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Police State USA NOTE: Story has been updated. View updates chronologically at bottom of text. “The Hospital is not the custodian or the legal guardian of the patients in its care, nor is it affiliated with any state agency. Our staff are caring and supportive professionals who aim to provide the best and most appropriate care for each and every child, regardless of diagnosis.” Justina enjoyed ice-skating before being confined to Boston Children's Hospital “Many parents and their advocates complain, however, that the state agency, because of its lack of in-house medical expertise and its longstanding ties with Children’s, is overly deferential to the renowned Harvard teaching hospital.” Justina Pelletier's sisters (from left to right): Julia, Jennifer, and Jessica Justina Pelletier's family is only allowed two twenty-minute phone calls with her per week. “Due to concerns regarding Justina’s regressive behavior changes around her family, the multiple medical procedures and care episodes she has been through … and both parents’ resistance towards recommended treatment plans for Justina … a child protection team was convened.” Dr. Mark Korson was Justina's primary doctor before being excluded by BHC “I am dismayed. … It feels like Justina’s treatment team is out to prove the diagnosis at all costs. … The (Boston Children’s Hospital) team has demanded that Justina be removed from the home. … This represents the most severe and intrusive intervention a patient can undergo … for a clinical hunch,” Dr. Korson wrote. BCH issued the Pelleteirs "guidelines" for their daughter's care which include "No Second Opinions" Justina Pelletier with her mother during one of her weekly visits allowed by the hospital Justina passes handwritten notes to her family via origami art “The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual’s own good.” UPDATE (12/20/2013): Court Rules Indefinite Detention May Continue The Pelletiers react to a judge's decision to keep Justina locked away indefinitely in a psych ward “I don’t understand how they can do this. I didn’t do anything wrong,” said Linda Pelletier as she left the courtroom, sobbing. Her red-faced father, Lou, said, “It’s a ******* corrupt state” as he left. The judge appointed a new guardian ad litem for Justina, and another hearing is scheduled for January 10th, 2014. UPDATE (2/17/2014): Desperate Parents Break Gag Order, Allege Torture February 14th marked a full year that Justina has been held hostage by Boston Children’s Hospital. Her parents — emotionally and financially drained — are growing increasingly disillusioned and vocal about the situation. There seems to be few legal and peaceful options left for them to reunite their family. In desperation, Justina’s father has broken the court’s gag order on him talking about the oppression of his family. Lou Pelletier disclosed to the Blaze how his daughter is being punished by her captors if she passes too much information to her parents. UPDATE (2/18/2014): Lou Pelletier Charged with Contempt of Court Earnest thanks goes to all those who have contributed to the operation of this website. We are committed to covering stories that remain conspicuously ignored by the national mainstream media, and your generous support is essential to effectively distributing this message. Many victims of government-sanctioned violence offer their gratitude. Take Action DCF Website Find this article useful? Like us on Facebook. We post breaking stories just like this one all the time: |
Paradise Papers: What is the leak and who is behind the firm Appleby? Updated The Paradise Papers are the largest leak in history with more than 13.4 million files revealing the workings of the tax haven industry. Over half of those documents, 6.8 million, emanate from the offshore law firm, Appleby, but the leak also includes roughly half-a-million documents from the Singapore-based Asiaciti Trust and a further 6 million documents from corporate registries located in 19 tax havens. The cache of documents reveals an industry designed to sell secrecy. It also offers rare insights into the complex offshore structures used by multinationals to minimise their tax bills. The leaks were obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and over 90 media partners including Four Corners. The files include emails, bank statements, court documents and client records covering a period of 66 years — from 1950 to 2016. Who is in the data? Royalty, rock stars and 120 politicians from around the world are exposed in the documents. They are joined by oligarchs from Russia, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The financial affairs of Queen Elizabeth II, US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's key fundraiser and Russian tech investor Yuri Milner are revealed. Closer to home, new details of Australian rock icon Michael Hutchence's long contested estate are uncovered in the data. On the corporate front there are rare insights into the hidden offshore tax structures used by multinationals including Facebook and mining giant Glencore. What is Appleby? Founded in Bermuda — an island well known for its zero corporate tax rate and perhaps lesser known for its quirky corporate attire, the Bermuda shorts — Appleby sets up companies, trusts and other offshore entities for thousands of clients including high wealth individuals, international banks and accounting firms as well as multinational corporations. Appleby considers itself an industry leader proving to the world that the offshore industry can operate cleanly and ethically. Its pitch appears to be as a law firm for the rich and respectable. The firm was founded in the 1890s by Major Reginald Appleby, a lawyer who detested paying tax. In 1979 the firm began its expansion into a global institution with over 700 employees, operating in notorious tax havens including the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and the Isle of Man. In a public statement anticipating the leak, Appleby maintained it is committed to high standards and said while the firm does not tolerate illegal behaviour, "we are not infallible." Appleby's corporate services division became independent in 2016 and operates under the name Estera. Where are the "secrecy jurisdictions"? The Tax Justice Network says the terms secrecy jurisdiction and tax haven are interchangeable. Broadly, they are places where the laws and systems offer legal and financial secrecy to others. The network notes that these jurisdictions provide "facilities that enable people or entities escape [from the] laws, rules and regulations of other jurisdictions..." Recent international agreements have made it easier for tax authorities to get information from tax havens, but it's still a battle. Going offshore: Is this legal? Sorry, this video has expired Video: Inside the tax havens of the rich and powerful (ABC News) Yes. Multinationals may use tax havens to smooth the flow of capital between company operations split across multiple countries. The problem is those tax havens can also be used for aggressive tax planning which enables individuals or large corporations to avoid paying tax or evade tax altogether. The big attraction of tax havens is that they offer low or even zero corporate tax rates. Avoiding tax is not illegal but it may be against the spirit of the law. However, evading tax is illegal. Beyond that, defining the differences is tricky. The Australian Tax Office has published a guide to tax crimes - warning perpetrators face criminal convictions, fines, and even prison sentences. So why does this matter? The ATO estimated it was owed roughly $2.5 billion in missing tax revenue from large corporations and multinationals from the 2014-15 financial year. That's money that could be used to fund public services like hospitals, schools and transport. The use of tax havens allows large corporations and multinationals to avoid tax in a way that is out of reach for the average worker. Critics say tax havens enable a two-tiered system where multinationals and high-wealth individuals can enjoy all the benefits of doing business within a stable law-based country like Australia but contribute little in return. James Henry, from the Tax Justice Network, said the system was comparable to the dark days of a feudal society. "You get a tiny group of people who are basically citizens of nowhere for tax purposes and yet are able to call in the benefits of society for defence, national security, all of the benefits of having a rule of law and courts that they take advantage of all the time to make their money and to pass it on." How is this different to the Panama Papers? The leak of the Panama Papers last year focussed on the inner workings of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. In terms of the volume of documents, the Paradise Papers leak is the larger of the two. The Panama Papers leak contained just over 11 million files compared with the 13.4 million documents in the Paradise Papers. While the Panama data exposed world leaders, Mexican drug lords and relatives of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, the Appleby leak relates to a mostly blue-chip client list including politicians, celebrities and multinationals. Credits Topics: tax, fraud-and-corporate-crime, multinationals, bermuda, australia First posted |
Unable to play video. Neither flash nor html5 is supported! President Trump on Saturday addressed American troops stationed in Italy, offering a glowing assessment of his whirlwind tour through the Middle East and Europe. Trump, who entered the Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily to the theme of the 1997 Harrison Ford movie “Air Force One,” gave himself a few self-congratulatory pats on the back and applauded his unconventional approach to the presidency. “We have been gone for close to nine days. This will be nine days. And I think we hit a home run no matter where we are,” he said before boarding Air Force One for his return flight to Washington. Trump will land late Saturday amid a growing cloud of controversy surrounding federal investigations into his campaign’s ties with Russian officials. First Lady Melania Trump introduced the President on Saturday, also listing off the stops the couple made during their overseas excursion. The President recapped his travels, calling the G7 and NATO meetings “tremendously productive” and touted economic deals made in Saudi Arabia. Trump, earlier in the day, rode the streets of Taormina in a golf cart as the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom walked ahead of him. Trump tweeted that he would make a final decision next week on whether to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. President Trump is introduced ahead of his speech to U.S. military troops at Naval Air Station Sigonella, Saturday, in Sigonella, Italy. (Evan Vucci/AP) European leaders have been pressuring him to stay in the pact during their meetings with him this week, arguing that America’s leadership on climate change is crucial. Trump has previously referred to climate change as a “hoax.” Despite the lack of commitment, French President Emmanuel Macron had warm words for Trump. “I saw a leader with strong opinions on a number of subjects, which I share in part — the fight against terrorism, the willingness to keep our place in the family of nations — and with whom I have disagreements that we spoke about very calmly. I saw someone who listens and who is willing to work,” Macron said. The president said recent terrorist attacks in Manchester, England and Egypt underscored the need for the U.S. to “defeat terrorism and protect civilization.” “Terrorism is a threat, bad threat to all of humanity,” he added. Trump also touted a renewed commitment by NATO members to spend more on defense. “Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in — NATO will be much stronger,” he said. Trump returns to Washington as the lead Senate committee investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has requested information and documents from his campaign. Trump greets people after speaking to U.S. military troops at Naval Air Station Sigonella, Saturday, in Sigonella, Italy. (Evan Vucci/AP) Trump’s top aides have refused to address reports Trump’s son-in-law — White House adviser Jared Kushner — and a Russian diplomat may have discussed setting up a secret communications channel between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin. The President, who was granted five military deferments during Vietnam, commended U.S. troops, saying that “you are protecting us and we will always remember that.” He noted his desire to boost military spending and promised them “my complete and unshakable support.” “We’re going to have a lot of strength and a lot of peace,” he said. “You have poured out your hearts, your souls, and even your blood for this nation, and we will pour out our gratitude to you.” Once aboard Air Force One Trump took to Twittter to continue to brag about his travels. “Bringing hundreds of billions of dollars back to the U.S.A. from the Middle East - which will mean JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!” On Monday, Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, on Memorial Day. With News Wire Services |
A First Nations NDP MP has written a biting, satirical letter to Justin Trudeau to "thank" him for controversial remarks he made about Indigenous youth, while taking aim at the prime minister's suggestion that some chiefs are out of touch with the needs of young people living on reserve. Trudeau had suggested that most of the Indigenous youth he talked to wanted "a place to store their canoes and paddles so they can connect back out on the land." Romeo Saganash, who represents the northern Quebec riding of Abitibi–Baie-James–Nunavik–Eeyou, and serves as his party's Indigenous affairs critic, told Trudeau he had no idea there was such a problem until he watched the prime minister's town hall appearance in Saskatoon. (Trudeau repeated the canoes and paddle comments, nearly verbatim, the next day in Winnipeg.) "In fact, I am ashamed for my people that we haven't been listening to our youth in the way that you have," Saganash wrote in his sarcastic response. Saganash said he was writing to the prime minister to voice his support for what he imagines is a national canoe and paddle program, something he said must have been erroneously left off the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 94 calls to action. It must have been a "secret" recommendation that only Trudeau knew about, Saganash wrote. "It is time for the federal government to help First Nations maintain our very important spiritual connection with the water," he wrote. Sarcastically, the Cree MP wrote that Trudeau is best placed to take the lead on this file because of his track record of protecting water sources, pointing to his approval of the Site C hydroelectric dam, Trans Mountain's Kinder Morgan pipeline and the Muskrat Falls dam. Tribal Chief of the Saskatoon Tribal Council Felix Thomas directs a question to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Saskatoon on Jan. 25. (Liam Richards/Canadian Press) Saganash wrote that once the canoe and paddle storage program is in place, he will personally paddle across the country to tell First Nations concerned about these projects not to worry, as the "urgently needed" investment in canoe depots will help Indigenous people protect their land and water. The Trudeau remarks in question were made after Saskatoon Tribal Council Chief Felix Thomas criticized the disconnect between the prime minister's rhetoric — namely his assertion that there is no relationship more important to him than the one with Indigenous people — and the government's perceived inaction on key files, including post-secondary and K-12 education, child welfare, water and health care. Trudeau on what Indigenous youth need: "Most of the young people I've talked to want a place to store their canoes and paddles..." <a href="https://t.co/EGgNjFxn8N">pic.twitter.com/EGgNjFxn8N</a> —@connie_walker "I've spoken with a number of chiefs who said, 'You know, we need a youth centre … You know, we need TVs and lounges and sofas so they can hang around.' And when a chief says that to me, I pretty much know they haven't actually talked to their young people," Trudeau said. "Because most of the young people I've talked to want a place to store their canoes and paddles so they can connect back out on the land." 'Insensitive and insulting' The comments have been labelled as patronizing by many First Nations observers. Saganash said Friday the comments are "bordering on racist." "I couldn't let the prime minister off the hook with those comments that he made," he said later in an interview with CBC's Power & Politics. He said his letter's sarcastic approach is a typical Cree response to irritants. "The remarks were ignorant, insensitive and insulting," he said, saying he was particularly bothered by the fact the prime minister repeated them at two separate town hall appearances. "He should be aware that the challenges that we have in this country as Indigenous Peoples are way more serious, and way more grave, than having sheds for our canoes and paddles," he said. "Stop this rhetoric." Saganash said he founded the Cree National Youth Council in 1985, and has been travelling to communities countrywide as part of his duties as a member of the Indigenous affairs parliamentary committee, and not once has he heard a request for a canoe depot. What youth really need, Saganash said, is mental health supports, adequate housing, decent education and reforms to the child welfare system. The Prime Minister's Office said late Friday Trudeau's comments were simply reflective of the many conversations he has had over the years with Indigenous leaders, young people, parents and elders. "During these conversations, First Nations youth often raise the need for greater investments in youth programming and services, and we will continue listening to youth in Indigenous communities across the country while working in partnership with them to develop new solutions and opportunities," said Cameron Ahmad, the prime minister's press secretary, in a statement. |
Spoilers for Thursday night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy ahead, plus spoilers for past episodes of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Good Wife and The Wire blurred out. Last night, Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey), the dreamy doctor and main love interest for 11 years on Grey’s Anatomy, died in a car crash. Fans took to social media to express their shock, outrage and sadness. This death was more than a plot twist: it was a personal affront. Those feelings are completely normal, said Christiane Manzella, the clinical director of the Seleni Institute for Women, who provides grief therapy. “We see this all the time,” Manzella told TIME. “Human beings love stories and making connections, even if it’s to fictional people. We create meaning and then experience actual grief when that connection is broken.” And while some might dismiss grief for a fictional character, Manzella said what Grey’s fans are likely feeling is something called disenfranchised grief. “Disenfranchised grief is grief that’s not considered ‘OK’ by other people. Sometimes people have this strong feeling of loss or sadness but don’t know if it’s strange to feel that way,” she said. “But the connection is real, and loss is loss.” This article contains spoilers. Click here to reveal them. Some characters’ deaths are felt more deeply than others, she explained. While people like Stringer Bell on The Wire or Walter White on Breaking Bad may have been fan favorites, they were bad guys. It’s the good guys—the ones who don’t deserve what’s coming—that audiences mourn the most. This article contains spoilers. Click here to reveal them. Fans fantasize about certain characters: they think of them as their dream boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses or parents. People feel the deepest connection to those people and therefore take their loss the hardest. Just last year, The Good Wife fans cried over the loss of Will Gardner, in many respects the dream boyfriend. And a few months later, Robb Stark’s Red Wedding death on Game of Thrones felt particularly cruel because he had made great sacrifices for love. If it’s possible, Derek Shepherd was even more perfect—at least in the audience’s minds. After all, his nickname was McDreamy. “He’s the fantasy boyfriend,” said Manzella. “People pictured themselves with him. They cared about him and thought about him for 10 years. Of course they’re going to feel a sense of loss to this person they not only grew attached to but maybe even imagined themselves with.” So fans can take their time getting over McDreamy’s death. The show will likely spend the next several episodes exploring the ramifications of the accident, which Manzella said could help the audience find some closure. Write to Eliana Dockterman at eliana.dockterman@time.com. |
Tali Soroker is a Financial Analyst at I Know First. The Basics of Algorithmic Trading – What You Should Know The development of algorithmic trading High frequency trading Manual algorithmic trading Algorithmic trading with I Know First Algotrading is the name for a broad set of trading systems that use complex mathematical formulas and high-speed computer programs to determine, and act on optimal trading strategies. It was initially developed in the mid-twentieth century and has advanced on an exponential scale in the last 60 years. In 1951, Harry Markowitz helped to design the first algorithm that could calculate the optimal investment portfolio. In the 1960s, advances in computer technology allowed for the analysis of millions of data points that are generated by the market each day. With these advancements, large trading firms started to use program trading by the 70s and 80s and signal theory became widely accepted around this time as well. In the 2000s, algotrading erupted and in 2012, computer algorithms made 84% of trades. Algotrading can be divided into two categories, Automatic High-Frequency Trading (HFT) and Manual Algorithmic Trading. HFT is trading with the use of computers that are programmed to follow a certain set of instructions, these computers can make trades thousands of times faster than humans. When HFT erupted in the 2000s it allowed for the removal of humans almost entirely from the trading process. HFT has revolutionized the way modern stock trades are made. A controversial method, HFT has decreased the time needed to make a stock trade from several seconds to nanoseconds. Today, just one millisecond, .001 second, accounts for $100 million in revenue per year from market trades. This practice has, at times, been borderline catastrophic for the market, causing crashes like the “Flash Crash” of 2010 when the Dow Jones plummeted 1,000 points in just one day. Regulators are now trying to make changes to the system, in an attempt to level the playing field between man and machine and to safeguard from the effects that such trading practices can cause. In manual algorithmic trading, a computer tracks historical data and detects market opportunities, and then it produces an output for investors to act on. Until recently, this kind of algorithmic technology was accessible primarily by large hedge funds and investment firms. Now, hedge funds and private customers make up the same percentage of manual algorithm users, both around 30%. The last 40% of users consist of family offices, bank advisors, and investment banks. I Know First, founded in 2010, is a financial technology company that has been working to increase the number of people who have access to these trading strategies by providing daily investment forecasts based on an advanced, self-learning algorithm. The algorithm was developed to track historical data for 3,000 different markets and generate daily market predictions for stocks, commodities, ETF’s, interest rates, currencies, and world indices for the short, medium and long-term time horizons. The I Know First team is focused on providing comprehensive algorithmic solutions to its investors. Employees in each of our R&D, Operations, Analytics, and Marketing departments are dedicated to providing the best products and support to our clients while maintaining the highest level of ethical conduct and transparency. |
To this date, South Korean director Jang Joon-hwan has only made two feature-length films. The first is 2003’s Save the Green Planet!, a gratuitously gory piece with an off-kilter tone a la The Dark Knight‘s Joker. The second is 2013’s Hwayi: A Monster Boy. Hwayi is decidedly less insane than Save the Green Planet (though that’s like saying someone is less insane than Charles Manson) and falls more in line with other Korean gangster or revenge films. The film’s plot centers around a 17 year-old boy named Hwayi who’s been raised by five criminal fathers to become the perfect killing machine. At the cusp of adulthood, Hwayi has incipient longings of a normal life that start to make him press at his existence’s boundaries and unanswered questions. When his five fathers take him on his first crime, Hwayi discovers that they have been concealing a critical — and horrible — part of his past. Traumatized from the finding, Hwayi swears revenge upon his fathers. If this sounds similar to Oldboy or Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, that’s because it is. While Hwayi has a decently unique premise, the film is quite similar in tone and plot construction to other Korean revenge films. Compared with the claustrophobic brutality of Save the Green Planet! (which consists heavily of torture scenes in a basement), Hwayi‘s violence occurs in more traditionally cold-blooded scenes with car chases and gunfights within industrial warehouses. In Hwayi, the bloodletting usually happens for a reason, as opposed to purely for bloodletting’s sake. What Hwayi does try to share with Save the Green Planet! is a sense of insanity among its characters; for instance, Hwayi (the boy) has frequent visions of a monster that’s manifested onscreen in all its CGI glory. However, Hwayi’s monster feels like a convenient way to package up all the problems of a boy who, given his upbringing, should be way more screwed up than he’s depicted onscreen. Granted, making Hwayi only as insane as other Korean revenge film characters probably helped the movie perform better at the box office (where it did have a strong showing). Ultimately, Hwayi is an entertaining and thoughtful piece that has slick action scenes and manages to grapple with a boy’s prematurely shattered innocence and conflicted sense of parentage. However, if you’ve seen a lot of Korean revenge or gangster films, it will feel familiar, a regular train ride compared with the roller coaster of Director Jang’s Save the Green Planet. Hwayi: A Monster Boy (Korean: 화이: 괴물을 삼킨 아이) — Directed by Jang Joon-hwan. First released October 2013. Running time 2hr 6min. Starring Yeo Jin-goo, Kim Yoon-seok, Cho Jin-woong, and Park Yong-woo. |
