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<p />
<p>The Affordable Care Act may give more people access to health insurance, but experts don’t expect it to help solve a major problem in this country: medical bankruptcies.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>According to a 2013 study by NerdWallet Health, unpaid medical bills are expected to be the No.1 cause of bankruptcy filings, surpassing both credit card and mortgage debt.</p>
<p>But medical bankruptcy doesn’t just happen to the uninsured. In fact, research shows that many people who file for bankruptcy due to exorbitant medical costs have existing health insurance.</p>
<p>“It’s not just the medical bills it’s really everything around the bills that insurance won’t cover,” says Ethan Austin, co-founder of Internet-based fundraising service GiveForward. He says 78% of people that file for medical bankruptcy had insurance.</p>
<p>He gives the example of a breast cancer patient, citing out-of-pocket costs for a year of treatment coming in around $8,500 to cover things like co-pays, co-insurance and travel to and from the medical facility. The figure doesn’t include lost wages, day care and other expenses associated with treatment. Add a high deductible health insurance plan to the mix, which is what many Americans have, and it’s not surprising people are struggling with mounting medical costs.</p>
<p>Prior to the start of the ACA’s enrollment season on Oct. 1, health insurance was mainly tied to employment. The protracted recession pushed millions of of people out of the workforce without insurance. Sure they could use COBRA for coverage, but the costs associated with that insurance makes it prohibitive to many, particularly the recently laid off.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>“Medical expenses have been growing at a rate well above inflation,” says Rocket Lawyer On Call attorney Mazyar Hedayat. “Starting in about 2007/2008, medical expenses went from being a primary component of a lot of cases to becoming the dominate factor in consumer.</p>
<p>When it comes to medical bankruptcy, consumers need to look at it the same way they would for personal bankruptcy, which means their credit will take a hit for as long as 10 years depending on the type they file. Consumers can either file for Chapter 7, which is when assets go into liquidation and the debts are wiped out, or Chapter 13, which reorganizes the debt into a repayment plan.</p>
<p>“The less likely a repayment plan is feasible given your income, the more likely it will be that you file under Chapter 7,” says Chas Rampenthal, LegalZoom general counsel and legal life coach . He says consumers going the Chapter 7 route may be able to file bankruptcy over certain debt but not all of it.</p>
<p>“It is possible to not try and discharge a home mortgage and only discharge medical bills or credit card debt. Generally you have to make the court aware of all your debt and you will have to use what is known as a reaffirmation agreement to waive the discharge of that debt.”</p>
<p>Experts say filing for bankruptcy should be a last resort, and suggest cash-strapped patients try to negotiate with the hospital, seek out help from federal and state entities and look for creative ways to raise money.</p>
<p>But don’t wait too long and end up owing a lot more. “People don’t want to stiff their doctor so they will hang in there as long as they can,” says Hedayat. “I often find people have years and years’ worth of compounded medical expenses.”</p>
<p>For consumers who do decide to file for bankruptcy because of medical debt, Rampenthal says it’s imperative that the problem or problems that caused the bankruptcy are fixed.&#160; If the filing is because of medical costs, it may be good ideas to wait to all those expenses are done with before filing.</p>
<p>“When your debts are discharged, you get a ‘clean slate’ to start over financially,” says Rampenthal.&#160; “If you immediately fall into the same habits that got you into the debt in the first place, you could end up back in debt – only this time you will not have the ability to file for bankruptcy.”</p>
|
Medical Bankruptcies are Still a Problem, Here's What to Expect
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/02/18/medical-bankruptcies-are-still-problem-here-what-to-expect.html
|
2016-03-05
| 0right
|
Medical Bankruptcies are Still a Problem, Here's What to Expect
<p />
<p>The Affordable Care Act may give more people access to health insurance, but experts don’t expect it to help solve a major problem in this country: medical bankruptcies.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>According to a 2013 study by NerdWallet Health, unpaid medical bills are expected to be the No.1 cause of bankruptcy filings, surpassing both credit card and mortgage debt.</p>
<p>But medical bankruptcy doesn’t just happen to the uninsured. In fact, research shows that many people who file for bankruptcy due to exorbitant medical costs have existing health insurance.</p>
<p>“It’s not just the medical bills it’s really everything around the bills that insurance won’t cover,” says Ethan Austin, co-founder of Internet-based fundraising service GiveForward. He says 78% of people that file for medical bankruptcy had insurance.</p>
<p>He gives the example of a breast cancer patient, citing out-of-pocket costs for a year of treatment coming in around $8,500 to cover things like co-pays, co-insurance and travel to and from the medical facility. The figure doesn’t include lost wages, day care and other expenses associated with treatment. Add a high deductible health insurance plan to the mix, which is what many Americans have, and it’s not surprising people are struggling with mounting medical costs.</p>
<p>Prior to the start of the ACA’s enrollment season on Oct. 1, health insurance was mainly tied to employment. The protracted recession pushed millions of of people out of the workforce without insurance. Sure they could use COBRA for coverage, but the costs associated with that insurance makes it prohibitive to many, particularly the recently laid off.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>“Medical expenses have been growing at a rate well above inflation,” says Rocket Lawyer On Call attorney Mazyar Hedayat. “Starting in about 2007/2008, medical expenses went from being a primary component of a lot of cases to becoming the dominate factor in consumer.</p>
<p>When it comes to medical bankruptcy, consumers need to look at it the same way they would for personal bankruptcy, which means their credit will take a hit for as long as 10 years depending on the type they file. Consumers can either file for Chapter 7, which is when assets go into liquidation and the debts are wiped out, or Chapter 13, which reorganizes the debt into a repayment plan.</p>
<p>“The less likely a repayment plan is feasible given your income, the more likely it will be that you file under Chapter 7,” says Chas Rampenthal, LegalZoom general counsel and legal life coach . He says consumers going the Chapter 7 route may be able to file bankruptcy over certain debt but not all of it.</p>
<p>“It is possible to not try and discharge a home mortgage and only discharge medical bills or credit card debt. Generally you have to make the court aware of all your debt and you will have to use what is known as a reaffirmation agreement to waive the discharge of that debt.”</p>
<p>Experts say filing for bankruptcy should be a last resort, and suggest cash-strapped patients try to negotiate with the hospital, seek out help from federal and state entities and look for creative ways to raise money.</p>
<p>But don’t wait too long and end up owing a lot more. “People don’t want to stiff their doctor so they will hang in there as long as they can,” says Hedayat. “I often find people have years and years’ worth of compounded medical expenses.”</p>
<p>For consumers who do decide to file for bankruptcy because of medical debt, Rampenthal says it’s imperative that the problem or problems that caused the bankruptcy are fixed.&#160; If the filing is because of medical costs, it may be good ideas to wait to all those expenses are done with before filing.</p>
<p>“When your debts are discharged, you get a ‘clean slate’ to start over financially,” says Rampenthal.&#160; “If you immediately fall into the same habits that got you into the debt in the first place, you could end up back in debt – only this time you will not have the ability to file for bankruptcy.”</p>
| 7,600 |
<p>Tropical storms are striking areas further north of the tropics and culminating their most devastating force in higher latitudes, a new study led by the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association) says. The report, published in the journal Nature, also notes that this effect is more dangerous due to higher population concentrations in these northern areas as compared to the tropics.</p>
<p>Tropical cyclones — including hurricanes and typhoons — spiked intensity levels by a distance of 30 to 40 miles above and below the equator for the past 30 years, the study says.</p>
<p>On the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website, the agency says: “As tropical cyclones move into higher latitudes, some regions closer to the equator may experience reduced risk, while coastal populations and infrastructure pole-ward of the tropics may experience increased risk. With their devastating winds and flooding, tropical cyclones can especially endanger&#160;coastal cities not adequately prepared for them.”</p>
<p>As meteorologists have worked determinately&#160;to isolate where tropical storms are most intense, various factors have evaded their pinpointing. Jim Kossin, the lead author of the paper and scientist working with NOAA’s National Climactic Data Center said, “the location where a tropical cyclone reaches its maximum intensity is a more reliable value and less likely to be influenced by data discrepancies or uncertainties.”</p>
<p>Previous studies have reported that since 1979, the tropics are actually expanding a distance of 1 to 3 degrees of latitude. This equals an expanse of approximately 70-100 miles in the northern and southern hemispheres.</p>
<p>“The rate at which tropical cyclones are moving toward the poles is consistent with the observed rates of tropical expansion,” says Kossin. “The expansion of the tropics appears to be influencing the environmental factors that control tropical cyclone formation and intensification, which is apparently driving their migration toward the poles.”</p>
<p>To show how researchers with the National Climactic Data Center constructed the project, Nature World News reported, “In order to track these storms’ paths over recent years, researchers used international data from 1982 to 2012. They then marked the peak intensity of each of the storms in order to see whether the hurricanes were traveling further afield.”</p>
<p>One aspect the study brings to light is many of the areas above and below the equator with higher coastal populations than in the tropics are unprepared for storms with these intensity levels as was seen with Hurricane Sandy crushing New York City in 2012.</p>
<p>Researchers at MIT who helped with the release of the study said that the trend “seems consistent with a warming climate.”</p>
<p />
|
Tropical storms to claim more territory as equator expands
| false |
http://natmonitor.com/2014/05/14/tropical-storms-claim-more-territory-as-equator-expands/
|
2014-05-14
| 3left-center
|
Tropical storms to claim more territory as equator expands
<p>Tropical storms are striking areas further north of the tropics and culminating their most devastating force in higher latitudes, a new study led by the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association) says. The report, published in the journal Nature, also notes that this effect is more dangerous due to higher population concentrations in these northern areas as compared to the tropics.</p>
<p>Tropical cyclones — including hurricanes and typhoons — spiked intensity levels by a distance of 30 to 40 miles above and below the equator for the past 30 years, the study says.</p>
<p>On the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website, the agency says: “As tropical cyclones move into higher latitudes, some regions closer to the equator may experience reduced risk, while coastal populations and infrastructure pole-ward of the tropics may experience increased risk. With their devastating winds and flooding, tropical cyclones can especially endanger&#160;coastal cities not adequately prepared for them.”</p>
<p>As meteorologists have worked determinately&#160;to isolate where tropical storms are most intense, various factors have evaded their pinpointing. Jim Kossin, the lead author of the paper and scientist working with NOAA’s National Climactic Data Center said, “the location where a tropical cyclone reaches its maximum intensity is a more reliable value and less likely to be influenced by data discrepancies or uncertainties.”</p>
<p>Previous studies have reported that since 1979, the tropics are actually expanding a distance of 1 to 3 degrees of latitude. This equals an expanse of approximately 70-100 miles in the northern and southern hemispheres.</p>
<p>“The rate at which tropical cyclones are moving toward the poles is consistent with the observed rates of tropical expansion,” says Kossin. “The expansion of the tropics appears to be influencing the environmental factors that control tropical cyclone formation and intensification, which is apparently driving their migration toward the poles.”</p>
<p>To show how researchers with the National Climactic Data Center constructed the project, Nature World News reported, “In order to track these storms’ paths over recent years, researchers used international data from 1982 to 2012. They then marked the peak intensity of each of the storms in order to see whether the hurricanes were traveling further afield.”</p>
<p>One aspect the study brings to light is many of the areas above and below the equator with higher coastal populations than in the tropics are unprepared for storms with these intensity levels as was seen with Hurricane Sandy crushing New York City in 2012.</p>
<p>Researchers at MIT who helped with the release of the study said that the trend “seems consistent with a warming climate.”</p>
<p />
| 7,601 |
<p>As was the case in 2008, the racial divide in American society is a huge obstacle to President Barack Obama’s chances of electoral victory in 2012. He overcame it last time, but now the economy has made his task much more difficult.</p>
<p>Four years ago, as the country plunged into recession, Obama won 43 percent of the white vote, which helped him to his win over John McCain, roughly 53 to 46 percent overall. Supporters cheered — some wept — at signs of a new racial harmony, ignoring the fact that many white voters didn’t see it that way.</p>
<p>I was glad he won — still am, as a matter of fact. But my years as a reporter covering streets and schools where many races come together, often in an unfriendly manner, told me this was no new era.</p>
<p>Many words have been lavished on the brilliance of Obama’s campaign, but it’s clear he probably would have lost without the recession.</p>
<p />
<p>The recession began in December 2007. Obama was then dazzling Iowa Democrats with his vague message of hope, mixed with an equally vague critique of the Iraq War. However, during the January 2008 primary campaign in New Hampshire, a state more typical of the rest of the country, voters showed strong signs of worrying about an economy starting to falter. Hillary Clinton reflected such concern in hard-edged, detailed speeches. She upset Obama in that state’s primary.</p>
<p>Lehman Brothers went bankrupt on Sept. 15, 2008, and the economy collapsed just as the fall campaign began. Obama, by then focusing his message on the economy, won. McCain, who represented the incumbent party and had been running on his national security experience, didn’t have a chance.</p>
<p>This was an aberration rather than a trend. The racial divide remains, as shown in scholarly research on the phenomenon of racially polarized voting, in which members of ethnic groups strongly tend to vote for their own.</p>
<p>The research was for a current <a href="http://mobile.latimes.com/p.p?m=b&amp;a=rp&amp;id=847169&amp;postId=847169&amp;postUserId=7&amp;sessionToken=&amp;catId=6978&amp;curAbsIndex=1&amp;resultsUrl=DID%3D6%26DFCL%3D1000%26DSB%3Drank%2523desc%26DBFQ%3DuserId%253A7%26DL.w%3D%26DL.d%3D10%26DQ%3DsectionId%253A6978%26DPS%3D0%26DPL%3D10%20" type="external">reapportionment dispute</a> in racially diverse Southern California involving the question of whether a county supervisorial district should have a Latino majority to meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. In exploring that angle, professor Matt A. Barreto of the University of Washington examined the results of several congressional, legislative and local elections in areas where there is a substantial white and Latino population. “Non-Latinos tend to vote against Latino candidates in all reaches of Los Angeles County, while Latinos vote strongly in favor,” he said. In another study, Barreto and two other researchers found that “non-Latinos continue to systematically vote against Latino candidates and that Latino voters demonstrate very high rates of racial bloc voting in favor of co-ethnic candidates.”</p>
<p>Such polarized voting is evident in elections involving whites and African-Americans as well.</p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.dawn.com/2011/08/28/whites-women-voters-a-problem-for-obama.html%20" type="external">Associated Press-GfK poll</a> last month showed that only 36 percent of whites now approve of the job Obama has been doing, down from 56 percent in the first three months of his term. “In 2008, Obama won the backing of most whites in the Northeast and was competitive in the Midwest and West, outperforming the previous two Democratic nominees,” the pollsters said. “Now majorities of whites in every region but the Northeast say he deserves to lose in 2012 and is not a strong leader.”</p>
<p>Obama seems aware of the role the bad economy will play in his re-election campaign. He discussed it frankly in an interview for White House correspondent Kenneth T. Walsh’s 2010 book “Family of Freedoms: Presidents and African Americans in the White House.” He told Walsh, who reports for U.S. News &amp; World Report, “If I succeed, the economy will have been growing, and our history indicates that when the economy is growing and people feel good about their prospects, social tensions diminish. I’ve always been of the view that if you close the gap in the economic status of African-Americans relative to the general population, that would do more than any race commission or explicit race based strategy to reduce tensions.”</p>
<p>Since that interview, the economy has become worse. That was clear in the recent Census Bureau report that more people are living under the poverty line now than at any other time in more than half a century. Last year, the bureau said, 2.6 million more people joined the ranks of the officially impoverished. In addition, the incomes of households in the middle fell 7.1 percent below their 1999 height.</p>
<p>Income dropped across the population except among the wealthiest. The gap separating whites from lower-earning African-Americans and Hispanics widened. That chills Obama’s hopes that a growing economy will ease social tensions.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for him, he now owns this bad economy. Elected by attacking the economic failures of President George W. Bush and other Republicans, he now must defend himself for not doing enough about it. That’s not a racial issue. If Obama were white, he would still be shouldering the blame. But the fact that he is not white makes his task much more difficult, given white voters’ tendency to vote against black and Latino candidates.</p>
<p>He’s fighting back. No more of the remote Obama. “We’re in a national emergency … and instead of getting folks to rise up above partisanship in a spirit that says we’re all in this together you’ve got folks who are purposely dividing,” he told 9,300 people who packed an arena in Raleigh, N.C., last Wednesday. He should be saying this all over the country. Maybe it will be enough to help him overcome the obstacle that threatens his presidency.</p>
|
The Racial Divide Is There and Waiting
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/the-racial-divide-is-there-and-waiting/
|
2011-09-20
| 4left
|
The Racial Divide Is There and Waiting
<p>As was the case in 2008, the racial divide in American society is a huge obstacle to President Barack Obama’s chances of electoral victory in 2012. He overcame it last time, but now the economy has made his task much more difficult.</p>
<p>Four years ago, as the country plunged into recession, Obama won 43 percent of the white vote, which helped him to his win over John McCain, roughly 53 to 46 percent overall. Supporters cheered — some wept — at signs of a new racial harmony, ignoring the fact that many white voters didn’t see it that way.</p>
<p>I was glad he won — still am, as a matter of fact. But my years as a reporter covering streets and schools where many races come together, often in an unfriendly manner, told me this was no new era.</p>
<p>Many words have been lavished on the brilliance of Obama’s campaign, but it’s clear he probably would have lost without the recession.</p>
<p />
<p>The recession began in December 2007. Obama was then dazzling Iowa Democrats with his vague message of hope, mixed with an equally vague critique of the Iraq War. However, during the January 2008 primary campaign in New Hampshire, a state more typical of the rest of the country, voters showed strong signs of worrying about an economy starting to falter. Hillary Clinton reflected such concern in hard-edged, detailed speeches. She upset Obama in that state’s primary.</p>
<p>Lehman Brothers went bankrupt on Sept. 15, 2008, and the economy collapsed just as the fall campaign began. Obama, by then focusing his message on the economy, won. McCain, who represented the incumbent party and had been running on his national security experience, didn’t have a chance.</p>
<p>This was an aberration rather than a trend. The racial divide remains, as shown in scholarly research on the phenomenon of racially polarized voting, in which members of ethnic groups strongly tend to vote for their own.</p>
<p>The research was for a current <a href="http://mobile.latimes.com/p.p?m=b&amp;a=rp&amp;id=847169&amp;postId=847169&amp;postUserId=7&amp;sessionToken=&amp;catId=6978&amp;curAbsIndex=1&amp;resultsUrl=DID%3D6%26DFCL%3D1000%26DSB%3Drank%2523desc%26DBFQ%3DuserId%253A7%26DL.w%3D%26DL.d%3D10%26DQ%3DsectionId%253A6978%26DPS%3D0%26DPL%3D10%20" type="external">reapportionment dispute</a> in racially diverse Southern California involving the question of whether a county supervisorial district should have a Latino majority to meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. In exploring that angle, professor Matt A. Barreto of the University of Washington examined the results of several congressional, legislative and local elections in areas where there is a substantial white and Latino population. “Non-Latinos tend to vote against Latino candidates in all reaches of Los Angeles County, while Latinos vote strongly in favor,” he said. In another study, Barreto and two other researchers found that “non-Latinos continue to systematically vote against Latino candidates and that Latino voters demonstrate very high rates of racial bloc voting in favor of co-ethnic candidates.”</p>
<p>Such polarized voting is evident in elections involving whites and African-Americans as well.</p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.dawn.com/2011/08/28/whites-women-voters-a-problem-for-obama.html%20" type="external">Associated Press-GfK poll</a> last month showed that only 36 percent of whites now approve of the job Obama has been doing, down from 56 percent in the first three months of his term. “In 2008, Obama won the backing of most whites in the Northeast and was competitive in the Midwest and West, outperforming the previous two Democratic nominees,” the pollsters said. “Now majorities of whites in every region but the Northeast say he deserves to lose in 2012 and is not a strong leader.”</p>
<p>Obama seems aware of the role the bad economy will play in his re-election campaign. He discussed it frankly in an interview for White House correspondent Kenneth T. Walsh’s 2010 book “Family of Freedoms: Presidents and African Americans in the White House.” He told Walsh, who reports for U.S. News &amp; World Report, “If I succeed, the economy will have been growing, and our history indicates that when the economy is growing and people feel good about their prospects, social tensions diminish. I’ve always been of the view that if you close the gap in the economic status of African-Americans relative to the general population, that would do more than any race commission or explicit race based strategy to reduce tensions.”</p>
<p>Since that interview, the economy has become worse. That was clear in the recent Census Bureau report that more people are living under the poverty line now than at any other time in more than half a century. Last year, the bureau said, 2.6 million more people joined the ranks of the officially impoverished. In addition, the incomes of households in the middle fell 7.1 percent below their 1999 height.</p>
<p>Income dropped across the population except among the wealthiest. The gap separating whites from lower-earning African-Americans and Hispanics widened. That chills Obama’s hopes that a growing economy will ease social tensions.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for him, he now owns this bad economy. Elected by attacking the economic failures of President George W. Bush and other Republicans, he now must defend himself for not doing enough about it. That’s not a racial issue. If Obama were white, he would still be shouldering the blame. But the fact that he is not white makes his task much more difficult, given white voters’ tendency to vote against black and Latino candidates.</p>
<p>He’s fighting back. No more of the remote Obama. “We’re in a national emergency … and instead of getting folks to rise up above partisanship in a spirit that says we’re all in this together you’ve got folks who are purposely dividing,” he told 9,300 people who packed an arena in Raleigh, N.C., last Wednesday. He should be saying this all over the country. Maybe it will be enough to help him overcome the obstacle that threatens his presidency.</p>
| 7,602 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" />On the show this week: The idea that the surge of US troops is what “won” the Iraq War shouldn’t be treated as if it’s a fact. Plus we look at who NBC tapped for his Iraq/Iran expertise.&#160; And media tried to tell us what we need to know about a powerful Republican lawmaker. They failed.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Watch:</p>
<p />
<p />
|
FAIR TV: Iraq Surge Myths, More TV Hawks, News You Can’t Use
| true |
http://fair.org/blog/2014/06/27/fair-tv-iraq-surge-myths-more-tv-hawks-news-you-cant-use/
|
2014-06-27
| 4left
|
FAIR TV: Iraq Surge Myths, More TV Hawks, News You Can’t Use
<p><a href="" type="internal" />On the show this week: The idea that the surge of US troops is what “won” the Iraq War shouldn’t be treated as if it’s a fact. Plus we look at who NBC tapped for his Iraq/Iran expertise.&#160; And media tried to tell us what we need to know about a powerful Republican lawmaker. They failed.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Watch:</p>
<p />
<p />
| 7,603 |
<p>and ROBERT WEISSMAN</p>
<p>It’s hard not to be mesmerized by the bubbling scandal at Hewlett-Packard.</p>
<p>Former chair of the board Patricia Dunn had the company hire private detectives to track down who on the company’s board was leaking information. Those detectives used “pretexting” — employing a false identity — to obtain board member phone records, as well as those of journalists covering the company. They also sifted through garbage and considered sending undercover agents into newsrooms. In the wake of the scandal, Dunn and other executives have resigned, and criminal investigations are underway.</p>
<p>While the Senate was busy yesterday shredding the Constitution, a subcommittee of the House of Representatives focused its attention on HP. Dunn faced a withering examination. Ten witnesses asserted their Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions.</p>
<p>It would be wrong to say this was a waste of the committee’s time. The HP tactics were outrageous, and high-profile cases can properly focus Congressional minds on important issues.</p>
<p>In the wake of the HP scandal, Congress may well pass legislation outlawing pretexting. This is not a trivial issue. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has earlier petitioned the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission to take remedial action to stop pretexting. EPIC said in an FTC filing that it had identified 40 websites offering to sell phone records to anyone.</p>
<p>However, in a world where privacy rights are fast slipping away, there’s a lot more that lawmakers should be looking at than pretexting. Digitalization, corporate consolidation, corporate marketers’ effort to microtarget potential customers and the expanding demands of the national security state are combining to enable the creation of a Big Brother corporate-state nexus.</p>
<p>A few examples:</p>
<p>* Phone companies handed over millions of customers’ records to the National Security Agency, without being presented with a warrant. “The actions of Hewlett Packard executives, although egregious, pale in comparison to the violation of the privacy rights of tens of millions of American consumers that should be safeguarded by federal law,” noted 40 organizations including the ACLU, the American Library Association, the Arab American Institute, EPIC, Greenpeace and the Republican Liberty Caucus, in a letter sent yesterday to the House Commerce Committee. “The history of covert government surveillance of citizens,” the groups noted, “has included unjustified spying on civil rights, civil liberty, and peace organizations engaged in First Amendment protected activity.”</p>
<p>* Thanks to the financial services deregulation bill, giant financial conglomerates are now able to share consumer information between affiliates, and they can even share the information with non-affiliated corporations (unless a consumer affirmatively opts out of such arrangements).</p>
<p>* Corporate (and governmental) database managers don’t provide adequate security for their own databases. Stolen computers, misplaced disks and lost files make vast troves of personal data potential available to identity thieves — and those at risk may not even be notified that the data theft has occurred, nor given rights to block access to their consumer credit files. According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, just since February 2005, more than 93 million data records in the United States have been compromised due to security breaches.</p>
<p>* The first corporations are now requiring employees to have RFID chips ­- mini radio transmitter chips — embedded in their bodies. The theory is they work as a perfect identity card in high-security situations. The worry is that they may give employers the ability to track employees wherever they go, at any time.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the phenomenon that Robert Harrow chronicles in his chilling book, <a href="" type="internal">No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society.</a>While there are restrictions on the kinds of information U.S. government agencies may collect on citizens, they are increasingly circumventing these restrictions simply by purchasing data collected by corporations such as ChoicePoint, and many others.</p>
<p>“More than ever before,” Harrow concludes, “The details about our lives are no longer our own. They belong to the companies that collect them, and the government agencies that buy or demand them in the name of keeping us safe.”</p>
<p>It’s like our lives are being recorded, one activist told Harrow, with an array of corporations maintaining electronic diaries relating to virtually everything we do.</p>
<p>“Only we have no control over the diaries,” Harrow writes, “and we can’t even know what they say about us. And there’s no place to hide.”</p>
<p>It doesn’t have to be this way. But it will be, unless people demand restraints on how corporations manage the bits and bytes that record who we are and what we do.</p>
<p>RUSSELL MOKHIBER is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based <a href="http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/" type="external">Corporate Crime Reporter</a>.</p>
<p>Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based <a href="http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/" type="external">Multinational Monitor</a>, and co-director of Essential Action, a corporate accountability group. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; <a href="http://www.corporatepredators.org/" type="external">http://www.corporatepredators.org</a>).</p>
<p>(c) RUSSELL MOKHIBER and Robert Weissman</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Hewlett Packard and the Erosion of Privacy
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2006/10/01/hewlett-packard-and-the-erosion-of-privacy/
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2006-10-01
| 4left
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Hewlett Packard and the Erosion of Privacy
<p>and ROBERT WEISSMAN</p>
<p>It’s hard not to be mesmerized by the bubbling scandal at Hewlett-Packard.</p>
<p>Former chair of the board Patricia Dunn had the company hire private detectives to track down who on the company’s board was leaking information. Those detectives used “pretexting” — employing a false identity — to obtain board member phone records, as well as those of journalists covering the company. They also sifted through garbage and considered sending undercover agents into newsrooms. In the wake of the scandal, Dunn and other executives have resigned, and criminal investigations are underway.</p>
<p>While the Senate was busy yesterday shredding the Constitution, a subcommittee of the House of Representatives focused its attention on HP. Dunn faced a withering examination. Ten witnesses asserted their Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions.</p>
<p>It would be wrong to say this was a waste of the committee’s time. The HP tactics were outrageous, and high-profile cases can properly focus Congressional minds on important issues.</p>
<p>In the wake of the HP scandal, Congress may well pass legislation outlawing pretexting. This is not a trivial issue. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has earlier petitioned the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission to take remedial action to stop pretexting. EPIC said in an FTC filing that it had identified 40 websites offering to sell phone records to anyone.</p>
<p>However, in a world where privacy rights are fast slipping away, there’s a lot more that lawmakers should be looking at than pretexting. Digitalization, corporate consolidation, corporate marketers’ effort to microtarget potential customers and the expanding demands of the national security state are combining to enable the creation of a Big Brother corporate-state nexus.</p>
<p>A few examples:</p>
<p>* Phone companies handed over millions of customers’ records to the National Security Agency, without being presented with a warrant. “The actions of Hewlett Packard executives, although egregious, pale in comparison to the violation of the privacy rights of tens of millions of American consumers that should be safeguarded by federal law,” noted 40 organizations including the ACLU, the American Library Association, the Arab American Institute, EPIC, Greenpeace and the Republican Liberty Caucus, in a letter sent yesterday to the House Commerce Committee. “The history of covert government surveillance of citizens,” the groups noted, “has included unjustified spying on civil rights, civil liberty, and peace organizations engaged in First Amendment protected activity.”</p>
<p>* Thanks to the financial services deregulation bill, giant financial conglomerates are now able to share consumer information between affiliates, and they can even share the information with non-affiliated corporations (unless a consumer affirmatively opts out of such arrangements).</p>
<p>* Corporate (and governmental) database managers don’t provide adequate security for their own databases. Stolen computers, misplaced disks and lost files make vast troves of personal data potential available to identity thieves — and those at risk may not even be notified that the data theft has occurred, nor given rights to block access to their consumer credit files. According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, just since February 2005, more than 93 million data records in the United States have been compromised due to security breaches.</p>
<p>* The first corporations are now requiring employees to have RFID chips ­- mini radio transmitter chips — embedded in their bodies. The theory is they work as a perfect identity card in high-security situations. The worry is that they may give employers the ability to track employees wherever they go, at any time.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the phenomenon that Robert Harrow chronicles in his chilling book, <a href="" type="internal">No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society.</a>While there are restrictions on the kinds of information U.S. government agencies may collect on citizens, they are increasingly circumventing these restrictions simply by purchasing data collected by corporations such as ChoicePoint, and many others.</p>
<p>“More than ever before,” Harrow concludes, “The details about our lives are no longer our own. They belong to the companies that collect them, and the government agencies that buy or demand them in the name of keeping us safe.”</p>
<p>It’s like our lives are being recorded, one activist told Harrow, with an array of corporations maintaining electronic diaries relating to virtually everything we do.</p>
<p>“Only we have no control over the diaries,” Harrow writes, “and we can’t even know what they say about us. And there’s no place to hide.”</p>
<p>It doesn’t have to be this way. But it will be, unless people demand restraints on how corporations manage the bits and bytes that record who we are and what we do.</p>
<p>RUSSELL MOKHIBER is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based <a href="http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/" type="external">Corporate Crime Reporter</a>.</p>
<p>Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based <a href="http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/" type="external">Multinational Monitor</a>, and co-director of Essential Action, a corporate accountability group. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; <a href="http://www.corporatepredators.org/" type="external">http://www.corporatepredators.org</a>).</p>
<p>(c) RUSSELL MOKHIBER and Robert Weissman</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 7,604 |
<p>The unarmed man accidentally shot to death last month by a volunteer sheriff's deputy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, had methamphetamine in his system when he died, according to an autopsy report released Tuesday.</p>
<p>Eric Harris was killed after running from Tulsa Sheriff's Office deputies who'd caught him in an April 2 gun-sale sting. The fatal shot came from Robert Bates, a 73-year-old retired insurance executive who moonlighted as a volunteer on a violent crimes task force.</p>
<p>Bates has said he thought he was grabbing for his Taser when he shot Harris. He has been charged with manslaughter, and has pleaded not guilty.</p>
<p>Harris suffered a fatal gunshot to his left armpit, with the bullet traveling through his body and ending up near his right armpit, the autopsy report showed.</p>
<p>The autopsy also diagnosed Harris with "acute intoxication by methamphetamine." He also suffered from cardiovascular disease and hypertension, according to the report.</p>
<p>Harris' death made Tulsa a flashpoint in a raging national debate over police use of force, and exposed the sheriff's office to criticism for allowing a non-officer to provide backup on a potentially violent police operation. Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz, a longtime friend of Bates', has said he was qualified for the posting, but the department was having trouble finding all the training records.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Bates told TODAY</a> last month that accusations he wasn't properly trained and was allowed to "play cop" are "unbelievably unfair."</p>
<p>An internal report obtained by NBC News found that employees were asked to modify training records, a revelation that led Tulsa County District Attorney Stephen Kunzweiler to call for a deeper investigation.</p>
<p>The Tulsa County Sheriff's Office has defended Bates, saying that officers chasing Harris had good reason to fear that he was armed. They said Harris, a felon, had a history of violence against police officers and had placed his hand near his waistband during the chase.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Eric Harris Shooting: Tulsa Sheriff Says He Won't Resign</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Eric Harris Shooting: Sheriff's Official Tim Albin Resigns</a></p>
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Eric Harris Was on Meth When Tulsa Deputy Robert Bates Shot Him: Autopsy
| false |
http://nbcnews.com/news/us-news/eric-harris-was-high-meth-when-tulsa-deputy-shot-him-n357926
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2015-05-12
| 3left-center
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Eric Harris Was on Meth When Tulsa Deputy Robert Bates Shot Him: Autopsy
<p>The unarmed man accidentally shot to death last month by a volunteer sheriff's deputy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, had methamphetamine in his system when he died, according to an autopsy report released Tuesday.</p>
<p>Eric Harris was killed after running from Tulsa Sheriff's Office deputies who'd caught him in an April 2 gun-sale sting. The fatal shot came from Robert Bates, a 73-year-old retired insurance executive who moonlighted as a volunteer on a violent crimes task force.</p>
<p>Bates has said he thought he was grabbing for his Taser when he shot Harris. He has been charged with manslaughter, and has pleaded not guilty.</p>
<p>Harris suffered a fatal gunshot to his left armpit, with the bullet traveling through his body and ending up near his right armpit, the autopsy report showed.</p>
<p>The autopsy also diagnosed Harris with "acute intoxication by methamphetamine." He also suffered from cardiovascular disease and hypertension, according to the report.</p>
<p>Harris' death made Tulsa a flashpoint in a raging national debate over police use of force, and exposed the sheriff's office to criticism for allowing a non-officer to provide backup on a potentially violent police operation. Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz, a longtime friend of Bates', has said he was qualified for the posting, but the department was having trouble finding all the training records.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Bates told TODAY</a> last month that accusations he wasn't properly trained and was allowed to "play cop" are "unbelievably unfair."</p>
<p>An internal report obtained by NBC News found that employees were asked to modify training records, a revelation that led Tulsa County District Attorney Stephen Kunzweiler to call for a deeper investigation.</p>
<p>The Tulsa County Sheriff's Office has defended Bates, saying that officers chasing Harris had good reason to fear that he was armed. They said Harris, a felon, had a history of violence against police officers and had placed his hand near his waistband during the chase.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Eric Harris Shooting: Tulsa Sheriff Says He Won't Resign</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Eric Harris Shooting: Sheriff's Official Tim Albin Resigns</a></p>
| 7,605 |
<p>Stoxx Europe 600 sets 5-month closing high</p>
<p>European stocks scored the highest close in five months Monday, with much of the action centered around Spanish equities after the central government in Madrid took control of the Catalonia region following its push for independence.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>What stock indexes are doing:</p>
<p>In Madrid, the IBEX 35 climbed 2.4% to end at 10,446.00, with shares of CaixaBank SA (CABK.MC) and Banco de Sabadell SA (SAB.MC) jumping by 4.2% and 5.7%, respectively.</p>
<p>The Spanish stock gauge achieved its biggest daily percentage gain since Oct. 5, or more than three weeks ago, according to FactSet data.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Stoxx Europe 600 index rose 0.1% to close at 393.91, ending at its highest level since May 16. The pan-European benchmark on Friday rose 0.6% (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/european-stocks-extend-gains-as-euro-remains-lower-after-dovish-ecb-move-2017-10-27), as it gained 0.9% for the week.</p>
<p>Monday's session also saw Germany's DAX 30 index rise 0.1% to end at 13,229.57 for another all-time closing high.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In Paris, the CAC 40 closed fractionally lower at 5,493.63, and in London, the FTSE 100 fell 0.2% to finish at 7,487.81 (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ftse-100-set-for-first-loss-in-3-sessions-as-homebuilders-hsbc-fall-2017-10-30)</p>
<p>What's moving markets:</p>
<p>Spain's stocks entered recovery mode after the Spanish government late Friday ousted leaders in Catalonia (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/spain-seizes-power-as-tension-mounts-in-independence-bent-catalonia-2017-10-28) in reaction to separatist lawmakers declaring the region an independent republic. On Sunday in Catalonia, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in a show of unity with the rest of Spain. (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hundreds-of-thousands-of-pro-unity-demonstrators-rally-in-catalonia-2017-10-29)</p>
<p>Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has set new legislative elections in Catalonia for Dec. 21. A poll for the El Mundo newspaper (http://www.elmundo.es/) has found that 33.5% of respondents want secession compared with 58.3% who do not.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, preliminary data on Monday showed Spain's GDP expanded by 0.8% in the third quarter (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/spanish-economy-grows-08-in-3rd-quarter-2017-10-30) from the previous quarter, meeting expectations.</p>
<p>The yield on the 10-year Spanish government bond fell 6 basis points to 1.513%, according to Tradeweb. Yields fall as prices rise.</p>
<p>Read:Catalan leader goes to Brussels, as top prosecutor calls for charges of rebellion (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/with-catalonia-now-under-spain-rule-some-start-to-see-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-2017-10-30)</p>
<p>What strategists are saying:</p>
<p>"Although uncertainty will persist till 21 December, early elections could ease some of the markets' concerns," said UBS economist Reinhard Cluse in a research note. "We currently forecast Spanish GDP to grow by 3.1% this year and 2.3% in 2018--with next year's deceleration not an expression of negative expectations, but an almost inevitable slowdown after years of impressively strong growth."</p>
<p>Stock movers:</p>
<p>Bankia SA (BKIA.MC) climbed 2.2% as the Spanish lender's 10% fall in third-quarter profit to EUR225 million was smaller than expected. Profit was expected at EUR197 million, according to a Reuters poll.</p>
<p>Berkeley Group Holdings PLC (BKG.LN) fell 1.4% and Bellway PLC (BWY.LN) dropped 1.1%, as they were among the notable decliners in the Stoxx 600 after Barclays downgraded the U.K. home builders. Berkeley was cut to underweight from equal weight, while Bellway went to equal weight from overweight.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>October 30, 2017 13:03 ET (17:03 GMT)</p>
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EUROPE MARKETS: Spanish Stocks Finish With Their Biggest Daily Gain In More Than 3 Weeks
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/30/europe-markets-spanish-stocks-finish-with-their-biggest-daily-gain-in-more-than-3-weeks.html
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2017-10-30
| 0right
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EUROPE MARKETS: Spanish Stocks Finish With Their Biggest Daily Gain In More Than 3 Weeks
<p>Stoxx Europe 600 sets 5-month closing high</p>
<p>European stocks scored the highest close in five months Monday, with much of the action centered around Spanish equities after the central government in Madrid took control of the Catalonia region following its push for independence.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>What stock indexes are doing:</p>
<p>In Madrid, the IBEX 35 climbed 2.4% to end at 10,446.00, with shares of CaixaBank SA (CABK.MC) and Banco de Sabadell SA (SAB.MC) jumping by 4.2% and 5.7%, respectively.</p>
<p>The Spanish stock gauge achieved its biggest daily percentage gain since Oct. 5, or more than three weeks ago, according to FactSet data.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Stoxx Europe 600 index rose 0.1% to close at 393.91, ending at its highest level since May 16. The pan-European benchmark on Friday rose 0.6% (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/european-stocks-extend-gains-as-euro-remains-lower-after-dovish-ecb-move-2017-10-27), as it gained 0.9% for the week.</p>
<p>Monday's session also saw Germany's DAX 30 index rise 0.1% to end at 13,229.57 for another all-time closing high.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In Paris, the CAC 40 closed fractionally lower at 5,493.63, and in London, the FTSE 100 fell 0.2% to finish at 7,487.81 (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ftse-100-set-for-first-loss-in-3-sessions-as-homebuilders-hsbc-fall-2017-10-30)</p>
<p>What's moving markets:</p>
<p>Spain's stocks entered recovery mode after the Spanish government late Friday ousted leaders in Catalonia (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/spain-seizes-power-as-tension-mounts-in-independence-bent-catalonia-2017-10-28) in reaction to separatist lawmakers declaring the region an independent republic. On Sunday in Catalonia, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in a show of unity with the rest of Spain. (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hundreds-of-thousands-of-pro-unity-demonstrators-rally-in-catalonia-2017-10-29)</p>
<p>Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has set new legislative elections in Catalonia for Dec. 21. A poll for the El Mundo newspaper (http://www.elmundo.es/) has found that 33.5% of respondents want secession compared with 58.3% who do not.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, preliminary data on Monday showed Spain's GDP expanded by 0.8% in the third quarter (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/spanish-economy-grows-08-in-3rd-quarter-2017-10-30) from the previous quarter, meeting expectations.</p>
<p>The yield on the 10-year Spanish government bond fell 6 basis points to 1.513%, according to Tradeweb. Yields fall as prices rise.</p>
<p>Read:Catalan leader goes to Brussels, as top prosecutor calls for charges of rebellion (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/with-catalonia-now-under-spain-rule-some-start-to-see-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-2017-10-30)</p>
<p>What strategists are saying:</p>
<p>"Although uncertainty will persist till 21 December, early elections could ease some of the markets' concerns," said UBS economist Reinhard Cluse in a research note. "We currently forecast Spanish GDP to grow by 3.1% this year and 2.3% in 2018--with next year's deceleration not an expression of negative expectations, but an almost inevitable slowdown after years of impressively strong growth."</p>
<p>Stock movers:</p>
<p>Bankia SA (BKIA.MC) climbed 2.2% as the Spanish lender's 10% fall in third-quarter profit to EUR225 million was smaller than expected. Profit was expected at EUR197 million, according to a Reuters poll.</p>
<p>Berkeley Group Holdings PLC (BKG.LN) fell 1.4% and Bellway PLC (BWY.LN) dropped 1.1%, as they were among the notable decliners in the Stoxx 600 after Barclays downgraded the U.K. home builders. Berkeley was cut to underweight from equal weight, while Bellway went to equal weight from overweight.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>October 30, 2017 13:03 ET (17:03 GMT)</p>
| 7,606 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Donald Trump’s primary victory in California came along with a big cost to his campaign, as the presumptive Republican nominee’s sustained&#160;attacks and insinuations against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans roiled the Golden State and&#160;slowed the party’s move to consolidate around him.</p>
<p>Although Trump has long put his plans for a border wall at the center of his campaign, he recently drew a fresh chorus of criticism for his&#160;invective&#160;against the judge involved in the highest-profile lawsuit against him.&#160;“Trump implied in interviews last week that U.S. district judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrant parents, is unfit to hear a case involving the candidate’s disgraced Trump University because ‘he’s Mexican’ and thus has a conflict of interest due to Trump’s comments about Mexicans during the presidential campaign,” as Vice News <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/donald-trump-and-latinos-in-california-primary" type="external">recalled</a>.</p>
<p>In a shift that had even some Trump supporters concerned, the national news media pounced on the Curiel story, aggressively fact-checking Trump’s vague but pointed charges. “Trump said Curiel belonged to a group that is very strongly pro-Mexican. The California La Raza Lawyers Association does advance the interests of the Latino legal community and works on issues that matter in Latino communities more broadly.&#160;However, it has stayed on the sidelines in the immigration debate,” PolitiFact <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/07/donald-trump/trump-wrongly-casts-california-lawyers-group-stron/" type="external">noted</a>. “Trump’s statement is accurate only in the sense that the association’s mission aims to support Latinos, but even that is flawed because&#160;he said the group was pro-Mexican and the Latino designation reaches a wider set of people. The claim ignores critical facts that would give a very different impression.”</p>
<p>Trump’s charges,&#160;which many leading Republicans have decried as race-baiting or worse, also offered California Democrats a cudgel with which to beat their in-state opponents. “Democrats seeking to unseat several Republican members of Congress from California linked the incumbents to Donald Trump,” the Associated Press <a href="http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2016/06/08/california-democrats-using-donald-trump-to-help-unseat-republicans/" type="external">observed</a>, “hoping to tap discontent with the presumptive GOP presidential nominee in districts with large numbers of Democrats and Latinos.” Although several GOP incumbents survived handily, the state GOP’s&#160;nerves frayed further over fears that massive anti-Trump turnout will sink their failing fortunes come November.</p>
<p>But Trump’s adversaries confronted&#160;a public relations mess of their own in his wake, as protests that spiraled into violence fed perceptions among pro-Trump voters that even peaceful rallies will meet with intimidation and physical retaliation.&#160;“Donald Trump supporters leaving the presumptive GOP nominee’s&#160;rally in San Jose […]&#160;were pounced by protesters, some of whom threw punches and eggs,” <a href="http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/politics/Donald-Trump-Rally-in-San-Jose-Draws-Protesters-381728251.html" type="external">according</a> to NBC Los Angeles. “The protesters&#160;chased and taunted Trump’s supporters outside the San Jose Convention Center. They&#160;surrounded one woman and threw eggs and bottles at her.”</p>
<p>Those attacks have now resulted in arrests.&#160;Three juvenile males “were accused of taking part in a number of skirmishes between Trump supporters and anti-Trump demonstrators […]&#160;outside the San Jose Convention Center,” where Trump was holding one of his trademark rallies, Reuters <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-arrests-idUSKCN0YV0E2" type="external">reported</a>. “Two of the teenagers, aged 16 and 17, face charges of felony assault with a deadly weapon. The third, also 16, faces a misdemeanor battery charge, the San Jose Police Department said in a statement.”</p>
<p>“Four others were arrested during the protests last week. Two 19-year-olds and an 18-year-old face charges of felony assault with a deadly weapon, while another 19-year-old faces a misdemeanor charge of refusal to disperse.&#160;It is unclear whether the seven charged were Trump supporters or among the hundreds of protesters who were seen on news clips waving Mexican flags, chanting anti-Trump slogans, and burning Trump hats and at least one U.S. flag.”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, with Hillary Clinton opening a bigger lead over Trump in the polls now that she has all but dispatched Bernie Sanders, analysts doubt that Trump can put California electorally in play. Despite his apparent claim to the contrary, as Slate <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/06/09/donald_trump_is_going_to_blow_all_of_the_gop_s_money.html" type="external">observed</a>, California’s high campaign cost seems prohibitive barring a dramatic change in his fortunes.</p>
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Trump’s Mexico-baiting roils CA, GOP
| false |
https://calwatchdog.com/2016/06/11/trumps-mexico-baiting-roils-ca-gop/
|
2018-06-20
| 3left-center
|
Trump’s Mexico-baiting roils CA, GOP
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Donald Trump’s primary victory in California came along with a big cost to his campaign, as the presumptive Republican nominee’s sustained&#160;attacks and insinuations against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans roiled the Golden State and&#160;slowed the party’s move to consolidate around him.</p>
<p>Although Trump has long put his plans for a border wall at the center of his campaign, he recently drew a fresh chorus of criticism for his&#160;invective&#160;against the judge involved in the highest-profile lawsuit against him.&#160;“Trump implied in interviews last week that U.S. district judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrant parents, is unfit to hear a case involving the candidate’s disgraced Trump University because ‘he’s Mexican’ and thus has a conflict of interest due to Trump’s comments about Mexicans during the presidential campaign,” as Vice News <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/donald-trump-and-latinos-in-california-primary" type="external">recalled</a>.</p>
<p>In a shift that had even some Trump supporters concerned, the national news media pounced on the Curiel story, aggressively fact-checking Trump’s vague but pointed charges. “Trump said Curiel belonged to a group that is very strongly pro-Mexican. The California La Raza Lawyers Association does advance the interests of the Latino legal community and works on issues that matter in Latino communities more broadly.&#160;However, it has stayed on the sidelines in the immigration debate,” PolitiFact <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/07/donald-trump/trump-wrongly-casts-california-lawyers-group-stron/" type="external">noted</a>. “Trump’s statement is accurate only in the sense that the association’s mission aims to support Latinos, but even that is flawed because&#160;he said the group was pro-Mexican and the Latino designation reaches a wider set of people. The claim ignores critical facts that would give a very different impression.”</p>
<p>Trump’s charges,&#160;which many leading Republicans have decried as race-baiting or worse, also offered California Democrats a cudgel with which to beat their in-state opponents. “Democrats seeking to unseat several Republican members of Congress from California linked the incumbents to Donald Trump,” the Associated Press <a href="http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2016/06/08/california-democrats-using-donald-trump-to-help-unseat-republicans/" type="external">observed</a>, “hoping to tap discontent with the presumptive GOP presidential nominee in districts with large numbers of Democrats and Latinos.” Although several GOP incumbents survived handily, the state GOP’s&#160;nerves frayed further over fears that massive anti-Trump turnout will sink their failing fortunes come November.</p>
<p>But Trump’s adversaries confronted&#160;a public relations mess of their own in his wake, as protests that spiraled into violence fed perceptions among pro-Trump voters that even peaceful rallies will meet with intimidation and physical retaliation.&#160;“Donald Trump supporters leaving the presumptive GOP nominee’s&#160;rally in San Jose […]&#160;were pounced by protesters, some of whom threw punches and eggs,” <a href="http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/politics/Donald-Trump-Rally-in-San-Jose-Draws-Protesters-381728251.html" type="external">according</a> to NBC Los Angeles. “The protesters&#160;chased and taunted Trump’s supporters outside the San Jose Convention Center. They&#160;surrounded one woman and threw eggs and bottles at her.”</p>
<p>Those attacks have now resulted in arrests.&#160;Three juvenile males “were accused of taking part in a number of skirmishes between Trump supporters and anti-Trump demonstrators […]&#160;outside the San Jose Convention Center,” where Trump was holding one of his trademark rallies, Reuters <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-arrests-idUSKCN0YV0E2" type="external">reported</a>. “Two of the teenagers, aged 16 and 17, face charges of felony assault with a deadly weapon. The third, also 16, faces a misdemeanor battery charge, the San Jose Police Department said in a statement.”</p>
<p>“Four others were arrested during the protests last week. Two 19-year-olds and an 18-year-old face charges of felony assault with a deadly weapon, while another 19-year-old faces a misdemeanor charge of refusal to disperse.&#160;It is unclear whether the seven charged were Trump supporters or among the hundreds of protesters who were seen on news clips waving Mexican flags, chanting anti-Trump slogans, and burning Trump hats and at least one U.S. flag.”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, with Hillary Clinton opening a bigger lead over Trump in the polls now that she has all but dispatched Bernie Sanders, analysts doubt that Trump can put California electorally in play. Despite his apparent claim to the contrary, as Slate <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/06/09/donald_trump_is_going_to_blow_all_of_the_gop_s_money.html" type="external">observed</a>, California’s high campaign cost seems prohibitive barring a dramatic change in his fortunes.</p>
| 7,607 |
<p />
<p>Depending on where you live, the chances are you have come across those who disagree with your choice to exercise your right to keep and bear arms. &#160;There is also a chance you have found businesses that do not recognize your 2nd Amendment rights.</p>
<p>There are plenty of those of the “tolerant” left who have causes they believe in as well.</p>
<p>The difference between in how gun owners react to rejection and the way those of the hateful left is quite telling.</p>
<p>If a business is anti-gun, we as gun owners will most likely avoid it in order to support another company that believes in the 2nd Amendment. &#160;We’ll let others in our community know that a certain business is anti-gun and may even reach out to that business to let them know that they are losing business but it doesn’t extend further than that.</p>
<p>Then you have the hateful left, and I’m not talking about those stooges <a href="http://www.pagunblog.com/2012/02/14/boycott-fail/" type="external">who impotently try to boycott Starbucks</a></p>
<p><a href="http://bulletsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/boycottstarbucks.jpeg" type="external" /></p>
<p />
<p>but rather those hate mongering “tolerant” intellectuals. &#160;Those that wish those who disagree with them to die, or their families to die are are threatening them directly with murder.</p>
<p><a href="http://bulletsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/nra-threat.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>This kind of hateful rhetoric is not limited to the anti-gun zealots but rather to any person who dares disagree with an opinion of a hateful left member.</p>
<p>The most recent example of this is the vicious and continued attack by the hateful left against “Sweet Cakes By Melissa”. &#160;What did the owners of the cake shop, Aaron and Melissa Klein, do that was so reprehensible to the hateful left?</p>
<p>They chose to not bake a cake for a lesbian wedding since, on religious grounds, they do not agree morally with a homosexual marriage.</p>
<p>While every gun owner I know and anyone who is not a member of the hateful left would have just found another place to have their cake baked and been content to know that Sweet Cakes lost business, the lesbian couple decided to sue in order to force the Klein’s to betray their own beliefs.</p>
<p>The courts in Oregon, being one of the west coast havens for the hateful left, ruled that the Klein’s had to invalidate their 1st Amendment right of freedom of religion and betray their religious belief in order to placate this lesbian couple.</p>
<p>I can only imagine if I went to a Muslim Bakery and demanded they put bacon into a cake. &#160;Somehow I doubt the court would back me up on that in the same manner.</p>
<p>But on top of forcing a business owner to betray their own religious rights, the hateful left wanted to also punish the owners by <a href="http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/gay-issues/threats-shut-down-oregon-bakery-refused-make-gay-wedding-cake-bible-thumping#" type="external">threatening them until they decided to close their shop</a>.</p>
<p>Threatening calls, letters promising violence and hateful posts on social media flooded the Kleins. &#160;From proclamations that Aaron should be shot to one apparent threat that he be raped, the hate and angst being thrown the Klein family’s way is certainly serious in nature. Some have even wished for the couple’s five children to be stricken with illness.</p>
<p>One of the tamer ones:</p>
<p>“You stupid bible-thumping, hypocritical b**ch. I hope your kids get really, really, sick and you go out of business,”</p>
<p>That is the tolerance of the hateful left. &#160;You are free to believe in anything you want…so long as you completely agree with them or else they will threaten you and your family.</p>
<p>The Klein’s, refusing to betray their values decided to close the doors to their business and move the operation to a home-based business. &#160;That is called conviction and I salute them for it. &#160;I wish them all the luck and congratulate them on staying true to their beliefs in the face of the ugly and hateful response by the hateful left.</p>
<p>As a vocal gun owner, I have been all too familiar with death threats and just vicious hateful trash being spewed at me from the sewers the hateful left calls mouths.</p>
<p>It is important as a gun owner, or as any rational and reasonable human being to avoid the violence and vitriol of the hateful left and in doing so showing the contrast to an outside party of what we stand for and what the hateful left stand for.</p>
<p>We stand for freedom…they stand for hate mongering and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink" type="external">groupthink</a>.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.</p>
|
Gun owners act with class…the hateful left acts with crass
| true |
http://bulletsfirst.net/2013/09/04/gun-owners-act-with-class-the-hateful-left-acts-with-crass/
| 0right
|
Gun owners act with class…the hateful left acts with crass
<p />
<p>Depending on where you live, the chances are you have come across those who disagree with your choice to exercise your right to keep and bear arms. &#160;There is also a chance you have found businesses that do not recognize your 2nd Amendment rights.</p>
<p>There are plenty of those of the “tolerant” left who have causes they believe in as well.</p>
<p>The difference between in how gun owners react to rejection and the way those of the hateful left is quite telling.</p>
<p>If a business is anti-gun, we as gun owners will most likely avoid it in order to support another company that believes in the 2nd Amendment. &#160;We’ll let others in our community know that a certain business is anti-gun and may even reach out to that business to let them know that they are losing business but it doesn’t extend further than that.</p>
<p>Then you have the hateful left, and I’m not talking about those stooges <a href="http://www.pagunblog.com/2012/02/14/boycott-fail/" type="external">who impotently try to boycott Starbucks</a></p>
<p><a href="http://bulletsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/boycottstarbucks.jpeg" type="external" /></p>
<p />
<p>but rather those hate mongering “tolerant” intellectuals. &#160;Those that wish those who disagree with them to die, or their families to die are are threatening them directly with murder.</p>
<p><a href="http://bulletsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/nra-threat.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>This kind of hateful rhetoric is not limited to the anti-gun zealots but rather to any person who dares disagree with an opinion of a hateful left member.</p>
<p>The most recent example of this is the vicious and continued attack by the hateful left against “Sweet Cakes By Melissa”. &#160;What did the owners of the cake shop, Aaron and Melissa Klein, do that was so reprehensible to the hateful left?</p>
<p>They chose to not bake a cake for a lesbian wedding since, on religious grounds, they do not agree morally with a homosexual marriage.</p>
<p>While every gun owner I know and anyone who is not a member of the hateful left would have just found another place to have their cake baked and been content to know that Sweet Cakes lost business, the lesbian couple decided to sue in order to force the Klein’s to betray their own beliefs.</p>
<p>The courts in Oregon, being one of the west coast havens for the hateful left, ruled that the Klein’s had to invalidate their 1st Amendment right of freedom of religion and betray their religious belief in order to placate this lesbian couple.</p>
<p>I can only imagine if I went to a Muslim Bakery and demanded they put bacon into a cake. &#160;Somehow I doubt the court would back me up on that in the same manner.</p>
<p>But on top of forcing a business owner to betray their own religious rights, the hateful left wanted to also punish the owners by <a href="http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/gay-issues/threats-shut-down-oregon-bakery-refused-make-gay-wedding-cake-bible-thumping#" type="external">threatening them until they decided to close their shop</a>.</p>
<p>Threatening calls, letters promising violence and hateful posts on social media flooded the Kleins. &#160;From proclamations that Aaron should be shot to one apparent threat that he be raped, the hate and angst being thrown the Klein family’s way is certainly serious in nature. Some have even wished for the couple’s five children to be stricken with illness.</p>
<p>One of the tamer ones:</p>
<p>“You stupid bible-thumping, hypocritical b**ch. I hope your kids get really, really, sick and you go out of business,”</p>
<p>That is the tolerance of the hateful left. &#160;You are free to believe in anything you want…so long as you completely agree with them or else they will threaten you and your family.</p>
<p>The Klein’s, refusing to betray their values decided to close the doors to their business and move the operation to a home-based business. &#160;That is called conviction and I salute them for it. &#160;I wish them all the luck and congratulate them on staying true to their beliefs in the face of the ugly and hateful response by the hateful left.</p>
<p>As a vocal gun owner, I have been all too familiar with death threats and just vicious hateful trash being spewed at me from the sewers the hateful left calls mouths.</p>
<p>It is important as a gun owner, or as any rational and reasonable human being to avoid the violence and vitriol of the hateful left and in doing so showing the contrast to an outside party of what we stand for and what the hateful left stand for.</p>
<p>We stand for freedom…they stand for hate mongering and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink" type="external">groupthink</a>.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.</p>
| 7,608 |
|
<p>Andy Bell takes a creative left turn on his new solo album. (Photo courtesy Strike Force Entertainment)</p>
<p>Andy Bell has enjoyed a 30-year run of hits with his musical partner Vince Clarke in Erasure, the legendary duo who’ve managed to navigate the fickle world of pop music far longer than most artists can dream.</p>
<p>Early hits like “Sometimes” and “A Little Respect” are still beloved, and they continue to release vital new music. “Violent Flame” (2014) was their 16th album and they promoted it with a successful tour before wildly enthusiastic crowds that included two nights at the 9:30 Club in D.C. It would be easy for the dynamic vocalist to spend his down time from Erasure enjoying the fruits of his success.</p>
<p>But resting on his laurels doesn’t seem to be in the cards for Andy Bell. His new solo album “Torsten the Beautiful Libertine” is an ambitious collection of songs featured in the stage show of the same name, which opened this week at London’s Above the Stag Theatre (which bills itself as “The UK’s LGBT Theatre”).</p>
<p>Torsten first appeared as a character in a 2014 song cycle written for Bell by Barney Ashton-Bullock and Christopher Frost called “Torsten the Bareback Saint” that was performed in London and Edinburgh, and made into an album. The new show and album — also written by Ashton-Bullock and Frost — is a more fully developed exploration of a decidedly unique character. On the Above the Stag website, Torsten is described as an “age-defying, polysexual hero” who lives an abnormally long life, and has plenty of time to reflect on all of the connections — sexual and otherwise — he’s made over the years. Seeing a neverending parade of deaths unfold before him renders Torsten melancholy and unwilling to get close to anybody to protect himself from the continued pangs of loss.</p>
<p>If you’re expecting the electrifying dance-pop Bell is known for with Erasure and on his two prior solo albums (2005’s “Electric Blue” and 2010’s “Non-Stop”), seek elsewhere. This is musical theater, and Bell’s expressive tenor suits the medium perfectly. Erasure’s music has always been family friendly and generally upbeat, so it’s something of a shock hearing Bell singing pieces like “Blow Jobs for Cocaine” and “Ooh Baby, You’re so Queercore,”&#160; but it works.</p>
<p>The songs deal with various aspects of Torsten’s experiences and they are often grandiose and richly beautiful. “Beautiful Libertine” is an early highlight, emphasizing the always-impressive vocal range that Bell continues to possess. The sardonic ballad “This Town Needs Jesus” is another standout, with Bell delivering an impassioned vocal over a piano accompaniment. He’s clearly invested in this material and gives one convincing performance after another.</p>
<p>Some tracks, like “Lady Domina Bizarre” and “The Slums We Loved,” &#160;are highly orchestral, but there are unexpected left turns. “We Were Singing Along to Liza” is a poignantly nostalgic dance track that will surely inspire a bevy of remixes. “Photos of Daniel” is a hauntingly beautiful reminiscence of better days. “My Precious Ones,” which has been issued as the album’s lead single, has the most standard pop arrangement on the album. It’s a melodic guitar-based track with terrific harmonies.</p>
<p>As with any musical theater piece, it’s a challenge to fully realize the vision conceptualized in “Torsten The Beautiful Libertine” without seeing the show. There are so many ideas thrown at us over the span of 17 tracks that it’s hard to completely absorb it. But even as a conceptual album, “Torsten” is always entertaining and surprising, as the songs veer in unanticipated directions. Bell’s voice shines throughout, the writing is smart and unpredictable and Torsten is an interesting character that will hopefully stick around to chronicle more triumphs and tragedies and adventures.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Andy Bell</a> <a href="" type="internal">Barney Ashton-Bullock</a> <a href="" type="internal">Christopher Frost</a> <a href="" type="internal">Erasure</a> <a href="" type="internal">Torsten the Beautiful Libertine</a> <a href="" type="internal">Vince Clarke</a></p>
|
New guise for Andy Bell
| false |
http://washingtonblade.com/2016/03/10/new-guise-for-andy-bell/
| 3left-center
|
New guise for Andy Bell
<p>Andy Bell takes a creative left turn on his new solo album. (Photo courtesy Strike Force Entertainment)</p>
<p>Andy Bell has enjoyed a 30-year run of hits with his musical partner Vince Clarke in Erasure, the legendary duo who’ve managed to navigate the fickle world of pop music far longer than most artists can dream.</p>
<p>Early hits like “Sometimes” and “A Little Respect” are still beloved, and they continue to release vital new music. “Violent Flame” (2014) was their 16th album and they promoted it with a successful tour before wildly enthusiastic crowds that included two nights at the 9:30 Club in D.C. It would be easy for the dynamic vocalist to spend his down time from Erasure enjoying the fruits of his success.</p>
<p>But resting on his laurels doesn’t seem to be in the cards for Andy Bell. His new solo album “Torsten the Beautiful Libertine” is an ambitious collection of songs featured in the stage show of the same name, which opened this week at London’s Above the Stag Theatre (which bills itself as “The UK’s LGBT Theatre”).</p>
<p>Torsten first appeared as a character in a 2014 song cycle written for Bell by Barney Ashton-Bullock and Christopher Frost called “Torsten the Bareback Saint” that was performed in London and Edinburgh, and made into an album. The new show and album — also written by Ashton-Bullock and Frost — is a more fully developed exploration of a decidedly unique character. On the Above the Stag website, Torsten is described as an “age-defying, polysexual hero” who lives an abnormally long life, and has plenty of time to reflect on all of the connections — sexual and otherwise — he’s made over the years. Seeing a neverending parade of deaths unfold before him renders Torsten melancholy and unwilling to get close to anybody to protect himself from the continued pangs of loss.</p>
<p>If you’re expecting the electrifying dance-pop Bell is known for with Erasure and on his two prior solo albums (2005’s “Electric Blue” and 2010’s “Non-Stop”), seek elsewhere. This is musical theater, and Bell’s expressive tenor suits the medium perfectly. Erasure’s music has always been family friendly and generally upbeat, so it’s something of a shock hearing Bell singing pieces like “Blow Jobs for Cocaine” and “Ooh Baby, You’re so Queercore,”&#160; but it works.</p>
<p>The songs deal with various aspects of Torsten’s experiences and they are often grandiose and richly beautiful. “Beautiful Libertine” is an early highlight, emphasizing the always-impressive vocal range that Bell continues to possess. The sardonic ballad “This Town Needs Jesus” is another standout, with Bell delivering an impassioned vocal over a piano accompaniment. He’s clearly invested in this material and gives one convincing performance after another.</p>
<p>Some tracks, like “Lady Domina Bizarre” and “The Slums We Loved,” &#160;are highly orchestral, but there are unexpected left turns. “We Were Singing Along to Liza” is a poignantly nostalgic dance track that will surely inspire a bevy of remixes. “Photos of Daniel” is a hauntingly beautiful reminiscence of better days. “My Precious Ones,” which has been issued as the album’s lead single, has the most standard pop arrangement on the album. It’s a melodic guitar-based track with terrific harmonies.</p>
<p>As with any musical theater piece, it’s a challenge to fully realize the vision conceptualized in “Torsten The Beautiful Libertine” without seeing the show. There are so many ideas thrown at us over the span of 17 tracks that it’s hard to completely absorb it. But even as a conceptual album, “Torsten” is always entertaining and surprising, as the songs veer in unanticipated directions. Bell’s voice shines throughout, the writing is smart and unpredictable and Torsten is an interesting character that will hopefully stick around to chronicle more triumphs and tragedies and adventures.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Andy Bell</a> <a href="" type="internal">Barney Ashton-Bullock</a> <a href="" type="internal">Christopher Frost</a> <a href="" type="internal">Erasure</a> <a href="" type="internal">Torsten the Beautiful Libertine</a> <a href="" type="internal">Vince Clarke</a></p>
| 7,609 |
|
<p>The lineup of nations competing in Olympic bobsled and skeleton events was finalized by the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation on Monday, with 30 countries formally qualifying for the Pyeongchang Games in those sports.</p>
<p>Among them: the African nations of Ghana and Nigeria, as well as Russia — which will have some specially approved athletes competing under the Olympic flag since the Russian Olympic Committee has been banned from these games as part of the massive fallout from the state-sponsored doping scandal in Sochi four years ago.</p>
<p>Nigeria has athletes in the Winter Olympics for the first time, qualifying in women’s bobsled and women’s skeleton. Jamaica is also sending a women’s bobsled team to the Olympics for the first time.</p>
<p>Ghana will have men’s skeleton racer Akwasi Frimpong in the 30-man Olympic field, meaning if he finishes he’s assured of being his country’s top finisher in any event at the Winter Games. The nation’s only other Winter Olympian was alpine skier Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, who was 47th in the slalom in 2010 at Vancouver.</p>
<p>At least 17 athletes are expected to fill Russia’s sleds, under the designation of OAR or Olympic Athlete from Russia. The Russians qualified for two sleds in each bobsled event — two-man, four-man and women’s — as well as three starting spots in men’s skeleton and two from women’s skeleton.</p>
<p>None of the Russian athletes sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee for doping are eligible for credentials for Pyeongchang or any future Olympics, and many including women’s skeleton bronze medalist Elana Nikitina have had their medals stripped. Nikitina is among about three dozen Russians trying to clear their names through appeals.</p>
<p>“We are the masters of our own destiny,” Nikitina wrote in an Instagram post Monday from Switzerland, where she’s part of a Russian delegation pleading their case to the Court of Arbitration of Sport — which is expected to rule next week on those appeals.</p>
<p>Host South Korea will have sleds in all five of the bobsled and skeleton disciplines, and 2022 Winter Olympic host China will compete next month in men’s skeleton, two-man bobsledding and four-man bobsledding.</p>
<p>Nations could qualify up to three sleds in each of the skeleton and bobsled events. Only Canada and Germany managed to reach the full allocation; the United States has four skeleton athletes instead of the maximum six, and eight bobsleds headed to Korea instead of the maximum nine.</p>
<p>North Korea, which will have some athletes competing in Pyeongchang, will not be taking part in sliding after all.</p>
<p>The International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation proposed and endorsed a plan to have a forerunning four-man bobsled — one that tests conditions before races but isn’t part of the competition — composed of two sliders from South Korea and two others from North Korea, and have it coached by Italian and U.S. officials.</p>
<p>But the notion has fallen apart, with the North Koreans — who do not regularly compete in bobsled — sending word to the IBSF that it was unable to find athletes who could fill the two slots.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP Winter Olympics: <a href="https://wintergames.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="https://wintergames.ap.org" type="external">https://wintergames.ap.org</a></p>
<p>The lineup of nations competing in Olympic bobsled and skeleton events was finalized by the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation on Monday, with 30 countries formally qualifying for the Pyeongchang Games in those sports.</p>
<p>Among them: the African nations of Ghana and Nigeria, as well as Russia — which will have some specially approved athletes competing under the Olympic flag since the Russian Olympic Committee has been banned from these games as part of the massive fallout from the state-sponsored doping scandal in Sochi four years ago.</p>
<p>Nigeria has athletes in the Winter Olympics for the first time, qualifying in women’s bobsled and women’s skeleton. Jamaica is also sending a women’s bobsled team to the Olympics for the first time.</p>
<p>Ghana will have men’s skeleton racer Akwasi Frimpong in the 30-man Olympic field, meaning if he finishes he’s assured of being his country’s top finisher in any event at the Winter Games. The nation’s only other Winter Olympian was alpine skier Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, who was 47th in the slalom in 2010 at Vancouver.</p>
<p>At least 17 athletes are expected to fill Russia’s sleds, under the designation of OAR or Olympic Athlete from Russia. The Russians qualified for two sleds in each bobsled event — two-man, four-man and women’s — as well as three starting spots in men’s skeleton and two from women’s skeleton.</p>
<p>None of the Russian athletes sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee for doping are eligible for credentials for Pyeongchang or any future Olympics, and many including women’s skeleton bronze medalist Elana Nikitina have had their medals stripped. Nikitina is among about three dozen Russians trying to clear their names through appeals.</p>
<p>“We are the masters of our own destiny,” Nikitina wrote in an Instagram post Monday from Switzerland, where she’s part of a Russian delegation pleading their case to the Court of Arbitration of Sport — which is expected to rule next week on those appeals.</p>
<p>Host South Korea will have sleds in all five of the bobsled and skeleton disciplines, and 2022 Winter Olympic host China will compete next month in men’s skeleton, two-man bobsledding and four-man bobsledding.</p>
<p>Nations could qualify up to three sleds in each of the skeleton and bobsled events. Only Canada and Germany managed to reach the full allocation; the United States has four skeleton athletes instead of the maximum six, and eight bobsleds headed to Korea instead of the maximum nine.</p>
<p>North Korea, which will have some athletes competing in Pyeongchang, will not be taking part in sliding after all.</p>
<p>The International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation proposed and endorsed a plan to have a forerunning four-man bobsled — one that tests conditions before races but isn’t part of the competition — composed of two sliders from South Korea and two others from North Korea, and have it coached by Italian and U.S. officials.</p>
<p>But the notion has fallen apart, with the North Koreans — who do not regularly compete in bobsled — sending word to the IBSF that it was unable to find athletes who could fill the two slots.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP Winter Olympics: <a href="https://wintergames.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="https://wintergames.ap.org" type="external">https://wintergames.ap.org</a></p>
|
Bobsled, skeleton officials finalize Olympic sled numbers
| false |
https://apnews.com/f03c9f46907d490391916741753c68cc
|
2018-01-22
| 2least
|
Bobsled, skeleton officials finalize Olympic sled numbers
<p>The lineup of nations competing in Olympic bobsled and skeleton events was finalized by the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation on Monday, with 30 countries formally qualifying for the Pyeongchang Games in those sports.</p>
<p>Among them: the African nations of Ghana and Nigeria, as well as Russia — which will have some specially approved athletes competing under the Olympic flag since the Russian Olympic Committee has been banned from these games as part of the massive fallout from the state-sponsored doping scandal in Sochi four years ago.</p>
<p>Nigeria has athletes in the Winter Olympics for the first time, qualifying in women’s bobsled and women’s skeleton. Jamaica is also sending a women’s bobsled team to the Olympics for the first time.</p>
<p>Ghana will have men’s skeleton racer Akwasi Frimpong in the 30-man Olympic field, meaning if he finishes he’s assured of being his country’s top finisher in any event at the Winter Games. The nation’s only other Winter Olympian was alpine skier Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, who was 47th in the slalom in 2010 at Vancouver.</p>
<p>At least 17 athletes are expected to fill Russia’s sleds, under the designation of OAR or Olympic Athlete from Russia. The Russians qualified for two sleds in each bobsled event — two-man, four-man and women’s — as well as three starting spots in men’s skeleton and two from women’s skeleton.</p>
<p>None of the Russian athletes sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee for doping are eligible for credentials for Pyeongchang or any future Olympics, and many including women’s skeleton bronze medalist Elana Nikitina have had their medals stripped. Nikitina is among about three dozen Russians trying to clear their names through appeals.</p>
<p>“We are the masters of our own destiny,” Nikitina wrote in an Instagram post Monday from Switzerland, where she’s part of a Russian delegation pleading their case to the Court of Arbitration of Sport — which is expected to rule next week on those appeals.</p>
<p>Host South Korea will have sleds in all five of the bobsled and skeleton disciplines, and 2022 Winter Olympic host China will compete next month in men’s skeleton, two-man bobsledding and four-man bobsledding.</p>
<p>Nations could qualify up to three sleds in each of the skeleton and bobsled events. Only Canada and Germany managed to reach the full allocation; the United States has four skeleton athletes instead of the maximum six, and eight bobsleds headed to Korea instead of the maximum nine.</p>
<p>North Korea, which will have some athletes competing in Pyeongchang, will not be taking part in sliding after all.</p>
<p>The International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation proposed and endorsed a plan to have a forerunning four-man bobsled — one that tests conditions before races but isn’t part of the competition — composed of two sliders from South Korea and two others from North Korea, and have it coached by Italian and U.S. officials.</p>
<p>But the notion has fallen apart, with the North Koreans — who do not regularly compete in bobsled — sending word to the IBSF that it was unable to find athletes who could fill the two slots.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP Winter Olympics: <a href="https://wintergames.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="https://wintergames.ap.org" type="external">https://wintergames.ap.org</a></p>
<p>The lineup of nations competing in Olympic bobsled and skeleton events was finalized by the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation on Monday, with 30 countries formally qualifying for the Pyeongchang Games in those sports.</p>
<p>Among them: the African nations of Ghana and Nigeria, as well as Russia — which will have some specially approved athletes competing under the Olympic flag since the Russian Olympic Committee has been banned from these games as part of the massive fallout from the state-sponsored doping scandal in Sochi four years ago.</p>
<p>Nigeria has athletes in the Winter Olympics for the first time, qualifying in women’s bobsled and women’s skeleton. Jamaica is also sending a women’s bobsled team to the Olympics for the first time.</p>
<p>Ghana will have men’s skeleton racer Akwasi Frimpong in the 30-man Olympic field, meaning if he finishes he’s assured of being his country’s top finisher in any event at the Winter Games. The nation’s only other Winter Olympian was alpine skier Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, who was 47th in the slalom in 2010 at Vancouver.</p>
<p>At least 17 athletes are expected to fill Russia’s sleds, under the designation of OAR or Olympic Athlete from Russia. The Russians qualified for two sleds in each bobsled event — two-man, four-man and women’s — as well as three starting spots in men’s skeleton and two from women’s skeleton.</p>
<p>None of the Russian athletes sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee for doping are eligible for credentials for Pyeongchang or any future Olympics, and many including women’s skeleton bronze medalist Elana Nikitina have had their medals stripped. Nikitina is among about three dozen Russians trying to clear their names through appeals.</p>
<p>“We are the masters of our own destiny,” Nikitina wrote in an Instagram post Monday from Switzerland, where she’s part of a Russian delegation pleading their case to the Court of Arbitration of Sport — which is expected to rule next week on those appeals.</p>
<p>Host South Korea will have sleds in all five of the bobsled and skeleton disciplines, and 2022 Winter Olympic host China will compete next month in men’s skeleton, two-man bobsledding and four-man bobsledding.</p>
<p>Nations could qualify up to three sleds in each of the skeleton and bobsled events. Only Canada and Germany managed to reach the full allocation; the United States has four skeleton athletes instead of the maximum six, and eight bobsleds headed to Korea instead of the maximum nine.</p>
<p>North Korea, which will have some athletes competing in Pyeongchang, will not be taking part in sliding after all.</p>
<p>The International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation proposed and endorsed a plan to have a forerunning four-man bobsled — one that tests conditions before races but isn’t part of the competition — composed of two sliders from South Korea and two others from North Korea, and have it coached by Italian and U.S. officials.</p>
<p>But the notion has fallen apart, with the North Koreans — who do not regularly compete in bobsled — sending word to the IBSF that it was unable to find athletes who could fill the two slots.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP Winter Olympics: <a href="https://wintergames.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="https://wintergames.ap.org" type="external">https://wintergames.ap.org</a></p>
| 7,610 |
<p>By Sharon Bernstein</p>
<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – California lawmaker Raul Bocanegra resigned from the state assembly on Monday, a week after local media reported that six women had accused him of sexual harassment, while denying any criminal wrongdoing.</p>
<p>On Nov. 20 the Los Angeles Times published a report in which the women accused Bocanegra of groping or harassing them.</p>
<p>Previously, the newspaper reported that Bocanegra had been disciplined by the state for inappropriate behavior in 2009.</p>
<p>Reuters has not independently confirmed the allegations. Bocanegra’s staff did not immediately reply to Reuters requests for comment.</p>
<p>Bocanegra, a Democrat, wrote on Facebook (NASDAQ:) on Nov. 20, “News stories were reported a few weeks ago about a regrettable encounter when I was a legislative staffer in 2009. It was a moment that I truly regret, that I am very sorry for, and for which I have accepted responsibility for my actions.”</p>
<p>Bocanegra said in the post that he planned to resign from the legislature at the end of the session in September 2018.</p>
<p>In a statement posted on Monday on that Facebook page, Bocanegra wrote that he was resigning from the State Assembly effective immediately. “While I am not guilty of any such crimes, I am admittedly not perfect,” he wrote.</p>
<p>Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon confirmed in an emailed statement that Bocanegra had resigned.</p>
<p>Legislatures in several states are grappling with claims of sexual harassment and abuse. Bocanegra’s resignation came a day before the California statehouse is scheduled to begin hearings on sexual harassment.</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>
|
California lawmaker resigns after media report of sexual harassment
| false |
https://newsline.com/california-lawmaker-resigns-after-media-report-of-sexual-harassment/
|
2017-11-27
| 1right-center
|
California lawmaker resigns after media report of sexual harassment
<p>By Sharon Bernstein</p>
<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – California lawmaker Raul Bocanegra resigned from the state assembly on Monday, a week after local media reported that six women had accused him of sexual harassment, while denying any criminal wrongdoing.</p>
<p>On Nov. 20 the Los Angeles Times published a report in which the women accused Bocanegra of groping or harassing them.</p>
<p>Previously, the newspaper reported that Bocanegra had been disciplined by the state for inappropriate behavior in 2009.</p>
<p>Reuters has not independently confirmed the allegations. Bocanegra’s staff did not immediately reply to Reuters requests for comment.</p>
<p>Bocanegra, a Democrat, wrote on Facebook (NASDAQ:) on Nov. 20, “News stories were reported a few weeks ago about a regrettable encounter when I was a legislative staffer in 2009. It was a moment that I truly regret, that I am very sorry for, and for which I have accepted responsibility for my actions.”</p>
<p>Bocanegra said in the post that he planned to resign from the legislature at the end of the session in September 2018.</p>
<p>In a statement posted on Monday on that Facebook page, Bocanegra wrote that he was resigning from the State Assembly effective immediately. “While I am not guilty of any such crimes, I am admittedly not perfect,” he wrote.</p>
<p>Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon confirmed in an emailed statement that Bocanegra had resigned.</p>
<p>Legislatures in several states are grappling with claims of sexual harassment and abuse. Bocanegra’s resignation came a day before the California statehouse is scheduled to begin hearings on sexual harassment.</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>
| 7,611 |
<p>If Donald Trump was chancellor of the University of Missouri, things would likely be turning out a lot differently this week.</p>
<p>"I think it's disgusting," Trump said of the student protesters' accusations of widespread "racism" on campus. "I think the two people that resigned are weak, ineffective people," he told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo this morning.</p>
<p>Watch the latest video at &lt;a href="http://video.foxbusiness.com"&gt;video.foxbusiness.com&lt;/a&gt;</p>
<p>"I think that when they resigned, they set something in motion that's gonna be a disaster for the next long period of time," the Republican front runner added, referring to former University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe and former Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin.</p>
<p>"Trump should have been the chancellor of that university," he said. "There would be no resignation."</p>
<p>He added the protesters' demands are "crazy."</p>
<p>Earlier this week, Fox News <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2015/11/08/missouri-protest-list-demands-issued-to-university.html" type="external">reported</a> the list of demands includes, among other things, that the recently ousted president "acknowledge his white male privilege":</p>
<p>I. We demand that the University of Missouri System President, Tim Wolfe, writes a handwritten apology to the Concerned Student 1-?9-?5-0 demonstrators and holds a press conference in the Mizzou Student Center reading the letter. In the letter and at the press conference, Tim Wolfe must acknowledge his white male privilege, recognize that systems of oppression exist, and provide a verbal commitment to fulfilling Concerned Student 1-9-5-?0 demands. We want Tim Wolfe to admit to his gross negligence, allowing his driver to hit one of the demonstrators, consenting to the physical violence of bystanders, and lastly refusing to intervene when Columbia Police Department used excessive force with demonstrators.</p>
<p>II. We demand the immediate removal of Tim Wolfe as UM system president. After his removal a new amendment to UM system policies must be established to have all future UM system president and Chancellor positions be selected by a collective of students, staff, and faculty of diverse backgrounds.</p>
<p>III. We demand that the University of Missouri meets the Legion of Black Collegians' demands that were presented in 1969 for the betterment of the black community.</p>
<p>IV. We demand that the University of Missouri creates and enforces comprehensive racial awareness and inclusion curriculum throughout all campus departments and units, mandatory for all students, faculty, staff, and administration. This curriculum must be vetted, maintained, and overseen by a board comprised of students, staff, and faculty of color.</p>
<p>V. We demand that by the academic year 2017-2018, the University of Missouri increases the percentage of black faculty and staff campus-wide to 10%.</p>
<p>VI. We demand that the University of Missouri composes a strategic 10 year plan by May 1, 2016 that will increase retention rates for marginalized students, sustain diversity curriculum and training, and promote a more safe and inclusive campus.</p>
<p>VII. We demand that the University of Missouri increases funding and resources for the University of Missouri Counseling Center for the purpose of hiring additional mental health professionals - particularly those of color, boosting mental health outreach and programming across campus, increasing campus-?wide awareness and visibility of the counseling center, and reducing lengthy wait times for prospective clients.</p>
<p>VIII. We demand that the University of Missouri increases funding, resources, and personnel for the social justices centers on campus for the purpose of hiring additional professionals, particularly those of color, boosting outreach and programming across campus, and increasing campus-?wide awareness and visibility.</p>
<p>&#160;Stop and ponder a moment how a Chancellor Trump would have handled things differently.</p>
|
TRUMP: Missouri campus protests 'disgusting'
| true |
http://theamericanmirror.com/trump-missouri-campus-protests-disgusting/
|
2015-11-12
| 0right
|
TRUMP: Missouri campus protests 'disgusting'
<p>If Donald Trump was chancellor of the University of Missouri, things would likely be turning out a lot differently this week.</p>
<p>"I think it's disgusting," Trump said of the student protesters' accusations of widespread "racism" on campus. "I think the two people that resigned are weak, ineffective people," he told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo this morning.</p>
<p>Watch the latest video at &lt;a href="http://video.foxbusiness.com"&gt;video.foxbusiness.com&lt;/a&gt;</p>
<p>"I think that when they resigned, they set something in motion that's gonna be a disaster for the next long period of time," the Republican front runner added, referring to former University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe and former Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin.</p>
<p>"Trump should have been the chancellor of that university," he said. "There would be no resignation."</p>
<p>He added the protesters' demands are "crazy."</p>
<p>Earlier this week, Fox News <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2015/11/08/missouri-protest-list-demands-issued-to-university.html" type="external">reported</a> the list of demands includes, among other things, that the recently ousted president "acknowledge his white male privilege":</p>
<p>I. We demand that the University of Missouri System President, Tim Wolfe, writes a handwritten apology to the Concerned Student 1-?9-?5-0 demonstrators and holds a press conference in the Mizzou Student Center reading the letter. In the letter and at the press conference, Tim Wolfe must acknowledge his white male privilege, recognize that systems of oppression exist, and provide a verbal commitment to fulfilling Concerned Student 1-9-5-?0 demands. We want Tim Wolfe to admit to his gross negligence, allowing his driver to hit one of the demonstrators, consenting to the physical violence of bystanders, and lastly refusing to intervene when Columbia Police Department used excessive force with demonstrators.</p>
<p>II. We demand the immediate removal of Tim Wolfe as UM system president. After his removal a new amendment to UM system policies must be established to have all future UM system president and Chancellor positions be selected by a collective of students, staff, and faculty of diverse backgrounds.</p>
<p>III. We demand that the University of Missouri meets the Legion of Black Collegians' demands that were presented in 1969 for the betterment of the black community.</p>
<p>IV. We demand that the University of Missouri creates and enforces comprehensive racial awareness and inclusion curriculum throughout all campus departments and units, mandatory for all students, faculty, staff, and administration. This curriculum must be vetted, maintained, and overseen by a board comprised of students, staff, and faculty of color.</p>
<p>V. We demand that by the academic year 2017-2018, the University of Missouri increases the percentage of black faculty and staff campus-wide to 10%.</p>
<p>VI. We demand that the University of Missouri composes a strategic 10 year plan by May 1, 2016 that will increase retention rates for marginalized students, sustain diversity curriculum and training, and promote a more safe and inclusive campus.</p>
<p>VII. We demand that the University of Missouri increases funding and resources for the University of Missouri Counseling Center for the purpose of hiring additional mental health professionals - particularly those of color, boosting mental health outreach and programming across campus, increasing campus-?wide awareness and visibility of the counseling center, and reducing lengthy wait times for prospective clients.</p>
<p>VIII. We demand that the University of Missouri increases funding, resources, and personnel for the social justices centers on campus for the purpose of hiring additional professionals, particularly those of color, boosting outreach and programming across campus, and increasing campus-?wide awareness and visibility.</p>
<p>&#160;Stop and ponder a moment how a Chancellor Trump would have handled things differently.</p>
| 7,612 |
<p />
<p>Shares of Marathon Petroleum (NYSE:MPC) climbed more than 7% to an all-time high of $59.74 on Monday after the petroleum refiner said it inked a deal to buy BP’s (NYSE:BP) 451,000 barrel per day Texas City refinery.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The purchase will run Marathon up to $2.5 billion, including a base price of $598 million plus inventories estimated at $1.2 billion. The company may also be responsible for another $700 million over six years, subject to certain conditions.</p>
<p>The move is part of larger efforts by BP to shed global assets as it struggles to cover the cost of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill that is expected to cost the British oil giant billions of dollars.</p>
<p>Under the terms of the agreement, Findlay, Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum will also acquire three interstate NGL pipelines originating at the refinery, shopper history on BP’s Colonial Pipeline Company representing 50,000 barrels per day, four light product terminals in Florida, North Carolina and Tennessee, retail marketing contract assignments for about 1,200 branded sites representing nearly 64,000 bpd of gas sales and a 1,040 megawatt cogeneration facility.</p>
<p>“This world-scale refinery and related assets complement our current geographic footprint and align well with our strategic initiative of growing in existing and contiguous markets to enhance our portfolio,” Marathon Petroleum CEO Gary Heminger said in a statement.</p>
<p>The transaction is expected to be accretive to Marathon’s earnings in the first year of operation and Heminger said it will provide the company the ability to capture synergies across its existing Gulf Coast operations, while expanding its retail presence in the southeast U.S., closer to export markets.</p>
<p>The BP Texas City refinery, one of the largest and most complex in the U.S., is strategically positioned to provide products throughout the Gulf of Mexico, Midwest and Southeast. The facility has the ability to process a wide range of crude oils and has access to mid-continent and Canadian crudes which are often more price-advantageous due to pipelines and cargoes.</p>
<p>BP first announced it would put the refinery, which was the site of a 2005 explosion that killed 15 people, on the block in 2011.</p>
<p>The oil giant has said it is trying to dispose of as much as $38 billion in assets by the end of 2013. It has already recorded some $32 billion in asset sales since the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
|
Marathon Petroleum, BP Strike $2.5B Deal Over Texas City Refinery
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/10/08/marathon-petroleum-scoops-up-bps-texas-city-refinery-for-25b.html
|
2016-01-26
| 0right
|
Marathon Petroleum, BP Strike $2.5B Deal Over Texas City Refinery
<p />
<p>Shares of Marathon Petroleum (NYSE:MPC) climbed more than 7% to an all-time high of $59.74 on Monday after the petroleum refiner said it inked a deal to buy BP’s (NYSE:BP) 451,000 barrel per day Texas City refinery.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The purchase will run Marathon up to $2.5 billion, including a base price of $598 million plus inventories estimated at $1.2 billion. The company may also be responsible for another $700 million over six years, subject to certain conditions.</p>
<p>The move is part of larger efforts by BP to shed global assets as it struggles to cover the cost of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill that is expected to cost the British oil giant billions of dollars.</p>
<p>Under the terms of the agreement, Findlay, Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum will also acquire three interstate NGL pipelines originating at the refinery, shopper history on BP’s Colonial Pipeline Company representing 50,000 barrels per day, four light product terminals in Florida, North Carolina and Tennessee, retail marketing contract assignments for about 1,200 branded sites representing nearly 64,000 bpd of gas sales and a 1,040 megawatt cogeneration facility.</p>
<p>“This world-scale refinery and related assets complement our current geographic footprint and align well with our strategic initiative of growing in existing and contiguous markets to enhance our portfolio,” Marathon Petroleum CEO Gary Heminger said in a statement.</p>
<p>The transaction is expected to be accretive to Marathon’s earnings in the first year of operation and Heminger said it will provide the company the ability to capture synergies across its existing Gulf Coast operations, while expanding its retail presence in the southeast U.S., closer to export markets.</p>
<p>The BP Texas City refinery, one of the largest and most complex in the U.S., is strategically positioned to provide products throughout the Gulf of Mexico, Midwest and Southeast. The facility has the ability to process a wide range of crude oils and has access to mid-continent and Canadian crudes which are often more price-advantageous due to pipelines and cargoes.</p>
<p>BP first announced it would put the refinery, which was the site of a 2005 explosion that killed 15 people, on the block in 2011.</p>
<p>The oil giant has said it is trying to dispose of as much as $38 billion in assets by the end of 2013. It has already recorded some $32 billion in asset sales since the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
| 7,613 |
<p>This is a study for props and costumes in " <a href="http://13.performa-arts.org/event/shana-lutker" type="external">The Nose, The Cane, The Broken Left Arm</a>", a piece by Shana Lutker that I saw staged last night in New York as part of this year's Performa festival, and that is playing again tonight. Lutker's piece revisits the events of July 6, 1923, when Andre Breton, future leader of the Surrealist movement, came to blows in a Paris theater with some adherents of the rival Dada group, led by Tristan Tzara, who that night was premiering his new play called "The Gas Heart". Lutker's directing and script both need lots (and lots) more work, but the historical material she unearthed is fantastic, as are the costumes for the characters in "The Gas Heart", the play within Lutker's play, whom Tzara named Mouth, Eyebrow, Ear, Neck, Eye and Nose. Apparently last night's outfits were "inspired" by the originals of Sonia Delaunay, but I've got a feeling that Lutker used some wonderful poetic license in giving us a few of these body parts.</p>
<p>For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit <a href="http://blakegopnik.com/archive" type="external">blakegopnik.com/archive</a>.</p>
|
Shana Lutker riffs on Andre Breton at Performa is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik
| true |
https://thedailybeast.com/shana-lutker-riffs-on-andre-breton-at-performa-is-the-daily-pic-by-blake-gopnik
|
2018-10-03
| 4left
|
Shana Lutker riffs on Andre Breton at Performa is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik
<p>This is a study for props and costumes in " <a href="http://13.performa-arts.org/event/shana-lutker" type="external">The Nose, The Cane, The Broken Left Arm</a>", a piece by Shana Lutker that I saw staged last night in New York as part of this year's Performa festival, and that is playing again tonight. Lutker's piece revisits the events of July 6, 1923, when Andre Breton, future leader of the Surrealist movement, came to blows in a Paris theater with some adherents of the rival Dada group, led by Tristan Tzara, who that night was premiering his new play called "The Gas Heart". Lutker's directing and script both need lots (and lots) more work, but the historical material she unearthed is fantastic, as are the costumes for the characters in "The Gas Heart", the play within Lutker's play, whom Tzara named Mouth, Eyebrow, Ear, Neck, Eye and Nose. Apparently last night's outfits were "inspired" by the originals of Sonia Delaunay, but I've got a feeling that Lutker used some wonderful poetic license in giving us a few of these body parts.</p>
<p>For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit <a href="http://blakegopnik.com/archive" type="external">blakegopnik.com/archive</a>.</p>
| 7,614 |
<p />
<p>RUSH: Here is Cynthia in Virginia. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.</p>
<p>CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?</p>
<p>RUSH: I’m great. I’m glad you called.</p>
<p>CALLER: We are like coast to coast, aren’t we?</p>
<p>RUSH: Yeah.</p>
<p>CALLER: I’m in Virginia; you’re in California.</p>
<p>RUSH: Right. We’re meeting halfway via phone line. Yes, that’s very cool.</p>
<p>CALLER: I know. It’s such a pleasure and an honor to talk to you. We’ve been listeners for 25-plus years.</p>
<p>RUSH: Thank you very much.</p>
<p>CALLER: Yeah. My husband was in law enforcement, and he got turned on to you, you know, driving in his patrol car. So he kind of turned me on to you too.</p>
<p>RUSH: Well, good for him. God bless you both.</p>
<p />
<p>CALLER: Well, thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to mention, I know you talked a little about climate change today and my husband and I were just for some variety, watching the Miss America Pageant last night, and he’s always great at picking the winners. So in between that and —</p>
<p>RUSH: I heard about this.</p>
<p>CALLER: You did?</p>
<p>RUSH: Yeah. They were making the contestants, they were leading the contestants into criticizing Trump, right?</p>
<p>CALLER: Well, it was very odd. The last four or five contestants, and they had a great variety of judges, I was pleased to see.</p>
<p>RUSH: That show hasn’t been the same since I was a judge and everybody knows it.</p>
<p>CALLER: How long ago was that?</p>
<p>RUSH: I was a judge four or five years ago. In fact, I was a judge then, and here’s the — you know, I didn’t see the show, but I’ve seen where some Miss America contestants were forced into or led into being critical of Trump. I don’t know if it was during interviews or what have you. And it doesn’t surprise me. It’s the same thing we’ve been talking about today. It’s everything we’ve been talking about today.</p>
<p>I mean, I was surprised to see it ’cause I didn’t see the actual show. But then after I digested it for a minute it made total sense because there’s the groupthink again, there’s the consensus. Everybody hates Trump, Trump’s a pig, everybody hates Trump, women hate Trump, oh, my God, women hate Trump because of the Billy Bush tape. You, Miss America Pageant contestant, you hate Trump, too, right, Trump’s a pig, right? Things like that. I mean, that’s not specific. I don’t know what the actual questions were.</p>
<p>Of course, what’s a poor contestant supposed to do, figuring out, “No, I actually like President Trump. I had dinner with President Trump.”</p>
<p>“You had dinner with Trump?” They don’t want to go there. They’ve politicized everything, folks, is the point. I appreciate the call, Cynthia. Thank you. Thank you very much.</p>
|
The Miss America Pageant Hasn’t Been the Same Since I Was a Judge
| true |
https://rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/09/11/the-miss-america-pageant-hasnt-been-the-same-since-i-was-a-judge/
|
2017-09-11
| 0right
|
The Miss America Pageant Hasn’t Been the Same Since I Was a Judge
<p />
<p>RUSH: Here is Cynthia in Virginia. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.</p>
<p>CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?</p>
<p>RUSH: I’m great. I’m glad you called.</p>
<p>CALLER: We are like coast to coast, aren’t we?</p>
<p>RUSH: Yeah.</p>
<p>CALLER: I’m in Virginia; you’re in California.</p>
<p>RUSH: Right. We’re meeting halfway via phone line. Yes, that’s very cool.</p>
<p>CALLER: I know. It’s such a pleasure and an honor to talk to you. We’ve been listeners for 25-plus years.</p>
<p>RUSH: Thank you very much.</p>
<p>CALLER: Yeah. My husband was in law enforcement, and he got turned on to you, you know, driving in his patrol car. So he kind of turned me on to you too.</p>
<p>RUSH: Well, good for him. God bless you both.</p>
<p />
<p>CALLER: Well, thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to mention, I know you talked a little about climate change today and my husband and I were just for some variety, watching the Miss America Pageant last night, and he’s always great at picking the winners. So in between that and —</p>
<p>RUSH: I heard about this.</p>
<p>CALLER: You did?</p>
<p>RUSH: Yeah. They were making the contestants, they were leading the contestants into criticizing Trump, right?</p>
<p>CALLER: Well, it was very odd. The last four or five contestants, and they had a great variety of judges, I was pleased to see.</p>
<p>RUSH: That show hasn’t been the same since I was a judge and everybody knows it.</p>
<p>CALLER: How long ago was that?</p>
<p>RUSH: I was a judge four or five years ago. In fact, I was a judge then, and here’s the — you know, I didn’t see the show, but I’ve seen where some Miss America contestants were forced into or led into being critical of Trump. I don’t know if it was during interviews or what have you. And it doesn’t surprise me. It’s the same thing we’ve been talking about today. It’s everything we’ve been talking about today.</p>
<p>I mean, I was surprised to see it ’cause I didn’t see the actual show. But then after I digested it for a minute it made total sense because there’s the groupthink again, there’s the consensus. Everybody hates Trump, Trump’s a pig, everybody hates Trump, women hate Trump, oh, my God, women hate Trump because of the Billy Bush tape. You, Miss America Pageant contestant, you hate Trump, too, right, Trump’s a pig, right? Things like that. I mean, that’s not specific. I don’t know what the actual questions were.</p>
<p>Of course, what’s a poor contestant supposed to do, figuring out, “No, I actually like President Trump. I had dinner with President Trump.”</p>
<p>“You had dinner with Trump?” They don’t want to go there. They’ve politicized everything, folks, is the point. I appreciate the call, Cynthia. Thank you. Thank you very much.</p>
| 7,615 |
<p />
<p>There is a remarkable new poll in Newsweek. After two months of a polling wasteland when it came to George Bush’s job approval and general electability, <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4049942/" type="external">the poll reports</a>:</p>
<p />
<p>What’s more, for the first time, a named Democrat, rather than a generic Democratic candidate, beats the President in the next election:</p>
<p />
<p>Now, all such polls have to be taken with several giant grains of salt. They are at best snapshots of passing seconds of feeling/opinion. Nonetheless, in the wake of the State of the Union speech, to see Bush fall below the Florida 50 percent mark when it comes to a second-term is at least encouraging. The State of the Union bomb (rather than the bombshell that was meant) and Kerry’s Iowa boost could obviously be reversed in about thirty seconds.</p>
<p>In the process, of course, Howard Dean got clobbered and his serial state shouting and singular yelp have already become a national joke. It’s unfortunate that no one puts much history behind that snapshot moment chosen, at least for the time being, as iconic for Dean both in the media and on late night TV. After all, the man did put some backbone into the other Democratic candidates. He gave them an ongoing tutorial in how to fight back against George and Co.</p>
<p>I suspect that, in retrospect, we’ll find his polling figures beginning to slide almost from the moment of Saddam’s capture when all the other major Democratic candidates collapsed in a heap of praise for the President. Dean remained standing and made an eminently reasonable comment: that we were no safer for Saddam’s capture. Within days the full range of mainstream media had swiveled on him and launched an attack that lasted two months without surcease. The other Democratic candidates soon leapt on board to join the beating. Dean was badly pummeled in the process, then lost by an unexpectedly wide margin in Iowa. By the time he emerged on stage that night to say a few words, he was clearly a badly shaken candidate. The rest you know.</p>
<p>If uncurious George had been pummeled by the media for two months in the same fashion, with every word he spoke dissected and every past moment of his reconsidered, he would have been more than a lame duck, he would have been exactly the sort of creature his vice-president and Supreme Court Justice Scalia were bagging the other week in an armed love fest that passed for a vacation.</p>
<p>By the way, given how tough this election is likely to be, I’m glad to see that a subject, which has made its way — sometimes a bit hysterically — around the political Internet, is finally making its way to the mainstream (or at least to an eddy somewhere close to the main current of the river). In a powerful recent column, Paul Krugman of the New York Times for the second time took up <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/23/opinion/23KRUG.html?ex=1076011367&amp;ei=1&amp;en=1c89eb2550453fc9" type="external">the dangers of electronic voting</a>. He began:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Now imagine this: in November the candidate trailing in the polls wins an upset victory – but all of the districts where he does much better than expected use touch-screen voting machines. Meanwhile, leaked internal e-mail from the companies that make these machines suggests widespread error, and possibly fraud. What would this do to the nation?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this story is completely plausible. (In fact, you can tell a similar story about some of the results in the 2002 midterm elections, especially in Georgia.) Fortune magazine rightly declared paperless voting the worst technology of 2003, but it’s not just a bad technology – it’s a threat to the republic.”</p>
<p>Finally, if you don’t think the coming election is important, check out Robert Kuttner, hardly a wild-eyed radical, in the latest issue of American Prospect magazine. He’s written a bone-chilling essay, <a href="http://www.prospect.org/print/V15/2/kuttner-r.html" type="external">‘America as a One-Party State’</a>, which explores in detail just how close we’ve already come to permanent Republican control of the House of Representatives and the Senate — it’s already become close to statistically inconceivable for the Democrats to take back control of either house in the foreseeable future — and in the courts where only a Bush reelection is needed to seal the bargain. All of this (along with the new voting procedures Krugman focuses on) bring us “close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself”):</p>
<p>“The United States could become a nation in which the dominant party rules for a prolonged period, marginalizes a token opposition and is extremely difficult to dislodge because democracy itself is rigged. This would be unprecedented in U.S. history.</p>
<p>“In past single-party eras, the majority party earned its preeminence with broad popular support. Today the electorate remains closely divided, and actually prefers more Democratic policy positions than Republican ones. Yet the drift toward an engineered one-party Republican state has aroused little press scrutiny or widespread popular protest.”]</p>
<p>Fly me to the moon</p>
<p>I was one of those space kids of the 1950s. An only child, bored with my life, I spent an inordinate amount of time off in space in every sense. I still wonder where those little platforms with steering mechanisms powered by jetpacks are — the ones that pop magazines of the era swore would take us individually zipping amongst the spired towers of our cities, creating traffic jams 30 stories up. Nothing better proves to me how pathetic our ability to predict the future is — take my previous assessment of Kerry’s presidential chances for an example — than the fact that at 59 I still find myself subway, bus, or car-bound in the big city.</p>
<p>Much of my night-time life back then was spent under the covers, at hours when I was supposed to be asleep, reading H. G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon or The War of the Worlds by flashlight — talk about terror wars, don’t get me started on how terrified I was — or checking out Isaac Asimov’s fabulous Foundation space operas in which empires in the stars rose and fell like clockwork. In the dark at least, Asimov prepared me well enough for the present Bush administration dreams of imperial adventure in space (though they do look so shabby by comparison).</p>
<p>Unfortunately, when we finally reached the moon in 1969, the Vietnam War was growing ever hotter, the first pictures back looked like they were taken from inside a washing machine, and the guys bouncing around up there were about as heavily scripted for banality as the automatons in Kubrick’s already released 2001: A Space Odyssey. So I put my space dreams away and focused on what was happening back on hidebound old planet Earth. But sometime in the 1970s, I found myself at the Exploratorium, San Francisco’s science museum, just as the first photos from our initial probe of Jupiter were coming in. Well, I have to tell you, my heart gave a suitable little, awed pitter-pat.</p>
<p>All of this is to say that some boyish part of me is still primed for the idea of space exploration. But space exploitation? Or worse, the further exploitation of our own planet via space — well, that’s another story, isn’t it?</p>
<p>The President, of course, was enthused. Like his father — some said in “tribute” to his father, who offered a similar plan during his presidency, but in this Oedipus Wrecks of an administration that seems doubtful — he called on us to establish a “base” on the moon by 2020 and then head for Mars. The good news is that there’s even a potential “race” into space to go with his plan. Will the Chinese, our supposed future imperial competitors, get someone to the moon first? Of course, George only plans to scrape together a billion dollars for the project over numerous years by shutting down other NASA projects, starting evidently with repairs for the Hubbell telescope, and then he naturally expects someone else to pay the gargantuan bill for this “vision” somewhere off in 2010 or after, while he’s sipping non-alcoholic Mai Tais in Crawford, TX. Still, something about that payment plan has a distinctly familiar ring to it. Where have I heard the idea before that we should mortgage the future to exploit the present?</p>
<p>So here was the President’s “vision thing” on space exploration (a vision that admittedly seemed to go over nationally with all the rocket thrust of a lead bagel), and it turns out to be subject to a little known natural law –I’d call it Cheney’s Law. It goes: Where the vision thing advances, can Halliburton be far behind? In fact, as it turns out, Halliburton was far ahead; so far, in fact, that <a href="http://www.petroleumnews.com/pnarch/010228-49.html" type="external">Petroleum News reported in February 2001</a>:</p>
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<p />
<p>“Briggs said NASA has been working with Halliburton, Shell, Baker-Hughes and the Los Alamos National Laboratory to identify drilling technologies that might work on Mars… Halliburton and Baker-Hughes are working on some very advanced systems, Briggs said, some so advanced they aren’t willing to talk much about them. He said the NASA Ames Center relies on working with people in the industry who “really understand the problems and make us face up to the realities … ‘We do appreciate,’ he said, ‘that this is a non-trivial activity.'”</p>
<p>Ah space, I shoulda known it — just another place to drill. Maybe in the next decade we could find a way to transport Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the moon; then no one would care what we did to it. Mike Allen and Greg Schneider of the Washington Post wrote an interesting piece on space business, aptly headlined, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21186-2004Jan15?language=printer" type="external">Industry Hopes Soar With Space Plan, Energy and Aerospace Firms Have Long Lobbied NASA</a>. It began:</p>
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<p>“One industry official said the climate changed last October, when China put a man in orbit and announced plans to go to the moon. Suddenly, the official said, the White House seemed anxious to revitalize the U.S. space program, in effect telling NASA that ‘we’re not going to let the Chinese take the moon and let us look like fools.’ NASA then spent weeks in drills to come up with an outline for getting U.S. astronauts back into space in a big way, using some of the broad ideas that companies had been pushing.”</p>
<p>And, perhaps not so strangely, as with so much that happens in the Bush administration, behind vast ambitions and galactic plans of epic proportions there’s always the same tiny, overlapping cast of corporate characters, more appropriate to a cozy bedroom drama. Allen and Schneider, for instance, quote Lockheed spokesman Tom Jurkowsky expressing enthusiasm for the Bush proposal: “Today our people in Houston, our people at Cape Canaveral, at the Marshall Space Center . . . are talking to their counterparts at NASA — at headquarters, at all levels.”</p>
<p>In a briefing NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe quickly reassured reporters that Bush’s “exploration program” would be “industry-driven.” And who wouldn’t claim that industry is driven? The space exploration program seems, by the way, to have emerged at least in part from our vice president’s office, where the swinging door has Halliburton written all over it. And even if none of this pans out in anybody’s lifetime, in a week in which Halliburton agreed to pay back $6.3 million in overcharges for its Iraq operations without even scratching the surface of things, imagine the overcharges in space. I mean, there’s no limit in space, is there?</p>
<p>And let’s not forget the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp?type=worldNews&amp;locale=en_IN&amp;storyID=4154049" type="external">helium 3 isotope</a>, supposedly to be found in abundance on the moon. Jim Wolf of Reuters wrote of it as “a near perfect fuel source: potent, nonpolluting and causing virtually no radioactive byproduct in a fusion reactor. ‘And if we could get a monopoly on that, we wouldn’t have to worry about the Saudis and we could basically tell everybody what the price of energy was going to be,’ said [John] Pike [of Globalsecurity.org].”</p>
<p>Interestingly in regard to that small cast of characters, Wolf writes:</p>
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<p>All this and yet, as Dr. Seuss might have written, oh no, that is not all; oh no, that is not all. Wolf adds:</p>
