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<p>Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook called on Comey to explain why he rushed to disclose new information about the status of the investigation into Clinton, while reportedly opposing, on the grounds that it would be too close to the election, a public statement by the FBI that the Russian government was seeking the influence the presidential race.</p>
<p>“It is impossible to view this as anything less than a blatant double standard,” Mook said.</p>
<p>Democrats are reeling from the news late last week that – a little more than a week before the election — Comey is revisiting his probe into the potential mishandling of classified material.</p>
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<p>Aiming to quickly redirect the focus of the presidential race, the Clinton campaign seized on news reports that Comey had rejected efforts within the FBI to identify Russia as the source of hacking incidents this year, which primarily effected Democratic organizations, including Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.</p>
<p>Clinton’s press secretary, Brian Fallon, said that Comey “set a standard for narrating a play-by-play for matters involving Hilary Clinton,” but has not set the same standard for inquiries into Russian hacking and potential ties to Republican nominee Donald Trump’s campaign.</p>
<p>“Director Comey owes the public an explanation for this inconsistency,” Fallon said.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in Warren, Michigan, Trump hammered on the issue of Clinton’s emails during an afternoon rally that started more than two hours late in the Detroit suburb.</p>
<p>He said that he expects the FBI to find some of the 33,000 emails that have yet to be uncovered among the 650,000 emails that are reportedly on the laptop at the center of the latest controversy. He repeated his claim that Clinton’s use of a private email server “the biggest scandal since Watergate,” and told Clinton to stop blaming the scandal on others.</p>
<p>“”Hillary Clinton wants to blame everyone else for her mounting legal troubles,” Trump said. “But she has brought this situation onto herself. She’s got nobody to blame but herself.”</p>
<p>While campaigning in Ohio earlier in the day, Clinton moved to turn the conversation to national security and Trump’s fitness for office.</p>
<p>The Democratic presidential nominee addressed the email issue at the start of a speech at Kent State University.</p>
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<p>“I’m sure a lot of you may be asking what this new email story is about, and why in the world the FBI would decide to jump into an election with no evidence of wrongdoing,” less than two weeks before Election Day, Clinton said. “That’s a good question.”</p>
<p>“I understand. And as I’ve said, I’m not making any excuses” for setting up her private email system as she did, Clinton said. “I’ve said it was a mistake, and I regret it.”</p>
<p>On Monday afternoon, the Justice Department responded to growing calls from a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress for additional information about the renewed inquiry. In a letter to lawmakers, the Justice Department said it was moving “as expeditiously as possible” to investigate the new emails, but it did not provide any additional information.</p>
<p>Clinton’s campaign pushed back hard all weekend against Comey’s decision. Clinton denies that her email put the country at risk, and her campaign says she testified truthfully.</p>
<p>Other Democrats also demanded swift answers about what Comey is looking for and why he chose to renew the inquiry less than two weeks before Election Day. Democratic senators asked for answers by the end of the day Monday.</p>
<p>At her rally in Ohio, Clinton predicted that the new inquiry will reach the same conclusion as Comey did at the end of the FBI investigation in July, when he announced that despite what he called sloppiness, there was no evidence of criminal conduct.</p>
<p>“There is no case,” Clinton said, adding that she thinks most Americans have long since decided how they feel about the email issue. “Now, what people are focused on is choosing the next president and commander in chief of the United States of America.”</p>
<p>Campaigning earlier Monday in Grand Rapids, Mich., Trump said that Comey had “brought back his reputation” with his notice to Congress on Friday that he would look at new information in the case.</p>
<p>“It took a lot of guts” for Comey to change course three months after ending the probe into whether classified information was compromised, Trump said. “I really disagreed with him” over that earlier decision. “I was not his fan. But what he did brought back his reputation.”</p>
<p>During her lengthy speech at Kent State, Clinton returned to an argument that has been among her most potent: that Trump’s “very thin skin” and brash, ill-informed commentary on world affairs disqualifies him as commander in chief.</p>
<p>“I’m running against a man who says he doesn’t understand why we can’t use nuclear weapons. He wants more countries to have nuclear weapons.” Clinton said. “And if you’re telling yourself he’s going to surround himself with smart people to stop these crazy ideas, remember this: He was asked who he consults on foreign policy. Donald Trump said he doesn’t need to consult because, and I quote, ‘I have a very good brain.’ “</p>
<p>Turning to Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin, Clinton said the Russian president is playing Trump for a patsy.</p>
<p>“He knows he can use flattery to get into Donald’s head, to make Donald the Kremlin’s puppet,” she said of Putin, “and it seems to be working. Donald has signaled to Putin that he will let Russia do whatever it wants.”</p>
<p>She also ran through a series of Trump remarks about the NATO alliance, U.S. nuclear umbrella in Asia and other topics that she said show him to be ignorant or reckless.</p>
<p>“This is one of those make-or-break moments for our nation,” she said.</p>
<p>Aside from changing the subject from the emails, Clinton’s efforts in Ohio are part of a strategy to create several paths to an electoral college victory – the simplest of which would be to win Florida. Clinton spent the weekend campaigning in the Sunshine State, where some polls show Trump leading.</p>
<p>But the campaign has encountered significant obstacles over the weekend after Comey reignited a political firestorm when he said FBI officials had detected a batch of emails pertinent to the earlier case during an “unrelated” investigation.</p>
<p>People close to the situation have told The Washington Post that the emails were found on a computer belonging to disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, who is under investigation for allegedly exchanging lewd messages with a 15-year-old girl. Weiner is the estranged husband of Clinton campaign vice chairman Huma Abedin.</p>
<p>Abedin, who is very often the aide closest to Clinton’s side on trips, has been absent from the campaign plane since the Comey news broke.</p>
<p>In Michigan when Trump first brought up Clinton’s emails, the crowd began to loudly chant: “Lock her up! Lock her up!” In the audience was a woman dressed up in an orange prison jumpsuit labeled “Clinton.”</p>
<p>As his audience laughed, Trump crowed, “Thank you, Huma,” mispronouncing Abedin’s first name as “OO-ma.” “Thank you, Huma! And thank you, Anthony Weiner.”</p>
<p>Clinton opened the last full week of campaigning Monday with a television advertisement revisiting the famous 1964 “Daisy” ad about the looming danger of nuclear weapons. The new ad features the same woman who, as a small girl, plucked petals from a flower in the original ad for President Lyndon Johnson’s campaign, which was aimed at Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater.</p>
<p>Clinton’s goal at rallies Monday near Cleveland and in Cincinnati is to keep up enthusiasm among Democrats and encourage more early voting this week. Former president Bill Clinton campaigned for his wife in Cleveland over the weekend, and President Obama is due in Columbus on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Trump leads Clinton in Ohio by 1.3 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls. That is within the margin of error, meaning the race is effectively tied.</p>
<p>On Sunday night, the FBI obtained a warrant to review the emails, which one official said include a significant number of messages associated with Clinton and Abedin. In his letter to Congress, Comey said that whether the emails provide any new information to the Clinton investigation had yet to be determined, but Democrats worry that the news could sway the election.</p>
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<p>Johnson reported from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Anne Gearan contributed from Washington.</p>
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<p>campaign-2ndld-writethru</p> | Clinton campaign accuses FBI director of ‘double standard’ in email probe | false | https://abqjournal.com/879080/clinton-works-to-shift-election-conversation-back-to-a-comparison-with-trump-on-national-security-grounds.html | 2016-10-31 | 2 |
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<p>Christopher Mark Radtke, who has resigned from the department, is facing one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and six counts of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds.</p>
<p>According to prosecutors, Radtke could get up to a 20-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine if convicted on the money laundering charge and up to 10 years per count and a $250,000 fine on the theft charges.</p>
<p>Radtke’s initial court appearance is scheduled for Friday morning.</p>
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<p>The sheriff’s office announced Monday that Radtke had resigned from the second-highest position in the department.</p>
<p>It wasn’t immediately clear Wednesday night if he had an attorney yet for his case.</p>
<p>The 10-page indictment alleges Radtke “conspired to circumvent the restrictions on the use” of RICO funds, which is money seized from criminals under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.</p>
<p>Radtke misrepresented to the county Attorney’s Office that the sheriff’s office was donating the funds to the Sheriff’s Auxiliary Volunteers, but the funds were actually used by the sheriff’s office, according to the indictment.</p>
<p>“This laundering of the forfeiture funds enabled the sheriff’s office to use the money free from regulations relating to forfeiture funds and procurement,” the indictment said.</p>
<p>Federal authorities investigated spending on a cafe operated by Radtke’s niece inside the sheriff’s headquarters.</p>
<p>Radtke’s niece reportedly took over operation of the cafe in 2012 and the sheriff’s department spent more than $10,000 on equipment for the space and allowed her to run her restaurant rent-free and without a county contract.</p>
<p>Sheriff’s officials initially said the equipment was paid for with RICO funds, but they later said the money came from the general fund.</p>
<p>Public records indicate the county spent more than $30,000 on equipment for the cafe and a second location opened in 2014 inside the county jail.</p>
<p>The indictment also lists several Sheriff’s Auxiliary Volunteers checks issued to a sheriff’s office employee from May 2011 to April 2015 for reimbursement of restaurant bills, a microwave oven, a food and refreshment fund, a Santa sleigh for an awards banquet, two model airplanes and chalkboards. One of the checks was for more than $926.</p> | Indictment of ex-Pima County Sheriff’s chief deputy unsealed | false | https://abqjournal.com/866368/indictment-of-ex-pima-county-sheriffs-chief-deputy-unsealed.html | 2 |
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<p>Price action confirms that, as expected, emerging markets assets did not enjoy the outcome of last month's U.S. presidential election. The ensuing rally in the U.S. dollar ensured previously hot emerging markets bonds suffered last month as well.</p>
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<p>The Market Vectors Emerging Mkts Local ETF (NYSE:EMLC), which as its name implies, holds emerging markets debt denominated in local currencies, fell 7.7 percent last month.</p>
<p>Emerging markets governments and some corporations binge borrowed in dollars during the various versions of the Fed's quantitative easing programs. It looked smart, as the dollar weakened against a plethora of developed and emerging currencies, but those emerging markets borrowers <a href="http://www.benzinga.com/trading-ideas/long-ideas/16/07/8220916/a-new-etf-avenue-for-em-sovereign-debt" type="external">were caught off guard Opens a New Window.</a> when the dollar started soaring several years ago.</p>
<p>With dollar soaring in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump's victory and in anticipation of the Federal Reserve boosting interest rates later this month, emerging markets bonds and ETFs such as EMLC make for easy targets for the vulnerable label, but there might be more to the story. Notably, today's emerging markets debt market looks much different than it did a decade ago.</p>
<p>The emerging markets debt asset class has grown tremendously in the past two decades. It now has a market capitalization of more than $3.6 trillion (as of October 31, 2016), as measured by J.P. Morgans emerging markets bond indices, versus approximately $1.1 trillion ten years ago. In addition to its growing size, the emerging markets debt market has become incredibly diverse and now includes bonds issued by sovereign, quasi-sovereign, and corporate entities in both hard currencies (mainly U.S. dollars and euros) and local currencies, said VanEck <a href="https://www.vaneck.com/blogs/emerging-markets-bonds/case-for-emb-part-1/" type="external">in a recent note Opens a New Window.</a></p>
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<p>EMLC has a 30-day SEC of 5.94 percent, which is eye-popping in a world of low and negative sovereign debt yields throughout the developed world. One of the reasons the ETF has struggled in recent weeks is its Mexico exposure.</p>
<p>Latin America's second-largest economy is EMLC's second-largest country weight, which has been a drag on the ETF in the wake of Trump's win because of his harsh rhetoric <a href="http://www.benzinga.com/news/16/11/8722042/a-problem-area-within-a-problem-etf" type="external">aimed at Mexico Opens a New Window.</a>. Not to mention the peso has been a laggard among emerging currencies this year. On the upside, Mexico carries an investment-grade rating and is historically not as volatile as other emerging economies.</p>
<p>Growth in the market size has been driven primarily by the increased issuance of local currency-denominated sovereign bonds, as well as corporate bonds. The emerging markets corporate debt market alone nearly equals the size of the U.S. high yield bond market. Many foreign investors gravitate towards hard currency sovereign and corporate bonds, typically those denominated in U.S. dollars, to limit currency risk. However, the local currency market far exceeds the hard currency market in size, added VanEck.</p>
<p>2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.</p> | There's Still A Case For Emerging Market Bond ETFs | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/12/01/there-still-case-for-emerging-market-bond-etfs-534349650.html | 2016-12-01 | 0 |
<p>Death is not a pleasant subject to talk or write about. For those who are healthy and busy, the mere thought of death is depressing. But all of us must die sometime, and if we wish to die well, we ought to think about death and plan for it long before we must face it. Nearly all deaths are painful, but the amount of pain can be greatly reduced by appropriate personal planning and social reform.</p>
<p>The ideal death is unexpected, quick, and dignified. The man who suffers a heart attack at home with his family and dies immediately is fortunate. He misses the fearful expectation of certain, fast approaching death, as well as the pain of a fatal illness. And, if such a death comes after a man has raised his family and completed his life's work, it is indeed an ideal death.</p>
<p>But only a very small minority of men and women now living will experience such an ideal death. The great majority will die slowly, consciously, painfully, and expensively, causing much trouble and cost to their families and/ or to society. Many will lie in bed for months or years, comatose, paralyzed, and/or in pain. About one-third of all deaths in the U.S. are caused by cancer, an especially painful disease; but many other terminal illnesses also cause great personal suffering and economic cost.</p>
<p /> | On the Right to Suicide by the Dying | true | https://dissentmagazine.org/article/on-the-right-to-suicide-by-the-dying | 2018-10-05 | 4 |
<p>Rumi, the best selling poet in America today, was a practicing Muslim and a Sufi master who lived nearly eight hundred years ago. His poetry and lyrical verses exalting his desire for the Divine, as well as describing his ecstatic pain and yearning for his “beloved” continue to inspire lovers to this day. Due to mass commercialization and weak translations of Rumi’s poetry, Sufism has unfortunately become synonymous with a saccharine, Hallmark card, Deepak Chopra’d simplification of Islam’s most profound spiritual science. Even within the global Muslim community, significant controversies and acrimonious debates have arisen around the validity of Sufism within the theological framework of the religion. Many, such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one of the most prolific and well known Muslim American scholars, argue that Sufism represents the spiritual engine and heart of Islam, which is rooted within the core of its scholastic traditions, and is capable of revitalizing modern day Islam rooted in literalism and political extremism. In discussing his latest work, “ <a href="" type="internal">The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition,</a>” we talked about Rumi’s spiritual influence on the modern world, the role of Sufism in Islamic history and tradition, and the critique of Sufism as an antiquated model of esotericism.</p>
<p>ALI: Let’s talk about Rumi. I’m sure you know Coleman Barks [“Translator” of countless Rumi poetry books], correct?</p>
<p>NASR: Yes.</p>
<p>ALI: Even though Coleman Barks and others try to divorce Rumi from his God consciousness, it nonetheless emanates in his poetry. Rumi is the best selling poet in America today. What is it about his work, which is thoroughly rooted in Islam and Islamic sciences, that appeals to mainstream audiences?</p>
<p>NASR: The question I think should be put the other way around. First of all, Jalaluddin Rumi is completely rooted in Islamic teachings of Quran. He was a great scholar, he belonged to a madrassa, and he knew Islamic theology and jurisprudence very well. He knew Persian, Arabic and Turkish, which was coming into Anatolia at that time, very well. He was a remarkable, remarkable scholar, besides being a great saint. He was completely rooted in Islamic tradition. I’m totally opposed to those who try to pull Rumi out of his Islamic foundations by ignoring that element. I have written about this quite a bit and in fact I have a recent book of poetry which is called “Life is a pilgrimage: In conversation with Rumi” in which I translated the first part of his Mathanvi [Rumi’s most beloved work.]</p>
<p>It complements what I said about Rumi being rooted completely in the Sufi Islamic tradition. Now what is it that appeals universally of Rumi to the West today? Several things. First of all, Rumi is one of the great spokesmen for the Quranic instruction teaching that all prophets come from God and God does not create one religion, but many religions. The verse of the Quran that mentions we have created for each of you, for all of you, your own path, your own Sharia [Religious law], so that you will vie for each other in goodness and mindfulness of God. And a very famous Quranic verse: “To every people we have sent a messenger.” And many of the verses of the Quran which represent a universal perspective of Islamic Fiqh [Jurisprudence.] Abraham is called a Muslim, Christ is called Muslim. Now, there were a large number of Muslims throughout history who brought out the meanings of this especially when it was necessary; when Islam met Hinduism in India and in Anatolia for example, and when Islam met Christianity and to an extent Judaism. But Rumi is one of the great masters who brought out this universal teaching.</p>
<p>As of today, one of the greatest problems of humanity is how to live in a multi religious society without losing one’s religion – without relativising everything. Which is why perhaps with the greatest spiritual problem of today, Rumi is a great master who is able to provide a way. Secondly, Rumi is also perhaps the greatest mystical poet who ever lived, one of the greatest poets of the Persian language. He was able to express practically all aspects of the spiritual life and our existential situation in the world today as human beings in beautiful Persian poetry.</p>
<p>Now, Coleman Barks and these other translators who are very famous now, they do not know Persian. They work with a Persian speaker. The translations are not exact. They are not like the translations of Reynald A. Nicholson, who translated the whole of the Mathnavi, a remarkable feat; a few mistakes in it, but really a remarkable feat. These people have adapted the teachings of Rumi often based on the Nicholson translation often with the help of a Persian speaker to a kind of contemporary, American medium of poetry. This is quite an art, although it’s not exact from the point of scholarship, it brings out something of the taste for this combination of truth and beauty that Rumi represents: an expression of the deepest truths of spiritual life in God and beauty.</p>
<p>ALI: Speaking about Rumi and other Sufi poets, much of their poetry comes from a specific desire. There seems to be a fire and longing in their spirit that was ignited by a loss. For Rumi, it was the loss of his spiritual friend and guide Shams Tabris. Why do we see these extreme emotions: one of pain and longing and the other of love, both equally necessary in reaching and understanding the Divine Path? Why the marriage of pain and longing?</p>
<p>NASR: Well, that’s very obvious and let me give you a human example. If you’re just a young man, like you are, and going about your business, you will think of this. Suppose you fall in love with a girl, now suddenly this element of love comes into your life and it disturbs you. The day before you fell in love, you got up in the morning, you said your prayers, you washed yourself, and you went to work and didn’t think of these things. Then suddenly you’ve fallen in love. Once you’ve fallen in love, it’s turned around your whole life. You keep thinking bout this girl all the time instead of thinking about other things. Since the object of love is that particular person, being separated brings about a longing and pain. Love is loss combined with pain; even in the West you have the famous, famous play, which Wagner put into opera, Tristan and Isolde, which brings out the story of these great lovers, where their love leads to death. It’s one of the most famous arias of Western music – The Love-Death Song of Wagner in German – which corresponds exactly on an external plane, because of course Wagner was not a mystic or a Sufi, but it was a medieval story that had this depth in it. The idea that love itself cannot be divorced from the suffering which comes from being separated from the object of love. The story of Layla and Majnoon, in Arabic and Persian and other Islamic languages, always leads them to death. It’s like Romeo and Juliet: intense love. This is a human way for expressing something much more profound that is that love for God.</p>
<p>And the Quran, of course, speaks about this explicitly: “God loves them, and they love Him.” If God did not love us, we could not love him. And Sufis are those who have realized this love. It’s like that second day that I mentioned about a young man, like yourself. The first day he was not in love and went about his business, and the second day suddenly the love came. There are people who realize this love for God in this life. Like falling in love with a beautiful woman, or from a female side, a man. Once this realization takes place, this love brings with it yearning. Yearning is inseparable from love, and since once doesn’t have the object of love immediately, one has not fallen in the embrace of the beloved immediately, they are suffering. That’s how they are related.</p>
<p>ALI; Here’s a criticism that many critics of spirituality ask: If the spiritual seeker must be like a subservient “corpse” in the hand of his “washer”, his spiritual guide, then doesn’t Islam and the spiritual path rob one of their individuality? Isn’t this proof Islam is a machine that requires assimilation and creates mindless automons? How is this a path towards individuality?</p>
<p>NASR: I wish someone could get rid of individuality so easily; one never gets rid of one’s individuality completely. One gets rid of one’s egotism, which is a very different matter. In your room, you can have two paintings on your wall; one that is a Persian miniature and the other which is a Dutch painting by Rembrandt. They are very distinct characters, yet they have their own individual traits, but they are inanimate, they don’t have a will of their own. When one talks about being like a dead corpse in the hands of a spiritual teacher it means being able to surrender one’s will, specially one’s nafs al ammarah, that is a part of our soul which is again a Quranic term, which commands us to evil – we must surrender that. That’s what it means. It doesn’t make you become part of a cog of a machine.</p>
