Datasets:

nixbel

/

ustest

like 0

Specter of Trump Loosens Tongues, if Not Purse Strings, in Silicon Valley - The New York Times

David Streitfeld

PALO ALTO, Calif. — After years of scorning the political process, Silicon Valley has leapt into the fray. The prospect of a President Donald J. Trump is pushing the tech community to move beyond its traditional role as donors and to embrace a new existence as agitators and activists. A distinguished venture capital firm emblazoned on its corporate home page an earthy epithet. One prominent tech chieftain says the consequences of Mr. Trump’s election would “range between disastrous and terrible. ” Another compares him to a dictator. And nearly 150 tech leaders signed an open letter decrying Mr. Trump and his campaign of “anger” and “bigotry. ” Not quite all the action is . Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal and Palantir who was the first outside investor in Facebook, spoke at the Republican convention in July. The New York Times reported on Saturday that Mr. Thiel is giving $1. 25 million to support Mr. Trump’s candidacy even as other supporters flee. (He also recently gave $1 million to a “super PAC” that supports Senator Rob Portman, the Republican freshman running for in Ohio.) Getting involved in politics used to be seen as clashing with Silicon Valley’s value system: You transform the world by making problems obsolete, not solving them through Washington. Nor did entrepreneurs want to alienate whatever segment of customers did not agree with them politically. Such reticence is no longer in style here. “We’re a bunch of nerds not used to having a lot of limelight,” said Dave McClure, an investor who runs a tech incubator called 500 Startups. “But to quote ‘With great power comes great responsibility. ’” Mr. McClure grew worried after the Republican and Democratic conventions as Mr. Trump began to catch up to Hillary Clinton in the polls. He wanted Silicon Valley to do more, and so late last month he announced Nerdz4Hillary, an informal effort. An initial group of donors pledged $50, 000 the goal was to ask the “nerdz” for small donations to match that sum. They have not come through yet. “We’re kind of optimistic we’ll get the other $50, 000 in a few weeks,” Mr. McClure said. That relatively slow pace reflects Silicon Valley’s shifting position: Even as it becomes increasingly free with its opinions, it has been less free with its checkbook. The most recent data, from late August, shows Mrs. Clinton taking in $7. 7 million from the tech community, according to Crowdpac, a that tracks donations. By that point in 2012, Crowdpac says, President Obama had raised $21 million from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Reid Hoffman, the billionaire of the business networking site LinkedIn, offers a snapshot of Silicon Valley’s evolving approach to politics. Mr. Hoffman was a top Obama donor, giving $1 million to the Priorities USA political action committee, something several of his peers did as well. Last month, Mr. Hoffman garnered worldwide publicity for saying he would donate up to $5 million to veterans’ groups if Mr. Trump released his taxes, a remote possibility that never came to pass. He has castigated Mr. Trump in interviews, saying he was speaking for those who were afraid. Mr. Hoffman’s outright donations, however, have been smaller this election cycle. In May, he gave $400, 000 to the Hillary Victory Fund. Asked if there was more recent giving that had not shown up in federal election records, Mr. Hoffman cryptically responded in an email, “Looking at some PACs, etc. ” He declined several opportunities to elaborate. Even as Priorities USA has raised $133 million this election cycle, far exceeding its total in 2012, its tech contributions have dwindled. The only familiar tech name this time around is John Doerr of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, who gave $500, 000. The AOL Steve Case said his September endorsement of Mrs. Clinton, via an in The Washington Post, was the first time he ever publicly declared for a candidate. “I always focused on policy and avoided politics,” he said. “But if Trump were elected president, I would be disappointed in myself for not acting. ” When he wrote the he was uncertain about donating money to Mrs. Clinton, saying only that it was “probable. ” A spokeswoman said Sunday that Mr. Case gave $25, 000 to the Hillary Victory Fund. Mason Harrison, Crowdpac’s head of communications, offered a possible reason for Mrs. Clinton’s support. “Donors give to support candidates they love, not to defeat candidates they fear,” he said. A few billionaires are acting instead of talking. Dustin Moskovitz, a founder of Facebook, said he was giving $20 million to various Democratic election efforts — the first time he and his wife, Cari Tuna, have endorsed a candidate. He declined to be interviewed. Part of the problem for Mrs. Clinton is that, however preferable she may be to Mr. Trump in the tech community, she pales in comparison to President Obama. After some initial misgivings, Silicon Valley found its champion in him. There has been a revolving door between tech and the Obama administration, just as previous Democratic administrations had a revolving door with Wall Street. In June, President Obama seemed to suggest that he might become a venture capitalist after his term ends. Mrs. Clinton is not as enthusiastic toward Silicon Valley and its disruptive ways. In a speech in the summer of 2015, she noted that in the “ or gig economy” — Uber, Airbnb and their ilk — were “unleashing innovation” but also “raising hard questions about workplace protection and what a good job will look like in the future. ” The Clinton campaign declined to comment. The Trump campaign did not respond to a query. Even as Silicon Valley works against Mr. Trump, there is quiet acknowledgment that his campaign has bared some important issues. In an endorsement this month of Mrs. Clinton, the venture capital firm Union Square Ventures pointed out that “the benefits of technology and globalization have not been evenly distributed,” and that this needed to change. If Silicon Valley’s political involvement outlasts this unusual election, the tech community may start contributing more to the process than commentary and cash. “Not only are tech people going to be wielding influence, but they’re going to be the candidate,” Mr. McClure said. “Reid Hoffman, Sheryl Sandberg” — the chief operating officer of Facebook — “and a bunch of other folks here have political aspirations. ” Others may be inspired to enter politics through other doors. Palmer Luckey is the founder of the Oculus virtual reality company, which he sold to Facebook for $2 billion. Mr. Luckey donated $10, 000 to a group dedicated to spreading messages about Mrs. Clinton both online and off. The group’s first billboard, said to be outside Pittsburgh, labeled her “Too Big to Jail. ” Mr. Luckey told The Daily Beast that his thinking “went along the lines of, ‘Hey, I have a bunch of money. I would love to see more of this stuff. ’” He added, “I thought it sounded like a real jolly good time. ” Many virtual reality developers were less happy, and Mr. Luckey quickly posted his regrets on Facebook. He declined to comment further. “If we’re going to be more vocal, we’ll have to live more transparently,” said Hunter Walk, a venture capitalist whose campaign to persuade tech companies to give workers Election Day off signed up nearly 300 firms, including Spotify, SurveyMonkey and TaskRabbit. “There will be a period of adjustment. ” But perhaps being vocal is a temporary condition after all. The venture firm CRV was in the spotlight at the end of August with its blunt message, which included the earthy epithet. A few weeks later, it cleaned up its website. The partners went from employing a publicist to seek out attention to declining interviews. “We reached everyone we wanted to reach, and hopefully influenced opinions,” said Saar Gur, a CRV venture capitalist. “Then the buzz died down and we went back to our day jobs, which are super busy. ”

Russian warships ready to strike terrorists near Aleppo

Russian warships ready to strike terrorists near Aleppo 08.11.2016 | Source: Source: Mil.ru Attack aircraft of the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov get ready to strike terrorists' positions in the vicinity of Aleppo, sources at the Russian Defense Ministry said, RBC reports. "Insurgents' attempts to break into Aleppo from outside are meaningless," the source said. The main task of the aircraft carrier aviation group is to strike missile and air blows on the terrorists , whose goal is to enter Aleppo. "After the attacks on terrorists' positions, one will have to forget about the support for insurgents from the outside," the source said. The Russian group in the Mediterranean Sea consists of the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier , the heavy nuclear missile cruiser Pyotr Velikiy (Peter the Great) and large anti-submarine ships Severomorsk and Vice-Admiral Kulakov. Russia has increased intelligence activities in Syria to establish the areas, where terrorists are concentrated, as well as the routes that they use to move from one area to another. "The militants took advantage of the humanitarian pause and regrouped their forces to prepare for a new breakthrough into the eastern part of Aleppo," the source added. According to the source, Russia will use new weapons during the upcoming attacks on terrorists . It was said that the Russian warships in the Mediterranean Sea will launch "Caliber" cruise missiles, although it was not specified which ships would be responsible for the launches. Pravda.Ru Russian warships travel to Syria

#NoDAPL: Native American Leaders Vow to Stay All Winter, File Lawsuit Against Police

Common Dreams

Videos #NoDAPL: Native American Leaders Vow to Stay All Winter, File Lawsuit Against Police Amnesty International are sending a delegation of human rights observers to monitor the response of law enforcement to the protests. Be Sociable, Share! (Rob Wilson photo) Native American leaders vowed on Saturday to protest through the winter against a North Dakota oil pipeline they say threatens water resources and sacred lands and are planning lawsuits over police treatment of arrested protesters. Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II said he and other tribal leaders were working on providing food, heat and shelter for protesters opposed to the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline. “We’re just working through some technical details as far as where the land is, and the type of land that can be used for some permanent structures,” Archambault told reporters in Mandan, North Dakota on Saturday morning. At least 10 shelters were being readied on tribal land against temperatures that can fall below -35 Fahrenheit (-37 Celsius) for days at time, he said. “It doesn’t have to put our water at risk,” said Archambault, who was joined by Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman Harold Frazier. The two leaders said they’re considering taking legal action against law enforcement. Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault II said more than 40 people were injured, including broken bones and welts from rubber bullets and bean bag rounds fired by law enforcement on Thursday, Oct. 27th. Archambault said his tribe may pursue a class action over police tactics. Officers in riot gear swept through a protester camp on private land using pepper spray, bean bag rounds and an audio cannon aiming high-pitched “sound cannon” blasts against demonstrators. At least 142 people were arrested on Thursday and Friday. Protesters had numbers written on their arms and were housed in what appeared to be dog kennels, without bedding or furniture. “It’s just wrong to use that type of force on innocent people,” Archambault said Saturday, Oct. 29, during a press conference in front of the Morton County Sheriff’s Department. Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman Harold Frazier said he has heard reports of inhumane treatment while people were incarcerated. “All they’re doing is standing up to protect that water,” Frazier said. Here come reinforcements! As police attack & arrest land protectors thousands of buffalo storm #StandingRock https://t.co/NoQyIsWbxv #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/oMa647HviB — RoseAnn DeMoro (@RoseAnnDeMoro) October 28, 2016 Meanwhile, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) announced that they are sending a delegation of human rights observers to monitor the response of law enforcement to the protests. AIUSA also has sent a letter to the Morton County Sheriff’s Department expressing concern about the degree of force used against the protests. The organization will also call on the Department of Justice to investigate police practices. AIUSA sent a delegation of observers to the area in August and has stayed in contact both with the Indigenous community and those policing the protests since then. Letters had previously been sent to the North Dakota Highway Patrol and the Morton County Sheriff’s office calling for law enforcement officers to respect international human rights standards on the policing of protests. “Our observers are here to ensure that everyone’s human rights are protected,” said Eric Ferrero, director of communications for AIUSA. “We’re deeply concerned about what we heard during our previous visit to Standing Rock and what has been reported to us since.” In some instances, police have responded to protesters with pepper spray and bean bags, and in one instance, private security staff used guard dogs. Those recently arrested have reported being strip searched and forced to pay bail for minor offenses. Members of the media and legal observers have also been arrested or charged with minor offenses. “People here just want to stand up for the rights of Indigenous people and protect their natural resources. These people should not be treated like the enemy,” said Ferrero “Police must keep the peace using minimal force appropriate to the situation. Confronting men, women, and children while outfitted in gear more suited for the battlefield is a disproportionate response.” This picture should be shared far & wide. I can only see wrong doing from one side and it isn’t the elder! Bullying cretins! #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/avNjgfYGnz — Crystal Johnson (@Crystal1Johnson) October 29, 2016

Tim Tebow Will Attempt Another Comeback, This Time in Baseball - The New York Times

Daniel Victor

If at first you don’t succeed, try a different sport. Tim Tebow, who was a Heisman quarterback at the University of Florida but was unable to hold an N. F. L. job, is pursuing a career in Major League Baseball. He will hold a workout for M. L. B. teams this month, his agents told ESPN and other news outlets. “This may sound like a publicity stunt, but nothing could be further from the truth,” said Brodie Van Wagenen, of CAA Baseball, part of the sports agency CAA Sports, in the statement. “I have seen Tim’s workouts, and people inside and outside the industry — scouts, executives, players and fans — will be impressed by his talent. ” It’s been over a decade since Tebow, 28, has played baseball full time, which means a comeback would be no easy task. But the former major league catcher Chad Moeller, who said in the statement that he had been training Tebow in Arizona, said he was “beyond impressed with Tim’s athleticism and swing. ” “I see bat speed and power and real baseball talent,” Moeller said. “I truly believe Tim has the skill set and potential to achieve his goal of playing in the major leagues and based on what I have seen over the past two months, it could happen relatively quickly. ” Or, take it from Gary Sheffield, the former outfielder. News of Tebow’s attempted comeback in baseball was greeted with skepticism on Twitter. As a junior at Nease High in Ponte Vedra, Fla. Tebow drew the attention of major league scouts, batting . 494 with four home runs as a left fielder. But he ditched the bat and glove in favor of pigskin, leading Florida to two national championships, in 2007 and 2009. Two former scouts for the Los Angeles Angels told WEEI, a Boston radio station, that Tebow had been under consideration as a high school junior. “’x80’x9cWe wanted to draft him, ’x80’x9cbut he never sent back his information card,” said one of the scouts, Tom Kotchman, referring to a questionnaire the team had sent him. “He had a strong arm and had a lot of power,” said the other scout, Stephen Hargett. “If he would have been there his senior year he definitely would have had a good chance to be drafted. ” “It was just easy for him,” Hargett added. “You thought, If this guy dedicated everything to baseball like he did to football how good could he be?” Tebow’s high school baseball coach, Greg Mullins, told The Sporting News in 2013 that he believed Tebow could have made the major leagues. “He was the leader of the team with his passion, his fire and his energy,” Mullins said. “He loved to play baseball, too. He just had a bigger fire for football. ” Tebow wouldn’t be the first athlete to switch from the N. F. L. to M. L. B. Bo Jackson had one season as a Kansas City Royal, and Deion Sanders played several years for the Atlanta Braves with mixed success. Though Michael Jordan tried to cross over to baseball from basketball as a in 1994, he did not fare as well playing one year for a Chicago White Sox minor league team. As a football player, Tebow was unable to match his college success in the pros. The Denver Broncos drafted him in the first round of the 2010 N. F. L. Draft, and he quickly developed a reputation for clutch performances, including a memorable pass against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2011 Wild Card round. But his stats and his passing form weren’t pretty, and he spent just two years in Denver before moving to the Jets in 2012, where he spent his last season on an N. F. L. roster. He was cut during preseason from the New England Patriots in 2013 and from the Philadelphia Eagles in 2015.

Keiser Report: Meme Wars (E995)

Truth Broadcast Network

42 mins ago 1 Views 0 Comments 0 Likes 'For the first time in history, we’re filming a panoramic video from the station. It means you’ll see everything we see here, with your own eyes. That’s to say, you’ll be able to feel like real cosmonauts' - Borisenko to RT. Video presented by RT in collaboration with the Russian space agency Roscosmos and the rocket and space corporation Energia More on our project website: space360.rt.com Subscribe Like Leave a Reply Login with your Social ID Your email address will not be published. Name

Trump is USA's antique hero. Clinton will be next president

Trump is USA's antique hero. Clinton will be next president 08.11.2016 | Source: AP photo FBI Director James Comey said on November 6 that his department would not be criminally charging Hillary Clinton for revelations found in her email correspondence. Earlier, however, the FBI had flagged Clinton's email case as a file of high priority. It was said that the FBI had collected a lot of evidence. All of a sudden, it was announced that Clinton would be cleared. Pravda.Ru asked political scientist and publicist Leonid Krutakov to comment on such a development. "Was it a though-out move to show that Clinton is not guilty?" "Did you expect a criminal case against Clinton right before the election? I thought of such a plan if Trump were winning, but now that they have cleared her name, it means that Hillary Clinton will win the election. One can be sure for 100 percent that Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States of America. "I do not think that the FBI Director made that decision independently. This is a political figure, this is a job to which people are appointed by someone else. It is stupid to believe that one FBI director will stand up against the whole elite that prints money and runs business and international politics. The times of ancient heroes have passed. Trump has tried to become one. He has proclaimed a new era, not only in America but in the world, and the electorate that has consolidated around Trump will not go anywhere after the election. "One needs another war and another threat to America to make Trump's electorate change their mind. As we remember, George W. Bush won the election in no less controversial election battles, when votes in Florida were recounted manually. We remember what happened afterwards - we had September 11, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Bush immediately scored 96 percent of support of the nation. History repeats itself." Pravda.Ru Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru What does Hillary Clinton like about Putin?

