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LUXEMBOURG — Signs of testy relations between Turkey’s embattled government and the United States continued Sunday, as Secretary of State John Kerry denounced any suggestion of American involvement in Friday’s coup. “We think it’s irresponsible to have accusations of American involvement,” Mr. Kerry told CNN Sunday President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has accused Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive cleric now living in Pennsylvania, of orchestrating the violence, and Mr. Erdogan demanded that Mr. Gulen be extradited. Mr. Gulen has denied the charge, and Mr. Kerry said the Justice Department would examine any evidence Turkey presented as part of an extradition request. Suleyman Soylu, Turkey’s labor minister, had accused the United States of being behind the coup. In a phone call on Saturday with the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Mr. Kerry urged restraint by the Turkish government and said that “public insinuations or claims about any role by the United States in the failed coup attempt are utterly false and harmful to our bilateral relations,” according to a description of the call released by the State Department. On Sunday, Mr. Kerry expressed concerns that Mr. Erdogan might use the coup to undertake a purge within the government of those who may disagree with him. “Obviously, there are coup plotters, and the coup plotters need to be held accountable and they will be,” Mr. Kerry said on ABC. “But I think we’re all concerned, and we have expressed that concern, that this not fuel a reach well beyond those who engaged in the coup but that they strengthen the democracy of the country, strengthen the process, and use it as a moment to unite the nation. ” On NBC, Mr. Kerry said an extensive purge “would be a great challenge to his relationship to Europe, to NATO and to all of us, and we have urged them not to reach out so far that they’re creating doubts about their commitment to the democratic process, and I hope it won’t result in that. ”

Carey Wedler | ANTIMEDIA Over the course of the 2016 presidential election, Americans who rail against Hillary Clinton have condemned the media’s bias in her favor — and rightfully so. Clinton has effectively infiltrated the corporate news media — whose parent companies often donate to her — with the deliberate intent of bolstering her own chances at the presidency. But as this nefarious behavior continues to come to light through hacks and leaks, another powerful sphere of media influence has quietly placed its resources behind Hillary Clinton – and hardly anyone is talking about it. Though outrage over Clinton’s corporate sponsors usually focuses on her support from banking giants like Goldman Sachs , Citibank, JP Morgan, and other reviled companies, corporate Hollywood has collectively supplied her campaign with far more cash than these banks. When people think of Hollywood’s support for a political campaign, their minds tend to focus on the entertainment industry’s most visible figures — celebrities. From George Clooney , Katy Perry, and Leonardo DiCaprio to Justin Timberlake, Reese Witherspoon, Steven Spielberg, Beyonce, and Jay-Z, the celebrity consensus this year has settled on Clinton. But underneath the stars’ ‘progressive’ choice is an intentional, systematic machine working in Hillary’s favor, and it mirrors other conglomerated industries that have aligned behind her. Moguls with Millions (and Billions) Back Hillary and the Clinton Family The first layer of Clinton’s corporate Hollywood allegiance is rather simple to peel back, simply because Hillary’s top industry donors make no secret of their support. Earlier this year, George Clooney held a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser for Clinton, one that earned $15 million dollars — far more than Goldman Sachs has collectively donated to her campaign. The actor’s event raised money for the Hillary Victory Fund, which was recently revealed to be an avenue for maxed out donors to contribute more than the allowable amount. The Victory Fund has also been criticized for hoarding money for Hillary that was supposed to go to state Democratic parties. Clooney teamed up with one of corporate Hollywood’s most powerful executives, Jeffrey Katzenberg, for this fundraiser. Katzenberg rose to prominence at Walt Disney in the 1990s, where he helmed some of the millennial generation’s favorite childhood films: Beauty and the Beast , Aladdin , the Lion King , and the Little Mermaid were all products of Katzenberg’s leadership. Several years later, he partnered with Steven Spielberg (also a longtime Clinton supporter) and David Geffen, a music mogul, to create Dreamworks Animation. Katzenberg was the top bundler for Barack Obama in 2012 and also funded him in 2008, so it’s unsurprising the president takes his phone calls. Further, Katzenberg’s right-hand man, Andy Spahn, visited the White House almost 50 times during Obama’s first term, Mother Jones reported at the time, enjoying a close relationship with the president — and some economic benefits. Katzenberg, who recently earned $391 million on the sale of Dreamworks to Comcast, has donated at least $1 million to Clinton’s campaign this election season. Then there’s billionaire Haim Saban, the staunchly pro-Israel entertainment mogul behind the original Power Rangers series. He is Clinton’s top individual donor, besting Katzenberg, with at least $6.4 million in donations to her campaign. He has contributed $15 million to the Clinton Foundation, and his wife, Cheryl, serves on the board. Saban has supported the Clintons since the 1990s, and during Bill’s time in office, he enjoyed the business perks of being friends with the president of the United States, as Mother Jones has detailed . His investments are tied to Wall Street, and he has also enjoyed Clinton’s condemnation of Boycott, Sanction, Divest, a nonviolent, market-based global protest movement challenging Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Both men, therefore, know well the perks of having friends in high places — and both are some of the top donors of any candidate in the 2016 race. But their very public— and lavish — support barely scratches the surface of the real machinations taking place between Hollywood’s corporate underbelly and its stake in American politics. The Studio Lobby Most people, if they’ve heard of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) at all, know it as the organization that rates films. It’s the familiar, almost comforting disclaimer that appears before a trailer or film, ranking it G, PG, PG-13, R, or in some cases, NC-17. Though the organization has its roots in the 20th century, founded as an effort to self-regulate their content, more than anything, it is corporate Hollywood’s lobby. The MPAA represents 20th Century Fox (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.), Warner Brothers (owned by Time Warner), Disney, Universal (owned in part by Comcast), Sony Pictures, and Paramount Pictures (News Corp, Time Warner, and Comcast have all contributed to the Clinton Foundation). For some, it’s difficult to place corporate Hollywood in the same category as more reviled industries like banking, weapons manufacturing, or pharmaceuticals . This is likely, at least in part, because they deliver one of America’s favorite pastimes — entertainment. Yet the revolving door is strong, as is the MPAA’s political foundation. In fact, the MPAA’s longest running chairman was Jack Valenti , who served as an advisor to Lyndon B. Johnson before taking over the lobbying group. By 2011, former senator and presidential candidate, Chris Dodd, had taken the reins. Dodd, who makes $3 million a year working as the organization’s top lobbyist, takes his job seriously. As the Los Angeles Times reported , Dodd has increased lobbying funds and efforts in Congress. “ We’ve had a hundred meetings with new members of Congress since November ,” he told the publication last year. Dodd is a Clinton supporter. He officially endorsed her earlier this year. Disney chairman Bob Iger is also a huge Clinton supporter and member of the MPAA. Alongside Saban, Iger hosted a Hollywood fundraiser for her in August and held a meeting with Tim Kaine, Clinton’s running mate, in September. On that same trip, Kaine met with Warner Brothers executive Kevin Tsujihara, who donated to Hillary Clinton’s Victory Fund this year. He met with Fox Television executive Dana Walden, who also donated to Clinton. He also met with Kevin Reilly, an executive at Turner, which is owned by Time Warner, which owns Warner Brothers and CNN , an outlet condemned for heavily favoring Clinton this election cycle. Perhaps these private meetings were about gun control and equal rights. Or, perhaps, Kaine and the executives discussed business interests. Either way, the paper trail gets more decisive — and more revealing. What is the MPAA Hoping to Achieve? MPAA members Disney and Sony have independently advocated for the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal , the globally loathed trade agreement criticized for granting carte blanche to corporations and stripping nations of their sovereignty. Disney has even prodded its employees to contribute lobbying funds in support of the agreement. Fox, Disney, Time Warner, Comcast, and other media companies have lobbied in favor of TPP . One of TPP’s most dangerous provisions is its intent to regulate copyright and intellectual property in favor of corporations – one of corporate Hollywood’s main objectives. Dodd is, unsurprisingly, a proponent of internet censorship legislation, which corporate Hollywood invariably backs in its attempts to preserve its copyright profits. Hollywood studios have been some of the biggest proponents of heavy internet regulation (with regard to copyright) and have waged campaigns against online piracy. The MPAA’s website claims “the most serious threat” to the film industry is online copyright theft. It makes sense, then, that the MPAA would be a member of the U.S. Business Coalition for TPP . This massive trade group spent $658 billion dollars on lobbying in 2014, according to Common Cause, a left-leaning nonprofit lobbying organization. The coalition includes members like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Dow Chemical , Pfizer , GlaxoSmithKline , Boeing , and Viacom (another media behemoth). Interestingly, the coalition’s website no longer lists its members, though Anti-Media easily accessed an archived version of that information. These corporations, or their employees, have also donated funds to Hillary Clinton in one way or another, often via the Clinton Foundation, which has been documented to issue favors to entities that contribute funds. Dozens of media corporations have donated to the foundation. And — surprise, surprise — the only presidential candidate the MPAA has contributed to in 2016 is … Hillary Clinton. While it’s certainly the case that Hollywood executives lean liberal and many undoubtedly support Clinton due to a misguided moral imperative to stop Donald Trump, it would be naive to presume this is the only dynamic at play. This dynamic is evident in a letter from MPAA chief counsel Steven Fabrizio to Disney’s Alan Braverman, among others, assuring them of his efforts to pass the bill. “ Finally, in regard to trade ,” he wrote , “ the MPAA/MPA with the strong support of your studios, continue to advocate to governments around the world about the pressing need for strong pro-IP trade policies such as TPP and the proposed EU/US trade agreement (TTIP). ” Braverman donated to Clinton this year. Infiltrating the DNC Platform Drafting Committee Most damning is the fact that one MPAA lobbyist, former California congressman Howard Berman, ended up on the drafting committee for the Democratic platform this year (throughout the course of his political career, some of his top donors were Hollywood studios). According to an email released by Wikileaks, Berman met with now-disgraced former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz in May of this year — two months before he helped draft the platform. She appointed him to the platform drafting committee. That platform was widely criticized for refusing to condemn and reject TPP outright, as Bernie Sanders and his camp attempted to do. Berman helped vote down language against TPP. “But Hillary opposes TPP!” some might argue. Indeed, after claiming it was set to be the “gold standard” of trade agreements, she changed her mind and said she opposed it. But a leak from the recently released John Podesta batch showed there is a very strong chance she will change her mind, again, once elected. And considering Donald Trump’s anti-trade deal rhetoric against both NAFTA and TPP (not to mention his incendiary rhetoric), it makes little sense for corporate Hollywood to back Trump — even if they’re partly responsible for his meteoric rise via the Apprentice . In a vein similar to Berman’s, a former MPAA (and Disney, and Dow, and Citigroup) lobbyist, Jose Villareal, now serves as the Clinton campaign’s treasurer. Though there is no smoking gun proving corporate Hollywood is backing Clinton with the express intent of ensuring passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it’s telling that the MPAA’s homepage is a tribute to TPP (and, naturally, themselves). It’s telling that the organization donated to only one presidential candidate. It’s telling that executives within these corporations are supporting Clinton while the companies they represent heavily back TPP — and in many cases, Clinton. It’s telling that their parent corporations, like News Corp and Time Warner , are backing her — and the TPP. Considering six corporations control 90% of media in the United States and Clinton continually proves her loyalties to big business, it’s hardly surprising she’s the choice of corporate Hollywood. And it’s likely they’ll expect favors in return. As Dodd said following President Obama’s rejection of SOPA and PIPA following public outcry in 2012: “Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake…Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

Wed, 26 Oct 2016 20:35 UTC He roamed the streets of Sacramento for six years, raping women as they walked to work or headed home from parties in the dark. To keep them from fighting back, he smashed their heads with rocks and wrapped his hands around their necks. Sometimes he threatened them with a gun. Police became frustrated, unable to identify him even though they had his DNA from the crimes. Desperate for a break, they checked a database of convicted felons, but came up empty-handed. Finally, they searched for a partial match to see whether he had a relative in the database. They got lucky — the man had a brother in custody, which led authorities to the assailant. The "Roaming Rapist" is one of a handful of cases that California authorities have quietly solved in recent years using a controversial technique that scours an offender DNA database for a father, son or brother of an elusive crime suspect. The state's early success using familial DNA searches to identify the so-called "Grim Sleeper" serial killer led Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck to predict that the method would "change the way policing is done in the United States." Civil liberty groups expressed alarm, saying the searches raised significant ethical and privacy concerns. Some questioned their legality. Since then, familial DNA has made more modest progress than Beck predicted but has also gained wider respect. Eight other states have followed California's lead, formally embracing the technique as a crime-fighting tool. And though many opponents still express concerns, California's approach has won over some previous skeptics who say they are impressed with the state's strict policies limiting its use and the measured successes. Using the method helped detectives in the state identify two murderers, including the Grim Sleeper, and five men wanted for sexual assaults, according to the attorney general's office. Early last year, authorities arrested a San Diego County man accused of sneaking into children's bedrooms and cutting holes in their pajamas before molesting them. A few months later, a Vacaville man was arrested on suspicion of raping and sodomizing a woman along a bike path. A Santa Cruz County judge in 2013 sentenced a man to life in prison for raping a coffee shop employee then barricading her inside a walk-in refrigerator. Lab officials look for a relative by scanning genetic profiles in the offender database and looking for DNA samples that match with a suspect's along several, but not all, markers. From there, California's testing method focuses on part of the Y-chromosome passed down along the male line, identifying father-son or full brother relationships. As more genetic markers for people's DNA are entered into offender databases, the technology will become more precise, said geneticist Frederick Bieber, a professor at Harvard University 's medical school and a leading authority on the technique. That could help officials identify more distant relatives and track down criminals who aren't in the system, he said. "The technology is powerful...there's demonstrable success," Bieber said. Britain pioneered the use of familial DNA for crime solving more than a decade ago. In one of the earliest cases, detectives reopened the 1988 killing of a 20-year-old woman in Wales and compared DNA from the assailant to genetic profiles in Britain's database of known offenders. In 2002, they got a partial match to a 14-year-old boy. The teen wasn't alive at the time of the slaying, but detectives used the clue to focus on his uncle, who eventually pleaded guilty to the murder. Despite that conviction and others, the technology took some time to catch on in the U.S. and was used only sporadically. Among its earliest uses was the 2005 Kansas arrest of Dennis Rader, the BTK serial killer, which came after officials subpoenaed a tissue sample from his daughter's Pap smear taken at a medical clinic. © Travis Heying / Los Angeles Times A familial DNA test led to the arrest of Dennis L. Rader, shown making a court appearance via video feed, in the BTK ("bind, torture and kill") serial murder case in Kansas. By 2007, an impassioned debate on the technology was percolating at the Capitol in Sacramento. Gov. Jerry Brown — then the state's attorney general — began fielding letters and visits from prosecutors, urging him to consider using familial DNA. His advisers, however, were concerned approving the method might cause federal judges to shut down the whole database on constitutional grounds. In 2008, Brown enacted a comprehensive familial DNA policy — making California the first state in the country to do so. Under the policy, familial DNA is only to be used as a "last resort" when all other investigative angles have been exhausted. So far, the state Department of Justice has run 156 familial searches, many of them repeat queries, such as in the Grim Sleeper case. An initial search turned up nothing, but state officials ran another scan in 2010. A partial match came back to a man added to the database after a 2008 arrest for firearm and drug offenses. Detectives zeroed in on the man's father, Lonnie Franklin Jr., who lived close to where many of the victims' bodies were dumped in South L.A. Detectives believe Franklin killed at least 25 women over more than two decades . He was sentenced to death in August. Nabbing Franklin changed things for now-UCLA Law School Dean Jennifer Mnookin, who once condemned using DNA to find suspects by searching for relatives. Mnookin argued that the method invades privacy rights and is racially discriminatory because African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately represented in DNA databases. Although she still worries about the racial disparity, she said her view shifted after seeing the effect on big cases, such as Franklin's, and how infrequently the technology is used. "If it's helping us solve big cases," Mnookin said, "it seems like a worthwhile trade-off." Eight other states — Colorado, Wisconsin, Virginia, Michigan, Texas, Wyoming, Utah and Florida — have protocols for the use of familial DNA, and the technology has also been used informally by agencies elsewhere. But the growing popularity of the technique has raised alarms for some privacy advocates, such as Steve Mercer, chief attorney for the forensic division of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. Mercer successfully lobbied for his state's formal ban on familial searches. Washington, D.C., is the only other jurisdiction to prohibit them outright. Searching for relatives through partial matches is intrusive, he said, and raises concerns about the 4th Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure. "It is a slippery slope," he said. Critics also warn that partial matches can point authorities to innocent people. In 2014, the technology led police in an Idaho city to wrongfully suspect a New Orleans filmmaker of committing a notorious 1996 murder. Police homed in on him after examining an online database of genetic profiles. One profile, which was a near match to DNA left at the crime scene, belonged to a man who had donated his DNA years earlier to a hereditary studies project conducted by the Mormon church. An ancestry research company purchased the program's database, making it publicly available. Idaho Falls police obtained a court order compelling the company to turn over the identity of the man, who detectives thought could be related to the killer. Once they had his name, they scrubbed his family and focused on the man's son, Michael Usry. Detectives flew to New Orleans and interrogated him for more than three hours, before ordering him to provide a cheek swab. Usry asked whether someone he knew had committed a heinous crime. No, the detectives told him, they were looking at him. He waited anxiously for a month, wondering whether he'd be wrongfully arrested. Finally, an email came. "Mr. Usry," it read, "your DNA did not match with our case. Sorry for the inconvenience." The science is complicated and his experience shows it isn't the "perfect system" some supporters make it out to be, said Usry, now 37 and living in Colorado. "I'm still just scratching my head," he said. "Civil rights are being taken from us at an alarming rate." Still, supporters of familial DNA searches point to its successes. Sacramento's "Roaming Rapist," Dereck Sanders, spent 14 years on the loose, attacking women in the late-1990s and early-2000s. He sexually assaulted 10 victims, including two teenagers,14 and 15, who sneaked out one night to meet up with friends. Officials ran his DNA and began trailing Sanders, whose brother — a convicted rapist — was in the offender DNA database. Sacramento sheriff's deputies followed him to a McDonald's drive-thru, where he ordered a Happy Meal, and then to a park where he ate and threw away his trash. Detectives retrieved the garbage and took it back to the county's crime lab. There, officials tested the DNA from a straw Sanders had used. It was a match. "That was one of the happiest meals we ever had," said Rob Gold, the supervising deputy district attorney who prosecuted Sanders. "It would not have been solved without familial DNA." Sanders' 14-year-old victim, who is now 33, said the rape destroyed her for years. She obsessed over maintaining control in all situations and felt paranoid. She watched until her girlfriends walked into their homes and shut the door behind them, but still found herself texting them to double-check that they were safe. ( The Times generally does not identify victims of sex crimes.) She got counseling and tried to understand the different ways the rape had affected her. Still, the same two questions often came to mind. Is he hurting anyone else, she wondered? Will I ever get the chance to look him in the eye? The answer came in the fall of 2014 at Sanders' trial, where she testified against him. He was convicted of multiple counts of sexual assault and sentenced to life in prison. To her, the question of whether to use the technology is almost silly. "It's out there, it's available," she said. "Do it." Authorities in California have used familial DNA searches to solve several murder and sexual assault cases: Lonnie Franklin Jr. The "Grim Sleeper" serial killer prowled the streets of South L.A. for more than two decades. After getting a partial DNA hit to his son in 2010, authorities charged Franklin with killing nine women and a teenage girl. He was convicted earlier this year and sentenced to death. Elvis Garcia A man sexually assaulted a barista in a Santa Cruz coffee shop in 2008, threatening her with a knife and barricading her inside a walk-in refrigerator. In 2011, a partial hit to the assailant's father led police to Garcia, who was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to 65 years to life in prison. James Brown The 1978 slaying of a 26-year-old woman in an Orange County parking lot remained unsolved for three decades until familial DNA helped lead authorities to Brown, who died in 1996 and had been cremated. Forensic scientists used a DNA sample from his son to confirm Brown was the killer. Dereck Sanders Beginning in the late 1990s, the "Roaming Rapist" sexually assaulted women and girls across Sacramento County. Sheriff's deputies arrested Sanders in 2012 after a crime lab got a partial hit to his brother, a convicted rapist. Sanders is serving life in prison. Michael Simpson In 2002, a man raped and beat a 55-year-old woman behind a store in Sunnyvale. Using a familial DNA search, police identified Simpson as a suspect. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Gilbert Chavarria During a heat wave in the summer of 2013, when many people left their windows cracked open, a San Diego County man snuck into the bedrooms of six children and cut holes in their pajamas before molesting them. Authorities said a familial DNA hit ultimately led them to arrest Chavarria. He has pleaded not guilty. Jeremy Delaunay In the summer of 2014, a teenager in Vacaville sexually assaulted a woman along a bike path before stealing her jewelry. A year later, authorities arrested Delaunay. He is serving six years in prison after pleading guilty to rape.

Laughter saved Linda Ragoo’s face. That is what a doctor told her after she had a stroke in 2003. It happened on a Sunday, at the end of an exhausting weekend of chores, errands and obligations. Ms. Ragoo felt part of her body go numb. “I sat down by the bed and I felt my leg, like it was sleeping,” Ms. Ragoo recalled. “It’s sleeping too long. ” She was able to call one of her sisters, who rushed to Ms. Ragoo’s Brooklyn apartment and found her on the floor, unable to move, the left side of her body paralyzed. While they waited for an ambulance, Ms. Ragoo asked to use the bathroom. Her sister fetched a long stick, presumably to prod her across the floor. Ms. Ragoo cracked up at the absurdity of the moment. “My sister said, ‘Stop this nonsense, stop this nonsense,’” she said. “And I keep laughing. ” She spent the next month in a hospital. Ms. Ragoo’s mobility is still restricted by partial paralysis. But her facial muscles, built up by years of laughter, are as they have always been. Ms. Ragoo, 78, credits her jocular spirit and easygoing sense of humor in part to her upbringing in Trinidad, with its tropical weather, way of life, and holiday and carnival celebrations. In the 1970s, Ms. Ragoo went to New York in search of an even better life. She settled in Brooklyn and found work as a nurse’s aide. Though hardships and tragedy have marked her life, “I can make a joke out of nothing,” she said. Just recently, she dozed off in her recliner and somehow managed to slide off it, flopping to the floor. For her, it was a rude, yet hilarious, awakening. “I laugh at my own self when I do stupid things,” she said. “I laugh at myself many times. ” Levity not only carried Ms. Ragoo through the setbacks after her stroke, but it also helped her cope with a more painful loss. Her son Satinus, 58, had a heart attack and died in 2014. He was a nurse’s aide, like his mother. “I’m telling you, things can’t put you down,” Ms. Ragoo said of staying positive through trying times. She lives alone in a apartment in Crown Heights, which is how she likes it. There is plenty of space just for her. And she does not need much of it to flourish. When it was time to get a new mattress, she willingly downgraded from a queen to a full. As much as she relishes independence, health problems drove her to seek outside help. Ms. Ragoo has arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure and osteoporosis, as well as mobility issues caused by the stroke. Ms. Ragoo sought help from Heights and Hills, which offers support services for older adults, and has a home attendant. Each month, Ms. Ragoo receives $811 from Social Security and $612 from a pension. Because of her tight income, Ms. Ragoo could not afford an last summer. Usually a fan had been sufficient to keep her cool, but not last year. “When that heat took me, I couldn’t stand it,” she said. She mentioned her concerns to her social worker and made clear the severity of the problem. “I told her, ‘This is not funny. ’” Ms. Ragoo said. Her caseworker reached out to FPWA, formerly the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, and applied for a $600 grant in Neediest funds, which allowed Ms. Ragoo to buy an . Ms. Ragoo fondly recalls more youthful pleasures, like traveling, especially cruises, and taking trips to the casino. Ms. Ragoo has not done either in some time. But it is hard to keep her from a dance floor pulsating with salsa or calypso. Her coordination and energy are not what they once were, but she still has rhythm. “I dance with my cane,” she said. “I hold my cane and I move from side to side. Because they say if you don’t use it, you lose it. ” But she is quick to joke with people about her age. On a recent December afternoon, Ms. Ragoo declared she was just 16, despite the cane clutched to her side and dark glasses shielding her eyes after cataract surgery. “It’s the best therapy, to laugh,” she said. “You have to keep on laughing. ”

Wednesday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh said President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI director James Comey was “an epic troll” on the Democrat Party. Partial transcript as follows: LIMBAUGH: Hi, friends. This is great. I have been laughing all morning long. I have been laughing starting with last night. Can we agree that Donald Trump is probably enjoying this more than anybody wants to admit or that anybody knows? So he fires Comey yesterday. Who’s he meet with today? He’s meeting with the Soviet, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov! I mean, what an epic troll this is. The Democrat Party is going bananas — completely, totally unhinged — on the road to literal insanity. Do you realize … ? Let me tell you what’s happened here. The Democrat Party has once again thrown Hillary Clinton overboard. Hillary Clinton is the most woman in America by people in her own party, and it’s happened again. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, stand by I’m gonna explain all of this. But they have just chosen sides and, once again, Hillary gets thrown under the bus. And not only that, the Democrats are rolling that bus backwards and forwards. She’s finished! She’s over with. The Democrat Party and the media have made it clear that she is fodder. She is irrelevant here. It is amazing. Two days ago, they were all talking about how Comey needs to be fired because of how he was mistreating Hillary, and the Hillary people were running around claiming that Comey’s a bad guy. And now Comey gets fired, and all of a sudden they do a 180! You know, my friends, I’ve often spoke of the connection Donald Trump has with his audience, with his supporters. I understand it because … Well, I just understand it. ( Right Scoop) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter sued the federal government on Thursday to block the unmasking of an anonymous account that has posted messages critical of the Trump administration and has claimed to have ties to a government agency. The suit sets up a potential confrontation between the Trump administration and Twitter over digital privacy, a thorny issue that has driven a wedge between the technology industry and government in the past. Twitter disclosed in a federal court filing on Thursday that it had received a summons directing it to reveal the identity or identities of those behind @ALT_USCIS, one of several run by people purporting to be current or former federal employees. The @ALT_USCIS account, which quickly gained tens of thousands of followers, has frequently criticized the Trump administration’s immigration policies and enforcement actions. Twitter said in its filing that it could not be compelled to disclose the identity or identities of whoever is behind the account. The company argued that the government’s directive and reasoning were unlawful, and that complying would have “a grave chilling effect” on the speech of that voice resistance to government policies. “A tradition of pseudonymous free speech on matters of public moment runs deep in the political life of America,” Twitter said in its filing. “These First Amendment interests are at their zenith when, as here, the speech at issue touches on matters of public political life. ” Jenny Burke, a spokeswoman for Homeland Security Department, which, with Customs and Border Protection had issued the summons, declined to comment. Even before this episode, previous presidential administrations have sought access the valuable digital information held by Facebook, Google, Twitter and other internet companies, in what some of the companies have said is an overreach of government power. Federal officials have typically said in such cases that they need the data at issue for national security or other reasons. Last year, for example, Apple, the world’s most valuable public company, squared off against the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a contentious case involving issues of privacy and national security. The F. B. I. asked Apple to unlock an iPhone that had been used by a gunman in a 2015 attack in San Bernardino, Calif. in which 14 people were fatally shot. Apple refused, citing its customers’ privacy concerns and the potential legal precedent. The F. B. I. dropped the matter after finding another way to open the iPhone without Apple’s help. The new case involving Twitter is more straightforward than Apple’s standoff with the F. B. I. which required the creation of new technology to circumvent the iPhone’s encryption. The Twitter case is centered instead on the protection of free speech, which is critical to the social media company’s platform. Twitter has a history of protecting its users’ First Amendment rights. In 2012, it filed an appeal in a New York State court to protect account information believed to have been used by an Occupy Wall Street protester. The company has also sued the federal government over rules related to whether it would be allowed to simply disclose requests for user data from federal agencies. Mr. Trump himself is a Twitter user, regularly sending out incendiary missives about the economy, politics and all manner of other topics from his @realDonaldTrump account. On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union said it planned to represent the anonymous user or users behind @ALT_USCIS. “To unmask an anonymous speaker online, the government must have a strong justification,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, an A. C. L. U. attorney involved in the case. “But in this case the government has given no reason at all, leading to concerns that it is simply trying to stifle dissent. ” The case stems from a wave of alternative government agency accounts that sprouted on Twitter after Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Upon being sworn into office, the president began to silence federal agencies from speaking out on the social media platform after the National Park Service’s official Twitter account posted images comparing the size of the crowds at Mr. Trump’s inauguration “to the apparently larger crowd size at President Obama’s 2009 inauguration,” according to Twitter’s court filing. In response, alternative accounts began to pop up, with many professing to be written by current or former employees of federal agencies. Accounts with handles like @Alt_Labor, @BadlandsNPS and @RogueEPAstaff had attracted tens of thousands of followers less than a week after Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Many of the accounts have since posted messages in opposition to the Trump administration’s views. The @Alt_CDC account, for instance, once called the prospect of a “vaccine review committee” — an idea that Mr. Trump had discussed with others — a “serious threat to global public health. ” The @ALT_USCIS account, which was created in January, has repeatedly criticized the Trump administration’s immigration policies, among other topics. Messages posted by the account have referred to Mr. Trump’s executive order restricting travel to the United States by people from several mostly Muslim countries as the “#MuslimBan. ” The account has also described itself as “official inside resistance” and has said several times that the person or people using it to post messages is a current federal employee of Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Homeland Security Department. Twitter said in its court filing that about 19, 000 employees and contractors work for Citizenship and Immigration Services. In March, Customs and Border Protection sent Twitter a summons that ordered the company to hand over information about the @ALT_USCIS account, including the names, phone numbers, mailing addresses and internet protocol addresses of the account holder or holders. The summons cited 19 U. S. Code 1509, a federal law that authorizes Customs and Border Protection to “obtain documents only for investigations and inquiries relating to the importation of merchandise. ” Twitter said the law was not relevant to the agency’s request and also that the summons violated the Stored Communications Act, which protects individuals’ privacy and proprietary interests. As for @ALT_USCIS, the account was particularly active on Thursday, posting more than a dozen messages after Twitter’s suit against the government became public. The account, which added 32, 000 followers within two months of being started, had ballooned to more than 77, 000 followers by early in the evening. Highlighted at the top of the account: a message featuring a screenshot of the Constitution and the First Amendment.

Print [Ed. – This passive-aggressive BS Obama is so fond of is nauseating. What, like Russia can’t find another way to refuel in the Med? If we’re going to oppose Russian policy, then frigging oppose Russian policy. Do something real. Don’t just skitter around like the village idiot tagging Russia and then running away.] On Thursday, Malta withdrew permission for a Russian Navy replenishment tanker to refuel at its port. UK and American diplomats had applied pressure to the Maltese government to deny access to the tanker, as they believed the fuel would be used to replenish the Admiral Kuznetsov battlegroup. The carrier and seven accompanying vessels are believed to be headed to Syria to support the siege of Aleppo. Earlier this week, Spain cancelled permission for the Kuznetsov’s auxiliaries to take on fuel at the North African port territory of Ceuta. The Spanish government had come under intense diplomatic pressure to deny access to the Russian vessels. Russian officials say that the Kuznetsov battlegroup carries enough supplies to be self-sustaining for at least 45 days, and several military spokespeople denied that they had ever asked for formal permission to call at Ceuta or Malta.

Posted on October 30, 2016 by Isaac Davis The months long Dakota Access Keystone XL pipleine protest at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation by Native Americans and those sympathetic to protection of our water supply have been met with a heavy-handed and brutal clamp down by police and national guard. Militarized goons in battle dress have stormed protector camps with LRAD sonic weapons, attack dogs , tear gas, tazers , and even live ammunition ( killing horses ), while politicians and mainstream media do their best to ignore this growing atrocity, hoping to wait it out until the protestors give up. But, as the saying goes, Water Is Life , and the issue of life and death is at the root of this protection movement, therefore, for people concerned with life, giving up on this is simply unthinkable. The root issue justifying state oppression of the protest is capitalism, and the perception that money is more important than life itself. When the police and national guard attack U.S. citizens on private property to protect corporate interests, who are they really working for? The corporate dream of the Keystone XL pipeline is to create a profit stream for a small number of people at the expense of the natural world and anyone in the way. At the top of this pyramid of profit is Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for the project. So who is Kelcy Warren? A native of East Texas and graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington with a degree in civil engineering, Warren worked in the natural gas industry and became co-chair of Energy Transfer Equity in 2007. With business partner Ray Davis, co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, Warren built Energy Transfer Equity into one of the nation’s largest pipeline companies, which now owns about 71,000 miles of pipelines carrying natural gas, natural gas liquids, refined products and crude oil. The company’s holdings include Sunoco, Southern Union and Regency Energy Partners. Forbes estimates the 60-year-old Warren’s personal wealth at $4 billion. Bloomberg described him as “among America’s new shale tycoons” — but rather than building a fortune by drilling he “takes the stuff others pull from underground and moves it from one place to another, chilling, boiling, pressurizing, and processing it until it’s worth more than when it burst from the wellhead.” [ Source ] Shockingly, in 2015 the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, appointed Warren to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission which is an insult to environmentalists working to protect Big Bend National Park and surrounding sacred tribal lands from another $770 million pipeline project . “According to the governor’s office, the state parks and wildlife commission “manages and conserves the natural and cultural resources of Texas,” along with ensuring the future of hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation opportunities for Texans.” [ Source ] This glaring conflict of interest has inspired Environmental Science major at UTSA and former Texas State Park Ambassador Andrew Lucas to begin a drive to have Warren removed from this environmental post. His petition is described here : Most people may know Kelcy Warren as the man behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The Dallas-based billionaire and CEO of Energy Transfer Partners has been making headlines for fast-tracking a 1100 mile crude oil pipeline across the Midwest and under the Missouri River, just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. No environmental impact assessment, no respect for cultural sites, and no regard for the local and widespread communities living along the river. A similar story is unfolding out in West Texas, where Warren’s company has split through the pristine Big Bend region with the 200 mile Comanche Trail Pipeline and nearly-complete 143 mile Trans Pecos Pipeline. These Pipelines mark the way for massive natural gas and oil developments in the Trans Pecos region. With untold damages unfolding for cultural and environmental resources at the hands of Energy Transfer Partners, it would surprise most to know that nearly a year ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbott appointed Kelcy Warren for a 6 year term as 1 of the 10 commissioners who preside over Texas Parks And Wildlife… Why? Probably the $550,000 in campaign contributions Abbott received from Warren. Footage of militarized police using the Long Range Acoustic Device ( LRAD ) crowd control weapon against protectors at standing rock on October 27th, 2016: Final Thoughts Warren is listed as number 150 on Forbes list of wealthiest Americans with an estimated net worth of $4.2 billion in September of 2016. He is the head of the Dakota Access Pipeline snake. If you are scratching your head wondering why militarized police and private security contractors are beating, gassing and attacking peaceful resistors , including women, children and the elderly, the answer is, they are doing it to protect the interests of Kelcy Warren and others invested in this pipeline project. Read more articles by Isaac Davis . Isaac Davis is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and OffgridOutpost.com Survival Tips blog. He is an outspoken advocate of liberty and of a voluntary society. He is an avid reader of history and passionate about becoming self-sufficient to break free of the control matrix. Follow him on Facebook, here . This article ( This is the Man Militarized Police at Standing Rock are Working For ) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Isaac Davis and WakingTimes.com . It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement. 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posted by Eddie Cyndy Coppola was arrested for standing on her own property as she tried to block Dakota Access Pipeline construction equipment from crossing her land. Once again, the repression of those against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is heating up, with 127 activists arrested in North Dakota over the weekend. However, North Dakota isn’t the only place where protests over the Dakota Access pipeline are coming to a head. In Iowa, farmers have had their land seized by the company behind the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, through the use of eminent domain. Eminent domain has been legal in the US since 1888, thanks to the passage of the Condemnation Act . The law authorizes the federal government to take private property for public use. However, in 1906, the law was amended to allow for the seizure of private property even if it only benefited private parties (e.g., corporations), not the public. The argument for this was that corporate seizure of private land “helps” the public through economic development. Yet, what the law essentially means is that even your own land doesn’t belong to you if the government or government-supported corporations want it. A sad, yet accurate example of eminent domain gone wrong took place last week in Calhoun County, Iowa. Cyndy Coppola was arrested over the weekend on her own property for trying to block access to DAPL trucks from hauling pipeline construction materials through her land. DAPL first received access to Coppola’s farm through the use of eminent domain, which granted Energy Transfer Partners easements to her property. Coppola remarked that watching the morally wrong seizure of the farm she worked so hard for was difficult to handle. “It was very frustrating, and when I first saw that topsoil piled up when they started digging, my first reaction was to cry, because we’ve tried everything.” Coppola, as well as nine other local farmers, are suing Energy Transfer Partners for the seizure of their property. They are arguing that the move stands in complete violation of Iowa state law. The pipeline has generated controversy for most of this year, inspiring the largest gathering of Native American tribes in recent history to fight the project. They, as well as environmental activists, argue that the pipeline will poison the water and destroy the sacred sites of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. The evidence stands on their side, as the company that will be tasked with managing the pipeline after its construction has been responsible for more leaks than any of their competitors, with over 200 recorded leaks since 2010. The most recent of these happened over the weekend when a Sunoco pipeline leaked 55,000 gallons of gasoline into one of the nation’s most endangered rivers. Even the UN has officially condemned the project, asking the US federal government to end the project immediately. However, the federal government is openly supporting the crackdown on protestors, as well as journalists who are covering the story. Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman was charged with “participating in a riot” just for reporting on the issue. Though those charges were eventually dropped, the North Dakota State Attorney who initially charged her has vowed to look for new reasons to criminalize Goodman’s reporting. Goodman said that these actions send a chilling message to journalists, “don’t come to North Dakota.” The Dakota Access pipeline has proved, without a doubt, that private interests are the real beneficiaries of federal policy, allowing them to take what’s lawfully yours and even arrest you just for standing on your own property. What are your thoughts? Please comment and share this news! source:

The New York Times won three Pulitzer Prizes, and The New York Daily News and ProPublica shared the prize for public service, as journalism presented its highest honors on Monday at a time of steep financial challenges for the industry and unabashed antagonism from a new presidential administration. The Daily joint effort won for a series on the New York Police Department’s widespread abuse of a law to force people from their homes and businesses over alleged illegal activity. The investigation, which involved the examination of more than 1, 100 nuisance abatement cases, found that the Police Department almost exclusively targeted households and shops in minority neighborhoods. The reporting drove New York City to the nuisance law and pass sweeping reforms. The Times won for breaking news photography, feature writing and international reporting. Daniel Berehulak won for a searing photo essay titled “They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals” that provided a haunting portrait of a violent drug crackdown in the Philippines. C. J. Chivers won for a magazine piece on a young veteran of the war in Afghanistan suffering from PTSD. At times dizzyingly detailed, Mr. Chivers’s account revealed the lasting effects of combat and violence. Reporters from The Times also won for international reporting for a series on Russia’s surreptitious assertion of power. The series, a collaboration among The Times’s international, Washington and investigative teams, explored how Russia was expanding its influence at home and abroad. David A. Fahrenthold of The Washington Post won the prize for national reporting for his work during the presidential campaign on Donald J. Trump’s charitable foundation. And Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal won the commentary award for columns that the Pulitzer board said “connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation’s most divisive political campaigns. ” Colson Whitehead’s brutal and surreal novel “The Underground Railroad” won the prize for fiction. The novel, which won the National Book Award last fall, centers on a young woman who escapes her life as a slave in Georgia and flees via a real subterranean network of train cars. Mr. Whitehead, 47, said in a phone interview on Monday that to be given even more recognition by the Pulitzer committee was “startling and wonderful,” adding with a laugh, “Obviously, it’s all downhill from here. ” Lynn Nottage’s play “Sweat,” about the American working class, was awarded the prize for drama. And the drama critic Hilton Als of The New Yorker won for criticism. The Pulitzers this year come as financial pressure drains many news organizations of the resources to pursue journalism. They also come in the face of a combative stance from President Trump, who has called the news media “the enemy of the American people. ” But for one day, at least, newsrooms came together in celebration, and the journalism industry’s focus was on its accomplishments and purpose, rather than its woes. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy and The Miami Herald shared the prize for explanatory reporting for their coverage of millions of leaked documents known as the Panama Papers. (The Herald also won in another category — Jim Morin was awarded the prize for editorial cartooning.) Eric Eyre of The Charleston won the investigative reporting prize for coverage that laid bare the relentless flow of opioids into West Virginia counties with the highest rate of overdose deaths in the country. The East Bay Times of Oakland, Calif. won the breaking news reporting prize for its coverage of the “Ghost Ship” fire in December that killed 36 people at a warehouse party, chronicling the city’s failures that led to the tragedy. The prize for editorial writing was awarded to Art Cullen of The Storm Lake Times, a newspaper in Iowa with a circulation of 3, 000, for editorials that held corporate agricultural interests accountable. The Times is owned by Mr. Cullen and his older brother.

Remnants of both vanquished American political empires, the Bushes and the Clintons, will attend Donald J. Trump’s official swearing in as the next president of the United States, a major symbolic victory for the outsider and billionaire businessman who crushed both of them on his way to the White House. [Bill and Hillary Clinton — the former president and first lady, the latter of whom was Trump’s general election opponent on Nov. 8 — will attend the inauguration, according to a report in New York Magazine. “Bill and Hillary Clinton have decided to attend the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States, according to two sources with knowledge of their plans,” New York Magazine’s Yashar Ali wrote, adding later in his short piece on Tuesday afternoon: NEW: Pres. George W. Bush wife will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration say they’re pleased to ”witness the peaceful transfer of power” — Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) January 3, 2017, Former President Jimmy Carter, the failed Democratic president from the 1970s, will also be present — as will outgoing President Barack Obama, who will officially transfer power to Trump on Jan. 20. It’s unclear whether former President George H. W. Bush, the elder Bush who succeeded the late former President Ronald Reagan, will attend. The elder Bush’s health has been an issue as of late. But the fact that both the Bushes and the Clintons will be present at Trump’s inauguration is a stunning development, as Trump’s meteoric rise to the White House went through both dynasties. Throughout the GOP primaries, Trump mocked and ridiculed George W. Bush’s younger brother former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — at the time the presumed GOP frontrunner who had millions upon millions of donor class dollars funneled into his campaign — as “low energy. ” Trump ripped Jeb Bush apart, and blew past the other GOP candidates on his way to viciously winning the nomination to face off against Hillary Clinton in the general election. There, in the general election, Trump described Clinton as “Crooked Hillary” and even called “Heartless Hillary” at one point. He threatened to throw her in jail for her email scandal and her Clinton Foundation scandal — something that still hasn’t been ruled out in the future — as well as running one of the most vicious campaigns in American political history. He proved to be successful, winning a landslide 30 and a half states and 306 electoral votes on Nov. 8 — officially closing the chapter of U. S. history where Americans had dynasties like the Bushes and the Clintons. Trump’s populist nationalist worldview once and for all defeated the globalist elitist Bushes and Clintons, and now they will witness him officially take power on Jan. 20 as Trump — the person to be elected to the highest office in the land without ever having served in government before — takes the oath of office.

In times of great stress, or of flickering, dread, I find that canceling all my plans and staying in to make mashed potatoes generally helps. This year, there were quite a few opportunities to do so. anxiety gnawed at me for months, lighting up old networks of pain in my shoulders and back. Mold bloomed around the mysterious wet patch that appeared in my bedroom ceiling. I started a thrilling, but terrifying, new job. And as the holidays neared, I worried about my grandmother, almost 80, living alone. Still, I let about half her calls go to voice mail each week, and hated myself for it. I turned to aligot, the mashed potatoes with roots in central France. Aligot doesn’t fix anything, but it does put a little cushion between you and the abyss, whatever form the abyss might take. To make it, you’ll need a ricer. You could, technically, blitz everything together in the food processor, but you risk potatoes with the gooey, elastic texture of an glue, setting up between planks. If you’re in a delicate emotional state, as I usually am when I start these potatoes, it’s better not to risk it. Besides, pressing down on the ricer is an essential part of the process. Squashing hot, tender potatoes through tiny holes is a pure and simple joy, one of the rare cooking tasks that’s just as fun as those sets once had you believe. The potato rushes out in tiny, twirling, noodles. You don’t need to worry about lumps. In France, aligot is traditionally made with tomme fraîche or unripened Cantal, but those cheeses can be hard to find. At North End Grill, a restaurant in Manhattan’s Battery Park City, the chef Eric Korsh makes aligot with a little bit of roasted garlic and a lot of Comté. Any cheese that melts well will do, but for aligot you also want to seek out a cheese with a capacity for stringiness. I’ve had great aligot with Comté, Gruyère and Emmental, and fresh mozzarella can also work in a pinch. Ham a chef at the Brooklyn diner Hail Mary, starts with Robuchon potatoes. Among cooks, the phrase “Robuchon potatoes” is shorthand for what many still consider the Platonic ideal of mashed potatoes: a flawless purée, mounted with an obscene amount of butter and named for the celebrity French chef Joël Robuchon. In a video dedicated to his famous mashed potatoes, Robuchon leans over a cook and says in French, quite sternly: “More butter! More butter! More butter! More butter! More, more, more!” Robuchon uses ratte potatoes — an expensive variety from France. He boils them whole, then peels them while hot. After pushing the potatoes through a food mill, he adds loads of cold butter over the heat and finally some milk or cream, whisking the whole thing until it’s an airy, cloud. Waylly starts around there, then adds a mix of Gruyère and a cow’s milk cheese from Vermont, even throwing in part of the bloomy rind. The key, he told me, is to whip the potatoes with confidence, vigor and speed once you add the cheese, to build up the stringiness as it melts. “When you pull it, you want it to seem like you’re pulling at fondue,” Waylly said. “You want to see a good amount of strands falling, and they should have some strength. They should fight with you. ” Stringiness is the whole point of aligot, that long, delightful stretch, the way it takes on all the qualities of melted cheese but remains mashed potato. And though it’s tough to get it like the cooks in Auvergne, some of whom can pull spoonfuls of hot aligot that stretch several feet, you can still get a good, cheesy texture as a beginner, working with a small amount of potato over low heat. At home, in the 20 minutes or so it takes for the potatoes to cook through, I like to get the rest of the meal going. I brown sausages and wilt a big bunch of greens in the same pan. I have a glass of whatever wine is open in the fridge. By now, things are looking up. Cheesy mashed potatoes are on the horizon, like sunshine after a long, dark night. And by the time those potatoes are ready, so am I. Recipe: Aligot (Mashed Potatoes With Cheese)

From the first piece headlined James Comey is damaging our democracy : First, the FBI director, James B. Comey, put himself enthusiastically forward as the arbiter of not only whether to prosecute a criminal case — which is not the job of the FBI — but also best practices in the handling of email and other matters. Now, he has chosen personally to restrike the balance between transparency and fairness , departing from the department’s traditions. From the second piece by notorious mud-slinger Dana Milbank: I’ve long believed in Comey’s integrity. But if he doesn’t step forward and explain his October Surprise, he may inadvertently wind up interfering in the political process — perhaps even reversing the outcome of a presidential election — in a way that would have made J. Edgar Hoover gape. And the third strike : FBI Director James B. Comey’s stunning announcement that he has directed investigators to begin reviewing new evidence in the Clinton email investigation was yet another troubling violation of long-standing Justice Department rules or precedent, conduct that raises serious questions about his judgment and ability to serve as the nation’s chief investigative official . Back to the July 7 editorial: “It appears damage is being done to the rule of law,” Mr. Ryan said. He’s right, but the FBI director isn’t doing the damage. The wreckers are those who cast baseless aspersions on U.S. law enforcement in the service of their partisan goals . I for one believe that Comey was wrong in July and is right today. He should have pressed for charges against Clinton early on. Using a "secret" private email server for confidential state business is not legal and would have been out of bounds for anyone else. Now possible new evidence was found and must be investigated. It is not Comey's job to ask if the timing of a renewed investigation is convenient for the potential culprit. He also had to inform Congress because he had reasonably promised to do so. (He also needed to save his ass before anyone else in his department talked to the media.) The so called "election" of a U.S. president is always a sorry show. But this season's version has at least some amusing moments. Seeing the hypocrites at Fred Hyatt's Funny Pages™ squirm is one of them. It makes me smirk. Posted by b on October 30, 2016 at 08:37 AM | Permalink

By REBECCA PERRING For years Sweden has regarded itself as a “humanitarian superpower” – making its mark by offering refugee to those fleeing war and persecution. But people’s patience with their visitors is wearing thin following a year of violence, sickening sex assaults and the death of social worker Alexandra Mezher , 22, who was knifed to death at an asylum centre for unaccompanied children at the hands of a Somalian migrant who claimed he was 15. At the time, her grieving mother, an immigrant herself from the Middle East said: “Immigration has destroyed Sweden.” Sweden, a country of 9.8million, took 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015. The influx included 35,400 unaccompanied minors – nine times more than 2015. But nothing could prepare Stockholm for the rise in crime and an abuse of the criminal system. And so much so, a nation, which once prided itself on giving a warm welcome to outsiders, has reported a rise in arson attacks against migrant shelters, while support for the right-wing Swedish Democrats has surged. In January, authorities were forced to admit there were at least 70 girls in migrant centres were asylum child brides, according FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE CLICK LINK

An unarmed man who was fatally shot in Bakersfield, Calif. by an officer who thought he had a gun was actually carrying a crucifix, the police say. The family of the man, Francisco Serna, 73, who said he had dementia, is demanding a Justice Department investigation into the actions of the Police Department, which previously came under scrutiny for its use of deadly force. The Bakersfield police chief, Lyle Martin, said at a news conference on Tuesday that officers did not find a gun on Mr. Serna after he was killed on Monday and that the department was conducting its own investigation into the shooting. According to the police, a woman who lives across the street from Mr. Serna was removing items from a vehicle outside her home when she noticed a man standing behind her. He turned out to be Mr. Serna. She said he asked if he could get in the car. He was allowed only to look into the vehicle, and the woman went inside her house, the chief said. The woman later said she had believed that Mr. Serna had a firearm because his hand was in his jacket, and she saw an object with a handle, the chief said. She told her husband about the encounter, and he called the police to report a man outside with a gun. “He is brandishing a firearm,” the husband said, according to a recording of the 911 call, which was published by KERO television station. He said the man was an “older Mexican gentleman” and that it looked like the firearm was a revolver. “He could be the neighbor across the street or a visitor I am not for sure. ” When officers arrived, the woman pointed out Mr. Serna as he left his house, Chief Martin said. The police said they shouted to Mr. Serna to take his hands out of his jacket and to stop walking toward them. But he continued and entered the woman’s driveway, officials said. Mr. Serna was about 15 to 20 feet away when Officer Reagan Selman fired seven times, the chief said. Mr. Serna, who the police said was hit by five of the bullets, fell. Efforts by the police and medics to revive him were not successful. Chief Martin said that he was “unable to describe” the object found with Mr. Serna. But Sgt. Gary Carruesco later said a “dark colored simulated wood grain” crucifix was found. “We thought we were dealing with an armed subject,” Chief Martin said. He said that officers did not have any information about Mr. Serna’s dementia and that they had to make a decision about the use of force in 20 to 30 seconds. He said there was no indication the older man had been “lunging or threatening or anything of that nature. ” Officer Selman joined the force in July 2015, and it was the first time he had been involved in such a shooting, the police said. He and the other officers were placed on administrative leave while the case was investigated, the chief said. Mr. Serna’s family said he had dementia and would take short walks in the neighborhood to help him sleep, The Associated Press reported. Symptoms of dementia can include confusion and wandering, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. At a vigil on Tuesday night, a family spokeswoman said Mr. Serna’s relatives had asked for an investigation by the Department of Justice and for the California attorney general to appoint an independent investigator, The Los Angeles Times reported. The shooting has prompted renewed calls for greater scrutiny of the use of force by the police in Bakersfield, the biggest city in Kern County, where the police in 2015 killed more people per capita than in any other county in the United States, an investigation by The Guardian showed. Chief Martin, who was promoted to his position this week, said that once he has his command staff in place, he will meet with local groups that have called for greater openness about the department’s use of force. “This is a very delicate situation,” he said.