<p>In fact, the machine doesn’t have the consciousness we have, the free will that we have, and to surrender one’s free will, not in every matter but in spiritual matters, to a spiritual teacher is in a sense a lower level of surrendering one’s will to God. Many people have criticized Islam for being just automatic, having no individuality, just surrendering your will to God, but we Muslims know very well that every moment of the day we have to practice the fact that to surrender one’s self to God is an act of free will.</p>
<p>ALI: Muslims look at the world right now, specifically the Muslim “ummah” [community], and they see instability, suffering, authoritarian regimes, oppression and so forth. So, many Muslims ask what will all this fasting, this dhikr [remembrance and invocation of God], this tazkiyat al nafs [Spiritual exercises in purification], and all this Sufi practice help? How do all these spiritual Sufi practices help the Muslims suffering in Palestine, Chechnya or Iraq? People say this is like Muslims who live in a bubble and put their heads in the sand, but in order to help people one must be more political. So, what’s your take on that?</p>
<p>NASR: It’s total nonsense. There are many, many answers to this question. The main answer is that the Islamic world is suffering not only because of external oppression but also because of the loss of its own dignity, of its own heritage, of its own practice of Islam, of its weakening of its own ethics, and many things which are internal to Islam not just external. Now, Sufism has always had the function of purifying Islamic ethics and that fasting and tazkiya is like lighting a lamp. What does a lamp do? The lamp is like a horse that is running but stays put. But by virtue of being a lamp it illuminates the space around it. Therefore, the practice of purifying one’s soul, of living virtuously, has tremendous impacts upon the ethics of the surrounding society.</p>
<p>The Islamic world is not only suffering from the American occupation of Palestine and Iraq, it’s also suffering from the unbelievable corruption in Afghanistan by Afghans themselves and also in Iraq – I’m just giving these 2 examples of countries which are under direct occupation; I do not mean at all to negate the terrible events that led to this or what’s going on with the foreign occupation there. But I’m saying that it is not the only problem and Sufis have always been those that have tried to purify the ethics of Islam and society. And they don’t have their hands cut off from the external action at all. For example, the bazaar in which the Sufis were very strong always dominated economic life in Islamic world. They could give a much more sane and Islamic form of activity when the economic life of Islam moved out of the bazaar to new parts of Islamic cities with modernized Muslims, who took it in another light and it became very, very anti Islamic, and much against many of the most profound practices of Islamic societies.</p>
<p>There is no way throughout Islamic society for Islam as a society, as a civilization, to revive itself without this inner spiritual vitality that came to it. And also militarily, the great movements of resistance against colonial powers in the 18th and 19th century were almost all from Sufis: Imam Shamil in Caucasia, Amir Abd al Qadir in Algeria, The Barelvi family in the modern province of India, today which is Pakistan, and you can go down the line. What is tragic today is that there is a number of Muslims who think that all the solutions are to be found simply by external actions. They don’t have to do anything within themselves. This is a deeply Western idea – modern, Western idea, where you try to improve the world without improving yourself. And this is what the Muslims who talk about others putting their heads in the sand and that “We are doing jihad and we are political” and so forth, they are emulating a very important mistake of modernism.</p>
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<p>ALI: Prophet Muhammad’s personality and name are exalted as habiballah, beloved of God, and he who is beloved by Muslims as a criterion model of conduct. His Sunnah [Prophetic etiquette and conduct] yields men like Rumi and leads to acts of selfless charity, but also at the same inspires jihadists and extremists in the modern world. Many people blame this latter type of behavior on the personality of Prophet Muhammad. Let’s talk about this remarkably complex personality, which can produce such varying fruits and results in its followers. You have the Sufis on one hand and the Bin Ladens on the other.</p>
<p>NASR: First of all, The Bin Ladens must not be confused with authentic jihad – it’s quite something else. If you want an example of external jihad, you should cite Amir Abd al Qadir who fought against the French in the 19th century, which was quite something else. But putting that aside, the Prophet, peace be on him, presents all the possibilities of the human state in perfection. Now, a part of that of course is love of God. And the word Habib in Arabic means both lover and beloved. At the heart of it is that he loves God, God loves him. But God designated him to be also the founder of a new world order of a civilization of a society. He was therefore, first of all, a Prophet of course, a beloved and lover of God, a father, an army commander, a judge, a ruler of a community, the King of Medina and later of Arabia, and all of these were combined in him and his destiny, the reason God brought him on earth, was to show how each of the functions which human beings have in life have the perfect form in the prophet.</p>
<p>He sets the model for all of them. He sets the model for being a good statesman. He also sets the model for being a good warrior, for chivalry, of nobility, of all the things which the Quran and Hadith [The recorded collections of the sayings and traditions of the Prophet] says of treating your enemy with dignity and kindness. The Quran explicitly opposes the killing of innocent people and the Prophet was always careful in doing that. If they had to fight a war, he was always on the side of peace as soon as it was possible to make peace because that’s what the Quran says also. He was the exemplar ruler, exemplar father, exemplar warrior, and once you have a family, you have contentions, you have problems, human problems, and it’s the human order. He set the example and model for Muslims for all the different endeavors. He is not only the example of the spiritual life, but he is also an example for our life in this world. Because Islam, in contrast to Christianity and Buddhism, does not have monasticism; spiritual life, social life, they are all integrated and related together in one way or another. And the Prophet represents that in his life.</p>
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<p>ALI: Let’s talk about the relationship between a murshid [spiritual master/guide] and his murid [spiritual aspirant/apprentice]; the seeker and the sought; the master and the apprentice. First, why must the spiritual aspirant need to give baya’ [allegiance/oath; giving one’s hand] to a spiritual master?</p>
<p>NASR: In Islam, there is no priesthood and each person stands before God, like in the daily prayers, without an intermediary. That’s in contrast to Christianity, where during the Eucharist, a priest has to officiate and the priest functions as a link – at least in Catholic Christianity – between the laity and God. In Islam this doesn’t exist. However, this is not the same thing as spiritual guidance of what I speak. All Muslims stand before God and they are their own priests. But spiritual guidance needs guidance. It’s like comparing walking on the ground and mountain climbing. Once you learn how to walk, you can walk on the ground by yourself, but if you want to climb Mount Everest, you need a guide.</p>
<p>The fact there is need for a guide in the spiritual traveling that Sufism is involved with does not at all annul what I just said about the lack of necessity of an intermediary of God –&#160; as far as religious rights of ordinary practices of religion are concerned. In the field of medicine, if you’re sick you need a doctor. A doctor has already studied how to deal with your ailments, and human beings are imperfect. There any many ailments of the psyche and the soul that need to be treated, and the serious murshid, or spiritual master, is also really a doctor of the soul: a person who can heal the wounds of the soul in the same way as a medical doctor takes care of our physical problems. Why does one need a doctor if God has given us our body and we pray to Him for our help?</p>
<p>That’s on one level, but the need of a doctor when we have a bad stomach is an immediate level and God has provided the possibility.&#160; In Islam, we believe that it is God himself who is the ultimate guide – Al Hadi – one of the names of God is Al Hadi, the Guide. But at the same time, God has provided within the Islamic revelation the possibility of spiritual guidance through human beings, because then everyone can have direct access to God. If you want to make a decision in life on what to do, but if you’re trying systematically, through spiritual practice, through meditation, through the invocation of the name of God, to walk closer and closer in this life to Him, you need someone to guide you. And God has made it possible in Islam for this guidance to exist.</p>
<p>ALI: Here comes the criticism, and I don’t want to label the people who would say this, but assume someone says, “Ok, what you say makes sense but where’s the proof in Quran and Sunnah [The Prophetic traditions and etiquette] that allows this? Where did the Prophet Muhammad allow this? When did Prophet Muhammad do this – the giving of the baya’?”</p>
<p>NASR: First of all, in Hudaibiya, the Prophet gave baya’ to his choice followers, laying the foundation of the baya’ of Sufism. This is based directly on the Sunnah of the Prophet. Secondly, the Quran mentions the story of Moses and Khidr [a prophet mentioned in the Quran who guided Moses on a revelatory journey], a famous story, in which Moses represents sort of the external understanding of the religion and Khidr represents the inner spiritual understanding of the religion. Moses went on a journey with Khidr and Khidr said, “I will not accept you unless you stop questioning things,” which from an external point of view seems strange, but inwardly is very meaningful. This is exactly the question of spiritual guidance.</p>
<p>Finally, you have the prototype of spiritual guidance, you have the Prophet, peace be upon him, himself when he goes on the night Miraj, the nocturnal ascent, which is in the Quran and no Muslim can deny it no matter how external and exclusive they are, and there are many of those in the Islamic world today, but they can’t deny the text of the Quran. The Prophet was taken by the order of God to heaven, which is a prototype of all spiritual realization in Islam. But, he had a guide; Gabriel, the angel, was his guide. He took him to heaven. So, anybody who says what is the basis of this – there are many, many sources. This is not at all something without scriptural basis; there is much scriptural basis in Sharia [Islamic Jurisprudence.]</p>
<p>ALI: Many might say what you are describing is a very universal concept of religion and spirituality. Yet in Sufism and Islam, why is Haqiqat [Spiritual Enlightenment; The Ultimate Truth] rooted within Sharia [Islamic Jurisprudence]? Why must the tariqah [Spiritual Path] be Islamic if there are so many different paths to God?</p>
<p>NASR: That’s a very good question. In the same way that we have a body and a soul and a spirit, our soul can’t walk in the street without our body – we would be dead then. Religion is the same way; it has to have a body, it has to have a form, it has to have structure. Without that, the soul cannot be prepared to follow the tariqah. Tariqah [The Spiritual Path] without the Sharia [Islamic Law] is like having a pistachio tree without the shell. Or a walnut, a walnut cannot grow on a tree without having a shell, and the food that you eat is inside the shell. The Shariah has many other functions but also protects the tarqiah; it protects the spiritual path. There is no religion in the world where there is a possibility of spiritual development outside of the context of that religion. This is only a modern invention. For example, Christian mystics were also Christians. They also went to Church and followed Christian laws. Hindu mystics were practicing Hindus; they didn’t kill cows and have steak. They follow the Hindu laws and so on and so forth down the line and Sufism is no exception.</p>
<p>It’s only in the modern world, where there is a hatred of religion, and there are certain sectors of modern society where there is an idea that you can take the spiritual teachings of a religion outside of a religion and practice them; these ideas are brought forward. That appears to be easy. You can say, “Oh, well. I don’t have to bother about not eating pork, and not drinking wine, and all you have to do is read the beautiful poetry of Rumi and talk about wine, women and song. Or something like that.” This kind of attitude. This is the antipode of the other attitude which says Islam is nothing but throwing bombs, it has nothing to do with internal or inward purification.</p>
<p>ALI: Haqiqat, some say, destroyed al-Hallaj [9TH century Persian Sufi mystic executed for alleged heresy] It overtook him to the point where he exceeded Sharia boundaries and proclaimed himself as “The Truth.”&#160; So why dabble with something that is so dangerous for a practicing Muslim? Why dabble with this spiritual science?</p>
<p>NASR: You are taking only one case. It’s like saying why drive when there are drunk people on the road everyday. There are millions and millions of Sufis who have existed in Islamic history and have the deepest impact on every aspect of Islamic culture and civilization to philosophy to art to science to social structure to economics who have not met the destiny of al-Hallaj. That has to be understood.</p>
<p>Al-Hallaj has a special destiny. He came at a time when worldliness, the luxury, were inundating the Islamic world. His function was to act as kind of an antithesis to this, and he paid for it with his life, and he was very happy to do so.&#160; He smiled as he went to the executioner. That was done because it shook the conscience of the Islamic peoples of that time. But the vast majority, the vast, vast, vast majority of Sufis, they have not met the destiny of al-Hallaj. They have spoken about reaching “the Truth” and there is nothing dangerous about it. Look at Senegal, about 90% of the Muslims in Senegal are Tijani or Qadiri Sufis. Among them, they have very great teachers who have written poems about al-Hallaj, and they have not been killed. In fact, it’s Sufism that brought Islam through all of Senegal, right under our noses the last couple of centuries. And you can go down the same line through Indonesia and Malaysia. How did the Turks become Muslim? They became Muslim through the Sufis. The Arabs never conquered the Turks. There were people in early Islam who were speaking like Hallaj, who spoke about the Truth, about reaching the Truth, about being one with the Truth, and not only they were not killed, but they were great heroes of their own culture, and there is a university in Turkey named after one [Sufi Saint.]</p>
<p>ALI: How did Sufism help spread Islam without the sword using the Chishti and Qadiri Sufi tariqahs in South Asia? Because all we hear is that Islam spread through the sword and only the sword –</p>
<p>NASR: That is absurd. This is all Western propaganda from the Middle Ages which is totally untrue. First of all, 300 years after the rise of Islam there were Zoroastrians in Iran. The Muslim armies never forced people to accept Islam. It was only within Arabia that God ordered the idolaters to have a choice of either embracing Islam or fight against Muslims, because He wanted to remove this terrible idolatry that exited there. But outside Arabia where Islam met Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Hindus, they were given a choice by and large. That’s why many Christians and Jewish communities survived in the Muslim world, but gradually many of them embraced Islam for different reasons. First of all, let’s stop talking about the spread by the sword. The Islamic world doesn’t stop in the Arab world or Persia. There is the whole Turkic world, the Central Asian world, South Asian world, Southeast Asian world, and African world.</p>
<p>If you have a billion Muslims, 900 million of them were not brought into Islam by any kind of invasion, but most of them through the Sufis, because human beings are such that they are affected by people of spiritual character. Certainly when they display nobility and hospitality and gentility and love and are not selfish or aggressive, and they are honest.&#160; People who were also traders were also men of Sufism, as we see around Java, people who were outwardly trading but were also men of very high spiritual character. Otherwise no trader would be able to convert a person from one religion to another. It was because they were men of spiritual character.</p>
<p>The Qadiri and Chisti Sufi orders in South Asia played an incredible role. Moinuddin Chishti, this incredible master who founded the Chishti order, originally Chisht was in the border of modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan, he was brought to India as a young man. He was a great saint. Openly, Hindus came to him, he would pray for them, he would be kind to them, and he would eat with them. Many of these Hindus realized this man was beyond all the distinctions of caste and social classifications that existed in India. I’m not trying to criticize the caste system that has its own philosophy, but the oppressive aspect of social stratification did not exist for him, so, many Hindus came to him. And they say he brought over 500,000 people to Islam during his life. Same with the Qadiris, some of these were great teachers who did not take a sword and try to fight against the Hindus. They made friends with the Hindus. In fact many Hindu yogis and Sufis met, they became friends, they spoke about the knowledge and love of God; about all the similarities that exist. And then the simplicity of Islam, the fact these people practiced what they preached brought many, many Hindus into Islam. It is very clear, you can see it: without Sufism, Islam would not have spread into two thirds of what we call the Islamic world.</p>
<p>WAJAHAT ALI is Pakistani Muslim American who is neither a terrorist nor a saint. He is a playwright, essayist, humorist, and Attorney at Law, whose work, “ <a href="http://www.domesticcrusaders.com/" type="external">The Domestic Crusaders</a>” is the first major play about Muslim Americans living in a post 9-11 America. His blog is at <a href="http://goatmilk.wordpress.com/" type="external">http://goatmilk.wordpress.com/</a>. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Rumi and Sufism | true | https://counterpunch.org/2008/06/10/rumi-and-sufism/ | 2008-06-10 | 4 |
<p>Share dilution is rarely met with anything but contempt from shareholders, though there are some cases where it can be used for the good of the company and shareholders alike.</p>
<p>In this week's crossover episode of <a href="http://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Industry Focus: Healthcare Opens a New Window.</a>, Kristine Harjes talks with guest host Gaby Lapera from the Financials show about why companies might dilute their shares, for better or worse. Then, the hosts dive into a business where the dilution rules get a little strange -- business development companies, or BDCs. Find out what a BDC does, how dilution is different for this class of businesses, and how investors probably want to approach BDCs.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</p>
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<p>This podcast was recorded on Nov. 16, 2016.</p>
<p>Kristine Harjes: Welcome to Industry Focus, the podcast that dives into a different sector of the stock market everyday. It's Nov. 16. I'm your host, Kristine Harjes, and I am pleased to welcome Financials host Gaby Lapera in the studio for crossover week. Hi, Gaby!</p>
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<p>Gaby Lapera: Hello, everyone! I'm super excited.</p>
<p>Harjes: It's alwaysawesometo be able to do the show with somebody in the studio.I love you to death, Todd Campbell, but it'sso nice to have somebody who you can look andgesticulate to and have right here. You can feel the energy, feel the love.</p>
<p>Lapera: Dude,I totally feel you. I think you and I are the only hosts thatconsistently have our analysts in the cloud somewhere. Sothis is super cool. I'm going to look at you the entire show; don't get freaked out.</p>
<p>Harjes: I will probably avoid eye contact.</p>
<p>Lapera: OK.</p>
<p>Harjes: Anyway,today we're going to be talking aboutshareholder dilution. Of course, since it is crossover week, we want to put an emphasis on our tworespective sectors. We'll try to focus it with a lens on both healthcare and financials.I figure we'll start off with some basics. Gaby,do you want to kick it off and tell us about what dilution is and why it matters?</p>
<p>Lapera: Yes, I would love to. Dilution,much like the chemistry term,means that you are becoming less concentrated. Shareholder dilation in particular means tworeally important things: one, that theeconomic power of the share that you hold is less, and two, your voting rights are lessbecause the share makes up less of the company. Let's back up a little bit, because I realized I just jumped straight into theconclusions of dilution anddidn't actually explain what it was. When companies decide to issue more stock, they don't magically have more assets, so the stock becomes less in price because there are more of them. It's a very simple equation.</p>
<p>Harjes: I think of it like a pie. You have the same size pie -- you can chop it up into however many pieces, but you still have the same pie at the end of the day.I think that's why there's such a negative perception of shareholder dilution, because if you areholding on to this piece of pie that you paid good money for,you don't want to see it suddenly get smaller. But there are good reasons why companies will dilute. Some of the really common ones are, for example, to pay for an acquisition. Sometimes it's to raise money. Maybe you need that to service your debt, or something like that. Another really common reason why shares become diluted is the conversion of stock options granted to employees or board members. A bunch of companies will give their executives, or theiremployees in general, the option to convertthese securities into common shares. Andwhen they actually do exercise that option, it dilutes thecurrent shareholder base.</p>
<p>So this can be a good thing or a bad thing. It'slargely a bad thing. Most people are not pleasedwhen they hear that they're being diluted. Butit actually could be a good thing,which is kind of an interesting case. Say, for example, yourcompany is overvalued and you know it. Which,hopefully, you bought it when they were undervalued, and now you're sitting on an overvalued company. Regardless -- say a company is overvalued, and the company goes to pay for anacquisition using stock. That'ssmarter thandoing that using cash, because the shares are worth more than the cash value. At that point, you could be very happy to see that,because this slice of pie that you have accumulatedis suddenly a bigger pie. It's cut up more ways, but the pie is bigger, so that's a good thing. But in general, it's not the best. Many times, you canperceive it as a transfer of wealth from the retail investor to the insiders, when you have the exercise of stock options.</p>
<p>Youalso have the option of it being pretty neutral,which is kind of the same as the case when it's good,except that that would be if you're using it in an acquisition where you're paying a fair price,and the company that you own is also fairly valued. That's net-net -- your slice of the pie is smaller,but the pie is proportionately bigger, so it's pretty neutral.</p>
<p>Lapera: I would love a real-life example, if you have one.</p>
<p>Harjes: I can do that, and I'm probably going to pick a healthcare stock, if that's alright with you.</p>
<p>Lapera: That's totally fine.</p>
<p>Harjes: Onerecent secondary offering that wasannounced in the healthcare world was that ofPuma Biotechnology(NYSE: PBYI). OnOct. 18 after the closing bell, theyannounced that they wanted to raise $150 million, and potentially another $22.5 million on top of that because of some technicalities with the people who underwrote the shares. They could technically have the option to buy them within 30 days, if they want. So this was aninteresting situation because Puma,right now, has this one drugcalled Neratinib. It's a breast cancer drug. If you were listening to this show yesterday, by the way, it's an HER2-positive breast cancer drug, which is a target thatI was just talking about with Vince on the Consumer Goods show yesterday. Anyway, you have this drug, and it's under FDA review right now, the decision should come out in about mid-2017.</p>
<p>Lapera: That means they're still testing the drug?</p>
