalation and mission creep.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Obama has resisted, however. I believe he simply does not want his legacy to include embroiling the United States in another big, tragic, expensive, open-ended Middle East war.</p>
<p>I don't blame him. Do you?</p>
<p>Critics of Obama's policies propose relatively modest steps that sound reasonable: Speed up the training. Intensify the bombing, using American spotters. Provide more arms. Let U.S. advisers stand shoulder to shoulder with Iraqi officers on the front lines.</p>
<p>But none of this deals with the central problem, which is that too many Iraqis place sectarian, ethnic and regional loyalties ahead of their allegiance to the nation. If the ideal of a unified, pacified, pluralistic Iraq is more important to us than it is to the Iraqis, even the 10,000 additional U.S. troops proposed by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., cannot possibly make a difference.</p>
<p>Yes, the United States could easily marshal the necessary forces and recapture Ramadi. But what would we do with it? Give it back to a government that the city's residents don't trust? Keep it under martial law until we could make it safe for McDonald's?</p>
<p>Here's a bigger question: Would a large, long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq - and, almost surely, Syria as well - make Americans safer? I think not, but it's an argument worth having. What makes no sense to me is believing in an Iraqi nation that doesn't believe in itself.</p>
<p>Obama's hesitancy suggests a deep skepticism about what, at this point, must be considered his war. That would explain why he keeps announcing we have no strategy. Maybe one does exist - but the president doesn't think it will work.</p>
<p>Or perhaps Obama is playing for time. Maybe he has decided to do just enough to keep the Iraqi government from collapsing, while giving his generals every chance to make their far-fetched training program work.</p>
<p>The problem is that, in any war, the enemy gets a vote. And nothing, so far, has altered the fact that the Islamic State is far more in control of events than the president.</p>
<p>Email: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>; copyright, Washington Post Writers Group.</p>
<p /> | 3,094 |
|
<p>JERUSALEM (AP) - With a Twitter post threatening to cut off U.S. aid to the Palestinians, President Donald Trump has expressed his frustration over the lack of progress in his hoped-for Mideast peace push. But things could deteriorate even further if Trump follows through on the threat.</p>
<p>Over two decades of on-and-off peace talks, the U.S., Israel and the Palestinians have created a situation of interdependence, with American mediation at the core of this system.</p>
<p>A cutoff in aid would almost certainly harm the Palestinians, particularly those who rely on U.N. refugee services. But Trump's credibility, damaged with the Palestinians after recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, would suffer another blow. And in a worst-case scenario, Israel could find itself footing the bill to provide services to millions of Palestinians while heading closer toward a single binational state with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>Here is a look at U.S. aid to the Palestinians, and the potential implications of that funding drying up.</p>
<p>Q: What aid does the U.S. provide to the Palestinians?</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority relies heavily on foreign assistance. It receives hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the international community, and the U.S. is a major donor.</p>
<p>The U.S., in contrast to other donors, does not provide direct funding for the Palestinian budget. Instead, its assistance focuses on development projects.</p>
<p>According to the U.S. Consulate, the U.S. has delivered about $5.2 billion in aid to the Palestinians since 1994, with the current level at roughly $400 million a year. This money goes to fund roads, schools, water projects, hospitals and health care, and to help support the Palestinian security forces.</p>
<p>In addition, the U.S. is the largest donor to UNRWA, the U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees across the region with services such as housing, health care, education and food assistance. UNRWA says the U.S. contributed over $365 million last year, roughly 30 percent of the agency's budget.</p>
<p>Q: Is the money promised by formal agreement?</p>
<p>There is no formal aid agreement with the Palestinian Authority. The administration requests funds each year that are then approved by Congress.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 as an autonomy government meant to last five years as a prelude to a final peace deal establishing an independent Palestinian state. But after years of failed negotiations and several waves of violence, what was meant to be a temporary arrangement has become permanent.</p>
<p>Today, the U.S. sends little money directly to the Palestinian Authority amid concerns, expressed by U.S. officials and congressmen, that the Palestinians were not doing enough to halt violence, incitement or corruption. Most funds are typically earmarked for projects coordinated through the U.S. Agency for International Development.</p>
<p>Trump's latest Tweet, however, appears to stem from anger over the U.N. General Assembly's vote last month that overwhelmingly rejected his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.</p>
<p>The Palestinians, who seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem as their capital, say the U.S. is no longer a suitable mediator, and Trump's Mideast diplomacy appears frozen.</p>
<p>At the time of the U.N. vote, Trump warned that countries that backed the Palestinians risked losing American aid. This week, he also took aim at aid to Pakistan, a country that voted with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>Q: Could the Palestinians get alternative funding?</p>
<p>Since Trump's Jerusalem decision, the Palestinians have been seeking to rally diplomatic support both in Europe and across the Arab world. They would likely turn to the European Union and wealthy Gulf Arab states for financial support as well, though it is far from certain others will step up to fill the void.</p>
<p>Q: What are the implications if the aid is cut off?</p>
<p>The Palestinians have been grappling with reductions in aid from cash-strapped donors for several years, and officials say they can also withstand a U.S. cut-off, especially because the money does not go to their operating budget.</p>
<p>"The Palestinian Authority is not going to collapse if the U.S. stops paying its aid, but it will create more difficulties," said Mohammed Mustafa, an economic adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas.</p>
<p>In the short term, the biggest casualty would be UNRWA. The agency provides services to some 5 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants across the Middle East. The agency, for instance, educates an estimated 270,000 children in Gaza. If schools were forced to close, these children could end up in classrooms run by the ruling Hamas militant group. UNRWA might also be forced to lay off workers in a volatile territory where unemployment already is over 40 percent.</p>