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” while discussing the U. S. missile strike on a Syrian air base in response to a deadly chemical attack, U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called President Donald Trump’s decision one of his “finest hours. ” Haley said, “What happened this week was really one of the president’s finest hours. ” She continued, “He wanted to know exactly what the facts and evidence was. He wanted to know what the options were, what the risks were, and the political strategy and solution side of it. After all of that, he made a very, you know, strong decision and I think it was one that was very good for the world. ” She added, “He won’t stop here “If he needs to do more, he’ll do more. Really, now what happens depends on how everyone responds to what happened in Syria and make sure that we start moving toward a political solution and we start finding peace in that area. ” ( The Hill) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] Justin Bieber Defecates On Adoring Irish Fans From Hotel Window November 1, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , ENTERTAINMENT Share 0 Add Comment JUSTIN Bieber fans gathering outside the Shelborne hotel this evening were rewarded by the pop star after he took a large dump from an overlapping balcony, causing a stampede of adoring fans to gather below and smear themselves with the falling excrement. Men, women and children of all ages pushed and tugged each other as they desperately positioned themselves under the hotels three story window, while the 22-year-old squatted over the side, before then squeezing several pieces of spent food from his anus. “Let the younger ones through,” Bieber ordered fans, as he let loose for a third time while being supported by two large security guards, “Make sure everyone gets some. There’s enough to go round. “Rub it in. Sing with me ‘You know you love me, I know you care. Just shout whenever, and I’ll be there'” he bellowed. Following several slips and falls, with one fan breaking her ankle, Gardai were later called to the scene and kindly asked the American heartthrob to stop defecating from the Shelbourne balcony and to go inside. “He must have been there for a good twenty minutes, just crapping on everyone,” eyewitness Mark Dunphy told WWN, “That young fella is full of shit. The fans lapped it up. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what I saw tonight”. Mr. Bieber is in town for a sold-out concert at Dublin’s 3Arena tonight and tomorrow as part of his Purpose world tour.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — As the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approached, jihadist propagandists told their followers that it was a good time to kill people. The spokesman for the Islamic State said in late May that jihadists should “make it, with God’s permission, a month of pain for infidels everywhere. ” Another extremist distributed a manual for using poisons, adding, in poor English: “Dont forget Ramadan is close, the month of victories. ” A bloody month it has been, with terrorist attacks killing and wounding hundreds of people in Orlando, Fla. Istanbul Dhaka, Bangladesh and now Baghdad, where a bomb killed more than 140 people early Sunday in a shopping area full of families who had just broken their Ramadan fasts. For the vast majority of the world’s Muslims, violence is completely dissonant with the holy month, which in addition to fasting is a time for spiritual renewal, prayer and visits with friends and family. It is widely believed that the rewards earned for noble acts are greater during Ramadan, which culminates in the Eid holiday this week. Jihadists have perverted this belief to serve their own ends, analysts said. In short: If one believes it is good to kill those who are considered infidels, all the better to do so during Ramadan. “There is no doubt in my mind that Al Qaeda, its various affiliates and now ISIS use Ramadan as a watershed, as a marker to inspire and motivate their followers and supporters worldwide,” said Fawaz A. Gerges, a professor at the London School of Economics who has written books on jihad. While not all of them may have been carried out with Ramadan in mind, the month has seen a stunning array of attacks. A gunman opened fire in a nightclub in Orlando, killing 49. A suicide attack on an army post in Jordan killed seven soldiers. Suicide bombers killed dozens of civilians in Al Mukalla, Yemen, and in a Christian village in Lebanon, on the same day. The next day, attackers struck Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, killing at least 41. In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian assailants killed two Israeli civilians over two days: stabbing a girl while she was asleep in her home in a Jewish settlement and gunning down a man on the road. On Friday, gunmen stormed a restaurant in Dhaka’s diplomatic quarter, letting some Muslims escape but killing at least 22, most of them foreigners. And on Sunday, a bombing took at least 143 lives in Baghdad. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has claimed responsibility for many of the attacks and is the prime suspect in others. A large share of the victims have been Muslims, belying the Islamic State’s claim to be the defender of their faith. “We were happy and preparing to break the last day of the fasting month very soon and to celebrate Eid, but our feelings have been stained with blood,” said Hadi a shopkeeper who was hit with flying glass in the attack in Baghdad. Many large attacks occurred during Ramadan last year, too, hitting a Tunisian beach resort, a Shiite mosque in Kuwait, a Kurdish town in northern Syria and African Union troops in Somalia. But terrorism researchers caution that attacks happen and that there is little systematic evidence that they become more common during Ramadan. And it is almost impossible to tell what role the month plays in the thinking of individual attackers. What is clearer is that the manipulation of the goals of Ramadan are another way in which jihadists have interpreted the religion in a way most Muslims deplore. Another example is the jihadists’ wide use of takfir, or the branding of others as infidels who deserve death. The Islamic State has used this concept to justify the killing of other Muslims, be they Shiites or fellow Sunnis whom the group deems to be insufficiently devout. Such views course through the jihadists’ Ramadan propaganda. In an audio message released before the month began, Abu Muhammed the Islamic State spokesman, urged the group’s followers to launch attacks in the West during Ramadan in retaliation for strikes by a United coalition in the group’s central territories in Syria and Iraq. “Know that in the heart of the lands of the Crusaders there is no protection for that blood, and there is no presence of civilians,” he said. Jihadists should act, he said, “so that perhaps you will gain the great reward for martyrdom in Ramadan. ” Other propagandists reached back into Islamic history to compare the modern jihadist struggle to the Battle of Badr, a famous Ramadan victory mentioned in the Quran in which the Prophet Muhammad and his forces routed their enemies in Mecca. Some drew links between those forces and Omar Mateen, the Orlando gunman. “In Islamic history, Ramadan is a reminder to Muslims of who they are, separating the faithful from the ” Professor Gerges said. “But what ISIS and Al Qaeda have done to great effect is to focus on the war spirit and offensive spirit rather than on the moral spirit. ” The recent spate of attacks could be less about Ramadan than about the Islamic State’s desire to project strength as it loses territory. In Iraq, it recently lost control of Ramadi and was pushed out of Falluja last month — a humiliating Ramadan defeat. Since those losses undermine the jihadists’ claim to have a powerful state with its own territory, attacks abroad serve as “force multipliers, because they divert attention from what is happening in Iraq and Syria,” Professor Gerges said. The jihadists’ focus on violence during the holy month stirs revulsion among most Muslims, who see it as a time of intensified spirituality and increased religious activity, said Jonathan A. C. Brown, a professor of Islamic civilization at Georgetown University. This often means more time spent in prayer, at the mosque or reading the Quran, in addition to the fast that is among the primary requirements of observant Muslims. Even many secular Muslims fast or pursue good works throughout Ramadan. “If you do your fast well and it is received, there is a huge reward you get in the afterlife,” Dr. Brown said. Underlying much Ramadan activity is a sense that the rewards for good deeds are greater during the holy month, even for acts as small as smiling at someone, Dr. Brown said. Muslims are to give contributions to charity equaling the cost of one meal at the end of the month, and many also give their required alms for the year during Ramadan, making it an active time for thinking about the poor. Many Muslim communities also hold Ramadan drives for charitable causes. There is also a belief that the devils who normally tempt people to sin are “chained up” during Ramadan, making it easier for Muslims to be good, as they have to face only their own temptations. “This is a time to improve yourself and not to swear, not to have arguments — and you have a leg up now,” Dr. Brown said. “That means that people who do these attacks only have themselves to blame. They can’t blame the devil. ”

The Daily Show‘s Trevor Noah and Michelle Wolf mercilessly mocked Megyn Kelly’s NBC debut this week, in which the former Fox News star landed a interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin on her newsmagazine show Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly. [After playing clips of the interview, host Noah brought out Daily Show correspondent Wolf, who said that seeing someone “so conniving trying to manipulate the American public was disgusting. ” When Noah said he agreed that watching Putin’s responses was indeed disgusting, Wolf said she was referring to Kelly. “Last night on her new show, she acted like she didn’t spend the last 12 years of her life as a soldier in Fox News’ culture war,” Wolf said. The Daily Show then played a clip from Kelly’s NBC show in which she chided the media for its “rude behavior” and asked “Can’t we all just get along?” “Oh, I’m sorry, now we’re all supposed to be friends?” Wolf continued. “Now that you’re NBC you’re acting all peaceful like some sort of Mahatma Blondie?” “Let’s not forget, before she was ‘NBC News’s Megyn Kelly,’ for over a decade she was ‘Fox News’s Megyn Kelly,’ basically a pretty, puppet who Roger Ailes kept trying to put his hand up,” Wolf added, drawing a loud groan from the audience. “Oh, don’t worry, she’s on network now and he’s dead, they’re both in better places. ” Wolf didn’t let up for the whole segment, blasting Kelly for acting what she described as “high and mighty” when she told Axios in a recent interview that she only consumes news by print. “Sorry Megyn, you’re not the new Barbra Walters, you’re that guy who just follows the money,” she concluded. Kelly’s contentious interview with Putin at an international economics forum in St. Petersburg — in which the pair discussed allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U. S. presidential election — drew mixed reaction from fellow journalists and middling ratings for NBC. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum

.@CLewandowski_: ”I think Jim Comey is in big trouble. .. Jim Comey is a liar.” pic. twitter. Saturday on “Fox Friends,” former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski accused former FBI Director Jim Comey of being a “liar” who is looking to turn his spotlight into a major book deal. “I think Jim Comey’s in big trouble because under oath in front of the committee he said things which we know to be factually inaccurate, not just in his testimony this week, but when he was the director of the FBI he’s had to come back and recant statements that he’s made … because Jim Comey’s a liar,” Lewandowski said. Lewandowski went on to address a rumor that Comey is about to sign a lucrative book deal, saying it is just another example of the Washington D. C. “swamp creatures” being “very real. ” “[W]hat we saw this week, I’m shocked by this news, is Jim Comey’s about to sign a $10 million book deal, right?” he continued. “It’s amazing how these guys go from government service to and people wonder why Washington is broken. This is what happens all the time. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent

Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle has suggested she would be interested in replacing Sean Spicer as White House press secretary, amid reports Spicer could soon be released from the role. [In an interview with Mercury News, Guilfoyle said: “I’m a patriot and it would be an honor to serve the country. I think it’d be a fascinating job. It’s a challenging job, and you need someone really determined and focused, a great communicator in there with deep knowledge to be able to handle that position. ” Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that President Trump was considering Guilfoyle as a replacement for Spicer, whose time as press secretary has been marked by a number of gaffes and mistakes. An anonymously sourced report by ABC News also alleges that Trump is furious with his communications team over recent media narratives and could fire both Spicer and his communications director Mike Dubke. Guilfoyle, 48, is the former first lady of San Fransisco, having been married to former city’s former mayor Gavin Newsom and served as its deputy district attorney from 2004 until 2006. She currently works as a on talk show The Five on the Fox News channel. “I think I have a very good relationship with the president. I think I enjoy a very straightforward and authentic, very genuine relationship, one that’s built on trust and integrity, and I think that’s imperative for success in that position,” Guilfoyle added. “Sean Spicer is a very nice man and a patriot. He’s dedicated himself to this public service. Very tough position he’s in. I wish him the best and I know he puts a lot of effort into it. ” Responding to the rumors, a Fox News spokesperson said: “Kimberly is a valued member of the FOX News primetime lineup, and is under a contract with the network. ” Meanwhile, Guilfoyle said through a spokesperson: “As I stated in the interview, I really love what I do and my job The Five is tough to beat. ” You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com

Clinton’s Campaign Chairman John Podesta Invited to an Occult ‘Spirit Cooking’ Dinner by Marina Abramović November 4, 2016 190 The Podesta e-mails released by Wikileaks contain various bizarre entries, including an invitation to a ‘Spirit Cooking’ dinner from notorious occultist Marina Abramović. These parties include blood, semen, breast milk … and God knows what else. A leaked e-mail reveals that John Podesta was invited to a ‘Spirit Cooking’ dinner by Marina Abramović in 2015. John David Podesta is the Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. He previously served as Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton and Counselor to President Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton and John Podesta, 2011. - Advertisement - Here’s the leaked e-mail . Marina Abramovic sent an e-mail to Tony Podesta (John Podesta’s brother) who then forwarded it to his brother. Before going any further, here’s a video of Marina preparing a ‘Spirit Cooking’ ritual. Yes, the process involves buckets of congealed pig’s blood. Marina paints on walls instructions coded in classic occultist matter. Spirit cooking refers to “a sacrament in the religion of Thelema which was founded by Aleister Crowley” and involves an occult performance during which menstrual blood, breast milk, urine and sperm are used to create a “painting”. Strange fact: In another leaked e-mail , Podesta contacts his doctor about an infected finger. Strange coincidence. Further in the video, Marina drenches in blood a statue shaped like a small child. Why do I have the sick feeling that actual children might be used during these ceremonies? Why would an occultist such as Marina Abramović be in direct and friendly contact with people at the highest levels of power? Because they are all part of the OCCULT ELITE. Marina Abramović Marina Abramović is considered to be the “grandmother of performance art”. Most of her work however takes place in private settings where she conducts magick rituals. She is an important and powerful figure in pop culture and is greatly influential in Hollywood, the fashion world and the music business. Marina ‘training’ Lady Gaga in the ‘Abramovic Method’. Marina performing with Jay-Z. Marina is an “occult pop culture” icon. Here are symbolic pictures celebrating this fact. On this cover of Vogue Ukraine, Marina represents the stronghold of occultism on the fashion world. In the same photoshoot, Marina is holds a goat’s head by the horns – a classic way of representing the drawing of magickal power from Baphomet. Same photoshoot: Marina standing in front of a model with inner body parts exposed while doing an occult handsign. This picture was featured in The New Yorker along with a lengthy article praising her career. A serpent hiding one eye: The perfect way of representing a member of the occult elite. Marina on the cover of ELLE with one eye hidden. Mimicking Baphomet horns. “Cleaning the Mirror”, 1995. Another interesting fact: Marina’s Twitter name is @AbramovicM666 This is why the term ‘occult elite’ is used to describe the highest level of power. Do you see the dots connecting? TAGS

It is entirely possible, as many have argued, that Hillary Clinton would be the of the United States if the F. B. I. director, James Comey, had not sent a letter to Congress about her emails in the last weeks of the campaign. But the electoral trends that put Donald J. Trump within striking distance of victory were clear long before Mr. Comey sent his letter. They were clear before WikiLeaks published hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee. They were even clear back in early July, before Mr. Comey excoriated Mrs. Clinton for using a private email server. It was clear from the start that Mrs. Clinton was struggling to reassemble the Obama coalition. At every point of the race, Mr. Trump was doing better among white voters without a college degree than Mitt Romney did in 2012 — by a wide margin. Mrs. Clinton was also not matching Mr. Obama’s support among black voters. This was the core of the Obama coalition: an alliance between black voters and Northern white voters, from Mr. Obama’s first win in the 2008 Iowa caucuses to his final sprint across the Midwestern Firewall states where he staked his 2012 bid. In 2016, the Obama coalition crumbled and so did the Midwestern Firewall. The countryside of Iowa or the industrial belt along Lake Erie is not the sort of place that people envision when they think of the Obama coalition. Yet it was an important component of his victory. Campaign lore has it that President Obama won thanks to a young, diverse, and metropolitan “coalition of the ascendant” — an emerging Democratic majority anchored in the new economy. Hispanic voters, in particular, were credited with Mr. Obama’s victory. But Mr. Obama would have won even if he hadn’t won the Hispanic vote at all. He would have won even if the electorate had been as old and as white as it had been in 2004. Largely overlooked, his key support often came in the places where you would least expect it. He did better than John Kerry and Al Gore among white voters across the Northern United States, despite exit poll results to the contrary. Over all, 34 percent of Mr. Obama’s voters were whites without a college degree — larger in number than black voters, Hispanic voters or whites. He excelled in a nearly continuous swath from the Pacific Coast of Oregon and Washington to the Red River Valley in Minnesota, along the Great Lakes to the coast of Maine. In these places, Mr. Obama often ran as strong or stronger than any Democrat in history. In 2016, Mr. Trump made huge gains among white voters. It wasn’t just in the places where Democratic strength had been eroding for a long time, like western Pennsylvania. It was often in the places where Democrats had seemed resilient or even strong, like Scranton, Pa. and eastern Iowa. It was a decisive break from recent trends. White voters without college degrees, for the first time, deviated from the national trend and swung decidedly toward the Republicans. No bastion of white, Democratic strength was immune to the trend. For the first time in the history of the two parties, the Republican candidate did better among whites than among affluent whites, according to exit poll data and a compilation of New York News surveys. According to exit polls, Mr. Trump did better than Mr. Romney by 24 points among white voters without a degree making less than $30, 000 a year. He won these voters by a margin of 62 to 30 percent, compared with Mr. Romney’s narrow win of 52 percent to 45 percent. In general, exit poll data should be interpreted with caution — but polls show a similar swing, and the magnitude of the shifts most likely withstands any failings of the exit polls. Mrs. Clinton’s profound weakness among Northern white voters was not expected as recently as six months ago. She was thought to be fairly strong among the older white voters who were skeptical of Mr. Obama from the start. Most of Mr. Obama’s strength among white voters without a degree was due to his gains among those under age 45. But Mr. Trump expanded on Republican gains among older white voters, according to Upshot estimates, while erasing most of Mr. Obama’s gains among younger Northern white voters without a degree. His gains among younger whites were especially important in the Upper Midwest. Young white voters represent a larger share of the vote there than anywhere else in the country. Mr. Obama’s strength among them — and Mrs. Clinton’s weakness — was evident from the beginning of the 2008 primaries. Mr. Trump’s gains among white voters weren’t simply caused by Democrats staying home on Election Day. The Clinton team knew what was wrong from the start, according to a Clinton campaign staffer and other Democrats. Its models, based on survey data, indicated that they were underperforming Mr. Obama in white areas by a wide margin — perhaps 10 points or more — as early as the summer. The campaign looked back to respondents who were contacted in 2012, and found a large number of white voters who had backed Mr. Obama were now supporting Mr. Trump. The same story was obvious in public polls of registered voters. Those polls aren’t affected by changes in turnout. The best data on the effect of turnout will ultimately come from voter file data, which will include an account of who voted and who didn’t. Most of this data is only beginning to become available. But the limited data that’s already available is consistent with the story evident in the polling: Turnout wasn’t the major factor driving shifts among white voters. The data in North Carolina, where nearly all of the state’s jurisdictions have reported their vote, shows that the turnout among white Democrats and Republicans increased by almost the exact amount — about 2. 5 percent. The same appears to be true in Florida. Nationally, there is no relationship between the decline in Democratic strength and the change in turnout. Mr. Trump made gains in white areas, whether turnout surged or dropped. The exit polls also show all of the signs that Mr. Trump was winning over Obama voters. Perhaps most strikingly, Mr. Trump won 19 percent of white voters without a degree who approved of Mr. Obama’s performance, including 8 percent of those who “strongly” approved of Mr. Obama’s performance and 10 percent of white voters who wanted to continue Mr. Obama’s policies. Mr. Trump won 20 percent of liberal white voters, according to the exit polls, and 38 percent of those who wanted policies that were more liberal than Mr. Obama’s. It strongly suggests that Mr. Trump won over large numbers of white, voters who supported Mr. Obama four years earlier. The notion that Mr. Trump could win over so many people who voted for Mr. Obama and who still approved of his performance is hard to understand for people with ideologically consistent views on a traditional spectrum. Mr. Trump, if anything, was Mr. Obama’s opposite. But the two had the same winning pitch to white voters. Mr. Obama and his campaign team portrayed Mr. Romney as a plutocrat who dismantled companies and outsourced jobs. The implication was that he would leave jobs prey to globalization and corporations. The proof of Mr. Obama’s commitment to the working class and Mr. Romney’s callousness, according to the Obama campaign, was the auto bailout: Mr. Obama protected the auto industry Mr. Romney wrote “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” in The New York Times. There was one place where Mr. Romney was able to effectively argue that he could protect the industrial economy and the people who worked in it: coal country. There he made big gains after the Obama administration pushed policies that would reduce the production and use of coal. In retrospect, the scale of the Democratic collapse in coal country was a harbinger of just how far the Democrats would fall in their old strongholds once they forfeited the mantle of interests. Mr. Trump owned Mr. Obama’s winning message to autoworkers and Mr. Romney’s message to coal country. He didn’t merely run to protect the remnants of the industrial economy he promised to restore it and “make America great again. ” Just as Mr. Obama’s team caricatured Mr. Romney, Mr. Trump caricatured Mrs. Clinton as a tool of Wall Street, bought by special interests. She, too, would leave workers vulnerable to the forces of globalization and big business, he said. According to Mr. Trump’s campaign, the proof of his commitment to the working class wasn’t the auto bailout but the issue of trade: Mr. Trump said free trade was responsible for deindustrialization, and asserted that he would get tough on China, renegotiate Nafta and pull out of the Partnership — two trade agreements that Mrs. Clinton supported or helped negotiate (she later rejected the deal). Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump ran against the establishment — and against a candidate who embodied it far more than John McCain or Mr. Romney did. The various allegations against Mrs. Clinton neatly complemented the notion that she wasn’t out to help ordinary Americans. Taken together, Mr. Trump’s views on immigration, trade, China, crime, guns and Islam all had considerable appeal to white Democratic voters, according to Pew Research data. It was a far more appealing message than old Republican messages about abortion, marriage and the social safety net. None of this is to say that changes in turnout didn’t help Mr. Trump at all. It’s just not the reason he made such large gains among white voters. There was no relationship between the change in Democratic support and the change in turnout, or the change in turnout and Democratic strength. But the Democrats did have a turnout problem in November. It wasn’t a broad Democratic turnout problem. It was a black turnout problem. The turnout probably increased among all major groups of voters — Hispanics, white Democrats, white Republicans — except black voters. The conclusive data is available in the Southern states where voters indicate their race on their voter registration forms, and they point toward a considerable decline in black turnout. In Georgia, the black share of the electorate fell to 27. 6 percent from 29. 9 percent, and in Louisiana it fell to 28. 5 percent from 30. 1 percent, according to the completed state turnout data. The data is not yet final in North Carolina, but the black share of the electorate looks unlikely to reach 21 percent of voters — down from 23 percent in 2012. The data is even less complete in Florida, but there too it appears that black turnout will fall by a similar amount — perhaps to 12. 7 percent of voters from 14 percent. In all of these states, the black share of the electorate is still poised to be higher than it was in 2004. It just wasn’t as high as it was with Mr. Obama at the top of the ticket. Young black voters appear to be a key driver of the decline. They registered at a lower rate than they did ahead of the 2012 and 2008 presidential elections, causing the black share of registered voters to dip. And those who were registered turned out at a far lower rate than black registrants did four years ago. The data is not so authoritative elsewhere in the country, but it tells a similar story. Turnout dropped by 8 percent in the majority black wards of Philadelphia, while rising everywhere else in the city. The turnout in Detroit fell by 14 percent. Turnout fell in other industrial centers with a large black population, like Milwaukee and Flint, Mich. It’s hard to know just how much of this is lower black turnout instead of black population decline — the census can struggle to make population estimates in places with a declining population — but the turnout certainly dropped faster than the reported population decline. Taken in totality, it appears that black turnout dropped somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent — with few exceptions. It should be noted that the decline in black turnout appears very consistent across the country, regardless of whether states put in new laws that might reduce turnout, like those cutting early voting or requiring a photo ID. Was the decline in black turnout enough to change the result of the election? It seems so. If black turnout had matched 2012 levels, Mrs. Clinton would have almost certainly scratched out wins in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Florida and North Carolina would have been extremely close. But pinning Mrs. Clinton’s loss on low black turnout would probably be a mistake. Mr. Obama would have easily won both his elections with this level of black turnout and support. (He would have won Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin each time even if Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee had been severed from their states and cast adrift into the Great Lakes.) Perhaps more important, the Clinton campaign’s models and public polls all assumed lower black turnout — and still showed Mrs. Clinton on track for victory. The Clinton campaign believed it could compensate for the loss of the Obama coalition by winning the “rising American electorate” or “coalition of the ascendant” of voters and Hispanic voters — a caricature of the Obama coalition. These demographic shifts have benefited Democrats over the last decade, but most of these gains have come in noncompetitive states. This year, the exit polls again exaggerated the importance of and Hispanic voters. Last time, it was said that these voters won the election for Mr. Obama — and this time that they lost it for Mrs. Clinton. According to the exit polls, Mrs. Clinton fared a tad worse among white voters — but much worse among Hispanic, and black voters than Mr. Obama. And those polls said she didn’t win white voters, as many polls indicated. But the preliminary Upshot analysis of voting returns, census and polling data suggests that Mrs. Clinton was stronger among white and nonwhite voters than the exit polls imply. It is important to emphasize that these estimates are preliminary. They will change over the next few years with more data from the Census Bureau and additional polling. But it nonetheless paints an alternative picture that’s more consistent with the actual results, polls and the consensus of academics and campaign analysts on the electorate. The Upshot estimates suggest that Mrs. Clinton really might have become the first Democrat to win white voters with a college degree (although it is very possible that Mr. Obama did so in 2008 as well). Mrs. Clinton’s gains were concentrated among the most affluent and white voters, much as Mr. Trump’s gains were concentrated among the and white voters. She gained 17 points among white postgraduates, according to Upshot estimates, but just four points among whites with a bachelor’s degree. There was a similar pattern by income. Over all, she picked up 24 points among white voters with a degree making more than $250, 000, according to the exit polls, while she made only slight gains among those making less than $100, 000 per year. These gains helped her win huge margins in the most and prosperous liberal bastions of the new economy, like Manhattan, Silicon Valley, Washington, Seattle, Chicago and Boston. There, Mrs. Clinton ran up huge margins in traditionally liberal enclaves and stamped out nearly every last wealthy precinct that supported the Republicans. Scarsdale, N. Y. voted for Mrs. Clinton by 57 points, up from Mr. Obama’s win. You could drive a full 30 miles through the leafy suburbs northwest of Boston before reaching a town where Mr. Trump hit 20 percent of the vote. She won the affluent suburbs of Seattle, like Mercer Island, Bellevue and Issaquah, by around 50 points — doubling Mr. Obama’s victory. Every Republican enclave of western Connecticut, like Darien and Greenwich, voted for Mrs. Clinton, in some cases swinging 30 points in her direction. Every precinct of Winnetka and Glencoe, Ill. went to Mrs. Clinton as well. Her gains were nearly as impressive in affluent Republican suburbs, like those edging west of Kansas City, Mo. and Houston north of Atlanta, Dallas and Columbus, Ohio or south of Charlotte, N. C. and Los Angeles in Orange County. Mrs. Clinton didn’t always win these affluent Republican enclaves, but she made big gains. But the narrowness of Mrs. Clinton’s gains among voters helped to concentrate her support in the coasts and the prosperous but safely Republican Sun Belt. It left her short in suburbs, like those around Philadelphia, Detroit and Tampa, Fla. where far fewer workers have a postgraduate degree, make more than $100, 000 per year or work in finance, science or technology. A similar divide may have helped obscure whether Mrs. Clinton improved among Hispanic voters, a question addressed in depth by Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight. Mrs. Clinton was expected to excel among Hispanic voters, because of Mr. Trump’s proposals to deport undocumented workers, his plans to build a wall along the Southern border and his inflammatory comments about Mexican immigrants. The polls generally showed Mrs. Clinton poised to make good on that possibility. But the exit polls show a marked decrease in Democratic strength, with Mrs. Clinton winning just 66 percent of the Hispanic vote, down from Mr. Obama’s 71 percent in 2012. Mrs. Clinton plainly fared worse than Mr. Obama in many heavily Hispanic areas — like South Texas or South Colorado. Our estimates suggest that Mrs. Clinton did about the same as Mr. Obama among Hispanic voters over all. The estimates hint at a potential explanation for the results in some heavily Hispanic areas: Mrs. Clinton may have faltered among Hispanic voters without a high school degree, while making gains among those with some college education or better. Nationwide, Mrs. Clinton’s success in reviving the elements in the caricature version of the Obama coalition really did let her compensate for losses among black voters and whites. She won the popular vote. But it did not do nearly enough good in the decisive battleground states.

BREAKING : Soros Hiring Anti-Trump “Protesters” Once Again For Sunday Palos Verdes Event BREAKING : Soros Hiring Anti-Trump “Protesters” Once Again For Sunday Palos Verdes Event Breaking News By TruthFeedNews November 13, 2016 Here we go again, once again, presumably George Soros is hiring anti-Trump “protesters” to wreak havok. This time their target is in Palos Verdes, California at the Trump Golf location. Here is the Craigslist ad exposing the truth. Surely the lying mainstream media, spearheaded by the Clinton News Network will cover the protests as if they were “organic” and downplay the truth that they are being orchestrated by this radical leftist madman. Support the Trump Presidency and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter.

Pregnancy changes a woman’s brain, altering the size and structure of areas involved in perceiving the feelings and perspectives of others, according to a study published Monday. Most of these changes remained two years after giving birth, at least into the babies’ toddler years. And the more pronounced the brain changes, the higher mothers scored on a measure of emotional attachment to their babies. “Just fascinating,” said Dr. Ronald E. Dahl, director of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. He said the researchers’ interpretation that changes in the brain enhance women’s maternal responses is “provocative, and I think it’s likely to be true. ” In the study, researchers scanned the brains of women who had never conceived before, and again after they gave birth for the first time. The results were remarkable: loss of gray matter in several brain areas involved in a process called social cognition or “theory of mind,” the ability to register and consider how other people perceive things. What might the loss mean? There are three possibilities, said Paul Thompson, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California who was not involved in the study. “The most intuitive is that losing gray matter is not beneficial, that later on there may be negative consequences. ” Or, he said, it could be just a “neutral” reflection of “stress, diet, lack of sleep. ” A third possibility is that the loss is “part of the brain’s program for dealing with the future,” he said. Hormone surges in pregnancy might cause “pruning or cellular adaptation that is helpful,” he said, streamlining certain brain areas to be more efficient at mothering skills “from nurturing to extra vigilance to teaching. ” The study strongly leans toward the third possibility. “We certainly don’t want to put a message out there on the lines of ‘pregnancy makes you lose your brain,’ as we don’t believe this is the case,” said Elseline Hoekzema, a researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who led the study at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain. “Gray matter volume loss does not necessarily represent a bad thing,” she said. “It can also represent a beneficial process of maturation or specialization. ” Pregnancy, she explained, may help a woman’s brain specialize in “a mother’s ability to recognize the needs of her infant, to recognize social threats or to promote bonding. ” The study, which took more than five years, involved 25 women in their 30s in Spain who had never been pregnant but were hoping to conceive. Their brains were scanned before becoming pregnant and within few months after giving birth. For comparison, 20 women who had never been pregnant were also scanned twice, about the same number of months apart. Only the pregnant women showed gray matter reduction, thinning and changes in the surface area of the cortex in areas related to social cognition. Changes were so clear that imaging results alone could indicate which women had been pregnant. The researchers said they did not yet know what was being reduced in size: neurons, other brain cells, synapses or parts of the circulatory system. Many of the women had been recruited for the study at a fertility clinic, and the 16 who conceived after fertility treatment were compared with nine who conceived naturally. The treatments caused no difference in brain changes nor did the sex of the babies. The researchers also scanned the brains of 17 men who were not fathers and 19 fathers before and after their partners’ pregnancies. The two male groups showed no difference in brain volume. Researchers wanted to see if the women’s brain changes affected anything related to mothering. They found that relevant brain regions in mothers showed more activity when women looked at photos of their own babies than with photos of other children. Six months after giving birth, the mothers answered questions on the Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale, used to assess a woman’s emotional attachment, pleasure and hostility toward her baby. The degree of changes in the mothers’ gray matter volume predicted the degree of hostility and attachment, Dr. Hoekzema said. Experts said more research was required, involving more women and clearer assessments of social cognition to substantiate whether gray matter loss is truly linked to “theory of mind” and improved mothering skills. But there are some precedents for making that connection. A 2014 study showed “people with better spontaneous ‘theory of mind’ also have less gray matter volume in pretty much exactly these regions,” said Rebecca Saxe, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the new research. During another period of roiling hormonal change — adolescence — gray matter decreases in several brain regions that are believed to provide for the social, emotional and cognitive territory of being a teenager. “We think it is creating plasticity for learning, not that adolescent brains are wacko or making them crazy,” said Dr. Dahl of the University of California, Berkeley. Perhaps there is “a similar turbulent period around pregnancy,” he said. In the study, the women’s cognitive abilities were tested before and after pregnancy, and “there was no loss of memory, verbal skills or working memory,” Dr. Saxe noted, providing “evidence against the common myth of ‘mommy brain.’ ” Two years after they gave birth, scans of the brains of 11 women who had not had second children showed the same gray matter loss in the same areas, except for an area in the hippocampus, which had regained volume. Dr. Thompson said it was notable that the hippocampus, important in memory, appeared to recover, possibly because of all the learning and activity required of new mothers. “That boost in the memory system is something that many of us in neuroscience would give our eyeteeth to achieve,” he said. Brain areas lose volume “like the erosion of the coast, but there are not many things that put the coast back. ” Many questions remain. Pilyoung Kim, an assistant professor of developmental psychology at the University of Denver, who was not involved in the study, said her research had found that some brain regions increased in size in the months after giving birth. She said she wondered if maternal brain areas waxed and waned during and after pregnancy. Dr. Hoekzema is continuing the research, including in one very personal way. “I was pregnant with my first child when analyzing these data, but unfortunately I couldn’t get the before and after M. R. I. scans of my first pregnancy,” she said. Now, she is 20 weeks pregnant, with her second child. “Yes, I’ve certainly scanned myself before getting pregnant,” she said, “and will go into the scanner again after birth!”

Refugee Manhunt After Family Found in Freezer in Denmark November 01, 2016 Refugee Manhunt After Family Found in Freezer in Denmark (COPENHAGEN) - The bodies of a Syrian woman and her two daughters, aged 7 and 9, have been found in a freezer in a town in Denmark and the woman's husband and refugee father of the children was being sought, Danish police said on Tuesday. The discovery was made on Sunday night in Aabenraa in southern Denmark. The family came to Denmark in summer 2015 and obtained refugee status, police said. A court on Monday pronounced the Syrian father, Hamid Farid Mohammed, "imprisoned in absentia," meaning he should be detained immediately. Police said 33-year-old Mohammed fled Denmark on Friday into Germany and then flew to Turkey. Danish police said they were cooperating with the Turkish police to find him.

By Brandon Turbeville As the floodwaters receded from Nichols, South Carolina and the surrounding areas, many residents made the emotional journey home to assess what little they had left, a good...

Interwebs of Gaia energetics are strengthened. Creation plays its final piece. Standards of elementals are raised. Astronomicals reunite. Source: GaiaPortal

Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough said President Donald Trump’s covfefe tweet was “like somebody pooping their pants” and then saying, “I’m going to sit down in my pants, and it will then be modern art. ” Scarborough also went after White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer comments about the tweet saying, “Trump has people doing that rhetorically in their pants every day. ” Mika Brzezinski started the comparisons by saying, “It’s like kids mess in their pants and then say, ‘I meant to do that. ” Scarborough agreed, “Yes, it would be like somebody pooping their pants and people looking at it saying, ‘That’s modern art, don’t you understand? I am making a statement against Russian aggression in Crimea, and so this is my statement, and if you don’t get it something’s wrong with you and not me. ’” As Brzezinski laughed, Scarborough continued, “I am making a statement against Russian aggression in Crimea, and so this is my statement, and if you don’t get it something’s wrong with you and not me … And you know I’m going to make another statement and I’m going to sit down in my pants, and it will then be modern art and I will hang it on your wall. ” Brzezinski added,”That’s what covfefe, if anybody wants to know, that small group knows what covfefe is — poopy pants. ” When Brzezinski asked “How long is it going to go,” Scarborough said, “He does a verbal version of that every day, but it’s not just him. Unfortunately now Donald Trump has people doing that rhetorically in their pants every day. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

We could talk about cooking as a function of chemistry and physics. Better to talk about elbow grease. Specifically, a physical theory of everyday cooking, The Continuum. The premise is simple: You start with food, apply a variable equation of time and energy — guided perhaps, by a recipe — and sooner or later you have a meal. To eat sooner, you will have to expend more of your own energy if you’re willing to wait, then you have the luxury of letting heat serve as the primary energy, transforming the raw ingredients with minimal input from you. According to this hypothesis, every dish can be plotted along a single X axis, measured by Time at one end and Work at the other. If you wanted to go for fancier science, put time on the X axis and a work on the Y and plot recipes in quadrants. (Meanwhile, I’ll make a sandwich.) The two recipes that follow demonstrate how you can use the continuum to increase your kitchen efficiency. The first, a pork and vegetable braise, requires about 3 hours of time and 5 minutes of work. The second, a fast version of spaghetti and meatballs with red gravy, provides the counterpoint. It’s ready in less than 30 minutes, but you’ll be chopping, stirring and monitoring heat and doneness — actively working — from start to finish. This is the crux of the hypothesis: To get the biggest return on your investment, whether in time or work, you need to cook toward the extremes of the continuum. Venturing toward the center, where recipes require both time and work in near equal measure, is also fine, especially if you see cooking as an art form or creative outlet that brings you relaxation and pleasure, or in times of celebration or insanity, when you throw yourself into a food project that gives you a sense of accomplishment. But for everyday fare, you must be more efficient. Otherwise you’ll get frustrated and find your food elsewhere. My job is to lure people into the kitchen, preferably with recipes. In these examples, I’ve rolled the preparation of ingredients into the steps so that you can get an accurate portrayal of the work involved. The modern convention in recipe writing is to incorporate the preparations into the ingredient list. (“1 large onion, chopped 2 garlic cloves, minced 1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into cubes. ”) Many cooks go so far as to suggest you gather and prepare all the ingredients in advance before proceeding with the actual directions. I understand and can execute this approach to a recipe, but I largely ignore it in the privacy of my own kitchen. And I know others do the same, opting instead to merge preparation and cooking, so that executing the various tasks ebb and flow with the natural rhythms of the process. At home, instead of first getting everything in its place — known as mise en place, a protocol that makes perfect sense for restaurant chefs — you chop the onions while the pan heats, mince the garlic while the onions sizzle and break down the squash in the time it takes the aromatics to soften. Presto. That one bit of multitasking probably saved you 7 minutes. And your work made the most efficient use of time. The spaghetti and meatballs recipe demonstrates cooking. Throw yourself immediately into the directions and you’ll be sitting at the table twirling pasta in less than a . You’ll be busy, but not frantic, the whole time, and rewarded with the satisfaction that you made every second count. On the other side of the time axis, there’s braised pork with cabbage and sauerkraut, an easy path to a kind of choucroute garnie. Spend a few minutes making broad strokes with a sharp knife and layer the ingredients in a deep roasting pan. Then walk away for more than 2 hours. Pass through the kitchen again to uncover the pan and turn the oven up, then go back to your business. You’ve just spent a productive 3 or so hours cooking and doing something else. Talk about efficient. With only a little forethought, you can steer many recipes toward the extremes of the Continuum. Start by transferring the work hidden in the ingredient list — the chopping of vegetables and so forth — into the steps of the recipe. This is relatively easy: Scan the directions for chunks of time when no other work is happening. Like “Cook, stirring occasionally until brown all over, 3 to 5 minutes. ” Then use that time to prepare for what comes next. Another strategy is to let time do the work, as in the choucroute. This is what makes slow cookers so popular. Leave food in big chunks, don’t before braising or stewing, marinate vegetables instead of cooking them and the one tip I give all the time: Prepare big batches of key components like beans, whole grains or plainly cooked produce and meat. Once you start to wean yourself from the recipe, or at least take better control of it, you’ll be a better cook.

Share This Despite being dead for over 7 years, it seems that Michael Jackson’s name has just been dragged back into the spotlight once again. Unfortunately for his family, it looks like bad news for the star’s estate as a woman leaked the $900,000 sex secret he had kept quiet for a whopping 30 years – and she has proof. Most people are aware of Jackson’s depraved past involving children – specifically, little boys. However, the most recent person to come forward is actually a woman, who states that the deceased star had molested and sexually assaulted her about 3 decades prior. According to LA Times , “The alleged abuse started in 1986 and occurred in such iconic locations as Neverland Ranch, the set of ‘Moonwalker,’ Jackson’s Encino mansion, and in the back of the singer’s limousine, according to papers filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.” Unfortunately for the family and Jackson’s estate, her word isn’t all the accuser was armed with . Stock image of Michael Jackson’s “Neverland” ranch Among the court filings are scanned copies of checks purportedly paid to her from Jackson or his entertainment companies, which she says were issued to pay her off in exchange for her silence. In all, the checks totaled a whopping $900,000 – a damning number to say the least. Furthermore, the largest sum, a check for $600,000, was dated in late 1993, which just so happens to be three months after Jackson found himself in yet another lawsuit, that time with a 13-year-old boy saying he had been molested by the King of Pop. Of course, the payment comes at a time where Jackson would have wanted to ensure that all of his other skeletons remained perfectly quiet in his closet. Oddly enough, this is the only time a female victim has come forward to allege a Jackson sexual assault. In addition to that, the woman’s lawyer, Vince Finaldi, said the case offers the first evidence that Jackson and his production company — not an insurance carrier — made direct payments to an alleged abuse victim. Michael Jackson (Source: LA Times ) The abuse allegedly lasted for over 3 years, beginning when the girl was merely 12 years old and ending just after her 15 th birthday. LA Times adds: The woman alleges that for about three years, Jackson fondled her, forced her to orally copulate him, and attempted to have sexual intercourse with her, which caused her to bleed, the lawsuit states. Jackson also supplied her with gifts and letters, and two of the notes were attached to the lawsuit. One of the letters ends, “I’m crazy about you. … All my love, Michael.” Of course, the Jackson family lawyer is saying that the entire ordeal is a made-up claim meant to do nothing more than leech off of the star’s estate. As the woman – being a sex assault victim – and her identity are being kept quiet for the time being, it’s hard to say whether she’s looking for a payout or something more. Although this man is dead and buried, and under most circumstances should be left to rest in peace, no sex assault victim should ever go without justice. Although money is a good way to buy silence, it certainly does not equate to anything near justice. In fact, it represents the exact opposite as it proves that if you have enough money, you can get away with anything – even sexually abusing a child. This woman deserves her day in court, and it certainly doesn’t look like the Jackson family is going to like the end result.

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. The House vote on the health care bill was delayed amid a swirl of Republican deal making and White House wrangling, but the Senate passed a measure to dismantle landmark internet privacy protections. Exactly when the health care vote will occur is not yet clear. The current version of the compromise bill strips away minimum requirements for coverage, like maternity care, hospitalization and prescriptions. Here are the changes made to the bill so far. And here is an easy way to see how it differs from Obamacare. The Daily podcast looks at why the Republicans are so divided. _____ 2. In the other major fight on Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats signaled a willingness to filibuster Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Neil Gorsuch. The judge, who emerged largely unscathed from 20 hours of Senate questioning over two days, appeared to be short of the eight Democratic votes he’ll need to proceed to a final confirmation vote. If the Democrats dig in, the Republican majority could change the rules to allow a simple majority vote to move the confirmation forward. _____ 3. The Islamic State claimed the deadly attack outside the British Parliament. The suspect, who was shot and killed, was identified as a man of Pakistani descent who had a long criminal history but no terrorism convictions. The four people he killed and dozens he injured came from around the world, and included a Utah man who’d been traveling with his wife. London fell back on its famed resolve. “It takes a lot to shake a Londoner,” one woman said. “The Blitz spirit lives on. ” _____ 4. A suspect in the some of the scores of bomb threats against Jewish community centers was arrested: a Jewish teenager in Israel. The authorities said the youth, a dual . S. citizen, used “advanced camouflage technologies” to mask the origin of his calls. His lawyer said he has a brain tumor. _____ 5. “He was particularly offended by black men who are with white women. His intent was to kill as many black men here in New York in particular. ” That was a prosecutor, explaining the case against this Army veteran, James Harris Jackson, who is facing murder charges in the fatal stabbing of a New Yorker, Timothy Caughman. A relative of Mr. Caughman wanted people to know that he lived a full life. _____ 6. Good news from California: Using NASA data, we compared this year’s snowpack in the Sierra Nevada with that of 2015, when the state was in the grip of drought. After a very wet winter, the totals have been remarkably big. And bad news from the Arctic, which has less sea ice at winter’s end than ever before in nearly four decades of satellite measurements. The extent of ice cover — a record low for the third straight year — is another indicator of the effects of global warming. _____ 7. “If my father were alive, I would not be spending the day in the bazaar. ” That’s one of the nearly 4 million boys and girls in Afghanistan who won’t be at school on Thursday, the first day of the new school year, because of violence, displacement and poverty. Another such child is above. Elsewhere in Afghanistan, the Taliban captured the strategic district of Sangin in Helmand Province. More British and American Marines died in Sangin than in any of the country’s roughly 400 other districts. _____ 8. When couples divorce, who gets to keep the pets? Courts are shifting from treating them as property. Above, Charlene Lima, a Rhode Island state representative who has introduced legislation to encourage the legal system to act in the best interests of the animals. Alaska already has such a law. A particularly contentious legal fight in San Diego over Gigi the dog lasted two years, cost $150, 000 and involved a “bonding study” by an animal behaviorist. _____ 9. John Mayer knows he messed up. As the finished a new album this month, he reflected on his 2010 undoing. (In comments to two magazines, he called his penis David Duke, and used a racial epithet, among other highlights.) “What has to happen for a guy to believe that he’s totally and be that far out of touch?” he said. “My GPS was shattered, just shattered. ” _____ 10. In other navigational fails, Stephen Colbert lamented that he missed a sex scandal involving a rear admiral named Bruce Loveless amid the cacophony of news from Washington. “What has happened to us as a nation?” he grumbled. Indeed, there’s just so much news that keeping up can be overwhelming — not to mention going the extra mile to see events from alternative perspectives. So we’re making it easier, with a collection of political writing from the right and left that you might not have seen. Have a great night. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com.

Emma Morano, the last surviving person hailing from the 1800s, died this weekend. She took our human link to simpler times with her. [The Italian was born in a kingdom but died in a republic. Yet she never lived more than 20 miles from her place of birth. Time makes immigrants of us all if we live long enough. She entered and exited a world with inhabitants innocent of a Soviet Union, not recognizing Pluto as a planet, or knowing anything called Eastern Airlines. In fact, the Wright Brothers’ first flight, Charles Lindbergh’s crossing of the Atlantic, and Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon all lay in the future in 1899. No radio stations, televisions, computers, or internet marked her earliest days of existence. How long did Mrs. Morano live? Ernest Hemingway, Humphrey Bogart, Al Capone, and Duke Ellington all came into the world in 1899 as well. They all died more than a half century ago. Life expectancy averaged about fifty years upon Morano’s birth. So, by the expectations of the late 19th century, she lived more than two lifetimes. The discovery of penicillin, the creation of vaccines for polio, yellow fever, and tuberculosis, and the invention of CT scans, and MRIs all helped extend existence over her existence. She married upon the threat of death, and separated upon the reality of bodily harm. She nevertheless remained married to her husband until his death in 1978 — 40 years after the separation — in part because Italy only legalized divorce in 1970. She said her one true love died in World War I. Morano credited her longevity to diet, which rebelled against modern medical advice while conforming to medical advice given to her about a century ago, in its reliance on raw eggs. “I eat two eggs a day, and that’s it — and cookies,” she told the AFP last year. “But I do not eat much because I have no teeth. ” The lesson? Pull your teeth if you long for longevity. Or, perhaps go full Rocky Balboa and down a cup of raw yolks everyday. Alas, the best advice instructs us to enter the world with the type of genetics that only comes along once every 117 years.

protesters ran wild across Washington, D. C. on the eve of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, obliging the police to douse them in pepper spray. I dubbed the event “Loserpalooza” on Twitter:[Looks like Loserpalooza was a smash. Nothing says “love wins” like forcing the police to you. https: . — John Hayward (@Doc_0) January 20, 2017, Pepper seasoning was added to this assortment of mixed nuts outside the “DeploraBall” inaugural event. Politico quoted NBC News reports about the demonstrators burning a Trump hat and lugging around an inflatable elephant festooned with a “RACISM” banner — because Republicans are racists, get it? See? SEE? — and then added their own impressions of the madness: Protesters outside the building chanted “Nazi scum” at DeploraBall attendees as they entered the building and a DeploraBall Twitter account posted videos of the group outside chanting “F — Trump. ” Along with the video, the DeploraBall account’s post read, “SHOUTING WONT CHANGE TOMORROWS OUTCOME … CANT WAIT TO SAY PRESIDENT @realDonaldTrump. ” The demonstrators also brought with them a projector, used to project two messages onto nearby buildings: “Impeach the predatory president” and “bragging about grabbing a woman’s genitals. ” Here’s some video of the tear gas flowing: BREAKING: DC police mace, teargas protests outside National Press club. Video: #disruptj20 pic. twitter. — DCMediaGroup (@DCMediaGroup) January 20, 2017, Here are some more postcards from the edge, as lefty mobs do their best to convince Trump voters they made the right choice in November: Tiny activist boasts of setting fires: No protest is complete without some child abuse, so there was a little boy telling Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins that he started a fire outside the National Press Club “because I felt like it, and because I’m just saying, ‘Screw our president!” Technically, he was saying “Screw Barack Obama,” who remains the current president until Trump takes the oath of office, but whoever taught him to start fires to express his unthinking rage apparently didn’t bother to teach him much in the way of civics. “We have to really be concerned about this dangerous direction our country is going in. When you come for our communities, when you come for us, and when you try to violate our rights, we will resist,” a Loserpalooza spokeswoman told Jenkins. The rest of us are really concerned about thugs blocking streets and setting things on fire. Michael Moore melts down: Were are the clowns? Quick, send in the clowns! Don’t bother … they’re here. Helplessly blubbering in uncontrollable hysteria, lefty propagandist Michael Moore rolled through D. C. like a lump of cholesterol slowly passing through the veins of the city, filling his Twitter stream with bad photographs and worse poetry: Passing the White House on the Obamas last night, sound asleep inside. The country wide awake, afraid 2 close its eyes pic. twitter. — Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 20, 2017, Just arrived in DC. Police lights flashing everywhere in the middle of the night. Reichstag tonite still a democracy. pic. twitter. — Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 20, 2017, Actually, the country is wide awake because your protester buddies are making a lot of noise, Mike, and frankly we’re worried about the vandalsim and violence you’re likely to commit when you gather in large numbers. Moore also attended a protest rally in New York City on Thursday night, along with such Hollywood intellectual giants as Alec Baldwin and Mark Ruffalo, where he declared President Trump would “not last four years” and called for “a hundred days of protest. ” His actor buddies should clue him in to the actual attention span of his followers. Also, he should remember that George Soros lost a ton of money betting against America after the election, and might not be able to afford 100 days of . “We oppose totalitarianism!” scream totalitarians: Enjoy the spectacle of people who fantasize about being brave resistance fighters against Trumpian tyranny blocking off checkpoints, denying others their rights to speech and assembly without a second thought: #Trump supporters trying to attend #Inauguration told “this checkpoint is closed” by #DisruptJ20 protesters at #BlackLivesMatter blockade pic. twitter. — Alexander Rubinstein (@AlexR_DC) January 20, 2017, They were still blockading intersections and getting into tussles with riot cops on Friday morning: HAPPENING NOW blockade at D and 1st! Labor and Palestine. Riot cops pushing protestors #DisruptJ20 @DisruptJ20 pic. twitter. — Martha Neuman (@MWNeuman) January 20, 2017, As former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer succinctly observed: If they’re blocking attendees from entering, they’re not protestors. They’re interfering with the rights of others and should be arrested. https: . — Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) January 20, 2017, “Rights” are only for people with the correct politics, Mr. Fleischer! The whole “occupy” strategy of the Left, from Occupy Wall Street through Black Lives Matter, is about forcing people to listen by illegally seizing property and blocking off roads. And then they wonder why so many people voted for Donald Trump when he said he’d get America moving again. Peaceful, tolerant protesters throw eggs, assault Trump supporters: Gateway Pundit reported on Trump supporters getting pelted with eggs, with one woman talking about how she was struck in the head several times: James Allsup reported he was ambushed by thugs in ski masks and beaten bloody. “I was wearing my ‘Make America Great Again’ hat, and a white male came up behind me and swung at me with a flagpole — I kind of blacked out for a minute. Before I knew it, my head was gushing blood — there’s blood on my Trump hat,” he told Fox News. “I’m all for disagreeing, I debate people all the time and I want to engage in these discussions, but they’re throwing bottles. I would be livid if people who supported Trump were doing this to Hillary supporters,” Allsup added. He posted photos of the aftermath on Twitter: Here are the graphic images of the assault aftermath before being treated by EMS and taken to the hospital. #Deploraballpic. twitter. — James Allsup (@realJamesAllsup) January 20, 2017, His Twitter feed quickly filled with caring, compassionate liberals who accused him of faking the blood, and even of faking his hospital report, but there is video of the entire assault, and you can see the thug waving his flagpole around: That’s what you get for thinking you can walk around wearing whatever you want and expressing your opinions in a city under occupation by the Army of Tolerance, buddy. Anarchists unite! Sky News caught a menacing crew marching around with anarchist flags and threatening slogans. Nothing brings people together like a little ISIS cosplay! The funny thing is, the same people are also given to protesting globalist trade meetings that very much believe in their “no borders, no nations” ideology. Trump protests are taking place in Washington https: . — Sky News (@SkyNews) January 20, 2017, The police have started arresting some of the brigades, and they’re not taking it well: Police clash with protesters ahead of Donald Trump’s #Inauguration https: . pic. twitter. — Reuters Top News (@Reuters) January 20, 2017, Socialist mayor shuts down his own city: Not all of the fun and frolic was taking place in D. C. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio “caused traffic mayhem for his own political gains,” as the New York Post put it, by heading up a “massive protest in Columbus Circle. ” The streets were lined with obstacles such as sand trucks and, eventually, Michael Moore. “It’s terrible, I just want to go home,” and “It’s irresponsible of the mayor,” and “I’m appalled at what’s happening here and I am angry at de Blasio” were among the comments from New Yorkers collected by the Post. The rally ended up looking like this: It looks like the Left is dissolving into one big Godwin’s Law violation. They’re just so that they get to pretend they’re brave heroes battling an evil dictator! These are the same people that tried, with considerable success, to shut down bakeries and pizzerias over ideological disagreements when they were in power. At this very moment, as seen above, they’re using violence to shut down the free speech of others. They’re displacing a huge amount of guilt for their own sins against democracy onto Trump’s shoulders. He should send them a bill for therapeutic services rendered. Vandalism and for peace and justice: Are the lefty mobs breaking windows and stealing stuff to express their commitment to “justice?” You bet they are! #BREAKING protesters are now smashing windows on the streets of Washington. pic. twitter. — Doc Thompson (@DocThompsonShow) January 20, 2017, #BREAKING: [VIDEO] More footage of protestors destroying a @Starbucks #InaugurationDay #TrumpProtest pic. twitter. — Kris Cruz (@rc_kris) January 20, 2017, Damage to businesses up down I st. pic. twitter. — Alex Emmons (@AlexanderEmmons) January 20, 2017, Why do they always take out a Starbucks when they go nuts? The UK Independent says protesters also trashed a Bank of America branch, and there were “unconfirmed reports of looting. ” “Observers said the disorder appeared to be organised, with the group splitting from a larger protest before launching the wave of vandalism,” the Independent adds. They even trashed a bus stop. Aren’t liberals supposed to love mass transportation? Bus bay smashed at #wmata pic. twitter. — Faiz Siddiqui (@faizsays) January 20, 2017, Lefty brigades show typical respect for American troops: Here’s a gang of protesters trying to prevent Air Force men from entering an inauguration checkpoint: protesters block men in Air Force uniforms from entering the #Inauguration checkpoint. pic. twitter. — Breaking911 (@Breaking911) January 20, 2017, What a great way to win hearts and minds!

2016 elections by Patrick Bond Donald Trump is mostly bad news for Africa, including reduced U.S. aid and possibly more support for “imperial African adventurism" – unless, of course, Africa uses Trump’s lemons to make lemonade. His isolationism “could give Africans a chance to recalibrate what is now an excessive, self-destructive reliance on export of oil and gas, minerals and cash crops.” On climate policy, Trump is an unmitigated disaster. What Does a Trump Victory Mean for Africa? by Patrick Bond This article previously appeared in Pambazuka News . “ Trump will sabotage the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and similar strategies to solve global problems.” The most catastrophic long-term consequence is climate change. This is because Trump is a denialist who will give the green light to widespread fracking, coal and oil exploration. Africa will be the most adversely affected continent. United Nations scientists estimate that 9 out of 10 small-scale farmers are unlikely to farm by 2100 due to drying soils and global warming, plus extreme weather will also cause 180 million unnecessary African deaths by then, according to Christian Aid. Under Trump, we can safely predict that Washington will no longer seek to control United Nations climate negotiations, as did Barack Obama’s administration. The WikiLeaks Clinton emails and State Department cables revealed blatant manipulations of the Copenhagen and Durban climate summits. Instead, Trump will simply pull the US out of the 2015 Paris agreement, as did George W. Bush from the Kyoto Protocol. By good fortune, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change annual summit is underway this week in Morocco. The only logical move, if the delegates have any spine, is to expel the US State Department and establish the machinery for a major carbon tax applied to products associated with countries – the US especially – which raise emissions and threaten the survival of many species across the globe. “Trump will simply pull the US out of the 2015 Paris agreement, as did George W. Bush from the Kyoto Protocol.” Trump also heralds a rise in US racism and xenophobia, parallel to the Brexit vote by the British white working class. In neither case will local solutions be effective for the simple reason that neither Trump nor Theresa May (UK Prime Minister) are interested in the income redistribution required to benefit their economies. And African elites who have – with a few exceptions – climbed over each other to please Washington, won’t find themselves welcome in the White House. Hopefully the contagion of Trump’s racism – which will make life for Africans much harder – will be met by a major resistance movement including Africans from all walks of life in solidarity with various groups that stand to be oppressed by the US – women, African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, environmentalists, progressives of all sorts. This movement can shape up in the same spirit to those that gave solidarity during the fight against apartheid. What are the likely economic consequences? Consistent with his isolationism, world trade stagnation will continue. In the case of Africa, Trump is likely to retract benefits under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act and reduce US aid. That isolationism, in turn, could give Africans a chance to recalibrate what is now an excessive, self-destructive reliance on export of oil and gas, minerals and cash crops. Africa must focus on localizing its economies to be able to meet basic needs. Trump’s hatred of what he terms the “globalists” is probably just hot electioneering rhetoric. It’s fair to predict that pro-corporate candidates will come forward as Trump allies to calm the crashing stock markets. The “neoliberal” group of policy wonks who expressed disgust with Trump and favored Hillary Clinton will quickly make inroads into the new administration. They will ensure that the continuing US dominance in Western-leaning multilateral institutions is not disturbed. We can simply anticipate more brazen US self-interest, as witnessed during the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush regimes, with less of the confusing rhetoric promoted by Obama and his allies. What US policies on Africa are likely to change? With what impact? To be frank, we can only offer guesses. Trump said literally nothing about Africa during his campaign. He wants to “rebuild US military power,” which might include strengthening the Pentagon’s controversial Africa Command, known as Africom. Economically, it is worth noting Trump’s close relations to the oil and gas industry which comes via Vice President Mike Pence. This suggests that multinational corporations in the extractive industries who desire more explicit imperial support for African adventurism will be served well by Trump’s bully-boy mentality. What does this mean for multilateral institutions and how will this affect Africa? The US’s role in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will become nastier given the veto power it enjoys, holding more than 15% of the voting shares. Trump will probably hire a brutal neoliberal as his IMF executive director, someone who will tighten the screws on Africa using Washington’s veto power. The leaders of two big African economies are desperate for IMF credits: Nigeria ($29 billion) and Egypt ($12 billion). In relation to the United Nations, an interesting question comes to mind: should the UN leadership now sitting in Trump’s Manhattan East Side neighborhood not develop a contingency plan to move UN headquarters out of the US? Trump promises to make life very hard for visitors who are Muslims, Libyans, Syrians and Mexicans – amongst others – so holding multilateral events in the US may soon be impossible. The period ahead demands a very different multilateralism due to a number of expectations. The first is that Trump will sabotage the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and similar strategies to solve global problems, and wreck nuclear non-proliferation strategies such as the agreement that Obama painstakingly reached with Iran earlier this year. And the second is that three of the BRICS’ nationalistic leaders – Vladimir Putin in Russia, Nahendra Modi in India and Michel Temer in Brazil – can be expected to establish much closer ties to Trump. This is likely to affect the balance of power between geographical regions, added to which are the drift of Pakistan, Turkey and the Philippines away from Washington. Trump’s hatred of China is another indeterminate factor. Regardless of the geopolitical maneuvers, it’s time for a ‘multilateralism-from-below’ in which traditional progressive movements in civil society find common cause, because this is the most serious threat to humanity, the world economy and environment we’ve seen in living memory. Patrick Bond is Director of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society and a professor of political economy at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Email The president has to be kicking himself over this one. As his term in office comes to a close, it seems as if Barack Obama may have missed out on a pretty spectacular opportunity. Earlier today, the president was told that he had been allowed to sleep in the White House this whole time, after he spent nearly two full terms living in a hotel by Reagan National Airport. Sorry, Mr. President, but it’s true. You really blew your chance on this one. Having booked an extended stay at the airport Hilton upon his inauguration back in 2009, Barack and his family have resided in an atrium-view room with two double beds and complimentary wi-fi for the past eight years. But earlier this week when a senior advisor asked the president why he had chosen to live by the airport instead of the White House, you could tell that Obama hadn’t realized the choice was his to make until that very moment. Yes, Obama’s accomplished a lot over the years, but he’s got to be wondering how much more progress he might have made living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He would have had a lot more time to work on signature policies like the Affordable Care Act if he hadn’t wasted so much of his mornings commuting from the airport to the Oval Office on the D.C. Metro. There’s no doubt the countless Hilton Rewards Points Obama has accrued is a nice perk, but that doesn’t soften the blow of leaving the neoclassic mansion built exclusively to house the commander in chief and his family empty for two full terms. This is something Obama is going to regret for a long time to come. “Nobody ever explicitly told me that I could live there until now,” said a clearly disappointed Obama, as he waited patiently for a set of fresh towels. “While Sasha and Malia love being on the same floor as the pool here, I now wish we had stayed at the lavish, 20,000-square-foot private residence in the White House for the past eight years. One time in 2011, I slept underneath my desk after a late night, and I was worried someone was going to find me there in the morning and yell at me. Now I’m being told we apparently have a personal chef and dozens of butlers. This sucks.” Sorry, Barry, but this one’s kind of on you. Our advice to whoever the next president is? Don’t miss your chance like he did.

President Obama canceled a meeting with President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines scheduled for Tuesday in Laos, after the Philippine president directed an expletive at Mr. Obama on Monday. On Tuesday, Mr. Duterte released a statement saying he regretted that his curse “came across as a personal attack on the U. S. president. ” He blamed his words on “certain press questions that elicited concern and distress. ” Mr. Duterte had warned Mr. Obama not to ask him about extrajudicial killings related to his crackdown on drug dealers, a campaign pledge that helped sweep him to victory in the country’s presidential election in May. “I am a president of a sovereign state, and we have long ceased to be a colony,” Mr. Duterte told reporters before he left his country for Laos, where he and Mr. Obama will attend the meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. “I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody,” he said in remarks published by The Associated Press. Apparently addressing Mr. Obama, he added: “You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions. ” Then, using a curse in Tagalog that can be translated as “son of a bitch,” he added, “I will swear at you in that forum. ” Mr. Obama, who was in China for a Group of 20 meeting, departed on Monday for Laos, becoming the first American president to visit the nation. He is also scheduled to take part in the East Asia Summit and speak at a forum with young people. Mr. Obama had planned to meet Mr. Duterte in Laos, but the White House said early Tuesday that the meeting had been canceled. “Clearly, he’s a colorful guy,” Mr. Obama said Monday. “I always want to make sure if I’m having a meeting that it’s productive. ” Mr. Duterte acknowledged Tuesday that the meeting had been canceled and seemed to take a softer tone: “We look forward to ironing out differences arising out of national priorities and perceptions, and working in mutually responsible ways for both countries. ” Last month, the Philippines’ top police official, Chief Ronald dela Rosa, told a Senate hearing that killings by the police and vigilantes in the country’s war on drugs had soared to nearly 1, 800 in the seven weeks since Mr. Duterte, a former mayor of Davao, was sworn into office. Mr. Duterte’s public image has been characterized by bouts of coarse language. He has lashed out at his critics, threatening to withdraw from the United Nations after human rights experts called for a halt to the killings. He joked about the rape of an Australian missionary during the presidential campaign, and he cursed Pope Francis and his entourage for causing huge traffic jams in Manila during the pope’s visit to the Philippines in 2015.

