news_text
stringlengths 0
312k
| title
stringlengths 0
11.1k
| hyperpartisan
bool 2
classes | url
stringlengths 20
344
| published_at
stringlengths 0
10
| bias
class label 5
classes | text
stringlengths 19
312k
| uid
int64 0
600k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
<p>TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Gov. Sam Brownback is authorizing a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those involved in the death of a woman who was found floating in a reservoir.</p>
<p>The governor issued an executive order Tuesday in the case of 33-year-old Cassie Ann Easom, of Miami, Oklahoma.</p>
<p>She was found Dec. 7 floating in the Elk Creek Reservoir in southwest Kansas and was later declared dead. Investigators say she was shot several times in the head.</p>
<p>Anyone with information is asked to call the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office or the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.</p>
<p>The executive order makes the reward offer effective immediately.</p>
<p>TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Gov. Sam Brownback is authorizing a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those involved in the death of a woman who was found floating in a reservoir.</p>
<p>The governor issued an executive order Tuesday in the case of 33-year-old Cassie Ann Easom, of Miami, Oklahoma.</p>
<p>She was found Dec. 7 floating in the Elk Creek Reservoir in southwest Kansas and was later declared dead. Investigators say she was shot several times in the head.</p>
<p>Anyone with information is asked to call the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office or the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.</p>
<p>The executive order makes the reward offer effective immediately.</p>
|
$5,000 reward offered in shooting death of Oklahoma woman
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/b0e803df9d6944078475d4748a4148a2
|
2018-01-23
| 2least
|
$5,000 reward offered in shooting death of Oklahoma woman
<p>TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Gov. Sam Brownback is authorizing a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those involved in the death of a woman who was found floating in a reservoir.</p>
<p>The governor issued an executive order Tuesday in the case of 33-year-old Cassie Ann Easom, of Miami, Oklahoma.</p>
<p>She was found Dec. 7 floating in the Elk Creek Reservoir in southwest Kansas and was later declared dead. Investigators say she was shot several times in the head.</p>
<p>Anyone with information is asked to call the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office or the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.</p>
<p>The executive order makes the reward offer effective immediately.</p>
<p>TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Gov. Sam Brownback is authorizing a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those involved in the death of a woman who was found floating in a reservoir.</p>
<p>The governor issued an executive order Tuesday in the case of 33-year-old Cassie Ann Easom, of Miami, Oklahoma.</p>
<p>She was found Dec. 7 floating in the Elk Creek Reservoir in southwest Kansas and was later declared dead. Investigators say she was shot several times in the head.</p>
<p>Anyone with information is asked to call the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office or the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.</p>
<p>The executive order makes the reward offer effective immediately.</p>
| 8,000 |
<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville left wing Filip Forsberg was placed on injured reserve with an upper-body injury Saturday before the Predators' game against Minnesota, ending his regular-season and postseason consecutive games streak at 325.</p>
<p>Forsberg had 15:04 of ice time Friday night in a loss in Minnesota. His last shift ended with 8:40 remaining in the third period. &#160;</p>
<p>The Predators did not offer a timetable for Forsberg's return. As a result of being placed on injured reserve, which is at least one week in length, Forsberg will miss at least three games.</p>
<p>The high-scoring Swede has played in all 82 regular-season games for Nashville the past three seasons and all 42 postseason games in that timeframe as well.</p>
<p>In 37 games played this season, Forsberg leads the Predators with 15 goals and 34 points and is tied for the team lead with 19 assists.</p>
<p>"Everybody appreciates the fact that he's been one of our top scorers and one of our top players consistently year-after-year since he's been here," Nashville coach Peter Laviolette said. "It's an unfortunate thing, all the teams deal with it. Look around the league, everybody seems to be losing a player here or there. I think it becomes more significant when you lose a guy like Filip because of the minutes and the role that he plays on this team. With that comes an opportunity for somebody else to step up and that's the way we've got to look at it."</p>
<p>Saturday night is the first regular-season or postseason game Laviolette has coached the Predators without Forsberg in the lineup.</p>
<p>Earlier Saturday, Nashville recalled forward Frederick Gaudreau from the Milwaukee Admirals of the American Hockey League.</p>
<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville left wing Filip Forsberg was placed on injured reserve with an upper-body injury Saturday before the Predators' game against Minnesota, ending his regular-season and postseason consecutive games streak at 325.</p>
<p>Forsberg had 15:04 of ice time Friday night in a loss in Minnesota. His last shift ended with 8:40 remaining in the third period. &#160;</p>
<p>The Predators did not offer a timetable for Forsberg's return. As a result of being placed on injured reserve, which is at least one week in length, Forsberg will miss at least three games.</p>
<p>The high-scoring Swede has played in all 82 regular-season games for Nashville the past three seasons and all 42 postseason games in that timeframe as well.</p>
<p>In 37 games played this season, Forsberg leads the Predators with 15 goals and 34 points and is tied for the team lead with 19 assists.</p>
<p>"Everybody appreciates the fact that he's been one of our top scorers and one of our top players consistently year-after-year since he's been here," Nashville coach Peter Laviolette said. "It's an unfortunate thing, all the teams deal with it. Look around the league, everybody seems to be losing a player here or there. I think it becomes more significant when you lose a guy like Filip because of the minutes and the role that he plays on this team. With that comes an opportunity for somebody else to step up and that's the way we've got to look at it."</p>
<p>Saturday night is the first regular-season or postseason game Laviolette has coached the Predators without Forsberg in the lineup.</p>
<p>Earlier Saturday, Nashville recalled forward Frederick Gaudreau from the Milwaukee Admirals of the American Hockey League.</p>
|
Predators place Forsberg on IR with upper-body injury
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/cbeb3263121c4d048fcd095699fe3794
|
2017-12-31
| 2least
|
Predators place Forsberg on IR with upper-body injury
<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville left wing Filip Forsberg was placed on injured reserve with an upper-body injury Saturday before the Predators' game against Minnesota, ending his regular-season and postseason consecutive games streak at 325.</p>
<p>Forsberg had 15:04 of ice time Friday night in a loss in Minnesota. His last shift ended with 8:40 remaining in the third period. &#160;</p>
<p>The Predators did not offer a timetable for Forsberg's return. As a result of being placed on injured reserve, which is at least one week in length, Forsberg will miss at least three games.</p>
<p>The high-scoring Swede has played in all 82 regular-season games for Nashville the past three seasons and all 42 postseason games in that timeframe as well.</p>
<p>In 37 games played this season, Forsberg leads the Predators with 15 goals and 34 points and is tied for the team lead with 19 assists.</p>
<p>"Everybody appreciates the fact that he's been one of our top scorers and one of our top players consistently year-after-year since he's been here," Nashville coach Peter Laviolette said. "It's an unfortunate thing, all the teams deal with it. Look around the league, everybody seems to be losing a player here or there. I think it becomes more significant when you lose a guy like Filip because of the minutes and the role that he plays on this team. With that comes an opportunity for somebody else to step up and that's the way we've got to look at it."</p>
<p>Saturday night is the first regular-season or postseason game Laviolette has coached the Predators without Forsberg in the lineup.</p>
<p>Earlier Saturday, Nashville recalled forward Frederick Gaudreau from the Milwaukee Admirals of the American Hockey League.</p>
<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville left wing Filip Forsberg was placed on injured reserve with an upper-body injury Saturday before the Predators' game against Minnesota, ending his regular-season and postseason consecutive games streak at 325.</p>
<p>Forsberg had 15:04 of ice time Friday night in a loss in Minnesota. His last shift ended with 8:40 remaining in the third period. &#160;</p>
<p>The Predators did not offer a timetable for Forsberg's return. As a result of being placed on injured reserve, which is at least one week in length, Forsberg will miss at least three games.</p>
<p>The high-scoring Swede has played in all 82 regular-season games for Nashville the past three seasons and all 42 postseason games in that timeframe as well.</p>
<p>In 37 games played this season, Forsberg leads the Predators with 15 goals and 34 points and is tied for the team lead with 19 assists.</p>
<p>"Everybody appreciates the fact that he's been one of our top scorers and one of our top players consistently year-after-year since he's been here," Nashville coach Peter Laviolette said. "It's an unfortunate thing, all the teams deal with it. Look around the league, everybody seems to be losing a player here or there. I think it becomes more significant when you lose a guy like Filip because of the minutes and the role that he plays on this team. With that comes an opportunity for somebody else to step up and that's the way we've got to look at it."</p>
<p>Saturday night is the first regular-season or postseason game Laviolette has coached the Predators without Forsberg in the lineup.</p>
<p>Earlier Saturday, Nashville recalled forward Frederick Gaudreau from the Milwaukee Admirals of the American Hockey League.</p>
| 8,001 |
<p>Recipients:</p>
<p>Barack Obama, President of the United States</p>
<p>John Kerry, Secretary of State</p>
<p>Ashton Carter, Secretary of Defense</p>
<p>&#160;July 25, 2016</p>
<p>We write as academics and concerned citizens to express our strong condemnation of the current situation in Turkey. While we disapprove of the attempt to subvert the democratic process in Turkey through the military coup of July 15, 2016, President Erdogan’s response has gone beyond measures compatible with the rule of law and human rights, using the occasion to undertake a massive dismissal or suspension from duty of judges, military personnel, civil servants, university deans, and teachers. As of the most recent news this number has reached nearly 60, 000.</p>
<p>In addition, the Turkish government has suspended the annual leave of more than three million civil servants nationwide, and public sector employees are also banned from traveling abroad. Academics and university researchers are asked to request special approval from their superiors to attend scholarly conferences and other professional activities abroad. During an interview with CNN on July 18, Turkish President Erdoğan did not rule out the possibility of reinstating the death penalty. We fear that justice cannot be done in this situation. There are no checks and balances left; authoritarian presidential rule has taken over and in major military and civil society institutions the ideology of one party is beginning to dominate while opposition of any kind is being crushed. There are reports that those in custody cannot find lawyers, since no one dares defend them fearing to be added to the purge lists.</p>
<p>All the evidence suggests that the coup provided an opportunity for the Turkish government to further restrict the role of the legitimate political opposition and its function of democratic oversight–a process already underway before the coup attempt. Shortly after arriving in Istanbul, on the day after the coup attempt, President Erdogan said “This insurgency is a blessing from Allah, because it will allow us to purge the military” of mutineers. He has gone far beyond punishment of the conspirators, however, to attack any who have ever questioned his policies.</p>
<p>Turkey is a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights and, as a candidate for membership in the European Union, it has committed itself to the full observance of the Copenhagen criteria, including stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, respect for and protection of minorities, and abolition of capital punishment. The current crackdown violates all of these commitments and ought not to be tolerated by the EU, by NATO, or by the government of the United States of America which considers Turkey its strong ally.</p>
<p>We, the undersigned, condemn the actions taken by the Turkish government in violation of human rights and the rule of law. The principle of independence and impartiality of the judiciary—together with freedom of the media—is at the foundation of the rule of law and democracy. The political independence and the academic freedom of the educational profession is essential for free societies.</p>
<p>We therefore call upon President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, and Secretary of Defense Carter to strongly criticize the Turkish government’s violation of human rights, academic freedom and the rule of law and to refuse to accept anything but a reversal of these authoritarian policies.</p>
<p>Seyla Benhabib, Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University</p>
<p>Joan W. Scott, Professor Emerita, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study</p>
<p>Natalie Zemon Davis, Princeton University and University of Toronto</p>
<p>Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory, University of California Berkeley</p>
<p>Rosalind Petchesky, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Political Science, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, New York</p>
<p>Rudy Fichtenbaum, President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).</p>
<p>Vijay Prashad, Professor of International Studies, Trinity College.</p>
<p>Of almost four hundred signatures from US academics.</p>
|
Letter to US Government Officials Concerning Recent Events in Turkey
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2016/07/26/letter-to-us-government-officials-concerning-recent-events-in-turkey/
|
2016-07-26
| 4left
|
Letter to US Government Officials Concerning Recent Events in Turkey
<p>Recipients:</p>
<p>Barack Obama, President of the United States</p>
<p>John Kerry, Secretary of State</p>
<p>Ashton Carter, Secretary of Defense</p>
<p>&#160;July 25, 2016</p>
<p>We write as academics and concerned citizens to express our strong condemnation of the current situation in Turkey. While we disapprove of the attempt to subvert the democratic process in Turkey through the military coup of July 15, 2016, President Erdogan’s response has gone beyond measures compatible with the rule of law and human rights, using the occasion to undertake a massive dismissal or suspension from duty of judges, military personnel, civil servants, university deans, and teachers. As of the most recent news this number has reached nearly 60, 000.</p>
<p>In addition, the Turkish government has suspended the annual leave of more than three million civil servants nationwide, and public sector employees are also banned from traveling abroad. Academics and university researchers are asked to request special approval from their superiors to attend scholarly conferences and other professional activities abroad. During an interview with CNN on July 18, Turkish President Erdoğan did not rule out the possibility of reinstating the death penalty. We fear that justice cannot be done in this situation. There are no checks and balances left; authoritarian presidential rule has taken over and in major military and civil society institutions the ideology of one party is beginning to dominate while opposition of any kind is being crushed. There are reports that those in custody cannot find lawyers, since no one dares defend them fearing to be added to the purge lists.</p>
<p>All the evidence suggests that the coup provided an opportunity for the Turkish government to further restrict the role of the legitimate political opposition and its function of democratic oversight–a process already underway before the coup attempt. Shortly after arriving in Istanbul, on the day after the coup attempt, President Erdogan said “This insurgency is a blessing from Allah, because it will allow us to purge the military” of mutineers. He has gone far beyond punishment of the conspirators, however, to attack any who have ever questioned his policies.</p>
<p>Turkey is a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights and, as a candidate for membership in the European Union, it has committed itself to the full observance of the Copenhagen criteria, including stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, respect for and protection of minorities, and abolition of capital punishment. The current crackdown violates all of these commitments and ought not to be tolerated by the EU, by NATO, or by the government of the United States of America which considers Turkey its strong ally.</p>
<p>We, the undersigned, condemn the actions taken by the Turkish government in violation of human rights and the rule of law. The principle of independence and impartiality of the judiciary—together with freedom of the media—is at the foundation of the rule of law and democracy. The political independence and the academic freedom of the educational profession is essential for free societies.</p>
<p>We therefore call upon President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, and Secretary of Defense Carter to strongly criticize the Turkish government’s violation of human rights, academic freedom and the rule of law and to refuse to accept anything but a reversal of these authoritarian policies.</p>
<p>Seyla Benhabib, Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University</p>
<p>Joan W. Scott, Professor Emerita, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study</p>
<p>Natalie Zemon Davis, Princeton University and University of Toronto</p>
<p>Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory, University of California Berkeley</p>
<p>Rosalind Petchesky, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Political Science, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, New York</p>
<p>Rudy Fichtenbaum, President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).</p>
<p>Vijay Prashad, Professor of International Studies, Trinity College.</p>
<p>Of almost four hundred signatures from US academics.</p>
| 8,002 |
<p>DETROIT, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Japanese carmkaker Nissan Motor Co. plans to transform its upscale Infiniti brand into a primarily electrified vehicle offering, Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa said on Tuesday.</p>
<p>All new Infiniti models launched in or after 2021 will be either electric or so-called "e-Power" hybrids, Saikawa told the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit.</p>
<p>"We are going to make Infiniti the premium and highly electrified brand," he said. (Reporting by Laurence Frost and Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Sandra Maler)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Swedish DJ and record producer Avicii, one of the biggest stars of electronic dance music (EDM) in Europe, was found dead on Friday at the age of 28, his U.S. publicist said.</p> Avicii accepts the favorite electronic dance music artist award at the 41st American Music Awards in Los Angeles, California November 24, 2013. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
<p>Avicii, whose real name is Tim Bergling, died in Muscat, Oman.</p>
<p>"It is with profound sorrow that we announce the loss of Tim Bergling, also known as Avicii," publicist Diana Baron said in a statement. "The family is devastated and we ask everyone to please respect their need for privacy in this difficult time."</p> FILE PHOTO: DJ Avicii (C) performs during a concert at Brooklyn's Barclay's Center in New York June 28, 2014. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo
<p>No cause of death was given, and it was not known why the musician was in Oman. Baron said no further statements would be released.</p>
<p>Avicii, known for international hits like "Wake Me Up" and "Hey Brother," announced in 2016 that he was retiring from touring, but he kept making music and was nominated for a Billboard music award earlier this week.</p>
<p>News of his death shocked the EDM community and fans, particularly in Europe, where he was a popular attraction at festivals and dance clubs.</p> Slideshow (4 Images)
<p>Fellow British DJ Calvin Harris called his death "devastating news," adding on Twitter that Avicii was: "a beautiful soul, passionate and extremely talented with so much more to do."</p>
<p>EDM artist Deadmau5 said in a post on Twitter: "Nobody can deny what he has accomplished and done for modern dance music and im (sic) very proud of him."</p>
<p>Former One Direction member Liam Payne said via Twitter that Avicii's demise was "very very sad news way (too) young ... what a talent he was."</p>
<p>Avicii told Billboard magazine he decided to stop touring in 2016 for health reasons. Three years earlier, he underwent surgery for a ruptured appendix and a blocked gall bladder and in 2012, he was hospitalized with pancreatitis.</p>
<p>"The scene was not for me. It was not the shows and not the music. It was always the other stuff surrounding it that never came naturally to me," he told Billboard magazine of his decision to quit touring in 2016.</p>
<p>"I'm more of an introverted person in general. It was always very hard for me. I took on board too much negative energy, I think," he said at the time.</p>
<p>Avicii won a number of American Music Awards, Billboard music awards and MTV Europe Music awards for his EDM work. He also collaborated with Carlos Santana and Wyclef Jean on the official anthem for the 2014 soccer World Cup in Brazil, "We Will Find a Way."</p>
<p>Editing by Richard Chang and Bernadette Baum</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Southwest Airlines Co confirmed Friday it has sent $5,000 checks to passengers aboard a flight that made an emergency landing this week after an engine failed, killing a passenger.</p> U.S. NTSB investigators are on scene examining damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane in this image released from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., April 17, 2018. NTSB/Handout via REUTERS
<p>The airline confirmed news reports from passengers it had sent the checks along with $1,000 travel vouchers. "We can confirm the communication and gesture are authentic and heartfelt," the company said in a brief statement on Friday.</p>
<p>The CFM56 jet engine on Southwest flight 1380 blew apart over Pennsylvania on Tuesday, about 20 minutes after the Dallas-bound flight left New York's LaGuardia Airport with 149 people on board. The engine debris shattered a window on the Boeing 737 plane, killing a passenger - the first death in a U.S. airline accident since 2009. The plane made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>The Federal Aviation Administration said late on Wednesday it was working to quickly finalize an airworthiness directive within the next two weeks that had been proposed in August 2017 after a similar engine failure in a Southwest plane in 2016, which it said would apply to 220 engines.</p>
<p>National Transportation Safety Board investigators on the scene were expected to wrap up their work in Philadelphia on Saturday, the agency said on Friday.</p>
<p>Southwest said after the incident that it was accelerating its existing engine inspection program "out of an abundance of caution" and expected to complete it over the next 30 days.</p>
<p>The company has declined to answer questions about the status of those inspections and whether the engine that failed had previously been inspected or whether the inspections have turned up any evidence of defects or metal fatigue.</p>
<p>The FAA order will require ultrasonic inspection within the next six months of the fan blades on all CFM56-7B engines that have accrued a certain number of takeoffs. Others more recently serviced will require inspections within 18 months, the FAA draft order said.</p>
<p>Airlines told the FAA last year that because fan blades may have been repaired and moved to other engines, the order would affect far more than 220 CFM56-7Bs, which are made by a partnership of France's Safran SA and General Electric Co.</p>
<p>Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>PARIS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Aircraft engine maker CFM International said on Friday it was recommending expanded inspections within 20 days of engines similar to one involved in a fatal Southwest Airlines accident earlier this week.</p> U.S. NTSB investigators are on scene examining damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane in this image released from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., April 17, 2018. NTSB/Handout via REUTERS
<p>CFM is jointly owned by General Electric and France's Safran.</p>
<p>European and U.S. regulators were expected on Friday to make the recommendations mandatory, two people familiar with the matter said.</p>
<p>CFM is calling on airlines operating the CFM56-7B, which powers current-generation Boeing 737s, to carry out ultrasonic inspections within the next 20 days on fan blades which have been used in more than 30,000 cycles, it said in a statement.</p>
<p>A cycle includes one take-off and landing.</p>
<p>CFM also recommends inspections by the end of August for fan blades with 20,000 cycles, and inspections to all other fan blades when they reach 20,000 cycles.</p>
<p>After the first inspection, airlines should keep repeating the process every 3,000 cycles, which typically represents about two years in service, CFM said.</p>
<p>Approximately 14,000 CFM56-7B engines are in operation.</p>
<p>The inspections recommended within the next 20 days will affect about 680 engines, officials said.</p>
<p>However, more than 150 have already been inspected.</p>
<p>Inspections recommended by the end of August will affect an additional 2,500 engines.</p>
<p>Reporting by Tim Hepher, David Shepardson; editing by Leslie Adler and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and European regulators on Friday will announce they are requiring emergency inspections within the next 20 days of fan blades of nearly 700 CFM56-7B engines worldwide after the crash this week of a Southwest Airlines jet that killed one person, two sources said.</p> Emergency personnel monitor the damaged engine of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, which diverted to the Philadelphia International Airport this morning after the airline crew reported damage to one of the aircraft's engines, on a runway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania U.S. April 17, 2018. REUTERS/Mark Makela
<p>The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and European regulators will announce they are mandating the inspections that were recommended by engine maker CFM International, a partnership of France's Safran SA and General Electric Co, in a bulletin earlier Friday. The emergency inspections apply to 681 engines worldwide, including 352 in the United States. CFM said more than 150 have already been inspected.</p>
<p>Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
|
Nissan's Infiniti to become predominantly electric brand -CEO Avicii, Swedish electronic dance music artist and DJ, dead at 28 Southwest giving passengers $5,000 checks on accident flight Engine maker CFM recommends urgent checks on some Boeing 737 engines U.S., Europe to order emergency inspections of engines after Southwest crash: sources
| false |
https://reuters.com/article/autoshow-detroit-nissan-infiniti/nissans-infiniti-to-become-predominantly-electric-brand-ceo-idUSL8N1PB6WR
|
2018-01-16
| 2least
|
Nissan's Infiniti to become predominantly electric brand -CEO Avicii, Swedish electronic dance music artist and DJ, dead at 28 Southwest giving passengers $5,000 checks on accident flight Engine maker CFM recommends urgent checks on some Boeing 737 engines U.S., Europe to order emergency inspections of engines after Southwest crash: sources
<p>DETROIT, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Japanese carmkaker Nissan Motor Co. plans to transform its upscale Infiniti brand into a primarily electrified vehicle offering, Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa said on Tuesday.</p>
<p>All new Infiniti models launched in or after 2021 will be either electric or so-called "e-Power" hybrids, Saikawa told the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit.</p>
<p>"We are going to make Infiniti the premium and highly electrified brand," he said. (Reporting by Laurence Frost and Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Sandra Maler)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Swedish DJ and record producer Avicii, one of the biggest stars of electronic dance music (EDM) in Europe, was found dead on Friday at the age of 28, his U.S. publicist said.</p> Avicii accepts the favorite electronic dance music artist award at the 41st American Music Awards in Los Angeles, California November 24, 2013. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
<p>Avicii, whose real name is Tim Bergling, died in Muscat, Oman.</p>
<p>"It is with profound sorrow that we announce the loss of Tim Bergling, also known as Avicii," publicist Diana Baron said in a statement. "The family is devastated and we ask everyone to please respect their need for privacy in this difficult time."</p> FILE PHOTO: DJ Avicii (C) performs during a concert at Brooklyn's Barclay's Center in New York June 28, 2014. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo
<p>No cause of death was given, and it was not known why the musician was in Oman. Baron said no further statements would be released.</p>
<p>Avicii, known for international hits like "Wake Me Up" and "Hey Brother," announced in 2016 that he was retiring from touring, but he kept making music and was nominated for a Billboard music award earlier this week.</p>
<p>News of his death shocked the EDM community and fans, particularly in Europe, where he was a popular attraction at festivals and dance clubs.</p> Slideshow (4 Images)
<p>Fellow British DJ Calvin Harris called his death "devastating news," adding on Twitter that Avicii was: "a beautiful soul, passionate and extremely talented with so much more to do."</p>
<p>EDM artist Deadmau5 said in a post on Twitter: "Nobody can deny what he has accomplished and done for modern dance music and im (sic) very proud of him."</p>
<p>Former One Direction member Liam Payne said via Twitter that Avicii's demise was "very very sad news way (too) young ... what a talent he was."</p>
<p>Avicii told Billboard magazine he decided to stop touring in 2016 for health reasons. Three years earlier, he underwent surgery for a ruptured appendix and a blocked gall bladder and in 2012, he was hospitalized with pancreatitis.</p>
<p>"The scene was not for me. It was not the shows and not the music. It was always the other stuff surrounding it that never came naturally to me," he told Billboard magazine of his decision to quit touring in 2016.</p>
<p>"I'm more of an introverted person in general. It was always very hard for me. I took on board too much negative energy, I think," he said at the time.</p>
<p>Avicii won a number of American Music Awards, Billboard music awards and MTV Europe Music awards for his EDM work. He also collaborated with Carlos Santana and Wyclef Jean on the official anthem for the 2014 soccer World Cup in Brazil, "We Will Find a Way."</p>
<p>Editing by Richard Chang and Bernadette Baum</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Southwest Airlines Co confirmed Friday it has sent $5,000 checks to passengers aboard a flight that made an emergency landing this week after an engine failed, killing a passenger.</p> U.S. NTSB investigators are on scene examining damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane in this image released from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., April 17, 2018. NTSB/Handout via REUTERS
<p>The airline confirmed news reports from passengers it had sent the checks along with $1,000 travel vouchers. "We can confirm the communication and gesture are authentic and heartfelt," the company said in a brief statement on Friday.</p>
<p>The CFM56 jet engine on Southwest flight 1380 blew apart over Pennsylvania on Tuesday, about 20 minutes after the Dallas-bound flight left New York's LaGuardia Airport with 149 people on board. The engine debris shattered a window on the Boeing 737 plane, killing a passenger - the first death in a U.S. airline accident since 2009. The plane made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>The Federal Aviation Administration said late on Wednesday it was working to quickly finalize an airworthiness directive within the next two weeks that had been proposed in August 2017 after a similar engine failure in a Southwest plane in 2016, which it said would apply to 220 engines.</p>
<p>National Transportation Safety Board investigators on the scene were expected to wrap up their work in Philadelphia on Saturday, the agency said on Friday.</p>
<p>Southwest said after the incident that it was accelerating its existing engine inspection program "out of an abundance of caution" and expected to complete it over the next 30 days.</p>
<p>The company has declined to answer questions about the status of those inspections and whether the engine that failed had previously been inspected or whether the inspections have turned up any evidence of defects or metal fatigue.</p>
<p>The FAA order will require ultrasonic inspection within the next six months of the fan blades on all CFM56-7B engines that have accrued a certain number of takeoffs. Others more recently serviced will require inspections within 18 months, the FAA draft order said.</p>
<p>Airlines told the FAA last year that because fan blades may have been repaired and moved to other engines, the order would affect far more than 220 CFM56-7Bs, which are made by a partnership of France's Safran SA and General Electric Co.</p>
<p>Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>PARIS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Aircraft engine maker CFM International said on Friday it was recommending expanded inspections within 20 days of engines similar to one involved in a fatal Southwest Airlines accident earlier this week.</p> U.S. NTSB investigators are on scene examining damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane in this image released from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., April 17, 2018. NTSB/Handout via REUTERS
<p>CFM is jointly owned by General Electric and France's Safran.</p>
<p>European and U.S. regulators were expected on Friday to make the recommendations mandatory, two people familiar with the matter said.</p>
<p>CFM is calling on airlines operating the CFM56-7B, which powers current-generation Boeing 737s, to carry out ultrasonic inspections within the next 20 days on fan blades which have been used in more than 30,000 cycles, it said in a statement.</p>
<p>A cycle includes one take-off and landing.</p>
<p>CFM also recommends inspections by the end of August for fan blades with 20,000 cycles, and inspections to all other fan blades when they reach 20,000 cycles.</p>
<p>After the first inspection, airlines should keep repeating the process every 3,000 cycles, which typically represents about two years in service, CFM said.</p>
<p>Approximately 14,000 CFM56-7B engines are in operation.</p>
<p>The inspections recommended within the next 20 days will affect about 680 engines, officials said.</p>
<p>However, more than 150 have already been inspected.</p>
<p>Inspections recommended by the end of August will affect an additional 2,500 engines.</p>
<p>Reporting by Tim Hepher, David Shepardson; editing by Leslie Adler and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and European regulators on Friday will announce they are requiring emergency inspections within the next 20 days of fan blades of nearly 700 CFM56-7B engines worldwide after the crash this week of a Southwest Airlines jet that killed one person, two sources said.</p> Emergency personnel monitor the damaged engine of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, which diverted to the Philadelphia International Airport this morning after the airline crew reported damage to one of the aircraft's engines, on a runway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania U.S. April 17, 2018. REUTERS/Mark Makela
<p>The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and European regulators will announce they are mandating the inspections that were recommended by engine maker CFM International, a partnership of France's Safran SA and General Electric Co, in a bulletin earlier Friday. The emergency inspections apply to 681 engines worldwide, including 352 in the United States. CFM said more than 150 have already been inspected.</p>
<p>Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
| 8,003 |
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Verizon</a> (NYSE:VZ) and Coinstar’s (NASDAQ:CSTR) Redbox have joined to rent DVDs in a joint venture that will directly compete with <a href="" type="internal">Netflix</a> (NASDAQ:NFLX).</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The venture, owned 65% by Verizon and 35% by Redbox, will provide customers new release DVDs and Blu-rays through a subscription-based, video-on-demand streaming and download platform run through Verizon.</p>
<p>Videos will also be available for rent through the traditional Redbox kiosks. The companies plan to launch the service in the U.S. later in 2012.</p>
<p>“When you consider the core elements the parties bring to this venture – our powerful brands; our national rental kiosk footprint; our anytime, anywhere network presence; and our mutual commitment to customer-focused innovation – it's clear that Verizon and Redbox are a powerful entertainment team," said Bob Mudge, president of Verizon consumer and mass business markets.</p>
<p>The news comes two months after DealReporter said Verizon was considering buying the troubled movie renter, sending Netflix’s shares at the time up more than 6%.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Shares of Netflix took a hit Monday morning, falling more than 3%. The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company is down 50% from August after raising prices during the summer.</p>
<p>The move marks a powerful strategic step for Verizon, which has tackled the phone, Internet, wireless and data markets but has yet to successfully enter the movie-streaming business.</p>
<p>Coinstar, which has been saying it was developing a video streaming platform for more than a year, saw its shares jump 7% premarket on the news.</p>
<p>No financial details of the deal were disclosed.</p>
|
Verizon, Redbox Team to Rent Movies, Rival Netflix
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/02/06/verizon-redbox-team-to-rent-movies-rival-netflix.html
|
2016-03-03
| 0right
|
Verizon, Redbox Team to Rent Movies, Rival Netflix
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Verizon</a> (NYSE:VZ) and Coinstar’s (NASDAQ:CSTR) Redbox have joined to rent DVDs in a joint venture that will directly compete with <a href="" type="internal">Netflix</a> (NASDAQ:NFLX).</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The venture, owned 65% by Verizon and 35% by Redbox, will provide customers new release DVDs and Blu-rays through a subscription-based, video-on-demand streaming and download platform run through Verizon.</p>
<p>Videos will also be available for rent through the traditional Redbox kiosks. The companies plan to launch the service in the U.S. later in 2012.</p>
<p>“When you consider the core elements the parties bring to this venture – our powerful brands; our national rental kiosk footprint; our anytime, anywhere network presence; and our mutual commitment to customer-focused innovation – it's clear that Verizon and Redbox are a powerful entertainment team," said Bob Mudge, president of Verizon consumer and mass business markets.</p>
<p>The news comes two months after DealReporter said Verizon was considering buying the troubled movie renter, sending Netflix’s shares at the time up more than 6%.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Shares of Netflix took a hit Monday morning, falling more than 3%. The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company is down 50% from August after raising prices during the summer.</p>
<p>The move marks a powerful strategic step for Verizon, which has tackled the phone, Internet, wireless and data markets but has yet to successfully enter the movie-streaming business.</p>
<p>Coinstar, which has been saying it was developing a video streaming platform for more than a year, saw its shares jump 7% premarket on the news.</p>
<p>No financial details of the deal were disclosed.</p>
| 8,004 |
<p>OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — The Ottawa Senators’ attention to detail is paying off.</p>
<p>Kyle Turris had a goal and two assists to lead Ottawa to a 4-1 victory over the Florida Panthers on Saturday night, giving the Senators consecutive wins for the first time in seven weeks.</p>
<p>“I think we’re playing better and I think we’re making strides in the right direction,” Turris said. “We’re playing better in our own end and just playing smarter. We’re doing little things that make a big difference.”</p>
<p>Bobby Ryan, Erik Karlsson and Curtis Lazar also scored for Ottawa, and Andrew Hammond made 21 saves for his second win in two NHL starts. The last time the Senators won back-to-back games was Dec. 29 and Jan. 3.</p>
<p>Aleksander Barkov scored for the Panthers, who missed an opportunity to pass Boston for the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. Roberto Luongo stopped 35 shots.</p>
<p>“It was a wasted opportunity and it was a tough one but we just have to put this one behind us and move on,” Luongo said. “It was one of those games where we didn’t have it. Coming into the third we were down one which is a situation we’ve become accustomed to, but for some reason we didn’t have the period we wanted to.”</p>
<p>Ryan got the tiebreaking goal at 8:40 of the second period, tipping a point shot past Luongo just as the tripping penalty to Tomas Kopecky expired.</p>
<p>The Panthers were fortunate to be down only a goal after 40 minutes considering they were outshot 26-15 over that span.</p>
<p>“I didn’t like our game at all. We didn’t play well at all, we didn’t work hard, we didn’t compete hard and it was the longest night for me behind the Florida bench this year,” Panthers coach Gerald Gallant said. “We had a few chances in the first period and I thought Ottawa played well and they moved the puck, but we didn’t have any work ethic and I thought we played a real poor game.”</p>
<p>Karlsson made it 3-1 at 8:03 of the third and Lazar capped the scoring with 7:51 remaining.</p>
<p>“We’ve got momentum now and to win back-to back games for the first time in a while is big for our hockey club,” Lazar said.</p>
<p>The Panthers opened the scoring at 7:38 of the first period just seconds after they had a goal called off because the official had blown his whistle prior to the puck entering the net.</p>
<p>After the ensuing faceoff the puck game to Barkov at the top of the crease and his wrist shot beat Hammond, barely making its way across the goal line.</p>
<p>The Senators tied it a little less than 3 minutes later when Turris took a pass beside the net from Mark Stone and sent the puck behind Luongo.</p>
<p>Ottawa completed its five-game homestand 3-1-1 record and opens a five-game road swing this week — including three in California.</p>
<p>The Panthers will play fourth game of a five-game trip at Pittsburgh on Sunday night.</p>
<p>NOTES: Eric Gryba was scratched from the Senators’ lineup, while the Panthers scratched Dmitry Kulikov and Sean Bergenheim. ... His first-period goal gave Turris 200 career points. ... Senators forward Matt Puempel played his first NHL game Saturday night. ... Gallant coached his 200th game as Panthers coach.</p>
<p>OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — The Ottawa Senators’ attention to detail is paying off.</p>
<p>Kyle Turris had a goal and two assists to lead Ottawa to a 4-1 victory over the Florida Panthers on Saturday night, giving the Senators consecutive wins for the first time in seven weeks.</p>
<p>“I think we’re playing better and I think we’re making strides in the right direction,” Turris said. “We’re playing better in our own end and just playing smarter. We’re doing little things that make a big difference.”</p>
<p>Bobby Ryan, Erik Karlsson and Curtis Lazar also scored for Ottawa, and Andrew Hammond made 21 saves for his second win in two NHL starts. The last time the Senators won back-to-back games was Dec. 29 and Jan. 3.</p>
<p>Aleksander Barkov scored for the Panthers, who missed an opportunity to pass Boston for the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. Roberto Luongo stopped 35 shots.</p>
<p>“It was a wasted opportunity and it was a tough one but we just have to put this one behind us and move on,” Luongo said. “It was one of those games where we didn’t have it. Coming into the third we were down one which is a situation we’ve become accustomed to, but for some reason we didn’t have the period we wanted to.”</p>
<p>Ryan got the tiebreaking goal at 8:40 of the second period, tipping a point shot past Luongo just as the tripping penalty to Tomas Kopecky expired.</p>
<p>The Panthers were fortunate to be down only a goal after 40 minutes considering they were outshot 26-15 over that span.</p>
<p>“I didn’t like our game at all. We didn’t play well at all, we didn’t work hard, we didn’t compete hard and it was the longest night for me behind the Florida bench this year,” Panthers coach Gerald Gallant said. “We had a few chances in the first period and I thought Ottawa played well and they moved the puck, but we didn’t have any work ethic and I thought we played a real poor game.”</p>
<p>Karlsson made it 3-1 at 8:03 of the third and Lazar capped the scoring with 7:51 remaining.</p>
<p>“We’ve got momentum now and to win back-to back games for the first time in a while is big for our hockey club,” Lazar said.</p>
<p>The Panthers opened the scoring at 7:38 of the first period just seconds after they had a goal called off because the official had blown his whistle prior to the puck entering the net.</p>
<p>After the ensuing faceoff the puck game to Barkov at the top of the crease and his wrist shot beat Hammond, barely making its way across the goal line.</p>
<p>The Senators tied it a little less than 3 minutes later when Turris took a pass beside the net from Mark Stone and sent the puck behind Luongo.</p>
<p>Ottawa completed its five-game homestand 3-1-1 record and opens a five-game road swing this week — including three in California.</p>
<p>The Panthers will play fourth game of a five-game trip at Pittsburgh on Sunday night.</p>
<p>NOTES: Eric Gryba was scratched from the Senators’ lineup, while the Panthers scratched Dmitry Kulikov and Sean Bergenheim. ... His first-period goal gave Turris 200 career points. ... Senators forward Matt Puempel played his first NHL game Saturday night. ... Gallant coached his 200th game as Panthers coach.</p>
|
Turris has goal, 2 assists to lead Senators past Panthers
| false |
https://apnews.com/2ba4d53a74f943c2a5496dde61df64ad
|
2015-02-22
| 2least
|
Turris has goal, 2 assists to lead Senators past Panthers
<p>OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — The Ottawa Senators’ attention to detail is paying off.</p>
<p>Kyle Turris had a goal and two assists to lead Ottawa to a 4-1 victory over the Florida Panthers on Saturday night, giving the Senators consecutive wins for the first time in seven weeks.</p>
<p>“I think we’re playing better and I think we’re making strides in the right direction,” Turris said. “We’re playing better in our own end and just playing smarter. We’re doing little things that make a big difference.”</p>
<p>Bobby Ryan, Erik Karlsson and Curtis Lazar also scored for Ottawa, and Andrew Hammond made 21 saves for his second win in two NHL starts. The last time the Senators won back-to-back games was Dec. 29 and Jan. 3.</p>
<p>Aleksander Barkov scored for the Panthers, who missed an opportunity to pass Boston for the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. Roberto Luongo stopped 35 shots.</p>
<p>“It was a wasted opportunity and it was a tough one but we just have to put this one behind us and move on,” Luongo said. “It was one of those games where we didn’t have it. Coming into the third we were down one which is a situation we’ve become accustomed to, but for some reason we didn’t have the period we wanted to.”</p>
<p>Ryan got the tiebreaking goal at 8:40 of the second period, tipping a point shot past Luongo just as the tripping penalty to Tomas Kopecky expired.</p>
<p>The Panthers were fortunate to be down only a goal after 40 minutes considering they were outshot 26-15 over that span.</p>
<p>“I didn’t like our game at all. We didn’t play well at all, we didn’t work hard, we didn’t compete hard and it was the longest night for me behind the Florida bench this year,” Panthers coach Gerald Gallant said. “We had a few chances in the first period and I thought Ottawa played well and they moved the puck, but we didn’t have any work ethic and I thought we played a real poor game.”</p>
<p>Karlsson made it 3-1 at 8:03 of the third and Lazar capped the scoring with 7:51 remaining.</p>
<p>“We’ve got momentum now and to win back-to back games for the first time in a while is big for our hockey club,” Lazar said.</p>
<p>The Panthers opened the scoring at 7:38 of the first period just seconds after they had a goal called off because the official had blown his whistle prior to the puck entering the net.</p>
<p>After the ensuing faceoff the puck game to Barkov at the top of the crease and his wrist shot beat Hammond, barely making its way across the goal line.</p>
<p>The Senators tied it a little less than 3 minutes later when Turris took a pass beside the net from Mark Stone and sent the puck behind Luongo.</p>
<p>Ottawa completed its five-game homestand 3-1-1 record and opens a five-game road swing this week — including three in California.</p>
<p>The Panthers will play fourth game of a five-game trip at Pittsburgh on Sunday night.</p>
<p>NOTES: Eric Gryba was scratched from the Senators’ lineup, while the Panthers scratched Dmitry Kulikov and Sean Bergenheim. ... His first-period goal gave Turris 200 career points. ... Senators forward Matt Puempel played his first NHL game Saturday night. ... Gallant coached his 200th game as Panthers coach.</p>
<p>OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — The Ottawa Senators’ attention to detail is paying off.</p>
<p>Kyle Turris had a goal and two assists to lead Ottawa to a 4-1 victory over the Florida Panthers on Saturday night, giving the Senators consecutive wins for the first time in seven weeks.</p>
<p>“I think we’re playing better and I think we’re making strides in the right direction,” Turris said. “We’re playing better in our own end and just playing smarter. We’re doing little things that make a big difference.”</p>
<p>Bobby Ryan, Erik Karlsson and Curtis Lazar also scored for Ottawa, and Andrew Hammond made 21 saves for his second win in two NHL starts. The last time the Senators won back-to-back games was Dec. 29 and Jan. 3.</p>
<p>Aleksander Barkov scored for the Panthers, who missed an opportunity to pass Boston for the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. Roberto Luongo stopped 35 shots.</p>
<p>“It was a wasted opportunity and it was a tough one but we just have to put this one behind us and move on,” Luongo said. “It was one of those games where we didn’t have it. Coming into the third we were down one which is a situation we’ve become accustomed to, but for some reason we didn’t have the period we wanted to.”</p>
<p>Ryan got the tiebreaking goal at 8:40 of the second period, tipping a point shot past Luongo just as the tripping penalty to Tomas Kopecky expired.</p>
<p>The Panthers were fortunate to be down only a goal after 40 minutes considering they were outshot 26-15 over that span.</p>
<p>“I didn’t like our game at all. We didn’t play well at all, we didn’t work hard, we didn’t compete hard and it was the longest night for me behind the Florida bench this year,” Panthers coach Gerald Gallant said. “We had a few chances in the first period and I thought Ottawa played well and they moved the puck, but we didn’t have any work ethic and I thought we played a real poor game.”</p>
<p>Karlsson made it 3-1 at 8:03 of the third and Lazar capped the scoring with 7:51 remaining.</p>
<p>“We’ve got momentum now and to win back-to back games for the first time in a while is big for our hockey club,” Lazar said.</p>
<p>The Panthers opened the scoring at 7:38 of the first period just seconds after they had a goal called off because the official had blown his whistle prior to the puck entering the net.</p>
<p>After the ensuing faceoff the puck game to Barkov at the top of the crease and his wrist shot beat Hammond, barely making its way across the goal line.</p>
<p>The Senators tied it a little less than 3 minutes later when Turris took a pass beside the net from Mark Stone and sent the puck behind Luongo.</p>
<p>Ottawa completed its five-game homestand 3-1-1 record and opens a five-game road swing this week — including three in California.</p>
<p>The Panthers will play fourth game of a five-game trip at Pittsburgh on Sunday night.</p>
<p>NOTES: Eric Gryba was scratched from the Senators’ lineup, while the Panthers scratched Dmitry Kulikov and Sean Bergenheim. ... His first-period goal gave Turris 200 career points. ... Senators forward Matt Puempel played his first NHL game Saturday night. ... Gallant coached his 200th game as Panthers coach.</p>
| 8,005 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>I have a tenant on a month-to-month and I’d like them to stay if possible. They take very good care of the place and I think it will show well with them in it. When do you suggest I talk to them? I want to keep them in the loop and make sure they know what’s happening.</p>
<p>A: A rental property is a great way to have steady cash flow in the years to come, so I assume you have a good reason for selling. That said, if you’re firm on your decision, there are some things to take into account.</p>
<p>First and foremost, make absolutely sure you want to sell the house before talking to your tenant. Nothing scares a tenant who has been living comfortably and happily in a house than hearing it might sell. A good tenant has become attached to your home and treats it like their own. They have an emotional connection to the place and as soon as you tell them it might sell, they have to adjust to the idea of moving and uprooting their lives.</p>
<p>Well, if they have to adjust to the idea of moving, they might as well move. So before you discuss this with the tenant, have your Realtor do a market analysis and get a sense for how much your house is worth. Make sure the sale will meet whatever financial goals you’re trying to achieve. If you talk to your tenants too soon and then find out the numbers are not there, you could end up losing a great tenant and be stuck with an empty house until you find a new tenant, who might not be as dedicated to the care of your house.</p>
<p>Talk to the tenant once you’re sure you want to sell. Try to assuage their fears and if possible, offer some financial incentive to staying in the house while it sells. Some people go with a reduction in rent for keeping the house looking good. Some people go with a smaller reduction for each successful showing. If you’re so inclined, you can even offer them a new (short) lease ensuring they will be able to stay in the house for a specific amount of time.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>But keep in mind, even if it’s only three months, you have to count on your future buyer being willing to wait longer than usual to move in. This risk might be worth it to keep your tenant in place as you never know how long it can take to sell a house.</p>
<p>Just in case your tenant does move out right away, make sure you have sufficient funds to pay the mortgage every month. Otherwise, selling your house could turn into a difficult financial time when it’s supposed to be helping you achieve your goals.</p>
<p>Talia Freedman is a Realtor with Signature Southwest Properties.</p>
<p />
|
Be certain you’re selling before talking to tenants
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/547719/be-certain-youre-selling-before-talking-to-tenants.html
| 2least
|
Be certain you’re selling before talking to tenants
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>I have a tenant on a month-to-month and I’d like them to stay if possible. They take very good care of the place and I think it will show well with them in it. When do you suggest I talk to them? I want to keep them in the loop and make sure they know what’s happening.</p>
<p>A: A rental property is a great way to have steady cash flow in the years to come, so I assume you have a good reason for selling. That said, if you’re firm on your decision, there are some things to take into account.</p>
<p>First and foremost, make absolutely sure you want to sell the house before talking to your tenant. Nothing scares a tenant who has been living comfortably and happily in a house than hearing it might sell. A good tenant has become attached to your home and treats it like their own. They have an emotional connection to the place and as soon as you tell them it might sell, they have to adjust to the idea of moving and uprooting their lives.</p>
<p>Well, if they have to adjust to the idea of moving, they might as well move. So before you discuss this with the tenant, have your Realtor do a market analysis and get a sense for how much your house is worth. Make sure the sale will meet whatever financial goals you’re trying to achieve. If you talk to your tenants too soon and then find out the numbers are not there, you could end up losing a great tenant and be stuck with an empty house until you find a new tenant, who might not be as dedicated to the care of your house.</p>
<p>Talk to the tenant once you’re sure you want to sell. Try to assuage their fears and if possible, offer some financial incentive to staying in the house while it sells. Some people go with a reduction in rent for keeping the house looking good. Some people go with a smaller reduction for each successful showing. If you’re so inclined, you can even offer them a new (short) lease ensuring they will be able to stay in the house for a specific amount of time.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>But keep in mind, even if it’s only three months, you have to count on your future buyer being willing to wait longer than usual to move in. This risk might be worth it to keep your tenant in place as you never know how long it can take to sell a house.</p>
<p>Just in case your tenant does move out right away, make sure you have sufficient funds to pay the mortgage every month. Otherwise, selling your house could turn into a difficult financial time when it’s supposed to be helping you achieve your goals.</p>
<p>Talia Freedman is a Realtor with Signature Southwest Properties.</p>
<p />
| 8,006 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - New Mexico State Police found a woman dead in her own home in Socorro County on June 8, according to a statement released by a spokeswoman Tuesday.</p>
<p>Veronica Romero, 34, was discovered in her Veguita home by an officer carrying out a welfare check after she didn't appear for a scheduled appointment, said Sgt. Elizabeth Armijo, a state police spokeswoman. Armijo did not say how Romero died or if the death is suspicious.</p>
<p>"This investigation is ongoing and no further details are available," Armijo said. "Upon completion of the investigation more information will be released."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Woman found dead in her home in Veguita
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/600206/woman-found-dead-in-her-home-in-veguita.html
| 2least
|
Woman found dead in her home in Veguita
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - New Mexico State Police found a woman dead in her own home in Socorro County on June 8, according to a statement released by a spokeswoman Tuesday.</p>
<p>Veronica Romero, 34, was discovered in her Veguita home by an officer carrying out a welfare check after she didn't appear for a scheduled appointment, said Sgt. Elizabeth Armijo, a state police spokeswoman. Armijo did not say how Romero died or if the death is suspicious.</p>
<p>"This investigation is ongoing and no further details are available," Armijo said. "Upon completion of the investigation more information will be released."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 8,007 |
|
<p>A U.S. congressional committee on Friday said there were "failures within the system" over the handling of flawed ignition switches in General Motors Co. vehicles, which have been linked to 13 deaths.</p>
<p>House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton said that initial documents provided to his panel revealed those failures. Upton also said that there was "much left to examine" in its ongoing investigation of <a href="" type="internal">GM's recalled vehicles</a>, which came more than a decade after the company first noticed a problem.</p>
<p>According to one document obtained by the committee, GM CEO Mary Barra, who assumed the top position in January, received an email in 2011 pointing to steering problems in GM models that later were recalled.</p>
<p>That email cited a New York Times story dated Oct. 3, 2011, which reported on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration deliberations concerning Saturn Ions and Chevrolet Cobalts that were experiencing steering problems related to a loss of power.</p>
<p>The email to Barra, however, does not mention ignition switch problems.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, NHTSA, the agency that oversees automaker safety problems, stated in a 2013 email to GM that the company was "slow to communicate, slow to act" on defects and recalls.</p>
<p>In February, GM recalled 2.6 million cars, including Ions and Cobalts, due to concerns that faulty ignition switches could cause the vehicles' engines to turn off during operation. That, in turn, can prevent airbags from operating and cause power steering and power brakes to not operate as intended.</p>
<p>The House committee, which held its first public hearing April 1, is trying to determine whether GM officials failed to react in a timely way to the critical safety defect and whether NHTSA regulators also may have failed to carry out their duties.</p>
<p>More than 250,000 documents from GM and NHTSA have been submitted to the House committee.</p>
|
House Panel Chairman Cites ‘Failures’ Related to GM Recalls
| false |
http://nbcnews.com/storyline/gm-recall/house-panel-chairman-cites-failures-related-gm-recalls-n78296
|
2014-04-11
| 3left-center
|
House Panel Chairman Cites ‘Failures’ Related to GM Recalls
<p>A U.S. congressional committee on Friday said there were "failures within the system" over the handling of flawed ignition switches in General Motors Co. vehicles, which have been linked to 13 deaths.</p>
<p>House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton said that initial documents provided to his panel revealed those failures. Upton also said that there was "much left to examine" in its ongoing investigation of <a href="" type="internal">GM's recalled vehicles</a>, which came more than a decade after the company first noticed a problem.</p>
<p>According to one document obtained by the committee, GM CEO Mary Barra, who assumed the top position in January, received an email in 2011 pointing to steering problems in GM models that later were recalled.</p>
<p>That email cited a New York Times story dated Oct. 3, 2011, which reported on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration deliberations concerning Saturn Ions and Chevrolet Cobalts that were experiencing steering problems related to a loss of power.</p>
<p>The email to Barra, however, does not mention ignition switch problems.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, NHTSA, the agency that oversees automaker safety problems, stated in a 2013 email to GM that the company was "slow to communicate, slow to act" on defects and recalls.</p>
<p>In February, GM recalled 2.6 million cars, including Ions and Cobalts, due to concerns that faulty ignition switches could cause the vehicles' engines to turn off during operation. That, in turn, can prevent airbags from operating and cause power steering and power brakes to not operate as intended.</p>
<p>The House committee, which held its first public hearing April 1, is trying to determine whether GM officials failed to react in a timely way to the critical safety defect and whether NHTSA regulators also may have failed to carry out their duties.</p>
<p>More than 250,000 documents from GM and NHTSA have been submitted to the House committee.</p>
| 8,008 |
<p>A bit over an hour into the five-hour drive across the ferrous red plateau, heading south toward Uganda’s capital Kampala, suddenly, there’s the Nile, a boiling, roiling cataract at this time of year, rain-swollen and ropy and rabid below the bridge that vaults over it.&#160; If Niagara Falls surged horizontally and a rickety bridge arced, shudderingly, over the torrent below, it might feel like the Nile at Karuma.</p>
<p>Naturally, I take out my iPhone and begin snapping pics.</p>
<p>On the other side of the bridge, three soldiers standing in wait in the middle of the road, rifles slung over their shoulders, direct my Kampalan driver Godfrey and me to pull over.</p>
<p>“You were photographing the bridge,” one of them announces, coming up to my open window.&#160; “We saw you.”</p>
<p>“Taking photos of the bridge is expressly forbidden,” the second offers by way of clarification, as the first reaches in and grabs the iPhone out of my hand.&#160; “National security.&#160; Terrorists could use such photos to help in planning to blow up the bridge.”</p>
<p>“Do I look like a terrorist to you?” I ask.&#160; “And anyway,” I shout as Soldiers One and Two walk off with their prize, oblivious, “I wasn’t photographing the bridge.&#160; I was photographing the rapids.&#160; The bridge was precisely the one thing I wasn’t photographing!”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1582437572/counterpunchmaga" type="external" />To no avail.&#160; I open my car door and begin to get out — but the third soldier pushes me gently back and then leans into the window, peering amiably. “And besides,” I continue, “there were no signs forbidding such photographs.&#160; Anyway, if it’s such a big deal just give me back the phone and I’ll delete the photos.&#160; You can watch.”</p>
<p>I’m beginning to panic.&#160; As with most of us nowadays, pretty much my entire life is couched inside that bloody little device: contacts, calendars, hotel reservations, all my appointment coordinates for the coming days.</p>
<p>“Ah no,” Soldier Three smiles in a silkily practiced manner.&#160; “You are not to worry.&#160; This is not an affair about you.&#160; This is an affair between Ugandans.&#160; It is your driver who was at fault.&#160; He is a Ugandan, he should have known about our national security and how no one should photograph the bridge.&#160; Let them work it out.”</p>
<p>And indeed, when I turn around Godfrey is no longer behind the steering wheel.&#160; He’s with the other soldiers, remonstrating away.&#160; “Don’t you worry,” repeats my guy indulgently, a broad smile spreading across his face as if we are the best of buddies.&#160; “Give them time.”&#160; And then, as if to pass the time himself, he adds, “So, how do you like our excellent country?”</p>
<p>Minutes go by with Godfrey and his two interlocutors on the other side of the road, locked in fervent colloquy — much hand waving, arm flinging, rifle toying, shouting, cajoling, and then smiling, even guffawing — until finally, 15 minutes and $20 later, Godfrey comes ambling back to the car, climbs into the driver’s seat, and hands me the iPhone.</p>
<p>(Memo to would-be terrorists: If any of you are planning to blow up the Karuma bridge, make sure to budget an extra $20 photography fee during the planning phase.)</p>
<p>Anyway, Godfrey turns the key, revs up the car’s engine, and we resume our climb out of the canyon of the Nile and back onto the flat, red, shrubby plateau.</p>
<p>“Does that kind of thing happen often?” I ask Godfrey, who in much of the rest of his life is a Kampala taxi driver.</p>
<p>“All the time,” he assures me.&#160; Two or three times a week.&#160; He has to figure it into his budget, and it’s a large item.&#160; Just the other day, he adds, he turned down a one-way street in the middle of Kampala and found, a couple hundred yards on, that it was completely flooded.&#160; As he gingerly made his way back to the intersection, a traffic cop was happily standing in wait to give him a hefty fine for driving the wrong way on a one-way street — either that or a 10,000 shilling tip (about $5, which in Kampala might otherwise pay for two good meals) to make the problem go away.</p>
<p>It’s to be expected, Godfrey went on.&#160; The soldiers are conscripts, the traffic cop a lowly underling, and they’re all notoriously underpaid.&#160; Or rather, their superiors carve out a substantial part of their salaries for themselves, leaving these men with hardly enough to live on, let alone maintain a family.&#160; The opportunity to garnish bribes becomes a necessary perk of the job.&#160; The trouble is, he continued, such corruption riddles the entire country, infesting virtually every transaction with the state.</p>
<p>We are silent for a few moments, the scrub brush racing by.&#160; Then Godfrey asks, “Doesn’t this sort of thing happen in America?”</p>
<p>I don’t even hesitate.&#160; Not really, I tell him: not blatantly like that, and not frequently, certainly not all the time.</p>
<p>Only, then I get to thinking, because that answer turns out to be way too glib.&#160; It’s not that the United States lacks corruption, I go on to say — or even pervasive corruption.&#160; It’s just not of the low-level and petty variety like the kind we just went through, not most of the time anyway.&#160; In America, corruption is concentrated at the highest levels of society — and it masquerades, for example, under the name of “campaign finance.”</p>
<p>Election campaigns have become so expensive that candidates have to go begging, hat in hand, to anyone who will finance them.&#160; And the billionaires and millionaires and bankers and hedge-fund operators and portfolio managers and CEOs and their lobbyists are, in turn, only too happy to contribute.&#160; They lard the “people’s representatives” with grotesque “contributions” after which those representatives prove only too willing to turn around and carve out billions of dollars in specifically targeted tax breaks and subsidies structured exclusively for them — precious dollars which then can’t be used to fund schools or clinics or playgrounds or to further the public good in any way.</p>
<p>And it’s worse than that: once congressional representatives or their senior staff retire, they almost invariably get much higher paying lobbying jobs working for the very industries over which they had once held sway — a further incentive not to upset those monied interests when still on the public payroll.</p>
<p>So regulations get gutted, calamities ensue, and guess who gets stuck cleaning up the inevitable mess, whether financial, environmental, or of any other sort: yup, the taxpayers.&#160; Tax laws get dictated or often just written by the lobbyists of those same monied interests, with all sorts of sweet loopholes carved out especially for them — not infrequently for them individually — so that, in the end, the richest man in America reports he’s getting off with a lower tax rate than his secretary.</p>
<p>“You’re kidding,” Godfrey interjected.</p>
<p>No: even he’s embarrassed!&#160; Education, meanwhile, is funded according to narrowly local property taxes — and the rich make sure it stays that way.&#160; The result?&#160; Their kids get a far better education than those living in poorer neighborhoods.&#160; When people try to remedy that injustice through affirmative action programs which at least recognize the unfairness of the competition for access to, for example, university slots, the rich protest and get judges to overturn such programs as racist.&#160; They are, however, perfectly happy to take advantage of other programs that assure the acceptance of the children of alumni, no matter their scholarly performance, and no one says boo.&#160; It’s all perfectly legal.</p>
<p>In America, as W.E.B. Du Bois noted toward the end of his life, “We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is ‘legal’ we call it high profits.&#160; And the profiteers help decide what is legal.”</p>
<p>In Uganda, corruption often arises out of desperation.&#160; In America, more typically, its wellsprings are greed, pure and simple.&#160; And it’s hard to decide which is the more dismaying, the more disfiguring, the more disgusting.</p>
<p>Or actually, no, it’s not.&#160; It’s not that hard at all.</p>
<p>Lawrence Weschler is director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU.&#160; His newest book, just published, is&#160; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1582437572/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative</a>&#160;(Counterpoint).</p>
<p><a href="http://tomdispatch.com/" type="external">This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.</a></p>
|
The Great American Shakedown
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2011/11/03/the-great-american-shakedown/
|
2011-11-03
| 4left
|
The Great American Shakedown
<p>A bit over an hour into the five-hour drive across the ferrous red plateau, heading south toward Uganda’s capital Kampala, suddenly, there’s the Nile, a boiling, roiling cataract at this time of year, rain-swollen and ropy and rabid below the bridge that vaults over it.&#160; If Niagara Falls surged horizontally and a rickety bridge arced, shudderingly, over the torrent below, it might feel like the Nile at Karuma.</p>
<p>Naturally, I take out my iPhone and begin snapping pics.</p>
<p>On the other side of the bridge, three soldiers standing in wait in the middle of the road, rifles slung over their shoulders, direct my Kampalan driver Godfrey and me to pull over.</p>
<p>“You were photographing the bridge,” one of them announces, coming up to my open window.&#160; “We saw you.”</p>
<p>“Taking photos of the bridge is expressly forbidden,” the second offers by way of clarification, as the first reaches in and grabs the iPhone out of my hand.&#160; “National security.&#160; Terrorists could use such photos to help in planning to blow up the bridge.”</p>
<p>“Do I look like a terrorist to you?” I ask.&#160; “And anyway,” I shout as Soldiers One and Two walk off with their prize, oblivious, “I wasn’t photographing the bridge.&#160; I was photographing the rapids.&#160; The bridge was precisely the one thing I wasn’t photographing!”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1582437572/counterpunchmaga" type="external" />To no avail.&#160; I open my car door and begin to get out — but the third soldier pushes me gently back and then leans into the window, peering amiably. “And besides,” I continue, “there were no signs forbidding such photographs.&#160; Anyway, if it’s such a big deal just give me back the phone and I’ll delete the photos.&#160; You can watch.”</p>
<p>I’m beginning to panic.&#160; As with most of us nowadays, pretty much my entire life is couched inside that bloody little device: contacts, calendars, hotel reservations, all my appointment coordinates for the coming days.</p>
<p>“Ah no,” Soldier Three smiles in a silkily practiced manner.&#160; “You are not to worry.&#160; This is not an affair about you.&#160; This is an affair between Ugandans.&#160; It is your driver who was at fault.&#160; He is a Ugandan, he should have known about our national security and how no one should photograph the bridge.&#160; Let them work it out.”</p>
<p>And indeed, when I turn around Godfrey is no longer behind the steering wheel.&#160; He’s with the other soldiers, remonstrating away.&#160; “Don’t you worry,” repeats my guy indulgently, a broad smile spreading across his face as if we are the best of buddies.&#160; “Give them time.”&#160; And then, as if to pass the time himself, he adds, “So, how do you like our excellent country?”</p>
<p>Minutes go by with Godfrey and his two interlocutors on the other side of the road, locked in fervent colloquy — much hand waving, arm flinging, rifle toying, shouting, cajoling, and then smiling, even guffawing — until finally, 15 minutes and $20 later, Godfrey comes ambling back to the car, climbs into the driver’s seat, and hands me the iPhone.</p>
<p>(Memo to would-be terrorists: If any of you are planning to blow up the Karuma bridge, make sure to budget an extra $20 photography fee during the planning phase.)</p>
<p>Anyway, Godfrey turns the key, revs up the car’s engine, and we resume our climb out of the canyon of the Nile and back onto the flat, red, shrubby plateau.</p>
<p>“Does that kind of thing happen often?” I ask Godfrey, who in much of the rest of his life is a Kampala taxi driver.</p>
<p>“All the time,” he assures me.&#160; Two or three times a week.&#160; He has to figure it into his budget, and it’s a large item.&#160; Just the other day, he adds, he turned down a one-way street in the middle of Kampala and found, a couple hundred yards on, that it was completely flooded.&#160; As he gingerly made his way back to the intersection, a traffic cop was happily standing in wait to give him a hefty fine for driving the wrong way on a one-way street — either that or a 10,000 shilling tip (about $5, which in Kampala might otherwise pay for two good meals) to make the problem go away.</p>
<p>It’s to be expected, Godfrey went on.&#160; The soldiers are conscripts, the traffic cop a lowly underling, and they’re all notoriously underpaid.&#160; Or rather, their superiors carve out a substantial part of their salaries for themselves, leaving these men with hardly enough to live on, let alone maintain a family.&#160; The opportunity to garnish bribes becomes a necessary perk of the job.&#160; The trouble is, he continued, such corruption riddles the entire country, infesting virtually every transaction with the state.</p>
<p>We are silent for a few moments, the scrub brush racing by.&#160; Then Godfrey asks, “Doesn’t this sort of thing happen in America?”</p>
<p>I don’t even hesitate.&#160; Not really, I tell him: not blatantly like that, and not frequently, certainly not all the time.</p>
<p>Only, then I get to thinking, because that answer turns out to be way too glib.&#160; It’s not that the United States lacks corruption, I go on to say — or even pervasive corruption.&#160; It’s just not of the low-level and petty variety like the kind we just went through, not most of the time anyway.&#160; In America, corruption is concentrated at the highest levels of society — and it masquerades, for example, under the name of “campaign finance.”</p>
<p>Election campaigns have become so expensive that candidates have to go begging, hat in hand, to anyone who will finance them.&#160; And the billionaires and millionaires and bankers and hedge-fund operators and portfolio managers and CEOs and their lobbyists are, in turn, only too happy to contribute.&#160; They lard the “people’s representatives” with grotesque “contributions” after which those representatives prove only too willing to turn around and carve out billions of dollars in specifically targeted tax breaks and subsidies structured exclusively for them — precious dollars which then can’t be used to fund schools or clinics or playgrounds or to further the public good in any way.</p>
<p>And it’s worse than that: once congressional representatives or their senior staff retire, they almost invariably get much higher paying lobbying jobs working for the very industries over which they had once held sway — a further incentive not to upset those monied interests when still on the public payroll.</p>
<p>So regulations get gutted, calamities ensue, and guess who gets stuck cleaning up the inevitable mess, whether financial, environmental, or of any other sort: yup, the taxpayers.&#160; Tax laws get dictated or often just written by the lobbyists of those same monied interests, with all sorts of sweet loopholes carved out especially for them — not infrequently for them individually — so that, in the end, the richest man in America reports he’s getting off with a lower tax rate than his secretary.</p>
<p>“You’re kidding,” Godfrey interjected.</p>
<p>No: even he’s embarrassed!&#160; Education, meanwhile, is funded according to narrowly local property taxes — and the rich make sure it stays that way.&#160; The result?&#160; Their kids get a far better education than those living in poorer neighborhoods.&#160; When people try to remedy that injustice through affirmative action programs which at least recognize the unfairness of the competition for access to, for example, university slots, the rich protest and get judges to overturn such programs as racist.&#160; They are, however, perfectly happy to take advantage of other programs that assure the acceptance of the children of alumni, no matter their scholarly performance, and no one says boo.&#160; It’s all perfectly legal.</p>
<p>In America, as W.E.B. Du Bois noted toward the end of his life, “We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is ‘legal’ we call it high profits.&#160; And the profiteers help decide what is legal.”</p>
<p>In Uganda, corruption often arises out of desperation.&#160; In America, more typically, its wellsprings are greed, pure and simple.&#160; And it’s hard to decide which is the more dismaying, the more disfiguring, the more disgusting.</p>
<p>Or actually, no, it’s not.&#160; It’s not that hard at all.</p>
<p>Lawrence Weschler is director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU.&#160; His newest book, just published, is&#160; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1582437572/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative</a>&#160;(Counterpoint).</p>
<p><a href="http://tomdispatch.com/" type="external">This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.</a></p>
| 8,009 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Agents with the FBI served at least one search warrant on Sheriff Tommy Rodella’s office in Española on Wednesday afternoon, according to U.S. Attorney spokeswoman Elizabeth Martinez.</p>
<p>But Martinez said that under federal Department of Justice policy, she couldn’t say more and couldn’t describe the nature of the investigation or what the agents were seeking.</p>
<p>Answers also weren’t coming from the FBI. Regional spokesman Frank Fisher responded to several telephone calls from the Journal with a one-line email, stating only: “need refer you to U.S. Attorney’s Office.”</p>
<p>An explanation wasn’t coming from Rodella either, who did not answer a message seeking a comment. A deputy said Rodella was in a meeting, and the sheriff did not come out to speak with reporters gathered outside his office.</p>
<p>Attorney Yvonne Quintana, who said she was representing the sheriff, would not answer any questions.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Sheriff’s spokesman Jake Arnold said he had no comment other than to say, “The FBI did come here. They wanted documents. We complied. That’s all.”</p>
<p>Arnold said no arrests were made.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Feds Use Warrant To Get Documents From Rio Arriba Sheriff
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/189997/feds-use-warrant-to-get-documents-from-rio-arriba-sheriff.html
|
2013-04-18
| 2least
|
Feds Use Warrant To Get Documents From Rio Arriba Sheriff
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Agents with the FBI served at least one search warrant on Sheriff Tommy Rodella’s office in Española on Wednesday afternoon, according to U.S. Attorney spokeswoman Elizabeth Martinez.</p>
<p>But Martinez said that under federal Department of Justice policy, she couldn’t say more and couldn’t describe the nature of the investigation or what the agents were seeking.</p>
<p>Answers also weren’t coming from the FBI. Regional spokesman Frank Fisher responded to several telephone calls from the Journal with a one-line email, stating only: “need refer you to U.S. Attorney’s Office.”</p>
<p>An explanation wasn’t coming from Rodella either, who did not answer a message seeking a comment. A deputy said Rodella was in a meeting, and the sheriff did not come out to speak with reporters gathered outside his office.</p>
<p>Attorney Yvonne Quintana, who said she was representing the sheriff, would not answer any questions.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Sheriff’s spokesman Jake Arnold said he had no comment other than to say, “The FBI did come here. They wanted documents. We complied. That’s all.”</p>
<p>Arnold said no arrests were made.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 8,010 |
<p>On Friday’s episode of “Jeopardy,” a contestant found a hilarious way to mock liberals.</p>
<p />
<p>The final question was, “The flower pictured here is called this, also a disparaging term for people on the political left.”</p>
<p>The correct answer was “Bleeding Heart,” but the losing contestant answered, “What is a pansy?”</p>
<p>Host Alex Trabek had a good laugh, as did the audience. “You found a way to insult liberals in this country,” he said.</p>
|
VIDEO: JEOPARDY contestant insults liberals with final answer
| true |
http://theamericanmirror.com/video-jeopardy-contestant-insults-liberals-with-final-answer/
|
2015-10-26
| 0right
|
VIDEO: JEOPARDY contestant insults liberals with final answer
<p>On Friday’s episode of “Jeopardy,” a contestant found a hilarious way to mock liberals.</p>
<p />
<p>The final question was, “The flower pictured here is called this, also a disparaging term for people on the political left.”</p>
<p>The correct answer was “Bleeding Heart,” but the losing contestant answered, “What is a pansy?”</p>
<p>Host Alex Trabek had a good laugh, as did the audience. “You found a way to insult liberals in this country,” he said.</p>
| 8,011 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The commissioners passed a resolution Tuesday opposing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's program to reintroduce the Mexican wolf in the wild - especially in Socorro County, according to a report in El Defensor Chieftain.</p>
<p>The commissioners also approved the publication of a proposed ordinance that would make it illegal to release wolves on ranch land in Socorro County, although there were questions about whether such a rule could be enforced on federal land, according to the report.</p>
<p>A public hearing on the proposed ordinance would be held before the commission votes.</p>
<p>A new management rule that took effect in February expanded the area where Mexican wolves may roam and includes Socorro County.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The recovery area now stretches from Interstate 40 to the U.S.-Mexico border.</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Socorro County opposes wolf recovery program
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/660800/socorro-county-opposes-wolf-recovery-program.html
| 2least
|
Socorro County opposes wolf recovery program
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The commissioners passed a resolution Tuesday opposing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's program to reintroduce the Mexican wolf in the wild - especially in Socorro County, according to a report in El Defensor Chieftain.</p>
<p>The commissioners also approved the publication of a proposed ordinance that would make it illegal to release wolves on ranch land in Socorro County, although there were questions about whether such a rule could be enforced on federal land, according to the report.</p>
<p>A public hearing on the proposed ordinance would be held before the commission votes.</p>
<p>A new management rule that took effect in February expanded the area where Mexican wolves may roam and includes Socorro County.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The recovery area now stretches from Interstate 40 to the U.S.-Mexico border.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 8,012 |
|
<p>The man who has played the good, the bad and the ugly both in Hollywood and American politics has come out in favor of same-sex marriage as he added his name to a legal brief calling on the Supreme Court to strike down a ban on such unions.</p>
<p>In California, where Clint Eastwood lives, Proposition 8 limits marriage to between a man and a woman. The Oscar-winning filmmaker and well-known conservative is speaking up one month before the high court is due to hear arguments on the legality of the prohibition against gay marriage. Opponents of the measure are hoping the justices will overturn it.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p>The Guardian:</p>
<p />
<p>The 82-year-old director of Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby was one of more than 80 Republicans who signed the “friend of the court” brief, which was then released by the American Foundation for Equal Rights. Adam Umhoefer, the foundation’s executive director, described the brief as “a microcosm of what we see happening all across the country”. He added: “Americans are united in the concept of freedom, dignity and strong families.”</p>
<p>A recent poll found that 61% of California voters are now in favour of same-sex marriage.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/mar/01/clint-eastwood-gay-marriage" type="external">Read more</a></p>
|
Make My Day: Legalize Gay Marriage, Eastwood Says
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/make-my-day-legalize-gay-marriage-eastwood-says/
|
2013-03-01
| 4left
|
Make My Day: Legalize Gay Marriage, Eastwood Says
<p>The man who has played the good, the bad and the ugly both in Hollywood and American politics has come out in favor of same-sex marriage as he added his name to a legal brief calling on the Supreme Court to strike down a ban on such unions.</p>
<p>In California, where Clint Eastwood lives, Proposition 8 limits marriage to between a man and a woman. The Oscar-winning filmmaker and well-known conservative is speaking up one month before the high court is due to hear arguments on the legality of the prohibition against gay marriage. Opponents of the measure are hoping the justices will overturn it.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p>The Guardian:</p>
<p />
<p>The 82-year-old director of Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby was one of more than 80 Republicans who signed the “friend of the court” brief, which was then released by the American Foundation for Equal Rights. Adam Umhoefer, the foundation’s executive director, described the brief as “a microcosm of what we see happening all across the country”. He added: “Americans are united in the concept of freedom, dignity and strong families.”</p>
<p>A recent poll found that 61% of California voters are now in favour of same-sex marriage.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/mar/01/clint-eastwood-gay-marriage" type="external">Read more</a></p>
| 8,013 |
<p>The Oklahoma Supreme Court says American Airlines is entitled to sales tax refunds that could total more than $1 million.</p>
<p>A 42-page ruling handed down Tuesday by the court overturns the Oklahoma Tax Commission's denial of the refund and orders the commission to determine exactly how much money is owed to the airline.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Fort Worth, Texas-based American operates a large maintenance base in Tulsa and requested refunds for taxes it paid for electricity and natural gas utility services in 2006.</p>
<p>The matter wound up in court after the commission denied the refund request, asserting that American bought items and services that don't become "part of the aircraft."</p>
<p>A tax commission spokeswoman says the agency will review the order. A message left with an attorney for American was not immediately returned.</p>
|
Oklahoma Supreme Court rules American Airlines may get $1M-plus in sales tax refunds
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/11/18/oklahoma-supreme-court-rules-american-airlines-may-get-1m-plus-in-sales-tax.html
|
2016-03-09
| 0right
|
Oklahoma Supreme Court rules American Airlines may get $1M-plus in sales tax refunds
<p>The Oklahoma Supreme Court says American Airlines is entitled to sales tax refunds that could total more than $1 million.</p>
<p>A 42-page ruling handed down Tuesday by the court overturns the Oklahoma Tax Commission's denial of the refund and orders the commission to determine exactly how much money is owed to the airline.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Fort Worth, Texas-based American operates a large maintenance base in Tulsa and requested refunds for taxes it paid for electricity and natural gas utility services in 2006.</p>
<p>The matter wound up in court after the commission denied the refund request, asserting that American bought items and services that don't become "part of the aircraft."</p>
<p>A tax commission spokeswoman says the agency will review the order. A message left with an attorney for American was not immediately returned.</p>
| 8,014 |
<p>PHOENIX (AP) _ These Arizona lotteries were drawn Saturday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>JS-3D-6D-6S-9S</p>
<p>(JS, 3D, 6D, 6S, 9S)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Evening</p>
<p>01-02-03-04-10-11-14-15-16-19</p>
<p>(one, two, three, four, ten, eleven, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, nineteen)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Midday</p>
<p>03-04-07-08-09-10-11-12-17-18</p>
<p>(three, four, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, seventeen, eighteen)</p>
<p>Pick 3</p>
<p>8-4-6</p>
<p>(eight, four, six)</p>
<p>Fantasy 5</p>
<p>01-03-25-38-40</p>
<p>(one, three, twenty-five, thirty-eight, forty)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $55,000</p>
<p>The Pick</p>
<p>04-06-08-11-21-43</p>
<p>(four, six, eight, eleven, twenty-one, forty-three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $1 million</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>14-25-35-58-69, Powerball: 24, Power Play: 2</p>
<p>(fourteen, twenty-five, thirty-five, fifty-eight, sixty-nine; Powerball: twenty-four; Power Play: two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>PHOENIX (AP) _ These Arizona lotteries were drawn Saturday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>JS-3D-6D-6S-9S</p>
<p>(JS, 3D, 6D, 6S, 9S)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Evening</p>
<p>01-02-03-04-10-11-14-15-16-19</p>
<p>(one, two, three, four, ten, eleven, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, nineteen)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Midday</p>
<p>03-04-07-08-09-10-11-12-17-18</p>
<p>(three, four, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, seventeen, eighteen)</p>
<p>Pick 3</p>
<p>8-4-6</p>
<p>(eight, four, six)</p>
<p>Fantasy 5</p>
<p>01-03-25-38-40</p>
<p>(one, three, twenty-five, thirty-eight, forty)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $55,000</p>
<p>The Pick</p>
<p>04-06-08-11-21-43</p>
<p>(four, six, eight, eleven, twenty-one, forty-three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $1 million</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>14-25-35-58-69, Powerball: 24, Power Play: 2</p>
<p>(fourteen, twenty-five, thirty-five, fifty-eight, sixty-nine; Powerball: twenty-four; Power Play: two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
|
AZ Lottery
| false |
https://apnews.com/a86f9c733770411a8eefeb129eaebceb
|
2018-01-14
| 2least
|
AZ Lottery
<p>PHOENIX (AP) _ These Arizona lotteries were drawn Saturday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>JS-3D-6D-6S-9S</p>
<p>(JS, 3D, 6D, 6S, 9S)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Evening</p>
<p>01-02-03-04-10-11-14-15-16-19</p>
<p>(one, two, three, four, ten, eleven, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, nineteen)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Midday</p>
<p>03-04-07-08-09-10-11-12-17-18</p>
<p>(three, four, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, seventeen, eighteen)</p>
<p>Pick 3</p>
<p>8-4-6</p>
<p>(eight, four, six)</p>
<p>Fantasy 5</p>
<p>01-03-25-38-40</p>
<p>(one, three, twenty-five, thirty-eight, forty)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $55,000</p>
<p>The Pick</p>
<p>04-06-08-11-21-43</p>
<p>(four, six, eight, eleven, twenty-one, forty-three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $1 million</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>14-25-35-58-69, Powerball: 24, Power Play: 2</p>
<p>(fourteen, twenty-five, thirty-five, fifty-eight, sixty-nine; Powerball: twenty-four; Power Play: two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>PHOENIX (AP) _ These Arizona lotteries were drawn Saturday:</p>
<p>5 Card Cash</p>
<p>JS-3D-6D-6S-9S</p>
<p>(JS, 3D, 6D, 6S, 9S)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Evening</p>
<p>01-02-03-04-10-11-14-15-16-19</p>
<p>(one, two, three, four, ten, eleven, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, nineteen)</p>
<p>All or Nothing Midday</p>
<p>03-04-07-08-09-10-11-12-17-18</p>
<p>(three, four, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, seventeen, eighteen)</p>
<p>Pick 3</p>
<p>8-4-6</p>
<p>(eight, four, six)</p>
<p>Fantasy 5</p>
<p>01-03-25-38-40</p>
<p>(one, three, twenty-five, thirty-eight, forty)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $55,000</p>
<p>The Pick</p>
<p>04-06-08-11-21-43</p>
<p>(four, six, eight, eleven, twenty-one, forty-three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $1 million</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>14-25-35-58-69, Powerball: 24, Power Play: 2</p>
<p>(fourteen, twenty-five, thirty-five, fifty-eight, sixty-nine; Powerball: twenty-four; Power Play: two)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
| 8,015 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The restaurant inside the golf course building is next to the pro shop but you don’t have to be a golfer to enjoy the food of the restaurant.</p>
<p>I ordered the red chile cheese enchiladas ($6). They come with pinto beans, Spanish rice, a garnish of shredded lettuce and diced tomato, and a flour tortilla. The meal was cooked to perfection and the chef/waiter said everything was prepared from scratch. I’m a big fan of red so I was doing an informal taste comparison with what I’ve eaten at other restaurants. This restaurant’s red was wonderfully hot but not hot-hot.</p>
<p>Motivated by hunger, taste and value, I got a second dish of the enchiladas. No wonder my stomach and chest stayed warm hours later. Maybe I’ll take up golf.</p>
<p>I drank a cup of instant hot chocolate ($2).</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Nibbles: Los Altos Golf Course
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/168895/headline-goes-here-214.html
|
2013-02-15
| 2least
|
Nibbles: Los Altos Golf Course
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The restaurant inside the golf course building is next to the pro shop but you don’t have to be a golfer to enjoy the food of the restaurant.</p>
<p>I ordered the red chile cheese enchiladas ($6). They come with pinto beans, Spanish rice, a garnish of shredded lettuce and diced tomato, and a flour tortilla. The meal was cooked to perfection and the chef/waiter said everything was prepared from scratch. I’m a big fan of red so I was doing an informal taste comparison with what I’ve eaten at other restaurants. This restaurant’s red was wonderfully hot but not hot-hot.</p>
<p>Motivated by hunger, taste and value, I got a second dish of the enchiladas. No wonder my stomach and chest stayed warm hours later. Maybe I’ll take up golf.</p>
<p>I drank a cup of instant hot chocolate ($2).</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 8,016 |
<p>(Screenshot courtesy of YouTube)</p>
<p>“Arrow” actor Colton Haynes revealed in an emotional interview with <a href="http://www.out.com/popnography/2016/8/10/pretty-hurts-joy-and-heartache-colton-haynes" type="external">Out</a>magazine that he was blamed for his father’s suicide after coming out to his family.</p>
<p>Haynes says he came out to his family at age 14 and ran away from home for three weeks. While he was away, his father overdosed on 40 oxycodone pills.</p>
<p>“I’m the last person in the world who would say, ‘Oh, my dad – pity me. But I was told that my dad killed himself because he found out I was gay,” Haynes, 28, told Out.&#160;“I lost it and was like, ‘How could you say something like that?’ And no one will ever really know the truth. But my brother and my mom went to pick up my dad’s stuff, and the only picture on his fridge was my eighth-grade graduation picture. So I was just like, f**k.”</p>
<p>The actor&#160;also revealed he knew he was gay in first grade, but tried to keep his sexuality a secret. Suppressing his secret led to Haynes having anxiety which he has dealt with in therapy.</p>
<p>“I feel bad that I had to lie for so long,” Haynes says. “But I was told that was the only way I was going to be successful. When you’re young in this industry, people take advantage of you, and they literally tell you that your dreams are going to come true. If you believe that, you’ll do anything. And you do believe it, especially if you’re from Kansas.”</p>
<p>Haynes publicly came out in <a href="" type="internal">May</a> following <a href="" type="internal">speculation</a> about his sexuality. Fellow actor Noah Galvin attacked Haynes for the way in which he came out in a controversial <a href="" type="internal">Vulture</a> article.</p>
<p>“That’s not coming out. That’s f**king p***y bulls**t. That’s like, enough people assume that I sleep with men, so I’m just going to slightly confirm the fact that I’ve sucked a d**k or two. That’s not doing anything for the little gays but giving them more masturbation material,” Galvin said in the article. He issued a statement through Twitter apologizing soon after.</p>
<p>Haynes told Out he was hurt and confused by Galvin’s comments.</p>
<p>“When I came out, Noah tweeted, ‘Welcome to the family,’ and ‘So proud of you.’ I have the tweets saved on my phone,” Haynes&#160;says. “Then, all of a sudden, I’m the worst, I’m a terrible person, and I’m a shame of the gay community.”</p>
<p>“It was really an emotional thing for me,” Haynes continued. “And for that to be discredited by someone who has never met me was upsetting. He has no idea what I’ve been through. And I can’t sit here and have a conversation about Noah because I don’t know him either.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Arrow</a> <a href="" type="internal">Colton Haynes</a> <a href="" type="internal">Noah Galvin</a> <a href="" type="internal">out</a></p>
|
Colton Haynes says he was blamed for his father’s suicide
| false |
http://washingtonblade.com/2016/08/11/colton-haynes-says-blamed-fathers-suicide/
| 3left-center
|
Colton Haynes says he was blamed for his father’s suicide
<p>(Screenshot courtesy of YouTube)</p>
<p>“Arrow” actor Colton Haynes revealed in an emotional interview with <a href="http://www.out.com/popnography/2016/8/10/pretty-hurts-joy-and-heartache-colton-haynes" type="external">Out</a>magazine that he was blamed for his father’s suicide after coming out to his family.</p>
<p>Haynes says he came out to his family at age 14 and ran away from home for three weeks. While he was away, his father overdosed on 40 oxycodone pills.</p>
<p>“I’m the last person in the world who would say, ‘Oh, my dad – pity me. But I was told that my dad killed himself because he found out I was gay,” Haynes, 28, told Out.&#160;“I lost it and was like, ‘How could you say something like that?’ And no one will ever really know the truth. But my brother and my mom went to pick up my dad’s stuff, and the only picture on his fridge was my eighth-grade graduation picture. So I was just like, f**k.”</p>
<p>The actor&#160;also revealed he knew he was gay in first grade, but tried to keep his sexuality a secret. Suppressing his secret led to Haynes having anxiety which he has dealt with in therapy.</p>
<p>“I feel bad that I had to lie for so long,” Haynes says. “But I was told that was the only way I was going to be successful. When you’re young in this industry, people take advantage of you, and they literally tell you that your dreams are going to come true. If you believe that, you’ll do anything. And you do believe it, especially if you’re from Kansas.”</p>
<p>Haynes publicly came out in <a href="" type="internal">May</a> following <a href="" type="internal">speculation</a> about his sexuality. Fellow actor Noah Galvin attacked Haynes for the way in which he came out in a controversial <a href="" type="internal">Vulture</a> article.</p>
<p>“That’s not coming out. That’s f**king p***y bulls**t. That’s like, enough people assume that I sleep with men, so I’m just going to slightly confirm the fact that I’ve sucked a d**k or two. That’s not doing anything for the little gays but giving them more masturbation material,” Galvin said in the article. He issued a statement through Twitter apologizing soon after.</p>
<p>Haynes told Out he was hurt and confused by Galvin’s comments.</p>
<p>“When I came out, Noah tweeted, ‘Welcome to the family,’ and ‘So proud of you.’ I have the tweets saved on my phone,” Haynes&#160;says. “Then, all of a sudden, I’m the worst, I’m a terrible person, and I’m a shame of the gay community.”</p>
<p>“It was really an emotional thing for me,” Haynes continued. “And for that to be discredited by someone who has never met me was upsetting. He has no idea what I’ve been through. And I can’t sit here and have a conversation about Noah because I don’t know him either.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Arrow</a> <a href="" type="internal">Colton Haynes</a> <a href="" type="internal">Noah Galvin</a> <a href="" type="internal">out</a></p>
| 8,017 |
|
<p>Jan 25 (Reuters) - Fingerprint Cards AB:</p>
<p>* REG-FINGERPRINTS PREDICTS LOWER THAN EXPECTED EARNINGS IN THE FOURTH QUARTER</p>
<p>* PREDICTS Q4 2017 EARNINGS TO BE LOWER THAN MARKET EXPECTATIONS</p>
<p>* ESTIMATES REVENUES TO DECLINE 62% COMPARED TO SAME QUARTER LAST YEAR</p> * EXPECTS GROSS MARGIN TO DECLINE TO 21% IN Q4
<p>* SAYS ‍PREDICTS Q4 2017 EARNINGS TO BE LOWER THAN MARKET EXPECTATIONS, AND ESTIMATES REVENUES TO DECLINE 62% COMPARED TO SAME QUARTER LAST YEAR TO SEK 615.3 M (1,618.7)​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍ESTIMATES THAT OPERATING PROFIT (EBIT) DECLINES TO SEK -40.6 M (520.0)​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍EXCLUDING INVENTORY PROVISION OF SEK -58.9 M AND A NON-RECURRING ITEM OF SEK 28.2 M, COMPANY ESTIMATES OPERATING PROFIT (EBIT) TO SEK -9.9 M.​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍REVENUES HAVE BEEN IMPACTED BY A WEAK MARKET DEVELOPMENT AND A CONTINUED NEGATIVE PRICE DEVELOPMENT IN CAPACITIVE SENSORS​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍ESTIMATES THAT CHINESE SMARTPHONE MARKET HAS WEAKENED FURTHER DURING QUARTER AND PREDICTS THAT COMPANY’S REVENUES WILL REMAIN WEAK DURING Q1 OF 2018​</p> * SAYS ‍EXPECTS GROSS MARGIN TO DECLINE TO 21% (44)​
<p>* SAYS ‍DECLINE IN GROSS MARGIN IS PRIMARILY ATTRIBUTABLE TO A WEAKENED PRODUCT MIX AND TO AN INVENTORY PROVISION OF SEK -58.9 M​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍TO STRUCTURALLY IMPROVE PROFITABILITY FINGERPRINTS HAS INITIATED A COST REDUCTION PROGRAM AND AS PART OF THIS APPROXIMATELY 185 POSITIONS ARE MADE REDUNDANT​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍IS REDUCING EXTERNAL COSTS, MOSTLY CONSULTANTS, BUT ALSO COSTS RELATED TO OWN EMPLOYEES​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍AGGREGATED INITIATIVES ARE ESTIMATED TO RESULT IN COST SAVINGS OF SOME SEK 360 M DURING 2018​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍RESTRUCTURING COSTS ARE CURRENTLY ESTIMATED TO SEK 40 M AND WILL MAINLY BE REPORTED DURING FIRST HALF OF 2018​ Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Stockholm Newsroom)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who stepped down in January under fire from President Donald Trump, is meeting on Thursday with a Justice Department official in an effort to preserve his pension, according to a source familiar with the matter.</p> Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testifies before the House Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein
<p>McCabe planned to retire on Sunday with full benefits, but some or all of his pension could be at risk after the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommended firing him for misleading Justice Department investigators about his supervision of probes into Hillary Clinton, Trump’s presidential opponent, said the source, who requested anonymity.</p>
<p>The person spoke anonymously because no decisions have been made, and the matter is still not public.</p>
<p>McCabe did not return a call seeking comment.</p>
<p>Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by John Walcott and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Iconic toy retailer Toys ‘R’ Us Inc will shutter or sell its stores in the United States after failing to revamp its struggling business, putting 30,000 jobs at risk and leaving a void for vendors who supplied the company with $11 billion worth of goods a year.</p>
<p>As shoppers flock to Amazon.com Inc and children choose smartphones and screens over toys, Toys ‘R’ Us has struggled to boost sales and service debt following a $6.6-billion leveraged buyout by private equity firms in 2005.</p>
<p>Toys ‘R’ Us plans to liquidate inventory at 735 U.S. stores, including Babies ‘R’ Us locations, by the end of this year. The wind-down follows a bruising holiday season, when the company failed to stay competitive and sales came in well below projections. The quarter accounts for 40 percent of its annual net sales.</p>
<p>With the disappearance of Toys ‘R’ Us, everything from squishies and slime kits made by small companies, to board games and Barbie dolls by heavyweights Hasbro Inc and Mattel Inc, will lose a top customer.</p>
<p>Hasbro said on Thursday the pending liquidation and closure is expected to be “disruptive” in the near term.</p>
<p>Lutz Muller, president of consultancy Klosters Trading Corp, estimated a single-digit sales impact on companies like Mattel, Hasbro, Spin Master Corp, Jakks Pacific Inc, Funko Inc and MGA Entertainment Inc.</p>
<p>“Bad but not fatal,” Muller said. “But for the little guys that depended on Toys ‘R’ Us as a major showcase ... a large number will go to the wall.”</p>
<p>Jefferies predicted the bankruptcy would depress 2018 revenue across the industry by between 2.5 percent and 5.5 percent. It said 40 percent of the toy sales up for grabs would flow to Amazon and 30 percent to Walmart Inc.</p>
<p>Shares of Mattel fell nearly 3 percent while shares of Hasbro were trading slightly lower on Thursday; they had tumbled last week on Toys ‘R’ Us’ liquidation reports.</p>
<p>Toys ‘R’ Us’ creditors said in a court filing that Target Corp, Walmart and Amazon pricing toys at low margins, and a greater-than-expected decline in toy and gift card sales following its bankruptcy filing in September, led to the weak performance in the quarter.</p>
<p>“Even during recent store close-outs, Toys ‘R’ Us failed to create any sense of excitement,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of retail research firm GlobalData Retail. “Its so-called heavy discounts remained well above the standard prices of many rivals.”</p> The logo of Toys R Us is seen on a store at Saint-Sebastien-sur-Loire near Nantes, France, March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe TOYS ABROAD
<p>Wayne, New Jersey-based Toys ‘R’ Us was already in the process of closing one-fifth of its stores as part of an attempt to emerge from one of the largest ever bankruptcies by a specialty retailer.</p>
<p>In September, when the company operated more than 1,600 stores globally, with roughly 800 stores outside the United States, it got court permission to borrow more than $2 billion to start paying suppliers.</p>
<p>But efforts to keep the business going collapsed after lenders decided they could recover more in a liquidation by closing stores and raising money from merchandise sales.</p> Slideshow (5 Images)
<p>The company, which is also winding down its UK business, is still trying to salvage some 200 U.S. stores as part of negotiations to sell its Canadian business.</p>
<p>It is also pursuing a reorganization or sale of its operations in Asia and Central Europe, including Germany, Austria and Switzerland.</p>
<p>Keeping up a good relationship with vendors who supply across Toys ‘R’ Us throughout liquidation proceedings will be key to those deals, sources with knowledge of the matter said.</p>
<p>Seventy-year Toys ‘R’ Us does not rule out a last-minute offer for all of its stores and said it will announce the winning bidder of a March 29 auction on April 12.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-toys-r-us-bankruptcy-hasbro/hasbro-sees-near-term-disruption-from-toys-r-us-liquidation-idUSKCN1GR2I9" type="external">Hasbro sees near-term disruption from Toys 'R' Us liquidation</a>
<a href="/article/us-toys-r-us-bankruptcy-reit/reits-slip-anew-despite-minor-exposure-to-toys-r-us-closings-idUSKCN1GR2NA" type="external">REITs slip anew despite minor exposure to Toys 'R' Us closings</a>
<p>The company’s troubles mirror those of other mall-based retailers in the United States that have shut stores and fired employees in a bid to stay relevant.</p>
<p>More than 8,000 U.S. retail stores closed in 2017, roughly double the average annual store closures in the previous decade, according to data from the International Council of Shopping Centers.</p>
<p>Despite the threat of 30,000 job losses, experts do not expect retail employment and wages to be subdued in the near term. Approximately 700,000 jobs in the industry need to be filled, say retail staffing firms and trade federations such as the NRF.</p>
<p>Aly Sanchez, a two-year employee of Toys R Us in Kansas City, said, “It’s an overwhelming feeling not knowing what’s going to happen. And if we do close, we don’t know if we’ll even get severance pay.”</p>