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<p>Ah, Donald Rumsfeld. Michelle Ciarrocca of the World Policy Institute discusses just how long our Secretary of Defense has been <a href="http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=1209" type="external">eyeing the military</a> (and industrial) control of space, while warning of future “space Pearl Harbors.” As she points out, “the military has long eyed the moon as a potential base of operations as warfare is moved into the heavens.” (Those of you who go to the new Errol Morris film, The Fog of War, will hear a little anecdote by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara about how the Joint Chiefs tried to scuttle a bit of arms control by claiming, in a blame-it-on-the-neighbors moment — this was the wild-eyed 1960s, of course — that the Russians might avoid scrutiny by secretly testing atomic weapons on the other side of the moon.)</p>
<p>Ciarocca points out that the normal cast of characters was well represented on Rumsfeld’s “Space Commission” of 2001 and that the new presidential commission to be formed soon to consider the President’s space goals will be headed by Edward C. “Pete” Aldridge Jr., former Air Force secretary and presently on the board of… you guessed it, Lockheed Martin.</p>
<p>Even if you don’t take all this too seriously, it certainly reveals a good deal about the kinds of dreams that are deeply lodged in the Bush administration’s overheated brain trust. For them, space exploration is evidently the final fantasy, the Iraq that should have been: Industry-driven; backed by government; involving a few large corporations; no guerrillas anywhere in sight; totally “privatized”; and, at the end of the “rainbow,” energy sources beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings, and all ours. Or maybe I’m wrong and this was all preparation work for the next Star Trek movie, Space, The Final Dollar Frontier or the Wrath of Vice-President Khan.</p>
<p>I did notice that, after a couple of days of soaring (or at least hopping) presidential oratory, the plan dropped from sight. Not a mention of it in the State of the Union address; not even a suggestion for a Saddam trial at the International Space Station. Right now all we’re left with is two go-carts on Mars, one malfunctioning. Oh well, perhaps it’s time for a little humor and <a href="http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4008805/" type="external">the funniest space article of the week</a> was written by Gersh Kuntzman for the Newsweek website. (“Here is what the president said: ‘The moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air.’ Here is what the president meant: ‘My friends at Halliburton are very eager to strip-mine the moon and since most of my policies seem to come from outer space anyway, I said, ‘What the hell?'”)</p>
<p>But whether mining the moon for a helium isotope is pure fantasy or not (Alien without the Alien, just the big, dull cargo ships plowing through space), the militarization of space isn’t and our militarization of Earth is already a fact — with, naturally, the same small cast of characters pulling more than their weight.</p>
<p>And, to put any future militarized moon or Mars shot into the context that matters, we all know that in a world of one Power, our defense budget — the President asked for $401.3 billion this year and has already let us know that he’ll up it for 2005 — either staggers or beggars the social imagination. We also know that that figure doesn’t even include supplemental military requests for Iraq and Afghanistan. And <a href="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=YELXP2DKDFVVUCRBAEZSFEY?type=topNews&amp;storyID=4180257" type="external">recent rumors have it</a> that in a second term, George would ask for — depending on whom you believe — between $40-100 billion more for war-fighting and “reconstruction” in the area.</p>
<p>Recently in the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Insight section, Robert Higgs, a scholar at the Independent Institute in Oakland, California, took a plunge into the hidden depths of the actual military budget, adding onto it “military items” like, to give but a small example, the $4 billion annually that passes for “foreign aid” but is actually “foreign military financing.” He came up with a de facto “defense” budget for 2004 whose “super-grand total… will reach the astonishing amount of nearly $754 billion — or 88 percent more than the much-publicized $401.3 billion — plus, of course, any additional supplemental spending that may be approved before the end of the fiscal year.”</p>
<p>Concluding his venture into the real finances that underlie our gargantuan military presence at home and in the world, he writes ( <a href="http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/18/INGSM4A8JB1.DTL&amp;type=printable" type="external">Billions more for defence –and we may not even know it</a>):</p>
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<p>The thing to remember here is that nothing this big and well fed is going anywhere any time soon, no matter who’s elected to what. And once you have a military of this size with this sort of hardware in hand, the itch to try it all out becomes almost unbearable. Only the other day, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3419715.stm" type="external">head of the Army General Peter Schoomaker</a> offered some comments on this subject in an interview:</p>
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<p>“He said it was no use having an army that did nothing but train. ‘There’s got to be a certain appetite for what the hell we exist for,’ he said. ‘I’m not warmongering, the fact is we’re going to be called and really asked to do this stuff.'”</p>
<p>Certainly, there are a few large corporations — you know the names — which will never complain about this urge to use. After all, it keeps the reorders coming in and the weapons assembly lines humming. Oh, and good news, we’ve got a new place to try out our stuff. The U.S. military is planning to stay in Georgia — and we’re not talking about Macon or Atlanta here, but the small state on the Russian border that recently had a “velvet revolution” and through which a key oil pipeline to the West is slated to pass. As the BBC <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3406941.stm" type="external">reported last week</a>:</p>
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<p>On Saturday the US ambassador to Georgia said they had decided to continue training the Georgian army in a full-time programme. During the Soviet era, Krtsanisi military base outside Tbilisi was home to the Red Army. Now it is US soldiers who are in charge and, according to the US Ambassador in Tbilisi Richard Miles, they are in Georgia to stay.”</p>
<p>It’s strange, isn’t it? The Cold War is far behind us; “containment” is a doctrine relegated to ancient history classes; and yet ever more American deployments and bases ring what’s left of the former Soviet Union.</p>
<p>Fly me to Iraq</p>
<p><a href="http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040125/1/3hi25.html" type="external">Eight American soldiers have died</a> and a number more have been wounded in the last 24 hours while, as I write, the news is coming in that the second helicopter to go down in 72 hours has just dropped into the Tigris River with two American soldiers aboard. In the carnage of the last couple of days in the Sunni Triangle and Baghdad, numerous Iraqi passersby have died or been wounded while a bus of cleaning women heading for an American base was attacked by gunmen who murdered four cleaning ladies, a grim, cruel warning to Iraqis in any way associated with the occupation, even those needing to do so to make the most modest of livings. Though it’s been little written about, I’ve heard estimates of somewhere upwards of 600 Iraqi policemen, caught between the occupation and the ragtag insurgency, who have been killed over the last months.</p>
<p>In some sense, as the situation in Iraq becomes murkier and more dangerous, it also becomes clearer. In the north, Kurdish parties are demanding an autonomy that verges on independence (which might, in turn, cause neighboring states to intervene) as well as control over the oil region of Kirkuk, something other Iraqis are unlikely to cede willingly. In the center of the country, Sunni Iraq and the capital, where the occupation is ever more harshly enforced, a low-level insurgency now rages. In the majority Shiite south, a conservative Ayatollah with powerful support insists on a democratic election which will certainly deliver the country into the hands of a possibly weak Shiite government. And yet, nothing is faintly this simple. Iraq doesn’t really divide up neatly into Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite areas (even forgetting other minorities); and many in all regions of the country clearly prefer to think of themselves as Iraqis first. Still, one can see here the makings of a truly explosive situation.</p>
<p>Last week, according to <a href="http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/7765464.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp" type="external">the reliable Knight-Ridder team of Warren Stroebel and Jonathan Landay</a>, the CIA issued a warning: “[T]he country may be on a path to civil war, current and former U.S. officials said Wednesday, starkly contradicting the upbeat assessment that President Bush gave in his State of the Union address.” (Do I detect a tad of payback politics here as well?)</p>
<p>In Sunday’s New York Times “Week in Review” section in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/weekinreview/25bumi.html?ex=1076061672&amp;ei=1&amp;en=04912a26697fc40c" type="external">a piece by Elisabeth Bumiller</a> (who is so far inside the White House she’s practically on staff), I noted the following telling little sentence: “It is no surprise that the biggest fear of the current White House, short of another terrorist attack, is that Iraq will implode before the election.”</p>
<p>And so, while David Kay resigns his leadership of the team in Iraq searching for weapons of mass destruction and announces that they are undoubtedly nonexistent, L. Paul Bremer and the Bush foreign policy team rush to the UN, reconsider their plans for handing over sovereignty in Iraq, and generally twist madly in the breeze, trying to figure out how to deal with Shiite Ayatollah Sistani’s call for actual democratic elections in Iraq, while still somehow securing an agreement to keep American troops in Iraq for years, ensuring that the economy remains “open” to the Halliburtons of our world, and installing someone in Baghdad not likely to abrogate all this. Stay tuned, folks…</p>
<p>As Jonathan Steele <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1126040,00.html" type="external">wrote</a> in the Guardian last week:</p>
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<p>Ehsan Ahrari of the Asia Times <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FA17Ak02.html" type="external">asks</a>:</p>
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<p>Hojatul Islam Ali Abdulhakim Alsafi, the second most senior cleric of Iraq, in a letter to President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has adopted a threatening tone by stating that their refusal to let the Iraqis chose their own institutions would drag their countries into a battle they would lose. Needless to say, Alsafi was saying what Sistani wasn’t saying directly and explicitly, but really meant to say.”</p>
<p>The Washington Post’s superb correspondent in Iraq <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40115-2004Jan22.html" type="external">Anthony Shadid reports that recently Sistani</a></p>
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<p>The confrontation between the Bush administration and Sistani, who has not appeared in public in nearly a year, has created an enduring irony for the U.S. occupation, with the conservative clergy emerging as the most vocal constituency pressing for democratic elections. Sistani’s call has resonated among the long-repressed Shiites, whose gratitude following the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April has given way to mounting frustration over joblessness and to distrust of U.S. plans… [Sistani spokesman] Musawi also warned that the clergy would be sensitive to U.S. or British pressure and suggested that Sistani would retain the right to veto any alternative the [visiting UN] team proposed.”</p>
<p>The Sistani veto. We’re certainly seeing the formation of a new system in Iraq — just as the Busheviks once claimed they fervently wanted.</p>
<p>The most vivid description of this administration’s idea of “democracy” and its elaborate plan for caucuses meant to put its own Iraqis in power for 17 months before any election even theoretically need occur, can be found in <a href="http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040122/CONAOMI22//?query=naomi+klein" type="external">a piece by the remarkable Naomi Klein</a> in the Toronto Globe and Star in which she writes in part (but do read the whole piece):</p>
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<p>By the way, while considering the present carnage in Iraq, here’s an instant myth that deserves to be shot down: The Vietnam analogy doesn’t apply to Iraq because American casualties there are so relatively modest. After all, 58,000 American died in Vietnam. In contrast, R. Jeffrey Smith in the San Francisco Chronicle offers <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/18/MNGB44CJKR1.DTL&amp;type=printable" type="external">this startling comparison</a>:</p>
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<p>So it’s true that Vietnam doesn’t apply, just not in the ways we imagined.</p>
<p>Oh yes, and in the overstretched-military category, about a week ago I mentioned rumors I had seen about retired reservists being called up. The following interesting e-letter came in from a reader:</p>
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<p>If this isn’t a limited and unfair “draft” for a desperately overstretched military, I don’t know what is.</p>
<p>Fly me to my stomach</p>
<p>Is there a UN program the Bush administration wouldn’t like to eliminate, an international effort it wouldn’t like to shoot down, or a treaty it wouldn’t like to ditch? I think not. This administration has given new meaning to former First Lady Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” anti-drug campaign. At the very moment that the administration has turned to the UN for some help in salvaging its Iraq wreck (but not too much help please, just get that Ayatollah off our back), it managed this week to toss a monkey wrench into the works on the least controversial of international efforts — not a curb on global warming or biological weapons or land mines, but an attempt to cut down on one of the great international killers, sugar.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&amp;storyID=4170227&amp;sect;ion=news" type="external">According to Reuters</a>, “The United States, where two-thirds of adults are overweight, succeeded Tuesday in stalling a global plan [by the World Health Organization] to fight an obesity epidemic.” WHO was about to launch a global campaign against sugar’s role in obesity, but it hardly had turned the key in the motor when the American Hummer crushed it (with the help of a couple of sugar-producing islands, Russia, South Korea and India).</p>
<p>Why? Well, after pointing out that we are the globe’s major sugar junkies (“Americans, who comprise only 5% of the world’s population, account for a whopping 33% of total global sugar consumption – over 10 million tons annually. According to the WHO, over half of Americans are overweight and 31% — 38.8 million people — are obese. Obesity rates in children have risen 50% in recent years”), Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis explains not just how overconsumption of sugar leads to cardiovascular disorders and diabetes, but why the WHO campaign was put on hold ( <a href="http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_jan25.html" type="external">Overweight America is hooked on sugar</a>):</p>
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<p>“The result: the federal government subsidizes U.S. sugar producers to the tune of $1.4 billion US annually. Import restrictions protect them from foreign competition and keep domestic sugar prices three or four times higher than world prices. Sugar remains the nation’s most heavily subsidized crop at almost $500 per acre per annum.”</p>
<p>Sugar in outer space anyone?</p>
<p>Pardoning the turkeys</p>
<p>Just because I can’t help it, let me end by recommending a new piece by Arundhati Roy, who has been one of the freshest voices on planet Earth since 9/11. She’s got an essay in the latest Nation magazine <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040209&amp;s=roy" type="external">on the “New Imperialism,”</a> or how an empire is to be run in this post-modern age and offers the following passage on the far less messy “New Racism” that goes with it.</p>
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<p>“That’s how New Racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys–the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself)–are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park. The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically they’re for the pot. But the Fortunate Fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and the WTO–so who can accuse those organizations of being antiturkey? Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee–so who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalization? There’s a stampede to get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way?”</p>
<p>Additional briefings by Tom Engelhardt can be read throughout the week at <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external">TomDispatch.com</a>, a web-log of The Nation Institute.</p>
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Fly Me to…
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https://motherjones.com/politics/2004/01/fly-me/
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2004-01-26
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Fly Me to…
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<p>There is a remarkable new poll in Newsweek. After two months of a polling wasteland when it came to George Bush’s job approval and general electability, <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4049942/" type="external">the poll reports</a>:</p>
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<p>What’s more, for the first time, a named Democrat, rather than a generic Democratic candidate, beats the President in the next election:</p>
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<p>Now, all such polls have to be taken with several giant grains of salt. They are at best snapshots of passing seconds of feeling/opinion. Nonetheless, in the wake of the State of the Union speech, to see Bush fall below the Florida 50 percent mark when it comes to a second-term is at least encouraging. The State of the Union bomb (rather than the bombshell that was meant) and Kerry’s Iowa boost could obviously be reversed in about thirty seconds.</p>
<p>In the process, of course, Howard Dean got clobbered and his serial state shouting and singular yelp have already become a national joke. It’s unfortunate that no one puts much history behind that snapshot moment chosen, at least for the time being, as iconic for Dean both in the media and on late night TV. After all, the man did put some backbone into the other Democratic candidates. He gave them an ongoing tutorial in how to fight back against George and Co.</p>
<p>I suspect that, in retrospect, we’ll find his polling figures beginning to slide almost from the moment of Saddam’s capture when all the other major Democratic candidates collapsed in a heap of praise for the President. Dean remained standing and made an eminently reasonable comment: that we were no safer for Saddam’s capture. Within days the full range of mainstream media had swiveled on him and launched an attack that lasted two months without surcease. The other Democratic candidates soon leapt on board to join the beating. Dean was badly pummeled in the process, then lost by an unexpectedly wide margin in Iowa. By the time he emerged on stage that night to say a few words, he was clearly a badly shaken candidate. The rest you know.</p>
<p>If uncurious George had been pummeled by the media for two months in the same fashion, with every word he spoke dissected and every past moment of his reconsidered, he would have been more than a lame duck, he would have been exactly the sort of creature his vice-president and Supreme Court Justice Scalia were bagging the other week in an armed love fest that passed for a vacation.</p>
<p>By the way, given how tough this election is likely to be, I’m glad to see that a subject, which has made its way — sometimes a bit hysterically — around the political Internet, is finally making its way to the mainstream (or at least to an eddy somewhere close to the main current of the river). In a powerful recent column, Paul Krugman of the New York Times for the second time took up <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/23/opinion/23KRUG.html?ex=1076011367&amp;ei=1&amp;en=1c89eb2550453fc9" type="external">the dangers of electronic voting</a>. He began:</p>
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<p>Now imagine this: in November the candidate trailing in the polls wins an upset victory – but all of the districts where he does much better than expected use touch-screen voting machines. Meanwhile, leaked internal e-mail from the companies that make these machines suggests widespread error, and possibly fraud. What would this do to the nation?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this story is completely plausible. (In fact, you can tell a similar story about some of the results in the 2002 midterm elections, especially in Georgia.) Fortune magazine rightly declared paperless voting the worst technology of 2003, but it’s not just a bad technology – it’s a threat to the republic.”</p>
<p>Finally, if you don’t think the coming election is important, check out Robert Kuttner, hardly a wild-eyed radical, in the latest issue of American Prospect magazine. He’s written a bone-chilling essay, <a href="http://www.prospect.org/print/V15/2/kuttner-r.html" type="external">‘America as a One-Party State’</a>, which explores in detail just how close we’ve already come to permanent Republican control of the House of Representatives and the Senate — it’s already become close to statistically inconceivable for the Democrats to take back control of either house in the foreseeable future — and in the courts where only a Bush reelection is needed to seal the bargain. All of this (along with the new voting procedures Krugman focuses on) bring us “close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself”):</p>
<p>“The United States could become a nation in which the dominant party rules for a prolonged period, marginalizes a token opposition and is extremely difficult to dislodge because democracy itself is rigged. This would be unprecedented in U.S. history.</p>
<p>“In past single-party eras, the majority party earned its preeminence with broad popular support. Today the electorate remains closely divided, and actually prefers more Democratic policy positions than Republican ones. Yet the drift toward an engineered one-party Republican state has aroused little press scrutiny or widespread popular protest.”]</p>
<p>Fly me to the moon</p>
<p>I was one of those space kids of the 1950s. An only child, bored with my life, I spent an inordinate amount of time off in space in every sense. I still wonder where those little platforms with steering mechanisms powered by jetpacks are — the ones that pop magazines of the era swore would take us individually zipping amongst the spired towers of our cities, creating traffic jams 30 stories up. Nothing better proves to me how pathetic our ability to predict the future is — take my previous assessment of Kerry’s presidential chances for an example — than the fact that at 59 I still find myself subway, bus, or car-bound in the big city.</p>
<p>Much of my night-time life back then was spent under the covers, at hours when I was supposed to be asleep, reading H. G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon or The War of the Worlds by flashlight — talk about terror wars, don’t get me started on how terrified I was — or checking out Isaac Asimov’s fabulous Foundation space operas in which empires in the stars rose and fell like clockwork. In the dark at least, Asimov prepared me well enough for the present Bush administration dreams of imperial adventure in space (though they do look so shabby by comparison).</p>
<p>Unfortunately, when we finally reached the moon in 1969, the Vietnam War was growing ever hotter, the first pictures back looked like they were taken from inside a washing machine, and the guys bouncing around up there were about as heavily scripted for banality as the automatons in Kubrick’s already released 2001: A Space Odyssey. So I put my space dreams away and focused on what was happening back on hidebound old planet Earth. But sometime in the 1970s, I found myself at the Exploratorium, San Francisco’s science museum, just as the first photos from our initial probe of Jupiter were coming in. Well, I have to tell you, my heart gave a suitable little, awed pitter-pat.</p>
<p>All of this is to say that some boyish part of me is still primed for the idea of space exploration. But space exploitation? Or worse, the further exploitation of our own planet via space — well, that’s another story, isn’t it?</p>
<p>The President, of course, was enthused. Like his father — some said in “tribute” to his father, who offered a similar plan during his presidency, but in this Oedipus Wrecks of an administration that seems doubtful — he called on us to establish a “base” on the moon by 2020 and then head for Mars. The good news is that there’s even a potential “race” into space to go with his plan. Will the Chinese, our supposed future imperial competitors, get someone to the moon first? Of course, George only plans to scrape together a billion dollars for the project over numerous years by shutting down other NASA projects, starting evidently with repairs for the Hubbell telescope, and then he naturally expects someone else to pay the gargantuan bill for this “vision” somewhere off in 2010 or after, while he’s sipping non-alcoholic Mai Tais in Crawford, TX. Still, something about that payment plan has a distinctly familiar ring to it. Where have I heard the idea before that we should mortgage the future to exploit the present?</p>
<p>So here was the President’s “vision thing” on space exploration (a vision that admittedly seemed to go over nationally with all the rocket thrust of a lead bagel), and it turns out to be subject to a little known natural law –I’d call it Cheney’s Law. It goes: Where the vision thing advances, can Halliburton be far behind? In fact, as it turns out, Halliburton was far ahead; so far, in fact, that <a href="http://www.petroleumnews.com/pnarch/010228-49.html" type="external">Petroleum News reported in February 2001</a>:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>“Briggs said NASA has been working with Halliburton, Shell, Baker-Hughes and the Los Alamos National Laboratory to identify drilling technologies that might work on Mars… Halliburton and Baker-Hughes are working on some very advanced systems, Briggs said, some so advanced they aren’t willing to talk much about them. He said the NASA Ames Center relies on working with people in the industry who “really understand the problems and make us face up to the realities … ‘We do appreciate,’ he said, ‘that this is a non-trivial activity.'”</p>
<p>Ah space, I shoulda known it — just another place to drill. Maybe in the next decade we could find a way to transport Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the moon; then no one would care what we did to it. Mike Allen and Greg Schneider of the Washington Post wrote an interesting piece on space business, aptly headlined, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21186-2004Jan15?language=printer" type="external">Industry Hopes Soar With Space Plan, Energy and Aerospace Firms Have Long Lobbied NASA</a>. It began:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>“One industry official said the climate changed last October, when China put a man in orbit and announced plans to go to the moon. Suddenly, the official said, the White House seemed anxious to revitalize the U.S. space program, in effect telling NASA that ‘we’re not going to let the Chinese take the moon and let us look like fools.’ NASA then spent weeks in drills to come up with an outline for getting U.S. astronauts back into space in a big way, using some of the broad ideas that companies had been pushing.”</p>
<p>And, perhaps not so strangely, as with so much that happens in the Bush administration, behind vast ambitions and galactic plans of epic proportions there’s always the same tiny, overlapping cast of corporate characters, more appropriate to a cozy bedroom drama. Allen and Schneider, for instance, quote Lockheed spokesman Tom Jurkowsky expressing enthusiasm for the Bush proposal: “Today our people in Houston, our people at Cape Canaveral, at the Marshall Space Center . . . are talking to their counterparts at NASA — at headquarters, at all levels.”</p>
<p>In a briefing NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe quickly reassured reporters that Bush’s “exploration program” would be “industry-driven.” And who wouldn’t claim that industry is driven? The space exploration program seems, by the way, to have emerged at least in part from our vice president’s office, where the swinging door has Halliburton written all over it. And even if none of this pans out in anybody’s lifetime, in a week in which Halliburton agreed to pay back $6.3 million in overcharges for its Iraq operations without even scratching the surface of things, imagine the overcharges in space. I mean, there’s no limit in space, is there?</p>
<p>And let’s not forget the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp?type=worldNews&amp;locale=en_IN&amp;storyID=4154049" type="external">helium 3 isotope</a>, supposedly to be found in abundance on the moon. Jim Wolf of Reuters wrote of it as “a near perfect fuel source: potent, nonpolluting and causing virtually no radioactive byproduct in a fusion reactor. ‘And if we could get a monopoly on that, we wouldn’t have to worry about the Saudis and we could basically tell everybody what the price of energy was going to be,’ said [John] Pike [of Globalsecurity.org].”</p>
<p>Interestingly in regard to that small cast of characters, Wolf writes:</p>
<p />
<p>All this and yet, as Dr. Seuss might have written, oh no, that is not all; oh no, that is not all. Wolf adds:</p>
<p />
<p>Ah, Donald Rumsfeld. Michelle Ciarrocca of the World Policy Institute discusses just how long our Secretary of Defense has been <a href="http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=1209" type="external">eyeing the military</a> (and industrial) control of space, while warning of future “space Pearl Harbors.” As she points out, “the military has long eyed the moon as a potential base of operations as warfare is moved into the heavens.” (Those of you who go to the new Errol Morris film, The Fog of War, will hear a little anecdote by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara about how the Joint Chiefs tried to scuttle a bit of arms control by claiming, in a blame-it-on-the-neighbors moment — this was the wild-eyed 1960s, of course — that the Russians might avoid scrutiny by secretly testing atomic weapons on the other side of the moon.)</p>
<p>Ciarocca points out that the normal cast of characters was well represented on Rumsfeld’s “Space Commission” of 2001 and that the new presidential commission to be formed soon to consider the President’s space goals will be headed by Edward C. “Pete” Aldridge Jr., former Air Force secretary and presently on the board of… you guessed it, Lockheed Martin.</p>
<p>Even if you don’t take all this too seriously, it certainly reveals a good deal about the kinds of dreams that are deeply lodged in the Bush administration’s overheated brain trust. For them, space exploration is evidently the final fantasy, the Iraq that should have been: Industry-driven; backed by government; involving a few large corporations; no guerrillas anywhere in sight; totally “privatized”; and, at the end of the “rainbow,” energy sources beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings, and all ours. Or maybe I’m wrong and this was all preparation work for the next Star Trek movie, Space, The Final Dollar Frontier or the Wrath of Vice-President Khan.</p>
<p>I did notice that, after a couple of days of soaring (or at least hopping) presidential oratory, the plan dropped from sight. Not a mention of it in the State of the Union address; not even a suggestion for a Saddam trial at the International Space Station. Right now all we’re left with is two go-carts on Mars, one malfunctioning. Oh well, perhaps it’s time for a little humor and <a href="http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4008805/" type="external">the funniest space article of the week</a> was written by Gersh Kuntzman for the Newsweek website. (“Here is what the president said: ‘The moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air.’ Here is what the president meant: ‘My friends at Halliburton are very eager to strip-mine the moon and since most of my policies seem to come from outer space anyway, I said, ‘What the hell?'”)</p>
<p>But whether mining the moon for a helium isotope is pure fantasy or not (Alien without the Alien, just the big, dull cargo ships plowing through space), the militarization of space isn’t and our militarization of Earth is already a fact — with, naturally, the same small cast of characters pulling more than their weight.</p>
<p>And, to put any future militarized moon or Mars shot into the context that matters, we all know that in a world of one Power, our defense budget — the President asked for $401.3 billion this year and has already let us know that he’ll up it for 2005 — either staggers or beggars the social imagination. We also know that that figure doesn’t even include supplemental military requests for Iraq and Afghanistan. And <a href="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=YELXP2DKDFVVUCRBAEZSFEY?type=topNews&amp;storyID=4180257" type="external">recent rumors have it</a> that in a second term, George would ask for — depending on whom you believe — between $40-100 billion more for war-fighting and “reconstruction” in the area.</p>
<p>Recently in the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Insight section, Robert Higgs, a scholar at the Independent Institute in Oakland, California, took a plunge into the hidden depths of the actual military budget, adding onto it “military items” like, to give but a small example, the $4 billion annually that passes for “foreign aid” but is actually “foreign military financing.” He came up with a de facto “defense” budget for 2004 whose “super-grand total… will reach the astonishing amount of nearly $754 billion — or 88 percent more than the much-publicized $401.3 billion — plus, of course, any additional supplemental spending that may be approved before the end of the fiscal year.”</p>
<p>Concluding his venture into the real finances that underlie our gargantuan military presence at home and in the world, he writes ( <a href="http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/18/INGSM4A8JB1.DTL&amp;type=printable" type="external">Billions more for defence –and we may not even know it</a>):</p>
<p />
<p>The thing to remember here is that nothing this big and well fed is going anywhere any time soon, no matter who’s elected to what. And once you have a military of this size with this sort of hardware in hand, the itch to try it all out becomes almost unbearable. Only the other day, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3419715.stm" type="external">head of the Army General Peter Schoomaker</a> offered some comments on this subject in an interview:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>“He said it was no use having an army that did nothing but train. ‘There’s got to be a certain appetite for what the hell we exist for,’ he said. ‘I’m not warmongering, the fact is we’re going to be called and really asked to do this stuff.'”</p>
<p>Certainly, there are a few large corporations — you know the names — which will never complain about this urge to use. After all, it keeps the reorders coming in and the weapons assembly lines humming. Oh, and good news, we’ve got a new place to try out our stuff. The U.S. military is planning to stay in Georgia — and we’re not talking about Macon or Atlanta here, but the small state on the Russian border that recently had a “velvet revolution” and through which a key oil pipeline to the West is slated to pass. As the BBC <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3406941.stm" type="external">reported last week</a>:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>On Saturday the US ambassador to Georgia said they had decided to continue training the Georgian army in a full-time programme. During the Soviet era, Krtsanisi military base outside Tbilisi was home to the Red Army. Now it is US soldiers who are in charge and, according to the US Ambassador in Tbilisi Richard Miles, they are in Georgia to stay.”</p>
<p>It’s strange, isn’t it? The Cold War is far behind us; “containment” is a doctrine relegated to ancient history classes; and yet ever more American deployments and bases ring what’s left of the former Soviet Union.</p>
<p>Fly me to Iraq</p>
<p><a href="http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040125/1/3hi25.html" type="external">Eight American soldiers have died</a> and a number more have been wounded in the last 24 hours while, as I write, the news is coming in that the second helicopter to go down in 72 hours has just dropped into the Tigris River with two American soldiers aboard. In the carnage of the last couple of days in the Sunni Triangle and Baghdad, numerous Iraqi passersby have died or been wounded while a bus of cleaning women heading for an American base was attacked by gunmen who murdered four cleaning ladies, a grim, cruel warning to Iraqis in any way associated with the occupation, even those needing to do so to make the most modest of livings. Though it’s been little written about, I’ve heard estimates of somewhere upwards of 600 Iraqi policemen, caught between the occupation and the ragtag insurgency, who have been killed over the last months.</p>
<p>In some sense, as the situation in Iraq becomes murkier and more dangerous, it also becomes clearer. In the north, Kurdish parties are demanding an autonomy that verges on independence (which might, in turn, cause neighboring states to intervene) as well as control over the oil region of Kirkuk, something other Iraqis are unlikely to cede willingly. In the center of the country, Sunni Iraq and the capital, where the occupation is ever more harshly enforced, a low-level insurgency now rages. In the majority Shiite south, a conservative Ayatollah with powerful support insists on a democratic election which will certainly deliver the country into the hands of a possibly weak Shiite government. And yet, nothing is faintly this simple. Iraq doesn’t really divide up neatly into Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite areas (even forgetting other minorities); and many in all regions of the country clearly prefer to think of themselves as Iraqis first. Still, one can see here the makings of a truly explosive situation.</p>
<p>Last week, according to <a href="http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/7765464.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp" type="external">the reliable Knight-Ridder team of Warren Stroebel and Jonathan Landay</a>, the CIA issued a warning: “[T]he country may be on a path to civil war, current and former U.S. officials said Wednesday, starkly contradicting the upbeat assessment that President Bush gave in his State of the Union address.” (Do I detect a tad of payback politics here as well?)</p>
<p>In Sunday’s New York Times “Week in Review” section in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/weekinreview/25bumi.html?ex=1076061672&amp;ei=1&amp;en=04912a26697fc40c" type="external">a piece by Elisabeth Bumiller</a> (who is so far inside the White House she’s practically on staff), I noted the following telling little sentence: “It is no surprise that the biggest fear of the current White House, short of another terrorist attack, is that Iraq will implode before the election.”</p>
<p>And so, while David Kay resigns his leadership of the team in Iraq searching for weapons of mass destruction and announces that they are undoubtedly nonexistent, L. Paul Bremer and the Bush foreign policy team rush to the UN, reconsider their plans for handing over sovereignty in Iraq, and generally twist madly in the breeze, trying to figure out how to deal with Shiite Ayatollah Sistani’s call for actual democratic elections in Iraq, while still somehow securing an agreement to keep American troops in Iraq for years, ensuring that the economy remains “open” to the Halliburtons of our world, and installing someone in Baghdad not likely to abrogate all this. Stay tuned, folks…</p>
<p>As Jonathan Steele <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1126040,00.html" type="external">wrote</a> in the Guardian last week:</p>
<p />
<p>Ehsan Ahrari of the Asia Times <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FA17Ak02.html" type="external">asks</a>:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Hojatul Islam Ali Abdulhakim Alsafi, the second most senior cleric of Iraq, in a letter to President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has adopted a threatening tone by stating that their refusal to let the Iraqis chose their own institutions would drag their countries into a battle they would lose. Needless to say, Alsafi was saying what Sistani wasn’t saying directly and explicitly, but really meant to say.”</p>
<p>The Washington Post’s superb correspondent in Iraq <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40115-2004Jan22.html" type="external">Anthony Shadid reports that recently Sistani</a></p>
<p />
<p />
<p>The confrontation between the Bush administration and Sistani, who has not appeared in public in nearly a year, has created an enduring irony for the U.S. occupation, with the conservative clergy emerging as the most vocal constituency pressing for democratic elections. Sistani’s call has resonated among the long-repressed Shiites, whose gratitude following the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April has given way to mounting frustration over joblessness and to distrust of U.S. plans… [Sistani spokesman] Musawi also warned that the clergy would be sensitive to U.S. or British pressure and suggested that Sistani would retain the right to veto any alternative the [visiting UN] team proposed.”</p>
<p>The Sistani veto. We’re certainly seeing the formation of a new system in Iraq — just as the Busheviks once claimed they fervently wanted.</p>
<p>The most vivid description of this administration’s idea of “democracy” and its elaborate plan for caucuses meant to put its own Iraqis in power for 17 months before any election even theoretically need occur, can be found in <a href="http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040122/CONAOMI22//?query=naomi+klein" type="external">a piece by the remarkable Naomi Klein</a> in the Toronto Globe and Star in which she writes in part (but do read the whole piece):</p>
<p />
<p>By the way, while considering the present carnage in Iraq, here’s an instant myth that deserves to be shot down: The Vietnam analogy doesn’t apply to Iraq because American casualties there are so relatively modest. After all, 58,000 American died in Vietnam. In contrast, R. Jeffrey Smith in the San Francisco Chronicle offers <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/18/MNGB44CJKR1.DTL&amp;type=printable" type="external">this startling comparison</a>:</p>
<p />
<p>So it’s true that Vietnam doesn’t apply, just not in the ways we imagined.</p>
<p>Oh yes, and in the overstretched-military category, about a week ago I mentioned rumors I had seen about retired reservists being called up. The following interesting e-letter came in from a reader:</p>
<p />
<p>If this isn’t a limited and unfair “draft” for a desperately overstretched military, I don’t know what is.</p>
<p>Fly me to my stomach</p>
<p>Is there a UN program the Bush administration wouldn’t like to eliminate, an international effort it wouldn’t like to shoot down, or a treaty it wouldn’t like to ditch? I think not. This administration has given new meaning to former First Lady Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” anti-drug campaign. At the very moment that the administration has turned to the UN for some help in salvaging its Iraq wreck (but not too much help please, just get that Ayatollah off our back), it managed this week to toss a monkey wrench into the works on the least controversial of international efforts — not a curb on global warming or biological weapons or land mines, but an attempt to cut down on one of the great international killers, sugar.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&amp;storyID=4170227&amp;sect;ion=news" type="external">According to Reuters</a>, “The United States, where two-thirds of adults are overweight, succeeded Tuesday in stalling a global plan [by the World Health Organization] to fight an obesity epidemic.” WHO was about to launch a global campaign against sugar’s role in obesity, but it hardly had turned the key in the motor when the American Hummer crushed it (with the help of a couple of sugar-producing islands, Russia, South Korea and India).</p>
<p>Why? Well, after pointing out that we are the globe’s major sugar junkies (“Americans, who comprise only 5% of the world’s population, account for a whopping 33% of total global sugar consumption – over 10 million tons annually. According to the WHO, over half of Americans are overweight and 31% — 38.8 million people — are obese. Obesity rates in children have risen 50% in recent years”), Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis explains not just how overconsumption of sugar leads to cardiovascular disorders and diabetes, but why the WHO campaign was put on hold ( <a href="http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_jan25.html" type="external">Overweight America is hooked on sugar</a>):</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>“The result: the federal government subsidizes U.S. sugar producers to the tune of $1.4 billion US annually. Import restrictions protect them from foreign competition and keep domestic sugar prices three or four times higher than world prices. Sugar remains the nation’s most heavily subsidized crop at almost $500 per acre per annum.”</p>
<p>Sugar in outer space anyone?</p>
<p>Pardoning the turkeys</p>
<p>Just because I can’t help it, let me end by recommending a new piece by Arundhati Roy, who has been one of the freshest voices on planet Earth since 9/11. She’s got an essay in the latest Nation magazine <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040209&amp;s=roy" type="external">on the “New Imperialism,”</a> or how an empire is to be run in this post-modern age and offers the following passage on the far less messy “New Racism” that goes with it.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>“That’s how New Racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys–the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself)–are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park. The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically they’re for the pot. But the Fortunate Fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and the WTO–so who can accuse those organizations of being antiturkey? Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee–so who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalization? There’s a stampede to get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way?”</p>
<p>Additional briefings by Tom Engelhardt can be read throughout the week at <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external">TomDispatch.com</a>, a web-log of The Nation Institute.</p>
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<p>Anti-Americans like Antifa leftist sure hate the flag and what it represents but don’t mind the benefits. Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2017.</p>
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Ameriphobia
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http://comicallyincorrect.com/2017/04/28/ameriphobia/
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Ameriphobia
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<p>Anti-Americans like Antifa leftist sure hate the flag and what it represents but don’t mind the benefits. Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2017.</p>
<p><a href="http://patriotdepot.com/comically-incorrect-a-collection-of-politically-incorrect-comics-volume-1/" type="external">A.F.Branco Coffee Table Book</a> &lt;—- Order Here!</p>
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<p>The Justice Department's $17 billion settlement with Bank of America almost certainly will not cost the company that much.</p>
<p>Inflated figures in mega-settlements negotiated with the government make for sensational headlines. But the true cost to companies is often obscured by potential tax deductions and opaque accounting techniques.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A person familiar with the settlement tells The Associated Press that Bank of America will pay roughly $10 billion in cash and provide aid valued by the government at $7 billion.</p>
<p>The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal had not yet been announced.</p>
<p>It's a bit of a numbers game. Cash payments can be treated as tax-deductible business expenses. And consumer relief is a vague cost category that can include simply following business as usual.</p>
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Accounting obscurities mean US settlement with Bank of America might not cost bank $17 billion
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Accounting obscurities mean US settlement with Bank of America might not cost bank $17 billion
<p>The Justice Department's $17 billion settlement with Bank of America almost certainly will not cost the company that much.</p>
<p>Inflated figures in mega-settlements negotiated with the government make for sensational headlines. But the true cost to companies is often obscured by potential tax deductions and opaque accounting techniques.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A person familiar with the settlement tells The Associated Press that Bank of America will pay roughly $10 billion in cash and provide aid valued by the government at $7 billion.</p>
<p>The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal had not yet been announced.</p>
<p>It's a bit of a numbers game. Cash payments can be treated as tax-deductible business expenses. And consumer relief is a vague cost category that can include simply following business as usual.</p>
| 7,618 |
<p>Comedy, Jon Stewart once said after the&#160;Charlie Hebdo massacre in France, ''shouldn't have to be an act of courage.''</p>
<p>Yet his courage and vision have been cited by critics since&#160;Stewart's&#160;announcement he was leaving "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central,&#160;the program that he built into a news source more trusted than the old networks he so loved to poke fun at.</p>
<p>“It’s hard to imagine life without Jon Stewart’s Daily Show,” says&#160;Bob Garfield, longtime journalist and co-host of WNYC’s On the Media.&#160;“It’s been transformative, in media and politics. He’s the voice of reason for the millennials, and maybe the generation before that. There’s nothing like him in the American scene since Will Rogers, only Will Rogers wasn’t on the ‘TV machine.’”</p>
<p>“The guy should be on Mount Rushmore,” Garfield says. He was the anti-Brian Williams, adds media critic Dan Kennedy. "Stewart is utterly transparent — we know what he believes and what perspective he brings to his commentary,'' <a href="http://wgbhnews.org/post/jon-stewart-anti-brian-williams" type="external">Kennedy writes, adding that Tina Fey or Amy Poehler</a>&#160;would be worthy Daily Show successors.</p>
<p>In 16 years, Stewart broke numerous boundaries, including an episode in which he was accused of being pro-Palestinian by Israeli officials and pro-Israeli by Palestinian officials.</p>
<p>Garfield&#160;says that The Daily Show even paved the way for his own weekly radio media review.&#160;“He did what we do better,” Garfield&#160;says.</p>
<p>Aside from the comedic elements of The Daily Show, the program helped pioneer now-modern techniques used by broadcast news outlets: The show was out in front with its use of YouTube video integration and memes, a practice now commonly used by many broadcast mediums.</p>
<p>Beyond The Daily Show’s use of technique, Garfield says the program was always fair.</p>
<p>“They didn’t cheat,” says Garfield. “They had more integrity in producing their fake news broadcast than much of the rest of broadcast news had in its producing its supposedly real ones. It’s remarkable, and we shall not see the likes of him soon.”</p>
<p>This article <a href="http://www.thetakeaway.org/story/jon-stewart-brian-williams-job-swap/" type="external">was adapted from</a> an interview on PRI's news show <a href="http://www.thetakeaway.org/" type="external">The Takeaway</a>.</p>
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Missing Jon Stewart already: 'This guy ought to be on Mount Rushmore'
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Missing Jon Stewart already: 'This guy ought to be on Mount Rushmore'
<p>Comedy, Jon Stewart once said after the&#160;Charlie Hebdo massacre in France, ''shouldn't have to be an act of courage.''</p>
<p>Yet his courage and vision have been cited by critics since&#160;Stewart's&#160;announcement he was leaving "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central,&#160;the program that he built into a news source more trusted than the old networks he so loved to poke fun at.</p>
<p>“It’s hard to imagine life without Jon Stewart’s Daily Show,” says&#160;Bob Garfield, longtime journalist and co-host of WNYC’s On the Media.&#160;“It’s been transformative, in media and politics. He’s the voice of reason for the millennials, and maybe the generation before that. There’s nothing like him in the American scene since Will Rogers, only Will Rogers wasn’t on the ‘TV machine.’”</p>
<p>“The guy should be on Mount Rushmore,” Garfield says. He was the anti-Brian Williams, adds media critic Dan Kennedy. "Stewart is utterly transparent — we know what he believes and what perspective he brings to his commentary,'' <a href="http://wgbhnews.org/post/jon-stewart-anti-brian-williams" type="external">Kennedy writes, adding that Tina Fey or Amy Poehler</a>&#160;would be worthy Daily Show successors.</p>
<p>In 16 years, Stewart broke numerous boundaries, including an episode in which he was accused of being pro-Palestinian by Israeli officials and pro-Israeli by Palestinian officials.</p>
<p>Garfield&#160;says that The Daily Show even paved the way for his own weekly radio media review.&#160;“He did what we do better,” Garfield&#160;says.</p>
<p>Aside from the comedic elements of The Daily Show, the program helped pioneer now-modern techniques used by broadcast news outlets: The show was out in front with its use of YouTube video integration and memes, a practice now commonly used by many broadcast mediums.</p>
<p>Beyond The Daily Show’s use of technique, Garfield says the program was always fair.</p>
<p>“They didn’t cheat,” says Garfield. “They had more integrity in producing their fake news broadcast than much of the rest of broadcast news had in its producing its supposedly real ones. It’s remarkable, and we shall not see the likes of him soon.”</p>
<p>This article <a href="http://www.thetakeaway.org/story/jon-stewart-brian-williams-job-swap/" type="external">was adapted from</a> an interview on PRI's news show <a href="http://www.thetakeaway.org/" type="external">The Takeaway</a>.</p>
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<p>The United States Department of Justice is investigating trades worth billions of dollars that Germany's Deutsche Bank AG made on behalf of its Russian clients, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The probe investigates so-called mirror trades, where the bank's Russian clients bought stocks in rubles, and through simultaneous transactions in London, bought the same stocks in U.S. dollars, thereby moving funds out of Russia without informing authorities, Bloomberg reported.</p>
<p>Last month, The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) sought detailed information from Deutsche Bank on possible money-laundering transactions by some of its clients in Russia that could exceed $6 billion in total, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.</p>
<p>Deutsche Bank declined to comment on this development and referred to its earlier statement published on the issue along with its annual report on July 30.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Ankush Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)</p>
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Report: U.S. Dept of Justice initiates criminal probe against Deutsche Bank
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2015/08/03/report-us-dept-justice-initiates-criminal-probe-against-deutsche-bank.html
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2016-03-09
| 0right
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Report: U.S. Dept of Justice initiates criminal probe against Deutsche Bank
<p />
<p>The United States Department of Justice is investigating trades worth billions of dollars that Germany's Deutsche Bank AG made on behalf of its Russian clients, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The probe investigates so-called mirror trades, where the bank's Russian clients bought stocks in rubles, and through simultaneous transactions in London, bought the same stocks in U.S. dollars, thereby moving funds out of Russia without informing authorities, Bloomberg reported.</p>
<p>Last month, The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) sought detailed information from Deutsche Bank on possible money-laundering transactions by some of its clients in Russia that could exceed $6 billion in total, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.</p>
<p>Deutsche Bank declined to comment on this development and referred to its earlier statement published on the issue along with its annual report on July 30.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Ankush Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)</p>
| 7,620 |
<p>Stretch, breathe, and connect...or something. Yoga - the word and the practise - carry different meanings in India than in the United States and elsewhere. A new movie, "Enlighten Up!" investigates, at times hilariously. Also this week, the French schoolboy who created a whole language for kids turns 50. And part two of our conversation with Wikipedia historian Andrew Lih. He argues that American politicos write many more manipulative wiki-articles than their Chinese counterparts...and he reveals why there is, shockingly, no Wikipedia in Montenegrin.</p>
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The World in Words 48: Le Petit Nicolas, how to start a foreign language Wikipedia, and the many meanings of yoga
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2009-04-02/world-words-48-le-petit-nicolas-how-start-foreign-language-wikipedia-and-many
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2009-04-02
| 3left-center
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The World in Words 48: Le Petit Nicolas, how to start a foreign language Wikipedia, and the many meanings of yoga
<p>Stretch, breathe, and connect...or something. Yoga - the word and the practise - carry different meanings in India than in the United States and elsewhere. A new movie, "Enlighten Up!" investigates, at times hilariously. Also this week, the French schoolboy who created a whole language for kids turns 50. And part two of our conversation with Wikipedia historian Andrew Lih. He argues that American politicos write many more manipulative wiki-articles than their Chinese counterparts...and he reveals why there is, shockingly, no Wikipedia in Montenegrin.</p>
| 7,621 |
<p>The bailout of AIG to enable derivatives traders and other gamblers collect on their computer-driven bets is so enormous that it will take another article to describe. But in the meantime there is a development so wonderfully appropriate, almost poetic as a metaphor, that it cannot go unnoticed. The Dow Jones Company announced on September 18 that as of this Monday, September 22, 2008 it will replace ailing A.I.G. in the Dow Industrial Average with Kraft Foods. The company makes processed industrial products such as Cheez’it, Cheez Whiz and Oscar Meyer wieners, but is best known for the Macaroni and Cheese that Sam Kraft introduced in the Depression year of 1937. When milk and dairy products were rationed during World War II, these packaged meals were all that was available. Along with the company’s Hamburger Helper, much of the public may find itself obliged to eat more of this by the time the fallout from this week’s transition from Industrial Capitalism to Hedge Fund Capitalism runs its course.</p>
<p>How fitting a metaphor, not only the notorious Depression Diet, but the fact that the Kraft process is fake cheese. About as real as the default guarantees that A.I.G. “insured,” Velveeta and similar so-called “cheese products” are made out of Milk Protein Concentrate (MPC). “The general definition of MPC is a blend of dry dairy ingredients from 42% to 90% casein (pure dairy protein) made by ultra filtering skim milk, retaining anything the size of a protein or larger (bacteria, somatic cell, etc.) and then drying that to form a powder,” describes the Agribusiness Examiner. “Not manufactured in the U.S., MPC’s are added to cheese vats – on the cheap yielding more end products with ‘savings’ retained by the manufacturer.” <a href="#_ftn1" type="external" /></p>
<p>The resulting products are not considered milk by the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) definitions. This fact legally obliges Kraft to spell many of its consumer items “Cheez” under the “truth in labeling” laws. The intention is for the children at whom most of Kraft’s advertising is aimed will think that this is an affectionate diminutive for the company’s cheesy chemicals, confusing it with real dairy cheese. Much as Kraft’s products are aimed mainly at kids, so about three quarters of A.I.G.’s derivative insurance guarantees for trillions of dollars of computer-driven trades were pawned off on gullible European financial institutions.</p>
<p>Much in line with Thomas Gresham’s quip that “Bad money drives out good,” so Kraft now accounts for no less than 57 percent of the U.S. “cheese” market. And in the sphere of finance capital, the massive computerized derivatives trading insured by A.I.G. has diverted pension fund savings and bank credit away from tangible investment to something almost unworldly, neither tangible capital nor even financial capital, but bets and straddles on cross trades.</p>
<p>Kraft also makes Oscar Mayer meats, mainly frankfurters and other sausages, providing a model for the investment banking industry to emulate with its packaged mortgages (toxic CDOs, collateralized debt obligations), the financial equivalent of sweepings off the floor. People who know what go into sausages or CDOs rarely want to buy them. But a lot of money has been made selling them. And the government is now giving the blessing. There is no health plan for Americans reduced to Kraft Cheez diets, but there is now indeed a financial health plan for all the traders who have choked on the $450 billion unpayable derivatives trades that A.I.G. is said to have insured.</p>
<p>The moral seems to be health and bailouts for the wealthy; let the rest eat Cheese and Macaroni.</p>
<p>MICHAEL HUDSON is a former Wall Street economist specializing in the balance of payments and real estate at the Chase Manhattan Bank (now JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co.), Arthur Anderson, and later at the Hudson Institute (no relation). In 1990 he helped established the world’s first sovereign debt fund for Scudder Stevens &amp; Clark. Dr. Hudson was Dennis Kucinich’s Chief Economic Advisor in the recent Democratic primary presidential campaign, and has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments, as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including <a href="" type="internal">Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire</a> (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached via his website, <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="#_ftnref1" type="external" /> Kraft “Cheese?”: Adulterated Food? FDA: Don’t Ask! Don’t Tell! The Agribusiness Examiner, May 7, 2001.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Your Ad Here</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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The Dow Jones’ Wonderfully Cheesy Addition
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2008/09/19/the-dow-jones-wonderfully-cheesy-addition/
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2008-09-19
| 4left
|
The Dow Jones’ Wonderfully Cheesy Addition
<p>The bailout of AIG to enable derivatives traders and other gamblers collect on their computer-driven bets is so enormous that it will take another article to describe. But in the meantime there is a development so wonderfully appropriate, almost poetic as a metaphor, that it cannot go unnoticed. The Dow Jones Company announced on September 18 that as of this Monday, September 22, 2008 it will replace ailing A.I.G. in the Dow Industrial Average with Kraft Foods. The company makes processed industrial products such as Cheez’it, Cheez Whiz and Oscar Meyer wieners, but is best known for the Macaroni and Cheese that Sam Kraft introduced in the Depression year of 1937. When milk and dairy products were rationed during World War II, these packaged meals were all that was available. Along with the company’s Hamburger Helper, much of the public may find itself obliged to eat more of this by the time the fallout from this week’s transition from Industrial Capitalism to Hedge Fund Capitalism runs its course.</p>
<p>How fitting a metaphor, not only the notorious Depression Diet, but the fact that the Kraft process is fake cheese. About as real as the default guarantees that A.I.G. “insured,” Velveeta and similar so-called “cheese products” are made out of Milk Protein Concentrate (MPC). “The general definition of MPC is a blend of dry dairy ingredients from 42% to 90% casein (pure dairy protein) made by ultra filtering skim milk, retaining anything the size of a protein or larger (bacteria, somatic cell, etc.) and then drying that to form a powder,” describes the Agribusiness Examiner. “Not manufactured in the U.S., MPC’s are added to cheese vats – on the cheap yielding more end products with ‘savings’ retained by the manufacturer.” <a href="#_ftn1" type="external" /></p>
<p>The resulting products are not considered milk by the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) definitions. This fact legally obliges Kraft to spell many of its consumer items “Cheez” under the “truth in labeling” laws. The intention is for the children at whom most of Kraft’s advertising is aimed will think that this is an affectionate diminutive for the company’s cheesy chemicals, confusing it with real dairy cheese. Much as Kraft’s products are aimed mainly at kids, so about three quarters of A.I.G.’s derivative insurance guarantees for trillions of dollars of computer-driven trades were pawned off on gullible European financial institutions.</p>
<p>Much in line with Thomas Gresham’s quip that “Bad money drives out good,” so Kraft now accounts for no less than 57 percent of the U.S. “cheese” market. And in the sphere of finance capital, the massive computerized derivatives trading insured by A.I.G. has diverted pension fund savings and bank credit away from tangible investment to something almost unworldly, neither tangible capital nor even financial capital, but bets and straddles on cross trades.</p>
<p>Kraft also makes Oscar Mayer meats, mainly frankfurters and other sausages, providing a model for the investment banking industry to emulate with its packaged mortgages (toxic CDOs, collateralized debt obligations), the financial equivalent of sweepings off the floor. People who know what go into sausages or CDOs rarely want to buy them. But a lot of money has been made selling them. And the government is now giving the blessing. There is no health plan for Americans reduced to Kraft Cheez diets, but there is now indeed a financial health plan for all the traders who have choked on the $450 billion unpayable derivatives trades that A.I.G. is said to have insured.</p>
<p>The moral seems to be health and bailouts for the wealthy; let the rest eat Cheese and Macaroni.</p>
<p>MICHAEL HUDSON is a former Wall Street economist specializing in the balance of payments and real estate at the Chase Manhattan Bank (now JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co.), Arthur Anderson, and later at the Hudson Institute (no relation). In 1990 he helped established the world’s first sovereign debt fund for Scudder Stevens &amp; Clark. Dr. Hudson was Dennis Kucinich’s Chief Economic Advisor in the recent Democratic primary presidential campaign, and has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments, as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including <a href="" type="internal">Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire</a> (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached via his website, <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="#_ftnref1" type="external" /> Kraft “Cheese?”: Adulterated Food? FDA: Don’t Ask! Don’t Tell! The Agribusiness Examiner, May 7, 2001.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Your Ad Here</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 7,622 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>THE HIGHLY TOUTED Valpo, turned out to be more like Alpo, and Los Lobos feasted on them. I think Jacobs has won the starting point guard job, now it remains to be seen.</p>
<p>– Vince Guillen</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
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Sports Speak Up!
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/507148/sports-speak-up-254.html
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Sports Speak Up!
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>THE HIGHLY TOUTED Valpo, turned out to be more like Alpo, and Los Lobos feasted on them. I think Jacobs has won the starting point guard job, now it remains to be seen.</p>
<p>– Vince Guillen</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 7,623 |
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<p>(ABP) — K.H. Ting, an Anglican bishop prior to China’s Cultural Revolution who led a “post-denominational” re-emergence of Chinese Christianity in the 1970s and 1980s, died Nov. 22 after several years of poor health.</p>
<p>Ting is credited with opening up the Chinese church to the outside world, including Amity’s Teachers Program, which recruits people from around the world sponsored by church agencies — including many Baptists in the Mid-Atlantic — to teach English, Japanese or German in Chinese universities.</p>
<p />
<p>“I think it would not be too much to say that without his leadership after the Cultural Revolution, it’s hard to know whether the Chinese church would have been able to recover and flourish,” said Lynn Yarbrough, who retired this year as an English teacher supported by the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. “His influence probably saved the Chinese church during and after the Cultural Revolution. He was probably the only one who had credibility with both the government and Christians.”</p>
<p>Hailed by some as a patriot and visionary and criticized by others for being too cozy with China’s Communist leaders, Ting, 97, worked through 60 often difficult years of change in the world’s most populous nation.</p>
<p>Ting was ordained as China’s last Anglican bishop in 1942, a position he never renounced and technically held until death, even though his church was effectively dissolved and merged with other Protestant denominations into an umbrella organization called the China Christian Council.</p>
<p>Ting served as chairman of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the liaison between church and state in China, and president of the China Christian Council, the official Protestant denomination. He became president of Nanjing Union Theological Seminary in 1953.</p>
<p>He lost his positions during the Cultural Revolution — a crackdown launched in 1966 to strengthen Mao’s position in the Communist Party and ensure continuation of the revolution that formed the People’s Republic of China in 1949 — but returned to prominence in the wake of liberalizations following Mao’s death in 1976.</p>
<p>In 1985, Ting and others set up the Amity Foundation, a Christian faith-based organization that promotes education, social services, health and rural development across China. Its work includes Nanjing Amity Printing Company, Ltd., a joint venture with the United Bible Societies launched in 1988 that recently celebrated the printing of its 100 millionth Bible.</p>
<p>“The life and ministry of Bishop Ting has had profound influence on the Christian church in China as well as on the global Church, and it has had profound influence on me personally,” said Daniel Vestal, the recently retired executive coordinator of the Atlanta-based Fellowship.</p>
<p>Vestal, director of the Baugh Center for Baptist Leadership and distinguished university professor of Baptist leadership at Mercer University, described the Chinese leader as a prophet, pastor, evangelist and teacher. “But most of all he was a bold follower of Christ who showed us that God is love,” Vestal said.</p>
<p>Roy Medley, general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA, described Bishop Ting as “an extraordinary leader in the Church.”</p>
<p>“Under his careful guidance, the Church in China flourished and experienced its richest period of growth and service as a truly indigenous expression of the gospel,” Medley said. “He will be greatly missed, not only in China but in the church ecumenical.”</p>
<p>A theologian influenced by French philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ting envisioned an indigenous Christianity devoid of foreign influences and sensitive to the Chinese context. (The Three-Self Patriotic Movement stands for self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating.)</p>
<p>Bob Allen ( <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>)&#160;is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.</p>
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K.H. Ting, leader credited with strengthening indigenous Christianity in China, dead at 97
| false |
https://baptistnews.com/article/khtingleadercreditedwithstrengtheningindigenouschristianityinchinadeadat97-5/
| 3left-center
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K.H. Ting, leader credited with strengthening indigenous Christianity in China, dead at 97
<p>(ABP) — K.H. Ting, an Anglican bishop prior to China’s Cultural Revolution who led a “post-denominational” re-emergence of Chinese Christianity in the 1970s and 1980s, died Nov. 22 after several years of poor health.</p>
<p>Ting is credited with opening up the Chinese church to the outside world, including Amity’s Teachers Program, which recruits people from around the world sponsored by church agencies — including many Baptists in the Mid-Atlantic — to teach English, Japanese or German in Chinese universities.</p>
<p />
<p>“I think it would not be too much to say that without his leadership after the Cultural Revolution, it’s hard to know whether the Chinese church would have been able to recover and flourish,” said Lynn Yarbrough, who retired this year as an English teacher supported by the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. “His influence probably saved the Chinese church during and after the Cultural Revolution. He was probably the only one who had credibility with both the government and Christians.”</p>
<p>Hailed by some as a patriot and visionary and criticized by others for being too cozy with China’s Communist leaders, Ting, 97, worked through 60 often difficult years of change in the world’s most populous nation.</p>
<p>Ting was ordained as China’s last Anglican bishop in 1942, a position he never renounced and technically held until death, even though his church was effectively dissolved and merged with other Protestant denominations into an umbrella organization called the China Christian Council.</p>
<p>Ting served as chairman of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the liaison between church and state in China, and president of the China Christian Council, the official Protestant denomination. He became president of Nanjing Union Theological Seminary in 1953.</p>
<p>He lost his positions during the Cultural Revolution — a crackdown launched in 1966 to strengthen Mao’s position in the Communist Party and ensure continuation of the revolution that formed the People’s Republic of China in 1949 — but returned to prominence in the wake of liberalizations following Mao’s death in 1976.</p>
<p>In 1985, Ting and others set up the Amity Foundation, a Christian faith-based organization that promotes education, social services, health and rural development across China. Its work includes Nanjing Amity Printing Company, Ltd., a joint venture with the United Bible Societies launched in 1988 that recently celebrated the printing of its 100 millionth Bible.</p>
<p>“The life and ministry of Bishop Ting has had profound influence on the Christian church in China as well as on the global Church, and it has had profound influence on me personally,” said Daniel Vestal, the recently retired executive coordinator of the Atlanta-based Fellowship.</p>
<p>Vestal, director of the Baugh Center for Baptist Leadership and distinguished university professor of Baptist leadership at Mercer University, described the Chinese leader as a prophet, pastor, evangelist and teacher. “But most of all he was a bold follower of Christ who showed us that God is love,” Vestal said.</p>
<p>Roy Medley, general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA, described Bishop Ting as “an extraordinary leader in the Church.”</p>
<p>“Under his careful guidance, the Church in China flourished and experienced its richest period of growth and service as a truly indigenous expression of the gospel,” Medley said. “He will be greatly missed, not only in China but in the church ecumenical.”</p>
<p>A theologian influenced by French philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ting envisioned an indigenous Christianity devoid of foreign influences and sensitive to the Chinese context. (The Three-Self Patriotic Movement stands for self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating.)</p>
<p>Bob Allen ( <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>)&#160;is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.</p>
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<p>The Washington-based Religious Freedom Institute, in cooperation with the Baylor University Institute for the Studies of Religion and the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, recently held a consultation between Christian and Muslim scholars in Rome, “Promoting Religious Freedom in the Middle East.” NRO contributor George Weigel delivered the following remarks to the consultation on the evening of December 14. The title of his lecture was “The Catholic Journey to Religious Freedom:&#160;Dignitatis Humanae&#160;– Fundamental Change or Development?”</p>
<p>The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, often cited by its Latin title,&#160;Dignitatis Humanae (DH), is rightly regarded as a watershed, a crucial moment, in the Catholic Church’s centuries-long engagement with political modernity. But what kind of engagement was it? Did&#160;DH&#160;mark a rupture in the Catholic tradition’s thinking about the relationship between religious and political authority in society and in the state? Or was&#160;DH&#160;a genuine, which is to say organic, development of Catholic church-state theory?</p>
<p>According to one telling of the tale, prominent among both Catholic progressives and Catholic traditionalists,&#160;DH&#160;marked the end of a long war of attrition between Catholicism and political modernity, in which the Church — having unsuccessfully fought a series of rearguard actions followed by several tactical retreats — finally admitted that it had been wrong about the political regimes that had emerged from the American and French Revolutions. And in doing so, that story-line continues, Catholicism surrendered to the claims of the Enlightenment about the proper organization of society, which include a radical separation of religious conviction and religious authority from public life.</p>
<p>I’m sure you’ve all heard that telling of the story before. What I am proposing tonight is that that is not simply an incomplete picture; from both a historical and a theological point of view, it is a&#160;false&#160;picture. And it’s a false picture that impedes a truth-based interreligious dialogue between Catholics and Muslims in the 21st century.</p>
<p>It’s a false picture historically because it presumes that religious tolerance and religious freedom in any meaningful sense of the term only began with the Reformation and the Enlightenment. But this 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformations — I use the plural deliberately, because there were many different and often competing “Reformations” — ought to have reminded us that these Reformations were hardly the occasion for the triumph of religious freedom and tolerance. Rather, they were the occasion for considerable inter-religious bloodletting,&#160;among&#160;Protestants as well as between Protestants and Catholics.&#160; And if it is also true, as the most recent historical scholarship suggests, that the horrible Thirty Years War that devastated Europe was at least as much a result of modern state-formation as of interreligious conflict, it is also true that the resolution of that war in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia cannot be considered a triumph for religious tolerance and religious freedom.</p>
<p>Why? Because the Westphalian formula,&#160;cuius regio eius religio&#160;— the prince’s religion is the religion of the state and must be the religion of the people — can and should be considered the modern West’s first experiment in the totalitarian coercion of conscience by state power. And as those experiments intensified and secularized in succeeding centuries, the death toll expanded exponentially. Now that was not the explanation of the Westphalian settlement that I was taught in university-level history classes; I doubt that many of you were taught “Westphalia” that way either. But two decades ago, in Poland, I was given a fresh look at a tangled history by scholars formed in a country that did not experience the Thirty Years War, but which did have a devastating experience of both the mid-20th-century totalitarianisms. And that produced in Poland some interesting theories of the genealogy of state coercion of religious conscience, according to which the Poles — whose king in the mid-16th century, Sigismund Augustus, had told them that he was “not the king of your consciences” — considered Westphalia a sad, indeed prototypical example.</p>
<p>As for the Enlightenment: Well, Voltaire may have claimed that he would defend to the death the right to express the erroneous opinions of those with whom he disagreed, but many of his political heirs in the French Revolution were not so committed. Thus the French Revolution conducted a bloody persecution of the Catholic Church — first in the name of subordinating the Church to state power, and then in the name of substituting a secular “religion of reason” for biblical religion. That pattern was replicated in much of Western Europe throughout the 19th and early-20th centuries, in venues ranging from Germany (the&#160;Kulturkampf)&#160;to Italy (the anticlerical&#160;Risorgimento) to Spain and Portugal, before jumping the Atlantic to Mexico in the 1920s.</p>
<p>So the Whig theory of history, according to which what we know in the 21st century as religious tolerance and religious freedom are byproducts of the Reformation and the Enlightenment, simply does not stand up to the historical evidence. Even under the conditions of the least secular of the various European Enlightenments, the English Enlightenment, it took the better part of two centuries for a religious minority, Catholics, to be conceded full civil rights in what prided itself on being the mother of democracies.</p>
<p>Then there is the question of theology, and what Catholic theologians call the “development of doctrine:” a heady subject, to be sure, but if you will bear with me for a moment, I think I can paint a more interesting portrait than you may have heard previously of how&#160;Dignitatis Humanae&#160;and the Catholic Church’s embrace of religious freedom as the first of civil and political rights happened. For it came about, not through a rupture with the past, but through the retrieval and renewal of core Catholic convictions that had gotten a bit lost through the vicissitudes of history.</p>
<p>To make a long and complex story desperately short: In 1878, the newly elected Pope Leo XIII took a bold decision in what international-relations theorists would call “grand strategy:” unlike his two immediate papal predecessors, Gregory XVI and Pius IX, both of whom rejected political modernity root and branch, he would seek to&#160;engage&#160;modernity, including political modernity. And he would do so with distinctively Catholic intellectual tools, the sharpest of which had been forged in the 13th century by St. Thomas Aquinas — who had, of course, greatly benefited from the retrieval of Aristotle by Arab and Islamic scholars.</p>
<p>Thus, in a series of encyclicals — teaching documents with considerable weight — Leo XIII examined what was good and what was troubling in political modernity through the lens of Thomas Aquinas’s political theory as developed by generations of Catholics including such great figures as Robert Bellarmine: a concept of the just society in which politics was understood to be under the judgment of the natural moral law written into the world and into us; a concept of the just society in which the consent of the governed, not state coercion, was the basic mechanism of governance; a concept of the just society in which it was understood that what we know today as the institutions of civil society — the family, religious communities, voluntary associations of various sorts — exist prior to the state, ontologically as well as historically, such that the state exists to serve those civil societal institutions, not the other way around; a concept of the just society in which it was understood that only a virtuous people could live freedom nobly.</p>
<p>And as Leo XIII was giving birth to modern Catholic social doctrine in these encyclicals, he was also grappling with a genuine&#160;novum&#160;in history: Catholicism’s vast and rapid growth in the United States under a political regime in which no denomination or religion enjoyed state favor. What did this mean? Did it mean that there were other ways to think about Church-and-state than through the model of religious establishment? Might it even mean that, under the pluralistic conditions of modernity, religious establishment was, in fact, not so good for religion? Leo XIII didn’t push the argument that far. But in an 1895 letter to the Catholic bishops of the United States, he noted the growth of the Church under the constitutional separation of Church and state and agreed that this was an arrangement the Church could accept. And in doing so, Pope Leo accelerated the development of Catholic doctrine on Church and state that would, 62 years after his death and after no little controversy, result at the Second Vatican Council in&#160;Dignitatis Humanae.</p>
<p>But before that could happen, a few other pieces of the puzzle had to fall into place.</p>
<p>The most important of these pieces involved the recovery and retrieval of two deep truths of Christian faith. The first of these was Christ’s teaching that, while Caesar should be given his due, there are things of God’s that are not Caesar’s: and that meant that the reach of Caesar’s power is necessarily limited. Thus, according to this retrieval of classic Catholic church-state theory, royal absolutism in league with an established Catholic Church is an aberration, not the baseline it was (and is) often assumed to be.</p>
<p>And the second “retrieved” truth was the theological conviction that the only genuine act of faith is a free act of faith. This had been the Church’s theological and doctrinal conviction since its beginning. But under the pressures of history, especially after the fracture of European Christendom in the 16th century and the secularizing passions of some forms of the Enlightenment, that truth had gotten somewhat detached from Catholic church-state theory, not least because of the notion that “error has no rights.”</p>
<p>The development of Christian personalism — the close philosophical examination of the inherent dignity of the human person — in 20th-century Catholic philosophy and theology helped the Church retrieve and develop its convictions about the necessary freedom of the act of faith. For whether “error” does or not have “rights” (whatever that might mean),&#160;persons&#160;have rights, whether their views be erroneous or not.</p>
<p>These developments in theological and historical understanding, which were genuine&#160;developments&#160;that involved retrieving elements of the Catholic tradition and renewing them in the present, opened the door, at Vatican II, to the embrace of religious freedom as a fundamental human right that ought, as the Council fathers put it, to be embodied in both constitutional and positive law.</p>
<p>So&#160;Dignitatis Humanae&#160;was not a surrender document in which the Church finally raised the white flag to political modernity; it was a retrieval and development of the Church’s own tradition. Moreover, it was also a genuine contribution to modern secular political theory. For to define religious freedom as a basic human right that a just state must acknowledge is to say that there are certain spheres of life into which state power must not intrude — and&#160;that&#160;is to help create the social space for a vibrant civil society.</p>
<p>The modern state comes in many forms and flavors, but all of them seem to have a built-in tendency to occupy more and more social “space.” Religious freedom, embodied in constitutional and positive law and warranted by widely held cultural norms, is a crucial barrier to that “occupation,” for it declares part of the “space” of society off-limits to state-power. Thus religious freedom is a crucial buttress to genuine social pluralism as well as a barrier to the totalitarian temptation that infects all forms of political modernity.</p>
<p>At the Council,&#160;DH&#160;was the child of a coalition of three groups of bishops: Western European Christian personalists, especially Francophones who wanted to get beyond the battles over the French Revolution that had raged since 1789; central and eastern European bishops looking for a strong, effective weapon in their conflict with Communism; and American bishops&#160;who wanted a Catholic affirmation of the constitutional arrangements of the United States — the religious freedom of the individual, and the separation of religious and political authority in national and state governance.</p>
<p>And over the past half-century,&#160;DH&#160;had effects that could not have been anticipated in 1965.</p>
<p>In 1982, Sir Michael Howard, an Anglican who was later Regius Professor of History at Oxford, told me that there had been two great 20th-cenury revolutions: the Russian Revolution of November 1917, in which Lenin’s Bolsheviks expropriated the Russian people’s revolution that had begun months earlier; and the transformation, well underway as we spoke, of the Catholic Church from a bastion of the&#160;ancien régime&#160;to the world’s foremost institutional proponent of human rights. That “Catholic human rights revolution,” as I dubbed it, was one key to what we know as the Revolution of 1989 and the auto-liberation of central and eastern Europe from Communist tyranny. (It was also very much part of what Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington called the “third wave” of democratization in Latin America and East Asia). And none of that would have been possible without&#160;Dignitatis Humanae, which was, in a sense, the cornerstone of the Catholic human-rights revolution.</p>
<p>Further,&#160;DH&#160;liberated the Church for evangelical mission, absent the baggage of state power. St. John Paul II’s “New Evangelization” and Pope Francis’s “Church permanently in mission” would have been difficult if not impossible without&#160;DH.</p>
<p>Moreover,&#160;DH&#160;put the Catholic Church in a stronger position to resist the encroachments of what Charles Taylor has called exclusivist secularism: For in the Catholic understanding of religious freedom as developed by and after Vatican II, whatever the “separation of Church and state” may mean about institutional relationships within society, it cannot mean the separation of religiously informed moral argument from public life. Why? Because to deny to religious believers the capacity to bring into public life the religious sources of their deepest convictions is a profoundly undemocratic act — a bigoted act. And a religious body that has eschewed the exclusive protection of the state and detached itself from state power in favor of social pluralism is in a far stronger position to resist the new exclusivism that radical secularism seeks to impose on society and the state.</p>
<p>Finally, what might this understanding of the Catholic journey to religious freedom mean for Muslims?</p>
<p>It may mean that the Islamic journey to religious freedom will follow a similar path: that that journey, which is neither easy nor simple, will mean the retrieval and renewal of deep truths within Islamic faith — truths that may have become obscured by contingent historical experiences — rather than a wholesale surrender to “Enlightenment values” conceived as a radical secularization project.</p>
<p>And understood in that way, religious freedom and the institutional separation of religious and political authority in the 21st-century state may seem less a threat to Islam, and more an achievement to be welcomed.</p>
<p>—&#160;George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.</p>
|
The Catholic Journey to Religious Freedom
| false |
https://eppc.org/publications/the-catholic-journey-to-religious-freedom/
| 1right-center
|
The Catholic Journey to Religious Freedom
<p>The Washington-based Religious Freedom Institute, in cooperation with the Baylor University Institute for the Studies of Religion and the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, recently held a consultation between Christian and Muslim scholars in Rome, “Promoting Religious Freedom in the Middle East.” NRO contributor George Weigel delivered the following remarks to the consultation on the evening of December 14. The title of his lecture was “The Catholic Journey to Religious Freedom:&#160;Dignitatis Humanae&#160;– Fundamental Change or Development?”</p>
<p>The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, often cited by its Latin title,&#160;Dignitatis Humanae (DH), is rightly regarded as a watershed, a crucial moment, in the Catholic Church’s centuries-long engagement with political modernity. But what kind of engagement was it? Did&#160;DH&#160;mark a rupture in the Catholic tradition’s thinking about the relationship between religious and political authority in society and in the state? Or was&#160;DH&#160;a genuine, which is to say organic, development of Catholic church-state theory?</p>
<p>According to one telling of the tale, prominent among both Catholic progressives and Catholic traditionalists,&#160;DH&#160;marked the end of a long war of attrition between Catholicism and political modernity, in which the Church — having unsuccessfully fought a series of rearguard actions followed by several tactical retreats — finally admitted that it had been wrong about the political regimes that had emerged from the American and French Revolutions. And in doing so, that story-line continues, Catholicism surrendered to the claims of the Enlightenment about the proper organization of society, which include a radical separation of religious conviction and religious authority from public life.</p>
<p>I’m sure you’ve all heard that telling of the story before. What I am proposing tonight is that that is not simply an incomplete picture; from both a historical and a theological point of view, it is a&#160;false&#160;picture. And it’s a false picture that impedes a truth-based interreligious dialogue between Catholics and Muslims in the 21st century.</p>
<p>It’s a false picture historically because it presumes that religious tolerance and religious freedom in any meaningful sense of the term only began with the Reformation and the Enlightenment. But this 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformations — I use the plural deliberately, because there were many different and often competing “Reformations” — ought to have reminded us that these Reformations were hardly the occasion for the triumph of religious freedom and tolerance. Rather, they were the occasion for considerable inter-religious bloodletting,&#160;among&#160;Protestants as well as between Protestants and Catholics.&#160; And if it is also true, as the most recent historical scholarship suggests, that the horrible Thirty Years War that devastated Europe was at least as much a result of modern state-formation as of interreligious conflict, it is also true that the resolution of that war in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia cannot be considered a triumph for religious tolerance and religious freedom.</p>
<p>Why? Because the Westphalian formula,&#160;cuius regio eius religio&#160;— the prince’s religion is the religion of the state and must be the religion of the people — can and should be considered the modern West’s first experiment in the totalitarian coercion of conscience by state power. And as those experiments intensified and secularized in succeeding centuries, the death toll expanded exponentially. Now that was not the explanation of the Westphalian settlement that I was taught in university-level history classes; I doubt that many of you were taught “Westphalia” that way either. But two decades ago, in Poland, I was given a fresh look at a tangled history by scholars formed in a country that did not experience the Thirty Years War, but which did have a devastating experience of both the mid-20th-century totalitarianisms. And that produced in Poland some interesting theories of the genealogy of state coercion of religious conscience, according to which the Poles — whose king in the mid-16th century, Sigismund Augustus, had told them that he was “not the king of your consciences” — considered Westphalia a sad, indeed prototypical example.</p>
<p>As for the Enlightenment: Well, Voltaire may have claimed that he would defend to the death the right to express the erroneous opinions of those with whom he disagreed, but many of his political heirs in the French Revolution were not so committed. Thus the French Revolution conducted a bloody persecution of the Catholic Church — first in the name of subordinating the Church to state power, and then in the name of substituting a secular “religion of reason” for biblical religion. That pattern was replicated in much of Western Europe throughout the 19th and early-20th centuries, in venues ranging from Germany (the&#160;Kulturkampf)&#160;to Italy (the anticlerical&#160;Risorgimento) to Spain and Portugal, before jumping the Atlantic to Mexico in the 1920s.</p>
<p>So the Whig theory of history, according to which what we know in the 21st century as religious tolerance and religious freedom are byproducts of the Reformation and the Enlightenment, simply does not stand up to the historical evidence. Even under the conditions of the least secular of the various European Enlightenments, the English Enlightenment, it took the better part of two centuries for a religious minority, Catholics, to be conceded full civil rights in what prided itself on being the mother of democracies.</p>
<p>Then there is the question of theology, and what Catholic theologians call the “development of doctrine:” a heady subject, to be sure, but if you will bear with me for a moment, I think I can paint a more interesting portrait than you may have heard previously of how&#160;Dignitatis Humanae&#160;and the Catholic Church’s embrace of religious freedom as the first of civil and political rights happened. For it came about, not through a rupture with the past, but through the retrieval and renewal of core Catholic convictions that had gotten a bit lost through the vicissitudes of history.</p>
<p>To make a long and complex story desperately short: In 1878, the newly elected Pope Leo XIII took a bold decision in what international-relations theorists would call “grand strategy:” unlike his two immediate papal predecessors, Gregory XVI and Pius IX, both of whom rejected political modernity root and branch, he would seek to&#160;engage&#160;modernity, including political modernity. And he would do so with distinctively Catholic intellectual tools, the sharpest of which had been forged in the 13th century by St. Thomas Aquinas — who had, of course, greatly benefited from the retrieval of Aristotle by Arab and Islamic scholars.</p>
<p>Thus, in a series of encyclicals — teaching documents with considerable weight — Leo XIII examined what was good and what was troubling in political modernity through the lens of Thomas Aquinas’s political theory as developed by generations of Catholics including such great figures as Robert Bellarmine: a concept of the just society in which politics was understood to be under the judgment of the natural moral law written into the world and into us; a concept of the just society in which the consent of the governed, not state coercion, was the basic mechanism of governance; a concept of the just society in which it was understood that what we know today as the institutions of civil society — the family, religious communities, voluntary associations of various sorts — exist prior to the state, ontologically as well as historically, such that the state exists to serve those civil societal institutions, not the other way around; a concept of the just society in which it was understood that only a virtuous people could live freedom nobly.</p>
<p>And as Leo XIII was giving birth to modern Catholic social doctrine in these encyclicals, he was also grappling with a genuine&#160;novum&#160;in history: Catholicism’s vast and rapid growth in the United States under a political regime in which no denomination or religion enjoyed state favor. What did this mean? Did it mean that there were other ways to think about Church-and-state than through the model of religious establishment? Might it even mean that, under the pluralistic conditions of modernity, religious establishment was, in fact, not so good for religion? Leo XIII didn’t push the argument that far. But in an 1895 letter to the Catholic bishops of the United States, he noted the growth of the Church under the constitutional separation of Church and state and agreed that this was an arrangement the Church could accept. And in doing so, Pope Leo accelerated the development of Catholic doctrine on Church and state that would, 62 years after his death and after no little controversy, result at the Second Vatican Council in&#160;Dignitatis Humanae.</p>
<p>But before that could happen, a few other pieces of the puzzle had to fall into place.</p>
<p>The most important of these pieces involved the recovery and retrieval of two deep truths of Christian faith. The first of these was Christ’s teaching that, while Caesar should be given his due, there are things of God’s that are not Caesar’s: and that meant that the reach of Caesar’s power is necessarily limited. Thus, according to this retrieval of classic Catholic church-state theory, royal absolutism in league with an established Catholic Church is an aberration, not the baseline it was (and is) often assumed to be.</p>
<p>And the second “retrieved” truth was the theological conviction that the only genuine act of faith is a free act of faith. This had been the Church’s theological and doctrinal conviction since its beginning. But under the pressures of history, especially after the fracture of European Christendom in the 16th century and the secularizing passions of some forms of the Enlightenment, that truth had gotten somewhat detached from Catholic church-state theory, not least because of the notion that “error has no rights.”</p>
<p>The development of Christian personalism — the close philosophical examination of the inherent dignity of the human person — in 20th-century Catholic philosophy and theology helped the Church retrieve and develop its convictions about the necessary freedom of the act of faith. For whether “error” does or not have “rights” (whatever that might mean),&#160;persons&#160;have rights, whether their views be erroneous or not.</p>
<p>These developments in theological and historical understanding, which were genuine&#160;developments&#160;that involved retrieving elements of the Catholic tradition and renewing them in the present, opened the door, at Vatican II, to the embrace of religious freedom as a fundamental human right that ought, as the Council fathers put it, to be embodied in both constitutional and positive law.</p>
<p>So&#160;Dignitatis Humanae&#160;was not a surrender document in which the Church finally raised the white flag to political modernity; it was a retrieval and development of the Church’s own tradition. Moreover, it was also a genuine contribution to modern secular political theory. For to define religious freedom as a basic human right that a just state must acknowledge is to say that there are certain spheres of life into which state power must not intrude — and&#160;that&#160;is to help create the social space for a vibrant civil society.</p>
<p>The modern state comes in many forms and flavors, but all of them seem to have a built-in tendency to occupy more and more social “space.” Religious freedom, embodied in constitutional and positive law and warranted by widely held cultural norms, is a crucial barrier to that “occupation,” for it declares part of the “space” of society off-limits to state-power. Thus religious freedom is a crucial buttress to genuine social pluralism as well as a barrier to the totalitarian temptation that infects all forms of political modernity.</p>
<p>At the Council,&#160;DH&#160;was the child of a coalition of three groups of bishops: Western European Christian personalists, especially Francophones who wanted to get beyond the battles over the French Revolution that had raged since 1789; central and eastern European bishops looking for a strong, effective weapon in their conflict with Communism; and American bishops&#160;who wanted a Catholic affirmation of the constitutional arrangements of the United States — the religious freedom of the individual, and the separation of religious and political authority in national and state governance.</p>
<p>And over the past half-century,&#160;DH&#160;had effects that could not have been anticipated in 1965.</p>
<p>In 1982, Sir Michael Howard, an Anglican who was later Regius Professor of History at Oxford, told me that there had been two great 20th-cenury revolutions: the Russian Revolution of November 1917, in which Lenin’s Bolsheviks expropriated the Russian people’s revolution that had begun months earlier; and the transformation, well underway as we spoke, of the Catholic Church from a bastion of the&#160;ancien régime&#160;to the world’s foremost institutional proponent of human rights. That “Catholic human rights revolution,” as I dubbed it, was one key to what we know as the Revolution of 1989 and the auto-liberation of central and eastern Europe from Communist tyranny. (It was also very much part of what Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington called the “third wave” of democratization in Latin America and East Asia). And none of that would have been possible without&#160;Dignitatis Humanae, which was, in a sense, the cornerstone of the Catholic human-rights revolution.</p>
<p>Further,&#160;DH&#160;liberated the Church for evangelical mission, absent the baggage of state power. St. John Paul II’s “New Evangelization” and Pope Francis’s “Church permanently in mission” would have been difficult if not impossible without&#160;DH.</p>
<p>Moreover,&#160;DH&#160;put the Catholic Church in a stronger position to resist the encroachments of what Charles Taylor has called exclusivist secularism: For in the Catholic understanding of religious freedom as developed by and after Vatican II, whatever the “separation of Church and state” may mean about institutional relationships within society, it cannot mean the separation of religiously informed moral argument from public life. Why? Because to deny to religious believers the capacity to bring into public life the religious sources of their deepest convictions is a profoundly undemocratic act — a bigoted act. And a religious body that has eschewed the exclusive protection of the state and detached itself from state power in favor of social pluralism is in a far stronger position to resist the new exclusivism that radical secularism seeks to impose on society and the state.</p>
<p>Finally, what might this understanding of the Catholic journey to religious freedom mean for Muslims?</p>
<p>It may mean that the Islamic journey to religious freedom will follow a similar path: that that journey, which is neither easy nor simple, will mean the retrieval and renewal of deep truths within Islamic faith — truths that may have become obscured by contingent historical experiences — rather than a wholesale surrender to “Enlightenment values” conceived as a radical secularization project.</p>
<p>And understood in that way, religious freedom and the institutional separation of religious and political authority in the 21st-century state may seem less a threat to Islam, and more an achievement to be welcomed.</p>
<p>—&#160;George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.</p>
| 7,625 |
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<p>At the time, the idea of a nationwide “Recovery Summer” tour must have seemed irresistible. After all,&#160; the stock market was inching its way higher every week and there were convincing signs that the economy was on the rebound. What better time for President Barack Obama to barnstorm his way across the heartland singing praise for his&#160; $787 fiscal stimulus package?</p>
<p>All of that has now changed.</p>
<p>Jobless claims are rising, manufacturing is slowing, housing sales have fallen off a cliff, &#160;GDP is shrinking. The whole notion of declaring “mission accomplished” over the recession seems ridiculous, which is why “Recovery Summer” has turned into a public relations nightmare.&#160;The economy hasn’t reached “escape velocity” as economics czar, Lawrence Summers boasted earlier in the year.</p>
<p>It’s is barely limping along and the prospect of another slump looms larger by the day.&#160; Obama’s woefully undersized&#160; stimulus is quickly evaporating leaving a gigantic hole in spending that will inevitably lead to another contraction.</p>
<p>That’s what makes the whole “Recovery Summer” pitch so pathetic and &#160;shows just how out-of-touch Obama’s economics troupe really is. The latest downturn was entirely foreseeable. Obama needs to get rid of the Wall Street suck-ups and build a new &#160;team</p>
<p>This is from the New York Times for Monday, August 23:</p>
<p>“Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds&#160; in the first seven months of this year, according to the Investment Company Institute,&#160; the mutual fund industry trade group…If that pace continues, more money will be pulled out of these mutual funds in 2010 than in any year since the 1980s, with the exception of 2008, when the global financial crisis peaked….</p>
<p>“On Friday, Fidelity Investments reported that a record number of people took so-called hardship withdrawals from their retirement accounts in the second quarter. These are early withdrawals intended to pay for needs like medical expenses.” (“In Striking Shift, Small Investors Flee Stock Market Graham Bowley, New York Times)</p>
<p>Retail investors are saying “enough” and heading for the exits. The market-flight has gone on for some time, but it’s gained momentum since the May 6, “Flash Crash” when the Dow Jones plunged nearly 1,000 in less than an hour. That really put the stampede in motion. A late-day rebound did nothing to allay investor fears or convince traders that the problems had been fixed. The trust is gone.&#160; Investors feel that the new architecture of the markets has fundamentally changed and that innovations like high-frequency trading, dark pools and complex derivatives have stacked the odds against them, making it impossible for them to succeed. That’s why they continue to leave in droves. They’ve lost confidence in the markets.</p>
<p>Who has confidence in these markets? Who believes that a well-informed investor that has reasonable expectations of future performance can compete with high-speed speculators? No one. That’s why more money is being stuffed into mattresses than into stock funds.</p>
<p>Chief enabler of fraud</p>
<p>The Fed’s task is to perpetuate the “free market” fraud for as long as possible. That’s why the Fed has pushed for “regulatory forbearance” so that insolvent, capital-starved banks can conceal their losses from the public. The Fed has transferred $1.7 trillion in toxic securities and non-performing loans from the banks to its own balance sheet to preserve the illusion that “all is well” and that asset prices will eventually return to precrisis levels. It’s all smoke and mirrors.</p>
<p>Securitization, derivatives trading, and repo market activity are all based on the same principle, which is, to give the financial giants the ability to generate windfall profits on microscopic morsels of capital that have been leveraged into bloated &#160;debt-balloons. The banking system is not funded on loans made from deposits, but through the exchange of high-risk securities with shadow banks in the repo market. This is the system that crashed after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008. The Fed and Treasury have committed trillions in public funds to stitch this wobbly, crisis-prone system back together to preserve the profit-centers of their primary constituents–the big banks and Wall Street. The system itself is a scam designed to shift wealth from the middle class to under-capitalized financial raptors.</p>
<p>Is it any wonder that confidence is at an all-time low?</p>
<p>MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
|
Recovery Summer Hits the Rocks
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2010/08/23/recovery-summer-hits-the-rocks/
|
2010-08-23
| 4left
|
Recovery Summer Hits the Rocks
<p>At the time, the idea of a nationwide “Recovery Summer” tour must have seemed irresistible. After all,&#160; the stock market was inching its way higher every week and there were convincing signs that the economy was on the rebound. What better time for President Barack Obama to barnstorm his way across the heartland singing praise for his&#160; $787 fiscal stimulus package?</p>
<p>All of that has now changed.</p>
<p>Jobless claims are rising, manufacturing is slowing, housing sales have fallen off a cliff, &#160;GDP is shrinking. The whole notion of declaring “mission accomplished” over the recession seems ridiculous, which is why “Recovery Summer” has turned into a public relations nightmare.&#160;The economy hasn’t reached “escape velocity” as economics czar, Lawrence Summers boasted earlier in the year.</p>
<p>It’s is barely limping along and the prospect of another slump looms larger by the day.&#160; Obama’s woefully undersized&#160; stimulus is quickly evaporating leaving a gigantic hole in spending that will inevitably lead to another contraction.</p>
<p>That’s what makes the whole “Recovery Summer” pitch so pathetic and &#160;shows just how out-of-touch Obama’s economics troupe really is. The latest downturn was entirely foreseeable. Obama needs to get rid of the Wall Street suck-ups and build a new &#160;team</p>
<p>This is from the New York Times for Monday, August 23:</p>
<p>“Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds&#160; in the first seven months of this year, according to the Investment Company Institute,&#160; the mutual fund industry trade group…If that pace continues, more money will be pulled out of these mutual funds in 2010 than in any year since the 1980s, with the exception of 2008, when the global financial crisis peaked….</p>
<p>“On Friday, Fidelity Investments reported that a record number of people took so-called hardship withdrawals from their retirement accounts in the second quarter. These are early withdrawals intended to pay for needs like medical expenses.” (“In Striking Shift, Small Investors Flee Stock Market Graham Bowley, New York Times)</p>
<p>Retail investors are saying “enough” and heading for the exits. The market-flight has gone on for some time, but it’s gained momentum since the May 6, “Flash Crash” when the Dow Jones plunged nearly 1,000 in less than an hour. That really put the stampede in motion. A late-day rebound did nothing to allay investor fears or convince traders that the problems had been fixed. The trust is gone.&#160; Investors feel that the new architecture of the markets has fundamentally changed and that innovations like high-frequency trading, dark pools and complex derivatives have stacked the odds against them, making it impossible for them to succeed. That’s why they continue to leave in droves. They’ve lost confidence in the markets.</p>
<p>Who has confidence in these markets? Who believes that a well-informed investor that has reasonable expectations of future performance can compete with high-speed speculators? No one. That’s why more money is being stuffed into mattresses than into stock funds.</p>
<p>Chief enabler of fraud</p>
<p>The Fed’s task is to perpetuate the “free market” fraud for as long as possible. That’s why the Fed has pushed for “regulatory forbearance” so that insolvent, capital-starved banks can conceal their losses from the public. The Fed has transferred $1.7 trillion in toxic securities and non-performing loans from the banks to its own balance sheet to preserve the illusion that “all is well” and that asset prices will eventually return to precrisis levels. It’s all smoke and mirrors.</p>
<p>Securitization, derivatives trading, and repo market activity are all based on the same principle, which is, to give the financial giants the ability to generate windfall profits on microscopic morsels of capital that have been leveraged into bloated &#160;debt-balloons. The banking system is not funded on loans made from deposits, but through the exchange of high-risk securities with shadow banks in the repo market. This is the system that crashed after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008. The Fed and Treasury have committed trillions in public funds to stitch this wobbly, crisis-prone system back together to preserve the profit-centers of their primary constituents–the big banks and Wall Street. The system itself is a scam designed to shift wealth from the middle class to under-capitalized financial raptors.</p>
<p>Is it any wonder that confidence is at an all-time low?</p>
<p>MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
| 7,626 |
<p />
<p>No, it’s not a line out of Gilbert and Sullivan; it’s a line out of <a href="http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2519204" type="external">this AP story</a>, which takes up the crucial question in the scandal all of Washington is calling, with cheeky brilliance, “Foleygate”: “What did GOP leaders know and when did they know it?” As Media Matters <a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200610020012" type="external">notes</a>, the press inititally bought Dennis Hastert’s spin that the emails Republican leaders were “over friendly” (which they were!), but is now rallying to the the view that, as one Republican strategist says, “[It’s not] so much about Foley as it is about the handling of this.” Democrats, once again the beneficiaries of a Republican disaster they did nothing to bring about, are “delighted.”</p>
<p />
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Salacious Exchanges With Underage Male Pages
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2006/10/salacious-exchanges-underage-male-pages/
|
2006-10-03
| 4left
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Salacious Exchanges With Underage Male Pages
<p />
<p>No, it’s not a line out of Gilbert and Sullivan; it’s a line out of <a href="http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2519204" type="external">this AP story</a>, which takes up the crucial question in the scandal all of Washington is calling, with cheeky brilliance, “Foleygate”: “What did GOP leaders know and when did they know it?” As Media Matters <a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200610020012" type="external">notes</a>, the press inititally bought Dennis Hastert’s spin that the emails Republican leaders were “over friendly” (which they were!), but is now rallying to the the view that, as one Republican strategist says, “[It’s not] so much about Foley as it is about the handling of this.” Democrats, once again the beneficiaries of a Republican disaster they did nothing to bring about, are “delighted.”</p>
<p />
| 7,627 |
<p />
<p>Federal law enforcement officials say they have at least five years worth of insider-trading cases in the pipeline, a tally that could lead to hundreds of additional arrests in what’s already the largest probe of its kind, the FOX Business Network has learned.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>This broad conclusion being reached by officials at the <a href="" type="internal">Securities and Exchange Commission</a>, the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and the <a href="" type="internal">Federal Bureau of Investigation</a> is the result of numerous interviews conducted by the FOX Business Network in recent weeks with senior law enforcement officials directly involved in the investigation.</p>
<p>The current investigation -- which traces its roots to an SEC inquiry in 2007 and FBI agents gaining court approval to use wiretaps to snare targets -- has resulted in 66 people being charged with insider trading and related crimes, and 57 convictions, the largest crackdown on insider trading in modern law enforcement history.</p>
<p>But law enforcement officials interviewed by FOX Business say the investigation is far from over and will get much larger in the years to come. According to these officials:</p>
<p>--They have “scheduled out” cases for the next five years, meaning that the use of wire taps and informants have netted far more cases than they had originally thought. &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;--Though it’s difficult to predict future case loads, law enforcement officials are in general agreement that “hundreds” of additional people could be charged in the years ahead. “In five years, we can easily see hundreds of people arrested and charged,” another senior law enforcement official told FOX Business. &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;--Law enforcement officials say they expect to charge another major figure in the hedge fund business, someone at the level of <a href="" type="internal">Raj Rajaratnam</a>, the former founder of the giant <a href="" type="internal">Galleon Group</a> hedge fund, before the inquiry is concluded. Officials declined to provide names of potential targets, but some of the big <a href="" type="internal">hedge funds</a> that have received subpoenas in the probe include SAC Capital, run by Steve Cohen, and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investments.</p>
<p>Press officials from both companies have said they have done nothing wrong. The SEC and the FBI declined to comment.</p>
<p>Senior law enforcement officials tell FOX Business that a combination of wiretap evidence and the use of wiretaps to convince market participants to become government informants has played a key role in the investigation's current success, and what they believe will be the probe’s success for years to come.</p>
<p>They consider among their best informants former Galleon Group trader David Slaine, who helped them nab Rajaratnam and produced leads on many others who have yet to be charged.</p>
<p>The size and scope of the investigation will likely lead to massive changes in the hedge fund business. Already hedge funds have scaled back on their use of so-called expert networks, which provide detailed information about particular industries such as technology and health care.</p>
<p>Several executives working at expert firms have been snared in the probe for passing inside information to their hedge fund clients. While only a handful of hedge funds have been closed so far, many more are likely to shut down as the investigation widens.</p>
<p>“Will the hedge fund business survive this? Yes I think so,” said Columbia Law School Professor John Coffee. “But it will likely cripple the hedge fund whose name is associated with any insider trading charges.”</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
|
Here's a Tip: Insider-Trading Cases Will Pile Up for Years
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/02/21/heres-tip-insider-trading-cases-will-pile-up-for-years.html
|
2016-01-26
| 0right
|
Here's a Tip: Insider-Trading Cases Will Pile Up for Years
<p />
<p>Federal law enforcement officials say they have at least five years worth of insider-trading cases in the pipeline, a tally that could lead to hundreds of additional arrests in what’s already the largest probe of its kind, the FOX Business Network has learned.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>This broad conclusion being reached by officials at the <a href="" type="internal">Securities and Exchange Commission</a>, the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and the <a href="" type="internal">Federal Bureau of Investigation</a> is the result of numerous interviews conducted by the FOX Business Network in recent weeks with senior law enforcement officials directly involved in the investigation.</p>
<p>The current investigation -- which traces its roots to an SEC inquiry in 2007 and FBI agents gaining court approval to use wiretaps to snare targets -- has resulted in 66 people being charged with insider trading and related crimes, and 57 convictions, the largest crackdown on insider trading in modern law enforcement history.</p>
<p>But law enforcement officials interviewed by FOX Business say the investigation is far from over and will get much larger in the years to come. According to these officials:</p>
<p>--They have “scheduled out” cases for the next five years, meaning that the use of wire taps and informants have netted far more cases than they had originally thought. &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;--Though it’s difficult to predict future case loads, law enforcement officials are in general agreement that “hundreds” of additional people could be charged in the years ahead. “In five years, we can easily see hundreds of people arrested and charged,” another senior law enforcement official told FOX Business. &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;--Law enforcement officials say they expect to charge another major figure in the hedge fund business, someone at the level of <a href="" type="internal">Raj Rajaratnam</a>, the former founder of the giant <a href="" type="internal">Galleon Group</a> hedge fund, before the inquiry is concluded. Officials declined to provide names of potential targets, but some of the big <a href="" type="internal">hedge funds</a> that have received subpoenas in the probe include SAC Capital, run by Steve Cohen, and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investments.</p>
<p>Press officials from both companies have said they have done nothing wrong. The SEC and the FBI declined to comment.</p>
<p>Senior law enforcement officials tell FOX Business that a combination of wiretap evidence and the use of wiretaps to convince market participants to become government informants has played a key role in the investigation's current success, and what they believe will be the probe’s success for years to come.</p>
<p>They consider among their best informants former Galleon Group trader David Slaine, who helped them nab Rajaratnam and produced leads on many others who have yet to be charged.</p>
<p>The size and scope of the investigation will likely lead to massive changes in the hedge fund business. Already hedge funds have scaled back on their use of so-called expert networks, which provide detailed information about particular industries such as technology and health care.</p>
<p>Several executives working at expert firms have been snared in the probe for passing inside information to their hedge fund clients. While only a handful of hedge funds have been closed so far, many more are likely to shut down as the investigation widens.</p>
<p>“Will the hedge fund business survive this? Yes I think so,” said Columbia Law School Professor John Coffee. “But it will likely cripple the hedge fund whose name is associated with any insider trading charges.”</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
| 7,628 |
<p>If you're looking to major in a subject that will translate into job security, you've come to the right spot. Even though the unemployment rate currently sits at 4.1%, the statisticians at "Study Soup" got together to see which degrees have the lowest unemployment rate.</p>
<p>Researchers used data from the <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/about.html" type="external">U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey</a> and compared unemployment rates, underemployment rates, and the median wages for college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27. These are the Top 10 majors that can lead to steady employment:</p>
<p>10. Family and Consumer Sciences</p>
<p>This major involves managing the economics of community and home-based relationships. The unemployment rate for the major is 2.8% and the Underemployment Rate stands at 44.6%. Depending on what you do, you can make about $30,000 early on in your career.</p>
<p>9. Civil Engineering</p>
<p>The unemployment rate for civil engineering stands at 2.7% and the underemployment rate sits at 18.7%. It's a crazy stat for a profession with an average starting wage as a high as $54,000. If designing or constructing buildings or bridges interest you, this may be the major for you.</p>
<p>8. Nursing</p>
<p>Nurses make about $50,000 on average starting out and the unemployment rate related to their profession sits at 2.5%. A nursing degree are in high demand and the number of registered nurses expected to <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm#tab-1" type="external">increase by 15%</a> over the next decade.</p>
<p>7. Secondary Education</p>
<p>You're probably thinking, "teachers don't make a lot of money." While the average starting salary may seem low for high school level teachers ($34.500), a degree in Secondary Education can lead to career where the average salary of $58,030.</p>
<p>6. Early Childhood Education</p>
<p>Yes, we previously mentioned teacher salaries, and yes, it's worse for Early Childhood Education majors. But this degree also prepares you for careers including child care center directors, educational consultants, and other professional positions. Plus, there is only a 2.1% unemployment rate associated with degree.</p>
<p>5. Nutrition Sciences</p>
<p>This degree can get you a job ranging from clinical dietitian to a position with the USDA. Depending on the gig, you can make an average <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/dietitians-and-nutritionists.htm" type="external">salary of $58,920</a>.</p>
<p>4. Elementary Education</p>
<p>There seems to be an education theme going. This major is associated with a 18.6% underemployment rate. And sticking with teaching, you can expect a gradual increase to an <a href="https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes252021.htm" type="external">industry median of $55,800</a>.</p>
<p>3. Agriculture</p>
<p>This major offers job opportunities in a number of areas and is linked to a 1.9% unemployment rate. Soup Study says a degree in Agriculture can range from farm management to soil science. In California, Soil and Plant Scientists make an <a href="https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes191013.htm" type="external">annual wage of $82,350</a>.</p>
<p>2. Special Education</p>
<p>Yup. You guessed it. Teaching is the way to go. While special education requires having a big heart to go along with the degree, jobs are in high demand. With an unemployment rate that hovers just above 1% and a underemployment rate of 17.3%, finding and keeping a job should be easy after college.</p>
<p>1. Construction Services</p>
<p>Builders are always in demand, and not just the hammer wielding kind. A degree in Construction Services means learning building codes and specifications, construction safety, and electrical systems. Construction Managers typically achieve the highest earnings with a <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/construction-managers.htm" type="external">median salary of $89,300</a>. Good money for a major with an expanding workforce and a 1% unemployment rate.</p>
|
Here are the Top 10 degrees that will get you paid!!