Gov. Chris Christie, who has long resisted raising any taxes, has battled with Democratic leaders since early summer over raising New Jersey’s gas tax, reaching an impasse that brought hundreds of highway and transit projects to a standstill that lasted months. But on Friday, a day after a fatal train crash in Hoboken focused attention on the troubled conditions of the railroad, Mr. Christie, a Republican, finally gave way by accepting the first tax increase during his seven years in office. He said he had agreed to raise the gas tax by 23 cents a gallon to replenish the depleted Transportation Trust Fund, which the state uses to pay for improvements to rails, roads and bridges. Mr. Christie, who has just over one year left in his second term, has prided himself on his refusal to raise taxes and promoted his record during his campaign to be the Republican presidential candidate. But he said he made an exception for the gas tax because the need to maintain the state’s transportation infrastructure was so critical. “While I’m not authorizing any other tax increase during my time as governor,” he said, “I’m authorizing this one because of the importance of the Transportation Trust Fund, the tax fairness that we’ve accomplished together and the compromise we’ve reached, and because we need to responsibly finance this type of activity. ” Mr. Christie made the announcement at the State House in Trenton, flanked by the State Senate president, Stephen M. Sweeney, and the speaker of the State Assembly, Vincent Prieto, both Democrats. The three men each described the agreement as a compromise. “Sorry it took so long,” Senator Sweeney said. “But we all have strong personalities, and sometimes it just takes time to get together. ” The increase could take effect as soon as next week. The Legislature has scheduled a special session for Wednesday to vote on the matter. In exchange for Mr. Christie’s acceptance of the higher gas tax, the Democrats agreed to lower the state’s sales tax by less than half a penny and to phase out the estate tax by 2018. Mr. Christie said the sales tax rate would decrease next year to 6. 875 percent, from 7 percent. In 2018, he said, it will drop again, to 6. 625 percent. He said the gas tax would pay for an $32 billion reauthorization of the Transportation Trust Fund, adding that “$32 billion will be invested in infrastructure and improvements and modernizations in the state of New Jersey over the next eight years. ” Mr. Prieto said that the agreement “couldn’t come soon enough,” and that replenishing the transportation fund was “so important because it’s a public safety issue. ” Mr. Christie had argued for the reduction of other taxes to balance the tax burden of New Jersey residents. He had called for a 1 cent decrease in the sales tax rate, but settled for a package of cuts that would include the smaller decrease. Along with the drop in the sales tax, the Democrats also accepted a phaseout of the state’s estate tax, an increase in the tax credit for the working poor and a tax break for veterans. The increase in what the state collects on fuel sales — currently the rate of all the states — would be the first in New Jersey in nearly three decades. It was last raised in 1988, and now only Alaska’s is lower. With the proposed increase, to 37. 5 cents, New Jersey’s gas tax would be considerably higher than the national average of about 21 cents. The agreement met with immediate criticism from some advocacy groups. “These leaders have foolishly paired a big package of tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit New Jerseyans while decimating the state’s ability to pay for essential services, promised obligations and other critical investments,” said Jon Whiten, the vice president of New Jersey Policy Perspectives. “While it is absolutely essential that New Jersey invest in its transportation infrastructure, that investment should not be held hostage to some warped idea of tax fairness that will cost the state well over $1 billion a year,” Mr. Whiten added. “This is, quite simply, the wrong path forward for New Jersey. ” Mr. Christie said the trust fund would receive $2 billion a year for eight years, which he said would be its biggest and longest reauthorization. With federal matching funds, he said, the state would have $32 billion to spend on road and transit projects over the next eight years. The governor said the tax cuts were estimated to save the state’s taxpayers $164 million next year and as much as $1. 4 billion when they are completely in place in 2021.

On Tuesday’s “Good Morning America,” George Stephanopoulos and ABC Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz stated that the attack in Manchester could lead to backlash. Stephanapolous said that while people are determined to go back to their normal lives, “this is also likely to inflame sentiment across Britain, across Europe. ” Raddatz responded, “It sure could, George. You know, Manchester itself is a very multicultural city. There’s a large Muslim population, with many there for generations. So, a headscarf attracts little attention there. And notably, Manchester did not vote in favor of Brexit, but an attack like this, as you said, is much bigger than Manchester itself, and will likely create backlash depending, of course, on the details of this attack, George. ” ( WFB) Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

October 26, 2016 “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.” ~ Georgia Guidestones This is one of the first of ten commandments blazoned across the Georgia Guidestones, an occult monument for which no person or organization has taken credit. Though the monument was commissioned by someone named R.C. Christian more than two decades ago, the true identity of the person who built this specter is still unidentified, and the message is but one of the many examples of a cabalistic desire to cull the population. There are many more ‘hidden’ in plain sight. The Georgie Guidestones state : 1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature. 2. Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity. 3. Unite humanity with a living new language. 4. Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason. 5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts. 6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court. 7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials. 8. Balance personal rights with social duties. 9. Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite. 10.Be not a cancer on the earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature. Though some of these commandments seem harmless enough, the very first describes the supreme sentiment of the mysterious group of masons who erected the stones. If you want further narrative for what they bode, you don’t have to look far. As Stanford University Professor, Paul Ehrlich , the author of The Population Bomb states , “The first task is population control at home. How do we go about it? Many of my colleagues feel that some sort of compulsory birth regulation would be necessary to achieve such control. One plan often mentioned involves the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired population size.” We can see clearly that the ‘elite’ class, intent on ridding the planet of its burdensome load, has already poisoned the water of 42 out of 50 states with lead . Pesticides and fertilizers poison the remaining states’ water along with the original 42 states. Male infertility is rising due to these contaminants, and premature births along with miscarriage are more common due to others. If the water doesn’t kill you, it will simply lobotomize you, or at least start the process. Harvard medical has pronounced that fluoridated water lowered IQ scores in children who drank it, and aluminum along with fluoride is a known neurotoxin, also contributing to the rising numbers of Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, and similar neurodegenerative diseases. READ: 11 Common Symptoms of the Global Depopulation Slow Kill Should poisoning the water be insufficient to keep the population down, we can look to the advice of David Brower, once Executive Director of the Sierra Club and founder of the Friends of the Earth. He suggests that, “Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license … All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.” Forced and coerced sterilization at the hands of the Eugenics Board and other bodies is nothing new. Some investigators recently found that 148 female inmates in two California prisons were sterilized between 2006 to 2010 — and there may be 100 more incidents dating back to the late 1990s. One reporter wrote , “ The women were signed up for the surgery while they were pregnant and housed at either the California Institution for Women in Corona or Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, which is now a men’s prison. Former inmates and prisoner advocates maintain that prison medical staff coerced the women, targeting those deemed likely to return to prison in the future. Crystal Nguyen, a former Valley State Prison inmate who worked in the prison’s infirmary during 2007, said she often overheard medical staff asking inmates who had served multiple prison terms to agree to be sterilized. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s not right,’” Nguyen, 28, said. “ Do they think they’re animals, and they don’t want them to breed anymore? ” Today vaccines are used in a similar manner to help cull the population against their informed consent. Eugenicist, Bill Gates tried to ‘ field test ’ his HPV vaccine in India on indigenous young girls, but the Indian government eventually brought a stop to this. The Rockefeller family also quietly funds vaccines that alter a woman’s hormones to make her less likely to become pregnant or to maintain a pregnancy. A book titled Disciplining Reproduction by Adele E. Clark explains what the elites were planning as early as the 1930s. “ Other lines of current immunological contraceptive research continue to seek what, during the 1930s, Max Mason of the Rockefeller Foundation called “anti-hormones”: vaccines to block hormones needed for very early pregnancy and a vaccine to block the hormone needed for the surface of the egg to function properly .” Barack Obama’s top science advisor , John P. Holdren has also said : “ A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men . The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.” A simple look at the peer-reviewed Plos One site offers over 7,500 additional scientific articles that connect vaccines to sterilization. Should vaccines or forced implants be insufficient to reduce the number of ‘useless eaters’ in the world, as Henry Kissinger has implied, then there is also the revealing text of Dr. John Colemann, who outlines the aims of a Committee of 300, otherwise known as the original hierarchical organization to plan a New World Order . Among their plans are genocide, war, the installation of dictators, the legalization of drug use, and the normalizing of pornography : “To bring about depopulation of large cities according to the trial run carried out by the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. It is interesting to note that Pol Pot’s genocidal plans were drawn up in the US by one of the Club of Rome’s research foundations, and overseen by Thomas Enders, a high-ranking State Department official. It is also interesting that the committee is currently seeking to reinstate the Pol Pot butchers in Cambodia. “….To cause by means of limited wars in the advanced countries, by means of starvation and diseases in the Third World countries, the death of three billion people by the year 2050, people they call ‘useless eaters.’ The Committee of 300 (Illuminati) commissioned Cyrus Vance to write a paper on this subject of how to bring about such genocide. The paper was produced under the title “Global 2000 Report” and was accepted and approved for action by former President James Earl Carter, and Edwin Muskie, then Secretary of State, for and on behalf of the US Government. Under the terms of the Global 2000 Report, the population of the US is to be reduced by 100 million by the year of 2050. “……To encourage, and eventually legalize the use of drugs and make pornography an ‘art-form,’ which will be widely accepted and, eventually, become quite commonplace.” Look no further than Syria , Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, and a myriad other examples of false flag terrorism . Look no further than the top twenty pharmaceutical companies (all U.S., Illuminati based ) that control almost 99 percent of the world’s massive, ‘legalized’ drug trade. See clearly, the genocide happening around the globe , and the child sex trafficking and pornography which is silently abided in Hollywood, Washington, and in every government circle run by cabal-funded individuals. Look at the money usurped for the task of culling the masses, as former U.S. Secretary of State and presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton has stated : “This year, the United States renewed funding of reproductive healthcare through the United Nations Population Fund, and more funding is on the way. The U.S. Congress recently appropriated more than $648 million in foreign assistance to family planning and reproductive health programs worldwide . That’s the largest allocation in more than a decade – since we last had a Democratic president, I might add.” Furthermore, weather modification, or geoengineering , also known as chemtrails , additionally help the slow kill , or fast degeneration of the human species. NASA has admitted to using these weather altering programs, so there is no sense denying their presence. Aside from spraying lithium, strontium , barium, nano aluminum-coated fiberglass [known as CHAFF], radioactive thorium, cadmium, chromium, nickel, desiccated blood, mold spores, yellow fungus, and more, these chemical concoctions act as a global pandemic to further population control. Without mention of contaminated food, DARPA contrived control devices, and further attempts to make slaves of the remaining sheeple who live through these demonic efforts, know this; you are swimming in the depopulation agenda. The effects are all around you, and it is high time to put up some kind of resistance. Via Waking Times Image: sagesolar/Flickr Nathaniel Mauka is a researcher of the dark side of government and exopolitics, and a staff writer for Waking Times .

Voters Can Fight Back Against Election Fraud November 08, 2016 Voters Can Fight Back Against Election Fraud Reports are already coming that there are attempts at voter fraud as Americans go to the polls on this Election Day. Some examples: TRUNEWS reported on how fake IDs are being used to influence election results As a voter, you have every right to assume that your vote is secure and counted fairly. Attempts to influence elections through voter fraud violate the rights of every informed citizen, and are a legitimate threat to the constitutional republic. What can you do? Fight back!! If you see voter fraud of ANY KIND, report it at your local polling station, and also to your STATE election board. Here is a list of phone numbers by state to report any suspected election fraud as you go to the polling booth: Alabama

Forget the images of men in hard hats standing before factory gates, of men with faces, of men perched high above New York City on steel beams. The emerging face of the American working class is a Hispanic woman who has never set foot on a factory floor. That’s not the kind of work much of the working class does anymore. Instead of making things, they are more often paid to serve people: to care for someone else’s children or someone else’s parents to clean another family’s home. The decline of the old working class has meant both an economic triumph for the nation and a personal tribulation for many of the workers. Technological progress has made American farms and factories more productive than ever, creating great wealth and cutting the cost of food and most other products. But the work no longer requires large numbers of workers. In 1900, factories and farms employed 60 percent of the work force. By 1950, a later, those two sectors employed 36 percent. In 2014, they employed less than 10 percent. For more than a century, since the trend was first documented, people have been prophesying a dire future in which the working class would no longer work. In 1964, a group of prominent liberals wrote President Johnson to warn of a “cybernation revolution” inexorably creating “a permanent impoverished and jobless class established in the midst of potential abundance. ” Machines have taken the jobs of millions of Americans, and there is every indication that the trend will continue. In October, Budweiser successfully tested a truck by delivering beer more than 120 miles to a warehouse in Colorado. In December, Amazon opened a small convenience store near its Seattle headquarters that has no cashiers. Customers — for now, Amazon employees only — are billed automatically as they leave the store. In January, Bank of America opened branches in Denver and Minneapolis that are staffed by a lone employee, A. T. M.s and video terminals. And Americans are making a growing share of purchases online: about 8. 4 percent of retail sales in 2016. These changes are driven by consumer preferences, not just by corporate imperatives. People like shopping in bed in the middle of the night. People like that computers make fewer mistakes. And people grow accustomed to computers. A few years ago, I watched a woman walk up to a bank teller and ask where she could find an A. T. M. The teller asked if she could help. No, the woman said, she just needed to withdraw some money. But the forecasters were wrong in the most important respect. Workers continue to find work, but now the jobs are in service. Taking care of aging baby boomers, in particular, has become by far the largest driver of job growth in the American economy. Among the occupations the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects to grow most rapidly over the next decade: assistants, home health aides, assistants, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, aides, physician assistants. . .. You get the idea. Nine of the 12 fields are different ways of saying “nurse. ” In 1950, service work made up about 40 percent of labor in the United States. By 2005, that share had climbed to 56 percent, according to data from a 2013 analysis by the economists David Autor at M. I. T. and David Dorn at the University of Zurich. The available evidence, Autor said, suggests that this trend has continued “very rapidly” over the last decade, increasing the share of American workers who work in the service industries. The rise of employment reflects the fact that Americans on average have more money to spend and that we are spending relatively less of that money on physical goods, because those goods have become cheaper. It took 10. 5 hours of work at average wages to buy a bicycle in 1979 it took just four hours in 2015. Most Americans don’t want a second and third bicycle, so that leaves more money for other purposes. And increasingly, the money is spent on services: help around the home, entertainment and vacations and, most of all, education and health care. These jobs are difficult to mechanize or to perform with greater efficiency. Convalescents cannot be trained to eat more quickly. A phlebotomist cannot draw blood from two arms at once. Robots, as yet, cannot change diapers. Moreover, consumers may have an emotional investment in seeing this caring work performed by people rather than machines. They may be willing to pay for a personal touch. Another limitation on our ability to program computers to do the work of people is summarized by the observation of the Hungarian scientist Michael Polanyi that “we can know more than we can tell. ” Consider the work of a security guard, who is basically tasked with sounding the alarm if something doesn’t seem right. Technology improves security, but it is not easy to write a formula approximating intuition. The Cassandras, however, were right to warn about poverty in the midst of abundance. providers — “servants,” as they once were called — tend to be poorly paid. There is little job security the benefits are meager the work is physically demanding and emotionally draining. It is not particularly surprising that women and immigrants have been more likely to take these jobs than men. For many of the caretaking service jobs, less than 10 percent of the work force is male. The wages of service work increasingly determine the welfare of the American working class and, to a substantial degree, the broader economy. But politicians have paid little attention. That’s partly because Americans continue to view service work as a way station, not a way of life. Teenagers get their first job at McDonald’s mothers dip back into the work force as receptionists seniors make a little extra money as Walmart greeters. The reality is that these are the kinds of jobs millions of Americans hold for their entire working lives. And increasingly, these are the jobs their children will perform, too. — Binyamin Appelbaum Santa Clara, Calif. • The Home Health Aide By Elise Craig Two major events in Ofelia Bersabe’s life persuaded her to become a home health aide. In 2008, the Bay Area electronics company where she worked for 21 years as a supervisor let her go in a mass layoff. And that same year, her mother, whom she followed to the United States from the Philippines nearly two decades earlier, died. “When she passed away in my arms, I felt that I hadn’t given her the full attention I wanted to,” Bersabe said. “I promised myself that I would concentrate on taking care of women, especially seniors. In that way, I feel like I’m still taking care of her. ” Nine years later, at age 69, Bersabe is among nearly a million Americans who work as home health aides, a field that is expected to grow 38 percent by 2024, faster than most other occupations, thanks in large part to the aging population. Already a senior herself, Bersabe works 65 hours a week caring for two elderly clients with dementia. She spends five and night shifts in her clients’ homes, providing companionship, reminders to take medicine and light housekeeping for one client, and everything from bathing and dressing to diaper changing for the other. Having two jobs is partly a necessity and partly a hedge should one of her clients die, she can still rely on income from the other. She also needs the money. Because she is a member of the Service Employees International Union Local 2015, the agencies that Bersabe works for pay her $16. 13 and $11 an hour. California’s current minimum wage is $10. 50, but the living wage for someone like Bersabe is $11. 29. Bersabe is grateful for the money and has no complaints about her wages, but she acknowledges that making a living in the Bay Area’s technology bubble is tough. She lost her house after the 2008 layoff, and she and her husband, who works nights as a security guard, now share a apartment rental behind Levi’s Stadium, where the 49ers play, with two other elderly couples. The gratitude Bersabe’s clients show her — one kisses her when she arrives — is incredibly fulfilling, she said, but the work is hard. Dementia patients can be very unpredictable. “I have a very tame cat, and when they start to have ” — the confusion that can be a symptom of dementia — “I have a wild tiger,” she said. “But it’s not the person herself, it’s the sickness. ” Once, when a client began to get agitated and yell at Bersabe, she sneaked around to the front door and rang the doorbell. The client welcomed Bersabe as an old friend that she hadn’t seen in a long time. Bersabe expects to work through her 70s and 80s and maybe even into her 90s. “I’ll work as long as I can stand on my own two legs,” she said. “As long as I can drive and walk and God permits me, I’ll enjoy the job I love. ” Bersabe has no intention of being a burden to her three children, who have families of their own and are scattered from Kentucky to the Philippines. “Honestly, I am thinking, when the time comes, who is going to take care of me?” she said. “I don’t want to bother my kids. I want them to see me as a kicking woman, like I was before. ” Elise Craig is a freelance writer and editor based in San Francisco. Brooklyn • The Hair Braider By Jazmine Hughes On a recent visit to Jennifer’s Beauty World, in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Sonia Ufot started by detangling my tightly coiled hair and it then she parted a small section into an individual plait, wrapped a section of filler hair around the root and braided it straight down for 16 inches. She repeated this step around 80 more times, over the course of about six hours, all that time spent either standing or hunched over on a high stool. “It takes time and patience for you to be able to stand on your feet for hours to braid somebody’s hair,” she said, “so you really have to love doing it. ” Ufot, 38, has known how to braid since she was 15 she picked up the skill in Warri, Nigeria, where she was born. A family friend owned a braiding shop, and she visited every day, watching the women do their work and, eventually, persuading them to let her practice on their customers’ heads. She majored in economics at Delta State University in Nigeria, but while she was at school, she found out she had thyroid cancer and eventually moved to the United States for treatment. She started braiding hair for the money and never returned to economics. “There’s more money doing hair,” she told me. And because she’s in such high demand, Ufot can work 12 to 15 hour days, sometimes seven days a week, depending on appointments. She charges between $100 to $250 for each style, depending on its intricacy. She hasn’t gone on vacation in five years. Unlike most people trained in cosmetology, braiders, many of whom are immigrants, don’t use chemicals, sharp objects or heat just a comb, oil, water and their hands. Individual states legislate the requirements for becoming a licensed hair braider in several, braiders — even those with a knowledge of braiding — are required to complete more than 2, 000 hours of training at cosmetology schools, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars and whose classes have almost nothing to do with styling black women’s hair. Many cosmetology schools don’t even offer braiding instruction. In 2016, Iowa ended its requirement for hair braiders, allowing them instead to pass basic exams with the state Nebraska, too, recently ended its laborious stipulation of 2, 100 hours of cosmetology training for natural hair braiders. In New York, braiders are required to obtain a license, which allows the stylists to perform the techniques of styling black hair — for example, shampooing hair, applying extensions, making dreadlocks, braiding — and not much else. It costs about $70 and mandates schooling, which costs more. But many braiders operate without licenses. Ufot wants to go to cosmetology school her goal is to enroll by year’s end, if she can get enough financial aid. She figures it will cost her about $15, 000, so she’ll continue braiding and attend night classes as long she can get someone to look after her daughter. She told me that she wants to learn how to do all types of hair — dyeing, perms — and dreams of owning her own shop. “I want to get my cosmetology license so I’m able to do all of the things,” she told me, laughing. “I want to be able to cut white people’s hair!” Jazmine Hughes is an associate editor for the magazine. Cicero, Ill. • The Worker By Ben Austen Adriana Alvarez was leaving her McDonald’s at the end of a daylong shift in 2014 when a man stopped her in the parking lot. She’d noticed him inside, buying coffee, and now he asked if she’d heard about the Fight for $15. Laughing, she said $15 an hour for work sounded crazy. She was racing to pick up her son Manny from day care, but she talked with the guy later that evening. She told him that she earned $8. 50 an hour, just 25 cents above the Illinois minimum wage. She’d been at the same McDonald’s in Cicero, a largely Latino town west of Chicago, for about four years. In all that time, she had one raise: 10 cents. The man explained that she’d been cheated even out of her low pay: Workers at restaurants had been required, illegally, to punch out before tallying up their registers or breaking down boxes. “I think about it now,” Alvarez says. “God, I was stupid. ” A few weeks after meeting the organizer, Alvarez said, she and her handed in a petition demanding that the store manager show them more respect in front of customers. Not only did the yelling stop, she said, but they soon received a raise of as much as 75 cents. “Pushing works,” Alvarez says she learned. In March 2014, she joined her first rally, a multicity coordinated Fight for $15 day of action. Alvarez is now 24 and still works at the same McDonald’s. Nationally, jobs in retail and food services outnumber those in manufacturing by more than two to one. The country’s largest private employers include Walmart, McDonald’s, Kroger and the conglomeration of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. These chains are no longer places just for teenagers to work part time: The average age of a employee has climbed to 29 like Alvarez, a third of them have spent some time in college. Fight for $15 doesn’t operate like a traditional union: There are no contracts with employers, and Alvarez and others pay no dues. The Service Employees International Union has been its primary source of funding from its inception in New York City, in 2012. Yet Fight for $15 organizers take credit for winning wage increases for 22 million workers in America. Although the federal minimum wage of $7. 25 hasn’t budged since 2009, numerous cities and states since 2012 have raised their base pay to $12, $13 and even $15 an hour. Under President Trump, the effort is sure to face additional hurdles. But Fight for $15 helped lead the campaign to derail Trump’s first pick for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, organizing workers from his chains to march on their stores and to share their stories of wage theft. Low pay is an issue that crosses party lines: Two of every five U. S. workers earn less than $15 an hour. Today Alvarez makes $11 an hour at McDonald’s. She has never been put on the schedule for a full week she receives no benefits, health coverage or overtime. Yet the raise has allowed her to replace the moldering floorboards in her basement apartment. And Alvarez has been transformed in other ways by the labor fight. She has emerged as one of its spokeswomen, and the job has taken on a new significance. “When people say we should go back to school, I say the adjunct professors who joined us went to school,” Alvarez said. “How come they’re not doing better? I’m not just serving customers. I’m also serving these innocent ladies” — her — “who might not be conscious of their rights. I’m like their protector. ” Ben Austen is working on a book about Chicago’s complex. 4. Stuart Culver Brooklyn Park, Minn. • The Delivery Driver By Jaime Lowe Stuart Culver starts his overnight shift for O’Reilly Auto Parts at 7 p. m. and finishes about nine hours later. A relay driver, he exchanges freight — mufflers, batteries, drums of fluid — with another driver in La Crosse, Wis. and then makes deliveries to five stores on his route. The road has changed over the two decades that he has been driving trucks. “In today’s day and age, it’s really stressful,” he says. “You’re a lot more likely to be struck because of other drivers using their cellphone. ” The regulatory landscape has changed, too. Every year, for example, Culver has to undergo a Department of Transportation physical, because he has sleep apnea. In recent years, online giants like Amazon have pushed for delivery times, sometimes delivering orders on the same day. As consumers increase their online shopping — total retail sales in the United States increased only 2. 9 percent last year, but online sales rose 15. 1 percent — distribution networks have adapted by integrating more and more consumer destinations into their systems. Mark Merz, a spokesman for O’Reilly, attributes part of the company’s success to “having inventory immediately available when a customer needs those parts. ” Though O’Reilly extended its reach to 4, 829 stores in 47 states last year and revenue surpassed $8. 5 billion, that growth hasn’t led to an expansion of its work force or changed the nature of its jobs. “We’ve been for over six months,” Culver says. “Guys are doing extra work and taking on extra stores for their routes. ” Culver, who belongs to the Teamsters Local 120, says he is not paid by the amount of time it takes him to complete his deliveries but according to the route driven, which varies from year to year. Culver says he made roughly $53, 000 last year, earning almost $23 an hour. “Our wages haven’t really gone up in the same way that other jobs’ wages have gone up,” he says. “I have to go to special school to get my license, and how we’re treated and looked at hasn’t really changed in 20 years. ” Culver, who is 56, doesn’t expect that technology will eliminate work like his. “I don’t see how automatic truck drivers are going to work,” he says. “There are so many variables. ” O’Reilly still needs people to operate the electric pallet jacks and hydraulic liftgates at the rear of their delivery trucks, still relies on backs and arms to unload and inspect orders. Despite the toll the work has taken on Culver — two operations to fuse vertebrae in his neck and a operation — he says he likes the job. “I’m happy doing this, I enjoy what I do,” he says. “I hope I can make it to 65. ” Jaime Lowe is a freelance writer and a frequent contributor to the magazine. Las Vegas • The Rep By Eric Steuer When Sandi Dolan moved to Las Vegas in 2014, to escape the cold Colorado winters, she’d been working primarily as a representative for more than a decade in the insurance industry. Dolan is remarkably upbeat, and she says she genuinely enjoys helping strangers solve problems. But she said that day after day of calls about accidents and claims made for a pretty depressing gig. “No one ever wants to talk to their insurance company,” she said. “It’s never a good phone call. ” Not long after landing in Las Vegas, Dolan started looking for a job. She found a opening with Zappos, the online retailer. “I actually didn’t know anything about the company,” she said. “But after I was hired, I started talking to locals, and people were like: ‘You have no idea, do you? We all tried to get in there. ’’u2009” Zappos has more than 500 people on its team, about a third of the company’s total staff. Most employees work together in the company’s headquarters, a building downtown that used to be Las Vegas’s city hall. Employees like Dolan, who work the phones, start at $14 an hour, about a dollar less than the median wage earned by the more than 2. 5 million Americans who work as representatives. But Dolan, who makes slightly more than that, points out that, unlike at many other companies, most Zappos workers are employees who receive benefits like health insurance and retirement plans. At Zappos, employees are encouraged to interact with throughout the business and eat together on campus. The company frequently hosts events, ranging from product demonstrations to scavenger hunts, which are open to all employees. Dolan said this is one thing that makes her current work so much better than previous jobs. “I’ve been in places where I wasn’t even allowed to take a break with someone if they were a different pay grade than I was,” she said. Another difference from Dolan’s previous jobs is that Zappos reps aren’t limited in the amount of time they are allowed to spend on each conversation. “At other jobs, I’d be stressed because I’d have to resolve each call in about five minutes in order to make my numbers,” Dolan said. She knows she could be making more money somewhere else, but she wouldn’t enjoy her day as much. “I figured I’d do this for six months just to get something local on my résumé so I could look for something else,” she said. “But I haven’t looked for a job since I stepped foot in here. I don’t plan on it. ” Eric Steuer is a contributing writer for Wired based in San Francisco. Columbus, Ohio • The Meat Cutter By Abe Streep Every day at 2 p. m. Ruhatijuru Sebatutsi, a Congolese refugee, rides a bus from outside Columbus, Ohio, where he lives with his wife and eight children, with 10 of his colleagues. The bus travels 40 miles southwest to Washington Court House, population about 14, 000, and drops its passengers near a plant owned by the SugarCreek Packing Company, which produces pork and poultry products like bacon bits and sausage patties. Just before 4, Sebatutsi, 40, changes into the uniform of a meat cutter: cap, gloves and scrubs. Then he takes his place in a line of men and women from Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bhutan and rural Ohio. Sebatutsi fled war in Congo as a teenager and spent most of his life in Rwanda’s sprawling Gihembe refugee camp before being relocated to Ohio in 2015. Once the shift starts, he pushes meat through cutting machines. “You push again and again,” he told me through a translator. “It doesn’t require a lot of knowledge. ” There are three breaks per shift: 15 minutes early on, a meal break, then 10 minutes toward the end. At 1 a. m. he takes the bus home. When he arrives, his wife and children are sleeping. He works seven days a week, making $11. 50 an hour, time and a half on Saturdays and double on Sundays. “I am so lucky,” he said. Central Ohio is particularly welcoming to refugees, having resettled more than 17, 000 since 1983. In November 2016, the region became a flash point for those opposed to resettlement when a Ohio State University student was killed by police after attacking pedestrians. Still, in early February, the Columbus mayor, Andrew Ginther, signed an executive order supporting the resettlement of refugees. His reasons were economic as well as altruistic. Nearly 12 percent of Columbus is . According to a recent study from the New American Economy, a nonprofit group, immigrants pay $1. 2 billion a year in taxes and have an annual spending power of $3. 2 billion. They work as doctors and engineers, open small businesses employing thousands, perform manual labor in warehouses and frequently do the jobs that many other Americans will not, like meatpacking. SugarCreek is one of many meatpacking businesses nationwide that have turned to refugees. Last spring, the company approached Community Refugee and Immigration Services (CRIS) a Columbus resettlement agency. “They needed people,” said CRIS’s Marcus Gorman, who arranges employment for the newly resettled. “They had a lot of opportunities for workers, and they were accustomed to working with folks that spoke little to no English. ” Now, Gorman said, about 65 of CRIS’s clients work at SugarCreek. Since Sebatutsi started last November, he has opted to work every day, which he said is the best part of the job. “There’s a lot of overtime, and you can make money. ” But, he added, “that’s also the worst thing. ” He is no longer able to join his family at church. All that pushing, slicing and packaging is repetitive, but it’s far better than life in Gihembe. “The kids can ask you for something, you cannot provide,” he said. “But here you work, you take care of your problems, you do something for yourself. ” Abe Streep is a contributing editor for Outside and a contributing writer for The California Sunday Magazine. Dalton, Ga. • The Carpet Whisperer By Lizzie O’Leary The warehouse where Guadalupe Guido works is so bright inside that it feels like noon no matter the time of day. Huge metal racks hold row after row of carpet that will be trucked from this plant in Dalton, Ga. all over the United States. Dalton calls itself the Carpet Capital of the World, and everyone in Guido’s family — her mother, father, sister and herself — work for one of Dalton’s carpet companies. Guido, who is 23 and goes by Lupe, has been working at Engineered Floors for almost two years. She has risen quickly, starting on yarn machines, before driving a Hyster forklift, working as a production clerk and now serving as a tufting scheduler. She creates orders, dictating the type of yarn to use and how much footage of carpet each job will need. “Without this person,” she said of her role, “there really is no show. ” In the political sphere, manufacturing work is often associated with men, and specifically white men. But women have always worked in carpets in Dalton and at Engineered Floors. And Dalton is about 50 percent Latino, which is reflected in the work force here. Many people in the city came from Mexico in the 1970s and ’80s to work in the industry, including Guido’s parents, Jose and Martina. Lupe Guido was born in Dalton and dreamed initially of becoming a lawyer. “I talk a lot,” she said with a laugh. But at 18, she wanted independence and her own money and went to work at Mohawk Industries, one of the largest carpet companies in the city, where her mother still works. It was not what her parents had in mind. “When I was growing up, it was always: ‘Go to school, go to school,’’u2009” she said. “’u2009‘You don’t want to be working how I’m working. ’’u2009” But the carpet industry, like most of American manufacturing, has undergone radical changes. The hardest and most dangerous jobs are now performed by machines that are mostly run by computers, and those computers are watched over by people like Guido. Engineered Floors is new in comparison to Mohawk or Shaw Industries, the two companies that have dominated Dalton for decades. But Guido has been able to move up quickly. She earns $15. 50 an hour, up from $11 an hour when she started in 2015. At the end of each year, she gets a $500 bonus. Guido said she would like to stay at Engineered Floors if she can. To do so requires vigilantly managing her time so that she can move up. She’s awake at 6 a. m. clocks into her job at 7 and works a shift until 5 p. m. After dinner with her fiancé, who also works in the carpet industry, Guido spends her nights studying for a bachelor’s degree in management at Georgia Northwestern Technical College. One day, she wants to be a department manager or a plant manager. “The way I’ve been growing and growing,” she said, “I don’t want for that to stop. ” Lizzie O’Leary is the host of the radio program “Marketplace Weekend. ” More reporting by O’Leary and the producer Eliza Mills about the carpet industry in Dalton, Ga. is on Marketplace Weekend. Las Vegas • The Hotel Cleaner By Amanda Fortini Most mornings, Wendy Almada — a attendant, or G. R. A. at the Aria Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip — puts on a pair of latex gloves and tackles the bathroom first. “I don’t like to do beds,” she said. “I like to clean bathrooms. ” Next she yanks off the sheets, bags them and makes up the bed. She dusts, vacuums, empties the garbage. If a light bulb is out or the carpet needs to be shampooed, she puts in a work order. She scans the room for any last detail that she might have overlooked, then clocks out and moves on to the next one. She cleans 13 rooms a day, with suites counting as two or three. Sometimes the job is that straightforward, but often she opens the door to find what all G. R. A.s dread: a “trashed” room. “They eat and they leave all the trash everywhere: cans, food,” she said, gesturing with her hands. She was seated at a folding table in a trailer parked in the lot of the Las Vegas Culinary Workers Union. “Especially the bachelor party. Oh, my God, those are bad. ” Because she is a member of the union, the job pays her $17. 65 an hour. The Culinary Workers Union Local 226, chartered in 1935, is the largest union in Nevada, representing 57, 000 men and women from 167 countries (its membership is 56 percent Latino and 81 percent people of color) among them cooks, bartenders, cocktail servers, porters, bellmen and attendants. The average wage of a worker is $23 an hour, compared with the $10 an hour made by a nonunionized Las Vegas hospitality worker or the $6 an hour Almada, who is 42 and who moved to the United States from the Mexico border town of Agua Prieta (she got her green card when she was 11, and became a citizen when she was 22) was paid at her last job in a factory in Tucson. She said she was fired from that job for taking two months’ maternity leave, which prompted her and her (now former) husband to move to Las Vegas. They had heard that there were jobs at the casinos, where 90 percent of the hospitality work force on the Strip belong to the culinary union. But it was only after they divorced and she needed to support herself and her three children that Almada applied for her job at the Aria. That was six years ago. Almada enumerates all the ways that the job and its attendant union membership has improved her life: free health insurance and pharmacy benefits a pension job security and soon a $20, 000 down payment she will use to buy her first house. Initially she didn’t understand the benefits and regulations the union conferred. This is a common reason workers can still be taken advantage of, particularly those who don’t speak English. For the past seven months, though, Almada has been on an extended, contractually allowed, leave of absence to serve as an organizer at Mandalay Bay Casino she is teaching other workers to read and understand their own contracts. “I never had these rights in Arizona,” she said. “Because I had my little one, they fired me and nobody helped me. If I was working here with the union, that doesn’t happen to me. ” Amanda Fortini is a contributing editor at Elle magazine and a visiting lecturer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Boston • The Pipe Fitter By Carlo Rotella From the job site in Roxbury where he works as a union pipe fitter, Nate Awan can see the building that once housed the Phillis Wheatley Middle School, from which he was expelled for fighting and other misbehavior. “That was back in my knucklehead time,” he said. The fifth child of an overwhelmed single mother, Awan was kicked out of four schools and took a bullet in the shoulder before going to prison at 18 for trying to shoot a rival gang member. While serving a sentence, he resolved that he would change his fate. With the help of a former prosecutor who took an interest in his rehabilitation, Awan found his way into Operation Exit, a program founded in 2014 in which the city of Boston partners with unions to channel residents with criminal backgrounds into the trades. Having sampled carpentry, work and other options, Awan, who had always been fascinated by welding but doesn’t like heights, chose pipe fitting over iron work. There’s plenty of politics in the building trades, but there’s also an ethos of craft meritocracy. “It’s not what you look like, it’s what your clevis hangers look like,” Awan said, referring to the brackets used to support pipes. “All at the same level, nothing crooked. It’s about your work ethic. ” He’s already planning to get his son into the local when he’s old enough. Awan, who is 28 and currently a apprentice making $30 an hour plus benefits, can become a journeyman in three years, and he looks forward to continuing up the scale of seniority and pay toward the top rate of $50 or so an hour. He still lives near the Four Corners section of Dorchester where he grew up, but he’s shopping for a house outside the city. “You come from no money for food, nothing, to where you’re buying a house, buying a car,” he said. “Your son needs a school uniform, you can get him one. ” Boston’s mayor, Martin Walsh, intends Operation Exit to enable this kind of transformation of prospects and consciousness. Walsh, who also grew up in Dorchester and had his own troubles (a bullet grazed his leg) before putting his life on course in the building trades, says: “We’ve had 80 graduates come through this program, and we’re expanding from the building trades into coding and culinary arts. Some of these guys were impact players on the street. It has an effect. ” Programs that reduce crime by connecting offenders and potential offenders to meaningful work are getting more attention across the country. Some, like Operation Exit, focus on after prison others, like the Chicago CRED initiative recently started by the Emerson Collective and Arne Duncan, the former U. S. secretary of education, try to reduce gun violence by teaching job and life skills to young men adrift from both school and the labor market. It takes a significant investment of time and resources to shift a life from a trajectory to a viable future in this way, but Awan testifies to the approach’s effectiveness. “I’m no surgeon or prosecutor,” he said, “but for me — a product of his environment, taken from my mother at 9, incarcerated at 18, sweeping and mopping in the hole in prison for 19 cents an hour, living like a peasant — this here is a lottery ticket. ” Carlo Rotella is the director of American studies at Boston College and the author, most recently, of “Playing in Time. ”

Posted on October 30, 2016 by Carol Adl in News , US // 0 Comments Bernie Sanders sent a letter to President Barack Obama on Friday requesting that he intervene to protect Native Americans who have been peacefully protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. In a statement issued on his official U.S. Senate website, Sanders asked Obama to halt construction of the pipeline until federal officials properly conduct a cultural and environmental review. Recommended President Barack Obama has sneakily approved the construction of two new Dakota pipelines just as the DoJ halted the construction on the existing one. (1 hour ago) At least 140 people were arrested at the construction site on Wednesday after hundreds of police in riot gear moved in with tanks, using sound cannons, pepper spray and rubber bullets. Sanders.Senate.gov reports: Hundreds of Native American protectors have gathered at the site since April to protest the pipeline’s construction on land they claim is tribal under the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. “I urge you to take all appropriate measures to protect the safety of the Native Americans protesters and their supporters who have gathered peacefully to oppose the construction of the pipeline,” Sanders wrote in the letter. Recommended Bernie Sanders joined protests in support of Native American activists who are striving to stop construction of a North Dakota pipeline. (1 hour ago) Sanders asks that President Obama direct the Justice Department to send observers to the site to protect protestors’ safety and First Amendment rights; call North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple to remove the National Guard from the protest camp; and direct the Army Corps of Engineers to issue an order to stop work on construction of the pipeline near the protest site to reduce tensions while awaiting judicial action. Sanders again called on the president to suspend construction of the pipeline until the Army Corps of Engineers completes a full cultural and environmental review. “It is deeply distressing to me that the federal government is putting the profits of the oil industry ahead of the treaty and sovereign rights of Native American communities,” Sanders wrote. “Mr. President, you took a bold and principled stand against the Keystone pipeline – I ask you to take a similar stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline.” Sanders previously called on the president to block construction of the pipeline during a rally outside the White House with leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other tribal nations in September.

Google has revealed a new jobs section for their search engine, which will allow users to find job listings in their area, along with commute times and employer ratings. [“At Google this year, we announced Google for Jobs, a new initiative focused on helping both job seekers and employers, through collaboration with the job matching industry,” declared Google in an official blog post on Tuesday. “One major part of this effort is launching an improved experience for job seekers on Google Search. We’re happy to announce this new experience is now open for all developers and site owners. ” “For queries with clear intent like [head of catering jobs in nyc] or [entry level jobs in DC] we’ll show a job listings preview, and each job can expand to display comprehensive details about the listing,” they continued. “If you already publish your job openings on another site like LinkedIn, Monster, DirectEmployers, CareerBuilder, Glassdoor, and Facebook, they are eligible to appear in the feature as well. ” Employers will be able to list their available positions on the search engine, along with their company logo, job details, and reviews and ratings from current employees. Users looking for a job will be able to filter terms and positions in their determined location, allowing them to find more specific openings than other job listing sites. “For added convenience going forward with any job hunt, it will also be possible to turn on alerts for a particular job search, with Google sending a notification via email when relevant new positions are advertised online,” explained TechRadar. “We should hopefully see this functionality introduced in the UK (and other territories) before too long, but for now, as mentioned, this is a proposition. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.

He won six N. B. A. championships, is the greatest scorer ever and once netted 38 points while battling the flu. The logo of a sneaker brand is a silhouette of him flying through the air. But on Twitter, Michael Jordan is a loser. For the past two years, a photograph of Jordan crying, snapped at his 2009 induction into basketball’s Hall of Fame, has been grafted onto any sports figure who has suffered humiliation or defeat. No one is seemingly safe from the Crying Jordan treatment. When the New England Patriots lost to the Denver Broncos in the N. F. L. playoffs this year, Tom Brady got Crying Jordaned. He’s joined by the University of North Carolina mascot Rameses and the Villanova band member who cried as she played the piccolo during her team’s stunning N. C. A. A. tournament defeat last year. Recently, Jordan’s cry face has transcended sports. It has graced the cracked Liberty Bell, losing Powerball numbers and that picture of Marco Rubio on a gigantic chair. When it was announced that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, the president’s face got hit. Now you can Crying Jordan your friends: The “Crying Jordan Meme Generator” app, which serves up little Crying Jordan cutouts, has been downloaded more than 40, 000 times since its February release. The internet thrives on humiliation. Twitter is always raring for a public shaming. The Crying Jordan meme, which takes one of America’s biggest sports stars and makes him small, indulges those impulses, but it also works on another level as a corrective to online . The meme’s hold over online culture offers clues about our ambivalent relationship to alpha males in 2016. “It takes somebody so good, so dominant — the crème de la crème — and it makes him into an international figure of epic failure,” said David Okun, a software developer who created the app. “That’s what’s so great about it. ” But the Crying Jordan meme radiates affection even as it burns. “Memes are used as a weapon,” said Limor Shifman, a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who studies digital culture. “But at the very same time, the weapon creates a kind of affinity between the groups that are fighting, because everybody gets the joke. ” By the way, “Michael actually thinks it’s funny,” his spokeswoman, Estee Portnoy, said. The meme pokes fun at a person’s failures, but it also turns them into an game, one in which everyone messes up, and everyone receives the same absurd rebuke. It helps that the Crying Jordan often mercifully obscures the shamed person’s face. It’s a little like putting a over a . If the meme drags Michael Jordan’s image down with it, his persona can take the hit. “It doesn’t make you feel bad, like a picture of a crying kid would,” said Courtney M. Cox, who studies the intersection of sports and technology at the University of Southern California. “He’s the greatest basketball player ever. The lowest we’ve ever seen him is crying at the Hall of Fame. ” Crying Jordan recalls other memes inspired by famous men caught in introspective moments. There is Sad Kanye, a meme based on a candid photograph of Kanye West looking dejected on a tour, and Sad Keanu, which plays off a paparazzi photo of Keanu Reeves eating a sandwich alone. “There’s an element of flawed masculinity at play,” Ms. Shifman said. “You have a masculine star who expresses vulnerability, and people simultaneously mock and celebrate that. ” The Jordan meme can be read as straightforwardly emasculating: Watch a grown man cry. But it also works as a criticism of traditional maleness. The meme revels in the contradiction between Jordan’s legendarily aggressive persona and his tears. The joke probably couldn’t work with any other sports star: Magic Johnson was a passer, Tom Brady is a but Jordan’s dominance on the court was matched only by his nerve. He came back from retirement — twice. And his Hall of Fame speech, in which he resurrected old feuds, extended that reputation. “Jordan is the ultimate alpha male, and this was his alpha male moment,” a columnist for ESPN wrote after the event. Only in the snapshot does he look oddly pitiful: eyes red, shoulders slouched, cheeks shiny with tears. The meme makes fun at the guy who cried like a little girl over what a big man he was. It’s not a coincidence that the Jordan meme took off just as N. B. A. stars used the sport’s biggest stages to model humility and playfulness. Modern masculinity in basketball is Kevin Durant, the most valuable player of 2014, calling his mother “the real M. V. P. ” It’s Stephen Curry ceding the spotlight to his daughter Riley at a news conference. The meme seems to share that sense of perspective. Some iterations of the Jordan meme work as bizarre visual gags: replacing Michael Jackson on the cover of “Thriller” making up James Harden’s beard with layer upon layer of Crying Jordans. Other variations rely on sheer volume: As the Oklahoma City Thunder stumbled in the N. B. A. playoffs, every Thunder fan visible in the stands became a target. Perhaps the most technologically advanced and contextually creative Crying Jordan plays off LeBron James’s pregame ritual. When he tosses some chalk above his head, an ephemeral Crying Jordan appears, then dissipates into the air. When Jordan made a rare public appearance in April, showing up at an N. C. A. A. tournament game at his alma mater, North Carolina, the meme threatened to turn meta. Sure enough, the Tar Heels were upset and, in countless tweets, so was Jordan. “Memes, they come and they go, but this is unlike any I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Okun, the app’s creator, said. “It keeps feeling like it’s going to die, and it doesn’t. It only gets bigger. ” He added, “I hope it never stops. ” After all, the meme has helped extend Jordan’s legacy, if not exactly honor it. “I just hope that when kids say: ‘Mommy? Daddy? Who’s that crying basketball guy? ’,” Mr. Okun said. “They tell them: ‘That’s the greatest basketball player of all time. That’s Michael Jordan. ’”

During Saturday’s Democratic Weekly Address, House Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Representative Linda Sánchez ( ) stated, ” Recently we have seen the President use fear — fear of Muslims and fear of immigrants — as a tool to promote his misguided and poorly developed policies. Policies that not only undermine our American values, but also jeopardize our safety and harm our economy. ” Transcript as Follows: “Hello. I’m California Congresswoman Linda Sánchez, Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus. I am proud to share my family’s story because it is an American story. I am the daughter of immigrants. My parents came here from Mexico. Like so many immigrants, my parents came to this country and worked hard every day to provide for me, my six brothers and sisters. My father, Ignacio, was an industrial mechanic. My mother, Maria, became an elementary school teacher after first raising a family. They owned their own home. They sent all seven of their children to college. And we give back every day to this country we love. In fact — my parents are the only parents in our nation’s history to send — not one — but TWO daughters to the United States Congress! My mother and father saved and sacrificed to achieve the American Dream for our family. They weren’t handed their success — they earned it! Immigrants, like my parents, are working and contributing to the success of our country every day. They are starting businesses which create jobs, caring for our children and aging parents, serving in our military, and they harvest and prepare the food we eat. Immigrants are woven into the fabric of our country because we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. Recently we have seen the President use fear — fear of Muslims and fear of immigrants — as a tool to promote his misguided and poorly developed policies. Policies that not only undermine our American values, but also jeopardize our safety and harm our economy. Democrats agree that removing violent criminals should be the priority. But tearing families apart through mass deportations does not make our country safer and wastes our precious resources. Banning refugees who have already been thoroughly vetted wastes resources. Building useless walls instead of fixing our roads and bridges wastes resources. We cannot let the politics of fear and suspicion, distract us from our priorities. Democrats want to make this country work for all Americans. We believe in making America greater by fighting for economic growth that benefits everyone. Our agenda is simple: Keep America safe, keep America working, and keep America moving forward. And I know that so many of you share those same priorities. Over the past month, millions of Americans are getting involved and taking action in their communities. We have seen organized demonstrations in cities all across our country. Men and women from every walk of life coming together to stand up and speak out against a hateful and divisive agenda. They are sending a clear message: We will resist. We will persist. It was volunteer lawyers with laptops sitting on cold airport floors that led the fight against the President’s reckless Muslim ban. It was a group of entrepreneurial women who organized a march in Washington with crowds surpassing the inauguration. President Lincoln said, ‘Public sentiment is everything.’ Because in this country, it is the people who have the ultimate power. I beg you, keep flexing your power. The fight we are in right now is not a fight over politics. It is a fight for the future of our country. And we are in this fight together. If you share our commitment to the success of working men and women all across our nation, stay with us in this fight. Do not give up hope. Do not give in to anger and fear. Do not stop fighting for what you think is best for our country. If we keep up the fight — we will win. And together we will make our country even greater. Thank you. And may God bless the United States of America. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

1212 Views November 07, 2016 5 Comments Blog, Community News and Announcements The Saker It is with great sadness that we, the Saker Community, have decided to sever our ties with the German Saker blog. For many years the German Saker blog has been one of the most successful and dedicated blogs of our community and we want to sincerely thank Dagmar Henn for the superb job she did as the person in charge of this blog. Recently, however, the German Saker blog has taken a very different tone and has made a number of accusations and statements which have convinced us that we need to part ways. We do that with great sadness. We reserve the right to start another “community approved” German Saker blog in the future with a different domain name and we express the hope that the current administrators of the so-called “saker.de 2.0″ will agree to stop using the word “saker” in their domain and blog name. Any future use of that word by the “saker.de 2.0″ would be morally illegitimate and misleading. Signed: French Saker blog, Italian Saker blog, Latin American Saker blog, Oceania Saker blog, Russian Saker blog, Serbian Saker blog, The Saker The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world $27.95

An education watch coalition of grassroots parents and other citizens representing 27 states is letting the Senate know its concerns about education department secretary nominee Betsy DeVos. [With DeVos’ confirmation hearing rescheduled to begin January 17, members of Education Liberty Watch have sent a letter detailing their concerns to Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander ( ) ranking member Sen. Patty Murray ( ) and the committee’s other members. “This national coalition of grassroots parent and citizen organizations has many questions and concerns about Betsy DeVos,” the group’s president, Dr. Karen Effrem, tells Breitbart News. “Chief among them is her apparent very recent conversion to opposing Common Core when her activist and philanthropic record shows concrete evidence of strong support for the standards over many years. ” While, upon her nomination, DeVos launched a new website on which she stated she is “certainly” not a supporter of Common Core, she has served on boards and funded organizations that have been vocal supporters of the standards. Additionally, she has been strongly endorsed by former GOP presidential candidate and Common Core promoter Jeb Bush, his mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush, former GOP presidential nominee and “ ” Mitt Romney, former education secretary William Bennett — who received compensation for promoting Common Core among conservatives, the Core Michigan Chamber of Commerce, and the Bill Fordham Institute, which has also promoted Common Core. “There is also great concern about her support of voucher programs imposing Common Core on private and potentially home schools, and extensive student data mining,” Effrem continues. “These concerns are especially acute given Trump’s encouraging and repeated promises to get rid of Common Core, protect privacy and decrease or eliminate the federal role in education. ” Effrem summarizes the letter and the group’s concerns: 1) From all the evidence we can find, her statement when she was appointed on November 23rd was her very first against Common Core. Her statements and record via organizations that she has founded, funded, chaired, or on whose boards she has served and her political contributions have all been in support of Common Core and Core candidates. Her statement and her interview with Donald Trump focused on “higher standards” which is a euphemism for Common Core, even though there is abundant evidence that the Common Core standards are anything but high. 2) Her American Federation for Children group has been strongly in support of state voucher laws in Indiana and Louisiana or federal Title I portability that imposes or would impose Common Core on private schools via the federally mandated state assessments. The education savings accounts that she touts could well place government regulations on home schooling for “accountability” purposes. 3) Although a strong supporter of charter schools, it appears she has never financially supported classical charter schools like the Hillsdale model in her own home state, only charters that require the teaching and testing of Common Core. 4) The Philanthropy Roundtable that she chaired until her appointment put out a report that is strongly in favor of extensive data mining of children without transparency of what data is collected and who receives it or parental consent and never mentions the word “privacy. ” 5) We are also concerned about continued expansion of invasive, subjective social emotional learning programs at the federal level and need to know her position on those. “We strongly urge the Senate HELP Committee to closely question her about these critical issues,” Effrem says.

Donald Trump appeared at three inaugural balls to celebrate his supporters’ victory, and to promise a determined push for their shared campaign goals. [“Well, we did it,” he told a cheering crowd at his first speech, given at the Liberty Ball. He continued: Now the work begins. There are no game, no games, right? We’re not playing games. I want to thank everybody. We love you. We’re going to be working for you, and we’re going to be producing results. “Now the work begins,” he said at his second speech, given at the Freedom Ball. “We did a good job together … there has never been a movement like this anywhere in the world,” he told his enthusiastic supporters. “We will not be taken advantage of anymore. We’re going to have those great companies come pouring back in,” Trump said. “We are not going to let you down. Remember the theme: Make America Great Again … greater than ever before — it will happen,” he said. Trump also promised to keep Tweeting, saying: Should I keep the Twitter going or not? Should I keep it going? … You know, the enemies keep saying ‘Oh no, that’s terrible.’ But it is a way of bypassing dishonest media, right? The White House pool report said thousands of people attended both rallies.