<p>Harjes: That means the trails haveeither largely wrapped up orthat they have enough that they could submit it to the FDAwith what they have right now. The FDA is sitting on theinformation, they have the application,and they have a certain amount of time to actually accept or deny the drugthe right to be marketed. So, anapproval, as you likely know, would send shares of this company higher. If youthink about how the mechanicsof shareholder dilution and secondary offerings work, youwant to wait until you have that higher share price before you go out and send more shares,because you make more money. But they don't really haveenough time leftwith the cash that they have to wait for an actual approval. So they had to do this now. And I think it's probably a smart move. They canhit the ground running; they can get ready for the launch. But shares did sink 18%,even before the price of this secondary offering was announced. Since this announcement came out, shares have been slipping and slipping even more. Ultimately, shareholders were diluted about 15%, and thecompany got the money that they needed. So I think that's a fairly typical way you'll see secondary offerings and shareholder dilution in the biotech world. You have these companies that aren't making with the money with the drugs yet, because they're not approved yet, so they need to make money somehow.</p>
<p>Turning to the financials world, I feel like it gets a lot hairier.</p>
<p>Lapera: It can, definitely. You have a ton of regular type companies in the financials world, like banks and insurance companies and stuff like that, that do this what I like to call "the normal way," the way that Kristine just described. But then there's other companies. We'vediscussed these companies before. A great example of them is a BDC, which is a business development company. When you think about a BDC, think of them as a venture capitalist that you can buy shares of. Instead of youpersonally going out and saying, "Iwould like to investin your pizza delivery company," you would invest in the BDC, who would then give money to the pizza delivery company. Obviously, you can't buy shares of private equity firms, because they'reprivate equity firms.BDCs are really interesting because they're closed-end funds, which means they can't accept new investments all the time.</p>
<p>Harjes: What do you mean by that?</p>
<p>Lapera: Imagine you have a mutual fund, and you give the mutual fund $1,000 of your money. You can go to the mutual fund any time and say, "I want my $1,000 back," or, "I want to give you an extra $1,000," and the mutual fund says, "Great, totally fine, here's your $1,000 back." You can't do that with BDCs. The only way to get your money in and out of the BDC is just to buy or sell the shares that are on the exchange. That's because BDCs typically invest in the debt or equity of really small private companies -- back to this single pizza store in Washington, D.C., or ajewelry store in Idaho, or a mattress company. I don't know why, but BDCs lovemattress companies.</p>
<p>Theproblem with that is that if you have the debtof a very small company,it's really difficult to buy or sell those companiesor the debt on thosecompanies, because not a lot of people want it. So if an investor were able to just come up to the BDC and say, "Hey,I want my $1,000 back," or, in this case, maybe "I want my $100,000 back," the BDC might not have the cash on hand to give it back to them, which is why they issue shares instead. That's why BDCs have shares to begin with,as opposed to a mutual fund.</p>
<p>Harjes: So then,what sorts of issues do you run intoif they decide they want to issueeven more shares?</p>
<p>Lapera: This isreally interesting, and this gets into how the value of BDCs are calculated. If you've invested in a mutual fund, or have heard of mutual funds, you might have heard the term "net asset value," which issuper easy to calculate with mutual funds, because it's just the value of all the assets minus the liabilities that are on the balance sheets. Now, the problem with BDCs is, they get to decidehow valuable their assets are.</p>
<p>Harjes: And that's because they're these tiny pizza/mattress/etc. companies, right? You can't just go look online to say, "How much is this mattress shop worth?"</p>
<p>Lapera: Exactly. They don't issue 10-Qs, they don't have any of that. Unless you happen to be wherever that mattress company is, and you canwalk in and look at it and maybe talk to somebody there,it's really hard for investors to do their due diligence on what the BDCsactually own, so you have to just trust them. There areaccounting principles that they follow for this,but I like to call it emotional accounting,because it's really just how the BDC feelsabout this business.There is math involved, but it's a little bit more ...I wish listeners could see me,my hands are making vague motions in the air.</p>
<p>Harjes: Her face lookshighly skeptical.</p>
<p>Lapera: I'm so skeptical.</p>
<p>Harjes: The point is,it's a little bit shady, how you determine that asset value. But that's a really important metric for BDCs.</p>
<p>Lapera: Absolutely. Theeasiest way to explain BDCs is in contrast to mutual funds,which is why I keep bringing them up. If you want to buy into a mutual fund, you knowexactly how much each bit of the mutual fund is, because the net asset value iscalculated once a dayat the end of the day,which is why you only come in and out of mutual funds once a day. But BDCs, theirshare price is not 100% dependent on their net asset value. You can buy BDCs at a discount, or a premium. Typically,people want to buy at a discount.</p>
<p>Harjes: In that way, it's kind of like a stock.</p>
<p>Lapera: Exactly, it's exactly like a stock. And people do takenet asset value into account when buying shares. But it's an interesting thing,because where is the point where you're saying, "You'retrading it too much of a discount to youractual net asset value,and it makes me really nervous"?</p>
<p>Harjes: Right. At that point,is the market missing something, or is the company misleading you? I can see how that's a shaky gray area. Bringing that back around to this whole shareholder dilution thing, where exactly does that come into play here? What are the steps involved, the considerations?</p>
<p>Lapera: OK,let's throw in one more complicated thing. This requires a lot of definitionsto even get to the point here, so bear with us -- thank you, listeners! BDCs aretechnically not allowed to issue shares below their net asset value. So if their net asset value is $10,they can't issue shares for $8.</p>
<p>Harjes: Which iskind of fascinating. If you think about it,go back to the example of Puma Biotechnology,I'm pretty sure they were trading at $52 the day that it wasannounced that they were going to offer more shares. They're not going to offer more shares at a higher price than that,because who's going to buy them? You can buy them on the market for $52. So you naturally have this ceiling for stocks, whereif you're going to issue more shares,it has to be below know that current share price.</p>
<p>Lapera: Right. Companies can justdecide to do that. BDCs cannot. If they would like to do that, they need to ask their shareholders to let them dilute their stock. So they have proxies every year. It's interesting, because if BDCs are struggling, they can't just automatically lean on share issuance to prop themselves up. But there's this caveat -- BDCsfrequently ask their shareholders, every yearpretty routinely, "Hey, can we issue stocks below net asset value?"</p>
<p>Harjes: "Like,hypothetically, in the future, if we want to, will you let us?"</p>
<p>Lapera: Yes.</p>
<p>Harjes: That's a pretty long leash.</p>
<p>Lapera: Exactly. AndInvestors will frequently say yes, which I hate.</p>
<p>Harjes: Why is that?</p>
<p>Lapera: Why say yes?</p>
<p>Harjes: Can you see the rationale there at all?</p>
<p>Lapera: No.I really can't. I can't justify it. If you're one of these people who vote yes,please write in to me at <a href="http://mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected] Opens a New Window.</a> and let me know why you say yes.I really want to know. Because I would never say yes in a million years.</p>
<p>Harjes: Even if you totally trusted this BDC, it had been great to you in the past, you thought the net asset value was verytrustworthy, all that?</p>
<p>Lapera: Yeah,I would never say yes. Partially because BDCs are a really complicated beast,which is really something that I say every time we talk about BDCs, and there's a lot of room for mismanagement to occur in BDCs, not just with share dilution but with the way thatmanagement occurs, external vs. internal management, fee structures, theaccounting processes we talked about earlier,there's just a lot of ways for people to mess up in BDCs,so it's one of those things -- why give you thetemptation when it's not necessary?</p>
<p>Harjes: Right,I can see that. That leads me to the last thing I wanted to talk about with you today. I know BDCs have a pretty heavypresence of activist investors,and I have to assume that's because ofall these things they were just saying, where there's thisopportunity for mismanagement.</p>
<p>Lapera: Yeah,absolutely. But interestingly,activist investors are actually more attracted to BDCs that cannot issue more shares,because it's a lot easier for them to take control of them --</p>
<p>Harjes: You mean, people voted no?</p>
<p>Lapera: Yeah, people voted no. Typically, if people vote no, that means there's something wrong with the BDC, because it takes a lot for shareholders to vote no, forwhatever reason. So if they're voting no,it's because there's already something bad going on.</p>
<p>Harjes: So that's anindication of a lack of trust?</p>
<p>Lapera: Yeah,on the shareholders' part. And there'splenty of companies that never actually use this --that the shareholders vote yes andthe company's never do it, they just ask every yearjust because,because they're fine raising capital in other ways. But if you think about it, if a BDC has been told, "No,you can't issue any more shares,"it suddenly becomes a lot more easy --and they're already in trouble,so no one really wants to buy more shares of them, so they can't finance themselves, they can't issue themselves more shares below net asset value --it becomes a lot easier for an activist investor to start buying up shares and be able to take a stake in thatcompany that allows them to force that company to do what they want.</p>
<p>Harjes: So what is it that they want them to do at that point? How do youtake this and turn it around?</p>
<p>Lapera: Ittotally depends on the activist investor. I think some havebetter intentions than others.</p>
<p>Harjes: Do you think the primary goal there is to get that yes vote the next time it comes around?</p>
<p>Lapera: No. For most activistinvestors, they want to retain control of the company.</p>
<p>Harjes: Andthat's why they go for the ones that already voted no, that makes sense.</p>
<p>Lapera: Mostfrequently, activist investors want to change management structures or fee structures, in order,generally, to make it more profitable for shareholders. Butevery once in a while, they want to devalue the companyto make it easier for someone else to buy.</p>
<p>Harjes: Interesting. Have they been successful, on the whole?</p>
<p>Lapera: Yeah. BDCs are prime targets for activist investors. Especially because they're so complicated, and not a lot of people really 100% understand what's going on with them. But they are really high-yielding investment vehicles because they, much like real estate investment trusts, are required to pay out 90% of their taxable income as dividends. Because they're investing in high-risk, tiny businesses, the margin on their loans, or the debt they have, is a lot higher. So, they have the potential to yield super high returns.</p>
<p>Harjes: Given everything that you've told us today about BDCs, is there a single one that you would consider investing in?</p>
<p>Lapera: I hate BDCs.</p>
<p>Harjes: OK, that's a no.</p>
<p>Lapera: As a personal investor, I think they're fascinating as something to study. But no, I would never buy a BDC. I know that makes me biased. I'macknowledging my bias.</p>
<p>Harjes: I think that's OK. Look, for example, at Warren Buffett. He says he doesn't want to invest in stocks he doesn't understand. That eliminates a lot. For example, he's not going to invest in a biotech. I like to think you can understand biotech even without a science background. That's what we're here for atIndustry Focus: Healthcare. But, he's ruling out an entire chunk of companies, just because he doesn't think it's worthwhile to even bother trying to pick out the gold in a pile of dirt. That's not a real phrase, but I'm making it one. I feel like that's the same way with BDCs. Maybe there is a gem out there, but in general, it's a category that we're not too big fans of.</p>
<p>Lapera: Yeah. Do you like them?</p>
<p>Harjes: Not from what I've heard, no. With the shadiness, I would be intimidated to even try to pick apart the real net asset value.</p>
<p>Lapera: Yeah. I'm just waiting for a BDC PR specialist to reach out to me today and be like, "Let us change your mind about BDCs. We'd really love to give you an interview." And I'll probably ignore it or crotchetily -- which is not a word, by the way --cantankerously say, "No!" But nicer, because it's never polite to be mean.</p>
<p>Harjes: With that nice lesson of the day,I think I'm going to close out the show. Thank you, Gaby,so much for being hereand explaining to us this very complex topic of BDCs, andoffering some thoughts about shareholder dilution. Before wetotally sign off, I want to tell everybody thatthere's a race going on this Sundayin Alexandria, Va. If you live somewhere in the neighborhood of Fool HQ,you should absolutely consider signing up. It's called the Run for Shelter. Itbenefits The Carpenter's Shelter,which is a great local organization thatThe Motley Fool works with to fight homelessness. Chris Hill and Alison Southwick, some names thatyou'll recognize if you listen to our whole suite of podcasts, will be there. I'll be there. Many, many other Fools will be there. Andwe hope to see some of you there. Don't hesitate to come up and say hi. If you do run the race, there's a 5K, 10K, and 1 mile.</p>
<p>Lapera: I won't be there.</p>
<p>Harjes: Gaby,unfortunately missed the sign-ups because of her lovely trip to Asia thatI'm sure you guys have heard plenty about. But, she'll be there in spirit. Anywho, you can check out all of our past episodes ofIndustry Focus, and all of The Motley Fool's podcasts at our Podcast Center, which is at <a href="http://www.fool.com/podcasts/?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">podcasts.fool.com Opens a New Window.</a>. While you're there, you can also check out our flagship newsletter service, which is called Motley Fool Stock Advisor. This Friday, the new issue of Stock Advisor comes out, and they're going to have two newstock recommendations from David and Tom Gardner,who are the co-founders of our company, and some reallyphenomenal stock pickers. You cancheck out the recommendations by going to the Podcast Center, scrollall the way to the bottom. Again, that is podcast.fool.com.</p>
<p>As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks that they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell anything based solely on what you hear. For Gaby Lapera --thank you very much for being here -- I'm Kristine Harjes. Thanks for listening, guys, and Fool on!</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFCaffeine/info.aspx" type="external">Gaby Lapera Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFAnchor/info.aspx" type="external">Kristine Harjes Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Shareholder Dilution: What Investors Need to Know | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/22/shareholder-dilution-what-investors-need-to-know.html | 2016-11-22 | 0 |
<a href="http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/31/ivanka-trump-and-megyn-kelly-meet-for-brunch-in-new-york/" type="external">Daily Caller</a> Ivanka Trump had a surprising guest join her for breakfast recently. The Republican nominee's daughter&#160;and Megyn Kelly were spotted brunching&#160;together at the Four Seasons in New York on Friday for ?roughly two and a half hours,?&#160;according to Politico Playbook. An onlooker sent Playbook a fuzzy picture&#160;of Trump and Kelly dining together&#160;at a corner table. | Ivanka Trump Has Brunch With Megyn Kelly | true | http://americanupdate.com/articles/ivanka-trump-has-brunch-with-megyn-kelly?utm_content%3Dbuffer33088%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dfacebook.com%26utm_campaign%3Dbuffer | 0 |
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<p>FARMINGTON, N.M. — The Bureau of Land Management says an oil company with plans to build a pipeline in New Mexico capable of moving 50,000 barrels of crude oil a day has withdrawn its application for the project.</p>
<p>Saddle Butte San Juan, LLC, sent a letter to the agency saying that market conditions led to the decision to withdraw the right of way application for the Pinon pipeline system.</p>
<p>The project would have been be made up of smaller pipelines that would gather oil at well pads and other points. A larger pipeline would have moved the oil south to a distribution center near Interstate 40 in western New Mexico.</p>
<p>Environmentalists had voiced concerned that the pipeline would open the door to an exponential increase in production in the San Juan Basin.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Oil company withdraws application for New Mexico pipeline | false | https://abqjournal.com/910852/oil-company-withdraws-application-for-new-mexico-pipeline.html | 2 |
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<p><a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="" type="internal">Herman Cain</a> has suspended his presidential campaign, after a week-long battle attempting to regain the upper hand against allegations of a 13-year adulterous affair with Atlanta businesswoman Ginger White, and weeks denying allegations from up to form women of sexual harassment or sexual assault.</p>
<p>Cain said his “plan B” is a website called <a href="http://www.thecainsolutions.org/" type="external">The Cain Solutions</a>, which is not yet active as of this writing.</p>
<p>So, Cain said he was suspending his campaign, not quitting, he is refusing to go away, he is setting up a website to keep his ideas in the media, and then he said he is going to soon make an endorsement, which essentially destroys his intentions of suspending his campaign, although allows him to continue raising money. Stay tuned for more details on this critical issue.</p>
<p>Cain, who is 65, made the announcement live Saturday afternoon, standing alongside his wife Gloria, at what was to be the grand opening of his new campaign headquarters in his hometown of Atlanta. Reports claim that the Cain campaign, had been in touch with the Michele Bachmann campaign and debated throwing his support to Bachmann, the only woman of the GOP presidential candidates.</p>
<p>“I am at peace with my God. I am at peace with my wife, and she is at peace with me, and I am at peace with my family, and I am at peace with my self,” Cain said during his 20-minute oration.</p>
<p>Cain Saturday afternoon also said, “As of today, with a lot of prayer and soul searching, I am suspending my presidential campaign,” adding “message was more important than money,” and that “we showed you didn’t have to have a political pedigree to run for president.” He also said to the audience, “I’m one of you.”</p>
<p>Lambasting the “political elites,” Cain said, “as false accusations about me continue they have sidetracked my ability to present solutions to the American people,” but added, “I’ve made mistakes.”</p>
<p>Cain used the phrase “unproved allegations” several times, and said the media’s “spin… hurts my wife, it hurts my family, it hurts me, and it hurts the American people, because you are being denied solutions to our problems.”</p>
<p>On Tuesday, November 29, Cain said to his campaign on a conference call that he was “ <a href="" type="internal">reassessing</a>” his campaign.</p>
<p>Cain has been plagued by allegations of sexual harassment and/or sexual assault by four women, beginning in late October. Two of those women,&#160;Sharon Bialek and Karen Kraushaar, came forward publicly. Then, this past Monday, November 28, <a href="" type="internal">Ginger White</a>, an Atlanta businesswoman, was interviewed by a local Fox affiliate and stated she had maintained a 13-year sexual relationship with Cain, which included his contributing financial support to her household. Cain has denied all these allegations and, essentially, called all of these women liars, a point made by one of the women’s lawyers, Gloria Allred.</p>
<p>Cain was also plagued with a faulty centerpiece, his “999″ tax plan, his inability to grasp key issues on both foreign and domestic policy, and even his hiring of Mark Block, a political operative so flawed he was forced to agree to stay out of politics for three years for ethical violations.</p>
<p>This was Cain’s first campaign for public office, which had publicly announced his interest in pursuing last year, on&#160;September 24, 2010. Cain formed an exploratory committee&#160;on January 12, 2011, and formally announced his candidacy on May 21 of this year.</p>
<p>Cain has been a CEO, “industry lobbyist, syndicated columnist, and radio host from Georgia. Cain was chairman and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza from 1986 to 1996, deputy chairman of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City from 1992 to 1994, and chairman from 1995 to 1996. Cain was president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association from 1996 to 1999. Before his business career, he worked as a mathematician in ballistics as a civilian employee of the United States Navy,” according to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_cain" type="external">Wikipedia</a>.</p>
<p>(Image: Poster: <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Herman_Cain_protester.jpg" type="external">Protester of Herman Cain in Scottsdale, Arizona</a>. By Gage Skidmore.)</p>
<p>Friends:</p>
<p>We invite you to <a href="http://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/manage/optin?v=001whLQo73KzGhEjdskYG07rHNy_XoDDkSBBO4INZHx6oD9kfp2yeeQAJeMQUu9oTviZa0VEl5k0rNiLifxlZsOFScMz8rVGmIaN-FFOO3GTKc%3D" type="external">sign up for our new mailing list</a>, and&#160; <a href="http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=TheNewCivilRightsMovement&amp;amp;loc=en_US" type="external">subscribe to The New Civil Rights Movement via email</a> or <a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/thenewcivilrightsmovement" type="external">RSS</a>.</p>
<p>Also, please&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-New-Civil-Rights-Movement/358168880614" type="external">like us on Facebook</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/gaycivilrights" type="external">follow us on Twitter</a>!</p> | Cain Suspends Presidential Race | true | http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/cain-suspends-presidential-race/politics/2011/12/03/31170 | 2011-12-03 | 4 |
<p>AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday morning’s drawing of the Texas Lottery’s “Daily 4 Morning” game were:</p>
<p>4-5-7-6, Sum It Up: 22</p>
<p>(four, five, seven, six; Sum It Up: twenty-two)</p>
<p>AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday morning’s drawing of the Texas Lottery’s “Daily 4 Morning” game were:</p>
<p>4-5-7-6, Sum It Up: 22</p>
<p>(four, five, seven, six; Sum It Up: twenty-two)</p> | Winning numbers drawn in ‘Daily 4 Morning’ game | false | https://apnews.com/a9cfe18f23f446ef97b1dd4a2cc5a37d | 2018-01-18 | 2 |
<p>In a small study, 10 severely obese patients with uncontrolled type 1 diabetes who underwent bariatric surgery lost weight and had improved glycemic control and a better metabolic profile 3 years later. The results were published online February 20 in a letter to the editor in Diabetes Care.</p>
<p>The weight loss was “remarkable and sustained,” note the authors, led by Stacy A. Brethauer, Maryland, from Cleveland Clinic, Ohio.</p>
<p>Dr. Brethauer told Medscape Medical News that physicians may be reluctant to refer obese patients with type 1 diabetes for bariatric surgery, “because of the thought that maybe it wouldn’t help — there’s just going to be no chance their pancreas will recover.</p>
<p>“[However], what this paper shows is that some patients with type 1 diabetes would benefit from these operations — [not just] in terms of their quality of life but also their glucose control,” he added.</p>
<p>Patients with type 2 diabetes typically develop worsening insulin resistance with weight gain and a growing body of evidence suggests that some of these individuals can achieve diabetes remission after losing weight with bariatric surgery, Dr. Brethauer noted.</p>
<p>Those with type 1 diabetes may also become obese, and although they may not achieve diabetes remission, they might require less insulin therapy after bariatric surgery, he explained.</p>
<p>Fewer than 10 cases of type 1 diabetic patients who’ve had bariatric surgery have been published, but in all instances they lost a significant amount of weight and improved their glucose control.</p>
<p>In this series, Dr. Brethauer and colleagues examined clinical outcomes and metabolic parameters in morbidly obese individuals with uncontrolled type 1 diabetes who had undergone bariatric surgery at their center from 2005 to 2012. Each had an average of 10 comorbidities, including cardiovascular disease, sleep apnea, gastroesophageal reflux, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia.</p>
