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<p />
<p>Berkshire Hathaway CEO, Warren Buffett. Image source: The Motley Fool.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Warren Buffett, the CEO of conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway , which owns more than 60 subsidiaries, is arguably the world's most-renowned investor. Over a span of six-plus decades, he built up his net worth from less than $10,000 to more than $66 billion, based on real-time data from Forbes as of June 16, 2016.</p>
<p>On top of profits earned by Berkshire's many subsidiaries, Buffett's conglomerate benefits from long-term investments in the stock market. Buffett is a firm believer that high-quality companies tend to increase in value over time, and the bets that he, sidekick Charlie Munger, and his investment team, place are often based on a multi-year, or multi-decade time horizon.</p>
<p>One of the keen strategies Buffett uses when investing for the long term is seeking out dividend stocks. Dividends, by nature, tend to be paid by businesses with proven track records that have stable long-term outlooks, thus providing the peace of mind that the Oracle of Omaha is often looking for in an investment. Dividends can also act as a hedge in a falling stock market, and can be reinvested into more shares of stock in a strategy known as compounding. This can result in owning more shares of stock, and receiving even bigger dividend payouts in a repeating cycle.</p>
<p>Out of the 45 separate companies/share classes currently held in Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio as of its latest 13F filing in mid-May, three companies stand out as being in the high-yield dividend category. What represents a "high-yield dividend?" While arbitrary, a high-yield dividend is generally considered to be a stock yielding 4% or higher, or essentially double what the broad-based S&amp;P 500 is paying out. Based on Berkshire's current holdings, here are the high-yield dividend stock Buffett has chosen to buy.</p>
<p>Baojun 560. Image source: General Motors.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Topping the list of Buffett's favorite high-yield dividend stocks is automaker General Motors , with a current yield of 5.2%. The 50-million shares that Berkshire Hathaway currently owns is enough to give Buffet a 3.2% stake in GM.</p>
<p>What does Warren Buffett see in General Motors? My bet is it's the automaker's long-tail growth opportunity in China, and more modest growth opportunities in the U.S. and Europe. For example, Warren Buffett has suggested on numerous occasions that the value of American businesses (as a whole) tends to increase because global GDP rises over long periods of time. This would, in a very-simplistic manner, bode well for General Motors, which relies on a growing U.S. and global economy to drive new-vehicle purchases.</p>
<p>But China's growing middle class, and the expectation of a burgeoning middle class in Southeast Asia, India, and even Africa, gives hope to GM that it'll be able to translate its success in the U.S. and Europe into these markets, as well. General Motors will look to do this by focusing on affordability, providing improvements in fuel efficiency, and offer in-cabin luxuries, such as infotainment systems, which can rapidly boost margins.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, GM's biggest success story in China hasn't been its sedans, but its SUVs The Baojun 560 quickly became one of the top-selling SUVs in China just months after its launch. SUVs typically have better margins than sedans for automakers, so this is good news all around for GM and its shareholders.</p>
<p>Wall Street seems to have written off the automakers for the time being, with China's GDP growth rate shrinking; but GM's forward P/E of five is getting difficult to ignore.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Buffett and his investment team are also big fans of telecom giant Verizon Communications , which is sporting a 4.2% yield. Berkshire Hathaway owned just a hair over 15 million shares of Verizon as of the end of the first quarter, which is worth about $802 million.I suspect there are two main reasons why Buffett sticks with Verizon: the high barrier of entry in the wireless industry, and the juicy margins associated with the industry.</p>
<p>Within the U.S., there are really only four telecom companies that dominate the wireless scene, and only Verizon and AT&amp;T have deep-enough pockets to invest billions upon billions annually in upgrading their infrastructures and data networks to meet the growing data demands of the American public. It would take an incredible amount of capital and a long period of time for any new entrant to gather the wireless following that these two telecom giants possess. To that end, this high barrier to entry helps to preserve Verizon's wireless market share, and it makes the company's cash flow somewhat predictable on an annual basis.</p>
<p>Because there are so few wireless choices for the consumer, Verizon also possesses substantial pricing power with its data plans. Although the company ditched cellphone contracts last year, it's had absolutely no problem keeping consumers loyal to the brand. In the first quarter, the company's wireless <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/what-is-churn-rate.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">churn rate Opens a New Window.</a> dipped below 1%, meaning it's losing very few customers to its competitors.</p>
<p>With a "steady as she goes" business model, Verizon is the perfect example of a high-yield Buffett stock.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>While known for his penchant to tread lightly around healthcare companies, Warren Buffett also owns shares of French drugmaker Sanofi , which is currently yielding 4.2%. As of the end of Q1 2016, Berkshire Hathaway owned a little over 3.9 million shares of Sanofi, worth about $150 million.</p>
<p>On one hand, the danger of investing in pharmaceutical giants is that they'll eventually encounter the patent cliff. In Sanofi's case, it's been dealing with declining sales for Plavix, Allegra, and Lovenox, to name a few. However, there are plenty of growth channels within Sanofi's product portfolio.</p>
<p>For example, Sanofi sold $726 million worth of rare-disease drugs during the first quarter, an 8.5% increase from the year-ago quarter. Although rare diseases have limited patient pools, they're also usually devoid of competition. This gives Sanofi the ability to boost pricing to match or exceed the rate of inflation. The company also possesses strong pricing power with its rapidly growing multiple sclerosis product, and its vaccine segment.</p>
<p>Sanofi also intends to spread its wings, and grow via collaborations. Sanofi has partnered with Regeneron Pharmaceuticalsto bring Praluent to market, a PCSK9 inhibitor that's designed to dramatically lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or LDL-C, the bad kind of cholesterol.</p>
<p>This next-generation injectable medicine is a lot more expensive than traditional cholesterol-reducing medicines, but the results of Sanofi's and Regeneron's long-term cardiovascular outcome study could go a long way to justifying its $14,600 annual cost, and boosting sales. At its peak, Praluent could easily be a $2 billion to $3 billion per year drug if the long-term CV data proves superior to the current standard of care.</p>
<p>As long as Sanofi remains innovative, Buffett, Berkshire, and shareholders are liable to reap the rewards.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/22/warren-buffetts-favorite-high-yield-dividend-stock.aspx" type="external">Warren Buffett's Favorite High-Yield Dividend Stock Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFUltraLong/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Sean Williams Opens a New Window.</a>has no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen name <a href="http://caps.fool.com/player/tmfultralong.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">TMFUltraLong Opens a New Window.</a>, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/TMFUltraLong" type="external">@TMFUltraLong Opens a New Window.</a>.The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Berkshire Hathaway (B Shares) and Verizon Communications. It also owns shares of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and recommends General Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
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Warren Buffett's Favorite High-Yield Dividend Stock
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http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/06/22/warren-buffett-favorite-high-yield-dividend-stock.html
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2016-06-22
| 0right
|
Warren Buffett's Favorite High-Yield Dividend Stock
<p />
<p>Berkshire Hathaway CEO, Warren Buffett. Image source: The Motley Fool.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Warren Buffett, the CEO of conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway , which owns more than 60 subsidiaries, is arguably the world's most-renowned investor. Over a span of six-plus decades, he built up his net worth from less than $10,000 to more than $66 billion, based on real-time data from Forbes as of June 16, 2016.</p>
<p>On top of profits earned by Berkshire's many subsidiaries, Buffett's conglomerate benefits from long-term investments in the stock market. Buffett is a firm believer that high-quality companies tend to increase in value over time, and the bets that he, sidekick Charlie Munger, and his investment team, place are often based on a multi-year, or multi-decade time horizon.</p>
<p>One of the keen strategies Buffett uses when investing for the long term is seeking out dividend stocks. Dividends, by nature, tend to be paid by businesses with proven track records that have stable long-term outlooks, thus providing the peace of mind that the Oracle of Omaha is often looking for in an investment. Dividends can also act as a hedge in a falling stock market, and can be reinvested into more shares of stock in a strategy known as compounding. This can result in owning more shares of stock, and receiving even bigger dividend payouts in a repeating cycle.</p>
<p>Out of the 45 separate companies/share classes currently held in Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio as of its latest 13F filing in mid-May, three companies stand out as being in the high-yield dividend category. What represents a "high-yield dividend?" While arbitrary, a high-yield dividend is generally considered to be a stock yielding 4% or higher, or essentially double what the broad-based S&amp;P 500 is paying out. Based on Berkshire's current holdings, here are the high-yield dividend stock Buffett has chosen to buy.</p>
<p>Baojun 560. Image source: General Motors.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Topping the list of Buffett's favorite high-yield dividend stocks is automaker General Motors , with a current yield of 5.2%. The 50-million shares that Berkshire Hathaway currently owns is enough to give Buffet a 3.2% stake in GM.</p>
<p>What does Warren Buffett see in General Motors? My bet is it's the automaker's long-tail growth opportunity in China, and more modest growth opportunities in the U.S. and Europe. For example, Warren Buffett has suggested on numerous occasions that the value of American businesses (as a whole) tends to increase because global GDP rises over long periods of time. This would, in a very-simplistic manner, bode well for General Motors, which relies on a growing U.S. and global economy to drive new-vehicle purchases.</p>
<p>But China's growing middle class, and the expectation of a burgeoning middle class in Southeast Asia, India, and even Africa, gives hope to GM that it'll be able to translate its success in the U.S. and Europe into these markets, as well. General Motors will look to do this by focusing on affordability, providing improvements in fuel efficiency, and offer in-cabin luxuries, such as infotainment systems, which can rapidly boost margins.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, GM's biggest success story in China hasn't been its sedans, but its SUVs The Baojun 560 quickly became one of the top-selling SUVs in China just months after its launch. SUVs typically have better margins than sedans for automakers, so this is good news all around for GM and its shareholders.</p>
<p>Wall Street seems to have written off the automakers for the time being, with China's GDP growth rate shrinking; but GM's forward P/E of five is getting difficult to ignore.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Buffett and his investment team are also big fans of telecom giant Verizon Communications , which is sporting a 4.2% yield. Berkshire Hathaway owned just a hair over 15 million shares of Verizon as of the end of the first quarter, which is worth about $802 million.I suspect there are two main reasons why Buffett sticks with Verizon: the high barrier of entry in the wireless industry, and the juicy margins associated with the industry.</p>
<p>Within the U.S., there are really only four telecom companies that dominate the wireless scene, and only Verizon and AT&amp;T have deep-enough pockets to invest billions upon billions annually in upgrading their infrastructures and data networks to meet the growing data demands of the American public. It would take an incredible amount of capital and a long period of time for any new entrant to gather the wireless following that these two telecom giants possess. To that end, this high barrier to entry helps to preserve Verizon's wireless market share, and it makes the company's cash flow somewhat predictable on an annual basis.</p>
<p>Because there are so few wireless choices for the consumer, Verizon also possesses substantial pricing power with its data plans. Although the company ditched cellphone contracts last year, it's had absolutely no problem keeping consumers loyal to the brand. In the first quarter, the company's wireless <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/what-is-churn-rate.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">churn rate Opens a New Window.</a> dipped below 1%, meaning it's losing very few customers to its competitors.</p>
<p>With a "steady as she goes" business model, Verizon is the perfect example of a high-yield Buffett stock.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>While known for his penchant to tread lightly around healthcare companies, Warren Buffett also owns shares of French drugmaker Sanofi , which is currently yielding 4.2%. As of the end of Q1 2016, Berkshire Hathaway owned a little over 3.9 million shares of Sanofi, worth about $150 million.</p>
<p>On one hand, the danger of investing in pharmaceutical giants is that they'll eventually encounter the patent cliff. In Sanofi's case, it's been dealing with declining sales for Plavix, Allegra, and Lovenox, to name a few. However, there are plenty of growth channels within Sanofi's product portfolio.</p>
<p>For example, Sanofi sold $726 million worth of rare-disease drugs during the first quarter, an 8.5% increase from the year-ago quarter. Although rare diseases have limited patient pools, they're also usually devoid of competition. This gives Sanofi the ability to boost pricing to match or exceed the rate of inflation. The company also possesses strong pricing power with its rapidly growing multiple sclerosis product, and its vaccine segment.</p>
<p>Sanofi also intends to spread its wings, and grow via collaborations. Sanofi has partnered with Regeneron Pharmaceuticalsto bring Praluent to market, a PCSK9 inhibitor that's designed to dramatically lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or LDL-C, the bad kind of cholesterol.</p>
<p>This next-generation injectable medicine is a lot more expensive than traditional cholesterol-reducing medicines, but the results of Sanofi's and Regeneron's long-term cardiovascular outcome study could go a long way to justifying its $14,600 annual cost, and boosting sales. At its peak, Praluent could easily be a $2 billion to $3 billion per year drug if the long-term CV data proves superior to the current standard of care.</p>
<p>As long as Sanofi remains innovative, Buffett, Berkshire, and shareholders are liable to reap the rewards.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/22/warren-buffetts-favorite-high-yield-dividend-stock.aspx" type="external">Warren Buffett's Favorite High-Yield Dividend Stock Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFUltraLong/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Sean Williams Opens a New Window.</a>has no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen name <a href="http://caps.fool.com/player/tmfultralong.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">TMFUltraLong Opens a New Window.</a>, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/TMFUltraLong" type="external">@TMFUltraLong Opens a New Window.</a>.The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Berkshire Hathaway (B Shares) and Verizon Communications. It also owns shares of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and recommends General Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
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<p />
<p>PepsiCo chief executive Indra Nooyi said Monday that at least two-thirds of the company’s beverages will contain 100 calories or less per 12-ounce serving by 2025. Nooyi said the beverage giant will focus on selling more low- or zero-calorie products. Advances in technology and artificial sweeteners are creating soft drinks that better duplicate the taste of sugary drinks but with fewer calories.</p>
<p>“So we’re now faced with [an] interesting opportunity to step the consumer down to lower sweetness levels,” Nooyi said in an interview with CNBC.</p>
<p>PepsiCo, based in Purchase, N.Y., still makes a significant amount of its $5.45 billion in annual profit from sugary drinks. The company sold $63 billion in food and beverages across 180 countries in 2015, including its flagship Pepsi brand as well as Diet Pepsi, Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Aquafina, Tropicana and a host of snacks including Lay’s, Doritos and Ruffles.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Nooyi’s announcement comes as sugary drinks continue to come under fire from nutritionists and from politicians who want to tax the soft drinks as a way to address health problem such as diabetes, obesity and tooth decay, especially among children. Former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg tried to limit the size of soft-drinks in 2012. The ban was rejected by the New York State Court of Appeals on the grounds that the city’s health board did not have the authority to impose such a cap.</p>
<p>San Francisco’s Bay Area is trying to slow consumption of sweetened sodas, tea and sports drinks by adopting a tax. San Francisco and Oakland have ballot measures to tax soda that will be voted on in November. Only Berkeley and Philadelphia have imposed similar levies, and the American Beverage Association is suing to prevent the Philadelphia tax from taking effect in January.</p>
<p>Fortune magazine reported earlier this year that overall sales of carbonated soft drinks in the United States have dropped 11 consecutive years.</p>
<p>David Ludwig, a professor of nutrition at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, called Nooyi’s announcement “a step in the right direction.” But he added that “the soft drink industry has a long and sorry history of responding only to quell public outrage and delay government regulation.</p>
<p>“Sugary beverages are the single, most harmful component in the food supply today. Demand for it is driven by a massive marketing campaign, all too often directed at children and vulnerable populations,” Ludwig said.</p>
<p>Lawrence A. Soler, president of Partnership for a Healthier America, an advocacy group focused on childhood obesity, lauded PepsiCo’s 10-year plan.</p>
<p>“While much work remains for all of us fighting to help children grow up at a healthy weight, we believe today’s announcement represents a positive step for PepsiCo and we hope that other industry leaders will take similar steps,” Soler said.</p>
<p>The soda industry is trying to retain customers by selling beverages in smaller cans and bottles, which can be more profitable than larger sizes.</p>
<p>Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, said she endorsed the idea of smaller portions.</p>
<p>“They are going to promote small cans, which they can charge more for,” said Nestle, adding that PepsiCo’s past efforts to “go healthy” displeased investors. “I’m in favor of small cans. That’s a step forward if it works. But if their bottom line drops, they will drop this, too.”</p>
<p>Nooyi also told CNBC that the company was trying to also reduce sodium in products, including snacks sold by the Frito-Lay division.</p>
<p>“By applying the seasoning differently, we can actually still make it a salty snack, but with lower sodium levels, and that’s what we have managed to do with. . . our products in countries like the U.K. and China, where we’ve reduced salt levels significantly,” she told CNBC.</p>
<p>pepsi-post</p>
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Pepsi wants to make its sodas better for you-eventually
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/869042/pepsi-wants-to-make-its-sodas-better-for-you-eventually.html
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Pepsi wants to make its sodas better for you-eventually
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>PepsiCo chief executive Indra Nooyi said Monday that at least two-thirds of the company’s beverages will contain 100 calories or less per 12-ounce serving by 2025. Nooyi said the beverage giant will focus on selling more low- or zero-calorie products. Advances in technology and artificial sweeteners are creating soft drinks that better duplicate the taste of sugary drinks but with fewer calories.</p>
<p>“So we’re now faced with [an] interesting opportunity to step the consumer down to lower sweetness levels,” Nooyi said in an interview with CNBC.</p>
<p>PepsiCo, based in Purchase, N.Y., still makes a significant amount of its $5.45 billion in annual profit from sugary drinks. The company sold $63 billion in food and beverages across 180 countries in 2015, including its flagship Pepsi brand as well as Diet Pepsi, Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Aquafina, Tropicana and a host of snacks including Lay’s, Doritos and Ruffles.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Nooyi’s announcement comes as sugary drinks continue to come under fire from nutritionists and from politicians who want to tax the soft drinks as a way to address health problem such as diabetes, obesity and tooth decay, especially among children. Former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg tried to limit the size of soft-drinks in 2012. The ban was rejected by the New York State Court of Appeals on the grounds that the city’s health board did not have the authority to impose such a cap.</p>
<p>San Francisco’s Bay Area is trying to slow consumption of sweetened sodas, tea and sports drinks by adopting a tax. San Francisco and Oakland have ballot measures to tax soda that will be voted on in November. Only Berkeley and Philadelphia have imposed similar levies, and the American Beverage Association is suing to prevent the Philadelphia tax from taking effect in January.</p>
<p>Fortune magazine reported earlier this year that overall sales of carbonated soft drinks in the United States have dropped 11 consecutive years.</p>
<p>David Ludwig, a professor of nutrition at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, called Nooyi’s announcement “a step in the right direction.” But he added that “the soft drink industry has a long and sorry history of responding only to quell public outrage and delay government regulation.</p>
<p>“Sugary beverages are the single, most harmful component in the food supply today. Demand for it is driven by a massive marketing campaign, all too often directed at children and vulnerable populations,” Ludwig said.</p>
<p>Lawrence A. Soler, president of Partnership for a Healthier America, an advocacy group focused on childhood obesity, lauded PepsiCo’s 10-year plan.</p>
<p>“While much work remains for all of us fighting to help children grow up at a healthy weight, we believe today’s announcement represents a positive step for PepsiCo and we hope that other industry leaders will take similar steps,” Soler said.</p>
<p>The soda industry is trying to retain customers by selling beverages in smaller cans and bottles, which can be more profitable than larger sizes.</p>
<p>Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, said she endorsed the idea of smaller portions.</p>
<p>“They are going to promote small cans, which they can charge more for,” said Nestle, adding that PepsiCo’s past efforts to “go healthy” displeased investors. “I’m in favor of small cans. That’s a step forward if it works. But if their bottom line drops, they will drop this, too.”</p>
<p>Nooyi also told CNBC that the company was trying to also reduce sodium in products, including snacks sold by the Frito-Lay division.</p>
<p>“By applying the seasoning differently, we can actually still make it a salty snack, but with lower sodium levels, and that’s what we have managed to do with. . . our products in countries like the U.K. and China, where we’ve reduced salt levels significantly,” she told CNBC.</p>
<p>pepsi-post</p>
| 5,701 |
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<p>TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Shakayla Thomas had career highs of 32 points and 14 rebounds to lead No. 19 Florida State over Georgia Tech 75-69 on Sunday.</p>
<p>Adut Bulgak added 14 points and 11 rebounds for the Seminoles (12-4, 2-1 ACC), who extended their home winning streak to 27.</p>
<p>Ciani Cryor scored 18 points and Aaliyah Whiteside 17 for the Yellow Jackets (10-7, 0-4).</p>
<p>The Seminoles were shooting 50 percent on 3-pointers at home but dipped to 21 percent (4 of 19) Sunday. They also had 29 turnovers but they ruled the boards, 56-21.</p>
<p>The Seminoles led by 17 before a 19-1 Georgia Tech run cut it to one, 37-36, at halftime. FSU rebuilt its lead to 10 but a 3-pointer by Antonia Peresson shaved it to three, 72-69, with 3:14 left. However, the Yellow Jackets missed four shots and had two turnovers after that while Thomas added a final free throw and basket.</p>
<p>TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Shakayla Thomas had career highs of 32 points and 14 rebounds to lead No. 19 Florida State over Georgia Tech 75-69 on Sunday.</p>
<p>Adut Bulgak added 14 points and 11 rebounds for the Seminoles (12-4, 2-1 ACC), who extended their home winning streak to 27.</p>
<p>Ciani Cryor scored 18 points and Aaliyah Whiteside 17 for the Yellow Jackets (10-7, 0-4).</p>
<p>The Seminoles were shooting 50 percent on 3-pointers at home but dipped to 21 percent (4 of 19) Sunday. They also had 29 turnovers but they ruled the boards, 56-21.</p>
<p>The Seminoles led by 17 before a 19-1 Georgia Tech run cut it to one, 37-36, at halftime. FSU rebuilt its lead to 10 but a 3-pointer by Antonia Peresson shaved it to three, 72-69, with 3:14 left. However, the Yellow Jackets missed four shots and had two turnovers after that while Thomas added a final free throw and basket.</p>
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No. 19 Florida State women hold on against Georgia Tech
| false |
https://apnews.com/2cea776e2eb84dbcbe2a2099838615e4
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2016-01-10
| 2least
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No. 19 Florida State women hold on against Georgia Tech
<p>TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Shakayla Thomas had career highs of 32 points and 14 rebounds to lead No. 19 Florida State over Georgia Tech 75-69 on Sunday.</p>
<p>Adut Bulgak added 14 points and 11 rebounds for the Seminoles (12-4, 2-1 ACC), who extended their home winning streak to 27.</p>
<p>Ciani Cryor scored 18 points and Aaliyah Whiteside 17 for the Yellow Jackets (10-7, 0-4).</p>
<p>The Seminoles were shooting 50 percent on 3-pointers at home but dipped to 21 percent (4 of 19) Sunday. They also had 29 turnovers but they ruled the boards, 56-21.</p>
<p>The Seminoles led by 17 before a 19-1 Georgia Tech run cut it to one, 37-36, at halftime. FSU rebuilt its lead to 10 but a 3-pointer by Antonia Peresson shaved it to three, 72-69, with 3:14 left. However, the Yellow Jackets missed four shots and had two turnovers after that while Thomas added a final free throw and basket.</p>
<p>TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Shakayla Thomas had career highs of 32 points and 14 rebounds to lead No. 19 Florida State over Georgia Tech 75-69 on Sunday.</p>
<p>Adut Bulgak added 14 points and 11 rebounds for the Seminoles (12-4, 2-1 ACC), who extended their home winning streak to 27.</p>
<p>Ciani Cryor scored 18 points and Aaliyah Whiteside 17 for the Yellow Jackets (10-7, 0-4).</p>
<p>The Seminoles were shooting 50 percent on 3-pointers at home but dipped to 21 percent (4 of 19) Sunday. They also had 29 turnovers but they ruled the boards, 56-21.</p>
<p>The Seminoles led by 17 before a 19-1 Georgia Tech run cut it to one, 37-36, at halftime. FSU rebuilt its lead to 10 but a 3-pointer by Antonia Peresson shaved it to three, 72-69, with 3:14 left. However, the Yellow Jackets missed four shots and had two turnovers after that while Thomas added a final free throw and basket.</p>
| 5,702 |
<p />
<p>Military leaders at the US Guantanamo Bay Naval Station have been <a href="http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Nov2005/20051129_3476.html" type="external">appalled</a> by the media’s failure to update its outmoded image of the detention facility and report on the camps improved attributes.</p>
<p>The hastily-erected Camp X-Ray, composed of open-air chain link cages, originally became notorious when pictures of detainees blindfolded, handcuffed, and kneeling under the humid Caribbean sun reached the American public. James Yee, a former US Army Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo, recounts the urgency of building a facility to detain “enemy combatants” in his new book For God and Country:</p>
<p>According to Captain Les McCoy of the navy, a former Guantanamo base commander, the military placed a call to the naval base soon after September 11. “We got a plane full of terrorists and we’re on our way,” the commander said at the time, Navy Captain Robert A. Buehn, was told, “start building a prison.”</p>
<p>But officials there insist that, along with the closure of the temporary Camp X-Ray in early 2002—since overrun by vines along its concertina-wire walls, there have been many improvements in detainee housing, including a permanent new $16 million-dollar unit modeled after correctional facilities in the United States.</p>
<p>Could it be that the press’ delayed awareness is due to the importance of these housing improvements being trumped by the much larger, pressing story of mounting evidence to substantiate torture allegations collected by independent sources? Nah!</p>
<p>As late as last November the International Red Cross, which has monitored detainee treatment since <a href="http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/678FK8?OpenDocument" type="external">2002</a> under conditions of confidentiality, remained concerned that there persisted “significant problems regarding conditions and treatment at Guantanamo Bay have not yet been adequately addressed.”</p>
<p>“We welcome people to come in,” said Army Brig. Gen. John Gong, indicating media and clearly not the United Nations. Earlier in November the UN was forced to reject an invitation to the review detainee conditions due to the US’s denial of adequate capacities to form an assessment.</p>
<p />
|
The Verdant Concertina Wire of Guantanamo
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2005/12/verdant-concertina-wire-guantanamo/
|
2005-12-01
| 4left
|
The Verdant Concertina Wire of Guantanamo
<p />
<p>Military leaders at the US Guantanamo Bay Naval Station have been <a href="http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Nov2005/20051129_3476.html" type="external">appalled</a> by the media’s failure to update its outmoded image of the detention facility and report on the camps improved attributes.</p>
<p>The hastily-erected Camp X-Ray, composed of open-air chain link cages, originally became notorious when pictures of detainees blindfolded, handcuffed, and kneeling under the humid Caribbean sun reached the American public. James Yee, a former US Army Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo, recounts the urgency of building a facility to detain “enemy combatants” in his new book For God and Country:</p>
<p>According to Captain Les McCoy of the navy, a former Guantanamo base commander, the military placed a call to the naval base soon after September 11. “We got a plane full of terrorists and we’re on our way,” the commander said at the time, Navy Captain Robert A. Buehn, was told, “start building a prison.”</p>
<p>But officials there insist that, along with the closure of the temporary Camp X-Ray in early 2002—since overrun by vines along its concertina-wire walls, there have been many improvements in detainee housing, including a permanent new $16 million-dollar unit modeled after correctional facilities in the United States.</p>
<p>Could it be that the press’ delayed awareness is due to the importance of these housing improvements being trumped by the much larger, pressing story of mounting evidence to substantiate torture allegations collected by independent sources? Nah!</p>
<p>As late as last November the International Red Cross, which has monitored detainee treatment since <a href="http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/678FK8?OpenDocument" type="external">2002</a> under conditions of confidentiality, remained concerned that there persisted “significant problems regarding conditions and treatment at Guantanamo Bay have not yet been adequately addressed.”</p>
<p>“We welcome people to come in,” said Army Brig. Gen. John Gong, indicating media and clearly not the United Nations. Earlier in November the UN was forced to reject an invitation to the review detainee conditions due to the US’s denial of adequate capacities to form an assessment.</p>
<p />
| 5,703 |
<p>Iran's move to shore up the Iraqi government has prompted a difficult question: how do you intervene on behalf of your sectarian allies without inflaming a sectarian war?</p>
<p>In recent days, Iran has stepped forward with aid, overseeing secret surveillance drone missions over Iraq and sending transport plans with military equipment and supplies to Baghdad.&#160;And back in Tehran,&#160;hundreds of Iranians rallied in the streets earlier this week in support of their Shiite neighbors.</p>
<p>Iranian-American journalist Hooman Majd, author of "The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran," says Iran has carefully avoided framing the situation as a sectarian divide.</p>
<p>"It's very important for the Iranians for [the crisis] not to become a sectarian issue because Iran needs the so-called 'Arab street' to be sympathetic to Iran, and not be hostile to it as it has been in recent years," Majd says.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Iran wants to avoid turmoil in Iraq and protect its territory from groups like ISIS. But that doesn't mean automatic support for the policies of Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's Shiite prime minister. He has so far refused to create a new, more inclusive government, and Majd thinks Iran doesn't agree.</p>
<p>"It is a purely vengeful sectarian position that Maliki has taken, and I think Iran is not comfortable with that," he says. "I&#160;think they've made it clear to Maliki, although he is still an ally of Iran."</p>
<p>Iran is working to aid Iraq and maintain a good relationship with Maliki, without putting its own population at risk.</p>
<p>"Iran has a Sunni population of its own, it has a Kurdish population of its own. It has Arabs in the south of Iran," says Majd. "There is no interest for Iran to encourage a sectarian issue here."&#160;</p>
<p>There are also the persistent tensions between Arab Iraqi Shiites and Persian Iranian Shiites.</p>
<p>"We do have to remember that when Iran fought an eight-year war with Iraq, the vast majority of the soldiers fighting Iran were Shiite," Majd&#160;explains.&#160;"So there is no illusion among Iranians or among Iraqis that the Shiites of Iraq and Shiites of Iran, just because they are from the same sect, are bosom buddies."</p>
<p>But the sectarian issue is difficult to ignore, especially for Shiites in the Iraqi government who spent their exile years in Iran.</p>
<p>"This is a country where the iron fist of Saddam Hussein came down most hard on Shiites, as we know from history," Majd says.</p>
<p>Iraq is also home to the holiest shrines for Shiites, and&#160;Majd says that Iran will never allow "Shiite holy sites to fall to ISIS or any other group that has proclaimed they will destroy them."&#160;</p>
<p>But though Iran could become a neutral military protector of&#160;Shiite holy sites, Majd says it could only happen in the unlikely event that Iraq splinters.&#160;</p>
<p>"I don't think Iran wants to be seen in that role, at least certainly not yet," he adds. "Because again, I think it points to a sectarian and an ethnic issue that the Iranians don't really want to get involved in."</p>
|
Iran walks a sectarian tightrope as it intervenes in Iraq
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2014-06-28/iran-walks-sectarian-tightrope-it-intervenes-iraq
|
2014-06-28
| 3left-center
|
Iran walks a sectarian tightrope as it intervenes in Iraq
<p>Iran's move to shore up the Iraqi government has prompted a difficult question: how do you intervene on behalf of your sectarian allies without inflaming a sectarian war?</p>
<p>In recent days, Iran has stepped forward with aid, overseeing secret surveillance drone missions over Iraq and sending transport plans with military equipment and supplies to Baghdad.&#160;And back in Tehran,&#160;hundreds of Iranians rallied in the streets earlier this week in support of their Shiite neighbors.</p>
<p>Iranian-American journalist Hooman Majd, author of "The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran," says Iran has carefully avoided framing the situation as a sectarian divide.</p>
<p>"It's very important for the Iranians for [the crisis] not to become a sectarian issue because Iran needs the so-called 'Arab street' to be sympathetic to Iran, and not be hostile to it as it has been in recent years," Majd says.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Iran wants to avoid turmoil in Iraq and protect its territory from groups like ISIS. But that doesn't mean automatic support for the policies of Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's Shiite prime minister. He has so far refused to create a new, more inclusive government, and Majd thinks Iran doesn't agree.</p>
<p>"It is a purely vengeful sectarian position that Maliki has taken, and I think Iran is not comfortable with that," he says. "I&#160;think they've made it clear to Maliki, although he is still an ally of Iran."</p>
<p>Iran is working to aid Iraq and maintain a good relationship with Maliki, without putting its own population at risk.</p>
<p>"Iran has a Sunni population of its own, it has a Kurdish population of its own. It has Arabs in the south of Iran," says Majd. "There is no interest for Iran to encourage a sectarian issue here."&#160;</p>
<p>There are also the persistent tensions between Arab Iraqi Shiites and Persian Iranian Shiites.</p>
<p>"We do have to remember that when Iran fought an eight-year war with Iraq, the vast majority of the soldiers fighting Iran were Shiite," Majd&#160;explains.&#160;"So there is no illusion among Iranians or among Iraqis that the Shiites of Iraq and Shiites of Iran, just because they are from the same sect, are bosom buddies."</p>
<p>But the sectarian issue is difficult to ignore, especially for Shiites in the Iraqi government who spent their exile years in Iran.</p>
<p>"This is a country where the iron fist of Saddam Hussein came down most hard on Shiites, as we know from history," Majd says.</p>
<p>Iraq is also home to the holiest shrines for Shiites, and&#160;Majd says that Iran will never allow "Shiite holy sites to fall to ISIS or any other group that has proclaimed they will destroy them."&#160;</p>
<p>But though Iran could become a neutral military protector of&#160;Shiite holy sites, Majd says it could only happen in the unlikely event that Iraq splinters.&#160;</p>
<p>"I don't think Iran wants to be seen in that role, at least certainly not yet," he adds. "Because again, I think it points to a sectarian and an ethnic issue that the Iranians don't really want to get involved in."</p>
| 5,704 |
<p>The South Korean president has vowed to avoid “losing everything” in another conflict with the North, adding that Seoul can veto US military action in the region. He also warned North Korea “to end its dangerous gamble” with missile tests.</p>
<p>“I will prevent war at all cost,” President Moon Jae-in said, as <a href="https://www.afp.com/en/news/205/s-koreas-moon-there-will-be-no-war-korean-peninsula" type="external">cited</a> by AFP. “I want all South Koreans to believe with confidence that there will be no war.”&#160;</p>
<p>Seoul can use its right to a veto on any US military action on the peninsula, the South Korean leader said.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/399389-north-korea-millions-fight-us/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Washington had agreed that “no matter what option they take about North Korea, all decisions will be made after consulting with and getting agreement with the Republic of Korea,” he added.</p>
<p>According to Moon, US President Donald Trump is “trying to pressure North Korea by showing a firm resolution.”</p>
<p>“All South Koreans have worked so hard together to rebuild the country from the ruins of the Korean War [of the 1950s]. We can’t lose everything with another war,” Moon said.</p>
<p>The South Korean leader called upon the North to “end additional provocations to create the mood for dialogue.” He added that “the red line” would be North Korea “completing its intercontinental ballistic missile [ICBM]” and “mounting it with a nuclear warhead and weaponizing it.”</p>
<p>“If North Korea launches another provocation, it will face even stronger sanctions and it will not be able to survive them. I would like to warn North Korea to end its dangerous gamble,” he added.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/399298-trump-north-korea-military-threat/" type="external">READ MORE: Trump: Military solutions ‘locked &amp; loaded’ against North Korea&#160;</a></p>
<p>A recent war of words between the US and North Korea escalated tensions. Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” later adding that the threat wasn’t tough enough. On one occasion he said that Washington has military solutions “locked and loaded” for North Korea.</p>
<p>At the same time, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that “Americans should sleep well at night,” while commenting on the crisis.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/399077-tillerson-calm-north-korea/" type="external">READ MORE: ‘Americans should sleep well at night’ – Tillerson on North Korea threat&#160;</a></p>
<p>Pyongyang vowed to launch a medium-range ballistic missile to reach an area near the US territory of Guam, some 3,200km from North Korea. The country’s media reported that at least 3.5 million young people and retired soldiers have joined the military to fight in the event of a war against the US.</p>
<p>In the meantime, South Korea, a long-standing ally of Washington, doesn’t seem to share Trump’s saber-rattling rhetoric. The South, where over <a href="http://www.usfk.mil/Portals/105/Documents/Strategic%20Newsletter/TriFold_Korea_An_Assignment_of_Choice.pdf" type="external">28,000</a> US troops are currently stationed, has its own stance on the crisis. &#160;</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>On Sunday, a special policy adviser to President Moon told ABC News that Trump’s policy towards Pyongyang was&#160;“strategic confusion.”</p>
<p>“We are very much confused. Therefore, we think that now the American development has moved from strategic patience of Obama administration into strategic confusion,”&#160;he&#160; <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-13-17-lt-gen-mcmaster-anthony/story?id=49177024" type="external">said</a>. &#160;</p>
<p>On Tuesday, President Moon&#160; <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/south-korea-no-military-action-north-korea-2017-8" type="external">said&#160;</a>that&#160;“no one else can decide to take military action without the consent of South Korea.”&#160;</p>
<p>“I call upon the North Korean government: without international cooperation and co-existence economic development is impossible,”&#160;he also said.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, North Korea has urged the US to show willingness to ease tensions.</p>
<p>“The United States, which was the first to bring numerous strategic nuclear equipment near us, should first make the right decision and show through actions if they wish to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula and prevent a dangerous military clash,”&#160;North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said, as&#160; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/15/north-korea-kim-foolish-yankees-guam-missile-attack" type="external">cited&#160;</a>by state KCNA news agency.&#160;</p>
<p>Mixed signals from the US on the crisis may be down to a lack of cooperation inside the government, Lawrence Davidson, a foreign policy analyst, told RT.</p>
<p>“This is because there is no policy. This is because Trump doesn’t sit down with his cabinet and say, ‘OK, lets’ strategize for the contingencies that we’ve got. And then once we’ve got this policy, then we go to that policy and our public statements reflect that.’”</p>
<p>According to Davidson, Trump seems to make his statements without consulting or warning anyone.&#160;</p>
<p>“This is what happens when nobody is in control,”&#160;he concluded.</p>
|
‘At all costs’: South Korean leader vows to prevent war with North
| false |
https://newsline.com/at-all-costs-south-korean-leader-vows-to-prevent-war-with-north/
|
2017-08-17
| 1right-center
|
‘At all costs’: South Korean leader vows to prevent war with North
<p>The South Korean president has vowed to avoid “losing everything” in another conflict with the North, adding that Seoul can veto US military action in the region. He also warned North Korea “to end its dangerous gamble” with missile tests.</p>
<p>“I will prevent war at all cost,” President Moon Jae-in said, as <a href="https://www.afp.com/en/news/205/s-koreas-moon-there-will-be-no-war-korean-peninsula" type="external">cited</a> by AFP. “I want all South Koreans to believe with confidence that there will be no war.”&#160;</p>
<p>Seoul can use its right to a veto on any US military action on the peninsula, the South Korean leader said.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/399389-north-korea-millions-fight-us/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Washington had agreed that “no matter what option they take about North Korea, all decisions will be made after consulting with and getting agreement with the Republic of Korea,” he added.</p>
<p>According to Moon, US President Donald Trump is “trying to pressure North Korea by showing a firm resolution.”</p>
<p>“All South Koreans have worked so hard together to rebuild the country from the ruins of the Korean War [of the 1950s]. We can’t lose everything with another war,” Moon said.</p>
<p>The South Korean leader called upon the North to “end additional provocations to create the mood for dialogue.” He added that “the red line” would be North Korea “completing its intercontinental ballistic missile [ICBM]” and “mounting it with a nuclear warhead and weaponizing it.”</p>
<p>“If North Korea launches another provocation, it will face even stronger sanctions and it will not be able to survive them. I would like to warn North Korea to end its dangerous gamble,” he added.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/399298-trump-north-korea-military-threat/" type="external">READ MORE: Trump: Military solutions ‘locked &amp; loaded’ against North Korea&#160;</a></p>
<p>A recent war of words between the US and North Korea escalated tensions. Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” later adding that the threat wasn’t tough enough. On one occasion he said that Washington has military solutions “locked and loaded” for North Korea.</p>
<p>At the same time, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that “Americans should sleep well at night,” while commenting on the crisis.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/399077-tillerson-calm-north-korea/" type="external">READ MORE: ‘Americans should sleep well at night’ – Tillerson on North Korea threat&#160;</a></p>
<p>Pyongyang vowed to launch a medium-range ballistic missile to reach an area near the US territory of Guam, some 3,200km from North Korea. The country’s media reported that at least 3.5 million young people and retired soldiers have joined the military to fight in the event of a war against the US.</p>
<p>In the meantime, South Korea, a long-standing ally of Washington, doesn’t seem to share Trump’s saber-rattling rhetoric. The South, where over <a href="http://www.usfk.mil/Portals/105/Documents/Strategic%20Newsletter/TriFold_Korea_An_Assignment_of_Choice.pdf" type="external">28,000</a> US troops are currently stationed, has its own stance on the crisis. &#160;</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>On Sunday, a special policy adviser to President Moon told ABC News that Trump’s policy towards Pyongyang was&#160;“strategic confusion.”</p>
<p>“We are very much confused. Therefore, we think that now the American development has moved from strategic patience of Obama administration into strategic confusion,”&#160;he&#160; <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-13-17-lt-gen-mcmaster-anthony/story?id=49177024" type="external">said</a>. &#160;</p>
<p>On Tuesday, President Moon&#160; <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/south-korea-no-military-action-north-korea-2017-8" type="external">said&#160;</a>that&#160;“no one else can decide to take military action without the consent of South Korea.”&#160;</p>
<p>“I call upon the North Korean government: without international cooperation and co-existence economic development is impossible,”&#160;he also said.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, North Korea has urged the US to show willingness to ease tensions.</p>
<p>“The United States, which was the first to bring numerous strategic nuclear equipment near us, should first make the right decision and show through actions if they wish to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula and prevent a dangerous military clash,”&#160;North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said, as&#160; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/15/north-korea-kim-foolish-yankees-guam-missile-attack" type="external">cited&#160;</a>by state KCNA news agency.&#160;</p>
<p>Mixed signals from the US on the crisis may be down to a lack of cooperation inside the government, Lawrence Davidson, a foreign policy analyst, told RT.</p>
<p>“This is because there is no policy. This is because Trump doesn’t sit down with his cabinet and say, ‘OK, lets’ strategize for the contingencies that we’ve got. And then once we’ve got this policy, then we go to that policy and our public statements reflect that.’”</p>
<p>According to Davidson, Trump seems to make his statements without consulting or warning anyone.&#160;</p>
<p>“This is what happens when nobody is in control,”&#160;he concluded.</p>
| 5,705 |
<p>Despite numerous reports on The Daily Beast detailing how Audra Shay seemingly approved when a friend on Facebook implied that the Obama administration was run by “mad coons” and <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2009/07/10/the-gops-young-hatemonger.html" type="external">made other hateful comments</a> on the social-networking site, the Louisiana resident and military veteran was elected chairman of the Young Republicans at their convention on Saturday. The campaign was nasty, fueled by sexually tinged <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2009/07/12/bullying-behind-gop-racist-win-5.html" type="external">accusations</a>, and left the Young Republicans organization in a large degree of disarray.</p>
<p>When the governor’s spokesman was asked, as a followup, whether Jindal still supported his chosen candidate, Shay, as chairman of the Young Republicans, there was no response.</p>
<p>More interesting, however, is how the national Republican leadership is treating Shay’s election. Specifically, with silence. Despite Shay’s new position as the face of the young GOP (even though she's 38) and her social media track record, which even when viewed in the best light is offensive and encourages hate, none of the party’s leaders contacted by The Daily Beast would call on Shay to step down, or even apologize, or publicly explain her remarks.</p>
<p>Chief among them is Governor Bobby Jindal, who publicly endorsed Shay. Last week, as the “coons” controversy emerged, Jindal’s office did not respond to several requests for comment.</p>
<p>Yesterday, Jindal finally issued a statement. “I oppose all racism and all racist comments," he said. When the governor’s spokesman was asked, as a followup, whether Jindal still supported his chosen candidate as chairman of the Young Republicans, there was no response. Left unsaid was whether Jindal regards any of Shay’s comments as racist.</p>
<p>That’s quite a nuanced position for a person still regarded as a possible presidential candidate in 2012. But Jindal was hardly alone among GOP bigwigs in his silence on whether he supports the leader of the party’s under-40 arm. Spokespeople for Newt Gingrich and House Minority Leader John Boehner declined to comment. A representative for Mitt Romney, who addressed the Young Republicans convention in 2007, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the GOP’s Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, House Whip Eric Cantor, National Republican Congressional Committee head Pete Sessions, former GOP party head and current Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour or another Louisianan, Senator David Vitter.</p>
<p>Several phone calls and emails to spokespeople for Michael Steele, who <a href="http://www.indystar.com/article/20090710/NEWS08/907100368/1101/NEWS08/Young+Republicans+show+plenty+of+spirit" type="external">hobnobbed</a> with Young Republicans in Indiana this weekend and has repeatedly called on the Republican Party to reach out to minorities and immigrants, were not returned.</p>
<p>The only thing approaching criticism came from an early supporter of Shay (who in turn supported him when he won his seat), Louisiana Rep. Joseph Cao, whose district is predominantly African American. In a statement, Cao said:</p>
<p>"I do not condone the irresponsibility of Audra's comments. When I endorsed her in March, I did so with the expectation that she would be an advocate for all Young Republicans. As an immigrant and the nation's first Vietnamese-American congressman, and the national representative for a district that is 64 percent African American, it is important to me that the future leaders of both political parties understand the importance of the inclusion of minorities in the political process. Americans of all backgrounds are affected by the state of the economy, the debate over health care, and national security. Our national leaders should focus on the issues than on personal attacks against President Obama. I ask that Audra publicly denounce all racially insensitive comments and pledge (or pass a resolution) to commit the organization to doing more to improve race relations."</p>
<p>Despite asking Shay to denounce the remarks, a spokesperson for Cao said that the congressman would not call on her to resign from her position, a decision that he believes should be left to the group itself.</p>
<p>Founded in 1859, the Young Republicans bill themselves as "the oldest political youth organization in the United States." The group is open to 18- to 40-year-olds and seeks to register Republicans and persuade voters. Despite the silence of their leaders, many members of the Young Republicans have complained about Shay's election, which she won by a vote of 470-415. “They just took a vote that may have set the party back 30 years,” the co-founder of HipHopRepublican.com, Lenny McAllister, <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2009/07/12/bullying-behind-gop-racist-win-5.html" type="external">told</a> The Daily Beast's John Avlon. She also drew a condemnation from prominent young Republican (lower case “y”) Meghan McCain, who wrote in The Daily Beast that Shay “represents the same old stereotypes about 'young Republicans'—apparently racist and more middle-aged than youthful.”</p>
|
Jindal and the 'Racist'
| true |
https://thedailybeast.com/jindal-and-the-racist
|
2018-10-03
| 4left
|
Jindal and the 'Racist'
<p>Despite numerous reports on The Daily Beast detailing how Audra Shay seemingly approved when a friend on Facebook implied that the Obama administration was run by “mad coons” and <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2009/07/10/the-gops-young-hatemonger.html" type="external">made other hateful comments</a> on the social-networking site, the Louisiana resident and military veteran was elected chairman of the Young Republicans at their convention on Saturday. The campaign was nasty, fueled by sexually tinged <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2009/07/12/bullying-behind-gop-racist-win-5.html" type="external">accusations</a>, and left the Young Republicans organization in a large degree of disarray.</p>
<p>When the governor’s spokesman was asked, as a followup, whether Jindal still supported his chosen candidate, Shay, as chairman of the Young Republicans, there was no response.</p>
<p>More interesting, however, is how the national Republican leadership is treating Shay’s election. Specifically, with silence. Despite Shay’s new position as the face of the young GOP (even though she's 38) and her social media track record, which even when viewed in the best light is offensive and encourages hate, none of the party’s leaders contacted by The Daily Beast would call on Shay to step down, or even apologize, or publicly explain her remarks.</p>
<p>Chief among them is Governor Bobby Jindal, who publicly endorsed Shay. Last week, as the “coons” controversy emerged, Jindal’s office did not respond to several requests for comment.</p>
<p>Yesterday, Jindal finally issued a statement. “I oppose all racism and all racist comments," he said. When the governor’s spokesman was asked, as a followup, whether Jindal still supported his chosen candidate as chairman of the Young Republicans, there was no response. Left unsaid was whether Jindal regards any of Shay’s comments as racist.</p>
<p>That’s quite a nuanced position for a person still regarded as a possible presidential candidate in 2012. But Jindal was hardly alone among GOP bigwigs in his silence on whether he supports the leader of the party’s under-40 arm. Spokespeople for Newt Gingrich and House Minority Leader John Boehner declined to comment. A representative for Mitt Romney, who addressed the Young Republicans convention in 2007, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the GOP’s Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, House Whip Eric Cantor, National Republican Congressional Committee head Pete Sessions, former GOP party head and current Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour or another Louisianan, Senator David Vitter.</p>
<p>Several phone calls and emails to spokespeople for Michael Steele, who <a href="http://www.indystar.com/article/20090710/NEWS08/907100368/1101/NEWS08/Young+Republicans+show+plenty+of+spirit" type="external">hobnobbed</a> with Young Republicans in Indiana this weekend and has repeatedly called on the Republican Party to reach out to minorities and immigrants, were not returned.</p>
<p>The only thing approaching criticism came from an early supporter of Shay (who in turn supported him when he won his seat), Louisiana Rep. Joseph Cao, whose district is predominantly African American. In a statement, Cao said:</p>
<p>"I do not condone the irresponsibility of Audra's comments. When I endorsed her in March, I did so with the expectation that she would be an advocate for all Young Republicans. As an immigrant and the nation's first Vietnamese-American congressman, and the national representative for a district that is 64 percent African American, it is important to me that the future leaders of both political parties understand the importance of the inclusion of minorities in the political process. Americans of all backgrounds are affected by the state of the economy, the debate over health care, and national security. Our national leaders should focus on the issues than on personal attacks against President Obama. I ask that Audra publicly denounce all racially insensitive comments and pledge (or pass a resolution) to commit the organization to doing more to improve race relations."</p>
<p>Despite asking Shay to denounce the remarks, a spokesperson for Cao said that the congressman would not call on her to resign from her position, a decision that he believes should be left to the group itself.</p>
<p>Founded in 1859, the Young Republicans bill themselves as "the oldest political youth organization in the United States." The group is open to 18- to 40-year-olds and seeks to register Republicans and persuade voters. Despite the silence of their leaders, many members of the Young Republicans have complained about Shay's election, which she won by a vote of 470-415. “They just took a vote that may have set the party back 30 years,” the co-founder of HipHopRepublican.com, Lenny McAllister, <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2009/07/12/bullying-behind-gop-racist-win-5.html" type="external">told</a> The Daily Beast's John Avlon. She also drew a condemnation from prominent young Republican (lower case “y”) Meghan McCain, who wrote in The Daily Beast that Shay “represents the same old stereotypes about 'young Republicans'—apparently racist and more middle-aged than youthful.”</p>
| 5,706 |
<p>California officially has a budget-yes! Now that that order of business has been taken care of, let’s turn to another pressing local problem: water in the time of drought.</p>
<p>The California seasonal drought outlook, as forecast by the National Weather Service and the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, is not a happy one. The NOAA/NWS official U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook predicts the months of February 2009 through April 2009 will bring persistent and/or more intense drought conditions. Soil moisture predictions are no different, as the current water reserves and expected precipitation are all lower than usual this year.</p>
<p>According to the NWS readings, during January, nearly all of California cities received either less than 50 percent or only between 50-69 percent of typical rainfall levels. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which is one of the largest water providers in California, hasn’t been immune: this water district provides water to many smaller water districts throughout the state. The MWD’s water reserves are at under 50 percent (less than or equal to 200 million acre feet of water).</p>
<p>In June 2008, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared the state of California as being in a drought. By January 2009, the gravity of the situation was revealed further, as a California judge ordered tightened restrictions on the amount of water that could legally be taken from the San Joaquin Valley, to be provided to Southern California consumers. It was further determined that by spring 2009, if there was no drastic improvement, the state may begin implementing a system of water rationing. As everyone knows, rationing is no fun, as it is often accompanied by artificially inflated prices and widespread frustration.</p>
<p>The California Department of Water Resources noted this month that despite heavy rainfall throughout Southern and Northern California from February 5 and on (with some cities receiving more than 5 inches of rain within this short span), average water reserves and runoff levels throughout the entire state are at noticeably lower levels, even lower than last year.</p>
<p>Other than hoping for miracles and nonstop rain, Californians can’t control the weather. They can, however, control the amount of water being used in a given day. California water districts are encouraging people to purchase certain “water efficient” devices and water conservation programs (such as BeWaterWise, through the MWD, and SoCal Water$mart, also through the MWD), which offer very generous rebates to those who purchase these systems. Some of the water-saving devices include high-efficiency washing machines, toilets and weather-based irrigation devices, also known as “smart” sprinklers. Some varieties of the latter have been reported to save thousands of gallons of water every year. One system, the Cyber-Rain system, costs more than $300, but rebates are available for a significant percentage of that cost.</p>
<p>Other helpful tips shared by water districts and water conservation programs include common sense tips, which include turning off the faucet when brushing your teeth; using a broom to clean off the driveway, rather than the hose, and plant lower water-use/drought-tolerant plants, many of which thrive happily in California (and include surprisingly pleasant flowers such as the lantana and the lavender). As an added bonus, the consumer even gets to save money… on the water bill.</p>
<p>Though the drought may seem to only bring gloom, this is an excellent learning opportunity for all Californians (and those in drought-affected states, including Texas, Nevada and Florida). Californians have an extraordinary ability to adapt and innovate: by adopting widespread water conservation measures, we cannot only help conserve our water, but can provide for a continued, lowered level of extraneous water usage.</p>
<p>And residents who are considering conserving aren’t alone: the sheer magnitude of water conservation support throughout the state is quite unlike anything: water districts, state and local governmental agencies and various water programs not only support consumers in word, but many provide direct links to programs to reward the conservationists. Who said it doesn’t pay to conserve?</p>
|
Watering Down
| false |
https://ivn.us/2009/02/25/watering-down/
|
2009-02-25
| 2least
|
Watering Down
<p>California officially has a budget-yes! Now that that order of business has been taken care of, let’s turn to another pressing local problem: water in the time of drought.</p>
<p>The California seasonal drought outlook, as forecast by the National Weather Service and the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, is not a happy one. The NOAA/NWS official U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook predicts the months of February 2009 through April 2009 will bring persistent and/or more intense drought conditions. Soil moisture predictions are no different, as the current water reserves and expected precipitation are all lower than usual this year.</p>
<p>According to the NWS readings, during January, nearly all of California cities received either less than 50 percent or only between 50-69 percent of typical rainfall levels. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which is one of the largest water providers in California, hasn’t been immune: this water district provides water to many smaller water districts throughout the state. The MWD’s water reserves are at under 50 percent (less than or equal to 200 million acre feet of water).</p>
<p>In June 2008, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared the state of California as being in a drought. By January 2009, the gravity of the situation was revealed further, as a California judge ordered tightened restrictions on the amount of water that could legally be taken from the San Joaquin Valley, to be provided to Southern California consumers. It was further determined that by spring 2009, if there was no drastic improvement, the state may begin implementing a system of water rationing. As everyone knows, rationing is no fun, as it is often accompanied by artificially inflated prices and widespread frustration.</p>
<p>The California Department of Water Resources noted this month that despite heavy rainfall throughout Southern and Northern California from February 5 and on (with some cities receiving more than 5 inches of rain within this short span), average water reserves and runoff levels throughout the entire state are at noticeably lower levels, even lower than last year.</p>
<p>Other than hoping for miracles and nonstop rain, Californians can’t control the weather. They can, however, control the amount of water being used in a given day. California water districts are encouraging people to purchase certain “water efficient” devices and water conservation programs (such as BeWaterWise, through the MWD, and SoCal Water$mart, also through the MWD), which offer very generous rebates to those who purchase these systems. Some of the water-saving devices include high-efficiency washing machines, toilets and weather-based irrigation devices, also known as “smart” sprinklers. Some varieties of the latter have been reported to save thousands of gallons of water every year. One system, the Cyber-Rain system, costs more than $300, but rebates are available for a significant percentage of that cost.</p>
<p>Other helpful tips shared by water districts and water conservation programs include common sense tips, which include turning off the faucet when brushing your teeth; using a broom to clean off the driveway, rather than the hose, and plant lower water-use/drought-tolerant plants, many of which thrive happily in California (and include surprisingly pleasant flowers such as the lantana and the lavender). As an added bonus, the consumer even gets to save money… on the water bill.</p>
<p>Though the drought may seem to only bring gloom, this is an excellent learning opportunity for all Californians (and those in drought-affected states, including Texas, Nevada and Florida). Californians have an extraordinary ability to adapt and innovate: by adopting widespread water conservation measures, we cannot only help conserve our water, but can provide for a continued, lowered level of extraneous water usage.</p>
<p>And residents who are considering conserving aren’t alone: the sheer magnitude of water conservation support throughout the state is quite unlike anything: water districts, state and local governmental agencies and various water programs not only support consumers in word, but many provide direct links to programs to reward the conservationists. Who said it doesn’t pay to conserve?</p>
| 5,707 |
<p />
<p>Barclays (NYSE:BCS) CEO Antony Jenkins has agreed to waive his 2012 bonus amid the bank’s recent troubles, saying that he should “bear an appropriate degree of accountability.”</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Jenkins, who took the British bank’s reins in August after Bob Diamond stepped down for Barclay’s involvement in the Libor scandal, said he was aware of the speculation and public interest into whether he would receive a bonus for his 2012 performance.</p>
<p>The chief said he decided earlier this week that he does not wish to be considered for a bonus and has communicated that decision to the board.</p>
<p>“The year just past was clearly a very difficult one for Barclays and its stakeholders, with multiple issues of our own making besetting the bank,” Jenkins said. “I have concluded that it would be wrong for me to receive a bonus for 2012 given those circumstances.”</p>
<p>The award could have fetched as much as 2.75 million pounds, or $4.35 million, which would have been on top of his base salary of 1.1 million pounds ($1.75 million).</p>
<p>Among Barclays' issues this year was a $450 million fine from U.S. and U.K. regulators for its part in a global interest rate rigging scandal as well as scandals involving the improper selling of payment protection insurance in its retail business.</p>
|
Barclays CEO Jenkins Waives 2012 Bonus Amid Scandals
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/02/01/barclays-ceo-jenkins-waives-2012-bonus-amid-scandals.html
|
2016-03-02
| 0right
|
Barclays CEO Jenkins Waives 2012 Bonus Amid Scandals
<p />
<p>Barclays (NYSE:BCS) CEO Antony Jenkins has agreed to waive his 2012 bonus amid the bank’s recent troubles, saying that he should “bear an appropriate degree of accountability.”</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Jenkins, who took the British bank’s reins in August after Bob Diamond stepped down for Barclay’s involvement in the Libor scandal, said he was aware of the speculation and public interest into whether he would receive a bonus for his 2012 performance.</p>
<p>The chief said he decided earlier this week that he does not wish to be considered for a bonus and has communicated that decision to the board.</p>
<p>“The year just past was clearly a very difficult one for Barclays and its stakeholders, with multiple issues of our own making besetting the bank,” Jenkins said. “I have concluded that it would be wrong for me to receive a bonus for 2012 given those circumstances.”</p>
<p>The award could have fetched as much as 2.75 million pounds, or $4.35 million, which would have been on top of his base salary of 1.1 million pounds ($1.75 million).</p>
<p>Among Barclays' issues this year was a $450 million fine from U.S. and U.K. regulators for its part in a global interest rate rigging scandal as well as scandals involving the improper selling of payment protection insurance in its retail business.</p>
| 5,708 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" />I get that conservatives hate President Obama. &#160;Heck, I live in Texas — he’s despised by nearly every conservative I encounter here. &#160;It’s caused me to avoid political discussions in public. &#160;You’d think that doing what I do for a living I’d talk politics all the time, but&#160;that’s not the case in my private life. &#160;Whenever a conservative I meet finds out what I do, I usually avoid discussing politics if possible. &#160;I’ve been down that road before and it’s just not worth the headache.</p>
<p>The asinine “facts” I’ve seen these people spew are often so ridiculous I can’t even properly respond to them because I’m trying not to laugh. &#160;“Did you know Obamacare requires microchips in every American?” &#160;Who honestly would believe such nonsense?</p>
<p>Well, while checking out Politifact, <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jan/02/blog-posting/bloggers-say-obamacare-coding-system-could-usher-b/" type="external">I ran across what might be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen them fact-check</a>. &#160;Now I’m not exactly sure what their process is for investigating something, but I’m guessing it requires quite a few inquiries about a particular situation before they take the time to investigate the claim and write their article displaying their results.</p>
<p>So when I saw that they fact-checked a claim that “Obamacare” coding would lead to executions by beheading in the United States —&#160;I couldn’t believe my eyes.</p>
<p>Not that some idiots believed this (when you’ve seen as many ridiculous “facts” uttered by conservatives about “Obamacare” over the years, nothing surprises you anymore) but the fact that it was believed by so many people that Politifact took the time to fact-check it was the laughable part.</p>
<p>For the record, it was deemed a “Pants on Fire” lie — their harshest rating for factually inaccurate information.</p>
<p>Granted, I’ve seen conservative friends and family post some really crazy things on Facebook that they believed to be true, but I can’t even wrap my mind around the idea that there were enough people who believed “Obamacare” allowed for execution by beheadings in the United States. &#160;I’ll admit that shocked the hell out of me.</p>
<p>As a liberal, if I read something with a headline that radical (even if it supports my side of the argument), red flags instantly go off inside my head. &#160;The first thing I do is Google the headline and see if any credible sources have reported anything about it. &#160;Then I go to the article itself to see what source they used. &#160; Then, if there’s even a source, I see where the source got their information — which more often than not isn’t cited or sourced at all. &#160;It’s just some blog filled with all sorts of far-right (or far-left) radical articles with no factual basis whatsoever.</p>
<p>It just goes to show how blind many conservatives are when it comes to the Affordable Care Act. &#160;They’ve been programmed to hate the health care law to such an extent that most of them will believe just about any nonsense that flies across their TV screen, computer or smart phone. &#160;But seriously, beheadings? &#160;Absurd doesn’t even begin to properly&#160;describe that level of insanity.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Arkansas GOP Lawmaker Admits Republicans are Trying to Sabotage Health Care Enrollment</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Jon Stewart Destroys Fox News, Exposes 50 Of Their Lies In 6 Seconds (Video)</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Several Questions I Want Republicans to Answer About President Obama</a></p>
<p>0 Facebook comments</p>
|
How Gullible are Conservatives? You Won’t Believe What Had to be Fact-Checked
| true |
http://forwardprogressives.com/how-gullible-are-conservatives-you-wont-believe-what-had-to-be-fact-checked/
|
2014-01-06
| 4left
|
How Gullible are Conservatives? You Won’t Believe What Had to be Fact-Checked
<p><a href="" type="internal" />I get that conservatives hate President Obama. &#160;Heck, I live in Texas — he’s despised by nearly every conservative I encounter here. &#160;It’s caused me to avoid political discussions in public. &#160;You’d think that doing what I do for a living I’d talk politics all the time, but&#160;that’s not the case in my private life. &#160;Whenever a conservative I meet finds out what I do, I usually avoid discussing politics if possible. &#160;I’ve been down that road before and it’s just not worth the headache.</p>
<p>The asinine “facts” I’ve seen these people spew are often so ridiculous I can’t even properly respond to them because I’m trying not to laugh. &#160;“Did you know Obamacare requires microchips in every American?” &#160;Who honestly would believe such nonsense?</p>
<p>Well, while checking out Politifact, <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jan/02/blog-posting/bloggers-say-obamacare-coding-system-could-usher-b/" type="external">I ran across what might be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen them fact-check</a>. &#160;Now I’m not exactly sure what their process is for investigating something, but I’m guessing it requires quite a few inquiries about a particular situation before they take the time to investigate the claim and write their article displaying their results.</p>
<p>So when I saw that they fact-checked a claim that “Obamacare” coding would lead to executions by beheading in the United States —&#160;I couldn’t believe my eyes.</p>
<p>Not that some idiots believed this (when you’ve seen as many ridiculous “facts” uttered by conservatives about “Obamacare” over the years, nothing surprises you anymore) but the fact that it was believed by so many people that Politifact took the time to fact-check it was the laughable part.</p>
<p>For the record, it was deemed a “Pants on Fire” lie — their harshest rating for factually inaccurate information.</p>
<p>Granted, I’ve seen conservative friends and family post some really crazy things on Facebook that they believed to be true, but I can’t even wrap my mind around the idea that there were enough people who believed “Obamacare” allowed for execution by beheadings in the United States. &#160;I’ll admit that shocked the hell out of me.</p>
<p>As a liberal, if I read something with a headline that radical (even if it supports my side of the argument), red flags instantly go off inside my head. &#160;The first thing I do is Google the headline and see if any credible sources have reported anything about it. &#160;Then I go to the article itself to see what source they used. &#160; Then, if there’s even a source, I see where the source got their information — which more often than not isn’t cited or sourced at all. &#160;It’s just some blog filled with all sorts of far-right (or far-left) radical articles with no factual basis whatsoever.</p>
<p>It just goes to show how blind many conservatives are when it comes to the Affordable Care Act. &#160;They’ve been programmed to hate the health care law to such an extent that most of them will believe just about any nonsense that flies across their TV screen, computer or smart phone. &#160;But seriously, beheadings? &#160;Absurd doesn’t even begin to properly&#160;describe that level of insanity.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Arkansas GOP Lawmaker Admits Republicans are Trying to Sabotage Health Care Enrollment</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Jon Stewart Destroys Fox News, Exposes 50 Of Their Lies In 6 Seconds (Video)</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Several Questions I Want Republicans to Answer About President Obama</a></p>
<p>0 Facebook comments</p>
| 5,709 |
<p>In the year since Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed, US service members have shared their sexual orientation openly both on the job and across their social networks. Here's a selection of some of the best shots that have surfaced on Instagram since the ban was repealed on Sept. 20, 2011.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/229421051_3848075" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/237130232583424699_6727305" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/260894132343035798_175384756" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/220907841635664379_11479783" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/621403596_14308558" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/147754244_5095317" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/284494905048136352_6369957" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/283717137193428906_19716720" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/202006128064170389_4518553" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/219394575212094925_42417696" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/viewer.php" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
|
DADT: A year of serving openly (PHOTOS)
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2012-09-20/dadt-year-serving-openly-photos
|
2012-09-20
| 3left-center
|
DADT: A year of serving openly (PHOTOS)
<p>In the year since Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed, US service members have shared their sexual orientation openly both on the job and across their social networks. Here's a selection of some of the best shots that have surfaced on Instagram since the ban was repealed on Sept. 20, 2011.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/229421051_3848075" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/237130232583424699_6727305" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/260894132343035798_175384756" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/220907841635664379_11479783" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/621403596_14308558" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/147754244_5095317" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/284494905048136352_6369957" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/283717137193428906_19716720" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/202006128064170389_4518553" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/p/219394575212094925_42417696" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://statigr.am/viewer.php" type="external">statigr.am</a> via <a href="http://pinterest.com/globalpost/" type="external">GlobalPost</a> on <a href="http://pinterest.com" type="external">Pinterest</a></p>
| 5,710 |
<p>Photo: Wikimedia Commons</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175104" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external">TomDispatch website</a>.</p>
<p>Echo Platoon is part of the 82nd Replacement Detachment of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Soldiers in the platoon are relegated to living quarters in a set of dimly lit concrete rooms. Pipes peep out of missing ceiling tiles and a musty smell permeates beds placed on cracked linoleum floors.</p>
<p>For soldiers who have gone AWOL (Absent Without Leave) and then voluntarily turned themselves in or were forcibly returned, the detention conditions here in Echo Platoon only serve to reinforce the inescapability of their situation. They remain suspended in a legal limbo of forced uncertainty that can extend from several months to a year or more, while the military takes its time deciding their fate. Some of them, however, are offered a free pass out of this military half-life—but only if they agree to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq.</p>
<p>Specialist Kevin McCormick, 21, who was held in Echo Platoon for more than seven months on AWOL and desertion charges, was typically offered release, subject to accepting deployment to Iraq, despite being suicidal. “Echo is like jail,” he says, “with some privileges. [You are] just stuck there with horrible living conditions. There’s black mold on the building [and] when I first got there, there were five or six people to a room, which is like a cell block with cement brick walls. The piping and electricals are above the tiles, so if anything leaks or bursts, it goes right down into the room.”</p>
<p>Specialist Michael St. Clair went AWOL because he could not obtain treatment from the military for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). On turning himself in, he ended up consigned to Echo Platoon. As he recalls it, “The number fluctuates all the time, but on an average you have 50 people sharing two functioning toilets and a single shower… Except for a couple of rooms none have doors, and there is minimal privacy with four or more people to a room. It’s stressful not knowing what’s going to happen to you.”</p>
<p>Former military recruiter Staff Sargeant Jeffrey Nelbach went AWOL in 2004 in hopes of salvaging his family life. (It is not uncommon for soldiers to remain AWOL for years at a time.) Now, he’s paying for it with a stint in Echo. He confirms the awful conditions. “It is an old, moldy building with bad ventilation. Fifty-plus people use the same latrine. And more and more people are going there.”</p>
<p>Nelbach, who is quick to say that he’s “not really for the war and not really against it,” has lost his house and is struggling to support his children with no income during his first few months in Echo, a limbo-land where even military pay can be suspended. His experience has convinced him that “military justice is arbitrary and if your chain of command is bad, it means everything up is bad.”</p>
<p>“Not Many Have This Opportunity.”</p>
<p>According to Major Virginia McCabe, spokesperson for the 82nd Airborne Division, AWOL soldiers are confined to the holdover section at the 82nd Replacement Detachment at Fort Bragg if they are deemed a flight risk. She offered no criteria, however, for just how that is determined. “Each AWOL soldier has his or her own special circumstances,” she said. “They stay in a holding platoon until a legal decision is taken. Or they might say they made a mistake and return to serve.”</p>
<p>Normally, soldiers on a legal “hold” of some kind end up in platoons like Echo. It may be because he or she is seeking a medical discharge, switching assignments, or waiting for a court martial to be convened.</p>
<p>Echo Platoon, however, seems to be made up of a contingent of wayward soldiers the military does not know what to do with. Captain Kevin Thaxton, commander of the 82nd Replacement Detachment, of which Echo Platoon is a part, offers this explanation:</p>
<p>“While the entire replacement detachment contains 500 soldiers, there are 40 AWOLs in Echo and about 20 in for holdovers/personnel issues and post-UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice] Punishment, totaling about 60 people.</p>
<p>“Some are given the opportunity to go back with their unit and deploy. Those who accept do not exactly have their records cleared, but they do get to start over, keeping in mind we know this person has had problems before. We don’t advertise that they went AWOL, but the commanders and the NCOs know about it. Not many have this opportunity. It depends on how long they’ve been AWOL. You have to say OK, would I trust a person who decided they didn’t want to serve at one time, someone who is always on the fence?”</p>
<p>“Having a Head Full of Insanity”</p>
<p>One soldier in Echo Platoon, Specialist Dustin Stevens, had gone AWOL before the invasion of Iraq, and did so because he was opposed to all wars. On turning himself in, he’s been in the holdover section for six months now awaiting AWOL and desertion charges. He may not be halfway through his purgatory. Others in the platoon have been held for more than a year in a no man’s land of small-scale arbitrary punishment in which, according to soldiers in Echo Platoon, officers in charge regularly verbally abuse them as well as make physical threats.</p>
<p>Kevin McCormick describes his experience this way: “You’re less than human to the commanders. [They act as if] you don’t deserve to be alive. A sergeant told us he wanted to take us out and shoot us in the back of the head. We get threatened all the time there.”</p>
<p>On being questioned about such threats, Captain Thaxton played it safe. “I can’t confirm or deny verbal abuse,” he responded. “It depends on if a person is angry after something has been done.”</p>
<p>On average, two new soldiers are assigned to Echo Platoon every week, according to Stevens. Resigned to a long wait, Stevens sums up life in the platoon this way:</p>
<p>“I’ve been here almost seven months, and only a few people have gotten out during that time. There was a Purple Heart veteran who was here and is now serving a 15-month jail sentence. One guy, gone for 10 years, got two years in prison without pay, although he had a newborn daughter. It doesn’t make sense. Unfortunately, our sentence does not take into account the time served here. Some of us get paid, albeit the E1 or entry level wages, but I’d gladly give them the money back if I could go home…</p>
<p>“[Soldiers in Echo Platoon] don’t… get the benefits others get. You are pretty much a prisoner. You can’t do anything. They say you are not confined, but you can’t go more than 50 miles off post. It’s almost impossible to get leave unless in dire emergency, so we’re just sitting here, day by day.”</p>
<p>Downplaying the punitive nature of the platoon, Captain Thaxton admits only that “people who get in trouble are restricted to post. It keeps them from getting in fights with other soldiers. However, they are allowed access to Post Exchange [shopping], the chapel and dining facilities along with a 50-mile radius for travel.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1931859884/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />Thaxton repeated several times that soldiers in Echo Platoon “can go to behavioral health [care].” While the soldiers themselves admit this is true and that they do have access to mental-health care, they say it is of very poor quality. Doctors, they claim, just focus on “drugging them up,” rather than giving them adequate therapy in order to help them deal with their specific problems. The platoon’s soldiers regularly confide suicidal urges to each other.</p>
<p>In Echo Platoon the deleterious effects the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are having on ordinary soldiers are clearly visible. By December 2006, it was already <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/19/AR2006121901659.html" type="external">estimated</a> that that 38% of all Army personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan had served multiple tours of duty. By October 2007, the Army <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1811858,00.html" type="external">reported</a> that approximately 12% of all combat troops in Iraq were coping by taking antidepressants and/or sleeping pills.</p>
<p>In April 2008, the Rand Corporation, a military-affiliated think-tank, released a <a href="http://www.rand.org/news/press/2008/04/17/" type="external">study stating</a>: “Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan—300,000 in all—report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression.”</p>
<p>Like others who have turned against America’s wars after multiple deployments to Iraq, Michael St. Clair has his regrets:</p>
<p>“I had always idealized the military, like we were going out to fight the Nazis, and had real moral high ground. When I got over [to Iraq], I was shocked by the brutality. My whole first tour, I can honestly say I never saw an Iraqi guy who deserved to die, who had weapons or was attacking us or anything. In many instances American soldiers took really bad decisions that killed innocent Iraqis. I had a hard time reconciling that with what I had thought I would be doing. By the time my second tour was over, I had morphed into a killer. A lot of people don’t understand what war actually is. I don’t know what’s worse: being charged with felony or having a head full of insanity.”</p>
<p>On St. Clair’s return from his second tour, the military did a post-deployment health assessment, and six months later a reassessment. That is when his PTSD symptoms began to appear, and he was prescribed medication for depression. According to St. Clair, when he reported a panic attack, he was told he would not be sent to sniper school, and that he would not be given any further training because he was considered too unstable, which made him a danger to the country. Nevertheless, his military psychiatrist was, he claimed, pressured by higher ups to declare that he had a pre-Army personality disorder and was not suffering from PTSD. In despair, he went AWOL for 10 months before turning himself in.</p>
<p>His story is one more instance of the troop-unfriendly and skewed practices of the military machine. Diagnosed with PTSD, he was finally given a medical discharge for a personality disorder in an effort by the military to continue their systematic denial of the psychologically destructive effects of war.</p>
<p>Staying AWOL</p>
<p>After his deployment to Iraq, Kevin McCormick went AWOL because he felt suicidal and wasn’t getting the help he needed. While in Iraq, he says, “I had a lot of problems back home. My mom had recently passed away. When I asked for help it got pushed back in my face. Even the Inspector General denied me treatment.” (Essentially, the Inspector General represents a soldier’s last recourse in attempting to correct a problem. If the IG refuses to help, there are few alternatives available.)</p>
<p>When, after four-and-a-half-months AWOL, McCormick turned himself in, he was offered absolution if he agreed to serve again, an absurdity not lost on him. “They offered me that deal,” he exclaims, “when it was a known fact that I had issues with my mental care. They offered me a chance to go back to the unit!” His refusal to do so left him languishing in Echo Platoon for eight months until he finally received a medical discharge.</p>
<p>Even though his decision to go AWOL was in no way a protest against the U.S. occupation of Iraq, he is now opposed to it. “I personally don’t feel we need to be in Iraq and I’ve been there and seen it firsthand. I think the U.S. being there is pointless.”</p>
<p>His blunt advice to soldiers who go AWOL and intend to turn themselves in is, “If you’re AWOL, fuck going back.”</p>
<p>Staff Sergeant Nelbach will have spent over nine months in Echo Platoon by the time he is tried in October. His court martial will in all likelihood bring further punishment. Due to his higher rank and the fact that he was a platoon leader, Nelbach is in charge of making sure that soldiers in the platoon follow through on their work assignments. He also accompanies people to medical appointments and does necessary paperwork. He is thus seen by other platoon soldiers as the one who runs the place. Yet he is aware that none of this will help him when he comes to trial. “It’s inhuman,” he insists. “There’s no fairness to it. It’s always been mass punishment there.”</p>
<p>Warehousing Soldiers</p>
<p>Assigned to Echo Platoon in January 2009, Dustin Stevens continues to bide his time awaiting charges that might still be months away. “[It’s] horrible here. We are treated like animals. We’re all so lost and wanting to go home. Some of us are going crazy, some are sick. And the way I see it, I did nothing wrong. By reading or talking to people all of the time I try to stay out of this place in my mind… There are people here who should be in mental hospitals.”</p>
<p>James Branum, Stevens’ civilian lawyer, is also the legal adviser to the G.I. Rights Hotline of Oklahoma and co-chair of the Military Law Task Force (MLTF) which offers training to the legal community and information about G.I. Rights and military law to service members and their families. He says AWOL troops make up three-quarters of Echo platoon and that medical cases are the bulk of the remainder. Accustomed to inordinate delays from the military, he says, “People are in this unit for months and months. The [authorities] take forever to do anything. You are going to be there six months if you’re lucky, twelve if you’re not.”</p>
<p>On the legality of such detention without trial, Branum comments:</p>
<p>“I think there are some illegal elements about how they are running the place, but the general concept is not illegal. You have people there with legitimate medical and psychological issues, but instead of proactively helping them, the military shuffles them off to this replacement [detachment] to be treated like dirt. They are told they have no rights when they do have a right to talk to their commander, to have an attorney, and to talk to Congress. Echo, if run properly, would be a good thing. Not so when people are being warehoused and told repeatedly they have no rights. That is illegal.”</p>
<p>As for the military’s goal in running Echo Platoon and other similar units at military bases around the country:</p>
<p>“To me it doesn’t seem productive. Oftentimes, the military doesn’t know what it is doing. There isn’t a logical explanation for this. Maybe deterrence is one. Other soldiers see these guys being ill treated and don’t want to resist. They also want to break and wear people down so they’ll deploy rather than keep resisting. The Army isn’t true to its own processes at times. If their goal is to get folks deployable, this isn’t the way. You don’t want guys with physical or psychological issues to deploy.”</p>
<p>In 2008, USA Today <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-05-07-nondeploy_N.htm" type="external">revealed</a> that more than 43,000 troops listed as medically unfit had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan anyway.</p>
<p>A Yardstick of Desperation</p>
<p>In a discussion of her group’s role in dealing with the legal holding of soldiers, MLTF co-chair Kathleen Gilberd commented:</p>
<p>“Fort Bragg is not an isolated situation. Placement in legal-hold [detachments] where soldiers languish for months is common to all the services. What we’re seeing is the command not making up their minds. Their indecision has severe consequences for those with open-ended medical issues because they cannot avail themselves of help until their legal situation is resolved.”</p>
<p>Chuck Fager, the director of the Fayetteville Quaker House (the town of Fayetteville adjoins Fort Bragg) claims that the military is primarily focused on “making numbers” for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Orders from the Pentagon say you have to send X [number of] troops,” he points out. “The military does not have them and is constantly looking around for where to get them. One potential pool is the mass of soldiers gone AWOL. Eventually they either go back or get picked up… We are guessing [military officials] think they can persuade a significant number of these AWOL soldiers to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan. “</p>
<p>The U.S. still maintains more than 130,000 soldiers in Iraq and, by year’s end, will have at least 68,000 in Afghanistan, a figure likely to rise in the years to come.</p>
<p>Think of Echo and other platoons like it as grim yardsticks for measuring the desperation in which a military under immense strain is now operating. Looking up at that military from Echo’s airless limbo, from a world of soldiers who have fallen through the cracks of a system under great stress, you can see just how devastating America’s two ongoing wars have been for the military itself. The walking wounded, the troubled, and the broken are now being pressured to reenter the fray.</p>
<p>If Chuck Fager is right, the future is bleak for the members of Echo Platoon who endure deplorable conditions with little idea about whether their future involves charges, trial, deployment, or medical release. It is a painful irony that some of those who volunteered to serve and defend our nation are now left particularly defenseless and vulnerable as a direct consequence of its ill advised foreign adventures.</p>
<p>Bhaswati Sengupta contributed to this report.</p>
|
Lost in Military Limbo
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/08/lost-military-limbo/
|
2009-08-10
| 4left
|
Lost in Military Limbo
<p>Photo: Wikimedia Commons</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175104" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external">TomDispatch website</a>.</p>
<p>Echo Platoon is part of the 82nd Replacement Detachment of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Soldiers in the platoon are relegated to living quarters in a set of dimly lit concrete rooms. Pipes peep out of missing ceiling tiles and a musty smell permeates beds placed on cracked linoleum floors.</p>
<p>For soldiers who have gone AWOL (Absent Without Leave) and then voluntarily turned themselves in or were forcibly returned, the detention conditions here in Echo Platoon only serve to reinforce the inescapability of their situation. They remain suspended in a legal limbo of forced uncertainty that can extend from several months to a year or more, while the military takes its time deciding their fate. Some of them, however, are offered a free pass out of this military half-life—but only if they agree to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq.</p>
<p>Specialist Kevin McCormick, 21, who was held in Echo Platoon for more than seven months on AWOL and desertion charges, was typically offered release, subject to accepting deployment to Iraq, despite being suicidal. “Echo is like jail,” he says, “with some privileges. [You are] just stuck there with horrible living conditions. There’s black mold on the building [and] when I first got there, there were five or six people to a room, which is like a cell block with cement brick walls. The piping and electricals are above the tiles, so if anything leaks or bursts, it goes right down into the room.”</p>
<p>Specialist Michael St. Clair went AWOL because he could not obtain treatment from the military for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). On turning himself in, he ended up consigned to Echo Platoon. As he recalls it, “The number fluctuates all the time, but on an average you have 50 people sharing two functioning toilets and a single shower… Except for a couple of rooms none have doors, and there is minimal privacy with four or more people to a room. It’s stressful not knowing what’s going to happen to you.”</p>
<p>Former military recruiter Staff Sargeant Jeffrey Nelbach went AWOL in 2004 in hopes of salvaging his family life. (It is not uncommon for soldiers to remain AWOL for years at a time.) Now, he’s paying for it with a stint in Echo. He confirms the awful conditions. “It is an old, moldy building with bad ventilation. Fifty-plus people use the same latrine. And more and more people are going there.”</p>
<p>Nelbach, who is quick to say that he’s “not really for the war and not really against it,” has lost his house and is struggling to support his children with no income during his first few months in Echo, a limbo-land where even military pay can be suspended. His experience has convinced him that “military justice is arbitrary and if your chain of command is bad, it means everything up is bad.”</p>
<p>“Not Many Have This Opportunity.”</p>
<p>According to Major Virginia McCabe, spokesperson for the 82nd Airborne Division, AWOL soldiers are confined to the holdover section at the 82nd Replacement Detachment at Fort Bragg if they are deemed a flight risk. She offered no criteria, however, for just how that is determined. “Each AWOL soldier has his or her own special circumstances,” she said. “They stay in a holding platoon until a legal decision is taken. Or they might say they made a mistake and return to serve.”</p>
<p>Normally, soldiers on a legal “hold” of some kind end up in platoons like Echo. It may be because he or she is seeking a medical discharge, switching assignments, or waiting for a court martial to be convened.</p>
<p>Echo Platoon, however, seems to be made up of a contingent of wayward soldiers the military does not know what to do with. Captain Kevin Thaxton, commander of the 82nd Replacement Detachment, of which Echo Platoon is a part, offers this explanation:</p>
<p>“While the entire replacement detachment contains 500 soldiers, there are 40 AWOLs in Echo and about 20 in for holdovers/personnel issues and post-UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice] Punishment, totaling about 60 people.</p>
<p>“Some are given the opportunity to go back with their unit and deploy. Those who accept do not exactly have their records cleared, but they do get to start over, keeping in mind we know this person has had problems before. We don’t advertise that they went AWOL, but the commanders and the NCOs know about it. Not many have this opportunity. It depends on how long they’ve been AWOL. You have to say OK, would I trust a person who decided they didn’t want to serve at one time, someone who is always on the fence?”</p>
<p>“Having a Head Full of Insanity”</p>
<p>One soldier in Echo Platoon, Specialist Dustin Stevens, had gone AWOL before the invasion of Iraq, and did so because he was opposed to all wars. On turning himself in, he’s been in the holdover section for six months now awaiting AWOL and desertion charges. He may not be halfway through his purgatory. Others in the platoon have been held for more than a year in a no man’s land of small-scale arbitrary punishment in which, according to soldiers in Echo Platoon, officers in charge regularly verbally abuse them as well as make physical threats.</p>
<p>Kevin McCormick describes his experience this way: “You’re less than human to the commanders. [They act as if] you don’t deserve to be alive. A sergeant told us he wanted to take us out and shoot us in the back of the head. We get threatened all the time there.”</p>
<p>On being questioned about such threats, Captain Thaxton played it safe. “I can’t confirm or deny verbal abuse,” he responded. “It depends on if a person is angry after something has been done.”</p>
<p>On average, two new soldiers are assigned to Echo Platoon every week, according to Stevens. Resigned to a long wait, Stevens sums up life in the platoon this way:</p>
<p>“I’ve been here almost seven months, and only a few people have gotten out during that time. There was a Purple Heart veteran who was here and is now serving a 15-month jail sentence. One guy, gone for 10 years, got two years in prison without pay, although he had a newborn daughter. It doesn’t make sense. Unfortunately, our sentence does not take into account the time served here. Some of us get paid, albeit the E1 or entry level wages, but I’d gladly give them the money back if I could go home…</p>
<p>“[Soldiers in Echo Platoon] don’t… get the benefits others get. You are pretty much a prisoner. You can’t do anything. They say you are not confined, but you can’t go more than 50 miles off post. It’s almost impossible to get leave unless in dire emergency, so we’re just sitting here, day by day.”</p>
<p>Downplaying the punitive nature of the platoon, Captain Thaxton admits only that “people who get in trouble are restricted to post. It keeps them from getting in fights with other soldiers. However, they are allowed access to Post Exchange [shopping], the chapel and dining facilities along with a 50-mile radius for travel.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1931859884/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />Thaxton repeated several times that soldiers in Echo Platoon “can go to behavioral health [care].” While the soldiers themselves admit this is true and that they do have access to mental-health care, they say it is of very poor quality. Doctors, they claim, just focus on “drugging them up,” rather than giving them adequate therapy in order to help them deal with their specific problems. The platoon’s soldiers regularly confide suicidal urges to each other.</p>
<p>In Echo Platoon the deleterious effects the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are having on ordinary soldiers are clearly visible. By December 2006, it was already <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/19/AR2006121901659.html" type="external">estimated</a> that that 38% of all Army personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan had served multiple tours of duty. By October 2007, the Army <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1811858,00.html" type="external">reported</a> that approximately 12% of all combat troops in Iraq were coping by taking antidepressants and/or sleeping pills.</p>
<p>In April 2008, the Rand Corporation, a military-affiliated think-tank, released a <a href="http://www.rand.org/news/press/2008/04/17/" type="external">study stating</a>: “Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan—300,000 in all—report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression.”</p>
<p>Like others who have turned against America’s wars after multiple deployments to Iraq, Michael St. Clair has his regrets:</p>
<p>“I had always idealized the military, like we were going out to fight the Nazis, and had real moral high ground. When I got over [to Iraq], I was shocked by the brutality. My whole first tour, I can honestly say I never saw an Iraqi guy who deserved to die, who had weapons or was attacking us or anything. In many instances American soldiers took really bad decisions that killed innocent Iraqis. I had a hard time reconciling that with what I had thought I would be doing. By the time my second tour was over, I had morphed into a killer. A lot of people don’t understand what war actually is. I don’t know what’s worse: being charged with felony or having a head full of insanity.”</p>
<p>On St. Clair’s return from his second tour, the military did a post-deployment health assessment, and six months later a reassessment. That is when his PTSD symptoms began to appear, and he was prescribed medication for depression. According to St. Clair, when he reported a panic attack, he was told he would not be sent to sniper school, and that he would not be given any further training because he was considered too unstable, which made him a danger to the country. Nevertheless, his military psychiatrist was, he claimed, pressured by higher ups to declare that he had a pre-Army personality disorder and was not suffering from PTSD. In despair, he went AWOL for 10 months before turning himself in.</p>
<p>His story is one more instance of the troop-unfriendly and skewed practices of the military machine. Diagnosed with PTSD, he was finally given a medical discharge for a personality disorder in an effort by the military to continue their systematic denial of the psychologically destructive effects of war.</p>
<p>Staying AWOL</p>
<p>After his deployment to Iraq, Kevin McCormick went AWOL because he felt suicidal and wasn’t getting the help he needed. While in Iraq, he says, “I had a lot of problems back home. My mom had recently passed away. When I asked for help it got pushed back in my face. Even the Inspector General denied me treatment.” (Essentially, the Inspector General represents a soldier’s last recourse in attempting to correct a problem. If the IG refuses to help, there are few alternatives available.)</p>
<p>When, after four-and-a-half-months AWOL, McCormick turned himself in, he was offered absolution if he agreed to serve again, an absurdity not lost on him. “They offered me that deal,” he exclaims, “when it was a known fact that I had issues with my mental care. They offered me a chance to go back to the unit!” His refusal to do so left him languishing in Echo Platoon for eight months until he finally received a medical discharge.</p>
<p>Even though his decision to go AWOL was in no way a protest against the U.S. occupation of Iraq, he is now opposed to it. “I personally don’t feel we need to be in Iraq and I’ve been there and seen it firsthand. I think the U.S. being there is pointless.”</p>
<p>His blunt advice to soldiers who go AWOL and intend to turn themselves in is, “If you’re AWOL, fuck going back.”</p>
<p>Staff Sergeant Nelbach will have spent over nine months in Echo Platoon by the time he is tried in October. His court martial will in all likelihood bring further punishment. Due to his higher rank and the fact that he was a platoon leader, Nelbach is in charge of making sure that soldiers in the platoon follow through on their work assignments. He also accompanies people to medical appointments and does necessary paperwork. He is thus seen by other platoon soldiers as the one who runs the place. Yet he is aware that none of this will help him when he comes to trial. “It’s inhuman,” he insists. “There’s no fairness to it. It’s always been mass punishment there.”</p>
<p>Warehousing Soldiers</p>
<p>Assigned to Echo Platoon in January 2009, Dustin Stevens continues to bide his time awaiting charges that might still be months away. “[It’s] horrible here. We are treated like animals. We’re all so lost and wanting to go home. Some of us are going crazy, some are sick. And the way I see it, I did nothing wrong. By reading or talking to people all of the time I try to stay out of this place in my mind… There are people here who should be in mental hospitals.”</p>
<p>James Branum, Stevens’ civilian lawyer, is also the legal adviser to the G.I. Rights Hotline of Oklahoma and co-chair of the Military Law Task Force (MLTF) which offers training to the legal community and information about G.I. Rights and military law to service members and their families. He says AWOL troops make up three-quarters of Echo platoon and that medical cases are the bulk of the remainder. Accustomed to inordinate delays from the military, he says, “People are in this unit for months and months. The [authorities] take forever to do anything. You are going to be there six months if you’re lucky, twelve if you’re not.”</p>
<p>On the legality of such detention without trial, Branum comments:</p>