WASHINGTON — In naming Stephen K. Bannon to a senior White House post, Donald J. Trump has elevated the nationalist movement that Mr. Bannon has nurtured for years from the fringes of American politics to its very heart, a remarkable shift that has further intensified concern about the new administration’s direction. The provocative news and opinion website that Mr. Bannon ran, Breitbart News, has repeatedly published articles linking migrants to the spread of disease. Its authors have criticized politicians who do not support a religious test for immigrants to screen out potential jihadists. And it has promoted stories that tried to tie Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton who is Muslim, to Islamic militants. In an interview, Mr. Bannon, 62, rejected what he called the “ ” tendencies of some in the movement. His interest in populism and American nationalism, he said, has to do with curbing what he sees as the corrosive effects of globalization. And he believes his enemies are misstating his views and those of many Trump followers. “These people are patriots,” he said. “They love their country. They just want their country taken care of. ” He added, “It’s not that some people on the margins, as in any movement, aren’t bad guys — racists, . But that’s irrelevant. ” Some of Mr. Bannon’s own statements and behavior have drawn the condemnation of faith leaders and groups, which reacted to his appointment with alarm on Monday. Jewish groups pointed to allegations from Mr. Bannon’s that he had made comments about the students at his daughter’s school. Critics have resurfaced other episodes from his past, including a 2011 interview in which he mocked liberals who criticize conservative women as “a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools. ” Mr. Bannon’s ascent has quickly become the focus of those critics, who broadly condemned the choice as divisive, if not racist, on Monday. But it was also a victory of dimensions for a man who is relatively new to the ’s inner circle. When Mr. Bannon joined Mr. Trump’s sputtering presidential campaign in August, he insisted to his friends that even if Mr. Trump lost, he could at least mitigate any damage to the nationalist movement, which he helped fuel as the head of Breitbart. Instead, that nationalist movement — which has promoted and enabled and racist sentiments — will now have a champion at Mr. Trump’s side in the West Wing. The place that Mr. Bannon will occupy in the new administration, as senior counselor and chief strategist, also elevates to one of the most powerful roles in government someone whose mission in politics has been to tear down institutions, not run them. His appointment was intended to be a reassuring signal to the vocal and restive members of Mr. Trump’s populist, base who are suspicious of power and anyone who holds it. Mr. Trump is their champion, but Mr. Bannon is their check against the Washington establishment and any efforts it makes to soften the new president’s resolve. Mr. Bannon does not come out of the usual political or ideological backgrounds that have shaped the Republican Party in recent decades. He is not a religious conservative who is focused on social issues. He is not a traditional economic conservative. What especially motivates Mr. Bannon, his friends and colleagues say, is a sense that the country’s cultural and political elite are contemptuous of ordinary Americans. That endeared him to Mr. Trump, who never felt he received the respect he deserved for building such a large political movement. That “arrogance of the elites,” as Mr. Bannon has said, explains why most of the media and political class missed the rise of Mr. Trump. Mr. Bannon’s disgust with the politics of the mainstream Republican Party burns just as hot as, if not hotter than, his animus toward liberals. He sees Republicans as the “party of Davos donors” and has scorned them for denigrating Trump supporters as the “vulgarians, the hobbits” and “the peasants with the pitchforks. ” He is close to Sarah Palin, and at one point he urged her to take up the kind of Republican versus Republican battle he relishes: a primary campaign against Senator John McCain, her 2008 running mate. (She declined.) He was behind some of the Trump campaign’s most inflammatory moves, like inviting several women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual advances to sit in Mr. Trump’s family box during a debate. He had never worked on a national campaign until signing on with Mr. Trump, and has had eclectic taste in careers. He served as a Navy officer and went into banking for Goldman Sachs. He also helped run Biosphere 2, the domed ecosystem in Arizona where people lived without contact with the outside world. Like many leaders of the emerging movement, he became engaged in politics with the rise of the Tea Party early in President Obama’s first term. He felt that the government’s bailout of the banking system was an egregious misuse of taxpayer dollars that did almost nothing to help ordinary Americans. His reason was personal: His father, a former telephone company lineman, had to sell off stock in his retirement account to make ends meet. Mr. Bannon has told people in Mr. Trump’s inner circle that the new administration will have a short window of time to push its agenda through and should focus first on the priorities that are expected to be the most contentious. Ever hungry for political combat, Mr. Bannon is expected to be an unrelenting advocate for many of Mr. Trump’s most aggressive plans on immigration. That involves stopping the immigration of Syrian refugees, deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records and devoting more resources to securing the border. Mr. Bannon, who grew up in a neighborhood in Norfolk, Va. earned degrees from Georgetown and Harvard. He often compares Mr. Trump’s political rise to that of Andrew Jackson, the military general and populist hero who took on the political and social elite of his day as the seventh president of the United States. While Mr. Trump became the leader of the movement of disaffected Americans who feel lost and disenfranchised in a nation undergoing rapid cultural and demographic change, Mr. Bannon has been a student of global populist trends, carefully tracking the rise of the National Front in France under Marine Le Pen and the remarkable victory of the U. K. Independence Party in Britain’s vote this year to leave the European Union. “Steve saw — and was a thought leader and a visionary about — the issues and the movement that Trump eventually caught on to and espoused,” said Larry Solov, the chief executive of Breitbart. “He’s like a field general,” Mr. Solov added, “and very much sees the fight for the soul of this country as a war. ” Mr. Bannon will take his White House job already at odds with the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, an ally of Mr. Priebus’s whom Mr. Bannon has long sought to undermine. When he ran Breitbart, Mr. Bannon promoted Mr. Ryan’s opponent in the Wisconsin primary in the website’s news stories and radio interviews. Mr. Bannon is personally close to members of Congress like Dave Brat, the Virginia Republican who unseated Eric Cantor, the former majority leader. He has written that the appropriations process under Mr. Ryan was “a total and complete sellout of the American people. ” His former colleagues at Breitbart refer to him admiringly as a “honey badger” because of his relentlessness — a quality they now expect him to turn on Washington. “What drives Steve,” said Joel B. Pollak, Breitbart’s editor at large, “is the way the political establishment is holding back American politics. ”

CNN and other outlets were in high dudgeon Friday afternoon after several news outlets were apparently excluded from a White House press gaggle, complaining that conservative, “ ” outlets like Breitbart News were allowed into the briefing. [Those excluded called it “absolutely unacceptable” and described it as an attack on the freedom of the press. CNN was blocked from WH @PressSec‘s media gaggle today. This is our response: pic. twitter. — CNN Communications (@CNNPR) February 24, 2017, CNN’s media correspondent Brian Stelter accused the Trump administration from trying to “ ” questions, defeating the media’s ability to hold the president accountable. Dean Baqeut, executive editor of the New York Times, said: “Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties. ” However, as the New York Times itself reported in 2015, President Barack Obama met privately with liberal reporters and columnists frequently throughout his tenure in office — “more than a dozen” times. And although he occasionally invited conservative columnists, “ columnists from newspapers tend to dominate at Mr. Obama’s secret sessions. ” Obama’s private briefings for liberal members of the media, which excluded conservatives, were . A few: On Friday, CNN media reporter Dylan Byers expressed concern at the alleged exclusion of media outlets. Yet in 2015, he wrote about the frequency of Obama’s private meetings with journalists. Byers noted that President Obama “holds the occasional meeting with conservatives,” but the list of “regulars” included a roster of prominent liberal journalists. Some at CNN NYT stood News when the Obama admin attacked us tried 2 exclude WH gaggle should be open to all credentialed orgs https: . — Bret Baier (@BretBaier) February 24, 2017, In reaction to the exclusion of some outlets from Friday’s briefing, Fox News’ Bret Baier noted that some journalists at CNN and the Times had stood up to the Obama administration when it tried to exclude Fox News from White House briefings. That is true — and admirable. The question of whether some outlets are being excluded from otherwise public briefings is a valid one — and, as of this writing, the White House has not yet clarified why some outlets were not included in the gaggle. Nevertheless, the New York Times‘ claim that “[n]othing like this has ever happened” is simply false — or “fake news. ” Update: The White House has denied claims that it excluded any outlets at all: White House Deputy Comms. Dir. Raj Shah denies reports of a gaggle block against CNN, NYT, Politico and others: pic. twitter. — ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) February 24, 2017, CNN’s Jake Tapper, host of The Lead, opened his show by calling Trump’s attitude toward the press “ . ” . @jaketapper: ”The White House does not value an independent press. There is a word for that: .” https: . pic. twitter. — The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) February 24, 2017, Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

References The Debate It started when Daniel Blatman, an Israeli historian and head of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, penned an op-ed for the Israeli daily Haaretz stating that ethnic cleansing “is exactly what happened in 1948.” To support this, Blatman cited Benny Morris: the Israeli historian, Blatman wrote, “determined that most of the Arabs in the country, over 400,000, were encouraged to leave or expelled in the first stage of the war—even before the Arab nations’ armies invaded.” [2] Benny Morris, October 30, 2007 ( Aude / CC BY-SA 2.0 ) That prompted a response from Morris, who wrote an op-ed of his own titled “Israel Conducted No Ethnic Cleansing in 1948”. In it, he contends that Blatman “distorts history when he says the new State of Israel, a country facing invading armies, carried out a policy of expelling the local Arabs.” And Blatman “betrayed his profession”, Morris further charged, “when he attributed to me things I have never claimed and distorted the events of the 1948 war.” Central to Morris’s argument is that “Blatman ignores the basic fact that the Palestinians were the ones who started the war when they rejected the UN compromise plan and embarked on hostile acts in which 1,800 Jews were killed between November 1947 and mid-May 1948.” Moreover, the neighboring Arab states had “threatened to invade even before the UN resolution was passed on November 29, 1947, and before a single Arab had been uprooted from his home.” Even prior to the adoption of General Assembly Resolution 181, which recommended partitioning Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states, they Arab states had continuously declared their intent “to attack the Jewish state when the British left.” He acknowledges that prior to the Zionists’ declaration of the existence of Israel on May 14, 1948, and the subsequent introduction of Arab states’ regular armies into the conflict, a few hundred thousand Arabs (though a number “apparently smaller” than the figure of 400,000 cited by Blatman) “were expelled from their homes and forced to flee”. How can it be true that, on one hand, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes and never allowed to return, yet also true, on the other, that there was no ethnic cleansing? Morris attempts to reconcile the apparent contradiction by arguing that “at no stage of the 1948 war was there a decision by the leadership of the Yishuv [the Jewish community] or the state to ‘expel the Arabs’”. In other words, it’s true that many Arabs were indeed expelled, but this was not the result of an official policy of the Zionist leadership. “It’s true that in the 1930s and early ‘40s”, Morris further acknowledges, “David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann supported the transfer of Arabs from the area of the future Jewish state. But later they supported the UN decision, whose plan left more than 400,000 Arabs in place. “It’s also true that from a certain point during the war, Ben-Gurion let his officers understand that it was preferable for as few Arabs as possible to remain in the new country, but he never gave them an order ‘to expel the Arabs.’” And, true, there was an “atmosphere of transfer that prevailed in the country beginning in April 1948”, but this “was never translated into official policy—which is why there were officers who expelled Arabs and others who didn’t. Neither group was reprimanded or punished. “In the end, in 1948 about 160,000 Arabs remained in Israeli territory—a fifth of the population.” Furthermore, “on March 24, 1948, Israel Galili, Ben-Gurion’s deputy in the future Defense Ministry and the head of the Haganah, ordered all the Haganah brigades not to uproot Arabs from the territory of the designated Jewish state. Things did change in early April due to the Yishuv’s shaky condition and the impending Arab invasion. But there was no overall expulsion policy—here they expelled people, there they didn’t, and for the most part the Arabs simply fled.” Morris acknowledges that the Zionist leadership in mid-1948 “adopted a policy of preventing the return of refugees”, but asserts this was “logical and just” on the grounds that these were the “same refugees who months and weeks earlier had tried to destroy the state in the making.” What happened in 1948 does not fit the definition of “ethnic cleansing”, Morris concludes. The Arab states, on the other hand, “carried out ethnic cleansing and uprooted all the Jews, down to the last one, from any territory they captured in 1948”, while the Jews “left Arabs in place in Haifa and Jaffa”, among other places. [3] Arabs leaving Haifa as Jewish forces enter the city ( Public Domain ) That wasn’t the end of the discussion. Blatman responded in turn with an op-ed titled “Yes, Benny Morris, Israel Did Perpetrate Ethnic Cleansing in 1948”. In it, he writes that, “On March 10, 1948, the national Haganah headquarters approved Plan Dalet, which discussed the intention of expelling as many Arabs as possible from the territory of the future Jewish state.” With regard to Morris’s denial that what occurred fits the definition of “ethnic cleansing”, Blatman quotes the prosecutor in the trial of Radovan Karadzic, a Bosnian-Serb leader convicted for the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia: In ethnic cleansing . . . you act in such a way that in a given territory, the members of a given ethnic group are eliminated. . . . You have massacres. Everybody is not massacred, but you have massacres in order to scare those populations. . . . Naturally, the other people are driven away. They are afraid . . . and, of course, in the end these people simply want to leave. . . . They are driven away either on their own initiative or they are deported. . . . Some women are raped and, furthermore, often times what you have is the destruction of the monuments which marked the presence of a given population . . . for instance, Catholic churches or mosques are destroyed. In other words, contrary to Morris’s argument, it doesn’t follow that, since there is no document in which the Zionist leadership explicitly outlined a plan to expel all Arabs or in which military commanders were instructed to do so, therefore what occurred was not ethnic cleansing. What the prosecutor describes is exactly what happened in 1948, Blatman notes: “Implied instructions, silent understandings, sowing fear among the population whose flight is the objective; the destruction of the physical presence left behind.” Blatman quotes from Morris’s book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 : The attacks of the Haganah and the Israel Defense Forces, expulsion orders, the fear of attacks and acts of cruelty on the part of the Jews, the absence of assistance from the Arab world and the Arab Higher Committee, the sense of helplessness and abandonment, orders by Arab institutions and commanders to leave and evacuate, in most cases was the direct and decisive reason for the flight—an attack by the Haganah, Irgun, Lehi or the IDF, or the inhabitants’ fear of such an attack. Blatman adds, “The expulsions were not war crimes, says Morris, because it was the Arabs who started the war. In other words, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who belong to the side that began the fighting have to be expelled. Maybe Morris would agree that the genocide carried out by the Germans against the Herero in 1904–1908 was justified since, after all, the Herero began the rebellion against German colonialism in Namibia.” [4] Next to weigh in on the debate was Steven Klein, a Haaretz editor and adjunct professor at Tel Aviv University’s International Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation. Klein notes how Morris himself, in a 1988 essay titled “The New Historiography”, had explained how under Plan D, the Zionist forces “cleared various areas completely of Arab villages”, and how “Jewish atrocities . . . and the drive to avenge past misdeeds also contributed significantly to the exodus.” A Palestinian woman and child (Source: Hanini.org / CC BY 3.0 ) And in his book Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 , “Morris observed that Ben-Gurion’s views on ‘transfer as a legitimate solution to the Arab problem’ did not change after he publicly declared support for forced expulsions in the 1930s, but that ‘he was aware of the need, for tactical reasons, to be discreet.’ Thus, so it seemed, he explained how Ben-Gurion could be responsible for the expulsion of many of the 700,000 Palestinian Arabs without ever issuing an order to that effect.” Then in a 2004 Haaretz interview with journalist Ari Shavit, Morris had said, “A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them.” “Morris, of course, is welcome to change his political view”, Klein continues. “But he, like any other historian, must understand that he has left a paper trail that tells a substantially different narrative than the one he now advocates. The Benny Morris of 2016 seems to be doing what he once accused the ‘old historians’ of doing—interpreting history and downplaying Israeli misdeeds in order to defend Israel’s legitimacy.” [5] Next to chime in on the debate was Ehud Ein-Gil, who points out in his own Haaretz op-ed that among the Arabs who were allowed to remain were “15,000 Druze who had allied with Israel, 34,000 Christians, whom Israel treated decently so as not to anger its Western allies, and some Bedouin Muslim villages, whose leaders had allied with Israel or with their Jewish neighbors. “Of the 75,000 Muslims who remained (less than 15 percent of the prewar number), tens of thousands were internally displaced—people who had fled their villages or were expelled from them and have not been allowed to return to their homes to this day.” “Morris is right”, Ein-Gil continues, “when he mentions the ‘atmosphere of transfer’ that gripped Israel from April 1948, but he errs when he claims that this atmosphere was never translated into official policy.” He quotes the orders given to commanders in Plan D to either destroy villages or encircle and then mount “search-and-control operations” within them and, in the event of resistance, to expel all inhabitants. [6] Finally, Morris responded once more to his critics with a Haaretz article titled “‘Ethnic Cleansing’ and pro-Arab Propaganda”, in which he characterizes their articles as not reflecting “a serious way of writing history.” His own “opinions about the history of 1948 haven’t changed at all”, Morris asserts. He maintains that “Some Palestinians were expelled (from Lod and Ramle, for example), some were ordered or encouraged by their leaders to flee (from Haifa, for example) and most fled for fear of the hostilities and apparently in the belief that they would return to their homes after the expected Arab victory. “And indeed, beginning in June, the new Israeli government adopted a policy of preventing the return of refugees—those same Palestinians who fought the Yishuv, the prestate Jewish community, and tried to destroy it.” Morris contends, “In 1947–1948 there was no a priori intention to expel the Arabs, and during the war there was no policy of expulsion. There are clearly Israel-hating ‘historians’ like Ilan Pappe and Walid Khalidi, and perhaps also Daniel Blatman, going by what he has said, who see the Haganah’s Plan Dalet of March 10, 1948, as a master plan for expelling the Palestinians. It isn’t.” Rather, Plan D “was intended to craft strategy and tactics for the Haganah to maintain its hold on strategic roads in what was to become the Jewish state. It also sought to secure the borders in the run-up to the expected Arab invasion following the departure of the British. Blatman’s contention that Plan Dalet ‘discussed the intention of expelling as many Arabs as possible from the territory of the future Jewish state’ is a malicious falsification. These are the words of a pro-Arab propagandist, not of a historian.” Furthermore, Plan D “explicitly states that the inhabitants of villages that fight the Jews should be expelled and the villages destroyed, while neutral or friendly villages should be left untouched (and have forces garrisoned there). “As for Arab neighborhoods in mixed cities, the Haganah field commanders ordered that the Arabs of the outlying neighborhoods be transferred to the Arab centers of those cities, like Haifa, not expelled from the country.” Morris contends that, “if there had been a master plan and a policy of ‘expelling the Arabs,’ we would have found indications of this in the various operational orders to the combat units, and in the reports to the command headquarters, like ‘We carried out the expulsion in accordance with the master plan’ or ‘with Plan Dalet.’ There are no such mentions.” True, “there was an ‘atmosphere of transfer,’” but this was “understandable in light of the circumstances: constant attacks by Palestinian militias over four months and the expectation of an impending invasion by the Arab armies aimed at annihilating the Jewish state to be and perhaps the people as well.” This “necessitated occupation and the expelling of villagers who ambushed, sniped at and killed Jews along the borders and the main roads.” Moreover, “the vast majority of Arabs fled, and the officers of the Haganah/IDF had no need to face the decision of whether to expel them.” [7] On the night of April 7-8, under the command of Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini, Palestinian irregulars counterattacked the Haganah occupiers of Castel. The Palestinians are seen here moving to the counterattack. From Walid Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora, page 334. ( Public Domain ) Points of Agreement While there are a number of points on which Morris and his critics heatedly disagree, it’s imperative to begin by highlighting those facts that aren’t in dispute. First and foremost, it’s completely uncontroversial that hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes by the Zionist forces during the 1948 war—about 700,000, according to Morris, by the time it was done. Also uncontroversial is the fact that much of this flight and expulsion occurred well before the neighboring Arab states sent in their armies following the Zionists’ declaration of the existence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948. In his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 , Morris estimates the number of Arabs made refugees prior to May 14 at somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000. In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine , Israeli historian Ilan Pappé writes, “There were in fact 350,000 if one adds all of the population from the 200 towns and villages that were destroyed by 15 May 1948.” [8] This is consistent with Morris’s remark that the number was “apparently smaller” than 400,000. Another uncontroversial fact is that there was a prevailing “atmosphere of transfer” among the Zionist leadership—with “transfer” being a euphemism for the forced displacement of Arabs from their homes. As Morris notes in his book 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War , “an atmosphere of what would later be called ethnic cleansing prevailed”, and, to be sure, “much of the country had been ‘cleansed’ of Arabs” by the end of the war. [9] David Ben-Gurion issues the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, beneath a portrait of Theodor Herzl ( Rudi Weissenstein ) Indeed, the idea that the Arabs would have to go was an assumption inherent in the ideology of political Zionism. The Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl, who is considered the father of the movement, outlined the Zionist project in a pamphlet titled The Jewish State in 1896. [10] A year prior, he had expressed in his diary the need to rid the land of its Arab majority: “We shall have to spirit the penniless population across the border, by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” [11] In 1937, the British Peel Commission proposed that Palestine be partitioned into separate Jewish and Arab states, but there was a problem: there would remain an estimated 225,000 Arabs in the area proposed for the Jewish state. “Sooner or later there should be a transfer of land and, as far as possible, an exchange of population”, the Commission concluded. It proceeded to draw attention to the “instructive precedent” of an agreement between the governments of Greece and Turkey in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War of 1922 that determined that “Greek nationals of the Orthodox religion living in Turkey should be compulsorily removed to Greece, and Turkish nationals of the Moslem religion living in Greece to Turkey.” The Commission expressed its hope “that the Arab and the Jewish leaders might show the same high statesmanship as that of the Turks and the Greeks and make the same bold decision for the sake of peace.” [12] Of course, the Commission was not unmindful of “the deeply-rooted aversion which all Arab peasants have shown in the past to leaving the lands which they have cultivated for many generations. They would, it is believed, strongly object to a compulsory transfer . . . .” [13] OBSTACLE TO PEACE The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Jeremy R. Hammond Order Now Learn More As Morris notes in 1948 , “The fact that the Peel Commission in 1937 supported the transfer of Arabs out of the Jewish state-to-be without doubt consolidated the wide acceptance of the idea among the Zionist leaders.” [14] “Once the Peel Commission had given the idea its imprimatur, . . . the floodgates were opened. Ben-Gurion, Weizmann, Shertok, and others—a virtual consensus—went on record in support of transfer at meetings of the JAE [Jewish Agency Executive] at the Twentieth Zionist Congress (in August 1937, in Zurich) and in other forums.” [15] Chaim Weizmann, for example, in January 1941 told the Soviet ambassador to London, Ivan Maiskii, “If half a million Arabs could be transferred, two million Jews could be put in their place.” [16] The Zionist leader who would become Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, after the Peel Commission had recommended the “compulsory transfer” of Arabs, expressed his acceptance of the partition plan as a pragmatic first step toward the ultimate goal of establishing a Jewish state over all of the territory of Palestine. On October 5, 1937, he wrote to his son (underlined emphasis in original): Of course the partition of the country gives me no pleasure. But the country that they are partitioning is not in our actual possession; it is in the possession of the Arabs and the English. What is in our actual possession is a small portion, less than what they are proposing for a Jewish state. If I were an Arab I would have been very indignant. But in this proposed partition we will get more than what we already have, though of course much less than we merit and desire. . . . What we really want is not that the land remain whole and unified. What we want is that the whole and unified land be Jewish . A unified Eretz Israeli [ sic ] would be no source of satisfaction for me—if it were Arab. Acceptance of “a Jewish state on only part of the land”, Ben-Gurion continued, was “not the end but the beginning.” In time, the Jews would settle the rest of the land, “through agreement and understanding with our Arab neighbors, or through some other means ” (emphasis added). If the Arabs didn’t acquiesce to the establishment of a Jewish state in the place of Palestine, then the Jews would “have to talk to them in a different language” and might be “compelled to use force” to realize their goals. [17] “My approach to the solution of the question of the Arabs in the Jewish state”, said Ben-Gurion in June 1938, “is their transfer to Arab countries.” The same year, he told the Jewish Agency Executive, “I am for compulsory transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it.” [18] The idea of partitioning Palestine was resurrected by the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), which had drawn up the plan endorsed by the UN General Assembly in Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947. This plan, too, contained the inherent problem of a sizable population of Arabs who would remain within the boundaries of the proposed Jewish state. Benny Morris documents the attitude of the Zionist leadership with respect to this dilemma: The Zionists feared that the Arab minority would prefer, rather than move to the Arab state, to accept the citizenship of the Jewish state. And “we are interested in less Arabs who will be citizens of the Jewish state,” said Golda Myerson (Meir), acting head of the Jewish Agency Political Department. Yitzhak Gruenbaum, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive and head of its Labor Department, thought that Arabs who remained in the Jewish state but were citizens of the Arab state would constitute “a permanent irredenta.” Ben-Gurion thought that the Arabs remaining in the Jewish state, whether citizens of the Arab or Jewish state, would constitute an irredenta—and in the event of war, they would become a “Fifth Column.” If they are citizens of the Arab state, argued Ben-Gurion, “[we] would be able to expel them,” but if they were citizens of the Jewish state, “we will be able only to jail them. And it is better to expel them than jail them.” So it was better not to facilitate their receipt of Jewish state citizenship. But Ben-Gurion feared that they would prefer this citizenship. Eli‘ezer Kaplan, the Jewish Agency’s treasurer, added: “Our young state will not be able to stand such a large number of strangers in its midst.” [19] In sum, there was a consensus that such a sizable population of Arabs within the borders of their desired “Jewish state” was unacceptable. The events that followed must be analyzed within the context of this explicit understanding among the Zionist leadership that, one way or another, a large number of Arabs would have to go. Ruins of the former Arab village of Bayt Jibrin, in the West Bank west of Hebron. ( Public Domain ) Who Started the War? One of Morris’s main arguments underscoring his denial of ethnic cleansing is that it was the Arabs, not the Jews, who started the war after having rejected the UN partition plan. He points to hostile actions by the Arabs between the end of November 1947 and May 1948, but, of course, there were also hostile actions by the Jews during this same period. So is there a particular incident Morris can point to as having marked the initiation of these hostilities? In fact, in his book 1948 , he does point to a specific event. Early in the morning on November 30—the day after Resolution 181 was adopted in the UN General Assembly—an eight-man armed band from Jaffa ambushed a Jewish bus near Kfar Syrkin, killing five. Half an hour later, the gang attacked a second bus, killing two more. “These were the first dead of the 1948 War”, Morris writes. Yet Morris also acknowledges that these attacks were almost certainly “not ordered or organized by” the Arab Palestinian leadership. And “the majority view” in the intelligence wing of the Haganah—the Zionists’ paramilitary organization that later became the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)—“was that the attackers were driven primarily by a desire to avenge” a raid by the Jewish terrorist group Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang, on an Arab family ten days prior. Lehi “had selected five males of the Shubaki family and executed them in a nearby orange grove” as an act of revenge for the apparently mistaken belief that the Shubakis had informed the British authorities about a Lehi training session that prompted a British raid on the group in which five Jewish youths were killed. [20] So why wasn’t the murder of five Arabs by the Jewish terrorist organization the initiating act of hostility marking the start of the 1948 war, in Morris’s account? Clearly, to try to assess responsibility for the war by pinpointing this or that incident of tit-for-tat violence is an exercise in futility. Moreover, apart from overlooking the Zionists’ own acts of hostility, Morris’s claim that the Arabs started the war serves to remove the mutual hostilities that broke out in the wake of the General Assembly’s adoption of Resolution 181 from their larger context—and it is only within that larger context that a proper assessment of which side bore greater responsibility for the war can be made. As in the above example, Morris tends to portray Jewish violence against Arabs as always being preceded by Arab violence against Jews—even though, as just illustrated, it was equally true that the Arab violence had, in turn, been preceded by Jewish violence. Elsewhere, in contrast to how he characterizes Arab violence, Morris describes unambiguous war crimes committed by the Zionist forces as merely “mistakes”. Included among the Haganah’s “mistakes” was an attack on December 18, 1947, on the village of Khisas. Carried out with the approval of Yigal Allon, the commander of the Palmach (an elite unit within the Jewish army), Zionist forces invaded the village and indiscriminately murdered seven men, a woman, and four children. Morris describes this as a “reprisal” for the murder of a Jewish cart driver earlier that day, even though, as he superfluously notes, “None of the dead appear to have been involved in the death of the cart driver.” [21] Another of the Haganah’s “mistakes” occurred on the night of January 5, 1948, when Zionist forces entered the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Katamon and bombed the Semiramis Hotel, killing twenty-six civilians, including a government official from Spain. “The explosion triggered the start of a ‘panic exodus’ from the prosperous Arab neighborhood.” The British were furious, and Ben-Gurion subsequently removed the officer responsible from command. [22] Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war (Source: Hanini.org / CC BY 3.0 ) “But generally”, Morris continues, “Haganah retaliatory strikes during December 1947–March 1948 were accurately directed, either against perpetrators or against their home bases”—meaning the Arab villages where they lived. Thus, according to Morris’s own criteria, when the Haganah attacked an Arab village that happened to be home to one or more combatants and proceeded to go about “accurately” killing innocent civilians and destroying their homes, this was by no means a “mistake”. Instructively, Morris quotes a document from the intelligence wing of the Haganah on the consequences of what he describes as the “Jewish reprisals” that occurred during those months: “The main effect of these operations was on the Arab civilian population ” (emphasis added), the Haganah noted, including “the destruction of their houses” and psychological trauma. Among other consequences, “The Jewish attacks forced the Arabs to tie down great forces in protecting themselves ” (emphasis added). [23] Thus Morris’s characterization of Arabs as the aggressors and the Haganah as being on the defensive throughout this period is contradicted by his own account, citing primary source evidence that precisely the opposite was true. Indeed, Morris goes into considerable detail documenting how, in his own summation, “the Yishuv had organized for war. The Arabs hadn’t.” [24] Morris’s characterization of the Arabs as always being the aggressors and the Jews as being on the defensive, despite occasional “mistakes” such as those just noted, extends well prior to the onset of the 1948 war. While Lehi’s murder of five members of the Shubaki family on November 20 seems to fit Morris’s criteria for a “mistake”, he could, in turn, also point to Arab attacks on Jews that had occurred well prior to that incident. He writes, for example, that in the spring and summer of 1939 the Irgun Zvai Leumi, “which had been formed by activist breakaways from the Haganah, subjected the Arab towns to an unnerving campaign of retaliatory terrorism, with special Haganah units adding to the bloodshed through selective reprisals ” (emphasis added). [25] Once again we see that, while Morris doesn’t try to justify such acts of terrorism, he does characterize them as only occurring in retaliation for earlier acts of aggression by Arabs. Indeed, Morris could go back a decade prior, within this exercise of trying to pinpoint responsibility for the initiation of such tit-for-tat violence, and point to the 1929 massacre of Jews in Hebron; or, further, to May 1921, when Arab mobs murdered Jews in Jaffa; or further still, to April 1920, when Arab rioters killed five Jews in Jerusalem. There is no dispute that these earlier incidences of violence were initiated by Arabs. But the question remains of why they occurred. Did these murderous attacks reflect an inherent hatred of Jews among the Arab population? Or is there some other context that the debate Morris has had with his critics is still missing? The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination The Struggle for Palestine and the Roots of the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Jeremy R. Hammond An overview of the crucial period from the rise of the Zionist movement until the creation of the state of Israel. Order Now Learn More Those were questions the British occupiers asked themselves and conducted inquiries to try to answer. The inquiry into the outbreak of violence in 1921, the Haycraft Commission, determined that “there is no inherent anti-Semitism in the country, racial or religious. We are credibly assured by educated Arabs that they would welcome the arrival of well-to-do and able Jews who could help to develop the country to their advantage of all sections of the community.” [26] The outbreaks, rather, reflected the growing apprehension and resentment among the Arabs toward the Zionist project to reconstitute Palestine into a “Jewish state”—and in so doing to displace or otherwise disenfranchise and the land’s majority Arab population. Nor were the Arabs’ fears unfounded; indeed, the Zionists were quite open about their intentions. When the acting Chairman of the Zionist Commission was interviewed, for example, “he was perfectly frank in expressing his view of the Zionist ideal. . . . In his opinion there can only be one National Home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish predominance as soon as the numbers of that race are sufficiently increased.” [27] The Shaw Commission inquiring into the cause of the 1929 violence arrived at the same conclusion and further observed: In less than ten years three serious attacks have been made by Arabs on Jews. For eighty years before the first of these attacks there is no recorded instance of any similar incidents. It is obvious then that the relations between the two races during the past decade must have differed in some material respect from those which previously obtained. Of this we found ample evidence. The reports of the Military Court and of the local Commission which, in 1920 and in 1921 respectively, enquired into the disturbances of those years, drew attention to the change in the attitude of the Arab population towards the Jews in Palestine. This was borne out by the evidence tendered during our enquiry when representatives of all parties told us that before the War the Jews and Arabs lived side by side if not in amity, at least with tolerance, a quality which to-day is almost unknown in Palestine. [28] Morris likewise notes in 1948 that the attacks were chiefly motivated by “the fear and antagonism toward the Zionist enterprise”: “The bouts of violence of 1920, 1921, and 1929 were a prelude to the far wider, protracted eruption of 1936–1939, the (Palestine) Arab Revolt. Again, Zionist immigration and settlement—and the prospect of the Judaization of the country and possibly genuine fears of ultimate displacement—underlay the outbreak.” [29] As Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion wrote to the director of the agency’s Political Department, Moshe Shertok, in 1937, “What Arab cannot do his math and understand that immigration at the rate of 60,000 a year means a Jewish state in all of Palestine?” [30] As Morris also documents, Ben-Gurion understood the Arab perspective perfectly well. With respect to the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt, Ben-Gurion told his colleagues, “We must see the situation for what it is. On the security front, we are those attacked and who are on the defensive. But in the political field we are the attackers and the Arabs are those defending themselves. They are living in the country and own the land, the village. We live in the Diaspora and want only to immigrate [to Palestine] and gain possession of [ lirkosh ] the land from them.” [31] Ben-Gurion told Zionist leader Nahum Goldmann years later, after the establishment of Israel, “Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?” [32] Another aspect of Morris’s assessment that warrants emphasis is how he takes for granted that the UN partition plan was an equitable solution and that it was unreasonable of the Arabs to have rejected it. While accusing his critics of “pro-Arab propaganda”, this assumption reveals his own demonstrable prejudice toward the Palestinians. In truth, the UN partition plan was preposterously inequitable. Here, too, some additional historical background helps illuminate the context in which Resolution 181 was adopted, as well as the questions of why the 1948 war started and who bore greater responsibility for it. Lord Arthur Balfour in Tel Aviv, c. 1925 (from the G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection at the Library of Congress ) The Zionist Mandate for Palestine During the First World War, the British came to occupy the territory of Palestine, having conquered it from the defeated Ottoman Empire. On November 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour sent a letter to financier and representative of the Zionist movement Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild that contained a declaration approved by the British Cabinet. The declaration read: His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. This statement, which became known as “The Balfour Declaration”, was cited by the Zionist leadership as having legitimized their aspirations, which had been reiterated by Lord Rothschild just a few months prior, on July 18, in a memorandum that expressed “the principle that Palestine should be re-constituted as the National Home for the Jewish People.” Any opinion the Arabs might have had about their homeland being so “re-constituted” was of no consideration. [33] The purpose of the declaration was to secure Jewish support for the war effort. As Prime Minister Lloyd George noted, it was for “propaganda reasons”. The aforementioned 1937 British commission headed up by Lord William Peel explained that “it was believed that Jewish sympathy or the reverse would make a substantial difference one way or the other to the Allied cause. In particular Jewish sympathy would confirm the support of American Jewry . . . .” The Zionist leaders promised that, “if the Allies committed themselves to giving facilities for the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine, they would do their best to rally Jewish sentiment and support throughout the world to the Allied cause.” [34] “The fact that the Balfour the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917 in order to enlist Jewish support for the Allies and the fact that this support was forthcoming”, the Peel Commission further remarked, “are not sufficiently appreciated in Palestine.” [35] The wording “national home for the Jewish people” was chosen because it was not politically feasible for the British government to “commit itself to the establishment of a Jewish State” in the place of Palestine; the best it could do was to facilitate immigration and deny self-determination to the people of Palestine—the only one of the formerly mandated territories whose independence was not recognized—until such time as the Jews had managed to establish a majority. [36] The problem with this plan was that the Arabs recognized that the goal of the Zionist project “would ultimately tend to their political and economic subjection. The Arabs were aware that this prospect was definitely envisaged not only by the Zionists of the ‘extremist’ kind, . . . but also by more responsible representatives of Zionism, such as Dr. Eder, the acting chairman of the Zionist Commission . . . .” [37] The Peel Commission further acknowledged that “the forcible conversion of Palestine into a Jewish State against the will of the Arabs . . . would mean that national self-determination had been withheld when the Arabs were a majority in Palestine and only conceded when the Jews were a majority. It would mean that the Arabs had been denied the opportunity of standing by themselves: that they had, in fact, after an interval of conflict, been bartered about from Turkish sovereignty to Jewish sovereignty.” [38] In an effort to allay Arab apprehension and garner their support, as well, for the war effort, Western governments promised the people of the region their independence. In January 1918, President Woodrow Wilson outlined his “fourteen points”, promising respect for the right to self-determination and independence for the people living under Turkish rule: “The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development.” [39] On November 7, 1918, the British and French governments issued a joint declaration stating that “The object aimed at by France and Great Britain in prosecuting in the East the war let loose by German ambition is the complete and definite emancipation of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks, and the establishment of National Governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigenous populations.” [40] The British were not incognizant of the self-contradictory nature of its promises. In a memorandum to British Foreign Secretary George Curzon on August 11, 1919, Lord Balfour acknowledged the “flagrant” contradictions of British policy, but dismissed it as a matter of no concern: For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country . . . . The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, and far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. No declaration had been made by the British with regard to the inhabitants of Palestine, Balfour added, that “they have not always intended to violate”. [41] As the Peel Commission later noted, “It was never doubted that the experiment”—meaning the Zionist project—“would have to be controlled by one of the Great Powers; and to that end it was agreed . . . that Palestine should have its place in the new Mandate System . . . .” [42] The League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine was intended to give the color of law to Britain’s occupation and the policies enacted under its administration. It was not only favorable toward their goals, but was effectively written by the Zionists themselves. As the Peel Commission pointed out: On the 3rd February the Zionist Organisation presented a draft resolution embodying its scheme for the execution of the Balfour Declaration. On the 27th of February its leaders appeared before the Supreme Council and explained the scheme. A more detailed plan, dated the 28th of March, was drafted by Mr. Felix Frankfurter, an eminent American Zionist. From these and other documents and records it is clear that the Zionist project had already in those early days assumed something like the shape of the Mandate as we know it. [43] Not surprisingly, given the Zionists’ role in drafting the Mandate, it included the terms of the Balfour Declaration, charging the British with enacting policies to “secure the establishment of the Jewish national home”—including the facilitation of Jewish immigration—and requiring the British administration to consult and cooperate with the Jewish Agency toward that end. It contained no provisions assuring the Arab majority that they would have a say in the administration of their homeland by the foreign occupying power and its European colonialist partners. [44] The Arab Legion attacking the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, May 1948 ( John Phillips/Life Magazine ) The Expropriation of the Land As Theodor Herzl had envisioned, the Mandate facilitated the process of expropriation and removal of the poor Arab peasants by the Zionists, including by denying them employment. The Constitution of the Jewish Agency for Palestine signed in Zurich on August 14, 1920, stated: Land is to be acquired as Jewish property and . . . the title to the lands acquired is to be taken in the name of the Jewish National Fund [JNF], to the end that the same shall be held as the inalienable property of the Jewish people. . . . The Agency shall promote agricultural colonization based on Jewish labour, and in all works or undertakings carried out or furthered by the Agency, it shall be deemed to be a matter of principle that Jewish labour shall be employed . . . . [45] A 1930 report by Sir John Hope Simpson for the British government on immigration, land settlement, and development noted that, “Actually the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that the land has been extraterritorialised. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or to cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived for ever from employment on that land.” [46] The prejudice underlying the JNF’s policy blinded the Zionist leadership to the harm it also caused to Jewish landowners. The 1921 British Haycraft Commission report cited an example: [T]he Zionist Commission put strong pressure upon a large Jewish landowner of Richon-le-Zion to employ Jewish labour in place of the Arabs who had been employed on his farm since he was a boy. The farmer, we were told, yielded to this pressure with reluctance, firstly, because the substitution of Jewish for Arab labour would alienate the Arabs, secondly, because the pay demanded by the Jewish labourers, and the short hours during which they would consent to work, would make it impossible for him to run his farm at a profit. [47] Learn Real History and Economics. Get FREE Books. Join Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom today to get access to courses on how the economy really works and history the political establishment would prefer you didn’t know. Plus get 3 FREE books by award-winning journalist Jeremy R. Hammond. Learn More Relations between Jews and Arabs in the JNF colonies were contrasted by relations in the settlements of the Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association (PICA) funded by Baron Edmond de Rothschild. The 1930 Hope Simpson Report observed: In so far as the past policy of the P.I.C.A. is concerned, there can be no doubt that the Arab has profited largely by the installation of the colonies. Relations between the colonists and their Arab neighbours were excellent. In many cases, when land was bought by the P.I.C.A. for settlement, they combined with the development of the land for their own settlers similar development for the Arabs who previously occupied the land. All the cases which are now quoted by the Jewish authorities to establish the advantageous effect of Jewish colonization on the Arabs of the neighbourhood, and which have been brought to notice forcibly and frequently during the course of this enquiry, are cases relating to colonies established by the P.I.C.A., before the KerenHeyesod [JNF] came into existence. In fact, the policy of the P.I.C.A. was one of great friendship for the Arab. Not only did they develop the Arab lands simultaneously with their own, when founding their colonies, but they employed the Arab to tend their plantations, cultivate their fields, to pluck their grapes and their oranges. As a general rule the P.I.C.A. colonization was of unquestionable benefit to the Arabs of the vicinity. It is also very noticeable, in travelling through the P.I.C.A. villages, to see the friendliness of the relations which exist between Jew and Arab. It is quite a common sight to see an Arab sitting in the verandah of a Jewish house. The position is entirely different in the Zionist colonies. [48] Had the Jewish settlement in Palestine proceeded along the lines of the PICA colonies, history would undoubtedly have been very different. Alas, it was the policies of the JNF that came to characterize the nature of the colonization project. As the Hope Simpson Report noted: At the moment this policy is confined to the Zionist colonies, but the General Federation of Jewish Labour is using every effort to ensure that it shall be extended to the colonies of the P.I.C.A., and this with some considerable success. . . . It will be a matter of great regret if the friendly spirt which characterized the relations between the Jewish employer in the P.I.C.A. villages and his Arab employees . . . were to disappear. Unless there is some change of spirit in the policy of the Zionist Organisation it seems inevitable that the General Federation of Jewish Labour, which dominates that policy, will succeed in extending its principles to all the Jewish colonies in Palestine. . . . The Arab population already regards the transfer of lands to Zionist hands with dismay and alarm. These cannot be dismissed as baseless in the light of the Zionist policy . . . . [49] Another aspect of the Zionists’ land purchases was how it disenfranchised Arab inhabitants who had theretofore been living on and working the land. This was achieved by exploiting feudalistic Ottoman land laws. Under the Ottoman Land Code of 1858, the state effectively claimed ownership of the land and individuals were regarded as tenants. Subsequently, the law was amended so individuals could register for a title-deed to the land, but landholders often saw no need to do so unless they were interested in selling. Moreover, there were incentives not to register, including the desire to avoid granting legitimacy to the Ottoman government, to avoid paying registration fees and taxes, and to evade possible military conscription. Additionally, land lived on and cultivated by one individual or family was often registered in the name of another, such as local government magnates who registered large plots or even entire villages in their own names. [50] The British Shaw Commission report of 1929 described another common means by which the rightful owners of the land were legally disenfranchised: Under the Turkish regime, especially in the latter half of the eighteenth century, persons of the peasant classes in some parts of the Ottoman Empire, including the territory now known as Palestine, found that by admitting the over-lordship of the Sultan or of some member of the Turkish aristocracy, they could obtain protection against extortion and other material benefits which counterbalanced the tribune demanded by their over-lord as a return for his protection. Accordingly many peasant cultivators at that time either willingly entered into an arrangement of this character or, finding that it was imposed upon them, submitted to it. By these means persons of importance and position in the Ottoman Empire acquired the legal title to large tracts of land which for generations and in some cases for centuries had been in the undisturbed and undisputed occupation of peasants who . . . had undoubtedly a strong moral claim to be allowed to continue in occupation of those lands. [51] Much of the land acquired by the JNF was purchased from absentee landlords, with extreme prejudice toward the poor Arab inhabitants who by rights were its legitimate owners. [52] According to the Shaw Commission, no more than 10 percent of purchased land was acquired from peasants, the rest having been “acquired from the owners of large estates most of whom live outside Palestine”. [53] In the Vale of Esdraelon, for instance, “one of the most fertile parts of Palestine”, Jews purchased 200,000 dunams (more than 49,000 acres) from a wealthy family of Christian Arabs from Beirut (the Sursock family). Included in the purchase were 22 villages, “the tenants of which, with the exception of a single village, were displaced: 1,746 families or 8,730 people.” [54] As another example, in the Wadi el Hawareth area, the JNF purchased 30,826 dunams (more than 7,600 acres) and evicted a large proportion its 1,200 Arab inhabitants. [55] Suba Ruins of the Palestinian village of Suba, near Jerusalem, overlooking Kibbutz Zova, which was built on the village lands. ( Doron / CC BY-SA 3.0 ) Resolution 181 and the Early Phases of the 1948 War Despite their best efforts, by the end of the Mandate, the Jewish settlers had managed to acquire only about 7 percent of the land in Palestine. Arabs owned more land than Jews in every single district, including Jaffa, which included the largest Jewish population center, Tel Aviv. According to the UNSCOP report, “The Arab population, despite the strenuous efforts of Jews to acquire land in Palestine, at present remains in possession of approximately 85 percent of the land.” A subcommittee report further observed that “The bulk of the land in the Arab State, as well as in the proposed Jewish State , is owned and possessed by Arabs” (emphasis added). Furthermore, the Jewish population in the area of their proposed state was 498,000, while the number of Arabs was 407,000 plus an estimated 105,000 Bedouins. “In other words,” the subcommittee report noted, “at the outset, the Arabs will have a majority in the proposed Jewish State.” UNSCOP nevertheless proposed that the Arab state be constituted from about 44 percent of the whole of Palestine, while the Jews would be awarded about 55 percent for their state, including the best agricultural lands. The committee was not incognizant of how this plan prejudiced the rights of the majority Arab population. In fact, in keeping with the prejudice inherent in the Mandate, the UNSCOP report explicitly rejected the right of the Arab Palestinians to self-determination. The “principle of self-determination” was “not applied to Palestine,” the report stated, “obviously because of the intention to make possible the creation of the Jewish National Home there. Actually, it may well be said that the Jewish National Home and the sui generis Mandate for Palestine run counter to that principle.” [56] Given the proper historical context, we can now return to Benny Morris’s argument that “the Palestinians were the ones who started the war when they rejected the UN compromise plan and embarked on hostile acts”. This argument assumes that the Arabs’ rejection of the plan was somehow unreasonable. It was not . Morris’s argument also assumes that Resolution 181 somehow lent legitimacy to the Zionists’ goal of establishing a “Jewish state” in Palestine within the area proposed under UNSCOP’s plan. It did not . While it is a popular myth that the UN created Israel, the partition plan was actually never implemented. Resolution 181 merely recommended that Palestine be partitioned and referred the matter to the Security Council, where it died . Needless to say, neither the General Assembly nor the Security Council had any authority to partition Palestine against the will of the majority of its inhabitants. Although Resolution 181 was cited in Israel’s founding document as having granted legitimacy to the establishment of the “Jewish state”, in truth, the resolution neither partitioned Palestine nor conferred any legal authority to the Zionists for their unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948. [57] When Morris says that the Arabs states had declared their intent “to attack the Jewish state when the British left”, what he really means, therefore, is that they declared their intent to take up arms to prevent the Zionists from unilaterally declaring for themselves sovereignty over lands they had no rights to and politically disenfranchising the majority population of Palestine. Morris employs this same rhetorical device—a mainstay of Zionist propaganda—in his book 1948 to suggest that it was the Arabs who were the aggressors, while the Jews were simply defending themselves. For example, he emphasizes that “most of the fighting between November 1947 and mid-May 1948 occurred in the areas earmarked for Jewish statehood”—thus implying that most of the fighting occurred on land rightfully belonging to the Jews. However, the fact that most of the violence occurred within this area is completely irrelevant and tells us nothing about which side was guilty of aggression. After all, Arabs owned more land than Jews and much of this fighting took place in Arab villages and towns located within that same “earmarked” territory. It is largely on the basis of his assumption that the land proposed for the Jewish state under the partition plan was indeed rightfully the Jews’ that he can sustain his narrative that, “From the end of November 1947 until the end of March 1948, the Arabs held the initiative and the Haganah was on the strategic defensive.” [58] “Going into the civil war, Haganah policy was purely defensive”, Morris repeats—although he grants that “the mainstream Zionist leaders, from the first, began to think of expanding the Jewish state beyond the 29 November partition resolution borders”; and its “defensive policy” during the early months of the war “was dictated in part by a lack of means” as it “was not yet ready for large-scale offensive operations”. [59] But the Arabs initiated the violence, in Morris’s account, and the Haganah acted in self-defense while “occasionally retaliating against Arab traffic, villages, and urban neighborhoods.” [60] Ilan Pappé sheds some additional light on how the Haganah’s “defensive” operations were undertaken: The first step was a well-orchestrated campaign of threats. Special units of the Hagana would enter villages looking for ‘infiltrators’ (read ‘Arab volunteers’) and distribute leaflets warning the local people against cooperating with the Arab Liberation Army. Any resistance to such an incursion usually ended with the Jewish troops firing at random and killing several villagers. The Hagana called these incursions ‘violent reconnaissance’ ( hasiyur ha-alim ). . . . In essence the idea was to enter a defenceless village close to midnight, stay there for a few hours, shoot at anyone who dared leave his or her house, and then depart. [61] For example, on December 18, 1947, the Haganah attacked the village of Khisas at night, randomly blowing up houses with the occupants sleeping inside, killing fifteen, including five children. With a New York Times reporter having closely followed the events, Ben-Gurion issued a public apology and claimed the attack had been unauthorized; but “a few months later, in April, he included it in a list of successful operations.” [62] “Much of the fighting in the first months of the war”, writes Morris, “took place in and on the edges of the main towns—Jerusalem, Tel Aviv–Jaffa, and Haifa. Most of the violence was initiated by the Arabs. Arab snipers continuously fired at Jewish houses, pedestrians, and traffic and planted bombs and mines along urban and rural paths and roads.” He describes “several days of sniping and Haganah responses in kind”—a typical example of how he characterizes the Haganah’s violence as occurring in self-defense or as retaliation for earlier Arab attacks he identifies as having initiated any given round of fighting. [63] Pappé again offers some additional illumination that once again calls into question Morris’s assertion that it was the Arabs who were mostly responsible for initiating the violence. With respect to Haifa, Pappé writes: From the morning after the UN Partition Resolution was adopted, the 75,000 Palestinians in the city were subjected to a campaign of terror jointly instigated by the Irgun and the Hagana. As they had only arrived in recent decades, the Jewish settlers had built their houses higher up the mountain. Thus, they lived topographically above the Arab neighbourhoods and could easily shell and snipe at them. They had started doing this frequently since early December. They used other methods of intimidation as well: the Jewish troops rolled barrels full of explosives, and huge steel balls, down into the Arab residential areas, and poured oil mixed with fuel down the roads, which they then ignited. The moment panic-stricken Palestinian residents came running out of their homes to try to extinguish these rivers of fire, they were sprayed with machine-gun fire. In areas where the two communities still interacted, the Hagana brought cars to Palestinian garages to be repaired, loaded with explosives and detonating devices, and so wreaked death and chaos. A special unit of the Hagana, Hashahar (‘Dawn’), made up of mistarvim —literally Hebrew for ‘becoming Arab’, that is Jews who disguised themselves as Palestinians—was behind this kind of assault. The mastermind of these operations was someone called Dani Agmon, who headed the ‘Dawn’ units. On its website, the official historian of the Palmach puts it as follows: ‘The Palestinians [in Haifa] were from December onwards under siege and intimidation.’ But worse was to come. [64] Haifa before the ethnic cleansing (Source: PalestineRemembered.com ) Plan D Morris’s debate with his critics centers largely around “Plan D”, for “Dalet”, the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In contrast to what he describes as the Zionists’ “defensive” stage of the war, Plan D marked, by his own account, the beginning of their “war of conquest”. [65] Morris is correct that Plan D did not explicitly call for “expelling as many Arabs as possible from the territory of the future Jewish state”, as Blatman suggests. But neither did it order that “neutral or friendly villages should be left untouched”, as Morris contends. Under Plan D, brigade commanders were to use their own discretion in mounting operations against “enemy population centers”—meaning Arab towns and villages—by choosing between the following options: —Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously. —Mounting combing and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be wiped out and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state. [66] Thus, while Plan D allowed for Arab inhabitants to remain as long as they did not resist the takeover of their villages by the Zionist forces, it did not order Haganah commanders to permit them to stay under such circumstances—as Morris falsely suggests in the second of his responses in Haaretz . Nor is Morris incognizant of the critical distinction. In 1948 , he explicitly notes that “brigade commanders were given the option ” of destroying Arab villages (emphasis added)—which would obviously necessitate expelling their inhabitants—regardless of whether any of the villagers offered any resistance. “The commanders were given discretion whether to evict the inhabitants of villages and urban neighborhoods sitting on vital access roads”, Morris writes (emphasis added). “The plan gave the brigades carte blanche to conquer the Arab villages and, in effect, to decide on each village’s fate (emphasis added)—destruction and expulsion or occupation. The plan explicitly called for the destruction of resisting Arab villages and the expulsion of their inhabitants.” [67] As Ilan Pappé expounds, “Villages were to be expelled in their entirety either because they were located in strategic spots or because they were expected to put up some sort of resistance. These orders were issued when it was clear that occupation would always provoke some resistance and that therefore no village would be immune, either because of its location or because it would not allow itself to be occupied.” [68] By these means, by the time the war ended, the Zionist forces had expelled the inhabitants of and destroyed 531 villages and emptied eleven urban neighborhoods of their Arab residents. [69] Pappé further notes how the facts on the ground at the time challenge Morris’s characterization of the Zionist’s operations as having been “defensive” prior to the implementation of Plan D: The reality of the situation could not have been more different: the overall military, political and economic balance between the two communities was such that not only were the majority of Jews in no danger at all, but in addition, between the beginning of December 1947 and the end of March 1948, their army had been able to complete the first stage of the cleansing of Palestine, even before the master plan had been put into effect. If there were a turning point in April, it was the shift from sporadic attacks and counter-attacks on the Palestinian civilian population towards the systematic mega-operation of ethnic cleansing that now followed. [70] In Haaretz , Morris adds that in the larger urban areas with mixed populations, under Plan D, the orders were for the Arabs “to be transferred to the Arab centers of those cities, like Haifa, not expelled from the country.” Morris also writes that the Zionists “left Arabs in place in Haifa”, and he cites it as an example of a place where Arabs “were ordered or encouraged by their leaders to flee”—as opposed to them being expelled by the Zionist forces. But the details Morris provides in 1948 of what happened in Haifa tell an altogether different story. By the end of March 1948, most of the wealthy and middle-class families had fled Haifa. Far from ordering this evacuation, the Arab leadership had blasted those who fled as “cowards” and tried to prevent them from leaving. [71] Among the reasons for the flight were terrorist attacks by the Irgun that had sowed panic in Haifa and other cities. On the morning of December 30, 1947, for example, the Irgun threw “three bombs from a passing van into a crowd of casual Arab laborers at a bus stop outside the Haifa Oil Refinery, killing eleven and wounding dozens.” [72] (Ilan Pappé notes that “Throwing bombs into Arab crowds was the specialty of the Irgun, who had already done so before 1947.” [73] And as Morris points out, Arab militias took note of the methods of the Irgun and Lehi and eventually started copying them: “The Arabs had noted the devastating effects of a few well-placed Jewish bombs in Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa . . . .” [74] ) Arab laborers inside the plant responded by turning against their Jewish coworkers, killing thirty-nine and wounding fifty (several Arab employees did try to protect their Jewish co-workers). [75] The Haganah retaliated by targeted a nearby village that was home to many of the refinery workers. The orders were to spare the women and children, but to kill the men. “The raiders moved from house to house, pulling out men and executing them. Sometimes they threw grenades into houses and sprayed the interiors with automatic fire. There were several dozen dead, including some women and children.” Ben-Gurion defended the attack by saying it was “impossible” to “discriminate” under the circumstances. “We’re at war. . . . There is an injustice in this, but otherwise we will not be able to hold out.” [76] Marking “the start of the implementation of Plan D”, writes Morris, was Operation Nahshon in April 1948. [77] By this time, tens of thousands of Haifa’s seventy thousand Arabs had already fled. [78] The Haganah had been planning an operation in Haifa since mid-month, and when the British withdrew their troops from positions between Arab and Jewish neighborhoods on April 21, it provided the Haganah with the opportunity to put it into effect. [79] The Haganah fired mortars indiscriminately into the lower city, and by noon “smoke rose above gutted buildings and mangled bodies littered the streets and alleyways.” The mortar and machine gun fire “precipitated mass flight toward the British-held port area”, where Arab civilians trampled each other to get to boats, many of which were capsized in the mad rush. [80] The British high commissioner, Sir Alan Cunningham, described the Haganah’s tactics: “Recent Jewish military successes (if indeed operations based on the mortaring of terrified women and children can be classed as such) have aroused extravagant reactions in the Jewish press and among the Jews themselves a spirit of arrogance which blinds them to future difficulties. . . . Jewish broadcasts both in content and in manner of delivery, are remarkably like those of Nazi Germany.” [81] An elderly man and a girl, refugees of the 1948 war (Source: Hanini.org / CC BY 3.0 ) It was under these circumstances that the local Arab leaders sought to negotiate a truce, and in a British-mediated meeting in the afternoon on April 22, the Jewish forces proposed a surrender agreement that “assured the Arab population a future ‘as equal and free citizens of Haifa.’” [82] But the Arab notables, after taking some time to consult before reconvening, informed that they were in no position to sign the truce since they had no control over the Arab combatants in Haifa and that the population was intent on evacuating. Jewish and British officials at the meeting tried to persuade them to sign the agreement, to no avail. In the days that followed, nearly all of Haifa’s remaining inhabitants fled, with only about 5,000 remaining. While in his Haaretz article, Morris attributed this flight solely to orders from the Arab leadership to leave the city, in 1948 , he notes that other factors included psychological trauma from the violence—especially the Haganah’s mortaring of the lower city—and despair at the thought of living now as a minority under a people who had just inflicted that collective punishment upon them. Furthermore, “The Jewish authorities almost immediately grasped that a city without a large (and actively or potentially hostile) Arab minority would be better for the emergent Jewish state, militarily and politically. Moreover, in the days after 22 April, Haganah units systematically swept the conquered neighborhoods for arms and irregulars; they often handled the population roughly; families were evicted temporarily from their homes; young males were arrested, some beaten. The Haganah troops broke into Arab shops and storage facilities and confiscated cars and food stocks. Looting was rife.” [83] This, then, is the situation Morris is describing when he disingenuously writes in Haaretz that the Zionist forces “left Arabs in place in Haifa” and that Arabs fled Haifa because they were “ordered or encouraged by their leaders”. We can also compare Morris’s account of how the village of Lifta came to be emptied of its Arab inhabitants with Ilan Pappé’s. 1984 contains only one mention of Lifta, a single sentence in which Morris characterizes it as another example of how Arabs fled upon the orders of their leadership: “For example, already on 3–4 December 1947 the inhabitants of Lifta, a village on the western edge of Jerusalem, were ordered to send away their women and children (partly in order to make room for incoming militiamen).” [84] Pappé tells a remarkably different story, describing Lifta, with its population of 2,500, as “one of the very first to be ethnically cleansed”: Social life in Lifta revolved around a small shipping centre, which included a club and two coffee houses. It attracted Jerusalemites as well, as no doubt it would today were it still there. One of the coffee houses was the target of the Hagana when it attacked on 28 December 1947. Armed with machine guns the Jews sprayed the coffee house, while members of the Stern Gang stopped a bus nearby and began firing into it randomly. This was the first Stern Gang operation in rural Palestine; prior to the attack, the gang had issued pamphlets to its activists: ‘Destroy Arab neighbourhoods and punish Arab villages.’ The involvement of the Stern Gang in the attack on Lifta may have been outside the overall scheme of the Hagana in Jerusalem, according to the Consultancy [i.e., Ben-Gurion and his close advisors], but once it had occurred it was incorporated into the plan. In a pattern that would repeat itself, creating faits accomplis became part of the overall strategy. The Hagana High Command at first condemned the Stern Gang attack at the end of December, but when they realized that the assault had caused the villagers to flee, they ordered another operation against the same village on 11 January in order to complete the expulsion. The Hagana blew up most of the houses in the village and drove out all the people who were still there. [85] The lesson learned was also applied in Jerusalem. On February 7, 1948, Ben-Gurion went to see Lifta for himself and that evening reported to a council of the Mapai party in Jerusalem: When I come now to Jerusalem, I feel I am in a Jewish ( Ivrit ) city. This is a feeling I only had in Tel-Aviv or in an agricultural farm. It is true that not all of Jerusalem is Jewish, but it has in it already a huge Jewish bloc: when you enter the city through Lifta and Romema, through Mahaneh Yehuda, King George Street and Mea Shearim—there are no Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Ever since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans—the city was not as Jewish as it is now. In many Arab neighbourhoods in the West you do not see even one Arab. I do not suppose it will change. And what happened in Jerusalem and in Haifa—can happen in large parts of the country. If we persist it is quite possible that in the next six or eight months there will be considerable changes in the country, very considerable, and to our advantage. There will certainly be considerable changes in the demographic composition of the country. [86] Note that all of this happened well before explicit orders were given to destroy villages and expel their inhabitants if anyone resisted occupation by the Zionist forces. From mid-March onward, in Morris’s own words, “In line with Plan D, Arab villages were henceforward to be leveled to prevent their reinvestment by Arab forces; the implication was that their inhabitants were to be expelled and prevented from returning.” [87] The Haganah “embarked on a campaign of clearing areas of Arab inhabitants and militia forces and conquering and leveling villages”. [88] Plan D implemented a “new policy, of permanently occupying and/or razing villages and of clearing whole areas of Arabs”. [89] Morris’s contention that what happened wasn’t ethnic cleansing because most Palestinians fled, as opposed to being expelled by the Zionist forces, becomes a moot distinction in light of how, for example, a massacre that occurred in the Arab village of Deir Yassin in April was “amplified through radio broadcasts . . . to encourage a mass Arab exodus from the Jewish state-to-be.” [90] David Ben-Gurion (center) with Yitzhak Rabin and Yigal Allon during the 1948 war ( Israel Defense Forces / CC BY-NC 2.0 ) In the Galilee, “the Arab inhabitants of the towns of Beit Shean (Beisan) and Safad had to be ‘harassed’ into flight”, according to a planned series of operations conceived in April (“in line with Plan D”, Morris notes). In charge of these operations was the commander of the Palmach, Yigal Allon. [91] On May 1, two villages north of Safad were captured. Several dozen male prisoners were executed, and the Palmach “proceeded to blow up the two villages as Safad’s Arabs looked on. The bulk of the Third Battalion then moved into the town’s Jewish Quarter and mortared the Arab quarters”, prompting many of Safad’s Arab inhabitants to flee. [92] After five days, the Arabs sought a truce, which Allon rejected. Even some of the local Jews “sought to negotiate a surrender and demanded that the Haganah leave town. But the Haganah commanders were unbending” and continued pounding Safad with mortars and its arsenal of 3-inch Davidka munitions. The first of the Davidka bombs, according to Arab sources cited by a Haganah intelligence document, killed 13 Arabs, mostly children, which triggered a panic and further flight. This, of course, was precisely what was “intended by the Palmah commanders when unleashing the mortars against the Arab neighborhoods”—which, “literally overnight, turned into a ‘ghost town’”. In the weeks that followed, “the few remaining Arabs, most of them old and infirm or Christians, were expelled to Lebanon or transferred to Haifa.” [93] Yigal Allon summed up the purpose of the Palmach’s operations: “We regarded it as imperative to cleanse the interior of the Galilee and create Jewish territorial continuity in the whole of Upper Galilee.” He boasted of how he devised a plan to rid the Galilee of tens of thousands of Arabs without having to actually use force to drive them out. His strategy, which “worked wonderfully”, was to plant rumors that additional reinforcements had arrived “and were about to clean out the villages of the Hula [Valley]”. Local Jewish leaders with ties to the area’s villages were tasked with advising their Arab neighbors, “as friends, to flee while they could. And the rumor spread throughout the Hula that the time had come to flee. The flight encompassed tens of thousands.” [94] Morris adds that, “To reinforce this ‘whispering,’ or psychological warfare, campaign, Allon’s men distributed fliers, advising those who wished to avoid harm to leave ‘with their women and children.’” [95] Morris’s denial that these events he describes constituted ethnic cleansing seems difficult to reconcile with Allon’s statement that the goal of the Palmach’s operations in the Galilee was “to cleanse” the area of its Arab inhabitants. In his 2004 interview with Ari Shavit, Morris also noted with respect to the use of the verb “cleanse” to describe what happened throughout Palestine, “I know it doesn’t sound nice but that’s the term they used at the time. I adopted it from all the 1948 documents in which I am immersed.” Indeed, Morris himself used the term repeatedly in his discussion with Shavit, in which Morris expressed his view that this “cleansing” of Palestine was morally justified: Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here. . . . There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don’t think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands. . . . There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing. . . . That was the situation. That is what Zionism faced. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. . . . I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. . . . But I do not identify with Ben-Gurion. I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948. Even though he understood the demographic issue and the need to establish a Jewish state without a large Arab minority, he got cold feet during the war. In the end, he faltered. . . . If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. . . . If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will be because Ben-Gurion did not complete the transfer in 1948. Because he left a large and volatile demographic reserve in the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel itself. . . . The non-completion of the transfer was a mistake. [96] Morris’s recent denial that what occurred was ethnic cleansing is also difficult to reconcile with these earlier comments of his. Indeed, that would seem quite impossible, which is presumably why Morris made no attempt to do so after Steven Klein, in his contribution to the debate, had pointed out these words of Morris’s. Arab refugees crowding a British ship carrying them to Acre, April 1948 (Life Magazine. Source: PalestineRemembered.com ) The Fallacies of Morris’s Arguments Now that the proper historical context has been established, let’s return to Morris’s arguments and address each in turn. Morris denies that the Jewish leadership “carried out a policy of expelling the local Arabs”. This denial is untenable. Logically, the goal of establishing a demographically “Jewish state” would require the “compulsory transfer”—to borrow Ben-Gurion’s phrase for it, in turn borrowed from the Peel Commission—of a large number of Arabs. Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders had explicitly stated their desire to effect this “transfer”, and once war broke out there was a clear tacit understanding between the political leadership and the military commanders toward that end. As Morris himself has pointed out, there was an “atmosphere of transfer”, and commanders who carried out such expulsions were not punished. Moreover, from mid-March onward, commanders were given explicit instructions for how this “compulsory transfer” was to be carried out. If the expulsion of Arab villagers prior to Plan D had received the tacit approval of the leadership, the expulsions thereafter received their explicit approval. Commanders like Yigal Allon understood their orders very well: it was “imperative” to “cleanse” their areas of operation of their Arab inhabitants. After Blatman cited Morris to support his assertion that Palestine was ethnically cleansed in 1948, Morris accused Blatman of attributing things to him that he had never claimed. Yet Morris himself had previously described what happened during the war as “ethnic cleansing”—and expressed his view that Ben-Gurion’s error was not doing a thorough enough job of it. Morris argues that Blatman’s assertion “ignores the basic fact that the Palestinians were the ones who started the war”. Even if we accept his assumptions that the Arabs’ rejection of the UN partition plan was unreasonable and that they were responsible for starting the war, it does not follow that no ethnic cleansing occurred. In keeping with his comments to Ari Shavit, what Morris really seems to be arguing here is not that it didn’t happen, but that it was justified; it’s not that Palestine wasn’t actually ethnically cleansed—clearly, by his own account, it was—just that, in his view, this wasn’t a crime. And while legal scholars may debate whether such actions were prohibited under the laws of war at the time, there isn’t any ambiguity about the fact that they are recognized today as war crimes—and, regardless of what any international treaties had to say about it, just as immoral then as they would be today. Moreover, Morris’s assumptions that the UN partition plan was an equitable solution and that Resolution 181 lent legitimacy to the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, are both categorically false . He bases his arguments that the Jews were acting defensively on the grounds that the Arab states had threatened “to attack the Jewish state” and then carried out that threat by “invading” Israel. But given the illegitimacy of the May 14 declaration and the inherent prejudice of the Zionist project toward the majority Arab population, this narrative crumbles. To characterize the Arabs as the “invaders” while Palestine’s Arab inhabitants were being systematically expelled or driven into flight and its Arab villages literally wiped off the map is simply to flip reality on its head. Morris denies that there was ever a decision by the Jewish leadership “to ‘expel the Arabs’”. He repeats that Ben-Gurion “never gave [his officers] an order ‘to expel the Arabs.’” It might be true that no known documents, including Plan D, contained those exact words, but the leadership’s intent was clear. Indeed, in the very same sentence he says Ben-Gurion gave no such order, Morris notes that Ben-Gurion “let his officers understand that it was preferable for as few Arabs as possible to remain in the new country”. His implied logic is that without such an explicit order, it wasn’t ethnic cleansing. This is a non sequitur. No explicit order need have been given; it was enough that Haganah commanders understood the leaderships’ intention to have “as few Arabs as possible”, to quote Morris’s own words, in the “Jewish state” they were seeking to establish. Palestinian refugees fleeing their homes, October 30, 1948 (Source: PalestineRemembered.com ) Moreover, Plan D did make explicit the operational orders to expel Arabs from their villages. Morris also suggests that since not all Arabs were expelled, therefore it wasn’t ethnic cleansing. But once again his logic is a non sequitur. It doesn’t follow that since there were Arabs who were allowed to remain in the territory that became Israel that therefore the expulsion of the majority of that territory’s Arab inhabitants didn’t constitute ethnic cleansing. Morris can opine that Ben-Gurion didn’t do a thorough enough job of it; but he can’t sustain the suggestion that the lack of thoroughness means it wasn’t ethnic cleansing. The “atmosphere of transfer” is acknowledged by Morris; yet he asserts that Zionist leaders like Ben-Gurion and Weizmann, who “supported the transfer of Arabs” in the 1930s and early ‘40s, later “supported the UN decision, whose plan left more than 400,000 Arabs in place.” With this comment, he implies that Ben-Gurion and other leaders changed their minds and decided that a population of 400,000 Arabs within the area they desired for their “Jewish state” would be just fine. Once again, his argument is a non sequitur; their acceptance of the partition plan did not constitute a repudiation of their desire to rid the land of Arabs. On the contrary, it was seen as a pragmatic step toward achieving the ultimate goal of establishing a Jewish state with “less Arabs” (Golda Meir). Indeed, he further acknowledges that the “atmosphere of transfer” still prevailed in April 1948, but, he argues, this “was never translated into official policy—which is why there were officers who expelled Arabs and others who didn’t.” But, once again, the fact that some Arabs—about 160,000, according to Morris—were permitted to remain does not mean that the rest weren’t victims of ethnic cleansing. Once again, explicit orders to expel Arabs needn’t have existed for us to recognize what occurred as ethnic cleansing; it was enough that a tacit understanding existed between the political leadership and the military commanders, which Morris acknowledges was in fact the case—including by pointing out that those commanders who expelled Arabs from their villages weren’t punished. Moreover, again, the “atmosphere of transfer” was translated into official policy with Plan D. On March 24, 1948, Morris argues in Haaretz , Israel Galili “ordered all the Haganah brigades not to uproot Arabs from the territory of the designated Jewish state.” In 1948 , he specifies that “Galili instructed all Haganah units to abide by standing Zionist policy, which was to respect the ‘rights, needs and freedom,’ ‘without discrimination,’ of the Arabs living in the Jewish State areas.” [97] How does Morris reconcile this with the explicit orders under Plan D to collectively punish the civilian population by expelling them from their homes and destroying their villages? How does he reconcile it with the fact that, by his own account, commanders who expelled Arabs and destroyed villages weren’t punished for defying what Morris characterizes as a direct order? Instructively, he makes no attempt to. But he does note that “Things did change in early April”, meaning that this ostensible order to respect the rights of Palestinian civilians was rescinded. As he notes in 1948 , the policy outlined in April was “generally, to evict the Arabs living in the brigade’s area.” [98] So how does Morris, in light of this admission, maintain that “there was no overall expulsion policy”? He notes that “here they expelled people, there they didn’t, and for the most part the Arabs simply fled.” But, again, neither the fact that some Arabs were allowed to remain nor that many fled out of fear is inconsistent with the recognition of what happened as ethnic cleansing. Finally, Morris acknowledges that the Zionist leadership as a matter of policy prevented the Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes. Indeed, this was made largely impossible by the complete destruction of their villages. He makes no effort to reconcile this policy with his denial that ethnic cleansing occurred. Instead, he opines that this policy was “logical and just”. We see once again, thus, that Morris isn’t so much arguing that there was no ethnic cleansing as he is that the ethnic cleansing was justified. He is attempting to argue that the ethnic cleansing that did occur—which he has explicitly acknowledged did occur, and which he documents extensively in his own writings—was not a crime. Benny Morris is entitled to his opinions. But to deny that the “Jewish state” of Israel was established by ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Arabs from their homes in Palestine is simply a display of the very intellectual dishonesty he accuses his critics of. The standard he applies is telling: he defends the ethnic cleansing on the grounds that all of the Arabs who were made refugees by the war and whom Israel refused to allow to return “had tried to destroy the state in the making.” Inasmuch as their very inhabitancy in the land the Zionist leadership desired for their “Jewish state” stood in the way of that project, he has a point. Their very existence in the land constituted a destruction of the Zionists’ ideal. Hence they had to go. In Morris’s own words, “A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them.” Beyond that, Morris’s hypocrisy is glaring. He knows perfectly well that most of those expelled were civilians who had taken no part in hostilities. Hence what he is really saying here is that it was “logical and just” for the civilian Arab population to have been collectively punished for the crime some among them committed of putting up resistance to the Zionists’ operations to seize control of the territory they wanted for their “Jewish state”—precisely the collective punishment that Haganah commanders were ordered to carry out under Plan D, the blueprint, by Morris’s own account, for the Zionists’ “war of conquest”. That Benny Morris applies such a hypocritical standard should not be too surprising. He is, after all, himself a Zionist. As a historian, he has contributed greatly to the literature on the subject, and in so doing, has helped move the discussion forward. By helping us to understand the origins of the conflict, he has empowered us with knowledge that brings clarity on how to achieve a peaceful resolution. It is unfortunate that he’s lately made such a concerted effort to move the discussion backward again. It is in the context of his own deeply held and scarcely concealed prejudice toward the Palestinians that his attempts now to deny the ethnic cleansing of Palestine must be understood. Haganah men patrolling the streets of Haifa, April 1948 (Life Magazine. Source: PalestineRemembered.com ) Conclusion Was what happened in Palestine during the 1948 war “ethnic cleansing”? Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, author of Ethnic Cleansing , writes that, while the term “defies easy definition”, it can be generally understood as “the expulsion of an ‘undesirable’ population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of these.” [99] The US State Department, in a 1999 report titled Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo: An Accounting , described “the Milosevic regime’s brutal, premeditated, and systematic campaign to expel many Kosovar Albanians from their homeland.” [100] In a February 2007 judgment, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) noted that the term “ethnic cleansing” was used in practice “to mean ‘rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area’”. [101] By any of these definitions, ethnic cleansing is precisely what occurred in Palestine during the 1948 war. As Ilan Pappé writes in the beginning of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine , “This book is written with the deep conviction that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine must become rooted in our memory and consciousness as a crime against humanity and that it should be excluded from the list of alleged crimes.” [102] Indeed, what happened in Palestine in 1948 was not an “alleged” ethnic cleansing, as Benny Morris would have us believe. It is regrettable that he seems to have decided that trying to justify Israel’s legitimacy as a “Jewish state” is more important than presenting the public with an honest historical representation of how Israel came into existence. But far from being “alleged”, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine must today be recognized as an uncontroversial historical fact. That this ethnic cleansing occurred is indeed today very well documented—including in Benny Morris’s own important contributions to the literature on the subject. It is also regrettable that the US mainstream media treat the matter as taboo. This silence must be broken. The means by which the “Jewish state” of Israel came into existence—via the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population of Palestine—must be brought out of the darkness and into the light. Only by doing so will the prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians have any chance of coming to fruition. Jeremy R. Hammond Jeremy R. Hammond is an award-winning independent political analyst and editor and publisher of Foreign Policy Journal . Described by Barron’s as “a writer of rare skill”, he is the author of Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2016), Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman: Austrian vs. Keynesian Economics in the Financial Crisis (2012), and The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination: The Struggle for Palestine and the Roots of the Israeli-Arab Conflict (2009). Find him on the web at JeremyRHammond.com .