| false |
https://circa.com/story/2017/12/01/campus/here-are-the-top-10-degrees-that-will-get-you-paid
|
2017-12-01
| 1right-center
|
Here are the Top 10 degrees that will get you paid!!
<p>If you're looking to major in a subject that will translate into job security, you've come to the right spot. Even though the unemployment rate currently sits at 4.1%, the statisticians at "Study Soup" got together to see which degrees have the lowest unemployment rate.</p>
<p>Researchers used data from the <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/about.html" type="external">U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey</a> and compared unemployment rates, underemployment rates, and the median wages for college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27. These are the Top 10 majors that can lead to steady employment:</p>
<p>10. Family and Consumer Sciences</p>
<p>This major involves managing the economics of community and home-based relationships. The unemployment rate for the major is 2.8% and the Underemployment Rate stands at 44.6%. Depending on what you do, you can make about $30,000 early on in your career.</p>
<p>9. Civil Engineering</p>
<p>The unemployment rate for civil engineering stands at 2.7% and the underemployment rate sits at 18.7%. It's a crazy stat for a profession with an average starting wage as a high as $54,000. If designing or constructing buildings or bridges interest you, this may be the major for you.</p>
<p>8. Nursing</p>
<p>Nurses make about $50,000 on average starting out and the unemployment rate related to their profession sits at 2.5%. A nursing degree are in high demand and the number of registered nurses expected to <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm#tab-1" type="external">increase by 15%</a> over the next decade.</p>
<p>7. Secondary Education</p>
<p>You're probably thinking, "teachers don't make a lot of money." While the average starting salary may seem low for high school level teachers ($34.500), a degree in Secondary Education can lead to career where the average salary of $58,030.</p>
<p>6. Early Childhood Education</p>
<p>Yes, we previously mentioned teacher salaries, and yes, it's worse for Early Childhood Education majors. But this degree also prepares you for careers including child care center directors, educational consultants, and other professional positions. Plus, there is only a 2.1% unemployment rate associated with degree.</p>
<p>5. Nutrition Sciences</p>
<p>This degree can get you a job ranging from clinical dietitian to a position with the USDA. Depending on the gig, you can make an average <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/dietitians-and-nutritionists.htm" type="external">salary of $58,920</a>.</p>
<p>4. Elementary Education</p>
<p>There seems to be an education theme going. This major is associated with a 18.6% underemployment rate. And sticking with teaching, you can expect a gradual increase to an <a href="https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes252021.htm" type="external">industry median of $55,800</a>.</p>
<p>3. Agriculture</p>
<p>This major offers job opportunities in a number of areas and is linked to a 1.9% unemployment rate. Soup Study says a degree in Agriculture can range from farm management to soil science. In California, Soil and Plant Scientists make an <a href="https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes191013.htm" type="external">annual wage of $82,350</a>.</p>
<p>2. Special Education</p>
<p>Yup. You guessed it. Teaching is the way to go. While special education requires having a big heart to go along with the degree, jobs are in high demand. With an unemployment rate that hovers just above 1% and a underemployment rate of 17.3%, finding and keeping a job should be easy after college.</p>
<p>1. Construction Services</p>
<p>Builders are always in demand, and not just the hammer wielding kind. A degree in Construction Services means learning building codes and specifications, construction safety, and electrical systems. Construction Managers typically achieve the highest earnings with a <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/construction-managers.htm" type="external">median salary of $89,300</a>. Good money for a major with an expanding workforce and a 1% unemployment rate.</p>
| 7,629 |
<p>Today Secretary Rice met with Georgia's President. And yesterday the Georgian President met with President Bush at the White House. The Georgian President ensured that he'd press NATO to open its doors to Georgia. This Georgian official says his country's participation in Iraq demonstrates its readiness to join NATO. Georgia has been a part of the invasion of Iraq and the war since. Georgia's presence there has been growing since then. This analyst thinks the Georgian military has learned a lot in Iraq.</p>
|
Georgian troops in Iraq
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2008-03-20/georgian-troops-iraq
|
2008-03-20
| 3left-center
|
Georgian troops in Iraq
<p>Today Secretary Rice met with Georgia's President. And yesterday the Georgian President met with President Bush at the White House. The Georgian President ensured that he'd press NATO to open its doors to Georgia. This Georgian official says his country's participation in Iraq demonstrates its readiness to join NATO. Georgia has been a part of the invasion of Iraq and the war since. Georgia's presence there has been growing since then. This analyst thinks the Georgian military has learned a lot in Iraq.</p>
| 7,630 |
<p>AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening’s drawing of the Texas Lottery’s “All or Nothing Night” game were:</p>
<p>05-06-07-08-11-12-13-14-20-21-22-23</p>
<p>(five, six, seven, eight, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three)</p>
<p>AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening’s drawing of the Texas Lottery’s “All or Nothing Night” game were:</p>
<p>05-06-07-08-11-12-13-14-20-21-22-23</p>
<p>(five, six, seven, eight, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three)</p>
|
Winning numbers drawn in ‘All or Nothing Night’ game
| false |
https://apnews.com/e42cfa8d5c2c4501b7a8a190e4a614a1
|
2018-01-25
| 2least
|
Winning numbers drawn in ‘All or Nothing Night’ game
<p>AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening’s drawing of the Texas Lottery’s “All or Nothing Night” game were:</p>
<p>05-06-07-08-11-12-13-14-20-21-22-23</p>
<p>(five, six, seven, eight, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three)</p>
<p>AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening’s drawing of the Texas Lottery’s “All or Nothing Night” game were:</p>
<p>05-06-07-08-11-12-13-14-20-21-22-23</p>
<p>(five, six, seven, eight, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three)</p>
| 7,631 |
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday 49-47 to confirm a top air quality official at the Environmental Protection Agency, despite concerns raised by lawmakers over his industry ties.</p>
<p>William Wehrum, who had represented industry clients at law and lobbying firm Hunton &amp; Williams, will serve as the EPA’s assistant administrator for Air and Radiation, its top position for overseeing key air quality regulations.</p>
<p>Wehrum is now only the second high-level official after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to be confirmed by Senate.</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>
|
Senate confirms top EPA air quality official despite concerns
| false |
https://newsline.com/senate-confirms-top-epa-air-quality-official-despite-concerns/
|
2017-11-09
| 1right-center
|
Senate confirms top EPA air quality official despite concerns
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday 49-47 to confirm a top air quality official at the Environmental Protection Agency, despite concerns raised by lawmakers over his industry ties.</p>
<p>William Wehrum, who had represented industry clients at law and lobbying firm Hunton &amp; Williams, will serve as the EPA’s assistant administrator for Air and Radiation, its top position for overseeing key air quality regulations.</p>
<p>Wehrum is now only the second high-level official after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to be confirmed by Senate.</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>
| 7,632 |
<p>On Friday, Judge Barry Williams announced that Baltimore prosecutors in the Freddie Gray case had failed to hand over evidence to defense attorneys that would have helped exonerate their client. Gray, 25, died while in custody in the back of a police van; the driver, Oscar Goodman, is on trial for the inflated charge of depraved-heart murder.</p>
<p>So, what did the prosecution withhold?</p>
<p>According to ABC News:</p>
<p>Goodson's attorneys have argued that prosecutors withheld statements made last year by Donta Allen, a key witness. Allen was picked up by the Baltimore police van after Gray.</p>
<p>In his original statement to police in April last year, Allen said he heard banging coming from Gray's side of the vehicle. He gave a similar statement in a separate interview with prosecutors a month later, but the state never turned it over as evidence to defense attorneys.</p>
<p>Why does this make a difference? Because, as <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/436474/freddie-gray-prosecutions-continue-unravel-judge-finds-prosecutors-withheld-evidence" type="external">David French points out</a>, “It turns out that Allen had given a second, extended interview to the prosecution where he reaffirmed his initial story, and that initial story is devastating to the prosecution’s case.” Allen testified that Goodman had provided a “smooth ride,” that Gray was banging his own head against the barrier, and that Gray was still upright and moving for most of the ride. This would essentially exonerate Goodman.</p>
<p>Before the left cries racism, here’s a sad fact for their case: Goodman is black, and so is Williams.</p>
<p>So, why did the prosecution attempt to hide evidence? Because the Baltimore prosecutions have been a farce since the moment prosecutor Marilyn Mosby vowed “justice” on behalf of the “youth of this city” – the youth that had just rioted and burned down stores. Here’s a bit <a href="https://patriotpost.us/opinion/35013" type="external">of background on Mosby</a>:</p>
<p>Mosby was elected in January 2015 as the youngest district attorney in America; she reportedly has aspirations to higher office. Before her election, she publicly questioned the jury verdict in the George Zimmerman case and cast racial aspersions on the prosecutor who refused to file charges against Officer Darren Wilson (even Eric Holder’s Department of Justice found Wilson’s actions against Michael Brown justifiable). Furthermore, Mosby’s husband, Nick Mosby, has excused rioting while serving as a Baltimore city councilman. Mosby’s prosecution of the case amounts to a serious conflict of interest.</p>
<p>But the left needs no evidence to convict cops of racism. The Eric Holder Justice Department has routinely crammed down consent decrees on police departments without any evidence of racism. For example, in Seattle, Holder’s DOJ insisted that the police department suffered from “unconscious bias.” The only evidence: “many in the community perceive that pedestrian stops are overused and targeted minorities.” In other words, the DOJ found minority people who felt bad about the police, then used those feelings to crack down on normal police practice.</p>
<p>Baltimore prosecutors are apparently mirroring the same behavior here: they’re suggesting that the officers in this case must have been racist, even if there’s no evidence – and if there’s any counterevidence, they’re tossing it in the wastebin.</p>
<p>In the end, there will be more riots in Baltimore, even as the left proclaims the prosecutors in the Freddie Gray case heroes of the law. When legal bigwigs decide it’s more important to nail a defendant over race than to play by the rules, nobody is safe.</p>
|
Baltimore Prosecutors Withheld Evidence To Railroad A Cop In Freddie Gray Case
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/6506/baltimore-prosecutors-withheld-evidence-railroad-ben-shapiro
|
2016-06-10
| 0right
|
Baltimore Prosecutors Withheld Evidence To Railroad A Cop In Freddie Gray Case
<p>On Friday, Judge Barry Williams announced that Baltimore prosecutors in the Freddie Gray case had failed to hand over evidence to defense attorneys that would have helped exonerate their client. Gray, 25, died while in custody in the back of a police van; the driver, Oscar Goodman, is on trial for the inflated charge of depraved-heart murder.</p>
<p>So, what did the prosecution withhold?</p>
<p>According to ABC News:</p>
<p>Goodson's attorneys have argued that prosecutors withheld statements made last year by Donta Allen, a key witness. Allen was picked up by the Baltimore police van after Gray.</p>
<p>In his original statement to police in April last year, Allen said he heard banging coming from Gray's side of the vehicle. He gave a similar statement in a separate interview with prosecutors a month later, but the state never turned it over as evidence to defense attorneys.</p>
<p>Why does this make a difference? Because, as <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/436474/freddie-gray-prosecutions-continue-unravel-judge-finds-prosecutors-withheld-evidence" type="external">David French points out</a>, “It turns out that Allen had given a second, extended interview to the prosecution where he reaffirmed his initial story, and that initial story is devastating to the prosecution’s case.” Allen testified that Goodman had provided a “smooth ride,” that Gray was banging his own head against the barrier, and that Gray was still upright and moving for most of the ride. This would essentially exonerate Goodman.</p>
<p>Before the left cries racism, here’s a sad fact for their case: Goodman is black, and so is Williams.</p>
<p>So, why did the prosecution attempt to hide evidence? Because the Baltimore prosecutions have been a farce since the moment prosecutor Marilyn Mosby vowed “justice” on behalf of the “youth of this city” – the youth that had just rioted and burned down stores. Here’s a bit <a href="https://patriotpost.us/opinion/35013" type="external">of background on Mosby</a>:</p>
<p>Mosby was elected in January 2015 as the youngest district attorney in America; she reportedly has aspirations to higher office. Before her election, she publicly questioned the jury verdict in the George Zimmerman case and cast racial aspersions on the prosecutor who refused to file charges against Officer Darren Wilson (even Eric Holder’s Department of Justice found Wilson’s actions against Michael Brown justifiable). Furthermore, Mosby’s husband, Nick Mosby, has excused rioting while serving as a Baltimore city councilman. Mosby’s prosecution of the case amounts to a serious conflict of interest.</p>
<p>But the left needs no evidence to convict cops of racism. The Eric Holder Justice Department has routinely crammed down consent decrees on police departments without any evidence of racism. For example, in Seattle, Holder’s DOJ insisted that the police department suffered from “unconscious bias.” The only evidence: “many in the community perceive that pedestrian stops are overused and targeted minorities.” In other words, the DOJ found minority people who felt bad about the police, then used those feelings to crack down on normal police practice.</p>
<p>Baltimore prosecutors are apparently mirroring the same behavior here: they’re suggesting that the officers in this case must have been racist, even if there’s no evidence – and if there’s any counterevidence, they’re tossing it in the wastebin.</p>
<p>In the end, there will be more riots in Baltimore, even as the left proclaims the prosecutors in the Freddie Gray case heroes of the law. When legal bigwigs decide it’s more important to nail a defendant over race than to play by the rules, nobody is safe.</p>
| 7,633 |
<p />
<p>Everybody knows that Green is the new Black, and nowhere is the corporate greenwashing trend more annoyingly exploited than in the pages of various <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cond%C3%A9_Nast_Publications" type="external">Condé Nast</a> magazines. So, for example, in the current issue of Vogue, amid a fashion shoot where models cloy at various “green” items (mostly CFC bulbs and mockups of wind turbines), is a picture of a giant bales of paper, with the following caption:</p>
<p>WASTE NOT, WANT NOT: It looks good on paper! Family-owned since 1896, Chambers Paper Fibres in Brooklyn sorts ten to fifteen tons of wastepaper an hour. Each recycled ton saves seventeen trees and 7,000 gallons of water.</p>
<p>Did I mention that this came on page 722 of the “840-page biggest issue ever!” of Vogue? So the question that leapt to mind (that is, after I contemplated which poor photo assistant had to construct the giant bales of paper so that the logos of the Times and the WSJ were showing) was: So just how much #$%@ing paper does this 840-page issue of Vogue use anyway?</p>
<p>Ok, so I think Vogue‘s circulation is around 2 million. And that issue weighed about five pounds. Based on those assumptions and on <a href="http://www.printingtalk.com/news/thq/thq105.html" type="external">Conservatrees’ calculation</a> that “one ton of uncoated virgin, or non-recycled printing and office paper uses 24 trees” then I see the math as following:</p>
<p>2 million issues x 5lbs per issue= 10,000,000 lbs of paper / 2,000= 5,000 tons of paper x 24 trees = 120,000 trees. And if all these issues of Vogue were recycled at Chambers (and Vogue’s fact-checking is kosher) it would take the folks there (assuming eight-hour work days with no lunch) 61 days to recycle Vogue alone.</p>
<p>I will eat one of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wintour" type="external">Anna Wintour</a>‘s least fashionable shoes if I’m wrong, but the post-consumer content for Vogue is negligible to none. Mother Jones, meanwhile, uses 30% post-consumer recycled fiber (and non-chlorine bleach), which allows us to save 432 trees, 89,564 gallons of water, 216 pounds of solid waste, and 33,393 pounds of greenhouse gases per issue. Now no old-media editor should throw stones, and fashion mags, admittedly, have the greatest incentive to print on virgin paper; advertisers demand it. But if every magazine changed its policies just a little—say 10% post-consumer—it would help change the market. And hey, maybe advertisers should demand it too. Especially those whose products are pimped on the facing page, to wit:</p>
<p>Borrow a look from the boys but in a delicate peach and baby blue with subtle luster. Miu Miu silk waffle-knit V-neck ($760), pant ($965), and leather belt: Miu Miu boutiques. LaCrasia pistachio opera gloves. Hermes leather d’Orsay plaforms.</p>
<p>Later this week: The incredible carbon cost of Vanity Fair‘s green issue. And, why does Condé Nast poly bag every one of its magazines with Fashion Rocks?</p>
<p />
|
Vogue Goes Green!!! (No, Not Really)
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/vogue-goes-green-no-not-really/
|
2007-08-27
| 4left
|
Vogue Goes Green!!! (No, Not Really)
<p />
<p>Everybody knows that Green is the new Black, and nowhere is the corporate greenwashing trend more annoyingly exploited than in the pages of various <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cond%C3%A9_Nast_Publications" type="external">Condé Nast</a> magazines. So, for example, in the current issue of Vogue, amid a fashion shoot where models cloy at various “green” items (mostly CFC bulbs and mockups of wind turbines), is a picture of a giant bales of paper, with the following caption:</p>
<p>WASTE NOT, WANT NOT: It looks good on paper! Family-owned since 1896, Chambers Paper Fibres in Brooklyn sorts ten to fifteen tons of wastepaper an hour. Each recycled ton saves seventeen trees and 7,000 gallons of water.</p>
<p>Did I mention that this came on page 722 of the “840-page biggest issue ever!” of Vogue? So the question that leapt to mind (that is, after I contemplated which poor photo assistant had to construct the giant bales of paper so that the logos of the Times and the WSJ were showing) was: So just how much #$%@ing paper does this 840-page issue of Vogue use anyway?</p>
<p>Ok, so I think Vogue‘s circulation is around 2 million. And that issue weighed about five pounds. Based on those assumptions and on <a href="http://www.printingtalk.com/news/thq/thq105.html" type="external">Conservatrees’ calculation</a> that “one ton of uncoated virgin, or non-recycled printing and office paper uses 24 trees” then I see the math as following:</p>
<p>2 million issues x 5lbs per issue= 10,000,000 lbs of paper / 2,000= 5,000 tons of paper x 24 trees = 120,000 trees. And if all these issues of Vogue were recycled at Chambers (and Vogue’s fact-checking is kosher) it would take the folks there (assuming eight-hour work days with no lunch) 61 days to recycle Vogue alone.</p>
<p>I will eat one of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wintour" type="external">Anna Wintour</a>‘s least fashionable shoes if I’m wrong, but the post-consumer content for Vogue is negligible to none. Mother Jones, meanwhile, uses 30% post-consumer recycled fiber (and non-chlorine bleach), which allows us to save 432 trees, 89,564 gallons of water, 216 pounds of solid waste, and 33,393 pounds of greenhouse gases per issue. Now no old-media editor should throw stones, and fashion mags, admittedly, have the greatest incentive to print on virgin paper; advertisers demand it. But if every magazine changed its policies just a little—say 10% post-consumer—it would help change the market. And hey, maybe advertisers should demand it too. Especially those whose products are pimped on the facing page, to wit:</p>
<p>Borrow a look from the boys but in a delicate peach and baby blue with subtle luster. Miu Miu silk waffle-knit V-neck ($760), pant ($965), and leather belt: Miu Miu boutiques. LaCrasia pistachio opera gloves. Hermes leather d’Orsay plaforms.</p>
<p>Later this week: The incredible carbon cost of Vanity Fair‘s green issue. And, why does Condé Nast poly bag every one of its magazines with Fashion Rocks?</p>
<p />
| 7,634 |
<p />
<p>Everyone loves a good turnaround story -- especially when the business in question isn't fundamentally going anywhere anytime soon. Case in point: Kinder Morgan -- the largest pipeline and energy infrastructure operator in North America. Kinder Morgan has, arguably, cut its dividend and seen its share price languish amid an industry downturn and a seizing up of capital markets -- not due to a fundamental decrease in its earning power.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>However, the downturn itself has forced KMI to play defense, while a number of its peers have continued to pay uncut dividends to partners while expanding operations. Enter Buckeye Partners, L.P. with its 6.7% dividend yield and a unique hedge to protect it should energy markets continue their oversupplied state. Here's what Foolish investors need to know.</p>
<p>While Buckeye Partners has its beginnings as part of the <a href="http://www.buckeye.com/AboutUs/OrganizationalHistory/tabid/108/Default.aspx" type="external">Standard Oil Company of Ohio over 100 years ago Opens a New Window.</a>, its 21st century form operates out of its headquarters in Houston, TX. Bukeye owns and operates some 6,000 miles of pipelines in the Northeast and Midwest U.S., as well as 117 liquid petroleum products distribution terminals. As a matter of fact, it is one of largest integrated networks of marine terminals in the East and Gulf Coast regions of the U.S., with a newly acquired major hub in the Caribbean as icing on the cake.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://www.buckeye.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=nuNZB0MWLPU%3d&amp;tabid=776" type="external">Buckeye Partners Investor Presentation June 28, 2016 Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>These assets have continued to generate enough cash to pay the company's sizable dividend and support its debt load, giving it an operational edge over bigger peer Kinder Morgan:</p>
<p>Buckeye Partners, L.P.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://capitaliq.com" type="external">S&amp;P Capital IQ Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Kinder Morgan</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://capitaliq.com" type="external">S&amp;P Capital IQ Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>As we are all aware, Kinder Morgan made the fateful decision to cut its dividend in late 2015. While this was probably a <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/24/why-kinder-morgans-dividend-cut-now-looks-brillian.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">smart move Opens a New Window.</a>, Buckeye Partners has continued to send partners their quarterly dividend checks thanks, in part, to a more conservative balance sheet and a unique advantage that makes BPL a unique "hedge" in today's energy paradigm.</p>
<p>The buzzword inevitably tied to any discussion of the energy market for the last 20 months has, of course, been "glut." There's simply too much oil being produced right now, thanks to the advent of U.S. shale oil production and counterproductive infighting within OPEC. This situation has produced some unique side effects, particularly for those that transport and store oil.</p>
<p>As previously mentioned, Buckeye Partners also happens to operate a storage business in addition to its 6,000 miles of pipelines. This division has actually been a major source of investment by Buckeye's management, as it spent $850 million to acquire what is now the Buckeye Bahamas Hub in the Caribbean in 2012. Buckeye's Baltimore facilities have recently been refurbished and brought back on line as well. All told, these initiatives give the partnership over 110 million barrels of oil storage capacity. First quarter utilization of these tanks was 99%, up from 91% in Q1 2015. While these conditions won't last forever, it does give Buckeye a unique edge over the competition as well as increasingly strong pricing power as those looking to store their oil have fewer places to turn.</p>
<p>Both Kinder Morgan's and Buckeye Partners futures are likely bright -- it's hard to see otherwise given their near monopolistic business models. However, Kinder Morgan offers investors a relatively paltry 2.67% dividend yield (and sizable capital appreciation potential if and when the dividend returns to its former glory), whereas Buckeye Partners is going strong with expansion plans all while offering a 6.9% yield in the here and now.</p>
<p>To boot, Buckeye has sizable expansion plans in its Chicago complex, as well as its Corpus Christi and New York Harbor terminals all of which will continue to support dividend growth in the years ahead. Kinder Morgan also has expansion plans, but guessing as to when it's previous $0.50 per share quarterly dividend will return is a (lower case) fool's errand. For those investors looking for sizable dividends in the present, Buckeye Partners might just be the way to go.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/10/like-kinder-morgan-then-youll-love-this-stock.aspx" type="external">Like Kinder Morgan? Then You'll Love This Stock Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBuckeye/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Sean O'Reilly Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Kinder Morgan. 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>
|
Like Kinder Morgan? Then You'll Love This Stock
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/07/10/like-kinder-morgan-then-youll-love-this-stock.html
|
2016-07-10
| 0right
|
Like Kinder Morgan? Then You'll Love This Stock
<p />
<p>Everyone loves a good turnaround story -- especially when the business in question isn't fundamentally going anywhere anytime soon. Case in point: Kinder Morgan -- the largest pipeline and energy infrastructure operator in North America. Kinder Morgan has, arguably, cut its dividend and seen its share price languish amid an industry downturn and a seizing up of capital markets -- not due to a fundamental decrease in its earning power.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>However, the downturn itself has forced KMI to play defense, while a number of its peers have continued to pay uncut dividends to partners while expanding operations. Enter Buckeye Partners, L.P. with its 6.7% dividend yield and a unique hedge to protect it should energy markets continue their oversupplied state. Here's what Foolish investors need to know.</p>
<p>While Buckeye Partners has its beginnings as part of the <a href="http://www.buckeye.com/AboutUs/OrganizationalHistory/tabid/108/Default.aspx" type="external">Standard Oil Company of Ohio over 100 years ago Opens a New Window.</a>, its 21st century form operates out of its headquarters in Houston, TX. Bukeye owns and operates some 6,000 miles of pipelines in the Northeast and Midwest U.S., as well as 117 liquid petroleum products distribution terminals. As a matter of fact, it is one of largest integrated networks of marine terminals in the East and Gulf Coast regions of the U.S., with a newly acquired major hub in the Caribbean as icing on the cake.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://www.buckeye.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=nuNZB0MWLPU%3d&amp;tabid=776" type="external">Buckeye Partners Investor Presentation June 28, 2016 Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>These assets have continued to generate enough cash to pay the company's sizable dividend and support its debt load, giving it an operational edge over bigger peer Kinder Morgan:</p>
<p>Buckeye Partners, L.P.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://capitaliq.com" type="external">S&amp;P Capital IQ Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Kinder Morgan</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://capitaliq.com" type="external">S&amp;P Capital IQ Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>As we are all aware, Kinder Morgan made the fateful decision to cut its dividend in late 2015. While this was probably a <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/24/why-kinder-morgans-dividend-cut-now-looks-brillian.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">smart move Opens a New Window.</a>, Buckeye Partners has continued to send partners their quarterly dividend checks thanks, in part, to a more conservative balance sheet and a unique advantage that makes BPL a unique "hedge" in today's energy paradigm.</p>
<p>The buzzword inevitably tied to any discussion of the energy market for the last 20 months has, of course, been "glut." There's simply too much oil being produced right now, thanks to the advent of U.S. shale oil production and counterproductive infighting within OPEC. This situation has produced some unique side effects, particularly for those that transport and store oil.</p>
<p>As previously mentioned, Buckeye Partners also happens to operate a storage business in addition to its 6,000 miles of pipelines. This division has actually been a major source of investment by Buckeye's management, as it spent $850 million to acquire what is now the Buckeye Bahamas Hub in the Caribbean in 2012. Buckeye's Baltimore facilities have recently been refurbished and brought back on line as well. All told, these initiatives give the partnership over 110 million barrels of oil storage capacity. First quarter utilization of these tanks was 99%, up from 91% in Q1 2015. While these conditions won't last forever, it does give Buckeye a unique edge over the competition as well as increasingly strong pricing power as those looking to store their oil have fewer places to turn.</p>
<p>Both Kinder Morgan's and Buckeye Partners futures are likely bright -- it's hard to see otherwise given their near monopolistic business models. However, Kinder Morgan offers investors a relatively paltry 2.67% dividend yield (and sizable capital appreciation potential if and when the dividend returns to its former glory), whereas Buckeye Partners is going strong with expansion plans all while offering a 6.9% yield in the here and now.</p>
<p>To boot, Buckeye has sizable expansion plans in its Chicago complex, as well as its Corpus Christi and New York Harbor terminals all of which will continue to support dividend growth in the years ahead. Kinder Morgan also has expansion plans, but guessing as to when it's previous $0.50 per share quarterly dividend will return is a (lower case) fool's errand. For those investors looking for sizable dividends in the present, Buckeye Partners might just be the way to go.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/10/like-kinder-morgan-then-youll-love-this-stock.aspx" type="external">Like Kinder Morgan? Then You'll Love This Stock Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBuckeye/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Sean O'Reilly Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Kinder Morgan. 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>
| 7,635 |
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) _ These Illinois lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>LuckyDay Lotto Midday</p>
<p>12-19-21-31-43</p>
<p>(twelve, nineteen, twenty-one, thirty-one, forty-three)</p>
<p>Pick Three-Midday</p>
<p>8-5-8, Fireball: 1</p>
<p>(eight, five, eight; Fireball: one)</p>
<p>Pick Three-Evening</p>
<p>9-0-7, Fireball: 9</p>
<p>(nine, zero, seven; Fireball: nine)</p>
<p>Pick Four-Midday</p>
<p>5-2-5-6, Fireball: 4</p>
<p>(five, two, five, six; Fireball: four)</p>
<p>Pick Four-Evening</p>
<p>7-0-3-1, Fireball: 9</p>
<p>(seven, zero, three, one; Fireball: nine)</p>
<p>Lucky Day Lotto</p>
<p>07-15-22-35-41</p>
<p>(seven, fifteen, twenty-two, thirty-five, forty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $450,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $418 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>02-18-37-39-42, Powerball: 12, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(two, eighteen, thirty-seven, thirty-nine, forty-two; Powerball: twelve; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $460 million</p>
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) _ These Illinois lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>LuckyDay Lotto Midday</p>
<p>12-19-21-31-43</p>
<p>(twelve, nineteen, twenty-one, thirty-one, forty-three)</p>
<p>Pick Three-Midday</p>
<p>8-5-8, Fireball: 1</p>
<p>(eight, five, eight; Fireball: one)</p>
<p>Pick Three-Evening</p>
<p>9-0-7, Fireball: 9</p>
<p>(nine, zero, seven; Fireball: nine)</p>
<p>Pick Four-Midday</p>
<p>5-2-5-6, Fireball: 4</p>
<p>(five, two, five, six; Fireball: four)</p>
<p>Pick Four-Evening</p>
<p>7-0-3-1, Fireball: 9</p>
<p>(seven, zero, three, one; Fireball: nine)</p>
<p>Lucky Day Lotto</p>
<p>07-15-22-35-41</p>
<p>(seven, fifteen, twenty-two, thirty-five, forty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $450,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $418 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>02-18-37-39-42, Powerball: 12, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(two, eighteen, thirty-seven, thirty-nine, forty-two; Powerball: twelve; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $460 million</p>
|
IL Lottery
| false |
https://apnews.com/01aaac17f7f443f989bac9282e49c71a
|
2018-01-04
| 2least
|
IL Lottery
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) _ These Illinois lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>LuckyDay Lotto Midday</p>
<p>12-19-21-31-43</p>
<p>(twelve, nineteen, twenty-one, thirty-one, forty-three)</p>
<p>Pick Three-Midday</p>
<p>8-5-8, Fireball: 1</p>
<p>(eight, five, eight; Fireball: one)</p>
<p>Pick Three-Evening</p>
<p>9-0-7, Fireball: 9</p>
<p>(nine, zero, seven; Fireball: nine)</p>
<p>Pick Four-Midday</p>
<p>5-2-5-6, Fireball: 4</p>
<p>(five, two, five, six; Fireball: four)</p>
<p>Pick Four-Evening</p>
<p>7-0-3-1, Fireball: 9</p>
<p>(seven, zero, three, one; Fireball: nine)</p>
<p>Lucky Day Lotto</p>
<p>07-15-22-35-41</p>
<p>(seven, fifteen, twenty-two, thirty-five, forty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $450,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $418 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>02-18-37-39-42, Powerball: 12, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(two, eighteen, thirty-seven, thirty-nine, forty-two; Powerball: twelve; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $460 million</p>
<p>SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) _ These Illinois lotteries were drawn Wednesday:</p>
<p>LuckyDay Lotto Midday</p>
<p>12-19-21-31-43</p>
<p>(twelve, nineteen, twenty-one, thirty-one, forty-three)</p>
<p>Pick Three-Midday</p>
<p>8-5-8, Fireball: 1</p>
<p>(eight, five, eight; Fireball: one)</p>
<p>Pick Three-Evening</p>
<p>9-0-7, Fireball: 9</p>
<p>(nine, zero, seven; Fireball: nine)</p>
<p>Pick Four-Midday</p>
<p>5-2-5-6, Fireball: 4</p>
<p>(five, two, five, six; Fireball: four)</p>
<p>Pick Four-Evening</p>
<p>7-0-3-1, Fireball: 9</p>
<p>(seven, zero, three, one; Fireball: nine)</p>
<p>Lucky Day Lotto</p>
<p>07-15-22-35-41</p>
<p>(seven, fifteen, twenty-two, thirty-five, forty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $450,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $418 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>02-18-37-39-42, Powerball: 12, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(two, eighteen, thirty-seven, thirty-nine, forty-two; Powerball: twelve; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $460 million</p>
| 7,636 |
<p>With the constant barrage of police hate this year it's nice to see a story showing the heart of the vast majority of officers as displayed through the thoughtful actions of one patrolman doing his part to serve and protect his community.</p>
<p />
<p>In the clip below, CBS News reporter Steve Hartman follows Benicia, California, officer Kirk Keffer through his encounter with a "shadowy figure in a dark hoodie" he met while out on patrol.</p>
<p>“And it kinda caught me off guard because I normally don’t see anybody out there. And there’s no sidewalks. And he’s kind of walking on the side of the street,” Keffer said. “It wasn’t right.”</p>
<p>Or was it? Jourdan Duncan says he was minding his own business.</p>
<p>“And I noticed it was a police car. And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to move. I don’t want him to think I have any weapons,’” Jourdan said.</p>
<p>Jourdan explained to the officer that he was just walking home from work. There was no crime. The kid didn’t need help.</p>
<p>Officer Keffer gave the young man a ride home, which happens to be 7 miles away in the next town over and usually takes him two-and-a-half hours one-way on foot. Keffer said when he learned about how far the young man walked to get to work after his car broke down last May, he was impressed. Despite people having offered him rides, Jourdan said he wanted to get to work on his own.</p>
<p>"Not many 18-year-olds you meet have that kind of mindset," said the officer. "They don’t even want to walk down to the store, let alone walk seven miles just to get to work."</p>
<p>Keffer decided that he would try to help out the young man, so he talked with the police association about getting him something that would make the 7-mile trek a little easier.</p>
<p>“He said, ‘Hey, Jourdan, you remember me right?’ And I was like … ‘How could I not,’” Jourdan said.</p>
<p>“I said, ‘Jourdan, you’re not in trouble.’ I said, ‘We just want to give you something,’” Keffer said.</p>
<p>The police association surprised the hard working young fella with a new bike to ease his commute.</p>
<p>"I was just looking at the bike like 'This bike is going to be cherished,'" Jourdan said.</p>
<p>But the cops weren't done. They raised an additional $38,000 dollars to help Jourdan buy a vehicle and pursue his career path of becoming a police officer just like his new mentor.</p>
<p />
|
Video: Cop's Run-In With Teen Takes A Heartwarming Turn
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/11367/video-cops-run-teen-takes-heartwarming-turn-chase-stephens
|
2016-12-06
| 0right
|
Video: Cop's Run-In With Teen Takes A Heartwarming Turn
<p>With the constant barrage of police hate this year it's nice to see a story showing the heart of the vast majority of officers as displayed through the thoughtful actions of one patrolman doing his part to serve and protect his community.</p>
<p />
<p>In the clip below, CBS News reporter Steve Hartman follows Benicia, California, officer Kirk Keffer through his encounter with a "shadowy figure in a dark hoodie" he met while out on patrol.</p>
<p>“And it kinda caught me off guard because I normally don’t see anybody out there. And there’s no sidewalks. And he’s kind of walking on the side of the street,” Keffer said. “It wasn’t right.”</p>
<p>Or was it? Jourdan Duncan says he was minding his own business.</p>
<p>“And I noticed it was a police car. And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to move. I don’t want him to think I have any weapons,’” Jourdan said.</p>
<p>Jourdan explained to the officer that he was just walking home from work. There was no crime. The kid didn’t need help.</p>
<p>Officer Keffer gave the young man a ride home, which happens to be 7 miles away in the next town over and usually takes him two-and-a-half hours one-way on foot. Keffer said when he learned about how far the young man walked to get to work after his car broke down last May, he was impressed. Despite people having offered him rides, Jourdan said he wanted to get to work on his own.</p>
<p>"Not many 18-year-olds you meet have that kind of mindset," said the officer. "They don’t even want to walk down to the store, let alone walk seven miles just to get to work."</p>
<p>Keffer decided that he would try to help out the young man, so he talked with the police association about getting him something that would make the 7-mile trek a little easier.</p>
<p>“He said, ‘Hey, Jourdan, you remember me right?’ And I was like … ‘How could I not,’” Jourdan said.</p>
<p>“I said, ‘Jourdan, you’re not in trouble.’ I said, ‘We just want to give you something,’” Keffer said.</p>
<p>The police association surprised the hard working young fella with a new bike to ease his commute.</p>
<p>"I was just looking at the bike like 'This bike is going to be cherished,'" Jourdan said.</p>
<p>But the cops weren't done. They raised an additional $38,000 dollars to help Jourdan buy a vehicle and pursue his career path of becoming a police officer just like his new mentor.</p>
<p />
| 7,637 |
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<p>BONN, Germany — Protesters drowned out speeches by White House advisers and business representatives Monday at an event the U.S. government sponsored at the U.N. climate talks in Germany promoting the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy.</p>
<p>About 200 protesters stood up 10 minutes into the event and began singing an anti-coal song to the tune of “God Bless the U.S.A.” They were ushered out of the room without further incident.</p>
<p>The event late Monday was the only one the U.S. delegation organized at the ongoing climate talks in Bonn. The American delegates are being closely watched by diplomats from the other 194 nations at the conference because of President Donald Trump’s announcement that he wants to quit the 2015 Paris climate accord.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Before the panel event, the governors of Oregon and Washington — Kate Brown and Jay Inslee — said Trump’s rejection of climate change was “a dead end.”</p>
<p>“What you’re going to hear today is essentially Donald Trump trying to sell 8-track tapes in a Spotify streaming world,” Inslee told reporters. “That is not going to cut it.” Both Oregon and Washington are part of a coalition backing the Paris accord ,</p>
<p>George David Banks, a White House adviser who was part of the U.S. panel, said ruling out the use of fossil fuels and other non-renewable sources of energy was only controversial “if we choose to bury our heads in the sand and ignore the reality of the global energy system.”</p>
<p>After the singing protesters left, the panel faced largely hostile questions from the audience about the facts and figures presented to support the continued use of fossil fuels.</p>
<p>The event took place as a new report released Monday showed global carbon emissions will reach a record high in 2017, dashing hopes that levels of the heat-trapping gas might have plateaued following three consecutive years when they didn’t go up at all.</p>
<p>The talks in Bonn, now in their second week, are intended to hammer out some of the nitty-gritty details for implementing the Paris accord. Participating countries agreed to keep global warming significantly below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit)</p>
<p>Key topics include how to measure individual countries’ efforts, taking stock of what’s been achieved so far and setting the new emissions reduction targets needed to reach the Paris goal.</p>
<p>Developing countries also are pushing for rich nations to pay for some of the devastating impacts climate change inevitably is going to have, particularly on poor communities around the world.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Poor nations see the issue of financial compensation, known in U.N. parlance as “loss and damage,” as a matter of fairness. They argue that rising sea levels and more extreme weather will hit them disproportionately hard even though they have contributed only a fraction of the carbon emissions blamed for global warming.</p>
<p>Rich countries counter that they are already paying billions of dollars to help developing nations reduce emissions — such as by switching to renewable energy — and to adapt to climate change.</p>
<p>“Without that support forthcoming from the developed countries, there’s going to be some real fireworks at the end of this week,” said Alden Meyer, strategy and policy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group in Washington.</p>
<p>Formal decisions on most issues won’t be taken until next year’s meeting in Poland, but few want to leave progress until the last minute. Green groups said it might fall to leaders to break a deadlock over issues such as compensation for countries hardest-hit by global warming. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron will take part in a high-level event Wednesday.</p>
<p>While other developed countries reject the Trump administration’s stance on the Paris agreement, their views on loss and damage are largely in step with Washington’s.</p>
<p>“It’s fair to say that other developed countries are hiding behind the U.S. on the loss and damage,” Meyer said. “They need to be called out on this.”</p>
<p>The other issue that’s being hotly debated in Bonn is what emissions-cutting measures are necessary before 2020. While some countries already have taken reduction steps, activists say they fall far short of what’s needed to ensure emissions peak in three years’ time — after which it would become much harder to achieve the most ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F.)</p>
<p>____</p>
<p>Follow Frank Jordans on Twitter at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/wirereporter" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/wirereporter</a></p>
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Protesters disrupt US fossil-nuclear event at climate talks
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/1092006/protesters-disrupt-us-fossil-nuclear-event-at-climate-talks.html
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2017-11-13
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Protesters disrupt US fossil-nuclear event at climate talks
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<p>BONN, Germany — Protesters drowned out speeches by White House advisers and business representatives Monday at an event the U.S. government sponsored at the U.N. climate talks in Germany promoting the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy.</p>
<p>About 200 protesters stood up 10 minutes into the event and began singing an anti-coal song to the tune of “God Bless the U.S.A.” They were ushered out of the room without further incident.</p>
<p>The event late Monday was the only one the U.S. delegation organized at the ongoing climate talks in Bonn. The American delegates are being closely watched by diplomats from the other 194 nations at the conference because of President Donald Trump’s announcement that he wants to quit the 2015 Paris climate accord.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Before the panel event, the governors of Oregon and Washington — Kate Brown and Jay Inslee — said Trump’s rejection of climate change was “a dead end.”</p>
<p>“What you’re going to hear today is essentially Donald Trump trying to sell 8-track tapes in a Spotify streaming world,” Inslee told reporters. “That is not going to cut it.” Both Oregon and Washington are part of a coalition backing the Paris accord ,</p>
<p>George David Banks, a White House adviser who was part of the U.S. panel, said ruling out the use of fossil fuels and other non-renewable sources of energy was only controversial “if we choose to bury our heads in the sand and ignore the reality of the global energy system.”</p>
<p>After the singing protesters left, the panel faced largely hostile questions from the audience about the facts and figures presented to support the continued use of fossil fuels.</p>
<p>The event took place as a new report released Monday showed global carbon emissions will reach a record high in 2017, dashing hopes that levels of the heat-trapping gas might have plateaued following three consecutive years when they didn’t go up at all.</p>
<p>The talks in Bonn, now in their second week, are intended to hammer out some of the nitty-gritty details for implementing the Paris accord. Participating countries agreed to keep global warming significantly below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit)</p>
<p>Key topics include how to measure individual countries’ efforts, taking stock of what’s been achieved so far and setting the new emissions reduction targets needed to reach the Paris goal.</p>
<p>Developing countries also are pushing for rich nations to pay for some of the devastating impacts climate change inevitably is going to have, particularly on poor communities around the world.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Poor nations see the issue of financial compensation, known in U.N. parlance as “loss and damage,” as a matter of fairness. They argue that rising sea levels and more extreme weather will hit them disproportionately hard even though they have contributed only a fraction of the carbon emissions blamed for global warming.</p>
<p>Rich countries counter that they are already paying billions of dollars to help developing nations reduce emissions — such as by switching to renewable energy — and to adapt to climate change.</p>
<p>“Without that support forthcoming from the developed countries, there’s going to be some real fireworks at the end of this week,” said Alden Meyer, strategy and policy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group in Washington.</p>
<p>Formal decisions on most issues won’t be taken until next year’s meeting in Poland, but few want to leave progress until the last minute. Green groups said it might fall to leaders to break a deadlock over issues such as compensation for countries hardest-hit by global warming. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron will take part in a high-level event Wednesday.</p>
<p>While other developed countries reject the Trump administration’s stance on the Paris agreement, their views on loss and damage are largely in step with Washington’s.</p>
<p>“It’s fair to say that other developed countries are hiding behind the U.S. on the loss and damage,” Meyer said. “They need to be called out on this.”</p>
<p>The other issue that’s being hotly debated in Bonn is what emissions-cutting measures are necessary before 2020. While some countries already have taken reduction steps, activists say they fall far short of what’s needed to ensure emissions peak in three years’ time — after which it would become much harder to achieve the most ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F.)</p>
<p>____</p>
<p>Follow Frank Jordans on Twitter at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/wirereporter" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/wirereporter</a></p>
| 7,638 |
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<p />
<p>The Gladiators (1-2) snapped a two-game losing streak last Saturday at Tingley with a 40-38 victory over the defending champion Wichita Force, grabbing a 34-13 halftime lead and hanging on.</p>
<p>“It shouldn’t have been that close of a game,” third-year Duke City coach Dominic Bramante said in a phone interview. “It was good for the fans, who were sitting at the end of their seats, but as a coach it wasn’t so good.”</p>
<p>The Cavalry, which plays home games in Belton, Texas, is coming off a 69-21 loss to the Texas Revolution that resulted in a coaching change. Former Gladiators player Adrian Perez has been promoted from assistant coach to field boss of Centex. He also briefly was coach of the New Mexico Stars last year before he was fired for allegedly breaking team rules.</p>
<p>Third-year Duke City coach Dominic Bramante said the Centex coaching change leaves him a little bit in the dark preparation-wise.</p>
<p>“Usually going into a game you know what you’re going up against.” Bramante said. “But this week is different. (Perez) told me he has changed out half his team.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Bramante well knows the significance of this game, considering five of his team’s next six will be on the road, broken up by a home game against the Salina (Kan.) Liberty on April 15.</p>
<p>“We can’t afford a hiccup,” Bramante said of playing a team at the bottom of the CIF standings. “You have to treat every game with the seriousness as the game before.”</p>
<p>HONORS: Gladiator kicker Brian Weems was named the league’s Special Teams Player of the Week for his performance against Wichita, going 4-for-4 on field goal tries and 4-for-4 on PATs.</p>
<p>SATURDAY: Centex Cavalry at Duke City Gladiators, 6:05 p.m., Tingley Coliseum; My50TV, FamousHipHopRadio.com. Tickets: $10-50.</p>
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Gladiators host new-look team from Texas
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https://abqjournal.com/975867/gladiators-host-new-look-team-from-texas.html
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Gladiators host new-look team from Texas
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<p />
<p>The Gladiators (1-2) snapped a two-game losing streak last Saturday at Tingley with a 40-38 victory over the defending champion Wichita Force, grabbing a 34-13 halftime lead and hanging on.</p>
<p>“It shouldn’t have been that close of a game,” third-year Duke City coach Dominic Bramante said in a phone interview. “It was good for the fans, who were sitting at the end of their seats, but as a coach it wasn’t so good.”</p>
<p>The Cavalry, which plays home games in Belton, Texas, is coming off a 69-21 loss to the Texas Revolution that resulted in a coaching change. Former Gladiators player Adrian Perez has been promoted from assistant coach to field boss of Centex. He also briefly was coach of the New Mexico Stars last year before he was fired for allegedly breaking team rules.</p>
<p>Third-year Duke City coach Dominic Bramante said the Centex coaching change leaves him a little bit in the dark preparation-wise.</p>
<p>“Usually going into a game you know what you’re going up against.” Bramante said. “But this week is different. (Perez) told me he has changed out half his team.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Bramante well knows the significance of this game, considering five of his team’s next six will be on the road, broken up by a home game against the Salina (Kan.) Liberty on April 15.</p>
<p>“We can’t afford a hiccup,” Bramante said of playing a team at the bottom of the CIF standings. “You have to treat every game with the seriousness as the game before.”</p>
<p>HONORS: Gladiator kicker Brian Weems was named the league’s Special Teams Player of the Week for his performance against Wichita, going 4-for-4 on field goal tries and 4-for-4 on PATs.</p>
<p>SATURDAY: Centex Cavalry at Duke City Gladiators, 6:05 p.m., Tingley Coliseum; My50TV, FamousHipHopRadio.com. Tickets: $10-50.</p>
| 7,639 |
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<p>Following Vladimir Putin’s reelection as president of Russia, Donald Trump called him to offer his hearty congratulations. The fact that Trump thinks that Putin deserves applause for masterminding a sham election is bad enough. But in the midst of ongoing atrocities related to Russia’s election tampering in the United States, and it’s complicity in executing opponents with nerve agents on British soil, it is utterly disgraceful. And he was even <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/21/17147684/do-not-congratulate-trump-putin" type="external">warned</a> against sending congratulations by his top advisors, a warning that he ignored.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NewsCorpse/posts/2082540175094100" type="external" /></p>
<p>Many Americans are outraged by Trump’s fealty to Putin, including a few Republicans who castigated him for praising the Russian tyrant’s undemocratic victory. But most Republicans are either defending Trump or remaining silent in the wake of yet another heinous act against the interests of America. And Trump’s greatest defender is, as usual, himself. In a Wednesday morning twitter rant, Trump tried to excuse sucking up to Putin by saying that…</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>First of all, Obama didn’t call Putin while Russia was still trying to undermine America’s democracy and attacking our allies with chemical weapons. Secondly, the media are not the only critics of Trump’s Putin-fluffing. Ask GOP senators John McCain, Jeff Flake, and Lindsey Graham. Thirdly, would Trump have also said that getting along with Hitler was a good thing?</p>
<p>But the most troubling part of this tweet-plomacy is Trump’s curious reference to Russia helping with “the coming Arms Race.” Is there something he knows that he isn’t telling us?</p>
<p>It should be noted that any suggestion that an arms race is developing has to recognize that Trump himself is waging it. He has railed for months about what he regards as a depleted and ineffectual U.S. military. During his campaign, and now as president, Trump has promised to build up the military with an infusion of billions of dollars. He has advocated more and newer nuclear weapons, as well as piling on additional conventional munitions.</p>
<p>What’s more, Russia doesn’t seem to be a particularly helpful party when it comes to an arms race. Putin recently <a href="" type="internal">showed off</a> what he said were invincible new missiles that could be used against the U.S. and for which we would have no defense. If anything, Trump and Putin appear to be engaged in a mutually agreed upon escalation of weapons of mass destruction. Which would just make this the latest sweetheart deal that Trump has executed with his BFF.</p>
<p>It is no longer shocking when Trump says something false or stupid. That’s a nearly daily occurrence. But it is still worrisome when he makes dangerous comments that bring the country closer to conflict with foreign adversaries. Especially when those comments are contrary to the public policies and best interests of the nation.</p>
<p>By announcing that there is a “coming Arms Race,” Trump is alerting Russia and other nations of an intention by the U.S. to expand its military advantage. In effect, the comment has the potential to be the trigger for an arms race that didn’t exist previously. Hopefully somebody in the media will ask Trump what the heck he’s talking about. Although it may be too much to hope for that he actually knows.</p>
<p>How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QSSMOES/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00QSSMOES&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=newscorpsecom-20&amp;linkId=TLI6JC2OYE22MUTS" type="external">Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.</a> Available now at Amazon.</p>
|
The Coming Arms Race? WTF is Trump Tweeting About Now?
| true |
http://newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p%3D10601
| 4left
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The Coming Arms Race? WTF is Trump Tweeting About Now?