<p>Reporting by Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal and Nandita Bose; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO accused Russia on Thursday of trying to destabilise the West with new nuclear weapons, cyber attacks and covert action, including the poisoning of a Russian former double agent in Britain, that blurred the line between peace and war.</p> NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg addresses a news conference at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman
<p>NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters the use of the Novichok nerve agent against Sergei Skripal and his daughter “happened against a backdrop of a reckless pattern of Russian behaviour over many years”.</p>
<p>Russia denies any involvement and says it is the U.S.-led Atlantic alliance that is a risk to peace in Europe.</p>
<p>Britain’s National Security Adviser Mark Sedwill told NATO envoys at a special meeting of the alliance’s governing North Atlantic Council that Russia was to blame.</p>
<p>“What happened in Salisbury was the latest in a clear pattern of reckless and unlawful behaviour by the Russian state,” Sedwill said in a statement he read to reporters after the meeting, referring to the English city where Skripal was attacked.</p>
<p>Sedwill said the attack “concerns the whole alliance” and that Britain would support allies who faced similar threats. Britain’s ambassador to NATO briefed the envoys on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Stoltenberg said Russia was mixing nuclear and conventional weapons in military doctrine and exercises, which lowered the threshold for launching nuclear attacks, and increasingly deploying “hybrid tactics” such as soldiers without insignia.</p>
<p>Stoltenberg listed Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, its direct support for separatists in Ukraine, its military presence in Moldova and Georgia, meddling in Western elections and its involvement in the war in Syria as evidence of Russia’s threat.</p>
<p>He cited the development of new nuclear weapons, which President Vladimir Putin unveiled in a bellicose speech on March 1, as another worrying development.</p> “BLURRING THE LINE”
<p>He also accused Moscow of a “blurring of the line between peace, crisis and war”, which he said was “destabilising and dangerous”.</p>
<p>Stoltenberg, who will meet British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Monday in Brussels, stressed there had been no request from London to activate the Western military alliance’s mutual defence clause, but said Russia must be deterred.</p> Related Video
<p>“The UK will respond and is responding in a proportionate and measured way ... I fully support there is a need for a response, because there must be consequences when we see actions like those in Salisbury,” he said.</p>
<p>NATO has deployed significant ground forces to the Baltic countries and Poland to dissuade Russia from repeating any Crimea-like seizures.</p>
<p>Stoltenberg said there was little for NATO as an alliance to do immediately in response to the nerve agent attack, beyond giving Britain strong political support.</p>
<p>Reporting by Robin Emmott; editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Kevin Liffey</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain, the United States, Germany and France jointly called on Russia on Thursday to explain a military-grade nerve toxin attack in England on a former Russian double agent, which they said threatened Western security.</p>
<p>After the first known offensive use of such a weapon on European soil since World War Two, Britain has pinned the blame on Moscow and given 23 Russians who it said were spies working under diplomatic cover at the London embassy a week to leave.</p>
<p>Moscow has denied any involvement in the poisoning. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused London of behaving in a “boorish” way and suggested this was partly due to the problems Britain faces over its planned exit from the European Union next year.</p>
<p>Russia has refused Britain’s demands to explain how Novichok, a nerve agent first developed by the Soviet military, was used to strike down Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the southern English city of Salisbury.</p>
<p>“We call on Russia to address all questions related to the attack,” U.S. President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May said in their joint statement.</p>
<p>“It is an assault on UK sovereignty,” the leaders said. “It threatens the security of us all.”</p>
<p>While the statement signals a more coordinated response from Britain’s closest allies, it lacked any details about specific measures the West would take if Russia failed to comply.</p> BREACH OF CONVENTION
<p>The Western leaders said the use of the toxin was a clear breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention and international law.</p>
<p>They called on Russia to provide a complete disclosure of the Novichok program to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.</p>
<p>Russia has repeatedly asked Britain to supply a sample of the nerve agent. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said neither Russia nor the Soviet Union had run a program to develop Novichok.</p>
<p>Separately, Washington on Thursday slapped sanctions on two of Russia’s biggest intelligence agencies, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the GRU military intelligence service, in response to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and malicious cyber attacks.</p> Security cameras are seen, and a flag flies outside the consular section of Russia's embassy in London, Britain, March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
<p>Skripal, a former colonel in the GRU who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence, and his daughter have been critically ill since March 4, when they were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, an elegant cathedral city.</p>
<p>A British policeman who was also poisoned when he went to help them is in a serious but stable condition.</p>
<p>May has directly accused President Vladimir Putin, poised to win a fourth term in an election on Sunday, of being behind the attack. In Washington, Trump said: “It looks like the Russians were behind it.”</p> Slideshow (10 Images) LOST INFLUENCE
<p>Putin, who took over as Kremlin chief from Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has tried to claw back some of the clout that Moscow lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He says the West has repeatedly tried to undermine Russia.</p>
<p>Lavrov said Russia would respond “very soon” to Britain’s decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats. Putin discussed relations with Britain at a meeting of Russia’s Security Council.</p>
<p>Skripal, who was turned by Britain’s MI6 agency while serving in Spain, was arrested in Moscow in 2004 and convicted in 2006 of treason. But in 2010 he was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies.</p>
<p>May on Thursday visited Salisbury, a normally sedate city where police investigators in chemical protection suits and the army have been collecting evidence of the poisoning.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-may-salisbury/uk-pm-may-visits-city-where-russian-double-agent-was-poisoned-idUSKCN1GR1TH" type="external">UK PM May visits city where Russian double agent was poisoned</a>
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-johnson/britain-to-let-international-body-check-its-poison-findings-idUSKCN1GR2RC" type="external">Britain to let international body check its poison findings</a>
<a href="/article/us-britian-russia-france/after-hesitancy-france-backs-britain-over-russian-role-in-attack-idUSKCN1GR144" type="external">After hesitancy, France backs Britain over Russian role in attack</a>
<p>NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Britain could count on NATO’s solidarity, but that it had not invoked the alliance’s mutual defense clause.</p>
<p>In London, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson defended the government’s response and suggested the authorities might also go after assets held in Britain by Russians close to Putin, though he gave no specific details.</p>
<p>Lavrov suggested that the poisoning might have motivated by a desire to complicate Russia’s hosting of this summer’s soccer World Cup.</p>
<p>In a sign of just how tense relations have become, British Defence Secretary said: “Russia should go away, it should shut up.”</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Michael Holden, Elisabeth O'Leary and Costas Pitas in London and Edinburgh, William James in Salisbury, England; Robin Emmott in Brussels; Denis Pinchuk and Andrew Osborn in Moscow; and Steve Holland, James Oliphant and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Gareth Jones</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
|
BRIEF-Fingerprint Cards warns of Q4 operating loss, sees weak Q1 sales Former FBI official urging Justice not to fire him days before he retires Toys 'R' Us closure leaves void for suppliers, endangers 30,000 jobs After nerve agent attack, NATO sees pattern of Russian interference West calls on Russia to explain nerve toxin attack on former double agent
| false |
https://reuters.com/article/brief-fingerprint-cards-warns-of-q4-oper/brief-fingerprint-cards-warns-of-q4-operating-loss-sees-weak-q1-sales-idUSASM000IGY
|
2018-01-25
| 2least
|
BRIEF-Fingerprint Cards warns of Q4 operating loss, sees weak Q1 sales Former FBI official urging Justice not to fire him days before he retires Toys 'R' Us closure leaves void for suppliers, endangers 30,000 jobs After nerve agent attack, NATO sees pattern of Russian interference West calls on Russia to explain nerve toxin attack on former double agent
<p>Jan 25 (Reuters) - Fingerprint Cards AB:</p>
<p>* REG-FINGERPRINTS PREDICTS LOWER THAN EXPECTED EARNINGS IN THE FOURTH QUARTER</p>
<p>* PREDICTS Q4 2017 EARNINGS TO BE LOWER THAN MARKET EXPECTATIONS</p>
<p>* ESTIMATES REVENUES TO DECLINE 62% COMPARED TO SAME QUARTER LAST YEAR</p> * EXPECTS GROSS MARGIN TO DECLINE TO 21% IN Q4
<p>* SAYS ‍PREDICTS Q4 2017 EARNINGS TO BE LOWER THAN MARKET EXPECTATIONS, AND ESTIMATES REVENUES TO DECLINE 62% COMPARED TO SAME QUARTER LAST YEAR TO SEK 615.3 M (1,618.7)​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍ESTIMATES THAT OPERATING PROFIT (EBIT) DECLINES TO SEK -40.6 M (520.0)​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍EXCLUDING INVENTORY PROVISION OF SEK -58.9 M AND A NON-RECURRING ITEM OF SEK 28.2 M, COMPANY ESTIMATES OPERATING PROFIT (EBIT) TO SEK -9.9 M.​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍REVENUES HAVE BEEN IMPACTED BY A WEAK MARKET DEVELOPMENT AND A CONTINUED NEGATIVE PRICE DEVELOPMENT IN CAPACITIVE SENSORS​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍ESTIMATES THAT CHINESE SMARTPHONE MARKET HAS WEAKENED FURTHER DURING QUARTER AND PREDICTS THAT COMPANY’S REVENUES WILL REMAIN WEAK DURING Q1 OF 2018​</p> * SAYS ‍EXPECTS GROSS MARGIN TO DECLINE TO 21% (44)​
<p>* SAYS ‍DECLINE IN GROSS MARGIN IS PRIMARILY ATTRIBUTABLE TO A WEAKENED PRODUCT MIX AND TO AN INVENTORY PROVISION OF SEK -58.9 M​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍TO STRUCTURALLY IMPROVE PROFITABILITY FINGERPRINTS HAS INITIATED A COST REDUCTION PROGRAM AND AS PART OF THIS APPROXIMATELY 185 POSITIONS ARE MADE REDUNDANT​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍IS REDUCING EXTERNAL COSTS, MOSTLY CONSULTANTS, BUT ALSO COSTS RELATED TO OWN EMPLOYEES​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍AGGREGATED INITIATIVES ARE ESTIMATED TO RESULT IN COST SAVINGS OF SOME SEK 360 M DURING 2018​</p>
<p>* SAYS ‍RESTRUCTURING COSTS ARE CURRENTLY ESTIMATED TO SEK 40 M AND WILL MAINLY BE REPORTED DURING FIRST HALF OF 2018​ Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Stockholm Newsroom)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who stepped down in January under fire from President Donald Trump, is meeting on Thursday with a Justice Department official in an effort to preserve his pension, according to a source familiar with the matter.</p> Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testifies before the House Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein
<p>McCabe planned to retire on Sunday with full benefits, but some or all of his pension could be at risk after the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommended firing him for misleading Justice Department investigators about his supervision of probes into Hillary Clinton, Trump’s presidential opponent, said the source, who requested anonymity.</p>
<p>The person spoke anonymously because no decisions have been made, and the matter is still not public.</p>
<p>McCabe did not return a call seeking comment.</p>
<p>Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by John Walcott and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - Iconic toy retailer Toys ‘R’ Us Inc will shutter or sell its stores in the United States after failing to revamp its struggling business, putting 30,000 jobs at risk and leaving a void for vendors who supplied the company with $11 billion worth of goods a year.</p>
<p>As shoppers flock to Amazon.com Inc and children choose smartphones and screens over toys, Toys ‘R’ Us has struggled to boost sales and service debt following a $6.6-billion leveraged buyout by private equity firms in 2005.</p>
<p>Toys ‘R’ Us plans to liquidate inventory at 735 U.S. stores, including Babies ‘R’ Us locations, by the end of this year. The wind-down follows a bruising holiday season, when the company failed to stay competitive and sales came in well below projections. The quarter accounts for 40 percent of its annual net sales.</p>
<p>With the disappearance of Toys ‘R’ Us, everything from squishies and slime kits made by small companies, to board games and Barbie dolls by heavyweights Hasbro Inc and Mattel Inc, will lose a top customer.</p>
<p>Hasbro said on Thursday the pending liquidation and closure is expected to be “disruptive” in the near term.</p>
<p>Lutz Muller, president of consultancy Klosters Trading Corp, estimated a single-digit sales impact on companies like Mattel, Hasbro, Spin Master Corp, Jakks Pacific Inc, Funko Inc and MGA Entertainment Inc.</p>
<p>“Bad but not fatal,” Muller said. “But for the little guys that depended on Toys ‘R’ Us as a major showcase ... a large number will go to the wall.”</p>
<p>Jefferies predicted the bankruptcy would depress 2018 revenue across the industry by between 2.5 percent and 5.5 percent. It said 40 percent of the toy sales up for grabs would flow to Amazon and 30 percent to Walmart Inc.</p>
<p>Shares of Mattel fell nearly 3 percent while shares of Hasbro were trading slightly lower on Thursday; they had tumbled last week on Toys ‘R’ Us’ liquidation reports.</p>
<p>Toys ‘R’ Us’ creditors said in a court filing that Target Corp, Walmart and Amazon pricing toys at low margins, and a greater-than-expected decline in toy and gift card sales following its bankruptcy filing in September, led to the weak performance in the quarter.</p>
<p>“Even during recent store close-outs, Toys ‘R’ Us failed to create any sense of excitement,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of retail research firm GlobalData Retail. “Its so-called heavy discounts remained well above the standard prices of many rivals.”</p> The logo of Toys R Us is seen on a store at Saint-Sebastien-sur-Loire near Nantes, France, March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe TOYS ABROAD
<p>Wayne, New Jersey-based Toys ‘R’ Us was already in the process of closing one-fifth of its stores as part of an attempt to emerge from one of the largest ever bankruptcies by a specialty retailer.</p>
<p>In September, when the company operated more than 1,600 stores globally, with roughly 800 stores outside the United States, it got court permission to borrow more than $2 billion to start paying suppliers.</p>
<p>But efforts to keep the business going collapsed after lenders decided they could recover more in a liquidation by closing stores and raising money from merchandise sales.</p> Slideshow (5 Images)
<p>The company, which is also winding down its UK business, is still trying to salvage some 200 U.S. stores as part of negotiations to sell its Canadian business.</p>
<p>It is also pursuing a reorganization or sale of its operations in Asia and Central Europe, including Germany, Austria and Switzerland.</p>
<p>Keeping up a good relationship with vendors who supply across Toys ‘R’ Us throughout liquidation proceedings will be key to those deals, sources with knowledge of the matter said.</p>
<p>Seventy-year Toys ‘R’ Us does not rule out a last-minute offer for all of its stores and said it will announce the winning bidder of a March 29 auction on April 12.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-toys-r-us-bankruptcy-hasbro/hasbro-sees-near-term-disruption-from-toys-r-us-liquidation-idUSKCN1GR2I9" type="external">Hasbro sees near-term disruption from Toys 'R' Us liquidation</a>
<a href="/article/us-toys-r-us-bankruptcy-reit/reits-slip-anew-despite-minor-exposure-to-toys-r-us-closings-idUSKCN1GR2NA" type="external">REITs slip anew despite minor exposure to Toys 'R' Us closings</a>
<p>The company’s troubles mirror those of other mall-based retailers in the United States that have shut stores and fired employees in a bid to stay relevant.</p>
<p>More than 8,000 U.S. retail stores closed in 2017, roughly double the average annual store closures in the previous decade, according to data from the International Council of Shopping Centers.</p>
<p>Despite the threat of 30,000 job losses, experts do not expect retail employment and wages to be subdued in the near term. Approximately 700,000 jobs in the industry need to be filled, say retail staffing firms and trade federations such as the NRF.</p>
<p>Aly Sanchez, a two-year employee of Toys R Us in Kansas City, said, “It’s an overwhelming feeling not knowing what’s going to happen. And if we do close, we don’t know if we’ll even get severance pay.”</p>
<p>Reporting by Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal and Nandita Bose; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO accused Russia on Thursday of trying to destabilise the West with new nuclear weapons, cyber attacks and covert action, including the poisoning of a Russian former double agent in Britain, that blurred the line between peace and war.</p> NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg addresses a news conference at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman
<p>NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters the use of the Novichok nerve agent against Sergei Skripal and his daughter “happened against a backdrop of a reckless pattern of Russian behaviour over many years”.</p>
<p>Russia denies any involvement and says it is the U.S.-led Atlantic alliance that is a risk to peace in Europe.</p>
<p>Britain’s National Security Adviser Mark Sedwill told NATO envoys at a special meeting of the alliance’s governing North Atlantic Council that Russia was to blame.</p>
<p>“What happened in Salisbury was the latest in a clear pattern of reckless and unlawful behaviour by the Russian state,” Sedwill said in a statement he read to reporters after the meeting, referring to the English city where Skripal was attacked.</p>
<p>Sedwill said the attack “concerns the whole alliance” and that Britain would support allies who faced similar threats. Britain’s ambassador to NATO briefed the envoys on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Stoltenberg said Russia was mixing nuclear and conventional weapons in military doctrine and exercises, which lowered the threshold for launching nuclear attacks, and increasingly deploying “hybrid tactics” such as soldiers without insignia.</p>
<p>Stoltenberg listed Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, its direct support for separatists in Ukraine, its military presence in Moldova and Georgia, meddling in Western elections and its involvement in the war in Syria as evidence of Russia’s threat.</p>
<p>He cited the development of new nuclear weapons, which President Vladimir Putin unveiled in a bellicose speech on March 1, as another worrying development.</p> “BLURRING THE LINE”
<p>He also accused Moscow of a “blurring of the line between peace, crisis and war”, which he said was “destabilising and dangerous”.</p>
<p>Stoltenberg, who will meet British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Monday in Brussels, stressed there had been no request from London to activate the Western military alliance’s mutual defence clause, but said Russia must be deterred.</p> Related Video
<p>“The UK will respond and is responding in a proportionate and measured way ... I fully support there is a need for a response, because there must be consequences when we see actions like those in Salisbury,” he said.</p>
<p>NATO has deployed significant ground forces to the Baltic countries and Poland to dissuade Russia from repeating any Crimea-like seizures.</p>
<p>Stoltenberg said there was little for NATO as an alliance to do immediately in response to the nerve agent attack, beyond giving Britain strong political support.</p>
<p>Reporting by Robin Emmott; editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Kevin Liffey</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain, the United States, Germany and France jointly called on Russia on Thursday to explain a military-grade nerve toxin attack in England on a former Russian double agent, which they said threatened Western security.</p>
<p>After the first known offensive use of such a weapon on European soil since World War Two, Britain has pinned the blame on Moscow and given 23 Russians who it said were spies working under diplomatic cover at the London embassy a week to leave.</p>
<p>Moscow has denied any involvement in the poisoning. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused London of behaving in a “boorish” way and suggested this was partly due to the problems Britain faces over its planned exit from the European Union next year.</p>
<p>Russia has refused Britain’s demands to explain how Novichok, a nerve agent first developed by the Soviet military, was used to strike down Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the southern English city of Salisbury.</p>
<p>“We call on Russia to address all questions related to the attack,” U.S. President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May said in their joint statement.</p>
<p>“It is an assault on UK sovereignty,” the leaders said. “It threatens the security of us all.”</p>
<p>While the statement signals a more coordinated response from Britain’s closest allies, it lacked any details about specific measures the West would take if Russia failed to comply.</p> BREACH OF CONVENTION
<p>The Western leaders said the use of the toxin was a clear breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention and international law.</p>
<p>They called on Russia to provide a complete disclosure of the Novichok program to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.</p>
<p>Russia has repeatedly asked Britain to supply a sample of the nerve agent. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said neither Russia nor the Soviet Union had run a program to develop Novichok.</p>
<p>Separately, Washington on Thursday slapped sanctions on two of Russia’s biggest intelligence agencies, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the GRU military intelligence service, in response to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and malicious cyber attacks.</p> Security cameras are seen, and a flag flies outside the consular section of Russia's embassy in London, Britain, March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
<p>Skripal, a former colonel in the GRU who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence, and his daughter have been critically ill since March 4, when they were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, an elegant cathedral city.</p>
<p>A British policeman who was also poisoned when he went to help them is in a serious but stable condition.</p>
<p>May has directly accused President Vladimir Putin, poised to win a fourth term in an election on Sunday, of being behind the attack. In Washington, Trump said: “It looks like the Russians were behind it.”</p> Slideshow (10 Images) LOST INFLUENCE
<p>Putin, who took over as Kremlin chief from Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has tried to claw back some of the clout that Moscow lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He says the West has repeatedly tried to undermine Russia.</p>
<p>Lavrov said Russia would respond “very soon” to Britain’s decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats. Putin discussed relations with Britain at a meeting of Russia’s Security Council.</p>
<p>Skripal, who was turned by Britain’s MI6 agency while serving in Spain, was arrested in Moscow in 2004 and convicted in 2006 of treason. But in 2010 he was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies.</p>
<p>May on Thursday visited Salisbury, a normally sedate city where police investigators in chemical protection suits and the army have been collecting evidence of the poisoning.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-may-salisbury/uk-pm-may-visits-city-where-russian-double-agent-was-poisoned-idUSKCN1GR1TH" type="external">UK PM May visits city where Russian double agent was poisoned</a>
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-johnson/britain-to-let-international-body-check-its-poison-findings-idUSKCN1GR2RC" type="external">Britain to let international body check its poison findings</a>
<a href="/article/us-britian-russia-france/after-hesitancy-france-backs-britain-over-russian-role-in-attack-idUSKCN1GR144" type="external">After hesitancy, France backs Britain over Russian role in attack</a>
<p>NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Britain could count on NATO’s solidarity, but that it had not invoked the alliance’s mutual defense clause.</p>
<p>In London, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson defended the government’s response and suggested the authorities might also go after assets held in Britain by Russians close to Putin, though he gave no specific details.</p>
<p>Lavrov suggested that the poisoning might have motivated by a desire to complicate Russia’s hosting of this summer’s soccer World Cup.</p>
<p>In a sign of just how tense relations have become, British Defence Secretary said: “Russia should go away, it should shut up.”</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Michael Holden, Elisabeth O'Leary and Costas Pitas in London and Edinburgh, William James in Salisbury, England; Robin Emmott in Brussels; Denis Pinchuk and Andrew Osborn in Moscow; and Steve Holland, James Oliphant and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Gareth Jones</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
| 8,018 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Terminal cancer patients who received moderate doses of psilocybin under the supervision of therapists appeared to experience some lasting relief from anxiety, according to new study funded by a Santa Fe institute.</p>
<p>The study, published this month in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, is the first of three pilot studies that could lead to the therapeutic use of psilocybin for anxiety and other mental disorders, said Dr. George Greer, medical director of the Heffter Institute, which studies potential medical uses for hallucinogens.</p>
<p>Psilocybin is a naturally occurring compound, found in some 200 species of mushrooms, that has long been known for its hallucinogenic effects.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I think there’s huge promise because this is a completely different model of treatment for emotional problems,” said Greer, a psychiatrist and co-author of the study.</p>
<p>Psilocybin offers a potential alternative to anti-anxiety drugs, which are used to treat symptoms of anxiety, he said.</p>
<p>“The psilocybin opens the personality and allows the person to go though a psychological healing process to resolve inner conflicts on a more lasting basis,” Greer said.</p>
<p>Psilocybin can produce a period of heightened emotion that can include crying and grieving, Greer said. The experience also can include a “spiritual, mystical part where they feel at peace, at one with what they feel is sacred,” he said.</p>
<p>The study, performed at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Calif., and two ongoing studies at New York University and Johns Hopkins University, are among the first since the early 1970s to explore possible medical uses for hallucinogens, he said.</p>
<p>Researchers at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center recruited 12 patients with advanced-stage cancer and anxiety. During two sessions, each patient received either a moderate dose of psilocybin or a placebo. Each subject received psilocybin in one of the two sessions.</p>
<p>Subjects were encouraged to lie in bed wearing eyeshades and listening to music on headphones and were monitored periodically. At the end of each six-hour session, subjects were given a variety of psychological tests. Follow-up testing was done over the next six months.</p>
<p>Some of the data found that subjects showed a trend toward improved mood and reduced anxiety, the study concluded. No adverse physical or psychological effects were observed.</p>
<p>The results of the study were limited by the small number of subjects and the modest doses of psilocybin used, Greer said.</p>
<p>“In this study, the FDA allowed only a moderate dose because this was the first study done like this in a very long time,” he said.</p>
<p>The federal Food and Drug Administration in the early 1970s banned medical research with hallucinogens, which by then had become a hot-button social and political issue, Greer said.</p>
<p>The FDA loosened its policies on hallucinogens in 1989, but a lack of federal funding has limited research, he said. The Heffter Research Institute was formed in 1993 to foster research with hallucinogens.</p>
|
Possible Therapeutic Use of Psilocybin Being Studied
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/9429/possible-therapeutic-use-of-psilocybin-being-studied.html
| 2least
|
Possible Therapeutic Use of Psilocybin Being Studied
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Terminal cancer patients who received moderate doses of psilocybin under the supervision of therapists appeared to experience some lasting relief from anxiety, according to new study funded by a Santa Fe institute.</p>
<p>The study, published this month in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, is the first of three pilot studies that could lead to the therapeutic use of psilocybin for anxiety and other mental disorders, said Dr. George Greer, medical director of the Heffter Institute, which studies potential medical uses for hallucinogens.</p>
<p>Psilocybin is a naturally occurring compound, found in some 200 species of mushrooms, that has long been known for its hallucinogenic effects.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I think there’s huge promise because this is a completely different model of treatment for emotional problems,” said Greer, a psychiatrist and co-author of the study.</p>
<p>Psilocybin offers a potential alternative to anti-anxiety drugs, which are used to treat symptoms of anxiety, he said.</p>
<p>“The psilocybin opens the personality and allows the person to go though a psychological healing process to resolve inner conflicts on a more lasting basis,” Greer said.</p>
<p>Psilocybin can produce a period of heightened emotion that can include crying and grieving, Greer said. The experience also can include a “spiritual, mystical part where they feel at peace, at one with what they feel is sacred,” he said.</p>
<p>The study, performed at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Calif., and two ongoing studies at New York University and Johns Hopkins University, are among the first since the early 1970s to explore possible medical uses for hallucinogens, he said.</p>
<p>Researchers at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center recruited 12 patients with advanced-stage cancer and anxiety. During two sessions, each patient received either a moderate dose of psilocybin or a placebo. Each subject received psilocybin in one of the two sessions.</p>
<p>Subjects were encouraged to lie in bed wearing eyeshades and listening to music on headphones and were monitored periodically. At the end of each six-hour session, subjects were given a variety of psychological tests. Follow-up testing was done over the next six months.</p>
<p>Some of the data found that subjects showed a trend toward improved mood and reduced anxiety, the study concluded. No adverse physical or psychological effects were observed.</p>
<p>The results of the study were limited by the small number of subjects and the modest doses of psilocybin used, Greer said.</p>
<p>“In this study, the FDA allowed only a moderate dose because this was the first study done like this in a very long time,” he said.</p>
<p>The federal Food and Drug Administration in the early 1970s banned medical research with hallucinogens, which by then had become a hot-button social and political issue, Greer said.</p>
<p>The FDA loosened its policies on hallucinogens in 1989, but a lack of federal funding has limited research, he said. The Heffter Research Institute was formed in 1993 to foster research with hallucinogens.</p>
| 8,019 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The officials said that diplomats were being evacuated from the country on Tuesday and that the embassy in Sanaa would suspend operations until conditions improve. Yemen has been in crisis for months with Iran-linked Shiite Houthi rebels besieging the capital and then taking control. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the closure publicly on the record.</p>
<p>Marines providing the security at the embassy will also likely leave, officials said, but American forces conducting counterterrorism missions against al-Qaida’s Yemen affiliate in other parts of the country would not be affected.</p>
<p>Spokesmen at the Pentagon and State Department had no immediate comment on the closure.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Although operations against al-Qaida’s Yemen affiliate will continue, the closure of the embassy will be seen as a blow to the Obama administration, which has held up its partnership with ousted Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s government as a model for his strategy in combatting terrorism, particularly in unstable countries.</p>
<p>“Yemen has never been a perfect democracy or an island of stability,” President Barack Obama said late last month as conditions in the capital of Sanaa became worse. “What I’ve said is, is that our efforts to go after terrorist networks inside of Yemen without an occupying U.S. army, but rather by partnering and intelligence-sharing with that local government, is the approach that we’re going to need to take.”</p>
<p>The embassy closure will also complicate the CIA’s operations in Yemen, U.S. intelligence officials acknowledge. Although CIA officers could continue to work out of U.S. military installations, many intelligence operations are run from embassies, and the CIA lost visibility on Syria when that embassy was evacuated in 2012. The CIA’s main role in Yemen is to gather intelligence about members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and occasionally kill them with drone strikes. Both the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command run separate drone killing programs in Yemen, though the CIA has conducted the majority of the strikes, U.S. officials have said.</p>
<p>There were 23 U.S. drone strikes reported in Yemen last year, 26 in 2013 and 41 in 2012, according to Long War Journal, a website that tracks them through media reports.</p>
<p>The Houthis last week dissolved parliament and formally took over after months of clashes. They then placed President Hadi and his Cabinet ministers under house arrest. Hadi and the ministers later resigned in protest.</p>
<p>Earlier Tuesday, Yemeni military officials said the Houthis, aided by troops loyal to Hadi’s predecessor, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, took full control of the key central province of Bayda province.</p>
<p>Bayda is the gateway to the country’s south, which remains in the hands of pro-independence southerners and to the strategic oil-rich Maarib province, to the east, also still not in rebel hands.</p>
<p>The U.S. Embassy in Yemen is the third in an Arab country that has closed since the turmoil of the Arab spring began in December 2010. The other two were embassies in Damascus, Syria and Tripoli, Libya. The embassy in Damascus was closed in Feb 2012 and the embassy in Tripoli was closed in July 2014.</p>
<p>The embassy in Yemen was operating with only a small portion of its usual diplomatic staff and had closed to the public for all but emergency services in January. It had been operating with reduced manpower since September 2014, when the State Department ordered all non-essential personnel to leave the country.</p>
<p>In May, 2014 the embassy in Sanaa was closed for several for several weeks due to heightened security threats.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Associated Press White House correspondent Julie Pace and Intelligence Writer Ken Dilanian contributed to this report.</p>
|
Officials: US closing embassy in Yemen amid continued unrest
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/539551/officials-us-closing-embassy-in-yemen-due-to-unrest.html
| 2least
|
Officials: US closing embassy in Yemen amid continued unrest
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The officials said that diplomats were being evacuated from the country on Tuesday and that the embassy in Sanaa would suspend operations until conditions improve. Yemen has been in crisis for months with Iran-linked Shiite Houthi rebels besieging the capital and then taking control. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the closure publicly on the record.</p>
<p>Marines providing the security at the embassy will also likely leave, officials said, but American forces conducting counterterrorism missions against al-Qaida’s Yemen affiliate in other parts of the country would not be affected.</p>
<p>Spokesmen at the Pentagon and State Department had no immediate comment on the closure.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Although operations against al-Qaida’s Yemen affiliate will continue, the closure of the embassy will be seen as a blow to the Obama administration, which has held up its partnership with ousted Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s government as a model for his strategy in combatting terrorism, particularly in unstable countries.</p>
<p>“Yemen has never been a perfect democracy or an island of stability,” President Barack Obama said late last month as conditions in the capital of Sanaa became worse. “What I’ve said is, is that our efforts to go after terrorist networks inside of Yemen without an occupying U.S. army, but rather by partnering and intelligence-sharing with that local government, is the approach that we’re going to need to take.”</p>
<p>The embassy closure will also complicate the CIA’s operations in Yemen, U.S. intelligence officials acknowledge. Although CIA officers could continue to work out of U.S. military installations, many intelligence operations are run from embassies, and the CIA lost visibility on Syria when that embassy was evacuated in 2012. The CIA’s main role in Yemen is to gather intelligence about members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and occasionally kill them with drone strikes. Both the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command run separate drone killing programs in Yemen, though the CIA has conducted the majority of the strikes, U.S. officials have said.</p>
<p>There were 23 U.S. drone strikes reported in Yemen last year, 26 in 2013 and 41 in 2012, according to Long War Journal, a website that tracks them through media reports.</p>
<p>The Houthis last week dissolved parliament and formally took over after months of clashes. They then placed President Hadi and his Cabinet ministers under house arrest. Hadi and the ministers later resigned in protest.</p>
<p>Earlier Tuesday, Yemeni military officials said the Houthis, aided by troops loyal to Hadi’s predecessor, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, took full control of the key central province of Bayda province.</p>
<p>Bayda is the gateway to the country’s south, which remains in the hands of pro-independence southerners and to the strategic oil-rich Maarib province, to the east, also still not in rebel hands.</p>
<p>The U.S. Embassy in Yemen is the third in an Arab country that has closed since the turmoil of the Arab spring began in December 2010. The other two were embassies in Damascus, Syria and Tripoli, Libya. The embassy in Damascus was closed in Feb 2012 and the embassy in Tripoli was closed in July 2014.</p>
<p>The embassy in Yemen was operating with only a small portion of its usual diplomatic staff and had closed to the public for all but emergency services in January. It had been operating with reduced manpower since September 2014, when the State Department ordered all non-essential personnel to leave the country.</p>
<p>In May, 2014 the embassy in Sanaa was closed for several for several weeks due to heightened security threats.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Associated Press White House correspondent Julie Pace and Intelligence Writer Ken Dilanian contributed to this report.</p>
| 8,020 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>In the capital’s working class district of Imbaba, residents spoke of a sudden spike in transportation and food prices, mainly because of the increase in petrol costs.</p>
<p>Gaber Ramadan, a manual laborer, told The Associated Press that his commute to work rose from 2 to 3 pounds overnight, and even his morning falafel went up from a quarter to a half pound. Even the slightest increase stings, he said, as he earns 1,200 pounds a month, a third of which goes to rent.</p>
<p>The unprecedented shock therapy measures are part of a raft of reforms aimed at salvaging Egypt’s crumbling economy and securing a $12 billion IMF bailout.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>But it has also raised fears of a backlash from a public already struggling with high inflation and mounting unemployment.</p>
<p>“People are tired, really tired,” said Ramadan.</p>
<p>A young salesman at a nearby mobile phone shop, who identified himself with his first name Hamada, yelled: “We are worth nothing!”</p>
<p>On Thursday, the Central Bank devalued the Egyptian pound from 8.8 to 13 to the dollar, and then floated it. By Friday, the pound was at 15 to 16 to the dollar.</p>
<p>At midnight on Thursday, the fuel subsidy cut also came into effect, increasing gas prices by 30 to 47 percent, depending on the type.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Sherif Ismail appeared on state TV at a press conference with six other ministers, and said the government doesn’t have the “luxury” to wait.</p>
<p>“It is our destiny to take action in the face of the current economic situation,” he said, arguing that the way forward is to attract foreign investment to provide more job opportunities and increase exports. Egypt currently imports a third of its needs in goods.</p>
<p>But he pledged that steps would also be taken toward “improving the living conditions of citizens.” He said past measures were only temporary “pain relief,” but that the latest drastic moves were part of a comprehensive reform program.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The government aims to achieve a growth rate of no less than 6 percent, compared to the current 4.3 percent, and reduce the budget deficit from 12 to 10 percent, he said.</p>
<p>The move was praised by the IMF and local business community as a belated and much-needed step in the right direction.</p>
<p>Egypt’s foreign currency reserves dwindled in recent years as tourism dried up over fears of terrorism, remittances dropped because of low oil prices, and Suez Canal revenues diminished because of a decline in global trade. Investment and business activity stalled, with inflation hitting 14 percent and unemployment 13 percent. Government efforts to shore up the currency generated a black market where the dollar reached a rate of 19 pounds — compared to 8.8 in the banks.</p>
<p>In recent days, basic commodities like sugar have been all but absent from markets, and President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi risks paying a heavy political price.</p>
<p>Ismail appeared to recognize this reality, and referenced the 1977 bread riots that erupted over austerity measures which had also included subsidy cuts. Then-President Anwar Sadat deployed the military to quash ensuing riots, and was eventually compelled to cancel the austerity measures. Ismail said cancelling the cuts back then led to mounting budget deficits, which the country has been enduring ever since.</p>
<p>Aspiring to a better future, Egyptians have changed their president twice in the past six years. The 2011 uprising ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak, and in 2013 the military removed the elected Islamist president Mohammed Morsi. With each transition, instability has devastated the economy.</p>
<p>El-Sissi, who led the military ouster of Morsi, was elected on a platform that promised security and stability. Under his rule, security forces have cracked down heavily on Islamists and dissenters, preventing any significant protests for the past two years. But with a move set to radically disrupt a subsidy system that has been in place for decades, el-Sissi risks galvanizing his opposition.</p>
<p>For weeks, there have been calls on social media for mass demonstrations on Nov. 11. And while many political forces have distanced themselves from the call, the Interior Ministry still issued warnings of “conspiracies to incite chaos” — a naked reference to what it considers rabblerousing by the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood group.</p>
<p>Capitalizing on the public mood, Brotherhood supporters called on Friday for protests to demand the ouster of el-Sissi.</p>
<p>“Raise the pound with your protests; remove el-Sissi the failure,” a statement by an Islamist alliance said on its Facebook page, calling for a “week of rage” against the government’s economic policies.</p>
<p>In Imbaba, some said they will demonstrate on Nov. 11.</p>
<p>“I swear to God, I went to the street for el-Sissi before. This time I will go again against him because I don’t want him,” said Ramadan, the laborer. “He was a trap.”</p>
<p>A minibus driver, Khaled Fathi, said the cost of filling his tank on Friday went up 30 percent to 60 pounds. In turn, he increased his fares to 1.75 pounds from 1.15, angering commuters. “Since the morning, I have been in endless arguments,” he said.</p>
<p>“The prices of everything around us are increasing, except for human beings. People in Egypt are very cheap,” he said. “I will go out and we have nothing to lose.”</p>
<p>Although El-Sissi regularly justifies heavy-handed security measures against dissent as the cost of stability, violent attacks in the country haven’t ceased since the 2011 uprising.</p>
<p>On Friday, authorities reported that a car bomb allegedly targeting a judge involved in a terror-linked case, exploded on Friday near the popular Al-Ahly Club in the eastern suburb of Nasr City, damaging several cars but causing no injuries.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, militants also killed a senior army officer in the restive Sinai Peninsula’s el-Arish, where the army has been battling Islamic militants.</p>
|
Amid anger, Egypt PM defends painful economic measures
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/882121/egypt-prime-minister-defends-painful-economic-measures.html
|
2016-11-04
| 2least
|
Amid anger, Egypt PM defends painful economic measures
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>In the capital’s working class district of Imbaba, residents spoke of a sudden spike in transportation and food prices, mainly because of the increase in petrol costs.</p>
<p>Gaber Ramadan, a manual laborer, told The Associated Press that his commute to work rose from 2 to 3 pounds overnight, and even his morning falafel went up from a quarter to a half pound. Even the slightest increase stings, he said, as he earns 1,200 pounds a month, a third of which goes to rent.</p>
<p>The unprecedented shock therapy measures are part of a raft of reforms aimed at salvaging Egypt’s crumbling economy and securing a $12 billion IMF bailout.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>But it has also raised fears of a backlash from a public already struggling with high inflation and mounting unemployment.</p>
<p>“People are tired, really tired,” said Ramadan.</p>
<p>A young salesman at a nearby mobile phone shop, who identified himself with his first name Hamada, yelled: “We are worth nothing!”</p>
<p>On Thursday, the Central Bank devalued the Egyptian pound from 8.8 to 13 to the dollar, and then floated it. By Friday, the pound was at 15 to 16 to the dollar.</p>
<p>At midnight on Thursday, the fuel subsidy cut also came into effect, increasing gas prices by 30 to 47 percent, depending on the type.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Sherif Ismail appeared on state TV at a press conference with six other ministers, and said the government doesn’t have the “luxury” to wait.</p>
<p>“It is our destiny to take action in the face of the current economic situation,” he said, arguing that the way forward is to attract foreign investment to provide more job opportunities and increase exports. Egypt currently imports a third of its needs in goods.</p>
<p>But he pledged that steps would also be taken toward “improving the living conditions of citizens.” He said past measures were only temporary “pain relief,” but that the latest drastic moves were part of a comprehensive reform program.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The government aims to achieve a growth rate of no less than 6 percent, compared to the current 4.3 percent, and reduce the budget deficit from 12 to 10 percent, he said.</p>
<p>The move was praised by the IMF and local business community as a belated and much-needed step in the right direction.</p>
<p>Egypt’s foreign currency reserves dwindled in recent years as tourism dried up over fears of terrorism, remittances dropped because of low oil prices, and Suez Canal revenues diminished because of a decline in global trade. Investment and business activity stalled, with inflation hitting 14 percent and unemployment 13 percent. Government efforts to shore up the currency generated a black market where the dollar reached a rate of 19 pounds — compared to 8.8 in the banks.</p>
<p>In recent days, basic commodities like sugar have been all but absent from markets, and President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi risks paying a heavy political price.</p>
<p>Ismail appeared to recognize this reality, and referenced the 1977 bread riots that erupted over austerity measures which had also included subsidy cuts. Then-President Anwar Sadat deployed the military to quash ensuing riots, and was eventually compelled to cancel the austerity measures. Ismail said cancelling the cuts back then led to mounting budget deficits, which the country has been enduring ever since.</p>
<p>Aspiring to a better future, Egyptians have changed their president twice in the past six years. The 2011 uprising ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak, and in 2013 the military removed the elected Islamist president Mohammed Morsi. With each transition, instability has devastated the economy.</p>
<p>El-Sissi, who led the military ouster of Morsi, was elected on a platform that promised security and stability. Under his rule, security forces have cracked down heavily on Islamists and dissenters, preventing any significant protests for the past two years. But with a move set to radically disrupt a subsidy system that has been in place for decades, el-Sissi risks galvanizing his opposition.</p>
<p>For weeks, there have been calls on social media for mass demonstrations on Nov. 11. And while many political forces have distanced themselves from the call, the Interior Ministry still issued warnings of “conspiracies to incite chaos” — a naked reference to what it considers rabblerousing by the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood group.</p>
<p>Capitalizing on the public mood, Brotherhood supporters called on Friday for protests to demand the ouster of el-Sissi.</p>
<p>“Raise the pound with your protests; remove el-Sissi the failure,” a statement by an Islamist alliance said on its Facebook page, calling for a “week of rage” against the government’s economic policies.</p>
<p>In Imbaba, some said they will demonstrate on Nov. 11.</p>
<p>“I swear to God, I went to the street for el-Sissi before. This time I will go again against him because I don’t want him,” said Ramadan, the laborer. “He was a trap.”</p>
<p>A minibus driver, Khaled Fathi, said the cost of filling his tank on Friday went up 30 percent to 60 pounds. In turn, he increased his fares to 1.75 pounds from 1.15, angering commuters. “Since the morning, I have been in endless arguments,” he said.</p>
<p>“The prices of everything around us are increasing, except for human beings. People in Egypt are very cheap,” he said. “I will go out and we have nothing to lose.”</p>
<p>Although El-Sissi regularly justifies heavy-handed security measures against dissent as the cost of stability, violent attacks in the country haven’t ceased since the 2011 uprising.</p>
<p>On Friday, authorities reported that a car bomb allegedly targeting a judge involved in a terror-linked case, exploded on Friday near the popular Al-Ahly Club in the eastern suburb of Nasr City, damaging several cars but causing no injuries.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, militants also killed a senior army officer in the restive Sinai Peninsula’s el-Arish, where the army has been battling Islamic militants.</p>
| 8,021 |
<p>From the Berlusconi scandal in&#160;February 2011 which triggered mass demonstrations in Italy, protests have continued, most recently against the&#160;referendum on&#160;nuclear energy, in&#160; <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2011/06/italys-referendums" type="external">another blow for Berlusconi</a>'s government according to the Economist.&#160;</p>
<p>The youth in Spain has also been protesting heavily against soaring unemployment, which marks the current financial crisis in Europe. Spain's unemployment has doubled in three years and in Greece and the Irish Republic, unemployment figures are at their highest level in 10 years, according to a&#160; <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11432579" type="external">BBC</a> <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11432579" type="external">report</a>.&#160;So it's not surprising that the&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/photo-galleries/5652948/photos-greece-revolt" type="external">Greeks too have also taken to the streets</a> protesting the new economic reforms being proposed. Brussels has also seen similar protests this week resulting in numerous clashes with policemen.&#160;</p>
<p>Mass demonstrations, sleeping outside the parliament, and attempts to forcibly close down cities in organized strikes are a common characteristic of the protests all over Europe. The message is loud and clear: people are unhappy with the system and do not seem ready to give up.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/110614/roubini-predicts-euro-zone-breakup" type="external">(From GlobalPost: Dr. Doom predicts Euro Zone breakup)</a></p>
|
Protests in the Euro Zone (PHOTOS)
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2012-03-22/protests-euro-zone-photos
|
2012-03-22
| 3left-center
|
Protests in the Euro Zone (PHOTOS)
<p>From the Berlusconi scandal in&#160;February 2011 which triggered mass demonstrations in Italy, protests have continued, most recently against the&#160;referendum on&#160;nuclear energy, in&#160; <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2011/06/italys-referendums" type="external">another blow for Berlusconi</a>'s government according to the Economist.&#160;</p>
<p>The youth in Spain has also been protesting heavily against soaring unemployment, which marks the current financial crisis in Europe. Spain's unemployment has doubled in three years and in Greece and the Irish Republic, unemployment figures are at their highest level in 10 years, according to a&#160; <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11432579" type="external">BBC</a> <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11432579" type="external">report</a>.&#160;So it's not surprising that the&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/photo-galleries/5652948/photos-greece-revolt" type="external">Greeks too have also taken to the streets</a> protesting the new economic reforms being proposed. Brussels has also seen similar protests this week resulting in numerous clashes with policemen.&#160;</p>
<p>Mass demonstrations, sleeping outside the parliament, and attempts to forcibly close down cities in organized strikes are a common characteristic of the protests all over Europe. The message is loud and clear: people are unhappy with the system and do not seem ready to give up.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/110614/roubini-predicts-euro-zone-breakup" type="external">(From GlobalPost: Dr. Doom predicts Euro Zone breakup)</a></p>
| 8,022 |
<p />
<p>"And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh" The Pretribulation Rapture. NTEB has started a series making the historical and biblical case for the existience of the Pretribulation Rapture of the Church. We believe it is stated time and time again in the bible, in no uncertain terms, and we are proud to take a stand to defend this exciting End Times Bible prophecy. Does the bible teach a Pretribulation Rapture? Yes, we believe it does, and present evidence for proof of a Pretribulation Rapture. It Is Written "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Rev&amp;c=3" type="external">Revelation 3:10</a></p>
<p>Scriptural Evidence for the Pretribulation Rapture This section is used by permission from <a href="http://www.raptureready.com/rr-pretribulation-rapture.html" type="external">RaptureReady.com</a> The Unknown Hour When we search the Scriptures and read the passages describing the Lord Jesus' return, we find verses that tell us we won't know the day and hour of that event. Matthew 25:13 says Jesus will return at an unknown time, while Revelation 12:6 indicates that the Jews will have to wait on the Lord 1,260 days, starting when the Antichrist stands in the Temple of God and declares himself to be God (2 Thes 2:4). This event will take place at the mid-point of the seven-year tribulation (Dan 9:27).</p>
<p>Note that some people only see a three-and-a-half-year tribulation. In a way, they are correct because the first half of the tribulation will be relatively peaceful compared to the second half. Nonetheless, peaceful or not, there still remains a seven-year period called the tribulation. When the Jews flee into the wilderness, they know that all they have to do is wait out those 1,260 days (Mat 24:16). There is no way to apply the phrase "neither the day nor the hour" to this situation. The only way for these two viewpoints to be true is to separate the two distinct events transpiring here: 1) the rapture of the Church, which comes before the tribulation; and 2) the return of Jesus to the earth, which takes place roughly seven years later. The Pretribulation Rapture: The Marriage Supper of the Lamb In Luke 12:36, the Word states that when Christ returns, He will be returning from a wedding. In Revelation 19:7-8, we read about the marriage itself. The marriage supper takes place before the marriage. According to Jewish custom, the marriage contract, which often includes a dowry, is drawn up first. The contract parallels the act of faith we use when we trust Jesus to be our Savior. The dowry is His life, which was used to purchase us. When it's time for the wedding, the groom goes to the bride's house unannounced. She comes out to meet him, and then he takes her to his father's house. This precisely correlates with the events according to the pre-trib scenario. Jesus, the Groom, comes down from heaven and calls up the Church, His Bride. After meeting in the air, He and His Bride return to His Father's house, heaven. The marriage supper itself will take place there, while down here on earth the final events of the tribulation will be playing out. After the marriage supper of Jewish tradition, the bride and groom are presented to the world as man and wife. This corresponds to the time when Jesus returns to earth accompanied by an army "clothed in fine linen, white and clean" (Rev 19:14). The Pretribulation Rapture: What They Didn't Teach You in History Class Many groups try to discredit the pre-trib rapture by saying most of the end-time events in the Bible have already taken place. A group of people called preterists claims that the Book of Revelation was mostly fulfilled by 70 AD. If the events described in the Book of Revelation took place in the past, I'm at a loss to explain some of the current situations I see around us: the rebirth of Israel, the reunification of Europe, the number of global wars that have occurred, and the development of nuclear weapons. During history class, I must have slept through the part where the teacher talked about the time when a third of the trees were burned up, 100-pound hailstones fell from the sky, and the sea turned into blood (Rev 8:7-8, 16:21). I think several people would have to question their opposition to the pre-trib rapture doctrine if they knew that the evidence provided to them was based on the understanding that most tribulation prophecies have already occurred. The Pretribulation Rapture: The Time of Jacob's Trouble In several passages, the Bible refers to the tribulation as a time of trouble for the Jews. The phrase "Jacob's trouble" pertains to the descendants of Jacob. Jeremiah 30:7 says that this time of trouble will come just before the Lord returns to save His people. The final week of Daniel's 70th week is yet to take place. An angel told Daniel that, "70 weeks are determined unto thy people" (Dan 9:24). Scripture never mentions that the tribulation is meant to be a time of testing for Christians. However, some post-tribbers try to claim that they are the ones being tested during the tribulation. To make this so, they need to spiritualize the 144,000 Jewish believers in Revelation 7:2-8 who receive God's protective seal. Placing the Church dispensation into the same time frame as the seven-year Jewish dispensation, as the post-tribbers do, raises one good question: Can two dispensations transpire at the same time? In the past, God has only dealt with one at a time. Having both present during the tribulation would have to be an exception. The Pretribulation Rapture: God Hath Not Appointed Us to Wrath In 1 Thessalonians 5:9, Paul assures us that God has not appointed His people to wrath. This wrath is plainly God's anger that will be poured out during the tribulation. Pre-trib believers interpret this as meaning that Christians will be removed from the earth. Post-trib believers tell a different story. They describe this as meaning that God will protect Christians during the tribulation and pour this wrath out on the unbelievers only. This idea runs against the statement made in Revelation 13:7, in which the Antichrist is given power to make war with the saints and to overcome them. A post-trib view would make God's promise of protection from wrath into a lie. In years past, it was possible to think of being protected from the guns and swords of that day. Today, when any major war would involve nuclear and chemical weapons, it's impossible to expect that same kind of protection. When Nagasaki, Japan was bombed during World War II, the bomb exploded over a Catholic church. Everyone who was in the center of the explosion died--both Christians and non-Christians. The only way to validly interpret God's promise of protection from wrath is by viewing 1 Thessalonians 5:9 as the bodily removal of the Church from this world. The Pretribulation Rapture: Noah and Lot as Examples The tribulation period is compared to the times of Noah and Lot by Jesus in Luke 17:28. Most people argue over whether the time frame Jesus was talking about in that passage was pre-trib or post-trib. In doing so, they miss an important point. The two circumstances that the Noah and Lot situations have in common are the removal of the righteous and the judgment of the unbelievers. From these two accounts, we see that God prefers to remove His own when danger is involved. <a href="javascript:;" type="external">source - Rapture Ready</a></p>
<p>The Pretribulation Rapture: The Unknown Hour</p>
<p>When we search the Scriptures and read the passages describing the Lord Jesus' return, we find verses that tell us we won't know the day and hour of that event. Matthew 25:13 says Jesus will return at an unknown time, while Revelation 12:6 indicates that the Jews will have to wait on the Lord 1,260 days, starting when the Antichrist stands in the Temple of God and declares himself to be God (2 Thes 2:4). This event will take place at the mid-point of the seven-year tribulation (Dan 9:27). Note that some people only see a three-and-a-half-year tribulation.</p>
<p>In a way, they are correct because the first half of the tribulation will be relatively peaceful compared to the second half. Nonetheless, peaceful or not, there still remains a seven-year period called the tribulation. When the Jews flee into the wilderness, they know that all they have to do is wait out those 1,260 days (Mat 24:16). There is no way to apply the phrase "neither the day nor the hour" to this situation. The only way for these two viewpoints to be true is to separate the two distinct events transpiring here: 1) the rapture of the Church, which comes before the tribulation; and 2) the return of Jesus to the earth, which takes place roughly seven years later.</p> It Is Written click here
|
The Pretribulation Rapture Of The Church Explained Understanding the Time of the Pretribulation Rapture Through End Times Bible Prophecy
| true |
http://nowtheendbegins.com/pages/rapture/the-pretribulation-rapture-explained.htm
| 0right
|
The Pretribulation Rapture Of The Church Explained Understanding the Time of the Pretribulation Rapture Through End Times Bible Prophecy
<p />
<p>"And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh" The Pretribulation Rapture. NTEB has started a series making the historical and biblical case for the existience of the Pretribulation Rapture of the Church. We believe it is stated time and time again in the bible, in no uncertain terms, and we are proud to take a stand to defend this exciting End Times Bible prophecy. Does the bible teach a Pretribulation Rapture? Yes, we believe it does, and present evidence for proof of a Pretribulation Rapture. It Is Written "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Rev&amp;c=3" type="external">Revelation 3:10</a></p>
<p>Scriptural Evidence for the Pretribulation Rapture This section is used by permission from <a href="http://www.raptureready.com/rr-pretribulation-rapture.html" type="external">RaptureReady.com</a> The Unknown Hour When we search the Scriptures and read the passages describing the Lord Jesus' return, we find verses that tell us we won't know the day and hour of that event. Matthew 25:13 says Jesus will return at an unknown time, while Revelation 12:6 indicates that the Jews will have to wait on the Lord 1,260 days, starting when the Antichrist stands in the Temple of God and declares himself to be God (2 Thes 2:4). This event will take place at the mid-point of the seven-year tribulation (Dan 9:27).</p>
<p>Note that some people only see a three-and-a-half-year tribulation. In a way, they are correct because the first half of the tribulation will be relatively peaceful compared to the second half. Nonetheless, peaceful or not, there still remains a seven-year period called the tribulation. When the Jews flee into the wilderness, they know that all they have to do is wait out those 1,260 days (Mat 24:16). There is no way to apply the phrase "neither the day nor the hour" to this situation. The only way for these two viewpoints to be true is to separate the two distinct events transpiring here: 1) the rapture of the Church, which comes before the tribulation; and 2) the return of Jesus to the earth, which takes place roughly seven years later. The Pretribulation Rapture: The Marriage Supper of the Lamb In Luke 12:36, the Word states that when Christ returns, He will be returning from a wedding. In Revelation 19:7-8, we read about the marriage itself. The marriage supper takes place before the marriage. According to Jewish custom, the marriage contract, which often includes a dowry, is drawn up first. The contract parallels the act of faith we use when we trust Jesus to be our Savior. The dowry is His life, which was used to purchase us. When it's time for the wedding, the groom goes to the bride's house unannounced. She comes out to meet him, and then he takes her to his father's house. This precisely correlates with the events according to the pre-trib scenario. Jesus, the Groom, comes down from heaven and calls up the Church, His Bride. After meeting in the air, He and His Bride return to His Father's house, heaven. The marriage supper itself will take place there, while down here on earth the final events of the tribulation will be playing out. After the marriage supper of Jewish tradition, the bride and groom are presented to the world as man and wife. This corresponds to the time when Jesus returns to earth accompanied by an army "clothed in fine linen, white and clean" (Rev 19:14). The Pretribulation Rapture: What They Didn't Teach You in History Class Many groups try to discredit the pre-trib rapture by saying most of the end-time events in the Bible have already taken place. A group of people called preterists claims that the Book of Revelation was mostly fulfilled by 70 AD. If the events described in the Book of Revelation took place in the past, I'm at a loss to explain some of the current situations I see around us: the rebirth of Israel, the reunification of Europe, the number of global wars that have occurred, and the development of nuclear weapons. During history class, I must have slept through the part where the teacher talked about the time when a third of the trees were burned up, 100-pound hailstones fell from the sky, and the sea turned into blood (Rev 8:7-8, 16:21). I think several people would have to question their opposition to the pre-trib rapture doctrine if they knew that the evidence provided to them was based on the understanding that most tribulation prophecies have already occurred. The Pretribulation Rapture: The Time of Jacob's Trouble In several passages, the Bible refers to the tribulation as a time of trouble for the Jews. The phrase "Jacob's trouble" pertains to the descendants of Jacob. Jeremiah 30:7 says that this time of trouble will come just before the Lord returns to save His people. The final week of Daniel's 70th week is yet to take place. An angel told Daniel that, "70 weeks are determined unto thy people" (Dan 9:24). Scripture never mentions that the tribulation is meant to be a time of testing for Christians. However, some post-tribbers try to claim that they are the ones being tested during the tribulation. To make this so, they need to spiritualize the 144,000 Jewish believers in Revelation 7:2-8 who receive God's protective seal. Placing the Church dispensation into the same time frame as the seven-year Jewish dispensation, as the post-tribbers do, raises one good question: Can two dispensations transpire at the same time? In the past, God has only dealt with one at a time. Having both present during the tribulation would have to be an exception. The Pretribulation Rapture: God Hath Not Appointed Us to Wrath In 1 Thessalonians 5:9, Paul assures us that God has not appointed His people to wrath. This wrath is plainly God's anger that will be poured out during the tribulation. Pre-trib believers interpret this as meaning that Christians will be removed from the earth. Post-trib believers tell a different story. They describe this as meaning that God will protect Christians during the tribulation and pour this wrath out on the unbelievers only. This idea runs against the statement made in Revelation 13:7, in which the Antichrist is given power to make war with the saints and to overcome them. A post-trib view would make God's promise of protection from wrath into a lie. In years past, it was possible to think of being protected from the guns and swords of that day. Today, when any major war would involve nuclear and chemical weapons, it's impossible to expect that same kind of protection. When Nagasaki, Japan was bombed during World War II, the bomb exploded over a Catholic church. Everyone who was in the center of the explosion died--both Christians and non-Christians. The only way to validly interpret God's promise of protection from wrath is by viewing 1 Thessalonians 5:9 as the bodily removal of the Church from this world. The Pretribulation Rapture: Noah and Lot as Examples The tribulation period is compared to the times of Noah and Lot by Jesus in Luke 17:28. Most people argue over whether the time frame Jesus was talking about in that passage was pre-trib or post-trib. In doing so, they miss an important point. The two circumstances that the Noah and Lot situations have in common are the removal of the righteous and the judgment of the unbelievers. From these two accounts, we see that God prefers to remove His own when danger is involved. <a href="javascript:;" type="external">source - Rapture Ready</a></p>
<p>The Pretribulation Rapture: The Unknown Hour</p>
<p>When we search the Scriptures and read the passages describing the Lord Jesus' return, we find verses that tell us we won't know the day and hour of that event. Matthew 25:13 says Jesus will return at an unknown time, while Revelation 12:6 indicates that the Jews will have to wait on the Lord 1,260 days, starting when the Antichrist stands in the Temple of God and declares himself to be God (2 Thes 2:4). This event will take place at the mid-point of the seven-year tribulation (Dan 9:27). Note that some people only see a three-and-a-half-year tribulation.</p>
<p>In a way, they are correct because the first half of the tribulation will be relatively peaceful compared to the second half. Nonetheless, peaceful or not, there still remains a seven-year period called the tribulation. When the Jews flee into the wilderness, they know that all they have to do is wait out those 1,260 days (Mat 24:16). There is no way to apply the phrase "neither the day nor the hour" to this situation. The only way for these two viewpoints to be true is to separate the two distinct events transpiring here: 1) the rapture of the Church, which comes before the tribulation; and 2) the return of Jesus to the earth, which takes place roughly seven years later.</p> It Is Written click here
| 8,023 |
|
<p>TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Motorists and pedestrians are facing icy conditions across New Jersey after freezing rain glazed motor vehicles, roads and sidewalks.</p>
<p>Many schools across the state have delayed opening on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Motorists are asked to use caution, especially when approaching bridges, because temperatures remain below freezing and driving conditions could be slick.</p>
<p>Allow extra time to clear ice from windshields.</p>
<p>Pedestrians also should use caution because sidewalks could be icy.</p>
<p>Temperatures are expected to rise above freezing throughout the day and conditions are expected to improve.</p>
<p>TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Motorists and pedestrians are facing icy conditions across New Jersey after freezing rain glazed motor vehicles, roads and sidewalks.</p>
<p>Many schools across the state have delayed opening on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Motorists are asked to use caution, especially when approaching bridges, because temperatures remain below freezing and driving conditions could be slick.</p>
<p>Allow extra time to clear ice from windshields.</p>
<p>Pedestrians also should use caution because sidewalks could be icy.</p>
<p>Temperatures are expected to rise above freezing throughout the day and conditions are expected to improve.</p>
|
Icy conditions slowing motorists, students in New Jersey
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/858c95d5c8ef498abe633d7effaca455
|
2018-01-09
| 2least
|
Icy conditions slowing motorists, students in New Jersey
<p>TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Motorists and pedestrians are facing icy conditions across New Jersey after freezing rain glazed motor vehicles, roads and sidewalks.</p>
<p>Many schools across the state have delayed opening on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Motorists are asked to use caution, especially when approaching bridges, because temperatures remain below freezing and driving conditions could be slick.</p>
<p>Allow extra time to clear ice from windshields.</p>
<p>Pedestrians also should use caution because sidewalks could be icy.</p>
<p>Temperatures are expected to rise above freezing throughout the day and conditions are expected to improve.</p>
<p>TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Motorists and pedestrians are facing icy conditions across New Jersey after freezing rain glazed motor vehicles, roads and sidewalks.</p>
<p>Many schools across the state have delayed opening on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Motorists are asked to use caution, especially when approaching bridges, because temperatures remain below freezing and driving conditions could be slick.</p>
<p>Allow extra time to clear ice from windshields.</p>
<p>Pedestrians also should use caution because sidewalks could be icy.</p>
<p>Temperatures are expected to rise above freezing throughout the day and conditions are expected to improve.</p>
| 8,024 |
<p>HAMILTON, N.Y. (AP) — Sean O’Brien had 18 points and six assists, Will Rayman added 17 points and Colgate beat Navy 70-62 on Monday night.</p>
<p>Shawn Anderson pulled Navy within 51-47 on a 3-point play with 7:51 remaining in the second half but the Midshipmen didn’t score again until Anderson’s 3-pointer at the 3:06 mark.</p>
<p>Dana Batt made Colgate’s final field goal at 5:01 for a 58-47 lead and the Raiders made 12 straight free throws the rest of the way, with six from O’Brien, to seal it.</p>
<p>O’Brien hit four of Colgate’s 11 3-pointers and Rayman had seven rebounds, four assists and three steals. Colgate (8-7, 3-1 Patriot) is 6-1 at Cotterell Court.</p>
<p>The Raiders had a 29-28 lead at halftime after closing on an 11-0 run, with 3-pointers by David Maynard, O’Brien and Jack Ferguson.</p>
<p>Anderson led Navy (11-6, 2-2) with 21 points on 9-of-19 shooting. George Kiernan had 17 points and 10 rebounds, and Hasan Abdullah added 12 points.</p>
<p>HAMILTON, N.Y. (AP) — Sean O’Brien had 18 points and six assists, Will Rayman added 17 points and Colgate beat Navy 70-62 on Monday night.</p>
<p>Shawn Anderson pulled Navy within 51-47 on a 3-point play with 7:51 remaining in the second half but the Midshipmen didn’t score again until Anderson’s 3-pointer at the 3:06 mark.</p>
<p>Dana Batt made Colgate’s final field goal at 5:01 for a 58-47 lead and the Raiders made 12 straight free throws the rest of the way, with six from O’Brien, to seal it.</p>
<p>O’Brien hit four of Colgate’s 11 3-pointers and Rayman had seven rebounds, four assists and three steals. Colgate (8-7, 3-1 Patriot) is 6-1 at Cotterell Court.</p>
<p>The Raiders had a 29-28 lead at halftime after closing on an 11-0 run, with 3-pointers by David Maynard, O’Brien and Jack Ferguson.</p>
<p>Anderson led Navy (11-6, 2-2) with 21 points on 9-of-19 shooting. George Kiernan had 17 points and 10 rebounds, and Hasan Abdullah added 12 points.</p>
|
O’Brien scores 18, Colgate beats Navy 70-62
| false |
https://apnews.com/f985fe212b30401394b5ef21d6d9ff34
|
2018-01-09
| 2least
|
O’Brien scores 18, Colgate beats Navy 70-62
<p>HAMILTON, N.Y. (AP) — Sean O’Brien had 18 points and six assists, Will Rayman added 17 points and Colgate beat Navy 70-62 on Monday night.</p>
<p>Shawn Anderson pulled Navy within 51-47 on a 3-point play with 7:51 remaining in the second half but the Midshipmen didn’t score again until Anderson’s 3-pointer at the 3:06 mark.</p>
<p>Dana Batt made Colgate’s final field goal at 5:01 for a 58-47 lead and the Raiders made 12 straight free throws the rest of the way, with six from O’Brien, to seal it.</p>
<p>O’Brien hit four of Colgate’s 11 3-pointers and Rayman had seven rebounds, four assists and three steals. Colgate (8-7, 3-1 Patriot) is 6-1 at Cotterell Court.</p>
<p>The Raiders had a 29-28 lead at halftime after closing on an 11-0 run, with 3-pointers by David Maynard, O’Brien and Jack Ferguson.</p>
<p>Anderson led Navy (11-6, 2-2) with 21 points on 9-of-19 shooting. George Kiernan had 17 points and 10 rebounds, and Hasan Abdullah added 12 points.</p>
<p>HAMILTON, N.Y. (AP) — Sean O’Brien had 18 points and six assists, Will Rayman added 17 points and Colgate beat Navy 70-62 on Monday night.</p>
<p>Shawn Anderson pulled Navy within 51-47 on a 3-point play with 7:51 remaining in the second half but the Midshipmen didn’t score again until Anderson’s 3-pointer at the 3:06 mark.</p>
<p>Dana Batt made Colgate’s final field goal at 5:01 for a 58-47 lead and the Raiders made 12 straight free throws the rest of the way, with six from O’Brien, to seal it.</p>
<p>O’Brien hit four of Colgate’s 11 3-pointers and Rayman had seven rebounds, four assists and three steals. Colgate (8-7, 3-1 Patriot) is 6-1 at Cotterell Court.</p>
<p>The Raiders had a 29-28 lead at halftime after closing on an 11-0 run, with 3-pointers by David Maynard, O’Brien and Jack Ferguson.</p>
<p>Anderson led Navy (11-6, 2-2) with 21 points on 9-of-19 shooting. George Kiernan had 17 points and 10 rebounds, and Hasan Abdullah added 12 points.</p>
| 8,025 |
<p />
<p />
<p>As 2015 winds down, the folks at real estate blog Estately <a href="http://blog.estately.com/2015/12/what-each-state-googled-more-than-any-other-state-in-2015/" type="external">have figured out which celebrities, news stories, and other topics of interest most captivated people across the United States this year</a>. Using data from Google Trends, they identified the term each state Googled more than any other state over the course of the year. (They did the same thing in 2014—check out the map below to see <a href="http://blog.estately.com/2014/12/heres-what-each-state-googled-more-than-any-other-state-in-2014/" type="external">how we’ve progressed</a>, and see <a href="http://blog.estately.com/2015/12/what-each-state-googled-more-than-any-other-state-in-2015/" type="external">here</a> for the full 2015 analysis.)</p>
<p>People in Wisconsin are evidently feeling a bit behind the times, wondering, “What does ‘bae’ mean?” (2015) and “What is Tinder?” (2014). Utah, caught with an embarrassing search history last year, wanted to learn more about transgender issues this year. And it’s not clear what’s going on in New Mexico, where people searched for “Pluto” in 2015 and “zombies” in 2014. See how your state compares with the rest, and happy Googling in 2016. <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/lol/what-your-state-googled-more-than-any-other/?tw=dd" type="external">(h/t The Daily Dot)</a></p>
<p />
<p />
|
This Map Shows What Each State Googled More Than Any Other in 2015
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/heres-what-each-state-googled-more-any-other-2015/
|
2015-12-29
| 4left
|
This Map Shows What Each State Googled More Than Any Other in 2015
<p />
<p />
<p>As 2015 winds down, the folks at real estate blog Estately <a href="http://blog.estately.com/2015/12/what-each-state-googled-more-than-any-other-state-in-2015/" type="external">have figured out which celebrities, news stories, and other topics of interest most captivated people across the United States this year</a>. Using data from Google Trends, they identified the term each state Googled more than any other state over the course of the year. (They did the same thing in 2014—check out the map below to see <a href="http://blog.estately.com/2014/12/heres-what-each-state-googled-more-than-any-other-state-in-2014/" type="external">how we’ve progressed</a>, and see <a href="http://blog.estately.com/2015/12/what-each-state-googled-more-than-any-other-state-in-2015/" type="external">here</a> for the full 2015 analysis.)</p>
<p>People in Wisconsin are evidently feeling a bit behind the times, wondering, “What does ‘bae’ mean?” (2015) and “What is Tinder?” (2014). Utah, caught with an embarrassing search history last year, wanted to learn more about transgender issues this year. And it’s not clear what’s going on in New Mexico, where people searched for “Pluto” in 2015 and “zombies” in 2014. See how your state compares with the rest, and happy Googling in 2016. <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/lol/what-your-state-googled-more-than-any-other/?tw=dd" type="external">(h/t The Daily Dot)</a></p>
<p />
<p />
| 8,026 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The always outspoken White <a href="http://espn.go.com/mma/story/_/id/11060930/no-diego-sanchez-ross-pearson-rematch-horrible-decision-ufc-president-dana-white-says?src=mobile" type="external">labeled the decision “insanity”</a> and said the UFC will proceed as if Pearson won the fight. There’s no need for a rematch, he said.</p>
<p>Later Tuesday, White said on UFC.com that Pearson would be paid the extra $30,000 he wold have earned had his hand been raised in victory Saturday night.</p>
<p>Regardless of White’s opinion, or anyone else’s, it’s highly likely the fight will remain on the books as a victory for Sanchez. The rulebook of the New Mexico Athletic Commission, as well as of other commissions around the country, does not provide for the reversal of a decision simply because most people (or, in this case, everyone other than two judges and Sanchez himself) disagree with it.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The only grounds for a reversal or a setting aside of a decision are a mistake in tallying the scorecards; collusion or undue influence that resulted in a dishonest verdict’; or a misinterpretation of a rule that resulted in an unfair decision.</p>
<p>If there had been an error in tallying the scorecards, that certainly would have been addressed by now.</p>
<p>As for collusion/undue influence, the New Mexico Athletic Commission has received a formal complaint by the Pearson camp and said it plans to investigate the matter. But it’s highly likely this simply was a matter of two judges not seeing the same fight as the rest of the world. It happens, whether the sport in question is MMA or boxing.</p>
<p>There was no misinterpretation or wrong application of rules during the fight.</p>
<p>Tuesday, at the Athletic Commission’s June meeting, a special meeting was scheduled for Monday. At that time, the NMAC will discuss Pearson’s appeal and review the Jason High shoving incident.</p>
<p>High, angered by referee Kevin Mulhall’s decision to stop his fight with Rafael Dos Anjos and award Dos Anjos a victory by TKO, shoved Mulhall in frustration.</p>
<p>High will be invited to appear before the commission, either in person or via teleconference. He faces the possibility of a fine, a suspension or both.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, White announced Tuesday that High would be released from his contract with the UFC in response to the shoving incident.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
MMA: Dana White weighs in
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/413544/mma-dana-white-weighs-in.html
| 2least
|
MMA: Dana White weighs in
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The always outspoken White <a href="http://espn.go.com/mma/story/_/id/11060930/no-diego-sanchez-ross-pearson-rematch-horrible-decision-ufc-president-dana-white-says?src=mobile" type="external">labeled the decision “insanity”</a> and said the UFC will proceed as if Pearson won the fight. There’s no need for a rematch, he said.</p>
<p>Later Tuesday, White said on UFC.com that Pearson would be paid the extra $30,000 he wold have earned had his hand been raised in victory Saturday night.</p>
<p>Regardless of White’s opinion, or anyone else’s, it’s highly likely the fight will remain on the books as a victory for Sanchez. The rulebook of the New Mexico Athletic Commission, as well as of other commissions around the country, does not provide for the reversal of a decision simply because most people (or, in this case, everyone other than two judges and Sanchez himself) disagree with it.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The only grounds for a reversal or a setting aside of a decision are a mistake in tallying the scorecards; collusion or undue influence that resulted in a dishonest verdict’; or a misinterpretation of a rule that resulted in an unfair decision.</p>
<p>If there had been an error in tallying the scorecards, that certainly would have been addressed by now.</p>
<p>As for collusion/undue influence, the New Mexico Athletic Commission has received a formal complaint by the Pearson camp and said it plans to investigate the matter. But it’s highly likely this simply was a matter of two judges not seeing the same fight as the rest of the world. It happens, whether the sport in question is MMA or boxing.</p>
<p>There was no misinterpretation or wrong application of rules during the fight.</p>
<p>Tuesday, at the Athletic Commission’s June meeting, a special meeting was scheduled for Monday. At that time, the NMAC will discuss Pearson’s appeal and review the Jason High shoving incident.</p>
<p>High, angered by referee Kevin Mulhall’s decision to stop his fight with Rafael Dos Anjos and award Dos Anjos a victory by TKO, shoved Mulhall in frustration.</p>
<p>High will be invited to appear before the commission, either in person or via teleconference. He faces the possibility of a fine, a suspension or both.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, White announced Tuesday that High would be released from his contract with the UFC in response to the shoving incident.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 8,027 |
|
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Bob Woodward, “How do you think history will regard the war in Iraq?”</p>
<p>Bush, (hesitating) “It won’t matter. We’ll all be dead.”</p>
<p>Once again, imperial chronicler Bob Woodward finds himself at the center of national attention with his appearance on 60 Minutes. Woodward, who had previously endeared himself to the Bush Administration with his pandering portrait of the President in “Bush at War”, has launched a blistering assault on White House credibility with his new book, “ <a href="" type="internal">Plan of Attack</a>“. The book will add significantly to the widely held belief that the war in Iraq was cooked up with little regard for the facts. Rather, it solidifies the testimony of both Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neill that the Administration was “fixated” on Iraq from the get-go and did whatever they could to fabricate a rationale to justify the invasion.</p>
<p>Woodward adds little of interest to the preponderance of evidence that the war was both unwise and unnecessary. His appearance does, however, add one more voice to the chorus of professionals who are challenging the Administration’s motivation. Woodward shows that the motivation for war in Iraq clearly overshadowed any real threat to national security.</p>
<p>Although the Woodward interview provided some interesting insights into the messianic character of our 43rd President, (The “messenger of God’s Will”) there is a question of whether Woodward may have had a larger purpose in savaging Bush on national TV.</p>
<p>It is striking that Woodward was able to interview 75 of the highest ranking government officials without any of them suspecting that he might blind sight the President with privileged information.</p>
<p>Could it be that Woodward has an agenda of his own, or is he just the straight-shooting journalist who “tells it like it is?”</p>
<p>Both Richard Clarke and ex-Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill are considerably more convincing in the role of “concerned citizen” than the unctuous Woodward.</p>
<p>Woodward is the ultimate insider; a major player among Washington power brokers. He is as much a part of the established order as anyone in the Administration or anyone leading a major American corporation.</p>
<p>His newspaper, (The Washington Post) while more nuanced than either FOX News or the Washington Times, is equally guilty in crafting a narrative that supports the basic institutions of American power. To be sure, the Post did not equivocate when it came to creating a “story-line” that was sympathetic to invading a defenseless Iraq.</p>
<p>Now, apparently, since the policy of staying in Iraq is set in stone, he feels comfortable in tossing Bush out of the lifeboat.</p>
<p>“Ingratitude, the marble-hearted beast!”</p>
<p>This is a struggle between American elites battling over the political direction of the country. Woodward knows how to play the game as well as anyone. His interview on 60 Minutes was just the first salvo in what looks to be a brutal campaign. He has reconciled the idea of sticking the dagger in Bush knowing full well that Kerry is in the wings ready to carry out the same policies with just a tad bit more discretion. His assault on Bush is not so much a challenge to the existing framework of American power, as it is an effort at “fine-tuning” its operation by supporting more competent leadership.</p>
<p>This is how newspaper editors assume the role of “kingmaker;” creating heroes out of flawed politicians, and then, knocking them down with a stroke of the pen.</p>
<p>Woodward is a bright guy. He saw through the Bush façade long ago, but it didn’t suit his purposes to blow the whistle. Now, he is trying to affect the appearance a cub reporter who is merely “acting in the public interest”.</p>
<p>It’s pure hypocrisy.</p>
<p>Bob Woodward is at the very epicenter of the nation’s corrupt core; a poseur who regulates the flow of information so it fits his own political agenda.</p>
<p>When the dust settles over the current flap, Bush will have taken another well deserved beating in the public eye and moved down another notch in the polls. Conversely, the oily Woodward will be lauded for his courageous commitment to the truth, while having successfully performed his task as political assassin.</p>
<p>MIKE WHITNEY can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Woodward’s Imperial Trifles
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2004/04/19/woodward-s-imperial-trifles/
|
2004-04-19
| 4left
|
Woodward’s Imperial Trifles
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Bob Woodward, “How do you think history will regard the war in Iraq?”</p>
<p>Bush, (hesitating) “It won’t matter. We’ll all be dead.”</p>
<p>Once again, imperial chronicler Bob Woodward finds himself at the center of national attention with his appearance on 60 Minutes. Woodward, who had previously endeared himself to the Bush Administration with his pandering portrait of the President in “Bush at War”, has launched a blistering assault on White House credibility with his new book, “ <a href="" type="internal">Plan of Attack</a>“. The book will add significantly to the widely held belief that the war in Iraq was cooked up with little regard for the facts. Rather, it solidifies the testimony of both Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neill that the Administration was “fixated” on Iraq from the get-go and did whatever they could to fabricate a rationale to justify the invasion.</p>
<p>Woodward adds little of interest to the preponderance of evidence that the war was both unwise and unnecessary. His appearance does, however, add one more voice to the chorus of professionals who are challenging the Administration’s motivation. Woodward shows that the motivation for war in Iraq clearly overshadowed any real threat to national security.</p>
<p>Although the Woodward interview provided some interesting insights into the messianic character of our 43rd President, (The “messenger of God’s Will”) there is a question of whether Woodward may have had a larger purpose in savaging Bush on national TV.</p>
<p>It is striking that Woodward was able to interview 75 of the highest ranking government officials without any of them suspecting that he might blind sight the President with privileged information.</p>
<p>Could it be that Woodward has an agenda of his own, or is he just the straight-shooting journalist who “tells it like it is?”</p>
<p>Both Richard Clarke and ex-Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill are considerably more convincing in the role of “concerned citizen” than the unctuous Woodward.</p>
<p>Woodward is the ultimate insider; a major player among Washington power brokers. He is as much a part of the established order as anyone in the Administration or anyone leading a major American corporation.</p>
<p>His newspaper, (The Washington Post) while more nuanced than either FOX News or the Washington Times, is equally guilty in crafting a narrative that supports the basic institutions of American power. To be sure, the Post did not equivocate when it came to creating a “story-line” that was sympathetic to invading a defenseless Iraq.</p>
<p>Now, apparently, since the policy of staying in Iraq is set in stone, he feels comfortable in tossing Bush out of the lifeboat.</p>
<p>“Ingratitude, the marble-hearted beast!”</p>
<p>This is a struggle between American elites battling over the political direction of the country. Woodward knows how to play the game as well as anyone. His interview on 60 Minutes was just the first salvo in what looks to be a brutal campaign. He has reconciled the idea of sticking the dagger in Bush knowing full well that Kerry is in the wings ready to carry out the same policies with just a tad bit more discretion. His assault on Bush is not so much a challenge to the existing framework of American power, as it is an effort at “fine-tuning” its operation by supporting more competent leadership.</p>
<p>This is how newspaper editors assume the role of “kingmaker;” creating heroes out of flawed politicians, and then, knocking them down with a stroke of the pen.</p>
<p>Woodward is a bright guy. He saw through the Bush façade long ago, but it didn’t suit his purposes to blow the whistle. Now, he is trying to affect the appearance a cub reporter who is merely “acting in the public interest”.</p>
<p>It’s pure hypocrisy.</p>
<p>Bob Woodward is at the very epicenter of the nation’s corrupt core; a poseur who regulates the flow of information so it fits his own political agenda.</p>
<p>When the dust settles over the current flap, Bush will have taken another well deserved beating in the public eye and moved down another notch in the polls. Conversely, the oily Woodward will be lauded for his courageous commitment to the truth, while having successfully performed his task as political assassin.</p>
<p>MIKE WHITNEY can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 8,028 |
<p>Pro-life non-profit organization Live Action published a <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-twitter-suppressing/" type="external">report</a> Tuesday alleging that Twitter has "suppressed" the group's advertisements that criticize the taxpayer-funded abortion giant Planned Parenthood, requiring that the pro-life group "delete ALL the tweets it deems offensive."</p>
<p>Live Action has been one of the more active voices in calling out Planned Parenthood's massive abortion industry, which churns out around 320,000 abortions a year (that's far more abortions than breast exams, by the way) while receiving over $500 million in taxpayer funding. The pro-life group has used social media to get out the ugly truth about the real focus of the abortion provider. But, Live Action says, they've found that some major platforms, like Twitter and YouTube, appear to be playing defense for the abortion giant.</p>
<p>Live Action underscores that while their tweets are not being censored, "Twitter has banned our ability to advertise our content until we delete ALL the tweets it deems offensive," which is really just those that are unflattering to Planned Parenthood:</p>
<p>While it won’t censor Live Action’s and Lila Rose’s tweets outright, Twitter has banned our ability to advertise our content until we delete ALL the tweets it deems offensive — or, in reality, all the tweets that offend Planned Parenthood. Twitter has told us that we must delete:</p>
<p>Twitter has effectively limited speech on the side of the issue it apparently rejects. This is disturbing behavior for a social media platform that has over 300 million active users a month and that presents itself as a forum for people to voice a variety of opinions and positions.</p>
<p>Live Action provided some examples of messages Twitter deems "acceptable" versus those it deems "inflammatory or provocative":</p>
<p><a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-twitter-suppressing/twitter-and-live-action-example-1/" type="external" /></p>
<p><a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-twitter-suppressing/twitter-and-live-action-example-2/" type="external" /></p>
<p><a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-twitter-suppressing/twitter-and-live-action-example-3/" type="external" /></p>
<p><a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-twitter-suppressing/twitter-and-live-action-example-4/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Below are links to more examples of tweets deemed "inflammatory" that Live Action provided to The Daily Wire:</p>
<p>Live Action says Twitter's "policy committee," which determines what content is "acceptable" or "inflammatory, " offers "little explanation" for their decisions and no process for appeal. "In fact, Live Action was told that a meeting with this team would not be possible," the organization states.</p>
<p>In an email reviewed by The Daily Wire, a Twitter spokesman gave Live Action the following description of what is "prohibited under our sensitive advertising content policy regarding language and imagery":</p>
<p>The explanation was followed by the following examples from @LiveAction's account:</p>
<p>The organization was then given "two options to consider that will allow you to become eligible for advertising moving forward":</p>
<p>The pro-life group stresses that it is "certainly within Twitter’s right to determine its own standards"; however, Americans deserve to be aware of the clear bias of the platform.</p>
<p>"On an issue where Americans are divided, Twitter is acting to suppress pro-life messages that exposes the truth about abortion and Planned Parenthood’s lack of comprehensive health care for women," the group says, adding that it's "not surprising" that Twitter co-founder Evan Williams "recently <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/05/21/twitter-co-founder-im-sorry-if-we-made-trumps-presidency-possible/?utm_term=.5dd0ebd2e7a2" type="external">apologized</a> for the role Twitter played in electing President Trump."</p>
<p>Live Action concludes its article by noting that Twitter is not the only social media platform "suppressing" speech; YouTube has also tagged some of their videos with warnings that they may be "inappropriate" for some viewers (a trend also experienced by PragerU):</p>
<p>Some of <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/what-we-do/investigations/medical-misinformation/" type="external">Live Action’s videos</a> get the “content warnings” placed over them by YouTube. When a person tries to watch the video, but is not logged in to YouTube, they are informed the material may be “inappropriate.” This warning is placed over <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/what-we-do/investigations/medical-misinformation/" type="external">the video below</a> that has no graphic images, but instead, actual statements from Planned Parenthood staff giving a woman false information about the science of <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/12-amazing-facts-prove-preborn-humanity-first-trimester/" type="external">fetal development</a>.</p>
<p>Below are a few of the hard numbers about Planned Parenthood highlighted by Live Action that the abortion mill that its defenders clearly don't want voters to know:</p>
<p>According to Planned Parenthood’s own annual reports:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-twitter-suppressing/" type="external">Read Live Action's full article here</a>.</p>
<p>This article has been expanded to include more information provided to The Daily Wire by Live Action.</p>
|
Pro-Life Group: Twitter Suppressing Messages That Criticize Planned Parenthood
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/18028/pro-life-group-twitter-suppressing-messages-james-barrett
|
2017-06-28
| 0right
|
Pro-Life Group: Twitter Suppressing Messages That Criticize Planned Parenthood
<p>Pro-life non-profit organization Live Action published a <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-twitter-suppressing/" type="external">report</a> Tuesday alleging that Twitter has "suppressed" the group's advertisements that criticize the taxpayer-funded abortion giant Planned Parenthood, requiring that the pro-life group "delete ALL the tweets it deems offensive."</p>
<p>Live Action has been one of the more active voices in calling out Planned Parenthood's massive abortion industry, which churns out around 320,000 abortions a year (that's far more abortions than breast exams, by the way) while receiving over $500 million in taxpayer funding. The pro-life group has used social media to get out the ugly truth about the real focus of the abortion provider. But, Live Action says, they've found that some major platforms, like Twitter and YouTube, appear to be playing defense for the abortion giant.</p>
<p>Live Action underscores that while their tweets are not being censored, "Twitter has banned our ability to advertise our content until we delete ALL the tweets it deems offensive," which is really just those that are unflattering to Planned Parenthood:</p>
<p>While it won’t censor Live Action’s and Lila Rose’s tweets outright, Twitter has banned our ability to advertise our content until we delete ALL the tweets it deems offensive — or, in reality, all the tweets that offend Planned Parenthood. Twitter has told us that we must delete:</p>
<p>Twitter has effectively limited speech on the side of the issue it apparently rejects. This is disturbing behavior for a social media platform that has over 300 million active users a month and that presents itself as a forum for people to voice a variety of opinions and positions.</p>
<p>Live Action provided some examples of messages Twitter deems "acceptable" versus those it deems "inflammatory or provocative":</p>
<p><a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-twitter-suppressing/twitter-and-live-action-example-1/" type="external" /></p>
<p><a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-twitter-suppressing/twitter-and-live-action-example-2/" type="external" /></p>
<p><a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-twitter-suppressing/twitter-and-live-action-example-3/" type="external" /></p>
<p><a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-twitter-suppressing/twitter-and-live-action-example-4/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Below are links to more examples of tweets deemed "inflammatory" that Live Action provided to The Daily Wire:</p>
<p>Live Action says Twitter's "policy committee," which determines what content is "acceptable" or "inflammatory, " offers "little explanation" for their decisions and no process for appeal. "In fact, Live Action was told that a meeting with this team would not be possible," the organization states.</p>
<p>In an email reviewed by The Daily Wire, a Twitter spokesman gave Live Action the following description of what is "prohibited under our sensitive advertising content policy regarding language and imagery":</p>
<p>The explanation was followed by the following examples from @LiveAction's account:</p>
<p>The organization was then given "two options to consider that will allow you to become eligible for advertising moving forward":</p>
<p>The pro-life group stresses that it is "certainly within Twitter’s right to determine its own standards"; however, Americans deserve to be aware of the clear bias of the platform.</p>
<p>"On an issue where Americans are divided, Twitter is acting to suppress pro-life messages that exposes the truth about abortion and Planned Parenthood’s lack of comprehensive health care for women," the group says, adding that it's "not surprising" that Twitter co-founder Evan Williams "recently <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/05/21/twitter-co-founder-im-sorry-if-we-made-trumps-presidency-possible/?utm_term=.5dd0ebd2e7a2" type="external">apologized</a> for the role Twitter played in electing President Trump."</p>
<p>Live Action concludes its article by noting that Twitter is not the only social media platform "suppressing" speech; YouTube has also tagged some of their videos with warnings that they may be "inappropriate" for some viewers (a trend also experienced by PragerU):</p>
<p>Some of <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/what-we-do/investigations/medical-misinformation/" type="external">Live Action’s videos</a> get the “content warnings” placed over them by YouTube. When a person tries to watch the video, but is not logged in to YouTube, they are informed the material may be “inappropriate.” This warning is placed over <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/what-we-do/investigations/medical-misinformation/" type="external">the video below</a> that has no graphic images, but instead, actual statements from Planned Parenthood staff giving a woman false information about the science of <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/12-amazing-facts-prove-preborn-humanity-first-trimester/" type="external">fetal development</a>.</p>
<p>Below are a few of the hard numbers about Planned Parenthood highlighted by Live Action that the abortion mill that its defenders clearly don't want voters to know:</p>
<p>According to Planned Parenthood’s own annual reports:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-twitter-suppressing/" type="external">Read Live Action's full article here</a>.</p>
<p>This article has been expanded to include more information provided to The Daily Wire by Live Action.</p>
| 8,029 |
<p />
<p><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/16/kristol-williams/" type="external">Think Progress</a> (watching the Sunday shout shows so you–and I for that matter–don’t have to) picks up a remarkable exchange between arch-neocon William Kristol and commentator Juan Williams. Kristol having “argued” that the Bush administration’s “coddling” of Iran had “invited” the current fighting in the Middle East, and that the United States should wade into the battle, Williams retorted:</p>
<p />
<p>You just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East. … You’re saying, why doesn’t the United States take this hard, unforgiving line? Well, the hard and unforgiving line has been, we don’t talk to anybody. We don’t talk to Hamas. We don’t talk to Hezbollah. We’re not going to talk to Iran. Where has it gotten us, Bill?</p>
<p>Kristol threw up his hands and didn’t answer.</p>
<p>And this was on Fox!</p>
<p />
|
War, War, War…and More War
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2006/07/war-war-warand-more-war/
|
2006-07-17
| 4left
|
War, War, War…and More War
<p />
<p><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/16/kristol-williams/" type="external">Think Progress</a> (watching the Sunday shout shows so you–and I for that matter–don’t have to) picks up a remarkable exchange between arch-neocon William Kristol and commentator Juan Williams. Kristol having “argued” that the Bush administration’s “coddling” of Iran had “invited” the current fighting in the Middle East, and that the United States should wade into the battle, Williams retorted:</p>
<p />
<p>You just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East. … You’re saying, why doesn’t the United States take this hard, unforgiving line? Well, the hard and unforgiving line has been, we don’t talk to anybody. We don’t talk to Hamas. We don’t talk to Hezbollah. We’re not going to talk to Iran. Where has it gotten us, Bill?</p>
<p>Kristol threw up his hands and didn’t answer.</p>
<p>And this was on Fox!</p>
<p />
| 8,030 |
<p>A U.S. Senate subcommittee has opened a "preliminary inquiry" into Mylan Pharmaceuticals' price increases on its allergic reaction treatment EpiPen, Sens. Rob Portman (R, Ohio) and Claire McCaskill (D, Mo.) said Wednesday afternoon. The company's sixfold price increases on the EpiPen over the last several years sparked public outrage and condemnation by various lawmakers last month. "Our review of this matter will be robust, thorough and bipartisan," the two senators said. Mylan's shares dropped 7.8% over the last three months, compared with a 3.5% rise in the S&amp;P 500 .</p>
<p>Copyright © 2016 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
|
Senate Subcommittee Opens Preliminary Inquiry Into Mylan Over EpiPen Pricing
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/09/07/senate-subcommittee-opens-preliminary-inquiry-into-mylan-over-epipen-pricing.html
|
2016-09-07
| 0right
|
Senate Subcommittee Opens Preliminary Inquiry Into Mylan Over EpiPen Pricing
<p>A U.S. Senate subcommittee has opened a "preliminary inquiry" into Mylan Pharmaceuticals' price increases on its allergic reaction treatment EpiPen, Sens. Rob Portman (R, Ohio) and Claire McCaskill (D, Mo.) said Wednesday afternoon. The company's sixfold price increases on the EpiPen over the last several years sparked public outrage and condemnation by various lawmakers last month. "Our review of this matter will be robust, thorough and bipartisan," the two senators said. Mylan's shares dropped 7.8% over the last three months, compared with a 3.5% rise in the S&amp;P 500 .</p>
<p>Copyright © 2016 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
| 8,031 |
<p>Medea Benjamin is co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK and the human rights organization Global Exchange. She has been organizing against U.S. military interventions, promoting the rights of Palestinians and calling for no war on Iran. Her latest work includes an effort to stop CIA drone attacks, and she is the author of a new book, "Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection"</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p /> PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. This is Reality Asserts Itself.
<p />
<p />~~~
<p />
<p />DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Is it the responsibility of free people to do something, to take steps to deal with such a threat before such an attack occurs?