Note to President Obama: a Hillary Clinton pardon could heal a divided nation. After all, if it was good enough for Richard Nixon, it is certainly good enough for Clinton. The difference being that Tricky Dicky was actually guilty of the crimes insinuated against him, whereas the former Secretary of State, who was thoroughly investigated and cleared of any criminal wrongdoing twice, continues to be maligned and persecuted by the right-wing establishment, as well as politicos with decades-old grudges who view the Clinton witch hunt as their opportunity to exact revenge on the woman who should be America’s first female President of the United States , and proved it by carrying the nation’s popular vote if not the antiquated electoral college. As originally proposed by one-time presidential hopeful, Rev. Jesse Jackson, the nation should call upon President Barack Obama to issue a blanket pardon to the twice-exonerated Clinton, in order to call an end to the drawn-out attack on every aspect of the former New York senator’s character once and for all. In the 21st century, it is unthinkable to believe that U.S. citizens are so narrow-minded and circumspect that they seek to stop an empowered, idolized public servant from holding the highest office in the nation simply because she is a woman. While it is abominable and heartbreaking to lend credence to this theory, there is strong evidence to support its existence, especially when considering some examples from other nations who have female world leaders: — Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1966-77; 1980 to Oct. 31, 1984 (her assassination)) — British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1979-90). Thatcher was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and first woman to have held the office. — Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (1969-74) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel (2005-present) — Queen Elizabeth II of United Kingdom (U.K.), Great Britain, and Northern Ireland (1952-present) — South Korean President Park Geun-hye (2013-present) — Prime Minister Theresa May of U.K., Great Britain, and Northern Ireland (2016-present) — Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed of Bangladesh (1996-2001; 2009-present) From countries great and small, these women and countless others have achieved the ultimate seat of power in their respective nations. Some of these countries have a long, storied legacy of woman leaders that spans decades and even generations, while others are relatively new to welcoming a female presence as their central figurehead. Nonetheless, women all over the globe have been given the opportunity to lead their countries into a new era and provide their citizens with a different perspective, with the glaring exception of the United States, a nation that could benefit immensely from female influence at the helm. Presidential pardons are not a foreign concept. Every U.S. president has the authority to grant pardons, which is also known as clemency, to anyone of their choosing. However, unlike most executive powers, presidential pardons are unchecked by Congress and cannot be blocked, overturned, or reviewed. The purpose of this power exists to help ease tensions, correct historic injustices, and heal political wounds. If any situation calls for its implementation, this scenario could not be more fitting. Yet, this authority does not come without controversy. In addition to President Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon in 1974, other controversial acts of clemency include President Bill Clinton’s pardon of Symbionese Liberation Army sympathizer and publishing heiress Patty Hearst in 2001, President Richard Nixon’s offer of clemency to Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa in 1971, and President Jimmy Carter’s commutation of Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy’s prison sentence in 1977. As evidenced by the vitriol of the 2016 Campaign and subsequent General Election , a Hillary Clinton pardon by President Obama could be the only way to end the vicious cycle of recrimination and violence observed throughout the so-called Democratic process , which has encountered its own foibles and criticisms. Namely, the ongoing debate about the necessity of the electoral college and its all-or-nothing allotment, which many consider unjust and obsolete. Instead, many believe the winner of the popular vote should be elected as U.S. commander in chief, which would have resulted in President-elect Clinton occupying the Oval Office. In the aftermath of the controversial election results, a blanket pardon for the veteran politician could be the first step in healing a divided nation, which has truly demonstrated its fractured populace via the chaotic antics and disdainful actions observed throughout the extended 2016 Campaign cycle, as well as in the aftermath of its divisive conclusion. Opinion Written and Edited by Leigh Haugh Sources: Personal Opinions and Observations of the Author Detroit Free Press –Obama Should Pardon Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson Says New York Times –Hillary Clinton, in Emotional Speech, Implores Supporters to Keep Believing in America MTV –We Need Female Politicians Now More Than Ever Washington Post –Here Are the Dozens of Democracies That Have Elected a Female Leader All Article Images Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons – Creative Commons License clinton , Donald Trump , Hillary Clinton , jesse jackson , President Barack Obama , Presidential Pardons

Reunión del Consejo de Seguridad de 28 de octubre de 2016 Nota conceptual para la presidencia de Rusia Red Voltaire | Nueva York (EE.UU.) | 27 de octubre de 2016 français English русский عربي 中文 Cooperación entre las Naciones Unidas y las organizaciones regionales y subregionales en el mantenimiento de la paz y la seguridad internacionales: Organización del Tratado de Seguridad Colectiva, Organización de Cooperación de Shanghái y Comunidad de Estados Independientes Como actividad central durante su Presidencia en el Consejo de Seguridad, la Federación de Rusia tiene previsto celebrar un debate el 28 de octubre de 2016 sobre el tema “Cooperación entre las Naciones Unidas y las organizaciones regionales y subregionales en el mantenimiento de la paz y la seguridad internacionales: Organización del Tratado de Seguridad Colectiva, Organización de Cooperación de Shanghái y Comunidad de Estados Independientes”. El carácter mundial de los desafíos y amenazas actuales y la elaboración de los enfoques colectivos necesarios para abordarlos eficazmente hacen necesario mejorar la cooperación entre las Naciones Unidas y las organizaciones regionales y subregionales en la esfera del mantenimiento de la paz y la seguridad. Las Naciones Unidas pueden aportar, en primer lugar, su carácter universal, tanto en lo que respecta a su composición como a sus actividades, así como su legitimidad mundialmente reconocida. Por su parte, las organizaciones regionales suelen tener una comprensión más profunda de la situación en su ámbito de responsabilidad. Además, en muchos casos, estas cuentan con mecanismos de prevención y de mantenimiento de la paz adaptados a las realidades locales. Al mismo tiempo, es importante garantizar que las actividades de las organizaciones regionales estén dirigidas a hallar una solución política por medios pacíficos a los nuevos conflictos. En este contexto se hace muy pertinente una “comparación de notas” sistemática con los principales asociados regionales de las Naciones Unidas sobre cuestiones relativas al mantenimiento de la paz y la seguridad internacionales. Por ejemplo, el Consejo de Seguridad celebra periódicamente reuniones sobre la cooperación con la Unión Africana, la Organización para la Seguridad y la Cooperación en Europa y la Unión Europea. En los últimos años se han realizado exámenes sobre las relaciones con la Liga de los Estados Árabes, la Asociación de Naciones de Asia Sudoriental, la Unión de Naciones Suramericanas y otras entidades regionales. Como se sabe, la cooperación entre las Naciones Unidas y sus asociados regionales abarca un abanico cada vez más amplio de cuestiones. A las tareas de mantenimiento de la paz y consolidación de la paz, ahora se han sumado las de la lucha contra la proliferación de armas de destrucción en masa, las corrientes ilícitas de armas pequeñas y armas ligeras, el ciberterrorismo y la migración ilegal, ámbitos en los que la cooperación entre las Naciones Unidas y las mencionadas organizaciones está cobrando impulso. Esta cooperación reviste una importancia fundamental para el mantenimiento de la paz y la seguridad en todo el territorio de Eurasia y especialmente en la región de Asia Central. Es precisamente en este ámbito en que trabajan tres organizaciones relativamente nuevas que operan en la vasta región que va desde Europa Oriental hasta el Lejano Oriente: la Organización del Tratado de Seguridad Colectiva (OTSC), la Organización de Cooperación de Shanghai (OCS) y la Comunidad de Estados Independientes (CEI). Estas organizaciones están consolidando su influencia política en el mundo y contribuyendo significativamente al fortalecimiento de la seguridad regional e internacional. En las deliberaciones, se centrará la atención en la contribución de la OTSC, la OCS y la CEI a la lucha contra las amenazas a la paz y la seguridad en la región, en particular a la lucha contra el terrorismo, el tráfico de drogas y la delincuencia organizada. Este evento también ofrecerá una oportunidad a estas tres organizaciones para reafirmar su compromiso con el objetivo de establecer una colaboración práctica con las Naciones Unidas, en particular con su Centro Regional de las Naciones Unidas para la Diplomacia Preventiva en Asia Central. La Organización del Tratado de Seguridad Colectiva (OTSC) es una estructura de vectores múltiples, capaz de responder resueltamente a la amplia gama de desafíos y amenazas que afrontan actualmente sus Estados miembros. En este sentido, la cooperación que se está desarrollando entre las Naciones Unidas y la OTSC en la esfera del mantenimiento de la paz tiene muy buenas perspectivas. La OTSC está trabajando intensamente para crear capacidades propias para el mantenimiento de la paz, que, entre otras cosas, se utilizarían en las operaciones de mantenimiento de la paz de las Naciones Unidas. Además, la OTSC contribuye activamente a las iniciativas internacionales encaminadas a la reconstrucción del Afganistán. La OTSC contribuye activamente a los esfuerzos internacionales para la reconstrucción del Afganistán y a la lucha contra la amenaza de las drogas provenientes del territorio de ese país. Las relaciones entre la OTSC y las Naciones Unidas se han desarrollado con éxito en varios ámbitos, como la lucha contra el terrorismo y el tráfico de drogas, el mantenimiento de la paz y la lucha contra la delincuencia organizada. La OTSC mantiene y desarrolla contactos productivos con las estructuras especializadas de las Naciones Unidas, en particular el Comité contra el Terrorismo del Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas y la Oficina de las Naciones Unidas contra la Droga y el Delito. La Asamblea General aprueba cada dos años la resolución sobre la cooperación entre las Naciones Unidas y la Organización del Tratado de Seguridad Colectiva. Se ha previsto que en su septuagésimo primer período de sesiones, la Asamblea General aprobará una resolución sobre ese tema en el marco del debate sobre el tema del programa titulado “Cooperación entre las Naciones Unidas y las organizaciones regionales y de otro tipo”. El marco jurídico para la cooperación entre las Naciones Unidas y la Organización de Cooperación de Shanghai (OCS) sobre las cuestiones relativas a la paz y la seguridad internacionales fue establecido, de conformidad con el artículo VIII de la Carta de las Naciones Unidas, tras la firma en 2010 de una declaración conjunta sobre la cooperación entre las secretarías de las dos organizaciones. En la actualidad, la OCS y las Naciones Unidas están cooperando activamente en ámbitos como la prevención y la resolución de conflictos, la lucha contra el terrorismo (la Estructura Regional contra el Terrorismo se ha establecido en el marco de la OCS con esa finalidad), la no proliferación de las armas de destrucción en masa, la lucha contra la delincuencia transnacional y el tráfico ilícito de drogas, y la protección de la seguridad de la información internacional. En este contexto, la OCS apoya activamente las iniciativas de la comunidad internacional y las entidades de las Naciones Unidas para restablecer la paz en el Afganistán, y siempre ha estado a favor de que las Naciones Unidas mantengan su función de coordinación central en el proceso de solución afgana. La cooperación para garantizar la seguridad y hacer frente a los desafíos y amenazas actuales ha sido siempre y seguirá siendo una de las esferas prioritarias de la cooperación integradora entre los Estados miembros de la Comunidad de Estados Independientes. La cooperación constructiva de la CEI con las organizaciones internacionales es también un factor fundamental en la lucha contra las nuevas amenazas. Los Estados de la CEI son partes en todos los principales instrumentos internacionales que rigen la cooperación en las esferas de la seguridad, el desarme, y la lucha contra los desafíos y amenazas actuales, y contribuyen de manera efectiva a su aplicación. En la aplicación de medidas conjuntas se tienen en cuenta la función rectora de las Naciones Unidas y la necesidad de establecer una asociación constructiva con otros organismos internacionales y sus estructuras especializadas, como el Comité contra el Terrorismo del Consejo de Seguridad, la Oficina de las Naciones Unidas contra la Droga y el Delito, la Interpol, la Organización Internacional para las Migraciones, la Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Refugiados, y el Grupo de Acción Financiera sobre el Blanqueo de Capitales. Seguir fortaleciendo y estrechando la cooperación entre las Naciones Unidas y la OTSC, la OCS y la CEI, sobre la base del artículo VIII de la Carta de las Naciones Unidas, contribuirá de forma constructiva al logro de los objetivos de las Naciones Unidas y, en particular, a la lucha contra los desafíos y amenazas actuales. En este contexto, estas organizaciones regionales, por una parte, deben posicionarse activamente de modo que pueda aprovecharse su potencial en interés de las Naciones Unidas. Por otra parte, las Naciones Unidas deben seguir prestando la atención necesaria al fortalecimiento de la coordinación y la cooperación con esas organizaciones, con estricta observancia de las prerrogativas de las Naciones Unidas y su Consejo de Seguridad. En este sentido, quisiéramos proponer a los Estados Miembros de las Naciones Unidas que presenten su propia visión de los medios de fortalecer la seguridad en la región de Eurasia sobre la base de los mecanismos regionales existentes. Es evidente que la estabilidad en esta macrorregión sentará las bases para el crecimiento económico y la consolidación del Estado de los países euroasiáticos. Por esa razón, agradeceríamos que las delegaciones transmitieran sus consideraciones al respecto, en particular sobre la relación entre la seguridad y el desarrollo. Estamos convencidos de que aquí, en el marco de las Naciones Unidas, organización que goza de una legitimidad universal, podremos proponer de manera colectiva enfoques innovadores sobre las cuestiones relativas a la estabilización de las regiones vulnerables, que posteriormente podrán aplicarse en otras partes del mundo que sean objeto de la atención del Consejo de Seguridad. En el debate formularán declaraciones el Secretario General de las Naciones Unidas, Excmo. Sr. Ban Ki-moon, el Secretario General de la Organización del Tratado de Seguridad Colectiva, Excmo. Sr. Nikolai Bordyuzha, el Secretario General de la Organización de Cooperación de Shanghai, Excmo. Sr. Rashid Alimov, y el Vicepresidente del Comité Ejecutivo de la CEI, Excmo. Sr. Sergey Ivanov. También están invitados a participar en la reunión los Estados miembros de las organizaciones regionales mencionadas y los representantes de otros Estados interesados.

MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte’s declaration of a “state of lawlessness” in the Philippines after a blast that left at least 14 dead raised fears on Saturday that it could lead to a curtailment of basic freedoms. The declaration of a state of lawlessness would allow the military to carry out some police operations, including patrolling urban areas, conducting searches, enforcing curfews and setting up checkpoints, Mr. Duterte said. A presidential spokesman, Ernesto Abella, said Saturday that the declaration was “limited” and allowed for the use of troops only to deal with security threats and to “suppress” violence. Mr. Abella emphasized that the president was not declaring martial law, which he could do only in response to an “invasion or rebellion, and when the public safety requires it. ” He called for unity and told the public to “complain less and do more” in the wake of the explosion in Davao, on the southern island of Mindanao, on Friday. Mr. Duterte’s announcement was viewed with concern by some lawmakers and human rights groups, who had already expressed alarm over a violent war on crime and drugs initiated by Mr. Duterte. Nearly 1, 800 people were killed by the police and vigilante groups in the weeks after his inauguration in June. The human rights group Amnesty International said Saturday that while it recognized government’s duty to protect civilians, Friday’s attack “must not be met by government action that itself disregards human life. ” “Resort to unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests or other human rights violations will only play to the hands of those who seek an cycle of violence and abuse,” said Champa Patel, Amnesty’s senior researcher in the region. The extremist group Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility for the blast, according to The Associated Press, but Mr. Duterte said investigators were also looking at other possible suspects, including drug syndicates singled out in his recent crackdown. A military spokesman, Col. Edgar Arevalo, said that the country’s armed forces had been placed on red alert and that all leaves had been canceled. Colonel Arevalo said provincial military commanders would work with their police counterparts and regional officials to set up local “peace and order councils. ” To “tackle this affront to our democracy,” he said, the military was asking “our people to bear with us as we dutifully, but courteously, conduct our checkpoints and increase our presence in some areas. ” The explosion, which also wounded more than 60 people, appeared to have been caused by a bomb set off at a market near a hotel frequented by the president. Mr. Duterte was Davao’s mayor for nearly two decades before becoming president. Mr. Duterte was in Davao at the time of the blast. Presidential aides said they suspected that Abu Sayyaf militants were retaliating for an intensified military offensive against the group. In the past week, the military sent thousands of troops to hunt for the extremists on the island of Jolo, in the southern province of Sulu, where members of Abu Sayyaf are believed to be holding hostages. Responding to the president’s remarks after the explosion, the Senate minority leader, Ralph G. Recto, urged Mr. Duterte to “explain and elaborate in writing” his reasons for placing the “whole country under a state of lawlessness” and clarify the scope of his order. Franklin M. Drilon, the president pro tempore of the Senate, advised the president to be “prudent,” saying such a declaration would affect the business climate. Mr. Abella, the president’s spokesman, contended that the declaration was covered under the 1987 Constitution, which he said gave the president the authority to call out the military and police to “suppress lawless violence, invasion or rebellion. ” But Senator Risa Hontiveros said it raised “deep concerns” and might increase public fears in ways that could be used by the Abu Sayyaf, or others. “I worry that the president might play to the script of the perpetrators of the violence,” Ms. Hontiveros said.

Hallowe'en - The Day of the Aos Si 31.10.2016 And so the agricultural year dies, the underworld and our world reach the same level and there begins the time of the crossing of spirits from below to above, walking among us through the darkness of Winter. Hence the need to light fires and celebrate with festivals of light, hence the children dressed up as demons and ghouls. Humankind 2016, repeating prehistoric rites. Hallowe'en, the Day of the Witches, All Hallows' Evening, Samhain. Day of the Dead. Pumpkins, chestnuts, new wine, mulled wine. A bonfire, to keep away the evil spirits, the Aos Sí and to bring the community together, the first festival of light in the dark winter with little or no agricultural produce. What is the meaning of all these symbols? The end, or death, of the agricultural year in Europe happens around this time and as the centuries wore on, the Celtic peoples (and probably others) stipulated that at sunset on October 31 begins Samhain (pronounced So'win). This was a "boundary time" when the Aos Sí (bad spirits) could move easily from the underworld into our world and so bonfires were lit to cleanse the Earth from evil and to protect communities against it. Print version Font Size From the earliest times, children would go "mumming" or "guising", wearing disguises as monsters, witches or bad spirits, going from door to door asking for offerings of food and drink - or else people placed these outside their homes for the Aos Sí to take and be appeased. A time of darkness and uncertainty It was a time of darkness and uncertainty, a time when survival depended on how much food had been stored from the harvest and in what conditions it was in, a time when the wine or beer barrel was opened and which hopefully would last until Spring. It was a time when the fattened pig would be slaughtered and salted, when sausages would be made, hams smoked. It was a time before the potato, which was brought to Europe from the region of the Andes in the sixteenth century. What substituted the potato at the time was the chestnut, especially in Southern Europe, where a chestnut festivity took place at the beginning of November around a Magnus Ustus, a Great Bonfire. As with Samhain , the date became institutionalized and was fixed on November 11, the Day of Saint Martin. Medieval festivals carried across the waters In Medieval times, these festivities were still very popular in Europe and were carried over to the Americas by the Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (rest of Latin America), French and British (North America), where they continued, while they became less popular in Europe and were celebrated locally by communities. In some cases, they took on a different meaning, as was the case with Guy Fawkes' Night, or Bonfire Night, in the United Kingdom. Guy Fawkes, an English Catholic, was part of a plot to blow up barrels of gunpowder under the House of Parliament when it was to be opened by King James VI of Scotland, James I of England (who became King of both countries upon the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603), on November 5, 1605. The plot was discovered, Guy Fawkes committed suicide just before he was hanged (he jumped from the gallows and broke his neck) and since then the day has been remembered throughout the UK with fireworks, bonfires, chestnuts and a stuffed doll representing the "Guy", children wheeling the doll around the villages asking for "A penny for the Guy". But this does not begin in 1605 - as we see, the symbology is the same as that coming from ancient times and the burning of the guy resembles the burning of the scarecrow in Iberian communities around this time. Humankind 2016, repeating age-old rites just because it is what you do at this time of year. You dress up, you light a fire, you dance, you celebrate, you go singing round people's homes. But you also come together and the community regulates itself during the darkest and most dangerous months of the year. A good example, togetherness. It is a pity that with all the resources at our disposal, we cannot perpetuate such moments throughout the year. Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

The government terror threat level of ‘critical’ which was set after the Manchester terror attack on Monday was reduced to severe Saturday lunchtime, as British police announced another series of terror arrests. [‘Critical’ which means the government and security services believes an attack is imminent, was put in place this week and saw the deployment of 1, 000 troops of the British army to assist police in their duties, with an option to expand the deployment to 5, 000. After a number of arrests across the country including locations in Manchester and Nuneaton, Warwickshire, the terror threat has fallen to the second highest level, where it was before the Manchester attack. Returned to critical, the government now assess the likelihood of a terror attack to be “highly likely” as opposed to imminent. The reduction is likely to have stemmed from the flurry of arrests in recent days, with 11 individuals now in police custody. British boss Mark Rowley said a “large part” of the terror network that had been connected to bomber Salman Abedi had been dismantled by the arrests, But he said there were still “gaps in our understanding” of the plot, as investigators probed Abedi’s potential links to jihadis in Britain, Europe, Libya and the Middle East. Despite that there were still “gaps in our understanding” of the conspiracy to kill, he said. The Prime Minister said “a significant amount of police activity” and the fresh arrests had contributed to an improved overall security picture, meaning the terror threat level could be knocked down a notch. Despite the slight relaxation she urged the public to remain vigilant. While the presence of 1, 000 armed soldiers would continue over the bank holiday weekend to assist police and provide from the public, Operation Temperer is to be wound down at the start of next week. Despite the change in security level, the situation remains tense in Manchester — the announcement came as evacuations took place in the Moss Side area, with bomb disposal troops deployed. Latest update pic. twitter. — G M Police (@gmpolice) May 27, 2017,

The man who lost his voice was a gentle man who didn’t ask terribly much of life. He lived in a miniature space in a residence on the corner of 74th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan, above J. G. Melon, the popular restaurant and bar known for succulent hamburgers. And he was a New York story. He was a New York story because he didn’t have a lot and yet he gave a lot. And in return he got what New York for all its busyness so often offers those who could use a good dose of it — kindness. The city can be cold and aloof and you can live crunched amid its population and remain lonely and overlooked. You can also be someone unremarkable and be made to feel like Mr. Big Shot. The name of the man who lost his voice was Bernhardt Wichmann III. Sounds like an name for sure, but any money ever attached to it was no longer visible. His story revolves around a pair of doormen. In 1994, Jorge Grisales became a night doorman at the Mayfair, an apartment building at 207 East 74th Street. His shift began at midnight, when the city slows down but keeps breathing. When you are a doorman, you notice things. You especially notice recurring people. Mr. Grisales became aware of a man who almost nightly ambled past the building. He had a glistening face with a trimmed beard and he sported a big smile. . As he walked, he would bend down and dutifully scoop up litter, tidying up the neighborhood. One sweaty summer evening, the smiling man waved at the doorman and paused. Mr. Grisales said, “How are you?” The man clutched scraps of paper. He wrote something down and handed it over. It said: “Hi, my name is Bernhardt but call me Ben. I can’t talk, but I can hear. ” Something instantly clicked between them. There was a delicious spirit about Ben. Two years later, Juan Arias joined the door staff, and Mr. Grisales introduced him to Ben. They, too, clicked. They talked. He wrote. On his notes, he always drew a smiley face. Over time, the two doormen learned some blurred snippets about Ben Wichmann. That his parents came from Germany to Davenport, Iowa. That he was born in 1932. That he had served in the United States Army and was in the Korean War. That he came to New York and became an architectural draftsman. That, among other things, he worked on closets as well as decks and porches for houses in the Hamptons. That he loved opera and classical music. That he was gay. That he had a sister. That his parents and sister were dead and he had no family. And that in 1983 he had polyps removed from his larynx, and that he had not been able to speak since. He wasn’t entirely sure why. They discovered that since 1991, Ben had lived in that tiny room down the block that cost $10 a day. He had few possessions and eked by on Social Security. In a city where so many have so much, he had practically nothing. Yet it was enough, always enough. And inside him beat a heart bigger than a mountain. He seemed unrelievedly happy. That happiness bounced off him and settled on others. People up and down the block came to know Ben. He always petted people’s dogs. Admired the flowers. His cheery presence made East 74th Street brighter than it would have been without him. “He charmed people,” Mr. Grisales said. “He always smiled. He never complained. He was just wonderful. ” Mr. Arias said: “He had plenty of reasons to be unhappy. But I never saw him unhappy. ” Now and then, he would stop in at J. G. Melon, plant himself at the bar and have a glass of wine and maybe a salad and converse through his written expressions with customers and the staff. He would bring the doormen coffee and a Spanish newspaper. And they would fall into meandering exchanges — spoken words from the doormen, scribbling from Ben. Oh how they relished one another’s company. Mr. Grisales was shaky with his English. That was why he worked the midnight shift. Ben tutored him. If Mr. Grisales mispronounced a word, he would write out how to say it, which syllables to emphasize, what words it rhymed with. Mr. Grisales polished his English and graduated to an earlier shift. The doormen gave Ben gifts — shirts or shoes, things he needed. So did others on the block. Joan Gralla, a reporter at Newsday who lives near the Mayfair, gave him sweaters, hats, a yellow rain slicker. For years, she got him a ticket to the Metropolitan Opera. He would dress up in his best clothes and have the time of his life. She would tell him the ticket was from her dog, Clementine. Once, when the seat was exceptional, he wrote that Clementine must have some pull. “Ben was just magical in bringing out the best in people,” Ms. Gralla said. Ben had many medical issues. He came to rely on the doormen to make — or cancel — doctor appointments. If something was urgent, he would write out the note to them in red ink. Every Thanksgiving, Mr. Grisales had Ben come to his home in Queens for dinner. His wife and two children adored Ben. His family made him family. Then the strangest thing happened. Last August, Ben was having hallucinations and went to the Veterans Affairs New York Harbor Healthcare System in Manhattan. An M. R. I. scan found nothing. When he got up from the M. R. I. machine, he mouthed the words “thank you” to the technician. Except he heard his voice saying, “Thank you. ” He could talk again! One of the first things Ben did was ask to use the phone. He dialed Mr. Grisales. “Hi, Jorge, it’s your friend Ben,” he said. The voice was deep and gravelly. A puzzled Mr. Grisales said, “I have one friend with that name, and he can’t talk. ” “This is him,” he said. “I can talk. ” He related what had happened. He said that he came out of the M. R. I. coughed and could speak. Not yet clued in, Mr. Arias went to visit him at the hospital. He entered his room and Ben said: “Hi, Juan. How are you?” Mr. Arias just about fainted. The miraculous transformation filled the two dumbfounded doormen with joy. Ben, their Ben, could speak. Words spilled out of him. Again and again, he would relate the story of the M. R. I. machine and his recovered voice. The two doormen offered to get Ben a cellphone, make him the modern man, but he waved that off. It was enough for him just to talk. And talk. And talk. How was this possible? Dr. Babak Givi, a head and neck surgeon at the Veterans Affairs center, never examined Ben himself, though he was familiar with his records. He had no explanation for what had occurred, only that it was extraordinarily rare. “You know I’m a humble guy,” Dr. Givi said. “I don’t know everything. Unbelievable things happen. ” His best guess — and it was nothing more than that — was that his voice box was not injured in that earlier surgery but that something psychosomatic happened that convinced his brain that he could no longer speak. And then something about the M. R. I. experience convinced him that he could again. But who knew. Up and down East 74th Street, residents rejoiced. Ben had a voice. Miracles have expiration dates. They can come mercilessly fast. For years, Ben had had prostate cancer. The cancer had been in remission, but it returned and was spreading. Last fall, just a couple of months after finding his voice, he entered the hospital, then a nursing home in Queens. The doormen visited him there multiple times a week. A woman on the block bought him a radio so he could listen to music. He was always upbeat. The doormen went to cheer him up. He cheered them up. “He left me a lesson,” Mr. Arias said. “Always be happy. Don’t worry. ” He told the doormen he would recover and return to his little room on East 74th Street. And they assured him, why of course you will. On July 7, he died. There were no relatives to bury him. But there were the doormen. Mr. Grisales found his way to the Guida Funeral Home in Queens. Tom Habermann, the manager, said he would handle matters for a discounted $1, 500. The two doormen put out fliers in the neighborhood to solicit donations. In two days, they had the money. Because Ben was a veteran, Mr. Habermann arranged for a military service at Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island. Ben was cremated, and the cremains went to a niche there. For the service at Calverton, Mr. Grisales brought his wife and children, and Mr. Arias came with his wife. Two women from the block attended. There was an honor guard detail. They played taps. An American flag was folded and presented to Mr. Grisales. Because this was one of the things that had been best in his life. Knowing Ben. Mr. Grisales has ordered a frame for the flag that will have Ben’s name engraved on it and the dates crossing the 83 years when his life began and ended. He intends to hang it on the wall in his home, in a special place where he will always see it. Then, if anyone notices it and asks, well, they will need to sit down. He will have quite a story to tell.

A military commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has reportedly told the country’s state controlled media that Iran will soon be sending elite forces into the United States and Europe in an effort to thwart potential plots against the rogue Islamic Republic. As the Washington Free Beacon has reported, the commander stated that at the direction of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the IRGC will soon send their elite forces to operate in both the US and Europe under the goal of bolstering Iran’s hardline regime. “The IRGC is [the] strong guardian of the Islamic Republic… The Fedayeen of Velayat [fighting force] are under the order of Iran’s Supreme leader. Defending and protecting the Velayat [the Supreme Leader] has no border and limit.” Salar Abnoush, deputy coordinator of Iran’s Khatam-al-Anbia Garrison stated. Abnoush’s provocative comments come at a time where Iran is actively upgrading their military hardware and attempting to strengthen their presence throughout the Middle East with funds provided by the Obama Administration. Via Washington Free Beacon “The whole world should know that the IRGC will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” Salar Abnoush, deputy coordinator of Iran’s Khatam-al-Anbia Garrison, an IRGC command front, was quoted as saying in an Iranian state-controlled publication closely tied to the IRGC. Iranian military and government officials have continued to advocate violence against the U.S. and its allies, despite the nuclear deal and several secret side agreements that gave Iran $1.7 billion in cash. Iran accuses the U.S. of violating its end of the agreement by not helping the Islamic Republic gain further access to international banks and other markets. “Our enemies have several projects to destroy our Islamic revolution, and have waged three wars against us to execute their plans against our Islamic Republic,” Abnoush said. “The IRGC has defeated enemies in several fronts. The enemy surrendered and accepted to negotiate with us.” “And now all of our problems are being solved and our country is becoming stronger in all fronts. Some believe the holy defense ended,” the military leader added. “They are wrong; the holy defense continues, and today, it is more complicated than before.” Another source who advises congressional leaders on Iran sanctions issues told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration is blocking Congress from taking action to stop this type of infiltration by Iranian forces. “Iran is ideologically, politically, and militarily committed to exporting the Islamic revolution through terrorism, which is why even the Obama administration says they’re the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” the source said. “Congress wants to act, but Obama officials keep saying that new laws are unnecessary because the U.S. has enough tools to block Iranian terror expansion. Instead of using those tools, though, they’re sending Iran billions of dollars in cash while Iran plants terror cells in Europe and here at home.”

All Brexit arguments settled by 0.5 per cent third-quarter growth 28-10-16 ALL debates about the negative impact of Brexit have been settled for good by Britain’s 0.5 per cent third-quarter growth. Leading Remain campaigners, including former chancellor George Osborne, are preparing public apologies and the nation’s 16 million Remain voters are expected to follow suit. Joanna Kramer of Bristol said: “It’s not easy to admit you’re wrong but I don’t see I have any choice. “Britain is thriving with only a 0.2 per cent decline on expected growth, national pride has exploded into a proud display of healthy scepticism towards supposed child refugees, and I was a fool. “How could I have been so blind not to see that glory would be upon us this soon, if only we had the courage to take back control? “I’m sorry, everyone. I’m sorry I was a traitor.” Brexit voter Stephen Malley said: “What am I going to do for conversation now?” Share:

A Muslim student on an interfaith panel at Portland State University claimed that apostates will be killed or banished in Islamic countries. [At @Portland_State interfaith panel today, the Muslim student speaker said that apostates will be killed or banished in an Islamic state. pic. twitter. — Andy C. Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) April 27, 2017, Although unclear if the student was advocating for the killing of apostates or merely expressing the realities of countries run under Koranic law, a student on an interfaith panel event at Portland State University argued that would be either banished or killed in countries led under Koranic law. “That is only considered a crime when the country is based on Koranic law,” the student said, speaking about the legality of being a in an Islamic country. “That means is there is no other law than the Koran. So in that case, you are given the liberty to leave the country. I am not going to sugarcoat it. So if you go to a different country … but in a Muslim country, a country based on Koranic law, disbelieving or being an infidel, is not allowed, so you will be given the choice. ” Journalist Andy C. Ngo, who is also a graduate student at Portland State University, recorded the panel event and spoke with the Muslim student following the panel discussion. Ngo claims that the student wasn’t merely expressing the realities of countries led under Koranic law, but rather expressing his personal perspective on punishment for apostates as an adherent to the faith. @cjhc @TheChosenOneToo I recorded this video. He was not giving an example of consequences. I also spoke with him afterwards for further clarification on views. — Andy C. Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) April 27, 2017, Benjamin Ramey, who was a panelist at the event, also tweeted that the Muslim student’s comments were not taken out of context. @MrAndyNgo @Portland_State As one of the panelists present at this event I would like to say that this speech is not taken out of context. — Benjamin Ramey (@NikolaosRamey) April 27, 2017, Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com

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Videos Israel Tracked ‘Anti-Government’ Journalists On Facebook Netanyahu thinks the new channel doesn’t have enough government supervision and is too critical of his government and policies. An Israeli soldier looks at the IDF’s Facebook page at the army spokesperson’s office in Jerusalem. Israel’s ruling party used Facebook to spy on “anti-government” journalists, Likud parliamentarian David Bitan said in a public debate Saturday. Bitan openly said he and others had been scouring the Facebook pages of journalists hired recently to set up a new public broadcasting service, saying they were scorned by their left-wing politics. “We went and we checked the Facebook pages of these people. We saw what they are writing and I will tell you that we are talking about people who are leftist. They want to impose their own agenda on the new channel,” he said in the forum. Bitan has been the lead crusader against the establishment of the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation. The new radio and TV media outlet, to be launched in recent months, is slated to replace the decades-old Israel Broadcasting Authority. But Bitan and his cadre, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are looking to stop the new broadcast service, establishing a committee tasked to find a way to keep the old Israel Broadcasting Authority. Their concern? The new public service channel doesn’t have enough government supervision and is overtly critical of Netanyahu’s government and policies. This, despite Netanyahu calling the change “essential” and “necessary” two years ago. Despite this resistance, work has been underway in establishing the new outlet, with deals having been made with unions and generous severance packages being offered to workers who have agreed to quit the old broadcast voluntarily. The new media corporation has been poaching media personalities from competing outlets and preparing content for the launch date, which has already been postponed several times. And critics are firing back at the prime minister, saying the new public broadcasting service should be free of political influence. They also see Netanyahu’s actions as a clear attack on media freedom. Local media has also come out to harshly criticize the ruling party. After Bitan’s comments about surveillance became public, the Union of Journalists in Israel called on the attorney general to investigate the legality of Bitan’s actions. “Closing down public broadcasting just because the prime minister can’t control it crosses a red line reminiscent of a totalitarian regime and not a democratic society like Israel,” said Yair Tarchitsky, the union’s chairman. He said the government’s actions amounted to McCarthyism. Bitan, even last week, had not been hesitant to voice his opinions about the change. “It’s not going in the direction that we want. It is clear that the corporation will be left-leaning, according to what they are talking about. The journalists and workers are talking, they are tweeting, there is a red line that we will not allow it to cross,” said Bitan during an interview last week with Israel’s Channel 2 news. The Israel Broadcasting Authority was first established in 1948 and was the apartheid state’s sole television and radio outlet until commercial channels began broadcasting in the nineties.

By Mike Maharrey Today, a new law allowing parents to opt their children out of standardized testing in Alaska goes into effect. The new statute gives...

Lightning struck twice at Baylor University’s renowned football program when on Monday the second person this year affiliated with the team was fired in a sex scandal. [The private Baptist university in Waco, Texas, fired their director of football operations, DeMarko Butler, for allegedly sending inappropriate text messages to a teenager. According to a school official, the texts went to an individual classified as an adult under the laws of the state. Butler had only worked for the university for about a month, KWTX reported. David Kaye, Baylor’s director of athletics communications, stated in an official release from the university, ”DeMarkco Butler is no longer employed by Baylor University. As a personnel matter, we have no further comment. ” In February the university’s head football coach, Matt Rhule, was forced to terminate Brandon Washington, a recently hired strength and conditioning coach after his arrest in a solicitation of prostitution sting. At that time Rhule said, ”When we arrived at Baylor, we made a commitment to character and integrity in our program. ” He added, ”Brandon’s actions are completely unacceptable. We will not tolerate conduct that is contradictory to these values. ”

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More than two decades before he died on Sunday at age 53, George Michael was publicly struggling with the trappings of fame. And when he spoke out about his concerns about the nature of celebrity, Frank Sinatra pulled out his stationery and responded. A 1990 story by The Los Angeles Times focused on Mr. Michael’s refusal to promote his music by making videos which, at the height of MTV, was a risky move at best, and career suicide at worst. “I’m not stupid enough to think that I can deal with another 10 or 15 years of major exposure,” Mr. Michael said at the time. “I think that is the ultimate tragedy of fame. ” He added: “People who are simply out of control, who are lost. I’ve seen so many of them, and I don’t want to be another cliché. ” Mr. Sinatra, who was then in his and had experienced the ups and downs of celebrity, gently admonished the younger star in a letter that appeared in The Los Angeles Times a week later. The letter was later published by the online museum Letters of Note. “Come on, George,” Mr. Sinatra wrote. “Loosen up. Swing, man. Dust off those gossamer wings and fly yourself to the moon of your choice and be grateful to carry the baggage we’ve all had to carry since those lean nights of sleeping on buses and helping the driver unload the instruments. ” Mr. Sinatra, who died of a heart attack in 1998 at age 82, knew something about the other side of fame. After years of soaring popularity, Mr. Sinatra, a baritone, saw his career slide in the late 1940s. By the early 1950s, he had retooled his musical persona and won a string of acting roles. To call it a career revival was an understatement: Sinatra had transformed himself from a fledgling wartime singer into a pop culture titan. “The tragedy of fame is when no one shows up and you’re singing to the cleaning lady in some empty joint that hasn’t seen a paying customer since Saint Swithin’s day. ” Mr. Sinatra wrote. “And you’re nowhere near that you’re top dog on the top rung of a tall ladder called Stardom, which in Latin means who were there when it was lonely. ” Mr. Sinatra finished the letter succinctly: “Trust me. I’ve been there. ” As the letter resurfaced after Mr. Michael’s death, it quickly spread on social media. In 1990, not all readers had taken Mr. Sinatra’s side, either. One urged for a more compassionate treatment of Mr. Michael, whose struggle with fame continued until his death. “For Mr. Sinatra to trivialize George Michael’s statements and make them seem superfluous or indicate his grasp of the downside of ‘the business’ is minuscule. A performer is, foremost, a human being, not a commodity, a windup toy or machine,” a reader, Mike Sekulic, wrote to The Los Angeles Times on Sept. 23, 1990.

Sharon Olds feels bad about her neck. In her new book there is a poem called “Ode to Wattles,” and it is about what you suspect it’s about: the poet’s “face hanging down from the bottom of my face,” the “slackness of the drapery. ” In the mirror, Ms. Olds is shocked yet thrilled at her visage. Old age — “my crone beauty, in its first youth” — has given her fresh subject matter, which she does not intend to waste. She writes: No one who has kept up with Ms. Olds’s work needs to be told that she loves to be a little disgusting. As a writer, she’s always gotten an illicit thrill from pushing boundaries, whether scrutinizing sex or motherhood or parents or illness (but sex especially). The critic Helen Vendler, not a fan, has called her work pornographic. The nimbleness and electricity of Ms. Olds’s best sex poems, however, will not be denied. These poems declare, as vividly as did Janis Joplin: Honey, get it while you can. Ms. Olds, 73, has been on a fierce run. Her last book, “Stag’s Leap,” about her divorce from her husband of many years, deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. At around the same time, Ms. Olds took a small detour. She composed for Oprah magazine an article titled “Heartbroken? 6 Ways to Pull Yourself Back Up. ” (Poets and listicles: no more of these, please.) Item No. 2: “Carry a Power Hankie. ” This I hated to see, if only because one of the great things about Ms. Olds’s verse is that she never seems to be carrying a hankie at all, much less a fancy hankie. She avoids sentimentality the way a runner on the beach zigs to avoid the foamy lips of waves. Her new book, “Odes,” picks up where “Stag’s Leap” left off, which is to say that it contains some of the best and most ingenious poems of her career. Some are about aging. There is “Ode of Withered Cleavage,” for example, and “Hip Replacement Ode. ” There is also “Merkin Ode,” a merkin being a wig worn in the pubic region. These are on Ms. Olds’s mind because, she writes, Her poems have long found their center of gravity at crotch level. They contain an awareness, too, that as Philip Roth contended in “American Pastoral,” the body’s surface is “about as serious a thing as there is in life. ” Sex, for Ms. Olds, remains at the center of life and art. We have no finer laureate of the clitoris, which she likens in one poem here, in 10 of the more miraculous words that 2016 has produced, to the “ biceps of a teeny goddess who is buff. ” She describes the hymen as Her poem “ Ode” performs a service by containing a history lesson for millennials. It begins: She does, of course, go on, and suggests: “let’s take some the creepiness of how women were the 1950s. ” Ms. Olds has sometimes being criticized for being for narcissism run amok. I see no logic to this sort of censure, agreeing with Philip Larkin, who said in an interview, “A very crude difference between novels and poetry is that novels are about other people and poetry is about yourself. ” Ms. Olds renders the personal universal. There is a good deal of lesser work in “Odes. ” When Ms. Olds’s poems miss, they really miss, more so than most poets at her level. Her “Ode to the Penis,” for example, contains these lines: “I you’re lovely and brave, and so interesting, you like a creature, with your head, and trunk, as if you have a life of your own. ” Or perhaps male poets have condescended for so long to the clitoris that this is her revenge. There are other topics besides sex and death in “Odes. ” There are odes to buttermilk and composting toilets and other poets (Stanley Kunitz, Galway Kinnell) and pine trees and sick couches and Sloan Kettering. The book’s warmth comes from the intensities of its language and the intensities that emerge from a life that seems well lived. In a poem about her living friends, she writes: “You were exactly who I’d looking for, without daring to imagine. ” At their best, you can say the same thing of this writer’s poems. No power hankie required.

Blue Collar Election Shocks Liberal Media Blue Collar Election Shocks Liberal Media November 17, 2016, 12:30 pm by Cliff Kincaid Leave a Comment 0 Accuracy in Media Before Election Day, the liberal media were speculating about the demise of the Republican Party. However, the media misjudged the electorate before November 8 and they are misjudging it again. It’s the Democratic Party that faces an uncertain future. In an MSNBC broadcast before Election Day, MTV’s Ana Marie Cox said the results might just mean that the GOP would “cease to be a national party” because the demographic trends were in favor of Democrats, and the Democrats had “reclaimed the mantle of patriotism” and “reclaimed the mantle of faith.” Host Lawrence O’Donnell agreed, asking, “Are you looking for in tomorrow night’s results …the beginning of the discussion within the Republican Party about how to rebuild itself into something resembling a coherent party?” Former Jeb Bush communications director and “political strategist” Tim Miller said, “I have a lot of pessimism about where the party goes.” After the results came in, left-wing journalist John Nichols became despondent, writing in his most recent column that “The Democratic Party had not lost a presidential race in Wisconsin since 1984. But it did in 2016. The Democratic Party had not lost a Wisconsin U.S. Senate race in a presidential election year since 1980. But it did in 2016.” But it gets worse. “The Democratic Party has been decimated in the state Legislature,” he writes from Wisconsin, “with a Senate caucus that looks likely to have 13 seats (the smallest total since Richard Nixon was president) and an Assembly caucus with 35 members (the smallest total since Dwight Eisenhower was president).” In Wisconsin, as noted by Wisconsin Public Radio, Republican Governor Scott Walker will have his biggest GOP majorities yet when lawmakers return to Madison next year. Nichols, who writes for The Capital Times, says the Democratic Party of Wisconsin “is going to need to rethink and remake itself,” but that “this is not just a Wisconsin problem. This is a national crisis.” His solution is to elect a radical Muslim, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy rightly notes , “One would think that the last thing Democrats want to publicize after their wholesale repudiation by American voters is their party’s ties to radical leftists and Islamic supremacists.” Yet, he goes on, that will be the “predictable effect” of Ellison leading the Democratic National Committee. Nichols is not alone in recommending Ellison as DNC chair. Ellison is backed by Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Going further left, in this case embracing a “fiery critic of Israel,” is starting to attract some media scrutiny. The embrace of Ellison could be interpreted as a death wish by the Democratic Party. The political situation has changed dramatically. Five years ago Nichols was telling the Democratic Socialists of America that the progressive movement was on the move, and that this process of revolutionary change would continue. So what happened? Simply put, the Democratic Party abandoned the working class, once considered the cornerstone of the Marxist revolution. Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing , calls it “The Blue Collar Election.” He says, “A week has passed since election night, and if it wasn’t clear then, it is now: Economic pain in the industrial states is real and has shocked our politics.” In order for the Republican Party to take advantage of this dramatic shift, President-elect Donald Trump has to get tough with foreign countries. Kevin L. Kearns, president of the U.S. Business & Industry Council, says that Trump will face a lot of opposition as he pursues a “balanced trade” agenda. His antagonists include “Wall Street institutions, multinational corporations, major business organizations, academic economists, editorial boards, business journalists, opinion writers, bloggers, and the generally knowledge-free mainstream media,” Kearns writes . His remark about a “knowledge-free mainstream media” is right on target. But as we have seen in coverage of the campaign and their predictions about the results, a lack of knowledge hasn’t stopped the media from claiming to be knowledgeable. The media may sound stupid, but they must realize that if the Republicans are able to accommodate the interests of their new Blue Collar constituency and bring forth a balanced trade and pro-growth agenda, the Democrats will be left with a constituency consisting of a few Muslims, some gays and transgenders, student debt-laden young people, and the radical pro-abortion feminist lobby. It’s difficult to see how the Democrats can assemble a majority out of that. Cliff Kincaid Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid . 0

If so, then Hillary and Obama will end up being among the most unpopular Presidents in US history and and Hillary will be EASILY replaced by Elizabeth Warren. Hillary might even be impeached for grossly violating her Presidential Oath of Office! Frankly, I don't think Hillary is so dumb as to do that. If Obama pushed the TPP through Congress during the "lame duck" session of Congress, his "legacy" will be seriously tarnished for generations to come! He and Hillary will be PERSONALLY BLAMED for every multi-million or multi-billion dollar ISDS lawsuit against any level of our government (i.e. US taxpayers) forever after!