<p>Following Vladimir Putin’s reelection as president of Russia, Donald Trump called him to offer his hearty congratulations. The fact that Trump thinks that Putin deserves applause for masterminding a sham election is bad enough. But in the midst of ongoing atrocities related to Russia’s election tampering in the United States, and it’s complicity in executing opponents with nerve agents on British soil, it is utterly disgraceful. And he was even <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/21/17147684/do-not-congratulate-trump-putin" type="external">warned</a> against sending congratulations by his top advisors, a warning that he ignored.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NewsCorpse/posts/2082540175094100" type="external" /></p>
<p>Many Americans are outraged by Trump’s fealty to Putin, including a few Republicans who castigated him for praising the Russian tyrant’s undemocratic victory. But most Republicans are either defending Trump or remaining silent in the wake of yet another heinous act against the interests of America. And Trump’s greatest defender is, as usual, himself. In a Wednesday morning twitter rant, Trump tried to excuse sucking up to Putin by saying that…</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>First of all, Obama didn’t call Putin while Russia was still trying to undermine America’s democracy and attacking our allies with chemical weapons. Secondly, the media are not the only critics of Trump’s Putin-fluffing. Ask GOP senators John McCain, Jeff Flake, and Lindsey Graham. Thirdly, would Trump have also said that getting along with Hitler was a good thing?</p>
<p>But the most troubling part of this tweet-plomacy is Trump’s curious reference to Russia helping with “the coming Arms Race.” Is there something he knows that he isn’t telling us?</p>
<p>It should be noted that any suggestion that an arms race is developing has to recognize that Trump himself is waging it. He has railed for months about what he regards as a depleted and ineffectual U.S. military. During his campaign, and now as president, Trump has promised to build up the military with an infusion of billions of dollars. He has advocated more and newer nuclear weapons, as well as piling on additional conventional munitions.</p>
<p>What’s more, Russia doesn’t seem to be a particularly helpful party when it comes to an arms race. Putin recently <a href="" type="internal">showed off</a> what he said were invincible new missiles that could be used against the U.S. and for which we would have no defense. If anything, Trump and Putin appear to be engaged in a mutually agreed upon escalation of weapons of mass destruction. Which would just make this the latest sweetheart deal that Trump has executed with his BFF.</p>
<p>It is no longer shocking when Trump says something false or stupid. That’s a nearly daily occurrence. But it is still worrisome when he makes dangerous comments that bring the country closer to conflict with foreign adversaries. Especially when those comments are contrary to the public policies and best interests of the nation.</p>
<p>By announcing that there is a “coming Arms Race,” Trump is alerting Russia and other nations of an intention by the U.S. to expand its military advantage. In effect, the comment has the potential to be the trigger for an arms race that didn’t exist previously. Hopefully somebody in the media will ask Trump what the heck he’s talking about. Although it may be too much to hope for that he actually knows.</p>
<p>How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QSSMOES/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00QSSMOES&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=newscorpsecom-20&amp;linkId=TLI6JC2OYE22MUTS" type="external">Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.</a> Available now at Amazon.</p>
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<p />
<p>Until then, however, it means keeping the issue front and center and all of us working together to become violence free.</p>
<p>Toward that, today heralds the beginning of “Domestic Violence Awareness Month,” observed nationally each year to raise attention to the problem and the need to support organizations that provide service to victims of abuse and their families, as well as to celebrate the survivors.</p>
<p>Most of us would agree that physically injuring someone out of anger, especially a loved one, is intolerable. Yet, the number of abuse cases remain staggering — it’s estimated that one in every four women has experienced domestic violence in her lifetime and that on average, three women are killed by their partners each day, according to Department of Justice statistics. The victims are not exclusively women: The DOJ reports that, on average, one man is killed by his spouse every day of the year.</p>
<p>No less staggering is the fact that nearly 75 percent of Americans either know an abuser or someone who has been a victim.</p>
<p>The tragedy of domestic abuse extends far beyond the victim and abuser, of course. Some of its most deeply affected victims are their families: Children who can’t fathom why the father they worship could have hurt their mother; the parents left to agonize over an adult son whose anger spilled over into violence at home or a daughter who can’t, for whatever reason, be persuaded to leave an abusive relationship; or grandparents of an abuser or a victim who struggle to know if they should step in.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Much of the local effort to observe Domestic Violence Awareness Month in Rio Rancho is led by Haven House, Sandoval County’s emergency shelter that provides free services — including crisis intervention, transportation, legal advocacy, counseling, supplemental food and clothing — for women, and their children, who must leave their homes because of abuse. As in the past, the organization has planned a series of events for the month called “The Purple Ribbon Initiative.”</p>
<p>The activities include the “Purpling of the Poles,” the display of purple ribbons along the city’s main road, NM 528; Mayor Hull’s Barbecue at Haynes Park on Thursday, Oct. 23, and a Children’s Fun Run/Walk at Rio Rancho High on Saturday morning, Oct.25.</p>
<p>“I’d like to invite the community to support our efforts and if anybody wants to help us, they can call us,” Haven House Executive Director Cosmina Hays said. The phone number is 896-4869.</p>
<p>We hope Rio Rancho residents respond generously for a very worthy cause.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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Our view: October rings in ‘Domestic Violence Awareness Month’
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https://abqjournal.com/471751/october-rings-in-39domestic-violence-awareness-month39.html
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Our view: October rings in ‘Domestic Violence Awareness Month’
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<p />
<p>Until then, however, it means keeping the issue front and center and all of us working together to become violence free.</p>
<p>Toward that, today heralds the beginning of “Domestic Violence Awareness Month,” observed nationally each year to raise attention to the problem and the need to support organizations that provide service to victims of abuse and their families, as well as to celebrate the survivors.</p>
<p>Most of us would agree that physically injuring someone out of anger, especially a loved one, is intolerable. Yet, the number of abuse cases remain staggering — it’s estimated that one in every four women has experienced domestic violence in her lifetime and that on average, three women are killed by their partners each day, according to Department of Justice statistics. The victims are not exclusively women: The DOJ reports that, on average, one man is killed by his spouse every day of the year.</p>
<p>No less staggering is the fact that nearly 75 percent of Americans either know an abuser or someone who has been a victim.</p>
<p>The tragedy of domestic abuse extends far beyond the victim and abuser, of course. Some of its most deeply affected victims are their families: Children who can’t fathom why the father they worship could have hurt their mother; the parents left to agonize over an adult son whose anger spilled over into violence at home or a daughter who can’t, for whatever reason, be persuaded to leave an abusive relationship; or grandparents of an abuser or a victim who struggle to know if they should step in.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Much of the local effort to observe Domestic Violence Awareness Month in Rio Rancho is led by Haven House, Sandoval County’s emergency shelter that provides free services — including crisis intervention, transportation, legal advocacy, counseling, supplemental food and clothing — for women, and their children, who must leave their homes because of abuse. As in the past, the organization has planned a series of events for the month called “The Purple Ribbon Initiative.”</p>
<p>The activities include the “Purpling of the Poles,” the display of purple ribbons along the city’s main road, NM 528; Mayor Hull’s Barbecue at Haynes Park on Thursday, Oct. 23, and a Children’s Fun Run/Walk at Rio Rancho High on Saturday morning, Oct.25.</p>
<p>“I’d like to invite the community to support our efforts and if anybody wants to help us, they can call us,” Haven House Executive Director Cosmina Hays said. The phone number is 896-4869.</p>
<p>We hope Rio Rancho residents respond generously for a very worthy cause.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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<p>Almost every day, entertainment, sports, media, political and even some business organizations are jettisoning their top officials and incumbents after reported accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assaults of their subordinates. They’re not waiting for prosecutors, courts or regulators to take action. “Get out now” is the first punishing order. Then the work product of these asserted offenders—whether music, comedy shows, etc.—are often scrubbed, and recipients of political contributions are under pressure to give these sums to charity. In addition a wider arc of resignations by the heads and Boards of Directors, accused of lax monitoring is emerging.</p>
<p>The speed of punishment is unprecedented. One day millions of people watched Bill O’Reilly, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer and others. The next day they were vanished. Although this is only the tip of the iceberg—and there is more to come—the velocity of expulsions coming from these accusations—even when they are denied—is unprecedented. (A major exception, however, are the escapades of Donald Trump over the years.)</p>
<p>What do the expellers know that spurs them to make these instant decisions often to the detriment of their own economic interest, such as Fox, PBS, NBC or NPR evicting their four, lucrative star performers?</p>
<p>Could it be that the media was quick to report these abuses and that more was coming to produce even more damaging publicity to their brand? Could it be that they wanted to avoid their companies being stigmatized as a perilous or toxic workplace for future talent considering careers there? Were they trying to avoid potential lawsuits? Could it be that some of these executives wanted to get rid of the spotlight that might reach their own transgressions, even though they think they were of lesser seriousness?</p>
<p>To all of these the answer is probably, “partly.” But it is also important for the media outlets, political parties, and Hollywood studios to react in the most responsible manner: that is, when abuses come to light, they may not need to wait for due process; they should react in order to protect their employees, who could become victims, as well as their reputation and their sizeable audience/constituency. While many of these organizations waited far too long to remove abusers, as in the case of Michigan State University and the United States Olympic Committee, the act of removing serial predators from their powerful positions signals a degree of belated resolve and compassion, and is in line with their responsibility to protect their workplace.</p>
<p>So why is it that when corporations and financial institutions commit broad-scale crimes that endanger or take the lives of millions of people, they receive absolute impunity? Indeed, their executives are rewarded for their own chronic, dangerous lawlessness. When their numerous crimes or criminogenic actions come to light, why are these bosses not immediately removed from their positions, in the manner of the many powerful men who have fallen as the #MeToo movement gains momentum?</p>
<p>Who knows? Time will tell perhaps. What is known is that corporations get away with very serious crimes—deaths, lifetime injuries, massive assaults on the economic necessities of millions of innocent people, the sickening of children and loss of their lives, the poisoning of water, air, land, food, perilous workplaces—all while paying off the political system that would have exacted punishment—and without appropriate sanctions.</p>
<p>None of the bailed-out Wall Street bosses who crashed the economy in 2008-2009 were prosecuted. These repeat-offenders took 8 million jobs away from the American people with their crimes, deceptions, cover-ups and rampant speculation with the very pensions and mutual funds that had been entrusted to them by their clients. Some Wall Street predators retired with huge severance packages—worth many millions of dollars—while others stayed put and resumed their roles as people of influential status and approbation.</p>
<p>Look at George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who together initiated a criminal war of aggression that sent tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers to death, illness and permanent disability while destroying the lives of over a million Iraqis and leaving the country and its impoverished survivors devastated. They left public office in January 2009, above the laws they broke, and the Constitution they violated, to the accolades of Republicans and some Democrats. Lucrative speeches, book advances and other goodies flooded into their “retirements.”</p>
<p>People like Bill Clinton helped rehabilitate Mr. Bush with collaborative projects and joint appearances. The Bush Presidential library is thriving without mention of his and Mr. Cheney’s war crimes.</p>
<p>Over and over again, as reported in the&#160;Wall Street Journal, the&#160;New York Times, the&#160;Washington Post, and&#160;CBS’s Sixty Minutes, corporate crime, violence and fraud do not result in punishment. All too often the rewards and luxuries accorded to these powerful executives continue unabated.</p>
<p>Even when the Justice Department occasionally nails a big drug company for crimes costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars, “deferred prosecution agreements” let the bosses off and allow the companies themselves to get away with fines that appear large but are far less than the ill-gotten gains that finally caught the attention of the underfunded Department’s prosecutors.</p>
<p>In 2011 I filled a book titled&#160;Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism&#160;with dozens of documented corporate crimes that ultimately resulted in a little bad publicity, some fines and infrequent enforcement actions, but no real justice. But in all of the many egregious accounts detailed in&#160;Getting Steamed, did the business bosses lose their jobs, their retirement, even the esteem of their colleagues, as a result of their chronic predation? Very rarely.</p>
<p>With over 450,000 Americans dying every year from tobacco-related diseases and with documentation piling up on how these tobacco titans deliberately marketed cigarettes to youngsters to hook them for life, none of these company officials went to jail or were even personally fined. Remember the celebrated Congressional hearings when about a dozen tobacco executives, under oath, said they didn’t believe there was a connection between their heavily promoted products and disease? There was no prosecution for perjury then or later when it became abundantly clear these executives knew all about the health impacts from evidence inside the companies.</p>
<p>The same impunity and immunity attached to the asbestos and lead manufacturers whose bosses knew for decades of the lethal impacts on millions of their long suffering victims. So why the difference? The sexual harassment reactions came because the perpetrators had done demonstrable damage—to their victims, to the cultures of their workplaces, to productivity, and, of course, to the public relations of the organizations writ large. Weren’t the companies that brought about the recession or criminally destroyed lives also afraid of losing sales and talent if they didn’t rid themselves of the culpable perpetrators?</p>
<p>One difference may be that the evicted sexual assaulters did their deeds personally and directly, unlike the more remote corporate bosses or even middle management, their crimes more abstract within the enormity of the bureaucratic machines that they’ve rigged to avoid accountability. The other difference is that the public outrage was more personal and intense over the high-profile victims in the Hollywood episodes, which set the level of high media visibility. But what are the other factors at work?</p>
|
The Paradox of Equal Justice
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2018/02/02/the-paradox-of-equal-justice/
|
2018-02-02
| 4left
|
The Paradox of Equal Justice
<p>Almost every day, entertainment, sports, media, political and even some business organizations are jettisoning their top officials and incumbents after reported accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assaults of their subordinates. They’re not waiting for prosecutors, courts or regulators to take action. “Get out now” is the first punishing order. Then the work product of these asserted offenders—whether music, comedy shows, etc.—are often scrubbed, and recipients of political contributions are under pressure to give these sums to charity. In addition a wider arc of resignations by the heads and Boards of Directors, accused of lax monitoring is emerging.</p>
<p>The speed of punishment is unprecedented. One day millions of people watched Bill O’Reilly, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer and others. The next day they were vanished. Although this is only the tip of the iceberg—and there is more to come—the velocity of expulsions coming from these accusations—even when they are denied—is unprecedented. (A major exception, however, are the escapades of Donald Trump over the years.)</p>
<p>What do the expellers know that spurs them to make these instant decisions often to the detriment of their own economic interest, such as Fox, PBS, NBC or NPR evicting their four, lucrative star performers?</p>
<p>Could it be that the media was quick to report these abuses and that more was coming to produce even more damaging publicity to their brand? Could it be that they wanted to avoid their companies being stigmatized as a perilous or toxic workplace for future talent considering careers there? Were they trying to avoid potential lawsuits? Could it be that some of these executives wanted to get rid of the spotlight that might reach their own transgressions, even though they think they were of lesser seriousness?</p>
<p>To all of these the answer is probably, “partly.” But it is also important for the media outlets, political parties, and Hollywood studios to react in the most responsible manner: that is, when abuses come to light, they may not need to wait for due process; they should react in order to protect their employees, who could become victims, as well as their reputation and their sizeable audience/constituency. While many of these organizations waited far too long to remove abusers, as in the case of Michigan State University and the United States Olympic Committee, the act of removing serial predators from their powerful positions signals a degree of belated resolve and compassion, and is in line with their responsibility to protect their workplace.</p>
<p>So why is it that when corporations and financial institutions commit broad-scale crimes that endanger or take the lives of millions of people, they receive absolute impunity? Indeed, their executives are rewarded for their own chronic, dangerous lawlessness. When their numerous crimes or criminogenic actions come to light, why are these bosses not immediately removed from their positions, in the manner of the many powerful men who have fallen as the #MeToo movement gains momentum?</p>
<p>Who knows? Time will tell perhaps. What is known is that corporations get away with very serious crimes—deaths, lifetime injuries, massive assaults on the economic necessities of millions of innocent people, the sickening of children and loss of their lives, the poisoning of water, air, land, food, perilous workplaces—all while paying off the political system that would have exacted punishment—and without appropriate sanctions.</p>
<p>None of the bailed-out Wall Street bosses who crashed the economy in 2008-2009 were prosecuted. These repeat-offenders took 8 million jobs away from the American people with their crimes, deceptions, cover-ups and rampant speculation with the very pensions and mutual funds that had been entrusted to them by their clients. Some Wall Street predators retired with huge severance packages—worth many millions of dollars—while others stayed put and resumed their roles as people of influential status and approbation.</p>
<p>Look at George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who together initiated a criminal war of aggression that sent tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers to death, illness and permanent disability while destroying the lives of over a million Iraqis and leaving the country and its impoverished survivors devastated. They left public office in January 2009, above the laws they broke, and the Constitution they violated, to the accolades of Republicans and some Democrats. Lucrative speeches, book advances and other goodies flooded into their “retirements.”</p>
<p>People like Bill Clinton helped rehabilitate Mr. Bush with collaborative projects and joint appearances. The Bush Presidential library is thriving without mention of his and Mr. Cheney’s war crimes.</p>
<p>Over and over again, as reported in the&#160;Wall Street Journal, the&#160;New York Times, the&#160;Washington Post, and&#160;CBS’s Sixty Minutes, corporate crime, violence and fraud do not result in punishment. All too often the rewards and luxuries accorded to these powerful executives continue unabated.</p>
<p>Even when the Justice Department occasionally nails a big drug company for crimes costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars, “deferred prosecution agreements” let the bosses off and allow the companies themselves to get away with fines that appear large but are far less than the ill-gotten gains that finally caught the attention of the underfunded Department’s prosecutors.</p>
<p>In 2011 I filled a book titled&#160;Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism&#160;with dozens of documented corporate crimes that ultimately resulted in a little bad publicity, some fines and infrequent enforcement actions, but no real justice. But in all of the many egregious accounts detailed in&#160;Getting Steamed, did the business bosses lose their jobs, their retirement, even the esteem of their colleagues, as a result of their chronic predation? Very rarely.</p>
<p>With over 450,000 Americans dying every year from tobacco-related diseases and with documentation piling up on how these tobacco titans deliberately marketed cigarettes to youngsters to hook them for life, none of these company officials went to jail or were even personally fined. Remember the celebrated Congressional hearings when about a dozen tobacco executives, under oath, said they didn’t believe there was a connection between their heavily promoted products and disease? There was no prosecution for perjury then or later when it became abundantly clear these executives knew all about the health impacts from evidence inside the companies.</p>
<p>The same impunity and immunity attached to the asbestos and lead manufacturers whose bosses knew for decades of the lethal impacts on millions of their long suffering victims. So why the difference? The sexual harassment reactions came because the perpetrators had done demonstrable damage—to their victims, to the cultures of their workplaces, to productivity, and, of course, to the public relations of the organizations writ large. Weren’t the companies that brought about the recession or criminally destroyed lives also afraid of losing sales and talent if they didn’t rid themselves of the culpable perpetrators?</p>
<p>One difference may be that the evicted sexual assaulters did their deeds personally and directly, unlike the more remote corporate bosses or even middle management, their crimes more abstract within the enormity of the bureaucratic machines that they’ve rigged to avoid accountability. The other difference is that the public outrage was more personal and intense over the high-profile victims in the Hollywood episodes, which set the level of high media visibility. But what are the other factors at work?</p>
| 7,642 |
<p>If you’re one of <a href="http://www.outdoorfoundation.org/research.participation.2013.topline.html" type="external">142 million Americans</a> heading to the outdoors this year, there’s a good chance you’ll run into one of at least <a href="http://www.americanrivers.org/rivers/about/" type="external">250,000 rivers in the country</a>. Much of the nation’s 3.5 million miles of rivers and streams provide drinking water, electric power, and critical habitat for fish and wildlife throughout. If you were to connect all the rivers in the United States into one long cord, it would wrap around the entire country 175 times. But as a <a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/C967210C37CFFB6885257B3A004CFAF6" type="external">recent assessment</a> by the Environmental Protection Agency points out, we’ve done a pretty bad job of preserving the quality of these waters: In March, the EPA estimated that more than half of the nation’s waterways are in “poor condition for aquatic life.”</p>
<p>Back in the 1960s, after recognizing the toll that decades of damming, developing, and diverting had taken on America’s rivers, Congress passed the <a href="http://www.rivers.gov/wsr-act.php" type="external">Wild and Scenic Rivers Act</a> in 1968 to preserve rivers with “outstanding natural, cultural, and recreational values in a free-flowing condition.” Unfortunately, only a sliver of US rivers— <a href="http://www.americanrivers.org/endangered-rivers/2013/merced/" type="external">0.25 percent</a>—have earned federal protection since the act passed.</p>
<p>In the interactive map below, we highlight 21 rivers that, based on the conservation group American Rivers’ reports in 2012 and 2013, are under the most duress (or soon will be) from extended droughts, flooding, agriculture, or severe pollution from nearby industrial activity. Find out which rivers are endangered by hovering over them (in orange). Jump down to the list below to read about what’s threatening the rivers. For fun, we also mapped every river and stream recorded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was too beautiful not to.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Areas affected: Alabama</p>
<p>What’s going on? The mining company Drummond has proposed a 1,773-acre coal mine just 800 feet from a major drinking water intake on the river’s Mulberry Fork. Once in operation, the mine could introduce sediment and toxic pollution into the drinking water supply.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Black Warrior watershed is home to more than 1 million residents. The river shelters 127 freshwater fish species, 36 mussel species, and 15 turtles species, some of which are federally endangered or threatened.</p>
<p>Areas affected: North Carolina, South Carolina</p>
<p>What’s going on? Power plants in the Catawba watershed have dumped coal ash and scrubber residue into 551 acres of ponds, ultimately contaminating nearby groundwater and drinking water reservoirs with toxic waste.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? More than 1.5 million people in Charlotte, Gastonia, Hickory, and elsewhere depend on the Catawba for drinking water and power generation.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Georgia</p>
<p>What’s going on? Population growth and extreme droughts are making it tougher for Chattahoochee to keep up with demand. Two planned dams and reservoirs could reduce flows to its trout fishery and exacerbate water evaporation from reservoirs during droughts.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Chattahoochee provides water to more than 3.5 million people in metropolitan Atlanta. It’s used for irrigation, power, recreation, and boasts a fish and wildlife habitat. Trout Unlimited ranks it among America’s 100 best trout streams.</p>
<p>Areas affected: West Virginia</p>
<p>What’s going on? With 20 percent of the Coal’s watershed permitting mining, mountaintop removal mining and valley fills have buried and poisoned about 100 miles of Coal’s headwater streams. A proposal for a 5,000-acre project would involve leveling Coal River Mountain and dumping the soil into nearby streams.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Coal, prized for its fishing, kayaking, and canoeing, is on the National Register of Historic Places. It supports one of the world’s most diverse temperate forests, provides habitat for threatened species, and supplies drinking water for nearby communities.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming</p>
<p>What’s going on? More than 100 dams on the Colorado and its tributaries. Despite benefits like power and agriculture, overallocation and drought have put stress on its reservoirs and water storage. Although current water demand in the river’s basin exceeds what the Colorado can supply, plans for more dams and diversions are underway.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Colorado supplies drinking water to approximately 36 million people, supports tourism and recreation valued at $26 billion, and irrigates nearly 4 million acres of land, which is responsible for 15 percent of the nation’s crops.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Colorado</p>
<p>What’s going on? Plans for a new dam, two reservoirs, and a water diversion project threaten to degrade the Crystal and its surrounding habitat. It would flood the nearby Placita wetland, which is a breeding ground for waterfowl, amphibians, neotropical migratory birds.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Crystal provides drinking water to at least 7,000 people, supports ranchland irrigators, and is a favorite among fishermen, kayakers, and sightseers. Cutthroat trout, bald eagles, Lewis’s woodpeckers, and rare plant species like the orchid thrive here.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Georgia</p>
<p>What’s going on? Urbanization at the river’s headwaters, high demand, intensive agricultural water use, and frequent and prolonged droughts are all straining the Flint’s flow.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Flint River provides water for more than 1 million people throughout Georgia, 10,000 farms, and 300 miles of fishing, paddling, and other recreational activities. Severe low flows have already lowered nearby property values and recreational activity.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Ohio</p>
<p>What’s going on? Federally protected since 1974, the Grand boasts the best water quality in the Lake Erie Basin. Several natural gas companies have been buying up leases to develop Ohio’s shale gas deposits. Future fracking operations will exacerbate conditions on the river, where fracking wastewater from other states are already ending up.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Grand is the most biologically diverse river of its size in the Lake Erie area. It is home to wildlife such as the river otter, showshoe hare, wild turkey, and bald eagle, as well as the steelhead and smallmouth bass.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Wyoming, Utah, Colorado</p>
<p>What’s going on? Proposals to build a 500-mile long pipeline, if successful, could divert more than 250,000 acre feet of water from the Green River annually. This could restrict water for agricultural and municipal use in Colorado.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Green River is one of the most remote in the US. Several endangered or threatened species, including the Colorado pikeminnow, razorblack sucker, and bonytail and humpback chub thrive in the river. &#160;</p>
<p>Areas affected: Wyoming</p>
<p>What’s going on? The Houston-based energy company Plains Exploration and Production is seeking permission to frack near the headwaters of the Hoback. PXP plans to drill 136 wells from 17 well pads and build or upgrade 30 miles of roads, making the river vulnerable to toxic fracking fluids, sediment buildup in streams from construction, and displacement of wildlife.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Hoback is a popular destination for local residents, tourists, and trout fishermen, serving as an important habitat for elk, mule deer, moose, and other big game animals.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Kansas</p>
<p>What’s going on? Draining more than 53,000 square miles of commercial farmland, the Kansas suffers from fertilizer and animal waste pollution. Sand and gravel dredging on the river have widened and deepened the river channel, lowering the water level and cutting off access to water.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Kansas (or “Kaw”) provides water for irrigation, public drinking, municipal waste, and for cooling three coal-fired power plants. It is the state’s most popular recreational river, and home to 14 threatened or endangered fish species.</p>
<p>Areas affected:&#160; Minnesota&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? The Boundary Waters, which in the past have suffered from extensive mine exploration, are located two miles from the site of a proposed copper-nickel mine. If it gets built, the Boundary Waters will be at risk of toxic metal and chemical pollution from mine waste and will require active water treatment.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, covering 1.1 million acres, attracts as many as 250,000 visitors each year. It is home to wolves, lynx, moose, bears, loons, bald eages, and ospreys, and is a popular fishing destination. The US Forest Service estimates that the waters contribute about $100 million to the region’s economy. &#160;</p>
<p>Areas affected: Montana, Idaho, British Columbia&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Open-pit coal mining operations are expanding in the Kootenai region, making the waterways and its surrounding habitat vulnerable to selenium pollution, which is considered toxic even at low levels in water.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Kootenai is one of the country’s only remaining wild rivers, supporting rare native fish species like white sturgeon and bull trout, and wildlife including grizzly bears and woodland caribou.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Wisconsin&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Irrigation, municipal, and industrial wells are withdrawing groundwater that would otherwise flow into the Little Plover. Between the mid-1970s and 2006, the river lost more than half of its flow. The river, once a favorite for native brook trout fishing, is too shallow to support its fish populations.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Little Plover provides water to about 14,000 people, 5,500 acres of irrigated crops, a vegetable processing plant, and a paper mill. The agricultural products grown in the surrounding county are valued up to $145 million.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? More than 75 years of irrigation, dredging, and other techniques to control floods on the Missouri have transformed it into a series of massive reservoirs and a narrow channel along the lower river. Over time, flood damages have worsened and sediment flow through the river has slowed, posing a greater risk to its surrounding communities and wildlife habitats.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Missouri River Basin supports about 450 species of birds, fish, and mammals, including the endangered pallid sturgeon, interior least tern, and piping plover. Roughly a quarter of all US agricultural land is in the Missouri watershed, providing more than a third of the country’s wheat, flax, barley, and oats.</p>
<p>Areas affected: California&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Regulators are currently moving to raise the New Exchequer Dam by 10 feet, which would inundate at least one stretch of the Merced. This could harm native fish and reduce recreational opportunites along the river.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The lower portion of the Merced, which flows for 135 miles through Yosemite Valley, is home to 26 fish and 136 bird species, including the endangered White-Tailed Kite and Swainson’s Hawk, and the rare limestone salamander. &#160;</p>
<p>Areas affected: Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Dams and other flood-control structures built along the Missouri River are causing sediment buildup downstream on the Niobrara, at times flooding surrounding croplands and homes. As sediment continues to build up, the Lower Niobrara is gradually losing its seeps, springs, forests, and canyons.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Niobrara is home to rare species including the interior least tern and piping plover, as well as bald eagles, river otters, and pallid sturgeon. The area has also been home to the Ponca Sioux and Santee Sioux tribes.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Washington, DC&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Though no longer “a national disgrace” as Lyndon B. Johnson once said, the Potomac still suffers from agricultural pollution and runoff from nearby cities. Recent efforts in Congress to roll back provisions under the Clean Water Act, if they succeed, will make the Potomac much more vulnerable.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Potomac provides drinking water, habitat for fish, and recreational opportunities to at least 4 million people who trek to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historic Park each year.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Oregon&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Several mining companies are planning to explore and develop along the two creeks, which will open up the area to strip mining, road construction, and metal processing. The new mines could pollute the creeks with smelter waste and other toxins.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Rough &amp; Ready and Baldface have been considered some of the most pristine rivers in the country, a haven for hikers, wildflower enthusiasts, and salmon and steelhead fishing.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Texas&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Wasteful water use and unregulated irrigation are drying up the otherwise scenic and pristine San Saba and the surrounding Hill Country. The result? Some 50 miles of the river runs dry for an average five months each year.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The San Saba supplies water to nearby cities, livestock, and crop farms, and to Austin’s chain of lakes that flow out to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s home to burr oak and pecan trees, rare mussel varieties, and fish.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Washington&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? A public utility proposal to build a hydropower dam on the Skykomish’s south fork threatens to significantly diminish 2 out of 3 of its dramatic waterfalls, its water quality, and surrounding habitat.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Skykomish is one of Washington’s most popular rivers, providing whitewater recreation, angle fishing and hiking opportunities, wildlife habitat, and supports tourism in the nearby towns Skykomish and Index.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a type="external" href="">*</a>Correction: A previous version of this map showed two versions of the Green River.</p>
<p><a type="external" href="">**</a>Clarification: American Rivers contacted us to say that while the Hoback River was put on the endangered rivers list at the time of their report in 2012 due to the threat of industrial oil drilling, it’s since been taken off the list as the <a href="http://www.americanrivers.org/newsroom/blog/sbosse-20121005-victory-on-the-hoback.html" type="external">land in question was purchased</a> and the oil and gas leases are set to be retired.</p>
|
MAP: America’s 21 Most Vulnerable Rivers
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/americas-most-endangered-rivers/
|
2013-07-01
| 4left
|
MAP: America’s 21 Most Vulnerable Rivers
<p>If you’re one of <a href="http://www.outdoorfoundation.org/research.participation.2013.topline.html" type="external">142 million Americans</a> heading to the outdoors this year, there’s a good chance you’ll run into one of at least <a href="http://www.americanrivers.org/rivers/about/" type="external">250,000 rivers in the country</a>. Much of the nation’s 3.5 million miles of rivers and streams provide drinking water, electric power, and critical habitat for fish and wildlife throughout. If you were to connect all the rivers in the United States into one long cord, it would wrap around the entire country 175 times. But as a <a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/C967210C37CFFB6885257B3A004CFAF6" type="external">recent assessment</a> by the Environmental Protection Agency points out, we’ve done a pretty bad job of preserving the quality of these waters: In March, the EPA estimated that more than half of the nation’s waterways are in “poor condition for aquatic life.”</p>
<p>Back in the 1960s, after recognizing the toll that decades of damming, developing, and diverting had taken on America’s rivers, Congress passed the <a href="http://www.rivers.gov/wsr-act.php" type="external">Wild and Scenic Rivers Act</a> in 1968 to preserve rivers with “outstanding natural, cultural, and recreational values in a free-flowing condition.” Unfortunately, only a sliver of US rivers— <a href="http://www.americanrivers.org/endangered-rivers/2013/merced/" type="external">0.25 percent</a>—have earned federal protection since the act passed.</p>
<p>In the interactive map below, we highlight 21 rivers that, based on the conservation group American Rivers’ reports in 2012 and 2013, are under the most duress (or soon will be) from extended droughts, flooding, agriculture, or severe pollution from nearby industrial activity. Find out which rivers are endangered by hovering over them (in orange). Jump down to the list below to read about what’s threatening the rivers. For fun, we also mapped every river and stream recorded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was too beautiful not to.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Areas affected: Alabama</p>
<p>What’s going on? The mining company Drummond has proposed a 1,773-acre coal mine just 800 feet from a major drinking water intake on the river’s Mulberry Fork. Once in operation, the mine could introduce sediment and toxic pollution into the drinking water supply.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Black Warrior watershed is home to more than 1 million residents. The river shelters 127 freshwater fish species, 36 mussel species, and 15 turtles species, some of which are federally endangered or threatened.</p>
<p>Areas affected: North Carolina, South Carolina</p>
<p>What’s going on? Power plants in the Catawba watershed have dumped coal ash and scrubber residue into 551 acres of ponds, ultimately contaminating nearby groundwater and drinking water reservoirs with toxic waste.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? More than 1.5 million people in Charlotte, Gastonia, Hickory, and elsewhere depend on the Catawba for drinking water and power generation.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Georgia</p>
<p>What’s going on? Population growth and extreme droughts are making it tougher for Chattahoochee to keep up with demand. Two planned dams and reservoirs could reduce flows to its trout fishery and exacerbate water evaporation from reservoirs during droughts.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Chattahoochee provides water to more than 3.5 million people in metropolitan Atlanta. It’s used for irrigation, power, recreation, and boasts a fish and wildlife habitat. Trout Unlimited ranks it among America’s 100 best trout streams.</p>
<p>Areas affected: West Virginia</p>
<p>What’s going on? With 20 percent of the Coal’s watershed permitting mining, mountaintop removal mining and valley fills have buried and poisoned about 100 miles of Coal’s headwater streams. A proposal for a 5,000-acre project would involve leveling Coal River Mountain and dumping the soil into nearby streams.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Coal, prized for its fishing, kayaking, and canoeing, is on the National Register of Historic Places. It supports one of the world’s most diverse temperate forests, provides habitat for threatened species, and supplies drinking water for nearby communities.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming</p>
<p>What’s going on? More than 100 dams on the Colorado and its tributaries. Despite benefits like power and agriculture, overallocation and drought have put stress on its reservoirs and water storage. Although current water demand in the river’s basin exceeds what the Colorado can supply, plans for more dams and diversions are underway.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Colorado supplies drinking water to approximately 36 million people, supports tourism and recreation valued at $26 billion, and irrigates nearly 4 million acres of land, which is responsible for 15 percent of the nation’s crops.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Colorado</p>
<p>What’s going on? Plans for a new dam, two reservoirs, and a water diversion project threaten to degrade the Crystal and its surrounding habitat. It would flood the nearby Placita wetland, which is a breeding ground for waterfowl, amphibians, neotropical migratory birds.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Crystal provides drinking water to at least 7,000 people, supports ranchland irrigators, and is a favorite among fishermen, kayakers, and sightseers. Cutthroat trout, bald eagles, Lewis’s woodpeckers, and rare plant species like the orchid thrive here.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Georgia</p>
<p>What’s going on? Urbanization at the river’s headwaters, high demand, intensive agricultural water use, and frequent and prolonged droughts are all straining the Flint’s flow.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Flint River provides water for more than 1 million people throughout Georgia, 10,000 farms, and 300 miles of fishing, paddling, and other recreational activities. Severe low flows have already lowered nearby property values and recreational activity.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Ohio</p>
<p>What’s going on? Federally protected since 1974, the Grand boasts the best water quality in the Lake Erie Basin. Several natural gas companies have been buying up leases to develop Ohio’s shale gas deposits. Future fracking operations will exacerbate conditions on the river, where fracking wastewater from other states are already ending up.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Grand is the most biologically diverse river of its size in the Lake Erie area. It is home to wildlife such as the river otter, showshoe hare, wild turkey, and bald eagle, as well as the steelhead and smallmouth bass.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Wyoming, Utah, Colorado</p>
<p>What’s going on? Proposals to build a 500-mile long pipeline, if successful, could divert more than 250,000 acre feet of water from the Green River annually. This could restrict water for agricultural and municipal use in Colorado.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Green River is one of the most remote in the US. Several endangered or threatened species, including the Colorado pikeminnow, razorblack sucker, and bonytail and humpback chub thrive in the river. &#160;</p>
<p>Areas affected: Wyoming</p>
<p>What’s going on? The Houston-based energy company Plains Exploration and Production is seeking permission to frack near the headwaters of the Hoback. PXP plans to drill 136 wells from 17 well pads and build or upgrade 30 miles of roads, making the river vulnerable to toxic fracking fluids, sediment buildup in streams from construction, and displacement of wildlife.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Hoback is a popular destination for local residents, tourists, and trout fishermen, serving as an important habitat for elk, mule deer, moose, and other big game animals.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Kansas</p>
<p>What’s going on? Draining more than 53,000 square miles of commercial farmland, the Kansas suffers from fertilizer and animal waste pollution. Sand and gravel dredging on the river have widened and deepened the river channel, lowering the water level and cutting off access to water.</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Kansas (or “Kaw”) provides water for irrigation, public drinking, municipal waste, and for cooling three coal-fired power plants. It is the state’s most popular recreational river, and home to 14 threatened or endangered fish species.</p>
<p>Areas affected:&#160; Minnesota&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? The Boundary Waters, which in the past have suffered from extensive mine exploration, are located two miles from the site of a proposed copper-nickel mine. If it gets built, the Boundary Waters will be at risk of toxic metal and chemical pollution from mine waste and will require active water treatment.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, covering 1.1 million acres, attracts as many as 250,000 visitors each year. It is home to wolves, lynx, moose, bears, loons, bald eages, and ospreys, and is a popular fishing destination. The US Forest Service estimates that the waters contribute about $100 million to the region’s economy. &#160;</p>
<p>Areas affected: Montana, Idaho, British Columbia&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Open-pit coal mining operations are expanding in the Kootenai region, making the waterways and its surrounding habitat vulnerable to selenium pollution, which is considered toxic even at low levels in water.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Kootenai is one of the country’s only remaining wild rivers, supporting rare native fish species like white sturgeon and bull trout, and wildlife including grizzly bears and woodland caribou.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Wisconsin&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Irrigation, municipal, and industrial wells are withdrawing groundwater that would otherwise flow into the Little Plover. Between the mid-1970s and 2006, the river lost more than half of its flow. The river, once a favorite for native brook trout fishing, is too shallow to support its fish populations.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Little Plover provides water to about 14,000 people, 5,500 acres of irrigated crops, a vegetable processing plant, and a paper mill. The agricultural products grown in the surrounding county are valued up to $145 million.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? More than 75 years of irrigation, dredging, and other techniques to control floods on the Missouri have transformed it into a series of massive reservoirs and a narrow channel along the lower river. Over time, flood damages have worsened and sediment flow through the river has slowed, posing a greater risk to its surrounding communities and wildlife habitats.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Missouri River Basin supports about 450 species of birds, fish, and mammals, including the endangered pallid sturgeon, interior least tern, and piping plover. Roughly a quarter of all US agricultural land is in the Missouri watershed, providing more than a third of the country’s wheat, flax, barley, and oats.</p>
<p>Areas affected: California&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Regulators are currently moving to raise the New Exchequer Dam by 10 feet, which would inundate at least one stretch of the Merced. This could harm native fish and reduce recreational opportunites along the river.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The lower portion of the Merced, which flows for 135 miles through Yosemite Valley, is home to 26 fish and 136 bird species, including the endangered White-Tailed Kite and Swainson’s Hawk, and the rare limestone salamander. &#160;</p>
<p>Areas affected: Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Dams and other flood-control structures built along the Missouri River are causing sediment buildup downstream on the Niobrara, at times flooding surrounding croplands and homes. As sediment continues to build up, the Lower Niobrara is gradually losing its seeps, springs, forests, and canyons.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Niobrara is home to rare species including the interior least tern and piping plover, as well as bald eagles, river otters, and pallid sturgeon. The area has also been home to the Ponca Sioux and Santee Sioux tribes.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Washington, DC&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Though no longer “a national disgrace” as Lyndon B. Johnson once said, the Potomac still suffers from agricultural pollution and runoff from nearby cities. Recent efforts in Congress to roll back provisions under the Clean Water Act, if they succeed, will make the Potomac much more vulnerable.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Potomac provides drinking water, habitat for fish, and recreational opportunities to at least 4 million people who trek to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historic Park each year.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Oregon&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Several mining companies are planning to explore and develop along the two creeks, which will open up the area to strip mining, road construction, and metal processing. The new mines could pollute the creeks with smelter waste and other toxins.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Rough &amp; Ready and Baldface have been considered some of the most pristine rivers in the country, a haven for hikers, wildflower enthusiasts, and salmon and steelhead fishing.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Texas&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? Wasteful water use and unregulated irrigation are drying up the otherwise scenic and pristine San Saba and the surrounding Hill Country. The result? Some 50 miles of the river runs dry for an average five months each year.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The San Saba supplies water to nearby cities, livestock, and crop farms, and to Austin’s chain of lakes that flow out to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s home to burr oak and pecan trees, rare mussel varieties, and fish.</p>
<p>Areas affected: Washington&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s going on? A public utility proposal to build a hydropower dam on the Skykomish’s south fork threatens to significantly diminish 2 out of 3 of its dramatic waterfalls, its water quality, and surrounding habitat.&#160;&#160; &#160;</p>
<p>What’s at risk? The Skykomish is one of Washington’s most popular rivers, providing whitewater recreation, angle fishing and hiking opportunities, wildlife habitat, and supports tourism in the nearby towns Skykomish and Index.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a type="external" href="">*</a>Correction: A previous version of this map showed two versions of the Green River.</p>
<p><a type="external" href="">**</a>Clarification: American Rivers contacted us to say that while the Hoback River was put on the endangered rivers list at the time of their report in 2012 due to the threat of industrial oil drilling, it’s since been taken off the list as the <a href="http://www.americanrivers.org/newsroom/blog/sbosse-20121005-victory-on-the-hoback.html" type="external">land in question was purchased</a> and the oil and gas leases are set to be retired.</p>
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<p>The duchy of Cornwall gave the prince an income of £18m last year, but says it is not subject to paying corporation tax</p>
<p>Robert Booth <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/dec/14/prince-charles-estate-tax-avoidance" type="external">Guardian</a></p>
<p>HM Revenue &amp; Customs has been asked to investigate alleged&#160;tax avoidance&#160;by&#160;Prince Charles’s £700m hereditary estate.</p>
<p>The duchy of Cornwall last year&#160; <a href="https://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/sites/default/files/annual-review/Annual%20Review%202012.pdf" type="external">provided Charles</a>&#160;with an income of £18m and&#160; <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/hmrc" type="external">HMRC</a>‘s anti-avoidance group is now being asked to examine its non-payment of corporation tax following a potentially significant court ruling on its legal status.</p>
<p>The issue has been raised by an accountant investigating the tax affairs of the duchy – an agricultural, commercial and residential landowner.</p>
<p>He has analysed the impact of a judicial ruling handed down last year. Anti-monarchy campaigners claim it shows the duchy is running “a well-entrenched tax avoidance scheme”.</p>
<p>The duchy&#160; <a href="http://www.duchyofcornwall.org/annual-report-11-12.pdf" type="external">insists</a>&#160;it “is not subject to corporation tax as it is not a separate legal entity for tax purposes”. But John Angel, principal judge at the information rights tribunal, ruled last December it was a separate legal body to the prince.</p>
<p>Accountants now believe the ruling could leave the duchy exposed to the 24% levy on profits other organisations must pay. Any change to its tax status could result in a cut to the prince’s income.</p>
<p>Republic, the campaign for an elected head of state, has asked HMRC’s anti-avoidance team to investigate whether the ruling means the duchy is now “using a highly questionable interpretation of its legal status as a means of avoiding corporation tax obligations”.</p>
<p>A spokesman for HMRC said it would evaluate the information and “take appropriate action”. There is no suggestion any law has been breached. Clarence House strongly denies claims of avoidance.</p>
<p>The move comes as the House of Commons public accounts committee, which earlier this month&#160; <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmpubacc/716/71603.htm" type="external">criticised Starbucks, Google and Amazon</a>&#160;for their “immoral” decisions to avoid paying more corporation tax, prepares to hold a hearing next year into the royal finances. As well as duchy income, last year Charles received £2.2m in grants from the taxpayer to pay for his travel by private jet, helicopter and train and the upkeep of Clarence House.</p>
<p>He voluntarily paid tax of £5m on his £18m income from the duchy last year, which Clarence House said was at the full 50% rate after deductions from expenses.</p>
<p>The duchy owns 53,000 hectares of land in 23 counties, including Prince Charles’s Gloucestershire home of Highgrove. It has provided incomes to successive Princes of Wales since the 14th century. The assertion that the estate is inseparable from Charles has allowed him to use its gross profits to fund private and official spending including 26 valets, gardeners and farm staff. In the past five years he has received more than £86m from the arrangement.</p>
<p>But&#160; <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/03/prince-charles-duchy-environment" type="external">when Angel was tasked with deciding if the duchy should publish information about its environmental impact, he ruled</a>&#160;it must be considered a separate legal body to the prince because of “the differentiation of the duchy and duke in commercial and tax matters as well as under legislation and the contractual behaviour of the duchy”.</p>
<p>The judge said: “We find that the duchy is now a body or other legal person.”</p>
<p>Independent accountants and a firm of tax lawyers consulted by the Guardian over the claims confirmed the ruling had the potential to undermine the prince’s tax arrangements, but said it was not clear-cut.</p>
<p>“There appears to be no legal basis on which the duchy is not taxed and there is no legal basis for the arrangement under which Prince Charles pays tax on an ad hoc basis of his own making,” said Richard Murphy, who runs Tax Research LLP, and has examined the duchy’s arrangements. “We have a token PR gesture from Prince Charles, not unlike Starbucks’ arrangement [to pay voluntary corporation tax].”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/dec/14/prince-charles-estate-tax-avoidance" type="external">Read more</a></p>
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New Legal Issue: Prince Charles’s £700m Estate Accused of Tax Avoidance
| true |
http://21stcenturywire.com/2012/12/17/new-legal-issue-prince-charless-700m-estate-accused-of-tax-avoidance/?fb_source%3Dpubv1
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2012-12-17
| 4left
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New Legal Issue: Prince Charles’s £700m Estate Accused of Tax Avoidance
<p>The duchy of Cornwall gave the prince an income of £18m last year, but says it is not subject to paying corporation tax</p>
<p>Robert Booth <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/dec/14/prince-charles-estate-tax-avoidance" type="external">Guardian</a></p>
<p>HM Revenue &amp; Customs has been asked to investigate alleged&#160;tax avoidance&#160;by&#160;Prince Charles’s £700m hereditary estate.</p>
<p>The duchy of Cornwall last year&#160; <a href="https://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/sites/default/files/annual-review/Annual%20Review%202012.pdf" type="external">provided Charles</a>&#160;with an income of £18m and&#160; <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/hmrc" type="external">HMRC</a>‘s anti-avoidance group is now being asked to examine its non-payment of corporation tax following a potentially significant court ruling on its legal status.</p>
<p>The issue has been raised by an accountant investigating the tax affairs of the duchy – an agricultural, commercial and residential landowner.</p>
<p>He has analysed the impact of a judicial ruling handed down last year. Anti-monarchy campaigners claim it shows the duchy is running “a well-entrenched tax avoidance scheme”.</p>
<p>The duchy&#160; <a href="http://www.duchyofcornwall.org/annual-report-11-12.pdf" type="external">insists</a>&#160;it “is not subject to corporation tax as it is not a separate legal entity for tax purposes”. But John Angel, principal judge at the information rights tribunal, ruled last December it was a separate legal body to the prince.</p>
<p>Accountants now believe the ruling could leave the duchy exposed to the 24% levy on profits other organisations must pay. Any change to its tax status could result in a cut to the prince’s income.</p>
<p>Republic, the campaign for an elected head of state, has asked HMRC’s anti-avoidance team to investigate whether the ruling means the duchy is now “using a highly questionable interpretation of its legal status as a means of avoiding corporation tax obligations”.</p>
<p>A spokesman for HMRC said it would evaluate the information and “take appropriate action”. There is no suggestion any law has been breached. Clarence House strongly denies claims of avoidance.</p>
<p>The move comes as the House of Commons public accounts committee, which earlier this month&#160; <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmpubacc/716/71603.htm" type="external">criticised Starbucks, Google and Amazon</a>&#160;for their “immoral” decisions to avoid paying more corporation tax, prepares to hold a hearing next year into the royal finances. As well as duchy income, last year Charles received £2.2m in grants from the taxpayer to pay for his travel by private jet, helicopter and train and the upkeep of Clarence House.</p>
<p>He voluntarily paid tax of £5m on his £18m income from the duchy last year, which Clarence House said was at the full 50% rate after deductions from expenses.</p>
<p>The duchy owns 53,000 hectares of land in 23 counties, including Prince Charles’s Gloucestershire home of Highgrove. It has provided incomes to successive Princes of Wales since the 14th century. The assertion that the estate is inseparable from Charles has allowed him to use its gross profits to fund private and official spending including 26 valets, gardeners and farm staff. In the past five years he has received more than £86m from the arrangement.</p>
<p>But&#160; <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/03/prince-charles-duchy-environment" type="external">when Angel was tasked with deciding if the duchy should publish information about its environmental impact, he ruled</a>&#160;it must be considered a separate legal body to the prince because of “the differentiation of the duchy and duke in commercial and tax matters as well as under legislation and the contractual behaviour of the duchy”.</p>
<p>The judge said: “We find that the duchy is now a body or other legal person.”</p>
<p>Independent accountants and a firm of tax lawyers consulted by the Guardian over the claims confirmed the ruling had the potential to undermine the prince’s tax arrangements, but said it was not clear-cut.</p>
<p>“There appears to be no legal basis on which the duchy is not taxed and there is no legal basis for the arrangement under which Prince Charles pays tax on an ad hoc basis of his own making,” said Richard Murphy, who runs Tax Research LLP, and has examined the duchy’s arrangements. “We have a token PR gesture from Prince Charles, not unlike Starbucks’ arrangement [to pay voluntary corporation tax].”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/dec/14/prince-charles-estate-tax-avoidance" type="external">Read more</a></p>
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<p>The Wisconsin State Assembly will vote Thursday on a $3 billion tax-incentive package for Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group to build a display-panel plant that Gov. Scott Walker says will bring thousands of jobs to the state.</p>
<p>The vote, expected Thursday evening, could allow the bill to proceed to the state Senate. The deal is largely expected to pass in both houses of the Republican-controlled legislature, although how much bipartisan support it will receive remains unclear. Mr. Walker, a Republican, said he believes the bill will pass before Labor Day.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Foxconn, best known for assembling Apple Inc. iPhones in China, is planning to build a $10 billion, 20 million square-foot campus that will primarily produce high-resolution liquid-crystal displays used in smartphones and car dashboards in addition to TVs. The deal was announced last month at a White House ceremony as part of President Donald Trump's efforts to revive the U.S. manufacturing industry.</p>
<p>Mr. Walker has touted the benefits of the plant, including claims that it would hire 3,000 people initially and up to 13,000 workers eventually. Tens of thousands of other jobs would be created indirectly, according to reports from consulting firms hired by the state and Foxconn.</p>
<p>Mr. Walker has also argued the deal would be transformational for the state's economy, attracting an influx of investment and talent.</p>
<p>But a state fiscal analysis found that taxpayers would not recoup their investment in the 15-year tax-credit deal until the 2042-2043 fiscal year. The hefty tax bill has led some lawmakers to question whether the deal as it's currently structured makes sense. Others have also raised concerns about an easing of some environmental requirements for Foxconn.</p>
<p>Rep. Peter Barca, the Assembly minority leader, said at Thursday's session that, "We can restructure this deal so by the time we've paid out over 15 years, the taxpayers would have been made whole. It's not that hard to do."</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The state Senate hasn't given a firm date for when it will take up the bill, but the majority leader expects the bill to pass before a Sept. 30 deadline.</p>
<p>Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is the world's foremost contract manufacturer and one of China's largest exporters, making products for a range of companies, including Apple.</p>
<p>With this investment, Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou is betting the U.S. can re-create the supply chain that moved to China and other lower-cost Asian countries in recent decades.</p>
<p>This wouldn't be Mr. Gou's first attempt at opening a U.S. display factory. In 2014, the firm explored a potential $40 million investment in manufacturing and research facilities in Pennsylvania that didn't advance because local governments didn't offer terms that were favorable enough.</p>
<p>Write to Shayndi Raice at [email protected]</p>
<p>Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group got one step closer Thursday to setting up shop in Wisconsin.</p>
<p>The Wisconsin state assembly voted to approve a $3 billion tax-incentive package for the Taiwanese firm to build a display-panel plant that Gov. Scott Walker says will bring thousands of jobs to the state.</p>
<p>The vote, which gained bipartisan support, allows the bill to proceed to the Wisconsin state senate.</p>
<p>Mr. Walker said the vote was "the next big step in bringing a high-tech ecosystem to Wisconsin."</p>
<p>Foxconn, best known for assembling Apple Inc. iPhones in China, is planning to build a $10 billion, 20 million square-foot campus that will primarily produce high-resolution liquid-crystal displays used in smartphones and car dashboards in addition to TVs. The deal was announced last month at a White House ceremony as part of President Donald Trump's efforts to revive the U.S. manufacturing industry.</p>
<p>Mr. Walker has touted the benefits of the plant, including claims that it would hire 3,000 people initially and up to 13,000 workers eventually. Tens of thousands of other jobs would be created indirectly, according to reports from consulting firms hired by the state and Foxconn.</p>
<p>Mr. Walker has also argued the deal would be transformational for the state's economy, attracting an influx of investment and talent.</p>
<p>But a state fiscal analysis found that taxpayers wouldn't recoup their investment in the 15-year tax-credit deal until the 2042-2043 fiscal year. The hefty tax bill has led some lawmakers to question whether the deal as it is currently structured makes sense. Others have also raised concerns about an easing of some environmental requirements for Foxconn.</p>
<p>Speaking on the assembly floor earlier in the day, Rep. Gary Hebl, a Democrat who represents Sun Prairie, said "I don't want to gamble with the taxpayers money and if I'm going to break even in 25 years, that's a horrible gamble. I'm better off putting my money in a mattress." He voted against the bill.</p>
<p>The state Senate hasn't given a firm date for when it will take up the bill, but the majority leader expects the bill to pass before a Sept. 30 deadline.</p>
<p>Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is the world's foremost contract manufacturer and one of China's largest exporters, making products for a range of companies, including Apple.</p>
<p>With this investment, Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou is betting the U.S. can re-create the supply chain that moved to China and other lower-cost Asian countries in recent decades.</p>
<p>This wouldn't be Mr. Gou's first attempt at opening a U.S. display factory. In 2014, the firm explored a potential $40 million investment in manufacturing and research facilities in Pennsylvania that didn't advance because local governments didn't offer terms that were favorable enough.</p>
<p>Write to Shayndi Raice at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 17, 2017 21:01 ET (01:01 GMT)</p>
|
Wisconsin Assembly Expected to Approve $3 Billion Tax Package for Foxconn
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/17/wisconsin-assembly-expected-to-approve-3-billion-tax-package-for-foxconn.html
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2017-08-17
| 0right
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Wisconsin Assembly Expected to Approve $3 Billion Tax Package for Foxconn
<p>The Wisconsin State Assembly will vote Thursday on a $3 billion tax-incentive package for Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group to build a display-panel plant that Gov. Scott Walker says will bring thousands of jobs to the state.</p>
<p>The vote, expected Thursday evening, could allow the bill to proceed to the state Senate. The deal is largely expected to pass in both houses of the Republican-controlled legislature, although how much bipartisan support it will receive remains unclear. Mr. Walker, a Republican, said he believes the bill will pass before Labor Day.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Foxconn, best known for assembling Apple Inc. iPhones in China, is planning to build a $10 billion, 20 million square-foot campus that will primarily produce high-resolution liquid-crystal displays used in smartphones and car dashboards in addition to TVs. The deal was announced last month at a White House ceremony as part of President Donald Trump's efforts to revive the U.S. manufacturing industry.</p>
<p>Mr. Walker has touted the benefits of the plant, including claims that it would hire 3,000 people initially and up to 13,000 workers eventually. Tens of thousands of other jobs would be created indirectly, according to reports from consulting firms hired by the state and Foxconn.</p>
<p>Mr. Walker has also argued the deal would be transformational for the state's economy, attracting an influx of investment and talent.</p>
<p>But a state fiscal analysis found that taxpayers would not recoup their investment in the 15-year tax-credit deal until the 2042-2043 fiscal year. The hefty tax bill has led some lawmakers to question whether the deal as it's currently structured makes sense. Others have also raised concerns about an easing of some environmental requirements for Foxconn.</p>
<p>Rep. Peter Barca, the Assembly minority leader, said at Thursday's session that, "We can restructure this deal so by the time we've paid out over 15 years, the taxpayers would have been made whole. It's not that hard to do."</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The state Senate hasn't given a firm date for when it will take up the bill, but the majority leader expects the bill to pass before a Sept. 30 deadline.</p>
<p>Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is the world's foremost contract manufacturer and one of China's largest exporters, making products for a range of companies, including Apple.</p>
<p>With this investment, Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou is betting the U.S. can re-create the supply chain that moved to China and other lower-cost Asian countries in recent decades.</p>
<p>This wouldn't be Mr. Gou's first attempt at opening a U.S. display factory. In 2014, the firm explored a potential $40 million investment in manufacturing and research facilities in Pennsylvania that didn't advance because local governments didn't offer terms that were favorable enough.</p>
<p>Write to Shayndi Raice at [email protected]</p>
<p>Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group got one step closer Thursday to setting up shop in Wisconsin.</p>
<p>The Wisconsin state assembly voted to approve a $3 billion tax-incentive package for the Taiwanese firm to build a display-panel plant that Gov. Scott Walker says will bring thousands of jobs to the state.</p>
<p>The vote, which gained bipartisan support, allows the bill to proceed to the Wisconsin state senate.</p>
<p>Mr. Walker said the vote was "the next big step in bringing a high-tech ecosystem to Wisconsin."</p>
<p>Foxconn, best known for assembling Apple Inc. iPhones in China, is planning to build a $10 billion, 20 million square-foot campus that will primarily produce high-resolution liquid-crystal displays used in smartphones and car dashboards in addition to TVs. The deal was announced last month at a White House ceremony as part of President Donald Trump's efforts to revive the U.S. manufacturing industry.</p>
<p>Mr. Walker has touted the benefits of the plant, including claims that it would hire 3,000 people initially and up to 13,000 workers eventually. Tens of thousands of other jobs would be created indirectly, according to reports from consulting firms hired by the state and Foxconn.</p>
<p>Mr. Walker has also argued the deal would be transformational for the state's economy, attracting an influx of investment and talent.</p>
<p>But a state fiscal analysis found that taxpayers wouldn't recoup their investment in the 15-year tax-credit deal until the 2042-2043 fiscal year. The hefty tax bill has led some lawmakers to question whether the deal as it is currently structured makes sense. Others have also raised concerns about an easing of some environmental requirements for Foxconn.</p>
<p>Speaking on the assembly floor earlier in the day, Rep. Gary Hebl, a Democrat who represents Sun Prairie, said "I don't want to gamble with the taxpayers money and if I'm going to break even in 25 years, that's a horrible gamble. I'm better off putting my money in a mattress." He voted against the bill.</p>
<p>The state Senate hasn't given a firm date for when it will take up the bill, but the majority leader expects the bill to pass before a Sept. 30 deadline.</p>
<p>Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is the world's foremost contract manufacturer and one of China's largest exporters, making products for a range of companies, including Apple.</p>
<p>With this investment, Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou is betting the U.S. can re-create the supply chain that moved to China and other lower-cost Asian countries in recent decades.</p>
<p>This wouldn't be Mr. Gou's first attempt at opening a U.S. display factory. In 2014, the firm explored a potential $40 million investment in manufacturing and research facilities in Pennsylvania that didn't advance because local governments didn't offer terms that were favorable enough.</p>
<p>Write to Shayndi Raice at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 17, 2017 21:01 ET (01:01 GMT)</p>
| 7,645 |
<p><a href="" type="internal">Friday’s jobs report</a> was immediately heralded as a strong rebound from months of weak employment growth. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/us-added-163000-jobs-in-july-unemployment-rate-ticks-up-to-83-percent/2012/08/03/ee10172a-dd68-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html" type="external">With the jobless rate at 8.3 percent,</a> barely changed from 8.2 percent last month, financial markets, ever fickle and always flighty, staged a relief rally after a week of disappointments that the central banks of the world were not swooping in cavalry-like to the rescue. Yet what is most striking about this report is how truly static the job picture in the United States is overall and how that stasis masks the American economic system’s continued, relentless transformation—which has been going on for years.</p>
<p>One way of looking at these reports is to say that as blah as they’ve been, they show employment growth every month, which is not enough to bring down the unemployment rate but is enough to justify the idea that we are in the midst of what my colleague <a href="" type="internal">Dan Gross calls a “conservative recovery.”</a> Another way, and we will surely hear this from Mitt Romney and a host of Republicans in the coming weeks, is that we are in the midst of a “non-recovery” that is in imminent danger of slipping back into recession and may already have.</p>
<p>What you will not hear during the campaign season is that we are in the middle of a generational shift that was dramatically exposed by the financial crisis of 2008-09 but which was not caused by it. As anyone who looks at wage figures knows, the wages of “average” Americans ceased growing sometime in the mid-1980s. Of course, averages always lie, in that you can find many millions who thrived during these decades and many millions whose standards of living decreased appreciably. Wage numbers also say little about the cost of goods and their quality; a car or refrigerator today is loaded with electronics—ice makers, satellite radio—that make them more efficient and elaborate. TVs and many home goods cost much less. Even so, it’s unequivocal that system-wide, the U.S. economy stopped being an engine of wage growth for many in the middle class 30 years ago.</p>
<p>As these jobs reports make clear, however, even there it isn’t so simple—and that very lack of simplicity is why we aren’t taking about it in the election silly season or in most forums that demand sound bites. For the college-educated, wage growth has been decent and unemployment not a major problem. College-educated people have an unemployment rate nationally of 4.1 percent, and between 1989 and 2010, those with a college degree saw wage growth of nearly 20 percent. So, for the past 30 years, those who don’t have a college degree have fallen further and further behind those who do. What happened in 2008-09 is that people could no longer use cheap credit and loads of debt to close the gap between the standard of living they needed and wanted, and the income they were earning. That was compounded by the dual forces of globalization of manufacturing and technology, both of which put downward pressure on wages and on the number of jobs in heavy industry. The final nail was the collapse of construction jobs once the housing bubble imploded.</p>
<p>That story emerges powerfully from the reams of data embedded in these jobs reports each month but not from the unemployment rate or from the number of jobs added or subtracted from payrolls. The financial crisis created sharp dislocations that accelerated those trends, and since 2011 the economy has stabilized and employment has settled into a static groove with very modest job growth, save for health-care services and a slight rebound in domestic manufacturing. The rebirth of American manufacturing has been touted, but even there, it is more a case of output rebounding rather than employment. Technology and robotics mean the same factory that once employed 5,000 may employ no more than 500 today and produce twice as much, twice as fast.</p>
<p>Our political system and the media maw’s need for news are ill-suited to multiyear changes with multiyear solutions. Few societies possess that long-term approach, though one could argue that China, with its communist legacy of five-year plans, does think ahead; we will see whether it can implement that thinking in the coming years. The United States could use a grand vision of the coming years that starts with an embrace of the structural changes under way and then considers a range of policies to address global competitiveness: education, vocational training, a realistic level of sustainable growth, and spending in sync with that. Given current realities, that feels like a pipe dream, which leaves us with the hope and the prayer that the magical messiness of American society, with its <a href="" type="internal">churning drives and unrealistic dreams</a>—the very pursuit of which propels us forward—will somehow carry us through to the next era of prosperity. That has worked in the past. Even the New Deal was only a retrospective success because of the unexpected and wrenching economic benefits of a tragic world war. We can pray it works in the future, but that is a thin reed on which to rest our collective fate.</p>
|
Jobs Report Hides Real Change in U.S. Economy
| true |
https://thedailybeast.com/jobs-report-hides-real-change-in-us-economy
|
2018-10-05
| 4left
|
Jobs Report Hides Real Change in U.S. Economy
<p><a href="" type="internal">Friday’s jobs report</a> was immediately heralded as a strong rebound from months of weak employment growth. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/us-added-163000-jobs-in-july-unemployment-rate-ticks-up-to-83-percent/2012/08/03/ee10172a-dd68-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html" type="external">With the jobless rate at 8.3 percent,</a> barely changed from 8.2 percent last month, financial markets, ever fickle and always flighty, staged a relief rally after a week of disappointments that the central banks of the world were not swooping in cavalry-like to the rescue. Yet what is most striking about this report is how truly static the job picture in the United States is overall and how that stasis masks the American economic system’s continued, relentless transformation—which has been going on for years.</p>
<p>One way of looking at these reports is to say that as blah as they’ve been, they show employment growth every month, which is not enough to bring down the unemployment rate but is enough to justify the idea that we are in the midst of what my colleague <a href="" type="internal">Dan Gross calls a “conservative recovery.”</a> Another way, and we will surely hear this from Mitt Romney and a host of Republicans in the coming weeks, is that we are in the midst of a “non-recovery” that is in imminent danger of slipping back into recession and may already have.</p>
<p>What you will not hear during the campaign season is that we are in the middle of a generational shift that was dramatically exposed by the financial crisis of 2008-09 but which was not caused by it. As anyone who looks at wage figures knows, the wages of “average” Americans ceased growing sometime in the mid-1980s. Of course, averages always lie, in that you can find many millions who thrived during these decades and many millions whose standards of living decreased appreciably. Wage numbers also say little about the cost of goods and their quality; a car or refrigerator today is loaded with electronics—ice makers, satellite radio—that make them more efficient and elaborate. TVs and many home goods cost much less. Even so, it’s unequivocal that system-wide, the U.S. economy stopped being an engine of wage growth for many in the middle class 30 years ago.</p>
<p>As these jobs reports make clear, however, even there it isn’t so simple—and that very lack of simplicity is why we aren’t taking about it in the election silly season or in most forums that demand sound bites. For the college-educated, wage growth has been decent and unemployment not a major problem. College-educated people have an unemployment rate nationally of 4.1 percent, and between 1989 and 2010, those with a college degree saw wage growth of nearly 20 percent. So, for the past 30 years, those who don’t have a college degree have fallen further and further behind those who do. What happened in 2008-09 is that people could no longer use cheap credit and loads of debt to close the gap between the standard of living they needed and wanted, and the income they were earning. That was compounded by the dual forces of globalization of manufacturing and technology, both of which put downward pressure on wages and on the number of jobs in heavy industry. The final nail was the collapse of construction jobs once the housing bubble imploded.</p>
<p>That story emerges powerfully from the reams of data embedded in these jobs reports each month but not from the unemployment rate or from the number of jobs added or subtracted from payrolls. The financial crisis created sharp dislocations that accelerated those trends, and since 2011 the economy has stabilized and employment has settled into a static groove with very modest job growth, save for health-care services and a slight rebound in domestic manufacturing. The rebirth of American manufacturing has been touted, but even there, it is more a case of output rebounding rather than employment. Technology and robotics mean the same factory that once employed 5,000 may employ no more than 500 today and produce twice as much, twice as fast.</p>
<p>Our political system and the media maw’s need for news are ill-suited to multiyear changes with multiyear solutions. Few societies possess that long-term approach, though one could argue that China, with its communist legacy of five-year plans, does think ahead; we will see whether it can implement that thinking in the coming years. The United States could use a grand vision of the coming years that starts with an embrace of the structural changes under way and then considers a range of policies to address global competitiveness: education, vocational training, a realistic level of sustainable growth, and spending in sync with that. Given current realities, that feels like a pipe dream, which leaves us with the hope and the prayer that the magical messiness of American society, with its <a href="" type="internal">churning drives and unrealistic dreams</a>—the very pursuit of which propels us forward—will somehow carry us through to the next era of prosperity. That has worked in the past. Even the New Deal was only a retrospective success because of the unexpected and wrenching economic benefits of a tragic world war. We can pray it works in the future, but that is a thin reed on which to rest our collective fate.</p>
| 7,646 |
<p>Douglas 43, Wheatland 34</p>
<p>Gering, Neb. 81, Newcastle 48</p>
<p>Kaycee 64, Burns 39</p>
<p>Lingle-Fort Laramie 48, Guernsey-Sunrise 44</p>
<p>Midwest 67, Normative Services 40</p>
<p>Mountain View 67, Lyman 46</p>
<p>Rawlins 43, Star Valley 27</p>
<p>Saratoga 62, Hanna-Elk Mountain 33</p>
<p>Douglas 43, Wheatland 34</p>
<p>Gering, Neb. 81, Newcastle 48</p>
<p>Kaycee 64, Burns 39</p>
<p>Lingle-Fort Laramie 48, Guernsey-Sunrise 44</p>
<p>Midwest 67, Normative Services 40</p>
<p>Mountain View 67, Lyman 46</p>
<p>Rawlins 43, Star Valley 27</p>
<p>Saratoga 62, Hanna-Elk Mountain 33</p>
|
Saturday's Scores
| false |
https://apnews.com/18bfc1220e184257ae13950021941cb5
|
2018-01-07
| 2least
|
Saturday's Scores
<p>Douglas 43, Wheatland 34</p>
<p>Gering, Neb. 81, Newcastle 48</p>
<p>Kaycee 64, Burns 39</p>
<p>Lingle-Fort Laramie 48, Guernsey-Sunrise 44</p>
<p>Midwest 67, Normative Services 40</p>
<p>Mountain View 67, Lyman 46</p>
<p>Rawlins 43, Star Valley 27</p>
<p>Saratoga 62, Hanna-Elk Mountain 33</p>
<p>Douglas 43, Wheatland 34</p>
<p>Gering, Neb. 81, Newcastle 48</p>
<p>Kaycee 64, Burns 39</p>
<p>Lingle-Fort Laramie 48, Guernsey-Sunrise 44</p>
<p>Midwest 67, Normative Services 40</p>
<p>Mountain View 67, Lyman 46</p>
<p>Rawlins 43, Star Valley 27</p>
<p>Saratoga 62, Hanna-Elk Mountain 33</p>
| 7,647 |
<p>It’s difficult to imagine even having these discussions but these are not normal times. &#160;The topic is launching a nuclear strike and Donald Trump’s authority. &#160;Yesterday, the U.S. General in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal said he would push back if Trump ordered an “illegal” nuclear strike. &#160; <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/u-s-strategic-command-gen-john-hyten-resist-illegal-nuke-order-from-trump/" type="external">CBS News first reported</a> the remarks by Gen. John Hyten made &#160;in Canada. &#160;What exactly is legal and illegal was unclear but earlier in the week, an extraordinary&#160;hearing was held by the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee that was as much about telegraphing concerns as it was finding facts. &#160;The issue was Trump’s authority to launch nukes. &#160;“We are concerned that the President of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with US national security interests,” said Chris Murphy D-Connecticut.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/11/14/trump-critic-bob-corker-lead-senate-hearing-presidents-powers-order-nuclear-attack/860142001/" type="external">According to USA Today</a>, Senators from both parties were raising questions that hadn’t been raised in decades. &#160; But this is a new and dangerous time when one careless tweet could set off a crisis. &#160;Democrats have filed bills that would require Congress to declare an act of war before the president could launch. &#160;That’s unlikely and some who testified were uneasy limiting the president’s authority. &#160;But to raise the question says everything about where we are.</p>
|
Top General Would Push Back Against “Illegal” Nuke Strike
| false |
https://newsandguts.com/top-general-push-back-illegal-nuke-strike/
|
2017-11-19
| 3left-center
|
Top General Would Push Back Against “Illegal” Nuke Strike
<p>It’s difficult to imagine even having these discussions but these are not normal times. &#160;The topic is launching a nuclear strike and Donald Trump’s authority. &#160;Yesterday, the U.S. General in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal said he would push back if Trump ordered an “illegal” nuclear strike. &#160; <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/u-s-strategic-command-gen-john-hyten-resist-illegal-nuke-order-from-trump/" type="external">CBS News first reported</a> the remarks by Gen. John Hyten made &#160;in Canada. &#160;What exactly is legal and illegal was unclear but earlier in the week, an extraordinary&#160;hearing was held by the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee that was as much about telegraphing concerns as it was finding facts. &#160;The issue was Trump’s authority to launch nukes. &#160;“We are concerned that the President of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with US national security interests,” said Chris Murphy D-Connecticut.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/11/14/trump-critic-bob-corker-lead-senate-hearing-presidents-powers-order-nuclear-attack/860142001/" type="external">According to USA Today</a>, Senators from both parties were raising questions that hadn’t been raised in decades. &#160; But this is a new and dangerous time when one careless tweet could set off a crisis. &#160;Democrats have filed bills that would require Congress to declare an act of war before the president could launch. &#160;That’s unlikely and some who testified were uneasy limiting the president’s authority. &#160;But to raise the question says everything about where we are.</p>
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<p />
<p>Fueled by a rapidly intensifying cyber battleground, the deals market has turned red hot for boutique security firms.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>As enterprises better arm themselves, there has been a flurry of investment for specialized security firms both on and off Wall Street.</p>
<p>“This industry is so large there are now all sorts of new specializations,” said Tenable Network Security CEO Ron Gula, who has participated in the deals market.</p>
<p>Information security market growth was more than 50% higher than overall IT spending growth in the second quarter as companies adapted to broader transformations in the tech industry, Ernst &amp; Young said in a recent report.</p>
<p>Enterprise deals are now stretching into the billion-dollar range for security firms, while IPO prices are rising and private equity firms are diversifying their portfolios. There has been a spike in consolidation as security vendors look to cover the chasm.</p>
<p>New trends such as heightened usage of the cloud and social media outlets, as well as the continued shift to mobile, are adding previously unneeded dimensions to enterprise security, says Jeff Liu, leader of U.S. technology for E&amp;Y’s M&amp;A advisory group.</p>
<p>“These technology-induced changes result in corporate IT environments that are far more powerful — and far more difficult to secure,” he said.</p>
<p>Record Number of Deals</p>
<p>Underscoring some of the flurry is Vista Equity’s $1 billion acquisition of Websense in the second quarter, Cisco’s (NASDAQ:CSCO) $2.7 billion buy of cyber intelligent giant Sourcefire (NASDAQ:FIRE) in the third quarter and IBM’s (NYSE:IBM) late-August $1 billion purchase of boutique firm Trusteer.</p>
<p>During the second quarter, privately-held Blue Coat acquired Solera Networks to boost its network forensics and security analytics, while Intel’s (NASDAQ:INTC) McAfee added next-generation firewalls and intrusion detection through its $389 million purchase of Finland-based Stonesoft.</p>
<p>“There’s an increase in investment in cyber and wiliness by customers to procure multiple products,” Gula said.</p>
<p>In all, E&amp;Y said it recorded nearly four dozen security deals in the second quarter of this year, or roughly 7% of all deals. That’s up from a share of just 3% during the same quarter last year and compares with just 5% in the whole of 2012.</p>
<p>A Market Opportunity</p>
<p>What seems to be specific to security is the fact that deals are spread across all forms of investment. Typically industries tend to experience specific types of deals, whether it be high-growth companies looking to raise cash through IPOs or private equities adding a slow-but-steady investment to their portfolios.</p>
<p>With security, Liu notes, things are changing too rapidly, and its services are too hot and widespread to be destined toward a single investment path.</p>
<p>“It’s a distinguishing trend that’s unique to security because the categories of transactions span different types of growth and innovation,” he said. “I think this just tells you how complex it is – very much a multi-faceted world.”</p>
<p>As the heightened appetite encourages specialization amid new security startups, Gula encourages entrepreneurs with highly-sought-after specialties to get into business.</p>
<p>“If you think you can solve one problem, now’s the time to start a company,” he said.</p>
<p>E&amp;Y's tech group also has some advice:</p>
<p>"Every security vendor — no matter how broad or narrow its product line — should already be thinking about how to manage its organic product development and transaction strategy to match the pace of rapid change," it said.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
|
Cyber Security Ablaze in M&A World
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/09/13/cyber-security-turns-red-hot-in-ma-world.html
|
2016-01-29
| 0right
|
Cyber Security Ablaze in M&A World
<p />
<p>Fueled by a rapidly intensifying cyber battleground, the deals market has turned red hot for boutique security firms.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>As enterprises better arm themselves, there has been a flurry of investment for specialized security firms both on and off Wall Street.</p>
<p>“This industry is so large there are now all sorts of new specializations,” said Tenable Network Security CEO Ron Gula, who has participated in the deals market.</p>
<p>Information security market growth was more than 50% higher than overall IT spending growth in the second quarter as companies adapted to broader transformations in the tech industry, Ernst &amp; Young said in a recent report.</p>
<p>Enterprise deals are now stretching into the billion-dollar range for security firms, while IPO prices are rising and private equity firms are diversifying their portfolios. There has been a spike in consolidation as security vendors look to cover the chasm.</p>
<p>New trends such as heightened usage of the cloud and social media outlets, as well as the continued shift to mobile, are adding previously unneeded dimensions to enterprise security, says Jeff Liu, leader of U.S. technology for E&amp;Y’s M&amp;A advisory group.</p>
<p>“These technology-induced changes result in corporate IT environments that are far more powerful — and far more difficult to secure,” he said.</p>
<p>Record Number of Deals</p>
<p>Underscoring some of the flurry is Vista Equity’s $1 billion acquisition of Websense in the second quarter, Cisco’s (NASDAQ:CSCO) $2.7 billion buy of cyber intelligent giant Sourcefire (NASDAQ:FIRE) in the third quarter and IBM’s (NYSE:IBM) late-August $1 billion purchase of boutique firm Trusteer.</p>
<p>During the second quarter, privately-held Blue Coat acquired Solera Networks to boost its network forensics and security analytics, while Intel’s (NASDAQ:INTC) McAfee added next-generation firewalls and intrusion detection through its $389 million purchase of Finland-based Stonesoft.</p>
<p>“There’s an increase in investment in cyber and wiliness by customers to procure multiple products,” Gula said.</p>
<p>In all, E&amp;Y said it recorded nearly four dozen security deals in the second quarter of this year, or roughly 7% of all deals. That’s up from a share of just 3% during the same quarter last year and compares with just 5% in the whole of 2012.</p>
<p>A Market Opportunity</p>
<p>What seems to be specific to security is the fact that deals are spread across all forms of investment. Typically industries tend to experience specific types of deals, whether it be high-growth companies looking to raise cash through IPOs or private equities adding a slow-but-steady investment to their portfolios.</p>
<p>With security, Liu notes, things are changing too rapidly, and its services are too hot and widespread to be destined toward a single investment path.</p>
<p>“It’s a distinguishing trend that’s unique to security because the categories of transactions span different types of growth and innovation,” he said. “I think this just tells you how complex it is – very much a multi-faceted world.”</p>
<p>As the heightened appetite encourages specialization amid new security startups, Gula encourages entrepreneurs with highly-sought-after specialties to get into business.</p>
<p>“If you think you can solve one problem, now’s the time to start a company,” he said.</p>
<p>E&amp;Y's tech group also has some advice:</p>
<p>"Every security vendor — no matter how broad or narrow its product line — should already be thinking about how to manage its organic product development and transaction strategy to match the pace of rapid change," it said.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
| 7,649 |
<p>On Wednesday, The Paley Center for Media hosted day eight of its annual <a href="http://variety.com/t/paleyfest/" type="external">PaleyFest</a> Fall TV Previews for Fox’s new sci-fi series, “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/the-orville/" type="external">The Orville</a>.” Created by <a href="http://variety.com/t/seth-macfarlane/" type="external">Seth MacFarlane</a>, “The Orville” follows the adventures of Ed Mercer (MacFarlane) and his crew aboard one of Earth’s space fleet vessels as they explore the cosmos.</p>
<p>MacFarlane and castmates Adrianne Palicki, Halston Sage, J. Lee, Mark Jackson, Penny Johnson Jerald, Peter Macon,&#160;and&#160;Scott Grimes were joined by executive producers Brannon Braga and David Goodman on the panel.</p>
<p>“Working with comedy and science-fiction is a challenge because every time it’s a reinvention as to how the comedy fits into the narrative; it’s a learning process,” MacFarlane said. “I’m someone who tends to be a punching bag for the critics, so it’s great to see such a positive response from the fans — which is really all that matters.”</p>
<p>He added, “Science fiction nowadays tends to be very noir and dark and not very inviting. We wanted our show to be brighter and more comfortable, something that draws viewers in.”</p>
<p>Goodman, who has worked with MacFarlane on “Family Guy,” said that the show pays homage to classic science fiction series and brings a sense of optimism and aspiration that isn’t often seen in modern sci-fi programs.</p>
<p>Many of the panelists noted that MacFarlane’s exploration of contemporary social issues like gender, race relations, and politics, coupled with the show’s novelty, will make it even more appealing for viewers.</p>
<p>“This whole world came from Seth’s brain and heart, yet he was still so collaborative and interested in other people’s ideas and what we wanted to bring to our characters,” Sage said. “‘The Orville’ is completely different from any of his other projects. The show is more character-driven than genre-driven, so it’s not strictly a comedy or a drama every week.”</p>
<p>“The Orville” premiered Sept. 10 on Fox and episode two will be released on Sunday, before moving to a new time on Thursdays at 9 p.m.</p>
|
Seth MacFarlane’s ‘The Orville’ Hopes to Brighten Up the Sci-Fi TV Universe
| false |
https://newsline.com/seth-macfarlanes-the-orville-hopes-to-brighten-up-the-sci-fi-tv-universe/
|
2017-09-14
| 1right-center
|
Seth MacFarlane’s ‘The Orville’ Hopes to Brighten Up the Sci-Fi TV Universe
<p>On Wednesday, The Paley Center for Media hosted day eight of its annual <a href="http://variety.com/t/paleyfest/" type="external">PaleyFest</a> Fall TV Previews for Fox’s new sci-fi series, “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/the-orville/" type="external">The Orville</a>.” Created by <a href="http://variety.com/t/seth-macfarlane/" type="external">Seth MacFarlane</a>, “The Orville” follows the adventures of Ed Mercer (MacFarlane) and his crew aboard one of Earth’s space fleet vessels as they explore the cosmos.</p>
<p>MacFarlane and castmates Adrianne Palicki, Halston Sage, J. Lee, Mark Jackson, Penny Johnson Jerald, Peter Macon,&#160;and&#160;Scott Grimes were joined by executive producers Brannon Braga and David Goodman on the panel.</p>
<p>“Working with comedy and science-fiction is a challenge because every time it’s a reinvention as to how the comedy fits into the narrative; it’s a learning process,” MacFarlane said. “I’m someone who tends to be a punching bag for the critics, so it’s great to see such a positive response from the fans — which is really all that matters.”</p>
<p>He added, “Science fiction nowadays tends to be very noir and dark and not very inviting. We wanted our show to be brighter and more comfortable, something that draws viewers in.”</p>
<p>Goodman, who has worked with MacFarlane on “Family Guy,” said that the show pays homage to classic science fiction series and brings a sense of optimism and aspiration that isn’t often seen in modern sci-fi programs.</p>
<p>Many of the panelists noted that MacFarlane’s exploration of contemporary social issues like gender, race relations, and politics, coupled with the show’s novelty, will make it even more appealing for viewers.</p>
<p>“This whole world came from Seth’s brain and heart, yet he was still so collaborative and interested in other people’s ideas and what we wanted to bring to our characters,” Sage said. “‘The Orville’ is completely different from any of his other projects. The show is more character-driven than genre-driven, so it’s not strictly a comedy or a drama every week.”</p>
<p>“The Orville” premiered Sept. 10 on Fox and episode two will be released on Sunday, before moving to a new time on Thursdays at 9 p.m.</p>
| 7,650 |
<p>From SF Chronicle:</p>
<p>“San Francisco stands ready to begin marrying same sex couples, and we remain as deeply committed to the fight for marriage equality today as we did nearly eight years ago when then Mayor&#160; <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/gavin-newsom/" type="external">Gavin Newsom</a>&#160;started one of the most important civil rights issues of our generation to ensure equality for all.” –&#160;San Francisco Mayor&#160; <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/ed-lee/" type="external">Ed Lee</a></p>
<p>“This is the one last big piece of the civil rights struggle and it’s happening in our lifetime, in real time and I’m very proud of this court’s decision.” –&#160;Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom</p>
<p>“Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.” –&#160;Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/07/BANB1N48J7.DTL&amp;feed=rss.news" type="external">(Read Full Article)</a> <a href="" type="internal" /></p>
|
Politicians applaud, slam Prop 8 decision
| false |
http://capoliticalreview.com/trending/politicians-applaud-slam-prop-8-decision/
|
2012-02-08
| 1right-center
|
Politicians applaud, slam Prop 8 decision
<p>From SF Chronicle:</p>
<p>“San Francisco stands ready to begin marrying same sex couples, and we remain as deeply committed to the fight for marriage equality today as we did nearly eight years ago when then Mayor&#160; <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/gavin-newsom/" type="external">Gavin Newsom</a>&#160;started one of the most important civil rights issues of our generation to ensure equality for all.” –&#160;San Francisco Mayor&#160; <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/ed-lee/" type="external">Ed Lee</a></p>
<p>“This is the one last big piece of the civil rights struggle and it’s happening in our lifetime, in real time and I’m very proud of this court’s decision.” –&#160;Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom</p>
<p>“Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.” –&#160;Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/07/BANB1N48J7.DTL&amp;feed=rss.news" type="external">(Read Full Article)</a> <a href="" type="internal" /></p>
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<p />
<p>FARMINGTON — It’s becoming a twisted tradition.</p>
<p>A State Police sergeant has arrested Stevenson Benally, a 35-year-old Kirtland man, two times on suspicion of drunken driving in the last two years.</p>
<p>Both the arrests were made near the 32 mile marker of U.S. Highway 64 during morning workday traffic. On May 6, Sgt. James Rempe pulled Benally over for a registration violation shortly before 8 a.m. Rempe reported the smell of alcohol on Benally and during a DWI investigation Benally failed two field-sobriety tests.</p>
<p>Court documents state that a breath test showed Benally had a 0.11 blood-alcohol content, which is over the legal limit.</p>
<p>He was booked into jail where he is being held on a $50,000 cash-only bond set by Magistrate Trudy Reed-Chase.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Benally has five DWI convictions.</p>
<p>His most recent conviction stemmed from a Nov. 2, 2010, arrest.</p>
<p>During that arrest, Rempe pulled Benally over on U.S. Highway 64 at 8:30 a.m. on a Tuesday.</p>
<p>“It was the exact same location,” Rempe said. “That’s definitely unusual.”</p>
<p>During both arrests, Benally said he had a hangover from drinking the night before and was on his way to purchase alcohol, Rempe said.</p>
|
DWI arrest: same man, same location
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/199142/dwi-arrest-same-man-same-location.html
|
2013-05-15
| 2least
|
DWI arrest: same man, same location
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>FARMINGTON — It’s becoming a twisted tradition.</p>
<p>A State Police sergeant has arrested Stevenson Benally, a 35-year-old Kirtland man, two times on suspicion of drunken driving in the last two years.</p>
<p>Both the arrests were made near the 32 mile marker of U.S. Highway 64 during morning workday traffic. On May 6, Sgt. James Rempe pulled Benally over for a registration violation shortly before 8 a.m. Rempe reported the smell of alcohol on Benally and during a DWI investigation Benally failed two field-sobriety tests.</p>
<p>Court documents state that a breath test showed Benally had a 0.11 blood-alcohol content, which is over the legal limit.</p>
<p>He was booked into jail where he is being held on a $50,000 cash-only bond set by Magistrate Trudy Reed-Chase.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Benally has five DWI convictions.</p>
<p>His most recent conviction stemmed from a Nov. 2, 2010, arrest.</p>
<p>During that arrest, Rempe pulled Benally over on U.S. Highway 64 at 8:30 a.m. on a Tuesday.</p>
<p>“It was the exact same location,” Rempe said. “That’s definitely unusual.”</p>
<p>During both arrests, Benally said he had a hangover from drinking the night before and was on his way to purchase alcohol, Rempe said.</p>
| 7,652 |
<p>A lot of people have sent this story asking for comment. I addressed it today on air but will do so again, here. <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_e0d7dc2a-39f9-5b32-9779-b502c8bee672.html#.Udg1Mhv5vcs.twitter" type="external">The story</a>:</p>
<p>In recent weeks, the grounds crew had carved a cross and a No. 6 (in honor of the late Stan Musial) on the back side of the mound. But general manager John Mozeliak, who said he first had learned about the practice from a Post-Dispatch report and photo, said Friday night that he had asked that the practice cease.</p>
<p>“Once we learned of it,” said Mozeliak, “I did contact the grounds crew and just asked that they don’t.</p>
<p>“It’s just not club policy to be putting religious symbols on the playing field or throughout the ballpark. I didn’t ask for the reason behind it. I just asked for it to stop.”</p>
<p>The Cardinals are a private entity and they can do what they want. I say this having had a Dana Show section at last Sunday’s Christian Day at the Ballpark with the St. Louis Cardinals featuring outspoken Christian evangelist Willie Robertson from “Duck Dynasty” (which I was too under the weather to attend, sadly). Our team is called the Saint&#160;Louis Cardinals. Sure, wipe away the cross on the mound since you can’t change the team’s name.</p>
|
On The Cardinals And The Cross In The Pitcher’s Mound
| true |
http://danaloeschradio.com/on-the-cardinals-and-the-cross-in-the-pitchers-mound/
|
2013-07-08
| 0right
|
On The Cardinals And The Cross In The Pitcher’s Mound
<p>A lot of people have sent this story asking for comment. I addressed it today on air but will do so again, here. <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_e0d7dc2a-39f9-5b32-9779-b502c8bee672.html#.Udg1Mhv5vcs.twitter" type="external">The story</a>:</p>
<p>In recent weeks, the grounds crew had carved a cross and a No. 6 (in honor of the late Stan Musial) on the back side of the mound. But general manager John Mozeliak, who said he first had learned about the practice from a Post-Dispatch report and photo, said Friday night that he had asked that the practice cease.</p>
<p>“Once we learned of it,” said Mozeliak, “I did contact the grounds crew and just asked that they don’t.</p>
<p>“It’s just not club policy to be putting religious symbols on the playing field or throughout the ballpark. I didn’t ask for the reason behind it. I just asked for it to stop.”</p>
<p>The Cardinals are a private entity and they can do what they want. I say this having had a Dana Show section at last Sunday’s Christian Day at the Ballpark with the St. Louis Cardinals featuring outspoken Christian evangelist Willie Robertson from “Duck Dynasty” (which I was too under the weather to attend, sadly). Our team is called the Saint&#160;Louis Cardinals. Sure, wipe away the cross on the mound since you can’t change the team’s name.</p>
| 7,653 |
<p>It’s Hearts ‘n’ Flowers Time again, or maybe it’s Panties ‘n’ Dildos time for you. Whatever your fancy or fetish, even if you manage to somehow steer clear of love and sex the rest of the year, it’s futile to resist that itching in your heart, that longing in your loins around Valentine’s Day.</p>
<p>If love and sexuality are important to you, as they are to me, then Valentine’s Day is almost a religious holiday, a time to stimulate your lover(s), celebrate your love or, at least, masturbate yourself. If you love love, you’ve just got to make love to someone you love on Valentine’s Day, even if that someone is you. That’s right. Better to make good clean love to yourself than feel sorry for yourself or make bad love to someone you really don’t love.</p>
<p>Still, loving someone besides yourself is one of the great delicious challenges and blessings of life. But don’t panic, there’s still time. Even if, as you’re reading this, it’s too late for Valentine’s Day, it’s never too late for nookie, and it’s never too late for love.</p>
<p>“The spiritualization of sexuality is called love,” said Nietzche in The Twilight of the Idols, “It is a great triumph over Christianity.” Not to mention every other organized religion.</p>
<p>Sex is my obsession. Love is my religion. Sometimes I’m not sure if I believe in God. But I always believe in Love. I know love exists, because I can see it in my lover’s eyes, I can hear it in his voice, I can feel it in his arms, I can smell it on the back of his neck, and I can taste love in his kiss. I love the physicality of love; it gives me faith, breaks down the agnostic in me, and makes of me, against all odds, a true believer.</p>
<p>But my belief in love goes beyond the physical. I believe the more love there is in the world, the less violence. And I’m not just talking here about love of humankind. That’s a wonderful, very important kind of “altruistic” love, but it can only go so far because it’s not passionate (and who the hell wants to go to bed with all of humankind anyway?). Violence is passionate. It can only be defeated by an equally passionate, powerful force like romantic erotic love. Duke Ellington said it best: “Love is supreme and unconditional. Like is nice but limited.”</p>
<p>But how can we make love last? That is the question, and the answer lies in the story of our lives on earth, and the chemistry of our feelings…</p>
<p>In the beginning, there is love. A hot and steaming love supreme that can heal our wounds, open our eyes, shake up our governments, give us more zing than a case of Red Bull and make us hap-hap-happier than we ever imagined possible.</p>
<p>And it’s real. As scientifically real as the chemical changes it unleashes within our bodies. But alas, it is not eternal. Nor is it exclusive.</p>
<p>Just look at nature: exclusivity in love is rare as an endangered species. The Nile crocodile, the American toad, the wood roach, the klipspringer, the siamang, the reedbuck, some beetles, most birds, muskrats, some bats, beavers, deer mice, a few monkeys, some wild dogs, and the ironically named dik-dik are monogamous creatures. At least, they’re into serial monogamy. But that’s about it.</p>
<p>Monogamy is not the norm in nature, since it’s not normally to a male’s genetic advantage to stay with one female when he can get it on with several and recycle more of his genes. For females, monogamy isn’t natural either. Despite the old saying, Hoggamus higgamus, man is polygamous. Higgamus hoggamus, woman’s monogamous, studies show that human females aren’t much more faithful than males, even though almost all societies punish women for cheating far, far more than men.</p>
<p>Hoggamus, hiscuous, nature’s promiscuous. From nature’s viewpoint, romantic love merely serves an evolutionary purpose for both sexes: to make us so HOT for each other that we reproduce. Otherwise, considering the high cost of child care, we very well might not. We fall in and out of love so we’ll mix up our genes (I call it “Integration through Intercourse”), increasing their odds of “winning” the human race, genetically speaking, if not environmentally.</p>
<p>Never mind that society values long-term monogamy. Nature isn’t so pious. Anthropologists tell us that nature only provides for us to feel “in love” for a few months, or at most a few years, enough time to rear a child through babyhood, somewhere between the three-year tingle and the seven-year itch. At this point, theoretically, the kid is brought up by the “village,” tribe or school system, leaving the parents relatively free to fall in love with someone else and start the process again. In modern terms, you could say that’s when Junior goes off to kindergarten, and Mummy and Dadda go off and have affairs.</p>
<p>It all seems like a nasty trick that Mother Nature is playing on those of us who’d like to make love last. Especially around Valentine’s Day. And there’s only one solution. If you want to make love last, you just have to trick nature.</p>
<p>Trick nature? You can’t fool Mother Nature, can you? Don’t be intimidated by Her PR. You can fool Her. At least sometimes. And “sometimes” might be all you need to keep love hot through Ice Ages of mortgages, meetings, seductive strangers, dirty diapers, soul-consuming children, depressing political situations, personal tragedies and platinum anniversaries.</p>
<p>The trick is to crack the Chemical Code of Love. It all comes down to chemistry–literally. Falling in love floods your bloodstream with a fricassee of powerful chemicals: dopamine, norepinephrine, phenylethylamine (PEA) and other natural cousins of amphetamines, stimulants and painkillers.</p>
<p>Yes, falling in love is like being on drugs. Hard drugs. It’s a natural high far finer and smoother than anything you could inject, smoke, snort, drink or swallow. Of course, love isn’t something you can pick up at the pharmacy or even on the black market. It strikes you like a mystical gift from God, or a practical joke from tricky, fickle old Hot Mama Nature. Then it stirs up that euphoric, love-juicy chemical goo that permeates your cells, creating a place within you where hormones meet holiness, wildflowers bloom, angels dance, and the city never sleeps.</p>
<p>To differentiate it from long-term love, I call this marvelous, giddy, speedy, slightly insane, falling-in-love feeling “Hot Love.” Hot Love is the supernova of affection, but like the song sings, it’s just too hot not to cool down. After a while, your body builds up a tolerance to the PEA and other sizzling chemicals. Inevitably, the feeling fades. And you wonder (as the two of you go to bed yet again without coupling madly like you used to), where is the passion? Where has love gone?</p>
<p>It’s a sad, sad, universal story. But don’t despair! All is not lost, chemically speaking. If your relationship continues past the Hot Love stage, another set of chemicals flows into your bloodstream. These are opiate-like endorphins and sweet-feeling oxytocin that sensitize your nerves, stimulate muscle contraction, enhance orgasm and make cuddling feel absolutely divine. I call this stage “Warm Love,” as it brings on that nice, warm sense of well-being you get when you’re really comfortable with someone.</p>
<p>The coolest thing about Warm Love is that, unlike Hot Love, it can last forever. No tricks necessary. In fact, it’s quite habit-forming. That’s why breaking up is so hard to do. Even when you really don’t like someone anymore, and you know you should move on, it often feels like you “can’t.” Why? Because you’re chemically addicted. Oxytocin, when it’s got you hooked on the wrong partner, can be tougher to kick than heroin. In fact, the prescription painkiller, OxyContin, based on somewhat similar ingredients, is considered one of the most addictive medications on the market.</p>
<p>But if you’re with the right person, the cozy compounds that concoct Warm Love create a “good addiction,” helping to keep you happy together long after your Hot Love peaks have petered out. Warm Love chemicals aren’t just a high; they’re a health benefit, naturally strengthening your heart and immune system. And yet, without that exhilaratingly giddy fizz of Hot Love, you may feel you’ve fallen out of love. Have you?</p>
<p>Well, yes and no. It’s natural to only feel Hot Love with your partner in the beginning. Then, if you just go according to Nature’s Plan, the relationship evolves into Warm Love, never to scale the delightfully dizzying summits of Hot Love again, or at least, not very often. Not that all of us require multiple helpings of Hot Love throughout life. But without it-even with plenty of Warm Love-most of us feel a bit empty and bored. That’s why so many people in genuinely “happy marriages” have affairs, restlessly seeking that elusive Hot Love fix.</p>
<p>After all, the easiest way to experience Hot Love is with a new lover. Novelty triggers PEA like the sun brings out the string bikinis. It may be disturbing, but it’s undeniably true: there is no aphrodisiac like fresh meat. But it’s also possible to trick those mercurial Hot Love chemicals into kicking in–if both you and your partner really want to–by adding new elements to your old relationship.</p>
<p>Of course, you knew that already, didn’t you? Every self-help sexpert and romance hustler tells you to try new things. But do you actually do it? See, that’s the trick.</p>
<p>Sometimes all it takes is the simplest novelties: Surprising each other with a sexy (but not appalling) new look or spending the weekend in a strange (but not uncomfortable) locale. Yes indeed, these are some of the oldest tricks in the book because they very often work, literally tricking your nervous system into reacting as if “Wow! Something new is happening here! I’m falling in love!” Your chemical soup is stirred, your heart beats fast and fireworks explode, all with the same old sweetheart.</p>
<p>There are more exotic ways to fool Mother Nature into giving you a Hot Love chemical shower. The following suggestions are easy enough to incorporate into your relationship. They just require two very valuable commodities: time and faith. Indeed, like the faith of a religious fundamentalist, you have to allow yourself to be tricked into believing what you know to be objectively false, i.e., “My wife of 20 years is a young, hot hooker” or “My husband is really three guys and a bi chick, all of whom are after me.”</p>
<p>Also, this stuff only works if you’ve already shared loads of Hot Love, at least in the beginning of your relationship. Chemistry can’t be conjured from nothing. So with that caveat, the essential “suspension of disbelief” and the willingness to put some real quality and quantity time into this endeavor, let’s give these tips a whirl:</p>
<p>1) Sharing Fantasies. Fantasy creates the feeling of novelty in the erotic theater of your mind. Cynics have a hard time with this, of course. But even cynics can be softies if the fantasy is compelling enough. Fantasies don’t have to be completely made up; some of us just don’t have the imagination for it. Sharing memories can be just as good or better than sharing totally made-up stuff, especially if these are memories of Hot Love experiences you’ve had together (your first kiss, your first sex). You can also share memories mixed with fantasies. Remember that time you made love on the beach? Or off that mountain path? Or under a blanket in the first class cabin of that flight to Paris? That was exciting. Now what if someone was watching? What if they joined in? Whew, I’m getting hot already…</p>
<p>2) Role-Playing. Take fantasies a little farther by dressing up, acting the part, wearing masks, using props. You might even pretend to meet for the first time, maybe in a bar. If you play it out and don’t giggle too much, it’s amazing how easily your Hot Love button can be pushed even when you know the sexy stranger with whom you’re carrying on some serious flirtation is really just your familiar old spouse.</p>
<p>3) Make Love First if You Want to Make Love Last. Make love a top priority–or better yet, THE top priority–in your lives. If you’ve got a busy schedule, you have to schedule sex. Make plans for love, Hot and Warm. But remember: the best laid plans may not get you laid the way you planned! Be open to the magical mysteries of surprise.</p>
<p>4) Chemical Combo. Give your lover a massage to activate Warm Love endorphins as you whisper fantasies to kindle Hot Love amphetamines. Take a scary roller coaster ride together to ignite Hot Love, then fall into a soft Warm Love bed in a strange (but comfy) motel.</p>
<p>5) Try New Sexual Things. Sample sex toys. Watch porn. Look at erotic art. Or maybe a good horror movie (fear can be an aphrodisiac). Go to a swing party. You don’t have to really “swing.” You can go and just watch, maintaining your monogamy, while voyeuristically experiencing the excitement of multiple partners engaging in public sex. Try feeding each other oysters, damiana, playing bondage games—the list of potential aphrodisiacs is endless. Some are better than others, depending on your taste, your values and your mood. Experiment. That’s one way to fire up your PEA Bunsen burner. But keep in mind that Hot Love chemicals are highly combustible. Things that ignite them can also elicit feelings of paranoia, anger, jealousy and embarrassment. Remember, a little bit of fear is like spice in your enchilada. But too much fear spoils the meat. Don’t let yourself become a Hot Love junkie, oblivious to your partner’s Warm Love needs. Take good care of each other with lots of reassuring Warm Love when you undertake Hot Love experimentation.</p>
<p>It’s not easy to make true love that lasts more than three or four Valentine’s Days. It’s a delicate chemical soufflé. If you can whip it up right, you’ll keep love and sex hot and warm your whole life long. Hey, it’s worked for me for the past 14 years, and I have high hopes – hell, I have FAITH, Brothers &amp; Sisters, Lovers &amp; Sinners – that it will keeping working for years to come. But if it doesn’t work for you, if you can’t make love last, hey, you’re only human. Forgive yourself. But never give up. Remember the wise words of that horny old Victorian, William Makepeace Thackeray: “To love and win is the best thing; to love and lose, the next best thing.”</p>
<p>And if you need a little inspiration or stimulation, you can come to my Valentine Saturday Night celebration where we’ll have all of the above Hot Love stimulators (except the roller coaster), and more. Come one, come all, come with someone you love, even if that someone is you.</p>
<p>Dr. SUSAN BLOCK is a sex educator, cultural commentator, host of The Dr. SUSAN BLOCK Show and author of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure. Visit her website at <a href="http://www.drsusanblock.com/" type="external">http://www.drsusanblock.com</a></p>
<p>Send all hate mail, love letters, commentary, questions and confessions to her at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
|
Chemistry of Love
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2005/02/12/chemistry-of-love/
|
2005-02-12
| 4left
|
Chemistry of Love
<p>It’s Hearts ‘n’ Flowers Time again, or maybe it’s Panties ‘n’ Dildos time for you. Whatever your fancy or fetish, even if you manage to somehow steer clear of love and sex the rest of the year, it’s futile to resist that itching in your heart, that longing in your loins around Valentine’s Day.</p>
<p>If love and sexuality are important to you, as they are to me, then Valentine’s Day is almost a religious holiday, a time to stimulate your lover(s), celebrate your love or, at least, masturbate yourself. If you love love, you’ve just got to make love to someone you love on Valentine’s Day, even if that someone is you. That’s right. Better to make good clean love to yourself than feel sorry for yourself or make bad love to someone you really don’t love.</p>
<p>Still, loving someone besides yourself is one of the great delicious challenges and blessings of life. But don’t panic, there’s still time. Even if, as you’re reading this, it’s too late for Valentine’s Day, it’s never too late for nookie, and it’s never too late for love.</p>
<p>“The spiritualization of sexuality is called love,” said Nietzche in The Twilight of the Idols, “It is a great triumph over Christianity.” Not to mention every other organized religion.</p>
<p>Sex is my obsession. Love is my religion. Sometimes I’m not sure if I believe in God. But I always believe in Love. I know love exists, because I can see it in my lover’s eyes, I can hear it in his voice, I can feel it in his arms, I can smell it on the back of his neck, and I can taste love in his kiss. I love the physicality of love; it gives me faith, breaks down the agnostic in me, and makes of me, against all odds, a true believer.</p>
<p>But my belief in love goes beyond the physical. I believe the more love there is in the world, the less violence. And I’m not just talking here about love of humankind. That’s a wonderful, very important kind of “altruistic” love, but it can only go so far because it’s not passionate (and who the hell wants to go to bed with all of humankind anyway?). Violence is passionate. It can only be defeated by an equally passionate, powerful force like romantic erotic love. Duke Ellington said it best: “Love is supreme and unconditional. Like is nice but limited.”</p>
<p>But how can we make love last? That is the question, and the answer lies in the story of our lives on earth, and the chemistry of our feelings…</p>
<p>In the beginning, there is love. A hot and steaming love supreme that can heal our wounds, open our eyes, shake up our governments, give us more zing than a case of Red Bull and make us hap-hap-happier than we ever imagined possible.</p>
<p>And it’s real. As scientifically real as the chemical changes it unleashes within our bodies. But alas, it is not eternal. Nor is it exclusive.</p>
<p>Just look at nature: exclusivity in love is rare as an endangered species. The Nile crocodile, the American toad, the wood roach, the klipspringer, the siamang, the reedbuck, some beetles, most birds, muskrats, some bats, beavers, deer mice, a few monkeys, some wild dogs, and the ironically named dik-dik are monogamous creatures. At least, they’re into serial monogamy. But that’s about it.</p>
<p>Monogamy is not the norm in nature, since it’s not normally to a male’s genetic advantage to stay with one female when he can get it on with several and recycle more of his genes. For females, monogamy isn’t natural either. Despite the old saying, Hoggamus higgamus, man is polygamous. Higgamus hoggamus, woman’s monogamous, studies show that human females aren’t much more faithful than males, even though almost all societies punish women for cheating far, far more than men.</p>
<p>Hoggamus, hiscuous, nature’s promiscuous. From nature’s viewpoint, romantic love merely serves an evolutionary purpose for both sexes: to make us so HOT for each other that we reproduce. Otherwise, considering the high cost of child care, we very well might not. We fall in and out of love so we’ll mix up our genes (I call it “Integration through Intercourse”), increasing their odds of “winning” the human race, genetically speaking, if not environmentally.</p>
<p>Never mind that society values long-term monogamy. Nature isn’t so pious. Anthropologists tell us that nature only provides for us to feel “in love” for a few months, or at most a few years, enough time to rear a child through babyhood, somewhere between the three-year tingle and the seven-year itch. At this point, theoretically, the kid is brought up by the “village,” tribe or school system, leaving the parents relatively free to fall in love with someone else and start the process again. In modern terms, you could say that’s when Junior goes off to kindergarten, and Mummy and Dadda go off and have affairs.</p>
<p>It all seems like a nasty trick that Mother Nature is playing on those of us who’d like to make love last. Especially around Valentine’s Day. And there’s only one solution. If you want to make love last, you just have to trick nature.</p>
<p>Trick nature? You can’t fool Mother Nature, can you? Don’t be intimidated by Her PR. You can fool Her. At least sometimes. And “sometimes” might be all you need to keep love hot through Ice Ages of mortgages, meetings, seductive strangers, dirty diapers, soul-consuming children, depressing political situations, personal tragedies and platinum anniversaries.</p>
<p>The trick is to crack the Chemical Code of Love. It all comes down to chemistry–literally. Falling in love floods your bloodstream with a fricassee of powerful chemicals: dopamine, norepinephrine, phenylethylamine (PEA) and other natural cousins of amphetamines, stimulants and painkillers.</p>
<p>Yes, falling in love is like being on drugs. Hard drugs. It’s a natural high far finer and smoother than anything you could inject, smoke, snort, drink or swallow. Of course, love isn’t something you can pick up at the pharmacy or even on the black market. It strikes you like a mystical gift from God, or a practical joke from tricky, fickle old Hot Mama Nature. Then it stirs up that euphoric, love-juicy chemical goo that permeates your cells, creating a place within you where hormones meet holiness, wildflowers bloom, angels dance, and the city never sleeps.</p>
<p>To differentiate it from long-term love, I call this marvelous, giddy, speedy, slightly insane, falling-in-love feeling “Hot Love.” Hot Love is the supernova of affection, but like the song sings, it’s just too hot not to cool down. After a while, your body builds up a tolerance to the PEA and other sizzling chemicals. Inevitably, the feeling fades. And you wonder (as the two of you go to bed yet again without coupling madly like you used to), where is the passion? Where has love gone?</p>
<p>It’s a sad, sad, universal story. But don’t despair! All is not lost, chemically speaking. If your relationship continues past the Hot Love stage, another set of chemicals flows into your bloodstream. These are opiate-like endorphins and sweet-feeling oxytocin that sensitize your nerves, stimulate muscle contraction, enhance orgasm and make cuddling feel absolutely divine. I call this stage “Warm Love,” as it brings on that nice, warm sense of well-being you get when you’re really comfortable with someone.</p>
<p>The coolest thing about Warm Love is that, unlike Hot Love, it can last forever. No tricks necessary. In fact, it’s quite habit-forming. That’s why breaking up is so hard to do. Even when you really don’t like someone anymore, and you know you should move on, it often feels like you “can’t.” Why? Because you’re chemically addicted. Oxytocin, when it’s got you hooked on the wrong partner, can be tougher to kick than heroin. In fact, the prescription painkiller, OxyContin, based on somewhat similar ingredients, is considered one of the most addictive medications on the market.</p>
<p>But if you’re with the right person, the cozy compounds that concoct Warm Love create a “good addiction,” helping to keep you happy together long after your Hot Love peaks have petered out. Warm Love chemicals aren’t just a high; they’re a health benefit, naturally strengthening your heart and immune system. And yet, without that exhilaratingly giddy fizz of Hot Love, you may feel you’ve fallen out of love. Have you?</p>
<p>Well, yes and no. It’s natural to only feel Hot Love with your partner in the beginning. Then, if you just go according to Nature’s Plan, the relationship evolves into Warm Love, never to scale the delightfully dizzying summits of Hot Love again, or at least, not very often. Not that all of us require multiple helpings of Hot Love throughout life. But without it-even with plenty of Warm Love-most of us feel a bit empty and bored. That’s why so many people in genuinely “happy marriages” have affairs, restlessly seeking that elusive Hot Love fix.</p>
<p>After all, the easiest way to experience Hot Love is with a new lover. Novelty triggers PEA like the sun brings out the string bikinis. It may be disturbing, but it’s undeniably true: there is no aphrodisiac like fresh meat. But it’s also possible to trick those mercurial Hot Love chemicals into kicking in–if both you and your partner really want to–by adding new elements to your old relationship.</p>
<p>Of course, you knew that already, didn’t you? Every self-help sexpert and romance hustler tells you to try new things. But do you actually do it? See, that’s the trick.</p>
<p>Sometimes all it takes is the simplest novelties: Surprising each other with a sexy (but not appalling) new look or spending the weekend in a strange (but not uncomfortable) locale. Yes indeed, these are some of the oldest tricks in the book because they very often work, literally tricking your nervous system into reacting as if “Wow! Something new is happening here! I’m falling in love!” Your chemical soup is stirred, your heart beats fast and fireworks explode, all with the same old sweetheart.</p>
<p>There are more exotic ways to fool Mother Nature into giving you a Hot Love chemical shower. The following suggestions are easy enough to incorporate into your relationship. They just require two very valuable commodities: time and faith. Indeed, like the faith of a religious fundamentalist, you have to allow yourself to be tricked into believing what you know to be objectively false, i.e., “My wife of 20 years is a young, hot hooker” or “My husband is really three guys and a bi chick, all of whom are after me.”</p>
<p>Also, this stuff only works if you’ve already shared loads of Hot Love, at least in the beginning of your relationship. Chemistry can’t be conjured from nothing. So with that caveat, the essential “suspension of disbelief” and the willingness to put some real quality and quantity time into this endeavor, let’s give these tips a whirl:</p>
<p>1) Sharing Fantasies. Fantasy creates the feeling of novelty in the erotic theater of your mind. Cynics have a hard time with this, of course. But even cynics can be softies if the fantasy is compelling enough. Fantasies don’t have to be completely made up; some of us just don’t have the imagination for it. Sharing memories can be just as good or better than sharing totally made-up stuff, especially if these are memories of Hot Love experiences you’ve had together (your first kiss, your first sex). You can also share memories mixed with fantasies. Remember that time you made love on the beach? Or off that mountain path? Or under a blanket in the first class cabin of that flight to Paris? That was exciting. Now what if someone was watching? What if they joined in? Whew, I’m getting hot already…</p>
<p>2) Role-Playing. Take fantasies a little farther by dressing up, acting the part, wearing masks, using props. You might even pretend to meet for the first time, maybe in a bar. If you play it out and don’t giggle too much, it’s amazing how easily your Hot Love button can be pushed even when you know the sexy stranger with whom you’re carrying on some serious flirtation is really just your familiar old spouse.</p>
<p>3) Make Love First if You Want to Make Love Last. Make love a top priority–or better yet, THE top priority–in your lives. If you’ve got a busy schedule, you have to schedule sex. Make plans for love, Hot and Warm. But remember: the best laid plans may not get you laid the way you planned! Be open to the magical mysteries of surprise.</p>
<p>4) Chemical Combo. Give your lover a massage to activate Warm Love endorphins as you whisper fantasies to kindle Hot Love amphetamines. Take a scary roller coaster ride together to ignite Hot Love, then fall into a soft Warm Love bed in a strange (but comfy) motel.</p>
<p>5) Try New Sexual Things. Sample sex toys. Watch porn. Look at erotic art. Or maybe a good horror movie (fear can be an aphrodisiac). Go to a swing party. You don’t have to really “swing.” You can go and just watch, maintaining your monogamy, while voyeuristically experiencing the excitement of multiple partners engaging in public sex. Try feeding each other oysters, damiana, playing bondage games—the list of potential aphrodisiacs is endless. Some are better than others, depending on your taste, your values and your mood. Experiment. That’s one way to fire up your PEA Bunsen burner. But keep in mind that Hot Love chemicals are highly combustible. Things that ignite them can also elicit feelings of paranoia, anger, jealousy and embarrassment. Remember, a little bit of fear is like spice in your enchilada. But too much fear spoils the meat. Don’t let yourself become a Hot Love junkie, oblivious to your partner’s Warm Love needs. Take good care of each other with lots of reassuring Warm Love when you undertake Hot Love experimentation.</p>
<p>It’s not easy to make true love that lasts more than three or four Valentine’s Days. It’s a delicate chemical soufflé. If you can whip it up right, you’ll keep love and sex hot and warm your whole life long. Hey, it’s worked for me for the past 14 years, and I have high hopes – hell, I have FAITH, Brothers &amp; Sisters, Lovers &amp; Sinners – that it will keeping working for years to come. But if it doesn’t work for you, if you can’t make love last, hey, you’re only human. Forgive yourself. But never give up. Remember the wise words of that horny old Victorian, William Makepeace Thackeray: “To love and win is the best thing; to love and lose, the next best thing.”</p>
<p>And if you need a little inspiration or stimulation, you can come to my Valentine Saturday Night celebration where we’ll have all of the above Hot Love stimulators (except the roller coaster), and more. Come one, come all, come with someone you love, even if that someone is you.</p>
<p>Dr. SUSAN BLOCK is a sex educator, cultural commentator, host of The Dr. SUSAN BLOCK Show and author of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure. Visit her website at <a href="http://www.drsusanblock.com/" type="external">http://www.drsusanblock.com</a></p>
<p>Send all hate mail, love letters, commentary, questions and confessions to her at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
| 7,654 |
<p>SAN JOSE — He’s known around City Hall as Councilman Captain America and his email signature flashes a patriotic red, white and blue. Only weeks into his first term in public office, Lan Diep has already made a splash on national television.</p>
<p>San Jose’s flamboyant new councilman, who became an online sensation holding a “Captain America” shield at his swearing in last month, is making good on his pledge to “make government fun” in a job&#160;where land-use debates can stretch past midnight.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>“My parents always told me, ‘You have the benefit of living in America and having these opportunities that other people in Vietnam don’t have,'” Diep, 32, said in his council office decorated with bright green, orange and blue walls and a portrait of a woman sewing a yellow Vietnamese freedom flag. “I need to recognize that privilege and not squander it.”</p>
<p>Behind the superhero shield — a rare replica hidden in his closet for two years — is a man who grew up wearing hand-me-downs, practicing&#160;magic tricks and struggling to fit in. Diep’s parents&#160;fled the communist regime by boat in 1979&#160;and landed in Houston, where Diep was born.</p>
<p>“Even though I’m American born,” Diep said, “I have the mindset of a refugee.”</p>
<p>Diep’s parents both worked for Shell Oil Company, and left Houston for&#160;Martinez when he was 11 years old. Four years later, his parents divorced, and Diep&#160;moved to San Jose with his mom.</p>
<p>The divorce, he said, was one of hardest moments of his life. His mother “had a difficult time leaving my dad, and that was mainly because she was afraid of what society and the Vietnamese culture would say.”</p>
<p>But it instilled in Diep&#160;a lesson.&#160;“It taught me courage and that you have to be happy,” Diep said.</p>
<p>But Diep — who endured people telling&#160;him to go&#160;“mow the lawn” when he was young (his name rhymes with “fun”) — gained confidence after learning English from watching TV and finding new friends in San Jose’s diverse community.</p>
<p>“Lan had a political awareness you don’t see among high school students,” said Martin Brandt, Diep’s English teacher at Independence High School. “He was a very confident young man who wasn’t shy about expressing his opinion.”</p>
<p>Diep went on to earn dual bachelor degrees in political science and history from UC San Diego and a&#160;law degree from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law.</p>
<p>After the Deep Horizon oil platform disaster on the Gulf Coast, Diep&#160;spent two years as an Equal Justice Works/AmeriCorps legal fellow fighting to ensure&#160;oil spill victims received fair compensation. He calls it the highlight of his career — so far.</p>
<p>Diep was honored for helping Vietnamese fishermen who lost their livelihoods after the BP oil spill when President Barack Obama gave him the Champion of Change Award in 2011, followed by the Points of Light Award from former President George H. W. Bush in 2012.</p>
<p>“I&#160;knew that I was making a difference,” Diep said. “I’ve been chasing that sense of fulfillment ever since.”</p>
<p>Diep’s rise in politics was anything but easy. After losing a special election for the District 4 council seat in 2015 to former Councilman Manh Nguyen by just 13 votes, Diep took time off and drove across the country. One year later, when Diep saw no one challenging Nguyen’s re-election, he threw his name into the hat again.&#160;This time he won — by 12 votes — despite no major political support.</p>