<p>“The findings of this study, which is the largest case series to date, indicate that bariatric surgery leads to a remarkable and sustained weight loss in severely obese patients with type 1 diabetes and results in significant improvement in their glycemic status and comorbid conditions,” the authors summarize.</p>
<p>“Longer follow-up studies in a larger cohort” are required, they conclude.</p>
<p /> | Bariatric surgery an option for Type 1 diabetics | false | http://natmonitor.com/2014/03/05/bariatric-surgery-an-option-for-type-1-diabetics/ | 2014-03-05 | 3 |
<p>Ilya SheymanCourtesy Ilya Sheyman for Congress.</p>
<p />
<p>Could last fall’s Occupy fever portend a progressive takeover of Congress?</p>
<p>The answer could hinge on the outcome of an upcoming Democratic primary in a congressional district near Chicago, where a corporate-friendly centrist faces a remarkably stiff challenge from a 25-year-old Occupy Wall Street supporter who has even cut an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=Apw7JweoY3s" type="external">OWS-themed campaign ad</a>.</p>
<p>“What excited me about Occupy was that the target of this anger and frustration was finally the right one,” says Ilya Sheyman, who stepped down as national mobilization director for MoveOn.org early last year to compete for a seat held by a vulnerable GOP congressman. “I think what’s happened is people feel like, ‘Wow, we’ve changed the national conversation. Now we have to change leadership in Washington and deliver on that.'”</p>
<p>Sheyman’s main rival in the March 20 primary is Brad Schneider, who is running on his experience as a former accounting exec. The two have dueled for money, volunteers, and endorsements, with Schneider locking in the centrist New Democrat Coalition and moderates like House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), while Sheyman has won support from MoveOn, Democracy for America, and liberals like Russ Feingold (D-Wis.). So far, Sheyman has the edge in buzz and fundraising, although competing polls have put both men in the lead.</p>
<p>Progressives see the race as indicative of how Occupy Wall Street has changed the 2012 electoral calculus. ( <a href="" type="internal">Click here for our rundown of other 2012 “Occupy” candidates.</a>) “A victory for Sheyman would send a clear, early message to all Democrats running for office,” says Neil Sroka, a spokesman for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “If you stand up and fight for the progressive values that matter to voters, you’ll win your primary and build the enthusiastic grassroots base of&#160;donors and volunteers that all Democrats will need to win in November.”</p>
<p>Illinois’ Tenth Congressional District, perched on the tony North Shore of Lake Michigan, hardly seems like a crucible of populist uprising. It contains Northbrook, Glencoe, and Lake Forest, some of Chicago’s wealthiest suburbs. In 2010, Republican Robert Dold, owner of a pest-extermination firm, beat out a moderate Democrat to win the open seat with 51 percent of the vote.</p>
<p>But the district also includes North Chicago and Waukegan, towns with unemployment rates of 18 to 20 percent. And last year a Democratic legislature redrew district boundaries to make the Tenth more favorable to Dems. Sheyman’s campaign calculates that the Democrat who lost to Dold would have won the redrawn district with 53 percent of the ballots.</p>
<p>“This district is not by any means a Democratic seat and not by any means a liberal seat,” warns Loyola University poly sci professor John Frendreis, an expert on Chicago politics. He imagines that Sheyman might follow in the footsteps of erstwhile tea partiers like Nevada’s Sharron Angle and Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell, who beat out moderate members of their party in the primaries but were too radical to unseat unpopular incumbents in the general election. “The Democratic candidates who claim they are businessmen and that kind of thing probably have a better shot against Dold,” Frendreis says. “On the other hand, I kind of think it’s going to be a Democratic year nationally. And the Democrats are going to unite in the end behind whomever wins the nomination.”</p>
<p>In 1991, Sheyman and his Jewish family fled religious persecution in Moscow for a fresh start in Chicago. His father began working as pizza deliveryman before landing a job as a computer programmer and eventually starting his own computer business. Sheyman benefited from English-as-a-second-language programs and college Stafford loans, graduating from McGill University in 2006 with a desire to “give other people the same opportunities that someone gave me.”</p>
<p>In 2004, Sheyman campaigned on behalf of a rookie Senate candidate named Barack Obama. The next year, he went to work for Obama’s Senate office, handling tasks related to veterans and military affairs, before joining his boss’ presidential campaign. “This was the campaign that got me excited about the idea that we could make progress in this country,” he says, though he’s quick to acknowledge that Obama’s presidency hasn’t lived up to everyone’s expectations.</p>
<p>“I think what happened after [the election] is a lot of us said, ‘Our work is done. We’ve elected Barack Obama, we have a Democratic House and Senate, we are going to see the change that we want.’ But the reality is, it takes ongoing organizing and mobilizing from the grassroots level to make all the progress we’ve got to make.”</p>
<p>Which is where OWS comes in. While the Occupy protesters typically eschew direct involvement in electoral politics, Sheyman believes that the movement has created the space to talk about the things he cares about. “When we started this campaign a year ago, every question was about what do you cut and how do you deal with the deficit,” Sheyman says. “Now the questions we hear about are how do you put people to work, how do you restore fairness to our tax system? That is a result of that shift in dialogue that Occupy has caused. So we now are focusing on the real challenges our community is facing. And I think that is a significant victory.”</p>
<p>Sheyman and Schneider both want to raise taxes on the wealthy, pursue campaign-finance reform, and boost the economy through jobs programs. But they differ on some big issues. Sheyman pledges to preserve social security benefits, while Schneider would like to to have a “long, hard conversation” about alternative ways to keep the program solvent. Sheyman wants federal jobs legislation that would directly hire people to rebuild infrastructure. Schneider would rely on private contractors to do the job. (His campaign did not respond to repeated requests from Mother Jones for an interview.)</p>
<p>The most apparent difference between the candidates is rhetorical. At a February 26 debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters in wealthy Lake Forest, Schneider said he believed in a “progressive tax,” but added, “I don’t believe in a redistribution of wealth.” Sheyman was more outspoken: “I think we have no choice but to let the Bush tax cuts that favor the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans expire,” he said. “But the reality is that this won’t happen without a fight. In the last election, and the election before, Democrats ran on this and then when it came time to make the decision, they extended them for two more years. The difference is, I am willing to campaign on this, I am willing to advocate for this all across our community.”</p>
<p>If Sheyman’s numbers are any indication, that kind talk resonates with the Democratic base. His campaign has 16,000 individual donors—that’s among the largest donor bases of any non-incumbent congressional campaign—and 600 volunteers who’ll be key to mobilizing voters in what’s expected to be a low-turnout election.</p>
<p>Of course, those numbers also reflect his familiarity with the grassroots organizing tactics pioneered by Obama campaign and MoveOn. And in a year marked by the rise of the young Occupy demographic and intense skepticism of Washington, he could even be getting a bump from his relative lack of years and political experience.</p>
<p>A poll taken in January put Sheyman two points ahead of Schneider, with 23 percent of the likely vote in a four-way contest—the other two candidates are John Tree and Vivek Bavda. But in February, Schneider released a poll suggesting he’d jumped ahead, garnering 29 percent of likely voters to Sheyman’s 14 percent. Sheyman says his rival’s poll coincided with an onslaught of pro-Schneider mailers; he has fought back with mailers knocking Schneider for having&#160; <a href="http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50385/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=6366&amp;tag=truthaboutbrad" type="external">donating thousands of dollars to Republicans</a>. He also points to his recent victory in the Tenth District Democrats straw poll, in which he was backed by 73 percent of the participants.</p>
<p>In the next two weeks, Sheyman must demonstrate that he can play to the political center in a district that includes plenty of voters who are solidly upper middle class. He believes many of them are willing to pay more taxes if it means a better future for their children. And he sees crossover appeal in an economic message that stresses income inequality not just between the rich and poor, but between the mega-rich and everyone else. “Right now, the wealthiest 400 Americans in this country have as much wealth as the bottom 150 million,” he said during a Democratic primary debate this fall. “We are seeing those at the top getting wealthier and wealthier, while the middle class gets squeezed. So yes, I am a supporter of Occupy Wall Street.”</p>
<p /> | Can Progressives Ride the Occupy Train to Congress? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/sheyman-schneider-illinois-congress-occupy/ | 2012-03-12 | 4 |
<p>BAGHDAD (AP) — Officials say attacks inside and around Baghdad have killed at least seven people.</p>
<p>A police officer says drive-by shooters killed a pro-government Sunni tribal sheikh along with his three guards in the town of Tarmiyah, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Baghdad. Another officer said three civilians were killed and nine wounded in a bomb explosion at an outdoor marker in Baghdad's western Ghazaliyah neighborhood.</p>
<p>The attacks come as authorities found the bodies for four men and two women dumped in different areas in and around Baghdad, all shot in the chest and head with their hands and legs tied. None had identification cards.</p>
<p>Medical officials confirmed the causality figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.</p>
<p>BAGHDAD (AP) — Officials say attacks inside and around Baghdad have killed at least seven people.</p>
<p>A police officer says drive-by shooters killed a pro-government Sunni tribal sheikh along with his three guards in the town of Tarmiyah, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Baghdad. Another officer said three civilians were killed and nine wounded in a bomb explosion at an outdoor marker in Baghdad's western Ghazaliyah neighborhood.</p>
<p>The attacks come as authorities found the bodies for four men and two women dumped in different areas in and around Baghdad, all shot in the chest and head with their hands and legs tied. None had identification cards.</p>
<p>Medical officials confirmed the causality figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.</p> | Iraq: Attacks inside, around Baghdad kill at least 7 people | false | https://apnews.com/amp/d64de5c02e914d07bf67abde4b1eefac | 2015-06-29 | 2 |
<p />
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>American Airlines' (NASDAQ: AAL) stock performed poorly in 2015, falling more than 20%. The first half of 2016 was even worse, with the stock plunging nearly 40% by late June due to weak revenue trends throughout much of the world and fears about the impact of Brexit.</p>
<p>However, shares of the world's largest airline have regained a lot of ground since then. The rally continued in October, surging another 10.9%, according to data from <a href="https://www.capitaliq.com/CIQDotNet/Login.aspx" type="external">S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>American Airlines stock performance, 2015-present. Data source: <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
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<p>Weak unit revenue results were the primary cause of American Airlines stock's poor performance in 2015 and early 2016. The company actually posted record earnings throughout 2015 due to low oil prices, but investors rightly judged that American's 2015 profit margin was unsustainable. Once oil prices stabilized, American Airlines started to experience significant margin contraction.</p>
<p>Conversely, the stock's resurgence over the past several months has been powered by an improving unit revenue trend.</p>
<p>In Q2, American's revenue per available seat mile (RASM) declined 6.1% year over year. By contrast, in Q3, RASM fell just 2.2% year over year. That was significantly <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/10/11/american-airlines-and-united-continental-soar-past.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">better than the company's original guidance Opens a New Window.</a>. This solid result, reported last month, was the main driver of its double-digit share price gain in October.</p>
<p>American Airlines' unit revenue declined less than expected in Q3. Image source: American Airlines.</p>
<p>American Airlines expects another relatively solid revenue performance in Q4, with RASM down just 1%-3% year over year despite some unfavorable calendar shifts. That puts it on pace to be the first major airline in the U.S. to return to unit revenue growth in 2017.</p>
<p>However, just as American's "no-hedging" policy made it the first airline to benefit from falling fuel prices, it is also becoming the first airline to get hit by rising fuel prices. Even worse, non-fuel costs are spiraling higher.</p>
<p>Thus, despite the company's improving unit revenue trends, American Airlines' profit margin has quickly fallen toward the bottom of the airline industry this year. With the stock already having soared about 60% since late June, it's hard to see much further upside until the company gets its costs under control. As a result, I <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/10/25/i-just-sold-my-american-airlines-stock-heres-why.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">sold my American Airlines stock Opens a New Window.</a> last month.</p>
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<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGemHunter/info.aspx" type="external">Adam Levine-Weinberg Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Why American Airlines Group, Inc. Stock Rose 10.9% in October | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/02/why-american-airlines-group-inc-stock-rose-10-in-october.html | 2016-11-02 | 0 |
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico law enacted earlier this year will allow New Year’s Eve liquor sales to continue past midnight — the usual cutoff time for sales on Sunday.</p>
<p>KOB-TV <a href="http://www.kob.com/new-mexico-news/new-years-eve-sunday-liquor-sales-exception-new-mexico/4722742/?cat=500" type="external">reports</a> state Rep. Jim Trujillo introduced the bill that took effect in June, extending liquor sales when the last day of December falls on a Sunday.</p>
<p>The law only applies to businesses with full liquor licenses, so certain restaurants or breweries will not be able to sell past midnight depending on their license.</p>
<p>The law also does not apply to towns or counties that do not allow liquor sales at all on Sundays.</p>
<p>The next time New Year’s Eve falls on a Sunday is in 2023.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: KOB-TV, <a href="http://www.kob.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.kob.com" type="external">http://www.kob.com</a></p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico law enacted earlier this year will allow New Year’s Eve liquor sales to continue past midnight — the usual cutoff time for sales on Sunday.</p>
<p>KOB-TV <a href="http://www.kob.com/new-mexico-news/new-years-eve-sunday-liquor-sales-exception-new-mexico/4722742/?cat=500" type="external">reports</a> state Rep. Jim Trujillo introduced the bill that took effect in June, extending liquor sales when the last day of December falls on a Sunday.</p>
<p>The law only applies to businesses with full liquor licenses, so certain restaurants or breweries will not be able to sell past midnight depending on their license.</p>
<p>The law also does not apply to towns or counties that do not allow liquor sales at all on Sundays.</p>
<p>The next time New Year’s Eve falls on a Sunday is in 2023.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: KOB-TV, <a href="http://www.kob.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.kob.com" type="external">http://www.kob.com</a></p> | Law allows New Year’s Eve exception for Sunday liquor sales | false | https://apnews.com/d337ac7cac074130b3922b098c13b881 | 2017-12-28 | 2 |
<p>Published time: 26 Nov, 2017 16:25</p>
<p>The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has created its first-ever female armored unit in another move towards gender equality in the military.</p>
<p>A total of 15 recruits began basic combat training in March, although two withdrew during the first week. Once basic training concluded, the female recruits were transferred to the IDF’s tank training base in Shizafon, southern Israel, to complete the eight-month training course. They were divided into squads, each led by a male senior tank commander, and conducted their specialized training in the Merkava Mark III tank.</p>
<p>The 13 female soldiers will be divided into three tank squads and incorporated into the IDF’s Southern Territorial Division over the course of the next month. The test case will determine whether the IDF expands female roles in the military and continues drafting women into armored divisions.</p>
<p>The female tank units will operate in a limited capacity, however, operating exclusively on Israel’s southern border. They will not be assigned to the battlefield yet, only to borders with countries with whom Israel has good diplomatic relations. In the unlikely event that they would be required to return fire, engagements would be from stationary positions and not involving the armored battlefield maneuvers conducted as standard by Israel’s other tank brigades.</p>
<p>Women comprise roughly 34 percent of the Israeli army’s troops, are conscripted like men but only serve 24 months as opposed to the standard 32 months of service required of men, reports the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/A-lions-pride-432124" type="external">Jerusalem Post</a>. Female Israeli soldiers did fight during the War of Independence but were barred from active combat duty shortly thereafter.</p>
<p>Following a Supreme Court battle in the 1990s, Israel passed an equality amendment to the Defense Services Law that stated women should be equal to men in the IDF, in a move which led to the creation of the co-ed Caracal Battalion. The Lions of Jordan unit was inaugurated last year and, so far in 2017, almost 2,000 women have enlisted in combat units.</p>
<p />
<p>Today, the IDF established a new border defense array. As part of the opening ceremony, soldiers in the Lions of the Jordan Valley Battalion received new berets, symbolizing their new start in this array <a href="https://t.co/HkkVEwu2sl" type="external">pic.twitter.com/HkkVEwu2sl</a></p>
<p>— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) <a href="https://twitter.com/IDFSpokesperson/status/933794867179900928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">November 23, 2017</a></p>
<p />
<p>The IDF stressed that regardless of the outcome of the trial, no female tank units will be stationed in either Lebanon or Gaza and armored combat units will remain segregated.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/410471-lebanon-readiness-border-israel/" type="external">READ MORE: Lebanese Army placed at ‘full readiness’ to counter ‘Israeli enemy’</a></p>
<p>“There is no reason in the world to place women in the role of tank fighters, to storm the trenches with a ‘knife between their teeth,’ no reason whatsoever. There are sufficient men who will do the work,”&#160;said retired Brigadier General Avigdor Kahalani as cited by <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5047996,00.html" type="external">Ynet News</a>.</p> | Israel to deploy 1st female tank unit | false | https://newsline.com/israel-to-deploy-1st-female-tank-unit/ | 2017-11-26 | 1 |
<p>ST. LOUIS (AP) - Paul Stastny broke a third-period tie with his eighth goal of the season, Carter Hutton continued his strong play in goal and the St. Louis Blues beat the Vegas Golden Knights 2-1 on Thursday night.</p>
<p>Alexander Steen also scored for the Blues, who won their third straight. Hutton made 32 saves, including two tough stops early in the third while the game was tied.</p>
<p>Hutton, making his third consecutive start, earned his eighth win of the season and is 12-3 in his last 15 starts.</p>
<p>Erik Haula scored for Vegas, which had its NHL expansion record eight-game winning streak snapped. Marc-Andre Fleury made 37 saves but lost for the first time in six starts.</p>
<p>CANADIENS 2, LIGHTNING 1, SO</p>
<p>MONTREAL (AP) - Carey Price made 44 saves, Paul Byron scored the only goal in a shootout and Montreal ended a five-game losing streak with a victory over Tampa Bay.</p>
<p>Max Pacioretty scored in regulation for the Canadiens in their first victory since Dec. 22.</p>
<p>Nikita Kucherov scored his 26th goal for the Lightning.</p>
<p>Pacioretty opened the scoring at 20 seconds of the second period, ending his 13-game goal drought that dated to Nov. 30. Andrei Vasilevskiy, coming off two straight shutouts, saw his scoreless streak end at 184 minutes, 49 seconds.</p>
<p>HURRICANES 4, PENGUINS 0</p>
<p>PITTSBURGH (AP) - Sebastian Aho scored twice, Cam Ward stopped 21 shots and Carolina blanked Pittsburgh.</p>
<p>The Hurricanes also beat the Penguins 2-1 last Friday in Carolina. Aho got the winning goal in the first matchup, and this time he iced the two-time defending Stanely Cup champions after Jeff Skinner and Teuvo Teravainen scored. Aho assisted on Teravainen's goal and has 10 points during a six-game point streak.</p>
<p>Ward got his first shutout of the season and 26th of his career. He has wins in 10 of his last 13 games and has earned Carolina a point in eight straight.</p>
<p>The Penguins have dropped eight of their past 12 and haven't won back-to-back games since Dec. 1-2. Matt Murray had 29 saves.</p>
<p>MAPLE LEAFS 3, SHARKS 2, SO</p>
<p>TORONTO (AP) - Auston Matthews and Tyler Bozak scored in a shootout to give Toronto a victory over San Jose in a game that opened with a fight that saw the Maple Leafs? Nazem Kadri rip out part of Joe Thornton's mountain-man beard.</p>
<p>Toronto killed off Mitch Marner's high-sticking penalty that gave the Sharks a 4-on-3 skating advantage for the final 1:50 of overtime.</p>
<p>Kevin Labanc was the lone successful San Jose shooter in six tries against Frederik Andersen in the tiebreaker. Former Shark Patrick Marleau hit the post on his attempt.</p>
<p>Matthews and Kadri scored in regulation for Toronto, and Brenden Dillon and Chris Tierney countered for San Jose.</p>
<p>Toronto snapped a three-game losing streak and a 10-game slide (0-8-2) against the Sharks.</p>
<p>Thornton and Kadri dropped the gloves just two seconds in after slashing each other at the opening faceoff.</p>
<p>FLYERS 6, ISLANDERS 4</p>
<p>PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Ivan Provorov had two goals and an assist, and Sean Couturier had a goal, an assist and participated in one of several fights for Philadelphia in a feisty victory over slumping New York.</p>
<p>Travis Konecny energized his teammates with a first-period scrap, then scored to cap a four-goal second. Wayne Simmonds and Michael Raffl also scored for the Flyers, who overcame a poor third period for their second win in six games.</p>
<p>Brian Elliott made 27 saves in his 15th straight start, two nights after an ugly loss to Pittsburgh.</p>
<p>Cal Clutterbuck scored twice, and John Tavares and Ryan Pulock added third-period goals for the Islanders in their season-high fourth straight loss. Thomas Greiss allowed five goals on 31 shots but got little help from a defense that continues to struggle without injured Johnny Boychuk.</p>
<p>WILD 6, SABRES 2</p>
<p>ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Nino Niederreiter had a hat trick in his return from injury, Mikko Koivu contributed a goal and two assists, and the finally fully healthy Minnesota Wild beat Buffalo.</p>
<p>Niederreiter, who missed the previous five games because of a lower leg injury, needed less than 25 minutes of game time to get the second hat trick of his seven-year career. His parents were even in attendance from his native Switzerland.</p>
<p>Niederreiter scored just 69 seconds in, snapping a behind-the-net pass from Mikael Granlund beneath the pads of Sabres goalie Robin Lehner. Granlund had three assists.</p>
<p>Devan Dubnyk took a shutout into the third period for the Wild, until Sam Reinhart scored early and Evander Kane got a goal late. Dubnyk is 11-2-1 in his last 15 starts since Nov. 9.</p>
<p>Daniel Winnik and Charlie Coyle also scored for the Wild, who improved to 11-1-1 in their last 13 home games.</p>
<p>STARS 4, DEVILS 3</p>