<p>In the long run, things could become even more dire. The Trump administration, already seen as biased by the Palestinians, could have a difficult time bringing them back to the negotiating table as it prepares to float a peace proposal.</p>
<p>Reductions in funding for Palestinian security forces could, ironically, hurt Israeli security. These forces quietly cooperate with Israel in a shared fight against Hamas. For this reason, U.S. officials say security assistance will likely not be touched.</p>
<p>A collapse of the Palestinian Authority, already buckling under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, could be disastrous for Israel. As an occupying power, Israel could find itself responsible for the welfare and education of over 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.</p>
<p>The Palestinians also might follow through on threats to abandon their dream of establishing an independent state alongside Israel and instead seek equal rights in a single, binational state. This scenario could spell the end of Israel as a democracy with a broad Jewish majority.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP correspondents Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, and Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.</p>
<p>JERUSALEM (AP) - With a Twitter post threatening to cut off U.S. aid to the Palestinians, President Donald Trump has expressed his frustration over the lack of progress in his hoped-for Mideast peace push. But things could deteriorate even further if Trump follows through on the threat.</p>
<p>Over two decades of on-and-off peace talks, the U.S., Israel and the Palestinians have created a situation of interdependence, with American mediation at the core of this system.</p>
<p>A cutoff in aid would almost certainly harm the Palestinians, particularly those who rely on U.N. refugee services. But Trump's credibility, damaged with the Palestinians after recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, would suffer another blow. And in a worst-case scenario, Israel could find itself footing the bill to provide services to millions of Palestinians while heading closer toward a single binational state with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>Here is a look at U.S. aid to the Palestinians, and the potential implications of that funding drying up.</p>
<p>Q: What aid does the U.S. provide to the Palestinians?</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority relies heavily on foreign assistance. It receives hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the international community, and the U.S. is a major donor.</p>
<p>The U.S., in contrast to other donors, does not provide direct funding for the Palestinian budget. Instead, its assistance focuses on development projects.</p>
<p>According to the U.S. Consulate, the U.S. has delivered about $5.2 billion in aid to the Palestinians since 1994, with the current level at roughly $400 million a year. This money goes to fund roads, schools, water projects, hospitals and health care, and to help support the Palestinian security forces.</p>
<p>In addition, the U.S. is the largest donor to UNRWA, the U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees across the region with services such as housing, health care, education and food assistance. UNRWA says the U.S. contributed over $365 million last year, roughly 30 percent of the agency's budget.</p>
<p>Q: Is the money promised by formal agreement?</p>
<p>There is no formal aid agreement with the Palestinian Authority. The administration requests funds each year that are then approved by Congress.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 as an autonomy government meant to last five years as a prelude to a final peace deal establishing an independent Palestinian state. But after years of failed negotiations and several waves of violence, what was meant to be a temporary arrangement has become permanent.</p>
<p>Today, the U.S. sends little money directly to the Palestinian Authority amid concerns, expressed by U.S. officials and congressmen, that the Palestinians were not doing enough to halt violence, incitement or corruption. Most funds are typically earmarked for projects coordinated through the U.S. Agency for International Development.</p>
<p>Trump's latest Tweet, however, appears to stem from anger over the U.N. General Assembly's vote last month that overwhelmingly rejected his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.</p>
<p>The Palestinians, who seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem as their capital, say the U.S. is no longer a suitable mediator, and Trump's Mideast diplomacy appears frozen.</p>
<p>At the time of the U.N. vote, Trump warned that countries that backed the Palestinians risked losing American aid. This week, he also took aim at aid to Pakistan, a country that voted with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>Q: Could the Palestinians get alternative funding?</p>
<p>Since Trump's Jerusalem decision, the Palestinians have been seeking to rally diplomatic support both in Europe and across the Arab world. They would likely turn to the European Union and wealthy Gulf Arab states for financial support as well, though it is far from certain others will step up to fill the void.</p>
<p>Q: What are the implications if the aid is cut off?</p>
<p>The Palestinians have been grappling with reductions in aid from cash-strapped donors for several years, and officials say they can also withstand a U.S. cut-off, especially because the money does not go to their operating budget.</p>
<p>"The Palestinian Authority is not going to collapse if the U.S. stops paying its aid, but it will create more difficulties," said Mohammed Mustafa, an economic adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas.</p>
<p>In the short term, the biggest casualty would be UNRWA. The agency provides services to some 5 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants across the Middle East. The agency, for instance, educates an estimated 270,000 children in Gaza. If schools were forced to close, these children could end up in classrooms run by the ruling Hamas militant group. UNRWA might also be forced to lay off workers in a volatile territory where unemployment already is over 40 percent.</p>
<p>In the long run, things could become even more dire. The Trump administration, already seen as biased by the Palestinians, could have a difficult time bringing them back to the negotiating table as it prepares to float a peace proposal.</p>
<p>Reductions in funding for Palestinian security forces could, ironically, hurt Israeli security. These forces quietly cooperate with Israel in a shared fight against Hamas. For this reason, U.S. officials say security assistance will likely not be touched.</p>
<p>A collapse of the Palestinian Authority, already buckling under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, could be disastrous for Israel. As an occupying power, Israel could find itself responsible for the welfare and education of over 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.</p>