<p>“I think there are some illegal elements about how they are running the place, but the general concept is not illegal. You have people there with legitimate medical and psychological issues, but instead of proactively helping them, the military shuffles them off to this replacement [detachment] to be treated like dirt. They are told they have no rights when they do have a right to talk to their commander, to have an attorney, and to talk to Congress. Echo, if run properly, would be a good thing. Not so when people are being warehoused and told repeatedly they have no rights. That is illegal.”</p>
<p>As for the military’s goal in running Echo Platoon and other similar units at military bases around the country:</p>
<p>“To me it doesn’t seem productive. Oftentimes, the military doesn’t know what it is doing. There isn’t a logical explanation for this. Maybe deterrence is one. Other soldiers see these guys being ill treated and don’t want to resist. They also want to break and wear people down so they’ll deploy rather than keep resisting. The Army isn’t true to its own processes at times. If their goal is to get folks deployable, this isn’t the way. You don’t want guys with physical or psychological issues to deploy.”</p>
<p>In 2008, USA Today <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-05-07-nondeploy_N.htm" type="external">revealed</a> that more than 43,000 troops listed as medically unfit had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan anyway.</p>
<p>A Yardstick of Desperation</p>
<p>In a discussion of her group’s role in dealing with the legal holding of soldiers, MLTF co-chair Kathleen Gilberd commented:</p>
<p>“Fort Bragg is not an isolated situation. Placement in legal-hold [detachments] where soldiers languish for months is common to all the services. What we’re seeing is the command not making up their minds. Their indecision has severe consequences for those with open-ended medical issues because they cannot avail themselves of help until their legal situation is resolved.”</p>
<p>Chuck Fager, the director of the Fayetteville Quaker House (the town of Fayetteville adjoins Fort Bragg) claims that the military is primarily focused on “making numbers” for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Orders from the Pentagon say you have to send X [number of] troops,” he points out. “The military does not have them and is constantly looking around for where to get them. One potential pool is the mass of soldiers gone AWOL. Eventually they either go back or get picked up… We are guessing [military officials] think they can persuade a significant number of these AWOL soldiers to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan. “</p>
<p>The U.S. still maintains more than 130,000 soldiers in Iraq and, by year’s end, will have at least 68,000 in Afghanistan, a figure likely to rise in the years to come.</p>
<p>Think of Echo and other platoons like it as grim yardsticks for measuring the desperation in which a military under immense strain is now operating. Looking up at that military from Echo’s airless limbo, from a world of soldiers who have fallen through the cracks of a system under great stress, you can see just how devastating America’s two ongoing wars have been for the military itself. The walking wounded, the troubled, and the broken are now being pressured to reenter the fray.</p>
<p>If Chuck Fager is right, the future is bleak for the members of Echo Platoon who endure deplorable conditions with little idea about whether their future involves charges, trial, deployment, or medical release. It is a painful irony that some of those who volunteered to serve and defend our nation are now left particularly defenseless and vulnerable as a direct consequence of its ill advised foreign adventures.</p>
<p>Bhaswati Sengupta contributed to this report.</p>
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<p>In this March 12, 2010 file photo Mercedes Grand Prix driver Michael Schumacher of Germany is pictured in the pits during the first practice session at the Formula One Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain.</p>
<p>GRENOBLE, France (AP) — Michael Schumacher underwent a second surgery after a brain scan showed small, “surprising” signs of improvement, but grim doctors said today they could offer no insight into the prognosis for the Formula 1 champion.</p>
<p>Schumacher, who turns 45 on Friday, suffered critical head injuries when he fell and struck a rock Sunday while skiing on a family vacation in the French Alps. His manager confirmed that the accident cracked his helmet, which doctors credited for giving him a chance at survival.</p>
<p>Schumacher’s condition stabilized somewhat after the second surgery, but he remains in a medically induced coma — and doctors gave no prediction on how long that would last.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We cannot tell you any more about the future,” said Gerard Saillant, a surgeon and friend of the family who is in Grenoble. Saillant said it would be “stupid” to make any predictions about Schumacher’s recovery.</p>
<p>Schumacher and his 14-year-old son were skiing in the French Alpine resort of Meribel, where the family has a chalet, when he fell and hit the right side of his head on a rock. He was taken first to a local hospital, then to Grenoble University Hospital, which is recognized as having one of France’s best neurology teams.</p>
<p>Dr. Emmanuel Gay, the hospital’s chief neurosurgeon, said a brain scan performed late Monday showed bruising “a little bit everywhere” in Schumacher’s brain — but also an unexpected easing of pressure.</p>
<p>“The brain scan was, I must say, surprising,” he said.</p>
<p>But he and other doctors cautioned that Schumacher’s condition was still grave after the successful surgery to eliminate the largest and most accessible bruise, on the left side of his brain.</p>
<p>“We cannot say he is out of danger,” said Dr. Jean-Francois Payen, head of the hospital’s intensive care unit. Payen said any neurological evaluation was “out of the question” for now.</p>
<p>In this Friday, Jan. 13, 2006 file photo, Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher of Germany speeds down a course in Madonna di Campiglio, Italy.</p>
<p>Schumacher earned universal acclaim for his uncommon and sometimes ruthless driving talent, which led to a record 91 race wins. He retired from Formula 1 last year after garnering an unmatched seven world titles.</p>
<p>Schumi, as his fans affectionately call him, was famously aggressive on the track and no less intense off-hours. In retirement, he remained an avid skier, skydiver and horseback rider.</p>
<p>Schumacher’s manager, Sabine Kehm, offered more details on the accident, confirming that his helmet cracked on impact.</p>
<p>“It looks like probably that initiating a corner, he was hitting a stone which he had not seen and was catapulted down on a rock,” Kehm said in English. “That is extremely and very unfortunate … really very, very bad luck. Michael was not at high speed.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Lori Hinnant contributed from Paris.</p>
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F1 champion Schumacher shows small improvement after surgery
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F1 champion Schumacher shows small improvement after surgery
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<p>In this March 12, 2010 file photo Mercedes Grand Prix driver Michael Schumacher of Germany is pictured in the pits during the first practice session at the Formula One Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain.</p>
<p>GRENOBLE, France (AP) — Michael Schumacher underwent a second surgery after a brain scan showed small, “surprising” signs of improvement, but grim doctors said today they could offer no insight into the prognosis for the Formula 1 champion.</p>
<p>Schumacher, who turns 45 on Friday, suffered critical head injuries when he fell and struck a rock Sunday while skiing on a family vacation in the French Alps. His manager confirmed that the accident cracked his helmet, which doctors credited for giving him a chance at survival.</p>
<p>Schumacher’s condition stabilized somewhat after the second surgery, but he remains in a medically induced coma — and doctors gave no prediction on how long that would last.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We cannot tell you any more about the future,” said Gerard Saillant, a surgeon and friend of the family who is in Grenoble. Saillant said it would be “stupid” to make any predictions about Schumacher’s recovery.</p>
<p>Schumacher and his 14-year-old son were skiing in the French Alpine resort of Meribel, where the family has a chalet, when he fell and hit the right side of his head on a rock. He was taken first to a local hospital, then to Grenoble University Hospital, which is recognized as having one of France’s best neurology teams.</p>
<p>Dr. Emmanuel Gay, the hospital’s chief neurosurgeon, said a brain scan performed late Monday showed bruising “a little bit everywhere” in Schumacher’s brain — but also an unexpected easing of pressure.</p>
<p>“The brain scan was, I must say, surprising,” he said.</p>
<p>But he and other doctors cautioned that Schumacher’s condition was still grave after the successful surgery to eliminate the largest and most accessible bruise, on the left side of his brain.</p>
<p>“We cannot say he is out of danger,” said Dr. Jean-Francois Payen, head of the hospital’s intensive care unit. Payen said any neurological evaluation was “out of the question” for now.</p>
<p>In this Friday, Jan. 13, 2006 file photo, Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher of Germany speeds down a course in Madonna di Campiglio, Italy.</p>
<p>Schumacher earned universal acclaim for his uncommon and sometimes ruthless driving talent, which led to a record 91 race wins. He retired from Formula 1 last year after garnering an unmatched seven world titles.</p>
<p>Schumi, as his fans affectionately call him, was famously aggressive on the track and no less intense off-hours. In retirement, he remained an avid skier, skydiver and horseback rider.</p>
<p>Schumacher’s manager, Sabine Kehm, offered more details on the accident, confirming that his helmet cracked on impact.</p>
<p>“It looks like probably that initiating a corner, he was hitting a stone which he had not seen and was catapulted down on a rock,” Kehm said in English. “That is extremely and very unfortunate … really very, very bad luck. Michael was not at high speed.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Lori Hinnant contributed from Paris.</p>
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<p>Retired neurosurgeon and possible 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson didn’t name names, but took a shot at the cadre of political elites who form the Republican Party’s “political class” and said what America really needs are leaders who believe in God.</p>
<p>“Our founders wanted to make sure there was no such thing as a political class,” Mr. Carson said during a South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention speech, Politico <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/ben-carson-mocks-political-class-114366.html?hp=r3_3" type="external">reported</a>. “A select, small group of people out of which we consistently pull our leaders. That hasn’t worked so well for us.”</p>
<p>Mr. Carson didn’t name those he thought were members of that “select” group — but his speech comes shortly after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney announced he was mulling another run for the White House, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is considered a key GOP contender, Politico reported.</p>
<p>“What we need are intelligent people who have common sense, some humility … and faith in God,” Mr. Carson said, Politico reported.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. <a href="http://license.icopyright.net/3.7280?icx_id=/news/2015/jan/19/ben-carson-jabs-political-class-calls-for-candidat/" type="external">Click here for reprint permission</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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Ben Carson jabs ‘political class,’ calls for candidates with ‘faith in God’
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http://washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/19/ben-carson-jabs-political-class-calls-for-candidat/
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2015-01-19
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Ben Carson jabs ‘political class,’ calls for candidates with ‘faith in God’
<p>Retired neurosurgeon and possible 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson didn’t name names, but took a shot at the cadre of political elites who form the Republican Party’s “political class” and said what America really needs are leaders who believe in God.</p>
<p>“Our founders wanted to make sure there was no such thing as a political class,” Mr. Carson said during a South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention speech, Politico <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/ben-carson-mocks-political-class-114366.html?hp=r3_3" type="external">reported</a>. “A select, small group of people out of which we consistently pull our leaders. That hasn’t worked so well for us.”</p>
<p>Mr. Carson didn’t name those he thought were members of that “select” group — but his speech comes shortly after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney announced he was mulling another run for the White House, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is considered a key GOP contender, Politico reported.</p>
<p>“What we need are intelligent people who have common sense, some humility … and faith in God,” Mr. Carson said, Politico reported.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. <a href="http://license.icopyright.net/3.7280?icx_id=/news/2015/jan/19/ben-carson-jabs-political-class-calls-for-candidat/" type="external">Click here for reprint permission</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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<p>A lot of what we say and do becomes habit-forming. Groundhog Day 2013 could serve as a reminder that some political habits should be kicked. Here are a few:</p>
<p>“Defense budget”</p>
<p>No, it’s not a defense budget. It’s a military budget. But countless people and organizations keep saying they want to cut “the defense budget” or reduce “defense spending.”</p>
<p>Anyone who wants to challenge the warfare state should dispense with this misnomer. We don’t object to “defense” -- what we do oppose, vehemently, is military spending that has nothing to do with real defense and everything to do with killing people, enforcing geopolitical control and making vast profits for military contractors. And no, they’re not “defense contractors.”</p>
<p>President Eisenhower’s farewell address didn’t warn against a “defense-industrial complex.”</p>
<p>The fact that there’s something officially called the Department of Defense -- formerly the Department of War, until 1947 -- doesn’t make its huge budget a “defense budget,” any more than renaming the Bureau of Prisons “the Bureau of Love” would mean we should talk about wanting to cut the “love budget.”</p>
<p>“Pro-life”</p>
<p>Last week, midway through a heated debate on the PBS “NewsHour,” the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America said that some politicians get elected while hiding their extreme anti-abortion positions -- but would be rejected at the ballot box “if they ran on their pro-life values.”</p>
<p>“Pro-life” values? Not a label that abortion-rights advocates should use for opponents of a woman’s right to choose an abortion. One of the main reasons those opponents keep calling themselves “pro-life” is they want to imply that supporters of abortion rights are anti-life. Why help?</p>
<p>“Globalization”</p>
<p>In many realms, globalization can be positive, even essential. For instance, wonderful results flow from globalizing solidarity among workers around the world. Likewise, the planetary spread of awareness and cooperation among people taking action to protect the environment, stop human-rights abuses and end war.</p>
<p>Corporate globalization is another matter. Its destructive effects are lashing every continent with voracious commercialization along with exploitive races to the bottom for cheap labor, extraction of raw materials, privatization, flattening of protective tariffs, overriding of national laws that protect workers and replacement of democratic possibilities with the rule of big money.</p>
<p>Putting “corporate” before “globalization” may seem cumbersome, but it’s worth another three syllables. There’s a world of difference between globalization for human cooperation and corporate globalization. Blurring it all together misses the chance to clarify the distinct possibilities.</p>
<p>“Moderates”</p>
<p>Fifty-five years ago, in his book “The Causes of World War Three,” sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote about what he called “crackpot realism” -- policy nostrums widely touted by mass media outlets and other powerful institutions as wisely reasonable, yet actually disastrous.</p>
<p>In a similar groove, these days, we hear about how certain elected officials are “moderates.” And we might refer to them that way ourselves. But the grim results of crackpot moderation -- climate change and environmental degradation, incessant warfare, more poverty, widening economic inequities, abuse of civil liberties and so much more -- are all around us. So-called “moderates” fuel the infernos of catastrophe.</p>
<p>What’s moderate about the extreme injustices and destructiveness of the status quo?</p>
<p>Skimming the headlines</p>
<p>We all do it sometimes -- glancing at headlines and scarcely reading the stories -- one of the reasons why, all too often, what we think we know actually isn’t so.</p>
<p>Case in point: a headline at the top of the New York Times front page days ago, no doubt leaving many quick readers with the belief that President Obama is getting tough on Wall Street.</p>
<p>Well, that’s what the headline conveyed. “SIGNAL TO STREET IN OBAMA’S PICK FOR REGULATORS,” it began, followed by an elaboration in big type just below: “A Renewed Resolve to Hold Financial Firms Accountable.”</p>
<p>Mostly focusing on the appointment of Mary Jo White to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, the article offered a fleeting indication in its eighth paragraph that the “renewed resolve” might actually be wobbly. “While Ms. White is best known as an aggressive prosecutor,” the article noted, “she also built a lucrative legal practice defending Wall Street executives, a potential concern for consumer advocates.”</p>
<p>The basis for that potential concern, however, did not gain any further elucidation until the article’s twenty-sixth paragraph, which provided the other mention of why consumer advocates might be concerned: “Ms. White could face additional questions about her career, a revolving door in and out of government. In private practice, she defended some of Wall Street’s biggest names, including Kenneth D. Lewis, a former chief of Bank of America. As the head of litigation at Debevoise &amp; Plimpton, she also represented JPMorgan Chase and the board of Morgan Stanley.”</p>
<p>So much for headlines.</p>
<p>Norman Solomon is co-founder of <a href="" type="internal">RootsAction</a> and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “ <a href="http://www.normansolomon.com/warmadeeasy/" type="external">War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death</a>.”</p>
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Occupy Language: It's Time to Debunk a Few Words
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http://occupy.com/article/occupy-language-its-time-debunk-few-words
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Occupy Language: It's Time to Debunk a Few Words
<p>A lot of what we say and do becomes habit-forming. Groundhog Day 2013 could serve as a reminder that some political habits should be kicked. Here are a few:</p>
<p>“Defense budget”</p>
<p>No, it’s not a defense budget. It’s a military budget. But countless people and organizations keep saying they want to cut “the defense budget” or reduce “defense spending.”</p>
<p>Anyone who wants to challenge the warfare state should dispense with this misnomer. We don’t object to “defense” -- what we do oppose, vehemently, is military spending that has nothing to do with real defense and everything to do with killing people, enforcing geopolitical control and making vast profits for military contractors. And no, they’re not “defense contractors.”</p>
<p>President Eisenhower’s farewell address didn’t warn against a “defense-industrial complex.”</p>
<p>The fact that there’s something officially called the Department of Defense -- formerly the Department of War, until 1947 -- doesn’t make its huge budget a “defense budget,” any more than renaming the Bureau of Prisons “the Bureau of Love” would mean we should talk about wanting to cut the “love budget.”</p>
<p>“Pro-life”</p>
<p>Last week, midway through a heated debate on the PBS “NewsHour,” the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America said that some politicians get elected while hiding their extreme anti-abortion positions -- but would be rejected at the ballot box “if they ran on their pro-life values.”</p>
<p>“Pro-life” values? Not a label that abortion-rights advocates should use for opponents of a woman’s right to choose an abortion. One of the main reasons those opponents keep calling themselves “pro-life” is they want to imply that supporters of abortion rights are anti-life. Why help?</p>
<p>“Globalization”</p>
<p>In many realms, globalization can be positive, even essential. For instance, wonderful results flow from globalizing solidarity among workers around the world. Likewise, the planetary spread of awareness and cooperation among people taking action to protect the environment, stop human-rights abuses and end war.</p>
<p>Corporate globalization is another matter. Its destructive effects are lashing every continent with voracious commercialization along with exploitive races to the bottom for cheap labor, extraction of raw materials, privatization, flattening of protective tariffs, overriding of national laws that protect workers and replacement of democratic possibilities with the rule of big money.</p>
<p>Putting “corporate” before “globalization” may seem cumbersome, but it’s worth another three syllables. There’s a world of difference between globalization for human cooperation and corporate globalization. Blurring it all together misses the chance to clarify the distinct possibilities.</p>
<p>“Moderates”</p>
<p>Fifty-five years ago, in his book “The Causes of World War Three,” sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote about what he called “crackpot realism” -- policy nostrums widely touted by mass media outlets and other powerful institutions as wisely reasonable, yet actually disastrous.</p>
<p>In a similar groove, these days, we hear about how certain elected officials are “moderates.” And we might refer to them that way ourselves. But the grim results of crackpot moderation -- climate change and environmental degradation, incessant warfare, more poverty, widening economic inequities, abuse of civil liberties and so much more -- are all around us. So-called “moderates” fuel the infernos of catastrophe.</p>
<p>What’s moderate about the extreme injustices and destructiveness of the status quo?</p>
<p>Skimming the headlines</p>
<p>We all do it sometimes -- glancing at headlines and scarcely reading the stories -- one of the reasons why, all too often, what we think we know actually isn’t so.</p>
<p>Case in point: a headline at the top of the New York Times front page days ago, no doubt leaving many quick readers with the belief that President Obama is getting tough on Wall Street.</p>
<p>Well, that’s what the headline conveyed. “SIGNAL TO STREET IN OBAMA’S PICK FOR REGULATORS,” it began, followed by an elaboration in big type just below: “A Renewed Resolve to Hold Financial Firms Accountable.”</p>
<p>Mostly focusing on the appointment of Mary Jo White to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, the article offered a fleeting indication in its eighth paragraph that the “renewed resolve” might actually be wobbly. “While Ms. White is best known as an aggressive prosecutor,” the article noted, “she also built a lucrative legal practice defending Wall Street executives, a potential concern for consumer advocates.”</p>
<p>The basis for that potential concern, however, did not gain any further elucidation until the article’s twenty-sixth paragraph, which provided the other mention of why consumer advocates might be concerned: “Ms. White could face additional questions about her career, a revolving door in and out of government. In private practice, she defended some of Wall Street’s biggest names, including Kenneth D. Lewis, a former chief of Bank of America. As the head of litigation at Debevoise &amp; Plimpton, she also represented JPMorgan Chase and the board of Morgan Stanley.”</p>
<p>So much for headlines.</p>
<p>Norman Solomon is co-founder of <a href="" type="internal">RootsAction</a> and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “ <a href="http://www.normansolomon.com/warmadeeasy/" type="external">War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death</a>.”</p>
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<p />
<p>The district typically has limited the number of copies a school can make in one year to 1,200 per student, spokeswoman Johanna King said Thursday.</p>
<p>However, last school year, the district lifted those restrictions in part because of the Common Core-based instruction, which often requires students to take notes on their source material. King said that’s something that can’t be done in a traditional textbook, so teachers rely on handouts.</p>
<p>When the district lifted the limits, printing costs – paper, toner, maintenance and other items – rose by $700,000. So the district reinstated the rules this year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>King said district officials meet with principals during the budgeting process, but she could not confirm after 5 p.m. Thursday whether the issue of the copying budget was discussed.</p>
<p>“Two years ago, we spent $2 million on copies,” she said. “Last year, we spent $2.7 million. We thought we needed to get a better handle on it.”</p>
<p>But earlier this week during a board meeting, teachers pushed back, telling board members the limits were affecting their ability to do their jobs.</p>
<p>King said APS is willing to work with the teachers and will meet with Albuquerque Teachers Federation representatives to come up with a solution. She said the district does not want to “create a hardship for teachers.”</p>
<p>“We were budgeting and just looking for ways to save,” she said. “Then teachers said `Hey wait a minute,’ and we want to find a solution.”</p>
<p>One suggestion, King said, is to send larger copying jobs to the district print house. King said its high-volume machines cost less per page to print. Down the road, she said, the district also might explore using its instructional fund, instead of its operating budget, to cover the printing costs.</p>
<p>King said the district would need to ask the Legislature to broaden the scope of what districts can spend instructional money on because that fund is limited to mostly textbooks.</p>
<p />
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Copies crackdown tied to Common Core
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https://abqjournal.com/456965/copies-crackdown-tied-to-common-core.html
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<p />
<p>The district typically has limited the number of copies a school can make in one year to 1,200 per student, spokeswoman Johanna King said Thursday.</p>
<p>However, last school year, the district lifted those restrictions in part because of the Common Core-based instruction, which often requires students to take notes on their source material. King said that’s something that can’t be done in a traditional textbook, so teachers rely on handouts.</p>
<p>When the district lifted the limits, printing costs – paper, toner, maintenance and other items – rose by $700,000. So the district reinstated the rules this year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>King said district officials meet with principals during the budgeting process, but she could not confirm after 5 p.m. Thursday whether the issue of the copying budget was discussed.</p>
<p>“Two years ago, we spent $2 million on copies,” she said. “Last year, we spent $2.7 million. We thought we needed to get a better handle on it.”</p>
<p>But earlier this week during a board meeting, teachers pushed back, telling board members the limits were affecting their ability to do their jobs.</p>
<p>King said APS is willing to work with the teachers and will meet with Albuquerque Teachers Federation representatives to come up with a solution. She said the district does not want to “create a hardship for teachers.”</p>
<p>“We were budgeting and just looking for ways to save,” she said. “Then teachers said `Hey wait a minute,’ and we want to find a solution.”</p>
<p>One suggestion, King said, is to send larger copying jobs to the district print house. King said its high-volume machines cost less per page to print. Down the road, she said, the district also might explore using its instructional fund, instead of its operating budget, to cover the printing costs.</p>
<p>King said the district would need to ask the Legislature to broaden the scope of what districts can spend instructional money on because that fund is limited to mostly textbooks.</p>
<p />
<p />
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<p>One of the least discussed issues in California environmental politics – and one of the most crucial to understanding Governor Jerry Brown’s Delta Tunnels Plan – is the clear connection between the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative and the California WaterFix, formerly called the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP).</p>
<p>At a time when local, national and international mainstream media are focusing on the Oroville Dam crisis, it’s important for reporters to dig deeper and understand the context that the emergency, which spurred the evacuation of over 188,000 people in Butte, Yuba and Sutter counties, occurs within.</p>
<p>It’s crucial to understand that these two neo-liberal processes, the MLPA Initiative and the California Water Fix, are the environmental “legacy” that two Governors, Arnold Schwarznegger and Jerry Brown, have devoted their energy, staff and money to, rather than doing the mundane but necessary process of maintaining and repairing the state’s water infrastructure, including Oroville Dam.</p>
<p>The privately-funded MLPA Initiative and the California WaterFix at first may appear to be entirely different processes.</p>
<p>The MLPA Initiative, a process begun in 2004 under the Schwarzenegger administration, purported to create a network of “marine protected areas” along the California coast. The network was supposedly completed on December 19, 2012 with the imposition of contested “marine protected areas” along the North Coast under the Jerry Brown administration.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan process began under the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations to achieve the so-called “co-equal goals” of water supply reliability and Delta ecosystem restoration. In 2015, the state and federal governments divided the BDCP into two projects, the California WaterFix, the conveyance component and the California EcoRestore, the habitat “restoration” component.</p>
<p>But in spite of some superficial differences, the two processes are united by their leadership, funding, greenwashing goals, racism and denial of tribal rights, junk science and numerous conflicts of interest. When people educate themselves on the links between the two processes, I believe they can more effectively wage a successful campaign against the Delta Tunnels and to restore our imperiled salmon and San Francisco Bay-Delta fisheries.</p>
<p>Mike Carpenter, a sea urchin diver and organizer of a fundraiser for the California Fisheries Coalition in Albion on the Mendocino coast, made the vital connection between the MLPA Initiative and Schwarzenegger’s campaign to build a peripheral canal back in 2009 when the battle against the creation of questionable “marine protected areas” on the North Coast was amping up.</p>
<p>Carpenter emphasized that the MLPA Initiative was just a “cover-up” for the Governor’s plans to build a peripheral canal or tunnel, potentially the most environmentally destructive public works project in California history, through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas, through the Delta Vision and Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) process. Carpenter’s words have proven very prophetic, considering what has happened since that time.</p>
<p>How are the Delta Tunnels plan and MLPA process linked by leadership, funding, conflicts of interest, greenwashing goals, racism and denial of tribal rights, and junk science?</p>
<p>1. Leadership: Phil Isenberg, a former Sacramento Mayor and Assemblyman, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force to create faux “marine protected areas” on the Central Coast from 2004 to 2007. Isenberg then went on to Chair the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force that advocated building a peripheral canal or tunnel.</p>
<p>After that process was finished, he went on to chair the Delta Stewardship Council created under the water policy/water bond legislative package of 2009. He recently retired from the Council.</p>
<p>Under his leadership, the Council released a Delta Plan that creates a clear path to the construction of the Delta Tunnels. The deeply-flawed plan has been contested by 7 lawsuits from a diverse array of water contractors, agribusiness interests, urban water agencies, environmentalists, Indian Tribes and fishing groups.</p>
<p>Likewise, John Laird, former State Senator and the current Natural Resources Secretary, is the Brown administration’s key cheerleader for both the MLPA Initiative and the Delta Tunnels. He oversaw the completion of the faux “marine protected areas” for both the South Coast in January 2012 and the North Coast in December 2012, in spite of overwhelming opposition by fishermen, Tribal leaders and grassroots environmentalists.</p>
<p>Laird also promotes the construction of the tunnels at virtually every conference and media event he participates in, along with writing frequent op-eds in mainstream media portraying the WaterFix as the “solution” to water supply and ecosystem problems.</p>
<p>2. Funding: The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation and David and Lucille Packard Foundation both funded the MLPA Initiative, along with giving millions of dollars to the “environmental” NGOs that supported both the MLPA and BDCP processes.</p>
<p>For example, five non-profits, including the Packard and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundations, donated a total of $20 million for hearings for the creation of “marine protected areas” under the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative. The Packard Foundation, the biggest contributor to the hearings process, contributed $8.2 million to the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation to fund MLPA hearings.</p>
<p>The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation also contributed a total of $18,086,716, through the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, to the MLPA Initiative in California from 2004 to 2012. The foundation gave the first grant of $2,714,946 to fund the MLPA process in 2004. The foundation then contributed $3,305,628 for Phase 2 of the MLPA Initiative Phase in May 2007, $7,066,142 for Phase 3 in July 2008, and $5,000,000 for Phase 4 in February 2012.</p>
<p>The Packard Foundation and Resources Legacy Fund also helped fund, along with the Stephen Bechtel Foundation, several Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) reports advocating the construction of the Delta Tunnels as the “solution” to California’s water problems and ecosystem restoration.</p>
<p>For example, the PPIC in 2011 published a 500 page book, “Managing California’s Water: From Conflict to Reconciliation,” designed to greenwash the construction of a Peripheral Canal or Tunnels. The book was funded by the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Pisces Foundation (funded by the Fisher family that owns the Gap, Mendocino Redwood Company and Humboldt Redwood Company), the Resources Legacy Fund, and the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority.</p>
<p>3. Conflicts of Interest: The Blue Ribbon Task Forces to create “marine protected areas” under the MLPA Initiative were filled with individuals with numerous conflicts of interest, including a big oil lobbyist, a marina corporation executive and a coastal real estate developer.</p>
<p>Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and a relentless advocate for offshore oil drilling, fracking, the Keystone XL Pipeline and the weakening of environmental laws, chaired the South Coast MLPA Blue Ribbon Task that developed the MPAs that went into effect in Southern California waters on January 1, 2012. She also served on the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces for the North Coast, North Central Coast and Central Coast.</p>
<p>While Reheis-Boyd served on the task forces to “protect” the ocean, the same oil industry that the “marine guardian” represents was conducting environmentally destructive hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations off the Southern California coast. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and media investigations by Associated Press and truthout.org in 2013 reveal that the ocean has been fracked at least 203 times in the past 20 years, including the period from 2004 to 2012 that Reheis-Boyd served as a “marine guardian.”</p>
<p>In yet another conflict of interest, Reheis-Boyd’s husband, James D. Boyd, first appointed by Governor Davis, sat on on the California Energy Commission from 2002 to 2012, including serving as Vice-Chair of the Commission from 2/2007 to 1/2012. His service on the commission coincided with Reheis-Boyd’s terms as a “marine guardian.”</p>
<p>In the case of the BDCP/California WaterFix, the proverbial fox was also in charge of the hen house. Governor Jerry Brown appointed Laura King Moon of Woodland, a lobbyist for the state’s water exporters, as chief deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources (DWR).</p>
<p>Moon had been a project manager for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan since 2011 while “on loan” from the State Water Contractors, an association of 27 public agencies from Northern, Central and Southern California that purchase water under contract from the California State Water Project. Moon passed away from cancer last year.</p>
<p>DWR also hired Susan Ramos, Deputy General Manager of the Westlands Water District, “on loan” from the district to serve as “a liaison between all relevant parties” surrounding the Delta Habitat Conservation and Conveyance Program (DHCCP) and provide “technical and strategic assistance” to DWR.</p>
<p>Documents obtained by this reporter under the California Public Records Act revealed that Ramos was hired in an “inter-jurisdictional personal exchange agreement” between the DWR and Westlands from November 15, 2009 through December 31, 2010. The contract was extended to run through December 31, 2011 and again to continue through December 31, 2012.</p>
<p>4. Greenwashing Goals: Desperately needed actions to restore our ocean, bay and Delta waters have been substituted under the MLPA Initiative with the imposition of more fishing closures on some of the most heavily regulated ocean waters on the planet to further the “green” facades of Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown.</p>
<p>The alleged “marine reserves” created under the MLPA scam fail to protect the ocean from fracking, oil drilling, pollution, military testing, wind and wave energy projects and all human impacts on the ocean than fishing and gathering – at a time when the ocean is under assault by the oil industry, corporate polluters and ocean industrialists.</p>
<p>The greenwashing that occurred under this process become crystal clear during the Refugio Oil Spill of May 2015 when a badly corroded pipeline operated by the Plains All American Pipeline Company burst, fouling more than 9 miles of pristine coastline.</p>
<p>Not mentioned in the superficial coverage of the spill by the mainstream media and most of the “alternative media” is the alarming fact that Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the head of the same oil industry trade association that lobbies for the Plains All American Pipeline corporation, whose pipeline rupture caused the massive oil spill, is the very same person who chaired the panel that created the so-called “marine protected areas” that were fouled by the spill.</p>
<p>“Plains All American, the owner of the pipeline, is a member of the Western States Petroleum Association,” proclaimed Reheis-Boyd in her blogpost responding to the spill in 2015. In the case of the Delta Vision and BDCP/California Water Fix processes, the dire need to restore the Delta by decreasing water exports and retiring drainage impaired land on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side has been substituted with plans to build twin tunnels and increase water exports to corporate agribusiness, developers and oil companies while taking Delta family farms out of production under the guise of “habitat restoration.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, populations of Delta smelt, longfin smelt, winter-run Chinook salmon, and other fish species continue on their path to extinction, due to massive water exports from the Delta by the state and water projects, along with mismanagement of Trinity, Shasta, Oroville, Folsom and other dams by the Bureau of Reclamation and Department of Water Resources.</p>
<p>The Delta smelt index, a relative measure of abundance, in the latest survey was 8, the second lowest in history. Seven Delta smelt were collected in November – and none were collected in September, October, or December, according to a memo from James White, environmental scientist for the CDFW’s Bay Delta Region, to Scott Wilson, Regional Manager of the Bay Delta Region.</p>
<p>The small 2 to 3 inch fish, found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, is an indicator species that demonstrates the relative health of the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. The species is listed under both the state and federal Endangered Species Acts. When the numbers of Delta smelt are so low, it reveals that the estuary, as we know it, is just as close to extinction as the fish themselves.</p>
<p>In 2015, the Delta smelt index was only 7. That was the lowest number recorded since the survey began in 1967, after the State Water Project began exporting water south of the Delta.</p>
<p>Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Allliance (CSPA) pointed out the ecological disaster that would unfold if the State Water Resources Control Board approves the petitions by the Department of Water Resources and Bureau of Reclamation to change their points of diversion in order to proceed with the construction of the Delta Tunnels.</p>
<p>“This plan will deprive the Delta smelt of their habitat by exporting vast quantities of water from the Sacramento River,” said Jennings. “If the State Board approves the petition, it will only exacerbate things enormously for the Delta smelt and other fish species.”</p>
<p>The Delta Tunnels plan will not only hasten the extinction of Delta smelt, but it will also drive longfin smelt, winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon and other fish species closer and closer to extinction, according to Delta advocates and scientific experts. The WaterFix will also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers, since water from the Trinity, the largest tributary of the Klamath, is diverted to the Sacramento River watershed through a tunnel in the Trinity Mountains from Trinity Lake to Whiskeytown Reservoir.</p>
<p>5. Racism and denial of tribal rights: Tribal and environmental justice communities in both processes have been excluded in a classic example of environmental racism.</p>
<p>The institutional racism of the MLPA process was demonstrated when the Yurok Tribe was banned from harvesting abalone, mussels and seaweed off their traditional areas off the False Klamath and Reading Rock as they have done for thousands of years under the “marine protected areas” that went into effect off the coast in December 2012.</p>
<p>And in spite of direct action protests and outrage by Tribal members, fishermen and grassroots environmentalists over the flawed Initiative, the MLPA Initiative failed to recognize tribal gathering rights in no take “State Marine Reserves,” allowing tribal gathering only in “State Marine Conservation Areas” where some fishing and gathering is already allowed.</p>
<p>Likewise, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan/California WaterFix has been developed without the required consent from California Tribes including the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, as required under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. In fact, the first formal informational meeting for California Tribes on the BDCP was held on December 10, 2013, in Sacramento – the day after the EIR/EIS for the tunnel plan was released!</p>
<p>That is hardly “government-to-government” consultation, as required under state, federal and international law.</p>
<p>“There is no precedent for the killing of an estuary of this size, so how could any study be trusted to protect the Delta for salmon and other fish?” asked Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. “How can they even know what the effects will be? The end of salmon would also mean the end of Winnemem, so the BDCP is a threat to our very existence as indigenous people.”</p>
<p>This environmental injustice extends to non-English speakers in California impacted by the Delta Tunnels Plan. Restore the Delta (RTD) and environmental justice advocates charged the Brown Administration with violation of the civil rights of more than 600,000 non-English speakers in the Delta by its agencies’ failure to provide for “meaningful access to and participation” in the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) public comment period.</p>
<p>“More than 600,000 Delta residents alone don’t speak English, and are being shut out of the public comment process on this massive project that would affect them deeply,” said Esperanza Vielma, executive director of Café Coop &amp; Environmental Justice Representative, San Joaquin County/San Joaquin Valley Air Quality Board. “The Brown Administration is violating the civil rights of Limited English speaking Californians in its rush to build tunnels to serve the top 1% of industrial agriculture.”</p>
<p>6. Junk Science: Both the MLPA Initiative and BDCP/California Water Fix fiasco have relied on false assumptions and flawed data with little or no basis in natural science to advance their goals and objectives.</p>
<p>In the case of the MLPA Initiative, the Yurok Tribe said it attempted on numerous occasions to address the scientific inadequacies with the MLPA science developed under the Schwarzenegger administration by adding “more robust protocols” into the equation, but was denied every time.</p>
<p>The Northern California Tribal Chairman’s Association, including the Chairs of the Elk Valley Rancheria, Hoopa Valley Tribe, Karuk Tribe, Smith River Rancheria, Trinidad Rancheria, and Yurok Tribe, documented in a letter how the science behind the MLPA Initiative developed by Schwarzenegger’s Science Advisory Team is “incomplete and terminally flawed.”</p>
<p>Frankie Joe Myers, Yurok Tribal member and Coastal Justice Coalition activist, exposed the refusal to incorporate Tribal science that underlies the “science” of the MLPA process on the day of the historic direct action protest by a coalition of over 50 Tribes and their allies in Fort Bragg in July 2010.</p>
<p>“The whole process is inherently flawed by institutionalized racism,” said Myers. “It doesn’t recognize Tribes as political entities, or Tribal biologists as legitimate scientists.”</p>
<p>To make things even worse, a federal judge in May 2014 sentenced Ron LeValley of Mad River Biologists, the former co-chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Science Advisory Team for the North Coast, to a 10 month federal prison sentence for his role in a conspiracy to embezzle over $852,000 in federal funds from the Yurok Tribe!</p>
<p>LeValley pleaded guilty to a single federal charge of conspiracy to commit embezzlement and theft from an Indian Tribal Organization (18U.S.C §§ 371 and 1163) in the complex scheme in collaboration with former Yurok Forestry Director Roland Raymond. According to court documents, LeValley submitted more than 75 false invoices between 2007 and 2010 in payment for “work” on northern spotted owl surveys that was never performed.</p>
<p>The BDCP/California WaterFix “science” is also a sham. For example, on July 18, 2013 scientists from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Marine Fisheries Service exposed the hollowness of claims by Secretary John Laird and other state officials that the BDCP is based on “science.” This was done after the federal agencies had already made “red flag” comments stating that the completion of the tunnel plan could hasten the extinction of Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other fish species.</p>
<p>The federal scientists provided the California Department of Water Resources and the environmental consultants with 44 pages of comments highly critical of the Consultant Second Administrative Draft EIR/EISDraft, released on May 10, 2013. The agencies found, among other things, that the draft environmental documents were “biased,” “insufficient,” “confusing,” and “very subjective.” (baydeltaconservationplan.com/…)</p>
<p>Then in August 2014 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a scathing 43-page comment letter slamming the Bay Delta Conservation Plan’s draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/EIS).</p>
<p>The EPA diagnosis revealed that operating the proposed conveyance facilities “would contribute to increased and persistent violations of water quality standards in the Delta, set under the Clean Water Act,” and that the tunnels “would not protect beneficial uses for aquatic life, thereby violating the Clean Water Act.”</p>
<p>Bob Wright, the lawyer for Friends of the River, summed up the complete lack of science that the BDCP/California Water Fix is based upon when he said, “The plan is to grab the water and in the process take it away from designated critical habitat for several already endangered and threatened species of fish including Sacramento River Winter-Run and Central Valley Spring-Run Chinook Salmon and drive them into extinction. That is against the law because federal agencies are prohibited from doing that by the Endangered Species Act.”</p>
<p>Unjust Implementation of MLPA Initiative Continues</p>
<p>The MLPA Initiative’s unjust implementation continues to forge ahead, in spite of opposition by anglers, conservationists and public trust advocates. The California Fish and Game Commission on Wednesday, August 24, 2016, adopted the controversial Master Plan for Marine Protected Areas in California that delays regional reviews of MPAs, as originally promised, from every five years to every ten years.</p>
<p>After a very short discussion and hearing public comment, the Commission by a 4-0 vote approved text related to traditional ecological knowledge and then adopted the proposed final Master Plan for Marine Protected Areas and the Marine Life Protection Program pursuant to the Marine Life Protection Act (Pursuant to Section 2850, et seq., Fish and Game Code).</p>
<p>The three members of the commission at the time – President Eric Sklar, Vice President Jacque Hostler-Carmesin, and Member Anthony C. Williams – postponed the vote for approval to the June meeting. Since the April meeting, Governor Jerry Brown appointed two new Commissioners, Russell Burns of Napa, and Peter Silva of Chula Vista.</p>
<p>It’s no surprise that both of the new Commissioners who voted for the MLPA Master Plan have worked for organizations backing the Delta Tunnels. Burns is the business manager at Operating Engineers Local Union 3, a strong supporter of the California Water Fix, since 2006. Silva served as senior policy advisor at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, one of the key organizations pushing the Governor’s Delta Tunnels Plan, from 2005 to 2009.</p>
<p>The Master Plan breaks the original promise given to anglers by officials that regional reviews of the alleged “marine protected areas” created under the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative would be conducted every five years. The new plan changes the regional reviews to once every ten years, a move that anglers and public trust advocates strongly oppose because it results in less frequent scientific monitoring of the MPAs.</p>
<p>Here’s what the MLPA Initiative South Coast News, the official publication of the Initiative, actually said on October 16, 2009, contradicting claims by Commissioners that this promise to conduct five year reviews was never made:</p>
<p>“Q: If an area is closed as an MPA will it always be closed?</p>
<p>A: Not necessarily. The MLPA specifically requires monitoring, research and evaluation at selected sites to facilitate adaptive management of MPAs and ensure the system meets its goals and objectives. Within the MLPA master plan, it is recommended that the MPA network be evaluated approximately every five years. As MPAs are re-assessed for effectiveness, changes may be necessary, either to individual MPAs or the network as a whole. This may mean changing boundaries and/or allowances for extractive activities depending on how well MPAs are meeting goals. Just because an area is closed to one type of use or another does not mean that it will always be that way.”</p>
<p>We must learn from successes and failures of opposition to both processes</p>
<p>We can see that MLPA and BDCP/California WaterFix processes have much in common in terms of their leadership, funding, conflicts of interest, greenwashing goals, racism and denial of tribal rights, and junk science. I believe that people can more effectively oppose the Governor’s Delta Tunnels Plan and other threats to our rivers, lakes, bays and ocean water by understanding the dark links between the MLPA Initiative and Delta Tunnels project.</p>
<p>The unjust implementation of questionable “marine protected areas” under the MLPA Initiative also provides a cautionary tale for activists fighting the California Water Fix – the fact that science, state, federal and international laws and the majority of people are on your side doesn’t necessarily mean that you will prevail. The state and federal governments have a long history of implementing projects that don’t make any scientific, legal or economic sense because powerful corporate interests effectively bought off and manipulated agency and elected officials to produce a pre-determined outcome.</p>
<p>It is vital that people fighting against the California WaterFix and for the restoration of salmon and other fish populations in California learn from both the successes and mistakes of MLPA Initiative opponents so they can more effectively wage a successful campaign to stop the construction of Governor Jerry Brown’s Twin Tunnels.</p>
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Extinction 2017: California Edition
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https://counterpunch.org/2017/02/28/extinction-2017-california-edition/
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2017-02-28
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Extinction 2017: California Edition
<p>One of the least discussed issues in California environmental politics – and one of the most crucial to understanding Governor Jerry Brown’s Delta Tunnels Plan – is the clear connection between the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative and the California WaterFix, formerly called the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP).</p>
<p>At a time when local, national and international mainstream media are focusing on the Oroville Dam crisis, it’s important for reporters to dig deeper and understand the context that the emergency, which spurred the evacuation of over 188,000 people in Butte, Yuba and Sutter counties, occurs within.</p>
<p>It’s crucial to understand that these two neo-liberal processes, the MLPA Initiative and the California Water Fix, are the environmental “legacy” that two Governors, Arnold Schwarznegger and Jerry Brown, have devoted their energy, staff and money to, rather than doing the mundane but necessary process of maintaining and repairing the state’s water infrastructure, including Oroville Dam.</p>
<p>The privately-funded MLPA Initiative and the California WaterFix at first may appear to be entirely different processes.</p>
<p>The MLPA Initiative, a process begun in 2004 under the Schwarzenegger administration, purported to create a network of “marine protected areas” along the California coast. The network was supposedly completed on December 19, 2012 with the imposition of contested “marine protected areas” along the North Coast under the Jerry Brown administration.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan process began under the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations to achieve the so-called “co-equal goals” of water supply reliability and Delta ecosystem restoration. In 2015, the state and federal governments divided the BDCP into two projects, the California WaterFix, the conveyance component and the California EcoRestore, the habitat “restoration” component.</p>
<p>But in spite of some superficial differences, the two processes are united by their leadership, funding, greenwashing goals, racism and denial of tribal rights, junk science and numerous conflicts of interest. When people educate themselves on the links between the two processes, I believe they can more effectively wage a successful campaign against the Delta Tunnels and to restore our imperiled salmon and San Francisco Bay-Delta fisheries.</p>
<p>Mike Carpenter, a sea urchin diver and organizer of a fundraiser for the California Fisheries Coalition in Albion on the Mendocino coast, made the vital connection between the MLPA Initiative and Schwarzenegger’s campaign to build a peripheral canal back in 2009 when the battle against the creation of questionable “marine protected areas” on the North Coast was amping up.</p>
<p>Carpenter emphasized that the MLPA Initiative was just a “cover-up” for the Governor’s plans to build a peripheral canal or tunnel, potentially the most environmentally destructive public works project in California history, through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas, through the Delta Vision and Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) process. Carpenter’s words have proven very prophetic, considering what has happened since that time.</p>
<p>How are the Delta Tunnels plan and MLPA process linked by leadership, funding, conflicts of interest, greenwashing goals, racism and denial of tribal rights, and junk science?</p>
<p>1. Leadership: Phil Isenberg, a former Sacramento Mayor and Assemblyman, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force to create faux “marine protected areas” on the Central Coast from 2004 to 2007. Isenberg then went on to Chair the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force that advocated building a peripheral canal or tunnel.</p>
<p>After that process was finished, he went on to chair the Delta Stewardship Council created under the water policy/water bond legislative package of 2009. He recently retired from the Council.</p>
<p>Under his leadership, the Council released a Delta Plan that creates a clear path to the construction of the Delta Tunnels. The deeply-flawed plan has been contested by 7 lawsuits from a diverse array of water contractors, agribusiness interests, urban water agencies, environmentalists, Indian Tribes and fishing groups.</p>
<p>Likewise, John Laird, former State Senator and the current Natural Resources Secretary, is the Brown administration’s key cheerleader for both the MLPA Initiative and the Delta Tunnels. He oversaw the completion of the faux “marine protected areas” for both the South Coast in January 2012 and the North Coast in December 2012, in spite of overwhelming opposition by fishermen, Tribal leaders and grassroots environmentalists.</p>
<p>Laird also promotes the construction of the tunnels at virtually every conference and media event he participates in, along with writing frequent op-eds in mainstream media portraying the WaterFix as the “solution” to water supply and ecosystem problems.</p>
<p>2. Funding: The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation and David and Lucille Packard Foundation both funded the MLPA Initiative, along with giving millions of dollars to the “environmental” NGOs that supported both the MLPA and BDCP processes.</p>
<p>For example, five non-profits, including the Packard and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundations, donated a total of $20 million for hearings for the creation of “marine protected areas” under the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative. The Packard Foundation, the biggest contributor to the hearings process, contributed $8.2 million to the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation to fund MLPA hearings.</p>
<p>The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation also contributed a total of $18,086,716, through the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, to the MLPA Initiative in California from 2004 to 2012. The foundation gave the first grant of $2,714,946 to fund the MLPA process in 2004. The foundation then contributed $3,305,628 for Phase 2 of the MLPA Initiative Phase in May 2007, $7,066,142 for Phase 3 in July 2008, and $5,000,000 for Phase 4 in February 2012.</p>
<p>The Packard Foundation and Resources Legacy Fund also helped fund, along with the Stephen Bechtel Foundation, several Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) reports advocating the construction of the Delta Tunnels as the “solution” to California’s water problems and ecosystem restoration.</p>
<p>For example, the PPIC in 2011 published a 500 page book, “Managing California’s Water: From Conflict to Reconciliation,” designed to greenwash the construction of a Peripheral Canal or Tunnels. The book was funded by the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Pisces Foundation (funded by the Fisher family that owns the Gap, Mendocino Redwood Company and Humboldt Redwood Company), the Resources Legacy Fund, and the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority.</p>
<p>3. Conflicts of Interest: The Blue Ribbon Task Forces to create “marine protected areas” under the MLPA Initiative were filled with individuals with numerous conflicts of interest, including a big oil lobbyist, a marina corporation executive and a coastal real estate developer.</p>
<p>Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and a relentless advocate for offshore oil drilling, fracking, the Keystone XL Pipeline and the weakening of environmental laws, chaired the South Coast MLPA Blue Ribbon Task that developed the MPAs that went into effect in Southern California waters on January 1, 2012. She also served on the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces for the North Coast, North Central Coast and Central Coast.</p>
<p>While Reheis-Boyd served on the task forces to “protect” the ocean, the same oil industry that the “marine guardian” represents was conducting environmentally destructive hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations off the Southern California coast. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and media investigations by Associated Press and truthout.org in 2013 reveal that the ocean has been fracked at least 203 times in the past 20 years, including the period from 2004 to 2012 that Reheis-Boyd served as a “marine guardian.”</p>
<p>In yet another conflict of interest, Reheis-Boyd’s husband, James D. Boyd, first appointed by Governor Davis, sat on on the California Energy Commission from 2002 to 2012, including serving as Vice-Chair of the Commission from 2/2007 to 1/2012. His service on the commission coincided with Reheis-Boyd’s terms as a “marine guardian.”</p>
<p>In the case of the BDCP/California WaterFix, the proverbial fox was also in charge of the hen house. Governor Jerry Brown appointed Laura King Moon of Woodland, a lobbyist for the state’s water exporters, as chief deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources (DWR).</p>
<p>Moon had been a project manager for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan since 2011 while “on loan” from the State Water Contractors, an association of 27 public agencies from Northern, Central and Southern California that purchase water under contract from the California State Water Project. Moon passed away from cancer last year.</p>
<p>DWR also hired Susan Ramos, Deputy General Manager of the Westlands Water District, “on loan” from the district to serve as “a liaison between all relevant parties” surrounding the Delta Habitat Conservation and Conveyance Program (DHCCP) and provide “technical and strategic assistance” to DWR.</p>
<p>Documents obtained by this reporter under the California Public Records Act revealed that Ramos was hired in an “inter-jurisdictional personal exchange agreement” between the DWR and Westlands from November 15, 2009 through December 31, 2010. The contract was extended to run through December 31, 2011 and again to continue through December 31, 2012.</p>
<p>4. Greenwashing Goals: Desperately needed actions to restore our ocean, bay and Delta waters have been substituted under the MLPA Initiative with the imposition of more fishing closures on some of the most heavily regulated ocean waters on the planet to further the “green” facades of Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown.</p>
<p>The alleged “marine reserves” created under the MLPA scam fail to protect the ocean from fracking, oil drilling, pollution, military testing, wind and wave energy projects and all human impacts on the ocean than fishing and gathering – at a time when the ocean is under assault by the oil industry, corporate polluters and ocean industrialists.</p>
<p>The greenwashing that occurred under this process become crystal clear during the Refugio Oil Spill of May 2015 when a badly corroded pipeline operated by the Plains All American Pipeline Company burst, fouling more than 9 miles of pristine coastline.</p>
<p>Not mentioned in the superficial coverage of the spill by the mainstream media and most of the “alternative media” is the alarming fact that Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the head of the same oil industry trade association that lobbies for the Plains All American Pipeline corporation, whose pipeline rupture caused the massive oil spill, is the very same person who chaired the panel that created the so-called “marine protected areas” that were fouled by the spill.</p>
<p>“Plains All American, the owner of the pipeline, is a member of the Western States Petroleum Association,” proclaimed Reheis-Boyd in her blogpost responding to the spill in 2015. In the case of the Delta Vision and BDCP/California Water Fix processes, the dire need to restore the Delta by decreasing water exports and retiring drainage impaired land on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side has been substituted with plans to build twin tunnels and increase water exports to corporate agribusiness, developers and oil companies while taking Delta family farms out of production under the guise of “habitat restoration.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, populations of Delta smelt, longfin smelt, winter-run Chinook salmon, and other fish species continue on their path to extinction, due to massive water exports from the Delta by the state and water projects, along with mismanagement of Trinity, Shasta, Oroville, Folsom and other dams by the Bureau of Reclamation and Department of Water Resources.</p>
<p>The Delta smelt index, a relative measure of abundance, in the latest survey was 8, the second lowest in history. Seven Delta smelt were collected in November – and none were collected in September, October, or December, according to a memo from James White, environmental scientist for the CDFW’s Bay Delta Region, to Scott Wilson, Regional Manager of the Bay Delta Region.</p>
<p>The small 2 to 3 inch fish, found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, is an indicator species that demonstrates the relative health of the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. The species is listed under both the state and federal Endangered Species Acts. When the numbers of Delta smelt are so low, it reveals that the estuary, as we know it, is just as close to extinction as the fish themselves.</p>
<p>In 2015, the Delta smelt index was only 7. That was the lowest number recorded since the survey began in 1967, after the State Water Project began exporting water south of the Delta.</p>
<p>Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Allliance (CSPA) pointed out the ecological disaster that would unfold if the State Water Resources Control Board approves the petitions by the Department of Water Resources and Bureau of Reclamation to change their points of diversion in order to proceed with the construction of the Delta Tunnels.</p>
<p>“This plan will deprive the Delta smelt of their habitat by exporting vast quantities of water from the Sacramento River,” said Jennings. “If the State Board approves the petition, it will only exacerbate things enormously for the Delta smelt and other fish species.”</p>
<p>The Delta Tunnels plan will not only hasten the extinction of Delta smelt, but it will also drive longfin smelt, winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon and other fish species closer and closer to extinction, according to Delta advocates and scientific experts. The WaterFix will also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers, since water from the Trinity, the largest tributary of the Klamath, is diverted to the Sacramento River watershed through a tunnel in the Trinity Mountains from Trinity Lake to Whiskeytown Reservoir.</p>
<p>5. Racism and denial of tribal rights: Tribal and environmental justice communities in both processes have been excluded in a classic example of environmental racism.</p>
<p>The institutional racism of the MLPA process was demonstrated when the Yurok Tribe was banned from harvesting abalone, mussels and seaweed off their traditional areas off the False Klamath and Reading Rock as they have done for thousands of years under the “marine protected areas” that went into effect off the coast in December 2012.</p>
<p>And in spite of direct action protests and outrage by Tribal members, fishermen and grassroots environmentalists over the flawed Initiative, the MLPA Initiative failed to recognize tribal gathering rights in no take “State Marine Reserves,” allowing tribal gathering only in “State Marine Conservation Areas” where some fishing and gathering is already allowed.</p>
<p>Likewise, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan/California WaterFix has been developed without the required consent from California Tribes including the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, as required under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. In fact, the first formal informational meeting for California Tribes on the BDCP was held on December 10, 2013, in Sacramento – the day after the EIR/EIS for the tunnel plan was released!</p>
<p>That is hardly “government-to-government” consultation, as required under state, federal and international law.</p>
<p>“There is no precedent for the killing of an estuary of this size, so how could any study be trusted to protect the Delta for salmon and other fish?” asked Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. “How can they even know what the effects will be? The end of salmon would also mean the end of Winnemem, so the BDCP is a threat to our very existence as indigenous people.”</p>
<p>This environmental injustice extends to non-English speakers in California impacted by the Delta Tunnels Plan. Restore the Delta (RTD) and environmental justice advocates charged the Brown Administration with violation of the civil rights of more than 600,000 non-English speakers in the Delta by its agencies’ failure to provide for “meaningful access to and participation” in the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) public comment period.</p>
<p>“More than 600,000 Delta residents alone don’t speak English, and are being shut out of the public comment process on this massive project that would affect them deeply,” said Esperanza Vielma, executive director of Café Coop &amp; Environmental Justice Representative, San Joaquin County/San Joaquin Valley Air Quality Board. “The Brown Administration is violating the civil rights of Limited English speaking Californians in its rush to build tunnels to serve the top 1% of industrial agriculture.”</p>
<p>6. Junk Science: Both the MLPA Initiative and BDCP/California Water Fix fiasco have relied on false assumptions and flawed data with little or no basis in natural science to advance their goals and objectives.</p>
<p>In the case of the MLPA Initiative, the Yurok Tribe said it attempted on numerous occasions to address the scientific inadequacies with the MLPA science developed under the Schwarzenegger administration by adding “more robust protocols” into the equation, but was denied every time.</p>
<p>The Northern California Tribal Chairman’s Association, including the Chairs of the Elk Valley Rancheria, Hoopa Valley Tribe, Karuk Tribe, Smith River Rancheria, Trinidad Rancheria, and Yurok Tribe, documented in a letter how the science behind the MLPA Initiative developed by Schwarzenegger’s Science Advisory Team is “incomplete and terminally flawed.”</p>
<p>Frankie Joe Myers, Yurok Tribal member and Coastal Justice Coalition activist, exposed the refusal to incorporate Tribal science that underlies the “science” of the MLPA process on the day of the historic direct action protest by a coalition of over 50 Tribes and their allies in Fort Bragg in July 2010.</p>
<p>“The whole process is inherently flawed by institutionalized racism,” said Myers. “It doesn’t recognize Tribes as political entities, or Tribal biologists as legitimate scientists.”</p>
<p>To make things even worse, a federal judge in May 2014 sentenced Ron LeValley of Mad River Biologists, the former co-chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Science Advisory Team for the North Coast, to a 10 month federal prison sentence for his role in a conspiracy to embezzle over $852,000 in federal funds from the Yurok Tribe!</p>
<p>LeValley pleaded guilty to a single federal charge of conspiracy to commit embezzlement and theft from an Indian Tribal Organization (18U.S.C §§ 371 and 1163) in the complex scheme in collaboration with former Yurok Forestry Director Roland Raymond. According to court documents, LeValley submitted more than 75 false invoices between 2007 and 2010 in payment for “work” on northern spotted owl surveys that was never performed.</p>
<p>The BDCP/California WaterFix “science” is also a sham. For example, on July 18, 2013 scientists from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Marine Fisheries Service exposed the hollowness of claims by Secretary John Laird and other state officials that the BDCP is based on “science.” This was done after the federal agencies had already made “red flag” comments stating that the completion of the tunnel plan could hasten the extinction of Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other fish species.</p>
<p>The federal scientists provided the California Department of Water Resources and the environmental consultants with 44 pages of comments highly critical of the Consultant Second Administrative Draft EIR/EISDraft, released on May 10, 2013. The agencies found, among other things, that the draft environmental documents were “biased,” “insufficient,” “confusing,” and “very subjective.” (baydeltaconservationplan.com/…)</p>
<p>Then in August 2014 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a scathing 43-page comment letter slamming the Bay Delta Conservation Plan’s draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/EIS).</p>
<p>The EPA diagnosis revealed that operating the proposed conveyance facilities “would contribute to increased and persistent violations of water quality standards in the Delta, set under the Clean Water Act,” and that the tunnels “would not protect beneficial uses for aquatic life, thereby violating the Clean Water Act.”</p>
<p>Bob Wright, the lawyer for Friends of the River, summed up the complete lack of science that the BDCP/California Water Fix is based upon when he said, “The plan is to grab the water and in the process take it away from designated critical habitat for several already endangered and threatened species of fish including Sacramento River Winter-Run and Central Valley Spring-Run Chinook Salmon and drive them into extinction. That is against the law because federal agencies are prohibited from doing that by the Endangered Species Act.”</p>
<p>Unjust Implementation of MLPA Initiative Continues</p>
<p>The MLPA Initiative’s unjust implementation continues to forge ahead, in spite of opposition by anglers, conservationists and public trust advocates. The California Fish and Game Commission on Wednesday, August 24, 2016, adopted the controversial Master Plan for Marine Protected Areas in California that delays regional reviews of MPAs, as originally promised, from every five years to every ten years.</p>
<p>After a very short discussion and hearing public comment, the Commission by a 4-0 vote approved text related to traditional ecological knowledge and then adopted the proposed final Master Plan for Marine Protected Areas and the Marine Life Protection Program pursuant to the Marine Life Protection Act (Pursuant to Section 2850, et seq., Fish and Game Code).</p>
<p>The three members of the commission at the time – President Eric Sklar, Vice President Jacque Hostler-Carmesin, and Member Anthony C. Williams – postponed the vote for approval to the June meeting. Since the April meeting, Governor Jerry Brown appointed two new Commissioners, Russell Burns of Napa, and Peter Silva of Chula Vista.</p>
<p>It’s no surprise that both of the new Commissioners who voted for the MLPA Master Plan have worked for organizations backing the Delta Tunnels. Burns is the business manager at Operating Engineers Local Union 3, a strong supporter of the California Water Fix, since 2006. Silva served as senior policy advisor at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, one of the key organizations pushing the Governor’s Delta Tunnels Plan, from 2005 to 2009.</p>
<p>The Master Plan breaks the original promise given to anglers by officials that regional reviews of the alleged “marine protected areas” created under the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative would be conducted every five years. The new plan changes the regional reviews to once every ten years, a move that anglers and public trust advocates strongly oppose because it results in less frequent scientific monitoring of the MPAs.</p>
<p>Here’s what the MLPA Initiative South Coast News, the official publication of the Initiative, actually said on October 16, 2009, contradicting claims by Commissioners that this promise to conduct five year reviews was never made:</p>
<p>“Q: If an area is closed as an MPA will it always be closed?</p>
<p>A: Not necessarily. The MLPA specifically requires monitoring, research and evaluation at selected sites to facilitate adaptive management of MPAs and ensure the system meets its goals and objectives. Within the MLPA master plan, it is recommended that the MPA network be evaluated approximately every five years. As MPAs are re-assessed for effectiveness, changes may be necessary, either to individual MPAs or the network as a whole. This may mean changing boundaries and/or allowances for extractive activities depending on how well MPAs are meeting goals. Just because an area is closed to one type of use or another does not mean that it will always be that way.”</p>
<p>We must learn from successes and failures of opposition to both processes</p>
<p>We can see that MLPA and BDCP/California WaterFix processes have much in common in terms of their leadership, funding, conflicts of interest, greenwashing goals, racism and denial of tribal rights, and junk science. I believe that people can more effectively oppose the Governor’s Delta Tunnels Plan and other threats to our rivers, lakes, bays and ocean water by understanding the dark links between the MLPA Initiative and Delta Tunnels project.</p>
<p>The unjust implementation of questionable “marine protected areas” under the MLPA Initiative also provides a cautionary tale for activists fighting the California Water Fix – the fact that science, state, federal and international laws and the majority of people are on your side doesn’t necessarily mean that you will prevail. The state and federal governments have a long history of implementing projects that don’t make any scientific, legal or economic sense because powerful corporate interests effectively bought off and manipulated agency and elected officials to produce a pre-determined outcome.</p>
<p>It is vital that people fighting against the California WaterFix and for the restoration of salmon and other fish populations in California learn from both the successes and mistakes of MLPA Initiative opponents so they can more effectively wage a successful campaign to stop the construction of Governor Jerry Brown’s Twin Tunnels.</p>
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<p><a href="http://goo.gl/oCBdfG" type="external">Shutterstock</a></p>
<p>Ohio has become a bellwether state in presidential elections and, seeming to recognize that fact, the GOP has decided it’s the best place to anoint its 2016 nominee.</p>
<p>Cleveland is no Republican stronghold, however. The city was formerly represented in Congress in part by progressive Democrat Dennis Kucinich and has strong ties to organized labor.</p>
<p>The current mayor, Frank G. Jackson, is also a Democrat. That said, Jackson is credited by the county’s Republican Party chair with spearheading the effort to bring the convention to Cleveland. Whomever they’re nominating, conventions bring revenue, after all.</p>
<p />
<p>Republicans must be hoping to mine the Rust Belt for votes. Surely with this choice of venue, jobs will top the party’s talking points memo. According to the <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/07/cleveland_gop_convention_annou.html#incart_m-rpt-1" type="external">Cleveland Plain Dealer</a>, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told Fox News, “We’re excited about bringing the convention to Cleveland in Ohio, and we’re excited about the decision. We think it’s a smart decision.”</p>
<p>Cleveland beat out Dallas in red, red Texas.</p>
<p>(Tip of the hat to <a href="http://politicalwire.com/" type="external">Political Wire</a>.)</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Peter Z. Scheer</a></p>
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Republicans Will Hold 2016 Convention in Cleveland
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/republicans-will-hold-2016-convention-in-cleveland/
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2014-07-09
| 4left
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Republicans Will Hold 2016 Convention in Cleveland
<p><a href="http://goo.gl/oCBdfG" type="external">Shutterstock</a></p>
<p>Ohio has become a bellwether state in presidential elections and, seeming to recognize that fact, the GOP has decided it’s the best place to anoint its 2016 nominee.</p>
<p>Cleveland is no Republican stronghold, however. The city was formerly represented in Congress in part by progressive Democrat Dennis Kucinich and has strong ties to organized labor.</p>
<p>The current mayor, Frank G. Jackson, is also a Democrat. That said, Jackson is credited by the county’s Republican Party chair with spearheading the effort to bring the convention to Cleveland. Whomever they’re nominating, conventions bring revenue, after all.</p>
<p />
<p>Republicans must be hoping to mine the Rust Belt for votes. Surely with this choice of venue, jobs will top the party’s talking points memo. According to the <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/07/cleveland_gop_convention_annou.html#incart_m-rpt-1" type="external">Cleveland Plain Dealer</a>, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told Fox News, “We’re excited about bringing the convention to Cleveland in Ohio, and we’re excited about the decision. We think it’s a smart decision.”</p>
<p>Cleveland beat out Dallas in red, red Texas.</p>
<p>(Tip of the hat to <a href="http://politicalwire.com/" type="external">Political Wire</a>.)</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Peter Z. Scheer</a></p>
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<p />
<p>The race for the green jacket is wide open at this year’s Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, but defending champion Jordan Spieth enters the event as golf’s most marketable rising star. The 22-year-old Texan earned more money than any other golfer last year, and his business is off to a strong start in 2016.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Already one of golf’s most highly-touted young players, Spieth rocketed to superstardom with wins at the Masters and the U.S. Open last year. He led all golfers with about $53 million in earnings in 2015, including about $30 million from endorsements and appearances, according to Golf Digest’s annual “ <a href="http://www.golfdigest.com/gallery/golfs-top-earners" type="external">Highest Paid Opens a New Window.</a>” golfers list.</p>
<p>This year, he added a major endorsement deal with Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) to a lengthy list of sponsors that includes sports apparel brand Under Armour (NYSE:UA), AT&amp;T (NYSE:T), Rolex and Titleist. Less than five years into his professional career, Spieth has joined the likes of NFL legend Peyton Manning, NBA star LeBron James and fellow golfer Tiger Woods among America’s most marketable athletes. A strong performance on golf’s biggest stage would push his brand appeal to new heights.</p>
<p>“He’s extremely likable and scandal-free. He comes up big in Majors, when the most eyes are on the game, and he has an inspiring backstory in his tight relationship with his special needs sister,” Bob Dorfman, an expert on sports endorsement deals and executive creative director at Baker Street Advertising in San Francisco, told FOXBusiness.com. “His maturity, charisma and potential to dominate the game in Tiger-esque fashion make him the go-to choice for advertisers looking to reach the heavy-spending golf demographic. And with golfers’ long shelf-life as endorsers, Spieth is ideal for long-term partnerships.”</p>
<p>Those sponsors are already getting a solid return on their investment. Under Armour signed Spieth to a 10-year contract extension that included an equity stake in January 2015. Three months later, Spieth, clad head-to-toe in Under Armour gear, earned a wire-to-wire victory at the Masters, generating more than $30 million in advertising value for the apparel company, according to calculations by Apex Marketing Analytics.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>From an endorsement perspective, Spieth still has a way to go if he wants to catch golf’s old guard. Woods and Phil Mickelson have dominated the business side of golf for most of the last 20 years.</p>
<p>Mickelson ranked second on Golf Digest’s 2016 list with about $52 million in total earnings, but the $50 million he earned through sponsorships and appearances was more than any other golfer. Woods earned $48 million off the course last year.</p>
<p>Of Spieth’s contemporaries, only Rory McIlroy has amassed a business portfolio of similar scope. The 26-year-old Irishman earned $37.5 million last year through appearances and deals with companies like Nike Inc. (NYSE:NKE), Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:EA) and Bose. Rickie Fowler ($9 million), Justin Rose ($8 million) and Jason Day ($7.5 million) are well behind their rivals.</p>
<p>Despite Spieth’s win at last year’s tournament, WestGate Las Vegas SuperBook lists Day, who has been red-hot in 2016, as the odds-on favorite at this year’s Masters. Day is getting 7/1 odds of taking home the green jacket, while Spieth and McIlroy are each listed at 8/1.</p>
<p>At this year’s Masters, Apex estimates that a top-tier golfer that stays in the top-10 on the leaderboard through all four rounds will generate anywhere from $9.8 million to $21 million in advertising value for their sponsors, depending on the final results.</p>
<p>Not bad for a weekend’s work.</p>
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At Masters, Jordan Spieth Is Golf's Marketing King
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http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/04/07/at-masters-jordan-spieth-is-golfs-marketing-king.html
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2016-04-08
| 0right
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At Masters, Jordan Spieth Is Golf's Marketing King
<p />
<p>The race for the green jacket is wide open at this year’s Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, but defending champion Jordan Spieth enters the event as golf’s most marketable rising star. The 22-year-old Texan earned more money than any other golfer last year, and his business is off to a strong start in 2016.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Already one of golf’s most highly-touted young players, Spieth rocketed to superstardom with wins at the Masters and the U.S. Open last year. He led all golfers with about $53 million in earnings in 2015, including about $30 million from endorsements and appearances, according to Golf Digest’s annual “ <a href="http://www.golfdigest.com/gallery/golfs-top-earners" type="external">Highest Paid Opens a New Window.</a>” golfers list.</p>
<p>This year, he added a major endorsement deal with Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) to a lengthy list of sponsors that includes sports apparel brand Under Armour (NYSE:UA), AT&amp;T (NYSE:T), Rolex and Titleist. Less than five years into his professional career, Spieth has joined the likes of NFL legend Peyton Manning, NBA star LeBron James and fellow golfer Tiger Woods among America’s most marketable athletes. A strong performance on golf’s biggest stage would push his brand appeal to new heights.</p>
<p>“He’s extremely likable and scandal-free. He comes up big in Majors, when the most eyes are on the game, and he has an inspiring backstory in his tight relationship with his special needs sister,” Bob Dorfman, an expert on sports endorsement deals and executive creative director at Baker Street Advertising in San Francisco, told FOXBusiness.com. “His maturity, charisma and potential to dominate the game in Tiger-esque fashion make him the go-to choice for advertisers looking to reach the heavy-spending golf demographic. And with golfers’ long shelf-life as endorsers, Spieth is ideal for long-term partnerships.”</p>
<p>Those sponsors are already getting a solid return on their investment. Under Armour signed Spieth to a 10-year contract extension that included an equity stake in January 2015. Three months later, Spieth, clad head-to-toe in Under Armour gear, earned a wire-to-wire victory at the Masters, generating more than $30 million in advertising value for the apparel company, according to calculations by Apex Marketing Analytics.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>From an endorsement perspective, Spieth still has a way to go if he wants to catch golf’s old guard. Woods and Phil Mickelson have dominated the business side of golf for most of the last 20 years.</p>
<p>Mickelson ranked second on Golf Digest’s 2016 list with about $52 million in total earnings, but the $50 million he earned through sponsorships and appearances was more than any other golfer. Woods earned $48 million off the course last year.</p>
<p>Of Spieth’s contemporaries, only Rory McIlroy has amassed a business portfolio of similar scope. The 26-year-old Irishman earned $37.5 million last year through appearances and deals with companies like Nike Inc. (NYSE:NKE), Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:EA) and Bose. Rickie Fowler ($9 million), Justin Rose ($8 million) and Jason Day ($7.5 million) are well behind their rivals.</p>
<p>Despite Spieth’s win at last year’s tournament, WestGate Las Vegas SuperBook lists Day, who has been red-hot in 2016, as the odds-on favorite at this year’s Masters. Day is getting 7/1 odds of taking home the green jacket, while Spieth and McIlroy are each listed at 8/1.</p>
<p>At this year’s Masters, Apex estimates that a top-tier golfer that stays in the top-10 on the leaderboard through all four rounds will generate anywhere from $9.8 million to $21 million in advertising value for their sponsors, depending on the final results.</p>
<p>Not bad for a weekend’s work.</p>
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<p>Nov. 16 (UPI) — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mariah_Carey/" type="external">Mariah Carey</a> announced on Twitter Wednesday that she is canceling the opening shows of her Christmas concert tour due to an upper respiratory infection.</p>
<p>“Lambs! Just in time for the holiday gift-giving season, it seems I’ve received a present of my own; a lovely upper respiratory infection after last week’s flu,” the singer <a href="https://twitter.com/MariahCarey/status/930918957627904000" type="external">wrote</a>.</p>
<p>“Bleak! You know there is nothing I love more than celebrating the holidays with my festive Christmas show, but I have to take my Doctor’s orders and rest until he says I can sing on stage,” Carey continued.</p>
<p>“Until then, unfortunately, I have to cancel the first several shows of my upcoming Christmas tour. I’m going to do all that I can so that I can see you soon!”</p>
<p>The Christmas tour was originally <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/8038463/mariah-carey-cancels-shows-christmas-tour" type="external">scheduled</a> to begin Friday in Windsor, Ontario, at The Colosseum at Caesars Windsor. The concert series will now begin on Nov. 27 at the Beacon Theatre in New York City before wrapping up Dec. 22 at the Colosseum in Las Vegas.</p>
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Mariah Carey cancels Christmas tour dates due to upper respiratory infection
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https://newsline.com/mariah-carey-cancels-christmas-tour-dates-due-to-upper-respiratory-infection/
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2017-11-16
| 1right-center
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Mariah Carey cancels Christmas tour dates due to upper respiratory infection
<p>Nov. 16 (UPI) — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mariah_Carey/" type="external">Mariah Carey</a> announced on Twitter Wednesday that she is canceling the opening shows of her Christmas concert tour due to an upper respiratory infection.</p>
<p>“Lambs! Just in time for the holiday gift-giving season, it seems I’ve received a present of my own; a lovely upper respiratory infection after last week’s flu,” the singer <a href="https://twitter.com/MariahCarey/status/930918957627904000" type="external">wrote</a>.</p>
<p>“Bleak! You know there is nothing I love more than celebrating the holidays with my festive Christmas show, but I have to take my Doctor’s orders and rest until he says I can sing on stage,” Carey continued.</p>
<p>“Until then, unfortunately, I have to cancel the first several shows of my upcoming Christmas tour. I’m going to do all that I can so that I can see you soon!”</p>
<p>The Christmas tour was originally <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/8038463/mariah-carey-cancels-shows-christmas-tour" type="external">scheduled</a> to begin Friday in Windsor, Ontario, at The Colosseum at Caesars Windsor. The concert series will now begin on Nov. 27 at the Beacon Theatre in New York City before wrapping up Dec. 22 at the Colosseum in Las Vegas.</p>
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<p>The world’s largest retailer is pulling forward by nearly a month seven big deals on items like TVs and tablets that were originally reserved for the day after Thanksgiving and so-called Cyber Monday.</p>
<p>Shoppers will be able to purchase the items online starting shortly after midnight Friday. At the same time, Walmart.com will be pushing another 300 holiday deals on its website, from toys to home decor.</p>
<p>The seven deals include a 42- inch JVC LED TV for $299, a savings of 36 percent, and a 10-inch XELIO tablet for $49, a 51 percent discount. The items will be available while supplies last. Last year, Wal-Mart offered about 100 holiday deals online right after Halloween, but the offerings were focused on home decor.</p>
<p>“It’s been a tough year for the average American family,” Joel Anderson, president and CEO of Wal-Mart.com, told The Associated Press. “It’s our job to be able to help our customers.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>He said Wal-Mart decided to accelerate offering the seven deals a month ago. Wal-Mart declined to say whether it would be repeating the discounts during the Thanksgiving weekend.</p>
<p>Anderson noted that on top of economic challenges, there are loyal Walmart shoppers who want to be able to shop for bargains early. Last year, Wal-Mart saw traffic on its website surge right after Halloween, he noted.</p>
<p>The move comes as Wal-Mart, like others, have seen customers scale back purchases heading into the holiday shopping season, which accounts for anywhere from 20 percent to 40 percent of retailers’ annual revenue. While the job and housing markets are recovering, the improvements haven’t been enough to sustain increased spending among shoppers.</p>
<p />
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Wal-Mart kicks off holiday shopping season online
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/292838/walmart-kicks-off-holiday-shopping-season-online-2.html
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2013-11-01
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Wal-Mart kicks off holiday shopping season online
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<p />
<p>The world’s largest retailer is pulling forward by nearly a month seven big deals on items like TVs and tablets that were originally reserved for the day after Thanksgiving and so-called Cyber Monday.</p>
<p>Shoppers will be able to purchase the items online starting shortly after midnight Friday. At the same time, Walmart.com will be pushing another 300 holiday deals on its website, from toys to home decor.</p>
<p>The seven deals include a 42- inch JVC LED TV for $299, a savings of 36 percent, and a 10-inch XELIO tablet for $49, a 51 percent discount. The items will be available while supplies last. Last year, Wal-Mart offered about 100 holiday deals online right after Halloween, but the offerings were focused on home decor.</p>
<p>“It’s been a tough year for the average American family,” Joel Anderson, president and CEO of Wal-Mart.com, told The Associated Press. “It’s our job to be able to help our customers.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>He said Wal-Mart decided to accelerate offering the seven deals a month ago. Wal-Mart declined to say whether it would be repeating the discounts during the Thanksgiving weekend.</p>
<p>Anderson noted that on top of economic challenges, there are loyal Walmart shoppers who want to be able to shop for bargains early. Last year, Wal-Mart saw traffic on its website surge right after Halloween, he noted.</p>
<p>The move comes as Wal-Mart, like others, have seen customers scale back purchases heading into the holiday shopping season, which accounts for anywhere from 20 percent to 40 percent of retailers’ annual revenue. While the job and housing markets are recovering, the improvements haven’t been enough to sustain increased spending among shoppers.</p>
<p />
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<p>AP</p>
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">Alana Goodman</a> August 13, 2013 5:00 am</p>
<p>A technology company with ties to the White House is said to be in the running for a federal airport x-ray screener contract despite allegations that the company misled the federal government on a contract for controversial full-body scanners that was terminated by the TSA in January.</p>
<p>Rapiscan was accused of falsifying testing data for technology that was supposed to block its full-body scanners from recording nude images of passengers. The company has vehemently <a href="http://www.rapiscansystems.com/en/press_releases/article/rapiscan_systems_responds_to_media_reports_regarding_testing_of_ait_systems" type="external">denied</a> the allegations and said the government controlled the test.</p>
<p>"According to information received by the [House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security], it appears that the manufacturer may have attempted to defraud the government by knowingly manipulating an operational test," then-chairman of the subcommittee Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) wrote in a 2012 <a href="http://ae.cqrollcall.com/news_ustravel/latest-news/airport-security-news/tsa-accuses-backscatter-manufacturer-of-trying-to-falsify-test-data/" type="external">letter</a> to the TSA.</p>
<p>The TSA ended its contract with Rapiscan in January, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/17/business/la-fi-mo-fullbody-scanner-contract-20130117" type="external">saying</a> the company was not able to complete privacy-protecting software within the imposed deadline.</p>
<p>The Department of Homeland Security also took early steps to block the company from competing for future federal contracts, <a href="http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2013/may/20/osi-expects-debarment-notice-dhs/" type="external">issuing</a> a "Notice of Proposed Debarment" for Rapiscan in the spring.</p>
<p>Industry observers say Rapiscan is one of the few companies in the running for a multi-million-dollar TSA contract for "X-ray systems for screening passenger carry-on baggage to be used in our Nation’s airports."</p>
<p>A Rapiscan executive told the Washington Free Beacon he was unable to confirm the company was competing for the contract when reached by phone on Monday.&#160;</p>
<p>"As I am sure you understand, we limit what we disclose regarding potential sales opportunities," Andrew Goldsmith, vice president for global marketing of Rapiscan, said. "However, I can tell you that Rapiscan is eligible to compete for the opportunity you mentioned and we look forward to growing our business with the U.S. government.</p>
<p>Rapiscan’s parent company OSI Systems Inc. is led by Deepak Chopra, not to be confused with the celebrity New Age guru of the same name. Chopra, OSI Systems executive vice president Alan Edrick, and Rapiscan president Ajay Mehra each contributed $2,300 to President Obama’s 2008 campaign, according to campaign finance records.</p>
<p>Chopra accompanied Obama on a trip to India in 2010 to promote U.S.-India business partnerships, according to a <a href="http://investors.osi-systems.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=530184" type="external">press release</a> on the OSI Systems website.</p>
<p>After the DHS Notice of Proposed Debarment, Rapiscan was briefly placed on the government’s excluded parties list, preventing it from competing for contracts, from May 17 to June 21 of this year.</p>
<p>The list includes companies that are "ineligible [to compete for contracts] based upon adequate evidence of conduct indicating a lack of business honesty or integrity, or a lack of business integrity, or regulation, statute, executive order or other legal authority," pending an investigation.</p>
<p>Companies placed on the excluded parties list can be debarred unless the notice is withdrawn by the DHS or the company and the federal government enter into an "administrative compliance agreement."</p>
<p>OSI announced that Rapiscan had completed an administrative compliance agreement in June.</p>
<p>"We appreciated the opportunity to meet with DHS and we are pleased to reach this outcome on an important issue for our organization. We take pride in our role as a U.S. Government vendor and this agreement allows us to continue to serve DHS, including TSA, and other U.S. Government agencies as a leading security solutions provider."</p>
<p>The TSA did not respond to questions about the details of the mediation agreement or Rapiscan’s potential bid as of press time.</p>
|
Rapiscan Up for Airport Screening Contract Despite Past Controversies
| true |
http://freebeacon.com/rapiscan-up-for-airport-screening-contract-despite-past-controversies/
|
2013-08-13
| 0right
|
Rapiscan Up for Airport Screening Contract Despite Past Controversies
<p>AP</p>
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">Alana Goodman</a> August 13, 2013 5:00 am</p>
<p>A technology company with ties to the White House is said to be in the running for a federal airport x-ray screener contract despite allegations that the company misled the federal government on a contract for controversial full-body scanners that was terminated by the TSA in January.</p>
<p>Rapiscan was accused of falsifying testing data for technology that was supposed to block its full-body scanners from recording nude images of passengers. The company has vehemently <a href="http://www.rapiscansystems.com/en/press_releases/article/rapiscan_systems_responds_to_media_reports_regarding_testing_of_ait_systems" type="external">denied</a> the allegations and said the government controlled the test.</p>
<p>"According to information received by the [House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security], it appears that the manufacturer may have attempted to defraud the government by knowingly manipulating an operational test," then-chairman of the subcommittee Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) wrote in a 2012 <a href="http://ae.cqrollcall.com/news_ustravel/latest-news/airport-security-news/tsa-accuses-backscatter-manufacturer-of-trying-to-falsify-test-data/" type="external">letter</a> to the TSA.</p>
<p>The TSA ended its contract with Rapiscan in January, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/17/business/la-fi-mo-fullbody-scanner-contract-20130117" type="external">saying</a> the company was not able to complete privacy-protecting software within the imposed deadline.</p>
<p>The Department of Homeland Security also took early steps to block the company from competing for future federal contracts, <a href="http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2013/may/20/osi-expects-debarment-notice-dhs/" type="external">issuing</a> a "Notice of Proposed Debarment" for Rapiscan in the spring.</p>
<p>Industry observers say Rapiscan is one of the few companies in the running for a multi-million-dollar TSA contract for "X-ray systems for screening passenger carry-on baggage to be used in our Nation’s airports."</p>
<p>A Rapiscan executive told the Washington Free Beacon he was unable to confirm the company was competing for the contract when reached by phone on Monday.&#160;</p>
<p>"As I am sure you understand, we limit what we disclose regarding potential sales opportunities," Andrew Goldsmith, vice president for global marketing of Rapiscan, said. "However, I can tell you that Rapiscan is eligible to compete for the opportunity you mentioned and we look forward to growing our business with the U.S. government.</p>
<p>Rapiscan’s parent company OSI Systems Inc. is led by Deepak Chopra, not to be confused with the celebrity New Age guru of the same name. Chopra, OSI Systems executive vice president Alan Edrick, and Rapiscan president Ajay Mehra each contributed $2,300 to President Obama’s 2008 campaign, according to campaign finance records.</p>
<p>Chopra accompanied Obama on a trip to India in 2010 to promote U.S.-India business partnerships, according to a <a href="http://investors.osi-systems.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=530184" type="external">press release</a> on the OSI Systems website.</p>
<p>After the DHS Notice of Proposed Debarment, Rapiscan was briefly placed on the government’s excluded parties list, preventing it from competing for contracts, from May 17 to June 21 of this year.</p>
<p>The list includes companies that are "ineligible [to compete for contracts] based upon adequate evidence of conduct indicating a lack of business honesty or integrity, or a lack of business integrity, or regulation, statute, executive order or other legal authority," pending an investigation.</p>
<p>Companies placed on the excluded parties list can be debarred unless the notice is withdrawn by the DHS or the company and the federal government enter into an "administrative compliance agreement."</p>
<p>OSI announced that Rapiscan had completed an administrative compliance agreement in June.</p>
<p>"We appreciated the opportunity to meet with DHS and we are pleased to reach this outcome on an important issue for our organization. We take pride in our role as a U.S. Government vendor and this agreement allows us to continue to serve DHS, including TSA, and other U.S. Government agencies as a leading security solutions provider."</p>
<p>The TSA did not respond to questions about the details of the mediation agreement or Rapiscan’s potential bid as of press time.</p>
| 5,721 |
<p>The Cloud of Stupid permanently surrounding The View round table turned especially opaque on Thursday morning when the feminists discussed the potential rollback of the Obamacare contraception mandate. As all the women breathlessly whined about the serious undoing of women's rights (not true), Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg decided to turn up the hysteria to 11 with none other than Taliban comparisons.</p>
<p>More specifically, the women argued that if you're not in favor of religious people, like charitable nuns for example, violating their religious precepts by the force of the federal government to pay for birth control, there's no difference between you and the Taliban.</p>
<p>Seriously.</p>
<p>For reference, <a href="" type="internal">a leaked draft</a> of a regulation allegedly composed by the Trump team stated that the administration would pull back the Obamacare mandate which otherwise requires employers to foot the bill for their employees' contraception, including sterilization and the morning-after pill. Under the outlined regulation, any employer would now be allowed to request exemption from the mandate for moral or religious reasons. The Obama mandate has only one carve-out: houses of worship.</p>
<p>Mind you, inexpensive birth control remains prevalent just about everywhere; Trump did not order birth control in all its forms to be taken off the shelves, nor did he forbid women from premarital sex. I know the media might have told you otherwise.</p>
<p>Still, the women of The View were infuriated by the report.</p>
<p>"How about this," said an irritated Goldberg. "Do what you need to do for your family. Let me do what I need to do for mine, and we’ll all be fine. I don’t understand."</p>
<p>"They don’t mind their own business," chimed in Behar, before adding, "It’s religion."</p>
<p>Jedediah Bila, the token "conservative" on the panel, butted in: "Yeah, but you can’t hide behind religion to restrict other people’s rights."</p>
<p>Quick aside: free birth control is not a right, nor is it free, actually.</p>
<p>"Well they do," screamed Behar.</p>
<p>Then came the first Taliban reference: "How is it different from the Taliban? I’d like to know," said Behar.</p>
<p>"I just feel that you have to—at some point, you have to take responsibility for your life," said Goldberg, unwittingly making the case for conservative policies. "And a lot of people are saying, this is what I need, and you’re saying it doesn’t matter what you need, I want you to believe how I believe."</p>
<p>"I’m going to say it again," she continued. "I said this before. With all these rollbacks and what we hear, what’s the difference between us and the people we’re fighting?"</p>
<p>"Nothing," Behar quickly answered.</p>
<p>"That’s what I’m saying," continued Behar. "It’s to keep women down also. Let’s not forget one of the reasons they do this is to keep women in their place—barefoot and pregnant."</p>
<p>That's right folks, unless the Little Sisters of the Poor are paying for your morning-after pill, we're basically living under the Taliban, a group of violent radical Islamist thugs who <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/malala-yousafzai-21362253" type="external">shoot little girls in the head for going to school</a>.</p>
<p>Same difference, amirite?</p>
<p>Watch:</p>
|
WATCH: Whoopi, Joy Say You’re Like The Taliban If You Don’t Want to Force Nuns To Pay For Birth Control
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/17085/watch-whoopi-goldberg-says-youre-taliban-if-you-amanda-prestigiacomo
|
2017-06-02
| 0right
|
WATCH: Whoopi, Joy Say You’re Like The Taliban If You Don’t Want to Force Nuns To Pay For Birth Control
<p>The Cloud of Stupid permanently surrounding The View round table turned especially opaque on Thursday morning when the feminists discussed the potential rollback of the Obamacare contraception mandate. As all the women breathlessly whined about the serious undoing of women's rights (not true), Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg decided to turn up the hysteria to 11 with none other than Taliban comparisons.</p>
<p>More specifically, the women argued that if you're not in favor of religious people, like charitable nuns for example, violating their religious precepts by the force of the federal government to pay for birth control, there's no difference between you and the Taliban.</p>
<p>Seriously.</p>
<p>For reference, <a href="" type="internal">a leaked draft</a> of a regulation allegedly composed by the Trump team stated that the administration would pull back the Obamacare mandate which otherwise requires employers to foot the bill for their employees' contraception, including sterilization and the morning-after pill. Under the outlined regulation, any employer would now be allowed to request exemption from the mandate for moral or religious reasons. The Obama mandate has only one carve-out: houses of worship.</p>
<p>Mind you, inexpensive birth control remains prevalent just about everywhere; Trump did not order birth control in all its forms to be taken off the shelves, nor did he forbid women from premarital sex. I know the media might have told you otherwise.</p>
<p>Still, the women of The View were infuriated by the report.</p>
<p>"How about this," said an irritated Goldberg. "Do what you need to do for your family. Let me do what I need to do for mine, and we’ll all be fine. I don’t understand."</p>
<p>"They don’t mind their own business," chimed in Behar, before adding, "It’s religion."</p>
<p>Jedediah Bila, the token "conservative" on the panel, butted in: "Yeah, but you can’t hide behind religion to restrict other people’s rights."</p>
<p>Quick aside: free birth control is not a right, nor is it free, actually.</p>
<p>"Well they do," screamed Behar.</p>
<p>Then came the first Taliban reference: "How is it different from the Taliban? I’d like to know," said Behar.</p>