Yesterday’s deaths at various demonstrations commemorating the Nakba remind us of one all-important fact: without a just resolution to the Palestinian refugee issue, the state of Israel will never be welcome or accepted in the region. Those killed highlight the importance of a 63 year-old issue which has yet to be resolved or properly addressed. But it is impossible for there to be any just solution to this issue without a candid discussion of history that many “pro-Israel” types do not want to have. (Image right: AP photo of Israeli soldiers yesterday making sure people inconvenient to an ethno-centric majoritarian state stay out. Kind of like what NY Times editors do to facts inconvenient to the Zionist narrative.) The Zionist narrative on the Nakba goes something like this: New born and defenseless Israel was attacked by 5 Arab armies the day after it’s birth, and refugees may have been created during the fighting, but tough luck since the Arabs started the war and David defeated Goliath. You can see this narrative uncritically repeated in the mainstream American press. Take for example this recent article by Ethan Bronner in the New York Times : After Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, armies from neighboring Arab states attacked the new nation; during the war that followed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes by Israeli forces. Hundreds of Palestinian villages were also destroyed. The refugees and their descendants remain a central issue of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The timeline begins at May 14th, 1948. There are a few rather significant historical facts which are inconvenient for this narrative that go unmentioned in the New York Times. Well, at least today’s New York Times. You see, had Ethan Bronner or the editors of the Times actually read their own newspaper’s reporting on this issue at the time, they likely would not have presented such a distorted representation of the facts. (This certainly isn’t the first time the NYT contradicts itself either ) Two facts which torpedo the Zionist narrative are corroborated by reporting from the New York Times during this period. 1. Masses of Palestinian refugees were created before one Arab soldier ‘attacked’ the new state of Israel. In one story from March, 20th, 1947, the New York Times actually addressed the pre-1948 situation as one of colonization and describes it rather appropriately. Imagining such characterization in the NY Times today is fantasy. I urge you to read the whole article, titled “ Palestine Jews Minimize Arabs: Sure of Superiority, Settlers Feel They Can Win Natives By Reason or Force ,” but here’s an excerpt: Whatever the degree of their superiority complex, however, the Jews are certainly confident of their ability to bring the Arabs to terms – by persuasion if possible, by might if necessary. The program of the largest terrorist group, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, is to evacuate the British forces from Palestine and declare a Zionist state west of the Jordan, and “we will take care of the Arabs.” Despite this, the New York Times today repeats the ridiculous assertion commonplace in the Zionist narrative that the creation of the state was an innocent act that drew unprovoked and barbaric reaction from the Goliath Arab states. Here is another article, this one from April 16, 1948 and titled “ Jews Press Arabs in Pitched Battle in North Palestine “: [Villages] taken yesterday were Dabiat er Ruha, Rihania and Kuteinat. Previously they had occupied Kufrin, Abu Sureik, Abu Shusha, Zerain, Naamieh, Ghubyat at Tahta and Ghubyat al Fauqha. Several bridges blown up by Haganah squads between Jenin and Lajjun are hampering Arabs [sic] communication. But today’s New York Times wants you to believe that the refugees created during the Nakba period, which is actually from 1947-1949, started only after Arab states attacked the newborn and sinless Israel. In reality, Zionist operations against Palestinian villages began well before the Arab armies crossed any borders. Half the total refugees created during the Nakba were created BEFORE May 15th, 1948. Again, another New York Times story from May 2nd, 1948 titled “ Dispair is Voiced by Arab Refugees: Evacuees from Palestine say Jews Crash Through Weak Resistance by Volunteers “: A stream of Arab refugees is moving eastward across the Jordan river. Many of the refugees passing Jericho en route to Trans-Jordan, a few miles away, are from Jerusalem and Jaffa. They say they fear that Jewish offensives are crashing through weakened Arab volunteer resistance. Haifa was described as almost a ghost town, with its population having dwindled to less than 20,000 from a normal figure at least five times that. Another article appearing in the New York Times titled “ Palestine Strife Creates DP Issue ” is dated May 3rd, 1948 stating “200,000 Arabs are now listed as homeless”: It is believed that possibly 50,000 Arabs left Jaffa, thousands of them by sea. Other thousands have fled inland, large numbers of them to become cave dwellers in the historic caves of Beit Jibrin, northwest of Hebron…at least 40,000 Arabs left Haifa when the combined Haganah and Irgun Zvai Leumi force stormed the Arab market place and conquered all of the city except the British-held waterfront. From Jerusalem wealthy Arabs have fled to near-by countries, the poorer ones into the hills and villages. Another New York Times story , this one from April 18th, 1948, tells of horror among refugees and massacres in the Galilee: According to reports telephoned from Nablus, that town and Jenin are crowded with refugees, among whom the rumor is circulating that the Jews are driving on Jenin. The Haganah said it had killed 130 Druse [sic] tribesmen yesterday when it seized Usha, a village east of Haifa. This information is important not simply because it illustrates how poorly the New York Times’ current day reporting is on an issue it reported on thoroughly at the time (They can’t even copy and paste), but also because it clearly rebuts the Zionist narrative people like Jeffery Goldberg incessantly repeat despite mounds of historic evidence to the contrary. In this post , Goldberg argues that the Nakba was “self-inflicted” because the Arabs “attacked the just-born Jewish state and then managed to lose on the battlefield.” Setting aside the already morally corrupt notion that ethnic cleansing during war is somehow acceptable, history simply proves Goldberg wrong. For a detailed account of the patterns of depopulation, you can see this video of Salman Abu Sitta’s recent lecture at the Palestine Cente r, starting around the 10 minute mark. 2. The pre-state Israeli forces were far greater in number and far better equipped than the combined forces of the “Goliath” Arab armies. This is another myth in the Zionist narrative. They want you to believe that the 5 Arab armies had genocidal intentions and wanted to destroy Israel. Why else would you send 5 armies against one? But if the 13 nation-states of the Caribbean attacked the United States we’d hardly consider the United States the ‘David’ facing a Caribbean Goliath. But the Zionist narrative wants to trick you with a faulty numbers game. In reality, the pre-state Israel forces were greater in numbers and far superior in training than the combined forces of the infamous 5 Arab Armies. Conveniently, the New York Times reported in an article from Feb. 29th, 1948 titled “ The Army Called ‘Haganah’ ” : Nobody knows its full strength, let alone its membership rolls. But it is no amateur army. It has a nucleus of 30,000 men who served in the British forces. Three thousand of them served in the RAF, including more than forty pilots. More than 300 served in the Commandos and 4,000 in the Jewish Brigade in action in Italy. The British estimate Haganah’s active membership at anywhere from 60,000 to 80,000. David Ben Gurion’s war diary notes that at every stage of the war Zionist troops outnumbered combined Arab armies. The Arab armies where disorganized having little combat experience prior to this with the exception of some of the Jordanian forces. Most Arab soldiers were using outdated arms from WWI or earlier which were inferior to the Zionist armies WWII arms and artillery. But even though these are facts the New York Times told us back then, they don’t want to remind you about it now. It makes you wonder; do the people that write the New York Times read the New York Times? The depopulation of Palestine of its native inhabitants which took place from 1947-49 was commemorated this weekend and it was marked by Israel with the enforcement of ethnic cleansing. Palestinians seeking to return were shot down in the process . One reason that the Nakba is marked when the state of Israel was created is because the creation of this state meant that a political force would exist to enforce the exile of Palestinian refugees. 63 years later, we are reminded that that fear was very well founded. Ironically, I srael is complaining to the United Nations that states like Syria and Lebanon would allow Palestinian refugees to come back to their native lands even though it is the UN which in General Assembly Resolution 194 required Israel to do just that. |
Trucking creates an ecosystem of towns and businesses fed by the steady flow of human drivers who stop along their route for basic necessities. Scott Santens, a blogger about basic income and automation, wrote on Medium: Why trucking matters: The country was built on transportation. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.6 million long-haul truckers and 2.8 million truckers are in the workforce. The American Trucking Association estimates an additional 5.2 million people are employed by the trucking industry who aren’t drivers. That includes operations managers, sales personnel, repair staff and instructors. How to pay for such an outlandish idea? Tax the rich, particularly the truly rich. Our current tax brackets often fail to distinguish between someone who makes, say, $500,000 and $5 million. But this difference matters, as does the difference between $5 million and $50 million. To simplify things, let the Google and Nike and Narrative Sciences executives eliminate all the jobs they please, as long as their taxes support a guaranteed minimum income. However, in his book, author Charles Murray concedes that a mincome-like plan may not be realistic… yet. “I began this thought experiment by asking you to ignore that the Plan was politically impossible today,” he wrote. “I end proposing that something like the Plan is politically inevitable — not next year, but sometime.” Whether or not we do so consciously and intentionally, we are always making choices. Changing conditions means both new problems and new opportunities, and hence new potential choices. Don’t forget the alternative. We could always choose to live in a society with a mass population of a permanent underclass. Instead of something like a basic income, we could have increasing rates of poverty, welfare, ghettoization, crime, gangs, black markets, and imprisonment. That is the choice we are making at present by default. There is no indication that these problems are going to inevitably lessen through natural forces, market mechanisms, or somehow otherwise solve themselves. The problem for Americans has never been laziness. If anything, we’ve been obsessed with work to an unhealthy degree. America is the land of the Protestant work ethic. The question is how do we turn this drive to work toward ends that are economically sustainable, socially beneficial, personally satisfying, and politically liberating. How do we increase opportunities and access for people to have better lives, for themselves, their families, and their communities? Even during this time of increasing unemployment/underemployment and economic inequality, the economy is growing. The problem is obviously not a lack of resources and productivity. Rather, it is an issue of what kind of society we want to live in, not just for some of us but for all of us. Anyway, there is never a lack of work that could be done. Most of the work people already do is unofficial and unpaid, from raising children to community-building, from church activities to volunteerism, along with endless other wanted and unwanted activities that whittle away one’s time. Having more freedom and leisure could mean more time spent with family, community, and church; more time growing fresh fruits and vegetables and cooking healthy meals; more time building social capital, participating in democracy, and implementing social innovations; even more time to seek education and training to find better and more satisfying employment. As many realize, our present economic situation isn’t stable or necessarily even sustainable. We too often forget that this arrangement of capitalist employment is only a few centuries old, feudalism having had just come to an end as the US was being founded (and slavery extending feudal-like conditions well into the capitalist era). Traditional forms of economics existed for millennia prior to modern economics. Even within recent centuries, capitalism has changed drastically. Further changes are inevitable. We will have to deal with this, one way or another. The loss of jobs through better technology and more efficient markets could be seen as a sad fate, but it could also be seen as an opportunity to build a new kind of society. A basic income obviously goes much further than present mainstream solutions. It turns a probing eye toward how public resources get allocated in the first place. It pushes the debate back to first principles and it questions upon what basis should our economy be built (not just the basis of politics and markets, but also that of the social values and moral vision). Also, it puts public costs and benefits squarely in the realm of public decisions to be made, not shifting the responsibility to private employers. A basic income could be designed in many ways, but it doesn’t even require an increase of taxes or any other form of altering the cost equation in the private sphere. It could be fully financed either through a redirecting of present welfare funds or through ensuring the economic value of natural resources is used toward this public good (or a combination of the two). I’m sure that diverse other funding possibilities are available as well. This line of thought could explain why a basic income has gained support from across the political spectrum. Even many libertarians are getting on board, as they see it as an attractive and viable alternative to a growing welfare state and the bureaucracy that goes along with it. Also, many people in general see as a failure such things as the call for raising the minimum wage, either a failure on practical grounds or a failure of imagination. A minimum wage just shifts the costs around, but it doesn’t alter the fundamental conditions and solve the fundamental problem. Sometimes shifting costs around is a necessary evil, as someone has to pay the costs (both financial and social), and at least the minimum wage is an acknowledgement of the problem itself, but maybe we should look to the systemic causes that go beyond any particular segment of the economy, even if one thinks raising the minimum wage is a partial or temporary solution. Basic income can exist with or without a minimum wage, for if the basic income is high enough a minimum wage simply becomes irrelevant and so would become useless as a political football. The point is: What end is work supposed to serve, if and when it no longer serves a market purpose? Real work or not, the government as an employer of last could end up being more expensive than present welfare and almost certainly would be more expensive than a basic income. How much would be willing to pay for employment for its own sake? One solution made popular came from the Progressive Era. Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed everyone had the right to work, with government as the employer of last resort. This was understandable during a time of growing industrialization. It makes less sense under present conditions. Neither the job market or welfare is keeping up with the economic problems facing so many Americans. If real work isn’t available, creating pointless busy work doesn’t seem all that productive or inspiring of a solution, not to argue that public service can’t be a worthy form of work. The implementation of a basic income is a way of evening out of the playing field that has, through past political policies (along with plutocratic maneuverings), been intentionally or unintentionally made uneven. A basic income doesn’t eliminate the faux meritocracy and rigid socioeconomic hierarchy, but it does lessen the sting of the harshest consequences. The challenge posed becomes an ever more present problem as increases are seen with the mechanization of jobs and the related rates of unemployment and underemployment. Average wages have been stagnating, median wages have been decreasing, buying power for basic goods has taken a hit, economic mobility has fallen, the middle class is shrinking, economic inequality is growing, and on and on. An entire permanent underclass is forming in this new economy. Americans, in particular, have ignored these realities. We could do so, for in the early centuries of our country, Americans could fool themselves into thinking that land and natural resources were practically infinite. The government’s giving away of the Commons for free or below-market value seemed like a necessary incentive for growth, not a theft from the public good. In recent generations, this privatization of gains and externalization or rather socialization of costs has become more difficult to ignore. All wealth originates from land. The reason for this is because everything procured and made comes from natural resources, including human lives and communities (a close, entangled relationship existing between natural capital, economic capital, and social capital). All natural resources were public before they were private. All private gains made from natural resources is at least in part wealth removed not just from the public domain but also from future generations. This a touchy issue for Americans, as our country was founded on the notion of consent of the governed, which was understood by the founders to mean that one generation of citizens shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions for and force costs upon future generations of citizens. It’s the worst form of externalization, for those future generations don’t necessarily even get any of the benefits for what they end up paying. Later American thinkers such as the 19th century Henry George had related ideas. Like Paine, he supported free markets and the private use of land. Also, like Paine, he saw land taxes as a way of dealing with the social problems related to the loss of access to land and its value. In the form of a citizen’s dividend, it goes back to Thomas Paine through his recognition of the significance of the loss of the Commons to the average person. The founders understood the value of land and having access to it, and they realized it was upon land that economies and lives were built. The early government lacked an income tax for the reason the federal government was able to gain so much money from the sale and taxation of land. Paine’s insight was that financial gain from public resources, especially when given away and privatized, should be shared to some minimal degree with the citizens that the government constitutionally represents. The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty. The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking. “Those working in these restaurants and motels along truck-driving routes are also consumers within their own local economies. Think about what a server spends her paycheck and tips on in her own community, and what a motel maid spends from her earnings into the same community. That spending creates other paychecks in turn. So now we’re not only talking about millions more who depend on those who depend on truck drivers, but we’re also talking about entire small town communities full of people who depend on all of the above in more rural areas. With any amount of reduced consumer spending, these local economies will shrink.” Those truckers are like nutrients moving along the roots and outer branches of the middle American tree — and when robots don’t need to pull over to spend their money at rest stops, each of those secondary services loses its viability. According to independent research reports as recent as May, the truck stop and convenience store business alone is a $450 billion industry. If self-driving trucks take over the roads, that puts 70% of the nation’s freight shipping in the hands of capable robots. That is, if the trucks of the future are all they’re cracked up to be. Will self-driving trucks actually take over the industry? Detractors say the change toward automation will happen so gradually that the industry won’t be irreparably disrupted. Bloomberg economy columnist Megan McArdle argues: “Overall, I think Santens is right that eventually, we’ll solve the problems and self-driving trucks will displace a lot of drivers. That will be good news, because truck accidents are extremely deadly. But I expect the number of jobs lost will be smaller than he thinks, and the change will be slower. So while eventually a set of former drivers will have to figure out what to do with their freed time, that’s likely to be a problem for the next generation of truckers, not this one.” Martin Ford, author of a recent book on automation called Rise of the Robots, told Mic a number of other factors will prevent self-driving trucks from taking over. To start: They’re extraordinarily heavy objects to be moving around populated roads without drivers, and that any computer system is likely to have its security issues. “The technology might be there, but it’s going to take some time,” he said. Another argument against the rapid loss of jobs is the concept that, like dozens of industrial transformations in human history, this change will create other kinds of jobs, like maintaining the automated trucks. But Santens disagrees. “When we mechanized farming, we transitioned to services — but now we’ve hit this part where instead of automating muscle power, we’re automating brain power,” Santens told Mic. “Suddenly, all this work we’ve been shifted to is automatable. There’s a belief there will be all these new jobs. And yes, there will be some, but not the millions on millions that will be lost.” Trucking in the U.S. was a stable, reliable source of income for millions of Americans. But now, as the sector explodes with new job opportunities in the short term, driver pay is also at a decadelong low. But self-driving trucks are arriving soon. Even if, as McArdle argues, this is far enough off in the future that only the next generation of truckers will be affected, we’ll need to find many of those drivers new job opportunities. Jobs that can’t be immediately automated — a classification of career that’s becoming smaller and smaller in scope. Basic income paid to the poor can transform lives The main conclusion is that a basic income can be transformative. It had four effects, most accentuated by the presence of the collective body. First, it had strong welfare, or “capability”, effects. There were improvements in child nutrition, child and adult health, schooling attendance and performance, sanitation, economic activity and earned incomes, and the socio-economic status of women, the elderly and the disabled. Second, it had strong equity effects. It resulted in bigger improvements for scheduled caste and tribal households, and for all vulnerable groups, notably those with disabilities and frailties. This was partly because the basic income was paid to each individual, strengthening their bargaining position in the household and community. Third, it had growth effects. Contrary to what sceptics predicted (including Sonia Gandhi), the basic incomes resulted in more economic activity and work. Conventional labour statistics would have picked that up inadequately. There was a big increase in secondary economic activities, as well as a shift from casual wage labour to own-account farming and small-scale business. Growth in village economies is often ignored. It should not be. Fourth, it had emancipatory effects. These are unappreciated by orthodox development thinkers. The poor’s liberty has no value. But the basic income resulted in some families buying themselves out of debt bondage, others paying down exorbitant debts incurring horrendous interest rates. For many, it provided liquidity with which to respond to shocks and hazards. In effect, the basic income responded to the fact that in such villages money is a scarce commodity, and as such that has driven up its price, locking most in a perpetual cycle of debt and deprivation. A bipartisan proposal to make a universal basic income a reality in America Universal Basic Income: Something We Can All Agree on? A Universal Basic Income Is The Bipartisan Solution To Poverty We’ve Been Waiting For But would it actually work? The evidence from actual experiments is limited, though it’s more positive than not. A pilot in the 1970s in Manitoba, Canada, showed that a “Mincome” not only ended poverty but also reduced hospital visits and raised high-school completion rates. There seemed to be a community-affirming effect, which showed itself in people making use of free public services more responsibly. Meanwhile, there were eight “negative income tax” trials in the U.S. in the ’70s, where people received payments and the government clawed back most of it in taxes based on your other income. The results for those trials was more mixed. They reduced poverty, but people also worked slightly less than normal. To some, this is the major drawback of basic income: it could make people lazier than they would otherwise be. That would certainly be a problem, though it’s questionable whether, in the future, there will be as much employment anyway. The age of robots and artificial intelligence seems likely to hollow out many jobs, perhaps changing how we view notions of laziness and productivity altogether. Experiments outside the U.S. have been more encouraging. One in Namibia cut poverty from 76% to 37%, increased non-subsidized incomes, raised education and health standards, and cut crime levels. Another involving 6,000 people in India paid people $7 month—about a third of subsistence levels. It, too, proved successful. “The important thing is to create a floor on which people can start building some security. If the economic situation allows, you can gradually increase the income to where it meets subsistence,” says Guy Standing, a professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, in London, who was involved with the pilot. “Even that modest amount had incredible effects on people’s savings, economic status, health, in children going to school, in the acquisition of items like school shoes, so people felt in control of their lives. The amount of work people were doing increased as well.” Given the gridlock in Congress, it’s unlikely we’ll see basic income here for a while. Though the idea has supporters in both left and right-leaning think-tanks, it’s doubtful actual politicians could agree to redesign much of the federal government if they can’t agree on much else. But the idea could take off in poorer countries that have more of a blank slate and suffer from less polarization. Perhaps we’ll re-import the concept one day once the developing world has perfected it? From basic income to social dividends: sharing the value of common resources Rethinking basic income in a sharing society This model of economic sharing recognizes that all citizens have a right to income from the commons—such as land and other resources that are either inherited or co-created by society. Although this approach is rarely part of the popular discourse on implementing a citizen’s income scheme, the idea can be traced back to the work of the American revolutionary Thomas Paine, who stated that “the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race.” As explained by Peter Barnes in his book With Liberty and Dividends for All, the majority of the wealth that’s inherited or created in society is captured and extracted by the rich, rather than distributed fairly among citizens. Meanwhile, the damaging social and environmental costs of this process are largely borne by the public or the biosphere. The simple idea at the heart of most proposals for a social dividend is therefore to charge user fees on shared resources, which can then be distributed to all citizens as a basic right. Although an agency would initially have to be set up by governments to administer the program, it would operate independently of the private and public sector as a ‘commons trust’ that could conceivably manage a range of shared resources—from land, fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon storage, to the electromagnetic spectrum and intellectual property. According to calculations by Barnes based only on a specific selection of shared assets, the program could provide every American citizen with as much as $5,000 a year. The real advantage of a social dividend from resource rents is that it would facilitate, rather than impede, the creation of a more equal society that embodies the ethic and practice of sharing. Unlike the standard basic income proposal, this alternative approach would not compete with existing welfare budgets, and it would therefore complement solidarity-based systems of social protection. The social dividend also acknowledges that all citizens are entitled to a fair share of co-owned wealth and resources, which is a commonsense proposal with the potential to dramatically reform economic systems and enhance social cohesion. Since the value of common resources would be shared more equitably, social dividends present an important systemic solution to poverty that can counterbalance the injustice of a global economic model in which wealth predominantly flows to the richest one per cent of the world’s population. In line with some of the common arguments made in favor of a basic income, social dividends would also increase our sense of personal freedom, since people would no longer feel forced to do menial or difficult jobs that they would otherwise undertake reluctantly or for reasons of survival. This