<p>The Palestinians also might follow through on threats to abandon their dream of establishing an independent state alongside Israel and instead seek equal rights in a single, binational state. This scenario could spell the end of Israel as a democracy with a broad Jewish majority.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP correspondents Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, and Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.</p> | Trump threat to cut aid to Palestinians carries risks | false | https://apnews.com/ba19dcbfa3d44f788e6b19649ab704bd | 2018-01-03 | 2least
| Trump threat to cut aid to Palestinians carries risks
<p>JERUSALEM (AP) - With a Twitter post threatening to cut off U.S. aid to the Palestinians, President Donald Trump has expressed his frustration over the lack of progress in his hoped-for Mideast peace push. But things could deteriorate even further if Trump follows through on the threat.</p>
<p>Over two decades of on-and-off peace talks, the U.S., Israel and the Palestinians have created a situation of interdependence, with American mediation at the core of this system.</p>
<p>A cutoff in aid would almost certainly harm the Palestinians, particularly those who rely on U.N. refugee services. But Trump's credibility, damaged with the Palestinians after recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, would suffer another blow. And in a worst-case scenario, Israel could find itself footing the bill to provide services to millions of Palestinians while heading closer toward a single binational state with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>Here is a look at U.S. aid to the Palestinians, and the potential implications of that funding drying up.</p>
<p>Q: What aid does the U.S. provide to the Palestinians?</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority relies heavily on foreign assistance. It receives hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the international community, and the U.S. is a major donor.</p>
<p>The U.S., in contrast to other donors, does not provide direct funding for the Palestinian budget. Instead, its assistance focuses on development projects.</p>
<p>According to the U.S. Consulate, the U.S. has delivered about $5.2 billion in aid to the Palestinians since 1994, with the current level at roughly $400 million a year. This money goes to fund roads, schools, water projects, hospitals and health care, and to help support the Palestinian security forces.</p>
<p>In addition, the U.S. is the largest donor to UNRWA, the U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees across the region with services such as housing, health care, education and food assistance. UNRWA says the U.S. contributed over $365 million last year, roughly 30 percent of the agency's budget.</p>
<p>Q: Is the money promised by formal agreement?</p>
<p>There is no formal aid agreement with the Palestinian Authority. The administration requests funds each year that are then approved by Congress.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 as an autonomy government meant to last five years as a prelude to a final peace deal establishing an independent Palestinian state. But after years of failed negotiations and several waves of violence, what was meant to be a temporary arrangement has become permanent.</p>
<p>Today, the U.S. sends little money directly to the Palestinian Authority amid concerns, expressed by U.S. officials and congressmen, that the Palestinians were not doing enough to halt violence, incitement or corruption. Most funds are typically earmarked for projects coordinated through the U.S. Agency for International Development.</p>
<p>Trump's latest Tweet, however, appears to stem from anger over the U.N. General Assembly's vote last month that overwhelmingly rejected his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.</p>
<p>The Palestinians, who seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem as their capital, say the U.S. is no longer a suitable mediator, and Trump's Mideast diplomacy appears frozen.</p>
<p>At the time of the U.N. vote, Trump warned that countries that backed the Palestinians risked losing American aid. This week, he also took aim at aid to Pakistan, a country that voted with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>Q: Could the Palestinians get alternative funding?</p>
<p>Since Trump's Jerusalem decision, the Palestinians have been seeking to rally diplomatic support both in Europe and across the Arab world. They would likely turn to the European Union and wealthy Gulf Arab states for financial support as well, though it is far from certain others will step up to fill the void.</p>
<p>Q: What are the implications if the aid is cut off?</p>
<p>The Palestinians have been grappling with reductions in aid from cash-strapped donors for several years, and officials say they can also withstand a U.S. cut-off, especially because the money does not go to their operating budget.</p>
<p>"The Palestinian Authority is not going to collapse if the U.S. stops paying its aid, but it will create more difficulties," said Mohammed Mustafa, an economic adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas.</p>
<p>In the short term, the biggest casualty would be UNRWA. The agency provides services to some 5 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants across the Middle East. The agency, for instance, educates an estimated 270,000 children in Gaza. If schools were forced to close, these children could end up in classrooms run by the ruling Hamas militant group. UNRWA might also be forced to lay off workers in a volatile territory where unemployment already is over 40 percent.</p>
<p>In the long run, things could become even more dire. The Trump administration, already seen as biased by the Palestinians, could have a difficult time bringing them back to the negotiating table as it prepares to float a peace proposal.</p>
<p>Reductions in funding for Palestinian security forces could, ironically, hurt Israeli security. These forces quietly cooperate with Israel in a shared fight against Hamas. For this reason, U.S. officials say security assistance will likely not be touched.</p>
<p>A collapse of the Palestinian Authority, already buckling under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, could be disastrous for Israel. As an occupying power, Israel could find itself responsible for the welfare and education of over 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.</p>
<p>The Palestinians also might follow through on threats to abandon their dream of establishing an independent state alongside Israel and instead seek equal rights in a single, binational state. This scenario could spell the end of Israel as a democracy with a broad Jewish majority.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP correspondents Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, and Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.</p>
<p>JERUSALEM (AP) - With a Twitter post threatening to cut off U.S. aid to the Palestinians, President Donald Trump has expressed his frustration over the lack of progress in his hoped-for Mideast peace push. But things could deteriorate even further if Trump follows through on the threat.</p>