<p>"I just feel that you have to—at some point, you have to take responsibility for your life," said Goldberg, unwittingly making the case for conservative policies. "And a lot of people are saying, this is what I need, and you’re saying it doesn’t matter what you need, I want you to believe how I believe."</p>
<p>"I’m going to say it again," she continued. "I said this before. With all these rollbacks and what we hear, what’s the difference between us and the people we’re fighting?"</p>
<p>"Nothing," Behar quickly answered.</p>
<p>"That’s what I’m saying," continued Behar. "It’s to keep women down also. Let’s not forget one of the reasons they do this is to keep women in their place—barefoot and pregnant."</p>
<p>That's right folks, unless the Little Sisters of the Poor are paying for your morning-after pill, we're basically living under the Taliban, a group of violent radical Islamist thugs who <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/malala-yousafzai-21362253" type="external">shoot little girls in the head for going to school</a>.</p>
<p>Same difference, amirite?</p>
<p>Watch:</p>
| 5,722 |
<p>The total in financial damages to taxpayers from the torture of over 100 black men that Burge oversaw, and the ongoing pension payouts to his collaborating officers, exceeds $120,000,000—with no end on the horizon.</p>
<p>Today, former Chicago police commander Jon Burge, who was convicted of lying about torturing over 100 African-American men at stationhouses on Chicago’s South and West Sides, will walk out of the Butner Correctional Institution, having been released to a halfway house in Tampa, Florida.</p>
<p>Burge’s 2010 conviction for perjury came nearly 20 years after his&#160; <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/house-of-screams/Content?oid=875107" type="external">reign of racist terror</a>&#160;finally ended. From 1972 to 1991,&#160; <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/police-torture-in-chicago-jon-burge-scandal-articles-by-john-conroy/Content?oid=1210030" type="external">he led a torture ring&#160;of white Chicago detectives</a> who routinely used electric shock, suffocation with plastic bags and typewriter covers, mock executions and brutal attacks on the genitals to obtain confessions from their victims. A team of lawyers at the People’s Law Office, including myself, documented 118 such cases. But a series of police superintendents, numerous Cook County prosecutors and a&#160;cover-up&#160;that implicated&#160;former Mayor Richard M. Daley&#160;(during his time as both mayor and state’s attorney) protected Burge and his men from prosecution until well after the statute of limitations had run out on their crimes of torture.</p>
<p>Like Al Capone's prosecution for tax evasion, Burge could only be prosecuted for lying about what he and his men did, not for the deeds themselves. He was&#160;sentenced&#160;to the maximum term of four and a half years, and ended up serving three and a half before being released to a halfway house—a stark contrast to the fates of his victims, many of whom received&#160; <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-07-14/news/ct-met-confession-investigation-20110714_1_jon-burge-chicago-police-cmdr-torture-allegations" type="external">death sentences or life in prison</a>&#160;on the basis of confessions that were tortured from them.</p>
<p>Despite his felony conviction,&#160;Burge continued to collect his pension (now at $54,000 per year) while serving his time, and the Illinois Supreme Court&#160; <a href="http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/illinois-supreme-court-ruling-means-burge-can-keep-his-pension/thu-07032014-808am" type="external">recently decided&#160;four to three</a> that he may continue to do so in the future. But the <a href="http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/illinois-supreme-court-ruling-means-burge-can-keep-his-pension/thu-07032014-808am" type="external">nearly&#160;$700,000 that Burge has already collected</a>&#160;is little compared to what Chicago, Cook County, the State of Illinois and federal taxpayers have already expended as a result of the Burge torture scandal.</p>
<p />
<p>Chicago has spent more than $20,000,000 to provide legal defense to Burge and his men in the numerous civil damages suits brought against them over the years. Chicago, Cook County and the State of Illinois have paid out more than $66,000,000 in settlements to compensate the Burge torture survivors who were wrongfully convicted on the basis of false confessions. The city, county, state and federal governments have spent more than $15,000,000 investigating and prosecuting Burge. And his cabal of officers has received $22,000,000 in pensions to date.</p>
<p>The total financial damage to taxpayers as a result of the torture of over 100 black men that Burge oversaw, and the ongoing payouts to his collaborating officers, now exceeds $120,000,000, and will only keep growing.</p>
<p>While Burge’s conviction and imprisonment were rightly seen as a major victory for the ongoing human rights struggle against police torture, the battle has continued apace. As many as 20 Burge torture victims remain behind bars decades after their convictions, and the movement has focused on demanding new hearings for them at which they would be permitted to present the evidence of systematic torture that has come to light since their convictions.</p>
<p>Some of these men have won&#160;new hearings, while others have either been denied or are awaiting decisions from the courts or the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (TIRC) on their requests. A court appointed monitor is examining prisoner files and letters to determine whether there are additional prisoners who may be entitled to judicial review of their claims of Burge-related torture. And the TIRC, which was created by the Illinois Legislature in response to the demands of community activists, is also reviewing some 65 claims of torture and related abuse at the hands of detectives who, while not working for Burge at the time of the alleged torture, had previously worked for him.</p>
<p>While Chicago has spent more than $20 million defending Burge and his crew, the dozens of survivors who have not been officially exonerated have received little or no compensation. Working menial jobs or unemployed, with many in need of health services for their physical and mental trauma, a number of them have courageously stepped forward and testified against Burge or have otherwise spoken out about their torture.</p>
<p>Two leading examples are&#160;Anthony Holmes&#160;and&#160;Darrell Cannon. Holmes, who was the first known victim of Burge’s electric shock and suffocation tactics, was a key witness against Burge at his trial and sentencing nearly 40 years later. Cannon, who in 1983 was <a href="http://peopleslawoffice.com/darrell-cannon-civil-rights-lawsui/" type="external">subjected to&#160;electric shock and a mock execution</a>&#160;by three of Burge’s most racist henchmen, has become the leading spokesman in Chicago’s anti-torture movement, and his case is featured in&#160; <a href="http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140404/loop/burge-torture-victims-deserve-reparations-says-amnesty-intl-protesters" type="external">Amnesty International’s current campaign against torture</a>&#160;in the United States.</p>
<p>Both men spent decades in prison on the basis of confessions tortured from them, but&#160; <a href="http://www.wbez.org/aldermen-want-reparations-burge-torture-victims-108946" type="external">Holmes has received no compensation</a>, while&#160; <a href="http://peopleslawoffice.com/darrell-cannon-civil-rights-lawsui/" type="external">Cannon received a $3,000 settlement</a>&#160;before the torture cover-up came unglued.</p>
<p>The contrast between the official treatment of the torturers and their victims has spurred activists, torture survivors and lawyers working with the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Project (CTJM) to campaign for the passage of a city ordinance that would address this appalling discrepancy.&#160;Introduced&#160;into City Council last October by Aldermen Joe Moreno and Howard Brookins, the “ <a href="http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20131016/downtown/burge-torture-victims-would-get-20-million-under-new-council-proposal" type="external">Reparations Ordinance</a>” calls for the establishment of a $20 million fund to compensate torture survivors who have so far <a href="http://www.wbez.org/aldermen-want-reparations-burge-torture-victims-108946" type="external">received little money or nothing at all</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://chicagotorture.org/articles/ordinance-seeks-reparations-chicago-police-torture-survivors/" type="external">reparations would also include</a> an official public apology from the City of Chicago and the establishment of a center on Chicago’s South Side where survivors and their families could receive treatment and educational and job training opportunities. Additionally, the ordinance mandates that the history of Chicago police torture be taught in Chicago’s public schools, and that memorials to the torture survivors be erected in the city.</p>
<p>As a result of CTJM’s work, the ordinance now has the sponsorship of a majority of the 50 Chicago city council members. CTJM has also issued a formal request to all of the city’s major Democratic candidates for mayor, both declared and undeclared, to publicly support the ordinance. Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, who is considering challenging Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the 2015 mayoral race, has issued a strong endorsement of the ordinance, stating that “reparations for the survivors of Chicago police torture are long past due.”</p>
<p>With the February 2015 primary fast approaching, Emanuel, whose assertions of concern for the needs of the African-American community all too often ring hollow, would be wise to consider the consequences of failing to support such a reasonable effort to heal the still festering wounds inflicted by the torture scandal.</p>
<p>Chicago, like the country at large, has been sensitized to racist police violence by the events in Ferguson, Missouri. In July, <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-two-boys-14-and-16-among-five-people-shot-by-chicago-police-20140707-story.html#page=1" type="external">two African-American youths were&#160;shot down</a> by Chicago police officers, and a Chicago police commander has been suspended and criminally charged for torturing an arrestee by&#160; <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/29791890-418/man-sues-police-commander-accused-of-sticking-gun-in-his-mouth.html#.VCouoildVbw" type="external">shoving a gun into his mouth</a>.</p>
<p>In this racially charged atmosphere, Burge’s release serves to further energize the forces that are fighting for justice for the survivors of torture. Reparations and fair hearings will go a long way to finally affording closure to a scandal that has dogged Chicago for more than forty years.</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>Flint Taylor is a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago. He is one of the lawyers for the families of slain Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and together with his law partner Jeffrey Haas was trial counsel in the marathon 1976 civil trial. He has also represented many survivors of Chicago police torture, was involved in the struggle for reparations, and has done battle with the Chicago Police Department—and the Fraternal Order of Police—on numerous occasions over his 45 year career as a people’s lawyer</p>
|
Jon Burge, Torturer of Over 100 Black Men, Is Out of Prison After Less Than Four Years
| true |
http://inthesetimes.com/article/17213/jon_burge_torture_chicago_has_not_paid_for_his_crimes
|
2014-10-02
| 4left
|
Jon Burge, Torturer of Over 100 Black Men, Is Out of Prison After Less Than Four Years
<p>The total in financial damages to taxpayers from the torture of over 100 black men that Burge oversaw, and the ongoing pension payouts to his collaborating officers, exceeds $120,000,000—with no end on the horizon.</p>
<p>Today, former Chicago police commander Jon Burge, who was convicted of lying about torturing over 100 African-American men at stationhouses on Chicago’s South and West Sides, will walk out of the Butner Correctional Institution, having been released to a halfway house in Tampa, Florida.</p>
<p>Burge’s 2010 conviction for perjury came nearly 20 years after his&#160; <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/house-of-screams/Content?oid=875107" type="external">reign of racist terror</a>&#160;finally ended. From 1972 to 1991,&#160; <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/police-torture-in-chicago-jon-burge-scandal-articles-by-john-conroy/Content?oid=1210030" type="external">he led a torture ring&#160;of white Chicago detectives</a> who routinely used electric shock, suffocation with plastic bags and typewriter covers, mock executions and brutal attacks on the genitals to obtain confessions from their victims. A team of lawyers at the People’s Law Office, including myself, documented 118 such cases. But a series of police superintendents, numerous Cook County prosecutors and a&#160;cover-up&#160;that implicated&#160;former Mayor Richard M. Daley&#160;(during his time as both mayor and state’s attorney) protected Burge and his men from prosecution until well after the statute of limitations had run out on their crimes of torture.</p>
<p>Like Al Capone's prosecution for tax evasion, Burge could only be prosecuted for lying about what he and his men did, not for the deeds themselves. He was&#160;sentenced&#160;to the maximum term of four and a half years, and ended up serving three and a half before being released to a halfway house—a stark contrast to the fates of his victims, many of whom received&#160; <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-07-14/news/ct-met-confession-investigation-20110714_1_jon-burge-chicago-police-cmdr-torture-allegations" type="external">death sentences or life in prison</a>&#160;on the basis of confessions that were tortured from them.</p>
<p>Despite his felony conviction,&#160;Burge continued to collect his pension (now at $54,000 per year) while serving his time, and the Illinois Supreme Court&#160; <a href="http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/illinois-supreme-court-ruling-means-burge-can-keep-his-pension/thu-07032014-808am" type="external">recently decided&#160;four to three</a> that he may continue to do so in the future. But the <a href="http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/illinois-supreme-court-ruling-means-burge-can-keep-his-pension/thu-07032014-808am" type="external">nearly&#160;$700,000 that Burge has already collected</a>&#160;is little compared to what Chicago, Cook County, the State of Illinois and federal taxpayers have already expended as a result of the Burge torture scandal.</p>
<p />
<p>Chicago has spent more than $20,000,000 to provide legal defense to Burge and his men in the numerous civil damages suits brought against them over the years. Chicago, Cook County and the State of Illinois have paid out more than $66,000,000 in settlements to compensate the Burge torture survivors who were wrongfully convicted on the basis of false confessions. The city, county, state and federal governments have spent more than $15,000,000 investigating and prosecuting Burge. And his cabal of officers has received $22,000,000 in pensions to date.</p>
<p>The total financial damage to taxpayers as a result of the torture of over 100 black men that Burge oversaw, and the ongoing payouts to his collaborating officers, now exceeds $120,000,000, and will only keep growing.</p>
<p>While Burge’s conviction and imprisonment were rightly seen as a major victory for the ongoing human rights struggle against police torture, the battle has continued apace. As many as 20 Burge torture victims remain behind bars decades after their convictions, and the movement has focused on demanding new hearings for them at which they would be permitted to present the evidence of systematic torture that has come to light since their convictions.</p>
<p>Some of these men have won&#160;new hearings, while others have either been denied or are awaiting decisions from the courts or the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (TIRC) on their requests. A court appointed monitor is examining prisoner files and letters to determine whether there are additional prisoners who may be entitled to judicial review of their claims of Burge-related torture. And the TIRC, which was created by the Illinois Legislature in response to the demands of community activists, is also reviewing some 65 claims of torture and related abuse at the hands of detectives who, while not working for Burge at the time of the alleged torture, had previously worked for him.</p>
<p>While Chicago has spent more than $20 million defending Burge and his crew, the dozens of survivors who have not been officially exonerated have received little or no compensation. Working menial jobs or unemployed, with many in need of health services for their physical and mental trauma, a number of them have courageously stepped forward and testified against Burge or have otherwise spoken out about their torture.</p>
<p>Two leading examples are&#160;Anthony Holmes&#160;and&#160;Darrell Cannon. Holmes, who was the first known victim of Burge’s electric shock and suffocation tactics, was a key witness against Burge at his trial and sentencing nearly 40 years later. Cannon, who in 1983 was <a href="http://peopleslawoffice.com/darrell-cannon-civil-rights-lawsui/" type="external">subjected to&#160;electric shock and a mock execution</a>&#160;by three of Burge’s most racist henchmen, has become the leading spokesman in Chicago’s anti-torture movement, and his case is featured in&#160; <a href="http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140404/loop/burge-torture-victims-deserve-reparations-says-amnesty-intl-protesters" type="external">Amnesty International’s current campaign against torture</a>&#160;in the United States.</p>
<p>Both men spent decades in prison on the basis of confessions tortured from them, but&#160; <a href="http://www.wbez.org/aldermen-want-reparations-burge-torture-victims-108946" type="external">Holmes has received no compensation</a>, while&#160; <a href="http://peopleslawoffice.com/darrell-cannon-civil-rights-lawsui/" type="external">Cannon received a $3,000 settlement</a>&#160;before the torture cover-up came unglued.</p>
<p>The contrast between the official treatment of the torturers and their victims has spurred activists, torture survivors and lawyers working with the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Project (CTJM) to campaign for the passage of a city ordinance that would address this appalling discrepancy.&#160;Introduced&#160;into City Council last October by Aldermen Joe Moreno and Howard Brookins, the “ <a href="http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20131016/downtown/burge-torture-victims-would-get-20-million-under-new-council-proposal" type="external">Reparations Ordinance</a>” calls for the establishment of a $20 million fund to compensate torture survivors who have so far <a href="http://www.wbez.org/aldermen-want-reparations-burge-torture-victims-108946" type="external">received little money or nothing at all</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://chicagotorture.org/articles/ordinance-seeks-reparations-chicago-police-torture-survivors/" type="external">reparations would also include</a> an official public apology from the City of Chicago and the establishment of a center on Chicago’s South Side where survivors and their families could receive treatment and educational and job training opportunities. Additionally, the ordinance mandates that the history of Chicago police torture be taught in Chicago’s public schools, and that memorials to the torture survivors be erected in the city.</p>
<p>As a result of CTJM’s work, the ordinance now has the sponsorship of a majority of the 50 Chicago city council members. CTJM has also issued a formal request to all of the city’s major Democratic candidates for mayor, both declared and undeclared, to publicly support the ordinance. Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, who is considering challenging Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the 2015 mayoral race, has issued a strong endorsement of the ordinance, stating that “reparations for the survivors of Chicago police torture are long past due.”</p>
<p>With the February 2015 primary fast approaching, Emanuel, whose assertions of concern for the needs of the African-American community all too often ring hollow, would be wise to consider the consequences of failing to support such a reasonable effort to heal the still festering wounds inflicted by the torture scandal.</p>
<p>Chicago, like the country at large, has been sensitized to racist police violence by the events in Ferguson, Missouri. In July, <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-two-boys-14-and-16-among-five-people-shot-by-chicago-police-20140707-story.html#page=1" type="external">two African-American youths were&#160;shot down</a> by Chicago police officers, and a Chicago police commander has been suspended and criminally charged for torturing an arrestee by&#160; <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/29791890-418/man-sues-police-commander-accused-of-sticking-gun-in-his-mouth.html#.VCouoildVbw" type="external">shoving a gun into his mouth</a>.</p>
<p>In this racially charged atmosphere, Burge’s release serves to further energize the forces that are fighting for justice for the survivors of torture. Reparations and fair hearings will go a long way to finally affording closure to a scandal that has dogged Chicago for more than forty years.</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>Flint Taylor is a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago. He is one of the lawyers for the families of slain Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and together with his law partner Jeffrey Haas was trial counsel in the marathon 1976 civil trial. He has also represented many survivors of Chicago police torture, was involved in the struggle for reparations, and has done battle with the Chicago Police Department—and the Fraternal Order of Police—on numerous occasions over his 45 year career as a people’s lawyer</p>
| 5,723 |
<p>By <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/24/veterans-plan-deployment-join-water-protectors-battle-against-dapl" type="external">Nika Knight / Common Dreams</a></p>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1136540643060285/" type="external">1,000 U.S. military veterans</a> are planning to “deploy” to join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and peacefully support the water protectors’ fight against the controversial <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/tag/dakota-access-pipeline" type="external">Dakota Access Pipeline</a> near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.</p>
<p>“We are calling for our fellow veterans to assemble as a peaceful, unarmed militia at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on Dec 4-7 and defend the water protectors from <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/21/police-blast-nodapl-activists-water-cannons-sub-freezing-temps" type="external">assault</a> and <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/22/call-doj-observers-north-dakota-dapl-activists-face-severe-injuries-arrests" type="external">intimidation</a> at the hands of the militarized police force and DAPL security,” the organizers wrote on the group’s <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/veterans-for-standing-rock-nodapl?rcid=1573e2264b8b495ca3abe66969a0e324" type="external">GoFundMe page</a>.</p>
<p>“Come to Standing Rock Indian Reservation and hold the line with Wes Clark Jr., Michael Wood Jr., [Hawaii Democratic Rep.] Tulsi Gabbard, and hundreds of other veterans in support of the Sioux nation against the DAPL pipeline,” reads the description of the action on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1136540643060285/?active_tab=about" type="external">Facebook</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>The event, Veterans Stand for Standing Rock, was put together by “veterans of the United States Armed Forces, including the U.S. Army, United States Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Coast Guard,” according to the group’s fundraiser.</p>
<p>The call to action has already garnered nearly $200,000 in donations, which will to go toward funding veterans’ travel to North Dakota and legal fees they are likely to incur.</p>
<p>Clark Jr. and Wood Jr., the two primary organizers of the campaign, spoke to their passion for the water protectors’ cause and their commitment to nonviolence when they were <a href="http://taskandpurpose.com/where-evil-resides-veterans-deploy-to-standing-rock-to-engage-the-enemy-the-us-government/" type="external">profiled</a> earlier this week in the veterans’ publication Task &amp; Purpose:</p>
<p>“This country is repressing our people,” Wood Jr. says. “If we’re going to be heroes, if we’re really going to be those veterans that this country praises, well, then we need to do the things that we actually said we’re going to do when we took the oath to defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic.”</p>
<p>[…] “We’re not going out there to get in a fight with anyone,” Clark Jr. says. “They can feel free to beat us up, but we’re 100% nonviolence.”</p>
<p>“According to an ‘ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_order" type="external">operations order</a>‘ for the planned engagement, posted to social media in mid-November, ‘First Americans have served in the United States Military, defending the soil of our homelands, at a greater percentage than any other group of Americans. There is no other people more deserving of veteran support,'” Task &amp; Purpose writes.</p>
<p>Indeed, Wood Jr. posted full the operations order on Twitter:</p>
<p>Updated Operations Order <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/VeteranStandingRock?src=hash" type="external">#VeteranStandingRock</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NoDAPL?src=hash" type="external">#NoDAPL</a> <a href="https://t.co/mBb6qg0g6V" type="external">https://t.co/mBb6qg0g6V</a> <a href="https://t.co/laxs0AISoQ" type="external">pic.twitter.com/laxs0AISoQ</a></p>
<p>— Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) <a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelAWoodJr/status/797910596079456261" type="external">November 13, 2016</a></p>
<p>The veterans are prepared for the <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/23/people-are-going-die-father-wounded-dapl-activist-sophia-wilansky-speaks-out" type="external">police violence</a> that they may encounter: “Bring body armor, gas masks, earplugs, AND shooting mufflers (we may be facing a sound cannon) but no drugs, alcohol, or weapons,” the organizers told the volunteers.</p>
<p>Task &amp; Purpose delved into all the details of the veterans’ plan, which is intended both to bolster the peaceful water protectors’ fight as well as to draw media attention to the ongoing protest:</p>
<p>On Dec. 4, Clark Jr. and Wood Jr., along with a group of veterans and other folks in the “bravery business,” as Wood Jr. puts it […] will muster at Standing Rock. The following morning they will join members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, including Young, for a traditional healing ceremony. With an eye toward the media, old military uniforms will be donned so that if the veterans are brutalized by the police, they are brutalized not as ordinary citizens, but as people who once served the government they are protesting against. Then body armor, ear plugs, and gas masks will be issued to those who didn’t bring their own. Bagpipes will play, and traditional Sioux war songs will be sung. The music will continue as everyone marches together to the banks of the Missouri, on the other side of which a line of guards in riot gear will be standing ready with rifles, mace, batons, and dogs. Then, the veterans and their allies—or at least the ones who are brave enough—will lock arms and cross the river in a “massive line” for their “first encounter” with the “opposing forces.” The goal is to make it to the drilling pad and surround it, arm in arm. That will require making it through the line of guards, who have repelled other such attempts with a level of physical force Sioux tribal members and protesters have described as “excessive”—claims that recently prompted <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/31/dakota-access-pipeline-protest-investigation-human-rights-abuses" type="external">a United Nations investigation</a>. Of course, that’s what the body armor and gas masks are for.</p>
<p>“We’ll have those people who will recognize that they’re not willing to take a bullet, and those who recognize that they are,” Wood Jr. told Task &amp; Purpose. “It’s okay if some of them step back, but Wes and I have no intention of doing so.”</p>
<p />
|
Veterans Plan 'Deployment' to Join Battle Against Dakota Access Pipeline
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/veterans-plan-deployment-to-join-battle-against-dakota-access-pipeline/
|
2016-11-25
| 4left
|
Veterans Plan 'Deployment' to Join Battle Against Dakota Access Pipeline
<p>By <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/24/veterans-plan-deployment-join-water-protectors-battle-against-dapl" type="external">Nika Knight / Common Dreams</a></p>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1136540643060285/" type="external">1,000 U.S. military veterans</a> are planning to “deploy” to join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and peacefully support the water protectors’ fight against the controversial <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/tag/dakota-access-pipeline" type="external">Dakota Access Pipeline</a> near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.</p>
<p>“We are calling for our fellow veterans to assemble as a peaceful, unarmed militia at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on Dec 4-7 and defend the water protectors from <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/21/police-blast-nodapl-activists-water-cannons-sub-freezing-temps" type="external">assault</a> and <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/22/call-doj-observers-north-dakota-dapl-activists-face-severe-injuries-arrests" type="external">intimidation</a> at the hands of the militarized police force and DAPL security,” the organizers wrote on the group’s <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/veterans-for-standing-rock-nodapl?rcid=1573e2264b8b495ca3abe66969a0e324" type="external">GoFundMe page</a>.</p>
<p>“Come to Standing Rock Indian Reservation and hold the line with Wes Clark Jr., Michael Wood Jr., [Hawaii Democratic Rep.] Tulsi Gabbard, and hundreds of other veterans in support of the Sioux nation against the DAPL pipeline,” reads the description of the action on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1136540643060285/?active_tab=about" type="external">Facebook</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>The event, Veterans Stand for Standing Rock, was put together by “veterans of the United States Armed Forces, including the U.S. Army, United States Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Coast Guard,” according to the group’s fundraiser.</p>
<p>The call to action has already garnered nearly $200,000 in donations, which will to go toward funding veterans’ travel to North Dakota and legal fees they are likely to incur.</p>
<p>Clark Jr. and Wood Jr., the two primary organizers of the campaign, spoke to their passion for the water protectors’ cause and their commitment to nonviolence when they were <a href="http://taskandpurpose.com/where-evil-resides-veterans-deploy-to-standing-rock-to-engage-the-enemy-the-us-government/" type="external">profiled</a> earlier this week in the veterans’ publication Task &amp; Purpose:</p>
<p>“This country is repressing our people,” Wood Jr. says. “If we’re going to be heroes, if we’re really going to be those veterans that this country praises, well, then we need to do the things that we actually said we’re going to do when we took the oath to defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic.”</p>
<p>[…] “We’re not going out there to get in a fight with anyone,” Clark Jr. says. “They can feel free to beat us up, but we’re 100% nonviolence.”</p>
<p>“According to an ‘ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_order" type="external">operations order</a>‘ for the planned engagement, posted to social media in mid-November, ‘First Americans have served in the United States Military, defending the soil of our homelands, at a greater percentage than any other group of Americans. There is no other people more deserving of veteran support,'” Task &amp; Purpose writes.</p>
<p>Indeed, Wood Jr. posted full the operations order on Twitter:</p>
<p>Updated Operations Order <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/VeteranStandingRock?src=hash" type="external">#VeteranStandingRock</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NoDAPL?src=hash" type="external">#NoDAPL</a> <a href="https://t.co/mBb6qg0g6V" type="external">https://t.co/mBb6qg0g6V</a> <a href="https://t.co/laxs0AISoQ" type="external">pic.twitter.com/laxs0AISoQ</a></p>
<p>— Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) <a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelAWoodJr/status/797910596079456261" type="external">November 13, 2016</a></p>
<p>The veterans are prepared for the <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/23/people-are-going-die-father-wounded-dapl-activist-sophia-wilansky-speaks-out" type="external">police violence</a> that they may encounter: “Bring body armor, gas masks, earplugs, AND shooting mufflers (we may be facing a sound cannon) but no drugs, alcohol, or weapons,” the organizers told the volunteers.</p>
<p>Task &amp; Purpose delved into all the details of the veterans’ plan, which is intended both to bolster the peaceful water protectors’ fight as well as to draw media attention to the ongoing protest:</p>
<p>On Dec. 4, Clark Jr. and Wood Jr., along with a group of veterans and other folks in the “bravery business,” as Wood Jr. puts it […] will muster at Standing Rock. The following morning they will join members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, including Young, for a traditional healing ceremony. With an eye toward the media, old military uniforms will be donned so that if the veterans are brutalized by the police, they are brutalized not as ordinary citizens, but as people who once served the government they are protesting against. Then body armor, ear plugs, and gas masks will be issued to those who didn’t bring their own. Bagpipes will play, and traditional Sioux war songs will be sung. The music will continue as everyone marches together to the banks of the Missouri, on the other side of which a line of guards in riot gear will be standing ready with rifles, mace, batons, and dogs. Then, the veterans and their allies—or at least the ones who are brave enough—will lock arms and cross the river in a “massive line” for their “first encounter” with the “opposing forces.” The goal is to make it to the drilling pad and surround it, arm in arm. That will require making it through the line of guards, who have repelled other such attempts with a level of physical force Sioux tribal members and protesters have described as “excessive”—claims that recently prompted <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/31/dakota-access-pipeline-protest-investigation-human-rights-abuses" type="external">a United Nations investigation</a>. Of course, that’s what the body armor and gas masks are for.</p>
<p>“We’ll have those people who will recognize that they’re not willing to take a bullet, and those who recognize that they are,” Wood Jr. told Task &amp; Purpose. “It’s okay if some of them step back, but Wes and I have no intention of doing so.”</p>
<p />
| 5,724 |
<p>ESPN reporter Britt McHenry was suspended for one week last Thursday after a video surfaced online which featured&#160;her berating a towing-company employee, but reports claim that she will have a spot on SportsCenter this weekend&#160;despite the latest controversy. The iconic sports network understands that McHenry has become a pariah in the public eye, but Sports Illustrated&#160;reported Thursday that ESPN has faith that the 28-year-old&#160;will “win back some of the trust of our viewers.”</p>
<p>McHenry first received public backlash when edited video footage showed her telling a towing-company worker, “I’m on television and you’re in a f–g trailer, honey” was posted&#160;online last week. ESPN fans immediately called for her suspension, complaining that they didn’t want to hear reporting from someone who seems so petty and entitled, and the network answered with a one-week suspension. While anger towards McHenry has not yet fully died down, ESPN is still allowing her to work on&#160;SportsCenter&#160;this weekend, and be on-camera for the network’s coverage of the opening round of the NFL draft next Thursday.</p>
<p>“I think she is just really anxious to get back to work,” ESPN senior coordinating producer Seth Markman told&#160;Sports Illustrated.&#160;“We had a conversation where we both talked about that it would take time and it will be hard. She realizes she will have to do her job really well and hopefully win back some of the trust of our viewers. We expect that from her, and I expect that from her.”</p>
<p>Markman added that the network’s leniency is due in part to the great job McHenry did in a number of difficult situations during her NFL coverage last year. He acknowledges that the decision to put her in front of the camera so quickly won’t be popular, but thinks McHenry is ready for the challenge and will be able to “rebound” perfectly fine.</p>
<p>“Listen, it wouldn’t shock me if some people react negatively,” said Markman. “My head hasn’t been buried in the sand. I’ve read a lot on this, and more than anything, she knows she made a mistake.”</p>
<p />
|
Britt McHenry returns to work at ESPN despite ongoing fury from public
| false |
http://natmonitor.com/2015/04/23/britt-mchenry-returns-to-work-at-espn-despite-ongoing-fury-from-public/
|
2015-04-23
| 3left-center
|
Britt McHenry returns to work at ESPN despite ongoing fury from public
<p>ESPN reporter Britt McHenry was suspended for one week last Thursday after a video surfaced online which featured&#160;her berating a towing-company employee, but reports claim that she will have a spot on SportsCenter this weekend&#160;despite the latest controversy. The iconic sports network understands that McHenry has become a pariah in the public eye, but Sports Illustrated&#160;reported Thursday that ESPN has faith that the 28-year-old&#160;will “win back some of the trust of our viewers.”</p>
<p>McHenry first received public backlash when edited video footage showed her telling a towing-company worker, “I’m on television and you’re in a f–g trailer, honey” was posted&#160;online last week. ESPN fans immediately called for her suspension, complaining that they didn’t want to hear reporting from someone who seems so petty and entitled, and the network answered with a one-week suspension. While anger towards McHenry has not yet fully died down, ESPN is still allowing her to work on&#160;SportsCenter&#160;this weekend, and be on-camera for the network’s coverage of the opening round of the NFL draft next Thursday.</p>
<p>“I think she is just really anxious to get back to work,” ESPN senior coordinating producer Seth Markman told&#160;Sports Illustrated.&#160;“We had a conversation where we both talked about that it would take time and it will be hard. She realizes she will have to do her job really well and hopefully win back some of the trust of our viewers. We expect that from her, and I expect that from her.”</p>
<p>Markman added that the network’s leniency is due in part to the great job McHenry did in a number of difficult situations during her NFL coverage last year. He acknowledges that the decision to put her in front of the camera so quickly won’t be popular, but thinks McHenry is ready for the challenge and will be able to “rebound” perfectly fine.</p>
<p>“Listen, it wouldn’t shock me if some people react negatively,” said Markman. “My head hasn’t been buried in the sand. I’ve read a lot on this, and more than anything, she knows she made a mistake.”</p>
<p />
| 5,725 |
<p>We’re living in a very weird and convoluted moment in the annals of truth and bullshit. For some reason Americans saddled themselves with a rich and obnoxious reality TV star significantly unmoored from reality. A George W. Bush aide famously told a reporter: We’re an empire now and we make our own reality. Maybe it’s an axiom of our age: The wealthy and powerful have the right to make their own reality. As for the poor and the powerless, the same condition of being unmoored from reality is generally linked with what we call “mental illness,” which leads to marginalization, institutionalization or incarceration.</p>
<p>The same corrupt double standard works in the realm of violence. I‘ve been writing for decades about the killing our government has officially undertaken in places like Vietnam and Iraq and in smaller venues. I’ve always liked the bumper sticker that says:&#160;Kill One Person It’s Murder; Kill 100,000 It’s Foreign Policy. In my thinking, it isn’t a joke; it’s more like the Rules Of Engagement.</p>
<p>For me, the exemplary culprit in this equation is Henry Kissinger and the cold-blooded slaughter of millions of Vietnamese in a war that really makes no sense at all. (I challenge anyone to tell me what the Vietnamese ever did to us other than work as our ally against the Japanese in World War Two.) The most truthful narrative is that the Vietnamese were betrayed and attacked by the United States, one, to support French re-colonization after WWII, and, two, because US leaders felt compelled to dominate the wrecked post-WWII world. To recognize Vietnamese nationalism and the Vietnamese urge for freedom was too complicated for our fearful and reductive Cold War mindset. Rich and powerful, we ended up killing millions of Vietnamese in an ultimately failed effort to impose our reality — although in the end the Vietnamese developed excellent capitalistic instincts.</p>
<p>In a very weird turn of events, our new president seems to agree with the idea that killing is very American and that there are killers in our government. President Trump revealed this in an interview with his old pal Bill O’Reilly. The interview was appropriately run just before the Super Bowl, our culture’s pre-eminent gladiatorial extravaganza, an annual event of such masculine escapist power that it defines Bread &amp; Circus for our media-addled, couch-potato age. Here’s O’Reilly and Trump:</p>
<p>O’Reilly: “Do you respect Putin?”</p>
<p>Trump: “I do respect him.”</p>
<p>O’Reilly: “Do you!? Why?”</p>
<p>Trump: “I respect a lot of people. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to get along with him. He’s a leader of his country. I say it’s better to get along with Russia than not, and if Russia helps us in the fight against ISIS – which is a major fight, and Islamic terrorism all over the world – that’s a good thing. Will I get along with him? I have no idea.”</p>
<p>O’Reilly: “He’s a killer, though. Putin’s a killer.”</p>
<p>Trump: “There are a lot of killers. We got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent? You think our country is so innocent?”</p>
<p>O’Reilly: “I don’t know of any government leaders that are killers.”</p>
<p>Trump: “Well, take a look at what we’ve done too. We’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’ve been against the war in Iraq from the beginning.”</p>
<p>O’Reilly: “Mistakes are different than —.”</p>
<p>Trump: “A lot of mistakes. Okay. But a lot of people were killed. So a lot of killers around, believe me.”</p>
<p>I’ve worked with a group of fellow Vietnam veterans in a project called Full Disclosure. The group’s mission is to inject some truth into the national consciousness about our tragic and immoral war against the Vietnamese. So far, the effort has been asymmetrical, or Sisyphian, since government efforts to propagandize the war as a noble cause grotesquely out-budget grassroots efforts like Full Disclosure.</p>
<p>Ex-POW and Senator John McCain was outraged by Trump’s remarks about killers in the US government and gave a speech on the floor of the US Senate. He was so impassioned he flapped his arms in an extremely awkward fashion attributable to the permanent shoulder-and-arm injuries he received ejecting from his jet and, later, from abuse by angry Vietnamese; he ended up in Truc Bach Lake in the middle of Hanoi. Of course, he was shot down on a bombing run over Hanoi killing Vietnamese, which may explain his vociferous opposition to the idea of American killers. It’s John McCain’s brand of bullshit — the patriotism of warrior politics — something that has taken him quite far. While I oppose McCain’s militarist views on everything but torture, I have to confess I often find it hard to dislike the man due to the suffering he endured and the fact I’m a “brother” Vietnam vet, albeit a vet with a quite un-glorious story, but a vet with some degree of guilt from the war.</p>
<p>This kind of discussion always reminds me of the history of the imperial United States from the days of the Spanish American War 119 years ago and how we’ve too often treated people as backward and barbaric in the places we so blithely assaulted. We tended to undertake the killing of people in order to open their countries as markets for our surpluses at times America was bursting at the seams with industrial production. Such was the case in the Philippines in 1900; it was thought war against Spain’s occupation there might open markets in Asia. Industrial forces and newspapers lobbied for war, but once it got underway things quickly became confused. For example Admiral George Dewey dispatched the Spanish fleet in Manila so quickly and easily, the question arose: What now? Like Shock &amp; Awe in 2003 in Baghdad, the war then generated its own internal logic and motivations that could be reduced to we must continue to fight the war because we’re here fighting a war and don’t want to lose face. Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn Rule comes out of this condition: “If you break it, you own it.” Plus, in 1900, we had the White Man’s Burden to carry or, as Teddy Roosevelt liked to put it, we were called to “manage small states unable to manage themselves.” In this way, the US did a lot of killing, most of it not a “mistake.” It was policy.</p>
<p>So the master bullshitter Donald Trump is ironically a profound truth-teller when he says: “We got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent?” He’s turning the tables on one of the most incredible sewer-clogging piles of propaganda bullshit in modern American history. Add to this the pop-culture adoration by Americans of the dramatic archetype of the killer and one begins to understand the problem. Americans (maybe humans in general) love a good killer — both&#160;good&#160;in the sense of efficient and&#160;good&#160;in the sense that people love a killer who kills for them, responds to their fears, advances their hopes and dreams.</p>
<p>The disturbing aspect of Trump’s truth-telling is that he’s not making a moral point that killing is wrong. He’s making the opposite point, that killing is normal and, therefore, acceptable. Americans need to be honest with themselves; those who get worked up about killing are hypocrites, weak sisters or cowards. Real men don’t eat quiche; they kill other people. He’s basically making a Hobbesian violent State Of Nature argument, as in the following by Vadim Volkov from his 2002 book&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force In the Making of Russian Capitalism</a>:</p>
<p>“In the state of nature, property exists only as long as it can be protected by the claimant. An entirely different world is what Hobbes calls the Commonwealth, where individuals are deprived of, or willingly abdicate, their natural right to self-government in favor of a higher power that establishes protection and laws for all.”</p>
<p>As a philosopher, Hobbes, of course, was being abstract. In the real world of America or Russia, these abstract concepts get a bit confused and begin to overlap into each other so we end up with an amalgam of the features of the State of Nature and the Commonwealth. We see this in the informal institutions of selective enforcement where the “protections” and “laws” that the Hobbesian commonwealth establishes, and citizens abdicate their self-determination for, are selectively applied, leaving some elements of society subject to the State of Nature where property (and life itself) “exist only as long as [they] can be protected by the claimant.” It’s as the narrator says in the preface of the Cohn brother’s film&#160;Blood Simple: Over shots of desolate west Texas desert highways he makes glib references to socialist societies, then says, “In Texas, you’re on your own.” It’s the Old West ethic of the gunfighter. It’s the manifest destiny that made America “great,” our dirty foundational secret that reveals the two strains of American history: the self-congratulatory mythic strain and The Truth, where America’s greatness is not inherent and God-given but achieved on the backs of people the world over weaker and less sophisticated, people vulnerable to domination and exploitation by a western mindset full of itself. There’s a strong case to be made that much of today’s threats are rooted in this legacy. What goes ’round, comes ’round.</p>
<p>Rather than use terms like “Mafia” or “organized crime,” Volkov, a Cambridge-educated Russian sociologist at the European University at St. Petersburg, likes to use terms like “violence-managing agencies,” “force wielding organizations,” “protection enterprises” and “private enforcers.” His book, he writes, “deals with an exclusively male world, where traditional male virtues associated with violent contest prevail.” The tale he unfolds is one of the anarchic aftermath of the downfall of the Soviet Union noted for the “violent entrepreneurs” of the title and the countervailing impulse to create a State structure that would constitute a Hobbesian commonwealth. He writes that in 2001 newly elected President Vladimir Putin addressed the Russian legislature and conceded the state was coming up short in “protecting citizens from racketeers, bandits, and bribe-takers.”</p>
<p>The Russian dance between state of nature anarchy and state protection is still a work-in-progress, something a truthful analysis of conditions in the United States would also have to concede. While the US may not be on an identical moral footing as Putin’s Russia (in some instances we may be better, some worse) selective enforcement remains a very healthy institution in America. Local cops tell me individual officers always have the discretion to arrest or not to arrest. Prosecutors have the same discretion. Think sentencing for crack cocaine in the ghetto versus powder cocaine in Hollywood and the mass incarceration of African American males. The list is long and the legacy of selective enforcement is overdue for a major American dialogue.</p>
<p>One might argue that President Trump is trying to shift the Hobbesian reality away from a classically liberal commonwealth of protection for the poor and weak to a more robust state of nature and wealth- and power-friendly society where, like in Texas, “you’re on your own.” This may also help explain the mysterious affinity between Trump and Putin. It’s like Russia and the United States are moving in opposite Hobbesian directions, and their current respective leaders — Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump — are meeting ideologically in the middle. Central to this struggle is the archetype of the killer, which is, as Volkov emphasizes, predominantly a male role. In the abstract world of Hobbes, the archetypal killer is a feature of the anarchic state of nature and a feature of the state’s monopoly on violence.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding Hillary Clinton’s evident shortcomings as a candidate, this may shed some light on why a liberal woman considered a&#160;fait-accompli&#160;failed to obtain the White House in 2016, a moment in history when the feminine, maternal and nurturing instincts associated with women would improve the American political character. But in a nation that has declared itself at war with crackpot elements of extremely violent, misogynous Muslims, the Rules Of Engagement among the winning Trump base may demand a countervailing violent male misogyny on our part. When you go to war with strange alien people, there’s a certain intimacy that necessarily grows from such an intense experience. It’s not exactly a case of&#160;If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em; it’s more like:&#160;If you fight someone long enough, you will assume some of their characteristics. The obverse must be true as well: in a natural learning curve, violent Muslims necessarily learn certain things from fighting westerners and Americans.</p>
<p>* NOTE: The term&#160;bullshit&#160;is used here in the sense established by Harvard philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt in his little gem of a book titled&#160; <a href="" type="internal">On Bullshit</a>, which opens with: “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.”</p>
|
On Killers and Bullshitters*
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2017/02/22/90660/
|
2017-02-22
| 4left
|
On Killers and Bullshitters*
<p>We’re living in a very weird and convoluted moment in the annals of truth and bullshit. For some reason Americans saddled themselves with a rich and obnoxious reality TV star significantly unmoored from reality. A George W. Bush aide famously told a reporter: We’re an empire now and we make our own reality. Maybe it’s an axiom of our age: The wealthy and powerful have the right to make their own reality. As for the poor and the powerless, the same condition of being unmoored from reality is generally linked with what we call “mental illness,” which leads to marginalization, institutionalization or incarceration.</p>
<p>The same corrupt double standard works in the realm of violence. I‘ve been writing for decades about the killing our government has officially undertaken in places like Vietnam and Iraq and in smaller venues. I’ve always liked the bumper sticker that says:&#160;Kill One Person It’s Murder; Kill 100,000 It’s Foreign Policy. In my thinking, it isn’t a joke; it’s more like the Rules Of Engagement.</p>
<p>For me, the exemplary culprit in this equation is Henry Kissinger and the cold-blooded slaughter of millions of Vietnamese in a war that really makes no sense at all. (I challenge anyone to tell me what the Vietnamese ever did to us other than work as our ally against the Japanese in World War Two.) The most truthful narrative is that the Vietnamese were betrayed and attacked by the United States, one, to support French re-colonization after WWII, and, two, because US leaders felt compelled to dominate the wrecked post-WWII world. To recognize Vietnamese nationalism and the Vietnamese urge for freedom was too complicated for our fearful and reductive Cold War mindset. Rich and powerful, we ended up killing millions of Vietnamese in an ultimately failed effort to impose our reality — although in the end the Vietnamese developed excellent capitalistic instincts.</p>
<p>In a very weird turn of events, our new president seems to agree with the idea that killing is very American and that there are killers in our government. President Trump revealed this in an interview with his old pal Bill O’Reilly. The interview was appropriately run just before the Super Bowl, our culture’s pre-eminent gladiatorial extravaganza, an annual event of such masculine escapist power that it defines Bread &amp; Circus for our media-addled, couch-potato age. Here’s O’Reilly and Trump:</p>
<p>O’Reilly: “Do you respect Putin?”</p>
<p>Trump: “I do respect him.”</p>
<p>O’Reilly: “Do you!? Why?”</p>
<p>Trump: “I respect a lot of people. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to get along with him. He’s a leader of his country. I say it’s better to get along with Russia than not, and if Russia helps us in the fight against ISIS – which is a major fight, and Islamic terrorism all over the world – that’s a good thing. Will I get along with him? I have no idea.”</p>
<p>O’Reilly: “He’s a killer, though. Putin’s a killer.”</p>
<p>Trump: “There are a lot of killers. We got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent? You think our country is so innocent?”</p>
<p>O’Reilly: “I don’t know of any government leaders that are killers.”</p>
<p>Trump: “Well, take a look at what we’ve done too. We’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’ve been against the war in Iraq from the beginning.”</p>
<p>O’Reilly: “Mistakes are different than —.”</p>
<p>Trump: “A lot of mistakes. Okay. But a lot of people were killed. So a lot of killers around, believe me.”</p>
<p>I’ve worked with a group of fellow Vietnam veterans in a project called Full Disclosure. The group’s mission is to inject some truth into the national consciousness about our tragic and immoral war against the Vietnamese. So far, the effort has been asymmetrical, or Sisyphian, since government efforts to propagandize the war as a noble cause grotesquely out-budget grassroots efforts like Full Disclosure.</p>
<p>Ex-POW and Senator John McCain was outraged by Trump’s remarks about killers in the US government and gave a speech on the floor of the US Senate. He was so impassioned he flapped his arms in an extremely awkward fashion attributable to the permanent shoulder-and-arm injuries he received ejecting from his jet and, later, from abuse by angry Vietnamese; he ended up in Truc Bach Lake in the middle of Hanoi. Of course, he was shot down on a bombing run over Hanoi killing Vietnamese, which may explain his vociferous opposition to the idea of American killers. It’s John McCain’s brand of bullshit — the patriotism of warrior politics — something that has taken him quite far. While I oppose McCain’s militarist views on everything but torture, I have to confess I often find it hard to dislike the man due to the suffering he endured and the fact I’m a “brother” Vietnam vet, albeit a vet with a quite un-glorious story, but a vet with some degree of guilt from the war.</p>
<p>This kind of discussion always reminds me of the history of the imperial United States from the days of the Spanish American War 119 years ago and how we’ve too often treated people as backward and barbaric in the places we so blithely assaulted. We tended to undertake the killing of people in order to open their countries as markets for our surpluses at times America was bursting at the seams with industrial production. Such was the case in the Philippines in 1900; it was thought war against Spain’s occupation there might open markets in Asia. Industrial forces and newspapers lobbied for war, but once it got underway things quickly became confused. For example Admiral George Dewey dispatched the Spanish fleet in Manila so quickly and easily, the question arose: What now? Like Shock &amp; Awe in 2003 in Baghdad, the war then generated its own internal logic and motivations that could be reduced to we must continue to fight the war because we’re here fighting a war and don’t want to lose face. Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn Rule comes out of this condition: “If you break it, you own it.” Plus, in 1900, we had the White Man’s Burden to carry or, as Teddy Roosevelt liked to put it, we were called to “manage small states unable to manage themselves.” In this way, the US did a lot of killing, most of it not a “mistake.” It was policy.</p>
<p>So the master bullshitter Donald Trump is ironically a profound truth-teller when he says: “We got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent?” He’s turning the tables on one of the most incredible sewer-clogging piles of propaganda bullshit in modern American history. Add to this the pop-culture adoration by Americans of the dramatic archetype of the killer and one begins to understand the problem. Americans (maybe humans in general) love a good killer — both&#160;good&#160;in the sense of efficient and&#160;good&#160;in the sense that people love a killer who kills for them, responds to their fears, advances their hopes and dreams.</p>
<p>The disturbing aspect of Trump’s truth-telling is that he’s not making a moral point that killing is wrong. He’s making the opposite point, that killing is normal and, therefore, acceptable. Americans need to be honest with themselves; those who get worked up about killing are hypocrites, weak sisters or cowards. Real men don’t eat quiche; they kill other people. He’s basically making a Hobbesian violent State Of Nature argument, as in the following by Vadim Volkov from his 2002 book&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force In the Making of Russian Capitalism</a>:</p>
<p>“In the state of nature, property exists only as long as it can be protected by the claimant. An entirely different world is what Hobbes calls the Commonwealth, where individuals are deprived of, or willingly abdicate, their natural right to self-government in favor of a higher power that establishes protection and laws for all.”</p>
<p>As a philosopher, Hobbes, of course, was being abstract. In the real world of America or Russia, these abstract concepts get a bit confused and begin to overlap into each other so we end up with an amalgam of the features of the State of Nature and the Commonwealth. We see this in the informal institutions of selective enforcement where the “protections” and “laws” that the Hobbesian commonwealth establishes, and citizens abdicate their self-determination for, are selectively applied, leaving some elements of society subject to the State of Nature where property (and life itself) “exist only as long as [they] can be protected by the claimant.” It’s as the narrator says in the preface of the Cohn brother’s film&#160;Blood Simple: Over shots of desolate west Texas desert highways he makes glib references to socialist societies, then says, “In Texas, you’re on your own.” It’s the Old West ethic of the gunfighter. It’s the manifest destiny that made America “great,” our dirty foundational secret that reveals the two strains of American history: the self-congratulatory mythic strain and The Truth, where America’s greatness is not inherent and God-given but achieved on the backs of people the world over weaker and less sophisticated, people vulnerable to domination and exploitation by a western mindset full of itself. There’s a strong case to be made that much of today’s threats are rooted in this legacy. What goes ’round, comes ’round.</p>
<p>Rather than use terms like “Mafia” or “organized crime,” Volkov, a Cambridge-educated Russian sociologist at the European University at St. Petersburg, likes to use terms like “violence-managing agencies,” “force wielding organizations,” “protection enterprises” and “private enforcers.” His book, he writes, “deals with an exclusively male world, where traditional male virtues associated with violent contest prevail.” The tale he unfolds is one of the anarchic aftermath of the downfall of the Soviet Union noted for the “violent entrepreneurs” of the title and the countervailing impulse to create a State structure that would constitute a Hobbesian commonwealth. He writes that in 2001 newly elected President Vladimir Putin addressed the Russian legislature and conceded the state was coming up short in “protecting citizens from racketeers, bandits, and bribe-takers.”</p>
<p>The Russian dance between state of nature anarchy and state protection is still a work-in-progress, something a truthful analysis of conditions in the United States would also have to concede. While the US may not be on an identical moral footing as Putin’s Russia (in some instances we may be better, some worse) selective enforcement remains a very healthy institution in America. Local cops tell me individual officers always have the discretion to arrest or not to arrest. Prosecutors have the same discretion. Think sentencing for crack cocaine in the ghetto versus powder cocaine in Hollywood and the mass incarceration of African American males. The list is long and the legacy of selective enforcement is overdue for a major American dialogue.</p>
<p>One might argue that President Trump is trying to shift the Hobbesian reality away from a classically liberal commonwealth of protection for the poor and weak to a more robust state of nature and wealth- and power-friendly society where, like in Texas, “you’re on your own.” This may also help explain the mysterious affinity between Trump and Putin. It’s like Russia and the United States are moving in opposite Hobbesian directions, and their current respective leaders — Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump — are meeting ideologically in the middle. Central to this struggle is the archetype of the killer, which is, as Volkov emphasizes, predominantly a male role. In the abstract world of Hobbes, the archetypal killer is a feature of the anarchic state of nature and a feature of the state’s monopoly on violence.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding Hillary Clinton’s evident shortcomings as a candidate, this may shed some light on why a liberal woman considered a&#160;fait-accompli&#160;failed to obtain the White House in 2016, a moment in history when the feminine, maternal and nurturing instincts associated with women would improve the American political character. But in a nation that has declared itself at war with crackpot elements of extremely violent, misogynous Muslims, the Rules Of Engagement among the winning Trump base may demand a countervailing violent male misogyny on our part. When you go to war with strange alien people, there’s a certain intimacy that necessarily grows from such an intense experience. It’s not exactly a case of&#160;If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em; it’s more like:&#160;If you fight someone long enough, you will assume some of their characteristics. The obverse must be true as well: in a natural learning curve, violent Muslims necessarily learn certain things from fighting westerners and Americans.</p>
<p>* NOTE: The term&#160;bullshit&#160;is used here in the sense established by Harvard philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt in his little gem of a book titled&#160; <a href="" type="internal">On Bullshit</a>, which opens with: “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.”</p>
| 5,726 |
<p>On the evening of May&#160;16, 1973, around halfway through the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin_Sane" type="external">Aladdin Sane</a> tour, I watched David Bowie play his second sold-out show at the Aberdeen Music Hall. I could not have imagined that one day I would be listening to him — or, rather, listening to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Moss" type="external">Kate Moss</a> speaking on his behalf — intervene in the debate over a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence" type="external">Scottish independence</a> referendum. Mind you, I cannot pretend that the national question was a high priority for my 15-year-old self; nor could I have imagined that there would ever be a Scottish independence referendum.</p>
<p>The message that Moss read out for Bowie at the <a href="http://www.brits.co.uk/" type="external">Brit Awards</a> on February&#160;20 this year —&#160;“Scotland, stay with us” — nevertheless deserves to be taken more seriously than it has been, and certainly more than the mixture of bluff and bullying that Scots have recently received from <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/scottish-independence/scottish-independence-george-osborne-offers-scotland-fresh-powers-but-says-no-chance-of-sharing-the-pound-9716931.html" type="external">George&#160;Osborne</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-26215963" type="external">Jose Manuel Barroso</a>, and the directors of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Life" type="external">Standard Life PLC</a>. Bowie is actually a more political artist than is often supposed, but he is in no sense a conventional left-wing one. Yet his intervention was typical of a widely held view on the Left that a “yes” vote for Scottish independence on September&#160;18 would be a disaster for “us” (meaning the English), and perhaps also for the Scots themselves. These views are also widely held in Scotland itself.</p>
<p>Before turning to these arguments, it is worth considering one pro-independence position that&#160;can only be held in England. Expressed most recently (if eccentrically) by Will Self in the <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/" type="external">New Statesman</a>,&#160;this holds that an independent Scotland would be a social-democratic — perhaps even socialist — inspiration to the English Left, finally galvanizing it into posing a serious challenge to neoliberalism and imperialism. And in some respects, a survey of social legislation in Scotland even under <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Scottish_devolution" type="external">devolution</a>, including that passed by the first two Liberal/Labour coalition governments, tends to support this perspective.</p>
<p>Scotland has free care for the elderly, free prescriptions for all, and no student tuition fees (at least for Scottish students). And the <a href="http://scotland.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/advice_topics/paying_for_a_home/housing_benefit/the_bedroom_tax" type="external">bedroom tax</a>, while it is beyond the power of Holyrood to abolish, has effectively been neutralized by the current Scottish National Party (SNP) government’s declaration (in a move supported by Labour) that it would set aside £15&#160;million to meet the additional costs of the 76,000 social housing tenants deemed to have a “spare bedroom.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, although there are longstanding private schools in Scotland, education has not been subjected to the disintegrative effect of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/10161371" type="external">academies and free schools</a>; water remains in public hands; the extent&#160;of privatization of the National Health Service in England has not been replicated north of the border; private finance initiatives and public–private partnerships are no longer in use. And while it would be absurd to pretend that racism is not a problem in Scotland, the public culture in this respect is different from England, not least because the SNP government — to its endless credit — has argued for welcoming migrants rather than attacking them.</p>
<p>We should nevertheless be skeptical about claims that, on the basis of these modest but real reforms, independence would&#160;automatically lead to the creation of a social democratic, let alone socialist, society. There is nothing intrinsically progressive about Scottish statehood — otherwise it would not be supported by reactionary types like Sir <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Souter" type="external">Brian Souter</a> of Stagecoach or Sir <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-28641991" type="external">George Mathewson</a> (formerly of the Royal Bank of Scotland), both of whom are perfectly aware of their class interests.</p>
<p>It is also true that, in economic terms, the SNP is committed to the neoliberal agenda — it is almost entirely in social terms that it has deviated to the left. This means that the SNP is presenting a highly contradictory program: on the one hand it argues&#160;for an Irish-style “competitive” tax regime for the corporations, while on the other claiming that it will be able to provide a Scandinavian-style welfare state. Nor is this the only contradiction: the SNP is committed to removing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMNB_Clyde" type="external">nuclear weapons</a> from the Clyde, but also to remaining within NATO, positions which are likely to conflict with each other, to say the least.</p>
<p>These contradictions form the starting point of the Left critique of the independence movement. But even so, a vote for independence in the referendum is not the same as a vote for the SNP. It is conceivable that independence might be won and the SNP could still lose the next Scottish parliamentary election, or vice versa. Support for a national demand such as Scottish independence is quite distinguishable from support for a party that advocates it. Indeed there are good reasons for thinking that the SNP — or at least its leadership — is&#160;not as committed to independence as it and almost everybody else finds it convenient to pretend.</p>
<p>“Maximum devolution,” or “devo max,” is the constitutional option probably supported by most Scots, although it is not an option on the referendum. This would leave the Scottish Parliament in control of all state functions (including taxation), with the exception of those controlled by the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Bank of England, in relation to setting interest rates. The bulk of the SNP leadership recognizes that there is unlikely to be a majority for independence in September.</p>
<p>Devo max is therefore what they hope to achieve — and, more importantly, what they think they can achieve — in the short to medium term. Salmond cannot of course openly argue for this without incurring the wrath of the fundamentalist-nationalist wing of his party, for whom anything less than independence is betraying of the blood of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wallace" type="external">Wallace</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_the_Bruce" type="external">The Bruce</a>, and so on.</p>
<p>Thus the way he has framed the outcome of a “yes” vote is as close to devo max as possible — retention of the monarchy, the pound sterling (under the tutelage of the Treasury and the Bank of England), and membership in the EU — the last two in themselves guaranteeing that the neoliberal ascendancy would continue, regardless of the intentions of the SNP leadership. Ironically, Osborne’s and Barroso’s intransigence may have inadvertently provided Salmond with an escape clause, if he is capable of taking it.</p>
<p>The situation is further complicated, however, by the fact that, in certain circumstances, devo max would probably be acceptable to a majority of Tories, if it was politically necessary. Cameron certainly wants to win a vote against independence, but, tactically inept though he is, is also aware that even if this is achieved the demand for further devolution will be unstoppable, and would probably result in pressure for devo max.</p>
<p>Cameron effectively conceded this early after the announcement of the referendum, in a February 2012 <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2012/02/united-kingdom-scotland-world" type="external">speech</a> in Edinburgh&#160;when he offered further measures of devolution if voters rejected independence. For tactical reasons, Salmond affected to believe this was a ruse to lull the Scots into voting for the status quo, after which the promise would be quietly forgotten. It is usually wise to believe the worst about Tory intentions, but in this case Cameron is probably genuine.</p>
<p>If the essential integrity of the British state was maintained at the military-diplomatic level, the latter would be an acceptable outcome, particularly since it would place the responsibility for raising taxation and cutting expenditures on the Scottish government. Indeed, some Tory intellectuals, notably <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Montgomerie" type="external">Tim Montgomerie</a>, are already arguing that Cameron should seize the opportunity to reconstruct the British Constitution on a federal basis. This is a position that would bring the Tories into harmony with the Liberal Democrats, for whom this is a policy goal dating back to the days of the original Liberal Party.</p>
<p>In other words, given the amount of shadow play involved in the current debates, the Left needs to present arguments for a genuine independence from the British state; but the Scottish Left is split on the question. The Labour Party is officially part of the Better Together campaign (“Project Fear”) along with the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, although an unquantifiable but substantial number of Labour members either want the party to campaign separately from the parties of the ruling Westminster Coalition, or even for it to support independence.</p>
<p>The “Yes Scotland” campaign is unsurprisingly dominated by the SNP, with support from the Greens and the remnants of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). Aligned to it, but much further to the left, is the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC), which involves the SNP left, the Greens, the SSP, and the rest of the radical and revolutionary left (Solidarity, the Socialist Workers Party, etc.). RIC has held two large conferences in Glasgow and is now conducting voter registration drives in the housing schemes of Central Scotland. (For the purposes of full disclosure, I should point out that I support RIC, although this will soon become obvious.)</p>
<p>What are the respective arguments of the two camps?</p>
|
Why Scotland Should Vote Yes
| true |
https://jacobinmag.com/2014/09/why-scotland-should-vote-yes/
|
2018-10-07
| 4left
|
Why Scotland Should Vote Yes
<p>On the evening of May&#160;16, 1973, around halfway through the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin_Sane" type="external">Aladdin Sane</a> tour, I watched David Bowie play his second sold-out show at the Aberdeen Music Hall. I could not have imagined that one day I would be listening to him — or, rather, listening to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Moss" type="external">Kate Moss</a> speaking on his behalf — intervene in the debate over a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence" type="external">Scottish independence</a> referendum. Mind you, I cannot pretend that the national question was a high priority for my 15-year-old self; nor could I have imagined that there would ever be a Scottish independence referendum.</p>
<p>The message that Moss read out for Bowie at the <a href="http://www.brits.co.uk/" type="external">Brit Awards</a> on February&#160;20 this year —&#160;“Scotland, stay with us” — nevertheless deserves to be taken more seriously than it has been, and certainly more than the mixture of bluff and bullying that Scots have recently received from <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/scottish-independence/scottish-independence-george-osborne-offers-scotland-fresh-powers-but-says-no-chance-of-sharing-the-pound-9716931.html" type="external">George&#160;Osborne</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-26215963" type="external">Jose Manuel Barroso</a>, and the directors of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Life" type="external">Standard Life PLC</a>. Bowie is actually a more political artist than is often supposed, but he is in no sense a conventional left-wing one. Yet his intervention was typical of a widely held view on the Left that a “yes” vote for Scottish independence on September&#160;18 would be a disaster for “us” (meaning the English), and perhaps also for the Scots themselves. These views are also widely held in Scotland itself.</p>
<p>Before turning to these arguments, it is worth considering one pro-independence position that&#160;can only be held in England. Expressed most recently (if eccentrically) by Will Self in the <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/" type="external">New Statesman</a>,&#160;this holds that an independent Scotland would be a social-democratic — perhaps even socialist — inspiration to the English Left, finally galvanizing it into posing a serious challenge to neoliberalism and imperialism. And in some respects, a survey of social legislation in Scotland even under <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Scottish_devolution" type="external">devolution</a>, including that passed by the first two Liberal/Labour coalition governments, tends to support this perspective.</p>
<p>Scotland has free care for the elderly, free prescriptions for all, and no student tuition fees (at least for Scottish students). And the <a href="http://scotland.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/advice_topics/paying_for_a_home/housing_benefit/the_bedroom_tax" type="external">bedroom tax</a>, while it is beyond the power of Holyrood to abolish, has effectively been neutralized by the current Scottish National Party (SNP) government’s declaration (in a move supported by Labour) that it would set aside £15&#160;million to meet the additional costs of the 76,000 social housing tenants deemed to have a “spare bedroom.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, although there are longstanding private schools in Scotland, education has not been subjected to the disintegrative effect of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/10161371" type="external">academies and free schools</a>; water remains in public hands; the extent&#160;of privatization of the National Health Service in England has not been replicated north of the border; private finance initiatives and public–private partnerships are no longer in use. And while it would be absurd to pretend that racism is not a problem in Scotland, the public culture in this respect is different from England, not least because the SNP government — to its endless credit — has argued for welcoming migrants rather than attacking them.</p>
<p>We should nevertheless be skeptical about claims that, on the basis of these modest but real reforms, independence would&#160;automatically lead to the creation of a social democratic, let alone socialist, society. There is nothing intrinsically progressive about Scottish statehood — otherwise it would not be supported by reactionary types like Sir <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Souter" type="external">Brian Souter</a> of Stagecoach or Sir <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-28641991" type="external">George Mathewson</a> (formerly of the Royal Bank of Scotland), both of whom are perfectly aware of their class interests.</p>
<p>It is also true that, in economic terms, the SNP is committed to the neoliberal agenda — it is almost entirely in social terms that it has deviated to the left. This means that the SNP is presenting a highly contradictory program: on the one hand it argues&#160;for an Irish-style “competitive” tax regime for the corporations, while on the other claiming that it will be able to provide a Scandinavian-style welfare state. Nor is this the only contradiction: the SNP is committed to removing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMNB_Clyde" type="external">nuclear weapons</a> from the Clyde, but also to remaining within NATO, positions which are likely to conflict with each other, to say the least.</p>
<p>These contradictions form the starting point of the Left critique of the independence movement. But even so, a vote for independence in the referendum is not the same as a vote for the SNP. It is conceivable that independence might be won and the SNP could still lose the next Scottish parliamentary election, or vice versa. Support for a national demand such as Scottish independence is quite distinguishable from support for a party that advocates it. Indeed there are good reasons for thinking that the SNP — or at least its leadership — is&#160;not as committed to independence as it and almost everybody else finds it convenient to pretend.</p>
<p>“Maximum devolution,” or “devo max,” is the constitutional option probably supported by most Scots, although it is not an option on the referendum. This would leave the Scottish Parliament in control of all state functions (including taxation), with the exception of those controlled by the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Bank of England, in relation to setting interest rates. The bulk of the SNP leadership recognizes that there is unlikely to be a majority for independence in September.</p>
<p>Devo max is therefore what they hope to achieve — and, more importantly, what they think they can achieve — in the short to medium term. Salmond cannot of course openly argue for this without incurring the wrath of the fundamentalist-nationalist wing of his party, for whom anything less than independence is betraying of the blood of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wallace" type="external">Wallace</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_the_Bruce" type="external">The Bruce</a>, and so on.</p>
<p>Thus the way he has framed the outcome of a “yes” vote is as close to devo max as possible — retention of the monarchy, the pound sterling (under the tutelage of the Treasury and the Bank of England), and membership in the EU — the last two in themselves guaranteeing that the neoliberal ascendancy would continue, regardless of the intentions of the SNP leadership. Ironically, Osborne’s and Barroso’s intransigence may have inadvertently provided Salmond with an escape clause, if he is capable of taking it.</p>
<p>The situation is further complicated, however, by the fact that, in certain circumstances, devo max would probably be acceptable to a majority of Tories, if it was politically necessary. Cameron certainly wants to win a vote against independence, but, tactically inept though he is, is also aware that even if this is achieved the demand for further devolution will be unstoppable, and would probably result in pressure for devo max.</p>
<p>Cameron effectively conceded this early after the announcement of the referendum, in a February 2012 <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2012/02/united-kingdom-scotland-world" type="external">speech</a> in Edinburgh&#160;when he offered further measures of devolution if voters rejected independence. For tactical reasons, Salmond affected to believe this was a ruse to lull the Scots into voting for the status quo, after which the promise would be quietly forgotten. It is usually wise to believe the worst about Tory intentions, but in this case Cameron is probably genuine.</p>
<p>If the essential integrity of the British state was maintained at the military-diplomatic level, the latter would be an acceptable outcome, particularly since it would place the responsibility for raising taxation and cutting expenditures on the Scottish government. Indeed, some Tory intellectuals, notably <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Montgomerie" type="external">Tim Montgomerie</a>, are already arguing that Cameron should seize the opportunity to reconstruct the British Constitution on a federal basis. This is a position that would bring the Tories into harmony with the Liberal Democrats, for whom this is a policy goal dating back to the days of the original Liberal Party.</p>
<p>In other words, given the amount of shadow play involved in the current debates, the Left needs to present arguments for a genuine independence from the British state; but the Scottish Left is split on the question. The Labour Party is officially part of the Better Together campaign (“Project Fear”) along with the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, although an unquantifiable but substantial number of Labour members either want the party to campaign separately from the parties of the ruling Westminster Coalition, or even for it to support independence.</p>
<p>The “Yes Scotland” campaign is unsurprisingly dominated by the SNP, with support from the Greens and the remnants of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). Aligned to it, but much further to the left, is the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC), which involves the SNP left, the Greens, the SSP, and the rest of the radical and revolutionary left (Solidarity, the Socialist Workers Party, etc.). RIC has held two large conferences in Glasgow and is now conducting voter registration drives in the housing schemes of Central Scotland. (For the purposes of full disclosure, I should point out that I support RIC, although this will soon become obvious.)</p>
<p>What are the respective arguments of the two camps?</p>
| 5,727 |
<p>Author and activist Tarek Fatah explains exactly how foreign money makes it into the hands of radical Canadian Muslim groups:</p>
<p />
<p>In some instances, individuals enter the country carrying tens of thousands of dollars, which is distributed to individuals who then "donate" it to a mosque or school.</p>
<p>Another scheme involves selling RevCan charitable donation receipts!</p>
<p>Muslim schools in Canada, he says, have been established because they will attract less suspicions than mosques.</p>
<p>He points to <a href="" type="internal">the recent refusal of a Muslim high school soccer team</a>to play against female players.</p>
<p>"Where do you think these ideas are coming from?" he asks.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0470841168/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=15121&amp;creative=330641&amp;creativeASIN=0470841168&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thereb00-2" type="external">Fatah</a> offers drastic ideas as to how the Canadian government can crack down on this money laundering operation.</p>
<p>"We're not fighting this war like we fought Hitler," he tells me, adding:</p>
<p>"How many more people have to die" at the hands of domestic jihadists before we wake up?</p>
<p>This is a thought provoking conversation you won't want to miss.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.TheRebel.Media/TheMegaphone" type="external">JOIN TheRebel.media</a>for more fearless news and commentary you won't find anywhere else.Who are Canada's radical Muslim leaders? <a href="" type="external">FIND OUT and fight back at CanadianJihad.ca</a></p>
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Tarek Fatah: Here's how to stop foreign funding of Canada's Muslim radicals once and for all
| true |
http://therebel.media/tarek_fatah_here_s_how_to_stop
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2015-06-05
| 0right
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Tarek Fatah: Here's how to stop foreign funding of Canada's Muslim radicals once and for all
<p>Author and activist Tarek Fatah explains exactly how foreign money makes it into the hands of radical Canadian Muslim groups:</p>
<p />
<p>In some instances, individuals enter the country carrying tens of thousands of dollars, which is distributed to individuals who then "donate" it to a mosque or school.</p>
<p>Another scheme involves selling RevCan charitable donation receipts!</p>
<p>Muslim schools in Canada, he says, have been established because they will attract less suspicions than mosques.</p>
<p>He points to <a href="" type="internal">the recent refusal of a Muslim high school soccer team</a>to play against female players.</p>
<p>"Where do you think these ideas are coming from?" he asks.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0470841168/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=15121&amp;creative=330641&amp;creativeASIN=0470841168&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thereb00-2" type="external">Fatah</a> offers drastic ideas as to how the Canadian government can crack down on this money laundering operation.</p>
<p>"We're not fighting this war like we fought Hitler," he tells me, adding:</p>
<p>"How many more people have to die" at the hands of domestic jihadists before we wake up?</p>
<p>This is a thought provoking conversation you won't want to miss.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.TheRebel.Media/TheMegaphone" type="external">JOIN TheRebel.media</a>for more fearless news and commentary you won't find anywhere else.Who are Canada's radical Muslim leaders? <a href="" type="external">FIND OUT and fight back at CanadianJihad.ca</a></p>
| 5,728 |
<p>Soon after news of the terrorist bombings in Brussels, CNN broke away&#160;from its reporters on the ground for an over-the-phone appearance of&#160;a more valued guest: Donald Trump.</p>
<p>CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked the&#160;Republican frontrunner what he would do if he were president of the&#160;United States, while CNN played a video loop of the devastated Brussels&#160;airport, the sounds of victims’ voices audible in the background.&#160;Trump held forth for 11 minutes.</p>
<p>CNN wasn’t the only network to take his call: Fox News, CBS, NBC and&#160;ABC all put Trump on the air, according to a count by&#160;Huffington Post media reporter&#160;Michael Calderone.</p>
<p>“What was surprising in this case, it was going on while the body&#160;count still wasn’t clear and people were still being let out of the&#160;airport in Brussels and a lot of details on the ground were still&#160;unknown," Calderone said.</p>
<p>That open invitation to Trump during a breaking news story highlights&#160;the unprecedented level of free promotion (nearly $2 billion in what’s&#160;called “earned media”) given to a single candidate in 2016. In&#160;exchange, the networks are seeing a big boost to their ratings and&#160;their ad revenue. As CBS’ Les Moonves said recently, Trump's campaign “may not be&#160;good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”</p>
<p>Not only is it free, it’s convenient. Over-the-phone interviews of&#160;political candidates used to be rare for broadcast television news.</p>
<p>Not any more. Trump has perfected the art of the “phoner” from the&#160;comfort of his office in Trump Tower or, for all we know, in his&#160;pajamas.</p>
<p>The free media also applies to coverage of Trump's campaign rallies.</p>
<p>There too, he has been able to exercise an unusual amount of control.&#160;Early on, the Trump campaign dictated the terms of where camera crews&#160;could be during events and the networks more or less agreed, according&#160;to Buzzfeed News. As a result, when actual news events occur —&#160;like&#160;disturbances and physical altercations in the crowd — the media is&#160;unable to capture them.</p>
<p>Kyle Blaine, deputy politics editor at Buzzfeed, interviewed several&#160;network staffers who say they never knew the campaign would turn out&#160;this way. “A lot of the rank-and-file at the networks are&#160;uncomfortable with turning over their platform to him," he said.</p>
<p>Producers and executives are “checking their judgement at the door” in&#160;exchange for the bottom line, said former CNN bureau chief Frank&#160;Sesno, who now directs the School of Media and Public Affairs at The&#160;George Washington University.</p>
<p>“They’re allowing one candidate to set the agenda in an extraordinary&#160;way,” Sesno said. “It has a lot to do with the bottom line. Politics&#160;brings money to broadcasting and to media in general at a time when&#160;other revenue stream have been declining. So this is the golden goose —&#160;do you kill the golden goose?”</p>
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Trump gets advantages on broadcast TV other candidates can only dream of
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2016-03-28/trump-gets-advantages-broadcast-tv-other-candidates-can-only-dream
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2016-03-28
| 3left-center
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Trump gets advantages on broadcast TV other candidates can only dream of
<p>Soon after news of the terrorist bombings in Brussels, CNN broke away&#160;from its reporters on the ground for an over-the-phone appearance of&#160;a more valued guest: Donald Trump.</p>
<p>CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked the&#160;Republican frontrunner what he would do if he were president of the&#160;United States, while CNN played a video loop of the devastated Brussels&#160;airport, the sounds of victims’ voices audible in the background.&#160;Trump held forth for 11 minutes.</p>
<p>CNN wasn’t the only network to take his call: Fox News, CBS, NBC and&#160;ABC all put Trump on the air, according to a count by&#160;Huffington Post media reporter&#160;Michael Calderone.</p>
<p>“What was surprising in this case, it was going on while the body&#160;count still wasn’t clear and people were still being let out of the&#160;airport in Brussels and a lot of details on the ground were still&#160;unknown," Calderone said.</p>
<p>That open invitation to Trump during a breaking news story highlights&#160;the unprecedented level of free promotion (nearly $2 billion in what’s&#160;called “earned media”) given to a single candidate in 2016. In&#160;exchange, the networks are seeing a big boost to their ratings and&#160;their ad revenue. As CBS’ Les Moonves said recently, Trump's campaign “may not be&#160;good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”</p>
<p>Not only is it free, it’s convenient. Over-the-phone interviews of&#160;political candidates used to be rare for broadcast television news.</p>
<p>Not any more. Trump has perfected the art of the “phoner” from the&#160;comfort of his office in Trump Tower or, for all we know, in his&#160;pajamas.</p>
<p>The free media also applies to coverage of Trump's campaign rallies.</p>
<p>There too, he has been able to exercise an unusual amount of control.&#160;Early on, the Trump campaign dictated the terms of where camera crews&#160;could be during events and the networks more or less agreed, according&#160;to Buzzfeed News. As a result, when actual news events occur —&#160;like&#160;disturbances and physical altercations in the crowd — the media is&#160;unable to capture them.</p>
<p>Kyle Blaine, deputy politics editor at Buzzfeed, interviewed several&#160;network staffers who say they never knew the campaign would turn out&#160;this way. “A lot of the rank-and-file at the networks are&#160;uncomfortable with turning over their platform to him," he said.</p>
<p>Producers and executives are “checking their judgement at the door” in&#160;exchange for the bottom line, said former CNN bureau chief Frank&#160;Sesno, who now directs the School of Media and Public Affairs at The&#160;George Washington University.</p>
<p>“They’re allowing one candidate to set the agenda in an extraordinary&#160;way,” Sesno said. “It has a lot to do with the bottom line. Politics&#160;brings money to broadcasting and to media in general at a time when&#160;other revenue stream have been declining. So this is the golden goose —&#160;do you kill the golden goose?”</p>
| 5,729 |
<p />
<p>FOX Business: The Power to Prosper</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The blue chips rallied as much as 200 points, but lagging technology shares made it difficult forced the Nasdaq to struggle to stay in the green.</p>
<p>Today's Markets</p>
<p>As of 3:10 p.m. ET, the <a href="" type="internal">Dow Jones</a> Industrial Average climbed 200 points, or 1.9%, to 10,971, the S&amp;P 500 gained 15.4 points, or 1.4%, to 1,152 and the <a href="" type="internal">Nasdaq</a> Composite rose 3.2 points, or 0.12%, to 2,486.</p>
<p>Trading was very choppy on Monday, with the Dow posting triple-digit gains, but the Nasdaq flipping between positive and negative territory. &#160;The blue chips were led higher by a broad swatch of issues, including Boeing (NYSE:BA), United Technologies (NYSE:UTX) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM).</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was a major drag on the Nasdaq after analysts at JPMorgan Chase noted the world's largest technology company is slashing parts orders for its super-popular iPad by 25% for the fourth quarter. &#160;The move is not forecast to be in preparation of a new model, the report noted. Boeing, meanwhile, signed a final contract to provide the first long-awaited Boeing 787 Dreamliner.</p>
<p>From a broad level, financials performed the best by far, while technology shares lagged behind significantly.</p>
<p>The economic calendar is fairly light on Monday, with a report on new home sales being the only major release. &#160;Sales of new homes fell 2.3% in August from July to an annualized unit rate of 295,000, according to the Commerce Department, which was in line with expectations. &#160;This represents the fourth-straight monthly decline. &#160;The level of new homes on the market hit a record low, which, could potentially help provide a bottom to prices.&#160;However, even with inventory levels being low, some analysts forecast continued sluggishness in homebuilding.</p>
<p>"Even with very low levels of inventory, the soft pace of sales continues to keep inventory elevated in terms of months' supply, restricting the need for new home building," economists at Barclays Capital said in a research note.</p>
<p>The new home industry has been under continued pressure as a result of weak lending conditions, high supply, and generally depressed prices across the country.</p>
<p>With little data on tap, Monday's session may be another volatile ride that is driven by headlines on Europe's sovereign debt crisis, according to Ben Critchley, sales trader at IG Index, a London-based trading firm.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">European Central Bank</a> Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny suggested Monday that a rate cut by the region's central bank shouldn't be ruled out, according to a report by Reuters. &#160;The generally inflation-hawkish ECB halted its rate cuts at its September meeting only five months after starting to hike rate amid increasing economic headwinds.</p>
<p>There were also reports over the weekend regarding additional measures to make it easier to euro zone countries like Greece to access funding, which has been struggling with a nearly $500 billion public debt load and has received enormous bailouts from the <a href="" type="internal">European Union</a> and <a href="" type="internal">International Monetary Fund</a>. &#160;The country, analysts say, is likely to default on its debt if it doesn't receive the next round of rescue aid next month. &#160;The increased likelihood of a default has made it more expensive for other highly-indebted euro zone countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal to access funding in the private markets, sparking fears of the debt crisis could escalate significantly should Greece default.</p>
<p>In particular, policymakers are said to be in discussions about strengthening the so-called <a href="" type="internal">European Financial Stability Facility</a>, which was set up in 2010 to help ease the pressures of the debt crisis.</p>
<p>Still, many market participants remained wary of policymakers' ability, or inclination, to further enhance the size of rescue funds.</p>
<p>'Dysfunctional Policy Performances'</p>
<p>"Euro area politicians and policymakers are still behind the curve in tackling the debt problems comprehensively enough to successfully contain or even reverse contagion," analysts at Barclays Capital wrote in a note to clients. "This overall policy uncertainty is not only not helpful, it is also damaging market confidence."</p>
<p>In fact, economists at <a href="" type="internal">Deutsche Bank</a> blamed "dysfunctional policy performances" in the U.S. and Europe as main contributors to damaging the U.S. economy, particularly, in hurting Americans' wealth and confidence. &#160;The German-based investment bank also warned that if "policy uncertainty intensifies further ... a recession could still ensue."</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Wall Street</a> was in selloff mode last week: the Dow plummeted 738 points, or 6.4%, while the broader S&amp;P 500 shed 6.5%. &#160;The flight from risky assets wasn't limited to equities, as oil and <a href="" type="internal">gold prices</a> plummeted nearly 10%, while the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note hit historical lows repeatedly.</p>
<p>In currencies, the euro fell 0.19% against the U.S. dollar in very volatile trading, while the greenback slumped 0.1% against a basket of world currencies.</p>
<p>Energy markets were in the green. &#160;Light, sweet crude gained 39 cents, or 0.49%, to $80.24 a barrel. &#160;Wholesale RBOB gasoline rose 1 cent, or 0.58%, to $2.57 a gallon.</p>
<p>Gold tumbled $45.00, or 2.7%, to $1,595 a troy ounce. &#160;The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 1.905% from 1.839%.</p>
<p>Corporate News</p>
<p>Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) struck a deal with Dreamworks Animation (NASDAQ:DWA) to stream first-run movies and television specials from the studio behind "Shrek" and "Madagascar." Shares were sharply higher on the news.</p>
<p>Berkshire Hathaway unveiled plans to buy back class A and B shares at no more than a 10% premium, sending shares soaring.</p>
<p>McGraw-Hill (NYSE:MHP) warned shareholders that the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering punishing the company’s Standard &amp; Poor’s unit due to its handling of a 2007 security that imploded.</p>
<p>Foreign Markets&#160;</p>
<p>The English FTSE 100 climbed 0.45% to 5,089 and the German DAX soared 2.9% to 5,346.</p>
<p>In Asia, the Japanese Nikkei 225 slumped 2.2% to 8,374 and the Chinese Hang Seng dropped 1.5% to 17,408.</p>
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Wall Street Rallies, But Tech Shares Lag Behind
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/09/26/wall-street-rallies-but-tech-shares-lag-behind.html
|
2016-03-07
| 0right
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Wall Street Rallies, But Tech Shares Lag Behind
<p />
<p>FOX Business: The Power to Prosper</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The blue chips rallied as much as 200 points, but lagging technology shares made it difficult forced the Nasdaq to struggle to stay in the green.</p>
<p>Today's Markets</p>
<p>As of 3:10 p.m. ET, the <a href="" type="internal">Dow Jones</a> Industrial Average climbed 200 points, or 1.9%, to 10,971, the S&amp;P 500 gained 15.4 points, or 1.4%, to 1,152 and the <a href="" type="internal">Nasdaq</a> Composite rose 3.2 points, or 0.12%, to 2,486.</p>
<p>Trading was very choppy on Monday, with the Dow posting triple-digit gains, but the Nasdaq flipping between positive and negative territory. &#160;The blue chips were led higher by a broad swatch of issues, including Boeing (NYSE:BA), United Technologies (NYSE:UTX) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM).</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was a major drag on the Nasdaq after analysts at JPMorgan Chase noted the world's largest technology company is slashing parts orders for its super-popular iPad by 25% for the fourth quarter. &#160;The move is not forecast to be in preparation of a new model, the report noted. Boeing, meanwhile, signed a final contract to provide the first long-awaited Boeing 787 Dreamliner.</p>
<p>From a broad level, financials performed the best by far, while technology shares lagged behind significantly.</p>
<p>The economic calendar is fairly light on Monday, with a report on new home sales being the only major release. &#160;Sales of new homes fell 2.3% in August from July to an annualized unit rate of 295,000, according to the Commerce Department, which was in line with expectations. &#160;This represents the fourth-straight monthly decline. &#160;The level of new homes on the market hit a record low, which, could potentially help provide a bottom to prices.&#160;However, even with inventory levels being low, some analysts forecast continued sluggishness in homebuilding.</p>
<p>"Even with very low levels of inventory, the soft pace of sales continues to keep inventory elevated in terms of months' supply, restricting the need for new home building," economists at Barclays Capital said in a research note.</p>
<p>The new home industry has been under continued pressure as a result of weak lending conditions, high supply, and generally depressed prices across the country.</p>
<p>With little data on tap, Monday's session may be another volatile ride that is driven by headlines on Europe's sovereign debt crisis, according to Ben Critchley, sales trader at IG Index, a London-based trading firm.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">European Central Bank</a> Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny suggested Monday that a rate cut by the region's central bank shouldn't be ruled out, according to a report by Reuters. &#160;The generally inflation-hawkish ECB halted its rate cuts at its September meeting only five months after starting to hike rate amid increasing economic headwinds.</p>
<p>There were also reports over the weekend regarding additional measures to make it easier to euro zone countries like Greece to access funding, which has been struggling with a nearly $500 billion public debt load and has received enormous bailouts from the <a href="" type="internal">European Union</a> and <a href="" type="internal">International Monetary Fund</a>. &#160;The country, analysts say, is likely to default on its debt if it doesn't receive the next round of rescue aid next month. &#160;The increased likelihood of a default has made it more expensive for other highly-indebted euro zone countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal to access funding in the private markets, sparking fears of the debt crisis could escalate significantly should Greece default.</p>
<p>In particular, policymakers are said to be in discussions about strengthening the so-called <a href="" type="internal">European Financial Stability Facility</a>, which was set up in 2010 to help ease the pressures of the debt crisis.</p>
<p>Still, many market participants remained wary of policymakers' ability, or inclination, to further enhance the size of rescue funds.</p>
<p>'Dysfunctional Policy Performances'</p>
<p>"Euro area politicians and policymakers are still behind the curve in tackling the debt problems comprehensively enough to successfully contain or even reverse contagion," analysts at Barclays Capital wrote in a note to clients. "This overall policy uncertainty is not only not helpful, it is also damaging market confidence."</p>
<p>In fact, economists at <a href="" type="internal">Deutsche Bank</a> blamed "dysfunctional policy performances" in the U.S. and Europe as main contributors to damaging the U.S. economy, particularly, in hurting Americans' wealth and confidence. &#160;The German-based investment bank also warned that if "policy uncertainty intensifies further ... a recession could still ensue."</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Wall Street</a> was in selloff mode last week: the Dow plummeted 738 points, or 6.4%, while the broader S&amp;P 500 shed 6.5%. &#160;The flight from risky assets wasn't limited to equities, as oil and <a href="" type="internal">gold prices</a> plummeted nearly 10%, while the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note hit historical lows repeatedly.</p>
<p>In currencies, the euro fell 0.19% against the U.S. dollar in very volatile trading, while the greenback slumped 0.1% against a basket of world currencies.</p>
<p>Energy markets were in the green. &#160;Light, sweet crude gained 39 cents, or 0.49%, to $80.24 a barrel. &#160;Wholesale RBOB gasoline rose 1 cent, or 0.58%, to $2.57 a gallon.</p>
<p>Gold tumbled $45.00, or 2.7%, to $1,595 a troy ounce. &#160;The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 1.905% from 1.839%.</p>
<p>Corporate News</p>
<p>Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) struck a deal with Dreamworks Animation (NASDAQ:DWA) to stream first-run movies and television specials from the studio behind "Shrek" and "Madagascar." Shares were sharply higher on the news.</p>
<p>Berkshire Hathaway unveiled plans to buy back class A and B shares at no more than a 10% premium, sending shares soaring.</p>
<p>McGraw-Hill (NYSE:MHP) warned shareholders that the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering punishing the company’s Standard &amp; Poor’s unit due to its handling of a 2007 security that imploded.</p>
<p>Foreign Markets&#160;</p>
<p>The English FTSE 100 climbed 0.45% to 5,089 and the German DAX soared 2.9% to 5,346.</p>
<p>In Asia, the Japanese Nikkei 225 slumped 2.2% to 8,374 and the Chinese Hang Seng dropped 1.5% to 17,408.</p>
| 5,730 |
<p>SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — New York Jets wide receiver Robby Anderson faces a slew of charges in Florida, including threatening a police officer's family and saying he would rape the officer's wife.</p>
<p>A Sunrise police report shows the 24-year-old Anderson was stopped early Friday in a sport utility vehicle after it ran two red lights and was swerving while traveling about 105 mph (170 kph) in a 45 mph zone.</p>
<p>After he was stopped, police say he made the threats and then boasted about how much money he has. Jail records show Anderson faces nine charges, including threatening harm to a public servant, resisting arrest and traffic violations.</p>
<p>The records don't list an attorney for Anderson.</p>
<p>"This is a pending legal matter and we will have no further comments," the Jets said in a statement.</p>
<p>The NFL is also aware of the situation and league spokesman Brian McCarthy said "we will be looking into this matter."</p>
<p>This is the latest legal trouble for Anderson, a 2011 graduate of South Plantation High School. <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/new-york-jets-receiver-robby-anderson-arrested-miami" type="external">He was arrested in May and charged with resisting arrest and obstruction of justice</a> after sparring with officials who asked him to leave a Miami music festival. Anderson's next scheduled court date for that incident is on March 19.</p>
<p>The league is also investigating that incident, and Anderson could face punishment from the NFL under its conduct policy.</p>
<p>Anderson set career highs with 63 catches, 941 yards receiving and seven touchdowns in his second season with the Jets. <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/robby-anderson-establishing-himself-go-guy-jets" type="external">He was a bright spot in the team's 5-11 season</a> and appeared on his way to a 1,000-yard campaign until quarterback Josh McCown went down with a broken left hand in Week 14.</p>
<p>Anderson went undrafted out of Temple in 2016 and signed with New York as a free agent. He made the opening day roster with an outstanding training camp and finished with 42 catches for 587 yards and two TDs. Anderson flourished in the Jets' offense this season, establishing himself as one of the top young speed receivers in the league.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP NFL: <a href="https://pro32.ap.org" type="external">https://pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
<p>SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — New York Jets wide receiver Robby Anderson faces a slew of charges in Florida, including threatening a police officer's family and saying he would rape the officer's wife.</p>
<p>A Sunrise police report shows the 24-year-old Anderson was stopped early Friday in a sport utility vehicle after it ran two red lights and was swerving while traveling about 105 mph (170 kph) in a 45 mph zone.</p>
<p>After he was stopped, police say he made the threats and then boasted about how much money he has. Jail records show Anderson faces nine charges, including threatening harm to a public servant, resisting arrest and traffic violations.</p>
<p>The records don't list an attorney for Anderson.</p>
<p>"This is a pending legal matter and we will have no further comments," the Jets said in a statement.</p>
<p>The NFL is also aware of the situation and league spokesman Brian McCarthy said "we will be looking into this matter."</p>