<p />
<p />MEDEA BENJAMIN, COFOUNDER, CODE PINK: Yes, Mr.&#160;Rumsfeld. I think we need weapons inspections, not war. Why [incompr.] the inspections? Is this really about oil? How many civilians will be killed?
<p />
<p />UNIDENTIFIED: Mr.&#160;Secretary, would you suspend for a minute and--.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: How many servicemen will be killed? Isn't this really about oil? Why is it [incompr.]
<p />
<p />UNIDENTIFIED: If we could ask the staff to see to it that our guests are escorted--.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: We want inspections, not war. Inspections. Not war. Inspections. Not war.
<p />
<p />~~~
<p />
<p />JAY: So that was Medea Benjamin after the founding of Code Pink, having one or two things to say to Donald Rumsfeld.
<p />
<p />Now joining us in the studio again is Medea Benjamin.
<p />
<p />Thanks for joining us again.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Good to be here.
<p />
<p />JAY: So Medea is cofounder of Code Pink with Jodie Evans, and she's the author of the book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.
<p />
<p />So talk a bit about what inspired and the early days of Code Pink.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: It was after 9/11, and as the whole country was in mourning, so was I. I grew up in New York, have a lot of family there. But I saw, as the days went by, what direction this was going in, and that was going to be more killing of more people, more innocent people dying.
<p />
<p />And at the time, when it was being talked about, invading Afghanistan, I reached out to the Afghan community. I was living in San Francisco, and there was a big Afghan community in Hayward there. And we organized a beautiful event with about 1,000 people coming together to say no to violence. And then Bush went ahead and invaded Afghanistan.
<p />
<p />I went to Afghanistan a week after the invasion, saw that the story that was being told to the Americans was not true, that we were killing a lot of innocent people in our invasion, and came back to the U.S., tried to go to Washington and hold a press conference and say, why in the world, when we're mourning the lives of innocent people, are we killing more innocent people? And nobody wanted to listen to it.
<p />
<p />JAY: Now, I made a film in Afghanistan in the spring of 2002, and while there was certainly significant resentment about the kind of civilian deaths--and a lot of the American bombing seemed to be--there was a certain point where the Northern Alliance was kind of sitting north of Kabul, and the Americans hadn't quite decided whether they're going to let them come in or not, and they're just bombing anything so that it could look like they were still bombing.
<p />
<p />But on the other hand, I found most people I talked to were so furious at the Taliban, so didn't want to live under that regime, that they were more, I should say, accepting of the American overthrow of the Taliban. I think, you know, they thought something positive would come out of all this, other than years of war. But at the time, I don't think it can be underestimated how much people wanted the Taliban gone.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, yes.
<p />
<p />On the other hand, I think that what was concerning to me was people who were a part of the collateral damage who weren't being acknowledged anymore. And if we allowed that to keep happening, it would keep happening. And so what we did is brought people from--who had direct family members killed on 9/11, brought them to Afghanistan, took them back to meet with their counterparts, which--there were many, unfortunately.
<p />
<p />And they would say, yes, we hated the Taliban, but what did I have to do with that? And why was my family hurt? And why won't the U.S. government apologize for what they did to my family? And now how am I going to feed my kids? And my husdand's gone.
<p />
<p />And so we did a campaign to get compensation for innocent victims. And it was--actually ended up, after a couple of years, being a successful campaign. The first pot of money was a $40&#160;million fund in the name of one of the women that we worked with, Marla Ruzicka, to compensate innocent family victims.
<p />
<p />JAY: And this was all under the roof of Code Pink.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: This was before--it started before Code Pink, when we had a group of women that gathered--actually, it was a gathering around women concerned about the environment was when we had already invaded Afghanistan and there was talk about invading Iraq. And at that point we were saying, how can we allow the U.S. to go in and invade another country, this one that really had nothing to do with 9/11? We've got to do something about it.
<p />
<p />And that's when some of us were playing around with this color-coded alert system of George Bush. Remember? He had the yellow, orange, red. And we said that that was a very insidious thing, actually, because it was making people feel living in fear and that it was justifying more military intervention. And so we came up with this idea of Code Pink, almost kind of a lark. And we thought maybe we'd go to Washington, D.C., do some action, and then go back to our other work, 'cause we were all very involved in other things. But it didn't work out that way.
<p />
<p />JAY: Now, Code Pink has become one of the most known organizations on the left, as I said in one of the earlier segments, you know, one of the favorite targets on the list of evildoers of Glenn Beck. You're usually on the list there. But there's so much we can talk about in terms of the history of Code Pink and this whole era, and I don't think we're going to get into all of it now.
<p />
<p />So I want to kind of focus on one thing, which is, in the leadup to the Iraq War, there was a massive upsurge in opposition to the war, and tens of thousands of people hit the streets all across the United States, you know, in the end, millions of people around the world.
<p />
<p />But what happened to that movement? You know. Some people suggest, although I don't think it's directly timed, but there's a suggestion that there's a--you know, you can get the antiwar movement going in the United States when it's against the Republicans, but once the Democrats are in power, you know, it takes the steam out of it. It wasn't so true under Vietnam, but other issues, such as the draft and such. But in short, what happened to that upsurge?
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, you said it. It's a one-word answer. Obama. And it wasn't Obama getting in; it was the leadup, it was the campaigning for Obama, when people were so desperate for an alternative to Bush that they said, I'm going to throw myself into this, I'm going to take off of work, students taking off of semesters, I'm going to put my life into getting this guy elected who said he was against the war in Iraq. And we put all our hopes and dreams into Obama, thinking that because he was against the war in Iraq and because he said Afghanistan was a good war--he didn't really mean that; you know, he was just saying that to get elected. But he was a smart guy, and he understood that war was not the answer, and he was going to get us out.
<p />
<p />And so the steam was just taken out of the whole movement. And it was amazing to see, because you said tens of thousands. I mean, there were eight times, during the Bush administration, that we got over 100,000 people. And we had a huge movement. You just look at one group, like Code Pink: we came out of nowhere, and suddenly we had over 300,000 people on our mailing list, and we had over 300 groups around the country and, really, around the world. We weren't even trying to set up chapters, and they were just springing up on university campuses, small towns, big towns, everywhere. (08:34) When Obama started to gain steam as a candidate, those started fizzling out. And when he won the election, we had half the numbers of people we had before on our mailing list. And most of the groups started to disintegrate.
<p />
<p />So that was indicative of what was happening to the whole peace movement.
<p />
<p />JAY: And had you drunk any of the Kool-Aid yourself?
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: I drank the Kool-Aid myself, in the sense that I voted for Obama the first time around and I'm usually a Green Party voter, always voting for something other than the Democrats and Republicans. I drank the Kool-Aid in that I was very, very anxious to vote for somebody who was going to win and have somebody who was going to be an alternative to those eight horrible years of Bush.
<p />
<p />And I was--we immediately did up a list of Obama's promises. That went from, you know, getting out of the war in Iraq to closing down Guantanamo and other things. And we started out right away: Obama, keep your promise.
<p />
<p />And I physically moved from San Francisco, where I'd been living for 26 years, to Washington, D.C., to say, now is the time to be there to make sure Obama fulfills his promises like closing Guantanamo, getting out of Iraq.
<p />
<p />And so I was full of hope, I would say. Yeah.
<p />
<p />JAY: Now, if you actually read the speeches--and we covered this on The Real News. I mean, I have to say, we didn't ever drink the Kool-Aid, 'cause we actually used to read his speeches. In fact, the best thing to do with Obama is don't listen to him, 'cause he sells the speeches, usually, so well. But if you actually read them, you would come to a different conclusion. And the interviews he did about the Iraq War, it was always, this is just stupid, I'm not a pacifist, the Iraq War is a stupid war. But he certainly was--in fact, what was stupid about it is, he said, it weakened America's ability to project power around the globe. But he certainly believed in projecting power around the globe.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, you're smarter, perhaps, and perhaps it's because--.
<p />
<p />JAY: Maybe 'cause I'm Canadian.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, and maybe it's 'cause you're not an activist, because we were just so desperate. You know, we saw firsthand so much of the devastation of the Bush years. The choice was between Hillary and Obama in terms of who was going to win from the Democratic side, and we knew Hillary was a hawk. In fact, we had a campaign bird dogging Hillary everywhere she went. And so our only real option for somebody who was going to win was Obama, and we projected our hopes and dreams on him like so many others did.
<p />
<p />And I remember--you know, you selectively listen, and I selectively listened to a lot of his campaign rhetoric, and also to the debates. And I remember one debate when he said that the role of a good leader is to talk to our adversaries and I will talk to our adversaries. And he got huge applause for that. And so I thought, alright, here's a guy who really understands that talking, dialog, negotiations are much better than war.
<p />
<p />JAY: And I have to say the one thing I had hope for in '08 with Obama--and I didn't have a lot of high expectations, and I wasn't disillusioned, 'cause I didn't have much illusions--but I thought he'd be rational on Iran when it was clear McCain wouldn't be. And then, after that, it was clear Romney wouldn't be. And, actually, so far it looks like--I mean, from the point of view of the same thing, he wants to project American power, and he knows Iran, you know, is stupid, even from the point of view of empire building. But I don't think you would get that from the Republican side. They seem much more willing to want to go for that kind of a fight. So I actually give him that. I think there is a rationality there.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, that, you know, jumps us fast-forward into today, and I'm not sure if that's where you want to go, but--.
<p />
<p />JAY: [crosstalk] We can jump around. It's okay.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Yeah? Okay. But I'm amazed at the fact that after 12 years of war, Obama would be so stupid as to do the thing with Syria and say, oh, here's my red line, and actually even contemplate U.S. physical military involvement in Syria. And that was one of my most exciting moments as an antiwar activist in recent years was to see this spontaneous uprising from left, right, Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, you name it, saying no way.
<p />
<p />And I think that you could say, yeah, Obama wants to have a rational approach to Iran, but I also think it's the mood of the country right now, and that it's forcing Obama to untether himself so much from AIPAC, the lobbyists that were gunning for war in Syria and Iran, and to take a more rational approach. I think it's a reflection of where we are as a nation. And I think there are a number of Republicans--and some of them are Tea Party Republicans--who really do not want to see the U.S. involved in another war.
<p />
<p />JAY: I think that's true. But if you go back to the Iraq War, there are a lot of people against the Iraq War, and it happens anyway. I think it had--.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: But that wasn't under Obama. That was under Bush.
<p />
<p />JAY: No, but I'm saying--yeah, but it's not just about public pressure. What I'm saying is--.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: But I think that Obama is more sensitive to public pressure than Bush was.
<p />
<p />JAY: Yeah.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: And it's his own party.
<p />
<p />JAY: Yeah. My but is is he was saying--. I think this is hilarious, me defending Obama, 'cause if you watch The Real News, we spend most of our time rather critical. But in the debates in '08, or, you know, leading into '08, he was saying things like, if you didn't want Iran to become such a dominant power in the region, you shouldn't have overthrown Saddam Hussein. You know, he was giving rational arguments back then.
<p />
<p />But I guess what I'm really getting at here--and this ties together with the antiwar movement question: it's not about him. He represents a section of the American elite. He represents probably the predominant opinion of the American professional foreign policy establishment. He represents the more professional Pentagon establishment. And all of them, you know, when they look at their grand chessboard, a war with Iran's not in American interest. And the same people were actually opposed to the war in Iraq on the whole. But Bush wouldn't listen to them.
<p />
<p />But what I'm getting at is that, when you drink the Kool-Aid, somehow you have to say to yourself that it's not a class that's in power, it's not a section of the American elite that's in power. It's, like, this guy, Obama. And if you start thinking that, then you can project things into this guy as an individual. But he never could have gotten where he was if he didn't represent a whole section of the American elite. And that section of the American elite seems awfully good at taking the legs out of--whether it's the antiwar movement or whether it was the upsurge in Wisconsin, of kind of turning the movement to become an appendage of the Democratic Party.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, exactly right. And that's--you know, when I made the decision to come to Washington, it wasn't because I thought Obama was just going to follow this nice antiwar path. I knew he was going to be confronted with this tremendous military-industrial complex that was going to push him on the militaristic path, and that we had to keep the momentum up.
<p />
<p />And we turned around as Code Pink and said, you know, where are our forces? Well, our forces had dwindled away, as we said. And even then, looking at Congress at the people that we had worked so much with under the Bush years, the Progressive Caucus, it was hard to get them to speak out, to say anything.
<p />
<p />And that's been tremendous frustration over these years is to see that the people who we were allied with and working closely with under the Bush years had suddenly--either they were part of the Democratic establishment and they were going to go with their guy, or they were willing to let down their guard and waited now for years for Obama to do the right thing.
<p />
<p />So I don't want to--I mean, when I say drank the Kool-Aid, I drank the Kool-Aid excited that things were going to change under Obama. But I was assuming that we were going to still have a movement, which we didn't have.
<p />
<p />JAY: One of the first things Obama did is not charge Bush and Cheney. I mean, there was a lot of talk about charging them on torture issues. But I always thought, if you're going to charge them, it should have been on war crimes of launching an illegal war, of which hundreds of thousands of people died.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Totally. And to this day, we at Code Pink are one of the few who follow these guys around, whether it's on a book tour or they're in a speaking engagement. We try and go whenever we can and bust into the room and saying, arrest that guy for war crimes, because we don't forget.
<p />
<p />JAY: And clearly President Obama--and for those of you that are going to write in the comments section, oh, there's Paul defending Obama on Iran, I only say this from the point of view of clearly it's to strengthen the empire. He doesn't want to get embroiled in Iran, but he has no problem. We're going to talk more about drones and such later. He's--clearly has no problem launching wars in the defense of that empire.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Yeah, and killing a lot of innocent people.
<p />
<p />JAY: So you were in touch with large numbers of people at the height of the movement and when Code Pink had lots of forces. What do they say? How can they, by this point, not get that Obama's essentially continuing Bush-Cheney policies?
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, in the first years of Obama, people got very angry at us and say, how could you be criticizing Obama? How could you be protesting what Obama's doing? And so we lost a lot of people from that end of things. It's funny, 'cause some of the people from the right who hated us so much under the Bush years were saying, well, at least we have to give them credit that there's equal-opportunity protesters. But we were small, 'cause we had lost so many people.
<p />
<p />And then, over the years, we've started to grow again, because people have seen that Obama is just continuing so many of the policies of the Bush administration.
<p />
<p />And sure there are people who--lots of people who will continue to defend Obama's foreign policy and try to make it as very differentiated from the Bush years, but we don't do that. And we would love to have the numbers that we had under the Bush administration. We don't have that.
<p />
<p />So we've tried to compensate through doing different things, like going into press conferences and speaking out when you know the national media's already there.
<p />
<p />But we certainly and unfortunately can't get tens of thousands of people out anymore. We're lucky if we can get 1,000 people out.
<p />
<p />JAY: Part of it is the complexity of the situation, is that, you know, as much as one can critique Obama and his administration and his section of the elite--and I keep saying it that way 'cause I don't want it to be about this one guy, 'cause it clearly isn't. That being said, the other section of the elite, the far right of the elite, are thoroughly sociopathic--not to say anyone that can, you know, send drones doesn't have a good dose of sociopathy themselves, but the other--you know, it's very likely, I would think, that if it had been a President Romney, for example, we might have been more directly heading towards war with Iran. And that's still not, quote-unquote, off the table with the Obama administration. Not to have illusions about them, but right now we don't seem to be headed there. You know, McCain, his war, he wanted to have a new Cold War with Russia. Who knows what the hell he would have started in terms of provocations against Russia? So it's complicated, because it's not that there's no difference between these two sections.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Right. And I think it's very interesting to see Kerry and how he has been acting as secretary of state. I was recently in Geneva when the talks around Syria started. And on the one hand, it's kind of schizophrenic, 'cause you see him with the foreign minister of Russia and shaking hands and trying to show to the media that we're good friends. And they actually are working together for the Syria talks. On the other hand, it's that American arrogance that's, you know, we will not contemplate any future of Syria that includes Saddam Hussein [sic]. Well is that up to you, John Kerry? Or is that up to the Syrian people? And the U.S. continuing to be funding the rebels while they are organizing these peace talks. So it's--.
<p />
<p />JAY: And the Russians doing the same thing on the other side.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: And the Russians doing the same thing.
<p />
<p />JAY: And the other thing about this whole thing is the absolute--what's the word?--marginalization, ignoring the refugee crisis in Syria, which is on an apocalyptic levels, and both in terms of the media and the politicians. It's like, oh, just, oh, yes, there are some refugees.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: A couple of million refugees. That's right.
<p />
<p />And the other thing ignoring is civil society, ignoring--. We were there to push women being at the table, women who had not taken up arms on either side, but who had huge constituencies 'cause they were working with refugees, they were working with displaced people, they were risking their lives to try to get humanitarian aid to people. And we could not get any kind of formal representation for women at these talks. So you have peace talks where the guys with the guns are sitting around a table and barely even talking to each other. They're only talking through the UN envoy, and the peacemakers are not at the table. And it was very profound to be there with many of these Syrian women who had been trying for months to get their voices heard and ignored at all levels from the U.S., the Russian side, and the UN side.
<p />
<p />JAY: Okay. We're going to do one more segment. We're going to talk a little bit more about the American antiwar movement and its ups and downs.
<p />
<p />Please join us with Medea Benjamin on Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News.
<p />
<p />End
<p />
<p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
|
Obama Sucked the Steam Out of the Anti-War Movement - Medea Benjamin on Reality Asserts Itself (3/4)
| true |
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D31%26Itemid%3D74%26jumival%3D11495
|
2014-02-17
| 4left
|
Obama Sucked the Steam Out of the Anti-War Movement - Medea Benjamin on Reality Asserts Itself (3/4)
<p>Medea Benjamin is co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK and the human rights organization Global Exchange. She has been organizing against U.S. military interventions, promoting the rights of Palestinians and calling for no war on Iran. Her latest work includes an effort to stop CIA drone attacks, and she is the author of a new book, "Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection"</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p /> PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. This is Reality Asserts Itself.
<p />
<p />~~~
<p />
<p />DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Is it the responsibility of free people to do something, to take steps to deal with such a threat before such an attack occurs?
<p />
<p />MEDEA BENJAMIN, COFOUNDER, CODE PINK: Yes, Mr.&#160;Rumsfeld. I think we need weapons inspections, not war. Why [incompr.] the inspections? Is this really about oil? How many civilians will be killed?
<p />
<p />UNIDENTIFIED: Mr.&#160;Secretary, would you suspend for a minute and--.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: How many servicemen will be killed? Isn't this really about oil? Why is it [incompr.]
<p />
<p />UNIDENTIFIED: If we could ask the staff to see to it that our guests are escorted--.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: We want inspections, not war. Inspections. Not war. Inspections. Not war.
<p />
<p />~~~
<p />
<p />JAY: So that was Medea Benjamin after the founding of Code Pink, having one or two things to say to Donald Rumsfeld.
<p />
<p />Now joining us in the studio again is Medea Benjamin.
<p />
<p />Thanks for joining us again.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Good to be here.
<p />
<p />JAY: So Medea is cofounder of Code Pink with Jodie Evans, and she's the author of the book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.
<p />
<p />So talk a bit about what inspired and the early days of Code Pink.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: It was after 9/11, and as the whole country was in mourning, so was I. I grew up in New York, have a lot of family there. But I saw, as the days went by, what direction this was going in, and that was going to be more killing of more people, more innocent people dying.
<p />
<p />And at the time, when it was being talked about, invading Afghanistan, I reached out to the Afghan community. I was living in San Francisco, and there was a big Afghan community in Hayward there. And we organized a beautiful event with about 1,000 people coming together to say no to violence. And then Bush went ahead and invaded Afghanistan.
<p />
<p />I went to Afghanistan a week after the invasion, saw that the story that was being told to the Americans was not true, that we were killing a lot of innocent people in our invasion, and came back to the U.S., tried to go to Washington and hold a press conference and say, why in the world, when we're mourning the lives of innocent people, are we killing more innocent people? And nobody wanted to listen to it.
<p />
<p />JAY: Now, I made a film in Afghanistan in the spring of 2002, and while there was certainly significant resentment about the kind of civilian deaths--and a lot of the American bombing seemed to be--there was a certain point where the Northern Alliance was kind of sitting north of Kabul, and the Americans hadn't quite decided whether they're going to let them come in or not, and they're just bombing anything so that it could look like they were still bombing.
<p />
<p />But on the other hand, I found most people I talked to were so furious at the Taliban, so didn't want to live under that regime, that they were more, I should say, accepting of the American overthrow of the Taliban. I think, you know, they thought something positive would come out of all this, other than years of war. But at the time, I don't think it can be underestimated how much people wanted the Taliban gone.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, yes.
<p />
<p />On the other hand, I think that what was concerning to me was people who were a part of the collateral damage who weren't being acknowledged anymore. And if we allowed that to keep happening, it would keep happening. And so what we did is brought people from--who had direct family members killed on 9/11, brought them to Afghanistan, took them back to meet with their counterparts, which--there were many, unfortunately.
<p />
<p />And they would say, yes, we hated the Taliban, but what did I have to do with that? And why was my family hurt? And why won't the U.S. government apologize for what they did to my family? And now how am I going to feed my kids? And my husdand's gone.
<p />
<p />And so we did a campaign to get compensation for innocent victims. And it was--actually ended up, after a couple of years, being a successful campaign. The first pot of money was a $40&#160;million fund in the name of one of the women that we worked with, Marla Ruzicka, to compensate innocent family victims.
<p />
<p />JAY: And this was all under the roof of Code Pink.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: This was before--it started before Code Pink, when we had a group of women that gathered--actually, it was a gathering around women concerned about the environment was when we had already invaded Afghanistan and there was talk about invading Iraq. And at that point we were saying, how can we allow the U.S. to go in and invade another country, this one that really had nothing to do with 9/11? We've got to do something about it.
<p />
<p />And that's when some of us were playing around with this color-coded alert system of George Bush. Remember? He had the yellow, orange, red. And we said that that was a very insidious thing, actually, because it was making people feel living in fear and that it was justifying more military intervention. And so we came up with this idea of Code Pink, almost kind of a lark. And we thought maybe we'd go to Washington, D.C., do some action, and then go back to our other work, 'cause we were all very involved in other things. But it didn't work out that way.
<p />
<p />JAY: Now, Code Pink has become one of the most known organizations on the left, as I said in one of the earlier segments, you know, one of the favorite targets on the list of evildoers of Glenn Beck. You're usually on the list there. But there's so much we can talk about in terms of the history of Code Pink and this whole era, and I don't think we're going to get into all of it now.
<p />
<p />So I want to kind of focus on one thing, which is, in the leadup to the Iraq War, there was a massive upsurge in opposition to the war, and tens of thousands of people hit the streets all across the United States, you know, in the end, millions of people around the world.
<p />
<p />But what happened to that movement? You know. Some people suggest, although I don't think it's directly timed, but there's a suggestion that there's a--you know, you can get the antiwar movement going in the United States when it's against the Republicans, but once the Democrats are in power, you know, it takes the steam out of it. It wasn't so true under Vietnam, but other issues, such as the draft and such. But in short, what happened to that upsurge?
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, you said it. It's a one-word answer. Obama. And it wasn't Obama getting in; it was the leadup, it was the campaigning for Obama, when people were so desperate for an alternative to Bush that they said, I'm going to throw myself into this, I'm going to take off of work, students taking off of semesters, I'm going to put my life into getting this guy elected who said he was against the war in Iraq. And we put all our hopes and dreams into Obama, thinking that because he was against the war in Iraq and because he said Afghanistan was a good war--he didn't really mean that; you know, he was just saying that to get elected. But he was a smart guy, and he understood that war was not the answer, and he was going to get us out.
<p />
<p />And so the steam was just taken out of the whole movement. And it was amazing to see, because you said tens of thousands. I mean, there were eight times, during the Bush administration, that we got over 100,000 people. And we had a huge movement. You just look at one group, like Code Pink: we came out of nowhere, and suddenly we had over 300,000 people on our mailing list, and we had over 300 groups around the country and, really, around the world. We weren't even trying to set up chapters, and they were just springing up on university campuses, small towns, big towns, everywhere. (08:34) When Obama started to gain steam as a candidate, those started fizzling out. And when he won the election, we had half the numbers of people we had before on our mailing list. And most of the groups started to disintegrate.
<p />
<p />So that was indicative of what was happening to the whole peace movement.
<p />
<p />JAY: And had you drunk any of the Kool-Aid yourself?
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: I drank the Kool-Aid myself, in the sense that I voted for Obama the first time around and I'm usually a Green Party voter, always voting for something other than the Democrats and Republicans. I drank the Kool-Aid in that I was very, very anxious to vote for somebody who was going to win and have somebody who was going to be an alternative to those eight horrible years of Bush.
<p />
<p />And I was--we immediately did up a list of Obama's promises. That went from, you know, getting out of the war in Iraq to closing down Guantanamo and other things. And we started out right away: Obama, keep your promise.
<p />
<p />And I physically moved from San Francisco, where I'd been living for 26 years, to Washington, D.C., to say, now is the time to be there to make sure Obama fulfills his promises like closing Guantanamo, getting out of Iraq.
<p />
<p />And so I was full of hope, I would say. Yeah.
<p />
<p />JAY: Now, if you actually read the speeches--and we covered this on The Real News. I mean, I have to say, we didn't ever drink the Kool-Aid, 'cause we actually used to read his speeches. In fact, the best thing to do with Obama is don't listen to him, 'cause he sells the speeches, usually, so well. But if you actually read them, you would come to a different conclusion. And the interviews he did about the Iraq War, it was always, this is just stupid, I'm not a pacifist, the Iraq War is a stupid war. But he certainly was--in fact, what was stupid about it is, he said, it weakened America's ability to project power around the globe. But he certainly believed in projecting power around the globe.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, you're smarter, perhaps, and perhaps it's because--.
<p />
<p />JAY: Maybe 'cause I'm Canadian.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, and maybe it's 'cause you're not an activist, because we were just so desperate. You know, we saw firsthand so much of the devastation of the Bush years. The choice was between Hillary and Obama in terms of who was going to win from the Democratic side, and we knew Hillary was a hawk. In fact, we had a campaign bird dogging Hillary everywhere she went. And so our only real option for somebody who was going to win was Obama, and we projected our hopes and dreams on him like so many others did.
<p />
<p />And I remember--you know, you selectively listen, and I selectively listened to a lot of his campaign rhetoric, and also to the debates. And I remember one debate when he said that the role of a good leader is to talk to our adversaries and I will talk to our adversaries. And he got huge applause for that. And so I thought, alright, here's a guy who really understands that talking, dialog, negotiations are much better than war.
<p />
<p />JAY: And I have to say the one thing I had hope for in '08 with Obama--and I didn't have a lot of high expectations, and I wasn't disillusioned, 'cause I didn't have much illusions--but I thought he'd be rational on Iran when it was clear McCain wouldn't be. And then, after that, it was clear Romney wouldn't be. And, actually, so far it looks like--I mean, from the point of view of the same thing, he wants to project American power, and he knows Iran, you know, is stupid, even from the point of view of empire building. But I don't think you would get that from the Republican side. They seem much more willing to want to go for that kind of a fight. So I actually give him that. I think there is a rationality there.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, that, you know, jumps us fast-forward into today, and I'm not sure if that's where you want to go, but--.
<p />
<p />JAY: [crosstalk] We can jump around. It's okay.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Yeah? Okay. But I'm amazed at the fact that after 12 years of war, Obama would be so stupid as to do the thing with Syria and say, oh, here's my red line, and actually even contemplate U.S. physical military involvement in Syria. And that was one of my most exciting moments as an antiwar activist in recent years was to see this spontaneous uprising from left, right, Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, you name it, saying no way.
<p />
<p />And I think that you could say, yeah, Obama wants to have a rational approach to Iran, but I also think it's the mood of the country right now, and that it's forcing Obama to untether himself so much from AIPAC, the lobbyists that were gunning for war in Syria and Iran, and to take a more rational approach. I think it's a reflection of where we are as a nation. And I think there are a number of Republicans--and some of them are Tea Party Republicans--who really do not want to see the U.S. involved in another war.
<p />
<p />JAY: I think that's true. But if you go back to the Iraq War, there are a lot of people against the Iraq War, and it happens anyway. I think it had--.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: But that wasn't under Obama. That was under Bush.
<p />
<p />JAY: No, but I'm saying--yeah, but it's not just about public pressure. What I'm saying is--.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: But I think that Obama is more sensitive to public pressure than Bush was.
<p />
<p />JAY: Yeah.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: And it's his own party.
<p />
<p />JAY: Yeah. My but is is he was saying--. I think this is hilarious, me defending Obama, 'cause if you watch The Real News, we spend most of our time rather critical. But in the debates in '08, or, you know, leading into '08, he was saying things like, if you didn't want Iran to become such a dominant power in the region, you shouldn't have overthrown Saddam Hussein. You know, he was giving rational arguments back then.
<p />
<p />But I guess what I'm really getting at here--and this ties together with the antiwar movement question: it's not about him. He represents a section of the American elite. He represents probably the predominant opinion of the American professional foreign policy establishment. He represents the more professional Pentagon establishment. And all of them, you know, when they look at their grand chessboard, a war with Iran's not in American interest. And the same people were actually opposed to the war in Iraq on the whole. But Bush wouldn't listen to them.
<p />
<p />But what I'm getting at is that, when you drink the Kool-Aid, somehow you have to say to yourself that it's not a class that's in power, it's not a section of the American elite that's in power. It's, like, this guy, Obama. And if you start thinking that, then you can project things into this guy as an individual. But he never could have gotten where he was if he didn't represent a whole section of the American elite. And that section of the American elite seems awfully good at taking the legs out of--whether it's the antiwar movement or whether it was the upsurge in Wisconsin, of kind of turning the movement to become an appendage of the Democratic Party.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, exactly right. And that's--you know, when I made the decision to come to Washington, it wasn't because I thought Obama was just going to follow this nice antiwar path. I knew he was going to be confronted with this tremendous military-industrial complex that was going to push him on the militaristic path, and that we had to keep the momentum up.
<p />
<p />And we turned around as Code Pink and said, you know, where are our forces? Well, our forces had dwindled away, as we said. And even then, looking at Congress at the people that we had worked so much with under the Bush years, the Progressive Caucus, it was hard to get them to speak out, to say anything.
<p />
<p />And that's been tremendous frustration over these years is to see that the people who we were allied with and working closely with under the Bush years had suddenly--either they were part of the Democratic establishment and they were going to go with their guy, or they were willing to let down their guard and waited now for years for Obama to do the right thing.
<p />
<p />So I don't want to--I mean, when I say drank the Kool-Aid, I drank the Kool-Aid excited that things were going to change under Obama. But I was assuming that we were going to still have a movement, which we didn't have.
<p />
<p />JAY: One of the first things Obama did is not charge Bush and Cheney. I mean, there was a lot of talk about charging them on torture issues. But I always thought, if you're going to charge them, it should have been on war crimes of launching an illegal war, of which hundreds of thousands of people died.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Totally. And to this day, we at Code Pink are one of the few who follow these guys around, whether it's on a book tour or they're in a speaking engagement. We try and go whenever we can and bust into the room and saying, arrest that guy for war crimes, because we don't forget.
<p />
<p />JAY: And clearly President Obama--and for those of you that are going to write in the comments section, oh, there's Paul defending Obama on Iran, I only say this from the point of view of clearly it's to strengthen the empire. He doesn't want to get embroiled in Iran, but he has no problem. We're going to talk more about drones and such later. He's--clearly has no problem launching wars in the defense of that empire.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Yeah, and killing a lot of innocent people.
<p />
<p />JAY: So you were in touch with large numbers of people at the height of the movement and when Code Pink had lots of forces. What do they say? How can they, by this point, not get that Obama's essentially continuing Bush-Cheney policies?
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Well, in the first years of Obama, people got very angry at us and say, how could you be criticizing Obama? How could you be protesting what Obama's doing? And so we lost a lot of people from that end of things. It's funny, 'cause some of the people from the right who hated us so much under the Bush years were saying, well, at least we have to give them credit that there's equal-opportunity protesters. But we were small, 'cause we had lost so many people.
<p />
<p />And then, over the years, we've started to grow again, because people have seen that Obama is just continuing so many of the policies of the Bush administration.
<p />
<p />And sure there are people who--lots of people who will continue to defend Obama's foreign policy and try to make it as very differentiated from the Bush years, but we don't do that. And we would love to have the numbers that we had under the Bush administration. We don't have that.
<p />
<p />So we've tried to compensate through doing different things, like going into press conferences and speaking out when you know the national media's already there.
<p />
<p />But we certainly and unfortunately can't get tens of thousands of people out anymore. We're lucky if we can get 1,000 people out.
<p />
<p />JAY: Part of it is the complexity of the situation, is that, you know, as much as one can critique Obama and his administration and his section of the elite--and I keep saying it that way 'cause I don't want it to be about this one guy, 'cause it clearly isn't. That being said, the other section of the elite, the far right of the elite, are thoroughly sociopathic--not to say anyone that can, you know, send drones doesn't have a good dose of sociopathy themselves, but the other--you know, it's very likely, I would think, that if it had been a President Romney, for example, we might have been more directly heading towards war with Iran. And that's still not, quote-unquote, off the table with the Obama administration. Not to have illusions about them, but right now we don't seem to be headed there. You know, McCain, his war, he wanted to have a new Cold War with Russia. Who knows what the hell he would have started in terms of provocations against Russia? So it's complicated, because it's not that there's no difference between these two sections.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: Right. And I think it's very interesting to see Kerry and how he has been acting as secretary of state. I was recently in Geneva when the talks around Syria started. And on the one hand, it's kind of schizophrenic, 'cause you see him with the foreign minister of Russia and shaking hands and trying to show to the media that we're good friends. And they actually are working together for the Syria talks. On the other hand, it's that American arrogance that's, you know, we will not contemplate any future of Syria that includes Saddam Hussein [sic]. Well is that up to you, John Kerry? Or is that up to the Syrian people? And the U.S. continuing to be funding the rebels while they are organizing these peace talks. So it's--.
<p />
<p />JAY: And the Russians doing the same thing on the other side.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: And the Russians doing the same thing.
<p />
<p />JAY: And the other thing about this whole thing is the absolute--what's the word?--marginalization, ignoring the refugee crisis in Syria, which is on an apocalyptic levels, and both in terms of the media and the politicians. It's like, oh, just, oh, yes, there are some refugees.
<p />
<p />BENJAMIN: A couple of million refugees. That's right.
<p />
<p />And the other thing ignoring is civil society, ignoring--. We were there to push women being at the table, women who had not taken up arms on either side, but who had huge constituencies 'cause they were working with refugees, they were working with displaced people, they were risking their lives to try to get humanitarian aid to people. And we could not get any kind of formal representation for women at these talks. So you have peace talks where the guys with the guns are sitting around a table and barely even talking to each other. They're only talking through the UN envoy, and the peacemakers are not at the table. And it was very profound to be there with many of these Syrian women who had been trying for months to get their voices heard and ignored at all levels from the U.S., the Russian side, and the UN side.
<p />
<p />JAY: Okay. We're going to do one more segment. We're going to talk a little bit more about the American antiwar movement and its ups and downs.
<p />
<p />Please join us with Medea Benjamin on Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News.
<p />
<p />End
<p />
<p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
| 8,032 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>And, eventually, the whole world in 2047.</p>
<p>A new study on global warming pinpoints the probable dates for when cities and ecosystems around the world will regularly experience hotter environments the likes of which they have never seen before.</p>
<p>And for dozens of cities, mostly in the tropics, those dates are a generation or less away.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“This paper is both innovative and sobering,” said Oregon State University professor Jane Lubchenco, former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who was not involved in the study.</p>
<p>To arrive at their projections, the researchers used weather observations, computer models and other data to calculate the point at which every year from then on will be warmer than the hottest year ever recorded over the last 150 years.</p>
<p>For example, the world as a whole had its hottest year on record in 2005. The new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, says that by the year 2047, every year that follows will probably be hotter than that record-setting scorcher.</p>
<p>Eventually, the coldest year in a particular city or region will be hotter than the hottest year in its past.</p>
<p>Study author Camilo Mora and his colleagues said they hope this new way of looking at climate change will spur governments to do something before it is too late.</p>
<p>“Now is the time to act,” said another study co-author, Ryan Longman.</p>
<p>Mora, a biological geographer at the University of Hawaii, and colleagues ran simulations from 39 different computer models and looked at hundreds of thousands of species, maps and data points to ask when places will have “an environment like we had never seen before.”</p>
<p>The 2047 date for the whole world is based on continually increasing emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gases. If the world manages to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases, that would be pushed to as late as 2069, according to Mora.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>But for now, Mora said, the world is rushing toward the 2047 date.</p>
<p>“One can think of this year as a kind of threshold into a hot new world from which one never goes back,” said Carnegie Institution climate scientist Chris Field, who was not part of the study. “This is really dramatic.”</p>
<p>Mora forecasts that the unprecedented heat starts in 2020 with Manokwa, Indonesia. Then Kingston, Jamaica. Within the next two decades, 59 cities will be living in what is essentially a new climate, including Singapore, Havana, Kuala Lumpur and Mexico City.</p>
<p>By 2043, 147 cities – more than half of those studied – will have shifted to a hotter temperature regime that is beyond historical records.</p>
<p>The first U.S. cities to feel that would be Honolulu and Phoenix, followed by San Diego and Orlando, Fla., in 2046. New York and Washington will get new climates around 2047, with Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, Chicago, Seattle, Austin and Dallas a bit later.</p>
<p>Mora calculated that the last of the 265 cities to move into their new climate will be Anchorage, Alaska – in 2071. There’s a five-year margin of error on the estimates.</p>
<p>Unlike previous research, the study highlights the tropics more than the polar regions. In the tropics, temperatures don’t vary much, so a small increase can have large effects on ecosystems, he said. A 3-degree change is not much to polar regions but is dramatic in the tropics, which hold most of the Earth’s biodiversity, he said.</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Temperatures to go off charts around 2047
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/278581/temperatures-to-go-off-charts-around-2047.html
|
2013-10-10
| 2least
|
Temperatures to go off charts around 2047
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>And, eventually, the whole world in 2047.</p>
<p>A new study on global warming pinpoints the probable dates for when cities and ecosystems around the world will regularly experience hotter environments the likes of which they have never seen before.</p>
<p>And for dozens of cities, mostly in the tropics, those dates are a generation or less away.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“This paper is both innovative and sobering,” said Oregon State University professor Jane Lubchenco, former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who was not involved in the study.</p>
<p>To arrive at their projections, the researchers used weather observations, computer models and other data to calculate the point at which every year from then on will be warmer than the hottest year ever recorded over the last 150 years.</p>
<p>For example, the world as a whole had its hottest year on record in 2005. The new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, says that by the year 2047, every year that follows will probably be hotter than that record-setting scorcher.</p>
<p>Eventually, the coldest year in a particular city or region will be hotter than the hottest year in its past.</p>
<p>Study author Camilo Mora and his colleagues said they hope this new way of looking at climate change will spur governments to do something before it is too late.</p>
<p>“Now is the time to act,” said another study co-author, Ryan Longman.</p>
<p>Mora, a biological geographer at the University of Hawaii, and colleagues ran simulations from 39 different computer models and looked at hundreds of thousands of species, maps and data points to ask when places will have “an environment like we had never seen before.”</p>
<p>The 2047 date for the whole world is based on continually increasing emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gases. If the world manages to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases, that would be pushed to as late as 2069, according to Mora.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>But for now, Mora said, the world is rushing toward the 2047 date.</p>
<p>“One can think of this year as a kind of threshold into a hot new world from which one never goes back,” said Carnegie Institution climate scientist Chris Field, who was not part of the study. “This is really dramatic.”</p>
<p>Mora forecasts that the unprecedented heat starts in 2020 with Manokwa, Indonesia. Then Kingston, Jamaica. Within the next two decades, 59 cities will be living in what is essentially a new climate, including Singapore, Havana, Kuala Lumpur and Mexico City.</p>
<p>By 2043, 147 cities – more than half of those studied – will have shifted to a hotter temperature regime that is beyond historical records.</p>
<p>The first U.S. cities to feel that would be Honolulu and Phoenix, followed by San Diego and Orlando, Fla., in 2046. New York and Washington will get new climates around 2047, with Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, Chicago, Seattle, Austin and Dallas a bit later.</p>
<p>Mora calculated that the last of the 265 cities to move into their new climate will be Anchorage, Alaska – in 2071. There’s a five-year margin of error on the estimates.</p>
<p>Unlike previous research, the study highlights the tropics more than the polar regions. In the tropics, temperatures don’t vary much, so a small increase can have large effects on ecosystems, he said. A 3-degree change is not much to polar regions but is dramatic in the tropics, which hold most of the Earth’s biodiversity, he said.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 8,033 |
<p />
<p />
<p>At the end of last week, the National Cathedral in D.C., made history by hosting its first Islamic Imam. In the ceremony, prayers were lifted up to Allah, the God of Islam.</p>
<p />
<p>But as the ceremony started, one proud Christian woman decided she had enough. Watch (above) as she stands up and proudly protests, “Jesus Christ died on that cross over there! He is the reason why we are to worship only him. Jesus Christ is our lord and savior!”</p>
<p />
<p>Prior to the event, Rev. Franklin Graham expressed <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2014/11/christians-muslims-conquering-washington-national-cathedral/" type="external">his opposition</a> to the prayer service:</p>
<p>The Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, said in a Facebook post Thursday that the Muslim prayer service at the National Cathedral is “sad to see” because the church should only open its doors for worship of “the One True God of the Bible.”</p>
<p>Graham, who heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, said, “Tomorrow, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. – one of the most prominent Episcopal churches in America – will host a Muslim prayer service to Allah.”</p>
<p>“It’s sad to see a church open its doors to the worship of anything other than the One True God of the Bible who sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to earth to save us from our sins,” said Graham. “Jesus was clear when He said, ‘I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me’ (John 14:6).”</p>
<p>Can you imagine what would happen if a Christian went to Mecca to protest Christianity? And perhaps it is this type of anti-Christian bigotry which is what made Friday’s Islamic ceremony in this Christian Episcopal cathedral so hypocritical.</p>
<p />
<p>Did the lady go to far, or do you support her outburst? Please leave us a comment and tell us what you think.</p>
<p />
|
At National Cathedral, One Christian Lady SPEAKS OUT Against Islamic Prayer Ceremony (VIDEO)
| true |
http://thepoliticalinsider.com/national-cathedral-one-christian-lady-speaks-islamic-prayer-ceremony-video/
|
2014-11-17
| 0right
|
At National Cathedral, One Christian Lady SPEAKS OUT Against Islamic Prayer Ceremony (VIDEO)
<p />
<p />
<p>At the end of last week, the National Cathedral in D.C., made history by hosting its first Islamic Imam. In the ceremony, prayers were lifted up to Allah, the God of Islam.</p>
<p />
<p>But as the ceremony started, one proud Christian woman decided she had enough. Watch (above) as she stands up and proudly protests, “Jesus Christ died on that cross over there! He is the reason why we are to worship only him. Jesus Christ is our lord and savior!”</p>
<p />
<p>Prior to the event, Rev. Franklin Graham expressed <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2014/11/christians-muslims-conquering-washington-national-cathedral/" type="external">his opposition</a> to the prayer service:</p>
<p>The Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, said in a Facebook post Thursday that the Muslim prayer service at the National Cathedral is “sad to see” because the church should only open its doors for worship of “the One True God of the Bible.”</p>
<p>Graham, who heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, said, “Tomorrow, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. – one of the most prominent Episcopal churches in America – will host a Muslim prayer service to Allah.”</p>
<p>“It’s sad to see a church open its doors to the worship of anything other than the One True God of the Bible who sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to earth to save us from our sins,” said Graham. “Jesus was clear when He said, ‘I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me’ (John 14:6).”</p>
<p>Can you imagine what would happen if a Christian went to Mecca to protest Christianity? And perhaps it is this type of anti-Christian bigotry which is what made Friday’s Islamic ceremony in this Christian Episcopal cathedral so hypocritical.</p>
<p />
<p>Did the lady go to far, or do you support her outburst? Please leave us a comment and tell us what you think.</p>
<p />
| 8,034 |
<p>The Associated Press <a href="http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/world/2017/02/16/united-states-russia/97987114/" type="external">reports</a>:</p>
<p>The U.S. is not ready to collaborate militarily with Russia, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday, appearing to close the door for now on any effort to work more closely with Moscow in the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria.</p>
<p>His blunt rejection came after Russian President Vladimir Putin called for increased intelligence cooperation with the U.S. and NATO, and it makes such coordination less likely at least in the near future. Mattis followed his dismissal with a sharp assessment of Russia’s alleged election meddling, saying there is “very little doubt that they have either interfered or they have attempted to interfere in a number of elections in the democracies.”</p>
<p>His comments raised questions about the Trump administration’s policies on Russia. As a candidate, President Donald Trump repeatedly praised Putin, saying he wanted a new era of cooperation with Moscow. Speaking at a meeting of NATO defense ministers, Mattis said the U.S. will continue to engage politically with Putin’s government to try to find common ground.</p>
<p />
|
Defense Secretary James Mattis Contradicts Trump: There Will Be No Military Collaboration With Russia
| true |
http://joemygod.com/2017/02/16/defense-secretary-james-mattis-contradicts-trump-will-no-military-collaboration-russia-video/
|
2017-02-16
| 4left
|
Defense Secretary James Mattis Contradicts Trump: There Will Be No Military Collaboration With Russia
<p>The Associated Press <a href="http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/world/2017/02/16/united-states-russia/97987114/" type="external">reports</a>:</p>
<p>The U.S. is not ready to collaborate militarily with Russia, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday, appearing to close the door for now on any effort to work more closely with Moscow in the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria.</p>
<p>His blunt rejection came after Russian President Vladimir Putin called for increased intelligence cooperation with the U.S. and NATO, and it makes such coordination less likely at least in the near future. Mattis followed his dismissal with a sharp assessment of Russia’s alleged election meddling, saying there is “very little doubt that they have either interfered or they have attempted to interfere in a number of elections in the democracies.”</p>
<p>His comments raised questions about the Trump administration’s policies on Russia. As a candidate, President Donald Trump repeatedly praised Putin, saying he wanted a new era of cooperation with Moscow. Speaking at a meeting of NATO defense ministers, Mattis said the U.S. will continue to engage politically with Putin’s government to try to find common ground.</p>
<p />
| 8,035 |
<p>FNC’s Clayton Morris weighs in on new video features in the iPad Air 2 and says the biggest wow factor from the event was the unveiling of the 27-inch iMac with retina 5K display.</p>
<p>Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) on Thursday unveiled a new, thinner iPad as the company tries to reignite the tablet's growth.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Apple said pricing for the iPad Air 2 starts at $499 and at $399 for the iPad Mini 3. Orders for the new iPad begin Friday, and shipping starts next week.</p>
<p>At an event at its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Apple also said its new mobile-payment service, Apple Pay, will roll out Monday and be supported by more than 500 banks.</p>
<p>In addition, Apple unveiled an iMac computer with higher-quality resolution. Pricing for that starts at $2,499, and shipping begins today.</p>
<p>Tablet computers are facing an existential question as technology evolves. Smartphones are growing bigger with larger screens and more powerful processors, increasingly capable of handling tasks once earmarked for tablets. Laptops are lighter and more portable, meeting some of the demand for a lightweight, mobile computing device.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Apple isn't alone in confronting a sluggish tablet market. Market researcher Gartner estimates that world-wide tablet unit shipments will grow 11% in 2014, a sharp deceleration from 55% unit growth in 2013. By comparison, Gartner says smartphone shipments will increase 35% this year.</p>
<p>The trends are visible in Apple's own product line, where the new iPhone 6 Plus comes with a 5.5-inch display, encroaching on the iPad Mini's 7.9-inch screen.</p>
<p>Apple said Thursday that the latest iPad, dubbed iPad Air 2, Is 18% thinner than iPad Air.</p>
<p>Apple defined the tablet computer market four years ago when it introduced the iPad, the last major new product released under then-CEO Steve Jobs. Initial sales were strong, but demand started to slow last year.</p>
<p>IPad revenue has fallen four of the last five quarters. Last year, Apple introduced the thinner iPad Air with a 9.7-inch screen and added a higher-resolution display to the smaller iPad Mini. Based on the leaked images, Apple appears to have added a Touch ID fingerprint reader to its two main iPads.</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that iPad owners aren't replacing tablets as often as they swap phones. According to Kantar Worldpanel Comtech data, nearly 50% of iPads in use are the original iPad and the iPad 2--which were introduced in 2010 and 2011, respectively.</p>
<p>Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has largely brushed off concerns about iPad sales--noting that customers are very satisfied with the product and iPad owners use the device frequently to browse the Web and make e-commerce purchases.</p>
<p>Apple is preparing a larger 12.9-inch iPad with a high-resolution display, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple had planned to start production of the new iPad this year, but it has pushed back the timetable to give suppliers more time to meet massive demand for its new iPhones.</p>
<p>A bigger iPad is expected to be part of Apple's push to position its tablet computer as the main workplace computing device for a new generation of workers. In July, it struck a partnership with International Busniness Machines Corp. to develop mobile applications targeted at different industries. Under the partnership, IBM (NYSE:IBM) also plans to sell iPhones and iPads to its corporate clients.</p>
<p>Apple Pay, meanwhile, is aimed at helping shoppers ditch their wallet and make purchases with an iPhone. The system relies on a technology known as near-field communication, or NFC, that has had trouble winning acceptance from merchants.</p>
<p>Merchants must install a reader at their checkout line for so-called tap-and-go payments. NFC readers are being used by fewer than 10% of merchants, according to Gartner analyst Mark Hung.</p>
<p>Apple has said iPhone owners will be able to use Apple Pay at 220,000 U.S. locations, including McDonald's Corp. (NYSE:MCD), Bloomingdale's and Macy's (NYSE:M). By comparison, the Electronic Transactions Association said more than nine million U.S. merchants accept credit and debit cards.</p>
<p>Apple also showed off its new operating system for Macs, the OS X Yosemite, which will be available today for free, and the company said its new mobile operating system, iOS 8.1, will be available Monday.</p>
|
Apple CEO Cook Unveils Thinner iPad, New iMac
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/10/16/apple-ceo-cook-unveils-thinner-ipad-new-imac.html
|
2016-03-06
| 0right
|
Apple CEO Cook Unveils Thinner iPad, New iMac
<p>FNC’s Clayton Morris weighs in on new video features in the iPad Air 2 and says the biggest wow factor from the event was the unveiling of the 27-inch iMac with retina 5K display.</p>
<p>Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) on Thursday unveiled a new, thinner iPad as the company tries to reignite the tablet's growth.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Apple said pricing for the iPad Air 2 starts at $499 and at $399 for the iPad Mini 3. Orders for the new iPad begin Friday, and shipping starts next week.</p>
<p>At an event at its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Apple also said its new mobile-payment service, Apple Pay, will roll out Monday and be supported by more than 500 banks.</p>
<p>In addition, Apple unveiled an iMac computer with higher-quality resolution. Pricing for that starts at $2,499, and shipping begins today.</p>
<p>Tablet computers are facing an existential question as technology evolves. Smartphones are growing bigger with larger screens and more powerful processors, increasingly capable of handling tasks once earmarked for tablets. Laptops are lighter and more portable, meeting some of the demand for a lightweight, mobile computing device.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Apple isn't alone in confronting a sluggish tablet market. Market researcher Gartner estimates that world-wide tablet unit shipments will grow 11% in 2014, a sharp deceleration from 55% unit growth in 2013. By comparison, Gartner says smartphone shipments will increase 35% this year.</p>
<p>The trends are visible in Apple's own product line, where the new iPhone 6 Plus comes with a 5.5-inch display, encroaching on the iPad Mini's 7.9-inch screen.</p>
<p>Apple said Thursday that the latest iPad, dubbed iPad Air 2, Is 18% thinner than iPad Air.</p>
<p>Apple defined the tablet computer market four years ago when it introduced the iPad, the last major new product released under then-CEO Steve Jobs. Initial sales were strong, but demand started to slow last year.</p>
<p>IPad revenue has fallen four of the last five quarters. Last year, Apple introduced the thinner iPad Air with a 9.7-inch screen and added a higher-resolution display to the smaller iPad Mini. Based on the leaked images, Apple appears to have added a Touch ID fingerprint reader to its two main iPads.</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that iPad owners aren't replacing tablets as often as they swap phones. According to Kantar Worldpanel Comtech data, nearly 50% of iPads in use are the original iPad and the iPad 2--which were introduced in 2010 and 2011, respectively.</p>
<p>Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has largely brushed off concerns about iPad sales--noting that customers are very satisfied with the product and iPad owners use the device frequently to browse the Web and make e-commerce purchases.</p>
<p>Apple is preparing a larger 12.9-inch iPad with a high-resolution display, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple had planned to start production of the new iPad this year, but it has pushed back the timetable to give suppliers more time to meet massive demand for its new iPhones.</p>
<p>A bigger iPad is expected to be part of Apple's push to position its tablet computer as the main workplace computing device for a new generation of workers. In July, it struck a partnership with International Busniness Machines Corp. to develop mobile applications targeted at different industries. Under the partnership, IBM (NYSE:IBM) also plans to sell iPhones and iPads to its corporate clients.</p>
<p>Apple Pay, meanwhile, is aimed at helping shoppers ditch their wallet and make purchases with an iPhone. The system relies on a technology known as near-field communication, or NFC, that has had trouble winning acceptance from merchants.</p>
<p>Merchants must install a reader at their checkout line for so-called tap-and-go payments. NFC readers are being used by fewer than 10% of merchants, according to Gartner analyst Mark Hung.</p>
<p>Apple has said iPhone owners will be able to use Apple Pay at 220,000 U.S. locations, including McDonald's Corp. (NYSE:MCD), Bloomingdale's and Macy's (NYSE:M). By comparison, the Electronic Transactions Association said more than nine million U.S. merchants accept credit and debit cards.</p>
<p>Apple also showed off its new operating system for Macs, the OS X Yosemite, which will be available today for free, and the company said its new mobile operating system, iOS 8.1, will be available Monday.</p>
| 8,036 |
<p>Accepting false left-wing premises built upon other false left-wing premises, Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Reince Priebus allowed CNN’s Jake Tapper to cast the GOP as needing to modify its message in order to appeal more broadly to Hispanic/Latino voters. Hyping the narrative of Hispanic/Latino voters widely supporting amnesty for illegal aliens, Tapper and Priebus agreed that Republican presidential aspirations would be best served by shifting to the left on the issue of illegal immigration.</p>
<p>Tapper recalled the 2012 RNC-commissioned “ <a href="http://goproject.gop.com/rnc_growth_opportunity_book_2013.pdf" type="external">autopsy report</a>,” in which Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign was explained away as a result of the former Massachusetts Governor supposedly staking out too strident a position on the issue of illegal immigration. The report concluded that future Republican victories in pursuit of the White House would require an expansion of support from Hispanic/Latino voters. Building on this false premise, the report recommended that Republican presidential candidates embrace policies of amnesty for foreigners illegally in the country - many of whom are from Mexico and South American countries - on the assumption that Hispanic/Latino voters subscribe to ethnic and/or linguistic kinship with many of them.</p>
<p>Quoting <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/reince-priebus-immigration-self-deportation-095621" type="external">comments</a> made by by the RNC chairman in 2013 describing Romney’s call for policies to induce “self-deportation” of foreigners illegally in the country as “horrific,” Tapper asked Priebus a familiar question.</p>
<p>“In retrospect, self-deportation compared to what we’re hearing from Mr. Trump on the campaign trail, I mean, that’s practically like cucaracha,” remarked Tapper.</p>
<p>“As a national party, one of our problems was that we weren’t in Hispanic and black communities on a full-time basis, and the big changes we’ve made here, it’s getting to a place where you’ve got ten people every ten blocks in Cleveland, in Cincinnati, in Pueblo Country,” replied Priebus, essentially praising GOP efforts to reach out black and Hispanic voters more directly.</p>
<p>Priebus neglected to call out left-wing media outlet - such as CNN - for its constant left-wing cultivation racial and ethnic grievances as a driver of support from black and Hispanic/Latino voters for the Democratic Party. Also ignored was the <a href="" type="internal">false premise</a> of a significant increase in aggregate support from black and Hispanic/Latino voters as a crucial ingredient for future Republican presidential fortunes. No mention was made of a “white vote,” or how expanding appeal to white voters might be a more sensible political strategy for the GOP within a political landscape of increasing racial and ethnic division.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>
|
Priebus And Tapper Agree: GOP Must Push Amnesty To Win Hispanic Voters
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/4618/priebus-and-tapper-agree-gop-must-push-amnesty-win-robert-kraychik
|
2016-04-03
| 0right
|
Priebus And Tapper Agree: GOP Must Push Amnesty To Win Hispanic Voters
<p>Accepting false left-wing premises built upon other false left-wing premises, Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Reince Priebus allowed CNN’s Jake Tapper to cast the GOP as needing to modify its message in order to appeal more broadly to Hispanic/Latino voters. Hyping the narrative of Hispanic/Latino voters widely supporting amnesty for illegal aliens, Tapper and Priebus agreed that Republican presidential aspirations would be best served by shifting to the left on the issue of illegal immigration.</p>
<p>Tapper recalled the 2012 RNC-commissioned “ <a href="http://goproject.gop.com/rnc_growth_opportunity_book_2013.pdf" type="external">autopsy report</a>,” in which Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign was explained away as a result of the former Massachusetts Governor supposedly staking out too strident a position on the issue of illegal immigration. The report concluded that future Republican victories in pursuit of the White House would require an expansion of support from Hispanic/Latino voters. Building on this false premise, the report recommended that Republican presidential candidates embrace policies of amnesty for foreigners illegally in the country - many of whom are from Mexico and South American countries - on the assumption that Hispanic/Latino voters subscribe to ethnic and/or linguistic kinship with many of them.</p>
<p>Quoting <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/reince-priebus-immigration-self-deportation-095621" type="external">comments</a> made by by the RNC chairman in 2013 describing Romney’s call for policies to induce “self-deportation” of foreigners illegally in the country as “horrific,” Tapper asked Priebus a familiar question.</p>
<p>“In retrospect, self-deportation compared to what we’re hearing from Mr. Trump on the campaign trail, I mean, that’s practically like cucaracha,” remarked Tapper.</p>
<p>“As a national party, one of our problems was that we weren’t in Hispanic and black communities on a full-time basis, and the big changes we’ve made here, it’s getting to a place where you’ve got ten people every ten blocks in Cleveland, in Cincinnati, in Pueblo Country,” replied Priebus, essentially praising GOP efforts to reach out black and Hispanic voters more directly.</p>
<p>Priebus neglected to call out left-wing media outlet - such as CNN - for its constant left-wing cultivation racial and ethnic grievances as a driver of support from black and Hispanic/Latino voters for the Democratic Party. Also ignored was the <a href="" type="internal">false premise</a> of a significant increase in aggregate support from black and Hispanic/Latino voters as a crucial ingredient for future Republican presidential fortunes. No mention was made of a “white vote,” or how expanding appeal to white voters might be a more sensible political strategy for the GOP within a political landscape of increasing racial and ethnic division.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>
| 8,037 |
<p>JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - On the streets of Johannesburg, the design is cutting edge, maybe even a little hallucinogenic: a three-foot-high zebra, fashioned from wire and beads, its stripes a rainbow of colors.</p>
<p>Zimbabweans hawking beaded wire animal sculptures at traffic lights are a regular sight in Johannesburg's wealthy northern suburbs. With few economic opportunities back home, many young men leave Zimbabwe for South Africa to find work, and some turn a childhood skill of building toy cars out of wire into an innovative way to earn a living.&#160;</p>
<p>Most of the beaded sculptures are tourist-friendly standbys, ranging from tiny rhinos and elephants, to waist-high lions and impalas, as well as life-sized sheep and goats - inexplicably popular with South Africans.</p>
<p>But when the eye-catching "rainbow zebra" design hit the Johannesburg streets, it was something different, and an instant success.</p>
<p>South Africa: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/culture-lifestyle/111004/mounting-violence-haunts-south-africa%E2%80%99s-gays-and-mobilizes-ac" type="external">Mounting Violence Haunts South Africa's Gays</a>&#160;</p>
<p>"It was a new thing for our customers," said Boas Manzvenga, part of a collective of Zimbabweans making and selling their creations from their longtime corner spot at Jan Smuts Drive and Bolton Road. "People bought them very much," he said.</p>
<p>What sets this group of artisans apart from the many other Zimbabweans selling beaded wire animals around the city is the sense of innovation with which they approach their work.</p>
<p>The group is called Kubatana, which means "united" in Zimbabwe's Shona language, and they plan to formally register as a business in South Africa and develop a website to promote their work overseas. These men may work on the street, but all have email addresses and a few have BlackBerrys.</p>
<p>Manzvenga says they want to maintain a reputation for quality among their customers, with their evolving designs - for example, they are trying out a new line of African bird sculptures. Ahead of Christmas, they sell reindeers. During the 2010 soccer World Cup, it was soccer balls and wire-and-bead replicas of the World Cup trophy.</p>
<p>Customers regularly bring in specific requests for made-to-order beaded wire art - such as beloved pet dogs, or most recently, a set of garish three-feet-high angel and devil sculptures.</p>
<p>But copycats are a problem on the streets of Johannesburg: as soon as the Kubatana collective's "rainbow zebra" took off late last year, copies of their design began appearing at other traffic lights throughout the city.</p>
<p>South Africa Video: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/video/5676900/south-africa-the-bonds-sisterhood-wine-farms-transgendered" type="external">The Bonds of Sisterhood</a></p>
<p>Manzvenga says there is little they can do to protect intellectual property on the streets of Johannesburg.</p>
<p>"The best way to overcome that problem is with quality," he said. "Some of those guys' zebras look more like a donkey or a horse."</p>
<p>Another problem is the police, who regularly target them for being unlicensed hawkers and confiscate their art.</p>
<p>Just last month, the police came and took away all the work they had displayed at roadside to attract passing motorists - $2,900 worth of beaded wire sculptures, Manzvenga says.</p>
<p>But the police harassment isn't as bad as it used to be. After a run of problems, the group five years ago asked a major art gallery located across the street if they could sell their beaded wire animals from the gallery grounds.</p>
<p>As long as they follow some house rules, the Goodman Gallery lets them sell and even store their sculptures overnight in a fenced-in grassy space next to the parking lot, guarded by a security officer.</p>
<p>So while they still sit next to the road, in order to promote their products to passing traffic, they store the bulk of their work - and the most expensive animal sculptures, such as $2,150 for a life-sized zebra - in the safe gallery lot.</p>
|
South Africa: Street art a way of life
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2011-10-08/south-africa-street-art-way-life
|
2011-10-08
| 3left-center
|
South Africa: Street art a way of life
<p>JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - On the streets of Johannesburg, the design is cutting edge, maybe even a little hallucinogenic: a three-foot-high zebra, fashioned from wire and beads, its stripes a rainbow of colors.</p>
<p>Zimbabweans hawking beaded wire animal sculptures at traffic lights are a regular sight in Johannesburg's wealthy northern suburbs. With few economic opportunities back home, many young men leave Zimbabwe for South Africa to find work, and some turn a childhood skill of building toy cars out of wire into an innovative way to earn a living.&#160;</p>
<p>Most of the beaded sculptures are tourist-friendly standbys, ranging from tiny rhinos and elephants, to waist-high lions and impalas, as well as life-sized sheep and goats - inexplicably popular with South Africans.</p>
<p>But when the eye-catching "rainbow zebra" design hit the Johannesburg streets, it was something different, and an instant success.</p>
<p>South Africa: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/culture-lifestyle/111004/mounting-violence-haunts-south-africa%E2%80%99s-gays-and-mobilizes-ac" type="external">Mounting Violence Haunts South Africa's Gays</a>&#160;</p>
<p>"It was a new thing for our customers," said Boas Manzvenga, part of a collective of Zimbabweans making and selling their creations from their longtime corner spot at Jan Smuts Drive and Bolton Road. "People bought them very much," he said.</p>
<p>What sets this group of artisans apart from the many other Zimbabweans selling beaded wire animals around the city is the sense of innovation with which they approach their work.</p>
<p>The group is called Kubatana, which means "united" in Zimbabwe's Shona language, and they plan to formally register as a business in South Africa and develop a website to promote their work overseas. These men may work on the street, but all have email addresses and a few have BlackBerrys.</p>
<p>Manzvenga says they want to maintain a reputation for quality among their customers, with their evolving designs - for example, they are trying out a new line of African bird sculptures. Ahead of Christmas, they sell reindeers. During the 2010 soccer World Cup, it was soccer balls and wire-and-bead replicas of the World Cup trophy.</p>
<p>Customers regularly bring in specific requests for made-to-order beaded wire art - such as beloved pet dogs, or most recently, a set of garish three-feet-high angel and devil sculptures.</p>
<p>But copycats are a problem on the streets of Johannesburg: as soon as the Kubatana collective's "rainbow zebra" took off late last year, copies of their design began appearing at other traffic lights throughout the city.</p>
<p>South Africa Video: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/video/5676900/south-africa-the-bonds-sisterhood-wine-farms-transgendered" type="external">The Bonds of Sisterhood</a></p>
<p>Manzvenga says there is little they can do to protect intellectual property on the streets of Johannesburg.</p>
<p>"The best way to overcome that problem is with quality," he said. "Some of those guys' zebras look more like a donkey or a horse."</p>
<p>Another problem is the police, who regularly target them for being unlicensed hawkers and confiscate their art.</p>
<p>Just last month, the police came and took away all the work they had displayed at roadside to attract passing motorists - $2,900 worth of beaded wire sculptures, Manzvenga says.</p>
<p>But the police harassment isn't as bad as it used to be. After a run of problems, the group five years ago asked a major art gallery located across the street if they could sell their beaded wire animals from the gallery grounds.</p>
<p>As long as they follow some house rules, the Goodman Gallery lets them sell and even store their sculptures overnight in a fenced-in grassy space next to the parking lot, guarded by a security officer.</p>
<p>So while they still sit next to the road, in order to promote their products to passing traffic, they store the bulk of their work - and the most expensive animal sculptures, such as $2,150 for a life-sized zebra - in the safe gallery lot.</p>
| 8,038 |
<p>Amidst a cacophony of statements, commentary and analyses about the American-Israeli relationship, and the events since Joe Biden’s visit to Israel, Mark Perry wrote an article in Foreign Policy magazine on March 13, 2010 titled “The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story”.&#160; Perry explained that on January 16, 2010, a team of central command officers and officials responsible for American national security in the Middle East made a presentation in the Pentagon to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, headed by Admiral Michael Mullen, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.</p>
<p>The team had been sent by General David Petraeus to “underline his growing concerns at the lack of progress in resolving the issue”.&#160; The conclusion of the presentation was that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel.&#160; That is why Arabs have started to lose faith in the United States and its promises, and that Israeli intransigence in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was paralyzing the position, role and status of the United States in the region.&#160; &#160;It added that “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding, despite the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of American troops in the region”.</p>
<p>Perry says that the briefing given to Mullen, at Petraeus’ request, fell like a bombshell on the White house.&#160; That is why the Obama administration sent Mullen to meet Gabi Ashkenazi.&#160; Mark Perry adds that Biden passed the content of the Mullen-Petraeus report to Netanyahu saying: “This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace”.&#160; The message was very clear.&#160; “Israel’s intransigence could cost American lives”.&#160; He concludes his article by saying that some people think that Biden’s visit to the region changed the Israeli-American relationship, while the real change happened last January when David Petraeus sent a clear warning to the Pentagon through the team which made the presentation: “America’s relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America’s soldiers”.</p>
<p>This review of what was published in the media since Biden’s visit is important because it shows that the Obama administration realizes the links between Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict, on the one hand, and what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the other.&#160; It also recognizes, albeit indirectly, that the question of Palestine and the occupied Arab territories is at the heart of what is going on in the region; and that the region will not know peace and quiet until justice is achieved in Palestine.</p>
<p>But the real message which the West should hear would be that of the concerned parties, the Arab leaders who are in charge of protecting Arab and Muslim sacred places.&#160; The clearer and more forceful and serious the message is the more seriously others would take and contemplate it.</p>
<p>A week of speculation about the course of American-Israeli relations did not lead to releasing one Palestinian prisoner, protecting one house in Jerusalem against demolition or allowing unarmed Palestinians without protection to praying in al-Aqsa mosque.&#160; American, European and quartet positions did not go beyond verbal criticism of settlements such as expressing ‘concern’, accompanied by invoking the strategic alliance between the United States and Israel and of course stressing for the billionth time the United States’ and Europe’s commitment to ‘Israel’s security’ without any consideration for the security, freedom and rights of the Palestinians.</p>
<p>All Western statements will remain mere media bubbles unless accompanied by the tools which the United States uses in dealing with Arabs and Muslims such as &#160;passing a binding resolution accompanied by sanctions.&#160; But these bubbles have two objectives in American policy: diverting attention from daily Israeli crimes against unarmed Palestinian civilians; and helping those who do not want Arabs to support the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>The importance of the Petraeus-Mullen briefing lies in its implicit suggestion that an Arab and Muslim stand can be effective, not only against Israeli occupation, but also against all those who support Israel &#160;with arms and money and all those who provide with international cover to enable it to continue Judazing land and sanctities.&#160; It is equally effective in supporting the Palestinian people uprooted from their land, deprived of their freedom and independence and subjected to crimes against humanity, under the full gaze of the ‘civilized’ world.</p>
<p>BOUTHAINA SHAABAN is Political and Media Advisor at the Syrian Presidency, and former Minister of Expatriates. She is also a writer and professor at Damascus University since 1985. She has been the spokesperson for Syria and was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. She can be reached through <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://greentags.bigcartel.com/" type="external">WORDS THAT STICK</a></p>
<p />
|
The Mullen-Petraeus Report on the Middle East
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2010/03/26/the-mullen-petraeus-report-on-the-middle-east/
|
2010-03-26
| 4left
|
The Mullen-Petraeus Report on the Middle East
<p>Amidst a cacophony of statements, commentary and analyses about the American-Israeli relationship, and the events since Joe Biden’s visit to Israel, Mark Perry wrote an article in Foreign Policy magazine on March 13, 2010 titled “The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story”.&#160; Perry explained that on January 16, 2010, a team of central command officers and officials responsible for American national security in the Middle East made a presentation in the Pentagon to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, headed by Admiral Michael Mullen, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.</p>
<p>The team had been sent by General David Petraeus to “underline his growing concerns at the lack of progress in resolving the issue”.&#160; The conclusion of the presentation was that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel.&#160; That is why Arabs have started to lose faith in the United States and its promises, and that Israeli intransigence in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was paralyzing the position, role and status of the United States in the region.&#160; &#160;It added that “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding, despite the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of American troops in the region”.</p>
<p>Perry says that the briefing given to Mullen, at Petraeus’ request, fell like a bombshell on the White house.&#160; That is why the Obama administration sent Mullen to meet Gabi Ashkenazi.&#160; Mark Perry adds that Biden passed the content of the Mullen-Petraeus report to Netanyahu saying: “This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace”.&#160; The message was very clear.&#160; “Israel’s intransigence could cost American lives”.&#160; He concludes his article by saying that some people think that Biden’s visit to the region changed the Israeli-American relationship, while the real change happened last January when David Petraeus sent a clear warning to the Pentagon through the team which made the presentation: “America’s relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America’s soldiers”.</p>
<p>This review of what was published in the media since Biden’s visit is important because it shows that the Obama administration realizes the links between Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict, on the one hand, and what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the other.&#160; It also recognizes, albeit indirectly, that the question of Palestine and the occupied Arab territories is at the heart of what is going on in the region; and that the region will not know peace and quiet until justice is achieved in Palestine.</p>
<p>But the real message which the West should hear would be that of the concerned parties, the Arab leaders who are in charge of protecting Arab and Muslim sacred places.&#160; The clearer and more forceful and serious the message is the more seriously others would take and contemplate it.</p>
<p>A week of speculation about the course of American-Israeli relations did not lead to releasing one Palestinian prisoner, protecting one house in Jerusalem against demolition or allowing unarmed Palestinians without protection to praying in al-Aqsa mosque.&#160; American, European and quartet positions did not go beyond verbal criticism of settlements such as expressing ‘concern’, accompanied by invoking the strategic alliance between the United States and Israel and of course stressing for the billionth time the United States’ and Europe’s commitment to ‘Israel’s security’ without any consideration for the security, freedom and rights of the Palestinians.</p>
<p>All Western statements will remain mere media bubbles unless accompanied by the tools which the United States uses in dealing with Arabs and Muslims such as &#160;passing a binding resolution accompanied by sanctions.&#160; But these bubbles have two objectives in American policy: diverting attention from daily Israeli crimes against unarmed Palestinian civilians; and helping those who do not want Arabs to support the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>The importance of the Petraeus-Mullen briefing lies in its implicit suggestion that an Arab and Muslim stand can be effective, not only against Israeli occupation, but also against all those who support Israel &#160;with arms and money and all those who provide with international cover to enable it to continue Judazing land and sanctities.&#160; It is equally effective in supporting the Palestinian people uprooted from their land, deprived of their freedom and independence and subjected to crimes against humanity, under the full gaze of the ‘civilized’ world.</p>
<p>BOUTHAINA SHAABAN is Political and Media Advisor at the Syrian Presidency, and former Minister of Expatriates. She is also a writer and professor at Damascus University since 1985. She has been the spokesperson for Syria and was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. She can be reached through <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://greentags.bigcartel.com/" type="external">WORDS THAT STICK</a></p>
<p />
| 8,039 |
<p>Donald Trump may be out of step with the Republican Party’s traditional stance on some issues, like support for international trade, but he’s right in line with Republican hysteria over voter fraud. Indeed, the threat of voter intimidation and violence that Trump is raising by his irresponsible talk of vote rigging and encouragement of his supporters to go to other polling places is only possible because of years of earlier irresponsible talk.</p>
<p />
<p>Let’s start with what Trump has said and why it is so irresponsible. <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=87068" type="external">As I’ve written</a>, one of the things we take for granted is that, even in tumultuous times when elections are hard-fought, the losers concede the election and embrace the process, even if things did not go well. That’s what Al Gore did after the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore. He did not call for demonstrations in the streets, which could have been destabilizing. In 2008, after great controversy over the Bush years, Obama v. McCain was very hard-fought, but we were able to come together again as a country.</p>
<p>Donald Trump threatens this peace by raising the prospect <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=87054" type="external">not only of sending his supporters</a>, unsupervised, into polling places (likely in minority neighborhoods). This can lead to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hasen-vote-rigging-20160816-snap-story.html" type="external">voter intimidation on election day</a>. He has also backed off <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=86893" type="external">his earlier, somewhat ambiguous statement</a> that he would support Hillary Clinton if she won. Now, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/us/politics/donald-trump-interview-bill-hillary-clinton.html?ref=politics" type="external">speaking to the New York Times</a>, he backed off even his qualified pledge to support Clinton if he loses, saying: “We’re going to have to see. We’re going to see what happens. We’re going to have to see.”</p>
<p>The message has resonated with his supporters. According to <a href="https://www.apnews.com/20b98547e9164d0cafc7419915608ce8/AP-NORC-Poll:-Half-of-Trump-backers-don%27t-trust-vote-count?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_medium=AP" type="external">an AP-NORC poll:</a> “Only about one-third of Republicans say they have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence that votes on Election Day will be counted fairly… Half the people who have a favorable opinion of the Republican nominee say they have little to no confidence in the integrity of the vote count.”</p>
<p>But this should be no surprise, because members of the fraudulent fraud squad have pushed this message for years, claiming that voter fraud is rampant, and that it inevitably helps Democrats. As I pointed out in my 2012 book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Voting-Wars-Florida-Election-Meltdown/dp/0300198248" type="external">The Voting Wars</a>, conservative flame thrower Michelle Malkin warned just before the 2010 election that voter fraud was rampant. But when Democrats faced a “thumping” at the polls, Malkin had nothing to say about fraud. And now she’s at it again, <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2016/10/05/will-illegal-foreign-voters-steal-the-election-n2228046" type="external">claiming non-citizens will steal the election</a> in Colorado and elsewhere.</p>
<p>There’s a whole industry of fraudsters, such as <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/29/the-voter-fraud-myth" type="external">Hans von Spakovsky</a> and Kansas Secretary of State Kobach who whip up voter fraud frenzies to degitimize Democrats, rile up the Republican base, and fundraise. That’s why the Wake County, NC GOP just <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=87238" type="external">sent out a letter</a> saying that Democrats will “stop at nothing and registering dead people or falsifying voter information is simply a ‘means to an end’ for them.”</p>
<p>Here’s what we know about voter fraud. One should never say voter fraud is non-existent. In fact, it happens occasionally with absentee ballots and I’ve long said we need more action to stop it. I’ve also said we need to clean up voter registration rolls to stop registration fraud. What is extremely rare and has not affected any election we know of since the 1980s is impersonation fraud, the kind of fraud state voter ID laws are meant to stop. Yet Republican laws that make it harder to register and vote generally don’t go after absentee ballot fraud but are instead targeted almost exclusively to measures making it harder for those likely to vote Democratic to register and vote.</p>
<p>Claims of voter fraud are often exaggerated by orders of magnitude. Consider the claims about non-citizen voting. <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=87096" type="external">Matt Drudge recently</a> had <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=87096" type="external">a headline</a> stating: “Report: 1,000+ Illegal Voters in Virginia.” And Dan Scavino, Jr. <a href="https://twitter.com/i/web/status/782883808613896192" type="external">tweeted</a>: “Terrible. We know who the 1,000+ illegal aliens ARE NOT VOTING FOR! A fixed presidential election in the making….will we ever know!?!?” But if you look <a href="https://publicinterestlegal.org/files/Report_Alien-Invasion-in-Virginia.pdf" type="external">at the underlying report</a>, they have identified only 31 actual non-citizen voters in Virginia over the last 10 years. No doubt there are some more, as not all the counties have responded yet. But it is not 1,000 plus non-citizens voting in Va. (“In the 8 jurisdictions that provided us with lists of aliens recently removed from their voter rolls, we discovered that 31 non-citizens had cast a total of 186 votes between 2005 and 2015. The most alien votes were cast in 2012 followed by 2008, the year President Obama was elected to his first term.” (emphasis omitted)). Don’t believe all the hype. Non-citizen voting is a real, but pretty small, problem (because the penalties are high and the payoff low).</p>
<p>And there’s no doubt a racial element to all of this. When Trump talks of voter fraud in “certain areas” (code word for voting by minorities, with the fix put in by local labor unions), he’s talking about impersonation fraud. He says he’s worried about people voting 10 or 15 times. But as I wrote in <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hasen-vote-rigging-20160816-snap-story.html" type="external">a recent LA Times oped</a>:</p>
<p>Trump contends that without strict voter identification laws, people can vote five, 10 or 15 times. He’s offered no evidence to back up this assertion, and for good reason. Even in states with modest means of identifying voters, such as comparing voters’ signatures in the poll ledger and on registration forms, there are safeguards to ensure against multiple voting.</p>
<p>In recent memory, the only publicized <a href="http://archive.jsonline.com/news/crime/shorewood-man-sentenced-to-jail-for-multiple-votes-in-several-elections-b99677321z1-370317801.html" type="external">case</a> involving someone voting in high multiples was a supporter of Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker when Walker was up for a recall. The voter tried to vote five times in the recall and seven more times in four other elections. He was easily caught, well before Wisconsin passed its strict voter ID law. The voter claimed amnesia; his lawyer argued he suffered from mental illness. The case shows this isn’t a problem that’s going to happen on a grand scale….</p>
<p>So yes, Trump’s rhetoric is not only condemnable; it is also dangerous. But let’s not forget where it came from, or expect that the pernicious voter fraud myth will disappear after Trump fades from the political scene.</p>
|
Donald Trump’s Dangerous Vote Rigging Comments Follow Years of Republican Voter Fraud Hysteria
| true |
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/trump-rigged-election-republican-voter-fraud-hysteria
| 4left
|
Donald Trump’s Dangerous Vote Rigging Comments Follow Years of Republican Voter Fraud Hysteria
<p>Donald Trump may be out of step with the Republican Party’s traditional stance on some issues, like support for international trade, but he’s right in line with Republican hysteria over voter fraud. Indeed, the threat of voter intimidation and violence that Trump is raising by his irresponsible talk of vote rigging and encouragement of his supporters to go to other polling places is only possible because of years of earlier irresponsible talk.</p>
<p />
<p>Let’s start with what Trump has said and why it is so irresponsible. <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=87068" type="external">As I’ve written</a>, one of the things we take for granted is that, even in tumultuous times when elections are hard-fought, the losers concede the election and embrace the process, even if things did not go well. That’s what Al Gore did after the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore. He did not call for demonstrations in the streets, which could have been destabilizing. In 2008, after great controversy over the Bush years, Obama v. McCain was very hard-fought, but we were able to come together again as a country.</p>
<p>Donald Trump threatens this peace by raising the prospect <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=87054" type="external">not only of sending his supporters</a>, unsupervised, into polling places (likely in minority neighborhoods). This can lead to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hasen-vote-rigging-20160816-snap-story.html" type="external">voter intimidation on election day</a>. He has also backed off <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=86893" type="external">his earlier, somewhat ambiguous statement</a> that he would support Hillary Clinton if she won. Now, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/us/politics/donald-trump-interview-bill-hillary-clinton.html?ref=politics" type="external">speaking to the New York Times</a>, he backed off even his qualified pledge to support Clinton if he loses, saying: “We’re going to have to see. We’re going to see what happens. We’re going to have to see.”</p>
<p>The message has resonated with his supporters. According to <a href="https://www.apnews.com/20b98547e9164d0cafc7419915608ce8/AP-NORC-Poll:-Half-of-Trump-backers-don%27t-trust-vote-count?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_medium=AP" type="external">an AP-NORC poll:</a> “Only about one-third of Republicans say they have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence that votes on Election Day will be counted fairly… Half the people who have a favorable opinion of the Republican nominee say they have little to no confidence in the integrity of the vote count.”</p>
<p>But this should be no surprise, because members of the fraudulent fraud squad have pushed this message for years, claiming that voter fraud is rampant, and that it inevitably helps Democrats. As I pointed out in my 2012 book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Voting-Wars-Florida-Election-Meltdown/dp/0300198248" type="external">The Voting Wars</a>, conservative flame thrower Michelle Malkin warned just before the 2010 election that voter fraud was rampant. But when Democrats faced a “thumping” at the polls, Malkin had nothing to say about fraud. And now she’s at it again, <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2016/10/05/will-illegal-foreign-voters-steal-the-election-n2228046" type="external">claiming non-citizens will steal the election</a> in Colorado and elsewhere.</p>
<p>There’s a whole industry of fraudsters, such as <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/29/the-voter-fraud-myth" type="external">Hans von Spakovsky</a> and Kansas Secretary of State Kobach who whip up voter fraud frenzies to degitimize Democrats, rile up the Republican base, and fundraise. That’s why the Wake County, NC GOP just <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=87238" type="external">sent out a letter</a> saying that Democrats will “stop at nothing and registering dead people or falsifying voter information is simply a ‘means to an end’ for them.”</p>
<p>Here’s what we know about voter fraud. One should never say voter fraud is non-existent. In fact, it happens occasionally with absentee ballots and I’ve long said we need more action to stop it. I’ve also said we need to clean up voter registration rolls to stop registration fraud. What is extremely rare and has not affected any election we know of since the 1980s is impersonation fraud, the kind of fraud state voter ID laws are meant to stop. Yet Republican laws that make it harder to register and vote generally don’t go after absentee ballot fraud but are instead targeted almost exclusively to measures making it harder for those likely to vote Democratic to register and vote.</p>
<p>Claims of voter fraud are often exaggerated by orders of magnitude. Consider the claims about non-citizen voting. <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=87096" type="external">Matt Drudge recently</a> had <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=87096" type="external">a headline</a> stating: “Report: 1,000+ Illegal Voters in Virginia.” And Dan Scavino, Jr. <a href="https://twitter.com/i/web/status/782883808613896192" type="external">tweeted</a>: “Terrible. We know who the 1,000+ illegal aliens ARE NOT VOTING FOR! A fixed presidential election in the making….will we ever know!?!?” But if you look <a href="https://publicinterestlegal.org/files/Report_Alien-Invasion-in-Virginia.pdf" type="external">at the underlying report</a>, they have identified only 31 actual non-citizen voters in Virginia over the last 10 years. No doubt there are some more, as not all the counties have responded yet. But it is not 1,000 plus non-citizens voting in Va. (“In the 8 jurisdictions that provided us with lists of aliens recently removed from their voter rolls, we discovered that 31 non-citizens had cast a total of 186 votes between 2005 and 2015. The most alien votes were cast in 2012 followed by 2008, the year President Obama was elected to his first term.” (emphasis omitted)). Don’t believe all the hype. Non-citizen voting is a real, but pretty small, problem (because the penalties are high and the payoff low).</p>
<p>And there’s no doubt a racial element to all of this. When Trump talks of voter fraud in “certain areas” (code word for voting by minorities, with the fix put in by local labor unions), he’s talking about impersonation fraud. He says he’s worried about people voting 10 or 15 times. But as I wrote in <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hasen-vote-rigging-20160816-snap-story.html" type="external">a recent LA Times oped</a>:</p>
<p>Trump contends that without strict voter identification laws, people can vote five, 10 or 15 times. He’s offered no evidence to back up this assertion, and for good reason. Even in states with modest means of identifying voters, such as comparing voters’ signatures in the poll ledger and on registration forms, there are safeguards to ensure against multiple voting.</p>
<p>In recent memory, the only publicized <a href="http://archive.jsonline.com/news/crime/shorewood-man-sentenced-to-jail-for-multiple-votes-in-several-elections-b99677321z1-370317801.html" type="external">case</a> involving someone voting in high multiples was a supporter of Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker when Walker was up for a recall. The voter tried to vote five times in the recall and seven more times in four other elections. He was easily caught, well before Wisconsin passed its strict voter ID law. The voter claimed amnesia; his lawyer argued he suffered from mental illness. The case shows this isn’t a problem that’s going to happen on a grand scale….</p>
<p>So yes, Trump’s rhetoric is not only condemnable; it is also dangerous. But let’s not forget where it came from, or expect that the pernicious voter fraud myth will disappear after Trump fades from the political scene.</p>
| 8,040 |
|
<p>Jan. 2 (UPI) — A fire that broke out at a safari park in Britain has killed more than a dozen patas monkeys, officials said Tuesday.</p>
<p>The blaze <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/woburn-safari-park-fire-latest-patas-monkeys-die-killed-bedfordshire-animals-dead-a8137456.html" type="external">began in the monkey house</a> in the drive-through portion of Woburn Safari Park in Bedfordshire, about 45 miles northwest of London.</p>
<p>“None of the 13 animals could be saved,” a park statement said. “All other animals within the jungle drive-through enclosure are being monitored, but early signs suggest that they have not been affected.”</p>
<p>Park spokesman Drew Mullin said it appears <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/02/fire-kills-13-monkeys-at-woburn-safari-park" type="external">a generator fault was the cause</a> of the fire.</p>
<p>“They are devastated,” he said of the monkeys’ caretakers. “They build up a bond with the animals.”</p>
<p>Nicola O’Brien, a campaign manager for The Captive Animals’ Protection Society, said the fire is an example of the dangers animals are exposed to in captivity.</p>
<p>“It’s just one of the risks of having animals trapped in cages. It must have been an absolutely horrific death for them,” O’Brien said. “Obviously accidents do happen, but we do think it calls into question the whole point of why we place animals in captivity in the first place.”</p>
<p>The monkeys shared a 16-acre exhibit with Barbacy macaques and a herd of Eastern Mountain antelope.</p>
<p>Ground-dwelling Patas monkey are found in open grasslands in central, western and eastern Africa and can run as fast as 35 mph, making them the fastest primates in the world.</p>
|
13 monkeys die in fire at British safari park
| false |
https://newsline.com/13-monkeys-die-in-fire-at-british-safari-park/
|
2018-01-02
| 1right-center
|
13 monkeys die in fire at British safari park
<p>Jan. 2 (UPI) — A fire that broke out at a safari park in Britain has killed more than a dozen patas monkeys, officials said Tuesday.</p>
<p>The blaze <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/woburn-safari-park-fire-latest-patas-monkeys-die-killed-bedfordshire-animals-dead-a8137456.html" type="external">began in the monkey house</a> in the drive-through portion of Woburn Safari Park in Bedfordshire, about 45 miles northwest of London.</p>
<p>“None of the 13 animals could be saved,” a park statement said. “All other animals within the jungle drive-through enclosure are being monitored, but early signs suggest that they have not been affected.”</p>
<p>Park spokesman Drew Mullin said it appears <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/02/fire-kills-13-monkeys-at-woburn-safari-park" type="external">a generator fault was the cause</a> of the fire.</p>
<p>“They are devastated,” he said of the monkeys’ caretakers. “They build up a bond with the animals.”</p>
<p>Nicola O’Brien, a campaign manager for The Captive Animals’ Protection Society, said the fire is an example of the dangers animals are exposed to in captivity.</p>
<p>“It’s just one of the risks of having animals trapped in cages. It must have been an absolutely horrific death for them,” O’Brien said. “Obviously accidents do happen, but we do think it calls into question the whole point of why we place animals in captivity in the first place.”</p>
<p>The monkeys shared a 16-acre exhibit with Barbacy macaques and a herd of Eastern Mountain antelope.</p>
<p>Ground-dwelling Patas monkey are found in open grasslands in central, western and eastern Africa and can run as fast as 35 mph, making them the fastest primates in the world.</p>
| 8,041 |