Pelosi Calls for FBI Investigation to Find Out ’What the Russians Have on Donald Trump’ - Breitbart

Pam Key

Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi ( ) called for a FBI investigation to find out “what the Russians have” on President Donald Trump. Pelosi said, “I want to know what the Russians have on Donald Trump. I think we have to have that investigation by the FBI into his financial, personal and political connections to Russia, and we want to see his tax returns so we can have a truth in the relationship between Putin whom he admires. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

Weekly Featured Profile – Randy Shannon

Trevor Loudon

You are here: Home / *Articles of the Bound* / Weekly Featured Profile – Randy Shannon Weekly Featured Profile – Randy Shannon October 31, 2016, 7:21 am by Trevor Loudon Leave a Comment 0 KeyWiki.org Randy Shannon Randy Shannon is a Beaver County , Pennsylvania Democratic Party activist. “A Democratic victory in 2016 with a bigger progressive caucus can tax Wall Street, end austerity and discrimination, and put the nation to work building the solar infrastructure we desperately need.” “We need progressives like Sanders, who support working families, running for President, for Senate, and for Congress wherever possible,” said Randy Shannon , convener of the Sanders for President PA Exploratory Committee. Randy Shannon was a student leader in the 1960’s at Duke University . He left Duke to organize campus groups for labor, peace, women’s equality and civil rights in the South as a staff member of the Southern Student Organizing Committee . In Nashville , he was a leader of the anti-Vietnam War movement and the Free Angela Davis campaign. He was an organizer for the National Welfare Rights Organization and led a local delegation to the 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami to fight for a $6400 guaranteed income. He ran in the TN 5th Congressional District Democratic primary in 1972 successfully targeting a right wing anti-busing candidate. He worked as a welder and organized rank and file workers as a member of Teamsters Local 327. He moved to Pittsburgh in 1976 and still works in the R&D sector of the basic materials industry. In PA he organized the Pittsburgh Youth Movement for Jobs , was active in the peace movement and progressive politics. In 1982, he moved to Beaver County and helped organize Beaver County Fightback , to defend the home ownership of unemployed steelworkers in the Ohio River Valley. He lead the Jesse Jackson campaign in the 4th and 22nd CDs of PA opening an office in Aliquippa in 1988. He also helped organize a ballot access campaign for Dennis Kucinich in 2004. He also helped organize the Beaver County Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and is still active in Beaver County Peace Links . Up until 1991, Randy Shannon was a member of the Communist Party USA . Shannon helped organize the first Citizens Congressional Hearing on Medicare for All, chaired by Rep. Dennis Kucinich in Aliquippa , PA in May 2005 and was an early advocate in Progressive Democrats of America for Medicare for All. He has worked for ten years building a local chapter of PDA that reflects the progressive coalition of minority, labor and progressive activists. For the last nine years he has been a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and a member of Democratic Socialists of America . Randy Shannon attended the 6th National Convention of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) at San Francisco’s Whitcomb Hotel, July 23-26, 2009. The “Building the Progressive Majority: Race, Class and Gender” plenary discussion began a series of panel and workshop discussions. The plenary panel consisted of reports highlighting work of CCDS activists in the South, in the Heartland “rustbelt states,” on the West Coast and New England and the East Coast. Randy Shannon’s report on Western Pennsylvania and the dire conditions in the wake of de-industrialization was particularly moving. He described independent political work with groups like Progressive Democrats of America in raising the consciousness and unity of the working class and Black community, and then in turn ally with forces like the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the Congress to defeat the right and advance progressive planks in Obama’s economic package. He stressed the importance of ending the wars and healthcare reform, especially HR 676 “Medicare for All.”

Urban Population Booms Will Make Climate Change Worse

Urban Population Booms Will Make Climate Change Worse Posted on Oct 27, 2016 By Tim Radford / Climate News Network Flooded slums in the densely-populated city of Jakarta, Indonesia. (Kent Clark via Flickr) LONDON—The world’s cities are growing even faster than the human population. Within the last 40 years, the global population has increased by a factor of 1.8, but built-up areas have multiplied 2.5 times . All of this information, and much more, appears in a new European Commission (EC) publication called the Atlas of the Human Planet , prepared to coincide with the recent third UN Habitat conference in Quito, Ecuador. The Atlas shows that, 40 years ago, most of the world’s 4.1billion population lived in rural areas. Now more than half live in towns and cities—urban clusters that cover 7.6% of the planet’s land mass, equivalent to an area about half the size of the European Union. Most of the people in the world are crammed into urban centres with a density greater than 1,500 persons per square kilometre, and in settlements greater than 50,000 inhabitants. Altogether, geographers have identified 13,000 urban centres, altogether surrounded by 300,000 “urban clusters” of at least 5,000 inhabitants living at a density of 300 per square kilometre. Population tripled And in the 40 years since the first UN Habitat conference in 1976, the population of Africa has tripled, while the built-up area of the continent has quadrupled. In wealthy Europe, the population remained stable, but the built-up area doubled. The research for the Atlas has been enriched by a new, free, open and global dataset, the Global Human Settlement Layer , developed by the EC’s Joint Research Centre , and based on 12,400 billion individual satellite data readings over the past four decades. It provides, in every sense, an overview of a planet at work and at rest and struggling to survive. It confirms what most people would have suspected: that nine of the 10 most densely populated urban centres—including Cairo in Egypt, Guangzhou in China, and Jakarta in Indonesia—are in the low-income countries. Researchers warn that whatever problems these new city-dwellers have will be compounded by climate change The largest urban centre in the world is Los Angeles in the US, eight of the 10 largest urban centres are in the high-income countries, and five of those are in the US. And a group of scientists led by Timon McPhearson, assistant professor of urban ecology at the New School in New York , publish a warning in Nature journal that more urban areas will be built in the next 30 years than ever before just to house and shelter the additional 1.1billion people expected in the next 14 years—most of them in the crowded cities of Asia and Africa. Whatever problems these new city-dwellers have will be compounded, other researchers warn, by climate change —with ever more frequent and intense heatwaves, droughts, floods , and days of bad air quality. Around 40% of the world’s people live in coastal cities, and are therefore increasingly vulnerable to floods , tsunamis, surges and tropical storms. Because of the notorious urban “heat island effect”, cities are inevitably hotter than the surrounding countryside , and many are likely to face a crisis in the supply of safe, clean water . Swelling cities The new Atlas warns that the new, swelling cities will go on making ever greater demands on the farmland and wilderness beyond the city’s boundaries. In the last 15 years, 27,000 sq km of land was covered by housing, workshops and pavement. This is an area equal to Cyprus and Israel combined. If this growth continues at the present rate, an additional 1.1 million sq km of land will become built-up between 2015 and 2040—an area equal to the size of Ethiopia. In 119 countries, the urban population is between 70% and 90% of the total. In 25 countries—most of them in Asia—the city dwellers make up 90% of the population. Many of these are in megacities. The atlas records 50 “urban clusters” of more than 10 million people, and one gigacity—Beijing—that is home to more than 100 million. Inevitably, in this growth explosion, the poorest are often most at risk, from floods, landslides, and other geophysical and climate-related potential disasters. In the last 40 years, the number of people living at or even below sea level has almost doubled from 45 million to 88 million, and the number living on steep slopes has increased from 70 million to 160 million. Tim Radford, a founding editor of Climate News Network, worked for The Guardian for 32 years, for most of that time as science editor. He has been covering climate change since 1988. Advertisement

cognitive dissident

don't we have the receipt?

184 U.S. generals and admirals endorse Trump for Commander-In-Chief

Dr. Eowyn

Have you seen that pro-Hillary TV ad of disgraced Gen. John Allen? Nauseating. You should know that in 2011, Allen, then a 4-star general in the U.S. Marine Corps, was nominated to be NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, pending confirmation by the Senate. On November 13, 2012, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suspended Allen’s confirmation hearing, pending investigations into the general’s “inappropriate communication” with a woman named Jill Kelley. Gen. John Allen (l); Jill Kelley (r) As part of the fallout of the Gen. David Petraeus -Paula Broadwell affair, the FBI uncovered 20,000 to 30,000 pages of correspondence — mostly email — between Allen and Kelley from 2010 to 2012. Reportedly, their correspondence was “flirtatious” and “inappropriate” as Allen and Kelley were both married at the time, but not to each other. Seriously, how can a 4-star general even have so much free time as to write 20,000 to 30,000 emails in the space of two years to ANYONE? 20,000 emails mean an average of 28 emails a day exchanged between Allen and Kelley; 30,000 emails mean an average of 42 emails a day. There is no one with whom I’ve exchanged 28 emails a day, even less 42 emails. The upshot: Not only did John Allen lose his confirmation as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, he also lost his job as Commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan — a post to which he was promoted to replace the disgraced Gen. Petraeus. (See “ Obama purges U.S. military command (Part 1) ”) Allen retired from the military in February 2013, but was appointed Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL (or ISIS) — a post and title created for Allen by Obama, which Allen held for about a year from September 2014 until October 23, 2015. Allen was a featured speaker at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. He criticized Donald Trump and endorsed Hillary Clinton — who abandoned four Americans to die in Benghazi — for President. Like the New Yorker that he is, Trump fired back, calling Allen “a failed general.” Trump does have the endorsement of 184 non-failed and non-disgraced U.S. generals and admirals, including at least four 4-star and fourteen 3-star flag officers, as well as the endorsement of 14 Medal of Honor recipients. The endorsements began with an open letter on Sept. 6, 2016, from 88 retired U.S. general and admirals : “The 2016 election affords the American people an urgently needed opportunity to make a long-overdue course correction in our national security posture and policy. As retired senior leaders of America’s military, we believe that such a change can only be made by someone who has not been deeply involved with, and substantially responsible for, the hollowing out of our military and the burgeoning threats facing our country around the world. For this reason, we support Donald Trump’s candidacy to be our next Commander-in-Chief. For the past eight years, America’s armed forces have been subjected to a series of ill-considered and debilitating budget cuts, policy choices and combat operations that have left the superb men and women in uniform less capable of performing their vital missions in the future than we require them to be. Simultaneously, enemies of this country have been emboldened, sensing weakness and irresolution in Washington and opportunities for aggression at our expense and that of other freedom-loving nations. In our professional judgment, the combined effect is potentially extremely perilous. That is especially the case if our government persists in the practices that have brought us to this present pass. For this reason, we support Donald Trump and his commitment to rebuild our military, to secure our borders, to defeat our Islamic supremacist adversaries and restore law and order domestically. We urge our fellow Americans to do the same.” Two days later on Sept. 8, another 21 retired U.S. generals and admirals joined the list, followed by 31 more the next day, on Sept. 9, and another 44 on Sept. 16, bringing the total number of flag officers who have endorsed Trump to 184. Below is the list, as of Sept. 16, 2016, of the retired U.S. generals and admirals, who are endorsing Trump for President and Commander-In-Chief: General Burwell B. Bell III, US Army, Retired General Alfred G. Hansen, US Air Force, Retired Admiral Jerry Johnson, US Navy, Retired Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, US Army, Retired Lieutenant General Marvin Covault, US Army, Retired Lieutenant General Brett Dula, US Air Force, Retired Lieutenant General Dan Duren, US Air Force, Retired Lieutenant General Harold T. Fields, US Army, Retired Lieutenant General Bruce L. Fister, US Air Force, Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, US Army, Retired Lieutenant General Gordon E, Fornell, US Air Force, Retired Lieutenant Jay Garner, US Army, Retired Lieutenant General Ron Hite, US Army, Retired Lieutenant Generals John I. Hudson, USMC, Retired Lieutenant General Harley Hughes, US Air Force, Retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, US Army, Retired Lieutenant General Timothy A. Kinnan, US Air Force, Retired Lieutenant General Joe Kinzer, US Army, US Army, Retired Lieutenant General Bennett L. Lewis, US Army, Retired Lieutenant General Frederick McCorkle, US MC, Retired Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, US Air Force, Retired Lieutenant General Clifford H. Rees, Jr. US Air Force, Retired Lieutenant James C. Riley, US Army, Retired Lieutenant General Hugh G. Smith, US Army, Retired Lieutenant General John B. Sylvester, US Army, Retired Lieutenant General David J. Teal, US Air Force, Retired Lieutenant General William E. Thurman, US Air Force, Retired Lieutenant General Jack Woodward, US Air Force, Retired Vice Admiral Mike Bucchi, US Navy, Retired Vice Admiral Edward Clexton, Jr. US Navy, Retired Vice Admiral Bernard M. Kauderer, US Navy, Retired Vice Admiral J. Theodore Parker, US Navy, Retired Vice Admiral R.F.Schoultz, US Navy, Retired Vice Admiral Robert Spane, US Navy, Retired Vice Admiral Donald Thompson, US Coast Guard, Retired Vice Admiral Howard B. Thorsen, US Coast Guard, Retired Vice Admiral John Totushek, US Navy, Retired Vice Admiral Jerry Unruh, US Navy, Retired Major General Joe Arbuckle, US Army, Retired Major General John Bianchi, CSMR, Retired Major General Pat Brady, US Army, Retired Major General Bobby G. Butcher, US Marine Corps, Retired, Major General Henry D. Canterbury, US Air Force, Retired Major General Carroll D. Childers, US Army, Retired Major General Jeffrey Cliver, US Air Force, Retired Major General Tommy F. Crawford, US Air Force, Retired Major General Harley Davis, US Army, Retired Major General Felix Dupre, US Air Force, Retired Major General Neil Eddins, US Air Force, Retired Major General David W. Eidsaune, US Air Force, Retired Major General John R. Farrington, US Air Force, Retired Major General Dave Garza, US Marine Corps, Retired Major General William A. Gorton, US Air Force, Retired Major General Kenneth Hagemann, US Air Force, Retired Major General Gary L. Harrell, US Army, Retired Major General Geoffrey Higginbothan, US Marine Corps, Retired Major General Kent Hillhouse,US Army, Retired Major General Jerry D. Holmes, US Air Force, Retired Major General John A. Leide, US Army, Retired Major General James E. Livingston, USMC, Retired Major General John D. Logeman, Jr., US Air Force, Retired Major General Homer S. Long, US Army, Retired Major General Billy McCoy, US Air Force, Retired Major General Robert Messerli, US Air Force, Retired Major General John Miller, US Air Force, Retired Major General Ray O’Mara, US Air Force, Retired Major General George W.“Nordie” Norwood, US Air Force, Retired Major General Robert W. Paret, US Air Force MC, Retired Major General James W. Parker, US Army, Retired Major General Richard Perraut, US Air Force, Retired Major General R.V. Secord, US Air Force, Retired Major General Sidney Shachnow, US Army, Retired Major General Edison E. Scholes, US Army (Retired) Major General Richard A. Scholtes,US Army, Retired Major General Mark Solo, US Air Force, Retired Major General James N. Stewart, US Air Force, Retired Major General Michael Sullivan, US MC, Retired Major General Thomas R. Tempel, US Army, Retired Major General Richard L. Testa, US Air Force, Retired Major General Paul E. Vallely, US Army, Retired Major General John Welde, US Air Force, Retired Major General Kenneth W. Weir, US Marine Corps, Retired Major General Michael Wiedemer, US Air Force, Retired Rear Admiral Phillip Anselmo, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Peter Booth, US Navy,Retired Rear Admiral Thomas F. Brown III, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral James J. Carey,US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral, Larry Chambers, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Robert C. Crates, SC, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Mimi Drew, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Ernest Elliot, SC, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral James H. Flatley III, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Vance H. Fry, SC, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Byron Fuller, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral George M. Furlong, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Albert Gallotta, Jr. US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Michael R. Groothousen US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral William A. Guereck, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Dale Hagen, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral John G. Hekman, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Charles F. Horne III US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral William P Houley, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Grady L. Jackson, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral J. Adrian Jackson, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Frederick C. Johnson, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Pierce J. Johnson, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Jack Kavanaugh, SC, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Charles R.Kubic, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Rich Landolt, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Don Loren, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral William J. McDaniel, MD, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral E.S. McGinley II, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Fred Metz, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Douglas M. Moore Jr. SC US Navy. Retired Rear Admiral John A. Moriarty, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral David R. Morris, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral James A. Mozart, SC US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Ed Nelson, US Coast Guard, Retired Rear Admiral Philip R. Olsen, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Robert S. Owens, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Robert Passmore,US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral W.W. Pickavance, Jr., US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Leonard F. Picotte, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Brian C. Prindle, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Mike Roesner, SC USN, Retired Rear Admiral William J. Ryan, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral William L. Schachte, Jr., US Navy JAGC, Retired Rear Admiral William R. Schmidt, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral William H. Shawcross, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Hugh P. Scott, US Navy, MC, Retired Rear Admiral Gregory Slavonic, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Paul Sutherland, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Charles Williams, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral H. Denny Wisely, US Navy, Retired Rear Admiral Theodore J. Wojnar, US Coast Guard, Retired Brigadier General Charles L. Bishop, US Army, Retired Brigadier General Remo Butler, US Army, Retired Brigadier General Jimmy L. Cash, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General George P. Cole, Jr. US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General Philip M. Drew, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General Jerome V. Foust, US Army, Retired Brigadier General Norman Ham, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General Thomas W. Honeywill, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General Charles Jones, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General Gary M. Jones, US Army, Retired Brigadier General James M. Johnston III, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General Thomas J. Lennon, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General Bruce Miketinac, US Army, Retired Brigadier General Bert Mizusawa, US Army, Retired Brigadier General Harold C. Morgan, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General Stephen Mundt, US Army, Retired Brigadier General Mike Neil, US Marines Corps, Retired Brigadier general Robert V. Paschon, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General Mark D. Scraba, US Army, Retired Brigadier General George L. Schulstad, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General Richard M. Tabor, US Army, retired Brigadier General Hugh B. Tant III, US Army, Retired Brigadier General Troy Tolbert, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General Robert F. Titus, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General William O. Walsh, US Air Force, Retired Brigadier General Robert V. Woods, US Air Force Retired Admiral James “Ace” Lyons, Retired

“Working Class Hero” by John Brennon

Doug Diamond

Source: CNBC, article by Robert Ferris Arctic sea ice is melting at a rate far faster than anyone thought, and it is already wildly, and perhaps The 36,000 member Institute of Physics “Climate geoengineering at scale must be considered only as a last resort…There should be no lessening of attempts to otherwise correct the harmful impacts of human economies on the Earth’s ecology and climate.” IS RAYTHEON THE WEATHER? Raytheon Corporation is the third largest weapons manufacturer, and is a partner in HAARP . Raethon also tells the weather to the American Meteorological Service (AMS) and is the leading corporation in Weather Modification Nano Technology, as well as advanced Weather Weapon Systems. Here is Raytheon's RAY GUN crowd control, weather modification, weapons systems, weather forecasting Raytheon. Still think they can't alter the weather? President John F Kennedy Secret Societies Methane