<p>Before Diep could celebrate his victory, Nguyen demanded a ballot recount and then sued to challenge the election results. The lawsuit continues today, but Diep, the city’s first American-born Vietnamese council member, says he isn’t worried.</p>
<p>Diep is one of three registered Republicans on the nonpartisan City Council. But he isn’t a&#160;typical conservative. He worked on President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and voted for the man he calls a “once-in-a-lifetime politician.” He&#160;missed his first City Council meeting last month to attend Obama’s farewell address in Chicago.</p>
<p>That had some fellow Republicans scratching their heads.</p>
<p>“I don’t care if it’s President Obama or President Trump,” Diep&#160;said. “If I have tickets to an event where the president of the United States is speaking, I will make every effort to go.”</p>
<p>On a City Council often divided between business and labor political camps, Diep aspires to bridge the gulf.&#160;He is a fiscal conservative who approved a hefty raise&#160;for cops, and asked six&#160;political figures&#160;from competing&#160;camps to swear him in. In voting this week to support a woman’s downtown club proposal over neighbor opposition, Diep made his point that “she’d done everything the city asked and they kept asking for more” by playing&#160;a two-minute clip from the “Rocky Balboa”&#160;film.</p>
<p>The shield at his swearing in got him TV billing on “The Daily Show” and “Today,” but also drew some sniping. “Doesn’t seem like he’s taking the position seriously,” one critic tweeted.</p>
<p>Diep’s explanation: “Whatever gets more people to pay attention to local government.”</p>
<p>“He’s getting so much attention and you can understand why others aren’t happy about it,” said former Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen, who was the city’s first Vietnamese council member and helped Diep’s campaign. “He’s admitted he is a comic geek and he’s sort of unleashing his inner geek.&#160;I think it’s very brave he’s showcasing that and it makes people relate to him.”</p>
<p>Active on social media, Diep has kept up an entertaining commentary on his life as well as his new job with Twitter accounts as “Councilor Lan Diep” and a personal account that shows him sporting jazz hands.</p>
<p>On his return trip from Obama’s farewell last month, Diep tweeted that Seattle’s airport had some pretty cool amenities for visitors in the terminal that San Jose’s airport could emulate.</p>
<p>“Lots of live music; spaces to lounge, eat, shop, pass the time, &amp; spend money,” Diep tweeted. “Lessons for @FlySJC?”</p>
<p>One of his toughest critics on the council&#160;who worried Diep wouldn’t serve the&#160;Vietnamese community now says he’s showing strong leadership.</p>
<p>“I’ve seen him change totally in the past couple months,” said Councilman Tam Nguyen, who came to the U.S. when he was 18. “He criticized Manh for focusing too much on the Vietnamese community — I was a little bit worried about him. But when he got into the job, he seems to be a promising councilman.”</p>
<p>Lan Diep</p>
<p>Age: 32</p>
<p>Born: March 11, 1984, Houston, TX</p>
<p>Education: Bachelor degrees in political science and history from UC San Diego, law degree from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law</p>
<p>Career: lawyer including two years as Equal Justice Works/AmeriCorps legal fellow. Elected to San Jose City Council June, 2016 for term beginning January 2017.</p>
<p>Fun fact: Learned English completely by watching TV and to this day he still knows the theme songs to most shows airing during the 1980s and 1990s by heart.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
|
The man behind the shield: San Jose Councilman Lan Diep
| false |
https://mercurynews.com/2017/02/15/the-man-behind-the-shield-san-jose-councilman-lan-diep/
|
2017-02-15
| 3left-center
|
The man behind the shield: San Jose Councilman Lan Diep
<p>SAN JOSE — He’s known around City Hall as Councilman Captain America and his email signature flashes a patriotic red, white and blue. Only weeks into his first term in public office, Lan Diep has already made a splash on national television.</p>
<p>San Jose’s flamboyant new councilman, who became an online sensation holding a “Captain America” shield at his swearing in last month, is making good on his pledge to “make government fun” in a job&#160;where land-use debates can stretch past midnight.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>“My parents always told me, ‘You have the benefit of living in America and having these opportunities that other people in Vietnam don’t have,'” Diep, 32, said in his council office decorated with bright green, orange and blue walls and a portrait of a woman sewing a yellow Vietnamese freedom flag. “I need to recognize that privilege and not squander it.”</p>
<p>Behind the superhero shield — a rare replica hidden in his closet for two years — is a man who grew up wearing hand-me-downs, practicing&#160;magic tricks and struggling to fit in. Diep’s parents&#160;fled the communist regime by boat in 1979&#160;and landed in Houston, where Diep was born.</p>
<p>“Even though I’m American born,” Diep said, “I have the mindset of a refugee.”</p>
<p>Diep’s parents both worked for Shell Oil Company, and left Houston for&#160;Martinez when he was 11 years old. Four years later, his parents divorced, and Diep&#160;moved to San Jose with his mom.</p>
<p>The divorce, he said, was one of hardest moments of his life. His mother “had a difficult time leaving my dad, and that was mainly because she was afraid of what society and the Vietnamese culture would say.”</p>
<p>But it instilled in Diep&#160;a lesson.&#160;“It taught me courage and that you have to be happy,” Diep said.</p>
<p>But Diep — who endured people telling&#160;him to go&#160;“mow the lawn” when he was young (his name rhymes with “fun”) — gained confidence after learning English from watching TV and finding new friends in San Jose’s diverse community.</p>
<p>“Lan had a political awareness you don’t see among high school students,” said Martin Brandt, Diep’s English teacher at Independence High School. “He was a very confident young man who wasn’t shy about expressing his opinion.”</p>
<p>Diep went on to earn dual bachelor degrees in political science and history from UC San Diego and a&#160;law degree from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law.</p>
<p>After the Deep Horizon oil platform disaster on the Gulf Coast, Diep&#160;spent two years as an Equal Justice Works/AmeriCorps legal fellow fighting to ensure&#160;oil spill victims received fair compensation. He calls it the highlight of his career — so far.</p>
<p>Diep was honored for helping Vietnamese fishermen who lost their livelihoods after the BP oil spill when President Barack Obama gave him the Champion of Change Award in 2011, followed by the Points of Light Award from former President George H. W. Bush in 2012.</p>
<p>“I&#160;knew that I was making a difference,” Diep said. “I’ve been chasing that sense of fulfillment ever since.”</p>
<p>Diep’s rise in politics was anything but easy. After losing a special election for the District 4 council seat in 2015 to former Councilman Manh Nguyen by just 13 votes, Diep took time off and drove across the country. One year later, when Diep saw no one challenging Nguyen’s re-election, he threw his name into the hat again.&#160;This time he won — by 12 votes — despite no major political support.</p>
<p>Before Diep could celebrate his victory, Nguyen demanded a ballot recount and then sued to challenge the election results. The lawsuit continues today, but Diep, the city’s first American-born Vietnamese council member, says he isn’t worried.</p>
<p>Diep is one of three registered Republicans on the nonpartisan City Council. But he isn’t a&#160;typical conservative. He worked on President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and voted for the man he calls a “once-in-a-lifetime politician.” He&#160;missed his first City Council meeting last month to attend Obama’s farewell address in Chicago.</p>
<p>That had some fellow Republicans scratching their heads.</p>
<p>“I don’t care if it’s President Obama or President Trump,” Diep&#160;said. “If I have tickets to an event where the president of the United States is speaking, I will make every effort to go.”</p>
<p>On a City Council often divided between business and labor political camps, Diep aspires to bridge the gulf.&#160;He is a fiscal conservative who approved a hefty raise&#160;for cops, and asked six&#160;political figures&#160;from competing&#160;camps to swear him in. In voting this week to support a woman’s downtown club proposal over neighbor opposition, Diep made his point that “she’d done everything the city asked and they kept asking for more” by playing&#160;a two-minute clip from the “Rocky Balboa”&#160;film.</p>
<p>The shield at his swearing in got him TV billing on “The Daily Show” and “Today,” but also drew some sniping. “Doesn’t seem like he’s taking the position seriously,” one critic tweeted.</p>
<p>Diep’s explanation: “Whatever gets more people to pay attention to local government.”</p>
<p>“He’s getting so much attention and you can understand why others aren’t happy about it,” said former Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen, who was the city’s first Vietnamese council member and helped Diep’s campaign. “He’s admitted he is a comic geek and he’s sort of unleashing his inner geek.&#160;I think it’s very brave he’s showcasing that and it makes people relate to him.”</p>
<p>Active on social media, Diep has kept up an entertaining commentary on his life as well as his new job with Twitter accounts as “Councilor Lan Diep” and a personal account that shows him sporting jazz hands.</p>
<p>On his return trip from Obama’s farewell last month, Diep tweeted that Seattle’s airport had some pretty cool amenities for visitors in the terminal that San Jose’s airport could emulate.</p>
<p>“Lots of live music; spaces to lounge, eat, shop, pass the time, &amp; spend money,” Diep tweeted. “Lessons for @FlySJC?”</p>
<p>One of his toughest critics on the council&#160;who worried Diep wouldn’t serve the&#160;Vietnamese community now says he’s showing strong leadership.</p>
<p>“I’ve seen him change totally in the past couple months,” said Councilman Tam Nguyen, who came to the U.S. when he was 18. “He criticized Manh for focusing too much on the Vietnamese community — I was a little bit worried about him. But when he got into the job, he seems to be a promising councilman.”</p>
<p>Lan Diep</p>
<p>Age: 32</p>
<p>Born: March 11, 1984, Houston, TX</p>
<p>Education: Bachelor degrees in political science and history from UC San Diego, law degree from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law</p>
<p>Career: lawyer including two years as Equal Justice Works/AmeriCorps legal fellow. Elected to San Jose City Council June, 2016 for term beginning January 2017.</p>
<p>Fun fact: Learned English completely by watching TV and to this day he still knows the theme songs to most shows airing during the 1980s and 1990s by heart.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
| 7,655 |
<p>An unpublished UCLA study challenging the societal "born this way" dogma of homosexuality has already been gaining traction in the public media since its presentation at an annual scientific conference last week.</p>
<p>The twin <a href="https://ep70.eventpilotadmin.com/web/page.php?page=IntHtml&amp;project=ASHG15&amp;id=150123267" type="external">study</a> conducted at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, finds that homosexuality may be triggered by environmental factors after birth. The research uses an algorithm covering epigenetic markers from several genomic sites of 37 sets of identical male twins to predict homosexuality in males, with 70 percent accuracy, as presented at the <a href="http://www.ashg.org/2015meeting/" type="external">American Society of Human Genetics 2015 Annual Meeting</a> in Baltimore.</p>
<p>“The finding is highly controversial because it suggests that some men are not born gay, but are turned homosexual by their surroundings,” Sarah Knapton of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11919786/Homosexuality-may-be-triggered-by-environment-after-birth.html#disqus_thread" type="external">Telegraph</a> suggested.</p>
<p>The research attracted widespread criticism, from lay people who cry "homophobe!" to experts who decry the study as " <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/epigenetic-tags-linked-to-homosexuality-in-men-1.18530" type="external">statistically [in]significant.</a>"</p>
<p>Dr. Eric Vilain, an author on the study and <a href="http://socgen.ucla.edu/people/eric-vilain/" type="external">director</a> at the Institute for Society and Genetics (ISG) at UCLA, has been championed as an LGBTQ hero in many publications who misconstrued the study itself. Ironically, he's also been scalded by politically correct leftists on issues of transgenderism ever since he coauthored an <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-vilain-transgender-parents-20150521-story.html" type="external">op-ed</a> in the LA Times last May called “What should you do if your son says he's a girl?”</p>
<p>The op-ed, written by two award-winning intersex experts, challenged the idea that adult transgenderism is inevitable for boys with gender dysphoria, and encouraged parents to not be quick to assume that their feminine-acting boys are gay.</p>
<p>Gender dysphoric children have not usually become transgender adults. For example, the large majority of gender dysphoric boys studied so far have become young men content to remain male. More than 80% adjusted by adolescence.</p>
<p>The op-ed also challenges Barack Obama’s <a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/response-your-petition-conversion-therapy" type="external">statement</a> last April, which called for a ban on all LGBTQ conversion therapies. The op-ed stated that some such therapies done by professionals could be useful in “trying to help children avoid later medical stress,” and bear no moral biases against transgendered people.</p>
<p>Dr. Vilain’s op-ed was attacked by readers of the LA Times, who took it as an offense to the LGBTQ community.</p>
<p>“Good to see Fox News has bought the LA Times and forced them to publish this bull $#!+," was one response.</p>
<p>"Shame on Eric Vilain," someone <a href="https://twitter.com/Viviphilia/status/601999836246876160" type="external">tweeted</a>.</p>
<p>"I think that boys can behave in ways that seem very effeminate without being encouraged in the idea that they are of the opposite gender."</p>
<p>Dr. Eric Vilain</p>
<p>These attacks and other attacks on Dr. Vilain’s work are not only morally outrageous because the content of his argument may offer insight and psychological remedy to the sexually ambiguous, they also ignore Dr. Vilain’s expert knowledge and personal contribution to intersex study in the past. The author of this article has been a student of the ISG, and can assert that Dr. Vilain has dedicated a large portion of his life since to studying intersexuality and sexual development, receiving numerous awards for his work, <a href="http://people.healthsciences.ucla.edu/research/institution/personnel?personnel_id=9435" type="external">notably from NIH and the March of Dimes.</a></p>
<p>“There is often a confusion in the minds of young children between their behavior and their identity,” he said yesterday, regarding his research. “If a young boy behaves in a female typical fashion, he may be believe that he IS a girl. That is not the case. I think that boys can behave in ways that seem very effeminate without being encouraged in the idea that they are of the opposite gender.”</p>
<p>Dr. Vilain continued that while it is unknown what the best method for raising "gender nonconforming" children would be, “one should be cautious in immediately supporting social transition of children who are non-conforming.”</p>
<p>He gave two reasons why he thinks that parents in the case of children with genetic markers for potential homosexuality should not try to enforce their children’s sexes with a definitive biological line. "One is that even if there were genetic predisposition markers, they should not be used as part of parenting or any kind of behavioral intervention," he said. "The other is that there simply should not be definitive line, because it does not exist.”</p>
<p>Ed Yong, a scientific journalist and blogger, published an <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/no-scientists-have-not-found-the-gay-gene/410059/" type="external">article</a> in the Atlantic criticizing both the UCLA researchers and the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) for misleading information which caused many news publications to infer that they had discovered a "gay gene."</p>
<p>“The research was described badly in the press release and the ensuing coverage,” Yong said this morning in an email. He insisted that the research was "fundamentally flawed," though it had not mentioned a "gay gene."</p>
<p>Dr. Dean Hamer, a geneticist currently in Hawaii, <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830434-200-gay-test-fear-mustnt-derail-work-on-sexualitys-genetic-basis/" type="external">wrote</a> in the New Scientist that he had been the first to hypothesize that epigenetics, or environmental factors affecting phenotypic expression, may play a role in homosexuality. Dr. Hamer later <a href="https://twitter.com/deanhamer/status/654410443297951744" type="external">tweeted</a> to a colleague that he thinks the ASHG had sent out their press statement on Vilain’s research without consulting Vilain first, even though he was senior author and PI.</p>
<p>Nalini Padmanabhan, communications manager at the ASHG, insisted in an email this morning that the ASHG has not misrepresented or commented independently on Vilain’s research in any way, and that the ASHG <a href="http://www.ashg.org/press/201510-sexual-orientation.html" type="external">press release</a> had simply represented the <a href="https://ep70.eventpilotadmin.com/web/page.php?page=IntHtml&amp;project=ASHG15&amp;id=150123267" type="external">abstract</a> sent to them by Vilain’s lab.</p>
<p>“Dr. Ngun, who is quoted directly throughout, worked with our office to refine the draft press release and ultimately approved the final version,” Padmanabhan said.</p>
<p>Regardless, the inferences drawn from ASHG’s press statement reflect a stubborn desire to twist the pending study as one proving genetic dominance over epigenetics. This is likely derived from a cultural fear of the "homophobic" idea that homosexuality can be triggered by environmental factors during a child’s upbringing.</p>
<p>Failure to acknowledge environmental factors as important triggers in the upbringing of sexually dysphoric children is in itself a disservice to the LGBTQ community, as it ignores possible helpful treatments and can instead often result in a tragic series of self-identity crises, severe mental illness, and in many cases, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/13/local/me-reimer13" type="external">suicide</a>.</p>
|
Study: No, There's No Evidence Of a 'Gay Gene'
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/445/study-no-theres-no-evidence-gay-gene-pardes-seleh
|
2015-10-15
| 0right
|
Study: No, There's No Evidence Of a 'Gay Gene'
<p>An unpublished UCLA study challenging the societal "born this way" dogma of homosexuality has already been gaining traction in the public media since its presentation at an annual scientific conference last week.</p>
<p>The twin <a href="https://ep70.eventpilotadmin.com/web/page.php?page=IntHtml&amp;project=ASHG15&amp;id=150123267" type="external">study</a> conducted at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, finds that homosexuality may be triggered by environmental factors after birth. The research uses an algorithm covering epigenetic markers from several genomic sites of 37 sets of identical male twins to predict homosexuality in males, with 70 percent accuracy, as presented at the <a href="http://www.ashg.org/2015meeting/" type="external">American Society of Human Genetics 2015 Annual Meeting</a> in Baltimore.</p>
<p>“The finding is highly controversial because it suggests that some men are not born gay, but are turned homosexual by their surroundings,” Sarah Knapton of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11919786/Homosexuality-may-be-triggered-by-environment-after-birth.html#disqus_thread" type="external">Telegraph</a> suggested.</p>
<p>The research attracted widespread criticism, from lay people who cry "homophobe!" to experts who decry the study as " <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/epigenetic-tags-linked-to-homosexuality-in-men-1.18530" type="external">statistically [in]significant.</a>"</p>
<p>Dr. Eric Vilain, an author on the study and <a href="http://socgen.ucla.edu/people/eric-vilain/" type="external">director</a> at the Institute for Society and Genetics (ISG) at UCLA, has been championed as an LGBTQ hero in many publications who misconstrued the study itself. Ironically, he's also been scalded by politically correct leftists on issues of transgenderism ever since he coauthored an <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-vilain-transgender-parents-20150521-story.html" type="external">op-ed</a> in the LA Times last May called “What should you do if your son says he's a girl?”</p>
<p>The op-ed, written by two award-winning intersex experts, challenged the idea that adult transgenderism is inevitable for boys with gender dysphoria, and encouraged parents to not be quick to assume that their feminine-acting boys are gay.</p>
<p>Gender dysphoric children have not usually become transgender adults. For example, the large majority of gender dysphoric boys studied so far have become young men content to remain male. More than 80% adjusted by adolescence.</p>
<p>The op-ed also challenges Barack Obama’s <a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/response-your-petition-conversion-therapy" type="external">statement</a> last April, which called for a ban on all LGBTQ conversion therapies. The op-ed stated that some such therapies done by professionals could be useful in “trying to help children avoid later medical stress,” and bear no moral biases against transgendered people.</p>
<p>Dr. Vilain’s op-ed was attacked by readers of the LA Times, who took it as an offense to the LGBTQ community.</p>
<p>“Good to see Fox News has bought the LA Times and forced them to publish this bull $#!+," was one response.</p>
<p>"Shame on Eric Vilain," someone <a href="https://twitter.com/Viviphilia/status/601999836246876160" type="external">tweeted</a>.</p>
<p>"I think that boys can behave in ways that seem very effeminate without being encouraged in the idea that they are of the opposite gender."</p>
<p>Dr. Eric Vilain</p>
<p>These attacks and other attacks on Dr. Vilain’s work are not only morally outrageous because the content of his argument may offer insight and psychological remedy to the sexually ambiguous, they also ignore Dr. Vilain’s expert knowledge and personal contribution to intersex study in the past. The author of this article has been a student of the ISG, and can assert that Dr. Vilain has dedicated a large portion of his life since to studying intersexuality and sexual development, receiving numerous awards for his work, <a href="http://people.healthsciences.ucla.edu/research/institution/personnel?personnel_id=9435" type="external">notably from NIH and the March of Dimes.</a></p>
<p>“There is often a confusion in the minds of young children between their behavior and their identity,” he said yesterday, regarding his research. “If a young boy behaves in a female typical fashion, he may be believe that he IS a girl. That is not the case. I think that boys can behave in ways that seem very effeminate without being encouraged in the idea that they are of the opposite gender.”</p>
<p>Dr. Vilain continued that while it is unknown what the best method for raising "gender nonconforming" children would be, “one should be cautious in immediately supporting social transition of children who are non-conforming.”</p>
<p>He gave two reasons why he thinks that parents in the case of children with genetic markers for potential homosexuality should not try to enforce their children’s sexes with a definitive biological line. "One is that even if there were genetic predisposition markers, they should not be used as part of parenting or any kind of behavioral intervention," he said. "The other is that there simply should not be definitive line, because it does not exist.”</p>
<p>Ed Yong, a scientific journalist and blogger, published an <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/no-scientists-have-not-found-the-gay-gene/410059/" type="external">article</a> in the Atlantic criticizing both the UCLA researchers and the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) for misleading information which caused many news publications to infer that they had discovered a "gay gene."</p>
<p>“The research was described badly in the press release and the ensuing coverage,” Yong said this morning in an email. He insisted that the research was "fundamentally flawed," though it had not mentioned a "gay gene."</p>
<p>Dr. Dean Hamer, a geneticist currently in Hawaii, <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830434-200-gay-test-fear-mustnt-derail-work-on-sexualitys-genetic-basis/" type="external">wrote</a> in the New Scientist that he had been the first to hypothesize that epigenetics, or environmental factors affecting phenotypic expression, may play a role in homosexuality. Dr. Hamer later <a href="https://twitter.com/deanhamer/status/654410443297951744" type="external">tweeted</a> to a colleague that he thinks the ASHG had sent out their press statement on Vilain’s research without consulting Vilain first, even though he was senior author and PI.</p>
<p>Nalini Padmanabhan, communications manager at the ASHG, insisted in an email this morning that the ASHG has not misrepresented or commented independently on Vilain’s research in any way, and that the ASHG <a href="http://www.ashg.org/press/201510-sexual-orientation.html" type="external">press release</a> had simply represented the <a href="https://ep70.eventpilotadmin.com/web/page.php?page=IntHtml&amp;project=ASHG15&amp;id=150123267" type="external">abstract</a> sent to them by Vilain’s lab.</p>
<p>“Dr. Ngun, who is quoted directly throughout, worked with our office to refine the draft press release and ultimately approved the final version,” Padmanabhan said.</p>
<p>Regardless, the inferences drawn from ASHG’s press statement reflect a stubborn desire to twist the pending study as one proving genetic dominance over epigenetics. This is likely derived from a cultural fear of the "homophobic" idea that homosexuality can be triggered by environmental factors during a child’s upbringing.</p>
<p>Failure to acknowledge environmental factors as important triggers in the upbringing of sexually dysphoric children is in itself a disservice to the LGBTQ community, as it ignores possible helpful treatments and can instead often result in a tragic series of self-identity crises, severe mental illness, and in many cases, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/13/local/me-reimer13" type="external">suicide</a>.</p>
| 7,656 |
<p>SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — If Zoya Kolosovksaya had her way, the national anthem would be ringing out each morning from the central square of this tattered former rebel stronghold in eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>Now that security forces have chased out the armed separatists who’d made this provincial outpost of around 120,000 their nerve center, the 51-year-old resident believes the anti-government hysteria that was recently so prominent here should quickly fade.</p>
<p>“People are capable of getting used to anything,” Kolosovskaya said. “They should get used to the fact that Ukrainian statehood exists.”</p>
<p>But that’s a tough sell to countless others who endured not only weeks of rebel occupation but also what many insist was indiscriminate shelling by Ukrainian forces they say terrorized the local population in equal measure.</p>
<p>It means that even though the rebels and their brand of gun-rule may be gone, the battle for hearts and minds has only just begun.</p>
<p>“People are expecting fairness,” says Andriy Mischenko, a Slovyansk city council official. “It’s very important that our government doesn’t miss this chance.”</p>
<p />
<p>The authorities have hailed the seizure of Slovyansk — a stronghold for the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic since April — as a turning point for the country’s crippled military, which for weeks had waged a largely ineffective “anti-terrorist” campaign.</p>
<p>Visiting here earlier this week, President Petro Poroshenko declared it a “symbol of the liberated Donbas,” referring to the area that’s home to the rebellious Donetsk and Luhansk regions.</p>
<p>But that sense has yet to take root in Slovyansk, where local residents are still adjusting to the sudden peace that’s come to the shattered city, where electricity, water and gas was virtually nonexistent during the occupation and many now get around on bicycles.</p>
<p>They wander central streets cracked under the weight of tank and armored personnel carrier tracks and examine the bombed-out apartments, bullet-ridden housing blocks and shattered remains of storefronts that dot the city.</p>
<p />
<p>Encountering acquaintances for the first time since the military arrived, residents often greet each other in the same cheerful if morbid way: “So you’re alive, thank God!”</p>
<p>Many who were unwilling or unable to flee the fighting remained holed up in their apartments or basements, waiting anxiously for an end to what they say was regular bombardment.</p>
<p>For Kolosovskaya and others here, the experience of life in a war zone seemed unreal.</p>
<p>“The explosions, the artillery, that whistling sound above our heads, all of it is impossible to describe,” she says. “You can only live through it and feel it for yourself.”</p>
<p>The local authorities are now busy restoring basic infrastructure whose breakdown amid heavy fighting had thrust life here into what seemed like the dark ages.</p>
<p>Once a key outpost for the separatist fighters in town, city hall on Wednesday was abuzz with activity as local officials and emergency ministry workers scrambled to restore power and tend to other pressing municipal needs.</p>
<p>Hordes of locals crowded the entrance, demanding answers to a kaleidoscope of problems: When will the water in their districts be restored? Whom do they see about their apartments’ blown-out windows?</p>
<p>On the central square nearby, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov strained to field questions from a small crowd about everything from the postal service and shuttered banks to alleged price hikes by the few vendors in town with decent food.</p>
<p />
<p>He assured the crowd that most basic services, including electricity, water and a supply of cash for local banks, would be in place by the end of the week.</p>
<p>“And don’t worry about not receiving your payments for the past months,” he told the crowd, addressing pensioners who haven’t been paid for more than two months. “Everyone will be paid.”</p>
<p>However, some appeared more interested in settling old scores than looking ahead.</p>
<p>Bitter arguments broke out among residents, with pro-Ukraine supporters and rebel sympathizers trading accusations of disloyalty and treason. The absence of the authoritarian separatists — who brooked little dissent — means ugly political and social cleavages are now back in the open.</p>
<p />
<p>Mikhail Morozov, a 66-year-old pensioner with leathery skin, leaned heavily on his cane as he watched the commotion.</p>
<p>Yes, the military’s arrival put an end to the violence. But that doesn’t mean widespread disenchantment with the new Kyiv authorities — decried by many locals, the separatists and the Russian state-run media that fueled the uprising here as “fascists” — has disappeared.</p>
<p>“That’s why I’d say that right now, my mood is neutral,” Morozov said.</p>
<p>Local officials believe it’s still possible to win over those disenfranchised with Kyiv for its alleged role in repressing Russian-speakers, who form the majority in eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>Mischenko, the city council official who rushed about city hall working to fix the electricity, suggests part of the toughest job — reassuring locals that they belong in Ukraine, not in a lawless, breakaway statelet — has already been done.</p>
<p>“The separatists themselves convinced people of that through an absence of ideology and their own actions,” he said, claiming that rebels had resorted to pillaging the city and terrifying many of its residents.</p>
<p />
<p>But others appear harder to convince.</p>
<p>Vitaliy, a 66-year-old former military man who said he was a veteran of several Soviet conflicts, sat idly on a bench in central Slovyansk, his legs dangling above the ground, as he pointed to the apartment building he witnessed being bombarded in an attack that killed his best friend’s wife.</p>
<p>“There was nothing left of her,” the slight, goateed pensioner said, claiming the artillery came from the Ukrainians. Like several others, he declined to give his last name.</p>
<p>Vitaliy, who praises the uprising an “experiment with rebellion” — “We in southeast Ukraine just wanted to show we should be reckoned with,” he said — nevertheless acknowledges the Ukrainian military’s effort at restoring peace in Slovyansk.</p>
<p>“But they gave their oath to the people of Ukraine, and now they're serving their manager and a group of oligarchs,” he said, referring to Poroshenko and his tycoon allies.</p>
<p>The fog of war that descended over Slovyansk in recent weeks, coupled with the vicious information war waged between Kyiv and Moscow, has made it virtually impossible to prove who shelled whom, how and from where.</p>
<p>Officials allege that incompetent or scheming rebels inflicted much of the worst violence here and in other parts of Ukraine, including Luhansk.</p>
<p>The insurgents and many locals blame the Ukrainian military and a patchwork of volunteer battalions for carelessly bombing civilians into submission.</p>
<p>Vlad, a portly 60-year-old, stands flummoxed in front of one of the heaviest-hit structures in the city — where a shell gutted five floors of an apartment building — and curses the government forces.</p>
<p />
<p>It was impossible for the rebels to inflict that kind of damage, he insists.</p>
<p>“If they had that kind of firepower, they'd have made it all the way to western Ukraine by now,” he said. “This is no way to unite Ukraine.”</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/united-kingdom/140707/scotland-independence-referendum-uk-bannockburn" type="external">700 years on, Scotland is still debating independence from England</a></p>
|
In ‘liberated’ eastern Ukraine, the hard work lies ahead
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2014-07-10/liberated-eastern-ukraine-hard-work-lies-ahead
|
2014-07-10
| 3left-center
|
In ‘liberated’ eastern Ukraine, the hard work lies ahead
<p>SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — If Zoya Kolosovksaya had her way, the national anthem would be ringing out each morning from the central square of this tattered former rebel stronghold in eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>Now that security forces have chased out the armed separatists who’d made this provincial outpost of around 120,000 their nerve center, the 51-year-old resident believes the anti-government hysteria that was recently so prominent here should quickly fade.</p>
<p>“People are capable of getting used to anything,” Kolosovskaya said. “They should get used to the fact that Ukrainian statehood exists.”</p>
<p>But that’s a tough sell to countless others who endured not only weeks of rebel occupation but also what many insist was indiscriminate shelling by Ukrainian forces they say terrorized the local population in equal measure.</p>
<p>It means that even though the rebels and their brand of gun-rule may be gone, the battle for hearts and minds has only just begun.</p>
<p>“People are expecting fairness,” says Andriy Mischenko, a Slovyansk city council official. “It’s very important that our government doesn’t miss this chance.”</p>
<p />
<p>The authorities have hailed the seizure of Slovyansk — a stronghold for the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic since April — as a turning point for the country’s crippled military, which for weeks had waged a largely ineffective “anti-terrorist” campaign.</p>
<p>Visiting here earlier this week, President Petro Poroshenko declared it a “symbol of the liberated Donbas,” referring to the area that’s home to the rebellious Donetsk and Luhansk regions.</p>
<p>But that sense has yet to take root in Slovyansk, where local residents are still adjusting to the sudden peace that’s come to the shattered city, where electricity, water and gas was virtually nonexistent during the occupation and many now get around on bicycles.</p>
<p>They wander central streets cracked under the weight of tank and armored personnel carrier tracks and examine the bombed-out apartments, bullet-ridden housing blocks and shattered remains of storefronts that dot the city.</p>
<p />
<p>Encountering acquaintances for the first time since the military arrived, residents often greet each other in the same cheerful if morbid way: “So you’re alive, thank God!”</p>
<p>Many who were unwilling or unable to flee the fighting remained holed up in their apartments or basements, waiting anxiously for an end to what they say was regular bombardment.</p>
<p>For Kolosovskaya and others here, the experience of life in a war zone seemed unreal.</p>
<p>“The explosions, the artillery, that whistling sound above our heads, all of it is impossible to describe,” she says. “You can only live through it and feel it for yourself.”</p>
<p>The local authorities are now busy restoring basic infrastructure whose breakdown amid heavy fighting had thrust life here into what seemed like the dark ages.</p>
<p>Once a key outpost for the separatist fighters in town, city hall on Wednesday was abuzz with activity as local officials and emergency ministry workers scrambled to restore power and tend to other pressing municipal needs.</p>
<p>Hordes of locals crowded the entrance, demanding answers to a kaleidoscope of problems: When will the water in their districts be restored? Whom do they see about their apartments’ blown-out windows?</p>
<p>On the central square nearby, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov strained to field questions from a small crowd about everything from the postal service and shuttered banks to alleged price hikes by the few vendors in town with decent food.</p>
<p />
<p>He assured the crowd that most basic services, including electricity, water and a supply of cash for local banks, would be in place by the end of the week.</p>
<p>“And don’t worry about not receiving your payments for the past months,” he told the crowd, addressing pensioners who haven’t been paid for more than two months. “Everyone will be paid.”</p>
<p>However, some appeared more interested in settling old scores than looking ahead.</p>
<p>Bitter arguments broke out among residents, with pro-Ukraine supporters and rebel sympathizers trading accusations of disloyalty and treason. The absence of the authoritarian separatists — who brooked little dissent — means ugly political and social cleavages are now back in the open.</p>
<p />
<p>Mikhail Morozov, a 66-year-old pensioner with leathery skin, leaned heavily on his cane as he watched the commotion.</p>
<p>Yes, the military’s arrival put an end to the violence. But that doesn’t mean widespread disenchantment with the new Kyiv authorities — decried by many locals, the separatists and the Russian state-run media that fueled the uprising here as “fascists” — has disappeared.</p>
<p>“That’s why I’d say that right now, my mood is neutral,” Morozov said.</p>
<p>Local officials believe it’s still possible to win over those disenfranchised with Kyiv for its alleged role in repressing Russian-speakers, who form the majority in eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>Mischenko, the city council official who rushed about city hall working to fix the electricity, suggests part of the toughest job — reassuring locals that they belong in Ukraine, not in a lawless, breakaway statelet — has already been done.</p>
<p>“The separatists themselves convinced people of that through an absence of ideology and their own actions,” he said, claiming that rebels had resorted to pillaging the city and terrifying many of its residents.</p>
<p />
<p>But others appear harder to convince.</p>
<p>Vitaliy, a 66-year-old former military man who said he was a veteran of several Soviet conflicts, sat idly on a bench in central Slovyansk, his legs dangling above the ground, as he pointed to the apartment building he witnessed being bombarded in an attack that killed his best friend’s wife.</p>
<p>“There was nothing left of her,” the slight, goateed pensioner said, claiming the artillery came from the Ukrainians. Like several others, he declined to give his last name.</p>
<p>Vitaliy, who praises the uprising an “experiment with rebellion” — “We in southeast Ukraine just wanted to show we should be reckoned with,” he said — nevertheless acknowledges the Ukrainian military’s effort at restoring peace in Slovyansk.</p>
<p>“But they gave their oath to the people of Ukraine, and now they're serving their manager and a group of oligarchs,” he said, referring to Poroshenko and his tycoon allies.</p>
<p>The fog of war that descended over Slovyansk in recent weeks, coupled with the vicious information war waged between Kyiv and Moscow, has made it virtually impossible to prove who shelled whom, how and from where.</p>
<p>Officials allege that incompetent or scheming rebels inflicted much of the worst violence here and in other parts of Ukraine, including Luhansk.</p>
<p>The insurgents and many locals blame the Ukrainian military and a patchwork of volunteer battalions for carelessly bombing civilians into submission.</p>
<p>Vlad, a portly 60-year-old, stands flummoxed in front of one of the heaviest-hit structures in the city — where a shell gutted five floors of an apartment building — and curses the government forces.</p>
<p />
<p>It was impossible for the rebels to inflict that kind of damage, he insists.</p>
<p>“If they had that kind of firepower, they'd have made it all the way to western Ukraine by now,” he said. “This is no way to unite Ukraine.”</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/united-kingdom/140707/scotland-independence-referendum-uk-bannockburn" type="external">700 years on, Scotland is still debating independence from England</a></p>
| 7,657 |
<p />
<p />
<p>For the past week, an inquest jury has been hearing evidence regarding the case to determine whether criminal charges should be brought against the jail staff. It took them only 90 minutes to come back with a ruling that all seven people that were subjects of the inquest should be charged.</p>
<p>Those staff members include:Jail Commander Maj. Nancy Evans, Lt. Kashka Meadors and Corrections Officers Jordon Johnson, Thomas Laine, James Ramsey-Guy, John Weber and Dominique Smith.</p>
<p>An eight staff member, Captain George Gold, who was investigated but not part of the inquest, abruptly resigned.</p>
<p>Noticeably absent from the conversation was the guy in charge of the jail, Sheriff David Clarke. When asked about that, <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/investigations/2017/05/01/2-more-inmates-had-water-cut-off-after-dehydration-death-milwaukee-county-jail/101163514/" type="external">District Attorney John Chisholm said this</a>:</p>
<p>Chisholm told reporters he would give a lot of weight to the inquest verdict but is not bound by it or limited by it. He could charge more than seven people, none or any number in between.</p>
<p>He said he tried to limit the number of individuals to those directly involved in Thomas’ care or jail leaders who knew or should have known of problems.</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>Asked why he did not ask jurors to consider if Clarke may have been liable, Chisholm said he would not comment on whether the sheriff or any other individual would likely face charges.</p>
<p>Clarke really should be charged.</p>
<p>First and foremost, he is the top dog at the jail and everything that happens there is ultimately his responsibility.</p>
<p>Secondly, it was Clarke's own policy that led up to this happening. The jail used to have a special needs dorm which was staffed by the Special Management Team, correction officers trained to deal with inmates with chronic mental illness. Clarke, in his infinite lack of wisdom, decided to do away with this unit, thereby bringing these special needs inmates in with the general population. It was a recipe for disaster and often, these mentally ill inmates would not get along well with others and end up in isolation where they fare even worse.</p>
<p>Another odd thing is how did Nancy Evans end up being a jail commander? In 2011, Evans was <a href="http://www.wisn.com/article/sheriff-s-official-demoted-not-charged-after-paying-lover-to-do-county-work/6314243" type="external">the subject of an investigation</a> which caused her to be demoted from her spot as third highest ranked official in the Sheriff's Office:</p>
<p>According to the report, Evans admitted she had a 10-year extra-marital relationship with a man she paid to do some remodeling in the administrative offices where she oversaw the Milwaukee County Jail.</p>
<p>Investigators said Evans paid her paramour "$5,852 of taxpayers' money for work that was not completed." Then "ordered her staff to have the inmate workers complete the work" while she attended a jail conference in Reno, accompanied by the remodeler.</p>
<p>So in just four years, Evans goes from almost losing her job and going to jail to being the jail commander? Something sure smells fishy.</p>
<p>Another thing that is very curious is that the loud-mouthed Clarke, who usually spews vitriol and hate everywhere, has been a long time proponent of standing up for officers around the country, whether they are guilty or innocent. But with his own officers, he's been suspiciously mum and only issued <a href="http://www.wisn.com/article/shocking-video-shows-2nd-grader-falling-from-moving-school-bus/9590818" type="external">this brief statement</a> after the verdict was read:</p>
<p>"This is part of a process. I respect the process. Jury recommendations are just that. The next step in the process is for DA Chisholm to decide if actual charges will be brought forth. There will be no speculation of what will happen until it happens," Clarke said in a statement.</p>
<p>Why, that's not very supportive at all! It's almost like he's afraid of saying something that might be used against him later.</p>
<p>Although to be honest, even if Clarke was charged in Terill's death, he could get off due to plausible deniability.</p>
<p>First, he's too stupid to understand what's going on without someone feeding him talking points. Secondly, he could honestly claim ignorance, since he was gone so much of the time, making appearances on Faux Newz and traveling around the country and to Russia for the NRA.,</p>
|
Inquest Jury Recommends Charges In Deaths In Sheriff Clarke's Jail
| true |
http://crooksandliars.com/2017/05/inquest-jury-recommends-charges-milwaukee
|
2017-05-02
| 4left
|
Inquest Jury Recommends Charges In Deaths In Sheriff Clarke's Jail
<p />
<p />
<p>For the past week, an inquest jury has been hearing evidence regarding the case to determine whether criminal charges should be brought against the jail staff. It took them only 90 minutes to come back with a ruling that all seven people that were subjects of the inquest should be charged.</p>
<p>Those staff members include:Jail Commander Maj. Nancy Evans, Lt. Kashka Meadors and Corrections Officers Jordon Johnson, Thomas Laine, James Ramsey-Guy, John Weber and Dominique Smith.</p>
<p>An eight staff member, Captain George Gold, who was investigated but not part of the inquest, abruptly resigned.</p>
<p>Noticeably absent from the conversation was the guy in charge of the jail, Sheriff David Clarke. When asked about that, <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/investigations/2017/05/01/2-more-inmates-had-water-cut-off-after-dehydration-death-milwaukee-county-jail/101163514/" type="external">District Attorney John Chisholm said this</a>:</p>
<p>Chisholm told reporters he would give a lot of weight to the inquest verdict but is not bound by it or limited by it. He could charge more than seven people, none or any number in between.</p>
<p>He said he tried to limit the number of individuals to those directly involved in Thomas’ care or jail leaders who knew or should have known of problems.</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>Asked why he did not ask jurors to consider if Clarke may have been liable, Chisholm said he would not comment on whether the sheriff or any other individual would likely face charges.</p>
<p>Clarke really should be charged.</p>
<p>First and foremost, he is the top dog at the jail and everything that happens there is ultimately his responsibility.</p>
<p>Secondly, it was Clarke's own policy that led up to this happening. The jail used to have a special needs dorm which was staffed by the Special Management Team, correction officers trained to deal with inmates with chronic mental illness. Clarke, in his infinite lack of wisdom, decided to do away with this unit, thereby bringing these special needs inmates in with the general population. It was a recipe for disaster and often, these mentally ill inmates would not get along well with others and end up in isolation where they fare even worse.</p>
<p>Another odd thing is how did Nancy Evans end up being a jail commander? In 2011, Evans was <a href="http://www.wisn.com/article/sheriff-s-official-demoted-not-charged-after-paying-lover-to-do-county-work/6314243" type="external">the subject of an investigation</a> which caused her to be demoted from her spot as third highest ranked official in the Sheriff's Office:</p>
<p>According to the report, Evans admitted she had a 10-year extra-marital relationship with a man she paid to do some remodeling in the administrative offices where she oversaw the Milwaukee County Jail.</p>
<p>Investigators said Evans paid her paramour "$5,852 of taxpayers' money for work that was not completed." Then "ordered her staff to have the inmate workers complete the work" while she attended a jail conference in Reno, accompanied by the remodeler.</p>
<p>So in just four years, Evans goes from almost losing her job and going to jail to being the jail commander? Something sure smells fishy.</p>
<p>Another thing that is very curious is that the loud-mouthed Clarke, who usually spews vitriol and hate everywhere, has been a long time proponent of standing up for officers around the country, whether they are guilty or innocent. But with his own officers, he's been suspiciously mum and only issued <a href="http://www.wisn.com/article/shocking-video-shows-2nd-grader-falling-from-moving-school-bus/9590818" type="external">this brief statement</a> after the verdict was read:</p>
<p>"This is part of a process. I respect the process. Jury recommendations are just that. The next step in the process is for DA Chisholm to decide if actual charges will be brought forth. There will be no speculation of what will happen until it happens," Clarke said in a statement.</p>
<p>Why, that's not very supportive at all! It's almost like he's afraid of saying something that might be used against him later.</p>
<p>Although to be honest, even if Clarke was charged in Terill's death, he could get off due to plausible deniability.</p>
<p>First, he's too stupid to understand what's going on without someone feeding him talking points. Secondly, he could honestly claim ignorance, since he was gone so much of the time, making appearances on Faux Newz and traveling around the country and to Russia for the NRA.,</p>
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<p>A scene from the documentary film “The Story of Por Por,” set in Ghana.</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Listen carefully to the horn honking in the film “The Story of Por Por.” It’s about music, not annoyance.</p>
<p>The film, which documents the truck klaxon horn as a musical instrument in Ghana, has been screened at international festivals and on major university campuses.</p>
<p>But one reason it will be shown Saturday, Dec. 7 at the Outpost Performance Space is in honor of the late Keith H. Basso, who taught at the University of New Mexico.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Keith was a big supporter of this film project. He was one of the most distinguished faculty in anthropology and linguistics in Native American studies,” said filmmaker Steven Feld, a distinguished professor of anthropology and music at UNM.</p>
<p>“He was strongly about collaboration, strongly about storytelling and about places and strongly about name systems, nicknames and reputation.”</p>
<p>This film, Feld said, is about all of those, “so the themes of the movie are ones that I associate with Keith’s work (with the Western Apache).”</p>
<p>Feld and Ghanian photographer Nii Yemo Nunu made the 60-minute film, which is in the Ga language with English subtitles.</p>
<p>Feld said the film should appeal to the general public.</p>
<p>“It’s a charming story about the invention of a musical instrument – the squeeze-bulb klaxon horn – and the story about how this new (Por Por) music was born about 60 years ago,” he said.</p>
<p>It uses interviews with 25 truck drivers and transport workers from a Ga-speaking residential township in Accra, Ghana, about their music that’s played for union driver funerals.</p>
<p>At the Outpost, Feld will introduce the film. Following the screening, he and Kwame Assenyoh, who helped Feld translate the subtitles from Ga to English, will host a question-and-answer session.</p>
<p>Feld has been involved in the making of another film and two CDs related to the Por Por music.</p>
<p />
|
Documentary tells the story of the invention of the squeeze-bulb klaxon horn
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/314352/albuquerque-documentary-film.html
| 2least
|
Documentary tells the story of the invention of the squeeze-bulb klaxon horn
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>A scene from the documentary film “The Story of Por Por,” set in Ghana.</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Listen carefully to the horn honking in the film “The Story of Por Por.” It’s about music, not annoyance.</p>
<p>The film, which documents the truck klaxon horn as a musical instrument in Ghana, has been screened at international festivals and on major university campuses.</p>
<p>But one reason it will be shown Saturday, Dec. 7 at the Outpost Performance Space is in honor of the late Keith H. Basso, who taught at the University of New Mexico.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Keith was a big supporter of this film project. He was one of the most distinguished faculty in anthropology and linguistics in Native American studies,” said filmmaker Steven Feld, a distinguished professor of anthropology and music at UNM.</p>
<p>“He was strongly about collaboration, strongly about storytelling and about places and strongly about name systems, nicknames and reputation.”</p>
<p>This film, Feld said, is about all of those, “so the themes of the movie are ones that I associate with Keith’s work (with the Western Apache).”</p>
<p>Feld and Ghanian photographer Nii Yemo Nunu made the 60-minute film, which is in the Ga language with English subtitles.</p>
<p>Feld said the film should appeal to the general public.</p>
<p>“It’s a charming story about the invention of a musical instrument – the squeeze-bulb klaxon horn – and the story about how this new (Por Por) music was born about 60 years ago,” he said.</p>
<p>It uses interviews with 25 truck drivers and transport workers from a Ga-speaking residential township in Accra, Ghana, about their music that’s played for union driver funerals.</p>
<p>At the Outpost, Feld will introduce the film. Following the screening, he and Kwame Assenyoh, who helped Feld translate the subtitles from Ga to English, will host a question-and-answer session.</p>
<p>Feld has been involved in the making of another film and two CDs related to the Por Por music.</p>
<p />
| 7,659 |
|
<p>BLUEFIELD — Nearly 50 Bluefield College students made new professions of faith, while an additional 40 to 50 students renewed their commitments to a relationship with Jesus Christ during the school's 16th annual Duremdes Christian Emphasis Week, Sept. 26-28.</p>
<p>Since 1992, BC students, faculty and staff have dedicated a week during the fall term to “examine their spiritual lives” through the facilitation of inspirational speakers, leaders and musicians. Created and funded through the gifts of Gene and Jane Duremdes of Princeton, W.Va., the event this year featured renowned evangelist Tony Nolan and the award-winning music of contemporary Christian band Building 429.</p>
<p>“This week has the potential to be the week we talk about for years to come,” said BC campus minister David Taylor about the 2007 version of Christian Emphasis Week, “because of the lives that are changed and the hearts that are transformed.”</p>
<p />
<p>Bluefield College</p>
<p>Bluefield College students worship led by contemporary Christian band Building 429.</p>
<p>Nolan led dozens of Bluefield College students to make new and renewed professions of faith during his three-day sermon series. Nolan said his goal for the week was that the BC students, “get it,” that they understand the truth regarding a relationship with Jesus Christ.</p>
<p>“If you really, authentically connect with God, absorb him, then you will know the truth,” said Nolan. “Why? Because the truth is a person, and if you abide in that person, follow that person, then the truth will set you free.”</p>
<p>Nolan, who was raised by an adoptive father who purchased him for $200 only later to say he wished he had never bought him, said God wants us to first know the truth about ourselves. The truth, he said, is that we are not defined by our past failures or by what others say about us. Instead, we are defined by how God see us.</p>
<p>“God sees us as tremendously valuable,” said Nolan, who was convinced he was unworthy until someone took time to share with him the good news of the gospel.</p>
<p>During his final session with BC students, Nolan challenged listeners to be devoted to prayer life with God. Using telecommunication names like Sprint, AT&amp;T, MCI and Excel, Nolan encouraged the students to run (Sprint) to God in prayer, approach the throne (AT&amp;T) of grace, make clean intercession (MCI), and just watch God do amazing things (Excel) in our life.</p>
<p>With its music ministry, Building 429 complemented Nolan's messages in a live concert during day one of Christian Emphasis Week. The Dove Award-winning artists performed hits from their latest CD, Iris to Iris.</p>
|
Dozens of BC students make spiritual decisions during emphasis week
| false |
https://baptistnews.com/article/dozensofbcstudentsmakespiritualdecisionsduringemphasisweek/
| 3left-center
|
Dozens of BC students make spiritual decisions during emphasis week
<p>BLUEFIELD — Nearly 50 Bluefield College students made new professions of faith, while an additional 40 to 50 students renewed their commitments to a relationship with Jesus Christ during the school's 16th annual Duremdes Christian Emphasis Week, Sept. 26-28.</p>
<p>Since 1992, BC students, faculty and staff have dedicated a week during the fall term to “examine their spiritual lives” through the facilitation of inspirational speakers, leaders and musicians. Created and funded through the gifts of Gene and Jane Duremdes of Princeton, W.Va., the event this year featured renowned evangelist Tony Nolan and the award-winning music of contemporary Christian band Building 429.</p>
<p>“This week has the potential to be the week we talk about for years to come,” said BC campus minister David Taylor about the 2007 version of Christian Emphasis Week, “because of the lives that are changed and the hearts that are transformed.”</p>
<p />
<p>Bluefield College</p>
<p>Bluefield College students worship led by contemporary Christian band Building 429.</p>
<p>Nolan led dozens of Bluefield College students to make new and renewed professions of faith during his three-day sermon series. Nolan said his goal for the week was that the BC students, “get it,” that they understand the truth regarding a relationship with Jesus Christ.</p>
<p>“If you really, authentically connect with God, absorb him, then you will know the truth,” said Nolan. “Why? Because the truth is a person, and if you abide in that person, follow that person, then the truth will set you free.”</p>
<p>Nolan, who was raised by an adoptive father who purchased him for $200 only later to say he wished he had never bought him, said God wants us to first know the truth about ourselves. The truth, he said, is that we are not defined by our past failures or by what others say about us. Instead, we are defined by how God see us.</p>
<p>“God sees us as tremendously valuable,” said Nolan, who was convinced he was unworthy until someone took time to share with him the good news of the gospel.</p>
<p>During his final session with BC students, Nolan challenged listeners to be devoted to prayer life with God. Using telecommunication names like Sprint, AT&amp;T, MCI and Excel, Nolan encouraged the students to run (Sprint) to God in prayer, approach the throne (AT&amp;T) of grace, make clean intercession (MCI), and just watch God do amazing things (Excel) in our life.</p>
<p>With its music ministry, Building 429 complemented Nolan's messages in a live concert during day one of Christian Emphasis Week. The Dove Award-winning artists performed hits from their latest CD, Iris to Iris.</p>
| 7,660 |
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<p>Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (Ret) is a familiar face on Fox News. He has been doing commentary on military matters and foreign affairs for more than a decade. He has always been a hard-core spokesman for ultra-conservative views and a fierce opponent of all things liberal. He once <a href="" type="internal">called President Obama</a> a “total pussy” on the air (for which he got a two week suspension).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NewsCorpse/posts/2081502651864519" type="external" /></p>
<p>For a little background, Peters is so radical that he once complained that the U.S. military needed to buck up and <a href="" type="internal">produce more civilian casualties</a> in order to win the war on terror. He also advocated <a href="" type="internal">targeting the media</a> for military attacks, including in the U.S. But more recently he has assumed a strident “NeverTrump” position. He believes that Donald Trump is Putin’s puppet and even announced on Fox that he would be <a href="" type="internal">voting for Hillary Clinton</a> because he doesn’t “want Moscow’s man in the White House,” and that “Vladimir Putin has a deep hold on Trump.”</p>
<p>Bearing all of that in mind, the <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomnamako/ralph-peters" type="external">letter</a> Peters released on Tuesday is all the more remarkable. In it he announced that he was severing his relationship with Fox News. And the substance and tone of the document is just plain shocking. For someone so devoted to the far-right agenda, Peters’ descriptions of Fox News must sting. And no matter how much of a war-mongering neanderthal he is, he seems to have solid grasp of how reprehensible and dangerous Fox News is. So read on in amazement (emphasis added):</p>
<p>On March 1st, I informed Fox that I would not renew my contract. The purpose of this message to all of you is twofold:</p>
<p>First, I must thank each of you for the cooperation and support you’ve shown me over the years. Those working off-camera, the bookers and producers, don’t often get the recognition you deserve, but I want you to know that I have always appreciated the challenges you face and the skill with which you master them.</p>
<p>Second, I feel compelled to explain why I have to leave. Four decades ago, I took an oath as a newly commissioned officer. I swore to “support and defend the Constitution,” and that oath did not expire when I took off my uniform. Today, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers. Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed.</p>
<p>In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration. When prime-time hosts–who have never served our country in any capacity–dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller–all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations– I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove. To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit.</p>
<p>As a Russia analyst for many years, it also has appalled me that hosts who made their reputations as super-patriots and who, justifiably, savaged President Obama for his duplicitous folly with Putin, now advance Putin’s agenda by making light of Russian penetration of our elections and the Trump campaign. Despite increasingly pathetic denials, it turns out that the “nothing-burger” has been covered with Russian dressing all along. And by the way: As an intelligence professional, I can tell you that the Steele dossier rings true–that’s how the Russians do things.. The result is that we have an American president who is terrified of his counterpart in Moscow.</p>
<p>I do not apply the above criticisms in full to Fox Business, where numerous hosts retain a respect for facts and maintain a measure of integrity (nor is every host at Fox News a propaganda mouthpiece–some have shown courage). I have enjoyed and valued my relationship with Fox Business, and I will miss a number of hosts and staff members. You’re the grown-ups.</p>
<p>Also, I deeply respect the hard-news reporters at Fox, who continue to do their best as talented professionals in a poisoned environment. These are some of the best men and women in the business.</p>
<p>So, to all of you: Thanks, and, as our president’s favorite world leader would say, “Das vidanya.”</p>
<p>That hardly requires any elaboration. However, Fox News issued a brief and uncharacteristically weak response:</p>
<p>“Ralph Peters is entitled to his opinion despite the fact that he’s choosing to use it as a weapon in order to gain attention. We are extremely proud of our top-rated primetime hosts and all of our opinion programing,”</p>
<p>Fox didn’t even bother to refute any of Peters’ allegations regarding Fox’s devolution into a propaganda machine. Nor did they defend the assertions that Trump is a hapless asset of Vladimir Putin. They just bragged about their on-air shills (only those in primetime) and made a wholly nonsensical accusation that Peters was seeking attention. By quitting his job at a major cable TV network? Um, Okay. Let’s see if any of his former colleagues have the guts to join a long overdue and righteous exodus from Fox. Or they can stay and forever wallow in the treasonous glow of Comrade Trump’s State TV.</p>
|
‘I Am Ashamed’ To Be Associated With Fox News, Says Long-Time Military Contributor
| true |
http://newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p%3D8730
| 4left
|
‘I Am Ashamed’ To Be Associated With Fox News, Says Long-Time Military Contributor
<p>Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (Ret) is a familiar face on Fox News. He has been doing commentary on military matters and foreign affairs for more than a decade. He has always been a hard-core spokesman for ultra-conservative views and a fierce opponent of all things liberal. He once <a href="" type="internal">called President Obama</a> a “total pussy” on the air (for which he got a two week suspension).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NewsCorpse/posts/2081502651864519" type="external" /></p>
<p>For a little background, Peters is so radical that he once complained that the U.S. military needed to buck up and <a href="" type="internal">produce more civilian casualties</a> in order to win the war on terror. He also advocated <a href="" type="internal">targeting the media</a> for military attacks, including in the U.S. But more recently he has assumed a strident “NeverTrump” position. He believes that Donald Trump is Putin’s puppet and even announced on Fox that he would be <a href="" type="internal">voting for Hillary Clinton</a> because he doesn’t “want Moscow’s man in the White House,” and that “Vladimir Putin has a deep hold on Trump.”</p>
<p>Bearing all of that in mind, the <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomnamako/ralph-peters" type="external">letter</a> Peters released on Tuesday is all the more remarkable. In it he announced that he was severing his relationship with Fox News. And the substance and tone of the document is just plain shocking. For someone so devoted to the far-right agenda, Peters’ descriptions of Fox News must sting. And no matter how much of a war-mongering neanderthal he is, he seems to have solid grasp of how reprehensible and dangerous Fox News is. So read on in amazement (emphasis added):</p>
<p>On March 1st, I informed Fox that I would not renew my contract. The purpose of this message to all of you is twofold:</p>
<p>First, I must thank each of you for the cooperation and support you’ve shown me over the years. Those working off-camera, the bookers and producers, don’t often get the recognition you deserve, but I want you to know that I have always appreciated the challenges you face and the skill with which you master them.</p>
<p>Second, I feel compelled to explain why I have to leave. Four decades ago, I took an oath as a newly commissioned officer. I swore to “support and defend the Constitution,” and that oath did not expire when I took off my uniform. Today, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers. Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed.</p>
<p>In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration. When prime-time hosts–who have never served our country in any capacity–dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller–all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations– I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove. To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit.</p>
<p>As a Russia analyst for many years, it also has appalled me that hosts who made their reputations as super-patriots and who, justifiably, savaged President Obama for his duplicitous folly with Putin, now advance Putin’s agenda by making light of Russian penetration of our elections and the Trump campaign. Despite increasingly pathetic denials, it turns out that the “nothing-burger” has been covered with Russian dressing all along. And by the way: As an intelligence professional, I can tell you that the Steele dossier rings true–that’s how the Russians do things.. The result is that we have an American president who is terrified of his counterpart in Moscow.</p>
<p>I do not apply the above criticisms in full to Fox Business, where numerous hosts retain a respect for facts and maintain a measure of integrity (nor is every host at Fox News a propaganda mouthpiece–some have shown courage). I have enjoyed and valued my relationship with Fox Business, and I will miss a number of hosts and staff members. You’re the grown-ups.</p>
<p>Also, I deeply respect the hard-news reporters at Fox, who continue to do their best as talented professionals in a poisoned environment. These are some of the best men and women in the business.</p>
<p>So, to all of you: Thanks, and, as our president’s favorite world leader would say, “Das vidanya.”</p>
<p>That hardly requires any elaboration. However, Fox News issued a brief and uncharacteristically weak response:</p>
<p>“Ralph Peters is entitled to his opinion despite the fact that he’s choosing to use it as a weapon in order to gain attention. We are extremely proud of our top-rated primetime hosts and all of our opinion programing,”</p>
<p>Fox didn’t even bother to refute any of Peters’ allegations regarding Fox’s devolution into a propaganda machine. Nor did they defend the assertions that Trump is a hapless asset of Vladimir Putin. They just bragged about their on-air shills (only those in primetime) and made a wholly nonsensical accusation that Peters was seeking attention. By quitting his job at a major cable TV network? Um, Okay. Let’s see if any of his former colleagues have the guts to join a long overdue and righteous exodus from Fox. Or they can stay and forever wallow in the treasonous glow of Comrade Trump’s State TV.</p>
| 7,661 |
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<p>Shares of <a href="http://variety.com/tag/roku/" type="external">Roku</a> shot up as high as 31% in its initial public offering Thursday on NASDAQ, as investors bought up stock in the streaming-media device and platform that’s challenging tech giants Apple, Google and Amazon.</p>
<p>The company began trading on NASDAQ under the “ <a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/roku-new-hulu-app-1202563689/" type="external">ROKU</a>” stock symbol around 10:40 a.m. ET on Thursday. <a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/roku-ipo-share-price-1202574719/" type="external">Roku priced its shares at $14 per share</a> (at the high end of its previous range), and the stock quickly rose to more than $18 in initial trading for a market cap of more than $1.6 billion. The peak in early trading was $18.40 per share. Roku raised about $220 million from the offering of 15.7 million shares.</p>
<p>In Roku’s IPO registration statement, the company disclosed healthy revenue gains and a shift toward a more diversified sales mix that includes advertising income — and while it’s not profitable, the company narrowed losses in the first half of 2017.</p>
<p>Roku generated $199.7 million in revenue during the first half of 2017, up 23% from $162.3 million during the same time last year. It reported a net loss of $24.2 million for the first six months of 2017, versus a net loss of $33.2 million in the comparable year-earlier period.</p>
<p>For the first six months of this year, 59% of Roku’s revenue came from the sale of streaming devices. The other 41% from what the company calls its platform business, which includes ad sales on advertising-supported channels, as well as licensing fees, fees for placement in the Roku channel store and more. The Roku platform business grew 91% year-over-year.</p>
<p>According to the regulatory filing, Roku had 15.1&#160;million active user accounts as of June 30, which stream an average of three hours of video daily. The company reported average revenue per user of $11.22 as of the end of Q2, which it calculates based on revenue and average number of active accounts during the preceding four fiscal quarters; that was up 35% from ARPU of $8.32 a year earlier.</p>
<p>Underwriters of the Roku IPO are Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, as well as Allen &amp; Co., Needham &amp; Co., RBC Capital Markets, Oppenheimer &amp; Co., and William Blair.</p>
|
Roku Shares Soar in Streaming-Device Maker’s IPO Debut
| false |
https://newsline.com/roku-shares-soar-in-streaming-device-makers-ipo-debut/
|
2017-09-28
| 1right-center
|
Roku Shares Soar in Streaming-Device Maker’s IPO Debut
<p>Shares of <a href="http://variety.com/tag/roku/" type="external">Roku</a> shot up as high as 31% in its initial public offering Thursday on NASDAQ, as investors bought up stock in the streaming-media device and platform that’s challenging tech giants Apple, Google and Amazon.</p>
<p>The company began trading on NASDAQ under the “ <a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/roku-new-hulu-app-1202563689/" type="external">ROKU</a>” stock symbol around 10:40 a.m. ET on Thursday. <a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/roku-ipo-share-price-1202574719/" type="external">Roku priced its shares at $14 per share</a> (at the high end of its previous range), and the stock quickly rose to more than $18 in initial trading for a market cap of more than $1.6 billion. The peak in early trading was $18.40 per share. Roku raised about $220 million from the offering of 15.7 million shares.</p>
<p>In Roku’s IPO registration statement, the company disclosed healthy revenue gains and a shift toward a more diversified sales mix that includes advertising income — and while it’s not profitable, the company narrowed losses in the first half of 2017.</p>
<p>Roku generated $199.7 million in revenue during the first half of 2017, up 23% from $162.3 million during the same time last year. It reported a net loss of $24.2 million for the first six months of 2017, versus a net loss of $33.2 million in the comparable year-earlier period.</p>
<p>For the first six months of this year, 59% of Roku’s revenue came from the sale of streaming devices. The other 41% from what the company calls its platform business, which includes ad sales on advertising-supported channels, as well as licensing fees, fees for placement in the Roku channel store and more. The Roku platform business grew 91% year-over-year.</p>
<p>According to the regulatory filing, Roku had 15.1&#160;million active user accounts as of June 30, which stream an average of three hours of video daily. The company reported average revenue per user of $11.22 as of the end of Q2, which it calculates based on revenue and average number of active accounts during the preceding four fiscal quarters; that was up 35% from ARPU of $8.32 a year earlier.</p>
<p>Underwriters of the Roku IPO are Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, as well as Allen &amp; Co., Needham &amp; Co., RBC Capital Markets, Oppenheimer &amp; Co., and William Blair.</p>
| 7,662 |
<p>As the Washington Post recently <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/they-said-the-sequester-would-be-scary-mostly-they-were-wrong/2013/06/30/73bdbbfc-da7a-11e2-8ed8-7adf8eba6e9a_story.html" type="external">reported</a>, the “sky didn’t fall” in the face of the current round of $85 billion in sequestration cuts.</p>
<p>Just whether the sky did or did not fall, though, depends on who you are in the country.&#160; <a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>For the 140,000 low-income families who are at risk of losing public housing support because of sequestration, the cuts have real meaning.</p>
<p>For parents who need to get their kids to Head Start programs – which officials, in some cases, have saved by cutting transportation and wrap-around services – a cut is still a cut.</p>
<p>The same can be said for people striving to build better lives but find that their <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sequester-brings-more-pain-to-the-long-term-unemployed/2013/07/02/f78d6170-e331-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_story.html" type="external">unemployment benefits are smaller</a> – thanks to the cuts.</p>
<p>To keep attention focused on this issue, Equal Voice News hosted a live Facebook chat on July 2 and invited participants from around the country to ask questions, share information and learn new details.</p>
<p>If you were unable to attend the live chat, you can find <a href="http://storify.com/equalvoicenews/live-facebook-chat-the-sequester" type="external">a summary on Storify</a> as well as <a href="https://www.facebook.com/EqualVoiceNews" type="external">Facebook</a>.</p>
<p>Erik Stegman, manager of <a href="http://www.halfinten.org/" type="external">Half in Ten: The Campaign to Cut Poverty in Half in Ten Years</a>, was on hand to answer questions. He leads the group’s “Restoring Shared Prosperity” project and analyzes policy, especially the impact of sequestration.</p>
<p>As Stegman pointed out during the chat, the overall sequestration cuts are expected to be $984 billion between 2013 and 2021. They were, he said, “designed to force Congress to compromise.”</p>
<p>Equal Voice News encourages people to continue this conversation by leaving a comment or question on our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/EqualVoiceNews" type="external">Facebook page</a> or sending a note via <a href="https://twitter.com/equalvoicenews" type="external">Twitter</a> with the hashtag, #SeqChat.</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Contact author</a></p>
<p>&#160;&#160; <a href="" type="internal">automatic budget cuts</a>, <a href="" type="internal">communities</a>, <a href="" type="internal">facebook</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Facebook chat</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Half in Ten</a>, <a href="" type="internal">sequestration</a></p>
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Is Sequestration Not an Issue? It Depends on Who You Are
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http://equalvoiceforfamilies.org/is-sequestration-not-an-issue-it-depends-on-who-you-are/
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Is Sequestration Not an Issue? It Depends on Who You Are
<p>As the Washington Post recently <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/they-said-the-sequester-would-be-scary-mostly-they-were-wrong/2013/06/30/73bdbbfc-da7a-11e2-8ed8-7adf8eba6e9a_story.html" type="external">reported</a>, the “sky didn’t fall” in the face of the current round of $85 billion in sequestration cuts.</p>
<p>Just whether the sky did or did not fall, though, depends on who you are in the country.&#160; <a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>For the 140,000 low-income families who are at risk of losing public housing support because of sequestration, the cuts have real meaning.</p>
<p>For parents who need to get their kids to Head Start programs – which officials, in some cases, have saved by cutting transportation and wrap-around services – a cut is still a cut.</p>
<p>The same can be said for people striving to build better lives but find that their <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sequester-brings-more-pain-to-the-long-term-unemployed/2013/07/02/f78d6170-e331-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_story.html" type="external">unemployment benefits are smaller</a> – thanks to the cuts.</p>
<p>To keep attention focused on this issue, Equal Voice News hosted a live Facebook chat on July 2 and invited participants from around the country to ask questions, share information and learn new details.</p>
<p>If you were unable to attend the live chat, you can find <a href="http://storify.com/equalvoicenews/live-facebook-chat-the-sequester" type="external">a summary on Storify</a> as well as <a href="https://www.facebook.com/EqualVoiceNews" type="external">Facebook</a>.</p>
<p>Erik Stegman, manager of <a href="http://www.halfinten.org/" type="external">Half in Ten: The Campaign to Cut Poverty in Half in Ten Years</a>, was on hand to answer questions. He leads the group’s “Restoring Shared Prosperity” project and analyzes policy, especially the impact of sequestration.</p>
<p>As Stegman pointed out during the chat, the overall sequestration cuts are expected to be $984 billion between 2013 and 2021. They were, he said, “designed to force Congress to compromise.”</p>
<p>Equal Voice News encourages people to continue this conversation by leaving a comment or question on our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/EqualVoiceNews" type="external">Facebook page</a> or sending a note via <a href="https://twitter.com/equalvoicenews" type="external">Twitter</a> with the hashtag, #SeqChat.</p>
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<p><a href="" type="internal">Contact author</a></p>
<p>&#160;&#160; <a href="" type="internal">automatic budget cuts</a>, <a href="" type="internal">communities</a>, <a href="" type="internal">facebook</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Facebook chat</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Half in Ten</a>, <a href="" type="internal">sequestration</a></p>
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<p>NEW ORLEANS — More shrimp fishermen would have to use nets equipped with turtle escape hatches, to prevent sea turtle deaths, under proposed new federal rules released on Thursday.</p>
<p>The National Marine Fisheries Service wants to require more shrimp fishermen to use “turtle excluder devices.” The devices are metal grates that allow turtles to escape the boats’ nets.</p>
<p>The new rules would apply mostly in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, home to a major part of America’s largest shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Mexico.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“This will allow the fishery to continue to operate and produce seafood, and it will aid our path down the recovery of the sea turtle population,” said Roy Crabtree, Southeast regional administrator for the fisheries service.</p>
<p>Shrimp fishermen, many of whom are already subject to similar rules, have long been preparing for more turtle protections, said Acy Cooper, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association. He said his association wants to scrutinize the proposal before taking a position on it.</p>
<p>Cooper and others in the shrimp business have voiced concerns that the turtle excluder devices could be difficult to operate safely on smaller boats that work in inshore waters.</p>
<p>“We know it’s coming, it’s just a matter of time,” Cooper said. “We want to make sure it doesn’t affect the guys, and we also want to make sure of the safety aspect of it.”</p>
<p>Thursday was the deadline for the federal government to propose regulations to protect turtles under a settlement with the conservation nonprofit Oceana. The proposal will be subject to a public comment process through mid-February.</p>
<p>Oceana sued the government in April 2015, arguing that the government estimates more than 500,000 sea turtles get caught in shrimp nets each year, and more than 53,000 of them die.</p>
<p>The group said Thursday that new rules would save as many as 2,500 endangered and threatened sea turtles every year by extending the requirement of turtle excluder devices to about 5,800 boats currently exempted from using them.</p>
<p>Oceana campaign director Lora Snyder called the rules “decades in the making” and cited the growing number of restaurants that refuse to sell unsustainable seafood as evidence that it’s also a smart business move.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The rules “would dramatically improve the survival and recovery prospects of sea turtle populations, as well as protect the livelihoods of thousands of American shrimp fishermen who lose markets and profits due to the ‘red-listing’ of their products,” she said.</p>
<p>The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agreed in September to draw up new rules for turtle excluder devices: metal bars set 4 inches apart on a vertical slant to deflect anything bigger to an opening at the top of the net.</p>
<p>Those are currently required only on the most common shrimp nets, mesh funnels known as otter trawls that are generally used offshore. There are three other kinds of shrimp trawls for shallower water.</p>
<p>The second-most-used are called skimmer nets. The other kinds include one called wing nets or butterfly trawls; and another called pusher-head trawls or chopstick rigs.</p>
<p>Shrimpers using any of those nets don’t currently have to use turtle excluder devices if they empty their nets after 55 minutes of trawling. Otter trawls may be pulled for hours.</p>
<p>Oceana also wants the bars required on all shrimp trawls and reduced from 4-inch to 3-inch openings, to protect smaller baby turtles.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Whittle reported from Portland, Maine.</p>
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New rules planned to keep sea turtles from shrimp net deaths
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https://abqjournal.com/909638/new-rules-planned-to-keep-sea-turtles-from-shrimp-net-deaths.html
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2016-12-15
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New rules planned to keep sea turtles from shrimp net deaths
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>NEW ORLEANS — More shrimp fishermen would have to use nets equipped with turtle escape hatches, to prevent sea turtle deaths, under proposed new federal rules released on Thursday.</p>
<p>The National Marine Fisheries Service wants to require more shrimp fishermen to use “turtle excluder devices.” The devices are metal grates that allow turtles to escape the boats’ nets.</p>
<p>The new rules would apply mostly in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, home to a major part of America’s largest shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Mexico.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“This will allow the fishery to continue to operate and produce seafood, and it will aid our path down the recovery of the sea turtle population,” said Roy Crabtree, Southeast regional administrator for the fisheries service.</p>
<p>Shrimp fishermen, many of whom are already subject to similar rules, have long been preparing for more turtle protections, said Acy Cooper, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association. He said his association wants to scrutinize the proposal before taking a position on it.</p>
<p>Cooper and others in the shrimp business have voiced concerns that the turtle excluder devices could be difficult to operate safely on smaller boats that work in inshore waters.</p>
<p>“We know it’s coming, it’s just a matter of time,” Cooper said. “We want to make sure it doesn’t affect the guys, and we also want to make sure of the safety aspect of it.”</p>
<p>Thursday was the deadline for the federal government to propose regulations to protect turtles under a settlement with the conservation nonprofit Oceana. The proposal will be subject to a public comment process through mid-February.</p>
<p>Oceana sued the government in April 2015, arguing that the government estimates more than 500,000 sea turtles get caught in shrimp nets each year, and more than 53,000 of them die.</p>
<p>The group said Thursday that new rules would save as many as 2,500 endangered and threatened sea turtles every year by extending the requirement of turtle excluder devices to about 5,800 boats currently exempted from using them.</p>
<p>Oceana campaign director Lora Snyder called the rules “decades in the making” and cited the growing number of restaurants that refuse to sell unsustainable seafood as evidence that it’s also a smart business move.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The rules “would dramatically improve the survival and recovery prospects of sea turtle populations, as well as protect the livelihoods of thousands of American shrimp fishermen who lose markets and profits due to the ‘red-listing’ of their products,” she said.</p>
<p>The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agreed in September to draw up new rules for turtle excluder devices: metal bars set 4 inches apart on a vertical slant to deflect anything bigger to an opening at the top of the net.</p>
<p>Those are currently required only on the most common shrimp nets, mesh funnels known as otter trawls that are generally used offshore. There are three other kinds of shrimp trawls for shallower water.</p>
<p>The second-most-used are called skimmer nets. The other kinds include one called wing nets or butterfly trawls; and another called pusher-head trawls or chopstick rigs.</p>
<p>Shrimpers using any of those nets don’t currently have to use turtle excluder devices if they empty their nets after 55 minutes of trawling. Otter trawls may be pulled for hours.</p>
<p>Oceana also wants the bars required on all shrimp trawls and reduced from 4-inch to 3-inch openings, to protect smaller baby turtles.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Whittle reported from Portland, Maine.</p>
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<p>Aug. 25 (UPI) — President <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Donald_Trump/" type="external">Donald Trump</a> on Friday signed a presidential disaster declaration to make federal funds available to Texas as Hurricane Harvey bears down on the coast.</p>
<p>The president issued the declaration in response to a request by Texas Gov. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Greg_Abbott/" type="external">Greg Abbott</a>, saying it “unleashes the full force of government help!”</p>
<p>“This is going to be a major disaster,” Abbott said during a briefing hours before the Category 4 hurricane was expected to make landfall near Corpus Christi. “My goal is to make it through this storm in a way that we lose no lives.”</p>
<p><a href="https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-requests-presidential-disaster-declaration-in-anticipation-" type="external">The declaration</a> would more quickly make federal money available to respond to any damage the hurricane may cause, a statement from Abbott’s office said.</p>
<p>“I spoke with President Trump yesterday and am confident that he will move quickly to grant this request and provide the people of Texas with everything they need to recover from this storm. I want to continue to encourage Texans to take this threat seriously, heed warnings from local officials, and do all they can to prepare as the state of Texas works to ensure we are in the best position to respond to urgent needs following this storm,” Abbott said.</p>
<p>Sens. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/U.S._Sen._John_Cornyn/" type="external">John Cornyn</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ted_Cruz/" type="external">Ted Cruz</a> of Texas issued a <a href="https://www.tedcruz.org/press-releases/cruz-cornyn-support-abbott-request-major-disaster-declaration-ahead-harvey-landfall/" type="external">joint statement</a> in support of Abbott’s request.</p>
<p>“Given the potential catastrophic impact that the hurricane may have on Texas communities, we strongly support this request and urge you to provide any and all emergency protective measures available by a major disaster declaration,” the senators wrote.</p>
<p>“We have been encouraged thus far by the work and strong coordination with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deploy assistance to state and local officials on the ground in Texas. We stand ready and willing to assist in any way possible to ensure prompt evaluation of this request.”</p>
<p>Trump said Friday he is watching the situation closely.</p>
<p>“I have spoken w/ @GovAbbott of Texas and @LouisianaGov [John Bel] Edwards. Closely monitoring #HurricaneHarvey developments &amp; here to assist as needed,” <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/901108572041433089" type="external">he tweeted</a> in the morning.</p>
<p>Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/901112569322237952" type="external">briefed the president</a> on the status of the hurricane Friday morning.</p>
<p>Later in the afternoon, he encouraged residents in the path to heed the advice and orders of their local and state officials, and said the “federal government is on site and ready to respond.”</p>
<p>As the hurricane fast approached the Texas coast Friday evening, residents boarded windows, laid sandbags and cleared store shelves to prepare for what’s expected to be the state’s first major hurricane in nine years.</p>
<p>Officials in Texas ordered mandatory evacuations in a number of locations near where the eye of the Category 3 storm is expected to arrive, including Aransas Pass, parts of Brazoria and Matagorda counties, all of Calhoun County and the city of Freeport.</p>
<p>Abbott pre-emptively declared a state of disaster in 30 counties where wind, heavy rain and flooding could cause damage. The Texas Army and Air National Guard also have been activated ahead of the storm.</p>
<p>Sitting in the bull’s eye is the city of Corpus Christi — the coastal population center closest to where <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/08/25/Harvey-strengthens-to-Category-2-hurricane-aims-for-Texas/9361503491207/" type="external">forecasters predict</a> Harvey’s eye will hit.</p>
<p>Despite mandatory evacuation orders elsewhere, Corpus Christi Mayor Joe McComb did not issue one for his city, though he has strongly encouraged residents in low-lying areas to leave due to potentially deadly flooding.</p>
<p>“We could mandate it, but people need to make a decision of their own. I’m not going to risk our police and fire people going to try and drag somebody out of the house if they don’t want to go,” <a href="https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/harvey-texas-louisiana-preps-impacts" type="external">McComb told The Weather Channel</a>. “Because our fire and police, they’re fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles. They’ve got relatives and they’ve got family, and we don’t want to put them in harm’s way because someone just wanted to stay.”</p>
<p>Farther north in Houston, officials canceled what was supposed to have been the first day of school on Monday, meaning 200,000 schoolchildren and thousands of teachers and support staff will remain home to ride out the storm.</p>
<p>A Coldplay concert scheduled for Houston’s NRG Stadium on Friday night <a href="http://abc13.com/entertainment/coldplay-show-at-nrg-stadium-scheduled-to-move-forward/2339133/" type="external">was scheduled to go on as planned.</a></p>
<p>Houston residents stood in long lines at grocery stores and cleared out shelves of staple foods and bottled water, <a href="https://twitter.com/KPRC2/status/900683938242473984" type="external">KPRC-TV reported</a>. Grocer Kroger sent an additional 80 truckloads of bottled water to its stores in the area.</p>
<p>Houston’s <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/George_Bush/" type="external">George Bush</a> Intercontinental Airport is not expected to close, but officials say flight cancellations are likely as Harvey strengthens. Most airlines offered waivers or dropped change fees for travelers scheduled to fly in or out over the weekend.</p>
<p>Hurricanes are a part of life in the coastal South, but the last major storm — Category 3 or higher — to hit the Texas coast was Hurricane Ike in 2008, which caused nearly $30 billion in damage.</p>
<p>Residents on Galveston Island, where Ike made landfall, greeted the prospect of a less damaging Hurricane Harvey with a shrug.</p>
<p>Paul Murdoch, owner of Marina Bar and Grill on the Galveston waterfront said his restaurant would stay open all weekend. He had even declined to cancel his Saturday night band.</p>
<p>“What storm?” Murdoch <a href="http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/Galveston-residents-visitors-stay-calm-as-11956753.php" type="external">asked the Houston Chronicle</a>. “It’s just business as normal.”</p>
<p>Others are taking the warnings more seriously.</p>
<p>Surfside Beach resident Randy Ramirez told KTRK he and his family were packing up.</p>
<p>“We were here for Ike, so we lost quite a bit in the wake of it,” he said. “We didn’t know what the water damage was going to be, so we evacuated, and by then it was too late to grab anything, so we lost quite a bit.”</p>
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Trump signs Texas hurricane disaster declaration
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https://newsline.com/trump-signs-texas-hurricane-disaster-declaration/
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2017-08-25
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Trump signs Texas hurricane disaster declaration
<p>Aug. 25 (UPI) — President <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Donald_Trump/" type="external">Donald Trump</a> on Friday signed a presidential disaster declaration to make federal funds available to Texas as Hurricane Harvey bears down on the coast.</p>
<p>The president issued the declaration in response to a request by Texas Gov. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Greg_Abbott/" type="external">Greg Abbott</a>, saying it “unleashes the full force of government help!”</p>
<p>“This is going to be a major disaster,” Abbott said during a briefing hours before the Category 4 hurricane was expected to make landfall near Corpus Christi. “My goal is to make it through this storm in a way that we lose no lives.”</p>
<p><a href="https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-requests-presidential-disaster-declaration-in-anticipation-" type="external">The declaration</a> would more quickly make federal money available to respond to any damage the hurricane may cause, a statement from Abbott’s office said.</p>
<p>“I spoke with President Trump yesterday and am confident that he will move quickly to grant this request and provide the people of Texas with everything they need to recover from this storm. I want to continue to encourage Texans to take this threat seriously, heed warnings from local officials, and do all they can to prepare as the state of Texas works to ensure we are in the best position to respond to urgent needs following this storm,” Abbott said.</p>
<p>Sens. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/U.S._Sen._John_Cornyn/" type="external">John Cornyn</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ted_Cruz/" type="external">Ted Cruz</a> of Texas issued a <a href="https://www.tedcruz.org/press-releases/cruz-cornyn-support-abbott-request-major-disaster-declaration-ahead-harvey-landfall/" type="external">joint statement</a> in support of Abbott’s request.</p>
<p>“Given the potential catastrophic impact that the hurricane may have on Texas communities, we strongly support this request and urge you to provide any and all emergency protective measures available by a major disaster declaration,” the senators wrote.</p>
<p>“We have been encouraged thus far by the work and strong coordination with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deploy assistance to state and local officials on the ground in Texas. We stand ready and willing to assist in any way possible to ensure prompt evaluation of this request.”</p>
<p>Trump said Friday he is watching the situation closely.</p>
<p>“I have spoken w/ @GovAbbott of Texas and @LouisianaGov [John Bel] Edwards. Closely monitoring #HurricaneHarvey developments &amp; here to assist as needed,” <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/901108572041433089" type="external">he tweeted</a> in the morning.</p>
<p>Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/901112569322237952" type="external">briefed the president</a> on the status of the hurricane Friday morning.</p>
<p>Later in the afternoon, he encouraged residents in the path to heed the advice and orders of their local and state officials, and said the “federal government is on site and ready to respond.”</p>
<p>As the hurricane fast approached the Texas coast Friday evening, residents boarded windows, laid sandbags and cleared store shelves to prepare for what’s expected to be the state’s first major hurricane in nine years.</p>
<p>Officials in Texas ordered mandatory evacuations in a number of locations near where the eye of the Category 3 storm is expected to arrive, including Aransas Pass, parts of Brazoria and Matagorda counties, all of Calhoun County and the city of Freeport.</p>
<p>Abbott pre-emptively declared a state of disaster in 30 counties where wind, heavy rain and flooding could cause damage. The Texas Army and Air National Guard also have been activated ahead of the storm.</p>
<p>Sitting in the bull’s eye is the city of Corpus Christi — the coastal population center closest to where <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/08/25/Harvey-strengthens-to-Category-2-hurricane-aims-for-Texas/9361503491207/" type="external">forecasters predict</a> Harvey’s eye will hit.</p>
<p>Despite mandatory evacuation orders elsewhere, Corpus Christi Mayor Joe McComb did not issue one for his city, though he has strongly encouraged residents in low-lying areas to leave due to potentially deadly flooding.</p>
<p>“We could mandate it, but people need to make a decision of their own. I’m not going to risk our police and fire people going to try and drag somebody out of the house if they don’t want to go,” <a href="https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/harvey-texas-louisiana-preps-impacts" type="external">McComb told The Weather Channel</a>. “Because our fire and police, they’re fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles. They’ve got relatives and they’ve got family, and we don’t want to put them in harm’s way because someone just wanted to stay.”</p>
<p>Farther north in Houston, officials canceled what was supposed to have been the first day of school on Monday, meaning 200,000 schoolchildren and thousands of teachers and support staff will remain home to ride out the storm.</p>
<p>A Coldplay concert scheduled for Houston’s NRG Stadium on Friday night <a href="http://abc13.com/entertainment/coldplay-show-at-nrg-stadium-scheduled-to-move-forward/2339133/" type="external">was scheduled to go on as planned.</a></p>
<p>Houston residents stood in long lines at grocery stores and cleared out shelves of staple foods and bottled water, <a href="https://twitter.com/KPRC2/status/900683938242473984" type="external">KPRC-TV reported</a>. Grocer Kroger sent an additional 80 truckloads of bottled water to its stores in the area.</p>
<p>Houston’s <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/George_Bush/" type="external">George Bush</a> Intercontinental Airport is not expected to close, but officials say flight cancellations are likely as Harvey strengthens. Most airlines offered waivers or dropped change fees for travelers scheduled to fly in or out over the weekend.</p>
<p>Hurricanes are a part of life in the coastal South, but the last major storm — Category 3 or higher — to hit the Texas coast was Hurricane Ike in 2008, which caused nearly $30 billion in damage.</p>
<p>Residents on Galveston Island, where Ike made landfall, greeted the prospect of a less damaging Hurricane Harvey with a shrug.</p>
<p>Paul Murdoch, owner of Marina Bar and Grill on the Galveston waterfront said his restaurant would stay open all weekend. He had even declined to cancel his Saturday night band.</p>
<p>“What storm?” Murdoch <a href="http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/Galveston-residents-visitors-stay-calm-as-11956753.php" type="external">asked the Houston Chronicle</a>. “It’s just business as normal.”</p>
<p>Others are taking the warnings more seriously.</p>
<p>Surfside Beach resident Randy Ramirez told KTRK he and his family were packing up.</p>
<p>“We were here for Ike, so we lost quite a bit in the wake of it,” he said. “We didn’t know what the water damage was going to be, so we evacuated, and by then it was too late to grab anything, so we lost quite a bit.”</p>
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<p>Governments across the globe are headed for a disaster entirely of their own making.</p>
<p>Though capital markets remain strong, the global economic backdrop continues to deteriorate as fiscal retrenchment takes hold. Commodity markets have rallied in tandem with the fall in the dollar even though there are signs that growth in the emerging world is slowing. Japan’s economy is in the soup, the U.S. economy has failed to pick up as many thought (with a mere 2% growth rate expected to be released for Q1 shortly), and the European economy is overdue for its own slowdown. The U.S. stock market has also rallied despite the threat of a very high gasoline price, disappointing economic growth data, and a fairly mixed earnings picture.</p>
<p>The new theme in the market seems to be that the Fed, unlike other central banks, will stick with super easy money policies, hence the tendency to push the weak dollar, rising equity prices, and soaring commodity prices. But the news that real GDP growth has fallen sharply in the first three months of 2011 is evidence that the current policy mix, with its emphasis on public spending cuts, is not working. If gasoline prices spike as high as they did in June 2008, they will further weaken an already feeble economy. Consumers did not show up at Walmart at the end of the month because they ran out of money. House prices are still falling.</p>
<p>At the same time, the political debate is focused on the public debt limit, which expires in a few weeks. Conservatives are once again threatening not to extend this limit, even though no less a figure than Warren Buffett has said the failure to do so would be the “most asinine act” the U.S. Congress has ever committed.</p>
<p>The evidence of an increasingly imploding euro zone (which continues to embrace fiscal austerity with the zeal of a religious fanatic) does not seem to have shifted the debate much in this country. Many European governments are facing a fiscal crisis due to their failure to advance public purpose and raise the funds needed to maintain existing programs. Only the interventions of the ECB are saving the whole system from total meltdown, but the underlying solvency problem for the individual member states is getting worse as the days go by. The Euro bosses are failing, and with any luck, so is political resistance to rational economic policy.</p>
<p>Last week, we got a whopping negative surprise with real retail sales down 2.1% in Germany, Europe’s largest economy. Since analysts had been hoping for no change, this is troubling and suggests that the problems of the euro zone are now extending beyond the periphery problem children, like Ireland, Portugal and Greece, into the core countries. The stronger euro, slowdowns in some emerging economies, and fiscal tightening could all add up to weaker-than-expected German exports, and weak German household spending could lead to a significant disappointment in the rest of Europe.</p>
<p>While Germany looms on the horizon, the euro disaster de jour is an eight percent year on year decline in Spanish retail sales. This in a country with a 21.3% unemployment rate. Their construction industry is probably still in decline, and there will be further government cutbacks. The Spanish trade account is now deteriorating and should continue to do so at this exchange rate, short of a disastrous decline in domestic demand. Spain was the domino that wasn’t supposed to fall in Euroland. So much for that idea.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, what is happening in Ireland makes a Samuel Beckett play look like a Restoration Comedy by comparison. The issue being faced there is akin to the problem faced by Iceland last year: should voters reject a taxpayer bailout of foreign creditors? Like Iceland, it faces a crushing debt because its government took on the liabilities of its oversized banks, who had lent indiscriminately throughout Euroland. However, unlike Iceland, Irish bank liabilities are denominated in the currency used in Ireland, the euro. Like every other country in the euro zone, the “Celtic Tiger” abandoned its sovereign currency when it joined the Euro. Effectively, it became like a U.S. state within Euroland, which means that it has little domestic policy space to use monetary or fiscal policy to deal with this crisis. The Irish economy continues to deflate into the ground, and default seems like an increasingly likely option unless debt relief is provided by the ECB or the EMU through some other entity. That is actually in the EMU’s interests, since much of the bank debt guaranteed by Ireland’s government is held externally by EU banks, but huge political opposition in some of the wealthier EU states (e.g. Finland and Germany) makes this an increasingly unlikely scenario. Default and possible expulsion from the euro zone (and all of the attendant systemic problems this would pose for Europe) are increasingly likely possibilities.</p>
<p>In Asia, things are not much better. Japan’s industrial production is down far, far more than anyone imagined, as is household consumption. Destructive IMF-style thinking still predominates in Tokyo, where the government is in thrall to a gaggle of deficit terrorists who think they can’t afford to fund a proper reconstruction in the country.</p>
<p>The economic data coming out of China is so bad it is hard to assess what is happening, but there is enough evidence to suggest that the Chinese economy too slowed in the fourth quarter of last year and has slowed further in the first quarter of this year. It seems that there are two reasons to expect further slowing:</p>
<p>1. The Chinese keep tightening monetary policy in response to rising inflationary pressures. Unfortunately, hiking rates via direct rate rises is the wrong way to go about it, because the resultant rise in interest income for savers ADDS to aggregate demand through the interest income channels, making their inflation that much worse. In response, Beijing is also beginning to deploy credit controls, which do slow demand, as do automatic stabilizers that work through higher nominal growth, including reduced transfer payments and higher tax receipts. In general, this type of policy response constitutes a significant tightening of fiscal policy and leads to a very hard landing.</p>
<p>2. The ratio of Chinese fixed investment to GDP is so high it is very difficult to sustain. A rising real effective exchange rate is surely squeezing many companies and that should curb their fixed investment. There has been a big shift in the composition of Chinese fixed investment from profitable industries that can self-finance to local government projects which are highly debt-dependent and have minimal ability to self-finance. This shift to more debt-dependent sectors should have an adverse impact on fixed investment, though with some lag.</p>
<p>All in all, not a pretty global picture. It’s only made worse by the fact that virtually all economic debates remain heavily skewed to further cutting government spending at a time when growth rates are falling and unemployment claims are rising. In short, the human tragedy we are now experiencing is totally self-inflicted policy stupidity. But then again, when have the neo-liberals ever let facts get in the way of a good theory?</p>
<p>Marshall Auerback is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and a market analyst and commentator. This column originally appeared on <a href="" type="internal">New Deal 2.0.</a></p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
|
The Global Slowdown
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2011/05/05/the-global-slowdown/
|
2011-05-05
| 4left
|
The Global Slowdown
<p>Governments across the globe are headed for a disaster entirely of their own making.</p>
<p>Though capital markets remain strong, the global economic backdrop continues to deteriorate as fiscal retrenchment takes hold. Commodity markets have rallied in tandem with the fall in the dollar even though there are signs that growth in the emerging world is slowing. Japan’s economy is in the soup, the U.S. economy has failed to pick up as many thought (with a mere 2% growth rate expected to be released for Q1 shortly), and the European economy is overdue for its own slowdown. The U.S. stock market has also rallied despite the threat of a very high gasoline price, disappointing economic growth data, and a fairly mixed earnings picture.</p>
<p>The new theme in the market seems to be that the Fed, unlike other central banks, will stick with super easy money policies, hence the tendency to push the weak dollar, rising equity prices, and soaring commodity prices. But the news that real GDP growth has fallen sharply in the first three months of 2011 is evidence that the current policy mix, with its emphasis on public spending cuts, is not working. If gasoline prices spike as high as they did in June 2008, they will further weaken an already feeble economy. Consumers did not show up at Walmart at the end of the month because they ran out of money. House prices are still falling.</p>
<p>At the same time, the political debate is focused on the public debt limit, which expires in a few weeks. Conservatives are once again threatening not to extend this limit, even though no less a figure than Warren Buffett has said the failure to do so would be the “most asinine act” the U.S. Congress has ever committed.</p>
<p>The evidence of an increasingly imploding euro zone (which continues to embrace fiscal austerity with the zeal of a religious fanatic) does not seem to have shifted the debate much in this country. Many European governments are facing a fiscal crisis due to their failure to advance public purpose and raise the funds needed to maintain existing programs. Only the interventions of the ECB are saving the whole system from total meltdown, but the underlying solvency problem for the individual member states is getting worse as the days go by. The Euro bosses are failing, and with any luck, so is political resistance to rational economic policy.</p>
<p>Last week, we got a whopping negative surprise with real retail sales down 2.1% in Germany, Europe’s largest economy. Since analysts had been hoping for no change, this is troubling and suggests that the problems of the euro zone are now extending beyond the periphery problem children, like Ireland, Portugal and Greece, into the core countries. The stronger euro, slowdowns in some emerging economies, and fiscal tightening could all add up to weaker-than-expected German exports, and weak German household spending could lead to a significant disappointment in the rest of Europe.</p>
<p>While Germany looms on the horizon, the euro disaster de jour is an eight percent year on year decline in Spanish retail sales. This in a country with a 21.3% unemployment rate. Their construction industry is probably still in decline, and there will be further government cutbacks. The Spanish trade account is now deteriorating and should continue to do so at this exchange rate, short of a disastrous decline in domestic demand. Spain was the domino that wasn’t supposed to fall in Euroland. So much for that idea.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, what is happening in Ireland makes a Samuel Beckett play look like a Restoration Comedy by comparison. The issue being faced there is akin to the problem faced by Iceland last year: should voters reject a taxpayer bailout of foreign creditors? Like Iceland, it faces a crushing debt because its government took on the liabilities of its oversized banks, who had lent indiscriminately throughout Euroland. However, unlike Iceland, Irish bank liabilities are denominated in the currency used in Ireland, the euro. Like every other country in the euro zone, the “Celtic Tiger” abandoned its sovereign currency when it joined the Euro. Effectively, it became like a U.S. state within Euroland, which means that it has little domestic policy space to use monetary or fiscal policy to deal with this crisis. The Irish economy continues to deflate into the ground, and default seems like an increasingly likely option unless debt relief is provided by the ECB or the EMU through some other entity. That is actually in the EMU’s interests, since much of the bank debt guaranteed by Ireland’s government is held externally by EU banks, but huge political opposition in some of the wealthier EU states (e.g. Finland and Germany) makes this an increasingly unlikely scenario. Default and possible expulsion from the euro zone (and all of the attendant systemic problems this would pose for Europe) are increasingly likely possibilities.</p>
<p>In Asia, things are not much better. Japan’s industrial production is down far, far more than anyone imagined, as is household consumption. Destructive IMF-style thinking still predominates in Tokyo, where the government is in thrall to a gaggle of deficit terrorists who think they can’t afford to fund a proper reconstruction in the country.</p>
<p>The economic data coming out of China is so bad it is hard to assess what is happening, but there is enough evidence to suggest that the Chinese economy too slowed in the fourth quarter of last year and has slowed further in the first quarter of this year. It seems that there are two reasons to expect further slowing:</p>
<p>1. The Chinese keep tightening monetary policy in response to rising inflationary pressures. Unfortunately, hiking rates via direct rate rises is the wrong way to go about it, because the resultant rise in interest income for savers ADDS to aggregate demand through the interest income channels, making their inflation that much worse. In response, Beijing is also beginning to deploy credit controls, which do slow demand, as do automatic stabilizers that work through higher nominal growth, including reduced transfer payments and higher tax receipts. In general, this type of policy response constitutes a significant tightening of fiscal policy and leads to a very hard landing.</p>
<p>2. The ratio of Chinese fixed investment to GDP is so high it is very difficult to sustain. A rising real effective exchange rate is surely squeezing many companies and that should curb their fixed investment. There has been a big shift in the composition of Chinese fixed investment from profitable industries that can self-finance to local government projects which are highly debt-dependent and have minimal ability to self-finance. This shift to more debt-dependent sectors should have an adverse impact on fixed investment, though with some lag.</p>
<p>All in all, not a pretty global picture. It’s only made worse by the fact that virtually all economic debates remain heavily skewed to further cutting government spending at a time when growth rates are falling and unemployment claims are rising. In short, the human tragedy we are now experiencing is totally self-inflicted policy stupidity. But then again, when have the neo-liberals ever let facts get in the way of a good theory?</p>
<p>Marshall Auerback is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and a market analyst and commentator. This column originally appeared on <a href="" type="internal">New Deal 2.0.</a></p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
| 7,666 |
<p>By Piya Sinha-Roy</p>
<p>LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Light faces dark, old faces new and there’s a struggle to find a balance in the Force when “Star Wars” returns with “The Last Jedi,” the sequel that places Luke Skywalker and his sister Leia at the center of an emotional adventure.</p>
<p>“The Last Jedi,” written and directed by Rian Johnson, sees new characters that were first introduced in 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” return alongside franchise veterans, as the Resistance, led by Carrie Fisher’s General Leia, fights the menacing First Order trying to control the galaxy.</p>
<p>“Because it’s a new chapter and because it’s the one where we have to start challenging the characters, it gets to go to intense places,” Johnson told Reuters in a recent interview.</p>
<p>“The Last Jedi,” out in theaters worldwide from Wednesday, is the eighth installment of the long-running “Star Wars” saga that George Lucas kicked off with 1977’s “Episode IV: A New Hope.”</p>
<p>Rey (Daisy Ridley) desperately tries to convince a stubborn Luke (Mark Hamill), who has sequestered himself on a remote island and given up the ways of the Jedi, to join the rebel fight, which is losing hope against a powerful First Order helmed by the tyrannical Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis).</p>
<p>Johnson places a spotlight back on the Force, the supernatural energy that runs through the galaxy and which a young Luke was taught to harness by Jedi Master Yoda in 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back.”</p>
<p>The older Luke has rejected the Force and the Jedi after one of his former pupils, Ben Solo (Adam Driver), turned to the dark side.</p>
<p>“The good guys really come up against a wall and everyone faces challenges in this movie that they didn’t expect,” Hamill said.</p>
<p>Rey harnesses the Force and finds that it connects her through visions to Ben, now the tormented villain Kylo Ren. She tries to convince him to embrace the light, while he attempts to lure her to the dark side.</p>
<p>“This is about balance in general. It’s sort of about taking away labels and … finding the middle ground and understanding more that in a war, both sides are losing,” Ridley said.</p>
<p>The film also shines a spotlight on Fisher, who died last December, shortly after she completed work on the film. “The Last Jedi” does not conclude Leia’s story, which will be left to the filmmakers of 2019’s “Episode IX.”</p>
<p>Early reviews for Walt Disney Co.’s “The Last Jedi” were mostly warm on Tuesday, and Boxoffice.com projected that the film would gross $185 million to $215 million in North America in its first weekend, one of the biggest film debuts in history.</p>
<p>Johnson said that, like previous “Star Wars” films, he wanted to bring levity to “The Last Jedi,” from Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) mocking the uptight General Hux to Leia’s scathing put-downs and Chewbacca’s annoyance with fuzzy new creatures, the Porgs.</p>
<p>“To me, a ‘Star Wars’ movie is a fun adventure. You have the opera but you also have to have the bubblegum,” Johnson said.</p>
|
'The Last Jedi' seeks balance in a 'Star Wars' galaxy in tumult
| false |
https://newsline.com/039the-last-jedi039-seeks-balance-in-a-039star-wars039-galaxy-in-tumult/
|
2017-12-13
| 1right-center
|
'The Last Jedi' seeks balance in a 'Star Wars' galaxy in tumult
<p>By Piya Sinha-Roy</p>
<p>LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Light faces dark, old faces new and there’s a struggle to find a balance in the Force when “Star Wars” returns with “The Last Jedi,” the sequel that places Luke Skywalker and his sister Leia at the center of an emotional adventure.</p>
<p>“The Last Jedi,” written and directed by Rian Johnson, sees new characters that were first introduced in 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” return alongside franchise veterans, as the Resistance, led by Carrie Fisher’s General Leia, fights the menacing First Order trying to control the galaxy.</p>
<p>“Because it’s a new chapter and because it’s the one where we have to start challenging the characters, it gets to go to intense places,” Johnson told Reuters in a recent interview.</p>
<p>“The Last Jedi,” out in theaters worldwide from Wednesday, is the eighth installment of the long-running “Star Wars” saga that George Lucas kicked off with 1977’s “Episode IV: A New Hope.”</p>
<p>Rey (Daisy Ridley) desperately tries to convince a stubborn Luke (Mark Hamill), who has sequestered himself on a remote island and given up the ways of the Jedi, to join the rebel fight, which is losing hope against a powerful First Order helmed by the tyrannical Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis).</p>
<p>Johnson places a spotlight back on the Force, the supernatural energy that runs through the galaxy and which a young Luke was taught to harness by Jedi Master Yoda in 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back.”</p>
<p>The older Luke has rejected the Force and the Jedi after one of his former pupils, Ben Solo (Adam Driver), turned to the dark side.</p>
<p>“The good guys really come up against a wall and everyone faces challenges in this movie that they didn’t expect,” Hamill said.</p>
<p>Rey harnesses the Force and finds that it connects her through visions to Ben, now the tormented villain Kylo Ren. She tries to convince him to embrace the light, while he attempts to lure her to the dark side.</p>
<p>“This is about balance in general. It’s sort of about taking away labels and … finding the middle ground and understanding more that in a war, both sides are losing,” Ridley said.</p>
<p>The film also shines a spotlight on Fisher, who died last December, shortly after she completed work on the film. “The Last Jedi” does not conclude Leia’s story, which will be left to the filmmakers of 2019’s “Episode IX.”</p>
<p>Early reviews for Walt Disney Co.’s “The Last Jedi” were mostly warm on Tuesday, and Boxoffice.com projected that the film would gross $185 million to $215 million in North America in its first weekend, one of the biggest film debuts in history.</p>
<p>Johnson said that, like previous “Star Wars” films, he wanted to bring levity to “The Last Jedi,” from Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) mocking the uptight General Hux to Leia’s scathing put-downs and Chewbacca’s annoyance with fuzzy new creatures, the Porgs.</p>
<p>“To me, a ‘Star Wars’ movie is a fun adventure. You have the opera but you also have to have the bubblegum,” Johnson said.</p>
| 7,667 |
<p>The Greek election produced a knife-edge result yesterday, with the establishment parties snatching victory in a narrow race.</p>
<p>“The Greek people voted today to stay on the European course and remain in the eurozone … there will be no more adventures, Greece’s place in Europe will not be put in doubt,” said the leader of New Democracy, Antonis Samaras, who is likely to become the new Prime Minister. The result may enable it to form a coalition government but it is likely to face strong opposition inside and outside parliament.</p>
<p>With more than 99 per cent of votes counted, interior ministry results showed the conservative New Democracy party securing 29.7 per cent of the vote. Its nearest rival, the radical-left Syriza, was only just behind on 26.9 per cent.</p>
<p>New Democracy is likely to form a coalition with the socialist Pasok party, which was in government until late last year and received 12.3 per cent of the vote, according to the results projections after 99 per cent of the ballots had been counted.</p>
<p>New Democracy is likely to have about 129 parliamentary seats, Syriza will have 71 and Pasok 33.</p>
<p>That outcome would, for the moment, allay fears that Greece will abandon the euro and spark a global financial crisis, as might have happened if the parties rejecting Greece’s austerity measures – accepted in return for €240bn in EU loans – had won a majority. But the neck-and-neck nature of the result means that uncertainty will continue.</p>
<p>In a poll crucial in Greek history, voters were asked to choose primarily between the establishment New Democracy party, which formally accepts the EU terms, and Syriza, which has said it would renegotiate them.</p>
<p>The surprise success of Alexis Tsipras, the inspirational Syriza leader, on 6 May had made him the subject of intense international scrutiny. Rivals feared that Syriza, which won 16.8 per cent in the first vote, increased its share substantially by winning support from people under 50 and from cities and towns. Many Syriza voters formerly voted for Pasok or the Communist KKE party.</p>
<p>New Democracy voters tend to be better-off, older and often live in the countryside. Mr Samaras sought with some success to cast the election in terms of Greeks choosing to stay in the eurozone and continuing to receive EU funding, or leaving it and risking an economic calamity.</p>
<p>The Greek business community and international investors were shocked by the rise of a radical alternative in the shape of the self-confident and fluent Mr Tsipras, though he steadily moderated his stance during the campaign. Some businesses, such as ship owners, threatened to leave the country, though one ship-broker asked: “Does it matter if we go broke in drachmas or euros?”</p>
<p>“I am driven by indignation against the political establishment and by hope for change,” said Chryssa Milona, a young mother clasping the hand of her daughter, after voting near Syntagma Square in central Athens. She said she voted Syriza “because people are suffering so much from unemployment and the fall in wages”. She would not reveal what her job was but said her salary had been cut by 15 per cent and she expected it to fall further. She was not sure Syriza would get anywhere but “at least it is different”.</p>
<p>The five-year-long crisis has polarized Greeks between left and right as old political fissures, stemming from the civil war and military dictatorship, have widened. Julia Oikeiadis, a retired travel agent, said she was voting for New Democracy because the most important thing was “to have a government and stabilize the country”.</p>
<p>She thought a victory for Mr Tsipras would be a calamity because he was young, inexperienced and making promises he could not fulfil. An allegation levelled by Mr Tsipras’s opponents was that he had pledged the impossible in promising to tear up the austerity memorandum signed last year with the EU “troika” (the EU, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank) and negotiate a better deal for Greece.</p>
<p>Mr Samaras had also suggested strongly in every speech that he would renegotiate after the poll. Even a traditional conservative voter like Ms Oikeiades said a government headed by New Democracy could implement part of the austerity program “but not all of it – to do all of it is absolutely impossible”.</p>
<p>Opinion polls show 80 per cent of Greeks want to stay in the euro but will not accept more austerity measures that have already seen taxes rise and wages, jobs, pensions and government expenditure cut.</p>
<p>Many people also argue that it is absurd for the other EU states to expect those whom many Greeks see as the corrupt and incompetent architects of their country’s ruin – the traditional leaders of New Democracy and its coalition partner Pasok – to clean up the mess they created. There is widespread anger that politicians notorious for their corruption and high living have escaped punishment.</p>
<p>Yesterday, some voters expressed worry that Greeks were not showing greater national solidarity. Yevgenia Perendiou, an unemployed nursery teacher now earning €400 a month as a babysitter, said: “I voted for the Democratic Left [which split from Syriza] because its leader, Fotis Kouvelis, said all parties should co-operate – something I didn’t hear from other leaders.”</p>
<p>The near dead-heat in the election does not bode well for decisive government in Greece. Pasok and the coalition with New Democracy implemented tax rises and wage and pension cuts but stalled over reforms such as privatization or dismantling the system of Tammany Hall-type cronyism and jobs for votes that had previously been at the heart of the political system.</p>
<p>Many of the beneficiaries of the old regime were prominent in electoral campaigns, suggesting that they had not lost their political strength.</p>
<p>PATRICK COCKBURN&#160;is the author of “ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1416551476/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq</a>.&#160;</p>
|
Caution Wins the Day in Greece
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2012/06/18/caution-wins-the-day-in-greece/
|
2012-06-18
| 4left
|
Caution Wins the Day in Greece
<p>The Greek election produced a knife-edge result yesterday, with the establishment parties snatching victory in a narrow race.</p>
<p>“The Greek people voted today to stay on the European course and remain in the eurozone … there will be no more adventures, Greece’s place in Europe will not be put in doubt,” said the leader of New Democracy, Antonis Samaras, who is likely to become the new Prime Minister. The result may enable it to form a coalition government but it is likely to face strong opposition inside and outside parliament.</p>
<p>With more than 99 per cent of votes counted, interior ministry results showed the conservative New Democracy party securing 29.7 per cent of the vote. Its nearest rival, the radical-left Syriza, was only just behind on 26.9 per cent.</p>
<p>New Democracy is likely to form a coalition with the socialist Pasok party, which was in government until late last year and received 12.3 per cent of the vote, according to the results projections after 99 per cent of the ballots had been counted.</p>
<p>New Democracy is likely to have about 129 parliamentary seats, Syriza will have 71 and Pasok 33.</p>
<p>That outcome would, for the moment, allay fears that Greece will abandon the euro and spark a global financial crisis, as might have happened if the parties rejecting Greece’s austerity measures – accepted in return for €240bn in EU loans – had won a majority. But the neck-and-neck nature of the result means that uncertainty will continue.</p>
<p>In a poll crucial in Greek history, voters were asked to choose primarily between the establishment New Democracy party, which formally accepts the EU terms, and Syriza, which has said it would renegotiate them.</p>
<p>The surprise success of Alexis Tsipras, the inspirational Syriza leader, on 6 May had made him the subject of intense international scrutiny. Rivals feared that Syriza, which won 16.8 per cent in the first vote, increased its share substantially by winning support from people under 50 and from cities and towns. Many Syriza voters formerly voted for Pasok or the Communist KKE party.</p>
<p>New Democracy voters tend to be better-off, older and often live in the countryside. Mr Samaras sought with some success to cast the election in terms of Greeks choosing to stay in the eurozone and continuing to receive EU funding, or leaving it and risking an economic calamity.</p>
<p>The Greek business community and international investors were shocked by the rise of a radical alternative in the shape of the self-confident and fluent Mr Tsipras, though he steadily moderated his stance during the campaign. Some businesses, such as ship owners, threatened to leave the country, though one ship-broker asked: “Does it matter if we go broke in drachmas or euros?”</p>
<p>“I am driven by indignation against the political establishment and by hope for change,” said Chryssa Milona, a young mother clasping the hand of her daughter, after voting near Syntagma Square in central Athens. She said she voted Syriza “because people are suffering so much from unemployment and the fall in wages”. She would not reveal what her job was but said her salary had been cut by 15 per cent and she expected it to fall further. She was not sure Syriza would get anywhere but “at least it is different”.</p>
<p>The five-year-long crisis has polarized Greeks between left and right as old political fissures, stemming from the civil war and military dictatorship, have widened. Julia Oikeiadis, a retired travel agent, said she was voting for New Democracy because the most important thing was “to have a government and stabilize the country”.</p>
<p>She thought a victory for Mr Tsipras would be a calamity because he was young, inexperienced and making promises he could not fulfil. An allegation levelled by Mr Tsipras’s opponents was that he had pledged the impossible in promising to tear up the austerity memorandum signed last year with the EU “troika” (the EU, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank) and negotiate a better deal for Greece.</p>
<p>Mr Samaras had also suggested strongly in every speech that he would renegotiate after the poll. Even a traditional conservative voter like Ms Oikeiades said a government headed by New Democracy could implement part of the austerity program “but not all of it – to do all of it is absolutely impossible”.</p>
<p>Opinion polls show 80 per cent of Greeks want to stay in the euro but will not accept more austerity measures that have already seen taxes rise and wages, jobs, pensions and government expenditure cut.</p>
<p>Many people also argue that it is absurd for the other EU states to expect those whom many Greeks see as the corrupt and incompetent architects of their country’s ruin – the traditional leaders of New Democracy and its coalition partner Pasok – to clean up the mess they created. There is widespread anger that politicians notorious for their corruption and high living have escaped punishment.</p>
<p>Yesterday, some voters expressed worry that Greeks were not showing greater national solidarity. Yevgenia Perendiou, an unemployed nursery teacher now earning €400 a month as a babysitter, said: “I voted for the Democratic Left [which split from Syriza] because its leader, Fotis Kouvelis, said all parties should co-operate – something I didn’t hear from other leaders.”</p>
<p>The near dead-heat in the election does not bode well for decisive government in Greece. Pasok and the coalition with New Democracy implemented tax rises and wage and pension cuts but stalled over reforms such as privatization or dismantling the system of Tammany Hall-type cronyism and jobs for votes that had previously been at the heart of the political system.</p>
<p>Many of the beneficiaries of the old regime were prominent in electoral campaigns, suggesting that they had not lost their political strength.</p>
<p>PATRICK COCKBURN&#160;is the author of “ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1416551476/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq</a>.&#160;</p>
| 7,668 |
<p />
<p>Between 2009 and 2012, states cut a total of $4.35 billion in public mental-health spending from their budgets. According to a <a href="" type="internal">report</a> by the <a href="http://www.nami.org/" type="external">National Alliance on Mental Illness</a>, significant cuts to general fund appropriations for state mental health agencies have translated into a severe shortage of services, including housing, community-based treatment and access to psychiatric medications. “Increasingly, emergency rooms, homeless shelters and jails are struggling with the effects of people falling through the cracks,” the report says, “due to lack of needed mental health services and supports.”</p>
<p>The map below shows how states’ spending changed on mental health services between 2009 and 2012. Click on a state to see the specifics.</p>
<p />
<p>These six states and the District of Columbia made the deepest cuts to their mental health budgets.</p>
<p>South Carolina ($187.3 million in 2009 to $113.7 million in 2012, -39.3 percent): The <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?avis=CP&amp;date=20111113&amp;category=PC1602&amp;lopenr=311139984&amp;Ref=AR&amp;template=printart" type="external">director of the local NAMI chapter</a> says the state’s mental-health department is “approaching crisis mode with funding at 1987 levels.” After closing community mental-health centers and reducing services at its remaining facilities, the department is now serving thousands fewer patients.</p>
<p>Alabama ($100.3 million in 2009 to $64.2 million in 2012, -36 percent): Alabama has one of the <a href="http://www.nami.org/gtsTemplate09.cfm?Section=Grading_the_States_2009&amp;Template=/contentmanagement/contentdisplay.cfm&amp;ContentID=74837" type="external">lowest numbers of psychiatrists</a> [PDF] per capita in the nation. Despite rising demand for psychiatric hospital beds, Alabama <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/us/alabama-plans-to-shut-most-mental-hospitals.html?_r=1&amp;pagewanted=print" type="external">plans to close</a> most of its state mental hospitals this spring, laying off 948 employees.</p>
<p>Alaska ($125.6 million in 2009 to $84.7 million in 2012, -32.6 percent): Alaska has the nation’s <a href="https://www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide/facts-and-figures" type="external">No. 2 suicide rate</a>—and a massive mental-health workforce shortage. Sometimes there is not a single <a href="http://www.nami.org/gtsTemplate09.cfm?Section=Grading_the_States_2009&amp;Template=/contentmanagement/contentdisplay.cfm&amp;ContentID=74841" type="external">psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse</a> [PDF] available at the mental-health center in Fairbanks, the state’s second-largest city.</p>
<p>Illinois ($590.7 million in 2009 to $403.7 million in 2012, $-31.7 percent): Illinois has more mentally ill people <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-09-29/news/chi-nursinghome1-ledeallsep29_1_nursing-homes-mentally-ill-patients-lowest-nursing-staff-levels" type="external">living in nursing homes</a> than any other state. In 2010, the state settled a class-action civil rights lawsuit, agreeing to help 5,000 of them transition into community programs within five years. As of July 2012, <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-nursing-home-report-20120704,0,7396495.story" type="external">only 45 people</a> had moved.</p>
<p>Nevada ($175.5 million in 2009 to $126.2 million in 2012, -28.1 percent): In 2003, Reno police calculated how much it cost the county to repeatedly pick up and hospitalize <a href="http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_13_a_murray.html" type="external">Murray Barr</a>, a homeless man with an alcohol addiction. Tallying up doctors’ fees and other expenses from his decade on the streets, Barr racked up a $1 million bill.</p>
<p>District of Columbia ($212.4 million in 2009 to $161.6 million in 2012, -23.9 percent): Children on Medicaid <a href="http://www.dcfpi.org/budget-cuts-mean-shrinking-access-to-mental-health-services-for-dc%E2%80%99s-children" type="external">wait 10 weeks</a>—or one-third of the school year—for an appointment with a Children’s National Medical Center community clinic psychiatrist.</p>
<p>California ($3,612.8 million in 2009 to $2,848 million in 2012, -21.2 percent): Inmates with severe mental illness often <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/27/4519117/mentally-ill-inmates-on-the-rise.html" type="external">wait three to six months</a> for a state psychiatric hospital bed. In 2007, 19 percent of state prisoners were mentally ill. By 2012, 25 percent were. &#160;</p>
<p>Approximately 10 percent of US homicides are committed by <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/310200" type="external">untreated severely mentally ill people</a>.</p>
<p>Chances that a perpetrator of a mass shooting <a href="" type="internal">displayed signs of mental illness</a> prior to the crime: 1 in 2</p>
<p>Between 1998 and 2006, the number of mentally ill people incarcerated in federal, state, and local prisons and jails more than <a href="http://www.hrw.org/print/news/2006/09/05/us-number-mentally-ill-prisons-quadrupled" type="external">quadrupled to 1,264,300.</a></p>
<p>Since 2006, mental-illness rates in some county jails have increased by another <a href="http://www.corrections.com/news/article/30549-mental-health-issues-in-county-corrections-vs-state-prisons" type="external">50 percent</a>.</p>
<p>For every $2,000 to $3,000 per year spent on treating the mentally ill, $50,000 is saved on incarceration costs.</p>
<p>Prisoners with mental illness cost the nation an average of nearly <a href="http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=policy_research_institute&amp;Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&amp;ContentID=14596" type="external">$9 billion a year</a>.</p>
<p>In 1955, there was one psychiatric bed for every 300 Americans. In 2010, there was <a href="http://www.tacreports.org/bedstudy" type="external">one psychiatric bed for every 7,100 Americans</a>—the same ratio as in 1850.</p>
<p>Severe mental disorders cost the nation $193.2 billion annually in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18463104" type="external">lost earnings</a>.</p>
<p>Sources for pie charts: <a href="http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/Mental_Illness.html" type="external">National Coalition for the Homeless</a>, <a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml" type="external">NIMH</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;ved=0CDIQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fusmayors.org%2Fpressreleases%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F1219-report-HH.pdf&amp;ei=AKg_UbOZM4mXqQHF0oH4DA&amp;usg=AFQjCNGPo8B_Pa6_a5a2HvBYmJXeI25pDA&amp;sig2=6cOXjk6hgTRBKJpCs3vLpA&amp;bvm=bv.43287494,d.aWM" type="external">“Hunger and Homelessness Survey,” The US Conference of Mayors</a>, <a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1DOJ.shtml" type="external">“Inmate Mental Health,” National Institute of Mental Health</a></p>
<p>Source for “Locked Up. But Where”: <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1748796" type="external">Bernard Harcourt</a></p>
<p>Source for “Docs to Drugs”: <a href="http://www.samhsa.gov/Financing/file.axd?file=2009%2F6%2FProjections+of+National+Expenditures+for+Mental+Health+Services+and+Substance+Abuse+Treatment%2C+2004-2014.pdf" type="external">US Dept. of Health and Human Services</a></p>
<p>Source for “States of Denial”: <a href="http://www.nri-inc.org/projects/Profiles/RevenuesExpenditures.cfm" type="external">NRI</a></p>
<p />
|
MAP: Which States Have Cut Treatment For the Mentally Ill the Most?
