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<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) _ These California lotteries were drawn Sunday:</p>
<p>Daily 3 Evening</p>
<p>4-4-9</p>
<p>(four, four, nine)</p>
<p>Daily 3 Midday</p>
<p>1-4-1</p>
<p>(one, four, one)</p>
<p>Daily 4</p>
<p>3-3-9-4</p>
<p>(three, three, nine, four)</p>
<p>Daily Derby</p>
<p>1st:7 Eureka-2nd:3 Hot Shot-3rd:9 Winning Spirit, Race Time: 1:45.97</p>
<p>(1st: 7 Eureka, 2nd: 3 Hot Shot, 3rd: 9 Winning Spirit; Race Time: one: 45.97)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $63,000</p>
<p>Fantasy 5</p>
<p>01-16-27-28-31</p>
<p>(one, sixteen, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, thirty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $303,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $343 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $440 million</p>
<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) _ These California lotteries were drawn Sunday:</p>
<p>Daily 3 Evening</p>
<p>4-4-9</p>
<p>(four, four, nine)</p>
<p>Daily 3 Midday</p>
<p>1-4-1</p>
<p>(one, four, one)</p>
<p>Daily 4</p>
<p>3-3-9-4</p>
<p>(three, three, nine, four)</p>
<p>Daily Derby</p>
<p>1st:7 Eureka-2nd:3 Hot Shot-3rd:9 Winning Spirit, Race Time: 1:45.97</p>
<p>(1st: 7 Eureka, 2nd: 3 Hot Shot, 3rd: 9 Winning Spirit; Race Time: one: 45.97)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $63,000</p>
<p>Fantasy 5</p>
<p>01-16-27-28-31</p>
<p>(one, sixteen, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, thirty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $303,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $343 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $440 million</p> | CA Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/e39b47408e4f484abc7e71505e0ad574 | 2018-01-01 | 2 |
<p>One of President Trump’s first lines of business has been to stop illegal immigration, and that also means that work has&#160;progressed when it comes to his campaign promise of building a wall. Florida Senator Marco Rubio is now saying that the wall isn’t going to stop or curb illegal immigration because he says that many illegal immigrants living in Florida are the result of overstaying visas.</p>
<p>Rubio is a supporter of the plan to build a wall, but he also adds&#160;that “In Florida, 70 percent of the people here illegally came on an airplane.&#160;They overstayed a visa — the wall isn’t going to address that.”</p>
<p>As the Miami Herald reports, the Department of Homeland Security estimated in 2016 that 416,500 people stayed in the country in 2016 out of 45 million United States arrivals by air and sea whose business and tourist visas expired in 2015.</p>
<p>A former INS demographer, Robert Warren, said that illegal immigrants in Florida that had overstayed their visas were about 61%, which translates to 430,000 of 710,000 illegal immigrants.</p>
<p>“What it comes down to is Florida has a higher mix of people who don’t come from Mexico or Central America than the country as a whole,” Warren added.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Rubio Says Wall Won’t Stop Illegal Immigration | true | http://shark-tank.com/2017/02/03/rubio-says-wall-wont-stop-illegal-immigration/ | 0 |
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<p>Photo by SFJZ13 | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>We are now entering yet another US-UK led war build-up against the cornerstone of Western ideology, the designated Enemy Russia.</p>
<p>As usual there is amnesia of the ever-recurring big-lie pretext, the need for another crisis to keep the two-billion-dollar a day NATO war machine going, the baleful puppet moves of Canada in the process, the crisis of legitimacy of the lead attacker’s government, and the silent diversion from the whole nightmare scenario unfolding by all NATO-member governments, mass media and even ‘peace activist’ organisations.</p>
<p>This time the big-lie pretext is about the alleged poisoning by the Kremlin/Putin of a double-agent, usually a stock move in the espionage entertainments, but here with no evidence of the claimed origin of the lethal nerve-agent, but rather expert denial within British defence and weapons research itself, with devious political word games to get around the absence of any corroborated evidence in familiar denuciations of Russia full of aggression and hate. Not even a death is recorded while US-led nd UK-armed ally forces are still mass-murdering poor civilian Yeminis, drone-murdering endless targets and civilians abroad, continuing on unblamed for the ongoing NATO-executed eco-genocides of Iraq and Libya societies, and on the 19-years anniversary of the mass bombing of, once again a society, Yugoslavia, with the most evolved social infrastructures of health, education, housing and life security in the region.</p>
<p>What this latest war pretext for US and NATO-backed aggression is really about is justifying more war in the Ukraine now that the massive war preparations along all of Russia’s Western borders following the self-declared Nazi-led and proven US- orchestrated and commanded mass-murder coup d’etat in February 2014 . As usual there is amnesia of the ever-recurring big-lie pretext, the need for another crisis to keep the two-billion-dollar a day NATO war machine going, the baleful puppet moves of Canada in the process, the crisis of legitimacy of the lead attacker’s government, and the silent diversion from the whole nightmare scenario unfolding by all NATO-member governments, mass media and even ‘peace activist’ organisations.</p>
<p>This time the big-lie pretext is about the alleged poisoning by the Kremlin/Putin of a double-agent traitor, usually a stock move in the espionage entertainments. Yet here there is no confirmed evidence whatever of the claimed origin of the lethal nerve-agent, but rather expert denial within British defence and weapons research itself that is silence in the press, with devious political word games crafted to get around the absence of any corroborated facts in the familiar denuciations of Russia full of team aggression and hate. Not even a death is recorded while US-led nd UK-armed ally forces are still mass-murdering poor civilian Yeminis, drone-murdering endless targets and civilians abroad, continuing on unblamed for the ongoing NATO-executed eco-genocides of Iraq and Libya societies, and on the 19-years anniversary of the mass bombing of Yugoslavia – once again a socialist society with the most evolved social infrastructures of health, education, housing and life security in the region.</p>
<p>What this latest war pretext for US and NATO-backed aggression is really about is justifying more war in Ukraine now that the massive war preparations along all of Russia’s Western borders following the self-declared Nazi-led and proven US- orchestrated and commanded mass-murder coup d’etat in February 2014 . As always, this US-directed mass murder was reverse-blamed on the ever shifting Enemy face – Russia’s allied but duly elected government of the Ukraine. It was only after this violent-coup Nazi-led and US directed overthrow of the elected government of the very resource-rich Ukraine – “the breadbasket of Europe” and sitting on newly discovered rich fossil fuel deposits – that Russia annexed its traditional territory of the Crimea next to Eastern Ukraine, the latter after the violent coup put under the rule of a US-Nazi-led government until its people fought back with Russia assistance for the now NATO-targeted zones of the new Donetsk and Lugansk republics.</p>
<p>What is new now is that we are about to enter yet another NATO-member war build-up against the cornerstone of Western&#160; ideology, the designated Enemy Russia. As usual there is amnesia of the ever-recurring big-lie pretext, the need for another crisis to keep the two-billion-dollar a day US-led NATO war machine going, the baleful puppet moves of Canada in the process, the crisis of legitimacy of the lead attacker’s UK government, and silent diversion from the whole nightmare scenario unfolding in NATO-member states, mass media and even ‘peace activist’ organisations.</p>
<p>Cui Bono? &#160;</p>
<p>The UK and the US followed by Canada and some of the EU have by expulsion of Russia diplomats prepared the diplomatic way for war in the Ukraine to seize back these lost coup-territories, and it will be in the name of “freedom”, “human rights” and “the rules of civilised nations”. But there is much officially suppressed colour to the warring parties political conflict which reveals who the truly heinous suppressor of human rights is.&#160; Under mass media and corporate-state cover, the US-UK-NATO axis about to make war in Ukraine is doing so under the factually absurd but non-stop pretext of “Russia aggression” constructed out of the double-agent poisoning affair, with the guilty agents and poison having no proof but the ever louder UK-led and NATO-state assertion of it in unison. Yet there is a clear answer to the cui bono question – which party does all this benefit? Clearly once the question is posed, as opposed to completely gagged in the corporate press, Theresa May’s slow-motion collapsing Tory government – now even challenged for its fraudulent Brexit referendum protecting the big London banks from EU regulation – has to have such a war-drum distraction to survive. The old war of aggression pattern reverse-blamed on the official enemy unwinds yet again.</p>
<p>It is revealing in this context how Canada’s government has no such ruler need of war – unless it be its Ukraine-descendent Foreign Minister up front and the very powerful and widely Nazi-sympathizing Ukraine Liberal vote bank and leadership brought to Canada after 1945&#160; to overwhelm the preceding active socialist Ukrainian community in Canada. Canada’s government – not its people – is in any case used to being a puppet regime in foreign affairs as a twice-colonized rule by big business (why the NDP is not allowed to govern unless so subjugated).</p>
<p>The Human Rights Question</p>
<p>In light of all of this suppressed factual background and motive for more war in Ukraine which is unspeakable in the official news, interaction with the United Nations is of revealing interest. While it has been the cover for US-led NATO executed genocidal wars of aggression in the past as in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Korea, the pretexts of ‘human rights’, ‘responsibility to protect’ and ‘stopping communist aggression’, which are in fact always been the spectacular opposite on the ground in terms of diseased, mass-murdered and destituted bodies, these pretexts may not sell well when the background facts are no longer suppressed from public view.</p>
<p>It is worthwhile recalling how Science for Peace leadership used to be against but has since Afghanistan collaborated with these false-pretext wars in sustaining their illusions and thus the war crimes and crimes against proceeding underneath them.</p>
<p>The NATO-executed Ukraine war now being orchestrated is especially revealing in its actual record of ‘protecting human rights’ through ‘international law’ and ‘norms of civilised nations’.&#160; Completely buried in official records is a United Nations resolution n on Ukraine that the US and Canada repudiated on November 20 2015 after the US-led bloody coup d’etat in Ukraine was in full motion of claiming all the vast tracts of land and resources that were Russia-speaking territory in the past.</p>
<p>The resolution was straightforwardly against “Nazi symbols and regalia” as well as &#160;“holocaust denial”. The Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Committee of the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted for a resolution to enable measures against “the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that facilitate the escalation of modern forms of racism, xenophobia and intolerance”. A total of 126 member-states of the UN voted for it for the second time. Over 100 countries voted for a similar resolution in 2014 including “denial of the holocaust and glorification of the Nazi movement, former members of the Waffen SS organization, including the installation of memorials to them, and post-coup attempts to desecrate or destroy the monuments to those who fought against Nazism in Ukraine during World War II”.</p>
<p>How could any civilised state vote against these United Nations Resolutions for human rights as Canada and the US have done and stood by ever since? Well instituted group hatred of the officially designated enemy can justify anything whatsoever, and does so right into next NATO-executed orgy of war crime and crimes against humanity, again inside Europe itself flaunting reverse-blame lies and slogans as red meat for psychotically trained masses. It is not by accident that Canada’s Foreign Minister is in this near century-old Nazi loyalist vs Russia-speaking conflict was before her appointment the “proud “granddaughter of a leading Nazi war propagandist during its occupation of Poland and Ukraine described as a “fighter for freedom”.</p>
<p>Yet on the other hand, we must not lose ourselves in ad hominem responsibility. Crystina Freeland, her Canada name, is interestingly propagandist in itself from her birth – Christian Free Land – but not observed in the corporate press. Minister Freeland is only a symptom of something far deeper and more systemically murderous and evil in state-executed unlimited greed and immiserization of innocent millions of people masked as ‘human rights’ , ‘freedom’ and ‘rule of law’ .&#160; Her more sinister double in the US is also a renamed person of the region, Victoria Nuland (read New Land) who orchestrated the whole 2014 mass-murder coup in Ukraine and now tub-thumps on public television for the ‘need to teach Putin and Russia a hard lesson’, aka another war attack by US-led NATO on Russia’s borders.</p>
<p>The difference now is that the absurd pretext and geostrategic mechanisms now in motion beforehand can be seen in front of our eyes – that is, if we can still see through the engineered prism of the US-UK led NATO war machine.&#160; This alone will stop it.</p>
<p>John McMurtry is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada whose work is translated from Latin America to Japan. His most recent book is <a href="" type="internal">The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis to Cure</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Is a New War Against Russia in Ukraine Unfolding Before Our Eyes? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2018/03/30/is-a-new-war-against-russia-in-ukraine-unfolding-before-our-eyes/ | 2018-03-30 | 4 |
<p>The New York Times ( <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/business/media/new-york-times-buyouts.html" type="external">5/31/17</a>) announces the end of the public editor era.</p>
<p>The compact a free press has with the public is based on two fundamental pillars: truth and trust. To earn the latter isn’t easy, however, because the former rarely just lies around in plain sight, waiting to be typed up and published.</p>
<p>That’s why journalism is, in all honesty, a frustrating profession of daily failure, of falling short—a telling of some of the truth, a few of the facts, as best as a reporter and editor know them. Right now. Or until tomorrow, when they will try to add more to the story. For a news organization to pretend otherwise is to build that foundation with the public upon rotten timbers that, sooner or later, will collapse.</p>
<p>To combat this, professional news organizations, including the New York Times, put systems in place to address their daily shortfalls in the pursuit of truth: They check facts. They vet sources. They consult experts. They edit copy. And, when necessary, they run corrections.</p>
<p>But these tactical measures are basic, and mostly granular in scale. What these systems are not well-designed to catch are broad strategic failures, ones where ingrained institutional biases and groupthink slip unseen into corporate media coverage and distort it for weeks, months, even years. Until you wake up one day to find your newsroom helped to launch a war based on <a href="" type="internal">phony WMD claims</a>, missed the <a href="" type="internal">biggest financial crisis</a> since the Great Depression, or enabled an incompetent, <a href="" type="internal">narcissistic xenophobe</a> to become president. Those are the kinds of events that sink the public’s trust in the mass media to <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx" type="external">record lows</a>.</p>
<p>Again, there are (more complicated) systems that can be put in place to help avoid these more massive shortfalls: Hire a more diverse staff. Crowdsource information. Break out of beat bubbles frequently. Watch what other, local and specialized news organizations are covering.</p>
<p>But there’s another, more accessible way to build trust with the public, to show that your news organization cares enough about what it does to question itself: Have an ombud. And in the aftermath of its notoriously flawed coverage of the Bush administration’s rush to invade Iraq, the New York Times felt compelled to create its own ombud position, the public editor, in 2003.</p>
<p>In an age of back-to-back buyouts and constant cost-cutting, however, investing a full-time salary in someone whose primary job is criticizing your coverage and broadcasting your newsroom’s inadequacy can be a tough sell in corporate media boardrooms. And yesterday, the Times seemingly succumbed to these same parochial concerns when it abruptly announced it would kill off its public editor. (The current occupant, Liz Spayd, has her <a href="https://www.cjr.org/analysis/liz-spayd-public-editor-new-york-times.php" type="external">last day</a> tomorrow, June 2.)</p>
<p>This move by the Times is tragically short-sighted, though admittedly not uncommon. (As of next week, among major outlets, only NPR and ESPN will have full-fledged ombuds on staff.) But for media organizations that shape our country’s discourse, to have a staff ombud offered a strong signal that they accept, own and take responsibility for that daily failure to arrive at the whole truth. Or, as I noted in The Nation ( <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/looking-back-moving-forward/" type="external">5/7/13</a>) after the Washington Post killed off its longtime ombud four years ago:</p>
<p>If yours is a newspaper or TV network with a national or international reach and especially if you have aspirations of charting the nation’s policymaking and political process, then the cost of employing one person who can offer honest, real-time feedback on your reportage is an investment in your reputation that, if done right, more than pays for itself.</p>
<p>In 2013, Post publisher Katharine Weymouth tried to justify her <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-reader-representative-for-the-washington-post/2013/03/01/1f7e3278-8297-11e2-a350-49866afab584_story.html?utm_term=.861e7c4f7772" type="external">decision</a> to kill off its ombud by claiming the role was an anachronism, “created decades ago for a different era.” Media critics inside and outside the paper, she said, “will continue to hold us accountable for what we write, as will our readers.” And to demonstrate her ongoing commitment to listening to these voices, she replaced the paper’s ombud with a “reader’s representative,” a new position, but one that was effectively neutered from the outset by being embedded into the Post’s newsroom hierarchy.</p>
<p>Yesterday’s executive <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/05/the-new-york-times-is-eliminating-the-position-of-public-editor-heres-the-sulzberger-memo/" type="external">memo</a> from Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. that axed his paper’s public editor sounded eerily the same. He trotted out ambiguous corporate-speak about the job having “outgrown that one office.” Sulzberger also tried to blunt the impact by creating a “reader’s center” to supposedly better listen to complaints. And just like Weymouth, Sulzberger disingenuously cited the paper’s readers and many followers on social media, “who collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be.”</p>
<p>These are rationalizations, not legitimate rationales. Times may change and platforms may evolve, but reporting the truth—and the many challenges that accompany that task—remains as fundamental to journalism as it was when the Republic first started. There is no “outgrowing” the intrinsic value of critically interrogating one’s own press coverage. And while more reader-focused attention is welcome, those efforts rarely last through the next organizational restructuring, as the Post’s experience attests—it quietly killed off its “reader’s representative” after just eight months, which proved to be <a href="https://twitter.com/reedfrich/status/870034783530868737" type="external">no great loss</a>.</p>
<p>Public editor Margaret Sullivan had the most intrepid approach to the possibilities of the position.</p>
<p>As for the let-1,000-media-critics-bloom argument, it too is a canard, as Spayd’s predecessor Margaret Sullivan pointed out. The fact that an ombud or public editor is empowered and paid by the news org gives it a unique advantage over even a horde of external critics, whom the masthead is free to ignore. “The one thing an ombud or public editor can almost always do is hold feet to the fire, and get a real answer out of management,” Sullivan <a href="https://twitter.com/Sulliview/status/869933537008517120" type="external">noted</a> on Twitter.</p>
<p>Sullivan’s tenure as Times public editor is noteworthy because, among the six to hold the job, she embodied the broadest spirit and most intrepid approach to its possibilities for making the paper sharper and the public wiser for it. She was commendably responsive to valid critiques (FAIR.org, <a href="" type="internal">8/21/14</a>) and took it upon herself to initiate others—and she got results (New York Times, <a href="https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/new-york-times-anoymous-sources-policy-public-editor/" type="external">3/15/16</a>).</p>
<p>Those public editors who came before and after her in the role were admittedly more of a mixed bag, sometimes open-minded (FAIR.org, <a href="" type="internal">10/3/09</a>), other times less so (FAIR.org, <a href="" type="internal">6/10/04</a>). The nadir, perhaps, was when Arthur Brisbane ( <a href="https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/should-the-times-be-a-truth-vigilante/" type="external">1/12/12</a>) used his platform to ask a shockingly obtuse question for a news organization: “Should the Times be a Truth Vigilante?”—only to answer, essentially: maybe?</p>
<p>Sadly, the current public editor, Spayd, seemed to have regressed to the mean as well, with an approach that often veered between being a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/public-editor/whyd-you-do-that-how-the-times-decides-to-send-news-alerts.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fthe-public-editor&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=opinion&amp;region=stream&amp;module=stream_unit&amp;version=latest&amp;contentPlacement=85&amp;pgtype=collection" type="external">glorified customer-service rep</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/public-editor/liz-spayd-new-york-times-public-editor.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fthe-public-editor&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=opinion&amp;region=stream&amp;module=stream_unit&amp;version=latest&amp;contentPlacement=102&amp;pgtype=collection" type="external">marketing consultant</a>—that is, when she wasn’t whiffing on a major issue like the paper’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/public-editor/one-thing-voters-agree-on-better-campaign-coverage-was-needed.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fthe-public-editor&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=opinion&amp;region=stream&amp;module=stream_unit&amp;version=latest&amp;contentPlacement=60&amp;pgtype=collection" type="external">many blindspots</a> in covering the 2016 election.</p>
<p>Despite the public editor’s uneven history, the Times and its readers were still unquestionably better served by its presence and its potential. To lose this position means both the paper and the public will suffer in the long run. Corporate media, now more than ever, can only recapture the public’s trust by bringing more transparency and accountability to those people and institutions in power. And yet these news organizations are increasingly uninterested in applying those same principles to themselves.</p>
<p>Failures in seeking truth are inherent to the job of journalism. But now the Times has rid itself of a powerful tool for learning from its previous mistakes and, maybe, preventing the next one.</p>
<p>You can send a message to the New York Times at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a> (Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes" type="external">@NYTimes</a>). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.</p> | Killing the Public Editor, NYT Deals Another Blow to the Public’s Trust | true | http://fair.org/home/killing-the-public-editor-nyt-deals-another-blow-to-the-publics-trust/ | 2017-06-01 | 4 |
<p>Courtesy of Prison Fellowship</p>
<p />
<p>Pastor Don Raymond isn’t trained in corrections and is not employed by the government, but he runs a new 140-person wing of the Ellsworth, Kansas, medium-security prison that draws inmates from throughout the state system.</p>
<p>In the phylum of prison staff, Raymond defies classification. He is not a tight-lipped warden, vindictive guard, or burnt-out social worker. In an industry that thrives on invisibility and resents the media, Raymond drives 140 miles, past newly seeded wheat fields and the rhythmically bowing heads of oil-well pumps, to pick me up from the airport, where he offers prayers of thanksgiving for my visit and “for the ministries of writing He has blessed Samantha with.” In a building that hums with hostility, Raymond is attentive, unguarded, gentle. Prison staff are not permitted to share personal information with inmates, address them by their first names, or socialize in any way; if an inmate wants to speak privately with a counselor, he has to fill out a Form-9. But these restrictions do not apply to Raymond, who often puts in 14-hour days working the cellblocks of the state’s prisons, recruiting men to transfer to his wing. In inmates’ marked bodies, averted eyes, and bristling rage, Raymond sees the debts and wounds, not of poverty or addiction, but of sin alone. He believes there is only one cure—Jesus Christ—and that it is a perfect and complete cure.</p>
<p>Once at the Ellsworth prison, Raymond and I quickly pass through the general population area, avoiding the acid attention of men slouched in front of bolted-down TVs, fingering the buttons of their state-issue work shirts. “I seeeeee you,” an inmate coos at me through his window grate as we pass. “Don’t think I can’t see you.” “I got to talk to you, girl! I got to talk to you right now!” another barks.</p>
<p>Raymond’s wing, the faith-based InnerChange Freedom Initiative, is identical to the rest of the prison but feels like an entirely different place, an excessively well-lit church basement perhaps. Inmates have arranged their desks, stacked with Bibles and workbooks, in a tidy circle. One rushes to pull a chair out for me; others reach out for a double-handed shake or a shoulder clap poised to morph into a full-body hug. These inmates see plenty of women; Raymond keeps a steady flow of church volunteers, mentors, and teachers circulating throughout the wing. They don’t behave toxicly, because the InnerChange staff doesn’t treat them like they are murderers or rapists, even though some are.</p>
<p>Before Bible study starts, they want to ask me some questions: “Where are you from?” “Have you been saved?” “Do you know Jesus?” After class, perhaps unsatisfied with my answers—I’m Jewish—Raymond presents me with a pocket-size New Testament, “a gift from the guys.” He then invites me to spend time alone with an inmate in his cell to peruse his extensive Scripture library more closely. A passing guard catches a glimpse of us crouched on the inmate’s cot and turns purple. “Don’t you know that no one is allowed in cells?” he bellows at Raymond. “Not even me, and I am a guard!”</p>
<p>Raymond is undeterred. Later that evening, after most prison staff have left, he leads InnerChange inmates across grounds off-limits to them because they are outside the view of security cameras. They set up amplifiers and a drum kit for an evening revival in the mess hall. With a backup band of inmates chanting, “You are the air I breathe,” Raymond preaches until the sun sets and goldfinches circle the indigo sky outside. By the end of the revival, Raymond has achieved his desired effect: The room is still with prayer; inmates are holding each other; some are crying. At 9:30, Raymond can be found in a cellblock, bent at the waist, his face pressed into the food slot of an inmate on lockdown. When he finally leaves the prison to eat a Dairy Queen dinner in the front seat of his pickup, the night is speckled with stars.</p>
<p>Aided by friends in high places—such as the White House—legislators in Kansas, Iowa, Texas, and Minnesota have, in the last six years, turned over portions of their prisons, and corrections budgets, to the politically powerful evangelical Christian group, Prison Fellowship Ministries, which pays Raymond’s salary. The largest prison ministry in the world, PFM sends more than 50,000 volunteers into prisons in every state with the goal of “declaring the good news of Jesus Christ to those impacted by crime.” The Ministries’ “Angel Tree” program has presented more than 4 million children of inmates with Christmas presents and evangelistic materials. The goal is clear. As Mark Earley, who was attorney general of Virginia before becoming president of PFM in 2002, writes on its website, “I believe God is going to raise up the next generation of leaders for His Church from men and women now behind bars, and from their children.”</p>
<p>In 1997, as part of a larger effort to increase funding for faith-based services in Texas, then-Governor George W. Bush gave PFM the chance to do more than just visit prisons; he allowed it to run a 24-hour “immersion” program in collaboration with the Department of Corrections. Three other states have since followed suit, and PFM plans to be in five more states by 2005 — “God does amazing things!” enthuses InnerChange executive director Jerry Wilger. In June, President Bush held a press conference with InnerChange officials and inmates, touting a University of Pennsylvania study that he, Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and the Wall Street Journal all claimed showed that InnerChange lowered recidivism. Critics later pointed out that the study actually indicated the opposite was true. In any case, InnerChange represents the cutting edge of Pres-ident Bush’s faith-based initiatives, which seek to have religious groups take over social services once provided by state and federal agencies and, in so doing, fulfill two goals dear to many conservatives: bringing more people to Christ and shrinking government.</p>
<p>In Kansas, most inmates two years away from possible parole are eligible to join InnerChange. Inmates who choose to live on its wing rise at 5 a.m. for morning prayers and bustle purposefully through a day packed with studying Scripture, practicing gospel music, learning life skills, and undergoing “biblically based” therapy designed to transform them through an “instantaneous miracle.” Their study regimen includes les-sons in creationism and an option to “convert” out of homosexuality. When I asked Alexander Curls, on work release after three years of InnerChange, what he was taught about other faiths, he said emphatically, “I found out that a lot of good people are going straight to hell!”</p>
<p>Many inmates, however, don’t join for the ideology. They do it to transfer from other parts of the prison system, and because completing InnerChange amounts to a get-out-of-jail-free card with the Parole Board: “We have a very positive relationship with the board. Sometimes they just give our inmates a green light and say, ‘See you at work release,'” said Larry Furnish, InnerChange program manager at Ellsworth. Kansas has only 298 coveted work-release positions for about 9,000 total inmates; InnerChange graduates are all but guaranteed a space as well as help finding a job and housing after they get out.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, joining InnerChange brings about a radical change in lifestyle. The movements of the general population are highly restricted. Those who share a snack or a book will likely be written up for “dealing and trading”; during visiting hours, hugs with family members are timed. But InnerChange “members” have good prison jobs and electric guitars. They are called by their first names, hugged and told they’re loved, and, because the program emphasizes reconciliation with family members, are provided much greater visitation rights—their wives can join them for Bible study and picnics.</p>
<p>And then there is the pizza. When a new class of inmates joins InnerChange, the staff orders 100 large pies, a fact that all 800-plus inmates at Ellsworth appear to be intimately, obsessively, aware of. “We are stretching the local Pizza Hut to its absolute capacity,” InnerChange office administrator Gale Soukup told me with a worried look, “and they’re the only game in town.”</p>
<p>Paid for in part by fees charged to the general population, InnerChange also offers substance-abuse treatment and free computer training, hot commodities in a time of budgetary woes. This year, the GED program Ellsworth offers regular prisoners was cut in half, the substance-abuse program eliminated. General-population inmates are still offered a computer class through the local community college, but as it costs $150, and men who are lucky enough to land a prison job make an average of 60 cents a day, the general population’s six computers sit under dust covers most days. As Issac Jarowitz, an Ellsworth inmate who isn’t in InnerChange, noted grudgingly, “The Christians do lots of stuff the state used to do, like vocational programs, but now they’re only for believers.”</p>
<p>“I tell them this is their ticket,” Raymond said, gesturing to the InnerChange ID card that inmates wear on a “What Would Jesus Do?” neck chain, “to everything they need.”</p>
<p>PRISON FELLOWSHIP MINISTRIES,&#160;the group that runs InnerChange, was founded in 1976 by Charles Colson, the “evil genius” of the Nix- on administration; one of his unrealized dirty tricks was a proposal to firebomb the Brookings Institution. For his Watergate crimes, Colson served seven months. After being released, he remade himself as a poster boy for the redemptive power Christ can have on criminals and the government, and has since become one of “America’s most powerful Christian conservatives,” according to the&#160;Weekly Standard.&#160;Still chairman of PFM, Colson is also a prolific writer. In his column for&#160;Christianity Today&#160;or his daily radio address, Colson can be found criticizing PBS for “promoting” evolution, hawking a brochure called “Rick Santorum Is Right,” or claiming that the real weapons of mass destruction “are not in Baghdad” but in “the hands of the sexual liberationist lobby.” In Colson’s first novel,&#160;Gideon’s Torch,&#160;the National Institutes of Health plans to harvest brain tissue from partial-birth abortions to treat&#160;AIDS&#160;patients, a scheme funded by Hollywood galas. Colson even has his anti-abortionist heroes firebomb the&#160;NIH.&#160;Gideon’s Torch,&#160;like much of Colson’s writings, ultimately argues that government without faith is doomed to destruction and corruption</p>
<p>Colson also drums on the clash between Christianity and Islam, a religion, he told Fox TV, “dedicated toward hatred,” but that can be defeated by aggressive evangelizing. Last year, he wrote several op-eds warning that Muslim inmates present a terrorist threat, a message that’s trickled down to InnerChange. Raymond refused to participate in an interfaith conference at Ellsworth last year because he thought the Muslim organizers were trying “to recruit guys.” Texas InnerChange inmates told me they watched an evangelical documentary on a Christian woman who’d been raped by Muslims.</p>
<p>At Ellsworth, Muslim inmates like Michael Patterson say that their practices have been restricted since InnerChange arrived. While InnerChange inmates and their families are treated to a Christmas dinner shared with prison staff, this year the Ramadan feast (which Muslim inmates must pay for and their families can’t attend) was denied. InnerChange inmates engage in spontaneous prayer throughout the day, but Lakota, Muslim, and other inmates in the general population need approval to pray together. “If anyone but the Christians gets together for a prayer, security hits the panic button,” Patterson said, adding that the prison’s chaplain would not order Islamic texts and that an inmate who started studying Arabic was called into the warden’s office. (The warden denies these reports.) To Patterson, this pattern suggests that “through a variety of avenues, the prison is trying to pressure inmates to join InnerChange to turn the whole prison into a Christian place.”</p>
<p>That sounds paranoid, and Warden Ray Roberts (who’s since become warden of another Kansas prison) said inmates are not pressured, implicitly or explicitly, to join InnerChange. But Roberts, his deputy warden, and the prison’s security chief all told me they would like the entire prison turned over to InnerChange. While walking with Raymond, an inmate suggested airbrushing a giant mural of Jesus on the side of the prison. “The state won’t let that fly,” Raymond said ruefully. “Wait until we take the place over.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>WARDEN ROBERTS previously served as director of the InnerChange unit in Texas, and he did his best to welcome the ministry to Ellsworth. Inmates in the program repair wheelchairs for an evangelical group that distributes them, and the gos- pel, in the Third World. When budget cuts affected state funding for InnerChange, Roberts allowed its inmates to hawk BBQ&#160;bacon cheeseburgers to the general population.</p>
<p>The prison’s chapel is small, so Roberts raised money for a large “Spiritual Life Center” that he said will make it easier to put on “wholesome entertainment, like gospel concerts.” Fundraising efforts included the sales of his wife’s “mop angels” (don’t laugh — that’s $23,000) and inmate art, a staff softball tournament, and a civilian-attended prison slumber party. Roberts said he didn’t plan to undertake similar efforts to restore the drug-abuse or education programs cut this year or to subsidize the $150 that regular inmates must pay for computer training.</p>
<p>Cheeseburgers aren’t the most substantial way Kansas’ inmates fund perks for their born-again brethren. Although some state legislatures allocate money for InnerChange (Texas recently set aside $1.5 million), Kansas provides it with only about $200,000 out of the Inmate Benefit Fund (profits from prison canteens and exorbitant phone rates). Kansas’ $4.3 million Inmate Benefit Fund typically buys library books and sports equipment, but Roger Werholtz, secretary of the Department of Corrections, said InnerChange is a fair allocation because it is voluntary and open to everyone. “Not everyone uses the basketball hoops,” he added.</p>
<p>In Kansas, the Inmate Benefit Fund covers only about 40 percent of InnerChange’s cost; PFM pays the rest, making it attractive to government officials not swayed by the promise of kingdom-building alone. Kansas pays up to $4,000 for each inmate who participates in a regular group-therapy program; InnerChange therapy costs the state only $1,086 per inmate. What’s more, the state saves money when inmates fulfill their requirements for vocational training or substance-abuse counseling through Inner- Change. “I know we don’t have any good long-term numbers on recidivism with the program,” said Werholtz, “but I was willing to suspend judgment because it follows the form, if not the content, of a therapeutic program. I’m interested in any kind of resources we can employ that will be effective on a low-cost or no-cost basis.”</p>
<p>Werholtz says, “If you turn down the volume, InnerChange looks like a therapeutic community program.” He is right. In their biblically based therapy sessions, InnerChange inmates break into tears and hugs with a frequency that would exhaust Oprah. These aren’t crocodile tears. Many men are reconciled with estranged family members; all can talk about whatever suffering, neglect, or poverty landed them in prison.</p>
<p>But lest anyone mistake an InnerChange session for group therapy, the program enumerates the differences in a handy page-long chart. For instance, while standard therapy “seeks gradual change of self,” the transformation that InnerChange promises “happens through an instantaneous miracle.”</p>
<p>InnerChange’s substance-abuse program is state accredited, although unlike in the regular state program, addiction isn’t presented as a disease to be struggled with for life, but as a sin that can be permanently “cured” through Jesus. This is typical of the faith-based substance-abuse programs, like Teen Challenge, that President Bush ardently supports. As governor, Bush defended Teen Challenge against charges that it violated state and health-department codes, saying, “I believe that conversion to religion, in this case Christianity, by its very na- ture promotes sobriety.”</p>
<p>At Ellsworth, InnerChange staff use Teen Challenge materials whether or not inmates have a substance-abuse problem. “It’s all about discipleship,” program manager Larry Furnish explains. “The addiction part is just one component of the materials.”</p>
<p>InnerChange is also eager to provide its own faith-based alternative to Kansas’ sex-offender treatment program. Pastor Raymond doesn’t think it would be that hard to develop. “It’s all sin,” he said, shrugging. Jerry Wilger, head of InnerChange, said the idea is currently under consideration.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>I GOT A TASTE OF WHAT a faith-based sex-offender program might look like when I attended an InnerChange support group that Furnish said was “a little like AA for homosexuals.” The group was led by Clint Price, 28, who Furnish said “had a reputation across the state for being a flaming homosexual,” while the other two members were “former cross-dressers.”</p>
<p>Serving out a sentence for burglary, Price showed me pictures of his pre-InnerChange days when he plucked his eyebrows and had long hair. “At one point, I had the Bloods and the Crips fighting over me,” he said with a trace of pride.</p>
<p>Price joined InnerChange because he had “some bad relationships and got let down and hurt so much. I was sick of competing with other queens in the system. In the pris- on environment, people are just not faithful and I was taking a lot of abuse.” At InnerChange, Price was encouraged to grow out his facial hair, lift weights, stop shaving his legs, and abandon “the lifestyle.” The group Price leads—InnerChange plans to have him minister to those “in the lifestyle” when he’s released—is supposed to affect a similar change in the others.</p>
<p>I entered the InnerChange library unattended by any guard or staff. Sitting in the darkened room with Price’s group as he read evangelical texts on homosexuality off a slide projector in a Ben Stein monotone—”Start your life moving.” Click. “In a new direction towards complete manhood.” Click—was a profoundly unsettling experience. It quickly became clear that the other members, Terry Hoffman and James Gavin, were not simply “cross-dressers” but serious sex offenders; Hoffman said he’d attempted to sodomize a blind man, and Gavin had sodomized his four-year-old daughter. Hoffman attended InnerChange because he’d been thrown out of the state-run sex-offender program, which Gavin had completed. As Price shared the trials of growing up gay, Asian, and uncoordinated in “a town smaller than Ellsworth, where sports are everything,” it was clear he was out of his depth.</p>
<p>Privately, Price acknowledged that he’s “really not for sure on how to deal with someone who has a sex crime. Some of the things they bring up from their past—real, real dysfunctional things—go beyond my experience,” he said uneasily. “I don’t know what to say, so I just have us pray together.”</p>
<p>Letting Christ-based programs “cure” sex offenders—exempting them from state programs that employ aversion therapy and normative counseling, and releasing them into society armed primarily with polemics about sin—seems risky, to say the least, but Furnish is confident the state will go for it. “We already offer GED, substance-abuse, and pre-release programs. If we get sex-offender treatment, we’ll have the whole ball of wax for the state at a bargain-basement price,” he said.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>INNERCHANGE is the sort of program President Bush is promoting with faith-based initiatives, appointments, exec-utive orders, and (so far failed) legislative attempts. The director of the White House Office for Faith-Based Initiatives says Bush has asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate using InnerChange in federal prisons. Former PFM officials also lead Dare Mighty Things, which, thanks to a $2.2 million grant by the Department of Health and Human Services, now serves as a clearinghouse for faith-based and community groups applying for federal money.</p>
<p>It was already possible for faith groups to receive government funding to work in prisons; they simply have to separate their charity from their sermons and are forbidden to proselytize. But Bush’s faith-based initiatives promote a very different theology of social action—one that he and Colson have personally experienced—that claims religion&#160;itself&#160;is the cure for social ills. PFM can receive state funds because InnerChange members enroll voluntarily, though it’s hard to see the program as entirely voluntary when lifestyle and parole benefits serve as both carrot and stick. Furthermore, lifers who graduate from the InnerChange “God pod” return to cellblocks as “disciples” and are encouraged to proselytize.</p>
<p>Bush’s faith-based initiatives are also part of a larger effort to privatize social services. As Robert Boston, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, says, “This is really about making dramatic changes in the structure of the social safety net.” Boston’s group is suing InnerChange in an effort to challenge faith-based initiatives on constitutional grounds.</p>
<p>Colson, in a recent radio address, said, “What’s at stake [in the suit] is not just a prison program, but how we deal with social problems in our country. Do we do it through grassroots organizations or big government? We know what works.”</p>
<p>In fact, there’s no conclusive research about whether the treatments InnerChange is experimenting with do work. The Texas Freedom Network recently reported on how Bush’s faith-based initiatives have fared in that state, where they’ve existed the longest. It documents rampant safety violations at deregulated faith-based child-care centers and alcohol-treatment programs. Data compiled by Texas’ Criminal Justice Policy Council suggests InnerChange graduates have lower rates of recidivism. But as University of Arizona sociologist Mark Chaves notes, “Prison Fellowship claims amazing success rates, but in prisons where it exists, it’s often the only rehab program. We don’t have comparisons between PFM and secular programs; we have comparisons between PFM and nothing.”&#160;</p>
<p>Faith-based programs have a synergetic relationship with government cutbacks; InnerChange derives its transformational force from the stark neediness of inmates. It’s hard—even for Muslim inmates like Patterson — to be overly critical of InnerChange, because the services its inmates receive are such an improvement on what is offered in regular prison. Amy Fettig of the ACLU National Prison Project says InnerChange is “potentially problematic,” but “we haven’t had any complaints from inmates. It may be that folks are just desperate to get any services with states cutting back their budgets so much.” Meanwhile, she adds, “we have to focus on other conditions, like deprivation of food, crowding, and violence.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>THOSE ARE SOME of the conditions that Rodney Woods, 31, said drove him to enroll in InnerChange. Previously, Woods was serving time in the Hutchinson, Kansas, maximum-security prison, where he shared a cell with four other men and was let out to exercise for an hour a day.</p>
<p>Woods, who has wide almond eyes and rows of neat braids knotted behind his ears, said he was angry all the time, frustrated, and scared of what he might do. “My homeboy got jumped and I knew when he got out of the hole we were going to take care of it. I was going to end up fighting, kill the guy if need be. I was going to do something I was gonna regret.” When Raymond came to speak at Hutchinson about the faith-based prison wing, Woods said, “I was attracted to the aspect of change. I wanted to be around positive people with a message of love.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | Charles Colson’s Jails for Jesus | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2003/11/jails-jesus-charles-colson/ | 2018-11-01 | 4 |
<p>Photo by Surian Soosay | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>While we were once given a savior who was known as&#160; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc-LJ_3VbUA" type="external">supply side Jesus</a>, sadly it seems the people have again forgotten the holy word. More youth than ever are becoming heretics to the sacred economic texts, but despite these frightening developments not all is lost, for imbued within me is light of understanding from our holy lord, the one true capitalist god; Praise be!</p>
<p>In a revelatory dream state I made blessed communion with the divine father, our money bags authoritarian sky daddy. Twas made known I was to be the chosen one; the supreme messenger of his word and to bring an enlightened capitalist perspective to the ignorant indolent masses who do not honor our sacred father. To be pure of heart in his kingdom each must create sufficient profit as sacrament to his name on high.</p>
<p>Divine will is carried forth by doing what best serves the self, all glory to thy self, as each time one maketh money and take more for yourself you are then able to buy more and create a living for your brethren. Yea, it is his holy will that the money trickle from you, and as a disciple of his lord it is thee who will best know how to spend the money you so justly earned.</p>
<p>Holy economic truth states that only by spending money can the economy be prosperous, and to spend money one must have money, therefore it is one’s godly duty as citizen of the universe to acquire as much money as possible, or be extended enough credit to do one’s part in this world; each must carry their own weight, each must have skin in the game, thus so we all may be prosperous under this divine system of capitalism.</p>
<p>His lord sayeth on high, worry not of inferior plants, animals, or people, they are here only to serve as tribute to the glory of his divine capitalist orthodoxy, use them up and extract the liquidity of all resources, and with use of this sage philosophy enormous amounts of passive income will grace thee.</p>
<p>May the rivers run black with tar if it should serve benefit to oil companies. May the fields overflow with toxic waste from the livestock industry should it lead to greater profits, let the earth frack and crack, let the ice caps melt back to the seas, let innocent people be ruthlessly bombed, let love die in a pit of despair – For if it is in the name of personal gain for profit then it is divine will and it is no man’s right impair the free groping hands of unfettered capitalism. Impeding profiteering is a hindrance to providence. The net capital gains far outstrip whatever negative was caused by acquiring the capital, this is the way of the lord.</p>
<p>Sinners who practice the devil’s magic, otherwise known as sharing, are a vile ghastly lot; an aberration to the natural order. They are enemy. And it is equally a sin to be consumed with such malignant indolence where a people would not extract the resources beneath their feet for profit to serve all. Know then it is justice for the lord’s army to lay waste to that which impedes his holy capitalist dictum. The lord giveth his blessing to launch crusades for profit as they are only a form a worship, all done for the greater good of money. Praise be!</p>
<p>His eminence sayeth the mansions of his most devout followers will be the new manses of our age; awarded primarily to the worthy few who have exploited well past their civic or religious responsibility, it is they who represent the highest ideals of our father; the wealthy.</p>
<p>His father sent message that it is better to beat a man over the head for a thing than to ask him if you can borrow it. At least you had to put in work to beat the man or employ someone else to do it for you, however by asking to share you’re just taking work that isn’t yours for free. And likewise it is not only a sin to take something in sharing but equally a sin to share something of yours with another, for it would rob one of motivation to make their own money to purchase that thing they wish to borrow. Thus it is your godly responsibility to not share or cooperate for what profit lesson have others learned if everything is just handed to them? None, so sayeth the lord!</p>
<p>Sharing is not just an evil to our immediate financial health, but what it may evolve into is even more cultish, people might just think if they cooperated and shared things they might not need money at all, they might want to live like unprofitable savage Native Americans. Who for all their rhetoric about living at one with the land in peaceful cooperative coexistence, all that noise didn’t matter much when they had such pathetic financial portfolios. And it was for this supreme heresy they were forever damned to communist hell, and let me tell you, there’s no valet parking down there.</p>
<p>All evils of our world can be directly attributed to sharing things. This is the most fundamental sin, antithetical to all that is true and just in the kingdom of bling. No loving pure capitalist will be admitted to join the father if they share in anyway that doesn’t directly have benefit to them first. This is the way of our lord. Praise be.</p>
<p>The father says do not wail in your meaningless woes, as they are but temporary, think instead of how you may contribute to the divine order of the corporation, who can exist forever(as long as they remain financially viable), carrying your legacy forward as generations to come will appreciate the accounting entries you made and they too will know their heritage and place in history carried by way of the corporate records, and in those records is where your life will be forever defined.</p>
<p>Underpaid servants to the capitalist father are among the most noble people, not as noble as your financial superiors, but a vital part of the capitalist religion, as without the lesser who would your financial superiors be superior to? This is the natural capitalist order, to have riches you must be rich relative to someone else, thus the greater the disparity the more it elevates your financial superiors to their rightful place.</p>
<p>Therefore it is one’s duty to serve their financial superiors, which is best expressed by way of humility evidenced in your tireless work, so much humility one could almost mistake it for stripping someone of dignity. But your role is to be a humble ascetic servant to your superiors, by the very fact one has less currency you then are not qualified to make such judgments about the distinctions between humility and loss of dignity, it is your job only to serve those who have more money than you. To be modest in your takings, a silent strong worker who does as they are told in reverence to our great capitalist father in the sky. Praise be.</p>
<p>Hierarchy is a natural state of being in our kingdom, as it has been made clear that the act of holding the blessed currency makes one divine, in the divine state one is possessed with the wisdom money imbues. And if the holy spirit should possess thee to buy a Bugatti or a yacht while others starve and go homeless, then so be it. The rich are no less saints upon this world, nay, they are heroes for spending their money quickly on big money items, injecting liquidity and accelerating the velocity of money, which his lord assures us is good for the environment and essential for market stability.</p>
<p>All should know that global affairs may seem chaotic from the outset, this is but an illusion, for our lord always looks down upon us and commands his will. Should two nations clash this is but design of the lord’s will to vertically integrate countries until only one great capitalist nation remains, his grand sky daddy says: “There can be only one. And Highlander is fantastic fucking cinema! USA! USA!” – these are the words I perhaps remember most clearly spoken to me in my spirit vision.</p>
<p>The lord does not look kindly upon the poors, if you are starving or homeless don’t think this will be ample excuse to not pay rents to your superiors. No matter how rich the superiors may seem, they are worth your suffering because they are superior by nature. They have likely thought of something superior, or been at a superior place at a superior time, they may have superior genes, superior height, superior weight, superiors tits, superior dicks, superior swag, superior friends, superior inheritance, superior weapons, superior intellect, superior ability to exploit. Whatever the case, their superior nature is proven by the sole fact they hold more holy currency than you.</p>
<p>At the apex of earthly capitalist enlightenment are your financial superiors, while their actions at times may seem a touch self indulgent, especially in light of how many they exploit to get that money, how many they made desperate, how many they put to war, how much mayhem and chaos they cause, how miserable they make the world, how much joy they are responsible for sucking out of daily life for no good reason than to serve themselves – No matter how utterly fucking petty and small and parasitic in nature they may seem, no matter how it may appear to objective eyes that the system being used may look exactly like the highest order of thievery and abuse to all conscious things, no matter how destructive to the totality of flora and fauna…</p>
<p>Know this:</p>
<p>Your financial superiors have an understanding you will never be able to comprehend until you have their money yourself. It is only those chosen to be rich who will be able to carry out his lord’s will. And furthermore, your superiors like all good people on this earth have a right to liberty, equality, and to spend their hard earned money however they choose. The plebeians have no right to judge the rich for any of their actions, and instead of asking something be stolen from the rich why not ask why are you aren’t rich yourself? Have ye not given proper hard work sacrifice to thy gracious lord? Perhaps, turn an inward eye to your own filthy abject laziness and intellectual depravity that have distracted you from the successful profitable nirvana we all deserve. Only by carefully following the path our capitalist God has lain before us may we save our financially inviable souls.</p>
<p>Praise be money. Amen.</p> | The Decree of the Capitalist God | true | https://counterpunch.org/2018/04/11/the-decree-of-the-capitalist-god/ | 2018-04-11 | 4 |
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<p>Boarding passes could someday become quaint relics for air travelers.</p>
<p>JetBlue Airways plans to test facial-recognition check-in for a few flights beginning later this month, and Delta Air Lines plans to let some passengers board with their fingerprints instead of a boarding pass.</p>
<p>The once-ubiquitous paper boarding pass is already shunned by many travelers who prefer to use mobile boarding passes on their phones. Now pilot programs could render those obsolete too, as airlines aim to increase convenience for customers, and government agencies look to increase security.</p>
<p>JetBlue and U.S. Customs and Border Protection will test facial recognition for passengers boarding flights from Boston’s Logan Airport to Aruba starting later this month. Volunteers will be photographed and their images will be searched against a Customs database of passport and other photos. Passengers who are cleared will get a signal from a screen above the camera, telling them they can go ahead and board.</p>
<p>JetBlue said it will be the first airline to work with Customs to test biometrics for identifying passengers during boarding.</p>