The Rise of Mandatory Vaccinations Means the End of Medical Freedom

Shaun Bradley

Written by Shaun Bradley Mandatory vaccinations are about to open up a new frontier for government control. Through the war on drugs, bureaucrats arbitrarily dictate what people can and can’t put into their bodies, but that violation pales in comparison to forcibly medicating millions against their will. Voluntary and informed consent are essential in securing individual rights, and without it, self-ownership will never be respected. The liberal stronghold of California is trailblazing the encroaching new practice and recently passed laws mandating that children and adults must have certain immunizations before being able to attend schools or work in certain professions. The longstanding religious and philosophical exemptions that protect freedom of choice have been systematically crushed by the state. California’s Senate Bill 277 went into effect on July 1st, 2016, and marked the most rigid requirements ever instituted for vaccinations. The law forces students to endure a total of 40 doses to complete the 10 federally recommended vaccines while allowing more to be added at any time. Any family that doesn’t go along will have their child barred from attending licensed day care facilities, in-home daycares, public or private schools, and even after school programs. Over the years, California has developed a reputation for pushing vaccines on their youth. Assembly Bill 499 was passed in 2011 and lowered the age of consent for STD prevention vaccines to just 12 years old. Included in the assortment of shots being administered was the infamous Gardasil , which just a few years later was at the center of a lawsuit that yielded the victims a $6 million settlement from the US government, which paid out funds from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program . The Vaccinate All Children Act of 2015 is an attempt to implement this new standard nationwide, and although it has stalled in the House, it will likely be reintroduced the next time the country is gripped by the fear of a pandemic. The debate surrounding vaccinations is commonly framed as a moral struggle between the benefits to the collective and the selfish preferences of the individual. But since the outbreak scares of Zika , measles , and ebola , the rhetoric has taken a turn toward authoritarianism. It’s commonly stated by the CDC and most mainstream doctors that the unvaccinated are putting the health of everyone else at risk, but the truth isn’t so black and white . The herd immunity theory has been consistently used to validate the expansion of vaccine programs, but it still doesn’t justify the removal of choice from the individual. The classic exchange of freedom for perceived safety is a no brainer for the millions of Americans who are willing to use government to strap their neighbors down and forcibly inject them for the greater good. Anyone who expresses concern about possible side effects is immediately branded as conspiratorial or anti-science. Yet controversial claims that certain vaccine variants cause neurological disorders like autism have led some people to swear off inoculations altogether. This all-or-nothing dynamic has completely polarized the issue and prevents any reasonable discussion from taking place. Either you accept all of the CDC’s recommended 69 doses of 16 vaccines between birth and age 18, or you want to bring back measles, polio, and probably the black plague. On the other extreme side of the debate, if you fail to acknowledge all vaccines as dangerous, you’re an ignorant sheep. Through the internet, disinformation has become widespread and created a movement of people that have written off all the benefits accomplished through immunizations. These individuals are unable or unwilling to separate the science from the shady institutions that develop and distribute new vaccines. Even if thimerosal and mercury based preservatives cause adverse reactions in some patients, it doesn’t detract from the advantages vaccine technology provides. In this debate, like most others in the US, both sides are swept up in emotion and ignorance. Regardless, the public’s trust in vaccinations has been eroded by the reputations of those companies producing them. Pharmaceutical giants like Merck and Pfizer make billions from the distribution of these shots, and the potential profits after a mandate are enough to corrupt the morals of almost anyone. In one example, former CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding left her post at the government agency in 2009 to work in Merck’s vaccine division. An investigative report published by the British Medical Journal last year found the CDC downplays its ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Further, by buying the support of politicians like Hillary Clinton — who received more donations from pharmaceutical companies and their employees than any other candidate this year — these huge companies are able to expand their influence in directing government policy . Maintaining control over what we put into our own bodies is a fundamental right, but for now, standing up to these government decrees only means ostracism from the education system and criticism from peers. In the future, however, the punishments for disobedience will likely only grow stricter. An Orange County doctor named Bob Sears is already in the crosshairs of California’s medical board after excusing a two-year-old from future vaccinations. The mother expressed concern that her daughter had an adverse reaction to a previous shot, describing the child as becoming limp “like a ragdoll” for 24 hours after the last dose. Dr. Sears’ alternative treatment recommendations break from the rules dictated by S.B. 277, and now his reputation, as well as his career, are in jeopardy. This new authority to strip doctors of their medical licenses for simply going against the state-imposed standards opens the door for the persecution of medical professionals who resist any government regulation.A vaccination is an invasive medical procedure that can have different effects on each and every individual. The Nuremberg Code’s first principle is voluntary consent, but it seems the lessons of history have been completely forgotten by today’s leaders. The transition of these shots from “recommended” to “required” is well underway, and those who think the ends justify the means are willing to forcibly make sure everyone else complies. The new benchmark set by California symbolizes a precedent that could be mimicked across the nation. Without having the discretion to choose which medications are injected into your body — or your child’s — how can anyone convince themselves they are free? This overreach and collusion can often be dismissed as a trivial issue, but the fact that voluntary consent is under attack speaks volumes to the extent that state power has metastasized. Reprinted with permission from TheAntiMedia.org . Related

Communists Terrorize Small Business

Steve Watson

Store Communists Terrorize Small Business The owner of the Blue Cat Cafe is the victim of recent terrorist attacks on her business by communists protesters based in Austin Infowars.com - October 27, 2016 Comments NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Download on your mobile device now for free. Today on the Show Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars crew. From the store Featured Videos FEATURED VIDEOS Donald Trump Has Won The 2016 Presidential Election - See the rest on the Alex Jones YouTube channel . BREAKING: Michael Moore Admits Trump Is Right - See the rest on the Alex Jones YouTube channel . ILLUSTRATION How much will your healthcare premiums rise in 2017? >25% © 2016 Infowars.com is a Free Speech Systems, LLC Company. All rights reserved. Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notice. 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force Brain Force – 25% OFF 34.95 22.46 Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with Brain Force the next generation of neural activation from Infowars Life. http://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brainforce-25-200-e1476824046577.jpg http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force http://www.infowarsstore.com/health-and-wellness/infowars-life/brain-force.html?ims=tzrwu&utm_campaign=Infowars+Placement&utm_source=Infowars.com&utm_medium=Widget&utm_content=Brain+Force

Computer Programmer Comes Forward, Admits To Being Paid To Rig Voting Booths! TRUMP WAS RIGHT! • USA Newsflash

Usa News Flash

VIA Conservative Tribune In 2000, computer programmer Clinton “Clint” Curtis was ordered to design an undetectable computer program that could flip the results of a close election, according to ClashDaily and the St. Petersburg Times, now the Tampa Bay Times . Curtis testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee that his employer, Yang Enterprises Inc., told him, “We need to steal an election.” The program was intended for the computerized voting machines to which Florida would be transitioning starting in 2002. You can watch the video here: CLICK HERE TO SEE THE VIDEO This is it, folks. Despite the liberal media’s efforts to convince us all otherwise and paint naysayers as conspiracy theorists, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is right. Rigging an election has never been easier. The left painted Clint Curtis as a nut, a conspiracy theorist, a disgruntled ex-employee. They published photoshopped images of him wearing a tinfoil hat and did everything possible to discredit one man who was standing up for the truth. Curtis voluntarily took a polygraph test, alleging that one of the consultants at his employer was a Chinese national and convicted spy. Yang Enterprises denied ever knowing consultant Hai Lin Nee, while in fact they had been assisting him for years in repeatedly extending his U.S. Visa. The Florida Department of Transportation inspector investigating the ballot tampering allegations, Raymond Lemme, was found dead in an apparent suicide. Both Curtis and Lemme’s family members believe he was murdered. In 2005, computer experts demonstrated for officials in Leon County, Florida, how simple it was to flip election results while leaving no detectable trace of their efforts. Where is the liberal media in all this? Where are the Democrats who are supposedly so concerned with our fundamental rights? They’re in a back room, preparing to steal an election if the people’s voice isn’t heard on Election Day. On Nov. 8, be that decent person standing up for truth. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think that the election is rigged? Share us your thoughts in the comments section below.

Thieves Take a Chunk of Change, All 221 Pounds of It, From a Berlin Museum - The New York Times

Melissa Eddy

BERLIN — You could never palm it, flip it or plunk it into a vending machine. But apparently it can be pinched: One of the world’s largest gold coins, a Canadian monster called the Big Maple Leaf, was stolen overnight from the Bode Museum in Berlin, the police said on Monday. The coin is about 21 inches in diameter and over an inch thick. It has the head of Queen Elizabeth II on one side and a maple leaf on the other. Its face value is 1 million Canadian dollars, or about $750, 000, but by gold content alone, it is worth as much as $4. 5 million at current market prices. And though it weighs about as much as a refrigerator, somehow thieves apparently managed to lug it through the museum and up at least one floor to get it out of a window at the back of the building. The police are still trying to figure out exactly how they did it. The Bode Museum, which sits on Museum Island in the Spree River, is part of the complex belonging to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, or in German, the Preussischer Kulturbesitz. The local commuter railway runs across the island along the back of the museum. The burglars seemed to have broken in through a window above the railway tracks during the hours when the trains pause for the night. The police were alerted to the at 4 a. m. and think that it took place between 3:20 a. m. and 3:45 a. m. The window, some three to four yards above the tracks, stood ajar and appeared to have been “forcibly opened,” said Winfrid Wenzel, a police spokesman. Officers searching the crime scene found a ladder on the elevated railway’s roadbed, which is near the museum’s back wall. The police declined to give further details, including whether security cameras monitored that window, or whether the museum’s alarm systems had gone off. The Big Maple Leaf had been on display since December 2010, on a floor below the window in its own bulletproof case. It was surrounded by other, smaller gold coins. The bulletproof glass “appeared to have been violently shattered,” Mr. Wenzel said. But the thieves seemed to know what they wanted the smaller gold coins were untouched. Given the coin’s weight, the authorities said they suspected that more than one person was involved. Their theory for now is that the thieves dragged the coin through the museum, out the window and then along the railway track, possibly reaching a park on the opposite bank of the river near the Hackescher Markt, a public square in Berlin that is home to a number of bars and cafes. The police appealed for clues from anyone who had been in the area at that time. Experts said it would be difficult to sell the stolen coin, but worried that it could be melted down and the gold resold on the open market. The museum is regularly closed on Mondays and is expected to reopen as planned on Tuesday. In addition to paintings, sculptures and other works of art, the museum displays what it says is one of the largest collection of coins and medals in the world, with about 500, 000 objects. The Royal Canadian Mint created its first coin, in Canadian dollars, as a demonstration in 2007 — “because we can,” the mint says on its website — to draw attention to its series of more modestly sized, if still costly, pure gold coins. But Alex Reeves, a spokesman for the mint, said it decided to produce up to 10 copies of the Big Maple Leaf after being approached by potential buyers. Interest, however, has been limited. Only five have been produced for sale to date the last delivery was made in 2008. “We were satisfied with selling five coins we didn’t expect to sell at all,” Mr. Reeves said. A granite display stand is supplied with the coin when purchased. Mr. Reeves said that the mint, which still has the first coin “safe and sound in our high security vault,” moves it around in a trunk with casters similar to those used by traveling music acts and stage shows. Not included, however, is any sort of theft protection plan. “Customers are responsible for security of their own assets,” Mr. Reeves said.

New England Patriots’ Owner, Still Sore at N.F.L., Has Payback in Sight - The New York Times

Ken Belson and Ben Shpigel

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — The N. F. L. likes portraying itself as one big family of owners, players and fans who, despite their differences, come together on game days. Yet at the Super Bowl in Houston in two weeks, the N. F. L. may have no choice but to air a public and profound grudge on national television. If the New England Patriots defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday as they are favored to do and go on to beat either the Atlanta Falcons or the Green Bay Packers for the title, the league commissioner, Roger Goodell, will have to present the Lombardi Trophy to Robert K. Kraft, the owner of the Patriots. The moment would be delicious payback for Kraft, who is still simmering about the suspension his quarterback, Tom Brady, served as a result of the cheating scandal known as Deflategate, after the underinflated footballs meant to give him a throwing advantage. In spite — or, perhaps, because — of it all, New England went this season and throttled the Houston Texans last week in its playoff opener. Kraft largely kept quiet while the Brady case played out. But in a recent interview, he made clear that he remains annoyed by how his best player and team were pilloried. “Sometimes, the league really messes up, and I think they really messed this up badly,” he said in a discussion in his Gillette Stadium office here. “But we’ve all agreed to subjugate our right to disrupt everything” — the Patriots declined to fight the league over financial penalties it levied on the team — “I mean, we can, but we’re a partnership. There’s jealousy, there’s envy, there’s stupidity. Sometimes, life is unfair, and you have to suck it up and move on and not use it as an excuse. ” Let bygones be bygones? Not quite. Goodell has not been seen at a Patriots home game in two years, and on Sunday, rather than face the wrath of Patriots fans, he will, for the second consecutive week, travel to Atlanta for the N. F. C. Championship game instead. This relationship may have evolved into one of the biggest tests of the diplomatic skills — in football and in his larger world of finance and philanthropy — that Kraft prides himself on. Never mind that he owns one of the most polarizing teams, one that, while certainly beloved in New England, has failed to attract the kind of passionate national following of the Cowboys or the Packers. Some of the distaste, of course, reflects a jealousy created by their four Super Bowl titles — and six appearances in the title game — over the last 15 years. But there is also the coach, Bill Belichick, who although most likely headed to the Hall of Fame, is hard to love with his taciturn and grumpy manner in public. Also not helping are a series of scandals, including New England’s spying on the New York Jets in 2007, and another involving a former player, Aaron Hernandez, who was convicted of committing a murder that occurred while he was a member of the team. And Brady and those footballs. So the internet likes to discuss things like “15 Reasons Why People Hate the New England Patriots. ” Kraft, a native of Brookline, Mass. who bought the Patriots 23 years ago for a $172 million, chalks up such animosity to the team’s success. He has an apartment in Manhattan, and in the years after he bought the team, he would get razzed by people on the street. “They used to be aggressive and nasty, and now they’re more respectful because I think we’ve been able to do pretty well and sustained it,” Kraft said. Still, the friction cuts against the image of affability and reason that Kraft, 75, likes to project. When a New York Times reporter stepped into his office, the first thing Kraft did was hand him two small cartons of eggs from his family farm, assuring him they would be the best he had ever eaten. On his desk facing visitors was a small plaque with the greeting “Shalom Y’all!” The 30 minutes allotted for the interview went on way longer, though some of it was given to asides and tangents. Kraft, whose billions come primarily from a packaging and paper empire and an assortment of other investments, sidestepped questions about whether winning a Super Bowl would have any extra meaning this year. Until Deflategate, he and Goodell publicly got along well, and Kraft takes pride in his facility for building relationships with a wide range of sports figures, celebrities, politicians and business leaders. One week, Secretary of State John Kerry might join him in his suite, and the next it’s media titans like Rupert Murdoch and Leslie Moonves. Among N. F. L. owners, whose politics tilt Republican, Kraft is among the most loyal donors to Democratic candidates. Yet he, as well as Brady and Belichick, considers Donald J. Trump a good friend, a tricky relationship in heavily Democratic Massachusetts, which voted for Hillary Clinton by a wide margin. Kraft said they met 20 years ago when Trump invited him to play golf at his club in West Palm Beach, Fla. “Loyalty is important to me, and he has been a wonderful friend,” Kraft said. “I think one of the great problems in the country today is the working poor, the middle class, that there hasn’t been growth in income on an equal basis, and I really think the policies he’s going to bring to bear are going to be great for the economic side of America. ” It is hard to tell if his association with Trump is costing the team fans, but then, as a team owner and businessman, he is used to being a target. He has had legal fights with business partners, including those with a stake in the land where Gillette Stadium now stands. Patriots fans, too, lashed out at Kraft for not doing more to fight the N. F. L. during Deflategate. Yet he is influential enough in the league that owners and officials prefer to keep their criticisms of him to private conversations. When Kraft and other team owners clash over league issues, it is usually behind closed doors. “We do have dissent and do have things I think you couldn’t help but have,” said the Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, who rivals Kraft for influence in the league. “I think Bob has exhibited disagreement, but he’s also very capable of making and influencing change. I’m someone, if he has ideas, I would certainly be a good listener. ” Kraft is still a very owner, but three of his sons have taken on greater responsibilities with the Patriots and the family’s portfolio of company investments, including a Major League Soccer team, the New England Revolution. More and more, Kraft said, he is focusing on strategizing and bringing people together. Like Arabs and Jews. He has sought to broker Middle East conciliation through sports and investments, citing economic interdependence as a unifying agent. Several years ago, Kraft, who is Jewish, operated a packaging company that employed Israelis and Palestinians. He has taken dozens of Christian friends to Israel, including Brady and, in 2015, 19 former N. F. L. players, some of whom were baptized in the Jordan River. Still, though he often portrays himself as a unifier, some people — or teams — do irk him. Like the Indianapolis Colts. During halftime in a victory over the Miami Dolphins last season, while praising Willie McGinest, a linebacker inducted into the team’s hall of fame that night, Kraft made sure to point out that McGinest was on teams that beat the Colts 16 times in 12 seasons. It was seven months after the Colts first suggested that New England used underinflated balls in the A. F. C. Championship game they lost, . McGinest said he understood how Kraft could still be offended. “When you take away from somebody’s hard work or everything that goes into winning those types of games, it’s pretty upsetting,” said McGinest, now an analyst for NFL Network. “That’s his baby. Those players are all his. That team, it’s his baby. ” At the Patriots, Kraft — and, before her death from cancer in 2011, his wife, Myra — has had a reputation for forming lasting relationships with his players and engaging in conversations with them beyond football. The Hall of Fame running back Curtis Martin grew close to the Krafts during his three seasons in New England. Martin, who identifies as a Christian, spent some Jewish holidays with the Krafts and so grew to love chicken soup served by Myra Kraft that she would give some to her husband to place in Martin’s locker. “I didn’t deem it as normal,” Martin, who also traveled to Israel with Kraft, said in a telephone interview. “I thought it was something that was very rare. ” Now a businessman himself, Martin cherishes the day during his rookie season, in 1995, when Kraft invited him to a plant he owned. “Everything has a process to it,” Martin said, explaining the lesson he learned. “And when you neglect the process, you ultimately neglect your ability to be successful at whatever you’re striving for. That’s an experience I’ll never forget. ” Kraft, former players say, is a regular presence in the locker room, where personnel rarely tread, greeting players, even those who are not stars, by name. Sometimes, he can show a playful, side. During receiver Donte Stallworth’s first stint in New England, in 2007, he and Randy Moss were leaving the cafeteria on their way to the receivers meeting room when Kraft stopped them in the hallway and handed them a manila folder. Opening it, Moss and Stallworth burst into laughter: Inside was a photograph of Kraft and the rapper 50 Cent sipping mai tais on a beach. “I know you two young men are pretty cool and you guys are young studs,” Kraft told them, according to Stallworth. “I’m an old guy, but I’m not too bad myself. ” Stallworth added: “He doesn’t walk around like he owns the place, even though he does. ” Indeed, Kraft was very at home in his office, which is stuffed with photos, memorabilia and knickknacks. Cradling a big cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, Kraft spoke about how he had managed to maintain consistent success at the Patriots, whether they win the Super Bowl this year or not. “My job is to keep everyone together, strong big egos, and keep the peace in the family,” he said. Looming large near his desk, propped against a wall, was a painting of Brady.