<p>DALLAS (AP) - Tyler Seguin scored his team-leading 20th goal short-handed, Alexander Radulov had a goal and two assists and Dallas beat New Jersey.</p>
<p>Brett Ritchie had the tiebreaking goal on a power play after a second straight penalty against Sami Vatanen, and the Devils matched their season high with a fourth straight loss. The skid follows a season-best five-game winning streak that started with a win at home over the Stars.</p>
<p>Radulov's 15th goal got Dallas even early in the second period, and Ben Bishop stopped 39 shots for his fifth win in a season-high ninth straight start.</p>
<p>Taylor Hall had a goal and two assists for the Devils, who scored in the final minute of each of the first two periods, starting with Brian Boyle on a power play with 14 seconds left in the first.</p>
<p>AVALANCHE 2, BLUE JACKETS 0</p>
<p>DENVER (AP) - Jonathan Bernier made 18 of his 34 saves in the third period for his second shutout of the season, leading Colorado past Columbus.</p>
<p>Mikko Rantanen had a goal and an assist and Matt Nieto also scored for the Avalanche, who have won four straight for the first time since January 2016. Colorado's win was its 21st, one fewer than all of last season, and the team's 45 points are three fewer than 2016-17.</p>
<p>Bernier has played in the last three games - starting two - because of a lower-body injury to No. 1 goaltender Semyon Varlamov.</p>
<p>Sergei Bobvrosky stopped 30 shots for the Blue Jackets, who are 3-5-2 in their last 10 games.</p>
<p>COYOTES 3, PREDATORS 2, OT</p>
<p>GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) - Christian Fischer scored off Jakob Chychrun's rebound at 2:41 of overtime to give Arizona a comeback win over Nashville.</p>
<p>The goal was reviewed, then challenged by the Predators and reviewed again. Arizona won for the third time in six games.</p>
<p>The Coyotes trailed 2-1 for much of the third period, until Nick Cousins tied it with 2:49 to play and Arizona on a power play. Anthony Duclair scored for the Coyotes in the second.</p>
<p>The Predators scored twice within 17 seconds of game time to take a 2-1 lead. Ryan Ellis scored with 8.7 seconds left in the second period, and Craig Smith netted a goal eight seconds into the third.</p>
<p>Nashville has lost three of four.</p>
<p>Antti Raanta made 17 of his 37 saves in the first period as Arizona was outshot by 14.</p>
<p>FLAMES 4, KINGS 3</p>
<p>CALGARY, Alberta (AP) - Sean Monahan and Micheal Ferland each had a goal and an assist as Calgary scored four times in the second period for a comeback victory over Los Angeles.</p>
<p>The Flames trailed 2-0 after 20 minutes, but Ferland sparked the rally at 2:34 when his shot squeezed under the pads of Jonathan Quick.</p>
<p>By the time Monahan capped the outburst on a wrist shot at 19:15, Calgary was ahead 4-2 and had completely taken over the game - outshooting the Kings 17-5 in the second period.</p>
<p>Troy Brouwer and Mark Jankowski also scored for Calgary. Mike Smith made 28 saves.</p>
<p>Tanner Pearson scored twice for Los Angeles, including with 1:31 left to make it close. Derek Forbort also had a goal for the Kings, who earned four out of six possible points on their road trip through Western Canada.</p>
<p>OILERS 2, DUCKS 1, SO</p>
<p>EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored the shootout winner and Edmonton snapped a four-game skid with a victory over Anaheim.</p>
<p>Kris Russell scored in regulation for the Oilers, outscored 10-0 in their previous two games.</p>
<p>Ryan Kesler scored for the Ducks, who had won three in a row.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NHL coverage: <a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NHLhockey</a></p>
<p>ST. LOUIS (AP) - Paul Stastny broke a third-period tie with his eighth goal of the season, Carter Hutton continued his strong play in goal and the St. Louis Blues beat the Vegas Golden Knights 2-1 on Thursday night.</p>
<p>Alexander Steen also scored for the Blues, who won their third straight. Hutton made 32 saves, including two tough stops early in the third while the game was tied.</p>
<p>Hutton, making his third consecutive start, earned his eighth win of the season and is 12-3 in his last 15 starts.</p>
<p>Erik Haula scored for Vegas, which had its NHL expansion record eight-game winning streak snapped. Marc-Andre Fleury made 37 saves but lost for the first time in six starts.</p>
<p>CANADIENS 2, LIGHTNING 1, SO</p>
<p>MONTREAL (AP) - Carey Price made 44 saves, Paul Byron scored the only goal in a shootout and Montreal ended a five-game losing streak with a victory over Tampa Bay.</p>
<p>Max Pacioretty scored in regulation for the Canadiens in their first victory since Dec. 22.</p>
<p>Nikita Kucherov scored his 26th goal for the Lightning.</p>
<p>Pacioretty opened the scoring at 20 seconds of the second period, ending his 13-game goal drought that dated to Nov. 30. Andrei Vasilevskiy, coming off two straight shutouts, saw his scoreless streak end at 184 minutes, 49 seconds.</p>
<p>HURRICANES 4, PENGUINS 0</p>
<p>PITTSBURGH (AP) - Sebastian Aho scored twice, Cam Ward stopped 21 shots and Carolina blanked Pittsburgh.</p>
<p>The Hurricanes also beat the Penguins 2-1 last Friday in Carolina. Aho got the winning goal in the first matchup, and this time he iced the two-time defending Stanely Cup champions after Jeff Skinner and Teuvo Teravainen scored. Aho assisted on Teravainen's goal and has 10 points during a six-game point streak.</p>
<p>Ward got his first shutout of the season and 26th of his career. He has wins in 10 of his last 13 games and has earned Carolina a point in eight straight.</p>
<p>The Penguins have dropped eight of their past 12 and haven't won back-to-back games since Dec. 1-2. Matt Murray had 29 saves.</p>
<p>MAPLE LEAFS 3, SHARKS 2, SO</p>
<p>TORONTO (AP) - Auston Matthews and Tyler Bozak scored in a shootout to give Toronto a victory over San Jose in a game that opened with a fight that saw the Maple Leafs? Nazem Kadri rip out part of Joe Thornton's mountain-man beard.</p>
<p>Toronto killed off Mitch Marner's high-sticking penalty that gave the Sharks a 4-on-3 skating advantage for the final 1:50 of overtime.</p>
<p>Kevin Labanc was the lone successful San Jose shooter in six tries against Frederik Andersen in the tiebreaker. Former Shark Patrick Marleau hit the post on his attempt.</p>
<p>Matthews and Kadri scored in regulation for Toronto, and Brenden Dillon and Chris Tierney countered for San Jose.</p>
<p>Toronto snapped a three-game losing streak and a 10-game slide (0-8-2) against the Sharks.</p>
<p>Thornton and Kadri dropped the gloves just two seconds in after slashing each other at the opening faceoff.</p>
<p>FLYERS 6, ISLANDERS 4</p>
<p>PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Ivan Provorov had two goals and an assist, and Sean Couturier had a goal, an assist and participated in one of several fights for Philadelphia in a feisty victory over slumping New York.</p>
<p>Travis Konecny energized his teammates with a first-period scrap, then scored to cap a four-goal second. Wayne Simmonds and Michael Raffl also scored for the Flyers, who overcame a poor third period for their second win in six games.</p>
<p>Brian Elliott made 27 saves in his 15th straight start, two nights after an ugly loss to Pittsburgh.</p>
<p>Cal Clutterbuck scored twice, and John Tavares and Ryan Pulock added third-period goals for the Islanders in their season-high fourth straight loss. Thomas Greiss allowed five goals on 31 shots but got little help from a defense that continues to struggle without injured Johnny Boychuk.</p>
<p>WILD 6, SABRES 2</p>
<p>ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Nino Niederreiter had a hat trick in his return from injury, Mikko Koivu contributed a goal and two assists, and the finally fully healthy Minnesota Wild beat Buffalo.</p>
<p>Niederreiter, who missed the previous five games because of a lower leg injury, needed less than 25 minutes of game time to get the second hat trick of his seven-year career. His parents were even in attendance from his native Switzerland.</p>
<p>Niederreiter scored just 69 seconds in, snapping a behind-the-net pass from Mikael Granlund beneath the pads of Sabres goalie Robin Lehner. Granlund had three assists.</p>
<p>Devan Dubnyk took a shutout into the third period for the Wild, until Sam Reinhart scored early and Evander Kane got a goal late. Dubnyk is 11-2-1 in his last 15 starts since Nov. 9.</p>
<p>Daniel Winnik and Charlie Coyle also scored for the Wild, who improved to 11-1-1 in their last 13 home games.</p>
<p>STARS 4, DEVILS 3</p>
<p>DALLAS (AP) - Tyler Seguin scored his team-leading 20th goal short-handed, Alexander Radulov had a goal and two assists and Dallas beat New Jersey.</p>
<p>Brett Ritchie had the tiebreaking goal on a power play after a second straight penalty against Sami Vatanen, and the Devils matched their season high with a fourth straight loss. The skid follows a season-best five-game winning streak that started with a win at home over the Stars.</p>
<p>Radulov's 15th goal got Dallas even early in the second period, and Ben Bishop stopped 39 shots for his fifth win in a season-high ninth straight start.</p>
<p>Taylor Hall had a goal and two assists for the Devils, who scored in the final minute of each of the first two periods, starting with Brian Boyle on a power play with 14 seconds left in the first.</p>
<p>AVALANCHE 2, BLUE JACKETS 0</p>
<p>DENVER (AP) - Jonathan Bernier made 18 of his 34 saves in the third period for his second shutout of the season, leading Colorado past Columbus.</p>
<p>Mikko Rantanen had a goal and an assist and Matt Nieto also scored for the Avalanche, who have won four straight for the first time since January 2016. Colorado's win was its 21st, one fewer than all of last season, and the team's 45 points are three fewer than 2016-17.</p>
<p>Bernier has played in the last three games - starting two - because of a lower-body injury to No. 1 goaltender Semyon Varlamov.</p>
<p>Sergei Bobvrosky stopped 30 shots for the Blue Jackets, who are 3-5-2 in their last 10 games.</p>
<p>COYOTES 3, PREDATORS 2, OT</p>
<p>GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) - Christian Fischer scored off Jakob Chychrun's rebound at 2:41 of overtime to give Arizona a comeback win over Nashville.</p>
<p>The goal was reviewed, then challenged by the Predators and reviewed again. Arizona won for the third time in six games.</p>
<p>The Coyotes trailed 2-1 for much of the third period, until Nick Cousins tied it with 2:49 to play and Arizona on a power play. Anthony Duclair scored for the Coyotes in the second.</p>
<p>The Predators scored twice within 17 seconds of game time to take a 2-1 lead. Ryan Ellis scored with 8.7 seconds left in the second period, and Craig Smith netted a goal eight seconds into the third.</p>
<p>Nashville has lost three of four.</p>
<p>Antti Raanta made 17 of his 37 saves in the first period as Arizona was outshot by 14.</p>
<p>FLAMES 4, KINGS 3</p>
<p>CALGARY, Alberta (AP) - Sean Monahan and Micheal Ferland each had a goal and an assist as Calgary scored four times in the second period for a comeback victory over Los Angeles.</p>
<p>The Flames trailed 2-0 after 20 minutes, but Ferland sparked the rally at 2:34 when his shot squeezed under the pads of Jonathan Quick.</p>
<p>By the time Monahan capped the outburst on a wrist shot at 19:15, Calgary was ahead 4-2 and had completely taken over the game - outshooting the Kings 17-5 in the second period.</p>
<p>Troy Brouwer and Mark Jankowski also scored for Calgary. Mike Smith made 28 saves.</p>
<p>Tanner Pearson scored twice for Los Angeles, including with 1:31 left to make it close. Derek Forbort also had a goal for the Kings, who earned four out of six possible points on their road trip through Western Canada.</p>
<p>OILERS 2, DUCKS 1, SO</p>
<p>EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored the shootout winner and Edmonton snapped a four-game skid with a victory over Anaheim.</p>
<p>Kris Russell scored in regulation for the Oilers, outscored 10-0 in their previous two games.</p>
<p>Ryan Kesler scored for the Ducks, who had won three in a row.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NHL coverage: <a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NHLhockey</a></p> | Stastny breaks tie in 3rd, Blues beat Golden Knights 2-1 | false | https://apnews.com/e2896085ebb340efb7e232dbeb33c5cd | 2018-01-05 | 2 |
<p />
<p>Chrysler will formally respond to safety officials' request to recall 2.7 million model-year 1993-2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee and 2002-2007 Liberty SUVs within the next six days.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The Detroit automaker legally has until June 18 to respond to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration request. Chrysler has announced plans to formally respond but hasn't said when exactly the detailed rebuff would be issued, however a response of that kind would likely take some time to prepare.</p>
<p>NHTSA is claiming that the aft-axle position of the fuel tank in those Jeep vehicles poses a greater risk of fire in the event of a rear-end collision, leading in some cases to injury or death.</p>
<p>Chrysler has been <a href="" type="internal">standing by the safety of those vehicles</a> and CEO Sergio Marchionne said Friday they were in line with what the industry was producing at the time.</p>
<p>Once NHTSA reviews Chrysler's response, it will issue an "initial decision" that will lay out why it does or doesn't agree with the automaker. If NHTSA still determines a recall is necessary, it will convene a public hearing. Once reviewing all of the public feedback, it will then determine whether to issue a mandatory recall.</p>
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<p>If the automaker continues to disagree, the issue could go to court.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">A recall can be costly</a>, particularly in Chrysler’s case where an entire overhaul of the structure of the vehicle might be needed to move the placement of the engine. However, a mandatory recall could prove even costlier if NHTSA is able to mount enough evidence to determine those vehicles are an imminent danger to public safety.</p>
<p>Under the Motor Vehicle Safety Act, auto companies have five days to report to NHTSA that a defect exists and in a timely matter issue a recall.</p>
<p>If NHTSA concludes that a manufacturer is in violation, automakers could face civil penalty fines of up to $17.35 million as well as potential wrongful death suits that in the past have extended beyond the billion-dollar mark.</p> | Chrysler to Issue Formal Response to NHTSA Within Six Days | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/06/12/safety-officials-give-chrysler-june-18-recall-deadline.html | 2016-01-25 | 0 |
<p>U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema is scheduled to issue a ruling in the Eastern District of Virginia at the end of April in a case that will send a signal to the Muslim world and beyond whether the American judicial system has regained its independence after eight years of flagrant manipulation and intimidation by the Bush administration. Brinkema will decide whether the Palestinian activist <a href="" type="internal">Dr. Sami Amin Al-Arian</a>, held for over six years in prison and under house arrest in Virginia since Sept 2, is guilty or innocent of two counts of criminal contempt.</p>
<p>Brinkema’s ruling will have ramifications that will extend far beyond Virginia and the United States. The trial of Al-Arian is a cause célèbre in the Muslim world. A <a href="http://www.nfi.no/english/norwegianfilms/show.html?id=730%20" type="external">documentary film</a> was made about the case in Europe. He has become the poster child for judicial abuse and persecution of Muslims in the United States by the Bush administration. The facts surrounding the trial and imprisonment of the <a href="http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31245%20" type="external">former university professor</a> have severely tarnished the integrity of the American judicial system and made the government’s vaunted campaign against terrorism look capricious, inept and overtly racist.</p>
<p>Government lawyers made wild assertions that showed a profound ignorance of the Middle East and exposed a gross stereotyping of the Muslim world. It called on the FBI case agent, for example, who testified as an expert witness that Islamic terrorists were routinely smuggled over the border from Iran into Syria, apparently unaware that Syria is separated from Iran by a large land mass called Iraq. The transcripts of the case against Al-Arian — which read like a bad Gilbert and Sullivan opera — are stupefying in their idiocy. The government wiretaps picked up nothing of substance; taxpayer dollars were used to record and transcribe 21,000 hours of banal chatter, including members of the Al-Arian household ordering pizza delivery. During the trial the government called 80 witnesses and subjected the jury to inane phone transcriptions and recordings, made over a 10-year period, which the jury curtly dismissed as “gossip.” It would be comical if the consequences were not so dire for the defendant.</p>
<p>A jury, on Dec. 6, 2005, acquitted Dr. Al-Arian on eight of the counts in the superseding indictment after a six-month trial in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. On the 94 charges made against the four defendants, there were no convictions. Of the 17 charges against Al-Arian — including “conspiracy to murder and maim persons abroad” — the jury acquitted him of eight and was hung on the rest. The jurors, who voted 10 to 2 to acquit on the remaining charges, could not reach a unanimous decision calling for his full acquittal. Two others in the case, Ghassan Ballut and Sameeh Hammoudeh, were acquitted of all charges.</p>
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<p>The trial result was a public relations disaster for the Bush White House and especially then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had personally announced the indictment and reportedly spent more than $50 million on the case. The government prosecutors threatened to retry Al-Arian. The Palestinian professor accepted a plea bargain that would spare him a second trial, agreeing that he had helped people associated with <a href="http://terrorism.about.com/od/groupsleader1/p/IslamicJIhad.htm%20" type="external">Palestinian Islamic Jihad</a> with immigration matters. It was a very minor charge given the high profile of the case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida and the counterterrorism section of the Justice Department agreed to recommend to the judge the minimum sentence of 46 months. But U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr., who made a series of comments during the trial that seemed to condemn all Muslims, sentenced Al-Arian to the maximum 57 months. In referring to Al-Arian’s contention, for example, that he had only raised money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s charity for widows and orphans, the judge told the professor that “your only connection to orphans and widows is that you create them.”</p>
<p>I spent an afternoon with Dr. Al-Arian in his small apartment in Arlington, Va., on Friday. His lawyers have asked that he make no public statements about his case. But we talked widely about the Middle East, the new Israeli government, the siege of Gaza, our families and the changes he hopes will come with an Obama administration. He sat on a couch wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet on his ankle, thankful to be with his wife and children after being shuttled between jails across the South and kept for 45 months in solitary confinement during his five-and-a-half-year ordeal. But he remains perplexed, as are many, by the gross miscarriage of justice and the ferocity of the government’s campaign to smear him with terrorism charges.</p>
<p>The government originally sought a standard cooperation provision as part of the final plea agreement. Al-Arian objected. He refused to plead guilty if he had to cooperate with the Justice Department. The Justice Department — including lawyers from the counterterrorism section of Main Justice — then negotiated to take out the cooperation provision in return for a longer sentence on the one count. That was the deal. He was to have been held in jail until April 2007 and then deported. But that never happened.Right-wing ideologues, led by Assistant United States Attorney <a href="http://www.nysun.com/national/a-prosecutor-is-called-relentless/82727/%20" type="external">Gordon Kromberg</a>, had no intention of letting him leave the country. Kromberg, a staunch supporter of Israel, arranged to keep Dr. Al-Arian behind bars even after he had finished serving his sentence. He blocked the deportation and subpoenaed Al-Arian to appear in Virginia to testify in an unrelated investigation of a Muslim think tank. This subpoena was a clear violation of the original plea bargain, and Al-Arian, heeding the advice of his lawyers, refused to give in to Kromberg’s demands. This led Kromberg to set in motion the newest charges of criminal contempt. Criminal contempt, bolstered by something called terrorism enhancement under Patriot Act II, is the only charge in U.S. statutes that does not carry a maximum penalty. The enhanced criminal contempt charge increases Al-Arian’s sentence from the usual 14 to 21 months for criminal contempt to a staggering 17 to 24 years for obstructing a state terrorism investigation. A handful of members of the House, including Jim Moran and Dennis Kucinich, have denounced Kromberg’s newest attempt to orchestrate a judicial lynching.</p>
<p>Kromberg, like many involved in the case, has also repeatedly made derogatory and insulting comments about Muslims. When Al-Arian’s lawyers asked Kromberg to delay the transfer of the professor to Virginia, for example, because of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, they were told “if they can kill each other during Ramadan they can appear before the grand jury.” Kromberg, according to an affidavit signed by Al-Arian’s attorney, Jack Fernandez, also said: “I am not going to put off Dr. Al-Arian’s grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America.”</p>
<p>Judge Brinkema, in one of the rare examples of judicial courage during this saga, defied the government to allow Al-Arian out on bail.</p>
<p>The case against Al-Arian, in the eyes of the grand inquisitors like Kromberg, is a battle against a culture and a religion that they openly denigrate and despise. This racism, the driving engine behind the campaign against Al-Arian, mocks the integrity of the American judicial system. Let us hope that in a few weeks we will witness a new era. Justice delayed is better than justice denied. We owe Dr. Al-Arian, and ourselves, a return to the rule of law.</p>
<p>Chris Hedges, who is an Arabic speaker and spent seven years in the Middle East, was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times.</p> | Obstruction of Justice | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/obstruction-of-justice/ | 2009-03-30 | 4 |
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<p /> JAISAL NOOR, PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.
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<p />Today we'll look at a really interesting question: what role can and should unions overall, and specifically teachers' unions, play in today's society? We're now joined by two guests who are uniquely positioned to answer those questions. We're joined by Ray Baker. He's the director of communications at the AFT Maryland, and Lois Weiner. Lois is a longtime teacher union advocate, director of urban education in the Teacher Unionism Policy Project at New Jersey City University, author of a number of books, most recently The Future Of Our Schools, and she's held three different elected posts at unions across the country. Thanks both of you for joining us.
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<p />So Lois, let's start by talking about your recent piece. In it you say that teachers' unions can't sit on the sidelines when it comes to the issues of social justice, and you talk specifically about the movement for black lives, which has been a massive wave around the country. And it's raised critical issues, important to every American, but issues that have been neglected for far too long.
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<p />LOIS WEINER: Well, let me start off by clarifying that I'm a professor of education, and I teach education. And being director of the policy project is part of my responsibilities now as a professor of education. But I was also a career teacher for 15 years. And during those 15 years I was active as a member and then elected officer in three different union locals.
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<p />So it's really based on research and my experience that I argue in my writing that teachers' unions have to be transformed. That it's not just a matter of their adopting a social justice issue, passing paper resolutions or writing letters in support of the social justice issue. That the unions have to, and union members, have to understand that the union's job is to fight for social justice. And that the responsibilities that the union has towards members are embedded in the unions' understanding that social justice is its business. That its business is not just winning improvement in wages and working conditions, which are very important to us, to make sure that teaching is a profession. And I think that teaching has to be a profession and a career that we advocate, but that an issue like racial justice is just as much a union issue as a pension is.