<p>Delta recently started letting come members of its loyalty program use fingerprints as proof of their identity to enter the airline’s lounge at Reagan Washington National Airport.</p>
<p>The airline says that it plans to expand the test at National to let members use fingerprints to check a bag and board a plane.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | JetBlue, Delta will test biometric boarding passes | false | https://abqjournal.com/1011636/jetblue-delta-will-test-biometric-boarding-passes.html | 2 |
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<p />
<p>You might want to think twice about retiring early.&#160; That’s because, new research has shown a link between early retirement and premature death.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Research by Andreas Kuhn,&#160;Jean-Philippe Wuellrich and&#160;Josef Zweimüller found that men, in particular, had an increased risk of death before age 67 when they <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2191-retirement-confidence-poll.html" type="external">retired early Opens a New Window.</a>. To prove this, the researchers looked at a group of blue-collar workers from Austria, born between 1929 and 1941.</p>
<p>"We find that a reduction in the retirement age causes a significant increase in the risk of premature death for males, but not for females," the research said. "The effect for males is not only statistically significant but also quantitatively important. According to our estimates, one additional year of early retirement causes an increase in the risk of premature death of 2.4 percentage points (a relative increase of about 13.4 percent, or 1.8 months in terms of years of life lost)."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.livescience.com/11342-10-easy-paths-destruction.html" type="external">[10 Easy Paths to Self Destruction] Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>According to the research, this can be attributed to negative health habits of people during retirement.&#160; These habits, which include smoking, drinking, unhealthy diet and limited exercise, contribute to 78 percent of casual retirement deaths, while smoking and drinking alone result in 32 percent of casual retirement deaths.</p>
<p>"Our results also suggest that preventive health policies should be targeted to (early) retirees," the research said. "Policies that induce individuals to adopt healthy (or avoid unhealthy) behaviors may have disproportionately positive health consequences for workers who (are about to) permanently <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2053-employment-retirement.html" type="external">withdraw from the labor market Opens a New Window.</a>."</p>
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<p>Reach BusinessNewsDaily staff writer David Mielach at <a href="http://mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected] Opens a New Window.</a>. Follow him on <a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a> @D_M89.</p>
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<p>Read more from BusinessNewsDaily:</p> | One Big Reason for Business Owners Not to Rush into Early Retirement | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/04/02/one-big-reason-for-business-owners-not-to-rush-into-early-retirement.html | 2016-03-23 | 0 |
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<p>Daimler has no plans to raise its minority stake in loss-making luxury carmaker Aston Martin, the German company's Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche said on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"We had all opportunities to increase our stake in Aston Martin. We do believe that for a company of that size, independence and a focused management is a recipe for success," Zetsche told reporters gathered at the Geneva motor show.</p>
<p>Last month, Aston Martin reported its sixth consecutive annual loss, but said the DB11, a new model equipped with Mercedes electronics, caused a surge in sales at the end of 2016.</p>
<p>The British luxury marque faces steep bills to keep its range of sportscars compliant with new emissions rules, increasing its dependency on larger corporations to act as suppliers for things like clean engines.</p>
<p>Daimler, which owns luxury brand Mercedes-Benz, struck a deal in 2013 to receive a 5 percent stake in Aston Martin in exchange for supplying engines and electronic components.</p>
<p>The deal helps Aston Martin, the only global luxury carmaker not attached to a larger manufacturer, spread the cost of developing new fuel-efficient vehicles.</p>
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<p>Zetsche however ruled out Mercedes taking a bigger stake in Aston. "I think just the way we are working together is the perfect way for both sides and we have no plan of changing that,��� he said.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Edward Taylor; editing by Susan Thomas)</p> | Daimler has no plans to buy Aston Martin: CEO | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/03/07/daimler-has-no-plans-to-buy-aston-martin-ceo.html | 2017-03-17 | 0 |
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<p>Less than half of fourth-graders nationwide know what the words “flourish” and “prestigious” mean, according to the latest results from the country’s only national standardized test.</p>
<p>It gets worse if you’re trying to flourish as a student in New Mexico and carve out a prestigious academic career. The National Assessment of Educational Progress results put New Mexico’s fourth-graders dead last among the 50 states in vocabulary skills; they rank N.M.’s eighth-graders fifth from the bottom.</p>
<p>And because this test is taken by a sample of students in every state, there can be no rationalizing the dismal showing by saying New Mexico’s test is harder because its standards are so much higher. Or that the results can be explained away by New Mexico’s poverty and high number of minority students.</p>
<p>Alabama and West Virginia, for example, have similar poverty rates, and their fourth-graders were at the national average. Like New Mexico, Texas is a minority-majority state, and less than 60 percent of Florida’s population is made up of non-Hispanic whites, yet those eighth-graders were at the national average.</p>
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<p>So forget the education establishment’s usual litany of excuses. New Mexico earned its last place, and 45th place, fair and square.</p>
<p>And that does not bode well for the economic future of the Land of Enchantment.</p>
<p>But it should fuel arguments against the state’s education status quo as well as for real progress on education reform.</p>
<p>This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.</p> | Editorial: Why Education Reform Must Continue Forward | false | https://abqjournal.com/153214/why-education-reform-must-continue-forward.html | 2012-12-14 | 2 |
<p>Steve DeAngelo at a protest in Oakland, California&lt;a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ghalog/7635700844/in/photolist-atMmwd-atMmxW-82KGeG-atJFCn-atJFPK-atMn1y-atJFNe-atJFwZ-atMn3h-atMmzJ-atJFoa-atJFX4-8hSqCv-9k5rc1-cCJXQy-eSV67V-9WDpXX-9RHaxs-dE8Qxg-9vrJvf-pfH38M-7gNZEN-aqk9cq-aqhsDT-8oe51f-p7BNZh-p9DQCF-p7BNPh-p9BVZd-oSa6n9-oS9z2P-p9BVQq-oSa6Bs-drBhsg-7b6Ukb-p9ohmn-p7BPZJ-oSaCxH-p9oiGZ-oS9yUz-p9DQSZ-oS9yft-k4KF-9tbjRT-wyiQ-o6jDeQ-7Assgm-cTKkWb-eFV9TA-oCpQPs"&gt;Glenn Halog&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
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<p>Steve DeAngelo is best known as a lifelong cannabis activist and the founder of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center—California’s largest and, by many accounts, most respected pot dispensary. In 2012, US Attorney Melinda Haag initiated <a href="" type="internal">civil forfeiture proceedings</a> against Harborside, which does $25 million a year in sales, on the grounds that it had grown too big. If the case goes to trial, DeAngelo has vowed to demand a courtroom large enough for “every single one of the 220,000 patients who depend on us for health care.” While maintaining an activist approach, DeAngelo has also become a leading pot entrepreneur as president of the <a href="" type="internal">Arcview Group</a> investor network. His new book, the Cannabis Manifesto, will be published in September.</p>
<p>Mother Jones spoke with DeAngelo last week about his time as a teenage runaway, his experiences in the Yippies, and his predictions for the future of pot.</p>
<p>Mother Jones: When you were a teenager growing up in the DC suburbs in the early 1970s, your parents busted you for smoking pot and seized your stash. Then you ran away from home for a few weeks. How old were you?</p>
<p>Steve DeAngelo: Thirteen.</p>
<p>MJ: What would you tell your kids if they wanted to smoke pot?</p>
<p>SD: I don’t have kids so I am not in that situation, but I think one of the best ways for kids to learn about cannabis use is to see people who are close to them using it responsibly. If cannabis is not the forbidden fruit, teenagers are generally not that interested in it until they get to be 16, 17, 18 years old. Of course, I don’t advocate that anybody who is not legally qualified should use cannabis, but I do know that there are a lot of parents who share alcohol at the family table with their kids before they reach 18 or 21 years of age as a way of introducing responsible use to them. And I think that’s probably the most appropriate way for young people to be introduced to cannabis use.</p>
<p>MJ: You were later kicked out of school—twice—for smoking up, and arrested for smoking pot in a public park. Even so, you eventually graduated from college and became professionally successful. But that wasn’t true of your stoner friend Eddie, who was black. What happened?</p>
<p>SD: He lived over on the other side of town from me and ended up getting busted even more than I did. And he got different treatment. When the cops found me smoking weed in the park, they took my pipe away, dumped the weed out, and told me not to ever let them see me doing it again. When the school caught me being involved in cannabis transactions, they didn’t invite me to come back the next year.</p>
<p>When Eddie was found with weed, he was actually arrested and tried and sentenced and went to juvenile hall and was suspended from school. I didn’t see Eddie for a few years, and then when I finally ran into him again, he was working as a barback at Shepherd Park, which was the local strip club. He told me it was the only place he could find a job. The club later burned down, and a friend told me how Eddie had run in twice and pulled people out of the bar before he died in the fire.</p>
<p>MJ: This sort of discrimination still happens when it comes to pot. It happened to your employee Ricky McCullough.</p>
<p>SD: Ricky, like a lot of our staff at Harborside, has been asked to help in a lot of different gardens of different patients. He was watching a grow room in Hayward while the patient who owned it went on vacation. The door was ajar and when he came out there was a cop sitting there. Ricky showed the cop all the medical cannabis documentation which was hanging up in the garden, his own medical cannabis documentation, and his ID. He didn’t have any weapons on him and was in 100 percent compliance with California medical cannabis law, but he was arrested and taken down to Santa Rita Jail.</p>
<p>These cases usually go nowhere—as soon as the employee demonstrates their medical cannabis status, the charges are dropped. But that didn’t happen with Ricky. We had to fight tooth and nail for over nine months before they would release him. The main reason he was treated that way was because his name was McCullough—some of his cousins had previous run-ins with the police—and maybe just because he was black.</p>
<p>MJ: Your parents were civil rights activists. Did they see drug policy reform as a civil rights issue?</p>
<p>SD: No [laughs]. I had a serious conflict with my parents around cannabis and that conflict, at least in the case of my father, really didn’t get finally resolved until I was granted a dispensary license by the city of Oakland. But the bottom line is that the racial disparity in cannabis enforcement that we hear so much about is not an unintended consequence of prohibition. It was the primary purpose of the cannabis laws in the first place. The first state laws prohibiting cannabis were passed in 1911, 1912, 1913, in border states, and it was a response to the influx of Mexican refugees who were bringing cannabis with them because it was part of the native curandero healing tradition in Mexico—they used it as a folk medicine. If you go back and read the comments of the legislators who passed those laws, you will see there was a very clear, and by today’s standards completely unacceptable, racism that was motivating that. And that simply got transferred as cannabis use became popular in the African-American community and moved across the country through the jazz scene. So when you look at it in that context, and at the number of African-Americans who have been arrested and had their property taken away, you see that cannabis prohibition has been a very powerful tool of racial repression.</p>
<p>MJ: Despite your parents’ dislike of cannabis, your mother later used it to treat her anxiety. What caused her to come around?</p>
<p>SD: I think it was mainly because she was surrounded by some friends who had positive attitudes about cannabis. After she got Alzheimer’s, which was during the time I was writing the book, it became really critical to her health care. She would experience extreme distress. I would be sitting working or reading and I would hear this long horrible wail of despair. The more I would try to calm her down, the more agitated she would get. So naturally I tried cannabis and it was tremendously effective for her. It just instantly brought her relief and made her more communicative.</p>
<p>MJ: In California there are doctors who for a few bucks will give pot recommendations to pretty much anyone for any reason. <a href="" type="internal">I got one for writer’s cramp</a>. But you argue in your book against drawing a bright line between pot’s medical and recreational uses.</p>
<p>SD: It’s all about wellness. And I define wellness broadly. Certainly it includes extreme medical situations, but I also think it includes things like waking up your sense of play, improving an intimate experience, or enhancing the flavor of food.</p>
<p>MJ: After dropping out of school, you joined the Yippies, a group that among other things smoked and sold a lot of pot. What did you learn?</p>
<p>SD: I learned to be very suspicious of ideology and dogma and political leadership. The Yippies theoretically were supposed to be an anarchist, nonauthoritarian grouping, but in fact there was a whole system of hidden power structures and economic structures that underlay the organization. So I learned it was very important to be suspicious of the idea that there could be a revolution that was going to solve all our problems all at once.</p>
<p>MJ: Which was quite a popular notion back then.</p>
<p>SD: Hey, I was ready for the Weather Underground to come hand me an AK-47 when I was in high school. We were ready for the revolution. But it wasn’t until I went to Eastern Europe a decade later and saw first hand the consequences of communism that I really lost all my vestiges of respect for a Marxist kind of economy.</p>
<p>MJ: So would you now call yourself a libertarian?</p>
<p>SD: My experiences with the federal government have caused me to be very suspicious of them, and in general to favor a leaner federal government rather than a heftier one. That said, I believe income inequality is an issue that is critical for us to address. I am this weird sort of guy. I often find it difficult to endorse any party or politician.</p>
<p>MJ: In the DC area you ran a countercultural gathering place called the Nuthouse. It sounds like you had a good time.</p>
<p>SD: When George H.W. Bush went to war in Kuwait, the Nuthouse was a staging ground for what we called Beat Around the Bush. On the night of the war, a bunch of us went down in front of the White House and started a drum circle, pounding it out all night long. After that, there were people drumming in the park constantly throughout the entire war. Bush made a comment, captured in the Washington Post, saying, “Those damn drums are keeping me up all night long.” Which of course we immediately printed up on a T-shirt and proudly distributed.</p>
<p>MJ: During the Nuthouse days, you helped launch the hippie craze for hemp jewelry.</p>
<p>SD: I was part of a group of cannabis activists that would do these hemp teach-in sort of things at college campuses, talking about how it’s this amazing forgotten product that has been outlawed. We wanted to show people old stuff made from hemp but had a really hard time locating things. Then I found this company in Philadelphia that had three tons of 100 percent hemp twine, which had been ordered from Hungary in 1955. It was delivered just as the Hungarian revolution broke out, and for political reasons the Navy, which had ordered it, never accepted delivery.</p>
<p>So the twine had been sitting in the warehouse of this company ever since. We got some balls of this twine, just stunning, and put it into our hemp museum. Kids at colleges started offering to buy the twine from the museum. And at first we were like, this sounds like a hassle, but enough people started asking for it that it became obvious there was a demand. We started getting larger orders of the twine from the company and actually selling them as a fundraising tool. And the orders got bigger and bigger. Finally we realized it was the perfect macramé material, so that’s how the macramé hemp jewelry fad started. Before long, we had a company called Ecolution that was brining in container loads of that twine. Amazingly, the same Hungarian company was still around, and they were very happy to see that there was demand from the United States again.</p>
<p>MJ: Clearly, market forces are changing the marijuana industry. I wonder if you ever worry that with the mainstreaming of cannabis, the culture of pot smoking will lose its bohemian and activist roots—that pot is going the way of tech bros and Super Bowl ads.</p>
<p>SD: Yeah, I worry about it, but I also know that it’s what we set out to do. My agenda has been to protect people who care about and use cannabis because I am one of them. But also because I’ve believed from the very beginning that if more people start using more cannabis and less alcohol and less tobacco and less pharmaceuticals, then we are going to be in a world that is more tolerant, more peaceful, that is in a better equilibrium with nature, that has a better reverence for creativity, that understands that fun and love are important parts of life. It was never about creating a small little isolated culture that was going to percolate on its own. We wanted to change the world. So I’m actually thrilled to see cannabis being mainstreamed. And it’s my belief that at the end of the day, cannabis is going to influence mainstream culture more than mainstream culture is going to influence the plant.</p>
<p>MJ: Harborside has certainly influenced things. The federal case against your dispensary continues, but now you have some powerful politicians on your side, including Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and Republican US Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who visited you recently. What caused them to finally get involved?</p>
<p>SD: There’s a large part of the American public that just doesn’t believe the propaganda anymore. They have enough direct, firsthand experience with it to be more open-minded. And that is being reflected in changes by the politicians. I think the election victories in 2012 and 2014 were really critical to demonstrating to politicians that embracing cannabis could be more of a win than a loss. With Barack Obama and the Democrats in the White House, it has also become easier for some Republicans like Dana Rohrabacher to be able to oppose some of their policies around cannabis. He has been tremendously successful in the Republican Party organizing cannabis reform around the principle of states’ rights.</p>
<p>MJ: How would legalization in California affect Harborside?</p>
<p>SD: I think what we want to avoid is the kind of system they have in Colorado, which is insane. You go into a cannabis shop and they have a wall down the middle of it. On one side there’s what they call recreational, and on the other side there’s what they call medical. You can have exactly the same products on both sides, the only real difference is you pay less tax on the medical side. But you have to maintain a separate entrance and exit, a separate staff, and a separate inventory for the medical and recreational sides. And that’s caused a huge amount of unnecessary duplication of effort. I hope we don’t do that.</p>
<p>MJ: You’re now involved with groups that invest in the pot sector. Is big business just going to take over the industry?</p>
<p>SD: I don’t think big business is going to take over the industry entirely, but it is certainly going to play a role just like it does in any other large-scale industry in this country. What I envision is a multitiered marketplace. There are lots of consumers who are going to be attracted to paying a half or a third as much as they do now for cannabis, and won’t be particularly bothered that it is produced in semi-industrial factory circumstances with commercial inputs and semiskilled labor under lights. And there’s going to be other consumers who will be happy to pay more and get something that is cultivated organically by a master gardener in a small plot. We need to make sure the regulations create an equal playing field for all these different models.</p>
<p>MJ: In your book, you anticipate the day where restaurants serve cannabis lozenges in the same manner as wine pairings. Is this actually going to happen anytime soon?</p>
<p>SD: The question is: When will we have a level of social acceptance that makes that kind of distribution acceptable? When you think about cannabis as an intoxicant, the idea of having lozenges on airplanes and in museums and other fairly public types of environments starts to shift to maybe being disturbing to people. So critical to that kind of acceptance will be popularizing the idea of cannabis as a wellness product.</p>
<p>MJ: What does the future of pot look like in California?</p>
<p>SD: You need to look ahead to the day that those interstate barriers to legal cannabis commerce drop. I think California will become the low-cost, high-quality supplier of cannabis to most of the rest of the country and a good chunk of the rest of the world. We have some natural advantages. First, right now we are the largest legal market for legal cannabis in the world. That gives us an opportunity to build larger companies, bigger teams, more talent and sophistication, stronger brands than any other state would be able to do. We also have the perfect microclimates for growing cannabis outdoors or in greenhouses, which means we can produce a higher quality cannabis at a lower cost than any other place in the country, hands down.</p>
<p>Third, we have incredible existing Big Ag infrastructure. We have those greenhouses, the aquifers, the wells, people at UC-Davis who have been working on tweaking the shape of lettuce leaves for 20 years, and who will be able to do incredible things with cannabis when they get their hands on it. We have a fairly supportive political structure, and we have a greater aggregation of cannabis expertise and genetics than anyplace else on the planet. We are looking at a nationwide market of about $150 billion a year, at least. California, I think, could claim half of that.</p>
<p>MJ: That would be more than the value of all of the state’s agricultural commodities combined.</p>
<p>SD: Yes, it probably would.</p>
<p /> | Adventures of a Pot Pioneer | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2015/08/steve-deangelo-harborside-marijuana-interview/ | 2015-08-17 | 4 |
<p>Photo by USDA Forest Service Alaska | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>Every time I drive up to Mount Bachelor in Central Oregon I pass the Deschutes National Forest’s logging and mastication projects. The Forest Service and the Deschutes Collaborative suggest they are “thinning” the forest to preclude large wildfires and to “restore it.” (The collaborative is a working group of various stakeholders who advise the Forest Service about&#160; <a href="" type="internal">management</a>&#160;issues.)</p>
<p>Neither of these assertions is accurate. What they are creating is tree plantations of largely even-aged trees — all done in the name of “fixing” the forest.</p>
<p>The first myth they are selling to the public is that logging can preclude large wildfires. There is a host of research — much by Forest Service’s own fire researchers as well as other ecologists — that concludes that under “extreme fire weather” nothing stops a wildfire.</p>
<p>When you have high temps, low humidity, drought and high winds, wildfires are unstoppable. It does not matter how much “thinning” or other fuel treatment you have done; wildfires will charge through, over and around any “fire break.”</p>
<p>When it appears that a fire break has stopped a blaze, check again. Almost always, the weather has changed. It is&#160; <a href="" type="internal">weather</a>&#160;change, not firefighting, that allows humans to stop large wildfires.</p>
<p>I just visited the Thomas Fire in Southern California, the largest blaze in recent California history. Despite thousands of firefighters, and numerous fire breaks along the pathway of the fire, including 12-lane freeways, the only fire break that halted the Thomas Fire was the Pacific Ocean!</p>
<p>The only way to protect Bend and other communities is through mandatory firewise regulations that include nonflammable roofs, removal of flammable materials from near&#160; <a href="" type="internal">homes</a>, and planning for rapid evacuation in the event of a wind-driven blaze.</p>
<p>The second justification for logging is to “restore” the forest. However, you can’t fix something if you don’t understand it. The Forest Service does not understand forest ecosystem function.</p>
<p>Logging trees reduces the potential for natural episodic mortality from other sources whether drought, beetles or wildfire that creates the dead trees and down wood critical for the survival of many species.</p>
<p>Indeed, the snag forests that result from major wildfire is one of the rarest habitats found in Western ecosystems. The second-highest biodiversity in our forest ecosystems is found the snag forests that result from high-severity fires or beetle kill.</p>
<p>For these plants and animals, the worse condition is what the Forest Service terms are a “healthy forest” with green trees.</p>
<p>Logging also can affect the genetic diversity of the forest. No foresters with a marking paint gun can tell which trees have the genetic diversity to sustain our forests. Natural ecological processes like wildfire or drought are superior at picking the&#160; <a href="" type="internal">winners</a>&#160;and losers that will provide resilience for future forests.</p>
<p>Forests are among our best forms of carbon storage. Numerous studies have shown that even burnt forests retain more carbon than logged/thinned forests. What burns in a wildfire are the fine fuels like needles and small branches. That is why we have “snags” after a fire. And most of the original carbon is retained in those snags and in the soil. Indeed, there are some ecologists and economists who insist the highest and best use of our public forests is to leave them alone for their long-term carbon storage value. But you won’t hear this from the Forest Service or Deschutes Collaborative.</p>
<p>And this gets to the third reason logging can’t “restore” the forest. We are in the midst of an unprecedented and accelerating climate change. Which plants and animals will live in Central Oregon and what the composition of the forest will be like 50 or 100 years from now is impossible to determine. What we need to do is allow natural evolutionary processes to create the resiliency that will enable forests to meet future climate challenges, not some guy with a chainsaw.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Logging Can’t Restore Burnt Forests | true | https://counterpunch.org/2018/03/06/logging-cant-restore-burnt-forests/ | 2018-03-06 | 4 |
<p>Austerity has caused more than 10,000 suicides and as many as 1 million additional cases of depression across Europe and the United States, economist David Stuckler and physician Sanjay Basu estimate.</p>
<p>In the opening of their recent article in The New York Times headlined “ <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/opinion/how-austerity-kills.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0" type="external">How Austerity Kills</a>,” Stuckler and Basu tell the story of Anna Maria Sopranzi, 68, and Romeo Dionisi, 62, (pictured above) married Italians who were struggling to live on Sopranzi’s monthly pension of $650 and had fallen behind on rent.</p>
<p>“Because the Italian government’s austerity budget had raised the retirement age, Mr. Dionisi, a former construction worker, became one of Italy’s esodati (exiled ones) — older workers plunged into poverty without a safety net,” Stuckler and Basu write. “On April 5, he and his wife left a note on a neighbor’s car asking for forgiveness, then hanged themselves in a storage closet at home. When Ms. Sopranzi’s brother, Giuseppe [Sopranzi, who was] 73, heard the news, he drowned himself in the Adriatic.”</p>
<p>The article was published a week before the release of Stuckler and Basu’s book on the health impacts of austerity across the globe, “The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills — Recessions, Budget Battles, and the Politics of Life and Death.” Stuckler is an economist, a public health specialist and a senior researcher at Oxford University. Basu is a physician and epidemiologist who teaches at Stanford University.</p>
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<p>“Unemployment, job loss, foreclosure, unpayable debt are risks to health,” Stuckler <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/21/why_austerity_kills_from_greece_to" type="external">told</a> “Democracy Now!” on Tuesday. “But what ultimately matters is how politicians respond. And when they make large cuts to social supports, social protections, they can turn recessions into severe epidemics.”</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p>‘Democracy Now!’:</p> | Economic Murder: How and Why Austerity Kills | true | http://truthdig.com/avbooth/item/economic_murder_how_and_why_austerity_kills_20130521/ | 2013-05-21 | 4 |
<p>By Tim Radford / <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/rising-vineyard-heat-hits-grape-pickers/" type="external">Climate News Network</a></p>
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<p>&#160; &#160; Success for a French vineyard: But it can cost the pickers a steep price.syvwich / Wikimedia Commons</p>
<p>White wine should be served chilled. Red wine should be served at room temperature. But inevitably the vineyard heat hits grape pickers who would count themselves not just lucky but more productive if they could pick on a mild day.</p>
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<p>And as global temperatures rise, grape harvests could be affected simply because manual worker efficiency goes down as the mercury goes up, according to a new study.</p>
<p>Researchers from Greece, Cyprus, Denmark and Canada report that higher temperatures for grape pickers correlated with a significant labour loss of up to 27%: the physical cost of labour in temperatures of 36°C – which can happen in the vineyards of Cyprus – told on the metabolic and cardiovascular systems of the grape pickers, and resulted in reduced output, according to a study in the journal Temperature.</p>
<p>Wine is big business: it now accounts for one 500th of the global GDP and is a significant component in the economies of France, Germany and southern Europe, as well as California, Chile, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand.</p>
<p>Researchers have already begun to measure the impact of global warming and climate change as a consequence of the profligate combustion of fossil fuels worldwide. Higher summer temperatures and earlier springs have shifted the vintages earlier in the year as European temperatures start to rise.</p>
<p>Such changes have paid off for some, as the conditions for viticulture shift northwards, but they have created problems in the more southerly zones, even casting doubts on the future of that natural stopper cork, from the bark of the cork oak.</p>
<p>And although researchers have warned about the costs of extremes of heat to economies around the world, and to Australia in particular, there has been little direct study of the impact of temperature rise on European workers in a particular field of agriculture.</p>
<p>Much agriculture is now machine-driven, but for more than 5,000 years grapes have been picked by hand: in Cyprus pickers must do this in August temperatures of 36°C, which in Germany would be considered a heatwave. Under such conditions, worker health and efficiency becomes a concern.</p>
<p>Grapes, too, respond to climate conditions – that is why some vintages are more valued than others – so the European scientists had to devise a way of measuring the human costs of labour in higher temperatures rather than overall economic losses.</p>
<p>They monitored workers near Paphos in Cyprus on four separate days in 2016, spread through a grape harvest that began in August and ended in October. They selected seven healthy workers accustomed to working in the heat, they made physical measurements of each worker, they monitored heat, humidity and breeze, and they used video studies to analyse time and motion not just by the hour, but by the second.</p>
<p>To avoid bias in the outcome, they initially told the selected workers it would be for a video about the making of wine, and then later told them the real reason and got their consent to the experiment. Altogether, they recorded the picking of 9,600 kg of grapes.</p>
<p>And they found that, on the hotter days of the experiment, the time spent not working during each eight-hour shift was higher. On the hottest days, irregular work breaks reached 15.3% of the working day; in the cooler autumn this fell to 10%. Altogether there was up to 2.1% increase in work-break time per hour with each rise of 1°C in the temperature.</p>
<p>The researchers write that their measurements proved more accurate than vineyard managers’ estimates of efficiency, that time and motion analysis delivers a reliable way of measuring output, and more emphatically that heat affects the ability to work.</p>
<p>“The studied grape-picking workers experienced increased workplace heat, leading to a significant labour loss,” they write.</p> | Rising Vineyard Heat Hits Grape Pickers | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/rising-vineyard-heat-hits-grape-pickers/ | 2017-07-24 | 4 |
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<p>RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said Tuesday that he will not spare the life of a man set to be executed this week for the slayings of two young girls in their Richmond home on New Year’s Day 2006.</p>
<p>Ricky Gray is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Wednesday for the killings of 9-year-old Stella Harvey and 4-year-old sister, Ruby. Gray was convicted of murdering the girls and their parents while the family was getting ready to have friends over for a holiday party.</p>
<p>The 39-year-old had asked the governor for clemency, arguing that the sexual abuse he suffered as a child and subsequent drug use provides an understanding of his actions that was never provided to jurors.</p>
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<p>But the Democratic governor said he has found no reason to intervene in Gray’s case. The governor said Gray received a fair and impartial trial and his case has been extensively reviewed by the courts.</p>
<p>“Unless a court intervenes, the Department of Corrections will carry out the execution in accordance with the order of the sentencing court,” McAuliffe said in a statement.</p>
<p>Gray’s attorneys called the governor’s decision disappointing, noting that dozens of mental health professionals had also asked for his life to be spared.</p>
<p>“Ricky’s execution will serve no purpose other than retribution, and it will add to the losses and suffering of members of our community,” Rob Lee and Jonathan Sheldon said in a statement.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, Gray’s attorneys also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his execution so he can continue his challenge to the state’s plans to use lethal injection drugs from a secret compounding pharmacy.</p>
<p>Virginia will be the first state to use midazolam from a compounding pharmacy, his attorneys say. They say the state risks “chemically torturing” the man.</p>
<p>A federal judge in Richmond and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have rejected Gray’s efforts to put his execution on hold.</p>
<p>Gray and his nephew Ray Dandridge were looking for a home to rob on New Year’s Day 2006 when they spotted the Harveys’ open door. The girls and their parents, Bryan and Kathryn Harvey were found in the basement of their burning home, bound, beaten and stabbed, with their throats cut.</p>
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<p>Gray also confessed to participating in the killing of 21-year-old Ashley Baskerville, her mother, Mary Baskerville-Tucker, and stepfather, Percyell Tucker, in their Richmond home less than a week later, but wasn’t tried in that case. Gray and Dandridge said Ashley Baskerville had served as a lookout for them during the Harvey slayings.</p>
<p>Kathryn Harvey was co-owner of a popular Richmond toy store, the World of Mirth, and Bryan Harvey was a guitarist and singer for the rock duo House of Freaks. Perycell Tucker was a forklift operator and Mary Baskerville-Tucker worked at a dry cleaner.</p>
<p>Gray had asked McAuliffe to commute his sentence to life in prison — the same sentence given to Dandridge, who pleaded guilty to the Baskerville-Tucker killings.</p>
<p>As a child, Gray was brutally beaten by his father with a PVC pipe and other objects and raped almost daily by his older brother, Gray’s attorneys say. They say Gray began using powerful drugs at a young age to deal with the emotional effects of that abuse. While Gray’s difficult childhood isn’t an excuse for his behavior, it provides an understanding of his actions that should have been afforded to jurors, the attorneys say.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>This story has been edited to restore Gray’s dropped first name.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Alanna Durkin Richer on Twitter at twitter.com/aedurkinricher. Her work can be found at <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/alanna-durkin-richer" type="external">http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/alanna-durkin-richer</a> .</p> | Virginia governor won’t spare life of convicted killer | false | https://abqjournal.com/929516/virginia-governor-wont-spare-life-of-convicted-killer.html | 2017-01-17 | 2 |
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<p>U.S. homebuilders are feeling slightly less optimistic about their sales prospects, even as their overall outlook remains favorable.</p>
<p>The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index released Monday slipped to 68 this month. That’s down three points from 71 in March, when it jumped to the highest level since June 2005.</p>
<p>Readings above 50 indicate more builders view sales conditions as good rather than poor. The index has been above 60 since September.</p>
<p>The April reading fell short of analyst predictions. They expected the index to dip to 70, according to FactSet.</p>
<p>Readings gauging builders’ view of sales now and over the next six months also edged lower, as did a measure of traffic by prospective buyers.</p>
<p>Despite the decline in the latest builder sentiment survey, sales of new U.S. homes have been robust this year and are expected to continue climbing.</p>
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<p>Low mortgage rates and a solid job market have helped drive home sales steadily higher. Sales of new U.S. homes increased in February at the fastest pace since July, reaching a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 592,000. That sales pace was nearly 13 percent higher than in the same month last year.</p>
<p>A pickup in mortgage rates last fall helped spur sales early this year. In recent weeks, mortgage rates have been edging lower, making the cost of home loans less expensive.</p>
<p>The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has fallen the past four weeks, declining to 4.08 percent last week. That’s up from an average of 3.65 percent all last year, but still low by historical standards.</p>
<p>This month’s builder index was based on 307 respondents.</p>
<p>A measure of current sales conditions for single-family homes fell three points to 74, while a gauge of traffic by prospective buyers declined one point to 52. Builders’ view of sales over the next six months slid three points to 75.</p> | US homebuilder sentiment slips, but overall outlook positive | false | https://abqjournal.com/988911/us-homebuilder-sentiment-slips-but-overall-outlook-positive.html | 2017-04-17 | 2 |
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<p />
<p>BERGEN: Had her own TV show in the 1950s</p>
<p>Bergen died at her home in Southbury, Connecticut, from natural causes, said publicist Judy Katz, and was surrounded by family and close friends.</p>
<p>A brunette beauty with a warm, sultry singing voice, Bergen was a household name from her 20s onward. She made albums, and played leading roles in films, stage musicals and TV dramas. She also hosted her own variety series, was a popular game show panelist and founded a thriving beauty products company that bore her name.</p>
<p>In recent years, she played Felicity Huffman’s mother on “Desperate Housewives” and the past mistress of Tony Soprano’s late father on “The Sopranos.”</p>
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<p>Bergen won an Emmy in 1958 portraying the tragic singer Helen Morgan on the famed anthology series “Playhouse 90.” She was nominated for another Emmy in 1989 for best supporting actress in a miniseries or special for “War and Remembrance.”</p>
<p>Talking to women in a business group in 1968, she said her definition of success was “when you feel what you’ve done fulfills yourself, makes you happy and makes people around you happy.”</p>
<p>Bergen was 20 and already an established singer when she starred with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in her first movie, “At War With the Army.” She joined them in two more comedies, “That’s My Boy” and “The Stooge.”</p>
<p>In 1953, she made her Broadway debut with Harry Belafonte in the revue “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.”</p>
<p>In 1957-58 she starred on the musical-variety “The Polly Bergen Show” on NBC, closing every broadcast with her theme song, “The Party’s Over.”</p>
<p>Also during the 1950s, she became a regular on the popular game show “To Tell the Truth.”</p>
<p>Bergen published the first of her three advice books, “The Polly Bergen Book of Beauty, Fashion and Charm,” in 1962. That led to her own cosmetics company, which earned her millions.</p>
<p>Bergen became a regular in TV movies and miniseries, most importantly in the 1983 epic “The Winds of War” and the 1988 sequel, “War and Remembrance.” She appeared as the troubled wife of high-ranking Navy officer Pug Henry, played by Robert Mitchum.</p>
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<p>Mitchum also had the key role in the landmark 1962 suspense film “Cape Fear” as the sadistic ex-convict who terrorizes a lawyer (Gregory Peck) and his wife (Bergen) and daughter because he blames Peck for sending him to prison.</p>
<p>The film was remade in 1991 by Martin Scorsese.</p>
<p>In 1964’s “Kisses for My President,” Bergen was cast as the first female U.S. president, with Fred MacMurray as First Gentleman. (In the end, the president quits when she gets pregnant.)</p>
<p>When Geena Davis portrayed a first woman president in the 2005 TV drama “Commander in Chief,” Bergen was cast as her mother.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Sultry star of song, stage and screen, Polly Bergen dies at 84 | false | https://abqjournal.com/465801/sultry-star-of-song-stage-and-screen-polly-bergen-dies-at-84.html | 2 |
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<p>From the Blaze:</p>
<p>On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution reaffirming “In God We Trust” as the national motto.</p>
<p>For those in America who believe that faith and religion are under attack, this was likely a welcome development. Others, though, criticized the vote at a&#160;waste&#160;of Congressional time.</p>
<p>The measure, sponsored by Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA), supports and encourages the motto’s display in all public schools and government buildings. It was approved 396-9, with 2 abstentions. With 91 percent of representatives voting in favor of the measure, it’s intriguing to look at the 2 percent who voted against it.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/so-who-in-congress-voted-against-in-god-we-trust/" type="external">(Read Full Article)</a></p> | House GOP leads huge reaffirmation in “In God We Trust” | false | http://capoliticalreview.com/trending/congress-votes-to-reaffirm-in-god-we-trust/ | 2011-11-03 | 1 |
<p>When the American flag is hoisted above the US Embassy in Havana Friday, Cubans and Cuban Americans will mark the moments in all sorts of different ways.&#160;</p>
<p>"My grandmother would've tried to make some money off this somehow," laughs Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco. "She was a bookie, and a wonderful funny character."&#160;</p>
<p>Blanco still has plenty of family back in Cuba, although he grew up in Miami. He will debut a poem on the embassy steps Friday, as US Secretary of State John Kerry leads the&#160;opening ceremony.</p>
<p>"The history is so complex and layered that you'd need an epic poem, you know 20 or 30 pages for every single angle," Blanco says. "As an artist, it's always about getting to the emotional core of people, and making us sort of understand how we're all human."</p>
<p>Cuba's government has silenced many artists who dare to criticize the regime, people like Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera who has been frequently detained and had her passport confiscated by authorities. Blanco's advice to those dissidents is "hang in there."&#160;</p>
<p>"It sounds a little perhaps too Pollyanna, but these new changes will allow us to be there for them in a much more effective and powerful way," Blanco says.&#160;</p>
<p>As an example, Blanco cites the planned meeting Kerry is slated to have with dissidents during a visit to the mission residence this week.&#160;</p>
<p>"That just couldn't have happened a year ago," says Blanco. "People have this sort of over-romanticized version of Cuba in their head. And I think that the more Americans travel to Cuba, they'll see the reality — the good, the bad and the ugly of Cuba."&#160;</p>
<p>The poet and author admits that his grandmother, in addition to trying to turn a profit off the new DC-Havana relationship, would have used the opportunity to introduce her Miami-raised grandson to a local.</p>
<p>"She'd try to make sure I married a good Cuban woman," he says, with a chuckle. "She would probably still have hopes that I'm not gay. She'd probably match me up with some Cuban bombshell!"</p> | A Cuban American poet sees a brighter future for dissident artists on the island | false | https://pri.org/stories/2015-08-13/cuban-american-poet-sees-brighter-future-dissident-artists-island | 2015-08-13 | 3 |
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<p />
<p>The service puts the Internet goliath in competition with popular paid subscription plans like Spotify and Rhapsody and free music services like Pandora.</p>
<p>The announcement Wednesday at Google’s annual developers conference in San Francisco kicks off a wave of developments in the digital music space that are expected to entice consumers with ways to listen to music on a range of devices.</p>
<p>Rival Apple Inc. is expected to debut a digital radio service later this year; Google-owned YouTube also is working on a paid subscription music plan; and Sweden’s Spotify is exploring a way to make a version of its paid streaming plan free with ads on mobile devices, according to a person in the music industry familiar with the matter.</p>
<p>Google is playing catch-up after launching its music store in November 2011. Apple’s iTunes, which launched in 2003, is the leader in song downloads and Spotify claims about 6 million paying subscribers worldwide.</p>
<p>But Google’s massive reach on mobile devices that use its Android operating system means it could narrow the gap quickly. Some 44 percent of active smartphones in the U.S. are powered by the Android software. Google said about 900 million Android devices have been activated worldwide.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>All Access launched in the U.S. on Wednesday and comes with a 30-day free trial. It is expected to roll out soon in 12 other countries where Google currently sells music, including 10 European countries such as the U.K., France and Germany. If you start the trial by June 30, the monthly fee drops to $8 for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Google’s All Access allows users to search for songs, albums or artists directly, or peruse 22 different genres. Google curators also offer up recommendations based on your listening behavior and your existing library.</p>
<p>You can listen to any of millions of tracks right away, or switch to a “radio” format that creates a playlist of songs that you might like. Radio playlists can be adjusted on the fly by deleting or reordering upcoming songs.</p>
<p>“This is radio without rules,” said Chris Yerga, engineering director of Android.</p>
<p /> | Google launches All Access, a subscription streaming music service | false | https://abqjournal.com/199560/google-launches-all-access-a-subscription-streaming-music-service.html | 2013-05-15 | 2 |
<p>LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska got some long-awaited payback against No. 23 Michigan.</p>
<p>James Palmer Jr. scored 19 points, Isaiah Roby had a career-high 14 and the Cornhuskers beat the Wolverines 72-52 on Thursday night for their first win in the series since joining the Big Ten.</p>
<p>They also avenged last year’s 93-57 loss to Michigan — their worst in Lincoln in program history — and handed the Wolverines their most lopsided Big Ten loss in five years.</p>
<p>“It’s good to kind of flip the tables on them,” Roby said. “It was a big game for us, for sure.”</p>
<p>Nebraska (14-7, 5-3), which needed Palmer’s 3-pointer to beat last-place Illinois 64-63 on Monday, led 32-21 at the half and never let Michigan get closer than 10 points in the last 17 minutes.</p>
<p>Michigan (16-5, 5-3), which had won nine of its last 10, suffered its most lopsided defeat since losing by 24 points at SMU in December 2015 and its worst against a Big Ten opponent since a 23-point loss to Michigan State in February 2013.</p>
<p>“This is a great lesson in humility against a great team,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “This is the way the league is going to be all year long. If you’re fortunate enough to keep winning, the crowds are going to get bigger and bigger and you’re going to get everybody’s best shot. We certainly got Nebraska’s best shot.”</p>
<p>Charles Matthews had 15 points for the Wolverines, who shot 37.5 percent from the floor and a season-low 22.2 percent (4 of 18) on 3-pointers. Their 52 points were their fewest this season.</p>
<p>The Wolverines had come in 8-0 against the Huskers since Nebraska joined the Big Ten in 2011-12, and they had won 10 straight in the series.</p>
<p>“It’s good to check that box,” Nebraska coach Tim Miles said.</p>
<p>Last March, Michigan set the Pinnacle Bank Arena record for points by an opponent and matched the arena record with 14 made 3-pointers.</p>
<p>Nebraska was in total control this time.</p>
<p>The Huskers played strong defense on the perimeter and forced nine of Michigan’s 12 turnovers the first 20 minutes. Roby, Duby Okeke and Jordy Tshimanga rendered season scoring leader Moritz Wagner a non-factor.</p>
<p>Wagner, who scored 27 points last Saturday against Michigan State and had reached double figures in all but two games, finished with a season-low two points, his only basket coming on a dunk early in the second half.</p>
<p>Isaac Copeland gave himself and teammates an ‘A’ for their defensive effort.</p>
<p>“We take pride in it,” he said. “A good team like that, we want to lock them up and win the game.”</p>
<p>Roby had two dunks and another basket during an 18-4 run that turned Nebraska’s 12-10 deficit into a 28-16 lead. The Wolverines went scoreless for more than 6 minutes and without a field goal for 7½ as the Huskers broke things open. The Wolverines missed 14 of their last 16 shots of the half.</p>
<p>“That was really good,” Miles said of his team’s defense. “It shows what they’re capable of.”</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Michigan: Though the Wolverines have owned Nebraska, Pinnacle Bank Arena is a tough place to play, and they might have been out of gas after an emotional win over Michigan State and having to rally to beat Maryland 68-67 on Monday.</p>
<p>Nebraska: This was a crucial win for a team that has hopes of returning to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014. Michigan came into the game No. 30 in the RPI; no other opponent Nebraska has beaten is in the top 50. Another big opportunity comes Monday when the Huskers visit Ohio State (No. 18 RPI).</p>
<p>TSHIMANGA RETURNS</p>
<p>Tshimanga, the Huskers’ 6-foot-11 center, missed the previous two games for personal reasons. He entered the game in the middle of the first half, and the first time he touched the ball, he passed to Roby for a dunk. He had three rebounds and an assist in seven minutes. Tshimanga had started the first 18 games.</p>
<p>“I was happy for him,” Miles said. “This was just a difficult personal thing for him. He feels pressure to please people and to do well, and I think it was one of those moments when you get a tipping point and the pressure explodes, and I’m glad we got it ironed out.”</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Michigan hosts Rutgers on Sunday.</p>
<p>Nebraska visits No. 22 Ohio State on Monday.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college basketball: <a href="https://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="https://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">https://collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external" /> <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p>
<p>LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska got some long-awaited payback against No. 23 Michigan.</p>
<p>James Palmer Jr. scored 19 points, Isaiah Roby had a career-high 14 and the Cornhuskers beat the Wolverines 72-52 on Thursday night for their first win in the series since joining the Big Ten.</p>
<p>They also avenged last year’s 93-57 loss to Michigan — their worst in Lincoln in program history — and handed the Wolverines their most lopsided Big Ten loss in five years.</p>
<p>“It’s good to kind of flip the tables on them,” Roby said. “It was a big game for us, for sure.”</p>
<p>Nebraska (14-7, 5-3), which needed Palmer’s 3-pointer to beat last-place Illinois 64-63 on Monday, led 32-21 at the half and never let Michigan get closer than 10 points in the last 17 minutes.</p>
<p>Michigan (16-5, 5-3), which had won nine of its last 10, suffered its most lopsided defeat since losing by 24 points at SMU in December 2015 and its worst against a Big Ten opponent since a 23-point loss to Michigan State in February 2013.</p>
<p>“This is a great lesson in humility against a great team,” Michigan coach John Beilein said. “This is the way the league is going to be all year long. If you’re fortunate enough to keep winning, the crowds are going to get bigger and bigger and you’re going to get everybody’s best shot. We certainly got Nebraska’s best shot.”</p>
<p>Charles Matthews had 15 points for the Wolverines, who shot 37.5 percent from the floor and a season-low 22.2 percent (4 of 18) on 3-pointers. Their 52 points were their fewest this season.</p>
<p>The Wolverines had come in 8-0 against the Huskers since Nebraska joined the Big Ten in 2011-12, and they had won 10 straight in the series.</p>
<p>“It’s good to check that box,” Nebraska coach Tim Miles said.</p>
<p>Last March, Michigan set the Pinnacle Bank Arena record for points by an opponent and matched the arena record with 14 made 3-pointers.</p>
<p>Nebraska was in total control this time.</p>
<p>The Huskers played strong defense on the perimeter and forced nine of Michigan’s 12 turnovers the first 20 minutes. Roby, Duby Okeke and Jordy Tshimanga rendered season scoring leader Moritz Wagner a non-factor.</p>
<p>Wagner, who scored 27 points last Saturday against Michigan State and had reached double figures in all but two games, finished with a season-low two points, his only basket coming on a dunk early in the second half.</p>
<p>Isaac Copeland gave himself and teammates an ‘A’ for their defensive effort.</p>
<p>“We take pride in it,” he said. “A good team like that, we want to lock them up and win the game.”</p>
<p>Roby had two dunks and another basket during an 18-4 run that turned Nebraska’s 12-10 deficit into a 28-16 lead. The Wolverines went scoreless for more than 6 minutes and without a field goal for 7½ as the Huskers broke things open. The Wolverines missed 14 of their last 16 shots of the half.</p>
<p>“That was really good,” Miles said of his team’s defense. “It shows what they’re capable of.”</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Michigan: Though the Wolverines have owned Nebraska, Pinnacle Bank Arena is a tough place to play, and they might have been out of gas after an emotional win over Michigan State and having to rally to beat Maryland 68-67 on Monday.</p>
<p>Nebraska: This was a crucial win for a team that has hopes of returning to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014. Michigan came into the game No. 30 in the RPI; no other opponent Nebraska has beaten is in the top 50. Another big opportunity comes Monday when the Huskers visit Ohio State (No. 18 RPI).</p>
<p>TSHIMANGA RETURNS</p>
<p>Tshimanga, the Huskers’ 6-foot-11 center, missed the previous two games for personal reasons. He entered the game in the middle of the first half, and the first time he touched the ball, he passed to Roby for a dunk. He had three rebounds and an assist in seven minutes. Tshimanga had started the first 18 games.</p>
<p>“I was happy for him,” Miles said. “This was just a difficult personal thing for him. He feels pressure to please people and to do well, and I think it was one of those moments when you get a tipping point and the pressure explodes, and I’m glad we got it ironed out.”</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Michigan hosts Rutgers on Sunday.</p>
<p>Nebraska visits No. 22 Ohio State on Monday.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college basketball: <a href="https://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="https://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">https://collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external" /> <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p> | Palmer scores 19, leads Huskers in 72-52 rout of Michigan | false | https://apnews.com/ed6938a1b1a24a07a115ec38f607c1cf | 2018-01-19 | 2 |
<p />
<p>Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares closed down 8% on Thursday after a rollercoaster session caused by the premature release of third-quarter results that badly missed analysts' projections.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The leaked earnings forced Google to halt trading on its stock, which failed to mount much of a rebound once trading resumed in late afternoon action.</p>
<p>Google blamed the early release on a mistake by R.R. Donnelley (NASDAQ:RRD), its financial printer, which Google said filed the company's 8-K earnings statement "without authorization." R.R. Donnelley said it is investigating the premature release.</p>
<p>Hours after the accidental release, Google released a new 8-K that corrected and superseded the old one, but left the financial results the same.</p>
<p>The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said it earned $2.18 billion, or $6.53 a share, last quarter, compared with a profit of $2.73 billion, or $8.33 a share, a year earlier.</p>
<p>Excluding one-time items, Google said it earned $9.03 a share, down from $9.72 a year earlier and well below the Street’s view of $10.65.</p>