would leave them free to devote more time to creative, cultural and caring pursuits, sparking a much-needed debate on the nature and purpose of work at a time when the escalating environmental crisis necessitates a radically new economic model that is no longer predicated on consumption-driven economic growth. Furthermore, social dividends could have a transformative impact on individuals and communities, which could pave the way for more extensive changes across society. The additional income received by individuals could help sustain the indispensable unpaid activities that take place in the core economy by giving people the freedom to act on their inner desires to give or be of real service to others. This includes raising children and caring for the elderly, maintaining community relationships and mutual support networks, and participating in voluntary action and civil society organizations. According to Edgar Cahn, the core economy produces “love and caring, coming to each other’s rescue, democracy and social justice”, which is why there is a clear imperative to rebuild and strengthen this fundamental aspect of society that is increasingly under assault. The profound relationship between genuine compassion and the creation of a more equal world was also vividly expressed by Martin Luther King, who once declared that “Standing beside love is always justice.” Embodied in these insights is the hope that strengthening the bonds of love, empathy and reciprocity within communities could spark a cultural shift in favor of social justice, and that this could eventually find expression in democratic institutions and policy debates. By helping to resuscitate a rapidly diminishing core economy, a basic income derived from the value of collectively owned resources could therefore empower citizens to take a crucial first step in the co-creation of a truly sharing society. The Aquarian Agrarian: Conservatives for Georgism and a Social Market Economy The Conservative Case for a Guaranteed Basic Income Why reform conservatives should embrace a universal basic income While Ryan’s expansion of the EITC is a good idea, it can’t address the bargaining power issue because getting the EITC is dependent on getting a job. So, like much of the rest of America’s social safety net, it can’t be used as leverage against an employer. Only a non-market wage of some sort can. By providing a little financial breathing room, a UBI would combat labor market slack and let more workers say “no” to jobs that don’t come with decent pay and sane schedules. Unfortunately, this is also what makes reformocons nervous about a UBI, since they rightly recognize the profound human damage that’s done — to both individuals and communities — when people detach from the work force. Jim Manzi and Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry have pointed to U.S. experiments with a negative income tax (NTI) — a close policy cousin to the UBI — that showed a drop in work effort of roughly 13 percent. However, the reduction wasn’t from people giving up on finding work entirely, but from people simply waiting longer during spells before taking another job — a crucial distinction. Most of them were mothers who chose to spend more time caring for their children, or young people who spent more time accumulating an education. A similar experiment in Canada around the same time found the same result. People weren’t “listing away in socially destructive idleness” as Gobry put it; they were simply contributing to the social fabric in ways not recognized by the market. And even when it’s not parents or teenagers waiting longer to get a job, these would-be workers could very well be holding out because they’re waiting for a better deal — enforcing exactly the kind of market discipline on employers that results in better wages and treatment. All unemployment is not created equal, and reformocons should not fear the UBI on this score. In fact, reform conservatives should embrace the UBI’s modest reductions of work effort. One of the reformocons’ primary concerns is for the “mediating institutions” of civil society; the families, neighborhoods, churches, community groups, charities and so on that make up the fabric of American social life. Perceptive conservatives like Patrick Deneen have long realized that it’s not just the state — reformocons’ typical bête noire — that threatens civil society, but the market as well. Ross Douthat, another reformocon, recently worried that “both capitalism and the welfare state tend to weaken forms of solidarity that give meaning to life for many people, while offering nothing but money in their place.” When we are dependent solely on the job market for our income, a tyranny of need sets in: We must go where the job market dictates, when it dictates, and do as its vagaries determine. That’s why the closing of a factory can decimate a town, and why a layoff can ruin a marriage. The time and energy we pour into work is time and energy we cannot give to our children, our spouses, our community gardens, our church bible studies, our hobbies and talents, or to our bowling leagues. The job market can poison and rend the social fabric as easily as bolster it. But by rolling back the ubiquity of the market, while minimizing the government’s bureaucratic footprint (it requires minimal administrative overhead to send people checks), a UBI would thread the needle between the market and the state. Pethokoukis has also worried that we’re headed toward a future where automation really does begin reducing the supply of jobs, or where the economy’s ability to deliver more corporate profits while employing fewer people becomes permanent. In that case, a UBI would also shift us away from the current situation, where total dependency on the job market means the most vulnerable Americans are the last to enjoy the benefits of increased productivity, but the first ones to be squeezed out of the labor force when another threshold of efficiency is reached. If the economy is learning to do more with less, then the ideal would be a world where attachment to the labor force remains high, but everyone just works fewer hours — essentially the opposite of what we have now. By equitably distributing some of those productivity gains, a UBI would make such a world a bit more likely. By giving all Americans at least a little income that is not dependent on the whims of the market, a UBI would allow workers more pro-active control over when and why they do or do not engage with the job market. It would open up more time and space for people to participate in those mediating institutions, becoming a de facto investment in the health of America’s civil society. In fact, the investment could very well be literal; any UBI — but especially one financed by tax deduction closures and military spending cuts — would be a massive distribution of income down the income ladder, and most social data suggests the poor and working class contribute more of their income to their churches, communities, and local charities than do the rich. Poverty: The argument for a basic income (Opinion) – CNN.com This tidy, egalitarian concept isn’t new, and its support isn’t limited to the radical political left. Dig through the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s little discussed book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community,” published in 1967, the year before his assassination, and you’ll find an endorsement: “I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective. The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.” Milton Friedman, the Nobel-prize winning economist who was an adviser to conservatives Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, also supported a variation of the idea. The basic income continues to have a diverse set of supporters — left, right and libertarian. They like the concept for different reasons, said Matt Bruenig, a writer and policy analyst for Demos. Those on the left tend to like it because it’s egalitarian. It helps give everyone an equal (or more equal) shot at success in our capitalist society. Some libertarians and right-wingers support the concept, meanwhile, because they see it as a way to whittle away at government bureaucracy. Some would have the basic income replace many existing social safety net programs. There’s also a conservative philosophy underlying all of this: Give people money and they, not the government, know best how to spend it. They know what they need. The feds do not. Basic Income: From Paine to MLK; a solution to Welfare and Poverty? Three Problems for Libertarian Supporters of a Basic Income August 2014: The Basic Income and the Welfare State Libertarians Debate Basic Income Guarantee It might not be ideal—certainly “no libertarian would wish for a BIG as an addition to the currently existing welfare state,” writes Zwolinski. “But what about as a replacement for it?” He argues that the BIG would amount to less bureaucracy, less expense, “less rent-seeking”, and less paternalism. Will a guaranteed basic income replace welfare? | Deseret News National One of the strangest aspects of basic income proposals, which Matthews handles at length, is that there is substantial support for it from both ideological extremes. On the conservative side, for example, libertarian political philosopher Matt Zwolinski joined the likes of economists Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith when he argued last year that such a policy could potentially simplify the current federal bureaucracy, lower costs and provide greater protections to individual privacy. “In Libertarian Utopia, we might not have any welfare state all, no matter how limited or efficient,” he argued. But, he continued, “the question is not whether a GBI is a perfectly libertarian policy in every way, but whether it is more libertarian than the other realistically available policy alternatives.” On the liberal side, many have noted that Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for similar measures, as did philosopher Bertrand Russell. “In a GBI (guaranteed basic income) world, an employer has to make work somehow appealing enough to get employees even though everyone’s guaranteed a basic minimum whether they work or not,” Matthew Yglesias wrote in Slate in 2013 (Yglesias is now an editor at Vox). “But that ‘appealing’ factor could be high wages, could be valuable skills and training, could just be a pleasant work atmosphere,” Yglesias added. “Or (it) could be some combination of the three.” Though there have been proposals in the past for some form of a basic income, most notably from the Nixon administration, most pundits, including Matthews, aren’t optimistic that such a major change to the American welfare system could come any time soon. Still, they argue, it’s at least worth a look. Basic minimum income is a BRILLIANT idea. Small problem: it doesn’t work as planned It should be fairly obvious that the other group of people who support this idea, us over on the very free market right, don’t necessarily support it for the same reasons. Yet it is true that this is where the other focus of support is. My own support comes from the incentives problem. I’m pretty much convinced that incentives matter to people – there would be little to be said about economics if this were not true. What you get, after tax and benefits withdrawal for your labour, is obviously an incentive that affects your willingness to labour. As the Budget points out every year (it’s one of those things it is supposed to detail each year) there’s several million people who face marginal tax and benefit rates of 70 per cent or more. There’s even a couple of hundred thousand over 100 per cent. By earning an extra pound or ten in a week they actually end up with less money in their pockets and have also had to work more to get less. You don’t have to entirely buy into a strict reading of Art Laffer’s famous Curve to believe that this is going to reduce the amount of extra work that these people are going to be willing to do. They’re thus stuck in a poverty trap; they work more and get less, therefore they won’t work harder and get over that hump into better territory. Please note the implication of this: yes, us free market right w(h)ingers really do think that hugely high marginal tax rates affect the poor just as they do the rich and that therefore we shouldn’t have them. So, from this point of view, just give everyone some amount of money per week, untaxed and not withdrawn as incomes rise and those poor will face hugely lower marginal tax rates. It’ll thus leave room for the incentives for people to slowly improve their situations through extra work, better work, experience, education and so on. We have, we hope, solved the poverty trap caused by the current tax and welfare system. This is largely the argument that Charles Murray (yes, he of the Bell Curve) used in his book on the subject, “In Our Hands”. The collision between tax rates and benefit withdrawal rates is such that we’d be better off just giving everyone some cash and letting them get on with it. If that means they go to the beach all their lives so what? It’ll be a minority that do and we’ll all still be better off. The problem really boils down to us asking, what is the definition of “basic” that we’re using here? There’s some who want to call for a universal income: something like the UK’s living wage of £15,000 a year or so. Without taxing the economy into oblivion, that’s just not going to happen. Murray’s worked out that the US, a much richer place, could afford about $10,000 a year per adult. But do note that that replaces everything else: the entire welfare state, including old age pensions (or Social Security as the colonials call it) disappears into that one $10,000 per adult payment. The Green Party is talking about £75 a week or so, which is pretty minimalist for even the word “basic”. The assumption seems to be that we’ll all eat off our own potato patches. Despite how that they’re not very good at explaining where the money will come from, the answer is obvious: it’s folding large pieces of that welfare state into making that payment. Dillow and I seem to think that something around the level of the pension guarantee could be done: £130 a week. But at that point you really have stripped absolutely everything out of the welfare state to pay for it. Pensions, tax credits, personal allowances for tax and so on all disappear into the gaping financial maw of said universal basic income. And we think that all would be better off in such a system. Money for nothing: Mincome experiment could pay dividends 40 years on | Al Jazeera America For those on the left, basic income represents a chance to strengthen the social safety net and more evenly redistribute wealth, while some American libertarians view it as a way to cut back on bureaucracy and provide individuals with greater personal choice. There’s disagreement, however, on whether there would be accompanying tax hikes and whether other social programs would remain in place. Karl Widerquist, an academic and vocal supporter of basic income, suggested its rising popularity in the U.S. springs from concern over income inequality spurred by the Great Recession. “It’s really incredible how much it’s grown so fast, and there’s no telling where it will go,” he said. The Dauphin experiment, like four others in the United States around the same time, was an attempt to measure if providing extra money directly to residents below a certain household income would be effective social policy. Dauphin was unique among those studies in that all residents of the municipality and surrounding area, with a population of about 10,000, were eligible to participate if they met the criteria. For those who didn’t qualify for support under traditional welfare schemes, such as those for the elderly and the working poor, Mincome meant a significant increase in income. Low-wage earners had their incomes topped up. Richardson, for instance, recalls collecting about 30 Canadian dollars some months. That’s the equivalent of about CA$145 today (US$133). The experiment produced a trove of data, but the results were never released. After changes at the federal and provincial government levels, the program was shut down without a final report or any analysis. Decades after the program ended, sociology professor Evelyn Forget dug up records from the period and found there were far-reaching benefits in the education and health sectors. In a 2011 study she reported an 8.5 percent drop in hospital visits, a decrease in emergency room visits from car accidents and fewer recorded instances of domestic abuse. There was also a reduction in the number of people who sought treatment for mental health issues. And a greater proportion of high school students continued to the 12th grade. As with U.S. experiments during the same period, there was no evidence that it led people to withdraw from the labor market, according to her research. “It’s surprising to find that it actually works, that people don’t quit their jobs,” said Forget, a University of Manitoba professor. “There’s this fear that if we have too much freedom, we might misuse it.” What happens to kids when you give families a universal basic income? | JSTOR Daily In a 2010 paper, a team of researchers looked at how the payments, which started in 1997, affected children. They determined that the payments increased the likelihood that kids would graduate from high school and reduced the chances that they would get involved in criminal activity. That was particularly true for the town’s poorest children. For those kids, an extra $4,000 in annual household income added up to an additional year of education and a 22 percent reduction in the chance of committing a minor crime at ages 16 or 17. How does giving families money help kids? The researchers found at least part of the explanation seems to be that adults who received the payments were able to be more effective parents. They were less likely to commit crimes and more likely to know where their kids were and what they were doing. Children in families receiving the payments also reported a higher number of positive interactions with their mothers (though there was no statistically significant effect here when it came to fathers). The authors suggest that getting a bit more money reduces stress and other mental health problems related to poverty. (Parents receiving the payments didn’t work any less, so the change was not about simply spending more time with their kids.) The fact that a simple transfer of money could produce this kind of change provides an interesting corrective to the frequent focus on supposedly deep-seated cultural differences to explain class differences among children. Lessons from Mincome: How a Basic Income Would Improve Health A Canadian City Once Eliminated Poverty And Nearly Everyone Forgot Two years before the Harper government shut down its operations, the National Council of Welfare released a damning report criticizing how welfare rules are trapping people in poverty. “Canada’s welfare system is a box with a tight lid. Those in need must essentially first become destitute before they qualify for temporary assistance,” said TD Bank’s former chief economist Don Drummond after the social agency’s report was released in 2010. “But the record shows once you become destitute you tend to stay in that state. You have no means to absorb setbacks in income or unexpected costs. You can’t afford to move to where jobs might be or upgrade your skills.” Former Conservative senator Hugh Segal is a longtime proponent of a guaranteed annual income policy. He believes the program could save provinces millions in social assistance spending on programs like welfare. Instead of being forced through the welfare system, people’s eligibility would be assessed and reassessed with every income tax filing. Those who don’t make above the low-income cut-off in their area would be automatically topped up, similar to Mincome in Dauphin. [ . . . ] “I would think it’s fair to say ideologically, the present government would eye the notion that this is some ‘kooky left-wing scheme’ without addressing the fact that really strong social and economic conservatives like Milton Friedman argued in favour of a negative income tax,” he said. In Canada, the idea of an universal basic income was first presented at a Progressive Conservative policy convention in October of 1969. Then-leader Robert Stanfield argued the idea would consolidate overlapping security programs and reduce bureaucracy. |
A fire Thursday morning burned briefly during construction work inside a historic 10-story downtown Minneapolis building, where two workers escaped to the roof and were soon brought down to safety. No injuries were reported. The blaze started around 7:30 a.m. on the eighth floor of the 106-year-old Ceresota Building at 512 2nd St. S., according to the Fire Department. Firefighters quickly brought the fire under control, tended to hot spots and ventilated the building of smoke before pulling out, the department said. The two workers escaped and were safely removed from the roof once the smoke sufficiently cleared, the Fire Department said. The building, not far from the Stone Arch Bridge that crosses the Mississippi River, is in transition from office space to 68 residences designed for seniors, said Jay Dworsky, one of its owners. Dworsky said the two iron workers were welding on the eighth-floor solarium and “they sparked some insulation, and we had a fire. … The eighth floor is a black mess, and the floors below are just waterlogged.” Despite the damage, Dworsky termed the blaze as “a minor setback” to the project’s progress and expects the building to open in next spring or summer. Fortunately, he added, “this building is made out of steel and concrete. There is no wood at all in this.” Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482 |
DC Comics solicitations for January 2014 reveal that Green Teem: Teen Trillionaires has been cancelled with its final issue, #. But also missing from the solicitations are justice league Of America’s Vibe and Katana, last solicited in December. In January… No mention. Could this be a Marvel stealth-style cancellation? I only ask because originally six issues long, the first trade paperback collections for Justice League’s Vibe and Katana have recently swelled in size and been rescheduled for June and August next year. Vibe now has 220 pages and Katana now has 240 pages, which could accommodate around ten or eleven issues. It’s often a sign that a comic has been cancelled but the publisher wants to collect all the issues in book form, by adding them to an existing solicited book. Here’s the solicits for the final issue of Green Team… THE GREEN TEAM: TEEN TRILLIONAIRES #8 Written by ART BALTAZAR and FRANCO Art by IG GUARA Cover by IG GUARA and J.P. MAYER On sale JANUARY 29 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T • FINAL ISSUE Through thick and thin, the Green Team has endured more pain and suffering than any teen trillionaire can withstand. Will this final issue be their breaking point? About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist. (Last Updated ) Related Posts None found |
.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — She’s a former CNN anchor and a black belt. He served in the U.S. Army, is a national security strategist and former CNN reporter. Both reportedly have concealed weapons permits. On Tuesday, one of the weapons they carry was put to use. The couple were staying at a Motel 6 in Northwest Albuquerque on Tuesday while on a cross-country trip to California. Shots were fired, and a man ended up dead in the motel parking lot. ADVERTISEMENTSkip Police haven’t provided details of their investigation into the shooting. But Lynne Russell, the former CNN anchor, said she and her husband, Chuck de Caro, were held at gunpoint by a man who tried to rob them before bullets started flying. Russell, who graduated from Manzano High School, said they stopped at the Motel 6 near Coors and Iliff because they were too tired to continue traveling that night. When she went to get something from her car, a man pointed a gun at her and forced her back into the couple’s room. De Caro was in the shower, and when he came out he saw the offender had forced her against the bed, she said. Russell said she and de Caro tried to talk to the man in an attempt to calm him down, and he told them his girlfriend had been kidnapped and he needed money or valuables. Russell said she tried to give the man medication, but he didn’t take it. Russell said both she and de Caro have concealed weapons permits and had put two guns in the bedside table. Russell was able to slide one of them into her purse and handed the purse to de Caro. She said she and de Caro continued to try to find items the intruder might want until the man saw de Caro’s briefcase. When the intruder demanded the briefcase, de Caro told him there was nothing valuable in it. The intruder got upset that de Caro wasn’t giving him the briefcase and opened fire, she said. De Caro, who had the gun from Russell’s purse, returned fire. Russell said that de Caro fired six shots and that when he was finished the intruder was still firing. The intruder died in the parking lot, she said. “It was a shootout,” she said. “When Chuck exhausted the weapon, he was bleeding profusely.” De Caro was hit three times – in the abdomen, the leg and lower abdomen. Russell said she had to dive behind a piece of furniture to avoid being hit. De Caro was taken to University of New Mexico Hospital and is expected to survive. He will be there about a week, Russell said. Police have not named the suspect. UPDATE: Police ID intruder (july 13, 2015) ADVERTISEMENTSkip Russell said the suspect was a thin, black man wearing green and white. He was agitated and seemed desperate, she said. “I knew he wouldn’t mind shooting us,” Russell said. She said they tried to negotiate with the suspect for a long time before it escalated. “You really don’t want to shoot someone,” she said. Albuquerque Police Department officer Tanner Tixier said police were called to the motel around 11:30 p.m., and when they arrived, they found a man dead in the parking lot. Tixier said detectives believe the suspect was armed when he confronted de Caro and Russell. ADVERTISEMENTSkip “The male victim and suspect exchanged gunfire,” Tixier said. “Initial investigation shows both males fired multiple rounds and both sustained gunshot wounds.” When asked, Tixier said he didn’t know of any physical evidence that contradicts Russell’s account but said detectives haven’t confirmed all those details. Mick Chenault, who was spending the night at the motel on his way from Phoenix to St. Louis, said he saw police lights around 12:30 a.m. and went outside. He said he saw a man who looked like he was shot in the head lying in the parking lot directly below his motel room. His travel partner Jason Hill said the dead man appeared to be African-American and was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Hill said he has stayed at the motel in the past and likely will again. “This stuff happens everywhere, I guess,” Hill said. ADVERTISEMENTSkip Russell, who is credited with being the first woman to solo anchor a prime-time newscast, said she and de Caro hadn’t planned to stay overnight in Albuquerque. She said de Caro was calm and collected during the attempted robbery. “He’s my hero,” Russell said. |
It's a cheeseburger that's good for you because it's a salad! I mean, salad is ok, but it's not very filling. Cheeseburgers are good, but they're not very healthy. What's a person to do?! The answer, once considered, is obvious. Marry the best of both worlds with this ultimate cheeseburger salad - the best thing to happen to salad since croutons and Baco-s* bacon bits. This recipe came about as a result of creating the Hamburger guide. I was joking with Randofo about what I could contribute to it, and decided on a cheeseburger salad. Not a salad with cheese and hamburger, a la taco salad, but a salad with tiny islands of crouton-like cheeeburgers. I did not know Rachel Ray had done it first. She is obviously a genius, and I'm pleased that we have the same ideas about food. But there's nothing as frustrating as finding out your idea was scooped. . . two years before you thought of it. My recipe was only slightly different, but this is my Instructable, so you're getting that one, and I hope you enjoy the technique pictures that Rachel Ray obviously does not love you enough to provide. *Bacon bits would take this salad to the extreme, and I can't believe I didn't think about it until now. Bacon Cheeseburger Salad, please. Yes, thank you. |