<p>Over two decades of on-and-off peace talks, the U.S., Israel and the Palestinians have created a situation of interdependence, with American mediation at the core of this system.</p>
<p>A cutoff in aid would almost certainly harm the Palestinians, particularly those who rely on U.N. refugee services. But Trump's credibility, damaged with the Palestinians after recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, would suffer another blow. And in a worst-case scenario, Israel could find itself footing the bill to provide services to millions of Palestinians while heading closer toward a single binational state with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>Here is a look at U.S. aid to the Palestinians, and the potential implications of that funding drying up.</p>
<p>Q: What aid does the U.S. provide to the Palestinians?</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority relies heavily on foreign assistance. It receives hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the international community, and the U.S. is a major donor.</p>
<p>The U.S., in contrast to other donors, does not provide direct funding for the Palestinian budget. Instead, its assistance focuses on development projects.</p>
<p>According to the U.S. Consulate, the U.S. has delivered about $5.2 billion in aid to the Palestinians since 1994, with the current level at roughly $400 million a year. This money goes to fund roads, schools, water projects, hospitals and health care, and to help support the Palestinian security forces.</p>
<p>In addition, the U.S. is the largest donor to UNRWA, the U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees across the region with services such as housing, health care, education and food assistance. UNRWA says the U.S. contributed over $365 million last year, roughly 30 percent of the agency's budget.</p>
<p>Q: Is the money promised by formal agreement?</p>
<p>There is no formal aid agreement with the Palestinian Authority. The administration requests funds each year that are then approved by Congress.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 as an autonomy government meant to last five years as a prelude to a final peace deal establishing an independent Palestinian state. But after years of failed negotiations and several waves of violence, what was meant to be a temporary arrangement has become permanent.</p>
<p>Today, the U.S. sends little money directly to the Palestinian Authority amid concerns, expressed by U.S. officials and congressmen, that the Palestinians were not doing enough to halt violence, incitement or corruption. Most funds are typically earmarked for projects coordinated through the U.S. Agency for International Development.</p>
<p>Trump's latest Tweet, however, appears to stem from anger over the U.N. General Assembly's vote last month that overwhelmingly rejected his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.</p>
<p>The Palestinians, who seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem as their capital, say the U.S. is no longer a suitable mediator, and Trump's Mideast diplomacy appears frozen.</p>
<p>At the time of the U.N. vote, Trump warned that countries that backed the Palestinians risked losing American aid. This week, he also took aim at aid to Pakistan, a country that voted with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>Q: Could the Palestinians get alternative funding?</p>
<p>Since Trump's Jerusalem decision, the Palestinians have been seeking to rally diplomatic support both in Europe and across the Arab world. They would likely turn to the European Union and wealthy Gulf Arab states for financial support as well, though it is far from certain others will step up to fill the void.</p>
<p>Q: What are the implications if the aid is cut off?</p>
<p>The Palestinians have been grappling with reductions in aid from cash-strapped donors for several years, and officials say they can also withstand a U.S. cut-off, especially because the money does not go to their operating budget.</p>
<p>"The Palestinian Authority is not going to collapse if the U.S. stops paying its aid, but it will create more difficulties," said Mohammed Mustafa, an economic adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas.</p>
<p>In the short term, the biggest casualty would be UNRWA. The agency provides services to some 5 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants across the Middle East. The agency, for instance, educates an estimated 270,000 children in Gaza. If schools were forced to close, these children could end up in classrooms run by the ruling Hamas militant group. UNRWA might also be forced to lay off workers in a volatile territory where unemployment already is over 40 percent.</p>
<p>In the long run, things could become even more dire. The Trump administration, already seen as biased by the Palestinians, could have a difficult time bringing them back to the negotiating table as it prepares to float a peace proposal.</p>
<p>Reductions in funding for Palestinian security forces could, ironically, hurt Israeli security. These forces quietly cooperate with Israel in a shared fight against Hamas. For this reason, U.S. officials say security assistance will likely not be touched.</p>
<p>A collapse of the Palestinian Authority, already buckling under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, could be disastrous for Israel. As an occupying power, Israel could find itself responsible for the welfare and education of over 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.</p>
<p>The Palestinians also might follow through on threats to abandon their dream of establishing an independent state alongside Israel and instead seek equal rights in a single, binational state. This scenario could spell the end of Israel as a democracy with a broad Jewish majority.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP correspondents Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, and Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.</p> | 3,095 |
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<p />
<p>GARCIA: Has tried to get bill passed since 2013</p>
<p>State Rep. Miguel Garcia, D-Albuquerque, has pre-filed a gun show loophole bill in anticipation of the 30-day legislative session that starts Jan. 19.</p>
<p>Current state law does not require background checks for some gun sales at gun shows or in person-to-person sales elsewhere.</p>
<p>The bill would require checks only at gun shows on customers who have not obtained concealed carry permits, a process that requires a background check.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"This is exclusive to gun shows. It doesn't deal with individual-to-individual sales or uncle Johnny selling to nephew Tommy, neighbor Juan selling to neighbor Erasmo," Garcia said Tuesday.</p>
<p>Licensed vendors at gun shows do perform background checks. This bill would force individual private vendors to also do checks or face a misdemeanor criminal charge, according to the bill. The bill would not affect sales of antique guns.</p>
<p>Since 2013, Garcia has tried to get the gun show loophole closed. A similar bill passed through the House and through Senate committees in 2013, but it died on the Senate floor in the last few minutes of the session, he said.</p>