<p>Revenue soared 45% to $14.10 billion. Excluding traffic acquisition costs, Google’s revenue was $11.3 billion, trailing consensus calls from analysts for $11.8 billion.</p>
<p>Google said its paid clicks jumped 33% year-over-year and 6% from the second quarter. However, the average cost per click declined 15% annually and 3% from the second quarter.</p>
<p>“We had a strong quarter," CEO Larry Page said in a statement, pointing to healthy revenue growth and the company's first $14 billion revenue quarter. “I am also really excited about the progress we’re making creating a beautifully simple, intuitive Google experience across all devices.”</p>
<p>Google's management team didn't have the chance to weigh in on the premature results listed in the Securities and Exchange Commission filing. In place of management commentary was a space that said: “PENDING LARRY QUOTE,” hinting at Google CEO Larry Page.</p>
<p>Trading resumed at about 3:20 p.m. ET after the company worked to "finalize" its earnings statement, which was officially released just after 3:00 p.m.</p>
<p>Shares of R.R. Donnelley, which Google said "erroneously released early" the results, declined almost 6% before recovering to nearly flat.</p>
<p>"We are fully engaged in an investigation to determine how this event took place and are pursuing our first obligation -- which is to serve our valued customer," a spokesperson from R.R. Donnelly said in a statement.</p>
<p>Google's shares were hit harder, closing down 7.95% to $695.42. Google’s results also weighed on the broader markets, driving the Nasdaq Composite about 1% lower.</p>
<p>Trading volume in Google's shares topped 12 million -- about four times the average daily volume over the past month. The selloff wiped out about $22 billion in Google's market value.</p>
<p>“It was surprisingly bad. I don’t think any of us were expecting them to miss and certainly not miss this big,” Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told FOX Business. “This showcases the fact that their lack of focus is starting to catch up to them.”</p>
<p>Other analysts were less concerned with Google's miss.</p>
<p>“Google continues to rocket forward. Let’s not forget Apple was slammed back in July and they’re doing just fine,” Ken Marlin, an analyst at Marlin &amp; Associates, told FOX Business. “I do think it’s a buying opportunity.”</p>
<p>The search giant disclosed performance information on its newly-acquired Motorola division. The unit suffered an operating loss of $527 million, $505 million of which was the mobile segment and $22 million for the home segment. On a non-GAAP basis, the division posted an operating loss of $151 million.</p>
<p>Google also said its full-time global workforce shrank to 53,546 at the end of the quarter, including 17,428 at Motorola. That compares with 54,604 full-time employees as of the end of the second quarter.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Surprise: Google's Early 3Q Results Trigger Steep Selloff | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/10/18/google-3q-results-misses-expectations.html | 2016-01-29 | 0 |
<p>Fragile and mysterious ocean creatures could turn the medical world upside-down, <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/news/science/20140427_ap_616345ece81e4f9b9780c64a1d75a02c.html#my2vvQHlbb4C7kLl.99" type="external">as reported by Lauran Neegaard of the Associated Press</a>.</p>
<p>Certain species of comb jellies, translucent creatures similar in appearance to jellyfish, can regrow brain tissue, possibly holding the key for human doctors to heal brain, spine, or other injuries.</p>
<p>Studying these fragile creatures is difficult. They generally need to be shipped dead and frozen to labs, and many of the samples are ultimately unusable.</p>
<p>“Nature has found solutions to how to stay healthy,” says researcher Leonid Moroz. “We need to learn how they do it. But they are so fragile, we have to do it here.”</p>
<p>Moroz is referring to his innovative sea lab, built so he can conduct his research right where the comb jellies are caught. Moroz studies the regenerative abilities and DNA of fragile animals like comb jellies, research that is near impossible with dead, frozen samples. In order study live specimens, Moroz set up a full laboratory in a retrofitted shipping container that can easily be transported onto a ship. His floating lab allows him and his team to study animals as soon as they are caught, taking samples and watching them regenerate in real time.</p>
<p>“If the sea can’t come to the lab, the lab must come to the sea,” says Moroz.</p>
<p>The floating lab includes a state-of-the-art DNA sequencing machine, which sends data by satellite to a supercomputer at the University of Florida. The results can be returned to the boat within a few hours, providing the fast results necessary for scientists working with live, fragile animals. Unused live specimens are returned to the sea, a departure from traditional comb jelly studies, which required extra animals to be killed to make up for the large number of useless samples.</p>
<p>Moroz’s team has already gathered data on thousands of genes in various species. This DNA research may lead to discovering the genes responsible for regeneration. Some species of comb jelly can completely regenerate missing tissue in less than a week, while other comb jellies lack the ability. This difference may yield the answer: “Why does one regenerate, and another not?” Moroz asks. “That is the million-dollar question.”</p>
<p /> | Answers to brain regeneration may be under the sea | false | http://natmonitor.com/2014/05/03/answers-to-brain-regeneration-may-be-under-the-sea/ | 2014-05-03 | 3 |
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<p>Brown hit a 3-pointer with 42 seconds left for a 75-69 lead but Jovan Mooring answered with a deep 3. Brown was fouled in the backcourt and the 83.1 percent free-throw shooter made two for a 77-72 lead but Mooring hit another 3, this time going to his right along the arc, with 20.7 seconds to go.</p>
<p>Hunter made two free throws for a 79-75 lead and Mooring finally missed a 3 but UNLV grabbed the offensive rebound and Tyrell Green dunked it. After Hunter went 1 for 2 from the line with 6.2 seconds left, Mooring raced down the court, got a high screen for a good look but he slipped and his 3-pointer was off.</p>
<p>Obij Aget had 15 points and 11 rebounds for New Mexico (14-9, 7-4 Mountain West), which wore its turquoise uniforms.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>New Mexico was without its second-leading scorer, Tim Williams, due to a stress reaction in his left foot. The senior, who was on the bench with a walking book on his left foot, is averaging 17.9 points per game this season.</p>
<p>Green had 25 points and eight rebounds for UNLV (10-13, 3-7) and Mooring added 23 points with six assists.</p> | Hunter hits 3 of 4 FTs in final 20 seconds, New Mexico wins | false | https://abqjournal.com/941192/hunter-hits-3-of-4-fts-in-final-20-seconds-new-mexico-wins.html | 2017-02-02 | 2 |
<p>We don't need to decide between social justice and economic justice—we got to have all of that justice together. Do we not?</p>
<p>On December 14, the political advocacy group Our Revolution hosted a&#160; <a href="https://ourrevolution.com/keith-ellison-dnc-livestream/" type="external">livestream</a>&#160;event with&#160;Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.)&#160;discussing the need to reform&#160;the Democratic Party. Both Sanders and Our Revolution have&#160;endorsed Ellison in his campaign to be the next chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). What follows is an abridged transcript of their remarks, edited&#160;for length and clarity.</p>
<p>Bernie:&#160;What we are doing tonight is not sexy, and it’s not going to make the headlines in the newspapers all over the country, but it is unprecedented for the Democratic Party and for the long-term future of our country, and it is of enormous consequence. At a time of low voter turnout, at a time when millions of Americans are demoralized politically and are sick and tired of establishment politics and establishment economics, we are gathered here tonight not only in this building but all over America to begin the process of transforming American politics and of creating a government which works for all of the people—not just the 1%.</p>
<p>That is what we are here to do, and in order to make that happen our first step is to transform the Democratic Party from a top-down party to a bottom-up body, to create a grassroots organization of the working families of this country, the young people of this country. I will tell you, having been all over this great nation of ours, there is an incredible idealism of millions of young people who believe in this country and who love this country and are prepared to fight to make this country all that we can become. I want to also urge all Americans regardless of income, regardless of their race, their nationality, their sexual orientation, to jump into the political process and make the Democratic Party a democratic party with a small “d,” not just a capital “d.”</p>
<p>This election for chair of the DNC is not a personality contest—the media may think it is, but it’s not. From what I can gather, Keith’s opponents are decent people who want to improve the Democratic Party and want to see us become victorious. The key difference here is whether we continue the status quo or whether we bring forth a very different vision for the future of the Democratic Party. That is what this election is about, and here is why we need to go forward in a very different direction than currently exists.</p>
<p>The painful truth is that despite President Obama’s strong victories in 2008 and 2012, the Democratic Party has lost enormous political ground over the last eight years. The Republicans have just won the White House. The Republicans now control the Senate. The Republicans now control the House. Republican governors now control almost two-thirds of the statehouses in this country, and over the last eight years Democrats have lost some 900 legislative seats from one end of America to the other. That is the simple, indisputable truth. Clearly, whatever the leadership of the Democratic Party has been doing over the last few years has failed, and we need fundamental change.</p>
<p>The Republican Party advocates cutting the Social Security that the American people want to expand. Republicans want to throw million Americans off of their health insurance. They now want to cut Medicare. They want to cut Medicaid. They want to cut federal aid to education. Despite competing against a Republican Party that not only does not want to do anything substantive about climate change, to a large degree they do not even recognize the&#160;scientific reality of climate change—despite all of that, and much more—the Democratic Party has lost significant political ground. We have got to ask why that has occurred.</p>
<p>Brothers and sisters, the status quo is not working, and we will not succeed if we continue along the same old path. Now is the time for real change in the Democratic Party, now is the time to revitalize the Democratic Party and bring in people who have not been welcomed in the past. We should not be afraid of new energy and new faces; we should welcome and embrace new energy and new faces. Now is the time for a chair of the Democratic Party who has a very different vision of the party then those who are in control today. Now is the time for Keith Ellison to become chair of the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>As I know many of you are aware, Keith is currently the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and has been one of the leading progressive voices on all of the major issues facing the middle class and working families of our country. He has been there on picket lines. He’s been up front and out front in terms of workers’ rights, in terms of the environment and climate change, in terms of the need to create a healthcare system that guarantees healthcare to all people as a right. He has been out in front on women’s rights, on the rights of the LGBT community, on the need for real criminal justice reform, on the need for immigration reform and on the need for real tax reform, so that Donald Trump and the other billionaires start paying their fair share of taxes. For many, many years Keith has been there not as a follower, but as a leader. Unlike some of the other candidates running for chair, Keith knew from day one that the TPP was a disaster for working families and helped us defeat the TPP. Keith is by nature a grassroots organizer—that is what he does and that is who he is. He is not a creature of the inside-the-beltway world; he is a person who lives in the real world, feels comfortable in the real world, and is going to bring the real world into the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>Keith already has the support of some of the strongest grassroots organizations and trade unions in this country, and we have the support of many, many progressive elected officials. But we have something even more important than all of that right now: We have the support of more than 600,000 men and women in every state in this country, who have signed petitions to demand and urge that Keith Ellison become the next chair of the Democratic Party. 600,000 people. Our goal, and I urge all people to get involved in this process, is to take that 600,000 number and make it a million. Please get your friends and co-workers involved, please go to OurRevolution.com and get your friends to sign up.</p>
<p>Brothers and sisters, we are in a perilous and momentous moment in American history. You all know that, and we are going to need a political party that has the guts to stand with working families, has the guts to take on the big money interests that control to a large degree our economic and political life.</p>
<p>It is my great privilege to introduce to you someone who I believe is going to be the next chair of the Democratic National Committee. Please welcome congressman Keith Ellison.</p>
<p>Keith:&#160; If there was ever a moment when people who love this country and the people in it need to step up and do everything they can to improve the lives of their fellow Americans, that moment is right now.</p>
<p>If I told you that you had an opportunity to fight for people who felt vulnerable and scared in this Trump America, would you do it? If I told you that you had a chance to stand up and fight for working people, would you do it? If I told you that you could be the hero of folks who pour the cement, who teach the classes, who take care of the folks in the hospital, who take care of the children, who cook the food—I mean the hard-working people of America—would you step up and do something for them?</p>
<p>Well that's good, because we need you to do all of that right now. Because let me tell you, it's hard to imagine somebody like Donald Trump being elected president, but in a few days he will be the president. I don't know what stage in the whole spectrum of grief you may be at, but I think we need to arrive at acceptance that he's about to be the president. And that means that each of us and all of us have to do every single thing that we can to protect our fellow Americans and to advance the cause of economic and social justice. This is a historic moment, this is a movement moment and this moment may well be the moment when the American people thought to reclaim their democracy of, by and for the people.</p>
<p>Now Trump ran saying stuff like, “more jobs, new trade model.” As soon as he got in there he said he was going to drain the swamp. You remember that one. Well, he's filling up with lobbyists, billionaires, corporate executives, hedge fund managers, all these folks. We're going to have the richest cabinet ever: If you just had a few million dollars, you'd be like the poor guy in that bunch.</p>
<p>Trump said he said he's going to fight for little people, yet he nominates as Secretary of Education another billionaire who's&#160;against public schools, when 90 percent of American school children will go to a public school. Betsy DeVos wants to privatize them. Trump said he was going to help working people. His nominee for labor secretary is another billionaire who makes billions on the backs of low-wage fast-food workers. He is actually against the minimum wage and would lower it if he could. This is the cabinet he's picked so far. He said he was going to appoint the best and most qualified, and yet Dr. Ben Carson admits he knows nothing at all about housing. &#160;</p>
<p>So I guess it's no surprise that Trump also nominated a guy who says that there's no such thing as climate change to be the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. At a time when people are living in toxic areas all over this country, he picks an EPA leader who is not in favor of protecting people from environmental hazards. So people, we got our work cut out for us.</p>
<p>We can always count on the right wing to say that rich people don't have enough money, and the poor folks have too much money. We can always count on them to say the rich folks need one more tax cut, one more regulation that they don't have to follow, and regular working people need one less thing that's going to help them make it through the week. Okay, so that's them, what about us? Are we going to hit the streets? Are we going to organize?</p>
<p>This is what we got to do: Right now we got to reset the future of the Democratic Party. We got to reset the Democratic party on the basis of grassroots activism.&#160;We got to reset the Democratic Party on the basis of working people who are striving every single day to make a better life for themselves and their families right here in America. I’m talking about African Americans, white Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans. I’m talking about Asian Americans, about people who are Jewish and Muslim and Christian and Buddhist and Hindu and those who have no faith at all. I’m talking about folks like you and me, folks like us that need to say that the Democratic Party has got to be democratic, and it starts with getting some leadership in there that's going to fight for that democracy. I'm telling you right now, this is the moment we have been waiting for: The time for us to stand up and fight back and reclaim our nation. Y’all ready? &#160;</p>
<p>Now I want to tell you that I am very proud to have your support, and I'm so amazed at the tremendous turnout we have here tonight. Big shoutout to the folks on the livestream. If the Democratic party's going to make any reforms, one of them has got to be that we use moments like this one—mass meetings of hundreds of thousands of people—to get together to talk about what we're going to do to make our country better for everyone. We got to include everybody, and if technology can help us get more folks on the table, well&#160;then let's do it.</p>
<p>The Democratic Party should be the party of the people. The Democratic Party should be the party for those who want a better future for their children and grandchildren. It should be a party that invests in workers and protects their ability to organize and fight for a fair wage in good working conditions. The Democratic Party should be a party that believes everyone should have equal access to the American Dream and equal rights before the law. The Democratic Party should say it doesn't matter what your color is, we're going to treat you with fairness and equality and respect. It doesn't matter who you love and go to bed with at night; it doesn't matter who your closest of kin is, they are your choice and we respect and honor that choice. That's what the Democratic Party should be. The Democratic Party should say whether you were born in America or whether you came here, we respect you. We believe that the Democratic Party should be the party of, by and for the people. &#160;</p>
<p>And yet, we know that even a good car sometimes needs a tune-up. You know what I mean. It needs new wheels, new brake pads, new belts, new hoses, new oil; it needs new spark plugs, maybe needs a paint job, needs to get that window that's been cracked fixed. You got to maintain and update and invigorate everything. If you just let it slide, it tends not to work so well.</p>
<p>Well now, I know some folks don't want to hear it, but Democrats have lost 935 legislative seats and Republicans now control two-thirds of governors’ offices—and let me tell you, the state legislature is very, very important, because that is where our voting rights are made. If you have a lifetime ban on voting if you have a felony, like they have in Florida, it’s because the state says so. If you never lose your right to vote, like they have in Vermont and Maine, that's because the state says so.</p>
<p>How is it impacting the American people's right to fully participate in democracy when 935 legislative seats and state legislatures have been lost by Democrats? How has it affected redistricting? It has devastated us. How has that affected a woman's right to choose in Ohio? Governor John Kasich said he has a 20-week ban on the right for a woman to choose abortion. Let me tell you something: This is none of his business. It's unconstitutional, but he did it because he wants a constitutional challenge, because he wants the case to go up there, because he wants to see the Supreme Court strip away a woman's right to make decisions for her family and herself and her body. That's something we have got to take very seriously, but it's going on at the state level.</p>
<p>You know what? Raising the minimum wage is winning on ballot initiatives, but Democrats aren’t winning. They like our ideas, but somehow our candidates aren't getting through. We need a retool. I don't recommend folks smoke marijuana, but I tell you it is crazy to throw people in jail for it, and when you see that all over the country these ballot initiatives are passing the right for medical and even recreational use. Why fill up the jails for something like that? That doesn't make no sense at all.</p>
<p>I’m running for DNC chair because it's time to turn all of this stuff around. It is time, and all of us have to step up. Each of us know no DNC chair, no elected official, can make the changes that have to be made. They're going to have to be made by the millions of Americans all across this country who believe in equality for all people, who believe in a fair economy, who believe that people have the right to choose and make their own personal decisions, who believe that climate change is going to destroy this world and our ability to live on it unless we do something right now. This is what we've got to do. We can remake this party right now.</p>
<p>I am a person who believes in unity, and I do absolutely thank the folks who have been around for a long time and honor their institutional memory and thank them for their service. But I also believe that it is absolutely time for a very serious injection of energy and reinvigoration. These two things don't need to be at odds; these things actually, if they work together, can serve us all very, very well. We all have our ideas about how things should go, so we need leadership that is going to say we're going to stick together and stay together. Maybe cuss each other out a little bit, but at the end of the day we're going to come out holding hands and be a team.</p>
<p>I also believe that we got to stand up tall for small. Now, what do I mean by that? You know, Howard Dean was right to say we need a 50-state strategy, but we got to go beyond that now. We need a 3,141-county strategy. We need strategy that gets granular. We need a block-by-block, a precinct strategy; we need a strategy that gets right down to the nitty-gritty, because the resources of the Democratic Party need to be moved right down closest to the voter. That's where they need to be. I'm talking about the money, the training, the data, the resources. But I can tell you that city officials and state legislative folks, and local county people, and just grassroots rank-and-file do not feel like they are being heard or listened to or included.</p>
<p>This a fact. I'm just telling the truth. If we want to win, we will listen to our local officials and our grassroots rank-and-file. We got to get small. I already mentioned to you that we have got to communicate, we got to use live-streaming like we are right now and this has got to be our regular practice. All of us together are smarter than any one of us, but if we don't share information and access, we cannot make maximum use of all of the intelligence and creativity that people are coming up with every day. We will do these things, we will make use of the talents that we have available to us, so abundant if only we would let go of our need to control everything and hand over the power to the people closest to the voter.</p>
<p>The Democratic Party must always be a party that stands for the respect and dignity of all people. Walter Reuther was the farmer who spoke at the March On Washington, which was not only for civil rights but for jobs as well. When Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers got up there, he said that there's a direct line between the bread box and ballot box.</p>
<p>He was right, wasn't he? We got to fight for economic justice; we got to make sure that prosperity for working people is available to them and that they have it. We don't need to decide between social justice and economic justice—we got to have all of that justice together. Do we not? You know I've heard people talk about the white working-class versus the rising new American electorate. Well let me tell you something, we got to stand for both. We got to stand for all; we can never sacrifice between the two. If we don't stand up for both, we’re not going to have neither one. Because they would use tribalism and racial manipulation to lower our wages. &#160;Once they get us fighting with each other on the basis of these things, they’re always going to come take the money. We've got to stay together.</p>
<p>We have also got to turn out the vote. In 2014, we saw a 70-year low in voter turnout. &#160;In 2016, over 90 million eligible voters did not vote. We say we're only going to campaign in the swing states, and we're only going to go to the likely voters, and we leave literally millions of people not participating. When we do that we leave ourselves to lose Wisconsin, which is a blue state. We leave ourselves to lose Michigan, which is the home of the UAW. We lose these states that we should win because we have this strategy that we’re only going to talk to certain people. What if we started talking to everybody?</p>
<p>We need to stop looking at each other and segmenting each other; and see each other as true allies to rebuild this party. We've got to energize activists at the grassroots and unite all throughout this country. We've got to give Black Lives Matter people a place where they can express themselves electorally. We've got to give the Fight for 15 a party where they feel good about expressing themselves electorally. The immigration activists have got to have a place where they feel that there's a party that's listening to them. We've got to have a place for the folks who fight for climate justice, a party that they can support.</p>
<p>We are off to a good start, because Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton combined to create the best platform the Democratic Party has ever seen. I was privileged and honored to have Bernie appoint me to the platform drafting committee, and let me tell you, good things came out of it. Because of that collaboration and that unity, we got the best platform we've ever had. We've got to use it to move forward. We can organize with this very important tool, and if you will take up this battle and you will pledge to yourself and each other that your love for this country outweighs any beef you may have with anyone, if you will promise to yourself that you will work hard every single day to make this Democratic Party really work for the people, then we are not only looking at victory in 2018 and redistricting in 2020. We are looking at a generation full of success for working people.</p>
<p>Republicans in 1964 thought that they were at the bottom, that they were down and out. People said conservatism was dead as a philosophy because Goldwater lost to Johnson in historic numbers, and yet those guys are so committed to making themselves more money and excluding people that they climb back up. They won, and then they won some more. And in 1980, this culminated in the election of Ronald Reagan, I'm telling you I don't want to be like them, I don't believe what they believe, but I will say that I appreciate determination when I see it. And you and I better have the same level, if not more, determination for working people.</p>
<p>Democrats, liberals, progressives, the Left—we stand for the right values. I think that because we stand for the right values, we think that's all we have to do. The people on the Right, they know that the program they're pushing is only going to benefit about 1% of the people, but they still live in a democracy, so they have to figure out a way to win. We also have got to understand that just being right is not enough. We've got to be unified. We got to be active. We got to be fighting together. We've got to be pushing the right program; we've got to strengthen and unify at the grassroots level, and we need a Democratic Party that's going to help us do that.</p>
<p>If you're ready to do those things, we are ready to win. I need to ask you to do just a few things. Bernie said that we need to sign those petitions. We absolutely got to get a million signatures, okay? If there are DNC members in your state, gently and politely tell them that you would like them to support Ellison for DNC chair. Also, we need to be doing meet-ups all over this country. I’m talking about meet-ups where people can meet like once a month, get some cookies, tea, coffee, whatever you like, and just say you know what? What if we did this, or what if we did that? And then maybe you could have a listening session to really feel how people are doing.</p>
<p>Here's the other thing, there's a lot of folks who voted for Trump. &#160;Don't reject them; ask them what are you thinking about? How do you feel now? Are you willing to work with us? Now did he disappoint you or do you still feel satisfied?&#160;Because there's a whole lot of folks after they lose their healthcare, they are going to be a little bit annoyed. Don't push them away, bring them in.</p>
<p>And the last thing I want to ask you to do is just understand that there's a lot of folks who might have their family roots south of the border, and a guy who just got elected said, “Build a wall.” These people need our support. These are our brothers and sisters, and we can't let them feel vulnerable and afraid. A dear friend of mine said to me recently that she was called to a meeting with her friend. She brought her little five-year-old daughter with her. And she said to my friend, if me and my husband are picked up and deported, you know Juanita is born in America, she's a citizen: Would you take care of her? &#160;You understand? Think about having that conversation. That's real for a lot of people. There are other people who were told that they were going to be banned from immigrating here based on their religion. People who are Muslim, be a friend. People who are gay and lesbian, people who are Jewish—a lot of anti-Semitism has really popped up. You got to stand with everybody who is feeling vulnerable right now. Because one of the things Trump has uncorked is that hate machine, and we have got to resist it and stand up against it. Our best weapon against it is our own solidarity. Let's remake the Democratic Party, everybody.</p>
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<p>Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and a candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is a democratic socialist who ran for president in the 2016 Democratic primary.</p> | Keith Ellison and Bernie Sanders: How To Remake the Democratic Party | true | http://inthesetimes.com/article/19743/bernie-sanders-keith-ellison-democratic-party-dnc-chair-our-revolution | 2016-12-20 | 4 |
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<p>It's difficult to rationalize the movements of the stock market sometimes. On the one hand, several mediocre businesses are trading at valuation multiples that make it terribly hard to generate a return over time. At the same time, some pretty high-quality companies are trading at considerable discounts for one reason for another. We certainly want to avoid those mediocre companies, especially when valuations run high. When stock prices for top-notch companies trade at low valuations, though, that's when we want to consider picking up shares.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Two companies that stand out today as egregiously cheap stocks to buy are biotech giant Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD) and solar power company First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR). Here's a quick look at why you may want to consider these cheap stocks for your portfolio.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>The knock on Gilead Sciences for some time has been that its two cash cow treatments for the hepatitis C virus (HCV) have been on the decline lately. The patient pool for HCV treatments is shrinking thanks in part to the success of Gilead's treatments, but that is putting immense pressure on prices for the company's existing and new treatments for the disease. In fact, management estimates that 2017 revenue from its HCV treatments will decline 40% to 50% from last year's result .</p>
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<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>The fear of Gilead losing its veritable cash-generating machine has a lot of investors and analysts running for the hills. The company's stock is down 26% over the past year. Currently, it trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 6.8. What's more, Gilead has more than $32 billion in cash and investments on the books. If we were to back out the cash from its market cap, that P/E ratio is 4.1.</p>
<p>Typically, a P/E ratio that low suggests there is no growth left in the stock, and that it's all downhill from here. That thinking heavily discounts two things, though: Gilead's development pipeline and its ability to deploy that cash horde.</p>
<p>Gilead Sciences currently has 28 clinical trials under way for treatments in a wider range of diseases, the most lucrative of which is itsnon-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) treatment. Of those clinical trials, 10 are in late-stage trials. Granted, we shouldn't expect many completed trials this year, and there is no guarantee that these will be blockbuster treatments like its suite of HCV treatments. All it takes is one treatment to become a blockbuster to move the needle, though. Gilead will spend heavily to complete this suite of late-stage trials in 2017.</p>
<p>The other thing that Gilead's stock price discounts is management's ability to use its cash on hand to make a significant acquisition. For a couple of quarters now, Gilead's management has said it is looking at potential acquisitionsto boost its sales or its development pipeline. Again, with that much cash on hand and its existing portfolio of drugscranking out solid cash flow, it can make some big acquisitions that could significantly improve its chances of developing the next major treatment.</p>
<p>Perhaps 2017 won't be the year we see a significant turnaround for Gilead, but that's OK. Doubters give investors a long window to pick up shares of Gilead at a very reasonable price.</p>
<p>Investing in the solar industry can be an incredibly frustrating endeavor. For all the talk of solar being the future of how we generate power and the massive growth potential, the industry is notoriously cyclical. Rapid technology improvements and the quick decline down the cost curve makes it a fast race to the bottom regarding pricing. These market dynamics can lead to ups and downs in panel prices and can do a real number on solar companies that aren't built to handle a cyclical market.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Today, we are in one of those market downturns. Back in 2015, investors were under the assumption that the investment tax credit and the production tax credit -- two things that boosted investment in solar installments -- would expire at the end of 2016. So most companies wanted to have their respective solar projects completed by the end of 2016 to reap the benefits of the tax credits. Those tax credits were extended, but not quickly enough for developers to fill their coffers with new projects. So today, the solar power industry is suffering from a bit of a hangover from this rapid expansion period.</p>
<p>As a result, First Solar stock has taken it on the chin. Shares are down a whopping 58% over the past year and trade at an absurdly low enterprise value-to-EBITDA ratio of 1.6. Like Gilead, First Solar also has a lot of cash on the balance sheet. In fact, if you were to invest in First Solar's stock today, 66% of its market cap is in cash.</p>
<p>Also, like Gilead, there isn't a whole lot of optimism over the short term for First Solar. The company expects a significant decline in earnings per shareas it goes through a weak panel price environment and as it converts some manufacturing facilities to build its next-generation panels.</p>
<p>If you extend your investment time horizon, though, there is a solid case to be made for investing in First Solar. One is that the company's research and development spending has produced fantastic results lately that have improved its panel efficiency well above the typical commodity product and have lowered manufacturing costs such that solar power is now cost-competitive with other sources of energy without tax credits. Also, First Solar anticipates it will more than double its panel production by 2020.</p>
<p>The solar industry continues to grow in fits and starts, but the long-term potential becomes more attractive by the day as costs continue to decline. With shares of First Solar trading at such a discount, today now seems like a very opportune time to buy shares.</p>
<p>Find out why Gilead Sciences is one of the 10 best stocks to buy now</p>
<p>Motley Fool co-founders Tom and David Gardner have spent more than a decade beating the market. (In fact, the newsletter they run, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market!*)</p>
<p>Tom and David just revealed their ten top stock picks for investors to buy right now. Gilead Sciences <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0000450%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6313%26ftm_veh%3Darticle_pitch&amp;impression=0a04a46e-b808-401b-82e4-13011ea718df&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">is on the list Opens a New Window.</a> -- but there are nine others you may be overlooking.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0000450%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6313%26ftm_veh%3Darticle_pitch&amp;impression=0a04a46e-b808-401b-82e4-13011ea718df&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here to get access to the full list! Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of February 6, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFDirtyBird/info.aspx" type="external">Tyler Crowe Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of First Solar and Gilead Sciences. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Gilead Sciences. The Motley Fool has the following options: short June 2017 $70 calls on Gilead Sciences. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | These 2 Stocks Are Ridiculously Cheap | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/28/these-2-stocks-are-ridiculously-cheap.html | 2017-03-28 | 0 |
<p />
<p>Question: What type of questions do I need to answer when shopping around for car insurance and then buying a policy?&#160; I'm trying to figure out what to have on hand before I start comparison shopping for quotes.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Answer:&#160; The insurance company will want to know what kind of car it is insuring, who will be driving it, where it will be driven and how often.</p>
<p>The rates you see when comparison shopping for auto insurance are based only on the information that you yourself provide. If you decide to buy, the company you choose will confirm the details before writing you a policy at the price it quoted. The information doesn't have to be perfect -- dates and dollar amounts, for example, may be hard to recollect exactly. But you should be close.</p>
<p>Information such as how long you've been driving, your ZIP code and the type of car you're driving are what is known as <a href="http://www.carinsurance.com/car-insurance-discounts/base-car-insurance-rates.aspx?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-171943510" type="external">rating factors Opens a New Window.</a> that are used to calculate your premium.&#160; (See “ <a href="http://www.carinsurance.com/kb/auto-insurers-nosy-about-household-members.aspx?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-171943510" type="external">Why are auto insurers so nosy? Opens a New Window.</a>”) Other information, such as whether you own a home or have taken a driver improvement course, helps insurers determine what <a href="http://www.carinsurance.com/car-insurance-discounts.aspx?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-171943510" type="external">discounts you're eligible for Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>In general you need to provide answers to questions in the following categories:</p>
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<p>Some companies may ask for your Social Security number so that your credit can be checked; others may wait to request it during the actual purchasing process (if it's required at all).</p>
<p>We highly recommend that you have your current auto insurance policy handy (if this isn't your first policy) so that you can compare “apples to apples” regarding coverages -- and see <a href="http://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/pocket-money-shop-around.aspx?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-171943510" type="external">how much you could save Opens a New Window.</a> by changing companies.</p>
<p>The rate you are quoted can change based on data from the DMV and other sources (such as your <a href="http://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/scoring-high-car-insurance-rates.aspx?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-171943510" type="external">C.L.U.E. report Opens a New Window.</a>); thus, it's very important to give accurate information during the quoting process if you don't want your final purchase price to change or to receive an additional premium notice. &#160;(See “ <a href="http://www.carinsurance.com/kb/always-disclose-information.aspx?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-171943510" type="external">Yes, the insurer checks up on you Opens a New Window.</a>”)</p>
<p>When you decide to buy a policy after you've <a href="http://www.carinsurance.com/kb/why-shop-around-for-auto-insurance.aspx?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-171943510" type="external">shopped around and found the best rates Opens a New Window.</a>, you'll need to have the following information on hand:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.carinsurance.com/car-insurance-comparison.aspx?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-171943510" type="external">Comparison shopping Opens a New Window.</a> is worth the time and effort.&#160; You can save hundreds, or even thousands, by shopping around with multiple insurance companies.&#160; (See “ <a href="http://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/biggest-savings-on-car-insurance.aspx?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-171943510" type="external">3 ways to save big on car insurance Opens a New Window.</a>”)</p>
<p>The original article can be found at CarInsurance.com: <a href="http://www.carinsurance.com/kb/what-you-need-auto-insurance-quote.aspx?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-171943510" type="external">What you need to get an auto insurance quote Opens a New Window.</a></p> | Shopping? What the Insurance Company Will Ask | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/06/18/shopping-what-insurance-company-will-ask.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
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<p>Superstorm Sandy was the second-costliest natural disaster in U.S. history at $70 billion. And now there are 10 teams working to make sure that kind of economic and physical devastation never happens again.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>As part of the Hurricane Sandy rebuilding task force called Rebuild by Design, designers this week unveiled innovative plans that could help change the New Jersey and New York coasts forever.</p>
<p>Some designs would drastically alter the appearance of the coast, while others would be implemented into the natural environment, virtually unseen.</p>
<p>All designs would provide some defense against the roaring sea as she barrels toward on-land infrastructure during future epic storms.</p>
<p>“We need to think differently this time around, making sure the region is resilient enough to rebound from future storms,” said Rebuild by Design on its website.</p>
<p>The designers were challenged to find a solution that would address the structural and environmental vulnerabilities that Hurricane Sandy exposed on communities throughout the low-lying regions of the Jersey Shore and New York Harbor.</p>
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<p>The teams submitted those initial ideas earlier this week and will now work on refining them into design solutions that can be implemented and funded.</p>
<p>By mid-2014, an expert jury will pick winning solutions to be potentially funded through disaster recovery grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and other private and public funding.</p>
<p>Those chosen will be a part of the greatest push to innovate shore protection in the Northeast since the region's beaches were naturally formed millions of years ago.</p>
<p>Out-of-the-Box Ideas</p>
<p>Having transformed permeable surfaces into impermeable concrete jungles, modern cities have become virtually ineffective at capturing, storing and even slowing water during floods. Manhattan’s Financial District was a clear case study of this, with tunnels, basements and car garages acting as virtual sewers.</p>
<p>One team, led by the architectural giant Bjarke Ingels Group, proposed a system of levees, berms and barriers that would double as public parks and be hidden in the natural environment. To protect lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, it proposes elevated land, attractive waterfront landscapes and other water-based resilience measures that would protect while simultaneously beautifying the land.</p>
<p>Another team led by Scape/Landscape Architecture believes large-scale artificial reefs would do the trick by helping to break down waves before they reach land.</p>
<p>“Our layered strategy introduces protective breakwaters and interior tidal flats that can dissipate wave energy and slow the water, while rebuilding sustainable oyster population within the Harbor,” the group writes in its proposal.</p>
<p>Another group, known as the Unabridged Coastal Collective, is looking much farther into the future, unveiling a slew of ideas that would change the face of coastal landscapes as water levels continue to rise and storms eat away at beaches.</p>
<p>Predicting that much of Long Island's Rockville barrier island will be under water by 2080, it envisions residents and visitors traveling there via water taxis or elevated public transportation. Once there, they'll fine a community of stilted buildings.</p>
<p>The PennDesign team proposes tall buildings be built in densely-populated urban areas in such a way that they act as levees to low-lying regions.</p>
<p>It also envisions inflatable tunnels and floodable retrofits, and is calling for reshaped and armored creek beds along the five-mile coast of Staten Island’s East Shore. On New Jersey's barrier islands, it is proposing floodable and mobile freight homes.</p>
<p>The Long Battle</p>
<p>The Sandy task force is far from the first attempt to tackle rising seas. The effort has proven not just a difficult one but an expensive one, too –yet pressures are nevertheless building as melting ice caps continue to increase water levels globally.</p>
<p>Millions of dollars have already been spent in the Northeast over the last decade on dredging beaches, which essentially involves a giant vacuum sucking sand from the seabed and depositing it on beaches in an effort to extend them.</p>
<p>Dune replenishment projects have also proven effective, however they tend to be temporary.&#160;In a recent analysis of a so-called 100-year storm event, Stockton College’s Coastal Research Center said long stretches of New Jersey's dune system would be “catastrophically inundated" in their current state.&#160;A 100-year storm is one that is predicted to strike only once in every 100 years.</p>
<p>Perhaps U.S. designers and scientists can learn from overseas attempts -- many that have been brewing for decades -- to protect their own terrain.</p>
<p>In Venice, construction began a decade ago on a system of 78 giant metal flap gates that would normally rest flat on the seabed but be blasted with compressed air so as to block rushing waters when they get to dangerous levels.</p>
<p>The $7.3 billion project, known officially as the Experimental Electromechanical Module, or “Moses” for short due to its ability to part the sea, was tested for the first time in earlier this month.</p>
<p>However Moses, which would ultimately be implemented on more than a mile of seabed, intended to block at least three inlets, has hit major roadblocks. The project, was initially expected to go into production in 2014, has been pushed back to at least 2016.</p>
<p>The Dutch, meanwhile, have spent considerably more than $7 billion and 50 years on their project dubbed Delta Works that is comprised of barriers and dams designed to protect populated areas near river mouths. However, the project is expected to take several more years, and cost billions of more dollars, for completion.</p>
<p>Perhaps one of the most effective solutions has been London's 520-meter Thames Barrier. Located downriver, it is one of the world’s largest movable flood barriers, acting as a mobile levee that protects 125 square kilometers (78 miles) of London from dangerous storm surges.</p>
<p>The Thames also has hundreds of other industrial and minor floodgates to protect the at-risk residential properties along its banks.</p>
<p>However, even that success story has its issues. As tides continue to rise at unprecedented levels, there is fear that the U.K.’s busiest city could be at risk if the barrier, put into operation in 1982, is not soon upgraded.</p> | Designers Imagine Storm-Proof Coastlines | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/10/31/reshaping-east-coast-ahead-next-superstorm.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
<p>France's Schneider Electric SE (SU.FR) on Wednesday said that it had signed a memorandum of understanding to buy software developer IGE + XAO SA (IGE.FR) in a deal valued at around 188.4 million euros ($218.3 million).</p>
<p>Schneider's subsidiary Schneider Electric Industries SAS will file a tender offer Wednesday for IGE + XAO to the French market regulator, the company said in a press release.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The deal is contingent upon Schneider holding at least two thirds of IGE + XAO's share capital by the end of the offer period. The proposed acquisition price of EUR132 a share represents a 15% premium to IGE + XAO's last closing price on Nov. 7, Schneider said.</p>
<p>IGE + XAO produces design and simulation software for electrical installations and reported consolidated revenue of EUR29.4 million and an operational margin of 27% in its last fiscal year, Schneider said.</p>
<p>The deal is the latest in a string of acquisitions by Schneider as the electrical-equipment manufacturer seeks to pivot towards writing the software that drives its products.</p>
<p>Write to Nathan Allen at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
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<p>November 08, 2017 02:56 ET (07:56 GMT)</p> | Schneider Electric to Acquire IGE + XAO for EUR188.4 Million | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/11/08/schneider-electric-to-acquire-ige-xao-for-eur188-4-million.html | 2017-11-08 | 0 |
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<p>When the calendar flips on Dec. 31, it will mark the end to one of the worst years on record for the casualty and property insurance industry, and with the floods in Thailand capping off a devastating 12 months, Fitch says premiums will likely be on the rise.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Munich Re was quick to call 2011 the highest year on record for total economic losses after only half the year, followed by Swiss Re, which called 2011 the second most expensive year in history, with insured claims at $70 billion.</p>
<p>That is behind only 2005, when hurricanes Katrina, Wilma and Rita contributed to more than $120 billion of total losses.</p>
<p>Approximately 26,000 people lost their lives in catastrophes in the first six months of 2011, most of them in Japan. Earlier this year, Swiss Re’s chief economist, Thomas Hess, said that given the high death toll in just the first half, additional claims had the potential to “bring figures for the full year even closer” to the record claims of 2005.</p>
<p>And while the first half exhausted much of insurers' catastrophe budgets, the floods in Thailand, the country's worst in 50 years, have only exacerbated the problem.</p>
<p>“Losses from the Thai floods will directly affect their bottom line,” Fitch said, which will likely be the catalyst that pushes premiums higher in certain regions.</p>
<p>The across-the-board rate increase would be necessary to absorb heavy losses from natural disasters in the Asia-Pacific region, including the March earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan and the February Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand.</p>
<p>Global insurers were also hit by a recent earthquake in Turkey and floods in Australia.</p>
<p>So far, price increases have been directly correlated with the countries that have been affected by the natural disasters. In New Zealand, for example, property renewal prices doubled in the June and July renewal seasons, while Japanese rates climbed by 30% to 70%.</p>
<p>Likewise, in the Thai market itself, reinsurers may limit the level of flood coverage to less than 100% of the total loss, Fitch says.</p>
<p>Estimates for total insured losses related to the floods still vary widely, due primarily to a lack of available claims adjusters coupled with a higher number of claims and the difficulties in accessing some rural and severely damaged areas.</p>
<p>Swiss Re forecasts the total insured market loss will be between $8 billion and $11 billion, however it added that “significant uncertainty” remains. Aon Benfield has said insured losses may exceed $10 billion, while the Office of Insurance Commission in Thailand gave an initial loss estimate of around $7.2 billion, excluding business disruption claims.</p>
<p>On Thursday, Munich Re predicted that its own losses from the floods will be around 500 million euros before tax.</p>
<p>However, the news isn't all grim, as the ratings company expects losses for local non-life insurers to be manageable in Thailand because of the country's relatively low insurance penetration and anticipated help from the government.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, insurers in the U.S. such as <a href="" type="internal">Chubb</a> (NYSE:CB), Allstate (NYSE:ALL) and Travelers (NYSE:TRV) have been reeling from floods and tornados in the Midwest, Hurricane Irene, a freak snow storm on Halloween and fires in California.</p>
<p>A report released Thursday by insurance broker Willis says 2011 catastrophe losses have had a "predictable impact on underwriting results," with many insurers posting significant losses in the first nine months of the year.</p>
<p>While Graham Knight, managing director of the Willis Power Practice in London, noted that there are increasing signs of a change in risk appetite, he said the general insurance market is still “reasonably well-capitalized,” meaning insurers should be able to keep funding claims.</p>
<p>Still, the outcome of the upcoming Jan. 1 renewal season is highly important, and Knight warned it will largely signify the direction of the market in 2012.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | For Insurers, 2011 Was One of the Worst | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/12/08/2011-one-worst-years-for-insurers-fitch-predicts-premiums-will-rise.html | 2016-01-29 | 0 |
<p>Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has thrown cold water on the argument that extreme interrogation methods are necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, telling NewsMax that waterboarding was not used to identify Osama bin Laden’s courier. Rumsfeld denied that waterboarding has been used at Guantanamo Bay at all, giving a spirited defense of the legacy of his former boss, President George W. Bush. John Yoo, who wrote a series of memos providing legal justification for “enhanced interrogation” while at the Bush Justice Department, argued that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/may/03/osama-bin-laden-death-us-bush-torture-debate" type="external">these techniques</a> made bin Laden’s elimination possible. — KDG</p>
<p>NewsMax:</p>
<p>Asked if harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay played a role in obtaining intelligence on bin Laden’s whereabouts, Rumsfeld declares: “First of all, no one was waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay. That’s a myth that’s been perpetrated around the country by critics.</p>
<p>“The United States Department of Defense did not do waterboarding for interrogation purposes to anyone. It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding.”</p>
<p />
<p>Rumsfeld reiterated that the killing of bin Laden exonerates the Bush administration’s response to 9/11.</p>
<p>“It certainly points up the fact that the structures that President Bush put into place — military commissions, Guantanamo Bay, the Patriot Act, indefinite detention, and humane treatment, but intensive interrogation to be sure — all contributed to the success we’ve had in the global war on terror.</p>
<p>“The fact that we’ve not had another attack on America for close to a decade, I don’t think anyone would have been bold enough to predict that 10 years ago.</p>
<p>“And certainly the killing of bin Laden is a testimony to our intelligence community. We’ve always had the ability to capture or kill Osama. What we didn’t have was the intelligence that was needed.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/DonaldRumsfeld-gitmo-waterboarding-osamabinladen/2011/05/02/id/394820" type="external">Read more</a></p> | No Waterboarding Used to Obtain bin Laden Intel, Rumsfeld Says | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/no-waterboarding-used-to-obtain-bin-laden-intel-rumsfeld-says/ | 2011-05-04 | 4 |
<p>Daily Free Press:</p>
<p>Looking to draw attention to what they call the "worst form of bigotry confronting America today," Boston University's College Republicans are circulating an application for a "Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship" that requires applicants be at least 25 percent Caucasian.</p>
<p>"Did we do this to give a scholarship to white kids? Of course not," the scholarship reads. "Did we do it to trigger a discussion on what we believe to be the morally wrong practice of basing decisions in our schools and our jobs on racial preferences rather than merit? Absolutely."</p>
<p>The scholarship, which is privately funded by the BUCR without the support of the university, is meant to raise awareness, group members say. BUCR member argue that racial preferences are a form of "bigotry." The group has a similar view on affirmative action.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://media.www.dailyfreepress.com/media/storage/paper87/news/2006/11/21/News/Bu.Group.Offers.White.Scholarship-2505837.shtml?sourcedomain=www.dailyfreepress.com&amp;MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com" type="external">Link</a></p> | College GOP'ers to Offer Caucasian Scholarship | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/college-gopers-to-offer-caucasian-scholarship/ | 2006-11-22 | 4 |
<p>Soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division in their M1A1 Abrams tank in Iraq, April 2004.&lt;a href="http://usarmy.vo.llnwd.net/e2/-images/2007/04/22/3579/"&gt;Photo by Pvt. Brandi Marshall&lt;/a&gt;/US Army</p>