The 1992 Chargers are the only team to start 0-4 and make the postseason since the NFL expanded the playoffs in 1990. The 2017 Chargers are looking to join the party. The '92 team won 11 of their final 12 games to cruise into the playoffs with first-year coach Bobby Ross. The '17 squad, with Anthony Lynn in his first season, won't have as pretty of a record, but following their 28-6 shellacking of the Dallas Cowboys, Los Angeles is right in the thick of the playoff hunt despite their disastrous start to the season. Quarterback Philip Rivers said after the Thanksgiving victory the current iteration is "close" to the 2006-2009 Chargers teams that won AFC West titles. "We are where we are, but I like where we are trending," Rivers said. "Each game is going to get bigger and bigger. But we've got a chance now, with the next two at home, to put ourselves in the mix. It will be fun in December if we do what we are supposed to do the next few weeks. We are right there, close to what we were in '06 to '09, when we had those opportunities. Then we start the season 0-4 right after I say that but we certainly are capable, but we've got a long way to go." When you look at talent and schedule, the Chargers appear to have the best shot of sneaking into the final AFC wild-card spot that is up for grabs. L.A. has home games against the Browns and Redskins, followed by trips to K.C and New York (Jets), and finishes up at home versus the Raiders. With Keenan Allen back to torturing defenses, Rivers slinging it around the park, and the best pass-rushing duo in the NFL -- Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram -- the Chargers are the most complete team racing for the last AFC postseason spot. The rest of the clubs have major flaws. The Baltimore Ravens currently sit in the playoffs at 5-5. The defense is studly, with three shutouts on the year, and they could carry them into the playoffs. Joe Flacco's offense, however, is painful to watch. Consider this: The Ravens shut out the Packers last week, but Green Bay somehow still had the better offense. That's how bad Baltimore has been on O. The Buffalo Bills (5-5) have been sieve on defense the past three weeks and are fumbling the quarterback situation. Oh, and they got slaughtered by the Chargers, who now own the tiebreaker. The 4-6 Miami Dolphins are the inverse of the Chargers. Miami has no business owning four wins. There is a decent argument the Dolphins among the five worst teams in the NFL. The New York Jets have scrapped their way to 4-6, but a painfully tough schedule sets them up to sink down the stretch. The Cincinnati Bengals haven't impressed on either side of the ball on their way to 4-6. The experience could keep them in the hunt but the offensive line woes are a major defect. The Oakland Raiders might be the most disappointing 4-6 team in the NFL and own one of the worst defensive units in the league. The Houston Texans (4-6) have been decimated by injury and are quarterbacked by Tom Savage. Looking at the landscape, L.A. is the team least-flawed team. Their biggest shortcoming, however, is a perpetual botching of golden opportunities. The Chargers have a path to the playoffs if they can do what they should down the stretch. But performing as expected has been their toughest challenge so far. |
The husband-and-wife team who headed the suicide bereavement charity Console relinquished their top-of-the-range company cars, credit cards, company records, a computer and keys yesterday after 10 days of turmoil over revelations of massive spending. The husband-and-wife team who headed the suicide bereavement charity Console relinquished their top-of-the-range company cars, credit cards, company records, a computer and keys yesterday after 10 days of turmoil over revelations of massive spending. Paul Kelly, who resigned as chief executive of Console, and his wife, Patricia, who was its chairperson and director, failed to show up for the handover, which took place in Bewleys Hotel, Ballsbridge shortly before 2pm yesterday. Console's interim CEO David Hall & Stephen Curtis checking the cars belonging to Paul Kelly & his wife Patricia from Console at Clayton Hotel today. Picture by Fergal Phillips Instead, solicitors for the couple arranged for the 2010 Audi Q5 used by Patricia Kelly and a 2009 Mercedes CLS driven by her husband to be collected from their home in Clane, Co Kildare, yesterday morning. The cars cost the charity more than €87,000. The high-end motors were driven to Bewleys Hotel, where David Hall, the charity's interim chief executive, took possession of them. Read more: Console scandal: Elaborate web of deceit of an 'untouchable' charity founder Read more: DJ Gareth O'Callaghan: 'Paul Kelly asked me to be Console CEO ... I'm sick from what I'm hearing' Console's interim CEO David Hall taking the cars belonging to Paul Kelly and his wife at Clayton Hotel today. Picture by Fergal Phillips He also collected a number of credit cards used by Paul and Patricia Kelly, and their son Tim, a computer, files, records and cheque books. After a week of silence, the Kellys made contact with David Hall through an intermediary on Friday night, the day after the High Court had ordered them to return Console's assets and prohibited them from interfering with the charity. Mr Hall confirmed that the cars had been taken to auction house, where they will remain for the immediate future. "I will be getting an inventory of what was returned and will be updating the High Court on Tuesday," he said. The Sunday Independent has also learned that: A draft HSE audit internal report, seen by this newspaper, reveals how Paul Kelly made three trips to Australia at the expense of Console in 16 months. His son Tim accompanied him on two of those trips, which took in Dubai, New Zealand and Singapore The HSE transferred €53,000 in state funds to the charity's bank account last month, despite concerns about its governance. When asked, David Hall confirmed that the funds were received by Console on Friday, June 24, the day after RTE Investigates highlighted serious financial concerns. The Department of Foreign Affairs is to send auditors to London this week to examine Console's UK books. The department paid grants of €130,000 to Console UK. A draft HSE internal audit report found that credit card bills for Paul, Patricia Kelly and Tim Kelly came close to €500,000 between 2012 and 2014. The charity received €1.3m in HSE funds in this period and a further €3.7m in public donations, fundraisers and other sources. Read more: Further investigations into Console charity bring to light transactions between its sister organisation in the UK, court hears Sunday Independent |
Opposition to Japan's whaling programme is a kind of "eco-imperialism" that imposes one value system on another and is based on emotion, not science - much the way killing elephants is now opposed, Japan's top whaling official said on Wednesday. Tokyo last week unveiled plans to resume whale hunting in the Southern Ocean in 2015-2015 despite an international court ruling that previous hunts were illegal, although it also slashed the quota for the so-called scientific whaling programme. Tension: Japan has come under fire for its whaling program in the past. Credit:Sea Shepherd Joji Morishita, Japan's commissioner to the International Whaling Commission, said the new proposal, which calls for taking 333 minke whales instead of 900, is Tokyo's latest attempt to pursue sustainable whaling according to scientific principles. "The whaling issue is seen as a symbol of a larger issue sometimes in Japan... You might have heard the word 'eco-imperialism'," Morishita told a news conference. |
As if we needed another sign of Xiaomi's skyrocketing growth, the Chinese smartphone maker says it's now the most highly valued technology startup in the world. Yes, it's even worth more than wunderkind Uber. Xiaomi announced that it raised a whopping $1.1 billion from investors, which pegged its valuation at $45 billion, slightly higher than Uber's $40 billion-plus value. For a company that didn't even exist before 2010, Xiaomi is on a roll: It was named the third-largest smartphone maker in the world earlier this year (which honestly makes it hard to think of it as a startup). And it's now focused on expansion efforts in India and Indonesia (scaling back plans to reach 10 more countries this year). It's no wonder why Xiaomi is popular in emerging markets -- its phones offer high-end specs and looks for a fraction of the price of other smartphones. While it has no plans to tackle the US or Europe yet (its next stop is Brazil next year), Xiaomi's unique strategy and massive funding could end up driving down smartphone prices everywhere. |
The Vietnamese Prime Minister has approved a plan to review the country’s legal framework for cryptocurrency. This action lays the foundation for Vietnam’s legal recognition of virtual currencies like bitcoin and Ether. This week, it was reported that Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc has tasked the Ministry of Justice with assessing the nation’s legal framework for cryptocurrency, and issuing a report by August 2018. ETHNews previously covered the Vietnamese government’s consideration of this plan. The Ministry of Justice will coordinate its evaluation with the State Bank of Vietnam, Ministry of Information and Communications, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Industry and Trade, and Ministry of Finance. Through this assessment, the Ministry of Justice will create proposals for legal standards and laws related to virtual property and virtual currency. According to Viet Nam News, by June 2019, the ministries must “finalize an application asking for the compilation of a legal framework on taxes for cryptocurrencies.” Additionally, the ministries must submit proposals for the prevention and resolution of related violations by September 2019. |
8 Lockerbie — A Parallel "The covert operators that I ran with would blow up a 747 with 300 people to kill one person. They are total sociopaths with no conscience whatsoever." — Former Pentagon CID Investigator Gene Wheaton On December 21, 1988, in the tiny town of Lockerbie, Scotland, 270 lives came to a traumatic and fiery end when Pan Am flight 103 was blown out of the skies. Two hundred and fifty-nine people plunged to their deaths, and 11 more died on the ground. Several minutes before flight 103 took off from London's Heathrow airport, FBI Assistant Director Oliver "Buck" Revell rushed out to the tarmac and pulled his son and daughter-in-law off the plane.[1001] How did he know? Perhaps Revell's intimate knowledge derived from his relationship with Lt. Colonel Oliver North. In March of 1986, North advised Attorney General Edwin Meese to head off the FBI's ensuing investigation into Iran-Contra. Meese informed Revell. Consequently, North managed to keep abreast of the FBI's investigation by conveniently receiving copies of all FBI files.[1002] Widely known for his inestimable and illegal support of the Contras, North (along with General Richard Secord and Iranian Albert Hakim) was a business associate of Syrian arms and drug runner Monzer al-Kassar. For his role in shipping Polish arms to North's mercenary army, al-Kassar became the recipient of North's undying gratitude [and laundered drug proceeds].[1003] Like so many criminals, drug-dealers, and mass-murderers the CIA had cozied up to over the years, al-Kassar enjoyed the highly valued status of CIA "asset." Al-Kassar was also closely aligned with Rifat Assad, brother of Syrian dictator Hafez Assad. Assad's daughter Raja was Kassar's mistress, and had once been married to Abu Abbas, a colleague of the notorious terrorist Abu Nidal. Rifat himself was married to the sister of Ali Issa Dubah, chief of Syrian intelligence, who, along with the Syrian army, controlled most of the opium production in Lebanon's Bekka Valley. The drug profits financed various terrorist groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), run by former Syrian army officer Ahmed Jibril.[1004] Al-Kassar also acted as middleman in the ransom paid by the French to effect the release of two hostages held in Beirut. Given his assistance in securing the release of those hostages, the CIA believed al-Kassar would prove invaluable in negotiating the release of the six American hostages then being held in Lebanon.[1005]* In return for this favor, al-Kassar's drug pipeline to the United States would be protected by the CIA. This would not prove difficult, as the DEA was already using Pan Am flights out of Frankfort, Germany for "controlled delivery" shipments of heroin. Realizing they couldn't halt the flow of drugs coming out of Lebanon, the DEA utilized the controlled shipments, escorted through customs by DEA couriers, as part of a sting operation, with the intention of catching the dealers in the U.S.[1006] Negotiation with individuals like Monzer al-Kassar had only one drawback: al-Kassar was closely linked, not only with the terrorist-sponsoring Syrian government, but with groups such Ahmed Jibril's PFLP-GC. Jibril, was also aligned with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which had a somewhat different agenda than al-Kassar. On July 3, 1988, less than six months before the Pan Am 103 bombing, the U.S.S. Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner over the Straits of Hormuz, killing all 290 people on board. Assuming the plane was a hostile craft, the captain of the Vincennes, Will Rodgers III, gave the command to fire. While the people of Iran grieved, the officer responsible for the fatal mistake was awarded a medal.[1007]† Under Islamic law, the crime had to be avenged. As Juval Aviv of Interfor stated in his report, "It was known at the time that the contract was out to down an American airliner." That contract — $10 million dollars — was given to Ahmed Jibril.[1008] Jibril had already established a base of operations in Neuss, Germany, not far from Frankfort. Central to his cell was one Marwan Abdel Razzack Khreeshat. Khreeshat's specialty was in building small, sophisticated bombs incorporating timing mechanisms capable of detonating at pre-determined altitudes. By mid-October 1988, Jibril was ready. Khreeshat had assembled five bombs, built into Toshiba radio-cassette players. However, the German police were watching Khreesat. On October 26, Khreesat and 14 other PFLP-GC suspects were rounded up in an operation code-named "Autumn Leaves." One of the bombs was seized. Yet four more remained at large. While in custody, Khreesat demanded to make a phone call, then refused to answer any questions. Within hours, he was mysteriously released.[1009] The incident is strikingly similar to the arrest of "neo-Nazi terrorist" Andreas Strassmeir on traffic charges in February of 1992. "Boy, we caught hell over that one," recalled tow-truck driver, Kenny Pence. "The phone calls came in from the State Department, the Governor's office, and someone called and said he had diplomatic immunity.…"[1010] Similar calls were made on behalf of Khreesat. Former CIA agent Oswald Le Winter, who investigated the case, stated, "…pressure had come from Bonn… from the U.S. Embassy in Bonn… to release Khreesat." It seems that both Strassmeir and Khreesat were operatives of U.S. intelligence. "I had spoken to a German reporter who refuses to go on camera," adds Le Winter, "but who is very close to federal intelligence sources in Germany, who assured me that Khreesat was an agent of the Jordanian service, and an asset of the Central Intelligence Agency."[1011] Given the close relationship between the Jordanians and the CIA, this is not surprising. Yet it appeared Khreesat wasn't only reporting to the Jordanians and the Americans; he was also reporting to Ahmed Jibril. Two months before the bombing, Jibril and al-Kassar were spotted by a Mossad agent dining at a Lebanese restaurant in Paris. Jibril was hoping to use al-Kassar's controlled drug shipments through Frankfort to effect the delivery of a bomb. The problem: how to protect the drug shipments while at the same time extract revenge on the Americans? Al-Kassar preferred the former option, but, due to political pressure, he grudgingly agreed to the latter. While a CIA team in Wiesbaden, code-named "COREA," was negotiating its secret deal with al-Kassar for release of the hostages (and protecting his drug route), a second team, led by Major Charles McKee of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and Matthew Gannon, the CIA's Deputy Station Chief in Beirut, had traveled to Lebanon to assess the odds for a military-style rescue operation.[1012] According to Aviv's report, McKee's team had, while reconnoitering for the release of the hostages, stumbled onto the first team's illegal drug operation. McKee refused to participate. When he and Gannon contacted their control in Washington, they received no reply. Against orders, they decided to fly home to blow the whistle. According to Aviv: They had communicated back to Langley the facts and names, and reported their film of the hostage locations. CIA did nothing. No reply. The team was outraged, believing that its rescue and their lives would be endangered by the double dealing. By mid-December the team became frustrated and angry and made plans to return to the U.S. with their photos and evidence to inform the government, and to publicize their findings if the government covered up. They never arrived. That night, Pan Am flight 103 was blown out of the skies. Was the death of McKee, Gannon, and five others on their team an unfortunate coincidence, or did someone want to ensure that they didn't reveal the carefully guarded secrets of the Octopus?[1013][1014] Given the ample and specific warnings received by the U.S. Government from the BKA, the Mossad, and a Palestinian informant named Samra Mahayoun, it would seem the latter.[1015]* Whatever the case, it is indisputable that U.S. authorities were warned of the attack, and failed to stop it. Was their failure deliberate? "Do I think the CIA was involved?" asked a government Mideast Intelligence specialist quoted in the financial weekly, Barron's. "Of course they were involved. And they screwed up. Was the operation planned by the top? Probably not. I doubt they sanctioned heroin importation — that came about at the more zealous lower levels. But they knew what was going on and didn't care." The expert added that his agency has "things that support Aviv's allegation, but we can't prove it. We have no smoking gun. And until the other agencies of the government open their doors, we will have no smoking gun." The Lockerbie bombing was not the first time authorities were warned in advance of a pending terrorist attack. The situation would repeat itself five years later in New York City, and seven years later in Oklahoma. It was an all too eerie coincidence. Typically, U.S. authorities disingeniously denied receiving any warnings, as they would later do in New York and Oklahoma. Yet, as in those cases, evidence of prior knowledge would eventually become known. "It subsequently came to me on further inquiries that they hadn't ignored [the warnings]," said a Pan Am security officer. "A number of VIPs were pulled off that plane. A number of intelligence operatives were pulled off that plane." Due to the warnings posted in U.S. embassies by the State Department (but not forwarded to Pan Am), many government employees avoided the flight. In fact, the large 747 was only two-thirds full that busy holiday evening. South African president Peter Botha and several high-ranking officials were advised by state security forces to change their reservations at the last hour. The South African State Security forces have a close relationship with the CIA.[1016] Just as they would do in Oklahoma, government officials promised a complete and thorough investigation. Stated Oliver "Buck" Revell, who headed up the Bureau's investigation: "All of us working on the case made it a very, very personal priority of the first order." Fronting for the CIA, Vince Cannistraro chimed in: "I had personal friends on that plane who died. And I assure you that I wanted to find the perpetrators of that disaster as much as anyone wanted to." As in Oklahoma City, this would become the catch-all phrase that would set everything right and prove the government had no involvement. Of course, this would be somewhat difficult in Revell's case, since he pulled his son and daughter-in-law off the plane minutes before it took off. (This was suspiciously reminiscent of the ATF agents who were paged not to come into work on April 19.) Interestingly, Revell was the FBI's lead investigator in the crash of an Arrow Air DC-8 which exploded on December 12, 1985 in Gander, Newfoundland, with the loss of all 248 personnel. As in Oklahoma City, that site was quickly bulldozed, destroying crucial forensic evidence, with an Army official maintaining a watchful eye at all times.[1017] Hiding behind the cover-up was the same cast of characters — Oliver North, Duane "Dewy" Clarridge, and Vince Cannistraro — who was North's deputy at the NSC during Iran-Contra, and would later appear in Lockerbie. The same cast of characters that lurked behind the scandals in Nicaragua and Iran, and would appear like ghostly apparitions in the smoldering ruins of Oklahoma City.[1018] It was also an act that the U.S. Shadow Government, responsible for precipitating, was anxious to cover up. Had the true cause of the crash — North's double-dealing with the Iranians — been revealed, the Iran-Contra scandal would have surfaced two years before it did. Oliver "Buck" Revell would be on hand to make sure it didn't. Three years later, in Lockerbie, the government was still claiming it's hands were clean. Yet it vigorously protested Pan Am's attempts to subpoena warning memos and other documents that would have revealed the government's foreknowledge, just as it did in Oklahoma. Simply stated, the attack on Pan Am 103 was in retaliation for the downing of the Iranian airbus. The reason for targeting Pan Am was simple: the airline was regularly used by al-Kassar's operatives to ferry drugs. It would be a simple matter to switch a suitcase containing drugs for one containing a bomb. That appears to be just what happened. According to Lester Knox Coleman, III, a former DIA agent in Cyprus seconded to the DEA: "I knew from the conversations around me in '88, that he (Lebanese drug courier Khalid Jaffar) was involved in the controlled deliveries. There's no doubt in my mind about that at all. When I found he was on 103 and was killed, and there was a controlled delivery going through at the time, and I knew the security problems the DEA had, and the relationships they had with the people in Lebanon, with the issues involving security, it was very simple for me to put one and one together and get the big two — that the DEA's operation had a role in all this."[1019] According to Juval Aviv, the drug suitcase was switched at Frankfort, where Turkish baggage handlers working for al-Kassar had been regularly switching bags for those containing heroin.[1020]* As the Interfor report stated: On December 21, 1988, a BKA surveillance agent watching the Pan Am flight's loading noticed that the "drug" suitcase substituted was different in make, shape, material and color from that used for all previous drug shipments. This one was a brown Samsonite case. He, like the other BKA agents on the scene, had been extra alert due to all the bomb tips. Within an hour or so before takeoff he phoned in a report as to what he had seen, saying something was very wrong.[1021] The BKA reported this to the CIA team in Wiesbaden, who, strangely, did not reply. According to Aviv, "[The CIA unit] reported to its control. CONTROL REPLIED: DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, DON'T STOP IT, LET IT GO." * Apparently, the CIA team "did not want to blow its surveillance operation and undercover penetration or to risk the al-Kassar hostage release operation," wrote Aviv. It seemed the CIA figured the BKA would intercept the terrorists, keeping the CIA out of the picture, thereby maintaining its cover. Yet this explanation hardly seems credible. The BKA had informed the CIA about the threat — a threat to one of its own planes. They also knew the Americans were running a sensitive undercover operation, and must have assumed the Americans would want to handle the situation themselves. Moreover, there is no indication that the CIA had instructed the BKA or any other German authorities to stop the bombing. The question is: why not? Certainly the CIA wouldn't blow its cover by asking the BKA to intercede, as they were already aware of the CIA/DEA operation. This raises even more disturbing questions. Had the CIA "control" in Washington, monitoring the situation, purposely allowed the bombing to occur? Was the McKee team, about to blow the whistle on the Octopus, specifically targeted for elimination? Had Middle Eastern terrorists knowingly or unknowingly conspired with the Octopus in eliminating a group of pesky whistle blowers?[1022]† Strangely, after the crash, large numbers of American "rescue" personnel began showing up rather quickly. As one searcher, a member of a mountain rescue team recalled: "We arrived within two hours [of the crash]. We found Americans already there."[1023] The first to appear was an FBI agent. According to George Stobbs, a Lockerbie police inspector, "[I] started to set up a control room, and [between] eleven o'clock and midnight, there was a member of the FBI in the office who came in, introduced herself to me, and sat down — and just sat there the rest of the night. That was it."[1024]* Was this so-called FBI agent there to observe the Scottish police's investigation, and report any conflicting findings back to her superiors? Tom Dalyell, a member of British Parliament, remarked: "…Absolutely swarms of Americans [were] fiddling with the bodies, and shall we say tampering with those things the police were carefully checking themselves. They weren't pretending, saying they were from the FBI or CIA, they were just 'Americans' who seemed to arrive very quickly on the scene." The scenario was eerily similar to that in Oklahoma City, where rescue workers and bomb squad technicians seemingly appeared out of thin air. Recall that Oklahoma City eyewitness Debra Burdick, who was near ground zero when the bomb went off, said: "And right after that, here comes the Bomb Squad, before the ambulances and the Fire Department." "They would have had to have had some kind of warning to respond that quick, said Burdick's husband, "because they would have had to get in their gear and everything."[1025] As mentioned previously, Burdick wasn't the only one who saw federal agents and rescue personnel arrive a bit too quickly. J.D. Reed, who was in the County Office Building when the bomb went off, later wrote: "The paramedics and firemen were already at work. How could they move so quickly? They were there by the time we got down to the street!"[1026] Then there was Sergeant Yeakey's ominous letter to his friend Ramona McDonald, which stated: "Everyone was behind you until you started asking questions as I did, as to how so many federal agents arrived at the scene at the same time.…" In Lockerbie, a number of American agents — some wearing Pan Am jumpsuits — were desperately searching for something. As Dalyell recalled: "It was… odd and strange that so many people should be involved in moving bodies, looking at luggage, who were not members of the investigating force. What were they looking for so carefully? You know, this was not just searching carefully for loved ones. It was far more than that. It was careful examination of luggage and indeed bodies."[1027] Dr. David Fieldhouse, the local police surgeon, identified Major McKee early on. "I knew that [the identification of] McKee was absolutely correct because of the clothing which correlated closely with the other reports and statements, and the computers that were linked up to Washington."[1028] This would subsume that Washington knew exactly what McKee — who hadn't told Control he was coming — was wearing. In other words, it means he was under surveillance by the Octopus. Fieldhouse also tagged over 58 bodies. "I later learned that when the bodies were taken to the mortuary, all the labels which had been put on them had been removed with the exception of two," said Fieldhouse, "but all the rest had been removed and discarded."[1029] A similar incident would occur in Oklahoma City. After nurse Toni Garret took a break from tagging dead bodies, she walked back to the makeshift morgue that had been set up in a nearby church. "When we came back in, there was a cold, callous atmosphere," said Garret. "I found out later that the FBI had taken over.