Before dawn on a Sunday late last month, a battalion of pesh merga soldiers — about 600 Kurdish men, along with a few women — gathered in the shadow of Bashiqa Mountain, on the western edge of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. They were sons, daughters, fathers, grandfathers. They wore an assortment of camouflage fatigues and traditional Kurdish flowing pants, waist sashes and head scarves. They carried antique Kalashnikovs and new assault rifles. Few had helmets, and fewer had body armor. Strapped to their backs and belts and legs were daggers, revolvers, axes. Some of them had received the call to duty only the day before and were driven to the front by family or rode overnight in taxis. With them was a column of vehicles new, old and very old: armored personnel carriers, vehicles (MRAPs) Humvees, S. U. V. s, ambulances, Soviet tanks, backhoes, bulldozers, sedans and a bestiary of retrofitted pickups and battlewagons, whose tenuous welding and argumentative suspensions told of the years Iraqi Kurds had spent fighting with and homemade hardware in one war or another. At 7 a. m. the idling engines came to life, and cries went up: “Long live pesh merga!” “Death to ISIS!” The troops started down an unpaved track that led southwest through the Tigris River valley toward the city of Mosul. As the march went on, villages gave way to occasional abandoned farmhouses, crop fields to dunes, and the sun made itself felt. A long dust cloud rose in the wake of the column, whose eventual destination was Bashiqa, a small city on the mountain’s edge that was claimed by the Islamic State. The operation to retake Mosul had finally begun one week earlier on Oct. 16. The pesh merga led the charge toward the city, Iraq’s and ISIS’ last citadel in the country. Mosul had become the focus of the world’s attention, and the battle for it had been criticized even before it began. In the second presidential debate, Donald Trump complained that in revealing its designs on Mosul, the international coalition was telegraphing its punches. This was inevitably true — not even ISIS had ever doubted that Mosul would be invaded — but it was also true that the first flurry of blows was too big to duck. Embedded in the column was a unit of American Special Forces, in a cluster of MRAPs. They were there, it was understood, to pick out targets for airstrikes. Rumbling in the distance, the bombs had deposited on the horizon a dome of inky vapor. While the pesh merga attacked ISIS from the north and the east, the Iraqi military was approaching from the south. The job of the battalion moving toward Bashiqa was to shore up the eastern front and extend a cordon around Mosul. The Iraqis’ next moves would depend in part on the Kurds’ success. For the moment, in other words, the progress of the central conflict in the Middle East had come down to this unlikely troop. The first ISIS mortar fire arrived in the midmorning with whizzes and thuds. It was off target, and the soldiers regarded the dirt plumes with indifference. The first incoming bullets soon followed and were cause for more alarm. They flew from a rambling, house on the crest of a slope. The gunfire split the column in two. The back portion halted behind a berm about 12 feet high and about 300 yards downslope from the house. A few soldiers climbed up the dirt and took aim. The rest got out of their vehicles and pulled out phones and cigarettes. Group photos and selfies were snapped. “Let’s use the cannon,” a commander suggested. A pickup mounted with an gun pulled in front of the berm. The first shot fell short a second hit the house, leaving a disappointingly small hole in the facade. When there was a pause in the fighting, a group of trucks emerged from behind the berm, raced up the track and cut right onto a hillock that overlooked the house. Some pesh merga got out and gathered. They presented a clear target for snipers and artillery, but they didn’t appear to mind. They chatted, laughed, smoked, checked their phones. More group photos, more selfies. Even after two mortar rounds landed in quick succession on either side of them — a sign that a spotter was nearby, bracketing their position — they remained unhurried. Eventually they got back into their vehicles and, under fire from the house, headed straight for it. The ISIS fighters had built their own berm beside the house’s exterior wall. The Kurdish soldiers backed their trucks up to it, and one of them opened up on the house with a machine gun. Others peeked over the berm, taking the occasional potshot. One walked up to a gap in the dirt and, with neither cover nor helmet, a cigarette dangling from his lips, emptied a magazine. The jammed. The fighting subsided again. The soldiers reclined at the base of the berm. Out came the phones. More selfies. Texting. A man called his mother. Another watched a video of a firefight taking place on some other front around Mosul. None of them seemed eager to storm the house. “I’m deaf from that cannon!” a soldier said. “Did you take any photos of it being shot?” another asked him. The gunner got into an argument with another soldier over whose responsibility it had been to make sure the was working properly that morning. “You were supposed to fix it!” “It’s not my job!” “It’s not as if you had to build an airplane. It’s simple. ” “You came all the way to the front in a taxi, and now all you do is talk. You just talk. ” Another burst of gunfire from the house, and a soldier climbed behind the gun. “Come help me,” he instructed a colleague. “I don’t know how. ” “If you don’t get up here and help me, I’m going to do everything that’s bad to you. ” The gun was loaded and fired. The backblast shattered a pickup’s windshield. “Bazan, where are your cigarettes?” Bazan ran to a truck and returned with a pack of cigarettes. “Who wants a cigarette?” The group lit up. “Everyone here talks like a man,” a soldier said, “but no one fights like one. ” There was a note of false modesty in this quip. In fact, for centuries Kurds have fought famously, taking on all comers: Persians, Ottomans, Arabs, British and the various governments of Iraq. A diffuse institution — “more an attitude than an army,” as one Kurd put it — the pesh merga today contain anywhere from several tens of thousands to about a hundred thousand fighters, depending on who’s counting and how proud he’s feeling. Many are volunteers. Only some of them have training that would warrant the name in a major military. The one thing they all share is that they are willing to die for their land. If their tactics are negligible — and sometimes as suicidal as those of the jihadists — their bravery is not. The pesh merga are commanded by Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish regional government. When ISIS overran Mosul in June 2014, Barzani offered the help of his army to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal who snubbed him. It was assumed Maliki worried that Barzani intended to annex whatever land his troops took. Maliki’s successor, Haider may have delayed the invasion of Mosul for the same reason. But earlier this year, Barzani, Abadi and the international coalition arrived at an agreement that called for the Kurdish forces to halt their advance at Bashiqa. About six miles from the eastern outskirts of Mosul, Bashiqa was inhabited largely by Christians, Kurds and members of the Yazidi minority, most of whom fled when ISIS arrived. The city presented an added political wrinkle in the war because it is in the “disputed territories,” land claimed by both Iraq and the Kurdish regional government. Certain Kurds, mainly older ones, consider Mosul theirs, too. Partly for this reason — but more because they’re accustomed to fighting against the Iraqi military, not alongside it — some pesh merga worried they would be attacked, or at least mistreated, by Iraqi soldiers when the two forces met on the front lines. Speculation about a sequel war between Kurdistan and Iraq was (and still is) commonplace. But so far relations were cordial, and the Iraqi military, knowing it would have its hands full with the close combat in Mosul’s ancient streets, was content to leave the Bashiqa campaign to the Kurds. “This war is very different for us Kurds,” Barzani’s brother, Sihad Barzani, explained several days after the campaign began. “This is the first time we’ve seen airstrikes that we’re not afraid of. This is the first time the Iraqi Army is not trying to kill us — and we’re not trying to kill them. We hope it stays this way. ” He was in a large abandoned house that the pesh merga had commandeered and turned into a field headquarters on the periphery of Bashiqa. The march had brought them to the limits of the city. They had not yet entered, but they had it surrounded. “ISIS has no escape. They will have to die now. ” The Barzanis are de facto royalty in Kurdistan. Massoud and Sihad’s father, Mustafa, the patriarch of the incipient Iraqi Kurdish republic, led its revolution against Iraq until his death in 1979. It’s common to meet pesh merga with tattoos of Mustafa’s portrait. As Sihad stepped from the house, a young soldier lifted up his shirt to reveal the face of Mustafa, with his thick black mustache and checkered red head scarf, sprawled across his back. Sihad looked on approvingly. Asked how many of his own family members were fighting ISIS, he gestured at the soldiers gathered in the courtyard and said, “They’re all my family. ” The Tigris River valley is dotted with villages and olive groves. The ISIS fighters inhabiting it were experienced and disciplined. What they lacked in munitions they made up for in patience, as the pesh merga had learned. Some Kurds had developed a reluctant respect for their adversary. “They fight as if they want to die,” it was often said. The night before, the jihadists had told the residents of Buharbuq, an village near Bashiqa, to be ready to leave at 6 a. m. for Mosul. The intent was obvious: They would be used as human shields. In the middle of the night, the village fled en masse. After leaving the headquarters, Barzani’s convoy passed the refugee caravan, 80 or so cars and trucks stretched along a roadside. The residents of Buharbuq had taken everyone and everything they could: children, mattresses, blankets, grandmothers, pots, buckets, sheep, chickens. One truck contained a motorized wheelchair, another seven newborn lambs. The women were still dressed according to ISIS decree, fully covered in black hijabs and abayas. Officers with the Asayish, a Kurdish internal security agency, met the villagers on the road with a fleet of buses that would take them to a camp. A soldier pulled up with a freight truck full of crackers and water. “All of our life is wasted in this ISIS mess,” a woman waiting in line said to her husband. “I feel a hundred years old. I hope ISIS goes to hell, then rots in hell. ” “I’m so tired,” her husband replied. There were heartsick roadside reunions. Two old classmates, one a pesh merga who had fled Buharbuq, the other a shop owner who had stayed, hugged for the first time in two years. “Life was very bitter,” the shop owner told his friend. He pulled from his pocket a note, less than a dollar. “This is all my money. ” A young man found his mother. She clung to his neck and wept and kissed his face again and again. “Thank God,” she muttered. “Thank God. ” Perhaps the bravest pesh merga are the drivers of earthmovers, who toil mere yards from ISIS positions. They are bombed, mortared, rocketed and sniped, all the while doing astonishingly fast work. Within two days of setting off toward Bashiqa, they had turned the valley into a grid of berms and trenches that prevented an ISIS breakout and cut off the group’s supply lines. About 4, 000 Kurdish soldiers now occupied 100 positions and small encampments. The main camp was presided over by Barham Arif, one of the youngest and most respected generals in the pesh merga. Tall and taciturn, he led his men into battle in a jaunty MRAP with a GoPro camera to the hood. “ISIS is not smart and not brave, but they brainwash stupid people,” Arif said. “They give drugs to their fighters. They fight for 20 minutes and then run away. ” For months, Arif had lived with his men on the pesh merga’s stalemated front line, on the ridge of Bashiqa Mountain, overlooking the valley. A modest cult of personality had formed around the general, and his camp was home to foreign volunteers and soldiers of fortune. There were American medics, a Brazilian and Czech videographer couple and, constantly at Arif’s side, a Scottish sniper in spectacles. On Facebook, under employer, he listed “pesh merga. ” Generations of Kurds also converged in the camp. A few soldiers were in their 20s. Most were in their 30s, 40s and 50s. One soldier who had come down from the mountain with Arif was Kaefe Ahmed. Ahmed’s father, also a pesh merga fighter, was killed by Iraqi soldiers when Ahmed was 4. Ten other family members had died in war. Ahmed refused to wear a camouflage uniform because, he said, “for decades the Iraqi Army destroyed our land with these uniforms. ” He had fought for more than 20 of his 37 years: in the Kurdish civil war, against Saddam Hussein’s forces and now against ISIS. He and his cousin Robar Ali were in a unit with a group of men, some of them related. When ISIS entered Mosul, they fought on its outskirts, before the pesh merga were ordered to withdraw. Had ISIS stopped there, Ahmed and Ali, like most Iraqi Kurds, wouldn’t have worried much about the jihadists living nearby. This was a conflict among Arabs, they felt, and at first ISIS was better than Saddam’s Baathists ever were. “In the beginning, the ISIS fighters were generally good with people,” Ahmed said. But then ISIS pushed into Kurdistan. Ahmed and Ali fought them in Sinjar, and then in Bashiqa, before it was overrun. The fighting there was particularly bitter. “They’re suicidal,” he said. The oldest soldier in the camp, as far as anyone knew, was a man named Jamil Rashid. When asked about his age, he first said, “A lot. ” Later offerings ranged from 61 to 78. Asked how many battles he’d fought in over the years, he said, “That notebook does not have enough paper to write them all down. ” He ate what food local brought to the camp and slept wrapped in a thin blanket in a ditch. Five of his sons were in the pesh merga. One had recently been killed by ISIS. He had more grandchildren than he cared to count. “ISIS is nothing — they’ve been around for two years,” said Rashid, who was fond of listing, in the profanest terms possible, the Iraqi premiers whose regimes he’d fought against. “Abd Qasim” — the Iraqi prime minister of the early 1960s. “I screwed his mother. Then there was Ahmed Hassan and then Saddam, and then Nuri . He was a bad guy. And now — what’s his name again?” “Abadi,” a young soldier said. “Right, Abadi. I fought all of them on this holy ground — for this holy ground. Our mud is holy. Whoever doesn’t fight for his land takes it in the [expletive]. This land is so precious. ” “Why are you talking about history, Jamil?” another young soldier asked him. “We’re supposed to be discussing now. ” “So what if I talk about history?” Rashid said. “It’s all the same, history and now. ” On Tuesday morning, Arif’s men prepared to assault Omar Qapchi, a village barely a from his camp that was still under ISIS control. A commander had got hold of some villagers on a cellphone and was telling them what to do when the fighting started. “Stay together, don’t separate,” he said. “If you see any ISIS, call this number. Take care of yourselves. We’re coming. ” The armored personnel carriers and tanks and trucks filled up in moments. Far more soldiers wanted to take part in the assault than there was space in vehicles. Omar Qapchi, spreading about a mile down a slope that ended in an arterial road at the foot of Bashiqa Mountain, was made up of tightly packed and homes. Near its western gate, the column split into three smaller convoys. Arif’s convoy cut across a field toward the road. Though the ground was known to be full of I. E. D. s, some pesh merga cut one another off as they careered over suspicious patches of dirt and objects, racing to get into the action. When the convoy reached the road, muzzle flashes appeared in windows, and bullets whizzed by. The pesh merga strafed the buildings with fire and grenades. At the eastern gate, the convoy hooked into the village. The streets were empty. From the residents who had phoned, it was known that about a dozen ISIS fighters were somewhere in the village. The convoy raced into the village center and suddenly found itself in a firefight with a contingent of ISIS gunmen, who, surrounded, had taken a stand at one end of a short, wide alley. The soldiers, on the other end, jumped from their vehicles, piled into the alley — directly in the line of fire — and began shooting back. There was little aiming but a lot of yelling. One man stepped into the alley with a grenade launcher. He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He held the rocket inches from his nose and looked at it quizzically. As bullets hit the dirt near his feet, he slowly peeled off a piece of plastic wrapping, then lifted the launcher back onto his shoulder and tried again. This time it fired. The ISIS fighters took to their heels, and the soldiers, among them Ahmed, gave chase, eventually cornering several jihadists in a mosque. One detonated a suicide vest another was sheared in half by a rocket. By the end of the day, eight of them had died, three had escaped and one was captured. Three pesh merga sustained minor wounds. Rather than going on foot from house to house to make sure the village was cleared, they gathered outside it and celebrated. “I think I killed someone,” Rashid said. “It would be a shame if I shot my rifle and didn’t kill anyone. ” Two days later, the wind at their backs, Arif’s men moved on Faziliya, a neighboring village. The road to the village was littered with I. E. D. s, which sent up showers of gravel and tarmac. On the wall of a kiosk at the entrance to the village was : “Every ISIS man who dies goes to paradise. ” An ISIS flag fluttered on a fence post, but the roofs of the houses, which ranged steeply up the foot of the mountain, bore newly hung white flags: The town’s residents were eagerly awaiting the pesh merga’s arrival. Then gun and rocket fire erupted from a small, windowed spire on a building near the road. A tank reduced the building to smoking rubble. The people of Faziliya streamed from their homes and into the streets. They patted their heads — a Kurdish gesture of welcome — and kissed the soldiers. Children chanted: “Long live pesh merga! Long live pesh merga!” In the village square, a group of boys tore down an ISIS billboard. Soldiers shot off celebratory rounds. “Who has cigarettes?” a man asked the soldiers. “We want to smoke!” A soldier found his wife and children — their first meeting in more than two years. His mother emerged. She took hold of her son. They sank to the ground in an embrace, their tears streaming together. Back at Omar Qapchi, the few residents who had remained for the battle were gathered outside the village next to a caged soccer pitch, where they awaited interrogation by the soldiers and Asayish officers. An elderly woman wanted to know where her brother was. A rocket had destroyed his house, and he was nowhere to be seen. “He’s dead,” a neighbor of hers explained, out of earshot, “but she hasn’t found out yet. ” An officer had already determined that one resident was allied with ISIS. The man was dragged from the group, his hands bound behind his back with a scarf. A green knit face mask was pulled down over his eyes, and he was forced to the ground. He pleaded his innocence. “Shut up, you imbecile!” a soldier yelled at him. “It’s obvious he’s ISIS,” another soldier said. “Just look at his color. He’s taken on the jihadists’ color. ” “I’m not with ISIS, I swear!” the prisoner said. “I’m a Kurd!” “Shut up or I’ll stuff this down your throat!” the first soldier said, jabbing his rifle’s stock in the man’s face. The officer was from Omar Qapchi and had fled the village as ISIS approached it in 2014. From his friends who had stayed, he had heard that the prisoner had driven an ambulance for the jihadists. His son, they said, was with ISIS, too. “I haven’t done anything!” the prisoner protested. “I was just told to drive somewhere. ” “Hit him already,” another soldier said. The prisoner’s son, his hands also bound and face covered, was pushed down beside his father. “My son is a student in Bashiqa,” the father said. “I’ll tell you anything about him. Please don’t put the gun to his head. ” “I’m just following orders,” the soldier said. “Don’t worry,” said an Asayish commander who had arrived on the scene. “We don’t know if he’s ISIS. We have to investigate. ” “You’ve humiliated my son!” “So are you saying your son is ISIS or not?” the soldier asked. “He’s a student! He’s in ninth grade!” They were bundled into the bed of a pickup and driven away. The Islamic State, the pesh merga knew, hadn’t conquered such large swaths of the country with weapons alone. It had won sympathy among many Sunni Muslims who felt neglected by Iraq’s national government and abused by security forces. ISIS promised them protection and pride. Many of them saw ISIS as a way out of an already miserable existence. In a camp near Khazer, another town, an elderly farmer who’d fled the village of Topzawa, not far from Bashiqa, which the Iraqi military had taken a few days before, talked about the jihadists fondly. “Most of the young men who joined ISIS were poor,” he said. “They needed the money. They had no other options. ” He confessed that he had come to know some of the ISIS men in Topzawa well. They weren’t foreigners, but Iraqis, ordinary ones. They were kind. They allowed him to travel wherever he wanted to sell his produce. He didn’t mind that the women in his family had to put on more clothing, and he wore a beard anyway. They treated his wife and daughters with the respect that Islam required. “At the beginning of Islam, with Muhammad, there were good rules. But with democracy, there are no rules. I’m a fair person. I believe in justice. But there are rules in Islam. No one can change them. Not you, not me, not anyone. “ISIS treated us as though we were free,” he went on. “We felt secure under them. In the final battle, they conducted themselves honorably. They fought until they died. ” The Iraqi Army, by contrast, relied on foreign airstrikes. The bombs had killed 20 of his sheep, 10 of his chickens and 10 dogs, and when the soldiers finally arrived, they were “very, very bad. ” They forced him from his home and made him come to this camp, where he endured humiliations. His hands were bound. “They attacked my honor. They told me my wife and daughters had been raped by ISIS. I was disgraced. I wanted to kill myself. ” Two weeks after the Bashiqa campaign began, President Barzani still hadn’t given the order to attack the city itself. Rumors about what would be found in it expanded by the day. The number of ISIS fighters supposedly hiding out there crept upward. There would be no end of I. E. D. s, people said, of suicide of snipers. There would be tunnels everywhere. At General Arif’s camp, the berms had grown taller and the foxholes deeper. ISIS fighters had attacked by night, and by day they lobbed in mortar rounds and handcrafted missiles. Jamil Rashid spoke with a group of younger soldiers as gunfire rang out. “This is nothing,” he said. “It’s air. I like the sound of it. ” Finally, the order was given. The night before the assault, Arif’s troops gathered on the mountain above Bashiqa, in their old position. Ahmed and his cousin Ali were part of group of about 30 men who would descend the slope and enter Bashiqa on foot. In the morning, an armored column collected on a road outside the city. Sihad Barzani arrived to wish them luck. “We must move, but slowly,” he said. For six hours, the column crept toward the city, while airstrikes and artillery pummeled it. As they waited, soldiers checked for news of the American election, the next day, on their phones. Word came down that a sniper was holed up somewhere inside. He had already killed one soldier and wounded four. On the access road into the city’s east end, which climbed up the mountainside, the column drove by a pesh merga bulldozer in flames, the driver incinerated in the cab. As in Omar Qapchi, the streets were quiet. But as the vehicles turned by a small park, a grenade flew at it. Its orange fireball and white smoke trail, visible for less than a second, were terribly beautiful. The rocket exploded against the low concrete wall of the park. Another quickly followed behind it. The column made it to a central plaza. A handsome old church with a suspicious tower was peppered with fire and artillery. Jamil Rashid hopped from the front seat of a truck and took up a position outside the church. Standing in the open, his rifle dangling by his leg, he looked around and breathed in the scent of gun smoke, beaming. The column turned back along the same road it had entered. But now there was an empty white sedan in the middle of an intersection. Was this a car bomb? A roadblock? Had some innocent tried to flee and suffered a breakdown? The driver of the lead tank stuck his head from the turret hatch. A shot cracked the air, its tone higher and sharper than that of a Kalashnikov. Blood sprayed from the driver’s head. He slumped over the turret. His crew mates began screaming and crying. Panic passed down the line. “Sniper! Sniper!” The column reversed course, honking and and labored back to the plaza. The tank sped from the city by a different route. At the staging point, the driver’s body was lifted out and put in an ambulance. His friends bent over the tank’s side skirt and knelt in the dirt, weeping. Before the driver was shot, Ahmed, Ali and their detachment had descended into the same side of the city on foot. They came under fire, retreated back uphill and took up a position. A crack. Ali lurched forward, falling over Ahmed’s leg. Ahmed thought his cousin had tripped. Then he saw the blood. Three days later, Ahmed was worrying a string of wooden prayer beads in a mosque in his and Ali’s hometown, Rawanduz, in Kurdistan’s eastern mountains. He sat by the muezzin, who sang a death prayer for Ali, a Quran open before him on a desk stand. Old pesh merga in traditional dress and younger ones in suits and jeans filed in. They greeted Ali’s father and Ahmed, their hands to their chests, saying: “May he rest in peace” and “May God forgive him his sins. ” After the service, long rugs were spread on the floor, and Ahmed and the men from his unit sat down to lunch. Their part in the fight against ISIS was over, for now. Bashiqa was liberated, and the Kurdish line stopped there. But the war against ISIS was not going well for the Iraqi Army, which was still stuck on Mosul’s outskirts, taking a lot of casualties. “It will be a heavy fight,” one man said. Ahmed and his friends would fight in Mosul if they were ordered to, they agreed, but they wouldn’t like it. They were not among the Kurds who considered the city part of the homeland. “Is it fair that a Kurd should die for an Arab?” Ahmed said. Anyway, history had taught them that another war would come soon enough. “Once you finish one fight, they prepare another one for you,” a soldier said. “It makes you tired. ”

В ноябре 2016 г. Мажилис Парламента Республики Казахстан одобрил создание на территории страны Банка низкообогащенного урана МАГАТЭ. Низкообогащенный уран (НОУ) – это материал, из которого делается топливо для АЭС. Создать стратегическое хранилище НОУ Международное атомное агентство решило еще в 2006 г. Цель проекта – гарантировать бесперебойные поставки топлива на АЭС стран, входящих в МАГАТЭ. При этом из самого Банка регулярных поставок осуществляться не будет. Это будет «неприкосновенный запас», которым не будут пользоваться без чрезвычайной ситуации. Официально запасы НОУ будут принадлежать МАГАТЭ. Разместить Банк было решено на территории одного из членов Агентства. Оператором могло стать государство, не имеющее ядерного оружия, но при этом обладающее технологиями и инфраструктурой для работы с НОУ. Кроме того, страна должна была обладать хорошей репутацией в МАГАТЭ. Казахстан удовлетворял всем этим условиям. Как известно, РК – крупнейший производитель урана с соответствующими технологиями и опытом, в том числе – по переработке высокообогащенного урана в НОУ (что важно для ядерного разоружения). Страна решила поучаствовать в развитии мирного атома и летом 2011 г. подала в МАГАТЭ заявку. Для размещения Банка Казахстан предложил два места: участок на бывшем Семипалатинском полигоне и «Ульбинский металлургический завод» (г. Усть-Каменогорск). После проверки обоих участков экспертами Агентства был выбран второй вариант. «Ульбинский металлургический завод» имеет почти полувековой опыт с радиоактивными материалами и компетентных специалистов – наследников советской школы. Кроме того, предприятие прошло серьезную модернизацию и отвечает самым высоким требованиям безопасности. В апреле 2015 г. вышло Постановление правительства РК, одобряющее договор с МАГАТЭ о создании Банка НОУ в Казахстане. В августе 2015 г. этот договор был подписан министром иностранных дел РК Ерланом Идрисовым и генеральным директором МАГАТЭ Юкия Амано. Сейчас полным ходом идут подготовительные работы, в которых участвуют эксперты МАГАТЭ. Прежде чем Банк НОУ будет размещен на казахской земле, правительству РК еще придется доработать как инфраструктуру, так и законодательство, чтобы все соответствовало международным критериям безопасности. Начало уже положено: так, в январе 2016 г. был принят закон «Об использовании атомной энергии». В составлении некоторых дополнений к новому закону участвовали эксперты МАГАТЭ. Предстоит еще многое сделать, чтобы новое хранилище было максимально безопасно для местного населения и окружающей среды. Весь материал будет содержаться в контейнерах, соответствующих европейским стандартам. По данным МАГАТЭ, урана в хранилище хватит, чтобы обеспечивать электричеством крупный город в течение 3 лет. Все расходы, связанные с перевозкой урана, уплатой налогов и гарантиями по отношению к Банку НОУ, МАГАТЭ берет на себя. Казахстану предстоит за свой счет эксплуатировать хранилище – обеспечивать его электроэнергией, платить заработную плату работникам (гражданам РК) и т.п. В благодарность за размещение и содержание на своей территории Банка НОУ Казахстан рассчитывает на помощь МАГАТЭ в развитии своей атомной промышленности. Уже сейчас на территории РК работает комиссия МАГАТЭ, проводящая общее исследование ядерной инфраструктуры. По окончании своей работы комиссия подготовит отчет с рекомендациями по развитию казахстанской атомной промышленности. Республика обладает огромными запасами урана и занимает первое место в мире по его добыче. Казахстанская продукция занимает немалую часть мирового уранового рынка. При этом Казахстан давно мечтает не только поставлять другим странам сырье или полуфабрикаты, но и самостоятельно проводить все этапы ядерного топливного цикла до превращения урана в готовое топливо для АЭС. Несомненно, экспортировать готовый продукт гораздо прибыльнее. Об этой задаче напомнил президент РК Нурсултан Назарбаев во время встречи с председателем правления «Казатомпрома» Аскаром Жумагалиевым, состоявшейся в начале ноября 2016 г. Тогда он отметил, что для достижения своей цели Казахстан должен усилить сотрудничество в атомной сфере с другими странами и международными организациями. Следует напомнить, что одним из основных партнеров Казахстана в атомной сфере является Россия. Благодаря работе с Россией РК значительно продвинулась на пути к самостоятельному производству ядерного топлива. Сотрудничество продолжается: в октябре 2016 г. в Астане состоялся Форум межрегионального сотрудничества России и Казахстана, в котором участвовали президенты двух стран – Владимир Путин и Нурсултан Назарбаев. В результате Россия и Казахстан приняли план совместных действий до 2018 г. и подписали меморандум о расширении стратегического сотрудничества в области ядерно-топливного цикла. Меморандум подтверждает все прежние договоренности между двумя странами, касающиеся совместной работы в области АЭ, в том числе добычи и переработки урана. Помимо прочего, в документе упоминается возможность совместного участия России и Казахстана в проектах МАГАТЭ. Размещение на территории республики Банка НОУ – широкий жест в сторону МАГАТЭ, который поднимет авторитет Казахстана в глазах других государств. Создание хранилища НОУ не только подстрахует работающие ядерные реакторы от дефицита топлива, но и поспособствует нераспространению ядерного оружия. Дело в том, что сейчас страны, желающие освоить «мирный атом», часто вынуждены самостоятельно обогащать уран, чтобы превратить его в топливо. При этом МАГАТЭ беспокоит, что кто-то из них может превысить необходимый для мирных целей уровень обогащения и получить материал для создания ядерного оружия. Появление хранилища НОУ, в которое может обратиться любая страна-член МАГАТЭ, позволит им не заниматься обогащением урана самостоятельно, тем самым снизив угрозу распространения ядерного оружия. Таким образом, Казахстан может стать стратегически важным членом МАГАТЭ, участвующим в обеспечении мировой безопасности. Помимо престижа и помощи в атомных проектах, это может привлечь к стране внимание зарубежных инвесторов. По данным правительства РК, за первую половину 2016 г. объем иностранных инвестиций в экономику страны увеличился в 5 раз, составив почти 6 млрд долларов США. Такой рост несомненно связан с ростом международного авторитета Казахстана, которым он отчасти обязан своему сотрудничеству с МАГАТЭ. Дмитрий Бокарев, политический обозреватель, специально для интернет-журнала « Новое Восточное Обозрение ». Популярные статьи

Conservative columnist and bestselling author Ann Coulter tweeted her take on Kathy Griffin’s gruesome video posing with a bloody severed head of the President of the United States Tuesday. [Coulter poked fun at Griffin, who has based much of her public image on being an irreverent “gay icon,” described as such by the likes of Gawker and TMZ. Coulter found the gory video an odd choice for Griffin, given its similarity to images popularized by violent Islamists like ISIS, who not only post pictures of themselves with the severed heads of allegedly gay men, but have been known to throw gay men from buildings to their deaths in the name of Sharia Law. Whoa! How does Kathy Griffin’s sole employer (Gay America, Inc.) feel about this tribute to Sharia Law? https: . — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 31, 2017, Commenting on a Breitbart News report on the incident, Coulter inquired after Griffin’s gay fanbase, calling them “Gay America, Inc. ” and Griffin’s “sole employer. ” She then dismissed Griffin’s attempts to excuse her actions by reference to comments President Donald Trump made about Megyn Kelly during a debate nearly two years ago. Kathy Griffin’s excuse for beheading Trump: His remarks @ Megyn Kelly ( ). After almost 2 YEARS, this is the best she can come up with? https: . — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 31, 2017, Coulter went further in pointing out the hypocrisy of the “gay icon,” mocking Griffin’s pandering to gays in light of her readiness to crib the style of those who wish them dead: Kathy Griffin’s entire career: Guilting an entire sexual subculture into pretending to find her funny. https: . — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 31, 2017, As the controversy over Griffin’s video stretched into Wednesday, Coulter continued to engage in the roiling fracas. Coulter retweeted, for example, Sen. Al Franken ( )’s decision to stand by Griffin after she issued a video apology Tuesday night saying, “I beg for your forgiveness. I went too far. I made a mistake. And I was wrong. ”

Contaminated Food from China Now Entering the U.S. Under the 'Organic' Label The Chinese food production industry is one of the world's least-regulated and most corrupt, as ... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/contaminated-food-from-china-now.html The Chinese food production industry is one of the world's least-regulated and most corrupt, as has repeatedly been proven time and again. Now, it appears, there is no trusting anything that comes from China marked "organic."Natural Health 365 reports that several foods within the country are so contaminated that Chinese citizens don't trust them. What's more, the countries that import these tainted foods are putting their citizens at risk.U.S. Customs personnel often turn away food shipments from China because they contain unsavory additives and drug residues, are mislabeled, or are just generally filthy. Some Chinese food exporters have responded by labeling their products "organic," though they are far from it.There are several factors at play which make Chinese claims of organic unreliable. First, environmental pollution from unrestrained and unregulated industrial growth has so polluted soil and waterways with toxic heavy metals that nothing grown in them is safe, much less organic. Also, there is so much fraudulent labeling and rampant corruption within the government and manufacturing sectors that it's not smart to trust what is put on packaging.In fact, farmers in China use water that is replete with heavy metals, Natural Health 365 noted in a separate report . In addition, water used for irrigation also contains organic and inorganic substances and pollutants. Chinese "organic" food is so contaminated that a person could get ill just by handling some of it. 'Dirty water' is all there is The report noted further:"This is reality – all of China's grains, vegetables and fruits are irrigated with untreated industrial wastewater. The Yellow River, which is considered unusable, supports major food producing areas in the northeast provinces."Many Chinese farmers won't even eat the food they produce, if you can believe that. That's because it's clear that China's water pollution issues are so pronounced that it threatens the country's entire food supply.Chinese farmers have said there is no available water for crops except "dirty water." As part of the country's industrial prowess, it is also one of the largest producers (and consumers) of fertilizers and pesticides, Water Politics reported.The site noted further that as China's industrial might grows, so too does the level of contaminants in the country's water supply. Lakes, rivers, streams and falling water tables are becoming more polluted by the year.In addition to man-made pollutants, animals produce about 90 percent of the organic pollutants and half of the nitrogen in China's water, say experts at the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning. There are times when water is so polluted it turns black – yet it is still used to irrigate crops, and of course, that affects so-called organic farming operations as well. These nine foods are particularly vulnerable to becoming tainted, Natural Health 365 noted: Fish: Some 80 percent of the tilapia sold in the U.S. come from fish farms in China, as well as half the cod. Water pollution in China is a horrible problem, so any fish grown there are suspect. Chicken: Poultry produced in China is very often plagued with illnesses like avian flu.Apples and apple juice: Only recently has the U.S. moved to allow the importation of Chinese apples, though American producers grow plenty for the country and the world. Rice: Though this is a staple in China and much of the rice in the U.S. comes from there, some of it has been found to be made of resin and potato. Mushrooms: Some 34 percent of processed mushrooms come from China. Salt: Some salt produced in China for industrial uses has made its way to American dinner tables. Black pepper: One Chinese vendor was trying to pass off mud flakes as pepper. Green peas: Phony peas have been found in China made of soy, green dye and other questionable substances. Garlic: About one-third of all garlic in the U.S. comes from China.Shop wisely.

For his bookshop and website One Grand Books, the editor Aaron Hicklin asked people to name the 10 books they’d take with them if they were marooned on a desert island. Every Friday for the last year, we’ve run one of those lists on TMagazine. com. So many books have been recommended — by everyone from James Franco to Alice Waters — that it might feel like you need a lifetime (and then another one) to read them all. So, in honor of the July 4th weekend, we’re giving you that time to catch up — or at least pick a good book to bring along to the beach. Here, excerpts from 10 of the individuals who have recommended titles over the last several months. Click the link beneath each name to read their whole list. Enjoy! “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” Steven Pinker Proof that the world is becoming more peaceful. It’s not just a question for historians, but a profound statement about human nature and the possibility for a better future. This book may have shaped my outlook more than any other. See more of Bill Gates’s favorite books. “The Color Purple,” Alice Walker Because she makes the invisible visible, and redeems people who seem irredeemable, she makes every reader feel visible and redeemable, too. See more of Gloria Steinem’s favorite books. “You’ve Got To Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories That Held Them in Awe,” Ron Hansen This anthology is like one of those fateful nights where you met a boyfriend, a best friend and got a lead on a job. It introduced me to Jim Shepard and Donald Barthelme. I often think of Amy Tan’s introduction of Molly Giles’s story, “Pie Dance. ” Tan writes that upon hearing Giles read the story, she felt she didn’t yet have what it took to be a writer but she “also knew — as deeply as you can know something about yourself — that it would be worth a lifetime to try. ” That’s one of the most genuine things I’ve ever heard a writer say about another writer. See more of Sloane Crosley’s favorite books. “A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction,” Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein Who needs a big place to live in? You need a front porch, you need a busy street, you need neighbors to say hello and good night to and you need a bedroom to restore yourself. This is a book you can open on any page. You might find a drawing of the narrow streets of Ethiopia, or a chapter titled “Dancing in the Streets,” which is something people have done forever. See more of Alice Waters’s favorite books. “What Maisie Knew,” Henry James A brilliant social comedy seen wholly from a child’s point of view, this is a dazzling technical feat that, as always with James, deepens as it develops — like the life of the child herself. An exhilarating prelude to the great novels of his famous late phase. See more of Alan Hollinghurst’s favorite books. “The Fire Next Time,” James Baldwin Basically the finest essay I’ve ever read. It’s technically two essays but it feels like one. Baldwin refused to hold anyone’s hand. He was both direct and beautiful all at once. He did not seem to write to convince you. He wrote beyond you. See more of Coates’s favorite books. “Women,” Chloe Caldwell Sexy, sexy hybrid that could turn anyone into a lesbian, at least for a summer. See more of Lena Dunham’s favorite books. “Birds of America,” Lorrie Moore Long before I started to write in earnest, Lorrie Moore taught me you could have a woman narrator who was funny and complex and even wrongheaded. She opened up a lot of space that me and a million other women rushed into. See more of Miranda July’s favorite books. “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” Gabriel García Márquez Picking a Márquez novel is a near impossible task. It’s too easy to just go with the obvious choice( s). But this is his most daring novel, and the labyrinthine twists and turns of each sentence demands undivided attention — so perfect for a desert island, then. See more of Marlon James’ favorite books. “Miles: The Autobiography,” Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe If I could have a meal with anyone, it would be Miles Davis. It would be so cool to hear his stories and sit back and talk about jazz. Miles moved to New York around the same age as I did, and he was a transformative player in the evolution of jazz music as we know it. This autobiography was his chance to tell all. See more of Marcus Samuelsson’s favorite books.

SCANDAL: EPA could have issued an emergency order 7 months before Flint water crisis became public knowledge Monday, October 31, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes Tags: Flint , water crisis , EPA cover-up (NaturalNews) The federal bureaucracy and corresponding state agencies have never been much good at responding to crises in a timely fashion, and that tradition was alive and well during the recent toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan.In fact, according to a newly released watchdog report, Americans now know that the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could have intervened in the crisis a full seven months before it finally did, meaning thousands of residents in Flint would have had to drink far less water tainted with lead.As reported by The Associated Press , the EPA's inspector general said that the agency had the authority and enough information to issue emergency orders to protect Flint residents from the lead-contaminated water they were drinking as early as June 2015, seven months before officials finally declared an emergency.Inspector General Arthur Elkins said in an interim report that the water crisis should have created "a greater sense of urgency" for the EPA to "intervene when the safety of drinking water is compromised." Everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else The drinking water in Flint became tainted with unsafe levels of lead after city officials decided to begin drawing from the Flint River in April 2014, in a bid to save money. The broke city of about 100,000 residents north of Detroit was under state control at the time.Regulators did not make sure that the water was properly treated, so lead from aging pipes leached into the supply, the AP reported.Since the discovery of high levels of lead, federal, state and local officials have traded accusations about who is most to blame for the crisis , even as residents are still forced to drink bottled or filtered water.Doctors have detected higher than normal levels of lead in hundreds of children around the city. And many taps remain off-limits.Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, appointed a panel to look into the matter. It concluded that the state is "fundamentally accountable" for the lead crisis due to decisions made by state environmental regulators as well as state-appointed emergency managers who were in charge of running the city.But that said, once the EPA discovered that water being consumed by city residents was tainted with unsafe levels of lead, Snyder believes the agency should have acted – and he is right."As Gov. Snyder has stated all along, what happened in Flint was the result of failure of government at all levels," his spokeswoman, Anna Heaton, said recently.Since the crisis began, officials have tried to reshuffle the deck, so to speak, and call it "reform." They say some state agencies have undergone "culture changes" that will supposedly prevent future recurrences of epic failure, according to Heaton, who called such changes "encouraging." People should be held accountable – but won't be It's unclear how many people actually believe that, considering that state agencies had mandates already to protect the public from polluted and contaminated water (as did the EPA). By "culture changes," does Heaton mean that people were fired and actually replaced by others who will do what taxpayers are paying them to do?Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, a Democrat who took office after the crisis emerged, said agencies like the EPA and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality are there "to help ensure the well-being and safety of men, women and children," yet they failed in their core mission to do so. She also called for those who are responsible for the crisis to be held accountable, though we advise her not to hold her breath.As for the EPA's inspector general report, it said that the agency's Midwest region did not issue an emergency order because officials concluded actions taken by the state prevented the EPA from doing so. The report says that their interpretation was not correct, and that according to federal law, when state actions are deemed to be unacceptable, "the EPA can and should proceed with an (emergency) order" designed to protect "the public in a timely manner."Without EPA intervention, "the conditions in Flint persisted, and the state continued to delay taking action to require corrosion control or provide alternative drinking water supplies," the report said. Sources:

A WikiLeak’s email released on Monday reveals Clinton staffers knew as early as 2011 that Anthony Weiner had been messaging an underage girl but chose to take no action. In June of 2011, John Podesta, chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign – received news of an investigation into Weiner’s online contact with a 17-year-old Delaware high school student. The email , sent by Jennifer Palmieri, the current Clinton campaign communications director, detailed lurid claims of private messages to an underage girl being investigated by police. Now it is only LOGICAL to say that if these people knew, Hillary Clinton knew as well. Podesta’s reaction suggested he was undisturbed by the news. He replied to the email, “Oof.” Palmieri’s email also included snippets of a Fox News report at the time, saying police were investigating Weiner’s communication with the girl. “Police on Friday afternoon came to the home of a 17-year-old high school junior to ask her about direct online communications she has had with Rep. Anthony Weiner,” the Fox News article said. Sources close to the 17-year-old at the time told Fox News that the girl and Weiner had direct-messaged each other on Twitter. The girl openly expressed her feelings for the disgraced congressman, who followed her on Twitter. She also expressed her affinity for married men, according to Patterico.com . At the time, Wiener was married to Huma Abedin, Clinton’s confidante and vice chairwoman, who is now a centerpiece of a fresh FBI investigation into the handling of classified material while Clinton was in office. The scandal was one of many committed by the former congressman, whose return to the public eye has infuriated Democrats . On Sunday, FBI Director James Comey announced that the FBI was re-opening its investigation into Clinton’s private email server, having discovered new emails that “appear to be pertinent.” Weiner is at the center of the investigation, along with his estranged wife, Abedin. Law enforcement officials told The New York Times that the emails were uncovered after the FBI seized devices belonging to Abedin. Comey has come under fire for his decision, but he has vigorously defended the integrity of the probe. “You can call us wrong, but don’t call us weasels. We are not weasels,” Comey said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing in September. “We are honest people, and whether or not you agree with the result, this was done the way you want it to be done.” Clinton has demanded the FBI “come clean” with more specifics, and some Democrats have gone as far as to accuse Comey of interfering with the election and violating the Hatch Act . “We’re not going to be distracted, no matter what our opponents throw at us,” Clinton told a Florida rally. Abedin separated from Weiner in August after it emerged that he was exchanging lewd messages with a woman on social media. Such behavior had destroyed his congressional career and his 2013 mayoral campaign. Source

أوروبا وخيار القوة في مواجهة اللاجئين تاريخ النشر: 26.10.2016 | 18:18 GMT | انسخ الرابط http://ar.rt.com/i5he قررت السلطاتُ الفرنسية اغلاقَ مخيماتِ اللجوء والهجرة في مدينة كاليه على الحدود الفرنسية البريطانية ومنعَ وصول اي لاجئين أو مهاجرين جدد اليها . جاء ذلك بناءً على قرار سياسي أعلنه الرئيسُ فرانسوا هولاند بتسوية هذا المسألة قبل حلول فصل الشتاء وبعدما تحول الملف الى ورقة بيد الأحزاب والتيارات السياسية اليمينية المتطرفة في فرنسا واوروبا بشكل عام. فرنسا حملت بريطانيا جزءا من المسؤولية ودعتها الى تحمل قسط من مسؤولياتها والتزاماتها الاخلاقية خاصة وان غالبية اللاجئين يرغبون في الوصول الى بريطانيا بأي شكل من الاشكال. ولعل اخطر مشكلة في هذا الملف هي قضية الاطفال السوريين الذين وصلوا الى كاليه من دون اي مرافق لهم واصبحوا عرضة لكل الاحتمالات حول مصيرهم المجهول وذلك بالرغم من إلحاح هيئات الاغاثة الانسانية والدعوة لإنقاذهم .

By the look of the renderings officially unveiled on Wednesday morning, New York’s next significant landmark may be the city’s biggest Rorschach test, too. Big, bold and the structure, “Vessel,” stands 15 stories, weighs 600 tons and is filled with 2, 500 climbable steps. Long under wraps, it is the creation of Thomas Heatherwick, 46, an acclaimed and controversial British designer, and will rise in the mammoth Far West Side development Hudson Yards, anchoring a plaza and garden that will not open until 2018. Some may see a jungle gym, others a honeycomb. But Stephen M. Ross, the billionaire founder and chairman of Related Companies, which is developing Hudson Yards with Oxford Properties Group, has his own nickname for “Vessel”: “the social climber. ” And the steep price tag Mr. Ross’s privately held company is paying for Mr. Heatherwick’s installation? More than $150 million. The back story of the “Vessel” involves two men who are in step in more ways than one: a designer known for dreaming big, and a developer who will spend whatever it takes to make a statement. Currently under construction in Monfalcone, Italy, the and concrete pieces that make up “Vessel” are not to be assembled on site until next year, but on Wednesday, Related Companies rolled out the design with a Hudson Yards spectacle hosted by Anderson Cooper, with a performance by the Alvin Ailey dance troupe on a set that mimicked the multiple stairways inside “Vessel. ” The crowd of hundreds included Mayor Bill de Blasio. “We know ‘Vessel’ will be debated and discussed and looked at from every angle, and Thomas,” the mayor added, addressing the architect, “if you meet 100 New Yorkers, you will find 100 different opinions on the beautiful work you’ve created. Do not be dismayed. ” On a visit to New York this summer, Mr. Heatherwick, founder of the Heatherwick Studio in London, was eager to explain his design. “We had to think of what could act as the role of a landmarker,” he said. “Something that could help give character and particularity to the space. ” Mr. Heatherwick said “Vessel” was partly inspired by Indian stepwells, but he also referred to it as a climbing frame — what Americans would call a jungle gym — as well as “a Busby Berkeley musical with a lot of steps. ” The design reflects Mr. Heatherwick’s belief that city natives are always looking for their next workout. “New Yorkers have a fitness thing,” he said. (It will test many city folk who can barely climb into their Ubers, but there will be an elevator for anyone unable to reach the top.) Inside the piece, the 154 interconnecting staircases may put visitors in mind of a drawing by M. C. Escher, especially given that the structure will have 80 viewing landings. Mr. Heatherwick’s career, as measured by his personal profile, has certainly been climbing. He gained fame for ingenious designs like his torch for the 2012 London Olympics, known as the Caldron. He is collaborating with the architect Bjarke Ingels on the design for Google’s new campus in Mountain View, Calif. and he is reimagining the home of the New York Philharmonic, David Geffen Hall, with Diamond Schmitt Architects of Toronto. But other projects have faced some downward pressure. Mr. Heatherwick’s proposal for a bridge across the Thames River in London was held up by budget issues in July, though Mr. Heatherwick said it was moving forward again. In New York, the Hudson River island park known as Pier 55 — funded by another billionaire, Barry Diller — was stalled by a legal challenge that was rejected last week. (According to Mr. Diller, the challenge is being secretly sponsored by Douglas Durst, a real estate rival of Mr. Ross’s.) “It’s a leap of faith in terms of scale,” said Susan K. Freedman, president of the Public Art Fund, who has seen the “Vessel” renderings and likes them. “ I admire the ambition,” she added. “You can’t be small in New York. ” But Ms. Freedman had her reservations. “The bigger problem may be traffic control,” she said, given that the work will be near the already crowded High Line, the tourist attraction whose northernmost segment winds around Hudson Yards. “I think people will want to experience it. ” Thomas Woltz, of the firm Nelson Byrd Woltz, designed Hudson Yards’ Public Square and Gardens, with input from Mr. Heatherwick, as a dramatically landscaped attraction. The square will be the $200 million centerpiece of Hudson Yards’ eastern section, a parcel with eight buildings comprising office space, retail outlets, residences and a new cultural institution, the Shed. The eastern section stretches from 30th to 34th Streets and from 10th to 11th Avenues, built largely on a platform over the West Side Rail Yards. Despite the name “Public Square,” Hudson Yards is a private development, and “Vessel” was commissioned and approved by a committee of one: Mr. Ross, who has kept the design models in a locked cabinet in the Related offices — when not allowing brief peeks to lure commercial tenants. “I have the only key,” he said with a smile. When Mr. Ross began the process of finding a piece several years ago, he first turned to five artists who are known for working in public plazas — and whom he declined to name — and asked them for detailed proposals. One of the unbuilt plans cost him $500, 000, he said, and another $250, 000. But he was unsatisfied. “Been there, seen that,” Mr. Ross said of his reaction. A Related colleague suggested Mr. Heatherwick, who had come in previously for a meeting at the company to discuss a future pavilion on the site. Mr. Heatherwick and Mr. Ross talked, and six weeks later, the designer sent a proposal. “I looked at it and said, ‘That’s it,’” Mr. Ross said. “It had everything I wanted. ” That was in 2013. “Everybody here thought I was nuts,” Mr. Ross said of his colleagues’ reactions. The idea of “Vessel” as an exclamation point toward the northern end of the High Line is part of Mr. Ross’s grand plan to make Hudson Yards the center of New York, despite its location. “The most important place in New York is Rockefeller Center during Christmas time,” Mr. Ross said. “I wanted to have a Christmas tree. ” One of Mr. Heatherwick’s main goals for the piece is to raise people significantly above ground level so they can see the city — and one another — in a new way. “The power of the High Line is the changed perspective on the world,” Mr. Heatherwick said. The interactive feature of “Vessel” was partly a reaction to what Mr. Heatherwick sees as previous failures in public projects: Plop art. “We’ve gotten used to these 1960s, 1970s plazas with obligatory big artworks plunked down,” he said. “Vessel” is only 50 feet in diameter at its base, rising to 150 feet at the top, meaning that it has a “small bum,” Mr. Heatherwick said, and does not take over the plaza’s ground level. The cost of the piece has ballooned from the original estimate, $75 million, Mr. Ross said. Mr. Heatherwick noted that the process of making the steel pieces was unusually complex. “We didn’t have an unlimited budget, but no corners have been cut,” Mr. Heatherwick said, adding that “Vessel” was sturdy enough to “take Hurricane Sandys. ” The price does not appear to trouble his patron. Mr. Ross has now hired Heatherwick Studio to design two residential buildings, one at Hudson Yards and one in Chelsea. For Mr. Heatherwick, “Vessel” represents his firm’s focus on doing innovative work for the public to enjoy. “I’m doing this project because it’s free, and for all New Yorkers,” he said. “I’m just itching to see a thousand people on it. ”

Cyber War - From Trifle to Catastrophe By Ernest Partridge November 06, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - Hillary Clinton tells us that all seventeen intelligence agencies agree that the Wikileaks hack comes from the Kremlin. Those agencies proclaim this with a rock-solid conviction that I have not heard since Vice President DIck Cheney told us all that "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." Add to that, the rock-solid evidence of Saddam's treachery that Colin Powell presented to the UN Security Council. The mainstream corporate media bought it whole. However, as all know today, these were lies. Saddam had no WMDs, and there were no Iraqi chemical weapons "Winebagos of Death" vividly described by Colin Powell. Now we are told, "with high confidence," that Vladimir Putin's Kremlin has launched a cyber attack to disrupt our presidential election. Never mind that, as MIT expert Theodore Postol has written that there is, "no technical way that the US intelligence community could know who did the hacking if it was done by sophisticated nation-state actors." The lies that launched the disastrous Iraq war have had lasting consequences to the credibility of the United States Government. The last time that government cried "wolf," there was no wolf. Why should we believe it now? So no, I am not convinced. There is good reason not to believe the "Kremlin hack" story. A crucial distinction is in order: First, there is the actual content of the hacked emails. Second, there are the consequences of the general media assumption and public belief that the emails were a Kremlin plot to disrupt the presidential election. As for the content , it was trivial and still worse, not credible. There is nothing remarkable in the disclosed content of the hacked emails. They might, if believed, cause John Podesta some embarrassment. In addition, they might reveal that the Democratic National Committee is controlled by a political elite. But we already know that. But why should we believe any of that content? If, as claimed, the leaks came from the Kremlin, there is not, and cannot be, any authentication of the hacked emails unless the original sources (e.g, John Podesta) produce the originals. And why would they? Accordingly, the leakers (whoever they might be) are free to concoct forgeries at will. And of course, it follows that we, the intended audience, are advised to ignore all of them. Furthermore, , why would Putin want to use these emails to "rig" our election? To tilt the election toward Trump? If that is his motive, it has backfired spectacularly. That alleged "disclosure" of the hacking has benefited Clinton far more than Trump. It is one of her favorite talking points, as we discovered in the final debate. So we are left with two alternate conclusions: The Russian government likely had no part in the leaking. Or if they did, the leaks will have little or no effect on the election, except to provide Hillary Clinton with a talking point and to embarrass John Podesta. In short, the Wikileaks hacks, whatever the source, appear to be a just a prank: A trifle, blown hugely out of proportion by a scandal-hungry media. However, even though the content of the hacked emails may be trivial and not credible, the consequences of the accusation of Kremlin connivance could be catastrophic. First of all, as we are finding out, the neo-cons and the media are using the hacks to intensify the demonization of Putin and to heat up the renewed Cold War. Still worse, as Joe Biden stated recently on Meet the Press , the accusation that Putin is behind the hacks and their release might provoke a cyber retaliation from the United States. A Kremlin spokesman has called Biden's threat a a "virtual American declaration of war on Russia." If, as Biden warns, the United States retaliates, then the Russian response might, unlike the present alleged leaks, be devastating to the US economy. Be assured that a "cyber-war" entails infinitely more than leaked emails. It might include the shutdown of the internet and emails. Also, the disruption of business and financial communications and utility grids. The world today runs on silicon and microprocessors. Imagine returning home to no electric power, phone service or access to the internet. Add to that, no restocking of the local supermarket or gas stations. And no capability of the government to make prompt repairs. The result: Total economic shutdown. We can do this to Russia, and be assured that Russia can do this to us. The reality of cyber attacks is no mere speculation, we have seen them at work. The Iranian nuclear weapons program was severely damaged and set back by a CIA implanted computer virus. And this past month, large regions of the United States temporarily lost internet service. The cause remains unknown. Has Joe Biden thought through the implications of his threat? Is this the horror that Biden wants to unleash on us and the world in response to an essentially harmless prank? To what purpose? Some kind of capitulation by the Russians? No chance of that. A far more likely result would be an escalation from cyber to military combat. And then what? Where are the cool-headed grownups, now that we need them? Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He has taught Philosophy at the University of California, and in Utah, Colorado and Wisconsin. He publishes the website, "The Online Gadfly" (www.igc.org/gadfly) and co-edits the progressive website, "The Crisis Papers" (www.crisispapers.org). His book in progress, "Conscience of a Progressive," can be seen at www.igc.org/gadfly/progressive/^toc.htm . Send comments to: gadfly@igc.org . Ernest Partridge's blog