College Republicans, YAF Sue Berkeley over Ann Coulter Event - Breitbart

Tom Ciccotta

The Berkeley College Republicans and the Young America’s Foundation have filed a lawsuit against members of the University of California system for their role in restricting an upcoming speaking event featuring Ann Coulter. [Our lawsuit agst Berkeley filed moments ago. @thomasfullerNYT at failing NYT won’t understand it. Read it yourself https: . — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 24, 2017, The suit alleges that administrators unlawfully violated the student’s rights to free expression on campus by placing unusual restrictions on events that the Berkeley College Republicans organized. An event featuring renowned conservative commentator David Horowitz was canceled after the university forced students to hold the event at 3 PM when most students are in class, at a venue far from the center of campus. According to the suit, Berkeley is accused of engaging in a discriminatory practice of applying unusual time and venue restrictions on events planned by the UCB College Republicans. These restrictions have led to the cancellation of two events in the month of April 2017. Defendants engage in a pattern and practice of enforcing a recently adopted, unwritten and unpublished policy that vests in University officials the unfettered discretion to unreasonably restrict the time, place, and manner of any campus event involving “ speakers” — a term that is wholly undefined, and that has enabled Defendants to apply this policy in a discriminatory fashion, resulting in the marginalization of the expression of conservative viewpoints on campus by any notable conservative speaker. Defendants freely admit that they have permitted the demands of a faceless, rabid, mob to dictate what speech is permitted at the center of campus during prime time, and which speech may be marginalized, burdened, and regulated out of its very existence by this unlawful heckler’s veto. The suit condemns the University of California system for failing to provide an academic environment that promotes free debate and the free exchange of ideas, which students were promised at the time of their enrollment. Though UC Berkeley promises its students an environment that promotes free debate and the free exchange of ideas, it had breached this promise through the repressive actions of University administrators and campus police, who have systematically and intentionally suppressed expression by Plaintiffs (and the many UC Berkeley students whose political viewpoints align with Plaintiffs) simply because that expression may anger or offend students, UC Berkeley administators, community members who do not share Plaintiffs’ viewpoints. Read the whole lawsuit below: 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,

Trump Melts Down And Accuses The US Postal Service Of Stealing The Election For Clinton

Jason Easley

Trump warned his supporters that the US Postal Service is trying to steal the election for Hillary Clinton in Colorado. Video: At a rally in Golden, CO, Trump said: I have real problems with ballots being sent. Does that make sense? Like people saying, “Oh, here’s a ballot. Here’s another ballot. Throw it away. Oh, here’s one I like. We’ll keep that one.” I have real problems, so get your ballots in. Trump also accused election officials of throwing away ballots, as his rally was a mixture of claims of voter fraud and baseless speculation about Hillary Clinton’s emails. Donald Trump appears to be losing his mind. He also seems to think that accusing the US Postal Service and election officials of stealing the election for Hillary Clinton is going to motivate Republicans to vote. Consider the contradiction in Trump’s message. The Republican nominee tells his supporters that the US Postal Service is throwing away ballots, while at the same time he is urging them to mail in their ballots. If their ballots are going to be thrown away by USPS, why should Republicans bother mailing their ballots in? It is this sort of incoherent gibberish that makes no sense. Trump’s inability to stay disciplined and on message is also one of the biggest reasons why Republicans on pace to lose this election. Donald Trump’s descent into paranoid senior citizen continues to play out in front of the entire nation, as the Republican nominee for president believes that his letter carrier is out to get him,

Visiting Madagascar? Leave Red Swimsuits (and Lemur Recipes) at Home - The New York Times

Bryant Rousseau

If you visit a certain beach in northeastern Madagascar, don’t wear red and don’t even think of speaking French. Across most of the island nation, be very careful where you point, lest your finger accidentally find an ancestor’s grave. And in certain areas of the country, do your best not to defecate in the same place twice. Behavior in Madagascar is governed by thousands of cultural taboos, or fady (pronounced ) many of which involve food (don’t eat goat or eel) days of the week (no funerals or farming on Tuesday) and objects (don’t use shovels with firm handles to bury the dead). Specific places associated with ancestors, who are revered, also carry a lot of fady (no playing of a game similar to near a tomb). Some of these prohibitions apply only in a single community, or even to a single family, while others are followed regionally. Breaking a fady invites both social shame and even direr consequences from the ancestors believed to enforce them. The repercussions can be as specific as the taboos: Sing while eating and your teeth will grow uncomfortably long. If a fady is considered overly onerous — say, a travel restriction that interferes with a promising business opportunity — a ritual negotiation can be held with the ancestors. To outsiders, fady can seem like a long and random list of superstitious rules, some silly (don’t build verandas, and don’t pass an egg directly to another person) some environmentally beneficial (eating most species of lemurs is fady, as is fishing in certain parts of the sea, to the benefit of coral reefs) and some harmful (among the Antambahoaka, an ethnic group in the southeast, a fady against raising twins led to a practice of abandoning them in the forest, and a fady against eating dried sweet potato has contributed to malnutrition). But Sarah Osterhoudt, an anthropologist at Indiana University, said fady are crucial to the identity and worldview of the Malagasy, as the people of Madagascar are known. “To the Malagasy, the idea of bringing together all different parts of life — the past and the present, the social and the political, the spiritual and the mundane” — is very important, she said. “Fady do this beautifully. ”

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – Cheap and Full of Toxic Chemicals

REALdeal

by ANYA V In 1928, a man named H.B. Reese, created the peanut butter cup. Mr. Reese was a dairy farmer and a shipping forman for Milton S. Hershey, and found him inspiring. Mr. Reese left dairy farming and created the Harry Burnett Reese Candy Co. in his basement within his home located in Hershey Pennsylvania. In 1956, Mr. Reese died, leaving his candy company to his six sons. In 1963, the Reese’ sons merged their fathers’ company with the Hershey Chocolate Corp. The merger was a tax-free, stock-for-stock merger. The six brothers received 666,316 common stocks valued at $23.5 million dollars in 1963. There are now 20 variations of Reese peanut butter cups. Even though Mr. Reese created a tasty candy and his six sons made wise business partnerships, their candy’s ingredients have become questionable. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are made with the controversial ingredient PGPR (Polyglycerol polyricinoleate, which is used as a substitute for cocoa butter. The FDA has determined it to be “safe for humans as long as you restrict your intake to 7.5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Otherwise you’d be open to reversible liver enlargement at higher intakes”. Let’s take a look at the other ingredients in one of the worlds’ most favorite candy. Reese’s peanut butter cup ingredients: Milk chocolate, (milk, chocolate, sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, no fat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin, PGPR), peanuts, sugar, dextrose, salt, TBHQ and citric acid. •PGPR (polyglycerol pilyricinoleate): Reese’s are made with this controversial ingredient PGPR that has replaced cocoa butter in an effort to cut down on manufacturing costs. PGPR is made from castor beans that reduces the viscosity of chocolate. This chemical has been found to cause gastrointestinal discomfort and allergic reaction in children. •Soy lecithin: 93% of soy is genetically modified. Soy lecithin can cause breast cancer, has negative effects on fertility and reproduction, may lead to behavioral and cerebral abnormalities. ( Read More About Soy Lecithin ) •TBHQ (tertiary butylhydroquinone): TBHQ comes from petroleum and is related to butane. This can be toxic and also cause nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ear, delirium and collapse. It is shown to cause stomach cancer in lab rats, fragment DNA and cause damage to humane lung and umbilical cells. In children it can cause anxiety, restlessness, and intensify the symptoms of ADHD. Want to make your own? Enjoy this recipe I have included:

President Obama and President-Elect Donald Trump Meet at White House

REALdeal

President Obama and President-Elect Donald Trump Meet at White House: Share:

Dale Johnson

VERSE 9. THE STATE OF NATIONAL INSECURITY The Directorate of National Insecurity-- The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the CIA, the Head of the National Security Agency, The President´s National Security Advisor, the Chief of Homeland Security, The Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Chair of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, The President of the Good Old USA-- All answer to the 1% in a plutocracy posing as ersatz democracy, Kowtowing to Big Money, to Wall Streeters and their cohorts, To Oil Barons, the Multinational Corporations, the Drone Makers, To the vast network of contractors for the CIA, NSA, and Homeland Insecurity, All enjoying secret giveaways for their private pockets (Estimated at a classified $4+ trillion for the War on Terror), Big $$$ to the GMO inventors, big Pharma profiting from provisions in “Fast Track” Free Trade Agreements, To insurance Racketeers serving up sickness under “Obamacare,” And all their lesser but well rewarded staff of hangers-on, All thinking that what the 1% want the 90% will get-- The Shaft, not even the Trickle-down. The Terrorism of War lubricates the Shaft, The State of National Insecurity shoves it up the ass of any boogeyman foreign terrorist created And any bold Peacemaker in the Homeland is at risk. In the Homeland all the agencies of repression mobilize to track the good guy. Whistle-blowers, dead or alive, by any means necessary! The NSA passes on what poses as intelligence to the multiplying police agencies. The FBI infiltrates the peacemakers, tells local cops how to des-occupy the street scat. Big Brother listens to every word you speak, And if you don´t think Zombie, puts you on The List. The Department of War brings official terror instruments to the Homeland, Arms local police forces with “surplus” military armaments To provoke and then violently suppress peaceful demonstrators Protesting police murder and immunity from prosecution. The State of National Insecurity has more sophisticated apparatuses than Mr. Orwell Or Adolf Hitler could envision. So efficient that no Homeland Gestapo is needed-- At least not time yet for domestic Death Squads Like those created by Ronnie Raygun in Central America in the 1980s And now the murderous Narco-State in Mexico fashioned by NAFTA and the War on Drugs, And the neo-Nazi thugs in the Ukraine overthrowing the government To get Western access to the oil, gas, business opportunity and NATO bases And start a new Cold War with Russia. The National Insecurity Agency, a monstrosity almost beyond comprehension, Scrutinizes billions of private messages of everyone, everywhere, Abroad the Heads of State of allies are listened to for clues as to their thoughts and policies. Everywhere searching for intelligence to compile lists of supposed terrorists to kill, At home compiling lists of millions among the thinking and peaceful, People like you and me, now with FBI files, Suspect because we oppose the Terrorism of the Super-Rogue. We pacifists are potential Terrorists. The President of nice words and dirty deeds Says “Reform,” but will as always follow the Dirty Way. There can be no balance of privacy and security, only cover-ups of what is really going on. The 2015 “Freedom Act” to limit the NSA is a long way from curtailing surveillance. The NSA searches for commercial advantage to pass on to Business Cronies. NSA still spies on friend and foe, sabotages computer systems of “enemies,” like China, Conspires to facilitate then cloak in secrecy the Official Terrorism of the Super Rogue. The State of National Insecurity could be considered a fourth branch of government, The military, security, and police agencies supposedly Backing the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Given their centrality, these agencies are better considered As a State reduced to its all-powerful Repressive Apparatus, To its authoritarian essence. Its centrality and power unchecked and not counterbalanced By executive, legislative, or judicial power. These branches respond to and do the bidding of the Repressive Apparatus. The agencies that directly constitute the Repressive Apparatus— The Department of War, the Joint Chiefs of War Staff, And the Special Forces created by the military (better termed Death Squads), The Central Intelligence Assassins, the National Insecurity Agency, The National Insecurity advisors around the Pres, Homeland Insecurity, the Injustice Department, the Federal Bureau of Cointelpro, Local trigger happy police, the National Guard Against Insurgency…. The Senate Insecurity Committee diapers their unwiped asses. Together these agencies have spawned a vast array of private contracting corporations That is well beyond the “Military-Industrial Complex” that President Eisenhower warned against. It is these days not just the big corporations producing weapons, Now it is private contractors that do much of the dirty counter-terrorism work, The computer surveillance and sabotage work, the spy work on corporate competitors, The listening in on allies like the German Chanciler or reformists like the President of Brazil. Secret mercenary work to disrupt and kill. The shadow private complex takes in trillions with no oversight or accountability. The State of National Insecurity is state agencies in symbiosis with a huge complex of private entities Contracted to share and profit from the Dirty Work. This Complex, the merging of government agencies and private corporations, Does the bidding of the entire Plutocracy, united by thirst for war and empire abroad And social control on the home front. A government that once had some lawful protections is transformed into a Regime of Repressive Lawlessness That jails or kills innocents And accords impunity to the criminality of the agents of the Repressive Apparatus. The State of National Insecurity corporatizes its global operations, With no oversight or accountability. A terror apparatus within the State of National Insecurity. Subservient to the 1%, Non-responsive to the courts or Congress. This State has its homeland, Fortress America; It has its dogma, the War on Terror; It has its policy guidelines, Neoliberalism; It has its ideology to instill in the populace, the religion of Zombyism— America first, racism, sexism, the War of All Against All, Imposed cultural ethos of competition and individualism that compliment insecurity and proneness to violence. Large sectors of the populace are taught to view militarism and violence as a source of pride, Criticism and resistance are unmanly cowardice, deserving of repressive punishment. The National State of Insecurity has its creative Think Tanks; It has its political action groups to spread millions around the electoral landscape; It has its means of avoiding accountability, a drawn curtain blocking heinous crimes, A kind of Shari-like code of security and Impunity A cloak of secrecy so dark only the top criminals who command it know what is going on... Unlike their counterparts declaring jihad, the bearded Male Islamic Fanatics, Reacting to the violence perpetrated upon their peoples with their own gross violence, These Macho Warriors of the Insecurity Complex, Dress in suits and ties, don’t sport beards, and don’t wave the Bible When they proclaim “Death to Terrorists” And at home intimidate the Rabble with teargas and clubs and guns, Central to the State of National Insecurity is a criminal organization, A pivot for organizing the ruthless pursuit of the Imperial Vision. The CIA has a long, long, long history of deadly Interventions and Dirty Tricks. The torture episode publicized of late is only the shivering tip of a very dense iceberg of Official Terrorism. After many years of cover-up the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Finally exhibited a semblance of courage in December 2014. In spite of being spied upon by the insecurity apparatus The Committee issued a report critical of CIA “enhanced interrogation” That was central to the War on Terror in the Bush years, Suspended under Obama in favor of drone attacks and more troops in Afghanistan. Committee Chairwoman Feinstein termed CIA activity “misguided.” The President blandly admitted “We tortured some folks.” The Head of the CIA, unsuccessful in attempts to suppress the report on grounds of “national security” And former Vice-President Cheney, a principal architect of the war on terror, An array of those involved, All rose to defend the indefensible in extensive media coverage, While not a single victim´s story was aired. The best that was said in official discourse is that torture is “unfortunate” and occasionally “never again.” There is immunity for all perpetrators, The CIA Director and the battery of agents in Covert Operations, President Bush, VP Cheney, the Attorney General and a battery of lawyers involved, The Secretary of War, Rumsfeld. No one will be prosecuted under American or international law For gross violations of human rights, For crimes against humanity Or any other violation of law and international treaties. No consequences for kidnappings and renditions to Black torture sights, For indefinite imprisonment in Guantanamo, For interrogation techniques that included Rectal feeding (liquefied gourmet Middle Eastern cuisine no doubt) Rectal hydration (convenient substitute for a water fountain) Diapers “Generally not to exceed 72 hours” (no latrines, on delayed order from private contractors) Cramped confinement, stress positions, insect placement, total darkness, sleep deprivation, Infliction of pain, hunger, and humiliation, threats of rape and execution, “Walling”, facial hold and slap, and the most notorious--Waterboarding. Donald Trump asked about reinstating waterboarding said, “You bet your ass.” These are heinous crimes committed by persons devoid of humanity, The Gestapo of our era responsible to institutions serving only the most perverse ends. Lest we forget, American judges in 1946 condemned Nazi torturers to death by hanging. The only sane response by American citizens is prosecution of those responsible. Hurrah to Code Pink that attempted to make a citizen´s arrest of Henry Kissinger for his crimes, The good Ladies were forcibly evited from a Senate Armed Services hearing on Imperial Strategy And Labeled by Warlord Senator John McCain as “low-life scum”, No doubt a projection of his own war-mongering character. For the institution that sponsored these depravities there is only one remedy, ABOLISH the CIA. Along with the National Security Agency that monitors all of us, And Homeland Security that that creates long lines at airport, And ridiculously has us take off our shoes before boarding an airplane.

The Real Numbers in Florida: Trump Winning by 14 Points

Andrew Anglin

October 27, 2016 DailyStormer: We may well win so hard on the 8th that it won't matter how much bussing they do, won't matter how many illegals vote What worries me is we don't know yet how many dead people are going to vote Democrat. October 27, 2016 I live in Florida and I have yet to see a Hillary sign anywhere, and I see literally thousands of Trump signs. Even the blacks here are for Trump. I've only met a handful of Clinton supporters and they were all female college students. Trump will not lose Florida!

Ann Coulter On C-Span Quotes VDARE.com’s Brimelow–A Racist Is Someone Winning An Argument With A Liberal.