<p>This is the latest legal trouble for Anderson, a 2011 graduate of South Plantation High School. <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/new-york-jets-receiver-robby-anderson-arrested-miami" type="external">He was arrested in May and charged with resisting arrest and obstruction of justice</a> after sparring with officials who asked him to leave a Miami music festival. Anderson's next scheduled court date for that incident is on March 19.</p>
<p>The league is also investigating that incident, and Anderson could face punishment from the NFL under its conduct policy.</p>
<p>Anderson set career highs with 63 catches, 941 yards receiving and seven touchdowns in his second season with the Jets. <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/robby-anderson-establishing-himself-go-guy-jets" type="external">He was a bright spot in the team's 5-11 season</a> and appeared on his way to a 1,000-yard campaign until quarterback Josh McCown went down with a broken left hand in Week 14.</p>
<p>Anderson went undrafted out of Temple in 2016 and signed with New York as a free agent. He made the opening day roster with an outstanding training camp and finished with 42 catches for 587 yards and two TDs. Anderson flourished in the Jets' offense this season, establishing himself as one of the top young speed receivers in the league.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP NFL: <a href="https://pro32.ap.org" type="external">https://pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
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Jets WR Anderson arrested in Florida on slew of charges
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https://apnews.com/amp/3994e4ca9d71433faf213b175ebc1f5e
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2018-01-20
| 2least
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Jets WR Anderson arrested in Florida on slew of charges
<p>SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — New York Jets wide receiver Robby Anderson faces a slew of charges in Florida, including threatening a police officer's family and saying he would rape the officer's wife.</p>
<p>A Sunrise police report shows the 24-year-old Anderson was stopped early Friday in a sport utility vehicle after it ran two red lights and was swerving while traveling about 105 mph (170 kph) in a 45 mph zone.</p>
<p>After he was stopped, police say he made the threats and then boasted about how much money he has. Jail records show Anderson faces nine charges, including threatening harm to a public servant, resisting arrest and traffic violations.</p>
<p>The records don't list an attorney for Anderson.</p>
<p>"This is a pending legal matter and we will have no further comments," the Jets said in a statement.</p>
<p>The NFL is also aware of the situation and league spokesman Brian McCarthy said "we will be looking into this matter."</p>
<p>This is the latest legal trouble for Anderson, a 2011 graduate of South Plantation High School. <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/new-york-jets-receiver-robby-anderson-arrested-miami" type="external">He was arrested in May and charged with resisting arrest and obstruction of justice</a> after sparring with officials who asked him to leave a Miami music festival. Anderson's next scheduled court date for that incident is on March 19.</p>
<p>The league is also investigating that incident, and Anderson could face punishment from the NFL under its conduct policy.</p>
<p>Anderson set career highs with 63 catches, 941 yards receiving and seven touchdowns in his second season with the Jets. <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/robby-anderson-establishing-himself-go-guy-jets" type="external">He was a bright spot in the team's 5-11 season</a> and appeared on his way to a 1,000-yard campaign until quarterback Josh McCown went down with a broken left hand in Week 14.</p>
<p>Anderson went undrafted out of Temple in 2016 and signed with New York as a free agent. He made the opening day roster with an outstanding training camp and finished with 42 catches for 587 yards and two TDs. Anderson flourished in the Jets' offense this season, establishing himself as one of the top young speed receivers in the league.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP NFL: <a href="https://pro32.ap.org" type="external">https://pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
<p>SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — New York Jets wide receiver Robby Anderson faces a slew of charges in Florida, including threatening a police officer's family and saying he would rape the officer's wife.</p>
<p>A Sunrise police report shows the 24-year-old Anderson was stopped early Friday in a sport utility vehicle after it ran two red lights and was swerving while traveling about 105 mph (170 kph) in a 45 mph zone.</p>
<p>After he was stopped, police say he made the threats and then boasted about how much money he has. Jail records show Anderson faces nine charges, including threatening harm to a public servant, resisting arrest and traffic violations.</p>
<p>The records don't list an attorney for Anderson.</p>
<p>"This is a pending legal matter and we will have no further comments," the Jets said in a statement.</p>
<p>The NFL is also aware of the situation and league spokesman Brian McCarthy said "we will be looking into this matter."</p>
<p>This is the latest legal trouble for Anderson, a 2011 graduate of South Plantation High School. <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/new-york-jets-receiver-robby-anderson-arrested-miami" type="external">He was arrested in May and charged with resisting arrest and obstruction of justice</a> after sparring with officials who asked him to leave a Miami music festival. Anderson's next scheduled court date for that incident is on March 19.</p>
<p>The league is also investigating that incident, and Anderson could face punishment from the NFL under its conduct policy.</p>
<p>Anderson set career highs with 63 catches, 941 yards receiving and seven touchdowns in his second season with the Jets. <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/robby-anderson-establishing-himself-go-guy-jets" type="external">He was a bright spot in the team's 5-11 season</a> and appeared on his way to a 1,000-yard campaign until quarterback Josh McCown went down with a broken left hand in Week 14.</p>
<p>Anderson went undrafted out of Temple in 2016 and signed with New York as a free agent. He made the opening day roster with an outstanding training camp and finished with 42 catches for 587 yards and two TDs. Anderson flourished in the Jets' offense this season, establishing himself as one of the top young speed receivers in the league.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP NFL: <a href="https://pro32.ap.org" type="external">https://pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
| 5,731 |
<p />
<p>A hearing has been set for Friday for Steven A. Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors to plead guilty to securities and wire fraud charges after years of investigations into insider trading at the embattled hedge fund.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The proceeding was disclosed in an order by U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in Manhattan made public Tuesday, the day after prosecutors announced SAC agreed to pay $1.2 billion in penalties as part of a plea agreement.</p>
<p>SAC has agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud and four counts of securities fraud. The agreement came after the fund was indicted in July on insider trading charges in connection with offenses committed by several employees over more than decade.</p>
<p>The $1.2 billion comes on top of a $616 million settlement announced in March with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Of the latest sum, $900 million goes toward resolving the criminal action.</p>
<p>As part of the settlement, SAC also agreed to terminate its investment advisory business.</p>
<p>Cohen, who has not been personally charged, is expected to continue managing about $9 billion of his own money via a so-called family office.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>SAC said in a statement that it took "responsibility for the handful of men who pleaded guilty and whose conduct gave rise to SAC's liability.</p>
<p>The plea hearing before Swain on Friday is scheduled for 3 p.m. (2000 GMT)</p>
<p>The case is USA v. S.A.C. Capital Advisors, L.P. et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 13-cr-00541.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)</p>
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SAC Capital's Plea Hearing Set for Friday
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SAC Capital's Plea Hearing Set for Friday
<p />
<p>A hearing has been set for Friday for Steven A. Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors to plead guilty to securities and wire fraud charges after years of investigations into insider trading at the embattled hedge fund.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The proceeding was disclosed in an order by U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in Manhattan made public Tuesday, the day after prosecutors announced SAC agreed to pay $1.2 billion in penalties as part of a plea agreement.</p>
<p>SAC has agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud and four counts of securities fraud. The agreement came after the fund was indicted in July on insider trading charges in connection with offenses committed by several employees over more than decade.</p>
<p>The $1.2 billion comes on top of a $616 million settlement announced in March with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Of the latest sum, $900 million goes toward resolving the criminal action.</p>
<p>As part of the settlement, SAC also agreed to terminate its investment advisory business.</p>
<p>Cohen, who has not been personally charged, is expected to continue managing about $9 billion of his own money via a so-called family office.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>SAC said in a statement that it took "responsibility for the handful of men who pleaded guilty and whose conduct gave rise to SAC's liability.</p>
<p>The plea hearing before Swain on Friday is scheduled for 3 p.m. (2000 GMT)</p>
<p>The case is USA v. S.A.C. Capital Advisors, L.P. et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 13-cr-00541.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)</p>
| 5,732 |
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/saudi-arabia/110615/saudi-womens-rights-driving-rights?page=full" type="external">Women in Saudi Arabia</a> have started openly driving cars in defiance of a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13809684" type="external">ban on female drivers</a> in the kingdom.</p>
<p>The campaign has been publicized on social networking sites, including <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/women2drive" type="external">Twitter</a>, Facebook and YouTube, where women have been posting images of themselves driving.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Women2Drive" type="external">Women2Drive Facebook page</a>, which includes messages of support from around the world, said the campaign would continue until a royal decree reversed the ban.</p>
<p>"All that we need is to run our errands without depending on drivers," said one woman in a film posted Friday, the BBC reports.</p>
<p>While there are no traffic laws that make it illegal for women to drive in Saudi Arabia, the ban is a religious fatwa imposed by conservative Muslim clerics.</p>
<p>"The <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/saudi-arabia/110615/saudi-womens-rights-driving-rights?page=full" type="external">driving ban</a> is increasingly upsetting Saudi women, who now make up more than half of this country's university students. Graduating in record numbers, they are looking for jobs and they want to drive themselves to work, to the shopping mall, to the grocery store and to their children's schools," <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/saudi-arabia/110615/saudi-womens-rights-driving-rights?page=full" type="external">wrote GlobalPost's Caryle Murphy</a> in a story suggested and voted on by GlobalPost readers.</p>
<p>"The new social media tools and recent peaceful street action in other Arab countries like Egypt have given the campaign quite a bit of steam," Murphy wrote.</p>
<p>Supporters of the ban say it protects women, and prevents them from leaving home unescorted or travelling with an unrelated male.</p>
<p>Last month, a woman was arrested and spent more than a week in jail after driving a car and posting a video of herself online.</p>
<p>Manal Al Sherif, 32, was accused of "besmirching the kingdom's reputation abroad and stirring up public opinion." She was released after being forced to sign a form promising never to drive again.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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Saudi Arabia women drive cars to protest ban
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https://pri.org/stories/2011-06-17/saudi-arabia-women-drive-cars-protest-ban
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2011-06-17
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Saudi Arabia women drive cars to protest ban
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/saudi-arabia/110615/saudi-womens-rights-driving-rights?page=full" type="external">Women in Saudi Arabia</a> have started openly driving cars in defiance of a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13809684" type="external">ban on female drivers</a> in the kingdom.</p>
<p>The campaign has been publicized on social networking sites, including <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/women2drive" type="external">Twitter</a>, Facebook and YouTube, where women have been posting images of themselves driving.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Women2Drive" type="external">Women2Drive Facebook page</a>, which includes messages of support from around the world, said the campaign would continue until a royal decree reversed the ban.</p>
<p>"All that we need is to run our errands without depending on drivers," said one woman in a film posted Friday, the BBC reports.</p>
<p>While there are no traffic laws that make it illegal for women to drive in Saudi Arabia, the ban is a religious fatwa imposed by conservative Muslim clerics.</p>
<p>"The <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/saudi-arabia/110615/saudi-womens-rights-driving-rights?page=full" type="external">driving ban</a> is increasingly upsetting Saudi women, who now make up more than half of this country's university students. Graduating in record numbers, they are looking for jobs and they want to drive themselves to work, to the shopping mall, to the grocery store and to their children's schools," <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/saudi-arabia/110615/saudi-womens-rights-driving-rights?page=full" type="external">wrote GlobalPost's Caryle Murphy</a> in a story suggested and voted on by GlobalPost readers.</p>
<p>"The new social media tools and recent peaceful street action in other Arab countries like Egypt have given the campaign quite a bit of steam," Murphy wrote.</p>
<p>Supporters of the ban say it protects women, and prevents them from leaving home unescorted or travelling with an unrelated male.</p>
<p>Last month, a woman was arrested and spent more than a week in jail after driving a car and posting a video of herself online.</p>
<p>Manal Al Sherif, 32, was accused of "besmirching the kingdom's reputation abroad and stirring up public opinion." She was released after being forced to sign a form promising never to drive again.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 5,733 |
<p>Standard Chartered PLC (STAN.LN) said Tuesday that it is looking at setting up a new office for about 500 staff in Eastern Europe.</p>
<p>The emerging markets-focused bank said the operation will support all of its European locations. Possible sites for the new office include Warsaw, Krakow, Budapest and Prague.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Standard Chartered said it will make a final decision about the location by the first quarter of 2018.</p>
<p>Shares are up 18.40 pence, or 2.5%, at 745.60 pence at 1427 GMT.</p>
<p>Write to Adam Clark at [email protected]; @AdamDowJones</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>December 05, 2017 10:17 ET (15:17 GMT)</p>
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Standard Chartered Plans New Office in Eastern Europe
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2017-12-05
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Standard Chartered Plans New Office in Eastern Europe
<p>Standard Chartered PLC (STAN.LN) said Tuesday that it is looking at setting up a new office for about 500 staff in Eastern Europe.</p>
<p>The emerging markets-focused bank said the operation will support all of its European locations. Possible sites for the new office include Warsaw, Krakow, Budapest and Prague.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Standard Chartered said it will make a final decision about the location by the first quarter of 2018.</p>
<p>Shares are up 18.40 pence, or 2.5%, at 745.60 pence at 1427 GMT.</p>
<p>Write to Adam Clark at [email protected]; @AdamDowJones</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>December 05, 2017 10:17 ET (15:17 GMT)</p>
| 5,734 |
<p />
<p>Tom Clancy's widow wants a court to rule that the author's estate is the exclusive owner of the rights to his famous character Jack Ryan.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>News media outlets report that Alexandra Clancy's lawsuit says that the author's estate should be the sole beneficiary of any posthumous books featuring the character who was first introduced in "The Hunt for Red October."</p>
<p>Alexandra Clancy is suing the personal representative of Clancy's estate, J.W. Thompson Webb, for allowing other entities to profit from posthumous book revenues. Clancy's first wife, Wanda King, is a partial owner of those other entities.</p>
<p>Clancy’s estate, which includes a stake in Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles and a World War II tank, is worth $82 million, the <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-tom-clancy-estate-20140918-story.html" type="external">Baltimore Sun Opens a New Window.</a> reported. Alexandra Clancy successfully sued Webb in 2014 over who was responsible for $4 million in outstanding estate taxes, though Webb maintained his role as the estate’s representative.</p>
<p>The new legal battle is unfolding as Amazon prepares debut its “Jack Ryan” TV series, which stars John Krasinski.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The lawsuit says: "Tom Clancy made Jack Ryan; and in a sense, Jack Ryan made Tom Clancy."</p>
<p>The lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court in Baltimore. Tom Clancy died in 2013.</p>
<p>The Associated Press contributed to this report.</p>
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Tom Clancy's widow sues for 'Jack Ryan' character rights
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Tom Clancy's widow sues for 'Jack Ryan' character rights
<p />
<p>Tom Clancy's widow wants a court to rule that the author's estate is the exclusive owner of the rights to his famous character Jack Ryan.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>News media outlets report that Alexandra Clancy's lawsuit says that the author's estate should be the sole beneficiary of any posthumous books featuring the character who was first introduced in "The Hunt for Red October."</p>
<p>Alexandra Clancy is suing the personal representative of Clancy's estate, J.W. Thompson Webb, for allowing other entities to profit from posthumous book revenues. Clancy's first wife, Wanda King, is a partial owner of those other entities.</p>
<p>Clancy’s estate, which includes a stake in Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles and a World War II tank, is worth $82 million, the <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-tom-clancy-estate-20140918-story.html" type="external">Baltimore Sun Opens a New Window.</a> reported. Alexandra Clancy successfully sued Webb in 2014 over who was responsible for $4 million in outstanding estate taxes, though Webb maintained his role as the estate’s representative.</p>
<p>The new legal battle is unfolding as Amazon prepares debut its “Jack Ryan” TV series, which stars John Krasinski.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The lawsuit says: "Tom Clancy made Jack Ryan; and in a sense, Jack Ryan made Tom Clancy."</p>
<p>The lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court in Baltimore. Tom Clancy died in 2013.</p>
<p>The Associated Press contributed to this report.</p>
| 5,735 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Junior running back Dominic Lucero from this season’s Class 3A state champion Robertson Cardinals has been named District 2-3A player of the year. Joaquin Medina of Taos was named defensive MVP, and Pojoaque Valley quarterback John Ainsworth was named offensive MVP.</p>
<p>District 2 coach coach of the year is Flavio Lopez of Taos.</p>
<p>All-District 2 members from the state championship Cardinals squad are James Gonzales III, Kenny Yara, Diego Trujillo, Josh Romero, Joe Armijo, J.R. Gonzalez and Estevan Varela. All-district recipients from District 2 champion Taos are Devin Ortega, Isaac Gonzales, Larry Martinez, Lorenzo Rael, Michael Landgraf, Jonathan Cordova, Kevin McCarty and Marshall Cummings.</p>
<p>Other All-District 2 players include: from West Las Vegas, Zachary Lujan, Anthony Medina and Adrian Valdez; from Raton, Cam Baird, Caleb Wood and Mackenzie Main; from Pojoaque Valley, Juan Rios, Isaac Martinez, Chris Quintana and Jonathon Bartheson.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
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<p>Junior running back Dominic Lucero from this season’s Class 3A state champion Robertson Cardinals has been named District 2-3A player of the year. Joaquin Medina of Taos was named defensive MVP, and Pojoaque Valley quarterback John Ainsworth was named offensive MVP.</p>
<p>District 2 coach coach of the year is Flavio Lopez of Taos.</p>
<p>All-District 2 members from the state championship Cardinals squad are James Gonzales III, Kenny Yara, Diego Trujillo, Josh Romero, Joe Armijo, J.R. Gonzalez and Estevan Varela. All-district recipients from District 2 champion Taos are Devin Ortega, Isaac Gonzales, Larry Martinez, Lorenzo Rael, Michael Landgraf, Jonathan Cordova, Kevin McCarty and Marshall Cummings.</p>
<p>Other All-District 2 players include: from West Las Vegas, Zachary Lujan, Anthony Medina and Adrian Valdez; from Raton, Cam Baird, Caleb Wood and Mackenzie Main; from Pojoaque Valley, Juan Rios, Isaac Martinez, Chris Quintana and Jonathon Bartheson.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 5,736 |
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<p>For the last 30 years, Theresa Marquez has worked in the organic food industry. Currently, she is the chief marketing executive at the Wisconsin-based CROPP Cooperative, home to the Organic Valley and Organic Prairie food brands.</p>
<p>Over the years, she’s learned the pros and cons of the organic industry. And one prevailing element is that people who need organic food the most can’t afford it.</p>
<p>Organic foods have always cost more than their conventional counterparts, and the forces driving up the cost of ordinary groceries are similarly affecting the organic industry.</p>
<p>High-priced organic food is the result of supply and demand. In recent years, organic food sales have increased, but there are not enough organic farmers to meet that demand, leading to high prices at the grocery stores.</p>
<p>There are several reasons farmers aren’t responding to the market opportunity, said Jim Slama, founder of FamilyFarmed.org. A few years ago, some farmers switched to organic production drawn by the opportunity to charge a premium on a product in short supply. But one major obstacle dissuaded the bulk of farmers from making the switch: the three-year transition period required for a farm to be certified as organic from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.</p>
<p>During the transition period, farmers improved the quality of their soil so they could sustain crops without using synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. Unfortunately, some farmers lost money while waiting the three years. While learning new growing techniques and prepping the soil, they weren’t allowed to use the old chemicals they relied on to create bountiful harvests.</p>
<p>The short-term threat of smaller yields and profit scared away potential organic growers, said Harriet Behar, out-reach coordinator at the Midwest Organic &amp; Sustainable Education Service, a nonprofit that offers training to farmers making the transition. “A lot of farmers say, –˜Well, can I make it through those three years?'”</p>
<p>The lean years were worth it to some farmers, who anticipated making up their losses with the additional profits they would eventually earn with organic crops. That was changed with the cur-rent energy crisis.</p>
<p>Government mandates and soaring fuel costs increased demand for U.S. ethanol production and the redirection of land from growing food for consumption to food for fuel. The change was one of the reasons that the cost of conventional food increased dramatically. From 2005 to 2007, the price of field corn rose from $2.00 to $4.00 per bushel, while wheat jumped from $3.42 to $6.65, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.</p>
<p>Suddenly, farmers were making a lot more money on the crops they were already growing. Though the price of organics also rose, it wasn’t enough to tempt farmers away from the booming conventional market. In fact, some farmers who had begun the transition process went back to conventional farming production, Clarkson said.</p>
<p>The end result was fewer organic farmers and an even smaller domestic supply of organic food, though consumers were clamoring for more.</p>
<p>“The organic world has succeeded at finding a wonderful demand,” Clarkson said. “What it has not found is sufficient production.”</p>
|
Organic Food Comes At A Cost
| false |
http://chicagoreporter.com/organic-food-comes-cost/
|
2008-09-17
| 3left-center
|
Organic Food Comes At A Cost
<p>For the last 30 years, Theresa Marquez has worked in the organic food industry. Currently, she is the chief marketing executive at the Wisconsin-based CROPP Cooperative, home to the Organic Valley and Organic Prairie food brands.</p>
<p>Over the years, she’s learned the pros and cons of the organic industry. And one prevailing element is that people who need organic food the most can’t afford it.</p>
<p>Organic foods have always cost more than their conventional counterparts, and the forces driving up the cost of ordinary groceries are similarly affecting the organic industry.</p>
<p>High-priced organic food is the result of supply and demand. In recent years, organic food sales have increased, but there are not enough organic farmers to meet that demand, leading to high prices at the grocery stores.</p>
<p>There are several reasons farmers aren’t responding to the market opportunity, said Jim Slama, founder of FamilyFarmed.org. A few years ago, some farmers switched to organic production drawn by the opportunity to charge a premium on a product in short supply. But one major obstacle dissuaded the bulk of farmers from making the switch: the three-year transition period required for a farm to be certified as organic from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.</p>
<p>During the transition period, farmers improved the quality of their soil so they could sustain crops without using synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. Unfortunately, some farmers lost money while waiting the three years. While learning new growing techniques and prepping the soil, they weren’t allowed to use the old chemicals they relied on to create bountiful harvests.</p>
<p>The short-term threat of smaller yields and profit scared away potential organic growers, said Harriet Behar, out-reach coordinator at the Midwest Organic &amp; Sustainable Education Service, a nonprofit that offers training to farmers making the transition. “A lot of farmers say, –˜Well, can I make it through those three years?'”</p>
<p>The lean years were worth it to some farmers, who anticipated making up their losses with the additional profits they would eventually earn with organic crops. That was changed with the cur-rent energy crisis.</p>
<p>Government mandates and soaring fuel costs increased demand for U.S. ethanol production and the redirection of land from growing food for consumption to food for fuel. The change was one of the reasons that the cost of conventional food increased dramatically. From 2005 to 2007, the price of field corn rose from $2.00 to $4.00 per bushel, while wheat jumped from $3.42 to $6.65, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.</p>
<p>Suddenly, farmers were making a lot more money on the crops they were already growing. Though the price of organics also rose, it wasn’t enough to tempt farmers away from the booming conventional market. In fact, some farmers who had begun the transition process went back to conventional farming production, Clarkson said.</p>
<p>The end result was fewer organic farmers and an even smaller domestic supply of organic food, though consumers were clamoring for more.</p>
<p>“The organic world has succeeded at finding a wonderful demand,” Clarkson said. “What it has not found is sufficient production.”</p>
| 5,737 |
<p>Insurance software provider Ebix (NASDAQ:EBIX) and an affiliate of Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) agreed Thursday to terminate their proposed merger amid an investigation into alleged misconduct at Ebix.</p>
<p>Ebix shares tumbled $9.47, or 48%, to $10.25 in early morning trading.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The company said it received a letter Friday from the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, which is investigating allegations of misconduct. The U.S. Attorney’s office became aware of the allegations from media reports and pending shareholder class-action lawsuits against Ebix directors and officers.</p>
<p>The investigation is in its early stages, Ebix said, adding that it will fully cooperate with regulatory authorities.</p>
<p>According to filings with regulators, class-action suits have been filed against Ebix and allege false statements in earnings reports, SEC filings, press releases and other public statements that purportedly caused shares to trade at inflated prices.</p>
<p>“We believe the allegations in the class-action suits are without merit,” Ebix Chairman and Chief Executive Robin Raina said in a statement. “We want to thank Goldman Sachs for their interest in acquiring Ebix and we are naturally disappointed that we could not complete a transaction at this time.”</p>
<p>Ebix said there will be no termination fees paid by either company, while both parties and certain Ebix shareholders agreed to release each other from all claims related to the terminated merger.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Its board will continue to evaluate strategic options, Ebix said.</p>
<p>In May, a Goldman Sachs affiliate agreed to buy Ebix for about $780 million. Ebix said at the time that the deal was valued at a total of $820 million including the assumption of debt.</p>
<p>Ebix, which provides software and e-commerce services for insurance and financial companies, defended its financial reporting back in February, when its shares fell in response to a post on a financial blog that questioned its accounting.</p>
<p>It called the post an “unsubstantiated report” and said management, “to the best of its knowledge,” believed the company’s reporting was accurate and complied with requirements set by the Securities and Exchange Commission.</p>
<p>Goldman Sachs was trading 1.1% lower at $159.71.</p>
|
Ebix, Goldman Affiliate Call Off Merger
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/06/20/ebix-goldman-affiliate-call-off-merger.html
|
2016-03-05
| 0right
|
Ebix, Goldman Affiliate Call Off Merger
<p>Insurance software provider Ebix (NASDAQ:EBIX) and an affiliate of Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) agreed Thursday to terminate their proposed merger amid an investigation into alleged misconduct at Ebix.</p>
<p>Ebix shares tumbled $9.47, or 48%, to $10.25 in early morning trading.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The company said it received a letter Friday from the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, which is investigating allegations of misconduct. The U.S. Attorney’s office became aware of the allegations from media reports and pending shareholder class-action lawsuits against Ebix directors and officers.</p>
<p>The investigation is in its early stages, Ebix said, adding that it will fully cooperate with regulatory authorities.</p>
<p>According to filings with regulators, class-action suits have been filed against Ebix and allege false statements in earnings reports, SEC filings, press releases and other public statements that purportedly caused shares to trade at inflated prices.</p>
<p>“We believe the allegations in the class-action suits are without merit,” Ebix Chairman and Chief Executive Robin Raina said in a statement. “We want to thank Goldman Sachs for their interest in acquiring Ebix and we are naturally disappointed that we could not complete a transaction at this time.”</p>
<p>Ebix said there will be no termination fees paid by either company, while both parties and certain Ebix shareholders agreed to release each other from all claims related to the terminated merger.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Its board will continue to evaluate strategic options, Ebix said.</p>
<p>In May, a Goldman Sachs affiliate agreed to buy Ebix for about $780 million. Ebix said at the time that the deal was valued at a total of $820 million including the assumption of debt.</p>
<p>Ebix, which provides software and e-commerce services for insurance and financial companies, defended its financial reporting back in February, when its shares fell in response to a post on a financial blog that questioned its accounting.</p>
<p>It called the post an “unsubstantiated report” and said management, “to the best of its knowledge,” believed the company’s reporting was accurate and complied with requirements set by the Securities and Exchange Commission.</p>
<p>Goldman Sachs was trading 1.1% lower at $159.71.</p>
| 5,738 |
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<p>DENVER — An Army drone that disappeared on a training flight in southern Arizona has been found about 600 miles away in Colorado, and the military is trying to figure out how it got there.</p>
<p>Officials at Fort Huachuca (wah-CHU’-kuh), Arizona, say a hiker found the $1.5 million Shadow drone stuck in a tree in the mountains west of Denver Thursday. It was missing a wing.</p>
<p>Soldiers lost contact with the drone at Fort Huachuca nine days earlier. A search failed to find it, and the Army concluded it probably crashed and disintegrated in the area.</p>
<p>Officials say the 450-pound drone has a 20-foot wingspan and can fly for eight or nine hours.</p>
<p>Soldiers from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state had gone to the Arizona post to train with the aircraft.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Army drone that vanished on Arizona flight found in Colorado
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/946636/army-drone-that-vanished-on-arizona-flight-found-in-colorado.html
|
2017-02-09
| 2least
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Army drone that vanished on Arizona flight found in Colorado
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>DENVER — An Army drone that disappeared on a training flight in southern Arizona has been found about 600 miles away in Colorado, and the military is trying to figure out how it got there.</p>
<p>Officials at Fort Huachuca (wah-CHU’-kuh), Arizona, say a hiker found the $1.5 million Shadow drone stuck in a tree in the mountains west of Denver Thursday. It was missing a wing.</p>
<p>Soldiers lost contact with the drone at Fort Huachuca nine days earlier. A search failed to find it, and the Army concluded it probably crashed and disintegrated in the area.</p>
<p>Officials say the 450-pound drone has a 20-foot wingspan and can fly for eight or nine hours.</p>
<p>Soldiers from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state had gone to the Arizona post to train with the aircraft.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 5,739 |
<p>Organizers in Tucson and surrounding Pima County have launched a petition drive that would put their plan to secede from Arizona on the ballot in 2012, a movement born out of liberal disgust with the conservatism of Phoenix and other northern neighbors. The plan is undoubtedly a long shot, and the creation of a “Baja Arizona” would be the first successful split since West Virginia branched off during the Civil War. But at the very least, the “Start Our State” movement sends a signal to the country that not all Arizonans support measures like the immigrant-targeting SB 1070 or the escapades of Maricopa Country Sheriff Joe Arpaio. — KDG</p>
<p>Huffington Post Politics:</p>
<p>Partisan tensions have long been a fact of life between left-leaning Pima County and a Phoenix-based political establishment that has produced such conservative giants as Barry Goldwater and John McCain.</p>
<p>But the rift was heightened during the past two years as Republican Governor Jan Brewer and her allies in control of the statehouse pursued a political agenda Democrats saw as extreme, including a crackdown on illegal immigration and proposals, ultimately unsuccessful, to nullify some federal laws.</p>
<p />
<p>Even Tucson’s best-known Democrat, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, had to fight tooth and nail to fend of a Republican challenge in her bid for a third term in November.</p>
<p>The ballot measure sought by Arizona secession backers is a non-binding measure asking Pima County voters if they support petitioning state lawmakers for permission to break away.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/10/baja-arizona-state_n_859954.html" type="external">Read more</a></p>
|
Leaving Arizona: Tucson Group Pushes Secession
| true |
http://truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/leaving_arizona_tucson_prepares_secession_movement_20110510/
|
2011-05-10
| 4left
|
Leaving Arizona: Tucson Group Pushes Secession
<p>Organizers in Tucson and surrounding Pima County have launched a petition drive that would put their plan to secede from Arizona on the ballot in 2012, a movement born out of liberal disgust with the conservatism of Phoenix and other northern neighbors. The plan is undoubtedly a long shot, and the creation of a “Baja Arizona” would be the first successful split since West Virginia branched off during the Civil War. But at the very least, the “Start Our State” movement sends a signal to the country that not all Arizonans support measures like the immigrant-targeting SB 1070 or the escapades of Maricopa Country Sheriff Joe Arpaio. — KDG</p>
<p>Huffington Post Politics:</p>
<p>Partisan tensions have long been a fact of life between left-leaning Pima County and a Phoenix-based political establishment that has produced such conservative giants as Barry Goldwater and John McCain.</p>
<p>But the rift was heightened during the past two years as Republican Governor Jan Brewer and her allies in control of the statehouse pursued a political agenda Democrats saw as extreme, including a crackdown on illegal immigration and proposals, ultimately unsuccessful, to nullify some federal laws.</p>
<p />
<p>Even Tucson’s best-known Democrat, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, had to fight tooth and nail to fend of a Republican challenge in her bid for a third term in November.</p>
<p>The ballot measure sought by Arizona secession backers is a non-binding measure asking Pima County voters if they support petitioning state lawmakers for permission to break away.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/10/baja-arizona-state_n_859954.html" type="external">Read more</a></p>
| 5,740 |
<p>HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut's highest court ruled Thursday on an issue that most people may think is already settled, saying doctors have a duty to keep patients' medical records confidential and can be sued if they don't.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court's 6-0 decision overturned the ruling of a lower court judge who said Connecticut had yet to recognize doctor-patient confidentiality.</p>
<p>The high court's ruling reinstated a lawsuit by former New Canaan resident Emily Byrne against the Avery Center for Obstetrics &amp; Gynecology in Westport.</p>
<p>"It's particularly important for not only my client but for all patients receiving medical care in Connecticut," Byrne's lawyer, Bruce Elstein, said. "This case has established for the first time that there's a duty of confidentiality. ... That's groundbreaking."</p>
<p>Byrne, who now lives in Montpelier, Vermont, alleges the doctor's office, without her permission and without warning, sent her medical file to a probate court in New Haven in 2005 under a subpoena issued by an attorney for her child's father. She alleges the father was then able to look at her medical file and use the highly personal information to harass, threaten and humiliate her, including filing seven lawsuits and threatening to file criminal complaints.</p>
<p>The father had subpoenaed the medical file in a paternity case.</p>
<p>Byrne sued the Avery Center in 2007 for alleged negligence in failing to protect her medical file, infliction of emotional distress and failing to follow state and federal medical privacy laws. But state Judge Richard Arnold in Bridgeport dismissed her claims in 2015.</p>
<p>Arnold ruled that Connecticut law, unlike laws in many other states, had yet to recognize a duty of confidentiality between doctors and their patients, or that communications between patients and health care providers are privileged under common law. Byrne appealed Arnold's decision.</p>
<p>The attorney for the Avery Center, James Biondo, did not return a message seeking comment Thursday.</p>
<p>Biondo had argued there is no common law duty for Connecticut doctors to keep patients' information confidential. He also wrote in court documents that Byrne signed a statement for the Avery Center confirming she had reviewed the center's privacy policy, which notifies patients that it is under no obligation to seek their authorization when complying with subpoenas.</p>
<p>There is a state law that prohibits disclosure of patient information by doctors, but there is an exception that allows for information to be released without the patient's consent "pursuant to ... the rules of court."</p>
<p>Byrne accused the Avery Center of failing to comply with the state law as well as the federal law on patient information confidentiality — the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. The federal law says a medical provider can disclose patient information in response to a subpoena not issued by a judge, if reasonable efforts have been made to notify the patient of the subpoena.</p>
<p>Byrne said she was not given an opportunity to object to the Avery Center releasing her medical file under subpoena.</p>
<p>The Avery Center said the appeal centered on common law and HIPAA was irrelevant.</p>
<p>____</p>
<p>This story corrects the summary to say the father of Byrne's child was able to view Byrnes' medical file, not the husband of her child.</p>
<p>HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut's highest court ruled Thursday on an issue that most people may think is already settled, saying doctors have a duty to keep patients' medical records confidential and can be sued if they don't.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court's 6-0 decision overturned the ruling of a lower court judge who said Connecticut had yet to recognize doctor-patient confidentiality.</p>
<p>The high court's ruling reinstated a lawsuit by former New Canaan resident Emily Byrne against the Avery Center for Obstetrics &amp; Gynecology in Westport.</p>
<p>"It's particularly important for not only my client but for all patients receiving medical care in Connecticut," Byrne's lawyer, Bruce Elstein, said. "This case has established for the first time that there's a duty of confidentiality. ... That's groundbreaking."</p>
<p>Byrne, who now lives in Montpelier, Vermont, alleges the doctor's office, without her permission and without warning, sent her medical file to a probate court in New Haven in 2005 under a subpoena issued by an attorney for her child's father. She alleges the father was then able to look at her medical file and use the highly personal information to harass, threaten and humiliate her, including filing seven lawsuits and threatening to file criminal complaints.</p>
<p>The father had subpoenaed the medical file in a paternity case.</p>
<p>Byrne sued the Avery Center in 2007 for alleged negligence in failing to protect her medical file, infliction of emotional distress and failing to follow state and federal medical privacy laws. But state Judge Richard Arnold in Bridgeport dismissed her claims in 2015.</p>
<p>Arnold ruled that Connecticut law, unlike laws in many other states, had yet to recognize a duty of confidentiality between doctors and their patients, or that communications between patients and health care providers are privileged under common law. Byrne appealed Arnold's decision.</p>
<p>The attorney for the Avery Center, James Biondo, did not return a message seeking comment Thursday.</p>
<p>Biondo had argued there is no common law duty for Connecticut doctors to keep patients' information confidential. He also wrote in court documents that Byrne signed a statement for the Avery Center confirming she had reviewed the center's privacy policy, which notifies patients that it is under no obligation to seek their authorization when complying with subpoenas.</p>
<p>There is a state law that prohibits disclosure of patient information by doctors, but there is an exception that allows for information to be released without the patient's consent "pursuant to ... the rules of court."</p>
<p>Byrne accused the Avery Center of failing to comply with the state law as well as the federal law on patient information confidentiality — the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. The federal law says a medical provider can disclose patient information in response to a subpoena not issued by a judge, if reasonable efforts have been made to notify the patient of the subpoena.</p>
<p>Byrne said she was not given an opportunity to object to the Avery Center releasing her medical file under subpoena.</p>
<p>The Avery Center said the appeal centered on common law and HIPAA was irrelevant.</p>
<p>____</p>
<p>This story corrects the summary to say the father of Byrne's child was able to view Byrnes' medical file, not the husband of her child.</p>
|
Court: Yes, there is doctor-patient confidentiality
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/de2b89a037c8404dbee9519bb12d2802
|
2018-01-11
| 2least
|
Court: Yes, there is doctor-patient confidentiality
<p>HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut's highest court ruled Thursday on an issue that most people may think is already settled, saying doctors have a duty to keep patients' medical records confidential and can be sued if they don't.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court's 6-0 decision overturned the ruling of a lower court judge who said Connecticut had yet to recognize doctor-patient confidentiality.</p>
<p>The high court's ruling reinstated a lawsuit by former New Canaan resident Emily Byrne against the Avery Center for Obstetrics &amp; Gynecology in Westport.</p>
<p>"It's particularly important for not only my client but for all patients receiving medical care in Connecticut," Byrne's lawyer, Bruce Elstein, said. "This case has established for the first time that there's a duty of confidentiality. ... That's groundbreaking."</p>
<p>Byrne, who now lives in Montpelier, Vermont, alleges the doctor's office, without her permission and without warning, sent her medical file to a probate court in New Haven in 2005 under a subpoena issued by an attorney for her child's father. She alleges the father was then able to look at her medical file and use the highly personal information to harass, threaten and humiliate her, including filing seven lawsuits and threatening to file criminal complaints.</p>
<p>The father had subpoenaed the medical file in a paternity case.</p>
<p>Byrne sued the Avery Center in 2007 for alleged negligence in failing to protect her medical file, infliction of emotional distress and failing to follow state and federal medical privacy laws. But state Judge Richard Arnold in Bridgeport dismissed her claims in 2015.</p>
<p>Arnold ruled that Connecticut law, unlike laws in many other states, had yet to recognize a duty of confidentiality between doctors and their patients, or that communications between patients and health care providers are privileged under common law. Byrne appealed Arnold's decision.</p>
<p>The attorney for the Avery Center, James Biondo, did not return a message seeking comment Thursday.</p>
<p>Biondo had argued there is no common law duty for Connecticut doctors to keep patients' information confidential. He also wrote in court documents that Byrne signed a statement for the Avery Center confirming she had reviewed the center's privacy policy, which notifies patients that it is under no obligation to seek their authorization when complying with subpoenas.</p>
<p>There is a state law that prohibits disclosure of patient information by doctors, but there is an exception that allows for information to be released without the patient's consent "pursuant to ... the rules of court."</p>
<p>Byrne accused the Avery Center of failing to comply with the state law as well as the federal law on patient information confidentiality — the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. The federal law says a medical provider can disclose patient information in response to a subpoena not issued by a judge, if reasonable efforts have been made to notify the patient of the subpoena.</p>
<p>Byrne said she was not given an opportunity to object to the Avery Center releasing her medical file under subpoena.</p>
<p>The Avery Center said the appeal centered on common law and HIPAA was irrelevant.</p>
<p>____</p>
<p>This story corrects the summary to say the father of Byrne's child was able to view Byrnes' medical file, not the husband of her child.</p>
<p>HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut's highest court ruled Thursday on an issue that most people may think is already settled, saying doctors have a duty to keep patients' medical records confidential and can be sued if they don't.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court's 6-0 decision overturned the ruling of a lower court judge who said Connecticut had yet to recognize doctor-patient confidentiality.</p>
<p>The high court's ruling reinstated a lawsuit by former New Canaan resident Emily Byrne against the Avery Center for Obstetrics &amp; Gynecology in Westport.</p>
<p>"It's particularly important for not only my client but for all patients receiving medical care in Connecticut," Byrne's lawyer, Bruce Elstein, said. "This case has established for the first time that there's a duty of confidentiality. ... That's groundbreaking."</p>
<p>Byrne, who now lives in Montpelier, Vermont, alleges the doctor's office, without her permission and without warning, sent her medical file to a probate court in New Haven in 2005 under a subpoena issued by an attorney for her child's father. She alleges the father was then able to look at her medical file and use the highly personal information to harass, threaten and humiliate her, including filing seven lawsuits and threatening to file criminal complaints.</p>
<p>The father had subpoenaed the medical file in a paternity case.</p>
<p>Byrne sued the Avery Center in 2007 for alleged negligence in failing to protect her medical file, infliction of emotional distress and failing to follow state and federal medical privacy laws. But state Judge Richard Arnold in Bridgeport dismissed her claims in 2015.</p>
<p>Arnold ruled that Connecticut law, unlike laws in many other states, had yet to recognize a duty of confidentiality between doctors and their patients, or that communications between patients and health care providers are privileged under common law. Byrne appealed Arnold's decision.</p>
<p>The attorney for the Avery Center, James Biondo, did not return a message seeking comment Thursday.</p>
<p>Biondo had argued there is no common law duty for Connecticut doctors to keep patients' information confidential. He also wrote in court documents that Byrne signed a statement for the Avery Center confirming she had reviewed the center's privacy policy, which notifies patients that it is under no obligation to seek their authorization when complying with subpoenas.</p>
<p>There is a state law that prohibits disclosure of patient information by doctors, but there is an exception that allows for information to be released without the patient's consent "pursuant to ... the rules of court."</p>
<p>Byrne accused the Avery Center of failing to comply with the state law as well as the federal law on patient information confidentiality — the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. The federal law says a medical provider can disclose patient information in response to a subpoena not issued by a judge, if reasonable efforts have been made to notify the patient of the subpoena.</p>
<p>Byrne said she was not given an opportunity to object to the Avery Center releasing her medical file under subpoena.</p>
<p>The Avery Center said the appeal centered on common law and HIPAA was irrelevant.</p>
<p>____</p>
<p>This story corrects the summary to say the father of Byrne's child was able to view Byrnes' medical file, not the husband of her child.</p>
| 5,741 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/changedotgov/3177138857/sizes/m/in/photostream/"&gt;Change.gov&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p />
<p>Tom Junod takes on President Barack Obama’s “ <a href="http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-lethal-presidency-0812" type="external">lethal presidency</a>” in the latest issue of Esquire. If you’re interested in the war on terror, drone strikes, and targeted killings, it’s a must-read. Here’s a teaser to get you started:</p>
<p>Sure, we as a nation have always killed people. A lot of people. But no president has ever waged war by killing enemies one by one, targeting them individually for execution, wherever they are. The Obama administration has taken pains to tell us, over and over again, that they are careful, scrupulous of our laws, and determined to avoid the loss of collateral, innocent lives. They’re careful because when it comes to waging war on individuals, the distinction between war and murder becomes a fine one. Especially when, on occasion, the individuals we target are Americans and when, in one instance, the collateral damage was an American boy.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://Read%20more:%20http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-lethal-presidency-0812#ixzz208Lwl3yt" type="external">Read on</a>. Junod does a service in the piece by refocusing the discussion from Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Al Qaeda propagandist who was killed in a drone strike last September, to Awlaki’s 16-year-old, American-born son Abdulrahman, who was also killed in a drone strike later that month. What happens when a drone strike kills an American teenager? We already know: nothing.&#160;Here’s another choice bit:</p>
<p>In every single utterance of the Lethal Presidency on the subject of its own lethality, it has offered the same narrative: that although it claims the power to kill, its combination of legal restraint and personal scruple makes the exercise of this power extremely difficult. The Lethal Presidency — and the Lethal President — wants us to know that killing is hard. It has spent months telling us this story because there is another story, a counterstory voiced off the record by administration members and confirmed by everything human beings have learned about killing in their bloody history:</p>
<p>That killing individuals identified as our enemies isn’t hard at all.</p>
<p>That it’s the easiest thing humans — particularly humans in power — can do.</p>
<p>The rest is <a href="http://Read%20more:%20http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-lethal-presidency-0812#ixzz208Lwl3yt" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p />
|
Esquire Takes on Obama’s “Lethal Presidency”
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https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/esquire-takes-obamas-lethal-presidency/
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2012-07-09
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Esquire Takes on Obama’s “Lethal Presidency”
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/changedotgov/3177138857/sizes/m/in/photostream/"&gt;Change.gov&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
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<p>Tom Junod takes on President Barack Obama’s “ <a href="http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-lethal-presidency-0812" type="external">lethal presidency</a>” in the latest issue of Esquire. If you’re interested in the war on terror, drone strikes, and targeted killings, it’s a must-read. Here’s a teaser to get you started:</p>
<p>Sure, we as a nation have always killed people. A lot of people. But no president has ever waged war by killing enemies one by one, targeting them individually for execution, wherever they are. The Obama administration has taken pains to tell us, over and over again, that they are careful, scrupulous of our laws, and determined to avoid the loss of collateral, innocent lives. They’re careful because when it comes to waging war on individuals, the distinction between war and murder becomes a fine one. Especially when, on occasion, the individuals we target are Americans and when, in one instance, the collateral damage was an American boy.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://Read%20more:%20http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-lethal-presidency-0812#ixzz208Lwl3yt" type="external">Read on</a>. Junod does a service in the piece by refocusing the discussion from Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Al Qaeda propagandist who was killed in a drone strike last September, to Awlaki’s 16-year-old, American-born son Abdulrahman, who was also killed in a drone strike later that month. What happens when a drone strike kills an American teenager? We already know: nothing.&#160;Here’s another choice bit:</p>
<p>In every single utterance of the Lethal Presidency on the subject of its own lethality, it has offered the same narrative: that although it claims the power to kill, its combination of legal restraint and personal scruple makes the exercise of this power extremely difficult. The Lethal Presidency — and the Lethal President — wants us to know that killing is hard. It has spent months telling us this story because there is another story, a counterstory voiced off the record by administration members and confirmed by everything human beings have learned about killing in their bloody history:</p>
<p>That killing individuals identified as our enemies isn’t hard at all.</p>
<p>That it’s the easiest thing humans — particularly humans in power — can do.</p>
<p>The rest is <a href="http://Read%20more:%20http://www.esquire.com/features/obama-lethal-presidency-0812#ixzz208Lwl3yt" type="external">here</a>.</p>
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<p>Nov. 26 (UPI) — Sen. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chuck_Schumer/" type="external">Chuck Schumer</a>, D-N.Y., called on the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Federal_Trade_Commission/" type="external">Federal Trade Commission</a> Sunday to investigate companies that provide ancestry DNA results due to potential privacy concerns.</p>
<p>Speaking at a news conference, Schumer said the terms of service agreements are not clear and could allow the companies to sell highly personal, detailed information about one’s genetics and DNA to third parties without the user’s full consent.</p>
<p>“Here’s what many consumers don’t realize, that their sensitive information can end up in the hands of unknown third-party companies,” Schumer said, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/senator-calls-more-scrutiny-home-dna-test-industry-n824031" type="external">according to NBC News</a>. “There are no prohibitions, and many companies say that they can still sell your information to other companies.”</p>
<p>He added: “Now, this is sensitive information, and what those companies can do with all that data, our sensitive and deepest information, your genetics, is not clear and in some cases not fair and not right.”</p>
<p>Schumer said the FTC should investigate the business practices of companies that conduct the DNA tests.</p>
<p>“When it comes to protecting consumers from at-home DNA test kit service, the federal government is behind…That is why I am asking the Federal Trade Commission to take a serious look at this relatively new kind of service and ensure that these companies have clear, fair privacy policies and standards for all kinds of at-home DNA test kits,” Schumer said, <a href="http://www.silive.com/news/2017/11/post_1839.html" type="external">according to the Staten Island Advance</a>.</p>
<p>Schumer singled out AncestryDNA’s fine print, which says it has the right to “communicate your genetic information for the purposes of providing products and services.”</p>
<p>Ancestry DNA <a href="https://nypost.com/2017/11/26/schumer-warns-dna-home-tests-could-be-gathering-personal-info/" type="external">told the New York Post</a> it doesn’t sell information without the customer’s consent.</p>
<p>“We respect and agree with Sen. Schumer’s concern for customer privacy and believe any regulation should match the commitments we make to our customers,” the company said.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://gizmodo.com/what-dna-testing-companies-terrifying-privacy-policies-1819158337" type="external">recent Gizmodo report</a> analyzed the terms and conditions of several DNA test companies and found the terms and conditions and found these companies can claim ownership of one’s DNA, who else can own the DNA and for what purposes are unclear and DNA information can get hacked.</p>
<p>“It’s basically like you have no privacy, they’re taking it all,” Joel Winston, a consumer protection lawyer, told Gizmodo. “When it comes to DNA tests, don’t assume you have any rights.”</p>
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Schumer wants DNA test companies investigated, warns info sold to third parties
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https://newsline.com/schumer-wants-dna-test-companies-investigated-warns-info-sold-to-third-parties/
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2017-11-26
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Schumer wants DNA test companies investigated, warns info sold to third parties
<p>Nov. 26 (UPI) — Sen. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chuck_Schumer/" type="external">Chuck Schumer</a>, D-N.Y., called on the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Federal_Trade_Commission/" type="external">Federal Trade Commission</a> Sunday to investigate companies that provide ancestry DNA results due to potential privacy concerns.</p>
<p>Speaking at a news conference, Schumer said the terms of service agreements are not clear and could allow the companies to sell highly personal, detailed information about one’s genetics and DNA to third parties without the user’s full consent.</p>
<p>“Here’s what many consumers don’t realize, that their sensitive information can end up in the hands of unknown third-party companies,” Schumer said, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/senator-calls-more-scrutiny-home-dna-test-industry-n824031" type="external">according to NBC News</a>. “There are no prohibitions, and many companies say that they can still sell your information to other companies.”</p>
<p>He added: “Now, this is sensitive information, and what those companies can do with all that data, our sensitive and deepest information, your genetics, is not clear and in some cases not fair and not right.”</p>
<p>Schumer said the FTC should investigate the business practices of companies that conduct the DNA tests.</p>
<p>“When it comes to protecting consumers from at-home DNA test kit service, the federal government is behind…That is why I am asking the Federal Trade Commission to take a serious look at this relatively new kind of service and ensure that these companies have clear, fair privacy policies and standards for all kinds of at-home DNA test kits,” Schumer said, <a href="http://www.silive.com/news/2017/11/post_1839.html" type="external">according to the Staten Island Advance</a>.</p>
<p>Schumer singled out AncestryDNA’s fine print, which says it has the right to “communicate your genetic information for the purposes of providing products and services.”</p>
<p>Ancestry DNA <a href="https://nypost.com/2017/11/26/schumer-warns-dna-home-tests-could-be-gathering-personal-info/" type="external">told the New York Post</a> it doesn’t sell information without the customer’s consent.</p>
<p>“We respect and agree with Sen. Schumer’s concern for customer privacy and believe any regulation should match the commitments we make to our customers,” the company said.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://gizmodo.com/what-dna-testing-companies-terrifying-privacy-policies-1819158337" type="external">recent Gizmodo report</a> analyzed the terms and conditions of several DNA test companies and found the terms and conditions and found these companies can claim ownership of one’s DNA, who else can own the DNA and for what purposes are unclear and DNA information can get hacked.</p>
<p>“It’s basically like you have no privacy, they’re taking it all,” Joel Winston, a consumer protection lawyer, told Gizmodo. “When it comes to DNA tests, don’t assume you have any rights.”</p>
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<p>Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said Wednesday that the fundamentals of the U.S. economy were strong, with wages starting to pick up, and that the ultra-low jobless rate could fall further.</p>
<p>"Global growth has really solidified," which has helped the U.S. economy, Mr. Evans said at a Bloomberg conference in Zurich. "I suspect the wage story is improving."</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The U.S. shed 33,000 jobs in September, the first loss in seven years. But the figure was largely dismissed by economists and financial markets because the jobs picture was distorted by Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas in late August, and Irma, which hit Florida in early September.</p>
<p>Other aspects of the report suggested underlying strength in the economy. The jobless rate was 4.2% in September, the lowest since 2001. Average hourly wages increased 2.9% from their year-earlier level.</p>
<p>Mr. Evans said his estimate for the natural rate of unemployment for the U.S. economy was around 4.5%, but added that the jobless rate could fall further from its current level</p>
<p>Write to Brian Blackstone at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
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<p>October 11, 2017 07:58 ET (11:58 GMT)</p>
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U.S. Unemployment Could Fall Further, Says Chicago Fed's Evans
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http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/11/u-s-unemployment-could-fall-further-says-chicago-feds-evans.html
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2017-11-07
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U.S. Unemployment Could Fall Further, Says Chicago Fed's Evans
<p>Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said Wednesday that the fundamentals of the U.S. economy were strong, with wages starting to pick up, and that the ultra-low jobless rate could fall further.</p>
<p>"Global growth has really solidified," which has helped the U.S. economy, Mr. Evans said at a Bloomberg conference in Zurich. "I suspect the wage story is improving."</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The U.S. shed 33,000 jobs in September, the first loss in seven years. But the figure was largely dismissed by economists and financial markets because the jobs picture was distorted by Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas in late August, and Irma, which hit Florida in early September.</p>
<p>Other aspects of the report suggested underlying strength in the economy. The jobless rate was 4.2% in September, the lowest since 2001. Average hourly wages increased 2.9% from their year-earlier level.</p>
<p>Mr. Evans said his estimate for the natural rate of unemployment for the U.S. economy was around 4.5%, but added that the jobless rate could fall further from its current level</p>
<p>Write to Brian Blackstone at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
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<p>October 11, 2017 07:58 ET (11:58 GMT)</p>
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<p>Rep. Joe Wilson may have apologized for <a href="" type="internal">heckling the president</a> during his speech to Congress Wednesday, but plenty of people apparently wish he hadn’t, most notably, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200909100018" type="external">Rush Limbaugh</a>. But his outburst has earned him support among another fringe of the right-wing: immigration foes, who were thrilled to hear Wilson vocally challenge Obama on his claim that health care reform would not cover illegal immigrants. Today, the <a href="http://www.alipac.us/article4501.html" type="external">Americans for Legal Immigration PAC</a> (ALI-PAC) came to Wilson’ defense, urging supporters to speak out online and on talk radio to support the South Carolina Republican.</p>
<p>“It is a real shame that the rest of Congress was not on their feet pointing out the President’s lie about illegal aliens in his Health Care plans along with Joe Wilson,” said William Gheen, the group’s executive director. “Joe Wilson yelled out what millions of Americans were thinking during Obama’s speech. We agree with what Joe Wilson said, even if we did not, we would defend his right as an American to speak his mind.”</p>
<p>Gheen became a media phenom in 2005 after fighting a North Carolina bill that would have allowed some non-citizens to qualify for in-state tuition at some of North Carolina’s public colleges and universities. A talk radio host, he is a prominent promoter of the reconquista conspiracy theory, believing that Mexicans are plotting to seize American territory. He has close ties to the Minutemen and other anti-immigration factions that the <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=1524" type="external">Southern Poverty Law Center</a> has deemed hate groups. Wilson may have disgraced his party last night, but for guys like Gheen, Wilson is a bona fide hero.</p>
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Joe Wilson Wins Nativist Vote
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https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/joe-wilson-wins-nativist-vote/
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2009-09-10
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Joe Wilson Wins Nativist Vote
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<p>Rep. Joe Wilson may have apologized for <a href="" type="internal">heckling the president</a> during his speech to Congress Wednesday, but plenty of people apparently wish he hadn’t, most notably, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200909100018" type="external">Rush Limbaugh</a>. But his outburst has earned him support among another fringe of the right-wing: immigration foes, who were thrilled to hear Wilson vocally challenge Obama on his claim that health care reform would not cover illegal immigrants. Today, the <a href="http://www.alipac.us/article4501.html" type="external">Americans for Legal Immigration PAC</a> (ALI-PAC) came to Wilson’ defense, urging supporters to speak out online and on talk radio to support the South Carolina Republican.</p>
<p>“It is a real shame that the rest of Congress was not on their feet pointing out the President’s lie about illegal aliens in his Health Care plans along with Joe Wilson,” said William Gheen, the group’s executive director. “Joe Wilson yelled out what millions of Americans were thinking during Obama’s speech. We agree with what Joe Wilson said, even if we did not, we would defend his right as an American to speak his mind.”</p>
<p>Gheen became a media phenom in 2005 after fighting a North Carolina bill that would have allowed some non-citizens to qualify for in-state tuition at some of North Carolina’s public colleges and universities. A talk radio host, he is a prominent promoter of the reconquista conspiracy theory, believing that Mexicans are plotting to seize American territory. He has close ties to the Minutemen and other anti-immigration factions that the <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=1524" type="external">Southern Poverty Law Center</a> has deemed hate groups. Wilson may have disgraced his party last night, but for guys like Gheen, Wilson is a bona fide hero.</p>
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<p>Photo by U.S. Department of Agriculture | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>There is a practical path for tackling climate change, for organizing from your house to your neighborhood, city, state and beyond. It’s clear. It’s simple. It’s 3 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per person per year as a goal and a measure for global sustainability.</p>
<p>3 tons is the basis for personal and collective action and planning on all levels. It is, and must become, the acceptable local and global standard first measuring where we are, sustainable or endangered, and as a guide to reaching sustainability.</p>
<p>3 tons per person per year of carbon dioxide emissions is a simple number. In the global aggregate, 21 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, more or less, is the sustainable global limit for natural cycles to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide levels level. A gigaton is a billion tons. This means that 21 gigatons is about 3 metric tons per person per year , or 6,612 pounds per year for all of us. 3 tons per person per year of carbon dioxide from primary energy consumption equal to 70 gigajoules or 19,443 kilowatt hours a year was set as a sustainable global target for all by the U.N. In 2011. Remember that 3 tons per person per year number. That’s the target we need to keep in mind if we are to stop and then reverse the steady march toward climate catastrophe.</p>
<p>3 tons by itself is not enough given the carbon dioxide we’ve already added to the atmosphere and are continuing to do so. 3 tons, or even less, as planetary target must be combined with global cooling also aggressively remove carbon from the atmosphere and sequester in soil or biomass or otherwise remove and store it.</p>
<p>Yes this is a global problem. But, from the other end of the telescope, climate change is the collective consequence of what all 7.6 billion of us do. Our opportunity and responsibility is to act from where we are, to take part in what must be come a global movement from the bottom up for global ecological and social change.</p>
<p>Current total global carbon emissions were 34 gigatons in 2017, an average of 5.5 tons carbon per person per year. This means collectively a 13 gigaton of carbon dioxide yearly excess. This is reflected in the relentless increase in atmospheric carbon measured by the Mana Loa laboratory in Hawaii, now above 400 parts per million and rising from the pre-industrial level of below 300 part per million.</p>
<p>Globally, at first glance, what’s the big deal? We just have to cut carbon emissions by a little more than half. Unfortunately, its not that simple. Some of the 7.6 billion, mostly poor people in poor nations are already way below 3 tons. The more “advanced’ the economy , the greater the carbon pollution. The rich, not the poor, are the global carbon hogs and are responsible for the lion’s share of historic and current pollution.</p>
<p>In Mali, the average emissions for 18 million people was only one-tenth of a ton (.1 tons) of carbon dioxide per person in 2014 according to the World Bank, or 1.8 million tons total of carbon dioxide. In the United States, for 300 million of us, it’s an average of 16.5 tons per person per year or 4.95 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. That’s 2,750 times greater than Mali. If we all lived like Americans, as many aspire to, global emissions would be 125 gigatons a year or about 6 times greater than sustainable levels. But we have only one Earth, not six.</p>
<p>3 tons per person per year of carbon dioxide equivalent is the basis for global convergence on sustainable conduct, for a global technological and social revolution based on making economic growth mean ecological improvement and for the pursuit of social and ecological justice and an end to poverty. Carbon dioxide equivalent includes the climate change effects of the emissions of other green house gases like methane. 3 tons per person emissions per year when combined with removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through soil building and biomass on land and sea will stop and reverse climate change.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, today almost none of us have any idea what is our actual share of the problem, nor do we understand what is a sustainable level of emissions. We don’t know the facts about the concrete goal we really need to be work toward and fighting for and how to measure our progress. Instead, we get lost in ever shifting and incomprehensible blather about how much warming is deemed acceptable. The acceptable number continuing to rise in order to keep business and pollution as usual churning as the “acceptable “target increases from 1.5 degrees Centigrade to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 degrees Centigrade. Business and pollution as usual offers half-measures and promises action just in time, if we are lucky, before the planet warms sufficiently to cause massive crop failure as industrial civilization collapses amidst flood, drought, famine, war, mass migration of the desperate, epidemics. All fall down.</p>
<p>There is another choice. We can make and implement plans for a 3 tons of carbon per person future starting where we live. Right here. Right now.</p>
<p>The global pursuit of 3 tons of carbon must be a reflection not of economic contraction and global depression, but of economic growth resulting in ecological improvement. This is global economic growth rooted in the community ownership of the new global efficient renewable energy system and ecological production systems. It is a plan for community empowerment and for asset building and a global sharing of resources as investment to help empower the global poor to build the sustainable energy and productive infrastructure. Unless this transformation, this 3 ton mantra for salvation, is global and shared we cannot succeed to save ourselves in a world half sustainable and half mega-polluting.</p>
<p>A 100% renewable energy transition globally by 2050 is both technological possible and will reduce the average cost of energy by 30% from current fossil fuel and nuclear power prices according to a comprehensive 2017 study of the European Energy Watch Group led by physicist and German PV pioneer Hans-Josef Fell and performed by Berlin’s Lappeenranta University of Technology. The study employed hourly simulation data for modeling 145 global regions using a mixture of renewables, primarily PV and wind and energy storage. Carbon dioxide emissions are radically reduced by 2030 and largely disappear by 2050 from energy production. In 2018, further examination of eliminating carbon dioxide from industrial and other sectors globally will be forthcoming.</p>
<p>This is the context of technological possibility and the competitive economic advantage of zero fuel cost and zero emissions renewable energy for the pursuit of global sustainability and 3 tons of carbon per person per year as achievable goal combined with global cooling activities to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by soil building and biomass.</p>
<p>But technological possibility and economic advantage will not by itself overcoming the self-interest of polluters,the political inertia against dramatic change and the trillions of dollars of soon to be stranded investment in fossil fuel and nuclear plants. To stranded plant is added the booked value of trillions of dollars of fossil fuels in the ground soon to be rendered worthless as fuel. Current economics is driving the abandonment of fossil fuels. This is why in March 2018, Duke energy announced the closing of 9 more coal plants to be replaced by renewables and, alas, natural gas. When Southern utilities in the U.S. like Duke and Florida Power and Light turn big time for renewables they clearly are driven by economic reality.</p>
<p>3 tons is meant to be a call to local action to start where we are, to push as hard as we can for a renewable energy transformation and transformation of the global industrial system to sustainability. This is happening on all levels from the efforts of Norenda Modi that is quickly allowing India to join China as ra renewable leader, to efforts by U.S. States like California and New York in response to the Trump administration withdrawal from the Paris Climate accords. Like Gov. Brown in California, we cannot wait for deliverance .We must act where we are, and make that action part of a global wave of local plans and clear plans and demands to facilitate the grand global renewable transformation.</p>
<p>The Energy Watch Group writes that they “initiated this research to present an energy transition pathway encompassing all countries globally which is required for a comprehensive discourse on national government levels…” The purpose of 3 tons of carbon per person per year is to raise these issues from below, thorough local plans,local demands that engage their neighbors, local businesses, schools, institutions and their political representatives. It is bringing the possibilities for a renewable transformation to reality.</p>
<p>We will sink or float together. We must make sure that a minimum of 1% of global product, annually $ 1.1 trillion, raised through ecological assessments on pollution and high energy consumption is targeted for investment to helping the poorest pursue ecological paths and not fossil fuels. China and India, led by Xi and Modi, are already leading the way with trillion dollar renewable investment construction programs.</p>
<p>Globally the renewable transition will require many trillions in productive investment,the everyday practice of making economic growth meaning ecological improvement. Much of this productive investment is to replace highly polluting and inefficient devices with more efficient and much less polluting machines, for example, installing only air to air heat pumps in buildings and not oil or gas burners. The three times more efficient electric heat pump, is both a big money saver that slashes carbon pollution. It takes heat from the air, even in the winter. It is 3 times more efficient than oil or gas burners because of the second law of thermodynamics advantages of the Carnot refrigeration cycle. In this case, heat pumps cooling the air and dumping the heat into the house in the winter. In the summer it takes taking heat out of the air in the house and dumps it outside. This is 3 times more efficient than burning oil or gas for heat. And if the electricity is from renewable energy sources, carbon dioxide is slashed to minimal levels.</p>
<p>A carbon based fuel when burnt combines with oxygen to produce 3.15 times its weight in carbon dioxide. Burn 1,000 gallons of fuel oil for heat releases 22.4 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon according to the EIA or 10.15 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. Electric heat pumps today reduces that to 3.4 tons and to a small fraction of that if the grid was renewably powered. The heat pumps could be sold by your electric utility on a no capital down basis and paid for from the savings form the fuel you no longer consume.</p>
<p>What to Do</p>
<p>What’s a concerned citizen to do beyond just worrying about business and pollution as usual that is leading us to common catastrophe? Suppose you knew that your personal share and entitlement for carbon dioxide emissions was three tons of carbon dioxide equivalents a year to hold the amount of carbon dioxide steady in the atmosphere. And you also knew, for example, that that an average gas driven car emitted 4.7 tons of carbon dioxide per year and an electric car would cut that in half even when powered from the current polluting grid, and much much less on a life cycle basis from a future global efficient renewable energy system displacing almost all fossil fuels.</p>
<p>Carbon dioxide life cycle footprint of fossil fuels is much greater than just the combustion. Included in life cycle carbon are substantial methane leaks from natural gas production and pipelines, the energy for drilling, mining, transport, refining, and disposal that are much more significant for fossil fuels and nuclear energy than for renewables. Reducing end use of fossil fuels has a much broader affect on net emissions.</p>
<p>A plan to help get to three tons is not simply to buy electric cars, but also to improve public transportation, bike sharing, installing electric vehicle charging infrastructure and car to home interconnection for millions of EVs to also help provide power into the electric grid, mandate phasing in of electric vehicles whose operating “fuel” cost is equivalent to less than $1.00 per gallon.</p>
<p>Understanding your current average national contribution in tons of carbon per person per year is the basis for understanding and changing not just your personal choices, but your local and national systemic issues necessary for getting to sustainable carbon levels.</p>
<p>Three Crucial Steps For Getting From Endangered Present to Ecological Future</p>
<p>An ecological transformation is not a recipe for stringency and poverty. It is a strategy for improved efficiency and massive productive investment over time to create the a sustainable global energy, production, agricultural, and forestry system. This is a recipe for a global convergence on sustainable conduct. It is the basis for a plan for social and ecological justice and an end to poverty.</p>
<p>Technologically, a comprehensive and economic series of changes are available to transform the self-destructive industrial present to make economic growth men ecological improvement in the context of a global pursuit of social and ecological justice.</p>
<p>A family of four today as an interim step with a 12 tons of carbon per year entitlement and goal could quickly move from 14.9 tons carbon for car and heating to 7.1 tons with electric vehicle and heat pump even using the current grid. A wide variety of measures can replace the typical U.S.consumption pattern and become part of the ecological transition plan including. car sharing, public transit, telecommuting and living near ,where you work, bike sharing, autonomous electric vehicles for hire.</p>
<p>At bottom, once we look the three tons of carbon challenge in the eye, it’s a straightforward matter to develop a clear plan in steps to get from our polluting and self-destructive present to a sustainable ecological future.</p>
<p>Three numbers matter the most that serve as a personal and collective guide to solutions from the grassroots up. We can have much more power to help change what happens in our neighborhood and our town and state than we do nationally and globally. Yes millions of people in the streets can help move the global leadership. But we have the real chance to participate in developing local plans for our town to take steps to:</p>
<p>1) Inventory and understand our greenhouse gas emissions from all aspects including individual and industrial consumption but also from agriculture and from forestry. There are good free software tools now available to conduct an inventory including the <a href="" type="internal">Global Protocol for Community Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories</a>. This 170 page report that provide detailed guidance and tools for conducting greenhouse gas emission inventories and developing and verifying plans.</p>
<p>2) Develop comprehensive plans to climate change mitigation focused on reaching the 3 tons per person carbon dioxide limit asap and to remove and sequester carbon from the atmosphere through soil building and biomass growth to provide global cooling and eventually return the atmosphere to pre-industrial carbon levels below 300 parts per million.</p>
<p>3) Have an action plan for implementation of the plan on fiancial, legislative, technical, legal area. Understand what must be done and what tools do we need to make this happen. For example to retrofit all buildings with PV and efficient appliances and EV changing capability could be facilitated by a combination of revolving loan funds from local revenue bonds providing loans to be repaid form the stream of saving from efficiency and renewable energy products.The measures needed will encompass the political, regulatory, technical, and financial areas.</p>
<p>Facing Reality and Shaping An Ecological Future</p>
<p>Three tons of carbon dioxide per person per year as goal and guide is the basis for more than typical climate change mitigation and adaptation plans. It is the basis for community action and beyond to craft a sustainable, prosperous, ecological and just future.</p>
<p>Three tons of carbon per person per year as global target for yourself, your city, your state and beyond is the basis not only for stopping and reversing climate change. It is the means for pursuing ecological economic growth, building locally owned assets in the renewably powered economy and for the pursuit of social and ecological justice manifested in concrete plans and to take action as consumers, workers, business people, investors, neighbors.</p>
<p>Sustainability writ large is the expression of grand co-evolutionary forces that have shaped our planet and the ecosphere. This has created the oxygen atmosphere with just enough carbon dioxide to maintain surface temperature within a range not too hot or too cold. The history of the co-evolution of life and planet Earth has been one of countervailing and healing response to excess that has permitted life to both survive periodic crises and mass extinctions and to respond to changing conditions and once again thrive.</p>
<p>We are in the midst of one of the times of crisis and the potential for a mass extinction event, this time driven not by geologic action like volcanoes, but by human industrial action and conscious human action. Humanity has joined the global process of sustainability that reshapes the nature of Earth on a fundamental and geological scale.</p>
<p>Humanity has the ability and the necessity, to play a healing role in response to industrial excess and toward the development of a sustainable civilization that will endure for geological time scale. If we fail we are almost certain to suffer the consequences of ecological and social crisis for geological scales potential lasting for hundreds of thousands of years as did the global warming of the Eocene.</p>
<p>We need to choose between pursuing a sustainable ecological future or accept decent into ecological chaos. Three tons of carbon dioxide per person per year is a means and a guide for healing and enduring ecological change and building a prosperous and enduring ecological civilization. Choose wisely. Now is the time.</p>
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Climate Truth: a Plan for Sustainability
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https://counterpunch.org/2018/04/05/climate-truth-a-plan-for-sustainability/
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2018-04-05
| 4left
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Climate Truth: a Plan for Sustainability
<p>Photo by U.S. Department of Agriculture | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>There is a practical path for tackling climate change, for organizing from your house to your neighborhood, city, state and beyond. It’s clear. It’s simple. It’s 3 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per person per year as a goal and a measure for global sustainability.</p>
<p>3 tons is the basis for personal and collective action and planning on all levels. It is, and must become, the acceptable local and global standard first measuring where we are, sustainable or endangered, and as a guide to reaching sustainability.</p>
<p>3 tons per person per year of carbon dioxide emissions is a simple number. In the global aggregate, 21 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, more or less, is the sustainable global limit for natural cycles to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide levels level. A gigaton is a billion tons. This means that 21 gigatons is about 3 metric tons per person per year , or 6,612 pounds per year for all of us. 3 tons per person per year of carbon dioxide from primary energy consumption equal to 70 gigajoules or 19,443 kilowatt hours a year was set as a sustainable global target for all by the U.N. In 2011. Remember that 3 tons per person per year number. That’s the target we need to keep in mind if we are to stop and then reverse the steady march toward climate catastrophe.</p>
<p>3 tons by itself is not enough given the carbon dioxide we’ve already added to the atmosphere and are continuing to do so. 3 tons, or even less, as planetary target must be combined with global cooling also aggressively remove carbon from the atmosphere and sequester in soil or biomass or otherwise remove and store it.</p>
<p>Yes this is a global problem. But, from the other end of the telescope, climate change is the collective consequence of what all 7.6 billion of us do. Our opportunity and responsibility is to act from where we are, to take part in what must be come a global movement from the bottom up for global ecological and social change.</p>
<p>Current total global carbon emissions were 34 gigatons in 2017, an average of 5.5 tons carbon per person per year. This means collectively a 13 gigaton of carbon dioxide yearly excess. This is reflected in the relentless increase in atmospheric carbon measured by the Mana Loa laboratory in Hawaii, now above 400 parts per million and rising from the pre-industrial level of below 300 part per million.</p>
<p>Globally, at first glance, what’s the big deal? We just have to cut carbon emissions by a little more than half. Unfortunately, its not that simple. Some of the 7.6 billion, mostly poor people in poor nations are already way below 3 tons. The more “advanced’ the economy , the greater the carbon pollution. The rich, not the poor, are the global carbon hogs and are responsible for the lion’s share of historic and current pollution.</p>
<p>In Mali, the average emissions for 18 million people was only one-tenth of a ton (.1 tons) of carbon dioxide per person in 2014 according to the World Bank, or 1.8 million tons total of carbon dioxide. In the United States, for 300 million of us, it’s an average of 16.5 tons per person per year or 4.95 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. That’s 2,750 times greater than Mali. If we all lived like Americans, as many aspire to, global emissions would be 125 gigatons a year or about 6 times greater than sustainable levels. But we have only one Earth, not six.</p>
<p>3 tons per person per year of carbon dioxide equivalent is the basis for global convergence on sustainable conduct, for a global technological and social revolution based on making economic growth mean ecological improvement and for the pursuit of social and ecological justice and an end to poverty. Carbon dioxide equivalent includes the climate change effects of the emissions of other green house gases like methane. 3 tons per person emissions per year when combined with removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through soil building and biomass on land and sea will stop and reverse climate change.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, today almost none of us have any idea what is our actual share of the problem, nor do we understand what is a sustainable level of emissions. We don’t know the facts about the concrete goal we really need to be work toward and fighting for and how to measure our progress. Instead, we get lost in ever shifting and incomprehensible blather about how much warming is deemed acceptable. The acceptable number continuing to rise in order to keep business and pollution as usual churning as the “acceptable “target increases from 1.5 degrees Centigrade to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 degrees Centigrade. Business and pollution as usual offers half-measures and promises action just in time, if we are lucky, before the planet warms sufficiently to cause massive crop failure as industrial civilization collapses amidst flood, drought, famine, war, mass migration of the desperate, epidemics. All fall down.</p>
<p>There is another choice. We can make and implement plans for a 3 tons of carbon per person future starting where we live. Right here. Right now.</p>
<p>The global pursuit of 3 tons of carbon must be a reflection not of economic contraction and global depression, but of economic growth resulting in ecological improvement. This is global economic growth rooted in the community ownership of the new global efficient renewable energy system and ecological production systems. It is a plan for community empowerment and for asset building and a global sharing of resources as investment to help empower the global poor to build the sustainable energy and productive infrastructure. Unless this transformation, this 3 ton mantra for salvation, is global and shared we cannot succeed to save ourselves in a world half sustainable and half mega-polluting.</p>
<p>A 100% renewable energy transition globally by 2050 is both technological possible and will reduce the average cost of energy by 30% from current fossil fuel and nuclear power prices according to a comprehensive 2017 study of the European Energy Watch Group led by physicist and German PV pioneer Hans-Josef Fell and performed by Berlin’s Lappeenranta University of Technology. The study employed hourly simulation data for modeling 145 global regions using a mixture of renewables, primarily PV and wind and energy storage. Carbon dioxide emissions are radically reduced by 2030 and largely disappear by 2050 from energy production. In 2018, further examination of eliminating carbon dioxide from industrial and other sectors globally will be forthcoming.</p>
<p>This is the context of technological possibility and the competitive economic advantage of zero fuel cost and zero emissions renewable energy for the pursuit of global sustainability and 3 tons of carbon per person per year as achievable goal combined with global cooling activities to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by soil building and biomass.</p>
<p>But technological possibility and economic advantage will not by itself overcoming the self-interest of polluters,the political inertia against dramatic change and the trillions of dollars of soon to be stranded investment in fossil fuel and nuclear plants. To stranded plant is added the booked value of trillions of dollars of fossil fuels in the ground soon to be rendered worthless as fuel. Current economics is driving the abandonment of fossil fuels. This is why in March 2018, Duke energy announced the closing of 9 more coal plants to be replaced by renewables and, alas, natural gas. When Southern utilities in the U.S. like Duke and Florida Power and Light turn big time for renewables they clearly are driven by economic reality.</p>
<p>3 tons is meant to be a call to local action to start where we are, to push as hard as we can for a renewable energy transformation and transformation of the global industrial system to sustainability. This is happening on all levels from the efforts of Norenda Modi that is quickly allowing India to join China as ra renewable leader, to efforts by U.S. States like California and New York in response to the Trump administration withdrawal from the Paris Climate accords. Like Gov. Brown in California, we cannot wait for deliverance .We must act where we are, and make that action part of a global wave of local plans and clear plans and demands to facilitate the grand global renewable transformation.</p>
<p>The Energy Watch Group writes that they “initiated this research to present an energy transition pathway encompassing all countries globally which is required for a comprehensive discourse on national government levels…” The purpose of 3 tons of carbon per person per year is to raise these issues from below, thorough local plans,local demands that engage their neighbors, local businesses, schools, institutions and their political representatives. It is bringing the possibilities for a renewable transformation to reality.</p>
<p>We will sink or float together. We must make sure that a minimum of 1% of global product, annually $ 1.1 trillion, raised through ecological assessments on pollution and high energy consumption is targeted for investment to helping the poorest pursue ecological paths and not fossil fuels. China and India, led by Xi and Modi, are already leading the way with trillion dollar renewable investment construction programs.</p>
<p>Globally the renewable transition will require many trillions in productive investment,the everyday practice of making economic growth meaning ecological improvement. Much of this productive investment is to replace highly polluting and inefficient devices with more efficient and much less polluting machines, for example, installing only air to air heat pumps in buildings and not oil or gas burners. The three times more efficient electric heat pump, is both a big money saver that slashes carbon pollution. It takes heat from the air, even in the winter. It is 3 times more efficient than oil or gas burners because of the second law of thermodynamics advantages of the Carnot refrigeration cycle. In this case, heat pumps cooling the air and dumping the heat into the house in the winter. In the summer it takes taking heat out of the air in the house and dumps it outside. This is 3 times more efficient than burning oil or gas for heat. And if the electricity is from renewable energy sources, carbon dioxide is slashed to minimal levels.</p>
<p>A carbon based fuel when burnt combines with oxygen to produce 3.15 times its weight in carbon dioxide. Burn 1,000 gallons of fuel oil for heat releases 22.4 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon according to the EIA or 10.15 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. Electric heat pumps today reduces that to 3.4 tons and to a small fraction of that if the grid was renewably powered. The heat pumps could be sold by your electric utility on a no capital down basis and paid for from the savings form the fuel you no longer consume.</p>
<p>What to Do</p>
<p>What’s a concerned citizen to do beyond just worrying about business and pollution as usual that is leading us to common catastrophe? Suppose you knew that your personal share and entitlement for carbon dioxide emissions was three tons of carbon dioxide equivalents a year to hold the amount of carbon dioxide steady in the atmosphere. And you also knew, for example, that that an average gas driven car emitted 4.7 tons of carbon dioxide per year and an electric car would cut that in half even when powered from the current polluting grid, and much much less on a life cycle basis from a future global efficient renewable energy system displacing almost all fossil fuels.</p>
<p>Carbon dioxide life cycle footprint of fossil fuels is much greater than just the combustion. Included in life cycle carbon are substantial methane leaks from natural gas production and pipelines, the energy for drilling, mining, transport, refining, and disposal that are much more significant for fossil fuels and nuclear energy than for renewables. Reducing end use of fossil fuels has a much broader affect on net emissions.</p>
<p>A plan to help get to three tons is not simply to buy electric cars, but also to improve public transportation, bike sharing, installing electric vehicle charging infrastructure and car to home interconnection for millions of EVs to also help provide power into the electric grid, mandate phasing in of electric vehicles whose operating “fuel” cost is equivalent to less than $1.00 per gallon.</p>
<p>Understanding your current average national contribution in tons of carbon per person per year is the basis for understanding and changing not just your personal choices, but your local and national systemic issues necessary for getting to sustainable carbon levels.</p>
<p>Three Crucial Steps For Getting From Endangered Present to Ecological Future</p>
<p>An ecological transformation is not a recipe for stringency and poverty. It is a strategy for improved efficiency and massive productive investment over time to create the a sustainable global energy, production, agricultural, and forestry system. This is a recipe for a global convergence on sustainable conduct. It is the basis for a plan for social and ecological justice and an end to poverty.</p>
<p>Technologically, a comprehensive and economic series of changes are available to transform the self-destructive industrial present to make economic growth men ecological improvement in the context of a global pursuit of social and ecological justice.</p>
<p>A family of four today as an interim step with a 12 tons of carbon per year entitlement and goal could quickly move from 14.9 tons carbon for car and heating to 7.1 tons with electric vehicle and heat pump even using the current grid. A wide variety of measures can replace the typical U.S.consumption pattern and become part of the ecological transition plan including. car sharing, public transit, telecommuting and living near ,where you work, bike sharing, autonomous electric vehicles for hire.</p>
<p>At bottom, once we look the three tons of carbon challenge in the eye, it’s a straightforward matter to develop a clear plan in steps to get from our polluting and self-destructive present to a sustainable ecological future.</p>
<p>Three numbers matter the most that serve as a personal and collective guide to solutions from the grassroots up. We can have much more power to help change what happens in our neighborhood and our town and state than we do nationally and globally. Yes millions of people in the streets can help move the global leadership. But we have the real chance to participate in developing local plans for our town to take steps to:</p>
<p>1) Inventory and understand our greenhouse gas emissions from all aspects including individual and industrial consumption but also from agriculture and from forestry. There are good free software tools now available to conduct an inventory including the <a href="" type="internal">Global Protocol for Community Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories</a>. This 170 page report that provide detailed guidance and tools for conducting greenhouse gas emission inventories and developing and verifying plans.</p>
<p>2) Develop comprehensive plans to climate change mitigation focused on reaching the 3 tons per person carbon dioxide limit asap and to remove and sequester carbon from the atmosphere through soil building and biomass growth to provide global cooling and eventually return the atmosphere to pre-industrial carbon levels below 300 parts per million.</p>
<p>3) Have an action plan for implementation of the plan on fiancial, legislative, technical, legal area. Understand what must be done and what tools do we need to make this happen. For example to retrofit all buildings with PV and efficient appliances and EV changing capability could be facilitated by a combination of revolving loan funds from local revenue bonds providing loans to be repaid form the stream of saving from efficiency and renewable energy products.The measures needed will encompass the political, regulatory, technical, and financial areas.</p>
<p>Facing Reality and Shaping An Ecological Future</p>
<p>Three tons of carbon dioxide per person per year as goal and guide is the basis for more than typical climate change mitigation and adaptation plans. It is the basis for community action and beyond to craft a sustainable, prosperous, ecological and just future.</p>
<p>Three tons of carbon per person per year as global target for yourself, your city, your state and beyond is the basis not only for stopping and reversing climate change. It is the means for pursuing ecological economic growth, building locally owned assets in the renewably powered economy and for the pursuit of social and ecological justice manifested in concrete plans and to take action as consumers, workers, business people, investors, neighbors.</p>
<p>Sustainability writ large is the expression of grand co-evolutionary forces that have shaped our planet and the ecosphere. This has created the oxygen atmosphere with just enough carbon dioxide to maintain surface temperature within a range not too hot or too cold. The history of the co-evolution of life and planet Earth has been one of countervailing and healing response to excess that has permitted life to both survive periodic crises and mass extinctions and to respond to changing conditions and once again thrive.</p>
<p>We are in the midst of one of the times of crisis and the potential for a mass extinction event, this time driven not by geologic action like volcanoes, but by human industrial action and conscious human action. Humanity has joined the global process of sustainability that reshapes the nature of Earth on a fundamental and geological scale.</p>
<p>Humanity has the ability and the necessity, to play a healing role in response to industrial excess and toward the development of a sustainable civilization that will endure for geological time scale. If we fail we are almost certain to suffer the consequences of ecological and social crisis for geological scales potential lasting for hundreds of thousands of years as did the global warming of the Eocene.</p>
<p>We need to choose between pursuing a sustainable ecological future or accept decent into ecological chaos. Three tons of carbon dioxide per person per year is a means and a guide for healing and enduring ecological change and building a prosperous and enduring ecological civilization. Choose wisely. Now is the time.</p>
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<p>Wikimedia Commons</p>
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<p>Even as oil continues to pour into the Gulf from BP’s well a mile below the sea, some members of Congress are calling on the Obama administration to end the temporary moratorium on new drilling in the region. The group, which 17 Republicans and one Democrat from Gulf coast states, argues that the BP disaster and offshore drilling should be treated as separate issues entirely.</p>
<p>At a press conference on Tuesday, Ted Poe (R-Texas) said that “jobs will be lost, businesses will move someplace else” if the moratorium continues, and introduced a bill that would lift the administration’s temporary pause on new drilling and exploration. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) has introduced companion legislation in the Senate.</p>
<p>“This is about the Gulf coast and about America,” said Louisiana’s Charlie Melancon, the lone Democrat at the presser. His district in southern Louisiana has been the most affected by the oil disaster, but is also heavily dependent on income from the oil industry. “We are united in support of responsible offshore drilling … The last thing we need is a moratorium on offshore drilling that would result in thousands of workers laid of.” He said while he understands that the moratorium is “well intentioned,” it “would deliver a body blow to the economy.”</p>
<p>It might seem counter-intuitive that the same representatives from states devastated by the Gulf spill are the ones calling on the government to move ahead full-bore on new drilling. But these are also states heavily dependent on income from the oil industry–16 percent of Louisiana’s GDP is from the oil industry. That said, the current ban only affects new drilling and exploration, despite what the representatives argued. Rigs already in production have not been affected by the moratorium.</p>
<p>If I were a cynic, I might suspect the fact that all these representatives have taken quite a bit of money from the industry had something to do with it as well. Melancon, who <a href="" type="internal">broke down in tears at a hearing last month</a> about the disaster, has taken $312,100 from the oil and gas industry in his career, and $65,500 this year alone, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Poe has raised $44,250 from the oil and gas industry this year and $208,450 over his lifetime. But surely that has nothing to do with it.</p>
<p>The moratorium, said Poe, is based is “based on unfounded science.” He also told reporters that he thinks the current disaster and the future of offshore development should be treated as “separate issues.” And yet, the press conference happened as oil executives were testifying before a House panel about their ability to respond to oil spills. The executives admitted that, should the worst happen again, they can’t deal with it. “The fact of the matter is when these thing happen, we are not well equipped to handle them,” said Rex Tillerson, head of ExxonMobil.</p>
<p>Many of the Republicans used the press conference as an occasion to bash Obama. “This moratorium the president has in place is a job killer,” said Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.). “It will make a horrible disaster even worse.”</p>
<p>“This is a knee-jerk reaction by the administration to address a problem that doesn’t exist,” said Pete Olson (R-Texas). Another Texas Republican, John Culberson, argued that the BP oil disaster “is an anomaly–like an airplane falling from the clear blue sky.”</p>
<p>Others used it as an opportunity to gripe about all the other places we can’t drill, with Ralph Hall (R-Texas) noting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Florida and California coasts as places he’d also like to see drilling. Others complained that Obama might use the oil spill to encourage Congress to pass cap and trade legislation.</p>
<p>Ridiculous arguments aside, I’ve got to admit, it takes some giant brass balls to stand up and call for more drilling even as your states drown in oil. The members said they are meeting with Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar tomorrow to make their case about why they believe the ban should be lifted.</p>
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Gulf Reps. Call for…More Drilling?
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/06/gop-melancon-call-end-temporary-drilling-moratorium/
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2010-06-15
| 4left
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Gulf Reps. Call for…More Drilling?