<p>The M1 Abrams tank has survived the Cold War, Iraq, and Afghanistan. No wonder—it weighs as much as nine elephants and is fitted with a cannon capable of turning a building to rubble from two and a half miles away.</p>
<p>But now the hulking, clanking machine finds itself a target in an unusual battle between the Defense Department and lawmakers who are the beneficiaries of large donations by its manufacturer.</p>
<p>The Pentagon, facing smaller budgets and looking towards a new global strategy, has decided it wants to save as much as <a href="http://www.defensenews.com/article/20120307/DEFREG02/303070011/U-S-Army-Congress-No-New-Tanks-Please" type="external">$3 billion</a> by not doing scheduled “refurbishing” upgrades on the tank from 2014 to 2017, and instead redesign the Abrams from top to bottom. But the proposal is fiercely opposed by Abrams manufacturer <a href="http://www.generaldynamics.com/" type="external">General Dynamics</a>, which has pumped millions of dollars into congressional elections over the last decade. The tank’s supporters on Capitol Hill say they want to save jobs—the Pentagon’s proposal would idle a large factory in Lima, Ohio, and halt work at subcontractors in several other states—and protect America’s military capability.</p>
<p>So far, the contractor is winning, after a well-organized campaign targeting lawmakers on four key committees that will decide the tank’s fate, according to an analysis of spending and lobbying records by the Center for Public Integrity.</p>
<p>Sharp spikes in General Dynamics’ donations—including a two-week period in 2011 when its employees and political action committee sent the lawmakers checks for their campaigns totaling nearly $50,000—roughly coincided with committee hearings and votes on the Abrams.</p>
<p>Last year, both the House and Senate restored the tank money the Pentagon wanted to cut from its own budget—and the Armed Services committees in both houses have proposed doing so again this year, <a href="http://www.startribune.com/printarticle/?id=161346855" type="external">to the tune of</a> $181 million in the House and $91 million in the Senate.</p>
<p>The Army already has more than 2,300 M1s deployed with US forces around the world and roughly 3,000 more sitting idle and unneeded in long rows outdoors at a remote military base in California’s Sierra mountains. If Congress restores the money, tax dollars will be going to upgrade about 70 tanks a year—or, as Army chief of staff Ray Odierno put it in a March hearing, “280 tanks that we simply do not need.”</p>
<p>The $3 billion in savings from freezing the refurbishments is not a large sum in Pentagon terms—it’s what the department spends in a little more than a day. But the fight over the Abrams’ future illuminates the pressures that drive the defense spending debate: The Pentagon is looking to free itself from legacy projects and modernize some of its combat strategy, Congress is determined to defend pet projects, and a well-financed defense industry is fighting to fend off even small reductions in the budget devoted to the military—which composes about half of the federal budget’s discretionary spending. &#160;</p>
<p>Vulnerable to IEDs But Impervious to Pentagon Budgeteers</p>
<p>The M1 Abrams entered service in 1980, but first saw combat during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. That experience suggested that, on the battlefield at least, one of the only things that could destroy an Abrams was another Abrams; only seven of the tanks deployed in the operation were destroyed, all by friendly fire.</p>
<p>In the last decade, however, as hundreds of the vehicles were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, a key shortcoming became apparent: The Abrams’ design made it <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-03-29-abrams-tank-a_x.htm" type="external">vulnerable</a> to improvised explosive devices (IEDs). As a result, the Abrams in Iraq sometimes ended up being used as “pillboxes”—high-priced armored bunkers used to protect terrain rather than go out and patrol.</p>
<p>“The M1 is an extraordinary vehicle, the best tank on the planet,” says <a href="http://nsnetwork.org/paul-eaton/" type="external">Paul D. Eaton</a>, a retired Army major general now with the nonprofit National Security Network. But its utility in modern counterinsurgency warfare is limited, he adds, because the tank’s primary purpose is to kill other tanks—as it would have in the kind of combat envisioned during the Cold War.</p>
<p>Ashley Givens, a spokeswoman for the Army’s <a href="http://www.peogcs.army.mil/" type="external">Program Executive Office for Ground Combat Systems</a>, said that the Army can get all the refurbishing it needs done by the end of 2013. Freezing work after that, she said, will allow it to “focus its limited resources on the development of the next generation Abrams tank,” rather than the current model that has “exceeded [its] space, weight, and power limits.”</p>
<p>Nonetheless, top Army officials have been unable to get political traction to kill the M1—thanks in large part to General Dynamics’ checkbook. Since January 2001, GD’s political action committee and the company’s employees have invested $5.3 million in current members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees or defense appropriations subcommittees, according to data the <a href="iwatchnews.org" type="external">Center for Public Integrity</a> acquired from the <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/" type="external">Center for Responsive Politics</a>.</p>
<p>Kendell Pease, GD’s Vice President for Government Relations and Communications, told us that the company—which produces submarines and radios for the military, as well as tanks—makes donations to lawmakers whose views are aligned with the firm’s interests. “We target our PAC money to those folks who support national security,” Pease says. “Most of them are on the four [key defense] committees.”</p>
<p>But Pease denies trying to time donations around key votes, saying that the company’s PAC typically gives money whenever members of Congress invite its representatives to fundraisers. “The timing of a donation is keyed by [members’] requests for funding,” he says, adding that personal donations by company employees are not under his control. &#160;</p>
<p>More Cash at Key Milestones</p>
<p>During the current election cycle, General Dynamics’ political action committee and its employees sent an average of about $7,000 a week to members of the four committees. But the week President Obama announced his defense budget plan in 2011, the donations spiked to more than $20,000, significantly higher than in any of the previous six weeks. A second spike of more than $20,000 in donations occurred in early March 2011, when Army budget hearings were being held.</p>
<p>At a March 9 hearing of the House subcommittee dealing with land forces, Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg65463/html/CHRG-112hhrg65463.htm" type="external">railed</a> against the Army’s decision to freeze work on the Abrams. Since the start of 2001, Reyes has received $64,650 in GD donations, including $1,000 on March 10, the day after the hearing, according to the data. Reyes’ office did not respond to a request to comment.</p>
<p>Another large spike came in May 2011, when the House Armed Services Committee voted 60-1 for a budget bill containing money to continue work on the Abrams through 2013. Over this period, GD’s PAC and employees donated a total of $48,100 to members of the four committees, with almost $20,000 of that going directly to members of the House Armed Services Committee.</p>
<p>During another two week period in September, in which the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense handed in its conference report and Congress rushed to pass a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/us/politics/house-republicans-push-stopgap-spending-bill.html?_r=1" type="external">stopgap spending bill</a> to keep the government open, the company sent $36,500 to members of the committees—primarily the House Armed Services Committee, whose members got $30,500.</p>
<p>The final large spike in donations last year came the week of December 11-17, when Congress voted on the whole Pentagon budget. During this week, GD’s donations to members of the four committees totaled $17,000.</p>
<p>Along with its checks, the company has been delivering a message that a cutoff of tank manufacturing work in Lima will harm the nation’s “industrial base”—a favorite expression for military contractors facing cutbacks.</p>
<p>The workforce “is not like a light switch. You can’t just click it off, then walk away for three years, come back and click it on,” Pease said. GD has also accused the Army of underestimating the cost of idling the Lima plant, claiming that the government’s actual savings would be minimal.</p>
<p>To drive these points home, General Dynamics has spent at least $84 million over the past 11 years on lobbyists, according to Senate Office of Public Records lobbying data acquired from the Center for Responsive Politics. While lobbyists often do not name their causes, those working for GD that specifically listed the Abrams tank, along with other topics, reported earning at least $550,000 from 2011 to the first quarter of 2012, according to the data. Pease described the lobbying efforts as “education…Shame on us if we don’t go and tell them [Congress] our side.” &#160;</p>
<p>Relying on Special Contacts</p>
<p>In addition to tapping its in-house team, the company hired outside firms that assigned the General Dynamics account to former congressional staff and others tightly connected to committee members. GD has paid the <a href="http://podesta.com/" type="external">Podesta Group</a>, run by famed Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta, more than $1.5 million since 2009 to lobby on the defense appropriations and authorizations bills, according to lobbying disclosure forms. Among the more than 20 Podesta lobbyists assigned to the account was Josh Holly, communications director for the House Committee on Armed Services under Republican leadership for six years.</p>
<p>According to Holly’s <a href="http://www.podesta.com/talent/josh-holly" type="external">bio</a> on the Podesta website, on the Hill he worked directly with California Republican Buck McKeon, the committee’s current chairman. McKeon has received $56,000 from GD’s PAC and employees since 2009, when he became the committee’s top Republican. Holly did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment, and committee spokesman Claude Chafin said McKeon has consistently argued that it is fiscally smarter to keep the Abrams work going than to stop it.</p>
<p>Podesta also assigned the GD account to two former House Appropriations Committee aides. One of them, Jim Dyer, confirmed that he lobbied on the tank this year, but he directed other questions to General Dynamics. GD also <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientlbs.php?id=D000000165&amp;year=2011" type="external">hired firms</a> that assigned its account to six other lobbyists who once worked for the relevant committees, and to a former Pentagon official who had served as the department’s liaison to Congress.</p>
<p>Pease said that when working with outside firms, he lets them choose the specific lobbyists on the account. But when picking the firms, “you always look for those people who can get the job done,” he says.</p>
<p>So far, it seems the job has been getting done—earlier this year, 173 members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, <a href="http://www.armytimes.com/news/2012/04/defense-strong-support-congress-more-tanks-042412/" type="external">signed a letter</a> of support for the tank. But their support isn’t necessarily in full public view.</p>
<p>Both this year and last year, the Abrams funds were added to the Pentagon budget without a specific recorded vote—in other words, as modern day earmarks. Earmarks were supposed to have been banned after the 2010 election, but lawmakers have decided that when multiple members favor adding funds—rather than just one lawmaker—it is not formally an earmark.</p>
<p>Rep. Jim Jordan, who represents the Ohio district where the Lima plant is located and has received $31,000 for his campaigns from General Dynamics’ leadership PAC and employees, said he is now optimistic that the Abrams money will make it safely through the Senate.</p>
<p>If it does, the fight still might not be over. The White House, in its May 15 <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/wp-content/uploads/omb/legislative/sap/112/saphr4310r_20120515.pdf" type="external">response</a> to the House budget, objected to the “unrequested authorization” of funds for the Abrams during a “fiscally-constrained environment.” The administration did not specifically threaten a veto over the issue but said that if too many unrequested projects impeded “the ability of the Administration to execute the new defense strategy and to properly direct scarce resources,” senior advisers will recommend the president veto the bill.</p>
<p>Reporter Zach Toombs and Data Editor David Donald contributed to this report.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.iwatchnews.org/" type="external">Center for Public Integrity</a> is a nonprofit, independent investigative news outlet.</p>
<p />
<p /> | There’s Only One Tank the Army Can’t Stop | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/abrams-tank-pentagon-defense-lobby/ | 2012-07-31 | 4 |
<p />
<p>The Bernie Sanders coalition -- a mix of young voters, liberals and independents -- is still a potent force in the Democratic primary race.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>With his unexpected win in Michigan's primary on Tuesday, Mr. Sanders proved his voting base still has power, just as the nominating calendar is about to turn to similar Midwestern states, including Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin.</p>
<p>Mr. Sanders's voting base had little visibility in Mississippi on Tuesday, where Hillary Clinton won an overwhelming victory on the strength of African-American voters, who made up more than 60% of the voter pool.</p>
<p>But in Michigan, where black voters accounted only for about one-quarter of the electorate and gave Mrs. Clinton less of a boost, the Sanders coalition held far more sway.</p>
<p>Mr. Sanders carried a commanding 8 in 10 voters under age 30, according to preliminary results of surveys of voters after they cast ballots. He won more than two-thirds of voters under age 45. And while Mrs. Clinton won a lopsided share of African-American voters, Mr. Sanders won nearly 6 in 10 white voters, according to exit polls reported by CNN and other media.</p>
<p>A similar coalition could make for close races in other Midwest states with manufacturing roots, where the voter pools look more like those of Michigan than of other states that have voted so far.</p>
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<p>Its white, non-Hispanic population, at 76% of all residents, looks similar to the 80% share of white residents in Ohio, 78% in Pennsylvania and 82% in Wisconsin. The percentage of people 25 or older with a bachelor's degree, at 26%, is in line with those three states.</p>
<p>Mr. Sanders has already won one upper Midwest state, Minnesota, where Democrats held caucuses rather than a primary.</p>
<p>The Tuesday night results have a message for both Democratic candidates. For Mrs. Clinton it is that her campaign needs a rationale and message as compelling as Mr. Sanders's call for a "political revolution" against the wealthy and Wall Street, which has caught the imagination of the party's liberals and young voters.</p>
<p>For Mr. Sanders, it is that winning the nomination in a racially diverse party is difficult without winning support from nonwhite voters.</p>
<p>Mr. Sanders's weak support among African-Americans has severely hampered him in the South, but he may find diverse states outside the South to be friendlier ground. He won 30% of African-American voters in Michigan, his best showing in any state for which there are exit polls and a far larger share than the single-digit support he had drawn in several Southern primaries.</p>
<p>As in other Southern states, Mrs. Clinton's victory in Mississippi rested on support from nearly 9 in 10 African-American voters, exit polls showed.</p>
<p>Donald Trump carried Mississippi's Republican primary. Like Mrs. Clinton, he has won the contests in Southern states, including those in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.</p>
<p>As in prior contests, Mr. Trump's support was strongest among voters without a college degree and those on the lower end of the income scale. But he swept almost every other group as well, even expanding the coalition that had delivered other Southern states to him.</p>
<p>Mr. Trump won among Republican Party members and independents who cast ballots. He carried evangelical Christians and non-evangelicals, foiling Sen. Ted Cruz, who had hoped to build a lead among evangelicals. Mr. Cruz, a favorite of social conservatives, carried voters who rated themselves "very conservative," as he had in prior contests.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p> | Michigan Surprise Shows Power Of Sanders Coalition | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/03/09/michigan-surprise-shows-power-sanders-coalition.html | 2016-07-06 | 0 |
<p>Photo by Elvert Barnes | <a href="" type="internal">CC by 2.0</a></p>
<p>There is more than a little irony in Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to attend a “celebration” dinner this week in London with his British counterpart, Theresa May, marking the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.</p>
<p>Palestinian objections to the 1917 document are well-known. Britain’s Lord Balfour had no right to promise a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, on the land of another people.</p>
<p>But Israelis have been taught a different history in which they, not the Palestinians, were betrayed.</p>
<p>In 1939, Britain appeared to revoke its pledge, stating “unequivocally” that it would not establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Limits on Jewish immigration were imposed, at a time when Europe’s Jews were fleeing the Nazi Holocaust.</p>
<p>It was for this reason that nearly a quarter of a century ago, in his book A Place Among the Nations, Netanyahu accused Britain of perfidy.</p>
<p>One can understand the reluctance of Israelis today to concede the pivotal role provided by Britain. The Balfour Declaration is an embarrassing reminder that a Jewish state was the fruit of a transparently colonial project.</p>
<p>In fact, Britain assisted the Zionists as best it could, given the need to weigh its imperial interests. Restrictions on immigration were introduced under the severe strain of a three-year armed uprising by Palestinians, determined to prevent their country being given away.</p>
<p>Historian Rashid Khalidi has noted that the Palestinian revolt of the late 1930s included possibly the longest-ever anti-colonial general strike. It posed such a threat that Britain committed thousands of extra soldiers to repress the insurgency, even as war loomed in Europe.</p>
<p>By the time Britain departed Palestine in 1948, it had overseen three decades in which the Zionists were allowed to develop the institutions of statehood: a government-in-waiting, the Jewish Agency; a proto-army in the Haganah; and a land and settlement division known as the Jewish National Fund.</p>
<p>By contrast, any signs of Palestinian nationalism, let alone nation-building, were ruthlessly crushed. By the end of the Arab revolt, less than a decade before the Palestinians would face a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Zionists, Palestinian society lay in ruins.</p>
<p>Israel learnt two lessons from Britain that guided its subsequent struggle to quash Palestinian attempts at liberation.</p>
<p>First, Israel continued the draconian measures of British colonial rule. In the early 1950s, Menachem Begin, leader of the pre-state Irgun militia and a future Israeli prime minister, famously called Britain’s emergency regulations “Nazi laws”.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, they were incorporated into the military orders Israel uses against Palestinians under occupation. Significantly, the regulations are also still in force inside Israel against the country’s large minority of Palestinian citizens, one in five of the population. Israel has yet to end its seven-decade state of emergency.</p>
<p>The other lesson derives from the wording of the Balfour Declaration. It referred to the native Palestinians – then 90 per cent of Palestine’s inhabitants – as “existing non-Jewish communities”. It promised only to protect their “civil and religious rights”, denying them recognition as a nation deserving of political and social rights.</p>
<p>Israel followed suit. Palestinians in Israel were characterised as “the minorities”, or generic “Israeli Arabs”, rather than Palestinians. Israel’s perverse nationality laws assign them largely religious classifications as Druze, Arameans (Christians) and Arabs (increasingly synonymous with Muslims).</p>
<p>In occupied East Jersualem, Palestinians are denied all national and institutional representation. And in the West Bank, the powers of the Palestinian Authority – supposedly the Palestinians’ fledgling government – extend no further than acting as a security contractor for Israel and carrying out municipal services like garbage collection. In practice, the PA’s severely circumscribed authority is confined to a tiny fraction of the West Bank.</p>
<p>As a result, the Palestinians’ national ambitions have shrunk precipitously: from Yasser Arafat’s struggle for one secular democratic state in all Palestine, to today’s enclaves in Gaza and slivers of the West Bank.</p>
<p>Israel has consistently rejected for Palestinians the very self-determination it once demanded from the British.</p>
<p>Netanyahu’s government is preparing to nullify any lingering hopes of Palestinian statehood with the most significant move towards annexation of Palestinian territory in 40 years, when Jerusalem was annexed. The plan is to greatly expand Jerusalem’s boundaries to include large Jewish settlements in the West Bank like Maale Adumim.</p>
<p>In addition, Netanyahu has reportedly promised $230 million to build five highways in the West Bank, aiding movement between Israel and the settlements.</p>
<p>Is there an opposition? Avi Gabbay, new leader of the centre-left Zionist Union, sounds no different from the far-right. Last month he stated: “I believe all of the Land of Israel [historic Palestine] is ours.” No West Bank settlement would be evacuated, even for the sake of peace, he added.</p>
<p>Britain fulfilled its promise to the Zionists in full, but broke even its feeble commitment to the Palestinians to protect their civil and religious rights. An apology from Britain is long overdue, as are efforts to repair the damage it initiated 100 years ago.</p>
<p>A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Balfour Declaration: Britain Broke Its Feeble Promise to the Palestinians | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/11/03/balfour-declaration-britain-broke-its-feeble-promise-to-the-palestinians/ | 2017-11-03 | 4 |
<p>As I’ve previously posted, <a href="" type="internal">Megyn Kelly</a> and <a href="http://www.newshounds.us/latest_fox_fraud_falsely_painting_nancy_pelosi_as_a_hamas_supporter_07312014" type="external">others</a> on Fox took a snippet of Nancy Pelosi’s comments on CNN’s State of the Union and used them to suggest she thinks Hamas is a humanitarian organization. Last night, Fox’s own Kirsten Powers told Sean Hannity, “There’s no way” Pelosi believes Hamas isn’t a terrorist organization.</p>
<p>The clip Fox is going gaga over shows Pelosi saying:</p>
<p>PELOSI: We have to support Iron Dome to protect the Israelis from the missiles. We have to support the Palestinians and what they need. And we have to confer with the Qataris, who have told me over and over again that Hamas is a humanitarian organization, maybe they could use their influence to - CROWLEY: The U.S. thinks they’re a terrorist organization though, correct? Do you? PELOSI: Mmm-hmm. CROWLEY: Yeah.</p>
<p>It seems clear to me even there that Pelosi was trying to say we need to confer with the Qataris because they could be helpful to broker peace, not because they support Hamas. But if you read the <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1407/27/sotu.01.html" type="external">full transcript</a>, it couldn’t be clearer.</p>
<p>But Hannity and his like-minded pals on the panel last night didn’t seem to care. For good measure, Hannity lumped Pelosi in with yet another <a href="" type="internal">swipe at Russell Brand</a>. He labeled Brand and Pelosi “two such morons.”</p>
<p>Powers told Hannity:</p>
<p>First of all, neither of them are dumb. Let’s just …stipulate that. …I think that Nancy Pelosi’s statements have been taken out of context. If you look at the entire interview, she’s saying this is what the Qataris told her. …She wasn’t endorsing it, though, and she refers to Hamas as a terrorist organization in that interview. …She says that they have initiated the conflict and they shouldn’t be using children as human shields. So I think you’re kind of – you’re twisting her words. I mean, she thinks they’re a terrorist organization!</p>
<p>Hannity kept trying to interrupt. He made a hammy show of putting his hands over his eyes. “Shouldn’t the former Speaker of the House know that they’re a terrorist organization?” he asked. Apparently, he had no interest in considering the full context of Pelosi’s comments. You have to wonder if he ever bothered to even glance at them.</p>
<p>However, Powers was not deterred.</p>
<p>I don’t think that you can take away from that that she doesn’t understand that. I think that she makes this one statement which you sort of are grabbing on to and then you ignore the fact – if you’re talking about Hamas, (she said), "They shouldn’t be using human shields. They’re a terrorist organization. They initiated this conflict. Israel has a right to defend itself." …I’m willing to state, I know I can prove it – she does not believe Hamas isn’t a terrorist organization. There’s no way.</p>
<p>Powers also pointed out that it’s true Hamas does do “humanitarian things,” as do other terrorist organizations. “That doesn’t make them a humanitarian organization,” she added.</p>
<p>The discussion moved back to Brand. I reiterate <a href="http://www.newshounds.us/hannity_hits_back_at_russell_brand_07302014" type="external">my assertion</a> that despite Hannity’s repeated insults about Brand, he’s actually pleased by the attention.</p> | Kirsten Powers Calls Out Hannity’s Baloney On Pelosi And Hamas | true | http://crooksandliars.com/2014/08/kirsten-powers-calls-out-hannity-s-baloney | 2014-08-01 | 4 |
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567512461/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Oil, Power &amp; Empire Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda</a> By Larry Everest Common Courage Press, 2004 392 pages, $19.95</p>
<p>When you dwell in a society that can barely see past the next fiscal quarter, the notion of historical context is more often than not in short supply…and whether you believe the U.S. invasion of Iraq is an international war crime or a major victory in the war on terror, it’s virtually impossible to fully appreciate the nuances of this ever-evolving situation without a firm grasp on what’s come before. “On many levels,” writes Larry Everest in his meticulously researched book, “the roots of the 2003 Iraq war extend back some 80 years to Great Britain’s invasion and conquest of the land of Mesopotamia, its 20-plus year occupation, and its creation of the country of Iraq.” But, before your eyes glaze over, be warned: This is not an arcane history lesson. “Oil, Power &amp; Empire” is a non-fiction page-turner, an antidote to sound bites and pull quotes, a reality show with no end in sight…as Everest shines an uncompromising light on all the flashpoints and pretexts (oil, sanctions, WMD, terrorism links, etc.) and reveals the history and context needed to begin comprehending war, terror, and occupation in the land that Time (and Newsweek) forgot.</p>
<p>MICKEY Z. is the author of two upcoming books: “A Gigantic Mistake: Articles and Essays for Your Intellectual Self-Defense” (Prime Books/Library Empyreal) and “Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda” (Common Courage Press). He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | A Reality Show with No End in Sight | true | https://counterpunch.org/2004/04/06/a-reality-show-with-no-end-in-sight/ | 2004-04-06 | 4 |
<p />
<p>Pandora Media Inc (NYSE:P) reported lower-than-expected quarterly revenue on Thursday as fewer listeners spent time on the online streaming service, sending the company's shares down 5.5 percent in trading after the bell.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Total listener hours were 5.15 billion in the third quarter, compared with 5.40 billion hours a year ago.</p>
<p>The company faces stiff competition from deep-pocketed rivals such as Apple Inc's Apple Music, Alphabet's Google Play Music and Sweden's Spotify.</p>
<p>Pandora, in which SiriusXM Holdings Inc has invested $480 million and has a 15.9 percent stake, said advertising revenue rose nearly 1 percent to $275.7 million, accounting for about 73 percent of total revenue.</p>
<p>That missed analysts' average estimate of $289.3 million, according to financial data and analytics firm FactSet.</p>
<p>Total revenue rose 7.6 percent to $378.6 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30.</p>
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<p>Pandora's net loss available to common stockholders increased to $84.6 million, or 34 cents per share, in the quarter, from $61.5 million, or 27 cents per share, a year earlier.</p>
<p>Excluding items, it posted a loss of 6 cents per share.</p>
<p>Analysts on average had expected a loss of 8 cents per share and revenue of $380.6 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.</p> | Pandora's revenue misses estimates, shares drop | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/11/02/pandoras-revenue-misses-estimates-shares-drop.html | 2017-11-02 | 0 |
<p>Dominion Energy's proposed project is inextricably linked to increased hydraulic fracturing, says the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, because the company is betting on cheap, plentiful fracked gas in order to make the large-scale export of liquefied natural gas profitable.</p>
<p>More than <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-cove-point-rally-20140220,0,4342692.story" type="external">500 protestors</a> marched in downtown Baltimore yesterday to oppose the expansion of natural-gas drilling, pipeline expansions and export across the Mid-Atlantic region. The protest was closely linked to the nationwide campaign against the much larger <a href="" type="internal">Keystone XL pipeline</a>, and growing agitation over the issue of climate change globally.&#160;</p>
<p>Resistance to corporate domination of energy policy was the key theme of the Feb. 20 march. For Baltimore protesters, the entity exemplifying such greed at present is Dominion Resources Inc., a large Virginia-based energy conglomerate <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-01-04/features/bs-gr-dominion-export-20130104_1_cove-point-maryland-conservation-council-dominion" type="external">pushing a plan</a>to construct a gas export terminal on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay shoreline. The proposed facility, called Cove Point, is being met with increasingly loud opposition from environmental groups like the <a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/" type="external">Sierra Club</a> and <a href="http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/" type="external">Chesapeake Climate Action Network</a>(CCAN), which were among the organizers of the rally. The rally and march were timed to coincide with a hearing by the Maryland Public Service Commission, which will determine whether the plan is in the “ <a href="http://smnewsnet.com/archives/93681" type="external">public interest</a>” and therefore merits approval. According to organizers, the rally and march was <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/02/21-3" type="external">the largest ever environmental protest</a>in the city.</p>
<p>Like what you’ve read? <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/itt-subscription-offer?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;noskip=true" type="external">Subscribe to In These Times magazine</a>, or <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/support-in-these-times?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;noskip=true" type="external">make a tax-deductible donation to fund this reporting</a>.</p>
<p>Bruce Vail is a Baltimore-based freelance writer with decades of experience covering labor and business stories for newspapers, magazines and new media. He was a reporter for Bloomberg BNA's Daily Labor Report, covering collective bargaining issues in a wide range of industries, and a maritime industry reporter and editor for the Journal of Commerce, serving both in the newspaper's New York City headquarters and in the Washington, D.C. bureau.</p> | Anti-Fracking Fight Heats Up in Maryland | true | http://inthesetimes.com/article/16330/fracking_issues_heating_up_in_md | 2014-02-21 | 4 |
<p>Millions marched against Trump for fear he’d cause devastation at home and abroad. This resistance movement still remains a powerful social force, and recently one of the movement’s biggest fears — a new war — was fully realized when Trump bombed the Syrian government and expanded the Middle East wars, at a time of immense risk of confrontation with Russia.</p>
<p>Immediately after the Syrian bombing Trump sent battleships to North Korea, and threatened to strike “preemptively,” á la Iraq in 2003. Then Trump escalated the Afghanistan war by dropping the world’s biggest non-nuclear bomb, at 21,000 pounds, whose one-mile blast radius creates nuclear-style havoc without the pesky label. The message is clear: Trump has become a seriously dangerous war president, the snake shedding his “isolationist” skin.</p>
<p>Society reeled from the newest war, but the fertile soil for protest barely produced a sprout. The establishment “supported” the new war, either directly by cheerleading or indirectly via silence.</p>
<p>The rest of the left was against the war but they didn’t bother to organize a protest. The only notable group that did — the ANSWER coalition — found little help from other left groups. The few protests that were organized were small or denounced by others on the left as being “pro Assad.” Trump was certainly pleased by the non-opposition and division against his new war.</p>
<p>Into the giant antiwar void crept the neo-Nazi “alt-right” groups, including leading white supremacist Richard Spencer, who loudly <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/salvadorhernandez/spencer-protests-trump-on-syria?utm_term=.lyZ8Bv9Pw#.evkjX1ex3" type="external">broke his support of Trump</a> by protesting the new Syria bombing in front of the White House. Other alt-right-associated individuals or organizations — including&#160; <a href="http://altright.com/" type="external">altright.com</a>&#160;and Infowars — loudly denounced their former Fuhrer.</p>
<p>In some ways the white supremacists protested more loudly and militantly than the left, which declined to ring any alarm bells, opting to minimize the aggression by dismissing the strike as “symbolic,” or “routine.”</p>
<p>While much of the alt-right unconditionally denounced the bombing, some on the left gave partial legitimacy to it by focusing half of their post-bombing energy on denouncing Trump’s target, Assad, helping to put the American public back to bed instead of agitating them into the streets.</p>
<p>Trump apparently silenced his critics by doing what they feared most. How did this happen?</p>
<p>In the political realm theory and action are inseparable. For revolutionaries the point of political theory/analysis is to directly intervene most effectively through organizing/action. The “what” of theory must be tightly connected to the “how” of organizing, sometimes referred to as “praxis.”</p>
<p>When it comes to theory/analysis on imperialism and war, the point is not just about understanding the “who,” “what,” and “why” of the conflict, but “how” to directly intervene to stop it.</p>
<p>Ultimately the only place that U.S. residents can directly intervene against war is in their own country, which is why any revolutionary analysis of the Syrian conflict must be oriented to agitating the U.S. public into action against “their” government’s war actions. Anything less is either abstract commentary or ineffectual moralizing.</p>
<p>Because theory is meant to prepare the working class to take action, a flawed theory results in inaction and political paralysis in the face of war. Leon Trotsky once compared a flawed theory to a leaky umbrella, “useless precisely when it rains.”</p>
<p>It’s raining now and instead of mass protests we have a sedated left, the result of several years of flawed analysis about the situation in the Middle East, coming to fruition just as the bombs began to rain down against yet another government.</p>
<p>What was the error? With each uptick in U.S. military intervention in Syria the left ignored or minimized it. Instead of educating the public about how the U.S. was <a href="" type="internal">openly organizing a proxy war</a> — the logic of which leads to direct military intervention — much of the left focused instead on how “monstrous” Syria’s President Assad was.</p>
<p>The left ignored the The <a href="" type="internal">New York Times reporting</a> that Obama was working with regional allies to recruit, train and arm soldiers, while funding them to attack the Syrian government. In 2013 The New York Times revealed that the U.S. had been overseeing a regional “weapons pipeline” to arm fighters. But this news barely registered on the left’s radar.</p>
<p>Instead of demanding that this intervention stop, many on the left gave it the green light; some actually demanded that the U.S. militarize the conflict by further arming Syrian rebels, or echoing the demand of some rebels to impose a military “no fly zone” in Syria ( <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4621738/dunford-tells-wicker-controlling-airspace-syria-means-war-russia-mccain-throws-tantrum-dunford" type="external">an act that requires war</a>).</p>
<p>The conflict would likely have ended several years ago without the direct intervention of the U.S., which not only gave guns and training but made regime change promises to allies, who were emboldened to go “all in” against the Syrian government by aiding the rebels, tearing the region apart in the process.</p>
<p>The majority of the left’s analysis focused on how awful Assad was, as if the U.S. public wasn’t already aware of the nonstop media coverage that turned him into a “monster,” a “butcher,” “Hitler,” etc.&#160; The left now appears too confused to protest; the conflict appears “very complicated.” People hate Trump but they are told Assad is even worse, so why protest a new U.S. war if the target deserves death?</p>
<p>It’s this conclusion that the U.S. government hopes to produce in every war. Saddam was a “monster,” Gaddafi was a “monster,” the Taliban are “monsters,” Milosevic was a “monster,” the Vietnamese too. Every new enemy of the U.S. military is compared to Hitler, because it is “moral” to kill Hitler, an idea now rebranded as “humanitarian intervention.” Every war the U.S. has ever waged was labeled “humanitarian,” including “taming the savages” during the indigenous American genocide.</p>
<p>The left shouldn’t fall victim to dehumanizing the enemy of the U.S. It’s true that Assad is no prince, but he’s a problem the Syrians have to deal with, not us. We have our hands full with Trump. The vast majority of nations have awful leaders, and all capitalist nations would react similarly to Assad when faced with protests that morphed into an armed revolt: they’d use vicious repression.</p>
<p>Saddam was every bit as “tyrannical” as Assad, having drowned in blood every threat against him. But you’d be hard pressed to see any anti-Saddam protest signs in the streets during the massive anti-war protests in 2003. The demand was simple: “Don’t Attack Iraq” or “No War.” Nobody was accused of being “pro-Saddam.”</p>
<p>In the face of war with Syria many left groups have foregone demands entirely, focusing instead on “condemning” every party to the war. Each party is declared equally guilty, which partially absolves every individual party, since “if everyone is guilty nobody is guilty.” This is the surest road to ambivalence and inaction if an antiwar movement is the goal. This lack of prioritizing guarantees ineffectual organizing and empty streets. The urgency to mobilize against U.S. imperialism is effectively muted. A demand isn’t an abstract slogan, but an urgent call to mobilize.</p>
<p>People should be putting only one government on trial for the Syrian conflict: the one they live under. Syrians should focus on Syria and Russians on Russia. U.S. residents only have proper jurisdiction in their own nation, where they are empowered to directly charge, convict and punish the guilty party, their government, through organizing and mobilizing the broader community into action.</p>
<p>The U.S. working class can do very little to stop the Syrian government from doing anything, nor are there Syrian revolutionary groups of any substance for U.S. residents to offer direct support to (the exception being the <a href="http://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-democracy/rojava-democracy/" type="external">Syrian Kurds in Rojava</a>).</p>
<p>It’s only inside of the United States where the government can be directly challenged, and even brought down via revolution when necessary. This is why for decades anti-war movements globally have used a general strategy in relation to organizing against war, which can be summarized as “the main enemy is in your own country.” This is the only internationalist approach to anti-war work. Real power must be leveraged, now, to stop the further expansion of this war. The U.S. public can show real solidarity to the Syrian people by stopping the biggest imperialist power in the world from further intervening there.</p>
<p>Demands and Social Movements</p>
<p>Strategic demands are a special weapon for the working class. They are indispensable tools for organizing, and effective demands are ones that agitate the broader population into action.&#160; Because most of the population will not unite over a litany of demands, the best demands are those that are limited, or singular, often referred to as “united front” demands, capable of uniting and rousing the population into action.</p>
<p>The most effective united front demand against U.S. imperialism has always been some variation of “Out Now,” or “Stop War” or “Hands Off Iraq” (or Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc.). One unifying demand that the working class can agree on, versus the laundry list of condemnations that cause confusion and disunity, resulting in passivity.</p>
<p>Demands are not a laundry list of opinions about whom you like or don’t like. The U.S. public doesn’t need to know “who” to support in this conflict, they need to know “how” to stop the war. No antiwar groups in any country waste their breath denouncing the target of the attack.</p>
<p>Several left groups combine their “demands,” such as “No Support for Trump or Assad.” Do the millions of people who marched against Trump — and hear daily anti-Assad media messages — need to be told “No Support for Trump or Assad”? Will this demand agitate them into action? The obvious answer is “no,” since you’re telling them what they already know while asking them to do nothing.</p>
<p>What people want to know is what to do now that their government has bombed yet another government. The public understands the matter is very serious, especially since Syria and Russia are tightly aligned and the situation is spiraling out of control.</p>
<p>Trump’s Dangerous Foreign Policy Shift</p>
<p>By not organizing protests against an expanded Syria war Trump is given a freer hand, and the neo-Nazi’s that call themselves “alt-right” are given an opportunity to gain further populist credentials by doing what the left used to do: unapologetically denounce U.S. foreign wars without condition.</p>
<p>The alt-right also seems to have a clearer analysis about what is happening in the White House. Trump’s election sidelined the section of the establishment that ran foreign policy for decades, often referred to as the “neocons.” &#160; Trump stymied them by campaigning as an “isolationist” who sought rapprochement with Russia. This approach found expression in Trump’s appointing General Flynn and fascist Steve Bannon to positions of power where military decisions are made.</p>
<p>Trump proclaimed the end to the U.S. policy of “regime change” in Syria, and the peace process already in place — which <a href="https://news.vice.com/story/russia-iran-and-turkey-are-shutting-the-u-s-out-of-the-syrian-peace-process" type="external">effectively excluded the U.S.</a> — would soon make concrete what everyone already knew: that Assad had won the war and would reclaim his “legitimacy” in global diplomacy.</p>
<p>Assad’s victory over Obama’s regime change strategy infuriated the neocons, who wanted to push Russia out of the Middle East and out of Eastern Europe, thereby maintaining the decades-long mastery of the U.S. over these regions.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton was the candidate of the big banks and neocons, and consequently she campaigned on war with Syria, using the euphemism of a “no fly zone” to get rid of Assad. A big chunk of Trump’s populism was his being perceived as “antiwar” (with the exception of ISIS).</p>
<p>Post election the “neocons” waged an internal struggle with Trump which they’ve recently won, transforming Trump from an isolationist into the warmonger they wanted.&#160; The proof is in the pudding: Trump’s isolationist General Flynn was taken down by internal media leaks, replaced by neocon-oriented General McMaster, who, <a href="" type="internal">according to the Washington Post</a>, was responsible for pushing isolationist/fascist Steve Bannon off the National Security Council, only days before Trump bombed Syria, based on zero evidence of a gas attack (the alt-right asked for evidence of the gas attack, whereas much of the Left simply accepted Trump’s pretext for war).</p>
<p>The internal balance of power has shifted, and the dominant section of the U.S. establishment has reasserted itself over foreign policy. Trump has learned his place, and the rest of the world is a far more dangerous place as a consequence: tensions with North Korea have exploded at the same time while the military used its MOAB super-bomb in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>The “alt-right” will use Trump’s war to further their populist position, but they are too weak to lead any movement currently. If the left remains paralyzed on this issue the white supremacists will have space to grow.</p>
<p>There is immense revolutionary potential for a U.S. anti-war movement. The anti-Trump movement has prepared the population for the next steps; it’s up to the left to provide guidance at a time when Trump escalates his wars as the military budget starves the country.</p>
<p>It is the job of the U.S. left to unite the broader population around a united front demand, such as “No War With Syria” &#160;or a similar demand that focuses our energy into a powerful force that can push the anti-Trump movement to the next level, while exerting the revolutionary energy capable of stopping the war on Syria, Russia, North Korea, and beyond.</p> | Will the “Alt-Right” Hijack the Antiwar Movement? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/04/17/will-the-alt-right-hijack-the-antiwar-movement/ | 2017-04-17 | 4 |
<p>Roughly 130 students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo <a href="http://mustangnews.net/students-gather-protest-hate-speech-campus/" type="external">protested</a> a faux Berlin Wall that was built to symbolize free speech.</p>
<p>As a part of Young America's Foundation's <a href="http://www.yaf.org/diy-berlin-wall.aspx" type="external">Freedom Week,</a> the Cal Poly College Republicans built the fake Berlin Wall. It's a yearly tradition to build the wall and let it stand for a week for students to write whatever they want on it, and then tear it down to celebrate the actual Berlin Wall coming down. Naturally, there is going to be offensive speech on the wall since people can write anonymously. This year, SLO Solidarity organized a rally that resulted in two straight days of protest against the wall.</p>
<p>Here is a list of <a href="http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article44582163.html" type="external">comments</a> that students found offensive on the wall:</p>
<p>Apparently this was enough to get people very, very offended and worried about inclusivity on campus.</p>
<p>"The people who say (All Lives Matter) … are not supporting any of the Hispanics that gotta deal with (Donald) Trump’s bullshit," Black Student Union member and psychology junior Kristin Lee <a href="http://mustangnews.net/students-gather-protest-hate-speech-campus/" type="external">told</a> Mustang News. "They’re not supporting any of the black people that gotta deal with white privilege or anything or on campus. They’re not supporting anything, but they want to say 'All Lives Matter.'"</p>
<p>Lee said that her mother warned her that she would experience racism at Cal Poly, and she apparently has experienced some, which begs the question as to why she would continue to attend the university if it's such a hateful, racist campus.</p>
<p>Many of the protesters who took offense to the comments on the wall were from the Queer Student Union.</p>
<p>"These comments are toxic to the people affected," Matt Klepfer, president of Cal Poly's QSU, <a href="http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article44582163.html" type="external">told</a> the Tribune. "We’re encouraging people not to be silent about expressing their feelings."</p>
<p>Cal Poly College Republicans President Paul Sullivan told the Tribune, "We don’t condone it but respect their right to say it, even though it’s crazy."</p>
<p>"These comments are toxic to the people affected. We’re encouraging people not to be silent about expressing their feelings."</p>
<p>Matt Klepfer, president of Cal Poly's QSU</p> | Cal Poly Students Protest A Free Speech Wall for Having Free Speech | true | https://dailywire.com/news/1108/cal-poly-students-protest-free-speech-wall-having-aaron-bandler | 2015-11-13 | 0 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of investigators has expressed interest in speaking with President Donald Trump as part of a probe into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.</p>
<p>The issue of an interview with the president has come up in recent discussions between Mueller’s team and Trump lawyers, but no details have been worked out, including the scope of questions that the president would agree to answer if an interview were to actually take place, according to the person, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.</p>
<p>The person said it was not surprising that investigators would be interested in eventually seeking to speak with the president. It was not immediately clear when or even if an interview will occur, what the terms will be, or whether Trump’s lawyers will attempt to narrow the range of questions or topics that prosecutors would cover.</p>
<p>Mueller for months has led a team of prosecutors and agents investigating whether Russia and Trump’s Republican campaign coordinated to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, and whether Trump worked to obstruct an FBI investigation into his aides. Mueller’s team recently concluded a series of interviews with many current and former White House aides, including former chief of staff Reince Priebus.</p>
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<p>Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment Monday, as did Trump lawyers John Dowd and Jay Sekulow.</p>
<p>Trump did not rule out the possibility of being questioned by Mueller when asked about it at a news conference Saturday. He said there had been “no collusion” and “no crime.”</p>
<p>“But we have been very open,” Trump said. “We could have done it two ways. We could have been very closed and it would have taken years. But you know, it’s sort of like, when you’ve done nothing wrong, let’s be open and get it over with.”</p>
<p>A White House spokesman pointed to a statement from White House lawyer Ty Cobb saying the White House doesn’t publicly discuss its conversations with Mueller but was continuing to cooperate “in order to facilitate the earliest possible resolution.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Chad Day contributed to this report.</p> | Mueller Conveys Interest in Questioning Trump, According to Anonymous Source | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/mueller-conveys-interest-questioning-trump-according-anonymous-source/ | 2018-01-08 | 4 |
<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Gov. Tom Wolf's campaign says the Democrat is heading into his re-election year with just over $11 million in his campaign account, while Republicans head for what could be an expensive and bruising primary contest.</p>
<p>Wolf's campaign manager, Jeff Sheridan, said Thursday that Wolf raised just over $11.1 million in 2017. That's more than any other governor raised in the year before they sought re-election.</p>
<p>Wolf didn't donate to his campaign this time around, after giving some $10 million to start his 2014 campaign. Wolf spent more than $32 million on his first campaign.</p>
<p>The deadline for candidates to report full campaign finances to the state is Jan. 31.</p>
<p>Wolf isn't expected to face a challenge in the May 15 primary election. Four Republicans are expected to seek their party's nomination.</p>
<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Gov. Tom Wolf's campaign says the Democrat is heading into his re-election year with just over $11 million in his campaign account, while Republicans head for what could be an expensive and bruising primary contest.</p>
<p>Wolf's campaign manager, Jeff Sheridan, said Thursday that Wolf raised just over $11.1 million in 2017. That's more than any other governor raised in the year before they sought re-election.</p>
<p>Wolf didn't donate to his campaign this time around, after giving some $10 million to start his 2014 campaign. Wolf spent more than $32 million on his first campaign.</p>
<p>The deadline for candidates to report full campaign finances to the state is Jan. 31.</p>
<p>Wolf isn't expected to face a challenge in the May 15 primary election. Four Republicans are expected to seek their party's nomination.</p> | Wolf heads into re-election year with $11M campaign account | false | https://apnews.com/amp/9e61180e32fd4728b7e78942268f6dd6 | 2018-01-18 | 2 |
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<p>Jeff Spiegel and his wife, Katie Gardner are partnering with executive chef John Haas to open M’Tucci’s Kitchina at The Shops @ Montaño.</p>
<p>The new restaurant is expected to open next month at 6001 Winter Haven NW, a space formerly occupied by The Mill of New Mexico. The same spot in recent years had also housed Tomato Cafe and, before that, Spinn’s Burgers and Beers.</p>
<p>Spiegel and Gardner owned several different restaurants in New York City, including the popular West End bar near Columbia University. They moved to Albuquerque, Spiegel’s hometown, in 2007.</p>
<p>Haas, meanwhile, comes to Kitchina after several years as executive chef at Bravo! Cucina Italiana in Albuquerque and Iowa, Spiegel said.</p>
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<p>Spiegel said Kitchina will offer Italian cuisine but will also do a more varied small-plates menu for the bar.</p>
<p>“I’m pretty familiar with the small-plates approach to life and know there are a lot of people who would prefer to eat appetizers, hors d’oeuvres, small plates or tapas than anything else,” Spiegel said.</p>
<p>The 3,600-square-foot restaurant is currently in the midst of a makeover to suit the new concept. Kitchina will ultimately seat about 200 people after the addition of a 40-seat patio, according to the shopping center’s owners.</p>
<p>“Jeff and Katie are just what we’ve been looking for. We couldn’t be happier,” said Mary Cooley, a managing member of Cavalier Investments LLC, which owns the shopping center.</p> | NYC restaurant veterans to open Duke City eatery | false | https://abqjournal.com/206751/nyc-restaurant-veterans-to-open-duke-city-eatery.html | 2013-06-04 | 2 |
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<p>Photo by DonkeyHotey | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
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<p>During an appearance on Fox &amp; Friends, Host Bill O’Reilly&#160; <a href="http://www.charlotteobserver.com/entertainment/tv/article141229143.html" type="external">claimed</a>&#160;he had difficulty focusing on a speech being given by Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) because of her “James Brown wig.”</p>
<p>The overtly sexist and racist comment wasn’t an anomaly, but a continued trend in Bill O’Reilly’s ideology and personal politics making an off-script appearance. He apologized for the comment, but only in response to the backlash and criticism to the comment, as Fox News Host Ainsely Earnhardt defended Waters and told O’Reilly he shouldn’t attack a woman based on her appearance.</p>
<p>In January 2017, the New York Times <a href="" type="internal">&#160;reported</a>&#160;that Fox News settled a sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill O’Reilly filed by a former Fox News Host Juliet Huddy. Former Fox News Host Andrea Tantaros has also&#160; <a href="" type="internal">accused</a>&#160;O’Reilly of sexual harassment at the network. Other anecdotes from previous employees at Fox have noted O’Reilly’s temper tantrum and outbursts toward women, which Fox News has responded to with impunity for O’Reilly.</p>
<p>O’Reilly’s views, outbursts, and influence are archaic, outdated, and perpetuate the assumption that conservative ideology is inherently sexist. In May 2016, he claimed in an&#160; <a href="" type="internal">interview</a>&#160;with the New York Times that feminists shouldn’t be allowed to report and cover Donald Trump because he’s the “antithesis” of feminism.</p>
<p>“Bill O’Reilly went on the “Today” show on Sept. 13 to promote his new book but instead ended up promoting misogyny,”&#160; <a href="" type="internal">wrote</a>&#160;Kareem Abdul Jabbar for the Washington Post in September 2016. “When former Fox News head, and O’Reilly’s boss, Roger Ailes was first accused of sexual harassment by Gretchen Carlson, O’Reilly dismissed his fellow anchor’s accusations,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">saying</a>, ‘I stand behind Roger 100 percent.’ He went on to complain about frivolous lawsuits, implying Carlson’s was without merit. When more women came forward to accuse Ailes, forcing a $20 million settlement with Fox News’s parent company, Fox News correspondents Geraldo Rivera and Gretchen Van Susteren, both of whom had initially defended Ailes, issued statements regretting their support. What did Bill O’Reilly do? As the&#160; <a href="" type="internal">damning testimony against Ailes piled up</a>, O’Reilly went on TV and claimed he had never addressed the Ailes case.</p>
<p>Perhaps at first, O’Reilly was merely defending his friend and boss and truly believed there was no merit to the case. But by denying he ever challenged Carlson’s accusations — and thereby supported an alleged sexual predator — he’s sending a message to the public that what Ailes was accused of doing is just fine.”</p>
<p>Thinly veiled misogyny has been an integral part of O’Reilly’s reporting throughout his career. In 2009, he&#160; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E14ZPdkBtQ" type="external">called&#160;</a>the first female member of the White House Press Corps the “wicked witch of the east,” and conducted his own impression of her on live television. In 2006, he <a href="" type="internal">&#160;claimed</a>&#160;rape and murder victim Jennifer Moore provoked an attack because of the clothes she was wearing. In 2011 he argued that contraceptives shouldn’t be covered by health insurance by&#160; <a href="" type="internal">claiming</a>, “many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex. They’re not going to use birth control anyway.”</p>