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<p />And that's really the argument I make in this, in what I'm writing. And in the piece you refer to that was in the Jacobin on Labor Day. So I'm very critical of the unions as they now exist, and I think that it's not enough for us to blame leaders, and to say individual leaders are at fault for the state of the unions. That the real problem is that members understand the union as being a business. And we shouldn't understand it as being a business. We should understand the union as being a social movement. And as soon as we change what the union stands for and what members expect of it then we understand that it is unions who--it is members who own the union. It is not leaders who tell union members what to do. It is members who own the union who tell the leadership what to do.
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<p />So in my opinion, I'm a member of the AFT, American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, who is the president, works for me. But my will as a union member has to be expressed collectively, through the democratic processes of the union.
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<p />NOOR: And Ray, your thoughts? Obviously unionism in general and especially teachers' unions are under a lot of pressure these days. There's charter schools. Maryland does have a very progressive charter school law, it's unique in many ways. Charters remain unionized. But there is a lot of pressure today for teachers' unions, from all sides, really. Your thoughts.
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<p />RAY BAKER: Absolutely. And I think the point--to go back about--the point about social justice is of the utmost importance. And I think that the will of the members will always be exemplified whenever we see union action. Ideally that's what happened. And I'm really proud of AFT Maryland and the Baltimore teachers' union, which we represent. Because more often than not we see the will of the members represented. Particularly in the work we do in the wake of some of the unrest we've had here in Baltimore and the Black Lives Matter movement across the nation as a whole.
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<p />To your point about charter schools and unions being under attack. On every front we see the least of these, in Biblical terms, being under attack by capital, by wealth, by larger institutions that look to swallow them up for privatization, for profit, for a number of reasons. I think it's up to many citizens who believe in the ideas of fairness, of justice, and equality to make sure that they fight back against that. That's in all walks of life, but particularly our unions. And I think that's something that we see here in Maryland.
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<p />NOOR: And Lois, so I wanted to get your response to Ray. And what, what would you--what remedies or what would you, what actions would you like unions to be taking?
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<p />WEINER: Well, look, I don't think it's the case that the will of the membership is represented in most unions in this country, and I think that the teachers' unions are no exception. So the criticisms that I have of the teachers' unions are the same criticisms I have of labor in this country in general. And when somebody, when the union leadership, makes the case that the will of the members is represented I always want to ask, how did that happen? What does the union constitution say? Where did the votes occur? If it's a contract vote I always want to know how long did members see the contract before they were asked to vote on it? Did members actually see the language that was going to be in the contract, or did they see a summary of the language that six people in a room presented to them? And when you ask those hard questions and you really examine closely the processes of union democracy, I think what we see in most cases is that the unions are very weak where it counts the most. And where does it count the most? It counts the most on the school level.
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<p />And so my question is always, how often do unions have meetings in the school level? How many members attend? Right? Is there a newsletter? Are union officers in touch with parents? Are union officers and are union members working with students about the issues that really affect the school community. So I'm looking for the union to not only represent the voices of teachers on economic issues. I'm looking for indications, for evidence, that the union has brought democracy to the school site, because that to me is the role of the union. The union plants the seeds of democracy, because union officials are elected and because it should be a democratic organization. But we have to go beyond understanding teachers having a voice and understand the role of the union in making sure that that voice is heard on the school site, at the school site, at the school level.
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<p />And in addition I want to say that the other criticism that I have of the teachers' unions, and again this is not just the teachers' unions but it's labor in general, is that, you know, we need to say honestly to people that public education is not going to solve the problems in any city, or this country. You know, community schools and charter schools are not going to solve the problem of poverty in Baltimore. We need jobs. We need good jobs for everybody, and it's the job of the teachers' unions to fight in the labor movement, to demand that the government create good jobs. Good, sustainable jobs.
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<p />That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be doing more to improve what happens in schools. Obviously we should. I wouldn't be a professor of education if I didn't believe that teacher quality counted. But teacher quality is not going to solve the problem of poverty. Education is not the one true path out of poverty which Arne Duncan and Obama have said it is.
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<p />NOOR: Which is what corporate reformers--that's what they say. The charter school proponents--.
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<p />WEINER: That's exactly what they say.
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<p />NOOR: They say that privatization and charter schools can get people out of poverty.
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<p />WEINER: And obviously we should be doing--we should be doing things better. We have to address the historic inequalities in public education. I think the unions, including teachers' unions, need to acknowledge their historic complicity in that history of racial inequality. And they have to put that on the table to communities of color--.
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<p />NOOR: Well, Lois, that's a lot--you've gone through several points there. I want to give chance, give Ray a chance to respond.
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<p />BAKER: I don't think that anything that she's said thus far has been wrong. I think there's value in everything she says. But I also would like to parallel it much to what Rev. Joseph Lowery says when he talks about America versus black America. He says, if America has a cold, black America has pneumonia. If America stubs its toe, black America has broken its foot.
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<p />And so some of the points that Lois is making about the democratization of unions, about what's being heard, what are members doing to call on their leadership, how is leadership being responsive to the union, that's, that's a microcosm just in our labor sector about what we're seeing across the United States. There's a legitimate and meaningful argument to be had across the United States about greater participation in our democracy. Greater participation and accountability from our elected officials. And so I think that the points that she's making, valid on all fronts, are consistent throughout what we're seeing in the United States. And I'm sure the professor does not--but we can't take these things in a vacuum, outside of the world that we live in, the nation that we live in. And so there are legitimate criticisms about those places.
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<p />Now, with regard to specific labor unions as a whole, and teachers' unions, I think that there may be exceptions to every rule, right? And that's not to ignore the rule, the pattern, the trajectory of the things that are. But there are some spaces where particularly some members are speaking up and hearing their voices heard, or able to air their disagreements with leadership in such a way that they feel confident that their point has been heard. But ultimately every labor union--and I'm saying this confidently, and I would like to think that our brothers and sisters in labor throughout the nation feel this way--they want the democracy and unions to be as full and robust as possible.
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<p />And I think, one of the points I wanted to bring up that she mentioned was the role of education not being necessarily this vehicle to ending all, be-all, end-all of poverty, right. And I, I--unfortunately in the United States so often we face these either false binaries or false dualities, right. There's either good guy, bad guy, left-right, up-down, where when we try to find solutions--and some of the corporate reformers you mentioned kind of particularly seem to go towards this, there's either do you want this, this, the neighborhood school where you may have some criticism? Or do you want me, the corporate reformer, to come in and change things? Where Maryland, as you alluded to earlier with this progressive charter law, is a space where we can allow and embrace the nuance. Because more often than not we find our answers lying within that nuance. And again, this is true for every sector of United States life, but particularly in our spaces of education.
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<p />NOOR: Okay. Well, this wraps up our first segment, but we're going to talk more about what's happening in Baltimore, the movement for black lives, student groups that are taking the forefront and demanding social and racial justice here. I want to thank you both for joining us for part one.
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<p />WEINER: Thank you.
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<p />BAKER: Thank you.
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<p />NOOR: Thank you for joining us at the Real News Network.
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<p />End
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<p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. | Are Teachers Unions Fighting for Social Justice? (2/2) | true | http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D31%26Itemid%3D74%26jumival%3D15014 | 2015-10-30 | 4 |
<p>your email</p>
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<p>Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton in New Haven, Connecticut. &#160;</p>
<p>Yale Law School students Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton were both members, alongside future Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal and Bill Clinton’s eventual Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor Robert Reich, of the Yale Law School Students Committee for Local 35, the university's blue-collar worker union, and signatories, during the week before the union went on strike, to a statement asserting “WE BELIEVE THE UNION DESERVES THE SUPPORT OF YALE STUDENTS AND FACULTY."&#160;Bill Clinton was even, former UNITE HERE President John Wilhelm would note decades later in his <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070313192745/http:/www.laborhistory.org/almanac_dedic.html" type="external">eulogy</a> for Vincent Sirabella, the Voter Registration Chairman of the Sirabella for Mayor Campaign.</p>
<p>And yet, on her first date with classmate Clinton in 1971, Rodham would later recall:</p>
<p>We both had wanted to see a Mark Rothko exhibit at the Yale Art Gallery but, because of a labor dispute, some of the university's buildings, including the museum, were closed. As Bill and I walked by, he decided he could get us in if we offered to pick up the litter that had accumulated in the gallery's courtyard. Watching him talk our way in was the first time I saw his persuasiveness in action. We had the entire museum to ourselves. We wandered through the galleries talking about Rothko and twentieth-century art. I admit to being surprised at his interest in and knowledge of subjects that seemed, at first, unusual for a Viking from Arkansas. We ended up in the museum's courtyard, where I sat in the large lap of Henry Moore's sculpture Drape Seated Woman while we talked until dark.</p>
<p>The relationship between Rodham and Clinton, two instrumental figures in the decoupling of the Democratic Party from the priorities of the mainstream labor movement, thus began with the crossing of a picket line.&#160;</p>
<p>When Rodham and Clinton picked up the garbage strewn about the art gallery courtyard (if, indeed, they ever did so), they were doing exactly what everyone from Vincent Sirabella to the Black Student Alliance at Yale had asked students not to do: they were performing—or at the very least offering to perform—the work that members of Local 35’s Grounds Maintenance division, had refused.</p>
<p>Rodham and Clinton were offering themselves as replacement labor, blunting, if only temporarily, the effects of the strike on the university. The two law students then bartered their litter pickup, which was, in essence, scab labor (or maybe just the promise thereof) into access to a struck building.&#160;</p>
<p>The art gallery and other nonessential buildings were closed because the university did not have enough managers to keep them open during the strike. They were closed because the people who usually cleaned and repaired them, whose labor helped make the university’s display of art possible, had been forced to absent themselves by the necessity which fueled the ongoing strike.&#160;</p>
<p>For Rodham and Clinton, the workers’ concerns&#160;were at best secondary to the romance of the empty museum, the sophistication and transgressive pleasure offered not only by the modernist art, but also by the act of violating the strike. Hillary Rodham Clinton offers this anecdote in her 2003 memoir&#160;Living History&#160;not in her discussion of how her time in New Haven affected her understanding of urban politics and life, but rather in a distinct chapter devoted entirely to the origins of her relationship with the “Viking from Arkansas.” The “labor dispute,” not even named here as a strike, is not only abstracted from the very spaces the future Clintons inhabit in this narrative, it is made incidental to them, an obstacle which has to be sidestepped in order for the art to be viewed and the date to acquire its romantic ambiance.</p>
<p>Excerpted and adapted from&#160;Beneath the University: Service Workers and the University-Hospital City, an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation.&#160;</p>
<p>Get the best of our labor news and analysis direct to your inbox:&#160; <a href="https://inthesetimes.formstack.com/forms/working" type="external">Sign up for the weekly&#160;Working In These Times&#160;newsletter</a> <a href="https://inthesetimes.formstack.com/forms/working" type="external">.&#160;</a></p> | On Bill and Hillary Clinton’s First Date in 1971, They Crossed a Picket Line | true | http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18841/hillary_rodham_bill_clinton_and_the_1971_yale_strike | 2016-02-09 | 4 |
<p>Jacobin published a bit over 450 essays this&#160;year. That’s a lot of material — around fourteen books worth, in addition to the four&#160; <a href="" type="internal">actual books</a> we put out. So in case you missed anything, below is&#160;a rundown of some of the magazine’s&#160;recent hits&#160;and what to look forward to in 2015.</p>
<p>Before we continue, we know that&#160;everyone has been inundated with donation appeals&#160;from organizations asking&#160;for cash. Many of them definitely deserve it. We hope that&#160;Jacobin&#160;has a place on your list, too. Today is the last day for <a href="" type="internal">$14 gift subscriptions</a>,&#160;and all <a href="" type="internal">donations</a> until midnight will be matched.</p>
<p>We reached four&#160;times as many people online (824,243 and counting this month alone) than we did this time last year. Most of those folks read online for free. We’re finally closing in on&#160;10,000 subscribers, but we still rely on a tiny base of small donors to keep things going.</p>
<p>There’s never been a more important time to <a href="" type="internal">support the magazine</a>.</p>
<p /> | The 2014 Jacobin Mixtape | true | https://jacobinmag.com/2014/12/the-2014-jacobin-mixtape/ | 2018-10-03 | 4 |
<p>Published time: 20 Jul, 2017 10:12</p>
<p>The UK government’s refusal to release key advice on the 2015 drone killing of two British citizens in Syria will be challenged in court on Thursday.</p>
<p>Campaigners have questioned the government’s line that the killing by drone strike of British jihadists Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin was legal.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/388797-raf-drone-strike-civilians/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Rights Watch UK, the NGO demanding to see the advice from government lawyer’s upon which the decision to kill the pair was made, have also accused the government of using a US-style drone kill list.</p>
<p>The civil liberties group says the disclosure of the advice is in the public interest, while the Cabinet Office and the attorney-general have rejected this claim, arguing the advice must remain secret because it involves information about intelligence agencies.</p>
<p>Rights Watch UK in turn reject the government views, calling for the legal parts of the advice to be disclosed rather than sensitive operational specifics – a process known as disaggregation.</p>
<p>Rights Watch Director Yasmine Ahmed told the Guardian that the “unprecedented strike” in 2015 signaled a “profound policy shift and a sweeping expansion of the circumstances in which the government claims they can lawfully use force overseas.”</p>
<p>She accused the government of “shielding their legal justification from public view” and in doing so “depriving parliament and the public of the opportunity to have informed debate about where and when its government can engage in the premeditated killings of individuals, including British nationals, abroad.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>“The government is seeking to have its cake and eat it: explicitly relying on the legal advice and its conclusions to assure parliament this new departure was lawful, then denying parliament and the public the opportunity to properly test this claim by wholesale withholding the advice with a catch-all reference,” Ahmed warned.</p>
<p>The lawyer acting on behalf of Rights Watch, Daniel Carey, accepted that “redaction of the document is likely to be necessary” but insisted that “outright refusal” to disclose was not justified.</p> | Secrecy around drone assassination of British citizens in Syria challenged in court | false | https://newsline.com/secrecy-around-drone-assassination-of-british-citizens-in-syria-challenged-in-court/ | 2017-07-20 | 1 |
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<p>Whether you're in the middle of a job hunt or planning to start one&#160;soon, there are a few <a href="https://www.recruiter.com/resume.html" type="external">resume Opens a New Window.</a> changes you should make if you want to immediately stand out and get more interviews.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Read through the steps below and use this as a checklist to make sure your resume is doing as much as possible to help you get hired!</p>
<p>1. Simplify the Formatting</p>
<p>The average corporate job receives <a href="http://www.eremedia.com/ere/why-you-cant-get-a-job-recruiting-explained-by-the-numbers/" type="external">around 250 applications, Opens a New Window.</a>&#160;which means hiring managers look through a lot of resumes each day. Unless you're an artist or graphic designer, you're going to see better results with a simple resume that leaves out the fancy formatting. Instead of trying to impress an employer&#160;with design, make&#160;your resume straightforward and easy to read. Impress them with your content.</p>
<p>Here are some general design guidelines:</p>
<p>Use 1-2 fonts maximum.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Use 2-3 font sizes.</p>
<p>Use left alignment and don't center any of your text.</p>
<p>Be consistent with your formatting from start to finish.</p>
<p>Do a final check to&#160;make sure your resume is easy on the eyes and has a natural flow as you scan down the page. You should have a larger header followed by smaller content. Repeat this pattern and keep it predictable so that a hiring manager can quickly make sense of your skills and background.</p>
<p>2. Use Numbers and Statistics Whenever Possible</p>
<p>Now that your formatting is set, you need great content to impress anyone who picks up your resume. Numbers and statistics are the&#160;best way to capture attention,&#160;and the easiest way to work them in&#160;is right in your bullet points.</p>
<p>Here's how the average bullet point might read: Responsible for handling inbound customer requests, conducting prompt follow up, and ensuring customer happiness.</p>
<p>Here's how a great, data-driven bullet point would read: Responded to 60+ inbound customer requests per day, following up within one hour and achieving a customer satisfaction rate of 97.8 percent.</p>
<p>You can use percentages, time periods, dollar amounts, rankings, and much more!</p>
<p>3. Think Critically About What the Hiring Manager Wants</p>
<p>It's easy to become self-centered in your job search. You thought a lot about your career, decided it was a <a href="http://careersidekick.com/the-two-best-and-worst-times-of-the-year-for-job-hunting/" type="external">good time to look for a job Opens a New Window.</a>, and then focused on your goal. But most people don't take the time to look at the job hunt&#160;from the hiring manager's perspective, so they end up submitting generic resumes that aren't tailored to the job.</p>
<p>What should you do instead? Look at the job description and figure out what's most important to the company. What does the description mention first or most often? Now go through your resume and reorder the pieces so that the hiring manager&#160;will see what they're&#160;looking for immediately. Add bullet points that are highly relevant and show necessary experience, not based on what you feel is most impressive overall, but based on what the hiring manager needs most in the person they hire.</p>
<p>4. Utilize Keywords</p>
<p>When hiring managers and recruiters are looking to hire someone, they're often in a rush, so you need a way to&#160;quickly make sure you're worth their time.</p>
<p>Keywords are a great way to show hiring managers and recruiters that you have what they need and that they should learn more about you. This also helps your resume <a href="https://www.recruiter.com/i/4-quick-ways-to-optimize-your-resume-for-atss/" type="external">pass any applicant tracking systems Opens a New Window.</a>&#160;that employers may be&#160;is using, which will improve your response rate overall.</p>
<p>5. Sound Like an Expert</p>
<p>In the steps above, you added relevant statistics and tailored your content. Now it's time to remove some of the fluff and unnecessary information so that your best content can stand out!</p>
<p>If some of your bullet points aren't related to what the job requires, consider removing them. For most jobs, hiring managers want an expert or a specialist. If you present yourself as a generalist, it's going to hurt your response rate and make it harder to get an interview. If you insist on sharing these other areas of experience that aren't as important, include them in your cover letter!</p>
<p>Biron&#160;Clark is an executive recruiter, career coach, and founder of&#160; <a href="http://careersidekick.com/" type="external">careersidekick.com Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 5 Simple Resume Tricks to Get You More Interviews | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/09/09/5-simple-resume-tricks-to-get-more-interviews.html | 2016-09-14 | 0 |
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<p>But what good is a low rate if a lender can’t process your application?</p>
<p>A protracted government shutdown would hamper the ability of lenders to confirm borrowers’ incomes and identities, as well as threatening loans that are backed by agencies such as the Federal Housing Administration.</p>
<p>“The federal government shutdown will have a growing impact on the housing market the longer it continues,” David H. Stevens, president and chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said in a statement Thursday.</p>
<p>“Lenders processing loans that need tax transcripts, Social Security number verification, or FHA home loans face longer delays and reduced functionality,” Stevens said, warning of “confusion and fear among borrowers about whether they will be able to close on a home purchase or refinance.”</p>
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<p>Sales of rental properties awaiting FHA financing could be held up as well.</p>
<p>Experts said mortgage seekers should discuss timelines and expectations with their lender and inquire about longer commitments, longer rate locks and extension policies.</p>
<p>A few days’ delay in shouldn’t derail too many deals but several weeks could cause backlogs to multiply.</p>
<p /> | Home rates drop again | false | https://abqjournal.com/275518/again.html | 2013-10-04 | 2 |
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<p>Image source: The Motley Fool.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>With the ongoing turmoil from the United Kingdom's Brexit vote two weeks ago combined with the recently released results from this year's stress tests, it'd be easy to overlook that second-quarter earnings season is nearly upon us.</p>
<p>As seasoned investors know, it's not necessarily how well a company performs each quarter on an absolute basis that matters most for its stock price in the wake of earnings, but rather how well the company performs relative to analyst expectations. It's with this in mind that I decided to kick off my coverage of the second-quarter earnings season by looking at how often the banks that I cover beat the consensus estimate.</p>
<p>The first bank up is Bank of America . To say that the nation's second biggest bank by assets has struggled over the past few years would be an understatement. Thanks to low interest rates and roughly $200 billion worth of added costs stemming from the financial crisis, Bank of America hasn't generated positive shareholder value for nearly a decade.</p>
<p>It came close last year, which was the first time since the crisis that it reported respectable earnings in four consecutive calendar quarters. But even then, its return on average common shareholders' equity was only 6.3%, which is roughly half its 12% cost of equity capital -- to create shareholder value, the former must exceed the latter.</p>
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<p>So, how is Bank of America expected to do in the second quarter of this year? The consensus among analysts is that it will earn $0.36 per share, according to Yahoo! Finance. That compares to per-share earnings of $0.45 in the second quarter of last year.</p>