<p>Wikimedia Commons</p>
<p />
<p>Even as oil continues to pour into the Gulf from BP’s well a mile below the sea, some members of Congress are calling on the Obama administration to end the temporary moratorium on new drilling in the region. The group, which 17 Republicans and one Democrat from Gulf coast states, argues that the BP disaster and offshore drilling should be treated as separate issues entirely.</p>
<p>At a press conference on Tuesday, Ted Poe (R-Texas) said that “jobs will be lost, businesses will move someplace else” if the moratorium continues, and introduced a bill that would lift the administration’s temporary pause on new drilling and exploration. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) has introduced companion legislation in the Senate.</p>
<p>“This is about the Gulf coast and about America,” said Louisiana’s Charlie Melancon, the lone Democrat at the presser. His district in southern Louisiana has been the most affected by the oil disaster, but is also heavily dependent on income from the oil industry. “We are united in support of responsible offshore drilling … The last thing we need is a moratorium on offshore drilling that would result in thousands of workers laid of.” He said while he understands that the moratorium is “well intentioned,” it “would deliver a body blow to the economy.”</p>
<p>It might seem counter-intuitive that the same representatives from states devastated by the Gulf spill are the ones calling on the government to move ahead full-bore on new drilling. But these are also states heavily dependent on income from the oil industry–16 percent of Louisiana’s GDP is from the oil industry. That said, the current ban only affects new drilling and exploration, despite what the representatives argued. Rigs already in production have not been affected by the moratorium.</p>
<p>If I were a cynic, I might suspect the fact that all these representatives have taken quite a bit of money from the industry had something to do with it as well. Melancon, who <a href="" type="internal">broke down in tears at a hearing last month</a> about the disaster, has taken $312,100 from the oil and gas industry in his career, and $65,500 this year alone, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Poe has raised $44,250 from the oil and gas industry this year and $208,450 over his lifetime. But surely that has nothing to do with it.</p>
<p>The moratorium, said Poe, is based is “based on unfounded science.” He also told reporters that he thinks the current disaster and the future of offshore development should be treated as “separate issues.” And yet, the press conference happened as oil executives were testifying before a House panel about their ability to respond to oil spills. The executives admitted that, should the worst happen again, they can’t deal with it. “The fact of the matter is when these thing happen, we are not well equipped to handle them,” said Rex Tillerson, head of ExxonMobil.</p>
<p>Many of the Republicans used the press conference as an occasion to bash Obama. “This moratorium the president has in place is a job killer,” said Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.). “It will make a horrible disaster even worse.”</p>
<p>“This is a knee-jerk reaction by the administration to address a problem that doesn’t exist,” said Pete Olson (R-Texas). Another Texas Republican, John Culberson, argued that the BP oil disaster “is an anomaly–like an airplane falling from the clear blue sky.”</p>
<p>Others used it as an opportunity to gripe about all the other places we can’t drill, with Ralph Hall (R-Texas) noting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Florida and California coasts as places he’d also like to see drilling. Others complained that Obama might use the oil spill to encourage Congress to pass cap and trade legislation.</p>
<p>Ridiculous arguments aside, I’ve got to admit, it takes some giant brass balls to stand up and call for more drilling even as your states drown in oil. The members said they are meeting with Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar tomorrow to make their case about why they believe the ban should be lifted.</p>
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<p>It was just an off-the-cuff comment. A throw-away line, actually. Just something to honor retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond at his 100th birthday bash.</p>
<p>Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said Mississippians were “proud of” voting for the segregationist Thurmond when he ran as a States Rights presidential candidate in 1948, largely against the civil rights record of incumbent Harry Truman. Then, Lott quickly added, “If the rest of the country had followed our lead we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”</p>
<p>For a couple of days, hardly anyone publicly spoke about the comments. Not the Democrats, who had proven themselves to be a marginalized blend of Demopublicanism. Not the Republicans who didn’t need a scandal so close after taking control of Congress. And not the establishment media which have often replaced hard-hitting investigative journalism with soft features about Britney’s latest navel-baring. Only a few alternative publications even mentioned Lott’s comments.</p>
<p>But it was enough. Soon, Lott’s comments were all over the internet, and the establishment finally realized there might be a story.</p>
<p>The Democrats, after a few days, sniffed the wind, suddenly became morally outraged at the Republican leader’s segregationist stand, and demanded his censure. The Republicans, trying for damage control, had little choice but to say they didn’t think Lott was a segregationist–any more–but still had to denounce the statements by the man they elected to lead them in the senate. President Bush, whom no one could accuse of racism, was justifiably outraged, and sharply rebuked Lott’s statements, saying the statements were not just offensive, but wrong. However, the President did not call for Lott’s resignation.</p>
<p>Some Republicans began a whispering campaign, giving the media statements of outrage–as long as they weren’t quoted by name or held responsible for their beliefs. After all, the Republican cowards figured that Lott just might survive a call for his resignation, and wouldn’t be magnanimous in awarding them political perks. But, if Lott did resign as majority leader, the whisperers would all move up the corporate political ladder, gaining better salaries, larger offices, and more power.</p>
<p>But, none of the Republicans were outraged enough to call for Lott to resign his senate seat-that would lead to a Democratic governor probably appointing a Democratic senator, thus reducing the Republican Senate membership to just 50.</p>
<p>Lott-just a good ole country boy- had managed to stay alive politically by telling his constituents what he thought they wanted to hear. As a fraternity president at the University of Mississippi, he not only opposed integrating his own Ole Miss fraternity, but chapters in all states. As a senator, he voted against an extension of the Voting Rights Act and against declaring a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. He voted for a Constitutional amendment that, if it had passed, would have outlawed busing to achieve racial integration. He supported federal provisions to allow tax exemptions for segregated private schools. In a campaign speech, he had told the segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens that they had “the right principles and the right philosophy.” And now, in mid-December, a contrite Lott, realizing the political damage and embarrassment he had caused, orchestrated a series of apologies, stating that his earlier remarks were “totally unacceptable and insensitive,” that he was truly sorry to “anybody who was offended,” and that he supported affirmative action. He told the media that although he grew up in a segregationist environment, “segregation and racism are immoral.” It’s what his 50 fellow Republican senators and the nation wanted to hear.</p>
<p>A number of questions still remain. Is Trent Lott a segregationist and racist who used that philosophy to get elected several times, and is he now apologetic because he wants to keep a leadership role and his Senate seat?</p>
<p>Why did Americans and their media, for 48 years, tolerate Strom Thurmond as a U.S. senator, although most of that time he was a segregationist and all of that time wrote no major legislation?</p>
<p>Why did the American media, which either didn’t know or didn’t care about Trent Lott’s history of segregationist and probably racist beliefs, remain relatively silent for the 14 years he was in the senate? More important, why was the establishment press silent for days after the most-recent comments?</p>
<p>Are the Democrats gleefully morally outraged because they really are outraged, or because they now have some political capital against a Republican-dominated Congress? Are the Republicans justifiably outraged, or are they just doing damage control to keep their Congressional power and whatever political capital they received during the mid-term elections?</p>
<p>Four years ago, Trent Lott was more than willing to use Bill Clinton’s sexual escapades as political fodder for a series of vicious attacks upon the President and the Democratic party. So, one interesting question remains. Why has no political leader called for Lott’s impeachment? The answer might be that Congress and Americans are more outraged at sexual conduct than they are at racism. Apparently, a stain upon a dress that almost tore apart the Clinton administration is politically far more damaging to America than a stain upon its soul.</p>
<p>WALT BRASCH, a national award-winning reporter and editor, is professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University. He is the author of 13 books, including The Press and the State, and the current book, The Joy of Sax: America During the Bill Clinton Era. You may contact him through his web-site <a href="http://www.walterbrasch.com/" type="external">www.walterbrasch.com</a>.</p>
<p>He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>copyright 2002 Walter M. Brasch.</p>
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A Lott of Questions
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https://counterpunch.org/2002/12/18/a-lott-of-questions/
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2002-12-18
| 4left
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A Lott of Questions
<p>It was just an off-the-cuff comment. A throw-away line, actually. Just something to honor retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond at his 100th birthday bash.</p>
<p>Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said Mississippians were “proud of” voting for the segregationist Thurmond when he ran as a States Rights presidential candidate in 1948, largely against the civil rights record of incumbent Harry Truman. Then, Lott quickly added, “If the rest of the country had followed our lead we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”</p>
<p>For a couple of days, hardly anyone publicly spoke about the comments. Not the Democrats, who had proven themselves to be a marginalized blend of Demopublicanism. Not the Republicans who didn’t need a scandal so close after taking control of Congress. And not the establishment media which have often replaced hard-hitting investigative journalism with soft features about Britney’s latest navel-baring. Only a few alternative publications even mentioned Lott’s comments.</p>
<p>But it was enough. Soon, Lott’s comments were all over the internet, and the establishment finally realized there might be a story.</p>
<p>The Democrats, after a few days, sniffed the wind, suddenly became morally outraged at the Republican leader’s segregationist stand, and demanded his censure. The Republicans, trying for damage control, had little choice but to say they didn’t think Lott was a segregationist–any more–but still had to denounce the statements by the man they elected to lead them in the senate. President Bush, whom no one could accuse of racism, was justifiably outraged, and sharply rebuked Lott’s statements, saying the statements were not just offensive, but wrong. However, the President did not call for Lott’s resignation.</p>
<p>Some Republicans began a whispering campaign, giving the media statements of outrage–as long as they weren’t quoted by name or held responsible for their beliefs. After all, the Republican cowards figured that Lott just might survive a call for his resignation, and wouldn’t be magnanimous in awarding them political perks. But, if Lott did resign as majority leader, the whisperers would all move up the corporate political ladder, gaining better salaries, larger offices, and more power.</p>
<p>But, none of the Republicans were outraged enough to call for Lott to resign his senate seat-that would lead to a Democratic governor probably appointing a Democratic senator, thus reducing the Republican Senate membership to just 50.</p>
<p>Lott-just a good ole country boy- had managed to stay alive politically by telling his constituents what he thought they wanted to hear. As a fraternity president at the University of Mississippi, he not only opposed integrating his own Ole Miss fraternity, but chapters in all states. As a senator, he voted against an extension of the Voting Rights Act and against declaring a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. He voted for a Constitutional amendment that, if it had passed, would have outlawed busing to achieve racial integration. He supported federal provisions to allow tax exemptions for segregated private schools. In a campaign speech, he had told the segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens that they had “the right principles and the right philosophy.” And now, in mid-December, a contrite Lott, realizing the political damage and embarrassment he had caused, orchestrated a series of apologies, stating that his earlier remarks were “totally unacceptable and insensitive,” that he was truly sorry to “anybody who was offended,” and that he supported affirmative action. He told the media that although he grew up in a segregationist environment, “segregation and racism are immoral.” It’s what his 50 fellow Republican senators and the nation wanted to hear.</p>
<p>A number of questions still remain. Is Trent Lott a segregationist and racist who used that philosophy to get elected several times, and is he now apologetic because he wants to keep a leadership role and his Senate seat?</p>
<p>Why did Americans and their media, for 48 years, tolerate Strom Thurmond as a U.S. senator, although most of that time he was a segregationist and all of that time wrote no major legislation?</p>
<p>Why did the American media, which either didn’t know or didn’t care about Trent Lott’s history of segregationist and probably racist beliefs, remain relatively silent for the 14 years he was in the senate? More important, why was the establishment press silent for days after the most-recent comments?</p>
<p>Are the Democrats gleefully morally outraged because they really are outraged, or because they now have some political capital against a Republican-dominated Congress? Are the Republicans justifiably outraged, or are they just doing damage control to keep their Congressional power and whatever political capital they received during the mid-term elections?</p>
<p>Four years ago, Trent Lott was more than willing to use Bill Clinton’s sexual escapades as political fodder for a series of vicious attacks upon the President and the Democratic party. So, one interesting question remains. Why has no political leader called for Lott’s impeachment? The answer might be that Congress and Americans are more outraged at sexual conduct than they are at racism. Apparently, a stain upon a dress that almost tore apart the Clinton administration is politically far more damaging to America than a stain upon its soul.</p>
<p>WALT BRASCH, a national award-winning reporter and editor, is professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University. He is the author of 13 books, including The Press and the State, and the current book, The Joy of Sax: America During the Bill Clinton Era. You may contact him through his web-site <a href="http://www.walterbrasch.com/" type="external">www.walterbrasch.com</a>.</p>
<p>He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>copyright 2002 Walter M. Brasch.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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<p>WACO, Texas (AP) — After combining for only 17 points and being in foul trouble in a recent game for No. 3 Baylor, Kalani Brown and Lauren Cox agreed they had to prove a point.</p>
<p>“We had to show we’re still there,” Brown said.</p>
<p>The 6-foot-7 Brown, a junior who is the Big 12′s top scorer, and the 6-foot-4 Cox have certainly posted up big for the Lady Bears (17-1, 7-0 Big 12). Baylor takes a 14-game winning streak into its home game Thursday against No. 6 Texas (15-3, 6-1), a matchup of the Big 12′s top two teams.</p>
<p>“They needed to redeem themselves after the Oklahoma game,” coach Kim Mulkey said. “I think they were obviously on a mission to not let the team down again because we do rely on those kids so much, and we ask them to do a lot of things.”</p>
<p>Since the duo’s rough outing — when the Lady Bears still won by 22 points, their slimmest winning margin this season — <a href="https://twitter.com/BaylorWBB/status/955249158528667648" type="external">Brown and Cox have combined for 95 points, 62 rebounds, 14 assists and 14 blocked shots in their last two games</a> .</p>
<p>Tara VanDerveer, who has coached plenty of big post players during her Hall of Fame career at Stanford, called Baylor’s duo “double trouble” after the Lady Bears beat the Cardinal by 24 points early in the season.</p>
<p>“I think a lot of teams, they have like one of us. They have one big player, and a couple of others that are 6-foot or something like that,” Cox said. “But I think it’s real special that both of us are on the same team.”</p>
<p>Brown and Cox account for 41 percent of the points scored by the Lady Bears, and grab 37 percent of the rebounds. In conference play, that is up to 44 percent of the scoring and 42 percent of the rebounding.</p>
<p>After <a href="http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=22163791" type="external">they became the first Big 12 teammates to both have 19 rebounds</a> in the same conference game, a 25-point victory in their last game, Kansas State coach Jeff Mittie likened Brown and Cox as having “a chance to play volleyball against the glass and rebound it more.”</p>
<p>Baylor finished with a 69-24 rebounding margin over the Wildcats. Cox and Brown combined for 19 of Baylor’s 32 offensive rebounds.</p>
<p>“Their front line’s as formidable as one that I think that is in the country. Their size obviously, their experience in there,” Mittie said.</p>
<p>“That’s a lot of rebounds for two girls that play together. They have to share the rebounding and not fight over it,” Mulkey said. “And to think that you had that many come off the boards and they both had the same number of rebounds is pretty impressive.”</p>
<p>The Lady Bears are the national leader with an average rebound margin of 19.7, which is 5 1/2 more per game than second-best Texas.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/BaylorWBB/status/954899241691906049" type="external">Brown leads the Big 12 with 21.7 points per game</a> and her 71 percent shooting from the field, and the junior center is fourth in the league with 9.3 rebounds per game. Cox is the league’s second-leading rebounder at 9.9 per game while also ranking 11th with 15.1 points per game and 10th with 3.4 assists — many of those to Brown, who has often returned the favor.</p>
<p>At Iowa State days after the Oklahoma game, Brown had four assists — all in one quarter, and all to Cox. In that same quarter, Cox had two assists on baskets by Brown.</p>
<p>“We have great chemistry together, we really trust each other. So I think that’s where all of the great passing comes from,” said Cox, now starting as a sophomore. “Last year, there were five of us, so we weren’t really getting to play with each other that much. And this year we’re the two main post players, and so we get to work with each other a lot more.”</p>
<p>Both play nearly 28 minutes per game, with only senior guard Kristy Wallace playing more — and just barely at exactly 28 minutes a game.</p>
<p>“Lauren and I have played together long enough to know how we want the ball,” Brown said. “I guess we just know each other. We know our strengths and our weaknesses, and we’re not going to put each other in jeopardy in any kind of way, or in a bad situation.”</p>
<p>WACO, Texas (AP) — After combining for only 17 points and being in foul trouble in a recent game for No. 3 Baylor, Kalani Brown and Lauren Cox agreed they had to prove a point.</p>
<p>“We had to show we’re still there,” Brown said.</p>
<p>The 6-foot-7 Brown, a junior who is the Big 12′s top scorer, and the 6-foot-4 Cox have certainly posted up big for the Lady Bears (17-1, 7-0 Big 12). Baylor takes a 14-game winning streak into its home game Thursday against No. 6 Texas (15-3, 6-1), a matchup of the Big 12′s top two teams.</p>
<p>“They needed to redeem themselves after the Oklahoma game,” coach Kim Mulkey said. “I think they were obviously on a mission to not let the team down again because we do rely on those kids so much, and we ask them to do a lot of things.”</p>
<p>Since the duo’s rough outing — when the Lady Bears still won by 22 points, their slimmest winning margin this season — <a href="https://twitter.com/BaylorWBB/status/955249158528667648" type="external">Brown and Cox have combined for 95 points, 62 rebounds, 14 assists and 14 blocked shots in their last two games</a> .</p>
<p>Tara VanDerveer, who has coached plenty of big post players during her Hall of Fame career at Stanford, called Baylor’s duo “double trouble” after the Lady Bears beat the Cardinal by 24 points early in the season.</p>
<p>“I think a lot of teams, they have like one of us. They have one big player, and a couple of others that are 6-foot or something like that,” Cox said. “But I think it’s real special that both of us are on the same team.”</p>
<p>Brown and Cox account for 41 percent of the points scored by the Lady Bears, and grab 37 percent of the rebounds. In conference play, that is up to 44 percent of the scoring and 42 percent of the rebounding.</p>
<p>After <a href="http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=22163791" type="external">they became the first Big 12 teammates to both have 19 rebounds</a> in the same conference game, a 25-point victory in their last game, Kansas State coach Jeff Mittie likened Brown and Cox as having “a chance to play volleyball against the glass and rebound it more.”</p>
<p>Baylor finished with a 69-24 rebounding margin over the Wildcats. Cox and Brown combined for 19 of Baylor’s 32 offensive rebounds.</p>
<p>“Their front line’s as formidable as one that I think that is in the country. Their size obviously, their experience in there,” Mittie said.</p>
<p>“That’s a lot of rebounds for two girls that play together. They have to share the rebounding and not fight over it,” Mulkey said. “And to think that you had that many come off the boards and they both had the same number of rebounds is pretty impressive.”</p>
<p>The Lady Bears are the national leader with an average rebound margin of 19.7, which is 5 1/2 more per game than second-best Texas.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/BaylorWBB/status/954899241691906049" type="external">Brown leads the Big 12 with 21.7 points per game</a> and her 71 percent shooting from the field, and the junior center is fourth in the league with 9.3 rebounds per game. Cox is the league’s second-leading rebounder at 9.9 per game while also ranking 11th with 15.1 points per game and 10th with 3.4 assists — many of those to Brown, who has often returned the favor.</p>
<p>At Iowa State days after the Oklahoma game, Brown had four assists — all in one quarter, and all to Cox. In that same quarter, Cox had two assists on baskets by Brown.</p>
<p>“We have great chemistry together, we really trust each other. So I think that’s where all of the great passing comes from,” said Cox, now starting as a sophomore. “Last year, there were five of us, so we weren’t really getting to play with each other that much. And this year we’re the two main post players, and so we get to work with each other a lot more.”</p>
<p>Both play nearly 28 minutes per game, with only senior guard Kristy Wallace playing more — and just barely at exactly 28 minutes a game.</p>
<p>“Lauren and I have played together long enough to know how we want the ball,” Brown said. “I guess we just know each other. We know our strengths and our weaknesses, and we’re not going to put each other in jeopardy in any kind of way, or in a bad situation.”</p>
|
No. 3 Baylor women posting up big with Brown and Cox
| false |
https://apnews.com/eae74ecff9e846d995a9fc175ef5d65a
|
2018-01-24
| 2least
|
No. 3 Baylor women posting up big with Brown and Cox
<p>WACO, Texas (AP) — After combining for only 17 points and being in foul trouble in a recent game for No. 3 Baylor, Kalani Brown and Lauren Cox agreed they had to prove a point.</p>
<p>“We had to show we’re still there,” Brown said.</p>
<p>The 6-foot-7 Brown, a junior who is the Big 12′s top scorer, and the 6-foot-4 Cox have certainly posted up big for the Lady Bears (17-1, 7-0 Big 12). Baylor takes a 14-game winning streak into its home game Thursday against No. 6 Texas (15-3, 6-1), a matchup of the Big 12′s top two teams.</p>
<p>“They needed to redeem themselves after the Oklahoma game,” coach Kim Mulkey said. “I think they were obviously on a mission to not let the team down again because we do rely on those kids so much, and we ask them to do a lot of things.”</p>
<p>Since the duo’s rough outing — when the Lady Bears still won by 22 points, their slimmest winning margin this season — <a href="https://twitter.com/BaylorWBB/status/955249158528667648" type="external">Brown and Cox have combined for 95 points, 62 rebounds, 14 assists and 14 blocked shots in their last two games</a> .</p>
<p>Tara VanDerveer, who has coached plenty of big post players during her Hall of Fame career at Stanford, called Baylor’s duo “double trouble” after the Lady Bears beat the Cardinal by 24 points early in the season.</p>
<p>“I think a lot of teams, they have like one of us. They have one big player, and a couple of others that are 6-foot or something like that,” Cox said. “But I think it’s real special that both of us are on the same team.”</p>
<p>Brown and Cox account for 41 percent of the points scored by the Lady Bears, and grab 37 percent of the rebounds. In conference play, that is up to 44 percent of the scoring and 42 percent of the rebounding.</p>
<p>After <a href="http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=22163791" type="external">they became the first Big 12 teammates to both have 19 rebounds</a> in the same conference game, a 25-point victory in their last game, Kansas State coach Jeff Mittie likened Brown and Cox as having “a chance to play volleyball against the glass and rebound it more.”</p>
<p>Baylor finished with a 69-24 rebounding margin over the Wildcats. Cox and Brown combined for 19 of Baylor’s 32 offensive rebounds.</p>
<p>“Their front line’s as formidable as one that I think that is in the country. Their size obviously, their experience in there,” Mittie said.</p>
<p>“That’s a lot of rebounds for two girls that play together. They have to share the rebounding and not fight over it,” Mulkey said. “And to think that you had that many come off the boards and they both had the same number of rebounds is pretty impressive.”</p>
<p>The Lady Bears are the national leader with an average rebound margin of 19.7, which is 5 1/2 more per game than second-best Texas.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/BaylorWBB/status/954899241691906049" type="external">Brown leads the Big 12 with 21.7 points per game</a> and her 71 percent shooting from the field, and the junior center is fourth in the league with 9.3 rebounds per game. Cox is the league’s second-leading rebounder at 9.9 per game while also ranking 11th with 15.1 points per game and 10th with 3.4 assists — many of those to Brown, who has often returned the favor.</p>
<p>At Iowa State days after the Oklahoma game, Brown had four assists — all in one quarter, and all to Cox. In that same quarter, Cox had two assists on baskets by Brown.</p>
<p>“We have great chemistry together, we really trust each other. So I think that’s where all of the great passing comes from,” said Cox, now starting as a sophomore. “Last year, there were five of us, so we weren’t really getting to play with each other that much. And this year we’re the two main post players, and so we get to work with each other a lot more.”</p>
<p>Both play nearly 28 minutes per game, with only senior guard Kristy Wallace playing more — and just barely at exactly 28 minutes a game.</p>
<p>“Lauren and I have played together long enough to know how we want the ball,” Brown said. “I guess we just know each other. We know our strengths and our weaknesses, and we’re not going to put each other in jeopardy in any kind of way, or in a bad situation.”</p>
<p>WACO, Texas (AP) — After combining for only 17 points and being in foul trouble in a recent game for No. 3 Baylor, Kalani Brown and Lauren Cox agreed they had to prove a point.</p>
<p>“We had to show we’re still there,” Brown said.</p>
<p>The 6-foot-7 Brown, a junior who is the Big 12′s top scorer, and the 6-foot-4 Cox have certainly posted up big for the Lady Bears (17-1, 7-0 Big 12). Baylor takes a 14-game winning streak into its home game Thursday against No. 6 Texas (15-3, 6-1), a matchup of the Big 12′s top two teams.</p>
<p>“They needed to redeem themselves after the Oklahoma game,” coach Kim Mulkey said. “I think they were obviously on a mission to not let the team down again because we do rely on those kids so much, and we ask them to do a lot of things.”</p>
<p>Since the duo’s rough outing — when the Lady Bears still won by 22 points, their slimmest winning margin this season — <a href="https://twitter.com/BaylorWBB/status/955249158528667648" type="external">Brown and Cox have combined for 95 points, 62 rebounds, 14 assists and 14 blocked shots in their last two games</a> .</p>
<p>Tara VanDerveer, who has coached plenty of big post players during her Hall of Fame career at Stanford, called Baylor’s duo “double trouble” after the Lady Bears beat the Cardinal by 24 points early in the season.</p>
<p>“I think a lot of teams, they have like one of us. They have one big player, and a couple of others that are 6-foot or something like that,” Cox said. “But I think it’s real special that both of us are on the same team.”</p>
<p>Brown and Cox account for 41 percent of the points scored by the Lady Bears, and grab 37 percent of the rebounds. In conference play, that is up to 44 percent of the scoring and 42 percent of the rebounding.</p>
<p>After <a href="http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=22163791" type="external">they became the first Big 12 teammates to both have 19 rebounds</a> in the same conference game, a 25-point victory in their last game, Kansas State coach Jeff Mittie likened Brown and Cox as having “a chance to play volleyball against the glass and rebound it more.”</p>
<p>Baylor finished with a 69-24 rebounding margin over the Wildcats. Cox and Brown combined for 19 of Baylor’s 32 offensive rebounds.</p>
<p>“Their front line’s as formidable as one that I think that is in the country. Their size obviously, their experience in there,” Mittie said.</p>
<p>“That’s a lot of rebounds for two girls that play together. They have to share the rebounding and not fight over it,” Mulkey said. “And to think that you had that many come off the boards and they both had the same number of rebounds is pretty impressive.”</p>
<p>The Lady Bears are the national leader with an average rebound margin of 19.7, which is 5 1/2 more per game than second-best Texas.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/BaylorWBB/status/954899241691906049" type="external">Brown leads the Big 12 with 21.7 points per game</a> and her 71 percent shooting from the field, and the junior center is fourth in the league with 9.3 rebounds per game. Cox is the league’s second-leading rebounder at 9.9 per game while also ranking 11th with 15.1 points per game and 10th with 3.4 assists — many of those to Brown, who has often returned the favor.</p>
<p>At Iowa State days after the Oklahoma game, Brown had four assists — all in one quarter, and all to Cox. In that same quarter, Cox had two assists on baskets by Brown.</p>
<p>“We have great chemistry together, we really trust each other. So I think that’s where all of the great passing comes from,” said Cox, now starting as a sophomore. “Last year, there were five of us, so we weren’t really getting to play with each other that much. And this year we’re the two main post players, and so we get to work with each other a lot more.”</p>
<p>Both play nearly 28 minutes per game, with only senior guard Kristy Wallace playing more — and just barely at exactly 28 minutes a game.</p>
<p>“Lauren and I have played together long enough to know how we want the ball,” Brown said. “I guess we just know each other. We know our strengths and our weaknesses, and we’re not going to put each other in jeopardy in any kind of way, or in a bad situation.”</p>
| 5,749 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Lottery proceeds fund scholarships that provide nearly free tuition to state schools, but the program has been struggling to stay afloat. The brief burst in Powerball ticket sales did not reverse a trend of lotto proceeds failing to keep up with the rising costs of higher education, and lawmakers are facing the possibility of having to impose dramatic cuts to the program.</p>
<p>Similar situations have played out in the seven other states that have lottery-based scholarship programs aimed at increasing access to college. Each has been forced to make painful changes in recent years - whether it be tightening eligibility requirements or reducing the amount of aid a student receives.</p>
<p>Of those states, New Mexico has one of the most generous programs, paying more than 90 percent of tuition for eligible students. Lawmakers are looking at decreasing the amount covered by the program.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The state will have to reduce the benefit to about 60 percent if no new money is found, according to New Mexico's Department of Higher Education.</p>
<p>State lawmakers have introduced dozens of measures over the last decade to shore up the program's financial underpinnings. They have made one-time appropriations to prop up the fund and shifted $19 million in liquor excise tax revenue.</p>
<p>During the legislative session that ended last month, Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez pushed through a bill allowing for unclaimed prize money to be transferred to the lottery tuition fund. Experts say that's a step in the right direction but not enough to close the growing gap.</p>
<p>Other ideas include raising the bar for eligibility. To qualify, New Mexico students must maintain a 2.5 grade-point average and complete at least 15 credit hours a semester at a four-year school.</p>
<p>Students are frustrated at the prospect of the cuts.</p>
<p>"The reason we were pushing so hard for solvency this year was because we don't want to reach the point where we're looking at a cliff, where we either have to make a decision or students are looking at a 30 percent decrease in funding. That's an incredibly large drop," said Jenna Hagengruber, president of Associated Students of the University of New Mexico.</p>
<p>The program launched two decades ago, shortly after Georgia set the bar with its lottery scholarship and spurred new programs throughout the South. Even Georgia was forced to make changes in 2011 that resulted in a nearly 25 percent decrease in the number of students who qualified.</p>
<p>Tennessee has tried to buffer its program from the volatility of lottery sales by establishing an endowment that can fund scholarships through interest and earnings. While there is still uncertainty in the market, the move could provide a cushion over the short term, experts say.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The University of New Mexico, where nearly half of all first-time, full-time students benefit from lottery scholarships, is bracing for what it says could be substantial ramifications.</p>
<p>"This would force students to pay about $1,700 more out of their pockets annually, and most likely, it would mean borrowing more in student loans," said Terry Babbitt, an associate vice president at the university.</p>
<p>New Mexico, where poverty is entrenched, already leads the nation with the highest student loan default rate, federal data show.</p>
<p>Even if new funding could be tapped, the problem is expected to linger.</p>
<p>Annual revenue from lottery ticket sales has plateaued at about $40 million. But tuition costs for eligible students are expected to top $65 million a year.</p>
<p>"The real problem is that New Mexico's four-year research colleges saw the lottery scholarship as a blank check from Santa Fe and have rapidly increased tuition costs over the last 15 years," said Republican state Rep. Jason Harper, who has been working on the issue since his election in 2013.</p>
<p>He suggests that the scholarships serve as a bridge for students after all other financial aid is exhausted, among some three dozen ideas floated in recent years.</p>
|
Lottery-linked scholarships face lower sales, higher tuition
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/733410/lottery-linked-scholarships-face-lower-sales-higher-tuition.html
| 2least
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Lottery-linked scholarships face lower sales, higher tuition
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Lottery proceeds fund scholarships that provide nearly free tuition to state schools, but the program has been struggling to stay afloat. The brief burst in Powerball ticket sales did not reverse a trend of lotto proceeds failing to keep up with the rising costs of higher education, and lawmakers are facing the possibility of having to impose dramatic cuts to the program.</p>
<p>Similar situations have played out in the seven other states that have lottery-based scholarship programs aimed at increasing access to college. Each has been forced to make painful changes in recent years - whether it be tightening eligibility requirements or reducing the amount of aid a student receives.</p>
<p>Of those states, New Mexico has one of the most generous programs, paying more than 90 percent of tuition for eligible students. Lawmakers are looking at decreasing the amount covered by the program.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The state will have to reduce the benefit to about 60 percent if no new money is found, according to New Mexico's Department of Higher Education.</p>
<p>State lawmakers have introduced dozens of measures over the last decade to shore up the program's financial underpinnings. They have made one-time appropriations to prop up the fund and shifted $19 million in liquor excise tax revenue.</p>
<p>During the legislative session that ended last month, Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez pushed through a bill allowing for unclaimed prize money to be transferred to the lottery tuition fund. Experts say that's a step in the right direction but not enough to close the growing gap.</p>
<p>Other ideas include raising the bar for eligibility. To qualify, New Mexico students must maintain a 2.5 grade-point average and complete at least 15 credit hours a semester at a four-year school.</p>
<p>Students are frustrated at the prospect of the cuts.</p>
<p>"The reason we were pushing so hard for solvency this year was because we don't want to reach the point where we're looking at a cliff, where we either have to make a decision or students are looking at a 30 percent decrease in funding. That's an incredibly large drop," said Jenna Hagengruber, president of Associated Students of the University of New Mexico.</p>
<p>The program launched two decades ago, shortly after Georgia set the bar with its lottery scholarship and spurred new programs throughout the South. Even Georgia was forced to make changes in 2011 that resulted in a nearly 25 percent decrease in the number of students who qualified.</p>
<p>Tennessee has tried to buffer its program from the volatility of lottery sales by establishing an endowment that can fund scholarships through interest and earnings. While there is still uncertainty in the market, the move could provide a cushion over the short term, experts say.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The University of New Mexico, where nearly half of all first-time, full-time students benefit from lottery scholarships, is bracing for what it says could be substantial ramifications.</p>
<p>"This would force students to pay about $1,700 more out of their pockets annually, and most likely, it would mean borrowing more in student loans," said Terry Babbitt, an associate vice president at the university.</p>
<p>New Mexico, where poverty is entrenched, already leads the nation with the highest student loan default rate, federal data show.</p>
<p>Even if new funding could be tapped, the problem is expected to linger.</p>
<p>Annual revenue from lottery ticket sales has plateaued at about $40 million. But tuition costs for eligible students are expected to top $65 million a year.</p>
<p>"The real problem is that New Mexico's four-year research colleges saw the lottery scholarship as a blank check from Santa Fe and have rapidly increased tuition costs over the last 15 years," said Republican state Rep. Jason Harper, who has been working on the issue since his election in 2013.</p>
<p>He suggests that the scholarships serve as a bridge for students after all other financial aid is exhausted, among some three dozen ideas floated in recent years.</p>
| 5,750 |
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<p>&lt;img class="size-full wp-image-48886 aligncenter" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TrudeauSons.jpg" alt="Justin Trudeau Sons" width="1200" height="627" srcset="https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TrudeauSons.jpg 1200w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TrudeauSons-300x157.jpg 300w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TrudeauSons-768x401.jpg 768w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TrudeauSons-1024x535.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /&gt;</p>
<p>Justin Trudeau loves man shaming. In fact, he seems to refer to himself far more as a “feminist” than a man (see <a href="" type="internal">IRONY: Canada’s Feminist, Justin Trudeau Visits Mosque. Turns Out It’s a Sexist One</a>). His war on all things dudely extends beyond his affinity for tight pants. Or trotting in gay Pride parades. It’s got his children in its well-manicured clutches. Justin <a href="http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a12811748/justin-trudeau-raising-kids-feminist/" type="external">recently wrote a personal piece</a> for magazine Marie Claire, wherein we get a glimpse into the terror that is feminist parenting. Hooray!</p>
<p>I am so exceptionally proud of my daughter Ella-Grace. I love Ella, and I worry–because as a father, son, husband, and citizen, I witness the unequal obstacles women and girls face every day. It’s 2017, yet in Canada and around the world, women and girls still face violence, discrimination, stereotypes that limit them, and unequal opportunities … It is maddening to me that my brilliant, compassionate daughter will grow up in a word where, despite everything she is as a person, there will still be people who won’t take her voice seriously, who will write her off–simply because of her gender.</p>
<p>Dealing with morons is something every kid has to learn, regardless of gender. But crippling, job-killing, “women belong in the kitchen!!!” sexism? Meh. All these women CEOs beg to differ (see <a href="" type="internal">WAGE GAP? Female CEOs Make More Than Male CEOs. Waaaay More…</a>).</p>
<p>&lt;img class=" aligncenter" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ez7Kb8pCoqo/UU-DGDj8TXI/AAAAAAAABlY/WTxXgmAQBlc/s400/kelly-kapur-head-shake.gif" width="361" height="203" /&gt;</p>
<p>After he wraps up showering his daughter in praise, he moves onto the sons. Except they don’t get so much&#160;complimenting.</p>
<p>[My wife] said, “That’s great–but how are you raising your sons to be strong advocates for women and girls, too?” All of us benefit when women and girls have the same opportunities as men and boys–and it’s on all of us to make that a reality. Our sons have the power and responsibility to change our culture of sexism, and I want Xavier and Hadrien–when he’s a little older–to understand that deeply. I want my sons to escape the pressure to be a particular kind of masculine that is so damaging to men and to the people around them. I want them to be comfortable being feminists.</p>
<p>So not only is Trudeau raising his daughter to believe everyone has a hidden agenda against her, he’s raising his sons to hate an ambiguous nature they are apparently inclined to — which he sums up so vaguely as “a particular kind of masculine.” Whatever that means.</p>
<p>Sounds awfully reminiscent of the damaging philosophy many a leftist has pushed on their kid, where having a penis essentially makes you a child of the anti-Christ (see <a href="" type="internal">Feminist Mother Worries 3 Year-Old Son is “Too Gendered.” Forces Him into Ballet</a>&#160;and&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Feminist is “Terrified” of Raising a Son Because of Trump. Yeah, She’s a Terrible Person…</a>). And we wonder why boys act out.</p>
<p>Feminism and parenting don’t mix well.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>NOT SUBSCRIBED TO THE PODCAST?&#160; <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/louder-with-crowder/id929121341?mt=2" type="external">FIX THAT</a>! IT’S COMPLETELY FREE ON BOTH&#160; <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/louder-with-crowder/id929121341?mt=2" type="external">ITUNES&#160;HERE</a>&#160;AND&#160; <a href="https://soundcloud.com/louderwithcrowder" type="external">SOUNDCLOUD&#160;HERE</a>.</p>
<p />
|
Proud Feminist Justin Trudeau Shames His Own Sons for Toxic ‘Masculine’ Nature
| true |
https://louderwithcrowder.com/justin-trudeau-sons-toxic-masculine-nature/
|
2017-10-11
| 0right
|
Proud Feminist Justin Trudeau Shames His Own Sons for Toxic ‘Masculine’ Nature
<p>&lt;img class="size-full wp-image-48886 aligncenter" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TrudeauSons.jpg" alt="Justin Trudeau Sons" width="1200" height="627" srcset="https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TrudeauSons.jpg 1200w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TrudeauSons-300x157.jpg 300w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TrudeauSons-768x401.jpg 768w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TrudeauSons-1024x535.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /&gt;</p>
<p>Justin Trudeau loves man shaming. In fact, he seems to refer to himself far more as a “feminist” than a man (see <a href="" type="internal">IRONY: Canada’s Feminist, Justin Trudeau Visits Mosque. Turns Out It’s a Sexist One</a>). His war on all things dudely extends beyond his affinity for tight pants. Or trotting in gay Pride parades. It’s got his children in its well-manicured clutches. Justin <a href="http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a12811748/justin-trudeau-raising-kids-feminist/" type="external">recently wrote a personal piece</a> for magazine Marie Claire, wherein we get a glimpse into the terror that is feminist parenting. Hooray!</p>
<p>I am so exceptionally proud of my daughter Ella-Grace. I love Ella, and I worry–because as a father, son, husband, and citizen, I witness the unequal obstacles women and girls face every day. It’s 2017, yet in Canada and around the world, women and girls still face violence, discrimination, stereotypes that limit them, and unequal opportunities … It is maddening to me that my brilliant, compassionate daughter will grow up in a word where, despite everything she is as a person, there will still be people who won’t take her voice seriously, who will write her off–simply because of her gender.</p>
<p>Dealing with morons is something every kid has to learn, regardless of gender. But crippling, job-killing, “women belong in the kitchen!!!” sexism? Meh. All these women CEOs beg to differ (see <a href="" type="internal">WAGE GAP? Female CEOs Make More Than Male CEOs. Waaaay More…</a>).</p>
<p>&lt;img class=" aligncenter" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ez7Kb8pCoqo/UU-DGDj8TXI/AAAAAAAABlY/WTxXgmAQBlc/s400/kelly-kapur-head-shake.gif" width="361" height="203" /&gt;</p>
<p>After he wraps up showering his daughter in praise, he moves onto the sons. Except they don’t get so much&#160;complimenting.</p>
<p>[My wife] said, “That’s great–but how are you raising your sons to be strong advocates for women and girls, too?” All of us benefit when women and girls have the same opportunities as men and boys–and it’s on all of us to make that a reality. Our sons have the power and responsibility to change our culture of sexism, and I want Xavier and Hadrien–when he’s a little older–to understand that deeply. I want my sons to escape the pressure to be a particular kind of masculine that is so damaging to men and to the people around them. I want them to be comfortable being feminists.</p>
<p>So not only is Trudeau raising his daughter to believe everyone has a hidden agenda against her, he’s raising his sons to hate an ambiguous nature they are apparently inclined to — which he sums up so vaguely as “a particular kind of masculine.” Whatever that means.</p>
<p>Sounds awfully reminiscent of the damaging philosophy many a leftist has pushed on their kid, where having a penis essentially makes you a child of the anti-Christ (see <a href="" type="internal">Feminist Mother Worries 3 Year-Old Son is “Too Gendered.” Forces Him into Ballet</a>&#160;and&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Feminist is “Terrified” of Raising a Son Because of Trump. Yeah, She’s a Terrible Person…</a>). And we wonder why boys act out.</p>
<p>Feminism and parenting don’t mix well.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>NOT SUBSCRIBED TO THE PODCAST?&#160; <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/louder-with-crowder/id929121341?mt=2" type="external">FIX THAT</a>! IT’S COMPLETELY FREE ON BOTH&#160; <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/louder-with-crowder/id929121341?mt=2" type="external">ITUNES&#160;HERE</a>&#160;AND&#160; <a href="https://soundcloud.com/louderwithcrowder" type="external">SOUNDCLOUD&#160;HERE</a>.</p>
<p />
| 5,751 |
<p>How can you get rich? There are plenty of paths to wealth.</p>
<p>You could win the lottery. A long-lost uncle could pass away and leave you his stash of bitcoins. Of course, there are plenty of other methods to getting rich as well. One way to seriously consider is to buy stocks that are poised to benefit from trends that will create enormous wealth.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>But which trends and which stocks? Artificial intelligence (AI), China's growing economic power, and gene editing are three trends that I think hold the potential to generate a lot of money in the coming years. Here's why Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU), Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), and Editas Medicine (NASDAQ: EDIT) could be great picks to profit from these trends -- and make you rich in the process.</p>
<p>If you don't know much about AI, understand three things. First, successful application of AI involves a huge amount of data. Second, that data has to be processed by high-powered computers. Third, this processing requires a lot of memory. Now that you've got those three things down, you can better appreciate the value that Micron Technology brings to organizations focusing on AI.</p>
<p>Micron is one of the world's biggest providers of memory chips used in AI systems. A rapidly growing application of AI is in autonomous, or self-driving, vehicles. Micron is making a big play in this market. In September, the company launched new memory chips that are designed to serve as the foundation for next-generation autonomous vehicles. It also announced partnerships with some of the top automakers to develop high-bandwidth memory technology intended to power fully autonomous vehicles.</p>
<p>There are plenty of stocks you could buy <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/12/17/3-artificial-intelligence-stocks-you-probably-over.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">to profit from the growth of AI Opens a New Window.</a>. Many of them, however, are priced for perfection. Micron, on the other hand, is incredibly cheap despite the stock doubling in 2017. The chipmaker's shares trade at a little over five times expected earnings. With the kind of growth that Micron should enjoy, the stock looks even more attractive.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>China ranks as the most populous country in the world. Its gross domestic product (GDP) has grown by 6.9% in 2017, more than twice as much as the U.S. China's middle class is growing significantly -- and that creates lots of opportunities. Alibaba has already begun capitalizing on those opportunities.</p>
<p>When it comes to e-commerce in China, Alibaba reigns as king. The company provides the internet platform that connects merchants with customers for both retailers and wholesalers. It's also China's largest provider of public cloud services. But as big as its market potential is in China, Alibaba isn't limiting itself to just one country. The company's mission is "to make it easy to do business anywhere." That's exactly what Alibaba is attempting to do.</p>
<p>The company owns the top mobile browser used in India and Indonesia, two other fast-growing nations. It owns the largest largest mobile payment platform in India. Founder Jack Ma's goal is to serve more than 2 billion consumers and 10 million small businesses 20 years from now. If it achieves that goal, Alibaba would have a business platform that was, by itself, one of the largest economies in the world. This could very well be one of those stocks that you can <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/28/8-reasons-to-buy-alibaba-group-and-never-sell.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">buy and never sell Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Gene editing, which involves inserting, deleting, or replacing DNA, has been around since 1991. But for years, actually editing genes was difficult, slow, and expensive. That changed in 2012 with the introduction of CRISPR (which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats). CRISPR used a bacterial enzyme (known as Cas9) to alter DNA and ushered in a whole new ballgame for gene editing. Some of the early pioneers of CRISPR founded Editas Medicine in 2013.</p>
<p>There are other early-stage biotechs developing therapies using CRISPR. What sets Editas apart from the pack? Patents. In 2014, the company licensed patents for CRISPR-Cas9 held by the Broad Institute and Harvard University. These patents cover any use of the gene-editing technology in humans. Unless the patents are somehow invalidated (and they've been upheld once in court already), any company that develops a gene therapy using CRISPR-Cas9 will have to pay royalties to Editas.</p>
<p>Editas could one day have its own gene therapies. The biotech is exploring use of CRISPR in developing treatments for eye diseases as well as genetic diseases including cystic fibrosis, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and sickle cell disease. It's also working with Juno Therapeutics on using gene editing for fighting cancer. I think it's entirely possible that Editas and others developing gene therapies using its patented technology <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/13/this-technology-could-make-you-rich-and-change-the.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">revolutionize healthcare in the coming years Opens a New Window.</a> -- and make some investors wealthy in the process.</p>
<p>The process for getting rich with these three stocks is pretty simple. It involves only two steps. First, buy the stocks. Second, hold on to them for a long time. The first step is easy, but the second step could be really tough to do.</p>
<p>All three of these stocks could be pretty volatile. That's especially true for Editas Medicine, since it isn't profitable yet and could have to raise cash through dilution-causing stock offerings. That volatility could make it difficult to stay calm at times.</p>
<p>Each of these stocks could also shoot up a lot in a relatively short amount of time. I already mentioned that Micron stock has doubled this year. Alibaba is pretty close to doubling as well, and Editas is up more than 65%. With those kinds of quick gains, you could be tempted to sell, take the money, and run. Don't.</p>
<p>I believe all three of these stocks are long-term plays. It will take years for AI, growth in China, and gene editing to reach their maximum impact. Buy Alibaba, Editas, and Micron now and hold on to them for a really long time. Maybe you won't get rich, but I think the chances are pretty good that you will.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Micron TechnologyWhen 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=198b3c4e-4410-4b5f-b775-bbeb312d51ba&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Micron Technology 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=198b3c4e-4410-4b5f-b775-bbeb312d51ba&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&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 December 4, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFishBiz/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Keith Speights Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Editas Medicine and Juno Therapeutics. 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=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
|
3 Stocks That Could Make You Rich
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/09/26/3-stocks-that-could-make-rich.html
|
2017-12-26
| 0right
|
3 Stocks That Could Make You Rich
<p>How can you get rich? There are plenty of paths to wealth.</p>
<p>You could win the lottery. A long-lost uncle could pass away and leave you his stash of bitcoins. Of course, there are plenty of other methods to getting rich as well. One way to seriously consider is to buy stocks that are poised to benefit from trends that will create enormous wealth.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>But which trends and which stocks? Artificial intelligence (AI), China's growing economic power, and gene editing are three trends that I think hold the potential to generate a lot of money in the coming years. Here's why Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU), Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), and Editas Medicine (NASDAQ: EDIT) could be great picks to profit from these trends -- and make you rich in the process.</p>
<p>If you don't know much about AI, understand three things. First, successful application of AI involves a huge amount of data. Second, that data has to be processed by high-powered computers. Third, this processing requires a lot of memory. Now that you've got those three things down, you can better appreciate the value that Micron Technology brings to organizations focusing on AI.</p>
<p>Micron is one of the world's biggest providers of memory chips used in AI systems. A rapidly growing application of AI is in autonomous, or self-driving, vehicles. Micron is making a big play in this market. In September, the company launched new memory chips that are designed to serve as the foundation for next-generation autonomous vehicles. It also announced partnerships with some of the top automakers to develop high-bandwidth memory technology intended to power fully autonomous vehicles.</p>
<p>There are plenty of stocks you could buy <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/12/17/3-artificial-intelligence-stocks-you-probably-over.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">to profit from the growth of AI Opens a New Window.</a>. Many of them, however, are priced for perfection. Micron, on the other hand, is incredibly cheap despite the stock doubling in 2017. The chipmaker's shares trade at a little over five times expected earnings. With the kind of growth that Micron should enjoy, the stock looks even more attractive.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>China ranks as the most populous country in the world. Its gross domestic product (GDP) has grown by 6.9% in 2017, more than twice as much as the U.S. China's middle class is growing significantly -- and that creates lots of opportunities. Alibaba has already begun capitalizing on those opportunities.</p>
<p>When it comes to e-commerce in China, Alibaba reigns as king. The company provides the internet platform that connects merchants with customers for both retailers and wholesalers. It's also China's largest provider of public cloud services. But as big as its market potential is in China, Alibaba isn't limiting itself to just one country. The company's mission is "to make it easy to do business anywhere." That's exactly what Alibaba is attempting to do.</p>
<p>The company owns the top mobile browser used in India and Indonesia, two other fast-growing nations. It owns the largest largest mobile payment platform in India. Founder Jack Ma's goal is to serve more than 2 billion consumers and 10 million small businesses 20 years from now. If it achieves that goal, Alibaba would have a business platform that was, by itself, one of the largest economies in the world. This could very well be one of those stocks that you can <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/28/8-reasons-to-buy-alibaba-group-and-never-sell.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">buy and never sell Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Gene editing, which involves inserting, deleting, or replacing DNA, has been around since 1991. But for years, actually editing genes was difficult, slow, and expensive. That changed in 2012 with the introduction of CRISPR (which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats). CRISPR used a bacterial enzyme (known as Cas9) to alter DNA and ushered in a whole new ballgame for gene editing. Some of the early pioneers of CRISPR founded Editas Medicine in 2013.</p>
<p>There are other early-stage biotechs developing therapies using CRISPR. What sets Editas apart from the pack? Patents. In 2014, the company licensed patents for CRISPR-Cas9 held by the Broad Institute and Harvard University. These patents cover any use of the gene-editing technology in humans. Unless the patents are somehow invalidated (and they've been upheld once in court already), any company that develops a gene therapy using CRISPR-Cas9 will have to pay royalties to Editas.</p>
<p>Editas could one day have its own gene therapies. The biotech is exploring use of CRISPR in developing treatments for eye diseases as well as genetic diseases including cystic fibrosis, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and sickle cell disease. It's also working with Juno Therapeutics on using gene editing for fighting cancer. I think it's entirely possible that Editas and others developing gene therapies using its patented technology <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/13/this-technology-could-make-you-rich-and-change-the.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">revolutionize healthcare in the coming years Opens a New Window.</a> -- and make some investors wealthy in the process.</p>
<p>The process for getting rich with these three stocks is pretty simple. It involves only two steps. First, buy the stocks. Second, hold on to them for a long time. The first step is easy, but the second step could be really tough to do.</p>
<p>All three of these stocks could be pretty volatile. That's especially true for Editas Medicine, since it isn't profitable yet and could have to raise cash through dilution-causing stock offerings. That volatility could make it difficult to stay calm at times.</p>
<p>Each of these stocks could also shoot up a lot in a relatively short amount of time. I already mentioned that Micron stock has doubled this year. Alibaba is pretty close to doubling as well, and Editas is up more than 65%. With those kinds of quick gains, you could be tempted to sell, take the money, and run. Don't.</p>
<p>I believe all three of these stocks are long-term plays. It will take years for AI, growth in China, and gene editing to reach their maximum impact. Buy Alibaba, Editas, and Micron now and hold on to them for a really long time. Maybe you won't get rich, but I think the chances are pretty good that you will.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Micron TechnologyWhen 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=198b3c4e-4410-4b5f-b775-bbeb312d51ba&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Micron Technology 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=198b3c4e-4410-4b5f-b775-bbeb312d51ba&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&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 December 4, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFishBiz/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Keith Speights Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Editas Medicine and Juno Therapeutics. 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=3f7c2936-e683-11e7-a3ec-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 5,752 |
<p>A fossil bed in China that contains some of the world's most exquisitely preserved feathered dinosaurs, early birds, reptiles and mammals may also be home to an equally rich set of older fossils from the Middle Jurassic, a new study finds.</p>
<p>These older fossils, dating back about 160 million years, contain the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/9433-mammals-soared-birds.html" type="external">earliest known gliding mammal</a>, the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/7054-mammal-swam-dinosaurs.html" type="external">earliest swimming mammal</a>, a flying reptile and the earliest feathered dinosaurs. Now, a new study classifies these fossils as belonging to a distinct ecological group, or biota.</p>
<p>The new biota was found in layers of rock beneath the Jehol Biota, a famous collection of 130 million-year-old fossils from China's western Liaoning Province and nearby northeastern China. The Jihol organisms are thought to have been preserved in a <a href="http://www.livescience.com/43081-animal-pompeii-found-in-china.html" type="external">Pompeii-style eruption</a>. In recent years, fossils that are 30 million years older have surfaced from beneath the Jehol Biota but were not definitively linked to the same time period. [ <a href="http://www.livescience.com/43841-photos-jurassic-fossils-china.html" type="external">In Photos: Wacky Fossil Animals from Jurassic China</a>]</p>
<p>The researchers cataloged the older fossils in unprecedented detail, naming them the Daohugou Biota, after a nearby village in Inner Mongolia. Like the Jehol fossils, the Daohugou fossils have remarkably intact skeletons, often still containing soft tissues and even feathers.</p>
<p>The fossil trove dates from <a href="http://www.livescience.com/28739-jurassic-period.html" type="external">the Middle-Upper Jurassic</a>, a period when birds are thought to have evolved from feathered dinosaurs. The team found birdlike feathered dinosaurs, but no actual birds.</p>
<p>At the moment when birds and dinosaurs split from each other, "you can barely tell them apart," said David Hone, a dinosaur biologist at Queen Mary University of London and lead author of the study, published Tuesday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.</p>
<p>Researchers also found mammals that glided from trees, a classic transitional form of flying reptile called a pterosaur and a "weird little buck-toothed dinosaur," Hone said.</p>
<p>This is a condensed version of a report from LiveScience. <a href="http://www.livescience.com/43852-chinese-jurassic-park-yields-feathered-dino.html" type="external">Read the full report.</a> Follow Tanya Lewis on <a href="https://twitter.com/tanyalewis314" type="external">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/117033537877488293678/posts" type="external">Google+</a>. Follow LiveScience on <a href="https://twitter.com/LiveScience" type="external">Twitter</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/livescience" type="external">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/101164570444913213957/posts" type="external">Google+</a>.</p>
|
China’s Jurassic Park Yields Fresh Feathered Dinosaur Finds
| false |
http://nbcnews.com/science/science-news/chinas-jurassic-park-yields-fresh-feathered-dinosaur-finds-n44581
|
2014-03-05
| 3left-center
|
China’s Jurassic Park Yields Fresh Feathered Dinosaur Finds
<p>A fossil bed in China that contains some of the world's most exquisitely preserved feathered dinosaurs, early birds, reptiles and mammals may also be home to an equally rich set of older fossils from the Middle Jurassic, a new study finds.</p>
<p>These older fossils, dating back about 160 million years, contain the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/9433-mammals-soared-birds.html" type="external">earliest known gliding mammal</a>, the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/7054-mammal-swam-dinosaurs.html" type="external">earliest swimming mammal</a>, a flying reptile and the earliest feathered dinosaurs. Now, a new study classifies these fossils as belonging to a distinct ecological group, or biota.</p>
<p>The new biota was found in layers of rock beneath the Jehol Biota, a famous collection of 130 million-year-old fossils from China's western Liaoning Province and nearby northeastern China. The Jihol organisms are thought to have been preserved in a <a href="http://www.livescience.com/43081-animal-pompeii-found-in-china.html" type="external">Pompeii-style eruption</a>. In recent years, fossils that are 30 million years older have surfaced from beneath the Jehol Biota but were not definitively linked to the same time period. [ <a href="http://www.livescience.com/43841-photos-jurassic-fossils-china.html" type="external">In Photos: Wacky Fossil Animals from Jurassic China</a>]</p>
<p>The researchers cataloged the older fossils in unprecedented detail, naming them the Daohugou Biota, after a nearby village in Inner Mongolia. Like the Jehol fossils, the Daohugou fossils have remarkably intact skeletons, often still containing soft tissues and even feathers.</p>
<p>The fossil trove dates from <a href="http://www.livescience.com/28739-jurassic-period.html" type="external">the Middle-Upper Jurassic</a>, a period when birds are thought to have evolved from feathered dinosaurs. The team found birdlike feathered dinosaurs, but no actual birds.</p>
<p>At the moment when birds and dinosaurs split from each other, "you can barely tell them apart," said David Hone, a dinosaur biologist at Queen Mary University of London and lead author of the study, published Tuesday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.</p>
<p>Researchers also found mammals that glided from trees, a classic transitional form of flying reptile called a pterosaur and a "weird little buck-toothed dinosaur," Hone said.</p>
<p>This is a condensed version of a report from LiveScience. <a href="http://www.livescience.com/43852-chinese-jurassic-park-yields-feathered-dino.html" type="external">Read the full report.</a> Follow Tanya Lewis on <a href="https://twitter.com/tanyalewis314" type="external">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/117033537877488293678/posts" type="external">Google+</a>. Follow LiveScience on <a href="https://twitter.com/LiveScience" type="external">Twitter</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/livescience" type="external">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/101164570444913213957/posts" type="external">Google+</a>.</p>
| 5,753 |
<p />
<p>New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits dropped last week to their lowest in more than 3-1/2 years, suggesting the <a href="" type="internal">labor market</a> recovery was gaining speed.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 364,000, the <a href="" type="internal">Labor Department</a> said on Thursday. That was the lowest level since April 2008.</p>
<p>The U.S. economy has shown signs it is gaining steam as the year ends, although the recovery still could be derailed by any big flare up in Europe's debt crisis. The economy also faces risks from the fight in Congress over extending special unemployment benefits and a payroll tax cut.</p>
<p>The prior week's claims data was revised up to 368,000 from the previously reported 366,000.</p>
<p>Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 375,000 last week.</p>
<p>The level of unemployment claims has fallen in recent weeks, and analysts say fewer layoffs means employers are probably more likely to hire.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Economists at <a href="" type="internal">Goldman Sachs</a> said earlier in the week that weekly claims below 435,000 pointed to net monthly gains in jobs. Their research was based on figures available through October.</p>
<p>In November, the jobless rate dropped to a 2-1/2 year low of 8.6%. The <a href="" type="internal">Federal Reserve</a> last week acknowledged an improvement in the jobs market, but said unemployment remained high and left the door open for further measures to help the economy.</p>
<p>A Labor Department official said claims were not estimated for any states, and that there was nothing unusual in the data.</p>
<p>The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends than the headline number, fell 8,000 to 380,250 -- the lowest since June 2008.</p>
<p>The number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid fell 79,000 to 3.546 million in the week ended Dec. 10.</p>
<p>Economists had forecast so-called continuing claims holding steady at 3.6 million.</p>
<p>As of Dec 3, a total of 7.150 million people were claiming unemployment benefits under all programs, down 299,738 from the prior week.</p>
|
Weekly Jobless Claims Fall 4K
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2011/12/22/weekly-jobless-claims-fall-4k.html
|
2016-03-07
| 0right
|
Weekly Jobless Claims Fall 4K
<p />
<p>New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits dropped last week to their lowest in more than 3-1/2 years, suggesting the <a href="" type="internal">labor market</a> recovery was gaining speed.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 364,000, the <a href="" type="internal">Labor Department</a> said on Thursday. That was the lowest level since April 2008.</p>
<p>The U.S. economy has shown signs it is gaining steam as the year ends, although the recovery still could be derailed by any big flare up in Europe's debt crisis. The economy also faces risks from the fight in Congress over extending special unemployment benefits and a payroll tax cut.</p>
<p>The prior week's claims data was revised up to 368,000 from the previously reported 366,000.</p>
<p>Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 375,000 last week.</p>
<p>The level of unemployment claims has fallen in recent weeks, and analysts say fewer layoffs means employers are probably more likely to hire.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Economists at <a href="" type="internal">Goldman Sachs</a> said earlier in the week that weekly claims below 435,000 pointed to net monthly gains in jobs. Their research was based on figures available through October.</p>
<p>In November, the jobless rate dropped to a 2-1/2 year low of 8.6%. The <a href="" type="internal">Federal Reserve</a> last week acknowledged an improvement in the jobs market, but said unemployment remained high and left the door open for further measures to help the economy.</p>
<p>A Labor Department official said claims were not estimated for any states, and that there was nothing unusual in the data.</p>
<p>The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends than the headline number, fell 8,000 to 380,250 -- the lowest since June 2008.</p>
<p>The number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid fell 79,000 to 3.546 million in the week ended Dec. 10.</p>
<p>Economists had forecast so-called continuing claims holding steady at 3.6 million.</p>
<p>As of Dec 3, a total of 7.150 million people were claiming unemployment benefits under all programs, down 299,738 from the prior week.</p>
| 5,754 |
<p />
<p>Some belated observations on my recent brush with Obamamania: I caught Barack Obama in Los Angeles Monday night when he spoke to around 4,000 people in Universal Studios’ Gibson Amphitheatre. His campaign had promised a star-studded evening, though it was clear that the celebs listed on the program were there to be seen with him, not vice versa. Obama’s star power, or at least his aura of novelty, seemed to be the main draw for many in the crowd, myself included. (OK, I also hoped to see Scarlett Johansson.) A fiftyish black woman next to me in the security line said she was a “curiosity seeker,” not inclined to vote for Hillary Clinton, but clearly hoping that seeing Obama in person might seal the deal. Whatever people’s reasons for lining up on this unusually chilly evening, the audience demographics highlighted one of the greatest arguments for Obama’s viability in the primaries and beyond. It was a remarkably diverse group, both in race and age. The $25 student tickets probably helped keep the average age down, but the $250 VIP section wasn’t all Boomers, either.</p>
<p>The opening acts were made slightly less tedious by the availability of overpriced french fries, chicken nuggets, and beer. (This was Universal Studios, after all.) The head of Obama’s LGBT outreach team kicked off the event by making a lot of obvious references to “triangulation” and describing Obama as “a circle that embraces.” He was followed by Los Angeles city council president Eric Garcetti, who dubbed the crowd the “Obama nation,” a potentially misconstrued phrase that the campaign would be wise to ban ASAP. Next up were Dancing With the Stars’ Giselle Fernandez, the endearingly earnest Kal Penn, and 81-year-old actor James Whitmore, who assured us with Greatest Generational gravitas that Obama was imbued with “wisdom” beyond his years. Ne-Yo busted out his Smooth Criminal dance moves, and the Goo Goo Dolls’ bassist kept me amused with his <a href="http://posters.imdb.com/character/ch0008208/photogallery-18" type="external">Dewey Finn</a> impersonation. The openers didn’t bring much glitz (hey, where was Scarlett, anyway?), but that was incidental to their role in reinforcing Obama’s broad appeal.</p>
<p>Finally: Obama. He was good, very good. For a half-hour, he stood tie-less in the bright lights of the catwalk, speaking without notes, delivering a surprisingly extemporaneous-feeling stump speech. Although it never felt canned, it fell short of electrifying. Which isn’t to say that the crowd didn’t go nuts, cheering and delivering standing Os with increasing frequency until the whole speech felt like one big applause line. Obama obliged them with a mix of feel-good lines and big, soaring crescendos of optimism and hope. He tried out some new material, remarking at his large crowds of late, “After Oprah, that’s a whole other story.” He quipped that it’s “an embarrassing thing being related to Dick Cheney.” And he riffed on the Clinton campaign’s attempt to dig up his kindergarten writings, mock-confessing, “I experimented with coloring outside the lines. And I pulled a girls’ pigtail—and liked it.”</p>
<p>Obama made some big promises, such as bringing health coverage to all Americans by the end of his first term, ending the Darfur genocide, tying the minimum wage to the cost of living, and shunning “corporate” lobbyists: “They have not funded my campaign. They will not work in my White House.” And, of course, he reiterated his call to get out of Iraq in 16 months. One of the more notable moments was his inclusion of “nonbelievers” in a line recognizing Americans’ religious diversity, a subtle retort to the GOP frontrunners’ Bible-thumping. There were a couple moments of real passion, such as when he mentioned his experience as an organizer in his twenties, and recalled a recent day spent shadowing an overworked, underpaid home health-care worker. He wrapped up by simultaneously defending himself from accusations of callowness and by putting She Who Must Not Be Named in her place. He said he didn’t feel he was “owed” the Oval Office, yet believed that there was no better time for him to take it, given—in the words of Martin Luther King Jr.,—”the fierce urgency of now.”</p>
<p>I’d hoped that he would speak longer, both because it was enjoyable to watch a speaker so natural and because I was waiting for some policy specifics that never came. (I suppose it was too much to expect an explanation of why he would not require health insurance for adults, for instance.) I didn’t see anything that distinguished Obama’s positions from those of his Democratic rivals, but I was left with a strong sense that he could mix things up in an interesting way. That, of course, is a big part of Obama’s pitch—that a fresh face is what his party and the nation need most. Which makes “the fierce urgency of now” a compelling argument for supporting him, particularly among Democrats who dread the timewarp that could be a Clinton candidacy (and presidency). But within the urgency argument is a suggestion that Obama has a looming sell-by date. (Conversely, Hillary Clinton’s impressive political shelf-life suggests she is packed to the gills with preservatives.) It’s an unintentional suggestion, to be sure, but it makes his greatest strength sound like a potential weakness. I’m not suggesting that he lacks substance or seriousness—far from it. But I came away from the movie-studio event thinking he’d be wise to anticipate the day when his celebrity is no longer enough to convert curiosity seekers into true believers.</p>
<p />
|
Does Obama Have a Political Sell-By Date?
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/12/does-obama-have-political-sell-date/
|
2007-12-13
| 4left
|
Does Obama Have a Political Sell-By Date?
<p />
<p>Some belated observations on my recent brush with Obamamania: I caught Barack Obama in Los Angeles Monday night when he spoke to around 4,000 people in Universal Studios’ Gibson Amphitheatre. His campaign had promised a star-studded evening, though it was clear that the celebs listed on the program were there to be seen with him, not vice versa. Obama’s star power, or at least his aura of novelty, seemed to be the main draw for many in the crowd, myself included. (OK, I also hoped to see Scarlett Johansson.) A fiftyish black woman next to me in the security line said she was a “curiosity seeker,” not inclined to vote for Hillary Clinton, but clearly hoping that seeing Obama in person might seal the deal. Whatever people’s reasons for lining up on this unusually chilly evening, the audience demographics highlighted one of the greatest arguments for Obama’s viability in the primaries and beyond. It was a remarkably diverse group, both in race and age. The $25 student tickets probably helped keep the average age down, but the $250 VIP section wasn’t all Boomers, either.</p>
<p>The opening acts were made slightly less tedious by the availability of overpriced french fries, chicken nuggets, and beer. (This was Universal Studios, after all.) The head of Obama’s LGBT outreach team kicked off the event by making a lot of obvious references to “triangulation” and describing Obama as “a circle that embraces.” He was followed by Los Angeles city council president Eric Garcetti, who dubbed the crowd the “Obama nation,” a potentially misconstrued phrase that the campaign would be wise to ban ASAP. Next up were Dancing With the Stars’ Giselle Fernandez, the endearingly earnest Kal Penn, and 81-year-old actor James Whitmore, who assured us with Greatest Generational gravitas that Obama was imbued with “wisdom” beyond his years. Ne-Yo busted out his Smooth Criminal dance moves, and the Goo Goo Dolls’ bassist kept me amused with his <a href="http://posters.imdb.com/character/ch0008208/photogallery-18" type="external">Dewey Finn</a> impersonation. The openers didn’t bring much glitz (hey, where was Scarlett, anyway?), but that was incidental to their role in reinforcing Obama’s broad appeal.</p>
<p>Finally: Obama. He was good, very good. For a half-hour, he stood tie-less in the bright lights of the catwalk, speaking without notes, delivering a surprisingly extemporaneous-feeling stump speech. Although it never felt canned, it fell short of electrifying. Which isn’t to say that the crowd didn’t go nuts, cheering and delivering standing Os with increasing frequency until the whole speech felt like one big applause line. Obama obliged them with a mix of feel-good lines and big, soaring crescendos of optimism and hope. He tried out some new material, remarking at his large crowds of late, “After Oprah, that’s a whole other story.” He quipped that it’s “an embarrassing thing being related to Dick Cheney.” And he riffed on the Clinton campaign’s attempt to dig up his kindergarten writings, mock-confessing, “I experimented with coloring outside the lines. And I pulled a girls’ pigtail—and liked it.”</p>
<p>Obama made some big promises, such as bringing health coverage to all Americans by the end of his first term, ending the Darfur genocide, tying the minimum wage to the cost of living, and shunning “corporate” lobbyists: “They have not funded my campaign. They will not work in my White House.” And, of course, he reiterated his call to get out of Iraq in 16 months. One of the more notable moments was his inclusion of “nonbelievers” in a line recognizing Americans’ religious diversity, a subtle retort to the GOP frontrunners’ Bible-thumping. There were a couple moments of real passion, such as when he mentioned his experience as an organizer in his twenties, and recalled a recent day spent shadowing an overworked, underpaid home health-care worker. He wrapped up by simultaneously defending himself from accusations of callowness and by putting She Who Must Not Be Named in her place. He said he didn’t feel he was “owed” the Oval Office, yet believed that there was no better time for him to take it, given—in the words of Martin Luther King Jr.,—”the fierce urgency of now.”</p>
<p>I’d hoped that he would speak longer, both because it was enjoyable to watch a speaker so natural and because I was waiting for some policy specifics that never came. (I suppose it was too much to expect an explanation of why he would not require health insurance for adults, for instance.) I didn’t see anything that distinguished Obama’s positions from those of his Democratic rivals, but I was left with a strong sense that he could mix things up in an interesting way. That, of course, is a big part of Obama’s pitch—that a fresh face is what his party and the nation need most. Which makes “the fierce urgency of now” a compelling argument for supporting him, particularly among Democrats who dread the timewarp that could be a Clinton candidacy (and presidency). But within the urgency argument is a suggestion that Obama has a looming sell-by date. (Conversely, Hillary Clinton’s impressive political shelf-life suggests she is packed to the gills with preservatives.) It’s an unintentional suggestion, to be sure, but it makes his greatest strength sound like a potential weakness. I’m not suggesting that he lacks substance or seriousness—far from it. But I came away from the movie-studio event thinking he’d be wise to anticipate the day when his celebrity is no longer enough to convert curiosity seekers into true believers.</p>
<p />
| 5,755 |
<p>Pakistan fears that India may ink some major defense deals with the US, as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visits New Delhi next month.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/international/19-May-2012/india-may-ink-major-defense-deals-with-us-next-month" type="external">The Nation</a>cited the Times of India as saying that New Delhi is likely to finalize the acquisition of 145 M-777 ultra-light howitzers in a government-to-government deal worth $647 million, as well as a $1.4 billion contract to buy 22 missile-armed helicopter gunships from Boeing.</p>
<p>Panetta's visit, and the possible arms purchases, come amid continuing tensions between the US and Pakistan over Islamabad's blocking of the NATO supply route into Afghanistan and the US president's refusal to apologize for drone attacks conducted in Pakistani territory.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Lisa Curtis, a senior fellow at the Heritage Center, <a href="http://www.rediff.com/news/column/how-pak-missed-opportunity-to-repair-ties-with-us/20120523.htm" type="external">wonders</a>if US-Pakistan relations will EVER get back to normal, while US lawmakers have voted in <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/Americas/US-senators-vote-to-tie-Pakistan-aid-to-supply-routes/Article1-859923.aspx" type="external">new curbs on aid to Islamabad</a> -- including measures to tie future aid to the opening of the Afghanistan supply route.</p>
|
US defense secretary to visit India next month
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2012-05-23/us-defense-secretary-visit-india-next-month
|
2012-05-23
| 3left-center
|
US defense secretary to visit India next month
<p>Pakistan fears that India may ink some major defense deals with the US, as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visits New Delhi next month.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/international/19-May-2012/india-may-ink-major-defense-deals-with-us-next-month" type="external">The Nation</a>cited the Times of India as saying that New Delhi is likely to finalize the acquisition of 145 M-777 ultra-light howitzers in a government-to-government deal worth $647 million, as well as a $1.4 billion contract to buy 22 missile-armed helicopter gunships from Boeing.</p>
<p>Panetta's visit, and the possible arms purchases, come amid continuing tensions between the US and Pakistan over Islamabad's blocking of the NATO supply route into Afghanistan and the US president's refusal to apologize for drone attacks conducted in Pakistani territory.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Lisa Curtis, a senior fellow at the Heritage Center, <a href="http://www.rediff.com/news/column/how-pak-missed-opportunity-to-repair-ties-with-us/20120523.htm" type="external">wonders</a>if US-Pakistan relations will EVER get back to normal, while US lawmakers have voted in <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/Americas/US-senators-vote-to-tie-Pakistan-aid-to-supply-routes/Article1-859923.aspx" type="external">new curbs on aid to Islamabad</a> -- including measures to tie future aid to the opening of the Afghanistan supply route.</p>
| 5,756 |
<p>South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) on Thursday indicated that she would not support a <a href="" type="internal">bill</a> introduced on Wednesday that would require public restrooms to direct people to use the bathroom that aligns with their birth sex and would keep local governments from letting transgender individuals choose which bathroom to use.</p>
<p>Haley told reporters in South Carolina that she doesn’t believe the bill is “necessary” and that her office hasn’t received any complaints about the issue, according to <a href="http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article70481297.html" type="external">The State</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>“This is not a battle that we’ve seen is needed in South Carolina,” she said. “It’s not something that we see that citizens are asking for.”</p>
<p>“When we look at our situation, we’re not hearing of anybody’s religious liberties that are being violated, and we’re again not hearing any citizens that are being violated in terms of freedoms,” she added, according to The State. “Like it or not, South Carolina is doing really well when it comes to respect and when it comes to kindness and when it comes to acceptance. For people to imply it’s not, I beg to differ.”</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Proponents of the bill</a> have said that the bill addresses a public safety issue, arguing that predators would be allowed to go into the restroom designated for the opposite gender.</p>
|
SC Gov. Nikki Haley Says ‘Bathroom Bill’ Isn’t Necessary
| true |
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/haley-bathroom-bill-not-necessary
| 4left
|
SC Gov. Nikki Haley Says ‘Bathroom Bill’ Isn’t Necessary
<p>South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) on Thursday indicated that she would not support a <a href="" type="internal">bill</a> introduced on Wednesday that would require public restrooms to direct people to use the bathroom that aligns with their birth sex and would keep local governments from letting transgender individuals choose which bathroom to use.</p>
<p>Haley told reporters in South Carolina that she doesn’t believe the bill is “necessary” and that her office hasn’t received any complaints about the issue, according to <a href="http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article70481297.html" type="external">The State</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>“This is not a battle that we’ve seen is needed in South Carolina,” she said. “It’s not something that we see that citizens are asking for.”</p>
<p>“When we look at our situation, we’re not hearing of anybody’s religious liberties that are being violated, and we’re again not hearing any citizens that are being violated in terms of freedoms,” she added, according to The State. “Like it or not, South Carolina is doing really well when it comes to respect and when it comes to kindness and when it comes to acceptance. For people to imply it’s not, I beg to differ.”</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Proponents of the bill</a> have said that the bill addresses a public safety issue, arguing that predators would be allowed to go into the restroom designated for the opposite gender.</p>
| 5,757 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>NEW YORK — Green Bay’s 34-31 win over Dallas was seen by an average of 48.5 million on Fox, the most-viewed NFL divisional playoff game ever.</p>
<p>The game Sunday had a 26.1 rating and 46 share, the network said Monday, the highest-rated NFC divisional game since 1997. The rating is the percentage of television households tuned to a program, and the share is the percentage watching a telecast among those homes with TVs on at the time.</p>
<p>Pittsburgh’s 18-16 victory over Kansas City, shifted to prime time Sunday night because of bad weather, was seen by 37.4 million people on NBC and its digital platform, including 37.1 million on the network.</p>
<p>Atlanta’s 36-20 win over Seattle on Saturday received a 16.2/32 on Fox and was seen by an average of 28.7 million on Fox, down 10 percent from New England’s win over Kansas City on CBS in the comparable time period last year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Patriots’ 34-16 victory over Houston on Saturday night had an 18.2/31 on CBS, which said total viewers were not yet available.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">http://www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a> .</p>
|
Green Bay’s win over Dallas seen by average of 48.5M on Fox
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/928812/green-bays-win-over-dallas-seen-by-average-of-48-5m-on-fox.html
|
2017-01-16
| 2least
|
Green Bay’s win over Dallas seen by average of 48.5M on Fox
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<p>NEW YORK — Green Bay’s 34-31 win over Dallas was seen by an average of 48.5 million on Fox, the most-viewed NFL divisional playoff game ever.</p>
<p>The game Sunday had a 26.1 rating and 46 share, the network said Monday, the highest-rated NFC divisional game since 1997. The rating is the percentage of television households tuned to a program, and the share is the percentage watching a telecast among those homes with TVs on at the time.</p>
<p>Pittsburgh’s 18-16 victory over Kansas City, shifted to prime time Sunday night because of bad weather, was seen by 37.4 million people on NBC and its digital platform, including 37.1 million on the network.</p>
<p>Atlanta’s 36-20 win over Seattle on Saturday received a 16.2/32 on Fox and was seen by an average of 28.7 million on Fox, down 10 percent from New England’s win over Kansas City on CBS in the comparable time period last year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Patriots’ 34-16 victory over Houston on Saturday night had an 18.2/31 on CBS, which said total viewers were not yet available.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">http://www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a> .</p>
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<p>In 2002, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) purchased Fruit of the Loom out of bankruptcy court for $835 million in cash. With the brand originating in 1851, and reportedly possessing a 33% share of the men's and boy's underwear market at the time, Fruit of the Loom was a playbook Buffett acquisition. The company was in a boring, consumer staples industry while possessing a well-known brand.</p>
<p>The underwear maker still commands a strong share of the market, but it shares its dominance with another participant. Hanesbrands Inc. (NYSE: HBI), which shares a <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/16/hanesbrands-inc-history-everything-investors-need.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=1b81cf48-6bf6-11e7-9eed-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">rich history Opens a New Window.</a> similar to Fruit of the Loom, owns popular brands including Hanes, Playtex, and Champion. According to the company, it owns the No. 1 or No. 2 market-share position in a variety of key categories across the globe, including intimate apparel, socks, and men's underwear.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Not only is it Fruit of the Loom's largest competitor, but Hanes also shares some similarities with the business, and not just on the positive side. Like Fruit of the Loom at the turn of the millennium, weaknesses are becoming prevalent in Hanes' business.</p>
<p>In February, Hanes stock was down as much as 45% from its all-time highs reached in April 2015. It has recovered some of those losses since, but is still down 32% from its previous high.&#160;&#160;One reason for the drop is the challenging retail environment, which has caused the company to miss Wall Street earnings estimates in three out of the past six quarters.</p>
<p>The amount of debt Hanes has taken on is also concerning. Since the end of 2014, Hanesbrands' long-term debt has increased from $1.6 billion to $3.7 billion. Its total <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/value/2007/06/20/using-the-debt-to-equity-ratio.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=1b81cf48-6bf6-11e7-9eed-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">debt-to-equity ratio Opens a New Window.</a> during the same period has gone from 276% to 640%. Rising debt levels can be dangerous as they typically mean higher interest rates, lower debt ratings, and stricter covenants on the debtor. Failure to abide by a debt covenant leads to default, which can have serious negative consequences.&#160; Given its increasing debt levels combined with its inability to beat Wall Street expectations, it's no surprise Hanes stock has been under pressure the past few years.</p>
<p>Given Hanes' increasing debt levels, underperforming business, declining stock price, and the fact that it's in the underwear business, I was reminded of Buffett's Fruit of the Loom acquisition 15 years ago.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In Warren Buffett's <a href="http://berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2001pdf.pdf" type="external">2001 annual letter to shareholders Opens a New Window.</a>, Buffett highlighted his early experience with Fruit of the Loom. In 1955, Buffett's mentor and early employer, Benjamin Graham, purchased a stake in Fruit of the Loom's producer and it went on to produce phenomenal returns. Fruit of the Loom was eventually acquired. In 1996, Fruit of the Loom's longtime manager, John Holland, retired and Buffett said this was followed by decline.</p>
<p>Large debt levels in part to fund acquisitions proved too much and in December 1999, after reporting a net loss of $576.2 million, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Buffett cited chaotic deliveries, soaring costs, and poor relationships with customers. Where Fruit of the Loom's issues drove many away, Buffett saw an opportunity. "We've agreed to buy Fruit of the Loom for two major reasons: the strength of the brand and the managerial talent of John Holland." Holland was brought back by Fruit of the Loom as the chief operating officer to rescue a sinking ship.</p>
<p>At the time of its bankruptcy filing, Fruit of the Loom was encumbered with about $1.3 billion in debt. Even after adjusting for inflation, Hanesbrands' debt levels are twice that of Fruit of the Loom at the time of its bankruptcy filing. However, the companies differ significantly in ability to service that debt.</p>
<p>While Fruit of the Loom had reported five straight quarterly losses prior to filing for bankruptcy protection, Hanes reported $71 million in net income during the most recent quarter and $530 million in profit over the last 12 months. It has also been able to grow earnings per share and free cash flow 16% and 12% annualized, respectively, over the last five years. Profit margins over the trailing 12 months are also healthy at 8.6% of revenue.</p>
<p>Much of Hanes' increase in debt levels has been to fund acquisitions. In June 2016, Hanes acquired Champion Europe for 220 million euros and a couple days later, acquired Pacific Brands Limited for approximately $800 million. Poor acquisitions often come back to bite many companies (Fruit of the Loom was a perfect example) but Hanesbrands' acquisition strategy, while aggressive, appears to be disciplined. During its 2016 investor day presentation, management noted acquisitions as a key component of its growth strategy. They also highlighted a methodical strategy when making acquisition decisions. In the company's words, its four acquisition criteria are:</p>
<p>Acquisitions that meet the criteria above have generated internal rates of return in the low-to-mid teens after taxes, according to the company.</p>
<p>While Hanesbrands' business is much healthier than Fruit of the Loom's business in the late 1990s, investors should still be aware of the threats that can turn Hanes' prospects for the worst. Poor acquisitions, changing consumer tastes, and moves that destroy its brand are all risks that could make servicing its high debt levels more challenging. Given Hanes' history in making acquisitions work along with lower-than-normal fashion risk in the innerwear space, the chances of any of these risks coming to pass are minimal. However, they are still real.</p>
<p>Acquisitions run the risk of damaging company cultures, but Hanesbrands also purchases businesses with the expectation of synergies. If those synergies don't come to fruition, it will have likely overpaid for the acquisition. This is something the company cannot afford, especially if it is funding the purchase with debt.</p>
<p>Market pessimism has whacked Hanesbrands' stock. Since Berkshire Hathaway already owns a close competitor, an acquisition of Hanes by Buffett is highly unlikely, so investors shouldn't hope for that kind of help. However, if Hanesbrands can achieve synergy targets and turn its acquisitions into successful investments, value investors may have the opportunity to make a purchase of a strong consumer brand at a depressed stock price.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Berkshire Hathaway (A shares)When 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=49a5197b-afa0-42ce-83fa-af1cc0f191d9&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=1b81cf48-6bf6-11e7-9eed-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Berkshire Hathaway (A shares) 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=49a5197b-afa0-42ce-83fa-af1cc0f191d9&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=1b81cf48-6bf6-11e7-9eed-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 July 6, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/CashRulez/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=1b81cf48-6bf6-11e7-9eed-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Palbir Nijjar Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway (B shares). The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Berkshire Hathaway (B shares). 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;uuid=1b81cf48-6bf6-11e7-9eed-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
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Comparing Hanesbrand to a Warren Buffett Acquisition
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2017-07-29
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Comparing Hanesbrand to a Warren Buffett Acquisition
<p>In 2002, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) purchased Fruit of the Loom out of bankruptcy court for $835 million in cash. With the brand originating in 1851, and reportedly possessing a 33% share of the men's and boy's underwear market at the time, Fruit of the Loom was a playbook Buffett acquisition. The company was in a boring, consumer staples industry while possessing a well-known brand.</p>
<p>The underwear maker still commands a strong share of the market, but it shares its dominance with another participant. Hanesbrands Inc. (NYSE: HBI), which shares a <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/16/hanesbrands-inc-history-everything-investors-need.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=1b81cf48-6bf6-11e7-9eed-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">rich history Opens a New Window.</a> similar to Fruit of the Loom, owns popular brands including Hanes, Playtex, and Champion. According to the company, it owns the No. 1 or No. 2 market-share position in a variety of key categories across the globe, including intimate apparel, socks, and men's underwear.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Not only is it Fruit of the Loom's largest competitor, but Hanes also shares some similarities with the business, and not just on the positive side. Like Fruit of the Loom at the turn of the millennium, weaknesses are becoming prevalent in Hanes' business.</p>
<p>In February, Hanes stock was down as much as 45% from its all-time highs reached in April 2015. It has recovered some of those losses since, but is still down 32% from its previous high.&#160;&#160;One reason for the drop is the challenging retail environment, which has caused the company to miss Wall Street earnings estimates in three out of the past six quarters.</p>
<p>The amount of debt Hanes has taken on is also concerning. Since the end of 2014, Hanesbrands' long-term debt has increased from $1.6 billion to $3.7 billion. Its total <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/value/2007/06/20/using-the-debt-to-equity-ratio.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=1b81cf48-6bf6-11e7-9eed-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">debt-to-equity ratio Opens a New Window.</a> during the same period has gone from 276% to 640%. Rising debt levels can be dangerous as they typically mean higher interest rates, lower debt ratings, and stricter covenants on the debtor. Failure to abide by a debt covenant leads to default, which can have serious negative consequences.&#160; Given its increasing debt levels combined with its inability to beat Wall Street expectations, it's no surprise Hanes stock has been under pressure the past few years.</p>
<p>Given Hanes' increasing debt levels, underperforming business, declining stock price, and the fact that it's in the underwear business, I was reminded of Buffett's Fruit of the Loom acquisition 15 years ago.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In Warren Buffett's <a href="http://berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2001pdf.pdf" type="external">2001 annual letter to shareholders Opens a New Window.</a>, Buffett highlighted his early experience with Fruit of the Loom. In 1955, Buffett's mentor and early employer, Benjamin Graham, purchased a stake in Fruit of the Loom's producer and it went on to produce phenomenal returns. Fruit of the Loom was eventually acquired. In 1996, Fruit of the Loom's longtime manager, John Holland, retired and Buffett said this was followed by decline.</p>
<p>Large debt levels in part to fund acquisitions proved too much and in December 1999, after reporting a net loss of $576.2 million, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Buffett cited chaotic deliveries, soaring costs, and poor relationships with customers. Where Fruit of the Loom's issues drove many away, Buffett saw an opportunity. "We've agreed to buy Fruit of the Loom for two major reasons: the strength of the brand and the managerial talent of John Holland." Holland was brought back by Fruit of the Loom as the chief operating officer to rescue a sinking ship.</p>
<p>At the time of its bankruptcy filing, Fruit of the Loom was encumbered with about $1.3 billion in debt. Even after adjusting for inflation, Hanesbrands' debt levels are twice that of Fruit of the Loom at the time of its bankruptcy filing. However, the companies differ significantly in ability to service that debt.</p>
<p>While Fruit of the Loom had reported five straight quarterly losses prior to filing for bankruptcy protection, Hanes reported $71 million in net income during the most recent quarter and $530 million in profit over the last 12 months. It has also been able to grow earnings per share and free cash flow 16% and 12% annualized, respectively, over the last five years. Profit margins over the trailing 12 months are also healthy at 8.6% of revenue.</p>
<p>Much of Hanes' increase in debt levels has been to fund acquisitions. In June 2016, Hanes acquired Champion Europe for 220 million euros and a couple days later, acquired Pacific Brands Limited for approximately $800 million. Poor acquisitions often come back to bite many companies (Fruit of the Loom was a perfect example) but Hanesbrands' acquisition strategy, while aggressive, appears to be disciplined. During its 2016 investor day presentation, management noted acquisitions as a key component of its growth strategy. They also highlighted a methodical strategy when making acquisition decisions. In the company's words, its four acquisition criteria are:</p>
<p>Acquisitions that meet the criteria above have generated internal rates of return in the low-to-mid teens after taxes, according to the company.</p>
<p>While Hanesbrands' business is much healthier than Fruit of the Loom's business in the late 1990s, investors should still be aware of the threats that can turn Hanes' prospects for the worst. Poor acquisitions, changing consumer tastes, and moves that destroy its brand are all risks that could make servicing its high debt levels more challenging. Given Hanes' history in making acquisitions work along with lower-than-normal fashion risk in the innerwear space, the chances of any of these risks coming to pass are minimal. However, they are still real.</p>
<p>Acquisitions run the risk of damaging company cultures, but Hanesbrands also purchases businesses with the expectation of synergies. If those synergies don't come to fruition, it will have likely overpaid for the acquisition. This is something the company cannot afford, especially if it is funding the purchase with debt.</p>
<p>Market pessimism has whacked Hanesbrands' stock. Since Berkshire Hathaway already owns a close competitor, an acquisition of Hanes by Buffett is highly unlikely, so investors shouldn't hope for that kind of help. However, if Hanesbrands can achieve synergy targets and turn its acquisitions into successful investments, value investors may have the opportunity to make a purchase of a strong consumer brand at a depressed stock price.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Berkshire Hathaway (A shares)When 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=49a5197b-afa0-42ce-83fa-af1cc0f191d9&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=1b81cf48-6bf6-11e7-9eed-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Berkshire Hathaway (A shares) 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=49a5197b-afa0-42ce-83fa-af1cc0f191d9&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=1b81cf48-6bf6-11e7-9eed-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 July 6, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/CashRulez/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=1b81cf48-6bf6-11e7-9eed-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Palbir Nijjar Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway (B shares). The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Berkshire Hathaway (B shares). 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;uuid=1b81cf48-6bf6-11e7-9eed-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 5,759 |
<p>Discontinuities, lost paperwork and outright errors can lead to more pain for homeowners already caught in a labyrinthine and punishing process.</p>
<p>…And that's because the nation’s largest non-bank mortgage servicer has supplied its legions of outsourced customer reps in India with a software program that gauges the stress level of callers. Aided in its design by a team of 16 social psychologists, this new wrinkle on mortgage servicing was first reported in a December 2011 article in the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203764804577056330869512216" type="external">Wall Street Journal</a>. By analyzing speech patterns of past calls, the program coaches reps on how to respond to incoming questions posed by often dazed, confused and angry homeowners regarding such matters as incomprehensible penalties and fees on their monthly statements, or why they’ve been peppered with foreclosure notices after having, they thought, negotiated a loan modification. If the history of consumer complaints regarding Ocwen Financial Corporation is any indication, the software program may be keyed to stress-level categories ranging from mildly pissed to hot under the collar to positively postal.</p>
<p>Ocwen Financial is in the center of what could mildly be called a feeding frenzy in the lucrative world of mortgage servicing. Mortgage servicers are simply the out-front reps for the securitized trusts that allegedly own your mortgage. In other words, they’re the ones with the outstretched hands grasping for your monthly payment. As the mega-banks and other financial institutions shed their once-profitable sub-prime mortgage portfolios, their servicing operations are being taken over by non-banking operations. According to <a href="http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/features/Nonbank-Mortgage-Servicers-Rapid-Growth-Alarms-Investors-1039844-1.html" type="external">a recent article in</a> <a href="http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/features/Nonbank-Mortgage-Servicers-Rapid-Growth-Alarms-Investors-1039844-1.html" type="external">National Mortgage News</a>, the three top dogs in this realm—Ocwen, Nationstar and Walter Investment—have hoovered in an astonishing $1 trillion dollars of mortgage servicing rights (known as “MSR’s” in the industry).</p>
<p>Ocwen, however, seems to be trying to do a von Clausewitz, outflanking and outmaneuvering its rivals. In the last few months, nearly every mortgage trade publication has sported headlines like “ <a href="http://www.housingwire.com/articles/ocwen-buys-homeward-residential-wl-ross" type="external">Ocwen buys Homeward Residential From WL Ross</a>” or “ <a href="http://www.dsnews.com/articles/ocwen-enters-deal-with-onewest-to-buy-78b-in-msrs-2013-06-14" type="external">Ocwen Agrees to Buy $78B in MSRs from One West.</a>” Ocwen’s current “head count,” the number of mortgages it services, numbers more than 2.8 million. Flush with success, Ocwen’s Chairman, William Erbey, recently announced that he’s now sniffing out other potential revenue streams, including other forms of consumer debt.&#160;</p>
<p>But there’s reason for concern at this rapid shifting of servicers. When a new servicer takes a mortgage hand-off, your loan may be in for a rough ride. In the wake of Ocwen’s successful ride to riches, homeowners’ complaints to regulatory agencies regarding servicing issues have increased. Discontinuities, lost paperwork and outright errors can lead to more pain for homeowners already caught in a labyrinthine and punishing process.</p>
<p>Owning a so-called “servicing platform” was all the rage in the financial world pre-2008. Almost every mega-bank and a host of Wall Street financial institutions wanted a piece of the action. Goldman scooped up a Houston-based operation, Litton Loan Servicing; Bear Stearns acquired EMC Mortgage Corporation and Bank of America jumped on the bandwagon with the acquisition of both Wilshire and Countrywide.</p>
<p>In the bad old days of gratuitous sub-prime lending, mortgage servicing provided ready cash for top-tier financial players: There were fees and penalties aplenty that could be levied on homeowners even if they were late on their payments by a day. When things really went south for a financially drowning homeowner, a foreclosure could initiate a revenue rainstorm for servicers and their owners.</p>
<p>But when the house of cards came down in 2008, sub-prime mortgages went from golden to toxic. Mega-bankers couldn’t consume enough Advil to banish the headaches brought on by negative press and increased regulatory scrutiny, and many decided to dump the sub-prime trash—often cleverly called “legacy assets”—on the open market where bottom feeders traditionally go to make a buck.</p>
<p>Enter Ocwen Financial, a Florida-based company that’s been around since the late 1980s but hadn’t really engendered any investor excitement. As industry writer, Paul Muolo, pointed out in a July, 2012, piece for <a href="http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/features/ocwen-knows-bad-old-days-will-not-last-1031572-1.html" type="external">National Mortgage News</a>, Ocwen soon became “the industry garbage man.” One of its first major trash hauls, in 2011, was Litton Loan Servicing, an operation <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-sucher/goldman-sachs-and-litton-_b_2144452.html" type="external">Goldman Sachs desperately wanted to unload</a>. Having direct contact with homeowners, even through a subsidiary, wasn’t really the company’s thing, financial analysts pointed out. &#160;</p>
<p>Ocwen, like its other non-bank counterparts, claims it works with homeowners in default by using a combination of loan modifications and principal reduction to make non-performing loans dance again. But despite the high-mindedness of Ocwen’s trademarked motto, “ <a href="http://www.ocwen.com/" type="external">Helping Homeowners Is What We Do!</a>”, there have been problems in spades. First of all, when a new servicer acquires an old loan portfolio there’s a learning curve, a getting-up-to-speed regarding the history of the loan and what has or has not been done to follow up requests for loan modifications. Different servicers also use different types of software—some proprietary—which could cause compatibility problems. And when major cost-cutting is implemented, like outsourcing critical customer care resources to India, communications issues are heightened.</p>
<p>According to ex-Litton Loan Servicing employee, Chris Wyatt, the result is that the left hand often doesn’t have clue what the right hand is doing, and often neither hand cares to acknowledge this shortcoming. Wyatt, now a homeowner’s advocate, has counseled numerous perplexed homeowners who’ve gone to the mat with Ocwen.</p>
<p>One homeowner living in Hawaii, Steven “V,” reached out to Wyatt for help in figuring out Ocwen’s modification agenda (he asked for anonymity).</p>
<p>Steven, whose loan was formerly serviced by Litton, says he’s at a loss as to why Ocwen can’t provide him a permanent loan modification. He claims that he’s made timely payments—four in fact—during the course of a trial modification but has been denied a permanent resolution. After Steven followed up with a battery of questions regarding the turn-down, company reps responded in three separate letters, each offering a different calculation to demonstrate he had insufficient income for a permanent modification. But, according to Wyatt, who reviewed the Ocwen memos, there was a significant problem: All the calculations were in line with figures Steven had submitted to Ocwen for the trial modification, which had been approved.</p>
<p>Steven feels that he’s been on the chump end of a bait-and-switch scam—established industry practice is to offer a permanent modification to a homeowner who fulfilled his or her end of the bargain during the course of the trial run. Again, Wyatt sees a company that’s grown too big, too fast and doesn’t have the requisite systems in place to deal with the sheer numbers of mortgages they’ve been buying up.</p>
<p>Communications problems with Ocwen are at the root of Susan Farrell’s travails as well. A Philadelphia resident with hearing, vision and speech disabilities, Farrell has always managed to support herself as a pet services provider. In 1998, Farrell says she signed on to a local program that let her pay her real estate taxes directly to the city. She managed to stay current on her mortgage payments until Ocwen acquired the right to service her loan in 2011. Then, as she tells it, things spun wildly out of control. Farrell claims that she informed Ocwen of her intention to keep paying property taxes to the city but Ocwen, unbeknownst to her, began stripping her monthly payments for tax escrow and only then applied the excess to principal and interest. As a result she fell into arrears, and that’s when she says the foreclosure notices started to pop up like weeds after a downpour. With the help of a good friend and a community-based legal organization she’s managed to keep the barbarians away from her gate, for now, but still remains in foreclosure limbo; a Bardo state that she now shares with millions of other American homeowners impacted by the foreclosure crisis.</p>
<p>But there’s one example that takes the cake, so to speak: the case of an upstate New York homeowner, whom we shall call “MP” for anonymity’s sake, the head of an extended family that includes a child with cerebral palsy. This homeowner was foreclosed upon, evicted, then, in a Kafka-esque twist, foreclosed upon again. After the family was eventually thrown out of its home by Waterfall Asset Management in October, 2012, “MP” started to get hit with new notices from Ocwen demanding a payment of $326,000 on an empty house.</p>
<p>Following the paper trail, Wyatt surmised that “MP”’s loan at one time had been serviced by Litton Loan for a company, C-BASS, which then sold its stake in the mortgage to Waterfall. But when Ocwen took over Litton and acquired the portfolio, it appears no one bothered to stamp “already foreclosed” on this mortgage.</p>
<p>Chris Wyatt has spent more than 20 years in the banking and mortgage servicing industry (nearly nine of those years at Litton Loan), and has taken his own probing look into Ocwen’s set-up. He says he’s come across a litany of problems that seem to have escaped major regulatory oversight—perhaps, he believes, because regulators themselves are babes in the woods regarding the ins and outs of this industry (the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been around for scarcely three years). One serious problem, he says, that seems to have been overlooked by regulators are homeowner complaints that Ocwen has been unresponsive to requests for loan documents such as the “Note, Mortgage and Assignment Chain”—all the crucial links that provide a legal foundation for a servicer’s right to foreclose. Ocwen’s position, according to Wyatt: These documents are superfluous to the servicing of the loan.</p>
<p>Because of these concerns, Wyatt has started a <a href="http://http:/www.change.org/petitions/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-investigate-the-servicing-foreclosure-and-robo-signing-practices-of-ocwen-loan-servicing" type="external">Change.org petition</a> calling for the CFPB and other regulatory agencies to take a hard look at the servicing practices of the country’s fastest growing non-bank servicer.</p>
<p>It’s not as though Ocwen has completely escaped regulatory oversight. In March of 2011, the company announced that it was under regulatory scrutiny and complying with <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703752404576178893700456726" type="external">FTC requests for information</a> regarding its servicing and debt collection practices. In December of 2012, New York’s Department of Financial Services took the servicer to task, <a href="http://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/press/pr1212051.htm" type="external">ordering a compliance monitor</a> to oversee the company’s servicing practices; in particular, the capabilities of its staff, its policies related to foreclosure prevention and the fairness of its fees.</p>
<p>For its part, CFPB has gone on the record acknowledging that the massive slide of mortgages from one servicer to another is fraught with risks for homeowners. In a <a href="http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201302_cfpb_bulletin-on-servicing-transfers.pdf" type="external">February 11, 2013 bulletin</a>, the regulatory agency advised servicers essentially to mind their manners and make sure that all information regarding a homeowner’s account be accurately conveyed to a new servicer. That includes any loss mitigation efforts and trial modification histories—in short, details relevant to keeping a homeowner out of foreclosure.</p>
<p>“Consumers should not be collateral damage in the mortgage servicing transfer process,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray <a href="http://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/press/pr1212051.htm" type="external">in a press release</a> when the advisory was first issued.&#160; He went on to say what most struggling homeowners, no doubt, want to hear from someone in charge: “This guidance directs all mortgage servicers, both banks and nonbanks, to follow the laws protecting borrowers from the risks of such transfers, and makes clear that we will be monitoring them for compliance.”</p>
<p>Regulators like CFPB have taken the first tentative steps in acknowledging that there is, indeed, a major problem. But acknowledgement is one thing; enforcing compliance … well, that’s a horse of a different color. Spokespeople for both New York DFS and CFPB declined to comment regarding any current regulatory efforts targeting Ocwen.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Ocwen continues its profitable ride to servicing riches, posting a recent third-quarter 2013 net income of 67 million dollars. An Ocwen spokesperson did not return a request for comment.</p>
<p>With more and more homeowners falling under the umbrella of non-bank servicers homeowners need assurance that their previous efforts toiling to avoid foreclosure won’t be lost in a transition to a new servicer. Unless there’s someone actually listening and responding to complaints like Farrell’s, then these homeowners are simply whistling in the proverbial wind.</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 Sucher is a filmmaker with <a href="http://www.psfp.com/index2.html" type="external">Pacific Street Films</a> and has been a contributing blogger on foreclosure issues for <a href="http:/www.americanbanker.com/authors/1239.html" type="external">American Banker</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-sucher/" type="external">Huffington Post</a>. He's also at work on a documentary, Foreclosure Diaries, and is working on a book titled, Intent to Accelerate: Reflections on the Foreclosure Crisis.</p>
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Ocwen Servicing Knows You’re Angry…
| true |
http://inthesetimes.com/article/15891/ocwen_servicing_knows_youre_angry/
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2013-11-18
| 4left
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Ocwen Servicing Knows You’re Angry…
<p>Discontinuities, lost paperwork and outright errors can lead to more pain for homeowners already caught in a labyrinthine and punishing process.</p>
<p>…And that's because the nation’s largest non-bank mortgage servicer has supplied its legions of outsourced customer reps in India with a software program that gauges the stress level of callers. Aided in its design by a team of 16 social psychologists, this new wrinkle on mortgage servicing was first reported in a December 2011 article in the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203764804577056330869512216" type="external">Wall Street Journal</a>. By analyzing speech patterns of past calls, the program coaches reps on how to respond to incoming questions posed by often dazed, confused and angry homeowners regarding such matters as incomprehensible penalties and fees on their monthly statements, or why they’ve been peppered with foreclosure notices after having, they thought, negotiated a loan modification. If the history of consumer complaints regarding Ocwen Financial Corporation is any indication, the software program may be keyed to stress-level categories ranging from mildly pissed to hot under the collar to positively postal.</p>
<p>Ocwen Financial is in the center of what could mildly be called a feeding frenzy in the lucrative world of mortgage servicing. Mortgage servicers are simply the out-front reps for the securitized trusts that allegedly own your mortgage. In other words, they’re the ones with the outstretched hands grasping for your monthly payment. As the mega-banks and other financial institutions shed their once-profitable sub-prime mortgage portfolios, their servicing operations are being taken over by non-banking operations. According to <a href="http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/features/Nonbank-Mortgage-Servicers-Rapid-Growth-Alarms-Investors-1039844-1.html" type="external">a recent article in</a> <a href="http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/features/Nonbank-Mortgage-Servicers-Rapid-Growth-Alarms-Investors-1039844-1.html" type="external">National Mortgage News</a>, the three top dogs in this realm—Ocwen, Nationstar and Walter Investment—have hoovered in an astonishing $1 trillion dollars of mortgage servicing rights (known as “MSR’s” in the industry).</p>
<p>Ocwen, however, seems to be trying to do a von Clausewitz, outflanking and outmaneuvering its rivals. In the last few months, nearly every mortgage trade publication has sported headlines like “ <a href="http://www.housingwire.com/articles/ocwen-buys-homeward-residential-wl-ross" type="external">Ocwen buys Homeward Residential From WL Ross</a>” or “ <a href="http://www.dsnews.com/articles/ocwen-enters-deal-with-onewest-to-buy-78b-in-msrs-2013-06-14" type="external">Ocwen Agrees to Buy $78B in MSRs from One West.</a>” Ocwen’s current “head count,” the number of mortgages it services, numbers more than 2.8 million. Flush with success, Ocwen’s Chairman, William Erbey, recently announced that he’s now sniffing out other potential revenue streams, including other forms of consumer debt.&#160;</p>
<p>But there’s reason for concern at this rapid shifting of servicers. When a new servicer takes a mortgage hand-off, your loan may be in for a rough ride. In the wake of Ocwen’s successful ride to riches, homeowners’ complaints to regulatory agencies regarding servicing issues have increased. Discontinuities, lost paperwork and outright errors can lead to more pain for homeowners already caught in a labyrinthine and punishing process.</p>
<p>Owning a so-called “servicing platform” was all the rage in the financial world pre-2008. Almost every mega-bank and a host of Wall Street financial institutions wanted a piece of the action. Goldman scooped up a Houston-based operation, Litton Loan Servicing; Bear Stearns acquired EMC Mortgage Corporation and Bank of America jumped on the bandwagon with the acquisition of both Wilshire and Countrywide.</p>
<p>In the bad old days of gratuitous sub-prime lending, mortgage servicing provided ready cash for top-tier financial players: There were fees and penalties aplenty that could be levied on homeowners even if they were late on their payments by a day. When things really went south for a financially drowning homeowner, a foreclosure could initiate a revenue rainstorm for servicers and their owners.</p>
<p>But when the house of cards came down in 2008, sub-prime mortgages went from golden to toxic. Mega-bankers couldn’t consume enough Advil to banish the headaches brought on by negative press and increased regulatory scrutiny, and many decided to dump the sub-prime trash—often cleverly called “legacy assets”—on the open market where bottom feeders traditionally go to make a buck.</p>
<p>Enter Ocwen Financial, a Florida-based company that’s been around since the late 1980s but hadn’t really engendered any investor excitement. As industry writer, Paul Muolo, pointed out in a July, 2012, piece for <a href="http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/features/ocwen-knows-bad-old-days-will-not-last-1031572-1.html" type="external">National Mortgage News</a>, Ocwen soon became “the industry garbage man.” One of its first major trash hauls, in 2011, was Litton Loan Servicing, an operation <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-sucher/goldman-sachs-and-litton-_b_2144452.html" type="external">Goldman Sachs desperately wanted to unload</a>. Having direct contact with homeowners, even through a subsidiary, wasn’t really the company’s thing, financial analysts pointed out. &#160;</p>
<p>Ocwen, like its other non-bank counterparts, claims it works with homeowners in default by using a combination of loan modifications and principal reduction to make non-performing loans dance again. But despite the high-mindedness of Ocwen’s trademarked motto, “ <a href="http://www.ocwen.com/" type="external">Helping Homeowners Is What We Do!</a>”, there have been problems in spades. First of all, when a new servicer acquires an old loan portfolio there’s a learning curve, a getting-up-to-speed regarding the history of the loan and what has or has not been done to follow up requests for loan modifications. Different servicers also use different types of software—some proprietary—which could cause compatibility problems. And when major cost-cutting is implemented, like outsourcing critical customer care resources to India, communications issues are heightened.</p>