James Fulford

‘Age of Empires’: How 2 Dynasties of Art Forged China’s Identity - The New York Times

Holland Cotter

No one does epic better than the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It brought Pergamon to New York last spring and got the balance of giant and delicate right. It flew in medieval Jerusalem, and kept its multicultural sprawl intact. Now, in the exhibition “Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties (221 B. C. . D. 220),” it brings us China becoming China in a take as strange and warm as life. We love life, of course, all the details: sparrows in the forsythia books and lamps and coffee the voice of a friend on the phone. The ancient Chinese loved it, too, and wanted it to last forever. China’s first emperor believed it might. He viewed death as a kind of power nap, from which he’d awake refreshed in a tomb that was like an earthly home, but better, more fun. He designed his mausoleum as an underground with countless pavilions, great feng shui and a major security force. For light, there were candles, the most expensive money could buy, guaranteed to keep burning after he’d moved in — he died in 210 B. C. — and the doors had shut for the last time. Those lights are still burning in the Met’s hypnotic, exhibition of 160 objects from 32 museums in China, which opens on Monday. Of the museum’s several presentations of Chinese antiquities over the past 20 years, this one is probably the most dramatic visually and the most accessible emotionally. There’s a certain amount of the type of art the Met is too comfortable with: imperial bling. But here even this material feels purposeful, because it dates from a time in China when the idea of empire and corporate branding through art was experimental. By the third century B. C. the Zhou dynasty had run its course, and turf wars broke out among smaller regional states. One of those states, the kingdom of Qin (pronounced CHIN) overcame all rivals and brought much of China under one rule for the first time. It did this partly through armed strength, but also through a sort of management savvy taught in business schools today. The Qin ruler, born Ying Zheng, decided that the most effective means of control was to promote team spirit: Get everyone on the same civic page, and keep them there. To that end, he instituted a unified currency and a single standard of weights and measures. He decreed the use of a universal written script, which let him control the political conversation. And he initiated construction of the Great Wall, a statement of Us versus Them. The effect of all this was to create a rudimentary sense of shared identity within a diverse population a sense of or — to use a modern English word that may derive from Qin — . The M. B. A. thinking worked, or did for Ying Zheng himself. He became the first Chinese ruler to assume the title of emperor — Qin Shihuangdi, or First Emperor of Qin — and built a tomb near Xian, in northwestern China, to match its grandeur. We have only written accounts of what’s in the tomb (the pavilions, the candles it’s never been excavated). But its presence yielded one of the ’s great art historical finds when, in 1978, on a tip from local farmers, archaeologists uncovered an army of some 7, 000 figures buried nearby. Five of those figures, four standing, one kneeling, open the Met show (along with two modern reproductions of buried chariots found with them). They, or their like, have been endlessly circulated for display, but they’re still magnetic, with their blocklike bodies and personable faces, and customized. Even more striking, and less familiar, is another figure found in a different part of the tomb site, this one a beefy court entertainer, nude to the waist, with every fold of flesh and swell of muscle precisely rendered. There was no precedent in China for any of this, the scale, the naturalism. So what was the source? Historians point to a likely one: the Hellenistic art that was introduced by Alexander the Great to Asia — at Pergamon, for example — and filtered over trade routes to China. Whatever its origins, the new sculpture adds another facet to the profile of : cosmopolitan taste. But for all its innovations, or maybe because of them, Qin rule was brief, 15 years. The emperor spent a lot of time on the road, surveying his domain but also on a quest for elixirs. His sudden death unleashed an drama of assassinations, suicides and civil war, until another imperial power, called Han, took its place, and held it more than four centuries. Han artists built on Qin precedents in art, but with adjustments. For a while they maintained an interest in realism, but seemed to shift the emphasis from the human figure to the natural world. The big personalities in Han sculpture in the show are animals: horses as majestic as gods elephants, foreign to China, closely observed. Even common barnyard creatures — chickens, goats and pigs — are portrayed with empathy you can almost hear them clucking and snuffling. The Han further refined the policy of centralized imperial rule and expanded its reach outward, globally, evident in the steady increase in material richness and variety seen as you move through the show, past granulated gold work, amethyst necklaces and luxury textiles brought overland and by sea from Afghanistan, India, Persia, nomadic Eurasia and the Mediterranean. Some of the most exotic items are from China itself. An fantastically sophisticated bronze cowrie shell container, swarming with tiny figures in what looks like a raucous Bruegelesque market scene, was produced by the Dian culture in what is now Yunnan province, people that Han court records referred to as “southwestern barbarians. ” Was that imperialism or provincialism speaking? They can be the same thing. And they can equally motivate people to shape an exclusive group identity. The Han were intent on doing so, though this didn’t prevent them from borrowing heavily from other cultures, including their immediate predecessors. As with the Qin, Han society, at least at elite levels, focused on the hereafter. Most items in the Met show came from graves. Many objects were specifically for funerary use. Like much art everywhere, the underlying inspiration was political and personal. Art promoted and shored up the hierarchies on which a culture was built. It also answered to a human need to keep life going. The Han elite spared no expense to ensure their continuance. The survivors of a Han princess named Dou Wan encased her corpse in a jumpsuit made from 2, 000 jade plaques linked with gold threads, jade being a stone thought to have preservative properties. The suit is in the show, and as we approach through a passageway in Zoe Florence’s theatrical exhibition installation, it looks like a sleeping extraterrestrial, a space traveler patiently waiting to be beamed up. Yet everything in the surrounding galleries seems designed to anchor the traveler to life on earth: a little in the form of a carved jade bear a silk pillow woven with the words “extend years” a vogueing earthenware dancer with sleeves and a wine jar that, when discovered in 2003, still held Han wine. There’s even a luxury or a model of one, and lamps to light it, including one shaped like a tree sprouting ducks and dragons like spring buds. At the end of the show — organized by Zhixin Jason Sun, a curator of Chinese art at the Met, assisted by Pengliang Lu, a curatorial fellow — there’s a low closed door, carved from stone, made for a tomb, and painted with figures that could be earthly or celestial. If you passed through the door, which life would you be entering, or leaving, and is there a preference? An answer may lie in an object hanging on the exhibition’s exit wall. It’s a round mirror with an inscription embossed on its rim: “May the Central Kingdom be peaceful and secure, and prosper for generations and generations to come, by following the great law that governs all. ” Central Kingdom meant China. And for the Qin and the Han, wherever you went, in this world or the next, you were there.

Because STUPID! NARAL created deck of ‘Gender Cards’ for Hillary; guess which card she is

Sam J.

Because STUPID! NARAL created deck of ‘Gender Cards’ for Hillary; guess which card she is Posted at 11:39 am on October 27, 2016 by Sam J. As Twitchy reported yesterday, NARAL celebrated Hillary’s birthday with a deck of Gender Cards, because ya’ know, we don’t hear enough about gender these days. Wonder which card she is … Celebrate @HillaryClinton ’s birthday with a deck of Gender Cards—she’s the Ace of Hearts! https://t.co/sTqjAFVmh0 #ImWithHer — NARAL (@NARAL) October 26, 2016 We thought for sure Hillary would be the Joker, because she kinda looks like him with that crazy smile and wide, vacant stare but oh no … they went with the Ace. And of course they couldn’t go with the Queen because that would likely be seen as oppressing her or something else weird with some reference to gender roles. Maybe? Dunno. These people are lunatics. — Deplorable Renaissan (@desertdude88012) October 26, 2016 That’s what we thought as well. — standing on my own (@Shawn88c) October 27, 2016 Told ya’.

Bill Weld, Running as a Libertarian, Likens Donald Trump’s Immigration Plan to Kristallnacht - The New York Times

Maggie Haberman and Thomas Kaplan

William F. Weld, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, who was last seen campaigning in the 2006 Republican primary for governor of New York, now hopes to be on a national ticket as the nominee of the Libertarian Party. And he is already on the attack. In his first interview since accepting an invitation to be the running mate of former Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico, Mr. Weld assailed Donald J. Trump over his call to round up and deport the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. “I can hear the glass crunching on Kristallnacht in the ghettos of Warsaw and Vienna when I hear that, honest,” Mr. Weld said Thursday. Mr. Weld, 70, was not uniformly critical of the presumptive Republican nominee. “I don’t consider myself part of the Never Trump movement,” he said, expressing admiration for Mr. Trump’s success in the primary contest. “I’m not horrified about everything Mr. Trump has done at all,” he said, adding: “I think he’s done a lot. But when I think about some of the positions, I think they’re way out there. ” Where he differs with Mr. Trump most sharply is on Mr. Trump’s call for mass deportations. Asked if he believed Mr. Trump was a fascist, Mr. Weld demurred. “My Kristallnacht analogy does evoke the Nazi period in Germany,” he said. “And that’s what I’m worried about: a slippery slope. ” After a circuitous answer, he eventually came to a conclusion. “No, I wouldn’t call Mr. Trump either a fascist or a Nazi,” Mr. Weld said. “I’m just saying, we got to watch it when we get exclusionary about people on account of their status as a member of a group. ” Mr. Weld also objected to Mr. Trump’s repeated threats to impose tariffs on goods imported from Mexico and China. “That’s a pretty good prescription to having China be the only superpower in about 10 years,” he said, leaning forward to make sure a reporter understood him. “China — not the U. S. ” Mr. Weld’s best known previous turn on the national stage was in 1997, when he resigned as governor to focus on his appointment by President Bill Clinton as ambassador to Mexico. That did not go well: He was blocked by Senator Jesse Helms and withdrew his nomination after a heated battle in which Mr. Weld, a pillar of what was left of the moderate northeastern Republican establishment, loudly assailed Mr. Helms and the archconservatives who stood behind him. A former prosecutor, Mr. Weld could appeal to some disaffected Republicans on a ticket alongside Mr. Johnson at a time when other efforts by Republicans to recruit a candidate — in part in the hopes of keeping Republican voters from staying home and costing the party’s candidates — are close to fizzling. Mr. Weld said Mr. Johnson, the Libertarian presidential candidate in 2012 who is seeking the party’s nomination again, spoke to him last weekend about running. Their hope is to amass enough support in national polls to be included in the presidential debates. If that happened, Mr. Weld said hopefully, it would not be impossible to envision a ticket winning the White House. But he also did not protest too much when asked how he would reassure those who, mindful of his willingness to roll the dice in politics, might question his level of commitment to a national run. “There’s some truth in that,” said Mr. Weld, who now works at a law firm, Mintz Levin, and its lobbying arm, ML Strategies. “I do like to climb mountains in politics, and I do enjoy running for office. ” The Libertarian Party says it already will be on the ballot in 32 states and is working on the rest. It will pick its presidential and nominees at a convention over Memorial Day weekend in Orlando, Fla. Mr. Weld suggested that the Libertarian message, which emphasizes civil liberties and small government, could appeal to younger voters. Discussing foreign policy, he spoke critically of the Iraq invasion of 2003 and of putting “boots on the ground” in the Middle East to project American strength. But he was supportive of the Obama administration on the Iran nuclear deal that Republicans frequently criticize. “I thought the game was worth the candle there, and that’s politically incorrect in almost all circles — certainly in Republican circles — but I think I do feel that way, and I followed that closely,” Mr. Weld said, adding, “I know John Kerry quite well and I saw his going back and forth, and rather admired it. ” (Mr. Weld unsuccessfully challenged Mr. Kerry in the 1996 Senate race.) Asked about Hillary Clinton, Mr. Weld noted that he had known her since they were both in their 20s. “I’ve always just thought of her as a really great kid,” he said. Mr. Weld said he possessed a deep libertarian streak, and pined for a time when that was more widespread in the Republican Party. He complained about the polarization in Congress and remembered his early days working on Capitol Hill, before law school, for Senator Jacob K. Javits, Republican of New York. “It was a totally different era and a wonderful era,” he said. “It was wonderful to be in Washington in those days. And things absolutely got done. ”