Here is President Putin’s speech at Valdai Putin speech, Valdai 2016 – JRL, October 29, 2016. President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Tarja, Heinz, Thabo, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, It is a great pleasure to see you again. I want to start by thanking all of the participants in the Valdai International Discussion Club, from Russia and abroad, for your constructive part in this work, and I want to thank our distinguished guests for their readiness to take part in this open discussion. Our esteemed moderator just wished me a good departure into retirement, and I wish myself the same when the time comes. This is the right approach and the thing to do. But I am not retired yet and am for now the leader of this big country. As such, it is fitting to show restraint and avoid displays of excessive aggressiveness. I do not think that this is my style in any case. But I do think that we should be frank with each other, particularly here in this gathering. I think we should hold candid, open discussions, otherwise our dialogue makes no sense and would be insipid and without the slightest interest. I think that this style of discussion is extremely needed today given the great changes taking place in the world. The theme for our meeting this year, The Future in Progress: Shaping the World of Tomorrow, is very topical. Last year, the Valdai forum participants discussed the problems with the current world order. Unfortunately, little has changed for the better over these last months. Indeed, it would be more honest to say that nothing has changed. The tensions engendered by shifts in distribution of economic and political influence continue to grow. Mutual distrust creates a burden that narrows our possibilities for finding effective responses to the real threats and challenges facing the world today. Essentially, the entire globalisation project is in crisis today and in Europe, as we know well, we hear voices now saying that multiculturalism has failed. I think this situation is in many respects the result of mistaken, hasty and to some extent over-confident choices made by some countries’ elites a quarter-of-a-century ago. Back then, in the late 1980s-early 1990s, there was a chance not just to accelerate the globalisation process but also to give it a different quality and make it more harmonious and sustainable in nature. But some countries that saw themselves as victors in the Cold War, not just saw themselves this way but said it openly, took the course of simply reshaping the global political and economic order to fit their own interests. In their euphoria, they essentially abandoned substantive and equal dialogue with other actors in international life, chose not to improve or create universal institutions, and attempted instead to bring the entire world under the spread of their own organisations, norms and rules. They chose the road of globalisation and security for their own beloved selves, for the select few, and not for all. But far from everyone was ready to agree with this. We may as well be frank here, as we know full well that many did not agree with what was happening, but some were unable by then to respond, and others were not yet ready to respond. The result though is that the system of international relations is in a feverish state and the global economy cannot extricate itself from systemic crisis. At the same time, rules and principles, in the economy and in politics, are constantly being distorted and we often see what only yesterday was taken as a truth and raised to dogma status reversed completely. If the powers that be today find some standard or norm to their advantage, they force everyone else to comply. But if tomorrow these same standards get in their way, they are swift to throw them in the bin, declare them obsolete, and set or try to set new rules. Thus, we saw the decisions to launch airstrikes in the centre of Europe, against Belgrade, and then came Iraq, and then Libya. The operations in Afghanistan also started without the corresponding decision from the United Nations Security Council. In their desire to shift the strategic balance in their favour these countries broke apart the international legal framework that prohibited deployment of new missile defence systems. They created and armed terrorist groups, whose cruel actions have sent millions of civilians into flight, made millions of displaced persons and immigrants, and plunged entire regions into chaos. We see how free trade is being sacrificed and countries use sanctions as a means of political pressure, bypass the World Trade Organisation and attempt to establish closed economic alliances with strict rules and barriers, in which the main beneficiaries are their own transnational corporations. And we know this is happening. They see that they cannot resolve all of the problems within the WTO framework and so think, why not throw the rules and the organisation itself aside and build a new one instead. This illustrates what I just said. At the same time, some of our partners demonstrate no desire to resolve the real international problems in the world today. In organisations such as NATO, for example, established during the Cold War and clearly out of date today, despite all the talk about the need to adapt to the new reality, no real adaptation takes place. We see constant attempts to turn the OSCE, a crucial mechanism for ensuring common European and also trans-Atlantic security, into an instrument in the service of someone’s foreign policy interests. The result is that this very important organisation has been hollowed out. But they continue to churn out threats, imaginary and mythical threats such as the ‘Russian military threat’. This is a profitable business that can be used to pump new money into defence budgets at home, get allies to bend to a single superpower’s interests, expand NATO and bring its infrastructure, military units and arms closer to our borders. Of course, it can be a pleasing and even profitable task to portray oneself as the defender of civilization against the new barbarians. The only thing is that Russia has no intention of attacking anyone. This is all quite absurd. I also read analytical materials, those written by you here today, and by your colleagues in the USA and Europe. It is unthinkable, foolish and completely unrealistic. Europe alone has 300 million people. All of the NATO members together with the USA have a total population of 600 million, probably. But Russia has only 146 million. It is simply absurd to even conceive such thoughts. And yet they use these ideas in pursuit of their political aims. Another mythical and imaginary problem is what I can only call the hysteria the USA has whipped up over supposed Russian meddling in the American presidential election. The United States has plenty of genuinely urgent problems, it would seem, from the colossal public debt to the increase in firearms violence and cases of arbitrary action by the police. You would think that the election debates would concentrate on these and other unresolved problems, but the elite has nothing with which to reassure society, it seems, and therefore attempt to distract public attention by pointing instead to supposed Russian hackers, spies, agents of influence and so forth. I have to ask myself and ask you too: Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia can somehow influence the American people’s choice? America is not some kind of ‘banana republic’, after all, but is a great power. Do correct me if I am wrong. The question is, if things continue in this vein, what awaits the world? What kind of world will we have tomorrow? Do we have answers to the questions of how to ensure stability, security and sustainable economic growth? Do we know how we will make a more prosperous world? Sad as it is to say, there is no consensus on these issues in the world today. Maybe you have come to some common conclusions through your discussions, and I would, of course, be interested to hear them. But it is very clear that there is a lack of strategy and ideas for the future. This creates a climate of uncertainty that has a direct impact on the public mood. Sociological studies conducted around the world show that people in different countries and on different continents tend to see the future as murky and bleak. This is sad. The future does not entice them, but frightens them. At the same time, people see no real opportunities or means for changing anything, influencing events and shaping policy. Yes, formally speaking, modern countries have all the attributes of democracy: Elections, freedom of speech, access to information, freedom of expression. But even in the most advanced democracies the majority of citizens have no real influence on the political process and no direct and real influence on power. People sense an ever-growing gap between their interests and the elite’s vision of the only correct course, a course the elite itself chooses. The result is that referendums and elections increasingly often create surprises for the authorities. People do not at all vote as the official and respectable media outlets advised them to, nor as the mainstream parties advised them to. Public movements that only recently were too far left or too far right are taking centre stage and pushing the political heavyweights aside. At first, these inconvenient results were hastily declared anomaly or chance. But when they became more frequent, people started saying that society does not understand those at the summit of power and has not yet matured sufficiently to be able to assess the authorities’ labour for the public good. Or they sink into hysteria and declare it the result of foreign, usually Russian, propaganda. Friends and colleagues, I would like to have such a propaganda machine here in Russia, but regrettably, this is not the case. We have not even global mass media outlets of the likes of CNN, BBC and others. We simply do not have this kind of capability yet. As for the claim that the fringe and populists have defeated the sensible, sober and responsible minority – we are not talking about populists or anything like that but about ordinary people, ordinary citizens who are losing trust in the ruling class. That is the problem. By the way, with the political agenda already eviscerated as it is, and with elections ceasing to be an instrument for change but consisting instead of nothing but scandals and digging up dirt – who gave someone a pinch, who sleeps with whom, if you’ll excuse me. This just goes beyond all boundaries. And honestly, a look at various candidates’ platforms gives the impression that they were made from the same mould – the difference is slight, if there is any. It seems as if the elites do not see the deepening stratification in society and the erosion of the middle class, while at the same time, they implant ideological ideas that, in my opinion, are destructive to cultural and national identity. And in certain cases, in some countries they subvert national interests and renounce sovereignty in exchange for the favour of the suzerain. This begs the question: who is actually the fringe? The expanding class of the supranational oligarchy and bureaucracy, which is in fact often not elected and not controlled by society, or the majority of citizens, who want simple and plain things – stability, free development of their countries, prospects for their lives and the lives of their children, preserving their cultural identity, and, finally, basic security for themselves and their loved ones. People are clearly scared to see how terrorism is evolving from a distant threat to an everyday one, how a terrorist attack could occur right near them, on the next street, if not on their own street, while any makeshift item – from a home-made explosive to an ordinary truck – can be used to carry out a mass killing. Moreover, the terrorist attacks that have taken place in the past few years in Boston and other US cities, Paris, Brussels, Nice and German cities, as well as, sadly, in our own country, show that terrorists do not need units or organised structures – they can act independently, on their own, they just need the ideological motivation against their enemies, that is, against you and us. The terrorist threat is a clear example of how people fail to adequately evaluate the nature and causes of the growing threats. We see this in the way events in Syria are developing. No one has succeeded in stopping the bloodshed and launching a political settlement process. One would think that we would have begun to put together a common front against terrorism now, after such lengthy negotiations, enormous effort and difficult compromises. But this has not happened and this common front has not emerged. My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results either. There were people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice. This all demonstrates an unexplainable and I would say irrational desire on the part of the Western countries to keep making the same mistakes or, as we say here in Russia, keep stepping on the same rake. We all see what is happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and a number of other countries. I have to ask, where are the results of the fight against terrorism and extremism? Overall, looking at the world as a whole, there are some results in particular regions and locations, but there is no global result and the terrorist threat continues to grow. We all remember the euphoria in some capitals over the Arab Spring. Where are these fanfares today? Russia’s calls for a joint fight against terrorism go ignored. What’s more, they continue to arm, supply and train terrorist groups in the hope of using them to achieve their own political aims. This is a very dangerous game and I address the players once again: The extremists in this case are more cunning, clever and stronger than you, and if you play these games with them, you will always lose. Colleagues, it is clear that the international community should concentrate on the real problems facing humanity today, the resolution of which will make our world a safer and more stable place and make the system of international relations fairer and more equal. As I said, it is essential to transform globalisation from something for a select few into something for all. It is my firm belief that we can overcome these threats and challenges only by working together on the solid foundation of international law and the United Nations Charter. Today it is the United Nations that continues to remain an agency that is unparalleled in representativeness and universality, a unique venue for equitable dialogue. Its universal rules are necessary for including as many countries as possible in economic and humanitarian integration, guaranteeing their political responsibility and working to coordinate their actions while also preserving their sovereignty and development models. We have no doubt that sovereignty is the central notion of the entire system of international relations. Respect for it and its consolidation will help underwrite peace and stability both at the national and international levels. There are many countries that can rely on a history stretching back a thousand years, like Russia, and we have come to appreciate our identity, freedom and independence. But we do not seek global domination, expansion or confrontation with anyone. In our mind, real leadership lies in seeing real problems rather than attempting to invent mythical threats and use them to steamroll others. This is exactly how Russia understands its role in global affairs today. There are priorities without which a prosperous future for our shared planet is unthinkable and they are absolutely obvious. I won’t be saying anything new here. First of all, there is equal and indivisible security for all states. Only after ending armed conflicts and ensuring the peaceful development of all countries will we be able to talk about economic progress and the resolution of social, humanitarian and other key problems. It is important to fight terrorism and extremism in actuality. It has been said more than once that this evil can only be overcome by a concerted effort of all states of the world. Russia continues to offer this to all interested partners. It is necessary to add to the international agenda the issue of restoring the Middle Eastern countries’ lasting statehood, economy and social sphere. The mammoth scale of destruction demands drawing up a long-term comprehensive programme, a kind of Marshall Plan, to revive the war- and conflict-ridden area. Russia is certainly willing to join actively in these team efforts. We cannot achieve global stability unless we guarantee global economic progress. It is essential to provide conditions for creative labour and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers. The rules of the game should give the developing economies at least a chance to catch up with those we know as developed economies. We should work to level out the pace of economic development, and brace up backward countries and regions so as to make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to all. Particularly, this would help to put an end to poverty, one of the worst contemporary problems. It is also absolutely evident that economic cooperation should be mutually lucrative and rest on universal principles to enable every country to become an equal partner in global economic activities. True, the regionalising trend in the world economy is likely to persist in the medium term. However, regional trade agreements should complement and expand not replace the universal norms and regulations. Russia advocates the harmonisation of regional economic formats based on the principles of transparency and respect for each other’s interests. That is how we arrange the work of the Eurasian Economic Union and conduct negotiations with our partners, particularly on coordination with the Silk Road Economic Belt project, which China is implementing. We expect it to promote an extensive Eurasian partnership, which promises to evolve into one of the formative centres of a vast Eurasian integration area. To implement this idea, 5+1 talks have begun already for an agreement on trade and economic cooperation between all participants in the process. An important task of ours is to develop human potential. Only a world with ample opportunities for all, with highly skilled workers, access to knowledge and a great variety of ways to realise their potential can be considered truly free. Only a world where people from different countries do not struggle to survive but lead full lives can be stable. A decent future is impossible without environment protection and addressing climate problems. That is why the conservation of the natural world and its diversity and reducing the human impact on the environment will be a priority for the coming decades. Another priority is global healthcare. Of course, there are many problems, such as large-scale epidemics, decreasing the mortality rate in some regions and the like. So there is enormous room for advancement. All people in the world, not only the elite, should have the right to healthy, long and full lives. This is a noble goal. In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all priority areas of human development. And of course, it is necessary to continue a broad-based discussion of our common future so that all sensible and promising initiatives are heard. Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, I am confident that you, as members of the Valdai Club, will actively take part in this work. Your expertise enables you to understand all angles of the processes underway both in Russia and in the world, forecast and evaluate long-term trends, and put forward new initiatives and recommendations that will help us find the way to the more prosperous and sustainable future that we all badly need. Thank you very much for your attention. … (comments at end) Vladimir Putin: I would just like to make a quick response to what Mr Fischer has just said. He mentioned discussions in the EU on the trade agreement with Canada. This is an internal EU matter, but if you permit, I would just like to make one small remark. I know that some in Europe find Wallonia’s position irritating, after all, the region is home to only 3.5 million people, but these 3.5 million people are blocking a decision on an issue of global importance, namely, this trade agreement with Canada. But when Belgium took part in the EU’s creation, it did so on the basis of particular principles, including that Belgium overall, and Wallonia, would have certain rights. The EU has grown greatly since then and has a much different membership now, but the rules have not changed. Perhaps these rules need to be changed, but in this case, you would first have to give the people who created this organisation a chance to change it through a democratic process and then obtain their approval. As for the dispute itself, I am not as familiar with all the details as the Europeans are, of course, but whatever the prerogatives of the EU supranational bodies (note that I have already spoken publicly on this point), the European Parliament adopts a far greater number of binding decisions with regard to the member states than did the USSR Supreme Soviet with regard to the Soviet Union’s constituent republics during the Soviet period. It is not for us to say whether this is good or bad. We want to see a strong and centralised Europe. This is our position. But in Europe itself there are many different views, and I hope that this whole issue will be resolved in positive fashion. On the matter of the UN, I have said before but will say again now that we must return to what is written in the UN Charter, because there is no other such universal organisation in the world. If we renounce the UN, this is a sure road to chaos. There is no other universal alternative in the world. Yes, the world has changed, and yes, the UN and the Security Council do need reform and reconstruction. But as they say in our Foreign Ministry, we can do this in such a way as to preserve the organisation’s effectiveness. We can do this on the basis of broad consensus. We need to ensure that the vast majority of international actors give their support to these reforms. Today, we must return to a common understanding of the principles of international law as enshrined in the UN Charter. This is because when the UN was established after World War II, there was a particular balance of power in the world. Later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States decided that there was no one to coordinate things with and they did not really need to get anyone’s approval on fundamental matters. This was the start of everything. First, in the 1990s, we had the airstrikes against Belgrade. I will not go into the humanitarian aspect that preceded these decisions, but just seeing airstrikes carried out in the heart of Europe at the end of the twentieth century seemed to me simply barbaric. This was all the more so as it was done in violation of the UN Charter and without approval. When this happened, people immediately started saying that the old rules were outdated and something had to change. Things got worse from there with the events in Iraq. Did the UN sanction the operations in Iraq? No. Before this there were operations in Afghanistan in 2001. Yes, we all know the tragedy of September 11, 2001, but even so, under existing international law, a relevant UN Security Council resolution should have been sought first, which was not done. Then came Iraq, and then came the resolution on Libya. You are all experts here, you have read the resolution on Libya, and know that it was about establishing a no-fly zone there. But what kind of no-fly zone can we speak of if airstrikes began against Libyan territory? This was a flagrant violation of the UN Charter. And then came Syria. It was either Tarja or Heinz who said that the operations in Aleppo are only increasing the number of terrorists. But did the terrorist ranks start swelling only with Aleppo? Were there terrorists in Iraq? There were no terrorists there until the country’s state structures were destroyed. The same was true of Libya, where there were no terrorists at all. But as soon as this country’s statehood was destroyed, who came along to fill the vacuum? Terrorists. The same is happening in Syria. I understand the insinuations made about our action in Aleppo or elsewhere. But let’s remember that as soon as the conflict began in Syria, and it began long before we became involved, terrorists appeared there and began receiving arms supplies. I mentioned this in my opening remarks. Attempts were made to train these terrorists and set them against al-Assad, because there were no other options and these groups were the most effective. This continues today because these are the most effective fighting units and some think that it is possible to make use of them and then sort them out later. But this is an illusion. It won’t work, and this is the problem. I would also like to respond to the absolutely proper developments in Finland, for instance. Bells are tolling for those who have been killed in Aleppo. Bells should also be tolling for those now losing their lives in Mosul and its vicinity. The operation in Mosul is getting underway now. As far as I know, the terrorists have already shot more than 200 people in the hope of stopping the offensive on the town. Let’s not forget this. And in Afghanistan? Whole wedding parties of 120 people were wiped out with a single airstrike. A single strike! Have we forgotten this? And what about what’s happening in Yemen? Let the bells toll for all of these innocent victims. I agree with you here. We keep hearing Aleppo, Aleppo, Aleppo. But what is the issue here? Do we leave the nest of terrorists in place there, or do we squeeze them out, doing our best to minimise and avoid civilian casualties? If it is better to not go in at all, then the offensive against Mosul shouldn’t go ahead at all either. Let’s just leave everything as it is. Let’s leave Raqqa alone too. Our partners keep saying, “We need to take back Raqqa and eliminate the nest of terrorists there”. But there are civilians in Raqqa too. So, should we not fight the terrorists at all? And when they take hostages in towns, should we just leave them be? Look at Israel’s example. Israel never steps back but always fights to the end, and this is how it survives. There is no alternative. We need to fight. If we keep retreating, we will always lose. Regarding what Tarja said on the subject of security in the Baltic Sea area, I remind you that this matter came up not on our initiative but during my visit to Naantali in Finland, and on the initiative of Mr Niinisto, the president of Finland. Quite out of the blue, he requested that Russian aircraft do not fly with their transponders off. For those not familiar with military matters, I note that transponders are instruments that signal an aircraft’s location in the air. Of course, if aircraft fly with their transponders on, this increases security in the Baltic Sea region. This is the truth of the matter. I responded immediately then, noting firstly that there are far more flights by NATO aircraft in the region than by our aircraft. Secondly, I promised the Finnish President that we would definitely raise this issue with our partners at the next Russia-NATO Council meeting. I can tell you that we did this. The result was that our NATO partners rejected Putin’s proposal, as they said. But this has nothing to do with Putin. They rejected the proposal made by Mr Niinisto, the president of Finland. This was not such a straightforward matter for us either, I would say, because there is a technical dimension involved, a purely military dimension. But I did give the Defence Ministry instructions to find a way to do this without detriment to our security. The Defence Ministry found a solution, but our NATO colleagues rejected it. So please, direct your questions to the NATO headquarters in Brussels. Vladimir Putin: I think that intervention by any country in another country’s internal political process is unacceptable, no matter how these attempts are made, with the help of cyberattacks or through other instruments or organisations controlled from the outside within the country. You know what happened in Turkey, for example, and the position taken by President of Turkey Recep Erdogan. He believes that the coup attempt in Turkey was undertaken by groups inspired by and with the direct help of an organisation run by a certain Gulen, who has lived in the United States for the last 9 years. This is unacceptable, and cyberattacks are unacceptable. But we probably cannot avoid having an impact on each other, including in cyberspace. Your question was about the very specific matter of the electoral system though. I think this is absolutely unacceptable. How can we avoid this sort of thing, if it does happen? I think the only way is to reach agreement and come up with some rules on which we will have a common understanding and which will be recognised at the government and state level and can be verified. Of course, the issue of internet freedom and everything related to it arises, but we know that many countries, including those that support internet freedom, take practical steps to restrict access out of concern for people’s interests. This concerns cybercrime, for example, attacks against banking systems and illegal money transfers. It concerns suicides too, crimes against children and so forth. These are measures taken at the national level. We can take appropriate measures both at the national level and at the intergovernmental level. Vladimir Putin : On the question of favourites in the US presidential campaign, you said that the media have created this view. Yes, this is the case, and this is not by chance. In my observation, it is a rare occasion that the mass media forms a view purely by chance. I think that this idea, inserted into the public consciousness in the middle of the US presidential campaign, pursues the sole aim of supporting those defending the interests of Ms Clinton, the Democratic Party candidate, in her fight against the Republican Party candidate, in this case, Donald Trump. How is this done? First, they create an enemy in the form of Russia, and then they say that Trump is our preferred candidate. This is complete nonsense and totally absurd. It’s only a tactic in the domestic political struggle, a way of manipulating public opinion before the elections take place. As I have said many times before, we do not know exactly what to expect from either of the candidates once they win. We do not know what Mr Trump would do if he wins, and we do not know what Ms Clinton would do, what would go ahead or not go ahead. Overall then, it does not really matter to us who wins. Of course, we can only welcome public words about a willingness to normalize relations between our two countries. In this sense, yes, we welcome such statements, no matter who makes them. That is all I can say, really. As for Mr Trump, he has chosen his method of reaching voters’ hearts. Yes, he behaves extravagantly, of course, we all see this. But I think there is some sense in his actions. I say this because in my view, he represents the interests of the sizeable part of American society that is tired of the elites that have been in power for decades now. He is simply representing these ordinary people’s interests. He portrays himself as an ordinary guy who criticizes those who have been in power for decades and does not like to see power handed down by inheritance, for example. We read the analysis too, including American analysis. Some of the experts there have written openly about this. He operates in this niche. The elections will soon show whether this is an effective strategy or not. As for me, I cannot but repeat what I have said already: we will work with whichever president the American people choose and who wants to work with us. Question: Mr President, my question follows on the subject of security addressed just before. Obviously, cooperation is an essential part of this, and we realise that cooperation is not always easy. We saw an example just before with the case of the transponders. The planes can still fly at least. But there are areas of vital importance, areas where innocent people’s lives are at stake. You mentioned recently the case of the Tsarnayev brothers. As far as I know, Russia passed on information but no action was taken. Does this mean that practical cooperation in security is now in a critical situation? Vladimir Putin : I spoke about this matter at a meeting with French journalists, if I recall correctly. Yes, we passed information on the Tsarnayev brothers on to our American partners. We wrote to them but received no response. After we wrote a second time we got a reply that they are US citizens and so it was none of our business and they would take care of everything themselves. I told the director of the FSB to archive the file. The response we received is still there, in the archives. Sadly, a few months later, the Boston marathon terrorist attack took place and people were killed. It is a great shame that this tragedy took place. If contacts and trust between us and our partners had been better this could have been avoided. The Americans came here immediately following the attack and we gave them the information in our possession. But it was too late. People had already lost their lives. This partly answers the last question too. We do not know if those who say they want to work with us really will or not, but they do say quite rightly that this is essential for all of us, especially in the fight against terrorism. In this sense, we welcome all who declare such intentions. As I have also said in the past, the Americans have provided us with real help, during the preparations for the Olympic Games in Sochi, for example, and we are grateful to them for this. Our cooperation was very efficient here, on site and at the level of our intelligence service heads. There have been other good examples of cooperation too. Overall, we have quite a good situation in this area with our European partners. We have open and professional contacts with the French intelligence services, for example, and exchange information. In general, the situation is not bad, but it could be a lot better. Sabine Fischer : There was discussion about sending a policing mission to Donbass, and also emphasis on the roadmap that we saw in Russia, for example, in the media and in political debate. I think this was really a case of diverging interpretations of the results. Vladimir Putin: This is no secret. I can tell you how it was. I might leave something out, so as not to put anyone in a difficult position or interfere with the process itself. As you know, the Minsk agreements, which I think the experts have all read, say in black and white: “Thirty days after the signing of the Minsk agreements Ukraine’s Rada must adopt a resolution outlining the geographical boundaries of areas where the law on the special status of these unrecognised republics would become effective immediately.” Because the only thing needed for it to work was the description of those geographical boundaries. That had to be established, not by law, but by a parliamentary resolution, and the resolution was finally adopted, even if past the deadline. So one would think that this law was to take effect immediately. It was passed, I would like to remind you, by the Parliament of Ukraine. The lawmakers voted for it, and it was coordinated with the unrecognised republics, which is very important, and in this sense, in my view, makes it viable legislation and a key element of a political settlement. But after passing this resolution, Ukraine and its Parliament adopted an amendment, a paragraph to Article 9 or 10, which said the law would take effect only after municipal elections in these areas. That once again postponed the law’s enforcement. I repeat, in our opinion, that law is absolutely key to a political resolution to the crisis in southeastern Ukraine. Moreover, that was done without even consulting anyone, least of all the unrecognised republics. We discussed this very actively a year ago in Paris. I insisted that this be done then and done immediately, as it was part of the Minsk Agreements and is, in our view, a key component. But the Ukrainian president said that this was not possible and everything ended up in a dead end. In this situation, everything could have ended then and there a year ago in Paris, but Mr Steinmeier, the German Foreign Minister, suddenly proposed a compromise. He suggested that we agree to have the law come into force on the day of the local elections in these regions, temporarily, and have it come into force permanently after the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights recognises the elections as having taken place in accordance with OSCE rules. This was not at all what was set out in the Minsk Agreements, but in order to get us out of the deadlock we were in, I expressed my agreement and said we would settle the matter with Donetsk and Lugansk, which we did. But then in Berlin, the Ukrainian president suddenly also attempted to change this proposal, already the result of a compromise. He went even further, essentially renouncing the law’s implementation whatever the case. We thus found ourselves back in the same crisis we had in Paris a year before. But I want to note the Federal Chancellor’s role here. She found arguments to persuade everyone present that we could and should keep to the agreement we reached and said that it was not possible to change what we’d already agreed on a year later, or we would never reach an agreement. But we agreed to bundle the nuances and details of how it would be implemented together with the concept you spoke about, and which still has to be worked through. That is it, really. But in principle, a lot was accomplished in terms of ensuring security. We reached agreement on nearly every point. We made very little progress on humanitarian matters. These regions remain tightly blockaded and are in a very difficult situation. But the so-called civilised world prefers not to notice this. I do not want to get into debate on this matter now. As far as the [Normandy] format goes and whether it is useful or not, we simply have no alternative. Yes, the discussions proceed with difficulty, and this is not very effective, I agree, but we have no other option, and if we want to make progress, we have to continue working in this format. As for the question of getting any other actors involved, our position is that we are not opposed to the idea of others taking part, including our American partners. But we have reached an agreement with all participants in the process that we will work in parallel with our American colleagues. My aide and Ms Nuland have regular meetings, discuss these issues and look for compromise. This is not being done in secret though, of course. All participants in the Normandy format meetings are informed and we take into account our American partners’ position too, of course. Angela Stent: This question is for President Putin. I’m Angela Stent; I’m a professor at Georgetown University in Washington. Mr President, Russia recently withdrew from an agreement with the United States to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium, but at the same time, the Russian Government said that it would consider re-joining the agreement if three conditions were met: firstly, that NATO troops should withdraw to the level that they were before 2000 in Europe; secondly, the Magnitsky Act should be repealed; and thirdly, that the sanctions imposed on Russia after the beginning of the Ukraine crisis should be lifted, and Russia should be paid compensation for them. So my question is: we will have a new President on January 20, I’m optimistic about that. Are we to understand, in the United States, that these three conditions would form the basis of an initial negotiating position on the Russian part with the American president, when she re-establishes high-level relations with the Kremlin? Thank you. Vladimir Putin: One can tell straight away that you are an academic and not a diplomat. If you ask the diplomats, they will tell you about the concept of ‘starting position’. As for our decision on the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, we did not withdraw from it. The United States withdrew from the missile defence treaty, but we did not withdraw from the plutonium agreement, we suspended it. Why did we do this? What were this agreement’s provisions? Under its terms, both countries were to build facilities for disposing of the surplus weapons-grade plutonium that had accumulated in both Russia and the USA. Not only did the USA not meet its obligations under the agreement, but said that it would not do so because of financial difficulties. As if Russia does not have financial difficulties of its own, but we built our facility and are disposing of this plutonium using industrial methods. Without any prior coordination with us, the United States made a unilateral announcement that they would not dilute this weapons-grade plutonium but would store it in some beds and so forth. This means that they retain what the experts call return potential, in other words, the plutonium could be returned and re-enriched at any moment. But we are eliminating our plutonium using industrial methods. We built our facility and spent money on it. Are we wealthier than the United States? There are many issues it has become difficult to discuss with the current administration because practically no obligations are met and no agreements are respected, including those on Syria. Perhaps we will be able to come back to this. We are ready, in any case, to talk with the new president and look for solutions to any, even the most difficult, issues. Question : Mr President, my question is on Russian policy towards Asia. The emphasis today in Russian foreign policy is on the construction of a multipolar world. But do you also give some thought to the importance of a multipolar Asia? Both in your speech today, and the general construction of the Russian foreign policy, points, I think, to the growing, deepening contradictions between the US and the West on the one hand, and the Eurasian situation. But it’s also a fact that there are internal contradictions within Eurasia. The rise of new powers is creating a lot of fears; the breakdown of the old order in some parts is releasing primordial forces. These are internal to Eurasia. But is there a danger that Russia, by its emphasis on a multipolar world, is underestimating the dangers of a unipolar Asia, and the need for great powers to work together to construct a genuinely democratic multipolar Asia? Vladimir Putin: We are actively developing relations with Asian countries not because of tension in relations with Europe or the United States, but simply because life itself dictates this choice. Why do I say that life itself dictates that we expand these contacts? The Asian countries’ development and influence is growing and will continue to do so, and, what’s more, they are growing fast. With a sizeable part of its territory in Asia, Russia would be foolish not to make use of its geographical advantages and develop ties with its neighbours. China is our neighbour and I mentioned this in my opening remarks. We have longstanding good relations with India and it would be a mistake not to make use of this and develop solid long-term relations with India today. We have many common interests. We can naturally complement each other in politics and the economy. As for the question of a multipolar or unipolar Asia, we see that Asia is not unipolar and this is very evident. Life is very diverse and complex in general and is full of contradictions. It is important to resolve these contradictions in a civilised fashion. I think that the Asian countries’ leaders today have sufficient common sense to work in just this way with each other, and we are ready to work the same way with them all. I visited India just recently and our Defence Minister has just returned from India. We have cooperation between our defence ministries and also between industry in the defence sector, as well as in the civilian sector, where we have many common interests with India, China, Vietnam and other countries in the region. These ties are extensive and promising. Thomas Gomart : In September 2014, at the Valdai Club, you described the relations between Ukraine and Russia with the following sentence: “Two countries, one people”. Today, how would you describe the relations between the two countries? Thank you very much. Vladimir Putin : I will not go into who is to blame for what now. I have always considered, and still do today, that Russians and Ukrainians are really one people. There are people who hold radical nationalist views both in Russia and in Ukraine. But overall, for the majority, we are one people, a people who share a common history and culture and are ethnically close. First we were divided, then we were set against each other, but we are not to blame for this. We must find our own way out of this situation. I am sure that common sense will prevail and that we will find a solution. Question : Mr President, before putting my question, I would like to pass on my young students’ words. Two years ago, you came to Shanghai on other important business and our students missed the chance to meet at the university with you and ask their question, but they asked me to tell you that they would be happy to see you any time, regardless of whether you have retired or not. My question is as follows: We have discussed the philosophical matter of international relations today. Humanity has already gone through different types of international systems. In your view, to what extent will future systems resemble past ones? What are the positive components we should emphasise in particular? Should we seek more universality or more diversity as far as principles go? What kind of combination of components would you prefer to see? And I have a specific question too. We have been actively discussing here the relations between Russia, the West, and China. Vladimir Putin : Heinz said that this is a very philosophical question and that we could spend a long time discussing it. Will tomorrow’s world resemble the past? No, of course not. How is this possible? Does today’s China resemble the China of the 1960s-70s? They are two completely different countries, and the Soviet Union is gone today too. Mr Mbeki spoke about Africa before. I share his arguments. But Africa cannot be some kind of peripheral place. If anyone thinks this way, they are deeply mistaken. If we follow this kind of thinking, we can expect very serious trials ahead. We already hear the talk about refugees and Syria. I saw today the news about the latest incident in the Mediterranean, where the Italian coastguard rescued refugees from Africa. What has Syria got to do with this? Africa’s future and the world’s future are very serious issues. The same goes for relations in Asia, where there are also many conflicts or potential conflict situations. I want to repeat what I have just said. The question is whether we have the wisdom and the courage to find acceptable solutions to these various problems and complicated conflicts. I certainly hope that this will be the case, that the world really will become more multipolar, and that the views of all actors in the international community will be taken into account. No matter whether a country is big or small, there should be universally accepted common rules that guarantee sovereignty and peoples’ interests. As for our relations with our partners in Europe, the United States, America in general, and the Asian countries, we have a multi-vector policy. This is not just in virtue of our geographical location. Our policy with regard to our partners is built on the basis of equality and mutual respect. Alexei Mukhin: Alexei Mukhin , Centre for Political Technology. Mr President, Ukraine is constantly trying to prohibit things Russian. We get the impression that everything Russian is being squeezed out of Ukrainian life. In this respect, I have a philosophical question too. Petro Poroshenko said that he plans to sell his Russian business interests. Does this business actually exist? What is your view on this? Vladimir Putin : We seek to respect ownership rights. Mr Kudrin is a staunch advocate of property rights, seeing it as one of the pillars of economic policy, and I fully agree with him. We have not always been entirely successful in this area and we still have improvements to make and much legislative work to do, but we will always keep working in this direction. The same concerns our foreign investors, including from Ukraine. Mr Poroshenko is one of our investors in the sense that he is the owner of a sizeable business in Lipetsk Region, the Roshen factory. Actually, there are two businesses there. The second is engaged in selling the products, as far as I know. There are a few problems there concerning non-return of VAT, and the courts have imposed some restrictions, but the factories are operating, paying wages and earning profits, and there are no restrictions on using these profits, including transferring them abroad. I do not recall the figures now and do not get into such detail, but I know the business is turning a profit and is working with success. Pyotr Dutkevich : Pyotr Dutkevich, Canada Mr President, I already put this question yesterday to the Deputy Foreign Minister, but I realise my mistake, because you are the only person this question should really be addressed to. My question is as follows: We have heard reports, I do not know how accurate they are, that you discussed a ceasefire in Syria at your meeting with Mr Obama in September. I do not know how accurate this information is, but it seems a 7-day ceasefire was proposed. You expressed doubts and said that it would not be possible to separate the radicals from the moderates in such a short time and that this task would likely prove impossible. You were given the answer then that if we failed in this task, you would have a free hand. Can you recall this conversation? It is very important for the history of what is taking place in Syria now. Vladimir Putin : Yes, I do not need to recall it because I never forgot it. It was a very important conversation. There was indeed talk on the lines that Russian and Syrian aircraft would cease their airstrikes against terrorist targets in Aleppo until the healthy opposition forces could be separated from the forces of Jabhat al-Nusra, a terrorist organisation recognised as such by the United Nations and included on the list of international terrorist organisations. In this respect, I note that it is no secret that our American partners promised to do this. First, they recognised the need to do this, and second, they recognised that part of Aleppo is occupied by terrorist organisations – ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. We can see this for ourselves from the news reports, where you see the banners of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra in some parts of the city. They recognised that this needs to be done and assured us that they would do this. After this, we agreed that we would decide right there on the battlefield who the moderates were, and we would not touch them, and who the terrorists were, and we and our American partners would target the terrorists. They made repeated promises. These promises were made at the level of our defence ministers, foreign ministers, intelligence services, but unfortunately, this fell through each time and they did not keep their promises. The question was raised again during our meeting in China. Yes, my American partner, President Obama, did indeed propose separating these different forces once again. But he insisted that we must first declare a D-day, cease hostilities, stop the airstrikes, and then, within 7 days, they would take on the responsibility of separating the moderates from Jabhat al-Nusra. I will not go into detail her because I do not think I have the right to make these details public. After all, when we have talks like these, there are always some things we say in confidence. But the fact remains. Instead of separating the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists from the healthy opposition, our American partners broke the ceasefire themselves. I had originally insisted that they first separate the terrorists from the moderates and we would then end the airstrikes, but in the end, I decided to agree with the American proposal at the talks. They were persistent and I decided to accept a compromise, said that we would go with their proposal, declare a ceasefire first and stop the airstrikes, giving them the seven days they asked for. The ceasefire was declared on September 12, I think, and on the 17th, American aircraft carried out a strike against Syrian troops, and this was followed by an ISIS offensive. We were told that the strike was a mistake and that the ISIS offensive was only a coincidence. Perhaps this is so, but the ceasefire was broken and we are not to blame for this. As for what the US President promised or didn’t promise, you should ask him. I imagine that he will speak with our European partners about this when he goes to Europe. I think this should be done openly and honestly and not simply in an attempt to use this to influence our position on Syria. By the way, do you realise that Russian and Syrian aircraft have not been carrying out any operations around Aleppo for 9 days now. We gave them not 7 days, but already 9, soon to be 10 days. But where is the effort to separate the terrorists from the moderates? You have to realise that if we do not meet our obligations we will never succeed in this fight against terrorism. I realise that this is not an easy task and we are not looking to make any accusations, but we do have to try to keep our promises. In any case, it should not be we who end up accused of every possible sin. This is simply indecent. We have been showing restraint and do not respond to our partners with insolence, but there is a limit to everything and we might have to reply at some point. Vladimir Putin : I can turn to Tarja and Heinz who know very well how the OSCE works. But I will give my opinion. President Poroshenko has advanced the initiative of a so-called policing mission for the duration of the possible future elections in Donbass, Donetsk and Lugansk. I was the only one there who supported him. It is another matter that I do not describe this as a policing mission because the other parties in the process have objected to it. They objected not because they do not want to help Mr Poroshenko, but because the OSCE has never done anything like this before. It does not have the experience, the people or any practice in implementing policing missions. At this point, the other parties in the process have not supported the idea Mr Poroshenko advanced, while I did. However, we do not describe this initiative as “a policing mission” but as an opportunity for those responsible for the elections and security during the campaign to carry weapons. Those who objected to this initiative pointed out that it could provoke others to use weapons against the armed people. They believe that the power of OSCE observers is not in weapons but in the fact that they represent a respectable international organisation, and the use of weapons against them when they are not armed is absolutely unacceptable and will be seen as the least acceptable behaviour. This is their power, not their guns. On the other hand, if Mr Poroshenko believes that this would help the cause, I agree with him. However, I was the only one to do so. The situation is strange; it is the only issue on which I agree with Mr Poroshenko. I have spoken about this more than once; there is nothing new here. Ultimately, all parties have agreed that it can be done, but only after careful consideration, including at the OSCE. I think this has never happened before in OSCE history. If I am wrong, Tarja can correct me. What do you think, Tarja? T.Colton : Representative from Beijing, please. Question: Thank you. Just now, former President of Austria Mr Fischer said that the relationship between the EU and Russia is not as expected 25 years ago. It’s unfortunate, and it’s hard to be optimistic. So I want to ask you, Mr President, from your point of view, why is this so? And were the expectations or the assumptions 25 years ago wrong, or did something go wrong along the way? And from a philosophical point of view, what do you think is the lesson to be learned for the next 25 years? Vladimir Putin : What was done correctly and what was not? Expectations were high after the Soviet Union switched to a policy of openness, since ideological differences, which were considered the main cause of division between the Soviet Union and then Russia, and the Western world, have disappeared. Frankly, we, in the Soviet Union, under Gorbachev, and then in Russia, believed that a new life would begin for us. One of our experts rightly said that there are things that, as we found out, run even deeper than ideological differences, namely, national and geopolitical interests. Could we have done things differently? Yes, indeed. During our previous meeting in this room, I said that there was a German politician, Mr Rau, a well-known figure from the Social Democratic Party of Germany, he is no longer with us, but he used to engage in lively discussions with Soviet leaders. Back then, he said (we have these conversations on record, but cannot get around to publishing them, which we need to do), that a new international security system should be built in Europe. In addition to NATO, he said, it is imperative to create another entity, which would include the Soviet Union and former Warsaw Pact countries, but with the participation of the United States in order to balance the system out. He went on to say that if we fail to do so, ultimately this entire system created during the Cold War would work against the Soviet Union. He said that it bothers him only because it would unbalance the entire system of international relations, and security in Europe would be jeopardised in a big way. What we have now is what this old gentleman warned us about in his own time. The people who worked on transforming the world, some of them did not want to change anything, as they believed that they already were riding high, while others did not have the political will to act on these absolutely correct ideas of this wise and experienced German politician. However, I hope that as the global alignment of forces in the world changes, political, diplomatic and regulatory support for these changes will follow. The world will be a more balanced and multipolar place. Heinz Fischer: I can also add that 25 years ago was the early ’90s. And in the early ’90s, the European Union had 12 members: Sweden, Finland and Austria joined only in ’94 or ’95. It was a sort of honeymoon time between Russia and Europe, in particular Russia and Germany, and Russia and other important European countries. It was the time before the economic crisis; growth rates were bigger. It was even the time before the introduction of the Euro; the Euro is very important, but the Euro is also accompanied with some problems, if you look at Greece or at Italy, etc. So these factors also have to be taken into consideration. Thank you. Tarja Halonen : I will also add that 25 years ago, Russia was different, and the European Union was different. Russia joined the Council of Europe after quite a long process, and I was myself also involved in that. So I think that one lesson that we could perhaps learn, also on the EU side, and from the Council of Europe side, is that this was a very good time to make an enlargement. But perhaps we should, to be fair, invest more in the enlargement process, not only before the enlargement, but also afterwards, and perhaps then the process could be easier today. But you know, sometimes things have to be hurried up, and you have not quite enough time. But we cannot take back the past, we have to try to build further on how it is now. Gabor Stier : My question to President Putin is about Ukraine. In the past few years we have often talked about Ukraine and the safety of Russian gas exports. Will Ukrainian flats be warm? Will Kiev pay for the gas? Are talks on gas exports to Ukraine underway? Was this discussed with Ukrainian President in Berlin? Vladimir Putin : We are concerned about what is happening now with this very important energy component in Ukraine because in our opinion, in the opinion of our specialists – and they are no worse than Ukrainian experts because in Soviet times this was a single complex – we do realise what is going on there. To guarantee uninterrupted supplies to Europe, it is necessary to pump the required amount of gas into underground gas storage facilities. This gas is for transit, not for domestic consumption. This is the technological gist of what was done in Soviet times. The amount of gas in these facilities is too low. It’s not enough. It is necessary to load from 17 to 21 billion and I think now only 14 billion have been loaded. Moreover, they have already started to syphon it off. These are grounds for concern. I discussed gas shipments to Ukraine with the Ukrainian President at his initiative. He wanted to know whether Russia could resume deliveries. Of course, it can do so anytime. Nothing is required for this. We have a contract with an annex. Only one thing is necessary and this is advance payment. We will provide timely and guaranteed energy supplies for Ukrainian consumers for the amount of this advance payment. But today the price for Ukraine – and we had agreed on this before and said so last year – will not be higher than the price for its neighbours, for instance, Poland. I do not know the current prices but when we had this conversation Poland was buying gas from us for $185 or $184 per thousand cubic metres in accordance with the contractual commitments that are still valid. We could sell gas to Ukraine for $180. I mentioned this price – $180 per thousand cubic metres of gas. But we were told that they prefer reverse supplies, so be it. By the way, this is a violation of Gazprom’s contracts with its partners in Western Europe but we are turning a blind eye to this and showing understanding. If they prefer reverse supplies, okay, let them get that, but as far as I know the cost of gas for end users – industrial enterprises – has already topped $300 per thousand cubic metres. We sell gas for $180 but they do not want to buy it from us yet. I have reason to believe that the middlemen in these reverse deals are close to certain executives in Ukraine’s fuel and energy complex. Good luck to them; let them do this but, most importantly, they must guarantee transit to European countries. Question: I have a question about the INF Treaty, which is under a lot of pressure today as I am sure you are aware; there are lots of bitter mutual recriminations, and so on. In this regard, it is important to understand Russia’s general approach to this treaty. Does Russia see any value in this treaty, and if yes, then what exactly? Is it even worthwhile to be part of this treaty? Vladimir Putin: It would be of great value to us, if other countries followed Russia and the United States. Here’s what we have: the naive former Russian leadership went ahead and eliminated intermediate-range land-based missiles. The Americans eliminated their Pershing missiles, while we scrapped the SS-20 missiles. There was a tragic event associated with this when the chief designer of these systems committed suicide believing that it was a betrayal of national interests and unilateral disarmament. Why unilateral? Because under that treaty we eliminated our ground complex, but the treaty did not include medium-range sea- and air-based missiles. Air- and sea-based missiles were not affected by it. The Soviet Union simply did not have them, while the United States kept them in service. What we ultimately got was a clear imbalance: the United States has kept its medium-range missiles. It does not matter whether they are based at sea, in the air, or on land; however, the Soviet Union was simply left without this type of weapons. Almost all of our neighbours make such weapons, including the countries to the east of our borders, and Middle Eastern countries as well, whereas none of the countries sharing borders with the United States, neither Canada nor Mexico, manufacture such weapons. So, for us it is a special test, but nevertheless we believe it is necessary to honour this treaty. All the more so since, as you may be aware, we now also have medium-range sea- and air-based missiles. Vladimir Putin : Yes, of course. I fully agree that we should at least try to break this vicious circle. But we were not the first to start drawing it. Quite to the contrary, we opened up completely in the mid-1990s. We expected to have an equal dialogue, that our interests would be respected, that we would discuss issues and meet each other halfway. It is impossible to offer only unilateral solutions and press towards your goal at all costs. You mentioned the bombing of former Yugoslavia and Crimea. Thank you for this example; it is wonderful that you have said this. The bombing of Belgrade is intervention carried out in violation of international law. Did the UN Security Council pass a resolution on military intervention in Yugoslavia? No. It was a unilateral decision of the United States. Now tell me what you meant when you mentioned Crimea. What was it you did in Yugoslavia, when you split it into several republics, including Kosovo, and then separated states from Serbia? In Kosovo, parliament voted on secession after the end of hostilities, intervention and thousands of casualties. But they made their decision, and you accepted it. There were no hostilities in Crimea, no bombing raids and no casualties. No one died there. The only thing we did was to ensure the free expression of will by the people, by the way, in strict compliance with the UN Charter. We did almost the same you did in Kosovo, only more. In Kosovo, parliament approved a secession resolution, while people in Crimea expressed their opinion at a referendum. After that, parliament ratified the decision, and Crimea as an independent state asked to be reintegrated with Russia. Of course, we can keep exchanging caustic remarks, but I think this vicious circle must be broken. I have said this more than once, and I am prepared to say it again. Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and NATO’s expansion – what is this? And then promises are forgotten, and we are again provoked into protecting our interests, after which “aggressive” Russia is accused of doing this or that. Why are you provoking us into taking action to protect our interests? Let us negotiate solutions instead. But it is impossible to agree on anything. And even when we agree on something, these agreements are not implemented. I would like to have different relations with the next US administration, a partnership based on mutual respect for each other’s interests. SF Source Paul Craig Roberts

It was not even a month ago that Mayor Bill de Blasio led a boisterous rally in Foley Square to celebrate the passage of key elements of his affordable housing plan. It was meant to be a pivotal moment in Mr. de Blasio’s tenure, a victory that would position him to better attend to New York City’s needs — something of a requisite as he approaches next year. In the past two weeks, though, the mayor’s fortunes have swung wildly in the opposite direction. His ability and style as a manager have come under excruciating scrutiny, as four separate investigative agencies pursue inquiries into possible wrongdoing on the part of his administration. Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, has been peppered with uncomfortable questions at news conferences and on national television, at a time when he hoped to be acting as a liberal for Hillary Clinton ahead of New York’s presidential primary on Tuesday. Instead, the mayor has repeatedly pleaded ignorance about the questionable actions of city agencies, all but undoing recent attempts by close aides to portray him as an adroit manager of a sprawling city bureaucracy that critics initially said he was too inexperienced or too ideological to handle effectively. Despite Mr. de Blasio’s centralized management style — marked by memos on key decisions and a desire for City Hall to weigh in on seemingly minor matters — he has repeatedly said he was left in the dark as problems percolated. And though he has tried to go even deeper into the minutiae of municipal governance, his focus on details, as described by close aides, has not extended to the subjects of the investigations. In March, the city comptroller’s office opened an inquiry into a change to a deed that allowed a nursing home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to be converted to the type of luxury apartments the mayor has said he wants to limit. Mr. de Blasio said he first learned of the matter from news reports. Less than two weeks later, the mayor learned of a federal corruption investigation into top Police Department officials. The inquiry revolved around two of Mr. de Blasio’s political supporters and appeared to extend into his efforts more broadly. Not long after that, the mayor had to explain confusion in his administration over whether work on a crucial water tunnel that would serve Brooklyn and Queens had been delayed. In addition to the federal inquiry and the one by the comptroller, investigations are underway into the nursing home deal by the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, and the city’s Investigation Department. Mr. de Blasio, who spent much of his first year as mayor focused on providing universal prekindergarten and much of the second year on his affordable housing initiative, said in an interview last month that he was intent on pressing ahead with an aggressive policy agenda. “We are going up the ambition scale here,” he said of his next goals: reducing homelessness, improving mental health services and addressing the dirt and disorder that tarnish the quality of New Yorkers’ lives. The de Blasio administration wants to combine those goals with an effort to overcome the mayor’s image as a leader more interested in making grand pronouncements than filling potholes. It was a perception shaped by numerous missteps in Mr. de Blasio’s first two years in office: late arrivals to events, public comments that alienated an already skeptical police force, a feud with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, his fellow Democrat. That image, which Mr. de Blasio has worked hard to shed, lent credibility to the notion that he could be vulnerable in the 2017 election, with potential challenges from both the right and left. But before the investigations came to light, Mr. de Blasio enjoyed rising popularity in polls, with no prominent Democrat emerging as a serious rival. Now the inquiries — as well as a joke the mayor made during a skit he performed with Mrs. Clinton on Saturday — have put Mr. de Blasio back on his heels. “He appears to be the type of political leader that those type of allegations accrue to,” said Don Levy, director of the Siena Research Institute, which conducts political polls. “A few years into his administration, his armor has taken a few hits and his accomplishments at this point just don’t seem to have turned the tide on a growing narrative of his not being effective. ” Mr. de Blasio has said he was not immediately informed about a separate federal investigation, also by the United States attorney for the Southern District, Preet Bharara, into the New York City Housing Authority, which began turning over millions of documents last year. Likewise, the mayor said he first heard of the federal corruption investigation involving the donors, Jeremiah Reichberg and Jona S. Rechnitz, from news reports this month. The police commissioner, William J. Bratton, has said the federal authorities told him of the widening investigation in 2014. (At the time, people briefed on the matter have said, the focus was on Philip Banks III, then the uniformed officer, and Norman Seabrook, the head of the city correction officers’ union.) City officials have said Anthony E. Shorris, the first deputy mayor, knew about the circumstances surrounding the lifting of the deed restriction on the nursing home weeks before the mayor said he became aware. The property was sold to condominium developers for $116 million in February after the Department of Citywide Administrative Services agreed to lift the restriction, which would have prevented the transaction. City officials said Mr. Shorris wanted to understand the matter fully before informing Mr. de Blasio. Two former city officials familiar with City Hall’s working said the mayor’s desire to closely manage decisions — and his displeasure when subordinates failed to answer his detailed questions — could backfire at times, making agency officials wary of bringing potentially troublesome issues to him in their early stages. One former official said that on several occasions, Mr. de Blasio said he had not been informed about an issue, when there was evidence that he had been, either by email or in person. The mayor would say he had not read the emails, the official said. Both officials, who still work in New York City, requested anonymity to speak about the administration’s internal operations. “The mayor is driven and passionate and holds his people accountable,” said Phil Walzak, a chief adviser to Mr. de Blasio. “People want to take information to the mayor when there’s a problem identified and some recommendations that can be made. I don’t know that people are reluctant to talk to him. I wouldn’t agree with that assessment. ” Mr. Walzak said the investigations had not dampened progress on the mayor’s agenda. “The mission of the administration is going to continue forward,” he said. In recent months, Mr. de Blasio has also moved beyond criticizing the previous administration’s failures and has begun celebrating the city and a trajectory that he can claim as his own. How far Mr. de Blasio’s new approach will carry him, as attention remains focused on the investigations, is an open question. In the interview last month, Mr. de Blasio said that he would be personally involved in the planning and execution of what he called “new, prominent efforts,” attending meetings and making sure that subordinates retained a sense of urgency. “In any one of these efforts I set the strategic template,” he said, “and that can mean agreeing to a vision, to a set of strategies and tactics that my team develops. ” But on Monday, as Mr. de Blasio announced changes to how his administration handled homeless people, he faced repeated questions about the investigations and his practices. “I’m happy to take questions today, but I’m not going to be speaking about this after today,” he said. But two days later, he was answering more questions about the investigations — and about his skit with Mrs. Clinton — after an event held by the Rev. Al Sharpton, where she also spoke. “Glad we focused on the important issues of the day,” he said sarcastically to reporters before walking off.

US Drone Strike In Afghanistan Kills, Wounds Several Civilians The attack targeted the home of a suspected 'Taliban commander.' | October 29, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! In this July, 2008 photo, a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper takes off from Joint Base Balad, Iraq. (Photo/U.S. Air Force by Tech. Sgt. Richard Lisum via Wikimedia Commons) A US drone strike has killed and wounded a number of civilians in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province today, though exact numbers are as yet unclear, with officials claiming that the home at the center of the attack was owned by a suspected Taliban commander. The putative commander does not appear to have been among the casualties, though at least four people were killed within the house, and the blast also wounded a number of people in the surrounding area. At least seven children and five women are in the hospital for treatment related to the strike. Official Afghan statements only labeled the 12 wounded as civilians, and everyone else was not a civilian. Locals offered varying estimates, and the Taliban claimed two civilians killed and over 30 wounded in their own report on the attack. The Nangarhar Province has been heavily targeted by US warplanes over the past several months, though generally trying to tamp down a growing ISIS faction therein. The Taliban has had a presence in Nangarhar throughout the US occupation, as indeed they have almost everywhere along the Pakistan border.

Bobby Hutcherson, one of the most admired and accomplished vibraphonists in jazz, died on Monday at his home in Montara, Calif. He was 75. Marshall Lamm, a spokesman for Mr. Hutcherson’s family, confirmed the death, saying Mr. Hutcherson had long been treated for emphysema. Mr. Hutcherson’s career took flight in the early 1960s, as jazz was slipping free of the complex harmonic and rhythmic designs of bebop. He was fluent in that language, but he was also one of the first to adapt his instrument to a freer postbop language, often playing chords with a pair of mallets in each hand. He released more than 40 albums and appeared on many more, including some regarded as classics, like “Out to Lunch,” by the alto saxophonist, flutist and bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy, and “Mode for Joe,” by the tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson. Both of those albums were a byproduct of Mr. Hutcherson’s close affiliation with Blue Note Records, from 1963 to 1977. He was part of a wave of young artists who defined the label’s forays into experimentalism, including the pianist Andrew Hill and the alto saxophonist Jackie McLean. But he also worked with stalwarts like the tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, and he later delved into and grooves. Mr. Hutcherson had a clear, ringing sound, but his style was luminescent and coolly fluid. More than Milt Jackson or Lionel Hampton, his major predecessors on the vibraphone, he made an art out of resonating overtones and chiming decay. This coloristic range of sound, which he often used in the service of emotional expression, was one reason for the deep influence he left on stylistic inheritors like Joe Locke, Warren Wolf, Chris Dingman and Stefon Harris, who recently assessed him as “by far the most harmonically advanced person to ever play the vibraphone. ” Robert Hutcherson was born in Los Angeles on Jan. 17, 1941. His father, Eli, was a brick mason, and his mother, Esther, was a hairdresser. Growing up in a black community in Pasadena, Calif. Mr. Hutcherson was drawn to jazz partly by way of his older siblings: His brother, Teddy, had gone to high school with Mr. Gordon, and his sister, Peggy, was a singer who worked with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra. (She later toured and recorded with Ray Charles as a Raelette.) Mr. Hutcherson, who took piano lessons as a child, often described his transition to vibraphone as the result of an epiphany: Walking past a record store one day, he heard a recording of Milt Jackson and was hooked. A friend at school, the bassist Herbie Lewis, further encouraged his interest in the vibraphone, so Mr. Hutcherson saved up and bought one. He was promptly booked for a concert with Mr. Lewis’s band. “Well, I hit the first note,” he recalled of that performance in a 2014 interview with JazzTimes. But, he added, “from the second note on it was complete chaos. You never heard people boo and laugh like that. I was completely humiliated. But my mom was just smiling, and my father was saying, ‘See, I told you he should have been a bricklayer. ’” Mr. Hutcherson persevered, eventually working with musicians like Mr. Dolphy, whom he had first met when Mr. Dolphy was his sister’s boyfriend, and the tenor saxophonist and flutist Charles Lloyd. In 1962, he joined a band led by a pair of Count Basie sidemen, the tenor saxophonist Billy Mitchell and the trombonist Al Grey, and it brought him to New York City for a debut engagement at Birdland. The group broke up not long afterward, but Mr. Hutcherson stayed in New York, driving a taxicab for a living, his vibraphone stashed in the trunk. He was living in the Bronx and married to his high school sweetheart, the former Beth Buford, with whom he had a son, Barry — the inspiration for his tune, the lilting modernist waltz “Little B’s Poem. ” Mr. Hutcherson caught a break when Mr. Lewis, his childhood friend, came to town and introduced him to the trombonist Grachan Moncur III, who in turn introduced him to Mr. McLean. “One Step Beyond,” an album by Mr. McLean released on Blue Note in 1963, featured Mr. Hutcherson’s vibraphone as the only chordal instrument. From that point on, he was busy. The first album he released as a leader was “Dialogue” (1965) featuring Mr. Hill, the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and the saxophonist and flutist Sam Rivers. Among his notable subsequent albums was “ !” (1966) with Mr. Henderson and the pianist McCoy Tyner among his partners. He and Mr. Tyner would forge a close alliance. After being arrested for marijuana possession in Central Park in 1967, Mr. Hutcherson lost his cabaret card, required of any musician working in New York clubs. He returned to California and struck a rapport with the tenor saxophonist Harold Land. Among the recordings they made together was “Ummh,” a funk shuffle that became a crossover hit in 1970. (It was later sampled by the rapper Ice Cube.) In the early ’70s Mr. Hutcherson bought an acre of land along the coast in Montara, where he built a house. He lived there with his wife, the former Rosemary Zuniga, whom he married in 1972. She survives him, along with their son, Teddy, a marketing production manager for the organization SFJazz his son Barry, a jazz drummer and two grandchildren. After his tenure on Blue Note, Mr. Hutcherson released albums on Columbia, Landmark and other labels, working with Mr. Tyner, the tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins and — onscreen, in the 1986 Bertrand Tavernier film “Round Midnight” — with Mr. Gordon and the pianist Herbie Hancock. From 2004 to 2007, Mr. Hutcherson toured with the first edition of the SFJazz Collective, an ensemble devoted equally to jazz repertory and the creation of new music. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2010. After releasing a series of albums on the European label Kind of Blue, he returned to Blue Note in 2014 to release a effort, “Enjoy the View,” with the alto saxophonist David Sanborn and other collaborators. Speaking in recent years, Mr. Hutcherson was fond of citing a bit of insight from an old friend. “Eric Dolphy said music is like the wind,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2012. “You don’t know where it came from, and you don’t know where it went. You can’t control it. All you can do is get inside the sphere of it and be swept away. ”

advocates have begun boycotting scheduled “stakeholder” meetings with immigration agency officials after the officials also invited reform advocates according to CNN. [“We are frustrated and angry that what [has] felt like a productive conversation and an exchange of ideas and information about how to ensure the safe and fair treatment of immigrants in their [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] custody has morphed into a meeting with organizations whose mission is to restrict immigration,” one advocate told CNN. “Immigrants’ rights organizations have since notified ICE that they have dissolved the Working Group and will no longer participate in the quarterly gatherings,” CNN said. “It is not a surprise — they can’t tolerate anyone there that doesn’t agree with them” responded Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “They figure they owned those meetings and the fact is now that they don’t, so they’re having a tantrum. ” Since the new administration arrived, Krikorian said he was invited to attend one ICE stakeholder meetings with the groups. “It was just kind of a general information thing about what’s going on, what’s new with regard to ICE [policies on] detention, removal and all that,” he said. Immigration advocates mostly “sat on one side of the table … we sat on the other side of the table,” he said, adding “one of them even kind of joked about it [although] it was not like there was some kind of icy atmosphere in the room. ” During the Obama administration, the groups used the stakeholder meetings to lobby and pressure agencies, and to cooperate on shared goals. In 2010, for example, ICE officials used one of the meetings to ask groups to collect complaints about ICE’s actions, according to a posting by a group titled “Stop Detaining Immigrants. ” ICE has informed members of the Working Group … ICE has asked that NGOs provide to them complaints that we are seeing around the country specifically on issues that demonstrate that IGSA facilities are not currently meeting the baseline requirements … In order to respond to ICEs request for complaints data, we would like to provide examples of violations of detention standards to present a national overview of some of the more egregious violations for the snapshot period of January 1, 2010 to March 2010. Before Donald Trump’s election, groups were invited to only a few of the events scheduled by Obama’s appointees. Obama’s officials at the Department of State ended meetings with the advocacy groups once the groups managed to bypass bureaucratic barriers to get into the national and regional meetings, said Ann Corcoran, the director of Refugee Resettlement Watch. In 2016, for example, the main meeting in D. C. was canceled, and opponents of refugee inflows were allowed only to submit recommendations that were never released, she said. “The stakeholder meetings that the refugee industry has [with agency officials] are really keep very secretive,” she said. “They love to have stakeholder meetings [about refugees] and I’ve never gotten wind of them,“ Krikorian said. The new boycott against the agencies comes alongside complaints by groups about the administration’s hiring of two immigration experts formerly employed at reform groups. According to CNN: Two opponents of illegal immigration have obtained advisory jobs at federal immigration agencies in the Department of Homeland Security. Jon Feere, a former legal policy analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies, or CIS, has been hired as an adviser to Thomas D. Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Homeland Security spokesman David Lapan. At Customs and Border Protection, Julie Kirchner, the former executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, has been hired as an adviser to Customs and Border Protection acting Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, said Lapan. advocates protested the appointments, according to CNN: “These groups have spent 20 years looking for ways that they could hurt immigrants and now they’ve been given the keys to the kingdom,” said Lynn Tramonte, deputy director of America’s Voice, a advocacy group based in Washington whose goal is to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. The agencies should continue to open up their meetings to all side in the debate, said Krikorian. “Obviously these kinds of information sessions with ICE officials should be open any interested party,” Krikorian said, adding “you can’t just grab people off the street, but any organization that works on the immigration issue should be able to come to these meetings. ” “It is outrageous that that wasn’t the case before, and I have to give credit to the agencies,” Krikorian said.