<p>That bill originally had requested gun shows to keep a record of customer sales and to have the state Department of Public Safety run the background checks instead of the federal government, as is normal procedure.</p>
<p>Garcia said lawmakers refined the bill and those requirements were removed and language of protection for antique guns was added. The revised bill was submitted in 2014 and again in 2015, though neither bill gained traction.</p>
<p>He hopes this year, with the same bill as the last two years, is different.</p>
<p>"The level of gun violence has not subsided since we first introduced the legislation in 2013," Garcia said, citing community sentiment about violent crime.</p>
<p>Federal and state statistics on gun-related violence are current only up to 2013.</p>
<p>Because the 2016 session is for 30 days, the governor will decide which bills and subjects are considered. The state budget will be the focus of the session.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Gun show sales targeted again in Legislature | false | https://abqjournal.com/695425/gun-show-sales-targeted-again.html | 2least
| Gun show sales targeted again in Legislature
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>GARCIA: Has tried to get bill passed since 2013</p>
<p>State Rep. Miguel Garcia, D-Albuquerque, has pre-filed a gun show loophole bill in anticipation of the 30-day legislative session that starts Jan. 19.</p>
<p>Current state law does not require background checks for some gun sales at gun shows or in person-to-person sales elsewhere.</p>
<p>The bill would require checks only at gun shows on customers who have not obtained concealed carry permits, a process that requires a background check.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"This is exclusive to gun shows. It doesn't deal with individual-to-individual sales or uncle Johnny selling to nephew Tommy, neighbor Juan selling to neighbor Erasmo," Garcia said Tuesday.</p>
<p>Licensed vendors at gun shows do perform background checks. This bill would force individual private vendors to also do checks or face a misdemeanor criminal charge, according to the bill. The bill would not affect sales of antique guns.</p>
<p>Since 2013, Garcia has tried to get the gun show loophole closed. A similar bill passed through the House and through Senate committees in 2013, but it died on the Senate floor in the last few minutes of the session, he said.</p>
<p>That bill originally had requested gun shows to keep a record of customer sales and to have the state Department of Public Safety run the background checks instead of the federal government, as is normal procedure.</p>
<p>Garcia said lawmakers refined the bill and those requirements were removed and language of protection for antique guns was added. The revised bill was submitted in 2014 and again in 2015, though neither bill gained traction.</p>
<p>He hopes this year, with the same bill as the last two years, is different.</p>
<p>"The level of gun violence has not subsided since we first introduced the legislation in 2013," Garcia said, citing community sentiment about violent crime.</p>
<p>Federal and state statistics on gun-related violence are current only up to 2013.</p>
<p>Because the 2016 session is for 30 days, the governor will decide which bills and subjects are considered. The state budget will be the focus of the session.</p>
<p />
<p /> | 3,096 |
|
<p>Strategic Resource Group managing director Burt Flickinger discusses his outlook for retail.</p>
<p>J.C. Penney (NYSE:JCP) shares tumbled to a record low on Friday after the retailer posted a fifth straight quarter of weaker sales.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Rivals Macy’s (NYSE:M) and Kohl’s (NYSE:KSS) beat Wall Street expectations in the second quarter, saying <a href="" type="internal">stores open at least a year booked healthier sales than anticipated Opens a New Window.</a>. J.C. Penney didn’t fare as well. The department-store chain said comparable sales were down 1.3%, a bit worse than an estimate of 1.2%.</p>
<p>J.C. Penney also missed estimates with a wider loss of $62 million, or 9 cents a share on an adjusted basis. Analysts were looking for a loss of 5 cents. Liquidation sales at 127 stores that are closing had a negative impact on earnings and profit margins, J.C. Penney said. Overall, its net sales were up 1.5% at $2.96 billion.</p>
<p>Shares plunged 16% to $3.98 in recent trading. The stock was already down 43% on the year heading into Friday’s session.</p>
<p>Retailers like J.C. Penney have struggled to stem a decline in store traffic as consumers shift more of their spending online. Brick-and-mortar chains have cut costs and closed stores to bolster their bottom lines, while e-commerce giant Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) continues to expand.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The latest quarter showed signs of progress for Kohl’s, which noted that traffic in its stores has gained some momentum. The retailer’s July transactions grew year-over-year amid a strong performance by the sports-apparel category, Kohl’s reported on Thursday.</p>
<p>J.C. Penney said its kids’ apparel, which has weighed on sales in recent quarters, showed a “significant acceleration” in the second quarter.</p> | JC Penney shares plunge after 2Q loss | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/11/jc-penney-shares-plunge-after-2q-loss.html | 2017-08-11 | 0right
| JC Penney shares plunge after 2Q loss
<p>Strategic Resource Group managing director Burt Flickinger discusses his outlook for retail.</p>
<p>J.C. Penney (NYSE:JCP) shares tumbled to a record low on Friday after the retailer posted a fifth straight quarter of weaker sales.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Rivals Macy’s (NYSE:M) and Kohl’s (NYSE:KSS) beat Wall Street expectations in the second quarter, saying <a href="" type="internal">stores open at least a year booked healthier sales than anticipated Opens a New Window.</a>. J.C. Penney didn’t fare as well. The department-store chain said comparable sales were down 1.3%, a bit worse than an estimate of 1.2%.</p>
<p>J.C. Penney also missed estimates with a wider loss of $62 million, or 9 cents a share on an adjusted basis. Analysts were looking for a loss of 5 cents. Liquidation sales at 127 stores that are closing had a negative impact on earnings and profit margins, J.C. Penney said. Overall, its net sales were up 1.5% at $2.96 billion.</p>
<p>Shares plunged 16% to $3.98 in recent trading. The stock was already down 43% on the year heading into Friday’s session.</p>
<p>Retailers like J.C. Penney have struggled to stem a decline in store traffic as consumers shift more of their spending online. Brick-and-mortar chains have cut costs and closed stores to bolster their bottom lines, while e-commerce giant Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) continues to expand.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The latest quarter showed signs of progress for Kohl’s, which noted that traffic in its stores has gained some momentum. The retailer’s July transactions grew year-over-year amid a strong performance by the sports-apparel category, Kohl’s reported on Thursday.</p>