How Housing’s New Players Spiraled Into Banks’ Old Mistakes - The New York Times

Matthew Goldstein, Rachel Abrams and Ben Protess

When the housing crisis sent the American economy to the brink of disaster in 2008, millions of people lost their homes. The banking system had failed homeowners and their families. New investors soon swept in — mainly private equity firms — promising to do better. But some of these new investors are repeating the mistakes that banks committed throughout the housing crisis, an investigation by The New York Times has found. They are quickly foreclosing on homeowners. They are losing families’ mortgage paperwork, much as the banks did. And many of these practices were enabled by the federal government, which sold tens of thousands of discounted mortgages to private equity investors, while making few demands on how they treated struggling homeowners. The rising importance of private equity in the housing market is one of the most consequential transformations of the American financial landscape. A home, after all, is the single largest investment most families will ever make. Private equity firms, and the mortgage companies they own, face less oversight than the banks. And yet they are the cleanup crew for the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression. Out of the more than a dozen private equity firms operating in the housing industry, The Times examined three of the largest to assess their impact on homeowners and renters. Lone Star Funds’ mortgage operation has aggressively pushed thousands of homeowners toward foreclosure, according to housing data, interviews with borrowers and records obtained through a Freedom of Information request. Lone Star ranks among the country’s biggest buyers of delinquent mortgages from the government and banks. Nationstar Mortgage, which leaped over big banks to become the collector of mortgage bills, repeatedly lost loan files and failed to detect errors in other documents. These mistakes, according to confidential regulatory records from a 2014 examination, put “borrowers at significant risk of servicing and foreclosure abuses. ” Unlike the banks, Nationstar wears many hats at once: mortgage bill collector, auction house for foreclosed homes and lender to new borrowers. By working every angle, and collecting fees at each step, the company faces potential conflicts of interest that enable it to make money on what is otherwise a costly foreclosure process. In the rental market, The Times found, other big private equity firms largely bypassed the nation’s poorest neighborhoods as they scooped up and renovated foreclosed homes across the country. Those firms include Blackstone, a huge private equity firm and the nation’s largest private landlord of rental houses. These decisions point to shortcomings of the government’s response to the housing crisis. Rather than enact sweeping changes to housing policy, the government largely handed the problems to a new set of companies. Normie Brown and her husband, Derrick, have lost two fights — first with their bank and then with private equity. Initially, the Texas couple say, they faced a wrongful foreclosure by Bank of America. The bank paid them $50, 000 as part of a broader government settlement over suspected mortgage abuses, and the Browns used that money to fight for their house in court. But the couple couldn’t stop their new bill collector, Nationstar, from auctioning off their home. “You think all you have to do is show them where they did you wrong, and basically justice will prevail,” Mr. Brown said. “That wasn’t the case. ” The court hadn’t yet decided the case, but it didn’t matter: They lost their house. The couple has since separated and Mr. Brown, a decorated Gulf War veteran, said he had moved in and out of homelessness. Nationstar declined to comment on the Browns’ case, but said it had outperformed banks on avoiding foreclosure. Nationstar’s chief executive, Jay Bray, said in an interview that “foreclosure is always, always the last resort. ” Private equity plowed into the housing market after big banks and regional lenders, facing a crackdown from federal regulators for wrongful foreclosure practices, pulled back in the aftermath of the crisis. The shift led private equity firms to spend tens of billions of dollars acquiring homes and troubled mortgages from banks and the government. For private equity firms, which specialize in buying companies at a bargain, the housing market was just their latest investment in a distressed asset. These firms, unlike banks, raise money for their deals from pension funds and other huge institutional investors. The wave of private equity investment in housing has had a positive impact on the American economy. The firms displaced poorly performing banks. They also helped stabilize the nation’s housing market, and it achieved that through smart business decisions about where to put its money. That, in turn, rewarded investors — which is how private enterprise is supposed to work. But much of this investment has not benefited poor neighborhoods. Banks are expected, under the Community Reinvestment Act, to help meet the credit needs of neighborhoods in areas they serve. Private equity has no such obligation. The idea is that banks should follow an implicit social contract: In return for government loans and other support, they are expected to serve a community’s needs. Private equity, which unlike the banks does not borrow money from the government, is answerable to its investors. Those investors include some of the nation’s largest pension plans, whose members — teachers and police officers among them — may support improvements to such areas. As a result, The Times found, private equity has focused on buying newer homes in areas like the suburbs of Tampa, Fla. They have largely avoided more urban communities with older homes, because doing so would be less lucrative for their investors. “There has been a missed opportunity here,” said Dan Immergluck, a professor of city and regional planning at the Georgia Tech College of Design, who has studied the effect of the financial crisis on housing. “They are pushing the market up at the top end and neglecting the bottom end. ” Government officials are also concerned that private equity’s mortgage firms face less scrutiny than banks. While banks are examined by regulators for financial soundness, no similar testing occurs for private equity’s companies. Ginnie Mae, which issues securities backed by mortgages with government guarantees, wants Congress to grant it greater oversight over nonbank mortgage firms and provide money to perform “stress tests. ” The fear is that one firm’s failure would create hardship for millions of customers. “It’s an Achilles’ heel for us to some degree,” said Ted Tozer, Ginnie Mae’s president. Buried in a confidential bond document, in a jumble of legalese, Lone Star explains to investors one way it profits from delinquent loans. Lone Star’s mortgage subsidiary will lower a borrower’s monthly payment if “the net present value of a modification is greater than the net present value of a foreclosure, loan sale or short sale. ” Translation: If foreclosing on a homeowner is the most profitable option, Lone Star is likely to foreclose. Federal officials hoped things would be different. In 2012, America was still in the grips of the worst housing crisis in decades. Foreclosure signs lined the American landscape, casting a shadow on more than 3. 5 million homes. In some communities, abandoned houses outnumbered occupied ones. And soured mortgages made by banks were weighing on the government because it had insured them against default. The government, eager to stem its own losses, decided to ramp up the sale of distressed mortgages to investors. In all, it has sold more than 100, 000 soured mortgages to investors — one of the largest such series of sales. The mortgage sales enticed private equity firms like Lone Star into the mortgage market, where they saw bargains. Housing officials reckoned that private equity firms would bring about change. For one thing, these firms were among the only investors with pockets deep enough to take on billions of dollars worth of ailing mortgages. And they could be more flexible than the banks in keeping Americans in their homes because they had bought the mortgages at steep discounts. But instead of showing greater flexibility, Lone Star — much like the banks before it — has often remained rigid about modifying mortgages. And in some cases it has moved quickly to foreclose, taking possession of homes to sell them, according to dozens of court proceedings, as well as interviews with borrowers and housing advocates. In a statement, Caliber Home Loans, Lone Star’s mortgage servicing subsidiary, said that “modifying a nonperforming loan for a borrower is almost always the most profitable option for a lender, and Caliber is incentivized to pursue that outcome. ” Yet Lone Star and Caliber have foreclosed on more than 14 percent of the 17, 000 loans the firm picked up at auction from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2014, according to an analysis of loan filings that RealtyTrac performed for The Times. Caliber is now moving toward foreclosing on at least another 3, 200. Some critics say the government is partly to blame by not expressly requiring private buyers to modify most loans. Its priority, these critics argue, was to sell off the mortgages to protect taxpayers against losses, rather than protecting homeowners. “I understand HUD wants to make its money back,” said Representative Michael E. Capuano, a Massachusetts Democrat. But, he said, “hedge funds and private equity firms have one interest only, and that is the bottom line. ” Mr. Capuano is one of dozens of lawmakers who have pushed for major changes in the auctions, including greater involvement of community groups and nonprofits, which often cannot afford to bid because the government sells the loans in huge bundles. In May, in an apparent acknowledgment of the problem, a HUD spokesman said the agency was drafting rules to force investment firms to be more accommodating to borrowers. In its defense, Caliber said that 71 percent of the 17, 000 mortgages it bought in the HUD auction had already begun the lengthy foreclosure process and that more than half of the homes were vacant at the time of foreclosure. Caliber said its goal was to “avoid foreclosure whenever possible,” noting that it had done so for roughly 4, 200 homeowners in the pool of mortgages it bought from HUD. Modifications don’t always save borrowers money. After filing for personal bankruptcy, Michael Rego, 51, of Yonkers, held out hope for a loan modification when JPMorgan Chase sold his delinquent mortgage to Lone Star. Last October, he received a letter from Lone Star’s Caliber that began: “Congratulations! You are approved for a trial period plan. ” But his hopes were dashed when it turned out that the proposed modification would actually increase his monthly payment by $500. Two months later, to add insult to injury, Mr. Rego lost his job as a marketing consultant at Citigroup. “I would hate to just walk away from the house,” said Mr. Rego, who has lived in the home for nearly 20 years. “But if I have to, I have to. ” Caliber and Lone Star have largely opted not to participate in government programs that encourage mortgage modifications. To date, Caliber has received just $3. 3 million in payments from the Treasury Department for modifying loans in compliance with the federal Home Affordable Modification Program. Caliber’s unwillingness is illustrated by two cases in White Plains. In both cases, homeowners challenged Caliber’s decision to not modify their loans. The homeowners argued that Lone Star bought the mortgages from a bank under terms that require Caliber to consider loans for the government program to help struggling borrowers. In contrast with Caliber, most banks have participated more fully in the government modification program, as has Nationstar, which has received $158 million in payments. Lone Star, led by the billionaire investor John Grayken, has expanded Caliber — which employs more than 1, 000 people — into one of the nation’s lenders. As a business, Lone Star has been a success. It has generated an average annual net return of 20 percent for investors for more than two decades. It also just completed one of the largest securitizations of nonprime mortgages since the financial crisis. In early June, the firm announced a $161. 7 million bond deal backed by mortgages underwritten by Caliber, including many loans to people who had either filed for bankruptcy or been previously foreclosed on. The escalation comes as a recent survey of housing counselors and lawyers ranked Caliber last among 11 mortgage servicers in most aspects of dealing with borrowers. And the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, opened an investigation last fall into Caliber over its handling of delinquent mortgages. Mr. Schneiderman recently expanded the investigation to include an examination of Lone Star’s securitization of mortgages, including delinquent loans. The New York State Department of Financial Services is also reviewing some of Caliber’s practices. “These companies are pitching their models as being well aligned with home buyers, but it’s hard to know if that’s true,” said Sarah Edelman, director of housing policy for the Center for American Progress. Inside Nationstar’s headquarters on the outskirts of Dallas, government regulators made an alarming discovery — and then another one, and another. The regulators, who gathered at Nationstar in 2014 for what should have been a routine examination, found “inaccurate information” in customer loan files, according to confidential documents reviewed by The Times. Nationstar, which became a huge mortgage bill collector in recent years, often failed to detect these errors “until the foreclosure process is underway. ” Some of the breakdowns, the documents said, “placed consumers at significant risk of servicing and foreclosure abuses. ” Regulators laid the blame on Nationstar, citing deficient technology and a failure to employ enough trained workers as it rapidly expanded to become the nation’s mortgage bill collector. In 2010, it ranked 18th. The examination, conducted by more than 15 states and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, showed the flaws of private equity’s new role in the mortgage market. Nationstar, controlled by the Fortress Investment Group, was repeating some of the banking industry’s mistakes. As new regulations prompted banks to scale back their servicing of mortgages, companies owned by private equity went on a buying spree. Private equity sensed an opportunity as the mortgage servicing business became a liability for the banks, leading Bank of America alone to reach settlements worth billions of dollars over federal accusations of using illegal foreclosure documents and unfair rejections of loan modifications. Since 2012, Nationstar has bought the rights to collect payments on more than $450 billion in mortgages, much of it from Bank of America. The previously unreported documents detailing Nationstar’s 2014 examination tell the story of its expansion and the problems that followed. “Nationstar Mortgage pursued a strategy of explosive and virtually unchecked growth, but did not put in place appropriate operational controls,” one regulatory memo said. Authorities are investigating Nationstar based on the 2014 examination, and it could face an enforcement action this year. Jay Bray, Nationstar’s chief executive, acknowledged that “candidly, we did a poor job” handling the 2014 exam. But since the exam, he said, “We are proud of the work we’ve done to improve the customer experience. ” The company has invested in technology and added staff, he said. “Did we make mistakes? Yes. Was it a systemic problem? I don’t think so,” he said, attributing the problems to growing pains. “It’s really easy to play Monday morning quarterback,” he said. Wesley Edens, a founder of Fortress, Nationstar’s private equity backer, maintains that the servicer has performed better than the banks it replaced. Since buying some of the banks’ most troubled assets, Nationstar has overseen a 50 percent decline in delinquent loans, though those improvements coincided with a broader recovery in housing. “Thank God those loans were moved from Bank of America to Nationstar, because so many borrowers were better off,” Mr. Edens said in an interview. (A Bank of America spokesman called the company “an industry leader in providing foreclosure avoidance solutions to more than 2. 1 million customers since the beginning of the crisis. ”) Mr. Edens, noting that Fannie Mae ranked Nationstar higher than its peers at preventing delinquency, encouraged The Times to contact federal authorities to verify these improvements. The authorities declined to comment. Nationstar notes that, over the last four years, it has approved more than 172, 000 loan modifications that saved homeowners an average of $380 a month. Whereas all servicers collectively rejected 69 percent of applications for the government’s modification program, Nationstar has been more generous, rejecting 54 percent of borrowers. Nationstar also recently announced plans to rename its mortgage operation “Mr. Cooper,” presenting a more face. Even as Nationstar has shown improvements, on multiple occasions last year the company “wrongfully terminated” borrowers from the federal mortgage modification program, according to a published report. “Over multiple quarters, Nationstar is wrongfully kicking people out of the program, and that’s a real serious concern,” said Christy Romero, the special inspector general for the 2008 bank bailout law and the author of the loan modification report. In Phoenix, Millard and Adria Gaines struggled to modify their loan as it changed hands four times in 20 years. During a recent interview at his home, Mr. Gaines walked to his kitchen freezer, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and described how he tried for years to get Bank of America, and then Nationstar, to modify their loan. In 2014, his wife exchanged emails with a Nationstar “foreclosure prevention specialist” who suggested she apply for a modification. After months of no change, Mrs. Gaines sent a letter detailing family misfortunes that imperiled their finances, including that her husband had been told he had acute kidney failure. About six months later, Nationstar finalized a mortgage modification for the Gaineses. But even then — reducing the interest rate to 3. 2 percent from 5. 3 percent — it was months too late to help the Gaineses avoid a second bankruptcy. Sheri Cellini’s family of five loved their home in Ashland, Ore. a small town in the foothills of the mountains. They lived there for six years until a foreclosure turned them into renters. “The kids want to drive by it all the time,” Ms. Cellini said of the family’s old house. “It’s an uncomfortable thing. ” The recent history of her former home reflects private equity’s new dominance. By the time their home was foreclosed on in 2013, and after the family tried in vain to lower monthly payments, the Cellinis had bounced from one mortgage firm to another. The company that oversaw their foreclosure was Nationstar. Another family took over the Cellinis’ house, winning it through an online auction platform called Homesearch. That family then obtained a mortgage through a company called Greenlight Loans. The companies all have different names and different roles, but all three are essentially the same company. Homesearch and Greenlight are owned by Nationstar. The whirl of transactions illustrates how Nationstar can control nearly every stage of the mortgage process, posing potential conflicts of interest as it earns fees along the way. Nationstar collects bills and, when people don’t pay, can foreclose on homes. Nationstar earns fees auctioning those homes through Homesearch. Ads on Homesearch, which is now known online as Xome. com, direct bidders to Greenlight. Nationstar can then collect on the new mortgage, bringing the process full circle. Shane Hunter, who won the Cellinis’ house through Homesearch, took out a mortgage with Greenlight, even though he had been leaning toward another lender. Nationstar earned a 5 percent “buyer’s premium” by selling the house through its auction website, an extra $10, 450 that it rolled into the loan. As a mortgage bill collector, Nationstar’s interests typically align with borrowers’ because foreclosing can be far more expensive than modifying and continuing to service a loan. But because Nationstar earns fees from selling homes through its auction site, as well as making new mortgages from winning bidders, that added business may compete with the company’s interest in keeping borrowers in their homes. Mr. Bray, the Nationstar chief executive, said the company would always rather keep people in their homes. “We don’t make money from foreclosing on folks,” he said, pointing to data showing that it costs the company 10 times as much to handle a loan in foreclosure. “We hate foreclosures. ” To prevent potential conflicts, Nationstar said it keeps its servicing employees separate from the auction staff. They work in different buildings and use separate email systems, the company said. Auction sites are a driver of Nationstar’s growth. From 2013 to 2015, revenue more than tripled in the unit that includes the auction platform and other services. This stands in contrast with banks, which generally do not own these types of sites. In interviews, several borrowers said that Nationstar required them to list their homes with Homesearch, even after they had found a buyer through their own real estate agent. While Nationstar argues that Homesearch helps to validate an outside offer price, homeowners and their agents complained that it could slow the sale process. “Any requirement to use a particular auction site, especially one affiliated with the loan servicer, raises serious concerns,” the Connecticut attorney general, George Jepsen, said in a statement. He is one of several state attorneys general investigating Nationstar’s auction business, questioning whether it imposes unnecessary costs on consumers. The New York State Department of Financial Services is conducting its own investigation of the auction process and the potential conflicts it presents, according to a letter obtained through a public records request. The case of the Browns — the Texas couple who first fought their bank, then fought Nationstar — illustrates Nationstar’s aggressiveness when selling a home through an auction site. The Browns won a temporary restraining order against Nationstar as they fought what they argued was a wrongful foreclosure. But Nationstar went ahead and listed the home for sale on Auction. com, an outside auction platform that has split fees with Nationstar. On Sept. 26, 2013 — more than a week before the restraining order would expire — Nationstar auctioned off the home through Auction. com. Next, Nationstar moved the case from state to federal court, and it closed the deal before the new judge could rule. “This was our first home,” said Ms. Brown, who ultimately lost the case after the home was sold. “I didn’t want to give up on it. ” To a visitor, Ruskin, Fla. a town just south of Tampa, looks like suburbia. But to private equity, it is pay dirt. Blackstone, one of the largest private equity firms, owns 125 homes in Ruskin that it operates as rentals. The financial crisis hit Ruskin hard: Nearly 800 families lost their homes in foreclosures, according to RealtyTrac. But the town is bouncing back. Amazon has opened a giant warehouse and distribution facility in Ruskin that now employs 2, 000 people. Across America, private equity firms stormed areas like Ruskin, calculating that the decline in home prices would be relatively . Ruskin’s economic prospects looked good. And it had many relatively newer homes, which are cheaper for a landlord to maintain. In making such a large investment in housing — $9 billion buying and renovating mainly foreclosed homes over the last four years — Blackstone effectively bet on which communities would emerge from the housing crisis as winners. It bet correctly. The firm, which now owns about 50, 000 homes in 14 markets, recently reported that the fund holding its Invitation Homes rental subsidiary has generated a 23 percent annualized return for its investors. More broadly, private equity’s investment in housing helped stabilize home prices across the country. The Obama administration supported private investment in foreclosed homes, with Timothy F. Geithner, then the Treasury secretary, remarking in 2011 that it would “support neighborhood and home price stability. ” Still, there has been a cost. Blackstone largely steered clear of more urban communities with older homes, which are more expensive to maintain. LuTanya Garrett, who pays $1, 395 a month for a house that Blackstone owns in Ruskin, said she was looking for another home because of the rent. “I feel like if I’m going to pay rent like this, I might as well own my own home,” said Ms. Garrett, 47, a mother of three. Nationally, the average rent on an Invitation Homes home is $1, 605 a month. The median rent in Ruskin is $1, 452, according to Trulia, a listing service. Blackstone says 72 percent of its homes have monthly rents that are within federal affordability guidelines for the markets it operates in. Institutional investors, which collectively have bought more than 200, 000 homes across the United States, point out that the rental homes they operate are a small fraction of the more than 15 million rental homes nationwide. Most are owned by small investors. About 3 percent of Blackstone’s rental homes are leased to tenants with federal housing subsidies known as Section 8 vouchers. The numbers are lower for most other big private equity firms. Blackstone has said it welcomes Section 8 voucher holders, if the federal subsidy is enough to cover the rent. “We are proud to provide quality housing choices for working families,” said Claire Parker, a spokeswoman for Invitation Homes. Blackstone needs to compete for renters to serve pension fund investors that have come to expect strong returns. And that leads private equity to focus on suburban communities with relatively few Section 8 voucher holders. Housing advocates argue that large private equity firms investing in rental housing should do more for the communities where they operate. “The urban areas took a big hit, and they have stayed down,” said Alan Mallach, senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress, a nonprofit that advises communities on dealing with vacant and blighted homes. “These firms are going into markets which would have recovered anyway. ” There are exceptions, though. Patriarch Properties of Newport Beach, Calif. is one small private equity firm that has set up shop mainly on the South Side of Columbus, Ohio, where abandoned buildings dot the streets, some inhabited by squatters and drug users. For the most part, Columbus has rebounded from the financial crisis. Unemployment is low, and the city is home to companies like Nationwide Insurance and Huntington Bancshares. Patriarch has bought about 260 deteriorated homes on the city’s South Side, an area yet to recover, and is using a combination of investor capital and loans from a nonprofit to rehabilitate the properties. The firm intends to rent the finished homes to residents, many with Section 8 vouchers, for $500 to $900 a month. ”We are trying to bring up an entire area,” said Ethan Temianka, 32, the founder of Patriarch. But there are questions over whether Patriarch can generate the hefty returns it promised investors. “Their very presence is a validation that there is a renaissance in the South Side,” said the Rev. John Edgar, who heads Community Development for All People, a nonprofit group already rehabbing homes in Columbus. “But I am not certain that in the long run the business model is viable. ”

Переплюнуть Калигулу…

Жанна Ивченко

Происшествия С лёгкой руки итальянского режиссёра Тинто Брасса римский император Калигула стал символом самого порочного разврата и воплощением аморального поведения. Но даже у него отношения с миром братьев наших меньших, то есть животных, носили чисто платонический характер: Калигула назначил своего любимого коня сенатором, но отнюдь не любимой женой. Так что, согласно недавним сообщениям СМИ, актёр Алексей Панин, якобы занявшийся зоофилией, переплюнул самого одиозного, не считая Нерона, римского императора. Сам Панин, разумеется, всё категорически отрицает. По его словам, на скандальном видео с собакой заснят не он, а другой мужчина, очень похожий на Панина. (Помните, человек, похожий на прокурора, с женщинами, похожими на проституток?). В раскручивании этой омерзительной истории Панин обвиняет бывшую жену, которой почему-то не нравится то, что актёр не платит алименты. Коварная женщина смонтировала видеозапись и каким-то образом воздействовала на создателей программы «Говорим и показываем», рискнувших пустить её в эфир. В общем, кругом враги, но Панин не намерен сдаваться и пойдёт в суд, чтобы доказать, что он и близко не подходил к собаке ни с какой стороны. Тех, кто ещё не утомился следить за извилистым творческим путём Алексея Панина, разгоревшийся скандал не слишком удивляет: ведь основой своего имиджа этот актёр сознательно сделал крайний эпатаж на грани, а то и за гранью фола. То он голым по гостинице “Версаль” бегает, то публично, пардон, рукоблудием занимается, то в лифте гадит – чего, как известно, ни одна воспитанная собака себе не позволит. Что до мелких потасовок и матерных перепалок, то им уже самые преданные поклонники счёт потеряли. В показушном мире шоу-бизнеса, где слава является смыслом жизни, каждый пытается выделиться, чем может: кто-то большим талантом, кто-то большим бюстом, а кто-то непомерным непотребством. Здесь всё ясно, и обсуждать, в общем-то, нечего. Вопрос в другом: есть ли грань, за которую СМИ не смогут зайти в погоне за сенсацией? Неважно, кто заснят на зоофильском видео: есть вещи, которые просто нельзя демонстрировать на экране телевизора. И здесь, как ни странно, хочется поддержать Панина в его планируемом иске к авторам передачи: если цензуры нравов нет, это не значит, что напоказ всё дозволено. Так что, ещё неизвестно, кто переплюнул Калигулу: актёр или режиссёр программы.

Sen Booker: Trump Is Creating ’Toxic’ Environment of ’Fear’ - Breitbart

Pam Key

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Cory Booker ( ) said President Donald Trump was creating a “toxic environment” of “increased fear in our country. ” Booker said, “This is the problem, I don’t care what party you are in right now, recognize this, we are at a time of increased fear in our country. ” He added, “There is something seriously wrong when mendacity has become the norm. There is something seriously wrong when citizens are afraid to leave their homes. There is something seriously wrong when hate crimes are surging. There is something seriously wrong when this is a toxic environment being created right now. And I don’t care who you are, if you consider yourself a leader, you have an obligation to stand up and do something about it and lead with love and not appealing to people’s darker angels or exploiting that fear. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

Facebook Wall: Reactions to Donald Trump’s victory in US Presidential elections

UnReal Mama

Tweet A truckload of eggs smashed into the faces of American liberals after controversial leader Donald Trump trounced Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States of America . Our correspondent Mark Zuckerpandian brings you a collection of reactions, especially from India: Tweet About UnReal Mama Ek chatur naar badee hoshiyaar, apane hee jaal me phasat jaat ham hasat jaat are ho ho ho ho ho!