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/map-states-cut-treatment-for-mentally-ill/
|
2013-04-29
| 4left
|
MAP: Which States Have Cut Treatment For the Mentally Ill the Most?
<p />
<p>Between 2009 and 2012, states cut a total of $4.35 billion in public mental-health spending from their budgets. According to a <a href="" type="internal">report</a> by the <a href="http://www.nami.org/" type="external">National Alliance on Mental Illness</a>, significant cuts to general fund appropriations for state mental health agencies have translated into a severe shortage of services, including housing, community-based treatment and access to psychiatric medications. “Increasingly, emergency rooms, homeless shelters and jails are struggling with the effects of people falling through the cracks,” the report says, “due to lack of needed mental health services and supports.”</p>
<p>The map below shows how states’ spending changed on mental health services between 2009 and 2012. Click on a state to see the specifics.</p>
<p />
<p>These six states and the District of Columbia made the deepest cuts to their mental health budgets.</p>
<p>South Carolina ($187.3 million in 2009 to $113.7 million in 2012, -39.3 percent): The <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?avis=CP&amp;date=20111113&amp;category=PC1602&amp;lopenr=311139984&amp;Ref=AR&amp;template=printart" type="external">director of the local NAMI chapter</a> says the state’s mental-health department is “approaching crisis mode with funding at 1987 levels.” After closing community mental-health centers and reducing services at its remaining facilities, the department is now serving thousands fewer patients.</p>
<p>Alabama ($100.3 million in 2009 to $64.2 million in 2012, -36 percent): Alabama has one of the <a href="http://www.nami.org/gtsTemplate09.cfm?Section=Grading_the_States_2009&amp;Template=/contentmanagement/contentdisplay.cfm&amp;ContentID=74837" type="external">lowest numbers of psychiatrists</a> [PDF] per capita in the nation. Despite rising demand for psychiatric hospital beds, Alabama <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/us/alabama-plans-to-shut-most-mental-hospitals.html?_r=1&amp;pagewanted=print" type="external">plans to close</a> most of its state mental hospitals this spring, laying off 948 employees.</p>
<p>Alaska ($125.6 million in 2009 to $84.7 million in 2012, -32.6 percent): Alaska has the nation’s <a href="https://www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide/facts-and-figures" type="external">No. 2 suicide rate</a>—and a massive mental-health workforce shortage. Sometimes there is not a single <a href="http://www.nami.org/gtsTemplate09.cfm?Section=Grading_the_States_2009&amp;Template=/contentmanagement/contentdisplay.cfm&amp;ContentID=74841" type="external">psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse</a> [PDF] available at the mental-health center in Fairbanks, the state’s second-largest city.</p>
<p>Illinois ($590.7 million in 2009 to $403.7 million in 2012, $-31.7 percent): Illinois has more mentally ill people <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-09-29/news/chi-nursinghome1-ledeallsep29_1_nursing-homes-mentally-ill-patients-lowest-nursing-staff-levels" type="external">living in nursing homes</a> than any other state. In 2010, the state settled a class-action civil rights lawsuit, agreeing to help 5,000 of them transition into community programs within five years. As of July 2012, <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-nursing-home-report-20120704,0,7396495.story" type="external">only 45 people</a> had moved.</p>
<p>Nevada ($175.5 million in 2009 to $126.2 million in 2012, -28.1 percent): In 2003, Reno police calculated how much it cost the county to repeatedly pick up and hospitalize <a href="http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_13_a_murray.html" type="external">Murray Barr</a>, a homeless man with an alcohol addiction. Tallying up doctors’ fees and other expenses from his decade on the streets, Barr racked up a $1 million bill.</p>
<p>District of Columbia ($212.4 million in 2009 to $161.6 million in 2012, -23.9 percent): Children on Medicaid <a href="http://www.dcfpi.org/budget-cuts-mean-shrinking-access-to-mental-health-services-for-dc%E2%80%99s-children" type="external">wait 10 weeks</a>—or one-third of the school year—for an appointment with a Children’s National Medical Center community clinic psychiatrist.</p>
<p>California ($3,612.8 million in 2009 to $2,848 million in 2012, -21.2 percent): Inmates with severe mental illness often <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/27/4519117/mentally-ill-inmates-on-the-rise.html" type="external">wait three to six months</a> for a state psychiatric hospital bed. In 2007, 19 percent of state prisoners were mentally ill. By 2012, 25 percent were. &#160;</p>
<p>Approximately 10 percent of US homicides are committed by <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/310200" type="external">untreated severely mentally ill people</a>.</p>
<p>Chances that a perpetrator of a mass shooting <a href="" type="internal">displayed signs of mental illness</a> prior to the crime: 1 in 2</p>
<p>Between 1998 and 2006, the number of mentally ill people incarcerated in federal, state, and local prisons and jails more than <a href="http://www.hrw.org/print/news/2006/09/05/us-number-mentally-ill-prisons-quadrupled" type="external">quadrupled to 1,264,300.</a></p>
<p>Since 2006, mental-illness rates in some county jails have increased by another <a href="http://www.corrections.com/news/article/30549-mental-health-issues-in-county-corrections-vs-state-prisons" type="external">50 percent</a>.</p>
<p>For every $2,000 to $3,000 per year spent on treating the mentally ill, $50,000 is saved on incarceration costs.</p>
<p>Prisoners with mental illness cost the nation an average of nearly <a href="http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=policy_research_institute&amp;Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&amp;ContentID=14596" type="external">$9 billion a year</a>.</p>
<p>In 1955, there was one psychiatric bed for every 300 Americans. In 2010, there was <a href="http://www.tacreports.org/bedstudy" type="external">one psychiatric bed for every 7,100 Americans</a>—the same ratio as in 1850.</p>
<p>Severe mental disorders cost the nation $193.2 billion annually in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18463104" type="external">lost earnings</a>.</p>
<p>Sources for pie charts: <a href="http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/Mental_Illness.html" type="external">National Coalition for the Homeless</a>, <a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml" type="external">NIMH</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;ved=0CDIQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fusmayors.org%2Fpressreleases%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F1219-report-HH.pdf&amp;ei=AKg_UbOZM4mXqQHF0oH4DA&amp;usg=AFQjCNGPo8B_Pa6_a5a2HvBYmJXeI25pDA&amp;sig2=6cOXjk6hgTRBKJpCs3vLpA&amp;bvm=bv.43287494,d.aWM" type="external">“Hunger and Homelessness Survey,” The US Conference of Mayors</a>, <a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1DOJ.shtml" type="external">“Inmate Mental Health,” National Institute of Mental Health</a></p>
<p>Source for “Locked Up. But Where”: <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1748796" type="external">Bernard Harcourt</a></p>
<p>Source for “Docs to Drugs”: <a href="http://www.samhsa.gov/Financing/file.axd?file=2009%2F6%2FProjections+of+National+Expenditures+for+Mental+Health+Services+and+Substance+Abuse+Treatment%2C+2004-2014.pdf" type="external">US Dept. of Health and Human Services</a></p>
<p>Source for “States of Denial”: <a href="http://www.nri-inc.org/projects/Profiles/RevenuesExpenditures.cfm" type="external">NRI</a></p>
<p />
| 7,669 |
<p />
<p>Image source: General Motors.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The auto industry has done extremely well in producing strong sales, with 2015 having been a record year and 2016 shaping up to be strong as well. Yet neither General Motors (NYSE: GM) nor Ford (NYSE: F) has produced particularly impressive share-price performance, and many investors worry that a cyclical peak will drive revenue downward and take stock prices with it. Nevertheless, both stocks trade at such attractively low levels that many investors wonder if they would make good value plays -- and if so, which is the smarter pick. Let's look more closely at how Ford and GM match up right now on some key metrics to see which could be the better buy.</p>
<p>General Motors and Ford have seen their stocks go in opposite directions over the past year. General Motors has produced a modest total return of 3% since October 2015, while Ford has lost ground, falling more than 12% over the same time period.</p>
<p>One thing that has so many investors confused right now is that based on very simple earnings-based valuations, both GM and Ford look dirt cheap right now. Looking at earnings over the past 12 months, GM has a slight lead, trading at just four times trailing earnings compared to a trailing earnings multiple of nearly almost six for Ford. Future earnings expectations for slight bottom-line declines make forward earnings multiples a bit higher, but GM still has a lead, sporting a forward multiple of just over 5.5 compared to almost 7 for Ford. Both stocks have low valuations, but General Motors wins with a slightly cheaper share price.</p>
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<p>Another thing that General Motors and Ford share is their commitment to rewarding shareholders. Both companies have dividend yields that are well above the market average. Ford's current yield is 4.9%, which just edges out GM's 4.7% yield.</p>
<p>However, when you look more closely at each company's total capital return to shareholders, General Motors looks more attractive. In each of the past four years, General Motors has spent between $2.4 billion and $5.1 billion on stock buybacks, dramatically outpacing Ford's negligible amounts on repurchasing its shares.</p>
<p>Still, Ford's dividend history is far more extensive, largely because of its ability to avoid bankruptcy. Ford restored its dividend in 2012 and has tripled it since then, while GM didn't start paying common dividends until 2014 and has been much more measured in boosting its payout. Overall, both stocks have their pluses and minuses on the capital front, leaving it to investors to decide which offers the more attractive combination for them.</p>
<p>One big worry about both General Motors and Ford is that they might have hit their peak for this business cycle and be destined to contract in the years to come. At the moment, projections suggest that 2016 auto sales in the U.S. will likely fall about 1% from 2015's record levels. Yet for General Motors, several factors could offset a weaker overall auto market. First, the company expects to offer new models of potentially popular vehicles in the next several years, including a dramatic expansion to its Cadillac luxury lineup. Efforts to streamline its financing division to make it more profitable could also help GM's bottom line, and the automaker expects a record profit for the 2016 year. With the potential for high-tech advances in electric vehicles and self-driving technology, General Motors is enthusiastic about its prospects.</p>
<p>For Ford, challenges have put it in a tougher position than GM. Recalls have been a recent problem for the automaker, with one door-latch issue originally expected to affect 830,000 vehicles in North America ending up affecting almost 2.4 million. More broadly, Ford's latest earnings report included higher sales incentives to dealers and a 9% decline in profit that prompted a significant share-price drop. But improving performance in Europe and relatedly strong conditions in North America have the long-term potential to keep driving growth at Ford, and that could make shares look inordinately inexpensive in hindsight.</p>
<p>At this point, both General Motors and Ford offer interesting prospects, but GM looks like the slightly better pick right now. Between a cheaper valuation and arguably more solid growth prospects, General Motors just edges out Ford and its similar set of compelling reasons to invest now.</p>
<p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2691&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Ford. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Ford. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
|
Better Buy: General Motors Company vs. Ford
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/10/11/better-buy-general-motors-company-vs-ford.html
|
2016-10-11
| 0right
|
Better Buy: General Motors Company vs. Ford
<p />
<p>Image source: General Motors.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The auto industry has done extremely well in producing strong sales, with 2015 having been a record year and 2016 shaping up to be strong as well. Yet neither General Motors (NYSE: GM) nor Ford (NYSE: F) has produced particularly impressive share-price performance, and many investors worry that a cyclical peak will drive revenue downward and take stock prices with it. Nevertheless, both stocks trade at such attractively low levels that many investors wonder if they would make good value plays -- and if so, which is the smarter pick. Let's look more closely at how Ford and GM match up right now on some key metrics to see which could be the better buy.</p>
<p>General Motors and Ford have seen their stocks go in opposite directions over the past year. General Motors has produced a modest total return of 3% since October 2015, while Ford has lost ground, falling more than 12% over the same time period.</p>
<p>One thing that has so many investors confused right now is that based on very simple earnings-based valuations, both GM and Ford look dirt cheap right now. Looking at earnings over the past 12 months, GM has a slight lead, trading at just four times trailing earnings compared to a trailing earnings multiple of nearly almost six for Ford. Future earnings expectations for slight bottom-line declines make forward earnings multiples a bit higher, but GM still has a lead, sporting a forward multiple of just over 5.5 compared to almost 7 for Ford. Both stocks have low valuations, but General Motors wins with a slightly cheaper share price.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Another thing that General Motors and Ford share is their commitment to rewarding shareholders. Both companies have dividend yields that are well above the market average. Ford's current yield is 4.9%, which just edges out GM's 4.7% yield.</p>
<p>However, when you look more closely at each company's total capital return to shareholders, General Motors looks more attractive. In each of the past four years, General Motors has spent between $2.4 billion and $5.1 billion on stock buybacks, dramatically outpacing Ford's negligible amounts on repurchasing its shares.</p>
<p>Still, Ford's dividend history is far more extensive, largely because of its ability to avoid bankruptcy. Ford restored its dividend in 2012 and has tripled it since then, while GM didn't start paying common dividends until 2014 and has been much more measured in boosting its payout. Overall, both stocks have their pluses and minuses on the capital front, leaving it to investors to decide which offers the more attractive combination for them.</p>
<p>One big worry about both General Motors and Ford is that they might have hit their peak for this business cycle and be destined to contract in the years to come. At the moment, projections suggest that 2016 auto sales in the U.S. will likely fall about 1% from 2015's record levels. Yet for General Motors, several factors could offset a weaker overall auto market. First, the company expects to offer new models of potentially popular vehicles in the next several years, including a dramatic expansion to its Cadillac luxury lineup. Efforts to streamline its financing division to make it more profitable could also help GM's bottom line, and the automaker expects a record profit for the 2016 year. With the potential for high-tech advances in electric vehicles and self-driving technology, General Motors is enthusiastic about its prospects.</p>
<p>For Ford, challenges have put it in a tougher position than GM. Recalls have been a recent problem for the automaker, with one door-latch issue originally expected to affect 830,000 vehicles in North America ending up affecting almost 2.4 million. More broadly, Ford's latest earnings report included higher sales incentives to dealers and a 9% decline in profit that prompted a significant share-price drop. But improving performance in Europe and relatedly strong conditions in North America have the long-term potential to keep driving growth at Ford, and that could make shares look inordinately inexpensive in hindsight.</p>
<p>At this point, both General Motors and Ford offer interesting prospects, but GM looks like the slightly better pick right now. Between a cheaper valuation and arguably more solid growth prospects, General Motors just edges out Ford and its similar set of compelling reasons to invest now.</p>
<p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2691&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Ford. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Ford. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 7,670 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>That's the line the Cleveland Storm have now assumed.</p>
<p>The fourth-ranked Storm overcame a lethargic, ineffective first half, scoring twice in the fourth quarter to beat No. 8 Cibola 21-7 in a matchup of District 1-5A's best on Friday night.</p>
<p>"This is a huge step forward for us," said quarterback Cole Gautsche, who threw for one touchdown and ran for another. "Getting this first district win against a good opponent, it was a huge night for us."</p>
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<p>The first hurdle in 1-5A may prove to be the most difficult for Cleveland (7-1 overall). It was no big secret: The winner of this game would become the odds-on favorite to take the district.</p>
<p>"It was very important to us," coach Kirk Potter said. "And Cibola knew it was important coming in."</p>
<p>The Cougars (3-5) were in control the first half, particularly their defense which limited the Storm to 21 yards of total offense. It was perhaps Cleveland's worst half of football this year.</p>
<p>"I think that we just came in thinking that we were gonna dominate," said tailback Thomas Knox.</p>
<p>Cibola managed the first half very well with quarterback Mike Kozemchak, who hit 7 of his first 10 passes.</p>
<p>"They had a good little scheme going on with the tight ends in their power sets, and that was messing with us for a while," Potter said.</p>
<p>A 35-yard toss to Ramon Garcia – who made a terrific catch – midway through the second quarter set up the game's first score, a 2-yard run by the Cougars' Mark Tapia.</p>
<p>Cibola would have led 10-0 halftime but for a missed field goal late in the quarter.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Cleveland managed to right things in the second half.</p>
<p>The Storm took the first possession 61 yards for a touchdown and tied the game. Gautsche's 42-yard strike to Chris Petro put the Storm at the Cibola 1, and Knox scored on the next play.</p>
<p>At one point, there were almost as many punts in this game (13) as there were points on the scoreboard (14).</p>
<p>After a poor Cibola punt, Cleveland got the ball to start the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>Gautsche's 45-yard slant pass to Travis Lonergan staked the Storm at the Cleveland 20.</p>
<p>On a fourth down from there, and without a reliable field-goal kicker, the Storm went for it. Gautsche threw a 12-yard bullet to Hasan Hudson, who was well covered, and the drive continued from the Cibola 8.</p>
<p>Three plays later, Gautsche lofted a perfect pass to the 6-foot-6 Lonergan, who easily outjumped a Cibola defender for the go-ahead TD at the 9:02 mark of the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>Cibola committed three turnovers in the final few minutes, including a muffed punt. Cleveland also intercepted Kozemchak twice in the waning moments; the first of those picks, by Petro, set up the final score, a 6-yard run by Gautsche with 19 seconds to go.</p>
|
Late-Arriving Storm Prevails
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/1536/late-arriving-storm-prevails.html
| 2least
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Late-Arriving Storm Prevails
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>That's the line the Cleveland Storm have now assumed.</p>
<p>The fourth-ranked Storm overcame a lethargic, ineffective first half, scoring twice in the fourth quarter to beat No. 8 Cibola 21-7 in a matchup of District 1-5A's best on Friday night.</p>
<p>"This is a huge step forward for us," said quarterback Cole Gautsche, who threw for one touchdown and ran for another. "Getting this first district win against a good opponent, it was a huge night for us."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The first hurdle in 1-5A may prove to be the most difficult for Cleveland (7-1 overall). It was no big secret: The winner of this game would become the odds-on favorite to take the district.</p>
<p>"It was very important to us," coach Kirk Potter said. "And Cibola knew it was important coming in."</p>
<p>The Cougars (3-5) were in control the first half, particularly their defense which limited the Storm to 21 yards of total offense. It was perhaps Cleveland's worst half of football this year.</p>
<p>"I think that we just came in thinking that we were gonna dominate," said tailback Thomas Knox.</p>
<p>Cibola managed the first half very well with quarterback Mike Kozemchak, who hit 7 of his first 10 passes.</p>
<p>"They had a good little scheme going on with the tight ends in their power sets, and that was messing with us for a while," Potter said.</p>
<p>A 35-yard toss to Ramon Garcia – who made a terrific catch – midway through the second quarter set up the game's first score, a 2-yard run by the Cougars' Mark Tapia.</p>
<p>Cibola would have led 10-0 halftime but for a missed field goal late in the quarter.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Cleveland managed to right things in the second half.</p>
<p>The Storm took the first possession 61 yards for a touchdown and tied the game. Gautsche's 42-yard strike to Chris Petro put the Storm at the Cibola 1, and Knox scored on the next play.</p>
<p>At one point, there were almost as many punts in this game (13) as there were points on the scoreboard (14).</p>
<p>After a poor Cibola punt, Cleveland got the ball to start the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>Gautsche's 45-yard slant pass to Travis Lonergan staked the Storm at the Cleveland 20.</p>
<p>On a fourth down from there, and without a reliable field-goal kicker, the Storm went for it. Gautsche threw a 12-yard bullet to Hasan Hudson, who was well covered, and the drive continued from the Cibola 8.</p>
<p>Three plays later, Gautsche lofted a perfect pass to the 6-foot-6 Lonergan, who easily outjumped a Cibola defender for the go-ahead TD at the 9:02 mark of the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>Cibola committed three turnovers in the final few minutes, including a muffed punt. Cleveland also intercepted Kozemchak twice in the waning moments; the first of those picks, by Petro, set up the final score, a 6-yard run by Gautsche with 19 seconds to go.</p>
| 7,671 |
|
<p>An imposing French manor house on 1.6 park-like acres in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, owned by veteran entertainment industry executive Frank Biondi Jr., has come to market with a price tag approaching $24 million. Biondi, president and CEO of Viacom in the ’80s and ’90s, and briefly chairman and CEO of Universal Studios in the late 1990s, purchased the handsome, brick-clad Wallace Neff-designed mansion in 1996 for nearly $4.1 million from married super-producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. At about the same time, he shelled out not quite $2 million more for a neighboring parcel from a different seller. The mansion was renovated and expanded in the late 1990s by celebrated architect Robert A.M. Stern to more than 9,300-square-feet with four bedrooms and seven full and two half bathrooms.</p>
<p>Grandly proportioned and sumptuously appointed entertaining spaces include a double-height entry with curved staircase and baronial formal living and dining rooms, both with chateau-style fireplaces. There’s also a family room with fireplace and vaulted, wood-beamed ceiling and a large eat-in kitchen. Along with a trio of en suite guest bedrooms and separate staff quarters, there’s a sprawling master suite with two bathrooms and elaborately fitted walk-in closets.</p>
<p>Meticulously groomed gardens surround a swimming pool and spa, a pool house with gym and a clay tennis court with viewing pavilion. The property is completed by a guardhouse, a gravel-paved motor court that can accommodate two-dozen cars and a 3,000-square-foot guesthouse with a cavernous, state-of-the-art digital screening room.</p>
<p>It would appear that Mr. Biondi, now in his 70s and a director of a number of companies including Yahoo, Hasbro and Cablevision, has decided to simplify and downsize his residential circumstances with the purchase of a 4,500-square-foot condo in a full-service high-rise along L.A.’s Wilshire Boulevard that he and wife Carol quietly scooped up late last year from Democratic political consultant Bob Shrum for $3.25 million.</p>
<p>listing photos: <a href="http://www.lindamay.com/" type="external">Hilton &amp; Hyland</a></p>
<p />
|
Frank Biondi Jr. Puts Lavish Brentwood Estate on the Market (EXCLUSIVE)
| false |
https://newsline.com/frank-biondi-jr-puts-lavish-brentwood-estate-on-the-market-exclusive/
|
2017-10-10
| 1right-center
|
Frank Biondi Jr. Puts Lavish Brentwood Estate on the Market (EXCLUSIVE)
<p>An imposing French manor house on 1.6 park-like acres in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, owned by veteran entertainment industry executive Frank Biondi Jr., has come to market with a price tag approaching $24 million. Biondi, president and CEO of Viacom in the ’80s and ’90s, and briefly chairman and CEO of Universal Studios in the late 1990s, purchased the handsome, brick-clad Wallace Neff-designed mansion in 1996 for nearly $4.1 million from married super-producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. At about the same time, he shelled out not quite $2 million more for a neighboring parcel from a different seller. The mansion was renovated and expanded in the late 1990s by celebrated architect Robert A.M. Stern to more than 9,300-square-feet with four bedrooms and seven full and two half bathrooms.</p>
<p>Grandly proportioned and sumptuously appointed entertaining spaces include a double-height entry with curved staircase and baronial formal living and dining rooms, both with chateau-style fireplaces. There’s also a family room with fireplace and vaulted, wood-beamed ceiling and a large eat-in kitchen. Along with a trio of en suite guest bedrooms and separate staff quarters, there’s a sprawling master suite with two bathrooms and elaborately fitted walk-in closets.</p>
<p>Meticulously groomed gardens surround a swimming pool and spa, a pool house with gym and a clay tennis court with viewing pavilion. The property is completed by a guardhouse, a gravel-paved motor court that can accommodate two-dozen cars and a 3,000-square-foot guesthouse with a cavernous, state-of-the-art digital screening room.</p>
<p>It would appear that Mr. Biondi, now in his 70s and a director of a number of companies including Yahoo, Hasbro and Cablevision, has decided to simplify and downsize his residential circumstances with the purchase of a 4,500-square-foot condo in a full-service high-rise along L.A.’s Wilshire Boulevard that he and wife Carol quietly scooped up late last year from Democratic political consultant Bob Shrum for $3.25 million.</p>
<p>listing photos: <a href="http://www.lindamay.com/" type="external">Hilton &amp; Hyland</a></p>
<p />
| 7,672 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" />JUNE 29, 2011</p>
<p>By KATY GRIMES</p>
<p>With a surprising lack of debate between parties, the California Legislature passed the budget late last evening, and only with a majority vote, attempting to close what began the year as a $26.6 billion deficit using a great deal of hope for increased state revenues.</p>
<p>Democrats pinned the budget’s balance on assumptions of future tax revenue estimates and projected spending levels. But even if tax revenue does increase as much as Democrats are hoping it will, many are saying that there will still be a budget shortfall in the near future.</p>
<p>After months of negotiations and nearly $10 billion in spending cuts, the budget plan is expected to close the $26.6 billion gap by nearly $20 billion — with the rest of the revenue on a wing and a prayer.</p>
<p>The motive for passage was strong as lawmakers’ pay had been suspended by Controller John Chiang for passing an unbalanced budget on June 15, which Gov. Jerry Brown immediately vetoed.</p>
<p>This budget is expected to bring about reinstatement of the legislators’ pay.</p>
<p>The eight bills, which made up the entire budget bill, were passed easily in the Assembly; and after several tries and some arm-twisting, then passed in the Senate.</p>
<p>Brown is expected to sign the budget as presented, bringing the general fund spending down to $86 billion from $91.5 billion.</p>
<p>However, this budget is a far cry from the budget Brown proposed in January. Brown has insisted that his budget proposal was a balance of cuts and revenues increases — tax increases — which Republicans refused to agree to.</p>
<p>Brown and the Democrats will still need to address the shortfall issue and are talking about putting a ballot initiative together for voters to approve tax increases.</p>
<p>But voters have defeated the last seven tax-increase attempts put before them.&#160; And Republicans insist that if voters are faced with increased taxes, they should also be allowed to vote on key reforms: pension reform, a spending cap and regulatory reform for the state’s struggling businesses.</p>
<p>“This latest budget is based on the hope that $4 billion in new revenues will miraculously materialize, but does absolutely nothing to change government as usual,” said Sen. Bob Dutton, the Senate Republican Leader. “The Democrats have said no to all of the Republican reforms that Californians are demanding, including pension reform, a spending cap and job creation.”</p>
<p>The budget includes even more cuts to higher education, in addition to the $500 million already cut by the University of California and California State University systems, and includes cutting seven days from the K-12 public school year.</p>
<p>Critics say that this budget is full of carryovers into future years, still making it unbalanced.</p>
<p>Specifically, the cuts and hoped-for new revenues include:</p>
<p>* $150 million cut to the University of California and California State University</p>
<p>* $150 million cut to state courts</p>
<p>* $200 million in Amazon online sales and use tax</p>
<p>* $2.8 billion in deferrals to K-12 schools and community colleges</p>
<p>* $300 million from $12 per vehicle increase in DMV registration “fee”</p>
<p>* $150 million from fire “fee” for rural homeowners</p>
<p>* $1.7 billion from redevelopment agencies</p>
<p>* $1.2 billion in higher May and June revenues</p>
<p>The budget anticipates $4 billion in higher revenues in 2011-12, with triggered cuts if revenues do not come in as anticipated. The 1.06 percentage point sales tax swap, which will redirect money to local governments for Brown’s “realignment” plan, is one of the anticipated revenues, angering many lawmakers with its passage.</p>
<p>And Republicans said they were “iced out” of budget negotiations, leaving Democrats owning the entire budget, process and all.</p>
<p>“This budget not only lacks regulatory relief that is critical for creating job opportunities, it lacks the other reforms that Californians are demanding and deserve,” said Dutton. “Californians want a hard spending cap and they want reforms to fix the unsustainable state and local pension systems. Pension reform is the only way to ensure that state and local governments can continue to fund essential services in the future.”</p>
<p>Dutton said numerous times this week that this is a “Hope without Change” budget. “It relies on the hope for billions of phantom dollars and does nothing, absolutely nothing, to change government as usual. Even worse, it does nothing to put people back to work.”</p>
<p>The budget appears to work on a balance sheet, but many of the nifty accounting tricks only last one year, which will surely trigger a shortfall. And if the “recovering” economy continues to flail, the budget shortfall will only be that much more dramatic, leaving taxpayers on the hook once again.</p>
<p>And Brown knows this. “We still have our wall of debt out there,” Brown said earlier in the week. “We still have work to do.”</p>
|
Democrats Pass Hinky Budget
| false |
https://calwatchdog.com/2011/06/29/democrats-pass-hinky-budget/
|
2018-06-20
| 3left-center
|
Democrats Pass Hinky Budget
<p><a href="" type="internal" />JUNE 29, 2011</p>
<p>By KATY GRIMES</p>
<p>With a surprising lack of debate between parties, the California Legislature passed the budget late last evening, and only with a majority vote, attempting to close what began the year as a $26.6 billion deficit using a great deal of hope for increased state revenues.</p>
<p>Democrats pinned the budget’s balance on assumptions of future tax revenue estimates and projected spending levels. But even if tax revenue does increase as much as Democrats are hoping it will, many are saying that there will still be a budget shortfall in the near future.</p>
<p>After months of negotiations and nearly $10 billion in spending cuts, the budget plan is expected to close the $26.6 billion gap by nearly $20 billion — with the rest of the revenue on a wing and a prayer.</p>
<p>The motive for passage was strong as lawmakers’ pay had been suspended by Controller John Chiang for passing an unbalanced budget on June 15, which Gov. Jerry Brown immediately vetoed.</p>
<p>This budget is expected to bring about reinstatement of the legislators’ pay.</p>
<p>The eight bills, which made up the entire budget bill, were passed easily in the Assembly; and after several tries and some arm-twisting, then passed in the Senate.</p>
<p>Brown is expected to sign the budget as presented, bringing the general fund spending down to $86 billion from $91.5 billion.</p>
<p>However, this budget is a far cry from the budget Brown proposed in January. Brown has insisted that his budget proposal was a balance of cuts and revenues increases — tax increases — which Republicans refused to agree to.</p>
<p>Brown and the Democrats will still need to address the shortfall issue and are talking about putting a ballot initiative together for voters to approve tax increases.</p>
<p>But voters have defeated the last seven tax-increase attempts put before them.&#160; And Republicans insist that if voters are faced with increased taxes, they should also be allowed to vote on key reforms: pension reform, a spending cap and regulatory reform for the state’s struggling businesses.</p>
<p>“This latest budget is based on the hope that $4 billion in new revenues will miraculously materialize, but does absolutely nothing to change government as usual,” said Sen. Bob Dutton, the Senate Republican Leader. “The Democrats have said no to all of the Republican reforms that Californians are demanding, including pension reform, a spending cap and job creation.”</p>
<p>The budget includes even more cuts to higher education, in addition to the $500 million already cut by the University of California and California State University systems, and includes cutting seven days from the K-12 public school year.</p>
<p>Critics say that this budget is full of carryovers into future years, still making it unbalanced.</p>
<p>Specifically, the cuts and hoped-for new revenues include:</p>
<p>* $150 million cut to the University of California and California State University</p>
<p>* $150 million cut to state courts</p>
<p>* $200 million in Amazon online sales and use tax</p>
<p>* $2.8 billion in deferrals to K-12 schools and community colleges</p>
<p>* $300 million from $12 per vehicle increase in DMV registration “fee”</p>
<p>* $150 million from fire “fee” for rural homeowners</p>
<p>* $1.7 billion from redevelopment agencies</p>
<p>* $1.2 billion in higher May and June revenues</p>
<p>The budget anticipates $4 billion in higher revenues in 2011-12, with triggered cuts if revenues do not come in as anticipated. The 1.06 percentage point sales tax swap, which will redirect money to local governments for Brown’s “realignment” plan, is one of the anticipated revenues, angering many lawmakers with its passage.</p>
<p>And Republicans said they were “iced out” of budget negotiations, leaving Democrats owning the entire budget, process and all.</p>
<p>“This budget not only lacks regulatory relief that is critical for creating job opportunities, it lacks the other reforms that Californians are demanding and deserve,” said Dutton. “Californians want a hard spending cap and they want reforms to fix the unsustainable state and local pension systems. Pension reform is the only way to ensure that state and local governments can continue to fund essential services in the future.”</p>
<p>Dutton said numerous times this week that this is a “Hope without Change” budget. “It relies on the hope for billions of phantom dollars and does nothing, absolutely nothing, to change government as usual. Even worse, it does nothing to put people back to work.”</p>
<p>The budget appears to work on a balance sheet, but many of the nifty accounting tricks only last one year, which will surely trigger a shortfall. And if the “recovering” economy continues to flail, the budget shortfall will only be that much more dramatic, leaving taxpayers on the hook once again.</p>
<p>And Brown knows this. “We still have our wall of debt out there,” Brown said earlier in the week. “We still have work to do.”</p>
| 7,673 |
<p>House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi threatened to block any federal funding to fight the Zika virus unless the money is also funneled to abortion giant Planned Parenthood.</p>
<p>In a press conference on Wednesday, Pelosi made her announcement and smeared Republicans for their refusal to include Planned Parenthood in the funding since the organization provides contraception.</p>
<p>"I grant them their position on abortion and the rest of that. But contraception?" Pelosi <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2016/09/08/nancy-pelosi-we-will-oppose-zika-virus-funding-unless-planned-parenthood-is-funded-too/" type="external">said</a>, repeating the word "contraception" twice thereafter as her voice dripped with stupid condescension. "Really? We’re talking about mosquitoes, but do we need to talk about the birds and the bees at the same time?"</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/pelosi-gop-defunding-planned-parenthood-zika-bill-do-we-need-talk-about" type="external">Asked</a> if she and the Democrats were "playing politics" by refusing to support the Zika funding, Pelosi denied it by pointing to their support of the Senate bill that passed in May that was later revised by the House to strip out funding for Planned Parenthood.</p>
<p>Pelosi didn't mention the fact that not only do federally qualified health centers vastly outnumber the number of Planned Parenthood clinics in the U.S.– 13,540 to 665 – they're also better capable of handling the Zika virus than Planned Parenthood.</p>
<p>"In federally qualified health centers, you actually have medical professionals on staff—doctors and nurses on staff—to diagnosis and treat illness," Casey Mattox, lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, <a href="http://dailysignal.com/2016/09/06/what-zika-crisis-shows-about-womens-health-funding-debate/" type="external">told</a> The Daily Signal. "That’s what they’re there for. Planned Parenthood does not have that. They have people who can provide birth control, and can provide other women’s health screenings in some cases, but they don’t have medical professionals that can actually provide primary care services. And that’s what you need in a public health crisis, the ability to provide primary care services, determine whether someone has Zika, and advise them on how to not get Zika."</p>
<p>The Daily Signal also found data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that reveals that federally qualified health centers "provide more than three times the total number of services that Planned Parenthood provides." In fact, federally qualified health centers also provide the birth control services that Pelosi seems so concerned about.</p>
<p>And yet, Pelosi and the Democrats insist on blocking bills solely because they don't provide even more federal funding to the abortion giant, even as the Centers for Disease Control director, Thomas Frieden, warned that CDC does not "have the resources we need to mount the kind of robust fight against the disease" and thus need the federal funding.</p>
<p>Politics always comes first with leftist Democrats, as they even take an issue like the Zika virus that shouldn't be political and inject politics into it to reward an organization that <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cycle=2016&amp;cmte=C00314617" type="external">funnels hundreds of thousands of dollars into Democratic campaigns</a>.</p>
<p>For more on the Zika virus, read The Daily Wire's primers on it <a href="" type="internal">here</a> and <a href="" type="internal">here</a>. For more on the evil Planned Parenthood commits, watch The Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro's video on it below.</p>
<p />
|
Pelosi: No Zika Funding Unless It Goes To Planned Parenthood As Well
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/8996/pelosi-no-zika-funding-unless-it-goes-planned-aaron-bandler
|
2016-09-08
| 0right
|
Pelosi: No Zika Funding Unless It Goes To Planned Parenthood As Well
<p>House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi threatened to block any federal funding to fight the Zika virus unless the money is also funneled to abortion giant Planned Parenthood.</p>
<p>In a press conference on Wednesday, Pelosi made her announcement and smeared Republicans for their refusal to include Planned Parenthood in the funding since the organization provides contraception.</p>
<p>"I grant them their position on abortion and the rest of that. But contraception?" Pelosi <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2016/09/08/nancy-pelosi-we-will-oppose-zika-virus-funding-unless-planned-parenthood-is-funded-too/" type="external">said</a>, repeating the word "contraception" twice thereafter as her voice dripped with stupid condescension. "Really? We’re talking about mosquitoes, but do we need to talk about the birds and the bees at the same time?"</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/pelosi-gop-defunding-planned-parenthood-zika-bill-do-we-need-talk-about" type="external">Asked</a> if she and the Democrats were "playing politics" by refusing to support the Zika funding, Pelosi denied it by pointing to their support of the Senate bill that passed in May that was later revised by the House to strip out funding for Planned Parenthood.</p>
<p>Pelosi didn't mention the fact that not only do federally qualified health centers vastly outnumber the number of Planned Parenthood clinics in the U.S.– 13,540 to 665 – they're also better capable of handling the Zika virus than Planned Parenthood.</p>
<p>"In federally qualified health centers, you actually have medical professionals on staff—doctors and nurses on staff—to diagnosis and treat illness," Casey Mattox, lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, <a href="http://dailysignal.com/2016/09/06/what-zika-crisis-shows-about-womens-health-funding-debate/" type="external">told</a> The Daily Signal. "That’s what they’re there for. Planned Parenthood does not have that. They have people who can provide birth control, and can provide other women’s health screenings in some cases, but they don’t have medical professionals that can actually provide primary care services. And that’s what you need in a public health crisis, the ability to provide primary care services, determine whether someone has Zika, and advise them on how to not get Zika."</p>
<p>The Daily Signal also found data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that reveals that federally qualified health centers "provide more than three times the total number of services that Planned Parenthood provides." In fact, federally qualified health centers also provide the birth control services that Pelosi seems so concerned about.</p>
<p>And yet, Pelosi and the Democrats insist on blocking bills solely because they don't provide even more federal funding to the abortion giant, even as the Centers for Disease Control director, Thomas Frieden, warned that CDC does not "have the resources we need to mount the kind of robust fight against the disease" and thus need the federal funding.</p>
<p>Politics always comes first with leftist Democrats, as they even take an issue like the Zika virus that shouldn't be political and inject politics into it to reward an organization that <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cycle=2016&amp;cmte=C00314617" type="external">funnels hundreds of thousands of dollars into Democratic campaigns</a>.</p>
<p>For more on the Zika virus, read The Daily Wire's primers on it <a href="" type="internal">here</a> and <a href="" type="internal">here</a>. For more on the evil Planned Parenthood commits, watch The Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro's video on it below.</p>
<p />
| 7,674 |
<p>To Donald Trump, size matters.</p>
<p>He’s gonna burn his MAGA hat.</p>
<p>Mmm…conservative tears!</p>
<p>Why do conservatives always praise Russian saboteurs?</p>
<p>Buckle up, Governor. The blue wave is coming.</p>
<p>Welcome to Trump’s America.</p>
<p>What a hot mess.</p>
<p>Conservatives have been saying the Texas bomber is a ‘liberal,’ but the evidence says otherwise.</p>
<p>This didn’t go down well.</p>
<p>Now imagine if this woman would have had a gun.</p>
<p>Best troll job EVER.</p>
<p>What are they so mad about? It’s a perfect likeness!</p>
<p>‘Responsible gun ownership’ at its finest.</p>
<p>He is pissed.</p>
<p>Whoops!</p>
<p>Trump is almost certainly panicking right now.</p>
<p>Gee, where could the have possibly gotten this information?</p>
<p>Sorry, Stupids. You’re wrong again.</p>
<p>Ouch!</p>
<p>The horror!</p>
| true |
http://addictinginfo.org/2011/03/25/g-e-and-their-corporate-welfare/
| 4left
|
<p>To Donald Trump, size matters.</p>
<p>He’s gonna burn his MAGA hat.</p>
<p>Mmm…conservative tears!</p>
<p>Why do conservatives always praise Russian saboteurs?</p>
<p>Buckle up, Governor. The blue wave is coming.</p>
<p>Welcome to Trump’s America.</p>
<p>What a hot mess.</p>
<p>Conservatives have been saying the Texas bomber is a ‘liberal,’ but the evidence says otherwise.</p>
<p>This didn’t go down well.</p>
<p>Now imagine if this woman would have had a gun.</p>
<p>Best troll job EVER.</p>
<p>What are they so mad about? It’s a perfect likeness!</p>
<p>‘Responsible gun ownership’ at its finest.</p>
<p>He is pissed.</p>
<p>Whoops!</p>
<p>Trump is almost certainly panicking right now.</p>
<p>Gee, where could the have possibly gotten this information?</p>
<p>Sorry, Stupids. You’re wrong again.</p>
<p>Ouch!</p>
<p>The horror!</p>
| 7,675 |
||
<p />
<p>On Sunday, the Associated Press <a href="http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/12/13/daisy-obi-forced-to-learn-islam-muslims/" type="external">reported</a> that Daisy Obi, a 73-year-old ordained minister from Nigeria who pastors the Adonai Bible Center in Somerville, Massachusetts, was ordered to take an introductory course in Islam after she was convicted of pushing her Muslim tenant down a flight of stairs.</p>
<p>“I want you to learn about the Muslim faith,” the judge said. “I want you to enroll and attend an introductory course on Islam.</p>
<p>“I do want you to understand people of the Muslim faith, and they need to be respected. They may worship Allah … but they need to be respected.”</p>
<p>The AP added:</p>
<p>The Supreme Judicial Court will hear arguments next month in a case that poses interesting legal questions at a time when the country is grappling with anti-Muslim backlash following deadly attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, both allegedly carried out by radical Muslims.</p>
<p>As it turns out, Obi rents to other Muslims and believes the entire incident is part of a vendetta against her.&#160; Still, the order would appear to violate the establishment clause of the Constitution.</p>
<p>Pamela Geller <a href="http://pamelageller.com/2015/12/sharia-in-boston-judge-orders-pastor-to-learn-and-study-islam.html/" type="external">wrote</a>:</p>
<p>…First off, I do not believe the Pastor Daisy Obi, a 73-year-old ordained minister from Nigeria, threw the Islamic supremacist&#160; Gihan Suliman down the stairs. I think she is a liar – I have seen this too any times. Muslim revenge. Muslims in Muslim countries under the sharia do this all the time, accuse Christians of blasphemy in order to get them jailed or punished.</p>
<p>The woman accused of saying anti-Muslim things and “pushing a Muslim tenant down the stairs” rents to several Muslims. So clearly she is not anti-Muslim. And secondly, the alleged victim had upwards of 15 people living her the apartment so of course the landlord. Suliman did not respond to messages left at her home and workplace (of course not).</p>
<p>Authorities claim they are not forcing her to accept a religious belief, but it’s frightening to think that a court can order someone to take a course in a faith other than their own.&#160; What’s next?&#160; The mind boggles…</p>
<p>Related:</p>
<p>If you haven’t checked out and liked our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">Facebook</a> page, please go <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">here</a> and do so.</p>
|
Judge orders Christian pastor to study Islam
| true |
http://conservativefiringline.com/judge-orders-christian-pastor-to-study-islam/
|
2015-12-14
| 0right
|
Judge orders Christian pastor to study Islam
<p />
<p>On Sunday, the Associated Press <a href="http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/12/13/daisy-obi-forced-to-learn-islam-muslims/" type="external">reported</a> that Daisy Obi, a 73-year-old ordained minister from Nigeria who pastors the Adonai Bible Center in Somerville, Massachusetts, was ordered to take an introductory course in Islam after she was convicted of pushing her Muslim tenant down a flight of stairs.</p>
<p>“I want you to learn about the Muslim faith,” the judge said. “I want you to enroll and attend an introductory course on Islam.</p>
<p>“I do want you to understand people of the Muslim faith, and they need to be respected. They may worship Allah … but they need to be respected.”</p>
<p>The AP added:</p>
<p>The Supreme Judicial Court will hear arguments next month in a case that poses interesting legal questions at a time when the country is grappling with anti-Muslim backlash following deadly attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, both allegedly carried out by radical Muslims.</p>
<p>As it turns out, Obi rents to other Muslims and believes the entire incident is part of a vendetta against her.&#160; Still, the order would appear to violate the establishment clause of the Constitution.</p>
<p>Pamela Geller <a href="http://pamelageller.com/2015/12/sharia-in-boston-judge-orders-pastor-to-learn-and-study-islam.html/" type="external">wrote</a>:</p>
<p>…First off, I do not believe the Pastor Daisy Obi, a 73-year-old ordained minister from Nigeria, threw the Islamic supremacist&#160; Gihan Suliman down the stairs. I think she is a liar – I have seen this too any times. Muslim revenge. Muslims in Muslim countries under the sharia do this all the time, accuse Christians of blasphemy in order to get them jailed or punished.</p>
<p>The woman accused of saying anti-Muslim things and “pushing a Muslim tenant down the stairs” rents to several Muslims. So clearly she is not anti-Muslim. And secondly, the alleged victim had upwards of 15 people living her the apartment so of course the landlord. Suliman did not respond to messages left at her home and workplace (of course not).</p>
<p>Authorities claim they are not forcing her to accept a religious belief, but it’s frightening to think that a court can order someone to take a course in a faith other than their own.&#160; What’s next?&#160; The mind boggles…</p>
<p>Related:</p>
<p>If you haven’t checked out and liked our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">Facebook</a> page, please go <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">here</a> and do so.</p>
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<p>In June, 2005, the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles began construction in Jerusalem of an ambitious new facility. This project was variously referred to by Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder and “dean” of the SWC, as the “Center for Human Dignity,” the “Center for Human Dignity—Jerusalem” and most pretentiously, the “Center for Human Dignity—Museum of Tolerance.” (Ground-breaking on the construction site had occurred in 2004, giving Arnold Schwarzenegger an opportunity to fly to Israel for one of his many photo ops with Rabbi Heir.) This sprawling structure was to be built on a parking lot that was supposedly adjacent to a historic Muslim ceremony; but which actually turned out to be directly on top of a part of it.</p>
<p>The cemetery, called the Mamilla Cemetary (Ma’Man Allah in Arabic), was an extremely old Muslim burial ground that was once the most important in Palestine, and in the Middle East generally. The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, in a petition to the UN and other international organizations to stop construction of the Wiesenthal Museum, wrote as follows: “The Mamilla Cemetery is an ancient Muslim burial ground and holy site believed to date back to the 7th century, when companions of the Prophet Muhammad were reputedly buried there. Numerous saints of the Sufi faith and thousands of other officials, scholar, notables and Jerusalemite families have been buried in the cemetery over the last 1000 years. The Muslim Supreme Council declared the cemetery a historical site in 1927, and the British Mandate authorities pronounced it an antiquities site in 1944. It was an active burial ground until 1948.”</p>
<p>“After the new State of Israel seized the western part of Jerusalem in 1948, the cemetery fell under Israeli control, and like other Islamic endowment properties, or waqf, Mamilla Cemetery was taken over by the Custodian for Absentee Property. Since then, Muslim authorities have not been allowed to maintain the cemetery.” At that time, in 1948, the Israeli Religious Affairs Ministry itself acknowledged Mamilla “to be one of the most prominent Muslim cemeteries, where seventy thousand Muslim warriors of [Saladin’s] armies are interred along with many Muslim scholars.” It added: “Israel will always know to protect and respect this site.”</p>
<p>But that is not what happened.</p>
<p>In the early 1980s, Muslims became aware that the cemetery was being encroached on and human remains were being disinterred, and protested to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In 1984 Israel responded to that protest by stating flatly that “no project exists for the de-consecration of the site and that on the contrary the site and its tombs are to be safeguarded.” In fact even as Israel said this, however, it was engaged in parceling off pieces of the cemetery for various kinds of private developments, even as they assured UNESCO that they were protecting it.</p>
<p>Sadly, Palestinians had no legal instrument by which they could stop this. Although Mamilla cemetery in on a list of “Special Antiquities Sites,” it is not protected as a religious site. All of the cemeteries in Israel that are protected as religious sites are Jewish. (The Israeli government designates 137 holy sites that receive such protection, but all are Jewish, a fact that the US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report of 2009 protested against.) Furthermore successive governments have sought to obliterate reminders of Palestinian culture in Jerusalem; successive governments parceled out sections of Mamilla for buildings, then for the construction of the parking lot mentioned above—and in 1992, the site was transferred to the Jerusalem municipality. At one point the government built a park over a part of the cemetery, which they named Independence Park, a reference to the founding of Israel in 1948 (and a clear attempt to provoke and humiliate Palestinians).</p>
<p>This is completely unlike the treatment meted out to Jewish cemeteries. On the Mount of the Olives, for example, the Jewish cemetery has been lavishly refurbished and even expanded, and finally transformed into a “heritage site.” On the other hand, Israel’s Muslim cemeteries have been allowed to fade into disuse, and are even destroyed when the government thinks it can get away with it. The 900-year-old Hittin mosque built by Saladin in the Galilee region has been deliberately fenced off and allowed to go to ruin. According to Bethlehem-based journalist Jonathan Cook, some mosques are used by rural Jewish communities as animal sheds. “And yet more,” he writes, “have been converted into discos, bars or nightclubs, including the Dahir al-Umar mosque—now the Dona Rosa restaurant—in the former Palestinian village of Ayn Hawd.”</p>
<p>Meron Benvenisti, a former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem who wrote Sacred Landscape: Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948, has been vocal in pointing out that Muslim groups, contrary to what the Simon Wiesenthal camp is saying, pleaded over the years to be allowed to officially refurbish and keep up their sacred sites and cemeteries, but were never allowed to do so. Many important Islamic sites, he has written, have been “turned into dumps, parking lots, roads and construction sites.”</p>
<p>The Israeli government has recently added Ibrahimi and Bilal Bin Abi Rabah Mosques to the Jewish heritage list, which means they are not protected as religious sites. This means that the Israeli government could easily sell off, close or develop the sites, just as it has the Mamilla site, which is also on the heritage list but not protected as a religious site.</p>
<p>On a tour of East Jerusalem in late summer 2010, activist and author Phillip Weiss wrote on his website Mondoweiss:</p>
<p>Maybe the most pitiable sight I saw yesterday, inside the West Bank but close to the north Jerusalem colonies of Ramot and Ramat Shlomo, [was] the hilltop tomb of the prophet Samuel, which is worshiped by Jews and Muslims. The tomb is both a mosque with a minaret and a Jewish place of worship. Well when we visited, busloads of Jewish schoolchildren were arriving and Israeli soldiers were in the tomb davening and Hasidic boys were descending, too.</p>
<p>But next door it was a different story:</p>
<p>The door is chained, pigeons fly into the outer rooms, the Palestinian who runs a store there told us that the authorities had shut down the minaret. There are no Palestinian worshipers.</p>
<p>Weiss points out that this is an Israeli National Park in the West Bank, which is supposedly Palestinian land and supposedly—if there were actually ever to be a two-state solution—the future site of a Palestinian state. But being under the authority of the Israeli army, the Jewish site is protected as a religious site, whereas the Muslim worship facility next to the tomb of the prophet Samuel has been closed down. It is hard not to conclude that the closing and degradation of Muslim religious sites is a deliberate and coordinated policy of the Israeli government to humiliate Palestinian Muslims, an extension of the slow ethnic cleansing currently underway in the occupied territories. The message seems to be, “If you don’t like what we’re doing to Muslim holy sites, why don’t you leave?”</p>
<p>The Simon Wiesenthal Center similarly claims that Mamilla deserves no protection as a religious site, citing the fact that in 1964 the government set up a Muslim trust and that the head of that council “deconsecrated” Mamilla—and supposedly declared it no longer sacred ground, thus opening it up to partial development. But the person in question was apparently a government plant brought in to give political cover to those anxious to make money by developing the cemetery. (The bogus 1964 proclamation was aggressively overturned—or ruled “void”—by the Shari’a Court of Appeals in Israel, which found the sanctity of cemeteries to be “eternal” in Islam.) Certainly one person—especially one who in 1964 had been given no authority by Muslims to represent them—cannot speak for the many families whose ancestors are buried in Mamilla. Although some tombstones appeared to have been replaced in recent years, individual attempts at upkeep haven’t been as successful as organized efforts by a Muslim trust would be.</p>
<p>In Death in Jerusalem, Noga Tarnopolsky writes of her friend Sari Nusseibeh, a philosopher and university president, who located the tomb of two illustrious ancestors in the Mamilla cemetery: “Nusseibeh then contacted a friend working at the Ministry for Religious Affairs and requested permission to place a plaque on the crypt. ‘I thought it was important to commemorate this, and to tell people that in the case of a family like mine, we are not claiming roots here in the abstract or national sense, but in the familial sense, which is a much closer thing,’ he said.”</p>
<p>“Nusseibeh secured permission and affixed a stone plaque explaining that the tomb belonged to Islam’s Kabrkabiyyan period and contained the remains of one Prince Iddaghji and a certain Judge Nusseibeh. The next day it was removed by municipal workers, who claimed sole jurisdiction over the entire park.” This was despite the permission he had supposedly gotten from the Ministry for Religious Affairs. This could stand as a paradigm interaction of Israel and its Palestinian citizens. One can jump through all the hoops, do all the paperwork required, but if you are Palestinian you can be ignored and shut down at any moment, simply because you do not have the right religion. And your attorney will be able to do nothing for you, because in Israel the legal system is completely skewed against Palestinians.</p>
<p>Thus the location for SWC’s “Museum of Tolerance” had already been contested ground for some time before 2004, and in the opinion of most Palestinians a prime example of Israel’s swaggering and increasingly aggressive religious intolerance. Even the design for the new structure—by the internationally-known architect Frank Gehry—seems to have pleased nobody. (Gehry claims that it represents a bowl of fruit, a strange idea that got little traction in Jerusalem.)[i] Meron Benvenisti complained about its “geometric forms that can’t be any more dissonant to the environment in which it is planned to put this alien object.” Noga Tarnopolsky characterized its design as “the image of a supernatural edifice resembling nothing so much as a crab in the process of hatching a sapphire spider with huge, glassy eyes. It is neither beautiful nor ugly; it is striking and odd.” The management of the Vad Yashem Holocaust memorial were unhappy about the competition in Holocaust tourism (there’s a great comic novel in there somewhere), and the people of Jerusalem, perhaps wary of busloads of ecstatic tourists from southern California, were generally mystified by Heir’s grandiose ideas.</p>
<p>The “Museum of Tolerance” was built on a parking lot that was supposed to be adjacent to Mamilla cemetery. In reality it was built over part of it. This fact became painfully clear to the Wiesenthal Center as workmen began to encounter human remains. (Laying electrical cables and sewer lines probably resulted in digging deeper than had been required for building the parking lot.) At first the presence of human remains was kept secret by the SWC, but it couldn’t have surprised many people in Jerusalem, since they knew that the government had been parceling off the cemetery for some time. What the government had chosen to ignore was how resentful of this Palestinians had become over the years, especially those families with ancestors buried in Mamilla.</p>
<p>Reports vary, but the Wiesenthal Center workers apparently encountered remains of about two hundred people; and a decision was supposedly made to take the remains to another Muslim cemetery and re-inter them there. (What really happened can’t be confirmed because the Wiesenthal Center won’t reveal where they were taken.) The centuries-old remains have been the main sticking point for Hier and the SWC, the seriousness of which can be inferred from their insistence that they “respectfully” re-interred the bones. (If that is true, why won’t they allow journalists to take photos of their final resting place?) If the Wiesenthal Center is simply building something on a parking lot, why were they engaged in digging up human remains? And if the claims of local Muslim families were all lies, why was the Wiesenthal Center, by its own admission, re-interring those same human remains in another Muslim cemetery?</p>
<p>In fact, Hier and the Wiesenthal Center had known for a very long time that they were building their “Center for Human Dignity—Museum of Tolerance.” on top of an historic Muslim cemetery. During the building of the original parking lot back in the 1960, hundreds of graves were disinterred, which caused anguished protests by Muslims; the same thing happened in 1984, when they appealed to UNESCO. Furthermore, as early as 1993 the municipal authorities offered the SWC the parking lot for the building of the project. Both Teddy Kollek and Ehud Olmert had encouraged the Simon Wiesenthal Center to build the current or similar projects at precisely this site, and they above all were in a position to know that the parking lot had been built over part of Mamilla Cemetery. Therefore Kollek, Ehud Olmert and Rabbi Hier knew exactly what lay under the parking lot. In fact, the case can be made that Hier wanted to build on a Muslim cemetery, especially given his apocalyptic ideas about the inevitability of religious war between Muslims and Jews. What could be better for fund-raising than a nice little religious war, with the frenetic Hier leading his faithful troops into the fray?</p>
<p>In 2005, Gideon Suleimani, a Palestinian archeologist, personally warned representatives of the SWC that the area was an antiquities site; at Seleimani’s request, the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) dug test trenches, and it was revealed that hundreds of graves—as many as four layers of graves—were located under the parking lot. One has the sense that Suleimani thought that he could get the Wiesenthal Center to back off if only he could appeal to their common humanity. If so, he didn’t know the group he was dealing with—the SWC continued, in spite of being so advised; and when reports surfaced of their digging up remains and carrying them away surreptitiously in boxes, several Palestinian families in the area decided to act.</p>
<p>The Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) then moved to investigate further. Suleimani, who was the Chief Excavator on the project, found that there were “at least 2000 graves,” on at least four levels, with exhumed remains dating back to the 12th century, and the lowest level dating back to the 11th century. But, as Suleimann later testified in an Affidavit, people from the Simon Wiesenthal Center began to put pressure on the IAA, as did interested politicians who were invested in getting the construction done. For their part the IAA, according to Suleimani, tried to get him to stop his excavating and to alter his report. Suleimani also said that “representatives of the SWC started coming by on a daily basis, pressing for the excavation to progress quickly, to prevent the Muslims from stopping the project,” not to mention entrepreneurs whose connection to the site was unclear, but who were now threatening to sue the Israeli Antiquities Authority.</p>
<p>In 2006 a lawsuit was filed that resulted in a court order that temporarily stopped construction. But the pressures were growing on the government. The Israeli Antiquities Authority decided, while defending against the lawsuit, to suppress the evidence their Chief Excavator Gideon Suleimani had uncovered. The High Court of Israel never found out that there were around 2,000 graves under the parking lot, going down four levels, the lowest level of graves dating back to the 11th century. They did not find out about it because the IAA suppressed the evidence that Seluimani collected, and that the IAA had asked him to collect. In an equally cynical move, the IAA apparently lied (according to affidavits by Suleimani) about his finding that only about ten percent of the excavations had been done, instead claiming that ninety percent was done.</p>
<p>What caused these criminal misrepresentations to the High Court, the first of which was suppression of evidence, and the second of which was perjury? For one thing, the Simon Wiesenthal Center had arranged to pay the workers doing the excavation, perhaps a violation of the law, but one that gave the SWC greater leverage over facts on the ground. Secondly, there is some evidence that the “Museum of Tolerance” was part of a larger deal which may not have been strictly legitimate (since it may have involved patronage from politicians). Thirdly, why did the IAA falsify the report they had initiated, and what did they receive in return from the Simon Wiesenthal Center? This critical piece of information can’t be determined until the principals to the controversy can be examined under oath. But given the value of the land involved it is hard to believe that they acted alone, or that they decided to suppress evidence on their own volition.</p>
<p>The High Court allowed construction to continue in October, 2008. Efforts were made to appeal this, since the Israel Antiquities Authority had repressed the only evidence that really counts in this case, which was testimony (and evidence) of the Chief Excavator assigned by the IAA itself, Gideon Suleimani. Despite the suppression of everything he had to say and all the evidence he had obtained, the court refused to open the case again, and insisted that construction must proceed. Exhumation of human remains resumed, and there was nothing that could be done about it. This constituted the exhaustion of appeals within the Israeli system of justice, and made the later appeal to the United Nations inevitable.</p>
<p>Contrary to what the IAA had told the High Court, ninety percent of the area intended for the Wiesenthal Center project still had to be dug up. The Israeli Antiquities Authority claimed that the disinterring of human remains occurring after October, 2008, involved manual removal after documentation so that the remains could be re-interred, but both the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the IAA have engaged in extreme secrecy, and it is impossible to say exactly what they did with the remains. (Needless to say, they refused to consult with appropriate Muslim authorities.) It was reported by the Palestinian News Network that during one week in 2009, some 300 Muslim graves were opened up, and the remains dumped into a mass grave. It is impossible to confirm this, but one can imagine how such reports affect the Palestinians that read them. The apparent collusion of the IAA and the Simon Wiesenthal group, and the extreme secrecy with which they operated—not to mention Rabbi Hier’s violent rhetorical attacks on any who oppose their projects as terrorists, anti-Semites, and “Islamists”—have for the time being removed hope for resolution using any of the instruments of Israeli civil society.</p>
<p>Therefore on 10 February 2010, in New York, Jerusalem, Geneva and Los Angeles, a petition was filed with several United Nations agencies to stop desecration of Mamilla Cemetary by Israeli authorities and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. (Press conferences were held in Geneva, Jersalem and Los Angeles.) The UN agencies to whom this was appealed were the UN Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Religion and Belief and on Contemporary Forms of Racism; the Independent Expert on Culture; the High Commissioner for Human Rights; and the Director General of UNESCO, the agency that was involved in investigations of previous desecrations of Mamilla Cemetary in 1984. The Petition was filed on behalf of some 60 Palestinians from 15 Jerusalem families whose ancestors, going back to the 12th century, are buried in the cemetery. The filing was done by the Center for Constitutional Rights located in New York, which has made information about the campaign to save Mamilla available at <a href="http://www.mamillacampaign.org" type="external">www.mamillacampaign.org</a>.</p>
<p>The press release accompanying the filing said as follows:</p>
<p>“This will be the first known time Palestinian individuals have taken collective action against Israel to bring such an issue before a UN forum and comes after all remedies in Israel were exhausted. The families, NGOs, and attorneys argue the desecration of the cemetery violates international conventions protecting cultural heritage, the manifestation of religious beliefs, and the right to family.” Maria LaHood, a Senior Attorney as CCR, added: “Left with no recourse in Israel, families of people buried in Mamilla cemetery have come together to petition the United Nations to safeguard their international human rights to be free from discrimination, to manifest religious beliefs, and to have their cultural heritage protected. We call on the international community to denounce this shameful desecration of a historic Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem.”</p>
<p>The Center for Constitutional Rights was found in 1966 by lawyers involved in the civil rights movement in the US, and is “committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.” In the international arena, the CCR sees itself as “dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Predictably, the Simon Wiesenthal Center sees the Petition filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights as a scheme to overthrown the authority of the Jewish state, in the same way that the Goldstone Report is seen by them as an unfair use of international law to attack and destroy Israel.</p>
<p>In 2009, in the New York Sun and the Jewish press, the Simon Wiesenthal Center presented “evidence” (in the form of a story from the Palestine Post of 1945) that the Supreme Muslim Council of Jerusalem was planning a business center on the site of the Mamilla Cemetary in 1945. The Palestine Post (precursor to the Jerusalem Post) was violently Labor-Zionist in its politics, and in 1945 was not the best source for anything going on within the Palestinian community, nor the best advocate for its interests. Furthermore, the nominal head of the Muslim Council at that time was the notorious Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, who although out of the country in 1945 was still the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem; and who, besides being one of the worst anti-Semites of the 20th century, was also an enthusiastic propagandist for Hitler and the Nazis. Furthermore, the entire Muslim Council in Jerusalem at that time was rife with cronyism, corruption, and the infighting of various Jerusalem families.</p>
<p>Although it is somewhat dangerous to generalize, it could be said that Al-Husayni and Jerusalem’s Muslim Council in 1945 represented a snapshot of exactly what a great many secular Arab nationalists (not to mention the later Islamic Revival throughout Muslim-majority countries) aimed to get rid of—not merely cronyism, greed and class oppression but also, in the case of Al-Husaybi, European-style fascism and anti-Semitism. The fact that neither Arab nationalism nor the Islamic Revival was entirely successful in doing so does not change the fact that Al-Husayni and the Muslim Council of 1945 engaged in behavior that the best Arab thinkers were irrevocably opposed to. It was for precisely this reason that the Palestinian Liberation Organization was careful to sideline al-Husayni and to downplay his influence in the years before his death in 1974.</p>
<p>In any case, neither al-Husayni nor the Muslim Council of 1945 are authoritative guides to the important cultural and political decisions that face Israel/Palestine in 2010, if for no other reason than that both Palestinian and Jewish communities today are entirely different than they were in 1945, as are their leaders. Sadly but not unsurprisingly, that is difficult for Rabbi Hier and the Simon Wiesenthal Center to accept. For them, there are only “the Palestinians,” much as Christians once referred to that mysterious entity known as “the Jews,” who were supposedly the enemy of Christendom; in the same way, Hier sees all Palestinians as enemies of Israeli Jews.</p>
<p>But Hier’s rhetoric is the self-delusion of the bully, who projects his own bad conscience onto his weaker victim. In reality, there is no they in those organizations and individuals who seek to defend Mamilla Cemetary, but Muslims, Christians and Jews of many different temperaments and affiliations who share an interest in preserving one of the most important and compelling religious sites of the Middle East. But Mamilla Cemetery is also a dispute in which a dominant group of people have the power to hurt and humiliate another and weaker group of people, whose religious sites furthermore receive no protection from the government. And the most dangerous thing in the world is unlimited executive power over aggrieved but powerless people, with the impunity to hurt them and get away with it.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The Simon Wiesenthal Center is an extreme rightwing Jewish organization, tinged by neo-fascism and with many of the characteristics of a hate organization. It is based almost completely on a vulgarized, pervasive form of religious nationalism. Its vision for Israel is consistent with the neo-fascist Jabotinsky tendency within Zionism that was modeled on Italian fascism, and it also promotes the Likudnik doctrine that Judaism itself has no practical or demographic existence separate from Israel. The SWC supports the neo-con belief in permanent war in the Middle East, and it engages in the vigorous dissemination of religious bigotry against Muslims in the US. It portrays anti-Semitism as worse than it is, partly for fund-raising purposes and partly to establish an imagined victim status. It similarly uses the Holocaust both to discourage criticism of Israel and to justify Israel’s own violence, aggressively insisting that every criticism of Israel is really aimed at destroying the Jewish people. Above all, the SWC is a dangerous cultural force that seeks religious war as the standard for religious authenticity.</p>
<p>What kind of people make up the “400,000 member-families” the SWC claims as supporters in southern California and the US? If the SWC does indeed have that many families that contribute annually, that makes it very much a mass organization, which means that it must be taken seriously. One has the sense that Hier’s followers are primarily lower (and middle) middle-class people, perhaps small businesspersons and conservative professionals who reject Judaism’s traditional concern for social justice, whose level of cultural literacy is not particularly high, and who are attracted to the us-against-them aggression of religious nationalism. The frenetic and frequently duplicitous advocacy emanating from the Simon Wiesenthal Center has a pronounced middlebrow flavor—that is, it is pretentious, self-congratulatory and sometimes unintentionally funny. (Last year an e-mailed Passover invitation to SWC members billed Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper as “featured Scholars-in-Residence at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel and Spa.”) Above all, the “member-families” of the Simon Wiesenthal Center are incessantly indoctrinated with the idea that Israel—and the Center itself—never make mistakes and are never at fault, because criticisms of them are invariably the work of anti-Semites.</p>
<p>The Wiesenthal Center’s exaggerations and fabrications regarding anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli attitudes are well-known. The SWC claimed that the 2002 World Social Forum in Mumbai was ‘hi-jacked by anti-Israel and anti-American forces.’ This was completely untrue, as Jewish peace activist Cecilie Surasky, who was in attendance, later testified. (The SWC also claimed in the Jerusalem Post to be ‘the only Jewish NGO’ at Mumbai, whereas in reality there were several, including Jewish Voice for Peace, with which Surasky is affiliated.) The Wiesenthal Center also engaged off a strenuous campaign to portray Hugo Chavez as an anti-Semite, which they attempted to do by strategically doctoring a quote by Chavez. This interventionist attitude shouldn’t surprise us—the Wiesenthal Center once presented Jeanne Kilpatrick, a US diplomatic defender of the murderous Pinochet regime in Chile, with its Humanitarian of the Year Award. (They also honored such noted humanitarians as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Robert Murdoch.)</p>
<p>The Wiesenthal Center also has the unenviable distinction of involvement in one of the worst journalistic blunders of modern times. In the late spring of 2006, Douglas Kelly, editor of the National Post, a Canadian newspaper, became aware of an item in a column by Iranian exile Amir Taheri, indicating that the Iranian Parliament might require Jews to wear yellow stars. A Post editor contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Center, thinking it was a legitimate human rights agency. Both Rabbi Marvin Hier and Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the SWC excitedly insisted to anybody that would listen, both verbally and in an email to the Post, that the tale was “absolutely true.” The Post went ahead with the story on Page One, but Taheri was a neo-con plant, and the story was a fabrication.</p>
<p>Within days, Post editor Kelly was obliged to make a long and detailed apology to his readers. He referred directly to the Post’s contact with both Cooper and Hier at the Wiesenthal Center, mentioning pointedly that they had both, on separate occasions, confirmed the story. The implication of having been consciously betrayed by the Wiesenthal Center was quite clear. For Hier and Cooper, however, it was a big victory—they’d been able to place a great piece of propaganda on Page One of a large daily newspaper, while managing to make the connection between Nazis and Iranians, a staple theme of the SWC.</p>
<p>The Wiesenthal Center is silent on the rise of fascism in Israel in 2010, probably because the Center’s own tactics are borrowed from classical fascism, such as their tireless dissemination of religious bigotry. Their more overt activity in this area involves their promotion and showing of the violently anti-Muslim film The Third Jihad, which was a project of the Clarion Fund, a shadowy rightwing Zionist operation that produced Obsession: Radical Islam’s War with the West. According to recent investigative reporting by Pam Martens appearing in Counterpunch, the Clarion Fund’s main financial supporters—Donor Capital Fund and Donors Trust—are managed by people who have a long association with Charles G. Koch, billionaire donor to the Tea Party.</p>
<p>The Simon Wiesenthal Center also cooperated with Aish HaTorah, a extremist rightwing Jewish group that Atlantic Magazine’s pro-Israel pundit Jeffrey Goldberg has referred to as “just about the most fundamentalist movement in Judaism today,”[ii] a group that has strong ties to the racist settlers in Israel’s occupied territories. Before the election of 2008, the Clarion Fund functioned as a loosely-constituted front group in America for Aish HaTorah, whose operatives had produced a film in 2003 alleging Palestinian incitement against Israel and Jews. Then, in the heady post-9/11 atmosphere, the Clarion Fund went ahead to produce Obsession, and then The Third Jihad, both wildly inflammatory propaganda films that were supposedly about a minority of “radical” Muslims, but which made fantastic allegations about mainstream Muslims organizations in the US such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), alleging them to be part of a hostile international plot to infiltrate and take over America.</p>
<p>In the spring of 2009, the Clarion Fund released The Third Jihad, with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles enthusiastically opting to sponsor its West Coast premiere on May 17th, 2009, thereby making it a major event in their spring calendar. The Wiesenthal premiere was co-sponsored by the American Freedom Alliance, an unsavory far-right group that was unabashedly Islamophobic and pro-torture (books by John Yoo and Marc Thiessen were on sale at their website). The Washington D.C. opening of The Third Jihad, which occurred at the same time as the SWC event in Los Angeles, was co-sponsored by the International Free Press Society, another unsavory rightwing group, this one authentically neo-fascist. Two months before the Washington Premiere, the IFPS had been involved in publicizing and promoting Geert Wilders, the well-known Dutch neo-fascist with links to several far-right parties in Europe.</p>
<p>The climax of The Third Jihad was a supposed Federal Bureau of Investigation discovery of a subversive document—a “Grand Jihad Manifesto”—outlining a Muslim plot to take over America. Why the FBI wasn’t out making arrests, if the plot violated any laws, was left unanswered. The document was depicted as being so sensitive it couldn’t be released to the general public, perhaps because it would demoralize the nation. (Or perhaps, on the other hand, it really doesn’t exist.) “The 15-page document outlines goals and strategies for the infiltration and domination of America from within,” The Third Jihad insists. “Among the strategies discussed is the establishment of ‘moderate’ groups, mosques and Islamic centers across North America in an effort to strategically position Islam so that it might weaken western culture and promote the implementation of Sharia Law.” (The resemblance of the alleged secret “Grand Jihad Manifesto” to the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was not lost on Jewish progressives.)</p>
<p>The Wiesenthal Center’s cooperation with Aish HaTorah, the group behind the Clarion Fund, is problematical for other reasons. Experts on cults suggest that Aish HaTorah has either become a cult or developed profoundly cult-like behavior. Some information about these concerns—including the first-person account of a Jewish mother whose son was indoctrinated—appears on the website of the Ross A. Rick Institute, which monitors cult behavior. Ross writes that cult-like Orthodox Jewish groups like “Aish HaTorah and Ohr Somayach have generated serious and repeated complaints from Jewish families, including Orthodox Jewish families….Aish/Ohr has repeatedly been accused of ‘brainwashing’ American Jewish tourists in Israel. These are typically young people that started out on vacation and were instead sucked into Aish/Ohr. These recruits then often gave up school, work, previously set goals and relationships to study at times for years with Aish/Ohr and stayed in Israel.”</p>
<p>Ross continues: “Recruiting was often done at the Western Wall and began with a simple invitation to a dinner or ‘Shabbat.’ Families should be aware of all this before sending their kids to Israel for any programs or vacations….Some of the most hateful and nasty emails I have ever received from any group mentioned on the Ross Institute database have been from Aish and Ohr participants, which have denounced other Jews (e.g. Reform and Conservative) and have expressed often extreme, bigoted and even violent sentiments.” Like many cults, Aish HaTorah uses various excerpts from holy books to rationalize coercive or violent behavior by leaders.</p>
<p>At present Aish HaTorah is also little more than an extension of the worldwide Israeli propaganda effort. People associated with Aish Hatorah devised the Hasbara Fellowships, which invite (or lure) young people to Israel, indoctrinate them, and send them back to fight “the enemies of Israel.” Honest Reporting, which claims to be the world’s largest pro-Israel media organization, is also a product of Aish HaTorah—its claimed 150,000 members worldwide that report on journalism they believe to be “anti-Israel.” Aish HaTorah is also known to partner with a national US Jewish fraternity to run a three-week tour of Israel trip for their undergraduate members, who then receive “education” from the group. Aish HaTorah runs a plethora of groups and seminars that purport to teach “core values” of Judaism, but which actually teach a fanatical, apocalyptic version of rightwing religious Zionism. For its leaders, the final goal of life is the death or defeat of Palestinians and Arabs. In some interviews, Aish HaTorah participants have made statements that suggest that they believe that it is God’s will that the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem be destroyed—an eventuality that would, of course, spark a major religious conflagration.</p>
<p>It is this background of incessant Islamophobia and extremely aggressive religious nationalism that must be kept in mind when considering the Wiesenthal Center’s motivation for building the “Center for Human Dignity—Museum of Tolerance.” Rabbi Hier and the SWC knew very well about the bodies buried under the parking lot at Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem. They had reportedly contemplated buying the site since at least 1993; they have been repeatedly warned that the site was built over a historic Muslim cemetery; and they have repeatedly refused suggestions of both Muslims and Jews to build somewhere else. Leaders of the Simon Wiesenthal Center cannot say that they did not know the potential for conflict in their choice. At its core the conflict over Mamilla Cemetery is, besides its potential for sparking religious conflict, one more attempt by rightwing Zionists to redefine Judaism as a religion that can somehow redeem the Holocaust by hurting and humiliating Palestinians.</p>
<p>Words like “Tolerance” and “Dignity” from the liberal and social-democratic past of European Jewry are gleefully flaunted by the SWC, but are used in the same way that Stalinists used words such as “democratic“ or “liberation,” to disguise the real nature of Stalinism. There is nothing “ironic” about the use of such words, as many liberal and religious-liberty groups believe, because this use of language it is a ploy, a part of SWC strategy; it serves the main function of deliberate Orwellian language, which is to communicate contempt for logic and to distract with its absurdity. Finally, it is an expression of raw illegitimate power, saying in effect to the Palestinians: “We control everything, even language. If we say that black is white, we will force you to accept it, because we have the power to humiliate and kill you.” Finally, like most extremist rightwing movements, people in the leadership of the Wiesenthal Center will lie and misrepresent things anytime they think they can get away with it.</p>
<p>The Mamilla Cemetery site was chosen for a reason. The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s real objective in building the “Center for Human Dignity—Museum of Tolerance” in Jerusalem is almost surely to ignite religious conflict, and ultimately religious war in the region. It is this pathological aggression that makes the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and its fundamentalist allies like Aish HaTorah, so dangerous. The fight over Mamilla Cemetery is a dispute in which Rabbi Hier, the very incarnation of the charismatic but morally corrupt religious fanatic, seeks to invent a new Judaism that, like medieval Christianity, defines itself by its ability to wound and torment the underdog. As American neo-conservatives made clear in their famous letter to Netanyahu in 1996, the American empire they seek depends on a state of permanent war in the Middle East. By all appearances, the Simon Wiesenthal Center aspires to be a pivotal part of this approaching religious war.</p>
<p>LAWRENCE SWAIM is executive director of the Interfaith Freedom Foundation.</p>
<p>Notes.</p>
<p>[i] Gehry latter pulled out of the project. In November, 2010, Jewish Voice for Peace announced that Gehry had joined a group of theatre professionals and people in the arts that were boycotting the Ariel performance center in the West Bank.</p>
<p>[ii] Ben Harris, “Rabbi Noah Wienberg, Founder of Aish HaTorah, Dies,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 6 Feb. 2009.</p>
<p>(This article is based on a column written for InFocus News, the national Muslim newspaper.)</p>
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Israel’s War Against the Dead
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Israel’s War Against the Dead
<p>In June, 2005, the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles began construction in Jerusalem of an ambitious new facility. This project was variously referred to by Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder and “dean” of the SWC, as the “Center for Human Dignity,” the “Center for Human Dignity—Jerusalem” and most pretentiously, the “Center for Human Dignity—Museum of Tolerance.” (Ground-breaking on the construction site had occurred in 2004, giving Arnold Schwarzenegger an opportunity to fly to Israel for one of his many photo ops with Rabbi Heir.) This sprawling structure was to be built on a parking lot that was supposedly adjacent to a historic Muslim ceremony; but which actually turned out to be directly on top of a part of it.</p>
<p>The cemetery, called the Mamilla Cemetary (Ma’Man Allah in Arabic), was an extremely old Muslim burial ground that was once the most important in Palestine, and in the Middle East generally. The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, in a petition to the UN and other international organizations to stop construction of the Wiesenthal Museum, wrote as follows: “The Mamilla Cemetery is an ancient Muslim burial ground and holy site believed to date back to the 7th century, when companions of the Prophet Muhammad were reputedly buried there. Numerous saints of the Sufi faith and thousands of other officials, scholar, notables and Jerusalemite families have been buried in the cemetery over the last 1000 years. The Muslim Supreme Council declared the cemetery a historical site in 1927, and the British Mandate authorities pronounced it an antiquities site in 1944. It was an active burial ground until 1948.”</p>
<p>“After the new State of Israel seized the western part of Jerusalem in 1948, the cemetery fell under Israeli control, and like other Islamic endowment properties, or waqf, Mamilla Cemetery was taken over by the Custodian for Absentee Property. Since then, Muslim authorities have not been allowed to maintain the cemetery.” At that time, in 1948, the Israeli Religious Affairs Ministry itself acknowledged Mamilla “to be one of the most prominent Muslim cemeteries, where seventy thousand Muslim warriors of [Saladin’s] armies are interred along with many Muslim scholars.” It added: “Israel will always know to protect and respect this site.”</p>
<p>But that is not what happened.</p>
<p>In the early 1980s, Muslims became aware that the cemetery was being encroached on and human remains were being disinterred, and protested to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In 1984 Israel responded to that protest by stating flatly that “no project exists for the de-consecration of the site and that on the contrary the site and its tombs are to be safeguarded.” In fact even as Israel said this, however, it was engaged in parceling off pieces of the cemetery for various kinds of private developments, even as they assured UNESCO that they were protecting it.</p>
<p>Sadly, Palestinians had no legal instrument by which they could stop this. Although Mamilla cemetery in on a list of “Special Antiquities Sites,” it is not protected as a religious site. All of the cemeteries in Israel that are protected as religious sites are Jewish. (The Israeli government designates 137 holy sites that receive such protection, but all are Jewish, a fact that the US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report of 2009 protested against.) Furthermore successive governments have sought to obliterate reminders of Palestinian culture in Jerusalem; successive governments parceled out sections of Mamilla for buildings, then for the construction of the parking lot mentioned above—and in 1992, the site was transferred to the Jerusalem municipality. At one point the government built a park over a part of the cemetery, which they named Independence Park, a reference to the founding of Israel in 1948 (and a clear attempt to provoke and humiliate Palestinians).</p>
<p>This is completely unlike the treatment meted out to Jewish cemeteries. On the Mount of the Olives, for example, the Jewish cemetery has been lavishly refurbished and even expanded, and finally transformed into a “heritage site.” On the other hand, Israel’s Muslim cemeteries have been allowed to fade into disuse, and are even destroyed when the government thinks it can get away with it. The 900-year-old Hittin mosque built by Saladin in the Galilee region has been deliberately fenced off and allowed to go to ruin. According to Bethlehem-based journalist Jonathan Cook, some mosques are used by rural Jewish communities as animal sheds. “And yet more,” he writes, “have been converted into discos, bars or nightclubs, including the Dahir al-Umar mosque—now the Dona Rosa restaurant—in the former Palestinian village of Ayn Hawd.”</p>
<p>Meron Benvenisti, a former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem who wrote Sacred Landscape: Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948, has been vocal in pointing out that Muslim groups, contrary to what the Simon Wiesenthal camp is saying, pleaded over the years to be allowed to officially refurbish and keep up their sacred sites and cemeteries, but were never allowed to do so. Many important Islamic sites, he has written, have been “turned into dumps, parking lots, roads and construction sites.”</p>
<p>The Israeli government has recently added Ibrahimi and Bilal Bin Abi Rabah Mosques to the Jewish heritage list, which means they are not protected as religious sites. This means that the Israeli government could easily sell off, close or develop the sites, just as it has the Mamilla site, which is also on the heritage list but not protected as a religious site.</p>
<p>On a tour of East Jerusalem in late summer 2010, activist and author Phillip Weiss wrote on his website Mondoweiss:</p>
<p>Maybe the most pitiable sight I saw yesterday, inside the West Bank but close to the north Jerusalem colonies of Ramot and Ramat Shlomo, [was] the hilltop tomb of the prophet Samuel, which is worshiped by Jews and Muslims. The tomb is both a mosque with a minaret and a Jewish place of worship. Well when we visited, busloads of Jewish schoolchildren were arriving and Israeli soldiers were in the tomb davening and Hasidic boys were descending, too.</p>
<p>But next door it was a different story:</p>
<p>The door is chained, pigeons fly into the outer rooms, the Palestinian who runs a store there told us that the authorities had shut down the minaret. There are no Palestinian worshipers.</p>
<p>Weiss points out that this is an Israeli National Park in the West Bank, which is supposedly Palestinian land and supposedly—if there were actually ever to be a two-state solution—the future site of a Palestinian state. But being under the authority of the Israeli army, the Jewish site is protected as a religious site, whereas the Muslim worship facility next to the tomb of the prophet Samuel has been closed down. It is hard not to conclude that the closing and degradation of Muslim religious sites is a deliberate and coordinated policy of the Israeli government to humiliate Palestinian Muslims, an extension of the slow ethnic cleansing currently underway in the occupied territories. The message seems to be, “If you don’t like what we’re doing to Muslim holy sites, why don’t you leave?”</p>
<p>The Simon Wiesenthal Center similarly claims that Mamilla deserves no protection as a religious site, citing the fact that in 1964 the government set up a Muslim trust and that the head of that council “deconsecrated” Mamilla—and supposedly declared it no longer sacred ground, thus opening it up to partial development. But the person in question was apparently a government plant brought in to give political cover to those anxious to make money by developing the cemetery. (The bogus 1964 proclamation was aggressively overturned—or ruled “void”—by the Shari’a Court of Appeals in Israel, which found the sanctity of cemeteries to be “eternal” in Islam.) Certainly one person—especially one who in 1964 had been given no authority by Muslims to represent them—cannot speak for the many families whose ancestors are buried in Mamilla. Although some tombstones appeared to have been replaced in recent years, individual attempts at upkeep haven’t been as successful as organized efforts by a Muslim trust would be.</p>
<p>In Death in Jerusalem, Noga Tarnopolsky writes of her friend Sari Nusseibeh, a philosopher and university president, who located the tomb of two illustrious ancestors in the Mamilla cemetery: “Nusseibeh then contacted a friend working at the Ministry for Religious Affairs and requested permission to place a plaque on the crypt. ‘I thought it was important to commemorate this, and to tell people that in the case of a family like mine, we are not claiming roots here in the abstract or national sense, but in the familial sense, which is a much closer thing,’ he said.”</p>
<p>“Nusseibeh secured permission and affixed a stone plaque explaining that the tomb belonged to Islam’s Kabrkabiyyan period and contained the remains of one Prince Iddaghji and a certain Judge Nusseibeh. The next day it was removed by municipal workers, who claimed sole jurisdiction over the entire park.” This was despite the permission he had supposedly gotten from the Ministry for Religious Affairs. This could stand as a paradigm interaction of Israel and its Palestinian citizens. One can jump through all the hoops, do all the paperwork required, but if you are Palestinian you can be ignored and shut down at any moment, simply because you do not have the right religion. And your attorney will be able to do nothing for you, because in Israel the legal system is completely skewed against Palestinians.</p>
<p>Thus the location for SWC’s “Museum of Tolerance” had already been contested ground for some time before 2004, and in the opinion of most Palestinians a prime example of Israel’s swaggering and increasingly aggressive religious intolerance. Even the design for the new structure—by the internationally-known architect Frank Gehry—seems to have pleased nobody. (Gehry claims that it represents a bowl of fruit, a strange idea that got little traction in Jerusalem.)[i] Meron Benvenisti complained about its “geometric forms that can’t be any more dissonant to the environment in which it is planned to put this alien object.” Noga Tarnopolsky characterized its design as “the image of a supernatural edifice resembling nothing so much as a crab in the process of hatching a sapphire spider with huge, glassy eyes. It is neither beautiful nor ugly; it is striking and odd.” The management of the Vad Yashem Holocaust memorial were unhappy about the competition in Holocaust tourism (there’s a great comic novel in there somewhere), and the people of Jerusalem, perhaps wary of busloads of ecstatic tourists from southern California, were generally mystified by Heir’s grandiose ideas.</p>
<p>The “Museum of Tolerance” was built on a parking lot that was supposed to be adjacent to Mamilla cemetery. In reality it was built over part of it. This fact became painfully clear to the Wiesenthal Center as workmen began to encounter human remains. (Laying electrical cables and sewer lines probably resulted in digging deeper than had been required for building the parking lot.) At first the presence of human remains was kept secret by the SWC, but it couldn’t have surprised many people in Jerusalem, since they knew that the government had been parceling off the cemetery for some time. What the government had chosen to ignore was how resentful of this Palestinians had become over the years, especially those families with ancestors buried in Mamilla.</p>
<p>Reports vary, but the Wiesenthal Center workers apparently encountered remains of about two hundred people; and a decision was supposedly made to take the remains to another Muslim cemetery and re-inter them there. (What really happened can’t be confirmed because the Wiesenthal Center won’t reveal where they were taken.) The centuries-old remains have been the main sticking point for Hier and the SWC, the seriousness of which can be inferred from their insistence that they “respectfully” re-interred the bones. (If that is true, why won’t they allow journalists to take photos of their final resting place?) If the Wiesenthal Center is simply building something on a parking lot, why were they engaged in digging up human remains? And if the claims of local Muslim families were all lies, why was the Wiesenthal Center, by its own admission, re-interring those same human remains in another Muslim cemetery?</p>
<p>In fact, Hier and the Wiesenthal Center had known for a very long time that they were building their “Center for Human Dignity—Museum of Tolerance.” on top of an historic Muslim cemetery. During the building of the original parking lot back in the 1960, hundreds of graves were disinterred, which caused anguished protests by Muslims; the same thing happened in 1984, when they appealed to UNESCO. Furthermore, as early as 1993 the municipal authorities offered the SWC the parking lot for the building of the project. Both Teddy Kollek and Ehud Olmert had encouraged the Simon Wiesenthal Center to build the current or similar projects at precisely this site, and they above all were in a position to know that the parking lot had been built over part of Mamilla Cemetery. Therefore Kollek, Ehud Olmert and Rabbi Hier knew exactly what lay under the parking lot. In fact, the case can be made that Hier wanted to build on a Muslim cemetery, especially given his apocalyptic ideas about the inevitability of religious war between Muslims and Jews. What could be better for fund-raising than a nice little religious war, with the frenetic Hier leading his faithful troops into the fray?</p>
<p>In 2005, Gideon Suleimani, a Palestinian archeologist, personally warned representatives of the SWC that the area was an antiquities site; at Seleimani’s request, the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) dug test trenches, and it was revealed that hundreds of graves—as many as four layers of graves—were located under the parking lot. One has the sense that Suleimani thought that he could get the Wiesenthal Center to back off if only he could appeal to their common humanity. If so, he didn’t know the group he was dealing with—the SWC continued, in spite of being so advised; and when reports surfaced of their digging up remains and carrying them away surreptitiously in boxes, several Palestinian families in the area decided to act.</p>
<p>The Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) then moved to investigate further. Suleimani, who was the Chief Excavator on the project, found that there were “at least 2000 graves,” on at least four levels, with exhumed remains dating back to the 12th century, and the lowest level dating back to the 11th century. But, as Suleimann later testified in an Affidavit, people from the Simon Wiesenthal Center began to put pressure on the IAA, as did interested politicians who were invested in getting the construction done. For their part the IAA, according to Suleimani, tried to get him to stop his excavating and to alter his report. Suleimani also said that “representatives of the SWC started coming by on a daily basis, pressing for the excavation to progress quickly, to prevent the Muslims from stopping the project,” not to mention entrepreneurs whose connection to the site was unclear, but who were now threatening to sue the Israeli Antiquities Authority.</p>
<p>In 2006 a lawsuit was filed that resulted in a court order that temporarily stopped construction. But the pressures were growing on the government. The Israeli Antiquities Authority decided, while defending against the lawsuit, to suppress the evidence their Chief Excavator Gideon Suleimani had uncovered. The High Court of Israel never found out that there were around 2,000 graves under the parking lot, going down four levels, the lowest level of graves dating back to the 11th century. They did not find out about it because the IAA suppressed the evidence that Seluimani collected, and that the IAA had asked him to collect. In an equally cynical move, the IAA apparently lied (according to affidavits by Suleimani) about his finding that only about ten percent of the excavations had been done, instead claiming that ninety percent was done.</p>
<p>What caused these criminal misrepresentations to the High Court, the first of which was suppression of evidence, and the second of which was perjury? For one thing, the Simon Wiesenthal Center had arranged to pay the workers doing the excavation, perhaps a violation of the law, but one that gave the SWC greater leverage over facts on the ground. Secondly, there is some evidence that the “Museum of Tolerance” was part of a larger deal which may not have been strictly legitimate (since it may have involved patronage from politicians). Thirdly, why did the IAA falsify the report they had initiated, and what did they receive in return from the Simon Wiesenthal Center? This critical piece of information can’t be determined until the principals to the controversy can be examined under oath. But given the value of the land involved it is hard to believe that they acted alone, or that they decided to suppress evidence on their own volition.</p>
<p>The High Court allowed construction to continue in October, 2008. Efforts were made to appeal this, since the Israel Antiquities Authority had repressed the only evidence that really counts in this case, which was testimony (and evidence) of the Chief Excavator assigned by the IAA itself, Gideon Suleimani. Despite the suppression of everything he had to say and all the evidence he had obtained, the court refused to open the case again, and insisted that construction must proceed. Exhumation of human remains resumed, and there was nothing that could be done about it. This constituted the exhaustion of appeals within the Israeli system of justice, and made the later appeal to the United Nations inevitable.</p>
<p>Contrary to what the IAA had told the High Court, ninety percent of the area intended for the Wiesenthal Center project still had to be dug up. The Israeli Antiquities Authority claimed that the disinterring of human remains occurring after October, 2008, involved manual removal after documentation so that the remains could be re-interred, but both the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the IAA have engaged in extreme secrecy, and it is impossible to say exactly what they did with the remains. (Needless to say, they refused to consult with appropriate Muslim authorities.) It was reported by the Palestinian News Network that during one week in 2009, some 300 Muslim graves were opened up, and the remains dumped into a mass grave. It is impossible to confirm this, but one can imagine how such reports affect the Palestinians that read them. The apparent collusion of the IAA and the Simon Wiesenthal group, and the extreme secrecy with which they operated—not to mention Rabbi Hier’s violent rhetorical attacks on any who oppose their projects as terrorists, anti-Semites, and “Islamists”—have for the time being removed hope for resolution using any of the instruments of Israeli civil society.</p>
<p>Therefore on 10 February 2010, in New York, Jerusalem, Geneva and Los Angeles, a petition was filed with several United Nations agencies to stop desecration of Mamilla Cemetary by Israeli authorities and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. (Press conferences were held in Geneva, Jersalem and Los Angeles.) The UN agencies to whom this was appealed were the UN Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Religion and Belief and on Contemporary Forms of Racism; the Independent Expert on Culture; the High Commissioner for Human Rights; and the Director General of UNESCO, the agency that was involved in investigations of previous desecrations of Mamilla Cemetary in 1984. The Petition was filed on behalf of some 60 Palestinians from 15 Jerusalem families whose ancestors, going back to the 12th century, are buried in the cemetery. The filing was done by the Center for Constitutional Rights located in New York, which has made information about the campaign to save Mamilla available at <a href="http://www.mamillacampaign.org" type="external">www.mamillacampaign.org</a>.</p>