<p>J.C. Penney said its kids’ apparel, which has weighed on sales in recent quarters, showed a “significant acceleration” in the second quarter.</p> | 3,097 |
<p>When I asked a friend in Sri Lanka what she thought of the presidential election and its aftermath, she said with exasperation, “The election was a joke. These politics are a joke.”</p>
<p>Another friend said, “At least Sri Lankans are again beginning to laugh and take their politicians less seriously.”</p>
<p>Whether or not the latter comment may be true, the recent politics and events in Sri Lanka are no laughing matter.&#160;As concerned individuals, we must critically examine the presidential election and its aftermath at this moment in order to press for restoring justice, dignity and democracy for all inhabitants of Sri Lanka.</p>
<p>Since the war’s end in May 2009, there has been little relief for Sri Lankans, and, in particular, for those civilians who have been uprooted and displaced by the protracted civil conflict. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) are still being held without land rights, homes or the freedom to move freely within the country’s borders. Muslims, expelled from Jaffna peninsula by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1990, have yet to secure unified support from Sri Lanka’s politicians to return homes.</p>
<p>During the conflict, thousands of Up-Country Tamils living and working on the tea and rubber plantations were chased out of their homes during a series of anti-Tamil riots. Today, many of the individuals remaining in the postwar IDP camps are in fact Up-Country Tamils who — displaced twice and thrice over the past decades — have no home to return to.</p>
<p>In the months before the presidential election, the widening space for dissent gave hopeful indication that Sri Lanka’s politicians might adequately address minority grievances and develop long-lasting strategies for reconciliation. Nevertheless, the election was marred by, as election monitoring centers report, 900 instances of violence, forms of corruption and blatant abuse of public funds for private interests.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the post-election arrest and detainment of retired General Sarath Fonseka has distracted politicians from pressing issues such as the resettlement of IDPs and the need for a far-reaching political solution.</p>
<p>In the last week, the opposition alliance has split, and Sarath Fonseka, while detained, has left the United National Party (UNP)-led alliance and started a new alliance called the Democratic National Alliance (DNA). This fracture and shift may suggest yet another victory for Rajapakse’s governing coalition in the Parliamentary elections, which are set to take place on April 8.&#160;</p>
<p>With the recent announcement that the detained Fonseka will contest in the April elections, voters may face the real possibility of continued violence and the residual effects of political elitism that plagued the presidential election.</p>
<p>This climate of political uncertainty has been further fueled by the increased militarization of post-war civil society. Outspoken journalists and activists are still regularly abducted and detained under the emergency regulations, without consistent or trustworthy follow-up investigation. Paramilitaries and political groups such as the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) in the North and East are still armed in a time of so-called “peace.”</p>
<p>Even though President Mahinda Rajapakse declared the defeat of terrorism nearly nine months ago, the Prevention of Terrorism Act is still in place, and civilians displaced from the High Security Zones (HSZ) in the North and East are still unable to return to their homes.</p>
<p>Given these conditions of exception, the incumbent President Rajapakse has made it clear that economic investment and growth are more important than guaranteeing dignity and safety for Sri Lankan civilians. By placing the question of a political solution on the backburner, his decisions suggest that he favors centralized executive power and refuses to embrace and implement more devolved forms of power sharing throughout the country.</p>
<p>As Sri Lanka is at a critical juncture in its post-war history, its leaders and constituents need more nuanced ways to justly engage all members of the country’s polity. To do this would involve immediate demilitarization of civil society, decentralization of executive and state powers, and an opening of space for dissenting voices — not only for those in the opposition but also for those marginalized minorities of ethnicity, caste, class and gender.</p>
<p>For some Sri Lankans, the current political events may be laughable. And given the end of the LTTE, perhaps, these political events are perceived by some as less serious than those of the former, conflict-ridden Sri Lanka.</p>
<p>But for those progressives who actively seek long-lasting political reform and sustainable modes of civic participation, the election and its aftermath are leaving a sour taste. Until Sri Lanka’s leaders can question the legitimacy and transparency of their own politics and form solidarities on the grounds of dignity and justice for all, Sri Lankan civilians will not be able to reassemble their lives and heal their trust in the country’s democratic political system.</p>
<p>The writer, an activist and scholar, has chosen to write anonymously for her own security.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Opinion: Reflecting between elections in Sri Lanka | false | https://pri.org/stories/2010-02-27/opinion-reflecting-between-elections-sri-lanka | 2010-02-27 | 3left-center
| Opinion: Reflecting between elections in Sri Lanka
<p>When I asked a friend in Sri Lanka what she thought of the presidential election and its aftermath, she said with exasperation, “The election was a joke. These politics are a joke.”</p>
<p>Another friend said, “At least Sri Lankans are again beginning to laugh and take their politicians less seriously.”</p>
<p>Whether or not the latter comment may be true, the recent politics and events in Sri Lanka are no laughing matter.&#160;As concerned individuals, we must critically examine the presidential election and its aftermath at this moment in order to press for restoring justice, dignity and democracy for all inhabitants of Sri Lanka.</p>
<p>Since the war’s end in May 2009, there has been little relief for Sri Lankans, and, in particular, for those civilians who have been uprooted and displaced by the protracted civil conflict. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) are still being held without land rights, homes or the freedom to move freely within the country’s borders. Muslims, expelled from Jaffna peninsula by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1990, have yet to secure unified support from Sri Lanka’s politicians to return homes.</p>
<p>During the conflict, thousands of Up-Country Tamils living and working on the tea and rubber plantations were chased out of their homes during a series of anti-Tamil riots. Today, many of the individuals remaining in the postwar IDP camps are in fact Up-Country Tamils who — displaced twice and thrice over the past decades — have no home to return to.</p>