In ‘Divorce,’ Sarah Jessica Parker Wants to Ditch Mr. Medium - The New York Times

James Poniewozik

In 1998, playing the relationship columnist Carrie Bradshaw in “Sex and the City,” Sarah Jessica Parker helped usher in HBO’s golden age and define a Manhattan gilded age. So it’s unavoidable to wonder if her new HBO series, “Divorce,” is “Sex and the City” 18 years later. It is not. It’s more like a comedy about the kind of people who once watched “Sex and the City,” 18 years later: suburbanites, pushing 50, for whom the sex (at least with their spouses) is nothing to wax literary about, and the city is a long train ride away. “Divorce” is not as as its forebear, not as fresh in its material, and in its first outings, not as consistently funny. But it can be a caustic pleasure, a chaser, heavy on the bitters, to Carrie’s fruity cosmo. Here, Ms. Parker is Frances, who, in a gender twist on the stereotypical scenario, is the one having the midlife crisis. She has a pricey house in Westchester County, two teenage kids and an office job for which she’s a dream of opening an art gallery. (In this ambition, she is more a Charlotte than a Carrie.) She also has a hunky college professor lover, Julian (Jemaine Clement, “Flight of the Conchords”). Frances’s husband, Robert (Thomas Haden Church) seems incapable of crisis, to a fault. He’s bluff and steady, predictable down to the timing of his bowel movements. His bushy, mustache makes him look mothballed and out of his time, like a man doing a Civil War of himself. Robert is no Mr. Big. He is, maybe, Mr. Medium. “Divorce” is grounded in harsh, compromised reality. In the opening shot, as Frances soberly assesses herself in the mirror — neck, chest, corners of the eyes — Ms. Parker conveys the sense of a woman who Marie Kondoed her glasses years ago. Julian gives her, besides orgasms, the chance to be at the beginning of something again. The affair is not — at first — what drives Frances and Robert to splitsville. Rather, it’s the party for her friend Diane (Molly Shannon) who gets sloppy drunk, rummages through a drawer for a gun and fires a clumsy shot at her husband, which nearly hits Robert. Instead of bringing Frances and Robert together, the scare pushes them further into themselves. He contemplates his mortality she decides she wants out: “I want to save my life while I still care about it. ” “Divorce” was created by Sharon Horgan, writer and star of “Catastrophe,” an unromanticized romantic comedy about marriage as a messy struggle. This comedy throws that rattly engine into reverse. The process of cutting entanglements, as Frances and Robert go from confrontation to mediation to litigation, is both sad and oddly invigorating. Ms. Horgan keeps the show’s sympathies complicated. Frances has fallen in love with falling out of love, and even Julian sees her decision as rash and . Robert is the spouse, but he’s no prize himself. When he learns about the affair, he glories in having the moral high ground: “You’re Jesse James,” he blusters, “and I get to be Sandra Bullock!” Neither is above using their friends and kids as leverage. Mr. Church gets the bigger comic moments, and he delightfully plays Robert as a blunderbuss whose explosions register both his pain at losing Frances and the rigidity that lost her in the first place. Ms. Parker plays the more complex role, with more mixed results. She made audiences love Carrie for years, and her inclination is to win us over to Frances. That’s important: You need to see that Frances believes that she’s the hero of a drama, not an antihero in a farce. But sometimes the role misses someone — like Ms. Horgan herself — who could own the character’s faults and the series’s acid tone. Some of the problem lies in the scripts, which swing unsteadily between lacerating the couple and empathizing with them. Ideally, “Divorce” wants to be a vicious relationship comedy that also takes its core sadness seriously. In this sense, it aims to be less like “Sex and the City” than like HBO’s naturalistic “Girls” (whose producer Paul Simms serves as a showrunner). The difference, of course, is measured in years. “Divorce” feels in its bones, from the themes to the wintry setting to the ’ soundtrack (Supertramp, Todd Rundgren, Climax Blues Band). It’s not going to reinvent the breakup comedy or the HBO comedy. Its goal is more modest and : to tell one more story of two people trying to reinvent themselves.

Senate Passes Bill Exposing Saudi Arabia to 9/11 Legal Claims - The New York Times

Mark Mazzetti

WASHINGTON — A bill that would let the families of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks sue Saudi Arabia for any role in the terrorist plot passed the Senate unanimously on Tuesday, bringing Congress closer to a showdown with the White House, which has threatened to veto the legislation. The Senate’s passage of the bill, which will now be taken up in the House, is another sign of escalating tensions in a relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia that once received little scrutiny from lawmakers. Administration officials have lobbied against the bill, a view that the White House spokesman Josh Earnest reiterated after the vote. And the Saudi government has warned that if the legislation passes, it might begin selling off up to $750 billion in Treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they face a danger of being frozen by American courts. Adel the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the warning to lawmakers and the administration while in Washington in March. Many economists are skeptical that the Saudis would deliver on such a warning, saying that a would be hard to execute and would do more harm to the kingdom’s economy than to America’s. Questions about the role Saudi officials might have played in the Sept. 11 plot have lingered for more than a decade, and families of the victims have used various lawsuits to try to hold members of the Saudi royal family and charities liable for what they allege is financial support of terrorism. But these moves have been mostly blocked, in part because of a 1976 law that gives foreign nations some immunity from lawsuits in American courts. The Senate bill carves out an exception to the law if foreign countries are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill American citizens within the United States. If the bill were to pass both houses and be signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi government to be examined in the Sept. 11 suits. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, a Democrat and a sponsor of the bill, said the legislation would help the families of the victims seek justice. “For the sake of the families, I want to make clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that every entity, including foreign states, will be held accountable if they are found to be sponsors of the heinous act of ” he said shortly before the bill’s passage. “If the Saudis did not participate in this terrorism, they have nothing to fear about going to court,” he said. “If they did, they should be held accountable. ” Mr. Schumer said he believed that Democrats would override a veto from Mr. Obama. He also said he believed that Saudi Arabia’s threat to pull its assets, a concern of the administration, was “hollow,” adding, “It will hurt them a lot more than it hurts us. ” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said the legislation was written in such a way that Americans would not be subject to legal action taken by other nations. “I do believe that there’s going to be some saber rattling, some threats, but I think that they are hollow,” Mr. Cornyn said. In a move intended to address some White House concerns, the bill’s sponsors included a new provision that would allow the attorney general to put a hold on individual court cases if the administration can show that it is negotiating with the defendant government to resolve the claims. But a release on Tuesday from Mr. Schumer’s office said the administration would need to provide details about the talks and a timetable for their resolution. Mr. Earnest said on Tuesday that White House officials would seek to negotiate with Republicans and Democrats on alternatives to the legislation that might be acceptable to the president, but he added, “I don’t know if that’s possible at this point. ” Earlier this month, Mr. Jubeir said during a news conference that the proposed legislation was “stripping the principle of sovereign immunities” and turning international law “into the law of the jungle. ” The legislation is moving through Congress as the Obama administration considers whether to declassify a portion of a 2002 congressional investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks that cited some evidence that Saudi government officials and other Saudi citizens living in the United States had a hand in the terrorist plot. Those conclusions have yet to be released publicly, but recently the National Archives posted a separate document on its website that appears to offer a glimpse at what the 28 pages contain. The document, dated June 6, 2003, is a series of memos written by Sept. 11 commission staff members compiling numerous possible connections between the hijackers and Saudis in the United States. The document was first disclosed publicly by 28pages. org, an advocacy website devoted to pushing for the declassification of the redacted section of the congressional inquiry. The Sept. 11 commission, which began its work after the congressional inquiry, found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” Al Qaeda or the plotters. Last month, the commission’s Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, issued a statement saying that the 28 pages “were based almost entirely on raw, unvetted material that came to the F. B. I. ” — much of it ultimately deemed inconclusive by the Sept. 11 panel. “Accusations of complicity in that mass murder from responsible authorities are a grave matter,” they wrote. “Such charges should be levied with care. ”

DAPL Protesters Proven Right as Largest Gas Pipeline in U.S. Experiences Massive and Deadly Explosion – Anonymous

DAPL Protesters Proven Right as Largest Gas Pipeline in U.S. Experiences Massive and Deadly Explosion 18 Shares Email ( ZHE ) Bloomberg reports that S.C. fuel marketers are receiving allocation notices from major suppliers after Colonial Pipeline shut its mainlines on fire in Shelby County, Alabama, according to Michael Fields, executive director of state’s Petroleum Marketers Association. Massive plume of smoke is filling the skyline after a gas pipeline exploded in Helena, Alabama according to CBS42. Fire units are headed to the scene, according to McAdory Fire Station #2. Alagasco has stated that the fire is from a petroleum line. According to the Shelby County Sheriff’s office, the blast was on the Colonial Line, with 8-9 people injured. For those curious about the pipeline, the EIA has a great primer found here. The Sheriff adds that the blast happened during crew work. The explosion took place near 334 Highway 13. At this time, a response team has been called in from Jefferson County as well as a tanker from the McAdory Fire Department. 7 victims now going to UAB: 6 people severely burned after reported gas line explosion https://t.co/TNcIGRujDA pic.twitter.com/83TyLP6Cqk

Bhumibol Adulyadej, 88, People’s King of Thailand, Dies After 7-Decade Reign - The New York Times

Barbara Crossette

King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, who took the throne of the kingdom once known as Siam shortly after World War II and held it for more than 70 years, establishing himself as a revered personification of Thai nationhood, died on Thursday in Bangkok. He was 88 and one of the monarchs in history. The royal palace said he died at Siriraj Hospital but gave no further details. King Bhumibol was a unifying figure in a deeply polarized country, and his death cast a pall of uncertainty across Thailand, raising questions about the future of the monarchy itself. The military junta, which seized power in a coup two years ago, derives its authority from the king. But the king’s heir apparent, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, seen by many as a playboy, is not held in the same regard as his father. King Bhumibol spent most of his final years in a hospital, ensconced in a special suite. His portrait hung in almost every shop, and as his health declined, billboards proclaimed “Long Live the King,” signaling widespread anxiety about a future without him. In response, he openly fretted about the people feeling so insecure. Thais came to see this Buddhist king as a father figure wholly dedicated to their welfare, and as the embodiment of stability in a country where political leadership rose and fell through decades of military coups. His death ends a reign of 70 years and 126 days, one that few monarchs have matched for longevity. Queen Elizabeth II, by comparison, has ruled Britain for more than 64 years, having surpassed Queen Victoria’s mark in 2015. With King Bhumibol’s death, she becomes the world’s monarch. King Bhumibol (pronounced ) was an accidental monarch, thrust onto the throne at 18 by the violent death of his older brother in 1946. He fully embraced the role of national patriarch, upholding Thailand’s traditions of hierarchy, deference and loyalty. Western stereotypes of his country irked him. He disdained the Broadway musical “The King and I,” with its roots in his grandfather’s court. And, like a stern father, he was quick to chastise his fellow Thais when he saw the need. In the king’s own book “The Story of Tongdaeng” (2002) about a street dog he had adopted, the message — there was always a message in his writings — was that affluent Thais should stop buying expensive foreign breeds when there were so many local strays to save. The book was a Thai . If he was a people’s king, Bhumibol was a quiet and somewhat aloof one. He was a man of sober, serious mien, often isolated in his palaces, protected by the most stringent of laws, which effectively prevent almost any public discussion of the royal family. But he had a worldly bent. Born in Cambridge, Mass. where his father was a student at Harvard, he was educated in Switzerland, spoke impeccable English and French, composed music, played jazz on the clarinet and saxophone, wrote, painted, took up photography and spent hours in a greenhouse at his Chitrlada Palace in Bangkok. Once he had returned from Europe, however, he stayed put. Never interested in a life, he stopped traveling abroad, saying there was too much to do at home. He was content to trudge through croplands in distant provinces in an shirt and sport coat, tending to the many development projects he encouraged and oversaw: plants, dams that watered rice fields, factories that recycled stalks and water hyacinths into fuel, and countless others. In a political crisis, Thais admired him for his shrewd sense of when to intervene — sometimes with only a gesture — to defuse it, even though he had only a limited constitutional role and no direct political power. “We are fighting in our own house,” he scolded two warring politicians he had summoned to sit abjectly at his feet in 1992. “It is useless to live on burned ruins. ” Eleven years earlier, he had aborted a coup by simply inviting the besieged prime minister, Prem Tinsulanonda, to stay at a royal palace with the king and queen. Thailand was transformed during his reign, moving from a mostly agricultural economy to a modern one of industry and commerce and a growing middle class. He presided over an expansion of democratic processes, though it was halting. He witnessed a dozen successful military coups and several attempted uprisings, and in his last years, his health failing, he appeared powerless to stem sometimes violent demonstrations, offering only vague appeals for unity and giving royal endorsement to two coups. Meanwhile a strain of republicanism emerged as the country broke into two camps: on one side, the establishment, with the palace at its core on the other, the disenfranchised, whose demand for a political voice threatened the traditional order. Between them was the king, a calming symbol of unity — so much so that at times he wanted to moderate the country’s almost obsessive veneration of him. In his annual birthday address in December 2001, King Bhumibol said, “There is an English saying that the king is always happy, or ‘happy as the king’ — which is not true at all. ” In his birthday speech in 2005, he said the belief that the king can do no wrong was “very much an insult to the king. ” “Why is it that the king can do no wrong?” he asked. “This shows they do not regard the king as being a human. But the king can do wrong. ” Bhumibol Adulyadej was born in Cambridge on Dec. 5, 1927, the son of Prince Mahidol of Songkhla, a founder of modern medicine in Thailand the prince was studying public health at Harvard at the time. Bhumibol’s mother, Princess Sangwalya Chukramol, was a Thai nurse studying on a scholarship at Simmons College in Boston when she met the prince. Bhumibol had an older brother, Ananda, and a sister, Galyani Vadhana. Bhumibol and his father were inheritors of the reformist tradition begun by King Mongkut in the 19th century and accelerated by his son King Chulalongkorn, Bhumibol’s grandfather. Mongkut and Chulalongkorn were the king and prince in “Anna and the King of Siam,” Margaret Landon’s 1943 novel, which was based on the autobiographical writings of Anna Leonowens. The novel inspired the musical “The King and I” and its film adaptation. Bhumibol was 2 when his father died, and his mother, to whom he was very close, took her children to Switzerland for schooling. Their family life was interrupted in 1935 when Thailand’s last absolute king, Prajadhipok, Prince Mahidol’s half brother, abdicated after a military coup. The crown passed to Prince Mahidol’s eldest son, Prince Ananda, then 10 years old. King Ananda was barely into his 20s when, on June 9, 1946, he was found dead in his private chambers with a bullet through his head. Bhumibol was the last family member to have seen him alive, but he never spoke publicly about the death or about rumors that the young king, a gun collector, may have committed suicide or killed himself accidentally. Bhumibol, though not originally in the line of succession, was anointed king. He soon returned to Switzerland for a few years and studied politics and history at the University of Lausanne. While on a trip to Paris, he met Sirikit Kitiyakara, whose father, a Thai prince, was serving as a diplomat in Europe. They married in 1950, the year King Bhumibol was formally crowned Rama IX of the Chakri dynasty. In an interview with The New York Times in 1988, the first he gave to a Western newspaper, King Bhumibol spoke with some bitterness of his early reign. He was repeatedly silenced by the military when he tried to assert himself, he said, and so decided to focus on what he could do best within his limited rights. That led to his concentration on industrial and agricultural development, an area in which the military could not challenge him without further undermining its increasingly shaky popular support. King Bhumibol began systematically building a following across the Thai political spectrum, down to the village level. It was a strategy emulated in neighboring Cambodia by Norodom Sihanouk, another Asian monarch who held the devotion of a nation through years of turmoil. David K. Wyatt, the author of the classic 1982 book “Thailand: A Short History,” credited King Bhumibol with turning the monarchy into Thailand’s strongest social and political institution. Queen Sirikit, though often ill, apparently from depression or a nervous disorder, tried to keep up with her husband as he toured the country and visited the more than 1, 200 development projects he fostered. She concentrated on reinvigorating Thai handicrafts. She and the couple’s four children survive. The eldest is the daughter Ubol Ratana, who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, married an American and lived mostly in California until separating from him and returning to the fold in Thailand in 2006. The youngest, Princess Chulabhorn, has a degree in organic chemistry and was married to a Thai commoner. It was she who broke a royal silence about the health of her mother in the by saying that Queen Sirikit, an insomniac, suffered from exhaustion. The heir to the throne, Prince Vajiralongkorn, is the only royal son. A daughter, Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, never married and had devoted herself to studying the arts and helping her father with his many projects. She has for years been the most popular woman in Thailand, a quiet, personable foil to her brother. Toward the end of the king’s life, Prince Vajiralongkorn was moving to the center of public life. The military has recently sought to burnish the image of the prince, a partnership that may also have cemented the generals’ power. King Bhumibol was nearing the end of a long day of visiting projects in eastern Thailand in the summer of 1988 when he and Princess Sirindhorn agreed to be interviewed by The Times in a chalet by a reservoir built by a donor in honor of the king. The subject turned to the legend of “The King and I,” which had been banned in Thailand as being disrespectful to the monarchy, and to the West’s image of the glittering life of a king of Siam, embodied in the musical most memorably by Yul Brynner. “At first it was all this rubbish about the half brother of the moon and the sun and master of the tide and all that,” King Bhumibol said in his fluent English. He said he found it “irking” to have to live up to legends created by Western writers. “They wanted to make a fairy tale to amuse people,” he said, “to amuse people more than to tell the truth. ” In reality, he said, his life revolved around his development projects. He said he did not care how history would remember him. “If they want to write about me in a good way,” he said, “they should write how I do things that are useful. ”

Krauthammer: Gorsuch Filibuster a ’Totally Illogical’ Move Fueled by ’Trump Derangement Syndrome’ - Breitbart

Ian Hanchett

On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” columnist Charles Krauthammer argued that filibustering Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court is a “totally illogical” move Democrats are pursuing because they’re responding to the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” of their base. Krauthammer said, “[I]t makes no sense. It’s totally illogical if you’re a Democrat. The fight is going to be over the next nominee. As you say, this nominee does not alter the balance of the court ideologically. The next very well could, whether it’s a Kennedy, or a Ginsburg, or a Breyer, it could be a radical change, a if it’s a Kennedy, and that would have an effect. And you’d expect the Democrats to want to save their ammunition, but they are expending it here. ” He added, “I think they are, in some ways, suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, in the sense that they might not be personally deranged by his presence, but they have a base that has not recovered from the election, and they insist that anybody who represents them and does not want to face a primary fight, or have a demonstration outside their house on a weekend, is — will oppose what Trump is doing. This is about Trump. It isn’t about Gorsuch. And that I think, is their motive for doing it, but it makes no sense because, if this is the first partisan filibuster, it will be the last. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

Stop Trump Mixtape: A Protest Song Collection

Kevin Gosztola

Editor’s Note Protest music alone cannot change the world. However, protest music can fuel a culture of resistance. Growing a culture of resistance is needed now more than ever. The following are songs from 2015 and 2016 that speak to the political moment and can be seen as the soundtrack for movements fighting for social, racial, economic, and environmental justice. Now, please enjoy this mixtape — the first of many “Stop Trump” playlists we expect to feature here at Shadowproof. “R.E.D.” by A Tribe Called Red (feat. Yasiin Bey, Narcy, and Black Bear) An anthem for the decolonization of culture and solidarity among colonized populations across all continents “T5” by Swet Shop Boys A sardonic take on post-9/11 security culture from Riz MC and Heems, rappers of British Pakistani and Punjabi-Indian descent who have experience with racial profiling at airports “Old Man Trump” by Ryan Harvey feat. Ani DiFranco and Tom Morello The lyrics of legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie are put to music in this song about Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, and how he excluded people of color from his Beach Haven housing project “Retribution” – Tanya Tagaq Throat singing from an indigenous throat singer who crafts a foreboding warning to global citizens about their non-consensual relationship with Mother Earth. “FDT” by YG A basic message from a young black rapper to reject and not stand for any of Donald Trump’s bullshit “Blk Girl Soldier” by Jamila Woods Calls upon the tradition of strong black women who engaged in freedom fighting for dignity, justice, and human rights while at the same time praising the power of black women with “black girl magic” “MariKKKopa” – Desaparecidos Implicates disgraced Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his legion of white supremacists who promote hate of immigrants—the kind of people glomming on to a Trump administration “The Comin’ Round Is Going Through” by Bonnie Raitt A foot-stomper on what’s coming around for the corporate class who have hijacked elections “In the River: A Protest Song” by Raye Zaragoza Ode to the water protectors standing against the oil barons set on poisoning water and the future of not only indigenous people but the entire planet “We The People…” by A Tribe Called Quest Rap song that uses Trump’s exclusionary rhetoric as a hook, rejects the law and order waging war on black bodies, and preaches hard truths about the dominant culture in which we find ourselves enveloped “True Trans Soul Rebel” by Against Me! Anthem for transgender people to help them find the strength to proudly stand up for dignity, equality, justice, and human rights “Big Box (Live)” by Neil Young & The Promise of the Real An indictment of capitalism, the song pleads for resistance to the corporate takeover over all aspects of government, the rule of law, and all facets of daily life, especially through the rise of Big Box stores. “How I Feel” by A Tribe Called Red Acknowledges the pain that indigenous people can see in eyes of other indigenous people, as they struggle to maintain the fight against colonialist oppression and not burn out. The message applies to all: keep listening to others and never give up. “America Back” by Jill Sobule Requires no additional description. When they say they want their America back, what the fuck do they mean? *** Stop Trump Mixtape on Spotify [*Note: Missing Jill Sobule’s “America Back” because that song is not available on Spotify.] The post Stop Trump Mixtape: A Protest Song Collection appeared first on Shadowproof .