<p>The press release accompanying the filing said as follows:</p>
<p>“This will be the first known time Palestinian individuals have taken collective action against Israel to bring such an issue before a UN forum and comes after all remedies in Israel were exhausted. The families, NGOs, and attorneys argue the desecration of the cemetery violates international conventions protecting cultural heritage, the manifestation of religious beliefs, and the right to family.” Maria LaHood, a Senior Attorney as CCR, added: “Left with no recourse in Israel, families of people buried in Mamilla cemetery have come together to petition the United Nations to safeguard their international human rights to be free from discrimination, to manifest religious beliefs, and to have their cultural heritage protected. We call on the international community to denounce this shameful desecration of a historic Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem.”</p>
<p>The Center for Constitutional Rights was found in 1966 by lawyers involved in the civil rights movement in the US, and is “committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.” In the international arena, the CCR sees itself as “dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Predictably, the Simon Wiesenthal Center sees the Petition filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights as a scheme to overthrown the authority of the Jewish state, in the same way that the Goldstone Report is seen by them as an unfair use of international law to attack and destroy Israel.</p>
<p>In 2009, in the New York Sun and the Jewish press, the Simon Wiesenthal Center presented “evidence” (in the form of a story from the Palestine Post of 1945) that the Supreme Muslim Council of Jerusalem was planning a business center on the site of the Mamilla Cemetary in 1945. The Palestine Post (precursor to the Jerusalem Post) was violently Labor-Zionist in its politics, and in 1945 was not the best source for anything going on within the Palestinian community, nor the best advocate for its interests. Furthermore, the nominal head of the Muslim Council at that time was the notorious Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, who although out of the country in 1945 was still the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem; and who, besides being one of the worst anti-Semites of the 20th century, was also an enthusiastic propagandist for Hitler and the Nazis. Furthermore, the entire Muslim Council in Jerusalem at that time was rife with cronyism, corruption, and the infighting of various Jerusalem families.</p>
<p>Although it is somewhat dangerous to generalize, it could be said that Al-Husayni and Jerusalem’s Muslim Council in 1945 represented a snapshot of exactly what a great many secular Arab nationalists (not to mention the later Islamic Revival throughout Muslim-majority countries) aimed to get rid of—not merely cronyism, greed and class oppression but also, in the case of Al-Husaybi, European-style fascism and anti-Semitism. The fact that neither Arab nationalism nor the Islamic Revival was entirely successful in doing so does not change the fact that Al-Husayni and the Muslim Council of 1945 engaged in behavior that the best Arab thinkers were irrevocably opposed to. It was for precisely this reason that the Palestinian Liberation Organization was careful to sideline al-Husayni and to downplay his influence in the years before his death in 1974.</p>
<p>In any case, neither al-Husayni nor the Muslim Council of 1945 are authoritative guides to the important cultural and political decisions that face Israel/Palestine in 2010, if for no other reason than that both Palestinian and Jewish communities today are entirely different than they were in 1945, as are their leaders. Sadly but not unsurprisingly, that is difficult for Rabbi Hier and the Simon Wiesenthal Center to accept. For them, there are only “the Palestinians,” much as Christians once referred to that mysterious entity known as “the Jews,” who were supposedly the enemy of Christendom; in the same way, Hier sees all Palestinians as enemies of Israeli Jews.</p>
<p>But Hier’s rhetoric is the self-delusion of the bully, who projects his own bad conscience onto his weaker victim. In reality, there is no they in those organizations and individuals who seek to defend Mamilla Cemetary, but Muslims, Christians and Jews of many different temperaments and affiliations who share an interest in preserving one of the most important and compelling religious sites of the Middle East. But Mamilla Cemetery is also a dispute in which a dominant group of people have the power to hurt and humiliate another and weaker group of people, whose religious sites furthermore receive no protection from the government. And the most dangerous thing in the world is unlimited executive power over aggrieved but powerless people, with the impunity to hurt them and get away with it.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The Simon Wiesenthal Center is an extreme rightwing Jewish organization, tinged by neo-fascism and with many of the characteristics of a hate organization. It is based almost completely on a vulgarized, pervasive form of religious nationalism. Its vision for Israel is consistent with the neo-fascist Jabotinsky tendency within Zionism that was modeled on Italian fascism, and it also promotes the Likudnik doctrine that Judaism itself has no practical or demographic existence separate from Israel. The SWC supports the neo-con belief in permanent war in the Middle East, and it engages in the vigorous dissemination of religious bigotry against Muslims in the US. It portrays anti-Semitism as worse than it is, partly for fund-raising purposes and partly to establish an imagined victim status. It similarly uses the Holocaust both to discourage criticism of Israel and to justify Israel’s own violence, aggressively insisting that every criticism of Israel is really aimed at destroying the Jewish people. Above all, the SWC is a dangerous cultural force that seeks religious war as the standard for religious authenticity.</p>
<p>What kind of people make up the “400,000 member-families” the SWC claims as supporters in southern California and the US? If the SWC does indeed have that many families that contribute annually, that makes it very much a mass organization, which means that it must be taken seriously. One has the sense that Hier’s followers are primarily lower (and middle) middle-class people, perhaps small businesspersons and conservative professionals who reject Judaism’s traditional concern for social justice, whose level of cultural literacy is not particularly high, and who are attracted to the us-against-them aggression of religious nationalism. The frenetic and frequently duplicitous advocacy emanating from the Simon Wiesenthal Center has a pronounced middlebrow flavor—that is, it is pretentious, self-congratulatory and sometimes unintentionally funny. (Last year an e-mailed Passover invitation to SWC members billed Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper as “featured Scholars-in-Residence at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel and Spa.”) Above all, the “member-families” of the Simon Wiesenthal Center are incessantly indoctrinated with the idea that Israel—and the Center itself—never make mistakes and are never at fault, because criticisms of them are invariably the work of anti-Semites.</p>
<p>The Wiesenthal Center’s exaggerations and fabrications regarding anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli attitudes are well-known. The SWC claimed that the 2002 World Social Forum in Mumbai was ‘hi-jacked by anti-Israel and anti-American forces.’ This was completely untrue, as Jewish peace activist Cecilie Surasky, who was in attendance, later testified. (The SWC also claimed in the Jerusalem Post to be ‘the only Jewish NGO’ at Mumbai, whereas in reality there were several, including Jewish Voice for Peace, with which Surasky is affiliated.) The Wiesenthal Center also engaged off a strenuous campaign to portray Hugo Chavez as an anti-Semite, which they attempted to do by strategically doctoring a quote by Chavez. This interventionist attitude shouldn’t surprise us—the Wiesenthal Center once presented Jeanne Kilpatrick, a US diplomatic defender of the murderous Pinochet regime in Chile, with its Humanitarian of the Year Award. (They also honored such noted humanitarians as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Robert Murdoch.)</p>
<p>The Wiesenthal Center also has the unenviable distinction of involvement in one of the worst journalistic blunders of modern times. In the late spring of 2006, Douglas Kelly, editor of the National Post, a Canadian newspaper, became aware of an item in a column by Iranian exile Amir Taheri, indicating that the Iranian Parliament might require Jews to wear yellow stars. A Post editor contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Center, thinking it was a legitimate human rights agency. Both Rabbi Marvin Hier and Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the SWC excitedly insisted to anybody that would listen, both verbally and in an email to the Post, that the tale was “absolutely true.” The Post went ahead with the story on Page One, but Taheri was a neo-con plant, and the story was a fabrication.</p>
<p>Within days, Post editor Kelly was obliged to make a long and detailed apology to his readers. He referred directly to the Post’s contact with both Cooper and Hier at the Wiesenthal Center, mentioning pointedly that they had both, on separate occasions, confirmed the story. The implication of having been consciously betrayed by the Wiesenthal Center was quite clear. For Hier and Cooper, however, it was a big victory—they’d been able to place a great piece of propaganda on Page One of a large daily newspaper, while managing to make the connection between Nazis and Iranians, a staple theme of the SWC.</p>
<p>The Wiesenthal Center is silent on the rise of fascism in Israel in 2010, probably because the Center’s own tactics are borrowed from classical fascism, such as their tireless dissemination of religious bigotry. Their more overt activity in this area involves their promotion and showing of the violently anti-Muslim film The Third Jihad, which was a project of the Clarion Fund, a shadowy rightwing Zionist operation that produced Obsession: Radical Islam’s War with the West. According to recent investigative reporting by Pam Martens appearing in Counterpunch, the Clarion Fund’s main financial supporters—Donor Capital Fund and Donors Trust—are managed by people who have a long association with Charles G. Koch, billionaire donor to the Tea Party.</p>
<p>The Simon Wiesenthal Center also cooperated with Aish HaTorah, a extremist rightwing Jewish group that Atlantic Magazine’s pro-Israel pundit Jeffrey Goldberg has referred to as “just about the most fundamentalist movement in Judaism today,”[ii] a group that has strong ties to the racist settlers in Israel’s occupied territories. Before the election of 2008, the Clarion Fund functioned as a loosely-constituted front group in America for Aish HaTorah, whose operatives had produced a film in 2003 alleging Palestinian incitement against Israel and Jews. Then, in the heady post-9/11 atmosphere, the Clarion Fund went ahead to produce Obsession, and then The Third Jihad, both wildly inflammatory propaganda films that were supposedly about a minority of “radical” Muslims, but which made fantastic allegations about mainstream Muslims organizations in the US such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), alleging them to be part of a hostile international plot to infiltrate and take over America.</p>
<p>In the spring of 2009, the Clarion Fund released The Third Jihad, with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles enthusiastically opting to sponsor its West Coast premiere on May 17th, 2009, thereby making it a major event in their spring calendar. The Wiesenthal premiere was co-sponsored by the American Freedom Alliance, an unsavory far-right group that was unabashedly Islamophobic and pro-torture (books by John Yoo and Marc Thiessen were on sale at their website). The Washington D.C. opening of The Third Jihad, which occurred at the same time as the SWC event in Los Angeles, was co-sponsored by the International Free Press Society, another unsavory rightwing group, this one authentically neo-fascist. Two months before the Washington Premiere, the IFPS had been involved in publicizing and promoting Geert Wilders, the well-known Dutch neo-fascist with links to several far-right parties in Europe.</p>
<p>The climax of The Third Jihad was a supposed Federal Bureau of Investigation discovery of a subversive document—a “Grand Jihad Manifesto”—outlining a Muslim plot to take over America. Why the FBI wasn’t out making arrests, if the plot violated any laws, was left unanswered. The document was depicted as being so sensitive it couldn’t be released to the general public, perhaps because it would demoralize the nation. (Or perhaps, on the other hand, it really doesn’t exist.) “The 15-page document outlines goals and strategies for the infiltration and domination of America from within,” The Third Jihad insists. “Among the strategies discussed is the establishment of ‘moderate’ groups, mosques and Islamic centers across North America in an effort to strategically position Islam so that it might weaken western culture and promote the implementation of Sharia Law.” (The resemblance of the alleged secret “Grand Jihad Manifesto” to the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was not lost on Jewish progressives.)</p>
<p>The Wiesenthal Center’s cooperation with Aish HaTorah, the group behind the Clarion Fund, is problematical for other reasons. Experts on cults suggest that Aish HaTorah has either become a cult or developed profoundly cult-like behavior. Some information about these concerns—including the first-person account of a Jewish mother whose son was indoctrinated—appears on the website of the Ross A. Rick Institute, which monitors cult behavior. Ross writes that cult-like Orthodox Jewish groups like “Aish HaTorah and Ohr Somayach have generated serious and repeated complaints from Jewish families, including Orthodox Jewish families….Aish/Ohr has repeatedly been accused of ‘brainwashing’ American Jewish tourists in Israel. These are typically young people that started out on vacation and were instead sucked into Aish/Ohr. These recruits then often gave up school, work, previously set goals and relationships to study at times for years with Aish/Ohr and stayed in Israel.”</p>
<p>Ross continues: “Recruiting was often done at the Western Wall and began with a simple invitation to a dinner or ‘Shabbat.’ Families should be aware of all this before sending their kids to Israel for any programs or vacations….Some of the most hateful and nasty emails I have ever received from any group mentioned on the Ross Institute database have been from Aish and Ohr participants, which have denounced other Jews (e.g. Reform and Conservative) and have expressed often extreme, bigoted and even violent sentiments.” Like many cults, Aish HaTorah uses various excerpts from holy books to rationalize coercive or violent behavior by leaders.</p>
<p>At present Aish HaTorah is also little more than an extension of the worldwide Israeli propaganda effort. People associated with Aish Hatorah devised the Hasbara Fellowships, which invite (or lure) young people to Israel, indoctrinate them, and send them back to fight “the enemies of Israel.” Honest Reporting, which claims to be the world’s largest pro-Israel media organization, is also a product of Aish HaTorah—its claimed 150,000 members worldwide that report on journalism they believe to be “anti-Israel.” Aish HaTorah is also known to partner with a national US Jewish fraternity to run a three-week tour of Israel trip for their undergraduate members, who then receive “education” from the group. Aish HaTorah runs a plethora of groups and seminars that purport to teach “core values” of Judaism, but which actually teach a fanatical, apocalyptic version of rightwing religious Zionism. For its leaders, the final goal of life is the death or defeat of Palestinians and Arabs. In some interviews, Aish HaTorah participants have made statements that suggest that they believe that it is God’s will that the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem be destroyed—an eventuality that would, of course, spark a major religious conflagration.</p>
<p>It is this background of incessant Islamophobia and extremely aggressive religious nationalism that must be kept in mind when considering the Wiesenthal Center’s motivation for building the “Center for Human Dignity—Museum of Tolerance.” Rabbi Hier and the SWC knew very well about the bodies buried under the parking lot at Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem. They had reportedly contemplated buying the site since at least 1993; they have been repeatedly warned that the site was built over a historic Muslim cemetery; and they have repeatedly refused suggestions of both Muslims and Jews to build somewhere else. Leaders of the Simon Wiesenthal Center cannot say that they did not know the potential for conflict in their choice. At its core the conflict over Mamilla Cemetery is, besides its potential for sparking religious conflict, one more attempt by rightwing Zionists to redefine Judaism as a religion that can somehow redeem the Holocaust by hurting and humiliating Palestinians.</p>
<p>Words like “Tolerance” and “Dignity” from the liberal and social-democratic past of European Jewry are gleefully flaunted by the SWC, but are used in the same way that Stalinists used words such as “democratic“ or “liberation,” to disguise the real nature of Stalinism. There is nothing “ironic” about the use of such words, as many liberal and religious-liberty groups believe, because this use of language it is a ploy, a part of SWC strategy; it serves the main function of deliberate Orwellian language, which is to communicate contempt for logic and to distract with its absurdity. Finally, it is an expression of raw illegitimate power, saying in effect to the Palestinians: “We control everything, even language. If we say that black is white, we will force you to accept it, because we have the power to humiliate and kill you.” Finally, like most extremist rightwing movements, people in the leadership of the Wiesenthal Center will lie and misrepresent things anytime they think they can get away with it.</p>
<p>The Mamilla Cemetery site was chosen for a reason. The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s real objective in building the “Center for Human Dignity—Museum of Tolerance” in Jerusalem is almost surely to ignite religious conflict, and ultimately religious war in the region. It is this pathological aggression that makes the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and its fundamentalist allies like Aish HaTorah, so dangerous. The fight over Mamilla Cemetery is a dispute in which Rabbi Hier, the very incarnation of the charismatic but morally corrupt religious fanatic, seeks to invent a new Judaism that, like medieval Christianity, defines itself by its ability to wound and torment the underdog. As American neo-conservatives made clear in their famous letter to Netanyahu in 1996, the American empire they seek depends on a state of permanent war in the Middle East. By all appearances, the Simon Wiesenthal Center aspires to be a pivotal part of this approaching religious war.</p>
<p>LAWRENCE SWAIM is executive director of the Interfaith Freedom Foundation.</p>
<p>Notes.</p>
<p>[i] Gehry latter pulled out of the project. In November, 2010, Jewish Voice for Peace announced that Gehry had joined a group of theatre professionals and people in the arts that were boycotting the Ariel performance center in the West Bank.</p>
<p>[ii] Ben Harris, “Rabbi Noah Wienberg, Founder of Aish HaTorah, Dies,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 6 Feb. 2009.</p>
<p>(This article is based on a column written for InFocus News, the national Muslim newspaper.)</p>
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<p>BERLIN — German police say four officers have been shot and wounded during a raid in which they had planned to confiscate the weapons of an anti-government extremist.</p>
<p>Police said that the 49-year-old man in the Bavarian town of Georgensgmuend legally possessed weapons but that officers had planned to seize them due to his “unreliability.”</p>
<p>They say that the man immediately opened fire and four officers were wounded, some of them seriously. He was arrested.</p>
<p>Police said the man, whom they didn’t identify, was as a member of the Reich Citizens’ Movement, an extremist group that refuses to acknowledge the authority of the post-war Federal Republic of Germany. The group has been compared to the U.S. sovereign citizen movement.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
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Germany: 4 police wounded in raid on anti-gov’t extremist
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https://abqjournal.com/870400/germany-4-police-wounded-in-raid-on-anti-govt-extremist.html
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Germany: 4 police wounded in raid on anti-gov’t extremist
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<p>BERLIN — German police say four officers have been shot and wounded during a raid in which they had planned to confiscate the weapons of an anti-government extremist.</p>
<p>Police said that the 49-year-old man in the Bavarian town of Georgensgmuend legally possessed weapons but that officers had planned to seize them due to his “unreliability.”</p>
<p>They say that the man immediately opened fire and four officers were wounded, some of them seriously. He was arrested.</p>
<p>Police said the man, whom they didn’t identify, was as a member of the Reich Citizens’ Movement, an extremist group that refuses to acknowledge the authority of the post-war Federal Republic of Germany. The group has been compared to the U.S. sovereign citizen movement.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
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<p>Shutterstock</p>
<p />
<p>A day after Florida mom Jamie Gilt apparently <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamie.gilt/posts/1166559156689521?comment_id=1167240353288068&amp;reply_comment_id=1167302153281888&amp;comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R6%22%7D" type="external">boasted on Facebook</a> about her four-year-old son’s affinity for target shooting, the boy gained access to a .45 caliber handgun and accidently shot her through the torso, according to the <a href="http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2016-03-08/story/woman-tells-putnam-county-deputy-son-4-shot-her-back-while-she-was" type="external">Florida Times-Union</a>:</p>
<p>[The] post, shared on the Jamie Gilt page Sunday, shows an image of two burglars breaking into a home with a message below saying guns are not the answer, but calling 911 is. In disagreement, Gilt shared the photo and commented that the criminals might change their plans if they knew they were going to get killed.</p>
<p>The post included other comments in a discussion that defended the right to carry guns.</p>
<p>“Thanks. All of ours know how to shoot too. Even my 4-year-old gets jacked up to target shoot the .22,” Gilt responded Monday evening on Facebook after someone commented on the post.</p>
<p>Gilt was wounded and lived. The Facebook page cited in the article belongs to a woman whose biographical details match the shooting victim’s.&#160;</p>
<p>This is just the latest example of a child who gains access to an unsecured gun and winds up accidentally shooting a family member or himself. A <a href="" type="internal">Mother Jones investigation</a> found that in the year following the Newtown massacre, at least 194 children were shot to death.</p>
<p />
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Yet Another Gun Owner Gets Shot by Her Own Kid
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https://motherjones.com/politics/2016/03/florida-mom-facebook-child-shooting-accident/
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2016-03-09
| 4left
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Yet Another Gun Owner Gets Shot by Her Own Kid
<p>Shutterstock</p>
<p />
<p>A day after Florida mom Jamie Gilt apparently <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamie.gilt/posts/1166559156689521?comment_id=1167240353288068&amp;reply_comment_id=1167302153281888&amp;comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R6%22%7D" type="external">boasted on Facebook</a> about her four-year-old son’s affinity for target shooting, the boy gained access to a .45 caliber handgun and accidently shot her through the torso, according to the <a href="http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2016-03-08/story/woman-tells-putnam-county-deputy-son-4-shot-her-back-while-she-was" type="external">Florida Times-Union</a>:</p>
<p>[The] post, shared on the Jamie Gilt page Sunday, shows an image of two burglars breaking into a home with a message below saying guns are not the answer, but calling 911 is. In disagreement, Gilt shared the photo and commented that the criminals might change their plans if they knew they were going to get killed.</p>
<p>The post included other comments in a discussion that defended the right to carry guns.</p>
<p>“Thanks. All of ours know how to shoot too. Even my 4-year-old gets jacked up to target shoot the .22,” Gilt responded Monday evening on Facebook after someone commented on the post.</p>
<p>Gilt was wounded and lived. The Facebook page cited in the article belongs to a woman whose biographical details match the shooting victim’s.&#160;</p>
<p>This is just the latest example of a child who gains access to an unsecured gun and winds up accidentally shooting a family member or himself. A <a href="" type="internal">Mother Jones investigation</a> found that in the year following the Newtown massacre, at least 194 children were shot to death.</p>
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<p>“Saddam Hussein is a man who is willing to gas his own people ” George Bush, March 22, 2002</p>
<p>“As he (George Bush) said, any person that would gas his own people is a threat to the world.” Scott McClellan, White House spokesperson, March 31, 2002</p>
<p>“Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people” Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002</p>
<p>“He poison-gassed his own people.” Al Gore, December 16, 1998</p>
<p>We might glean a few insights about the semantics of the global order–and the reality it tries to mask–from the way in which the United States has framed the moral case against Saddam.</p>
<p>Saddam’s unspeakable crime is that he has “tortured his own people.” He has “killed his own people.” He has “gassed his own people.” He has “poison-gassed his own people.” In all the accusations, Saddam stands inseparable from his own people.</p>
<p>Rarely do his accusers charge that Saddam “tortured people,” “gassed people,” “gassed Iraqis,” or “killed Iraqis.” A google search for “gassed his own people” and “Saddam” produced 5980 hits. Another search for “gassed people” and Saddam produced only 276 hits.</p>
<p>It would appear that the indictment of Saddam gathers power, conviction, irrefutability, by adding the possessive, proprietary, emphatic ‘own’ to the people tortured, gassed or killed. What does the grammar of accusations say about the metrics of American values?</p>
<p>It is revealing. For a country that claims to speak in the name of man, abstract man, universal man, the charge is not that Saddam has killed people, that he has committed murders, mass murders. Instead, the prosecution indicts him for killing a people who stand in a specific relation to the killer: they are his own people.</p>
<p>This betrays tribalism. It springs from a perception that fractures the indivisibility of mankind. It divides men into tribes. It divides people into “us” and “them:” “ours” and “theirs.” It elevates “us” above “them:” “our” kind above “their” kind. It reveals a sensibility that can feel horror only over the killing of one’s own kind.</p>
<p>Life is sacred at the Core. In the United States, we have an inalienable right to life. It is protected by law; it cannot be taken away without due process. Americans are proud, sedate, in the illusion that their President never kills his own people; their history is proof of this. An American President would never think of killing his own people.</p>
<p>Saddam’s crimes are most foul because he has tortured his own people; he has killed his own people; he has gassed his own people. He has violated the edict of nature. His actions are un-American.</p>
<p>Saddam’s unnatural crimes trouble us, however, not because we feel empathy for his victims. His crimes predict trouble for us. If he can kill his own kind how much more willingly would he kill us? In Scot McClellan’s version: “any person that would gas his own people is a threat to the world (read the United States).”</p>
<p>Of course, Saddam might plead innocence to this charge. “You’ve got it all wrong about the people I kill. The Kurds I killed are not my own people. They are not even Arabs, and, worse, they wanted to break up Iraq and create their own independent Kurdistan. What would you do to your Blacks, Amerindians, Hispanics or Asians, if they took up arms to carve out independent states of their own? Were not the Southern whites your own people? But you killed a half million of them when they took up arms against you in the 1860s. More recently, you killed your own kind at Waco.”</p>
<p>Now, as the United States prepares to try Saddam for torturing, gassing and killing his own people, does this absolve us of killing the same people because they are not our own? Is the killing of Iraqis a crime only when the perpetrators are local thugs–once in our pay–and not when we take up the killing, and execute it more efficiently, on our account?</p>
<p>In the colonial era, racism inoculated people against feeling empathy towards those other people in the Periphery. Those other people were children, barbarians, savages, if not worse. We had to kill them if they could not be useful to us, or if they stood in the way of our progress. There wasn’t much squeamishness about this. It was good policy.</p>
<p>In the era of the Cold War, we went easy on the language of racism, though not always on its substance. When we sent our men and women to kill hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Koreans, we justified this by claiming that we were doing it to protect our freedoms. Of course, it was all right to kill for our freedoms.</p>
<p>However, in the new era, the US learned to contract the killing to thugs in the Periphery. This was a win-win for us. We kept our hands free from bloodstains, so we could smell like roses. At the same time, we could point to colored killers (in our pay), and say, “Look, they are still incapable of civilization.” What is more, we could use their savagery as justification for killing colored peoples on our own account.</p>
<p>More recently, the US has gone back to killing on its own account. Starting in the 1980s, taking advantage of their indebtedness–which we helped create–we began a general economic warfare against the Periphery, stripping down their economies for takeover by Core capital. In this new war, the colonial governors and viceroys have been replaced by two banks–the World Bank and the IMF–and a trade enforcer, the WTO. Like the famines in British India, this war has produced tens of millions of hidden victims, dead from hunger and disease.</p>
<p>In 1990, the US introduced a new, deadlier form of economic warfare: it placed Iraq under a total siege. This instrument was chosen because we knew that Iraq was vulnerable: it imported much of its food, medicines, medical equipment, machinery and spare parts, nearly all paid for by oil exports. Imposed to end Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, the siege ended some thirteen years later only after the US had occupied Iraq. Only after the siege had killed more than a million and a half Iraqis, half of them children.</p>
<p>Once again, the US is the world’s nerve center of reactionary ideologies. The post-War restraints on the use of deadly force now gone, the United States revels in the use of deadly force. Not that alone, it wants to be seen using deadly force. It wants to be feared, even loathed for its magnificent power, raining death from the skies as never before, like no other power before. At manufacturing death, we brook no competition.</p>
<p>Imperialism, militarism and wars create their own rationale. In time, Islamist enemies were elevated and magnified, with help from the Zionists. Rogue states stepped out of the shadows. The swamps began to spawn terrorists. Weapons of mass destruction proliferated. Sagely Orientalists suddenly awoke to an Arab “democracy deficit.” Islam, they declared, is misogynist, anti-modernist and anti-democratic. The civilizing mission was Arabized. The musty odors of jingoism, militarism, racism and religious bigotry infested the air. Like a godsend, the attacks of September 11, 2001, galvanized America. Imperialism and racism rode into town, cheek by jowl, hand in hand.</p>
<p>The new colonization project has now snagged its chief prize. An Arab Ozymandias brought low. The man who tortured, killed and gassed his own people is in American hands. Our civilizing mission displays its trophy. We are repeatedly invited to peep into the oral orifice of this bedraggled Saddam. “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.”</p>
<p>The images of Saddam the captive, haggard, resigned, defanged, are images of our raw power. Our power to appoint, anoint, finance and arm surrogates in the Periphery: and when they go wrong, our power to wage war against their people; destroy their civilian infrastructure, poison their air, water and soil with uranium; lay siege to their economy; and, finally to invade and occupy their country. We will go to any lengths to save the people of the Periphery from our tyrants.</p>
<p>Come, then, wretched denizens of the Periphery, there is cause to rejoice. Lift your Cokes and offer a toast to the Boy Emperor even as he launches plans to establish a thousand years of Pax Americana. He will bring down all outmoded tyrannies, and root out rogue states, dictatorships and monarchies. He will extirpate all fundamentalists, hunt down all terrorists, track down all drug lords, and scrap all unfriendly WMDs. This will be the great cleansing of all self-created challenges to the Empire. In the end nothing will stand between the Empire and the Periphery, between Capital and Labor, between Thesis and Anti-Thesis.</p>
<p>Rejoice, the Empire is advancing its day of reckoning with history.</p>
<p>M. SHAHID ALAM is professor of economics at Northeastern University. His last book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave in 2000. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s hot new book: <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Bookshop.html" type="external">The Politics of Anti-Semitism</a>. He may be reached at [email protected]. Visit his webpage at <a href="http://msalam.net/" type="external">http://msalam.net</a>.</p>
<p>© M. SHAHID ALAM</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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The Semantics of Empire
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https://counterpunch.org/2003/12/24/the-semantics-of-empire/
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2003-12-24
| 4left
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The Semantics of Empire
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>“Saddam Hussein is a man who is willing to gas his own people ” George Bush, March 22, 2002</p>
<p>“As he (George Bush) said, any person that would gas his own people is a threat to the world.” Scott McClellan, White House spokesperson, March 31, 2002</p>
<p>“Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people” Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002</p>
<p>“He poison-gassed his own people.” Al Gore, December 16, 1998</p>
<p>We might glean a few insights about the semantics of the global order–and the reality it tries to mask–from the way in which the United States has framed the moral case against Saddam.</p>
<p>Saddam’s unspeakable crime is that he has “tortured his own people.” He has “killed his own people.” He has “gassed his own people.” He has “poison-gassed his own people.” In all the accusations, Saddam stands inseparable from his own people.</p>
<p>Rarely do his accusers charge that Saddam “tortured people,” “gassed people,” “gassed Iraqis,” or “killed Iraqis.” A google search for “gassed his own people” and “Saddam” produced 5980 hits. Another search for “gassed people” and Saddam produced only 276 hits.</p>
<p>It would appear that the indictment of Saddam gathers power, conviction, irrefutability, by adding the possessive, proprietary, emphatic ‘own’ to the people tortured, gassed or killed. What does the grammar of accusations say about the metrics of American values?</p>
<p>It is revealing. For a country that claims to speak in the name of man, abstract man, universal man, the charge is not that Saddam has killed people, that he has committed murders, mass murders. Instead, the prosecution indicts him for killing a people who stand in a specific relation to the killer: they are his own people.</p>
<p>This betrays tribalism. It springs from a perception that fractures the indivisibility of mankind. It divides men into tribes. It divides people into “us” and “them:” “ours” and “theirs.” It elevates “us” above “them:” “our” kind above “their” kind. It reveals a sensibility that can feel horror only over the killing of one’s own kind.</p>
<p>Life is sacred at the Core. In the United States, we have an inalienable right to life. It is protected by law; it cannot be taken away without due process. Americans are proud, sedate, in the illusion that their President never kills his own people; their history is proof of this. An American President would never think of killing his own people.</p>
<p>Saddam’s crimes are most foul because he has tortured his own people; he has killed his own people; he has gassed his own people. He has violated the edict of nature. His actions are un-American.</p>
<p>Saddam’s unnatural crimes trouble us, however, not because we feel empathy for his victims. His crimes predict trouble for us. If he can kill his own kind how much more willingly would he kill us? In Scot McClellan’s version: “any person that would gas his own people is a threat to the world (read the United States).”</p>
<p>Of course, Saddam might plead innocence to this charge. “You’ve got it all wrong about the people I kill. The Kurds I killed are not my own people. They are not even Arabs, and, worse, they wanted to break up Iraq and create their own independent Kurdistan. What would you do to your Blacks, Amerindians, Hispanics or Asians, if they took up arms to carve out independent states of their own? Were not the Southern whites your own people? But you killed a half million of them when they took up arms against you in the 1860s. More recently, you killed your own kind at Waco.”</p>
<p>Now, as the United States prepares to try Saddam for torturing, gassing and killing his own people, does this absolve us of killing the same people because they are not our own? Is the killing of Iraqis a crime only when the perpetrators are local thugs–once in our pay–and not when we take up the killing, and execute it more efficiently, on our account?</p>
<p>In the colonial era, racism inoculated people against feeling empathy towards those other people in the Periphery. Those other people were children, barbarians, savages, if not worse. We had to kill them if they could not be useful to us, or if they stood in the way of our progress. There wasn’t much squeamishness about this. It was good policy.</p>
<p>In the era of the Cold War, we went easy on the language of racism, though not always on its substance. When we sent our men and women to kill hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Koreans, we justified this by claiming that we were doing it to protect our freedoms. Of course, it was all right to kill for our freedoms.</p>
<p>However, in the new era, the US learned to contract the killing to thugs in the Periphery. This was a win-win for us. We kept our hands free from bloodstains, so we could smell like roses. At the same time, we could point to colored killers (in our pay), and say, “Look, they are still incapable of civilization.” What is more, we could use their savagery as justification for killing colored peoples on our own account.</p>
<p>More recently, the US has gone back to killing on its own account. Starting in the 1980s, taking advantage of their indebtedness–which we helped create–we began a general economic warfare against the Periphery, stripping down their economies for takeover by Core capital. In this new war, the colonial governors and viceroys have been replaced by two banks–the World Bank and the IMF–and a trade enforcer, the WTO. Like the famines in British India, this war has produced tens of millions of hidden victims, dead from hunger and disease.</p>
<p>In 1990, the US introduced a new, deadlier form of economic warfare: it placed Iraq under a total siege. This instrument was chosen because we knew that Iraq was vulnerable: it imported much of its food, medicines, medical equipment, machinery and spare parts, nearly all paid for by oil exports. Imposed to end Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, the siege ended some thirteen years later only after the US had occupied Iraq. Only after the siege had killed more than a million and a half Iraqis, half of them children.</p>
<p>Once again, the US is the world’s nerve center of reactionary ideologies. The post-War restraints on the use of deadly force now gone, the United States revels in the use of deadly force. Not that alone, it wants to be seen using deadly force. It wants to be feared, even loathed for its magnificent power, raining death from the skies as never before, like no other power before. At manufacturing death, we brook no competition.</p>
<p>Imperialism, militarism and wars create their own rationale. In time, Islamist enemies were elevated and magnified, with help from the Zionists. Rogue states stepped out of the shadows. The swamps began to spawn terrorists. Weapons of mass destruction proliferated. Sagely Orientalists suddenly awoke to an Arab “democracy deficit.” Islam, they declared, is misogynist, anti-modernist and anti-democratic. The civilizing mission was Arabized. The musty odors of jingoism, militarism, racism and religious bigotry infested the air. Like a godsend, the attacks of September 11, 2001, galvanized America. Imperialism and racism rode into town, cheek by jowl, hand in hand.</p>
<p>The new colonization project has now snagged its chief prize. An Arab Ozymandias brought low. The man who tortured, killed and gassed his own people is in American hands. Our civilizing mission displays its trophy. We are repeatedly invited to peep into the oral orifice of this bedraggled Saddam. “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.”</p>
<p>The images of Saddam the captive, haggard, resigned, defanged, are images of our raw power. Our power to appoint, anoint, finance and arm surrogates in the Periphery: and when they go wrong, our power to wage war against their people; destroy their civilian infrastructure, poison their air, water and soil with uranium; lay siege to their economy; and, finally to invade and occupy their country. We will go to any lengths to save the people of the Periphery from our tyrants.</p>
<p>Come, then, wretched denizens of the Periphery, there is cause to rejoice. Lift your Cokes and offer a toast to the Boy Emperor even as he launches plans to establish a thousand years of Pax Americana. He will bring down all outmoded tyrannies, and root out rogue states, dictatorships and monarchies. He will extirpate all fundamentalists, hunt down all terrorists, track down all drug lords, and scrap all unfriendly WMDs. This will be the great cleansing of all self-created challenges to the Empire. In the end nothing will stand between the Empire and the Periphery, between Capital and Labor, between Thesis and Anti-Thesis.</p>
<p>Rejoice, the Empire is advancing its day of reckoning with history.</p>
<p>M. SHAHID ALAM is professor of economics at Northeastern University. His last book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave in 2000. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s hot new book: <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Bookshop.html" type="external">The Politics of Anti-Semitism</a>. He may be reached at [email protected]. Visit his webpage at <a href="http://msalam.net/" type="external">http://msalam.net</a>.</p>
<p>© M. SHAHID ALAM</p>
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<p>Hillary <a href="" type="internal">Clinton did not mention the FBI’s decision to review additional emails</a> related to its investigation into her private server during a rally in Iowa on Friday.</p>
<p>The Democratic nominee has yet to comment on FBI Director James Comey’s letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee revealing the discovery of more emails related to the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.</p>
<p>A senior law enforcement official told NBC News the letter was sent to lawmakers "out of an abundance of caution" and to be extra-thorough.</p>
<p>The official said the emails were discovered "on another device" during a different investigation.</p>
<p>At a rally earlier in the day, Donald <a href="" type="internal">Trump commended</a> the FBI for having "the courage to right the horrible mistake they made" earlier in the summer.</p>
<p>Comey announced in July that the FBI would recommend not pressing criminal charges against Clinton for her email use while serving as secretary of state.</p>
<p>Update: Following the rally, <a href="" type="internal">Clinton campaign chair John Podesta released</a> a statement saying Comey "owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining. We are confident this will not produce any conclusions different from the one the FBI reached in July."</p>
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Clinton Doesn’t Mention Email Investigation at Rally
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Clinton Doesn’t Mention Email Investigation at Rally
<p>Hillary <a href="" type="internal">Clinton did not mention the FBI’s decision to review additional emails</a> related to its investigation into her private server during a rally in Iowa on Friday.</p>
<p>The Democratic nominee has yet to comment on FBI Director James Comey’s letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee revealing the discovery of more emails related to the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.</p>
<p>A senior law enforcement official told NBC News the letter was sent to lawmakers "out of an abundance of caution" and to be extra-thorough.</p>
<p>The official said the emails were discovered "on another device" during a different investigation.</p>
<p>At a rally earlier in the day, Donald <a href="" type="internal">Trump commended</a> the FBI for having "the courage to right the horrible mistake they made" earlier in the summer.</p>
<p>Comey announced in July that the FBI would recommend not pressing criminal charges against Clinton for her email use while serving as secretary of state.</p>
<p>Update: Following the rally, <a href="" type="internal">Clinton campaign chair John Podesta released</a> a statement saying Comey "owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining. We are confident this will not produce any conclusions different from the one the FBI reached in July."</p>
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<p>The peace plans proliferated shortly after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. In these “land for peace” deals, Israel would evacuate the territory it had occupied in exchange for peace with the Arabs and in line with the United Nations Security Council resolution 242.</p>
<p>Israel concluded such deals with both Egypt and Jordan. But as it continued to colonize the occupied Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, Arabs began to worry about a “peace for peace” scenario: Israel keeps the land while Arabs get the peace.</p>
<p>Today the Obama Administration appears stuck in a “freeze for peace” moment: an Israeli freeze on settlements in exchange for further Arab normalization. This might have been a good idea when first mooted. Not any more. It has been undermined by reports of an American-Israeli thaw to continue construction of some 2,500 housing units in the illegal settlements.</p>
<p>And it has hit up against an Arab position. As Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister put it starkly this week, unless Israel is clearly committed to withdrawing from Arab lands, there is no interest in incremental “confidence-building measures.” This is hardly surprising — given that Israel has expanded settlements for 42 years.</p>
<p>The problem with “freeze for peace” is that the Obama administration is playing from weakness. It is like a poker player with a large pile of chips facing a belligerent player with only a few chips left — most of which the administration has given or lent him — just shelling out hard-earned cash to keep the old game going.</p>
<p>America, instead, should play from strength. Here are five suggestions, none too politically costly to Obama:</p>
<p>First, up the ante. The administration can neatly step out of the trap it has unwittingly set for itself by shifting the discourse from a settlement freeze to an evacuation.</p>
<p>Here’s what Obama could say: “Let me be clear. I have already stated that my administration does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. There is no point having ‘natural growth’ in structures which must be evacuated, as required by international law. Peace with the Palestinians — based on two sovereign states along the 1967 borders with minor, mutually agreed modifications — is the best guarantee of Israel’s survival and security. We call on the world to act: Not against Israel, but against Israel’s occupation.”</p>
<p>Second, the administration should heed the growing mainstream demands to stop those American Jewish organizations that are funding the illegal settlements. The Washington Post has carried two solidly researched pieces questioning these organizations’ tax-free status — one by David Ignatius in March, and one by Ronit Avni in June. You don’t get more mainstream than the Post, and these columns reflect a fast-growing shift in American public opinion, including among American Jews, in support of tougher action for peace.</p>
<p>Third, just as Israel is stalling on what America has described as one of its national security interests — peace in the Middle East — the administration should similarly stall on issues important to Israel. For instance, sharing military technology, providing military aid or loan guarantees, and conducting joint military exercises. Bureaucracies can find ways to slow things down without a policy shift, and the administration should use them all.</p>
<p>Indeed, Obama should recall that the Bush administration slapped tough sanctions against Israel in 2005, when it violated restrictions on sharing American technology by selling Harpy killer drones to China. Israel got the message and toed the line.</p>
<p>Fourth, engage Hamas so as to rescue Gaza and enable reunification of Palestinian ranks. This is easily done. Hamas has upheld a ceasefire with Israel. Its leader, Khaled Meshal, supported a two-state solution in a May interview with The New York Times. The Quartet (Russia, America, European Union, and United Nations) could interpret this as constituting acceptance of its conditions that Hamas renounce violence, recognize Israel’s existence, and accept past agreements</p>
<p>Fifth, encourage Europe to deflect some of the heat from the United States. The European Union has shelved an upgrade of relations with Israel. Some member states are taking action against Israeli imports made in the illegal settlements. But Europe could do much more, given that it is Israel’s largest trading partner.</p>
<p>European leaders are ready for such measures. For example, in late July several British members of parliament forcefully challenged a government minister for not doing more to end Israel’s occupation. As one parliamentarian put it, “Our Government’s response has been to protest to the Israeli ambassador, but [this] is like shouting at a fish. All the evidence is that, when we protest, the Israelis build the settlements even faster.”</p>
<p>There is much more the Obama administration can do. The five steps outlined above are just a few of the chips it has to hand — powerful diplomatic ways to bring about peace.</p>
<p>NADIA HIJAB is an independent analyst and a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies.</p>
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Playing From Strength in the Middle East
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https://counterpunch.org/2009/08/05/playing-from-strength-in-the-middle-east/
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Playing From Strength in the Middle East
<p>The peace plans proliferated shortly after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. In these “land for peace” deals, Israel would evacuate the territory it had occupied in exchange for peace with the Arabs and in line with the United Nations Security Council resolution 242.</p>
<p>Israel concluded such deals with both Egypt and Jordan. But as it continued to colonize the occupied Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, Arabs began to worry about a “peace for peace” scenario: Israel keeps the land while Arabs get the peace.</p>
<p>Today the Obama Administration appears stuck in a “freeze for peace” moment: an Israeli freeze on settlements in exchange for further Arab normalization. This might have been a good idea when first mooted. Not any more. It has been undermined by reports of an American-Israeli thaw to continue construction of some 2,500 housing units in the illegal settlements.</p>
<p>And it has hit up against an Arab position. As Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister put it starkly this week, unless Israel is clearly committed to withdrawing from Arab lands, there is no interest in incremental “confidence-building measures.” This is hardly surprising — given that Israel has expanded settlements for 42 years.</p>
<p>The problem with “freeze for peace” is that the Obama administration is playing from weakness. It is like a poker player with a large pile of chips facing a belligerent player with only a few chips left — most of which the administration has given or lent him — just shelling out hard-earned cash to keep the old game going.</p>
<p>America, instead, should play from strength. Here are five suggestions, none too politically costly to Obama:</p>
<p>First, up the ante. The administration can neatly step out of the trap it has unwittingly set for itself by shifting the discourse from a settlement freeze to an evacuation.</p>
<p>Here’s what Obama could say: “Let me be clear. I have already stated that my administration does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. There is no point having ‘natural growth’ in structures which must be evacuated, as required by international law. Peace with the Palestinians — based on two sovereign states along the 1967 borders with minor, mutually agreed modifications — is the best guarantee of Israel’s survival and security. We call on the world to act: Not against Israel, but against Israel’s occupation.”</p>
<p>Second, the administration should heed the growing mainstream demands to stop those American Jewish organizations that are funding the illegal settlements. The Washington Post has carried two solidly researched pieces questioning these organizations’ tax-free status — one by David Ignatius in March, and one by Ronit Avni in June. You don’t get more mainstream than the Post, and these columns reflect a fast-growing shift in American public opinion, including among American Jews, in support of tougher action for peace.</p>
<p>Third, just as Israel is stalling on what America has described as one of its national security interests — peace in the Middle East — the administration should similarly stall on issues important to Israel. For instance, sharing military technology, providing military aid or loan guarantees, and conducting joint military exercises. Bureaucracies can find ways to slow things down without a policy shift, and the administration should use them all.</p>
<p>Indeed, Obama should recall that the Bush administration slapped tough sanctions against Israel in 2005, when it violated restrictions on sharing American technology by selling Harpy killer drones to China. Israel got the message and toed the line.</p>
<p>Fourth, engage Hamas so as to rescue Gaza and enable reunification of Palestinian ranks. This is easily done. Hamas has upheld a ceasefire with Israel. Its leader, Khaled Meshal, supported a two-state solution in a May interview with The New York Times. The Quartet (Russia, America, European Union, and United Nations) could interpret this as constituting acceptance of its conditions that Hamas renounce violence, recognize Israel’s existence, and accept past agreements</p>
<p>Fifth, encourage Europe to deflect some of the heat from the United States. The European Union has shelved an upgrade of relations with Israel. Some member states are taking action against Israeli imports made in the illegal settlements. But Europe could do much more, given that it is Israel’s largest trading partner.</p>
<p>European leaders are ready for such measures. For example, in late July several British members of parliament forcefully challenged a government minister for not doing more to end Israel’s occupation. As one parliamentarian put it, “Our Government’s response has been to protest to the Israeli ambassador, but [this] is like shouting at a fish. All the evidence is that, when we protest, the Israelis build the settlements even faster.”</p>
<p>There is much more the Obama administration can do. The five steps outlined above are just a few of the chips it has to hand — powerful diplomatic ways to bring about peace.</p>
<p>NADIA HIJAB is an independent analyst and a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies.</p>
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<p>However, a handful of big-ticket items totaling roughly $100 million raises questions about priorities.</p>
<p>Chief among those projects is a $45 million magnet high school that may be the most expensive new school, on a per-student basis, in the state. Board officials hope that the new North Side College Prep, located in Lincoln Square, will lure families who would otherwise leave Chicago’s public schools for private, parochial or suburban alternatives. They plan to open five more schools like North Side by the year 2001, some of them in rehabbed existing structures. In addition, the board’s capital dollars are being used to support the re-development of Cabrini-Green and to expand some elementary magnet schools.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the board does not have enough money to repair all existing schools and relieve overcrowding.</p>
<p>Julie Woestehoff, director of Parents United for Responsible Education, credits the board with having “very responsibly addressed the repair needs of most of the schools in the system.” But she says that by spreading the money around, the board also has given itself political cover to indulge in projects that, from her perspective, are questionable. Schools like North Side College Prep, she says, “are—let’s be honest—taking money away from repairs that could be made to schools in poor and minority neighborhoods.”</p>
<p>Supporters of the expanded magnet school program argue that it will pay for itself, in effect, by bolstering the city’s property tax base.</p>
<p>Matt McDermott, a policy analyst for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, agrees that the goal of retaining the middle class has merit, but he thinks the board is tilting too far in that direction.</p>
<p>“I’m not completely opposed to this,” he says. “I suppose there are some good reasons to have some flagship schools, but the cost has to be looked at, especially in light of [the board] potentially reaching their limit for capital spending. My general reaction would be that, it would be more important to save those dollars, even though they’re only 10 percent or so of the budget, for more basic needs, like schools that are falling apart, overcrowded or full of lead paint.”</p>
<p>“I think they’re all priorities,” says Jim Lewis, vice president for research and planning at the Chicago Urban League. “I can’t make a statement about how those things should be weighed against each other.”</p>
<p>Making basic repairs and relieving overcrowding are important, he explains, but so is promoting economically and racially mixed schools. “As long as [magnet programs] don’t become tools for any particular community, but remain tools for a desegregated school system, we’re completely for it,” he says.</p>
<p>In the case of two magnet high schools, McDermott and others say that the equity problem is compounded by the fact that college-prep programs are displacing vocational education programs that served lower-income students. In the South Loop, the office services program is being phased out of Jones Commercial High School to make room for a college-prep magnet. In the redeveloping Cabrini-Green area, Near North Career Magnet High School is being razed and replaced with a college-prep magnet that is closer to the Gold Coast.</p>
<p>Here are the details of the Catalyst analysis.</p>
<p>BROAD-BASED EQUITY Catalyst’s analysis of the board’s spending on capital improvements shows that about $1.5 billion, roughly 75 percent, is being used to rescue crumbling buildings and put up new ones to relieve overcrowding. About $390 million, or roughly 20 percent, is going to a grab-bag of extras, including new and expanded magnet schools, new science labs for high schools, playlots for elementary schools and office buildout for the School Board’s new downtown headquarters. About $97 million, roughly 5 percent, is going for program administration.</p>
<p>Catalyst’sanalysis of the degree to which school repair needs are being met found broad-based equity among various types of schools. Predominantly black schools, predominantly Latino schools and predominantly low-income schools all have about the same percentage of their repair needs being met as do middle-class schools and schools that enroll relatively high percentages of white students.</p>
<p>Catalyst’s ward-by-ward analysis of spending on repairs, overcrowding and extras shows no special preference for the wards of influential aldermen. In every spending category, politically influential or affluent wards were as likely to show up on a list of the 10 worst-funded wards as they were on a list of the 10 best-funded wards. For example, the least-funded wards include two of the most politically potent wards in the city: the 13th, home to Michael Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives and state Democratic Party chair, and the 19th, home to former Illinois Senate President Thomas Hynes, Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan and schools Chief Executive Officer Paul Vallas. (See map on page 6.)</p>
<p>“There’s no conscious attempt to leave anyone out,” acknowledges Jacqueline Leavy, executive director of the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group. “This is an administration that prides itself on being responsive, and if someone cries out, they are going to get a response that’s at least a step in the right direction.”</p>
<p>“But we still have to be concerned with: Is anybody falling between the cracks?” she continues. “A hundred and sixty-five schools testified at public hearings this spring, and that’s a lot of folks who stayed home. Some may have been satisfied, but there are folks we need to reach, who need to be convinced that it’s worth their while to come up and say, ‘This is what’s wrong with my kids’ school, and it must be addressed.'”</p>
<p>Indeed, while Catalyst’s analyses of the board’s numbers showed a pattern of overall equity, a closer look at some projects indicates that the board’s determination of need sometimes reflects community pressure as much as physical conditions.</p>
<p>For example, the board’s capital budget book, includes no projects for Morse Elementary in Humboldt Park even though the school has a buckling wall, a lunchroom with peeling lead paint on the ceiling, and windows that are not secure. Recently, though, the board has committed to fixing the lunchroom and is now looking into a full rehab for Morse. (For details, see story.) Since no price tag has been put on these projects, Morse’s needs are not part of Catalyst’s calculations.</p>
<p>In contrast, the capital budget book does include a $18.7 million plan to build a new building for Inter-American Magnet School, now located in Lake View. This project wasn’t on the board’s radar when it launched its capital improvement program in 1996. However, top organizers and staffers from several citywide policy and advocacy groups send their children to Inter-American, and they made sure the school turned out in force for public hearings in 1997. Parents came by the busloads, waving signs and banners.</p>
<p>Inter-American’s spokesperson was Adela Coronado-Greeley, a founder of the dual-language school and former Board of Education member. When she was on the board, Greeley testified, she had purposefully refrained from advocating for Inter-American “because I knew there were other schools that needed more” and were not being helped. Only when she saw schools with less need than Inter-American getting fixed did she decide the time had come to speak up.</p>
<p>No money has been lined up for the new building, a fact that put its ward, the 44th, near the bottom of Catalyst’s list showing the degree to which need is being met. Of the $30.9 million in projects outlined for the 44th Ward, $7.7 million, or 25 percent, have been funded. Three- quarters of that discrepancy is due to Inter-American.</p>
<p>Ald. Bernie Hansen was surprised and none too pleased to learn of his ward’s standing. “All I know is that Nettlehorst is done, Blaine is done, Hawthorne is done, LeMoyne is done, and there’s going to be a new Inter-American Magnet School, wherever that’s going to be,” he says. “And I don’t know why you’d think we were last, since almost all the schools I have are done already. If the school councils and the principals were unhappy, they’d be over to see me.”</p>
<p>Without Inter-American, Hansen’s ward would have landed about in the middle of Catalyst’s list.</p>
<p>BIG-TICKET ITEMS Southwest suburban Naperville drew gasps last year when it opened a $62 million high school, Neuqua Valley. However, on a per-student basis, Neuqua Valley is less than half as expensive as North Side College Prep, which is scheduled to open next September at Bryn Mawr and Kedzie. Built for 3,000 students, Neuqua’s per-student cost is about $20,000. Designed for 1,000, the $45 million North Side will cost about $45,000 per student.</p>
<p>Chicago school officials attribute the difference to economies of scale and unique construction challenges. “You’ve got to look at the fixed costs,” says Chief Operating Officer Tim Martin. “You’ve got to have a gym, an auditorium, a swimming pool. Once you’ve built a kitchen, it doesn’t matter if you cook 3,000 meals in it or 1,000.”</p>
<p>North Side’s location on the bank of the Chicago River also increased costs, he says. The foundation needed special reinforcement, and construction crews had to take care not to disrupt sewer lines that feed into the river. He adds that the board had hoped to offset construction costs by getting the land, formerly owned by the Cook County Water Reclamation District, for free. But he says the district was policy-bound to charge a fair price for it.</p>
<p>Similarly, the Region 2 College Prep High School, scheduled to open in the year 2000 at the corner of Oak and Wells streets, has a higher per-student cost than Nequa. With a capacity of 1,000 and a price tag of $30 million, its per-pupil cost is $30,000.</p>
<p>Region 2 College Prep is located in the Cabrini-Green area tax-increment financing district (TIF), which gets to keep gains in local property tax revenues for public improvements and other development incentives within its boundaries. School officials say they will tap those funds to help build Region 2 College Prep and other new schools in the TIF district. They say they also will use proceeds of the sale of the land under the nearby Near North Career Magnet High School, which is to be razed to make way for private development.</p>
<p>Members of Near North’s local school council say the board already is dismantling school programs and sidestepping the council. Last spring, when Principal Faye Grays’s contract expired, the board refused to ratify the contract of the LSC’s choice for a replacement, Ronald Gibbs. Gibbs now leads the school on an interim basis. This fall, officials disbanded the school’s football team, offering flag football instead. When council members took issue with the board’s choice for “transition manager,” Reginald Brown, a politically-connected former principal of Chicago Vocational High School, the board named him as the school’s probation manager instead.</p>
<p>“We have to fight for everything that should come easily,” says Clara Smith, who chairs the Near North LSC.</p>
<p>Parents and community members at the school also contend board officials have given them questionable information. Several say they’ve been told that Near North’s building has to be replaced because it has structural problems and is sinking into the ground. Smith asks, “If the land the school is on is sinking, wouldn’t the houses across the street be sinking too?”</p>
<p>Dion Smith, chief of staff in the board’s Operations Department, says that, to the best of his knowledge, Near North is not structurally unsound. It is being replaced, he says, because “it is not a well-designed building.”</p>
<p>Chief Education Officer Cozette Buckney says the board is “making an investment in those students who are there now [by] committing to keeping the school open through 2001 for them.” She adds, “We will make sure that any students who qualify can certainly go to the new school.”</p>
<p>Judging by Near North’s test scores, few of its students would qualify for the new Region 2 High, which will require above-average scores for admission. In 1997, which marked a seven-year high for Near North’s scores on the Tests of Achievement and Proficiency, fewer than 15 percent of the students scored at or above national norms.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in the Cabrini-Green area, the Ferguson Child-Parent Center has been torn down and rebuilt several blocks away. Its old site now sports a parking lot for the recently opened Dominick’s at Clybourn and Division. Byrd and Jenner elementary schools also are slated for replacement.</p>
<p>These projects, along with the new high school, make Ald. Walter Burnett’s 27th Ward one of the neediest wards in the city, by the board’s definitions. About $101 million in rehab and overcrowding-relief projects are listed for the ward, with $59 million of them funded.</p>
<p>OTHER DEVELOPMENT-RELATED PROJECTS In the South Loop, where gentrification is spreading rapidly, one of the system’s most successful vocational education programs is being phased out for a college-prep program. For decades, students from high schools across the city transferred to Jones Commercial after their sophomore year to prepare for office jobs at Loop companies. The school’s close proximity facilitated an extensive work experience program.</p>
<p>Buckney, who added college-prep courses while she was principal at Jones, says the area’s changing residential demographics demand a new program. “It was the logical thing to do, to convert a two-year school in a growing area to a four-year school. … Students will still be able to choose a business style program, but not for secretarial jobs anymore.”</p>
<p>The board’s Capital Improvement Plan lists an unfunded $15 million addition to Jones, and officials have talked about using land several doors south that is occupied by the Pacific Garden Mission. Officials say they are looking at alternative sites as well. “We’re exploring options right now,” says CEO Vallas.</p>
<p>At both Jones and Near North, teachers, parents and students have protested the board’s plans, and their travails have been chronicled in a series of articles in Substance, a muckraking, teacher-produced monthly newspaper. Stories headlined “Jones fights back!” and “Near North’s slow death” have painted the board’s action as straightforward cases of officials pushing out the schools’ working-class constituencies in order to encourage gentrification in the schools’ lakefront neighborhoods.</p>
<p>Vallas has denied that the new magnet high schools are intended to lure the affluent. However, when Schools and Regions Chief Blondean Davis helped interview finalists for the principal’s job at North Side College Prep, her first question to each finalist was: “What would you do to recruit students who would otherwise go to private or parochial schools?”</p>
<p>In a redevelopment area on the Near West Side, Riis Elementary recently saw its rehab plans disappear. Riis has a faulty heating system and drafty windows, which force some students to wear their coats to class during winter. Board officials had scheduled a $2 million rehab for the school in 1997-98, but the board quietly scrapped it last summer. Principal Susan Milojevic didn’t learn of the cancellation until a reporter told her of it.</p>
<p>Salazar jittery</p>
<p>Riis sits amid the ABLA homes, a public housing complex that is being replaced with mixed-income housing. As a result, the school’s enrollment has dropped. Board officials now say they are considering closing the school and sending the students elsewhere, rather than investing in repairs.</p>
<p>In the Cabrini-Green area, another school has gotten the jitters. Salazar Bilingual Academy, which sits across the street from the site of the new Region 2 High School, recently lost its teachers’ parking lot with dizzying speed.</p>
<p>According to Local School Council Chair Ricardo Gomez, the principal got a call on a Friday afternoon in late August from David Tkak, the mayor’s point person for Near North redevelopment, says Gomez.</p>
<p>Tkak was calling to say that over the weekend city bulldozers would convert the parking lot into an alley for town homes behind the school. When the school objected, the job was put off, but not for long.</p>
<p>On Sept. 23, the Reform Board passed a resolution selling the parking lot to the City of Chicago for $1. On Sept. 26, the bulldozers came and did the job.</p>
<p>“We’re starting to feel like they’re just inching us out,” says Gomez. “Like we could show up on Friday afternoon and they could say, ‘You guys have to get out, because on Monday, the mayor’s going to be using it for his headquarters.'”</p>
|
Everyone wins, some win more
| false |
http://chicagoreporter.com/everyone-wins-some-win-more/
|
2005-07-26
| 3left-center
|
Everyone wins, some win more
<p>However, a handful of big-ticket items totaling roughly $100 million raises questions about priorities.</p>
<p>Chief among those projects is a $45 million magnet high school that may be the most expensive new school, on a per-student basis, in the state. Board officials hope that the new North Side College Prep, located in Lincoln Square, will lure families who would otherwise leave Chicago’s public schools for private, parochial or suburban alternatives. They plan to open five more schools like North Side by the year 2001, some of them in rehabbed existing structures. In addition, the board’s capital dollars are being used to support the re-development of Cabrini-Green and to expand some elementary magnet schools.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the board does not have enough money to repair all existing schools and relieve overcrowding.</p>
<p>Julie Woestehoff, director of Parents United for Responsible Education, credits the board with having “very responsibly addressed the repair needs of most of the schools in the system.” But she says that by spreading the money around, the board also has given itself political cover to indulge in projects that, from her perspective, are questionable. Schools like North Side College Prep, she says, “are—let’s be honest—taking money away from repairs that could be made to schools in poor and minority neighborhoods.”</p>
<p>Supporters of the expanded magnet school program argue that it will pay for itself, in effect, by bolstering the city’s property tax base.</p>
<p>Matt McDermott, a policy analyst for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, agrees that the goal of retaining the middle class has merit, but he thinks the board is tilting too far in that direction.</p>
<p>“I’m not completely opposed to this,” he says. “I suppose there are some good reasons to have some flagship schools, but the cost has to be looked at, especially in light of [the board] potentially reaching their limit for capital spending. My general reaction would be that, it would be more important to save those dollars, even though they’re only 10 percent or so of the budget, for more basic needs, like schools that are falling apart, overcrowded or full of lead paint.”</p>
<p>“I think they’re all priorities,” says Jim Lewis, vice president for research and planning at the Chicago Urban League. “I can’t make a statement about how those things should be weighed against each other.”</p>
<p>Making basic repairs and relieving overcrowding are important, he explains, but so is promoting economically and racially mixed schools. “As long as [magnet programs] don’t become tools for any particular community, but remain tools for a desegregated school system, we’re completely for it,” he says.</p>
<p>In the case of two magnet high schools, McDermott and others say that the equity problem is compounded by the fact that college-prep programs are displacing vocational education programs that served lower-income students. In the South Loop, the office services program is being phased out of Jones Commercial High School to make room for a college-prep magnet. In the redeveloping Cabrini-Green area, Near North Career Magnet High School is being razed and replaced with a college-prep magnet that is closer to the Gold Coast.</p>
<p>Here are the details of the Catalyst analysis.</p>
<p>BROAD-BASED EQUITY Catalyst’s analysis of the board’s spending on capital improvements shows that about $1.5 billion, roughly 75 percent, is being used to rescue crumbling buildings and put up new ones to relieve overcrowding. About $390 million, or roughly 20 percent, is going to a grab-bag of extras, including new and expanded magnet schools, new science labs for high schools, playlots for elementary schools and office buildout for the School Board’s new downtown headquarters. About $97 million, roughly 5 percent, is going for program administration.</p>
<p>Catalyst’sanalysis of the degree to which school repair needs are being met found broad-based equity among various types of schools. Predominantly black schools, predominantly Latino schools and predominantly low-income schools all have about the same percentage of their repair needs being met as do middle-class schools and schools that enroll relatively high percentages of white students.</p>
<p>Catalyst’s ward-by-ward analysis of spending on repairs, overcrowding and extras shows no special preference for the wards of influential aldermen. In every spending category, politically influential or affluent wards were as likely to show up on a list of the 10 worst-funded wards as they were on a list of the 10 best-funded wards. For example, the least-funded wards include two of the most politically potent wards in the city: the 13th, home to Michael Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives and state Democratic Party chair, and the 19th, home to former Illinois Senate President Thomas Hynes, Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan and schools Chief Executive Officer Paul Vallas. (See map on page 6.)</p>
<p>“There’s no conscious attempt to leave anyone out,” acknowledges Jacqueline Leavy, executive director of the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group. “This is an administration that prides itself on being responsive, and if someone cries out, they are going to get a response that’s at least a step in the right direction.”</p>
<p>“But we still have to be concerned with: Is anybody falling between the cracks?” she continues. “A hundred and sixty-five schools testified at public hearings this spring, and that’s a lot of folks who stayed home. Some may have been satisfied, but there are folks we need to reach, who need to be convinced that it’s worth their while to come up and say, ‘This is what’s wrong with my kids’ school, and it must be addressed.'”</p>
<p>Indeed, while Catalyst’s analyses of the board’s numbers showed a pattern of overall equity, a closer look at some projects indicates that the board’s determination of need sometimes reflects community pressure as much as physical conditions.</p>
<p>For example, the board’s capital budget book, includes no projects for Morse Elementary in Humboldt Park even though the school has a buckling wall, a lunchroom with peeling lead paint on the ceiling, and windows that are not secure. Recently, though, the board has committed to fixing the lunchroom and is now looking into a full rehab for Morse. (For details, see story.) Since no price tag has been put on these projects, Morse’s needs are not part of Catalyst’s calculations.</p>
<p>In contrast, the capital budget book does include a $18.7 million plan to build a new building for Inter-American Magnet School, now located in Lake View. This project wasn’t on the board’s radar when it launched its capital improvement program in 1996. However, top organizers and staffers from several citywide policy and advocacy groups send their children to Inter-American, and they made sure the school turned out in force for public hearings in 1997. Parents came by the busloads, waving signs and banners.</p>
<p>Inter-American’s spokesperson was Adela Coronado-Greeley, a founder of the dual-language school and former Board of Education member. When she was on the board, Greeley testified, she had purposefully refrained from advocating for Inter-American “because I knew there were other schools that needed more” and were not being helped. Only when she saw schools with less need than Inter-American getting fixed did she decide the time had come to speak up.</p>
<p>No money has been lined up for the new building, a fact that put its ward, the 44th, near the bottom of Catalyst’s list showing the degree to which need is being met. Of the $30.9 million in projects outlined for the 44th Ward, $7.7 million, or 25 percent, have been funded. Three- quarters of that discrepancy is due to Inter-American.</p>
<p>Ald. Bernie Hansen was surprised and none too pleased to learn of his ward’s standing. “All I know is that Nettlehorst is done, Blaine is done, Hawthorne is done, LeMoyne is done, and there’s going to be a new Inter-American Magnet School, wherever that’s going to be,” he says. “And I don’t know why you’d think we were last, since almost all the schools I have are done already. If the school councils and the principals were unhappy, they’d be over to see me.”</p>
<p>Without Inter-American, Hansen’s ward would have landed about in the middle of Catalyst’s list.</p>
<p>BIG-TICKET ITEMS Southwest suburban Naperville drew gasps last year when it opened a $62 million high school, Neuqua Valley. However, on a per-student basis, Neuqua Valley is less than half as expensive as North Side College Prep, which is scheduled to open next September at Bryn Mawr and Kedzie. Built for 3,000 students, Neuqua’s per-student cost is about $20,000. Designed for 1,000, the $45 million North Side will cost about $45,000 per student.</p>
<p>Chicago school officials attribute the difference to economies of scale and unique construction challenges. “You’ve got to look at the fixed costs,” says Chief Operating Officer Tim Martin. “You’ve got to have a gym, an auditorium, a swimming pool. Once you’ve built a kitchen, it doesn’t matter if you cook 3,000 meals in it or 1,000.”</p>
<p>North Side’s location on the bank of the Chicago River also increased costs, he says. The foundation needed special reinforcement, and construction crews had to take care not to disrupt sewer lines that feed into the river. He adds that the board had hoped to offset construction costs by getting the land, formerly owned by the Cook County Water Reclamation District, for free. But he says the district was policy-bound to charge a fair price for it.</p>
<p>Similarly, the Region 2 College Prep High School, scheduled to open in the year 2000 at the corner of Oak and Wells streets, has a higher per-student cost than Nequa. With a capacity of 1,000 and a price tag of $30 million, its per-pupil cost is $30,000.</p>
<p>Region 2 College Prep is located in the Cabrini-Green area tax-increment financing district (TIF), which gets to keep gains in local property tax revenues for public improvements and other development incentives within its boundaries. School officials say they will tap those funds to help build Region 2 College Prep and other new schools in the TIF district. They say they also will use proceeds of the sale of the land under the nearby Near North Career Magnet High School, which is to be razed to make way for private development.</p>
<p>Members of Near North’s local school council say the board already is dismantling school programs and sidestepping the council. Last spring, when Principal Faye Grays’s contract expired, the board refused to ratify the contract of the LSC’s choice for a replacement, Ronald Gibbs. Gibbs now leads the school on an interim basis. This fall, officials disbanded the school’s football team, offering flag football instead. When council members took issue with the board’s choice for “transition manager,” Reginald Brown, a politically-connected former principal of Chicago Vocational High School, the board named him as the school’s probation manager instead.</p>
<p>“We have to fight for everything that should come easily,” says Clara Smith, who chairs the Near North LSC.</p>
<p>Parents and community members at the school also contend board officials have given them questionable information. Several say they’ve been told that Near North’s building has to be replaced because it has structural problems and is sinking into the ground. Smith asks, “If the land the school is on is sinking, wouldn’t the houses across the street be sinking too?”</p>
<p>Dion Smith, chief of staff in the board’s Operations Department, says that, to the best of his knowledge, Near North is not structurally unsound. It is being replaced, he says, because “it is not a well-designed building.”</p>
<p>Chief Education Officer Cozette Buckney says the board is “making an investment in those students who are there now [by] committing to keeping the school open through 2001 for them.” She adds, “We will make sure that any students who qualify can certainly go to the new school.”</p>
<p>Judging by Near North’s test scores, few of its students would qualify for the new Region 2 High, which will require above-average scores for admission. In 1997, which marked a seven-year high for Near North’s scores on the Tests of Achievement and Proficiency, fewer than 15 percent of the students scored at or above national norms.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in the Cabrini-Green area, the Ferguson Child-Parent Center has been torn down and rebuilt several blocks away. Its old site now sports a parking lot for the recently opened Dominick’s at Clybourn and Division. Byrd and Jenner elementary schools also are slated for replacement.</p>
<p>These projects, along with the new high school, make Ald. Walter Burnett’s 27th Ward one of the neediest wards in the city, by the board’s definitions. About $101 million in rehab and overcrowding-relief projects are listed for the ward, with $59 million of them funded.</p>
<p>OTHER DEVELOPMENT-RELATED PROJECTS In the South Loop, where gentrification is spreading rapidly, one of the system’s most successful vocational education programs is being phased out for a college-prep program. For decades, students from high schools across the city transferred to Jones Commercial after their sophomore year to prepare for office jobs at Loop companies. The school’s close proximity facilitated an extensive work experience program.</p>
<p>Buckney, who added college-prep courses while she was principal at Jones, says the area’s changing residential demographics demand a new program. “It was the logical thing to do, to convert a two-year school in a growing area to a four-year school. … Students will still be able to choose a business style program, but not for secretarial jobs anymore.”</p>
<p>The board’s Capital Improvement Plan lists an unfunded $15 million addition to Jones, and officials have talked about using land several doors south that is occupied by the Pacific Garden Mission. Officials say they are looking at alternative sites as well. “We’re exploring options right now,” says CEO Vallas.</p>
<p>At both Jones and Near North, teachers, parents and students have protested the board’s plans, and their travails have been chronicled in a series of articles in Substance, a muckraking, teacher-produced monthly newspaper. Stories headlined “Jones fights back!” and “Near North’s slow death” have painted the board’s action as straightforward cases of officials pushing out the schools’ working-class constituencies in order to encourage gentrification in the schools’ lakefront neighborhoods.</p>
<p>Vallas has denied that the new magnet high schools are intended to lure the affluent. However, when Schools and Regions Chief Blondean Davis helped interview finalists for the principal’s job at North Side College Prep, her first question to each finalist was: “What would you do to recruit students who would otherwise go to private or parochial schools?”</p>
<p>In a redevelopment area on the Near West Side, Riis Elementary recently saw its rehab plans disappear. Riis has a faulty heating system and drafty windows, which force some students to wear their coats to class during winter. Board officials had scheduled a $2 million rehab for the school in 1997-98, but the board quietly scrapped it last summer. Principal Susan Milojevic didn’t learn of the cancellation until a reporter told her of it.</p>
<p>Salazar jittery</p>
<p>Riis sits amid the ABLA homes, a public housing complex that is being replaced with mixed-income housing. As a result, the school’s enrollment has dropped. Board officials now say they are considering closing the school and sending the students elsewhere, rather than investing in repairs.</p>
<p>In the Cabrini-Green area, another school has gotten the jitters. Salazar Bilingual Academy, which sits across the street from the site of the new Region 2 High School, recently lost its teachers’ parking lot with dizzying speed.</p>
<p>According to Local School Council Chair Ricardo Gomez, the principal got a call on a Friday afternoon in late August from David Tkak, the mayor’s point person for Near North redevelopment, says Gomez.</p>
<p>Tkak was calling to say that over the weekend city bulldozers would convert the parking lot into an alley for town homes behind the school. When the school objected, the job was put off, but not for long.</p>
<p>On Sept. 23, the Reform Board passed a resolution selling the parking lot to the City of Chicago for $1. On Sept. 26, the bulldozers came and did the job.</p>
<p>“We’re starting to feel like they’re just inching us out,” says Gomez. “Like we could show up on Friday afternoon and they could say, ‘You guys have to get out, because on Monday, the mayor’s going to be using it for his headquarters.'”</p>
| 7,683 |
<p>By Ellen Brown, Web of DebtThis piece originally appeared at <a href="http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/indentured-servitude-for-seniors-social-security-garnished-for-student-debts/" type="external">Web of Debt</a>.</p>
<p>The Social Security program … represents our commitment as a society to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute. – President Jimmy Carter, December 20, 1977</p>
<p>[This law] assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half century ago … . [The Social Security Amendments of 1983 are] a monument to the spirit of compassion and commitment that unites us as a people. – President Ronald Reagan, April 20, 1983</p>
<p>So said Presidents Carter and Regan, but that was before 1996, when Congress voted to allow federal agencies to offset portions of Social Security payments to collect debts owed to those agencies. (31 U.S.C. §3716). Now we read of <a href="http://getoutofdebt.org/6328/im-a-grandmother-and-getting-my-social-security-check-garnished-for-student-loans-janis" type="external">horror stories like this</a>:</p>
<p />
<p>I’m a 68 year old grandma of 2 young grandchildren. I went to college to upgrade my employment status in 1998 or 1999. I finished in 2000 and at that time had a student loan balance of about 3500.00.</p>
<p>Could not find a job and had to request forbearance to carry me. Over the years I forgot about the loan, dealt with poor health, had brain surgery in 2006 and the collection agents decided to collect for the loan in 2008.</p>
<p>At no time during the 6-7 year gap did anyone remind me or let me know that I could make a minimum payment on the loan. Now that I am on Social Security (have been since I was 62), they have decided to garnishee my SS check to the tune of 15%.</p>
<p>I have not been employed since 2004 and have the two dependents . … I don’t dispute that I owed them the $3500.00 but am wondering why they let it build up to somewhere around $17,000/20,000 before they attempted to collect.</p>
<p>Her debt went from $3500 to over $17,000 in 10 years?! How could that be?</p>
<p>It seems that Congress has <a href="http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/bankruptcy/" type="external">removed nearly every consumer protection</a> from student loans, including not only standard bankruptcy protections, statutes of limitations, and truth in lending requirements, but protection from usury (excessive interest). Lenders can vary the interest rates, and some borrowers are reporting <a href="http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/112_HR_2028.html" type="external">rates as high as 18-20%</a>. At 20%, debt doubles in just 3-1/2 years; and in 7 years, it quadruples. Congress has also given lenders draconian collection powers to extort not just the original principal and interest on student loans but huge sums in penalties, fees, and collection costs.</p>
<p>The majority of these debts are being imposed on young people, who have a potential 40 years of gainful employment ahead of them to pay the debt off. But a sizeable chunk of U.S. student loan debt is <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/02/student-loan-debt-senior-citizens_n_1396713.html" type="external">held by senior citizens</a>, many of whom are not only unemployed but unemployable. According to the New York Federal Reserve, two million U.S. seniors age 60 and over have student loan debt, on which they owe a collective $36.5 billion; and 11.2 percent of this debt is in default. Almost a third of all student loan debt is held by people aged 40 and over, and 4.2% is held by people over the age of 60. The total student debt is now over $1 trillion, more even than credit card debt. The sum is unsustainable and threatens to be the next debt tsunami.</p>
<p>Some of this debt is for loans taken out years earlier on their own schooling, and some is from co-signing student loans for children or grandchildren. But much of it has been incurred by middle-aged people going back to school in the hope of finding employment in a bad job market. What they have wound up with is something much worse: no job, an exponentially mounting debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, and the prospect of old age without a social security check adequate to survive on.</p>
<p>Gone is the promise of earlier presidents of a “commitment to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute.” The plight of the indebted elderly is reminiscent of the Irish immigrants who came to America after a potato famine in the 19th century, who were looked upon in some places as actually lower than slaves. Plantation owners kept their slaves fed, clothed and cared for, because they were valuable property. The Irish were expendable, and they were on their own.It is obviously not a good time to raise interest rates on student debt, but they are <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/student-loan-rates-double-congress-090900901.html" type="external">set to double</a> on July 1, 2012, to 6.8%. Many lawmakers in both parties agree that the current 3.4% rates should be extended for another year, but they can’t agree on how to find the $6 billion that this would cost. Republicans want to take the money from a health care fund that promotes preventive care; Democrats want to eliminate some tax benefits for small business owners.</p>
<p>Congress cannot agree on $6 billion to save the students, yet they managed to agree in a matter of days in September 2008 to come up with $700 billion to save the banks; and the Federal Reserve found many trillions more. Estimates are that <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/167690/end-student-debt" type="external">tuition could be provided free</a> to students for a mere $30 billion annually. The government has the power to find $30 billion — or $300 billion or $3 trillion — in the same place the Federal Reserve found it: it can simply issue the money.</p>
<p>Congress is empowered by the Constitution to “coin money” and “regulate the value thereof,” and no limit is set on the face amount of the coins it creates. It could issue a few one-billion dollar coins, deposit them in an account, and start writing checks.</p>
<p>But wouldn’t that be inflationary? No. The Fed’s own figures show that the money supply (M3) has <a href="http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr458.html" type="external">shrunk by $3 trillion</a> since 2008. That sum could be added back into the economy without inflating prices. Gas and food are going up today, but the whole range of prices must be considered in order to determine whether price inflation is occurring. Housing and wages are significantly larger components of the price structure than commodities, and they remain severely depressed.</p>
<p>There is another way the government could find needed funds without raising taxes, slashing services, or going further into debt: Congress could re-finance the federal debt through the Federal Reserve, interest-free. <a href="http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/canada.php" type="external">Canada did this</a> from 1939 to 1974, keeping its national debt low and sustainable while funding massive programs including seaways, roadways, pensions, and national health care. The national debt shot up only when the government switched from borrowing from its own central bank to borrowing from private lenders at interest. The rationale was that borrowing bank-created money from the government’s own central bank inflated the money supply, while borrowing existing funds from private banks did not. But even the Federal Reserve <a href="http://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/educate/everyday/money.pdf" type="external">acknowledges</a> that private banks create the money they lend on their books, just as central banks do.</p>
<p>U.S. taxpayers now pay nearly half a trillion dollars annually to finance our federal debt. The cumulative figure comes to $8.2 trillion paid in interest just in the last 24 years. By financing the debt itself rather than paying interest to private parties, the government could divert what it would have paid in interest into tuition, jobs, infrastructure and social services, allowing us to keep the social contract while at the same time stimulating the economy.</p>
<p>For students, at the very least the bankruptcy option needs to be reinstated, usury laws restored, predatory practices eliminated, and the cost of education brought back down to earth. One possibility for relieving the burden on students would be to give them interest-free loans. The government of New Zealand now offers <a href="http://www.ird.govt.nz/studentloans/owing/interest/" type="external">0% loans to New Zealand students</a>, with repayment to be made from their income after they graduate. For the past twenty years, the Australian government has also successfully funded students by giving out what are in effect interest-free loans. The loans in the Australian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Australia" type="external">Higher Education Loan Programme</a> (or HELP) do not bear interest, but the government gets back more than it lends, because the principal is indexed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which goes up every year.</p>
<p>Predatory lenders are keeping us in debt peonage through misguided economics and bank-captured legislators. We have people who desperately want to work, to the point of going back to school to try to improve their chances; and we have mountains of work that needs to be done. The only thing keeping them apart is that artificial constraint called “money”, which we have allowed to be created by banks and let out at interest when it could have been created by public institutions for public purposes, either by direct issuance or through publicly-owned banks. We just need to recognize our oppressors and throw off their yoke, and the good times can roll again.</p>
<p />
|
Social Security Checks Garnisheed for Student Debt
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/social-security-checks-garnisheed-for-student-debt/
|
2012-05-11
| 4left
|
Social Security Checks Garnisheed for Student Debt
<p>By Ellen Brown, Web of DebtThis piece originally appeared at <a href="http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/indentured-servitude-for-seniors-social-security-garnished-for-student-debts/" type="external">Web of Debt</a>.</p>
<p>The Social Security program … represents our commitment as a society to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute. – President Jimmy Carter, December 20, 1977</p>
<p>[This law] assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half century ago … . [The Social Security Amendments of 1983 are] a monument to the spirit of compassion and commitment that unites us as a people. – President Ronald Reagan, April 20, 1983</p>
<p>So said Presidents Carter and Regan, but that was before 1996, when Congress voted to allow federal agencies to offset portions of Social Security payments to collect debts owed to those agencies. (31 U.S.C. §3716). Now we read of <a href="http://getoutofdebt.org/6328/im-a-grandmother-and-getting-my-social-security-check-garnished-for-student-loans-janis" type="external">horror stories like this</a>:</p>
<p />
<p>I’m a 68 year old grandma of 2 young grandchildren. I went to college to upgrade my employment status in 1998 or 1999. I finished in 2000 and at that time had a student loan balance of about 3500.00.</p>
<p>Could not find a job and had to request forbearance to carry me. Over the years I forgot about the loan, dealt with poor health, had brain surgery in 2006 and the collection agents decided to collect for the loan in 2008.</p>
<p>At no time during the 6-7 year gap did anyone remind me or let me know that I could make a minimum payment on the loan. Now that I am on Social Security (have been since I was 62), they have decided to garnishee my SS check to the tune of 15%.</p>
<p>I have not been employed since 2004 and have the two dependents . … I don’t dispute that I owed them the $3500.00 but am wondering why they let it build up to somewhere around $17,000/20,000 before they attempted to collect.</p>
<p>Her debt went from $3500 to over $17,000 in 10 years?! How could that be?</p>
<p>It seems that Congress has <a href="http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/bankruptcy/" type="external">removed nearly every consumer protection</a> from student loans, including not only standard bankruptcy protections, statutes of limitations, and truth in lending requirements, but protection from usury (excessive interest). Lenders can vary the interest rates, and some borrowers are reporting <a href="http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/112_HR_2028.html" type="external">rates as high as 18-20%</a>. At 20%, debt doubles in just 3-1/2 years; and in 7 years, it quadruples. Congress has also given lenders draconian collection powers to extort not just the original principal and interest on student loans but huge sums in penalties, fees, and collection costs.</p>
<p>The majority of these debts are being imposed on young people, who have a potential 40 years of gainful employment ahead of them to pay the debt off. But a sizeable chunk of U.S. student loan debt is <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/02/student-loan-debt-senior-citizens_n_1396713.html" type="external">held by senior citizens</a>, many of whom are not only unemployed but unemployable. According to the New York Federal Reserve, two million U.S. seniors age 60 and over have student loan debt, on which they owe a collective $36.5 billion; and 11.2 percent of this debt is in default. Almost a third of all student loan debt is held by people aged 40 and over, and 4.2% is held by people over the age of 60. The total student debt is now over $1 trillion, more even than credit card debt. The sum is unsustainable and threatens to be the next debt tsunami.</p>
<p>Some of this debt is for loans taken out years earlier on their own schooling, and some is from co-signing student loans for children or grandchildren. But much of it has been incurred by middle-aged people going back to school in the hope of finding employment in a bad job market. What they have wound up with is something much worse: no job, an exponentially mounting debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, and the prospect of old age without a social security check adequate to survive on.</p>
<p>Gone is the promise of earlier presidents of a “commitment to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute.” The plight of the indebted elderly is reminiscent of the Irish immigrants who came to America after a potato famine in the 19th century, who were looked upon in some places as actually lower than slaves. Plantation owners kept their slaves fed, clothed and cared for, because they were valuable property. The Irish were expendable, and they were on their own.It is obviously not a good time to raise interest rates on student debt, but they are <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/student-loan-rates-double-congress-090900901.html" type="external">set to double</a> on July 1, 2012, to 6.8%. Many lawmakers in both parties agree that the current 3.4% rates should be extended for another year, but they can’t agree on how to find the $6 billion that this would cost. Republicans want to take the money from a health care fund that promotes preventive care; Democrats want to eliminate some tax benefits for small business owners.</p>
<p>Congress cannot agree on $6 billion to save the students, yet they managed to agree in a matter of days in September 2008 to come up with $700 billion to save the banks; and the Federal Reserve found many trillions more. Estimates are that <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/167690/end-student-debt" type="external">tuition could be provided free</a> to students for a mere $30 billion annually. The government has the power to find $30 billion — or $300 billion or $3 trillion — in the same place the Federal Reserve found it: it can simply issue the money.</p>
<p>Congress is empowered by the Constitution to “coin money” and “regulate the value thereof,” and no limit is set on the face amount of the coins it creates. It could issue a few one-billion dollar coins, deposit them in an account, and start writing checks.</p>
<p>But wouldn’t that be inflationary? No. The Fed’s own figures show that the money supply (M3) has <a href="http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr458.html" type="external">shrunk by $3 trillion</a> since 2008. That sum could be added back into the economy without inflating prices. Gas and food are going up today, but the whole range of prices must be considered in order to determine whether price inflation is occurring. Housing and wages are significantly larger components of the price structure than commodities, and they remain severely depressed.</p>
<p>There is another way the government could find needed funds without raising taxes, slashing services, or going further into debt: Congress could re-finance the federal debt through the Federal Reserve, interest-free. <a href="http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/canada.php" type="external">Canada did this</a> from 1939 to 1974, keeping its national debt low and sustainable while funding massive programs including seaways, roadways, pensions, and national health care. The national debt shot up only when the government switched from borrowing from its own central bank to borrowing from private lenders at interest. The rationale was that borrowing bank-created money from the government’s own central bank inflated the money supply, while borrowing existing funds from private banks did not. But even the Federal Reserve <a href="http://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/educate/everyday/money.pdf" type="external">acknowledges</a> that private banks create the money they lend on their books, just as central banks do.</p>
<p>U.S. taxpayers now pay nearly half a trillion dollars annually to finance our federal debt. The cumulative figure comes to $8.2 trillion paid in interest just in the last 24 years. By financing the debt itself rather than paying interest to private parties, the government could divert what it would have paid in interest into tuition, jobs, infrastructure and social services, allowing us to keep the social contract while at the same time stimulating the economy.</p>
<p>For students, at the very least the bankruptcy option needs to be reinstated, usury laws restored, predatory practices eliminated, and the cost of education brought back down to earth. One possibility for relieving the burden on students would be to give them interest-free loans. The government of New Zealand now offers <a href="http://www.ird.govt.nz/studentloans/owing/interest/" type="external">0% loans to New Zealand students</a>, with repayment to be made from their income after they graduate. For the past twenty years, the Australian government has also successfully funded students by giving out what are in effect interest-free loans. The loans in the Australian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Australia" type="external">Higher Education Loan Programme</a> (or HELP) do not bear interest, but the government gets back more than it lends, because the principal is indexed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which goes up every year.</p>
<p>Predatory lenders are keeping us in debt peonage through misguided economics and bank-captured legislators. We have people who desperately want to work, to the point of going back to school to try to improve their chances; and we have mountains of work that needs to be done. The only thing keeping them apart is that artificial constraint called “money”, which we have allowed to be created by banks and let out at interest when it could have been created by public institutions for public purposes, either by direct issuance or through publicly-owned banks. We just need to recognize our oppressors and throw off their yoke, and the good times can roll again.</p>
<p />
| 7,684 |
<p />
<p>As we head into the home stretch of 1993, California Governor Pete Wilson is emerging as a dark horse candidate for evil American politician of the year. Now, evil is not a word to be used lightly, and its application to a moderate, seemingly rational Republican sounds harsh, even hysterical. But Wilson’s rationality is feigned, and a thin veil for his malice.</p>
<p>To recap: On August 9th, Wilson called a press conference to publicize a letter he was faxing to President Clinton “on behalf of the people of California.” The letter claimed that a massive influx of illegal immigrants lured by welfare was forcing financially strapped states to deny services to their own citizens. Wilson’s top solution: “Urge Congress to approve a Constitutional amendment to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrant parents.”</p>