<p>Instead of continuing to provide O’Reilly with a platform at Fox News, which is already suffering from a series of sexual harassment&#160;lawsuits that led to the&#160; <a href="" type="internal">resignation</a>&#160;of the network’s CEO in July 2016, Fox News should continue to clean house of the overt misogynists who continue to perpetuate attitudes abrasive toward women.</p> | Fox News Should Finally Dump Bill O’Reilly | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/03/30/fox-news-should-finally-dump-bill-oreilly/ | 2017-03-30 | 4 |
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<p>The Lobos are a proud bunch, having reached three straight Sweet 16 rounds. And today UNM is ranked 25th, with an RPI of 35. That has coach Jeremy Fishbein confident that his club will be one of 48 NCAA Tournament teams as it currently stands.</p>
<p>Still, the Lobos (10-5-1), who face South Carolina at home tonight, are only 3-4-0 in Conference USA, which has them tied for sixth place in the nine-team league. UNM figures to need a win tonight, then another in the first round of next week’s C-USA Tournament to up its status.</p>
<p>“Our challenge is to be good (tonight),” Fishbein said. “We’ve got to take away any element of doubt. Our goal right now is to be in the NCAA Tournament, and we control our destiny.”</p>
<p>The Lobos were in much better control before losing their last two matches – 3-2 at UAB and 2-1 against Marshall. The latter came at home despite UNM recording 31 shots and 15 corner kicks.</p>
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<p>“There are guys who have had uncharacteristic performances, guys in key areas,” Fishbein said. “But it’s not one person. It’s not about blaming people.”</p>
<p>Fishbein said it is ultimately on him.</p>
<p>“It’s fun when people are patting you on the back and you’re having success,” said Fishbein, who guided the Lobos to the Final Four last year. “You have to be fully prepared to take responsibility when things are not going your way.</p>
<p>“I think that’s my challenge. I need to stay positive. I need to stay encouraging. … I have nothing but confidence about (today).”</p>
<p>Sophomore midfielder Chris Wehan leads UNM with 18 points and eight goals. UNM has outshot its opponents 266-109, while outscoring them 29-13.</p>
<p>The Gamecocks (8-8-0, 3-4-0) are led by freshman forward Mikkel Knudson of Denmark with 17 points. They are second in the conference in shots with 237 and fourth in goals with 25.</p>
<p>“Our challenge is to see how these next couple of games go,” Fishbein said. “If we can take care of our business, with a big sigh of relief, I feel very good about where we’re at.</p>
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<p>“You don’t know what will be the catalyst to get things going. I don’t think it will take a miracle. You’ve got to keep doing what you’re doing, see where the chips fall. I’m proud of the guys. They’ve played good soccer in every game. … I don’t doubt our team.”</p>
<p>UNM WOMEN: Wyoming ended the Lobos’ season with a 2-1 overtime victory in the semifinals of the Mountain West tournament in San Diego on Thursday. UNM finished with a 10-6-2 record.</p>
<p>Madisyn Olguin’s pass hit Lindsey Guice in stride as Guice scored to give the Lobos a 1-0 lead in the 30th minute.</p>
<p>“The officials called that game a little differently, and we had to adjust to how it was being called tonight,” UNM coach Kit Vela said. “But we had a lot of chances; we just couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net.”</p>
<p>Looking ahead, the Lobos lose only senior Alexis Leyba.</p>
<p>“It’s nice ground to build from,” Vela said. “This can be a heck of a team, moving forward.”</p>
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<p /> | UNM men’s soccer team to face South Carolina | false | https://abqjournal.com/492782/unm-men-to-face-south-carolina.html | 2 |
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<p>The government has become quite efficient under Obama at fast walking guns to Mexico and free cell phones to Cleveland, but has ignored its obligation to secure and promote absentee ballot requests from the military.</p>
<p>Via <a href="http://watchdog.org/55187/va-military-absentee-ballots-going-awol-in-2012/" type="external">Virginia Watchdog</a>:</p>
<p>A 92 percent drop in absentee-ballot requests by military personnel in Virginia is raising concerns that the Pentagonis failing to carry out a federal voting law.</p>
<p>With only 1,746 military voters in Virginia requesting absentee ballots so far this year — out of 126,251 service members in the state —the <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/105035437" type="external">Military Voter Protection Project</a> says the system has broken down.</p>
<p>And it’s not just in the Old Dominion. MVPP Executive Director Eric Eversole reports significant declines in absentee-ballot requests by service members across the nation.</p>
<p>Compiling data from Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Illinois, Ohio, Alaska, Colorado and Nevada, Eversole’s organization found that military families have requested 55,510 absentee ballots so far this year. That’s a sharp decline from the 166,252 sought in those states in 2008.</p>
<p>Oh, and by the way, the government also is making sure military contractors <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/industry/259305-omb-tells-contractors-once-again-dont-issue-layoff-notices" type="external">don’t send out sequestration layoff notices</a> prior to the election by requiring that only contractors who comply with the request for a delay will have their layoff notice expenses paid by the contracting agency. That’s right, your tax money being used to promote Obama’s campaign effort.</p>
<p>But don’t dare ask someone for a voter i.d., that’s voter suppression.</p>
<p>The fish is rotting from the head down.</p> | Slow walking ballots to the military, fast walking guns to Mexico and free cell phones to Cleveland | true | http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/10/slow-walking-ballots-to-the-military-fast-walking-guns-to-mexico-and-free-cell-phones-to-cleveland/ | 2012-10-01 | 0 |
<p>The unemployment rate for recent military veterans fell sharply in October, though not entirely for positive reasons.</p>
<p>The rate for those who have served in the armed forces anytime since September 2001 dropped to 3.6 percent, the lowest level in data going back to 2008. While some found jobs, many others stopped looking for work or didn't want to work and so weren't counted as unemployed.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The unemployment rate for less educated workers —those without high school diplomas — also fell sharply to 5.7 percent from 6.5 percent.</p>
<p>All told, the unemployment rate fell in October to 4.1 percent, the lowest in nearly 17 years. But the drop in the rate occurred mostly because many people stopped looking for work. Employers added a solid 261,000 jobs overall.</p>
<p>The data for demographic groups came from a survey of households that is part of the Labor Department's monthly jobs report.</p> | Jobless rate for recent vets falls to lowest recorded level | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/11/03/jobless-rate-for-recent-vets-falls-to-lowest-recorded-level.html | 2017-11-03 | 0 |
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<p>To attract millennial talent, some cities are offering to help out with student loan debt. A number of cities across the country have rolled out student loan debt relief plans for recent graduates.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Stephen Dash, the founder of <a href="https://www.credible.com/" type="external">Credible</a>, a multi-lender marketplace for student loans, tells FOXBusiness.com that each program is designed to meet the goals of an individual city or state.</p>
<p>He also noted that many programs are to attract talent in highly specialized fields like engineering to more rural areas.</p>
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<p>Detroit offers home buyers and renters assistance for indivudals who work at select companies. New homeowners can receive up to $20,000 in forgivable loans toward purchasing a primary residence.</p>
<p>New renters can earn $2,500 in funding in their first year combined with an extra $1,000 in their second year.</p>
<p>Some neighborhoods in Chattanooga, TN will offer $11,250 in relocation benefits, including $1,250 for reloaction expenses and $10,000 for a forgivable second mortgage.</p>
<p>The benefits are open to those with technical skills like software developers and system administrators. But the program is only available to 10 lucky recipients.</p>
<p>Seventy-seven counties in rural Kansas will offer income tax waivers for up to five years and/or student loan repayment of up to $15,000. Those who are new, full time residents of the state are eligible for the program if they have an associates, bachelor's or post-graduate degree, have a student loan balance and if they take up residency in one of the 77 counties.</p> | These Cities Will Pay Off Your Student Debt | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/04/05/these-cities-will-pay-off-your-student-debt.html | 2016-04-06 | 0 |
<p>In one single scathing tweet, presidential hopeful Donald Trump called out President Obama after he declined to attend <a href="" type="internal">Supreme Court Justice Scalia's funeral.</a></p>
<p />
<p>Was it for the better than the President not attend the funeral, perhaps to avoid causing conflict? Or is this an example of the President's lack of class? Let us know.</p>
<p>0 comments</p> | Donald Trump releases vicious tweet about President Obama skipping Scalia funeral | true | http://freedomsfinalstand.com/donald-trump-releases-vicious-tweet-about-president-obama-skipping-scalia-funeral/ | 0 |
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<p>BANGKOK — It’s hardly the first putsch attempt in coup-riddled Thailand. But if the nation’s fashionistas have their way, the ongoing crusade to overthrow the government will go down as history's chicest coup.</p>
<p>To Americans, anti-government uprisings in faraway lands often conjure a fed-up lower class nobly risking life and limb to overcome an authoritarian regime. That imagery, however, is hard to square with some of the scenes playing out around the self-proclaimed “people’s coup” waged in Bangkok’s streets.</p>
<p>The latest issue of Image Magazine — Thailand’s answer to Vogue —&#160;gushes over protests as a “gathering spot for celebs and high society.” Like the “audience in premier seats at the cineplex ... they look like grand gents, smelling fragrant and clean.”</p>
<p>A spread in the magazine dolls up milk-skinned models in protester garb and Jimmy Choos and poses them with clenched fists. Their pouty lips are curled around whistles, a symbol of the uprising.</p>
<p>In another series of images, a lithe male model strikes a steely gaze, bloody scrapes across his high cheekbones. The faux wounds — painted on with makeup — insinuate scuffles with riot cops.</p>
<p>“The concept wasn’t meant to be fun. Just stylish,” said 52-year-old Kamron Pramoj Na Ayutthaya, Image Magazine’s well-heeled founder. The uprising-themed fashion shoot, Kamron’s brainchild, was intended to lend flair to the movement, which he vehemently supports.</p>
<p>“The government says we’re traitors,” Kamron said. “Let them say it. What did you call the Americans who fought the British? Rebels? Or freedom fighters?”</p>
<p>This campaign to oust Thailand’s ruling party — called “Bangkok Shutdown” — has amassed 200,000 people at its height, according to the Associated Press, and deployed followers to blockade key intersections and invade government ministries.</p>
<p>The stated goal: driving Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra out of the country and replacing her elected party, Pheu Thai, with an unelected council of handpicked virtuous leaders. As explained in fiery stage speeches, the council would aim to purify Thailand of corruption before restarting elections.</p>
<p>“I would call it a soft coup. It doesn’t require the use of force or any firearms,” said Akanat Promphan, the University of Oxford-educated spokesman for the movement. “These are reasonable people. We are not violent people. We don’t want civil war.”</p>
<p>Yingluck Shinawatra, the country’s first-ever female premier, has instead challenged detractors to oust her via the ballot box in Feb. 2 elections. Her family is led by her older brother, the tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra, who was himself ousted in a 2006 army coup. The Shinawatras control one of the most resilient and successful political parties in Thai history — and also one of its most controversial.</p>
<p>The Shinawatra network has won every major election for more than a decade. According to their detractors, they intend to entrench power and suck the country dry. But this backlash movement is faring poorly in the international court of popular opinion. Most nations, including the United States, are pressuring Thailand to go forward with elections.</p>
<p>Supporters of the current government, who are plentiful in Thailand’s vast and populous northern rice country, contend that this uprising amounts to the complaints of bitter, urban elitists who refuse to loosen their historical grip on power.</p>
<p>The movement, however, appears to alternately celebrate and reject its bourgeois reputation.</p>
<p>The icon for “Bangkok Shutdown,” splashed across banners and T-shirts, is the same symbol seen on power buttons for Apple MacBooks — a luxury item few Thais can afford. Far from downtrodden and voiceless, the uprising has its own in-house satellite TV station: BlueSky Channel.</p>
<p>Supporters with cash to spare can buy golden protest whistles, which are advertised on BlueSky. Vendors at blockades tempt protesters with bubblegum- or tiramisu-flavored ice cream out of food trucks.</p>
<p>Those who wade into protests will often behold an orgy of “selfies” being snapped on smartphones. Punching #bkkshutdown into Instagram turns up photo after photo of young women adorned in protest kitsch and mugging sweetly at the camera. Most sport accessories in the red, white and blue pattern of the Thai flag, which has been co-opted by the uprising.</p>
<p>Dti, a brace-faced 24-year-old from Bangkok, said her Facebook feed had grown overwhelmed with friends’ protest selfies. So she tied ribbons around her Shih Tzu named “Sushi,” placed the puppy in her bike’s front basket and rode to the protest to snap a few selfies of her own.</p>
<p>“There’s this special feeling of coming together with people who all share the same ideology,” she said. “It’s fun.”</p>
<p>Those who back the movement are indeed better off than the typical Thai. A recent survey by The Asia Foundation revealed that more than half of the protesters hold white-collar jobs, 85 percent hold diplomas beyond high school and a third make more than $23,000 per year — roughly seven times Thailand's minimum wage.</p>
<p>The movement’s chieftain, a 65-year-old, thickset veteran politician named Suthep Thaugsuban, has racked up cash donations by the sack-load during all-day marches through downtown Bangkok. Reluctant to stir chaos, police cleared to arrest Suthep have so far tolerated his public appearances, in which supporters line the streets to hand over money.</p>
<p>Among them: Rujipa Vejjapinan, a stylishly dressed 30-year-old office worker, who gleefully cozied up to the protest honcho, handed over a fistful of cash and snapped the obligatory selfie. She then erupted into a squealing fit worthy of a Justin Bieber sighting. On that day, Jan. 15, the movement claims to have collected more than $220,000 in cash.</p>
<p>“The rural people, many of them are field workers. They don’t understand what’s happening to our country,” Rujipa said. “This clan running the country just makes them feel important by giving them money. ... They’re exploited like just another tool.”</p>
<p>Rujipa is particularly disdainful of rival pro-government protesters, called Red Shirts, who have advanced the idea that Thailand is locked in a feudal struggle between “prai,” the serfdom, and “aamat,” or aristocrats. “These ideas,” she said, “have been planted in their heads.”</p>
<p>Noted academics have also taken aim at Bangkok’s mall-going culture that sees city dwellers shopping at Gap, eating sundaes at Swensen’s and, in general, behaving like ordinary suburban Americans.</p>
<p>Asia-focused Cornell University academic Benedict Anderson has rebuked the “Bangkok bourgeoisie” as “interested only in good food, fashions from abroad, expensive resorts and shopping trips in East Asia and Europe.”</p>
<p>Those within the movement are sensitive to allegations of elitism, which Akanat attributes to a “marketing scheme” by the Shinawatra political network. “It wouldn’t be fair to say this [movement] is hi-so,” said Akanat, using Thai slang for “high society.”</p>
<p>“A lot of working-class people have also shown clear support,” he said. In addition to middle- and upper-class Thais, frequent trips to protest blockades by GlobalPost turned up a mix of sun-leathered Thais from the tropical south, which has sent a large volume of protesters to sleep in flimsy tents at Bangkok blockades. More than 30 interviews with protesters also revealed the occasional workaday street merchant.</p>
<p>Still, some of the uprising’s most revolutionary rhetoric comes from protest leaders with highly patrician backgrounds.</p>
<p>“The spirit of the great masses incites us to fight on,” said Chitpas Kridakorn Na Ayutthaya, 27, a breakout star of the protest movement. “This people’s coup is no easy affair. We have only nation-loving hearts that must fight against the bandits plundering our country.”</p>
<p>Such rhetoric, posted to Instagram, would not sound terribly out of place during the French Revolution. But Chitpas makes for an atypical revolutionary. She is the heiress to a massive family fortune generated by Singha Beer, among Thailand’s best-known brews. Each evening, the political starlet signs stuffed dolls created in her likeness for throngs of eager protesters.</p>
<p>Kamron — the royally blooded grandson of three-times Thai prime minister, Seni Pramoj — warns foreigners against sneering at any elites who back the ongoing uprising. American independence, he said, was not engineered by peasants but by “the people who traded tea and tobacco. Your revolution had to bring out the elites.”</p>
<p>If Thailand descends into civil war, Kamron said, he will not flee to his second home in England. His uprising-themed magazine issue also contains an op-ed disdainful of those still wringing their hands: “When you won’t choose a side, you become a damned fickle, a double heart, a half child.”</p>
<p>“Your [American] civil war, you lost a lot of lives. You paid the price for democracy,” Kamron told GlobalPost. “Don’t we have time to learn? Adapt? Learn what’s right and wrong? Don’t judge us yet ... give us time to grow. We’re still children.”</p> | Thailand's revolution will be selfied | false | https://pri.org/stories/2014-01-20/thailands-revolution-will-be-selfied | 2014-01-20 | 3 |
<p>LOS ANGELES — The Arab Awakening offered the United States an opportunity to change its relationship with the Muslim world by allying with democratic movements instead of dictatorial regimes in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya.</p>
<p>But as several experts at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School argued Friday at a conference called “Religion, Democracy and the Arab Awakening,” the Obama administration couldn’t get comfortable with an essential element of Arab democracy: the reemergence of Islamist political organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>For example, former Brotherhood member Mohamed Morsi won Egypt’s first-ever presidential election in June 2012, but he was only able to hold power for a year before the Egyptian military <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/egypt/131104/egypts-morsi-trial-well-was-quick" type="external">deposed and imprisoned him</a> in a military coup. The United States provides Egypt’s military with more than $1 billion in aid each year, and the Obama administration proved unable or unwilling to pressure its benefactor into returning Morsi to office.</p>
<p>"Your government decided not to say the military coup was one," said Tariq Ramadan, Oxford University professor and the keynote speaker in Los Angeles on Friday night, going on to lambaste the massacre of more than 600 Morsi supporters by the military in August 2013. "That's not acceptable. Those people were sentenced to death. Now the US is starting to normalize its relationship with the military."</p>
<p>But Ramadan cautioned against the Arab world’s “obsession with the relationship with the West” and against Muslim-majority countries playing the role of the victim, calling for new alliances with BRICS countries, for example (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). He said that the Arab Awakening’s focus on democracy has actually obscured the economic and political reality underneath.</p>
<p>"We have to be very careful about ways that we can be used as part of the whole process,” Ramadan said. “It's not new, this is politics and we know how it works. It’s much more about economic balance in the region and geo-strategic interests, that's why we don't get it when we think about it just in terms of democracy."</p>
<p>But is the West ready for true Arab democracy? “Not yet,” he said with a smile.</p>
<p>Earlier in the day Brookings Institution fellow Shadi Hamid, who recently published a book on the emergence of “illiberal democracy,” was also critical of <a href="http://global.oup.com/academic/product/temptations-of-power-9780199314058;jsessionid=2ECED4620A971EB05F88C754E458706D?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;" type="external">the US response to the coup</a>.</p>
<p>“We have to respect democratic outcomes even if they do not adhere to American liberal ideals,” Hamid said.</p>
<p>Hamid was joined on a panel by Islamic legal scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl and former Obama national security adviser Steven Simon.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/special-reports/crisis-egypt" type="external">Egypt in Crisis</a></p>
<p>Sparks flew in the room full of scholars, journalists, civil society advocates and students as El Fadl mocked Western liberalistic ideals, which he said often mask Western countries’ own social problems while demonizing Islamism. It set the tone for the remainder of the conversation, and played into a broader “secular vs. religious” dynamic that has epitomized post-Arab Awakening politics.</p>
<p>“Our liberalism allows for homelessness, human trafficking, spousal and child abuse to go unaddressed,” El Fadl said. “Abysmal policies, increasing the gap between rich and poor. When we talk about that [Islamic] zealot, we are very clear-minded about what liberalism means. It means freedom, it means happiness,” he continued, bitterly attacking the liberal narrative.</p>
<p>“[The viewpoint is] it doesn't matter what Islamists believe, because they're liars,” El Fadl said. “Whether in the form of Islamophobia or more classy, nuanced discussions.”</p>
<p>Earlier panels focused on the role of women and religious minorities in the Middle East, as well as the role that social media and digital technology played in the Arab Awakening. The social movements of that era are widely agreed to have left a permanent intellectual and even psychological legacy, if not a fundamentally different power structure in the region.</p>
<p>As the most populous Arab country, Egypt’s saga continues to receive the most international attention.</p>
<p>"Yes indeed there are setbacks to freedom and democracy, it's hard to deny that,” said Sahar Khamis, professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. “But as Obama said, Egypt will not go back to where it was. The power of Egyptian public option, that is something that shouldn't be ignored. We can see this as a transitional stage. Hopefully there will be some kind of self-corrective process."</p>
<p>And as for the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world?</p>
<p>“US policy is hypocritical, we have a terrible tragic history of intervention,” said Brookings‘ Hamid. “But somehow we still have some ‘moral suasion.’ US power is still respected and countries are looking up to the US and hoping we'll do the right thing even though we usually don't." &#160;</p> | Egypt is just one example of how the West is not ready for a true Arab democracy | false | https://pri.org/stories/2014-04-28/egypt-just-one-example-how-west-not-ready-true-arab-democracy | 2014-04-28 | 3 |
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<p>House Republicans answered the call. We created a plan to balance the budget and leave money in the state’s reserves – without raising taxes. And we passed three tough-on-crime measures with broad support.</p>
<p>New Mexicans have told us they are tired of witnessing horrific acts of violence against our children and law enforcement officers. House Republicans responded.</p>
<p>We worked to remove the arbitrary age distinction from Baby Brianna’s Law so that anyone who abuses a child to death can be sentenced to life in prison – regardless of the child’s age.</p>
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<p>We fought to reform New Mexico’s ineffectual “three strikes law” so it could protect citizens as intended by keeping repeat violent criminals behind bars. Rep. John Zimmerman co-sponsored the effort.</p>
<p>And we passed legislation to reinstate the death penalty, giving prosecutors an additional tool to bring criminals who murder children, police or correctional officers to justice.</p>
<p>In contrast, the Senate, controlled by Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, came to Santa Fe for less than one day. They rushed through a handful of budget bills in the dead of night with almost no opportunity for public review.</p>
<p>The plan crafted by Senate Democrats raised taxes while cutting deeply into core areas like K-12 education and public safety.</p>
<p>Then, ignoring pleas from victims to address crime, Senate Democrats went home to resume their campaigns.</p>
<p>The solvency plans developed by each chamber show clear differences in the priorities of House Republicans and Senate Democrats.</p>
<p>The Senate attempted to raid $25 million from local school district reserve accounts. House Republicans blocked this harmful action. The state government shouldn’t punish local school districts that built an emergency account for unexpected expenses. We defended these cash balances to ensure districts have the money they need.</p>
<p>The Senate’s plan cut millions from the Department of Public Safety and the Children, Youth and Families Department, the state agency that works to keep kids safe. The House Republican plan reversed these cuts and also preserved funding for sexual assault prevention and victims services.</p>
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<p>In this fragile economy, it would be unfair to shift the state’s budget burden onto the backs of New Mexico’s families. House Republicans kept their commitment to resolving the budget shortfall without raising taxes.</p>
<p>Senate Democrats also demonstrated their priorities in what they didn’t do.</p>
<p>Namely, they did not hold a single hearing or vote on any of the three crime bills from the House. They had time to consider bills on medical marijuana and industrial hemp, but they refused to act on straightforward legislation to strengthen criminal penalties and keep the most violent offenders in prison and off our streets.</p>
<p>Budget reductions are always difficult, but House Republicans fought hard to protect your priorities – K-12 classroom funding, law enforcement, programs to safeguard our children and stronger penalties for violent criminals.</p>
<p>New Mexicans across the state have spoken, and House Republicans have acted on their concerns. New Mexicans deserve legislators that are responsive to their needs.</p>
<p>House Republicans delivered on their pledge to citizens and provided the serious leadership required to bring New Mexico through this crisis.</p>
<p /> | Session showed big differences | false | https://abqjournal.com/863498/session-showed-big-differences.html | 2 |
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<p>FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Atlanta-Falcons/" type="external">Atlanta Falcons</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Seattle-Seahawks/" type="external">Seattle Seahawks</a> have been playing so often they seem like division foes.</p>
<p>They played twice last season in the regular season and the playoffs.</p>
<p>They have played six times since 2010 and have met in the playoffs twice.</p>
<p>One key thing will be different when they play on Monday Night Football: Seattle cornerback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Richard-Sherman/" type="external">Richard Sherman</a> will not be on the field and that has a certain Falcons wide receiver upset.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Julio-Jones/" type="external">Julio Jones</a> is going to miss going up against Sherman, who suffered a season-ending Achilles injury and has been placed on injured reserve.</p>
<p>“We always have a good time,” Jones said. “He’ll try to stay on me the whole game a lot of times. Guys start playing me, and then get off, have help and Sherman’s not one of those guys. He’s comes out and competes every play, just man up.”</p>
<p>Last season, Jones had seven catches for 139 yards and one touchdown in a 26-24 loss in Seattle on Oct. 16.</p>
<p>In the playoff meeting, Jones had six catches for 67 yards and a touchdown in the 36-20 victory in the NFC divisional playoff victory.</p>
<p>Jones admits that Seattle has a unique home-field advantage.</p>
<p>“It’s very different,” Jones said. “The 12th man they have out there, the fans are very loud, but for me it doesn’t impact me. It’s my job to help others around me to help them make sure it doesn’t affect their game because it can be effective because it is that loud there.</p>
<p>“It’s one of those things about keeping all 11 guys on the same page at the same time due to the crowd noise. Offensively, if you get off the ball later than normal, obviously … then you’re in trouble already.</p>
<p>“The defensive ends and whatever they’ve got going on being able to penetrate and get pressure upfield they can create turnovers and put a lot of pressure and stress on the quarterback to make him get the ball out of his hands quickly.”</p>
<p>With Sherman out, the Falcons don’t know how the Seahawks will try to defend Jones.</p>
<p>“Not knowing how they are health-wise, I would expect Jeremy (Lane) certainly to get some action outside,” Falcons head coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dan_Quinn/" type="external">Dan Quinn</a> said. “He has the ability to play nickel, and play outside so that kind of versatility is good. Very good competitor, very good speed, good ball skills and he’s a good tackler.”</p>
<p>The Seattle safeties <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Earl-Thomas/" type="external">Earl Thomas</a> (hamstring) and Kam Chancellor (stinger) are also injured.</p>
<p>“As you go through the preparation, the scheme doesn’t change,” Quinn said. “We’ll plan on those players playing.”</p>
<p>The Falcons must contain Seattle quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Russell_Wilson/" type="external">Russell Wilson</a>.</p>
<p>“The hardest part to prepare for is some of the unknowns,” Quinn said. “With some players, you might say when a quarterback is scrambling to the right he may run it and when he’s running to the left he may remain a passer. With him, kind of anything goes in terms of where he may end up.”</p>
<p>Jones believe the Falcons must build on their win over Dallas.</p>
<p>“For us, most definitely,” Jones said. “Every win is a good win for us and things like that. Yeah, we can build off it because we did a lot of great things in the game, but we’ve got to continue to keep building.</p> | Atlanta Falcons and Seattle Seahawks know each other well | false | https://newsline.com/atlanta-falcons-and-seattle-seahawks-know-each-other-well/ | 2017-11-16 | 1 |
<p>A <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2012.04053.x/abstract" type="external">new study</a> suggests that living near a bar could make you drink more alcohol.</p>
<p>Researchers in Finland found that those who lived near bars were 17 percent more likely to be heavy drinkers than those who did not.</p>
<p>The study looked at the habits of 55,000 adults in Finland over seven years.</p>
<p>They noticed that those people who moved within 0.6 miles or closer to a bar were substantially more likely to be a heavier drinker, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/02/us-bar-riskydrinking-idUSBRE8A10Y220121102" type="external">said Reuters</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, of those who lived within 400 feet of a bar, nine percent were heavy drinkers, while among those who moved 1.5 miles away, only 7.5 percent were heavy drinkers.</p>
<p>The researchers were cautious in noting that the study did not prove causality, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/11/02/1133481/close-proximity-bar-risky-drinking/?mobile=nc" type="external">said ThinkProgress</a>.</p>
<p>However, when income level and neighborhood choice were accounted for the findings still held true.</p>
<p>That said, it is difficult to know if the same would hold true in other countries given the difference in peoples' drinking habits.</p>
<p>The study was published in the <a href="http://www.addictionjournal.org/" type="external">journal Addiction</a>.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/health/121023/opioid-drug-and-alcohol-problems-oxycontin-oxycodone-painkillers-addiction" type="external">Drug and alcohol problems in US rose by 70% over past decade: study</a></p> | Living near a bar increases your chance of drinking more, study says | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-11-03/living-near-bar-increases-your-chance-drinking-more-study-says | 2012-11-03 | 3 |
<p><a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/if-history-is-any-indication-junk-bonds-and-copper-are-telling-us-exactly-where-stocks-are-heading-next/stock-market-public-domain" type="external" />Yields on the riskiest junk bonds are absolutely soaring and <a href="" type="internal">the price of copper</a> just hit a fresh six year low.&#160; To most people, those pieces of financial news are meaningless.&#160; But if you understand history, and you are aware of the patterns that immediately preceded previous stock market crashes, then you know how how&#160;huge both of those signs are.&#160; During the summer of 2008, junk bond prices absolutely cratered as junk bond yields skyrocketed.&#160; This was a very clear signal that financial markets were about to crash, and sure enough a couple of months later it happened.&#160; Now the exact same thing is happening again.&#160; The following comes from a&#160;Wall Street On Parade article that was posted on Tuesday entitled “ <a href="http://wallstreetonparade.com/2015/08/keep-your-eye-on-junk-bonds-theyre-starting-to-behave-like-08/" type="external">Keep Your Eye on Junk Bonds: They’re Starting to Behave Like ‘08</a>“…</p>
<p>According to data from Bloomberg, corporations have issued a stunning $9.3 trillion in bonds since the beginning of 2009. The major beneficiary of this debt binge has been the stock market rather than investment in modernizing the plant, equipment or new hires to make the company more competitive for the future. Bond proceeds frequently ended up buying back shares or boosting dividends, thus elevating the stock market on the back of heavier debt levels on corporate balance sheets.</p>
<p>Now, with commodity prices resuming their plunge and currency wars spreading,&#160;concerns of financial contagion are back in the markets and spreads on corporate bonds versus safer, more liquid instruments like U.S. Treasury notes, are widening in a fashion similar to the warning signs heading into the 2008 crash. The $2.2 trillion junk bond market (high-yield) as well as the investment grade market have seen spreads widen as outflows from Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and bond funds pick up steam.</p>
<p>And right now we are seeing the most volatility in the junkiest of the junk bonds.</p>
<p>The following comes <a href="http://wolfstreet.com/2015/08/15/riskiest-end-of-junk-bond-market-just-blew-up-ccc-rated-yields-spike/" type="external">from Wolf Richter</a>, and my jaw just about dropped to the floor when I first saw this…</p>
<p>This chart of yields at the riskiest end of the junk bond market – bonds rated CCC and below – shows what happened. These bonds have been selling off over the past 12 months, with exception of the sucker rally earlier this year, and their yieldsmore than doubled from less than 7.9% in June a year ago to 16.2% by Thursday evening. And Thursday was a massacre:</p>
<p><a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/if-history-is-any-indication-junk-bonds-and-copper-are-telling-us-exactly-where-stocks-are-heading-next/riskiest-junk-bonds" type="external" /></p>
<p>On Thursday, yields jumped 2.6 percentage points, from 13.58% to 16.18%, as these junk bonds plunged. Those kinds of single-day vertigo-inducing sell-offs are rare in normal times, and there haven’t been any since the Financial Crisis.</p>
<p>Amazingly, the Federal Reserve is actually thinking about raising interest rates in this environment.</p>
<p>If that sounds like a really bad idea to you, that is because it is a really bad idea.</p>
<p>Raising interest rates would just add fuel to the fire of this junk bond rout.&#160; DoubleLine Capital’s co-founder Jeffrey Gundlach <a href="http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/latestnews/2015/08/18/Gundlach-says-bad-idea-Fed-hike-rates-when-junk-bonds-four-year-low" type="external">agrees with me</a>…</p>
<p>“To raise interest rates when junk bonds are nearly at a four-year low is a bad idea,” Gundlach said in a telephone interview.</p>
<p>Gundlach, widely followed for his prescient investment calls, said if the Fed begins raising interest rates in September, “it opens the lid on Pandora’s Box of a tightening cycle.”</p>
<p>Gundlach said the selling pressure in copper and commodity prices driven by worries over China’s growth outlook “should be a huge concern. It is the second-biggest economy in the world.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, as Gundlach mentioned, <a href="" type="internal">the price of copper</a> continues to plunge.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, it set <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/closing-bell-august-18-2015-8" type="external">a brand new six year low</a>.&#160; It is now the lowest that it has been since the days of the last financial crisis.</p>
<p>And as you can see from this excerpt from a recent&#160; <a href="http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/how-bad-will-the-financial-collapse-be-this-time/" type="external">Investment Research Dynamics article</a>, the price of copper started crashing before the stock market crash of 2008…</p>
<p>I wanted to keep this simple and just look at what is considered perhaps the best barometer of global economic activity:</p>
<p><a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/if-history-is-any-indication-junk-bonds-and-copper-are-telling-us-exactly-where-stocks-are-heading-next/copper-chart-investment-research-dynamics" type="external" /></p>
<p>You’ll note that the price of copper is headed lower and is back to the price level where it was in the middle of 2008, right before the great financial collapse. &#160;You’ll note that $3.6 trillion in Federal Reserve money printing – on top of trillions in Bank of Japan, ECB and People’s Bank of China money printing – has not been able to keep the price of copper from crashing again.</p>
<p>In case you haven’t figured it out by now, <a href="" type="internal">the global financial system is in real&#160;trouble</a>.</p>
<p>Another sign that rough waters are ahead is the fact that global shipping has fallen into a dramatic slump.&#160; The following comes from&#160; <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11808488/World-shipping-slump-deepens-as-China-retreats.html" type="external">the Telegraph</a>…</p>
<p>World shipping has fallen into a deep slump over the late summer, dashing hopes of a quick recovery from the global trade recession earlier this year and heightening fears that the six-year economic expansion may be on its last legs.</p>
<p>Freight rates for container shipping from Asia to Europe fell by over 20pc in the second week of August, even though trade volumes should be picking up at this time of the year. The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) for routes to north European ports crashed by 23pc in five trading days.</p>
<p>Global economic activity is clearly slowing down, and there are 23 nations around the planet <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/23-nations-around-the-world-where-stock-market-crashes-are-already-happening" type="external">that are already experiencing stock market crashes</a>.</p>
<p>The financial markets of the western world have not totally crashed just yet, but they are more leveraged and more vulnerable than ever.&#160; The following comes from <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-18/only-date-unknown" type="external">Zero Hedge</a>…</p>
<p>As I explained <a href="https://soundcloud.com/canyonmedia/economic-collapse-michael-snyder" type="external">during a recent interview with Kate Dalley of Fox News radio</a>, what is coming should be obvious to anyone that is willing to look at the numbers honestly.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">The global financial system is going to crash</a>.</p>
<p>Yes, this crisis is going to take years to fully play out, but by the time it is all said and done it is going to be much worse than what we experienced back in 2008 and 2009.</p>
<p>So buckle up tight and hold on for your life, because we are in for one wild ride.</p>
<p>Courtesy of <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/if-history-is-any-indication-junk-bonds-and-copper-are-telling-us-exactly-where-stocks-are-heading-next" type="external">The Economic Collapse Blog</a>.</p>
<p />
<p /> | If History Is Any Indication, Junk Bonds And Copper Are Telling Us Exactly Where Stocks Are Heading Next | true | http://dcclothesline.com/2015/08/19/if-history-is-any-indication-junk-bonds-and-copper-are-telling-us-exactly-where-stocks-are-heading-next/ | 2015-08-19 | 0 |
<p>Baghdad.</p>
<p>“What an extraordinary election, quite extraordinary,” said Adnan Pachachi, the elder statesman of Iraq and a man not easily impressed after seeing his country convulsed by war and dictatorship for half a century.</p>
<p>It is a strange affair. Not since the war which overthrew Saddam Hussein had there been such a gap between the reality of politics in Iraq and the picture presented by the US and British governments. The poll yesterday was portrayed as if Washington and London had finally been able to reach their goal of delivering democracy to Iraqis. In fact the US postponed elections to a distant future after the invasion of 2003.</p>
<p>The overthrow of Saddam Hussein had been so swift that the American administration thought it could rule Iraq directly with little Iraqi involvement. But in the autumn of 2003 the US made two unpleasant discoveries: The guerrilla attacks in Sunni districts of Iraq were increasing by the day. They were supposedly confined to “the Sunni triangle”, a description with a comfortingly limited ring to it, but in reality an area larger than Britain.</p>
<p>The second development which Paul Bremer, the head of the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority, was slow to understand, was that an elderly Shia cleric living in an alleyway home in the holy city of Najaf had more influence than any of the former Iraqi exiles on the US payroll. In June 2003, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiah leader, issued a fatwa or religious ruling saying that those who drew up Iraq’s constitution must be elected, not nominated by the US and the Iraqi Governing Council whose members Washington had appointed. In November 2003, he issued a further ruling saying that the transitional government must be elected.</p>
<p>Shia leaders believed they had made a grave mistake after Britain defeated the Turkish army and occupied what became Iraq in the First World War. The Shia revolted against the British occupation in 1920 so Britain turned to the Sunni community to rule Iraq and the Sunni kept their grip on power under the monarchy, the Republic and the dictator.</p>
<p>The reason there was a poll yesterday was that the US, facing an increasingly intensive war against the five million Sunni, dared not provoke revolt by the 15 to 16 million Shia. The price the US paid was to have an election in which the Shia would show that they are a majority of Iraqis.</p>
<p>But will the election yesterday involve a real transfer of power to the Shia? Last June, Iraqi sovereignty was supposedly transferred to the US-appointed interim government of Iyad Allawi. The change was largely a mirage. The government still depends for its existence on the presence of 150,000 US troops.</p>
<p>The wall-to-wall media coverage of the election yesterday obscured several of the realities of political life in Iraq. The National Assembly now being elected will have limited powers. It is constituted so no single community can dominate the others. But, as in Lebanon, this may be a recipe for paralysis. The assembly must elect a president and two vice-presidents and they will in turn chose a prime minister and ministers. The successful candidate will be the person with the fewest enemies.</p>
<p>The Shia were not going to the polling stations for the pleasure of risking mortars and suicide bombers. Their leaders have told them they will obtain real power for the first time.</p>
<p>Some US commentators have wondered if Washington might not be able to hold Iraq or at least remain in covert control by relying on the Kurds and the Shia. Together they make up 80 per cent of the population. This is known as ‘the 20 per cent solution” whereby the US will be able to deal with a rebellion supported by the Sunni Arabs, 20 per cent of the population.</p>
<p>This policy is based on a misconception. The Sunni are resisting the US occupation in arms. The Shia have not joined this rebellion, though Muqtada Sadr and his Mehdi Army fought the US Marines for Najaf last August. A central feature of Iraqi politics is that since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the US has become steadily more unpopular in Iraq outside Kurdistan. This is true among the Shia as well as the Sunni. An opinion poll by Zogby International shows that the Sunni Arabs who want the US out now or very soon total 82 per cent. The proportion of Shia wanting the US to go is less than the Sunni but still overwhelming at 69 per cent. Shia religious leaders have been telling their followers to vote as the quickest way to end the occupation.</p>
<p>The enthusiasm with which so many Shia went to the polls is a double-edged weapon. They did so in the belief that their ballots would translate into power.</p>
<p>In the immediate future, the election changes little in Iraq. The world is full of parliaments duly elected by a free ballot but power stays elsewhere, with the army, the security services or, in the case of Iraq today, an occupying foreign power.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | A Victory for the Shia | true | https://counterpunch.org/2005/01/31/a-victory-for-the-shia/ | 2005-01-31 | 4 |
<p>Jan 25 (Reuters) - Cabot Microelectronics Corp:</p>
<p>* CORP REPORTS STRONG RESULTS, INCLUDING RECORD REVENUE, FOR FIRST QUARTER OF FISCAL 2018</p> * Q1 GAAP LOSS PER SHARE $0.12
<p>* Q1 REVENUE $140 MILLION VERSUS I/B/E/S VIEW $137.9 MILLION</p>
<p>* Q1 EARNINGS PER SHARE VIEW $1.02 — THOMSON REUTERS I/B/E/S</p>
<p>* Q1 NON-GAAP EARNINGS PER SHARE $1.19</p>
<p>* ‍EFFECTIVE TAX RATE FOR Q1 WAS 108.4% VERSUS 20.3% IN SAME QUARTER LAST YEAR​</p>
<p>* CABOT MICROELECTRONICS-‍SEES ITS EFFECTIVE TAX RATE FOR REST OF FISCAL YEAR TO BE WITHIN RANGE OF 21 TO 24%; HAD EARLIER EXPECTED IT TO BE 24 TO 27 % FOR FY Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will expel 23 Russian diplomats in response to a nerve toxin attack on a Russian ex-spy in southern England, Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday, describing the attack as an unlawful use of force by Russia against the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>May said Britain would also introduce new measures to strengthen defenses against hostile state activities, freeze Russian state assets wherever there was evidence of a threat and downgrade its attendance at the soccer World Cup in Russia this summer.</p>
<p>Russia, which denies any involvement in the attack, called the measures announced by May “unacceptable, unjustified and shortsighted” and warned Britain to expect retaliation.</p>
<p>Unlike when the United States and European Union imposed sanctions on Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea and other actions in Ukraine, May did not name Russian individuals or companies that would be specifically targeted by sanctions.</p>
<p>Former double agent Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were found unconscious on a bench in the genteel city of Salisbury on March 4 and remain in hospital in a critical condition. A police officer was also harmed and remains in a serious condition.</p>
<p>Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to Britain before being arrested in Moscow and later jailed in 2006. He was freed under a spy swap deal in 2010 and took refuge in Britain.</p>
<p>May has said the Skripals were attacked with Novichok, a Soviet-era military-grade nerve agent. She had asked Moscow to explain whether it was responsible for the attack or had lost control of stocks of the highly dangerous substance.</p>
<p>“Their response demonstrated complete disdain for the gravity of these events,” May said in a statement to parliament.</p>
<p>“They have treated the use of a military-grade nerve agent in Europe with sarcasm, contempt and defiance.</p>
<p>“There is no alternative conclusion, other than that the Russian state was culpable for the attempted murder of Mr Skripal and his daughter, and for threatening the lives of other British citizens in Salisbury, including Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey.</p>
<p>“This represents an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom.”</p>
<p>(Graphic: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2FjA6EQ" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2FjA6EQ</a>)</p> Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May addresses the House of Commons on her government's reaction to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, in London, March 14, 2018. Parliament TV handout via REUTERS ONE WEEK TO LEAVE BRITAIN
<p>May said the expulsion of the 23 diplomats, identified as undeclared intelligence officers, was the biggest single expulsion for over 30 years and would degrade Russian intelligence capabilities in Britain for years to come.</p>
<p>The expelled Russian diplomats have one week to leave Britain, May said, before listing other measures.</p>
<p>“We will freeze Russian state assets wherever we have the evidence that they may be used to threaten the life or property of UK nationals or residents,” she said.</p>
<p>She also said new legislative proposals would be urgently developed to counter any threat from a hostile state.</p>
<p>“This will include the addition of a targeted power to detain those suspected of hostile state activity at the UK border,” May said.</p> Slideshow (15 Images)
<p>British authorities would make use of existing powers to enhance efforts to monitor and track the intentions of those traveling to the UK who could be engaged in activities that represented a security threat.</p>
<p>“We will increase checks on private flights, customs and freight,” she said.</p>
<p>She also threatened action against those she described as “serious criminals and corrupt elites,” adding: “There is no place for these people, or their money, in our country.”</p>
<p>May said Britain would revoke an invitation to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to visit the country and suspend all planned high level bilateral contacts between London and Moscow.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-response-factbox/factbox-britain-to-freeze-russian-state-assets-and-expel-23-diplomats-after-nerve-attack-idUSKCN1GQ1TN" type="external">Factbox: Britain to freeze Russian state assets and expel 23 diplomats after nerve attack</a>
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-may-threats/britain-will-stand-up-to-any-threats-from-russia-says-pm-may-idUSKCN1GQ214" type="external">Britain will stand up to any threats from Russia, says PM May</a>
<a href="/article/us-britain-russia-diplomacy-diplomats/uk-expulsion-of-envoys-unacceptable-and-short-sighted-russian-embassy-idUSKCN1GQ1Y0" type="external">UK expulsion of envoys unacceptable and short-sighted: Russian embassy</a>
<p>On the soccer World Cup, she said no ministers or members of the British royal family would attend.</p>
<p>May said Britain was not alone in confronting Russian aggression, saying that she had discussed the Salisbury attack with U.S. President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.</p>
<p>Donald Tusk, European Union council president, earlier voiced support for Britain and stood ready to put the attack on the agenda of a council meeting next week.</p>
<p>Britain asked for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to update members on the attack. Like Britain, Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council.</p>
<p>May also said London had notified the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons about the use of the nerve agent. “We are working with the police to enable the OPCW to independently verify our analysis,” she said.</p>
<p>Reporting by Costas Pitas, Estelle Shirbon, Guy Faulconbridge, Michael Holden, Elizabeth Piper and William James, additional reporting by Polina Ivanova in Moscow, writing by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Stephen Addison, William Maclean</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Students walked out of classrooms across the United States on Wednesday, waving signs and chanting their demands for tighter gun safety laws, joining a movement spearheaded by survivors of the deadly shooting spree at a Florida high school last month.</p>
<p>The #ENOUGH National School Walkout began at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) with 17-minute walkouts planned at 10 a.m. in each time zone, commemorating the 17 students and staff killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14. The massacre was the latest in a series of shootings that have plagued U.S. schools for nearly two decades.</p>
<p>Some students got in an early start. At Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in New York City, crowds of students poured into the streets of Manhattan, many dressed in orange, the color of the gun-control movement.</p>
<p>“Thoughts and prayers are not enough,” read one sign, needling the rote response many lawmakers make after mass shootings. At 10 a.m., the hundreds of students sat down on the sidewalk, filling half a city block, and fell silent.</p>
<p>In Parkland, thousands of students slowly filed onto the Stoneman Douglas school football field to the applause of families and supporters beyond the fences as law enforcement officers looked on. News helicopters thrummed overhead.</p>
<p>Ty Thompson, the school’s principal, called for the “biggest group hug,” and the students obliged around the 50-yard line.</p>
<p>The walkouts were part of a burgeoning, grassroots movement that grew out of the Parkland attack. Some of the survivors have lobbied state and federal lawmakers, and even met with President Donald Trump, to call for new restrictions on gun ownership, a right protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.</p>
<p>“We don’t feel safe in schools anymore,” Sarah Chatfield said. A 15-year-old high school student from Maryland, Chatfield had joined a crowd of hundreds protesting outside the White House, with some sitting silent with their backs turned.</p>
<p>“Trump is talking about arming teachers with guns,” she said. “That is not a step in the right direction.”</p> Slideshow (34 Images)
<p>Soon after, some of the students began marching toward Capitol Hill. “Hey hey, ho ho, the NRA has got to go!” they chanted, referring to the powerful gun-rights interest group, the National Rifle Association.</p>
<p>The Parkland survivors’ efforts helped bring about a tightening of Florida’s gun laws last week, when the minimum age for buying any kind of gun was raised to 21 years from 18, although lawmakers there rejected a ban on the sort of semiautomatic rifle used in the Parkland attack.</p>
<p>In Washington, however, plans to strengthen the background-check system for gun sales, among other measures, appear to be languishing.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=VIAB.O" type="external">Viacom Inc</a> 32.34 VIAB.O Nasdaq -0.26 (-0.80%) VIAB.O
<p>Students from more than 2,800 schools and groups are joining the walkouts, many with the backing of their school districts, according to the event’s organizers, who also coordinated the Women’s March protests staged nationwide over the past two years.</p>
<p>Support has also come from the American Civil Liberties Union and Viacom Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=VIAB.O" type="external">VIAB.O</a>), which said all seven of its networks, including MTV, suspended programming on the East Coast during the 17-minute walkout there.</p>
<p>The protests took place a day after Florida prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty for Nikolas Cruz, who has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the Parkland attack.</p>
<p>The New York City Department of Education allowed students to participate if they submitted a signed permission slip from their parents.</p>
<p>But a few school districts around the country had warned against protests during school hours.</p>
<p>Administrators in Sayreville, New Jersey, told students that anyone who walked out of class would face suspension or other punishment, according to myCentralJersey.com.</p>
<p>Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen and Alice Popovici in New York, Joe Skipper and Bernie Woodall in Parkland, Florida, and Susan Heavey and Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>YANGON (Reuters) - Some international observers urged Myanmar on Wednesday not to drag out legal proceedings against two Reuters journalists, as they appeared in court for the 10th time since they were arrested in December and accused of possessing secret government papers.</p> Detained Reuters journalist Wa Lone talks to reporters after a court hearing in Yangon, Myanmar March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
<p>A Yangon court began preliminary hearings in January to decide whether reporters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, will face charges under the colonial-era Officials Secrets Act, which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.</p>
<p>Denmark’s embassy in Yangon, which has closely followed the case, said ahead of the latest hearing that the journalists should be “thanked and not punished” for their reporting on northern Rakhine state - where they found evidence of security forces’ involvement in the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men.</p>
<p>“Nor should they be subject to a dragged out trial that appears to be set to last for months while keeping Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo incarcerated, away from their families and their work,” the embassy said in a statement.</p>
<p>Two civilians that police brought to witness a search of Wa Lone’s family home the evening after the reporters were arrested gave testimony on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Min Min, a neighborhood official in north Yangon, told the court he joined nine or 10 policemen searching the residence and signed a form to confirm a laptop with a charger and a bag, a hard drive and a notebook were discovered there.</p>
<p>Asked by defense lawyer Than Zaw Aung during cross-examination whether any government papers were discovered in the search, he said no.</p>
<p>Min Aung, a ward administrator who joined the search and gave testimony, said he could not remember seeing police find official documents.</p>
<p>Lead prosecutor Kyaw Min Aung left the court building before Reuters was able to put questions to him after the hearing. Government spokespeople have declined to comment on the case, citing the ongoing court proceedings.</p> Detained Reuters journalist Kyaw Soe Oo is escorted by police as he arrives at a court hearing in Yangon, Myanmar March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