What Happened to the FBI?

Andrew Napolitano

Here's something interesting from The Unz Review... Recipient Name Recipient Email => When FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5 that the Department of Justice would not seek the indictment of Hillary Clinton for failure to safeguard state secrets related to her email use while she was secretary of state, he both jumped the gun and set in motion a series of events that surely he did not intend. Was his hand forced by the behavior of FBI agents who wouldn’t take no for an answer? Did he let the FBI become a political tool? Here is the back story. The FBI began investigating the Clinton email scandal in the spring of 2015, when The New York Times revealed Clinton’s use of a private email address for her official governmental work and the fact that she did not preserve the emails on State Department servers, contrary to federal law. After an initial collection of evidence and a round of interviews, agents and senior managers gathered in the summer of 2015 to discuss how to proceed. It was obvious to all that a prima-facie case could be made for espionage, theft of government property and obstruction of justice charges. The consensus was to proceed with a formal criminal investigation. Six months later, the senior FBI agent in charge of that investigation resigned from the case and retired from the FBI because he felt the case was going “sideways”; that’s law enforcement jargon for “nowhere by design.” John Giacalone had been the chief of the New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., field offices of the FBI and, at the time of his “sideways” comment, was the chief of the FBI National Security Branch. The reason for the “sideways” comment must have been Giacalone’s realization that DOJ and FBI senior management had decided that the investigation would not work in tandem with a federal grand jury. That is nearly fatal to any government criminal case. In criminal cases, the FBI and the DOJ cannot issue subpoenas for testimony or for tangible things; only grand juries can. Giacalone knew that without a grand jury, the FBI would be toothless, as it would have no subpoena power. He also knew that without a grand jury, the FBI would have a hard time persuading any federal judge to issue search warrants. A judge would perceive the need for search warrants to be not acute in such a case because to a judge, the absence of a grand jury can only mean a case is “sideways” and not a serious investigation. As the investigation dragged on in secret and Donald Trump simultaneously began to rise in the Republican presidential primaries, it became more apparent to Giacalone’s successors that the goal of the FBI was to exonerate Clinton, not determine whether there was enough evidence to indict her. In late spring of this year, agents began interviewing the Clinton inner circle. When Clinton herself was interviewed on July 2 — for only four hours, during which the interviewers seemed to some in the bureau to lack aggression, passion and determination — some FBI agents privately came to the same conclusion as their former boss: The case was going sideways. A few determined agents were frustrated by Clinton’s professed lack of memory during her interview and her oblique reference to a recent head injury she had suffered as the probable cause of that. They sought to obtain her medical records to verify the gravity of her injury and to determine whether she had been truthful with them. They prepared the paperwork to obtain the records, only to have their request denied by Director Comey himself on July 4. Then some agents did the unthinkable; they reached out to colleagues in the intelligence community and asked them to obtain Clinton’s medical records so they could show them to Comey. We know that the National Security Agency can access anything that is stored digitally, including medical records. These communications took place late on July 4. When Comey learned of these efforts, he headed them off the next morning with his now infamous news conference, in which he announced that Clinton would not be indicted because the FBI had determined that her behavior, though extremely careless, was not reckless, which is the legal standard in espionage cases. He then proceeded to recount the evidence against her. He did this, no doubt, to head off the agents who had sought the Clinton medical records, whom he suspected would leak evidence against her. Three months later — and just weeks before Clinton will probably be elected president — we have learned that President Barack Obama regularly communicated with Clinton via her personal email servers about matters that the White House considered classified. That means that he lied when he told CBS News that he learned of the Clinton servers when the rest of us did. We also learned this week that Andrew McCabe, Giacalone’s successor as head of the FBI Washington field office and presently the No. 3 person in the FBI, is married to a woman to whom the Clinton money machine in Virginia funneled about $675,000 in lawful campaign funds for a failed 2015 run for the Virginia Senate. Comey apparently saw no conflict or appearance of impropriety in having the person in charge of the Clinton investigation in such an ethically challenged space. Why did this case go sideways? Did President Obama fear being a defense witness at Hillary Clinton’s criminal trial? Did he so fear being succeeded in office by Donald Trump that he ordered the FBI to exonerate Clinton, the rule of law be damned? Did the FBI lose its reputation for fidelity to law, bravery under stress and integrity at all times? This is not your grandfather’s FBI — or your father’s. It is the Obama FBI. Copyright 2016 Andrew P. Napolitano. Distributed by Creators.com.

Clubbers Lament Demise of Fabric, a ‘Totem’ of London’s Dance Scene - The New York Times

Dan Bilefsky

LONDON — For fans of one of London’s most fabled nightclubs, the party is over. This week, the local authorities shut down Fabric, a nightclub that helped put the British capital’s electronic music scene on the global stage and entranced a generation of clubbers from all walks of life. The message from officials was clear: The hedonism would no longer be tolerated. The decision by the Borough of Islington to revoke the license of the nightclub came after the police had asked the borough council to close the venue after the deaths of two in recent months. According to the council, both had taken MDMA, a drug better known as Ecstasy. In 2014, the police had also asked the council to review Fabric’s license after the deaths of four others in the previous three years were attributed to drugs. Clubgoers, music critics and D. J. s who made their names at Fabric described the club’s demise as a blow for British culture and a threat to London’s place as a global capital of electronic music, for which Fabric was both a laboratory and a temple. It was also seen as a death knell for nightclubs in London, where venues are already being pushed out by creeping gentrification, the lack of business from some millennials short on cash, and local governments that are more favorable to luxury apartment buildings and shopping malls than to loud, raucous music clubs. In August 2015, the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, a group that represents owners of pubs, bars and restaurants, published figures showing that half of Britain’s nightclubs had shut down since 2005, including dozens in London. The closing of the club reverberated among revelers around the world a stop at Fabric was a on any clubber’s trip to London. Several regulars, who said they viewed Fabric as a second home, gathered on the steps of the club this week, some overcome by tears. Kevin Ford, a drum and bass producer also known as DJ Hype, wrote on Twitter that he was shaken by the news. “For 15 years I was privileged to be part of greatest underground club in the world, I am lost for words right now,” he wrote. Kate Simko, a D. J. and composer who was born in Chicago and lives in London, has been playing at Fabric for nearly a decade. She said that the closing was a huge setback for the global electronic music scene and for the local area’s cosmopolitan spirit. “Fabric is a place where people from all backgrounds, colors, and sexual orientations, tourists and people from finance come together next to edgy club kids in sneakers and mohawks,” she said. “Electronic music is the music of our generation, and I am devastated. Just as clubs in New York have been pushed out of the center and replaced by shopping venues and luxury apartments during the last decade, now this is happening here. ” Fabric was one of the last megaclubs in central London. Local councils have been cracking down on licenses as the gentrification of formerly bohemian neighborhoods like Hackney, Dalston and Shoreditch pushes the counterculture to the outer fringes of the city. Last year, an article in The Guardian lamented “the slow death of British clubs” and pointed to, among other things, the hysteria of overzealous authorities. Last year, the Arches, a Glasgow superclub, was closed after a woman collapsed outside. Fabric’s closing also feeds into the debate about the criminalization of recreational drug use. There were questions about whether the authorities were making an unfair example of Fabric, with the club’s supporters contending that those determined to obtain drugs would find a way of using them at the club, with or without tough security checks. The problem of drug abuse has affected venues across the world, including in the United States, where security checks, free water stations, tents and ambulances on call have become commonplace at major music festivals. In its decision to close Fabric, the Islington council said the two teenagers had been able to sneak into the club without the drugs being detected, and had also bought drugs inside the club. It criticized Fabric for having what it called “grossly inadequate” security. The council said that undercover police operations at the club had revealed patrons displaying symptoms such as “sweating, glazed red eyes and staring into space, and people asking for help. ” Fabric said in a statement that it was “extremely disappointed” by the decision. “Closing Fabric is not the answer to the problems clubs like ours are working to prevent, and sets a troubling precedent for the future of London’s nighttime economy,” it said. Cameron Leslie, the club’s told The Guardian this week that since opening 17 years ago, Fabric had adopted a stringent safety approach, handing all confiscated drugs to the police and calling the authorities if anyone was suspected of dealing in narcotics. Hundreds from the music industry denounced Fabric’s closing, and a petition to prevent its demise had more than 155, 000 signatures by Thursday. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who has been pushing to make London more of a city by opening the subway for service on weekends, said he was “disappointed. ” Before the club was closed down, Mr. Khan had told the council that Fabric was important to a nighttime economy in London that contributed 26. 3 billion pounds, or about $35 billion, to the city’s coffers every year. “Clubbing needs to be safe, but I’m disappointed that Fabric, Islington Council and the Metropolitan Police were unable to reach agreement on how to address concerns about public safety,” he said in a statement. Mazdak Sanii, chief operating officer of Boiler Room, a platform that streams D. J. sets and dance parties online, said that the consequences of the decision would ripple across the city. “It’s a huge totem on the London scene, the premiere destination for the world’s biggest D. J. s, and I think the closure is going to have a totally massive impact on the music scene, on dance music culture and on the economy,” he said. “I think it’s got more to do with gentrification, noise complaints and policing than it does with public safety. It’s all a bit apocalyptic,” he added, referring to Britain’s vote this summer to leave the European Union. Some critics say leaving the bloc will make the country, and its culture, more . For many, Fabric was more than just a music venue. Jacob Husley, 35, a promoter and D. J. said in May that his favorite experience there came when a Polish couple in their 70s turned up, downed a shot of tequila each, the D. J. and danced until 5 a. m. “I took them upstairs to the balcony and brought them some tea — because they wanted to have tea,” he told The Evening Standard. “They were really sweet, they were on the balcony with their hands together ballroom dancing. ”

A Hushed Departure at the Met Museum Reveals Entrenched Management Culture - The New York Times

Robin Pogrebin

In 2010, the Metropolitan Museum of Art hired Erin Coburn away from the J. Paul Getty Museum, lauding her as its “first chief officer of digital media” — a role created and promoted by the Met director and chief executive, Thomas P. Campbell, as part of his efforts to move the museum into the 21st century. Two years later, Ms. Coburn quietly left, along with a confidential settlement from the Met. Though no clear explanation was given at the time, recent interviews with former and current staff members reveal that Ms. Coburn had long complained that she was unable to do her job effectively because of a close personal relationship between Mr. Campbell and a female staff member in her department. Mr. Campbell announced his resignation in February. And while the relationship was not the reason he left, staff members say that it contributed to a yearslong erosion of respect for his authority and judgment within the Met and that it reflects larger problems in how the institution is managed by top executives and the board of trustees. Despite its vaunted collection, prodigious $332 million budget and a board stocked with some of the country’s most powerful donors, the Met is largely run by a dozen or so executives and trustees, interviews show, with little transparency or accountability. The recent discovery of a looming $40 million deficit that forced the institution to cut staff, trim its exhibition schedule and postpone a heralded $600 million expansion are signs that the system is showing cracks. Now, details about how dysfunction in the digital media department was allowed to continue are revealing additional consequences of the Met’s turning a blind eye to problems. Ms. Coburn filed a formal complaint in 2012. Met executives investigated her claims but concluded they didn’t warrant action. The board’s chairman, Daniel Brodsky, and several museum executives negotiated Ms. Coburn’s departure and settlement while Mr. Campbell stayed on. Yet, for many then at the Met, the results of Mr. Campbell’s relationship with a member of Ms. Coburn’s staff were plain. The employee had a direct line to Mr. Campbell and amassed power well beyond her rank, they say, sidelining certain colleagues as well as commanding resources and hiring outside staff members for her projects, which added costs and created infrastructure complications. Leaders of the Met board and staff knew of the relationship before Ms. Coburn was hired, and at times had urged Mr. Campbell to end it, according to several people inside the museum. Mr. Campbell and the staff member “had an inappropriate relationship,” said Matthew R. Morgan, the general manager of the Met’s website from 2006 to 2012. “It was the reason I left,” he said. Mr. Campbell’s decisions favored the “vanity” of the staff member with whom he had close ties “over doing digital the right way,” Mr. Morgan added. This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen people during the past month, including Met trustees, senior executives, curators and former and current members of the digital staff. All expressed admiration for the museum and its acclaimed exhibitions, but many indicated concern that Met leaders would not take a hard look at themselves and find ways to change. “This is not just the singular responsibility of the C. E. O. ,” said Reynold Levy, the former president of Lincoln Center and an expert on nonprofits, speaking generally about the Met’s culture and recent struggles. “The board needs to hold a mirror up to itself and assess its own performance. ” As boards go, the Met’s is high end and old school. An international jewel of the art world, the museum sits atop the hierarchy of major New York cultural institutions and a spot on its board has long been considered the pinnacle of prestige. At 101 members, the board is also unusually large, which means decisions tend to be made in committees, the most important of which are the executive and finance committees. Expectations for most everyone else are relatively simple: deep pockets, attendance at five meetings a year and a willingness to let the Met’s top executives handle the details. “If you’re not on the executive committee, you don’t know anything,” said a trustee, who insisted on anonymity because board members have been warned against speaking publicly. “You’re expected to work and give, but not to question what goes on. ” Another trustee said, “Few people have spoken up in a meeting for about 40 years. ” This style appeared to work well enough, including throughout the tenure of Philippe de Montebello, who retired as director in 2008, just before the financial crisis. But the world has changed for the Met since then. Corporate and government donations to cultural institutions have declined competition from contemporary art institutions like the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art has increased and the demands to reach new audiences digitally have become urgent. It was in this environment that the board promoted Mr. Campbell, a former tapestry curator who — while erudite and elegant — had never managed an institution, let alone one with 2, 200 employees. Many inside and outside the Met describe Mr. Brodsky, a real estate executive who has been chairman since 2011, as a likable but passive leader who avoids conflict and has continued the Met tradition of informing the full board of museum developments at the last minute or, in the case of the Coburn investigation, not until he learned about the impending publication of this article. Inside the Met, several top executives knew about Ms. Coburn’s complaints, former employees say, including Emily K. Rafferty, then president Sharon H. Cott, the senior vice president, secretary and general counsel Debra A. McDowell, the vice president for human resources and Carrie Rebora Barratt, the associate director for collections and administration, all of whom declined to comment. But aside from Mr. Brodsky and Candace K. Beinecke, chairwoman of the board’s legal committee, other trustees were not made aware of the complaint. The Met said that this was to protect the confidentiality of the parties involved. Moreover, without the approval or knowledge of the entire board, the Met brought the full force of its resources to bear on the case, hiring an external management consultant as well as two law firms, which conducted a investigation. Tax records show that Ms. Coburn received $183, 000 in addition to her annual salary of $166, 000 in her final year at the museum, an unusually high payment given that she had been employed for just two years. The museum would not comment on whether the size of the payment was connected to her claim or why the terms of her departure had been kept confidential. As for the staff, no one was told the real reasons for the departure of Ms. Coburn, an executive described by former colleagues as “visionary” and “principled. ” “To drive someone like Erin Coburn out and see her undermined was very disconcerting to the whole department,” said Paco Link, the digital department’s former general manager of creative development, who had also worked with Ms. Coburn at the Getty. The exact nature of Mr. Campbell’s relationship with the staff member — whom The New York Times is not naming to protect her privacy — is not widely known, except that she became friendly with Mr. Campbell when he was chief tapestry curator and that their relationship grew closer after he became director in 2009, current and former employees say. The staff member joined the Met in 2000 and was promoted to manager of online publications in 2009. She was generally considered capable and helped develop the museum’s acclaimed online timeline, as well as website programs that feature curators and artists discussing pieces in the museum. Nevertheless, her relationship with the museum director made her “very hard” to manage, said Morgan S. Holzer, a former project manager at the Met. Neither the staff member nor Mr. Campbell responded to requests for comment. During the past seven years, newer trustees from the business world have, by many accounts, brought a more metabolism to the board — zeroing in on the Met’s financial troubles hiring a new president and chief operating officer, Daniel H. Weiss, a former president of Haverford College, in 2015 and enlisting Boston Consulting to do one of the “360 evaluations” commonly used by Fortune 500 companies to assess employees. Mr. Campbell remains director until June. Mr. Weiss, who has taken over Mr. Campbell’s role as chief executive on an interim basis, is considered a leading candidate for the next director, though the Met is planning a formal search. At a recent board meeting the Met agreed to examine the job descriptions of president and director. Mr. Brodsky, in response to detailed questions from The Times, said in a prepared statement: “The board is deeply committed to ensuring a professional workplace, and one that is free of favoritism of any kind. While we believe, in this case, that the board responded appropriately by ordering an investigation by independent, external experts — which concluded Ms. Coburn’s complaint was without merit — there is more we can do. ” Ms. Coburn was replaced by Sree Sreenivasan, who left in June, and then by Loic Tallon, under whom the female staff member was laid off, along with several others, in October. The current president, Mr. Weiss, said he was committed to establishing a very different management culture at the museum. “I know that this has been a difficult time at the Met,” he said in an email last week. “I look forward to working with my administrative and board colleagues to support a climate of candor, transparency, accountability and mutual respect. ”