<p>The political power of such scapegoating shouldn’t be underestimated. Wilson’s approval rating, previously at a low for any modern California governor, shot up after his media blitz. California’s centrist and liberal senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, were quick to declare that they, too, favor a hard line against illegals.</p>
<p>Almost everyone, of course, is against illegal immigration. It’s corrosive to have laws you can’t enforce. Furthermore, wanting to slow down legal immigration doesn’t make one a racist. Societies naturally have periods (usually coinciding with high unemployment) when they feel they need to limit immigration.</p>
<p>Wilson’s racism begins (and his rationality ends) with his attribution of shiftlessness as motive. Immigrants (legal and illegal) don’t come here seeking welfare, they come looking for jobs. Wilson knows this. As a U.S. senator he sponsored an amendment on behalf of growers allowing them to import extra “guest workers.” Immigrants, whatever their legal status, are generally optimistic, hardworking, adaptive people willing to do the jobs that residents won’t touch. Economic studies show that they give far more to the economy than they take away.</p>
<p>To strip citizenship from the U.S.-born children of illegals (or to deprive them of public schooling, another Wilson suggestion) is not only unconstitutional, it’s stupid. The few people discouraged from immigrating would be far outnumbered by those who would come anyway, but once here might feel they had no stake in a society where their families were permanently disenfranchised.</p>
<p>Wilson is attacking the American dream. Consider General Shalikashvili, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who immigrated here with his parents at age sixteen. The general’s father served as a major in the German SS Waffen and lied about this when immigrating. A clear, documented violation. Punish the son, Wilson says. He would transform our legal principle of citizenship by soil to citizenship by blood. The German system.</p>
<p>I recently visited Germany, where the question of outsiders is very much in the air. Especially in the East, the euphoria of unification has been replaced by self-pity. Do you know who made the East Germans accept Soviet totalitarianism? Who forced them to rat on one another? Who, some believe, are responsible for the economic and moral poverty that now plagues them? The Turkish guest workers in West Germany, of course.</p>
<p>Pete Wilson’s evil isn’t neo-Nazism, but it is anti-Americanism. One of the charges in our Declaration of Independence was that King George was “obstructing the laws for the naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither.” The Founding Fathers envisioned a country without status distinctions based upon heredity. Why does Jefferson’s first self-evident truth– “that all men are created equal”–evoke national pride today despite his omission of women and his acceptance of slavery? Because the phrase implies that the distinctions between people are largely of our own creation, and that a widening gap is a cause for dismay.</p>
<p>Wilson’s letter may have been the first volley in what will become an ugly campaign against immigrants. Emboldened by his rise in the polls, the governor wrote another public letter to President Clinton in September urging that California become the test state to require tamper-proof identification cards certifying citizenship. Obviously this will jolt our economy out of its recession!</p>
<p>Pete Wilson doesn’t care about the state or the future; he’s just interested in the state of his future. In the name of rationality, he is stirring up irrational fears, then denying his virulence like a classic Know-Nothing. At an Orange County border patrol checkpoint press conference, Wilson claimed, “I don’t fault the immigrants. If I were down there, I’d undoubtedly be trying to come up here, too.” This false empathy is a thinly disguised warning about the hungry southern horde.</p>
<p>Wilson isn’t on their side–or ours. The governor is trying to incite in us a hostile outward gaze toward “others.” As with the Birchers of the 1950s, who also began in Southern California, the real danger is not that extreme proposals will be enacted, but that they will warp the debate so much that practical, humane solutions to our problems won’t be discussed.</p>
<p />
|
MotherJones ND93: Nativist Son
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/1993/11/motherjones-nd93-nativist-son/
|
2018-11-01
| 4left
|
MotherJones ND93: Nativist Son
<p />
<p>As we head into the home stretch of 1993, California Governor Pete Wilson is emerging as a dark horse candidate for evil American politician of the year. Now, evil is not a word to be used lightly, and its application to a moderate, seemingly rational Republican sounds harsh, even hysterical. But Wilson’s rationality is feigned, and a thin veil for his malice.</p>
<p>To recap: On August 9th, Wilson called a press conference to publicize a letter he was faxing to President Clinton “on behalf of the people of California.” The letter claimed that a massive influx of illegal immigrants lured by welfare was forcing financially strapped states to deny services to their own citizens. Wilson’s top solution: “Urge Congress to approve a Constitutional amendment to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrant parents.”</p>
<p>The political power of such scapegoating shouldn’t be underestimated. Wilson’s approval rating, previously at a low for any modern California governor, shot up after his media blitz. California’s centrist and liberal senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, were quick to declare that they, too, favor a hard line against illegals.</p>
<p>Almost everyone, of course, is against illegal immigration. It’s corrosive to have laws you can’t enforce. Furthermore, wanting to slow down legal immigration doesn’t make one a racist. Societies naturally have periods (usually coinciding with high unemployment) when they feel they need to limit immigration.</p>
<p>Wilson’s racism begins (and his rationality ends) with his attribution of shiftlessness as motive. Immigrants (legal and illegal) don’t come here seeking welfare, they come looking for jobs. Wilson knows this. As a U.S. senator he sponsored an amendment on behalf of growers allowing them to import extra “guest workers.” Immigrants, whatever their legal status, are generally optimistic, hardworking, adaptive people willing to do the jobs that residents won’t touch. Economic studies show that they give far more to the economy than they take away.</p>
<p>To strip citizenship from the U.S.-born children of illegals (or to deprive them of public schooling, another Wilson suggestion) is not only unconstitutional, it’s stupid. The few people discouraged from immigrating would be far outnumbered by those who would come anyway, but once here might feel they had no stake in a society where their families were permanently disenfranchised.</p>
<p>Wilson is attacking the American dream. Consider General Shalikashvili, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who immigrated here with his parents at age sixteen. The general’s father served as a major in the German SS Waffen and lied about this when immigrating. A clear, documented violation. Punish the son, Wilson says. He would transform our legal principle of citizenship by soil to citizenship by blood. The German system.</p>
<p>I recently visited Germany, where the question of outsiders is very much in the air. Especially in the East, the euphoria of unification has been replaced by self-pity. Do you know who made the East Germans accept Soviet totalitarianism? Who forced them to rat on one another? Who, some believe, are responsible for the economic and moral poverty that now plagues them? The Turkish guest workers in West Germany, of course.</p>
<p>Pete Wilson’s evil isn’t neo-Nazism, but it is anti-Americanism. One of the charges in our Declaration of Independence was that King George was “obstructing the laws for the naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither.” The Founding Fathers envisioned a country without status distinctions based upon heredity. Why does Jefferson’s first self-evident truth– “that all men are created equal”–evoke national pride today despite his omission of women and his acceptance of slavery? Because the phrase implies that the distinctions between people are largely of our own creation, and that a widening gap is a cause for dismay.</p>
<p>Wilson’s letter may have been the first volley in what will become an ugly campaign against immigrants. Emboldened by his rise in the polls, the governor wrote another public letter to President Clinton in September urging that California become the test state to require tamper-proof identification cards certifying citizenship. Obviously this will jolt our economy out of its recession!</p>
<p>Pete Wilson doesn’t care about the state or the future; he’s just interested in the state of his future. In the name of rationality, he is stirring up irrational fears, then denying his virulence like a classic Know-Nothing. At an Orange County border patrol checkpoint press conference, Wilson claimed, “I don’t fault the immigrants. If I were down there, I’d undoubtedly be trying to come up here, too.” This false empathy is a thinly disguised warning about the hungry southern horde.</p>
<p>Wilson isn’t on their side–or ours. The governor is trying to incite in us a hostile outward gaze toward “others.” As with the Birchers of the 1950s, who also began in Southern California, the real danger is not that extreme proposals will be enacted, but that they will warp the debate so much that practical, humane solutions to our problems won’t be discussed.</p>
<p />
| 7,685 |
<p>Published time: 27 Jul, 2017 10:53</p>
<p>The CIA’s alleged ability to trojan an Apple OS disk image has been exposed in ‘Imperial,’ the latest release from WikiLeaks Vault 7 series. This new batch is made of three hacking exploits, ‘Achilles,’ ‘SeaPea’ and ‘Aeris.’</p>
<p>‘Achilles’ is detailed by WikiLeaks in a <a href="https://wikileaks.org/vault7/#Imperial" type="external">statement</a> as producing one or more operators to access an OS X disk image, and execute operations one time. The OS X disk image contains the contents and structure of the device’s storage.</p>
<p>Intel Core 2 Processor and OS X are required on the target’s computer for ‘Achilles’ to operate, according to a <a href="https://wikileaks.org/vault7/document/Achilles-UserGuide/" type="external">user guide</a>.</p>
<p>‘Imperial’ is part of a series by the whistleblowers named ‘Vault 7’ which began in March and has seen releases from WikiLeaks on an almost weekly basis.</p>
<p>WikiLeaks claims the leaks, which detail hacking exploits, come from a computer within the CIA, who would not comment on their alleged origin.</p>
<p>Also detailed in ‘Imperial’ is ‘SeaPea’ which targets Apple devices, providing stealth and tool-launching capabilities to the OS X Rootkit. Running on Mac OSX 10.6 and 10.7 it hides files and directories, socket connections and processes, according to WikiLeaks.</p>
<p>OSX 10.6 and 10.7 are more commonly known as Snow Leopard and Lion respectively, released by Apple in 2009 and supported until 2016.</p>
<p>‘SeaPea’ is installed using root access and remains on the device until either the hard drive is reformatted or the system is upgraded.</p>
<p>‘Aeris’ is detailed in the release as being an automated implant written in the C programming language, compatible with POSIX, a portable operating system interface for Unix. Once installed it allows for file exfiltration of files and encrypted communications.</p>
<p>Previous released material from ‘Vault 7’ exposed hacking exploits which weaponized smartphones and used Smart TVs to spy.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/379775-cia-weaponized-85pc-worlds-smartphones/" type="external">READ MORE: #Vault7: 85% of world’s smart phones ‘weaponized’ by CIA</a></p>
|
CIA ability to trojan Apple OS exposed in latest hacking release
| false |
https://newsline.com/cia-ability-to-trojan-apple-os-exposed-in-latest-hacking-release/
|
2017-07-27
| 1right-center
|
CIA ability to trojan Apple OS exposed in latest hacking release
<p>Published time: 27 Jul, 2017 10:53</p>
<p>The CIA’s alleged ability to trojan an Apple OS disk image has been exposed in ‘Imperial,’ the latest release from WikiLeaks Vault 7 series. This new batch is made of three hacking exploits, ‘Achilles,’ ‘SeaPea’ and ‘Aeris.’</p>
<p>‘Achilles’ is detailed by WikiLeaks in a <a href="https://wikileaks.org/vault7/#Imperial" type="external">statement</a> as producing one or more operators to access an OS X disk image, and execute operations one time. The OS X disk image contains the contents and structure of the device’s storage.</p>
<p>Intel Core 2 Processor and OS X are required on the target’s computer for ‘Achilles’ to operate, according to a <a href="https://wikileaks.org/vault7/document/Achilles-UserGuide/" type="external">user guide</a>.</p>
<p>‘Imperial’ is part of a series by the whistleblowers named ‘Vault 7’ which began in March and has seen releases from WikiLeaks on an almost weekly basis.</p>
<p>WikiLeaks claims the leaks, which detail hacking exploits, come from a computer within the CIA, who would not comment on their alleged origin.</p>
<p>Also detailed in ‘Imperial’ is ‘SeaPea’ which targets Apple devices, providing stealth and tool-launching capabilities to the OS X Rootkit. Running on Mac OSX 10.6 and 10.7 it hides files and directories, socket connections and processes, according to WikiLeaks.</p>
<p>OSX 10.6 and 10.7 are more commonly known as Snow Leopard and Lion respectively, released by Apple in 2009 and supported until 2016.</p>
<p>‘SeaPea’ is installed using root access and remains on the device until either the hard drive is reformatted or the system is upgraded.</p>
<p>‘Aeris’ is detailed in the release as being an automated implant written in the C programming language, compatible with POSIX, a portable operating system interface for Unix. Once installed it allows for file exfiltration of files and encrypted communications.</p>
<p>Previous released material from ‘Vault 7’ exposed hacking exploits which weaponized smartphones and used Smart TVs to spy.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/379775-cia-weaponized-85pc-worlds-smartphones/" type="external">READ MORE: #Vault7: 85% of world’s smart phones ‘weaponized’ by CIA</a></p>
| 7,686 |
<p>Published time: 12 Sep, 2017 10:14</p>
<p>Insolvent German airline Air Berlin has announced the cancellation of more than 70 flights, Tuesday. The measure comes as pilots have called in sick in curiously high numbers, Reuters reports.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/business/399670-air-berlin-files-bankruptcy/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The company’s website reveals canceled flights from several German airports including Berlin Tegel, Duesseldorf, Hamburg, and Cologne.</p>
<p>Last month, Air Berlin, the Germany’s second-largest airline filed for bankruptcy protection shortly after its principal shareholder Etihad Airways announced the withdrawal of funding for the carrier.</p>
<p>Etihad held 29.2 percent of Air Berlin and has reportedly withdrawn financial support following years of losses.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, the Abu Dhabi-based carrier said it would stop financing another European airline Alitalia, which had returned to making a loss. Etihad owns 49 percent of the Italian airline.</p>
<p>Air Berlin received a transitional loan of €150 million from the German government. The allowance may reportedly keep the carrier afloat until mid-November with its German jobs put at risk.</p>
<p>Shortly after the insolvency announcement bidders lined up to acquire Air Berlin’s assets with major European airline Lufthansa the most likely.</p>
<p>Later, Irish low-cost airline Ryanair accused Lufthansa and the German government of conspiracy to carve up the assets of the collapsed airline. Berlin denied the accusation, saying the support for the carrier did not breach anti-trust rules.</p>
<p>Bidders have until September 15 to submit offers. A decision on the fate of Air Berlin could come as quickly as September 21, three days before the German national election.</p>
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Mass pilot 'sickie' grounds Air Berlin flights
| false |
https://newsline.com/mass-pilot-039sickie039-grounds-air-berlin-flights/
|
2017-09-12
| 1right-center
|
Mass pilot 'sickie' grounds Air Berlin flights
<p>Published time: 12 Sep, 2017 10:14</p>
<p>Insolvent German airline Air Berlin has announced the cancellation of more than 70 flights, Tuesday. The measure comes as pilots have called in sick in curiously high numbers, Reuters reports.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/business/399670-air-berlin-files-bankruptcy/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The company’s website reveals canceled flights from several German airports including Berlin Tegel, Duesseldorf, Hamburg, and Cologne.</p>
<p>Last month, Air Berlin, the Germany’s second-largest airline filed for bankruptcy protection shortly after its principal shareholder Etihad Airways announced the withdrawal of funding for the carrier.</p>
<p>Etihad held 29.2 percent of Air Berlin and has reportedly withdrawn financial support following years of losses.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, the Abu Dhabi-based carrier said it would stop financing another European airline Alitalia, which had returned to making a loss. Etihad owns 49 percent of the Italian airline.</p>
<p>Air Berlin received a transitional loan of €150 million from the German government. The allowance may reportedly keep the carrier afloat until mid-November with its German jobs put at risk.</p>
<p>Shortly after the insolvency announcement bidders lined up to acquire Air Berlin’s assets with major European airline Lufthansa the most likely.</p>
<p>Later, Irish low-cost airline Ryanair accused Lufthansa and the German government of conspiracy to carve up the assets of the collapsed airline. Berlin denied the accusation, saying the support for the carrier did not breach anti-trust rules.</p>
<p>Bidders have until September 15 to submit offers. A decision on the fate of Air Berlin could come as quickly as September 21, three days before the German national election.</p>
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<p>This 1932 photo from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library shows hundreds of Mexicans at a Los Angeles train station awaiting deportation to Mexico. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's call for mass deportation of millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, as well as their American-born children, bears similarities to a large-scale removal that actually happened to many Mexican-American families 85 years ago. During the Great Depression, counties and cities in the American Southwest and Midwest forced Mexican immigrants and their families to leave the U.S. over concerns they were taking jobs away from whites despite their legal right to stay. The traumatic impact of the experience on Latinos remains evident today, experts and advocates say.(Los Angeles Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library via AP)</p>
<p>Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's call for mass deportation of millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, as well as their American-born children, bears similarities to a large-scale removal that many Mexican-American families faced 85 years ago.</p>
<p>During the Great Depression, counties and cities in the American Southwest and Midwest forced Mexican immigrants and their families to leave the U.S. over concerns they were taking jobs away from whites despite their legal right to stay.</p>
<p>The result: Around 500,000 to 1 million Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans were pushed out of the country during the 1930s repatriation, as the removal is sometimes called.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>During that time, immigrants were rounded up and sent to Mexico, sometimes in public places and often without formal proceedings. Others, scared under the threat of violence, left voluntarily.</p>
<p>About 60 percent of those who left were American citizens, according to various studies on the 1930s repatriation. Later testimonies show families lost most of their possessions and some family members died trying to return. Neighborhoods in cities such as Houston, San Antonio and Los Angeles became empty.</p>
<p>The impact of the experience on Latinos remains evident today, experts and advocates say.</p>
<p>"It set the tone for later deportations," said Francisco Balderrama, a Chicano studies professor at California State University, Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Two weeks ago, Trump said that, if elected president, he would expand deportations and end "birthright citizenship" for children born to immigrants who are here illegally. Under his plan, American-born children of immigrants also would be deported with their parents, and Mexico would be asked to help build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.</p>
<p>"They're illegal," Trump said of U.S.-born children of people living in the country illegally. "You either have a country or not."</p>
<p>Amid his comments on immigration, polls show negative impressions of Trump among Latinos. A Gallup poll released Aug. 24 found that Hispanics were more likely to give Trump unfavorable ratings than favorable ones by 51 percentage points.</p>
<p>Some immigrant advocates pointed to the removal of prominent Latino journalist Jorge Ramos from an Iowa press conference last week as a metaphor for the candidate's desire to remove Latinos from the United States.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"Mr. Trump should heed the following warning: Our Latino and immigrant communities are not going to forget the way he has treated them," the Washington, D.C.-based Fair Immigration Reform Movement said in a statement.</p>
<p>Ramos, an anchor for Univision, was escorted out by a Trump aide after Ramos, who had criticized Trump previously, tried to question Trump about his immigration plan. Trump interrupted Ramos, saying he hadn't been called on, and ultimately told Ramos, "Go back to Univision."</p>
<p>Ramos was saying, "You cannot deport 11 million people," as he was escorted away. He was later allowed to return.</p>
<p>Trump has provided few details on how his proposed deportation effort would be carried out. The conservative-leaning American Action Forum concluded in a report it would cost between $400 billion to $600 billion and take 20 years to remove an estimated 11.2 million immigrants living in the country illegally.</p>
<p>The large-scale deportation he envisions would be impractical to enact, due to the extent to which Mexican immigrants have integrated into U.S. society, said Columbia University history professor Mae Ngai.</p>
<p>U.S.-born children of immigrants have been automatically considered American citizens since the adoption of the Constitution's 14th Amendment in 1868. A Supreme Court ruling in 1898 halted previous attempts to limit the birthright of Chinese-American citizens after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.</p>
<p>The ruling upheld the clause for all U.S.-born children, Ngai said, and there have been no successful challenges to the clause since.</p>
<p>In the 1930s, Balderrama said, officials skirted the issue of birthright citizenship by saying they did not want to break up families.</p>
<p>"But they did break up families and many children never saw their parents again," said Balderrama, co-author of a book about Mexican repatriation in the 1930s with the late historian Raymond Rodriguez, who testified before a California state committee about seeing his father for the last time at age 10, before the father left for Mexico.</p>
<p>That legacy lingers in songs, often played on Spanish-language radio stations, that allude to mass deportations and separation of loved ones, said Lilia Soto, an American studies professor at the University of Wyoming.</p>
<p>For example, the lyrics to "Ice El Hielo," by the Los Angeles-band La Santa Cecilia, speak of a community afraid that federal agents about to arrive and launch deportations raids at any moment. The ballad "Volver, Volver," sung by Mexican ranchera performer Vicente "Chente" Fernandez, speaks of someone vowing to return to a lover despite all obstacles.</p>
<p>"They're about families being apart," Soto said. "The lyrics are all indirectly linked to this past."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Russell Contreras on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/russcontreras" type="external">http://twitter.com/russcontreras</a></p>
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Trump's mass deportation idea was tried in the 1930s
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/636919/trumps-mass-deportation-idea-was-tried-in-the-1930s.html
| 2least
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Trump's mass deportation idea was tried in the 1930s
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<p>This 1932 photo from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library shows hundreds of Mexicans at a Los Angeles train station awaiting deportation to Mexico. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's call for mass deportation of millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, as well as their American-born children, bears similarities to a large-scale removal that actually happened to many Mexican-American families 85 years ago. During the Great Depression, counties and cities in the American Southwest and Midwest forced Mexican immigrants and their families to leave the U.S. over concerns they were taking jobs away from whites despite their legal right to stay. The traumatic impact of the experience on Latinos remains evident today, experts and advocates say.(Los Angeles Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library via AP)</p>
<p>Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's call for mass deportation of millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, as well as their American-born children, bears similarities to a large-scale removal that many Mexican-American families faced 85 years ago.</p>
<p>During the Great Depression, counties and cities in the American Southwest and Midwest forced Mexican immigrants and their families to leave the U.S. over concerns they were taking jobs away from whites despite their legal right to stay.</p>
<p>The result: Around 500,000 to 1 million Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans were pushed out of the country during the 1930s repatriation, as the removal is sometimes called.</p>
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<p>During that time, immigrants were rounded up and sent to Mexico, sometimes in public places and often without formal proceedings. Others, scared under the threat of violence, left voluntarily.</p>
<p>About 60 percent of those who left were American citizens, according to various studies on the 1930s repatriation. Later testimonies show families lost most of their possessions and some family members died trying to return. Neighborhoods in cities such as Houston, San Antonio and Los Angeles became empty.</p>
<p>The impact of the experience on Latinos remains evident today, experts and advocates say.</p>
<p>"It set the tone for later deportations," said Francisco Balderrama, a Chicano studies professor at California State University, Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Two weeks ago, Trump said that, if elected president, he would expand deportations and end "birthright citizenship" for children born to immigrants who are here illegally. Under his plan, American-born children of immigrants also would be deported with their parents, and Mexico would be asked to help build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.</p>
<p>"They're illegal," Trump said of U.S.-born children of people living in the country illegally. "You either have a country or not."</p>
<p>Amid his comments on immigration, polls show negative impressions of Trump among Latinos. A Gallup poll released Aug. 24 found that Hispanics were more likely to give Trump unfavorable ratings than favorable ones by 51 percentage points.</p>
<p>Some immigrant advocates pointed to the removal of prominent Latino journalist Jorge Ramos from an Iowa press conference last week as a metaphor for the candidate's desire to remove Latinos from the United States.</p>
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<p>"Mr. Trump should heed the following warning: Our Latino and immigrant communities are not going to forget the way he has treated them," the Washington, D.C.-based Fair Immigration Reform Movement said in a statement.</p>
<p>Ramos, an anchor for Univision, was escorted out by a Trump aide after Ramos, who had criticized Trump previously, tried to question Trump about his immigration plan. Trump interrupted Ramos, saying he hadn't been called on, and ultimately told Ramos, "Go back to Univision."</p>
<p>Ramos was saying, "You cannot deport 11 million people," as he was escorted away. He was later allowed to return.</p>
<p>Trump has provided few details on how his proposed deportation effort would be carried out. The conservative-leaning American Action Forum concluded in a report it would cost between $400 billion to $600 billion and take 20 years to remove an estimated 11.2 million immigrants living in the country illegally.</p>
<p>The large-scale deportation he envisions would be impractical to enact, due to the extent to which Mexican immigrants have integrated into U.S. society, said Columbia University history professor Mae Ngai.</p>
<p>U.S.-born children of immigrants have been automatically considered American citizens since the adoption of the Constitution's 14th Amendment in 1868. A Supreme Court ruling in 1898 halted previous attempts to limit the birthright of Chinese-American citizens after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.</p>
<p>The ruling upheld the clause for all U.S.-born children, Ngai said, and there have been no successful challenges to the clause since.</p>
<p>In the 1930s, Balderrama said, officials skirted the issue of birthright citizenship by saying they did not want to break up families.</p>
<p>"But they did break up families and many children never saw their parents again," said Balderrama, co-author of a book about Mexican repatriation in the 1930s with the late historian Raymond Rodriguez, who testified before a California state committee about seeing his father for the last time at age 10, before the father left for Mexico.</p>
<p>That legacy lingers in songs, often played on Spanish-language radio stations, that allude to mass deportations and separation of loved ones, said Lilia Soto, an American studies professor at the University of Wyoming.</p>
<p>For example, the lyrics to "Ice El Hielo," by the Los Angeles-band La Santa Cecilia, speak of a community afraid that federal agents about to arrive and launch deportations raids at any moment. The ballad "Volver, Volver," sung by Mexican ranchera performer Vicente "Chente" Fernandez, speaks of someone vowing to return to a lover despite all obstacles.</p>
<p>"They're about families being apart," Soto said. "The lyrics are all indirectly linked to this past."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Russell Contreras on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/russcontreras" type="external">http://twitter.com/russcontreras</a></p>
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<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Titans finally making the playoffs left Pro Bowl defensive lineman Jurrell Casey speechless.</p>
<p>Well, for a moment anyway.</p>
<p>“Thinking amazing. Unbelievably fulfilling,” Casey said. “I’ve been waiting this for seven years, and finally got the opportunity to get out there.”</p>
<p>Plenty of his Tennessee teammates are experiencing all sorts of emotions after helping end the franchise’s playoff drought after eight long seasons.</p>
<p>Only 18 of the Titans who helped beat <a href="apne.ws/pc2ff17" type="external">Jacksonville 15-10 in the regular-season finale</a> to clinch the AFC’s No. 5 seed have been to the playoffs before.</p>
<p>That leaves 35 making their <a href="https://twitter.com/brettkern6/status/947634245337575424" type="external">playoff debut</a> Saturday when the Titans (9-7) visit the Kansas City Chiefs (10-6).</p>
<p>Linebacker Brian Orakpo has only been with the Titans three seasons, but this will be the postseason debut for the nine-year veteran.</p>
<p>After nine years, the 31-year-old Orakpo was beginning to think he’d never get the chance at a playoff game.</p>
<p>“I’m excited personally, and I’m really going to enjoy it,” Orakpo said. “Work my tail off this whole week to make something really happen while we are in there (the playoffs).”</p>
<p>The Titans, given Monday off, snapped a three-game skid to earn their playoff berth. They will go to Kansas City as big underdogs with the Chiefs already favored by 7½ points.</p>
<p>Long odds are no issue for the Titans who saw firsthand last spring what a team can do in the postseason no matter the seed.</p>
<p>They cheered as the NHL’s Nashville Predators went into the playoffs as the second wild card in the Western Conference only to reach their first Stanley Cup Final.</p>
<p>Now they hope to mimic what the Predators did.</p>
<p>“We’re excited,” quarterback Marcus Mariota said. “Hopefully, we can take it just as far as they did.”</p>
<p>Linebacker Derrick Morgan, Tennessee’s first-round pick back in 2010, had to wait until his eighth NFL season to prepare for his first playoff game.</p>
<p>“We are one of six AFC teams, so anything can happen,” Morgan said. “It’s the playoffs. You have seen a lot of fifth and sixth teams go all the way, so we’ll see what happens.</p>
<p>“It’s been a long time coming. A lot of 2-14 seasons and 3-13, and 6-10 seasons. To finally have a meaningful game in Week 17 and actually get in feels great, man. Our boys don’t stop.”</p>
<p>Coach Mike Mularkey’s job status reportedly was at risk with a loss. Controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk, who promoted Mularkey as an interim coach in November 2015 and gave him the job in January 2016, was in the locker room to greet her coach who just earned his first playoff berth in his fifth full NFL season.</p>
<p>Mularkey said he didn’t feel the need to address the reports that he might be fired with his team.</p>
<p>Instead, he led the Titans to their first back-to-back winning seasons since 2007 and 2008, and <a href="https://twitter.com/Titans/status/947696536305016832" type="external">linebacker Wesley Woodyard gave him a game ball after the game.</a></p>
<p>“It’s more gratifying because I was here for two of the years that we weren’t so good. To watch a team take a franchise and believe in something, and watch it turn around and become competitive every Sunday, where they have a chance to win every single Sunday, is gratifying,” Mularkey said. “That’s what you coach for.”</p>
<p>Now the Titans have another goal they will try to scratch off Saturday: Win their first playoff game since January 2004.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external" /> <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" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a> .</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Teresa M. Walker at www.twitter.com/teresamwalker</p>
<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Titans finally making the playoffs left Pro Bowl defensive lineman Jurrell Casey speechless.</p>
<p>Well, for a moment anyway.</p>
<p>“Thinking amazing. Unbelievably fulfilling,” Casey said. “I’ve been waiting this for seven years, and finally got the opportunity to get out there.”</p>
<p>Plenty of his Tennessee teammates are experiencing all sorts of emotions after helping end the franchise’s playoff drought after eight long seasons.</p>
<p>Only 18 of the Titans who helped beat <a href="apne.ws/pc2ff17" type="external">Jacksonville 15-10 in the regular-season finale</a> to clinch the AFC’s No. 5 seed have been to the playoffs before.</p>
<p>That leaves 35 making their <a href="https://twitter.com/brettkern6/status/947634245337575424" type="external">playoff debut</a> Saturday when the Titans (9-7) visit the Kansas City Chiefs (10-6).</p>
<p>Linebacker Brian Orakpo has only been with the Titans three seasons, but this will be the postseason debut for the nine-year veteran.</p>
<p>After nine years, the 31-year-old Orakpo was beginning to think he’d never get the chance at a playoff game.</p>
<p>“I’m excited personally, and I’m really going to enjoy it,” Orakpo said. “Work my tail off this whole week to make something really happen while we are in there (the playoffs).”</p>
<p>The Titans, given Monday off, snapped a three-game skid to earn their playoff berth. They will go to Kansas City as big underdogs with the Chiefs already favored by 7½ points.</p>
<p>Long odds are no issue for the Titans who saw firsthand last spring what a team can do in the postseason no matter the seed.</p>
<p>They cheered as the NHL’s Nashville Predators went into the playoffs as the second wild card in the Western Conference only to reach their first Stanley Cup Final.</p>
<p>Now they hope to mimic what the Predators did.</p>
<p>“We’re excited,” quarterback Marcus Mariota said. “Hopefully, we can take it just as far as they did.”</p>
<p>Linebacker Derrick Morgan, Tennessee’s first-round pick back in 2010, had to wait until his eighth NFL season to prepare for his first playoff game.</p>
<p>“We are one of six AFC teams, so anything can happen,” Morgan said. “It’s the playoffs. You have seen a lot of fifth and sixth teams go all the way, so we’ll see what happens.</p>
<p>“It’s been a long time coming. A lot of 2-14 seasons and 3-13, and 6-10 seasons. To finally have a meaningful game in Week 17 and actually get in feels great, man. Our boys don’t stop.”</p>
<p>Coach Mike Mularkey’s job status reportedly was at risk with a loss. Controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk, who promoted Mularkey as an interim coach in November 2015 and gave him the job in January 2016, was in the locker room to greet her coach who just earned his first playoff berth in his fifth full NFL season.</p>
<p>Mularkey said he didn’t feel the need to address the reports that he might be fired with his team.</p>
<p>Instead, he led the Titans to their first back-to-back winning seasons since 2007 and 2008, and <a href="https://twitter.com/Titans/status/947696536305016832" type="external">linebacker Wesley Woodyard gave him a game ball after the game.</a></p>
<p>“It’s more gratifying because I was here for two of the years that we weren’t so good. To watch a team take a franchise and believe in something, and watch it turn around and become competitive every Sunday, where they have a chance to win every single Sunday, is gratifying,” Mularkey said. “That’s what you coach for.”</p>
<p>Now the Titans have another goal they will try to scratch off Saturday: Win their first playoff game since January 2004.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external" /> <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" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a> .</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Teresa M. Walker at www.twitter.com/teresamwalker</p>
|
Happy to be in playoffs, Titans ready to show they belong
| false |
https://apnews.com/d6498f4846a9411f8802eef75ad61b4c
|
2018-01-01
| 2least
|
Happy to be in playoffs, Titans ready to show they belong
<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Titans finally making the playoffs left Pro Bowl defensive lineman Jurrell Casey speechless.</p>
<p>Well, for a moment anyway.</p>
<p>“Thinking amazing. Unbelievably fulfilling,” Casey said. “I’ve been waiting this for seven years, and finally got the opportunity to get out there.”</p>
<p>Plenty of his Tennessee teammates are experiencing all sorts of emotions after helping end the franchise’s playoff drought after eight long seasons.</p>
<p>Only 18 of the Titans who helped beat <a href="apne.ws/pc2ff17" type="external">Jacksonville 15-10 in the regular-season finale</a> to clinch the AFC’s No. 5 seed have been to the playoffs before.</p>
<p>That leaves 35 making their <a href="https://twitter.com/brettkern6/status/947634245337575424" type="external">playoff debut</a> Saturday when the Titans (9-7) visit the Kansas City Chiefs (10-6).</p>
<p>Linebacker Brian Orakpo has only been with the Titans three seasons, but this will be the postseason debut for the nine-year veteran.</p>
<p>After nine years, the 31-year-old Orakpo was beginning to think he’d never get the chance at a playoff game.</p>
<p>“I’m excited personally, and I’m really going to enjoy it,” Orakpo said. “Work my tail off this whole week to make something really happen while we are in there (the playoffs).”</p>
<p>The Titans, given Monday off, snapped a three-game skid to earn their playoff berth. They will go to Kansas City as big underdogs with the Chiefs already favored by 7½ points.</p>
<p>Long odds are no issue for the Titans who saw firsthand last spring what a team can do in the postseason no matter the seed.</p>
<p>They cheered as the NHL’s Nashville Predators went into the playoffs as the second wild card in the Western Conference only to reach their first Stanley Cup Final.</p>
<p>Now they hope to mimic what the Predators did.</p>
<p>“We’re excited,” quarterback Marcus Mariota said. “Hopefully, we can take it just as far as they did.”</p>
<p>Linebacker Derrick Morgan, Tennessee’s first-round pick back in 2010, had to wait until his eighth NFL season to prepare for his first playoff game.</p>
<p>“We are one of six AFC teams, so anything can happen,” Morgan said. “It’s the playoffs. You have seen a lot of fifth and sixth teams go all the way, so we’ll see what happens.</p>
<p>“It’s been a long time coming. A lot of 2-14 seasons and 3-13, and 6-10 seasons. To finally have a meaningful game in Week 17 and actually get in feels great, man. Our boys don’t stop.”</p>
<p>Coach Mike Mularkey’s job status reportedly was at risk with a loss. Controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk, who promoted Mularkey as an interim coach in November 2015 and gave him the job in January 2016, was in the locker room to greet her coach who just earned his first playoff berth in his fifth full NFL season.</p>
<p>Mularkey said he didn’t feel the need to address the reports that he might be fired with his team.</p>
<p>Instead, he led the Titans to their first back-to-back winning seasons since 2007 and 2008, and <a href="https://twitter.com/Titans/status/947696536305016832" type="external">linebacker Wesley Woodyard gave him a game ball after the game.</a></p>
<p>“It’s more gratifying because I was here for two of the years that we weren’t so good. To watch a team take a franchise and believe in something, and watch it turn around and become competitive every Sunday, where they have a chance to win every single Sunday, is gratifying,” Mularkey said. “That’s what you coach for.”</p>
<p>Now the Titans have another goal they will try to scratch off Saturday: Win their first playoff game since January 2004.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external" /> <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" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a> .</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Teresa M. Walker at www.twitter.com/teresamwalker</p>
<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Titans finally making the playoffs left Pro Bowl defensive lineman Jurrell Casey speechless.</p>
<p>Well, for a moment anyway.</p>
<p>“Thinking amazing. Unbelievably fulfilling,” Casey said. “I’ve been waiting this for seven years, and finally got the opportunity to get out there.”</p>
<p>Plenty of his Tennessee teammates are experiencing all sorts of emotions after helping end the franchise’s playoff drought after eight long seasons.</p>
<p>Only 18 of the Titans who helped beat <a href="apne.ws/pc2ff17" type="external">Jacksonville 15-10 in the regular-season finale</a> to clinch the AFC’s No. 5 seed have been to the playoffs before.</p>
<p>That leaves 35 making their <a href="https://twitter.com/brettkern6/status/947634245337575424" type="external">playoff debut</a> Saturday when the Titans (9-7) visit the Kansas City Chiefs (10-6).</p>
<p>Linebacker Brian Orakpo has only been with the Titans three seasons, but this will be the postseason debut for the nine-year veteran.</p>
<p>After nine years, the 31-year-old Orakpo was beginning to think he’d never get the chance at a playoff game.</p>
<p>“I’m excited personally, and I’m really going to enjoy it,” Orakpo said. “Work my tail off this whole week to make something really happen while we are in there (the playoffs).”</p>
<p>The Titans, given Monday off, snapped a three-game skid to earn their playoff berth. They will go to Kansas City as big underdogs with the Chiefs already favored by 7½ points.</p>
<p>Long odds are no issue for the Titans who saw firsthand last spring what a team can do in the postseason no matter the seed.</p>
<p>They cheered as the NHL’s Nashville Predators went into the playoffs as the second wild card in the Western Conference only to reach their first Stanley Cup Final.</p>
<p>Now they hope to mimic what the Predators did.</p>
<p>“We’re excited,” quarterback Marcus Mariota said. “Hopefully, we can take it just as far as they did.”</p>
<p>Linebacker Derrick Morgan, Tennessee’s first-round pick back in 2010, had to wait until his eighth NFL season to prepare for his first playoff game.</p>
<p>“We are one of six AFC teams, so anything can happen,” Morgan said. “It’s the playoffs. You have seen a lot of fifth and sixth teams go all the way, so we’ll see what happens.</p>
<p>“It’s been a long time coming. A lot of 2-14 seasons and 3-13, and 6-10 seasons. To finally have a meaningful game in Week 17 and actually get in feels great, man. Our boys don’t stop.”</p>
<p>Coach Mike Mularkey’s job status reportedly was at risk with a loss. Controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk, who promoted Mularkey as an interim coach in November 2015 and gave him the job in January 2016, was in the locker room to greet her coach who just earned his first playoff berth in his fifth full NFL season.</p>
<p>Mularkey said he didn’t feel the need to address the reports that he might be fired with his team.</p>
<p>Instead, he led the Titans to their first back-to-back winning seasons since 2007 and 2008, and <a href="https://twitter.com/Titans/status/947696536305016832" type="external">linebacker Wesley Woodyard gave him a game ball after the game.</a></p>
<p>“It’s more gratifying because I was here for two of the years that we weren’t so good. To watch a team take a franchise and believe in something, and watch it turn around and become competitive every Sunday, where they have a chance to win every single Sunday, is gratifying,” Mularkey said. “That’s what you coach for.”</p>
<p>Now the Titans have another goal they will try to scratch off Saturday: Win their first playoff game since January 2004.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external" /> <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" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a> .</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Teresa M. Walker at www.twitter.com/teresamwalker</p>
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<p />
<p>Women are no strangers to strength training. All sorts of workouts include some level of body-weight exercises or full-fledged weightlifting. Still, most apps only feature women in cardio routines, as if to say that's all they're interested in or capable of doing.</p>
<p>The creators of apps like Spitfire Athlete, Nike Training Club, Fitocracy and Workout Trainer know better. Many, if not all, of the strength training routines in their programs are demonstrated by women. And judging by the tens of thousands of downloads the apps are getting, there's an appetite for more equality in mobile workouts.</p>
<p>Take Spitfire Athlete, an app that exclusively shows women weightlifting, interval-training and just crushing all kinds of fierce workouts. About 78,000 people have downloaded Spitfire Athlete for free since its April 2014 debut in the Apple App store, according to co-creator Erin Parker, an Olympic weightlifter.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Parker and her partner, Nidhi Kulkarni, a competitive rower, set out to create the kind of program they would use for training. The two software engineers were disappointed by the way the fitness industry portrayed and marketed to women.</p>
<p>"We both felt like every single resource out there was not only condescending, but way too focused on how people looked instead of their actual athletic ability," Parker said. "We wanted to bring the kind of structured, performance-oriented training we do to the everyday woman. If she's committing to her workouts, then she could do that in a more intelligent way."</p>
<p>Users can choose from nearly a dozen plans designed to teach them how to train like a pro, with dynamic warm-ups, routines that get progressively harder and cool-downs to reduce injury. Each plan lasts at least four weeks and features professional athletes, including Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitor Rebecca Reuben and powerlifter Emily Hu.</p>
<p>Parker encourages users to start out on the "warrior," a plan designed to get people comfortable with basic weightlifting moves such as squats, dead lifts and bench presses. You can get stronger as the plan ratchets up the amount of weight used in each exercise over the course of four weeks.</p>
<p>"That kind of linear progression is the quickest way for a novice to get all the strength gains that they can before progressing to a more intermediate plan," Parker said.</p>
<p>Instead of focusing on how lifting can give you sexy arms or a firm butt, Spitfire's descriptions tout the health benefits of strength training - protection against osteoporosis, increased metabolism or muscular endurance. Parker and Kulkarni are working on new training plans, including tutorials on how to do a pull-up or a one-arm push-up, as part of the roll out of the "pro" edition of Spitfire this month.</p>
<p>"The weight room is intimidating, but it can be really helpful to look to the routines of inspiring women like Erin and all of the women featured in her app to get started," said personal trainer Krista Stryker, who develops workouts for Spitfire.</p>
<p>In addition to the work she has done for Spitfire, Stryker creates routines for her own app, 12 Minute Athlete. The program focuses on high-intensity interval training, with explosive moves like burpees followed by strength exercises like pike push-ups. Stryker packs in some heart-pumping routines in - you guessed it - 12 minutes, or 16 for those who can spare the time.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"You can do three sets of push-ups, and if you're working as hard as you can during that 30- or 50-second interval you'll build strength and endurance," said Stryker, who stars in all of the demo videos for 12 Minute Athlete. "Not everyone is meant to be a powerlifter, but you've got to try different things to find what works for you."</p>
<p>One of the most popular fitness apps, Nike Training Club, also shows that strength training can come in a variety of forms and be incorporated into all types of workouts. The app, which has been downloaded by 19 million people since 2009, supplies more than 135 routines to get users lean, toned or strong.</p>
<p>The routines are designed by celebrity trainers and feature a good number of celebrity athletes, including tennis great Serena Williams, Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas and basketball star Skylar Diggins. Naturally, everyone is sporting the latest Nike gear. But once you look past the product placement, there is an impressive mix of workouts that are all performed by women.</p>
<p>Although Nike says the app is "ideal for men," the company designed it for women. On its Web site, Nike calls NTC a "women's fitness community offering expertise, inspiration and motivation" to help ladies achieve their goals. While there are no powerlifting moves like on Spitfire, NTC does have a similar you-can-do-anything attitude to encourage women to break out of their comfort zones.</p>
<p>In a sign of true egalitarianism, Workout Trainer gives men and women an equal shot at performing all of the exercises included in the app. You're as likely to find men demonstrating Pilates moves as you are women doing a biceps curl.</p>
<p>"Fitness should be accessible to anyone," said Maria Ly, co-founder of Skimble, the tech company behind Workout Trainer. "We don't say these are moves specifically for men or women; everyone should be able to adapt any of them."</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Training apps for women are growing
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/644330/training-apps-for-women-are-growing.html
|
2015-09-15
| 2least
|
Training apps for women are growing
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Women are no strangers to strength training. All sorts of workouts include some level of body-weight exercises or full-fledged weightlifting. Still, most apps only feature women in cardio routines, as if to say that's all they're interested in or capable of doing.</p>
<p>The creators of apps like Spitfire Athlete, Nike Training Club, Fitocracy and Workout Trainer know better. Many, if not all, of the strength training routines in their programs are demonstrated by women. And judging by the tens of thousands of downloads the apps are getting, there's an appetite for more equality in mobile workouts.</p>
<p>Take Spitfire Athlete, an app that exclusively shows women weightlifting, interval-training and just crushing all kinds of fierce workouts. About 78,000 people have downloaded Spitfire Athlete for free since its April 2014 debut in the Apple App store, according to co-creator Erin Parker, an Olympic weightlifter.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Parker and her partner, Nidhi Kulkarni, a competitive rower, set out to create the kind of program they would use for training. The two software engineers were disappointed by the way the fitness industry portrayed and marketed to women.</p>
<p>"We both felt like every single resource out there was not only condescending, but way too focused on how people looked instead of their actual athletic ability," Parker said. "We wanted to bring the kind of structured, performance-oriented training we do to the everyday woman. If she's committing to her workouts, then she could do that in a more intelligent way."</p>
<p>Users can choose from nearly a dozen plans designed to teach them how to train like a pro, with dynamic warm-ups, routines that get progressively harder and cool-downs to reduce injury. Each plan lasts at least four weeks and features professional athletes, including Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitor Rebecca Reuben and powerlifter Emily Hu.</p>
<p>Parker encourages users to start out on the "warrior," a plan designed to get people comfortable with basic weightlifting moves such as squats, dead lifts and bench presses. You can get stronger as the plan ratchets up the amount of weight used in each exercise over the course of four weeks.</p>
<p>"That kind of linear progression is the quickest way for a novice to get all the strength gains that they can before progressing to a more intermediate plan," Parker said.</p>
<p>Instead of focusing on how lifting can give you sexy arms or a firm butt, Spitfire's descriptions tout the health benefits of strength training - protection against osteoporosis, increased metabolism or muscular endurance. Parker and Kulkarni are working on new training plans, including tutorials on how to do a pull-up or a one-arm push-up, as part of the roll out of the "pro" edition of Spitfire this month.</p>
<p>"The weight room is intimidating, but it can be really helpful to look to the routines of inspiring women like Erin and all of the women featured in her app to get started," said personal trainer Krista Stryker, who develops workouts for Spitfire.</p>
<p>In addition to the work she has done for Spitfire, Stryker creates routines for her own app, 12 Minute Athlete. The program focuses on high-intensity interval training, with explosive moves like burpees followed by strength exercises like pike push-ups. Stryker packs in some heart-pumping routines in - you guessed it - 12 minutes, or 16 for those who can spare the time.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"You can do three sets of push-ups, and if you're working as hard as you can during that 30- or 50-second interval you'll build strength and endurance," said Stryker, who stars in all of the demo videos for 12 Minute Athlete. "Not everyone is meant to be a powerlifter, but you've got to try different things to find what works for you."</p>
<p>One of the most popular fitness apps, Nike Training Club, also shows that strength training can come in a variety of forms and be incorporated into all types of workouts. The app, which has been downloaded by 19 million people since 2009, supplies more than 135 routines to get users lean, toned or strong.</p>
<p>The routines are designed by celebrity trainers and feature a good number of celebrity athletes, including tennis great Serena Williams, Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas and basketball star Skylar Diggins. Naturally, everyone is sporting the latest Nike gear. But once you look past the product placement, there is an impressive mix of workouts that are all performed by women.</p>
<p>Although Nike says the app is "ideal for men," the company designed it for women. On its Web site, Nike calls NTC a "women's fitness community offering expertise, inspiration and motivation" to help ladies achieve their goals. While there are no powerlifting moves like on Spitfire, NTC does have a similar you-can-do-anything attitude to encourage women to break out of their comfort zones.</p>
<p>In a sign of true egalitarianism, Workout Trainer gives men and women an equal shot at performing all of the exercises included in the app. You're as likely to find men demonstrating Pilates moves as you are women doing a biceps curl.</p>
<p>"Fitness should be accessible to anyone," said Maria Ly, co-founder of Skimble, the tech company behind Workout Trainer. "We don't say these are moves specifically for men or women; everyone should be able to adapt any of them."</p>
<p />
<p />
| 7,690 |
<p />
<p>Image source: Staples.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>What: Shares of office-supply retailers Staples and Office Depot rose during March, driven by growing optimism that the merger between the two companies will ultimately be approved. Shares of Staples jumped 16.7% during March, while shares of Office Depot soared 39.8% higher, according to data provided by <a href="https://www.capitaliq.com/CIQDotNet/Login.aspx" type="external">S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/SPLS" type="external">SPLS</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>So what: Late last year, the FTC sued to block the merger between Staples and Office Depot, arguing that allowing the deal to go through would reduce competition and lead to higher prices for large business customers. Both Staples and Office Depot sell supplies directly to large organizations, a distinct and less competitive business compared to retail.</p>
<p>The odds that the merger will be approved looked long until March 23, when a report surfaced indicating that the judge in the FTC's lawsuit rebuked the FTC's tactics, accusing the agency of pressuring e-commerce giant Amazon.com to provide favorable testimony. Amazon competes directly with both Staples and Office Depot in the retail business, and Staples' argument hinged on Amazon as a major threat in the business-to-business market as well.</p>
<p>On March 29, the <a href="http://nypost.com/2016/03/28/staples-closing-in-on-office-depot-deal/" type="external">New York Post Opens a New Window.</a> reported that sources had told it Staples was on the brink of winning its case against the FTC, with a decision expected soon.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Now what: The merger between Staples and Office Depot has been a roller-coaster ride, but it now looks a lot more likely that the deal will go through compared with a few months ago. Shares of both Staples and Office Depot are still below highs reached following the original announcement of the merger in early 2015, and both stocks could see further upside if the FTC is defeated.</p>
<p>If the deal is approved, a combined Staples-Office Depot will be better able to withstand a push from Amazon in the business-to-business market. At the moment, Amazon's presence in the business-to-business market is relatively small, but that probably won't be the case for long.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/05/why-staples-and-office-depot-soared-in-march.aspx" type="external">Why Staples and Office Depot Soared in March Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBargainBin/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Timothy Green Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon.com. 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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Why Staples and Office Depot Soared in March
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/04/05/why-staples-and-office-depot-soared-in-march.html
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2016-04-05
| 0right
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Why Staples and Office Depot Soared in March
<p />
<p>Image source: Staples.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>What: Shares of office-supply retailers Staples and Office Depot rose during March, driven by growing optimism that the merger between the two companies will ultimately be approved. Shares of Staples jumped 16.7% during March, while shares of Office Depot soared 39.8% higher, according to data provided by <a href="https://www.capitaliq.com/CIQDotNet/Login.aspx" type="external">S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/SPLS" type="external">SPLS</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>So what: Late last year, the FTC sued to block the merger between Staples and Office Depot, arguing that allowing the deal to go through would reduce competition and lead to higher prices for large business customers. Both Staples and Office Depot sell supplies directly to large organizations, a distinct and less competitive business compared to retail.</p>
<p>The odds that the merger will be approved looked long until March 23, when a report surfaced indicating that the judge in the FTC's lawsuit rebuked the FTC's tactics, accusing the agency of pressuring e-commerce giant Amazon.com to provide favorable testimony. Amazon competes directly with both Staples and Office Depot in the retail business, and Staples' argument hinged on Amazon as a major threat in the business-to-business market as well.</p>
<p>On March 29, the <a href="http://nypost.com/2016/03/28/staples-closing-in-on-office-depot-deal/" type="external">New York Post Opens a New Window.</a> reported that sources had told it Staples was on the brink of winning its case against the FTC, with a decision expected soon.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Now what: The merger between Staples and Office Depot has been a roller-coaster ride, but it now looks a lot more likely that the deal will go through compared with a few months ago. Shares of both Staples and Office Depot are still below highs reached following the original announcement of the merger in early 2015, and both stocks could see further upside if the FTC is defeated.</p>
<p>If the deal is approved, a combined Staples-Office Depot will be better able to withstand a push from Amazon in the business-to-business market. At the moment, Amazon's presence in the business-to-business market is relatively small, but that probably won't be the case for long.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/05/why-staples-and-office-depot-soared-in-march.aspx" type="external">Why Staples and Office Depot Soared in March Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBargainBin/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Timothy Green Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon.com. 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>
| 7,691 |
<p>Wrestling superstar Perro Aguayo, Jr. was part of the sport's royalty in Mexico, the son of another superstar wrestler from the 1970s. Both men were&#160;known for "La Lanza," a double-footed stomp that devastated opponents. But we'll never see La Lanza again.</p>
<p>Aguayo&#160;died early Saturday morning, after a match on Friday night, sending shockwaves through Mexico.</p>
<p>"It was something very, very tragic," says fellow wrestler&#160;Marco Corleone of Mexico City. "The whole world watched him die in front of our eyes. That's the weirdest part of it all."</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Corleone says Aguayo was&#160;one of the top five wrestlers, or luchadors,&#160;in Mexico. He was an entrepreneur who&#160;started his own company.&#160;But what made him great, Corleone says,&#160;was his style.</p>
<p>"His character was what we call, 'rudo,' which means like the 'bad guy,'" Corleone says.&#160;Yet "the thing about Perro&#160;was that&#160;although he was a bad guy and played the character of a bad guy, he was very beloved. I mean, it was very hard if you were the good guy wrestling him to steal the show from him. He demanded so much attention because he had so much charisma and so much knowledge."</p>
<p>Corleone says wrestlers are treated like superstars in Mexico,&#160;combinations of Hollywood idols&#160;and sports stars.&#160;"When kids grow up here, they want to be soccer players or they want to be luchadors," he says.</p>
<p>That's why people in Mexico are taking the news of his death so hard.&#160;"They didn't just see a wrestler die, they watched a superhero die,"&#160;Corleone says. "They watched Spiderman die in front of their eyes. We're looked at as larger than life, untouchable&#160;and unable to hurt. But, in this case, we saw that a star, a big star, died in front of our eyes and fell victim to an accident and death. And that's the tough part."</p>
|
'They didn't just see a wrestler die, they watched a superhero die'
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2015-03-25/they-didnt-just-see-wrestler-die-they-watched-superhero-die
|
2015-03-25
| 3left-center
|
'They didn't just see a wrestler die, they watched a superhero die'
<p>Wrestling superstar Perro Aguayo, Jr. was part of the sport's royalty in Mexico, the son of another superstar wrestler from the 1970s. Both men were&#160;known for "La Lanza," a double-footed stomp that devastated opponents. But we'll never see La Lanza again.</p>
<p>Aguayo&#160;died early Saturday morning, after a match on Friday night, sending shockwaves through Mexico.</p>
<p>"It was something very, very tragic," says fellow wrestler&#160;Marco Corleone of Mexico City. "The whole world watched him die in front of our eyes. That's the weirdest part of it all."</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Corleone says Aguayo was&#160;one of the top five wrestlers, or luchadors,&#160;in Mexico. He was an entrepreneur who&#160;started his own company.&#160;But what made him great, Corleone says,&#160;was his style.</p>
<p>"His character was what we call, 'rudo,' which means like the 'bad guy,'" Corleone says.&#160;Yet "the thing about Perro&#160;was that&#160;although he was a bad guy and played the character of a bad guy, he was very beloved. I mean, it was very hard if you were the good guy wrestling him to steal the show from him. He demanded so much attention because he had so much charisma and so much knowledge."</p>
<p>Corleone says wrestlers are treated like superstars in Mexico,&#160;combinations of Hollywood idols&#160;and sports stars.&#160;"When kids grow up here, they want to be soccer players or they want to be luchadors," he says.</p>
<p>That's why people in Mexico are taking the news of his death so hard.&#160;"They didn't just see a wrestler die, they watched a superhero die,"&#160;Corleone says. "They watched Spiderman die in front of their eyes. We're looked at as larger than life, untouchable&#160;and unable to hurt. But, in this case, we saw that a star, a big star, died in front of our eyes and fell victim to an accident and death. And that's the tough part."</p>
| 7,692 |
<p>Donald Trump might have built his loyal following almost entirely on being unpresidential, but that doesn't mean he can't play the role, because — as he told an audience of more than 3,000 at a campaign rally in Waterbury, Conn. Saturday — he's "like a really smart person" and being presidential is "easy."</p>
<p>With the convention rapidly approaching and Trump maintaining a sizeable lead, the calls from many on the Right, including some of Trump's most trusted advisors, for him to start acting at least a little like someone people could imagine giving State of the Union addresses have grown. Trump responded to the "presidential" calls Saturday by mocking the idea.</p>
<p>"I can do it. You know what, I'm like a really smart person. Like a lot of you people. Presidential is easy," he said, <a href="http://abc7.com/news/trump-acting-presidential-is-easy/1306309/" type="external">according to ABC News</a>.</p>
<p>"I can do it. You know what, I'm like a really smart person ... Presidential is easy."</p>
<p>Donald Trump</p>
<p>Trump followed up the comment by doing his best impersonation of a lifeless "presidential" candidate, stepping away from the podium, then returning in a decidedly un-Trumpian wooden manner.</p>
<p>"Ladies and gentlemen of Waterbury, it's a great honor to be with you this morning," said boring Presidential Trump to laughs from his loyal fans. Apparently, that's about as long as he could keep it up, as he quickly reverted back to Unpresidential Trump.</p>
<p>After saying most presidents "don't work in the morning," he said again, "[I]t's very easy to be presidential," adding, "I sort of don't like toning it down. If I acted presidential, I guarantee I wouldn't be here."</p>
<p>The Trump campaign has been embroiled in a bit of a civil war as of late, with Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski sidelined after the ugly episode in Jupiter, Florida in which he grabbed former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, something for which he was charged but <a href="" type="internal">not prosecuted</a>. The new guy in charge, long-time GOP operative Paul Manafort, has been installing a more "professional" campaign structure, including <a href="" type="internal">bringing in his lobbyist buddies</a> and trying to get Trump to take on a more measured tone. But as Trump made clear Saturday, he's not so easy to rein in.</p>
<p>Partial transcript via <a href="http://abc7.com/news/trump-acting-presidential-is-easy/1306309/" type="external">ABC7</a>.</p>
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Trump: Acting Presidential Is Easy!
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/5214/trump-acting-presidential-easy-james-barrett
|
2016-04-26
| 0right
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Trump: Acting Presidential Is Easy!
<p>Donald Trump might have built his loyal following almost entirely on being unpresidential, but that doesn't mean he can't play the role, because — as he told an audience of more than 3,000 at a campaign rally in Waterbury, Conn. Saturday — he's "like a really smart person" and being presidential is "easy."</p>
<p>With the convention rapidly approaching and Trump maintaining a sizeable lead, the calls from many on the Right, including some of Trump's most trusted advisors, for him to start acting at least a little like someone people could imagine giving State of the Union addresses have grown. Trump responded to the "presidential" calls Saturday by mocking the idea.</p>
<p>"I can do it. You know what, I'm like a really smart person. Like a lot of you people. Presidential is easy," he said, <a href="http://abc7.com/news/trump-acting-presidential-is-easy/1306309/" type="external">according to ABC News</a>.</p>
<p>"I can do it. You know what, I'm like a really smart person ... Presidential is easy."</p>
<p>Donald Trump</p>
<p>Trump followed up the comment by doing his best impersonation of a lifeless "presidential" candidate, stepping away from the podium, then returning in a decidedly un-Trumpian wooden manner.</p>
<p>"Ladies and gentlemen of Waterbury, it's a great honor to be with you this morning," said boring Presidential Trump to laughs from his loyal fans. Apparently, that's about as long as he could keep it up, as he quickly reverted back to Unpresidential Trump.</p>
<p>After saying most presidents "don't work in the morning," he said again, "[I]t's very easy to be presidential," adding, "I sort of don't like toning it down. If I acted presidential, I guarantee I wouldn't be here."</p>
<p>The Trump campaign has been embroiled in a bit of a civil war as of late, with Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski sidelined after the ugly episode in Jupiter, Florida in which he grabbed former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, something for which he was charged but <a href="" type="internal">not prosecuted</a>. The new guy in charge, long-time GOP operative Paul Manafort, has been installing a more "professional" campaign structure, including <a href="" type="internal">bringing in his lobbyist buddies</a> and trying to get Trump to take on a more measured tone. But as Trump made clear Saturday, he's not so easy to rein in.</p>
<p>Partial transcript via <a href="http://abc7.com/news/trump-acting-presidential-is-easy/1306309/" type="external">ABC7</a>.</p>
| 7,693 |
<p />
<p>SAN JOSE, CA–The Obama war room here is packing up and shutting down. With 31 percent of ballots counted in Santa Clara County, Clinton leads Obama 57 to 35 percent. Assuming the spread holds (and it might not), this is a blow to the Obama campaign. This district <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/02/7105_live_blogging_f.html" type="external">was supposed to be competitive</a>–a place where Obama might <a href="/news/update/2008/02/obama-in-california.html" type="external">cut into Clinton’s lead among Hispanics</a>. To some extent, he has. A few weeks ago Clinton was winning Hispanic votes by a 3-to-1 margin; exit polls tonight show the gap narrowing to roughly 2 to 1. But they <a href="http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/02/06/california-initial-thoughts-on-the-exit-poll.aspx" type="external">also show</a> Latinos comprising 29 percent of the Democratic electorate–a whopping 50 percent increase since the primaries of 2006. This may well be the story of the night. With the results incomplete and the campaigns heading home, though, it’s still hard to say. “If you give me a call tomorrow,” Obama volunteer Peter Allen told me as he downed his last beer of the night, “I’ll probably be able to give you a better and more sober assessment.” And so it goes as well for the press.</p>
<p />
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Bedtime for Team Obama
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2008/02/bedtime-team-obama/
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2008-02-06
| 4left
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Bedtime for Team Obama
<p />
<p>SAN JOSE, CA–The Obama war room here is packing up and shutting down. With 31 percent of ballots counted in Santa Clara County, Clinton leads Obama 57 to 35 percent. Assuming the spread holds (and it might not), this is a blow to the Obama campaign. This district <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/02/7105_live_blogging_f.html" type="external">was supposed to be competitive</a>–a place where Obama might <a href="/news/update/2008/02/obama-in-california.html" type="external">cut into Clinton’s lead among Hispanics</a>. To some extent, he has. A few weeks ago Clinton was winning Hispanic votes by a 3-to-1 margin; exit polls tonight show the gap narrowing to roughly 2 to 1. But they <a href="http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/02/06/california-initial-thoughts-on-the-exit-poll.aspx" type="external">also show</a> Latinos comprising 29 percent of the Democratic electorate–a whopping 50 percent increase since the primaries of 2006. This may well be the story of the night. With the results incomplete and the campaigns heading home, though, it’s still hard to say. “If you give me a call tomorrow,” Obama volunteer Peter Allen told me as he downed his last beer of the night, “I’ll probably be able to give you a better and more sober assessment.” And so it goes as well for the press.</p>
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<p>One of the websites that appeared to be gone had been cited to challenge statements made by the EPA’s new administrator, Scott Pruitt. Another provided detailed information on the previous administration’s Clean Power Plan, including fact sheets about greenhouse gas emissions on the state and local levels and how different demographic groups were affected by such emissions.</p>
<p>The changes came less than 24 hours before thousands of protesters were set to march in Washington and around the country in support of political action to push back against the Trump administration’s rollbacks of former president Barack Obama’s climate policies.</p>
<p>“As EPA renews its commitment to human health and clean air, land, and water, our website needs to reflect the views of the leadership of the agency,” J.P. Freire, the agency’s associate administrator for public affairs, said in a statement. “We want to eliminate confusion by removing outdated language first and making room to discuss how we’re protecting the environment and human health by partnering with states and working within the law.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The agency also said it would carefully archive pages from the past administration.</p>
<p>Yet the website overhaul appears to include not only policy-related changes, but also scrutiny of a scientific Web page that has existed for nearly two decades, and that explained what climate change is and how it worked.</p>
<p>The EPA’s extensive climate change website now redirects to a page that says “this page is being updated” and that “we are currently updating our website to reflect EPA’s priorities under the leadership of President Trump and Administrator Pruitt.” It also links to a full archive of how the page used to look on Jan. 19, before Trump’s inauguration.</p>
<p>The archive notes, in a key section under the “causes of climate change,” that</p>
<p>– – –</p>
<p>Recent climate changes, however, cannot be explained by natural causes alone. Research indicates that natural causes do not explain most observed warming, especially warming since the mid-20th century. Rather, it is extremely likely that human activities have been the dominant cause of that warming.</p>
<p>– – –</p>
<p>It is this language, when the site was still up, that directly contradicted Pruitt. Pruitt had argued on CNBC last month that “measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The EPA’s climate change website stated otherwise, and did so by citing findings of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.</p>
<p>There had been reports early in the Trump administration that the EPA climate change website was set to be taken down, but in the end it did not happen immediately.</p>
<p>The page contains scientific explanations of climate change and its causes and consequences, and has existed in one form or another since the Clinton administration. At that time it was called the agency’s Global Warming site.</p>
<p>The site has long served an informational role and sought to provide a comprehensive review of basic climate science, the effects of climate change, and how it is affecting the United States. In addition it contained information about the agency’s approach to climate change and how people could take steps to lower their own contributions to climate change.</p>
<p>However, the site has run into political difficulties before. Under President George W. Bush, updates to the site were frozen and then required to undergo White House review. However, this process did not lead to substantive changes in scientific content.</p>
<p>In its press statement, the EPA said that when it comes to website changes, “the first page to be updated is a page reflecting President Trump’s Executive Order on Energy Independence, which calls for a review of the so-called Clean Power Plan.”</p>
<p>That site, <a href="http://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan," type="external">www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan,</a> now redirects to https://www.epa.gov/Energy-Independence, which features an image of President Trump signing an executive order aimed at dismantling the power plant rule and other Obama-era climate regulations.</p>
<p>In the statement, Freire said that “language associated with the Clean Power Plan, written by the last administration, is out-of-date. Similarly, content related to climate and regulation is also under review.”</p>
<p>Several career EPA employees, who asked for anonymity out of fear of retribution, said they were not briefed in advance about the decision to alter the agency’s site.</p>
<p>“People are obviously unhappy,” one employee said. “It is, in my opinion, the best climate education website out there.”</p>
<p>David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air program for the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, tweeted Friday, “Cleansing has begun. EPA website scrubbed of pages on “so-called” Clean Power Plan. Now only alternative facts.”</p>
<p>Another EPA website, documenting climate change “indicators” across the United States, remained up on Friday.</p>
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EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades
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https://abqjournal.com/995488/epa-website-removes-climate-science-site-from-public-view-after-two-decades.html
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EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades
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<p />
<p>One of the websites that appeared to be gone had been cited to challenge statements made by the EPA’s new administrator, Scott Pruitt. Another provided detailed information on the previous administration’s Clean Power Plan, including fact sheets about greenhouse gas emissions on the state and local levels and how different demographic groups were affected by such emissions.</p>
<p>The changes came less than 24 hours before thousands of protesters were set to march in Washington and around the country in support of political action to push back against the Trump administration’s rollbacks of former president Barack Obama’s climate policies.</p>
<p>“As EPA renews its commitment to human health and clean air, land, and water, our website needs to reflect the views of the leadership of the agency,” J.P. Freire, the agency’s associate administrator for public affairs, said in a statement. “We want to eliminate confusion by removing outdated language first and making room to discuss how we’re protecting the environment and human health by partnering with states and working within the law.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The agency also said it would carefully archive pages from the past administration.</p>
<p>Yet the website overhaul appears to include not only policy-related changes, but also scrutiny of a scientific Web page that has existed for nearly two decades, and that explained what climate change is and how it worked.</p>
<p>The EPA’s extensive climate change website now redirects to a page that says “this page is being updated” and that “we are currently updating our website to reflect EPA’s priorities under the leadership of President Trump and Administrator Pruitt.” It also links to a full archive of how the page used to look on Jan. 19, before Trump’s inauguration.</p>
<p>The archive notes, in a key section under the “causes of climate change,” that</p>
<p>– – –</p>
<p>Recent climate changes, however, cannot be explained by natural causes alone. Research indicates that natural causes do not explain most observed warming, especially warming since the mid-20th century. Rather, it is extremely likely that human activities have been the dominant cause of that warming.</p>
<p>– – –</p>
<p>It is this language, when the site was still up, that directly contradicted Pruitt. Pruitt had argued on CNBC last month that “measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The EPA’s climate change website stated otherwise, and did so by citing findings of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.</p>
<p>There had been reports early in the Trump administration that the EPA climate change website was set to be taken down, but in the end it did not happen immediately.</p>
<p>The page contains scientific explanations of climate change and its causes and consequences, and has existed in one form or another since the Clinton administration. At that time it was called the agency’s Global Warming site.</p>
<p>The site has long served an informational role and sought to provide a comprehensive review of basic climate science, the effects of climate change, and how it is affecting the United States. In addition it contained information about the agency’s approach to climate change and how people could take steps to lower their own contributions to climate change.</p>
<p>However, the site has run into political difficulties before. Under President George W. Bush, updates to the site were frozen and then required to undergo White House review. However, this process did not lead to substantive changes in scientific content.</p>
<p>In its press statement, the EPA said that when it comes to website changes, “the first page to be updated is a page reflecting President Trump’s Executive Order on Energy Independence, which calls for a review of the so-called Clean Power Plan.”</p>
<p>That site, <a href="http://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan," type="external">www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan,</a> now redirects to https://www.epa.gov/Energy-Independence, which features an image of President Trump signing an executive order aimed at dismantling the power plant rule and other Obama-era climate regulations.</p>
<p>In the statement, Freire said that “language associated with the Clean Power Plan, written by the last administration, is out-of-date. Similarly, content related to climate and regulation is also under review.”</p>
<p>Several career EPA employees, who asked for anonymity out of fear of retribution, said they were not briefed in advance about the decision to alter the agency’s site.</p>
<p>“People are obviously unhappy,” one employee said. “It is, in my opinion, the best climate education website out there.”</p>
<p>David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air program for the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, tweeted Friday, “Cleansing has begun. EPA website scrubbed of pages on “so-called” Clean Power Plan. Now only alternative facts.”</p>
<p>Another EPA website, documenting climate change “indicators” across the United States, remained up on Friday.</p>
| 7,695 |
|
<p>The death knell has been sounded for the Rocky Mountain News, E.W. Scripps’ Denver-area newspaper, which is scheduled to close after Friday’s edition is churned out, no doubt signaling more mayhem to come in the old media world.</p>
<p>The New York Times:</p>
<p>Changing readership habits and increasing competition from the Internet have hit the newspaper industry especially hard, cutting overall circulation sharply over the last decade. Those forces, and the severe economic downturn, have significantly eroded advertising, the primary revenue source for newspapers.</p>
<p>The Rocky has about 230 reporters, editors and other employees in its newsroom. It will close just two months short of its 150th anniversary.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/rocky-mountain-news-to-shut-down/?ref=media" type="external">Read more</a></p>
|
The Rocky Going the Way of the Dodo
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/the-rocky-going-the-way-of-the-dodo/
|
2009-02-27
| 4left
|
The Rocky Going the Way of the Dodo
<p>The death knell has been sounded for the Rocky Mountain News, E.W. Scripps’ Denver-area newspaper, which is scheduled to close after Friday’s edition is churned out, no doubt signaling more mayhem to come in the old media world.</p>
<p>The New York Times:</p>
<p>Changing readership habits and increasing competition from the Internet have hit the newspaper industry especially hard, cutting overall circulation sharply over the last decade. Those forces, and the severe economic downturn, have significantly eroded advertising, the primary revenue source for newspapers.</p>
<p>The Rocky has about 230 reporters, editors and other employees in its newsroom. It will close just two months short of its 150th anniversary.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/rocky-mountain-news-to-shut-down/?ref=media" type="external">Read more</a></p>
| 7,696 |
<p />
<p>Scandals often play out in a set pattern: the news breaks, there is public outrage, followed by calls for action. Next, Congressional hearings are held, partisan wrangling ensues and, by the time it is resolved, the scandal has faded from the public eye and any action taken is minimal at best. Equifax (NYSE:EFX), the credit reporting company that failed to prevent hackers from exposing the personal information of 143 million Americans, is in the early days of this cycle. Late Monday the company disclosed that another 2.5 million accounts were hit, bringing the total to 145.5 million.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Before a similar incident happens again, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton has a very small window to do the right thing.&#160; The SEC should immediately require all companies to promptly disclose any significant computer hack to investors and the public, which I call the “Equifax Rule.”</p>
<p>Computer hacks, resulting in the theft of personal information by criminals seeking to rip off as many Americans as possible with the stolen data, have become an epidemic.&#160; In addition to the Equifax breach, Target (NYSE:TGT) stores disclosed in December 2013 that it had been hacked and credit card and other data of 70 million customers had been stolen.&#160; Yahoo, now a unit of Verizon (NYSE:VZ), has been breached twice, the most serious being in 2013, which affected over 1 billion accounts.&#160; Yahoo did not tell the public its information was stolen until late 2016, almost three years later.&#160; Equifax was better, but it still took executives six weeks to disclose the hack.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that hacks are very important information to investors (in addition to customers).&#160; For example, when the hack was announced, Yahoo’s stock dropped 4.4% the next trading day, and Target reported a 40% drop in fourth quarter profits following the breach.&#160; Equifax’s stock dropped from $143 per share to $93 per share, or about a 33% decrease over the course of the following week after the hack was announced. It has since rebounded about 15% to the $107 level. That means the information is “material” to investors, which the SEC typically requires companies to disclose.&#160; However, fearing reputation harm as well as liability, companies have been slow and reluctant to disclose hacks.&#160;The SEC needs to remove any doubt and declare significant hacks material&#160;so that&#160;companies and their legal teams&#160;will&#160;disclose them.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>To be sure, detecting, halting and investigating a computer hack is usually very difficult and often takes substantial time.&#160; That is why an “Equifax Rule” is needed.&#160; With such a rule, there will be no more delays while facts are gathered and conclusions are drawn.&#160; After all, the criminals don’t delay.&#160; They immediately start using the stolen information to rip off Americans who don’t even know their information has been stolen.</p>
<p>A simple “Equifax Rule” will directly fix that: if a company suffers a significant hack, it is promptly disclosed and Americans can take action to protect themselves.&#160;&#160; Such a rule will also ensure that Americans are not victimized twice: first by the criminals and then by the corporations who fail to tell them of the hack.</p>
<p>Dennis M. Kelleher is president and CEO of&#160; <a href="https://bettermarkets.com/" type="external">Better Markets, Opens a New Window.</a> a Washington-based independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes the public interest in financial reform, financial markets and the economy.</p>
|
"Equifax Rule" needed for America - now: Opinion
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/10/03/equifax-rule-needed-for-america-now-opinion.html
|
2017-10-03
| 0right
|
"Equifax Rule" needed for America - now: Opinion
<p />
<p>Scandals often play out in a set pattern: the news breaks, there is public outrage, followed by calls for action. Next, Congressional hearings are held, partisan wrangling ensues and, by the time it is resolved, the scandal has faded from the public eye and any action taken is minimal at best. Equifax (NYSE:EFX), the credit reporting company that failed to prevent hackers from exposing the personal information of 143 million Americans, is in the early days of this cycle. Late Monday the company disclosed that another 2.5 million accounts were hit, bringing the total to 145.5 million.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Before a similar incident happens again, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton has a very small window to do the right thing.&#160; The SEC should immediately require all companies to promptly disclose any significant computer hack to investors and the public, which I call the “Equifax Rule.”</p>
<p>Computer hacks, resulting in the theft of personal information by criminals seeking to rip off as many Americans as possible with the stolen data, have become an epidemic.&#160; In addition to the Equifax breach, Target (NYSE:TGT) stores disclosed in December 2013 that it had been hacked and credit card and other data of 70 million customers had been stolen.&#160; Yahoo, now a unit of Verizon (NYSE:VZ), has been breached twice, the most serious being in 2013, which affected over 1 billion accounts.&#160; Yahoo did not tell the public its information was stolen until late 2016, almost three years later.&#160; Equifax was better, but it still took executives six weeks to disclose the hack.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that hacks are very important information to investors (in addition to customers).&#160; For example, when the hack was announced, Yahoo’s stock dropped 4.4% the next trading day, and Target reported a 40% drop in fourth quarter profits following the breach.&#160; Equifax’s stock dropped from $143 per share to $93 per share, or about a 33% decrease over the course of the following week after the hack was announced. It has since rebounded about 15% to the $107 level. That means the information is “material” to investors, which the SEC typically requires companies to disclose.&#160; However, fearing reputation harm as well as liability, companies have been slow and reluctant to disclose hacks.&#160;The SEC needs to remove any doubt and declare significant hacks material&#160;so that&#160;companies and their legal teams&#160;will&#160;disclose them.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>To be sure, detecting, halting and investigating a computer hack is usually very difficult and often takes substantial time.&#160; That is why an “Equifax Rule” is needed.&#160; With such a rule, there will be no more delays while facts are gathered and conclusions are drawn.&#160; After all, the criminals don’t delay.&#160; They immediately start using the stolen information to rip off Americans who don’t even know their information has been stolen.</p>
<p>A simple “Equifax Rule” will directly fix that: if a company suffers a significant hack, it is promptly disclosed and Americans can take action to protect themselves.&#160;&#160; Such a rule will also ensure that Americans are not victimized twice: first by the criminals and then by the corporations who fail to tell them of the hack.</p>
<p>Dennis M. Kelleher is president and CEO of&#160; <a href="https://bettermarkets.com/" type="external">Better Markets, Opens a New Window.</a> a Washington-based independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes the public interest in financial reform, financial markets and the economy.</p>
| 7,697 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>A resolution issued after a special meeting of OIC foreign ministers to discuss the Rohingya crisis urged Myanmar to accept the OIC’s visit. It asked Myanmar to implement the rule of law, work toward a sustainable solution, and allow the safe return of refugees and “unimpeded and unconditional access” for humanitarian aid to the affected area.</p>
<p>Rohingya villagers and activists say hundreds of civilians have been killed since October, although figures cannot be verified because authorities have limited access for aid workers and journalists. Recent satellite images show thousands of houses were burned.</p>
<p>Myanmar’s army began a crackdown in Rakhine state in October after nine policemen were killed. The security forces are accused of killings, rape and the burning of homes that have driven some 65,000 refugees across the border into Bangladesh in the past three months.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The government and the army say they have been conducting operations to clear the area of armed elements.</p>
<p>Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said an independent assessment of the situation would help Myanmar’s government since it has rejected accusations of widespread abuses against the Rohingya.</p>
<p>“In order to ascertain the reality of it, why not receive an independent team to assess whether what has been said really happened or it is just mere propaganda. In actual fact, it is good for them,” Anifah told reporters at the end of Thursday’s meeting.</p>
<p>Earlier Thursday, Malaysia said the crisis was no longer Myanmar’s internal affair because it has fueled an exodus of refugees that could destabilize the region. Indonesia also offered to be a facilitator to find a solution to the crisis.</p>
<p>Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, delivering a speech at the meeting, warned that the violence must end, or militants including the Islamic State group could infiltrate and radicalize the Rohingya.</p>
<p>Najib urged Myanmar to stop all discrimination and attacks, and repeated calls for the free delivery of aid and safe return of refugees.</p>
<p>“This must happen now. … the government of Myanmar disputes the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing,’ but whatever the terminology, the Rohingya cannot wait,” he said.</p>
<p>Najib said Malaysia will donate another 10 million ringgit ($2.25 million) for humanitarian aid and social projects in Rakhine, where most of the Rohingya have lived for generations. Many have been denied Myanmar citizenship.</p>
<p>Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said on the sidelines of the meeting that Jakarta was “more than ready to play a bridging role” to help Myanmar and its Muslim minority. Marsudi said she will fly to Yangon on Friday to meet with Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and plans to travel to Rakhine on Saturday.</p>
<p>OIC Secretary General Yousef Al Othaimeen said Myanmar must halt “ongoing discrimination and the unwarranted systematic abuse against the Rohingya.”</p>
<p>A small group of Rohingya gathered at the building where the OIC ministers were meeting and repeated calls for an independent investigation into their plight.</p>
|
OIC hopes to send team to Myanmar to study Rohingya’s plight
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/931134/oic-hopes-to-send-team-to-myanmar-to-study-rohingyas-plight.html
|
2017-01-19
| 2least
|
OIC hopes to send team to Myanmar to study Rohingya’s plight
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>A resolution issued after a special meeting of OIC foreign ministers to discuss the Rohingya crisis urged Myanmar to accept the OIC’s visit. It asked Myanmar to implement the rule of law, work toward a sustainable solution, and allow the safe return of refugees and “unimpeded and unconditional access” for humanitarian aid to the affected area.</p>
<p>Rohingya villagers and activists say hundreds of civilians have been killed since October, although figures cannot be verified because authorities have limited access for aid workers and journalists. Recent satellite images show thousands of houses were burned.</p>
<p>Myanmar’s army began a crackdown in Rakhine state in October after nine policemen were killed. The security forces are accused of killings, rape and the burning of homes that have driven some 65,000 refugees across the border into Bangladesh in the past three months.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The government and the army say they have been conducting operations to clear the area of armed elements.</p>
<p>Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said an independent assessment of the situation would help Myanmar’s government since it has rejected accusations of widespread abuses against the Rohingya.</p>
<p>“In order to ascertain the reality of it, why not receive an independent team to assess whether what has been said really happened or it is just mere propaganda. In actual fact, it is good for them,” Anifah told reporters at the end of Thursday’s meeting.</p>
<p>Earlier Thursday, Malaysia said the crisis was no longer Myanmar’s internal affair because it has fueled an exodus of refugees that could destabilize the region. Indonesia also offered to be a facilitator to find a solution to the crisis.</p>
<p>Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, delivering a speech at the meeting, warned that the violence must end, or militants including the Islamic State group could infiltrate and radicalize the Rohingya.</p>
<p>Najib urged Myanmar to stop all discrimination and attacks, and repeated calls for the free delivery of aid and safe return of refugees.</p>
<p>“This must happen now. … the government of Myanmar disputes the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing,’ but whatever the terminology, the Rohingya cannot wait,” he said.</p>
<p>Najib said Malaysia will donate another 10 million ringgit ($2.25 million) for humanitarian aid and social projects in Rakhine, where most of the Rohingya have lived for generations. Many have been denied Myanmar citizenship.</p>
<p>Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said on the sidelines of the meeting that Jakarta was “more than ready to play a bridging role” to help Myanmar and its Muslim minority. Marsudi said she will fly to Yangon on Friday to meet with Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and plans to travel to Rakhine on Saturday.</p>
<p>OIC Secretary General Yousef Al Othaimeen said Myanmar must halt “ongoing discrimination and the unwarranted systematic abuse against the Rohingya.”</p>
<p>A small group of Rohingya gathered at the building where the OIC ministers were meeting and repeated calls for an independent investigation into their plight.</p>
| 7,698 |
<p>A <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/12/shaun-king-supporters-cook-up-new-conspiracy-theory-still-smarting-because-their-hero-isnt-black/" type="external">fake black man</a> appears to have faked where money from his charitable organizations was going.</p>
<p>Shaun King, a prominent Black Lives Matter figure, got into a <a href="http://www.bizpacreview.com/2015/12/14/when-two-race-baiting-scam-artists-collide-on-social-media-284196?hvid=6anoE8" type="external">Twitter spat</a> with Black Lives Matter leader <a href="" type="internal">DeRay McKesson</a> because McKesson claimed that King blocked him when he asked questions about King's financial dealings.</p>
<p>Leftist activist Goldie Taylor is now joining in, questioning how King handles his organizations' finances.</p>
<p>"To be honest, I have long been aware of the suspicions some harbor about how he manages charitable donations," Taylor <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/16/where-did-all-the-money-shaun-king-raised-for-black-lives-go.html" type="external">wrote</a> in The Daily Beast. "I have groused privately about the veracity of some of his reporting and whether his body of writing met the publishing standards that so many in this business work under. I heard the whispers, the backroom talk from people who did not want to be seen as 'racist' or acting like 'crabs in the barrel' for criticizing King."</p>
<p>Taylor examines King's organizations that have raised the questions:</p>
<p>In November, Breitbart's <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/20/5-questions-for-shaun-king-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-race/" type="external">Milo Yiannopoulos</a> asked the following questions about King's financial dealings:</p>
<p>1) Can you explain the difference between the $540,000 reportedly raised on Twitchange to help Haiti with the $200,000 eventually sent via Paypal to the Northwest Haiti Christian Ministry? Was the new facility for the Miriam Center ever built? If not, at what point do you plan to account for the remaining funds–over a third of a million dollars?</p>
<p>2) Knowing that truth is the ultimate defense against defamation, and that during your trial there will likely be discovery to prove or disprove your case, do you still intend to sue your former classmate for libel or slander for raising questions about what you say was a “hate crime” perpetrated against you in the 1990s? If so, when, and in what jurisdiction?</p>
<p>3) Do you plan on making good on the rewards from the $17,000 Kickstarter for your book? Many of your supporters say they never got what they paid for and their inquiries have been ignored. Will you pledge to address these complaints and issue refunds where appropriate?</p>
<p>4) Do you plan to pay Michael Moore for the bail for on an activist who broke the law tearing down a Confederate flag at your urging? Putting aside the legality of encouraging someone to commit a crime, you advertised a dollar amount but then Michael Moore had to step up and offer to cover it. Did Michael Moore eventually pay that bail, and if so, will you reimburse him?</p>
<p>5) You’ve said you’ve raised nearly half a million dollars for families affected by police violence. Which families? How can we get hold of them to verify this? How is anyone supposed to verify that the funds you raise end up with the people they are supposed to benefit? If there’s a tax exemption or international jurisdiction issue, I am happy to abide by standard journalistic practices of off the record or background conversations.</p>
<p><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/16/charities-touted-by-black-lives-matter-activist-shaun-king-appear-to-have-never-existed/" type="external">The Daily Caller</a> also reported that King has solicited donations for charities that did not exist. King lobbied for donations to an organization called Justice That's All, which he claimed was a 501(c)3 organization. The problem is, Justice That's All is nowhere to be found in the Internal Revenue Service's database. King also solicited donations for a nonprofit called the Upfront Foundation, an organization that was never created.</p>
<p>"To be honest, I have long been aware of the suspicions some harbor about how he manages charitable donations."</p>
<p>Leftist activist Goldie Taylor on Shaun King</p>
<p>Taylor concludes her column by declaring, "It’s time to clear the record. Unless and until he does, King’s credibility as a social justice leader of any note hangs in the balance."</p>
|
Fake Black Man May Have Faked Where Charity Money Went
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/1944/fake-black-man-may-have-faked-where-charity-money-aaron-bandler
|
2015-12-17
| 0right
|
Fake Black Man May Have Faked Where Charity Money Went
<p>A <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/12/shaun-king-supporters-cook-up-new-conspiracy-theory-still-smarting-because-their-hero-isnt-black/" type="external">fake black man</a> appears to have faked where money from his charitable organizations was going.</p>
<p>Shaun King, a prominent Black Lives Matter figure, got into a <a href="http://www.bizpacreview.com/2015/12/14/when-two-race-baiting-scam-artists-collide-on-social-media-284196?hvid=6anoE8" type="external">Twitter spat</a> with Black Lives Matter leader <a href="" type="internal">DeRay McKesson</a> because McKesson claimed that King blocked him when he asked questions about King's financial dealings.</p>
<p>Leftist activist Goldie Taylor is now joining in, questioning how King handles his organizations' finances.</p>
<p>"To be honest, I have long been aware of the suspicions some harbor about how he manages charitable donations," Taylor <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/16/where-did-all-the-money-shaun-king-raised-for-black-lives-go.html" type="external">wrote</a> in The Daily Beast. "I have groused privately about the veracity of some of his reporting and whether his body of writing met the publishing standards that so many in this business work under. I heard the whispers, the backroom talk from people who did not want to be seen as 'racist' or acting like 'crabs in the barrel' for criticizing King."</p>
<p>Taylor examines King's organizations that have raised the questions:</p>
<p>In November, Breitbart's <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/20/5-questions-for-shaun-king-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-race/" type="external">Milo Yiannopoulos</a> asked the following questions about King's financial dealings:</p>
<p>1) Can you explain the difference between the $540,000 reportedly raised on Twitchange to help Haiti with the $200,000 eventually sent via Paypal to the Northwest Haiti Christian Ministry? Was the new facility for the Miriam Center ever built? If not, at what point do you plan to account for the remaining funds–over a third of a million dollars?</p>
<p>2) Knowing that truth is the ultimate defense against defamation, and that during your trial there will likely be discovery to prove or disprove your case, do you still intend to sue your former classmate for libel or slander for raising questions about what you say was a “hate crime” perpetrated against you in the 1990s? If so, when, and in what jurisdiction?</p>
<p>3) Do you plan on making good on the rewards from the $17,000 Kickstarter for your book? Many of your supporters say they never got what they paid for and their inquiries have been ignored. Will you pledge to address these complaints and issue refunds where appropriate?</p>
<p>4) Do you plan to pay Michael Moore for the bail for on an activist who broke the law tearing down a Confederate flag at your urging? Putting aside the legality of encouraging someone to commit a crime, you advertised a dollar amount but then Michael Moore had to step up and offer to cover it. Did Michael Moore eventually pay that bail, and if so, will you reimburse him?</p>
<p>5) You’ve said you’ve raised nearly half a million dollars for families affected by police violence. Which families? How can we get hold of them to verify this? How is anyone supposed to verify that the funds you raise end up with the people they are supposed to benefit? If there’s a tax exemption or international jurisdiction issue, I am happy to abide by standard journalistic practices of off the record or background conversations.</p>
<p><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/16/charities-touted-by-black-lives-matter-activist-shaun-king-appear-to-have-never-existed/" type="external">The Daily Caller</a> also reported that King has solicited donations for charities that did not exist. King lobbied for donations to an organization called Justice That's All, which he claimed was a 501(c)3 organization. The problem is, Justice That's All is nowhere to be found in the Internal Revenue Service's database. King also solicited donations for a nonprofit called the Upfront Foundation, an organization that was never created.</p>
<p>"To be honest, I have long been aware of the suspicions some harbor about how he manages charitable donations."</p>
<p>Leftist activist Goldie Taylor on Shaun King</p>
<p>Taylor concludes her column by declaring, "It’s time to clear the record. Unless and until he does, King’s credibility as a social justice leader of any note hangs in the balance."</p>
| 7,699 |
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