<p>Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen answers a question during a news conference in Washington, Wednesday, December 16, 2015.Susan Walsh/AP</p>
<p />
<p>The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate for the first time in nearly a decade. Citing rising employment and economic activity, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee <a href="http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/20151216a.htm" type="external">voted to raise its target</a> for the federal funds rate (the rate that banks pay to loan each other money overnight) to between 0.25 and 0.5 percent. Interest rates across the economy are expected to climb along with it.</p>
<p>This may not sound significant, but the Fed’s interest rate decisions have a huge impact on the American and global economies.&#160;The rate is&#160;one of the main mechanisms that the Federal Reserve uses to cool&#160;the economy and quell inflation.&#160;The last time the Fed raised it <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35029586" type="external">was in 2006</a>. Then came the housing market crash, the Great Recession, and the Fed’s unprecedented response: nine years of near-zero rates aimed at spurring economic growth.&#160;</p>
<p>A growing contingent of influential economists <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/15/larry-summers-what-the-federal-reserve-got-wrong-and-what-it-should-do-next/" type="external">believe</a>that it is too soon to take&#160;moves that will slow economic growth,&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/the-downside-risk-of-the-feds-rate-hike/" type="external">arguing</a> that raising rates now will do the most damage to those who can least afford it: the poor and minorities. They say the Fed should only step in when there are clear signs of rising inflation, the traditional trigger for tightening monetary policy, which hasn’t happened yet.</p>
<p>The decade of near-zero interest rates have brought the economy into such unfamiliar territory, however, that other economists say we can’t predict the consequences of this move by the Fed. “The environment we’re in is just so out of the range of our models that we are a bit in the dark,”&#160;says Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.</p>
<p>The one point everybody agrees on is that while the impact of this first hike may be minor,&#160;Yellen has indicated that more may follow and those will shift gears in the American economy. Everyone will be affected, with some clear winners and losers.</p>
<p>The big winners are likely to include:</p>
<p>The financial sector:&#160;Big banks and financial institutions have <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/15/the-sector-thats-already-celebrating-a-rate-hike.html" type="external">already seen a bump</a> from the anticipated rate hike. Banks typically benefit from rising rates, because that means they are able to lend at higher long-term interest rates while borrowing at lower short-term ones. The financial sector also benefits from hard-on-inflation policies, since high inflation erodes the value of their investments. “Unexpected increases in inflation are wealth transfers from creditors to debtors,” explains Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the progressive Economic Policy Institute. “The finance sector really, really dislikes unexpected inflation.”</p>
<p>People with savings in the bank: Ralph Nader recently published <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/an-open-letter-to-chairwo_b_8438486.html?1446247344" type="external">a condescending letter</a> that he wrote Yellen, urging her to raise rates for the sake of “the savers of America.”&#160;(Yellen <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/yellen-defends-feds-low-rate-policy-in-response-to-ralph-nader-1448313349" type="external">responded with her own letter</a> defending the Fed’s policies). Nader was onto something though: An extended period of low rates hits hardest ordinary people who keep their savings in bank accounts. With interest rates near zero, their savings stagnate. But there’s a twist. The very poor are generally unable to save much, which means that they don’t have much to lose. People with significant savings tend to put their money in the stock market, which has soared over the past few years.</p>
<p>“If you’re talking about people that have any significant savings at all—more than $5,000 or $10,000—they’re not keeping it in a checking account, they’re doing things like putting it in stock and bonds. And the price of stocks and bonds have actually been driven higher by the Fed’s policies,”&#160;says Bivens.</p>
<p>Small businesses (maybe):&#160;This seems counterintuitive. After all, “cheap money,”&#160;or low interest rates, are supposed to benefit borrowers. But since the financial crisis, big banks have all but cut off lending to small businesses. The lack of bank loans has pushed small business owners into the open arms of non-bank lenders, who charge far higher rates. (The Wall Street Journal <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/big-banks-cut-back-on-small-business-1448586637" type="external">cites a lender</a> that charges 39 percent, as opposed to the 5 percent to 6 percent a bank would charge.) Some commentators <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-investing-funds-wellscapital-idUSKCN0T82A120151119" type="external">have</a> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2015/12/15/what-the-federal-reserves-expected-increase-rate-increase-means-for-small-business-lending/" type="external">pointed out</a> that higher rates could encourage banks to loosen their purse strings.</p>
<p>But at the same time, small businesses will be among the first to suffer if domestic demand drops—and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/business/economy/in-denver-worries-that-the-fed-will-chill-a-sizzling-recovery.html" type="external">some are worried</a> that this could happen with higher interest rates. The Fed is betting that the economy is strong enough, but only time will tell.</p>
<p>The economy as a whole (maybe): The big question mark is whether so-called bubbles are already forming in some areas of the economy. There is no agreement on this point, but cheap debt historically encourages a rapid rise in prices in certain sectors followed by a sudden drop, which is what happened when the bubble “burst” in the housing market during the Great Recession. Some economists are worried that we could make the same mistake again. Calabria from the Cato Institute, explains that even though he has been arguing in favor of a rate hike <a href="http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-the-federal-reserve-keep-interest-rates-low/the-federal-reserve-should-raise-rates-immediately" type="external">for several years,</a> he is concerned about this rate hike and the implications for “financial stability.” The discussions about it remind him of those from 2003 and 2004, before the last crisis. Some economists <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/06/housing-today-a-bubble-larger-than-2006.html" type="external">see a bubble growing</a>&#160;in the housing market, while others, including <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-08-10/alan-greenspan-sees-pending-bond-market-bubble-" type="external">former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan</a>, have sounded alarms about a <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-potential-bubble-the-federal-reserve-cares-most-about/" type="external">potential bubble</a> in the bond market.</p>
<p>The losers include:</p>
<p>Low-wage workers and the unemployed: Many pro-rate hike economists point to the unemployment rate as a reason to support the Fed’s move. The economy has been steadily adding jobs in recent months—including <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf" type="external">211,000 in November</a>—and unemployment, <a href="http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000" type="external">now at 5 percent,</a> has returned to pre-recession levels. The point of low rates is to create jobs, so with unemployment down, some say the Fed has already done its job.</p>
<p>But although unemployment has dropped, underemployment—or the rate of people working in jobs that don’t match their skill level or working part time when they would prefer to work full time—is still high at 9.9 percent, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/the-downside-risk-of-the-feds-rate-hike/?hpid=hp_regional-hp-cards_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fcard" type="external">according to Jared Bernstein</a>, former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden. What’s more, <a href="http://www.epi.org/nominal-wage-tracker/" type="external">wages are rising well below target levels</a>.</p>
<p>Some economists argue that it’s worth keeping rates low until their benefits spread to a greater number of low-income workers. “If [this hike] sets off a too-steep series of interest rate increases, I think the big losers are the literally couple of a million Americans who would not have jobs 12 to 18 months from now…and really tens of millions of Americans who will have slower wage growth over that time if we restrict economic growth too much,”&#160;says Bivens. Another argument for keeping rates low is that <a href="http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/fedwatch-if-the-unemployment-rate-declines-more-blacks-will-disproportionately-benefit" type="external">high employment disproportionately benefits black workers</a>, who have been <a href="http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/fedwatch-the-last-two-recessions-have-hurt-blacks-the-most" type="external">hit the hardest</a> by the past two recessions.</p>
<p>Emerging markets: Developing economies such as Russia, Turkey, and Brazil <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/emerging-markets-gird-for-fed-rate-increase-1450261800" type="external">may also take a hit</a>from the rate hike. By attracting investors to the United States with higher returns, the Fed’s rate hike is expected to strengthen the dollar relative to other world currencies. For the many companies in emerging markets who have taken out dollar-denominated debt, this could be a major problem; they will have to pay more on their loans even as their own countries’ currencies remain weak. International investors are already <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/net-capital-flows-out-of-emerging-markets-said-to-hit-541-billion-in-2015-1443706863" type="external">expected to pull more than $500 billion out of emerging markets</a> this year, making 2015 the first year in nearly three decades that more money has left emerging markets than entered them.</p>
<p>Exporters: The United States is tightening monetary policy just as the <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/asian-morning-briefing-stocks-rise-ahead-of-fed-decision-1450218685" type="external">European Union, Japan and China move in the opposite direction</a>, which will make the dollar even more attractive to foreign investors. A stronger dollar would push up the price of US exports, leaving some American companies at a competitive disadvantage.</p>
<p>Taxpayers: Finally, raising rates will push up one cost we all share—the cost of servicing government debt. Borrowing costs will rise along with interest rates, which will make it just that much harder for the government to close its deficit.</p>
<p />
|
How the Fed Raising Rates Will Affect You—And Everyone Else
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/who-wins-and-who-loses-feds-rate-hike/
|
2015-12-16
| 4left
|
How the Fed Raising Rates Will Affect You—And Everyone Else
<p>Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen answers a question during a news conference in Washington, Wednesday, December 16, 2015.Susan Walsh/AP</p>
<p />
<p>The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate for the first time in nearly a decade. Citing rising employment and economic activity, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee <a href="http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/20151216a.htm" type="external">voted to raise its target</a> for the federal funds rate (the rate that banks pay to loan each other money overnight) to between 0.25 and 0.5 percent. Interest rates across the economy are expected to climb along with it.</p>
<p>This may not sound significant, but the Fed’s interest rate decisions have a huge impact on the American and global economies.&#160;The rate is&#160;one of the main mechanisms that the Federal Reserve uses to cool&#160;the economy and quell inflation.&#160;The last time the Fed raised it <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35029586" type="external">was in 2006</a>. Then came the housing market crash, the Great Recession, and the Fed’s unprecedented response: nine years of near-zero rates aimed at spurring economic growth.&#160;</p>
<p>A growing contingent of influential economists <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/15/larry-summers-what-the-federal-reserve-got-wrong-and-what-it-should-do-next/" type="external">believe</a>that it is too soon to take&#160;moves that will slow economic growth,&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/the-downside-risk-of-the-feds-rate-hike/" type="external">arguing</a> that raising rates now will do the most damage to those who can least afford it: the poor and minorities. They say the Fed should only step in when there are clear signs of rising inflation, the traditional trigger for tightening monetary policy, which hasn’t happened yet.</p>
<p>The decade of near-zero interest rates have brought the economy into such unfamiliar territory, however, that other economists say we can’t predict the consequences of this move by the Fed. “The environment we’re in is just so out of the range of our models that we are a bit in the dark,”&#160;says Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.</p>
<p>The one point everybody agrees on is that while the impact of this first hike may be minor,&#160;Yellen has indicated that more may follow and those will shift gears in the American economy. Everyone will be affected, with some clear winners and losers.</p>
<p>The big winners are likely to include:</p>
<p>The financial sector:&#160;Big banks and financial institutions have <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/15/the-sector-thats-already-celebrating-a-rate-hike.html" type="external">already seen a bump</a> from the anticipated rate hike. Banks typically benefit from rising rates, because that means they are able to lend at higher long-term interest rates while borrowing at lower short-term ones. The financial sector also benefits from hard-on-inflation policies, since high inflation erodes the value of their investments. “Unexpected increases in inflation are wealth transfers from creditors to debtors,” explains Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the progressive Economic Policy Institute. “The finance sector really, really dislikes unexpected inflation.”</p>
<p>People with savings in the bank: Ralph Nader recently published <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/an-open-letter-to-chairwo_b_8438486.html?1446247344" type="external">a condescending letter</a> that he wrote Yellen, urging her to raise rates for the sake of “the savers of America.”&#160;(Yellen <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/yellen-defends-feds-low-rate-policy-in-response-to-ralph-nader-1448313349" type="external">responded with her own letter</a> defending the Fed’s policies). Nader was onto something though: An extended period of low rates hits hardest ordinary people who keep their savings in bank accounts. With interest rates near zero, their savings stagnate. But there’s a twist. The very poor are generally unable to save much, which means that they don’t have much to lose. People with significant savings tend to put their money in the stock market, which has soared over the past few years.</p>
<p>“If you’re talking about people that have any significant savings at all—more than $5,000 or $10,000—they’re not keeping it in a checking account, they’re doing things like putting it in stock and bonds. And the price of stocks and bonds have actually been driven higher by the Fed’s policies,”&#160;says Bivens.</p>
<p>Small businesses (maybe):&#160;This seems counterintuitive. After all, “cheap money,”&#160;or low interest rates, are supposed to benefit borrowers. But since the financial crisis, big banks have all but cut off lending to small businesses. The lack of bank loans has pushed small business owners into the open arms of non-bank lenders, who charge far higher rates. (The Wall Street Journal <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/big-banks-cut-back-on-small-business-1448586637" type="external">cites a lender</a> that charges 39 percent, as opposed to the 5 percent to 6 percent a bank would charge.) Some commentators <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-investing-funds-wellscapital-idUSKCN0T82A120151119" type="external">have</a> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2015/12/15/what-the-federal-reserves-expected-increase-rate-increase-means-for-small-business-lending/" type="external">pointed out</a> that higher rates could encourage banks to loosen their purse strings.</p>
<p>But at the same time, small businesses will be among the first to suffer if domestic demand drops—and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/business/economy/in-denver-worries-that-the-fed-will-chill-a-sizzling-recovery.html" type="external">some are worried</a> that this could happen with higher interest rates. The Fed is betting that the economy is strong enough, but only time will tell.</p>
<p>The economy as a whole (maybe): The big question mark is whether so-called bubbles are already forming in some areas of the economy. There is no agreement on this point, but cheap debt historically encourages a rapid rise in prices in certain sectors followed by a sudden drop, which is what happened when the bubble “burst” in the housing market during the Great Recession. Some economists are worried that we could make the same mistake again. Calabria from the Cato Institute, explains that even though he has been arguing in favor of a rate hike <a href="http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-the-federal-reserve-keep-interest-rates-low/the-federal-reserve-should-raise-rates-immediately" type="external">for several years,</a> he is concerned about this rate hike and the implications for “financial stability.” The discussions about it remind him of those from 2003 and 2004, before the last crisis. Some economists <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/06/housing-today-a-bubble-larger-than-2006.html" type="external">see a bubble growing</a>&#160;in the housing market, while others, including <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-08-10/alan-greenspan-sees-pending-bond-market-bubble-" type="external">former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan</a>, have sounded alarms about a <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-potential-bubble-the-federal-reserve-cares-most-about/" type="external">potential bubble</a> in the bond market.</p>
<p>The losers include:</p>
<p>Low-wage workers and the unemployed: Many pro-rate hike economists point to the unemployment rate as a reason to support the Fed’s move. The economy has been steadily adding jobs in recent months—including <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf" type="external">211,000 in November</a>—and unemployment, <a href="http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000" type="external">now at 5 percent,</a> has returned to pre-recession levels. The point of low rates is to create jobs, so with unemployment down, some say the Fed has already done its job.</p>
<p>But although unemployment has dropped, underemployment—or the rate of people working in jobs that don’t match their skill level or working part time when they would prefer to work full time—is still high at 9.9 percent, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/the-downside-risk-of-the-feds-rate-hike/?hpid=hp_regional-hp-cards_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fcard" type="external">according to Jared Bernstein</a>, former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden. What’s more, <a href="http://www.epi.org/nominal-wage-tracker/" type="external">wages are rising well below target levels</a>.</p>
<p>Some economists argue that it’s worth keeping rates low until their benefits spread to a greater number of low-income workers. “If [this hike] sets off a too-steep series of interest rate increases, I think the big losers are the literally couple of a million Americans who would not have jobs 12 to 18 months from now…and really tens of millions of Americans who will have slower wage growth over that time if we restrict economic growth too much,”&#160;says Bivens. Another argument for keeping rates low is that <a href="http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/fedwatch-if-the-unemployment-rate-declines-more-blacks-will-disproportionately-benefit" type="external">high employment disproportionately benefits black workers</a>, who have been <a href="http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/fedwatch-the-last-two-recessions-have-hurt-blacks-the-most" type="external">hit the hardest</a> by the past two recessions.</p>
<p>Emerging markets: Developing economies such as Russia, Turkey, and Brazil <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/emerging-markets-gird-for-fed-rate-increase-1450261800" type="external">may also take a hit</a>from the rate hike. By attracting investors to the United States with higher returns, the Fed’s rate hike is expected to strengthen the dollar relative to other world currencies. For the many companies in emerging markets who have taken out dollar-denominated debt, this could be a major problem; they will have to pay more on their loans even as their own countries’ currencies remain weak. International investors are already <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/net-capital-flows-out-of-emerging-markets-said-to-hit-541-billion-in-2015-1443706863" type="external">expected to pull more than $500 billion out of emerging markets</a> this year, making 2015 the first year in nearly three decades that more money has left emerging markets than entered them.</p>
<p>Exporters: The United States is tightening monetary policy just as the <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/asian-morning-briefing-stocks-rise-ahead-of-fed-decision-1450218685" type="external">European Union, Japan and China move in the opposite direction</a>, which will make the dollar even more attractive to foreign investors. A stronger dollar would push up the price of US exports, leaving some American companies at a competitive disadvantage.</p>
<p>Taxpayers: Finally, raising rates will push up one cost we all share—the cost of servicing government debt. Borrowing costs will rise along with interest rates, which will make it just that much harder for the government to close its deficit.</p>
<p />
| 8,042 |
<p>Let’s call her ‘Maria.’</p>
<p>She’s a brown-eyed, brown-haired woman, with a face that would be right at home in the Mediterranean or the Middle East.</p>
<p>And she’s Irish.</p>
<p>She lived about 5200 years ago, and was buried near a stone monument and an ancient ring-shaped earthwork, in Ballynahatty, near Belfast. It was her people who built nearly all those megalithic tombs, monuments&#160;and stone circles, that you see in advertisements from the Irish tourism industry. &#160;</p>
<p>And it’s now being suggested that nearly everyone in Ireland at that time looked like Maria, like they were from the Mediterranean. And that’s because they were.</p>
<p>The genetic profile of these first Irish farmers indisputably originates in the Middle East. Maria’s closest modern relatives — genetically — are the inhabitants of the Italian island of Sardinia.</p>
<p>Maria lived a stone-age existence. Literally. Nearly all her tools and implements were made from natural products like stone and wood.&#160;But she was a farmer, meaning she did not rely on hunting and gathering for her food.</p>
<p>Her ancestors may have taken a few centuries to complete the journey from the Middle East to the cold and foggy forests of northern Ireland. The genetic evidence suggests a maritime route, across the Mediterranean, to southern Spain, then up the Atlantic coast.</p>
<p>Maria’s DNA has traces of an even older first people in Ireland, people who relied on hunting and gathering for food. But it’s only a trace, leading scientists to suggest that Maria’s Neolithic farming people displaced and replaced the hunter-gatherers.</p>
<p>But in turn, Maria’s DNA is almost entirely absent from the population of modern Ireland. So this indicates that at some point, Maria’s people lost out to a new and very different population.</p>
<p>Three male skeletons provide clues to help scientists explain what happened. They were uncovered on the island of Rathlin, off the coast of Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>Let’s call them the Rathlin boys.</p>
<p>The Rathlin boys lived about 1000 years after Maria, and their DNA is very different to hers. Genetically, the lads have a very close affinity to the populations of modern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.</p>
<p>They have the code that causes blue eyes, and genetic markers for certain diseases that are common in the Irish to this day. Interestingly their DNA appears to have originated in the steppes of what is now Ukraine and southern Russia, and spread westwards through central Europe to its outermost fringe in Ireland.</p>
<p>No-one is saying for sure that these were Celts. No-one knows what languages these people spoke. But the scientists on the DNA project says the genetic affinity with the modern Irish people “invites the possibility of the introduction of Indo-European, perhaps early Celtic, language" at the time they arrived, around 4300 years ago.</p>
<p>Their remains belong to the Bronze Age, meaning their tools and weapons were metal, rather than stone.</p>
<p>Historians have long known about these great technological shifts in Ireland’s history; first, the introduction of agriculture around 5750 years ago, then secondly the advent of metalwork around 4300 years ago. But there’s been great debate about what happened to the people.</p>
<p>One popular theory was that the population was pretty stable, and that they adopted new technologies through a process called cultural transfer. That might involve the immigration of a new elite, or perhaps just a few skilled workers.</p>
<p>But the scientists who studied the Rathlin Boys and Maria say the DNA evidence suggests that actually the technological transformations were occasioned by mass migration, and population displacement.</p>
<p>This fits in with DNA evidence from elsewhere in Europe. Oetzi, the famous iceman found in the Alps, is genetically a cousin of Maria’s, but their descendants disappeared from most of Europe. Except for Sardinia. For some reason, the descendants of those early Neolithic farmers were left undisturbed on Sardinia.</p>
<p>So did the ancestors of the Rathlin Boys kill off Maria’s descendants? It will probably never be known how much violence there was, if any. But it is clear that the wave of newcomers brought a new technology that transformed the economic and agricultural world. This alone probably gave them enough of a competitive demographic edge to overwhelm the original inhabitants. You know, if your stone-age farm can support 2 people per square mile, and your Bronze age farm can support 20, then the genetic odds are in favor of the Bronze age folks.</p>
<p>There may have been some intermarriage and intermixture, but not enough to be demographically or genetically significant.</p>
<p>So if the Bronze Age metalworking boys from the steppes of eastern Europe were indeed the proto-Celts, and started arriving 4300 years ago, then that’s centuries after Maria and her Mediterranean-type people built most of those megaliths that we associate with Ireland.</p>
<p>The scientists from Trinity College Dublin and Queen's University Belfast published their findings in the journal, the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/12/22/1518445113" type="external">Proceedings of&#160;the National Academy of Sciences</a>, on December 29,&#160;2015.&#160;</p>
|
DNA solves mysteries of ancient Ireland
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2015-12-30/dna-solves-mysteries-ancient-ireland
|
2015-12-30
| 3left-center
|
DNA solves mysteries of ancient Ireland
<p>Let’s call her ‘Maria.’</p>
<p>She’s a brown-eyed, brown-haired woman, with a face that would be right at home in the Mediterranean or the Middle East.</p>
<p>And she’s Irish.</p>
<p>She lived about 5200 years ago, and was buried near a stone monument and an ancient ring-shaped earthwork, in Ballynahatty, near Belfast. It was her people who built nearly all those megalithic tombs, monuments&#160;and stone circles, that you see in advertisements from the Irish tourism industry. &#160;</p>
<p>And it’s now being suggested that nearly everyone in Ireland at that time looked like Maria, like they were from the Mediterranean. And that’s because they were.</p>
<p>The genetic profile of these first Irish farmers indisputably originates in the Middle East. Maria’s closest modern relatives — genetically — are the inhabitants of the Italian island of Sardinia.</p>
<p>Maria lived a stone-age existence. Literally. Nearly all her tools and implements were made from natural products like stone and wood.&#160;But she was a farmer, meaning she did not rely on hunting and gathering for her food.</p>
<p>Her ancestors may have taken a few centuries to complete the journey from the Middle East to the cold and foggy forests of northern Ireland. The genetic evidence suggests a maritime route, across the Mediterranean, to southern Spain, then up the Atlantic coast.</p>
<p>Maria’s DNA has traces of an even older first people in Ireland, people who relied on hunting and gathering for food. But it’s only a trace, leading scientists to suggest that Maria’s Neolithic farming people displaced and replaced the hunter-gatherers.</p>
<p>But in turn, Maria’s DNA is almost entirely absent from the population of modern Ireland. So this indicates that at some point, Maria’s people lost out to a new and very different population.</p>
<p>Three male skeletons provide clues to help scientists explain what happened. They were uncovered on the island of Rathlin, off the coast of Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>Let’s call them the Rathlin boys.</p>
<p>The Rathlin boys lived about 1000 years after Maria, and their DNA is very different to hers. Genetically, the lads have a very close affinity to the populations of modern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.</p>
<p>They have the code that causes blue eyes, and genetic markers for certain diseases that are common in the Irish to this day. Interestingly their DNA appears to have originated in the steppes of what is now Ukraine and southern Russia, and spread westwards through central Europe to its outermost fringe in Ireland.</p>
<p>No-one is saying for sure that these were Celts. No-one knows what languages these people spoke. But the scientists on the DNA project says the genetic affinity with the modern Irish people “invites the possibility of the introduction of Indo-European, perhaps early Celtic, language" at the time they arrived, around 4300 years ago.</p>
<p>Their remains belong to the Bronze Age, meaning their tools and weapons were metal, rather than stone.</p>
<p>Historians have long known about these great technological shifts in Ireland’s history; first, the introduction of agriculture around 5750 years ago, then secondly the advent of metalwork around 4300 years ago. But there’s been great debate about what happened to the people.</p>
<p>One popular theory was that the population was pretty stable, and that they adopted new technologies through a process called cultural transfer. That might involve the immigration of a new elite, or perhaps just a few skilled workers.</p>
<p>But the scientists who studied the Rathlin Boys and Maria say the DNA evidence suggests that actually the technological transformations were occasioned by mass migration, and population displacement.</p>
<p>This fits in with DNA evidence from elsewhere in Europe. Oetzi, the famous iceman found in the Alps, is genetically a cousin of Maria’s, but their descendants disappeared from most of Europe. Except for Sardinia. For some reason, the descendants of those early Neolithic farmers were left undisturbed on Sardinia.</p>
<p>So did the ancestors of the Rathlin Boys kill off Maria’s descendants? It will probably never be known how much violence there was, if any. But it is clear that the wave of newcomers brought a new technology that transformed the economic and agricultural world. This alone probably gave them enough of a competitive demographic edge to overwhelm the original inhabitants. You know, if your stone-age farm can support 2 people per square mile, and your Bronze age farm can support 20, then the genetic odds are in favor of the Bronze age folks.</p>
<p>There may have been some intermarriage and intermixture, but not enough to be demographically or genetically significant.</p>
<p>So if the Bronze Age metalworking boys from the steppes of eastern Europe were indeed the proto-Celts, and started arriving 4300 years ago, then that’s centuries after Maria and her Mediterranean-type people built most of those megaliths that we associate with Ireland.</p>
<p>The scientists from Trinity College Dublin and Queen's University Belfast published their findings in the journal, the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/12/22/1518445113" type="external">Proceedings of&#160;the National Academy of Sciences</a>, on December 29,&#160;2015.&#160;</p>
| 8,043 |
<p>After the United States and Britain were shown to be providing bogus and plagiarized “intelligence” documents to the UN Security Council that supposedly “proved” Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program, the world’s media is now being fed a steady stream of captured Iraqi “intelligence” documents from the rubble of Iraq’s Mukhabarat intelligence headquarters.</p>
<p>The problem with these documents is that they are being provided by the U.S. military to a few reporters working for a very suspect newspaper, London’s Daily Telegraph (affectionately known as the Daily Torygraph” by those who understand the paper’s right-wing slant). The Telegraph’s April 27 Sunday edition reported that its correspondent in Baghdad, Inigo Gilmore, had been invited into the intelligence headquarters by U.S. troops and miraculously “found” amid the rubble a document indicating that Iraq invited Osama bin Laden to visit Iraq in March 1998. Gilmore also reported that the CIA been through the building several times before he found the document. Gilmore added that the CIA must have “missed” the document in their prior searches, an astounding claim since the CIA must have been intimately familiar with the building from their previous intelligence links with the Mukhabarat dating from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Moreover, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, including Britain’s MI-6, have refuted claims of a link between Bin Laden and Iraq.</p>
<p>Gilmore also made it a point to declare he was not providing propaganda for the United States, a strange statement by someone who claims to be a seasoned Middle East correspondent. However, it is highly possible he was providing the propaganda for the benefit of a non-government actor, the neo-conservative movement, which uses the Pentagon as a base of operations, and employs deception and perception management tactics to push its sinister agenda.</p>
<p>The U.S. has been quite active in inviting Telegraph reporters into the Iraqi intelligence headquarters. Other documents “found” by the paper’s reporters “revealed” Russian intelligence had passed intercepts of Tony Blair’s phone conversations to Iraqi intelligence, that German intelligence offered to assist Iraqi intelligence in the lead up to the war, that France provided Iraq with the contents of US-French diplomatic exchanges, and that anti-war and anti-Bush Labor Party Member of Parliament George Galloway had solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars from Iraq, which were skimmed from the country’s oil-for-food program.</p>
<p>Galloway immediately smelled the rat of a disinformation campaign when he responded to the Telegraph about the “found” document. “Maybe it’s the product of the same forgers who forged so many other things in this whole Iraq picture â¤| It would not be the Iraqi regime that was forging it. It would be people like you [Telegraph journalists] and the Government whose policies you have supported,” Galloway said.</p>
<p>It is amazing that the U.S. military would be so open about letting favored journalists walk freely about the Mukhabarat building when the Pentagon has clamped tight security on the Iraqi Oil Ministry. The reason for this is obvious. While the Mukhabarat building can be salted with phony intelligence documents, the Oil Ministry is likely rife with documents showing the links between Saddam Hussein and Dick Cheney’s old firm, Halliburton. The company signed more than $73 million in contracts with Saddam’s government when Cheney was its Chief Executive Officer. The contracts, negotiated with two Halliburton subsidiaries — Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. — were part of the UN oil-for-food program, ironically the same program which figures prominently in the charges against Galloway. But unlike the charges against Galloway, the reports about Cheney’s links to Saddam Hussein’s oil industry originated with relatively more main stream media sources, including ABC News, The Washington Post, and The Texas Observer.</p>
<p>Gilmore told the BBC that he noticed that on the Mukhabarat documents he discovered, some information that was “erased.” The erasures were apparently made with a combination of black marker ink and correction fluid. He said he scraped away at the paper with a razor and miraculously found the name Bin Laden in three places. The standard procedure for redacting a classified document is to only use a black indelible marker to mask classified information. However, the proper procedure for trying to read through such markings is not to scrape away the ink as if the document were a instant lottery ticket. Toner print often bleeds through the indelible marker ink. If one holds up such a sheet of paper at a 45 degree angle and under a bright phosphorescent light, the lettering under the ink can be “read” because the lettering almost appears to be “raised.” If a razor blade were used to scrape away the markings, the indelible ink and the toner ink would be obliterated. Gilmore’s claims appear to be spurious.</p>
<p>It was not long before the Iraqi-Al Qaeda “smoking gun” document was reported around the world. America’s right-wing propaganda channel, Fox News, featured the “found” document on its lead story on its Fox Sunday News program. Fox anchorman Tony Snow asked the ethically-tainted Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi about the document. Chalabi responded, saying the document provided enough information that Saddam Hussein was knowledgeable about the September 11 attacks on the United States, a canard that has been rejected by intelligence agencies around the world. However, for those who forged or doctored the document it was mission accomplished.</p>
<p>To understand the process in disseminating such propaganda masked as news, it is important to understand the relationship between The Daily Telegraph and its parent company, the Hollinger Corporation, which is owned by British citizen and former Canadian, Conrad Black. Hollinger, like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, is a mega-media company that spins right-wing propaganda around the world through 379 newspapers, including the Jerusalem Post. Tom Rose, the publisher of the Jerusalem Post, is a major supporter of Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party and is a favorite guest on the right-wing talk shows on Clear Channel radio stations, including that of G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate infamy. Clear Channel, headquartered in Dallas, is owned by close Bush supporters and one-time business partners. To add to the spider’s web, one of Rose’s Jerusalem Post directors is Richard Perle, a member of Donald Rumsfeld’s advisory board.</p>
<p>The “smoking gun” document on Galloway was further played up on Fox News Sunday. William Kristol, an ally of Perle and a dean of the neo-conservatives, and Fox’s Brit Hume, a right-wing ideologue who masquerades as a reporter, said the documents implicating Galloway in accepting money from Saddam Hussein was the “tip of the iceberg.” They then suggested that French President Jacques Chirac, other Western politicians, and Arab journalists working for such networks as Al Jazeera, would soon be “outed” by further Iraqi intelligence documents. For good mesaure, Fox also announced that Galloway may have given classified satellite imagery to Al Qaeda. As is so often the case, the Fox News panelists provided no evidence for their slanderous claims.</p>
<p>Welcome to the new digital and satellite age McCarthyism. Phony documents are “dropped” into the hands of a right-wing London newspaper owned by Conrad Black. They are amplified by Black’s other holdings, including the Jerusalem Post and Chicago Sun-Times. The story is then picked up by the worldwide television outlets of News Corporation, Time Warner, Disney, and General Electric and echoed on the right-wing radio talk shows of Clear Channel and Viacom. Political careers are damaged or destroyed. There is no right of rebuttal for the accused. They are guilty as charged by a whipped up public that gets its information from the Orwellian telescreens of the corporate media.</p>
<p>The media operating in concert with political vermin to whip up popular opinion to stamp out criticism is nothing new. It was practiced by Joseph Goebbels quite effectively in Nazi Germany. It was a British-born actor named Peter Finch who so eloquently and prophetically warned us about the sorry state of today’s media. In Paddy Chayefsky’s excellent movie, “Network,” Finch plays UBS TV news anchormen Howard Beale. When UBS’s entertainment division decides to fire Beale because of low ratings, he begins to rant and rave on the air. He is then given his own television entertainment show, “The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves.” The most famous scene in the movie is when Beale exhorts his viewers to go their windows and yell, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” We should all be mad as hell about the propaganda in the newspapers and on the airwaves; George Bush and Tony Blair; Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black; Clear Channel and Viacom; the neo-conservative think tank bottom feeders; Rumsfeld and his circle of Pentagon ghouls such as Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Newt Gingrich; and the religious fundamentalists who give aid and succor to America’s war machine. To paraphrase Howard Beale, “We should not take them anymore!”</p>
<p>WAYNE MADSEN is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to <a href="" type="internal">Forbidden Truth</a>.</p>
<p>Madsen can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2003/04/26/about-those-iraqi-intelligence-documents/
|
2003-04-26
| 4left
|
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents
<p>After the United States and Britain were shown to be providing bogus and plagiarized “intelligence” documents to the UN Security Council that supposedly “proved” Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program, the world’s media is now being fed a steady stream of captured Iraqi “intelligence” documents from the rubble of Iraq’s Mukhabarat intelligence headquarters.</p>
<p>The problem with these documents is that they are being provided by the U.S. military to a few reporters working for a very suspect newspaper, London’s Daily Telegraph (affectionately known as the Daily Torygraph” by those who understand the paper’s right-wing slant). The Telegraph’s April 27 Sunday edition reported that its correspondent in Baghdad, Inigo Gilmore, had been invited into the intelligence headquarters by U.S. troops and miraculously “found” amid the rubble a document indicating that Iraq invited Osama bin Laden to visit Iraq in March 1998. Gilmore also reported that the CIA been through the building several times before he found the document. Gilmore added that the CIA must have “missed” the document in their prior searches, an astounding claim since the CIA must have been intimately familiar with the building from their previous intelligence links with the Mukhabarat dating from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Moreover, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, including Britain’s MI-6, have refuted claims of a link between Bin Laden and Iraq.</p>
<p>Gilmore also made it a point to declare he was not providing propaganda for the United States, a strange statement by someone who claims to be a seasoned Middle East correspondent. However, it is highly possible he was providing the propaganda for the benefit of a non-government actor, the neo-conservative movement, which uses the Pentagon as a base of operations, and employs deception and perception management tactics to push its sinister agenda.</p>
<p>The U.S. has been quite active in inviting Telegraph reporters into the Iraqi intelligence headquarters. Other documents “found” by the paper’s reporters “revealed” Russian intelligence had passed intercepts of Tony Blair’s phone conversations to Iraqi intelligence, that German intelligence offered to assist Iraqi intelligence in the lead up to the war, that France provided Iraq with the contents of US-French diplomatic exchanges, and that anti-war and anti-Bush Labor Party Member of Parliament George Galloway had solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars from Iraq, which were skimmed from the country’s oil-for-food program.</p>
<p>Galloway immediately smelled the rat of a disinformation campaign when he responded to the Telegraph about the “found” document. “Maybe it’s the product of the same forgers who forged so many other things in this whole Iraq picture â¤| It would not be the Iraqi regime that was forging it. It would be people like you [Telegraph journalists] and the Government whose policies you have supported,” Galloway said.</p>
<p>It is amazing that the U.S. military would be so open about letting favored journalists walk freely about the Mukhabarat building when the Pentagon has clamped tight security on the Iraqi Oil Ministry. The reason for this is obvious. While the Mukhabarat building can be salted with phony intelligence documents, the Oil Ministry is likely rife with documents showing the links between Saddam Hussein and Dick Cheney’s old firm, Halliburton. The company signed more than $73 million in contracts with Saddam’s government when Cheney was its Chief Executive Officer. The contracts, negotiated with two Halliburton subsidiaries — Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. — were part of the UN oil-for-food program, ironically the same program which figures prominently in the charges against Galloway. But unlike the charges against Galloway, the reports about Cheney’s links to Saddam Hussein’s oil industry originated with relatively more main stream media sources, including ABC News, The Washington Post, and The Texas Observer.</p>
<p>Gilmore told the BBC that he noticed that on the Mukhabarat documents he discovered, some information that was “erased.” The erasures were apparently made with a combination of black marker ink and correction fluid. He said he scraped away at the paper with a razor and miraculously found the name Bin Laden in three places. The standard procedure for redacting a classified document is to only use a black indelible marker to mask classified information. However, the proper procedure for trying to read through such markings is not to scrape away the ink as if the document were a instant lottery ticket. Toner print often bleeds through the indelible marker ink. If one holds up such a sheet of paper at a 45 degree angle and under a bright phosphorescent light, the lettering under the ink can be “read” because the lettering almost appears to be “raised.” If a razor blade were used to scrape away the markings, the indelible ink and the toner ink would be obliterated. Gilmore’s claims appear to be spurious.</p>
<p>It was not long before the Iraqi-Al Qaeda “smoking gun” document was reported around the world. America’s right-wing propaganda channel, Fox News, featured the “found” document on its lead story on its Fox Sunday News program. Fox anchorman Tony Snow asked the ethically-tainted Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi about the document. Chalabi responded, saying the document provided enough information that Saddam Hussein was knowledgeable about the September 11 attacks on the United States, a canard that has been rejected by intelligence agencies around the world. However, for those who forged or doctored the document it was mission accomplished.</p>
<p>To understand the process in disseminating such propaganda masked as news, it is important to understand the relationship between The Daily Telegraph and its parent company, the Hollinger Corporation, which is owned by British citizen and former Canadian, Conrad Black. Hollinger, like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, is a mega-media company that spins right-wing propaganda around the world through 379 newspapers, including the Jerusalem Post. Tom Rose, the publisher of the Jerusalem Post, is a major supporter of Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party and is a favorite guest on the right-wing talk shows on Clear Channel radio stations, including that of G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate infamy. Clear Channel, headquartered in Dallas, is owned by close Bush supporters and one-time business partners. To add to the spider’s web, one of Rose’s Jerusalem Post directors is Richard Perle, a member of Donald Rumsfeld’s advisory board.</p>
<p>The “smoking gun” document on Galloway was further played up on Fox News Sunday. William Kristol, an ally of Perle and a dean of the neo-conservatives, and Fox’s Brit Hume, a right-wing ideologue who masquerades as a reporter, said the documents implicating Galloway in accepting money from Saddam Hussein was the “tip of the iceberg.” They then suggested that French President Jacques Chirac, other Western politicians, and Arab journalists working for such networks as Al Jazeera, would soon be “outed” by further Iraqi intelligence documents. For good mesaure, Fox also announced that Galloway may have given classified satellite imagery to Al Qaeda. As is so often the case, the Fox News panelists provided no evidence for their slanderous claims.</p>
<p>Welcome to the new digital and satellite age McCarthyism. Phony documents are “dropped” into the hands of a right-wing London newspaper owned by Conrad Black. They are amplified by Black’s other holdings, including the Jerusalem Post and Chicago Sun-Times. The story is then picked up by the worldwide television outlets of News Corporation, Time Warner, Disney, and General Electric and echoed on the right-wing radio talk shows of Clear Channel and Viacom. Political careers are damaged or destroyed. There is no right of rebuttal for the accused. They are guilty as charged by a whipped up public that gets its information from the Orwellian telescreens of the corporate media.</p>
<p>The media operating in concert with political vermin to whip up popular opinion to stamp out criticism is nothing new. It was practiced by Joseph Goebbels quite effectively in Nazi Germany. It was a British-born actor named Peter Finch who so eloquently and prophetically warned us about the sorry state of today’s media. In Paddy Chayefsky’s excellent movie, “Network,” Finch plays UBS TV news anchormen Howard Beale. When UBS’s entertainment division decides to fire Beale because of low ratings, he begins to rant and rave on the air. He is then given his own television entertainment show, “The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves.” The most famous scene in the movie is when Beale exhorts his viewers to go their windows and yell, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” We should all be mad as hell about the propaganda in the newspapers and on the airwaves; George Bush and Tony Blair; Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black; Clear Channel and Viacom; the neo-conservative think tank bottom feeders; Rumsfeld and his circle of Pentagon ghouls such as Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Newt Gingrich; and the religious fundamentalists who give aid and succor to America’s war machine. To paraphrase Howard Beale, “We should not take them anymore!”</p>
<p>WAYNE MADSEN is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to <a href="" type="internal">Forbidden Truth</a>.</p>
<p>Madsen can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 8,044 |
<p>When Iceland's government announced that it was only willing to take in 50 Syrian refugees during the next two years, Reykjavík resident Bryndís Björgvinsdóttir got angry.&#160;</p>
<p>"Fifty people is not even a good wedding party," she says.&#160;</p>
<p>So Björgvinsdóttir created a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1481734488816658/1481836258806481/" type="external">Facebook event page</a>, where some 10,000 of her fellow Icelanders offered their homes, as well as food and clothing to Syrians on the run. &#160;</p>
<p>"The idea is to show we can raise that number from 50 to 100 to 500, even 5,000," she says. "One man offered a house with 11 bathrooms. People just really want to do something."&#160;</p>
<p>But Björgvinsdóttir's Facebook page has also attracted skeptics, who argued that extending a welcome&#160;to refugees only encourages vulernable populations to&#160;risk their lives in rickety boats or as stowaways.</p>
<p>Others who commented on the website were hateful.</p>
<p>"Tell us the date when you'll leave Islam, we can talk about immigration then," one post reads.</p>
<p>For her own part, Björgvinsdóttir says she can't offer Syrians shelter since she lives with her parents. But she's teamed up with a friend who says he has enough extra space to house five refugees fleeing Syria's war. Björgvinsdóttir has promised to pay the costs of plane tickets for the five Syrians.&#160;</p>
<p>"I don't think it's that much for five lives," she says.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, further south in the Greek island of Lesbos, residents have been facing a sharp increase in the number of refugees arriving on the island’s shore. Greece has called on governments in norther Europe, places like Iceland, to help relieve the pressure.</p>
<p>According to Kirk Day, the emergency field director on Lesbos with the International Rescue Committee, 4,000 refugees arrived on the island last Saturday alone.</p>
<p>Similar numbers made it there on Sunday.&#160;Day says the situation is “near complete chaos.”</p>
<p>He says the town of Mytilini&#160;has a population of around 30,000.</p>
<p>“One out of every four or more people that you see are refugees,” he says.&#160;“People are sleeping on the sidewalks, alleyways and parks.”</p>
<p>But while the situation has left Mytilini residents overwhelmed, Day says that for some businesses, the refugee influx has been good. That’s because many of them have brought with them their entire life savings and some have been spending that money on food and lodging.</p>
<p>But on the whole, the tiny island can’t handle the&#160;sheer number of people.</p>
<p>“If you take five years of austerity measures and you take the most recent financial crisis and their consequences, then how well-suited do we think an administrative structure should be on this remote island to handle this massive influx of refugees?” Day asks.</p>
<p>While the Greeks have been feeling the pressure from the large number of refugees, things certainly haven’t been easy for the refugees, either.&#160;Many, Day says, never wanted to leave their country in the first place.</p>
<p>“The Syrians love their country and they don’t want to necessarily leave, but they say that there were simply no way that they and their families could live safely in their homes,” he says.</p>
|
Icelanders say they want to house Syrian refugees — but in Greece the government and residents are overwhelmed
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2015-09-01/icelanders-say-they-want-house-syrian-refugees-greece-government-and-residents
|
2015-09-01
| 3left-center
|
Icelanders say they want to house Syrian refugees — but in Greece the government and residents are overwhelmed
<p>When Iceland's government announced that it was only willing to take in 50 Syrian refugees during the next two years, Reykjavík resident Bryndís Björgvinsdóttir got angry.&#160;</p>
<p>"Fifty people is not even a good wedding party," she says.&#160;</p>
<p>So Björgvinsdóttir created a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1481734488816658/1481836258806481/" type="external">Facebook event page</a>, where some 10,000 of her fellow Icelanders offered their homes, as well as food and clothing to Syrians on the run. &#160;</p>
<p>"The idea is to show we can raise that number from 50 to 100 to 500, even 5,000," she says. "One man offered a house with 11 bathrooms. People just really want to do something."&#160;</p>
<p>But Björgvinsdóttir's Facebook page has also attracted skeptics, who argued that extending a welcome&#160;to refugees only encourages vulernable populations to&#160;risk their lives in rickety boats or as stowaways.</p>
<p>Others who commented on the website were hateful.</p>
<p>"Tell us the date when you'll leave Islam, we can talk about immigration then," one post reads.</p>
<p>For her own part, Björgvinsdóttir says she can't offer Syrians shelter since she lives with her parents. But she's teamed up with a friend who says he has enough extra space to house five refugees fleeing Syria's war. Björgvinsdóttir has promised to pay the costs of plane tickets for the five Syrians.&#160;</p>
<p>"I don't think it's that much for five lives," she says.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, further south in the Greek island of Lesbos, residents have been facing a sharp increase in the number of refugees arriving on the island’s shore. Greece has called on governments in norther Europe, places like Iceland, to help relieve the pressure.</p>
<p>According to Kirk Day, the emergency field director on Lesbos with the International Rescue Committee, 4,000 refugees arrived on the island last Saturday alone.</p>
<p>Similar numbers made it there on Sunday.&#160;Day says the situation is “near complete chaos.”</p>
<p>He says the town of Mytilini&#160;has a population of around 30,000.</p>
<p>“One out of every four or more people that you see are refugees,” he says.&#160;“People are sleeping on the sidewalks, alleyways and parks.”</p>
<p>But while the situation has left Mytilini residents overwhelmed, Day says that for some businesses, the refugee influx has been good. That’s because many of them have brought with them their entire life savings and some have been spending that money on food and lodging.</p>
<p>But on the whole, the tiny island can’t handle the&#160;sheer number of people.</p>
<p>“If you take five years of austerity measures and you take the most recent financial crisis and their consequences, then how well-suited do we think an administrative structure should be on this remote island to handle this massive influx of refugees?” Day asks.</p>
<p>While the Greeks have been feeling the pressure from the large number of refugees, things certainly haven’t been easy for the refugees, either.&#160;Many, Day says, never wanted to leave their country in the first place.</p>
<p>“The Syrians love their country and they don’t want to necessarily leave, but they say that there were simply no way that they and their families could live safely in their homes,” he says.</p>
| 8,045 |
<p>Conspiracy theories have been buzzing around Twitter ever since Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton collapsed at a 9/11 memorial on Sunday. The latest rumor is that Clinton was accompanied by an undercover nurse at the event.</p>
<p>The UK Daily Mail <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3786445/Is-Hillary-Clinton-s-undercover-nurse-Pictures-unnamed-woman-checking-candidate-s-pulse-performing-neurological-test-collapsed-9-11-memorial.html" type="external">reports</a> that Twitter users noticed a dark-haired women whispering something into Clinton's ear during the memorial for quite some time, and helped escort Clinton out of the memorial when she wasn't feeling well.</p>
<p>In fact, the Daily Mail reported that she "held Clinton's hand in a gesture which has been suggested to be either taking her pulse, or a test for neurological damage," and there was a photo where it looks like the woman is having Clinton squeeze her fingers:</p>
<p>" <a href="https://twitter.com/smellyfed" type="external">@smellyfed</a>: "Squeeze my fingers" is a neurological test. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HillarysHealth?src=hash" type="external">#HillarysHealth</a> <a href="https://t.co/7XlVQlBA9N" type="external">pic.twitter.com/7XlVQlBA9N</a>" Yup.</p>
<p>Indeed, part of a neurological test involves having "the patient to make a fist, squeezing their hand around two of your fingers. If the grip is normal, you will not be able to pull your fingers out," according to the University of California San Diego's <a href="https://meded.ucsd.edu/clinicalmed/neuro2.htm" type="external">clinical medicine guide</a>.</p>
<p>Not only does this add fuel to the fire of some of the <a href="" type="internal">theories</a> that Clinton has neurological damage, it has also led some to speculate that the dark-haired woman is Dr. Lisa Bardack, who is Clinton's doctor:</p>
<p>Why does <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Hillary?src=hash" type="external">#Hillary</a> travel with Lisa Bardack M.D.? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HillaryCollapses?src=hash" type="external">#HillaryCollapses</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HillarysHealth?src=hash" type="external">#HillarysHealth</a> <a href="https://t.co/0GyHfRmBxr" type="external">https://t.co/0GyHfRmBxr</a> <a href="https://t.co/Vn96TlofYb" type="external">pic.twitter.com/Vn96TlofYb</a></p>
<p>Here is another photo of Bardack:</p>
<p>Profile for Dr. Lisa R. Bardack | Internal Medicine in Mount Kisco, NY <a href="https://t.co/0yxQDK2e4h" type="external">https://t.co/0yxQDK2e4h</a></p>
<p>It's a little hard to tell, but neither picture of Bardack seems to match up with the photo of the dark-haired woman in the image. The Daily Mail has not heard from Bardack or the Clinton campaign on whether or not that woman is in fact Bardack.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/09/13/hillarys-nurse-actually-pr-bigwig-and-former-aide" type="external">Fox News</a> is reporting that the woman is "P.R. bigwig and former aide" Christine Falvo, who said she was working as a volunteer at the 9/11 event.</p>
<p>Once again, the Clinton campaign's lack of transparency has opened the door to wild speculation. Hillary only has herself to blame for the growing number of conspiracy theories.</p>
<p>(h/t: <a href="http://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2016/09/13/who-is-the-mystery-woman-in-the-blue-dress-next-to-hillary-clinton/" type="external">Twitchy</a>)</p>
|
Is This Lady Hillary's 'Undercover Nurse'? And Did She Give Hillary a Neurological Test?
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/9115/lady-hillarys-undercover-nurse-and-did-she-give-aaron-bandler
|
2016-09-14
| 0right
|
Is This Lady Hillary's 'Undercover Nurse'? And Did She Give Hillary a Neurological Test?
<p>Conspiracy theories have been buzzing around Twitter ever since Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton collapsed at a 9/11 memorial on Sunday. The latest rumor is that Clinton was accompanied by an undercover nurse at the event.</p>
<p>The UK Daily Mail <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3786445/Is-Hillary-Clinton-s-undercover-nurse-Pictures-unnamed-woman-checking-candidate-s-pulse-performing-neurological-test-collapsed-9-11-memorial.html" type="external">reports</a> that Twitter users noticed a dark-haired women whispering something into Clinton's ear during the memorial for quite some time, and helped escort Clinton out of the memorial when she wasn't feeling well.</p>
<p>In fact, the Daily Mail reported that she "held Clinton's hand in a gesture which has been suggested to be either taking her pulse, or a test for neurological damage," and there was a photo where it looks like the woman is having Clinton squeeze her fingers:</p>
<p>" <a href="https://twitter.com/smellyfed" type="external">@smellyfed</a>: "Squeeze my fingers" is a neurological test. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HillarysHealth?src=hash" type="external">#HillarysHealth</a> <a href="https://t.co/7XlVQlBA9N" type="external">pic.twitter.com/7XlVQlBA9N</a>" Yup.</p>
<p>Indeed, part of a neurological test involves having "the patient to make a fist, squeezing their hand around two of your fingers. If the grip is normal, you will not be able to pull your fingers out," according to the University of California San Diego's <a href="https://meded.ucsd.edu/clinicalmed/neuro2.htm" type="external">clinical medicine guide</a>.</p>
<p>Not only does this add fuel to the fire of some of the <a href="" type="internal">theories</a> that Clinton has neurological damage, it has also led some to speculate that the dark-haired woman is Dr. Lisa Bardack, who is Clinton's doctor:</p>
<p>Why does <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Hillary?src=hash" type="external">#Hillary</a> travel with Lisa Bardack M.D.? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HillaryCollapses?src=hash" type="external">#HillaryCollapses</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HillarysHealth?src=hash" type="external">#HillarysHealth</a> <a href="https://t.co/0GyHfRmBxr" type="external">https://t.co/0GyHfRmBxr</a> <a href="https://t.co/Vn96TlofYb" type="external">pic.twitter.com/Vn96TlofYb</a></p>
<p>Here is another photo of Bardack:</p>
<p>Profile for Dr. Lisa R. Bardack | Internal Medicine in Mount Kisco, NY <a href="https://t.co/0yxQDK2e4h" type="external">https://t.co/0yxQDK2e4h</a></p>
<p>It's a little hard to tell, but neither picture of Bardack seems to match up with the photo of the dark-haired woman in the image. The Daily Mail has not heard from Bardack or the Clinton campaign on whether or not that woman is in fact Bardack.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/09/13/hillarys-nurse-actually-pr-bigwig-and-former-aide" type="external">Fox News</a> is reporting that the woman is "P.R. bigwig and former aide" Christine Falvo, who said she was working as a volunteer at the 9/11 event.</p>
<p>Once again, the Clinton campaign's lack of transparency has opened the door to wild speculation. Hillary only has herself to blame for the growing number of conspiracy theories.</p>
<p>(h/t: <a href="http://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2016/09/13/who-is-the-mystery-woman-in-the-blue-dress-next-to-hillary-clinton/" type="external">Twitchy</a>)</p>
| 8,046 |
<p />
<p><a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/neworleans/0,,1841653,00.html" type="external" /></p>
<p>The London Observer has a great audio slide show on music in New Orleans, post-Katrina. (To check it out, click on the photo, which shows the remains of a jukebox after the flood.) You get the basic gist from this paragraph in an accompanying <a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1840404,00.html" type="external">article</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>Following the storm it would be hard to say that music is in rude health, even in its rawest form, but look hard enough and the spirit of what everyone here calls ‘the real New Orleans’ is still intact. ‘I defy you to spend a day in this city without hearing live music,’ says Ben Jaffe, whose parents founded the French Quarter jazz venue Preservation Hall in 1961. He now plays bass with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. ‘You can’t walk down the street without hearing live music.’ He’s right. Even with 50 per cent of the population absent, much of the city a ghost town where even the 24-hour diners close at lunchtime because they’ve run out of food or staff and neighbourhoods are mouldering and decaying, music is everywhere, be it hip hop, bounce, brass bands or traditional jazz.</p>
<p />
|
Music Slowly Revives in New Orleans
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2006/08/music-slowly-revives-new-orleans/
|
2006-08-15
| 4left
|
Music Slowly Revives in New Orleans
<p />
<p><a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/neworleans/0,,1841653,00.html" type="external" /></p>
<p>The London Observer has a great audio slide show on music in New Orleans, post-Katrina. (To check it out, click on the photo, which shows the remains of a jukebox after the flood.) You get the basic gist from this paragraph in an accompanying <a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1840404,00.html" type="external">article</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>Following the storm it would be hard to say that music is in rude health, even in its rawest form, but look hard enough and the spirit of what everyone here calls ‘the real New Orleans’ is still intact. ‘I defy you to spend a day in this city without hearing live music,’ says Ben Jaffe, whose parents founded the French Quarter jazz venue Preservation Hall in 1961. He now plays bass with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. ‘You can’t walk down the street without hearing live music.’ He’s right. Even with 50 per cent of the population absent, much of the city a ghost town where even the 24-hour diners close at lunchtime because they’ve run out of food or staff and neighbourhoods are mouldering and decaying, music is everywhere, be it hip hop, bounce, brass bands or traditional jazz.</p>
<p />
| 8,047 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>LAS CRUCES - A Catholic church is joining the regional effort to shelter the hundreds of Central American migrants arriving in the border region.</p>
<p>Workers at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Heart of Mary said they expect the first migrants to arrive today.</p>
<p>U.S. immigration authorities have asked nonprofit groups along the border to temporarily house migrant families, who are processed and released while they await immigration hearings. Others are being sent to a temporary detention center in Artesia while they await deportation.</p>
<p>Thousands of migrants, including many women and children, have poured over the border into southern Texas, overwhelming the U.S. Border Patrol's ability to detain people there.</p>
<p>Catholic organizations in El Paso have already hosted several hundred migrants in recent weeks and reached out to the Las Cruces diocese for help.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Las Cruces church helps immigrants
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/424392/las-cruces-church-helps-immigrants.html
|
2014-07-03
| 2least
|
Las Cruces church helps immigrants
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>LAS CRUCES - A Catholic church is joining the regional effort to shelter the hundreds of Central American migrants arriving in the border region.</p>
<p>Workers at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Heart of Mary said they expect the first migrants to arrive today.</p>
<p>U.S. immigration authorities have asked nonprofit groups along the border to temporarily house migrant families, who are processed and released while they await immigration hearings. Others are being sent to a temporary detention center in Artesia while they await deportation.</p>
<p>Thousands of migrants, including many women and children, have poured over the border into southern Texas, overwhelming the U.S. Border Patrol's ability to detain people there.</p>
<p>Catholic organizations in El Paso have already hosted several hundred migrants in recent weeks and reached out to the Las Cruces diocese for help.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 8,048 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>SANTA FE (AP) — The Santa Fe National Forest says it’s ready to release a new map showing roads in the forest that can be used legally by all-terrain vehicles, motorcycles and highway-legal vehicles.</p>
<p>The “motor vehicle use map” will be released Monday. Free copies will be available at agency offices in Santa Fe, Coyote, Cuba, Las Vegas, Espanola, Jemez Springs and Pecos.</p>
<p>Digital versions of the map will be on the &lt;a href=”http://www.fs.usda.gov/main/santafe/home “&gt;national forest’s website&lt;/a&gt;.</p>
<p>Federal officials say the map is the product of work that began more than six years.</p>
<p>The Santa Fe National Forest covers about 1.6 million acres in north-central New Mexico. It’s one of five national forests in the state.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Santa Fe National Forest releasing road, trail map
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/187979/santa-fe-national-forest-releasing-road-trail-map.html
| 2least
|
Santa Fe National Forest releasing road, trail map
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>SANTA FE (AP) — The Santa Fe National Forest says it’s ready to release a new map showing roads in the forest that can be used legally by all-terrain vehicles, motorcycles and highway-legal vehicles.</p>
<p>The “motor vehicle use map” will be released Monday. Free copies will be available at agency offices in Santa Fe, Coyote, Cuba, Las Vegas, Espanola, Jemez Springs and Pecos.</p>
<p>Digital versions of the map will be on the &lt;a href=”http://www.fs.usda.gov/main/santafe/home “&gt;national forest’s website&lt;/a&gt;.</p>
<p>Federal officials say the map is the product of work that began more than six years.</p>
<p>The Santa Fe National Forest covers about 1.6 million acres in north-central New Mexico. It’s one of five national forests in the state.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 8,049 |
|
<p />
<p>D.C. police on Jan. 27, 2016, arrested two transgender women in connection with an alleged assault of a Casa Ruby staffer. (Photo by Cliff; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)</p>
<p />
<p>A D.C. police arrest affidavit says the staff member told police the two women began punching her in the face and body and tossing computer screens at her after acknowledging she had called police earlier that day because of improper behavior by one of the two alleged attackers.</p>
<p>Ruby Corado, the founder and director of Casa Ruby, said the staff member is also a trans woman and the two women arrested in the incident were Casa Ruby clients.</p>
<p>“It’s very sad that this was an internal thing,” Corado told the Washington Blade. “They were actually receiving housing-related services from us.”</p>
<p>Added Corado: “We have a history with these two girls. They have harassed other youth clients and we issued a bar notice for them. They got barred the night before.”</p>
<p>Police charging documents identify one of the two women charged in the case as Torkill Teriyaki Holcomb, 31, of Northeast D.C. The charging documents identify the other woman by her male birth name and list her age as 27. Corado said she goes by the name Janiyah Littman.</p>
<p>Court records show that both women pleaded not guilty to the charges, which are listed as misdemeanors. They and their attorneys couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.</p>
<p>The court records show the two were booked at the Third District police station on Jan. 27 and held overnight before being released by a D.C. Superior Court judge the next day on condition that they stay away from 2822 Georgia Ave., N.W., the address of Casa Ruby. The release conditions call for Holcomb to enter a drug treatment program and require Littman to undergo drug testing through the court pre-trial services office.</p>
<p>Both have prior arrest records, according to court documents.</p>
<p>The court records show that Judge Renee Raymond also ordered both women not to “assault, threaten, harass or stalk” the Casa Ruby staff member who they allegedly assaulted and Casa Ruby’s deputy director, Lourdes Ashley Hunter, the nationally known trans rights advocate.</p>
<p>The charging documents say the computer monitors were destroyed when they landed on the floor after Holcomb and Littman allegedly threw them at the Casa Ruby staffer, resulting in the charge of destruction of property under $1,000 in value.</p>
<p>Corado says she has receipts from the purchase of the computer monitors to show they cost more than $1,000.</p>
<p>Holcomb and Littman were scheduled to return to court for a misdemeanor status hearing on Feb. 11.</p>
<p>Legal name change ignored by court? Although D.C. police used the name Torkill Teriyaki Holcomb in the arrest affidavit they prepared for this case, the official D.C. Superior Court docket uses Holcomb’s birth name, even though records show that a Superior Court judge approved a legal name change for Holcomb in December 2012.</p>
<p>The court docket was opened at the time of Holcomb’s Jan. 28 court arraignment for the Casa Ruby charges and will become the official court record of all future proceedings in the case. It lists the name Torkill Teriyaki Holcomb as an “alias.”</p>
<p>The development is likely to raise concern among trans rights advocates, who have long urged government agencies to respect the wishes of trans people by using the name that reflects the gender to which they have transitioned.</p>
<p>Police and prosecutors have argued that they must use the legal name, which is usually the birth name, of people who are arrested to ensure they are correctly identified in police and court records.</p>
<p>The Blade has made an inquiry with the Superior Court to find out whether it was a mistake or whether it was related to a court policy that Holcomb’s birth name rather than her legally changed name was used on the court’s docket.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Casa Ruby</a> <a href="" type="internal">D.C.</a> <a href="" type="internal">Janiyah Littman</a> <a href="" type="internal">Lourdes Ashley Hunter</a> <a href="" type="internal">Renee Raymond</a> <a href="" type="internal">Ruby Corado</a> <a href="" type="internal">Torkill Teriyaki Holcomb</a> <a href="" type="internal">transgender</a></p>
|
Trans women charged with assault in Casa Ruby incident
| false |
http://washingtonblade.com/2016/01/30/trans-women-charged-with-assault-in-casa-ruby-incident/
| 3left-center
|
Trans women charged with assault in Casa Ruby incident
<p />
<p>D.C. police on Jan. 27, 2016, arrested two transgender women in connection with an alleged assault of a Casa Ruby staffer. (Photo by Cliff; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)</p>
<p />
<p>A D.C. police arrest affidavit says the staff member told police the two women began punching her in the face and body and tossing computer screens at her after acknowledging she had called police earlier that day because of improper behavior by one of the two alleged attackers.</p>
<p>Ruby Corado, the founder and director of Casa Ruby, said the staff member is also a trans woman and the two women arrested in the incident were Casa Ruby clients.</p>
<p>“It’s very sad that this was an internal thing,” Corado told the Washington Blade. “They were actually receiving housing-related services from us.”</p>
<p>Added Corado: “We have a history with these two girls. They have harassed other youth clients and we issued a bar notice for them. They got barred the night before.”</p>
<p>Police charging documents identify one of the two women charged in the case as Torkill Teriyaki Holcomb, 31, of Northeast D.C. The charging documents identify the other woman by her male birth name and list her age as 27. Corado said she goes by the name Janiyah Littman.</p>
<p>Court records show that both women pleaded not guilty to the charges, which are listed as misdemeanors. They and their attorneys couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.</p>
<p>The court records show the two were booked at the Third District police station on Jan. 27 and held overnight before being released by a D.C. Superior Court judge the next day on condition that they stay away from 2822 Georgia Ave., N.W., the address of Casa Ruby. The release conditions call for Holcomb to enter a drug treatment program and require Littman to undergo drug testing through the court pre-trial services office.</p>
<p>Both have prior arrest records, according to court documents.</p>
<p>The court records show that Judge Renee Raymond also ordered both women not to “assault, threaten, harass or stalk” the Casa Ruby staff member who they allegedly assaulted and Casa Ruby’s deputy director, Lourdes Ashley Hunter, the nationally known trans rights advocate.</p>
<p>The charging documents say the computer monitors were destroyed when they landed on the floor after Holcomb and Littman allegedly threw them at the Casa Ruby staffer, resulting in the charge of destruction of property under $1,000 in value.</p>
<p>Corado says she has receipts from the purchase of the computer monitors to show they cost more than $1,000.</p>
<p>Holcomb and Littman were scheduled to return to court for a misdemeanor status hearing on Feb. 11.</p>
<p>Legal name change ignored by court? Although D.C. police used the name Torkill Teriyaki Holcomb in the arrest affidavit they prepared for this case, the official D.C. Superior Court docket uses Holcomb’s birth name, even though records show that a Superior Court judge approved a legal name change for Holcomb in December 2012.</p>
<p>The court docket was opened at the time of Holcomb’s Jan. 28 court arraignment for the Casa Ruby charges and will become the official court record of all future proceedings in the case. It lists the name Torkill Teriyaki Holcomb as an “alias.”</p>
<p>The development is likely to raise concern among trans rights advocates, who have long urged government agencies to respect the wishes of trans people by using the name that reflects the gender to which they have transitioned.</p>
<p>Police and prosecutors have argued that they must use the legal name, which is usually the birth name, of people who are arrested to ensure they are correctly identified in police and court records.</p>
<p>The Blade has made an inquiry with the Superior Court to find out whether it was a mistake or whether it was related to a court policy that Holcomb’s birth name rather than her legally changed name was used on the court’s docket.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Casa Ruby</a> <a href="" type="internal">D.C.</a> <a href="" type="internal">Janiyah Littman</a> <a href="" type="internal">Lourdes Ashley Hunter</a> <a href="" type="internal">Renee Raymond</a> <a href="" type="internal">Ruby Corado</a> <a href="" type="internal">Torkill Teriyaki Holcomb</a> <a href="" type="internal">transgender</a></p>
| 8,050 |
|
<p>SEOUL, South Korea — For foreign investors, North Korea has long been akin to a dark, forbidden outpost in a distant galaxy.</p>
<p>It is among the most difficult countries to navigate. Its dictator, Kim Jong Un, oversees a heavily sanctioned nation and, by some measures, one of the poorest and <a href="http://www.transparency.org/cpi2012/results" type="external">most corrupt</a>.</p>
<p>In other words, it's not exactly an entrepreneur’s dream.</p>
<p>Yet over the past decade, the regime has begun to relax some control over its borders and its centrally planned economy, opening space for small-time trading activities.</p>
<p>The changes have been sufficient to attract a small but intrepid group of frontier market entrepreneurs, determined to harvest a profit from this untapped market.&#160;</p>
<p>Of course, those investors still face massive hurdles.</p>
<p>Among the biggest obstacle is United Nations sanctions, explains Felix Abt, a former pharmaceuticals executive in Pyongyang, and author of the memoir <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Capitalist-North-Korea-Felix-Abt-ebook/dp/B00APO647E" type="external">A Capitalist in North Korea</a>.</p>
<p>Abt, a Swiss investor who now lives in Vietnam, ran a pharmaceutical company called PyongSu during the late 2000s. The company churned out medicine for the small but growing market of North Koreans who can afford it.</p>
<p>In 2006 and 2009, the United Nations passed its first two rounds of sanctions, putting the future of Abt’s business in question. The manager worried he would no longer have access to chemicals needed to process food and pharmaceuticals.</p>
<p>The reason? Those materials could theoretically be used in chemical weapons, making them so-called “dual-use products” with military and civilian applications. Dual-use products are banned under the current system. North Korea is believed to be one of four remaining nations with a chemical weapons stockpile.</p>
<p>The UN enacted the sanctions to hinder North Korea as it reportedly sought to develop weapons of mass destruction. Governments were acting in response to rocket launches and underground nuclear tests.</p>
<p>But, Abt explains, there’s a flipside to anti-nuke efforts: average North Koreans suffer. “Without these banned products,” he told GlobalPost, “the quality and safety of these consumer goods are compromised.”</p>
<p>While living in Pyongyang, Abt’s life insurance plan was revoked, and he says that LinkedIn shut down his profile page after noticing his North Korean address.</p>
<p>Other experts run into problems even though their projects aren’t covered by sanctions at all.</p>
<p>In August, the British bank Barclays informed North Korea scholar Andray Abrahamian that <a href="http://beijingcream.com/2013/08/how-barclays-made-a-scholar-feel-like-a-criminal/" type="external">his account was being</a>closed, declining to give an explanation on the grounds of confidentiality.</p>
<p>Abrahamian is the executive director at the Choson Exchange, a non-profit based in Singapore that puts together business training sessions for young North Koreans. But the sanctions don’t cover educational exchanges. He has since found a new bank, he told GlobalPost.</p>
<p>Abrahamian thinks his group’s connection to North Korea was to blame for Barclay’s move. Banks and multinational companies shy away from organizations that could carry any liability related to North Korea. Many fear they’ll run afoul of sanctions, or that their dealings will end in public-relations disasters.</p>
<p>In this case, “Choson” — which is what North Koreans call their country — &#160;may have tipped off the bank.</p>
<p>Yet sanctions are only one matter that has dampened investor interest. “The legal framework, credible commitments, and infrastructure have to be right,” said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based analyst at the International Crisis Group.</p>
<p>North Korea is lacking in all three, which explains why North Korea’s promises of reform haven’t translated into larger amounts of foreign direct investment.</p>
<p>Despite those barriers, firms from China and Mongolia have fared somewhat better. Last year, a Mongolian oil company bought a 20 percent share in a North Korean refinery, possibly signaling that top officials were under pressure to attract foreign investment.</p>
<p>Chinese companies have also been active in the handful of special industrial zones opened in North Korea since the 1990s.</p>
<p>But these suitors have an advantage over their Western counterparts: Many have secured guarantees from “high-level political figures who somehow are perceived to be credible,” said Pinkston.</p>
<p>China, for instance, can use its diplomatic clout and trade agreements to ensure Pyongyang holds up its end of the bargain, Pinkston said. In a market that remains underdeveloped and potentially lawless, that’s one of few ways to ensure recourse.</p>
|
Wanna do business in North Korea? Good luck!
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2013-10-10/wanna-do-business-north-korea-good-luck
|
2013-10-10
| 3left-center
|
Wanna do business in North Korea? Good luck!
<p>SEOUL, South Korea — For foreign investors, North Korea has long been akin to a dark, forbidden outpost in a distant galaxy.</p>
<p>It is among the most difficult countries to navigate. Its dictator, Kim Jong Un, oversees a heavily sanctioned nation and, by some measures, one of the poorest and <a href="http://www.transparency.org/cpi2012/results" type="external">most corrupt</a>.</p>
<p>In other words, it's not exactly an entrepreneur’s dream.</p>
<p>Yet over the past decade, the regime has begun to relax some control over its borders and its centrally planned economy, opening space for small-time trading activities.</p>
<p>The changes have been sufficient to attract a small but intrepid group of frontier market entrepreneurs, determined to harvest a profit from this untapped market.&#160;</p>
<p>Of course, those investors still face massive hurdles.</p>
<p>Among the biggest obstacle is United Nations sanctions, explains Felix Abt, a former pharmaceuticals executive in Pyongyang, and author of the memoir <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Capitalist-North-Korea-Felix-Abt-ebook/dp/B00APO647E" type="external">A Capitalist in North Korea</a>.</p>
<p>Abt, a Swiss investor who now lives in Vietnam, ran a pharmaceutical company called PyongSu during the late 2000s. The company churned out medicine for the small but growing market of North Koreans who can afford it.</p>
<p>In 2006 and 2009, the United Nations passed its first two rounds of sanctions, putting the future of Abt’s business in question. The manager worried he would no longer have access to chemicals needed to process food and pharmaceuticals.</p>
<p>The reason? Those materials could theoretically be used in chemical weapons, making them so-called “dual-use products” with military and civilian applications. Dual-use products are banned under the current system. North Korea is believed to be one of four remaining nations with a chemical weapons stockpile.</p>
<p>The UN enacted the sanctions to hinder North Korea as it reportedly sought to develop weapons of mass destruction. Governments were acting in response to rocket launches and underground nuclear tests.</p>
<p>But, Abt explains, there’s a flipside to anti-nuke efforts: average North Koreans suffer. “Without these banned products,” he told GlobalPost, “the quality and safety of these consumer goods are compromised.”</p>
<p>While living in Pyongyang, Abt’s life insurance plan was revoked, and he says that LinkedIn shut down his profile page after noticing his North Korean address.</p>
<p>Other experts run into problems even though their projects aren’t covered by sanctions at all.</p>
<p>In August, the British bank Barclays informed North Korea scholar Andray Abrahamian that <a href="http://beijingcream.com/2013/08/how-barclays-made-a-scholar-feel-like-a-criminal/" type="external">his account was being</a>closed, declining to give an explanation on the grounds of confidentiality.</p>
<p>Abrahamian is the executive director at the Choson Exchange, a non-profit based in Singapore that puts together business training sessions for young North Koreans. But the sanctions don’t cover educational exchanges. He has since found a new bank, he told GlobalPost.</p>
<p>Abrahamian thinks his group’s connection to North Korea was to blame for Barclay’s move. Banks and multinational companies shy away from organizations that could carry any liability related to North Korea. Many fear they’ll run afoul of sanctions, or that their dealings will end in public-relations disasters.</p>
<p>In this case, “Choson” — which is what North Koreans call their country — &#160;may have tipped off the bank.</p>
<p>Yet sanctions are only one matter that has dampened investor interest. “The legal framework, credible commitments, and infrastructure have to be right,” said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based analyst at the International Crisis Group.</p>
<p>North Korea is lacking in all three, which explains why North Korea’s promises of reform haven’t translated into larger amounts of foreign direct investment.</p>
<p>Despite those barriers, firms from China and Mongolia have fared somewhat better. Last year, a Mongolian oil company bought a 20 percent share in a North Korean refinery, possibly signaling that top officials were under pressure to attract foreign investment.</p>
<p>Chinese companies have also been active in the handful of special industrial zones opened in North Korea since the 1990s.</p>
<p>But these suitors have an advantage over their Western counterparts: Many have secured guarantees from “high-level political figures who somehow are perceived to be credible,” said Pinkston.</p>
<p>China, for instance, can use its diplomatic clout and trade agreements to ensure Pyongyang holds up its end of the bargain, Pinkston said. In a market that remains underdeveloped and potentially lawless, that’s one of few ways to ensure recourse.</p>
| 8,051 |
<p>LA PAZ, Bolivia – Keep your money. If it comes with political conditions, we'd prefer not to have it.</p>
<p>That’s the message being sent to Washington by some countries receiving U.S. development assistance.</p>
<p>In September, Bolivian President Evo Morales ordered the U.S. Agency for International Development to end so-called “democracy” programs in the country, saying those programs — aimed at training groups in democracy and human rights — were simply an effort to undermine the country’s socialist economic and political reforms.</p>
<p>Previously, he had ordered USAID to stop its coca eradication programs in a region known as the Chapare, where most of Bolivia’s coca (the main ingredient in cocaine) is cultivated. American officials say coca production and cocaine exports have increased since 2005, when Morales was elected. Morales also expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg for meeting with opposition leaders, and threw the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) out of the country.</p>
<p>The kerfluffle has put the Obama administration in the awkward position of having to negotiate the terms under which it can donate money to Bolivia….&#160;</p>
<p>Editor's note: The remainder of this article is only available to members of GlobalPost Passport. <a href="../../../../../../passport/foreign-desk/091209/tension-persists-amazon-land-grab" type="external">Continue reading if you are a Passport member.</a></p>
<p>Passport helps GlobalPost support its worldwide news operation. <a href="../../../../../../passport" type="external">By joining</a>, you'll get exclusive in-depth reporting, regular access to our foreign correspondents, and a voice in the topics Passport covers. <a href="../../../../../../passport" type="external">Please support GlobalPost by becoming a member of our inner circle.</a> &#160;</p>
|
Please, take our money!
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2010-02-18/please-take-our-money
|
2010-02-18
| 3left-center
|
Please, take our money!
<p>LA PAZ, Bolivia – Keep your money. If it comes with political conditions, we'd prefer not to have it.</p>
<p>That’s the message being sent to Washington by some countries receiving U.S. development assistance.</p>
<p>In September, Bolivian President Evo Morales ordered the U.S. Agency for International Development to end so-called “democracy” programs in the country, saying those programs — aimed at training groups in democracy and human rights — were simply an effort to undermine the country’s socialist economic and political reforms.</p>
<p>Previously, he had ordered USAID to stop its coca eradication programs in a region known as the Chapare, where most of Bolivia’s coca (the main ingredient in cocaine) is cultivated. American officials say coca production and cocaine exports have increased since 2005, when Morales was elected. Morales also expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg for meeting with opposition leaders, and threw the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) out of the country.</p>
<p>The kerfluffle has put the Obama administration in the awkward position of having to negotiate the terms under which it can donate money to Bolivia….&#160;</p>
<p>Editor's note: The remainder of this article is only available to members of GlobalPost Passport. <a href="../../../../../../passport/foreign-desk/091209/tension-persists-amazon-land-grab" type="external">Continue reading if you are a Passport member.</a></p>
<p>Passport helps GlobalPost support its worldwide news operation. <a href="../../../../../../passport" type="external">By joining</a>, you'll get exclusive in-depth reporting, regular access to our foreign correspondents, and a voice in the topics Passport covers. <a href="../../../../../../passport" type="external">Please support GlobalPost by becoming a member of our inner circle.</a> &#160;</p>
| 8,052 |
<p>" <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=republican+overreach&amp;oq=republican+overreach&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.4239j0j4&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8" type="external">Overreach</a>" is a political tactic used by our corrupt mainstream media (MSM) to get Democrats off the hook. For example, let's say a Democrat does something like, oh, lies about a terror attack in Benghazi and then lies to the victims' families and then brands the victims' families liars to cover up their own lies. To protect the Democrat, the MSM immediately seeks out or outright fabricates an instance of "Republican overreach" -- a "gotcha" instance where the Republican supposedly "goes too far" while criticizing the Democrat.</p>
<p>This " <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=republican+overreach&amp;oq=republican+overreach&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.4239j0j4&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8" type="external">overreach</a>" allows the media to quickly pivot away from that which might politically damage the Democrat and point their fire towards the Republican -- which is always the MSM's goal. And when there is no "Republican overreach," the MSM merely pivots away from the Democrat's lies to by raising the question of " <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=republican+overreach&amp;oq=republican+overreach&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.4239j0j4&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8#q=when+will+republicans+overreach" type="external">When Will the GOP Overreach?</a>" (The opposite NEVER happens in the media -- Democrats never overreach.)</p>
<p>When a Democrat gets into trouble, this is always the MSM's Playbook. In the heat of a close presidential campaign, almost exactly four years ago, President Obama and Hillary Clinton were not pounded over their deadly mishandling of Benghazi or their blatant lies to cover it up. Instead, day after day after day, for the sin of "overreach," Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was.</p>
<p>Because the American people are fair and forgiving, and don't like mob-driven pile-ons, this is a very effective MSM tactic (it saved Bill Clinton during impeachment). What's so amusing, though, is that this very same MSM doesn't appear to have the self-awareness required to avoid an overreach backfire of its own -- which brings me to Melania Trump's lifting of a few sentences from a convention speech given by First Lady Michelle Obama in 2008.</p>
<p>The fact that a potential First Lady introduced herself in this way is a legitimate news story. There is no question about that. And it might have been a damaging news story if the fevered, insular MSM had not engaged in such hysterical overreach.</p>
<p>The "Today Show's" left-wing hack Matt Lauer actually asked Chris Christie if he would prosecute Ms. Trump.</p>
<p>Chris Cillizza, an outright propagandist for Hillary Clinton, used his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/19/the-astounding-carelessness-of-donald-trump-finally-caught-up-with-him/" type="external">perch at the Washington Post</a> to pretend THIS IS IT! This is Trump's Katrina! This is the mistake that will finally do him in! (After every real and perceived Trump misstep, in the hopes that they can make it so, the MSM and #NeverTrump just keep writing these THIS IS IT! pieces.)</p>
<p>According to my Twitter feed, CNN ( <a href="" type="internal">which is Hitler</a>) made Melania its top story every half-hour and then pretty much discussed it for a half-hour. And never forget that this is the same CNN that employs <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/442125/three-major-publications-have-acknowledged-plagiarism-by-fareed-zakaria-does-cnn-have-no-shame" type="external">a proven serial-plagiarist</a> as a news anchor.</p>
<p>Over at the New York Times, proven-liar and <a href="http://downtrend.com/robertgehl/press-literally-roped-down-at-hillary-campaign-event" type="external">Hillary fangirl Maggie Habermann</a> (she let Hillary tie her up, literally -- see the link!) pretty much rehashed everything that has already been reported and then pretended to have a scoop about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/us/politics/melania-trump-convention-speech.html?_r=0" type="external">an event that</a> "exposed the weaknesses of an organization that has long spurned the safeguards of a modern presidential campaign[.]"</p>
<p>Unbeknownst to a MSM only a tad more popular with the public than child rapists, within an hour of their hysterical coverage the public had already pivoted away from a dumb mistake that can be forgiven by a political ingénue like Melania Trump, and pivoted towards the MSM-mob trying to kill this poor woman for doing something our <a href="http://www.hannity.com/articles/election-493995/flashback-obama-was-busted-plagiarizing-governor-14922331/" type="external">sitting president</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/18/us/biden-admits-plagiarism-in-school-but-says-it-was-not-malevolent.html?pagewanted=all" type="external">vice president</a> did as seasoned politicos.</p>
<p>In short, the Narrative the MSM ran with after the first night of the Republican convention was something no one in the real world cares about -- especially in a real world where we appear to have daily Black Lives Matter-inspired police officer assassinations interrupted only by the latest deadly Islamic terror attack.</p>
<p>Moreover, the MSM is bullying Melania for a mistake that only helps to push one of Trump's selling points -- that he is not a politician, much less a slick and seasoned politician.</p>
<p>Cillizza and Haberman going on and on about how this mistake is finally the chickens coming home to roost for a campaign that "has long spurned the safeguards of a modern presidential campaign" is the kind of derangement that only comes from bubbled ideologues whipped up into a mob frenzy. You would think that instead of what was obviously a "copy and paste" error, that Melania had accidentally launched a nuke when she meant to make microwave popcorn.</p>
<p>And bullying a pretty girl is never-ever-ever a good idea, especially when she's a sophisticated and charming immigrant.</p>
<p>What's especially amusing is that after pounding Melania to dust for 24 hours, this very same MSM is spending today arguing that last night's convention was too tough on Hillary Clinton, a serial lying, terrorist appeasing, anti-cop, national security-violating, Wall Street-addicted sociopath.</p>
<p>Follow John Nolte on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/NolteNC" type="external">@NolteNC</a></p>
|
After Bullying Melania Over Nothing, MSM Claims GOP Too Tough On Sociopath Hillary
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/7625/after-bullying-melania-over-nothing-msm-claims-gop-john-nolte
|
2016-07-20
| 0right
|
After Bullying Melania Over Nothing, MSM Claims GOP Too Tough On Sociopath Hillary
<p>" <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=republican+overreach&amp;oq=republican+overreach&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.4239j0j4&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8" type="external">Overreach</a>" is a political tactic used by our corrupt mainstream media (MSM) to get Democrats off the hook. For example, let's say a Democrat does something like, oh, lies about a terror attack in Benghazi and then lies to the victims' families and then brands the victims' families liars to cover up their own lies. To protect the Democrat, the MSM immediately seeks out or outright fabricates an instance of "Republican overreach" -- a "gotcha" instance where the Republican supposedly "goes too far" while criticizing the Democrat.</p>
<p>This " <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=republican+overreach&amp;oq=republican+overreach&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.4239j0j4&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8" type="external">overreach</a>" allows the media to quickly pivot away from that which might politically damage the Democrat and point their fire towards the Republican -- which is always the MSM's goal. And when there is no "Republican overreach," the MSM merely pivots away from the Democrat's lies to by raising the question of " <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=republican+overreach&amp;oq=republican+overreach&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.4239j0j4&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8#q=when+will+republicans+overreach" type="external">When Will the GOP Overreach?</a>" (The opposite NEVER happens in the media -- Democrats never overreach.)</p>
<p>When a Democrat gets into trouble, this is always the MSM's Playbook. In the heat of a close presidential campaign, almost exactly four years ago, President Obama and Hillary Clinton were not pounded over their deadly mishandling of Benghazi or their blatant lies to cover it up. Instead, day after day after day, for the sin of "overreach," Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was.</p>
<p>Because the American people are fair and forgiving, and don't like mob-driven pile-ons, this is a very effective MSM tactic (it saved Bill Clinton during impeachment). What's so amusing, though, is that this very same MSM doesn't appear to have the self-awareness required to avoid an overreach backfire of its own -- which brings me to Melania Trump's lifting of a few sentences from a convention speech given by First Lady Michelle Obama in 2008.</p>
<p>The fact that a potential First Lady introduced herself in this way is a legitimate news story. There is no question about that. And it might have been a damaging news story if the fevered, insular MSM had not engaged in such hysterical overreach.</p>
<p>The "Today Show's" left-wing hack Matt Lauer actually asked Chris Christie if he would prosecute Ms. Trump.</p>
<p>Chris Cillizza, an outright propagandist for Hillary Clinton, used his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/19/the-astounding-carelessness-of-donald-trump-finally-caught-up-with-him/" type="external">perch at the Washington Post</a> to pretend THIS IS IT! This is Trump's Katrina! This is the mistake that will finally do him in! (After every real and perceived Trump misstep, in the hopes that they can make it so, the MSM and #NeverTrump just keep writing these THIS IS IT! pieces.)</p>
<p>According to my Twitter feed, CNN ( <a href="" type="internal">which is Hitler</a>) made Melania its top story every half-hour and then pretty much discussed it for a half-hour. And never forget that this is the same CNN that employs <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/442125/three-major-publications-have-acknowledged-plagiarism-by-fareed-zakaria-does-cnn-have-no-shame" type="external">a proven serial-plagiarist</a> as a news anchor.</p>
<p>Over at the New York Times, proven-liar and <a href="http://downtrend.com/robertgehl/press-literally-roped-down-at-hillary-campaign-event" type="external">Hillary fangirl Maggie Habermann</a> (she let Hillary tie her up, literally -- see the link!) pretty much rehashed everything that has already been reported and then pretended to have a scoop about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/us/politics/melania-trump-convention-speech.html?_r=0" type="external">an event that</a> "exposed the weaknesses of an organization that has long spurned the safeguards of a modern presidential campaign[.]"</p>
<p>Unbeknownst to a MSM only a tad more popular with the public than child rapists, within an hour of their hysterical coverage the public had already pivoted away from a dumb mistake that can be forgiven by a political ingénue like Melania Trump, and pivoted towards the MSM-mob trying to kill this poor woman for doing something our <a href="http://www.hannity.com/articles/election-493995/flashback-obama-was-busted-plagiarizing-governor-14922331/" type="external">sitting president</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/18/us/biden-admits-plagiarism-in-school-but-says-it-was-not-malevolent.html?pagewanted=all" type="external">vice president</a> did as seasoned politicos.</p>
<p>In short, the Narrative the MSM ran with after the first night of the Republican convention was something no one in the real world cares about -- especially in a real world where we appear to have daily Black Lives Matter-inspired police officer assassinations interrupted only by the latest deadly Islamic terror attack.</p>
<p>Moreover, the MSM is bullying Melania for a mistake that only helps to push one of Trump's selling points -- that he is not a politician, much less a slick and seasoned politician.</p>
<p>Cillizza and Haberman going on and on about how this mistake is finally the chickens coming home to roost for a campaign that "has long spurned the safeguards of a modern presidential campaign" is the kind of derangement that only comes from bubbled ideologues whipped up into a mob frenzy. You would think that instead of what was obviously a "copy and paste" error, that Melania had accidentally launched a nuke when she meant to make microwave popcorn.</p>
<p>And bullying a pretty girl is never-ever-ever a good idea, especially when she's a sophisticated and charming immigrant.</p>
<p>What's especially amusing is that after pounding Melania to dust for 24 hours, this very same MSM is spending today arguing that last night's convention was too tough on Hillary Clinton, a serial lying, terrorist appeasing, anti-cop, national security-violating, Wall Street-addicted sociopath.</p>
<p>Follow John Nolte on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/NolteNC" type="external">@NolteNC</a></p>
| 8,053 |
<p />
<p>Image source: Chipotle.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>It's unlikely to become your next favorite watering hole, butChipotle Mexican Grill(NYSE: CMG)is testing out drink specials as a way to increase its traffic and sales. The struggling burrito roller is testing <a href="https://chipotle.com/happyhour" type="external">Happy Four Hours Opens a New Window.</a> through select markets in the Midwest, offering half-priced adult beverages through the end of next month.</p>
<p>Happy Four Hours runs daily from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., and it's being offered at participating stores inChicago, Iowa (outside of Iowa City), Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin. It's not the same deal across all of the locations.Some are offering two-for-one beers and margaritas. Some are just marking down beers. Some are offering 50% off individual beverages.</p>
<p>It's just as well. It will give Chipotle the chance to see which approach is more successful if it decides to take Happy Four Hours national later this year.</p>
<p>It may very well flop. Chipotle isn't a place that folks associate with getting a drink on. The bright dining room and minimalist industrial decor push the attention to the exhibition assembly line, not the beer cooler by the register. Even after <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/04/23/is-chipotle-making-mcdonalds-mistake.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">adding premium margaritas Opens a New Window.</a>to many of its locations three years ago, adult beverages continued to be a non-factor. Alcohol sales were accounting for just 2% of Chipotle's sales two years ago, the last time that the chain divulged that information in an earnings call.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Whether it's the bare-boned architecture, heavy takeout component, or just the notion that co-workers ducking out for a meal together aren't likely to do heavy drinking, Chipotle may never be the next bar-fueled dining hotspot. You can't blame the chain for trying; nothing else seems to be working.</p>
<p>There hasn't been a food-borne illness outbreak at Chipotle since late last year, but consumers still haven't forgiven the chain. Comps plunged 23.6% during the second quarter, making it the chain's third-consecutive quarter of sharp double-digit declines in comparable-restaurant sales.</p>
<p>Chipotle has spent this year offering up promotions that essentially translate into free or discounted food. It's now midway through the three-month Chiptopia promotion that encourages repeat visits to score free entrees.</p>
<p>If non-alcohol items account for 98% of sales, and food specials aren't working, there's little reason to hold out hope for drink specials doing the trick. However, with some casual-dining chains scoring as much as a third of their sales from beer, wine, and cocktails, it's an outlet worth pursuing until the burrito assembly line begins picking up speed.</p>
<p>The chain <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/04/can-chipotle-drink-its-way-to-a-turnaround.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">partnered with master sommelier Richard Betts Opens a New Window.</a> earlier this year, proposing that Chipotle tweak its margarita recipe, introduce organic sangria, and shake up its beer selection. There's an opportunity here, and if you were Chipotle, you wouldn't just count on chorizo's national rollout to save the day later this year.</p>
<p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2667&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBreakerRick/info.aspx" type="external">Rick Munarriz Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill. 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://wiki.fool.com/Motley" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
|
Can Happy Hour Save Chipotle?
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/08/10/can-happy-hour-save-chipotle.html
|
2016-08-10
| 0right
|
Can Happy Hour Save Chipotle?