Email Former President Bill Clinton can be heard telling his former mistress, Gennifer Flowers, to deny that he helped her get a state job in a series of recorded phone conversation from 1991. “If they ever asked if you’d talked to me about it, you can say no,” Clinton is heard saying in the recording. At the time, the media was making inquiries about Flowers’ alleged affair with Clinton, and she was concerned that they may question how she got a job as administrative assistant for the Arkansas Appeal Tribunal. Clinton can also be heard telling Flowers how to handle a grievance filed by soemone else who applied for the same positioned and claimed she was more qualified than Flowers. Flowers famously recorded a series of conversation she had with Clinton from December 1990 to December 1991, while he was still Governor of Arkansas. The audio segments about the state job were widely reported in the 1990’s, however, as other pay-for-play financial scandals have surfaced, the details may warrant revisiting. Here is a transcript of part of the recording: GF – But anyway, then Wednesday, there was a grievance filed in my office when I got the job by a girl who felt like she should have gotten it, a black girl named (deleted). And they called me as a witness. So I go in and uh, nothing big came of it. It’s just that they were questioning me about how I found out about the job. And I said, “Well, that personnel said it that it was a possibility there would be a position,” and then uh, “they told me that it would be advertised in the newspaper. And it was and I pursued it from there. BC – Good for you. GF: Yeah. We had a little bit of a scare recently because she had a spot on an X-ray. And she went and had it checked again and it wasn’t cancer. And it’s been almost, it’ll be two years in May that she’s now diagnosed cancer free. My stepfather has been through two angioplasties, but he’s doing good. And I am, I’m really, Bill what I’m afraid of is that if somebody in the press finds out that I’m working for the state. BC – Yeah. GF – They’re going to make a big deal of it. BC – Yeah. GF – Well the only thing that concerns me, where I’m, where I’m concerned at this point is the state job. BC – Yeah. I never thought about that, but as long as you say you’ve just been looking for one, you’d uh, check on it. If they ever asked if you’d talked to me about it, you can say no.

Alabama Declares State Of Emergency Over Pipeline Explosion — Gov. Robert Bentley (@GovernorBentley) November 1, 2016 Governor Robert Bentley has declared a month-long state of emergency for Alabama after a pipeline explosion in Shelby County on Monday. The explosion killed one worker and injured six others.The blast shut down the pipeline, that supplies gasoline to millions of people, for the second time in less than two months , raising concerns over possible gas shortages and price hikes. The state of emergency came into effect on Tuesday and will last until December 1st unless the governor sees fit to end it sooner. RT reports: On Monday, construction crews working on the Colonial Pipeline in the area just south of Birmingham accidentally hit a transmission pipe, causing an explosion in which seven workers were injured, one of them fatally. The explosion also started a fire. The contractors were attempting to repair the pipeline segment that was damaged in September, spilling gas into the countryside. An extended shutdown could cause fuel shortages and higher gas prices in Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee, similar to what happened after the September accident. “An accident of this magnitude is tough for any community to deal with, and I want to personally thank the local first responders for their immediate assistance to this accident, as well as the first responders from surrounding counties. They all provided resources and support to the help Shelby County in their time of need,” Bentley said, announcing the emergency declaration. The state of emergency will enable Alabama to obtain a waiver from the federal government for transporting gasoline through the state, and avert fuel shortages caused by the pipeline disruption. Aerial surveillance of the explosion site shows that the fire continues to burn. The gasoline line will remain out of service at least for the rest of the week, Colonial Pipeline said. The secondary pipeline – which transports diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products, was returned to service Tuesday morning. Share This Article...

“National Mood” Focus Group Reflects Angry, Divided America 0 shares by A. Griffee / November 7, 2016 / POLITICS / A focus group of 23 people put together by CBS News revealed a frightening look at what America has become – a divided nation. Republican pollster, public opinion analyst and CBS News consultant Frank Luntz interviewed the group, and even lost it himself during the heated discussion. He came away deeply disturbed by what he saw. Whether they were Republicans or Democrats, supporting Trump or Clinton, they were all angry. Out of the 23 people, only 3 raised their hands saying they were voting for a candidate. The others were voting just to vote against a candidate. “When we don’t agree on the same facts, how can we possibly agree on the same solutions?” Luntz asked. My “angry voter” focus group will be on @60Minutes tonight. First time I’ve ever lost my composure during a group. 😳 pic.twitter.com/6vUNsSVLEb — Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) November 6, 2016 How many of you are voting against a candidate? Pollster . @FrankLuntz asks a focus group, tonight on #60Minutes pic.twitter.com/v5Px4JrB9d — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 6, 2016 Voters have become “vicious,” says pollster @FrankLuntz . They have “deep-seated resentment” about their choices for president pic.twitter.com/wFcM1gC18w — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 6, 2016 Sign up to get breaking news alerts from Dennis Michael Lynch. Subscribe

0 комментариев 0 поделились источник Pravda.Ru Как пишет Wall Street Journal, ссылаясь на свои источники, санкционные репрессии могут быть направлены против министров и их заместителей из правительства Сирии. По данным издания, в ЕС не будут тянут время, и, скорее всего, список будет расширен уже на следующей неделе. Отметим, в настоящее время в санкционных сирийских списках Европейского союза находятся более 200 человек и около 70 организаций. Напомним, недавно еще пять стран, не входящие в ЕС, но поддерживающие политику Брюсселя, продлили еще на полгода санкции против России . В список этих стран вошли Украина, Черногория, Албания, а также Лихтенштейн и Норвегия, входящие в Европейское экономическое пространство. Что заставило руководителей этих стран принять такое решение, рассказал Pravda.Ru старший научный сотрудник Института славяноведения РАН Петр Искендеров. - Какие у этих стран причины для присоединения к санкциям? - Позиция Черногории связана с позицией правящей элиты, которая одержала победу на днях на очередных парламентских выборах, - конкретно, премьер-министра Мило Джукановича. Он провозгласил вступление в ЕС и НАТО своим ключевым внешнеполитическим приоритетом. И понятно, что внешняя политика Черногории полностью находится в русле Брюсселя. Если говорить об Албании, то эта страна уже является членом НАТО. Она тоже активно пытается продвинуть свою заявку на вступление в Европейский союз и четко солидаризируется по внешнеполитическим вопросам с ключевыми лидерами ЕС, такими как Франция, Германия и Италия. А поскольку все эти страны пока официально не блокируют антироссийские санкции, подобного нельзя ожидать и от Албании. Ее внешняя политика полностью солидаризируется с политикой ЕС. Лихтенштейн - это карликовое государство, которое финансово и экономически связано с государствами Центральной Европы, прежде всего со Швейцарией, Австрией, Бельгией, Голландией, Германией. Поэтому от этого государства ожидать самостоятельности во внешней политике не приходится. В Норвегии другая ситуация. Эта страна полностью самодостаточная и в политическом, и в энергетическом плане, она не является членом ЕС, но связана с Брюсселем торгово-экономическими соглашениями. Кроме того, Норвегия является одним из конкурентов России в том, что касается освоения Арктического шельфа, это наш конкуренты на энергетическом рынке, в плане снабжения Европейского союза газом. И в принципе, Норвегия среди скандинавских стран традиционно занимает наиболее ярко выраженную антироссийскую позицию, по сравнению даже с Финляндией и Швецией. Поделиться:

Here is a guide to understanding Britain’’s vote to leave the European Union, a decision known as “Brexit” that will have global consequences for years to come. Complete news coverage is here. More than 17. 4 million Britons voted June 23 to sever ties with the European Union, whose seat of power lies in Brussels, compared with 16. 1 million who voted to remain. The stunning vote, 52 percent to 48 percent, plunged world financial markets into turmoil, the political consequences for the prime minister of Britain were swift, and people around the globe reacted with shock and confusion. It would be the first time any country has left the bloc. Fear of being overrun by immigrants was a driving concern for “Leave” voters, who appeared to dominate the conversation on social media. Globalization concerns and a desire to wrest Britain from under Brussels’ thumb were also factors. The referendum came about as a result of a promise made in 2013 by Prime Minister David Cameron to appease an increasingly vocal Union wing of his Conservative Party. ■ The prime minister said he would step down. Mr. Cameron, who led the “Remain” campaign, announced on Friday that he had no ”precise timetable” but that he believed his successor — who will manage the process of leaving the union — should be in place by October. Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London who backed leaving the E. U. was considered a to succeed Mr. Cameron. But on June 30, Mr. Johnson announced he would not run for the position of party leader (and therefore prime minister). ■ Global markets plunged. The British pound plummeted to its lowest level since 1985. Investors fled to the American dollar and the yen. ■ The U. S. market was down more than 3 percent at the close on June 24, with the Dow shedding over 600 points, after overnight in Japan and Hong Kong. The financial damage was more severe on the Continent than in Britain and the United States. ■ The United Kingdom lost its last remaining AAA credit rating on June 27, when the credit rating agency Standard Poor’s downgraded the nation to AA, Reuters reported. ■ The referendum is not legally binding, though it is difficult to imagine that the British government would ignore the will of the voters. The process of leaving begins only after the British government invokes a provision of the European Union’s governing treaty known as Article 50 — an action Mr. Cameron said he would leave to his successor. Once Article 50 is invoked, though, Britain could not change its mind and stay in the union unless the 27 other members all agreed. ■ Britain would leave the world’s largest common market, with 508 million residents, including 65 million Britons. That would free them from the bloc’s commitment to the free movement of labor, capital, goods and services. But it would also bring complications, with some businesses already planning to relocate. ■ Little will change for at least two years, but the vote sets off a series of negotiations as the country separates from the union’s remaining 27 members. Britain, which has the bloc’s economy after Germany, would have to come up with new trading agreements. Almost half its exports are sold on Europe’s common market. ■ London’s role as a financial center could be imperiled, particularly if the trade in securities moves to rival cities like Paris and Frankfurt. ■ The immediate effect on travel will be limited, especially as Britain was not a member of the Schengen zone, which came under heavy pressure last year from the refugee crisis. Americans will find bargains in travel to Britain, because of more favorable exchange rates. ■ Britain’s security will be largely unaffected: It remains a nuclear power, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a leader of NATO. ■ Scotland and Northern Ireland could go their own way. Both voted overwhelmingly to stay in the E. U. But prominent political leaders in Scotland and Northern Ireland called on Friday for new moves toward separating from Britain. Scotland, which voted in 2014 to remain in the United Kingdom, may revisit that referendum. Northern Ireland has an open border with the Republic of Ireland, a member of the bloc. Border crossings could now be tightened, and pressure could increase for unification, prompting instability in both places. ■ Calls for similar action have spread throughout Europe. “We must now have the same referendum,” French National Front party leader Marine Le Pen tweeted. Politicians made similar appeals in Denmark and the Netherlands. In Italy, one politician called for a referendum on whether to keep the euro currency. ■ President Obama said in a statement: “The people of the United Kingdom have spoken, and we respect their decision. ” He pledged that the U. K. and the E. U. would remain “indispensable partners of the United States” and that Britain’s “special relationship” with the United States would endure. ■ Hillary Clinton: “We respect the choice the people of the United Kingdom have made. Our first task has to be to make sure that the economic uncertainty created by these events does not hurt working families here in America. ” ■ Donald J. Trump: “I said this was going to happen, and I think that it’s a great thing. ” The British people “have declared their independence from the European Union, and have voted to reassert control over their own politics, borders and economy,” Mr. Trump said. “A Trump administration pledges to strengthen our ties with a free and independent Britain. ” ■ Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany expressed disappointment with the vote and called for European unity. “Our goal should be to create a future relationship between Great Britain and the European Union that is close and . ” ■ Moscow maintained its stance that the British referendum was of little direct concern. President Vladimir V. Putin said, “This will certainly have consequences for Britain, for Europe and for us. The consequences will be global, they are inevitable they will be both positive and negative. ”

Watching male and female models stride down the runways in tandem as more designers combined their women’s and men’s collections this New York Fashion Week raised the questions of what is masculine and what is feminine, how much those distinctions matter, and who gets to decide. Depending on which show you viewed, it’s fine for men to sport blue feather boas or fishnet shirts with a bow (Jeremy Scott). Or for women and men to wear virtually interchangeable clothes, in restrained, minimalist androgyny (Raf Simons for Calvin Klein). Or for women to feminize the puffer by wearing it off the shoulder, cinched at the waist (Public School). Society is in a time of renewed ferment about gender. Culture wars rage over bathrooms and even the very notion that men or women have to choose one fixed gender identity. President Donald J. Trump reportedly likes his female staff “to dress like women” just what this means isn’t entirely clear. The divide looms between those who welcome the new fluidity and those who yearn for clearly defined gender roles. So designers on the runway this week engaged in a continuing dialogue about how clothing defines masculinity and femininity — and how it scrambles these notions, too. Fashion has crossed many of these lines for years, of course. Women have long appropriated men’s clothes for comfort and authority. In the 1960s, longhaired men in paisley, florals and defied conventions of what men were supposed to look like and what clothes they were supposed to wear. Jean Paul Gaultier put a man in a skirt back in 1984. And last year, Jaden Smith wore clothes designed for women in a Louis Vuitton advertisement. But showing the women’s and men’s lines together allowed for consideration of what the differences were, really. Material? Designers used the same fabrics for many of the men’s and women’s collections. Cut? In some cases, the tailoring seemed uncannily similar. Accessories? Many designers included accessories that once would have been thought exclusively feminine or masculine on both male and female models. Fashion, like society, is clearly not opting for hard and fast rules. Yet each designer brought a particular sensibility to the gender continuum. Raf Simons made his name in men’s wear before expanding to women’s clothing. His first collection for Calvin Klein was also the first time the house showed both men’s and women’s lines in the same show. Mr. Simons was known for a distinctive male model, skinny and less bulked up, and he has said he designed some of his distinctive suits for that physique. In this show, much of the men’s and women’s clothing looked all but identical there were a few times when it was hard to figure out whether the model was a man or a woman. There were glen plaid suits with blazers and black leather jackets with silver rose cutouts for men and women. The pants and varsity stripe motifs were echoed in the men’s and women’s clothes. Mr. Simons played with the idea of transparency: women in sheer tops showing nipples men in sheer tops showing theirs. But he did not overtly cross gender lines by putting men in skirts. And he showed some simply beautiful feminine clothes, such as the dresses made of feathers encased in sheer plastic. For Public School, the designers Chow and Maxwell Osborne took street motifs often associated with men — parkas, puffers, hoodies, anoraks — and toyed with how to dress women in them. The puffers for women were a surprisingly sensual look for a normally unisex coat the men in the show wore the puffers short, not big or baggy. As with the other runway shows, combining men and women allowed the designers to present one aesthetic and show how it applied to each gender. At Public School, a man walked out in a plaid shirt and slightly baggy pants with a zipper, followed by a woman wearing the same plaid shirt as a dress with a navy train. A man wore an oversize glen paid top a woman wore the same glen plaid ensemble but belted and draped more closely to her body. Generally, the men’s and women’s looks were not interchangeable rather, men were in recognizable men’s clothes, and women were more often in dresses and skirts, with bare shoulders and material gathered in artful folds. It was a brasher vision than Calvin Klein’s, further along the continuum of sexual distinction. Jeremy Scott had it both ways: gender traditional in his unabashed sexuality for women and nonconforming in his use of what were once thought of as feminine colors, styles and accessories for men. Many of his designs for women were sex kittenish, including baby doll dresses, fishnet stockings, boots, short shorts in pink knit, and clingy tops in silver lamé. Men wore styles and colors that used to be associated with femininity: clingy velour pants in fuchsia and purple or jackets with gold fringe and purple sleeves. And sometimes Mr. Scott drew inspiration from both tropes in one look: He sent out a male model in a plaid skirt worn like a tunic over ripped jeans, finished off with an oversize parka. Men and women wore his signature Jesus motif coats with leopard accents — the women’s coats tighter, the men’s looser. In the end, designers ran the gamut, from blurring the lines between men and women to embracing them, sometimes in the same collection. It may be that fashion’s refusal to decide, to render any one verdict, is as radical as some of the more overtly political statements made this week on the runways.

// 0 Comments Clinton campaign in crisis after FBI agents uncover Hillary emails among sexts to underage girls on Anthony Weiner’s phone. The new Hillary Clinton emails uncovered by the FBI were discovered on electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner . The devices were seized by the FBI as they investigate allegations Weiner sent illicit sexual messages to underage girls. The New York Times reports that “ The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case — one federal official said they numbered in the thousands — potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election. “ Huma Abedin, Hillary’s closest aide, separated from her husband Weiner recently after it was revealed he conducted an online affair with an underage girl – the latest in a long line of scandals for the former congressman. The FBI informed Congress that while analyzing Weiner’s phone agents had uncovered new Hillary Clinton emails related to the investigation into whether Clinton and her aides mishandled classified information. The announcement has breathed new life into the Trump campaign – and proved the Republican nominee was eerily accurate with an old prediction. In a statement on his website immediately after the Abedin-Weiner split, Trump questioned Hillary’s judgement in allowing someone like Weiner into her circle of trust: DONALD J. TRUMP STATEMENT ON HILLARY CLINTON’S BAD JUDGMENT “ Huma is making a very wise decision. I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him. I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information. Who knows what he learned and who he told? It’s just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this.” – Donald J. Trump And previously, in an Aug. 3 tweet: It came out that Huma Abedin knows all about Hillary’s private illegal emails. Huma’s PR husband, Anthony Weiner, will tell the world.

A man was attacked by a bear in the wilderness of southwest Montana. Alone and injured, he walked — then drove — for miles to save himself. How did he do it? The man, Todd Orr, said he was scouting for elk in a mountainous valley on Sept. 30 when he was attacked twice by a female grizzly. Bleeding, stunned and suffering a cracked bone and deep gashes, Mr. Orr said he hiked through the woods for miles to reach his truck. In a gory video that had been viewed more than 37 million times by Thursday, Facebook posts describing the maulings and a new website that allows the public to track his recovery, Mr. Orr, 50, offers insights into the psychology of survival. While few people will encounter an angry bear in their lives, those in the business of first aid and extreme survival said his social media imprints invited general reflection: When someone finds themselves isolated, injured and bleeding, what should he or she do to survive the lonely trek in search of medical help? Dr. R. D. Marks, whose medical staff was the first to treat Mr. Orr, said the injured man came out of the woods on the morning after the attack and went to the Madison Valley Medical Center in the small city of Ennis, Mont. for help. “He just showed up at the door,” Dr. Marks said on Thursday. “I think he called ahead and said he was coming. By that time it was like his badge: ‘I got bit by a grizzly bear and I got a story to tell.’ ” Mr. Orr, who builds custom knives for a living, was recovering from multiple surgeries and unable to return telephone messages, according to a statement on his website. But in Facebook posts published last weekend, he said he had been scouting elk in Madison Valley, in the Lee Metcalf Wilderness area. That is bear country, Mr. Orr wrote. He should know he was raised in the area. Armed with a pistol and repellent spray, he made lots of noise so as not to surprise any bears, which can make them lash out. “I hollered out, ‘Hey, bear’ about every 30 seconds,” he wrote. But suddenly, on the trail ahead, he spotted a grizzly with cubs. She charged. A dose of repellent did nothing to slow her down. He hit the ground, face down, and she was on top of him, biting his arms, shoulders and backpack. “The force of each bite was like a sledgehammer with teeth,” he wrote. “She would stop for a few seconds and then bite again. Over and over. ” Then the bear ambled away. Stunned and bleeding, Mr. Orr started back down the trail toward his truck, about a trek. He took stock of his injuries: mostly puncture wounds on his arms and shoulder. He did not want to pause to dress the wounds, he wrote, so he toward what he thought was safety. But then, a sound: It was the same bear, charging toward him again. He hit the dirt, covering his neck with his arms and pressing his face to the ground to protect his eyes: the textbook position to take during a bear attack. One bite clamped onto his forearm, and he heard a crunch. He gasped from the pain, but the sound sent the animal into a frenzy, biting his shoulder and upper back even more. So, Mr. Orr said, he played dead, lying motionless and silent as the bear bit his head, even as blood gushed into his eyes and face. “I thought this was the end,” he wrote. Finally, the animal stopped. She stood on his back. Without moving, he endured moments of terrifying intimacy as the animal sniffed him. He felt her breath on his neck, her claws digging into his back, smelled her “pungent odor. ” Then she was gone. Somehow, Mr. Orr got to his feet. His pistol had been knocked out of reach. “But a quick assessment told me I could make it another 45 minutes to the truck without losing too much blood,” he wrote. He took off along the trail. At the end of the path, he took photographs and the video. Panting, and with streams of blood crisscrossing his face, Mr. Orr recorded his injuries as he spoke to the camera. “She got my head good,” he said. “I don’t know what is under my hat. My ear, my arm, pieces of stuff hanging out — I don’t know what’s going on in there,” he said, displaying his mangled arm. “And then my shoulder she ripped up I think my arm’s broke. But legs are good. Internal organs are good. Eyes are good,” he said. He got into the truck and drove, calling his girlfriend and 911, and asking a rancher along the way to telephone ahead for help. When Mr. Orr arrived at the medical center, Dr. Marks said, it was about 8 in the morning. Mr. Orr had driven six miles to reach a highway, and another 10 to get to the medical center, Dr. Marks estimated. “People are kind of amazing,” he said. “We think about how terrible these things are, and some people do freak out, but most people go into survival mode, and you get crystal clear: ‘Here is what I gotta do,’ and they do it. “You take inventory and find everything is working — I am alive,” he added. Mr. Orr said he had a gash above his ear and multiple bite marks for which he underwent several surgeries. Dr. Marks said Mr. Orr most likely stanched some of the heavy bleeding from his scalp wound by having his baseball cap pulled down over his head while on the trail. “It kind of pulled the edges together and controlled the bleeding, for the most part,” Dr. Marks said. “Kind of like putting a pressure dressing on. I don’t know if he thought about it that way. ” Tod Schimelpfenig, the curriculum director at NOLS Wilderness Medicine, a Wyoming school for wilderness medicine education, said that Mr. Orr was lucky the bear did not bite into an artery, penetrate his chest or skull, or rip off a large hunk of flesh. That would have made the bleeding unmanageable alone (though had he had help, he could have contained it with an expertly placed tourniquet). For people who might find themselves in similar situations, Mr. Schimelpfenig said puncture wounds should be treated by applying direct pressure for up to five minutes. With multiple punctures, you must “figure out the worst one. ” showed that Mr. Orr had a cracked forearm bone, but on the trail he was apparently unhindered by it. A stabilizing splint could be fashioned with a shirt tail and a safety pin, Mr. Schimelpfenig said. Replenishing fluids is key, because you could lose blood while exerting yourself — as Mr. Orr was while walking while injured. Mr. Orr’s presence of mind was notable. In the video, he demonstrated behavior common to extreme survivors. He was objective, giving a factual accounting of the parts of his body that still worked. He was accepting — admitting what he did not know, like the extent of his other wounds. In the Facebook post, Mr. Orr recalled that at one point he felt gratitude on the trail, saying he “thanked God for getting me through” the first attack. He grieved when the second attack occurred, then said he felt “double lucky” when he survived it. During the lonely trek out of the woods, in the dark, he continued to plan. He emphasized a connection with his fellow human beings, saying that after the attack, he had been concerned that other people might run into the bear. He imparted advice. “Be safe out there,” he said, his eyes darting around while he was still out in the open. “Bear spray doesn’t always work. But it’s better than nothing. ” Most important for survival, Mr. Orr described focusing on living, Mr. Schimelpfenig observed. “He came up with a plan, he saw the future, he was happy with what he had: ‘This is my reality here is what I am going to do,’ ” he said. ”He did not lie there and hope someone was going to find him. ”

Pecans, with their rich, buttery, sweet flavor, are considered by many to be the quintessential American nut. They once grew wild throughout what is now the American South and Mexico. Native peoples foraged for these highly nutritious nuts, and Spanish explorers took pecans — along with other unknown New World foods like potatoes, tomatoes, corn and chiles — back to Europe for cultivation. Today, orchards in the United States continue to produce most of the world’s supply. I have had them on the brain ever since I received a giant bag of pecans from a friend in New Mexico recently. With the holiday season (a. k. a. the baking season) nigh upon us, I began to think of what to do with them. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I will happily make an exception when homemade pecan rolls or other members of the sticky bun family are in the room. And if they happen to be rolled in cinnamon sugar, so much the better. Pecan rolls are a particularly fond childhood memory for me. Occasionally, a dozen freshly baked ones would arrive at our house, packed in a shoe box — the gift of a doting aunt on a baking spree. It was impossible not to eat at least two of them. I would eat them from the top down, unfurling the rolls’ spiral layers and saving the sugary caramelized bottom for last. Many years later, I found work as a professional baker, and making cinnamon rolls became a daily task. I baked dozens and dozens each day, even more on weekends, gaining proficiency, to say the least. (For quality control, I sampled one from each batch.) So playing with this pecan version was like riding a bike. Some home bakers are fearful of yeasted doughs. Don’t be. The key is to let the yeast do its work and allow the dough to rise sufficiently before popping your creations into the oven. These pecan rolls are baked in muffin tins to help them puff proudly. Just be sure not to rush them: The longer they rise, the lighter they’ll be. Bake them until the tops are nicely browned and well burnished. That is the way to ensure a golden glazed underside. Don’t we all love the classic filling of a good pecan pie? For these pecan bars, I wanted a similar sensation, but with a heaping dose of spice. Cardamom, allspice, nutmeg and clove add a kind of peppery warmth to these. I also craved the earthy presence and deep dark hue that a touch of molasses can contribute. Rather than rely on too much sugar or syrup, I folded chopped dates into the batter to increase the sticky factor. A thick layer of buttery shortbread is the base, baked in a square cake pan, with a generous layer of crisp pecans on top. You can cut the flat pie into bars or into pieces. The best thing about it is that you can store these bars at room temperature for days on end with no loss of quality. In fact, they seem to improve with a little age. (They also freeze well.) I’ll confess to a weakness for cheese puffs and other cheesy nibbles, and some kind of salty baked good is always welcome with drinks. For these savory cookies, grated Parmesan was my choice. Chopped pecans, fresh sage and a good spoonful of coarsely ground black pepper went into the dough. It is as easy to put together as any type of cookie dough, but not a speck of sugar goes in. The dough can be shaped into a log (keep a couple in the fridge at the ready) for savory cookies, or it may be rolled out like pie dough and cut into shapes. They’ll keep a week in an airtight tin, if it’s perched well out of reach serve the cookies with cocktails or add them to a cheese board. Surprise your friends and family with one of these pecan treats, or all three. Give them savory pecan cookies to start, pecan bars for dessert and a bag of pecan rolls to take home for breakfast. Recipes: Savory Pecan Cookies | Rolls | Spiced Pecan Date Shortbread Bars

. Barack Obama ( ) plagiarized . Deval Patrick of Massachusetts on the campaign trail in 2008 when he used Patrick’s signature line, “Don’t tell me words don’t matter. ”[Jeff Zeleny, then of the New York Times, wrote: Senator Barack Obama adapted one of his signature arguments — that his oratory amounts to more than inspiring words — from speeches given by Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts during his 2006 campaign. At a Democratic Party dinner Saturday in Wisconsin, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, responded to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who has criticized him for delivering smooth speeches but says they do not amount to solutions to the nation’s problems, by ticking through a string of historic references. “Don’t tell me words don’t matter,” Mr. Obama said, to applause. “ ‘I have a dream’ — just words? ‘We hold these truths to be that all men are created equal’ — just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’ — just words? Just speeches?” Mr. Patrick employed similar language during his 2006 governor’s race when his Republican rival, Kerry Healey, criticized him as offering lofty rhetoric over specifics. Mr. Patrick has endorsed Mr. Obama, and the two men are close friends. . Hillary Clinton ( ) seized on Obama’s copying, as the USA Today reported: Hillary Rodham Clinton accused presidential rival Barack Obama of political plagiarism Thursday night, but drew boos from a Democratic debate audience when she ridiculed him as the candidate of “change you can Xerox. ” Obama dismissed the charge out of hand, then turned the jeers to applause when he countered, “What we shouldn’t be spending time doing is tearing each other down. We should be spending time lifting the country up. ” It was a clear case of plagiarism — and an ironic one, given that it centered around a phrase promoting the importance of words. In the end, Gov. Patrick excused his friend, and Democrats excused Obama, as they would for most things. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Dr. James Weinstein, a back pain specialist and chief executive of Health System, has some advice for most people with lower back pain: Take two aspirin and don’t call me in the morning. On Monday, the American College of Physicians published updated guidelines that say much the same. In making the new recommendations for the treatment of most people with lower back pain, the group is bucking what many doctors do and changing its previous guidelines, which called for medication as therapy. Dr. Nitin Damle, president of the group’s board of regents and a practicing internist, said pills, even pain relievers and should not be the first choice. “We need to look at therapies that are nonpharmacological first,” he said. “That is a change. ” The recommendations come as the United States is struggling with an epidemic of opioid addiction that often begins with a simple prescription for ailments like back pain. In recent years, a number of states have enacted measures aimed at curbing prescription painkillers. The problem has also led many doctors around the country to reassess prescribing practices. The group did not address surgery. Its focus was on noninvasive treatment. The new guidelines said that doctors should avoid prescribing opioid painkillers for relief of back pain and suggested that before patients try or muscle relaxants, they should try alternative therapies like exercise, acupuncture, massage therapy or yoga. Doctors should reassure their patients that they will get better no matter what treatment they try, the group said. The guidelines also said that steroid injections were not helpful, and neither was acetaminophen, like Tylenol, although other pain relievers like aspirin, naproxen or ibuprofen could provide some relief. Dr. Weinstein, who was not an author of the guidelines, said patients have to stay active and wait it out. “Back pain has a natural course that does not require intervention,” he said. In fact, for most of the people with acute back pain — defined as present for four weeks or less that does not radiate down the leg — there is no need to see a doctor at all, said Dr. Rick Deyo, a spine researcher and professor at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Ore. and an author of the new guidelines. “For acute back pain, the analogy is to the common cold,” Dr. Deyo said. “It is very common and very annoying when it happens. But most of the time it will not result in anything major or serious. ” Even those with chronic back pain — lasting at least 12 weeks — should start with nonpharmacological treatments, the guidelines say. If patients still want medication, they can try drugs like ibuprofen or aspirin. Scans, like an M. R. I. for diagnosis are worse than useless for back pain patients, members of the group said in telephone interviews. The results can be misleading, showing what look like abnormalities that actually are not related to the pain. Measures that help patients get back to their usual routines can help along the way, as Sommer Kleweno Walley, 43, of Seattle, can attest. Last spring, she slipped on the stairs in her house and fell down hard, on her back. “After a couple of hours I could barely walk,” she said. “I was in real pain. ” She saw a physical therapist, but the pain persisted. Eleven days later, she showed up at the office of Dr. Christopher J. Standaert, a spine specialist at the University of Washington and Harborview Medical Center. She expected to receive an M. R. I. at least, and maybe a drug for pain. But Dr. Standaert told her an M. R. I. would not make any difference in her diagnosis or recovery and that the main thing was to keep active. She ended up getting medication and doing physical therapy. A few months later, her back stopped hurting. It is surprising, some experts in back pain say, how often patients are helped by treatments that are not medical, even by a placebo that patients are told at the start is really a placebo. Dr. Standaert cited a study in which patients with chronic low back pain were offered a placebo, and were told it was a placebo, along with their usual treatment — often an drug like ibuprofen or naproxen. Or, the patients remained with their usual treatment alone. Those taking the placebo reported less pain and disability than those in the control group who did not take it. The placebo effect, although modest, was about the same as the effect in studies testing nonpharmacological treatments for back pain like acupuncture, massage or chiropractic manipulations. Many people with chronic back pain tend to shut down, avoiding their usual activities, afraid of making things worse, Dr. Standaert said. Helping them is not a matter of prescribing drugs but rather teaching them to set goals and work toward returning to an active life, even if they still have pain. “They have to believe their life can get better,” Dr. Standaert said. “They have to believe they can get to a better state. ” The question is: Will the new guidelines be adopted? “Patients are looking for a cure,” said Dr. Steven J. Atlas, a back pain specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, who wrote an editorial accompanying the article on the new recommendations. “The guidelines are for managing pain. ” Added to the problem are the incentives that push doctors and patients toward medications, scans and injections, Dr. Deyo said. “There is marketing from professional organizations and from industry,” he said. “‘We have the cure. You can expect to be cured. You can expect to be pain free. ’” Medical insurance also contributes to the treatment problem, back experts say, because it does not pay for remedies like mindfulness training or chiropractic manipulations which, Dr. Deyo added, “are not cheap. ” Even if doctors want to recommend such treatments, there is no easy referral system, Dr. Atlas said. “It is much easier at Mass General to get a shot than to get a or cognitive behavioral therapy,” he added. Dr. Weinstein has a prescription: “What we need to do is to stop medicalizing symptoms,” he said. Pills are not going to make people better and as for other treatments, he said, “yoga and tai chi, all those things are wonderful, but why not just go back to your normal activities?” “I know your back hurts, but go run, be active, instead of taking a pill. ”

On Thursday’s episode of “The Dr. Oz Show,” Donald J. Trump told Dr. Mehmet Oz that he didn’t get much exercise these days. This is not really true. Even as he said it, he was in the middle of conducting a spinning class. Mr. Trump’s appearance came in the midst of a news week focused on the presidential candidates’ health. And Mr. Trump, the former host of “The Apprentice,” it like a reveal. After days of ’ as to whether Mr. Trump would provide the findings of a recent physical examination, daytime’s favorite doctor walked the candidate through a which Mr. Trump, as is his wont when answered favorably. If you feel so confident, Dr. Oz finally asked, “Why not share your medical records?” Mr. Trump responded like a knee to the tap of a mallet, producing two sheets of paper from his jacket as if they were the results of a dramatic elimination episode. The moment set off Mr. Trump’s showman’s instinct to engage the crowd. “I have it right here,” he said. “Should I do it?” Spoiler alert: He did. The move seemed to take Dr. Oz by surprise. He read over the letter quickly and approvingly, at one point interjecting, “My goodness!” (He did later point out that Mr. Trump is overweight.) He commended Mr. Trump for participating. “In this modern era,” Dr. Oz said, “people expect to know enough about the people they’re voting for. ” What Mr. Trump provided, it turned out, was a cursory summary of test results and other basic information, from the same personal physician who supplied him a bizarre, laudatory testimonial late last year. But for the nationwide audience, he created the impression of having been checked over and given a clean bill of health by the most famous surgeon in syndication. “I view this as, in a way, going to see my doctor,” Mr. Trump said. He left the appointment with much more than a lollipop. The man whom Oprah Winfrey called “America’s doctor” had become, wittingly or not, Mr. Trump’s spin doctor. The pairing made perfect showbiz sense. Dr. Oz has come to represent popular medical authority in the same way that Mr. Trump, through such platforms as “The Apprentice,” symbolizes business acumen. Dr. Oz may have come under fire for pushing supplements and “miracle” fixes Mr. Trump may have suffered bankruptcies. But their branding speaks louder. The “Dr. Oz” visit was announced last week. But when Hillary Clinton left the campaign trail with pneumonia after abruptly departing Sunday’s Sept. 11 memorial ceremony, the appearance became doubly strategic. First, because the Clinton campaign delayed explaining her illness, it was a chance to portray Mr. Trump as the more forthcoming, even though Mrs. Clinton has released more detailed medical information. (Both have provided less than some past nominees.) Whether on taxes or medical history, Mr. Trump has been far from a transparent candidate. But he plays one on TV. Second, it underlined the campaign theme that Mr. Trump has the most, you know, “stamina. ” At a rally on Wednesday, he questioned whether Mrs. Clinton (who is on her second national campaign) could make it through the speech he was giving. In case that was too nuanced, Mr. Trump’s medical letter included a reading of his testosterone level. The message — as Mr. Trump said in a March debate regarding another physical aspect of his masculinity — was, “I guarantee you there’s no problem. ” The visit’s beneficial side effects included outreach to the largely female daytime audience, in front of a friendly questioner. Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka joined him to plug his child care policy, without questions on, say, the criticism that the plan gives more help to families. Mr. Trump defended his past sexist banter on the Howard Stern radio show — “I was having fun” — and managed to get in a couple of digs at his opponent. When Dr. Oz asked him not to discuss Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump agreed, then added, “We want her to get well. ” (“I don’t think you can represent the country properly if you’re not a healthy person,” he said later.) But by the time the episode was broadcast, the important part of the show, for Mr. Trump’s purposes, was already over. Because he taped the appearance Wednesday, Mr. Trump gained a day’s worth of news clips showing him handing over two pages of — something — to the celebrity doctor and credulous headlines reporting his disclosure as the release of “medical records. ” Invested in the story, but without access to the information, news media grasped for snippets. “Audience Member: Dr. Oz Impressed With Trump’s Health,” read a chyron on CNN. It was the theater of transparency masquerading as actual transparency — a placebo. Now that Mr. Trump’s doctor’s letter has been released publicly, medical experts and journalists can assess what and how much it tells us — most likely, to less attention. But the episode showed that the instincts of America’s are quite healthy. In this news cycle’s journey to Oz, Mr. Trump was the man behind the curtain.

USA CREATED ISIS ,ALL EUROPEAN KNOW ABOUT THAT ,NOW WE’RE ALL SCARED NDMA Let’s just remember who enslaves USA : which entity forced them to do so 😉 People like me even understand how : fewer still like some of my family members even did something about some of it 😛 There’s a reason it will all end : for the pathetic & desperate slaver fiends pretending to be friends ……… nathan sandiego just imagine, GABE NEWELL, OWNER AND FOUNDER OF VALVE CONTROLLING AN ENTIRE MILITARY FROM HIS ARM CHAIR. NDMA Why would I bother doing that? I have better things I can work on 😉 nathan sandiego Herbanlegend is my steam name NDMA Life is better if we imagine how to replace the corruption that infests our world 😉 WW3 : not about guns, just permanently destroying all that powers the entitled peasants harming our ecology 🙂 MBruceQuarles That is awesome technology. God bless Israel! nathan sandiego Fuck Israel, bunch of zionists destroying what it means to be a Jew, turning back on God… they will soon be punished. dufas_duck American police have several local forces talking about arming the small drones that they are now using for survalence. In Arizona, the police think nothing of using helicopters to fire on suspected vehicles. If they kill innocent people, it doesn’t seem to matter any more than it does now….. NDMA https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/37fa3c31ef798b8d7c32d573e0cb260937becd817b7153c813ab7c104b835b96.jpg http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.659480 seriously, Israeli propaganda and the dreams of desperate pirates aren’t fooling anybody : WW3, we’re coming for the entitled chumps indeed 😉 mmmm going to be fun hunting them like Nazis : but we know who the most entitled be … those we will proudly make our victims during WW3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0AbIEH4biA already happily started slaughtering them all around the world … Aidan Rodrigo Johansson The reason that American police love just shooting people instead of actually working and risking their safety for the safety of the people is because they are blood thirsty cowboy dirty Harry brain washed psychopaths that love killing. It is American culture at the root, deep in the psyche. The police have been militarized. They dont do the job like in the old days. No more negotiators, Drs or counselling at the scene of the crisis, its just shoot bang bang boom yourr dead if you had a gun, knife, glow stick, sandwich, whatever. Gary Honeycutt How old are you? The old days you mention with negotiators and counselors came into vogue nationally in the 60’s, after a period of democrat rule notable for their most outstanding “accomplishment”: a huge escalation of criminals rights over those of victims. Note the escalation of crime since then. It seems you are also on the anti-cop bandwagon. I support them being able to defend themselves. Mistakes can be made in a split second, the same amount of time it might take for a criminal to kill a cop. I’m sure you can name victims of cops, do you realize what a small percentage of interactions between cops and the public they constitute? Unfortunately, the justified shootings like the Ferguson case are unfairly included in many of our perceptions. First and foremost: don’t commit crime. That improves your odds drastically. Next, comply with orders given by the police. If you were raised to treat the police as hostile someone failed you. Guilty or innocent, comply! The police are just trying to do their job, don’t complicate it. I’ve seen many an arrest where a person taunts and struggles with the police even up to resisting being put in the car. Try walking a mile in their shoes. They are trying to keep the public safe and they have a right to be safe themselves. fluffnik “Guilty or innocent, comply!” Land of the free? Most places are successfully policed by consent, and without shooting their citizens or suffering much crime. Gary Honeycutt Yes, if an officer wants to see identification he has a reason. If he wants you to keep your hands in plain sight he has a reason. He is possibly ruling you out as a person of interest that was seen in the area. Imagine how much more efficiently that would go if each person would refrain from shouting about their rights for 40 minutes before complying. If you are the person in question the transaction could be handled in a couple of minutes and you’ll be gone without any violence or hard feelings. If you pay taxes you will have helped us get our moneys worth. Of course, if you’ve seen the news and the reality shows You may have the impression that a lot of these guys that are giving a cop a load of crap probably live off of what you are paying to the government. Mike Wasn’t raised hostile to cops, family members are cops as a matter of fact. This is America. If I’m not committing a crime, or suspected of it, don’t ask me for papers. Don’t detain me. Don’t run DUI checkpoints. Those are infringements on all of our freedom, which I assume we love. Safety is what the left uses to excuse their behavior. Safety is a fallacy. dufas_duck I have had 5 police officers in my extended family. It got to the point that none of them were welcome into the rest of the family’s homes. They were eventually never invited to family get to gathers. They were rude, overbearing, malicious individuals, constantly bragging how they screwed some person and taught them how the world really should be. Their treatment of family members were more along the line of petty dictators where no matter the subject, some familly member was wrong. Petty things like they didn’t like the car they bought, or their haircut, or the job they worked at…. They were not satisfied with anything or anybody… They brought their street attitude home with them. They couldn’t keep wives or husbands or significant others for very long. They were arrogant, mean, and only thaought of themselves..anybody else was in their way…. I have seen gang members that have more ethics than these police and their freinds….. Gary Honeycutt My great-grandfather, his son-in-law (my grandfather)and his son, my uncle were all cops, the oldest and youngest for their whole careers. All deeply religious, highly moral men. dufas_duck That is great, if they were straight arrow, we need more like them. My cop relatives and their friends would fit right in in the Crips, the Bloods, or just about any outlaw motorcycle club. No one but other cops were ‘proud’ of them. My family sure wasn’t proud of them… Gary Honeycutt Maybe they became hardened by what they faced daily? East side of Detroit? South side of Chicago? People are products of their environment. Maybe the cops in Branson, Mo. and such places are nice guys. What is the ratio of cops to citizens? Let’s say you’ve got a playground with 60 10 year olds. You get a dozen 10 year olds to keep order among them. If the 60 are from Sierra Leone and the dozen are American boy scouts there’d be 12 dead Americans in short order. Any dead among the 60 would’ve been killed by their own. So what do we expect of cops who grew up without a rap sheet, graduated from school and passed the academy. You think 10 years of patrolling the gnetto might change them? They surely know the realities of the job better than we do. How do the ones who aren’t in Mayberry do a 20 or 30 year career in an inner city where shooting a cop makes you a hero and not resisting arrest makes you a pussy? dufas_duck I do know that where I grew up, the police at least tried to keep the officers from getting street hardened. They rotated officers to different districts every month. But then, they found thst the police were trading assignments. Some cops didn’t want to rotate out. They wanted to stay where they were… No explaination was given by any officer,[at least publically, no answer was given..] Many thought the cops were up to no good and wanted to stay in their own area to protct their interst… dufas_duck You just gave the cops an excuse to act like gang members…. Gary Honeycutt I don’t think so, but you don’t throw choirboys in blue to the wolves in the ghetto any more than you send a S.E.A.L. team to lifeguard the kiddie pool. dufas_duck “……. send a S.E.A.L. team to lifeguard the kiddie pool.” You haven’t checked out what school cops have been doing as of late then…? A 5 year old in handcuffs or throwing an 8 year old to the ground doesn’t work out to be the way to increase trust among the populace…… Anthony Fredericks I will end this stupidity of your right now GARY. I work with Police EVERY single day as a EMT. EVERY DAY! I am a qualified expert on how Police act on scene…Most of them are VERY arrogant, Rude and aggressive towards people. SHUT UP!! or BE QUIET!! is the first thing you normally hear from a cop, You ALWAYS see them put someone on the ground. Even if that person is the one who called them for help. If they don’t like you..BOOM! face down, knee on your neck, cuffs on. Approximately 25% are not like this. But the other 75% are. THIS IS REALITY GARY! And I have worked in SEVERAL cities in different areas…And it is all the same. Police are overbearing and have a chip on their shoulder against the general public…And a lot of them take it out physically on them. Gary Honeycutt My sympathies for the flaw in your family’s DNA. dufas_duck Luckily, the flaw was only in the extended family tree…inlaws, marriages, etc…… ;-> Gary Honeycutt Most people who oppose DUI checkpoints have a reason. I’ve always seen a problem with bars having parking lots when it is illegal for good reason to drink and drive. I don’t mind providing my ID when a cop asks for it. When it’s done without giving him any lip it is over quickly without incident. He’s just trying to do the job we are paying for. If you want to launch into a 40 minute tirade about your rights you’ll be there 40 minutes longer, make it a bad night at work for the cop and wind you all up, maybe you like that. Some people love drama. Mike The reason is, it’s an infringement on your rights, and unnecessarily exposes you AND the Officers to a potentially dangerous confrontation. There is no way you believe that *unwanted* contact that is forced upon Officers and the public increases their safety. I wouldn’t blame the Officers for the policies they have to enforce, however the higher ups never pay when things go wrong after the fact. The problem with being law abiding is that by doing nothing wrong, you don’t see the infringement of your rights, and tolerate them. Just because you aren’t guilty of anything, doesn’t mean your rights aren’t being taken from you. What if “for safety” we decided that all firearms need removed from private citizens? What if we decided that TSA should run mandatory random checkpoints all over the US, creating 2 hour delays? What if we decided that anyone that supports Trump may be a violent extremist and should be stopped for questioning? Do you see where this goes? I don’t like the immigration ones inside the states of the Southwest, I don’t like the “agricultural” ones into California, and I don’t like the DUI checkpoints in the South. I’m a legal resident, don’t transport crops, and don’t drink, yet I oppose all of them. The idea behind them is well-meaning, the execution is unlawful IMO. Obviously the courts don’t think so, or they’d not exist. Gary Honeycutt It is the officers job to initiate that confrontation despite the risk to himself. He does it to lessen the chance that a drunk will run over you daughter at a crosswalk. He stops people who fit the description of a wanted person in hopes of catching a criminal before he claims another victim, perhaps raping your daughter. What would you do in his place? Mike You are confusing the issues here. Zero issue stopping and talking with someone who is suspected or witnessed committing a crime. DUI checkpoints are 100% stop and question, with zero probable cause. Have you been in states where they run these? The road is barricaded, even turning around prior to the checkpoint leads to confrontation with the police as you are ASSUMED to be committing a crime for not wanting to be questioned. You are within your rights to be polite and refuse the checkpoint, but the fact that they exist trouble me. As do any checkpoints, as they are not based on probable cause. Gary Honeycutt And you’ve seen these checkpoints at 1pm by a suburban Baptist church? No! The probable cause lies In them being near “the strip” at 1am where there is a history of alcohol-related incidents. Mike I lived in the South, these things were not targeting a specific demographic as far as I could tell, and while not at 1PM that I can recall, they weren’t that late, and they sure could have been in front of a baptist church. I could have been naive about who was being targeted (I wasn’t just waived through once they saw my skin color), but my point is that the location doesn’t matter, nor does the target demographic, if there is one. They are unjust, and just like every other forced interaction with law enforcement, does not serve to increase the safety of LEO’s. If police pull me over because a car that looks like mine just robbed a quickie mart, or a guy like me was just reported for beating his wife or ran off with a kid, I do not have a problem with that. They have probable cause, and the risk to their safety and mine is worth it, because they may be stopping a criminal. Stop me, detain me for a reasonable time until they can prove I am or am not who they are looking for, then let me be on my way. However, I’ve been stopped in a rural area for making a right turn on red (perfectly legal in my state) and the officer was a complete ass. Enough that had I a short fuse, it could have quickly escalated. After that encounter, and talking with the state about why the previously posted “no turn on red sign” had been removed from that intersection for a couple of months, the fact that this officers supervisor backed him up for an unlawful stop, and threatening that they could have written me up and I would have to prove in court I didn’t break the law, just proved to me that SOME police are uninterested in doing what is right depending on the circumstances. That officer had no reason to stop me (although I suspect since it was near his house, and he is a rural county officer, he couldn’t control his road rage) and by doing so, he put himself at risk, as well as me. There are a million “what ifs” in that situation, not the least of which was the fact that even though he pulled me over in the dark, along a fairly rural road, by himself, he didn’t call in the stop, which is procedure for that department. I could have ended up shot, or he could have, and dispatch would have never known. Increasing negative interaction with the public, is never in a LEO’s best interest for safety and reputation of the police as a whole. dufas_duck I guess that’s why the police looking for a skinny Black man that is wearing a white sweatshirt and is 6 foot that just commited a robbery would shoot a short 5foot 5 kid wearing a dark gray sweat shirt in the back as he was walking down the sidewalk at a fast pace. Turned out that the man they shot was pizza delivery in a hurry to deliver the next order before it cooled off. Police shooting two small white females in a light blue pickup truck while the cops were looking a huge black man in a dark gray pickup truck is perfectly A-OK. In the town that I live in, police shot and killed a 15 year old kid while he slept… Maybe we should all congraduate the officer because he only used three bullets, he could have emptied his clip… Maybe the cops that you love are making things more efficient by killing anyone and everyone to save the taxpayers that you are so worried about any money. A couple of bullets is cheaper than some cop’s time to find out what really is going on.. Of course, some of those evil people’s relitives will probably sue, but so what, the tax payers will take care of that.. How do you feel about cops who demand sex from some random female and when she refuses, gets arrested for your ‘non-compliance’… You would love my uncle. He was a cop and really got off when he could beat or kill someone. After about fifteen years of bullying, beating, killing, and making false charges against people, the force finally fired him…meanwhile, he ruined hundreds of lives and they were not you welfare people that he abused, it was anybody he could screw with… But, in your mind, police can do no wrong..maybe you are right, police are always telling us that they never do anything wrong, especialy when they investigate themselves or have a friendly agency do the investigation….. Gary Honeycutt I don’t deny that there are a small percentage of cops that shouldn’t be or wrong split-second decisions sometimes. Think about how many police officers there have been over the span of time you draw your examples from. Think about the number of times per day that an LEO comes in contact with a citizen. That taken into account, bad contacts are extremely rare. The sensationalism of all these female teachers having sex with students is stuck in everyones mind but they don’t consider the huge number of teachers and students and note how statistically rare these incidents are. The incidents don’t sour me on the entire education system. We need law enforcement. You are good at pointing out the flaws but do you have a solution? Will any form of policing be perfect? What is? dufas_duck How about having honest police and policing. While percentage wise, there is a small number of truley bad cops….. But, [there is always a but]… A large percentage of your ‘good’ cops will keep silent, lie, or even cover for the bad cops. That extends up through the ranks to the top of the police forces. Those honest cops that do come forward are setting themselves up to fail and eventually destroy their careers..cops don’t like whistleblowers. The example you used, teachers having sex with students is perfect. Once it is found that a teacher has crossed the line, even a suspicion that the teacher has done something will bring immeadiate consequenses. Not so within the police. A bad policeman can get away with things multiple times, sometimes going on for years. The upper eschalon figures out ways to cover for the errant cop at almost every turn. Even if convicted, the court system will come in later on appeal and remove parts or all of any punishment. For years, the public was kept in the dark about ‘the bad cop’. Very few were brought to justice. Only the very extreme cases of crooked cops were adjudicated. It is just lately, after public attention, that the police are starting to somewhat clean house. There are child molesting police officers that are still working as officers. Many are just put on probation, others are allowed to retun to police work after their incarceration. It would also be a boon to the public if we had a justice system instead of a legal system. A legal system can be whatever it’s practicinors want it to be. A justice system looks for truth no matter where it points to. Quilified and absolute immunity for police, DAs, judges does not lend itself to anything close to ‘justice’….. Police are a necessary evil…the are some evil people in the world, it is just too bad that many of them are police officers. Gary Honeycutt Keep silent, lie, or even cover? Turn off the TV and go out i to the world. Some will agree with you but if you’d said the same thing about black people there’d be trouble. Don’t you think just about any group might share the same likelihood of bending the rules? They also don’t like criminals in uniform and are just as likely to line up against a bad apple. Do cops get away with small indiscretions and occassionally a major crime? Probably, but more so than the general population? Interesting take on the teacher thing. I remember a fellow who got a job as a girls basketball coach at a very small rural school. He was no prize in his youth and I guess when an equally awkward underage player on his team developped a crush on him he couldn’t resist. She got pregnant. And to add to a volatile situation, her uncle was the superintendent of schools! Flash ahead maybe 10 years give or take and I’m a teacher and football coach in that same system at a slightly larger rural school. I work with a married couple, both tenured teachers, probably on full retirement now after full careers without ever being fired, downsized, transferred, or any of the other things that may befall teachers during their careers. The hubby is the boys basketball coach and unofficially the assistant principle. Guess who? Yep! dufas_duck I’ve been out in the world for over 75 years. Been beat by cops and then have them later discover I wasn’t the perp they were looking for. I was only lucky in that the cops didn’t make up charges to cover their tails., they just lied about what went down and covered for each other. In this instance, everything happened because I was driving the same make, model, color, and year of vehicle that was used in a felony crime. On the way to jail, a radio message came in telling the cops to stand down, the perp had been caught and identified. The cops just turned around and dumped me back at my vehicle…. I think if you would re-read what I posted, It was the cops that I refered to as being giged for turning in another cop, not the teachers. In todays world, a teacher will be messed with just on a rumer. If you as a coach had rumers that you were messing with the kids, I don’t think you would have lasted in that position…unless you are stating you were messing with the kids and no on ratted on you??? Gary Honeycutt No, I wasn’t referring to myself. I was an outsider where the good ol’ boy superintendent had a slew of relatives and even more buddies on the payroll. I think the guy in my story should’ve done time and never been allowed to work with kids again. dufas_duck Addendum: I get the feelig[?] that you are the type that if a policeman makes a mistake, the officer should get a pass because everybody makes mistakes. Police are supposed to be trained on how to back off those split second decisions. Even in the military, soldier makes a mistake and if it is not covered up, the soldier faces the consequenses… But, there are many that think that the killing some kid by a policeman is A-OK. Like the two policemen that were canvassing a nieghborhood, knocking on doors and a 13 year old kid opens the door while holding a PS3 game controller. Cop shouts gun and 13 shots later…an innocent kid is dead and bleeding out in his own home while the Playstation is running in the background and the cops get another pass…. That’s the kind of policing that you want?? Yet, a mechanic makes a mistake while repairing or sevicing your vehicle and it leads to a death of an innocent person…the mechanic can be held liable… Both were mistakes…why should a mechanic be held responsible and the cop not be?? Anthony Fredericks There’s NO EXCUSE for killing a person Gary!!! We have laws against that! No “i’m Sorry” brings back people after being killed by over reacting cops. NO! GARY! accidents like that are NOT! EXCUSABLE!!! I don’t care what job you have. Soldiers in warzones who kill innocent people are brought up on charges of murder. Why would it be o.k. for a stupid beat cop to be able to do it??? Gary Honeycutt Self-defense is a valid reason, and the police have as much right to it as anyone and more likelihood to find themselves in that situation due to the nature of their jobs. People like to argue the case of an unarmed attacker. Should only MMA champions be allowed to be cops? An unarmed attacker can kill you. If someone breaks into my house at night I will do whatever it takes to keep him from doing harm to myself or family, I will not wait to see if he’s armed or ask his intentions. I won’t refrain from using a weapon because I don’t see him with one. It is not a high school wrestling match. We won’t get up and shake hands after it is decided by score. If this same criminal finds me awake and decides to leave at once I will call a cop. It is his job to confront this person and resistance by the suspect places him in the same situation I was in when someone invaded my home. fluffnik I live in Scotland where the police do not routinely carry guns, mostly no-one dies. Anthony Fredericks You mean like the guy who got shot in his car for trying to give his I.D. to the cop? Or maybe you are talking about the social worker that was trying to bring back his Autistic patient and the com while he was on his back with his hands straight in the air? How about those huh GARY!?!?!? I could go on and on but a close minded sheep like you would never see the forest through the trees…. Anthony Fredericks SO Gary if I seen you walking towards me on the street, Got scared because you LOOKED dangerous and I “accidentally” defended myself by blowing your head off, Then all I have to say is “oh, sorry my bad” and because accidents happen everything is o.k. right? Take your head out of the sand…Police kill people when they think their AUTHORITY is being challenged not their lives. They are protecting their ego’s. Mike While I won’t disagree completely with your statement, blanket statements are never correct. SOME police may kill from challenges to authority. In most cases it is a kill or be killed split second decision that we, not being in the exact same position, should not second guess. What we SHOULD be second-guessing, are the supervisors, chiefs, and elected officials who hire bad cops, improperly train their officers, and put officers in harms way where they should not be. The higher-ups NEVER pay the price for those under them, whose actions they are responsible for. That is a very real problem. If we want change, we need to hold our elected officials responsible for the behavior of the officers that indirectly work for them. Programs such as stop and frisk, checkpoints, etc., all require a confrontation with individuals that do not need to occur. That puts officers and the public’s lives at risk, neither is acceptable. The easy solution is to stop making the confrontations occur. But you do something stupid (Michael Brown) you deserve what you get. I wish organizations like black lives matter would pick individuals to use as martyrs who were actually victims. There are a lot of people who would agree with some of the basic ideas espoused. But when you choose the perpetrators of crime who just happened to get theirs as your martyrs, you expose your cause as being about something other than justice. Gary Honeycutt You can put that example back where you pulled it from…if your head isn’t in the way. BJ That’s actually standard in every part of the world except USA. It’s normal for police to protect and serve – it is not normal for police to shoot first, ask later… Jack McCauley Will someone hurry and inform the USA… jeeeez, it’s embarassing.. TroothFairy

Orange County received a more rain than it receives in one year over the course of four days of torrential downpours this week, leaving reservoirs full again. [According to the Orange County Register, Irvine Lake rose 6 feet in one week and Barbara’s Lake was full again after being dry for the past year. Further, the Register reported that a review of reservoirs on the east side of the Santa Ana Mountain range on Thursday found Lake Skinner 85 percent full Diamond Valley Lake 72 percent full and Lake Mathews 90 percent full. Just six months ago, those same lakes were reportedly dry. Nearly one year ago, Irvine Lake was forced to close its waters to recreational fishing after being a fishing hot spot for over 70 years. It is likely fishing activities will resume there in the near future. While the federal government’s U. S. Drought Monitor reported that approximately 35 percent of the state has exited the drought, it noted that “groundwater aquifers in many parts of the state remain severely overdrafted and will take far longer to recover. ” Two weeks ago, roughly 350 billion gallons of water came pouring into the region’s biggest reservoirs, boosting storage to levels not seen in years. Following that downpour, the U. S. Drought Monitor announced that 42 percent of California had been lifted out of the drought. That figure has likely increased as a result of the succeeding rains. While Northern California was almost completely Southern California still has a a way to go. Jerry Vilander, general manager for the Serrano Water District, which oversees the Santiago Creek Reservoir (i. e. Irvine Lake) told the Register that while four days of rain was equivalent to paying for three to four months of water, “For the drought to be truly over we need a few more years’ supply in our pocket. ” Residents are still urged to use water frugally and judiciously. Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter and Periscope @AdelleNaz