<p>The year-over-year drop is obviously disappointing. However, as I've already said, what matters more for its share price in the short-term is whether or not it's likely to miss or exceed analyst estimates. Fortunately, if the past is any indication, it seems more likely than not that it will beat current forecasts.</p>
<p>Since the first quarter of 2011, Bank of America has beaten analyst expectations in 17 out of 21 quarters, or 81% of the time. Whether it's able to do so this time, of course, remains to be seen -- though, one thing going in its favor is the fact that analysts have tempered their expectations over the past three months.</p>
<p>Ninety days ago, the consensus estimate for Bank of America's second-quarter earnings per share was $0.38. This dropped to $0.37 per share a month later. And just recently it dropped again to $0.36 per share. This is accordingly the number that investors will want to watch for when Bank of America reports earnings on July 18.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/08/how-often-does-bank-of-america-beat-earnings-estim.aspx" type="external">How Often Does Bank of America Beat Earnings Estimates? Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/JohnMaxfield37/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">John Maxfield Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Bank of America. The Motley Fool recommends Bank of America. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | How Often Does Bank of America Beat Earnings Estimates? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/07/08/how-often-does-bank-america-beat-earnings-estimates.html | 2016-07-08 | 0 |
<p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota hearing aid company says excerpts of more than 550 patient records were compromised in a security breach to its e-mail system. The company says no Social Security numbers or financial information were exposed.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.startribune.com/miracle-ear-reports-privacy-breach-of-nearly-600-patients/467173023/" type="external">Star Tribune</a> reports that Plymouth-based Miracle-Ear says the Oct. 24 incident happened when "an unknown and unauthorized intruder" gained access to the e-mail account of an employee of parent company Amplifon, which handles the accounts and administrative work for subsidiaries.</p>
<p>Company officials say they don't know if the intruder accessed patient records.</p>
<p>Because officials say they can't prove with "100 percent certainty" that the records were not viewed or copied, the company sent letters to those affected by the incident.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Star Tribune, <a href="http://www.startribune.com" type="external">http://www.startribune.com</a></p>
<p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota hearing aid company says excerpts of more than 550 patient records were compromised in a security breach to its e-mail system. The company says no Social Security numbers or financial information were exposed.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.startribune.com/miracle-ear-reports-privacy-breach-of-nearly-600-patients/467173023/" type="external">Star Tribune</a> reports that Plymouth-based Miracle-Ear says the Oct. 24 incident happened when "an unknown and unauthorized intruder" gained access to the e-mail account of an employee of parent company Amplifon, which handles the accounts and administrative work for subsidiaries.</p>
<p>Company officials say they don't know if the intruder accessed patient records.</p>
<p>Because officials say they can't prove with "100 percent certainty" that the records were not viewed or copied, the company sent letters to those affected by the incident.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Star Tribune, <a href="http://www.startribune.com" type="external">http://www.startribune.com</a></p> | Minnesota hearing aid company reports privacy breach | false | https://apnews.com/amp/3bbe03472a3140d1864dc66221c6777c | 2017-12-29 | 2 |
<p>On Thursday, most Americans will gather together with family and friends to have dinner and celebrate Thanksgiving. But not everyone will be able to enjoy the holiday the way they’d like.</p>
<p>Eleven brands say they will be open on Thanksgiving this year, requiring millions of workers to show up for shifts during the national holiday.</p>
<p>Many brands claim they try to staff these shifts with volunteers or seasonal employees. But their workers often tell a different story. <a href="" type="internal">At Kmart</a>, for example, many said their managers never gave anyone an opportunity to volunteer, nor could employees request time off or specific shifts. Instead, they’ve been told when they will work on the holiday without any willingness to accommodate their schedules, and some say that they’ve been told they risk being fired if they call out for a scheduled shift. <a href="" type="internal">Target employees</a> reported similar experiences last year. Low-income workers, as those in retail, are also <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs2.t06.htm" type="external">less likely</a> to be offered paid holiday and vacation time they could use to take the day off anyway.</p>
<p>But even as some stores will stretch their hours into the holiday, others have decided to do the opposite. Staples, which had even been open on Thanksgiving last year, changed its mind this year and decided to close. Seventeen other brands will also be closed on the holiday.</p>
<p>Some companies have explicitly said that they will close in order to let employees be home with friends and family. Staples <a href="" type="internal">said</a>, “We want our customers and associates to enjoy Thanksgiving their own way” by closing. “Family time is extremely important to us, and we want our associates to enjoy the holiday with their loved ones,” DSW <a href="https://www.morningstar.com/news/pr-news-wire/PRNews_20151026CL37329/dsw-continues-to-keep-their-doors-closed-on-thanksgiving.html" type="external">said</a>. TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods <a href="http://media.marshallstjmaxx.com/pressrelease/view/815/FALSE/1" type="external">will close</a> “so our Associates can enjoy the holiday with family and friends.” GameStop <a href="" type="internal">explained</a>, “We believe strongly that our customers and associates should have the opportunity to spend the Thanksgiving holiday relaxing with family and friends.”</p>
<p>And REI has gone the furthest, <a href="" type="internal">promising</a> not just to be closed on Thanksgiving but also on Black Friday, giving its employees a paid day off to enjoy the outdoors.</p>
<p>There’s little evidence that staying open on Thanksgiving helps increase retailers’ holiday sales. Instead, <a href="" type="internal">last year’s numbers</a> show that shoppers simply shifted purchases they would have made on Black Friday to Thanksgiving, with no net increase. There is also a potential public relations pitfall, as consumers have said they <a href="" type="internal">strongly disapprove</a> of being open.</p> | All The Stores That Will Make Employees Work On The Holidays | true | http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/11/24/3725339/thanksgiving-shopping-guide-2015/ | 2015-11-24 | 4 |
<p>It has been many months since I last wrote anything that I believe would be a contribution toward the struggle of Palestinians for freedom, independence and most importantly justice. I found that my inability to write was part of both an inner and external struggle as a deep sadness has been rooted in my heart and for so many months weaved itself around me–body and soul. Since September 2000, the outbreak of the Palestinian struggle for independence, the Al-Aqsa Intifada, I have born witness to the rape of a nation, people and land. In my thirty-one years on this earth I have gone though many struggles — beginning as a young girl to womanhood to belonging to a ‘minority; and being a firm and strong believer and follower of feminism. However, nothing in my thirty-one years prepared me for witnessing the rape of a nation and what I truly believe is outright ethnic cleansing of a people–all in broad daylight and on prime time TV.</p>
<p>I first came to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) in June 1987, about a year before the outbreak of what is called the first intifada (uprising). It was then that my parents decided that it was time my sisters and brothers and I ‘understand’ the Palestinian culture, way of life and to learn Arabic. Being young and rebellious, I was adamant on not going back home. Daily–with the volume as high as it can go, I listened to Bruce Springstein’s ‘Born in the USA’ over and over again. It was funny how all the neighborhood children memorized the words and would gather around my bedroom window and sing–pretending to play guitar and drums in the air. It is sad to say that those activities were the highlight of my life at that time. However, because these were the summer months and time was spent mostly at home as relatives and neighbors came to see ‘the Americans’, I had yet to know and understand the meaning of living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.</p>
<p>At the end of 1988 the first intifada broke out. By that time I had made friends at the Quaker run Friends Girls School (FGS) in Ramallah where I was studying and taking part in extracurricular activities that helped me ‘adapt’ to living here. However, in December 1988, at the outbreak of the Intifada, the Israeli government forced shut all the schools, including kindergartens and universities. That was my first taste at collective punishment and at the violation of basic rights such as the right to education. FGS decided on an alternative program to allow students to continue their education. Students would go to school and pick up homework and submit homework from the previous day–this went on for one year when my parents decided that this form of education is not suffice and decided to return to the US. Unlike my fellow classmates, I had the ‘opportunity’ to continue my education elsewhere.</p>
<p>It was during this time that I really began to understand what ‘occupation’ meant–basically someone else (in this case the Israeli government) controlled every aspect of your life. This meant that if the Israeli government decided to impose curfew–I was not allowed to go to school, to see my friends, to even go to the corner store. Curfew had a different meaning than that of what I was used to in the US–meaning that anyone under 18 years of age had to be home before 10:00pm for his or her own safety. Curfew imposed by the Israeli government only for Palestinian cities, towns and refugee camps meant that no one–adult, minor or child could step outside the door of their home even for medical emergencies and food. I learned what it meant to be a prisoner in your own home–under house arrest–just for being Palestinian. Whenever I had a chance to go to school, I would later follow my older sister to Al-Haq, a human rights organization in Ramallah. It was there that I discovered what had happened in South Africa, Sri Lanka, El Salvador and Guatemala. I think I was the youngest person there but I began to learn of my identity and developed a love for reading and poetry. I was introduced to the writings of Edward Said (I always had a dictionary next to me), Nawal El Saadawi and poets and literary writers such as Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Mahmoud Darwish, Fadwa Tuqan and Khalil Jubran Khalil. Those became the highlights of my days as I waited for the return to the US.</p>
<p>Upon returning to the US–I felt that I had a lot to say to my friends that I left behind–there were so many things that I lived through and witnessed. I felt that I had to tell the world what I saw and heard. Friends and classmates had their own lives and talking about Palestine did not interest them–it was a world away. I felt out of place–I was more serious, I had to read the daily papers and listen to the news so that I know what was happening in a far away land that had become such an important part of me. A place that helped me shape my identity–a place that played an integral part in the woman I was to become.</p>
<p>Less than ten years later I made one of the most important decisions in my life. In August 1996, I returned to Palestine to live. What I had been witness to in my real life crash course of illegal occupation in the late 1980’s had ingrained in me a need to see justice and see the Palestinian people live free and dignified lives. A few months after my return I again bore witness to horrific and repelling actions, again by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people in what is now called the Jerusalem Tunnel Massacre. Living in the city of Jerusalem, I actually heard the gunfire, saw the unhesitant fingers of Israeli soldiers continuously pressing the triggers of their M16 rifles aimed at Palestinian women, men and children running for their lives. I saw bodies covered with blood rushed out of the area–each body held by several young men because the Israeli’s prevented ambulances from reaching the injured, many of whom died of their wounds because of the inability to access medical assistance. Some bodies laid in public for sometime because people were afraid to assist them because of the trigger-happy Israeli soldiers and police. That is a day that I will never forget and still haunts me many years later.</p>
<p>Hoping and believing that things would get better, I began to make Israeli friends believing that one day we would live side by side–each of us in our state and each of us living in dignity. The hope began to slip away as daily violations against basic rights of Palestinians continued. The lack of action by the Israeli peace camp began to draw me away from some of the Israeli friends I had made–as I questioned their inaction to their government’s clear policies of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. However, those that I kept in touch with worked tirelessly, firmly believing and acting upon Dr. Martin Luther King’s saying, ‘There comes a time when silence is betrayal’.</p>
<p>Believing that the ‘situation’ cannot get any worse, I was struck with a hard and powerful blow on September 28, 2000, when Ariel Sharon’s infamous walk into one of the holiest Muslim sites created and uproar among Muslim and Christian Palestinians and led to what is now called the Al-Aqsa Intifada. For the past two years, from the Labor to the Likud governments, a kill to shoot policy against Palestinians was adopted. This of course is never said to the public, but with over 2000 Palestinians killed and over 20,000 injured with a high percentage targeted in the upper body parts–no words need to be said. Placing a whole population in an open prison, including children who are prevented from going to school or playing outside–no words need to be said. Assassinating at least 80 Palestinians and ‘by mistake’ or ‘unintentionally’ taking hundreds of lives of others including children in the process–no words need to be said. Re-displacing refugees from the 1948 (historical Palestine) that live in refugee camps again–like in Jenin Camp, Balata and Rafah no words need to be said.</p>
<p>I can’t help but feel that this inner sadness is a shared one with Holocaust survivors as they watched their family members, friends and neighbors perish one by one as I watch Palestinian children, women and men perish one by one. A mirror image of the Holocaust crosses my mind as Palestinian boys and men between the ages of 14–60 are rounded up in school yards or open grounds–some tied up and blindfolded and some with numbers written on their arms and foreheads. By orders from the government, men are also rounded up in buildings or outside their workplaces and killed execution style for just being Palestinian.</p>
<p>A mirror image also crosses my mind as we both shout and scream to the world for help–to interfere to stop the genocide. It is sad to say that all of this is happening as the world watches and as Americans we preach about civilized society and living in the 21st century–in a modern world. What right does the ‘modern world’ have to take away the life of Palestinians and by what right does Israel’s ‘democracy’ continue its genocide, ethnic cleansing, displacement and assassinations? As an American, I was taught that democracy means right to life, freedom of speech and due process–all of which lack in what Israel considers a ‘democracy’ as it continues the rape of a nation, a people and a land.</p>
<p>Salam Rahal is a pseudonym for a Palestinian-American living in the Occupied Palestinian Territorie. Salam can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | The Rape of a Nation | true | https://counterpunch.org/2002/09/19/the-rape-of-a-nation/ | 2002-09-19 | 4 |
<p>BOSTON (MA)Boston PhoenixBY KRISTEN LOMBARDI</p>
<p>THE YEAR WAS 1992, and Phil Saviano had yet to become a prominent leader in the movement for legal justice for victims of clergy sexual abuse. Back then, the Jamaica Plain resident was having trouble just leading his life. An AIDS patient, Saviano had grown emaciated and anemic. And although he was taking the antiviral drug AZT, he was biding his time. He had planned a funeral and drawn up a will. He had even procured a bottle of sleeping pills — in case he wanted to "check out."</p>
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<p>Amid this tango with mortality, he experienced a life-changing moment. On December 17, 1992 — Saviano remembers the date as if it were yesterday — he was reading the Boston Globe when he spotted something that startled him: an article about a former Massachusetts priest molesting children in New Mexico.</p>
<p>The news brought Saviano back to 1964, when he was an 11-year-old boy attending catechism classes at St. Denis Church, in East Douglas. That was the year Saviano lost his innocence. It was the year St. Denis’s pastor, Father David Holley, repeatedly forced Saviano to perform oral sex on him. Three decades later, Holley was accused of raping children under his priestly care in New Mexico, in the 1970s. (Holley is currently serving an unprecedented 275-year prison sentence for child molestation.)</p>
<p>Saviano never forgot his childhood abuse at the hands of this Catholic priest. At the same time, he never imagined that his perpetrator would still be using the collar to prey on children. "It was unbelievable," he recalls. The revelation sent Saviano down a path that hundreds of clergy-sex-abuse victims have traveled since the Boston scandal came to light, in 2001 — a path that Saviano blazed in 1992. As he puts it, "I saw that I had the opportunity to do one last thing with my life."</p>
<p>And so, he went public with his story. He sought legal help from Boston attorney Eric MacLeish, who now represents 250-plus alleged victims of clergy abuse. And he filed the first priest-abuse lawsuit in Massachusetts against the Worcester diocese, in which Holley had been a priest at the time of Saviano’s abuse. By 1995, the diocese had offered to settle the suit for $15,500. But on one condition: Saviano couldn’t talk about the abuse ever again. Even his therapist had to agree to keep silent. Saviano refused. "I couldn’t sign the agreement without feeling guilty about being part of the Church’s big secret."</p> | Founder of the local Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests | false | https://poynter.org/news/founder-local-survivors-network-those-abused-priests | 2003-10-30 | 2 |
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<p>SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — A man who was fined $190 for allowing his pet snake to slither freely in a South Dakota park says he's disturbed by an animal control officer's suggestion that he restrain the reptile on a leash while in public.</p>
<p>The Argus Leader ( <a href="http://argusne.ws/2oMstxK" type="external">http://argusne.ws/2oMstxK</a> ) reports that Jerry Kimball was ticketed for “animals running at large” last week after a woman complained that his Fire Bee Ball Python was roaming freely at Falls Park in Sioux Falls.</p>
<p>Kimball says he was “dumbfounded” by the leash recommendation.</p>
<p>Animal Control Supervisor Julie DeJong says a city ordinance requires all pets to be leashed or restrained in public and that pet snakes can be held or kept in a container to comply.</p>
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<p>Kimball says he plans to fight the ticket in court.</p>
<p>Information from: Argus Leader, <a href="http://www.argusleader.com" type="external">http://www.argusleader.com</a></p>
<p><a href="#112ee5bd-3e12-4890-8a1a-641db3879add" type="external">© 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</a> Learn more about our <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/privacy" type="external">Privacy Policy</a> and <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/terms" type="external">Terms of Use</a>.</p> | South Dakota man gets $190 fine for snake without leash | false | https://abqjournal.com/984606/south-dakota-man-gets-190-fine-for-snake-without-leash.html | 2017-04-07 | 2 |
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<p>While big companies such as Forever21 and In-N-Out Burger quietly stamp Bible verse John 3:16 on the bottom of their bags and cups, other companies are more outward in their devotion.&#160;But when it comes to integrating faith into your branding or business, it often can be a tricky line to toe.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Regardless of the size of the company, faith-based marketing can help reach an expansive Christian demographic with an estimated purchasing power of around $5.1 trillion a year.</p>
<p>“One of the things that makes the faith-based market unique is they gather weekly as a group to share and fellowship with each other,” said Greg Stielstra, founder of <a href="http://www.pyromarketing.com" type="external">PyroMarketing</a>, a social media marketing agency in Franklin, Tenn.</p>
<p>That means the opportunity for information to spread, including product endorsements, is huge, particularly since people trust recommendations of peers with similar interests. “For Christians in America, their faith in Jesus Christ is a defining characteristic, which makes word of mouth in that community more powerful than it would be for other communities,” Stielstra added.</p>
<p>Paul Jankowski, CEO of Access Brand Strategies and author of <a href="http://www.howtospeakamerican.com/" type="external">How to Speak American: Building Brands in the New Heartland</a>, agreed that faith as a core value in many Americans’ lives cannot be understated.</p>
<p>“Be cognizant of the role of faith, specifically, may play in the lives of this massive consumer group,” he said.</p>
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<p>Stielstra marketed for Christian publications for 17 years, including the wildly-successful promotion of The Purpose Driven Life. He is also the co-author of F <a href="http://www.faithbasedmarketing.com/" type="external">aith-Based Marketing: The Guide to Reaching 140 Million Christian Customers.</a></p>
<p>Stielstra attributed the success of The Purpose Driven Life, which is the fastest-selling hardcover book in American history, to the tightness of the faith-based community.</p>
<p>“By lighting that fuse in a number of key places, it was possible to reach almost everyone because that community is so tight.”</p>
<p>A 40-day marketing campaign for the book included having ministers preach six consecutive sermons about the book, with worshippers reading a chapter a day for 40 days. Readers were given the entire book, instead of just a sampling, and they would meet once a week to discuss it. Word of the book spread like wildfire through faith-based communities.</p>
<p>“It created an army of 400,000 customer evangelists who had a deep familiarity and a positive experience with the book, and that turned into irrepressible word of mouth,” Stielstra said. “It wasn’t valuing them for their purchase potential. What it unleashed was their promotional potential.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cbac.com/" type="external">Christian Brothers Automotive</a>is proof of that promotional potential.</p>
<p>CEO Mark Carr founded the company in 1982 after another man from his church asked if he could help start an automotive repair service. Carr, who was working in graphic arts prior – and continued to for seven years before working on his auto service full time – named the company Christian Brothers Automotive because it was literally opened by two brothers in Christ. What started out as a single repair shop outside of Houston, has turned into an operation of 88 franchises in 11 states, with another 32 under construction or getting ready to open.</p>
<p>Some franchise locations have Bibles in the waiting rooms or lobbies, along with TIME magazine and other reading material. Some franchisees also place prayer request books in the lobby open to people of any faith.</p>
<p>“We’re not going to outwardly proselytize ... but we hope and pray that they feel the love of God when they come into our stores,” said Josh Wall, vice president of franchise development.</p>
<p>Although most franchisees are Christians, the company has never specifically focused its marketing efforts on faith-based consumers. It simply made sure to take good care of customers, who in turn, helped boost the customer base with word-of-mouth, referral-based marketing.</p>
<p>“We’re not targeting faith-based customers, per se,” Wall said. “What we’re doing … is just saying, ‘we want to be in a business that glorifies God in everything we do, by providing ethical and excellent automotive repair for our customers.’ That’s something that’s not lip service – that’s who we are.”</p>
<p>As Christian Brothers Automotive expanded, it began advertising on Christian and talk radio – an “incredibly valuable” medium for the faith-based market, according to Stielstra, because many of the stations are listener supported, forging a deep bond between the station and its listeners.</p>
<p>“Many listeners turn to it as safe programming … they have come to trust Christian radio as a sort of gatekeeper,” Stielstra said. “I think brands can use Christian radio effectively to make an introduction and to get the kind of credibility that would take years and millions of dollars to build any other way.”</p>
<p>But you won’t see any type of Christian or religious arts in any of Christian Brothers Automotive's ads.</p>
<p>“We don’t want to offend anyone or create a pre-conceived notion before they walk in the door,” Wall said.</p>
<p>When deciding a franchise location, Christian Brothers looks at demographics like number of people, income levels, traffic, as well as competitive forces like other independent auto repair shops in the area. Ethnic or religious makeup isn’t considered in choosing a location. Some of its strongest franchise locations are in areas dense with people who identify with Eastern religions, not Christianity, according to Wall.</p>
<p>“Overwhelmingly, I would say it typically doesn’t offend non-evangelical Christians because they just want to be taken care of very well. We service people of all different faith backgrounds."</p>
<p>As to how companies or brands can tap into the faith-based market, Stielstra recommends becoming a trusted name in churches, first and foremost. That may mean sitting down with local pastors and presenting your product and explaining how it can be beneficial to his or her congregation.</p>
<p>“Let them speak back to you. Pastors are shepherds of their flock and shepherds protect their flock,” Stielstra said. “If you show how your product is genuinely helpful, they would be a great consultant.”</p>
<p>When it comes to displaying your faith, it’s the personal preference of business owners as to just how much they display. Some say it’s good to find the right balance of showing “we’re one of you” – or “homophily,” meaning “love of the same” - but not beating people senseless with it.</p>