<p>According to ex-Litton Loan Servicing employee, Chris Wyatt, the result is that the left hand often doesn’t have clue what the right hand is doing, and often neither hand cares to acknowledge this shortcoming. Wyatt, now a homeowner’s advocate, has counseled numerous perplexed homeowners who’ve gone to the mat with Ocwen.</p>
<p>One homeowner living in Hawaii, Steven “V,” reached out to Wyatt for help in figuring out Ocwen’s modification agenda (he asked for anonymity).</p>
<p>Steven, whose loan was formerly serviced by Litton, says he’s at a loss as to why Ocwen can’t provide him a permanent loan modification. He claims that he’s made timely payments—four in fact—during the course of a trial modification but has been denied a permanent resolution. After Steven followed up with a battery of questions regarding the turn-down, company reps responded in three separate letters, each offering a different calculation to demonstrate he had insufficient income for a permanent modification. But, according to Wyatt, who reviewed the Ocwen memos, there was a significant problem: All the calculations were in line with figures Steven had submitted to Ocwen for the trial modification, which had been approved.</p>
<p>Steven feels that he’s been on the chump end of a bait-and-switch scam—established industry practice is to offer a permanent modification to a homeowner who fulfilled his or her end of the bargain during the course of the trial run. Again, Wyatt sees a company that’s grown too big, too fast and doesn’t have the requisite systems in place to deal with the sheer numbers of mortgages they’ve been buying up.</p>
<p>Communications problems with Ocwen are at the root of Susan Farrell’s travails as well. A Philadelphia resident with hearing, vision and speech disabilities, Farrell has always managed to support herself as a pet services provider. In 1998, Farrell says she signed on to a local program that let her pay her real estate taxes directly to the city. She managed to stay current on her mortgage payments until Ocwen acquired the right to service her loan in 2011. Then, as she tells it, things spun wildly out of control. Farrell claims that she informed Ocwen of her intention to keep paying property taxes to the city but Ocwen, unbeknownst to her, began stripping her monthly payments for tax escrow and only then applied the excess to principal and interest. As a result she fell into arrears, and that’s when she says the foreclosure notices started to pop up like weeds after a downpour. With the help of a good friend and a community-based legal organization she’s managed to keep the barbarians away from her gate, for now, but still remains in foreclosure limbo; a Bardo state that she now shares with millions of other American homeowners impacted by the foreclosure crisis.</p>
<p>But there’s one example that takes the cake, so to speak: the case of an upstate New York homeowner, whom we shall call “MP” for anonymity’s sake, the head of an extended family that includes a child with cerebral palsy. This homeowner was foreclosed upon, evicted, then, in a Kafka-esque twist, foreclosed upon again. After the family was eventually thrown out of its home by Waterfall Asset Management in October, 2012, “MP” started to get hit with new notices from Ocwen demanding a payment of $326,000 on an empty house.</p>
<p>Following the paper trail, Wyatt surmised that “MP”’s loan at one time had been serviced by Litton Loan for a company, C-BASS, which then sold its stake in the mortgage to Waterfall. But when Ocwen took over Litton and acquired the portfolio, it appears no one bothered to stamp “already foreclosed” on this mortgage.</p>
<p>Chris Wyatt has spent more than 20 years in the banking and mortgage servicing industry (nearly nine of those years at Litton Loan), and has taken his own probing look into Ocwen’s set-up. He says he’s come across a litany of problems that seem to have escaped major regulatory oversight—perhaps, he believes, because regulators themselves are babes in the woods regarding the ins and outs of this industry (the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been around for scarcely three years). One serious problem, he says, that seems to have been overlooked by regulators are homeowner complaints that Ocwen has been unresponsive to requests for loan documents such as the “Note, Mortgage and Assignment Chain”—all the crucial links that provide a legal foundation for a servicer’s right to foreclose. Ocwen’s position, according to Wyatt: These documents are superfluous to the servicing of the loan.</p>
<p>Because of these concerns, Wyatt has started a <a href="http://http:/www.change.org/petitions/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-investigate-the-servicing-foreclosure-and-robo-signing-practices-of-ocwen-loan-servicing" type="external">Change.org petition</a> calling for the CFPB and other regulatory agencies to take a hard look at the servicing practices of the country’s fastest growing non-bank servicer.</p>
<p>It’s not as though Ocwen has completely escaped regulatory oversight. In March of 2011, the company announced that it was under regulatory scrutiny and complying with <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703752404576178893700456726" type="external">FTC requests for information</a> regarding its servicing and debt collection practices. In December of 2012, New York’s Department of Financial Services took the servicer to task, <a href="http://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/press/pr1212051.htm" type="external">ordering a compliance monitor</a> to oversee the company’s servicing practices; in particular, the capabilities of its staff, its policies related to foreclosure prevention and the fairness of its fees.</p>
<p>For its part, CFPB has gone on the record acknowledging that the massive slide of mortgages from one servicer to another is fraught with risks for homeowners. In a <a href="http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201302_cfpb_bulletin-on-servicing-transfers.pdf" type="external">February 11, 2013 bulletin</a>, the regulatory agency advised servicers essentially to mind their manners and make sure that all information regarding a homeowner’s account be accurately conveyed to a new servicer. That includes any loss mitigation efforts and trial modification histories—in short, details relevant to keeping a homeowner out of foreclosure.</p>
<p>“Consumers should not be collateral damage in the mortgage servicing transfer process,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray <a href="http://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/press/pr1212051.htm" type="external">in a press release</a> when the advisory was first issued.&#160; He went on to say what most struggling homeowners, no doubt, want to hear from someone in charge: “This guidance directs all mortgage servicers, both banks and nonbanks, to follow the laws protecting borrowers from the risks of such transfers, and makes clear that we will be monitoring them for compliance.”</p>
<p>Regulators like CFPB have taken the first tentative steps in acknowledging that there is, indeed, a major problem. But acknowledgement is one thing; enforcing compliance … well, that’s a horse of a different color. Spokespeople for both New York DFS and CFPB declined to comment regarding any current regulatory efforts targeting Ocwen.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Ocwen continues its profitable ride to servicing riches, posting a recent third-quarter 2013 net income of 67 million dollars. An Ocwen spokesperson did not return a request for comment.</p>
<p>With more and more homeowners falling under the umbrella of non-bank servicers homeowners need assurance that their previous efforts toiling to avoid foreclosure won’t be lost in a transition to a new servicer. Unless there’s someone actually listening and responding to complaints like Farrell’s, then these homeowners are simply whistling in the proverbial wind.</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 Sucher is a filmmaker with <a href="http://www.psfp.com/index2.html" type="external">Pacific Street Films</a> and has been a contributing blogger on foreclosure issues for <a href="http:/www.americanbanker.com/authors/1239.html" type="external">American Banker</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-sucher/" type="external">Huffington Post</a>. He's also at work on a documentary, Foreclosure Diaries, and is working on a book titled, Intent to Accelerate: Reflections on the Foreclosure Crisis.</p>
| 5,760 |
<p>A French effort to restore stability in the Central African Republic — a troubled former colony — is coming under fire. &#160;</p>
<p>Just days after 1,600 French soldiers arrived in the CAR to try to stop the fighting, two of the paratroopers are dead.&#160;Journalist Eliza Griswold calls it a significant escalation.&#160;</p>
<p>"When we see Western troops targeted, and a willingness for that to happen, it definitely changes the stakes of a local conflict," Griswold says.&#160;</p>
<p>Griswold says what looks like a clash between Christians and Muslims in the Central African Republic is actually a far deeper struggle over the political future of certain territories rich in diamonds, gold and uranium.</p>
<p>"The fighting itself isn't about religion. It's about control over political power and safeguarding communities," Griswold says. "And it's taking on the color of religion&#160;because no other form of identity is protecting the people of CAR now."</p>
<p>Griswold wrote "The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam."&#160;She says, in the absence of functioning governments, many Africans are increasingly defining themselves in terms of their religious identity.&#160;</p>
<p>"If it doesn't make any difference to be a citizen of the Central African Republic, what are you going to turn to?" Griswold asks.</p>
<p>The Red Cross reports that at least 465 people have died in the fighting in the CAR — just since last Thursday.</p>
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Religion is not the real issue in the Central African Republic's conflict
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2013-12-10/religion-not-real-issue-central-african-republics-conflict
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2013-12-10
| 3left-center
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Religion is not the real issue in the Central African Republic's conflict
<p>A French effort to restore stability in the Central African Republic — a troubled former colony — is coming under fire. &#160;</p>
<p>Just days after 1,600 French soldiers arrived in the CAR to try to stop the fighting, two of the paratroopers are dead.&#160;Journalist Eliza Griswold calls it a significant escalation.&#160;</p>
<p>"When we see Western troops targeted, and a willingness for that to happen, it definitely changes the stakes of a local conflict," Griswold says.&#160;</p>
<p>Griswold says what looks like a clash between Christians and Muslims in the Central African Republic is actually a far deeper struggle over the political future of certain territories rich in diamonds, gold and uranium.</p>
<p>"The fighting itself isn't about religion. It's about control over political power and safeguarding communities," Griswold says. "And it's taking on the color of religion&#160;because no other form of identity is protecting the people of CAR now."</p>
<p>Griswold wrote "The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam."&#160;She says, in the absence of functioning governments, many Africans are increasingly defining themselves in terms of their religious identity.&#160;</p>
<p>"If it doesn't make any difference to be a citizen of the Central African Republic, what are you going to turn to?" Griswold asks.</p>
<p>The Red Cross reports that at least 465 people have died in the fighting in the CAR — just since last Thursday.</p>
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<p>After grappling with how to overcome a projected $15 million budget deficit a year ago, the budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 utilizes an anticipated revenue surplus of $1.2 million this year to add $3.1 million in new spending.</p>
<p>Councilor Carmichael Dominguez, who chairs the Finance Committee, said he believes the city has now “turned the corner” with regard to its finances. Mayor Javier Gonzales called it a budget that “represents the values of city government.”</p>
<p>Much of the discussion of the budget on Wednesday centered around pay raises for employees and friendly amendments offered by Councilor Peter Ives to create positions for a director of the Historic Preservation Division and an enforcement officer within the Land Use Department. The council decided not to create unfunded positions but will revisit those ideas in December.</p>
<p>At that time, the council will also look for additional sources of funding to provide employees with a 5 percent pay increase proposed by the mayor. Gonzales said he’s still hopeful money will become available to bump the raises up to 5 percent before the end of the fiscal year.</p>
<p>During the public comment period, several city employees urged the council to give raises of more than 2 percent since the city had held back on providing pay increases in previous years.</p>
<p>Joyce Martinez, who works in the Community Services Department, said the word that sums up the feelings of most city employees is “frustration” that “stems from another day of trying to make ends meet.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The approved budget allocates $1.2 million for the 2 percent pay raises and establishes a $400,000 pool of money to be used for performance-based raises.</p>
<p>The new spending includes an extra $300,000 for on-call street repair and maintenance and $200,000 to hire 14 new employees to help manage road medians and city parks, including weed removal.</p>
<p>The fire department gets an additional $1.1 million for preventive medical response, wildfire prevention and to address needs in the southwest part of the city that was annexed from the county a few years ago.</p>
<p>Nearly $285,000 is set aside for marketing the municipal airport and to lease the La Bajada rest stop on Interstate 25 south of Santa Fe and turn it into a visitors center.</p>
<p>The city also tucked away $1.2 million to help pay off debt for the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, which earlier this month announced it would close next year. The SFUAD campus is on property the city bought in 2009, taking out a $30 million loan to do so, and then leased the property to the university. Without those rent payments after the university shuts down, the city could be on the hook for nearly $40 million in debt service over the next 18 years, including interest from the loan.</p>
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Santa Fe city budget includes $3.1 million in new spending
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/994018/santa-fe-city-budget-includes-3-1-million-in-new-spending.html
| 2least
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Santa Fe city budget includes $3.1 million in new spending
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<p />
<p>After grappling with how to overcome a projected $15 million budget deficit a year ago, the budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 utilizes an anticipated revenue surplus of $1.2 million this year to add $3.1 million in new spending.</p>
<p>Councilor Carmichael Dominguez, who chairs the Finance Committee, said he believes the city has now “turned the corner” with regard to its finances. Mayor Javier Gonzales called it a budget that “represents the values of city government.”</p>
<p>Much of the discussion of the budget on Wednesday centered around pay raises for employees and friendly amendments offered by Councilor Peter Ives to create positions for a director of the Historic Preservation Division and an enforcement officer within the Land Use Department. The council decided not to create unfunded positions but will revisit those ideas in December.</p>
<p>At that time, the council will also look for additional sources of funding to provide employees with a 5 percent pay increase proposed by the mayor. Gonzales said he’s still hopeful money will become available to bump the raises up to 5 percent before the end of the fiscal year.</p>
<p>During the public comment period, several city employees urged the council to give raises of more than 2 percent since the city had held back on providing pay increases in previous years.</p>
<p>Joyce Martinez, who works in the Community Services Department, said the word that sums up the feelings of most city employees is “frustration” that “stems from another day of trying to make ends meet.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The approved budget allocates $1.2 million for the 2 percent pay raises and establishes a $400,000 pool of money to be used for performance-based raises.</p>
<p>The new spending includes an extra $300,000 for on-call street repair and maintenance and $200,000 to hire 14 new employees to help manage road medians and city parks, including weed removal.</p>
<p>The fire department gets an additional $1.1 million for preventive medical response, wildfire prevention and to address needs in the southwest part of the city that was annexed from the county a few years ago.</p>
<p>Nearly $285,000 is set aside for marketing the municipal airport and to lease the La Bajada rest stop on Interstate 25 south of Santa Fe and turn it into a visitors center.</p>
<p>The city also tucked away $1.2 million to help pay off debt for the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, which earlier this month announced it would close next year. The SFUAD campus is on property the city bought in 2009, taking out a $30 million loan to do so, and then leased the property to the university. Without those rent payments after the university shuts down, the city could be on the hook for nearly $40 million in debt service over the next 18 years, including interest from the loan.</p>
| 5,762 |
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<p>Many new research studies have indicated that common infections, including colds and chickenpox, may increase the risk of strokes in children.</p>
<p>Although this is concerning news for parents, the good news is that strokes in children are quite rare. In addition, one study indicated that childhood vaccines seem to offer some protection against childhood strokes.</p>
<p>Dr. Heather Fullerton, one of the study’s authors and the lead director of a pediatric stroke center at the University of California, notes that children who suffered a stroke were more likely to have had a recent infection than children who did not have a stroke. She added that there appeared to be a particularly strong link of an infection happening around a week before the stroke happened in the child. In these instances, there was around a 7 percent increase in the risk of a stroke.</p>
<p>This news may be worrisome, but it remains true that these infections are very common and strokes are quite rare in children. The studies indicated that the infections may be a trigger in children who are already susceptible to strokes.</p>
<p>Fullerton and her team will soon be presenting their research and findings at an American Stroke Association meeting. The studies that Fullerton were involved in were smaller components of a larger research study involving vascular actions of infections in children.</p>
<p>To complete their study, the researchers followed close to 312 children who had previously suffered a stroke. The average age of the children in the study was 7. One study found that children who had an infection of less than 7 days before suffering a stroke were linked to a 7 percent higher chance of having a stroke. The study also found that upper respiratory infections were the most common types of infections preceding a stroke.</p>
<p>The study also found that children who had just a few or none of the recommended childhood vaccines also had a 7 percent higher risk of a stroke. Children who had received a measles-mumps-rubella, pneumococcus or polio vaccine appeared to have more protection against a stroke.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
|
Stroke risk higher in children with recent illness, according to study
| false |
http://natmonitor.com/2014/02/17/stroke-risk-higher-in-children-with-recent-illness-according-to-study/
|
2014-02-17
| 3left-center
|
Stroke risk higher in children with recent illness, according to study
<p>Many new research studies have indicated that common infections, including colds and chickenpox, may increase the risk of strokes in children.</p>
<p>Although this is concerning news for parents, the good news is that strokes in children are quite rare. In addition, one study indicated that childhood vaccines seem to offer some protection against childhood strokes.</p>
<p>Dr. Heather Fullerton, one of the study’s authors and the lead director of a pediatric stroke center at the University of California, notes that children who suffered a stroke were more likely to have had a recent infection than children who did not have a stroke. She added that there appeared to be a particularly strong link of an infection happening around a week before the stroke happened in the child. In these instances, there was around a 7 percent increase in the risk of a stroke.</p>
<p>This news may be worrisome, but it remains true that these infections are very common and strokes are quite rare in children. The studies indicated that the infections may be a trigger in children who are already susceptible to strokes.</p>
<p>Fullerton and her team will soon be presenting their research and findings at an American Stroke Association meeting. The studies that Fullerton were involved in were smaller components of a larger research study involving vascular actions of infections in children.</p>
<p>To complete their study, the researchers followed close to 312 children who had previously suffered a stroke. The average age of the children in the study was 7. One study found that children who had an infection of less than 7 days before suffering a stroke were linked to a 7 percent higher chance of having a stroke. The study also found that upper respiratory infections were the most common types of infections preceding a stroke.</p>
<p>The study also found that children who had just a few or none of the recommended childhood vaccines also had a 7 percent higher risk of a stroke. Children who had received a measles-mumps-rubella, pneumococcus or polio vaccine appeared to have more protection against a stroke.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
| 5,763 |
<p>KATHMANDU, Nepal — Nepal's government urged foreign rescue workers in the quake-hit capital to return home Monday as hundreds of people visited Buddhist shrines and monasteries to mark the birthday of Gautam Buddha.</p>
<p>Information Minister Minendra Rijal said the major rescue work in Kathmandu and surrounding areas has been completed and that the remaining operations can be handled by local workers. However, work remained in the villages and remote mountain areas, and foreign-aid volunteers could work with local police and army rescuers in those areas, he said.</p>
<p>Since the April 25 earthquake, 4,050 rescue workers from 34 different nations have flown to Nepal to help in rescue operations, provide emergency medical care and distribute food and other necessities. The death toll from the quake reached 7,276, police said.</p>
<p>At the Swayambhunath shrine, located atop a hill overlooking Kathmandu, hundreds of people chanted prayers as they walked around the hill where the white iconic stupa with its gazing eyes are located. Some of the structures around the stupa, built in the 5th century, were damaged in the April 25 magnitude 7.8 quake. Police blocked off the steep steps to the top of the shrine, also called "Monkey temple" because of the many monkeys who live on its slopes.</p>
<p>"I am praying for peace for the thousands of people who were killed," said Santa Lama, a 60-year-old woman. "I hope there will be peace and calm in the country once again and the worst is over."</p>
|
Nepal Urges Foreign Rescue Workers in Kathmandu to Go Home
| false |
http://nbcnews.com/storyline/nepal-earthquake/nepal-urges-foreign-rescue-workers-kathmandu-go-home-n353046
|
2015-05-04
| 3left-center
|
Nepal Urges Foreign Rescue Workers in Kathmandu to Go Home
<p>KATHMANDU, Nepal — Nepal's government urged foreign rescue workers in the quake-hit capital to return home Monday as hundreds of people visited Buddhist shrines and monasteries to mark the birthday of Gautam Buddha.</p>
<p>Information Minister Minendra Rijal said the major rescue work in Kathmandu and surrounding areas has been completed and that the remaining operations can be handled by local workers. However, work remained in the villages and remote mountain areas, and foreign-aid volunteers could work with local police and army rescuers in those areas, he said.</p>
<p>Since the April 25 earthquake, 4,050 rescue workers from 34 different nations have flown to Nepal to help in rescue operations, provide emergency medical care and distribute food and other necessities. The death toll from the quake reached 7,276, police said.</p>
<p>At the Swayambhunath shrine, located atop a hill overlooking Kathmandu, hundreds of people chanted prayers as they walked around the hill where the white iconic stupa with its gazing eyes are located. Some of the structures around the stupa, built in the 5th century, were damaged in the April 25 magnitude 7.8 quake. Police blocked off the steep steps to the top of the shrine, also called "Monkey temple" because of the many monkeys who live on its slopes.</p>
<p>"I am praying for peace for the thousands of people who were killed," said Santa Lama, a 60-year-old woman. "I hope there will be peace and calm in the country once again and the worst is over."</p>
| 5,764 |
<p />
<p>This election season there’s been plenty of talk of about aliens—but not the kind that are the focus of a ballot initiative in Denver, Colorado, where I’m reporting from today. <a href="http://www.extracampaign.org/" type="external">Initiative 300</a> asks voters a simple question: “Are you ready for the truth?” The only truth the backers of the initiative appear to be seeking, however, is access to information about what the government, military, etc. know about contact between humans and aliens. See, it’s not just California that gets the fun ballot initiatives.</p>
<p>Here’s what the backers of the ballot measure have to say about it: “Over 400 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses have testified to their direct, personal, first-hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology, and the cover-up that keeps this information secret.”</p>
<p>Think of it as an intergalactic Freedom of Information Act, if you will.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news-elections/article/denver-voters-debating-proposed-et-affairs-office/19626333" type="external">David Moye explains</a> what passing the initiative would mean in practice:</p>
<p>Put it simply: If the measure is approved by the voters, Denver’s mayor will have to select seven volunteers for a commission that will meet twice a year and gather the most compelling evidence regarding the existence of extraterrestrials and UFOs and put it on the city’s website.</p>
<p>In addition, Jeff Peckman, the man behind the proposal, says the commission will be a place where citizens can report sightings and assess the risks and benefits of dealing with the E.T.s.</p>
<p>Peckman says that he doesn’t expect only to learn about bad alien encounters—you know, the implanting-metal-things-in-your-brain and/or usurping- your-body-to-incubate-alien-fetuses type of stories. He notes also that there are “possible business opportunities or medical treatments that could come from them.”</p>
<p>Anyway, back on this planet, I’m heading over to the election night headquarters of Tom Tancredo, the former Republican congressman who is making a bid for governor on the American Constitution Party ticket. Tancredo, of course, is <a href="" type="internal">much better known</a> for his fearmongering about the kind of aliens that cross over the border from Mexico.</p>
<p />
|
A Ballot Initiative of Intergalactic Proportions
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/ballot-initiative-denver-aliens/
|
2010-11-02
| 4left
|
A Ballot Initiative of Intergalactic Proportions
<p />
<p>This election season there’s been plenty of talk of about aliens—but not the kind that are the focus of a ballot initiative in Denver, Colorado, where I’m reporting from today. <a href="http://www.extracampaign.org/" type="external">Initiative 300</a> asks voters a simple question: “Are you ready for the truth?” The only truth the backers of the initiative appear to be seeking, however, is access to information about what the government, military, etc. know about contact between humans and aliens. See, it’s not just California that gets the fun ballot initiatives.</p>
<p>Here’s what the backers of the ballot measure have to say about it: “Over 400 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses have testified to their direct, personal, first-hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology, and the cover-up that keeps this information secret.”</p>
<p>Think of it as an intergalactic Freedom of Information Act, if you will.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news-elections/article/denver-voters-debating-proposed-et-affairs-office/19626333" type="external">David Moye explains</a> what passing the initiative would mean in practice:</p>
<p>Put it simply: If the measure is approved by the voters, Denver’s mayor will have to select seven volunteers for a commission that will meet twice a year and gather the most compelling evidence regarding the existence of extraterrestrials and UFOs and put it on the city’s website.</p>
<p>In addition, Jeff Peckman, the man behind the proposal, says the commission will be a place where citizens can report sightings and assess the risks and benefits of dealing with the E.T.s.</p>
<p>Peckman says that he doesn’t expect only to learn about bad alien encounters—you know, the implanting-metal-things-in-your-brain and/or usurping- your-body-to-incubate-alien-fetuses type of stories. He notes also that there are “possible business opportunities or medical treatments that could come from them.”</p>
<p>Anyway, back on this planet, I’m heading over to the election night headquarters of Tom Tancredo, the former Republican congressman who is making a bid for governor on the American Constitution Party ticket. Tancredo, of course, is <a href="" type="internal">much better known</a> for his fearmongering about the kind of aliens that cross over the border from Mexico.</p>
<p />
| 5,765 |
<p />
<p>I just stumbled on an <a href="http://www.cepr.net/publications/poor_numbers.htm" type="external">old paper</a> from the Center for Economic and Policy research arguing that the gains from trade liberalization are often overstated. One major reference, for instance, had indicated that trade liberalization by rich countries would lift 540 million people out of poverty worldwide. But as it turns out, the calculations here were slightly askew. The CEPR researchers find that the gains here are much more marginal: most of the people “lifted out of poverty” would see their incomes rise from just below $2 a day to just above that level.</p>
<p>Now that’s not nothing, and the arguments in favor of trade liberalization are still quite good: the paper’s not saying that it would be harmful for rich countries to reduce their barriers. What it does imply, though, is that this isn’t a goal worth doing anything under the sun to pursue. Many liberal opponents of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA)— <a href="http://motherjones.org/commentary/columns/2005/06/CAFTA.html" type="external">me</a>, for instance—have noted that the benefits from the trade provisions in the bill are often swamped by the harmful effects due to the various intellectual property protections—for instance, the restrictions on generic drugs that would make AIDS medication more costly—and the weakening of labor standards. (Not to mention the fact that the agreement gives serious trade protection to American sugar producers.) Indeed, economists like Richard Freeman have <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=450881" type="external">often argued</a> that trade just isn’t all that consequential in the grand scheme of things: certainly not as important as immigration, capital flows, or technology transfers. That applies to CAFTA too.</p>
<p>Now some free-traders acknowledge that those are bad aspects of CAFTA, but think we should just ignore those objections because the upside to reduced tariffs is so high. But if CEPR’s figures are right, the upside to reduced tariffs, while decent, isn’t that high, and piling on concessions to the pharmaceutical and telecommunications industry really do, on average, make the bill a net negative. This applies to the recently-signed US-Australia free trade deal, which had a lot of harmful non-trade provisions, and it’s going to continue to happen so long as people believe that liberalization is such a good deal for poor countries that it should be pursued at all costs.</p>
<p />
|
The Exaggerated Impact of Trade
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2005/07/exaggerated-impact-trade/
|
2005-07-05
| 4left
|
The Exaggerated Impact of Trade
<p />
<p>I just stumbled on an <a href="http://www.cepr.net/publications/poor_numbers.htm" type="external">old paper</a> from the Center for Economic and Policy research arguing that the gains from trade liberalization are often overstated. One major reference, for instance, had indicated that trade liberalization by rich countries would lift 540 million people out of poverty worldwide. But as it turns out, the calculations here were slightly askew. The CEPR researchers find that the gains here are much more marginal: most of the people “lifted out of poverty” would see their incomes rise from just below $2 a day to just above that level.</p>
<p>Now that’s not nothing, and the arguments in favor of trade liberalization are still quite good: the paper’s not saying that it would be harmful for rich countries to reduce their barriers. What it does imply, though, is that this isn’t a goal worth doing anything under the sun to pursue. Many liberal opponents of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA)— <a href="http://motherjones.org/commentary/columns/2005/06/CAFTA.html" type="external">me</a>, for instance—have noted that the benefits from the trade provisions in the bill are often swamped by the harmful effects due to the various intellectual property protections—for instance, the restrictions on generic drugs that would make AIDS medication more costly—and the weakening of labor standards. (Not to mention the fact that the agreement gives serious trade protection to American sugar producers.) Indeed, economists like Richard Freeman have <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=450881" type="external">often argued</a> that trade just isn’t all that consequential in the grand scheme of things: certainly not as important as immigration, capital flows, or technology transfers. That applies to CAFTA too.</p>
<p>Now some free-traders acknowledge that those are bad aspects of CAFTA, but think we should just ignore those objections because the upside to reduced tariffs is so high. But if CEPR’s figures are right, the upside to reduced tariffs, while decent, isn’t that high, and piling on concessions to the pharmaceutical and telecommunications industry really do, on average, make the bill a net negative. This applies to the recently-signed US-Australia free trade deal, which had a lot of harmful non-trade provisions, and it’s going to continue to happen so long as people believe that liberalization is such a good deal for poor countries that it should be pursued at all costs.</p>
<p />
| 5,766 |
<p>Every few years the question of selling out comes up again, most recently it has been in the circles of the environmental movements. First it was Shellenberger and Nordhaus in their Grist Magazine article, the “Death of Environmentalism.” This cogent argument was countered nicely by Michel Gelobter and his numerous co-authors in their “Soul of Environmentalism.” All of this felt alarmingly similar to the raging debate between the Sierra Club directors and the insurgent environmental racism activists in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Now <a href="" type="internal">Jeffrey St. Clair has brought it up again</a>, and rightly so! The Sierra Club, the NRDC, EDF, and WWF are more sclerotic than athletic, more myopically interested in failing reformist policy than in listening to their base constituency.</p>
<p>But all of this should sound familiar. It is the old debate between the liberals and the radicals, between the reformists and the revolutionaries. From the Knights of Labor being sold out by the combination of the AFL and the CIO, to the socialists selling out the anarchists, there is a rich history of battles fought amongst those on the Left. And these battles are important, especially when formerly oppositional groups grow a little to comfortable with their fancy new digs near the seat of power. St. Clair is absolutely right to call “foul!” on the mainstream environmental groups, ensconced on K street in DC, collecting checks from their members via mass-mailings, but remaining otherwise insulated. But the Sierra Club and the other mass membership organizations are but one dimension of environmentalism: there is no such thing as the environmental movement. Instead there is a collection of many groups, movements, strategies and approaches that represent the full panoply of environmental movements. And it is here that St. Clair misses the most vivacious and thrilling part of the contemporary environmental movement: the continued work of the environmental justice activists and the rise of the anarchists.</p>
<p>By far the most vibrant, exciting, and successful set of movements in environmentalism today surround issues of environmental justice. Combining the strengths of race-based and class-based and gender-based movements, activists organizing under the banner of environmental justice have done what the Sierra Club could not: bring honor, integrity, and clean air and water to many out of the way, ignored, poor communities of color.</p>
<p>These movements have been gaining power for many years. Some date the beginning at Love Canal, others say that the Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta’s farm worker unionization movement was in large part about exposure to toxics, and thus about environmental justice. However you date the origins, it took many years for the mainstream groups to take note of these truly grassroots environmental and labor movements. They were organized in large part by poor women of color, those very folks who are the most shut out of the corridors of power that Nature Conservancy lobbyists walk through daily. It is no wonder that the reaction of mainstream environmentalists was at first to be defensive and hostile. But these movements-for environmental justice, against environmental racism and classism-are precisely the most thrilling and vibrant parts of the set of environmental movements today. The thrill hasn’t disappeared, as St. Clair argues, it has just moved to different locations, across the tracks to the low-rent district, into the agricultural fields, downstream from the chemical plant.</p>
<p>And what about those young folks who are pioneering new forms of activism? No more Kumbaya, no more business as usual: these folks are against all authority, whether that is the boss, the governor, or the highly-paid environmental lobbyist. Many folks today are so frustrated by the same sell-out that St. Clair points to that they see the mainstream environmental movements as illegitimate. No one, it seems, really speaks for the environment. Who can? Who will put their bodies on the line to save the trees from being cut, to send a message to the makers and buyers of SUVs? These new activists, following the earth first! model are monkey-wrenching the ecologically destructive practices of modernity. Many of these political actions engage in or flirt with property destruction, and are often based in a political philosophy of anarchism.</p>
<p>Actions on behalf of the environment that have involved property destruction or trespassing have been widespread-from California to Colorado to Indiana to New York-by people acting on their own and those associated with groups such as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Earth First!, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), among others. Some have targeted new housing developments, others have opposed commercial projects. The activists have ranged from the 23 year old Julia Butterfly Hill who sat in an old-growth redwood tree for two years to keep it from being harvested for timber to the 42 year old John Quigley who quietly sat in 200 year old oak tree in Los Angeles County for 70 days to protect it from being cut down for a housing development.</p>
<p>Trespassing in a tree is one thing. Tossing a garbage can through a Starbucks window in the Seattle WTO protests is another. And then there are people like Jeff “Free” Luers, who is serving a 22 year sentence for torching an SUV on a new car lot in Oregon as a form of protest against global warming. The mainstream media has been quick to judge such activists, calling them “eco-terrorists” and denigrating their actions as selfish, violent, and sociopathic. And many environmentalists decry the destruction of property as detrimental to the movement-after a ski lodge was burned down in Aspen, Colorado local environmentalists felt that they had to distance themselves from such “extremism.”</p>
<p>But of course, as the famous phrase goes, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue. We should not be afraid of young people who feel strongly that the destruction of the earth in the name of “development” or “progress” is wrong, and attempt take action to draw attention to perceived abuses of the environment in the only way they know how. When people feel strongly enough about a political issue to destroy property, they clearly are not being heard-they feel that they have no voice through normal, approved channels like their governmental representative or the Sierra Club. So while one might disagree with the strategy of property destruction (and we have yet to see a healthy debate on this), there are certainly still “thrilling” elements to the environmental movements.</p>
<p>And so we have the radicals torching SUVs, and the liberals trying to pass tax credits for investing in solar panels. Who is right? Which is the correct path to the goal of a sustainable future? Of course it is a diversity of tactics that makes a movement successful. Without Malcolm X banging on the back door, Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn’t ever have been let in the front door.</p>
<p>KEVIN WEHR is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the California State University at Sacramento, and can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Liberal vs. Radical Enviros, Redux
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2007/02/24/liberal-vs-radical-enviros-redux/
|
2007-02-24
| 4left
|
Liberal vs. Radical Enviros, Redux
<p>Every few years the question of selling out comes up again, most recently it has been in the circles of the environmental movements. First it was Shellenberger and Nordhaus in their Grist Magazine article, the “Death of Environmentalism.” This cogent argument was countered nicely by Michel Gelobter and his numerous co-authors in their “Soul of Environmentalism.” All of this felt alarmingly similar to the raging debate between the Sierra Club directors and the insurgent environmental racism activists in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Now <a href="" type="internal">Jeffrey St. Clair has brought it up again</a>, and rightly so! The Sierra Club, the NRDC, EDF, and WWF are more sclerotic than athletic, more myopically interested in failing reformist policy than in listening to their base constituency.</p>
<p>But all of this should sound familiar. It is the old debate between the liberals and the radicals, between the reformists and the revolutionaries. From the Knights of Labor being sold out by the combination of the AFL and the CIO, to the socialists selling out the anarchists, there is a rich history of battles fought amongst those on the Left. And these battles are important, especially when formerly oppositional groups grow a little to comfortable with their fancy new digs near the seat of power. St. Clair is absolutely right to call “foul!” on the mainstream environmental groups, ensconced on K street in DC, collecting checks from their members via mass-mailings, but remaining otherwise insulated. But the Sierra Club and the other mass membership organizations are but one dimension of environmentalism: there is no such thing as the environmental movement. Instead there is a collection of many groups, movements, strategies and approaches that represent the full panoply of environmental movements. And it is here that St. Clair misses the most vivacious and thrilling part of the contemporary environmental movement: the continued work of the environmental justice activists and the rise of the anarchists.</p>
<p>By far the most vibrant, exciting, and successful set of movements in environmentalism today surround issues of environmental justice. Combining the strengths of race-based and class-based and gender-based movements, activists organizing under the banner of environmental justice have done what the Sierra Club could not: bring honor, integrity, and clean air and water to many out of the way, ignored, poor communities of color.</p>
<p>These movements have been gaining power for many years. Some date the beginning at Love Canal, others say that the Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta’s farm worker unionization movement was in large part about exposure to toxics, and thus about environmental justice. However you date the origins, it took many years for the mainstream groups to take note of these truly grassroots environmental and labor movements. They were organized in large part by poor women of color, those very folks who are the most shut out of the corridors of power that Nature Conservancy lobbyists walk through daily. It is no wonder that the reaction of mainstream environmentalists was at first to be defensive and hostile. But these movements-for environmental justice, against environmental racism and classism-are precisely the most thrilling and vibrant parts of the set of environmental movements today. The thrill hasn’t disappeared, as St. Clair argues, it has just moved to different locations, across the tracks to the low-rent district, into the agricultural fields, downstream from the chemical plant.</p>
<p>And what about those young folks who are pioneering new forms of activism? No more Kumbaya, no more business as usual: these folks are against all authority, whether that is the boss, the governor, or the highly-paid environmental lobbyist. Many folks today are so frustrated by the same sell-out that St. Clair points to that they see the mainstream environmental movements as illegitimate. No one, it seems, really speaks for the environment. Who can? Who will put their bodies on the line to save the trees from being cut, to send a message to the makers and buyers of SUVs? These new activists, following the earth first! model are monkey-wrenching the ecologically destructive practices of modernity. Many of these political actions engage in or flirt with property destruction, and are often based in a political philosophy of anarchism.</p>
<p>Actions on behalf of the environment that have involved property destruction or trespassing have been widespread-from California to Colorado to Indiana to New York-by people acting on their own and those associated with groups such as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Earth First!, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), among others. Some have targeted new housing developments, others have opposed commercial projects. The activists have ranged from the 23 year old Julia Butterfly Hill who sat in an old-growth redwood tree for two years to keep it from being harvested for timber to the 42 year old John Quigley who quietly sat in 200 year old oak tree in Los Angeles County for 70 days to protect it from being cut down for a housing development.</p>
<p>Trespassing in a tree is one thing. Tossing a garbage can through a Starbucks window in the Seattle WTO protests is another. And then there are people like Jeff “Free” Luers, who is serving a 22 year sentence for torching an SUV on a new car lot in Oregon as a form of protest against global warming. The mainstream media has been quick to judge such activists, calling them “eco-terrorists” and denigrating their actions as selfish, violent, and sociopathic. And many environmentalists decry the destruction of property as detrimental to the movement-after a ski lodge was burned down in Aspen, Colorado local environmentalists felt that they had to distance themselves from such “extremism.”</p>
<p>But of course, as the famous phrase goes, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue. We should not be afraid of young people who feel strongly that the destruction of the earth in the name of “development” or “progress” is wrong, and attempt take action to draw attention to perceived abuses of the environment in the only way they know how. When people feel strongly enough about a political issue to destroy property, they clearly are not being heard-they feel that they have no voice through normal, approved channels like their governmental representative or the Sierra Club. So while one might disagree with the strategy of property destruction (and we have yet to see a healthy debate on this), there are certainly still “thrilling” elements to the environmental movements.</p>
<p>And so we have the radicals torching SUVs, and the liberals trying to pass tax credits for investing in solar panels. Who is right? Which is the correct path to the goal of a sustainable future? Of course it is a diversity of tactics that makes a movement successful. Without Malcolm X banging on the back door, Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn’t ever have been let in the front door.</p>
<p>KEVIN WEHR is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the California State University at Sacramento, and can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 5,767 |
<p />
<p />
<p>The face belonged to 81-year-old Elgie Bedford who had been the victim of a hit and run incident earlier that day. Grandfather Mr Bedford had been on his way to visit family in Texas from his home in Alaska when he crashed his car into a fence and began to walk along the freeway in search of help.</p>
<p>Truck driver David Welk, employed by trucking company CRST Expedited Inc., hit the pensioner with his semitrailer and drove off without reporting the crime. He was convicted in January 2015 of killing Mr Bedford and leaving the scene of the crime, and received a six year suspended sentence.</p>
<p>Investigators have reported that several other vehicles then struck the body as it lay in the road, and it is alleged that the owner of one of these cars then took her vehicle to the car wash to be cleaned which is how a large portion of the dead man's face ended up on the floor of the car wash.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>CRST Expedited Inc. deny any responsibility for her traumatic experience.</p>
|
Woman Suing After Finding Dead Man's Face At Car Wash
| true |
http://offthemainpage.com/2016/02/03/woman-suing-after-finding-dead-mans-face-at-car-wash/
|
2016-02-03
| 4left
|
Woman Suing After Finding Dead Man's Face At Car Wash
<p />
<p />
<p>The face belonged to 81-year-old Elgie Bedford who had been the victim of a hit and run incident earlier that day. Grandfather Mr Bedford had been on his way to visit family in Texas from his home in Alaska when he crashed his car into a fence and began to walk along the freeway in search of help.</p>
<p>Truck driver David Welk, employed by trucking company CRST Expedited Inc., hit the pensioner with his semitrailer and drove off without reporting the crime. He was convicted in January 2015 of killing Mr Bedford and leaving the scene of the crime, and received a six year suspended sentence.</p>
<p>Investigators have reported that several other vehicles then struck the body as it lay in the road, and it is alleged that the owner of one of these cars then took her vehicle to the car wash to be cleaned which is how a large portion of the dead man's face ended up on the floor of the car wash.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>CRST Expedited Inc. deny any responsibility for her traumatic experience.</p>
| 5,768 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Mitt Romney</p>
<p>Heather A. Wilson</p>
<p>1st District — Michelle Lujan Grisham</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>2nd District — Steve Pearce</p>
<p>3rd District — Ben R. Lujan</p>
<p>District 9 — David L. Doyle</p>
<p>District 10 — John Christopher Ryan</p>
<p>District 14 — Michael Padilla</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>District 15 — H. Diane Snyder</p>
<p>District 17 — Timothy M. Keller</p>
<p>District 18 — Lisa Torraco</p>
<p>District 20 — William H. Payne</p>
<p>District 21 — Mark Moores</p>
<p>District 12 — Ernest H. Chavez</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>District 13 — Jose Orozco</p>
<p>District 14 — Clara A. Pena</p>
<p>District 15 — Christopher T. Saucedo</p>
<p>District 17 — Edward C. Sandoval</p>
<p>District 18 — Gail Chasey</p>
<p>District 19 — Erica J. Landry</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>District 23 — Paul A. Pacheco</p>
<p>District 24 — Conrad D. James</p>
<p>District 25 — Elisabeth L. Keen</p>
<p>District 26 — Georgene Louis</p>
<p>District 27 — Lorenzo “Larry” A. Larranaga</p>
<p>District 29 — Thomas Anthony Anderson</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>District 30 — Nate Gentry</p>
<p>District 31 — William R. Rehm</p>
<p>District 68 — Monica C. Youngblood</p>
<p>N.M. Public Regulation Commission:</p>
<p>District 1 — Christopher Ocksrider</p>
<p>Contested races</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Supreme Court — Paul J. Kennedy</p>
<p>Court of Appeals — J. Miles Hanisee</p>
<p>Retention</p>
<p>Supreme Court — Richard C. Bosson, yes</p>
<p>Court of Appeals — Michael Vigil, yes</p>
<p>Court of Appeals — Roderick T. Kennedy, yes</p>
<p>Division 6 — Brett Roger Loveless</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Division 10 — Sharon D. Walton</p>
<p>Division 19 — Benjamin Chavez</p>
<p>Division 21 — Alisa Ann Hadfield</p>
<p>Amendment No. 1 — Increases membership of the Judicial Standards Commission from 11 to 13 — No.</p>
<p>Amendment No. 2 — Allows the Legislature to establish increased qualifications and continuing education for commissioners on the Public Regulation Commission — Yes.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Amendment No. 3 — Removes the duties to charter and regulate corporations from the Public Regulation Commission — Yes.</p>
<p>Amendment No. 4 — Removes the duty to regulate insurance companies and others engaged in risk assumption from the Public Regulation Commission — Yes.</p>
<p>Amendment No. 5 — Establishes the Public Defender Department as an independent state agency — Yes.</p>
<p>Bond Question A (Senior Citizen Centers) — Yes</p>
<p>Bond Question B (Libraries) — Yes</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Bond Question C (Higher Education) — Yes</p>
<p>District 1 — Simon Kubiak</p>
<p>George E. Torres</p>
<p>Bond No. 1 (Libraries) — Yes</p>
<p>Bond No. 2 (Public Safety, animal shelter, fire stations) — Yes</p>
<p>Bond No. 3 (Parks and Recreation, community center, parks) — Yes</p>
<p>Bond No. 4 (Capital Improvements to county buildings) — Yes</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Bond No. 5 (I-25/Paseo del Norte Interchange, county roads) — Yes</p>
<p>Bond No. 6 (Storm Drains) — Yes</p>
<p>Permits Albuquerque to issue up to $50 million in gross receipts tax revenue bonds to redevelop the Paseo/Interstate 25 interchange — Yes</p>
<p>Increases the minimum wage in Albuquerque and requires an annual cost-of-living adjustment based on percentage increases in the Consumer Price Index — No</p>
<p>This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.</p>
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Editorial: Journal Picks For Tuesday’s Election
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https://abqjournal.com/143880/journal-picks-for-tuesdays-election.html
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2012-11-05
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Editorial: Journal Picks For Tuesday’s Election
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<p>Mitt Romney</p>
<p>Heather A. Wilson</p>
<p>1st District — Michelle Lujan Grisham</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>2nd District — Steve Pearce</p>
<p>3rd District — Ben R. Lujan</p>
<p>District 9 — David L. Doyle</p>
<p>District 10 — John Christopher Ryan</p>
<p>District 14 — Michael Padilla</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>District 15 — H. Diane Snyder</p>
<p>District 17 — Timothy M. Keller</p>
<p>District 18 — Lisa Torraco</p>
<p>District 20 — William H. Payne</p>
<p>District 21 — Mark Moores</p>
<p>District 12 — Ernest H. Chavez</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>District 13 — Jose Orozco</p>
<p>District 14 — Clara A. Pena</p>
<p>District 15 — Christopher T. Saucedo</p>
<p>District 17 — Edward C. Sandoval</p>
<p>District 18 — Gail Chasey</p>
<p>District 19 — Erica J. Landry</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>District 23 — Paul A. Pacheco</p>
<p>District 24 — Conrad D. James</p>
<p>District 25 — Elisabeth L. Keen</p>
<p>District 26 — Georgene Louis</p>
<p>District 27 — Lorenzo “Larry” A. Larranaga</p>
<p>District 29 — Thomas Anthony Anderson</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>District 30 — Nate Gentry</p>
<p>District 31 — William R. Rehm</p>
<p>District 68 — Monica C. Youngblood</p>
<p>N.M. Public Regulation Commission:</p>
<p>District 1 — Christopher Ocksrider</p>
<p>Contested races</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Supreme Court — Paul J. Kennedy</p>
<p>Court of Appeals — J. Miles Hanisee</p>
<p>Retention</p>
<p>Supreme Court — Richard C. Bosson, yes</p>
<p>Court of Appeals — Michael Vigil, yes</p>
<p>Court of Appeals — Roderick T. Kennedy, yes</p>
<p>Division 6 — Brett Roger Loveless</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Division 10 — Sharon D. Walton</p>
<p>Division 19 — Benjamin Chavez</p>
<p>Division 21 — Alisa Ann Hadfield</p>
<p>Amendment No. 1 — Increases membership of the Judicial Standards Commission from 11 to 13 — No.</p>
<p>Amendment No. 2 — Allows the Legislature to establish increased qualifications and continuing education for commissioners on the Public Regulation Commission — Yes.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Amendment No. 3 — Removes the duties to charter and regulate corporations from the Public Regulation Commission — Yes.</p>
<p>Amendment No. 4 — Removes the duty to regulate insurance companies and others engaged in risk assumption from the Public Regulation Commission — Yes.</p>
<p>Amendment No. 5 — Establishes the Public Defender Department as an independent state agency — Yes.</p>
<p>Bond Question A (Senior Citizen Centers) — Yes</p>
<p>Bond Question B (Libraries) — Yes</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Bond Question C (Higher Education) — Yes</p>
<p>District 1 — Simon Kubiak</p>
<p>George E. Torres</p>
<p>Bond No. 1 (Libraries) — Yes</p>
<p>Bond No. 2 (Public Safety, animal shelter, fire stations) — Yes</p>
<p>Bond No. 3 (Parks and Recreation, community center, parks) — Yes</p>
<p>Bond No. 4 (Capital Improvements to county buildings) — Yes</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Bond No. 5 (I-25/Paseo del Norte Interchange, county roads) — Yes</p>
<p>Bond No. 6 (Storm Drains) — Yes</p>
<p>Permits Albuquerque to issue up to $50 million in gross receipts tax revenue bonds to redevelop the Paseo/Interstate 25 interchange — Yes</p>
<p>Increases the minimum wage in Albuquerque and requires an annual cost-of-living adjustment based on percentage increases in the Consumer Price Index — No</p>
<p>This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.</p>
| 5,769 |
<p>It seems as if most people have an emoji to represent them. The diversity of the digital symbols appear to include a broad range skin color, gender, weight, mood, glasses, hats, blowing kisses, drinking beers, etc. They seem to cover a lot of options. However one group (and maybe many others) have been&#160; <a href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/mobile-phones/ginger-emoji-may-be-coming/news-story/58d841898c92ee0fa1104398482cbb23" type="external">left</a> out and that is finally being addressed.</p>
<p>I am talking about red heads.</p>
<p>This has been a long road and we are not quite there yet.&#160;There is a redhead movement and Coppercap is a famous Youtube activist and redhead equality campaigner. In speaking with <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2663607/ginger-emojis-are-finally-on-the-way-following-furious-redheads-long-campaign-for-equality/" type="external">The Sun</a> Coppercap said:</p>
<p>Everybody deserves an emoji, and I’m BEYOND HAPPY that the tech companies have FINALLY made the right decision, by providing us with ginger emojis. This will do great things for young red-headed kids who may be getting bullied for the colour of their hair, because it will make it more normal for people to come across redheads now, like … in their phones. Anti-redhead sentiment is ABSOLUTELY a form of racism! Our skin pigmentation is completely different, we obviously have a definite hair colour, and we have setbacks because of our genetics such as being sunburnt more easily.</p>
<p>A Scottish group have created a Change.org petition with over 20000 signatures to urge&#160;Apple to create a ginger emoji. However it is another company Unicode who make <a href="http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17011-redhead-emoji-options.pdf" type="external">emojis</a>&#160;and who have outlined, that red haired people are finally on the cards.</p>
<p>Ever heard of the term ‘gingerism’? Neither had I, but according to Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia:</p>
<p>The lack of a redhead emoji has been the most frequent complaint from Emojipedia users in the past three months.</p>
<p>Red haired people make up only one to two percent of the world population, but obviously they as a group feel left out of the emoji world and some feel discriminated against by this previous omittance. While Coppercap and many others are celebrating the decision, the reality of seeing a ginger or red-haired emoji is still years off.</p>
<p>Watch:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Featured image via <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNzrWV7vpfo" type="external">Youtube</a>.</p>
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Left Out Group Of People Finally Getting An Emoji (VIDEO)
| true |
http://offthemainpage.com/2017/01/22/left-out-group-of-people-finally-getting-an-emoji-video/
|
2017-01-22
| 4left
|
Left Out Group Of People Finally Getting An Emoji (VIDEO)
<p>It seems as if most people have an emoji to represent them. The diversity of the digital symbols appear to include a broad range skin color, gender, weight, mood, glasses, hats, blowing kisses, drinking beers, etc. They seem to cover a lot of options. However one group (and maybe many others) have been&#160; <a href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/mobile-phones/ginger-emoji-may-be-coming/news-story/58d841898c92ee0fa1104398482cbb23" type="external">left</a> out and that is finally being addressed.</p>
<p>I am talking about red heads.</p>
<p>This has been a long road and we are not quite there yet.&#160;There is a redhead movement and Coppercap is a famous Youtube activist and redhead equality campaigner. In speaking with <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2663607/ginger-emojis-are-finally-on-the-way-following-furious-redheads-long-campaign-for-equality/" type="external">The Sun</a> Coppercap said:</p>
<p>Everybody deserves an emoji, and I’m BEYOND HAPPY that the tech companies have FINALLY made the right decision, by providing us with ginger emojis. This will do great things for young red-headed kids who may be getting bullied for the colour of their hair, because it will make it more normal for people to come across redheads now, like … in their phones. Anti-redhead sentiment is ABSOLUTELY a form of racism! Our skin pigmentation is completely different, we obviously have a definite hair colour, and we have setbacks because of our genetics such as being sunburnt more easily.</p>
<p>A Scottish group have created a Change.org petition with over 20000 signatures to urge&#160;Apple to create a ginger emoji. However it is another company Unicode who make <a href="http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17011-redhead-emoji-options.pdf" type="external">emojis</a>&#160;and who have outlined, that red haired people are finally on the cards.</p>
<p>Ever heard of the term ‘gingerism’? Neither had I, but according to Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia:</p>
<p>The lack of a redhead emoji has been the most frequent complaint from Emojipedia users in the past three months.</p>
<p>Red haired people make up only one to two percent of the world population, but obviously they as a group feel left out of the emoji world and some feel discriminated against by this previous omittance. While Coppercap and many others are celebrating the decision, the reality of seeing a ginger or red-haired emoji is still years off.</p>
<p>Watch:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Featured image via <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNzrWV7vpfo" type="external">Youtube</a>.</p>
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<p>President Barack Obama watches Native American dancers on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on Friday. (Charles Rex Arbogast/The Associated Press)</p>
<p>CANNON BALL, N.D. – President Barack Obama on Friday became only the fourth sitting U.S. president to set foot in Indian Country, encountering both the wonder of Native American culture and the struggle of tribal life on a breeze-whipped afternoon on the prairie. Amid snapping flags and colorful, feathered dancers, Obama declared that there was more the U.S. could do to help Native Americans.</p>
<p>Obama drew attention to inroads made by his administration in Indian Country even as he promoted the need to help reservations create jobs, strengthen justice, and improve health and education.</p>
<p>“Young people should be able to live, and work, and raise a family right here in the land of your fathers and mothers,” Obama told a crowd of about 1,800 during a Flag Day Celebration at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.</p>
<p>Citing legendary tribal chief Sitting Bull, Obama said: “Let’s put our minds together to build more economic opportunity in Indian country. Because every American, including every Native American, deserves a chance to work hard and get ahead.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Today, the 2.3 million-acre reservation is home to about 850 residents who struggle with a lack of housing, health care and education, among other problems familiar on reservations nationwide. The Bureau of Indian Affairs reported in January that about 63 percent of able workers on Standing Rock were unemployed.</p>
<p>With Native American poverty and unemployment more than double the U.S. average, Obama promoted initiatives to spur tribal development and create new markets for Native American products and services. The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Friday that it would make $70 million available to improve tribal housing conditions.</p>
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Obama promotes efforts to boost Native Americans
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Obama promotes efforts to boost Native Americans
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<p>President Barack Obama watches Native American dancers on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on Friday. (Charles Rex Arbogast/The Associated Press)</p>
<p>CANNON BALL, N.D. – President Barack Obama on Friday became only the fourth sitting U.S. president to set foot in Indian Country, encountering both the wonder of Native American culture and the struggle of tribal life on a breeze-whipped afternoon on the prairie. Amid snapping flags and colorful, feathered dancers, Obama declared that there was more the U.S. could do to help Native Americans.</p>
<p>Obama drew attention to inroads made by his administration in Indian Country even as he promoted the need to help reservations create jobs, strengthen justice, and improve health and education.</p>
<p>“Young people should be able to live, and work, and raise a family right here in the land of your fathers and mothers,” Obama told a crowd of about 1,800 during a Flag Day Celebration at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.</p>
<p>Citing legendary tribal chief Sitting Bull, Obama said: “Let’s put our minds together to build more economic opportunity in Indian country. Because every American, including every Native American, deserves a chance to work hard and get ahead.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Today, the 2.3 million-acre reservation is home to about 850 residents who struggle with a lack of housing, health care and education, among other problems familiar on reservations nationwide. The Bureau of Indian Affairs reported in January that about 63 percent of able workers on Standing Rock were unemployed.</p>
<p>With Native American poverty and unemployment more than double the U.S. average, Obama promoted initiatives to spur tribal development and create new markets for Native American products and services. The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Friday that it would make $70 million available to improve tribal housing conditions.</p>
<p />
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<p>[This article was originally delivered as <a href="" type="internal">EPPC’s Fourth Annual William E. Simon Lecture</a>&#160;on January 12, 2005. It will be printed in the Spring 2005 issue of&#160;Notre Dame Magazine, and is used here with permission.]</p>
<p>Let me begin with a disclaimer – anyone who came here this evening expecting hot tips on the front-runners for the papacy is going to leave disappointed. People sometimes ask, “What’s the Ethics and Public Policy Center?” Well, here’s one part of the answer – the Center isn’t Ladbroke’s, or the Potomac office of Off-Track Betting!</p>
<p>I should also say at the outset that the title of this lecture is not intended to suggest that Pope John Paul II is in imminent danger of death. I had dinner with the Holy Father on December 15, and while he is obviously suffering from the effects of his neurological disease, he’s alert and otherwise healthy; his schedule, while somewhat diminished, remains a full and taxing one; and eight days of work in Rome last month convinced me that John Paul remains the center of initiative at the center of the Catholic Church.</p>
<p>By the same token, it’s obvious that we are much closer to the end of this extraordinary pontificate than to its beginning. And as the Pope himself has talked about the impending completion of his mission on several occasions in recent years, there is nothing unseemly in deepening the conversation about what we might call “the work John Paul II will leave for the rest of us.” “The rest of us,” of course, includes the next pope – whoever the 265th Bishop of Rome may be, wherever he may have been born, and whatever his previous experience has been.</p>
<p>All conclaves tend to confound the predictions of pre-conclave prognosticators, but there is one thing of which we can be absolutely certain in thinking about the conclave that will elect the next pope: it will be a conclave in which the legacy of John Paul II looms very, very large.</p>
<p>A New Conversation. The fact that we are even having this discussion – here in Washington, under the sponsorship of a major foundation and an ecumenical and interreligious research institute – is itself a testimony to the accomplishment of John Paul II. Some years ago, a prominent national political commentator who is not a Christian said to me, “You know, in 1978 I could have cared less who the next pope would be. Now it means something to me personally.” I suspect my friend’s sentiments are replicated in hundreds of millions of hearts and minds throughout the world. The papacy has traditionally claimed a global role; the pontificate of John Paul II has given specific meaning and empirical texture to that claim. The cardinals who will elect the next pope know this. And as they ponder the implications of that remarkable fact, they will know something else: they will know that, in an important sense, they will be electing a pope for the world as well as for the Church.</p>
<p>The papacy now matters to virtually everyone. It matters to those for whom it represents the center of the divinely-mandated ordering of Christ’s Church. It matters to those for whom the papacy represents a global focal point of Christian unity and witness. It matters to those for whom the pope is a defender of universal human rights with a global platform. It matters, if in a rather different way, to those Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese, and North Korean totalitarians who fear the capacity of the Catholic Church to inspire liberation movements, as it has done during this pontificate in east central Europe, Latin America, and East Asia. And it matters to those who deplore the Catholic Church and its moral teaching as perhaps the last great institutional barrier to the triumph of a utilitarian ethic and the advance of what some genetics researchers unblushingly call the “immortality project.”1 Voltaire would be spinning in his grave at the thought of the papacy as a defender of the “rights of man;” and I rather doubt that Huxley imagined the papacy as a counterweight to the evolution of the brave new world. Yet precisely such hopes – and fears – may be found throughout the world today, in this twenty-seventh year of the pontificate of John Paul II. All conclaves are, by definition, “unprecedented.” But those hopes and fears will help make the conclave that elects John Paul’s successor an unprecedented one in a distinctive way.</p>
<p>A Complex Process. Several other factors will likely make the next conclave a complex and perhaps lengthy business, and it’s worth noting them briefly by way of completing the preliminaries.</p>
<p>As you all know, the next pope will be elected by the College of Cardinals, which has had the exclusive right to elect the Bishop of Rome since the twelfth century. The apostolic constitution governing the next conclave, which was issued by John Paul II in 1996, continues the practice, initiated by Pope Paul VI, of limiting cardinal-electors to those members of the College who have not reached their eightieth birthday on the day the Pope dies.2 Thus we can anticipate an electorate of between 110 and 120 cardinals – the largest in conclave history, an electorate twice the size of that which elected John XXIII in 1958, and one-quarter larger than that which elected John Paul II. But size is not the only distinguishing characteristic of this electorate and this conclave.</p>
<p>The cardinal-electors will be the most diverse such group in history. At present, they range in age from 52-year old Peter Erdt, the primate of Hungary, to 79-year old Alexandre do Nascimento, the archbishop emeritus of Luanda, Angola, once held hostage by rebel forces in his native country during his efforts to mediate Angola’s civil war. The average age of the electors today is 66. 11% of the electorate will come from North America; 19% from Latin America; 50% from Europe (but only 17% from Italy, the lowest percentage in modern conclave history); 10% from Africa; 11% from Asia and Oceania. The overwhelming majority of the electors, almost 80%, are local pastors, not figures in the Roman Curia; and several prominent Curial cardinals were successful local pastors before being called to Rome. 18% are members of religious orders, with the Franciscans boasting the largest number of cardinal-electors (four), while the Salesians and the Jesuits have three each; two cardinal-electors are affiliated with Opus Dei – a number that will doubtless disappoint true believers in the fevered speculations of The Da Vinci Code.</p>
<p>This unprecedented diversity will not only make the conclave more complex logistically; it will make it more complex linguistically. The cardinal-electors don’t share a common language (one after-effect of the decline of Latin in the Church) – and the results of that, for the pre-conclave discussion of issues and the conclave itself, remain to be seen. Then there is the fact that these men, brought together from all over the world, don’t really know each other; the last time most of them were in the same place at the same time was when John Paul II created new cardinals in October 2003, immediately after his own silver jubilee. And while there was some time for conversation during those celebrations, it would be a stretch to suggest that the cardinals, old and new, had then, or have had since, the opportunity to take each other’s measure. (This suggests, among other things, that the world media, and the images it creates of different personalities in the Church, may play a larger role in shaping the deliberations of this conclave than in the past.)</p>
<p>Moreover, the diversity of the cardinal-electors will be magnified in the pre-conclave discussions by the presence of some sixty-five cardinals who, having turned eighty, have lost their vote, but who will be very much part of the conversations about issues and the assessment of possible candidates in the two or three weeks that will pass between John Paul II’s death and the sealing of the conclave to elect his successor.</p>
<p>The cardinal-electors, even when “immured” in the conclave, will also be living far more comfortably than in the past. Previously, Curial offices in the Apostolic Palace were divided into ramshackle cubicles to house the cardinal-electors, most of whom were unaccustomed to sleeping on cots and using chamber pots. Now, thanks to the Domus Sanctae Marthae guest house inside the Vatican, built by John Paul II, the cardinal-electors will live in three-room suites in what amounts to a quite decent hotel with a more-than-adequate kitchen. According to a long-standing tradition, the actual election will take place in the Sistine Chapel; but unlike previous conclaves, the cardinal-electors will, if they like, be able to walk between the Domus Sanctae Marthae and the Sistine Chapel, and indeed in a substantial part of the Vatican grounds, should they choose to do so before or after the day’s electoral work is done. All of which is to say that, in very human terms, the pressures felt in previous conclaves to get the job done expeditiously will not be felt in the next conclave; call it the absence of the “chamber pot factor.”</p>
<p>Above and beyond these material considerations, the next conclave will, as I suggested at the outset, operate within a different structure of expectations than its predecessors. John Paul II’s retrieval and renewal of the evangelical and pastoral papacy – a papacy of preaching, teaching, witness, and encouragement – has changed the Church’s expectations of popes, and the world’s, too. These expectations are already creating a refined set of criteria for assessing possible candidates for the papacy. There is, for example, an emerging consensus among a significant number of cardinal-electors that one of the next pontificate’s principal tasks will be to concretize in the life of the Church the profound and challenging vision articulated by the pontificate of John Paul II: which is another way of saying that the next pope, in the minds of many electors, might well exercise a stronger administrative hand than his predecessor. At the same time, it is virtually inconceivable that the cardinal-electors, given this changed structure of expectations, will elect a man whose only, or even primary, qualification for the job is a reputation for making the trains run on time. The cardinals are well aware that personal holiness, intellectual depth, pastoral imagination, and communications skills are crucial in a 21st century pope – and will be measured quickly, by the world and the Church, in those first crucial moments when the new pope speaks urbi et orbi, “to the city and the world,” on the day of his election and at his inaugural Mass. It would perhaps be too much to expect that the next pope will announce himself in so riveting a way as John Paul II, the self-described man “from a far country” who boldly challenged the world to “be not afraid,” and to “open the doors to Christ.”3 But neither does anyone expect, or really want, the new pope to announce himself by laying out a detailed plan for the bureaucratic reform of the Church – important as certain such reforms may be.</p>
<p>To my mind, and measuring these things in purely human terms (as I have no pipeline to the Holy Spirit’s plans for the conclave), all of this adds up to a complex, possibly difficult, and probably lengthy conclave – one that I could imagine going on for three, four, even five days of voting. John Paul II’s apostolic constitution governing the next conclave permits the electors to move to a simple majority vote from the two-thirds majority requirement, after almost two weeks and some thirty-plus ballots. But I regard this as a very remote possibility indeed; for after five days, much less two weeks, the world media would begin reporting the story of a “Church in crisis,” and I cannot imagine the cardinal-electors wanting that story-line to set the stage for a man who is already going to have a next-to-impossible job – filling the exceedingly large shoes worn by John Paul II.</p>
<p>Could a consensus quickly form around a single candidate in the pre-conclave discussions, as it did in the first conclave of 1978, producing the one-day election of John Paul I? The only candidate in whose favor one might imagine such a scenario unfolding would be the most well-known (and, arguably, most well-respected) of the cardinals, Joseph Ratzinger. But Cardinal Ratzinger will be 78 in April, and, perhaps more to the point, he has critics within the College who may admire his personal sanctity and brilliance but who would not vote for him as pope. Whether those opponents could muster a blocking 41 votes is not something that can be pre-judged. It does seem likely, though, that the only “quick-conclave” scenario is one that produces a Ratzinger papacy.</p>
<p>Clarifying the Issues. But this is to proceed into territory – the terrain of personalities and candidacies – which I said at the outset that I would avoid. Not because such speculations aren’t interesting, but because they are, in the nature of the case, uninformed – even among informed observers. Moreover, and from the point of view of a papacy that “matters to all of us,” some of the most urgent questions will be addressed before the conclave, in the “general congregations” of cardinals that will begin meeting the day after the Pope’s death, and in those informal but important discussions known in Italian as the prattiche (which roughly translates as “exercises”). Here, “the issues” – or, as I put it above, “the work that John Paul II will leave the rest of us” – will be thrashed out. How those discussions evolve, and are resolved, will have a great deal to do with who becomes the 264th successor to St. Peter and the 265th Bishop of Rome. To borrow from Morris West’s famous image: the way in which the cardinals design and measure the shoes of the fisherman will have a lot to do with their choice of a man with the particular qualities needed to fit those particular shoes.</p>
<p>What, then, are the great issues facing the Catholic Church in the early 21st century? And how will the Church’s grappling with those issues affect “all of us?”</p>
<p>At the outset, it may help to clarify what the issues are not. Neither the next conclave nor the next pope is going to change the Catholic Church’s teaching on the morally appropriate way to regulate births, although the cardinals may well discuss how to present that teaching with greater pastoral effectiveness.4 Neither the next conclave nor the next pope is going to endorse abortion-on-demand or euthanasia; the inviolability of innocent life is a bedrock principle of both natural and revealed law, and the Church has no authority to declare the use of lethal violence against innocents morally justifiable.5 Similarly, while the pre-conclave prattiche and the conclave itself may involve some discussion of the effects of the revolution in women’s lives (and the concurrent revolution in men’s lives) on the Church and the world, the Church’s practice of calling only men to the ministerial priesthood is not going to change, because, as John Paul II stated eleven years ago, the Church is not authorized to change that practice.6 There will likely be some discussion of the advisability of ordaining viri probati, proven and tested older married men, to the ministerial priesthood in situations where the shortage of priests is drastically impeding the Church’s sacramental life – but the cardinals well know that this solution, if in fact it be that, will create some problems as well as address others, and we need not expect (nor, from my point of view, should we want) a full-scale retreat from the ancient linkage of celibacy and ordained ministry in the Catholic Church.7</p>
<p>Which is to say that virtually all of what the New York Times imagines are “the issues” for the Catholic Church aren’t, in fact, the issues, and aren’t going to play a significant role in shaping the next conclave and the next pontificate</p>
<p>So what are the issues?</p>
<p>Three large-scale issues are already under discussion within the College of Cardinals and among other senior churchmen, and will certainly weigh heavily in the conclaves’s deliberations, in the next pontificate, and in the Catholic Church’s interface with the 21st century world. The first of these is the virtual collapse of Christianity in its historic heartland – western Europe. The second great issue is the Church’s response to the multi-faceted challenge posed by the rise of militant Islam. And the third involves the questions posed by the biotech revolution. Questions of the Church’s intellectual discipline will also be discussed in the next conclave, and I hope to show in a moment why those questions, properly understood, are of considerable consequence for “all of us”. Then there is a question that may or may not come up in the prattiche, the general congregations, and the conclave deliberations of the cardinal-electors, but which, in my judgment, should be addressed: and that is the question of the Church’s diplomacy, or, to be more precise, the set of ideas that have guided the “foreign policy” of the Holy See for more than two generations now.</p>
<p>Let me address each of these briefly, without by any means exhausting each topic, but drawing out the implications embedded within each of these issues for “all of us.”</p>
<p>Europe. In last year’s Simon Lecture, I proposed a “culture-first” analysis of Europe’s current problems – and particularly the critical problem of European depopulation – and I traced the origins of these dilemmas to the triumph of what Henri de Lubac termed “atheistic humanism” in the high culture of 19th century Europe: an atheistic humanism that displaced the God of the Bible in the name of human liberation. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was right, I suggested, when he argued that Europe’s disastrous 20th century had taken place because men had “forgotten God” and had imagined the possibility, indeed the imperative, of politics-without-God.8</p>
<p>The worst material effects of atheistic humanism were defeated in two world wars and the Cold War. But the residues of atheistic humanism – now expressed in the kinder, gentler phenomenon that Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls “exclusive humanism” (i.e., a humanism committed to keeping all transcendent moral referents out of public life) – are much in evidence today. They were evident when the European constitutional treaty signed this past October willfully denied that fifteen hundred years of Christian history had anything to do with contemporary Europe’s commitments to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. They were evident when Rocco Buttiglione, a man who would have been considered an adornment of any sane government between the days of Cato the Elder and, well, this past November, was denied an opportunity to serve as European Minister of Justice, not because of his public commitments and record, but because of his personal convictions (informed by both natural law and Catholic moral theology) about the morality of homosexual acts and the nature of marriage. They have been evident in the recent controversy in Britain over Ruth Kelly’s service as Education Secretary in the Blair Cabinet, during which, as the Times of London put it, “Some MPs fear that her religion may cloud her judgment:” her religion being a robust Catholicism and her judgment (which Ms. Kelly believes is informed, not clouded, by her Catholic faith) being on matters of embryo-destructive stem-cell research.9 They are evident when a leading British newspaper warns that Christian churches will forfeit what little moral leadership they now enjoy if they do not recognize that “tolerance” (by which the paper in question means the moral approbation of any sexual activity between any configuration of, and perhaps any number of, consenting adults) is more important than the Church maintaining the historic and biblical integrity of its teaching.10</p>
<p>Apostasy is not the only story-line of 19th and 20th century Europe; there is also a history of Christian renewal movements, tremendous Christian missionary energy, and Christian martyrdom to be conjured with in assessing Europe’s immediate past and immediate future. But, for the moment, the apostates – the exclusivist humanists who believe that only a Europe “neutral between worldviews” (as Jürgen Habermas and the late Jacques Derrida put it) is safe for democracy and human rights – have won. They have won in part because of the collapse of Europe’s Christian communities as effective transmitters of the faith and effective public advocates for religiously-informed moral reason.</p>
<p>No pope in history has been more of a pan-European than John Paul II; no pope in history invested more time, intellectual energy, and personal struggle in calling Europe back to the promises of its baptism. And while the seeds that John Paul has planted may flower in the future, especially among today’s young Catholics, the critical moment for Europe is likely to come in the next twenty or thirty years. Will a depopulating Europe, incapable of taking the hard political decisions that would prevent fiscal chaos and social catastrophe, and increasingly beset from within by an assertive Islamic minority that sees in 21st century Europe an opportunity to reverse the defeat of 1683, become, as Niall Ferguson, Bernard Lewis, and Bat Ye’or have warned, “Eurabia” – an extension of the culture and politics of the Arab Islamic world? What would it mean for the Christian world of the 21st century if its historic heartland were to go the way of the “seven churches” to which St. John wrote the Book of Revelation – if, in other words, European Christianity of the late 21st century looks very much like the Christianity of Asia Minor today?</p>
<p>“Eurabia” would pose enormous strategic and economic problems for the United States and the rest of the democratic world. But even absent such a draconian finish to the story, Europe’s current apostasy – which carries with it, not an indifference to biblical religion but an antipathy toward it – is already hurting the United States. As I indicated in last year’s lecture, the import into the United States of European legal ideas deeply shaped by exclusivist humanism is already making a mark in our federal courts, notably in Lawrence v. Texas. Today and tomorrow, then, Americans and indeed all free peoples have a stake in whether Europe’s current, sad decline can be reversed – and thus a stake in whether the only plausible candidate for leading such a reversal, namely, an evangelically revived and culturally formative Christian Church, in fact emerges in the next two generations. How that might happen is beyond the scope of this lecture; finding ways to make it happen is one of the great issues for the Catholic Church that John Paul II will leave behind. A capacity to jump-start the re-evangelization of Europe will be one of the qualities the cardinal-electors will seek in the next pope. Whether they find such a man will have a lot to do with the rest of 21st century history, for all of us.</p>
<p>Islam. If one looks at the Church in global terms, as the cardinal-electors must, one cannot help but notice a band of conflict that runs from the west coast of Africa eastward, ending in Southeast Asia at East Timor. “Band of conflict” is perhaps too mild a term, however, for the regions south and north of that globe-spanning dividing line are like two enormous tectonic plates, grating on each other – with the occasional, bloody upheavals that such geologic collisions sometimes produce. North of the dividing line are societies and cultures increasingly swayed by militant forms of Islam; south of that dividing line are Christian communities that, from Nigeria through Sudan to Pakistan and on into the Philippines and Indonesia, are often under assault from their Muslim neighbors, and/or governments that abet or turn a blind eye to Islamic extremism.</p>
<p>The Catholic Church’s religious and theological dialogue with the worlds-within-worlds of Islam was shaped in the mid-1960s, at the end of the Second Vatican Council, a time of buoyant (some might say, overly-buoyant) optimism in the Church and of relative calm in the Islamic world. The latter has now changed, dramatically, in no small part because of strains of Islam influenced by the Islamic Brotherhood, the Wahhabi sect, and other proponents of cultural aggression, civic intolerance, and, too often, violence in the name of the one God and his one Prophet. The conflicts engendered by these changes have been evident along the fault-line running from Senegal to East Timor for more than a decade; after 9/11 and the Bali, Istanbul, and Madrid bombings, it should now be clear that this conflict is global in scope. That suggests that the dialogue between Catholicism and the multifaceted Islamic world must also change, dramatically. Which is to say that the Catholic-Islamic dialogue in the immediate future must be framed, from the Catholic point of view, in frankly strategic terms, if it is not to degenerate into yet another exercise in political correctness, with unhappy consequences for both the Church and the world.</p>
<p>To put the case for strategy most simply: can the Catholic Church be of some modest assistance to those Islamic scholars, lawyers, and religious leaders who are working – often at great risk – to develop a genuinely Islamic case for religious toleration in something approximating what we in the West call “civil society”? If a world safe for diversity and pluralism requires a billion Muslims to become good Rawlsian secular liberals, then we really do face the grim prospect of a global “clash of civilizations.” Thus one crucial question for the Islamic future, from the vantage point of the Catholic Church (and, I dare suggest, for free societies throughout the world), is whether Islam can find within its sacred texts and legal traditions the internal resources to ground an Islamic case for important facets of the free and virtuous society, including religious toleration and a commitment to the method of persuasion in politics.</p>
<p>Some may wonder whether the Catholic Church has anything of particular interest to bring to this discussion. What it has to offer, I suggest, is its own recent history – for it took the Catholic Church until 1965 to develop and articulate a thoroughly Catholic concept of religious freedom and its implications for the organization of public life.11 Indeed, one can draw a rough (all right, very rough) analogy between pro-civil society Islamic scholars and religious leaders today and those Catholic intellectuals and bishops who were probing toward some sort of intellectual rapprochement with religious freedom and democracy as the ancien régime was crumbling in Europe throughout the nineteenth century. There may be lessons to be learned from this experience – which eventually led to a dramatic development of social doctrine in Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom [Dignitatis Humanae] – that could and should be brought into the Catholic Church’s global dialogue with the multi-faceted worlds of Islam.</p>
<p>Because of its concern for imperiled Christian communities in Islamic-dominated lands, on the one hand, and a rather anodyne approach to interreligious dialogue, on the other, the Vatican has been reluctant to press its Islamic interlocutors to condemn terrorism forthrightly and publicly. But surely the cardinal-electors, well-aware of the threat that aggressive and militant forms of Islam pose to the world Church, will want to examine this reluctance carefully, and consider whether a more forthright approach to manifest aggression is not in order, not least because militant Islam seems to be most aggressive where it perceives weakness. Should the cardinals also agree that the next pontificate must fashion a new strategic approach to the Catholic Church’s relationship with its Islamic interlocutors, this would in turn require a change in the client-centered approach to this relationship that has, in recent decades, dominated the Islamic work of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. The point, it would seem, is not to be in dialogue with everyone; the point is to be in dialogue with those Islamic partners best positioned to leverage needed change in their co-religionists’ self-understanding of Islam’s role in public life.</p>
<p>There are, of course, no guarantees that a new, strategic approach to the Catholic-Islamic dialogue will have the desired effects within the Islamic world, given the multiple other pressures at play. Nor am I suggesting that new forms of interreligious dialogue are, in and of themselves, “the answer” to the worldwide threat of militant Islam. They may well be part of the answer, however. Putting them into play is an urgent task for the Church and for the world, a task not only for the next pontificate but for those that follow it in this century, and perhaps beyond.</p>
<p>The Bio-Tech Revolution. Like not a few of us, many cardinal-electors have the sense that the world has, at best, a ten-to-twenty year window in which to build the legal and regulatory structures necessary to channel humanity’s new genetic knowledge, and its marriage to technology, in directions that will lead to healing and genuine human flourishing rather than to Huxley’s nightmare. The cardinal-electors will also be aware, as many of us are, that the dominant public moral vocabulary for wrestling with the issues posed by the biotech revolution is a popularized form of utilitarianism – a utilitarianism reinforced by misplaced notions of compassion, on the one hand, and by scientific hubris, on the other. Changing the grammar and vocabulary of the biotech revolution is thus an urgent issue for both the Church and the world in the next generation. How could the next pontificate address that issue?</p>
<p>Perhaps the greatest contribution the Catholic Church can make to this debate is to demonstrate how careful moral reasoning on the biotech issues, far from being an “imposition” of “sectarian” values on a pluralistic society, in fact contributes to a morally serious theory and practice of democracy. In the 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, John Paul II alerted the world to the dangers inherent in a purely instrumental or mechanical view of democratic governance.12 In the 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor, he suggested that a robust public moral culture, recognizing the moral truths inscribed in the human condition, is essential in defending such bedrock democratic principles as equality-before-the-law, as well as in managing passions and interests, fighting corruption, and maintaining democratic “inclusiveness.”13 In the 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, the Pope demonstrated how legalized regimes of abortion and euthanasia, by placing certain classes of human beings outside the protection of the law, threaten the very moral structure of the democratic project.14 Can the Church develop these insights into a public moral language capable of challenging the utilitarianism that dominates debate on the “culture of life” questions today?</p>
<p>To take one important example: Catholicism proposes a “dignitarian” view of the human person, and challenges certain biotechological procedures, including cloning, on the moral ground that they violate the innate “human dignity” of persons. What, precisely, is the content of that “human dignity?” What are its component parts? How is it violated by certain practices? What are the consequences for democracy of these violations? John Paul II has given us a supple, rigorous framework for reflection on these questions. It is imperative that the Church, in conversation with all those who recognize the dangers in a purely utilitarian approach to devising the human future, begin to fill in that framework in order to shift the terms of the public moral debate.</p>
<p>For more than two decades now, the Catholic Church throughout the world has argued that abortion is not a question of sexual morality but of public justice: a question of the fifth commandment, not the sixth (or, for those of you who count differently, the sixth commandment, not the seventh!). In the next pontificate, and with the biotechnology challenge compounding the challenge of the abortion license and euthanasia, the Church’s social doctrine must demonstrate ever more specifically and persuasively how the protection of innocent life is a first principle of justice without which democracy will self-destruct. The next pontificate must, in other words, demonstrate ever more persuasively that the life issues are public issues with immense public consequences, and not simply matters of individual “choice.” If it does so, it will further advance the cause of a richer, nobler theory of democracy – which is also crucial in facing the challenge of militant Islam.</p>
<p>The Church’s Intellectual Life. Claims for Paul VI notwithstanding, John Paul II has been the “first modern pope,” if by that term we mean a pope with a thoroughly contemporary intellectual formation.15 Thus the charge that this has been a pontificate “against” modernity is, frankly, absurd. Rather, this has been a pontificate advancing an alternative modern reading of modernity, one in which the West’s passage through the epistemological trapgate created by Kant and Hume does not necessarily lead to a post-modern skepticism about the human capacity to know the truth of anything. “Faith and reason,” John Paul II wrote in 1998, “are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.”16 The quest for truth, the Pope proposed, is innate in us; to deny it is to deny an essential characteristic of our humanity, and the result of that stubborn denial is a stunted humanism eventually trapped in the prison of solipsism. If we want to see the public effects of infidelity toward reason and deeply embedded skepticism about reason’s capacity to know the truth of things with a measure of real clarity, we need look only to Europe – where, as Orthodox theologian David Hart has put it, a once-great civilization is dying of “metaphysical boredom.”17</p>
<p>A few moments ago, I mentioned that Voltaire would be “shocked, shocked” at the thought of the Catholic Church as defender of the rights of man; how much more would he be shocked by the idea of Catholicism as defender of reason? Yet that is the fact of the matter: alone among major western cultural-forming institutions, the Catholic Church still believes that human beings can know what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful, even if we can never know those exhaustively – and, thanks to the intellectual initiatives of John Paul II, the Church can, if it has the will for it, defend those claims in thoroughly modern terms.</p>
<p>“If it has the will for it” is, of course, the crux of the matter. Critics (and, in some cases, diehard opponents) of John Paul II’s intellectual project – critics who cannot seem to grasp that this is not a pontificate against modernity but a pontificate with an alternative modern reading of the human condition – remain firmly in control of Catholic intellectual centers throughout much of western Europe and North America (which, among other things, suggests that the notion of this being a “repressive” pontificate is rather overwrought). Younger scholars on both sides of the Atlantic seem more eager to take up the challenge posed by John Paul II than their elders, many of whom seem stuck in intellectual grooves forged in the late 1960s. Will the next pontificate and the next pope actively encourage these younger scholars and their commitment to extending the John Paul II project? Will the next pope and the next pontificate move more assertively to insure that Catholic institutions of higher education are disenthralled from the snares of exclusivist humanism, in order to more effectively develop the alternative, which is Christian humanism?</p>
<p>If militant Islam is a serious threat to the future of the West and to free societies throughout the world, so is militant irrationality – or, perhaps better, militant post-rationality. The renewal of western culture, which is essential to the defense of the democratic project, requires a new confidence in reason – a new confidence that we can know and defend certain truths about the dignity of man, and about the free and just society. Whether the next pope and the next generation of Catholic intellectuals successfully builds on the legacy of John Paul II in challenging modernity to a richer, nobler concept of itself thus has important consequences for “all of us,” and for the course of history.</p>
<p>The Vatican and the World. These four large-scale issues will certainly be among the questions shaping the deliberations that produce the next pope. In my judgment, a further large question should be added to the mix – and that is the question of the Vatican’s address to world politics.</p>
<p>Is it not time, for example, to revisit the terms of the Holy See’s embrace of international and regional organizations, such as the U.N. and the European Union? During the debate prior to the second Iraq War, senior officials of the Holy See made the argument that the U.N. Security Council was the sole agency capable of morally legitimating the resort to armed force in world politics; thanks to the Duelfer Report and Congressional investigations, we now know that, at precisely the time this claim was being made, members of the Security Council were blindly (or willfully) oblivious to (or complicit in) the largest financial scandal in human history, the Iraq Oil-for-Food program, which in fact worked both to re-arm the Saddam Hussein regime and to corrupt the Security Council’s deliberations on Iraq. Surely the time has come to raise the question of whether this and a host of other problems at the U.N. are systemic, not accidental.</p>
<p>The Holy See will continue to insist, as it must, that the nation-state is not necessarily the final or ultimate form of political organization. But unless that insistence is coupled with a serious moral critique of the current corruptions of the U.N. system – a critique that must hold open the question of whether some other form of international organization is not desirable – then the Holy See will, unfortunately, sound ever more like a somewhat more restrained World Council of Churches. Which is to say, its voice will cease to have any relevance in these debates. That would be a loss for the Church. It would also be a considerable loss for the world of the 21st century, which is badly in need of a public moral grammar and vocabulary capable of structuring and disciplining the international debate on international security, human rights, and development issues. The Holy See could help facilitate the development of that grammar and vocabulary – if it is prepared to re-examine certain aspects of its position that seem, to some minds, more reflective of conventional European political sentiment than of what was once referred to as “Catholic international relations theory.”18</p>
<p>A similar re-examination of the Holy See’s “default positions” might well take place in regard to European integration. The current Vatican default position on the E.U., which was set (like its positions on the U.N.) some forty years ago, is something like this: an integrating Europe will be forced to ask the question of the sources of its unity. That question can only be answered, ultimately, by Christianity. Therefore, E.U. expansion and the further integration of the Union through a new constitutional treaty create an evangelical opportunity – the opportunity to reverse the centuries-long process of European secularization. Brussels, setting out to make the rest of Europe Belgium, in fact succeeds in making the rest of Europe Poland.</p>
<p>It doesn’t seem to have worked out that way, however. “Brussels,” setting out to make the rest of Europe Belgium, is now seeking to impose a soulless secularism as the official ideology of the European Union – a secularism with Orwellian overtones, as international legal scholar J.H.H. Weiler has observed, because in the name of “tolerance” it is remarkably intolerant of Christian conviction in the European public square.19 Ask Rocco Buttiglione. Or, more to the point, ask why Buttiglione got such tepid support from the Secretariat of State of the Holy See during his recent inquisition. If the Holy See fears that raising its voice in defense of the right of Catholics to bring their philosophically and religiously informed moral convictions into public life will somehow jeopardize its “standing” in Brussels and Strasbourg, then one has to ask, at some point, whether the game is worth the candle.</p>
<p>We have seen how the default positions in the Church’s approach to interreligious dialogue with Islam must be reset. The default positions in the “foreign policy” of the Holy See require similar re-examination and resetting in the next pontificate – not, I hasten to add, to align the Holy See more closely with U.S. foreign policy, but to retrieve and renew, at the level of policy and witness, the distinctive discipline of Catholic international relations theory. Its revival, in turn, would mark a significant step in the world’s capacity to think through the inescapable moral questions posed by the agitated world politics of the early 21st century.</p>
<p>In the Footsteps of a Giant. Perhaps the wisest line ever written about John Paul II was written at the beginning of the pontificate by a French journalist, André Frossard, a convert from the fashionable atheism of his intellectual class. After John Paul’s clarion call to fearlessness and faith rang out across St. Peter’s Square at the inaugural Mass on October 22, 1978, Frossard wired back to his Paris newspaper, “This isn’t a pope from Poland; this is a pope from Galilee.”</p>
<p>The cardinal-electors know that they will be trying to find a worthy successor to a giant – to a man some knowledgeable scholars call the most significant pope of the second millennium of Christian history. One cannot envy the man who succeeds such a colossal figure. Yet for all his personal initiative and boldness, John Paul II has always understood that “the Church” is far, far more than the papacy or the pope. Indeed, one way to sum up his heroic efforts is to see him precisely as the “pope from Galilee,” the successor of Peter who summoned his brethren, in virtually every corner of the world, to live out the meaning of their baptismal consecration – and in doing so, to “set the world ablaze” with the truth, as he challenged two million young people to do at World Youth Day 2000 in Rome.20 John Paul II, in other words, has quite deliberately left a lot of work for the rest of us to do.</p>
<p>And the “rest of us” includes his successor, whose stewardship of the Church that John Paul II leaves behind will shape the course of 21st century history far beyond the institutional boundaries of Catholicism.</p>
<p>George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. and holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.</p>
<p>NOTES</p>
<p>1. Somewhat to my combined chagrin and satisfaction, I recently learned that the Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party had ordered translations made of certain key sections of my biography of Pope John Paul II, <a href="" type="internal">Witness to Hope</a>, for circulation among the higher party cadres – presumably to help them figure out how to avoid the fate of their east central European comrades. On the “immortality project,” see Leon Kass, “L’Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?” First Things 113 (May 2001).</p>
<p>2. John Paul II, Universi Dominici Gregis, 22 February 1996.</p>
<p>3. See my <a href="" type="internal">Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II</a>&#160;(New York: HarperCollins, 1999), pp. 260-63.</p>
<p>4. Which in fact is already being done, in part thanks to John Paul II’s “theology of the body;” see Witness To Hope, pp. 333-43.</p>
<p>5. See John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 57.4, 62.3, 65.4.</p>
<p>6. See John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 4.</p>
<p>7. The claim that priestly celibacy only became normative in western Christianity in the Middle Ages is challenged, persuasively in my view, by Christian Cochini, S.J., The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), and Alfons Maria Cardinal Stickler, The Case for Clerical Celibacy: Its Historical Development and Theological Foundations (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995).</p>
<p>8. See my essay, “ <a href="" type="internal">Europe’s Problem – And Ours</a>,” in First Things 140 (February 2004). This argument is amplified and extended in my forthcoming book, <a href="" type="internal">The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God</a>&#160;(New York: Basic Books, 2005).</p>
<p>9. See David Cracknell and Andrew Porter, “Miaow! Blair babes ditch sisterhood to sharpen claws on Kelly,” The Sunday Times, 19 December 2004. (The headline on this otherwise serious story may be taken as an illustration of what’s happened in recent years to what was once one of the world’s great newspapers.)</p>
<p>10. “The church should value tolerance over its own unity,” The Independent, 19 October 2004.</p>
<p>11. See John Courtney Murray, S.J., “The Issue of Church and State at Vatican Council II,” Theological Studies 27:4 (December 1966).</p>
<p>12. See John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 46.</p>
<p>13. See John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 96-97.</p>
<p>14. See John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 18, 20, 73.</p>
<p>15. See Witness to Hope, pp. 123-39.</p>
<p>16. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 1.</p>
<p>17. See David B. Hart, “Religion in America: ancient and modern,” The New Criterion, March 2004.</p>
<p>18. On this point, see my essay, “ <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0405/articles/weigel.html" type="external">World Order–What Catholics Forgot</a>,” First Things 143 (May 2004).</p>
<p>19. See J.H.H. Weiler, Un’Europa Cristiana – Un saggio esplorativo (Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 2003).</p>
<p>20. See <a href="" type="internal">Witness to Hope</a>, revised and expanded paperback edition (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 880.</p>
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The Next Pope–and Why He Matters to All of Us
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The Next Pope–and Why He Matters to All of Us
<p>[This article was originally delivered as <a href="" type="internal">EPPC’s Fourth Annual William E. Simon Lecture</a>&#160;on January 12, 2005. It will be printed in the Spring 2005 issue of&#160;Notre Dame Magazine, and is used here with permission.]</p>
<p>Let me begin with a disclaimer – anyone who came here this evening expecting hot tips on the front-runners for the papacy is going to leave disappointed. People sometimes ask, “What’s the Ethics and Public Policy Center?” Well, here’s one part of the answer – the Center isn’t Ladbroke’s, or the Potomac office of Off-Track Betting!</p>
<p>I should also say at the outset that the title of this lecture is not intended to suggest that Pope John Paul II is in imminent danger of death. I had dinner with the Holy Father on December 15, and while he is obviously suffering from the effects of his neurological disease, he’s alert and otherwise healthy; his schedule, while somewhat diminished, remains a full and taxing one; and eight days of work in Rome last month convinced me that John Paul remains the center of initiative at the center of the Catholic Church.</p>
<p>By the same token, it’s obvious that we are much closer to the end of this extraordinary pontificate than to its beginning. And as the Pope himself has talked about the impending completion of his mission on several occasions in recent years, there is nothing unseemly in deepening the conversation about what we might call “the work John Paul II will leave for the rest of us.” “The rest of us,” of course, includes the next pope – whoever the 265th Bishop of Rome may be, wherever he may have been born, and whatever his previous experience has been.</p>
<p>All conclaves tend to confound the predictions of pre-conclave prognosticators, but there is one thing of which we can be absolutely certain in thinking about the conclave that will elect the next pope: it will be a conclave in which the legacy of John Paul II looms very, very large.</p>
<p>A New Conversation. The fact that we are even having this discussion – here in Washington, under the sponsorship of a major foundation and an ecumenical and interreligious research institute – is itself a testimony to the accomplishment of John Paul II. Some years ago, a prominent national political commentator who is not a Christian said to me, “You know, in 1978 I could have cared less who the next pope would be. Now it means something to me personally.” I suspect my friend’s sentiments are replicated in hundreds of millions of hearts and minds throughout the world. The papacy has traditionally claimed a global role; the pontificate of John Paul II has given specific meaning and empirical texture to that claim. The cardinals who will elect the next pope know this. And as they ponder the implications of that remarkable fact, they will know something else: they will know that, in an important sense, they will be electing a pope for the world as well as for the Church.</p>
<p>The papacy now matters to virtually everyone. It matters to those for whom it represents the center of the divinely-mandated ordering of Christ’s Church. It matters to those for whom the papacy represents a global focal point of Christian unity and witness. It matters to those for whom the pope is a defender of universal human rights with a global platform. It matters, if in a rather different way, to those Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese, and North Korean totalitarians who fear the capacity of the Catholic Church to inspire liberation movements, as it has done during this pontificate in east central Europe, Latin America, and East Asia. And it matters to those who deplore the Catholic Church and its moral teaching as perhaps the last great institutional barrier to the triumph of a utilitarian ethic and the advance of what some genetics researchers unblushingly call the “immortality project.”1 Voltaire would be spinning in his grave at the thought of the papacy as a defender of the “rights of man;” and I rather doubt that Huxley imagined the papacy as a counterweight to the evolution of the brave new world. Yet precisely such hopes – and fears – may be found throughout the world today, in this twenty-seventh year of the pontificate of John Paul II. All conclaves are, by definition, “unprecedented.” But those hopes and fears will help make the conclave that elects John Paul’s successor an unprecedented one in a distinctive way.</p>
<p>A Complex Process. Several other factors will likely make the next conclave a complex and perhaps lengthy business, and it’s worth noting them briefly by way of completing the preliminaries.</p>
<p>As you all know, the next pope will be elected by the College of Cardinals, which has had the exclusive right to elect the Bishop of Rome since the twelfth century. The apostolic constitution governing the next conclave, which was issued by John Paul II in 1996, continues the practice, initiated by Pope Paul VI, of limiting cardinal-electors to those members of the College who have not reached their eightieth birthday on the day the Pope dies.2 Thus we can anticipate an electorate of between 110 and 120 cardinals – the largest in conclave history, an electorate twice the size of that which elected John XXIII in 1958, and one-quarter larger than that which elected John Paul II. But size is not the only distinguishing characteristic of this electorate and this conclave.</p>
<p>The cardinal-electors will be the most diverse such group in history. At present, they range in age from 52-year old Peter Erdt, the primate of Hungary, to 79-year old Alexandre do Nascimento, the archbishop emeritus of Luanda, Angola, once held hostage by rebel forces in his native country during his efforts to mediate Angola’s civil war. The average age of the electors today is 66. 11% of the electorate will come from North America; 19% from Latin America; 50% from Europe (but only 17% from Italy, the lowest percentage in modern conclave history); 10% from Africa; 11% from Asia and Oceania. The overwhelming majority of the electors, almost 80%, are local pastors, not figures in the Roman Curia; and several prominent Curial cardinals were successful local pastors before being called to Rome. 18% are members of religious orders, with the Franciscans boasting the largest number of cardinal-electors (four), while the Salesians and the Jesuits have three each; two cardinal-electors are affiliated with Opus Dei – a number that will doubtless disappoint true believers in the fevered speculations of The Da Vinci Code.</p>
<p>This unprecedented diversity will not only make the conclave more complex logistically; it will make it more complex linguistically. The cardinal-electors don’t share a common language (one after-effect of the decline of Latin in the Church) – and the results of that, for the pre-conclave discussion of issues and the conclave itself, remain to be seen. Then there is the fact that these men, brought together from all over the world, don’t really know each other; the last time most of them were in the same place at the same time was when John Paul II created new cardinals in October 2003, immediately after his own silver jubilee. And while there was some time for conversation during those celebrations, it would be a stretch to suggest that the cardinals, old and new, had then, or have had since, the opportunity to take each other’s measure. (This suggests, among other things, that the world media, and the images it creates of different personalities in the Church, may play a larger role in shaping the deliberations of this conclave than in the past.)</p>
<p>Moreover, the diversity of the cardinal-electors will be magnified in the pre-conclave discussions by the presence of some sixty-five cardinals who, having turned eighty, have lost their vote, but who will be very much part of the conversations about issues and the assessment of possible candidates in the two or three weeks that will pass between John Paul II’s death and the sealing of the conclave to elect his successor.</p>
<p>The cardinal-electors, even when “immured” in the conclave, will also be living far more comfortably than in the past. Previously, Curial offices in the Apostolic Palace were divided into ramshackle cubicles to house the cardinal-electors, most of whom were unaccustomed to sleeping on cots and using chamber pots. Now, thanks to the Domus Sanctae Marthae guest house inside the Vatican, built by John Paul II, the cardinal-electors will live in three-room suites in what amounts to a quite decent hotel with a more-than-adequate kitchen. According to a long-standing tradition, the actual election will take place in the Sistine Chapel; but unlike previous conclaves, the cardinal-electors will, if they like, be able to walk between the Domus Sanctae Marthae and the Sistine Chapel, and indeed in a substantial part of the Vatican grounds, should they choose to do so before or after the day’s electoral work is done. All of which is to say that, in very human terms, the pressures felt in previous conclaves to get the job done expeditiously will not be felt in the next conclave; call it the absence of the “chamber pot factor.”</p>
<p>Above and beyond these material considerations, the next conclave will, as I suggested at the outset, operate within a different structure of expectations than its predecessors. John Paul II’s retrieval and renewal of the evangelical and pastoral papacy – a papacy of preaching, teaching, witness, and encouragement – has changed the Church’s expectations of popes, and the world’s, too. These expectations are already creating a refined set of criteria for assessing possible candidates for the papacy. There is, for example, an emerging consensus among a significant number of cardinal-electors that one of the next pontificate’s principal tasks will be to concretize in the life of the Church the profound and challenging vision articulated by the pontificate of John Paul II: which is another way of saying that the next pope, in the minds of many electors, might well exercise a stronger administrative hand than his predecessor. At the same time, it is virtually inconceivable that the cardinal-electors, given this changed structure of expectations, will elect a man whose only, or even primary, qualification for the job is a reputation for making the trains run on time. The cardinals are well aware that personal holiness, intellectual depth, pastoral imagination, and communications skills are crucial in a 21st century pope – and will be measured quickly, by the world and the Church, in those first crucial moments when the new pope speaks urbi et orbi, “to the city and the world,” on the day of his election and at his inaugural Mass. It would perhaps be too much to expect that the next pope will announce himself in so riveting a way as John Paul II, the self-described man “from a far country” who boldly challenged the world to “be not afraid,” and to “open the doors to Christ.”3 But neither does anyone expect, or really want, the new pope to announce himself by laying out a detailed plan for the bureaucratic reform of the Church – important as certain such reforms may be.</p>
<p>To my mind, and measuring these things in purely human terms (as I have no pipeline to the Holy Spirit’s plans for the conclave), all of this adds up to a complex, possibly difficult, and probably lengthy conclave – one that I could imagine going on for three, four, even five days of voting. John Paul II’s apostolic constitution governing the next conclave permits the electors to move to a simple majority vote from the two-thirds majority requirement, after almost two weeks and some thirty-plus ballots. But I regard this as a very remote possibility indeed; for after five days, much less two weeks, the world media would begin reporting the story of a “Church in crisis,” and I cannot imagine the cardinal-electors wanting that story-line to set the stage for a man who is already going to have a next-to-impossible job – filling the exceedingly large shoes worn by John Paul II.</p>
<p>Could a consensus quickly form around a single candidate in the pre-conclave discussions, as it did in the first conclave of 1978, producing the one-day election of John Paul I? The only candidate in whose favor one might imagine such a scenario unfolding would be the most well-known (and, arguably, most well-respected) of the cardinals, Joseph Ratzinger. But Cardinal Ratzinger will be 78 in April, and, perhaps more to the point, he has critics within the College who may admire his personal sanctity and brilliance but who would not vote for him as pope. Whether those opponents could muster a blocking 41 votes is not something that can be pre-judged. It does seem likely, though, that the only “quick-conclave” scenario is one that produces a Ratzinger papacy.</p>
<p>Clarifying the Issues. But this is to proceed into territory – the terrain of personalities and candidacies – which I said at the outset that I would avoid. Not because such speculations aren’t interesting, but because they are, in the nature of the case, uninformed – even among informed observers. Moreover, and from the point of view of a papacy that “matters to all of us,” some of the most urgent questions will be addressed before the conclave, in the “general congregations” of cardinals that will begin meeting the day after the Pope’s death, and in those informal but important discussions known in Italian as the prattiche (which roughly translates as “exercises”). Here, “the issues” – or, as I put it above, “the work that John Paul II will leave the rest of us” – will be thrashed out. How those discussions evolve, and are resolved, will have a great deal to do with who becomes the 264th successor to St. Peter and the 265th Bishop of Rome. To borrow from Morris West’s famous image: the way in which the cardinals design and measure the shoes of the fisherman will have a lot to do with their choice of a man with the particular qualities needed to fit those particular shoes.</p>
<p>What, then, are the great issues facing the Catholic Church in the early 21st century? And how will the Church’s grappling with those issues affect “all of us?”</p>
<p>At the outset, it may help to clarify what the issues are not. Neither the next conclave nor the next pope is going to change the Catholic Church’s teaching on the morally appropriate way to regulate births, although the cardinals may well discuss how to present that teaching with greater pastoral effectiveness.4 Neither the next conclave nor the next pope is going to endorse abortion-on-demand or euthanasia; the inviolability of innocent life is a bedrock principle of both natural and revealed law, and the Church has no authority to declare the use of lethal violence against innocents morally justifiable.5 Similarly, while the pre-conclave prattiche and the conclave itself may involve some discussion of the effects of the revolution in women’s lives (and the concurrent revolution in men’s lives) on the Church and the world, the Church’s practice of calling only men to the ministerial priesthood is not going to change, because, as John Paul II stated eleven years ago, the Church is not authorized to change that practice.6 There will likely be some discussion of the advisability of ordaining viri probati, proven and tested older married men, to the ministerial priesthood in situations where the shortage of priests is drastically impeding the Church’s sacramental life – but the cardinals well know that this solution, if in fact it be that, will create some problems as well as address others, and we need not expect (nor, from my point of view, should we want) a full-scale retreat from the ancient linkage of celibacy and ordained ministry in the Catholic Church.7</p>
<p>Which is to say that virtually all of what the New York Times imagines are “the issues” for the Catholic Church aren’t, in fact, the issues, and aren’t going to play a significant role in shaping the next conclave and the next pontificate</p>
<p>So what are the issues?</p>
<p>Three large-scale issues are already under discussion within the College of Cardinals and among other senior churchmen, and will certainly weigh heavily in the conclaves’s deliberations, in the next pontificate, and in the Catholic Church’s interface with the 21st century world. The first of these is the virtual collapse of Christianity in its historic heartland – western Europe. The second great issue is the Church’s response to the multi-faceted challenge posed by the rise of militant Islam. And the third involves the questions posed by the biotech revolution. Questions of the Church’s intellectual discipline will also be discussed in the next conclave, and I hope to show in a moment why those questions, properly understood, are of considerable consequence for “all of us”. Then there is a question that may or may not come up in the prattiche, the general congregations, and the conclave deliberations of the cardinal-electors, but which, in my judgment, should be addressed: and that is the question of the Church’s diplomacy, or, to be more precise, the set of ideas that have guided the “foreign policy” of the Holy See for more than two generations now.</p>
<p>Let me address each of these briefly, without by any means exhausting each topic, but drawing out the implications embedded within each of these issues for “all of us.”</p>
<p>Europe. In last year’s Simon Lecture, I proposed a “culture-first” analysis of Europe’s current problems – and particularly the critical problem of European depopulation – and I traced the origins of these dilemmas to the triumph of what Henri de Lubac termed “atheistic humanism” in the high culture of 19th century Europe: an atheistic humanism that displaced the God of the Bible in the name of human liberation. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was right, I suggested, when he argued that Europe’s disastrous 20th century had taken place because men had “forgotten God” and had imagined the possibility, indeed the imperative, of politics-without-God.8</p>