…" Not only had the FBI taken over, but for some reason, they were suppressing the body count, which they originally claimed as only 22 dead. This enraged Garret, who had personally tagged over 120 bodies. While giving a news interview, FBI agents rushed over and told her to stop. Garret recalled the scene: "He said, 'Well, we're down here now, and we're taking over the building. It would be advisable and recommendable that you keep your mouth shut."[1030] In Lockerbie, police officers and military personnel would be prohibited under the Official Secrets Act from talking about what they had witnessed. Just what had they seen that was so sensitive? Jim Wilson knows. A local farmer, Wilson told relatives of Pan Am victims that he was present "when the drugs were found." The Tundergarth farmer had discovered a suitcase packed with heroin in one of his fields. Worried that it might harm his sheep, he informed local police, who notified the Americans, who then raced to the scene in an all-terrain vehicle. Wilson noted that the Americans seemed extremely angry that the drugs had not been discovered earlier by their own personnel. One Scottish police officer who did speak out said that his department had been told to keep an eye out for the drugs early on. He also overheard American personnel say that there was a drug courier on the plane — Khalid Jaffar — one of the Lebanese informants used by the DEA.[1031] Had the heroin belonged to Jaffar? Since the drug suitcase had been switched at Frankfort, it would seem unlikely. A more probable explanation is that it belonged to Gannon or McKee — evidence of the illegal operation being run by the Octopus. It would certainly explain why U.S. officials were so desperate to find the suitcase before the Scottish authorities did. Once located, the heroin was removed, and the bag placed back in its original position like nothing had happened. In Oklahoma City, 10 hours after the blast(s), federal agents halted rescue efforts to remove files from the building. While limited numbers of rescue workers were constrained to the lower right side of the building, between 40 and 50 federal agents began carting away boxes of files from the ATF and DEA offices. "You'd think they would have let their evidence and files sit at least until the last survivor was pulled out," one angry rescue worker told the New York Daily News.[1032] Then, approximately 10 days after the blast, two white trucks pulled up to the postal annex across from the Murrah Building that was being used to store emergency supplies. A dozen men in black unmarked uniforms, wearing ski masks and carrying submachine guns, jumped out and formed a protective corridor to the building. Others, wearing blue nylon windbreakers and carrying hand-held radios, formed an outer perimeter. As a witness watched, he observed "box after box of what appeared to be files or documents in boxes [that] were loaded on the unmarked trucks that looked like Ryder rental trucks, but were white."[1033] The witness, a Tulsa Fire Captain who was filming the site of the explosion, was told by one of the agents to put down his camera. His film was later confiscated. What were in the boxes — boxes that were originally stored in the Federal Building — that over a dozen mysteriously anonymous federal agents armed with submachine guns were so anxious to secrete into hiding? Were they files that were being taken away to be destroyed… or to be protected? And by whom? The public would never learn of this bizarre incident, just as they would never learn of the Mid-Eastern connection, the numerous John Does, the prior warnings of Cary Gagan and Carol Howe, and the elaborate cover-up. The government had convicted their man — Timothy James McVeigh — just as they had done with Lee Harvey Oswald 34 years ago. The victims who subscribed to the government's version of the case could now begin to experience a sense of "closure," whether they had learned the truth or not. Five years before, the government had attempted to provide "closure" to the Pan Am bombing by announcing its newly discovered "evidence" — a tiny piece of microchip allegedly linked to the bomb. This new evidence, discovered in a remote field ten months after the crash, would conclusively prove, the government claimed, that Libyan terrorists had destroyed the plane. Like the evidence of McVeigh's racing fuel purchases which suddenly came to light 18 months after the bombing, or the startling new "revelations" of Eldon Elliott, Thomas Manning, and Daina Bradley, this "new evidence" would help the government divert attention from the true perpetrators of the crime. Interestingly, Tom Thurman, the FBI lab technician who matched the chip — a tiny charred fragment that had miraculously survived two Scottish Winters — would later be accused of perjury in unrelated cases. Nevertheless, the discovery was hailed as a major find. Vince Cannistraro, the CIA Counter terrorism Chief on the National Security Council, was the front-man for new "Libyan" theory. "The principle avenues that led to identification of a foreign role in an act of terrorism," Cannistraro quipped with mock assurance, "was forensic evidence recovered by the Scottish police at Lockerbie themselves. Investigators and townspeople on their hands and knees, crawling along the countryside, picking up minute bits of debris. And one of those bits of debris turned out to be a microchip, which was analyzed microscopically that led to the Libyan connection." Like the Ryder truck axle in Oklahoma City that was allegedly discovered by several different people, so the microchip would have a confusing and contradictory bevy of claimants. "Three of his people (FBI agents) had sworn that they had found this piece in a piece of a coat and had signed a paper to this effect," stated Bollier. "I later heard that it was the Scottish police who had found the piece in a shirt that came from Malta." Yet in spite of this, the Scotts would attempt to have a townsperson sign a statement that he had found the chip.[1034] Yet the townsperson whom the FBI claimed had discovered the chip could not even recall finding it. The man, named "Bobby," said "I got a call from a policeman asking if he could come down to my home, and would I sign to say that I picked those [items] up. He brought with him three small bags about the size of an eight-by-five piece of paper, one of which contained an item of cloth, one of which contained a brown piece which looked very much like a piece of plastic, the third piece I couldn't tell what it was." Had the chip been planted by the FBI? The Bureau admitted that it already possessed two such timers, confiscated from two Libyans in Dakar and Senegal in 1986. The incident was remarkably similar to the Oklahoma City bombing witnesses who were coerced into signing statements that differed from what they actually saw. Yet British authorities would willingly cooperate with the U.S. as the result of a phone call made by President Bush to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. According to Washington Post syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, the two heads of state agreed that the investigation should be "limited" in order to avoid compromising the two nations' intelligence communities.[1035] For his part, Cannistraro had developed, along with NSC staffers Howard Teicher and Oliver North, the Reagan-inspired propaganda policy of destroying the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi. As Bob Woodward wrote in the Washington Post: Vincent M. Cannistraro, a veteran CIA operations officer and director of intelligence on the National Security Council staff, and Howard R. Teicher, the director of the office of political military affairs in the NSC, supported the disinformation and deception plan…. "I developed the policy toward Libya," said Cannistraro. "In fact, I even wrote the draft paper that was later adopted by the President."[1036] In spite of the obvious propaganda ploy, the evidence against Libya was dubious at best. Even more dubious was the government's theory of how the bomb got on board. According to "Buck" Revell, the bomb, built by two Libyan intelligence agents — Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhima — was placed inside a suitcase and smuggled into the airport at Malta, and tagged for its final destination to JFK airport in New York. It then flew, unaccompanied, to Frankfort, where it changed planes, also unaccompanied, then flew to London, where it managed to change planes again, only to explode over Lockerbie. Like the specter of two lone amateurs with a fertilizer bomb, the government actually expects the public to believe that a sensitive altitude-triggered time-bomb managed to pass through three countries unaccompanied, pass through security and customs checks, change planes twice, then detonate at precisely the right moment over its target destination! Such a suggestion, even to the uninitiated, is ridiculous. And there was no evidence to support it. According to Dennis Phipps, former head of security for British Airways: "…the records of handling of that fight were made available for me to see. There was no evidence of any unaccompanied bags. All of the bags that were carried as passenger baggage on that flight, had to be checked in by a passenger who actually traveled on the flight." Said Michael Jones, Pan Am's London Security Chief: "I've never seen any documentation whatsoever, produced by Pan Am or anybody else, showing there was any interlying baggage to Pan Am from the Air Malta flight…" Even the FBI's own telex, dated October 23, 1989, stated: To Director, FBI, Priority — Records there is no concrete indication that any piece of luggage was unloaded from Air Malta 100 sent through the luggage routing at Frankfort airport then loaded on board Pan Am 103. In fact, it is absurd to suggest that trained intelligence agents or even clever terrorists would opt for such a far-fetched and risky plan. Especially given the security measures regarding unaccompanied bags, which would have surely aroused suspicion. This premise becomes even more ludicrous considering the unexpected delays inherent in Winter holiday flights. How had the bomb, after passing through three countries, managed to arm itself and detonate at precisely the right moment? Miraculously, eight months after the bombing, a baggage print-out was obtained by the BKA showing an unaccompanied bag that had been transferred from Air Malta. The government finally had its "evidence."[1037] Just as they had suddenly dropped the Middle Eastern lead in Oklahoma, the government was now switching tracks and blaming the Libyans for the Pan Am bombing. But why? Why, after two years of solid evidence pointing to Syrian and Iranian involvement, was the government now blaming Libya — and on such flimsy pretenses? Naturally, like the theory of McVeigh's "revenge for Waco," the government had a handy explanation: Libya's motive for the attack stemmed from the April, 1986 U.S. air-raid on Tripoli and Benghazi, in which over 37 civilians, including Qaddafi's infant daughter, were killed. That raid was in retaliation for the bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in Berlin a year earlier, in which two U.S. servicemen and a Turkish woman were killed.[1038] In fact, the involvement of Libya in the disco bombing was highly questionable. It is also curious why Qaddafi would wait two-and-a-half years to extract his revenge on the Americans for the Benghazi attack.[1039] Essentially, government's desire to implicate Libya for the bombing of Pan Am 103 was no different than its desire to implicate the militia for the bombing in Oklahoma City. In that case, they claimed, the motive was revenge for the government's atrocities at Waco.[1040] In fact, President Bush knew perfectly well who had bombed flight 103. Six months after the bombing, Secretary of State James Baker visited with Syrian Foreign Intelligence Minister Farouk al-Sharaa. Baker asked: "What are you doing about the GLC group?" "What are you talking about," asked al-Sharaa. "Jibril," answered Baker. "We know they are responsible for Lockerbie. What are you doing about them?" "How do you know that?" "We have the evidence," Baker replied. "And the evidence is irrefutable."[1041] Nevertheless, the government lied to the American people.[1042] The investigation had turned political. In July of 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. President Bush began forming his Gulf War coalition. Syria, formerly viewed as a terrorist state, was now seen as a necessary ally. Interestingly, Bush had been quietly making overtures to Syrian President Assad for years. Assad was a bitter enemy of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. In order to bring Syria into the coalition, all evidence pointing to them was dropped. And, in November of 1991, the Libyan theory became the "official" version of the bombing.[1043] The real story appears somewhat different. On December 20, an intercept of a call made to the Iranian embassy in Beirut confirmed that an American operative named David Lovejoy (AKA: Michael Franks, Michael Schafer) had spoken to Iranian Chargé d'Affaires Hussein Niknam, and advised him that the McKee team had changed its travel plans and booked passage on flight 103. The next day, Niknam called the Interior Ministry in Teheran and passed on Frank's information.[1044] The DEA was also monitoring McKee, and separately informed the CIA in Washington, British MI6, and the CIA team in Wiesbaden.[1045] Al-Kassar's operatives had also observed Gannon making travel arrangements in Nicosia, and reported this to their CIA handlers in Wiesbaden. This wasn't difficult, as the DEA's "controlled delivery" operation, run by DEA Station Chief Michael T. Hurley in Cyprus, utilized Arab informants, some of whom, according to Coleman, were reporting back to Ahmed Jibril.[1046] As one source familiar with the case said, "Every spook in Europe knew that McKee and Gannon were flying home on flight 103." Yet while the McKee team was obviously compromised, the question begging to be answered is, who is Michael Franks? And why did Franks inform the Iranian embassy, a bitter enemy of the U.S., of McKee's travel plans? An associate of Oliver North, Franks worked for Overseas Press Service (OPS) a television consultancy firm run by W. Dennis Suit. A former CIA operative in Central America, Suit was an associate of North, William Casey, Jack Singlaub, Jack Terrell, and Contra leaders Adolfo and Mario Calero. Lester Coleman aptly described him as a representative of North's "Georgia Mafia." In other words, Franks worked for the Octopus. Sent to Cyprus by OPS as a "cameraman," Franks was in a perfect position to monitor the activities of the DEA. The other question begging to be answered is: who at the CIA Control in Washington (not their headquarters in Langley) told the CIA team in Wiesbaden: "DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, DON'T STOP IT, LET IT GO"?[1047] It has been argued by apologists for the CIA that the Agency didn't stop the bombing because it didn't want to compromise its hostage-rescue mission — an operation being run by the Octopus in collusion with Monzer al-Kassar. Essentially, we are asked to accept the idea that the CIA was ready to sacrifice the lives of 270 people so as not to risk the opportunity to free six people. A more plausible explanation is that the Octopus didn't want to compromise its profitable drug and gun running operation — an operation that traces its roots from the Corsican Mafia, through the Hmong tribesman in Laos, to the Mujahadeen in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and finally to the cartels in Columbia and Mexico. It is an enterprise run by many of the same spooks that ran the Cold War, channeling billions of taxpayer dollars into the military/industrial establishment, while funneling thousands of tons of heroin and cocaine into our cities' streets.[1048] As intelligence analyst Dave Emory notes, "When federal intelligence agencies in the United States decide to move in a particular direction — or when a faction of them decides to move in a particular direction — they do so when to move in that direction would scratch a number of different itches at different levels simultaneously."[1049] By passing on the travel plans of the McKee team to the Iranians, Franks allowed Ahmed Jibril to bomb the plane, eliminating McKee and Gannon in the process, and preventing exposure of the Octopus. At the same time, the Iranians got revenge for the shootdown of their airliner, and the drug dealers kept their operation relatively intact. Using the Iranians as proxies permitted the Octopus to maintain "plausible deniability." Describing how proxies or "cut-outs" are used in assassination work, 25-year DEA veteran Mike Levine said, "…when you say 'they wouldn't do it,' surely you don't think that the Sicilian Mafia (to use an example) sends out a couple of Italians to do a hit on a U.S. Attorney that they could link directly back? No, absolutely not. What they might do is use what's left of [August] Record's organization (a drug dealer in South America), they might talk to an Italian who lives in Paraguay or Monte Madeo, he then talks to the son of a German who lives in Paraguay. An arrangement is made. They want them hurt. This organization finds out that this guy's wife is flying on a plane. Not that that's happened. I'm giving you a scenario… that's the way it's done. We're living in a world where murder has become very, very high-tech, very convoluted, with cut-outs… "TWA, Pan Am 103 — this is the perfect M.O. of this organization," adds Levine. "Not that they (Ricord) did it, but when they did things, there was no way it would ever go back to them, because they would do it for someone else."[1050] In the case of Pan Am 103, it appeared that the Octopus was more interested in covering up its involvement with drug smugglers than in securing the release of American hostages. And it was willing to sacrifice 270 lives to do so. |
Catalan daily newspaper Mundo Deportivo understands that Real Madrid are weighing up a summer bid for Bayern Munich forward Thomas Muller. Los Blancos aim to further reinforce the attacking department in the summer and they have reportedly set their sights on the Germany international. Mundo Deportivo has even suggested that Real Madrid are set to table a €45 million bid for the player’s services. Thomas Muller has spent his entire professional career up to date at Bayern Munich, making a total of 150 Bundesliga appearances and scoring 52 goals. He has been one of club’s most productive players this season, having managed 7 goals and 6 assists in 16 league outings. Muller has also started all ten games for Germany in the 2014 World Cup qualifiers, scoring 4 goals in the process. It remains to be seen if Bayern would be ready to consider an offer from Santiago Bernabeu, but it would certainly take a mega money bid to prize him away from Alianz Arena. |
National City Gaylien Bar. The gang’s all here! They’re chatting about Guardian, James and Winn puffing out their chests and trying their hardest to not take credit for the adventures of the helmeted hero. Kara and Alex roll their eyes and scoff at this wannabe and are interrupted by a sharp, “Danvers!” Maggie Sawyer is there, confused as to why Alex is standing around chit-chatting instead of answering her many texts and calls. But before she confronts her about it, Alex stammers a bit and introduces her to everyone, including Kara, the sister she’s heard so much about. Kara smiles her most charming smile and says, with no bite to her tone at all, “And I’ve heard all about you.” There’s no need to make threats when you know your sneeze could knock the girl halfway to Mars. Maggie pulls Alex aside and now is when she asks what’s up with the radio silence, and if they’re okay after their last interaction. Alex is playing it cool but is a little on the chilly side. Until Maggie tilts her head and smiles and asks if they’re still friends. Alex musters up every bit of energy she can manage and smiles back. She can’t not. “Of course,” she promises. Friends. Though I think if she had really meant it, she would have invited Maggie to join them. Instead, Maggie leaves, and Alex goes back to her sister. Kara asks if she’s okay in that totally casual way you do when you need to know but you don’t need anyone else at the table needs to know. But she’s good. Alex quickly changes the subject to Mon-El, who they assume is gallivanting around with some lady-friends, though he’s actually in a Cadmus cell. J’onn is starting to hallucinate his family, so he’s doing tai chi to center himself. Kara comes and he blessedly confesses what’s wrong instead of hiding it like some kind of Caitlin Snow. She thinks he’s just freaking out because of Megan, and tells him that just because he has found family now doesn’t take away from his lost family. There’s room in your heart for both, her adoptive mama told her so. Meanwhile, there’s trouble right here in National City, because someone is finding the Guardian’s take-downs and finishing the job for him, so everyone thinks Guardian is a murderer. Supergirl is on her way to check it out when she gets a transmission from Cadmus. She has to come see Mrs. Cadmus without telling anyone or Mon-El dies. Supergirl flies into Cadmus HQ and is greeted with someone who looks like J’onn but who Kara knows is not on account of him punching her. She realizes quickly that it’s the real Hank Henshaw, but what she doesn’t surmise until she head-visions his face is that he’s part cyborg. (And calls himself Cyborg Superman.) Back at the DEO, Winn is freaking out because Maggie was on the news calling for Guardian’s arrest. Winn begs Alex to get her friend to back off, please tell her friend Guardian is not a murder, so if she could get her friend to— Finally Alex has heard enough of this fucking F word and pins Winn against the wall, threatening to torture him out of his mind of he doesn’t stop yammering and just tell her what he knows. Alex is just at the beginning of her threat spree but Winn has heard enough and squeaks out that Guardian is James. Alex is PISSED and reluctantly agrees to both not tell Kara and talk to Maggie, and rewards him for cooperation with a smack to the head. Alex finds Maggie and tells her to back off Guardian but won’t tell her why. A little stung by Alex pulling the old classified line, Maggie uses the dreaded “friend” again and Alex has had enough from her, too. So she says, no. They’re not friends. Then Alex lets it all out. Every thought that has been consuming her since that kiss. Every feeling that has been ricocheting around in her chest since Maggie pulled away. She realizes now that it wasn’t all in her head. (I think she read your comments on my last recap.) Maggie knew she was hitting on her, Maggie encouraged her to come out, Maggie told her that her feelings were real. It wasn’t out of nowhere that Alex thought Maggie liked her back, and what should be an exciting time in her life, coming out, realizing who she is, instead is rife with pain. Then something important happens. Alex says she’s in pain because she was wrong, because Maggie doesn’t like her. And then Maggie says, “That’s not why.” That’s not why! Which means she does like her. But Alex won’t let her finish her thought, she’s probably dizzy with truth telling. Maggie is so sad to have hurt Alex. And Alex storms away. Across town, Kara wakes up in a cell next to Mon-El. Lady Cadmus comes to see her and Kara realizes she’s Lillian Luthor. Then Lillian literally asks her what her intentions are with her daughter. I… don’t even know how to interpret her questions as not assuming Kara and Lena are romantically involved. I’m sorry, I tried. Lillian is on the warpath; she hates Superman and blames him for what happened to Lex, so therefore she must destroy all alien life. In order to do so, she needs Kara to drain herself, and after she threatens Mon-El, Kara reluctantly agrees. She heat-visions into a special helmet until she’s weak, and they haul her away to take some of her blood. Kara agrees. Back at the DEO, J’onn isn’t getting better despite Kara’s pep talk, and after Alex spots something shady in his blood, he confronts Megan about it. Megan confesses to being a White Martian, but says she’s the good one from her story. He’s pissed and wants to fight her, Martian to Martian. He eventually decides to lock her up instead of killing her, which is good because then she gets to tell him: he’s going to turn into a White Martian now that her blood is in him. Supergirl is thrown back in her Cadmus cage, and she’s in the middle of giving Mon-El a message for Alex and admitting she’s scared… …when someone comes to save them. And that someone? Daddy Danvers! Kara wants him to escape with them because Alex will be so happy but he has to stay for now. She tells him she loves him and escapes with an injured Mon-El on her arm. In an abandoned factory, the Guardian fights the new vigilante and eventually Maggie and Alex bust it up. In a moment that goes by very quickly but is very meaningful, Alex looks to Maggie and says the sirens are getting closer. She has two choices. Maggie can bring Guardian in, or she can trust Alex and just let him go. Even after everything Alex said — or maybe because of it — Maggie says she’ll let him go. Alex gets word that Kara and Mon-El are back from Cadmus and RUNS back to the DEO. She feels awful for not knowing Kara was kidnapped even though the first thing she did every time the camera cut to her was ask after Kara and every time someone reassured her that she was probably fine. And no one worried about Mon-El at all. But Kara interrupts her— she’s fine, it’s fine, what’s important is her news: Jeremiah saved her. They run to where Cadmus HQ just was but it has been totally cleared out. The gang goes back to Kara’s apartment for pizza and potstickers, where Kara finally admits that maybe this mysterious Guardian fella isn’t so bad after all, and Alex says pointedly that maybe he’ll even reveal his identity. In a moment that’s almost cute, Kara comments that Mon-El was brave, and he says he learned it from watching her. But then he ruins it by asking James and Winn if she has a mate yet. I do have to admit, as a side note, now that James is full Guardian and loving life, he’s back to being a charming goofball and if he continues in this vein he can re-earn his place in my heart. The party is interrupted by a knock at the door, and Alex is surprised to see Maggie on the other side. Maggie says she’s here to talk. She understands where Alex was coming from the other day, truly. And after she says what she came here to say, if Alex wants to send her away for good, Maggie will leave. The thing is, Maggie might be all smiles for Alex, but she doesn’t meet people she cares about as easily as some. There’s a reason she’s always playing pool alone. But she cares about Alex. A lot. And she understands Alex might need time, but Maggie does still want to be friends someday. She says, “I don’t want to imagine my life without you in it.” And I mean damn. Tracking her down at her sister’s place was commitment enough. That line? Who could resist?? And what better way to show Alex that she never meant to hurt her. She wasn’t toying with Alex’s emotions on purpose. So before going back inside, Alex invites her to play pool tomorrow night. Relief washes over Maggie; she wouldn’t miss it. Kara (who had obviously peeped to see who her sister was talking to, for safety reasons) asks Alex how that went, and Alex says the word she’s been fighting the whole episode without the anger or bitterness of before: They’re going to be friends. And maybe this is a controversial opinion, but I’m so glad Maggie didn’t storm up and kiss Alex. It would have felt forced, like she was just doing because she felt like Alex was giving her an all or nothing ultimatum. Instead she gets what she needs: time. Kara accepts this answer, and assures her that they’re going to get her father back, too. And speaking of friends who probably want to be more, Kara wonders if Lena knows about Cadmus, and what Cadmus is doing with her blood. And what they’re doing is accessing the Fortress of Solitude. Dear friends, a lot of you are heading home this weekend to be with families who voted for someone who is making the world a really scary place for you right now. I want you to remember there are people banding together with you to make a stand. You are not alone. And there might be people who threaten us or hate us but one thing I know for sure: Some people love us. Including these two nerds. Stay safe and I’ll see you back here next week! |