<p>In the months before the presidential election, the widening space for dissent gave hopeful indication that Sri Lanka’s politicians might adequately address minority grievances and develop long-lasting strategies for reconciliation. Nevertheless, the election was marred by, as election monitoring centers report, 900 instances of violence, forms of corruption and blatant abuse of public funds for private interests.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the post-election arrest and detainment of retired General Sarath Fonseka has distracted politicians from pressing issues such as the resettlement of IDPs and the need for a far-reaching political solution.</p>
<p>In the last week, the opposition alliance has split, and Sarath Fonseka, while detained, has left the United National Party (UNP)-led alliance and started a new alliance called the Democratic National Alliance (DNA). This fracture and shift may suggest yet another victory for Rajapakse’s governing coalition in the Parliamentary elections, which are set to take place on April 8.&#160;</p>
<p>With the recent announcement that the detained Fonseka will contest in the April elections, voters may face the real possibility of continued violence and the residual effects of political elitism that plagued the presidential election.</p>
<p>This climate of political uncertainty has been further fueled by the increased militarization of post-war civil society. Outspoken journalists and activists are still regularly abducted and detained under the emergency regulations, without consistent or trustworthy follow-up investigation. Paramilitaries and political groups such as the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) in the North and East are still armed in a time of so-called “peace.”</p>
<p>Even though President Mahinda Rajapakse declared the defeat of terrorism nearly nine months ago, the Prevention of Terrorism Act is still in place, and civilians displaced from the High Security Zones (HSZ) in the North and East are still unable to return to their homes.</p>
<p>Given these conditions of exception, the incumbent President Rajapakse has made it clear that economic investment and growth are more important than guaranteeing dignity and safety for Sri Lankan civilians. By placing the question of a political solution on the backburner, his decisions suggest that he favors centralized executive power and refuses to embrace and implement more devolved forms of power sharing throughout the country.</p>
<p>As Sri Lanka is at a critical juncture in its post-war history, its leaders and constituents need more nuanced ways to justly engage all members of the country’s polity. To do this would involve immediate demilitarization of civil society, decentralization of executive and state powers, and an opening of space for dissenting voices — not only for those in the opposition but also for those marginalized minorities of ethnicity, caste, class and gender.</p>
<p>For some Sri Lankans, the current political events may be laughable. And given the end of the LTTE, perhaps, these political events are perceived by some as less serious than those of the former, conflict-ridden Sri Lanka.</p>
<p>But for those progressives who actively seek long-lasting political reform and sustainable modes of civic participation, the election and its aftermath are leaving a sour taste. Until Sri Lanka’s leaders can question the legitimacy and transparency of their own politics and form solidarities on the grounds of dignity and justice for all, Sri Lankan civilians will not be able to reassemble their lives and heal their trust in the country’s democratic political system.</p>
<p>The writer, an activist and scholar, has chosen to write anonymously for her own security.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | 3,098 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Throwing logic aside, a left-wing petition on the popular website Change.org has taken aim at popular preacher and radio personality Bradlee Dean and his participation in the Minnesota state fair recently.</p>
<p>The petition, started by St. Paul resident Michael Chergosky, claims that <a href="http://youcanruninternational.com/" type="external">You Can Run But You Cannot Hide</a>, Dean’s youth ministry, is “divisive” and should not be invited to the state fair. However, it ignored a multitude of praise from young people and school administrators over the years of YCR’s ministry. Chergosky merely made the oft-heard charge of being a “hate group” simply because Dean promotes a message that sex should be limited to within marriage between one man and one woman.</p>
<p>“It’s all a matter of viewpoint discrimination,” Dean said in reply. “When you uphold the truth of the Bible, you have enemies – Christ himself told us this.”</p>
<p>Dean said that they met scores of young people and others at the Labor Day fair with their positive message, as they have there for eight years. “We met lots of young people who truly appreciated our message of promoting the Constitutional and Biblical values that are at the very root of our country,” Dean said, adding that his rock group Junkyard Prophet is very popular in bringing YCR’s message to schools and public venues around the country.</p>
<p>Indeed, YCR organizers are noting that their ministry has reached out to more than 300 high schools in 36 states. Opposition to it, Dean said, seems to center on a few opponents from the militant gay community, or left-leaning media.</p>
<p>The Minnesota CBS TV affiliate also took up the claims, citing unnamed-critics of YCR’s booth at the fair.</p>
<p>In response to the news report, Dean said, “Are we to believe that it is ‘hate’ to stand up for God’s Word, the laws of our Constitutional republic, for marriage, and for the protection of our children? When does hate ever tell the truth? Love does that.”</p>
<p>“The petition quoted as our critics the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Quoting these as authorities is nothing but laughable,” Dean said.</p>
<p>The SPLC has long been a critic of conservative causes and persons, including some of the most popular ministers in the country. And yet the SPLC is unabashed about its attack on these people, Dean said. Mark Potoc of the SPLC, said that “Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on… I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.”</p>
<p>“It’s true that conservative Americans who really believe in the Constitution and the Bible are being found guilty of ‘thought crimes,’ and their detractors won’t stop until they are completely silenced,” Dean said in reply. “But we won’t stop, because we must preach the truth without compromise.”</p>
<p>The Southern Poverty Law Center has as its mission to make money while working hand in glove with the mainstream media to attack America’s foundation using a Communist/Marxist agenda.</p>
<p>SPLC’s history is tarnished from its beginning. Its founder, lawyer Morris Dees, earned money in 1961 by doing legal work for the Ku Klux Klan. That information alone brings enough red flags to expose SPLC as an illegitimate and anti-American organization.</p>