<p>The government prosecutor has now called 12 of 25 listed witnesses to hearings that have been taking place weekly. The court agreed to hear three witnesses at its next session on March 21.</p> HELD IN CUSTODY
<p>Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been in custody since their arrest on Dec. 12.</p> Detained Reuters journalist Wa Lone is escorted by police after a court hearing in Yangon, Myanmar March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
<p>The pair had been invited by police officers to a restaurant in northern Yangon. They have told family members they were arrested by plainclothes officers almost immediately after being handed some rolled up papers by the policemen, whom they had not met before.</p>
<p>Previous police witnesses have said they were stopped and searched at a traffic checkpoint by officers who were unaware they were journalists, and found to be holding in their hands documents relating to security force deployments in Rakhine.</p>
<p>Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, wearing handcuffs, were rushed in and out of court by police on Wednesday, giving them only a brief opportunity to talk to their families or reporters. Kyaw Soe Oo was prevented by police from hugging his young daughter.</p>
<p>Myanmar has denied accusations the two reporters were targeted over their reporting in Rakhine, where a security response to insurgent attacks has seen nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims flee to Bangladesh since August.</p>
<p>Last week, responding to comments from U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein who said he strongly suspected “acts of genocide” had taken place in Rakhine, Myanmar’s national security advisor Thaung Tun said the country wanted to see “clear evidence” to support such allegations.</p>
<p>Sean Bain, a legal adviser in Myanmar for the International Commission of Jurists, a human rights group made up of 60 senior international judges, lawyers and legal academics, called for the case against the reporters to be dropped.</p>
<p>“The government has asked for ‘concrete evidence’ of alleged rights violations in Rakhine State,” said Bain, who attended Wednesday’s hearing. “These journalists produced it, but they remain imprisoned.”</p>
<p>Reporting by Simon Lewis and Shoon Naing; Additional reporting by Thu Thu Aung; Editing by Alex Richardson</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats following the poisoning of a former double agent is a hostile and unjustified action, Russia’s embassy in London said on Wednesday.</p> Russia's flag flies from the consular section of its embassy, in central London, Britain March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Phil Noble
<p>Britain accuses Russia of being responsible for the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, southern England, but Russia denies involvement and says Britain is to blame for worsening relations between the two countries.</p>
<p>“We consider this hostile action as totally unacceptable, unjustified and short-sighted,” the Russian embassy said in a statement in reaction to the expulsion.</p>
<p>“All the responsibility for the deterioration of the Russia-UK relationship lies with the current political leadership of Britain,” it added.</p>
<p>Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Stephen Addison</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | BRIEF-Cabot Microelectronics Reports Q1 GAAP Loss Per Share Of $0.12 Britain expels 23 Russian diplomats over chemical attack on ex-spy U.S. students walk out of class in solidarity with Florida shooting victims Myanmar urged not to drag out case against Reuters reporters UK expulsion of envoys unacceptable and short-sighted: Russian embassy | false | https://reuters.com/article/brief-cabot-microelectronics-reports-q1/brief-cabot-microelectronics-reports-q1-gaap-loss-per-share-of-012-idUSASB0C29V | 2018-01-25 | 2 |
<p />
<p>It looks like Congress <a href="" type="internal">may finally pass health care reform</a> this week. Environmental advocates have been bemoaning the fact that the prolonged health care debate has tangled up action on climate. But could passage of the bill actually do more to screw up the chances of passing climate and energy legislation? Lindsey Graham – the only Republican actively engaging with Democrats on climate – warned yesterday that moving health care without Republican support may ruin hopes for future bipartisanship.</p>
<p>“If they do this, it’s going to poison the well for anything else they would like to achieve this year or thereafter,” Graham said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, warning against using reconciliation to move the bill forward.</p>
<p>Among Republicans, Graham is one of the few that the administration might care about. In addition to working with John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on a climate and energy package, he’s the basically the lone GOP collaborator on <a href="%C2%94" type="external">Guantanamo</a> and immigration (though he’s had some <a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/03/sen-graham-says-president-obamas-proclaimed-unwavering-commitment-to-immigration-reform-doesnt-pass-.html" type="external">harsh words</a> for Obama on that of late, too).</p>
<p>He said, however, that maybe the Obama administration would do well to focus on climate and energy–an area where there is some bipartisan interest in collaboration–before moving to other contentious issues. “This is one issue where the president has been great. He’s saying all the right things to give us a chance to become energy independent, clean up the air and create jobs. But when it comes to health care, he’s been tone deaf, he’s been arrogant, and they’re pushing a legislative proposal and a way to do that legislative proposal that’s going to destroy the ability of this country to work together for a very long time. And that’s not necessary.”</p>
<p /> | Will Health Care Reform Help or Hinder a Climate Bill? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/will-health-care-reform-help-or-hinder-climate-bill/ | 2010-03-15 | 4 |
<p>After I left school I was inundated with clichés such as “You need a degree to get your foot in the door."</p>
<p>This conventional wisdom is inconsistent with economic realities and alters students’ expectations of life after graduation. University is often considered a safety net, a means of avoiding failure. However, the advantages of having a degree, particularly in life sciences, humanities and social sciences, <a href="http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/if_2013-0826.pdf" type="external">are&#160;losing their allure</a>. The over-abundance of graduates is not always reflective of market demand, seriously diminishing the unmatched return on investment university is said to provide. In fact, Canada tops the list of <a href="https://www.oecd.org/" type="external">OECD</a> countries for university graduates making less than half the national median income. I couldn’t justify spending four of the most productive years of my life and thousands of dollars to build a safety net with holes in it, so I left.Many Westerners must still acknowledge&#160;their&#160;fetishism of higher education is a problem. If the variety of degrees available to new students reflected the actualities of the job market, that alone would make university a more worthwhile endeavor. Unfortunately for everyone, university subsidies are&#160;politically expedient; the tired platitude of "investing in our nation's youth" doesn't lose its&#160;charm&#160;come election season. This was <a href="https://www.liberal.ca/liberal-plan-will-make-real-immediate-investment-in-young-canadians/" type="external">a&#160;key aspect of the Liberal platform</a>, which promised to invest $1.3 billion over three years to "create jobs and opportunities for young Canadians."</p>
<p>Most young Canadians would have an easier time getting a job if they chose to expand their skills and knowledge in fields that were actually in demand. However, this does not coincide with&#160;the victim narrative perpetuated by progressives such as our prime minister, to whom&#160;personal choice is inconsequential&#160;and students must be saved by government from the tentacled clutches of the free market.University&#160;subsidization&#160;is a failed government program, and by no means a noble one. According to Statistics Canada, in 2009 (the latest data available) federal, provincial, and municipal governments&#160; <a href="http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/govt31a-eng.htm" type="external">shelled out $20,000 per student</a>&#160;to universities across Canada.&#160;If you could believe it, this has not alleviated the burden on my demographic. Replacing student loans debt with national debt doesn't solve the problem: money is still extracted from the economy and misallocated, which makes us all&#160;that much poorer. Further, what incentive does this provide for universities to compete and improve the quality of the education at a lower cost when,&#160; <a href="http://www.charlatan.ca/2014/07/high-plant-mortalities-recorded-on-plant-wall/" type="external">as the case was at Carleton</a>, they can&#160;install a&#160;remarkably&#160;unimpressive "living wall" that costs $18,000 per year to maintain and still receive cheques from the government? This is the best time in human history to seek alternatives to traditional institutions (let us recall that at one time the only educated people resided in monasteries). Regretfully, there is greater support among students for cutting tuition fees than there is for seeking alternatives. This emphasizes how ingrained university and government intervention are in Western culture. In a free market, increasing prices are an indicator that one should adjust their decision-making. One alternative to traditional post-secondary education is Praxis, a South Carolina-based educational program focused on entrepreneurship, self-discipline, and developing tangible skills. Isaac Morehouse founded Praxis in 2013 because he noticed a growing number of bored students and graduates with debt and no jobs, as well as a growing number of business owners who were always hiring but could never find good talent as degrees became the norm. According to Morehouse, the main advantage Praxis graduates have is "real world experience with entrepreneurs for a year,” and “Entrepreneurial thinking and the ability and courage to take their life and career in their own hands."&#160; University is not about enrichment; it's about credentialism.&#160;Unfortunately for many degree-holders in bloated majors, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/wage-gap-between-high-school-grads-and-degree-holders-narrows-1.2624066" type="external">the wage gap between high school graduates and university graduates&#160;is shrinking.</a>"It's all about the credentials, which are waning in value and the credential-based mindset is going to be replaced," says Morehouse. I would much rather show a future employer a unique set of experiences, accomplishments, references and skills than a university degree that renders me identical to hundreds of thousands of other candidates on paper. "Companies don't care about degrees," Morehouse says, "outside of bureaucracies and those with government-mandated degrees.&#160;They care about value creation and it's never been easier to signal to the world your ability."You can always say, "To hell with you, I'm finishing my degree." That's fine, but that's not the point. A degree is not inherently worthless, and is necessary in certain fields. That said, taking a year off, creating value for someone, and asking yourself if you really need university to lead a successful life should be the default after high school, not rushing to get a degree. When it comes to creating value, university sets&#160;"a pretty low bar," says Morehouse. "What could you do with four years and tens of thousands [of dollars] that's more valuable? It's limited only to your imagination." Purists may argue that this is a reckless way of thinking, but considering you’re getting closer to your demise as you read this, a little recklessness may soon find its appeal. Especially when the alternative is striving for mediocrity.(To learn more about Praxis, check out&#160; <a href="http://www.discoverpraxis.com%20" type="external">discoverpraxis.com</a>and also&#160; <a href="http://www.thefutureofschool.com" type="external">thefutureofschool.com</a>&#160;to get a free eBook with Isaac's&#160;story and more information about new approaches to education.)</p>
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<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.TheRebel.media/join" type="external">JOIN TheRebel.media FREE</a> for more fearless news and commentary you won’t find anywhere else. <a href="https://the-rebel-store.myshopify.com/products/shirt-sell-the-cbc" type="external">GET YOUR “Sell The CBC” t-shirt</a> ONLY at The Rebel Store!Canada needs a conservative infrastructure to influence the culture! <a href="http://www.RebuildTheRight.ca" type="external">SIGN UP at RebuildTheRight.ca</a> to be part of this new movement</p> | "Companies don't care about degrees": As credentials lose their value, state subsidized university makes no sense | true | http://therebel.media/_companies_don_t_care_about_degrees | 2015-12-02 | 0 |
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<p>So, it seems <a href="http://goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031227/NEWS07/112270363" type="external">Bush is still eating beef</a>. A little Mad Cow disease, the White House assures us, isn’t going to scare our red meat-loving leader. We suppose that’s supposed to make us all feel better, encouraging us to accept the USDA’s assertion that its inspection rules are sufficient.</p>
<p>Somehow, we aren’t convinced.</p>
<p>Maybe that’s because the meat from the diseased heifer slaughtered in Washington state wasn’t distributed in Texas, where the prez is spending his holiday. Maybe it’s because one of the key administration officials telling us everything’s okay is a former agribusiness lobbyist. Or maybe it’s just because we know that the meat industry and its allies in Congress have for years managed to kill every effort to reform the inspection and feed rules — including one that would have kept meat from this particular dairy cow from ever reaching anybody’s plate.</p>
<p>We should remember, this is not a new fight. It dates back nearly a century, to <a href="http://www.boondocksnet.com/editions/jungle/jungle01.html" type="external">Upton Sinclair</a> and <a href="http://www.vw.cc.va.us/vwhansd/HIS122/Teddy/TRtoonMuck.jpg" type="external">Teddy Roosevelt</a>, uneasy allies who fought bitterly to get the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 through a similarly recalcitrant Congress. Ever since, cattle ranchers and meat packers have managed to water down or kill efforts to strenghten federal rules on meat inspection, slaughtering, and feed lot management. In that fight, the beef industry has been aided by scores of allies in Congress, lawmakers willing to oppose any measure that might make the meatpacking business less profitable. And with the arrival of Bush and Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman — an agribusiness lobbyist before joining Bush’s team — the industry has been given red-carpet treatment. Now, the Madison Capital Times argues, the cost of such laissez-faire political favoritism is becoming <a href="http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/editorial/64042.php" type="external">unavoidably clear</a>.</p>
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<p>“Veneman was put in charge of the Department of Agriculture by President Bush because he knew the longtime advocate for the genetic modification of food, factory farming and free trade policies that favor big agribusiness over family farmers and consumers could be counted on to choose the side of business interests over the public interest.</p>
<p>Veneman did just that when she announced that mad cow disease had been found in the United States. Instead of offering a realistic response to the news, she was still doing public relations for agribusiness. She declared the case was isolated, praised the USDA for a ‘swift and effective’ response, and discounted any risk to human health.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, because of the USDA’s lax approach to inspections and regulation, Venemen has no idea whether she is right.”</p>
<p>In fact, the USDA has been more than lax — as John Munsell knows too well. As Mother Jones reported last month, the Montana meatpacker became a food inspection activist after meat ground at his family-run plant tested positive for E. coli. Munsell took his concerns to the USDA, and found out <a href="/news/hellraiser/2003/11/ma_573_01.html" type="external">what the agency’s real priorities are</a>.</p>
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<p>“Instead of tracking the contaminated meat back to its source, the USDA launched an investigation of Munsell’s own operation in Miles City, Montana. Never mind that the local federal inspector had seen the beef go straight from the package into a clean grinder — a USDA spokesman called that testimony “hearsay.” By February 2002, three more tests of meat Munsell was grinding straight from the package came back positive in USDA tests for E. coli. This time, as he would later testify in a government hearing, he had paperwork documenting that the beef came from a single source: ConAgra’s massive Greeley, Colorado, facility, which kills as many cows in three hours as Montana Quality Foods handles in a year.</p>
<p>Munsell fired off an angry email to the district USDA manager, warning of a potential public-health emergency, and adding that if no one tracked down the rest of the bad meat, “both of us should share a cell in Alcatraz.” The agency moved immediately and aggressively — not to recall meat from Greeley, but to shut down Munsell’s grinding operation, a punishment that lasted four months.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>‘I want the world to know what the real policies are,’ says Munsell, driving through Miles City, a ranching town on Montana’s eastern plain where the casinos compete with saddle shops on Main Street and the men don’t take their hats off for much. ‘The real policies imperil the consumer,” he says. “The USDA doesn’t want that out.'”</p>
<p>There is <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0353/mondo1.php" type="external">plenty of evidence</a> to support Munsell’s assertion. As James Ridgeway of The Village Voice writes, a study by the Center for Public Integrity found that “only 43 percent of all meat products recalled by their manufacturers from 1990-1997 was recovered.”</p>
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<p>“The rest of the meat—some 17 million pounds—was eaten by unsuspecting consumers. Yet Congress fought off efforts by the Secretary of Agriculture during that time to get the authority to issue mandatory recalls of contaminated meat.</p>
<p>The investigation found that during the 1990s the highly exclusive meat business spent $41 million financing political campaigns of Congress members, more than one third of them from House or Senate agriculture committees. Among them: the majority and minority leaders of the Senate (Trent Lott and Tom Daschle), the speaker of the House and the House minority leader (Newt Gingrich and Dick Gephardt), and six past or present chairmen or ranking minority members of the Senate and House agriculture committees.</p>
<p>The cattle industry during that period employed 124 lobbyists to work the Hill, 28 of them previously either lawmakers or aides to lawmakers. And it worked. ‘During the escalating public health crisis of the past decade,’ the Center reported, ‘the food industry has managed to kill every bill that has promised meaningful reform.’ In lieu of any serious rulemaking, the Clinton administration struck a weak-ass deal with the industry to allow cattlemen to do their own inspections and label their records “trade secrets” so the public can’t look at them.”</p>
<p>There is little chance the industry’s friends in Congress will be able to keep their stonewalling record intact. Already, the USDA has announced it will ban the slaughtering of “downer” cattle — animals that cannot move on their own because of disease or some other ailment. The Washington state dairy cow that tested positive for Mad Cow, it should be noted, was a “downer”. Of course, Congress had repeatedly failed to adopt a similar ban — even though <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2001823293_madcow26.html" type="external">it was already embraced</a> by some of the meat industry’s largest clients, Wayne Pacelle writes in the Seattle Times.</p>
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<p>“The fast-food industry — led by McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King — considers downer meat too dangerous for its customers and no longer buys it. So do mink farmers who refuse to feed it to their animals.</p>
<p>Three years ago, the USDA banned it from the National School Lunch Program. Several states including California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, Vermont and Wisconsin prohibit downers from being sold or killed at state-inspected abattoirs, but have no control over federally regulated slaughterhouses that process most of these disabled animals.”</p>
<p>Still, there are other legislative initiatives in play, The Denver Post reports, including one measure making it easier to track infected beef from farms to markets. That bill was introduced a year ago, but has been <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~417~1859603,00.html" type="external">blocked by the beef industry’s alllies on the Agriculture committee</a>. But are such changes enough? John Stauber, co-author of Mad Cow USA, insists it is not. Writing on Alternet, Stauber argues that <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17466" type="external">far more sweeping reforms are required</a>.</p>
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<p>“The feed rules that the United States must adopt can be summarized this way: you might not be a vegetarian, but the animals you eat must be. The United States must also institute an immediate testing regime that will test millions of cattle, not the 20,000 tested out of 35 million slaughtered in the past year in the United States. Japan now tests all cattle before consumption, and disease experts like Dr. Prusiner recommend this goal for the United States. And of course, no sick “downer” cows, barely able to move, should be fed to any humans. These are the type of animals most likely to be infected with mad cow and other ailments – although mad cows can also seem completely healthy at the time of slaughter, which is why testing all animals must be the goal.</p>
<p>Ann Veneman and the Bush administration, unfortunately, currently have no plans to do the right thing. The United States meat industry still believes that the millions of dollars in campaign contributions doled out over the years will continue to forestall the necessary regulations, and that soothing PR assurances will convince the consuming public that this is just some vegetarian fear-mongering conspiracy concocted by the media to sell organic food. Will the American public buy this bull? It has in the past.”</p>
<p>Finally, while the current uproar is over a single cow, the problems with our meat inspection and feed rules <a href="http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16209" type="external">aren’t limited to the beef industry</a>, Geov Parrish reminds us in his latest column on Working for Change. The entire meat production business — dominated by huge factory-farming conglomerates — is plagued by dangerous and inhumane practices which need to be exposed, Parrish asserts.</p>
<p />
<p>For the worst corporate violators, the ones actually inspected and found to be egregiously violating food safety laws, the penalties are slaps on the wrist. Many large operations consider such fines a cost of doing business, a pittance compared to the money they save through mistreatment of the animals, fouling of the environment, and careless handling of the meat.</p>
<p>These issues are hardly confined to cattle — industrial pig farming has become notorious for its noxiousness — or to meat. The use of antibiotics on farm animals, pesticides on crops, and genetic engineering on anything agribusiness can figure out how to “improve” all carry risks right through the food chain into our bodies.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>The discovery of mad cow disease in one cow, out of nearly 100 million now living in the U.S., is hardly a major risk to the public. But the factors that made it possible — big agribusiness, lax regulation, and consumer ignorance — also fuel any number of far more common problems. For meat, such problems are usually avoidable by buying organic meat free of antibiotics and the ravages of factory farming. In fact, for nutrients and taste as well as food safety, organics in general are well worth the higher price.”</p>
<p>In the meantime, while we wait for Congress and the Bush administration to take action, the carnivores among us can always follow the lead of the folks at Free Range Graphics — the animation jocks behind <a href="http://www.themeatrix.com/" type="external">The Meatrix</a>. Or we could embrace the vegetarian option. Apparently, producers of vegetable-based meat alternatives expect many of us will — Planet Ark reports several such companies <a href="http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23256/story.htm" type="external">expect their business is about to boom</a> — just not in Crawford, Texas.</p>
<p /> | Something’s Rotten… | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2003/12/somethings-rotten/ | 2003-12-31 | 4 |
<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday afternoon’s drawing of the Pennsylvania Lottery’s “Pick 5 Day” game were:</p>
<p>7-4-1-4-9, Wild: 7</p>
<p>(seven, four, one, four, nine; Wild: seven)</p>
<p>HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday afternoon’s drawing of the Pennsylvania Lottery’s “Pick 5 Day” game were:</p>
<p>7-4-1-4-9, Wild: 7</p>
<p>(seven, four, one, four, nine; Wild: seven)</p> | Winning numbers drawn in ‘Pick 5 Day’ game | false | https://apnews.com/5b67f07e485f4dc28f7c9b63b0a6ef94 | 2017-12-28 | 2 |
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<p>What image is floating there? A dark room full of foreign soldiers, staring intently at computer screens? Russian President Vladimir Putin, possibly shirtless and on a horse?</p>
<p>Think smaller. Think cuddlier.</p>
<p>Think squirrels. But bonus points if you imagined Putin on a Shetland pony.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>As the nation is at perhaps its most apoplectic about what, exactly, Russian computers are doing to American ones, a cybersecurity expert pointed out this week that most are ignoring an insidious, bushy-tailed foe that occasionally buries acorns and gets squashed by mail trucks.</p>
<p>Since 2013, Cris Thomas, a cybersecurity expert who has testified before Congress, has been tracking reports of “cyberwar operations” by animals in the English-speaking world.</p>
<p>Squirrels are the leading, and possibly cutest, attackers. They’ve been responsible for 879 successful attacks.</p>
<p>“If these numbers are accurate, squirrels just aren’t winning the cyberwar, they’re crushing it,” he told Shmoocon 2017, an annual East Coast hacker convention, earlier this week.</p>
<p>His speech, aptly, is titled “35 Years of Cyberwar: The Squirrels are Winning.”</p>
<p>It’s the latest iteration of his attempts to dispel myths about the threat of cyberwarfare and focus Americans’ fears where they should be rightly placed.</p>
<p>“A lot of people don’t understand the word ‘cyber,’ and because we don’t understand it, we’re afraid of it,” Thomas told The Washington Post. “And because we’re afraid of it, it must be bad.</p>
<p>“We’ve been told to fear cyberattacks from large-threat actors that will cripple the electric grid – there has been no dissenting voice.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The U.S. government has launched an investigation into the alleged Russian hacking, which has caused a domino effect in American politics on the eve of a transfer of presidential power.</p>
<p>Over the weekend, Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a prominent Democrat and a civil rights icon, said that Russia’s hacking of the Democrats was part of a conspiracy that he believes delegitimizes Donald Trump’s election.</p>
<p>The war of words escalated, and now dozens of Democrats have said they’ll skip Trump’s inauguration. Nearly two of every three Americans believe Russian hacking affected the election – and eight of 10 Democrats, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.</p>
<p>As The Post’s Andrea Peterson reported, a devastating cyberattack is a common doomsday scenario on Capitol Hill.</p>
<p>“Practically speaking, an adversary is going to go after our civilian infrastructure first,” former National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command chief Keith Alexander said during a hearing last fall. “We’re seeing that in some of the things going on today. Take down the power grid and the financial sector, and everybody’s going to forget about these problems.”</p>
<p>But right under their noses – or possibly above them, hopping across a power line – is a looming menace.</p>
<p>In 1987, a rogue squirrel took out power to Nasdaq’s computer center for 90 minutes, according to the New York Times. It disrupted 20 million trades. And Thomas keeps lists of other animal saboteurs – a bird that stored 300 pounds of acorns in a microwave transmitter, jellyfish that pooled in a power plant’s water tanks. Even a power outage caused by “caterpillars, lots of them.”</p>
<p>Last year, humans were responsible for a coordinated attack on the Ukrainian power grid. Ukrainian officials were able to get the power back on in a few hours.</p>
<p>Thomas told The Post that the Ukraine incident shows that power companies and other critical industries have weaknesses, and “we need to fix these problems and devote some resources.”</p>
<p>“But we can’t go whole hog and go Cheney doctrine,” he said, referring to former vice president Richard B. Cheney. “It’s like terrorism and Iraq. We just went totally nuts trying to solve this one problem. When it comes to the hype that’s out there from the cyberwar hawks, I think we need to tone it down a little bit.”</p>
<p>After all, he says, more outages are caused by actual hawks, anyway.</p> | Most cybersecurity experts are worried about Russian hackers. One says: Look, a squirrel! | false | https://abqjournal.com/930319/most-cybersecurity-experts-are-worried-about-russian-hackers-one-says-look-a-squirrel.html | 2 |
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<p>Nov. 13 (UPI) — Defensive end <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Adrian-Clayborn/" type="external">Adrian Clayborn</a> obliterated the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dallas-Cowboys/" type="external">Dallas Cowboys</a>‘ offensive line with six sacks Sunday for the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Atlanta-Falcons/" type="external">Atlanta Falcons</a>.</p>
<p>Clayborn began his assault at the 10:03 mark in the first quarter. He sprinted around left tackle Chaz Green before grabbing Cowboys quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Dak-Prescott/" type="external">Dak Prescott</a> for sack No. 1.</p>
<p>His next quarterback takedown came with 12:20 remaining in the second quarter. On that play, the 6 foot 3, 281 pound pass rusher dropped back into coverage. Prescott escaped the pocket and ran toward the line of scrimmage, but was brought down by Clayborn before getting there.</p>
<p>Clayborn returned with 14 seconds remaining in the first half. On that play, he spun around Green and grabbed Prescott for his third sack of the game.</p>
<p>He terrorized the Cowboys’ typically stout defensive line once more with 4:37 left in the third stanza. Clayborn raced around Green again on that play, before leaping into Prescott’s back from the blindside.</p>
<p>His fifth sack came with about 13 minutes left in the game. He ran around the Cowboys’ fill-in lineman once more for that quarterback takedown. Clayborn also forced two fumbles in the game, including one for his sixth sack and fumble with just 3:23 remaining in the contest.</p>
<p>“It just hurts because I feel like this was on my shoulders,” <a href="http://www.dallascowboys.com/node/446886" type="external">Green told reporters after the game</a>. “I feel like I let the team down.”</p>
<p>Green was filling in at tackle for All-Pro <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tyron-Smith/" type="external">Tyron Smith</a>, who is out with a groin injury.</p>
<p>Clayborn’s six sacks are a Falcons record. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Derrick_Thomas/" type="external">Derrick Thomas</a> had seven in 1990 against the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Seattle-Seahawks/" type="external">Seattle Seahawks</a> and six in 1998 against the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Oakland-Raiders/" type="external">Oakland Raiders</a>. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/New_York_Giants/" type="external">New York Giants</a> legend <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Osi_Umenyiora/" type="external">Osi Umenyiora</a> had six sacks in 2007 against the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Philadelphia-Eagles/" type="external">Philadelphia Eagles</a>, as did <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/San-Francisco-49ers/" type="external">San Francisco 49ers</a>‘ <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Fred_Dean/" type="external">Fred Dean</a> in 1983 against the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/New-Orleans-Saints/" type="external">New Orleans Saints</a>.</p>
<p>“I didn’t know at one point,” Clayborn told reporters, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIxw-G35CoA" type="external">according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution</a>. “I didn’t know if they count certain ones for half sacks, but I’m just happy for the win. It has been a tough season for us, but we are back on the right track. I feel like these last couple weeks our whole d-line is playing a lot better. We’ve been playing together. It’s a long time coming but it’s finally here.”</p>
<p>Former Falcons defensive end Chuck Smith commented on Clayborn’s performance on Twitter, hoping he would get a seventh sack.</p>
<p>“Loving watching @AJaClay using the cross Chop. It’s like poetry in motion, wanna see him get 3 more! #BreakTheRecord #Falcons #DrRush #RiseUp #ATLvsDAL,” Smith tweeted.</p>
<p>“Thank you sir for the pass rush wisdom and <a href="https://twitter.com/AJaClay/status/930046759270838272" type="external">teaching me the good</a> stuff!” Clayborn responded.</p>
<p>Clayborn, 29, was a first round pick in the 2011 NFL Draft by the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tampa-Bay-Buccaneers/" type="external">Tampa Bay Buccaneers</a>. He now has eight sacks this season, the third-highest total in the NFC.</p> | Adrian Clayborn: Watch all six of his sacks in Atlanta Falcons win vs. Dallas Cowboys | false | https://newsline.com/adrian-clayborn-watch-all-six-of-his-sacks-in-atlanta-falcons-win-vs-dallas-cowboys/ | 2017-11-13 | 1 |
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<p />
<p>As President Trump travels to Arizona for his first rally since the Virginia uproar, the Phoenix Mayor, Democrat Greg Stanton, asked him to possibly postpone Tuesday's event scheduled for 7pm MST.</p>
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<p />
<p>The mayor was quoted in the Washington Post today: "America is hurting. And it is hurting largely because Trump has doused racial tensions with gasoline. With his planned visit to Phoenix on Tuesday, I fear the president may be looking to light a match."</p>
<p>Large protests could greet the republican President this evening as he makes his first campaign rally since he caused an uproar with his remarks about a white nationalist demonstration in Virginia. According to social media postings by resident activists, several anti-Trump demonstrations are already planned.</p>
<p>Although the White House has not released an official statement, it was understood that some White House officials had privately expressed concerns that the President's planned Phoenix rally might arouse tension again just at the moment that things seemed to be cooling down in the press.</p>
<p>Arizona politicians are not known as friends of Trump. Two resident Republican U.S. senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake are vocal critics of the President and have clashed with him on many issues.</p>
<p>And even Republican Governor Doug Ducey informed the Arizona Republic on Monday that though he would welcome Trump on the tarmac, he would not attend the campaign rally.</p>
<p>Source.</p>
<p><a href="http://news.trust.org/item/20170822100445-tcba4/" type="external">news.trust.org/item/20170822100445-tcba4</a></p>
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<p /> | Breaking - Democrat Phoenix Mayor asks Trump to Delay Rally as Protests Expected | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/7014-Breaking-Democrat-Phoenix-Mayor-asks-Trump-to-Delay-Rally-as-Protests-Expected | 2017-08-22 | 0 |
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<p>LUCCA, Italy — Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations met Monday to try to forge a common response to the deadly chemical attack in Syria, with new sanctions against Russian backers of President Bashar Assad one of the options on the table.</p>
<p>G-7 diplomats sitting down for talks in the centuries-old Ducal Palace in Lucca, Italy, hope to use outrage over the attack and wide international support for the United States’ retaliatory missile strikes to push Russia to abandon Assad and join a new peace effort for Syria.</p>
<p>Members of the group also hope to gain a sense from U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of President Donald Trump’s next steps and foreign-policy goals.</p>
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<p>Speaking after meeting with Tillerson, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said ministers “will be discussing the possibility of further sanctions, certainly, on some of the Syrian military figures and indeed on some of the Russian military figures.”</p>
<p>He said Russia had a choice: to continue backing the “toxic” Assad regime, “or to work with the rest of the world to find a solution for Syria, a political solution.”</p>
<p>Last week’s nerve gas attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed more than 80 people, stirred Trump — who was previously cool to the idea of U.S. intervention — to strike for the first time at Assad’s forces. U.S. warships fired 59 cruise missiles at the Syrian air base from which the U.S. believes the attack was launched.</p>
<p>The U.S. strikes drew support from other Western leaders who have been uncertain what to make of Trump’s foreign policy. Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said Sunday that Europe’s broad support for the U.S. military strikes had contributed to a “renewed harmony” between the United States and its partners.</p>
<p>In a gesture weighted with symbolism, Tillerson visited the site of a World War II-era Nazi massacre in central Italy on Monday. He said the United States was rededicating itself to hold to account “any and all” who commit crimes against innocent people.</p>
<p>Tillerson accompanied Alfano to Santa’Anna di Stazzema, where 560 civilians, including some 130 children, were killed in 1944.</p>
<p>The two-day G-7 meeting in the Tuscan walled city of Lucca is bringing together the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Britain, Japan and Canada, the U.S. and current G-7 president Italy, as well as European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.</p>
<p>Ahead of the full meeting, Tillerson held bilateral talks with G-7 counterparts including Britain’s Johnson, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida.</p>
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<p>Kishida said that “Japan supports the U.S. commitment in trying to take responsibility to prevent spread and use of chemical weapons and we confirmed Japan and the U.S. will continue to work together (in that effort).”</p>
<p>Tillerson also spoke by phone with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, whose government insists Assad should play no role in Syria’s future.</p>
<p>The G-7 meeting comes as the United States is sending a Navy carrier strike group toward the Korean Peninsula in a show of strength following North Korea’s persistent ballistic missile tests.</p>
<p>It is also taking place amid an ongoing terror threat that was underscored by the Palm Sunday bombing of Coptic churches in Egypt claimed by the Islamic State group, and another truck attack on European soil, this time in Stockholm, on Friday.</p>
<p>Syria, though, topped the agenda.</p>
<p>The chemical attack has sent a new chill through relations between the West and Moscow, which backs Assad diplomatically and militarily and denies Syrian forces used chemical weapons.</p>
<p>Russia planned to put forward a proposal on Monday for an independent and impartial investigation of the attack, a spokesman for German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said, calling it “a good and important sign.”</p>
<p>Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, whose government is another backer of Assad’s, also called for an independent inquiry under U.N. auspices when he spoke Monday to Alfano, Italy’s foreign ministry said in a statement.</p>
<p>The United States is fighting Islamic State group militants in Syria, but had previously avoided striking government forces, largely out of concern about being pulled into a military conflict with Russia, whose relations with the West have been on a downward spiral for several years.</p>
<p>Russia was kicked out of the club of industrialized nations, formerly the G-8, after its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and assistance for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>The flipside of the talk about sanctions from Johnson and other diplomats is an implicit promise that Moscow could be allowed to rejoin the G-8, if it drops its support for Assad.</p>
<p>“I think the Russians need a way out and a way forward,” Johnson said.</p>
<p>The British foreign secretary had been due to visit Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow before the G-7 meeting. Johnson canceled the trip at the last minute, saying the chemical attack had “changed the situation fundamentally.”</p>
<p>His decision drew taunts from opponents that Johnson was a “poodle” of the Americans who had been told to stay home so he would not upstage Tillerson.</p>
<p>But Johnson said Monday that “it is the Americans who have changed the game by using those cruise missiles,” and it was right for the rest of the G-7 unite behind Tillerson.</p>
<p>Washington has sent mixed signals about whether it shares the determination of allies such as Britain that Assad must be removed from power.</p>
<p>After the April 4 chemical attack, Trump said his attitude toward Assad “has changed very much” and Tillerson said “steps are underway” to organize a coalition to remove him from power.</p>
<p>However, Tillerson said in television interviews that aired Sunday that the top U.S. priority in the region remains the defeat of Islamic State militants.</p>
<p>Among European nations, there are also differences. While Britain stressed pressure on Russia and removing Assad, Germany’s Gabriel emphasized that Russia and Iran must be part of the peace process for Syria.</p>
<p>“Now is the right moment to talk about how we can push for a peace process in Syria within the international community — with Russia, with Iran, with Saudi Arabia, with Europe, with the United States,” he said as he arrived. “To prevent military violence to escalate on and on, it’s all about this.”</p>
<p>_____</p>
<p>Colleen Barry in Milan and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.</p> | G-7 ministers seek unity in bid to press Russia over Assad | false | https://abqjournal.com/985387/g-7-ministers-aim-to-press-russia-to-stop-backing-assad.html | 2017-04-10 | 2 |
<p />
<p>The South Korean court overseeing Hanjin Shipping Co's &lt;117930.KS&gt; receivership process plans to put the collapsed shipper's Asia-U.S. operations up for sale as early as Friday, a court spokesman said on Thursday.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The spokesman declined to comment on potential price or interested parties for the assets.</p>
<p>Hanjin Shipping, which applied for court receivership in late August, is due to submit a rehabilitation plan to a Seoul court in December.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Writing by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)</p> | Hanjin Shipping Asia-U.S. operations to be put up for sale as early as Friday: South Korea court | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/10/12/hanjin-shipping-asia-us-operations-to-be-put-up-for-sale-as-early-as-friday.html | 2016-10-13 | 0 |
<p>In today’s film news roundup, thriller “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/three-seconds/" type="external">Three Seconds</a>” gets distribution through Aviron, Samuel Goldwyn buys “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/saturday-church/" type="external">Saturday Church</a>,” Gravitas picks up frat thriller “ <a href="http://variety.com/t/haze/" type="external">Haze</a>,” and the fourth “Insidious” movie gets a new title.</p>
<p>ACQUISITIONS</p>
<p>Aviron Pictures has bought North American distribution rights to Andrea Di Stefano’s thriller “Three Seconds,” starring Joel Kinnaman, Rosamund Pike, Clive Owen, Common, and Ana de Armas.</p>
<p>The script, based on the Swedish novel by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström, was written by Matt Cook with revisions by Rowan Joffé and Alex Garland, and current edits by Di Stefano.</p>
<p>Kinnaman plays a reformed criminal and former special ops soldier who, in order to free himself from jail,&#160; has been working undercover for crooked FBI handlers (played by Pike, Common, and Owen) to infiltrate the Polish mob’s drug trade in New York.</p>
<p>Thunder Road Pictures’ Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee are producing alongside The Fyzz Facility’s Wayne Marc Godfrey, Robert Jones, Mark Lane and James Harris, and Ollie Madden. The Fyzz Facility is also financing the film. Thunder Road’s Jonathan Fuhrman and Magnolia Entertainment’s Shelley Browning are the executive producers.</p>
<p>Aviron picked up “Three Seconds” in advance of the Toronto Film Festival. Acquisitions head Jason Resnick brokered the deal for Aviron Pictures. Bloom handled international sales.</p>
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<p>Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired Damon Cardasis’ coming-of-age musical drama “Saturday Church,” and plans a release in January for theaters, on demand, and digital.</p>
<p>“Saturday Church” stars Luka Kain, Margot Bingham, Regina Taylor (“The Unit”), Marquis Rodriguez, MJ Rodriguez (“The Carrie Diaries”), Indya Moore, Alexia Garcia, Kate Bornstein, and Jaylin Fletcher.</p>
<p>The movie centers on a 14-year-old boy who finds himself coping with new responsibilities as “man of the house” after the death of his father — along with struggling with questions about his gender identity. He finds an escape by creating a world of fantasy filled with dance and music. His life takes a turn for the better when he encounters members of a transgender community who take him to “Saturday Church” — a program for LGBTQ youth.</p>
<p>“Saturday Church” is a Spring Pictures and Round Films presentation in association with 19340 Productions. The film was written and directed by Cardasis, who also produced with Mandy Tagger-Brockey, Adi Ezroni, and Rebecca Miller. The executive producers are Sharon Chang, Luigi Caiola, Isabel Henderson, and Lia Mayer-Sommer.</p>
<p>The deal was negotiated by Peter Goldwyn of Samuel Goldwyn Films and Marc Simon of Fox Rothschild on behalf of the filmmakers. CAA repped the film for North America and WestEnd Films handles international rights.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Gravitas Ventures has acquired&#160;North American rights to filmmaker David Burkman’s thriller “Haze,” Variety has learned exclusively.</p>
<p>Written and directed by Burkman, the film stars Kirk Curran, Mike Blejer, Jeremy O’Shea, Kristin Rogers, and Sophia Medley. “Haze” will hit theaters on Oct. 13, followed by a release on all digital platforms on Oct. 17.</p>
<p>The film takes place in the aftermath of a brutal hazing death, when a college freshman’s desire to join a fraternity is threatened when his older brother launches an anti-hazing crusade. Burkman also produced with Jayme Aronberg.</p>
<p>“Hollywood has always been fascinated with Greek Life, but ever since the seminal ‘Animal House,’ the genre tends towards comedy, and the depictions of hazing are usually innocuous,” Burkman said. “‘Haze’ is an uncompromising look at what really goes on behind fraternity and sorority house walls. We are thrilled to work with Gravitas and their daring team to get this unique film into the world.”</p>
<p>The&#160;deal was negotiated by Chad Miller of Gravitas, and by Verve on behalf of the filmmakers.</p>
<p>TITLES</p>
<p>Universal Pictures and Sony Pictures have re-titled “Insidious: Chapter 4” as “Insidious: The Last Key,” set for release on Jan. 5.</p>
<p>U.S. theatrical distribution will be handled by Universal, and Sony Pictures Releasing and SPWA’s Stage 6 Films will distribute the film outside of the U.S.</p>
<p>Lin Shaye returns as a parapsychologist facing a fearsome and personal haunting in&#160;her own family home.&#160;The film is written by co-creator Leigh Whannell — who also penned the trilogy and directed “Chapter 3” — and produced by Jason Blum, Oren Peli, and co-creator James Wan.</p>
<p>Series newcomer Adam Robitel (“The Taking of Deborah Logan”) directs. Also starring are Angus Sampson, Whannell, Josh Stewart, Caitlin Gerard, Kirk Acevedo, Javier Botet, Bruce Davison, Spencer Locke, Tessa Ferrer, Ava Kolker, and Marcus Henderson.</p>
<p>AWARDS</p>
<p>The <a href="http://variety.com/t/national-board-of-review/" type="external">National Board of Review</a> has moved its annual film awards gala back five days to Jan.&#160; 9.</p>
<p>Willie Geist will return as host for the fourth year in a row. The celebration will be held at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City, where it has taken place for more than a decade. Recipients of the organization’s year-end honors will be named on Nov. 28, as previously announced.</p>
<p>The National Board of Review’s awards include best picture, director, actor and actress, original and adapted screenplay, breakthrough performance, and directorial debut, as well as the&#160;William K. Everson Award for Film History, Freedom of Expression, and the NBR Spotlight Award.</p>
<p>This past year’s NBR winners included Oscar recipients “Manchester by the Sea” and”Moonlight.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The American Film Institute has set its <a href="http://variety.com/t/afi-awards/" type="external">AFI Awards</a> ceremonies for Jan. 5, when it will announce the 10 most outstanding films and 10 most outstanding television programs of the year.</p>
<p>The annual gathering at a private luncheon honors the creative ensemble as a whole — those in front of and behind the camera. It’s the 18th year in which the awards have been given.</p>
<p>Honorees are selected by a jury process comprised of experts from across the moving image communities — including film and television artists, critics, scholars, and AFI trustees.</p> | Film News Roundup: Rosamund Pike, Joel Kinnaman, Clive Owen Thriller ‘Three Seconds’ Gets U.S. Distribution | false | https://newsline.com/film-news-roundup-rosamund-pike-joel-kinnaman-clive-owen-thriller-three-seconds-gets-u-s-distribution/ | 2017-09-05 | 1 |
<p>CARSON CITY — The next generation of Nevada infants may have state lawmakers to thank for increased access to their mother’s milk.</p>
<p>Breastfeeding infants, it turns out, command a diverse lobbying coalition in Nevada. Child advocates, labor groups and hospitals are among the entities supporting Assembly Bill 113. They turned out in force on Monday, when the bill was heard in the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee.</p>
<p>The bill would require most private and government workplaces to provide mothers a break, paid or unpaid, and a clean, private place to “express milk.” That’s different from directly breastfeeding a baby. Instead, it’s a process for a mother to produce and store breast milk for the baby’s use later.</p>
<p>As simple as it sounds, mothers still run into problems.</p>
<p>“One teacher even told me that her principal told her she needed to pump her milk in the janitor’s closet,” Assembly Assistant Majority Whip Ellen Spiegel, D-Henderson, the bill’s sponsor, told the committee.</p>
<p>Similar stories came out at the meeting. Meghan Trahan, who is seven months pregnant, testified from Las Vegas that a hospital she worked at forced her to use an unlocked shower stall stocked with cleaning supplies.</p>
<p>The bill would apply to all mothers within the first year of their child’s birth.</p>
<p>The measure mirrors a federal law that covers private employers. The bill is needed to cover public-sector employees without federal protections in case the federal statute changes, Spiegel said.</p>
<p>Workers would be able to file a complaint with their local health board if there is a dispute over compliance. The law allows local health boards to have voluntary mediation programs to resolve disputes.</p>
<p>Employers who don’t comply would be subject to a $5,000 penalty. The bill exempts private employers with fewer than 50 employees if providing the accommodations would create a hardship.</p>
<p>Paul Moradkhan, a lobbyist for the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce, testified in support of the bill, saying it provides a balanced approach to the needs of mothers and workplaces.</p>
<p>The bill has some exceptions. The Nevada Department of Corrections is exempt, due to staffing and security concerns. Spiegel said her hope is that mothers there could work out a solution with supervisors.</p>
<p>The bill also includes language proposed by the Nevada Association of General Contractors that exempts off-site construction projects that are more than 3 miles from a contractor’s place of business.</p>
<p>Randi Thompson, a lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Businesses, said the bill should be clarified to apply to businesses with the full-time equivalent of 50 or more employees.</p>
<p>For example, she said, at a Jimmy John’s sandwich restaurant, the business can be above the 50-employee threshold when taking into account part-time employees, including delivery drivers.</p>
<p>The Review-Journal’s Bizuayehu Tesfaye contributed to this report. Contact Ben Botkin at [email protected] or 775-461-0661. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/BenBotkin1" type="external">@BenBotkin1</a> on Twitter.</p> | ‘Express milk’ bill for mothers gets plenty of support in Nevada | false | https://reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/express-milk-bill-for-mothers-gets-plenty-of-support-in-nevada/ | 2017-02-27 | 1 |
<p>Yuri Gripas/Reuters</p>
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<p>Law enforcement officials have found no evidence supporting President Donald Trump’s assertions that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 election, FBI Director James Comey said Monday.</p>
<p>“With respect to the president’s tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets,” Comey said during a House intelligence committee hearing on Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election. “We have looked carefully inside the FBI.”</p>
<p>Comey added that the Justice Department hasn’t turned up any evidence backing Trump’s claims, either. “The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components: The department has no information that supports those tweets,” he said.</p>
<p>Comey’s remarks on Monday are the latest public rejections of Trump’s wiretapping claims from high-ranking officials, many of whom have called on the president to apologize for the accusation. Trump, however, has refused to back down from his claims, despite increasing pressure from lawmakers on <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/17/politics/tom-cole-donald-trump-apology/" type="external">both sides of the aisle</a>.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>At the hearing, when asked by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) whether as part of the Obama administration Comey had engaged in McCarthyism, Comey jokingly responded that he tries “not to engage in any ‘isms’ of any kind, including McCarthyism.”</p>
<p>Moments later, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers dismissed suggestions by the Trump administration that the Obama administration had asked a British spy agency to conduct surveillance on Trump during the campaign.</p>
<p>“Did you ever request that your counterparts in GCHQ [the British version of the NSA] should wiretap Mr. Trump on behalf of President Obama?”</p>
<p>“No, sir. Nor would I,” responded Rogers.</p>
<p>Schiff then asked if there was any evidence that anyone else in the Obama administration did so.</p>
<p>“No, sir,” Rogers said again. “I have seen nothing on the NSA said that we engaged in such activity, nor that anyone ever asked us to engage in such activity.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>This story has been updated.</p>
<p /> | Comey: FBI Has No Evidence Obama Wiretapped Trump Tower | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/comey-fbi-has-no-evidence-obama-wiretapped-trump-towers/ | 2017-03-20 | 4 |
<p>From <a href="http://www.aintitcool.com/node/40385" type="external">Ain’t It Cool News</a> via <a href="http://www.towleroad.com/2009/03/sacha-baron-cohens-bruno-to-preview-at-sxsw.html" type="external">Towleroad</a> come the first reviews of Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s bigger, badder and oh-so-much-gayer followup to Borat. We’ve covered Bruno’s shenanigans as he <a href="" type="internal">terrorized Kansas</a> and <a href="" type="internal">punked a former Mossad agent</a>, but apparently those are only the tamest of the antics on display. The movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0889583/" type="external">doesn’t come out until July 10</a> (with the first “official” sneak peak taking place <a href="http://theenvelope.latimes.com/entertainment/env-et-bruno-sxsw-mar11,0,7174786.story" type="external">at the upcoming SXSW</a>), but a couple lucky ducks got into early test screenings and sent their thoughts to Ain’t It Cool. I hope they’re legit, as both reviews were filled with gushing, hyperbolic praise: the first called the film “everything I was hoping for—shocking, jaw-dropping and TOTALLY FUCKING HILARIOUS,” while the second managed to quantify Bruno as “10 times sharper, wittier and altogether ballsier” than Borat. Not bad. Apparently the plot revolves around the Austrian fashion reporter character we know and love trying to “make it big”:</p>
<p>He heads to the US to become a famous celebrity, but everything he tries to make himself famous – shooting a tv pilot, being an extra in a movie, bringing peace to the middle east, adopting a baby – doesn’t work, and he concludes it’s his gayness that’s holding him back. So he decides to become straight and the last third of the film revolve around his efforts to become a “normal” heterosexual male, climaxing (pun intended) with him hosting a cage fight for thousands of crazy rednecks.</p>
<p>So great. The film sounds like a wild ride, but more than anything, it was heartening to see two clearly (insistently!) heterosexual reviewers give the film props for its expose of anti-gay prejudice, with one saying Baron Cohen has “huge, ginormous balls” for putting himself in dangerous situations to make clear that “homophobia is alive and well in the US.” The reviews also gave away the names of some music mega-stars who contributed a song to the film, although I’ll let you decide if you want to <a href="http://www.aintitcool.com/node/40385" type="external">click through</a> for that little spoiler.</p> | Bruno: “F***ing Awesome” | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/bruno-fing-awesome/ | 2009-03-11 | 4 |
<p>PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) _ These Oregon lotteries were drawn Sunday:</p>
<p>Lucky Lines</p>
<p>02-06-12-14-FREE-17-24-27-31</p>