<p />
<p>Image source: Chipotle.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>It's unlikely to become your next favorite watering hole, butChipotle Mexican Grill(NYSE: CMG)is testing out drink specials as a way to increase its traffic and sales. The struggling burrito roller is testing <a href="https://chipotle.com/happyhour" type="external">Happy Four Hours Opens a New Window.</a> through select markets in the Midwest, offering half-priced adult beverages through the end of next month.</p>
<p>Happy Four Hours runs daily from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., and it's being offered at participating stores inChicago, Iowa (outside of Iowa City), Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin. It's not the same deal across all of the locations.Some are offering two-for-one beers and margaritas. Some are just marking down beers. Some are offering 50% off individual beverages.</p>
<p>It's just as well. It will give Chipotle the chance to see which approach is more successful if it decides to take Happy Four Hours national later this year.</p>
<p>It may very well flop. Chipotle isn't a place that folks associate with getting a drink on. The bright dining room and minimalist industrial decor push the attention to the exhibition assembly line, not the beer cooler by the register. Even after <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/04/23/is-chipotle-making-mcdonalds-mistake.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">adding premium margaritas Opens a New Window.</a>to many of its locations three years ago, adult beverages continued to be a non-factor. Alcohol sales were accounting for just 2% of Chipotle's sales two years ago, the last time that the chain divulged that information in an earnings call.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Whether it's the bare-boned architecture, heavy takeout component, or just the notion that co-workers ducking out for a meal together aren't likely to do heavy drinking, Chipotle may never be the next bar-fueled dining hotspot. You can't blame the chain for trying; nothing else seems to be working.</p>
<p>There hasn't been a food-borne illness outbreak at Chipotle since late last year, but consumers still haven't forgiven the chain. Comps plunged 23.6% during the second quarter, making it the chain's third-consecutive quarter of sharp double-digit declines in comparable-restaurant sales.</p>
<p>Chipotle has spent this year offering up promotions that essentially translate into free or discounted food. It's now midway through the three-month Chiptopia promotion that encourages repeat visits to score free entrees.</p>
<p>If non-alcohol items account for 98% of sales, and food specials aren't working, there's little reason to hold out hope for drink specials doing the trick. However, with some casual-dining chains scoring as much as a third of their sales from beer, wine, and cocktails, it's an outlet worth pursuing until the burrito assembly line begins picking up speed.</p>
<p>The chain <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/04/can-chipotle-drink-its-way-to-a-turnaround.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">partnered with master sommelier Richard Betts Opens a New Window.</a> earlier this year, proposing that Chipotle tweak its margarita recipe, introduce organic sangria, and shake up its beer selection. There's an opportunity here, and if you were Chipotle, you wouldn't just count on chorizo's national rollout to save the day later this year.</p>
<p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2667&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBreakerRick/info.aspx" type="external">Rick Munarriz Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill. 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://wiki.fool.com/Motley" 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>
| 8,054 |
<p />
<p>General Electric (NYSE:GE) revealed an in-line 8% rise in third-quarter profits on Friday, but the blue-chip conglomerate’s anemic sales growth disappointed Wall Street.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Shares of the diversified manufacturing and technology company dropped about 2% on the results and lowered 2012 sales guidance.</p>
<p>GE said it earned $3.49 billion, or 33 cents a share, compared with a profit of $3.22 billion, or 22 cents a share, a year earlier. The company’s operating EPS of 36 cents met expectations from analysts.</p>
<p>However, revenue rose 2.8% to $36.35 billion, narrowly missing the Street’s view of $36.94 billion. Currency fluctuations negatively impacted revenue by $1.1 billion, meaning sales would have been up 6% excluding foreign-exchange impacts.</p>
<p>GE, which is the world’s leader in electric turbines and jet engines, said excluding wind and foreign exchange, orders were up 4% last quarter.</p>
<p>“The overall environment remains challenging, but GE continues to execute on our growth strategy,” CEO Jeff Immelt said in a statement.</p>
<p>For the first time since 2005, GE posted positive earnings growth for all of its segments, led by a 61% surge in home &amp; business solutions to $61 million and a 35% increase for its transportation segment to $265 million.</p>
<p>GE Capital, the conglomerate’s once-troubled finance arm, generated 11% growth in earnings to $1.7 billion. Energy infrastructure posted a 13% increase in earnings to $1.70 billion, while aviation posted a 7% rise to $924 million.</p>
<p>Looking ahead, GE said it remains on track to achieve double-digit earnings growth for in 2012, however it now sees revenue growth of just 3%, down from 5% previously. GE Capital revenue is seen dropping 10%, compared with a prior target of just a 5% decline.</p>
<p>“The global economy is uncertain, and we are prepared for a variety of economic outcomes. We will continue to invest to win in our markets, while aggressively managing our overall cost structure,” Immelt said.</p>
<p>GE’s shares fell 1.8% to $22.40. The decline is eating just slightly into GE’s 2012 rally of 27% and 12-month surge of 37%.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
|
GE Generates 8% Rise in 3Q Net, Sales Come Up Short
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/10/19/ge-3q-eps-matches-estimates-sales-fall-slightly-short.html
|
2016-01-26
| 0right
|
GE Generates 8% Rise in 3Q Net, Sales Come Up Short
<p />
<p>General Electric (NYSE:GE) revealed an in-line 8% rise in third-quarter profits on Friday, but the blue-chip conglomerate’s anemic sales growth disappointed Wall Street.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Shares of the diversified manufacturing and technology company dropped about 2% on the results and lowered 2012 sales guidance.</p>
<p>GE said it earned $3.49 billion, or 33 cents a share, compared with a profit of $3.22 billion, or 22 cents a share, a year earlier. The company’s operating EPS of 36 cents met expectations from analysts.</p>
<p>However, revenue rose 2.8% to $36.35 billion, narrowly missing the Street’s view of $36.94 billion. Currency fluctuations negatively impacted revenue by $1.1 billion, meaning sales would have been up 6% excluding foreign-exchange impacts.</p>
<p>GE, which is the world’s leader in electric turbines and jet engines, said excluding wind and foreign exchange, orders were up 4% last quarter.</p>
<p>“The overall environment remains challenging, but GE continues to execute on our growth strategy,” CEO Jeff Immelt said in a statement.</p>
<p>For the first time since 2005, GE posted positive earnings growth for all of its segments, led by a 61% surge in home &amp; business solutions to $61 million and a 35% increase for its transportation segment to $265 million.</p>
<p>GE Capital, the conglomerate’s once-troubled finance arm, generated 11% growth in earnings to $1.7 billion. Energy infrastructure posted a 13% increase in earnings to $1.70 billion, while aviation posted a 7% rise to $924 million.</p>
<p>Looking ahead, GE said it remains on track to achieve double-digit earnings growth for in 2012, however it now sees revenue growth of just 3%, down from 5% previously. GE Capital revenue is seen dropping 10%, compared with a prior target of just a 5% decline.</p>
<p>“The global economy is uncertain, and we are prepared for a variety of economic outcomes. We will continue to invest to win in our markets, while aggressively managing our overall cost structure,” Immelt said.</p>
<p>GE’s shares fell 1.8% to $22.40. The decline is eating just slightly into GE’s 2012 rally of 27% and 12-month surge of 37%.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
| 8,055 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>WASHINGTON - Fewer Americans sought jobless benefits last week, and the number of people collecting unemployment checks felt to the lowest level since 1988 - more evidence the U.S. job market remains strong.</p>
<p>THE NUMBERS: The Labor Department said Thursday that initial claims for jobless aid fell by 2,000 to 236,000. The less volatile four-week average blipped up by 500 to 243,500. The overall number of Americans collecting unemployment checks dropped to 1.92 million, lowest since November 1988.</p>
<p>THE TAKEAWAY: Applications for unemployment benefits are a proxy for layoffs. They have now come in below 300,000 for 114 straight weeks, longest such streak since 1970.</p>
<p>KEY DRIVERS: The numbers reflect the strength of the job market and show that most American workers enjoy job security. The government reported last week that the unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent last month, lowest since 2007.</p>
<p>Employers are adding 185,000 jobs a month so far this year, little-changed from an average of 187,000 new jobs a month in 2016.</p>
<p>The job market looks healthier than the overall economy so far this year. The U.S. economy grew at an annual pace of just 0.7 percent from January through March, weakest performance in three years. Economists expect the pace of growth to quicken the rest of the year, led by a pickup in consumer spending.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Claims for US unemployment aid fall by 2,000 to 236,000
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/1001855/claims-for-us-unemployment-aid-fall-by-2000-to-236000.html
|
2017-05-11
| 2least
|
Claims for US unemployment aid fall by 2,000 to 236,000
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>WASHINGTON - Fewer Americans sought jobless benefits last week, and the number of people collecting unemployment checks felt to the lowest level since 1988 - more evidence the U.S. job market remains strong.</p>
<p>THE NUMBERS: The Labor Department said Thursday that initial claims for jobless aid fell by 2,000 to 236,000. The less volatile four-week average blipped up by 500 to 243,500. The overall number of Americans collecting unemployment checks dropped to 1.92 million, lowest since November 1988.</p>
<p>THE TAKEAWAY: Applications for unemployment benefits are a proxy for layoffs. They have now come in below 300,000 for 114 straight weeks, longest such streak since 1970.</p>
<p>KEY DRIVERS: The numbers reflect the strength of the job market and show that most American workers enjoy job security. The government reported last week that the unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent last month, lowest since 2007.</p>
<p>Employers are adding 185,000 jobs a month so far this year, little-changed from an average of 187,000 new jobs a month in 2016.</p>
<p>The job market looks healthier than the overall economy so far this year. The U.S. economy grew at an annual pace of just 0.7 percent from January through March, weakest performance in three years. Economists expect the pace of growth to quicken the rest of the year, led by a pickup in consumer spending.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 8,056 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>SAN ANTONIO - A South Texas sheriff's deputy has been charged with raping a female inmate in a transport van in the jail parking lot.</p>
<p>Erick Montez was being held Wednesday in San Antonio on felony charges of sexual assault and violating the civil rights of a person in custody.</p>
<p>The Bexar (bayr) County Sheriff's Office on Tuesday announced the arrest of the 35-year-old detention officer and plans to fire him.</p>
<p>The inmate reported that Montez forced her to have sex with him Dec. 27 in the van while he was on duty. A sheriff's statement says surveillance video appears to support the allegations. Investigators did not release further details on the woman.</p>
<p>Jail records don't list an attorney to speak for Montez, whose bond was $85,000. He's been a deputy since 2008.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Texas jailer charged with raping female inmate in van
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/705250/texas-jailer-charged-with-raping-female-inmate-in-van.html
| 2least
|
Texas jailer charged with raping female inmate in van
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>SAN ANTONIO - A South Texas sheriff's deputy has been charged with raping a female inmate in a transport van in the jail parking lot.</p>
<p>Erick Montez was being held Wednesday in San Antonio on felony charges of sexual assault and violating the civil rights of a person in custody.</p>
<p>The Bexar (bayr) County Sheriff's Office on Tuesday announced the arrest of the 35-year-old detention officer and plans to fire him.</p>
<p>The inmate reported that Montez forced her to have sex with him Dec. 27 in the van while he was on duty. A sheriff's statement says surveillance video appears to support the allegations. Investigators did not release further details on the woman.</p>
<p>Jail records don't list an attorney to speak for Montez, whose bond was $85,000. He's been a deputy since 2008.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 8,057 |
|
<p>Feminists won a major victory at the UN Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo last September, making the empowerment of women the central issue of population policy. Slowing population growth will henceforth have to be addressed within the larger context of human rights for women.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, crucial discussions of economic development were neglected at the ten-day meeting, and environmental concerns were almost thoroughly ignored. Representatives from southern hemisphere countries, in particular, complained that abortion debates distracted the conference from pressing social and economic issues.</p>
<p>The focus on women's issues created</p>
<p />
|
Feminists Gain at Cairo Population Conference
| true |
https://dissentmagazine.org/article/feminists-gain-at-cairo-population-conference
|
2018-10-03
| 4left
|
Feminists Gain at Cairo Population Conference
<p>Feminists won a major victory at the UN Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo last September, making the empowerment of women the central issue of population policy. Slowing population growth will henceforth have to be addressed within the larger context of human rights for women.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, crucial discussions of economic development were neglected at the ten-day meeting, and environmental concerns were almost thoroughly ignored. Representatives from southern hemisphere countries, in particular, complained that abortion debates distracted the conference from pressing social and economic issues.</p>
<p>The focus on women's issues created</p>
<p />
| 8,058 |
<p>MOBILE (AL)Mobile RegisterBy GARY McELROY Staff Reporter</p>
<p />
<p>When former Catholic educator Brother Nicholas Paul Bendillo, known as "Brother Vic," was arrested last week on sex abuse and related charges, he apparently did not have the money to pay his $15,000 in bonds.&#160;Instead, the bond money -- covering two counts of second-degree sexual abuse and two counts of enticing a child for immoral purposes -- was paid by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic religious order of male educators.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>No bail company was involved in the cash bond transaction.</p>
<p>Bendillo, a former teacher and academic adviser at McGill-Toolen High School, is a member of the religious order, his attorney, Donald Briskman, said Wednesday.</p>
|
Religious order puts up bail for 'Brother Vic'
| false |
https://poynter.org/news/religious-order-puts-bail-brother-vic
|
2003-05-01
| 2least
|
Religious order puts up bail for 'Brother Vic'
<p>MOBILE (AL)Mobile RegisterBy GARY McELROY Staff Reporter</p>
<p />
<p>When former Catholic educator Brother Nicholas Paul Bendillo, known as "Brother Vic," was arrested last week on sex abuse and related charges, he apparently did not have the money to pay his $15,000 in bonds.&#160;Instead, the bond money -- covering two counts of second-degree sexual abuse and two counts of enticing a child for immoral purposes -- was paid by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic religious order of male educators.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>No bail company was involved in the cash bond transaction.</p>
<p>Bendillo, a former teacher and academic adviser at McGill-Toolen High School, is a member of the religious order, his attorney, Donald Briskman, said Wednesday.</p>
| 8,059 |
<p>Public polling, the NY-26 outcome, and other objective indicators make it clear Republicans have boxed themselves into a political corner with their plan to end Medicare. It's a big problem for them politically, and there's no easy way out, especially since virtually every Republican in Congress is now on the record, with a vote, that they favor gutting Medicare.</p>
<p>So how are they gonna get out of this jam? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) <a href="" type="internal">just made it clear in a briefing with reporters</a> on the Hill: They're going to hold the government's debt limit as hostage in order to back their way out of this political tight spot.How? McConnell just announced he will not support raising the debt ceiling unless big Medicare cuts are part of the deal. Translation: Unless Democrats get us off the hook by agreeing to deep Medicare cuts (meaning Democrats can no longer attack Republicans for wanting to eliminate Medicare), then we're going to force the federal government into default on its debt.</p>
<p>What if McConnell extracted substantial other cuts from the White House to achieve the GOP's spending cuts goal? No matter, McConnell says. If Medicare cuts aren't part of the deal, <a href="" type="internal">then no dice on the debt ceiling</a> - U.S. economy and world financial system be damned.</p>
<p>It's as stark as that. And the decision for Democrats is equally stark: Do you negotiate with hostage-takers?</p>
<p>Brian Beutler has <a href="" type="internal">our full report</a>.</p>
|
A Cornered Animal Is A Dangerous Animal
| true |
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/05/a_cornered_animal_is_a_dangerous_animal.php
| 4left
|
A Cornered Animal Is A Dangerous Animal
<p>Public polling, the NY-26 outcome, and other objective indicators make it clear Republicans have boxed themselves into a political corner with their plan to end Medicare. It's a big problem for them politically, and there's no easy way out, especially since virtually every Republican in Congress is now on the record, with a vote, that they favor gutting Medicare.</p>
<p>So how are they gonna get out of this jam? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) <a href="" type="internal">just made it clear in a briefing with reporters</a> on the Hill: They're going to hold the government's debt limit as hostage in order to back their way out of this political tight spot.How? McConnell just announced he will not support raising the debt ceiling unless big Medicare cuts are part of the deal. Translation: Unless Democrats get us off the hook by agreeing to deep Medicare cuts (meaning Democrats can no longer attack Republicans for wanting to eliminate Medicare), then we're going to force the federal government into default on its debt.</p>
<p>What if McConnell extracted substantial other cuts from the White House to achieve the GOP's spending cuts goal? No matter, McConnell says. If Medicare cuts aren't part of the deal, <a href="" type="internal">then no dice on the debt ceiling</a> - U.S. economy and world financial system be damned.</p>
<p>It's as stark as that. And the decision for Democrats is equally stark: Do you negotiate with hostage-takers?</p>
<p>Brian Beutler has <a href="" type="internal">our full report</a>.</p>
| 8,060 |
|
<p>In a new ad, Obama says, "I don’t take money from oil companies."</p>
<p>Technically, that’s true, since a law that has been on the books for more than a century prohibits corporations from giving money directly to any federal candidate. But that doesn’t distinguish Obama from his rivals in the race.</p>
<p>We find the statement misleading:</p>
<p>Sen. Barack Obama’s ad began running late last week in Pennsylvania and Indiana. In it, Obama talks about the United States’ reliance on foreign oil and the need for energy independence and alternative fuels.</p>
<p>&lt;iframe height="390" width="480" src="https://video.factcheck.org/play/hIUWgeqdcwI" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</p>
<p>&#160;[TET ]</p>
<p>Obama ’08 Ad: Nothing’s Changed</p>
<p>Obama: Since the gas lines of the ’70s, Democrats and Republicans have talked about energy independence, but nothing’s changed — except now Exxon’s making $40 billion a year, and we’re paying $3.50 for gas.</p>
<p>I’m Barack Obama. I don’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won’t let them block change anymore. They’ll pay a penalty on windfall profits. We’ll invest in alternative energy, create jobs and free ourselves from foreign oil. I approve this message because it’s time that Washington worked for you. Not them. [/TET]</p>
<p>Only Legal Contributions, Please</p>
<p>Obama’s right on both counts when he says that “Exxon’s making $40 billion a year, and we’re paying $3.50 for gas.” ExxonMobil’s profits in 2007 hit $40.6 billion, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/business/02oil.html" type="external">highest</a> ever recorded by any company.</p>
<p>The national average price for a gallon of gas in the week ending March 24, the most recent data <a href="http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_w.htm" type="external">available</a>, was $3.26, but prices are higher than the average in some areas.</p>
<p>Our problem comes with this statement:</p>
<p>Obama: I don’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won’t let them block change anymore.</p>
<p>It’s true that Obama doesn’t take money directly from oil companies, but then, no presidential, House or Senate candidate does. They can’t: Corporations have been prohibited from contributing directly to federal candidates since the Tillman Act became law in <a href="http://www.fec.gov/info/appfour.htm" type="external">1907</a>.</p>
<p>Obama has, however, accepted more than $213,000 in contributions from individuals who work for, or whose spouses work for, companies in the oil and gas industry, <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.asp?Ind=E01" type="external">according</a> to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s not as much as Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has received more than $306,000 in donations from people tied to the industry, but it’s still a substantial amount.</p>
<p>Here’s a chart we made, using the OpenSecrets.org database, of contributions to Obama from individuals employed by some of the largest oil companies in the U.S. Our numbers are conservative because the database doesn’t include donations of less than $200 (federal law doesn’t require the reporting of donations below that amount), and we haven’t included sums donated by the spouses or other immediate family members of the employees. Additionally, we haven’t included donations from people who work at smaller firms in the industry.</p>
<p />
<p>When the Clinton campaign <a href="http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=6803" type="external">criticized</a> Obama’s ad, calling it "false advertising," Obama’s campaign quickly noted that he didn’t take money from political action committees or lobbyists.</p>
<p>We’d say the Obama campaign is trying to create a distinction without very much of a practical difference. Political action committee funds are pooled contributions from a company’s or an organization’s individual employees or members; corporate lobbyists often have a big say as to where a PAC’s donations go. But a PAC can give no more than $5,000 per candidate, per election. We’re not sure how a $5,000 contribution from, say, Chevron’s PAC would have more influence on a candidate than, for example, the $9,500 Obama has received from Chevron employees giving money individually.</p>
<p>In addition, two oil industry executives are bundling money for Obama&#160;– drumming up contributions from individuals and turning them over to the campaign. George Kaiser, the chairman of Oklahoma-based Kaiser-Francis Oil Co., ranks 68th on the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/10/billionaires08_George-Kaiser_OXNB.html" type="external">Forbes list</a> of world billionaires. He’s listed on Obama’s <a href="http://answercenter.barackobama.com/cgi-bin/barackobama.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=130&amp;p_created=1176309944&amp;p_sid=qu6dkS_i&amp;p_accessibility=0&amp;p_redirect=&amp;p_lva=&amp;p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MiwyJnBfcHJvZHM9JnBfY2F0cz0wJnBfcHY9JnBfY3Y9JnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9YnVuZGxlcg**&amp;p_li=&amp;p_topview=1" type="external">Web site</a> as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for the candidate. Robert Cavnar is president and CEO of <a href="http://www.milagroexploration.com/team/" type="external">Milagro Exploration LLC</a>, an oil exploration and production company. He’s named as a bundler in the same category as Kaiser.</p>
<p>We’re not making any judgments about whether Obama is influenced by campaign contributions. In fact, we’d note that he singles out ExxonMobil in this ad, even though he’s received more than $30,850 from individuals who work for the company. But we do think that in theory, contributions that come in volume from oil industry executives, or are bundled by them, can be every bit as influential as PAC contributions, if not more so.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Lobbyist Loopholes?</p>
<p>We’ve noted before that Obama’s policy of not taking money from lobbyists is a bit of <a href="" type="internal">hair-splitting</a>. It’s true that he doesn’t accept contributions from individuals who are registered to lobby the federal government. But he does take money from their spouses and from other individuals at firms where lobbyists work. And some of his bigger fundraisers were registered lobbyists until they signed on with the Obama campaign.</p>
<p>Even the campaign has acknowledged that this policy is flawed. "It isn’t a perfect solution to the problem and it isn’t even a perfect symbol," Obama spokesman Bill Burton has said.</p>
<p>– by Viveca Novak, with Justin Bank</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Mouawad, Jad. " <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/business/02oil.html" type="external">Exxon Sets Record Profit Last Year</a>." The New York Times, 2 Feb. 2008.</p>
<p>"Open Secrets" Database. Center for Responsive Politics, Accessed 31 March 2008.</p>
<p>Hillary for President. “ <a href="http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=6803" type="external">False Advertising: New Obama Ad Falsely Claims He Does Not Accept Money from Oil Companies</a>.” 28 March 2008.</p>
<p>Energy Information Administration, " <a href="http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_w.htm" type="external">Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices</a>," accessed 31 March 2008.&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Obama’s Oil Spill
| false |
https://factcheck.org/2008/03/obamas-oil-spill/
|
2008-03-31
| 2least
|
Obama’s Oil Spill
<p>In a new ad, Obama says, "I don’t take money from oil companies."</p>
<p>Technically, that’s true, since a law that has been on the books for more than a century prohibits corporations from giving money directly to any federal candidate. But that doesn’t distinguish Obama from his rivals in the race.</p>
<p>We find the statement misleading:</p>
<p>Sen. Barack Obama’s ad began running late last week in Pennsylvania and Indiana. In it, Obama talks about the United States’ reliance on foreign oil and the need for energy independence and alternative fuels.</p>
<p>&lt;iframe height="390" width="480" src="https://video.factcheck.org/play/hIUWgeqdcwI" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</p>
<p>&#160;[TET ]</p>
<p>Obama ’08 Ad: Nothing’s Changed</p>
<p>Obama: Since the gas lines of the ’70s, Democrats and Republicans have talked about energy independence, but nothing’s changed — except now Exxon’s making $40 billion a year, and we’re paying $3.50 for gas.</p>
<p>I’m Barack Obama. I don’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won’t let them block change anymore. They’ll pay a penalty on windfall profits. We’ll invest in alternative energy, create jobs and free ourselves from foreign oil. I approve this message because it’s time that Washington worked for you. Not them. [/TET]</p>
<p>Only Legal Contributions, Please</p>
<p>Obama’s right on both counts when he says that “Exxon’s making $40 billion a year, and we’re paying $3.50 for gas.” ExxonMobil’s profits in 2007 hit $40.6 billion, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/business/02oil.html" type="external">highest</a> ever recorded by any company.</p>
<p>The national average price for a gallon of gas in the week ending March 24, the most recent data <a href="http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_w.htm" type="external">available</a>, was $3.26, but prices are higher than the average in some areas.</p>
<p>Our problem comes with this statement:</p>
<p>Obama: I don’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won’t let them block change anymore.</p>
<p>It’s true that Obama doesn’t take money directly from oil companies, but then, no presidential, House or Senate candidate does. They can’t: Corporations have been prohibited from contributing directly to federal candidates since the Tillman Act became law in <a href="http://www.fec.gov/info/appfour.htm" type="external">1907</a>.</p>
<p>Obama has, however, accepted more than $213,000 in contributions from individuals who work for, or whose spouses work for, companies in the oil and gas industry, <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.asp?Ind=E01" type="external">according</a> to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s not as much as Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has received more than $306,000 in donations from people tied to the industry, but it’s still a substantial amount.</p>
<p>Here’s a chart we made, using the OpenSecrets.org database, of contributions to Obama from individuals employed by some of the largest oil companies in the U.S. Our numbers are conservative because the database doesn’t include donations of less than $200 (federal law doesn’t require the reporting of donations below that amount), and we haven’t included sums donated by the spouses or other immediate family members of the employees. Additionally, we haven’t included donations from people who work at smaller firms in the industry.</p>
<p />
<p>When the Clinton campaign <a href="http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=6803" type="external">criticized</a> Obama’s ad, calling it "false advertising," Obama’s campaign quickly noted that he didn’t take money from political action committees or lobbyists.</p>
<p>We’d say the Obama campaign is trying to create a distinction without very much of a practical difference. Political action committee funds are pooled contributions from a company’s or an organization’s individual employees or members; corporate lobbyists often have a big say as to where a PAC’s donations go. But a PAC can give no more than $5,000 per candidate, per election. We’re not sure how a $5,000 contribution from, say, Chevron’s PAC would have more influence on a candidate than, for example, the $9,500 Obama has received from Chevron employees giving money individually.</p>
<p>In addition, two oil industry executives are bundling money for Obama&#160;– drumming up contributions from individuals and turning them over to the campaign. George Kaiser, the chairman of Oklahoma-based Kaiser-Francis Oil Co., ranks 68th on the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/10/billionaires08_George-Kaiser_OXNB.html" type="external">Forbes list</a> of world billionaires. He’s listed on Obama’s <a href="http://answercenter.barackobama.com/cgi-bin/barackobama.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=130&amp;p_created=1176309944&amp;p_sid=qu6dkS_i&amp;p_accessibility=0&amp;p_redirect=&amp;p_lva=&amp;p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MiwyJnBfcHJvZHM9JnBfY2F0cz0wJnBfcHY9JnBfY3Y9JnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9YnVuZGxlcg**&amp;p_li=&amp;p_topview=1" type="external">Web site</a> as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for the candidate. Robert Cavnar is president and CEO of <a href="http://www.milagroexploration.com/team/" type="external">Milagro Exploration LLC</a>, an oil exploration and production company. He’s named as a bundler in the same category as Kaiser.</p>
<p>We’re not making any judgments about whether Obama is influenced by campaign contributions. In fact, we’d note that he singles out ExxonMobil in this ad, even though he’s received more than $30,850 from individuals who work for the company. But we do think that in theory, contributions that come in volume from oil industry executives, or are bundled by them, can be every bit as influential as PAC contributions, if not more so.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Lobbyist Loopholes?</p>
<p>We’ve noted before that Obama’s policy of not taking money from lobbyists is a bit of <a href="" type="internal">hair-splitting</a>. It’s true that he doesn’t accept contributions from individuals who are registered to lobby the federal government. But he does take money from their spouses and from other individuals at firms where lobbyists work. And some of his bigger fundraisers were registered lobbyists until they signed on with the Obama campaign.</p>
<p>Even the campaign has acknowledged that this policy is flawed. "It isn’t a perfect solution to the problem and it isn’t even a perfect symbol," Obama spokesman Bill Burton has said.</p>
<p>– by Viveca Novak, with Justin Bank</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Mouawad, Jad. " <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/business/02oil.html" type="external">Exxon Sets Record Profit Last Year</a>." The New York Times, 2 Feb. 2008.</p>
<p>"Open Secrets" Database. Center for Responsive Politics, Accessed 31 March 2008.</p>
<p>Hillary for President. “ <a href="http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=6803" type="external">False Advertising: New Obama Ad Falsely Claims He Does Not Accept Money from Oil Companies</a>.” 28 March 2008.</p>
<p>Energy Information Administration, " <a href="http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_w.htm" type="external">Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices</a>," accessed 31 March 2008.&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 8,061 |
<p />
<p>More than four years ago, I wrote a post for Get Rich Slowly about <a href="http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2009/10/06/how-to-stop-buying-clothes-you-never-wear/?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">how to stop buying clothes you never wear Opens a New Window.</a>. I wasn't sure how it would go over, to be honest. We don't discuss fashion much in our little corner of the Internet, and I also worried about being judged for my sordid, non-frugal past.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>But it was a problem I'd had struggled with, and it was a problem that cost me a lot of money over the years. And in the 100+ comments on the original post, many of you said that you've struggled with the same problem.</p>
<p>So here we are four years later, and I'm happy to report that my wardrobe is even smaller and more functional today. And since I've picked up new tips these last few years, I thought it'd be helpful to update my original post.</p>
<p>But before we talk about the state of my closet today, here's an idea of where I started…</p>
<p>Three closets, no space</p>
<p>When I graduated from college, my first apartment came with three closets -- two in the master bath, and one in the hallway. I easily filled them all.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Part the problem was that I held onto things I didn't wear or like all that much -- you know, just in case. Another part of the problem was that I would buy new clothes without much consideration. For instance, I owned five winter coats, and I live in Texas.</p>
<p>So, far too often, things were worn once, then eventually made their way to the no man's land that was the back of my closet. Or worse, I never wore them at all. The price tags were still attached, making it even harder for me to part with them because there was a reminder of how much money I wasted hanging from the label.</p>
<p>The crazy thing is that, even though I owned plenty of clothes, I somehow lacked the basic foundation for a work wardrobe.</p>
<p>The closet clean-out</p>
<p>The wasted money and the jammed closets finally got to be too much. Maybe it was the fact that I was learning about personal finance or the fact that I was reading about minimalism and the ease of a small wardrobe, but I'd had enough.</p>
<p>I decided to do a total closet cleanout. I donated, consigned, and gave away about 75% of my wardrobe.</p>
<p>It wasn't easy. I felt a lot of guilt for wasting that money in the first place. But by the time I was done, it was like a weight had been lifted. There was space in my closet, room to breathe. I also could see what I really needed in my wardrobe, and as I started to fill those holes, it became easier to get dressed in the morning. And I was able to shop with a list, knowing that what was on that list would get a lot of use.</p>
<p>One small closet, plenty of space</p>
<p>That's the Cliff's Notes version of the story, but the change wasn't as instantaneous as it may seem.</p>
<p>Even after cleaning out my closet, I'd still buy things that weren't really my style. Or I'd buy things that fit well enough, then never wear them. Sometimes I'd return those purchases, other times I fell into old habits and kept them around. After doing a few more minor closet cleanouts, though, there was less and less waste.</p>
<p>Then my husband and I bought a house. The master bedroom has two small closets -- a his and a hers. My brother-in-law jokingly asked if my husband would really get his own closet or if I would claim some of his space, and I just smiled. I was actually excited about the size of my closet -- it was the perfect size for my small, well-curated wardrobe.</p>
<p>How to only buy clothes you'll really wear</p>
<p>In my original post, I talked about how to clean out your closet. So if your closet door is bursting at the hinges or if you just have a lot of stuff you don't wear, head over there for tips on how to get rid of it.</p>
<p>When you're done cleaning out your closet, you're probably going to feel a lot like this guy. But resist the urge to go clothes shopping right away. Here's what to do instead:</p>
<p>1. Think "meat and potatoes."</p>
<p>One of my favorite bits of advice came from designer Michael Kors: "70% of the clothes you own should be meat and potatoes. 30% should be icing and fluff -- that's color, pattern, shine, accessories. Too many women get the proportions the other way round, then can't figure out why they can't get dressed."</p>
<p>Take a look at your closet, and figure out if you have enough meat and potatoes. Do you have enough basic black pants for work? Or a pair of nice dress shoes that will go with virtually everything?</p>
<p>If you don't know how to identify gaps, look at a list of wardrobe essentials and see what you're missing. (Some must-have lists aren't very realistic, but I think <a href="http://www.wardrobeoxygen.com/?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">Alison Gary at Wardrobe Oxygen Opens a New Window.</a> has great advice for both <a href="http://www.wardrobeoxygen.com/2006/12/what-every-man-needs-in-his-wardrobe.html?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">w Opens a New Window.</a> <a href="http://www.wardrobeoxygen.com/2005/06/staples-for-every-womans-wardrobe.html?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">omen Opens a New Window.</a> and <a href="http://www.wardrobeoxygen.com/2006/12/what-every-man-needs-in-his-wardrobe.html?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">men</a>.)</p>
<p>2. Dress for the life you live right now</p>
<p>The life you live right now includes factors like lifestyle and even the climate where you live.</p>
<p>For instance, an attorney in her 20s has very different clothing needs than a 35-year-old stay-at-home dad. Also, "it's important for the largest part of your wardrobe and seasonal fashion budget to reflect the dominant seasons where you live," writes style consultant Angie Cox of <a href="http://youlookfab.com/?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">You Look Fab Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>If you buy the majority of your clothes for a fantasy version of your life instead of the reality, you'll end up owning a lot of clothes and having nothing to wear.</p>
<p>3. Figure out your "uniform"</p>
<p>This is a new tip I've picked up -- the idea of a personal uniform.</p>
<p>"If your wardrobe contains sequins, camouflage canvas, distressed denim, glazed leather, monkey fur, plaid kilts, and gold lamé cocktail dresses it may be fun to look at, but it's not as fun to dress for the every day," says Gary. "Having a signature style is easier on the wallet, easier on the soul when getting dressed each day, and better for your personal style."</p>
<p>That doesn't mean that you have to wear the same thing every day. It just means figuring out what looks good on you and what you like to wear -- the items that are always in the wash or at the dry cleaner's are a good place to start.</p>
<p>Since I work from home now, my uniform has become straight leg jeans, a nice, drapey tee with a scoop neck, a long necklace, and flats or sandals. When I buy those things, I know they won't sit in my closet unworn.</p>
<p>4. Consider fit and fabric</p>
<p>I used to own 15 pairs of jeans, but I only wore three pairs. The ones I didn't wear were made of stiff fabric and looked okay on me but not great. The three I did wear were made from high-quality denim and made me feel like this.</p>
<p>My take on this is still the same. For fit, clothes should never gape, pull, or fit the person you want to be 10 pounds from now. Either don't buy those things or, if a tailor or seamstress can solve the problem, have them altered.</p>
<p>As for fabric, you really don't have to be an expert. Does it feel good and drape nicely, or does it feel cheap, like the sort of thing that will fall apart in the washing machine after one wear?</p>
<p>5. Watch out for high prices (and low ones, too!)</p>
<p>Sometimes it makes sense to pay more for quality. However, if you find a great pair of pants for $30, they are a better buy than the designer pants that cost $200 and fit you kinda funny. So as long as something is within your budget, price should be a secondary concern.</p>
<p>Also, beware of the clearance rack. I've taken many things home with me because they were a good deal, and then I barely wore them. Today, I ignore the discount and only buy something if I absolutely love it the minute I put it on. It has to feel great and look great and work in my existing wardrobe, or else it doesn't come home with me.</p>
<p>6. You can always return it</p>
<p>If you get home and decide you don't like something after all, return it as soon as possible. I like to shop online, so I've become very disciplined about returning items I don't want within a week, long before the return policy expires.</p>
<p>And you have to do what works for you, but I don't buy anything on final sale anymore. That bit me in the bank account twice, and after that I decided that if there's not a return policy, I'm not buying it.</p>
<p>7. Be a little ruthless</p>
<p>Another source of extra stuff in my closet used to be gifts, like a sweater given to me by a loved one.</p>
<p>This situation is hard because I feel like a jerk for getting rid of their gift. On the other hand, I don't want to hang onto something that I know I'll never wear.</p>
<p>So, I donate it. I still feel a little bit bad about it, and I worry about some scenario where they'll ask me about it later, like, "Oh, show so-and-so that necklace I bought you last Christmas!"</p>
<p>But, I've had to learn to be a little ruthless. And besides, the gift always goes to a good cause, and hopefully to a closet where it'll actually get worn!</p>
<p>Have you struggled with buying clothes you don't wear? Do you have any tips for how to only buy stuff you'll really wear?</p>
<p>The original article can be found at GetRichSlowly.org: <a href="http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/more-on-how-to-stop-buying-clothes-you-never-wear.html?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">More on how to stop buying clothes you never wear Opens a New Window.</a></p>
|
How to Stop Buying Clothes You Never Wear
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/04/25/more-on-how-to-stop-buying-clothes-never-wear.html
|
2016-03-05
| 0right
|
How to Stop Buying Clothes You Never Wear
<p />
<p>More than four years ago, I wrote a post for Get Rich Slowly about <a href="http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2009/10/06/how-to-stop-buying-clothes-you-never-wear/?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">how to stop buying clothes you never wear Opens a New Window.</a>. I wasn't sure how it would go over, to be honest. We don't discuss fashion much in our little corner of the Internet, and I also worried about being judged for my sordid, non-frugal past.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>But it was a problem I'd had struggled with, and it was a problem that cost me a lot of money over the years. And in the 100+ comments on the original post, many of you said that you've struggled with the same problem.</p>
<p>So here we are four years later, and I'm happy to report that my wardrobe is even smaller and more functional today. And since I've picked up new tips these last few years, I thought it'd be helpful to update my original post.</p>
<p>But before we talk about the state of my closet today, here's an idea of where I started…</p>
<p>Three closets, no space</p>
<p>When I graduated from college, my first apartment came with three closets -- two in the master bath, and one in the hallway. I easily filled them all.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Part the problem was that I held onto things I didn't wear or like all that much -- you know, just in case. Another part of the problem was that I would buy new clothes without much consideration. For instance, I owned five winter coats, and I live in Texas.</p>
<p>So, far too often, things were worn once, then eventually made their way to the no man's land that was the back of my closet. Or worse, I never wore them at all. The price tags were still attached, making it even harder for me to part with them because there was a reminder of how much money I wasted hanging from the label.</p>
<p>The crazy thing is that, even though I owned plenty of clothes, I somehow lacked the basic foundation for a work wardrobe.</p>
<p>The closet clean-out</p>
<p>The wasted money and the jammed closets finally got to be too much. Maybe it was the fact that I was learning about personal finance or the fact that I was reading about minimalism and the ease of a small wardrobe, but I'd had enough.</p>
<p>I decided to do a total closet cleanout. I donated, consigned, and gave away about 75% of my wardrobe.</p>
<p>It wasn't easy. I felt a lot of guilt for wasting that money in the first place. But by the time I was done, it was like a weight had been lifted. There was space in my closet, room to breathe. I also could see what I really needed in my wardrobe, and as I started to fill those holes, it became easier to get dressed in the morning. And I was able to shop with a list, knowing that what was on that list would get a lot of use.</p>
<p>One small closet, plenty of space</p>
<p>That's the Cliff's Notes version of the story, but the change wasn't as instantaneous as it may seem.</p>
<p>Even after cleaning out my closet, I'd still buy things that weren't really my style. Or I'd buy things that fit well enough, then never wear them. Sometimes I'd return those purchases, other times I fell into old habits and kept them around. After doing a few more minor closet cleanouts, though, there was less and less waste.</p>
<p>Then my husband and I bought a house. The master bedroom has two small closets -- a his and a hers. My brother-in-law jokingly asked if my husband would really get his own closet or if I would claim some of his space, and I just smiled. I was actually excited about the size of my closet -- it was the perfect size for my small, well-curated wardrobe.</p>
<p>How to only buy clothes you'll really wear</p>
<p>In my original post, I talked about how to clean out your closet. So if your closet door is bursting at the hinges or if you just have a lot of stuff you don't wear, head over there for tips on how to get rid of it.</p>
<p>When you're done cleaning out your closet, you're probably going to feel a lot like this guy. But resist the urge to go clothes shopping right away. Here's what to do instead:</p>
<p>1. Think "meat and potatoes."</p>
<p>One of my favorite bits of advice came from designer Michael Kors: "70% of the clothes you own should be meat and potatoes. 30% should be icing and fluff -- that's color, pattern, shine, accessories. Too many women get the proportions the other way round, then can't figure out why they can't get dressed."</p>
<p>Take a look at your closet, and figure out if you have enough meat and potatoes. Do you have enough basic black pants for work? Or a pair of nice dress shoes that will go with virtually everything?</p>
<p>If you don't know how to identify gaps, look at a list of wardrobe essentials and see what you're missing. (Some must-have lists aren't very realistic, but I think <a href="http://www.wardrobeoxygen.com/?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">Alison Gary at Wardrobe Oxygen Opens a New Window.</a> has great advice for both <a href="http://www.wardrobeoxygen.com/2006/12/what-every-man-needs-in-his-wardrobe.html?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">w Opens a New Window.</a> <a href="http://www.wardrobeoxygen.com/2005/06/staples-for-every-womans-wardrobe.html?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">omen Opens a New Window.</a> and <a href="http://www.wardrobeoxygen.com/2006/12/what-every-man-needs-in-his-wardrobe.html?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">men</a>.)</p>
<p>2. Dress for the life you live right now</p>
<p>The life you live right now includes factors like lifestyle and even the climate where you live.</p>
<p>For instance, an attorney in her 20s has very different clothing needs than a 35-year-old stay-at-home dad. Also, "it's important for the largest part of your wardrobe and seasonal fashion budget to reflect the dominant seasons where you live," writes style consultant Angie Cox of <a href="http://youlookfab.com/?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">You Look Fab Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>If you buy the majority of your clothes for a fantasy version of your life instead of the reality, you'll end up owning a lot of clothes and having nothing to wear.</p>
<p>3. Figure out your "uniform"</p>
<p>This is a new tip I've picked up -- the idea of a personal uniform.</p>
<p>"If your wardrobe contains sequins, camouflage canvas, distressed denim, glazed leather, monkey fur, plaid kilts, and gold lamé cocktail dresses it may be fun to look at, but it's not as fun to dress for the every day," says Gary. "Having a signature style is easier on the wallet, easier on the soul when getting dressed each day, and better for your personal style."</p>
<p>That doesn't mean that you have to wear the same thing every day. It just means figuring out what looks good on you and what you like to wear -- the items that are always in the wash or at the dry cleaner's are a good place to start.</p>
<p>Since I work from home now, my uniform has become straight leg jeans, a nice, drapey tee with a scoop neck, a long necklace, and flats or sandals. When I buy those things, I know they won't sit in my closet unworn.</p>
<p>4. Consider fit and fabric</p>
<p>I used to own 15 pairs of jeans, but I only wore three pairs. The ones I didn't wear were made of stiff fabric and looked okay on me but not great. The three I did wear were made from high-quality denim and made me feel like this.</p>
<p>My take on this is still the same. For fit, clothes should never gape, pull, or fit the person you want to be 10 pounds from now. Either don't buy those things or, if a tailor or seamstress can solve the problem, have them altered.</p>
<p>As for fabric, you really don't have to be an expert. Does it feel good and drape nicely, or does it feel cheap, like the sort of thing that will fall apart in the washing machine after one wear?</p>
<p>5. Watch out for high prices (and low ones, too!)</p>
<p>Sometimes it makes sense to pay more for quality. However, if you find a great pair of pants for $30, they are a better buy than the designer pants that cost $200 and fit you kinda funny. So as long as something is within your budget, price should be a secondary concern.</p>
<p>Also, beware of the clearance rack. I've taken many things home with me because they were a good deal, and then I barely wore them. Today, I ignore the discount and only buy something if I absolutely love it the minute I put it on. It has to feel great and look great and work in my existing wardrobe, or else it doesn't come home with me.</p>
<p>6. You can always return it</p>
<p>If you get home and decide you don't like something after all, return it as soon as possible. I like to shop online, so I've become very disciplined about returning items I don't want within a week, long before the return policy expires.</p>
<p>And you have to do what works for you, but I don't buy anything on final sale anymore. That bit me in the bank account twice, and after that I decided that if there's not a return policy, I'm not buying it.</p>
<p>7. Be a little ruthless</p>
<p>Another source of extra stuff in my closet used to be gifts, like a sweater given to me by a loved one.</p>
<p>This situation is hard because I feel like a jerk for getting rid of their gift. On the other hand, I don't want to hang onto something that I know I'll never wear.</p>
<p>So, I donate it. I still feel a little bit bad about it, and I worry about some scenario where they'll ask me about it later, like, "Oh, show so-and-so that necklace I bought you last Christmas!"</p>
<p>But, I've had to learn to be a little ruthless. And besides, the gift always goes to a good cause, and hopefully to a closet where it'll actually get worn!</p>
<p>Have you struggled with buying clothes you don't wear? Do you have any tips for how to only buy stuff you'll really wear?</p>
<p>The original article can be found at GetRichSlowly.org: <a href="http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/more-on-how-to-stop-buying-clothes-you-never-wear.html?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-184166910" type="external">More on how to stop buying clothes you never wear Opens a New Window.</a></p>
| 8,062 |
<p />
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>This is going to be a transformative year for the United States. Not only are we set to vote in a new president for the first time in eight years this November, but we could also see the most rapid expansion of marijuana ever, with eight states now set to vote on recreational or medical cannabis initiatives or amendments this fall.</p>
<p>The expansion of the cannabis industry was initially put in motion 20 years ago when California approved a compassionate use law for medical marijuana. Today, half of all U.S. states have approved a medical marijuana law. The two most recent approvals came from Pennsylvania and Ohio, which used the legislative process to pass medical cannabis laws.</p>
<p>Additionally, we've witnessed four states legalize the recreational use of cannabis -- Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska, along with Washington, D.C. Recreational approvals and the expansion of medical cannabis have generated tax revenue and licensing fees that are boosting state education budgets and allowing certain patients access to new pathways of treatment.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The real buzz among marijuana supporters is what might happen come November. President Obama has suggested that the best way to get the attention of Congress is to legalize marijuana in as many states as possible at the state level. If a majority of states approve marijuana measures and public opinion continues to swell in favor of cannabis, Congress may have no choice but to consider decriminalization -- or legalize the substance.</p>
<p>Of course, success for the movement is no guarantee. Florida failed to pass a medical marijuana amendment in 2014, and Prop 19 in California failed to legalize recreational marijuana in 2010. It's worth noting that support for marijuana has grown substantially since both of these elections, but that still doesn't guarantee success this November.</p>
<p>Here are the eight states that'll be voting on a marijuana initiative or amendment this fall.</p>
<p>Las Vegas, NV. Image source: Pixabay.</p>
<p>Nevada was the only state that was a lock to be voting on recreational marijuana in 2016, since it was added to the ballot last November. As home to "Sin City" and an existing infrastructure of medical marijuana dispensaries, Nevada appears to be the perfect stomping ground to become a recreation-legal state. If the measure is approved, an excise tax of 15% would be applied at the wholesale level, with the consumer also paying existing sales tax at the retail level.</p>
<p>Despite a narrow defeat in 2014, Florida is once again looking to legalize medical marijuana come November. Florida's constitution is set up in such a way that a traditional majority vote doesn't equate to passage. The state's constitution requires an amendment, which in turn needs 60% "Yes" votes to pass. The nation's younger generation appears overwhelmingly in favor of legalizing medical cannabis, but seniors tend to have a more negative view on cannabis (and there are a lot of retirees in Florida).</p>
<p>But for what it's worth, a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in May found that 80% of Florida voters favor the legalization of medical marijuana, while 16% said they would vote no on the measure. This could be the year that Florida finally gets a medical marijuana measure passed.</p>
<p>It's been a little more than two months since we learned that Maine would have a recreational marijuana initiative on the November ballot. Maine's proposal includes a 10% excise tax, and like most other recreation-legal states (save for Oregon), it would limit the number of licenses it issues.</p>
<p>A May poll of just over 600 Maine residents from the Marijuana Policy Projectshowed that 55% supported the recreational legalization of marijuana, compared to 41% who were said to be leaning against legalization. Obviously polls have some margin for error, but things are looking promising for cannabis supporters in Maine.</p>
<p>Santa Monica, CA. Image source: Pixabay.</p>
<p>It's been officially "unofficial" for more than two months, but a little more than a week ago, California made it resoundingly clear that a recreational marijuana vote had won a place on the state's November ballot. Should California voters choose to approve the measure, they'd be subject to a 15% retail sales tax. Growers within the state would also pay additional taxes.</p>
<p>Per Dale Gieringer of the California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), legalization in marijuana could result in more than $1 billion in annual tax revenue and at least a $100 million reduction in law enforcement costs. Needless to say, approval here would be the crown jewel for the cannabis industry.</p>
<p>A poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California earlier this year showed 60% in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana, compared to just 37% who opposed the idea. This was up from the 54% in favor as of June 2015 and down from the 44% who opposed its legalization.</p>
<p>Enough signatures were gathered in Massachusetts to put a recreational marijuana initiative on the November ballot. As we <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/05/up-to-12-states-could-vote-on-marijuana-this-novem.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">examined about five weeks ago Opens a New Window.</a> when Massachusetts was still somewhat on the fence, an approval would mean consumers paying the state a 6.25% tax, plus an excise tax of 3.75%. Individual cities and towns could also impose taxes totaling up to 2%, meaning a top-tier marijuana tax of about 12%.</p>
<p>Unlike Maine or California, where polled residents appear to be in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana, the issue could come down to the wire in Massachusetts. A Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll conducted in the first week of May found that 43% of polled residents would vote yes to legalize, while another 46% would vote no. Some 11% were undecided.</p>
<p>Will this be the dawn or sunset of Arizona's recreational marijuana industry? Image source: Pixabay.</p>
<p>Residents in Arizona will also be voting on recreational marijuana this November. If it's approved, a 15% tax on retail sales would be passed on to the consumer, with a decent chunk of tax revenue raised going to support Arizona's K-12 public schools and a full-day kindergarten program. However, supporters are facing an uphill battle. A poll released in April from Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy showed that only 43% supported a legal recreational marijuana measure compared to the 49% who opposed it.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, in April a bill aimed at legalizing medical marijuana in Missouri was voted down by the state's House of Representatives. Killing the bill on the legislative front meant that any chance of passage would be up to voters. With enough signatures collected, Missourians will now have that chance.</p>
<p>But like in Arizona, the battle to legalize could be tough. Show-Me Cannabis suspended legalization efforts in Missouri in 2015 after polls showed that registered voters were against the full legalization of marijuana to the tune of 51% to 45% in 2015. However, with just a medical marijuana proposal on the table, the outcome could be different.</p>
<p>Finally, residents in Arkansas will be voting on whether or not to legalize medical marijuana, too. Having easily surpassed the 84,859 signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot, the next step for in-state supporters is to push the measure in a region that's generally been hostile to legalizing marijuana. The potential good news (for supporters) is a Talk Business &amp; Politics/Hendrix College survey, which recently showed that a majority of Arkansans polled (58%) favored the legalization of medical marijuana compared to those who opposed it (34%).</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>It'll undeniably be an exciting year for the marijuana industry. But I would discourage investors from jumping on the bandwagon prior to November, as there are other dynamics at work that could keep you from benefiting -- even with success in the voting booths.</p>
<p>As we've looked at previously, inaction at the federal level means inherent disadvantages for marijuana businesses, which in turn means bad news for investors.</p>
<p>For starters, marijuana businesses owe a lot more in taxes (assuming they're profitable) as a percentage of net income than most normal businesses because businesses that sell an illegal substance are barred from taking normal business deductions. This leaves cannabis-based businesses to pay federal tax on their gross profits instead of net profits.</p>
<p>Secondly, cannabis-based businesses have very limited access to banking solutions. Only about 3% of banks nationwide are currently servicing the marijuana industry, mostly for fear of prosecution from the federal government down the road. Without access to basic banking services like a checking account or lines of credit, it can be a pain to expand, replenish product, or even pay employees -- not to mention that dealing with cash is a potentially costly security concern.</p>
<p>Until we see discernable changes on Capitol Hill, marijuana stocks should be nowhere near your portfolio.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/10/residents-in-these-8-states-are-set-to-vote-on-mar.aspx" type="external">Residents in These 8 States Are Set to Vote on Marijuana This November Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFUltraLong/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Sean Williams Opens a New Window.</a>has no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen name <a href="http://caps.fool.com/player/tmfultralong.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">TMFUltraLong Opens a New Window.</a>, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/TMFUltraLong" type="external">@TMFUltraLong Opens a New Window.</a>.The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a>makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
|
Residents in These 8 States Are Set to Vote on Marijuana This November
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/07/10/residents-in-these-8-states-are-set-to-vote-on-marijuana-this-november.html
|
2016-07-10
| 0right
|
Residents in These 8 States Are Set to Vote on Marijuana This November
<p />
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>This is going to be a transformative year for the United States. Not only are we set to vote in a new president for the first time in eight years this November, but we could also see the most rapid expansion of marijuana ever, with eight states now set to vote on recreational or medical cannabis initiatives or amendments this fall.</p>
<p>The expansion of the cannabis industry was initially put in motion 20 years ago when California approved a compassionate use law for medical marijuana. Today, half of all U.S. states have approved a medical marijuana law. The two most recent approvals came from Pennsylvania and Ohio, which used the legislative process to pass medical cannabis laws.</p>
<p>Additionally, we've witnessed four states legalize the recreational use of cannabis -- Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska, along with Washington, D.C. Recreational approvals and the expansion of medical cannabis have generated tax revenue and licensing fees that are boosting state education budgets and allowing certain patients access to new pathways of treatment.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The real buzz among marijuana supporters is what might happen come November. President Obama has suggested that the best way to get the attention of Congress is to legalize marijuana in as many states as possible at the state level. If a majority of states approve marijuana measures and public opinion continues to swell in favor of cannabis, Congress may have no choice but to consider decriminalization -- or legalize the substance.</p>
<p>Of course, success for the movement is no guarantee. Florida failed to pass a medical marijuana amendment in 2014, and Prop 19 in California failed to legalize recreational marijuana in 2010. It's worth noting that support for marijuana has grown substantially since both of these elections, but that still doesn't guarantee success this November.</p>
<p>Here are the eight states that'll be voting on a marijuana initiative or amendment this fall.</p>
<p>Las Vegas, NV. Image source: Pixabay.</p>
<p>Nevada was the only state that was a lock to be voting on recreational marijuana in 2016, since it was added to the ballot last November. As home to "Sin City" and an existing infrastructure of medical marijuana dispensaries, Nevada appears to be the perfect stomping ground to become a recreation-legal state. If the measure is approved, an excise tax of 15% would be applied at the wholesale level, with the consumer also paying existing sales tax at the retail level.</p>
<p>Despite a narrow defeat in 2014, Florida is once again looking to legalize medical marijuana come November. Florida's constitution is set up in such a way that a traditional majority vote doesn't equate to passage. The state's constitution requires an amendment, which in turn needs 60% "Yes" votes to pass. The nation's younger generation appears overwhelmingly in favor of legalizing medical cannabis, but seniors tend to have a more negative view on cannabis (and there are a lot of retirees in Florida).</p>
<p>But for what it's worth, a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in May found that 80% of Florida voters favor the legalization of medical marijuana, while 16% said they would vote no on the measure. This could be the year that Florida finally gets a medical marijuana measure passed.</p>
<p>It's been a little more than two months since we learned that Maine would have a recreational marijuana initiative on the November ballot. Maine's proposal includes a 10% excise tax, and like most other recreation-legal states (save for Oregon), it would limit the number of licenses it issues.</p>
<p>A May poll of just over 600 Maine residents from the Marijuana Policy Projectshowed that 55% supported the recreational legalization of marijuana, compared to 41% who were said to be leaning against legalization. Obviously polls have some margin for error, but things are looking promising for cannabis supporters in Maine.</p>
<p>Santa Monica, CA. Image source: Pixabay.</p>
<p>It's been officially "unofficial" for more than two months, but a little more than a week ago, California made it resoundingly clear that a recreational marijuana vote had won a place on the state's November ballot. Should California voters choose to approve the measure, they'd be subject to a 15% retail sales tax. Growers within the state would also pay additional taxes.</p>
<p>Per Dale Gieringer of the California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), legalization in marijuana could result in more than $1 billion in annual tax revenue and at least a $100 million reduction in law enforcement costs. Needless to say, approval here would be the crown jewel for the cannabis industry.</p>
<p>A poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California earlier this year showed 60% in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana, compared to just 37% who opposed the idea. This was up from the 54% in favor as of June 2015 and down from the 44% who opposed its legalization.</p>
<p>Enough signatures were gathered in Massachusetts to put a recreational marijuana initiative on the November ballot. As we <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/05/up-to-12-states-could-vote-on-marijuana-this-novem.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">examined about five weeks ago Opens a New Window.</a> when Massachusetts was still somewhat on the fence, an approval would mean consumers paying the state a 6.25% tax, plus an excise tax of 3.75%. Individual cities and towns could also impose taxes totaling up to 2%, meaning a top-tier marijuana tax of about 12%.</p>
<p>Unlike Maine or California, where polled residents appear to be in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana, the issue could come down to the wire in Massachusetts. A Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll conducted in the first week of May found that 43% of polled residents would vote yes to legalize, while another 46% would vote no. Some 11% were undecided.</p>
<p>Will this be the dawn or sunset of Arizona's recreational marijuana industry? Image source: Pixabay.</p>
<p>Residents in Arizona will also be voting on recreational marijuana this November. If it's approved, a 15% tax on retail sales would be passed on to the consumer, with a decent chunk of tax revenue raised going to support Arizona's K-12 public schools and a full-day kindergarten program. However, supporters are facing an uphill battle. A poll released in April from Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy showed that only 43% supported a legal recreational marijuana measure compared to the 49% who opposed it.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, in April a bill aimed at legalizing medical marijuana in Missouri was voted down by the state's House of Representatives. Killing the bill on the legislative front meant that any chance of passage would be up to voters. With enough signatures collected, Missourians will now have that chance.</p>
<p>But like in Arizona, the battle to legalize could be tough. Show-Me Cannabis suspended legalization efforts in Missouri in 2015 after polls showed that registered voters were against the full legalization of marijuana to the tune of 51% to 45% in 2015. However, with just a medical marijuana proposal on the table, the outcome could be different.</p>
<p>Finally, residents in Arkansas will be voting on whether or not to legalize medical marijuana, too. Having easily surpassed the 84,859 signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot, the next step for in-state supporters is to push the measure in a region that's generally been hostile to legalizing marijuana. The potential good news (for supporters) is a Talk Business &amp; Politics/Hendrix College survey, which recently showed that a majority of Arkansans polled (58%) favored the legalization of medical marijuana compared to those who opposed it (34%).</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>It'll undeniably be an exciting year for the marijuana industry. But I would discourage investors from jumping on the bandwagon prior to November, as there are other dynamics at work that could keep you from benefiting -- even with success in the voting booths.</p>
<p>As we've looked at previously, inaction at the federal level means inherent disadvantages for marijuana businesses, which in turn means bad news for investors.</p>
<p>For starters, marijuana businesses owe a lot more in taxes (assuming they're profitable) as a percentage of net income than most normal businesses because businesses that sell an illegal substance are barred from taking normal business deductions. This leaves cannabis-based businesses to pay federal tax on their gross profits instead of net profits.</p>
<p>Secondly, cannabis-based businesses have very limited access to banking solutions. Only about 3% of banks nationwide are currently servicing the marijuana industry, mostly for fear of prosecution from the federal government down the road. Without access to basic banking services like a checking account or lines of credit, it can be a pain to expand, replenish product, or even pay employees -- not to mention that dealing with cash is a potentially costly security concern.</p>
<p>Until we see discernable changes on Capitol Hill, marijuana stocks should be nowhere near your portfolio.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/10/residents-in-these-8-states-are-set-to-vote-on-mar.aspx" type="external">Residents in These 8 States Are Set to Vote on Marijuana This November Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFUltraLong/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Sean Williams Opens a New Window.</a>has no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen name <a href="http://caps.fool.com/player/tmfultralong.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">TMFUltraLong Opens a New Window.</a>, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/TMFUltraLong" type="external">@TMFUltraLong Opens a New Window.</a>.The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a>makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 8,063 |
<p>A former senior UN diplomat has revealed to me details of how, just over 10 years ago, the Clinton administration deliberately sabotaged UN weapons inspections in Iraq.</p>
<p>American officials were fearful that Iraq would be officially certified as weapons-free, a development that was seen as a political liability for Bill Clinton. Thus the stage was set for the manufacture of the Iraqi WMD myth as the excuse for George Bush’s catastrophic invasion of Iraq.</p>
<p>It was March 1997. For six years the UN inspectors had been probing the secrets of Saddam’s weapons programs, in the process destroying huge quantities of chemical munitions and other production facilities. To enforce Saddam’s cooperation, Iraq was subject to crushing sanctions.</p>
<p>Now, Rolf Ekeus, the urbane Swedish diplomat who headed the inspection effort, was ready to announce that his work was almost done. “I was getting close to certifying that Iraq was in compliance with Resolution 687,” he confirmed to me recently.</p>
<p>At the time, he declared that although there were some loose ends to be cleared up, “not much is unknown about Iraq’s retained proscribed weapons capabilities.”</p>
<p>For the Clinton administration, this was a crisis. If Ekeus was allowed to complete his mission, then the suspension of sanctions would follow almost automatically.</p>
<p>Saddam would be off the hook and, more importantly for the Clintonites, the neo-conservative republicans would be howling for the president’s blood.</p>
<p>The only hope was somehow to prevent Ekeus completing his mission.</p>
<p>Enter Madeleine Albright, newly appointed Secretary of State. On March 26, 1997, she strode on to the stage at Georgetown University to deliver what was billed as a major policy address on Iraq. Many in the audience expected that she would extend some sort of olive branch toward the Iraqi regime, but that was far from her mind.</p>
<p>Instead, she was set on making sure that Saddam effectively ended his cooperation with the inspectors. “We do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted,” she declared. Sanctions, she stated without equivocation, would remain unless or until Saddam was driven from power.</p>
<p>Ekeus understood immediately what Albright intended. “I knew that Saddam would now feel that there was no point in his cooperating with us, and that was the intent of her speech.”</p>
<p>Sure enough, the following day he got an angry call from Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s deputy prime minister and emissary to the outside world. “He wanted to know why Iraq should work with us any more.”</p>
<p>From then on, the inspectors found their lives increasingly difficult, as Iraqi officials, clearly acting under instructions from Saddam, blocked them at every turn.Ekeus resigned in July 1997, to be replaced by the Australian Richard Butler. Butler was soon embroiled in acrimonious confrontation with the Iraqis. Later the following year, all the inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq and the US mounted a series of bombing raids.</p>
<p>Clinton’s strategy had been successful. Iraq remained under sanctions, while in Washington the neo-conservative faction spun the wildest conjectures as to what evil schemes Saddam, unmolested by inspectors, might be concocting with his weapons scientists.</p>
<p>In fact Saddam had long abandoned all his WMD programs, but as the CIA had no sources of intelligence inside Iraq, no one in the West could prove this.</p>
<p>Finally, following 9/11, the war party in George Bush Jr’s administration was able to make the case for invasion on the grounds that Saddam had refused to comply with UN resolutions on disarmament by refusing to grant access to the weapons inspectors. The Iraq disaster has many fathers.</p>
<p>[Footnote: Ekeus knew from the mid-l990s on that Saddam Hussein had no such weapons of mass destruction. They had all been destroyed years earlier, after the first Gulf war.</p>
<p>Ekeus learned this on the night of August 22, l995, in Amman, from the lips of General Hussein Kamel, who had just defected from Iraq, along with some of his senior military aides. Kamel was Saddam’s son-in-law and had been in overall charge of all programs for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and delivery systems.</p>
<p>That night, in three hours of detailed questioning from Ekeus and two technical experts, Kamel was categorical. The UN inspection teams had done a good job. When Saddam was finally persuaded that failure to dispose of the relevant weapons systems would have very serious consequences, he issued the order and Kamel carried it out. As he told Ekeus that night, “All weapons, biological, chemical, missile, nuclear, were destroyed.” (The UNSCOM record of the session can ne viewed at <a href="http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf" type="external">http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf)</a>. In similar debriefings that August Kamel said the same thing to teams from the CIA and MI6. His military aides provided a wealth of corroborative details. Then, the following year, Kamel was lured back to Iraq and at once executed. Editors.]</p>
<p>ANDREW COCKBURN is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1416535748/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy.</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Iraq’s WMD Myth
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2007/09/29/iraq-s-wmd-myth/
|
2007-09-29
| 4left
|
Iraq’s WMD Myth
<p>A former senior UN diplomat has revealed to me details of how, just over 10 years ago, the Clinton administration deliberately sabotaged UN weapons inspections in Iraq.</p>
<p>American officials were fearful that Iraq would be officially certified as weapons-free, a development that was seen as a political liability for Bill Clinton. Thus the stage was set for the manufacture of the Iraqi WMD myth as the excuse for George Bush’s catastrophic invasion of Iraq.</p>
<p>It was March 1997. For six years the UN inspectors had been probing the secrets of Saddam’s weapons programs, in the process destroying huge quantities of chemical munitions and other production facilities. To enforce Saddam’s cooperation, Iraq was subject to crushing sanctions.</p>
<p>Now, Rolf Ekeus, the urbane Swedish diplomat who headed the inspection effort, was ready to announce that his work was almost done. “I was getting close to certifying that Iraq was in compliance with Resolution 687,” he confirmed to me recently.</p>
<p>At the time, he declared that although there were some loose ends to be cleared up, “not much is unknown about Iraq’s retained proscribed weapons capabilities.”</p>
<p>For the Clinton administration, this was a crisis. If Ekeus was allowed to complete his mission, then the suspension of sanctions would follow almost automatically.</p>
<p>Saddam would be off the hook and, more importantly for the Clintonites, the neo-conservative republicans would be howling for the president’s blood.</p>
<p>The only hope was somehow to prevent Ekeus completing his mission.</p>
<p>Enter Madeleine Albright, newly appointed Secretary of State. On March 26, 1997, she strode on to the stage at Georgetown University to deliver what was billed as a major policy address on Iraq. Many in the audience expected that she would extend some sort of olive branch toward the Iraqi regime, but that was far from her mind.</p>
<p>Instead, she was set on making sure that Saddam effectively ended his cooperation with the inspectors. “We do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted,” she declared. Sanctions, she stated without equivocation, would remain unless or until Saddam was driven from power.</p>
<p>Ekeus understood immediately what Albright intended. “I knew that Saddam would now feel that there was no point in his cooperating with us, and that was the intent of her speech.”</p>
<p>Sure enough, the following day he got an angry call from Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s deputy prime minister and emissary to the outside world. “He wanted to know why Iraq should work with us any more.”</p>
<p>From then on, the inspectors found their lives increasingly difficult, as Iraqi officials, clearly acting under instructions from Saddam, blocked them at every turn.Ekeus resigned in July 1997, to be replaced by the Australian Richard Butler. Butler was soon embroiled in acrimonious confrontation with the Iraqis. Later the following year, all the inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq and the US mounted a series of bombing raids.</p>
<p>Clinton’s strategy had been successful. Iraq remained under sanctions, while in Washington the neo-conservative faction spun the wildest conjectures as to what evil schemes Saddam, unmolested by inspectors, might be concocting with his weapons scientists.</p>
<p>In fact Saddam had long abandoned all his WMD programs, but as the CIA had no sources of intelligence inside Iraq, no one in the West could prove this.</p>
<p>Finally, following 9/11, the war party in George Bush Jr’s administration was able to make the case for invasion on the grounds that Saddam had refused to comply with UN resolutions on disarmament by refusing to grant access to the weapons inspectors. The Iraq disaster has many fathers.</p>
<p>[Footnote: Ekeus knew from the mid-l990s on that Saddam Hussein had no such weapons of mass destruction. They had all been destroyed years earlier, after the first Gulf war.</p>
<p>Ekeus learned this on the night of August 22, l995, in Amman, from the lips of General Hussein Kamel, who had just defected from Iraq, along with some of his senior military aides. Kamel was Saddam’s son-in-law and had been in overall charge of all programs for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and delivery systems.</p>
<p>That night, in three hours of detailed questioning from Ekeus and two technical experts, Kamel was categorical. The UN inspection teams had done a good job. When Saddam was finally persuaded that failure to dispose of the relevant weapons systems would have very serious consequences, he issued the order and Kamel carried it out. As he told Ekeus that night, “All weapons, biological, chemical, missile, nuclear, were destroyed.” (The UNSCOM record of the session can ne viewed at <a href="http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf" type="external">http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf)</a>. In similar debriefings that August Kamel said the same thing to teams from the CIA and MI6. His military aides provided a wealth of corroborative details. Then, the following year, Kamel was lured back to Iraq and at once executed. Editors.]</p>
<p>ANDREW COCKBURN is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1416535748/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy.</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 8,064 |
<p>BOSTON (MA)RepublicanBy BILL ZAJAC Staff writer <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p />
<p>BOSTON - The Republican filed an appeal yesterday with the state's top court seeking to overturn a Massachusetts Appeals Court ruling last month that has kept impounded the investigation files into the 1972 murder investigation of Daniel Croteau.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Boston lawyer Jonathan M. Albano, who filed the appeal with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on behalf of the newspaper, said action by the court could be taken within the next month or so.&#160;"Usually a single justice holds a hearing within 30 days of filing," Albano said.</p>
<p>A single justice could grant or deny the appeal, or that justice could decide that the appeal be heard by the seven-judge court, Albano said.</p>
<p>Larry A. McDermott, publisher and chief executive officer of The Republican, said he believes the public deserves access to the files.</p>
|
Appeal seeks to unseal files in Croteau slaying
| false |
https://poynter.org/news/appeal-seeks-unseal-files-croteau-slaying
|
2003-12-22
| 2least
|
Appeal seeks to unseal files in Croteau slaying
<p>BOSTON (MA)RepublicanBy BILL ZAJAC Staff writer <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p />
<p>BOSTON - The Republican filed an appeal yesterday with the state's top court seeking to overturn a Massachusetts Appeals Court ruling last month that has kept impounded the investigation files into the 1972 murder investigation of Daniel Croteau.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Boston lawyer Jonathan M. Albano, who filed the appeal with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on behalf of the newspaper, said action by the court could be taken within the next month or so.&#160;"Usually a single justice holds a hearing within 30 days of filing," Albano said.</p>
<p>A single justice could grant or deny the appeal, or that justice could decide that the appeal be heard by the seven-judge court, Albano said.</p>
<p>Larry A. McDermott, publisher and chief executive officer of The Republican, said he believes the public deserves access to the files.</p>
| 8,065 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Jan. 10, 2013</p>
<p>By Katy Grimes</p>
<p>SACRAMENTO — Many in the state refer to the annual California governor’s January budget proposal as fantasy. Gov. Jerry Brown did not disappoint today as he presented his budget — “balanced and fair,” according to Brown, and a way to equalize the unequal.</p>
<p>“I want to advance the progressive agenda, but with the amount of money available,” Brown said during the press conference on the budget for fiscal year&#160; <a href="http://gov.ca.gov/home.php" type="external">2013-14, which begins on July 1</a>.</p>
<p>Brown said that California is not facing a deficit spending plan for the next fiscal&#160;year. Yet, the non-partisan&#160; <a href="http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/bud/fiscal-outlook/fiscal-outlook-2012.aspx" type="external">Legislative Analyst’s Office projected</a>a $1.9 billion deficit for 2013-14. And while the LAO projected a deficit in the 2013-14 budget, they also projected budget surpluses ahead.</p>
<p>Many in the Capitol warned that the LAO’s projections were too rosy.</p>
<p>To explain why Brown’s budget proposal is even more rosy than the LAO’s projections, the <a href="http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/EconomicOutlook.pdf" type="external">economic assumptions</a> in the <a href="http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/BudgetSummary/BSS/BSS.html" type="external">budget summary</a> are telling.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/BudgetSummary/BSS/BSS.html" type="external">According</a> to Brown and his administration, there is an economic recovery, and many sectors of the economy are improving. Brown’s budget summary, however, did admit &#160;that there is still “economic uncertainty.” However, the Brown budget plan said economic uncertainty is the result of “global economic developments that tempered investment” and “Hurricane Sandy.”</p>
<p>Other economic assumptions in the budget summary include:</p>
<p>* Better real estate conditions;</p>
<p>* California’s housing market in recovery;</p>
<p>* Employment gains improved. The reason listed for this is that “23 of 28 metropolitan areas added jobs” — but these were mostly government jobs;</p>
<p>* Consumer spending improvement.</p>
<p>Brown said that, under his budget, California can reduce its “wall of debt” from nearly $28 billion to $4.3 billion by the end of the 2016-17 budget. “It will not be easy, there will be some heartburn, but I’m here to get done what I think is compassionate, and what is good for the state of California,” Brown said.</p>
<p>“The 2012–13 budget assumed a year-end reserve of $948 million,” the LAO found in its <a href="http://lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/bud/fiscal-outlook/fiscal-outlook-2012.aspx" type="external">2013-14 Budget Outlook</a>. “Our forecast now projects the General Fund ending 2012–13 with a $943 million deficit.”</p>
<p>“We also expect that the state faces a $936 million operating deficit under current policies in 2013–14. These estimates mean that the new Legislature and the Governor will need to address a $1.9 billion budget problem in order to pass a balanced budget by June 2013 for the next fiscal year,” the <a href="http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/bud/fiscal-outlook/fiscal-outlook-2012.aspx" type="external">LAO reported</a> in November.</p>
<p><a href="http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_30,_Sales_and_Income_Tax_Increase_(2012)" type="external">Prop. 30</a>is the recently passed ballot measure, authored by Brown, which increases income taxes on personal and business incomes of $250,000 and higher, as well as increasing sales taxes on everyone.</p>
<p>The LAO has &#160;consistently said that Prop. 30 will raise $6 billion per year.</p>
<p>Analysis of Prop. 30 by the&#160;LAO showed that&#160;the initiative will raise the state sales tax by one-quarter cent for every dollar for four years, and raise income taxes on Californians making over $250,000 for seven years.</p>
<p>Incomes of more than $500,000 would be taxed at an additional rate of 1 percent and 2 percent on incomes of $600,000 or more. Incomes of $1,000,000 and higher will pay a 3 percent increase.</p>
<p>The LAO has warned that the tax revenue could be volatile, depending on housing prices, the stock market and the economy because of the dependence on the tax increases of upper-income earners.</p>
<p>This particular budget issue will probably get punted to the governor’s May Budget Revise.</p>
<p>Budgets projections have changed dramatically since the Legislature no longer has to pass budgets with a two-thirds majority vote.</p>
<p>The LAO used to be better at exploring&#160;different scenarios and factors for its budget projections. Now, with a majority budget, what is not included in budget projections is nearly as important and what they choose to use. What’s not included any longer are any fiscal issues important to Republicans and fiscal conservatives.</p>
<p>In this <a href="http://www.csuchico.edu/bud/documents/laofiscal_outlook_07.pdf" type="external">2007-08 LAO budget projection</a>, the good, the bad, and the ugly is included, and is a very different projection style from recent LAO budget projections. Many in the Capitol attribute this not only to the influence of the Democratic majority, but of the pressure put on the LAO by this majority.</p>
<p>Some in the Capitol worry that, because the Prop. 30 taxes expire after seven years, the Democrat-controlled Legislature will vote to extend them. Even if the governor of the time vetoes such a bill, the supermajority in the Legislature could override his veto.</p>
<p>Brown said that he was increasing education spending in the state from $44 billion to $66 billion. “This is real investing,” Brown said.</p>
<p>Brown said that he plans to increase education funding for low-income area schools, schools with non-English speaking students, students who are foster children and poor-performing schools. Brown quoted Aristotle, who&#160;said that distributive justice consists of&#160;“treating equals equally and unequals unequally.”</p>
<p>“Treating unequals equally is not justice,” Brown said. “Growing up in Compton or Richmond is not the same as growing up in Los Gatos, Beverly Hills or Piedmont.”</p>
<p>“We recognize that putting in equality formulas … it is controversial, but right … fair,” Brown said.</p>
<p>Brown said that colleges and universities “will have to reconfigure themselves to keep the cost from escalating,” but would not guarantee that there would be no tuition rate hikes. “Guarantees are not part of this world we live in.”</p>
<p>The California State University and University of California will receive $125 million each, and the Community College system will receive $197 million.</p>
<p>With the implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act, Brown promised that health care spending was on the rise, but the state “would move cautiously.” He said that Obama was “historic and heroic” for passing the national health care act.</p>
<p>Brown mentioned climate change spending several times, and indicated that it was on the rise as well. Proposition 39, also passed in November, is a tax on out-of-state businesses, which have a significant presence in California. The money from Prop. 39 goes to the General Fund as well as into spending for renewable energy. It also factors into the mandatory education spending calculation of <a href="http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_98,_Mandatory_Education_Spending_(1988)" type="external">Proposition 98</a>. Prop. 39 is estimated to bring in $1 billion in tax revenues, but many warn that this is also a volatile revenue prediction.</p>
<p>Sounding more like a fiscal conservative at times, Brown stressed that fiscal discipline was his priority. “Fiscal discipline is not an enemy of Democrats,” he said, to chuckles in the press bay. “It allows us to take care of people over time.”</p>
<p>Brown said that America is in a big fiscal mess, and referred to “two characters” who have written California off as a failed state. Adding that he would find creative ways to deal with the many challenges, Brown said “fiscal discipline and imaginative investment” could repair California.</p>
<p>Missing from the governor’s press conference, however, was any discussion of what the administration and lawmakers can do to grow the state’s economy and get the nearly 10 percent of those in unemployment back to work. “The true way is to create more taxpayers, not hike taxes on current taxpayers,” former state Senator&#160;George Runner told me in an interview; he’s now a member of the Board of Equalization.&#160;“I’m disappointed that we’ve heard virtually nothing from the governor about spurring job creation and economic growth. Targeted tax credits, tax rollbacks. What can we do to actually grow the economy?</p>
<p>“If the governor and Legislature want to ensure California’s solvency, they need to help the private sector succeed in our state. That means fewer taxes and regulations, not more. There was a real absence of strategy about what to do.”</p>
|
Gov. Brown’s new budget seeks to equalize the unequal
| false |
https://calwatchdog.com/2013/01/10/gov-browns-new-budget-seeks-to-equalize-the-unequal/
|
2018-01-20
| 3left-center
|
Gov. Brown’s new budget seeks to equalize the unequal
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Jan. 10, 2013</p>
<p>By Katy Grimes</p>
<p>SACRAMENTO — Many in the state refer to the annual California governor’s January budget proposal as fantasy. Gov. Jerry Brown did not disappoint today as he presented his budget — “balanced and fair,” according to Brown, and a way to equalize the unequal.</p>
<p>“I want to advance the progressive agenda, but with the amount of money available,” Brown said during the press conference on the budget for fiscal year&#160; <a href="http://gov.ca.gov/home.php" type="external">2013-14, which begins on July 1</a>.</p>
<p>Brown said that California is not facing a deficit spending plan for the next fiscal&#160;year. Yet, the non-partisan&#160; <a href="http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/bud/fiscal-outlook/fiscal-outlook-2012.aspx" type="external">Legislative Analyst’s Office projected</a>a $1.9 billion deficit for 2013-14. And while the LAO projected a deficit in the 2013-14 budget, they also projected budget surpluses ahead.</p>
<p>Many in the Capitol warned that the LAO’s projections were too rosy.</p>
<p>To explain why Brown’s budget proposal is even more rosy than the LAO’s projections, the <a href="http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/EconomicOutlook.pdf" type="external">economic assumptions</a> in the <a href="http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/BudgetSummary/BSS/BSS.html" type="external">budget summary</a> are telling.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/BudgetSummary/BSS/BSS.html" type="external">According</a> to Brown and his administration, there is an economic recovery, and many sectors of the economy are improving. Brown’s budget summary, however, did admit &#160;that there is still “economic uncertainty.” However, the Brown budget plan said economic uncertainty is the result of “global economic developments that tempered investment” and “Hurricane Sandy.”</p>
<p>Other economic assumptions in the budget summary include:</p>
<p>* Better real estate conditions;</p>
<p>* California’s housing market in recovery;</p>
<p>* Employment gains improved. The reason listed for this is that “23 of 28 metropolitan areas added jobs” — but these were mostly government jobs;</p>
<p>* Consumer spending improvement.</p>
<p>Brown said that, under his budget, California can reduce its “wall of debt” from nearly $28 billion to $4.3 billion by the end of the 2016-17 budget. “It will not be easy, there will be some heartburn, but I’m here to get done what I think is compassionate, and what is good for the state of California,” Brown said.</p>
<p>“The 2012–13 budget assumed a year-end reserve of $948 million,” the LAO found in its <a href="http://lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/bud/fiscal-outlook/fiscal-outlook-2012.aspx" type="external">2013-14 Budget Outlook</a>. “Our forecast now projects the General Fund ending 2012–13 with a $943 million deficit.”</p>
<p>“We also expect that the state faces a $936 million operating deficit under current policies in 2013–14. These estimates mean that the new Legislature and the Governor will need to address a $1.9 billion budget problem in order to pass a balanced budget by June 2013 for the next fiscal year,” the <a href="http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2012/bud/fiscal-outlook/fiscal-outlook-2012.aspx" type="external">LAO reported</a> in November.</p>
<p><a href="http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_30,_Sales_and_Income_Tax_Increase_(2012)" type="external">Prop. 30</a>is the recently passed ballot measure, authored by Brown, which increases income taxes on personal and business incomes of $250,000 and higher, as well as increasing sales taxes on everyone.</p>
<p>The LAO has &#160;consistently said that Prop. 30 will raise $6 billion per year.</p>
<p>Analysis of Prop. 30 by the&#160;LAO showed that&#160;the initiative will raise the state sales tax by one-quarter cent for every dollar for four years, and raise income taxes on Californians making over $250,000 for seven years.</p>
<p>Incomes of more than $500,000 would be taxed at an additional rate of 1 percent and 2 percent on incomes of $600,000 or more. Incomes of $1,000,000 and higher will pay a 3 percent increase.</p>
<p>The LAO has warned that the tax revenue could be volatile, depending on housing prices, the stock market and the economy because of the dependence on the tax increases of upper-income earners.</p>
<p>This particular budget issue will probably get punted to the governor’s May Budget Revise.</p>
<p>Budgets projections have changed dramatically since the Legislature no longer has to pass budgets with a two-thirds majority vote.</p>
<p>The LAO used to be better at exploring&#160;different scenarios and factors for its budget projections. Now, with a majority budget, what is not included in budget projections is nearly as important and what they choose to use. What’s not included any longer are any fiscal issues important to Republicans and fiscal conservatives.</p>
<p>In this <a href="http://www.csuchico.edu/bud/documents/laofiscal_outlook_07.pdf" type="external">2007-08 LAO budget projection</a>, the good, the bad, and the ugly is included, and is a very different projection style from recent LAO budget projections. Many in the Capitol attribute this not only to the influence of the Democratic majority, but of the pressure put on the LAO by this majority.</p>
<p>Some in the Capitol worry that, because the Prop. 30 taxes expire after seven years, the Democrat-controlled Legislature will vote to extend them. Even if the governor of the time vetoes such a bill, the supermajority in the Legislature could override his veto.</p>
<p>Brown said that he was increasing education spending in the state from $44 billion to $66 billion. “This is real investing,” Brown said.</p>
<p>Brown said that he plans to increase education funding for low-income area schools, schools with non-English speaking students, students who are foster children and poor-performing schools. Brown quoted Aristotle, who&#160;said that distributive justice consists of&#160;“treating equals equally and unequals unequally.”</p>
<p>“Treating unequals equally is not justice,” Brown said. “Growing up in Compton or Richmond is not the same as growing up in Los Gatos, Beverly Hills or Piedmont.”</p>
<p>“We recognize that putting in equality formulas … it is controversial, but right … fair,” Brown said.</p>
<p>Brown said that colleges and universities “will have to reconfigure themselves to keep the cost from escalating,” but would not guarantee that there would be no tuition rate hikes. “Guarantees are not part of this world we live in.”</p>
<p>The California State University and University of California will receive $125 million each, and the Community College system will receive $197 million.</p>
<p>With the implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act, Brown promised that health care spending was on the rise, but the state “would move cautiously.” He said that Obama was “historic and heroic” for passing the national health care act.</p>
<p>Brown mentioned climate change spending several times, and indicated that it was on the rise as well. Proposition 39, also passed in November, is a tax on out-of-state businesses, which have a significant presence in California. The money from Prop. 39 goes to the General Fund as well as into spending for renewable energy. It also factors into the mandatory education spending calculation of <a href="http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_98,_Mandatory_Education_Spending_(1988)" type="external">Proposition 98</a>. Prop. 39 is estimated to bring in $1 billion in tax revenues, but many warn that this is also a volatile revenue prediction.</p>
<p>Sounding more like a fiscal conservative at times, Brown stressed that fiscal discipline was his priority. “Fiscal discipline is not an enemy of Democrats,” he said, to chuckles in the press bay. “It allows us to take care of people over time.”</p>
<p>Brown said that America is in a big fiscal mess, and referred to “two characters” who have written California off as a failed state. Adding that he would find creative ways to deal with the many challenges, Brown said “fiscal discipline and imaginative investment” could repair California.</p>
<p>Missing from the governor’s press conference, however, was any discussion of what the administration and lawmakers can do to grow the state’s economy and get the nearly 10 percent of those in unemployment back to work. “The true way is to create more taxpayers, not hike taxes on current taxpayers,” former state Senator&#160;George Runner told me in an interview; he’s now a member of the Board of Equalization.&#160;“I’m disappointed that we’ve heard virtually nothing from the governor about spurring job creation and economic growth. Targeted tax credits, tax rollbacks. What can we do to actually grow the economy?</p>
<p>“If the governor and Legislature want to ensure California’s solvency, they need to help the private sector succeed in our state. That means fewer taxes and regulations, not more. There was a real absence of strategy about what to do.”</p>
| 8,066 |
<p />
<p>For some time now, Christian fundamentalists <a href="http://thedeesdiversion.blogspot.com/2004/05/it-should-come-as-no-surprise-to.html" type="external">have served</a> as Middle East consultants to the National Security Council. Most recently, the White House has <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060814/new_christian_zionism" type="external">met</a> with a group called <a href="http://www.cufi.org/" type="external">Christians United for Israel</a>, whose members believe that supporing Israel’s expansionist policies represents a “biblical imperative.” Led by <a href="http://www.jhm.org/pastor.asp" type="external">John Hagee</a>, known for his televangelism, CUFI’s members are interested in the U.S.’s adopting a more confrontational posture with Iran and in withdrawing all aid to Palestinians.</p>
<p>“The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty,” says Hagee. A loyal friend of the Israeli right, Hagee has raised over $8 million for Israeli social service projects. His man in Washington is Sen. Arlen Specter’s former chief of staff, <a href="http://davidbrog.com/index.php" type="external">David Brog</a>, who helps carry out CUFI policy, handles public relations, and–though Jewish–represents Christian Zionist in meetings with White House staff.</p>
<p>One of Brog’s more interesting theses is that Christian anti-Semitism no longer exists and “is a bygone phenomenon that died the moment the Allies seized Hitler’s bunker.” To support this belief, he emphasizes the outpouring of Christian evangelical support for Israel. At the same time, Brog has to carry the baggage of Hagee’s outspoken belief that Israel will be the site of the Rapture. Only recently, Hagee ally <a href="http://www.jpamerica.com/pg/jsp/general/bio.jsp" type="external">Janet Parshall</a> announced, when the Israel-Hezbollah conflict began, that “These are the times we’ve been waiting for. This is straight out of a Sunday School lesson.” Somehow, the two men have developed a public relations balance in which Hagee and his people can go on about the Rapture and Brog can dismiss this talk as something like the ramblings of an ecccentric uncle, and concentrate on promoting the organization’s total support for Israel.</p>
<p>The CUFI board of directors, by the way, is made up very well-known figures, including Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer and George Morrison (chairman of the board of Promise Keepers). Other CUFI personalities include Parshall, Rod Parsley, Ron Wexler, Joyce Meyer, and Benny Hinn. In addition to supporting Israel, all of these people are also opposed to feminism and gay rights, and any form of liberalism. Hagee is closely associated with Tom DeLay, Meyer came close to having her ministry investigated by the IRS, and Hinn has been accused of avoiding financial accountability for his faith-healing ministry. Another of their close colleagues, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, is closely associated with both DeLay and Jack Abramoff.</p>
<p />
|
Christian Zionists continue to have clout with White House
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2006/08/christian-zionists-continue-have-clout-white-house/
|
2006-08-09
| 4left
|
Christian Zionists continue to have clout with White House
<p />
<p>For some time now, Christian fundamentalists <a href="http://thedeesdiversion.blogspot.com/2004/05/it-should-come-as-no-surprise-to.html" type="external">have served</a> as Middle East consultants to the National Security Council. Most recently, the White House has <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060814/new_christian_zionism" type="external">met</a> with a group called <a href="http://www.cufi.org/" type="external">Christians United for Israel</a>, whose members believe that supporing Israel’s expansionist policies represents a “biblical imperative.” Led by <a href="http://www.jhm.org/pastor.asp" type="external">John Hagee</a>, known for his televangelism, CUFI’s members are interested in the U.S.’s adopting a more confrontational posture with Iran and in withdrawing all aid to Palestinians.</p>
<p>“The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty,” says Hagee. A loyal friend of the Israeli right, Hagee has raised over $8 million for Israeli social service projects. His man in Washington is Sen. Arlen Specter’s former chief of staff, <a href="http://davidbrog.com/index.php" type="external">David Brog</a>, who helps carry out CUFI policy, handles public relations, and–though Jewish–represents Christian Zionist in meetings with White House staff.</p>
<p>One of Brog’s more interesting theses is that Christian anti-Semitism no longer exists and “is a bygone phenomenon that died the moment the Allies seized Hitler’s bunker.” To support this belief, he emphasizes the outpouring of Christian evangelical support for Israel. At the same time, Brog has to carry the baggage of Hagee’s outspoken belief that Israel will be the site of the Rapture. Only recently, Hagee ally <a href="http://www.jpamerica.com/pg/jsp/general/bio.jsp" type="external">Janet Parshall</a> announced, when the Israel-Hezbollah conflict began, that “These are the times we’ve been waiting for. This is straight out of a Sunday School lesson.” Somehow, the two men have developed a public relations balance in which Hagee and his people can go on about the Rapture and Brog can dismiss this talk as something like the ramblings of an ecccentric uncle, and concentrate on promoting the organization’s total support for Israel.</p>
<p>The CUFI board of directors, by the way, is made up very well-known figures, including Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer and George Morrison (chairman of the board of Promise Keepers). Other CUFI personalities include Parshall, Rod Parsley, Ron Wexler, Joyce Meyer, and Benny Hinn. In addition to supporting Israel, all of these people are also opposed to feminism and gay rights, and any form of liberalism. Hagee is closely associated with Tom DeLay, Meyer came close to having her ministry investigated by the IRS, and Hinn has been accused of avoiding financial accountability for his faith-healing ministry. Another of their close colleagues, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, is closely associated with both DeLay and Jack Abramoff.</p>
<p />
| 8,067 |
<p>Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, seeking to address a recent puzzling slowdown in global inflation, said she expects forces holding down consumer prices to fade in the months ahead, allowing the central bank to stick to its plans for gradual interest-rate increases.</p>
<p>But she left herself an out, saying the Fed would alter its plans if softer price pressures proved more persistent.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"It's premature to reach the judgment that we're not on the path to 2% inflation over the next couple of years," Ms. Yellen said Wednesday, during a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee. She repeated her view that an increasingly tight labor market would put upward pressure on wages and prices, but added, "We're watching this very closely and stand ready to adjust our policy if it appears that the inflation undershoot will be persistent."</p>
<p>Fed officials next meet July 25-26. At their meeting last month, officials raised rates for the third time in as many quarters to a range between 1% and 1.25% and penciled in one more rate increase this year. Ms. Yellen gave no indication about the timing of the next rate increase in her testimony Wednesday.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen also updated lawmakers on the Fed's plans to start slowly shrinking its $4.5 trillion portfolio of bonds and other assets acquired during and after the 2008 financial crisis. Ms. Yellen said she expected to set those plans into motion "relatively soon" this year, but wasn't more specific about the timing.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen faces two days of testimony, with the House panel Wednesday and the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, in what could be her final appearances on Capitol Hill before her term expires in February. The White House is beginning the process of considering who should be the next Fed leader. While Ms. Yellen isn't expected to be reappointed, President Donald Trump hasn't ruled it out.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen demurred when asked repeatedly about her desire to serve a second term. "I really haven't had to give further thought at this point to this question," she said.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Statements from Fed officials in recent weeks have highlighted a debate over whether a slowdown in inflation should lead them to hold back on additional rate increases for now. But even those who want to go slower on raising rates because of their inflation doubts have shown no such qualms about announcing plans to implement the portfolio runoff in the next few months.</p>
<p>Excluding volatile food and energy categories, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge slowed to a gain of 1.4% over the year ended May, versus 1.8% in February. In her testimony, Ms. Yellen said the inflation slowdown partly reflects unusual one-off declines and officials would monitor inflation developments closely in the months ahead. "There is...uncertainty about when -- and how much -- inflation will respond to tightening resource utilization," she said.</p>
<p>Her remarks Wednesday indicated slightly greater uncertainty about the forces slowing price growth than her comments at a press conference following the decision to raise interest rates last month. Ms. Yellen said Wednesday the recent slowdown "partly" reflected one-off factors, while she said they "significantly" reflected such factors last month. Stocks rallied and bond yields fell after her testimony Wednesday morning.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen's tenure as Fed chairwoman began in early 2014, as the Fed began to slow its purchases of Treasury and mortgage securities, the conclusion of the latest -- and broadest -- effort to spur household and business investment by pushing down long-term interest rates.</p>
<p>The Fed stopped adding to its holdings, also known as its balance sheet, in October 2014, but it has continued to reinvest the proceeds of maturing assets to maintain the portfolio's size. Since then, central bankers in Europe and Japan have ramped up similar bond-buying experiments, and the Fed slowly moved to raise interest rates from near zero.</p>
<p>Under the balance-sheet plan announced last month, the Fed will allow its holdings to decline gradually by allowing a predetermined amount of bonds to mature every month without reinvestment. Allowing some of the holdings to run off could push up long-term rates, but markets haven't shown a significant reaction so far.</p>
<p>The Fed doesn't plan to use its portfolio as an active tool of monetary policy during normal times, Ms. Yellen said Wednesday. But it would be "prepared to resume reinvestments if a material deterioration in the economic outlook were to warrant a sizable reduction in the federal-funds rate," she said.</p>
<p>More broadly, Ms. Yellen said the economy's performance was likely to warrant "gradual increases in the federal-funds rate over time" to achieve the Fed's goals of maximum sustainable employment and stable prices, measured relative to a 2% annual inflation target. Inflation has fallen below that target for most of the last five years.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen characterized the Fed's benchmark short-term rate as "somewhat below" its neutral level, one in which the Fed is neither trying to speed up or slow down the economy. Because that level is currently low by historical standards, "the federal-funds rate would not have to rise all that much further to get to a neutral policy stance," she said.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen's outlook on the economy was little changed from the assessment she offered at a news conference last month after the Fed announced its most recent rate increase. The unemployment rate, at 4.4% in June, is near its lowest levels in 16 years.</p>