Chone Figgins has officially announced his retirement, as per an Angels press release. He will sign a ceremonial one-day contract with the Halos tomorrow in order to leave baseball in the same uniform in which he spent eight of his 12 MLB seasons. Figgins was originally drafted by the Rockies in the fourth round of the 1997 draft, and wasn’t a particularly heralded prospect. Faint praise became a positive for Figgins, as he related in his retirement statement: “There was a quote written about me during my second year in the minors that I’ll never forget. It was a story about all minor leaguers and how scouts projected the progress of their careers. Mine said at best I would be a fringe big leaguer, if I ever made it. To me, that was the greatest quote I ever read about myself. Fringe is usually not a compliment in pro ball, but in my eyes, it meant I could be in the big leagues one day.” A trade to the Angels in July 2001 led to a big league debut in late 2002 at the high point in Anaheim baseball history. Figgins went from a late season callup to earning a World Series ring, appearing in six postseason games as a pinch-runner during the Angels’ run to their only championship. After that auspicious debut, Figgins became a key part of the Angels’ lineup over the next seven seasons with a game built around versatility, speed, and high average and on-base skills. Figgins spent most of his time as a third baseman but also saw significant action in center field as well as right, left, short and second. He hit .291/.363/.388 over 4075 PA as an Angel, and is the team’s all-time leader in stolen bases (280) and second on its all-time triples list (53). Figgins’ all-around value peaked with a 7.7 rWAR/6.5 fWAR season in 2009, which was good timing as he headed into free agency that winter and resulted in a four-year, $36MM contract with the Mariners. Unfortunately for both Figgins and the club, 2009 was his last productive season. Figgins badly struggled in Seattle and was released prior to his final year of that deal. He briefly signed a minor league deal with the Marlins after that release but was cut in Spring Training and sat out the 2013 season before catching on with the 2014 Dodgers for what ended up being his final 38 games in the Show. All told, Figgins ended his career with a .276/.349/.363 slash line over 5360 PA, 1298 hits, 341 stolen bases and just under $52MM in career earnings. We at MLBTR congratulate Figgins on a fine career and wish him the best in his post-playing days. |
* Saudi Arabia says to block Messenger as of Friday * Canada, United States in talks with UAE, Saudi officials * Algeria joins list of countries reviewing options -paper * RIM co-CEO criticizes governments for politicizing issue * RIM shares down about 2 percent (Recasts, adds Algeria might consider ban) By Souhail Karam and Susan Taylor RIYADH/OTTAWA, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion RIM.TO are making progress in talks over access to the device’s encrypted network, a source close to the negotiations said, and the kingdom had yet to carry out threats to cut its Messenger service early Friday morning. Canada also said it is talking to Saudi Arabia and the UAE to resolve a fight over BlackBerry security that could jeopardize the growth of RIM, the country’s most important tech exporter. RIM is facing mounting pressure to open up its super-secure network to government scrutiny. A growing number of countries are demanding access to encrypted communications sent through the device, saying national security may be at risk. In addition to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, India is in talks with the company over gaining access, and both Lebanon and Algeria, according to a newspaper report, are reviewing the situation and might soon also might join the list. The Saudi talks have led Research In Motion to consider locating a server in the kingdom to handle some of the BlackBerry network’s encrypted communications, Al-Hayat newspaper’s online edition said on Friday in an unsourced report. “RIM showed on Thursday a degree of flexibility that has not been there over the past three months. Progress is being made. We started debating the technicalities of new setups,” the source told Reuters. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has promoted Internet freedom as a basic human right, said the United States will hold talks with the UAE and other countries on the issue. <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Factbox on BlackBerry security issues [ID:nLDE6720FI] Factbox on BlackBerry security explained [ID:nN04103272] Take a Look on Blackberry’s data risk [ID:nN02151382] Global smartphone market: link.reuters.com/fup82n Reuters Insider: link.reuters.com/myw92n ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> Canada, where RIM is based, is concerned about the looming ban and its “broader implications,” Trade Minister Peter Van Loan said in a statement. He said Canadian officials were working with RIM, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to find a solution. “Canada has been working closely with the officials at Research In Motion as well as with governments on the ground to assist them in dealing with these challenges,” the minister told reporters in Ottawa. Shares of RIM RIMM.O fell about 2 percent Thursday on the Nasdaq and Toronto stock exchanges. The stock has shed about 9 percent since the UAE threatened over the weekend to ban BlackBerry email, messaging and Internet services after three years of negotiations with RIM over access to user data. RIM is in an unusual position of having to deal with government requests to monitor its clients because it is the only smartphone maker that manages the traffic of messages sent using its equipment. Although the Gulf region accounts for only a small portion of RIM’s more than 41 million subscribers, analysts said they were concerned about the impact on the Canadian company’s reputation for providing iron-clad smartphone services. “The company has to stand its ground...they’ve built their loyalty largely around security,” said Nick Agostino, analyst at Mackie Research Capital Corp. POLITICS RIM has said its technology will not allow a third party to monitor communications running through the BlackBerry’s enterprise servers. Co-CEO Michael Lazaridis, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, accused governments of picking on smartphones to score political points. “This is about the Internet,” Lazaridis was quoted as saying. “Everything on the Internet is encrypted. This is not a BlackBerry-only issue. If they can’t deal with the Internet, they should shut it off.” Governments from China to Iran have become more vocal about controlling conversations on the Internet and on mobile phones, citing risks to national security. Disputes between government regulators and technology providers have escalated into diplomatic disputes, such as the one between China and Google Inc over Internet censorship and cyber attacks earlier this year. Clinton, who had also waded into the Google-China dispute, said on Thursday about the BlackBerry issue: “We are taking time to consult and analyze the full array of interests and issues at stake because we know that there is a legitimate security concern, but there is also a legitimate right of free use and access.” Some analysts said it may be difficult for governments to get what they want. “I think their expectations are unrealistic over the long term to maintain the kind of control that they’re looking for. They’re really trying to put the genie back in the bottle here,” said Kevin Restivo, a senior mobile phone analyst at IDC. Algeria became the latest government to join the fray, saying it is reviewing the use of the BlackBerry and that it will ban the devices if it concludes they are a threat, according to a report early on Friday. “We are looking at the issue. If we find out that it is a danger for our economy and our security, we will stop it,” the El Khabar newspaper quoted Telecommunications Minister Moussa Benhamadi as saying.” Lebanon said on Thursday it was studying security concerns related to the BlackBerry and would begin talks with RIM. India, worried that BlackBerry’s secure messaging services could be misused by militants, has demanded more access for its security agencies, and the country’s telecoms minister said it had not reached an agreement with the company. “India has made these threats time and again and India’s starting to sound like the boy that cried wolf, a little bit, because RIM continues to maintain service there and has talked to the government many times and come to resolutions over the course of time,” said Restivo. RIM has said BlackBerry security is based on a system where customers create their own keys. The company neither has a master key nor any “back door” to let RIM or third parties to gain access to data. (Additional reporting by Souhail Karam, Emma Ashburn and Jeffrey Hodgson; Writing by Ritsuko Ando in New York and Frank McGurty in Toronto; Editing by Dave Zimmerman, Robert MacMillan and Tim Dobbyn) |
– Coming to DVD on November 12th is The Scorpion King 3: Battle For Redemption, and that DVD film will feature former WWE star Batista and former UFC fighter Kimbo Slice. Here is a video preview and the synopsis of the film… Since his triumphant rise to power in the original blockbuster The Scorpion King, Mathayus’ kingdom has fallen and he’s lost his queen to plague. Now an assassin for hire, he must defend a kingdom from an evil tyrant and his ghost warriors for the chance to regain the power and glory he once knew. Starring Ron Perlman (Hellboy) and Billy Zane (Titanic), and featuring 6-time WWE champion Dave Bautista and UFC star Kimbo Slice, The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption takes The Mummy phenomenon to an all-new level of epic action and non-stop adventure! NULL |
Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email It's Joe Allen Appreciation Day ... again. According to Wales skipper Ashley Williams, the Wales squad at the European Championships are so totally in love with the Liverpool man, they celebrate his very existence on a weekly basis. "We have a WhatsApp messaging group and at least once a week we have a Joe Allen Appreciation Day," Williams said. "Great beard, great haircut, great guy, he’s the main man in the squad. Class player too." Joe showed his class once again last night, with the defence splitting pass for Aaron Ramsey which set up Wales' 3-0 romp against Russia. But how well do YOU know Joe? Try our Joe Allen Appreciation Day quiz and see if you appreciate him as much as you should. Post your answers on social media. |
Mr Marques told daily Correio da Manha: “She was 500 metres from the coast when fishermen heard her shouting. “When they reached her she was clinging onto a handbag she had been swimming with.” She was rushed to a hospital intensive care unit in an ambulance after being rescued and taken ashore. She was understood to be “out of danger” on Monday morning. Police are also thought to be planning to interview the British woman to get more details of Saturday night’s incident. The Marco Polo docked in Madeira on Saturday morning around 10am from Barbados and left the island around 8pm the same day. Local daily Jornal da Madeira said: “Everything is pointing to the woman failing to return to the ship at 8pm and instead deciding to go to the airport to catch a flight. “According to the port captain she was on holiday accompanied by her husband who did get back on board the ship. “When she reached the airport the tourist saw the ship passing and threw herself into the sea with the aim of reaching the vessel.” National Portuguese daily Correio da Manha added: “Annoyed with her husband, a British tourist aged 65 abandoned the cruise liner Marco Polo in Funchal port with the intention of flying home. “But when she was at the airport she saw the ship on the horizon, had second thoughts and threw herself into the water to try to return to the ship. “She was rescued from the water four hours later suffering hypothermia.” A worker at Nelio Mendonca Hospital, where Mrs Brown was taken, said on Monday morning: “Mrs Brown is not really in a position to speak at the moment.” The Marco Polo cruise liner, which the holidaymaker’s husband is thought to be on, was due to dock in the Portuguese capital Lisbon on Monday morning at 8am. He was expected to fly back to Madeira for an emotional reunion with his wife. The ship was due to leave Lisbon for Bristol at 5pm on Monday. |
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AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas grand jury has decided not to bring charges against an Austin police officer who fatally shot an unarmed and naked teenage male in February, a local prosecutor said on Tuesday. Officer Geoffrey Freeman was permanently suspended in March, a procedural step for firing, after he was found to have violated department policy by shooting black 17-year-old David Joseph a few seconds after confronting him. Freeman, who also is African American and has worked as an Austin police officer for 10 years, appealed the suspension. The case drew scrutiny as questions of racial bias in U.S. policing have been raised after the fatal shootings of several unarmed African-American men by police in recent months. The grand jury met on five separate days and heard testimony from 12 witnesses, including Freeman and members of Joseph’s family, before reaching its decision, the Travis County District Attorney’s office said in a statement. It said Freeman stopped his patrol car about 100 feet from Joseph and drew his gun. Joseph ran toward he officer, who ordered him to stop and Freeman fired two shots when he did not, the district attorney’s office said, adding both shots hit Joseph. Jeff Edwards, the attorney for the Joseph family, said the decision not to indict marked a sad day for justice. “Failing to secure an indictment when a police officer shoots and kills an unarmed, skinny, naked teenager, who the officer outweighed by over 100 pounds, is a failure of will by the district attorney, and calls in to question the entire grand jury process in cases involving police misconduct,” Edwards said in a statement. An autopsy found that Joseph had two prescription drugs and marijuana in his system at the time he was shot, local TV station KVUE reported. A police group backing the officer said there was a rush to judgment in the case by Austin Police Department leaders and applauded the decision not to indict. |
Eenam Gambhir, at her speech at the UN General Assembly this year described Pakistan as “Terroristan” (Image Credit: ANI) Eenam Gambhir, India’s First Secretary in Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, has become the victim of notorious thieves and snatchers in Delhi. Eenam Gambhir is posted in New York. She has visited her home for the vacation. On Saturday night, Eenam Gambhir was out for a walk with her mother when two men on a motorbike snatched her mobile phone. A case has been registered with Delhi Police about the same. It was confirmed by her father, Jagdish Kumar Gambhir, that her iPhone had important work-related documents. He also confirmed that her phone had a US-registered SIM card. At the UN General Assembly on September 22 this year, the Indian diplomat had called Pakistan as “terroristan” – “a geography synonymous with terror” with a flourishing “industry” producing and exporting global terrorism. In her speech at the UN Assembly, Eenam Gambhir said, “Pakistan is now ”Terroristan’, with a flourishing industry producing and exporting global terrorism. Its current state can be gauged from the fact that Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, a leader of the UN designated terrorist organization Lashkar-i-Taiba, is now sought to be legitimized as a leader of a political party.” During her speech, Gambhir exposed Pakistan’s hypocrisy and described Sharif’s speech as a “long tirade” about the situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. She exercised India’s Right of Reply at the Assembly. She said, “The land of Taxila, one of the greatest learning centres of ancient times, is now host to the Ivy League of terrorism. It attracts aspirants and apprentices from all over the world.” Meanwhile, fighting the ever-rising crime in the city, a brave girl in her 20s fought a snatching attempt in north Delhi’s Lahori Gate area on November 1. She even chased down the man who tried to run away with her cell phone. The girl and her sister were returning after shopping when a man snatched the later’s phone. In another incident earlier in January this year, a brave girl hockey player in Delhi chased two miscreants and caught hold of one of them after they snatched her friend’s cell phone in a bus in west Delhi’s Punjabi Bagh area. Ritu Bhoraiya, who has represented Haryana and Delhi in national hockey tournaments, was going to Peeragarhi along with her two friends in a bus when the snatchers struck on January 20. |
The Diaguita Indians live in the foothills of the Andes, just downstream from the world's highest gold mine, where for as long as anyone can remember they've drunk straight from the glacier-fed river that irrigates their orchards and vineyards with its clear water. Then thousands of mine workers and their huge machines moved in, building a road alongside the river that reaches all the way up to Pascua-Lama, a gold mine being built along both sides of the Chile-Argentine border at a lung-busting 5,000 metres above sea level. The crews moved mountaintops in preparation for 25 years of gold and silver production, breaking rocks and allowing mineral acids that include arsenic, aluminum and sulfates to flow into the headwaters feeding Atacama desert communities down below. River levels dropped, the water is murky in places and the Indians now complain of cancerous growths and aching stomachs. There's no way to prove or disprove it, but villagers are convinced Barrick Gold Corp. is to blame for their health problems. "We don't know how much contamination the fruit and vegetables we eat may have," complained Diaguita leader Yovana Paredes Paez. "They're drying up the river, our farms aren't the same. The animals are dying of hunger. Now there's no cheese or meat. It's changed completely." Acting independently, Chile's newly empowered environmental regulator on Friday confirmed nearly two dozen violations of Barrick's environmental impact agreement, blocking construction on the $8.5 billion project until the Canadian company keeps its promises to prevent water contamination. The Environmental Superintendent, Juan Carlos Monckeberg, also fined Barrick $16.4 million, the highest environmental fine in Chile's history, saying agency inspectors found the company hadn't told the full truth when it reported failures. "We found that the acts described weren't correct, truthful or provable. And there were other failures of Pascua-Lama's environmental permit as well," Monckeberg said. Barrick promised $30 million in fixes and said it remains committed to meeting the highest standards and causing no pollution. But Chile seems determined to minimize the dangers of digging huge pits and processing ore with toxic chemicals along the spine of the Andes, causing delays that threaten the future of this top priority for the world's largest gold-mining company. "We're profoundly sorry that Pascua-Lama has suffered obstacles in its construction and we'll make our best efforts to get back on track and meet the conditions stipulated in the approved project," Eduardo Flores Zelaya, president of Barrick Sudamerica, said Friday. "We are respectful of the institutions in the countries where we operate, and as a consequence we will follow the resolution." Monckeberg said Barrick caused permanent damage by failing to properly construct a diversionary canal, triggering a rockfall that covered a field down below with waste rock. "I don't believe there's any way of repairing it," he told a news conference in Santiago. More than 70 per cent of gold is on Chile side Barrick had hoped to begin production in early 2014, and warned shareholders that it might abandon Pascua, the Chilean side, if construction delays keep the mine from opening this year. Argentine authorities, meanwhile, have insisted that Lama will proceed with or without Chile, taking advantage of nearby infrastructure used for Barrick's Veladero mine, which produces ore just downhill. Some 500 Diaguita have joined a civil lawsuit against Barrick. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press) Together, the two projects employ thousands of workers, fuel a third of the provincial San Juan economy, and promise millions in revenue for a country sorely in need of hard currency. But more than 70 per cent of Pascua-Lama's 18 million ounces of gold and 676 million ounces of silver are on the Chilean side. The plan has been to extract it from huge open pits and carry it through a tunnel for processing in Argentina. Rockfalls are just one of the threats to building anything in the high Andes, where gale-force winds have coated glaciers with construction dust for miles around and groundwater expands and contracts with each freeze and thaw. To refine ore into gold bullion, the company must transport thousands of tons of cyanide, mercury and other toxic chemicals to the mountaintop. Once the precious metals are gone, Chile will be left with huge rock piles and Argentina with toxic waste that must be contained for generations to come on ever-moving slopes between melting glaciers and snowy peaks. "I'm so angry at this company," said Meri del Rosario, 42, of El Corral, Chile. She has thyroid cancer; two cysts were removed from her throat last year. She blames water pollution from Pascua-Lama. "If they keep working the valley will end up completely dry, and we'll have to go, and where? I think it's Barrick that has to go," she said. Some 500 Diaguita have joined a civil lawsuit against Barrick, persuading an appellate court last month to block construction despite the company's denials that it caused any pollution or health problems. Removed mountaintops without building earth up The company's response to the environmental regulator was much more conciliatory: Faced with 23 violations, Barrick accepted nearly all of them, and obtained permission to make urgent repairs. The violations include building some earthworks without approval, while failing to build others that were supposed to be in place before construction began so that rainfall wouldn't increase the runoff from mineral acids naturally released when rocks are broken. Instead, Barrick went ahead and moved mountaintops in preparation for 25 years of gold and silver production. 'We are respectful of the institutions in the countries where we operate, and as a consequence we will follow the resolution,' said Eduardo Flores Zelaya, president of Barrick Sudamerica. (Jorge Saenz/Associated Press) Barrick also acknowledged making an "unjustified discharge coming from the acid treatment plant to the Estrecho river" that was "neither declared nor monitored." The company persuaded the regulator to withdraw an allegation that it had not properly built a huge, impermeable wall that stretches deep below ground and all the way across the top of the Rio del Estrecho valley. Barrick said the wall stretches for 206 metres across the valley and reaches down as much as 62 metres below the surface, with sealants injected nearly 30 metres deeper still into fissures in the bedrock. It meets U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards and beats industry standards, the company said. Despite all this work, inspectors found acid in five test wells below the wall. Barrick challenged the methodology and claimed the acid was there naturally, but after the regulator agreed that the wall met requirements, the company agreed to fortify several wells downstream to collect contaminated water. Barrick works with 'an enormous quantity of cyanide' Chile's environmentalists, farmers and indigenous communities were thrilled with Friday's ruling, saying it shows only strong oversight can force Barrick to keep its promises. "One of the concerns we've always had is that they are going to work with an enormous quantity of cyanide," said Leonel Rivera Zuleta, 56, a farmer and member of the Diaguita community of Chipasse Tamaricunga. "Who will assure us that there won't be some kind of accident with this element so poisonous to nature and man?" Living in adobe homes or concrete houses in the narrow Huasco valley, they tend "the garden of the Atacama," where the river enables them to grow oranges, apples, grapes and vegetables in landscape so barren it's been compared to the surface of Mars. The Diaguita once followed the rivers up the mountains and roamed over both sides of the frontier, but now Barrick's security guards block their way at a checkpoint just above town. Dump trucks the size of two-story homes and dozens of red barrels with toxic warning labels are kept in a fenced lot nearby. "The Earth is giving us the strength to be courageous," Diaguita leader Maglene Campillay said, amazed that they're being listened to in a country where mining sustains the economy. "This might be a small community that used to be afraid, but we've united, and we're defending our rights, because we're not going to let them take away our water and end our culture." |
What are your favorite films of 1995? Choose one or more answers: Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls The Addiction The Amazing Panda Adventure The American President Antonia’s Line Apollo 13 Assassins Babe Bad Boys Balto The Basketball Diaries Batman Forever Before Sunrise Beyond Rangoon The Big Green Billy Madison The Blade (Dao) Blue in the Face Boys on the Side The Brady Bunch Movie Braveheart The Bridges of Madison County Bushwhacked Canadian Bacon Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh Carl Th. Dreyer: My Metier Casino Casper Castle Freak The Celluloid Closet La Cérémonie A Chinese Odyssey The Brothers McMullen Christmas Vacation '95 Circle of Friends Citizen X The City of Lost Children Clockers A Close Shave Clueless Congo Copycat Crimson Tide The Crossing Guard Crying Freeman The Cure Cutthroat Island Cyclo Dangerous Minds The Day of the Beast Dead Man Dead Man Walking Dead Presidents Desperado Devil in a Blue Dress Die Hard with a Vengeance Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge Dolores Claiborne The Doom Generation Dracula: Dead and Loving It Embrace of the Vampire Empire Records The Enforcer The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain Fair Game Fallen Angels Far from Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog Father of the Bride Part II First Knight The Flower of My Secret Fluke Forget Paris Forgotten Silver Four Rooms Free Willy 2 - The Adventure Home French Kiss French Twist Friday Get Shorty Ghost in the Shell Godzilla vs. Destoroyah GoldenEye A Goofy Movie Grumpier Old Men Guardian Angels Hackers La Haine Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers Die Hard: With a Vengeance Haunted Heat Heavyweights Higher Learning Home for the Holidays How To Make An American Quilt I.D. The Indian in the Cupboard It Takes Two Jade Johnny Mnemonic Judge Dredd Jumanji Just Cause Kicking and Screaming Kids Kiss of Death Land and Freedom The Land Before Time III: Time of the Great Giving The Langoliers Last of the Dogmen The Last Supper Leaving Las Vegas Leprechaun 3 A Little Princess Living in Oblivion Lord of Illusions Losing Isaiah Love Letter Maborosi Mad Love Major Payne Mallrats Man of the House The Mangler Margaret's Museum Memories Mighty Aphrodite Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie Money Train Mortal Kombat Mr. Holland's Opus Murder in the First Mute Witness The Net Nick of Time Nine Months Nixon Now and Then On Your Mark Othello Outbreak Party Girl The Pebble and the Penguin A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies Persuasion Pink Floyd: Pulse Pocahontas Powder Pride & Prejudice The Prophecy The Quick and the Dead Restoration Richard III Rob Roy Rumble in the Bronx Sabrina Safe The Scarlet Letter Screamers Se7en Selvaggi Sense and Sensibility Showgirls Smoke Something to Talk About Species The Star Maker Strange Days Sudden Death Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight Tales from the Hood Tank Girl The Graduates Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead The Three Brothers Thunderbolt To Die For To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar Tokyo Fist Tom and Huck Tommy Boy Total Eclipse Toy Story Twelve Monkeys Ulysses' Gaze Under Siege 2: Dark Territory Underground The Usual Suspects Vampire in Brooklyn Viaggi di nozze Village of the Damned Virtuosity Waiting to Exhale A Walk in the Clouds Waterworld Welcome to the Dollhouse While You Were Sleeping Whisper of the Heart The White Balloon |