<p>The worst material effects of atheistic humanism were defeated in two world wars and the Cold War. But the residues of atheistic humanism – now expressed in the kinder, gentler phenomenon that Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls “exclusive humanism” (i.e., a humanism committed to keeping all transcendent moral referents out of public life) – are much in evidence today. They were evident when the European constitutional treaty signed this past October willfully denied that fifteen hundred years of Christian history had anything to do with contemporary Europe’s commitments to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. They were evident when Rocco Buttiglione, a man who would have been considered an adornment of any sane government between the days of Cato the Elder and, well, this past November, was denied an opportunity to serve as European Minister of Justice, not because of his public commitments and record, but because of his personal convictions (informed by both natural law and Catholic moral theology) about the morality of homosexual acts and the nature of marriage. They have been evident in the recent controversy in Britain over Ruth Kelly’s service as Education Secretary in the Blair Cabinet, during which, as the Times of London put it, “Some MPs fear that her religion may cloud her judgment:” her religion being a robust Catholicism and her judgment (which Ms. Kelly believes is informed, not clouded, by her Catholic faith) being on matters of embryo-destructive stem-cell research.9 They are evident when a leading British newspaper warns that Christian churches will forfeit what little moral leadership they now enjoy if they do not recognize that “tolerance” (by which the paper in question means the moral approbation of any sexual activity between any configuration of, and perhaps any number of, consenting adults) is more important than the Church maintaining the historic and biblical integrity of its teaching.10</p>
<p>Apostasy is not the only story-line of 19th and 20th century Europe; there is also a history of Christian renewal movements, tremendous Christian missionary energy, and Christian martyrdom to be conjured with in assessing Europe’s immediate past and immediate future. But, for the moment, the apostates – the exclusivist humanists who believe that only a Europe “neutral between worldviews” (as Jürgen Habermas and the late Jacques Derrida put it) is safe for democracy and human rights – have won. They have won in part because of the collapse of Europe’s Christian communities as effective transmitters of the faith and effective public advocates for religiously-informed moral reason.</p>
<p>No pope in history has been more of a pan-European than John Paul II; no pope in history invested more time, intellectual energy, and personal struggle in calling Europe back to the promises of its baptism. And while the seeds that John Paul has planted may flower in the future, especially among today’s young Catholics, the critical moment for Europe is likely to come in the next twenty or thirty years. Will a depopulating Europe, incapable of taking the hard political decisions that would prevent fiscal chaos and social catastrophe, and increasingly beset from within by an assertive Islamic minority that sees in 21st century Europe an opportunity to reverse the defeat of 1683, become, as Niall Ferguson, Bernard Lewis, and Bat Ye’or have warned, “Eurabia” – an extension of the culture and politics of the Arab Islamic world? What would it mean for the Christian world of the 21st century if its historic heartland were to go the way of the “seven churches” to which St. John wrote the Book of Revelation – if, in other words, European Christianity of the late 21st century looks very much like the Christianity of Asia Minor today?</p>
<p>“Eurabia” would pose enormous strategic and economic problems for the United States and the rest of the democratic world. But even absent such a draconian finish to the story, Europe’s current apostasy – which carries with it, not an indifference to biblical religion but an antipathy toward it – is already hurting the United States. As I indicated in last year’s lecture, the import into the United States of European legal ideas deeply shaped by exclusivist humanism is already making a mark in our federal courts, notably in Lawrence v. Texas. Today and tomorrow, then, Americans and indeed all free peoples have a stake in whether Europe’s current, sad decline can be reversed – and thus a stake in whether the only plausible candidate for leading such a reversal, namely, an evangelically revived and culturally formative Christian Church, in fact emerges in the next two generations. How that might happen is beyond the scope of this lecture; finding ways to make it happen is one of the great issues for the Catholic Church that John Paul II will leave behind. A capacity to jump-start the re-evangelization of Europe will be one of the qualities the cardinal-electors will seek in the next pope. Whether they find such a man will have a lot to do with the rest of 21st century history, for all of us.</p>
<p>Islam. If one looks at the Church in global terms, as the cardinal-electors must, one cannot help but notice a band of conflict that runs from the west coast of Africa eastward, ending in Southeast Asia at East Timor. “Band of conflict” is perhaps too mild a term, however, for the regions south and north of that globe-spanning dividing line are like two enormous tectonic plates, grating on each other – with the occasional, bloody upheavals that such geologic collisions sometimes produce. North of the dividing line are societies and cultures increasingly swayed by militant forms of Islam; south of that dividing line are Christian communities that, from Nigeria through Sudan to Pakistan and on into the Philippines and Indonesia, are often under assault from their Muslim neighbors, and/or governments that abet or turn a blind eye to Islamic extremism.</p>
<p>The Catholic Church’s religious and theological dialogue with the worlds-within-worlds of Islam was shaped in the mid-1960s, at the end of the Second Vatican Council, a time of buoyant (some might say, overly-buoyant) optimism in the Church and of relative calm in the Islamic world. The latter has now changed, dramatically, in no small part because of strains of Islam influenced by the Islamic Brotherhood, the Wahhabi sect, and other proponents of cultural aggression, civic intolerance, and, too often, violence in the name of the one God and his one Prophet. The conflicts engendered by these changes have been evident along the fault-line running from Senegal to East Timor for more than a decade; after 9/11 and the Bali, Istanbul, and Madrid bombings, it should now be clear that this conflict is global in scope. That suggests that the dialogue between Catholicism and the multifaceted Islamic world must also change, dramatically. Which is to say that the Catholic-Islamic dialogue in the immediate future must be framed, from the Catholic point of view, in frankly strategic terms, if it is not to degenerate into yet another exercise in political correctness, with unhappy consequences for both the Church and the world.</p>
<p>To put the case for strategy most simply: can the Catholic Church be of some modest assistance to those Islamic scholars, lawyers, and religious leaders who are working – often at great risk – to develop a genuinely Islamic case for religious toleration in something approximating what we in the West call “civil society”? If a world safe for diversity and pluralism requires a billion Muslims to become good Rawlsian secular liberals, then we really do face the grim prospect of a global “clash of civilizations.” Thus one crucial question for the Islamic future, from the vantage point of the Catholic Church (and, I dare suggest, for free societies throughout the world), is whether Islam can find within its sacred texts and legal traditions the internal resources to ground an Islamic case for important facets of the free and virtuous society, including religious toleration and a commitment to the method of persuasion in politics.</p>
<p>Some may wonder whether the Catholic Church has anything of particular interest to bring to this discussion. What it has to offer, I suggest, is its own recent history – for it took the Catholic Church until 1965 to develop and articulate a thoroughly Catholic concept of religious freedom and its implications for the organization of public life.11 Indeed, one can draw a rough (all right, very rough) analogy between pro-civil society Islamic scholars and religious leaders today and those Catholic intellectuals and bishops who were probing toward some sort of intellectual rapprochement with religious freedom and democracy as the ancien régime was crumbling in Europe throughout the nineteenth century. There may be lessons to be learned from this experience – which eventually led to a dramatic development of social doctrine in Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom [Dignitatis Humanae] – that could and should be brought into the Catholic Church’s global dialogue with the multi-faceted worlds of Islam.</p>
<p>Because of its concern for imperiled Christian communities in Islamic-dominated lands, on the one hand, and a rather anodyne approach to interreligious dialogue, on the other, the Vatican has been reluctant to press its Islamic interlocutors to condemn terrorism forthrightly and publicly. But surely the cardinal-electors, well-aware of the threat that aggressive and militant forms of Islam pose to the world Church, will want to examine this reluctance carefully, and consider whether a more forthright approach to manifest aggression is not in order, not least because militant Islam seems to be most aggressive where it perceives weakness. Should the cardinals also agree that the next pontificate must fashion a new strategic approach to the Catholic Church’s relationship with its Islamic interlocutors, this would in turn require a change in the client-centered approach to this relationship that has, in recent decades, dominated the Islamic work of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. The point, it would seem, is not to be in dialogue with everyone; the point is to be in dialogue with those Islamic partners best positioned to leverage needed change in their co-religionists’ self-understanding of Islam’s role in public life.</p>
<p>There are, of course, no guarantees that a new, strategic approach to the Catholic-Islamic dialogue will have the desired effects within the Islamic world, given the multiple other pressures at play. Nor am I suggesting that new forms of interreligious dialogue are, in and of themselves, “the answer” to the worldwide threat of militant Islam. They may well be part of the answer, however. Putting them into play is an urgent task for the Church and for the world, a task not only for the next pontificate but for those that follow it in this century, and perhaps beyond.</p>
<p>The Bio-Tech Revolution. Like not a few of us, many cardinal-electors have the sense that the world has, at best, a ten-to-twenty year window in which to build the legal and regulatory structures necessary to channel humanity’s new genetic knowledge, and its marriage to technology, in directions that will lead to healing and genuine human flourishing rather than to Huxley’s nightmare. The cardinal-electors will also be aware, as many of us are, that the dominant public moral vocabulary for wrestling with the issues posed by the biotech revolution is a popularized form of utilitarianism – a utilitarianism reinforced by misplaced notions of compassion, on the one hand, and by scientific hubris, on the other. Changing the grammar and vocabulary of the biotech revolution is thus an urgent issue for both the Church and the world in the next generation. How could the next pontificate address that issue?</p>
<p>Perhaps the greatest contribution the Catholic Church can make to this debate is to demonstrate how careful moral reasoning on the biotech issues, far from being an “imposition” of “sectarian” values on a pluralistic society, in fact contributes to a morally serious theory and practice of democracy. In the 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, John Paul II alerted the world to the dangers inherent in a purely instrumental or mechanical view of democratic governance.12 In the 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor, he suggested that a robust public moral culture, recognizing the moral truths inscribed in the human condition, is essential in defending such bedrock democratic principles as equality-before-the-law, as well as in managing passions and interests, fighting corruption, and maintaining democratic “inclusiveness.”13 In the 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, the Pope demonstrated how legalized regimes of abortion and euthanasia, by placing certain classes of human beings outside the protection of the law, threaten the very moral structure of the democratic project.14 Can the Church develop these insights into a public moral language capable of challenging the utilitarianism that dominates debate on the “culture of life” questions today?</p>
<p>To take one important example: Catholicism proposes a “dignitarian” view of the human person, and challenges certain biotechological procedures, including cloning, on the moral ground that they violate the innate “human dignity” of persons. What, precisely, is the content of that “human dignity?” What are its component parts? How is it violated by certain practices? What are the consequences for democracy of these violations? John Paul II has given us a supple, rigorous framework for reflection on these questions. It is imperative that the Church, in conversation with all those who recognize the dangers in a purely utilitarian approach to devising the human future, begin to fill in that framework in order to shift the terms of the public moral debate.</p>
<p>For more than two decades now, the Catholic Church throughout the world has argued that abortion is not a question of sexual morality but of public justice: a question of the fifth commandment, not the sixth (or, for those of you who count differently, the sixth commandment, not the seventh!). In the next pontificate, and with the biotechnology challenge compounding the challenge of the abortion license and euthanasia, the Church’s social doctrine must demonstrate ever more specifically and persuasively how the protection of innocent life is a first principle of justice without which democracy will self-destruct. The next pontificate must, in other words, demonstrate ever more persuasively that the life issues are public issues with immense public consequences, and not simply matters of individual “choice.” If it does so, it will further advance the cause of a richer, nobler theory of democracy – which is also crucial in facing the challenge of militant Islam.</p>
<p>The Church’s Intellectual Life. Claims for Paul VI notwithstanding, John Paul II has been the “first modern pope,” if by that term we mean a pope with a thoroughly contemporary intellectual formation.15 Thus the charge that this has been a pontificate “against” modernity is, frankly, absurd. Rather, this has been a pontificate advancing an alternative modern reading of modernity, one in which the West’s passage through the epistemological trapgate created by Kant and Hume does not necessarily lead to a post-modern skepticism about the human capacity to know the truth of anything. “Faith and reason,” John Paul II wrote in 1998, “are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.”16 The quest for truth, the Pope proposed, is innate in us; to deny it is to deny an essential characteristic of our humanity, and the result of that stubborn denial is a stunted humanism eventually trapped in the prison of solipsism. If we want to see the public effects of infidelity toward reason and deeply embedded skepticism about reason’s capacity to know the truth of things with a measure of real clarity, we need look only to Europe – where, as Orthodox theologian David Hart has put it, a once-great civilization is dying of “metaphysical boredom.”17</p>
<p>A few moments ago, I mentioned that Voltaire would be “shocked, shocked” at the thought of the Catholic Church as defender of the rights of man; how much more would he be shocked by the idea of Catholicism as defender of reason? Yet that is the fact of the matter: alone among major western cultural-forming institutions, the Catholic Church still believes that human beings can know what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful, even if we can never know those exhaustively – and, thanks to the intellectual initiatives of John Paul II, the Church can, if it has the will for it, defend those claims in thoroughly modern terms.</p>
<p>“If it has the will for it” is, of course, the crux of the matter. Critics (and, in some cases, diehard opponents) of John Paul II’s intellectual project – critics who cannot seem to grasp that this is not a pontificate against modernity but a pontificate with an alternative modern reading of the human condition – remain firmly in control of Catholic intellectual centers throughout much of western Europe and North America (which, among other things, suggests that the notion of this being a “repressive” pontificate is rather overwrought). Younger scholars on both sides of the Atlantic seem more eager to take up the challenge posed by John Paul II than their elders, many of whom seem stuck in intellectual grooves forged in the late 1960s. Will the next pontificate and the next pope actively encourage these younger scholars and their commitment to extending the John Paul II project? Will the next pope and the next pontificate move more assertively to insure that Catholic institutions of higher education are disenthralled from the snares of exclusivist humanism, in order to more effectively develop the alternative, which is Christian humanism?</p>
<p>If militant Islam is a serious threat to the future of the West and to free societies throughout the world, so is militant irrationality – or, perhaps better, militant post-rationality. The renewal of western culture, which is essential to the defense of the democratic project, requires a new confidence in reason – a new confidence that we can know and defend certain truths about the dignity of man, and about the free and just society. Whether the next pope and the next generation of Catholic intellectuals successfully builds on the legacy of John Paul II in challenging modernity to a richer, nobler concept of itself thus has important consequences for “all of us,” and for the course of history.</p>
<p>The Vatican and the World. These four large-scale issues will certainly be among the questions shaping the deliberations that produce the next pope. In my judgment, a further large question should be added to the mix – and that is the question of the Vatican’s address to world politics.</p>
<p>Is it not time, for example, to revisit the terms of the Holy See’s embrace of international and regional organizations, such as the U.N. and the European Union? During the debate prior to the second Iraq War, senior officials of the Holy See made the argument that the U.N. Security Council was the sole agency capable of morally legitimating the resort to armed force in world politics; thanks to the Duelfer Report and Congressional investigations, we now know that, at precisely the time this claim was being made, members of the Security Council were blindly (or willfully) oblivious to (or complicit in) the largest financial scandal in human history, the Iraq Oil-for-Food program, which in fact worked both to re-arm the Saddam Hussein regime and to corrupt the Security Council’s deliberations on Iraq. Surely the time has come to raise the question of whether this and a host of other problems at the U.N. are systemic, not accidental.</p>
<p>The Holy See will continue to insist, as it must, that the nation-state is not necessarily the final or ultimate form of political organization. But unless that insistence is coupled with a serious moral critique of the current corruptions of the U.N. system – a critique that must hold open the question of whether some other form of international organization is not desirable – then the Holy See will, unfortunately, sound ever more like a somewhat more restrained World Council of Churches. Which is to say, its voice will cease to have any relevance in these debates. That would be a loss for the Church. It would also be a considerable loss for the world of the 21st century, which is badly in need of a public moral grammar and vocabulary capable of structuring and disciplining the international debate on international security, human rights, and development issues. The Holy See could help facilitate the development of that grammar and vocabulary – if it is prepared to re-examine certain aspects of its position that seem, to some minds, more reflective of conventional European political sentiment than of what was once referred to as “Catholic international relations theory.”18</p>
<p>A similar re-examination of the Holy See’s “default positions” might well take place in regard to European integration. The current Vatican default position on the E.U., which was set (like its positions on the U.N.) some forty years ago, is something like this: an integrating Europe will be forced to ask the question of the sources of its unity. That question can only be answered, ultimately, by Christianity. Therefore, E.U. expansion and the further integration of the Union through a new constitutional treaty create an evangelical opportunity – the opportunity to reverse the centuries-long process of European secularization. Brussels, setting out to make the rest of Europe Belgium, in fact succeeds in making the rest of Europe Poland.</p>
<p>It doesn’t seem to have worked out that way, however. “Brussels,” setting out to make the rest of Europe Belgium, is now seeking to impose a soulless secularism as the official ideology of the European Union – a secularism with Orwellian overtones, as international legal scholar J.H.H. Weiler has observed, because in the name of “tolerance” it is remarkably intolerant of Christian conviction in the European public square.19 Ask Rocco Buttiglione. Or, more to the point, ask why Buttiglione got such tepid support from the Secretariat of State of the Holy See during his recent inquisition. If the Holy See fears that raising its voice in defense of the right of Catholics to bring their philosophically and religiously informed moral convictions into public life will somehow jeopardize its “standing” in Brussels and Strasbourg, then one has to ask, at some point, whether the game is worth the candle.</p>
<p>We have seen how the default positions in the Church’s approach to interreligious dialogue with Islam must be reset. The default positions in the “foreign policy” of the Holy See require similar re-examination and resetting in the next pontificate – not, I hasten to add, to align the Holy See more closely with U.S. foreign policy, but to retrieve and renew, at the level of policy and witness, the distinctive discipline of Catholic international relations theory. Its revival, in turn, would mark a significant step in the world’s capacity to think through the inescapable moral questions posed by the agitated world politics of the early 21st century.</p>
<p>In the Footsteps of a Giant. Perhaps the wisest line ever written about John Paul II was written at the beginning of the pontificate by a French journalist, André Frossard, a convert from the fashionable atheism of his intellectual class. After John Paul’s clarion call to fearlessness and faith rang out across St. Peter’s Square at the inaugural Mass on October 22, 1978, Frossard wired back to his Paris newspaper, “This isn’t a pope from Poland; this is a pope from Galilee.”</p>
<p>The cardinal-electors know that they will be trying to find a worthy successor to a giant – to a man some knowledgeable scholars call the most significant pope of the second millennium of Christian history. One cannot envy the man who succeeds such a colossal figure. Yet for all his personal initiative and boldness, John Paul II has always understood that “the Church” is far, far more than the papacy or the pope. Indeed, one way to sum up his heroic efforts is to see him precisely as the “pope from Galilee,” the successor of Peter who summoned his brethren, in virtually every corner of the world, to live out the meaning of their baptismal consecration – and in doing so, to “set the world ablaze” with the truth, as he challenged two million young people to do at World Youth Day 2000 in Rome.20 John Paul II, in other words, has quite deliberately left a lot of work for the rest of us to do.</p>
<p>And the “rest of us” includes his successor, whose stewardship of the Church that John Paul II leaves behind will shape the course of 21st century history far beyond the institutional boundaries of Catholicism.</p>
<p>George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. and holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.</p>
<p>NOTES</p>
<p>1. Somewhat to my combined chagrin and satisfaction, I recently learned that the Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party had ordered translations made of certain key sections of my biography of Pope John Paul II, <a href="" type="internal">Witness to Hope</a>, for circulation among the higher party cadres – presumably to help them figure out how to avoid the fate of their east central European comrades. On the “immortality project,” see Leon Kass, “L’Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?” First Things 113 (May 2001).</p>
<p>2. John Paul II, Universi Dominici Gregis, 22 February 1996.</p>
<p>3. See my <a href="" type="internal">Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II</a>&#160;(New York: HarperCollins, 1999), pp. 260-63.</p>
<p>4. Which in fact is already being done, in part thanks to John Paul II’s “theology of the body;” see Witness To Hope, pp. 333-43.</p>
<p>5. See John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 57.4, 62.3, 65.4.</p>
<p>6. See John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 4.</p>
<p>7. The claim that priestly celibacy only became normative in western Christianity in the Middle Ages is challenged, persuasively in my view, by Christian Cochini, S.J., The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), and Alfons Maria Cardinal Stickler, The Case for Clerical Celibacy: Its Historical Development and Theological Foundations (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995).</p>
<p>8. See my essay, “ <a href="" type="internal">Europe’s Problem – And Ours</a>,” in First Things 140 (February 2004). This argument is amplified and extended in my forthcoming book, <a href="" type="internal">The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God</a>&#160;(New York: Basic Books, 2005).</p>
<p>9. See David Cracknell and Andrew Porter, “Miaow! Blair babes ditch sisterhood to sharpen claws on Kelly,” The Sunday Times, 19 December 2004. (The headline on this otherwise serious story may be taken as an illustration of what’s happened in recent years to what was once one of the world’s great newspapers.)</p>
<p>10. “The church should value tolerance over its own unity,” The Independent, 19 October 2004.</p>
<p>11. See John Courtney Murray, S.J., “The Issue of Church and State at Vatican Council II,” Theological Studies 27:4 (December 1966).</p>
<p>12. See John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 46.</p>
<p>13. See John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 96-97.</p>
<p>14. See John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 18, 20, 73.</p>
<p>15. See Witness to Hope, pp. 123-39.</p>
<p>16. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 1.</p>
<p>17. See David B. Hart, “Religion in America: ancient and modern,” The New Criterion, March 2004.</p>
<p>18. On this point, see my essay, “ <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0405/articles/weigel.html" type="external">World Order–What Catholics Forgot</a>,” First Things 143 (May 2004).</p>
<p>19. See J.H.H. Weiler, Un’Europa Cristiana – Un saggio esplorativo (Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 2003).</p>
<p>20. See <a href="" type="internal">Witness to Hope</a>, revised and expanded paperback edition (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 880.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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<p>CORRECTS YEAR OF SHOOTING TO 2012 FROM 2013 – People enter the Arapahoe County Justice Center in Centennial, Colo., Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015. The jury selection process in the trial of Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes began Tuesday, and is expected to take several weeks to a few months. Holmes is charged with killing 12 people and wounding more than 50 in an Aurora movie theater in 2012. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)</p>
<p>CENTENNIAL, Colo. — A judge overseeing the Colorado theater shooting trial dismissed a potential juror who tore out her hair when told she would have to return for further questioning.</p>
<p>The woman broke down Tuesday outside the courtroom and away from defendant James Holmes and his attorneys.</p>
<p>Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. said the woman had brought her grandchild into the courthouse because she couldn’t find daycare for the unvaccinated child.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Samour said he was concerned about the health risks of having an unvaccinated child in the courtroom.</p>
<p>The woman “lost it,” began crying and became incoherent when told she would have to return later for further questioning.</p>
<p>The defense agreed to release her from jury duty after the outburst. On Wednesday, Samour said other potential jurors found clumps of hair on the floor.</p>
<p>Attorneys are in the process of selecting 12 jurors and 12 alternates who will hear the case against Holmes, who is charged with killing 12 people and injuring 70 others in the July 20, 2012, attack at a Denver-area movie theater.</p>
<p>Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.</p>
<p>An unprecedented 9,000 people were initially sent summonses.</p>
<p>Potential jurors began flooding the courthouse on Jan. 20 to fill out a lengthy questionnaire involved in screening. Since then it has become clear how badly some of them want to avoid service and how the trial, which could run through October, could disrupt their lives.</p>
<p>Samour has dismissed more than 1,000 people, many of whom brought notes from doctors, said they were not U.S. citizens, or were unable to speak English. Others have told the judge in written notes that serving will negatively impact their livelihoods or exacerbate family problems.</p>
<p>The second phase of jury selection starts Feb. 11 with questioning of candidates about the death penalty, mental illness and other matters. Samour said he hopes at least 100 people suitable for service will remain after that process ends.</p>
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Potential theater shooting juror released after pulling hair
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Potential theater shooting juror released after pulling hair
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<p>CORRECTS YEAR OF SHOOTING TO 2012 FROM 2013 – People enter the Arapahoe County Justice Center in Centennial, Colo., Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015. The jury selection process in the trial of Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes began Tuesday, and is expected to take several weeks to a few months. Holmes is charged with killing 12 people and wounding more than 50 in an Aurora movie theater in 2012. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)</p>
<p>CENTENNIAL, Colo. — A judge overseeing the Colorado theater shooting trial dismissed a potential juror who tore out her hair when told she would have to return for further questioning.</p>
<p>The woman broke down Tuesday outside the courtroom and away from defendant James Holmes and his attorneys.</p>
<p>Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. said the woman had brought her grandchild into the courthouse because she couldn’t find daycare for the unvaccinated child.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Samour said he was concerned about the health risks of having an unvaccinated child in the courtroom.</p>
<p>The woman “lost it,” began crying and became incoherent when told she would have to return later for further questioning.</p>
<p>The defense agreed to release her from jury duty after the outburst. On Wednesday, Samour said other potential jurors found clumps of hair on the floor.</p>
<p>Attorneys are in the process of selecting 12 jurors and 12 alternates who will hear the case against Holmes, who is charged with killing 12 people and injuring 70 others in the July 20, 2012, attack at a Denver-area movie theater.</p>
<p>Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.</p>
<p>An unprecedented 9,000 people were initially sent summonses.</p>
<p>Potential jurors began flooding the courthouse on Jan. 20 to fill out a lengthy questionnaire involved in screening. Since then it has become clear how badly some of them want to avoid service and how the trial, which could run through October, could disrupt their lives.</p>
<p>Samour has dismissed more than 1,000 people, many of whom brought notes from doctors, said they were not U.S. citizens, or were unable to speak English. Others have told the judge in written notes that serving will negatively impact their livelihoods or exacerbate family problems.</p>
<p>The second phase of jury selection starts Feb. 11 with questioning of candidates about the death penalty, mental illness and other matters. Samour said he hopes at least 100 people suitable for service will remain after that process ends.</p>
| 5,773 |
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<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Google</a>’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) <a href="" type="internal">Chrome</a> has overtaken Firefox for the first time, becoming the second most popular web browser, according to web analytics company StatCounter.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>In November, Chrome took 25.69% of the worldwide market, up from 4.66% two years ago, just surpassing Firefox’s 25.23%.</p>
<p>The leader of the pack remains <a href="" type="internal">Microsoft</a>’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Internet Explorer, which maintains a global lead of 40.63%.</p>
<p>"We can look forward to a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Google as the pace of growth of Chrome suggests that it will become a real rival to Internet Explorer globally," StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen said.</p>
<p>The company’s stats measure actual browser usage, not downloads, and Cullen notes that while Chrome has been effective in ensuring downloads, the figures show people are now starting to use Chrome to actually surf the web as well.</p>
<p>In the U.S., Internet Explorer continues its stronghold on the market with a 50.66% share, while Firefox retains second place with 20.09% and Chrome comes in third at 17.3%, which is up from 10.89% a year ago.</p>
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<p>Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Safari browser hold 10.76% of the U.S. market.</p>
<p>In Europe, Google has surpassed Firefox, up to 24.82% while Firefox holds just 20.56%.</p>
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Google's Chrome Surpasses Firefox in November
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Google's Chrome Surpasses Firefox in November
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Google</a>’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) <a href="" type="internal">Chrome</a> has overtaken Firefox for the first time, becoming the second most popular web browser, according to web analytics company StatCounter.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>In November, Chrome took 25.69% of the worldwide market, up from 4.66% two years ago, just surpassing Firefox’s 25.23%.</p>
<p>The leader of the pack remains <a href="" type="internal">Microsoft</a>’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Internet Explorer, which maintains a global lead of 40.63%.</p>
<p>"We can look forward to a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Google as the pace of growth of Chrome suggests that it will become a real rival to Internet Explorer globally," StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen said.</p>
<p>The company’s stats measure actual browser usage, not downloads, and Cullen notes that while Chrome has been effective in ensuring downloads, the figures show people are now starting to use Chrome to actually surf the web as well.</p>
<p>In the U.S., Internet Explorer continues its stronghold on the market with a 50.66% share, while Firefox retains second place with 20.09% and Chrome comes in third at 17.3%, which is up from 10.89% a year ago.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Safari browser hold 10.76% of the U.S. market.</p>
<p>In Europe, Google has surpassed Firefox, up to 24.82% while Firefox holds just 20.56%.</p>
| 5,774 |
<p>The stock market moved lower on Monday, with major benchmarks indexes falling as much as 0.4% as market participants started to handicap the question of whether lawmakers on Capitol Hill would be able to come to a consensus on tax reform. Concerns that tax cuts would cause the federal deficit to skyrocket led some in Congress to consider a slower, phased-in approach, which would have less of an immediate positive effect on companies. Such a result would also raise the specter of lawmakers being unable to follow through with more comprehensive, business-friendly tax changes in the future.</p>
<p>Yet even against that backdrop of nervousness, some companies saw their stocks rise due to more optimistic views for their specific businesses. Mattel (NASDAQ: MAT), TransEnterix (NYSEMKT: TRXC), and Dynegy (NYSE: DYN) were among the best performers on the day. Below, we'll look more closely at these companies to tell you why their stocks did so well.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Mattel jumped 11%, recovering every bit of <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/28/mattel-earnings-sales-plummet-and-its-dividend-dis.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">its 9% drop from Friday Opens a New Window.</a>. The toymaker's drop last week came after it announced third-quarter results that included a 13% drop in net sales and a huge loss for the period. The bankruptcy of retailer Toys R Us was a contributing factor, but Mattel's sales declined in all of its key categories, including Barbie and American Girl. Mattel even decided to suspend its dividend.</p>
<p>Yet Monday's rebound&#160; came as analysts concluded that the best solution for the business might be for the toymaker to sell itself, freeing its assets from the uncertainty about its operations. Even with that gain, Mattel has still lost more than half its value in less than a year; naturally, how it fares in the coming holiday season could be decisive in what course the company charts for itself from here.</p>
<p>Shares of robotic surgical company TransEnterix experienced another day of the dramatic volatility they've shown since the <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/16/why-transenterix-is-skyrocketing-today.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">FDA approval of its Senhance system Opens a New Window.</a>. That thumbs up came two weeks ago, and caused shares to triple&#160; from pre-announcement levels. Since then, though, TransEnterix had given up more than half of its value as investors questioned what would come next for the tiny innovator.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>One answer seemed to come today, as <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/30/why-transenterix-stock-is-rebounding-today.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">positive comments from analyst companies Opens a New Window.</a> accompanied rumors of a possible buyout bid, led shares to jump by almost 25%.</p>
<p>Given the strong competition in its niche, TransEnterix might do well to ally itself with a larger partner, but traders are working without a lot of information as they attempt to parse the company's prospects.</p>
<p>Finally, <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/30/why-dynegy-incs-shares-popped-15-today.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Dynegy shares climbed 5% Opens a New Window.</a>. The power producer said that it would combine with fellow industry major Vistra Energy (NYSE: VST) in an all-stock merger. The combined entity would have 2.7 million residential customers as well as 240,000 industrial customers. Under the deal, Dynegy shareholders will get 0.652 shares of Vistra stock for every Dynegy share they own. Although the move rewards Dynegy with a premium valuation and should help produce cost savings for the combined entity, it will still be counting on a rebound in the natural gas and renewable energy markets to power a strong rebound. Until that happens, investors might not to see immediate benefits from the deal.</p>
<p>Offer from The Motley Fool: The 10 best stocks to buy now</p>
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<p>Tom and David just revealed their ten top stock picks for investors to buy right now.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.fool.com/mms/mark/sa-bbn-usat?aid=8867&amp;source=isausttxt0000002&amp;ftm_cam=sa-bbn-evergreen&amp;ftm_pit=6830&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here to get access to the full list! Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of October 9, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. 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;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
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Why Mattel, TransEnterix, and Dynegy Jumped Today
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2017-10-30
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Why Mattel, TransEnterix, and Dynegy Jumped Today
<p>The stock market moved lower on Monday, with major benchmarks indexes falling as much as 0.4% as market participants started to handicap the question of whether lawmakers on Capitol Hill would be able to come to a consensus on tax reform. Concerns that tax cuts would cause the federal deficit to skyrocket led some in Congress to consider a slower, phased-in approach, which would have less of an immediate positive effect on companies. Such a result would also raise the specter of lawmakers being unable to follow through with more comprehensive, business-friendly tax changes in the future.</p>
<p>Yet even against that backdrop of nervousness, some companies saw their stocks rise due to more optimistic views for their specific businesses. Mattel (NASDAQ: MAT), TransEnterix (NYSEMKT: TRXC), and Dynegy (NYSE: DYN) were among the best performers on the day. Below, we'll look more closely at these companies to tell you why their stocks did so well.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Mattel jumped 11%, recovering every bit of <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/28/mattel-earnings-sales-plummet-and-its-dividend-dis.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">its 9% drop from Friday Opens a New Window.</a>. The toymaker's drop last week came after it announced third-quarter results that included a 13% drop in net sales and a huge loss for the period. The bankruptcy of retailer Toys R Us was a contributing factor, but Mattel's sales declined in all of its key categories, including Barbie and American Girl. Mattel even decided to suspend its dividend.</p>
<p>Yet Monday's rebound&#160; came as analysts concluded that the best solution for the business might be for the toymaker to sell itself, freeing its assets from the uncertainty about its operations. Even with that gain, Mattel has still lost more than half its value in less than a year; naturally, how it fares in the coming holiday season could be decisive in what course the company charts for itself from here.</p>
<p>Shares of robotic surgical company TransEnterix experienced another day of the dramatic volatility they've shown since the <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/16/why-transenterix-is-skyrocketing-today.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">FDA approval of its Senhance system Opens a New Window.</a>. That thumbs up came two weeks ago, and caused shares to triple&#160; from pre-announcement levels. Since then, though, TransEnterix had given up more than half of its value as investors questioned what would come next for the tiny innovator.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>One answer seemed to come today, as <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/30/why-transenterix-stock-is-rebounding-today.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">positive comments from analyst companies Opens a New Window.</a> accompanied rumors of a possible buyout bid, led shares to jump by almost 25%.</p>
<p>Given the strong competition in its niche, TransEnterix might do well to ally itself with a larger partner, but traders are working without a lot of information as they attempt to parse the company's prospects.</p>
<p>Finally, <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/30/why-dynegy-incs-shares-popped-15-today.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Dynegy shares climbed 5% Opens a New Window.</a>. The power producer said that it would combine with fellow industry major Vistra Energy (NYSE: VST) in an all-stock merger. The combined entity would have 2.7 million residential customers as well as 240,000 industrial customers. Under the deal, Dynegy shareholders will get 0.652 shares of Vistra stock for every Dynegy share they own. Although the move rewards Dynegy with a premium valuation and should help produce cost savings for the combined entity, it will still be counting on a rebound in the natural gas and renewable energy markets to power a strong rebound. Until that happens, investors might not to see immediate benefits from the deal.</p>
<p>Offer from The Motley Fool: The 10 best stocks to buy now</p>
<p>Motley Fool co-founders Tom and David Gardner have spent more than a decade beating the market. In fact, the newsletter they run, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the S&amp;P 500!*</p>
<p>Tom and David just revealed their ten top stock picks for investors to buy right now.</p>
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<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of October 9, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. 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;uuid=f6661dc8-bda7-11e7-bc25-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 5,775 |
<p>Since Osama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. Navy SEAL raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 1, 2011, six potential candidates to lead al Qaeda have been killed in U.S. drone strikes, according an NBC News analysis.</p>
<p>The SEALS grabbed a treasure trove of materials that night -- five computers, 10 hard drives and more than 100 storage devices that held between 10,000 and 15,000 documents and between 15,000 to 25,000 videos, including a large number of duplicate files.</p>
<p>Related: <a href="" type="internal">Embattled Al Qaeda Hunts for a New Bin Laden</a></p>
<p>Most of the data was worthless, but a lot of it helped the U.S. identify, characterize and track potential successors to bin Laden, three of whom were killed in the five months after the raid. The fourth -- Abu Yahya al-Libi -- took more than a year to find and kill, but he, say U.S. officials, was the real prize.</p>
<p>Here are thumbnail sketches of those killed:</p>
<p>Follow NBC News Investigations on <a href="https://twitter.com/NBCInvestigates" type="external">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NBCInvestigates" type="external">Facebook</a></p>
|
Six Potential al Qaeda Leaders Eliminated Since Bin Laden Raid
| false |
http://nbcnews.com/news/investigations/six-potential-al-qaeda-leaders-eliminated-bin-laden-raid-n38171
|
2014-02-26
| 3left-center
|
Six Potential al Qaeda Leaders Eliminated Since Bin Laden Raid
<p>Since Osama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. Navy SEAL raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 1, 2011, six potential candidates to lead al Qaeda have been killed in U.S. drone strikes, according an NBC News analysis.</p>
<p>The SEALS grabbed a treasure trove of materials that night -- five computers, 10 hard drives and more than 100 storage devices that held between 10,000 and 15,000 documents and between 15,000 to 25,000 videos, including a large number of duplicate files.</p>
<p>Related: <a href="" type="internal">Embattled Al Qaeda Hunts for a New Bin Laden</a></p>
<p>Most of the data was worthless, but a lot of it helped the U.S. identify, characterize and track potential successors to bin Laden, three of whom were killed in the five months after the raid. The fourth -- Abu Yahya al-Libi -- took more than a year to find and kill, but he, say U.S. officials, was the real prize.</p>
<p>Here are thumbnail sketches of those killed:</p>
<p>Follow NBC News Investigations on <a href="https://twitter.com/NBCInvestigates" type="external">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NBCInvestigates" type="external">Facebook</a></p>
| 5,776 |
<p>As the riptide of voices seeking to drown Kofi Annan and the UN Oil-For-Food Program strengthens, it is interesting to note not only what is being said about the Program’s shortcomings, but also what isn’t being said. In order to do that, however, it is first necessary to at least mention something that many critics of the Oil-For-Food Program seem to have forgotten: the Program’s original intent.</p>
<p>The Oil-For-Food Program was authorized on April 14, 1995 by UN Security Council Resolution 986, which begins with this language: “Concerned by the serious nutritional and health situation of the Iraqi population, and by the risk of a further deterioration in this situation, Convinced of the needto provide for the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people” The Resolution goes on to authorize the sale of Iraqi petroleum expressly “to finance the export to Iraqof medicine, health supplies, foodstuffs, and materials and supplies for essential civilian needs.” In other words, suffocating under a comprehensive embargo for five years, people in Iraq were turning blue and dying, unable to feed themselves, care effectively for their sick, or repair and maintain essential civilian life support systems such as the country’s devastated electrical grid and sewage and water treatment facilities.</p>
<p>There. Now that we,ve said it, and the world hasn’t stopped spinning a risk worth taking we can resume breathing and return to the original point of this article. In the churning, shark-infested waters in which the bloody Oil-For-Food Program now swims, the focus of the sharks is on reports of bribes accepted by Program employees and of kickbacks to Saddam Hussein from the sale of oil, kickbacks which weapons inspector Charles Duelfer estimates at $1.7 billion over the life of the Program. In recent newspaper articles, the Program is variously described as “corrupt,” “evil,” “a scandal,” “a mess,” etc.</p>
<p>In a measure of just how deep and wide is the current of ill-will toward the Oil-For-Food Program, even articles defending Kofi Annan as innocent of any wrongdoing attack the Program without mercy or compunction. Take, for example, Thomas Oliphant writing recently in the <a href="" type="internal">Boston Globe</a>, referring to the “notorious and corrupted Oil-For-Food Program.” Eventually, he writes the Program off completely: “Oil-for-food was a worldwide disgrace–a mess. Instead of easing the impact of UN sanctions on Iraqi civilians, the program was an opportunity for profiteering both by businesses and by Saddam Hussein.”</p>
<p>A more balanced and accurate analysis would acknowledge that the Oil-For-Food Program, while obviously no substitute for a complete lifting of sanctions, did succeed in halting the precipitous deterioration in the health of Iraqi children. It accomplished this by piggy-backing on, and supplementing, an existing Iraqi government program of food rationing. By the time the Program was fully operational in the late 1990’s, rising malnutrition levels among children had eased, though they remained at an inhumane and unacceptable level. In accomplishing this, the Program undoubtedly saved and improved lives. Why pretend otherwise?</p>
<p>The Program also served to chronicle the effect of sanctions on ordinary Iraqi people. Particularly during Hans von Sponeck’s tenure as Director, the Program sponsored investigations and produced reports on features of the humanitarian crisis which were all but ignored at the time. These include, for example, the difficult-to-measure psychosocial effects of sanctions. There were numerous other reports which represent another, little-known success.</p>
<p>Lastly, the Program produced the most knowledgeable, and therefore most credible, Western critics of the economic embargo, von Sponeck and Denis Halliday, both of whom were Program Directors who resigned in protest of the embargo’s devastating effects on Iraqi society. This, no doubt, should be considered an unintentional success.</p>
<p>Ironically, von Sponeck and Halliday were also the most credible critics of the Oil-For-Food Program itself. Its successes notwithstanding, the Oil-For-Food Program was doomed to failure, not because of corruption among employees, not because Saddam Hussein was “siphoning” money out of the Program as people are fond of misstating, not because the Iraqi government wouldn’t cooperate with it, but for structural reasons. First, the Program was woefully underfunded, a point which cannot be overstated. And by underfunded, I mean from the perspective of the Iraqi people.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to be naïve. There is no evidence that the architects of US foreign policy care about the people of Iraq, but staff of the Oil-For-Food Program certainly did. Recent attacks on the Program must seem cruelly ironic to many former employees who struggled for years with inadequate resources to address a humanitarian catastrophe that confronted them up close and personal every day.</p>
<p>The Oil-For-Food Program was never intended to generate enough money to reverse the trends in Iraq and bring people back to the standard of health they,d enjoyed prior to the onset of sanctions. This is especially true for the 87% of the population living in the south and center of the country.</p>
<p>The shortfall in monies available to the Program was due in part to requirements written into the original Resolution. Throughout the duration of the Program, <a href="" type="internal">in what Denis Halliday has correctly called a crime</a>, 30% of the oil sale proceeds were sent to Kuwait as war reparations. “They gave 30% to Kuwait while Iraqi children were dying for lack of water and adequate foodstuffs. That’s a crime in a sense”. Another 5% went to the United Nations to administer the program. 13%, taken off the top, was set aside for people in the autonomous northern governates. This left approximately 50% of the money for the roughly 20 million people living in the rest of Iraq. If we divide the total amount of money available to these people through the seven years of the Program (roughly $32 billion), we arrive at $225 per person per year, a pathetic amount, hardly enough to fund a healthy society, let alone rebuild one which had been so thoroughly devastated. And so people, many of them children, continued to sicken and die. This is the real disgrace of the Oil-For-food Program.</p>
<p>A lack of money isn’t the only structural problem that Oil-for-Food Program staff faced. Recall that every contract entered into by Iraq had to be approved by the UN Sanctions Committee before it could be finalized and a transaction could take place. Any item which even a single member of the committee questioned could be held up. Eventually, US committee members alone held up 5,000 contracts. The value of contracts on hold in the Program was substantial in the billions of dollars.</p>
<p>Of equal importance is the kind of items held or denied. These include especially items considered “dual use,” having supposedly both a civilian and a military application. The list of these items is astounding. It includes pencils, boots, academic textbooks, refrigerators, electric light bulbs, and many others. It also includes items which go right to the heart of the humanitarian crisis — chlorine, for example, which Iraq needed to purify water, various spare parts needed to repair or maintain water and sewage treatment systems, and medical supplies. Never mind that the Oil-for-Food Program, working jointly with the UN World Health Organization, convincingly and painstakingly proved in the late 1990’s that it could adequately monitor items coming into Iraq, assuring that they both reached their intended destination and were used for their intended purpose. Never mind that some of these held items were potentially life-saving. They were nonetheless held or denied entry.</p>
<p>Finally, the Oil-For-Food Program was hampered by the state of the Iraqi oil industry, which the US military intentionally targeted in 1991. The Program was often unable to meet its quarterly quota of oil sales, in part because Iraq wasn’t able to extract and refine enough oil. From the perspective of the Iraqi people, more oil sales would have meant more food and of higher nutritional value, more supplies, an easing of their plight. The US did nothing to support the rehabilitation of Iraq’s oil industry during this time. In fact, it worked against it. Not only did it hold up or deny spare parts contracts, but it continued to bomb Iraq’s oil industry infrastructure as well.</p>
<p>The real “mess” is the one created by the sanctions and by the 1991 Gulf War: the economic and humanitarian crisis in Iraq. The real “disgrace” is the maintenance of sanctions in the face of incontrovertible evidence of large-scale suffering and death, and the hamstringing of the Oil-For-Food Program, which served as a lifeline for millions of Iraqi people.</p>
<p>DAVID SMITH-FERRI is a member of <a href="http://www.vitw.org/" type="external">Voices in the Wilderness</a>, a campaign to end U.S. economic and military warfare abroad and at home. He lives in Ukiah, CA. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
The UN’s Real Disgrace was the Sanctions Regime
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2004/12/23/the-un-s-real-disgrace-was-the-sanctions-regime/
|
2004-12-23
| 4left
|
The UN’s Real Disgrace was the Sanctions Regime
<p>As the riptide of voices seeking to drown Kofi Annan and the UN Oil-For-Food Program strengthens, it is interesting to note not only what is being said about the Program’s shortcomings, but also what isn’t being said. In order to do that, however, it is first necessary to at least mention something that many critics of the Oil-For-Food Program seem to have forgotten: the Program’s original intent.</p>
<p>The Oil-For-Food Program was authorized on April 14, 1995 by UN Security Council Resolution 986, which begins with this language: “Concerned by the serious nutritional and health situation of the Iraqi population, and by the risk of a further deterioration in this situation, Convinced of the needto provide for the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people” The Resolution goes on to authorize the sale of Iraqi petroleum expressly “to finance the export to Iraqof medicine, health supplies, foodstuffs, and materials and supplies for essential civilian needs.” In other words, suffocating under a comprehensive embargo for five years, people in Iraq were turning blue and dying, unable to feed themselves, care effectively for their sick, or repair and maintain essential civilian life support systems such as the country’s devastated electrical grid and sewage and water treatment facilities.</p>
<p>There. Now that we,ve said it, and the world hasn’t stopped spinning a risk worth taking we can resume breathing and return to the original point of this article. In the churning, shark-infested waters in which the bloody Oil-For-Food Program now swims, the focus of the sharks is on reports of bribes accepted by Program employees and of kickbacks to Saddam Hussein from the sale of oil, kickbacks which weapons inspector Charles Duelfer estimates at $1.7 billion over the life of the Program. In recent newspaper articles, the Program is variously described as “corrupt,” “evil,” “a scandal,” “a mess,” etc.</p>
<p>In a measure of just how deep and wide is the current of ill-will toward the Oil-For-Food Program, even articles defending Kofi Annan as innocent of any wrongdoing attack the Program without mercy or compunction. Take, for example, Thomas Oliphant writing recently in the <a href="" type="internal">Boston Globe</a>, referring to the “notorious and corrupted Oil-For-Food Program.” Eventually, he writes the Program off completely: “Oil-for-food was a worldwide disgrace–a mess. Instead of easing the impact of UN sanctions on Iraqi civilians, the program was an opportunity for profiteering both by businesses and by Saddam Hussein.”</p>
<p>A more balanced and accurate analysis would acknowledge that the Oil-For-Food Program, while obviously no substitute for a complete lifting of sanctions, did succeed in halting the precipitous deterioration in the health of Iraqi children. It accomplished this by piggy-backing on, and supplementing, an existing Iraqi government program of food rationing. By the time the Program was fully operational in the late 1990’s, rising malnutrition levels among children had eased, though they remained at an inhumane and unacceptable level. In accomplishing this, the Program undoubtedly saved and improved lives. Why pretend otherwise?</p>
<p>The Program also served to chronicle the effect of sanctions on ordinary Iraqi people. Particularly during Hans von Sponeck’s tenure as Director, the Program sponsored investigations and produced reports on features of the humanitarian crisis which were all but ignored at the time. These include, for example, the difficult-to-measure psychosocial effects of sanctions. There were numerous other reports which represent another, little-known success.</p>
<p>Lastly, the Program produced the most knowledgeable, and therefore most credible, Western critics of the economic embargo, von Sponeck and Denis Halliday, both of whom were Program Directors who resigned in protest of the embargo’s devastating effects on Iraqi society. This, no doubt, should be considered an unintentional success.</p>
<p>Ironically, von Sponeck and Halliday were also the most credible critics of the Oil-For-Food Program itself. Its successes notwithstanding, the Oil-For-Food Program was doomed to failure, not because of corruption among employees, not because Saddam Hussein was “siphoning” money out of the Program as people are fond of misstating, not because the Iraqi government wouldn’t cooperate with it, but for structural reasons. First, the Program was woefully underfunded, a point which cannot be overstated. And by underfunded, I mean from the perspective of the Iraqi people.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to be naïve. There is no evidence that the architects of US foreign policy care about the people of Iraq, but staff of the Oil-For-Food Program certainly did. Recent attacks on the Program must seem cruelly ironic to many former employees who struggled for years with inadequate resources to address a humanitarian catastrophe that confronted them up close and personal every day.</p>
<p>The Oil-For-Food Program was never intended to generate enough money to reverse the trends in Iraq and bring people back to the standard of health they,d enjoyed prior to the onset of sanctions. This is especially true for the 87% of the population living in the south and center of the country.</p>
<p>The shortfall in monies available to the Program was due in part to requirements written into the original Resolution. Throughout the duration of the Program, <a href="" type="internal">in what Denis Halliday has correctly called a crime</a>, 30% of the oil sale proceeds were sent to Kuwait as war reparations. “They gave 30% to Kuwait while Iraqi children were dying for lack of water and adequate foodstuffs. That’s a crime in a sense”. Another 5% went to the United Nations to administer the program. 13%, taken off the top, was set aside for people in the autonomous northern governates. This left approximately 50% of the money for the roughly 20 million people living in the rest of Iraq. If we divide the total amount of money available to these people through the seven years of the Program (roughly $32 billion), we arrive at $225 per person per year, a pathetic amount, hardly enough to fund a healthy society, let alone rebuild one which had been so thoroughly devastated. And so people, many of them children, continued to sicken and die. This is the real disgrace of the Oil-For-food Program.</p>
<p>A lack of money isn’t the only structural problem that Oil-for-Food Program staff faced. Recall that every contract entered into by Iraq had to be approved by the UN Sanctions Committee before it could be finalized and a transaction could take place. Any item which even a single member of the committee questioned could be held up. Eventually, US committee members alone held up 5,000 contracts. The value of contracts on hold in the Program was substantial in the billions of dollars.</p>
<p>Of equal importance is the kind of items held or denied. These include especially items considered “dual use,” having supposedly both a civilian and a military application. The list of these items is astounding. It includes pencils, boots, academic textbooks, refrigerators, electric light bulbs, and many others. It also includes items which go right to the heart of the humanitarian crisis — chlorine, for example, which Iraq needed to purify water, various spare parts needed to repair or maintain water and sewage treatment systems, and medical supplies. Never mind that the Oil-for-Food Program, working jointly with the UN World Health Organization, convincingly and painstakingly proved in the late 1990’s that it could adequately monitor items coming into Iraq, assuring that they both reached their intended destination and were used for their intended purpose. Never mind that some of these held items were potentially life-saving. They were nonetheless held or denied entry.</p>
<p>Finally, the Oil-For-Food Program was hampered by the state of the Iraqi oil industry, which the US military intentionally targeted in 1991. The Program was often unable to meet its quarterly quota of oil sales, in part because Iraq wasn’t able to extract and refine enough oil. From the perspective of the Iraqi people, more oil sales would have meant more food and of higher nutritional value, more supplies, an easing of their plight. The US did nothing to support the rehabilitation of Iraq’s oil industry during this time. In fact, it worked against it. Not only did it hold up or deny spare parts contracts, but it continued to bomb Iraq’s oil industry infrastructure as well.</p>
<p>The real “mess” is the one created by the sanctions and by the 1991 Gulf War: the economic and humanitarian crisis in Iraq. The real “disgrace” is the maintenance of sanctions in the face of incontrovertible evidence of large-scale suffering and death, and the hamstringing of the Oil-For-Food Program, which served as a lifeline for millions of Iraqi people.</p>
<p>DAVID SMITH-FERRI is a member of <a href="http://www.vitw.org/" type="external">Voices in the Wilderness</a>, a campaign to end U.S. economic and military warfare abroad and at home. He lives in Ukiah, CA. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 5,777 |
<p>By Andrew Cawthorne</p>
<p>CARACAS (Reuters) – Just months ago, with crowds of protesters baying on the streets for the resignation of the “dictator” and “murderer,” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro looked like a goner.</p>
<p>Global opinion hardened against his socialist government, with Washington the first to impose sanctions. Coup rumors spread amid one of the worst economic implosions in modern Latin American history, and there were two botched mini-uprisings.</p>
<p>Yet the unpopular successor to Hugo Chavez has not only survived, he is ending the year on a political high and is even a front-runner for the 2018 presidential election.</p>
<p>The upturn in Maduro’s fortunes began with a surprise victory in last month’s gubernatorial elections, thanks to abstentionism by disillusioned opposition supporters and election conditions stacked in favor of his Socialist Party.</p>
<p>He then seized the initiative by announcing Venezuela’s intention to restructure its more than $120 billion foreign debt. The high-stakes moves allows him to blame a U.S.-led “capitalist conspiracy” for hyperinflation and shortages while potentially freeing hard currency to import food and medicines ahead of next year’s vote.</p>
<p>Government sources say a buoyant Maduro is now considering driving home his advantage by bringing forward the normally year-end election to February or March.</p>
<p>The president, so toxic last month that few gubernatorial candidates wanted to be seen with him, might now be his party’s best bet to retain power against an opposition in disarray.</p>
<p>Speculation about alternative candidates – from powerful Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello to up-and-coming governor Hector Rodriguez – has quietened in recent days.</p>
<p>“For sure Maduro will be the candidate. How can anyone challenge him?” said Dimitris Pantoulas, a Caracas-based consultant who tracks Socialist Party politics.</p>
<p>“Look at him on TV: He’s bright and happy. He even dances better than before! ‘Chavismo’ has the momentum,” he added, referring to the movement founded by Chavez.</p>
<p>Maduro is taking credit in government circles for pushing through a Constituent Assembly super-body that cemented the socialists’ power – albeit in an election boycotted by the opposition and marred by fraud accusations even from the company running the voting machines – and for breaking the opposition coalition.</p>
<p>With the main parties within the opposition Democratic Unity coalition boycotting next month’s mayoral elections, another win looks likely at the local level.</p>
<p>NO TO SANCTIONS</p>
<p>The 55-year-old leader is already touting his potential 2018 campaign theme: No to the “Yankee” sanctions.</p>
<p>Some believe that was one motivation behind the proposed debt restructuring: to force creditors into pressuring Washington to ease sanctions because they hinder any refinancing of Venezuela’s obligations.</p>
<p>It is also part of Maduro’s strategy with the opposition in talks due to start on Dec. 1 in the Dominican Republic.</p>
<p>“We must demand the Venezuela opposition reach a pact for 2018 to have presidential elections with economic guarantees, an end to U.S. government sanctions and an end to the financial persecution of Venezuela,” Maduro said recently.</p>
<p>The government will also press for the opposition-controlled National Assembly to support debt refinancing, a potential way around sanctions that otherwise prevent U.S. banks from participating.</p>
<p>There has been no sign U.S. President Donald Trump would be willing to ease sanctions. On the contrary, a U.S. official told Reuters recently that Washington was weighing new sanctions in response to Maduro’s crackdown on the opposition.</p>
<p>Though the opposition is trying to rally Venezuelans to oust the socialists once and for all in the 2018 vote, there is no hiding their woeful state.</p>
<p>Leaders struggled to explain the October gubernatorial poll defeat, first blaming fraud then admitting they shot themselves in the foot via abstentionism.</p>
<p>The coalition openly split over the Dec. 10 municipal elections, with major parties opting for a boycott but others deciding to run candidates. That confused strategy – a far cry from their unity in 2015 parliamentary elections – has undercut western pressure on Maduro.</p>
<p>Given that the opposition’s most popular candidates are detained or banned from running, Maduro is goading veteran Democratic Action party leader Henry Ramos – a divisive figure, unpopular with many younger voters and hard-line opposition groups – to contest the 2018 poll.</p>
<p>‘DIFFERENT WAY’?</p>
<p>With an unpopular president potentially facing an unconvincing opposition candidate, next year’s election would seem to be fertile territory for a middle-ground aspirant.</p>
<p>“This is the best time for anyone proposing a different way,” said dissident former ‘Chavista’ Nicmer Evans.</p>
<p>Putting his money where his mouth is, Evans is tramping the streets of Caracas to campaign for a mayorship at the Dec. 10 vote with a new party called New Vision For My Country.</p>
<p>Many Venezuelans say the best president would be Lorenzo Mendoza, the billionaire head of the Polar brewing and food company, whose ratings dwarf mainstream politicians. He, however, has shown little inclination.</p>
<p>Assuming Mendoza remains on the sidelines and no Socialist Party faction displaces a Maduro candidacy, he seems to have a real chance of retaining the presidency despite popularity levels that have been halved during his rule to around 20-25 percent.</p>
<p>A bigger threat than the opposition would appear to be social protests at the economic crisis, or a Zimbabwe-style move from within the military.</p>
<p>Cliver Alcala, a former “Chavista” general who is now an outspoken critic of Maduro, said rank-and-file soldiers were fed up with personal penury and the politicization of their institution.</p>
<p>Even so, he saw little appetite for an uprising and said the military top brass appeared to have a vested interest in supporting Maduro due to the influence he allows them.</p>
<p>“There is more possibility of a popular social outburst due to lack of food and medicine, and the constant abuses of authority,” Alcala said.</p>
<p>That, however, is a cycle Venezuelans have lived through over and over in recent years: violent protests and national shutdowns coming at huge cost to life, property and productivity.</p>
<p>Through it all, Maduro has hung on – and for now is smiling again.</p>
|
Venezuela's Maduro keeps eye on prize: 2018 presidential vote
| false |
https://newsline.com/venezuela039s-maduro-keeps-eye-on-prize-2018-presidential-vote/
|
2017-11-24
| 1right-center
|
Venezuela's Maduro keeps eye on prize: 2018 presidential vote
<p>By Andrew Cawthorne</p>
<p>CARACAS (Reuters) – Just months ago, with crowds of protesters baying on the streets for the resignation of the “dictator” and “murderer,” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro looked like a goner.</p>
<p>Global opinion hardened against his socialist government, with Washington the first to impose sanctions. Coup rumors spread amid one of the worst economic implosions in modern Latin American history, and there were two botched mini-uprisings.</p>
<p>Yet the unpopular successor to Hugo Chavez has not only survived, he is ending the year on a political high and is even a front-runner for the 2018 presidential election.</p>
<p>The upturn in Maduro’s fortunes began with a surprise victory in last month’s gubernatorial elections, thanks to abstentionism by disillusioned opposition supporters and election conditions stacked in favor of his Socialist Party.</p>
<p>He then seized the initiative by announcing Venezuela’s intention to restructure its more than $120 billion foreign debt. The high-stakes moves allows him to blame a U.S.-led “capitalist conspiracy” for hyperinflation and shortages while potentially freeing hard currency to import food and medicines ahead of next year’s vote.</p>
<p>Government sources say a buoyant Maduro is now considering driving home his advantage by bringing forward the normally year-end election to February or March.</p>
<p>The president, so toxic last month that few gubernatorial candidates wanted to be seen with him, might now be his party’s best bet to retain power against an opposition in disarray.</p>
<p>Speculation about alternative candidates – from powerful Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello to up-and-coming governor Hector Rodriguez – has quietened in recent days.</p>
<p>“For sure Maduro will be the candidate. How can anyone challenge him?” said Dimitris Pantoulas, a Caracas-based consultant who tracks Socialist Party politics.</p>
<p>“Look at him on TV: He’s bright and happy. He even dances better than before! ‘Chavismo’ has the momentum,” he added, referring to the movement founded by Chavez.</p>
<p>Maduro is taking credit in government circles for pushing through a Constituent Assembly super-body that cemented the socialists’ power – albeit in an election boycotted by the opposition and marred by fraud accusations even from the company running the voting machines – and for breaking the opposition coalition.</p>
<p>With the main parties within the opposition Democratic Unity coalition boycotting next month’s mayoral elections, another win looks likely at the local level.</p>
<p>NO TO SANCTIONS</p>
<p>The 55-year-old leader is already touting his potential 2018 campaign theme: No to the “Yankee” sanctions.</p>
<p>Some believe that was one motivation behind the proposed debt restructuring: to force creditors into pressuring Washington to ease sanctions because they hinder any refinancing of Venezuela’s obligations.</p>
<p>It is also part of Maduro’s strategy with the opposition in talks due to start on Dec. 1 in the Dominican Republic.</p>
<p>“We must demand the Venezuela opposition reach a pact for 2018 to have presidential elections with economic guarantees, an end to U.S. government sanctions and an end to the financial persecution of Venezuela,” Maduro said recently.</p>
<p>The government will also press for the opposition-controlled National Assembly to support debt refinancing, a potential way around sanctions that otherwise prevent U.S. banks from participating.</p>
<p>There has been no sign U.S. President Donald Trump would be willing to ease sanctions. On the contrary, a U.S. official told Reuters recently that Washington was weighing new sanctions in response to Maduro’s crackdown on the opposition.</p>
<p>Though the opposition is trying to rally Venezuelans to oust the socialists once and for all in the 2018 vote, there is no hiding their woeful state.</p>
<p>Leaders struggled to explain the October gubernatorial poll defeat, first blaming fraud then admitting they shot themselves in the foot via abstentionism.</p>
<p>The coalition openly split over the Dec. 10 municipal elections, with major parties opting for a boycott but others deciding to run candidates. That confused strategy – a far cry from their unity in 2015 parliamentary elections – has undercut western pressure on Maduro.</p>
<p>Given that the opposition’s most popular candidates are detained or banned from running, Maduro is goading veteran Democratic Action party leader Henry Ramos – a divisive figure, unpopular with many younger voters and hard-line opposition groups – to contest the 2018 poll.</p>
<p>‘DIFFERENT WAY’?</p>
<p>With an unpopular president potentially facing an unconvincing opposition candidate, next year’s election would seem to be fertile territory for a middle-ground aspirant.</p>
<p>“This is the best time for anyone proposing a different way,” said dissident former ‘Chavista’ Nicmer Evans.</p>
<p>Putting his money where his mouth is, Evans is tramping the streets of Caracas to campaign for a mayorship at the Dec. 10 vote with a new party called New Vision For My Country.</p>
<p>Many Venezuelans say the best president would be Lorenzo Mendoza, the billionaire head of the Polar brewing and food company, whose ratings dwarf mainstream politicians. He, however, has shown little inclination.</p>
<p>Assuming Mendoza remains on the sidelines and no Socialist Party faction displaces a Maduro candidacy, he seems to have a real chance of retaining the presidency despite popularity levels that have been halved during his rule to around 20-25 percent.</p>
<p>A bigger threat than the opposition would appear to be social protests at the economic crisis, or a Zimbabwe-style move from within the military.</p>
<p>Cliver Alcala, a former “Chavista” general who is now an outspoken critic of Maduro, said rank-and-file soldiers were fed up with personal penury and the politicization of their institution.</p>
<p>Even so, he saw little appetite for an uprising and said the military top brass appeared to have a vested interest in supporting Maduro due to the influence he allows them.</p>
<p>“There is more possibility of a popular social outburst due to lack of food and medicine, and the constant abuses of authority,” Alcala said.</p>
<p>That, however, is a cycle Venezuelans have lived through over and over in recent years: violent protests and national shutdowns coming at huge cost to life, property and productivity.</p>
<p>Through it all, Maduro has hung on – and for now is smiling again.</p>
| 5,778 |
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<p>Danielle Richardson, mother of Darius, 14, right, Dari’Anna, almost 1, Dalilah, 9, front left, and aunt to Nathan Richardson, 14, second from front left, looks at the Thanksgiving meal that was served at Kirtland Elementary on Thanksgiving Day. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 Albuquerque Journal</p>
<p>The cafeteria at Kirtland Elementary School had a distinctly homey feel to it on Thursday afternoon.</p>
<p>Each long, faux-wood table was covered in a festively-colored tablecloth and centerpiece of autumn leaves, pumpkins and gourds.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Cheery music floated in from unseen speakers.</p>
<p>But the best part were the smells emanating from a table at the front of the cafeteria, where volunteers were serving helpings of turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, corn and pumpkin pie to Kirtland students and their families.</p>
<p>The effort was headed up by Kirtland principal Rayetta Baty.</p>
<p>Kirtland Elementary School principal Rayetta Baty chats with Danielle Richardson and family during the Thanksgiving meal that was served there on Thursday afternoon. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>“Every year, we (Albuquerque Public Schools) give out food boxes for needy families,” Baty said. “It dawned on me that there are those who can’t even cook what we gave them.”</p>
<p>So Baty, with the help of a Kirtland teacher, prepared the food donated by Rivers of Living Water Outreach and brought it to the school to serve.</p>
<p>Baty called on her chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., to help serve the hot meal.</p>
<p>“Anytime we hear about people needing assistance within the community, we are more than happy to jump in,” said Deidre Gordon, vice president of the Iota Xi Omega chapter.</p>
<p>Baty, who said it was the first time the district had hosted an event like the one on Thursday, said all Kirtland students were invited to participate.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Fourth-grader Dalilah Richardson and her family were some of the first to arrive.</p>
<p>“It brings your family together,” she said of the holiday, adding that the dinner rolls were her favorite part of the meal.</p>
<p>Her little sister, Dari’Anna Richardson, sat across the table on mom Danielle Richardson’s lap, happily smearing mashed sweet potatoes across her face.</p>
<p>“I came here, my brothers came here, we all came to Kirtland,” Danielle Richardson said. “This is the first time we were invited here for Thanksgiving dinner.”</p>
<p>Baty said she hoped the event served as a way to remind students and their families that the district is looking out for them, even when they’re not in school.</p>
<p>“We’re a community school, so I thought what better place to be able to come,” Baty said. “Not only are we educating their children but we’re meeting their needs and making sure you were thought of during the holidays.”</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Volunteers cook up a Thanksgiving feast
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/1096949/kirtland-elementary-serves-up-home.html
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2017-11-23
| 2least
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Volunteers cook up a Thanksgiving feast
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Danielle Richardson, mother of Darius, 14, right, Dari’Anna, almost 1, Dalilah, 9, front left, and aunt to Nathan Richardson, 14, second from front left, looks at the Thanksgiving meal that was served at Kirtland Elementary on Thanksgiving Day. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 Albuquerque Journal</p>
<p>The cafeteria at Kirtland Elementary School had a distinctly homey feel to it on Thursday afternoon.</p>
<p>Each long, faux-wood table was covered in a festively-colored tablecloth and centerpiece of autumn leaves, pumpkins and gourds.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Cheery music floated in from unseen speakers.</p>
<p>But the best part were the smells emanating from a table at the front of the cafeteria, where volunteers were serving helpings of turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, corn and pumpkin pie to Kirtland students and their families.</p>
<p>The effort was headed up by Kirtland principal Rayetta Baty.</p>
<p>Kirtland Elementary School principal Rayetta Baty chats with Danielle Richardson and family during the Thanksgiving meal that was served there on Thursday afternoon. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>“Every year, we (Albuquerque Public Schools) give out food boxes for needy families,” Baty said. “It dawned on me that there are those who can’t even cook what we gave them.”</p>
<p>So Baty, with the help of a Kirtland teacher, prepared the food donated by Rivers of Living Water Outreach and brought it to the school to serve.</p>
<p>Baty called on her chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., to help serve the hot meal.</p>
<p>“Anytime we hear about people needing assistance within the community, we are more than happy to jump in,” said Deidre Gordon, vice president of the Iota Xi Omega chapter.</p>
<p>Baty, who said it was the first time the district had hosted an event like the one on Thursday, said all Kirtland students were invited to participate.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Fourth-grader Dalilah Richardson and her family were some of the first to arrive.</p>
<p>“It brings your family together,” she said of the holiday, adding that the dinner rolls were her favorite part of the meal.</p>
<p>Her little sister, Dari’Anna Richardson, sat across the table on mom Danielle Richardson’s lap, happily smearing mashed sweet potatoes across her face.</p>
<p>“I came here, my brothers came here, we all came to Kirtland,” Danielle Richardson said. “This is the first time we were invited here for Thanksgiving dinner.”</p>
<p>Baty said she hoped the event served as a way to remind students and their families that the district is looking out for them, even when they’re not in school.</p>
<p>“We’re a community school, so I thought what better place to be able to come,” Baty said. “Not only are we educating their children but we’re meeting their needs and making sure you were thought of during the holidays.”</p>
<p />
<p />
| 5,779 |
<p>U.S. Wheat Supply and Use</p>
<p>==============================================================================</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Item 2016/2017 2017/2018</p>
<p>prev Jul 12 prev Jul 12</p>
<p>==============================================================================</p>
<p>Area Million acres</p>
<p>Planted 50.2 50.2 46.1 * 45.7</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Harvested 43.9 43.9 38.5 * 38.1</p>
<p>Bushels</p>
<p>Yield per harv. acre 52.6 52.6 47.3 * 46.2</p>
<p>Million Bushels</p>
<p>Beginning stocks 976 976 1,161 1,184</p>
<p>Production 2,310 2,310 1,824 1,760</p>
<p>Imports 117 118 130 140</p>
<p>Supply, total 3,402 3,403 3,115 3,084</p>
<p>Food 955 955 955 955</p>
<p>Seed 61 61 66 66</p>
<p>Feed and residual 190 148 170 150</p>
<p>Domestic, total 1,206 1,164 1,191 1,171</p>
<p>Exports 1,035 1,055 1,000 975</p>
<p>Use, total 2,241 2,219 2,191 2,146</p>
<p>Ending stocks 1,161 1,184 924 938</p>
<p>avg farm prc ($/bu) 3.90 3.89 3.90 - 4.70 4.40 - 5.20</p>
<p>==============================================================================</p>
<p>U.S. Wheat by Class: Supply and Use</p>
<p>Year beginning Hard Hard Soft</p>
<p>June 1 Winter Spring Red White Durum Total</p>
<p>==============================================================================</p>
<p>2016/2017 (estimated)</p>
<p>Beginning Stocks 446 272 157 74 28 976</p>
<p>Production 1,082 493 345 286 104 2,310</p>
<p>Supply, Total 1,532 807 535 367 162 3,403</p>
<p>Domestic Use 484 251 228 98 102 1,164</p>
<p>Exports 455 321 92 163 24 1,055</p>
<p>Use, Total 939 572 320 262 126 2,219</p>
<p>Ending Stocks, Total 593 235 215 105 36 1,184</p>
<p>2017/2018 (projected)</p>
<p>Beginning Stocks 593 235 215 105 36 1,184</p>
<p>Production 758 385 306 254 57 1,760</p>
<p>Supply, Total 1,358 683 543 367 134 3,084</p>
<p>Domestic Use 495 271 217 100 88 1,171</p>
<p>Exports 415 290 90 160 20 975</p>
<p>Use, Total 910 561 307 260 108 2,146</p>
<p>Ending Stocks, Total Jul 448 122 236 107 26 938</p>
<p>Ending Stocks, Total Jun (NA) (NA) (NA) (NA) (NA) (NA)</p>
<p>==============================================================================</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>July 12, 2017 12:15 ET (16:15 GMT)</p>
|
USDA Supply/Demand: U.S. Wheat And Wheat By Class - Jul 12
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http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/07/12/usda-supplydemand-u-s-wheat-and-wheat-by-class-jul-12.html
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2017-07-12
| 0right
|
USDA Supply/Demand: U.S. Wheat And Wheat By Class - Jul 12
<p>U.S. Wheat Supply and Use</p>
<p>==============================================================================</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Item 2016/2017 2017/2018</p>
<p>prev Jul 12 prev Jul 12</p>
<p>==============================================================================</p>
<p>Area Million acres</p>
<p>Planted 50.2 50.2 46.1 * 45.7</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Harvested 43.9 43.9 38.5 * 38.1</p>
<p>Bushels</p>
<p>Yield per harv. acre 52.6 52.6 47.3 * 46.2</p>
<p>Million Bushels</p>
<p>Beginning stocks 976 976 1,161 1,184</p>
<p>Production 2,310 2,310 1,824 1,760</p>
<p>Imports 117 118 130 140</p>
<p>Supply, total 3,402 3,403 3,115 3,084</p>
<p>Food 955 955 955 955</p>
<p>Seed 61 61 66 66</p>
<p>Feed and residual 190 148 170 150</p>
<p>Domestic, total 1,206 1,164 1,191 1,171</p>
<p>Exports 1,035 1,055 1,000 975</p>
<p>Use, total 2,241 2,219 2,191 2,146</p>
<p>Ending stocks 1,161 1,184 924 938</p>
<p>avg farm prc ($/bu) 3.90 3.89 3.90 - 4.70 4.40 - 5.20</p>
<p>==============================================================================</p>
<p>U.S. Wheat by Class: Supply and Use</p>
<p>Year beginning Hard Hard Soft</p>
<p>June 1 Winter Spring Red White Durum Total</p>
<p>==============================================================================</p>
<p>2016/2017 (estimated)</p>
<p>Beginning Stocks 446 272 157 74 28 976</p>
<p>Production 1,082 493 345 286 104 2,310</p>
<p>Supply, Total 1,532 807 535 367 162 3,403</p>
<p>Domestic Use 484 251 228 98 102 1,164</p>
<p>Exports 455 321 92 163 24 1,055</p>
<p>Use, Total 939 572 320 262 126 2,219</p>
<p>Ending Stocks, Total 593 235 215 105 36 1,184</p>
<p>2017/2018 (projected)</p>
<p>Beginning Stocks 593 235 215 105 36 1,184</p>
<p>Production 758 385 306 254 57 1,760</p>
<p>Supply, Total 1,358 683 543 367 134 3,084</p>
<p>Domestic Use 495 271 217 100 88 1,171</p>
<p>Exports 415 290 90 160 20 975</p>
<p>Use, Total 910 561 307 260 108 2,146</p>
<p>Ending Stocks, Total Jul 448 122 236 107 26 938</p>
<p>Ending Stocks, Total Jun (NA) (NA) (NA) (NA) (NA) (NA)</p>
<p>==============================================================================</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>July 12, 2017 12:15 ET (16:15 GMT)</p>
| 5,780 |
<p>CBS's Bob Schieffer hit Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie from the left on Sunday's Face the Nation, claiming he has "demonized" teachers and urging him to give some "straight talk" about the necessity to raise taxes. After asking if he thinks "Governor Walker out there in Wisconsin has gone too far?" in trying to end collective bargaining, Schieffer ludicrously asserted "everybody in this country on all sides of this thinks we need education reform," but he wanted to know if Christie realized his stance has "demonized teachers and will raise questions in young people's minds as to whether they want to go into the profession?" "Banal Bob" soon implored Christie with his standard plea: "You have a reputation as a straight talker, I think. Do you believe that the budgetary problems across this country can be resolved without raising taxes?" Christie zinged Schieffer with solid retorts to Schieffer's left-wing presumptions, telling Schieffer "I disagree with the premise of your question which is that everybody agrees there should be education reform. It's everybody but the teachers union who believes that everything is fine." On increasing taxes: "We raised taxes and fees 115 times in the last eight years. And we still have one of the worst budget problems in America." From the Sunday, February 27 Face the Nation on CBS:</p>
<p>BOB SCHIEFFER: You really came on hard against the teachers' union. I think everybody in this country on all sides of this thinks we need education reform, that we got to do something to make our educational system better. Do you worry that the stance you have taken has somehow demonized teachers and will raise questions in young people's minds as to whether they want to go into the profession?</p>
<p>GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE: No, I don't. I think quite the opposite. Listen, I think that the teachers in New Jersey and there's thousands and thousands of great ones, deserve a union as good as they are. They don't have it. And I disagree with the premise of your question which is that everybody agrees there should be education reform. It's everybody but the teachers union who believes that everything is fine. If you listen to them in New Jersey they'll tell you everything is fine. It's great. It's great except for the 104,000 kids in New Jersey that are stuck in 200 chronically failing schools....</p>
<p>SCHIEFFER: You have a reputation as a straight talker, I think. Do you believe that the budgetary problems across this country can be resolved without raising taxes?</p>
<p>CHRISTIE: Let's take New Jersey, for instance, Bob. We raised taxes and fees 115 times in the last eight years. And we still have one of the worst budget problems in America. And so I think unless you deal with the underlying structural expense problems - and we've been dealing with them in New Jersey - there's no amount of taxation will keep up with the amount of spending increase that we have....</p>
<p>- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. <a href="http://twitter.com/BrentHBaker" type="external">Click here</a> to follow him on Twitter.</p>
|
Schieffer Hits Christie for How He 'Demonized Teachers' and Presses Him to Offer 'Straight Talk' on Raising Taxes
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2011-02-27
| 0right
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Schieffer Hits Christie for How He 'Demonized Teachers' and Presses Him to Offer 'Straight Talk' on Raising Taxes
<p>CBS's Bob Schieffer hit Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie from the left on Sunday's Face the Nation, claiming he has "demonized" teachers and urging him to give some "straight talk" about the necessity to raise taxes. After asking if he thinks "Governor Walker out there in Wisconsin has gone too far?" in trying to end collective bargaining, Schieffer ludicrously asserted "everybody in this country on all sides of this thinks we need education reform," but he wanted to know if Christie realized his stance has "demonized teachers and will raise questions in young people's minds as to whether they want to go into the profession?" "Banal Bob" soon implored Christie with his standard plea: "You have a reputation as a straight talker, I think. Do you believe that the budgetary problems across this country can be resolved without raising taxes?" Christie zinged Schieffer with solid retorts to Schieffer's left-wing presumptions, telling Schieffer "I disagree with the premise of your question which is that everybody agrees there should be education reform. It's everybody but the teachers union who believes that everything is fine." On increasing taxes: "We raised taxes and fees 115 times in the last eight years. And we still have one of the worst budget problems in America." From the Sunday, February 27 Face the Nation on CBS:</p>
<p>BOB SCHIEFFER: You really came on hard against the teachers' union. I think everybody in this country on all sides of this thinks we need education reform, that we got to do something to make our educational system better. Do you worry that the stance you have taken has somehow demonized teachers and will raise questions in young people's minds as to whether they want to go into the profession?</p>
<p>GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE: No, I don't. I think quite the opposite. Listen, I think that the teachers in New Jersey and there's thousands and thousands of great ones, deserve a union as good as they are. They don't have it. And I disagree with the premise of your question which is that everybody agrees there should be education reform. It's everybody but the teachers union who believes that everything is fine. If you listen to them in New Jersey they'll tell you everything is fine. It's great. It's great except for the 104,000 kids in New Jersey that are stuck in 200 chronically failing schools....</p>
<p>SCHIEFFER: You have a reputation as a straight talker, I think. Do you believe that the budgetary problems across this country can be resolved without raising taxes?</p>
<p>CHRISTIE: Let's take New Jersey, for instance, Bob. We raised taxes and fees 115 times in the last eight years. And we still have one of the worst budget problems in America. And so I think unless you deal with the underlying structural expense problems - and we've been dealing with them in New Jersey - there's no amount of taxation will keep up with the amount of spending increase that we have....</p>
<p>- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. <a href="http://twitter.com/BrentHBaker" type="external">Click here</a> to follow him on Twitter.</p>
| 5,781 |
<p>A man, who appears to have acted alone,&#160; <a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/edmonton-attack-terrorism-truck-isis/article36449925/" type="external">carried out</a> a terrorist rampage in Canada overnight, leaving five people in the hospital, including one police officer who was intentionally hit by a car and then stabbed multiple times.</p>
<p>Somewhat unsurprisingly, even though this incident is serious and warrants high level scrutiny, U.S. President Donald Trump has not publicly responded to the incident as of yet. Instead, he has stuck to tweeting hate at the news media, the NFL, and provocative nonsense about North Korea — all in just the last twenty four hours.</p>
<p>It’s not as though Trump has shown himself in the past as capable of responding appropriately to incidents like this one. After a terror attack in London earlier this year, he took to criticizing the city’s mayor on Twitter — because, of course he did. Following a terror attack in San Bernardino, California, in 2015, Trump proposed a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslims entering the United States — something he’s worked to enact since becoming president.</p>
<p>Furthermore, thanks to Trump’s belligerence, the United States’ relationship with Canada has become increasingly strained in recent months. Earlier this year, Trump abruptly imposed a massive tariff on Canadian lumber, while also working to undercut the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, which Canada is part of, along with the United States and Mexico.</p>
<p>Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is among those politicians who have responded to the incident, commenting to reporters on Sunday morning as follows:</p>
<p>‘The horrific events last night in downtown Edmonton have left us shocked and angry. It’s left us shocked at the indiscriminate cruelty and angry that someone might target their hatred at places where we gather with our families and friends.’</p>
<p>Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson — who leads the area where the attack took place — commented proactively, urging residents to not be “intimidated by violence,” adding a call for locals to attend a vigil planned for Sunday night designed to promote unity among the community. As he said, “This is something that touches all of us.”</p>
<p>Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also commented on the situation, saying:</p>
<p>‘We cannot — and will not — let violent extremism take root in our communities. We know that Canada’s strength comes from our diversity, and we will not be cowed by those who seek to divide us or promote fear.’</p>
<p>The weekend Canadian terror incident, as The Globe and Mail <a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/edmonton-attack-terrorism-truck-isis/article36449925/" type="external">reports</a>, “began… when a white Chevy Malibu plowed through a barricade into a police officer directing traffic outside an Football Games game… on military appreciation night.”</p>
<p>The attacker got out of his car and stabbed the officer he had hit multiple times, fleeing the scene on foot. A couple of hours later, he was found driving a U-Haul, and in the police pursuit of his vehicle, he hit multiple pedestrians, apparently sending four to the hospital. An Islamic State flag was found inside his vehicle.</p>
<p>The incident in Canada isn’t even the only one to rock the Western world over the weekend. In Marseille, France, two young women were stabbed to death Sunday in an incident that the Islamic State eventually claimed responsibility for.</p>
<p>Guess what? Like the pathetic excuse for a leader that he is, Donald Trump has not yet publicly responded to that incident either.</p>
<p>Featured Image via&#160; <a href="http://www.gettyimages.com/license/856258764" type="external">MICHAEL MUKAI/ AFP/ Getty Images</a></p>
|
Terror Attack Rocks Football Game As Police Officers Working Stadium Are Targeted
| true |
http://bipartisanreport.com/2017/10/01/terror-attack-rocks-football-game-as-police-officers-working-stadium-are-targeted/
|
2017-10-01
| 4left
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Terror Attack Rocks Football Game As Police Officers Working Stadium Are Targeted
<p>A man, who appears to have acted alone,&#160; <a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/edmonton-attack-terrorism-truck-isis/article36449925/" type="external">carried out</a> a terrorist rampage in Canada overnight, leaving five people in the hospital, including one police officer who was intentionally hit by a car and then stabbed multiple times.</p>
<p>Somewhat unsurprisingly, even though this incident is serious and warrants high level scrutiny, U.S. President Donald Trump has not publicly responded to the incident as of yet. Instead, he has stuck to tweeting hate at the news media, the NFL, and provocative nonsense about North Korea — all in just the last twenty four hours.</p>
<p>It’s not as though Trump has shown himself in the past as capable of responding appropriately to incidents like this one. After a terror attack in London earlier this year, he took to criticizing the city’s mayor on Twitter — because, of course he did. Following a terror attack in San Bernardino, California, in 2015, Trump proposed a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslims entering the United States — something he’s worked to enact since becoming president.</p>
<p>Furthermore, thanks to Trump’s belligerence, the United States’ relationship with Canada has become increasingly strained in recent months. Earlier this year, Trump abruptly imposed a massive tariff on Canadian lumber, while also working to undercut the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, which Canada is part of, along with the United States and Mexico.</p>
<p>Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is among those politicians who have responded to the incident, commenting to reporters on Sunday morning as follows:</p>
<p>‘The horrific events last night in downtown Edmonton have left us shocked and angry. It’s left us shocked at the indiscriminate cruelty and angry that someone might target their hatred at places where we gather with our families and friends.’</p>
<p>Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson — who leads the area where the attack took place — commented proactively, urging residents to not be “intimidated by violence,” adding a call for locals to attend a vigil planned for Sunday night designed to promote unity among the community. As he said, “This is something that touches all of us.”</p>
<p>Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also commented on the situation, saying:</p>
<p>‘We cannot — and will not — let violent extremism take root in our communities. We know that Canada’s strength comes from our diversity, and we will not be cowed by those who seek to divide us or promote fear.’</p>
<p>The weekend Canadian terror incident, as The Globe and Mail <a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/edmonton-attack-terrorism-truck-isis/article36449925/" type="external">reports</a>, “began… when a white Chevy Malibu plowed through a barricade into a police officer directing traffic outside an Football Games game… on military appreciation night.”</p>
<p>The attacker got out of his car and stabbed the officer he had hit multiple times, fleeing the scene on foot. A couple of hours later, he was found driving a U-Haul, and in the police pursuit of his vehicle, he hit multiple pedestrians, apparently sending four to the hospital. An Islamic State flag was found inside his vehicle.</p>
<p>The incident in Canada isn’t even the only one to rock the Western world over the weekend. In Marseille, France, two young women were stabbed to death Sunday in an incident that the Islamic State eventually claimed responsibility for.</p>
<p>Guess what? Like the pathetic excuse for a leader that he is, Donald Trump has not yet publicly responded to that incident either.</p>
<p>Featured Image via&#160; <a href="http://www.gettyimages.com/license/856258764" type="external">MICHAEL MUKAI/ AFP/ Getty Images</a></p>
| 5,782 |
<p>PayPal and Mastercard signed a deal Tuesday that aims to make it easier for PayPal users to pay with a Mastercard.</p>
<p>The announcement comes after PayPal Holdings Inc. signed a similar deal with credit card issuer Visa Inc. in July.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Mastercard will be more prominently featured on PayPal's app and website and its other payment service, Venmo. It will also allow PayPal users to select a Mastercard as a default payment option.</p>
<p>Under the new deal, PayPal and Venmo users will also be able to transfer money to their Mastercard debit cards instantly. Previously, it would take a couple of days for the funds to be available in bank accounts.</p>
<p>The changes are expected to be made in the first half of 2017.</p>
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PayPal expands its partnership with Mastercard
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/09/06/paypal-expands-its-partnership-with-mastercard.html
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2016-09-06
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PayPal expands its partnership with Mastercard
<p>PayPal and Mastercard signed a deal Tuesday that aims to make it easier for PayPal users to pay with a Mastercard.</p>
<p>The announcement comes after PayPal Holdings Inc. signed a similar deal with credit card issuer Visa Inc. in July.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Mastercard will be more prominently featured on PayPal's app and website and its other payment service, Venmo. It will also allow PayPal users to select a Mastercard as a default payment option.</p>
<p>Under the new deal, PayPal and Venmo users will also be able to transfer money to their Mastercard debit cards instantly. Previously, it would take a couple of days for the funds to be available in bank accounts.</p>
<p>The changes are expected to be made in the first half of 2017.</p>
| 5,783 |
<p>In the United States, Ivanka Trump is a controversial figure, battling persistent questions about business conflicts and criticism. To many, she is what many women aspire to be.</p>
<p />
<p>She is now being criticized for not doing more to moderate her father's policies toward women.</p>
<p>In China, Ms. Trump is widely adored.</p>
<p />
<p>Her lavish lifestyle and business acumen resonate with many young professionals who are hungry for fame and fortune in a society that often equates material wealth with success.</p>
<p />
<p>"She's pretty, she has her own career, she's hardworking and she has a beautiful family," said Ms. Wang, 26, a student at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing. "She inspires me."</p>
<p />
<p>She is called a "goddess" on social media. A video of her daughter singing in Chinese went viral, attracting tens of millions of viewers. Working mothers have latched onto Ms. Trump's brand of have-it-all feminism, even if most lack her financial resources, and entrepreneurs have studied her speeches for clues on making successful pitches.</p>
<p />
<p>According to the New York Times, "Some also believe Ms. Trump embodies Confucian values, pointing to her decision to convert to Judaism for her husband and her steadfast defense of her father, both seen as illustrations of a devotion to family."</p>
<p />
<p>Also, according to with The New York Times, "Chinese companies have also tried to profit from Ms. Trump's popularity, filing hundreds of trademark applications using her name - Yi Wan Ka in Chinese - on products and services such as shoes, spa treatments, plastic surgery, and pottery."</p>
<p />
<p>The Notably liberal newspaper further went on? Young Chinese women working in sectors like technology and finance have been especially taken by Ms. Trump, whom they see as an elegant symbol of power and ambition. They say they have sought to mimic her tenacity and confidence as they confront chauvinism and stereotypes in the workplace and in family life.</p>
<p />
<p>For the record. We at the Goldwater wear her perfume.</p>
|
Goddess Ivanka Isn't So Bad in China
| true |
http://thegoldwater.com/news/2113-Goddess-Ivanka-Isn-t-So-Bad-in-China
|
2017-04-06
| 0right
|
Goddess Ivanka Isn't So Bad in China
<p>In the United States, Ivanka Trump is a controversial figure, battling persistent questions about business conflicts and criticism. To many, she is what many women aspire to be.</p>
<p />
<p>She is now being criticized for not doing more to moderate her father's policies toward women.</p>
<p>In China, Ms. Trump is widely adored.</p>
<p />
<p>Her lavish lifestyle and business acumen resonate with many young professionals who are hungry for fame and fortune in a society that often equates material wealth with success.</p>
<p />
<p>"She's pretty, she has her own career, she's hardworking and she has a beautiful family," said Ms. Wang, 26, a student at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing. "She inspires me."</p>
<p />
<p>She is called a "goddess" on social media. A video of her daughter singing in Chinese went viral, attracting tens of millions of viewers. Working mothers have latched onto Ms. Trump's brand of have-it-all feminism, even if most lack her financial resources, and entrepreneurs have studied her speeches for clues on making successful pitches.</p>
<p />
<p>According to the New York Times, "Some also believe Ms. Trump embodies Confucian values, pointing to her decision to convert to Judaism for her husband and her steadfast defense of her father, both seen as illustrations of a devotion to family."</p>
<p />
<p>Also, according to with The New York Times, "Chinese companies have also tried to profit from Ms. Trump's popularity, filing hundreds of trademark applications using her name - Yi Wan Ka in Chinese - on products and services such as shoes, spa treatments, plastic surgery, and pottery."</p>
<p />
<p>The Notably liberal newspaper further went on? Young Chinese women working in sectors like technology and finance have been especially taken by Ms. Trump, whom they see as an elegant symbol of power and ambition. They say they have sought to mimic her tenacity and confidence as they confront chauvinism and stereotypes in the workplace and in family life.</p>
<p />
<p>For the record. We at the Goldwater wear her perfume.</p>
| 5,784 |
<p>Yolanda Guevara knows she could be called up at any moment.</p>
<p>Guevara is a rear detachment commander for her Army Reserve unit, which has already been deployed to Kuwait. It’s a matter of time before she would have to leave her husband and three children in North Carolina to join her unit. Even now, she is sent away from home for anywhere from three days to two weeks to various places in the country–”a job she says would be difficult to manage without the support of her husband.</p>
<p>“He works part time but whenever I have to go out –¦ he’s there for me,” Yolanda says. “I don’t think I could be in the military without him.”</p>
<p>For many military families, the thought of being deployed would be enough to deal with, but Guevara also faces the possibility that her husband, Juan, will be deported back to El Salvador in a few months.</p>
<p>Juan crossed the border into Arizona without inspection in 2000. A year later, severe earthquakes hit El Salvador, and he was able to apply for “Temporary Protected Status” that gives him permission to live and work in the U.S. Every year, the two fill out forms to renew this status.</p>
<p>In 2007, after saving up enough money, they decided to apply for Juan’s permanent residency. But at the immigration appointment late last year, they were told he is ineligible for citizenship because he crossed illegally.</p>
<p>When Guevara explained her situation to the immigration officer, the response was less than helpful. “I told him, –˜My unit is going to be deployed, so I’m afraid–” what if I’m gone and I’m stationed over in Iraq or Kuwait, and my husband’s [status] expires?'” she says. “What’s going to happen to my kids?”</p>
<p>She says the officer responded, “You worry about that when that happens.” Advocates say many military families are in the same boat. Though official figures aren’t collected, Lt. Col. Margaret Stock, an immigration attorney who helped establish the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Military Assistance Program, says she gets at least one phone call a day from military personnel with immigration troubles.</p>
<p>Stock says it is a problem that not only interferes with the lives of soldiers and their families, but ultimately also hampers military readiness. “You would not believe the amount of resources that are being spent right now trying to deal with these problems,” says Stock, whose program provides military families with pro bono assistance. “We just have soldiers who are in tears–”soldiers and sailors who just can’t deal with their family situation being unsettled.”</p>
<p>Most problems stem from the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which established a strict set of changes in immigration laws, including a rule that does not provide waivers for any offenses–”such as crossing the border illegally–”for immigrants who are seeking permanent residence or other legal status.</p>
<p>Stock says the ’96 law is responsible for a large chunk of undocumented immigrants that the country has today. In testifying before Congress earlier this year, she referred to the “parole” policy for undocumented Cubans and said putting a similar policy in place for the military families could provide a solution.</p>
<p>In May, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren introduced a bill, H.R. 6020, that would provide such relief–”by allowing for discretion that currently lacks in immigration law in handling noncitizen military families members.</p>
<p>But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank that advocates for controlled immigration, says making exceptions for the noncitizen spouses of soldiers is like giving a criminal a “get-out-of-jail-free card.” With 12 million undocumented immigrants, the country can’t afford to look at each case and keep making exceptions.</p>
<p>“If you’re saying the law needs to have wiggle room, I agree,” he says. “But our immigration law is nothing but wiggle room. The immigration lawyers have a motto: –˜It ain’t over ’til the alien wins.'”</p>
<p>Stock says that people who tend to make that argument never actually intend to let immigrants through. “The irony of the whole immigration debate is that [they] don’t want anything to change,” she says.</p>
<p>Deborah Notkin, an immigration lawyer in New York and member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s board of governors, says the country will always have a high number of immigrants, but that shouldn’t be a reason why these families aren’t helped.</p>
<p>“We don’t want to be a country that turns its back on human compassion,” she says. “It’s not okay to take a woman who’s been here for 20 years and has four children and say we have to turn our back on them because we have too many here already.”</p>
<p>Rather than sit back and wait to see what would happen, Guevara decided to look for help. She discussed the issue with her commander who then talked to her battalion commander. They decided to put her in charge of her unit from a station in the U.S. After two months of pushing for help, a battalion lawyer referred her to Stock’s program. She’s now working with a lawyer to find a way to reverse the deportation process.</p>
<p>Unless the case succeeds, the family’s only hope is for the protected status for El Salvadorians to be extended before it expires in March. If it’s extended, Juan would be able to reapply for his stay. If it’s not, he faces his deportation proceeding. The deportation, Guevara says, would mean she’d have to quit the military and consider moving with her family to either El Salvador or Mexico. “I don’t really want to leave the military because I’ve only been with it for seven years,” she says. “I want to stay and get a career in it, but my family comes first. So it’s kind of hard for me, but I will have to leave. There’s no other way.”</p>
|
Deployed And Deported
| false |
http://chicagoreporter.com/deployed-and-deported/
|
2008-10-31
| 3left-center
|
Deployed And Deported
<p>Yolanda Guevara knows she could be called up at any moment.</p>
<p>Guevara is a rear detachment commander for her Army Reserve unit, which has already been deployed to Kuwait. It’s a matter of time before she would have to leave her husband and three children in North Carolina to join her unit. Even now, she is sent away from home for anywhere from three days to two weeks to various places in the country–”a job she says would be difficult to manage without the support of her husband.</p>
<p>“He works part time but whenever I have to go out –¦ he’s there for me,” Yolanda says. “I don’t think I could be in the military without him.”</p>
<p>For many military families, the thought of being deployed would be enough to deal with, but Guevara also faces the possibility that her husband, Juan, will be deported back to El Salvador in a few months.</p>
<p>Juan crossed the border into Arizona without inspection in 2000. A year later, severe earthquakes hit El Salvador, and he was able to apply for “Temporary Protected Status” that gives him permission to live and work in the U.S. Every year, the two fill out forms to renew this status.</p>
<p>In 2007, after saving up enough money, they decided to apply for Juan’s permanent residency. But at the immigration appointment late last year, they were told he is ineligible for citizenship because he crossed illegally.</p>
<p>When Guevara explained her situation to the immigration officer, the response was less than helpful. “I told him, –˜My unit is going to be deployed, so I’m afraid–” what if I’m gone and I’m stationed over in Iraq or Kuwait, and my husband’s [status] expires?'” she says. “What’s going to happen to my kids?”</p>
<p>She says the officer responded, “You worry about that when that happens.” Advocates say many military families are in the same boat. Though official figures aren’t collected, Lt. Col. Margaret Stock, an immigration attorney who helped establish the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Military Assistance Program, says she gets at least one phone call a day from military personnel with immigration troubles.</p>
<p>Stock says it is a problem that not only interferes with the lives of soldiers and their families, but ultimately also hampers military readiness. “You would not believe the amount of resources that are being spent right now trying to deal with these problems,” says Stock, whose program provides military families with pro bono assistance. “We just have soldiers who are in tears–”soldiers and sailors who just can’t deal with their family situation being unsettled.”</p>
<p>Most problems stem from the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which established a strict set of changes in immigration laws, including a rule that does not provide waivers for any offenses–”such as crossing the border illegally–”for immigrants who are seeking permanent residence or other legal status.</p>
<p>Stock says the ’96 law is responsible for a large chunk of undocumented immigrants that the country has today. In testifying before Congress earlier this year, she referred to the “parole” policy for undocumented Cubans and said putting a similar policy in place for the military families could provide a solution.</p>
<p>In May, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren introduced a bill, H.R. 6020, that would provide such relief–”by allowing for discretion that currently lacks in immigration law in handling noncitizen military families members.</p>
<p>But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank that advocates for controlled immigration, says making exceptions for the noncitizen spouses of soldiers is like giving a criminal a “get-out-of-jail-free card.” With 12 million undocumented immigrants, the country can’t afford to look at each case and keep making exceptions.</p>
<p>“If you’re saying the law needs to have wiggle room, I agree,” he says. “But our immigration law is nothing but wiggle room. The immigration lawyers have a motto: –˜It ain’t over ’til the alien wins.'”</p>
<p>Stock says that people who tend to make that argument never actually intend to let immigrants through. “The irony of the whole immigration debate is that [they] don’t want anything to change,” she says.</p>
<p>Deborah Notkin, an immigration lawyer in New York and member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s board of governors, says the country will always have a high number of immigrants, but that shouldn’t be a reason why these families aren’t helped.</p>
<p>“We don’t want to be a country that turns its back on human compassion,” she says. “It’s not okay to take a woman who’s been here for 20 years and has four children and say we have to turn our back on them because we have too many here already.”</p>
<p>Rather than sit back and wait to see what would happen, Guevara decided to look for help. She discussed the issue with her commander who then talked to her battalion commander. They decided to put her in charge of her unit from a station in the U.S. After two months of pushing for help, a battalion lawyer referred her to Stock’s program. She’s now working with a lawyer to find a way to reverse the deportation process.</p>
<p>Unless the case succeeds, the family’s only hope is for the protected status for El Salvadorians to be extended before it expires in March. If it’s extended, Juan would be able to reapply for his stay. If it’s not, he faces his deportation proceeding. The deportation, Guevara says, would mean she’d have to quit the military and consider moving with her family to either El Salvador or Mexico. “I don’t really want to leave the military because I’ve only been with it for seven years,” she says. “I want to stay and get a career in it, but my family comes first. So it’s kind of hard for me, but I will have to leave. There’s no other way.”</p>
| 5,785 |
<p>Photo by paz.ca | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>Over the past few months, social media companies have come under increasing scrutiny from media critics, watchdog groups, and US congressional committees.</p>
<p>Much of the criticism has focused upon how Facebook and Twitter facilitated the propagation of inflammatory messages created by Russian agents during the 2016 US presidential elections, ostensibly to polarize American voters. Self-serve advertising, “filter bubbles,” and other aspects of social media have made mass targeted manipulation easy and efficient.</p>
<p>Yet some are voicing deeper concerns about the social, psychological, cognitive, and emotional effects of social media–particularly as they impact children.</p>
<p>For example, Facebook has come under attack from an unlikely group of critics: some of its own former executives. Their comments coincide with the debut of “ <a href="https://messengerkids.com/" type="external">Messenger Kids</a>,” Facebook’s latest product. According to reports its target audience is 6- to 12-year old children. (Like most other social media apps, Facebook does not allow people younger than 13 years old to create accounts.)</p>
<p>Despite Facebook CEO <a href="" type="internal">Mark Zuckerberg’s recent resolution</a> to “fix” Facebook in 2018, “Messenger Kids” reveals a different agenda: to scoop up a new generation of users, habituate them to the virtual life, increase market share, and develop brand loyalty in a highly competitive marketplace. Facebook’s first president, <a href="" type="internal">Sean Parker, acknowledged late last year</a> that its creators intentionally designed the platform to consume as much of users’ time and attention as possible. According to Parker, “likes” and “posts” serve as “a social validation feedback loop” exploiting the psychological need for social acceptance. “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains,” he said (quoted in Allen 2017).</p>
<p>Why would the architects of Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, and other social media platforms resort to these techniques? Facebook’s business model is based on revenue generated from advertising. An early Facebook investor, <a href="" type="internal">Roger McNamee (2018), recently wrote</a>:</p>
<p>Smartphones changed the advertising game completely. It took only a few years for billions of people to have an all-purpose content delivery system easily accessible sixteen hours or more a day. This turned media into a battle to hold users’ attention as long as possible. .&#160; .Why pay a newspaper in the hopes of catching the attention of a certain portion of its audience, when you can pay Facebook to reach exactly those people and no one else?</p>
<p>Sean Parker and Roger McNamee aren’t alone. Venture capitalist and former Facebook VP <a href="" type="internal">Chamath Palihapitiya admitted last month</a> that he regrets helping the company expand its global reach. (Facebook has more than two billion users worldwide and is still growing.)</p>
<p>“We have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. . .you are being programmed,” Palihapitiya told an audience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He added, “No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem–this is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem. . .Bad actors can now manipulate large swathes of people to do anything you want. It’s just a really, really bad state of affairs” (Palihapitiya 2017).</p>
<p>Yet another former Facebook executive, Antonio García-Martínez, went public last summer with his <a href="" type="internal">criticism</a> of the company’s techniques:</p>
<p>If used very cleverly, with lots of machine-learning iteration and systematic trial-and-error, the canny marketer can find just the right admixture of age, geography, time of day, and music or film tastes that demarcate a demographic winner of an audience. The “clickthrough rate,” to use the advertiser’s parlance, doesn’t lie. . .Facebook has and does offer “psychometric”-type targeting, where the goal is to define a subset of the marketing audience that an advertiser thinks is particularly susceptible to their message. . .Sometimes data behaves unethically. . .Facebook will never try to limit such use of their data unless the public uproar reaches such a crescendo as to be un-mutable (García-Martínez 2017).</p>
<p>Such statements are startling–but not unprecedented.</p>
<p>For years social scientists have warned about how technology can trigger behavioral addictions. MIT anthropologist Natasha Schüll, who conducted research on Las Vegas casinos over a 20-year period, learned that slot machines pull some gamblers into a disorienting “machine zone.” (Schüll’s research builds upon the pioneering work of UC Berkeley anthropologist Laura Nader, who developed the concept of “controlling processes”–how individuals and groups are persuaded to participate in their own domination.) After interviewing machine designers, casino architects and hardcore gamblers among others, Schüll concludes in her book <a href="" type="internal">Addiction by Design</a> that the magnetic attraction of slot machines is due in part to their deeply interactive features. Gambling industry experts openly talk about maximizing “time-on-device.” As one consultant told Schüll, “The key is duration of play. I want to keep you there as long as humanly possible–that’s the whole trick, that’s what makes you lose” (Schüll 2012: 58; see also Nader 1997).</p>
<p>New York University business professor Adam Alter, author of <a href="" type="internal">Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Getting Us Hooked</a> (2017), argues that Facebook’s “like” button has a comparable effect. Every post, photo, or status update is a gamble that might result in a total loss (zero likes) or a jackpot (going viral). Twitter “retweets,” Instagram “likes,” and YouTube “views” work the same way. (It’s worth mentioning that Google’s YouTube and Amazon are also making aggressive <a href="" type="internal">efforts to corner the youth market</a>.)</p>
<p>Last month, just three weeks before Christmas, Facebook issued a press release declaring the arrival of “Messenger Kids.” According to the company, the app was developed in consultation with parents and “parenting experts” to keep it safe for kids. Facebook has also promised to limit the collection of data on children, and to not use the app for advertising.</p>
<p>Such promises are disingenuous. It is clear that “Messenger Kids” is part of a long-term strategy designed to get children hooked on its social networking habits (“likes,” text messaging, filter bubbling) as early as possible. In other words, to get kids’ dopamine levels surging in the formative years–so that frequent dopamine bursts become a normal part of life. Once that happens, it will be even easier for future social media companies (which are fundamentally advertising firms) to feed billions of behavioral addicts customized propaganda.</p>
<p>Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued <a href="https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/american-academy-of-pediatrics-announces-new-recommendations-for-childrens-media-use.aspx" type="external">recommendations</a> outlining limits on screen time for children, noting that “problems begin when media use displaces physical activity, hands-on exploration and face-to-face social interaction in the real world, which is critical to learning” (AAP 2016).</p>
<p>“Messenger Kids” will potentially drive children even deeper into the virtual world. Perhaps Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World has arrived–for as the prescient media critic Neil Postman once wrote:</p>
<p>in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. . .As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions” (Postman 1985: vii).</p>
<p>Last month, Chamath Palihapitiya told CNBC that his 5- and 9-year old children get no screen time at all, even though they constantly ask for it. Bill Gates, Jonathan Ive (who designed the iPad), the late Steve Jobs, and many other well-known figures in the technology industry also placed strict limits on their children’s use of technology. They clearly understand the cognitive, psychological, and emotional fallout of the devices they helped to create. If these legends have taken drastic measures to protect their sons and daughters from the dark side of the virtual life, perhaps more of us should follow their lead.</p>
<p>Beyond the immediacy of our individual and familial habits and practices looms a larger social problem: the possibility of a future in which authoritarian institutions have the tremendous capacity to mold the ideas, attitudes and behaviors of audiences captured by their own compulsions.</p>
<p>References</p>
<p>AAP (2016). “ <a href="https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/american-academy-of-pediatrics-announces-new-recommendations-for-childrens-media-use.aspx" type="external">American Academy of Pediatrics Announces New Recommendations for Children’s Media Use</a>.” October 21.</p>
<p>Allen, Mike (2017). “ <a href="" type="internal">Sean Parker Unloads on Facebook</a>.” Axios.com, November 9.</p>
<p>Alter, Adam (2017). Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Getting Us Hooked. New York: Penguin Books.</p>
<p>García-Martínez, Antonio (2017). “ <a href="" type="internal">I’m an Ex-Facebook Exec: Don’t Believe What They Tell You Maabout Ads</a>.” The Guardian, May 2.</p>
<p>McNamee, Roger (2018). “ <a href="" type="internal">How to Fix Facebook–Before It Fixes Us</a>.” Washington Monthly, January.</p>
<p>Nader, Laura (1997). “Controlling Processes: Tracing the Dynamic Components of Power.” Current Anthropology 38(5): 711-738.</p>
<p>Palihapitiya, Chamath (2017). “ <a href="" type="internal">Money as an Instrument of Change</a>.” Talk presented to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, November 13.</p>
<p>Postman, Neil (1985). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin Books.</p>
<p>Schüll, Natasha (2012). Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.</p>
|
Starting Them Young: Is Facebook Hooking Children on Social Media?