<p>Some Fed officials in recent weeks have said easier financial conditions, including stocks at record highs and a decline in the dollar, could justify further rate increases this year. Ms. Yellen didn't mention financial conditions in her prepared testimony.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen is likely to face questions over financial regulation at Wednesday's hearing. While she has largely defended the postcrisis financial-regulatory architecture created by the Dodd-Frank Act, Ms. Yellen and other Fed officials have signaled openness to changing some of those rules.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, the White House formally nominated Randal Quarles, a former Treasury official in Republican administrations, to serve on the Fed's seven-member board of governors and as the vice chair of bank supervision, a new post created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-regulatory overhaul. The Fed has two other vacancies on its board, giving Mr. Trump an early opportunity to put his stamp on the central bank.</p>
<p>Write to Nick Timiraos at [email protected]</p>
<p>WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, faced with a recent, puzzling slowdown in global inflation, said she expects the forces holding down consumer prices to fade in the months ahead, allowing the central bank to stick to its plans for gradual interest-rate increases.</p>
<p>But she left herself an out, saying the Fed could veer from its policy plans if inflation weakness proved more stubborn than officials expect.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen repeated her view that a tightening labor market would put upward pressure on wages and prices. "It's premature to reach the judgment that we're not on the path to 2% inflation over the next couple of years," she said Wednesday during a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee. But, she added, "We're watching this very closely and stand ready to adjust our policy if it appears that the inflation undershoot will be persistent."</p>
<p>Stocks rallied and bond yields fell after her testimony.</p>
<p>Markets increasingly expect the Fed to next raise rates in December, after launching in September the process of slowly shrinking its $4.5 trillion portfolio of bonds and other assets acquired during and after the financial crisis.</p>
<p>Fed officials next meet July 25-26. At their meeting last month, they raised short-term interest rates for the third time in as many quarters to a range between 1% and 1.25% and penciled in one more increase this year.</p>
<p>Fed officials in recent weeks have debated whether the inflation slowdown is likely to pass or persist, with some saying they want to hold off on more rate increases until price pressures pick up. But even those who want to go slower on raising rates because of inflation have shown no such qualms about announcing plans to implement the portfolio runoff in the next few months.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen has been in the camp of those who see the inflation slowdown as likely to be transitory.</p>
<p>She told lawmakers the traditional pattern in which tighter labor markets put pressure on wages and inflation more broadly have been slow to surface. "The relationship between those two things has become more attenuated than we've been accustomed to historically," she said. The unemployment rate, at 4.4% in June, was near its lowest level in 16 years, but wage pressures have been muted.</p>
<p>"There is...uncertainty about when -- and how much -- inflation will respond to tightening resource utilization," Ms. Yellen said Wednesday.</p>
<p>Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge slowed to a gain of 1.4% over the year ended May, versus 1.8% in February -- both below the Fed's 2% target. The Labor Department is set to report on its consumer-price index for June on Friday.</p>
<p>While some Fed officials in recent weeks have said the Fed should hold to its plans to raise rates despite low inflation, because of the strong labor market and easier financial conditions, Ms. Yellen offered few signs of alarm about the possibility of loftier asset prices creating financial instability.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen characterized the Fed's benchmark short-term rate as "somewhat below" its neutral level, one in which the Fed is neither trying to spur nor slow the economy. Because that neutral level is currently low by historical standards, she said the central bank might not need to raise rates much further to reach it.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen said, as she did in June, that the Fed could pull the trigger on the balance-sheet plan "relatively soon." She added Wednesday that she didn't find the timing terribly important now that the approach is well understood by markets.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen faces a second day of testimony Thursday, before the Senate Banking Committee, in what could be her final appearances before both panels before her term expires in February. The White House is beginning the process of considering who should be the next Fed leader. While Ms. Yellen isn't expected to be reappointed, President Donald Trump hasn't ruled it out.</p>
<p>Asked repeatedly whether she wants to serve a second term, Ms. Yellen initially demurred and implied she hadn't discussed the matter with the White House. Later, when asked what she would say if Mr. Trump asked her to serve another term, she said, "It is certainly something that I would discuss with the president, obviously."</p>
<p>The hearing also showed how the political dynamic facing the central bank could shift with Republicans in control of the White House and the Fed farther along in plans to raise rates and shrink its balance sheet.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen's appearance before the House panel was less contentious than prior hearings, in which Republicans unsparingly challenged the central-bank leader over everything from institutional accountability to economic forecasts. Democrats, meanwhile, appeared less willing to offer unconditional support for the Fed's stance toward gradually providing less support to the economy, though many extolled Ms. Yellen's leadership of the central bank.</p>
<p>Write to Nick Timiraos at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>July 12, 2017 18:34 ET (22:34 GMT)</p>
|
Yellen: Inflation Should Rebound, but Fed Could Alter Policy if Softness Persists -- 3rd Update
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/07/12/yellen-inflation-should-rebound-but-fed-could-alter-policy-if-softness-persists-3rd-update.html
|
2017-07-12
| 0right
|
Yellen: Inflation Should Rebound, but Fed Could Alter Policy if Softness Persists -- 3rd Update
<p>Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, seeking to address a recent puzzling slowdown in global inflation, said she expects forces holding down consumer prices to fade in the months ahead, allowing the central bank to stick to its plans for gradual interest-rate increases.</p>
<p>But she left herself an out, saying the Fed would alter its plans if softer price pressures proved more persistent.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"It's premature to reach the judgment that we're not on the path to 2% inflation over the next couple of years," Ms. Yellen said Wednesday, during a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee. She repeated her view that an increasingly tight labor market would put upward pressure on wages and prices, but added, "We're watching this very closely and stand ready to adjust our policy if it appears that the inflation undershoot will be persistent."</p>
<p>Fed officials next meet July 25-26. At their meeting last month, officials raised rates for the third time in as many quarters to a range between 1% and 1.25% and penciled in one more rate increase this year. Ms. Yellen gave no indication about the timing of the next rate increase in her testimony Wednesday.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen also updated lawmakers on the Fed's plans to start slowly shrinking its $4.5 trillion portfolio of bonds and other assets acquired during and after the 2008 financial crisis. Ms. Yellen said she expected to set those plans into motion "relatively soon" this year, but wasn't more specific about the timing.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen faces two days of testimony, with the House panel Wednesday and the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, in what could be her final appearances on Capitol Hill before her term expires in February. The White House is beginning the process of considering who should be the next Fed leader. While Ms. Yellen isn't expected to be reappointed, President Donald Trump hasn't ruled it out.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen demurred when asked repeatedly about her desire to serve a second term. "I really haven't had to give further thought at this point to this question," she said.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Statements from Fed officials in recent weeks have highlighted a debate over whether a slowdown in inflation should lead them to hold back on additional rate increases for now. But even those who want to go slower on raising rates because of their inflation doubts have shown no such qualms about announcing plans to implement the portfolio runoff in the next few months.</p>
<p>Excluding volatile food and energy categories, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge slowed to a gain of 1.4% over the year ended May, versus 1.8% in February. In her testimony, Ms. Yellen said the inflation slowdown partly reflects unusual one-off declines and officials would monitor inflation developments closely in the months ahead. "There is...uncertainty about when -- and how much -- inflation will respond to tightening resource utilization," she said.</p>
<p>Her remarks Wednesday indicated slightly greater uncertainty about the forces slowing price growth than her comments at a press conference following the decision to raise interest rates last month. Ms. Yellen said Wednesday the recent slowdown "partly" reflected one-off factors, while she said they "significantly" reflected such factors last month. Stocks rallied and bond yields fell after her testimony Wednesday morning.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen's tenure as Fed chairwoman began in early 2014, as the Fed began to slow its purchases of Treasury and mortgage securities, the conclusion of the latest -- and broadest -- effort to spur household and business investment by pushing down long-term interest rates.</p>
<p>The Fed stopped adding to its holdings, also known as its balance sheet, in October 2014, but it has continued to reinvest the proceeds of maturing assets to maintain the portfolio's size. Since then, central bankers in Europe and Japan have ramped up similar bond-buying experiments, and the Fed slowly moved to raise interest rates from near zero.</p>
<p>Under the balance-sheet plan announced last month, the Fed will allow its holdings to decline gradually by allowing a predetermined amount of bonds to mature every month without reinvestment. Allowing some of the holdings to run off could push up long-term rates, but markets haven't shown a significant reaction so far.</p>
<p>The Fed doesn't plan to use its portfolio as an active tool of monetary policy during normal times, Ms. Yellen said Wednesday. But it would be "prepared to resume reinvestments if a material deterioration in the economic outlook were to warrant a sizable reduction in the federal-funds rate," she said.</p>
<p>More broadly, Ms. Yellen said the economy's performance was likely to warrant "gradual increases in the federal-funds rate over time" to achieve the Fed's goals of maximum sustainable employment and stable prices, measured relative to a 2% annual inflation target. Inflation has fallen below that target for most of the last five years.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen characterized the Fed's benchmark short-term rate as "somewhat below" its neutral level, one in which the Fed is neither trying to speed up or slow down the economy. Because that level is currently low by historical standards, "the federal-funds rate would not have to rise all that much further to get to a neutral policy stance," she said.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen's outlook on the economy was little changed from the assessment she offered at a news conference last month after the Fed announced its most recent rate increase. The unemployment rate, at 4.4% in June, is near its lowest levels in 16 years.</p>
<p>Some Fed officials in recent weeks have said easier financial conditions, including stocks at record highs and a decline in the dollar, could justify further rate increases this year. Ms. Yellen didn't mention financial conditions in her prepared testimony.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen is likely to face questions over financial regulation at Wednesday's hearing. While she has largely defended the postcrisis financial-regulatory architecture created by the Dodd-Frank Act, Ms. Yellen and other Fed officials have signaled openness to changing some of those rules.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, the White House formally nominated Randal Quarles, a former Treasury official in Republican administrations, to serve on the Fed's seven-member board of governors and as the vice chair of bank supervision, a new post created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-regulatory overhaul. The Fed has two other vacancies on its board, giving Mr. Trump an early opportunity to put his stamp on the central bank.</p>
<p>Write to Nick Timiraos at [email protected]</p>
<p>WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, faced with a recent, puzzling slowdown in global inflation, said she expects the forces holding down consumer prices to fade in the months ahead, allowing the central bank to stick to its plans for gradual interest-rate increases.</p>
<p>But she left herself an out, saying the Fed could veer from its policy plans if inflation weakness proved more stubborn than officials expect.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen repeated her view that a tightening labor market would put upward pressure on wages and prices. "It's premature to reach the judgment that we're not on the path to 2% inflation over the next couple of years," she said Wednesday during a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee. But, she added, "We're watching this very closely and stand ready to adjust our policy if it appears that the inflation undershoot will be persistent."</p>
<p>Stocks rallied and bond yields fell after her testimony.</p>
<p>Markets increasingly expect the Fed to next raise rates in December, after launching in September the process of slowly shrinking its $4.5 trillion portfolio of bonds and other assets acquired during and after the financial crisis.</p>
<p>Fed officials next meet July 25-26. At their meeting last month, they raised short-term interest rates for the third time in as many quarters to a range between 1% and 1.25% and penciled in one more increase this year.</p>
<p>Fed officials in recent weeks have debated whether the inflation slowdown is likely to pass or persist, with some saying they want to hold off on more rate increases until price pressures pick up. But even those who want to go slower on raising rates because of inflation have shown no such qualms about announcing plans to implement the portfolio runoff in the next few months.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen has been in the camp of those who see the inflation slowdown as likely to be transitory.</p>
<p>She told lawmakers the traditional pattern in which tighter labor markets put pressure on wages and inflation more broadly have been slow to surface. "The relationship between those two things has become more attenuated than we've been accustomed to historically," she said. The unemployment rate, at 4.4% in June, was near its lowest level in 16 years, but wage pressures have been muted.</p>
<p>"There is...uncertainty about when -- and how much -- inflation will respond to tightening resource utilization," Ms. Yellen said Wednesday.</p>
<p>Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge slowed to a gain of 1.4% over the year ended May, versus 1.8% in February -- both below the Fed's 2% target. The Labor Department is set to report on its consumer-price index for June on Friday.</p>
<p>While some Fed officials in recent weeks have said the Fed should hold to its plans to raise rates despite low inflation, because of the strong labor market and easier financial conditions, Ms. Yellen offered few signs of alarm about the possibility of loftier asset prices creating financial instability.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen characterized the Fed's benchmark short-term rate as "somewhat below" its neutral level, one in which the Fed is neither trying to spur nor slow the economy. Because that neutral level is currently low by historical standards, she said the central bank might not need to raise rates much further to reach it.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen said, as she did in June, that the Fed could pull the trigger on the balance-sheet plan "relatively soon." She added Wednesday that she didn't find the timing terribly important now that the approach is well understood by markets.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen faces a second day of testimony Thursday, before the Senate Banking Committee, in what could be her final appearances before both panels before her term expires in February. The White House is beginning the process of considering who should be the next Fed leader. While Ms. Yellen isn't expected to be reappointed, President Donald Trump hasn't ruled it out.</p>
<p>Asked repeatedly whether she wants to serve a second term, Ms. Yellen initially demurred and implied she hadn't discussed the matter with the White House. Later, when asked what she would say if Mr. Trump asked her to serve another term, she said, "It is certainly something that I would discuss with the president, obviously."</p>
<p>The hearing also showed how the political dynamic facing the central bank could shift with Republicans in control of the White House and the Fed farther along in plans to raise rates and shrink its balance sheet.</p>
<p>Ms. Yellen's appearance before the House panel was less contentious than prior hearings, in which Republicans unsparingly challenged the central-bank leader over everything from institutional accountability to economic forecasts. Democrats, meanwhile, appeared less willing to offer unconditional support for the Fed's stance toward gradually providing less support to the economy, though many extolled Ms. Yellen's leadership of the central bank.</p>
<p>Write to Nick Timiraos at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>July 12, 2017 18:34 ET (22:34 GMT)</p>
| 8,068 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>MARQUEZ-CHAVEZ: Was allegedly abused</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Neither prosecution nor defense believed Roberta Marquez-Chavez should spend time in prison for what amounted to neglect of her children, but her guilty plea to child abandonment and failing to report abuse exposed her to 12 years in custody.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The plea agreement left it up to the judge, and the judge imposed five years.</p>
<p>Photographs of the malnourished children, with distended bellies and black eyes, their bones showing, cuts all over their bodies, were seared into memory.</p>
<p>Wednesday, 2nd Judicial District Judge Jacqueline Flores invoked those memories in denying requests by defense attorney Liane Kerr to reconsider the sentence or allow Marquez-Chavez to withdraw her no contest plea and go to trial.</p>
<p>"I cannot forget the image of those two little girls," Flores said. "It was shocking."</p>
<p>Marquez-Chavez was arrested just after Christmas 2011 in what became known by the police description - girls 5 and 3 years old forced to live in a bathtub.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>By the time of sentencing, both prosecution and defense were aware of a fuller picture, one that pegged Jesus Acosta, Marquez-Chavez's then-boyfriend, as the probable perpetrator of violence not only against the children, but also against Marquez-Chavez. In fact, Marquez-Chavez was herself a longtime victim of domestic violence who had been raped at age 12 by her mother's drug dealer and given birth to a child as a result of those assaults, according to court pleadings.</p>
<p>Three experts submitted written reports about Marquez-Chavez's conditioning to violence and well-founded fear of Acosta, an alleged cartel member who fled and is believed to be living in Mexico.</p>
<p>While awaiting trial, Marquez-Chavez married, had a baby, continued working and complied with requirements of Pretrial Services. Kerr filed multiple motions in an effort to get a better result for Marquez-Chavez, even telling the judge Wednesday that she had been ineffective in counseling her client in the case.</p>
<p>Assistant District Attorney Mark Trejtnar said that while the state did not oppose probation, he believed a trial at this point would be a waste of judicial resources and hard to prosecute, since many of the University of New Mexico Hospital resident physicians who treated the children are now scattered all over the country.</p>
<p>Flores told Kerr that the sentence was a fair one. Although Marquez-Chavez's culpability was less than Acosta's, she had not taken opportunities to save her children from abuse. They are now living with a foster family, and Marquez-Chavez relinquished custody.</p>
<p>Flores said she believed the plea was entered into appropriately, and Kerr worked to get her client a fair sentence.</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Mother gets 5 years in neglect of children
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/577236/woman-gets-5-years-in-jail.html
| 2least
|
Mother gets 5 years in neglect of children
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>MARQUEZ-CHAVEZ: Was allegedly abused</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Neither prosecution nor defense believed Roberta Marquez-Chavez should spend time in prison for what amounted to neglect of her children, but her guilty plea to child abandonment and failing to report abuse exposed her to 12 years in custody.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The plea agreement left it up to the judge, and the judge imposed five years.</p>
<p>Photographs of the malnourished children, with distended bellies and black eyes, their bones showing, cuts all over their bodies, were seared into memory.</p>
<p>Wednesday, 2nd Judicial District Judge Jacqueline Flores invoked those memories in denying requests by defense attorney Liane Kerr to reconsider the sentence or allow Marquez-Chavez to withdraw her no contest plea and go to trial.</p>
<p>"I cannot forget the image of those two little girls," Flores said. "It was shocking."</p>
<p>Marquez-Chavez was arrested just after Christmas 2011 in what became known by the police description - girls 5 and 3 years old forced to live in a bathtub.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>By the time of sentencing, both prosecution and defense were aware of a fuller picture, one that pegged Jesus Acosta, Marquez-Chavez's then-boyfriend, as the probable perpetrator of violence not only against the children, but also against Marquez-Chavez. In fact, Marquez-Chavez was herself a longtime victim of domestic violence who had been raped at age 12 by her mother's drug dealer and given birth to a child as a result of those assaults, according to court pleadings.</p>
<p>Three experts submitted written reports about Marquez-Chavez's conditioning to violence and well-founded fear of Acosta, an alleged cartel member who fled and is believed to be living in Mexico.</p>
<p>While awaiting trial, Marquez-Chavez married, had a baby, continued working and complied with requirements of Pretrial Services. Kerr filed multiple motions in an effort to get a better result for Marquez-Chavez, even telling the judge Wednesday that she had been ineffective in counseling her client in the case.</p>
<p>Assistant District Attorney Mark Trejtnar said that while the state did not oppose probation, he believed a trial at this point would be a waste of judicial resources and hard to prosecute, since many of the University of New Mexico Hospital resident physicians who treated the children are now scattered all over the country.</p>
<p>Flores told Kerr that the sentence was a fair one. Although Marquez-Chavez's culpability was less than Acosta's, she had not taken opportunities to save her children from abuse. They are now living with a foster family, and Marquez-Chavez relinquished custody.</p>
<p>Flores said she believed the plea was entered into appropriately, and Kerr worked to get her client a fair sentence.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 8,069 |
|
<p>FOX Business: Capitalism Lives Here</p>
<p>Energy and materials stocks were the worst performers on the day as energy futures took a thrashing on the back of a much bigger-than-expected inventory build.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Today's Markets</p>
<p>As of 3:25 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 130 points, or 0.88%, to 14709, the S&amp;P 500 dipped 14 points, or 0.88%, to 1584 and the Nasdaq Composite declined 28.2 points, or 0.84%, to 3301.</p>
<p>Commodities stole the spotlight on Wall Street Wednesday. Oil and gasoline futures were both sharply lower. The benchmark U.S. crude oil contract slid $2.69, or 2.9%, to $90.81 a barrel. Wholesale New York Harbor gasoline sold off 3% to $2.717 a gallon.</p>
<p>The move in oil came after the Energy Department said crude stocks surged 6.7 million barrels to 395.2 million barrels last week. That is the highest level on record since at least August 1982.</p>
<p>In metals, gold slumped $26.00, or 1.8%, to $1,446 a troy ounce.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in economic news,&#160;the Federal Reserve held the pace of its asset-purchase program steady at $85 billion a month, and said it will hold short-term interest rates at historic lows until the unemployment rate falls to 6.5%. The central bank also said it sees the economy growing at a ‘moderate’ pace, but unemployment remains ‘elevated.’ Stocks remained deep in the red after the statement.</p>
<p>The European Central Bank is out with its decision on Thursday. That one is being more closely watched since some analysts expect the ECB to cut rates to record lows amid signs Germany, Europe's biggest economy, has begun struggling.</p>
<p>Also on the economic front, the ADP National Employment Report showed the private sector added 119,000 jobs in April, falling short of estimates of an increase of 150,000 jobs. Digging into the report, small businesses added the most jobs, followed by large businesses and then medium-sized ones. Every segment tacked on jobs on the month, expect manufacturing, which shed 10,000 jobs.</p>
<p>"Overall, job growth has clearly slowed since November of last year and with respect to Friday’s payroll report, we cannot help but feel any enthusiasm is unwarranted," Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG wrote in an email.</p>
<p>The labor market has shown only tepid growth in recent months, sparking worries about the robustness of the recovery of the world's biggest economy.</p>
<p>The Institute for Supply Management's PMI gauge slid to 50.7 in April from 51.3 in March. Economists expected a slightly stronger reading of 50.9. Reading above 50 point to expansion, while those below indicate contraction.</p>
<p>In corporate news, Merck (NYSE:MRK) posted weaker-than-expected quarterly sales on increased generic competition, sending shares of the blue-chip biotech behemoth sliding more than 2% in pre-market action.</p>
<p>Automakers also reported April sales on the day. General Motors (NYSE:GM) saw its sales climb 11.4% and Ford (NYSE:F) experienced an 18% jump.</p>
<p>Foreign Markets</p>
<p>The English FTSE 100 climbed 0.66% to 6472. Markets in Germany were closed for Labor Day.</p>
<p>In Asia, the Japanese Nikkei 225 fell 0.44% to 13799. Markets in China were closed for Labor Day.</p>
|
Energy Stocks Lead Wall Street Lower as Oil Tumbles
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2013/05/01/stocks-slide-as-jobs-worries-mount.html
|
2016-03-06
| 0right
|
Energy Stocks Lead Wall Street Lower as Oil Tumbles
<p>FOX Business: Capitalism Lives Here</p>
<p>Energy and materials stocks were the worst performers on the day as energy futures took a thrashing on the back of a much bigger-than-expected inventory build.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Today's Markets</p>
<p>As of 3:25 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 130 points, or 0.88%, to 14709, the S&amp;P 500 dipped 14 points, or 0.88%, to 1584 and the Nasdaq Composite declined 28.2 points, or 0.84%, to 3301.</p>
<p>Commodities stole the spotlight on Wall Street Wednesday. Oil and gasoline futures were both sharply lower. The benchmark U.S. crude oil contract slid $2.69, or 2.9%, to $90.81 a barrel. Wholesale New York Harbor gasoline sold off 3% to $2.717 a gallon.</p>
<p>The move in oil came after the Energy Department said crude stocks surged 6.7 million barrels to 395.2 million barrels last week. That is the highest level on record since at least August 1982.</p>
<p>In metals, gold slumped $26.00, or 1.8%, to $1,446 a troy ounce.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in economic news,&#160;the Federal Reserve held the pace of its asset-purchase program steady at $85 billion a month, and said it will hold short-term interest rates at historic lows until the unemployment rate falls to 6.5%. The central bank also said it sees the economy growing at a ‘moderate’ pace, but unemployment remains ‘elevated.’ Stocks remained deep in the red after the statement.</p>
<p>The European Central Bank is out with its decision on Thursday. That one is being more closely watched since some analysts expect the ECB to cut rates to record lows amid signs Germany, Europe's biggest economy, has begun struggling.</p>
<p>Also on the economic front, the ADP National Employment Report showed the private sector added 119,000 jobs in April, falling short of estimates of an increase of 150,000 jobs. Digging into the report, small businesses added the most jobs, followed by large businesses and then medium-sized ones. Every segment tacked on jobs on the month, expect manufacturing, which shed 10,000 jobs.</p>
<p>"Overall, job growth has clearly slowed since November of last year and with respect to Friday’s payroll report, we cannot help but feel any enthusiasm is unwarranted," Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG wrote in an email.</p>
<p>The labor market has shown only tepid growth in recent months, sparking worries about the robustness of the recovery of the world's biggest economy.</p>
<p>The Institute for Supply Management's PMI gauge slid to 50.7 in April from 51.3 in March. Economists expected a slightly stronger reading of 50.9. Reading above 50 point to expansion, while those below indicate contraction.</p>
<p>In corporate news, Merck (NYSE:MRK) posted weaker-than-expected quarterly sales on increased generic competition, sending shares of the blue-chip biotech behemoth sliding more than 2% in pre-market action.</p>
<p>Automakers also reported April sales on the day. General Motors (NYSE:GM) saw its sales climb 11.4% and Ford (NYSE:F) experienced an 18% jump.</p>
<p>Foreign Markets</p>
<p>The English FTSE 100 climbed 0.66% to 6472. Markets in Germany were closed for Labor Day.</p>
<p>In Asia, the Japanese Nikkei 225 fell 0.44% to 13799. Markets in China were closed for Labor Day.</p>
| 8,070 |
<p>In the world of currencies, particularly in the current environment, the U.S. dollar, British pound, euro and Japanese yen often command most of the attention.</p>
<p>However, investors should be mindful of the Australian dollar and the CurrencyShares Australian Dollar Trust (NYSEArca: <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/etf-resume.php?quote=fxa" type="external">FXA Opens a New Window.</a>), which tracks the Aussie against the U.S. dollar.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Related: <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/2016/05/aussie-dollar-etf-plunges-as-reserve-bank-cuts-rates/" type="external">Aussie Dollar ETF Plunges as Reserve Bank Cuts Rates Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>While the Australian dollar, like other major currencies, is beholden to central bank policy, the good news for the currency and FXA is that some Australian officials do not see the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) engaging in another rate cut this year.</p>
<p>“Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison said he doesn’t see much appetite for further cuts to his nation’s already record-low interest rates, while stressing that’s a decision for new central bank Governor Philip Lowe,” reports <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com//news/articles/2016-10-07/australia-s-morrison-sees-little-rba-enthusiasm-to-ease-further" type="external">Bloomberg Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Australia’s benchmark interest rate of 1.75 percent is a record low for the country, but well above most other developed markets, indicating there is room for further downside.</p>
<p>Among developed markets single-country exchange traded funds, the iShares MSCI Australia ETF (NYSEArca: <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/etf-resume.php?quote=ewa" type="external">EWA Opens a New Window.</a>) has been a solid performer this year with a gain of almost 9%. Rebounding commodities prices and an accomodative central bank are boosting Australian equities, EWA and helping the country continue its lengthy streak of not falling into a recession.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Related: <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/2016/05/aussie-dollar-etf-plunges-as-reserve-bank-cuts-rates/" type="external">Down Under Opportunity</a></p>
<p>“RBA’s Stevens and Lowe have made the case for utilizing low global rates to borrow cheaply to fund infrastructure and boost productivity in the economy. Morrison said while Australia is still increasing borrowing to cover government spending on obligations such as health, education and welfare, it wasn’t in a position to splurge on capital,” according to Bloomberg.</p>
<p>The SPDR MSCI Australia Quality Mix ETF (NYSEArca: <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/etf-resume.php?quote=qaus" type="external">QAUS Opens a New Window.</a>) emphasizes the quality factor, which captures excess returns to stocks that are characterized by low debt, stable earnings growth and other ‘quality’ metrics. Lastly, the First Trust Australia AlphaDEX Fund (NYSEArca: <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/etf-resume.php?quote=faus" type="external">FAUS Opens a New Window.</a>) selects Australian companies based on growth factors including 3-, 6- and 12-month price appreciation, sales to price and one year sales growth, along with value factors including book value to price, cash flow to price and return on assets.</p>
<p>CurrencyShares Australian Dollar Trust</p>
<p>The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Mr. Lydon serves as an independent trustee of certain mutual funds and ETFs that are managed by Guggenheim Investments; however, any opinions or forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Mr. Lydon and not those of Guggenheim Funds, Guggenheim Investments, Guggenheim Specialized Products, LLC or any of their affiliates. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.etftrends.com/2016/10/aussie-dollar-etf-a-solid-performer/" type="external">This article Opens a New Window.</a> was provided by our partners at ETFTrends.</p>
|
Aussie Dollar ETF a Solid Performer
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/10/10/aussie-dollar-etf-solid-performer.html
|
2016-10-10
| 0right
|
Aussie Dollar ETF a Solid Performer
<p>In the world of currencies, particularly in the current environment, the U.S. dollar, British pound, euro and Japanese yen often command most of the attention.</p>
<p>However, investors should be mindful of the Australian dollar and the CurrencyShares Australian Dollar Trust (NYSEArca: <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/etf-resume.php?quote=fxa" type="external">FXA Opens a New Window.</a>), which tracks the Aussie against the U.S. dollar.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Related: <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/2016/05/aussie-dollar-etf-plunges-as-reserve-bank-cuts-rates/" type="external">Aussie Dollar ETF Plunges as Reserve Bank Cuts Rates Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>While the Australian dollar, like other major currencies, is beholden to central bank policy, the good news for the currency and FXA is that some Australian officials do not see the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) engaging in another rate cut this year.</p>
<p>“Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison said he doesn’t see much appetite for further cuts to his nation’s already record-low interest rates, while stressing that’s a decision for new central bank Governor Philip Lowe,” reports <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com//news/articles/2016-10-07/australia-s-morrison-sees-little-rba-enthusiasm-to-ease-further" type="external">Bloomberg Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Australia’s benchmark interest rate of 1.75 percent is a record low for the country, but well above most other developed markets, indicating there is room for further downside.</p>
<p>Among developed markets single-country exchange traded funds, the iShares MSCI Australia ETF (NYSEArca: <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/etf-resume.php?quote=ewa" type="external">EWA Opens a New Window.</a>) has been a solid performer this year with a gain of almost 9%. Rebounding commodities prices and an accomodative central bank are boosting Australian equities, EWA and helping the country continue its lengthy streak of not falling into a recession.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Related: <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/2016/05/aussie-dollar-etf-plunges-as-reserve-bank-cuts-rates/" type="external">Down Under Opportunity</a></p>
<p>“RBA’s Stevens and Lowe have made the case for utilizing low global rates to borrow cheaply to fund infrastructure and boost productivity in the economy. Morrison said while Australia is still increasing borrowing to cover government spending on obligations such as health, education and welfare, it wasn’t in a position to splurge on capital,” according to Bloomberg.</p>
<p>The SPDR MSCI Australia Quality Mix ETF (NYSEArca: <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/etf-resume.php?quote=qaus" type="external">QAUS Opens a New Window.</a>) emphasizes the quality factor, which captures excess returns to stocks that are characterized by low debt, stable earnings growth and other ‘quality’ metrics. Lastly, the First Trust Australia AlphaDEX Fund (NYSEArca: <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/etf-resume.php?quote=faus" type="external">FAUS Opens a New Window.</a>) selects Australian companies based on growth factors including 3-, 6- and 12-month price appreciation, sales to price and one year sales growth, along with value factors including book value to price, cash flow to price and return on assets.</p>
<p>CurrencyShares Australian Dollar Trust</p>
<p>The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Mr. Lydon serves as an independent trustee of certain mutual funds and ETFs that are managed by Guggenheim Investments; however, any opinions or forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Mr. Lydon and not those of Guggenheim Funds, Guggenheim Investments, Guggenheim Specialized Products, LLC or any of their affiliates. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.etftrends.com/2016/10/aussie-dollar-etf-a-solid-performer/" type="external">This article Opens a New Window.</a> was provided by our partners at ETFTrends.</p>
| 8,071 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>PHOENIX — An ex-convict has been sentenced to life in prison in the shooting death of a retired Bakersfield, California, police officer during an attempted carjacking outside an Arizona casino.</p>
<p>John Albert Campos Sr. faces six life terms under the sentence imposed Monday by a federal judge in Phoenix as a result of Campos’ February guilty plea in the Dec. 24, 2015 killing of 52-year-old Frank Pascua.</p>
<p>Pascua was shot outside a Gila River Indian Community casino as Campos tried to steal a car. Campos then carjacked another vehicle and fled. He was later arrested in Phoenix.</p>
<p>Campus pleaded guilty to numerous crimes that included carjacking and use of a firearm during a crime of violence.</p>
<p>Arizona Department of Corrections records list numerous previous convictions for Campos, including armed robbery and kidnapping.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Man sentenced to life in Arizona casino shooting death of retired officer
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/996987/man-sentenced-to-life-in-arizona-casino-shooting-death-of-retired-officer.html
| 2least
|
Man sentenced to life in Arizona casino shooting death of retired officer
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>PHOENIX — An ex-convict has been sentenced to life in prison in the shooting death of a retired Bakersfield, California, police officer during an attempted carjacking outside an Arizona casino.</p>
<p>John Albert Campos Sr. faces six life terms under the sentence imposed Monday by a federal judge in Phoenix as a result of Campos’ February guilty plea in the Dec. 24, 2015 killing of 52-year-old Frank Pascua.</p>
<p>Pascua was shot outside a Gila River Indian Community casino as Campos tried to steal a car. Campos then carjacked another vehicle and fled. He was later arrested in Phoenix.</p>
<p>Campus pleaded guilty to numerous crimes that included carjacking and use of a firearm during a crime of violence.</p>
<p>Arizona Department of Corrections records list numerous previous convictions for Campos, including armed robbery and kidnapping.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 8,072 |
|
<p>History is already remembering a handful of Israeli Prime Ministers as well intending peacemakers.</p>
<p>Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, although affiliated with terrorism in his early years, then bloody wars in later years, was made a peacemaker when he struck a deal with former Egyptian President Anwar Sadddat, virtually ending hostilities between both countries, while sidelining the Palestinian question altogether.</p>
<p>History has also shown its soft side depicting the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, another Israeli Noble Peace Prize recipient, for his role in the signing of the Oslo agreement of 1993, in Norway. Interestingly, both Israelis and Palestinians see the document as an infamous one. Rabin’s own violent history was almost completely scrapped the moment he signed his name, endorsing the agreement on the White House lawn.</p>
<p>Ehud Barak, also relatively young and still vibrant, was spared by history from any blame. After all, the retired General and former Prime Minister’s name shall also be synonymous to the term “generous offer”, allegedly offered to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat at Camp David in July 2000. Although Barak’s offer largely failed to address the important topics regarded by Palestinians as fundemental, he remains nonetheless, a “peacemaker”.</p>
<p>For Palestinians, the signing of a document resolves nothing, their own reading of history taught them such a lesson.</p>
<p>On one hand, Begin’s association with the ethnic cleansing of over a million Palestinians, and a list of bloody massacres, from Palestine to Lebanon, were greater witnesses to Begin’s true merit than the signing at Camp David. The late 1970’s agreement, like Oslo and Camp David 2, satisfied little of their long held aspirations for freedom, the right of return and a sovereign homeland.</p>
<p>Rabin is also remembered by thousands of Palestinian men and by their families. The former Israeli Defense Minister was the one who initiated the “broken bones” policy during the first Palestinian uprising, which started in 1987. Such a legacy was overlooked after his signing of the Oslo accords, and following his assassination by an Israeli terrorist. But the cheers that followed the historic signing of Oslo on the White House lawn could never be loud enough to cover the screams of thousands of men and children whose hands and legs were broken, because the Israeli economy couldn’t handle their uprising and quest for freedom.</p>
<p>There is history, and there is Palestinian history. The first refers to how Israel or pro Israeli pundits wish to see history written, joined by the collective efforts of the media. The second refers to how Palestinians choose to remember their own plight and those who contributed to their misery.</p>
<p>Palestinians are not selective in their memory as it may seem, and are indeed forgiving. After all, the day Oslo was signed Palestinians marched in every town, village and refugee camp. In Gaza, they carried olive branches and handed them to Israeli soldiers, while the soldiers were in the process of subjecting the Palestinians to a brutal occupation.</p>
<p>History can be of a great value if it is depicted accurately. Such remembrance is due now more than any time in the past, for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has uttered a word, which some have already described as “historic”. Sharon referred to the Israeli occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories as “occupation” during the debate that preceded the approval of the Road Map peace initiative late May. For a right wing extremist, we are told, such a word was taboo, and might signal a fundamental shift in the Israeli government’s policies toward the Palestinians.</p>
<p>I am still not clear how Sharon’s admission will change the political discourse governing the Middle East’s most durable conflict. What seems clear to me, however, is the fact that Israeli leaders, whether “peacemakers” or “right wing extremists” have excelled in manipulating certain terminology to fit their own political agenda, but without associating any tangible meaning they become irrelevant. Various Israeli leaders spoke openly about a Palestinian state, while actively slicing up the potential state into Bantustans, separated by fortified settlements and barbed wire. Israeli officials are actively using the term “peace”, but considering the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed demonstrates the lack of substance to such an assertion.</p>
<p>Sharon’s first day in office was a day where he spoke of a Palestinian state, but if we recall such statements, such a state fails to include more than 42 percent of the size of West Bank and Gaza, a state crowded with illegal Jewish settlements, bypass roads, Israeli military zones, without its refugees, without Jerusalem, and without real territorial integrity.</p>
<p>The chances are that Sharon’s words were simply a political maneuver, rather than a genuine change of heart. By uttering the word, “occupation”, Sharon might have enlisted himself into the category of “peacemakers”.</p>
<p>On the “historic” day when Sharon used the word “occupation”, Israeli tanks attacked the West Bank town of Tulkarm and killed a Palestinian boy. Two children were also wounded in the Israeli attack, one was seven and the other nine. Sharon’s word made no difference to the families of the children killed and wounded, and most likely to millions of Palestinians, who still regard Sharon as a violent leader who holds no respect for their long denied rights. Looking back at their experiences with Begin, Rabin, Barak and Sharon himself, Palestinians already know: expressions of peace that are soaked in blood just don’t count.</p>
<p>RAMZY BAROUD is the editor-in-chief of PalestineChronicle.com and the editor of the anthology “ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1885942338/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion 2002</a>.” 50 percent of the editor’s royalties will go directly to assist in the relief efforts in Jenin. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2003/06/02/sharon-and-the-myth-of-the-peacemakers/
|
2003-06-02
| 4left
|
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
<p>History is already remembering a handful of Israeli Prime Ministers as well intending peacemakers.</p>
<p>Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, although affiliated with terrorism in his early years, then bloody wars in later years, was made a peacemaker when he struck a deal with former Egyptian President Anwar Sadddat, virtually ending hostilities between both countries, while sidelining the Palestinian question altogether.</p>
<p>History has also shown its soft side depicting the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, another Israeli Noble Peace Prize recipient, for his role in the signing of the Oslo agreement of 1993, in Norway. Interestingly, both Israelis and Palestinians see the document as an infamous one. Rabin’s own violent history was almost completely scrapped the moment he signed his name, endorsing the agreement on the White House lawn.</p>
<p>Ehud Barak, also relatively young and still vibrant, was spared by history from any blame. After all, the retired General and former Prime Minister’s name shall also be synonymous to the term “generous offer”, allegedly offered to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat at Camp David in July 2000. Although Barak’s offer largely failed to address the important topics regarded by Palestinians as fundemental, he remains nonetheless, a “peacemaker”.</p>
<p>For Palestinians, the signing of a document resolves nothing, their own reading of history taught them such a lesson.</p>
<p>On one hand, Begin’s association with the ethnic cleansing of over a million Palestinians, and a list of bloody massacres, from Palestine to Lebanon, were greater witnesses to Begin’s true merit than the signing at Camp David. The late 1970’s agreement, like Oslo and Camp David 2, satisfied little of their long held aspirations for freedom, the right of return and a sovereign homeland.</p>
<p>Rabin is also remembered by thousands of Palestinian men and by their families. The former Israeli Defense Minister was the one who initiated the “broken bones” policy during the first Palestinian uprising, which started in 1987. Such a legacy was overlooked after his signing of the Oslo accords, and following his assassination by an Israeli terrorist. But the cheers that followed the historic signing of Oslo on the White House lawn could never be loud enough to cover the screams of thousands of men and children whose hands and legs were broken, because the Israeli economy couldn’t handle their uprising and quest for freedom.</p>
<p>There is history, and there is Palestinian history. The first refers to how Israel or pro Israeli pundits wish to see history written, joined by the collective efforts of the media. The second refers to how Palestinians choose to remember their own plight and those who contributed to their misery.</p>
<p>Palestinians are not selective in their memory as it may seem, and are indeed forgiving. After all, the day Oslo was signed Palestinians marched in every town, village and refugee camp. In Gaza, they carried olive branches and handed them to Israeli soldiers, while the soldiers were in the process of subjecting the Palestinians to a brutal occupation.</p>
<p>History can be of a great value if it is depicted accurately. Such remembrance is due now more than any time in the past, for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has uttered a word, which some have already described as “historic”. Sharon referred to the Israeli occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories as “occupation” during the debate that preceded the approval of the Road Map peace initiative late May. For a right wing extremist, we are told, such a word was taboo, and might signal a fundamental shift in the Israeli government’s policies toward the Palestinians.</p>
<p>I am still not clear how Sharon’s admission will change the political discourse governing the Middle East’s most durable conflict. What seems clear to me, however, is the fact that Israeli leaders, whether “peacemakers” or “right wing extremists” have excelled in manipulating certain terminology to fit their own political agenda, but without associating any tangible meaning they become irrelevant. Various Israeli leaders spoke openly about a Palestinian state, while actively slicing up the potential state into Bantustans, separated by fortified settlements and barbed wire. Israeli officials are actively using the term “peace”, but considering the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed demonstrates the lack of substance to such an assertion.</p>
<p>Sharon’s first day in office was a day where he spoke of a Palestinian state, but if we recall such statements, such a state fails to include more than 42 percent of the size of West Bank and Gaza, a state crowded with illegal Jewish settlements, bypass roads, Israeli military zones, without its refugees, without Jerusalem, and without real territorial integrity.</p>
<p>The chances are that Sharon’s words were simply a political maneuver, rather than a genuine change of heart. By uttering the word, “occupation”, Sharon might have enlisted himself into the category of “peacemakers”.</p>
<p>On the “historic” day when Sharon used the word “occupation”, Israeli tanks attacked the West Bank town of Tulkarm and killed a Palestinian boy. Two children were also wounded in the Israeli attack, one was seven and the other nine. Sharon’s word made no difference to the families of the children killed and wounded, and most likely to millions of Palestinians, who still regard Sharon as a violent leader who holds no respect for their long denied rights. Looking back at their experiences with Begin, Rabin, Barak and Sharon himself, Palestinians already know: expressions of peace that are soaked in blood just don’t count.</p>
<p>RAMZY BAROUD is the editor-in-chief of PalestineChronicle.com and the editor of the anthology “ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1885942338/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion 2002</a>.” 50 percent of the editor’s royalties will go directly to assist in the relief efforts in Jenin. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 8,073 |
<p>OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — The Latest on a public records lawsuit that The Associated Press and other news organizations brought against the Washington state Legislature (all times local):</p>
<p>9:30 a.m.</p>
<p>A judge in Washington state has ruled that the records of state lawmakers are subject to public disclosure.</p>
<p>Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese ruled Friday in favor of a media coalition, led by The Associated Press, that sued in September.</p>
<p>The group challenged the Washington Legislature’s assertion that lawmakers are excluded from stricter disclosure rules that apply to other elected officials and agencies.</p>
<p>Attorneys for the Washington Legislature had argued that lawmakers exempted most of their records from the state’s public records act through a series of changes in past years and therefore were not violating the law.</p>
<p>The news organizations filed requests for records from all 147 Washington lawmakers last year, including daily calendars, text messages and documentation of staff complaints against House and Senate members.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>5 a.m.</p>
<p>A judge is expected to issue a ruling in a public records lawsuit brought against the Washington Legislature by a coalition of news organizations.</p>
<p>Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese is set to rule Friday morning. The news coalition, led by The Associated Press, sued in September. The news organizations are challenging state lawmakers’ assertion they are excluded from stricter disclosure rules that apply to other elected officials and agencies.</p>
<p>Attorneys for the Washington Legislature argued in a court hearing last month that lawmakers pointedly exempted most of their records from the state’s public records act through a series of changes in past years and therefore were not violating the law.</p>
<p>The news organizations filed requests for records from all 147 Washington lawmakers last year, including daily calendars, text messages and documentation of staff complaints against lawmakers.</p>
<p>OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — The Latest on a public records lawsuit that The Associated Press and other news organizations brought against the Washington state Legislature (all times local):</p>
<p>9:30 a.m.</p>
<p>A judge in Washington state has ruled that the records of state lawmakers are subject to public disclosure.</p>
<p>Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese ruled Friday in favor of a media coalition, led by The Associated Press, that sued in September.</p>
<p>The group challenged the Washington Legislature’s assertion that lawmakers are excluded from stricter disclosure rules that apply to other elected officials and agencies.</p>
<p>Attorneys for the Washington Legislature had argued that lawmakers exempted most of their records from the state’s public records act through a series of changes in past years and therefore were not violating the law.</p>
<p>The news organizations filed requests for records from all 147 Washington lawmakers last year, including daily calendars, text messages and documentation of staff complaints against House and Senate members.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>5 a.m.</p>
<p>A judge is expected to issue a ruling in a public records lawsuit brought against the Washington Legislature by a coalition of news organizations.</p>
<p>Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese is set to rule Friday morning. The news coalition, led by The Associated Press, sued in September. The news organizations are challenging state lawmakers’ assertion they are excluded from stricter disclosure rules that apply to other elected officials and agencies.</p>
<p>Attorneys for the Washington Legislature argued in a court hearing last month that lawmakers pointedly exempted most of their records from the state’s public records act through a series of changes in past years and therefore were not violating the law.</p>
<p>The news organizations filed requests for records from all 147 Washington lawmakers last year, including daily calendars, text messages and documentation of staff complaints against lawmakers.</p>
|
The Latest: Judge: Washington lawmaker records are public
| false |
https://apnews.com/3ab34c297acc4a7181bccdda1edf8b8e
|
2018-01-19
| 2least
|
The Latest: Judge: Washington lawmaker records are public
<p>OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — The Latest on a public records lawsuit that The Associated Press and other news organizations brought against the Washington state Legislature (all times local):</p>
<p>9:30 a.m.</p>
<p>A judge in Washington state has ruled that the records of state lawmakers are subject to public disclosure.</p>
<p>Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese ruled Friday in favor of a media coalition, led by The Associated Press, that sued in September.</p>
<p>The group challenged the Washington Legislature’s assertion that lawmakers are excluded from stricter disclosure rules that apply to other elected officials and agencies.</p>
<p>Attorneys for the Washington Legislature had argued that lawmakers exempted most of their records from the state’s public records act through a series of changes in past years and therefore were not violating the law.</p>
<p>The news organizations filed requests for records from all 147 Washington lawmakers last year, including daily calendars, text messages and documentation of staff complaints against House and Senate members.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>5 a.m.</p>
<p>A judge is expected to issue a ruling in a public records lawsuit brought against the Washington Legislature by a coalition of news organizations.</p>
<p>Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese is set to rule Friday morning. The news coalition, led by The Associated Press, sued in September. The news organizations are challenging state lawmakers’ assertion they are excluded from stricter disclosure rules that apply to other elected officials and agencies.</p>
<p>Attorneys for the Washington Legislature argued in a court hearing last month that lawmakers pointedly exempted most of their records from the state’s public records act through a series of changes in past years and therefore were not violating the law.</p>
<p>The news organizations filed requests for records from all 147 Washington lawmakers last year, including daily calendars, text messages and documentation of staff complaints against lawmakers.</p>
<p>OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — The Latest on a public records lawsuit that The Associated Press and other news organizations brought against the Washington state Legislature (all times local):</p>
<p>9:30 a.m.</p>
<p>A judge in Washington state has ruled that the records of state lawmakers are subject to public disclosure.</p>
<p>Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese ruled Friday in favor of a media coalition, led by The Associated Press, that sued in September.</p>
<p>The group challenged the Washington Legislature’s assertion that lawmakers are excluded from stricter disclosure rules that apply to other elected officials and agencies.</p>
<p>Attorneys for the Washington Legislature had argued that lawmakers exempted most of their records from the state’s public records act through a series of changes in past years and therefore were not violating the law.</p>
<p>The news organizations filed requests for records from all 147 Washington lawmakers last year, including daily calendars, text messages and documentation of staff complaints against House and Senate members.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>5 a.m.</p>
<p>A judge is expected to issue a ruling in a public records lawsuit brought against the Washington Legislature by a coalition of news organizations.</p>
<p>Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese is set to rule Friday morning. The news coalition, led by The Associated Press, sued in September. The news organizations are challenging state lawmakers’ assertion they are excluded from stricter disclosure rules that apply to other elected officials and agencies.</p>
<p>Attorneys for the Washington Legislature argued in a court hearing last month that lawmakers pointedly exempted most of their records from the state’s public records act through a series of changes in past years and therefore were not violating the law.</p>
<p>The news organizations filed requests for records from all 147 Washington lawmakers last year, including daily calendars, text messages and documentation of staff complaints against lawmakers.</p>
| 8,074 |
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator John McCain was undergoing treatment at a military hospital outside Washington for side effects of cancer therapy, his office said on Tuesday.</p>
<p>McCain, 81, who was diagnosed with brain cancer during the summer, will return to work as soon as possible, a statement from his office said.</p>
<p>“Senator McCain is currently receiving treatment at Walter Reed Medical Center for normal side effects of his ongoing cancer therapy,” the statement said. “Senator McCain looks forward to returning to work as soon as possible.”</p>
<p>McCain, an Arizona Republican who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2008, was found to have an aggressive form of brain tumor, glioblastoma, after surgery in July for a blood clot above his left eye.</p>
<p>He has been receiving chemotherapy and radiation treatment in the Washington area while continuing to work in the Senate. He has missed Senate votes this week.</p>
<p>A critical vote on the Republican tax overhaul is expected in the Senate early next week. McCain’s absence would make it more difficult, but not impossible, for Republicans to pass the bill.</p>
<p>McCain was re-elected to a sixth Senate term last year.</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>
|
Senator McCain treated for side effects of cancer therapy
| false |
https://newsline.com/senator-mccain-treated-for-side-effects-of-cancer-therapy/
|
2017-12-13
| 1right-center
|
Senator McCain treated for side effects of cancer therapy
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator John McCain was undergoing treatment at a military hospital outside Washington for side effects of cancer therapy, his office said on Tuesday.</p>
<p>McCain, 81, who was diagnosed with brain cancer during the summer, will return to work as soon as possible, a statement from his office said.</p>
<p>“Senator McCain is currently receiving treatment at Walter Reed Medical Center for normal side effects of his ongoing cancer therapy,” the statement said. “Senator McCain looks forward to returning to work as soon as possible.”</p>
<p>McCain, an Arizona Republican who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2008, was found to have an aggressive form of brain tumor, glioblastoma, after surgery in July for a blood clot above his left eye.</p>
<p>He has been receiving chemotherapy and radiation treatment in the Washington area while continuing to work in the Senate. He has missed Senate votes this week.</p>
<p>A critical vote on the Republican tax overhaul is expected in the Senate early next week. McCain’s absence would make it more difficult, but not impossible, for Republicans to pass the bill.</p>
<p>McCain was re-elected to a sixth Senate term last year.</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>
| 8,075 |
<p>FOX Business: Capitalism Lives Here</p>
<p>U.S. equity markets were set to extend a heavy selloff after JPMorgan Chase's first-quarter miss added to the already gloomy sentiment on Wall Street.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Today's Markets</p>
<p>As of 8:46 a.m. ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 77 points, or 0.47%, to 16034, S&amp;P 500 futures dipped 8.8 points, or 0.48%, 1818 and Nasdaq 100 futures slumped 26.2 points, or 0.75%, to 3454.</p>
<p>The Nasdaq took its worst beating since 2011 on Thursday, while the broader S&amp;P 500 took its steepest fall since last year. The move has been driven by an intense rotation away from growth stocks and into defensive plays like value stocks, Treasury bonds and gold.</p>
<p>Indeed, the Nasdaq biotechnology index is looking to end in the red for the seventh-straight week -- the longest weekly drop since 1998.</p>
<p>JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) kicked off bank earnings season with a significant miss on the top and bottom lines as fixed-income and mortgage-origination income plummeted. The disappointing results from the biggest U.S. bank by assets added to the malaise across global trading desks. Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), the No. 4 U.S. bank, is set to report later in the day.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Will Hedden, a premium client manager at London-based brokerage IG, said he sees some "panicky" moves in the markets as traders deal with the sudden bolt of volatility.</p>
<p>"Is this justified? The only thing I am sure of is that I am not sure," he quipped, highlighting the uncertainty over exactly what is driving investors to race away from growth names.</p>
<p>Traders once again took cover in safe-haven assets.&#160;The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond fell 0.034 percentage point to 2.62%. Meanwhile, gold prices rose $1.20, or 0.09%, to $1,321 a troy ounce.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in commodities, U.S. crude oil futures fell 17 cents, or 0.16%, to $103.23 a barrel. Wholesale New York Harbor gasoline dipped 0.19% to $3.00 a gallon.</p>
<p>In economic news, the Labor Department said wholesale prices rose 0.5% in March, the biggest increase since June, and higher than expectations for a 0.1% advance. Excluding the food and energy components, prices rose 0.6%, wider than the 0.2% pick-up analysts expected, and the biggest rise since March 2011.</p>
<p>"While some Fed members are having a difficult time finding any sort of inflation, data this week point to the existence of some of it," said Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group.</p>
|
Wall Street Poised to Extend Slide After JPMorgan Disappoints
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/04/11/wall-street-poised-to-extend-slide-after-jpmorgan-disappoints.html
|
2016-03-06
| 0right
|
Wall Street Poised to Extend Slide After JPMorgan Disappoints
<p>FOX Business: Capitalism Lives Here</p>
<p>U.S. equity markets were set to extend a heavy selloff after JPMorgan Chase's first-quarter miss added to the already gloomy sentiment on Wall Street.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Today's Markets</p>
<p>As of 8:46 a.m. ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 77 points, or 0.47%, to 16034, S&amp;P 500 futures dipped 8.8 points, or 0.48%, 1818 and Nasdaq 100 futures slumped 26.2 points, or 0.75%, to 3454.</p>
<p>The Nasdaq took its worst beating since 2011 on Thursday, while the broader S&amp;P 500 took its steepest fall since last year. The move has been driven by an intense rotation away from growth stocks and into defensive plays like value stocks, Treasury bonds and gold.</p>
<p>Indeed, the Nasdaq biotechnology index is looking to end in the red for the seventh-straight week -- the longest weekly drop since 1998.</p>
<p>JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) kicked off bank earnings season with a significant miss on the top and bottom lines as fixed-income and mortgage-origination income plummeted. The disappointing results from the biggest U.S. bank by assets added to the malaise across global trading desks. Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), the No. 4 U.S. bank, is set to report later in the day.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Will Hedden, a premium client manager at London-based brokerage IG, said he sees some "panicky" moves in the markets as traders deal with the sudden bolt of volatility.</p>
<p>"Is this justified? The only thing I am sure of is that I am not sure," he quipped, highlighting the uncertainty over exactly what is driving investors to race away from growth names.</p>
<p>Traders once again took cover in safe-haven assets.&#160;The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond fell 0.034 percentage point to 2.62%. Meanwhile, gold prices rose $1.20, or 0.09%, to $1,321 a troy ounce.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in commodities, U.S. crude oil futures fell 17 cents, or 0.16%, to $103.23 a barrel. Wholesale New York Harbor gasoline dipped 0.19% to $3.00 a gallon.</p>
<p>In economic news, the Labor Department said wholesale prices rose 0.5% in March, the biggest increase since June, and higher than expectations for a 0.1% advance. Excluding the food and energy components, prices rose 0.6%, wider than the 0.2% pick-up analysts expected, and the biggest rise since March 2011.</p>
<p>"While some Fed members are having a difficult time finding any sort of inflation, data this week point to the existence of some of it," said Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group.</p>
| 8,076 |
<p>When Bush signed the new Medicare bill on Dec. 8, 2003, he called it “the greatest advance in health care coverage for America’s seniors since the founding of Medicare” in 1965. No he did not say this on Saturday Night Live, he said it at the White House.</p>
<p>The bill did more for the pharmaceutical industry than it did for seniors citizens. Drug companies can continue to charge outrageous prices because Republicans refuse to allow the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and other countries.</p>
<p>Prescription drug spending is rising faster than any other health care expense. In 2003, total spending by Medicare beneficiaries on prescription drugs was $95 billion and senior citizens account for nearly 34% of all prescriptions sold.</p>
<p>The US is the only industrialized country without some form of price controls on drugs. It also accounts for more than half of the industry’s profits. And profits would have to be high because according to recent reports from the top pharmaceutical companies, CEO compensation packages range from $23.9 million to $150.9 million for one year.</p>
<p>Who Is Peter Rost?</p>
<p>Peter Rost is a physician and pharmaceutical industry executive who began advocating for drug importation after he posted a positive review on Amazon.com about the book “The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What To Do About It,” written by former New England Journal of Medicine editor Marcia Angell.</p>
<p>On September 10, 2004, Rost, was a featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Society for Professional Journalists, and openly criticized the high cost of prescription drugs and the efforts by the pharmaceutical industry and politicians to block the importation of cheaper drug from other countries, according to Independent Media TV on 9/16/04</p>
<p>Rost is the first drug-industry executive to dispute publicly the industry and federal government position that importing drugs isn’t safe. Rost, citing extensive experience with importing drug in Europe, says it is perfectly safe, according to Knight Ridder on 9/30/04.</p>
<p>For the past 20 years, Rost has been marketing pharmaceuticals and he is currently a Vice President with Pfizer. Rost says that his #1 concern is for the people who can not afford their prescription drugs. He believes that people going without medication is a “bigger safety issue than anything else,” Independent reports.</p>
<p>Rost said that “[d]rug companies are testifying that imported drugs are unsafe. Nothing could be further from the truth” (St. Paul Pioneer Press, 9/24).</p>
<p>Does Importation Work? Springfield MA – A Case Study</p>
<p>According to FACSNET, in 1996, the city of Springfield, Mass, paid $33 million in health care costs. This year, the cost is estimated at $70 million, according to Michael Albano, who was mayor of Springfield from 1996 to January of 2004.</p>
<p>Albano and Peter Rost both spoke on the importation issue at the Sept 10, 2004, FACS seminar at the Society of Professional Journalists convention.</p>
<p>Albano says, ìDuring my eight years as mayor, I watched this health care crisis develop: a 5 percent increase the first year, 10 percent, 15 to 20 percent increases … It became abundantly apparent that no corporation in America, and cities are corporations, could sustain that type of growth without going bankrupt. As a business, you fold; but as a government, you have to continue to provide services that citizens expect, deserve and demand,î Albano said.</p>
<p>Of the $33 million that Springfield paid for health care in 1996, prescription drugs accounted for $8.6 million. This year, out of $70 million in health care costs, prescription drugs will cost about $20 million. (Springfield has about 7,000 employees and 2,000 retirees and dependents. The employee numbers have changed little over the eight-year period.)</p>
<p>ìPrices have more than doubled for the same amount of prescription medication,î Albano said. While Albano was mayor, the situation presented a tough choice: Find a way to reduce health care costs or cut city services.</p>
<p>ìI said, ëThatís enough,íî Albano said. ìSo I took trip to Windsor, Ontario. I looked at some pharmacies and selected a Canadian provider. And what a surprise: the exact same medications, the exact same name brands ñ no difference whatsoeverî ñ except the price.</p>
<p>ìIn the first year the city implemented the program, it saved $3 million. This year the city will save about $6.5 million,î Albano said. ìThis is substantial for a city the size of Springfield,î he said. Springfield is now considered a pioneer in the many efforts to legalize drug re-importation from Canada.</p>
<p>Rost openly lauded Albanoís efforts and successes in bringing affordable prescription drugs to Springfield.</p>
<p>Lawmakers Want Vote On Importation</p>
<p>Bush and Republican leaders in Congress are refusing to allow a quick vote on a bill for drug importation, even though many rank-and-file Republicans in Congress and most Democrats back the idea, says the New York Times on 9/16/04.</p>
<p>Sen Byron Dorgan (D-ND) has co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R- Maine) that would allow Americans to buy drugs from such heavily regulated nations as Canada, where some prescription drugs can cost as much as 50 percent less than in the United States. The bill is designed to provide American consumers with some relief from escalating drug prices.</p>
<p>Dorgan and several other lawmakers held press conferences to rally support for a vote to be taken on the importation bill, which has languished in the Senate for several months.</p>
<p>The House of Representatives has already passed a bill allowing FDA-approved drugs to be imported from Canada and other countries. But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has refused to allow a similar bill to come up for a vote in the Senate.</p>
<p>Supporters wrote to Frist urging him to find time before the November elections to schedule a promised vote. Missouri Republican Jo Ann Emerson and other members of Congress say the law would pass if Frist would bring it to the floor, the Missourian reports.</p>
<p>According to The Hill on 9/14/04, Dorgan spokesman Barry Piatt said reimportation supporters would seek a vote regardless of Fristís position. ìItís going to happen,î Piatt said, adding that ìeverything that comes to the floorî is a possible vehicle.</p>
<p>Piatt said Dorganís reimportation bill has ìbroad consensus support in the Senate and in the country.î A Democratic staffer said the Dorgan bill may have 60 votes, says the Hill.</p>
<p>Democrats said the Food and Drug Administration had no record of any dangers presented by imported drugs. They argued that leading Republicans were using safety as an excuse to protect drug companies that charge more domestically for their products.</p>
<p>Sen Byron Dorgan (D-ND), said, “Miracle drugs offer no miracles for people who cannot take them” because of the cost. Rep Marion Berry (D-Ark) said, “Here we are in a global economy, and the United States allows these drug companies to take advantage and rob our own people. That can’t continue,ì Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 9/24.</p>
<p>Now Frists claims, “I don’t think we can address it adequately in the next 17 days.” That’s despite the fact that members of both parties in Congress support what is being called drug importation and it’s extremely popular with the public, which will decide whether to re-elect members of Congress in November, according to the 9/18/04 Enquirer.</p>
<p>In fact, according to the New York Times, Frist now says the Senate likely will not have time to debate the legislation this year, and Frist spokesperson Amy Call added, “Until he sees a way we can do this safely, he won’t put the American people in jeopardy” by allowing drug importation, the Times reported on 9/24.</p>
<p>Dorgan claims that Frist made a commitment in March to allow a vote this year, in exchange for Dorgan agreeing not to block the confirmation of Mark McClellan as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Dorgan said, “I think he ought to keep that commitment.î</p>
<p>I hate to say it but I guess the naive Dorgan is going to have to find out the hard way that a commitment by a Bush-Puppet Republican is meaningless.</p>
<p>Rost Speaks Out – At His Own Peril</p>
<p>Over the past month, Peter Rost has spoken out in favor of the various bills under consideration by Congress and state governments, that would allow the importation of cheaper drugs into the US from other countries.</p>
<p>Rost became the first drug industry executives to speak out in support of reimporting drugs from Canada. At all activities, Rost stressed that he was speaking as a private citizen and not as a Pfizer representative. Nothing could have been made this more clear.</p>
<p>On Sept 23, Rost attended a Washington rally with about 10 lawmakers to support a bill to legalize the sale and use of imported drugs from other countries where drugs are between 30% to 70% cheaper than in the US. He also attended a rally with Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) the following day, in attempt to convince Republican senators to allow a vote on the drug reimportation bill.</p>
<p>Drug companies have consistently opposed the move, arguing that US regulators could not guarantee the safety or quality of drugs brought in from other countries. But Rost counters that argument with the fact that European countries have used importation safely for 20 years, and he says drugmakers will “say anything” to prevent cheaper drugs from entering the US market.</p>
<p>Rost warns that, “The industry is making a big political mistake right now to fight reimportation,î he added, “The biggest safety issue is people not taking the drugs they need,î at the news conference with Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Reps. Dan Burton (R-Ind), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) and Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill) (Wall Street Journal, 9/22).</p>
<p>ìA lot of people cannot afford life-saving drugs. Drug re-importation provides an alternative supply at lower prices for people who cannot afford the full price,î Rost said. He said Europe has been trading pharmaceuticals for decades with no negative consequences. ìThe European union mandates free trade and movement of goods. Companies specialize in doing nothing but buying drugs cheaply and importing then to northern countries,î Rost said.</p>
<p>Rost says, ìDrugs donít work if you donít take them. If you canít afford them, you canít use them,î he said. ìDrugs are supposed to improve life and make us healthy. In the US, we have shorter life expectancy and higher infant mortality rates than host of other developed countries ñ Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Belgium, etc. … I hope speaking out will not only help patients but also wake up the drug companies.î</p>
<p>Sen Snowe (R-Maine) added, “If European countries can safety trade prescription drugs, the United States should be up to the task as well,” New York Times, 9/24.</p>
<p>According to Rost, “Holding up a vote on importation … has a high cost not just in money, but in American lives. Every day we delay, Americans die because they cannot afford life-saving drugs.” NYT / Sept 24th, 2004</p>
<p>Dr. Alan Sager, a researcher at the Boston University, says the same thing. “It is an abomination that any American continues to suffer pain, disease and premature death for lack of needed medications,” he said.</p>
<p>Do Bush or his industry cronies or his Republican allies in Congress care that people are going without their life-saving drugs? Not for a minute.</p>
<p>No Free Speech For Pfizer Employees</p>
<p>So much for free speech if you work for a drug company. Pfizer has recently launched an investigation of Rostís political activities. Rost has informed Independent Media that Pfizer has started an investigation and the law firm Orrick, Herrington &amp; Sutcliffe, LLP in New York will conduct the inquiry.</p>
<p>Rost told Independent, ìThe Pfizer inquiry came as a surprise to me, since I have always stated that I speak as a private citizen and do not in any way represent Pfizer in my public appearances and also do not comment on Pfizer. I am simply exercising my constitutional right to campaign for a candidate, a bill or an issue on the political agenda.î</p>
<p>Depth of Probe</p>
<p>Rostís attorney, David Green of Morristown, NJ, said Rost was first questioned about his contacts with reporters on Sept. 21. Rost said the Pfizer lawyer asked him to list all of his contacts with the media and noted Rostís quotes in news articles.</p>
<p>In response to Independentís questions about his Pfizer interview, Rost says, ì(I) spent a long and very intense day … answering detailed questions about all my contacts with the press and my private discussions with Senators and Congressmen. The questioning was so intense that we didnít even break for lunch until 2:30 p.m.î</p>
<p>ìI have been interrogated about every detail of my contacts with the press; who I have talked to, who Iíve met with, who else was there, what was said, if the talk was recorded, who called whom, and a line by line review of many articles and quotes,î Rost said.</p>
<p>Rost also told the Washington Post, “I was peppered with questions from morning to evening,” said Rost. “As a private citizen in a protected political activity, my concern was getting all these questions about my discussions with elected representatives,” on 10/1/04.</p>
<p>Rost was questioned about conversations with lawmakers and their staffs. “They were very specific about wanting to know everything I remembered from these conversations,” Rost said. “They wanted to know who was there, who said what,” the WP reported.</p>
<p>He told Independent Media, ìPfizer has also mapped all my contacts with Senators, Congressmen and their aids. I have been asked whom I met, at what time and where, who else was present, and Iíve been asked about every detail of my private conversation with Senators and Congressmen,î Rost said.</p>
<p>Apparently Pfizer also plans to monitor Rostís future political activities. He told Independent, ìIíve also had to answer questions about all my planned future political activity, which Senators, Congressmen and Governors have contacted me, where I will appear to speak, and who is paying for travel,î he said.</p>
<p>Rost said he only responded to the questions because he believed his refusal might have been used as grounds to fire him.</p>
<p>Pfizer spokesman, Jack Cox, wouldn’t discuss the nature of Rost’s daylong interview, but said, “the meeting was professional and entirely consistent with Pfizer’s policies regarding respect for employees,” according to a 9/30/04 article in Knight Ridder.</p>
<p>The top dogs at Pfizer have shown themselves to be true Republicans. True to form, when they can’t defeat the message, attack the messenger. This in depth questioning, is not the first indication that Pfizer was not too happy about Rostís activities.</p>
<p>On 9/28/04, Chuck Hardwick, a Pfizer senior vice president, sent a letter to Dorgan and other members of Congress attacking Rostís credentials and stating, “Dr. Rost has no qualifications to speak on importation, no responsibilities in this area at Pfizer, no knowledge of the information and analysis Pfizer has provided to the government on this issue, and no substantive grasp of how importation may impact the safety of this nation’s drug supply,” said the letter.</p>
<p>Of course it might be a bit embarrassing to have Rost support importing drugs, when Pfizer happens to be the highest-profile company cracking down wholesalers in Canada. It lead the industry effort against drug importation. In fact, CEO McKinnell threatened to blacklist Canadian pharmacies that sell drugs to Americans.</p>
<p>Right To Free Speech OK If Pfizer Says So</p>
<p>From day one, Rost made it clear to Independent that he did not in any way represent Pfizer. He does not believe he can be fired for making statements on his own time, because such activities are protected in New York, where Pfizer is located, and in New Jersey, where Rost resides, by laws that prohibit employment discrimination based on political beliefs.</p>
<p>Rost contends that he is within his rights to speak out irregardless of where he works. ìIt is important to remember that Pfizer employment matters are governed by New York State Law and New Jersey State Law, among others. According to the Office of New York State Attorney General, ìAn employee who is discharged because of his participation, on his own time, in lawful political or recreational activities can bring an action against his employer for damages and equitable relief,î quoting relevant laws.</p>
<p>Besides all that, if Rost was backing a candidate that Pfizer was supporting it would be permissible. Rost says Pfizer regularly distributes political literature to its employees, ìI also note that Dr. Hank McKinnell and his direct reports frequently use their positions within Pfizer to compel Pfizer employees to support political causes they believe inî Rost said. ìI regularly receive direct mails and e-mails from Dr. McKinnell suggesting that I make political financial contributions or that I contact my elected representatives on a particular issue. I also find posters at work encouraging political activity,î he added.</p>
<p>“When you do that as an employer, you also have to accept it if people are politically active about issues that you may not agree on. You can’t say it’s OK to just support certain things and not others,” Rost said.</p>
<p>Lawmakers And Media Come Out To Support Rost</p>
<p>Rep. Ann Northrup (R-Ky.) said that Hardwick’s letter concerning Rost was “insulting,” adding that it “regurgitated the same sorts of claims they have made in the past, claims that have been refuted.”</p>
<p>In response to the inappropriate tactics being used by Pfizer against Rost, members of Congress wrote a letter to Pfizer, on his behalf, condemning its intimidation of Rost. “If this is true, [Wednesday’s] interrogation, during which attorneys demanded details of private conversations with Members of Congress and their staffs, was clearly intended to intimidate Dr. Rost,” the letter said.</p>
<p>Rep Sanders, a Vermont independent, is also upset. “I find it an outrage that Pfizer would suggest that because somebody happens to work for Pfizer, that they’re not allowed to exercise their constitutional rights to support a particular piece of legislation. … My guess is those employees of Pfizer who are touting the company line in opposition of drug importation are not being brought before lawyers and cross-examined for hours,” he said.</p>
<p>The Associated Press lists the 7 lawmakers who signed the letter as: Bernard Sanders, I-Vt; Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill; Dan Burton, R-Ind; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.; Jim Langevin, D-RI; and Marion Berry, D-Ark.</p>
<p>It goes without saying that Independent Media plans to monitor this situation every single day. And at the same time, it goes without saying that Independent Media will be monitored.</p>
<p>Having said that, I’d advise Pfizer to pick its battles more carefully. Does it really want to go up against the press, politicians, Americans and especially senior citizens? It might want to rethink their strategy when attacking Peter Rost.</p>
<p>As Usual With Bush – Its About Money</p>
<p>Lawmakers also went to bat for Rost in Congress. “The issue of safety is a hoax, and when somebody tells you it is not about money, folks, it is about money,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel. The Illinois Democrat pointed out on the House floor that Rost disputed his industry’s position that importation can’t be done safely.</p>
<p>Rost says that at times, he felt pressured to donate money to specific candidates. “The push from Pfizer to donate part of my Pfizer salary to political causes is very strong. After I failed to pay $2,000 for a political fundraiser sponsored by Pfizer in 2003 I was contacted by Mr. Hank McKinnell, through a secretary who said she called on his behalf, reminding me to attend,î he said.</p>
<p>ìI would hope that a company that so closely tracks political activity and donations among its employees and supports employee political activism also will tolerate dissenting individual initiatives that allow our democracy to flourish,î Rost said.</p>
<p>Rostís assertions about Pfizer financially supporting politicians were easy enough to verify. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that monitors political contributions, Pfizer and its PACs are the largest contributors among drug companies, forking out $1.15 million in the 2004 cycle, with two-thirds of that amount going to Republicans. And lets take a look at Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell. He is a Bush Ranger, which means he has raised more than $200,000 for Bush’s reelection. Until last year, he served as chairman of the board for Pharma. Pfizer is one of the most profitable companies in the country and it spent $3.7 million on Washington lobbying in 2003.</p>
<p>As of July, 2004, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bush has already received $ $844,349 from the Pharmaceutical Industry. This figure already dwarfs his 2000 total of $499,283. [Source: Center for Responsive Politics, July 2004].</p>
<p>I just had an amusing thought. When Bush gets booted out of the White House, whoís going to funnel pay-off money to the industry? Or are they about even now?</p>
<p>Industry Pay-Offs</p>
<p>During a recent debate on the issue, Congressman Burton said this is a perfect example, in my opinion, of where a special interest, the pharmaceutical industry, has been able to manipulate the Congress and the government of the United States to their benefit, and to the detriment of the American taxpayer and the American people.</p>
<p>Burton says the new law makes it clear the industry got its money’s worth. He says billions of dollars are in it for drug companies in this new Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit.</p>
<p>A 1/15/04 report by Campaign Money Watch, asked “How blatant is the pay-to-play system between the pharmaceutical industry and those in powerful political positions in Washington? Consider this sentence from a letter from then RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson to then Bristol-Meyers CEO Charles Heimbold:</p>
<p>ìWe must keep the lines of communication open if we want to continue passing legislation that will benefit your industry.î”</p>
<p>The company and its employees have given over $4 million to federal candidates and party committees since 1999, over 80% to Republicans. Heinbold is no longer CEO of Bristol because he was appointed by Bush to be US Ambassador to Sweden, the reports adds.</p>
<p>The big shots of the industry were also out in full force during the Republican Convention. Among the drug company financed functions were 2 breakfasts, sponsored by Pfizer, for Oregon delegates, a state that has recently sought permission from the federal government to import cheaper drugs from Canada.</p>
<p>What Does Bush Say About Importation?</p>
<p>Just listen to what Bush had to say in return for all that money, to make sure the bills wouldn’t be passed. “Before I’ll allow that to happen, I’m going to make sure that you’re safe,” Bush said. “Because all you need to do is get a batch of drugs manufactured elsewhere that sounds like they’re legitimate and get sick, and then you’re going to be wondering, where were the people, why weren’t they doing their jobs of protecting consumer safety?” And he said this with a straight smirk.</p>
<p>And it gets better. At a health care forum in Blaine, Minn, Bush said, “Let me talk real quick about a subject I know is on your mind,” claiming his administration is studying the issue. “I know it sounds attractive to some, importation of drugs. And it may work. But, sure enough, if we’re not careful, drugs manufactured in the Third World over which we have no control could use Canada as a way to get into this state. And then we got a problem, a safety problem,” the New York Times reported on 9/16/04.</p>
<p>Is there any issue on which Bush won’t try to use the terrorist fear tactics? Never mind that he allows the importation of everything else. “The president would import sneakers from Taiwan, T shirts from Hong Kong and coffee from Colombia,” said Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.). “But drugs from Canada, no way! Again, the drug companies win and the seniors lose.” Newsday on 9/18/04.</p>
<p>Ya know, somebody ought to tell Bush that while out on the campaign trail, he should really knock of the phony caring act; his words donít match his arrogant personality or his cowboy swagger.</p>
<p>Bush And Drugmakers Cut Off Supplies In One Way Or Another</p>
<p>Several of the world’s biggest drug makers are restricting supply to online Canadian pharmacies that ship to the US, leading to delays of several weeks for many customers. In severe cases, some sites have stopped accepting new clients looking for the hardest-to-get medications, according to the 9/15/04 South Bend Tribune.</p>
<p>Rost is upset that companies are cutting off supplies. “It strikes me as immoral to limit trade to Canada under the guise that it is unsafe,” he said in a telephone interview. “The big safety issue is people not taking drugs — people having heart attacks because they can’t afford to stay on cholesterol-lowering medication,” he told the Boston Globe on 9/23/04.</p>
<p>But thatës not all they are up to. For his part of the bargain, Bush is striking out with the power of the government. “Hundreds of people in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Vermont had their Canadian prescription-drug orders seized and thousands more had their shipments delayed after about 450 packages arriving in Miami from the Bahamas were seized by U.S. Customs in July,” USA Today reported on 9/16/04.</p>
<p>“The seizure was the first large-scale effort by U.S. Customs and the Food and Drug Administration to halt prescription shipments from Canadian pharmacies, although individual packages have been halted in the past.” USA says.</p>
<p>“We have hundreds of seniors calling our office, saying, ‘Where are my prescription drugs?’ ” says Chris Lisi, spokeswoman for Sen Mark Dayton, D-Minn, who strongly supports allowing importation of lower-cost drugs from Canada. Dayton and Democrat Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle protested the FDA seizure.</p>
<p>Dayton issued a statement and responded to comments from seniors whose drugs were seized, saying, ”Rather than scaring Minnesota seniors and taking their affordable prescription drugs, FDA should focus its resources on working with Congress to create legislation that would facilitate safe and legal drug importation. We should be confiscating only those packages that come from unknown or questionable sources or contain suspicious substances, not medicines sent to America’s seniors from reputable Canadian pharmacies” (Miami Herald, 9/15).</p>
<p>According to an article on 9/15/04 by Associated Press, ìDemocratic Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold said in a letter to the agency they have received dozens of complaints from Wisconsin residents that the FDA had intercepted their orders of prescription drugs.î The senators said they were “concerned that the FDA’s actions could pose health risks to American consumers” and asked if the FDA plans “to use any other enforcement mechanisms to try to curtail the purchase of prescription drugs from Canada.”</p>
<p>Wisconsin Gov Jim Doyle said the seizure shows that the Bush administration has “decided it will do whatever it can to protect drug company profits.”</p>
<p>And if you think this is bad, just wait and see whatís in store for Americans if Bush is elected to 4 more years when he wonít be facing reelection and can drop the phony caring act.</p>
<p>Canada Is Very Insulted</p>
<p>Rost has said that some of Bushís argument about the safety of drugs are greatly exaggerated like the one above. When the FDA Acting Chief Lester Crawford made the outlandish suggestion that terrorists could use imported drugs from Canada to poison Americans, he found it ridiculous.</p>
<p>Rost said, “Drugs from Canada are absolutely, positively safe,” he said in a 9/18/04 phone interview with the Winnipeg Free Press. “What has been said (by Internet opponents) about Canadian drugs is, quite frankly, insulting, I would think, if I were a Canadian. Let’s get real. It’s exactly the same product that the same (pharmaceutical) companies are selling in Canada that they are selling in the U.S.”</p>
<p>And indeed Canadians are insulted. At a convention of the Iowa Association of Health Underwriters, Canada’s former prime minister defended the safety of his country’s prescription-drug system during an appearance in Des Moines, according to the Des Moines Register on 9/16/04.</p>
<p>Jean Chretien, who retired last year, dismissed claims that Canada’s drug-inspection system is less effective than the United States’. “Do you think we’re crazy in Canada – that we would let people sell unsafe drugs?” he said. “Do you think that as prime minister I would face the Canadian people and say, ‘Too bad, you know, but we don’t inspect drugs?’ . . . I hope you agree with me that we’re not that uncivilized,” the Register reports.</p>
<p>Of course I agree that Canadians are not crazy or uncivilized. If only the same could be said about the current occupant of our White House.</p>
<p>Bogus Research and Development Excuse</p>
<p>Pfizer questions Rost ability to understand the research and development issue. The industry says importing drugs would hurt profits that are relied upon to pay for research. Pfizer says Rost has ignored his company’s extensive research.</p>
<p>I found that funny because I thought Rost sounded fairly knowledgeable on the topic. He seemed to grasp the amount of money involved in research. According to the 9/28/04 Missourian, at news conference, Rost said that of drug giant Merckís $22.5 billion in annual sales, it spent $3.2 billion on research and development and $3.3 billion on stock dividends and reported a profit of $6.8 billion. Although Merck would lose money if the legislation passed, he said, drug companies would still be profitable enough to encourage investment in research.</p>
<p>So Rost doesnít know what heís talking about on the subject of importation? Well he sure had me fooled.</p>
<p>Lawmakers Become Willing To Break The Law</p>
<p>Legislatures all over the country are responding to demands from their constituents, with 24 states considering bills to import drugs from Canada or elsewhere. West Virginia, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Vermont and Rhode Island have already enacted laws that take the first steps toward engaging in broad imports of prescription medicines from Canada, although the federal government is challenging the legality of some of the programs, according to the LA Times on 9/30/94.</p>
<p>Many state and local governments are vowing to disregard federal laws. According to the 10/1/04 Bangor Daily News, Maine will challenge the federal DHHS by initiating a program to re-import drugs from Canada, Gov John Baldacci announced: ìThe state can’t wait … for the federal government to enact reforms that ensure affordable access to medications for all Americans and will instead take action on behalf of Maine citizens.î</p>
<p>Indiana Gov Joe Kernan says his state will help hundreds of thousands of public employees save money on prescription drugs next year one way or another, according to the 9/16/04 Washington Times.</p>
<p>Kernan plans to bring healthcare providers, business leaders and government officials together in early December to find ways to lower prescription drugs costs for state employees and eventually all Hoosiers, the Indianapolis Star Tribune said. If no state or federal solution is found by March 1, 2005, Kernan said he would support ways to help Hoosiers reimport drugs from Canada and other countries.</p>
<p>According to the 8/16/04 Boston Herald, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and city officials “shrugged off” a warning in a letter sent by FDA Associate Commissioner William Hubbard about the safety risks of a program that allows some city employees and retirees to reimport lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada.</p>
<p>In the letter, Hubbard asked Menino to end the “Meds by Mail” program, which began in August. About 14,000 city employees, retirees and their dependents covered under the city health plan qualify for the program. Boston officials have distributed more than 840 applications for the program.</p>
<p>Calgary-based Total Care Pharmacy provides the medications, and Menino has said that the contract between the city and the pharmacy requires safety measures and ensures quality. Hubbard warned that the FDA in the future might ask a judge to issue an injunction against the program but currently seeks to convince Boston officials to end the program voluntarily (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 8/5).</p>
<p>Since March, Wisconsin has filled 1,663 prescriptions under a state reimportation program. Susan Reinardy, a Wisconsin Department of Public Health and Family Services administrator, said that although in the early stages of the program Total Care shipped three generic medications not approved by FDA, the problem has not continued. “We’re very happy with their responsiveness,” she added (Boston Herald, 8/6).</p>
<p>Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Wisconsin all have websites that connect consumers to Canada drug importation companies. Additionally, the governors of Illinois, Iowa, Oregon, Vermont and West Virginia have come out in favor of importation (Stateline.org, Sept 14, 2004, “Minnesota gov. leads fight for legal Rx importsì).</p>
<p>Other Actions Against The Bush Drug Gang</p>
<p>Bush and his cronies in the industry are being hit from every angle. According to the 9/6/04 issue of American Medical News, Vermont has now sued the federal government for the right to reimport prescription medications.</p>
<p>The lawsuit alleges that the government wrongly denied Vermont’s request to establish a reimportation program. The FDA rejected the request claiming it was worried about drug safety. The lawsuit is the first of its kind.</p>
<p>Gov James Douglas, says, “Vermont will not sit back and watch as the cost of health insurance and prescription drugs continues to rise. Nor are we content to simply ignore the law,” Douglas said. “Real leadership means challenging those laws and policies you oppose and working within our systems to change them,” notes American Medical.</p>
<p>In the law suit, the Vermont claims the FDA violated the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. Officials say the law requires the federal government to create rules that allow wholesalers, pharmacists and state benefit programs to import drugs and calls for the government to give guidance on the circumstances under which the FDA would give waivers allowing importation for personal use.</p>
<p>Vermont claims the Bush administration has done neither and is asking the court to require the government to establish rules and guidelines promptly. “It is our hope and expectation that Vermont’s leadership will result in a legal precedent that benefits every Vermonter and every American,” Douglas said, “The ultimate goal is to get the best possible market prices at our pharmacies here at home.î</p>
<p>On another front, saying Kentucky could save more than $100 million a year in health care costs, state Auditor Crit Luallen called on the state to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada, according to the 9/29/04 Currier Journal. If Gov Ernie Fletcher agrees, Kentucky would join other states, including Illinois, Maryland, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Vermont, in seeking federal waivers to allow the importation of drugs from Canada. Almost two-thirds of Kentuckians want the federal government to make it easier to buy prescription drugs from Canada and other countries, according to a Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll conducted in May. Kentucky Rep Anne Northup, R-Louisville, is also pushing federal legislation to allow prescription drug sales from Canada.</p>
<p>The battleground has been set between the States and the White House. If Bush and Pharma want to continue the war of blocking ways for Americans to obtain affordable prescription drugs, they had better be ready to do a lot more than harass employees who refuse to turn a blind eye to their corruption.</p>
<p>Rost Vows To Stay The Course</p>
<p>Peter Rost vows to continue his support of importation efforts no matter what Pfizer does or doesnít do. In closing, he shared some personal thoughts that would never in a million years lead anyone to think that he is employed in the pharmaceutical industry:</p>
<p>–I donít believe we are put on this earth to make as much money as we can. –I donít think weíre here to rip off the weakest and poorest. –We are here to help each other and make it a better world.</p>
<p>EVELYN PRINGLE lives in Miamisburg, Ohio and can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2004/10/14/free-speech-banned-by-big-pharma/
|
2004-10-14
| 4left
|
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma
<p>When Bush signed the new Medicare bill on Dec. 8, 2003, he called it “the greatest advance in health care coverage for America’s seniors since the founding of Medicare” in 1965. No he did not say this on Saturday Night Live, he said it at the White House.</p>
<p>The bill did more for the pharmaceutical industry than it did for seniors citizens. Drug companies can continue to charge outrageous prices because Republicans refuse to allow the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and other countries.</p>
<p>Prescription drug spending is rising faster than any other health care expense. In 2003, total spending by Medicare beneficiaries on prescription drugs was $95 billion and senior citizens account for nearly 34% of all prescriptions sold.</p>
<p>The US is the only industrialized country without some form of price controls on drugs. It also accounts for more than half of the industry’s profits. And profits would have to be high because according to recent reports from the top pharmaceutical companies, CEO compensation packages range from $23.9 million to $150.9 million for one year.</p>
<p>Who Is Peter Rost?</p>
<p>Peter Rost is a physician and pharmaceutical industry executive who began advocating for drug importation after he posted a positive review on Amazon.com about the book “The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What To Do About It,” written by former New England Journal of Medicine editor Marcia Angell.</p>
<p>On September 10, 2004, Rost, was a featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Society for Professional Journalists, and openly criticized the high cost of prescription drugs and the efforts by the pharmaceutical industry and politicians to block the importation of cheaper drug from other countries, according to Independent Media TV on 9/16/04</p>
<p>Rost is the first drug-industry executive to dispute publicly the industry and federal government position that importing drugs isn’t safe. Rost, citing extensive experience with importing drug in Europe, says it is perfectly safe, according to Knight Ridder on 9/30/04.</p>
<p>For the past 20 years, Rost has been marketing pharmaceuticals and he is currently a Vice President with Pfizer. Rost says that his #1 concern is for the people who can not afford their prescription drugs. He believes that people going without medication is a “bigger safety issue than anything else,” Independent reports.</p>
<p>Rost said that “[d]rug companies are testifying that imported drugs are unsafe. Nothing could be further from the truth” (St. Paul Pioneer Press, 9/24).</p>
<p>Does Importation Work? Springfield MA – A Case Study</p>
<p>According to FACSNET, in 1996, the city of Springfield, Mass, paid $33 million in health care costs. This year, the cost is estimated at $70 million, according to Michael Albano, who was mayor of Springfield from 1996 to January of 2004.</p>
<p>Albano and Peter Rost both spoke on the importation issue at the Sept 10, 2004, FACS seminar at the Society of Professional Journalists convention.</p>
<p>Albano says, ìDuring my eight years as mayor, I watched this health care crisis develop: a 5 percent increase the first year, 10 percent, 15 to 20 percent increases … It became abundantly apparent that no corporation in America, and cities are corporations, could sustain that type of growth without going bankrupt. As a business, you fold; but as a government, you have to continue to provide services that citizens expect, deserve and demand,î Albano said.</p>
<p>Of the $33 million that Springfield paid for health care in 1996, prescription drugs accounted for $8.6 million. This year, out of $70 million in health care costs, prescription drugs will cost about $20 million. (Springfield has about 7,000 employees and 2,000 retirees and dependents. The employee numbers have changed little over the eight-year period.)</p>
<p>ìPrices have more than doubled for the same amount of prescription medication,î Albano said. While Albano was mayor, the situation presented a tough choice: Find a way to reduce health care costs or cut city services.</p>
<p>ìI said, ëThatís enough,íî Albano said. ìSo I took trip to Windsor, Ontario. I looked at some pharmacies and selected a Canadian provider. And what a surprise: the exact same medications, the exact same name brands ñ no difference whatsoeverî ñ except the price.</p>
<p>ìIn the first year the city implemented the program, it saved $3 million. This year the city will save about $6.5 million,î Albano said. ìThis is substantial for a city the size of Springfield,î he said. Springfield is now considered a pioneer in the many efforts to legalize drug re-importation from Canada.</p>
<p>Rost openly lauded Albanoís efforts and successes in bringing affordable prescription drugs to Springfield.</p>
<p>Lawmakers Want Vote On Importation</p>
<p>Bush and Republican leaders in Congress are refusing to allow a quick vote on a bill for drug importation, even though many rank-and-file Republicans in Congress and most Democrats back the idea, says the New York Times on 9/16/04.</p>
<p>Sen Byron Dorgan (D-ND) has co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R- Maine) that would allow Americans to buy drugs from such heavily regulated nations as Canada, where some prescription drugs can cost as much as 50 percent less than in the United States. The bill is designed to provide American consumers with some relief from escalating drug prices.</p>
<p>Dorgan and several other lawmakers held press conferences to rally support for a vote to be taken on the importation bill, which has languished in the Senate for several months.</p>
<p>The House of Representatives has already passed a bill allowing FDA-approved drugs to be imported from Canada and other countries. But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has refused to allow a similar bill to come up for a vote in the Senate.</p>
<p>Supporters wrote to Frist urging him to find time before the November elections to schedule a promised vote. Missouri Republican Jo Ann Emerson and other members of Congress say the law would pass if Frist would bring it to the floor, the Missourian reports.</p>
<p>According to The Hill on 9/14/04, Dorgan spokesman Barry Piatt said reimportation supporters would seek a vote regardless of Fristís position. ìItís going to happen,î Piatt said, adding that ìeverything that comes to the floorî is a possible vehicle.</p>
<p>Piatt said Dorganís reimportation bill has ìbroad consensus support in the Senate and in the country.î A Democratic staffer said the Dorgan bill may have 60 votes, says the Hill.</p>
<p>Democrats said the Food and Drug Administration had no record of any dangers presented by imported drugs. They argued that leading Republicans were using safety as an excuse to protect drug companies that charge more domestically for their products.</p>
<p>Sen Byron Dorgan (D-ND), said, “Miracle drugs offer no miracles for people who cannot take them” because of the cost. Rep Marion Berry (D-Ark) said, “Here we are in a global economy, and the United States allows these drug companies to take advantage and rob our own people. That can’t continue,ì Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 9/24.</p>
<p>Now Frists claims, “I don’t think we can address it adequately in the next 17 days.” That’s despite the fact that members of both parties in Congress support what is being called drug importation and it’s extremely popular with the public, which will decide whether to re-elect members of Congress in November, according to the 9/18/04 Enquirer.</p>
<p>In fact, according to the New York Times, Frist now says the Senate likely will not have time to debate the legislation this year, and Frist spokesperson Amy Call added, “Until he sees a way we can do this safely, he won’t put the American people in jeopardy” by allowing drug importation, the Times reported on 9/24.</p>
<p>Dorgan claims that Frist made a commitment in March to allow a vote this year, in exchange for Dorgan agreeing not to block the confirmation of Mark McClellan as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Dorgan said, “I think he ought to keep that commitment.î</p>
<p>I hate to say it but I guess the naive Dorgan is going to have to find out the hard way that a commitment by a Bush-Puppet Republican is meaningless.</p>
<p>Rost Speaks Out – At His Own Peril</p>
<p>Over the past month, Peter Rost has spoken out in favor of the various bills under consideration by Congress and state governments, that would allow the importation of cheaper drugs into the US from other countries.</p>
<p>Rost became the first drug industry executives to speak out in support of reimporting drugs from Canada. At all activities, Rost stressed that he was speaking as a private citizen and not as a Pfizer representative. Nothing could have been made this more clear.</p>
<p>On Sept 23, Rost attended a Washington rally with about 10 lawmakers to support a bill to legalize the sale and use of imported drugs from other countries where drugs are between 30% to 70% cheaper than in the US. He also attended a rally with Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) the following day, in attempt to convince Republican senators to allow a vote on the drug reimportation bill.</p>
<p>Drug companies have consistently opposed the move, arguing that US regulators could not guarantee the safety or quality of drugs brought in from other countries. But Rost counters that argument with the fact that European countries have used importation safely for 20 years, and he says drugmakers will “say anything” to prevent cheaper drugs from entering the US market.</p>
<p>Rost warns that, “The industry is making a big political mistake right now to fight reimportation,î he added, “The biggest safety issue is people not taking the drugs they need,î at the news conference with Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Reps. Dan Burton (R-Ind), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) and Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill) (Wall Street Journal, 9/22).</p>
<p>ìA lot of people cannot afford life-saving drugs. Drug re-importation provides an alternative supply at lower prices for people who cannot afford the full price,î Rost said. He said Europe has been trading pharmaceuticals for decades with no negative consequences. ìThe European union mandates free trade and movement of goods. Companies specialize in doing nothing but buying drugs cheaply and importing then to northern countries,î Rost said.</p>
<p>Rost says, ìDrugs donít work if you donít take them. If you canít afford them, you canít use them,î he said. ìDrugs are supposed to improve life and make us healthy. In the US, we have shorter life expectancy and higher infant mortality rates than host of other developed countries ñ Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Belgium, etc. … I hope speaking out will not only help patients but also wake up the drug companies.î</p>
<p>Sen Snowe (R-Maine) added, “If European countries can safety trade prescription drugs, the United States should be up to the task as well,” New York Times, 9/24.</p>
<p>According to Rost, “Holding up a vote on importation … has a high cost not just in money, but in American lives. Every day we delay, Americans die because they cannot afford life-saving drugs.” NYT / Sept 24th, 2004</p>
<p>Dr. Alan Sager, a researcher at the Boston University, says the same thing. “It is an abomination that any American continues to suffer pain, disease and premature death for lack of needed medications,” he said.</p>