A week after they published Ben Stein's silliness, the New York Times looks at the impact of efficiency. "It's gone before you even knew it was there: As energy is unlocked from fuels at power plants, two-thirds of the energy consumed to create electricity is lost. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that conversion efficiency will never be 100 percent, because heat is lost at every step of the conversion process. But new technologies may be able to greatly increase conversion efficiency, moving from an overall rate of 36 percent to closer to 50 percent." They also point out that this low-hanging fruit, doing what comes naturally: ""High fossil fuel prices will drive technology and innovation, because they respond to price signals," said Frank A. Wolak, an economist at Stanford. "Technology can improve efficiency by working the margin, gaining 10 to 15 percent. That's money." ::New York Times with ::terrific graphic here |
We are releasing the first version (0.1.0) of our clone of vmadm for FreeBSD jails today. It is not done or feature complete, but it does provides basic functionality. At this point, we think it would be helpful to get it out there and get some feedback. As of today, it allows basic management of datasets, as well as creating, starting, stopping, and destroying jails. Why another tool to manage jails However, before we go into details let’s talk why we build yet another jail manager? It is not the frequent NIH syndrome, actually quite the opposite. In FiFo 0.9.2 we experimented with iocage as a way to control jails. While iocage is a useful tool when used as a CLI utility it has some issues when used programmatically. When managing jails automatically and not via a CLI tool things like performance, or a machine parsable interface matter. While on a CLI it is acceptable if a call takes a second or two, for automatically consuming a tool this delay is problematic. Another reason for the decision was that vmadm is an excellent tool. It is very well designed. SmartOs uses vmadm for years now. Given all that, we opted for adopting a proven interface rather than trying to create a new one. Since we already interface with it on SmartOS, we can reuse a majority of our management code between SmartOS and FreeBSDBSD. What can we do Today we can manage datasets, which are jail templates in the form of ZFS volumes. We can list and serve them from a dataset-server, and fetch those we like want. At this point, we provide datasets for FreeBSD 10.0 to 11.1, but it is very likely that the list will grow. As an idea here is a community-driven list of datasets that exist for SmartOS today. Moreover, while those datasets will not work, we hope to see the same for BSD jails. After fetching the dataset, we can define jails by using a JSON file. This file is compatible with the zone description used on SmartOS. It does not provide all the same features but a subset. Resources such as CPU and memory can be defined, networking configured, a dataset selected and necessary settings like hostname set. With the jail created, vmadm allows managing its lifetime, starting, stopping it, accessing the console and finally destroying it. Updates to jails are supported to however as of today they are only taken into account after restarting the jail. However, this is in large parts not a technical impossibility but rather wasn’t high up on the TODO list. It is worth mentioning that vmadm will not pick up jails created in other tools or manually. Only using vmadm created jails was a conscious decision to prevent it interfering with existing setups or other utilities. While conventional tools can manage jails set up with vmadm just fine we use some special tricks like nested jails to allow for restrictions required for multi-tenancy that are hard or impossible to achieve otherwise. Whats next First and foremost we hope to get some feedback and perhaps community engagement. In the meantime, as announced earlier this year, we are hard at work integrating FreeBSD hypervisors in FiFo, and as of writing this, the core actions work quite well. Right now only the barebone functions are supported, some of the output is not as clear as we would like. We hope to eventually add support for behyve to vmadm the same way that it supports KVM on SmartOS. Moreover, the groundwork for this already exists in the nested jail techniques we are using. Other than that we are exploring ways to allow for PCI pass through in jails, something not possible in SmartOS zones right now that would be beneficial for some users. In general, we want to improve compatibility with SmartOS as much as possible and features that we add over time should make the specifications invalid for SmartOS. You can get the tool from gitlab. |
What happens when someone says “say it to my face” actually does it? What happens when someone really meets you in Temecula? Anna Dempster is about to find out. Dempster is going to fight heckling male Internet troll in real life (IRL). First let’s watch pro troll Kristopher Zylinski yell at the sky about gender or something. Then this happened And now Anna Dempster is going to legally fight Kristopher Zylinski in MMA. Holy shit or LOL. Here’s one of Dempster’s recent fights If the Fight Gods (Freak Show Gods) have any empathy left Dempster will head kick KO this deranged dude in 30 seconds. Here is the official page where the event will be streamed on January 6th in Orlando Florida. H/T WMMA Rankings for the find |
Adam Carolla SUED By Childhood Friend For Publishing Old Pics Adam Carolla Lawsuit -- SUED By Childhood Friend For Publishing Old Pics Breaking News The BITTER personal feud betweenand a childhood friend just got pettier ...is suing Carolla, saying the podcasting king published 2 old photos in his book without permission ... according to docs obtained by TMZ.The pics are crappy point-and-shoot stuff ... one shows a group of friends from '85, and the other is a snapshot of the comedian in '84. Both appeared in Carolla's "Not Taco Bell Material," released last June.Misraje claims he was a big part of Carolla's growing media empire in the beginning ... they'd been besties for 30 YEARS ... but he got the boot in September 2011 when Carolla brought in business managers who clashed with Misraje. He sued Carolla in January for breach of contract ... that lawsuit is still pending.Misraje says he took the photos and therefore owns the copyrights, so he's entitled to unspecified damages. But the real knife-twister -- he wants the court to force Carolla to recall all unsold copies of the book and turn them over "for destruction" ... this according to the federal lawsuit filed last week in California.We reached out to Carolla for comment -- so far, no word back. |
Spain’s demographics are changing dramatically. At the end of the 20th century, most homes comprised of a couple and their children. Now, half of homes are made up of single people and childless couples, according to new figures. The number of childless couples tripled between 1977 and 2015; from from 1.5 million to 4.4 million according to the latest issue of Panorama Social, a report released by Funcas, an association that funds studies into social and economic issues in Spain. The number of single person homes has increased five-fold since 1977: from 700,000 to 3.8 million; 22 percent of homes compared to eight percent in 1977. The figures show the huge demographic changes that have occurred in Spain in the last 40 years. “In Spain today, four in ten homes are comprised of a couple with children; a quarter are comprised of a couple without children and a quarter are single-person homes. The rest is comprised mainly of single-parent families and homes shared by non-family members,” writes Pau Miret in the issue, entitled “Demographic Challenges”. There are several reasons why Spain’s demographics are changing. Emigration One pointed out in the report is the increased emigration since the beginning of the economic crisis. The highest levels of emigration have been from Madrid, Catalonia and Valencia. Hundreds of thousands of young Spaniards, at the age when, in the past they might have thought about starting a family, are instead choosing to emigrate abroad in search of work, something difficult to find in Spain where there is 20 percent unemployment. During 2015, some 100,000 Spaniards emigrated, a rise of 23 percent on the year before, according to provisional figures from Spain's National Statistics Institute (INE). Low birth rate In 2014 the birth rate in Spain rose slightly (by 0.1 percent) after five years of plummeting. Since 2008, the number of births in Spain has fallen by 18 percent. Spain had one of the lowest fertility rates in the EU in 2014 at an average of 1.32 children, just above Greece, Cyprus, Portugal. In fact, more people died in Spain last year than were born for the first time since 1941. The number of deaths (422,276) exceeded births by almost 3,200, according to provisional figures from the INE: Ageing population Another important reason is Spain’s aging population. Spaniards have among the highest life expectancy in the world and with fewer births, the demographics are becoming increasingly weighted towards older people. In fact, over half of Spanish grandparents recently admitted to helping out their children during the economic crisis, be it financially or by looking after their grandchildren. The study, carried out by Sigma Dos and released by Messengers of Peace association, showed that 55.9 percent of grandparents in Spain had helped their children during the economic crisis. Older mothers Among Europeans, Spaniards leave it the latest to have children. Spanish women, on average, have their first child aged 32 making them the oldest first time mothers in Europe according to a 2014 study by the Institute for Family Policies (IFP). The IFP blamed the impact of the economic crisis on why many women are having children later in life. |
While in almost every respect Democrat Hillary Clinton comes off as a safer pair of hands, last week's U.S. presidential debate left a nagging feeling that Republican Donald Trump, by playing the anti-establishment radical, might yet talk his way to victory. Trump succeeded in painting Clinton as the status quo candidate. A survey of his plans, from blowing up the central bank to cutting taxes for the rich, means a Trump win may prompt a far more radical transformation than he and his supporters have bargained for. Financial markets and most credible polls are not taking the possibility of a Trump win seriously. On the other hand, Trump has repeatedly shown he is no pushover. Scandals and devastating headlines hardly weaken the appeal of his focused message. Deep trouble As commentators have taken turns observing, voters in the United States are disenchanted with the way things are. Trump fans that disenchantment. Donald Trump blames his Democratic opponent for a country 'in deep trouble.' He offers radical but untried solutions, including lower taxes and new trade deals. (Reuters) "Our country is in deep trouble," he announced in the debate. To the purely rational, Clinton's response — that the U.S. economy is growing and has produced millions of jobs despite the financial collapse that undeniably unfolded during a Republican watch — made sense. But Trump's gloom suits the public mood. Rational or not, his comments prompt visceral anger that blames foreigners for "stealing our companies and jobs." And most powerful of all, Trump can play the outsider card. Blaming Clinton "Hillary, I'd just ask you this. You've been doing this for 30 years. Why are you just thinking about these solutions right now?" asked Trump in the debate. "For 30 years, you've been doing it, and now you're just starting to think of solutions." A security guard walks in front of an image of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Donald Trump has been critical of the central bank, saying 'going back to gold' would be hard, but wonderful. (Reuters) Pointing a finger at failures by "Secretary Clinton and others, politicians," Trump makes it clear he believes he is not just an alternative to Clinton's team, but also outside the entire political in-group. Clinton has said she intends to raise taxes on the rich, but as the default candidate of the business elite, hands tied by a divided Congress, she may find it hard to do more than tinker. As Trump said, the Democrats have had eight years. The outsider solutions being proposed by Trump and his team are undeniably radical, threatening major changes in the conventional way of doing things. Blaming the Federal Reserve Trump has promised a shakeup at the U.S. central bank. He has described a return to the gold standard as "hard" but "wonderful." A Financial Times column by Trump economic adviser Judy Shelton hints at a major rethink. The U.S. dollar is the anchor of global finance. Dramatic changes in the Fed will affect more than the United States. Trump says he wants to cut taxes for corporations, break free-trade agreements, make NATO members pay more, stop China from debasing its currency, bring the jobs home. To a disenchanted electorate, such radical solutions may sound good, and who knows, maybe, like disturbing the roots of lilac or wisteria as gardeners do to make them bloom, they will work. But there is another potential outcome. Canadian pollster and author Frank Graves, president of Ekos Research, recently showed me some data collected this year that might horrify many Canadians. Class conflicts? Polling by Ekos Research shows disenchantment with inequality is growing even in Canada, with 57 per cent of respondents saying it could lead to 'violent class conflict.' (Copyright Ekos Research) It showed that a growing trend toward inequality means a large majority, an astounding 57 per cent, fear that we are heading for a period of "class conflicts" if things don't change. "I take it with a grain of salt but I also think it's a really important indicator of just how concerned and upset the public increasingly are," said Graves in a phone interview. In a book coming out next week, Graves says there are solutions, but the changes he proposes to create greater equality and "a shared prosperity" are not Trump's. He says inequality, which is even worse in the U.S., needs something more like the New Deal, the Depression-era reforms that helped restart the postwar North American economy. "This was not a matter of tinkering," says Graves. "This was a matter of dramatic, bold reform." While Trump's own reforms purport to make America great again, the short-term effect, making the rich richer through tax cuts, pulling the rug out from under international trade, sending global currency markets into confusion, could exacerbate a growing sense of class conflict. Despite calls for bold reform by people like Graves, history shows that making changes in wealth distribution has been difficult, usually requiring a major crisis. By precipitating such a crisis with untried radical reforms, a victorious Trump could be the catalyst for even greater change. Follow Don on Twitter @don_pittis More analysis by Don Pittis |
Photo via Nick J Webb A centerpiece of the Bioneers conference is how we use technology to further environmentalism. One panel I couldn't possibly pass up was "iTube, YouTube, WeAllTube: Digital Media and Distribution Innovators." The panelists were experts in media distribution and how to get a message across effectively with new avenues. The panel consisted of: Leila Conners, Tree Media Group founder, journalist and filmmaker, including co-directing the 11th Hour; Richard Wolfe, technophile and former 20th century Fox technology chrief; Richard Graves, Youth Voice/Youth Vote and Global Environment at Americans for Informed Democracy program director; Mark Sommer, executive director of The Mainstream Media Project, author, independent journalist and internationally syndicated columnist These four experts gave their advice on how to be effective activists through digital technology- what to do and what to avoid to get your message across. Compiled here are knowledge nuggets as well as do's and don'ts so you can be effective with getting your green message across to others. A few paraphrased pearls of wisdom: Innovation is not something that just happens organically — it takes nurturing. — Richard Graves Younger people are leaving movie theaters because it isn't interactive. To capture the younger audience, make your media interactive. — Richard Wolfe Niche TV is a new wave. Focusing a program or station on specific issues rather than broad strokes is on its way in. But it needs money. We have to demand money be sent to visionary media makers, rather than junk TV. — Leila Conners Innovation journalism is becoming more relevant than investigative journalism — finding out how everything works together and taking a look at it in new ways. Media is changing from a one-way messaging service to an interactive format for information exchange. — Mark Sommer Younger people are not automatically technically savvy. They are early adapters, not technology natives. — Richard Graves The real innovations come from the outliers - those on the fringes. They are the ones that seem to always have amazing ideas, not necessarily those deeply involved in social media. — Mark Sommer No one has totally figured out how to measure on a large scale the impactfulness of a message. Emails from the audience, hits to the website, and similar measurements are some of the best ways, though, to know an effect. — Leila Conners Groups need to be noticed more than they need money. Media attention often brings the other resources a group needs in the form of volunteers with various expertise they are willing to donate. — Richard Graves Good Things to DO to Get Your Message Across: • Come up with interactive and mutable forms of educating people through technology. An example is Educasting . Use a combination of old and new media to create values-driven innovation. Chiseled down, this means everyone wants a story (the oldest form) and they want it in an easy-to-access format (the newest forms). — Mark Sommer • Using our high speed outlets for fast reporting to even beat out major news networks — camera phones and Twitter make a great couple. — Man from the audience • Bird-Dogging — get candidates to commit to something by using accessable tech devices like a flip camera to get them on record about an issue, and ensure that they can't back down. — Richard Graves • TV is a powerful medium whose agenda was once created by newspapers, Newspapers, though, are on their way out. You can set the agenda for television by using new media — blogs, YouTube, Facebook and other popular sites — and being the source of stories that television stations will want to pick up. Don't pay for a commercial; get someone else to want to pay for it because your issue is so important to them. — Richard Graves • Non-Profit communication directors once ensured that all the papers and TV stations knew about the non-profit and its events. But these forms of media are not primary any longer. Instead of an expensive communication director, a non-profit can spend far less money on an effective media project, utilizing the myriad of free resources like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, free blog sites and more. The audience can and will find them through an effective media project, and the non-profit will save a significant amount of money. — Richard Graves • Get a group of "fans" to work with you as volunteers. It is not the number of people you reach, but the quality of a core of dedicated people. Usually these people can volunteer their experience or networks to help your issue move forward. — Mark Sommer • Be Generous. Provide materials, video, sound clips and more for free to people who are working to spread the word about your event. When you refuse to provide materials to the press, bloggers and media outlets, or make it too sticky with copyright law to safely use, you shoot yourself in the foot. - Me Good Things NOT TO DO to Get Your Message Across: • Don't put something in just one form and expect it to last. Keeping your message fresh is key, so if you put up a website about an issue, also do a video, do a forum, do a blog, do any other creative thing you can to keep your message from stagnating. — Richard Graves and Leila Conners • Don't start a blog for an event — once the event is over, people stop visiting. Instead, create your blog around your issue, and include the event in posts. — Richard Graves • Don't use an event to create an audience. Rather, create an event to feed your existing audience. — Richard Graves More on Bioneers 2008: Bioneers 2008: How to Use Digital Media for Environmental Activism - Advice from the Experts Bioneers 2008: High Tech High Students Creating Our Future Bioneers 2008: Familiar Faces — Interface Carpets, WiserEarth, Nepalese Paper and More Bioneers 2008: Mark Sommer Creates Educasts for Mobile Learning Bioneers 2008: Opening Speech by Kenny Ausubel Bioneers 2008: Nature and Technology Joining Forces Bioneers 2008: A Green Conference Standard Bioneers 2008: Solar-Powered Water Fountain a Great DIY Project |
After the riots in Baltimore, and then the sudden, unexpected criminal charges against six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake asked the United States Department of Justice to conduct an audit of her police department and make recommendations for reform. "We all know that Baltimore continues to have a fractured relationship between the police and the community," Rawlings-Blake said. "I'm willing to do what it takes to reform my department." The request for help from Washington, though, amounted to an implicit admission that Rawlings-Blake did not know what that reform should look like. The mayor of Baltimore, like mayors in most cities, appoints the police commissioner, and Rawlings-Blake named the current chief, Anthony Batts, in 2012. The Justice Department often steps in when the political leadership of a city proves unable or unwilling to address problems with the local police; that’s what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, following the death of Michael Brown. But Rawlings-Blake isn’t resistant to scrutiny; to the contrary, she invites it. Her problem is that she appears to have little idea what to do. Rawlings-Blake’s perplexity may seem peculiar—aren’t mayors supposed to know how to address the problems in their own cities?–but her dilemma may be more understandable than it at first appears. The deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police, beginning with Brown, last August, have brought widespread attention to the issue of race relations in law enforcement. This focus has not generated any real consensus on what would be appropriate solutions. Rather, the current crisis in criminal justice has proved, in significant part, to be a vehicle for the exercise of preëxisting prejudices. Consider the claim that family breakdown, absent fathers, and lack of parental discipline are to blame for both violence within the black community and conflicts with police. This constellation of issues tends to be cited by conservatives. Toya Graham, the Baltimore mother who was caught on video smacking her sixteen-year-old son, who appeared to be joining the rioting, briefly became a folk hero. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post saluted Graham in an editorial: “If hauling your son out of a violent confrontation with police is abuse, we need more abusive parents. In days of yore, everyone would’ve seen Graham’s actions as what they were: old-fashioned discipline.” It is true that children who grow up in intact homes tend to have better chances in life than those who do not. But one can recognize the problem of broken families (Graham is raising six children as a single parent) without endorsing a mother’s attack on her son. Moreover, conservatives rarely explain how intact families, valuable as they are, can provide jobs in communities like Baltimore, where about thirty-seven per cent of black men are unemployed, compared with ten per cent of white men. Other cities report similar data, and liberals often use it to counter claims that black families are at issue. Conservatives push culture, liberals stress economics, and neither is entirely wrong—or right. Following Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, community policing emerged as a popular panacea. There is a mismatch in Ferguson between the racial makeup of its police force (overwhelmingly white) and its population (overwhelmingly black). The death of a young black man at the hands of a white officer seemed like a tragic outgrowth of this misalliance. But Freddie Gray died at the hands of a police force that is nearly as integrated as the city of Baltimore, and that is headed by an African-American commissioner. Of the officers charged in his death, three are black and three are white. Again, a police force that looks like the city it patrols is a good idea, but hardly a guarantee of racial peace or skillful law enforcement. Hillary Clinton contributed to the debate by calling for all police officers to wear body cameras, which would, in theory, resolve ambiguities about encounters with the public. But the death of Eric Garner on Staten Island, at the hands of the New York City Police Department, was captured on video—which did not conclusively resolve the question of whether the police acted unlawfully. I discovered the limits of admirable attempts to address racial disparities in law enforcement when I went to Milwaukee earlier this year, to look at the innovative work being done by the local district attorney, John Chisholm. (I wrote about Chisholm in the magazine.) After Chisholm took office, in 2007, he allowed a research and policy group to examine the racial implications of his work. They found that he was prosecuting African-Americans more harshly than whites for nonviolent drug offenses. In response, Chisholm adopted policies that sharply restricted criminal prosecution for nonviolent drug offenses; this, of course, did away with most racial disparities in these areas. But violent crime remains concentrated in Milwaukee’s heavily African-American north side, and Chisholm has continued to prosecute those cases, in which both the defendants and the victims are overwhelmingly black. So there has been little change in the over-all ratio of black-to-white prosecutions. There are other initiatives, too, that governments can undertake to address the deep hostility between African-American communities and police departments. Many have some value. But will any of them make a dramatic difference in the underlying problems? So far, alas, it seems that the answer is no. |
ST. PAUL, Minnesota (CNN) -- A new poll suggests that Barack Obama is widening his lead over John McCain in two battleground states but indicates the race is dead even in Ohio, the state that decided the last presidential election. John McCain gets the support of white voters in Ohio, while in Iowa and Minnesota they lean toward Barack Obama. In a CNN/Time/Opinion Research Corp. survey out Wednesday afternoon, 55 percent of Iowa registered voters who were questioned said that Obama, D-Illinois, is their choice for president, with 40 percent backing McCain, R-Arizona. That's more than double the lead Obama had in a University of Iowa poll taken early last month. "Obama is winning in all regions of the state, even in the western counties, where George W. Bush beat John Kerry by 17 points," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "Obama is winning rural voters in Iowa, not something you see in many other states." Iowa's caucuses kicked off the presidential primary season and launched Obama toward the Democratic presidential nomination. "Iowa was Barack Obama's breakthrough state. He won the Democratic caucuses with a powerful organization. John McCain barely competed in the Iowa Republican caucuses. He came in fourth," said Bill Schneider, a CNN senior political analyst. "Obama retains a strong organization in Iowa, where McCain is just beginning to get started," Schneider said. It appears to be a similar story in Minnesota, where the Republicans are holding their national convention this week. The poll indicates that Obama has a 12-point lead over McCain, 53 percent to 41 percent. That's up slightly from a 10-point lead Obama held in a Humphrey Institute survey taken last month. "It's important to note that today's polls don't reflect any boost McCain might get from the GOP convention, because nearly all the interviews were done before the festivities started in St. Paul," Holland said. "This could be Obama's high-water mark in those states." It looks like a very different story in Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes up for grabs. iReport.com: Share your images from the campaign trail President Bush's narrow victory in Ohio four years ago clinched his re-election. It looks like it could be just as tight this time around in Ohio. The poll suggests that Obama has a 2-point lead over McCain, 47 percent to 45 percent, which is a virtual tie when taking into account the survey's 3.5-percentage-point sampling error. "In Iowa and Minnesota, white voters are backing Obama. In Ohio, white voters are supporting McCain. What about those blue-collar white voters that were so important for Clinton in Ohio? They're pretty solidly for McCain," Schneider said. The CNN/Time Magazine/Opinion Research Corp. poll was taken August 31 through September 2, with 828 registered voters in Iowa, 742 registered voters in Minnesota and 685 registered voters in Ohio questioned by telephone. All About John McCain • Barack Obama |