<p>(two, six, twelve, fourteen, FREE, seventeen, twenty-four, twenty-seven, thirty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $28,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $63 million</p>
<p>Pick 4 10PM</p>
<p>2-0-1-2</p>
<p>(two, zero, one, two)</p>
<p>Pick 4 1PM</p>
<p>3-9-7-6</p>
<p>(three, nine, seven, six)</p>
<p>Pick 4 4PM</p>
<p>2-5-9-2</p>
<p>(two, five, nine, two)</p>
<p>Pick 4 7PM</p>
<p>9-5-6-9</p>
<p>(nine, five, six, nine)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $92 million</p>
<p>PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) _ These Oregon lotteries were drawn Sunday:</p>
<p>Lucky Lines</p>
<p>02-06-12-14-FREE-17-24-27-31</p>
<p>(two, six, twelve, fourteen, FREE, seventeen, twenty-four, twenty-seven, thirty-one)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $28,000</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $63 million</p>
<p>Pick 4 10PM</p>
<p>2-0-1-2</p>
<p>(two, zero, one, two)</p>
<p>Pick 4 1PM</p>
<p>3-9-7-6</p>
<p>(three, nine, seven, six)</p>
<p>Pick 4 4PM</p>
<p>2-5-9-2</p>
<p>(two, five, nine, two)</p>
<p>Pick 4 7PM</p>
<p>9-5-6-9</p>
<p>(nine, five, six, nine)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $92 million</p> | OR Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/5d3e42e3b56245d18e608c0b6c2a9bd1 | 2018-01-22 | 2 |
<p>The right’s relentless campaign to demonize immigrants is an openly racist attempt to “make America white again.” There is no ethical justification for deporting productive, law-abiding people, who have lived here since childhood, to countries they never knew as home. But Republicans are determined to conflate these good neighbors with criminals and force them to leave their families and businesses for no reason other than their hatred of what they consider dark-skinned invaders.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NewsCorpse/posts/2031537810194337" type="external" /></p>
<p>Consistent with their support for conservative bigotry, Fox News invited right-wing radio talker Wayne Dupree to discuss immigration with the knuckleheads of Fox and Friends (video below). The discussion was triggered by a clip from CNN wherein host Brooke Baldwin stated the obvious truth that it’s wrong to imply that all immigrants are criminals. Well, that indisputable fact was too much for the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends to comprehend.</p>
<p>The Fox segment featured a banner that read: “CNN Analyst: Trump Labels Illegals as Killers.” Setting aside the racist and insulting “Illegals” rhetoric, it was otherwise accurate. Trump has been tying immigrants to criminals since the day he announced his candidacy. But co-host Steve Doocy still had to admit that he couldn’t understand what Baldwin was talking about:</p>
<p>Doocy: You’ve got her saying that people are here for all kinds of valid and patriotic reasons. I don’t get that part. Dupree: Oh, I do. It’s easy. CNN is trying to raise their ratings. They need illegal immigrants to watch their ratings, to get their ratings back up so that’s why they’re calling them patriotic. Listen, I don’t know what’s going on over there, whether it’s wacky tobacky or Latin lettuce in the break rooms or what not, but the American people right now, we want our polticians to enforce the laws.</p>
<p>Are you friggin’ kidding me? This deep-fried dope is in the media business and has no idea how ratings work. Does he think that immigrants dash across the border and are picked up by representatives from Nielsen Media who immediately start to register their TV viewing habits? This is too stupid, even for Fox News. Yet Dupree portrayed it as the “easy” answer to Doocy’s asinine question.</p>
<p>And if that weren’t enough, Dupree then implies that CNN’s reporters are drug users, and that results in them opposing law enforcement. Does anything coming out of his mouth make the slightest bit of sense? And before you answer that, consider this unadulterated nonsense:</p>
<p>Dupree: Illegal immigrants…don’t have any allegiance to this country. They don’t care about this country. And that’s why they can go out drinking and run over a rising NFL star.</p>
<p>What the F…? If anyone is high here, it’s Dupree. There is simply no discernible logic in that statement. Does he really think that anyone would get drunk, then take the car out for spin because they don’t like America? That would be stupid enough by itself, but it’s even worse when accusing people who take great risks to come to this country of not caring about it. What’s more, if Dupree thinks that drunk driving fatalities are caused by people who don’t like America, then let him explain the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html" type="external">10,000 annual deaths</a> caused by drunk driving American citizens.</p>
<p>This idiotic argument is nothing new for Fox News. They exploited the same sort of thing with the tragic death of Kate Steinle. In that case an immigrant accidentally fired a gun he had found. He was acquitted of any criminal homicide charges. And every time there is any crime committed by an undocumented resident, Fox News goes bonkers trying to associate the crime with the person’s residency status. Which has nothing to do with the crime. Something else that Fox News will never accept is the fact that undocumented immigrants <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/immigrants-commit-less-crime-than-native-born-americans-trump-speech-2017-3" type="external">commit far fewer crimes</a> than native-born citizens. But why let facts get in the way of a good racist narrative?</p>
<p>How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QSSMOES/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00QSSMOES&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=newscorpsecom-20&amp;linkId=TLI6JC2OYE22MUTS" type="external">Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.</a> Available now at Amazon.</p>
<p /> | So Stupid: Fox News Guest Says CNN ‘Needs Illegal Immigrants to Get Their Ratings Up’ | true | http://newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p%3D25881 | 4 |
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<p>FONTANA, Calif. (AP) — Kevin Harvick apparently isn’t satisfied with dominating just one NASCAR race series this year.</p>
<p>Harvick earned his second Xfinity Series win of his phenomenal season Saturday, easily holding off Brendan Gaughan at Auto Club Speedway.</p>
<p>Harvick led 100 of the 150 laps in his JR Motorsports Chevrolet while cruising to victory on the 2-mile oval in his native California.</p>
<p>“We’ve been close to winning here before, but today was a day that was pretty much flawless from start to finish,” Harvick said. “Everything is clicking right now, and you’ve just got to keep riding the wave.”</p>
<p>Harvick is hanging ten on a tidal wave lately: He has won two Sprint Cup Series races and finished second in the other two heading into Sunday’s race. He also won the Xfinity race at Atlanta, and finished third in his only other start.</p>
<p>The record is intimidating, but Harvick is making it look fairly easy. He was 3.317 seconds ahead of Gaughan on Saturday, suggesting the Sprint Cup field should be even more wary of the field’s streaking leader.</p>
<p>“A lot of fun to drive the race cars right now,” Harvick said. “For me as the driver, making laps around this place and knowing what seam does what ... I feel like the more laps I can make, the better off I’m going to be tomorrow.”</p>
<p>Although Harvick was the only Sprint Cup driver who finished in the top seven, 12 Sprint Cup drivers ran the Xfinity Fontana race this weekend to gain familiarity with NASCAR’s new rules package on a 2-mile track.</p>
<p>“Kevin is automatic pretty much every time he gets in the car,” team co-owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “He does a great job. We’re looking forward to what he’s going to do the rest of the year. He’s going to be in the car several times. Obviously he’s an amazing race car driver.”</p>
<p>The 39-year-old Gaughan had a career-best finish in second place, but the former Georgetown basketball walk-on hoped in vain for a late chance to blast past the dominant car.</p>
<p>“You can never say you’re going to beat Kevin Harvick on a restart, but man, I would have loved a shot,” Gaughan said. “His Chevrolet was on a mission today.”</p>
<p>Harvick is the 20th straight Sprint Cup driver to win the Xfinity race at Fontana. Kyle Larson, the defending champion, finished seventh after holding off Harvick on the final lap last year.</p>
<p>Pole sitter Erik Jones finished third, and Chase Elliott was fourth. Chris Buescher sits second in the Xfinity points standings after finishing fifth, just five points behind overall leader Ty Dillon, who was 14th at Fontana.</p>
<p>FONTANA, Calif. (AP) — Kevin Harvick apparently isn’t satisfied with dominating just one NASCAR race series this year.</p>
<p>Harvick earned his second Xfinity Series win of his phenomenal season Saturday, easily holding off Brendan Gaughan at Auto Club Speedway.</p>
<p>Harvick led 100 of the 150 laps in his JR Motorsports Chevrolet while cruising to victory on the 2-mile oval in his native California.</p>
<p>“We’ve been close to winning here before, but today was a day that was pretty much flawless from start to finish,” Harvick said. “Everything is clicking right now, and you’ve just got to keep riding the wave.”</p>
<p>Harvick is hanging ten on a tidal wave lately: He has won two Sprint Cup Series races and finished second in the other two heading into Sunday’s race. He also won the Xfinity race at Atlanta, and finished third in his only other start.</p>
<p>The record is intimidating, but Harvick is making it look fairly easy. He was 3.317 seconds ahead of Gaughan on Saturday, suggesting the Sprint Cup field should be even more wary of the field’s streaking leader.</p>
<p>“A lot of fun to drive the race cars right now,” Harvick said. “For me as the driver, making laps around this place and knowing what seam does what ... I feel like the more laps I can make, the better off I’m going to be tomorrow.”</p>
<p>Although Harvick was the only Sprint Cup driver who finished in the top seven, 12 Sprint Cup drivers ran the Xfinity Fontana race this weekend to gain familiarity with NASCAR’s new rules package on a 2-mile track.</p>
<p>“Kevin is automatic pretty much every time he gets in the car,” team co-owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “He does a great job. We’re looking forward to what he’s going to do the rest of the year. He’s going to be in the car several times. Obviously he’s an amazing race car driver.”</p>
<p>The 39-year-old Gaughan had a career-best finish in second place, but the former Georgetown basketball walk-on hoped in vain for a late chance to blast past the dominant car.</p>
<p>“You can never say you’re going to beat Kevin Harvick on a restart, but man, I would have loved a shot,” Gaughan said. “His Chevrolet was on a mission today.”</p>
<p>Harvick is the 20th straight Sprint Cup driver to win the Xfinity race at Fontana. Kyle Larson, the defending champion, finished seventh after holding off Harvick on the final lap last year.</p>
<p>Pole sitter Erik Jones finished third, and Chase Elliott was fourth. Chris Buescher sits second in the Xfinity points standings after finishing fifth, just five points behind overall leader Ty Dillon, who was 14th at Fontana.</p> | Kevin Harvick cruises to Xfinity Series win at Fontana | false | https://apnews.com/deec1b1e61824848803a8305810c00c0 | 2015-03-21 | 2 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>It sounds unbelievable. But no, this is not a satire article. A California school is coming under fire after planning a Black History Month lunch menu. That’s not so bad, right? But instead of including traditional African foods or the like, the menu consists almost exclusively of foods reflecting racial stereotypes: fried chicken, cornbread and watermelon.</p>
<p>The Carondelet High School for Girls is a private institution in Concord, California. Parents of students and throughout the Bay Area in general have been voicing their outrage over the school’s menu.</p>
<p>After the pressure put on the school by the community, Principal Nancy Libby said the offensive menu items will be removed. Bay Area NBC reported that she also pledged that the campus will hold a “diversity assembly”, set to include both faculty and students.</p>
<p>“I’d like to apologize for the announcement and any hurt this caused students, parents or community members,” an apology letter penned by Libby said. “Please know that at no time at Carondelet do we wish to perpetrate racial stereotypes.”</p>
<p>A screen capture of the image from the Bay Area NBC broadcast is below:</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>University of San Francisco professor James Taylor said that while the lunch may have been well-intended,&#160;“Chicken, watermelon, collard greens — these stereotypes of black Southern culture that come from the same place where the N-word comes from.”</p>
<p>If ever you thought we were in a “post-racial era,” incidences like this should be a splash of cold water on your face.</p>
<p>(Article by M.B. David and Shante Wooten; image via Shutterstock)</p> | California School Makes ‘Black History Month’ Menu of Fried Chicken, Watermelon and Cornbread | true | http://politicalblindspot.com/california-school-makes-black-history-month-menu-of-fried-chicken-watermelon-and-cornbread/ | 2014-02-07 | 4 |
<p>America’s tragedy is that we have three neoliberals left in the presidential race, at a time when, as Martin Wolf correctly pointed out in Wednesday’s Financial Times, neoliberalism has collapsed. The bailout by the Fed of Bear Stearns sounded the death knell for 30 years of deregulation.</p>
<p>How have McCain, Clinton and Obama adjusted to the new facts of life, at a moment when the entire system is still tottering?</p>
<p>The Republican, John McCain, has confirmed his own low estimates of his grasp of economic policy by announcing that he is opposed to any strengthening of financial regulation to prevent the shenanigans that caused the subprime and “securitization” catastrophes which have provoked the current credit crisis. At a moment when the costs of federal bailout and the incoming recession are certain to require a big increase in the US government deficit, he wants to cut spending.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton shuttles between criticisms of McCain’s stance and her formal declaration in one recent speech that she wants Clinton-era Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, and former Fed chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker to lead a “high-level emergency working group” to recommend ways to restructure at-risk mortgages to help avert more foreclosures.</p>
<p>Her nomination of Rubin and Greenspan scarcely encourages confidence in Mrs C’s oft-proclaimed capacity to hit the ground running in times of crisis. Rubin was the arch deregulator in Bill Clinton’s second term. It was Rubin who successfully pushed for repeal in 1999 of the Glass Steagall Act which, amidst financial collapse in early 1933 (when Roosevelt closed down the banking system altogether) placed regulatory barriers between commercial and investment banking.</p>
<p>As fed chairman in the Clinton and early Bush years Greenspan deliberately encouraged the growth of speculative bubbles. He chose in 1996 not to set margin requirements on stock market speculators and in later years fiercely advocated the deregulation of the financial system. His fingerprints are all over the sub-prime disaster.</p>
<p>This brings us to the man who, on the basis of current delegate counts, will be the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. His track record in matters of economic policy is slight, beyond some big favors extended in his senatorial term to Wall St which have earned him grateful campaign funding from this quarter. It would be the matter of an hour for any capable and economically informed speech writer to draft a speech for Obama which could politely savage Mrs Clinton’s claims that she has the maturity and experience to handle the nation’s economic affairs in what is sure to be a darkish time, at the start of 2009.</p>
<p>In recent days partially released records of Mrs Clinton’s White House log have disclosed that contrary to recent assertions she was an ardent lobbyist for the trade treaties that have shut down American factories by the thousand. Equally, he could deride her blue-ribbon panel of Rubin, Greenspan and Volcker. But here we come to the disturbing fact that Obama cannot bring himself, as a Democrat, to rock the boat by pointing out that the Clinton era was a feeding trough for the rich, but sparse in rewards for everyone else. Granted, he has put a toe or two in the water. He’s bringing up the repeal of Glass Steagall. But he should turn up the volume fast.</p>
<p>As for the phone ringing at 2 am: My guess is that President McCain would be flat on his back, snoring off cocktails, a fine claret and brandy to follow; Obama would be getting an earful from Michele about wimping out to Wall Street; Hillary would be reaching out a drowsy hand to check whether by mistake Bill hadn’t ended up in the same bed and Ralph would be on the phone already, using all available lines.</p>
<p>My Escape from the Titanic</p>
<p>I flew home from London to San Francisco from Heathrow’s new Terminal 5, inhabited solely by British Airways. I flew on March 27, the day it opened. As the world now knows, this was a day of epic British humiliation. For weeks the British newspapers and television channels had been vaunting the marvels of T5: miles of baggage conveyors rushing luggage swiftly from check-in point through entrails of steel to airplane hold; the gospel of efficiency bodied forth in this new temple of modernism.</p>
<p>The trouble is that the British just aren’t very good at this kind of thing. Year after year Q used to hand James Bond his attaché case of handy devices ­ a flame thrower in a handspray, a book which fired bullets out its spine. There was the Aston DB5 with ejector seat and saw blades in the wheel hubs. The cycle of Bond films began just when the Labor prime minister Harold Wilson was urging the nation to cast aside the archaic vestments of the past and bathe itself in the ‘white heat of technology’. Things worked in Bond movies but they didn’t work in Britain and as Kingsley Amis once sadly remarked, if Bond had really had to use his mini-submarine in combat conditions it would have surely taken him straight to the bottom. In 1983, just when Q gave Bond a staggering number of gadgets in Octopussy, Britain became for the first time in its history a net importer of industrial goods.</p>
<p>I got to T5 at around 11am, having traveled out on the Piccadilly line. Architecturally there’s nothing particularly memorable about T5’s three main buildings, all essentially aircraft hangers in basic contour. I smugly presented my preprinted boarding pass, checked two bags, wandered about for a minute and then went off to have an early lunch.</p>
<p>We now know that by then T5’s systems had already collapsed. In the case of the Titanic there was this same lag between the fatal incision of the iceberg into the hull, with consequent alarums deep in the bowels of the mighty liner and the dignity and repose of the first class lounge. In the case of T5 the planners had forgotten to create parking slots for the baggage handlers. When the handlers finally got to the doors of T5 their security passes didn’t work. The few that managed to get through didn’t know where their work stations were. The baggage handling software had already failed. My two bags which I had complacently supposed were being whirled at tremendous speed to the Boeing 747 at Gate 38 in Terminal B had in fact joined a mighty logjam in the center of the baggage maze. Everything came to a standstill.</p>
<p>But upstairs chaos was not yet apparent. BA’s greeters, soon to be the objects of vilification and physical threat, smiled sweetly. Since T5’s policy is not to have strident loudspeakers, there were no quacks of warning or alarm from the loudspeakers. It was 11.35am. A nice young woman next to me at the marble bar in the dining room turned out to hail from Youghal, in county Cork, just like me. As we chatted along, she kept peering at the monitor. Her flight was 15 minutes away, yet no boarding gate was advertised. Off she went, just like a passenger on the Titanic going to check to the bulletin board at the purser’s office. I never saw her again; and I’m fairly sure she never saw her flight. She did have an overnight bag on wheels. An hour later BA was telling passengers to send their suitcases home, stuff their essentials into their pockets and bunk down for the long wait.</p>
<p>I went off to Terminal B on a little railway, the sort that was cutting edge at SeaTac in the 1970s when optimists were writing about impending conversion of the war economy to the “social industrial complex”. There was almost no one in Terminal B. At Gate 38 I was the only person. No other travelers, no BA staff, just the quiet bulk of a 747 at the boarding port. Gradually the passengers mustered. In a movie this is where we would meet our characters: the noisy fellow who would panic and elbow the old lady; the lovers holding hands as they plummeted through the depressurized door; the unassuming co-editor of the radical website and newsletter who in the end takes control of the 747 and brings it safely down.</p>
<p>Our flight was scheduled for 13.45. At 13.50 we were told there was a change of plan. Our plane was at A 18. We had to go back, in a building designed to deal with people only going forward into their plane. By now, word was filtering to the outside world. The stock price of the Spanish company that owns Heathrow was dropping. The chairman of British Airways was sketching out his speech refusing to resign. Passengers were punching each other in the check-in lines.</p>
<p>We knew little of this at A18. By 4pm we were boarded, wedged into seats so tightly crammed that when I dropped my book, there was no way to maneuver one’s body to get a hand under the seat. There was the familiar wait for the tractor to haul the plane out to the runway; the familiar inaudible drone from the Captain. By six pm were in the air. We flew over southern Greenland. I was disappointed to see no signs of farming, amid newly benign conditions. We flew over Hudson’s Bay. There seemed to be plenty of ice. We flew over Tahoe. We were four hours late. No bags for most of us of course.</p>
<p>Moral: just don’t travel BA and don’t go through Heathrow. It’s not worth the hassle. With T5 it’s all worse. Go to Paris or Frankfurt and head on to your destination by plane or rail from there. And don’t travel Ryanair either. The tickets look cheap but by th time you pay overweight and a thousand other outrageous imposts it’s cheaper to go on a regular airline. In a properly functional Hell Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s bosss, will fly endlessly between Stansted and the Arctic Circle. He will be told that every article of clothing he wears will require a charge of one million Euros. You Read It Here First</p>
<p>If recent columns in the New York Times by Maureen Dowd and Nick Kristoff apropos Hillary Clinton seemed familiar it’s because they were. You read them here in Jeffrey St Clair’s piece on HRC, “ <a href="" type="internal">Blonde Ambition</a>”</p>
<p>That’s the one that began:</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton cannot win the Democratic nomination for president. The numbers tell the story. Even with robust victories in Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky, Hillary will trail Obama in popular votes and pledged delegates as they enter the convention hall in Denver. . . . Hillary Clinton is the prisoner of an unimpeachable mathematics. So she makes the most of a remorseless situation by doing what the Clintons do best: commit political fratricide. Quite literally, in this case, by knocking off a brother.</p>
<p>In order to realize her vaulting ambition, Hillary must mortally wound Obama as candidate in the fall race against John McCain so that she can run against McCain in 2012.</p>
<p>Worth copying, I’m sure you’ll agree.</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | When They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2008/03/29/when-they-pick-up-the-phone-at-3-am-what-will-they-say/ | 2008-03-29 | 4 |
<p>Courtesy of Cornel West</p>
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<p>Cornel West is a busy guy: <a href="http://www.boston.com/ae/music/clips/081207_prince/" type="external">Prince</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FauNFa9epc" type="external">Talib Kweli</a>, and&#160; <a href="http://www.jillscott.com/poetry" type="external">Jill Scott</a> are just a few of the musical revolutionaries with whom the Princeton professor of religion and African American studies has collaborated. You may recognize 57-year-old West’s bearded, sage-like face from Tavis Smiley’s recently discontinued <a href="http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/NW0ewBcZEVt/Hillary+Clinton+Speaks+State+Black+Union+Symposium/3tW8Xd5wFyO/Cornel+West" type="external">State of the Black Union</a> conferences or his annual appearances on <a href="http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/185684/september-24-2008/cornel-west" type="external">The Colbert Report</a>. He was also in both Matrix sequels, playing the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/11/02/091102ta_talk_remnick?printable=true" type="external">Zion Elder, Councillor West</a>. On his albums, of which there are three, West holds forth against a backdrop of great beats and soulful grooves, with lyrics that speak to his vision of creating a nation that works for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkQ5ToM0j5U" type="external">everyday people</a>. Currently he’s preparing for next month’s paperback release of his 2009 memoir <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Brother-West-Living-Loving-Memoir/dp/1401921892" type="external">Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud</a>. In our interview, West spoke about politics, his various forms activism, and why he believes music has the potential to close the widening divide between intellectuals and the public at large.</p>
<p>Mother Jones: Could you talk about why having a black president doesn’t necessarily mean that change isn’t needed anymore or that we’ve entered a post-racial era?</p>
<p>Cornel West: On the one hand, [Obama’s election is] a sign of tremendous progress in terms of struggling against racism. It means we are less racist. It doesn’t mean we’re post-racial. And less racist is fine, but we’ve still got various forms of <a href="" type="internal">institutional racism</a> operating, covert forms of racism operating, and of course we’ve got a <a href="" type="internal">white backlash</a> against brother Barack himself, which is why we’ve got to protect, respect, and correct it. In that sense the idea of congratulating ourselves perennially because we have elected a black man is inappropriate. We celebrated in January when he was inaugurated then we went to work. And in going to work, what did we find? Structural racism, unacceptable levels of social misery, <a href="" type="internal">unemployment</a>, infant mortality, poor access to health care, low-quality education, just right across the board. And all of that work that needs to be done is not helped by saying that we’re in a post-racial era. There’s no such thing as post-racial in that sense. On the ground people are still suffering. We’ve still got a lot of things to do.</p>
<p>MJ: I received a comment from one of our readers who said that there are many people who have lifted themselves out of horrible situations without waiting for the government to help them. I’m sure you’ve encountered this criticism in your work. How would you respond?</p>
<p>CW: Yes, it’s true that there’s going to be Michael Jordans, Oprah Winfreys, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQqTxK7VhSk" type="external">Curtis Mayfields</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2kxlZDOHeQ" type="external">Smokey Robinsons</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STKkWj2WpWM" type="external">Aretha Franklins</a>. Ain’t no doubt about that. That’s called genius. But generally speaking, most people don’t have that level of genius. And in a democracy you gotta keep track of everybody. You don’t just keep track of the geniuses. And we should also keep in mind that even the geniuses who make it, they had help. S <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDZFf0pm0SE" type="external">tevie Wonder</a> couldn’t have made it without his mother. He couldn’t have made it without <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWQKdVpS6Lk" type="external">Berry Gordy</a>. He couldn’t have made it without <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izzKUoxL11E&amp;feature=related" type="external">Diana Ross</a>. He couldn’t have made it without <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVTN5o9Kgu8" type="external">Marvin Gaye</a>. He couldn’t have made it without a lot friends who encouraged him and didn’t give him both psychic support and economic opportunity. His genius allowed him to seize those opportunities, to build on that support. But not one of us ever, ever, ever pulled ourselves up by ourselves. The very notion of being self-made is nothing but an American myth and a vicious lie.</p>
<p>MJ: What motivates you to use music as a form of activism, and what other kinds of activism do you do?</p>
<p>CW: I think that anytime you love people you hate the fact that they are being treated unjustly. And therefore you have to express the fire for justice that you have inside you by speaking out, by working with, by marching with, by being in solidarity with people who are suffering. It takes different forms. It can take the form of music, but <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/matrix.html" type="external">The Wachowski Brothers</a> are right on the same progressive page, trying to get people to think fearlessly on <a href="http://www.beststuff.com/videogames/wachowski-brothers-interview-on-the-matrix-online.html" type="external">The Matrix</a>. Same is true in the speeches that I give. Same is true in the various sermons I give in churches, in mosques and trade union centers, and prisons. As a Christian I work closely with prophetic churches, but I also do ecumenical work. I work with my Jewish brothers and sisters. I’m spending a lot of time now with my Muslim brothers and sisters, all of whom are concerned with justice. What I try to be is a multi-contextual progressive.</p>
<p>MJ: Do you think music is an effective way of bridging the gap between intellectuals and the public at large? Because the music you’re coming out with seems really contrary to the predominant big-pimpin’ hip-hop that’s taken over the airwaves.</p>
<p>CW: It’s true. But for me it’s primarily more transgenerational, trying to speak to the younger generation because most of the folk from my generation are old-school. They’re not really listening to the hip-hop artists.</p>
<p>MJ: I was just listening to the mix you put out with Prince, and it reminded me a little bit of <a href="" type="internal">Gil Scott-Heron</a>.</p>
<p>CW: Well Gil Scott is something. He’s a giant. But Gil Scott’s a real artist. I’m just a brother out there trying to have some fun and maybe educate too. Cause I have a lot of fun, you know.</p>
<p>MJ: Besides music and reading, what else do you like to do for fun?</p>
<p>CW: Read more [laughs]. I like to dance.</p>
<p>Listen to West’s collaboration with Talib Kweli (from the album Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations):</p>
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<p><a href="" type="internal">Click here for more Music Monday features from&#160;</a> <a href="" type="internal">Mother Jones</a> <a href="" type="internal">.</a></p>
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<p /> | Music Monday: My Chat With Cornel West | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/cornel-west-behind-music/ | 2010-08-16 | 4 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/botosynthetic/7197561918/in/photostream/"&gt;smokeghost&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/new-disclosure-rules-for-political-ads-could-take-months" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.propublica.org/" type="external">ProPublica website</a>.</p>
<p>After years of consideration, the Federal Communications Commission finally <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/fcc-required-political-ad-data-disclosures-wont-be-searchable" type="external">voted</a> last month to require broadcasters to post online political ad data currently kept only on paper at the stations. Yet it’s unclear when the data—which will provide a detailed picture of campaign and super PAC ad spending—will actually begin to be posted.</p>
<p>The National Association of Broadcasters <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/broadcasters-sue-to-stop-transparency" type="external">sued</a> to stop the rule last week, asking a federal appeals court in Washington to declare the measure unlawful. But even if the lawsuit fails, the earliest broadcasters will have to begin submitting data to a new FCC website is July, three months after the FCC’s vote. And it could be delayed until later in the summer, into the fall, or beyond.</p>
<p />
<p>The reason for the slow rollout? A law called the Paperwork Reduction Act.</p>
<p>In effect, the delay in implementation means information on who is buying political ads, where, and for how much, will remain trapped in filing cabinets at TV stations through several crucial months of the presidential campaign (not to mention state and local campaigns).</p>
<p>While presidential campaigns traditionally take off after Labor Day, this year campaigns and their supporters are already spending big. This month the Obama campaign and the anti-Obama Crossroads GPS <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/presidential-campaign/225747-obama-launches-new-25m-swing-state-ad-campaign" type="external">each</a> <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-crossroads-gps-fires-back-at-obama-with-25-million-ad-buy-20120516,0,5456680.story" type="external">announced</a> $25-million ad buys.</p>
<p>As ProPublica <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/fcc-required-political-ad-data-disclosures-wont-be-searchable" type="external">reported</a>, the FCC approved the rule April 27 in the face of intense opposition from the broadcast industry. The commission promised to create a website on which the affiliates of four major networks in the top 50 markets in the country would begin posting detailed information about political ad purchases. All stations will have to come into compliance with the rule in July 2014.</p>
<p>Here’s how the process works from here on out.</p>
<p>When the FCC approved the rule in April, it <a href="https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/348178-fcc-12-44a1#document/p46" type="external">dictated</a> that the measure would go into effect 30 days after approval by the Office of Management and Budget. OMB’s role is to determine whether the rule abides by the <a href="http://www.reginfo.gov/public/jsp/Utilities/faq.jsp#oira" type="external">Paperwork Reduction Act</a>, which first passed in 1980 and is intended to, yes, minimize paperwork, and improve the quality of information collected by the government.</p>
<p>OMB assesses whether the information that an agency is proposing to collect from the public is necessary, practically useful, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/357188-praprimer-04072010.html#document/p5" type="external">and so on</a>.</p>
<p>Before OMB begins to review a rule, it has to be listed in the Federal Register along with a request for comment by the FCC. That <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/05/11/2012-11435/information-collections-being-submitted-for-review-and-approval-to-the-office-of-management-and" type="external">happened May 11</a>, two weeks after the vote, triggering a 30-day period for public comment. After the end of the public comment period, the OMB has up to another 30 days to complete its review of the rule.</p>
<p>So if OMB takes the full 60 days after publication in the Federal Register to approve the rule, the political ad data would start appearing on an FCC website in another 30 days—August.</p>
<p>But the process can be delayed further if OMB raises concerns with the FCC about the rule, at which point the commission would then have to take time to formulate a response.</p>
<p>It’s rare for OMB to object to new rules on the grounds of the Paperwork Reduction Act, according to Sean Moulton, director of federal information policy at <a href="http://www.ombwatch.org/" type="external">OMB Watch</a>.</p>
<p>But back in March, the National Association of Broadcasters argued in one paragraph of a lengthy <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/348079-00-168-03-08-2012-national-association-of.html#document/p5" type="external">letter</a> to the FCC that the proposed rule would run afoulof the Paperwork Reduction Act. The industry, which vigorously <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/meet-the-media-companies-lobbying-against-transparency" type="external">lobbied</a> against the rule, could use the current public comment period before OMB to object to the rule on the basis of the law.</p> | New Disclosure Rules for Political Ads Could Take Months | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/new-disclosure-rules-political-ads-financial-fcc/ | 2012-05-29 | 4 |
<p>BELGRADE, Serbia — Though he washed the feet of a Serbian Muslim girl in an Italian prison on this year's Holy Thursday Mass, Pope Francis is still not on the road to visit Serbia.</p>
<p>Serbian ecclesiastical and political elite are still waiting for an official papal apology for crimes committed against Serbian Orthodox during World War II, and the pope has never received an official invitation to visit his more than 350,000 adherents in this Eastern European country.</p>
<p>Balkan history considers Roman Catholic clergy responsible for the death of 700,000 Serbs, Jews and Roma killed in the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCRQKp54yVM" type="external">concentration camp Jasenovac</a>, given the church's close relationship with the Nazi-affiliated Independent State of Croatia, as well as the forcible conversions of 240,000 Serbian Orthodox to Roman Catholicism.</p>
<p>”An apology would be a gesture that instills hope that something like that will never happen again," said Patriarch Irinej, the current leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church.</p>
<p>On the Catholic side, Monsignor Stanislav Hocevar, the archbishop of Belgrade, cannot understand why Serbia insists on a special papal apology, citing <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/mar/13/catholicism.religion" type="external">John Paul II’s apology in 2000</a> “ for the sins of Catholics throughout the ages for violating the rights of ethnic groups and peoples."</p>
<p>During his visit to Bosnia and Croatia in 2003, <a href="http://ipsnews2.wpengine.com/2003/06/religion-bosnia-popes-apology-brings-new-hope/" type="external">the pope also apologized for the crimes of Catholic Croats</a>. He held a Mass at the Petrićevac Monastery in Banja Luka, a place where the Croatian Ustase massacred over 2,500 Serbs in February 1941.</p>
<p>However, Serbian Orthodox Metropolitan Jovan of Zagreb strictly demanded that the Pope Francis pay a tribute to the victims of Jasenovac before he visit Serbia, like Pope Benedict did during his visit to Poland where <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1198976,00.html" type="external">he paid a tribute to Jewish victims</a>.</p>
<p>When it comes to Jasenovac, the only dealth camp not operated by Germany and the most painful collective Serbian memory of modern history, Monsignor Hocevar stresses that Catholic Church is very active in seeking forgiveness.</p>
<p>"Monsignor Antun Škvorčević has been permanently praying for all Jasenovac victims for years. He permanently seeks forgiveness,” Hocevar said. “The first president of the Croatian Bishops' Conference, Monsignor Marin Srakić, also asked for forgiveness, as well as Cardinal Josip Bozanic."</p>
<p>But he added, “The pope will not visit Jasenovac as long as the Serbian and Croatian sides do not establish an undeniable truth about the historical facts about Jasenovac."</p>
<p>Zivica Tucic, renowned Serbian religious analyst, says that Zagreb and Belgrade formed a joint historical committee to establish the <a href="http://www.ic-jasenovac.com/" type="external">truth about Jasenovac</a> but that it never held a session.</p>
<p>"The past is an excuse for the unwillingness or inability of both sides to step out of our own prejudices," said Tucic to GlobalPost, adding that "neither Orthodox nor Catholics are truly interested in clarification of Jasenovac truth. Each of them has its own version and their own casualties."</p>
<p>Long-strained communication between the Vatican and Serbia was additionally burdened after <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/185655.stm" type="external">John Paul II beatified Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac in 1998</a>. The Croatian wartime archbishop of Zagreb was accused of being an active collaborator with the Ustase regime.</p>
<p>In 2011, Pope Benedict paid tribute to Cardinal Stepinac at the outset of a two-day visit to Croatia. It also triggered Serbian rage.</p>
<p>But Pope Francis brings a hope for a radical change in political relations between the Vatican and Serbia. Serbian media describe Francis positively as a person whose name reflects modesty, self-sacrifice and service to others.</p>
<p>Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic showed his political sympathy for Francis <a href="http://voiceofserbia.org/content/nikolic-talked-pope" type="external">by attending the pope's inauguration</a>. But Nikolic was once more radical, supporting anticlericalism as espoused in the book, "Vatican: Satan’s Principal Nest," written by Vojislav Seselj, the former leader of Serbian Radical Party currently imprisoned at the Hague.</p>
<p>Anti-ecumenism is a serious stumbling block not only to the pope's visit to Serbia, but also for the potential unification of Catholicism and Orthodoxy in Christianity. Many Orthodoxies still consider Catholics to be heretics and apostates. Anti-Catholic atmosphere was a crucial reason why the pope did not attended the Jubilee of the Edict of Milan which was held in January 2013 in Nis and was a missed chance for reconciliation, overcoming centuries-long divisions and prejudices.&#160;</p>
<p>"Due to the still unsettled issues from the past, there was not yet a sufficient consensus in the public opinion about that visit in a way that it would be really fruitful to both sides," said Archbishop Orlando Antonini, adding that he loves Serbia as his own land.</p>
<p>The Serbian religious expert Tucic was told by the Vatican that the pope does not go where he is not welcome or where he might create strife in the church or the society. Tucic concludes that Serbia is still an immature society for such a visit.</p>
<p>"If the pope had visited Serbia, it is very possible that he would have been hit by eggs and tomatoes,” Tucic said. “It would have been organized demonstrations and blockades and it would have presented us as a religiously intolerant country. It would have been be an unmitigated disaster for our international reputation.” &#160;</p> | Why Pope Francis isn't welcome in Serbia | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-05-15/why-pope-francis-isnt-welcome-serbia | 2013-05-15 | 3 |
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<p>For those of you who may have forgotten I recently covered a story concerning a female pizza delivery driver from Papa John's who <a href="" type="internal">fought off two would be thieves/rapists by SHOOTING one of them in the face.</a></p>
<p>Papa John's responded by retracting their official stance of firing this woman but rather giving her a store job.</p>
<p>Note: Papa John's still has a rule disarming their drivers and leaving them to the "mercy" of predators.</p>
<p>Dominio's Pizza ALSO has a corporate policy against their delivery personnel from carrying firearms for their own protection.</p>
<p>Regrettably for one female driver in Antioch, CA who chose to follow Domino's rules, she found herself kidnapped and raped for two hours.</p>
<p>Let me just state, this wasn't some middle of the night ambush using the cover of darkness, the 22 year old girl was taken at 11:20AM when a 17 year old scumbag forced her back into her car and made her drive off to a secluded area where he raped her.</p>
<p>Fortunately for her he let her live and she would later identify him as the person who kidnapped and raped her.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, since she had the bad luck of working for a company that doesn't care about her safety and she followed the rules she was a prime target for a sexual predator.</p>
<p>I don't want to speak for the Domino's driver but I find it hard to believe that she would prefer to be raped than to follow in the footsteps of the Papa John's driver and shoot her attacker in the face.</p>
<p>But until companies like Papa John's and Domino's change their corporate policy and allow their employees to go out with some semblance of safety without having to break the rules, there will be more outcomes like the Domino's driver than that of the Papa John's driver.</p>
<p>It's a shame that so many companies follow Moms Demand Action logic and leave women more at risk of being raped, kidnapped and murdered.</p>
<p>As for me? &#160;I'm in the "Shoot rapists in the face" camp.</p>
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<p>We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.</p> | A Tale of Two Pizza Delivery Girls: One had a gun, the other was raped | true | http://bulletsfirst.net/2015/02/11/tale-two-pizza-delivery-girls-one-gun-raped/ | 0 |
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<p>DAKOTA CITY, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a man's body has been found inside a house that burned down in northeastern Nebraska's Dakota City.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/briefs/body-found-in-burning-dakota-city-house-thursday/article_6e490cd3-a512-55bb-bec9-e499141f31a6.html" type="external">Sioux City Journal reports</a> that the fire was reported late Thursday night. The Dakota County Sheriff's Office says firefighters who arrived to battle the blaze found the body inside. The body was taken to Sioux City, Iowa, for an autopsy. Officials say the victim was Native American, but do not yet know his identity.</p>
<p>Authorities called the homeowner, who was in Arizona at the time of the fire. The homeowner told officials no one was supposed to be in the house.</p>
<p>The home was destroyed in the fire. Officials, including the Dakota County Attorney's Office, Nebraska State Fire Marshal and Omaha Nation Law Enforcement Services, continue to investigate.</p>
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<p>Information from: Sioux City Journal, <a href="http://www.siouxcityjournal.com" type="external">http://www.siouxcityjournal.com</a></p>
<p>DAKOTA CITY, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a man's body has been found inside a house that burned down in northeastern Nebraska's Dakota City.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/briefs/body-found-in-burning-dakota-city-house-thursday/article_6e490cd3-a512-55bb-bec9-e499141f31a6.html" type="external">Sioux City Journal reports</a> that the fire was reported late Thursday night. The Dakota County Sheriff's Office says firefighters who arrived to battle the blaze found the body inside. The body was taken to Sioux City, Iowa, for an autopsy. Officials say the victim was Native American, but do not yet know his identity.</p>
<p>Authorities called the homeowner, who was in Arizona at the time of the fire. The homeowner told officials no one was supposed to be in the house.</p>
<p>The home was destroyed in the fire. Officials, including the Dakota County Attorney's Office, Nebraska State Fire Marshal and Omaha Nation Law Enforcement Services, continue to investigate.</p>
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<p>Information from: Sioux City Journal, <a href="http://www.siouxcityjournal.com" type="external">http://www.siouxcityjournal.com</a></p> | Authorities: Body found in northeastern Nebraska house fire | false | https://apnews.com/amp/ba2ffb216f9041b589ba6e3a04a3b170 | 2018-01-12 | 2 |
<p>PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa (AP) — South Africa stormed to an innings win over Zimbabwe on Wednesday, needing less than two days of the four-day test to dispatch the visitors.</p>
<p>South Africa bowled the Zimbabweans out for 68 and 121 in the day-night match to win by an innings and 120 runs after making 309-9 declared batting first.</p>
<p>Zimbabwe lost four first-innings wickets quickly under floodlights on day one, but didn’t even make it to the night session on day two. South Africa collected another 16 wickets in less than two sessions on the second day at St. George’s Park to romp to victory before the dinner break.</p>
<p>Fast bowler Morne Morkel destroyed Zimbabwe’s top and middle order in the first innings with his 5-21 from 11 overs. In the second innings, the Zimbabweans collapsed from 54-0 to 121 all out with left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj taking 5-59.</p>
<p>Aiden Markram set up South Africa’s first-innings total with his 125 — a second century in three tests for the opener. AB de Villiers added 53 in his first test in two years.</p>
<p>But the game was decided by the fragility of the Zimbabwe batting lineup as South Africa’s bowlers ran through the tourists twice in quick succession, led by the pace and hostility of Morkel in the first innings and the persistence of Maharaj in the second.</p>
<p>The highest score by a Zimbabwe batsman was 23. Only two Zimbabweans reached double figures in the first innings.</p>
<p>South Africa was also understrength, missing captain Faf du Plessis, who was unavailable because of a virus. Fast bowler Dale Steyn, who was expected to make his return from a series shoulder injury in the game, also missed out because of illness.</p>
<p>The Proteas didn’t miss them.</p>
<p>Morkel knocked Ryan Burl’s off stump out of the ground for the first wicket of the second day, starting a procession of Zimbabwe wickets that ended with Maharaj clinching his five-wicket haul and sealing South Africa’s victory when Chris Mpofu was bowled attempting a big heave down the ground.</p>
<p>PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa (AP) — South Africa stormed to an innings win over Zimbabwe on Wednesday, needing less than two days of the four-day test to dispatch the visitors.</p>
<p>South Africa bowled the Zimbabweans out for 68 and 121 in the day-night match to win by an innings and 120 runs after making 309-9 declared batting first.</p>
<p>Zimbabwe lost four first-innings wickets quickly under floodlights on day one, but didn’t even make it to the night session on day two. South Africa collected another 16 wickets in less than two sessions on the second day at St. George’s Park to romp to victory before the dinner break.</p>
<p>Fast bowler Morne Morkel destroyed Zimbabwe’s top and middle order in the first innings with his 5-21 from 11 overs. In the second innings, the Zimbabweans collapsed from 54-0 to 121 all out with left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj taking 5-59.</p>
<p>Aiden Markram set up South Africa’s first-innings total with his 125 — a second century in three tests for the opener. AB de Villiers added 53 in his first test in two years.</p>
<p>But the game was decided by the fragility of the Zimbabwe batting lineup as South Africa’s bowlers ran through the tourists twice in quick succession, led by the pace and hostility of Morkel in the first innings and the persistence of Maharaj in the second.</p>
<p>The highest score by a Zimbabwe batsman was 23. Only two Zimbabweans reached double figures in the first innings.</p>
<p>South Africa was also understrength, missing captain Faf du Plessis, who was unavailable because of a virus. Fast bowler Dale Steyn, who was expected to make his return from a series shoulder injury in the game, also missed out because of illness.</p>
<p>The Proteas didn’t miss them.</p>
<p>Morkel knocked Ryan Burl’s off stump out of the ground for the first wicket of the second day, starting a procession of Zimbabwe wickets that ended with Maharaj clinching his five-wicket haul and sealing South Africa’s victory when Chris Mpofu was bowled attempting a big heave down the ground.</p> | South Africa hammers Zimbabwe by innings in 4-day test | false | https://apnews.com/8f89a3b3b57247a7af22ed9caf92a8a6 | 2017-12-27 | 2 |
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Teachers in New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington state are finalists for the National Teacher of the Year honor from a state education leaders group.</p>
<p>The Council of Chief State School Officers says the winner typically receives presidential recognition and travels the country for education advocacy.</p>
<p>Three of the finalists are art instructor Jonathan Juravich from Liberty Tree Elementary in Powell, Ohio; American Sign Language instructor Amy Andersen of Ocean City High School in New Jersey; and Washington's Mandy Manning, who teaches refugee and immigrant students at Ferris High School in Spokane. They are the teacher of the year in their respective states.</p>
<p>The other finalist, Kara Ball, was similarly honored among educators under the Department of Defense umbrella for her work at an elementary school for Camp Lejeune.</p>
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Teachers in New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington state are finalists for the National Teacher of the Year honor from a state education leaders group.</p>
<p>The Council of Chief State School Officers says the winner typically receives presidential recognition and travels the country for education advocacy.</p>
<p>Three of the finalists are art instructor Jonathan Juravich from Liberty Tree Elementary in Powell, Ohio; American Sign Language instructor Amy Andersen of Ocean City High School in New Jersey; and Washington's Mandy Manning, who teaches refugee and immigrant students at Ferris High School in Spokane. They are the teacher of the year in their respective states.</p>
<p>The other finalist, Kara Ball, was similarly honored among educators under the Department of Defense umbrella for her work at an elementary school for Camp Lejeune.</p> | 4 finalists named for national teacher of the year honor | false | https://apnews.com/b5c7489f5cea47f0be5e4b94090428fe | 2018-01-05 | 2 |
<p>Obamacare protesters / AP</p>
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">Andrew Evans</a> September 17, 2013 1:05 pm</p>
<p>Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott sent a letter to congressional leaders on Monday expressing concern about the security of individuals’ private information under Obamacare as Republican leaders have repeatedly highlighted the law’s security flaws in recent weeks.</p>
<p>Scott’s <a href="http://www.flgov.com/2013/09/16/today-governor-rick-scott-sent-the-below-and-attached-letter-to-u-s-house-speaker-john-boehner-and-u-s-senate-majority-leader-harry-reid/" type="external">letter</a>, which he sent to Speaker of the House John Boehner (R., Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), focused on the security of the "navigator" system currently being set up in the states.</p>
<p>States and the federal government under Obamacare can hire "navigators" to help people sign up for health insurance through the new exchanges. By helping people sign up for insurance, the navigators will have access to their personal information, such as their social security numbers.</p>
<p>"Though details about what ‘navigators’ will do to collect personal information and run it through the federal data hub remain inconclusive at best, we know the data hub itself will use Americans’ ‘income, citizenship, immigration status, access to minimum essential coverage,’ as well as information at ‘the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Medicare, TRICARE, the Peace Corps, and the Office of Personnel Management’ to determine eligibility for the federal exchange," Scott wrote, citing a federal <a href="http://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Fact-Sheets/2013-Fact-Sheets-Items/2013-09-11.html" type="external">fact sheet</a> on Obamacare’s security.</p>
<p>"The ‘navigators’ are moving quickly in Florida to collect personal information and sign Floridians up on the federal exchange," Scott continued. "Some ‘navigators’ have even publicly stated their desire to set up offices in state health facilities, where we have a direct obligation to ensure Floridians’ privacy is protected."</p>
<p>Scott asked Reid and Boehner to review the security measures that are currently in place.</p>
<p>"Floridians should not have to exchange their privacy for insurance," Scott wrote.</p>
<p>Rep. Diane Black (R., Tenn.), a vocal critic of Obamacare’s security shortcomings, released a <a href="http://black.house.gov/press-release/black-statement-governor-scott%E2%80%99s-letter-addressing-privacy-concerns-obamacare-" type="external">statement</a> Tuesday saying the navigators’ access presents "staggering opportunities for fraud and abuse."</p>
<p>"With as little as 20 hours of training and no federal requirement for background checks, these individuals will gain access to Americans’ most sensitive personal information," Black said.</p>
<p>Black gave the <a href="http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/weekly-republican-address-stopping-fraud-abuse-obamacare" type="external">weekly Republican address</a> this Saturday to spotlight her bill that would prevent the Obama administration from subsidizing people’s health insurance without verifying their eligibility for the financial support. The House passed Black’s bill last week.</p>
<p>Obamacare initially required the administration to verify the eligibility of everybody who receives a subsidy, but the administration <a href="" type="internal">delayed the verification requirements</a> in early July.</p>
<p>The delay "opens the door a mile wide to fraud and abuse," Black said in the weekly address. "According to one independent estimate, some 250 billion dollars in bad payments could be doled out over the next decade."</p>
<p>Black joined two other congressmen in August to <a href="" type="internal">call for a delay</a> of the law’s individual mandate so the administration can complete the security measures for parts of the law, including the navigators and the "data hub," which will transmit information from various federal agencies to the exchanges.</p>
<p>"We still have no certainty that we have security," Rep. James Lankford (R., Okla.) said at the time. A big concern for the congressmen was that security testing of the data hub would not be completed until Sept. 30, the day before the exchanges were planned to open.</p>
<p>The administration has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/obamacares-data-hub/2013/09/10/d1640cb4-1a46-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story.html" type="external">since announced</a> that it has completed security testing, although Republicans have continued to raise concerns about law’s security and oversight.</p>
<p>Rep. Patrick Meehan (R., Pa.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection subcommittee, argued at a <a href="" type="internal">recent hearing</a> that the data hub is a prime target for a cyber attack.</p>
<p>Experts at the hearing noted that the administration has not been transparently implementing the law, and that the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has not been overseeing the law with sufficient rigor.</p>
<p>HHS did not immediately return a request for comment on the security questions raised, although the administration has repeatedly defended the law’s implementation and argued that all of its parts will be ready on time. For example, officials have said that the data hub itself will not store any information, although other parts of the law’s infrastructure will store information.</p> | Republicans Raising Obamacare Security Concerns | true | http://freebeacon.com/republicans-raising-obamacare-security-concerns/ | 2013-09-17 | 0 |
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<p>Yet another #EpicFail from the Obama Regime:</p>
<p>In 2010, Michelle Obama began her “Let’s Move” childhood anti-obesity campaign.</p>
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<p>Great job, Mooch!</p>
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<p>Via CNS: <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/teenage-obesity-increased-during-first-two-years-first-lady-s-let-s-move" type="external">Teenage Obesity Increased During First Two Years of First Lady’s ‘Let’s Move’ Program</a></p>