<p>Dees founded SPLC in 1971, after the civil rights battle had been won and there was no money left in representing KKK-type of groups. He then jumped to the other side of the fence, masquerading as a “civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.”</p>
<p>In 1986 SPLC’s entire staff quit in protest of Dees’ refusal to “address issues such as homelessness, voter registration and affirmative action – that they considered far more pertinent to poor minorities ….” (Harper’s Magazine).</p>
<p>Change.org, which was started in 2007 as an advocacy group and has been funded by liberal activist George Soros, has 20 million subscribers and has long been known as pushing liberal causes. Although a year ago it changed its policy to allow conservative advertising, it is still largely filled with liberal-leaning causes.</p>
<p>Chergosky, who says on his Facebook page that he was born in 1953, got only a few comments when he said that he started the petition.</p>
<p>Dean started his full-time ministry, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, after his conversion to Christianity in 1995. He has since dedicated himself to reaching the young to help them find a purpose in life, and to educate them in the Constitution and America’s biblically-based foundation.</p>
<p>Help in battling the enemies of our Constitution and Biblically based values. Like <a href="http://www.facebook.com/BradleeDeanYCR" type="external">Bradlee Dean on Facebook</a>, sign up for the You Can Run But You Cannot Hide and Sons of Liberty newsletter, or donate to receive a free gift: <a href="http://mhawu.cfazx.servertrust.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=67" type="external">Join the fight and Donate HERE!</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p /> | Soros-Funded Website Attacks Bradlee Dean’s Ministry at Minnesota State Fair | true | http://dcclothesline.com/2013/09/20/soros-funded-website-attacks-bradlee-deans-ministry-at-minnesota-state-fair/?fb_source%3Dpubv1 | 2013-09-20 | 0right
| Soros-Funded Website Attacks Bradlee Dean’s Ministry at Minnesota State Fair
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Throwing logic aside, a left-wing petition on the popular website Change.org has taken aim at popular preacher and radio personality Bradlee Dean and his participation in the Minnesota state fair recently.</p>
<p>The petition, started by St. Paul resident Michael Chergosky, claims that <a href="http://youcanruninternational.com/" type="external">You Can Run But You Cannot Hide</a>, Dean’s youth ministry, is “divisive” and should not be invited to the state fair. However, it ignored a multitude of praise from young people and school administrators over the years of YCR’s ministry. Chergosky merely made the oft-heard charge of being a “hate group” simply because Dean promotes a message that sex should be limited to within marriage between one man and one woman.</p>
<p>“It’s all a matter of viewpoint discrimination,” Dean said in reply. “When you uphold the truth of the Bible, you have enemies – Christ himself told us this.”</p>
<p>Dean said that they met scores of young people and others at the Labor Day fair with their positive message, as they have there for eight years. “We met lots of young people who truly appreciated our message of promoting the Constitutional and Biblical values that are at the very root of our country,” Dean said, adding that his rock group Junkyard Prophet is very popular in bringing YCR’s message to schools and public venues around the country.</p>
<p>Indeed, YCR organizers are noting that their ministry has reached out to more than 300 high schools in 36 states. Opposition to it, Dean said, seems to center on a few opponents from the militant gay community, or left-leaning media.</p>
<p>The Minnesota CBS TV affiliate also took up the claims, citing unnamed-critics of YCR’s booth at the fair.</p>
<p>In response to the news report, Dean said, “Are we to believe that it is ‘hate’ to stand up for God’s Word, the laws of our Constitutional republic, for marriage, and for the protection of our children? When does hate ever tell the truth? Love does that.”</p>
<p>“The petition quoted as our critics the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Quoting these as authorities is nothing but laughable,” Dean said.</p>
<p>The SPLC has long been a critic of conservative causes and persons, including some of the most popular ministers in the country. And yet the SPLC is unabashed about its attack on these people, Dean said. Mark Potoc of the SPLC, said that “Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on… I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.”</p>
<p>“It’s true that conservative Americans who really believe in the Constitution and the Bible are being found guilty of ‘thought crimes,’ and their detractors won’t stop until they are completely silenced,” Dean said in reply. “But we won’t stop, because we must preach the truth without compromise.”</p>
<p>The Southern Poverty Law Center has as its mission to make money while working hand in glove with the mainstream media to attack America’s foundation using a Communist/Marxist agenda.</p>
<p>SPLC’s history is tarnished from its beginning. Its founder, lawyer Morris Dees, earned money in 1961 by doing legal work for the Ku Klux Klan. That information alone brings enough red flags to expose SPLC as an illegitimate and anti-American organization.</p>
<p>Dees founded SPLC in 1971, after the civil rights battle had been won and there was no money left in representing KKK-type of groups. He then jumped to the other side of the fence, masquerading as a “civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.”</p>
<p>In 1986 SPLC’s entire staff quit in protest of Dees’ refusal to “address issues such as homelessness, voter registration and affirmative action – that they considered far more pertinent to poor minorities ….” (Harper’s Magazine).</p>
<p>Change.org, which was started in 2007 as an advocacy group and has been funded by liberal activist George Soros, has 20 million subscribers and has long been known as pushing liberal causes. Although a year ago it changed its policy to allow conservative advertising, it is still largely filled with liberal-leaning causes.</p>
<p>Chergosky, who says on his Facebook page that he was born in 1953, got only a few comments when he said that he started the petition.</p>
<p>Dean started his full-time ministry, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, after his conversion to Christianity in 1995. He has since dedicated himself to reaching the young to help them find a purpose in life, and to educate them in the Constitution and America’s biblically-based foundation.</p>
<p>Help in battling the enemies of our Constitution and Biblically based values. Like <a href="http://www.facebook.com/BradleeDeanYCR" type="external">Bradlee Dean on Facebook</a>, sign up for the You Can Run But You Cannot Hide and Sons of Liberty newsletter, or donate to receive a free gift: <a href="http://mhawu.cfazx.servertrust.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=67" type="external">Join the fight and Donate HERE!</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p /> | 3,099 |
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