If there’s one thing everyone knows about Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s that the group uses a Twelve Step program to help people overcome their addiction. No doubt AA has helped a lot of people, but there’s also no doubt the Twelve Steps call on people to give themselves over to a Higher Power. That’s why AA is considered a religious organization. In British Columbia, however, many treatment centers only recommend AA to alcoholics. The government’s own health information website also endorses AA. That’s a problem if you’re someone who either wants secular alternatives or prefers programs that operate based on the best available scientific evidence. This week, Ian Bushfield, the Executive Director of the BC Humanist Association, spoke in front of the province Legislature’s Standing Committee on Health to convince them to include secular recovery programs wherever possible while also making clear that AA is a religious group that isn’t run based on evidence. It was actually a good discussion for the most part. The legislators seemed to really be listening to what Bushfield was saying, with one of them saying this to him before asking pointed questions about how the government could fix the problem: This is a real eye-opener for me. It’s not something I was aware of at all, so I want to really thank you for coming forward and making this presentation and helping to open some of our eyes on it, who weren’t aware of this. Great! Nice to have someone who listens to the evidence being presented. But I want to bring up one particular comment from legislator Dr. Darryl Plecas, who was much more dismissive of Bushfield’s silly reason-based ideas: … In fact, there’s evidence to the contrary that would suggest that belief in a higher power has an incredibly powerful healing effect with people with all kinds of disorders. I’m just saying that’s the medical literature, which is telling us that. [Ian Bushfield: Well, I would disagree with that. I haven’t seen the study you’re talking about.] Well, I think there’s a fair amount of evidence which says that — like, such things as prayer would be helpful to people… It makes you want to bang your head against the wall, doesn’t it? Plecas was basically arguing AA shouldn’t be discounted because the “medical literature” says belief in God and prayer help people overcome their addictions and “all kinds of disorders.” Just to be clear, there’s absolutely no scientific proof (and there never has been) that God helps people in any meaningful way. What Plecas may have been referring to are studies that show belief in God and prayer function as powerful placebos. If you think they’ll help you, they just might. But there’s nothing divine going on there. If you think holding a rabbit’s foot will help, say, relieve your anxiety, that might help, too… but it doesn’t mean the rabbit’s foot has any special power. In case you’re curious, in every study where people pray for strangers without their knowledge, the strangers never get better in any statistically significant way. (Sometimes, they got worse.) Let’s hope the more rational minds win out here and secular alternatives are promoted at treatment centers in BC before long. It would be a resounding victory for those of us who care about recovery without the superstition. (Image via Shutterstock) |
Manu Fernandez/Associated Press Barcelona star Pedro is undergoing a medical with Chelsea after the Blues hijacked Manchester United's proposed move for the player. That's according to Luis Rojo of Marca, who added: "Pedro Rodriguez is all set to join Chelsea. The Blues and Barca struck a deal on Tuesday night for an initial €28 million plus another €2 million in add-ons, gazumping Manchester United's offer of €25 million up front and up to €5 million in extras." The news was also confirmed by Spanish football expert Rafael Hernandez: According to Dan King of the Sun (via Jonathan Green of the Daily Star), manager Jose Mourinho is against the forward's acquisition, but it appears owner Roman Abramovich has made an executive decision to bring him in with Chelsea struggling in their opening two Premier League fixtures. Despite Mourinho's reported objections, it was a personal call from the manager that sealed the deal, per Matt Barlow and Ian Ladyman of the Daily Mail. Further, it seems as though Mourinho isn't the only manager not interested in signing Pedro, with the Daily Mail's Mike Keegan reporting that United boss Louis van Gaal made the call for the Red Devils to back out of the race: Bleacher Report's Spanish football expert Guillem Balague elaborated on why the player won't end up at United: The Spaniard scored 11 goals and assisted nine in all competitions last season, but he was largely brought on as a substitute and used to cover Neymar, Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi. Pedro will add some much-needed competitive depth to Chelsea's squad. While the Blues have the likes of Juan Cuadrado, Victor Moses and Loic Remy in their ranks, the 28-year-old is far more incisive and offers a higher-quality alternative, which will be useful for the long campaign ahead. What could be a concern is Mourinho's reported stance on the transfer. If he is reluctant to sign Pedro, the forward may struggle to get the minutes on the pitch that he so clearly desires—after all, his lack of minutes at Barca is the sole cause of him wanting a move away from the club. What is certain is Chelsea seem to have acquired a player of outstanding talent and one who is capable of helping them regain a foothold in the title race. How successful he will be largely depends on Mourinho's management of the situation. |
The world’s most popular online course is a general introduction to the art of learning, taught jointly by an educator and a neuroscientist. “Learning How To Learn,” which was created by Barbara Oakley, an electrical engineer, and Terry Sejnowski, a neuroscientist, has been ranked as the leading class by enrollment in a survey of the 50 largest online courses released earlier this month by the Online Course Report website. The course is “aimed at a broad audience of learners who wanted to improve their learning performance based on what we know about how brains learn,” said Dr. Sejnowski, the director of the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. With 1,192,697 students enrolled since the course was created last year, “Learning How to Learn,” which is offered by the University of California through Coursera, an online learning company which has partnered with a number of universities, has narrowly edged out the more tightly focused course, “Machine Learning,” taught by Stanford University professor Andrew Ng, which currently has 1,122,031 students enrolled. The similar enrollment figures are striking in part because the field of machine learning has become one of the hottest university areas of study in recent years. High technology companies are competing intensely in Silicon Valley and elsewhere for newly minted data scientists. The enrollment figures indicate that massively open online courses, or MOOCs, which in 2012 emerged as a potentially disruptive force that some believed might threaten the modern educational system, are continuing to evolve and gaining broad acceptance as part of an increasingly diverse marketplace for online education. The Achilles heel of the MOOC phenomena has been that while enrollments have been huge, the number of students who actually complete courses for credit has remained low. That has led traditional educators to argue that the new technology would fail because students are generally less motivated to complete coursework online. The completion rate — or “stickiness” — of the “Learning How to Learn” course has been above 20 percent, said Dr. Sejnowski, roughly twice the average for most MOOCs. He said the course is now attracting about 2,000 new students a day from 200 countries. The course was created after the two researchers met at the National Science Foundation-financed Science of Learning Center at the University of California at San Diego, which Dr. Sejnowski directs. Dr. Oakley, a professor of engineering at Oakland University in Michigan, acknowledged that although only roughly 50,000 of the more than one million enrollees in her course had actually received a certificate for the course, certification was the wrong metric to understand the impact of the new form of online education. “People frame it incorrectly,” she said. “Students are clearly hungry to learn, and they’re particularly hungry for practically useful, scientifically based information told in a way that they can really get it.” She is a passionate advocate of the MOOC concept against a range of academic critics. She recently wrote an essay defending online education technologies. Dr. Oakley claims there is evidence that the course has touched a nerve more broadly from a diverse audience that is eager to acquire to improve their learning skills. She cited a range of groups who are promoting the course from the California State Prison System, federal K-12 teacher certificate programs, as well as refugee camps in Somalia and Sudan, where she asserted that students threatened to overwhelm the meager Internet bandwidth available in those countries. There is evidence that MOOCs are being fed by a broad base of “life-long learning” interest said Merrill Cook, editor of the Online Course Report. “Your average person taking a MOOC has a bachelors degree and is in their 30s,” he said. He noted that there is now an increasing proliferation of a range of different online learning offerings beyond MOOCs. That can be seen in the shift in strategy in one of the earliest commercial efforts in the new approach to teaching. Take Udacity, which was founded by Sebastian Thrun, an artificial intelligence researcher who taught at Stanford and then founded Google’s X Lab research effort. After first offering MOOCs, the Mountain View, Calif.-based firm shifted its strategy and now offers “Nanodegrees” to train online customers in very specific skills. “If I look back at the MOOC hype, what actually happened was that people equated a cheaper delivery method with the replacement of the entire educational system,” Dr. Thrun said. “A cheaper technology is not the same as a business revolution.” |
In a triumph of covert police work, undercover officers in North Carolina arrested another undercover officer from a different force after buying drugs off him. The entirely drug dealer-free drug deal occurred when undercover officers from the Statesville Police Department met a man interested in selling them some marijuana. The man was an undercover deputy from Iredell County Sheriff’s Office. Marijuana: the police would like to sell you some Statesville is the county seat of Iredell county. The Statesville officers apparently became suspicious that the drug-dealer was, in fact, an undercover deputy – so they rang the narcotics unit of the sheriff’s office to check. They were told that the dealer was definitely not an undercover deputy. They promptly arrested the man, before officers from the sheriff’s office arrived and confirmed that the man was, in fact, and undercover deputy. He was then released. Sheriff Phil Redmond told the Statesville Record & Landmark: ‘We had several large-scale operations going on at once, and the wires got crossed on this one.’ Statesville Police Chief Tom Anderson said: ‘It was a learning experience. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.’ |
Redlands was incorporated Nov. 26, 1888, and in 126 years, this little town has made history in many ways. Here are our claims to fame, in no particular order: Pizza pub Gay ’90s was the inspiration for the television hit “Cheers.” The show’s creators, Glen and Les Charles, went to the University of Redlands, and spent a lot of time in “the place where everybody knows your name.” Charles Nordhoff, who wrote “Mutiny on the Bounty,” is from here and is buried at Hillside Memorial Park. The trolley barn on Citrus Avenue is the last trolley barn in Southern California. The land at Opal Street and Citrus Avenue, behind Redlands East Valley High School, is the site of the Cram estate. It was leased by the famous Earp family in 1864. Nicholas Earp farmed the land for two years, but his son Wyatt Earp disliked farm life and sought adventure in San Timoteo Canyon with a freighting and stage line that shipped gold bullion — years before he and his older brothers Virgil and Morgan were in the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The Zanja was constructed by hand in 1819 — almost 70 years before Redlands became a city. At the top of it still sits the 1892 Redlands Electric Light and Power Co. powerhouse. It’s where the first three-phase power in the United States was created. That power was generated and sent 60 miles away to Los Angeles in 1893. The company later became Southern California Edison. Hatfield Buick, at 101, is the oldest Buick dealership of all. When the University of Redlands made its running oval, a man trying to discern whether a galloping horse ever has all four feet off the ground at once took a series of rapid photos on that track, and that’s how the motion picture was invented. The horse’s name: Hollywood. At the turn of the century when Redlanders were living on citrus groves, oranges sold for $5.95 a box. A tree gave about 20 boxes. You could put 90 trees on an acre, and the average person had about 10 acres, or 900 trees. You could pay for your house in a year. The Mitten Building is Redlands’ oldest packing house building. Redlands Foothill Groves is the last one in town in operation. A segment of a classic 1968 Ford commercial was filmed in front of the corner house on the Hogsback, at The Terrace and Church Street. The University of Redlands is also featured. The only survivor of the Zodiac killer lives in Redlands, and there is a group who suspects the 1948 killing of Redlands teen Margie Lee Winn was that serial killer’s first attack. The Morey Mansion was sketched regularly on the funny pages as Broom Hilda’s home, starting in 1970. Redlands was the first city in the state to require driver’s licenses. The Doors video for L.A. Woman (their last album, released in 1971, three months before lead singer Jim Morrison died) was filmed in Redlands. You’ll recognize the opening scenes. The first lighted tennis court west of the Mississippi is on Highland Avenue. The Redlands Bowl is the longest running venue in the world where no admission is charged. Redlands High School is the oldest high school in California still operating in its original spot. The practice of saying the Pledge of Allegiance began at Kingsbury School. The United States’ first woman career ambassador, Frances Elizabeth Willis, was a Redlander with a home on Highland Avenue. When Eleanor Roosevelt came to visit her, the first lady stayed at the Wissahickon Inn. Citrograph Printing, at 127 years old, is the longest-running printing company in the state. We have a lot to brag about. Happy birthday, hometown of mine! |
Before Pimp C’s tragic death and Bun B’s transformation into a universally beloved elder statesman and ambassador for hip-hop, UGK was a innovative young duo from the then unknown oil refinery town of Port Arthur, Texas. The state was just beginning to come into prominence as a breeding ground for hip-hop talent in 1991 on the shoulders of the Geto Boys, their hit single “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”, and their charismatic and tortured frontman, Scarface. Then UGK’s major-label debut, Too Hard to Swallow, came out a year later and changed everything. Picture a young drug dealer, fearless and brazen, in a sparse kitchen. He turns a knob, and blue flames emerge from the gas stove top, only to be smothered by a cold, gray pot filled with water. The water boils, and a smudged glass jar is submerged, a white powder coating the bottom, which through some feat of chemistry transforms from powder, to oil, to hardened rock. This scene was played out in vivid detail by the lead character, Caine, in the 1992 Hughes Brothers film Menace II Society, which featured the Too Hard to Swallow standout “Pocket Full of Stones (Pimp C’s Remix)” on the soundtrack. But it also played out in real life in the early 1990s in big cities on the east and west coasts as well as in smaller towns and working-class communities in the south. The crack era, and the destruction it wrought, was the inspiration for Too Hard to Swallow. The raw and unfiltered realism from Pimp and Bun positioned both rappers as active participants and unwitting victims of this poisonous trade. With a majority of the songs culled from their 1988 debut EP, The Southern Way, Too Hard To Swallow doesn’t display the same level of polish we would hear from UGK on later albums like Supertight and the classic Ridin’ Dirty. Pimp C’s production is stripped down, dragging easily recognizable samples like The Isley Brothers’ “Between the Sheets” — which was later used for The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Big Poppa” and hit singles from the likes of Bill Withers, The Steve Miller Band, and Rufus — through the Port Arthur dirt to create something previously unheard. Pimp and Bun spun lurid tales with the wizened demeanor of street veterans and impish mischievousness of the stars of a Judd Apatow teen comedy. Throughout the album, we hear more about the dicks of the influential duo than we would, thankfully, ever hear again throughout their respected careers, but we also hear the still-teenage rappers carve out their unique place in hip-hop and in their own region on songs like “Short Texas.” The aggression on the aforementioned track is turned up to a roiling boil compared to the low simmer of “Something Good”. Featuring another Isleys sample (this time “Summer Breeze”), both rappers alternate between thumbing their noses at fake gangsters and taunting the sexually unsatisfied paramours of their would-be enemies. “Something Good”, and a handful of additional songs, show the most restraint and promise, while giving glimpses of the greatness that would ensue from both rappers on subsequent albums. The album climaxes on the Pimp C solo outing “Feel Like I’m the One Who’s Doing Dope”. Pimp channels the same hysteria and delusions that tormented Scarface on “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”, which is not coincidentally sampled for the hook. Unhinged and paranoid, Pimp blows a kiss after he kills his girlfriend, who he thinks may have stolen his drugs from him though he’s unsure if he hasn’t just used them himself. The song taps into the juxtaposition Jay-Z elaborated on years later on his Black Album favorite “Allure”, comparing the draw of the streets and the adrenaline rush from tempting fate each day, to addicts jonesing and returning to the drugs that will eventually kill them. Too Hard to Swallow was a groundbreaking beginning to UGK’s legendary career. Their influence would extend throughout the country like the interstate drug trade, creating addicts and purveyors of the same dope in big southern metropolises like the Dungeon Family in Atlanta, small southern hamlets like Big K.R.I.T. in Meridian, MS, and even crawling up the east coast to hook the likes of the aforementioned Jay-Z and Harlem’s A$AP Rocky. UGK’s influence is undeniable, and it began 25 years ago in Short Texas with “Too Hard to Swallow”. Rest in peace to Pimp C, and undying respect to Bun B for creating a sound that altered the course of hip-hop history. |
Sony Buys Michael Jackson's Stake In Lucrative Music Catalog Enlarge this image toggle caption AFP/AFP/Getty Images AFP/AFP/Getty Images The Sony Corporation has announced it will pay Michael Jackson's estate $750 million for Jackson's 50 percent share of the Sony/ATV music publishing company. The backstory here has more twists and shouts than a long and winding road (Couldn't resist, but note that the rights to both "Twist and Shout" and "The Long and Winding Road" belong to Sony/ATV). Sony's purchase marks the culmination of one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the music business. It all started when Paul McCartney advised his young friend Michael Jackson that, to really make money in the music industry, you needed to own the publishing of hit songs. McCartney told CBS-TV in a 1989 interview that Jackson joked to him "One day I'll own your songs." To McCartney's shock, Jackson was true to his word. A music publisher owns the rights to a song's lyrics and composition. Anytime a song is performed, played on TV or radio, used in a commercial, etc., the publisher collects royalties. Contracts vary but, traditionally, that money is split 50/50 with the songwriter. In 1985, music publisher ATV owned the rights to some 4,000 songs, including more than 200 by The Beatles. It also owned Little Richard's Tutti Frutti. Michael Jackson's lawyer, John Branca, knew Jackson was looking for songs to buy. When Branca learned that the Australian tycoon who owned ATV was putting the company up for sale, Branca and Jackson put in a bid. After long, tense negotiations, Jackson was able to purchase ATV for a reported $47.5 million. In the mid-1990s, when Jackson was in debt, he sold half of ATV to Sony, forming the joint venture Sony/ATV. To get full ownership, Sony offered Jackson's estate $750 million. The Sony/ATV catalog has swelled over the years and now owns or administers the copyrights to more than three million songs, including hits by Sting, Lady Gaga and Alicia Keyes. The company controls some of the best known songs in the world, including "Over The Rainbow" and "New York, New York." One analyst tells Bloomberg, with the increase in streaming, the trove's worth is more than what Sony's paying for it. As for Michael Jackson's estate, it still owns Jackson's master recordings as well as Mijac Music, the publishing company that owns all of the songs he wrote. In a statement by co-executors John Branca and John McClain, the sale to Sony will allow them to maximize the "the value of Michael's Estate for the benefit of his children." |
Suzanne and Shea explore Buzzfeed quizzes, social media stalking and self-involved spouses in episode 207, "Who's The Cool Girl Josh Is Dating?" How has Valencia not done some super stalking by now? Where was Heather while Val and Becks were falling down a three-day rabbit hole? Who will Rebecca wind up watching Friday Night Lights with? Which Hamilton number did the boss's kids perform before the West Brovinas went on? We answer your questions, award our Giant Pretzels of the week and give our self-care recommendations for staying healthy and decidedly un-Bunch-like. Plus a special bonus self-care recommendation from your favorite ex-girlfriend turned girl grouper Valencia, a.k.a. Gabrielle Ruiz! (@gabrielleruiz) It's another fantastic pick-me-up for you from this fabulous cast. SONGS: Research Me Obsessively (Rachel Bloom, Jack Dolgen, Steven M. Gold and Adam Schlesinger, performed by Brittany Snow) Let Me Call You Sweetheart (Beth Slater Whitson and Leo Friedman, performed by West Brovinas Andrew Arrow, David Bickford, Kevin Linell, and Steve Monroe) You Go First (Rachel Bloom, Jack Dolgen, Steven M. Gold and Adam Schlesinger, performed by Rachel Bloom and Donna Lynne Champlin) |
Crowds gathered in Punxsutawney, Pa. to witness the annual ritual on Feb. 2. (Reuters) Punxsutawney Phil — the pleasantly plump Pennsylvania marmot who claims he “is the only true weather forecasting groundhog” — woke up Thursday morning, crawled out of his hole and saw his shadow. More winter, Phil said. I’m going back to bed. Wrong. In fact, spring has already arrived in somewhat official capacity for some of us, for some of us it might as well be spring for all of the warm weather we had in January. [Groundhogs totally deserve their own day (even if they can’t predict the weather)] The groundhog’s prediction came around 7:25 a.m. in Punxsutawney, Pa., where scattered snow showers were blowing by and the temperature was a finger-numbing 25 degrees. We’re not sure where the shadow came from with the sun just coming above the horizon and thick clouds overhead — perhaps all the lights from the TV cameras threw him off. We’ll give him a pass this time. The plucky marmot did not see his shadow last year, predicting an early spring during what was almost a record-strong El Niño. It wasn’t much of a long shot — forecasters had been saying the same thing for weeks. The people of Punxsutawney, Pa., celebrate Groundhog Day by singing, dancing and drinking through the night. The Post visited Punxsutawney Phil's hometown on the eve of his prediction to quiz revelers on how much they know about groundhogs. (Monica Akhtar,Jason Bittel/The Washington Post) Phil probably should have phoned in last year’s forecast this morning, because this one was wrong before he even woke up. When a season begins and when it ends tends to be a subjective matter, but there are actual metrics that phenologists (plant scientists!) use to determine when spring has arrived. [Groundhog Day is so silly. But as a groundhog scientist, I love it anyway.] In parts of the Southeast, green leaves are popping out more than 20 days ahead of schedule, according to the National Phenology Network. In late January, daffodils were reported in Oklahoma, crocuses in Delaware and tulips in Boston. Spring leaves are popping out more than 20 days ahead of schedule in parts of the Southeast. (USANPN) In the last two weeks of January, we tracked a record-long warm streak in Washington, D.C. — it didn’t drop below 32 degrees for 19 days in a row, which is the longest in the month of January. Last month was the second-warmest January since 2000 and the 12th-warmest overall for the capital. While no one questions Phil’s dedication to the seasonal outlook, his accuracy is an enduring source of controversy. In 2013, Phil issued a forecast for an early spring, but bitter cold and snow gripped the eastern United States into March that year. The prosecuting attorney in Butler County, Ohio, went as far as to seek the death penalty for Phil for “misrepresentation of early spring” before a Pennsylvania law firm came to Phil’s defense, claiming the Ohio attorney had no jurisdiction to prosecute the groundhog. Since the groundhog’s first prediction in 1887, Phil has seen his shadow 102 times and not seen it on just 17 occasions. There are nine missing years in the record, but Phil has issued a forecast without exception. Phil’s official website says he has “of course” issued a correct forecast 100 percent of the time. But NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center says Phil’s forecasts have shown “no predictive skill” in recent years. AccuWeather finds the rodent has an 80 percent accuracy rate. NOAA says Groundhog Day originated as an ancient celebration of the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox. “Superstition has it that fair weather [at this midpoint] was seen as forbearance of a stormy and cold second half to winter,” NOAA writes in its summary of Groundhog Day background and folklore. Groundhog Day-like celebrations are held in several other regions of North America where other rodents make their predictions, including: |
Village Roadshow will lead an action in the Australian Federal Court backed by Hollywood studios to have internet service providers block a piracy website which facilitates the free streaming of movies and television shows such as Star Wars and The Walking Dead. The action is the first taken to the Federal Court under the Copyright Amendment (online infringement) Act passed by the parliament which was put forward by the then Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull in June last year. The site Village Roadshow and its backers are seeking to block is SolarMovie. If successful the court case would not see Australians using the site prosecuted - it would simply stop working for users based here unless they were using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service. The site has been blocked by court order in the United Kingdom and on Tuesday was the first site to be blocked through court action by Singapore ISPs since the its government's own copyright legislation changes in December 2014. |
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