<p>Do Bush or his industry cronies or his Republican allies in Congress care that people are going without their life-saving drugs? Not for a minute.</p>
<p>No Free Speech For Pfizer Employees</p>
<p>So much for free speech if you work for a drug company. Pfizer has recently launched an investigation of Rostís political activities. Rost has informed Independent Media that Pfizer has started an investigation and the law firm Orrick, Herrington &amp; Sutcliffe, LLP in New York will conduct the inquiry.</p>
<p>Rost told Independent, ìThe Pfizer inquiry came as a surprise to me, since I have always stated that I speak as a private citizen and do not in any way represent Pfizer in my public appearances and also do not comment on Pfizer. I am simply exercising my constitutional right to campaign for a candidate, a bill or an issue on the political agenda.î</p>
<p>Depth of Probe</p>
<p>Rostís attorney, David Green of Morristown, NJ, said Rost was first questioned about his contacts with reporters on Sept. 21. Rost said the Pfizer lawyer asked him to list all of his contacts with the media and noted Rostís quotes in news articles.</p>
<p>In response to Independentís questions about his Pfizer interview, Rost says, ì(I) spent a long and very intense day … answering detailed questions about all my contacts with the press and my private discussions with Senators and Congressmen. The questioning was so intense that we didnít even break for lunch until 2:30 p.m.î</p>
<p>ìI have been interrogated about every detail of my contacts with the press; who I have talked to, who Iíve met with, who else was there, what was said, if the talk was recorded, who called whom, and a line by line review of many articles and quotes,î Rost said.</p>
<p>Rost also told the Washington Post, “I was peppered with questions from morning to evening,” said Rost. “As a private citizen in a protected political activity, my concern was getting all these questions about my discussions with elected representatives,” on 10/1/04.</p>
<p>Rost was questioned about conversations with lawmakers and their staffs. “They were very specific about wanting to know everything I remembered from these conversations,” Rost said. “They wanted to know who was there, who said what,” the WP reported.</p>
<p>He told Independent Media, ìPfizer has also mapped all my contacts with Senators, Congressmen and their aids. I have been asked whom I met, at what time and where, who else was present, and Iíve been asked about every detail of my private conversation with Senators and Congressmen,î Rost said.</p>
<p>Apparently Pfizer also plans to monitor Rostís future political activities. He told Independent, ìIíve also had to answer questions about all my planned future political activity, which Senators, Congressmen and Governors have contacted me, where I will appear to speak, and who is paying for travel,î he said.</p>
<p>Rost said he only responded to the questions because he believed his refusal might have been used as grounds to fire him.</p>
<p>Pfizer spokesman, Jack Cox, wouldn’t discuss the nature of Rost’s daylong interview, but said, “the meeting was professional and entirely consistent with Pfizer’s policies regarding respect for employees,” according to a 9/30/04 article in Knight Ridder.</p>
<p>The top dogs at Pfizer have shown themselves to be true Republicans. True to form, when they can’t defeat the message, attack the messenger. This in depth questioning, is not the first indication that Pfizer was not too happy about Rostís activities.</p>
<p>On 9/28/04, Chuck Hardwick, a Pfizer senior vice president, sent a letter to Dorgan and other members of Congress attacking Rostís credentials and stating, “Dr. Rost has no qualifications to speak on importation, no responsibilities in this area at Pfizer, no knowledge of the information and analysis Pfizer has provided to the government on this issue, and no substantive grasp of how importation may impact the safety of this nation’s drug supply,” said the letter.</p>
<p>Of course it might be a bit embarrassing to have Rost support importing drugs, when Pfizer happens to be the highest-profile company cracking down wholesalers in Canada. It lead the industry effort against drug importation. In fact, CEO McKinnell threatened to blacklist Canadian pharmacies that sell drugs to Americans.</p>
<p>Right To Free Speech OK If Pfizer Says So</p>
<p>From day one, Rost made it clear to Independent that he did not in any way represent Pfizer. He does not believe he can be fired for making statements on his own time, because such activities are protected in New York, where Pfizer is located, and in New Jersey, where Rost resides, by laws that prohibit employment discrimination based on political beliefs.</p>
<p>Rost contends that he is within his rights to speak out irregardless of where he works. ìIt is important to remember that Pfizer employment matters are governed by New York State Law and New Jersey State Law, among others. According to the Office of New York State Attorney General, ìAn employee who is discharged because of his participation, on his own time, in lawful political or recreational activities can bring an action against his employer for damages and equitable relief,î quoting relevant laws.</p>
<p>Besides all that, if Rost was backing a candidate that Pfizer was supporting it would be permissible. Rost says Pfizer regularly distributes political literature to its employees, ìI also note that Dr. Hank McKinnell and his direct reports frequently use their positions within Pfizer to compel Pfizer employees to support political causes they believe inî Rost said. ìI regularly receive direct mails and e-mails from Dr. McKinnell suggesting that I make political financial contributions or that I contact my elected representatives on a particular issue. I also find posters at work encouraging political activity,î he added.</p>
<p>“When you do that as an employer, you also have to accept it if people are politically active about issues that you may not agree on. You can’t say it’s OK to just support certain things and not others,” Rost said.</p>
<p>Lawmakers And Media Come Out To Support Rost</p>
<p>Rep. Ann Northrup (R-Ky.) said that Hardwick’s letter concerning Rost was “insulting,” adding that it “regurgitated the same sorts of claims they have made in the past, claims that have been refuted.”</p>
<p>In response to the inappropriate tactics being used by Pfizer against Rost, members of Congress wrote a letter to Pfizer, on his behalf, condemning its intimidation of Rost. “If this is true, [Wednesday’s] interrogation, during which attorneys demanded details of private conversations with Members of Congress and their staffs, was clearly intended to intimidate Dr. Rost,” the letter said.</p>
<p>Rep Sanders, a Vermont independent, is also upset. “I find it an outrage that Pfizer would suggest that because somebody happens to work for Pfizer, that they’re not allowed to exercise their constitutional rights to support a particular piece of legislation. … My guess is those employees of Pfizer who are touting the company line in opposition of drug importation are not being brought before lawyers and cross-examined for hours,” he said.</p>
<p>The Associated Press lists the 7 lawmakers who signed the letter as: Bernard Sanders, I-Vt; Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill; Dan Burton, R-Ind; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.; Jim Langevin, D-RI; and Marion Berry, D-Ark.</p>
<p>It goes without saying that Independent Media plans to monitor this situation every single day. And at the same time, it goes without saying that Independent Media will be monitored.</p>
<p>Having said that, I’d advise Pfizer to pick its battles more carefully. Does it really want to go up against the press, politicians, Americans and especially senior citizens? It might want to rethink their strategy when attacking Peter Rost.</p>
<p>As Usual With Bush – Its About Money</p>
<p>Lawmakers also went to bat for Rost in Congress. “The issue of safety is a hoax, and when somebody tells you it is not about money, folks, it is about money,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel. The Illinois Democrat pointed out on the House floor that Rost disputed his industry’s position that importation can’t be done safely.</p>
<p>Rost says that at times, he felt pressured to donate money to specific candidates. “The push from Pfizer to donate part of my Pfizer salary to political causes is very strong. After I failed to pay $2,000 for a political fundraiser sponsored by Pfizer in 2003 I was contacted by Mr. Hank McKinnell, through a secretary who said she called on his behalf, reminding me to attend,î he said.</p>
<p>ìI would hope that a company that so closely tracks political activity and donations among its employees and supports employee political activism also will tolerate dissenting individual initiatives that allow our democracy to flourish,î Rost said.</p>
<p>Rostís assertions about Pfizer financially supporting politicians were easy enough to verify. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that monitors political contributions, Pfizer and its PACs are the largest contributors among drug companies, forking out $1.15 million in the 2004 cycle, with two-thirds of that amount going to Republicans. And lets take a look at Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell. He is a Bush Ranger, which means he has raised more than $200,000 for Bush’s reelection. Until last year, he served as chairman of the board for Pharma. Pfizer is one of the most profitable companies in the country and it spent $3.7 million on Washington lobbying in 2003.</p>
<p>As of July, 2004, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bush has already received $ $844,349 from the Pharmaceutical Industry. This figure already dwarfs his 2000 total of $499,283. [Source: Center for Responsive Politics, July 2004].</p>
<p>I just had an amusing thought. When Bush gets booted out of the White House, whoís going to funnel pay-off money to the industry? Or are they about even now?</p>
<p>Industry Pay-Offs</p>
<p>During a recent debate on the issue, Congressman Burton said this is a perfect example, in my opinion, of where a special interest, the pharmaceutical industry, has been able to manipulate the Congress and the government of the United States to their benefit, and to the detriment of the American taxpayer and the American people.</p>
<p>Burton says the new law makes it clear the industry got its money’s worth. He says billions of dollars are in it for drug companies in this new Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit.</p>
<p>A 1/15/04 report by Campaign Money Watch, asked “How blatant is the pay-to-play system between the pharmaceutical industry and those in powerful political positions in Washington? Consider this sentence from a letter from then RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson to then Bristol-Meyers CEO Charles Heimbold:</p>
<p>ìWe must keep the lines of communication open if we want to continue passing legislation that will benefit your industry.î”</p>
<p>The company and its employees have given over $4 million to federal candidates and party committees since 1999, over 80% to Republicans. Heinbold is no longer CEO of Bristol because he was appointed by Bush to be US Ambassador to Sweden, the reports adds.</p>
<p>The big shots of the industry were also out in full force during the Republican Convention. Among the drug company financed functions were 2 breakfasts, sponsored by Pfizer, for Oregon delegates, a state that has recently sought permission from the federal government to import cheaper drugs from Canada.</p>
<p>What Does Bush Say About Importation?</p>
<p>Just listen to what Bush had to say in return for all that money, to make sure the bills wouldn’t be passed. “Before I’ll allow that to happen, I’m going to make sure that you’re safe,” Bush said. “Because all you need to do is get a batch of drugs manufactured elsewhere that sounds like they’re legitimate and get sick, and then you’re going to be wondering, where were the people, why weren’t they doing their jobs of protecting consumer safety?” And he said this with a straight smirk.</p>
<p>And it gets better. At a health care forum in Blaine, Minn, Bush said, “Let me talk real quick about a subject I know is on your mind,” claiming his administration is studying the issue. “I know it sounds attractive to some, importation of drugs. And it may work. But, sure enough, if we’re not careful, drugs manufactured in the Third World over which we have no control could use Canada as a way to get into this state. And then we got a problem, a safety problem,” the New York Times reported on 9/16/04.</p>
<p>Is there any issue on which Bush won’t try to use the terrorist fear tactics? Never mind that he allows the importation of everything else. “The president would import sneakers from Taiwan, T shirts from Hong Kong and coffee from Colombia,” said Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.). “But drugs from Canada, no way! Again, the drug companies win and the seniors lose.” Newsday on 9/18/04.</p>
<p>Ya know, somebody ought to tell Bush that while out on the campaign trail, he should really knock of the phony caring act; his words donít match his arrogant personality or his cowboy swagger.</p>
<p>Bush And Drugmakers Cut Off Supplies In One Way Or Another</p>
<p>Several of the world’s biggest drug makers are restricting supply to online Canadian pharmacies that ship to the US, leading to delays of several weeks for many customers. In severe cases, some sites have stopped accepting new clients looking for the hardest-to-get medications, according to the 9/15/04 South Bend Tribune.</p>
<p>Rost is upset that companies are cutting off supplies. “It strikes me as immoral to limit trade to Canada under the guise that it is unsafe,” he said in a telephone interview. “The big safety issue is people not taking drugs — people having heart attacks because they can’t afford to stay on cholesterol-lowering medication,” he told the Boston Globe on 9/23/04.</p>
<p>But thatës not all they are up to. For his part of the bargain, Bush is striking out with the power of the government. “Hundreds of people in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Vermont had their Canadian prescription-drug orders seized and thousands more had their shipments delayed after about 450 packages arriving in Miami from the Bahamas were seized by U.S. Customs in July,” USA Today reported on 9/16/04.</p>
<p>“The seizure was the first large-scale effort by U.S. Customs and the Food and Drug Administration to halt prescription shipments from Canadian pharmacies, although individual packages have been halted in the past.” USA says.</p>
<p>“We have hundreds of seniors calling our office, saying, ‘Where are my prescription drugs?’ ” says Chris Lisi, spokeswoman for Sen Mark Dayton, D-Minn, who strongly supports allowing importation of lower-cost drugs from Canada. Dayton and Democrat Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle protested the FDA seizure.</p>
<p>Dayton issued a statement and responded to comments from seniors whose drugs were seized, saying, ”Rather than scaring Minnesota seniors and taking their affordable prescription drugs, FDA should focus its resources on working with Congress to create legislation that would facilitate safe and legal drug importation. We should be confiscating only those packages that come from unknown or questionable sources or contain suspicious substances, not medicines sent to America’s seniors from reputable Canadian pharmacies” (Miami Herald, 9/15).</p>
<p>According to an article on 9/15/04 by Associated Press, ìDemocratic Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold said in a letter to the agency they have received dozens of complaints from Wisconsin residents that the FDA had intercepted their orders of prescription drugs.î The senators said they were “concerned that the FDA’s actions could pose health risks to American consumers” and asked if the FDA plans “to use any other enforcement mechanisms to try to curtail the purchase of prescription drugs from Canada.”</p>
<p>Wisconsin Gov Jim Doyle said the seizure shows that the Bush administration has “decided it will do whatever it can to protect drug company profits.”</p>
<p>And if you think this is bad, just wait and see whatís in store for Americans if Bush is elected to 4 more years when he wonít be facing reelection and can drop the phony caring act.</p>
<p>Canada Is Very Insulted</p>
<p>Rost has said that some of Bushís argument about the safety of drugs are greatly exaggerated like the one above. When the FDA Acting Chief Lester Crawford made the outlandish suggestion that terrorists could use imported drugs from Canada to poison Americans, he found it ridiculous.</p>
<p>Rost said, “Drugs from Canada are absolutely, positively safe,” he said in a 9/18/04 phone interview with the Winnipeg Free Press. “What has been said (by Internet opponents) about Canadian drugs is, quite frankly, insulting, I would think, if I were a Canadian. Let’s get real. It’s exactly the same product that the same (pharmaceutical) companies are selling in Canada that they are selling in the U.S.”</p>
<p>And indeed Canadians are insulted. At a convention of the Iowa Association of Health Underwriters, Canada’s former prime minister defended the safety of his country’s prescription-drug system during an appearance in Des Moines, according to the Des Moines Register on 9/16/04.</p>
<p>Jean Chretien, who retired last year, dismissed claims that Canada’s drug-inspection system is less effective than the United States’. “Do you think we’re crazy in Canada – that we would let people sell unsafe drugs?” he said. “Do you think that as prime minister I would face the Canadian people and say, ‘Too bad, you know, but we don’t inspect drugs?’ . . . I hope you agree with me that we’re not that uncivilized,” the Register reports.</p>
<p>Of course I agree that Canadians are not crazy or uncivilized. If only the same could be said about the current occupant of our White House.</p>
<p>Bogus Research and Development Excuse</p>
<p>Pfizer questions Rost ability to understand the research and development issue. The industry says importing drugs would hurt profits that are relied upon to pay for research. Pfizer says Rost has ignored his company’s extensive research.</p>
<p>I found that funny because I thought Rost sounded fairly knowledgeable on the topic. He seemed to grasp the amount of money involved in research. According to the 9/28/04 Missourian, at news conference, Rost said that of drug giant Merckís $22.5 billion in annual sales, it spent $3.2 billion on research and development and $3.3 billion on stock dividends and reported a profit of $6.8 billion. Although Merck would lose money if the legislation passed, he said, drug companies would still be profitable enough to encourage investment in research.</p>
<p>So Rost doesnít know what heís talking about on the subject of importation? Well he sure had me fooled.</p>
<p>Lawmakers Become Willing To Break The Law</p>
<p>Legislatures all over the country are responding to demands from their constituents, with 24 states considering bills to import drugs from Canada or elsewhere. West Virginia, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Vermont and Rhode Island have already enacted laws that take the first steps toward engaging in broad imports of prescription medicines from Canada, although the federal government is challenging the legality of some of the programs, according to the LA Times on 9/30/94.</p>
<p>Many state and local governments are vowing to disregard federal laws. According to the 10/1/04 Bangor Daily News, Maine will challenge the federal DHHS by initiating a program to re-import drugs from Canada, Gov John Baldacci announced: ìThe state can’t wait … for the federal government to enact reforms that ensure affordable access to medications for all Americans and will instead take action on behalf of Maine citizens.î</p>
<p>Indiana Gov Joe Kernan says his state will help hundreds of thousands of public employees save money on prescription drugs next year one way or another, according to the 9/16/04 Washington Times.</p>
<p>Kernan plans to bring healthcare providers, business leaders and government officials together in early December to find ways to lower prescription drugs costs for state employees and eventually all Hoosiers, the Indianapolis Star Tribune said. If no state or federal solution is found by March 1, 2005, Kernan said he would support ways to help Hoosiers reimport drugs from Canada and other countries.</p>
<p>According to the 8/16/04 Boston Herald, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and city officials “shrugged off” a warning in a letter sent by FDA Associate Commissioner William Hubbard about the safety risks of a program that allows some city employees and retirees to reimport lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada.</p>
<p>In the letter, Hubbard asked Menino to end the “Meds by Mail” program, which began in August. About 14,000 city employees, retirees and their dependents covered under the city health plan qualify for the program. Boston officials have distributed more than 840 applications for the program.</p>
<p>Calgary-based Total Care Pharmacy provides the medications, and Menino has said that the contract between the city and the pharmacy requires safety measures and ensures quality. Hubbard warned that the FDA in the future might ask a judge to issue an injunction against the program but currently seeks to convince Boston officials to end the program voluntarily (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 8/5).</p>
<p>Since March, Wisconsin has filled 1,663 prescriptions under a state reimportation program. Susan Reinardy, a Wisconsin Department of Public Health and Family Services administrator, said that although in the early stages of the program Total Care shipped three generic medications not approved by FDA, the problem has not continued. “We’re very happy with their responsiveness,” she added (Boston Herald, 8/6).</p>
<p>Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Wisconsin all have websites that connect consumers to Canada drug importation companies. Additionally, the governors of Illinois, Iowa, Oregon, Vermont and West Virginia have come out in favor of importation (Stateline.org, Sept 14, 2004, “Minnesota gov. leads fight for legal Rx importsì).</p>
<p>Other Actions Against The Bush Drug Gang</p>
<p>Bush and his cronies in the industry are being hit from every angle. According to the 9/6/04 issue of American Medical News, Vermont has now sued the federal government for the right to reimport prescription medications.</p>
<p>The lawsuit alleges that the government wrongly denied Vermont’s request to establish a reimportation program. The FDA rejected the request claiming it was worried about drug safety. The lawsuit is the first of its kind.</p>
<p>Gov James Douglas, says, “Vermont will not sit back and watch as the cost of health insurance and prescription drugs continues to rise. Nor are we content to simply ignore the law,” Douglas said. “Real leadership means challenging those laws and policies you oppose and working within our systems to change them,” notes American Medical.</p>
<p>In the law suit, the Vermont claims the FDA violated the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. Officials say the law requires the federal government to create rules that allow wholesalers, pharmacists and state benefit programs to import drugs and calls for the government to give guidance on the circumstances under which the FDA would give waivers allowing importation for personal use.</p>
<p>Vermont claims the Bush administration has done neither and is asking the court to require the government to establish rules and guidelines promptly. “It is our hope and expectation that Vermont’s leadership will result in a legal precedent that benefits every Vermonter and every American,” Douglas said, “The ultimate goal is to get the best possible market prices at our pharmacies here at home.î</p>
<p>On another front, saying Kentucky could save more than $100 million a year in health care costs, state Auditor Crit Luallen called on the state to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada, according to the 9/29/04 Currier Journal. If Gov Ernie Fletcher agrees, Kentucky would join other states, including Illinois, Maryland, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Vermont, in seeking federal waivers to allow the importation of drugs from Canada. Almost two-thirds of Kentuckians want the federal government to make it easier to buy prescription drugs from Canada and other countries, according to a Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll conducted in May. Kentucky Rep Anne Northup, R-Louisville, is also pushing federal legislation to allow prescription drug sales from Canada.</p>
<p>The battleground has been set between the States and the White House. If Bush and Pharma want to continue the war of blocking ways for Americans to obtain affordable prescription drugs, they had better be ready to do a lot more than harass employees who refuse to turn a blind eye to their corruption.</p>
<p>Rost Vows To Stay The Course</p>
<p>Peter Rost vows to continue his support of importation efforts no matter what Pfizer does or doesnít do. In closing, he shared some personal thoughts that would never in a million years lead anyone to think that he is employed in the pharmaceutical industry:</p>
<p>–I donít believe we are put on this earth to make as much money as we can. –I donít think weíre here to rip off the weakest and poorest. –We are here to help each other and make it a better world.</p>
<p>EVELYN PRINGLE lives in Miamisburg, Ohio and can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 8,077 |
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Authorities in northern Wisconsin have arrested five people in connection with a Lac du Flambeau tribal member's death.</p>
<p>The state Department of Justice issued a news release Thursday saying Wayne Valliere Jr. was last seen on Dec. 22. His body was discovered in Iron County on Jan. 1.</p>
<p>The release said police have arrested five people in connection with Valliere's death.</p>
<p>The release didn't offer any additional details. DOJ spokesman Johnny Koremenos said Valliere was last seen in Vilas County and was found in "rural" Iron County but declined further comment.</p>
<p>Lac du Flambeau President Joseph Wildcat Jr. issued a news release offering condolences to Valliere's family.</p>
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Authorities in northern Wisconsin have arrested five people in connection with a Lac du Flambeau tribal member's death.</p>
<p>The state Department of Justice issued a news release Thursday saying Wayne Valliere Jr. was last seen on Dec. 22. His body was discovered in Iron County on Jan. 1.</p>
<p>The release said police have arrested five people in connection with Valliere's death.</p>
<p>The release didn't offer any additional details. DOJ spokesman Johnny Koremenos said Valliere was last seen in Vilas County and was found in "rural" Iron County but declined further comment.</p>
<p>Lac du Flambeau President Joseph Wildcat Jr. issued a news release offering condolences to Valliere's family.</p>
|
5 arrested in connection with tribal member's death
| false |
https://apnews.com/6a442ca930d6414f894c5d728ff2cdfc
|
2018-01-04
| 2least
|
5 arrested in connection with tribal member's death
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Authorities in northern Wisconsin have arrested five people in connection with a Lac du Flambeau tribal member's death.</p>
<p>The state Department of Justice issued a news release Thursday saying Wayne Valliere Jr. was last seen on Dec. 22. His body was discovered in Iron County on Jan. 1.</p>
<p>The release said police have arrested five people in connection with Valliere's death.</p>
<p>The release didn't offer any additional details. DOJ spokesman Johnny Koremenos said Valliere was last seen in Vilas County and was found in "rural" Iron County but declined further comment.</p>
<p>Lac du Flambeau President Joseph Wildcat Jr. issued a news release offering condolences to Valliere's family.</p>
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Authorities in northern Wisconsin have arrested five people in connection with a Lac du Flambeau tribal member's death.</p>
<p>The state Department of Justice issued a news release Thursday saying Wayne Valliere Jr. was last seen on Dec. 22. His body was discovered in Iron County on Jan. 1.</p>
<p>The release said police have arrested five people in connection with Valliere's death.</p>
<p>The release didn't offer any additional details. DOJ spokesman Johnny Koremenos said Valliere was last seen in Vilas County and was found in "rural" Iron County but declined further comment.</p>
<p>Lac du Flambeau President Joseph Wildcat Jr. issued a news release offering condolences to Valliere's family.</p>
| 8,078 |
<p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - In a story Jan. 3 about the death of Mormon church President Thomas S. Monson, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Monson became the youngest apostle ever when he was named to the post in 1963 at the age of 36. He was the youngest apostle since 1910.</p>
<p>A corrected version of the story is below:</p>
<p>Church president was familiar face to generations of Mormons</p>
<p>The Mormon church president started as the youngest church apostle ever in 1963 at the age of 36, making him a face of the faith for decades</p>
<p>By BRADY MCCOMBS</p>
<p>Associated Press</p>
<p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - For more than 50 years, Thomas S. Monson served in top leadership councils for the Mormon church - making him a well-known face and personality to multiple generations of Mormons.</p>
<p>A church bishop at the age of 22, the Salt Lake City native became the youngest church apostle in a half century when he was named to the post in 1963 at the age of 36. He served as a counselor for three church presidents before assuming the role of the top leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February 2008.</p>
<p>Tuesday night, 90-year-old Monson died at his home in Salt Lake City, according to church spokesman Eric Hawkins.</p>
<p>As president of the nearly 16-million member faith, Monson was considered a prophet who led the church through revelation from God in collaboration with two top counselors and members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.</p>
<p>The next president was not immediately named, but the job is expected to go to the next longest-tenured member of the church's governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Russell M. Nelson, per church protocol.</p>
<p>Monson's presidency was marked by his noticeably low profile during a time of intense publicity for the church, including the 2008 and 2012 campaigns of Mormon Mitt Romney for President. Monson's most public acts were appearances at church conferences and devotionals as well as dedications of church temples.</p>
<p>Monson will also be remembered for his emphasis on humanitarian work; leading the faith's involvement in the passage of gay marriage ban in California in 2008; continuing the church's push to be more transparent about its past; and lowering the minimum age for missionaries.</p>
<p>Mormons considered Monson a warm, caring, endearing and approachable leader, said Patrick Mason, associate professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in California. He was known for dropping everything to make hospital visits to people in need. His speeches at the faith's twice-yearly conferences often focused on parables of human struggles resolved through faith.</p>
<p>He put an emphasis on the humanitarian ethic of Mormons, evidenced by his expansion of the church's disaster relief programs around the world, said Armand Mauss, a retired professor of sociology and religious studies at Washington State University.</p>
<p>Monson often credited his mother, Gladys Condie Monson, for fostering his compassion. He said that during his childhood in the Depression of the 1930s their house in Salt Lake City was known to hobos riding the railroads as a place to get a meal and a kind word.</p>
<p>"President Monson always seemed more interested in what we do with our religion rather than in what we believe," Mauss said.</p>
<p>A World War II veteran, Monson served in the Navy and spent a year overseas before returning to get a business degree at the University of Utah and a master's degree in business administration from the church-owned Brigham Young University.</p>
<p>Before being tabbed to join the faith's church's governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Monson worked for the church's secular businesses, primarily in advertising, printing and publishing including the Deseret Morning News.</p>
<p>Monson married Frances Beverly Johnson in 1948. The couple had three children, eight grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Frances died in 2013 at the age of 85.</p>
<p>Throughout his life, Monson was an avid fisherman who also raised homing pigeons, specifically, roller pigeons who twirled as they flew. He was known for his love of show tunes, Boy Scouts and the Utah Jazz.</p>
<p>Monson's legacy will be tied to the church's efforts to hold tight to its opposition of same-sex marriage while encouraging members to be more open and compassionate toward gays and lesbians as acceptance for LGBT people increased across the county.</p>
<p>At Monson's urging, Mormons were vigorous campaign donors and volunteers in support of a measure to ban gay marriage in California in 2008. That prompted a backlash against the church that included vandalism of church buildings, protest marches and demonstrations outside church temples nationwide.</p>
<p>In subsequent years, the church began utilizing a softer tone on the issue. In 2015, the church backed an anti-discrimination law in Utah that gave unprecedented protections for gay and transgender people while also protecting religious freedoms.</p>
<p>But the faith came under fire again in the fall of 2015 when it banned baptisms for children living with gay parents, and instituted a requirement that those children disavow homosexual relationships before being allowed to serve a mission. The changes were designed to avoid putting children in a tug-of-war between their parents and church teachings, leaders said.</p>
<p>The revisions triggered anger, confusion and sadness for a growing faction of LGBT-supportive Mormons who were buoyed in recent years by church leaders' calls for more love and understanding for LGBT members.</p>
<p>One of the most memorable moments of Monson's tenure came in October 2012, when he announced at church conference that the minimum age to depart on missions was being lowered to 19 from 21 for women; and to 18 from 19 for men. The change triggered a historic influx of missionaries, and proved a milestone change for women by allowing many more to serve.</p>
<p>Taking the lead from the previous president, Gordon B. Hinckley, Monson also continued the church's push toward being more open about some of the most sensitive aspect of the faith's history and doctrine. A renovated church history museum reopened in 2015 with an exhibit acknowledging the faith's early polygamous practices, a year after the church published an essay that for the first time chronicled founder Joseph Smith's plural wives.</p>
<p>Other church essays issued during Monson's tenure addressed other sensitive topics: sacred undergarments worn by devout members; a past ban on black men in the lay clergy; and the misconception that Mormons are taught they will get their own planet in the afterlife.</p>
<p>The growth and globalization of the church continued under Monson, with membership swelling to nearly 15.9 million, with more than half outside the United States.</p>
<p>The Mormon church was founded in 1830 in upstate New York by Joseph Smith, who claimed he was visited by God and Jesus while praying in a grove of trees and was called to found the church. Members are known as Mormons because of the keystone scripture, the Book of Mormon.</p>
<p>Mormons believe they are called to share the word of God, specifically their own message of the restored Gospel, through their missionaries. There were 71,000 church missionaries serving around the world at the end of 2016.</p>
<p>Like his predecessors, Monson traveled the world, visiting countless countries to give speeches, dedicate temples and preach to Latter-day Saints. Under his watch, 27 new temples were planned or built.</p>
<p>Monson chose five new members to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a top-governing body that sets policy and runs the worldwide faith's business operations. All five were white and from Utah - a fact that disappointed some Mormons who wanted to see a minority or person from outside the U.S. selected to acknowledge the globalization of the church.</p>
<p>The man expected to take Monson's seat, the 93-year-old Nelson, has been a church apostle since April 1984. Out of respect for Monson, his appointment will not be officially named until after his funeral services.</p>
<p>In keeping with tradition, Nelson will choose two new counselors from the Quorum of the Twelve who will join him to form a three-person "presidency" that is the top of the church's governing hierarchy. Monson's two counselors were Henry Eyring and Dieter Uchtdorf. They will go back to being regular members of the Quorum unless they are chosen again.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Michelle A. Monroe in Phoenix contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>This story has been corrected to show that Russell M. Nelson has been a church apostle since April 1984, not 1970.</p>
<p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - In a story Jan. 3 about the death of Mormon church President Thomas S. Monson, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Monson became the youngest apostle ever when he was named to the post in 1963 at the age of 36. He was the youngest apostle since 1910.</p>
<p>A corrected version of the story is below:</p>
<p>Church president was familiar face to generations of Mormons</p>
<p>The Mormon church president started as the youngest church apostle ever in 1963 at the age of 36, making him a face of the faith for decades</p>
<p>By BRADY MCCOMBS</p>
<p>Associated Press</p>
<p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - For more than 50 years, Thomas S. Monson served in top leadership councils for the Mormon church - making him a well-known face and personality to multiple generations of Mormons.</p>
<p>A church bishop at the age of 22, the Salt Lake City native became the youngest church apostle in a half century when he was named to the post in 1963 at the age of 36. He served as a counselor for three church presidents before assuming the role of the top leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February 2008.</p>
<p>Tuesday night, 90-year-old Monson died at his home in Salt Lake City, according to church spokesman Eric Hawkins.</p>
<p>As president of the nearly 16-million member faith, Monson was considered a prophet who led the church through revelation from God in collaboration with two top counselors and members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.</p>
<p>The next president was not immediately named, but the job is expected to go to the next longest-tenured member of the church's governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Russell M. Nelson, per church protocol.</p>
<p>Monson's presidency was marked by his noticeably low profile during a time of intense publicity for the church, including the 2008 and 2012 campaigns of Mormon Mitt Romney for President. Monson's most public acts were appearances at church conferences and devotionals as well as dedications of church temples.</p>
<p>Monson will also be remembered for his emphasis on humanitarian work; leading the faith's involvement in the passage of gay marriage ban in California in 2008; continuing the church's push to be more transparent about its past; and lowering the minimum age for missionaries.</p>
<p>Mormons considered Monson a warm, caring, endearing and approachable leader, said Patrick Mason, associate professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in California. He was known for dropping everything to make hospital visits to people in need. His speeches at the faith's twice-yearly conferences often focused on parables of human struggles resolved through faith.</p>
<p>He put an emphasis on the humanitarian ethic of Mormons, evidenced by his expansion of the church's disaster relief programs around the world, said Armand Mauss, a retired professor of sociology and religious studies at Washington State University.</p>
<p>Monson often credited his mother, Gladys Condie Monson, for fostering his compassion. He said that during his childhood in the Depression of the 1930s their house in Salt Lake City was known to hobos riding the railroads as a place to get a meal and a kind word.</p>
<p>"President Monson always seemed more interested in what we do with our religion rather than in what we believe," Mauss said.</p>
<p>A World War II veteran, Monson served in the Navy and spent a year overseas before returning to get a business degree at the University of Utah and a master's degree in business administration from the church-owned Brigham Young University.</p>
<p>Before being tabbed to join the faith's church's governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Monson worked for the church's secular businesses, primarily in advertising, printing and publishing including the Deseret Morning News.</p>
<p>Monson married Frances Beverly Johnson in 1948. The couple had three children, eight grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Frances died in 2013 at the age of 85.</p>
<p>Throughout his life, Monson was an avid fisherman who also raised homing pigeons, specifically, roller pigeons who twirled as they flew. He was known for his love of show tunes, Boy Scouts and the Utah Jazz.</p>
<p>Monson's legacy will be tied to the church's efforts to hold tight to its opposition of same-sex marriage while encouraging members to be more open and compassionate toward gays and lesbians as acceptance for LGBT people increased across the county.</p>
<p>At Monson's urging, Mormons were vigorous campaign donors and volunteers in support of a measure to ban gay marriage in California in 2008. That prompted a backlash against the church that included vandalism of church buildings, protest marches and demonstrations outside church temples nationwide.</p>
<p>In subsequent years, the church began utilizing a softer tone on the issue. In 2015, the church backed an anti-discrimination law in Utah that gave unprecedented protections for gay and transgender people while also protecting religious freedoms.</p>
<p>But the faith came under fire again in the fall of 2015 when it banned baptisms for children living with gay parents, and instituted a requirement that those children disavow homosexual relationships before being allowed to serve a mission. The changes were designed to avoid putting children in a tug-of-war between their parents and church teachings, leaders said.</p>
<p>The revisions triggered anger, confusion and sadness for a growing faction of LGBT-supportive Mormons who were buoyed in recent years by church leaders' calls for more love and understanding for LGBT members.</p>
<p>One of the most memorable moments of Monson's tenure came in October 2012, when he announced at church conference that the minimum age to depart on missions was being lowered to 19 from 21 for women; and to 18 from 19 for men. The change triggered a historic influx of missionaries, and proved a milestone change for women by allowing many more to serve.</p>
<p>Taking the lead from the previous president, Gordon B. Hinckley, Monson also continued the church's push toward being more open about some of the most sensitive aspect of the faith's history and doctrine. A renovated church history museum reopened in 2015 with an exhibit acknowledging the faith's early polygamous practices, a year after the church published an essay that for the first time chronicled founder Joseph Smith's plural wives.</p>
<p>Other church essays issued during Monson's tenure addressed other sensitive topics: sacred undergarments worn by devout members; a past ban on black men in the lay clergy; and the misconception that Mormons are taught they will get their own planet in the afterlife.</p>
<p>The growth and globalization of the church continued under Monson, with membership swelling to nearly 15.9 million, with more than half outside the United States.</p>
<p>The Mormon church was founded in 1830 in upstate New York by Joseph Smith, who claimed he was visited by God and Jesus while praying in a grove of trees and was called to found the church. Members are known as Mormons because of the keystone scripture, the Book of Mormon.</p>
<p>Mormons believe they are called to share the word of God, specifically their own message of the restored Gospel, through their missionaries. There were 71,000 church missionaries serving around the world at the end of 2016.</p>
<p>Like his predecessors, Monson traveled the world, visiting countless countries to give speeches, dedicate temples and preach to Latter-day Saints. Under his watch, 27 new temples were planned or built.</p>
<p>Monson chose five new members to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a top-governing body that sets policy and runs the worldwide faith's business operations. All five were white and from Utah - a fact that disappointed some Mormons who wanted to see a minority or person from outside the U.S. selected to acknowledge the globalization of the church.</p>
<p>The man expected to take Monson's seat, the 93-year-old Nelson, has been a church apostle since April 1984. Out of respect for Monson, his appointment will not be officially named until after his funeral services.</p>
<p>In keeping with tradition, Nelson will choose two new counselors from the Quorum of the Twelve who will join him to form a three-person "presidency" that is the top of the church's governing hierarchy. Monson's two counselors were Henry Eyring and Dieter Uchtdorf. They will go back to being regular members of the Quorum unless they are chosen again.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Michelle A. Monroe in Phoenix contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>This story has been corrected to show that Russell M. Nelson has been a church apostle since April 1984, not 1970.</p>
|
Correction: Obit-Thomas Monson-A Life story
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/36efc4fad57d49fbbd18fd7304db4305
|
2018-01-05
| 2least
|
Correction: Obit-Thomas Monson-A Life story
<p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - In a story Jan. 3 about the death of Mormon church President Thomas S. Monson, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Monson became the youngest apostle ever when he was named to the post in 1963 at the age of 36. He was the youngest apostle since 1910.</p>
<p>A corrected version of the story is below:</p>
<p>Church president was familiar face to generations of Mormons</p>
<p>The Mormon church president started as the youngest church apostle ever in 1963 at the age of 36, making him a face of the faith for decades</p>
<p>By BRADY MCCOMBS</p>
<p>Associated Press</p>
<p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - For more than 50 years, Thomas S. Monson served in top leadership councils for the Mormon church - making him a well-known face and personality to multiple generations of Mormons.</p>
<p>A church bishop at the age of 22, the Salt Lake City native became the youngest church apostle in a half century when he was named to the post in 1963 at the age of 36. He served as a counselor for three church presidents before assuming the role of the top leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February 2008.</p>
<p>Tuesday night, 90-year-old Monson died at his home in Salt Lake City, according to church spokesman Eric Hawkins.</p>
<p>As president of the nearly 16-million member faith, Monson was considered a prophet who led the church through revelation from God in collaboration with two top counselors and members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.</p>
<p>The next president was not immediately named, but the job is expected to go to the next longest-tenured member of the church's governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Russell M. Nelson, per church protocol.</p>
<p>Monson's presidency was marked by his noticeably low profile during a time of intense publicity for the church, including the 2008 and 2012 campaigns of Mormon Mitt Romney for President. Monson's most public acts were appearances at church conferences and devotionals as well as dedications of church temples.</p>
<p>Monson will also be remembered for his emphasis on humanitarian work; leading the faith's involvement in the passage of gay marriage ban in California in 2008; continuing the church's push to be more transparent about its past; and lowering the minimum age for missionaries.</p>
<p>Mormons considered Monson a warm, caring, endearing and approachable leader, said Patrick Mason, associate professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in California. He was known for dropping everything to make hospital visits to people in need. His speeches at the faith's twice-yearly conferences often focused on parables of human struggles resolved through faith.</p>
<p>He put an emphasis on the humanitarian ethic of Mormons, evidenced by his expansion of the church's disaster relief programs around the world, said Armand Mauss, a retired professor of sociology and religious studies at Washington State University.</p>
<p>Monson often credited his mother, Gladys Condie Monson, for fostering his compassion. He said that during his childhood in the Depression of the 1930s their house in Salt Lake City was known to hobos riding the railroads as a place to get a meal and a kind word.</p>
<p>"President Monson always seemed more interested in what we do with our religion rather than in what we believe," Mauss said.</p>
<p>A World War II veteran, Monson served in the Navy and spent a year overseas before returning to get a business degree at the University of Utah and a master's degree in business administration from the church-owned Brigham Young University.</p>
<p>Before being tabbed to join the faith's church's governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Monson worked for the church's secular businesses, primarily in advertising, printing and publishing including the Deseret Morning News.</p>
<p>Monson married Frances Beverly Johnson in 1948. The couple had three children, eight grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Frances died in 2013 at the age of 85.</p>
<p>Throughout his life, Monson was an avid fisherman who also raised homing pigeons, specifically, roller pigeons who twirled as they flew. He was known for his love of show tunes, Boy Scouts and the Utah Jazz.</p>
<p>Monson's legacy will be tied to the church's efforts to hold tight to its opposition of same-sex marriage while encouraging members to be more open and compassionate toward gays and lesbians as acceptance for LGBT people increased across the county.</p>
<p>At Monson's urging, Mormons were vigorous campaign donors and volunteers in support of a measure to ban gay marriage in California in 2008. That prompted a backlash against the church that included vandalism of church buildings, protest marches and demonstrations outside church temples nationwide.</p>
<p>In subsequent years, the church began utilizing a softer tone on the issue. In 2015, the church backed an anti-discrimination law in Utah that gave unprecedented protections for gay and transgender people while also protecting religious freedoms.</p>
<p>But the faith came under fire again in the fall of 2015 when it banned baptisms for children living with gay parents, and instituted a requirement that those children disavow homosexual relationships before being allowed to serve a mission. The changes were designed to avoid putting children in a tug-of-war between their parents and church teachings, leaders said.</p>
<p>The revisions triggered anger, confusion and sadness for a growing faction of LGBT-supportive Mormons who were buoyed in recent years by church leaders' calls for more love and understanding for LGBT members.</p>
<p>One of the most memorable moments of Monson's tenure came in October 2012, when he announced at church conference that the minimum age to depart on missions was being lowered to 19 from 21 for women; and to 18 from 19 for men. The change triggered a historic influx of missionaries, and proved a milestone change for women by allowing many more to serve.</p>
<p>Taking the lead from the previous president, Gordon B. Hinckley, Monson also continued the church's push toward being more open about some of the most sensitive aspect of the faith's history and doctrine. A renovated church history museum reopened in 2015 with an exhibit acknowledging the faith's early polygamous practices, a year after the church published an essay that for the first time chronicled founder Joseph Smith's plural wives.</p>
<p>Other church essays issued during Monson's tenure addressed other sensitive topics: sacred undergarments worn by devout members; a past ban on black men in the lay clergy; and the misconception that Mormons are taught they will get their own planet in the afterlife.</p>
<p>The growth and globalization of the church continued under Monson, with membership swelling to nearly 15.9 million, with more than half outside the United States.</p>
<p>The Mormon church was founded in 1830 in upstate New York by Joseph Smith, who claimed he was visited by God and Jesus while praying in a grove of trees and was called to found the church. Members are known as Mormons because of the keystone scripture, the Book of Mormon.</p>
<p>Mormons believe they are called to share the word of God, specifically their own message of the restored Gospel, through their missionaries. There were 71,000 church missionaries serving around the world at the end of 2016.</p>
<p>Like his predecessors, Monson traveled the world, visiting countless countries to give speeches, dedicate temples and preach to Latter-day Saints. Under his watch, 27 new temples were planned or built.</p>
<p>Monson chose five new members to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a top-governing body that sets policy and runs the worldwide faith's business operations. All five were white and from Utah - a fact that disappointed some Mormons who wanted to see a minority or person from outside the U.S. selected to acknowledge the globalization of the church.</p>
<p>The man expected to take Monson's seat, the 93-year-old Nelson, has been a church apostle since April 1984. Out of respect for Monson, his appointment will not be officially named until after his funeral services.</p>
<p>In keeping with tradition, Nelson will choose two new counselors from the Quorum of the Twelve who will join him to form a three-person "presidency" that is the top of the church's governing hierarchy. Monson's two counselors were Henry Eyring and Dieter Uchtdorf. They will go back to being regular members of the Quorum unless they are chosen again.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Michelle A. Monroe in Phoenix contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>This story has been corrected to show that Russell M. Nelson has been a church apostle since April 1984, not 1970.</p>
<p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - In a story Jan. 3 about the death of Mormon church President Thomas S. Monson, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Monson became the youngest apostle ever when he was named to the post in 1963 at the age of 36. He was the youngest apostle since 1910.</p>
<p>A corrected version of the story is below:</p>
<p>Church president was familiar face to generations of Mormons</p>
<p>The Mormon church president started as the youngest church apostle ever in 1963 at the age of 36, making him a face of the faith for decades</p>
<p>By BRADY MCCOMBS</p>
<p>Associated Press</p>
<p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - For more than 50 years, Thomas S. Monson served in top leadership councils for the Mormon church - making him a well-known face and personality to multiple generations of Mormons.</p>
<p>A church bishop at the age of 22, the Salt Lake City native became the youngest church apostle in a half century when he was named to the post in 1963 at the age of 36. He served as a counselor for three church presidents before assuming the role of the top leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February 2008.</p>
<p>Tuesday night, 90-year-old Monson died at his home in Salt Lake City, according to church spokesman Eric Hawkins.</p>
<p>As president of the nearly 16-million member faith, Monson was considered a prophet who led the church through revelation from God in collaboration with two top counselors and members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.</p>
<p>The next president was not immediately named, but the job is expected to go to the next longest-tenured member of the church's governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Russell M. Nelson, per church protocol.</p>
<p>Monson's presidency was marked by his noticeably low profile during a time of intense publicity for the church, including the 2008 and 2012 campaigns of Mormon Mitt Romney for President. Monson's most public acts were appearances at church conferences and devotionals as well as dedications of church temples.</p>
<p>Monson will also be remembered for his emphasis on humanitarian work; leading the faith's involvement in the passage of gay marriage ban in California in 2008; continuing the church's push to be more transparent about its past; and lowering the minimum age for missionaries.</p>
<p>Mormons considered Monson a warm, caring, endearing and approachable leader, said Patrick Mason, associate professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in California. He was known for dropping everything to make hospital visits to people in need. His speeches at the faith's twice-yearly conferences often focused on parables of human struggles resolved through faith.</p>
<p>He put an emphasis on the humanitarian ethic of Mormons, evidenced by his expansion of the church's disaster relief programs around the world, said Armand Mauss, a retired professor of sociology and religious studies at Washington State University.</p>
<p>Monson often credited his mother, Gladys Condie Monson, for fostering his compassion. He said that during his childhood in the Depression of the 1930s their house in Salt Lake City was known to hobos riding the railroads as a place to get a meal and a kind word.</p>
<p>"President Monson always seemed more interested in what we do with our religion rather than in what we believe," Mauss said.</p>
<p>A World War II veteran, Monson served in the Navy and spent a year overseas before returning to get a business degree at the University of Utah and a master's degree in business administration from the church-owned Brigham Young University.</p>
<p>Before being tabbed to join the faith's church's governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Monson worked for the church's secular businesses, primarily in advertising, printing and publishing including the Deseret Morning News.</p>
<p>Monson married Frances Beverly Johnson in 1948. The couple had three children, eight grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Frances died in 2013 at the age of 85.</p>
<p>Throughout his life, Monson was an avid fisherman who also raised homing pigeons, specifically, roller pigeons who twirled as they flew. He was known for his love of show tunes, Boy Scouts and the Utah Jazz.</p>
<p>Monson's legacy will be tied to the church's efforts to hold tight to its opposition of same-sex marriage while encouraging members to be more open and compassionate toward gays and lesbians as acceptance for LGBT people increased across the county.</p>
<p>At Monson's urging, Mormons were vigorous campaign donors and volunteers in support of a measure to ban gay marriage in California in 2008. That prompted a backlash against the church that included vandalism of church buildings, protest marches and demonstrations outside church temples nationwide.</p>
<p>In subsequent years, the church began utilizing a softer tone on the issue. In 2015, the church backed an anti-discrimination law in Utah that gave unprecedented protections for gay and transgender people while also protecting religious freedoms.</p>
<p>But the faith came under fire again in the fall of 2015 when it banned baptisms for children living with gay parents, and instituted a requirement that those children disavow homosexual relationships before being allowed to serve a mission. The changes were designed to avoid putting children in a tug-of-war between their parents and church teachings, leaders said.</p>
<p>The revisions triggered anger, confusion and sadness for a growing faction of LGBT-supportive Mormons who were buoyed in recent years by church leaders' calls for more love and understanding for LGBT members.</p>
<p>One of the most memorable moments of Monson's tenure came in October 2012, when he announced at church conference that the minimum age to depart on missions was being lowered to 19 from 21 for women; and to 18 from 19 for men. The change triggered a historic influx of missionaries, and proved a milestone change for women by allowing many more to serve.</p>
<p>Taking the lead from the previous president, Gordon B. Hinckley, Monson also continued the church's push toward being more open about some of the most sensitive aspect of the faith's history and doctrine. A renovated church history museum reopened in 2015 with an exhibit acknowledging the faith's early polygamous practices, a year after the church published an essay that for the first time chronicled founder Joseph Smith's plural wives.</p>
<p>Other church essays issued during Monson's tenure addressed other sensitive topics: sacred undergarments worn by devout members; a past ban on black men in the lay clergy; and the misconception that Mormons are taught they will get their own planet in the afterlife.</p>
<p>The growth and globalization of the church continued under Monson, with membership swelling to nearly 15.9 million, with more than half outside the United States.</p>
<p>The Mormon church was founded in 1830 in upstate New York by Joseph Smith, who claimed he was visited by God and Jesus while praying in a grove of trees and was called to found the church. Members are known as Mormons because of the keystone scripture, the Book of Mormon.</p>
<p>Mormons believe they are called to share the word of God, specifically their own message of the restored Gospel, through their missionaries. There were 71,000 church missionaries serving around the world at the end of 2016.</p>
<p>Like his predecessors, Monson traveled the world, visiting countless countries to give speeches, dedicate temples and preach to Latter-day Saints. Under his watch, 27 new temples were planned or built.</p>
<p>Monson chose five new members to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a top-governing body that sets policy and runs the worldwide faith's business operations. All five were white and from Utah - a fact that disappointed some Mormons who wanted to see a minority or person from outside the U.S. selected to acknowledge the globalization of the church.</p>
<p>The man expected to take Monson's seat, the 93-year-old Nelson, has been a church apostle since April 1984. Out of respect for Monson, his appointment will not be officially named until after his funeral services.</p>
<p>In keeping with tradition, Nelson will choose two new counselors from the Quorum of the Twelve who will join him to form a three-person "presidency" that is the top of the church's governing hierarchy. Monson's two counselors were Henry Eyring and Dieter Uchtdorf. They will go back to being regular members of the Quorum unless they are chosen again.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Michelle A. Monroe in Phoenix contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>This story has been corrected to show that Russell M. Nelson has been a church apostle since April 1984, not 1970.</p>
| 8,079 |
<p>Two college professors want their students to join a national campus "anti-fascist" action network, that they say is dedicated to "confronting" and "driving racists off campus."</p>
<p>Purdue University Professor Bill Mullen and Stanford University Professor David Palumbo-Liu say they began the Campus Anti-fascist Network, or CAN, last year, in response to what they claimed what an "alt-right" effort to infiltrate college campuses.</p>
<p>After the events of Charlottesville, Virginia last week, <a href="http://palumboliu.tumblr.com/post/164183139515/join-the-campus-antifascist-network" type="external">they issued an open invitation to students across the country</a> to join the group, claiming that the time has come to oppose the creeping threat of "facism," at our nation's institutions of higher education.</p>
<p>"Since Trump’s election, fascists, neo-fascists, and their allies have used blatantly Islamophobic, anti-semitic, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist messaging and iconography to recruit to their ranks and intimidate students, faculty, and staff,” the invitation reads. “The time to take action is now."</p>
<p>But while the two professors claim that anyone is welcome in their group as long as they oppose a "fascist"agenda, its not immediately clear who the Campus Anti-fascist Network believes is actually "fascist." In their letter, they make repeated references to the "alt-right" and "white supremacists," but make no deliniations between true alt-right figures like Richard Spencer, and more traditionally conservative campus speakers, who have used the concept of "free speech" to defend speaking to groups of often progressive-minded college students.</p>
<p>The pair also speak of threats of violence directed at professors who oppose things like racism, sexism, and homophobia, but seemingly neglect to mention the often violent harassment that any conservative or libertarian speaker faces when they dare to speak openly on a college campus.</p>
<p>Also, somewhat ironically, the two professors completely ignore that <a href="http://spme.org/boycotts-divestments-sanctions-bds/stanford-professor-palumbo-liu-makes-the-case-against-bds/22325/" type="external">Palumbo-Liu is a supporter of the anti-Semitic Boycott-Divest-Sanction movement</a> (or BDS), and frequently writes in support of "anti-Zionism" — a great example of the "hate" he seems so eager to oppose on college campuses.</p>
<p>The group claims to have around 200 members, will organize large rallies and demonstrations against alt-right and whtie supremacist speakers on campus, but, the professors say, will draw the line at adopting the violent tactics typically associated with the national "anti-facist" movement, or Antifa, because " <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9617" type="external">physically attacking speakers is not [within the law]</a>." Palumbo-Liu, also says that the group will not openly call President Donald Trump a "fascist" (at least, not yet) because they are more concerned with actions than labels.</p>
<p>So far, CAN hasn't managed to do much, however, besides <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6FX_x2dbvXqblpZQ3JuUTYxTnM/view" type="external">release a syllabus of "anti-fascist" resources</a> for teachers who wish to instruct their students in the historical underpinnings of the alt-right.</p>
|
College Professors Are Trying to Establish A National Campus Antifa Network
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/20049/college-professors-are-trying-establish-emily-zanotti
|
2017-08-22
| 0right
|
College Professors Are Trying to Establish A National Campus Antifa Network
<p>Two college professors want their students to join a national campus "anti-fascist" action network, that they say is dedicated to "confronting" and "driving racists off campus."</p>
<p>Purdue University Professor Bill Mullen and Stanford University Professor David Palumbo-Liu say they began the Campus Anti-fascist Network, or CAN, last year, in response to what they claimed what an "alt-right" effort to infiltrate college campuses.</p>
<p>After the events of Charlottesville, Virginia last week, <a href="http://palumboliu.tumblr.com/post/164183139515/join-the-campus-antifascist-network" type="external">they issued an open invitation to students across the country</a> to join the group, claiming that the time has come to oppose the creeping threat of "facism," at our nation's institutions of higher education.</p>
<p>"Since Trump’s election, fascists, neo-fascists, and their allies have used blatantly Islamophobic, anti-semitic, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist messaging and iconography to recruit to their ranks and intimidate students, faculty, and staff,” the invitation reads. “The time to take action is now."</p>
<p>But while the two professors claim that anyone is welcome in their group as long as they oppose a "fascist"agenda, its not immediately clear who the Campus Anti-fascist Network believes is actually "fascist." In their letter, they make repeated references to the "alt-right" and "white supremacists," but make no deliniations between true alt-right figures like Richard Spencer, and more traditionally conservative campus speakers, who have used the concept of "free speech" to defend speaking to groups of often progressive-minded college students.</p>
<p>The pair also speak of threats of violence directed at professors who oppose things like racism, sexism, and homophobia, but seemingly neglect to mention the often violent harassment that any conservative or libertarian speaker faces when they dare to speak openly on a college campus.</p>
<p>Also, somewhat ironically, the two professors completely ignore that <a href="http://spme.org/boycotts-divestments-sanctions-bds/stanford-professor-palumbo-liu-makes-the-case-against-bds/22325/" type="external">Palumbo-Liu is a supporter of the anti-Semitic Boycott-Divest-Sanction movement</a> (or BDS), and frequently writes in support of "anti-Zionism" — a great example of the "hate" he seems so eager to oppose on college campuses.</p>
<p>The group claims to have around 200 members, will organize large rallies and demonstrations against alt-right and whtie supremacist speakers on campus, but, the professors say, will draw the line at adopting the violent tactics typically associated with the national "anti-facist" movement, or Antifa, because " <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9617" type="external">physically attacking speakers is not [within the law]</a>." Palumbo-Liu, also says that the group will not openly call President Donald Trump a "fascist" (at least, not yet) because they are more concerned with actions than labels.</p>
<p>So far, CAN hasn't managed to do much, however, besides <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6FX_x2dbvXqblpZQ3JuUTYxTnM/view" type="external">release a syllabus of "anti-fascist" resources</a> for teachers who wish to instruct their students in the historical underpinnings of the alt-right.</p>
| 8,080 |
<p>After two years and seven months working with a paid-subcription model, Spain's <a href="http://www.elpais.es" type="external">ElPais.es</a> has made the decision to switch to a mixed one, increasing its free offering. In November 2002, the website of El Pais decided to turn from a free service to a paid one, as a I explained in <a href="" type="internal">an item here</a> at that time. This period of experience has convinced the company that the best option right now is to have a combined offer."This is the tendency we see in the sector and the model we want to apply," says the CEO of Prisacom, Manuel Mirat, in this <a href="http://www.elpais.es/articuloCompleto.html?d_date=&amp;xref=20050602elpepusoc_7&amp;type=Tes&amp;anchor=elpporsoc" type="external">article</a> (in Spanish).From tomorrow on, breaking news of the day, all the multimedia features, and some selected content from the print edition will be available for free. At the same time, the newspaper has enriched the offer for paid subscribers with new services such as access to all content of the digital edition of Le Monde, and viewing CNN+ in real time through the Internet or high-quality audio of the radio stations belonging to the same media holding company.</p>
|
ElPais.es Turns to a Free/Paid Mixed Model
| false |
https://poynter.org/news/elpaises-turns-freepaid-mixed-model
|
2005-06-02
| 2least
|
ElPais.es Turns to a Free/Paid Mixed Model
<p>After two years and seven months working with a paid-subcription model, Spain's <a href="http://www.elpais.es" type="external">ElPais.es</a> has made the decision to switch to a mixed one, increasing its free offering. In November 2002, the website of El Pais decided to turn from a free service to a paid one, as a I explained in <a href="" type="internal">an item here</a> at that time. This period of experience has convinced the company that the best option right now is to have a combined offer."This is the tendency we see in the sector and the model we want to apply," says the CEO of Prisacom, Manuel Mirat, in this <a href="http://www.elpais.es/articuloCompleto.html?d_date=&amp;xref=20050602elpepusoc_7&amp;type=Tes&amp;anchor=elpporsoc" type="external">article</a> (in Spanish).From tomorrow on, breaking news of the day, all the multimedia features, and some selected content from the print edition will be available for free. At the same time, the newspaper has enriched the offer for paid subscribers with new services such as access to all content of the digital edition of Le Monde, and viewing CNN+ in real time through the Internet or high-quality audio of the radio stations belonging to the same media holding company.</p>
| 8,081 |
<p />
<p>Does anybody “know” anything? Frank Rich on Sunday threw a parade for Obama and the package:</p>
<p>“But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.”</p>
<p />
<p>Rich seemed unfazed by the small army of vexed economists who supported Obama but came to the opinion that an event of this size needs a commensurate response.</p>
<p>American Prospect‘s Bob Kuttner:</p>
<p>“…The stimulus is too small by about a factor of three. Just to take one example, state and local governments are going to be out of revenues to the tune of $400 to $500 billion over the next two years. The money in the stimulus package, about $140 billion. So, you know, these are layoffs of teachers and police and fire and cuts in programs that are completely needless. All the government has to do is write a check, and state and local services can continue.”</p>
<p>Obama, so caught up in his GOP courtship, came up with a package just south of conservative. But what do we NEED?</p>
<p>Paul Krugman:</p>
<p>“For while Mr. Obama got more or less what he asked for, he almost certainly didn’t ask for enough. We’re probably facing the worst slump since the Great Depression. The Congressional Budget Office, not usually given to hyperbole, predicts that over the next three years there will be a $2.9 trillion gap between what the economy could produce and what it will actually produce. And $800 billion, while it sounds like a lot of money, isn’t nearly enough to bridge that chasm.</p>
<p>“Officially, the administration insists that the plan is adequate to the economy’s need. But few economists agree. And it’s widely believed that political considerations led to a plan that was weaker and contains more tax cuts than it should have—that Mr. Obama compromised in advance in the hope of gaining broad bipartisan support. We’ve just seen how well that worked.”</p>
<p>And last night on Olbermann:</p>
<p>“I’m almost sure we’re gonna have to come back for more…a Stimulus 2.0 to deal with this.”</p>
<p />
|
Brodner’s Cartoon du Jour: Stimu-Lite?
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/02/brodner-cartoon-du-jour-stimu-lite/
|
2009-02-17
| 4left
|
Brodner’s Cartoon du Jour: Stimu-Lite?
<p />
<p>Does anybody “know” anything? Frank Rich on Sunday threw a parade for Obama and the package:</p>
<p>“But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.”</p>
<p />
<p>Rich seemed unfazed by the small army of vexed economists who supported Obama but came to the opinion that an event of this size needs a commensurate response.</p>
<p>American Prospect‘s Bob Kuttner:</p>
<p>“…The stimulus is too small by about a factor of three. Just to take one example, state and local governments are going to be out of revenues to the tune of $400 to $500 billion over the next two years. The money in the stimulus package, about $140 billion. So, you know, these are layoffs of teachers and police and fire and cuts in programs that are completely needless. All the government has to do is write a check, and state and local services can continue.”</p>
<p>Obama, so caught up in his GOP courtship, came up with a package just south of conservative. But what do we NEED?</p>
<p>Paul Krugman:</p>
<p>“For while Mr. Obama got more or less what he asked for, he almost certainly didn’t ask for enough. We’re probably facing the worst slump since the Great Depression. The Congressional Budget Office, not usually given to hyperbole, predicts that over the next three years there will be a $2.9 trillion gap between what the economy could produce and what it will actually produce. And $800 billion, while it sounds like a lot of money, isn’t nearly enough to bridge that chasm.</p>
<p>“Officially, the administration insists that the plan is adequate to the economy’s need. But few economists agree. And it’s widely believed that political considerations led to a plan that was weaker and contains more tax cuts than it should have—that Mr. Obama compromised in advance in the hope of gaining broad bipartisan support. We’ve just seen how well that worked.”</p>
<p>And last night on Olbermann:</p>
<p>“I’m almost sure we’re gonna have to come back for more…a Stimulus 2.0 to deal with this.”</p>
<p />
| 8,082 |
<p>On Thursday, in Barcelona, Spain, a driver <a href="https://nypost.com/2017/08/17/van-plows-into-crowd-in-barcelona/" type="external">murdered at least two pedestrians</a> and injured 20 others when he <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-barcelona-idUSKCN1AX1W6?il=0&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=Social" type="external">rammed his white van</a> into crowds, mowing down dozens of people in the tourist-heavy Las Ramblas district. The driver fled on foot after the attack.</p>
<p>Reuters reported two armed men entered a nearby restaurant after the attack:</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/AFP/status/898209418726301698" type="external">AFP reports</a> that Barcelona police declared the crash a “terrorist attack.”</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/featured/1341110/terror-barcelona-van-slams-dozens-people-near-kosher-restaurant.html" type="external">Yeshiva World</a>, the attack occurred near the kosher restaurant “ <a href="http://www.restaurantmaccabi.com/en/restaurante/" type="external">Maccabi</a>.” Metro and train stations were requested to shut down. El Pais reported that the driver ran over people while they were attempting to cross the street during a traffic light.</p>
<p>Marc Esparcia, a 20-year-old student who lives in Barcelona and hid in a Starbucks after the attack, told the BBC, “There was a loud noise and everybody ran for cover. There were a lot people, lots of families [at the site], this is one of the most visited sites in Barcelona. I think several people were hit. It was horrible, there was panic. Terrible.”</p>
<p>University of Glasgow rector Aamer Anwar was walking in La Ramblas when the attack occurred; he said:</p>
<p>I turned around and people were screaming — I could see a woman screaming with her kids — people started running and jumping into shops. I ran for about 50 or 100 metres and stopped to see what was happening. The police were very quickly on the scene and getting people to move back. I could see chaos right at the top area and I spoke to a shopkeeper who had run down and was screaming. He was Bengali so I spoke to him in Urdu and he said a van had driven into a crowd and he thought there were five to six people very seriously injured.</p>
<p>The gunmen are reportedly holed up in a bar: <a href="http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/638229/barcelona-terror-attack-las-ramblas-van-armed-police-hunt-gunmen-bars-video" type="external">gunfire has been heard</a>.</p>
|
UPDATED: Terrorist Attack In Barcelona: Van Rams Into Crowd, At Least 13 Dead
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/19863/terrorist-attack-barcelona-van-rams-crowd-least-2-hank-berrien
|
2017-08-17
| 0right
|
UPDATED: Terrorist Attack In Barcelona: Van Rams Into Crowd, At Least 13 Dead
<p>On Thursday, in Barcelona, Spain, a driver <a href="https://nypost.com/2017/08/17/van-plows-into-crowd-in-barcelona/" type="external">murdered at least two pedestrians</a> and injured 20 others when he <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-barcelona-idUSKCN1AX1W6?il=0&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=Social" type="external">rammed his white van</a> into crowds, mowing down dozens of people in the tourist-heavy Las Ramblas district. The driver fled on foot after the attack.</p>
<p>Reuters reported two armed men entered a nearby restaurant after the attack:</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/AFP/status/898209418726301698" type="external">AFP reports</a> that Barcelona police declared the crash a “terrorist attack.”</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/featured/1341110/terror-barcelona-van-slams-dozens-people-near-kosher-restaurant.html" type="external">Yeshiva World</a>, the attack occurred near the kosher restaurant “ <a href="http://www.restaurantmaccabi.com/en/restaurante/" type="external">Maccabi</a>.” Metro and train stations were requested to shut down. El Pais reported that the driver ran over people while they were attempting to cross the street during a traffic light.</p>
<p>Marc Esparcia, a 20-year-old student who lives in Barcelona and hid in a Starbucks after the attack, told the BBC, “There was a loud noise and everybody ran for cover. There were a lot people, lots of families [at the site], this is one of the most visited sites in Barcelona. I think several people were hit. It was horrible, there was panic. Terrible.”</p>
<p>University of Glasgow rector Aamer Anwar was walking in La Ramblas when the attack occurred; he said:</p>
<p>I turned around and people were screaming — I could see a woman screaming with her kids — people started running and jumping into shops. I ran for about 50 or 100 metres and stopped to see what was happening. The police were very quickly on the scene and getting people to move back. I could see chaos right at the top area and I spoke to a shopkeeper who had run down and was screaming. He was Bengali so I spoke to him in Urdu and he said a van had driven into a crowd and he thought there were five to six people very seriously injured.</p>
<p>The gunmen are reportedly holed up in a bar: <a href="http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/638229/barcelona-terror-attack-las-ramblas-van-armed-police-hunt-gunmen-bars-video" type="external">gunfire has been heard</a>.</p>
| 8,083 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto. (Laurent Gillieron/Keystone/AP Photo)</p>
<p>MEXICO CITY – When a president is in crisis, it is usually a propitious time for political opponents to pounce. But in Mexico, the controversies, failings and crisis of confidence engulfing President Enrique Peña Nieto have tarred not only his 2-year-old administration, but also the entire political establishment.</p>
<p>No party has emerged unscathed, nor barely an institution, including universities and the traditionally respected military.</p>
<p>And no political realm has suffered more than the left, some of whose politicians have been exposed as corrupt and in cahoots with drug traffickers. The mayor in Guerrero state who is accused of having ordered the police attack that led to the likely slaying of 43 college students belongs to the main leftist party, the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>So did the disgraced governor of the state, who is believed to have turned a blind eye to the collusion of local politicians with drug traffickers and was been forced to resign.</p>
<p>That goes a long way toward explaining why the left has not been able to capitalize on the unrest and widespread protests against Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, government, even though public demonstrations have been filled with revolutionary slogans and the kinds of demands for justice favored by the left.</p>
<p>A founder of the PRD and its two-time presidential candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, quit the party last month in disgust over how it was being run. Its other prominent leader, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who now has a separate leftist party, has remained unusually quiet.</p>
<p>All this may doom the left, struggling and divided for years and unable to score major electoral victories. Carlos Navarrete, president of the PRD, told a Mexican newspaper that the level of corruption of some PRD-led cities, including those in Guerrero, was worse than he had imagined.</p>
<p>And with much of the public still disenchanted with the other main opposition party, the conservative National Action Party, after its 12 years in the presidency, Mexicans are largely deprived of any real political alternative if they want to unseat the PRI.</p>
<p>A major test of that will come in 2015 midterm federal and state elections. Mexicans will elect all 500 members of the lower house of Congress and governors in nine states. The PRI had been expecting something near a clean sweep, but that now seems less certain.</p>
<p>“What’s the alternative?” asked Adrian Morales, a hairdresser marching in a huge street demonstration through Mexico City in November. “The left is completely burned. And I think that if the PRI wins big again, people will be very angry and things could get very ugly.”</p>
<p>The popularity of Peña Nieto and nearly all political institutions had plummeted, according to the polls. In addition to the probable massacre of the students, the clear connection between politicians and organized crime and perceptions that authorities handled the case poorly, Peña Nieto and members of his inner circle have also been hit with allegations of conflict of interest in the awarding of lucrative public-works contracts.</p>
<p>A survey released this month by GEA-ISA found the president’s disapproval rating had soared to 52 percent, the highest in his tenure and more negative than those of his two predecessors at this point in their terms.</p>
<p />
|
Protests hurt Mexico’s president, don’t help left
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/524405/protests-hurt-mexicos-president-dont-help-left.html
| 2least
|
Protests hurt Mexico’s president, don’t help left
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto. (Laurent Gillieron/Keystone/AP Photo)</p>
<p>MEXICO CITY – When a president is in crisis, it is usually a propitious time for political opponents to pounce. But in Mexico, the controversies, failings and crisis of confidence engulfing President Enrique Peña Nieto have tarred not only his 2-year-old administration, but also the entire political establishment.</p>
<p>No party has emerged unscathed, nor barely an institution, including universities and the traditionally respected military.</p>
<p>And no political realm has suffered more than the left, some of whose politicians have been exposed as corrupt and in cahoots with drug traffickers. The mayor in Guerrero state who is accused of having ordered the police attack that led to the likely slaying of 43 college students belongs to the main leftist party, the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>So did the disgraced governor of the state, who is believed to have turned a blind eye to the collusion of local politicians with drug traffickers and was been forced to resign.</p>
<p>That goes a long way toward explaining why the left has not been able to capitalize on the unrest and widespread protests against Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, government, even though public demonstrations have been filled with revolutionary slogans and the kinds of demands for justice favored by the left.</p>
<p>A founder of the PRD and its two-time presidential candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, quit the party last month in disgust over how it was being run. Its other prominent leader, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who now has a separate leftist party, has remained unusually quiet.</p>
<p>All this may doom the left, struggling and divided for years and unable to score major electoral victories. Carlos Navarrete, president of the PRD, told a Mexican newspaper that the level of corruption of some PRD-led cities, including those in Guerrero, was worse than he had imagined.</p>
<p>And with much of the public still disenchanted with the other main opposition party, the conservative National Action Party, after its 12 years in the presidency, Mexicans are largely deprived of any real political alternative if they want to unseat the PRI.</p>
<p>A major test of that will come in 2015 midterm federal and state elections. Mexicans will elect all 500 members of the lower house of Congress and governors in nine states. The PRI had been expecting something near a clean sweep, but that now seems less certain.</p>
<p>“What’s the alternative?” asked Adrian Morales, a hairdresser marching in a huge street demonstration through Mexico City in November. “The left is completely burned. And I think that if the PRI wins big again, people will be very angry and things could get very ugly.”</p>
<p>The popularity of Peña Nieto and nearly all political institutions had plummeted, according to the polls. In addition to the probable massacre of the students, the clear connection between politicians and organized crime and perceptions that authorities handled the case poorly, Peña Nieto and members of his inner circle have also been hit with allegations of conflict of interest in the awarding of lucrative public-works contracts.</p>
<p>A survey released this month by GEA-ISA found the president’s disapproval rating had soared to 52 percent, the highest in his tenure and more negative than those of his two predecessors at this point in their terms.</p>
<p />
| 8,084 |
|
<p>It is said that the earth’s magnetic field is about 10 percent weaker than it was when Carl Friedrich Gauss first measured it in 1845. At some point, the field will reverse poles and regenerate itself. Compasses will then point south.</p>
<p>This process, which will no doubt confuse migratory birds, may or may not be an example of intelligent design. But as a metaphor for the life of political parties, the magnetic field theory has some merit. As the issues and controversies which motivate the formation of a party inevitably fade, the party’s platform becomes hollow rodomontade, full of sound and fury signifying only jobs for the boys.</p>
<p>Once the causes which formed the party pass out of human memory, the rituals weaken to the point where, at some unrecorded instant, the ideological platform may actually reverse, with no one understanding why. Unlike the earth’s magnetic field, however, the party process is not necessarily a perpetuum mobile. Should the party no longer hold the allegiance of its followers, it collapses.</p>
<p>Examples of this tendency litter the detritus bin of history. The Whig Party of late 17th and early 18th century England consisted of a few score wealthy oligarchs and the commercial interests that supported them. Its central tenets were an unquenchable hatred of popery, Frenchmen, and Spaniards, and a seething inimicality towards its hapless Celtic wards in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. So averse was the Whig Ascendancy to anything that smacked of Romanism that it imported an entire royal line from Hanover rather than take a chance on the Pope-addicted Stuarts.</p>
<p>Yet in time the Whigs became a more-or-less legitimate vehicle for expansion of the franchise, abolition of slavery and religious tests, home rule in Ireland, and do-goodism generally. By the early 20th century, English Whiggery (or the Liberal Party, as it then styled itself) had a radical strain which would appear positively Bolshevik today. Its Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George (a Welsh Methodist leading the successor party to the Whig Ascendancy was in itself a novel reversal) offered a budget whose confiscatory inheritance taxes would probably strike the Hon. Cynthia McKinney as too radical.</p>
<p>Yet the contradictions between its platform and its lingering cultural inheritance of confessional politics doomed Liberal Whiggery during the great crisis of World War I. Caught between an authentic, blood-and-guts nationalist Conservative Party and a Labour Party that seemed (then) to more genuinely represent the interests of the working man, the Liberals shrank into a debating society of 19th century holdovers.</p>
<p>Let us move to a more contemporary example of platform reversal in the form of the Republican Party of the United States. Born amid the uproar of abolitionism, Transcendental kookery, and industrial expansion, the Republican Party had a definite and comprehensible platform.</p>
<p>Whatever the humanitarian motivation of some of its early abolitionist adherents, the Republicans were driven by a far more practical appreciation of the slavery issue. Lincoln understood that the spread of chattel slavery was a dagger pointed at the heart of free labor, of commercial development, and of the prospect that the United States would ever shed its industrial and financial dependence on Great Britain. Keep Britain (or proto-fascist France under Louis Napoleon) out of the Western Hemisphere, was Lincoln’s strategy both to end the slavocracy and to avert a Balkanized United States.</p>
<p>Slavery meant a debt-service economy; the Southern planters were as beholden to the City of London as Argentina is to Wall Street today. While the North and the South had similar per capita wealth, south of the Mason-Dixon Line it was overwhelmingly concentrated in the planter class. Non-slaveholding Southern whites had only half the income of their Northern counterparts. Antebellum travelers such as de Tocqueville noted that to cross the Ohio River was to regress in time. Common schools, funded by the community as a sensible measure of human improvement, were as rare in Dixie as shoes.</p>
<p>The twin planks in the Republican platform, the tariff and exclusion of slavery from the territories, were two sides of the same coin. Strangling the slavocracy meant opposition to British finance imperialism. On the other hand, had the South maintained control of the executive, Congress, and the Supreme Court, territorial expansion would likely have moved south, into Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America, rather than west. By 1890, America might have more nearly resembled King Leopold’s Congo or Queen Vicky’s India than an industrial power.</p>
<p>The blue-coated line held at Little Round Top, and the reader knows the rest of the story. But what became of the party that professed to believe in internal development, constitutional liberties, the protective tariff, suspicion of international power politics, and support for the yeoman farmer and independent businessman?</p>
<p>The magnetic field appears to have reversed. The Grand Old Party is now the premier exponent of “free trade” (actually a kind of reverse mercantilism whereby financiers profit from gutting industry) [1]. Like their polar opposites of 1860, the Republicans have fervently embraced equatorial imperialism, substituting the oil-bearing strata of the Middle East for the Sugar Islands of the Caribbean.</p>
<p>Similarly long gone are the old nativist-isolationist suspicions of foreign entanglement. Perfidious Albion of yore receives far more solicitude from the Presidential Palace than, say, large tracts of the United States proper. [2]</p>
<p>The voter base of the GOP has likewise inverted. Formerly a party of the middling sort of Mainline Protestant shopkeepers, farmers, clerks, and Rotarians in the Northeast and Midwest (the latter being the infamous Jell-O Salad Belt), the Republicans have latterly made their greatest electoral gains in the Old Confederacy, the territory of their old mortal slavocratic nemesis. Find a vocal exponent of the Lost Cause, and nine chances in ten he votes for the party of Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman. The military of the former Yankee invader is now the object of considerable reverence by the denizens of the South, as well as a popular career track. Robert LaFollette, make way for NASCAR, the Reverend Moon, and the Baghdad airport road.</p>
<p>The United States under Republican control is now the world’s leading example of a debt-service economy. It is as if the nostrums of John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis took possession of the GOP in the manner of demons possessing a soul. During the last five years’ reign of the incumbent president, the national debt has almost doubled.</p>
<p>The dignity of free labor, once a pillar of Lincoln’s program, has given way to a more sophisticated version of the plantation system: a rootless, global system of downward wage arbitrage. Just as the shoeless antebellum Poor White Trash was conditioned to hate the slave rather than the slave system which reduced him to penury, so has the modern equivalent been propagandized by talk radio to blame foreign labor, or immigrant labor, or homosexual marriage, or stem cell research, or evolution, or the next bugaboo, rather than the system which arbitrages labor. The capacity for abstract thought is not a defining mark of the present age.</p>
<p>When Elisha Hunt Rhodes and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain tramped over the country whose constitutional principles they defended, theirs was an inward-looking, defensive patriotism. Patriotism, an attachment to a locality and its folkways, and a desire that one’s children be brought up in the same mental atmosphere, has given way, particularly under the Republican Party, to aggressive nationalism, which is the opposite of patriotism.</p>
<p>Nationalists, who seem to have found a home in the Republican Party, have very little knowledge or appreciation of the country, its traditions, or the essential inwardness of most of its people. For that very reason the most hyperbolic form of nationalism, neoconservatism, typically infects persons, like the Wall Street Journal’s Max Boot, who have only the most tenuous connections to the physical United States. In their rootless, cosmopolitan way, these vagabonds have battened onto the United States in the same manner that foreign communists once made their hajj to Moscow. They may even be the same people as those moldering communists, or their offspring. Where an American’s eye might glimpse the Adirondacks, or Sioux Falls, or Oshkosh, or the Father of Waters flowing unvexed to the sea, the neoconservative sees only the shimmering mirage of Imperial Rome.</p>
<p>Thus the Republican Party, anno 2005. In line with the manufactured Zeitgeist, the party elders have introduced a new catechism to snare the booboisie. Who would have thought the party of Charles Francis Adams and Thomas Alva Edison would declare war on science? Yet from stem cell research to evolution, from climate change to sociology, the Grand Old Party shows a cast of mind more appropriate to sour Wahhabite fanatics of the Arabian Peninsula than enlightened adults.</p>
<p>But this catechism, given the natural human tropism to regress to the level of the lower phyla, is undeniably popular. Similarly popular in the dark areas off the state highways is the idea of torture. Since the abolition of the Star Chamber, Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence has uniformly condemned torture, and with good reason. It is a reversion to the Stone Age. Its practitioners, and those who authorize it, are, without exception, sadistic scoundrels unfit for civilized company. Its absolute prohibition is the firewall between decent society and savagery.</p>
<p>Yet somehow, the GOP has tapped into the growing vicarious sadism of a large segment of the TV-addicted public. Perhaps it is the softness of modern life, with few thrills and little danger or physical strain, that allows people to imagine torture as yet another television play where the good guys win. A little assistance from Rupert Murdoch’s thinly disguised advocacy pieces for torture, like 24, is all it takes.</p>
<p>It is hardly coincidental that a political organization which shuns science would embrace torture. Ultimately, the contradictions may prove fatal: at some point, no one will be able to build the atomic bombs necessary to keeping an angry world sufficiently intimidated. But we would not bet that the Republican Party, having reversed all its founding tenets, will collapse anytime soon: after all, une idée fausse, mais claire et précise, aura toujours plus de puissance dans le monde qu’une idée vraie, mais complexe. This brings us to the other stooge in the great American dumb-show, the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>The Democracy began, as the GOP has presently evolved, with une idée fausse, mais claire et précis. That idea was the defense of slavery, wrapped up in mumbo-jumbo of States’ rights. [3] So strong were the Democrats that even being on the losing end of a bloody civil war did not extinguish the party; indeed, the party was competitive in the North during the Civil War, and even picked up Congressional seats in the “butternut” regions of the Ohio Valley in 1862.</p>
<p>Despite the charges of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion,” the party of Jefferson managed to avoid oblivion in the post-bellum years. As early as the 1870s, it could return a majority to Congress, and in the turbulent 1880s, even a president in the massive form of Grover Cleveland (who, in H.L. Mencken’s words, “sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite”–a journey made undoubtedly easier by the Gold Democrat Cleveland’s fealty to the House of Morgan).</p>
<p>After an ill-fated flirtation with the populism of William Jennings Bryan [4] The Democratic Party reverted to upstanding corporate lawyers of the stamp of Alton B. Parker and John W. Davis. The Democrats actually grasped the brass ring in the constipated form of Princeton pedagogue Thomas Woodrow Wilson. His interpretation of “The New Freedom” consisted of segregating the federal workforce, debuting Birth of a Nation in a White House screening, piling up 115,000 Yank corpses on the Western Front, imposing prohibition, and imprisoning his political opponents for terms of up to ten years. [5]</p>
<p>How was it, then, that a collection of reactionary Bourbons later came, during the Great Depression, to represent (even if in dream more than in reality) the aspirations of the Common Man? Perhaps it is once again the mystery of force field flipping. Similarly, it is one of the supreme ironies of history that the party of slavocracy forced the most comprehensive civil rights laws since Reconstruction through the legislative meat grinder in 1964 and 1965.</p>
<p>Did the Democrats become a radical egalitarian party? Not exactly. The party has reversed force fields again, becoming a creature of the Democratic Leadership Council. This organization apparently aspires to be junior partners with the Republican Ascendancy, and for good and sufficient reason. It’s not about America, it’s about Israel, the Great Britain of the 21st century.</p>
<p>The DLC was–and is–a creature of New York high roller Michael Steinhardt, son of Sol Steinhardt, a jewel fence for the Meyer Lansky mob. Like most of organized crime, Steinhardt fils decided to go upmarket and merge with Wall Street. His millions created the Hon. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT).</p>
<p>Steinhardt is also notable for his loose interpretation of the law of possession. In the early 1990s, he attempted to corner the market on Treasury securities, an audacious strategy which resulted in his having to pay $70 million in civil penalties to the Securities and Exchange Commission–a record fine at the time. Weep not for Steinhardt, though: he made $600 million from the scam.</p>
<p>Steinhardt, a certifiable pro-Israel fanatic, guarantees that the Democrats will not offer a genuine political alternative to the neoconservative-dominated Republicans. Should anyone wonder why the putatively limp-wristed Democrats vote for war in Iraq and for fiscally irresponsible military budgets, Steinhardt (and his AIPAC-connected confreres) offer a rationale: should Democratic Backbencher X vote against the next war in the Middle East or against the next Pentagon boondoggle, he will have shown himself insufficiently ready to protect Israel. Such transgressions must not go unpunished.</p>
<p>Hence the tortuous fakery of the current proceedings in Washington. The alleged opposition party’s candidate in 2004 declared that Iraq was a mistake that required 30,000 more troops. Hence the Hon. Joseph Biden’s aneurystic outbursts at the administration’s incompetent manner of prosecuting a war he voted to wage. Hence Madame Hillary’s cosponsorship of a bill to increase the size of the army. Hence the party’s decision to run away from the Hon. John Murtha, a Marine veteran who said enough is enough.</p>
<p>Hence the asinine charade of the vote of 18 November in relation to H. Res. 571, expressing the sense of the House of Representatives “that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq [should] be terminated immediately.” The Democrats had the strategic option of voting “present” if they thought the question was rigged. But under the leadership of the Hon. Nancy Pelosi, who is terrified of the Lobby, the overwhelming majority of Democrats joined Republicans in voting no. [6]</p>
<p>What does this remind us of? The Democrats’ pirouettes and tergiversations harken back to another failed party, the Whigs. No, not the English Whigs, who enjoyed a two-century run. A model for failure fully equal to the Democratic Party is the short, unhappy life of the American Whig Party. Formed in reaction to the exuberant (not to say unconstitutional) policies of Andrew Jackson, the Whigs met all issues by straddling them.</p>
<p>Faced with the Mexican War which many of them viscerally opposed, the Whigs reacted by nominating generals like William Henry Harrison and Winfield Scott. Does this remind us of the candidacy of Wesley Clark and the absurdly militaristic display of the 2004 convention?</p>
<p>Faced with the slavery issue, the Whigs resolutely decided not to decide. Some Northern Whigs opposed slavery, while other Northern “Cotton Whigs” attempted to profit from the South’s agricultural output. Southern Whigs pretended not to notice the Peculiar Institution existed at all.</p>
<p>And so, caught between Democratic pro-slavery fire-eaters and the Free Soil insurgency (soon to become the Republican Party), the Whigs faded into oblivion. They were not bad people: the Philadelphia industrialists and border state centrists who constituted its base sought compromise and conciliation. Slavery was an embarrassment that one might ignore out of existence.</p>
<p>War and slavery are great evils. The Whig Party attempted to compromise on a matter of utmost principle, and paid the price. The Democratic Party of 2005, as bereft of principles as it is of strategy, could suffer an even worse fate: it will not disappear, but linger on for decades, playing its assigned role as a tolerated opposition party so as to maintain the illusion of democratic participation.</p>
<p>WERTHER is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.</p>
<p>[1] The author’s recent tour of the Midwest, once the boast and pride of industrial America, uncovered a landscape of squalor unequalled except in the more putrid parts of post-industrial England and asset-stripped Russia.</p>
<p>[2] American Dynasty, Kevin Phillips’s perceptive laparotomy of the Bush clan, posits that Bush pere et fils, themselves distantly related to English monarchs, have attempted to construct an English-style oligarchy on the erstwhile constitutional republican soil of the United States.</p>
<p>[3] The fact that the Supreme Court’s ruling in DRED SCOTT, PLAINTIFF IN ERROR, v. JOHN FA SANDFORD. December Term, 1856, and the various fugitive slave statutes derived therefrom, completely invalidated States’ rights principles did not trouble the Old Democracy.</p>
<p>[4] As a point of personal privilege, it is now in order to respond to Counterpunch editor Alexander Cockburn’s <a href="" type="internal">broadside</a> against an earlier discussion of Bryan’s personal qualities . Perhaps reader Fahey and editor Cockburn overreacted in objecting to our inclusion of William Jennings Bryan in an omnium gatherum of political evangelicals. First, we previously gave respectful consideration to Bryan’s populist tendencies in an earlier piece, “The Peckerwood Pericles,” a fricasseeing of the Hon. Zell Miller, wherein the author stated, “as candidate for president [Bryan] held economic views that today, a century later, Sean Hannity would denounce as socialist.”</p>
<p>That said, it is far from clear whether Bryan opposed evolution based on a progressive ethical revulsion against Social Darwinism (including the eugenics movement, which itself was “progressive,” at the time, cf., Margaret Sanger); or, more likely, he was simply reacting on the basis of his evangelical religious dogma.</p>
<p>The late, great Walter Karp has suggested that Bryan was less a progressive leader than something of a red herring. The Democrats chose him in the 1896 convention more for his ability to split (and destroy) the burgeoning Progressive Party than for his potential to beat the heavily-funded McKinley, according to Karp. Bryan’s free-silver platform made a riveting nomination speech, but was just one in a long American tradition of monetary panaceas proposed by cranks.</p>
<p>It also bears mentioning that it was Southern and Midwestern-based Bryanite Methodism and Baptism which battened on the American people the all-time worst Constitutional amendment and the worst law since the Fugitive Slave Act. Those readers of Counterpunch who wonder at the manifest imbecility of the Federal government’s “war” on drugs can hardly be fans of the Volstead Act. That is one of the legacies of the movement Bryan brought into being.</p>
<p>Accordingly, Bryan’s role in American politics is far more muddled and ambiguous than Ms.Fahey and Mr. Cockburn suggested. WERTHER would stipulate that Bryan had redeeming qualities. To say that it is inappropriate to compare him to the current crop of politico-religious demagogues (a reasonable point if properly qualified), only shows how far the republic has slid.</p>
<p>[5] Pursuant to the Espionage Act of 1917 (18 U.S.C., Secs. 793, 794). While Wilson’s Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, has been saddled with the dubious credit for the governmental 18 Brumaire, Wilson was in fact the guiding light and inspirer of the oppression.</p>
<p>[6] The Republicans only scheduled the vote because some alert staffer noticed that Ms. Pelosi had cancelled a press conference in support of Mr. Murtha earlier the same day. Someone had apparently sensed that the Democratic leadership was not supporting Murtha, and accordingly put a resolution on the House calendar designed to drive a wedge between Murtha and Democrats beholden to Israel.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
The Whig Interpretation of Recent History
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2005/12/17/the-whig-interpretation-of-recent-history/
|
2005-12-17
| 4left
|
The Whig Interpretation of Recent History
<p>It is said that the earth’s magnetic field is about 10 percent weaker than it was when Carl Friedrich Gauss first measured it in 1845. At some point, the field will reverse poles and regenerate itself. Compasses will then point south.</p>
<p>This process, which will no doubt confuse migratory birds, may or may not be an example of intelligent design. But as a metaphor for the life of political parties, the magnetic field theory has some merit. As the issues and controversies which motivate the formation of a party inevitably fade, the party’s platform becomes hollow rodomontade, full of sound and fury signifying only jobs for the boys.</p>
<p>Once the causes which formed the party pass out of human memory, the rituals weaken to the point where, at some unrecorded instant, the ideological platform may actually reverse, with no one understanding why. Unlike the earth’s magnetic field, however, the party process is not necessarily a perpetuum mobile. Should the party no longer hold the allegiance of its followers, it collapses.</p>
<p>Examples of this tendency litter the detritus bin of history. The Whig Party of late 17th and early 18th century England consisted of a few score wealthy oligarchs and the commercial interests that supported them. Its central tenets were an unquenchable hatred of popery, Frenchmen, and Spaniards, and a seething inimicality towards its hapless Celtic wards in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. So averse was the Whig Ascendancy to anything that smacked of Romanism that it imported an entire royal line from Hanover rather than take a chance on the Pope-addicted Stuarts.</p>
<p>Yet in time the Whigs became a more-or-less legitimate vehicle for expansion of the franchise, abolition of slavery and religious tests, home rule in Ireland, and do-goodism generally. By the early 20th century, English Whiggery (or the Liberal Party, as it then styled itself) had a radical strain which would appear positively Bolshevik today. Its Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George (a Welsh Methodist leading the successor party to the Whig Ascendancy was in itself a novel reversal) offered a budget whose confiscatory inheritance taxes would probably strike the Hon. Cynthia McKinney as too radical.</p>
<p>Yet the contradictions between its platform and its lingering cultural inheritance of confessional politics doomed Liberal Whiggery during the great crisis of World War I. Caught between an authentic, blood-and-guts nationalist Conservative Party and a Labour Party that seemed (then) to more genuinely represent the interests of the working man, the Liberals shrank into a debating society of 19th century holdovers.</p>
<p>Let us move to a more contemporary example of platform reversal in the form of the Republican Party of the United States. Born amid the uproar of abolitionism, Transcendental kookery, and industrial expansion, the Republican Party had a definite and comprehensible platform.</p>
<p>Whatever the humanitarian motivation of some of its early abolitionist adherents, the Republicans were driven by a far more practical appreciation of the slavery issue. Lincoln understood that the spread of chattel slavery was a dagger pointed at the heart of free labor, of commercial development, and of the prospect that the United States would ever shed its industrial and financial dependence on Great Britain. Keep Britain (or proto-fascist France under Louis Napoleon) out of the Western Hemisphere, was Lincoln’s strategy both to end the slavocracy and to avert a Balkanized United States.</p>
<p>Slavery meant a debt-service economy; the Southern planters were as beholden to the City of London as Argentina is to Wall Street today. While the North and the South had similar per capita wealth, south of the Mason-Dixon Line it was overwhelmingly concentrated in the planter class. Non-slaveholding Southern whites had only half the income of their Northern counterparts. Antebellum travelers such as de Tocqueville noted that to cross the Ohio River was to regress in time. Common schools, funded by the community as a sensible measure of human improvement, were as rare in Dixie as shoes.</p>
<p>The twin planks in the Republican platform, the tariff and exclusion of slavery from the territories, were two sides of the same coin. Strangling the slavocracy meant opposition to British finance imperialism. On the other hand, had the South maintained control of the executive, Congress, and the Supreme Court, territorial expansion would likely have moved south, into Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America, rather than west. By 1890, America might have more nearly resembled King Leopold’s Congo or Queen Vicky’s India than an industrial power.</p>
<p>The blue-coated line held at Little Round Top, and the reader knows the rest of the story. But what became of the party that professed to believe in internal development, constitutional liberties, the protective tariff, suspicion of international power politics, and support for the yeoman farmer and independent businessman?</p>
<p>The magnetic field appears to have reversed. The Grand Old Party is now the premier exponent of “free trade” (actually a kind of reverse mercantilism whereby financiers profit from gutting industry) [1]. Like their polar opposites of 1860, the Republicans have fervently embraced equatorial imperialism, substituting the oil-bearing strata of the Middle East for the Sugar Islands of the Caribbean.</p>
<p>Similarly long gone are the old nativist-isolationist suspicions of foreign entanglement. Perfidious Albion of yore receives far more solicitude from the Presidential Palace than, say, large tracts of the United States proper. [2]</p>
<p>The voter base of the GOP has likewise inverted. Formerly a party of the middling sort of Mainline Protestant shopkeepers, farmers, clerks, and Rotarians in the Northeast and Midwest (the latter being the infamous Jell-O Salad Belt), the Republicans have latterly made their greatest electoral gains in the Old Confederacy, the territory of their old mortal slavocratic nemesis. Find a vocal exponent of the Lost Cause, and nine chances in ten he votes for the party of Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman. The military of the former Yankee invader is now the object of considerable reverence by the denizens of the South, as well as a popular career track. Robert LaFollette, make way for NASCAR, the Reverend Moon, and the Baghdad airport road.</p>
<p>The United States under Republican control is now the world’s leading example of a debt-service economy. It is as if the nostrums of John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis took possession of the GOP in the manner of demons possessing a soul. During the last five years’ reign of the incumbent president, the national debt has almost doubled.</p>
<p>The dignity of free labor, once a pillar of Lincoln’s program, has given way to a more sophisticated version of the plantation system: a rootless, global system of downward wage arbitrage. Just as the shoeless antebellum Poor White Trash was conditioned to hate the slave rather than the slave system which reduced him to penury, so has the modern equivalent been propagandized by talk radio to blame foreign labor, or immigrant labor, or homosexual marriage, or stem cell research, or evolution, or the next bugaboo, rather than the system which arbitrages labor. The capacity for abstract thought is not a defining mark of the present age.</p>
<p>When Elisha Hunt Rhodes and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain tramped over the country whose constitutional principles they defended, theirs was an inward-looking, defensive patriotism. Patriotism, an attachment to a locality and its folkways, and a desire that one’s children be brought up in the same mental atmosphere, has given way, particularly under the Republican Party, to aggressive nationalism, which is the opposite of patriotism.</p>
<p>Nationalists, who seem to have found a home in the Republican Party, have very little knowledge or appreciation of the country, its traditions, or the essential inwardness of most of its people. For that very reason the most hyperbolic form of nationalism, neoconservatism, typically infects persons, like the Wall Street Journal’s Max Boot, who have only the most tenuous connections to the physical United States. In their rootless, cosmopolitan way, these vagabonds have battened onto the United States in the same manner that foreign communists once made their hajj to Moscow. They may even be the same people as those moldering communists, or their offspring. Where an American’s eye might glimpse the Adirondacks, or Sioux Falls, or Oshkosh, or the Father of Waters flowing unvexed to the sea, the neoconservative sees only the shimmering mirage of Imperial Rome.</p>