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2018/01/12/starting-them-young-is-facebook-hooking-children-on-social-media/
|
2018-01-12
| 4left
|
Starting Them Young: Is Facebook Hooking Children on Social Media?
<p>Photo by paz.ca | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>Over the past few months, social media companies have come under increasing scrutiny from media critics, watchdog groups, and US congressional committees.</p>
<p>Much of the criticism has focused upon how Facebook and Twitter facilitated the propagation of inflammatory messages created by Russian agents during the 2016 US presidential elections, ostensibly to polarize American voters. Self-serve advertising, “filter bubbles,” and other aspects of social media have made mass targeted manipulation easy and efficient.</p>
<p>Yet some are voicing deeper concerns about the social, psychological, cognitive, and emotional effects of social media–particularly as they impact children.</p>
<p>For example, Facebook has come under attack from an unlikely group of critics: some of its own former executives. Their comments coincide with the debut of “ <a href="https://messengerkids.com/" type="external">Messenger Kids</a>,” Facebook’s latest product. According to reports its target audience is 6- to 12-year old children. (Like most other social media apps, Facebook does not allow people younger than 13 years old to create accounts.)</p>
<p>Despite Facebook CEO <a href="" type="internal">Mark Zuckerberg’s recent resolution</a> to “fix” Facebook in 2018, “Messenger Kids” reveals a different agenda: to scoop up a new generation of users, habituate them to the virtual life, increase market share, and develop brand loyalty in a highly competitive marketplace. Facebook’s first president, <a href="" type="internal">Sean Parker, acknowledged late last year</a> that its creators intentionally designed the platform to consume as much of users’ time and attention as possible. According to Parker, “likes” and “posts” serve as “a social validation feedback loop” exploiting the psychological need for social acceptance. “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains,” he said (quoted in Allen 2017).</p>
<p>Why would the architects of Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, and other social media platforms resort to these techniques? Facebook’s business model is based on revenue generated from advertising. An early Facebook investor, <a href="" type="internal">Roger McNamee (2018), recently wrote</a>:</p>
<p>Smartphones changed the advertising game completely. It took only a few years for billions of people to have an all-purpose content delivery system easily accessible sixteen hours or more a day. This turned media into a battle to hold users’ attention as long as possible. .&#160; .Why pay a newspaper in the hopes of catching the attention of a certain portion of its audience, when you can pay Facebook to reach exactly those people and no one else?</p>
<p>Sean Parker and Roger McNamee aren’t alone. Venture capitalist and former Facebook VP <a href="" type="internal">Chamath Palihapitiya admitted last month</a> that he regrets helping the company expand its global reach. (Facebook has more than two billion users worldwide and is still growing.)</p>
<p>“We have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. . .you are being programmed,” Palihapitiya told an audience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He added, “No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem–this is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem. . .Bad actors can now manipulate large swathes of people to do anything you want. It’s just a really, really bad state of affairs” (Palihapitiya 2017).</p>
<p>Yet another former Facebook executive, Antonio García-Martínez, went public last summer with his <a href="" type="internal">criticism</a> of the company’s techniques:</p>
<p>If used very cleverly, with lots of machine-learning iteration and systematic trial-and-error, the canny marketer can find just the right admixture of age, geography, time of day, and music or film tastes that demarcate a demographic winner of an audience. The “clickthrough rate,” to use the advertiser’s parlance, doesn’t lie. . .Facebook has and does offer “psychometric”-type targeting, where the goal is to define a subset of the marketing audience that an advertiser thinks is particularly susceptible to their message. . .Sometimes data behaves unethically. . .Facebook will never try to limit such use of their data unless the public uproar reaches such a crescendo as to be un-mutable (García-Martínez 2017).</p>
<p>Such statements are startling–but not unprecedented.</p>
<p>For years social scientists have warned about how technology can trigger behavioral addictions. MIT anthropologist Natasha Schüll, who conducted research on Las Vegas casinos over a 20-year period, learned that slot machines pull some gamblers into a disorienting “machine zone.” (Schüll’s research builds upon the pioneering work of UC Berkeley anthropologist Laura Nader, who developed the concept of “controlling processes”–how individuals and groups are persuaded to participate in their own domination.) After interviewing machine designers, casino architects and hardcore gamblers among others, Schüll concludes in her book <a href="" type="internal">Addiction by Design</a> that the magnetic attraction of slot machines is due in part to their deeply interactive features. Gambling industry experts openly talk about maximizing “time-on-device.” As one consultant told Schüll, “The key is duration of play. I want to keep you there as long as humanly possible–that’s the whole trick, that’s what makes you lose” (Schüll 2012: 58; see also Nader 1997).</p>
<p>New York University business professor Adam Alter, author of <a href="" type="internal">Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Getting Us Hooked</a> (2017), argues that Facebook’s “like” button has a comparable effect. Every post, photo, or status update is a gamble that might result in a total loss (zero likes) or a jackpot (going viral). Twitter “retweets,” Instagram “likes,” and YouTube “views” work the same way. (It’s worth mentioning that Google’s YouTube and Amazon are also making aggressive <a href="" type="internal">efforts to corner the youth market</a>.)</p>
<p>Last month, just three weeks before Christmas, Facebook issued a press release declaring the arrival of “Messenger Kids.” According to the company, the app was developed in consultation with parents and “parenting experts” to keep it safe for kids. Facebook has also promised to limit the collection of data on children, and to not use the app for advertising.</p>
<p>Such promises are disingenuous. It is clear that “Messenger Kids” is part of a long-term strategy designed to get children hooked on its social networking habits (“likes,” text messaging, filter bubbling) as early as possible. In other words, to get kids’ dopamine levels surging in the formative years–so that frequent dopamine bursts become a normal part of life. Once that happens, it will be even easier for future social media companies (which are fundamentally advertising firms) to feed billions of behavioral addicts customized propaganda.</p>
<p>Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued <a href="https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/american-academy-of-pediatrics-announces-new-recommendations-for-childrens-media-use.aspx" type="external">recommendations</a> outlining limits on screen time for children, noting that “problems begin when media use displaces physical activity, hands-on exploration and face-to-face social interaction in the real world, which is critical to learning” (AAP 2016).</p>
<p>“Messenger Kids” will potentially drive children even deeper into the virtual world. Perhaps Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World has arrived–for as the prescient media critic Neil Postman once wrote:</p>
<p>in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. . .As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions” (Postman 1985: vii).</p>
<p>Last month, Chamath Palihapitiya told CNBC that his 5- and 9-year old children get no screen time at all, even though they constantly ask for it. Bill Gates, Jonathan Ive (who designed the iPad), the late Steve Jobs, and many other well-known figures in the technology industry also placed strict limits on their children’s use of technology. They clearly understand the cognitive, psychological, and emotional fallout of the devices they helped to create. If these legends have taken drastic measures to protect their sons and daughters from the dark side of the virtual life, perhaps more of us should follow their lead.</p>
<p>Beyond the immediacy of our individual and familial habits and practices looms a larger social problem: the possibility of a future in which authoritarian institutions have the tremendous capacity to mold the ideas, attitudes and behaviors of audiences captured by their own compulsions.</p>
<p>References</p>
<p>AAP (2016). “ <a href="https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/american-academy-of-pediatrics-announces-new-recommendations-for-childrens-media-use.aspx" type="external">American Academy of Pediatrics Announces New Recommendations for Children’s Media Use</a>.” October 21.</p>
<p>Allen, Mike (2017). “ <a href="" type="internal">Sean Parker Unloads on Facebook</a>.” Axios.com, November 9.</p>
<p>Alter, Adam (2017). Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Getting Us Hooked. New York: Penguin Books.</p>
<p>García-Martínez, Antonio (2017). “ <a href="" type="internal">I’m an Ex-Facebook Exec: Don’t Believe What They Tell You Maabout Ads</a>.” The Guardian, May 2.</p>
<p>McNamee, Roger (2018). “ <a href="" type="internal">How to Fix Facebook–Before It Fixes Us</a>.” Washington Monthly, January.</p>
<p>Nader, Laura (1997). “Controlling Processes: Tracing the Dynamic Components of Power.” Current Anthropology 38(5): 711-738.</p>
<p>Palihapitiya, Chamath (2017). “ <a href="" type="internal">Money as an Instrument of Change</a>.” Talk presented to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, November 13.</p>
<p>Postman, Neil (1985). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin Books.</p>
<p>Schüll, Natasha (2012). Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.</p>
| 5,786 |
<p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday evening's drawing of the Indiana Lottery's "Quick Draw Evening" game were:</p>
<p>01-08-12-14-22-24-29-36-39-51-52-53-63-66-67-68-72-76-77-79, BE: 29</p>
<p>(one, eight, twelve, fourteen, twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty-nine, thirty-six, thirty-nine, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three, sixty-three, sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, seventy-two, seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-nine; BE: twenty-nine)</p>
<p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday evening's drawing of the Indiana Lottery's "Quick Draw Evening" game were:</p>
<p>01-08-12-14-22-24-29-36-39-51-52-53-63-66-67-68-72-76-77-79, BE: 29</p>
<p>(one, eight, twelve, fourteen, twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty-nine, thirty-six, thirty-nine, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three, sixty-three, sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, seventy-two, seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-nine; BE: twenty-nine)</p>
|
Winning numbers drawn in 'Quick Draw Evening' game
| false |
https://apnews.com/cd2f36ba679f45ddbe6ff5e0ab3c9b0e
|
2018-01-05
| 2least
|
Winning numbers drawn in 'Quick Draw Evening' game
<p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday evening's drawing of the Indiana Lottery's "Quick Draw Evening" game were:</p>
<p>01-08-12-14-22-24-29-36-39-51-52-53-63-66-67-68-72-76-77-79, BE: 29</p>
<p>(one, eight, twelve, fourteen, twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty-nine, thirty-six, thirty-nine, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three, sixty-three, sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, seventy-two, seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-nine; BE: twenty-nine)</p>
<p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday evening's drawing of the Indiana Lottery's "Quick Draw Evening" game were:</p>
<p>01-08-12-14-22-24-29-36-39-51-52-53-63-66-67-68-72-76-77-79, BE: 29</p>
<p>(one, eight, twelve, fourteen, twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty-nine, thirty-six, thirty-nine, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three, sixty-three, sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, seventy-two, seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-nine; BE: twenty-nine)</p>
| 5,787 |
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - Creators of a popular immersive art entertainment project in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Thursday announced a push into a major metropolitan market with plans for an interactive exhibit and music venue in downtown Denver.</p>
<p>The for-profit arts company Meow Wolf said it will launch the new business venture to build a kaleidoscopic walk- and crawl-through exhibit for all ages, under a 20-year lease in partnership with Denver-based commercial real estate developer Revesco Properties. It operates a nearby urban amusement park.</p>
<p>A new five-story building, spanning an area larger than a football field, is scheduled for completion in an industrial neighborhood by early 2020, offering the offbeat public attraction near stadiums for Denver's major league sports teams, the Children's Museum of Denver and the city's Downtown Aquarium.</p>
<p>The Denver venture will provide a major financial and creative test for Meow Wolf and its growing staff of about 200 artists, technicians and project developers. CEO Vince Kadlubek describes them as the "corporate version of an art collective."</p>
<p>He estimated overall investment will reach $30 million or more and compared it to the budget of a major motion picture.</p>
<p>Meow Wolf plans to seek additional investors later this year in an offering that could involve equity in the company or debt obligations or both.</p>
<p>The company last year raised nearly $1 million by selling off-exchange shares to employees and small-scale internet investors to fuel its expansion and equip a manufacturing and video production facility in Santa Fe.</p>
<p>In Santa Fe, the company invented a new brand of family entertainment that combines eye-popping psychedelic design work that lends itself to shared images on social media with narrative storytelling.</p>
<p>Ben Davis, a national art critic for artnet News, said Meow Wolf has succeeded in creating a new model for big, fun visual entertainment that borrows from science fantasy and thriller films and rewards visitors as they explore labyrinthine exhibits.</p>
<p>Scaling up high-tech exhibits for larger audiences will likely put the business in competition with museums and theme parks that have major financial resources, he said.</p>
<p>Artistic details of the Denver exhibit remained largely a mystery because the company did not disclose specifics. The attraction will be three times larger than the Santa Fe project.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Peipert reported from Denver.</p>
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - Creators of a popular immersive art entertainment project in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Thursday announced a push into a major metropolitan market with plans for an interactive exhibit and music venue in downtown Denver.</p>
<p>The for-profit arts company Meow Wolf said it will launch the new business venture to build a kaleidoscopic walk- and crawl-through exhibit for all ages, under a 20-year lease in partnership with Denver-based commercial real estate developer Revesco Properties. It operates a nearby urban amusement park.</p>
<p>A new five-story building, spanning an area larger than a football field, is scheduled for completion in an industrial neighborhood by early 2020, offering the offbeat public attraction near stadiums for Denver's major league sports teams, the Children's Museum of Denver and the city's Downtown Aquarium.</p>
<p>The Denver venture will provide a major financial and creative test for Meow Wolf and its growing staff of about 200 artists, technicians and project developers. CEO Vince Kadlubek describes them as the "corporate version of an art collective."</p>
<p>He estimated overall investment will reach $30 million or more and compared it to the budget of a major motion picture.</p>
<p>Meow Wolf plans to seek additional investors later this year in an offering that could involve equity in the company or debt obligations or both.</p>
<p>The company last year raised nearly $1 million by selling off-exchange shares to employees and small-scale internet investors to fuel its expansion and equip a manufacturing and video production facility in Santa Fe.</p>
<p>In Santa Fe, the company invented a new brand of family entertainment that combines eye-popping psychedelic design work that lends itself to shared images on social media with narrative storytelling.</p>
<p>Ben Davis, a national art critic for artnet News, said Meow Wolf has succeeded in creating a new model for big, fun visual entertainment that borrows from science fantasy and thriller films and rewards visitors as they explore labyrinthine exhibits.</p>
<p>Scaling up high-tech exhibits for larger audiences will likely put the business in competition with museums and theme parks that have major financial resources, he said.</p>
<p>Artistic details of the Denver exhibit remained largely a mystery because the company did not disclose specifics. The attraction will be three times larger than the Santa Fe project.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Peipert reported from Denver.</p>
|
$30M Denver kaleidoscopic exhibit planned by arts-tech firm
| false |
https://apnews.com/b9a474f05f0d4ee4905a4520a571eee8
|
2018-01-04
| 2least
|
$30M Denver kaleidoscopic exhibit planned by arts-tech firm
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - Creators of a popular immersive art entertainment project in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Thursday announced a push into a major metropolitan market with plans for an interactive exhibit and music venue in downtown Denver.</p>
<p>The for-profit arts company Meow Wolf said it will launch the new business venture to build a kaleidoscopic walk- and crawl-through exhibit for all ages, under a 20-year lease in partnership with Denver-based commercial real estate developer Revesco Properties. It operates a nearby urban amusement park.</p>
<p>A new five-story building, spanning an area larger than a football field, is scheduled for completion in an industrial neighborhood by early 2020, offering the offbeat public attraction near stadiums for Denver's major league sports teams, the Children's Museum of Denver and the city's Downtown Aquarium.</p>
<p>The Denver venture will provide a major financial and creative test for Meow Wolf and its growing staff of about 200 artists, technicians and project developers. CEO Vince Kadlubek describes them as the "corporate version of an art collective."</p>
<p>He estimated overall investment will reach $30 million or more and compared it to the budget of a major motion picture.</p>
<p>Meow Wolf plans to seek additional investors later this year in an offering that could involve equity in the company or debt obligations or both.</p>
<p>The company last year raised nearly $1 million by selling off-exchange shares to employees and small-scale internet investors to fuel its expansion and equip a manufacturing and video production facility in Santa Fe.</p>
<p>In Santa Fe, the company invented a new brand of family entertainment that combines eye-popping psychedelic design work that lends itself to shared images on social media with narrative storytelling.</p>
<p>Ben Davis, a national art critic for artnet News, said Meow Wolf has succeeded in creating a new model for big, fun visual entertainment that borrows from science fantasy and thriller films and rewards visitors as they explore labyrinthine exhibits.</p>
<p>Scaling up high-tech exhibits for larger audiences will likely put the business in competition with museums and theme parks that have major financial resources, he said.</p>
<p>Artistic details of the Denver exhibit remained largely a mystery because the company did not disclose specifics. The attraction will be three times larger than the Santa Fe project.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Peipert reported from Denver.</p>
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - Creators of a popular immersive art entertainment project in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Thursday announced a push into a major metropolitan market with plans for an interactive exhibit and music venue in downtown Denver.</p>
<p>The for-profit arts company Meow Wolf said it will launch the new business venture to build a kaleidoscopic walk- and crawl-through exhibit for all ages, under a 20-year lease in partnership with Denver-based commercial real estate developer Revesco Properties. It operates a nearby urban amusement park.</p>
<p>A new five-story building, spanning an area larger than a football field, is scheduled for completion in an industrial neighborhood by early 2020, offering the offbeat public attraction near stadiums for Denver's major league sports teams, the Children's Museum of Denver and the city's Downtown Aquarium.</p>
<p>The Denver venture will provide a major financial and creative test for Meow Wolf and its growing staff of about 200 artists, technicians and project developers. CEO Vince Kadlubek describes them as the "corporate version of an art collective."</p>
<p>He estimated overall investment will reach $30 million or more and compared it to the budget of a major motion picture.</p>
<p>Meow Wolf plans to seek additional investors later this year in an offering that could involve equity in the company or debt obligations or both.</p>
<p>The company last year raised nearly $1 million by selling off-exchange shares to employees and small-scale internet investors to fuel its expansion and equip a manufacturing and video production facility in Santa Fe.</p>
<p>In Santa Fe, the company invented a new brand of family entertainment that combines eye-popping psychedelic design work that lends itself to shared images on social media with narrative storytelling.</p>
<p>Ben Davis, a national art critic for artnet News, said Meow Wolf has succeeded in creating a new model for big, fun visual entertainment that borrows from science fantasy and thriller films and rewards visitors as they explore labyrinthine exhibits.</p>
<p>Scaling up high-tech exhibits for larger audiences will likely put the business in competition with museums and theme parks that have major financial resources, he said.</p>
<p>Artistic details of the Denver exhibit remained largely a mystery because the company did not disclose specifics. The attraction will be three times larger than the Santa Fe project.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Peipert reported from Denver.</p>
| 5,788 |
<p>Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, made a rare public appearance on Tuesday, warning those who were "banking on change" that the militant Shiite Muslim group is continuing to build its military arsenal, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/06/sheik-hassan-nasrallah-speech_n_1131445.html" type="external">the Associated Press reported</a>.</p>
<p>His speech was viewed widely as a way to portray confidence in Hezbollah during a time of upheaval in the region. Israeli officials and analysts did not read much significance into Nasrallah's brief public appearance, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/middleeast/hassan-nasrallah-hezbollah-leader-showcases-defiance-in-rare-appearance.html?_r=1" type="external">The New York Times reported</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>Hezbollah fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006, and since then Nasrallah has rarely been seen in public due to fears that he will be assasinated. Usually, he speaks to his supporters using a video-link. &#160;</p>
<p>Nasrallah spoke at a rally to commemorate the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Ashura" type="external">Shiite holiday</a> of <a href="http://www.ashura.com/" type="external">Ashura</a>.</p>
<p>Ashura, one of the holiest days in the Shiite calendar, commemorates the 7th century killing of the prophet Muhammad's grandson, Imam Hussein.</p>
<p>Nasrallah told supporters that Hezbollah was stronger than ever, and would never give up its arms, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16048832" type="external">BBC News reported</a>.</p>
<p>Nasrullah "struck a defiant note in his speech," <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/12/06/uk-lebanon-hezbollah-idUKTRE7B511920111206" type="external">Reuters reported</a>. He gave no sign that his allies' troubles were affecting Hezbollah, which has both an armed wing and a political movement.&#160;</p>
<p>According to the Associated Press:</p>
<p>Nasrallah's appearance is meant to portray confidence at a time of upheaval in the Middle East and particularly in Syria, which along with Iran is Hezbollah's backer.</p>
<p>Syrians and Arabs around the region have in recent years elevated Nasrallah to the status of a nationalist hero after his guerrillas' 2006 war with Israel.</p>
<p>Since the Syrian uprising, however, Syrians have unleashed their anger at Hezbollah over its blunt support for the regime of President Bashar Assad. Some protesters in Syria have set fire to the yellow flag of Hezbollah and pictures of Nasrallah.</p>
<p>He spoke only briefly, telling a large crowd, "I wanted to be with you for just a few minutes, although I love to be with you always."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/middleeast/hassan-nasrallah-hezbollah-leader-showcases-defiance-in-rare-appearance.html?_r=1" type="external">According to The New York Times</a>, Nasrallah said:&#160;</p>
<p>We will never let go of our arms. Our numbers are increasing day after day, and we are getting better and our training is becoming better and we are becoming more confident in our future and more armed. And it someone is betting that our weapons are rusting, we tell them that every weapon that rusts is replaced.</p>
<p>Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization by the United States. Its weapons, which have been acquired with help from Syria and Iran, are controversial in Lebanon as they give the group more military clout than the national army, <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/12/hezollah-leader-sheik-hassan-nasrallah-makes-rare-appearance.html" type="external">the LA Times reported.</a></p>
<p>During his speech, Nasrallah reiterated his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, and accused the United States of seeking to destroy Syria to make up for its defeat in Iraq, the Associated Press reported.&#160;</p>
<p>"It went largely unnoticed," said Yigal Palmor, the spokesman of Israel's Foreign Ministry. His words reflected that Israel believes that Hezbollah has concerns regarding the upheaval in Syria and internal problems in Lebanon, "and is not likely to initiate any imminent confrontation with Israel," reported The Times.</p>
|
Hassan Nasrullah, Hezbollah leader, makes public appearance
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2011-12-06/hassan-nasrullah-hezbollah-leader-makes-public-appearance
|
2011-12-06
| 3left-center
|
Hassan Nasrullah, Hezbollah leader, makes public appearance
<p>Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, made a rare public appearance on Tuesday, warning those who were "banking on change" that the militant Shiite Muslim group is continuing to build its military arsenal, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/06/sheik-hassan-nasrallah-speech_n_1131445.html" type="external">the Associated Press reported</a>.</p>
<p>His speech was viewed widely as a way to portray confidence in Hezbollah during a time of upheaval in the region. Israeli officials and analysts did not read much significance into Nasrallah's brief public appearance, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/middleeast/hassan-nasrallah-hezbollah-leader-showcases-defiance-in-rare-appearance.html?_r=1" type="external">The New York Times reported</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>Hezbollah fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006, and since then Nasrallah has rarely been seen in public due to fears that he will be assasinated. Usually, he speaks to his supporters using a video-link. &#160;</p>
<p>Nasrallah spoke at a rally to commemorate the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Ashura" type="external">Shiite holiday</a> of <a href="http://www.ashura.com/" type="external">Ashura</a>.</p>
<p>Ashura, one of the holiest days in the Shiite calendar, commemorates the 7th century killing of the prophet Muhammad's grandson, Imam Hussein.</p>
<p>Nasrallah told supporters that Hezbollah was stronger than ever, and would never give up its arms, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16048832" type="external">BBC News reported</a>.</p>
<p>Nasrullah "struck a defiant note in his speech," <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/12/06/uk-lebanon-hezbollah-idUKTRE7B511920111206" type="external">Reuters reported</a>. He gave no sign that his allies' troubles were affecting Hezbollah, which has both an armed wing and a political movement.&#160;</p>
<p>According to the Associated Press:</p>
<p>Nasrallah's appearance is meant to portray confidence at a time of upheaval in the Middle East and particularly in Syria, which along with Iran is Hezbollah's backer.</p>
<p>Syrians and Arabs around the region have in recent years elevated Nasrallah to the status of a nationalist hero after his guerrillas' 2006 war with Israel.</p>
<p>Since the Syrian uprising, however, Syrians have unleashed their anger at Hezbollah over its blunt support for the regime of President Bashar Assad. Some protesters in Syria have set fire to the yellow flag of Hezbollah and pictures of Nasrallah.</p>
<p>He spoke only briefly, telling a large crowd, "I wanted to be with you for just a few minutes, although I love to be with you always."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/middleeast/hassan-nasrallah-hezbollah-leader-showcases-defiance-in-rare-appearance.html?_r=1" type="external">According to The New York Times</a>, Nasrallah said:&#160;</p>
<p>We will never let go of our arms. Our numbers are increasing day after day, and we are getting better and our training is becoming better and we are becoming more confident in our future and more armed. And it someone is betting that our weapons are rusting, we tell them that every weapon that rusts is replaced.</p>
<p>Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization by the United States. Its weapons, which have been acquired with help from Syria and Iran, are controversial in Lebanon as they give the group more military clout than the national army, <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/12/hezollah-leader-sheik-hassan-nasrallah-makes-rare-appearance.html" type="external">the LA Times reported.</a></p>
<p>During his speech, Nasrallah reiterated his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, and accused the United States of seeking to destroy Syria to make up for its defeat in Iraq, the Associated Press reported.&#160;</p>
<p>"It went largely unnoticed," said Yigal Palmor, the spokesman of Israel's Foreign Ministry. His words reflected that Israel believes that Hezbollah has concerns regarding the upheaval in Syria and internal problems in Lebanon, "and is not likely to initiate any imminent confrontation with Israel," reported The Times.</p>
| 5,789 |
<p>Yup. Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is now talking to dogs.</p>
<p>The Republican presidential candidate teamed up with Independent Journal to create an extremely bizarre video clip where she explains why dogs are better than cats in an obvious attempt to appear more personable. The former Hewlett-Packard CEO is seen in the video above talking to the dogs, kissing them, naming them after presidential candidates and even biting into a dog treat in an effort to break it apart, although it looks as though she may have even taken a taste.</p>
<p>It’s fully and completely odd.</p>
<p>And this isn’t the first time Fiorina has been a little too affectionate with dogs; she was seen on the Tonight Show singing a song she made up for one of her beloved dogs.</p>
<p>She’s like the crazy cat-lady, but with dogs.</p>
<p>On the upside, Fiorina got in a couple of jabs; one at Obama and one at Trump. She told one of the dogs that President Obama had eaten one of his cousins, a reference to the president admitting that he has <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/obama-ate-dog-seamus-romney_n_1464749.html" type="external">eaten dog meat</a> in Indonesia before—but she is talking to a dog, so it kind of takes away from the “oh burn!” moment. The candidate then referenced one of the dog’s faces, but quickly retracted and called it his “persona” in effort to verbally smack Trump for his previous “look at that face!” remark. But again, the whole talking-to-a-dog thing counteracts the insult just a tad.</p>
<p>But, hey! At least Fiorina wasn’t in a “serious” <a href="" type="internal">interview with self-described "sexual predator" Lena Dunham</a> talking about Lenny Kravitz’s penis or painfully rapping (if that's what you can call it) about going to college, like our former first lady.</p>
|
So Carly Fiorina Is Talking To Dogs
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/1895/so-carly-fiorina-talking-dogs-amanda-prestigiacomo
|
2015-12-16
| 0right
|
So Carly Fiorina Is Talking To Dogs
<p>Yup. Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is now talking to dogs.</p>
<p>The Republican presidential candidate teamed up with Independent Journal to create an extremely bizarre video clip where she explains why dogs are better than cats in an obvious attempt to appear more personable. The former Hewlett-Packard CEO is seen in the video above talking to the dogs, kissing them, naming them after presidential candidates and even biting into a dog treat in an effort to break it apart, although it looks as though she may have even taken a taste.</p>
<p>It’s fully and completely odd.</p>
<p>And this isn’t the first time Fiorina has been a little too affectionate with dogs; she was seen on the Tonight Show singing a song she made up for one of her beloved dogs.</p>
<p>She’s like the crazy cat-lady, but with dogs.</p>
<p>On the upside, Fiorina got in a couple of jabs; one at Obama and one at Trump. She told one of the dogs that President Obama had eaten one of his cousins, a reference to the president admitting that he has <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/obama-ate-dog-seamus-romney_n_1464749.html" type="external">eaten dog meat</a> in Indonesia before—but she is talking to a dog, so it kind of takes away from the “oh burn!” moment. The candidate then referenced one of the dog’s faces, but quickly retracted and called it his “persona” in effort to verbally smack Trump for his previous “look at that face!” remark. But again, the whole talking-to-a-dog thing counteracts the insult just a tad.</p>
<p>But, hey! At least Fiorina wasn’t in a “serious” <a href="" type="internal">interview with self-described "sexual predator" Lena Dunham</a> talking about Lenny Kravitz’s penis or painfully rapping (if that's what you can call it) about going to college, like our former first lady.</p>
| 5,790 |
<p />
<p>It appears the negotiations and drama are finally over for TerraForm Power Inc. (NASDAQ: TERP) and TerraForm Global Inc. (NASDAQ: GLBL), which will be acquired by Brookfield Asset Management Inc.(NYSE: BAM).</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>TerraForm Global is being acquired in full for $5.10 per share, which amounts to a $787 million valuation for the company's equity and a $1.34 billion enterprise value. TerraForm Global will sell 51% of itself to Brookfield and the asset manager will take over the sponsor role from SunEdison. Here's a look at what you can expect from the deal.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>The buyout of TerraForm Global is fairly simple, with Brookfield agreeing to pay $5.10 per share in cash for the company. That's a 20% premium to where shares closed on Monday and is above the stock's 52-week range.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Investors will get to vote on the transaction but given the fact that Brookfield is paying a premium and TerraForm Global was running out of options, I don't see the acquisition getting held up by the vote.</p>
<p>The deal to buy 51% of TerraForm Power will be a little more complex. If approved, current shareholders will get a special dividend of $1.94 per share and either $9.52 in cash or one share of the post-transaction TerraForm Power. That's where the $11.46 buyout price comes from even though the stock is trading higher than that on the market post buyout announcement.</p>
<p>Complicating matters is that the deal is subject to proration, meaning investors may not get as many shares as they expect if they want to hold onto the stock. Brookfield needs to own 51% of the company post-transaction so if everyone chooses to get shares rather than the full cash buyout, the deal will be prorated to a level where more cash is paid out and Brookfield still owns 51% of the stock.</p>
<p>This was the best option TerraForm Power's management could find for the company given the weight SunEdison's ownership had on both shares and company borrowing. And it may allow Brookfield to generate more value long term.</p>
<p>One of the hopes for Brookfield is that it will be able to bring stability to both TerraForm Global and TerraForm Power in the long run. In the case of TerraForm Power, which will be the only public yieldco of the two after the acquisitions, the new sponsor may allow for lower borrowing rates on debt that funds operations. And even a small reduction in rates would help save costs from $3.86 billion in net debt.</p>
<p>This may even allow for a return of the dividend and potentially some growth acquisitions in the future. Brookfield agreed to provide a 3,500 MW right of first offer portfolio to TerraForm Power, which if acquired would provide growth.</p>
<p>We don't know exactly what TerraForm Power's operations will look like in the future but Brookfield's move to become the sponsor is a step in the right direction. Now, we'll need to see where the dividend ends up to know what kind of value the yieldco provides versus competing yieldcos on the market.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than TerraForm PowerWhen 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=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=9a33c8b4-1bf4-4569-b256-f0e8165e37fd&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and TerraForm Power 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=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=9a33c8b4-1bf4-4569-b256-f0e8165e37fd&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&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 February 6, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFlushDraw/info.aspx" type="external">Travis Hoium Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. 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>
|
What You Need to Know About the TerraForm Yieldco Buyouts
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/07/what-need-to-know-about-terraform-yieldco-buyouts.html
|
2017-03-17
| 0right
|
What You Need to Know About the TerraForm Yieldco Buyouts
<p />
<p>It appears the negotiations and drama are finally over for TerraForm Power Inc. (NASDAQ: TERP) and TerraForm Global Inc. (NASDAQ: GLBL), which will be acquired by Brookfield Asset Management Inc.(NYSE: BAM).</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>TerraForm Global is being acquired in full for $5.10 per share, which amounts to a $787 million valuation for the company's equity and a $1.34 billion enterprise value. TerraForm Global will sell 51% of itself to Brookfield and the asset manager will take over the sponsor role from SunEdison. Here's a look at what you can expect from the deal.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>The buyout of TerraForm Global is fairly simple, with Brookfield agreeing to pay $5.10 per share in cash for the company. That's a 20% premium to where shares closed on Monday and is above the stock's 52-week range.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Investors will get to vote on the transaction but given the fact that Brookfield is paying a premium and TerraForm Global was running out of options, I don't see the acquisition getting held up by the vote.</p>
<p>The deal to buy 51% of TerraForm Power will be a little more complex. If approved, current shareholders will get a special dividend of $1.94 per share and either $9.52 in cash or one share of the post-transaction TerraForm Power. That's where the $11.46 buyout price comes from even though the stock is trading higher than that on the market post buyout announcement.</p>
<p>Complicating matters is that the deal is subject to proration, meaning investors may not get as many shares as they expect if they want to hold onto the stock. Brookfield needs to own 51% of the company post-transaction so if everyone chooses to get shares rather than the full cash buyout, the deal will be prorated to a level where more cash is paid out and Brookfield still owns 51% of the stock.</p>
<p>This was the best option TerraForm Power's management could find for the company given the weight SunEdison's ownership had on both shares and company borrowing. And it may allow Brookfield to generate more value long term.</p>
<p>One of the hopes for Brookfield is that it will be able to bring stability to both TerraForm Global and TerraForm Power in the long run. In the case of TerraForm Power, which will be the only public yieldco of the two after the acquisitions, the new sponsor may allow for lower borrowing rates on debt that funds operations. And even a small reduction in rates would help save costs from $3.86 billion in net debt.</p>
<p>This may even allow for a return of the dividend and potentially some growth acquisitions in the future. Brookfield agreed to provide a 3,500 MW right of first offer portfolio to TerraForm Power, which if acquired would provide growth.</p>
<p>We don't know exactly what TerraForm Power's operations will look like in the future but Brookfield's move to become the sponsor is a step in the right direction. Now, we'll need to see where the dividend ends up to know what kind of value the yieldco provides versus competing yieldcos on the market.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than TerraForm PowerWhen 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=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=9a33c8b4-1bf4-4569-b256-f0e8165e37fd&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and TerraForm Power 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=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=9a33c8b4-1bf4-4569-b256-f0e8165e37fd&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&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 February 6, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFlushDraw/info.aspx" type="external">Travis Hoium Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. 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>
| 5,791 |
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<p />
<p>As commander of Air Force Materiel Command, I lead an organization of some 80,000 military members and civilian employees whose work touches every aspect of the Air Force. Kirtland Air Force Base is one of the bases in my command.</p>
<p>My people research, develop, buy, test and maintain everything the Air Force needs to carry out its mission — from uniforms to fighter aircraft.</p>
<p>Sequestration impacts every piece of the AFMC mission and, as a result, the entire Air Force. It will hit AFMC hard on three fronts — our mission, our people, and our bases such as Kirtland.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>I do not yet know the precise reductions AFMC will take under sequestration, but, for planning purposes, cuts for the remainder of this fiscal year ending Sept. 30 are about $300 million, or 29 percent of our remaining operating account, and $1.4 billion, or 40 percent of the remaining readiness account we operate on behalf of the Air Force.</p>
<p>Recapitalization and modernization will be slowed. Some costs will rise, and much-needed capabilities will take longer to get into the hands of our war fighters. This will be the case at all AFMC units, including the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland.</p>
<p>At the Air Force Test Center, the developmental test mission will be significantly impacted as we reduce operations at test ranges, stop all flight testing (except for the F-35) and test support toward the end of the fiscal year, and determine the status of upcoming Summer Test Pilot School classes.</p>
<p>Within the Air Force Sustainment Center, we will have to reduce sustainment operations at three depots by as much as 40 percent for the remainder of fiscal year 2013. Rough estimates include deferment of 297 aircraft and 197 engines for depot maintenance and major modifications. Depot operations will slow, aircraft availability and mission capable rates will drop, and some aircraft will simply be grounded. It could take up to five years for depot operations to “catch up” once fully funded.</p>
<p>In the Air Force Research Labs, sequestration will slow research; new technology transitions will be delayed to the war fighter for both immediate needs and long-term requirements for critical missions in the years to come.</p>
<p>AFMC’s workforce is 77 percent civilian. The majority of AFMC will be hit hard by the planned civilian furloughs that will cut workers’ pay by 20 percent through September 30. The impacts will be significant. I don’t know anyone who can take a 20 percent cut to their income and not feel it.</p>
<p>Many employees live paycheck to paycheck. A 20 percent pay cut is driving some to face fears of how to pay their bills. Many have expressed the need to work a part-time job or withdraw from their retirement accounts to make ends meet.</p>
<p>We are breaking faith with our civilian airmen.</p>
<p>I am responsible for nine bases in AFMC, in nine states across the country. Budget reductions will cut into our ability to maintain these bases, forcing base commanders to make tough calls on what to repair. Only emergency repairs will be accomplished.</p>
<p>The potential impacts on defense contractors will also be felt. Thousands of contractors provide goods and services to AFMC and the Air Force. Sequestration will cause some contracts to be modified. Small contractors will be hit especially hard since they do not have the financial depth of larger defense contractors.</p>
<p>If the House of Representatives’ Fiscal Year 2013 budget bill becomes law, its impact on sequestration translates into taking a step toward more regular order and removes uncertainty associated with the budget environment to date for this fiscal year. It will end the continuing resolution and finally give us a budget for fiscal year 2013.</p>
<p>While not all that we requested, we hope the bill, when eventually reconciled with a Senate version, will give the Department of Defense more clarity and flexibility as it carries out sequestration reductions.</p>
<p>Simply put, the impacts of sequestration are severe — to our mission, our people, and our bases and local communities.</p>
|
Sequestration will hit bases hard
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/180302/sequestration-will-hit-bases-hard.html
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2013-03-20
| 2least
|
Sequestration will hit bases hard
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>As commander of Air Force Materiel Command, I lead an organization of some 80,000 military members and civilian employees whose work touches every aspect of the Air Force. Kirtland Air Force Base is one of the bases in my command.</p>
<p>My people research, develop, buy, test and maintain everything the Air Force needs to carry out its mission — from uniforms to fighter aircraft.</p>
<p>Sequestration impacts every piece of the AFMC mission and, as a result, the entire Air Force. It will hit AFMC hard on three fronts — our mission, our people, and our bases such as Kirtland.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>I do not yet know the precise reductions AFMC will take under sequestration, but, for planning purposes, cuts for the remainder of this fiscal year ending Sept. 30 are about $300 million, or 29 percent of our remaining operating account, and $1.4 billion, or 40 percent of the remaining readiness account we operate on behalf of the Air Force.</p>
<p>Recapitalization and modernization will be slowed. Some costs will rise, and much-needed capabilities will take longer to get into the hands of our war fighters. This will be the case at all AFMC units, including the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland.</p>
<p>At the Air Force Test Center, the developmental test mission will be significantly impacted as we reduce operations at test ranges, stop all flight testing (except for the F-35) and test support toward the end of the fiscal year, and determine the status of upcoming Summer Test Pilot School classes.</p>
<p>Within the Air Force Sustainment Center, we will have to reduce sustainment operations at three depots by as much as 40 percent for the remainder of fiscal year 2013. Rough estimates include deferment of 297 aircraft and 197 engines for depot maintenance and major modifications. Depot operations will slow, aircraft availability and mission capable rates will drop, and some aircraft will simply be grounded. It could take up to five years for depot operations to “catch up” once fully funded.</p>
<p>In the Air Force Research Labs, sequestration will slow research; new technology transitions will be delayed to the war fighter for both immediate needs and long-term requirements for critical missions in the years to come.</p>
<p>AFMC’s workforce is 77 percent civilian. The majority of AFMC will be hit hard by the planned civilian furloughs that will cut workers’ pay by 20 percent through September 30. The impacts will be significant. I don’t know anyone who can take a 20 percent cut to their income and not feel it.</p>
<p>Many employees live paycheck to paycheck. A 20 percent pay cut is driving some to face fears of how to pay their bills. Many have expressed the need to work a part-time job or withdraw from their retirement accounts to make ends meet.</p>
<p>We are breaking faith with our civilian airmen.</p>
<p>I am responsible for nine bases in AFMC, in nine states across the country. Budget reductions will cut into our ability to maintain these bases, forcing base commanders to make tough calls on what to repair. Only emergency repairs will be accomplished.</p>
<p>The potential impacts on defense contractors will also be felt. Thousands of contractors provide goods and services to AFMC and the Air Force. Sequestration will cause some contracts to be modified. Small contractors will be hit especially hard since they do not have the financial depth of larger defense contractors.</p>
<p>If the House of Representatives’ Fiscal Year 2013 budget bill becomes law, its impact on sequestration translates into taking a step toward more regular order and removes uncertainty associated with the budget environment to date for this fiscal year. It will end the continuing resolution and finally give us a budget for fiscal year 2013.</p>
<p>While not all that we requested, we hope the bill, when eventually reconciled with a Senate version, will give the Department of Defense more clarity and flexibility as it carries out sequestration reductions.</p>
<p>Simply put, the impacts of sequestration are severe — to our mission, our people, and our bases and local communities.</p>
| 5,792 |
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<p>TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his Cabinet on Thursday, seeking to repair his tattered approval ratings by installing well-known moderates in key roles.</p>
<p>Abe said he would focus on bread-and-butter issues such as jobs, a pledge he’s made in the past only to prioritize conservative issues such as amending the constitution.</p>
<p>“We will put the economy first,” Abe told reporters after the newly installed Cabinet posed for a customary inaugural photo in morning coats and formal gowns. “There’s much left to do.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Abe said the appointments were made after deep reflection, based on the ministers’ strengths and experience.</p>
<p>Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, a key power broker who retained his post, announced the new lineup. It’s Abe’s fourth since he took office in late 2012. The last Cabinet was appointed about a year ago.</p>
<p>Public approval ratings for Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party have suffered after a spate of scandals over alleged cronyism and other abuses.</p>
<p>While the party enjoys wide support and is seen as the only realistic option given the lack of a united, popular opposition, many Japanese object to the Liberal Democrats’ tendency to force unpopular legislation through parliament.</p>
<p>Koichi Nakano, an international politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo who is often critical of the ruling party, said the lineup was “dull” and defensive in nature.</p>
<p>“Abe’s cornered and one of the main goals of the reshuffle was to remove problematic ministers, although Mr. Abe himself is the root of many problems,” Nakano said.</p>
<p>Experts said they expect work on Abe’s pet conservative causes, such as strengthening the role of the military, will continue behind the scenes.</p>
<p>The shakeup reflects Abe’s recognition that despite the Liberal Democrats’ overwhelming majority in parliament, his own once seemingly invincible position after more than four years in office may be imperiled.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Sweeping reforms meant to rejuvenate the sluggish economy and cope with Japan’s slow birthrate and aging, shrinking population have made little headway as Abe instead focused on other issues such as revising the pacifist constitution.</p>
<p>In Japan, choice Cabinet positions tend to be distributed among factions that operate almost like political fiefdoms within the ruling party, and this time is no different.</p>
<p>Of 19 Cabinet members, 14 were newly named. But many are party or Cabinet veterans, including Itsunori Onodera, a former defense minister who again was named to that post.</p>
<p>Last week, Abe protege Tomomi Inada stepped down as defense minister after the ministry was found to have covered up information about risks faced by Japanese peacekeeping troops in South Sudan.</p>
<p>Onodera’s expertise is viewed as an asset at a time of growing tensions over North Korea and its launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles.</p>
<p>Abe also chose several popular lawmakers known to differ from him on key issues such as nuclear power.</p>
<p>The new foreign minister, Taro Kono, is mildly liberal-leaning and has opposed nuclear energy, though he toned down his stance while serving as reform minister in an earlier Abe Cabinet.</p>
<p>A politics graduate of Georgetown University, Kono is fluent in English. He is probably best known for being the son of Yohei Kono, a former speaker of the lower house who also served as foreign minister.</p>
<p>Kono’s predecessor, Fumio Kishida, who had also taken on the defense minister post after Inada stepped down, opted out of this Cabinet and is widely thought to be aiming for a shot at becoming prime minister.</p>
<p>So is Seiko Noda, who was named minister for internal affairs and communications and has served in several past Cabinets.</p>
<p>Noda challenged Abe for leadership of the ruling party in 2015. Although a conservative, she’s a strong advocate of economic and other reforms to counter Japan’s falling birthrate and promote gender equality, qualities Abe said he appreciates.</p>
<p>He said that he and Noda had survived “difficult times together.”</p>
<p>“Between us we can talk about anything. She tells me the kind of things that are rather painful to my ears,” he said.</p>
<p>Yoshimasa Hayashi, another fluent English speaker and former agriculture minister, was appointed to head the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. He has headed several government agencies, including defense, farm and economic and fiscal policy.</p>
<p>Former Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa took the job once again after a hiatus.</p>
<p>Both Hayashi and Kamikawa hold master’s degrees in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.</p>
|
Japan’s Cabinet gets makeover as support for Abe dips
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/1042633/japans-prime-minister-reshuffles-cabinet-as-support-dips.html
|
2017-08-02
| 2least
|
Japan’s Cabinet gets makeover as support for Abe dips
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his Cabinet on Thursday, seeking to repair his tattered approval ratings by installing well-known moderates in key roles.</p>
<p>Abe said he would focus on bread-and-butter issues such as jobs, a pledge he’s made in the past only to prioritize conservative issues such as amending the constitution.</p>
<p>“We will put the economy first,” Abe told reporters after the newly installed Cabinet posed for a customary inaugural photo in morning coats and formal gowns. “There’s much left to do.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Abe said the appointments were made after deep reflection, based on the ministers’ strengths and experience.</p>
<p>Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, a key power broker who retained his post, announced the new lineup. It’s Abe’s fourth since he took office in late 2012. The last Cabinet was appointed about a year ago.</p>
<p>Public approval ratings for Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party have suffered after a spate of scandals over alleged cronyism and other abuses.</p>
<p>While the party enjoys wide support and is seen as the only realistic option given the lack of a united, popular opposition, many Japanese object to the Liberal Democrats’ tendency to force unpopular legislation through parliament.</p>
<p>Koichi Nakano, an international politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo who is often critical of the ruling party, said the lineup was “dull” and defensive in nature.</p>
<p>“Abe’s cornered and one of the main goals of the reshuffle was to remove problematic ministers, although Mr. Abe himself is the root of many problems,” Nakano said.</p>
<p>Experts said they expect work on Abe’s pet conservative causes, such as strengthening the role of the military, will continue behind the scenes.</p>
<p>The shakeup reflects Abe’s recognition that despite the Liberal Democrats’ overwhelming majority in parliament, his own once seemingly invincible position after more than four years in office may be imperiled.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Sweeping reforms meant to rejuvenate the sluggish economy and cope with Japan’s slow birthrate and aging, shrinking population have made little headway as Abe instead focused on other issues such as revising the pacifist constitution.</p>
<p>In Japan, choice Cabinet positions tend to be distributed among factions that operate almost like political fiefdoms within the ruling party, and this time is no different.</p>
<p>Of 19 Cabinet members, 14 were newly named. But many are party or Cabinet veterans, including Itsunori Onodera, a former defense minister who again was named to that post.</p>
<p>Last week, Abe protege Tomomi Inada stepped down as defense minister after the ministry was found to have covered up information about risks faced by Japanese peacekeeping troops in South Sudan.</p>
<p>Onodera’s expertise is viewed as an asset at a time of growing tensions over North Korea and its launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles.</p>
<p>Abe also chose several popular lawmakers known to differ from him on key issues such as nuclear power.</p>
<p>The new foreign minister, Taro Kono, is mildly liberal-leaning and has opposed nuclear energy, though he toned down his stance while serving as reform minister in an earlier Abe Cabinet.</p>
<p>A politics graduate of Georgetown University, Kono is fluent in English. He is probably best known for being the son of Yohei Kono, a former speaker of the lower house who also served as foreign minister.</p>
<p>Kono’s predecessor, Fumio Kishida, who had also taken on the defense minister post after Inada stepped down, opted out of this Cabinet and is widely thought to be aiming for a shot at becoming prime minister.</p>
<p>So is Seiko Noda, who was named minister for internal affairs and communications and has served in several past Cabinets.</p>
<p>Noda challenged Abe for leadership of the ruling party in 2015. Although a conservative, she’s a strong advocate of economic and other reforms to counter Japan’s falling birthrate and promote gender equality, qualities Abe said he appreciates.</p>
<p>He said that he and Noda had survived “difficult times together.”</p>
<p>“Between us we can talk about anything. She tells me the kind of things that are rather painful to my ears,” he said.</p>
<p>Yoshimasa Hayashi, another fluent English speaker and former agriculture minister, was appointed to head the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. He has headed several government agencies, including defense, farm and economic and fiscal policy.</p>
<p>Former Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa took the job once again after a hiatus.</p>
<p>Both Hayashi and Kamikawa hold master’s degrees in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.</p>
| 5,793 |
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico is the fifth least financially literate state in the nation, according to <a href="http://wallethub.com/edu/most-and-least-financially-literate-states/3337/" type="external">a new Wallethub ranking</a>.</p>
<p>New Mexico ranked particularly low because of its percentage of people with a rainy day fund (49th);&#160; percentage of people who pay only the minimum amount on their credit card bills (46th) and the percentage of people who compare credit cards before applying (41st).</p>
<p>New Hampshire, Utah and Massachusetts were ranked as the most financially literate states. Ranking below New Mexico were Louisiana, Arkansas, Nevada and Mississippi.</p>
<p>According to the study, Americans had racked up about $133 billion in new credit card debt since the beginning of 2012, “unsurprising given that only two in five adults actually have a budget,” according to the study. The study also found that one in five Americans spend more than they make.</p>
<p>The study analyzed financial education programs and consumer habits in each of the 50 states as well as the District of Columbia, using 11 key metrics ranging from Champlain University’s High School Financial Literacy Grades to the percentage of residents with a rainy day fund.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Study: New Mexicans not so good at managing money
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/562798/study-new-mexicans-not-so-good-at-managing-money.html
| 2least
|
Study: New Mexicans not so good at managing money
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico is the fifth least financially literate state in the nation, according to <a href="http://wallethub.com/edu/most-and-least-financially-literate-states/3337/" type="external">a new Wallethub ranking</a>.</p>
<p>New Mexico ranked particularly low because of its percentage of people with a rainy day fund (49th);&#160; percentage of people who pay only the minimum amount on their credit card bills (46th) and the percentage of people who compare credit cards before applying (41st).</p>
<p>New Hampshire, Utah and Massachusetts were ranked as the most financially literate states. Ranking below New Mexico were Louisiana, Arkansas, Nevada and Mississippi.</p>
<p>According to the study, Americans had racked up about $133 billion in new credit card debt since the beginning of 2012, “unsurprising given that only two in five adults actually have a budget,” according to the study. The study also found that one in five Americans spend more than they make.</p>
<p>The study analyzed financial education programs and consumer habits in each of the 50 states as well as the District of Columbia, using 11 key metrics ranging from Champlain University’s High School Financial Literacy Grades to the percentage of residents with a rainy day fund.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 5,794 |
|
<p>LOS ANGELES — Is there going to be another addition to the Jenner-Kardashian clan?</p>
<p>Several media outlets, including TMZ and People, are reporting Friday that 20-year-old Kylie Jenner, the youngest member of the reality show family, is expecting a child with her boyfriend Travis Scott.</p>
<p>Reps did not confirm the pregnancy, however, and did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ request for comment.</p>
|
Reports Say Kylie Jenner Is Pregnant with First Child
| false |
https://newsline.com/reports-say-kylie-jenner-is-pregnant-with-first-child/
|
2017-09-23
| 1right-center
|
Reports Say Kylie Jenner Is Pregnant with First Child
<p>LOS ANGELES — Is there going to be another addition to the Jenner-Kardashian clan?</p>
<p>Several media outlets, including TMZ and People, are reporting Friday that 20-year-old Kylie Jenner, the youngest member of the reality show family, is expecting a child with her boyfriend Travis Scott.</p>
<p>Reps did not confirm the pregnancy, however, and did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ request for comment.</p>
| 5,795 |
<p>Investing.com – The pound rose to the day’s highs on Wednesday after data showed that in September, but the report also showed that new orders rose at the slowest rate in 13 months.</p>
<p>was up 0.29% to 1.3269 by 05:02 AM ET (09:02 GMT) from around 1.3254 earlier.</p>
<p>Financial data firm Markit said its services purchasing managers’ index rose to in September, up from 53.2 in August. Economists had expected an unchanged reading.</p>
<p>Subdued domestic demand acted as a drag on growth and the increase in new work orders was the slowest in 13 months.</p>
<p>Firms also remained under pressure from rising prices, with input cost inflation hitting a seven month high.</p>
<p>That was due to rising costs for food, energy and fuel bills, alongside increased prices for imported items and greater staff salaries, the report said.</p>
<p>The report came after similar data earlier in the week showing that factory growth slowed and construction activity contracted in September.</p>
<p>“The three PMI surveys put the economy on course for another subdued 0.3% expansion in the third quarter, but the fourth quarter could see even slower growth,” said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at survey compiler Markit.</p>
<p>“The surveys therefore portray an economy struggling with the unwelcome combination of sluggish growth and rising prices, presenting a dilemma for policymakers.”</p>
<p>Sterling was higher against the euro following the report, with slipping 0.16% to 0.8859 from around 0.8873 earlier.</p>
<p>The dollar slipped lower against a basket of the other major currencies as markets weighed speculation over who will be the next Federal Reserve Chairman and ahead of U.S. jobs data that will be released later this week.</p>
<p>The , which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was last down 0.15% to 93.28, off Tuesday’s one-and-a-half month high of 98.78.</p>
<p>Sentiment on the dollar was dented following reports that U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin favors Fed Governor Jerome Powell over former governor Kevin Warsh to lead the central bank.</p>
<p>Last week the Trump administration interviewed both Warsh and Powell about replacing current Chair Janet Yellen when her term expires early next year.</p>
<p>Powell is seen as more dovish that Warsh, who has been critical of the Fed’s stimulus program in the past.</p>
<p>Investors were also looking ahead to Friday’s U.S. employment report for September. Signs of solid job growth would reinforce the case for a rate hike by the Fed in December.</p>
<p>Expectations that rates will rise help support the dollar by making U.S. assets more attractive to yield-seeking investors.</p>
<p>The dollar has risen in recent weeks as investors grow more optimistic about the prospect of higher interest rates and tax cuts that some expect to boost the U.S. economy.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p>
|
Forex – Sterling Hits Day’s Highs as UK Service Growth Rises
| false |
https://newsline.com/forex-sterling-hits-days-highs-as-uk-service-growth-rises/
|
2017-10-04
| 1right-center
|
Forex – Sterling Hits Day’s Highs as UK Service Growth Rises
<p>Investing.com – The pound rose to the day’s highs on Wednesday after data showed that in September, but the report also showed that new orders rose at the slowest rate in 13 months.</p>
<p>was up 0.29% to 1.3269 by 05:02 AM ET (09:02 GMT) from around 1.3254 earlier.</p>
<p>Financial data firm Markit said its services purchasing managers’ index rose to in September, up from 53.2 in August. Economists had expected an unchanged reading.</p>
<p>Subdued domestic demand acted as a drag on growth and the increase in new work orders was the slowest in 13 months.</p>
<p>Firms also remained under pressure from rising prices, with input cost inflation hitting a seven month high.</p>
<p>That was due to rising costs for food, energy and fuel bills, alongside increased prices for imported items and greater staff salaries, the report said.</p>
<p>The report came after similar data earlier in the week showing that factory growth slowed and construction activity contracted in September.</p>
<p>“The three PMI surveys put the economy on course for another subdued 0.3% expansion in the third quarter, but the fourth quarter could see even slower growth,” said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at survey compiler Markit.</p>
<p>“The surveys therefore portray an economy struggling with the unwelcome combination of sluggish growth and rising prices, presenting a dilemma for policymakers.”</p>
<p>Sterling was higher against the euro following the report, with slipping 0.16% to 0.8859 from around 0.8873 earlier.</p>
<p>The dollar slipped lower against a basket of the other major currencies as markets weighed speculation over who will be the next Federal Reserve Chairman and ahead of U.S. jobs data that will be released later this week.</p>
<p>The , which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was last down 0.15% to 93.28, off Tuesday’s one-and-a-half month high of 98.78.</p>
<p>Sentiment on the dollar was dented following reports that U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin favors Fed Governor Jerome Powell over former governor Kevin Warsh to lead the central bank.</p>
<p>Last week the Trump administration interviewed both Warsh and Powell about replacing current Chair Janet Yellen when her term expires early next year.</p>
<p>Powell is seen as more dovish that Warsh, who has been critical of the Fed’s stimulus program in the past.</p>
<p>Investors were also looking ahead to Friday’s U.S. employment report for September. Signs of solid job growth would reinforce the case for a rate hike by the Fed in December.</p>
<p>Expectations that rates will rise help support the dollar by making U.S. assets more attractive to yield-seeking investors.</p>
<p>The dollar has risen in recent weeks as investors grow more optimistic about the prospect of higher interest rates and tax cuts that some expect to boost the U.S. economy.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p>
| 5,796 |
<p>Income inequality is front and center in the the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, thanks to Sen. Bernie Sanders.&#160;</p>
<p>And the widening income gap between workers and managers isn't a uniquely American problem, it's global.</p>
<p>But several capitalist economies in northern Europe have done much more than the US has to close the income gap, according to Robert Reich, the former secretary of labor and the author of a new book,&#160; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Capitalism-For-Many-Not/dp/0385350570" type="external">Saving Captialism: For the Many, Not the Few</a>.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>"Among developed countries, the United States has the most unequal distribution of income and of wealth," he says. "People at the top are doing superbly well in this recovery, better than ever."</p>
<p>Reich points to Germany as a nation with a more egalitarian distribution of income. He says the top one percent of workers in Germany take home roughly 11 percent of the country's total income. &#160;In contrast, those "one percenters" in the US earn about 20 percent of national income. Plus, those German workers can expect their government to provide some measure of health care and education. &#160;It's a similar situation in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, he adds.</p>
<p>Reich, a professor at the University of California Berkeley, says stronger unions are a fundamental reason why some northern European nations have been able to bolster wages for their middle classes.&#160;US workers enjoyed the same benefits in the mid-1950s, when about one out three American workers was unionized.&#160;</p>
<p>"That gave the vast middle class a voice and considerable bargaining leverage because if you weren't unionized, you were still going to be affected by the union contracts," Reich says. "An employer in a non-unionized sector knew that if he or she didn't go along with unionized bargaining then&#160;that employer would be the next to be unionized."</p>
<p>And in Germany, unions' power, according to Reich is structurally integrated into corporate goverance.&#160;</p>
<p>"Unions do have a say in what corporations do in terms of pay and many things that in the United States are prerogatives of management," he notes.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/287115824/Saving-Capitalism-For-the-Many-Not-the-Few-Chapter-1" type="external">Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (Chapter 1)</a></p>
<p />
|
What Germany's got that America doesn't
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2015-10-26/america-global-leader-income-inequality
|
2015-10-26
| 3left-center
|
What Germany's got that America doesn't
<p>Income inequality is front and center in the the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, thanks to Sen. Bernie Sanders.&#160;</p>
<p>And the widening income gap between workers and managers isn't a uniquely American problem, it's global.</p>
<p>But several capitalist economies in northern Europe have done much more than the US has to close the income gap, according to Robert Reich, the former secretary of labor and the author of a new book,&#160; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Capitalism-For-Many-Not/dp/0385350570" type="external">Saving Captialism: For the Many, Not the Few</a>.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>"Among developed countries, the United States has the most unequal distribution of income and of wealth," he says. "People at the top are doing superbly well in this recovery, better than ever."</p>
<p>Reich points to Germany as a nation with a more egalitarian distribution of income. He says the top one percent of workers in Germany take home roughly 11 percent of the country's total income. &#160;In contrast, those "one percenters" in the US earn about 20 percent of national income. Plus, those German workers can expect their government to provide some measure of health care and education. &#160;It's a similar situation in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, he adds.</p>
<p>Reich, a professor at the University of California Berkeley, says stronger unions are a fundamental reason why some northern European nations have been able to bolster wages for their middle classes.&#160;US workers enjoyed the same benefits in the mid-1950s, when about one out three American workers was unionized.&#160;</p>
<p>"That gave the vast middle class a voice and considerable bargaining leverage because if you weren't unionized, you were still going to be affected by the union contracts," Reich says. "An employer in a non-unionized sector knew that if he or she didn't go along with unionized bargaining then&#160;that employer would be the next to be unionized."</p>
<p>And in Germany, unions' power, according to Reich is structurally integrated into corporate goverance.&#160;</p>
<p>"Unions do have a say in what corporations do in terms of pay and many things that in the United States are prerogatives of management," he notes.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/287115824/Saving-Capitalism-For-the-Many-Not-the-Few-Chapter-1" type="external">Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (Chapter 1)</a></p>
<p />
| 5,797 |
<p />
<p>According to the IRS, the average refund taxpayers received during the 2016 filing season was $2,732. That's a substantial chunk of change, but what if I told you that you could take that money and potentially triple its value for you by the end of this year?</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Indeed, you can turn that average refund into over $8,000 toward your retirement by the end of this year, with absolutely no impact to your lifestyle. All you need to do is follow these five simple steps.</p>
<p>For 2016, if you or your spouse are working, you can potentially contribute up to $5,500 each to either a Roth IRA or a Traditional IRA. If you're age 50 or up, that potential contribution increases to $6,500.</p>
<p>A refund check of $2,732 fits easily within those limits, which makes it a straightforward way to turn your tax refund into money for your retirement.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Your tax refund isn't a gift from the Government. It's the return to you of an interest-free loan you handed Uncle Sam during the year by over-withholding your taxes. Take that money back and put it to productive use for yourself. You can contribute pre-tax money to your traditional 401(k) and get not only your money working for you but also money Uncle Sam would have otherwise taxed from you.</p>
<p>To fully make use of your refund check, increase your 401(k) contributions by enough to make up for both the refund itself and the tax you won't be paying on the contributed income. The basic math is Refund / (1-marginal tax bracket). If you're in the 25% tax bracket and got that typical refund, that would turn into $2,732 / (1-0.25) = $3,642.67.</p>
<p>In step 2, you invested the money that you had over paid Uncle Sam, but in doing so, you did decrease your take home paycheck. Key to making this plan neutral to your everyday lifestyle is to decrease the amount Uncle Sam withholds every paycheck. Using <a href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf" type="external">IRS Form W-4 Opens a New Window.</a> or your employer's substitute, you can adjust your withholdings to make it so you won't be making another large interest free loan to Uncle Sam this year.</p>
<p>When you're making this adjustment, your objective should be to get close to break even when it comes time to filing your taxes next year. If you reduce your withholdings too much, you could have to pay underpayment penalties on top of any taxes you owe. The key is to be within one of the IRS' " <a href="http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2015/12/04/3-year-end-tax-tips-for-2015.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Safe Harbor Opens a New Window.</a>" limits. For 2016, the key Safe Harbor limits are:</p>
<p>Many employers offer a match to encourage employees to contribute money toward their own retirement. Matches vary by company, but a common practice is a $0.50 match for every $1.00 the employee contributes, up to some percentage of salary. On that $3,642.67 contribution you made in step 2, a 50% match would be an additional $1,821.33, contributed into your retirement account, on your behalf.</p>
<p>Your $2,732 IRA contribution from your refund check plus your $3,642.67 contribution to your 401(k) plus your employer's match of $1,821.33 brings your total to $8,196. That's triple your original refund amount, now working on your behalf to help fund your retirement.</p>
<p>Perhaps best of all, you just figured out how to save that $8,196 with no impact to your everyday lifestyle. Every penny of that money came straight from your tax refund this year, from the money that would otherwise have been a tax refund next year, and/or from your employer's matching program.</p>
<p>As fun as it might be to hold that $2,732 refund check, wouldn't it be even more fun to see it turn into more than $8,000 this year? On top of that, once you've taken these five steps, that $8,196 will be in your retirement accounts, where it can grow tax-deferred on your behalf for the rest of your career.</p>
<p>That's an amazing opportunity available to you simply by choosing to no longer offer Uncle Sam an interest free loan, instead putting that very same stack of your own money to work for you. So get started today, and turn that tax refund into the foundation for your financial future.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/06/5-simple-steps-to-triple-the-value-of-your-tax-ref.aspx" type="external">5 Simple Steps to Triple the Value of Your Tax Refund Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBigFrog/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Chuck Saletta Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
|
5 Simple Steps to Triple the Value of Your Tax Refund
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/06/06/5-simple-steps-to-triple-value-your-tax-refund.html
|
2016-06-06
| 0right
|
5 Simple Steps to Triple the Value of Your Tax Refund
<p />
<p>According to the IRS, the average refund taxpayers received during the 2016 filing season was $2,732. That's a substantial chunk of change, but what if I told you that you could take that money and potentially triple its value for you by the end of this year?</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Indeed, you can turn that average refund into over $8,000 toward your retirement by the end of this year, with absolutely no impact to your lifestyle. All you need to do is follow these five simple steps.</p>
<p>For 2016, if you or your spouse are working, you can potentially contribute up to $5,500 each to either a Roth IRA or a Traditional IRA. If you're age 50 or up, that potential contribution increases to $6,500.</p>
<p>A refund check of $2,732 fits easily within those limits, which makes it a straightforward way to turn your tax refund into money for your retirement.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Your tax refund isn't a gift from the Government. It's the return to you of an interest-free loan you handed Uncle Sam during the year by over-withholding your taxes. Take that money back and put it to productive use for yourself. You can contribute pre-tax money to your traditional 401(k) and get not only your money working for you but also money Uncle Sam would have otherwise taxed from you.</p>
<p>To fully make use of your refund check, increase your 401(k) contributions by enough to make up for both the refund itself and the tax you won't be paying on the contributed income. The basic math is Refund / (1-marginal tax bracket). If you're in the 25% tax bracket and got that typical refund, that would turn into $2,732 / (1-0.25) = $3,642.67.</p>
<p>In step 2, you invested the money that you had over paid Uncle Sam, but in doing so, you did decrease your take home paycheck. Key to making this plan neutral to your everyday lifestyle is to decrease the amount Uncle Sam withholds every paycheck. Using <a href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf" type="external">IRS Form W-4 Opens a New Window.</a> or your employer's substitute, you can adjust your withholdings to make it so you won't be making another large interest free loan to Uncle Sam this year.</p>
<p>When you're making this adjustment, your objective should be to get close to break even when it comes time to filing your taxes next year. If you reduce your withholdings too much, you could have to pay underpayment penalties on top of any taxes you owe. The key is to be within one of the IRS' " <a href="http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2015/12/04/3-year-end-tax-tips-for-2015.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Safe Harbor Opens a New Window.</a>" limits. For 2016, the key Safe Harbor limits are:</p>
<p>Many employers offer a match to encourage employees to contribute money toward their own retirement. Matches vary by company, but a common practice is a $0.50 match for every $1.00 the employee contributes, up to some percentage of salary. On that $3,642.67 contribution you made in step 2, a 50% match would be an additional $1,821.33, contributed into your retirement account, on your behalf.</p>
<p>Your $2,732 IRA contribution from your refund check plus your $3,642.67 contribution to your 401(k) plus your employer's match of $1,821.33 brings your total to $8,196. That's triple your original refund amount, now working on your behalf to help fund your retirement.</p>
<p>Perhaps best of all, you just figured out how to save that $8,196 with no impact to your everyday lifestyle. Every penny of that money came straight from your tax refund this year, from the money that would otherwise have been a tax refund next year, and/or from your employer's matching program.</p>
<p>As fun as it might be to hold that $2,732 refund check, wouldn't it be even more fun to see it turn into more than $8,000 this year? On top of that, once you've taken these five steps, that $8,196 will be in your retirement accounts, where it can grow tax-deferred on your behalf for the rest of your career.</p>
<p>That's an amazing opportunity available to you simply by choosing to no longer offer Uncle Sam an interest free loan, instead putting that very same stack of your own money to work for you. So get started today, and turn that tax refund into the foundation for your financial future.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/06/5-simple-steps-to-triple-the-value-of-your-tax-ref.aspx" type="external">5 Simple Steps to Triple the Value of Your Tax Refund Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBigFrog/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Chuck Saletta Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 5,798 |
<p>“Scientists Outside History” was published in the September 1996 issue of Natural History, the popular educational journal of the American Museum of Natural History. Authored by me, “ <a href="http://www.radiotahrir.org/fullarticle.php?article=14" type="external">Scientists Outside History</a>” was based on research I undertook in Iraq between 1989 and 1996. The article’s subheading: “Faced with international embargo, Iraq’s most progressive community finds itself abandoned.”</p>
<p>Reviewing my early files on Iraq, along with this article, I found a readers’ correspondence (that was the pre-digital era) which Natural History’s editor had forwarded to me. Most of these letters were from outraged readers, many of them scientists or teachers, berating and excoriating me for seeing any merits in what they viewed as the ‘vicious and tyrannical Saddam regime’. (Praise Iraq’s earlier four millennia, but not the 20th century.) How dare I claim “Iraq’s scientists and doctors had enjoyed strong government backing, enabling them to pursue their international studies”?</p>
<p>Those indignant respondents didn’t object that international scientific and medical journals were freely available in Iraq up to <a href="" type="internal" />1990. Nor did they challenge my report of how that embargo went far beyond its mandate to include cultural and medical exchange, that even by 1996 (it would continue for another six years) it ensured Iraqis no longer received international journals, that Iraqi students were barred from post graduate studies (in U.S., Canada, and perhaps elsewhere) in fields such as physics, and that invitations to international conferences could not be extended to Iraqis. As I wrote at the time, this exclusion “proved as severe as any weapon of mass destruction”.</p>
<p>It was the noted sculptor, Mohammed Hikmat Ghani, one of many Iraqi artists who, sponsored by his government, frequently traveled abroad to meet his peers, pointed out to me in 1991, that (as a result of that vicious embargo) “Iraq is now outside history”.</p>
<p>Visiting Iraq earlier this year, fourteen years into its American-designed and supervised democracy, I found that, as much as during the embargo, perhaps more so today Iraq is indeed outside history. It has been plundered of both its human and historical resources.</p>
<p>During my 1989 tour of the resplendent Iraq National Museum, it was Mohammed Ghani who informed me how the government had secreted away and protected the entire museum’s holdings during the eight year Iraq-Iran war. That collection was returned intact and complete following the 1988 cease fire:– the same treasure which, overseen by U.S. occupation troops in 2003, was ransacked and pillaged. (That was during the early months of the American invasion.)</p>
<p>One need not invoke ancient eras of past millennia to acknowledge Iraq’s contributions to civilization. Modern Iraq, before that embargo, was replete with industrious, well trained, talented men and women dedicated to their arts and sciences, their efforts generously encouraged and published by the government. They advanced more by personal merit than by party membership then.</p>
<p>The world famous architect <a href="http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-Fl-Ka/Hadid-Zaha.html" type="external">Zaha Hadid</a>, one of a large community of Iraqi artists, may have settled in Europe, but the foundation of her energy and imagination can be traced to her childhood within Iraq; there was early recognition of her mathematical genius and the influence of scientists in her own family.</p>
<p>Although not without difficulty, one can find many examples of outstanding 20th century treatises by Iraqi engineers (e.g. <a href="http://radiotahrir.org/audio_page.php?id=9" type="external">Ahmed Sousa and Aliya Sousa</a>), medical specialists, linguists and artists produced within Iraq prior to the sanction regime. That exhaustive embargo targeted Iraq’s intelligentsia as much as its Baathist leadership.</p>
<p>You may ask: Why bring this up now? The embargo ended in 2003; Saadam is gone. Liberated from international isolation and dictatorship, Iraq’s an oil rich nation free to interact on the global stage.</p>
<p>In fact Iraq is still culturally marginalized, and intellectually much weakened. Many teachers, scholars and other talent who represent the high standards of the 20th century and could bridge the three decade-long wasteland created by embargo and war, have departed. Either they have been snapped up by foreign nations who recognize their abilities and fine training. Or as refugees, they’re obliged to accept jobs that do not advance or nourish their talent and imagination.</p>
<p>I was reminded of just how widespread the destruction of modern Iraqi civilization is today by a recent FB post from an Iraqi colleague residing abroad. Now middle aged and without economic security as a non-citizen in a nearby Arab country, following the work of theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, he recalls his research in photon physics as a young engineer. He scans world scientific developments today realizing that Iraq, 30-60 years ago, was well placed to be in the forefront of scientific discoveries, on the cusp of frontiers in medical research, physics, and archeology. In response to his posting, colleagues in his network recalled their own attenuated and derailed careers. Many of these women and men are now exiles, snapped up by foreign companies and European and American universities, engineering institutes and hospitals, all well aware of the high standard of Iraq’s education (both before and during the Baath era). Tens of thousands of these experts are forced to take up work inferior to their level of training and without institutional support for publication and international dialogue.</p>
<p>When did you last see a citation of research authored by an Iraqi scientist? When have you last heard an Iraqi scientific presentation at an international conference? Their absence is indicative of their continued isolation and of their government’s cultural poverty and mismanaged resources.</p>
<p>Inside Iraq today the main concern of citizens (and government) is security. The streets of Baghdad are channels cutting through walled in lanes. There’s no civic landscape. No conferences take place here; few foreign professional colleagues visit; the government’s resources are consumed by a military budget for tanks and trucks, foreign anti-terror devices, and arming check posts.</p>
<p>Just as there are no conferences and few gatherings of musicians or writers or researchers, there are no open playgrounds, no public football matches, no concerts, and little inter-city travel. Children and families are confined to their homes watching the world pass through television, Youtube, and WhatsApp.</p>
<p>With corruption gripping all levels of government, whatever resources are available are allocated to cronies and their families; merit is an alien concept now. Even the Ministry of Health, once the pride of Iraq, is today incapable of designing and carrying out essential research to assess&#160; the nation’s basic health needs.</p>
<p>In response to the arrival of so many highly trained Iraqis in the West over the past 30 years, surely Americans and others could make an effort to visit Iraq and start a new dialogue with their peers there.</p>
<p>Barbara Nimri Aziz recently returned from a two week visit in Iraq. <a href="" type="internal">Swimming up the Tigris: Real Life Encounters with Iraq</a>, based on her work in Iraq between 1989 and 2003, is published by University of Florida Press, 2007.</p>
|
Iraq Outside History
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2018/03/16/iraq-outside-history/
|
2018-03-16
| 4left
|
Iraq Outside History
<p>“Scientists Outside History” was published in the September 1996 issue of Natural History, the popular educational journal of the American Museum of Natural History. Authored by me, “ <a href="http://www.radiotahrir.org/fullarticle.php?article=14" type="external">Scientists Outside History</a>” was based on research I undertook in Iraq between 1989 and 1996. The article’s subheading: “Faced with international embargo, Iraq’s most progressive community finds itself abandoned.”</p>
<p>Reviewing my early files on Iraq, along with this article, I found a readers’ correspondence (that was the pre-digital era) which Natural History’s editor had forwarded to me. Most of these letters were from outraged readers, many of them scientists or teachers, berating and excoriating me for seeing any merits in what they viewed as the ‘vicious and tyrannical Saddam regime’. (Praise Iraq’s earlier four millennia, but not the 20th century.) How dare I claim “Iraq’s scientists and doctors had enjoyed strong government backing, enabling them to pursue their international studies”?</p>
<p>Those indignant respondents didn’t object that international scientific and medical journals were freely available in Iraq up to <a href="" type="internal" />1990. Nor did they challenge my report of how that embargo went far beyond its mandate to include cultural and medical exchange, that even by 1996 (it would continue for another six years) it ensured Iraqis no longer received international journals, that Iraqi students were barred from post graduate studies (in U.S., Canada, and perhaps elsewhere) in fields such as physics, and that invitations to international conferences could not be extended to Iraqis. As I wrote at the time, this exclusion “proved as severe as any weapon of mass destruction”.</p>
<p>It was the noted sculptor, Mohammed Hikmat Ghani, one of many Iraqi artists who, sponsored by his government, frequently traveled abroad to meet his peers, pointed out to me in 1991, that (as a result of that vicious embargo) “Iraq is now outside history”.</p>
<p>Visiting Iraq earlier this year, fourteen years into its American-designed and supervised democracy, I found that, as much as during the embargo, perhaps more so today Iraq is indeed outside history. It has been plundered of both its human and historical resources.</p>
<p>During my 1989 tour of the resplendent Iraq National Museum, it was Mohammed Ghani who informed me how the government had secreted away and protected the entire museum’s holdings during the eight year Iraq-Iran war. That collection was returned intact and complete following the 1988 cease fire:– the same treasure which, overseen by U.S. occupation troops in 2003, was ransacked and pillaged. (That was during the early months of the American invasion.)</p>
<p>One need not invoke ancient eras of past millennia to acknowledge Iraq’s contributions to civilization. Modern Iraq, before that embargo, was replete with industrious, well trained, talented men and women dedicated to their arts and sciences, their efforts generously encouraged and published by the government. They advanced more by personal merit than by party membership then.</p>
<p>The world famous architect <a href="http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-Fl-Ka/Hadid-Zaha.html" type="external">Zaha Hadid</a>, one of a large community of Iraqi artists, may have settled in Europe, but the foundation of her energy and imagination can be traced to her childhood within Iraq; there was early recognition of her mathematical genius and the influence of scientists in her own family.</p>
<p>Although not without difficulty, one can find many examples of outstanding 20th century treatises by Iraqi engineers (e.g. <a href="http://radiotahrir.org/audio_page.php?id=9" type="external">Ahmed Sousa and Aliya Sousa</a>), medical specialists, linguists and artists produced within Iraq prior to the sanction regime. That exhaustive embargo targeted Iraq’s intelligentsia as much as its Baathist leadership.</p>
<p>You may ask: Why bring this up now? The embargo ended in 2003; Saadam is gone. Liberated from international isolation and dictatorship, Iraq’s an oil rich nation free to interact on the global stage.</p>
<p>In fact Iraq is still culturally marginalized, and intellectually much weakened. Many teachers, scholars and other talent who represent the high standards of the 20th century and could bridge the three decade-long wasteland created by embargo and war, have departed. Either they have been snapped up by foreign nations who recognize their abilities and fine training. Or as refugees, they’re obliged to accept jobs that do not advance or nourish their talent and imagination.</p>
<p>I was reminded of just how widespread the destruction of modern Iraqi civilization is today by a recent FB post from an Iraqi colleague residing abroad. Now middle aged and without economic security as a non-citizen in a nearby Arab country, following the work of theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, he recalls his research in photon physics as a young engineer. He scans world scientific developments today realizing that Iraq, 30-60 years ago, was well placed to be in the forefront of scientific discoveries, on the cusp of frontiers in medical research, physics, and archeology. In response to his posting, colleagues in his network recalled their own attenuated and derailed careers. Many of these women and men are now exiles, snapped up by foreign companies and European and American universities, engineering institutes and hospitals, all well aware of the high standard of Iraq’s education (both before and during the Baath era). Tens of thousands of these experts are forced to take up work inferior to their level of training and without institutional support for publication and international dialogue.</p>
<p>When did you last see a citation of research authored by an Iraqi scientist? When have you last heard an Iraqi scientific presentation at an international conference? Their absence is indicative of their continued isolation and of their government’s cultural poverty and mismanaged resources.</p>
<p>Inside Iraq today the main concern of citizens (and government) is security. The streets of Baghdad are channels cutting through walled in lanes. There’s no civic landscape. No conferences take place here; few foreign professional colleagues visit; the government’s resources are consumed by a military budget for tanks and trucks, foreign anti-terror devices, and arming check posts.</p>
<p>Just as there are no conferences and few gatherings of musicians or writers or researchers, there are no open playgrounds, no public football matches, no concerts, and little inter-city travel. Children and families are confined to their homes watching the world pass through television, Youtube, and WhatsApp.</p>
<p>With corruption gripping all levels of government, whatever resources are available are allocated to cronies and their families; merit is an alien concept now. Even the Ministry of Health, once the pride of Iraq, is today incapable of designing and carrying out essential research to assess&#160; the nation’s basic health needs.</p>
<p>In response to the arrival of so many highly trained Iraqis in the West over the past 30 years, surely Americans and others could make an effort to visit Iraq and start a new dialogue with their peers there.</p>
<p>Barbara Nimri Aziz recently returned from a two week visit in Iraq. <a href="" type="internal">Swimming up the Tigris: Real Life Encounters with Iraq</a>, based on her work in Iraq between 1989 and 2003, is published by University of Florida Press, 2007.</p>
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