<p>In the first two years since First Lady Michelle Obama launched her ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to fight childhood obesity in 2010, teenage obesity rates increased, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).</p>
<p>From 2009-2010, 18.4 percent of children ages 12-19 were classified as obese, according to the CDC. Since then, from 2011-2012, one in five children ages 12-19 or 20.5 percent, were classified as obese, an increase of 11.4 percent. The CDC has been tracking these data since 1966-1970, and at that time only 4.6 percent of teens were classified as obese….</p>
<p>And now, we have a new generation of Americans who probably think it is normal that a FLOTUS dances with a turnip:</p>
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<p>Stay classy, FLOTUS!</p> | true | http://tammybruce.com/2014/10/flotus-launches-lets-move-campaign-childhood-obesity-rate-increases.html | 0 |
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<p>“Mahatma Gandhi was OK, but he was no Manmohan Singh”, remarked a friend of mine. I laughed out loud at this deadpan humor, only to realize that my friend, a smart and successful high-tech baron in Silicon Valley, was entirely serious. He genuinely thought that Gandhi’s contribution was merely in freeing the country from the British, while Singh, the Indian finance minister who had ‘freed the Indian Economy from governmental shackles’ in the early 90s, thus ushering India into the global economy, was clearly the larger figure.</p>
<p>It is a notion shared by increasing numbers of the Indian intelligensia, both in India and abroad. To many, Gandhi is no more than a goody-goody icon, who talked about non-violence and held Luddite views on industry and trade. True, he was honest and upright, but then those were different times. Some (mistakenly, in my opinion) associate Gandhi with India’s path of economic protectionism after independence (a policy followed by his associate Jawaharlal Nehru) and hold Gandhi responsible for India’s perceived backwardness. Others consider his approach to Muslims and Pakistan naive and gullible. All in all, they conclude, the coward who shot him in 1948 did India a favor, for Gandhi would have been an albatross round our modern neck. In a world where terrorism lurks at every corner and computer screens blink on all sides, Gandhi is passe.</p>
<p>Is he?</p>
<p>As I watch world events, the more relevant his life appears. With each passing day, his words and methods seem uncannily prescient.</p>
<p>There are numerous personal characteristics of Gandhi–a prodigious courage both physical and political, enormous self-discipline, asceticism and industry (over a hundred volumes of writings and 20-hour days), a fine sense of humor and the ability to mock himself–all interesting and formidable qualities which must have played a major role in the making of the Mahatma. But if I were to condense his political philosophy into one phrase, it would be this–the freedom of the individual.</p>
<p>Complete liberty, for Gandhi, was the first and last goal. India’s freedom from Britain, to him, was only an objective along the path, and a rather insignificant one at that. Far more important was the ability of each individual to seek out his own freedom. “Real Swaraj (freedom) will come, not by the acquisition of authority by a few, but by the acquisition of the capacity by all to resist authority when abused”, he wrote. I think of that statement every time I recall how mutely the public of the United States accepted the slap delivered full to its face by the Rehnquist Court after the 2000 elections.</p>
<p>It is also in the context of liberty that ahimsa, his creed of non-violence, must be understood. It was not out of some sense of piety that he espoused peaceful means. He held non-violence to be essential because it afforded the only democratic means of struggle. It was available to everyone–not only to those who owned weapons. Secondly, a violent victory, even a just one, would only prove that violence triumphed, not necessarily justice. A violent solution would mean that the fate of the unarmed many would be mortaged to the benevolence of the armed few. This was contrary to liberty as seen by Gandhi.</p>
<p>An extremely intelligent man, he had a knack of cutting right through the shibboleths to the heart of the matter. In an earlier echo of the American position on Iraq, the British kept telling India that they would leave India in a heartbeat–their only interest being to keep the country from falling into anarchy. This made some sense to many in view of the vicissitudes and general caprice of feudal rule in pre-British India, until Gandhi gently reminded us that good governance was no substitute for self governance. When hearing the cant that passes for political discussion on the various talk shows, how one longs for a similar voice!</p>
<p>Gandhi saw that millions had lost their livelihood because the British, in a former era of globalization (who says history doesn’t repeat itself!) systematically destroyed India’s cottage industries to create a market for the products of the industrial revolution. Gandhi was the chief architect of India’s revived cottage industry. A magnificent achievent by itself, even more telling was the way he brought it about. He did not run complaining to the British Government to reduce exports to India. Instead, he moblized the people to boycott foreign goods. Huge bonfires of foreign cloth resulted in the handspun Indian fabric, khadi replacing foreign mill cloth to become, in Jawaharlal Nehru’s words, “the livery of India’s freedom”. This too has to do with freedom. To demand something of the government would only increase its power. He chose instead to empower each individual to make a statement by wearing khadi and shedding foreign cloth. Today, a third rail of American politics is the word, ‘trade’. It is commonly accepted, often without challenge, that this is a deity to be propitiated at all costs–even if it means sacrificing jobs, families, homes, even towns or entire ecologies. Gandhi wrote that he would like to see all needs of a community met from within a reasonable radius. Recently, Vegetarian Times carried a mind-boggling statistic–the average item we consume in America travels 1200 miles! Is it any surprise we have to invade other countries for oil? As Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan and others rail against NAFTA and WTO, one wonders why they haven’t thought of organizing a movement to buy American-made products and boycott NAFTA products.</p>
<p>Gandhi was an exponent of ‘demand-side economics’, to coin a phrase. This was a much longer and more arduous path than supply-side economics, but a more enduring one, and one with fewer deleterious side-effects. He believed that ultimately, the only guarantee of good society lay in the quality of the citizenry. Benjamin Franklin’s “A republic, if you can keep it” approximates Gandhi’s belief. A society with no demand for cigarettes, for instance, would soon stop manufacturing them. Gandhi believed the gift of liberty also carried with it the utmost moral responsiblity for its use. In a famous interview with Margaret Sanger, the noted birth-control proponent, he said flat out that he was against contraception, as it meant escaping the consequences of one’s action. He was no politically correct weathervane, preferring rather the liberty to say what he thought. He gave Margaret Sanger an analogy along these lines (not an exact quote), “I overeat, and instead of suffering the consequences of my indulgence, I go to the doctor and get some pills. To mitigate the side-effects of the pills, I then take some whiskey… Where does it end?” He would certainly be aghast at the blithe acceptance of abortion. He always made a connection with the individual morality and public policy. Consider the drug war for example. We do practically nothing to discourage the taking of drugs. Instead, we pour money, change foreign governments, destroy countrysides and fight endlessly (Panama, Columbia, Peru) because we don’t have the guts to demand the highest of our own citizenry. Gandhi was unafraid of public opprobrium, indeed even assassination. Every politician is willing to tell us what is wrong with someone else–Gandhi was different because he told us what was wrong with us. “Let us turn the searchlight inward”, he once said, to the astonishment of a crowd which had come expecting some rousing rhetoric condemning the British, only to find him spouting uncomfortable home truths about how Indians themselves enabled British rule in a hundred small ways. Likewise, if we turn the searchlight upon our own contradictions–we might wonder how, while complaining of our disappearing forests, we continue to build new housing developments (and prize this as an index of economic health!), or how, while complaining of rising medical costs, we cannot keep from our Big Macs.</p>
<p>Like Jefferson, Gandhi too believed in small government, writing that, “that government is best which governs least”. Once again, this is an offshoot of his ideal of least external control, maximum individual freedom, coupled with complete moral responsibility–making for an uncharacteristic meeting point between Karl Marx (state withering away) and Ayn Rand (individual freedom from the collective). As fear-stricken citizens throughout the world surrender their personal rights to their fear-stricken governments in the name of safeguarding their personal security, which in turn surrender their soverieignty to faceless agencies like the WTO in the name of economic security, we might recall Gandhi’s words, “Fearlessness is the first attribute of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.”</p>
<p>The art of forging popular movements based on inveterate opposition to injustice, while always demanding the highest moral standards both of the individual and of the collective, is Gandhi’s enduring contribution to politics. It is almost certainly owing to Gandhi’s movement that India, for all its flaws, has remained a liberal democracy (no other country freed from the colonial yoke can make this claim). Without a Gandhi, India might well have ended up like Pakistan, a hotbed of intolerance and obscurantism (it may be pure coincidence that the more India rejects Gandhi, that’s exactly where it seems headed!). At the risk of oversimplification, we can note that Martin Luther King applied Gandhi’s means and managed to avoid a West Bank in America. The Palestinians did not–and did not.</p>
<p>Long ago, the Indian socialist Rammanohar Lohia wrote that the 20th Century had produced one innovation, the Atom Bomb, and one innovator, Mahatma Gandhi. As paranoia and insanity sweep our times, Lohia’s terms appear in sharper focus–fear vs. freedom. In this contest, Gandhi is not merely relevant–he is central.</p>
<p>NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN is a writer living on the West Coast. His articles can be found on <a href="http://www.indogram.com/" type="external">Indogram</a>. He is currently working on a web site dedicated to Gandhi’s writings on industrialization and globalization, called <a href="http://www.hindswaraj.com/" type="external">www.hindswaraj.com</a>. The site is scheduled to be launched on November 14, 2003, to commemorate the 80th birth anniversary of K. G. Ramakrishnan, Indian freedom fighter and Gandhian thinker. NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN can be reached at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | What’s So Great About Gandhi, Anyway? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2003/10/02/what-s-so-great-about-gandhi-anyway/ | 2003-10-02 | 4 |
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<p>The federal appeals court in Denver found that Otero County’s resolution to treat overgrown areas of the Lincoln National Forest along with a state statute enabling counties to take action under certain circumstances conflicted with federal law.</p>
<p>A 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel said the case was a question of constitutional power and that federal law pre-empted both the state statute and the county’s resolution.</p>
<p>New Mexico enacted the so called “self-help” law for local communities in 2001, just months after a prescribed fire on federal land escaped from managers and raced across tinder-dry mountainsides and into Los Alamos. The town was evacuated before the flames destroyed hundreds of homes and forced the temporary closure of one of the nation’s premiere nuclear weapons laboratories.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The statute pointed to the inaction of the federal government to reduce the risk to lives and property and enabled commissioners in those counties in which a disaster had been declared to take actions necessary to clean and thin undergrowth or remove or log trees within the disaster area after consulting with the U.S. Forest Service.</p>
<p>Otero County passed its resolution in May 2011. The threat of wildfire was worsening as New Mexico headed into what ultimately became an unprecedented drought.</p>
<p>Over three-quarters of the county is federal land, so the county declared an emergency and a disaster after federal officials closed the Sacramento Ranger District due to drought and high fire danger.</p>
<p>The county then hired a consultant to prepare a plan for restoring thousands of acres of forest land by thinning trees and removing dead material. The Forest Service didn’t approve and took the case to court.</p>
<p>The appellate decision backs up a 2015 lower court ruling.</p>
<p>The courts stated there’s no dispute that a local government can exercise its police powers to mitigate fire danger within its territorial boundaries, but federal regulation requires permission of the Forest Service before anyone can cut or otherwise damage any timber, free or other forest product in a national forest.</p>
<p>The appeals court pointed to precedent, saying the U.S. Supreme Court has found that the property clause of the U.S. Constitution gives the federal government legislative and police power over federal property. Although state and local governments can ordinarily exercise their police powers over federal land within their boundaries, those powers must yield when they conflict with federal law.</p>
<p>The court, however, declined to address questions about whether the county can hold the Forest Service liable under federal common law for maintaining a public nuisance — in this case extreme fire risk — on federal land.</p>
<p>County Commission chairwoman Susan Flores said she had not yet reviewed the ruling but noted that fire danger is something the county is still living with.</p>
<p>“Some of the fires we’ve had have been devastating,” she said.</p>
<p>Just this summer, on the southern edge of the Lincoln National Forest, flames destroyed dozens of homes and other buildings in the village of Timberon.</p> | Ruling ends New Mexico county’s effort to combat fire danger | false | https://abqjournal.com/905638/ruling-ends-new-mexico-countys-effort-to-combat-fire-danger.html | 2016-12-09 | 2 |
<p>OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Tuesday evening’s drawing of the Washington Lottery’s “Keno” game were:</p>
<p>02-05-08-13-15-16-28-36-37-38-40-45-47-50-56-57-61-69-71-73</p>
<p>(two, five, eight, thirteen, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-eight, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, forty, forty-five, forty-seven, fifty, fifty-six, fifty-seven, sixty-one, sixty-nine, seventy-one, seventy-three)</p>
<p>OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Tuesday evening’s drawing of the Washington Lottery’s “Keno” game were:</p>
<p>02-05-08-13-15-16-28-36-37-38-40-45-47-50-56-57-61-69-71-73</p>
<p>(two, five, eight, thirteen, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-eight, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, forty, forty-five, forty-seven, fifty, fifty-six, fifty-seven, sixty-one, sixty-nine, seventy-one, seventy-three)</p> | Winning numbers drawn in ‘Keno’ game | false | https://apnews.com/0e62fc9cf0224b099884fb811127d9c7 | 2017-12-27 | 2 |
<p>Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom speaking in Sacramento, Calif., in April at a conference of Californians for Safety and Justice. Newsom and a gun control advocacy group are now proposing a 2016 ballot initiative to strengthen the state’s gun laws by restricting ammunition sales, barring possession of large-capacity assault-style magazines and requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen guns to law enforcement. ( <a href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/California-Gun-Control-/7387f7c73f044a338ec70a5aa41a1cbb/2/0" type="external">Rich Pedroncelli / AP</a>)</p>
<p>In reflecting on the tragic shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., earlier this month in which 14 people were killed and 21 injured, let’s not be distracted from the gun debate by cries of “terrorism.”</p>
<p>Of course it’s necessary to look at what led a young Muslim couple to abandon their 6-month-old baby and join Islamic State’s call to slaughter. But what the shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, appeared to have in common with other people driven to carry out such mass murders—in many cases white, male, American citizens—appears to be anger, alienation and easy access to semi-automatic assault weapons.</p>
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<p>Whether or not Farook and Malik were terrorists, the assault rifles they used were purchased legally and then modified to make them more lethal. In addition, they legally acquired 6,000 rounds of ammunition. Had those weapons and ammunition been harder to come by, perhaps they might have thought longer and harder about other ways to vent their rage.</p>
<p>Although hotly debated, certain “common sense” gun laws have been statistically proved to significantly reduce bloodshed.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/three-common-sense-gun-policies-that-would-save-lives/2015/10/15/3fd8cb80-735f-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html" type="external">These include</a>:</p>
<p>● Permit-to-purchase laws, which are contingent on the purchaser passing a background check. ● Prohibiting people with domestic violence restraining orders from owning a gun. ● Expanding federal denial criteria to include those who have been convicted of violent misdemeanors. ● Making gun manufacturers adopt more stringent safety features, among them “smart” guns that can be discharged only by an authorized user.</p>
<p>According to Evan DeFilippis and Devin Hughes, the founders of <a href="http://www.armedwithreason.com" type="external">Armed With Reason</a>, “… [T]he combined influence of these policies could prevent only ten percent of our nation’s more than 33,000 annual gun deaths. That would still be the equivalent of preventing the 9/11 terrorist attacks, every single year.”</p>
<p>California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom hopes to add one more item to this list: a ballot measure, slated for 2016, that would require background checks on ammunition purchases, ban large-capacity magazines and institute mandatory reporting of lost or stolen guns. This would make California the first state to require background checks at the point of sale for ammunition.</p>
<p>Then there’s a more radical approach, one that requires the political courage to put popularity and gun lobby donations aside in the name of doing what it takes. Australia is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_buyback_program" type="external">oft-touted example</a> of how a mandatory gun buy-back program changed a nation’s course.</p>
<p>But there are other issues that need addressing as well. Outreach to Muslim communities in the United States and abroad would do worlds to heal rifts, just as increased funding of mental health services and anti-bullying programs in schools might have prevented homegrown acts of terrorism by boys who felt separate, unequal and lost. But uncontrolled anger plus guns equals a recipe for only one kind of ending.</p>
<p>Here’s a startling fact, from <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/a-land-without-guns-how-japan-has-virtually-eliminated-shooting-deaths/260189/" type="external">an article in The Atlantic</a>: “America’s gun control laws are the loosest in the developed world and its rate of gun-related homicide is the highest. Of the world’s 23 ‘rich’ countries, the US gun-related murder rate is almost 20 times that of the other 22. With almost one privately owned firearm per person, America’s ownership rate is the highest in the world; tribal-conflict-torn Yemen is ranked second.”</p>
<p>Gun violence isn’t like Ebola or any other communicable disease for which we haven’t found a cure. When it comes to gun violence, the “doctors” are hemming and hawing, worrying that “we might make some of our patients (and board members) unhappy if we give them medicine that tastes bad.”</p>
<p>On the heels of the San Bernardino shooting, our Democratic leaders once again offered feeble promises, while for Republicans the incident appeared to offer more fodder to prove that Muslims are the enemy, and that we should all go out and arm ourselves to the teeth.</p>
<p>Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz held a <a href="http://www.cc.com/video-clips/c6usaz/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-nobody-likes-ted-cruz" type="external">pro-gun rally</a> at an Iowa range, Smith &amp; Wesson stocks rose, and the Senate voted down <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/guns/vote_2015.php" type="external">two gun control measures</a>, one to expand background checks and one to forbid individuals on the Terror Watchlist to purchase firearms. Republican front-runner Donald Trump declared he would ban Muslims from entering the country, while some other Republicans defended the rights of individuals on the Terror Watchlist to bear arms. Are they for real?</p>
<p>Meanwhile, apparently bloodshed by bullets is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/us/in-wake-of-shootings-a-familiar-call-to-arms-drives-latest-jump-in-weapon-sales.html?&amp;moduleDetail=section-&amp;mtrref=undefined&amp;gwh=D1D606D14AB6A7E2811300CCA18D4900&amp;gwt=pay" type="external">good for the gun industry</a>, because gun sales are booming. In some states, sheriffs are encouraging residents to arm themselves.</p>
<p>Here’s a small <a href="http://www.bradycampaign.org/sites/default/files/Gun-Death-Injury-Stat-Sheet-5-Year-Average-2012-Updates-October-2014.pdf" type="external">sampling of the facts</a>:</p>
<p>● Every day in the U.S., there’s more than one gun massacre; most don’t make the national news. According to <a href="http://www.shootingtracker.com/" type="external">shootingtracker.com</a> and <a href="http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/" type="external">gunviolencearchive.org</a>, shootings of four or more victims occur almost daily, on average.</p>
<p>● Every day in our country, 88 people die from gun violence: 31 are murdered; 53 kill themselves; two die unintentionally; one is killed by police intervention; and one dies from unknown intent.</p>
<p>● Every day, 208 people are shot and survive: 151 are shot in an assault; 10 survive a suicide attempt; 45 are shot unintentionally; two are shot in a police intervention.</p>
<p>● Since the Newtown, Conn., school slaughter three years ago, there have been <a href="http://everytownresearch.org/school-shootings/" type="external">more than 160 school shootings</a>.</p>
<p>I was beginning to wonder if this is our new normal recently when I ran into some military pilots on leave from service in Dubai, Afghanistan, Iraq and places they did not have permission to disclose. This led to a conversation on war, raising boys and gun control. Had you asked what I thought a group of military men would say about gun control, I’d have been 100 percent wrong—because these men turned out to be Australian.</p>
<p>Over the course of the discussion, the men gave me a glimpse into how Australians view American paralysis in the face of gun violence. Two of them agreed to let me quote them anonymously, on account of military restrictions about speaking to the press.</p>
<p>One of the pilots grew up in the small island state of Tasmania, the site of Australia’s worst mass shooting, in 1996. His father was one of the schoolteachers who taught the boy who would grow up to become the shooter. After the massacre, he said, “Our government went, ‘You know what? We’re going to do something about it.’&#160;”</p>
<p>He watched as members of his church parish reluctantly handed in their weapons during the famous mandatory gun buyback of 1996, pushed through by John Howard, then Australia’s prime minister. He was “pretty much our Ronald Reagan,” the pilot told me, “and there was massive backlash.”</p>
<p>“We look back 20 years later and you won’t find many Australians that will go that wasn’t a great idea,” he said. “We haven’t had a single mass shooting in 20 years. [Even] suicides went down. I’ve married an American who will refuse to raise her kids in [the U.S.].”</p>
<p>According to a study by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University, total intentional <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/world/australia/australia-gun-ban-shooting.html?_r=0" type="external">gun deaths fell</a> by half in the decade after the 1996 restrictions were put in place, even as Australia’s population grew nearly 14 percent. Gun suicides dropped 65 percent from 1995 to 2006, and gun homicides fell 59 percent.</p>
<p>Even <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/another-massacre-another-charade/2015/10/08/e45d0004-6dec-11e5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_story.html" type="external">conservative U.S. columnist Charles Krauthammer</a> recently hailed this kind of confiscation program as the only viable solution to gun violence, but also said it was doomed because of the Second Amendment and the power of the National Rifle Association. “As for the only remotely plausible solution, Obama dare not speak its name. … There’s a reason he didn’t bring up confiscation. … In this country, with its traditions, public sentiment and, most importantly, Second Amendment, them’s fightin’ words.”</p>
<p>On the other side, DeFilippis and Hughes—whose blog is “dedicated to academically refuting pro-gun myths, and providing a scholarly defense of gun control”—say, “We don’t need gun confiscation to save lives. We can do it through common-sense gun reform.”</p>
<p>Whichever solution you opt for, extreme gun violence in a land that is supposed to be the home of the free necessitates extreme measures. Whose freedom are we protecting these days? Freedom for those who seek to arm themselves or freedom for our children to go to school, freedom for the rest of us to go to work, to attend our place of worship, to go to college and come back home alive?</p>
<p>Another of the Australian pilots joined in our conversation, while one of his friends showed me photos of how to refuel a fighter jet at 36,000 feet above a warring country at 50 below zero Celsius.</p>
<p>“When you have the ability to go and purchase an automatic weapon with copious amounts of ammunition, and then you have the ability to walk into a primary school and shoot 6-year-olds in the face … that’s the worst. I cannot understand,” he said. “We go into shops here and there’s guns everywhere. Then a massacre happens and everyone’s saying, ‘It’s not the gun’s fault. … If that [kid] had a gun, he’d have been able to shoot the gunman and there wouldn’t have been any problem.’ To me that’s just crazy.”</p> | Those Radical Aussies, and How They Tackled Gun Violence | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/those-radical-aussies-and-how-they-tackled-gun-violence/ | 2015-12-15 | 4 |
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<p>Riesberg said the contract gives him administrative authority to approve two one-year extensions. He plans to approve a one-year extension in December.</p>
<p>The city’s current budget includes a projected $380,000 in revenue from camera- and van-related fines, he said.</p>
<p>Councilor Chuck Wilkins said the city would have to cut services or raise taxes if it did not get that revenue.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“It’s a sad day when we’re counting on poor driver behavior for revenue,” Councilor Shelby Smith commented.</p>
<p>The two councilors recently debated the red light camera issue at a local tea party meeting – Wilkins was pro-camera; Smith was against.</p>
<p>The city hired Arizona-based Redflex in late summer 2010 to provide speed monitoring vans and cameras. Redflex collects the data and turns it over to Rio Rancho police, who can issue violation notices resulting in fines based on their review of the material.</p>
<p>The vans became active in December 2010, while the cameras went live at the Southern and Northern intersections on Unser in March 2011.</p>
<p>A report the police department produced in early May showed there were four fewer crashes at the Unser/Southern intersection in the period from 2011 to 2013, compared with 2008 through 2010, or 111 versus 107, a 3.6 percent reduction.</p>
<p>At the Unser/Northern location, there were seven fewer crashes: 51 crashes from 2011 through 2013 compared with 58 crashes from 2008 through 2010, a 12 percent reduction, according to the report.</p>
<p>Fines for speeding 11 mph or more above the limit or red-light violations are $100. The city keeps a portion after Redflex and the state receive a share, and program expenses are covered, according to a formula spelled out in the contract.</p>
<p>In fiscal year 2013, net revenue for the city from paid fines resulting from camera and van data was $338,859; Redflex’s portion of the revenue was $406,536. Fiscal year 2013 ran from July 1, 2012, to June 30, 2013.</p>
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<p /> | Rio Rancho city manager to extend red light camera contract | false | https://abqjournal.com/445830/rio-rancho-city-manager-to-extend-red-light-camera-contract.html | 2014-08-14 | 2 |
<p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A summit of euro zone leaders will go ahead as planned in the middle of December, the chairman of European Union leaders said on Wednesday, dispelling speculation it might be postponed because of the collapse of German coalition talks.</p>
<p>“Just to be clear: The December Euro Summit is on. As part of the Leaders’ Agenda we need to discuss what, how and when to move forward on the EMU (European Monetary Union) and the Banking Union,” Tusk said on Twitter.</p>
<p>He said he discussed the agenda of the meeting over the phone on Wednesday with the chairman of euro zone finance ministers Jeroen Dijsselbloem.</p>
<p>German government coalition talks collapsed on Sunday night as the liberal FDP party pulled out after weeks of “exploratory” talks, plunging the euro zone’s most important economy into political uncertainty and raising the prospect of new elections.</p>
<p>Euro zone leaders are to set a direction for deeper euro zone economic integration at a summit in the middle of December, at which Germany’s input is crucial.</p>
<p>The summit is to launch six months of work that would lead decisions in June 2018 on whether or not the single currency area should have a budget, a finance minister and a separate euro zone assembly within the European Parliament.</p>
<p>The deeper integration push, championed by French President Emmanuel Macron, also includes the transformation of the euro zone bailout fund into a European Monetary Fund and the creation of a sovereign insolvency mechanism.</p>
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<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | Summit on euro zone future in December still on despite no German government: Tusk | false | https://newsline.com/summit-on-euro-zone-future-in-december-still-on-despite-no-german-government-tusk/ | 2017-11-22 | 1 |
<p>The overture has begun: with an EU summit scheduled this weekend in Brussels, the twists and turns, the will they/won't they reach agreement soap opera is underway. And in the middle of it: a Kodak moment.</p>
<p>Yesterday, Carla Bruni Sarkozy, wife of the French President, gave birth to a healthy baby girl. The French Prez missed the delivery, raced to the hospital, spent a few hours with wife and daughter, then raced to Frankfurt to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel.</p>
<p>Their mini-summit ended without any news ... apparently details of how the European Financial Stability Fund is to be organized are still being haggled over ... along with the size of the haircut the private banks will take on Greek debt.</p>
<p>Result: markets opened down across Europe.</p>
<p>This is a twist from earlier in the week when markets closed up following a report by the Guardian's man in Brussels, David Gow, who wrote that a deal to turn ESFS into an insurer of euro zone members bonds was effectively done. (see previous Europa postings). The ESFS is expected to be capitalized at around 440 billion euros ... via the insurance wheeze its actual value was supposed to be inflated to 2 trillion euros. (Don't ask me how that works ... I've been asking people who make a lot of money in the markets how it would work and they have no bloody idea),</p>
<p>Anyway, the insurance thing is not happening, according to Gow on the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2011/oct/20/eu-crisis-emergency-talks" type="external">Guardian live blog</a> of the crisis. " ... confirmation comes that the putative size of the enhanced bailout fund, the EFSF, and of the revised "haircuts" on Greek debt depends entirely on to whom one talks. What was true one day may be untrue the next (as this correspondent knows via impeccable sources). Thus, the idea of turning the EFSF into an insurer had a huge amount of traction earlier this week but may now have run out of puff."</p>
<p>Other cheerful notes from Europe:</p>
<p>Revised German growth figures are due later today ... they are expected to show growth slowing in 2012 (just two and a half months away!)</p>
<p>Day two of a general strike is underway in Athens ... more clashes are expected. Good footage <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15377398" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p>Finally:</p>
<p>BRITANNIA STILL RULES THE WAVES!!</p>
<p>Britain's Ministry of Defence has just sent out this press release.</p>
<p>"A dhow pirate mother-ship involved in attacks on merchant shipping in the Indian Ocean has been stopped and boarded by ships from the Royal Navy operating in the Indian Ocean.</p>
<p>It is believed the dhow was hijacked by suspected pirates so that they could use it as a base, or mothership, from which to launch attacks against merchant ships many hundreds of miles from Somalia. Throughout this time, the Pakistani crew of the dhow was held hostage on board." &#160;</p>
<p>No word on whether the Royal Marines boarded the dhow with cutlasses.</p> | "Merkozy" meet, still no agreement on euro bailout | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-10-20/merkozy-meet-still-no-agreement-euro-bailout | 2011-10-20 | 3 |
<p>One of the reasons Donald Trump has become so popular with many Americans lies in his gut-level pro-Americanism. Trump doesn’t make blue collar Americans feel bad about themselves; he tells them they’re not racists or sexists. Trump doesn’t make those who earn feel rotten; he tells them that he’s earned too, and he’s proud of it. Most of all, Trump doesn’t tear down law enforcement.</p>
<p>That last fact was on full display on Tuesday, when the president-elect called the family of San Antonio police officer Benjamin Marconi, who was murdered on Sunday morning during a traffic stop. Police Chief William McManus said the “uniform was the target” in the murder.</p>
<p>Marconi’s son, Dane, posted on Facebook, “Just got off the phone with future president Trump, he sends his condolences to our family.” Trump’s team has said nothing about the call thus far.</p>
<p>This isn’t the first such call for Trump post-election. Shortly after the election, Trump called the widow of murdered NYPD Sgt. Paul Tuozzolo to offer condolences. “I’m very sorry I cannot be there with you today. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family during this difficult time,” Trump reportedly said.</p>
<p>That’s classy.</p>
<p>It’s also necessary. President Obama sometimes called the families of slain cops; he routinely called the families of black people shot by cops under disputed circumstances. When he spoke at the funeral service for targeted Dallas police officers, he used the dais to rip police across the country as suffering from implicit bias. Americans rightly got the impression that Obama didn’t care nearly as much about targeted officers as he did about his misguided crusade to slander officers as the source of anti-black racism.</p>
<p>That’s not the message from Trump. Trump isn’t standing by bad police officers. But he’s making clear that he stands by police officers across the country, and that he takes their lives seriously. That’s a hell of a change from the current occupant of the Oval Office.</p> | CLASSY: Trump Calls Family of Slain San Antonio Officer | true | https://dailywire.com/news/11014/classy-trump-calls-family-slain-san-antonio-ben-shapiro | 2016-11-22 | 0 |
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<p>Taiwan's Foxconn &lt;2317.TW&gt;, the world's largest contract electronics maker, is "definitely bidding" for the chip business of Japan's Toshiba Corp &lt;6502.T&gt; and is "very confident" it can buy into it, company founder Terry Gou said on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Gou was speaking as Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, broke ground for a 61 billion yuan ($8.87 billion) flat-screen display factory in Guangzhou province, southern China.</p>
<p>Toshiba is considering selling the majority - or all - of its marquee flash-memory chip business, as it seeks to make up for a $6.3 billion writedown from its nuclear operations.</p>
<p>Gou declined to say how much of the Japanese company's chip business Foxconn was interested in.</p>
<p>"I cannot say we are for sure getting it, but we are very confident. We are also very sincere," Gou said. He later told Reuters that Foxconn was "definitely bidding" for Toshiba.</p>
<p>"Money should not be the only thing (for Toshiba) to consider... We can help its technology to be sold in products all over the world. That is Foxconn's advantage."</p>
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<p>Gou said Foxconn was open to teaming up with partners on any bid for Toshiba's chip business, adding anything was possible.</p>
<p>Toshiba wants to raise at least 1 trillion yen ($8.8 billion) in part by selling most of its flash memory chip business, seeking to create a buffer for any fresh financial problems, a person with knowledge of the matter previously told Reuters.</p>
<p>Another person with knowledge of the matter has told Reuters that Toshiba would seek initial bids in March, and aims to choose a preferred bidder or bidders by the end of May.</p>
<p>Gou on Wednesday said Foxconn, which last year bought control of Japan's Sharp Corp &lt;6753.T&gt;, was not a chip maker and so its bid is unlikely to be subject to anti-monopoly issues.</p>
<p>"Because we have the experience with Sharp, we think if Toshiba goes to us, we are its client, its user," Gou said.</p>
<p>"We would even invite it to set up a factory in China. It can keep its core technology in Japan but it is about expanding capacity."</p>
<p>Foxconn is one of China's biggest employers and an assembler of Apple Inc iPhones.</p>
<p>Toshiba is the second-biggest NAND chip producer after South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd &lt;005930.KS&gt;.</p>
<p>Speaking about Foxconn's investment plans, Gou said priority markets were China and the United States. He also said it was important the U.S. did not engage in a trade war with China.</p>
<p>Taiwan's tech-dominated manufacturers have been unnerved by U.S. President Donald Trump's suggestion to raise tariffs on imports from some countries, notably China, where the Taiwanese own factories.</p>
<p>In January, Gou said Foxconn was considering investing over $7 billion to set up a display factory with Sharp in the U.S.</p>
<p>Construction would start in the first half of this year with Sharp taking the lead on the project, a person with knowledge of the plan previously told Reuters.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Sijia Jiang; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Christopher Cushing)</p> | Taiwan's Foxconn 'definitely bidding' for Toshiba chip business | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/03/01/taiwan-foxconn-definitely-bidding-for-toshiba-chip-business.html | 2017-03-16 | 0 |
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<p>Dorame’s touchdown catch with 5.1 seconds remaining capped a one-minute, 80-yard drive and gave the fourth-seeded Warriors the Class 4A state football championship with a wild 57-54 victory over No. 3 Robertson on Saturday.</p>
<p>“It was a like a do-or-die moment,” Dorame said. “This was it. I just had a feeling that I was going to come out with the catch. It feels so amazing that it actually happened.”</p>
<p>The pinpoint pass was right on his hands, and all he had to do was come down with it.</p>
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<p>“Brennam Stewart made an amazing pass,” Dorame said. “He knew what I was doing. We were on the same page and he threw an awesome pass.”</p>
<p>The play kind of went off script, said Ruidoso coach Kief Johnson.</p>
<p>“We called a trips play. Brennam is such a good runner when we get him rolled out,” he said. “When we get him out on the perimeter, we either run it or we call a comeback to the pylon over there. It didn’t develop, but Gabe Dorame does a fantastic job of finding a hole and finding a way to get open.”</p>
<p>The game was one filled with big plays. Cardinals quarterback Arjay Ortiz delivered one moments earlier, completing a 47-yard pass on fourth-and-20 to set up the go-ahead touchdown.</p>
<p>But the score came too quickly.</p>
<p>“We knew we could march down the field and that’s what we did,” said Stewart, who exhorted his teammates before the final drive. “I just told them, ‘We’re going to win this game. Whatever it took, we were going to win this game.’ ”</p>
<p>After a couple of short completions, he delivered a key 33-yard run that moved the ball to the 20.</p>
<p>“Nothing over the top of us,” Robertson coach Leroy Gonzalez said of the defensive plan for the final drive. “We gave up big plays over the top, so nothing over the top. The big play was the run by the quarterback.”</p>
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<p>The Warriors (10-3) were confident throughout the drive, Johnson said.</p>
<p>“They gave us too much time on the clock, so we were happy about that,” he said.</p>
<p>Stewart finished with 205 passing yards and three touchdowns. Dorame threw a halfback pass for a 98-yard score to Layson Powell, who had two scores and 189 receiving yards. Isaiah Otero was Ruidoso’s workhorse, rushing for 176 yards and four touchdowns.</p>
<p>Ortiz ran for 158 yards and two long touchdowns and threw for 307 yards and four more scores for Robertson (11-2), which lost in the state final for the third straight season.</p>
<p>“These guys played as hard as they could, and that’s all the coaching staff can ask for,” Gonzalez said. “It’s all we can ask for. I can’t think about what I would have done different. If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Saturday — Las Vegas, N.M.</p>
<p>No. 4 RUIDOSO 57, No. 3 ROBERTSON 54</p>
<p>Ruidoso&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 14&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 7&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 22&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 14 —57</p>
<p>Robertson&#160;&#160; 7&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 21&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 19&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; 7 — 54</p>
<p>Scoring: Ru, Isaiah Otero 1 run (Jesus Segura kick blocked); Ro, Antonio Padilla 2 pass from Arjay Ortiz (Jerry Chavez kick); Ru, Layson Powell 55 pass from Brennam(CQ) Stewart (Gabriel Dorame pass from Stewart); Ro, Richard Armijo 35 pass from Ortiz (Chavez kick failed); Ro, Padilla 34 pass from Ortiz (Ortiz run); Ru, Grady Woodul 8 pass from Stewart (Segura kick); Ro, Ortiz 1 run (Chavez kick); Ro, Oritz, 34 run (Chavez kick); Ru, Powell 98 pass from Gabriel Dorame (Segura kick); Ro, Emiliano Berged recovered fumble in endzone (Ortiz run failed); Ru, Otero 1 run (Segura kick); Ru, Otero 32 run (Stewart run); Ro, Ortiz 77 run (Chavez kick); Ru, Otero 9 run (Segura kick); Jacob Gamel 18 pass from Ortiz (Chavez kick); Ru, Dorame 5 pass from Stewart (Segura kick). Rec.: Ru 10-3; Rob 11-2.</p>
<p>Rushing: Ru 36-264; Ro 40- 254. Passing: Ru 15-18-304-1; Ro 13-21-307-0. Total offense: Ru 568; Ro 561. First downs: Ru 21; Ro 22. Penalties: Ru 9-85; Ro 10-78. Punts: Ru 1-53; Ro 1- -9. Fumbles-lost: Ru 0-0; Ro 1-2.</p>
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<p /> | Class 4A football: Ruidoso outscores Robertson in a thriller | false | https://abqjournal.com/1101226/warriors-outscore-cards-in-thriller.html | 2 |
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<p>Calling employers to check on the status of your application lets them know that you are serious about the opportunity and sets you apart from other candidates.</p>
<p>Regardless of what stage you are at when looking for a job, there are a few key things to keep in mind when calling an employer. If you have sent in a résumé or dropped off an application, verify the information you have for your contact, and ask what the best time is to call.</p>
<p>Think about why you are calling and what you are going to say before you make the call. This will help if you are nervous and will build your confidence. To get the point and avoid rambling, have talking points ready that include what position you are calling about, why you are calling, and how they can best reach you if they have questions.</p>
<p>You want to gain positive attention from a prospective employer, so do not become overly aggressive by calling multiple times and leaving several messages. Avoid calling during busy times of the day, and try to call when you can speak to someone rather than leaving a voicemail.</p>
<p>Keep a log of your applications, contact information and follow-up phone calls. This will help you stay on task when applying for multiple jobs and will help you use your time most effectively.</p>
<p>After submitting an application or résumé, review the job posting for any specific directions for follow-up. Sometimes postings will note if the employer prefers phone calls or emails as follow-up. If you have not heard from the employer for one to two weeks, you can call to confirm that all your information has been received. You can also politely ask if interviews have been scheduled.</p>
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<p>After an interview, send thank-you notes to the interviewer and-or interview panel within 24 hours thanking them for the interview and restate your qualifications and experience as related to the job. If you have not heard from the employer or hiring manager within three to five days, you can follow-up with a phone call. They will probably need a few days after the interviews to organize their paperwork.</p>
<p>When calling after the interview, refresh their memory of who you are, what job you interviewed for, and politely ask if the position has been filled. If a candidate has not been selected, you may ask if there is a specific date or timeline in which a decision will be made, and finish the phone call by expressing your gratitude for the interview and reiterate why your interest in the job.</p>
<p>You might call after an interview, and the employer has selected another candidate. If this is the case, thank them for the opportunity and add that you would be interested in any future opportunities with the company. You never know when another job will become available with the company, and you want to leave them with a good impression.</p>
<p>This is a regular column written by the N.M. Department of Workforce Solutions. For more information, go to <a href="http://www.dws.state.nm.us" type="external">dws.state.nm.us</a>.</p>
<p /> | Follow-up call shows interest | false | https://abqjournal.com/324817/followup-call-shows-interest.html | 2 |
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<p>The New York City Department of Buildings is investigating whether Donald Trump has violated an agreement that called for Trump Tower's atrium to remain open to the public, a spokesperson confirmed to NBC News.</p>
<p>The department is looking into whether the atrium was "improperly closed" to the public during Trump campaign events at the tower, spokesperson Joseph Soldevere told NBC News.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/york-probing-trumps-closing-trump-tower-atrium-campaign-215408566.html" type="external">Reuters</a>first reported the investigation.</p>
<p>The real estate mogul reached an agreement with New York City in 1979 that allowed him to expand the building as long as the atrium stayed open to the public for most of the day.</p>
<p>Austin Finan, a spokesperson for Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, said, "Despite what he may think, the rules and laws of this city apply to everybody, including Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump should honor his agreement with the city to keep the space open to the public."</p>
<p>Trump faces a $4,000 fine if found in violation of the deal, Soldevere said.</p>
<p>The Buildings Department fined Trump Tower $2,500 in 2006 and $4,000 in 2015 for putting kiosks in public space to sell merchandise. The kiosks were removed earlier this year, officials said.</p> | NYC Officials Investigating Use of Trump Tower for Campaign Events | false | http://nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/nyc-officials-investing-use-trump-tower-campaign-events-n584111 | 2016-06-01 | 3 |
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<p>A view of the gaming floor at Santa Ana Star Casino from a balcony at The Stage. (Courtesy of Santa Ana Star Casino)</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Ring in the New Year with themed parties, extended hours and promotions for early birds and night owls this New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day at several area casinos.</p>
<p>Those who prefer to call it an early night don’t have to miss out on the action at Santa Ana Star Casino. The Star is kicking off the New Year’s Eve celebration at noon on Wednesday, Dec. 31, with its “Noon Year’s Eve” party featuring a casino-wide countdown and party favors.</p>
<p>Noontime also marks the beginning of New Year’s Eve hot seats. Two lucky players will win deluxe New Year’s gift baskets on the hour, every hour until midnight.</p>
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<p>New Year’s Eve family fun awaits upstairs at Starlight Bowling Center during the “Family Noon Year’s Eve Bowling Bash” starting at 11 a.m. Wednesday. Guests can buy a four-person package that includes three hours of bowling, a large pepperoni pizza and a pitcher of soda for $99.</p>
<p>Later in the night, between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. those ages 21 and older can participate in a cosmic bowling New Year’s Eve celebration. The “Lane Party” packages are available for $80 and include three hours of bowling for up to 10 people.</p>
<p>Night owls looking to party down on the dance floor with a French twist can celebrate the end of the year at “Rouge: A New Year’s Eve Ball” at The Stage. The event is inspired by the “artistic allure of Paris in the late 19th-century” and “commingles the risqué world of burlesque,” according to Santa Ana Star Casino news release.</p>
<p>The Stage will be draped in red velvet and black lace that will be complemented by sizzling sounds of DJ Automatic. VIP ticket-holders also will have access to the Sky Level VIP Lounge and VIP bar, where they can enjoy Rouge-themed cocktails, tantalizing hors d’oeuvres, a midnight champagne toast and more. VIP bottle service also is available by calling 771-5353.</p>
<p>The event is open to ages 21 and older. Doors open at 9 p.m. Wednesday. Tickets are $35 individuals, $60 per couple for general admission and $100 VIP, plus fees at <a href="http://holdmyticket.com" type="external">holdmyticket.com</a>. For information, visit <a href="http://thestageatthestar.com" type="external">thestageatthestar.com</a>.</p>
<p>Save some energy for New Year’s Day on Thursday, Jan. 1. Star Rewards Club members will receive four times the points and four times the drawing entries all day on Thursday. There will be New Year’s Day $100 hot seats held each hour from noon to 7 p.m. Two winners will be chosen each hour.</p>
<p>Patrons also can participate in a free slot tournament from noon to 8 p.m. with cash prizes.</p>
<p>Wrapping up the fun will be the New Year’s car giveaway at 8 p.m. when one guest will win his or her choice of a new Ford F-150, Ford Fusion or Ford C-Max. Guests can earn entries through Thursday. Star Rewards Club members receive an entry for every 500 points they earn playing their favorite slot machines or table games.</p>
<p>THE DOWNS RACETRACK &amp; CASINO: Players will enjoy extended hours at The Downs in celebration of the New Year’s holiday. The Downs will open from 10 a.m. Wednesday through 4 a.m. Thursday. Drawings to win cash and free play will take place every half-hour from 9 p.m. Wednesday through 2 a.m. Thursday. The Downs will be giving away more than $5,000. For more details, visit <a href="http://abqdowns.com" type="external">abqdowns.com</a>.</p>
<p>SKY CITY CASINO HOTEL: Bring in 2015 at Sky City during its free, family-friendly bash beginning at 9 p.m. Wednesday and running through 2 a.m. Thursday. Live music by Danny Duran &amp; Slo Burnin’ will be part of the festivities. A kids’ party will feature Bee Bee the Clown, face painting, sweet treats as well as arts and crafts. For more information, visit <a href="http://skycity.com" type="external">skycity.com</a>.</p>
<p /> | Early birds and night owls: Santa Ana Star Casino plans New Year’s celebrations, promos | false | https://abqjournal.com/517192/all-in-rozanna-m-martinez-71.html | 2 |
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<p>&#160;</p>
<p>“We’re all gonna rock to the rules that I make. I wanna be elected.”</p>
<p>–Alice Cooper, “Elected”</p>
<p>Last night was the opening of the presidential debate season…or as it’s known at Ralph Nader’s house: Passover.</p>
<p>We got Coke vs. Pepsi. McDonald’s vs. Burger King. MasterCard vs. Visa. General Electric vs. Westinghouse. Yale-educated millionaire war criminal vs. Yale-educated millionaire war criminal.</p>
<p>The debate pitted an alleged liberal (who supports the Iraq war, the Patriot Act, NAFTA, WTO, welfare repeal, the war on drugs, appointing anti-abortion judges, etc.) against an un-elected president who is somehow seeking re-election.</p>
<p>The next time someone tells you America has a two-party system…I suggest you demand a recount.</p>
<p>In 2004, we Americans will spend far more time researching what car to buy than we’d ever dedicate to an examination of how our tax dollars and our votes contribute to death and destruction at home and across the globe.</p>
<p>The vast majority of humans in this world live in abject poverty while those who don’t, well, they live their lives in such a manner as to threaten every living being on the planet. Many of us know this but it doesn’t seem to be enough to inspire more than pithy bumper stickers and increased sales of recycled toilet paper.</p>
<p>Like the bull in a bullfight, the American voter chases the elusive red cape…distracted from the real targets through an attractive image or illusion.</p>
<p>Our energies are so poorly focused that we offer no threat to the status quo. In fact, we willingly contribute by assuming our predetermined role as a voter/consumer.</p>
<p>Media-hyped millionaires are sold to the public like any other commodity. Ideologies are neatly packaged and marketed with the same intensity and deception as a cell phone or SUV.</p>
<p>Once in office, we trust these men (and women) with our moral decisions and are satisfied with the illusion of having elected them, never comprehending the reality that if voting ever looked like it might change anything, it might be made illegal.</p>
<p>U-N-L-E-S-S…</p>
<p>What if every eligible voter who stayed home in 2000 comes out on November 2 and writes in my name?</p>
<p>In 2000, 50,455,739 voted for Bush; 50,996,039 for Gore; 2,781,109 for Nader; and the rest were scattered over a handful of other candidates.</p>
<p>In 2000, there were 195,027,520 eligible voters in America…156,421,311 were registered, but only 110,604,647 actually hit the polling booths. That’s 56.7% of eligible voters participating.</p>
<p>Almost 85 million more Americans could have voted in the 2000 presidential election…but opted out.</p>
<p>Imagine if they came out in 2004 for, well, me. I never went to Yale (or any college, for that matter). I’m not a millionaire or a war criminal (but I do sympathize with Dubya’s efforts to avoid the front line), and I don’t windsurf.</p>
<p>This idea isn’t specifically about me winning…although there are enough non-voters out there to easily elect anyone. Even me. This is all about increasing the size of the voter pool so some of those disgruntled and alienated masses we keep hearing about can send a message that there’s more to life than Coke and Pepsi.</p>
<p>Imagine if even 10 or 20% of those 84,422,873 people who could’ve voted but didn’t in 2000 become motivated to make the effort and then imagine if they all voted for me…if for no other reason than to demonstrate that what they (we) want isn’t on the menu.</p>
<p>I’ll be like a bottle of filtered water against their sugary, chemical-laden Coke and Pepsi.</p>
<p>Fifteen million protest votes? In America? In one fell swoop, it would have the corporate media scrambling to catch up and explain what this means and why the powers-that-be didn’t see it coming.</p>
<p>Zach de la Rocha, formerly of Rage Against the Machine, wrote: “The structure is set; you’ll never change it with a ballot pull.”</p>
<p>We will change it when Americans embrace the subversive pleasure of thinking for themselves and challenge that structure. With the point of no return fading in the rearview mirror (or at least obscured by an SUV), the time is long overdue for all of us to recognize that the primary difference between Republicans and Democrats is that they tell different lies to get elected.</p>
<p>Thus, I kick off my one-month campaign with a presidential haiku:</p>
<p>you once seemed very important but now you are another four years</p>
<p>MICKEY Z. is the author of “ <a href="" type="internal">The Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda</a>” (Common Courage Press). For more information, please visit <a href="http://www.mickeyz.net/" type="external">http://www.mickeyz.net</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | My Write in Campaign Commences | true | https://counterpunch.org/2004/10/01/my-write-in-campaign-commences/ | 2004-10-01 | 4 |
<p>Union leaders came together in Albany yesterday, united in their disdain for Governor Cuomo and his efforts to “privatize” and “downsize” state services.</p>
<p>The rally was attended by members of three major New York unions, including PEF, CSEA and NYSCOPBA.</p>
<p>CSEA President Danny Donahue took some of the biggest shots at the Governor, referring to his efforts to keep an upstate plant open as “bullshit,” and later topping Cuomo as a “moron.”</p>
<p>Via the <a href="http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/204734/public-sector-unions-unload-on-moron-cuomo/" type="external">Times Union</a>:</p>
<p>CSEA President Danny Donohue, whose union is still upset over the governor’s institution of a less-costly Tier 6 retirement plan almost two years ago, took the rhetoric even farther, ridiculing as “bull___” the idea that Cuomo did everything he could to keep General Electric from closing an upstate plant late last year.</p>
<p>“Today should be the hue and cry for the governor,” Donohue said. ” … We the people of this state are sick and tired of being had by this moron.”</p>
<p>Donahue also called Cuomo a “monkey” for his <a href="http://www.nystateofpolitics.com/2014/01/cseas-donohue-union-unlikely-to-endorse-cuomo/" type="external">economic policies</a>.</p>
<p>He added that CSEA would probably not endorse the governor in the upcoming election.</p>
<p /> | Union President: We’re “Sick and Tired of Being Had By This Moron” Cuomo | true | http://menrec.com/union-president-were-sick-and-tired-of-being-had-by-this-moron-cuomo/ | 2014-01-30 | 0 |
Subsets and Splits