<p>Thus the Republican Party, anno 2005. In line with the manufactured Zeitgeist, the party elders have introduced a new catechism to snare the booboisie. Who would have thought the party of Charles Francis Adams and Thomas Alva Edison would declare war on science? Yet from stem cell research to evolution, from climate change to sociology, the Grand Old Party shows a cast of mind more appropriate to sour Wahhabite fanatics of the Arabian Peninsula than enlightened adults.</p>
<p>But this catechism, given the natural human tropism to regress to the level of the lower phyla, is undeniably popular. Similarly popular in the dark areas off the state highways is the idea of torture. Since the abolition of the Star Chamber, Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence has uniformly condemned torture, and with good reason. It is a reversion to the Stone Age. Its practitioners, and those who authorize it, are, without exception, sadistic scoundrels unfit for civilized company. Its absolute prohibition is the firewall between decent society and savagery.</p>
<p>Yet somehow, the GOP has tapped into the growing vicarious sadism of a large segment of the TV-addicted public. Perhaps it is the softness of modern life, with few thrills and little danger or physical strain, that allows people to imagine torture as yet another television play where the good guys win. A little assistance from Rupert Murdoch’s thinly disguised advocacy pieces for torture, like 24, is all it takes.</p>
<p>It is hardly coincidental that a political organization which shuns science would embrace torture. Ultimately, the contradictions may prove fatal: at some point, no one will be able to build the atomic bombs necessary to keeping an angry world sufficiently intimidated. But we would not bet that the Republican Party, having reversed all its founding tenets, will collapse anytime soon: after all, une idée fausse, mais claire et précise, aura toujours plus de puissance dans le monde qu’une idée vraie, mais complexe. This brings us to the other stooge in the great American dumb-show, the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>The Democracy began, as the GOP has presently evolved, with une idée fausse, mais claire et précis. That idea was the defense of slavery, wrapped up in mumbo-jumbo of States’ rights. [3] So strong were the Democrats that even being on the losing end of a bloody civil war did not extinguish the party; indeed, the party was competitive in the North during the Civil War, and even picked up Congressional seats in the “butternut” regions of the Ohio Valley in 1862.</p>
<p>Despite the charges of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion,” the party of Jefferson managed to avoid oblivion in the post-bellum years. As early as the 1870s, it could return a majority to Congress, and in the turbulent 1880s, even a president in the massive form of Grover Cleveland (who, in H.L. Mencken’s words, “sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite”–a journey made undoubtedly easier by the Gold Democrat Cleveland’s fealty to the House of Morgan).</p>
<p>After an ill-fated flirtation with the populism of William Jennings Bryan [4] The Democratic Party reverted to upstanding corporate lawyers of the stamp of Alton B. Parker and John W. Davis. The Democrats actually grasped the brass ring in the constipated form of Princeton pedagogue Thomas Woodrow Wilson. His interpretation of “The New Freedom” consisted of segregating the federal workforce, debuting Birth of a Nation in a White House screening, piling up 115,000 Yank corpses on the Western Front, imposing prohibition, and imprisoning his political opponents for terms of up to ten years. [5]</p>
<p>How was it, then, that a collection of reactionary Bourbons later came, during the Great Depression, to represent (even if in dream more than in reality) the aspirations of the Common Man? Perhaps it is once again the mystery of force field flipping. Similarly, it is one of the supreme ironies of history that the party of slavocracy forced the most comprehensive civil rights laws since Reconstruction through the legislative meat grinder in 1964 and 1965.</p>
<p>Did the Democrats become a radical egalitarian party? Not exactly. The party has reversed force fields again, becoming a creature of the Democratic Leadership Council. This organization apparently aspires to be junior partners with the Republican Ascendancy, and for good and sufficient reason. It’s not about America, it’s about Israel, the Great Britain of the 21st century.</p>
<p>The DLC was–and is–a creature of New York high roller Michael Steinhardt, son of Sol Steinhardt, a jewel fence for the Meyer Lansky mob. Like most of organized crime, Steinhardt fils decided to go upmarket and merge with Wall Street. His millions created the Hon. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT).</p>
<p>Steinhardt is also notable for his loose interpretation of the law of possession. In the early 1990s, he attempted to corner the market on Treasury securities, an audacious strategy which resulted in his having to pay $70 million in civil penalties to the Securities and Exchange Commission–a record fine at the time. Weep not for Steinhardt, though: he made $600 million from the scam.</p>
<p>Steinhardt, a certifiable pro-Israel fanatic, guarantees that the Democrats will not offer a genuine political alternative to the neoconservative-dominated Republicans. Should anyone wonder why the putatively limp-wristed Democrats vote for war in Iraq and for fiscally irresponsible military budgets, Steinhardt (and his AIPAC-connected confreres) offer a rationale: should Democratic Backbencher X vote against the next war in the Middle East or against the next Pentagon boondoggle, he will have shown himself insufficiently ready to protect Israel. Such transgressions must not go unpunished.</p>
<p>Hence the tortuous fakery of the current proceedings in Washington. The alleged opposition party’s candidate in 2004 declared that Iraq was a mistake that required 30,000 more troops. Hence the Hon. Joseph Biden’s aneurystic outbursts at the administration’s incompetent manner of prosecuting a war he voted to wage. Hence Madame Hillary’s cosponsorship of a bill to increase the size of the army. Hence the party’s decision to run away from the Hon. John Murtha, a Marine veteran who said enough is enough.</p>
<p>Hence the asinine charade of the vote of 18 November in relation to H. Res. 571, expressing the sense of the House of Representatives “that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq [should] be terminated immediately.” The Democrats had the strategic option of voting “present” if they thought the question was rigged. But under the leadership of the Hon. Nancy Pelosi, who is terrified of the Lobby, the overwhelming majority of Democrats joined Republicans in voting no. [6]</p>
<p>What does this remind us of? The Democrats’ pirouettes and tergiversations harken back to another failed party, the Whigs. No, not the English Whigs, who enjoyed a two-century run. A model for failure fully equal to the Democratic Party is the short, unhappy life of the American Whig Party. Formed in reaction to the exuberant (not to say unconstitutional) policies of Andrew Jackson, the Whigs met all issues by straddling them.</p>
<p>Faced with the Mexican War which many of them viscerally opposed, the Whigs reacted by nominating generals like William Henry Harrison and Winfield Scott. Does this remind us of the candidacy of Wesley Clark and the absurdly militaristic display of the 2004 convention?</p>
<p>Faced with the slavery issue, the Whigs resolutely decided not to decide. Some Northern Whigs opposed slavery, while other Northern “Cotton Whigs” attempted to profit from the South’s agricultural output. Southern Whigs pretended not to notice the Peculiar Institution existed at all.</p>
<p>And so, caught between Democratic pro-slavery fire-eaters and the Free Soil insurgency (soon to become the Republican Party), the Whigs faded into oblivion. They were not bad people: the Philadelphia industrialists and border state centrists who constituted its base sought compromise and conciliation. Slavery was an embarrassment that one might ignore out of existence.</p>
<p>War and slavery are great evils. The Whig Party attempted to compromise on a matter of utmost principle, and paid the price. The Democratic Party of 2005, as bereft of principles as it is of strategy, could suffer an even worse fate: it will not disappear, but linger on for decades, playing its assigned role as a tolerated opposition party so as to maintain the illusion of democratic participation.</p>
<p>WERTHER is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.</p>
<p>[1] The author’s recent tour of the Midwest, once the boast and pride of industrial America, uncovered a landscape of squalor unequalled except in the more putrid parts of post-industrial England and asset-stripped Russia.</p>
<p>[2] American Dynasty, Kevin Phillips’s perceptive laparotomy of the Bush clan, posits that Bush pere et fils, themselves distantly related to English monarchs, have attempted to construct an English-style oligarchy on the erstwhile constitutional republican soil of the United States.</p>
<p>[3] The fact that the Supreme Court’s ruling in DRED SCOTT, PLAINTIFF IN ERROR, v. JOHN FA SANDFORD. December Term, 1856, and the various fugitive slave statutes derived therefrom, completely invalidated States’ rights principles did not trouble the Old Democracy.</p>
<p>[4] As a point of personal privilege, it is now in order to respond to Counterpunch editor Alexander Cockburn’s <a href="" type="internal">broadside</a> against an earlier discussion of Bryan’s personal qualities . Perhaps reader Fahey and editor Cockburn overreacted in objecting to our inclusion of William Jennings Bryan in an omnium gatherum of political evangelicals. First, we previously gave respectful consideration to Bryan’s populist tendencies in an earlier piece, “The Peckerwood Pericles,” a fricasseeing of the Hon. Zell Miller, wherein the author stated, “as candidate for president [Bryan] held economic views that today, a century later, Sean Hannity would denounce as socialist.”</p>
<p>That said, it is far from clear whether Bryan opposed evolution based on a progressive ethical revulsion against Social Darwinism (including the eugenics movement, which itself was “progressive,” at the time, cf., Margaret Sanger); or, more likely, he was simply reacting on the basis of his evangelical religious dogma.</p>
<p>The late, great Walter Karp has suggested that Bryan was less a progressive leader than something of a red herring. The Democrats chose him in the 1896 convention more for his ability to split (and destroy) the burgeoning Progressive Party than for his potential to beat the heavily-funded McKinley, according to Karp. Bryan’s free-silver platform made a riveting nomination speech, but was just one in a long American tradition of monetary panaceas proposed by cranks.</p>
<p>It also bears mentioning that it was Southern and Midwestern-based Bryanite Methodism and Baptism which battened on the American people the all-time worst Constitutional amendment and the worst law since the Fugitive Slave Act. Those readers of Counterpunch who wonder at the manifest imbecility of the Federal government’s “war” on drugs can hardly be fans of the Volstead Act. That is one of the legacies of the movement Bryan brought into being.</p>
<p>Accordingly, Bryan’s role in American politics is far more muddled and ambiguous than Ms.Fahey and Mr. Cockburn suggested. WERTHER would stipulate that Bryan had redeeming qualities. To say that it is inappropriate to compare him to the current crop of politico-religious demagogues (a reasonable point if properly qualified), only shows how far the republic has slid.</p>
<p>[5] Pursuant to the Espionage Act of 1917 (18 U.S.C., Secs. 793, 794). While Wilson’s Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, has been saddled with the dubious credit for the governmental 18 Brumaire, Wilson was in fact the guiding light and inspirer of the oppression.</p>
<p>[6] The Republicans only scheduled the vote because some alert staffer noticed that Ms. Pelosi had cancelled a press conference in support of Mr. Murtha earlier the same day. Someone had apparently sensed that the Democratic leadership was not supporting Murtha, and accordingly put a resolution on the House calendar designed to drive a wedge between Murtha and Democrats beholden to Israel.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 8,085 |
<p>Fracking is now a flashpoint in debates about climate change, energy policy, and inequality.</p>
<p>AlterNet has partnered with the Nathan Cummings Foundation to produce Summits on Tenth, a new video series featuring conversations that challenge conventional thinking on the issues you care about. In our second installment, “The Striking Challenge of Fracking: Who Does it Benefit and Who Gets Hurt?” Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute and Kate Sinding of the Natural Resources Defense Council present strong — and sometimes opposing — points of view on this complicated topic.</p>
<p>Find out what fracking looks like to people from different vantage points and learn about the&#160;trade-offs, the dangers, and the future of fracking.</p>
<p>You can watch the highlights of the debate or the full debate below, plus read a series of mini op-eds from diverse thinkers who respond to the debate. You can also read the full <a href="" type="internal">transcript of the debate here</a>.</p>
<p>Watch the highlights of the debate:</p>
<p>Here's the full program:</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Read responses to the debate:</p>
<p>Phil Radford, Executive Director of Greenpeace</p>
<p>Natural gas is a false hope fuel that is too risky, expensive, and the American people don’t need it--the Fossil Fuel industry of the past, like ExxonMobil and Chesapeake Energy, does. &#160;&#160;</p>
<p>Natural gas has increased in price by&#160; <a href="//wesa.fm/post/rising-natural-gas-prices-make-electricity-more-expensive-nationwide" type="external">60% this year</a>&#160;compared to this time last year, so the promise of cheap gas was a false promise that will only lock America into another dirty fossil fuel. The American Gas Association says itself that if you want to get fracked gas from places like Ohio you’re paying a price that is more than you pay for solar and wind. Even markets are projecting that natural gas will be cost effective for electricity production. Wind is the cheapest form of new electricity, making up&#160; <a href="//www.reporternews.com/news/2013/apr/11/us-wind-energy-grew-28-percent-in-2012-and-texas/" type="external">over 9%</a>&#160;of TX’s energy mix, and counting, and 25% of&#160; <a href="//www.fastcoexist.com/1682566/does-amazon-have-a-renewable-energy-problem" type="external">Iowa’s</a>. And I’m one of thousands of people across the country who just put solar on my home, and I’m saving 30% on my electric bill. The fracked natural gas supply is&#160; <a href="//science.time.com/2013/05/27/natural-gas/" type="external">now outstripping demand</a>&#160;in the US, which is why companies want to export it, but exporting liquified natural gas means more drilling which means more fracking, more air and water pollution, and more unnatural weather disasters. It’s the fossil fuel cycle we must avoid. &#160;</p>
<p>All new electricity generating capacity in the United States in January 2013 was&#160; <a href="//thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/24/1631211/wind-solar-biomass-provide-all-new-us-electrical-generating-capacity-in-january-2013///www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fthinkprogress.org%2Fclimate%2F2013%2F02%2F24%2F1631211%2Fwind-solar-biomass-provide-all-new-us-electrical-generating-capacity-in-january-2013%2F&amp;sa=D&amp;sntz=1&amp;usg=AFQjCNGIBz03asgxW8OlSC6pHvQ9-IwhVw" type="external">renewable energy sources</a>. Renewables were&#160; <a href="//www.rtcc.org/2013/07/19/us-renewable-energy-use-soared-in-2012-report/" type="external">49%</a>&#160;of all new electricity last year. &#160;Farmers in Kansas and electricians in North Carolina know that these jobs are real, and they’re here now. This is a way to save the family farm.</p>
<p>We need an energy revolution now. &#160;The barriers to clean energy are political, not practical. &#160;Once the natural gas boom is officially over, it will no longer be the cheap solution to other fossil fuel pollution energy companies claim it is. &#160;We can already see natural gas prices leaping upwards, and that will only continue as the price of extraction, storage, and transport continues to rise.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Jonathan Cedar,&#160;Chief Executive Officer of BioLite</p>
<p>In the recent Summits on Tenth debate, Kate Sinding condemns fracking by first acknowledging that natural gas is cleaner than coal, but then stating that “better is not good enough.” While I agree with Ms. Sinding that a new generation of CO2 neutral technologies is needed to replace fossil fuels, we should not let our pursuit of the ideal interrupt the practical, implementable, affordable steps available today to minimize CO2 emissions and slow our rapid pace of climate disruption.&#160;</p>
<p>Whether we like it or not, global energy demand is continuing to rise and the choice we face today is whether we service that demand with cleaner (not to be confused with clean) or dirtier fuels. Natural gas releases approximately half the CO2 per BTU of energy as coal. Extraction and distribution of natural gas certainly has safety risks for both people and climate, but so do all of the current large-scale alternatives.&#160;</p>
<p>Rather than focusing our energy on condemning the cleanest of our admittedly imperfect energy options, we should embrace the replacement of dirty fuels with cleaner ones, while simultaneously creating an economic and regulatory environment that will allow yet cleaner alternatives to emerge.&#160;</p>
<p>Today's cleanest energy sources, solar, wind, geothermal and others, do not yet compete at scale economically with low cost fossil fuels. And what's worse, a whole generation of new technologies have not even made it out of the lab for lack of a financially viable future. At the same time, we know that the impacts of climate change will cost the United States and the world at large untold sums. It's time that we price the externalities of dirty energy in the form of a carbon tax and level the playing field to let our markets, along with our government, usher in a new generation of clean energy. But in the meanwhile, we should embrace every improvement towards reduced emissions, no matter if it's still imperfect.&#160;</p>
<p>Diane Pitcock, West Virginia Host Farms Program&#160;</p>
<p>The debate over natural gas vs. coal seems to focus on the idea that natural gas is a "cleaner" energy source, as alternative to coal burning plants.&#160;&#160; But is that really the case?&#160; Or is it just another dirty fossil fuel that we should be moving away from to seek "greener" alternatives such as solar and wind power?&#160;</p>
<p>The industry hype promoting natural gas that we are being fed, by way of a massive public relations campaign on television, radio, and in newspapers,&#160; does not realistically show the very real impacts of this type of energy development.&#160; Natural gas extraction processes are&#160; not clean at all!&#160; And it is certainly not the same "fracking" that's been done safely for more than 60 years, as we've been told to believe.&#160;</p>
<p>Shale gas drilling involves a newer "fracking" process known as "slick water, high pressure, high volume, horizontal fracking," to be more precise.&#160; It poses far greater risk to health and environment.&#160;&#160;Consider this, in order to do what they do, the industry had to be exempt from key provisions of seven federal environmental laws (the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (otherwise known as Superfund) and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act).&#160;</p>
<p>Living in Doddridge County, West Virginia at "ground zero" of the drilling, I am seeing firsthand the industrialization of our rural communities. The allegations of well water contamination, air quality and health issues, road destruction, erosion, illegal dumping, landowner rights abuses, and quality of life issues associated with extracting natural gas beneath us are staggering!&#160;&#160;The long term environmental and health impacts have not been adequately assessed ahead of the rush to drill for shale gas.&#160;</p>
<p>The environmental researchers and journalists would be well served to visit these heavily drilled areas of rural America to get "the rest of the story."&#160;&#160; It's not a pretty picture.</p>
<p>Anthony R. Ingraffea, Ph.D., P.E.. Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering, Weiss Presidential Teaching Fellow at Cornell University</p>
<p>Mr. Shellenberger says,&#160;"Well, I think what we’re dealing with is an energy transition.&#160;So we’re – the United States — is in the process of transitioning, or it could be even further, away from coal and towards natural gas." He is about 5 years out-of-touch with reality:&#160;The US has been in the process of a transition: it is transitioning away from coal, and natural gas, and oil and towards green renewables.&#160; His statements about gas being good for renewables is, well, insulting.&#160;He is completely behind the times on his criticisms of wind and solar availability (has he read our recent papers in&#160;Energy Policy&#160;on the capability to completely replace all fossil fuels for all energy needs in New York and in California with an assortment of renewables? Clearly, Kate has as she exhibits in her rebuttal remarks). He, like many "environmentalists" are ABC: anything but coal.&#160;I agree with the "but coal" part of that mantra, but not with the "anything." Natural gas can be greenwashed, but it is still a fossil fuel, and I strongly agree with Kate when she says "But it’s not clean enough, either to meet the climate imperative or because of the substantial impacts that it does have in terms of its production."&#160;</p>
<p>Kate is also exactly correct when she asks if shale gas is "...just yet another exploitation of a fossil fuel, one that brings with it significant impacts in the communities where it’s extracted and one that may further delay us from meeting the climate imperative that we all face."&#160; I would not have left that as a question, I would have stated it as fact.</p>
<p>Also, Mr. Shellenberger says, "So one thing to keep in mind, between 1990 and 2010, gas production increased 40 percent and yet methane leakage from overall gas production declined 10 percent." Wrong on the latter.&#160;Nobody knows what the actual leakage rate is — that is the subject of post-policy-statement ongoing research, as he knows.&#160;</p>
<p>Finally, I am concerned that Mr. Shellenberger tosses out fossil fuel industry talking points as if candy to kids, but is way behind on their factual bases. The most important of these is the reverse of his so-called transition from coal to methane for electricity generation:&#160;has he noticed this reversal in the past few months, as methane prices have edged up, coal use has begun to rise, and with exportation of our "home grown energy source" as LNG [liquified natural gas] on the horizon and its concomitant further increase in methane cost here, the US will soon be back to more coal at home.&#160; The methane industry will be laughing all the way to the bank.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
The Striking Challenge of Fracking: Who Does it Benefit and Who Gets Hurt
| true |
http://alternet.org/fracking/striking-challenge-fracking-who-does-it-benefit-and-who-gets-hurt
|
2013-10-02
| 4left
|
The Striking Challenge of Fracking: Who Does it Benefit and Who Gets Hurt
<p>Fracking is now a flashpoint in debates about climate change, energy policy, and inequality.</p>
<p>AlterNet has partnered with the Nathan Cummings Foundation to produce Summits on Tenth, a new video series featuring conversations that challenge conventional thinking on the issues you care about. In our second installment, “The Striking Challenge of Fracking: Who Does it Benefit and Who Gets Hurt?” Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute and Kate Sinding of the Natural Resources Defense Council present strong — and sometimes opposing — points of view on this complicated topic.</p>
<p>Find out what fracking looks like to people from different vantage points and learn about the&#160;trade-offs, the dangers, and the future of fracking.</p>
<p>You can watch the highlights of the debate or the full debate below, plus read a series of mini op-eds from diverse thinkers who respond to the debate. You can also read the full <a href="" type="internal">transcript of the debate here</a>.</p>
<p>Watch the highlights of the debate:</p>
<p>Here's the full program:</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Read responses to the debate:</p>
<p>Phil Radford, Executive Director of Greenpeace</p>
<p>Natural gas is a false hope fuel that is too risky, expensive, and the American people don’t need it--the Fossil Fuel industry of the past, like ExxonMobil and Chesapeake Energy, does. &#160;&#160;</p>
<p>Natural gas has increased in price by&#160; <a href="//wesa.fm/post/rising-natural-gas-prices-make-electricity-more-expensive-nationwide" type="external">60% this year</a>&#160;compared to this time last year, so the promise of cheap gas was a false promise that will only lock America into another dirty fossil fuel. The American Gas Association says itself that if you want to get fracked gas from places like Ohio you’re paying a price that is more than you pay for solar and wind. Even markets are projecting that natural gas will be cost effective for electricity production. Wind is the cheapest form of new electricity, making up&#160; <a href="//www.reporternews.com/news/2013/apr/11/us-wind-energy-grew-28-percent-in-2012-and-texas/" type="external">over 9%</a>&#160;of TX’s energy mix, and counting, and 25% of&#160; <a href="//www.fastcoexist.com/1682566/does-amazon-have-a-renewable-energy-problem" type="external">Iowa’s</a>. And I’m one of thousands of people across the country who just put solar on my home, and I’m saving 30% on my electric bill. The fracked natural gas supply is&#160; <a href="//science.time.com/2013/05/27/natural-gas/" type="external">now outstripping demand</a>&#160;in the US, which is why companies want to export it, but exporting liquified natural gas means more drilling which means more fracking, more air and water pollution, and more unnatural weather disasters. It’s the fossil fuel cycle we must avoid. &#160;</p>
<p>All new electricity generating capacity in the United States in January 2013 was&#160; <a href="//thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/24/1631211/wind-solar-biomass-provide-all-new-us-electrical-generating-capacity-in-january-2013///www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fthinkprogress.org%2Fclimate%2F2013%2F02%2F24%2F1631211%2Fwind-solar-biomass-provide-all-new-us-electrical-generating-capacity-in-january-2013%2F&amp;sa=D&amp;sntz=1&amp;usg=AFQjCNGIBz03asgxW8OlSC6pHvQ9-IwhVw" type="external">renewable energy sources</a>. Renewables were&#160; <a href="//www.rtcc.org/2013/07/19/us-renewable-energy-use-soared-in-2012-report/" type="external">49%</a>&#160;of all new electricity last year. &#160;Farmers in Kansas and electricians in North Carolina know that these jobs are real, and they’re here now. This is a way to save the family farm.</p>
<p>We need an energy revolution now. &#160;The barriers to clean energy are political, not practical. &#160;Once the natural gas boom is officially over, it will no longer be the cheap solution to other fossil fuel pollution energy companies claim it is. &#160;We can already see natural gas prices leaping upwards, and that will only continue as the price of extraction, storage, and transport continues to rise.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Jonathan Cedar,&#160;Chief Executive Officer of BioLite</p>
<p>In the recent Summits on Tenth debate, Kate Sinding condemns fracking by first acknowledging that natural gas is cleaner than coal, but then stating that “better is not good enough.” While I agree with Ms. Sinding that a new generation of CO2 neutral technologies is needed to replace fossil fuels, we should not let our pursuit of the ideal interrupt the practical, implementable, affordable steps available today to minimize CO2 emissions and slow our rapid pace of climate disruption.&#160;</p>
<p>Whether we like it or not, global energy demand is continuing to rise and the choice we face today is whether we service that demand with cleaner (not to be confused with clean) or dirtier fuels. Natural gas releases approximately half the CO2 per BTU of energy as coal. Extraction and distribution of natural gas certainly has safety risks for both people and climate, but so do all of the current large-scale alternatives.&#160;</p>
<p>Rather than focusing our energy on condemning the cleanest of our admittedly imperfect energy options, we should embrace the replacement of dirty fuels with cleaner ones, while simultaneously creating an economic and regulatory environment that will allow yet cleaner alternatives to emerge.&#160;</p>
<p>Today's cleanest energy sources, solar, wind, geothermal and others, do not yet compete at scale economically with low cost fossil fuels. And what's worse, a whole generation of new technologies have not even made it out of the lab for lack of a financially viable future. At the same time, we know that the impacts of climate change will cost the United States and the world at large untold sums. It's time that we price the externalities of dirty energy in the form of a carbon tax and level the playing field to let our markets, along with our government, usher in a new generation of clean energy. But in the meanwhile, we should embrace every improvement towards reduced emissions, no matter if it's still imperfect.&#160;</p>
<p>Diane Pitcock, West Virginia Host Farms Program&#160;</p>
<p>The debate over natural gas vs. coal seems to focus on the idea that natural gas is a "cleaner" energy source, as alternative to coal burning plants.&#160;&#160; But is that really the case?&#160; Or is it just another dirty fossil fuel that we should be moving away from to seek "greener" alternatives such as solar and wind power?&#160;</p>
<p>The industry hype promoting natural gas that we are being fed, by way of a massive public relations campaign on television, radio, and in newspapers,&#160; does not realistically show the very real impacts of this type of energy development.&#160; Natural gas extraction processes are&#160; not clean at all!&#160; And it is certainly not the same "fracking" that's been done safely for more than 60 years, as we've been told to believe.&#160;</p>
<p>Shale gas drilling involves a newer "fracking" process known as "slick water, high pressure, high volume, horizontal fracking," to be more precise.&#160; It poses far greater risk to health and environment.&#160;&#160;Consider this, in order to do what they do, the industry had to be exempt from key provisions of seven federal environmental laws (the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (otherwise known as Superfund) and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act).&#160;</p>
<p>Living in Doddridge County, West Virginia at "ground zero" of the drilling, I am seeing firsthand the industrialization of our rural communities. The allegations of well water contamination, air quality and health issues, road destruction, erosion, illegal dumping, landowner rights abuses, and quality of life issues associated with extracting natural gas beneath us are staggering!&#160;&#160;The long term environmental and health impacts have not been adequately assessed ahead of the rush to drill for shale gas.&#160;</p>
<p>The environmental researchers and journalists would be well served to visit these heavily drilled areas of rural America to get "the rest of the story."&#160;&#160; It's not a pretty picture.</p>
<p>Anthony R. Ingraffea, Ph.D., P.E.. Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering, Weiss Presidential Teaching Fellow at Cornell University</p>
<p>Mr. Shellenberger says,&#160;"Well, I think what we’re dealing with is an energy transition.&#160;So we’re – the United States — is in the process of transitioning, or it could be even further, away from coal and towards natural gas." He is about 5 years out-of-touch with reality:&#160;The US has been in the process of a transition: it is transitioning away from coal, and natural gas, and oil and towards green renewables.&#160; His statements about gas being good for renewables is, well, insulting.&#160;He is completely behind the times on his criticisms of wind and solar availability (has he read our recent papers in&#160;Energy Policy&#160;on the capability to completely replace all fossil fuels for all energy needs in New York and in California with an assortment of renewables? Clearly, Kate has as she exhibits in her rebuttal remarks). He, like many "environmentalists" are ABC: anything but coal.&#160;I agree with the "but coal" part of that mantra, but not with the "anything." Natural gas can be greenwashed, but it is still a fossil fuel, and I strongly agree with Kate when she says "But it’s not clean enough, either to meet the climate imperative or because of the substantial impacts that it does have in terms of its production."&#160;</p>
<p>Kate is also exactly correct when she asks if shale gas is "...just yet another exploitation of a fossil fuel, one that brings with it significant impacts in the communities where it’s extracted and one that may further delay us from meeting the climate imperative that we all face."&#160; I would not have left that as a question, I would have stated it as fact.</p>
<p>Also, Mr. Shellenberger says, "So one thing to keep in mind, between 1990 and 2010, gas production increased 40 percent and yet methane leakage from overall gas production declined 10 percent." Wrong on the latter.&#160;Nobody knows what the actual leakage rate is — that is the subject of post-policy-statement ongoing research, as he knows.&#160;</p>
<p>Finally, I am concerned that Mr. Shellenberger tosses out fossil fuel industry talking points as if candy to kids, but is way behind on their factual bases. The most important of these is the reverse of his so-called transition from coal to methane for electricity generation:&#160;has he noticed this reversal in the past few months, as methane prices have edged up, coal use has begun to rise, and with exportation of our "home grown energy source" as LNG [liquified natural gas] on the horizon and its concomitant further increase in methane cost here, the US will soon be back to more coal at home.&#160; The methane industry will be laughing all the way to the bank.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 8,086 |
<p>Until the very last moment, the Israeli leadership tried to keep Hosni Mubarak in power.</p>
<p>It was hopeless. Even the mighty United States was impotent when faced with this tsunami of popular outrage.</p>
<p>In the end it settled for second best: a pro-Western military dictatorship. But will this really be the outcome?</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>WHEN CONFRONTED with a new situation, Obama’s first response is generally admirable.</p>
<p>Then, it seems, second thoughts set in. And third. And fourth. The end result is a 180 degree turn.</p>
<p>When the masses started to gather in Tahrir Square, he reacted exactly like most decent people in the US and, indeed, throughout the world. There was unbounded admiration for those brave young men and women who faced the dreaded Mukhabarat secret police, demanding democracy and human rights.</p>
<p>How could one not admire them? They were non-violent, their demands were reasonable, their actions were spontaneous, they obviously expressed the feelings of the vast majority of the people. Without any organization to speak of, without leadership, they said and did all the right things.</p>
<p>Such a sight is rare in history. No sansculottes screaming for blood, no cold-minded Bolsheviks lurking in the shadows, no Ayatollahs dictating their actions in the name of God.</p>
<p>So Obama loved it. He did not hide his feelings. He practically called on the dictator to give up and go away.</p>
<p>If Obama had stayed this course, the result would have been historic. From being the most hated power in the Arab world, the US would have electrified the Arab masses, the Muslim region, indeed much of the Third World. It could have been the beginning of a completely new era.</p>
<p>I believe that Obama sensed this. His first instincts are usually right. In such a situation, a real leader – that rarest of all animals – stands out.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>BUT THEN came the second thoughts. Small people started to work on him. Politicians, generals, “security experts”, diplomats, pundits, lobbyists, business leaders, all the “experienced” people – experienced in routine affairs – started to weigh in. And, of course, the hugely powerful Israel lobby.</p>
<p>“Are you crazy?” – they admonished him. To forsake a dictator who happens to be our son-of-a-bitch? To tell all our client dictators around the world that we shall forsake them in their hour of need?</p>
<p>How naïve can you get? Democracy in an Arab country? Don’t make us laugh! We know the Arabs! You show them democracy on a platter and they would not know it from baked beans! They always need a dictator to keep them in shape! Especially these Egyptians! Ask the British!</p>
<p>The whole thing is really a conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood. Look them up on Google! They are the only alternative. It’s either Mubarak or them. They are the Egyptian Taliban, worse, the Egyptian al-Qaeda. Help the well-meaning democrats to overthrow the regime, and before you know it you will have a second Iran, with an Egyptian Ahmadinejad on Israel’s Southern border, hooking up with Hezbollah and Hamas. The dominos will begin to fall, starting with Jordan and Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>Faced with all these experts, Obama caved in. Again.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>OF COURSE, every single one of these arguments can easily be refuted.</p>
<p>Let’s start with Iran. The naïve Americans, so the story goes, forsook the Shah and his dreaded Israeli-trained secret police in order to promote democracy, but the revolution was taken over by the Ayatollahs. A cruel dictatorship was replaced by an even crueler one. This is what Binyamin Netanyahu said this week, warning that the same is inevitably bound to happen in Egypt.</p>
<p>But the true Iranian story is quite different.</p>
<p>In 1951, a patriotic politician named Mohammad Mossadegh was elected in democratic elections – the first of their kind in Iran. Mossadegh, neither a communist nor even a socialist,&#160; instituted sweeping&#160; social reforms, freed the peasants and worked mightily to turn backward Iran into a modern, democratic, secular state. In order to make this possible, he nationalized the oil industry, which was owned by a rapacious British company which paid Iran miniscule royalties. Huge demonstrations in Tehran supported Mossadegh.</p>
<p>The British reaction was swift and decisive. Winston Churchill convinced President Dwight Eisenhower that Mossadegh’s course would lead to Communism. In 1953 the CIA engineered a coup, Mossadegh was arrested and kept in isolation until his death 14 years later, the British got the oil back. The Shah, who had fled, was put back on his throne again. His reign of terror lasted until the Khomeini revolution, 26 years later.</p>
<p>Without this American intervention, Iran would probably have developed into a secular, liberal democracy. No Khomeini. No Ahmadinejad. No talk about nuclear bombs.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>NETANYAHU’S WARNINGS of the inevitable takeover of Egypt by the fanatical Muslim Brotherhood, if democratic elections were held, sound logical, but they are similarly based on willful ignorance.</p>
<p>Would the Muslim Brothers take over? Are they Taliban-like fanatics?</p>
<p>The Brotherhood was founded 80 years ago, long before Obama and Netanyahu were born. They have settled down and matured, with a strong moderate wing, much like the moderate, democratic Islamic party that is governing Turkey so well, and which they are trying to emulate. In a democratic Egypt, they would constitute a legitimate party playing its part in the democratic process.</p>
<p>(This, by the way, would have happened in Palestine, too, when Hamas was elected – if the Americans, under Israeli guidance, had not toppled the unity government and set Hamas on a different course.)</p>
<p>The majority of Egyptians are religious, but their Islam is far removed from the radical kind. There are no indications that the bulk of the people, represented by the youngsters in Tahrir Square, would tolerate a radical regime. The Islamic bogeyman is just that – a bogeyman.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>SO WHAT did Obama do? His moves were pathetic, to say the least. After turning against Mubarak, he suddenly opined that he must stay in power, in order to carry out democratic reforms. As his representative he sent to Egypt a retired diplomat whose current employer is a law firm that represents the Mubarak family (much as Bill Clinton used to send committed Jewish Zionists to “mediate” between Israel and the Palestinians.) So the detested dictator was supposed to institute democracy, enact a new liberal constitution, work together with the very people he had thrown into prison and systematically tortured.</p>
<p>Mubarak’s pathetic speech on Thursday was the straw that broke the back of the Egyptian camel. It showed that he had lost contact with reality or, worse, is mentally deranged. But even an unbalanced dictator would not have made such an atrocious speech had he not believed that America was still on his side. The howls of outrage in the square while Mubarak’s recorded speech was still being aired was Egypt’s answer. That needed no interpreters.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>BUT AMERICA had already moved. Its main instrument in Egypt is the army. It is the army that holds the key to the immediate future. When the “Supreme Military Council” convened on Thursday, just before that scandalous speech, and issued a “Communique No. 1”, hope was mingled with foreboding.</p>
<p>“Communique No. 1” is a term well known in history. It generally means that a military junta has assumed power, promising democracy, early elections, prosperity and heaven on earth. In very rare instances, the officers indeed fulfill these promises. Generally, what ensues is a military dictatorship of the worst kind.</p>
<p>This time, the communique said nothing at all. It just showed on live TV that they were there – all the leading generals, minus Mubarak and his stooge, Omar Suleiman.</p>
<p>Now they have assumed power. Quietly, without bloodshed. For the second time within 60 years.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>IT IS worthwhile recalling the first time. After a period of turmoil against the British occupiers, a group of young officers, veterans of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, hiding behind an elderly general, carried out a coup. The despised ruler, King Farouk, was literally sent packing. He put to sea on his yacht from Alexandria. Not a drop of blood was shed.</p>
<p>The people were jubilant. They loved the army and the coup. But it was a revolution from above. No crowds in Tahrir Square.</p>
<p>The army tried first to govern through civilian politicians. They soon lost patience with that. A charismatic young lieutenant-colonel, Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, emerged as the leader, instituted wide-ranging reforms, restored the honor of Egypt and the entire Arab world – and founded the dictatorship which expired yesterday.</p>
<p>Will the army follow this example, or will it do what the Turkish army has done several times: assume power and turn it over to an elected civilian government?</p>
<p>Much will depend on Obama. Will he support the move to democracy, as his inclination will undoubtedly suggest, or will he listen to the “experts”, Israelis included, who will urge him to rely on a military dictatorship, as American presidents have done for so long?</p>
<p>But the chance of the United States of America, and of Barack Obama personally, leading the world by shining statesmanship at a historic moment 19 days ago has been wasted. The beautiful words have evaporated.</p>
<p>For Israel there is another lesson. When the Free Officers made their revolution in 1952, in the whole of Israel only one single voice was raised (that of Haolam Hazeh, the news magazine I was editing) calling upon the Israeli government to come out in support. The government did the opposite, and a historic chance to show solidarity with the Egyptian people was lost. Now, I am afraid, this mistake will be repeated. The tsunami is being viewed in Israel as a terrifying natural catastrophe, not as the wonderful opportunity it is.</p>
<p>URI AVNERY is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">The Politics of Anti-Semitism</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Tsunami in Egypt
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2011/02/14/tsunami-in-egypt/
|
2011-02-14
| 4left
|
Tsunami in Egypt
<p>Until the very last moment, the Israeli leadership tried to keep Hosni Mubarak in power.</p>
<p>It was hopeless. Even the mighty United States was impotent when faced with this tsunami of popular outrage.</p>
<p>In the end it settled for second best: a pro-Western military dictatorship. But will this really be the outcome?</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>WHEN CONFRONTED with a new situation, Obama’s first response is generally admirable.</p>
<p>Then, it seems, second thoughts set in. And third. And fourth. The end result is a 180 degree turn.</p>
<p>When the masses started to gather in Tahrir Square, he reacted exactly like most decent people in the US and, indeed, throughout the world. There was unbounded admiration for those brave young men and women who faced the dreaded Mukhabarat secret police, demanding democracy and human rights.</p>
<p>How could one not admire them? They were non-violent, their demands were reasonable, their actions were spontaneous, they obviously expressed the feelings of the vast majority of the people. Without any organization to speak of, without leadership, they said and did all the right things.</p>
<p>Such a sight is rare in history. No sansculottes screaming for blood, no cold-minded Bolsheviks lurking in the shadows, no Ayatollahs dictating their actions in the name of God.</p>
<p>So Obama loved it. He did not hide his feelings. He practically called on the dictator to give up and go away.</p>
<p>If Obama had stayed this course, the result would have been historic. From being the most hated power in the Arab world, the US would have electrified the Arab masses, the Muslim region, indeed much of the Third World. It could have been the beginning of a completely new era.</p>
<p>I believe that Obama sensed this. His first instincts are usually right. In such a situation, a real leader – that rarest of all animals – stands out.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>BUT THEN came the second thoughts. Small people started to work on him. Politicians, generals, “security experts”, diplomats, pundits, lobbyists, business leaders, all the “experienced” people – experienced in routine affairs – started to weigh in. And, of course, the hugely powerful Israel lobby.</p>
<p>“Are you crazy?” – they admonished him. To forsake a dictator who happens to be our son-of-a-bitch? To tell all our client dictators around the world that we shall forsake them in their hour of need?</p>
<p>How naïve can you get? Democracy in an Arab country? Don’t make us laugh! We know the Arabs! You show them democracy on a platter and they would not know it from baked beans! They always need a dictator to keep them in shape! Especially these Egyptians! Ask the British!</p>
<p>The whole thing is really a conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood. Look them up on Google! They are the only alternative. It’s either Mubarak or them. They are the Egyptian Taliban, worse, the Egyptian al-Qaeda. Help the well-meaning democrats to overthrow the regime, and before you know it you will have a second Iran, with an Egyptian Ahmadinejad on Israel’s Southern border, hooking up with Hezbollah and Hamas. The dominos will begin to fall, starting with Jordan and Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>Faced with all these experts, Obama caved in. Again.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>OF COURSE, every single one of these arguments can easily be refuted.</p>
<p>Let’s start with Iran. The naïve Americans, so the story goes, forsook the Shah and his dreaded Israeli-trained secret police in order to promote democracy, but the revolution was taken over by the Ayatollahs. A cruel dictatorship was replaced by an even crueler one. This is what Binyamin Netanyahu said this week, warning that the same is inevitably bound to happen in Egypt.</p>
<p>But the true Iranian story is quite different.</p>
<p>In 1951, a patriotic politician named Mohammad Mossadegh was elected in democratic elections – the first of their kind in Iran. Mossadegh, neither a communist nor even a socialist,&#160; instituted sweeping&#160; social reforms, freed the peasants and worked mightily to turn backward Iran into a modern, democratic, secular state. In order to make this possible, he nationalized the oil industry, which was owned by a rapacious British company which paid Iran miniscule royalties. Huge demonstrations in Tehran supported Mossadegh.</p>
<p>The British reaction was swift and decisive. Winston Churchill convinced President Dwight Eisenhower that Mossadegh’s course would lead to Communism. In 1953 the CIA engineered a coup, Mossadegh was arrested and kept in isolation until his death 14 years later, the British got the oil back. The Shah, who had fled, was put back on his throne again. His reign of terror lasted until the Khomeini revolution, 26 years later.</p>
<p>Without this American intervention, Iran would probably have developed into a secular, liberal democracy. No Khomeini. No Ahmadinejad. No talk about nuclear bombs.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>NETANYAHU’S WARNINGS of the inevitable takeover of Egypt by the fanatical Muslim Brotherhood, if democratic elections were held, sound logical, but they are similarly based on willful ignorance.</p>
<p>Would the Muslim Brothers take over? Are they Taliban-like fanatics?</p>
<p>The Brotherhood was founded 80 years ago, long before Obama and Netanyahu were born. They have settled down and matured, with a strong moderate wing, much like the moderate, democratic Islamic party that is governing Turkey so well, and which they are trying to emulate. In a democratic Egypt, they would constitute a legitimate party playing its part in the democratic process.</p>
<p>(This, by the way, would have happened in Palestine, too, when Hamas was elected – if the Americans, under Israeli guidance, had not toppled the unity government and set Hamas on a different course.)</p>
<p>The majority of Egyptians are religious, but their Islam is far removed from the radical kind. There are no indications that the bulk of the people, represented by the youngsters in Tahrir Square, would tolerate a radical regime. The Islamic bogeyman is just that – a bogeyman.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>SO WHAT did Obama do? His moves were pathetic, to say the least. After turning against Mubarak, he suddenly opined that he must stay in power, in order to carry out democratic reforms. As his representative he sent to Egypt a retired diplomat whose current employer is a law firm that represents the Mubarak family (much as Bill Clinton used to send committed Jewish Zionists to “mediate” between Israel and the Palestinians.) So the detested dictator was supposed to institute democracy, enact a new liberal constitution, work together with the very people he had thrown into prison and systematically tortured.</p>
<p>Mubarak’s pathetic speech on Thursday was the straw that broke the back of the Egyptian camel. It showed that he had lost contact with reality or, worse, is mentally deranged. But even an unbalanced dictator would not have made such an atrocious speech had he not believed that America was still on his side. The howls of outrage in the square while Mubarak’s recorded speech was still being aired was Egypt’s answer. That needed no interpreters.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>BUT AMERICA had already moved. Its main instrument in Egypt is the army. It is the army that holds the key to the immediate future. When the “Supreme Military Council” convened on Thursday, just before that scandalous speech, and issued a “Communique No. 1”, hope was mingled with foreboding.</p>
<p>“Communique No. 1” is a term well known in history. It generally means that a military junta has assumed power, promising democracy, early elections, prosperity and heaven on earth. In very rare instances, the officers indeed fulfill these promises. Generally, what ensues is a military dictatorship of the worst kind.</p>
<p>This time, the communique said nothing at all. It just showed on live TV that they were there – all the leading generals, minus Mubarak and his stooge, Omar Suleiman.</p>
<p>Now they have assumed power. Quietly, without bloodshed. For the second time within 60 years.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>IT IS worthwhile recalling the first time. After a period of turmoil against the British occupiers, a group of young officers, veterans of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, hiding behind an elderly general, carried out a coup. The despised ruler, King Farouk, was literally sent packing. He put to sea on his yacht from Alexandria. Not a drop of blood was shed.</p>
<p>The people were jubilant. They loved the army and the coup. But it was a revolution from above. No crowds in Tahrir Square.</p>
<p>The army tried first to govern through civilian politicians. They soon lost patience with that. A charismatic young lieutenant-colonel, Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, emerged as the leader, instituted wide-ranging reforms, restored the honor of Egypt and the entire Arab world – and founded the dictatorship which expired yesterday.</p>
<p>Will the army follow this example, or will it do what the Turkish army has done several times: assume power and turn it over to an elected civilian government?</p>
<p>Much will depend on Obama. Will he support the move to democracy, as his inclination will undoubtedly suggest, or will he listen to the “experts”, Israelis included, who will urge him to rely on a military dictatorship, as American presidents have done for so long?</p>
<p>But the chance of the United States of America, and of Barack Obama personally, leading the world by shining statesmanship at a historic moment 19 days ago has been wasted. The beautiful words have evaporated.</p>
<p>For Israel there is another lesson. When the Free Officers made their revolution in 1952, in the whole of Israel only one single voice was raised (that of Haolam Hazeh, the news magazine I was editing) calling upon the Israeli government to come out in support. The government did the opposite, and a historic chance to show solidarity with the Egyptian people was lost. Now, I am afraid, this mistake will be repeated. The tsunami is being viewed in Israel as a terrifying natural catastrophe, not as the wonderful opportunity it is.</p>
<p>URI AVNERY is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">The Politics of Anti-Semitism</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
| 8,087 |
<p>Matt Damon attended an event in New York to celebrate Stella Artois’ upcoming Super Bowl ad to promote its ongoing partnership with Water.org. The ad will encourage viewers to purchase Stella Artois beer and a limited-edition chalice to raise money for Water.org. It’s also an opportunity to educate people on the global water crisis. (Jan. 17)</p>
<p>Matt Damon attended an event in New York to celebrate Stella Artois’ upcoming Super Bowl ad to promote its ongoing partnership with Water.org. The ad will encourage viewers to purchase Stella Artois beer and a limited-edition chalice to raise money for Water.org. It’s also an opportunity to educate people on the global water crisis. (Jan. 17)</p>
|
Matt Damon’s Water.org teams up with Stella Artois for Super Bowl ad
| false |
https://apnews.com/be3eced7da614f80b081ac18ff10f35f
|
2018-01-18
| 2least
|
Matt Damon’s Water.org teams up with Stella Artois for Super Bowl ad
<p>Matt Damon attended an event in New York to celebrate Stella Artois’ upcoming Super Bowl ad to promote its ongoing partnership with Water.org. The ad will encourage viewers to purchase Stella Artois beer and a limited-edition chalice to raise money for Water.org. It’s also an opportunity to educate people on the global water crisis. (Jan. 17)</p>
<p>Matt Damon attended an event in New York to celebrate Stella Artois’ upcoming Super Bowl ad to promote its ongoing partnership with Water.org. The ad will encourage viewers to purchase Stella Artois beer and a limited-edition chalice to raise money for Water.org. It’s also an opportunity to educate people on the global water crisis. (Jan. 17)</p>
| 8,088 |
<p>Gold futures held onto their gains in electronic trading late Wednesday after settling at a more than three-week high. Minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s December meeting revealed that officials from the central bank saw the possibility that they might have to raise interest rates faster than the "gradual" pace that they have stressed for some time. Higher interest rates can be a negative for gold, which tends to benefit from looser monetary policy, but the U.S. dollar extended its decline after the minutes, offering dollar-denominated gold some support. February gold was at $1,165.90 an ounce in electronic trading. It had settled at $1,165.30 an ounce, up $3.30, or 0.3%, for the session.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
|
Gold Futures Hold Gains In Electronic Trading After Fed Minutes
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/01/04/gold-futures-hold-gains-in-electronic-trading-after-fed-minutes.html
|
2017-01-04
| 0right
|
Gold Futures Hold Gains In Electronic Trading After Fed Minutes
<p>Gold futures held onto their gains in electronic trading late Wednesday after settling at a more than three-week high. Minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s December meeting revealed that officials from the central bank saw the possibility that they might have to raise interest rates faster than the "gradual" pace that they have stressed for some time. Higher interest rates can be a negative for gold, which tends to benefit from looser monetary policy, but the U.S. dollar extended its decline after the minutes, offering dollar-denominated gold some support. February gold was at $1,165.90 an ounce in electronic trading. It had settled at $1,165.30 an ounce, up $3.30, or 0.3%, for the session.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
| 8,089 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Fire Chief James Breen plans to retire at the end of the year.</p>
<p>In a letter to Albuquerque firefighters, Breen said he will step down Dec. 31 and that he hopes his successor is someone chosen from within the department.</p>
<p>He said the decision to retire was a difficult one, and his feelings are mixed.</p>
<p>But Breen said he’s ready to “make room for the next generation of firefighters that will lead AFD to new heights of prosperity and greater levels of service to this community.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
ABQ fire chief to retire
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/312651/abq-fire-chief-retires.html
| 2least
|
ABQ fire chief to retire
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Fire Chief James Breen plans to retire at the end of the year.</p>
<p>In a letter to Albuquerque firefighters, Breen said he will step down Dec. 31 and that he hopes his successor is someone chosen from within the department.</p>
<p>He said the decision to retire was a difficult one, and his feelings are mixed.</p>
<p>But Breen said he’s ready to “make room for the next generation of firefighters that will lead AFD to new heights of prosperity and greater levels of service to this community.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 8,090 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Sandia Heights, NM 87122</p>
<p>$1,000,000</p>
<p>5,280 sq. ft.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>4 bed / 2 full / 2 half bath</p>
<p>Penny Melloy</p>
<p>505.228.3902</p>
<p>ERA Sellers &amp; Buyers Real Estate</p>
<p>505.296.1500</p>
<p>Welcome to 1511 Eagle Ridge NE,&#160;nestled near the mountains in&#160;Sandia Heights. This contemporary,&#160;Santa Fe style home is&#160;an entertainer’s delight. At over 5,000 square&#160;feet, this home offers privacy and views as&#160;well as many custom features like diamond&#160;plaster walls, raised ceilings and unique wood&#160;finishes throughout. The spacious kitchen&#160;features a large island, granite counters and&#160;picturesque views while you cook.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Enjoy two living areas and five interior&#160;custom fireplaces throughout the home. The&#160;large theater room and recreation rooms will&#160;keep you and your guests entertained. The&#160;charming courtyards and portals will allow&#160;you to take in breathtaking views from almost&#160;anywhere on the property. Situated on 1.26&#160;acres, this home offers the convenience of&#160;city life with quick access to the Albuquerque&#160;Metro area, without sacrificing the privacy of&#160;country living.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
|
About the cover: October 9, 2016
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/863099/about-the-cover-october-9-2016.html
| 2least
|
About the cover: October 9, 2016
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Sandia Heights, NM 87122</p>
<p>$1,000,000</p>
<p>5,280 sq. ft.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>4 bed / 2 full / 2 half bath</p>
<p>Penny Melloy</p>
<p>505.228.3902</p>
<p>ERA Sellers &amp; Buyers Real Estate</p>
<p>505.296.1500</p>
<p>Welcome to 1511 Eagle Ridge NE,&#160;nestled near the mountains in&#160;Sandia Heights. This contemporary,&#160;Santa Fe style home is&#160;an entertainer’s delight. At over 5,000 square&#160;feet, this home offers privacy and views as&#160;well as many custom features like diamond&#160;plaster walls, raised ceilings and unique wood&#160;finishes throughout. The spacious kitchen&#160;features a large island, granite counters and&#160;picturesque views while you cook.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Enjoy two living areas and five interior&#160;custom fireplaces throughout the home. The&#160;large theater room and recreation rooms will&#160;keep you and your guests entertained. The&#160;charming courtyards and portals will allow&#160;you to take in breathtaking views from almost&#160;anywhere on the property. Situated on 1.26&#160;acres, this home offers the convenience of&#160;city life with quick access to the Albuquerque&#160;Metro area, without sacrificing the privacy of&#160;country living.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
| 8,091 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>In a letter to Postal Service officials, Santa Fe Mayor David Coss wrote that he was led to believe, from Postal Service officials themselves, that they would seek community input through public meetings before proceeding with a move.</p>
<p>“I formally appeal what continues to appear to be a unilateral decision to relocate Santa Fe’s main post office – demonstrated by the lack of a public meeting held by the Postal Service to develop an understanding of our community’s short and long-term needs,” Coss wrote in a letter dated Thursday.</p>
<p>“As Mayor, I must respectfully reiterate that community input is essential prior to making such an important decision that directly affects the daily lives of our residents and business owners,” Coss wrote.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Post Service officials informed the city in July that the agency has identified Sanbusco Market Center on Montezuma Street as its preferred location for Santa Fe’s new main post office. A site at 100 N. Guadalupe St. that used to house a bank is the agency’s second choice.</p>
<p>“We believe either of these sites will provide the community with an upgraded, modern facility that offers a safe working environment for our employees and the level of service expected by our customers,” USPS real estate specialist Angela Kuhl said in a July 24 letter to Coss.</p>
<p>Kuhl also said the USPS had approached the Montoya building’s landlord – the federal government – about remaining in the main post office’s current space “under fair terms.” However, “reasonable rates could not be agreed to and alternate quarters must be pursued,” Kuhl said.</p>
<p>Postal Service officials first publicly said last fall that they were considering moving retail and mail carrier operations from the Joseph M. Montoya Federal Building to other locations.</p>
<p>The agency promised that retail services would continue to be offered in the downtown Santa Fe area.</p>
<p>Postal Service officials said at the time that the move was part of consolidation efforts initiated by USPS in recent years to stem annual losses in the billions of dollars. The USPS experienced a $15.9 billion shortfall in the 2012 fiscal year, around $11.1 billion of that due to retirement benefit obligations.</p>
<p>At the same time, it’s grappled with a 25 percent reduction in mail volume over the past five years.</p>
<p>City Councilor Chris Calvert, a postal carrier, also noted at one public meeting that he’d been told the government planned to double the USPS’ rent in the Montoya building.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>New Mexico’s U.S. senators have expressed displeasure with the plan, saying they believe the move would negatively impact residents and small businesses in the downtown area.</p>
<p>Coss’s Aug. 22 letter complains that the Postal Service still hasn’t said what services will be kept in downtown Santa Fe.</p>
<p>“Will our downtown residential and commercial areas have retail, post office box and/or carrier operations? An answer for each of these operations is important, as it affects our assessment of the quality and availability of services in a very important area of our City,” Coss wrote.</p>
<p>Currently, the building on Federal Place has 2,800 post office boxes and a bulk mail entry unit, and serves as a base for mail carriers handling 31 mail routes.</p>
<p>In 2011, it had 85,000 customer visits. In comparison, the post office at nearby DeVargas Mall had 89,000 visits.</p>
<p />
<p />
|
City appeals decision to move post office
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/252047/city-appeals-decision-to-move-post-office.html
| 2least
|
City appeals decision to move post office
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>In a letter to Postal Service officials, Santa Fe Mayor David Coss wrote that he was led to believe, from Postal Service officials themselves, that they would seek community input through public meetings before proceeding with a move.</p>
<p>“I formally appeal what continues to appear to be a unilateral decision to relocate Santa Fe’s main post office – demonstrated by the lack of a public meeting held by the Postal Service to develop an understanding of our community’s short and long-term needs,” Coss wrote in a letter dated Thursday.</p>
<p>“As Mayor, I must respectfully reiterate that community input is essential prior to making such an important decision that directly affects the daily lives of our residents and business owners,” Coss wrote.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Post Service officials informed the city in July that the agency has identified Sanbusco Market Center on Montezuma Street as its preferred location for Santa Fe’s new main post office. A site at 100 N. Guadalupe St. that used to house a bank is the agency’s second choice.</p>
<p>“We believe either of these sites will provide the community with an upgraded, modern facility that offers a safe working environment for our employees and the level of service expected by our customers,” USPS real estate specialist Angela Kuhl said in a July 24 letter to Coss.</p>
<p>Kuhl also said the USPS had approached the Montoya building’s landlord – the federal government – about remaining in the main post office’s current space “under fair terms.” However, “reasonable rates could not be agreed to and alternate quarters must be pursued,” Kuhl said.</p>
<p>Postal Service officials first publicly said last fall that they were considering moving retail and mail carrier operations from the Joseph M. Montoya Federal Building to other locations.</p>
<p>The agency promised that retail services would continue to be offered in the downtown Santa Fe area.</p>
<p>Postal Service officials said at the time that the move was part of consolidation efforts initiated by USPS in recent years to stem annual losses in the billions of dollars. The USPS experienced a $15.9 billion shortfall in the 2012 fiscal year, around $11.1 billion of that due to retirement benefit obligations.</p>
<p>At the same time, it’s grappled with a 25 percent reduction in mail volume over the past five years.</p>
<p>City Councilor Chris Calvert, a postal carrier, also noted at one public meeting that he’d been told the government planned to double the USPS’ rent in the Montoya building.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>New Mexico’s U.S. senators have expressed displeasure with the plan, saying they believe the move would negatively impact residents and small businesses in the downtown area.</p>
<p>Coss’s Aug. 22 letter complains that the Postal Service still hasn’t said what services will be kept in downtown Santa Fe.</p>
<p>“Will our downtown residential and commercial areas have retail, post office box and/or carrier operations? An answer for each of these operations is important, as it affects our assessment of the quality and availability of services in a very important area of our City,” Coss wrote.</p>
<p>Currently, the building on Federal Place has 2,800 post office boxes and a bulk mail entry unit, and serves as a base for mail carriers handling 31 mail routes.</p>
<p>In 2011, it had 85,000 customer visits. In comparison, the post office at nearby DeVargas Mall had 89,000 visits.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 8,092 |
|
<p>In response to the establishment media’s contrived ‘fake news’ crisis designed to marginalise independent and alternative media sources of news and analysis, 21WIRE ran&#160;its own <a href="" type="internal">#FakeNewsWeek</a>&#160;campaign in February – exposing the government and the mainstream media as the real purveyors of ‘fake news’ throughout modern history. Following on from this, we decided to take advantage of March Madness, by running our own Fake News tournament in order find out who our readers and listeners feel is the top&#160;mainstream or establishment fake news outlet.</p>
<p>Listen to our March Madness &amp; #FNFF kick-off segment here:</p>
<p />
<p>In our initial final 8 preliminary competition, we&#160;included TV networks, newspapers, and also some government agencies who are also major players in the fake news and propaganda game.&#160;</p>
<p>We have a Final Four! Out of the rigorous State-Run Region, broadcast stalwarts CNN and BBC (the number one and two seeds respectively),&#160;pulled through with impressive wins on their side of the bracket. In the Deep State Regionals, New York Times&#160;won the battle of the ‘papers of record’ against a tough Washington Post. In the other Deep State contest,&#160;the CIA edged out the US State Dept in a tense&#160;fake news showdown between the two government agencies.</p>
<p>Unfortunately,losers Channel 4, Washington Post, and NBC/MSNBC will have&#160;an early spring break after being eliminated in a blistering quarter final round.</p>
<p>NOTE: This year’s leading Fake News honorable mentioned: TIME Magazine, the Daily Beast, VICE News, CBC, Bild Newspaper (Germany), Al Jazeera and France 24, The Guardian and the White Helmets.</p>
<p>In addition to the Fake News Final Four, we will also be nominating a list of finalists for the top fake news journalist in Mainstream Media. The winner will receive the first annual Horace Greeley Award for Most Outstanding Fake News Journalist.</p>
<p>VOTE FOR THE TOP&#160;FAKE NEWS OUTLET&#160; <a href="" type="internal">HERE</a> OR BELOW…</p>
<p>FINAL ROUND: CIA vs CNN (Voting Ends April 2nd!)</p>
<p />
<p>STATE-RUN REGION RESULTS: BBC vs CNN</p>
<p />
<p>DEEP STATE REGION RESULTS: NEW YORK TIMES vs CIA</p>
<p />
<p>Stay tuned to this week’s&#160; <a href="" type="internal">SUNDAY WIRE SHOW</a>&#160;as we breakdown the Final Four with color commentary and analysis from British oddsmaker Basil Valentine, and ACR Boiler Room’s own Hesher.</p>
<p>BASIL’S CORNER:</p>
<p>BBC: “Once considered the finest Broadcasting organisation in the world now known as a government propaganda machine dedicated to the Imperialist agenda. Appalling anti Corbyn and pro Israel bias pales into insignificance next to the legendary premature announcement of the collapse of Building 7. Mandatory license fee means its effectively a protection racket. A real contender these days. Nowhere for the light to get in.”</p>
<p>NBC/MSNBC: “Sacked its only honest journalist when Ed Schultz signed for real news network RT. Famous for excessive liberal bias and towing the Dem party line. Line up of world class polemics like the dreadful Rachel Maddow and &#160;Chris ‘Sweetypie’ Matthews. Still, they were no match for the powerhouse at CNN.”</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="" type="internal">CLICK HERE</a> TO VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE FAKE NEWS OUTLETS.</p>
<p>QUARTER FINAL RESULTS:</p>
<p>BBC won a relatively tight race against its UK rival Channel 4 with a strong&#160;57% to&#160;C4’s 43% (total votes 169).</p>
<p>CNN won handedly with 68% over a disappointed&#160;NBC/MSNBC with 32%&#160;(total votes 254).</p>
<p>CIA won comfortably with 60% over Beltway rival US&#160;State Dept who coasted with only&#160;40% of the vote (total votes 159).</p>
<p>New York Times took 58%&#160;over the Washington Post’s 42% (total votes 180).</p>
<p>SHOUT! Poll results:</p>
<p />
<p>READ MORE ABOUT MSM FAKE NEWS AT:&#160; <a href="" type="internal">FAKE NEWS WEEK</a></p>
<p>SUPPORT 21WIRE&#160;– SUBSCRIBE NOW &amp; BECOME A MEMBER&#160; <a href="https://21wire.tv/membership/plans/" type="external">@21WIRE.TV</a></p>
|
MARCH MADNESS: ‘Fake News Final Four’ Starts This Week
| true |
http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/03/12/march-madness-fake-news-final-four-starts-this-week/
|
2017-03-12
| 4left
|
MARCH MADNESS: ‘Fake News Final Four’ Starts This Week
<p>In response to the establishment media’s contrived ‘fake news’ crisis designed to marginalise independent and alternative media sources of news and analysis, 21WIRE ran&#160;its own <a href="" type="internal">#FakeNewsWeek</a>&#160;campaign in February – exposing the government and the mainstream media as the real purveyors of ‘fake news’ throughout modern history. Following on from this, we decided to take advantage of March Madness, by running our own Fake News tournament in order find out who our readers and listeners feel is the top&#160;mainstream or establishment fake news outlet.</p>
<p>Listen to our March Madness &amp; #FNFF kick-off segment here:</p>
<p />
<p>In our initial final 8 preliminary competition, we&#160;included TV networks, newspapers, and also some government agencies who are also major players in the fake news and propaganda game.&#160;</p>
<p>We have a Final Four! Out of the rigorous State-Run Region, broadcast stalwarts CNN and BBC (the number one and two seeds respectively),&#160;pulled through with impressive wins on their side of the bracket. In the Deep State Regionals, New York Times&#160;won the battle of the ‘papers of record’ against a tough Washington Post. In the other Deep State contest,&#160;the CIA edged out the US State Dept in a tense&#160;fake news showdown between the two government agencies.</p>
<p>Unfortunately,losers Channel 4, Washington Post, and NBC/MSNBC will have&#160;an early spring break after being eliminated in a blistering quarter final round.</p>
<p>NOTE: This year’s leading Fake News honorable mentioned: TIME Magazine, the Daily Beast, VICE News, CBC, Bild Newspaper (Germany), Al Jazeera and France 24, The Guardian and the White Helmets.</p>
<p>In addition to the Fake News Final Four, we will also be nominating a list of finalists for the top fake news journalist in Mainstream Media. The winner will receive the first annual Horace Greeley Award for Most Outstanding Fake News Journalist.</p>
<p>VOTE FOR THE TOP&#160;FAKE NEWS OUTLET&#160; <a href="" type="internal">HERE</a> OR BELOW…</p>
<p>FINAL ROUND: CIA vs CNN (Voting Ends April 2nd!)</p>
<p />
<p>STATE-RUN REGION RESULTS: BBC vs CNN</p>
<p />
<p>DEEP STATE REGION RESULTS: NEW YORK TIMES vs CIA</p>
<p />
<p>Stay tuned to this week’s&#160; <a href="" type="internal">SUNDAY WIRE SHOW</a>&#160;as we breakdown the Final Four with color commentary and analysis from British oddsmaker Basil Valentine, and ACR Boiler Room’s own Hesher.</p>
<p>BASIL’S CORNER:</p>
<p>BBC: “Once considered the finest Broadcasting organisation in the world now known as a government propaganda machine dedicated to the Imperialist agenda. Appalling anti Corbyn and pro Israel bias pales into insignificance next to the legendary premature announcement of the collapse of Building 7. Mandatory license fee means its effectively a protection racket. A real contender these days. Nowhere for the light to get in.”</p>
<p>NBC/MSNBC: “Sacked its only honest journalist when Ed Schultz signed for real news network RT. Famous for excessive liberal bias and towing the Dem party line. Line up of world class polemics like the dreadful Rachel Maddow and &#160;Chris ‘Sweetypie’ Matthews. Still, they were no match for the powerhouse at CNN.”</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="" type="internal">CLICK HERE</a> TO VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE FAKE NEWS OUTLETS.</p>
<p>QUARTER FINAL RESULTS:</p>
<p>BBC won a relatively tight race against its UK rival Channel 4 with a strong&#160;57% to&#160;C4’s 43% (total votes 169).</p>
<p>CNN won handedly with 68% over a disappointed&#160;NBC/MSNBC with 32%&#160;(total votes 254).</p>
<p>CIA won comfortably with 60% over Beltway rival US&#160;State Dept who coasted with only&#160;40% of the vote (total votes 159).</p>
<p>New York Times took 58%&#160;over the Washington Post’s 42% (total votes 180).</p>
<p>SHOUT! Poll results:</p>
<p />
<p>READ MORE ABOUT MSM FAKE NEWS AT:&#160; <a href="" type="internal">FAKE NEWS WEEK</a></p>
<p>SUPPORT 21WIRE&#160;– SUBSCRIBE NOW &amp; BECOME A MEMBER&#160; <a href="https://21wire.tv/membership/plans/" type="external">@21WIRE.TV</a></p>
| 8,093 |
<p><a href="" type="internal">Best Buy</a> Co Inc plans to boost its Web presence and open a greater number of small stores in the United States targeting mobile customers in an effort to win back market share from the likes of Amazon.com Inc and <a href="" type="internal">Wal-Mart</a> Stores Inc.</p>
<p>The news came after many investors had raised concerns about the retailer's huge overhead costs and oversized stores at a time when many shoppers go online to buy gadgets.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The largest U.S. <a href="" type="internal">consumer electronics</a> chain has reported three straight quarters of same-store sales declines and forecast a fall in same-store sales in the current quarter, mainly due to its ailing television business.</p>
<p>"The online channel is our greatest growth opportunity," Chief Executive Brian Dunn told investors and analysts in a meeting on Thursday at the company's corporate headquarters in Richfield, Minnesota.</p>
<p>Best Buy said it wants to double its current $2 billion online business within 3 to 5 years.</p>
<p>Dunn also expressed optimism about potential online taxation reforms that aim at expanding the collection of sales taxes on items bought over the Internet. That would prevent online-only retailers such as Amazon from having an advantage over traditional chains.</p>
<p>"We believe it's just a matter of time before this field is leveled," Dunn told analysts and investors.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>BRICK-AND-MORTAR MATTERS</p>
<p>Industry experts have long urged Best Buy to shrink larger, older stores as many shoppers increasingly buy gadgets online.</p>
<p>"These (large format) stores were built for another era in consumer electronics retailing." Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners told Reuters last week. "These stores, unless they are radically reconfigured or shrunk, are white elephants."</p>
<p>Best Buy's Dunn defended its brick-and-mortar presence.</p>
<p>"Stores ... augment the online presence," Dunn said, highlighting the importance of knowledgeable associates while trying to sell new gadgets.</p>
<p>Best Buy is now aiming for 600 to 800 Best Buy Mobile stand-alone stores in the United States within five years, even as its cuts U.S. "big box" store square footage by 10 percent over the next three to five years.</p>
<p>The retailer also plans to invest more in its profitable Chinese brand, Five Star, hoping to more than double its revenue in <a href="" type="internal">China</a> to $4 billion within five years. It sees a total of 400 to 500 Five Star stores in the next five years.</p>
<p>Best Buy shares were down 80 cents or 2.6 percent to $29.45 in afternoon <a href="" type="internal">New York Stock Exchange</a> trading.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Dhanya Skariachan, editing by Gerald E. <a href="" type="internal">McCormick</a> and Derek Caney)</p>
<p>((dhanya.skariachan @thomsonreuters.com; + 1 646 223 6191; Reuters Messaging:[email protected]))</p>
|
Best Buy to Expand Web Presence
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/04/14/best-buy-expand-web-presence.html
|
2016-03-04
| 0right
|
Best Buy to Expand Web Presence
<p><a href="" type="internal">Best Buy</a> Co Inc plans to boost its Web presence and open a greater number of small stores in the United States targeting mobile customers in an effort to win back market share from the likes of Amazon.com Inc and <a href="" type="internal">Wal-Mart</a> Stores Inc.</p>
<p>The news came after many investors had raised concerns about the retailer's huge overhead costs and oversized stores at a time when many shoppers go online to buy gadgets.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The largest U.S. <a href="" type="internal">consumer electronics</a> chain has reported three straight quarters of same-store sales declines and forecast a fall in same-store sales in the current quarter, mainly due to its ailing television business.</p>
<p>"The online channel is our greatest growth opportunity," Chief Executive Brian Dunn told investors and analysts in a meeting on Thursday at the company's corporate headquarters in Richfield, Minnesota.</p>
<p>Best Buy said it wants to double its current $2 billion online business within 3 to 5 years.</p>
<p>Dunn also expressed optimism about potential online taxation reforms that aim at expanding the collection of sales taxes on items bought over the Internet. That would prevent online-only retailers such as Amazon from having an advantage over traditional chains.</p>
<p>"We believe it's just a matter of time before this field is leveled," Dunn told analysts and investors.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>BRICK-AND-MORTAR MATTERS</p>
<p>Industry experts have long urged Best Buy to shrink larger, older stores as many shoppers increasingly buy gadgets online.</p>
<p>"These (large format) stores were built for another era in consumer electronics retailing." Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners told Reuters last week. "These stores, unless they are radically reconfigured or shrunk, are white elephants."</p>
<p>Best Buy's Dunn defended its brick-and-mortar presence.</p>
<p>"Stores ... augment the online presence," Dunn said, highlighting the importance of knowledgeable associates while trying to sell new gadgets.</p>
<p>Best Buy is now aiming for 600 to 800 Best Buy Mobile stand-alone stores in the United States within five years, even as its cuts U.S. "big box" store square footage by 10 percent over the next three to five years.</p>
<p>The retailer also plans to invest more in its profitable Chinese brand, Five Star, hoping to more than double its revenue in <a href="" type="internal">China</a> to $4 billion within five years. It sees a total of 400 to 500 Five Star stores in the next five years.</p>
<p>Best Buy shares were down 80 cents or 2.6 percent to $29.45 in afternoon <a href="" type="internal">New York Stock Exchange</a> trading.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Dhanya Skariachan, editing by Gerald E. <a href="" type="internal">McCormick</a> and Derek Caney)</p>
<p>((dhanya.skariachan @thomsonreuters.com; + 1 646 223 6191; Reuters Messaging:[email protected]))</p>
| 8,094 |
<p>Candidates for president in Iran have five days beginning Tuesday to submit applications to run for office.</p>
<p>Elections are in June.</p>
<p>Last time around, in 2009, 475 hopefuls registered as candidates.</p>
<p>Only four were approved to run by what's called "the Guardian Council," a group of 12 men — mostly appointed by the country's Supreme Leader.</p>
<p>To put it mildly, the Iranian system is not the democracy we're used to in the West.</p>
<p>It's a very closed system.</p>
<p>The criteria that they look for, which is enshrined in the constitution, is that candidates must be 'trustworthy,' they have to be members of the political elite in Iran, they have to be Iranian, they have to adhere to Shia Islam and of course they can't have a criminal record.</p>
<p>These are more or less vague criteria.</p>
|
Iran Kicks Off Its Election Season
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2013-05-07/iran-kicks-its-election-season
|
2013-05-07
| 3left-center
|
Iran Kicks Off Its Election Season
<p>Candidates for president in Iran have five days beginning Tuesday to submit applications to run for office.</p>
<p>Elections are in June.</p>
<p>Last time around, in 2009, 475 hopefuls registered as candidates.</p>
<p>Only four were approved to run by what's called "the Guardian Council," a group of 12 men — mostly appointed by the country's Supreme Leader.</p>
<p>To put it mildly, the Iranian system is not the democracy we're used to in the West.</p>
<p>It's a very closed system.</p>
<p>The criteria that they look for, which is enshrined in the constitution, is that candidates must be 'trustworthy,' they have to be members of the political elite in Iran, they have to be Iranian, they have to adhere to Shia Islam and of course they can't have a criminal record.</p>
<p>These are more or less vague criteria.</p>
| 8,095 |
<p>Alabama coach Nick Saban is 11-0 in matchups against his former assistants. A breakdown:</p>
<p>Vs. Derek Dooley (3-0)</p>
<p>2010, Alabama 41, Tennessee 10</p>
<p>2011, Alabama 37, Tennessee 6</p>
<p>2012, Alabama 44, Tennessee 13</p>
<p>Vs. Will Muschamp (2-0)</p>
<p>2011, Alabama 38, Florida 10</p>
<p>2014, Alabama 42, Florida 21</p>
<p>Vs. Jim McElwain (3-0)</p>
<p>2013, Alabama 31, Colorado State 6</p>
<p>2015, Alabama 29, Florida 15, SEC title game</p>
<p><a href="https://collegefootball.ap.org/article/no-1-alabama-romps-past-florida-54-16-sec-title-game" type="external">2016, Alabama 54, Florida 16, SEC title game</a></p>
<p>Vs. Mark Dantonio (2-0)</p>
<p>2011, Alabama 49, Michigan State 7, Capital One Bowl</p>
<p><a href="https://collegefootball.ap.org/article/alabama-knocks-out-michigan-state-38-0-cotton-bowl" type="external">2015, Alabama 38, Michigan State 0, CFP semifinal</a></p>
<p>Vs. Jimbo Fisher (1-0)</p>
<p><a href="https://collegefootball.ap.org/article/no-1-alabama-smothers-no-3-florida-state-opener-24-7" type="external">2017, Alabama 24, Florida State 7</a></p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college football: http://collegefootball.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP_Top25</p>
<p>Alabama coach Nick Saban is 11-0 in matchups against his former assistants. A breakdown:</p>
<p>Vs. Derek Dooley (3-0)</p>
<p>2010, Alabama 41, Tennessee 10</p>
<p>2011, Alabama 37, Tennessee 6</p>
<p>2012, Alabama 44, Tennessee 13</p>
<p>Vs. Will Muschamp (2-0)</p>
<p>2011, Alabama 38, Florida 10</p>
<p>2014, Alabama 42, Florida 21</p>
<p>Vs. Jim McElwain (3-0)</p>
<p>2013, Alabama 31, Colorado State 6</p>
<p>2015, Alabama 29, Florida 15, SEC title game</p>
<p><a href="https://collegefootball.ap.org/article/no-1-alabama-romps-past-florida-54-16-sec-title-game" type="external">2016, Alabama 54, Florida 16, SEC title game</a></p>
<p>Vs. Mark Dantonio (2-0)</p>
<p>2011, Alabama 49, Michigan State 7, Capital One Bowl</p>
<p><a href="https://collegefootball.ap.org/article/alabama-knocks-out-michigan-state-38-0-cotton-bowl" type="external">2015, Alabama 38, Michigan State 0, CFP semifinal</a></p>
<p>Vs. Jimbo Fisher (1-0)</p>
<p><a href="https://collegefootball.ap.org/article/no-1-alabama-smothers-no-3-florida-state-opener-24-7" type="external">2017, Alabama 24, Florida State 7</a></p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college football: http://collegefootball.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP_Top25</p>
|
Breakdown of Saban's 11-0 record against former assistants
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/13cfbc6c160740b2a7881fcbf0c28d8a
|
2018-01-05
| 2least
|
Breakdown of Saban's 11-0 record against former assistants
<p>Alabama coach Nick Saban is 11-0 in matchups against his former assistants. A breakdown:</p>
<p>Vs. Derek Dooley (3-0)</p>
<p>2010, Alabama 41, Tennessee 10</p>
<p>2011, Alabama 37, Tennessee 6</p>
<p>2012, Alabama 44, Tennessee 13</p>
<p>Vs. Will Muschamp (2-0)</p>
<p>2011, Alabama 38, Florida 10</p>
<p>2014, Alabama 42, Florida 21</p>
<p>Vs. Jim McElwain (3-0)</p>
<p>2013, Alabama 31, Colorado State 6</p>
<p>2015, Alabama 29, Florida 15, SEC title game</p>
<p><a href="https://collegefootball.ap.org/article/no-1-alabama-romps-past-florida-54-16-sec-title-game" type="external">2016, Alabama 54, Florida 16, SEC title game</a></p>
<p>Vs. Mark Dantonio (2-0)</p>
<p>2011, Alabama 49, Michigan State 7, Capital One Bowl</p>
<p><a href="https://collegefootball.ap.org/article/alabama-knocks-out-michigan-state-38-0-cotton-bowl" type="external">2015, Alabama 38, Michigan State 0, CFP semifinal</a></p>
<p>Vs. Jimbo Fisher (1-0)</p>
<p><a href="https://collegefootball.ap.org/article/no-1-alabama-smothers-no-3-florida-state-opener-24-7" type="external">2017, Alabama 24, Florida State 7</a></p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college football: http://collegefootball.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP_Top25</p>
<p>Alabama coach Nick Saban is 11-0 in matchups against his former assistants. A breakdown:</p>
<p>Vs. Derek Dooley (3-0)</p>
<p>2010, Alabama 41, Tennessee 10</p>
<p>2011, Alabama 37, Tennessee 6</p>
<p>2012, Alabama 44, Tennessee 13</p>
<p>Vs. Will Muschamp (2-0)</p>
<p>2011, Alabama 38, Florida 10</p>
<p>2014, Alabama 42, Florida 21</p>
<p>Vs. Jim McElwain (3-0)</p>
<p>2013, Alabama 31, Colorado State 6</p>
<p>2015, Alabama 29, Florida 15, SEC title game</p>
<p><a href="https://collegefootball.ap.org/article/no-1-alabama-romps-past-florida-54-16-sec-title-game" type="external">2016, Alabama 54, Florida 16, SEC title game</a></p>
<p>Vs. Mark Dantonio (2-0)</p>
<p>2011, Alabama 49, Michigan State 7, Capital One Bowl</p>
<p><a href="https://collegefootball.ap.org/article/alabama-knocks-out-michigan-state-38-0-cotton-bowl" type="external">2015, Alabama 38, Michigan State 0, CFP semifinal</a></p>
<p>Vs. Jimbo Fisher (1-0)</p>
<p><a href="https://collegefootball.ap.org/article/no-1-alabama-smothers-no-3-florida-state-opener-24-7" type="external">2017, Alabama 24, Florida State 7</a></p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college football: http://collegefootball.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP_Top25</p>
| 8,096 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Those are all valid reasons that are important to families and students alike. But other than moving into new school boundaries, there’s a reason that trumps them all and gets you top priority.</p>
<p>And that’s getting out of a failing school.</p>
<p>Parents, guardians and students should know that state law allows transfers from schools that have earned two F school grades in the past four years. Albuquerque Public Schools has 38 schools in that category, giving their students what amounts to an E-ticket into a school that is delivering better academic results. (A complete list of school grades is available online at ped.state.nm.us/SchoolGrading, or to check out your school’s four-year track record, go to aae.ped.state.nm.us.)</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>And to its credit, APS is bringing school transfers into the digital age; applications for transfers will be posted online today; in-person applications start Tuesday at the APS administration building, 6400 Uptown Blvd. NE. The first window for applications continues through Jan. 31. (For more information, go to aps.edu or call the Student Service Center at 855-9040 or the Transfer Office at 855-9050.)</p>
<p>PED Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski has said “part of the American dream is having freedom and choices – and families deserve to have the ability to choose a great school regardless of their socio-economic status or background.”</p>
<p>Given that many – but not all – of the failing schools are in areas of low economic opportunity and parents in those areas may struggle to even keep their children in school on a regular basis, school districts should reach out to make seeking transfers as easy as possible.</p>
<p>APS has struggled with a downward slide in school grades in recent years – in the 2017 school grading period, 34 percent of APS schools received an F, up from 25 percent in 2016. And the district is home to Hawthorne Elementary, Whittier Elementary and Los Padillas Elementary, which have received F grades for at least five consecutive years. They join Dulce Elementary in northern New Mexico as the state’s four lowest-performing schools, and each has to choose from among four options outlined in the state’s Every Student Succeeds Act plan: close, relaunch as a charter school, significantly restructure, or advocate for students to transfer.</p>
<p>Parents, guardians and students in chronically failing schools who can, should take advantage of the transfer option – especially now that they can do it on their own time by simply logging in. Because Ruszkowski is correct: Every child deserves the opportunity to learn.</p>
<p />
<p>• The first application window is Jan. 1-31.</p>
<p>• Pick one, two or three schools in order of preference.</p>
<p>• Transfers are approved on a priority system; if there are more requests than open slots at a school, then a lottery is used.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>• Notification of transfer status is emailed before the end of the school year.</p>
<p>• If there is no room at the school(s) selected, students are put on a wait list and can seek help in locating a different school with availability. Wait lists do not carry over year to year.</p>
<p>• Transportation is not provided for transfer students.</p>
<p>• More information is at aps.edu or 855-9050.</p>
<p>This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.</p>
<p />
|
Editorial: APS right to post student transfer paperwork online
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/1113318/aps-right-to-post-student-transfer-paperwork-online.html
| 2least
|
Editorial: APS right to post student transfer paperwork online
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Those are all valid reasons that are important to families and students alike. But other than moving into new school boundaries, there’s a reason that trumps them all and gets you top priority.</p>
<p>And that’s getting out of a failing school.</p>
<p>Parents, guardians and students should know that state law allows transfers from schools that have earned two F school grades in the past four years. Albuquerque Public Schools has 38 schools in that category, giving their students what amounts to an E-ticket into a school that is delivering better academic results. (A complete list of school grades is available online at ped.state.nm.us/SchoolGrading, or to check out your school’s four-year track record, go to aae.ped.state.nm.us.)</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>And to its credit, APS is bringing school transfers into the digital age; applications for transfers will be posted online today; in-person applications start Tuesday at the APS administration building, 6400 Uptown Blvd. NE. The first window for applications continues through Jan. 31. (For more information, go to aps.edu or call the Student Service Center at 855-9040 or the Transfer Office at 855-9050.)</p>
<p>PED Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski has said “part of the American dream is having freedom and choices – and families deserve to have the ability to choose a great school regardless of their socio-economic status or background.”</p>
<p>Given that many – but not all – of the failing schools are in areas of low economic opportunity and parents in those areas may struggle to even keep their children in school on a regular basis, school districts should reach out to make seeking transfers as easy as possible.</p>
<p>APS has struggled with a downward slide in school grades in recent years – in the 2017 school grading period, 34 percent of APS schools received an F, up from 25 percent in 2016. And the district is home to Hawthorne Elementary, Whittier Elementary and Los Padillas Elementary, which have received F grades for at least five consecutive years. They join Dulce Elementary in northern New Mexico as the state’s four lowest-performing schools, and each has to choose from among four options outlined in the state’s Every Student Succeeds Act plan: close, relaunch as a charter school, significantly restructure, or advocate for students to transfer.</p>
<p>Parents, guardians and students in chronically failing schools who can, should take advantage of the transfer option – especially now that they can do it on their own time by simply logging in. Because Ruszkowski is correct: Every child deserves the opportunity to learn.</p>
<p />
<p>• The first application window is Jan. 1-31.</p>
<p>• Pick one, two or three schools in order of preference.</p>
<p>• Transfers are approved on a priority system; if there are more requests than open slots at a school, then a lottery is used.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>• Notification of transfer status is emailed before the end of the school year.</p>
<p>• If there is no room at the school(s) selected, students are put on a wait list and can seek help in locating a different school with availability. Wait lists do not carry over year to year.</p>
<p>• Transportation is not provided for transfer students.</p>
<p>• More information is at aps.edu or 855-9050.</p>
<p>This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.</p>
<p />
| 8,097 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>FILE – In this March 27, 2012 file photo, Monsignor William Lynn leaves the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia. Lynn, a Roman Catholic church official, who has been jailed for more than a year for his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints, had his conviction reversed and was ordered released Thursday Dec. 26, 2013. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)</p>
<p>PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Roman Catholic church official who has been jailed for more than a year for his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints had his landmark conviction reversed and was ordered released Thursday.</p>
<p>A three-judge Superior Court panel unanimously rejected prosecution arguments that Monsignor William Lynn, the first U.S. church official ever charged or convicted for the handling of clergy-abuse complaints, was legally responsible for an abused boy’s welfare in the late 1990s.</p>
<p>“He’s been in prison 18 months for a crime he didn’t commit and couldn’t commit under the law,” said his attorney, Thomas Bergstrom. “It’s incredible what happened to this man.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Lynn, 62, is serving a three- to six-year prison sentence after his child-endangerment conviction last year. His lawyers hoped for his immediate release Thursday from the state prison in Waymart, but the appeals court denied the request, instead sending the bail issue back to the trial court.</p>
<p>Prosecutors vowed to oppose bail and to challenge the 43-page opinion.</p>
<p>“Because we will be appealing, the conviction still stands for now, and the defendant cannot be lawfully released until the end of the process,” District Attorney Seth Williams said in a statement.</p>
<p>His office contended at trial that Lynn reassigned known predators to new parishes in Philadelphia while he was the archdiocese’s secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004. Lynn’s conviction stems from the case of one priest, Edward Avery, found to have abused a child in 1998 after such a transfer.</p>
<p>Victims’ groups blasted the reversal.</p>
<p>“We know thousands of betrayed Catholics and wounded victims will be disheartened by this news,” said David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.</p>
<p>Lynn’s attorneys have long argued that the state’s child-endangerment law at the time applied only to parents and caregivers, not supervisors like Lynn. Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina had rejected their argument and sent the case to trial.</p>
<p>Sarmina concluded that Lynn perhaps drafted a 1994 list of accused priests to try to address the clergy abuse problem. But when Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua had the list destroyed, Lynn chose to stick around — and keep quiet, she said. A copy of the list was found years later in a safe and was repeatedly shown at trial.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Sarmina, in sentencing Lynn in July 2012, had said the church administrator had “enabled monsters in clerical garb … to destroy the souls of children,” rather than stand up to his bishop.</p>
<p>Lynn told the judge: “I did not intend any harm to come to (the boy). The fact is, my best was not good enough to stop that harm.”</p>
<p>Lynn’s supporters believe he was made a scapegoat for the church’s sins. Nonetheless, Bergstrom said his client hopes to return to ministry, and has enjoyed support of the current Philadelphia archbishop, Charles J. Chaput, who twice visited him in prison.</p>
<p>Lynn had left the archdiocesan hierarchy for parish work after he featured prominently in a damning 2005 grand jury report into the priest-abuse scandal. Then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham concluded that too much time had passed to charge anyone criminally despite decades of abuse complaints against dozens of priests.</p>
<p>Williams, her successor, revisited the issue when new accusers came forward under new laws that extended the time limits and added church or school supervisors to the list of people who could be charged. Williams filed the novel child-endangerment case against Lynn, while charging three other priests and a teacher of sexually abusing children.</p>
<p>Three of them have been convicted while the jury deadlocked in the fourth case.</p>
<p>Lynn’s trial lasted several months, although a majority of the testimony involved victim testimony from earlier, uncharged priest-abuse cases, much of it graphic. Sarmina allowed the jury to hear that evidence to let prosecutors show the pattern of behavior by Lynn and other church officials.</p>
<p>Bergstrom had also challenged that decision on appeal, calling it unfair.</p>
<p>The Superior Court never addressed that concern or other alleged trial errors, concluding the charges themselves were flawed because Lynn was charged under an endangerment law adopted after he left his church post.</p>
<p>The court found that Lynn didn’t supervise Avery’s accuser and “did not have any specific information that Avery intended or was preparing to molest (the boy) or any other child.”</p>
<p>The archdiocese said in a statement that its handling of abuse complaints “has changed dramatically since the events over 10 years ago that were at the center of the trial.” Over the past two years, Chaput has turned over sex-abuse complaints to prosecutors, and ousted at least nine accused priests from ministry, while restoring others to their jobs after finding complaints unfounded.</p>
<p>The archdiocese has called the sentence excessive and noted Thursday that it had hoped that Lynn’s sentence would be reviewed.</p>
<p>“We recognize that today’s news is especially difficult for survivors and their families. We profoundly regret their pain,” the archdiocese said.</p>
|
Court orders release of Catholic church official
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/326780/court-orders-release-of-catholic-church-official.html
| 2least
|
Court orders release of Catholic church official
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>FILE – In this March 27, 2012 file photo, Monsignor William Lynn leaves the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia. Lynn, a Roman Catholic church official, who has been jailed for more than a year for his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints, had his conviction reversed and was ordered released Thursday Dec. 26, 2013. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)</p>
<p>PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Roman Catholic church official who has been jailed for more than a year for his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints had his landmark conviction reversed and was ordered released Thursday.</p>
<p>A three-judge Superior Court panel unanimously rejected prosecution arguments that Monsignor William Lynn, the first U.S. church official ever charged or convicted for the handling of clergy-abuse complaints, was legally responsible for an abused boy’s welfare in the late 1990s.</p>
<p>“He’s been in prison 18 months for a crime he didn’t commit and couldn’t commit under the law,” said his attorney, Thomas Bergstrom. “It’s incredible what happened to this man.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Lynn, 62, is serving a three- to six-year prison sentence after his child-endangerment conviction last year. His lawyers hoped for his immediate release Thursday from the state prison in Waymart, but the appeals court denied the request, instead sending the bail issue back to the trial court.</p>
<p>Prosecutors vowed to oppose bail and to challenge the 43-page opinion.</p>
<p>“Because we will be appealing, the conviction still stands for now, and the defendant cannot be lawfully released until the end of the process,” District Attorney Seth Williams said in a statement.</p>
<p>His office contended at trial that Lynn reassigned known predators to new parishes in Philadelphia while he was the archdiocese’s secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004. Lynn’s conviction stems from the case of one priest, Edward Avery, found to have abused a child in 1998 after such a transfer.</p>
<p>Victims’ groups blasted the reversal.</p>
<p>“We know thousands of betrayed Catholics and wounded victims will be disheartened by this news,” said David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.</p>
<p>Lynn’s attorneys have long argued that the state’s child-endangerment law at the time applied only to parents and caregivers, not supervisors like Lynn. Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina had rejected their argument and sent the case to trial.</p>
<p>Sarmina concluded that Lynn perhaps drafted a 1994 list of accused priests to try to address the clergy abuse problem. But when Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua had the list destroyed, Lynn chose to stick around — and keep quiet, she said. A copy of the list was found years later in a safe and was repeatedly shown at trial.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Sarmina, in sentencing Lynn in July 2012, had said the church administrator had “enabled monsters in clerical garb … to destroy the souls of children,” rather than stand up to his bishop.</p>
<p>Lynn told the judge: “I did not intend any harm to come to (the boy). The fact is, my best was not good enough to stop that harm.”</p>
<p>Lynn’s supporters believe he was made a scapegoat for the church’s sins. Nonetheless, Bergstrom said his client hopes to return to ministry, and has enjoyed support of the current Philadelphia archbishop, Charles J. Chaput, who twice visited him in prison.</p>
<p>Lynn had left the archdiocesan hierarchy for parish work after he featured prominently in a damning 2005 grand jury report into the priest-abuse scandal. Then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham concluded that too much time had passed to charge anyone criminally despite decades of abuse complaints against dozens of priests.</p>
<p>Williams, her successor, revisited the issue when new accusers came forward under new laws that extended the time limits and added church or school supervisors to the list of people who could be charged. Williams filed the novel child-endangerment case against Lynn, while charging three other priests and a teacher of sexually abusing children.</p>
<p>Three of them have been convicted while the jury deadlocked in the fourth case.</p>
<p>Lynn’s trial lasted several months, although a majority of the testimony involved victim testimony from earlier, uncharged priest-abuse cases, much of it graphic. Sarmina allowed the jury to hear that evidence to let prosecutors show the pattern of behavior by Lynn and other church officials.</p>
<p>Bergstrom had also challenged that decision on appeal, calling it unfair.</p>
<p>The Superior Court never addressed that concern or other alleged trial errors, concluding the charges themselves were flawed because Lynn was charged under an endangerment law adopted after he left his church post.</p>
<p>The court found that Lynn didn’t supervise Avery’s accuser and “did not have any specific information that Avery intended or was preparing to molest (the boy) or any other child.”</p>
<p>The archdiocese said in a statement that its handling of abuse complaints “has changed dramatically since the events over 10 years ago that were at the center of the trial.” Over the past two years, Chaput has turned over sex-abuse complaints to prosecutors, and ousted at least nine accused priests from ministry, while restoring others to their jobs after finding complaints unfounded.</p>
<p>The archdiocese has called the sentence excessive and noted Thursday that it had hoped that Lynn’s sentence would be reviewed.</p>
<p>“We recognize that today’s news is especially difficult for survivors and their families. We profoundly regret their pain,” the archdiocese said.</p>
| 8,098 |
|
<p>&lt;img class="size-full wp-image-36321 aligncenter" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ArmandoLegalize.jpg" alt="Armando Garcia Ramirez" width="1200" height="627" srcset="https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ArmandoLegalize.jpg 1200w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ArmandoLegalize-300x157.jpg 300w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ArmandoLegalize-768x401.jpg 768w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ArmandoLegalize-1024x535.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /&gt;</p>
<p>In case you missed it, <a href="" type="internal">this undocumented hombre</a> was recently arrested for raping and killing his 15-year-old stepdaughter. While she was pregnant with his second child… Yeah, it’s a lot to process. Ready your mind grapes, because there’s been a new development. It seems Obama and friends were in the throes of <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/21/armando-garcia-ramirez-illegal-immigrant-accused-/" type="external">making this charmer a citizen…</a></p>
<p>The case involving Armando Garcia-Ramirez is raising new questions about immigration enforcement under President Obama… The Obama administration last year began the process of granting legal status to a 36-year-old illegal immigrant with a long criminal rap sheet whom agents had twice tried to deport, and who now stands accused of killing his 15-year-old girlfriend, mother of one child with him and pregnant with another.</p>
<p>[He] may have even been the girl’s stepfather at the time he impregnated her – something federal authorities apparently missed last year after he was arrested for smuggling five other illegal immigrants into the U.S.</p>
<p>Prosecutors declined to pursue the smuggling case, and Mr. Garcia made bond on immigration charges and was let go. Months later, Mr. Garcia was even approved for a work permit, letting him get a job and making him eligible for taxpayer benefits.</p>
<p>This human trashcan was breaking the law and committing heinous acts while reaping benefits. #America. Smuggling illegals across the border? Meh. Give him a work permit because&#160;he’s got brown skin. Then call Republicans “racist.” Well played.</p>
<p>The Obama Admin had multiple opportunities to give Garcia the silver-spurred boot. They could have even possibly prevented the rape of a child as well as her (and her unborn baby’s) murder. Alas, twas not written in the stars. #ThanksObama</p>
<p>&lt;img class="size-full wp-image-27889 aligncenter" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/raw.gif" alt="" width="452" height="254" /&gt;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">If ever you wondered why all the people turned in their leftist pitchforks</a> for MAGA hats, consider this one of many bullet points. Try counting them to see if they rival the illegals within a 25-mile radius of Home Depot. That’s not racist. I never said what race they were. If you assumed a race, YOU’RE THE RACIST.</p>
<p>While Trump made promises of secure borders and stricter immigration policies, Obama flipped America the bird&#160;and tried bringing this swell sewer rat into our country (see <a href="" type="internal">Crowder UNLOADS: ‘People voted Trump because Democrats screwed them!’</a>). Then Hillary’s gaping face crater promised more of it. And they wonder why they didn’t win. #Mystery</p>
<p>Leftists, feast your eyes on this pile of crap and wonder no more. Really, the writing was on the wall. It says “stop letting illegals in…” #BuilditNow #AndTaller #YesAllHashtags</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>NOT SUBSCRIBED TO THE PODCAST?&#160; <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/louder-with-crowder/id929121341?mt=2" type="external">FIX THAT</a>! IT’S COMPLETELY FREE ON BOTH&#160; <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/louder-with-crowder/id929121341?mt=2" type="external">ITUNES&#160;HERE</a>&#160;AND&#160; <a href="https://soundcloud.com/louderwithcrowder" type="external">SOUNDCLOUD&#160;HERE</a>.</p>
<p />
|
Obama Tried Legalizing Illegal Rapist Who Killed His Own Stepdaughter. Yes, Really…
| true |
http://louderwithcrowder.com/illegal-rapist-obama-tried-legalize/
|
2017-03-22
| 0right
|
Obama Tried Legalizing Illegal Rapist Who Killed His Own Stepdaughter. Yes, Really…
<p>&lt;img class="size-full wp-image-36321 aligncenter" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ArmandoLegalize.jpg" alt="Armando Garcia Ramirez" width="1200" height="627" srcset="https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ArmandoLegalize.jpg 1200w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ArmandoLegalize-300x157.jpg 300w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ArmandoLegalize-768x401.jpg 768w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ArmandoLegalize-1024x535.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /&gt;</p>
<p>In case you missed it, <a href="" type="internal">this undocumented hombre</a> was recently arrested for raping and killing his 15-year-old stepdaughter. While she was pregnant with his second child… Yeah, it’s a lot to process. Ready your mind grapes, because there’s been a new development. It seems Obama and friends were in the throes of <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/21/armando-garcia-ramirez-illegal-immigrant-accused-/" type="external">making this charmer a citizen…</a></p>
<p>The case involving Armando Garcia-Ramirez is raising new questions about immigration enforcement under President Obama… The Obama administration last year began the process of granting legal status to a 36-year-old illegal immigrant with a long criminal rap sheet whom agents had twice tried to deport, and who now stands accused of killing his 15-year-old girlfriend, mother of one child with him and pregnant with another.</p>
<p>[He] may have even been the girl’s stepfather at the time he impregnated her – something federal authorities apparently missed last year after he was arrested for smuggling five other illegal immigrants into the U.S.</p>
<p>Prosecutors declined to pursue the smuggling case, and Mr. Garcia made bond on immigration charges and was let go. Months later, Mr. Garcia was even approved for a work permit, letting him get a job and making him eligible for taxpayer benefits.</p>
<p>This human trashcan was breaking the law and committing heinous acts while reaping benefits. #America. Smuggling illegals across the border? Meh. Give him a work permit because&#160;he’s got brown skin. Then call Republicans “racist.” Well played.</p>
<p>The Obama Admin had multiple opportunities to give Garcia the silver-spurred boot. They could have even possibly prevented the rape of a child as well as her (and her unborn baby’s) murder. Alas, twas not written in the stars. #ThanksObama</p>
<p>&lt;img class="size-full wp-image-27889 aligncenter" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/raw.gif" alt="" width="452" height="254" /&gt;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">If ever you wondered why all the people turned in their leftist pitchforks</a> for MAGA hats, consider this one of many bullet points. Try counting them to see if they rival the illegals within a 25-mile radius of Home Depot. That’s not racist. I never said what race they were. If you assumed a race, YOU’RE THE RACIST.</p>
<p>While Trump made promises of secure borders and stricter immigration policies, Obama flipped America the bird&#160;and tried bringing this swell sewer rat into our country (see <a href="" type="internal">Crowder UNLOADS: ‘People voted Trump because Democrats screwed them!’</a>). Then Hillary’s gaping face crater promised more of it. And they wonder why they didn’t win. #Mystery</p>
<p>Leftists, feast your eyes on this pile of crap and wonder no more. Really, the writing was on the wall. It says “stop letting illegals in…” #BuilditNow #AndTaller #YesAllHashtags</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>NOT SUBSCRIBED TO THE PODCAST?&#160; <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/louder-with-crowder/id929121341?mt=2" type="external">FIX THAT</a>! IT’S COMPLETELY FREE ON BOTH&#160; <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/louder-with-crowder/id929121341?mt=2" type="external">ITUNES&#160;HERE</a>&#160;AND&#160; <a href="https://soundcloud.com/louderwithcrowder" type="external">SOUNDCLOUD&#160;HERE</a>.</p>
<p />
| 8,099 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.