<p>“If you can identify yourself as being a Christian and that your business is guided by Christian principles, other Christians will want to reward you and give them your business,” Stielstra said. “Other businesses can win patronage by Christians by saying there are aligned with the same values – that’s stopping short of sharing your faith, but there are at least a certain set of standards by which we all adhere.”</p> | Faith-Based Marketing Can Tap Into Powerful Consumer Base | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/09/28/faith-based-marketing-can-tap-into-powerful-consumer-base.html | 2016-03-22 | 0 |
<p>JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s military retaliated to rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip on Friday with strikes on posts used by the Islamic militant group Hamas that rules the territory. The exchange caused no casualties on either side.</p>
<p>The Israeli military said tanks and aircraft fired at Hamas posts soon after its Iron Dome missile defense system downed two rockets fired from Gaza targeting the south of the country. Police said another rocket exploded in a populated area damaging a building but causing no injuries.</p>
<p>Hamas said there were no injuries in the strikes.</p>
<p>Israel holds Hamas responsible for all attacks initiated from the territory regardless of the gunmen firing the rockets.</p>
<p>The rockets came as the family of Oron Shaul, an Israeli soldier killed in the 2014 Gaza-Israel war, held a birthday ceremony for him near the border prompting some participants to take cover.</p>
<p>Hamas is holding on to Shaul’s remains along with those of another soldier killed in the fighting, demanding Israel release dozens of Palestinian prisoners before it opens negotiations on returning them. Hamas is also believed to be holding two Israeli civilians in Gaza.</p>
<p>There has been an uptick in Gaza rocket fire since President Donald Trump on Dec. 6 abandoned decades of American policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and saying he would move the U.S. Embassy to the holy city.</p>
<p>Palestinians were enraged by Trump’s declaration, viewing it as siding with Israel on the most sensitive issue in the conflict. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said Trump’s move disqualified the U.S. from continuing in its role as the traditional mediator of peace talks.</p>
<p>Trump said his decision merely recognizes that Jerusalem already serves as Israel’s capital and is not meant to prejudge the final borders of the city.</p>
<p>Palestinians have clashed with Israeli troops across the West Bank and along the Gaza border since Trump’s announcement. Twelve Palestinians have died in the violence so far.</p>
<p>Palestinian health officials said dozens of protesters were injured on Friday, including some by live fire and rubber bullets.</p>
<p>Israel’s military said about 2,000 Palestinians rolled burning tires and threw rocks at soldiers stationed near the Gaza border and troops fired “selectively against four main instigators.”</p>
<p>It said troops used riot dispersal means in protests across the West Bank where Palestinians threw fire bombs and stones at soldiers.</p>
<p>JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s military retaliated to rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip on Friday with strikes on posts used by the Islamic militant group Hamas that rules the territory. The exchange caused no casualties on either side.</p>
<p>The Israeli military said tanks and aircraft fired at Hamas posts soon after its Iron Dome missile defense system downed two rockets fired from Gaza targeting the south of the country. Police said another rocket exploded in a populated area damaging a building but causing no injuries.</p>
<p>Hamas said there were no injuries in the strikes.</p>
<p>Israel holds Hamas responsible for all attacks initiated from the territory regardless of the gunmen firing the rockets.</p>
<p>The rockets came as the family of Oron Shaul, an Israeli soldier killed in the 2014 Gaza-Israel war, held a birthday ceremony for him near the border prompting some participants to take cover.</p>
<p>Hamas is holding on to Shaul’s remains along with those of another soldier killed in the fighting, demanding Israel release dozens of Palestinian prisoners before it opens negotiations on returning them. Hamas is also believed to be holding two Israeli civilians in Gaza.</p>
<p>There has been an uptick in Gaza rocket fire since President Donald Trump on Dec. 6 abandoned decades of American policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and saying he would move the U.S. Embassy to the holy city.</p>
<p>Palestinians were enraged by Trump’s declaration, viewing it as siding with Israel on the most sensitive issue in the conflict. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said Trump’s move disqualified the U.S. from continuing in its role as the traditional mediator of peace talks.</p>
<p>Trump said his decision merely recognizes that Jerusalem already serves as Israel’s capital and is not meant to prejudge the final borders of the city.</p>
<p>Palestinians have clashed with Israeli troops across the West Bank and along the Gaza border since Trump’s announcement. Twelve Palestinians have died in the violence so far.</p>
<p>Palestinian health officials said dozens of protesters were injured on Friday, including some by live fire and rubber bullets.</p>
<p>Israel’s military said about 2,000 Palestinians rolled burning tires and threw rocks at soldiers stationed near the Gaza border and troops fired “selectively against four main instigators.”</p>
<p>It said troops used riot dispersal means in protests across the West Bank where Palestinians threw fire bombs and stones at soldiers.</p> | Israel retaliates to Gaza rocket attack, no injuries | false | https://apnews.com/7c50f84913ac486eaa82a3e310ca412a | 2017-12-29 | 2 |
<p>President Clinton’s health care reform bill went down to defeat in 1993, due in large part to the opposition of the Religious Right, and the political fallout helped usher in a Republican takeover of Congress and nearly crippled the rest of his presidency.</p>
<p>But the religion-and-politics landscape is quite different today. Although many conservative religious groups continue to oppose a major overhaul of the health care system, centrist and liberal religious groups have large coalitions in favor of the kind of comprehensive reform President Obama is proposing.</p>
<p>“Right now, I think it’s fair to say that there is a real sense of effervescence and energy among progressives, who are forming coalitions with centrist groups, and some sense of disarray among the Christian Right,” said Robby Jones, president of the Washington-based Public Religion Research group. “In 1993, the Christian Coalition was really flexing its muscle; today, it’s a struggling organization, and Focus on the Family is laying people off.”</p>
<p />
<p>One coalition of centrist and progressive religious groups, Faith in Public Life, co-hosted an unprecedented Aug. 19 Internet-based conference call with Obama, religious leaders, reporters and more than 100,000 other participants to boost a religious case for broad-based reform.</p>
<p>“I believe that nobody in America should be denied basic health care because he or she lacks health insurance, and no one in America should be pushed to the edge of financial ruin because an insurance company denies them coverage or drops their coverage or charges fees they can’t afford for care that they desperately need,” Obama said during the call.</p>
<p>The difference between the participation of religious moderates and liberals in the debates over the Clinton plan and the Obama proposal has to do with both the different religion-and-politics climate as well as the difference in the facts on the ground in 2009 versus 1993, many experts agree.</p>
<p>“There’s a sense of urgency across the board, because things are even worse than they were in 1993” when it comes to uninsured and underinsured Americans, said Jennifer Butler, executive director of Faith in Public Life. Many religious leaders, including some conservative evangelical pastors, with whom her group works are seeing firsthand the effects of the health care crisis on families, she said.</p>
<p>“They’re just overwhelmed with the human need around them, in their congregations,” she said. “Some of them are active in these collaborative (local health care) clinics that have been set up, and there’s just this overwhelming sense of urgency or need, that the system is broken.”</p>
<p>But if the system is broken, it’s clear many Religious Right groups don’t trust President Obama or Congressional Democratic leaders to fix it.</p>
<p>“President Obama continued to mislead the American people by casually dismissing the concerns of millions of Americans who have deep moral objections to their tax dollars paying for abortions,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Washington-based Family Research Council, responding to Obama’s Sept. 9 address to a joint session of Congress.</p>
<p>Abortion is a major sticking point on the bill for many conservative religious leaders. Groups like the Family Research Council claim the health care proposals being considered do not currently contain adequate safeguards to ensure government funds will neither directly pay for abortions nor subsidize private insurance plans that include abortion coverage. Obama and his supporters, meanwhile, have insisted the reform they support does not include abortion.</p>
<p>Some Christian conservatives also have raised suspicions about other sanctity-of-life issues, including assertions that parts of Obama’s plan could, eventually lead to “rationing” of health care services that would involve government agents making decisions about whether vulnerable patients receive lifesaving treatments.</p>
<p>“Conservative groups of any variety will be — and are — skeptical of any expansion of government’s scope of influence and responsibility,” said Laura Olson, a political science professor at Clemson University in South Carolina and an expert in religion and politics. “For conservative religious groups, this general fear seems to be giving rise to more specific fears about how life issues — abortion, euthanasia, etc. — will be handled under a reformed health care system.”</p>
<p>But, Olson added, conservative Christian groups are disheartened and weakened by slipping support and the back-to-back drubbings conservative candidates took in the 2006 and 2008 elections — and they might see an issue in health care reform to re-ignite their base and re-assert their authority.</p>
<p>“Life issues are, of course, the natural province of conservative religious groups, so their current emphasis on these issues should come as no surprise from a substantive perspective,” she said. “At the same time, I think Religious Right activists notice that the health care debate represents a window through which they might reassert their overall relevance in American politics. So for conservative religious groups, it makes sense both substantively and strategically to be hammering on questions regarding life issues.”</p>
<p>Anecdotally, at least, the health care debate has already re-energized supporters of conservative religious groups. Democratic congressional leaders “have done more to energize Christian conservatives than any conservative leader could have done with this health care package,” Richard Land, president of the Southern Convention’s Ethics &amp; Religious Liberty Commission, told the Washington Post. “I, who never believed that we were dead, did not believe that it (the Religious Right’s revival) would happen this quickly.”</p>
<p>But Christian leaders supportive of comprehensive health care reform also assert sanctity-of-life arguments.</p>
<p>“Progressive religious voices are speaking up to claim that this is a moral and religious failing, and that the sanctity and dignity of life is also threatened by an inability to receive basic health care in a country with this many resources and wealth,” said Jones of Public Religion Research.</p>
<p>&#160;The main religious dividing line seems to be between those — particularly traditional evangelical right-wing groups — who are highly skeptical of any overarching government initiatives and those who are open to reform as long as it respects differences over abortion and other sanctity-of-life issues.</p>
<p>“One of the most enduring fault lines that distinguishes progressive and conservative groups is a theological ethic that is oriented more toward individual morality or more toward social justice,” Jones said. “These theological differences also predispose each group to have a different view of the proper role of government, and these differences are clearly alive in the health care debate.”</p>
<p>Evangelical association with the Republican Party also is a key factor, he added. “There are new voices, however, calling upon evangelicals to think more theologically on these issues and let the partisan chips fall where they may.”</p>
<p>• In 2007, 45 million non-elderly people in the United States lacked health insurance the entire year.</p>
<p>• About 83 percent of the uninsured population in the United States live in families headed by workers, and 63 percent of the uninsured workers have an employer who does not offer coverage. Source: Employees Benefit Research Institute <a href="http://www.ebri.org/pdf/briefspdf/EBRI_IB_09a-2008.pdf" type="external">www.ebri.org/pdf/briefspdf/EBRI_IB_09a-2008.pdf</a></p>
<p>• About $2.2 trillion was spent on health care in the United States in 2007 — more than 16 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. Health care costs more than tripled from 1990 to 2007. Source: <a href="http://www.healthaffairs.org/" type="external">www.healthaffairs.org</a></p>
<p>• There were about 8.1 million uninsured children in the United States in 2007. Source: U.S. Census Bureau <a href="http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/historic/hihistt5.xls" type="external">www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/historic/hihistt5.xls</a></p> | Healing the sick | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/healingthesick-2/ | 3 |
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<p>This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (November 28, 2017).</p>
<p>Three Chinese people have been indicted in the U.S. for allegedly hacking into the email account of a Moody's Analytics economist and stealing confidential business information from German electrical engineering giant Siemens AG, according to an indictment unsealed Monday.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The hackers targeted an unnamed "influential economist" at Moody's and forwarded the economist's emails to themselves beginning in 2011, court papers said. The indictment alleges that the economist, who isn't identified by name but is described in detail, was the victim of a scheme in which all of his incoming emails were forwarded beginning no later than 2011 to an email account that was then accessed by one of the defendants.</p>
<p>The indictment provides numerous details about the economist in question, and they closely match the background of Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi. Mr. Zandi declined to comment and referred questions Monday to a Moody's spokesman, who declined to comment on its economist.</p>
<p>Mr. Zandi is a high-profile economist who has provided analysis for Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) and has frequently been cited by congressional Democrats and Obama administration officials.</p>
<p>The alleged hackers also gained unauthorized access to Siemens's computer networks and removed about 407 gigabytes of data in 2015 from the network, including files created by Siemens' energy, technology and transportation businesses, according to the indictment. The alleged hackers also targeted in 2015 and 2016 the networks of GPS developer Trimble Inc., stealing information about a product then in development to improve the positioning accuracy of mobile devices in a cost-effective way, the indictment said.</p>
<p>A Siemens representative said the company doesn't comment on "internal security matters" but that it "rigorously" monitors its networks.</p>
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<p>A representative for Trimble said the company had responded to the attempted hacks and determined they had "no meaningful impact" on its business.</p>
<p>With the case, U.S. prosecutors are continuing a name-and-shame campaign to publicize alleged foreign hackers even though the defendants aren't in custody and are unlikely to see the inside of a U.S. courtroom any time soon. The defendants are believed to be in China, according to a Justice Department spokesman. China and the U.S. don't have an extradition treaty.</p>
<p>The indictment doesn't detail what the motivations of the alleged hackers may have been. "We can't divine why they targeted these corporations in particular," said Soo Song, the acting U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, whose office is prosecuting the case. "We do allege that there was some financial incentive or benefit that would have motivated them to make these infiltrations."</p>
<p>The three alleged hackers are owners of, or employed by, a Chinese cybersecurity firm called BoYu Information Technology Co., or Boyusec, the indictment said -- a company that private security researchers have linked to the Chinese government. The indictment doesn't allege the hackers had any state backing, but Justice Department officials said Monday the Chinese government wasn't responding to U.S. requests for help in prosecuting the alleged hackers.</p>
<p>U.S. officials sought China's assistance in putting a stop to Boyusec's activities in October after the indictment was returned in September, received "no meaningful response," and decided to make the charges public, a Justice Department spokesman said Monday.</p>
<p>The three alleged hackers -- Wu Yingzhuo, Dong Hao and Xia Lei -- are based in Guangzhou, China, according to the indictment, which says the company is also based there. Neither the defendants nor Boyusec could immediately be reached for comment.</p>
<p>A representative of the Chinese embassy in Washington didn't comment on the indictment, but pointed to a Justice Department summary of the October cybersecurity dialogue that described efforts to improve cybercrime cooperation between the U.S. and China.</p>
<p>"We work hard to bring these charges...if you don't identify and expose the conduct, nothing will ever change," Ms. Song said.</p>
<p>The case is similar to a 2014 indictment against five Chinese military officers, which alleged those officers hacked U.S. companies' computers to steal trade secrets to benefit Chinese state-owned companies that were competitors. After that indictment, experts said they found a drop in such activity from China. Those officers haven't been arrested, but the case helped lead to a 2015 agreement between U.S. and China under which both countries said they wouldn't support cyberespionage for commercial purposes. While the agreement appears to have slowed such activity, experts say it hasn't stopped.</p>
<p>The 2015 agreement may have put pressure on China to use private contractors, such as Boyusec -- also known by the names APT 3 and Gothic Panda -- to acquire sensitive information, rather than using military hackers, said Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence with the cyber investigation firm CrowdStrike Inc. The intelligence firm Recorded Future Inc. has linked employees of Boyusec to China's intelligence agency, known as the Ministry of State Security.</p>
<p>Boyusec's past targets victims include targets of interest to the Chinese government including Hong Kong free speech dissidents, Mr. Meyers said. And the targeting of Mr. Zandi hints at a political, rather than financial motive.</p>
<p>Mr. Zandi, described as an "influential economist" in the indictment, co-founded an economic-forecasting firm that was purchased by Moody's Corp. in 2005. A registered Democrat, he was an economic adviser to Mr. McCain's 2008 presidential campaign and was later consulted regularly by congressional Democrats and the Obama administration on housing and economic issues during and after the financial crisis.</p>
<p>Moody's said the company has worked closely with U.S. law enforcement during the investigation and didn't believe any confidential customer data or other personal employee information had been compromised. Moody's Analytics is a unit of Moody's Corp.</p>
<p>Boyusec's website was offline on Monday, but a version of the company's webpage that was saved by the Internet Archive says the company sells security assessment services.</p>
<p>It also advertised a partnership with Chinese technology giant Huawei Technologies Corp., whose telecom gear was effectively banned in the U.S. after a 2012 congressional report raised fears that its networking equipment could be used to spy on Americans. That company, founded by a former Chinese army engineer, has repeatedly dismissed such concerns.</p>
<p>Write to Aruna Viswanatha at [email protected], Robert McMillan at [email protected] and Nick Timiraos at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>November 28, 2017 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)</p> | Three From China Indicted In Hacks -- WSJ | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/11/28/three-from-china-indicted-in-hacks-wsj0.html | 2017-11-28 | 0 |
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<p>Employees like being challenged at work – but so stressed out that they start losing sleep and eating poorly? That's a bit too much.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>According to a new infographic from employee assistance program&#160; <a href="https://www.lifeworks.com/" type="external">LifeWorks Opens a New Window.</a>, about a quarter of employees say their job is bad for their sleeping and eating habits. Forty-four percent of employees say thinking about work keeps them up at night.</p>
<p>If your organization isn't taking steps to support employee <a href="https://www.recruiter.com/well-being.html" type="external">well-being Opens a New Window.</a>, now is that time to start. Not only is it the right thing to do from a human decency standpoint, but it's also good for business. Healthy employees miss fewer workdays and earn your company more money through increased productivity.</p>
<p>If you want to help your employees live healthier lives, start with LifeWork's infographic:</p> | How to Help Your Employees Manage Stress [Infographic] | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/02/08/how-to-help-your-employees-manage-stress-infographic.html | 2017-02-13 | 0 |
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<p>SANTA FE, N.M. — A study places New Mexico among the least prepared states for epidemics or other types of public health emergencies due to low public health funding and gaps in staffing.</p>
<p>The Santa Fe New Mexican reports the study made public last week by the health policy organization Trust for America’s Health shows the state as ranking among the bottom 11.</p>
<p>The study says state’s public health funding has dropped for the past two years.</p>
<p>New Mexico did score well in three of the 11 indicators the study examined. The state received high marks for biosafety training at state labs, high vaccinations rates against the flu and passing a national public health accreditation.</p>
<p>State Health Department officials told the newspaper that the agency could not immediately respond to questions on the report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Santa Fe New Mexican, <a href="http://www.sfnewmexican.com" type="external">http://www.sfnewmexican.com</a></p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Report: New Mexico among least prepared for health disasters | false | https://abqjournal.com/1111197/report-new-mexico-among-least-prepared-for-health-disasters.html | 2 |
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<p>Seven people arrested at a protest of a $3 billion pipeline being built to carry natural gas from northeastern Pennsylvania to Southern states intend to fight their charges at trial.</p>
<p>LNP newspaper reports the protesters entered not guilty pleas to charges of defiant criminal trespass on Monday.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The people were arrested in October after trying to keep construction crews off a cornfield owned by a Roman Catholic order of nuns. The Adorers of the Blood of Christ have sued in federal court to stop the project. The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge. That ruling is under appeal.</p>
<p>Thirteen other people arrested at the protest pleaded no contest. Two pleaded guilty. Another is being processed through the juvenile court system.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: LNP, http://lancasteronline.com</p> | 7 gas pipeline protesters plan to fight trespassing charges | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/12/05/7-gas-pipeline-protesters-plan-to-fight-trespassing-charges.html | 2017-12-05 | 0 |
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<p />
<p>Two men from the <a href="http://chickfilafoundation.com" type="external">Chick-fil-A Foundation</a> successfully “traded” their homosexuality in for chicken sandwiches at a Chick-Fil-A restaurant by handing in <a href="http://chickfilafoundation.com/Coupons.html" type="external">a coupon</a>&#160;renouncing their homosexuality. The stunt, including the fake coupon, was filmed and posted to YouTube by the men, identified only as John and Robert, and Harvey the Cow.</p>
<p>The Chick-Fil-A Foundation is not affiliated with Chick-Fil-A, and appears to be a spoof site focused on highlighting&#160;Chick-Fil-A’s anti-gay policies.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Chick-Fil-A</a> last year was the subject of intense ire after news broke that the multi-billion dollar fast food restaurant giant had spent five million dollars on groups — including a certified anti-gay hate group — which actively work to oppose same-sex marriage and LGBT civil rights.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>John, Robert and Harvey the Cow note they are available to “ <a href="http://chickfilafoundation.com" type="external">perform their Family Values Show at your church, school, or birthday party</a>.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>Hat tip: <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/01/07/video-chick-fil-a-gives-pranksters-a-free-chicken-burger-for-renouncing-their-homosexuality/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Pinknews+%28Pink+News%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader" type="external">Pink News UK</a></p>
<p>Tagged as: <a href="" type="internal">anti-gay hate</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Bigotry</a>, <a href="" type="internal">chick fil a</a>, <a href="" type="internal">dan cathy</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Gay Marriage</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Marriage Equality</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Same-Sex Marriage</a>, <a href="" type="internal">sandwiches</a>, <a href="" type="internal">spoof</a>, <a href="" type="internal">trade</a></p>
<p>Friends:</p>
<p>We invite you to <a href="http://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/manage/optin?v=001whLQo73KzGhEjdskYG07rHNy_XoDDkSBBO4INZHx6oD9kfp2yeeQAJeMQUu9oTviZa0VEl5k0rNiLifxlZsOFScMz8rVGmIaN-FFOO3GTKc%3D" type="external">sign up for our new mailing list</a>, and&#160; <a href="http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=TheNewCivilRightsMovement&amp;amp;loc=en_US" type="external">subscribe to The New Civil Rights Movement via email</a> or <a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/thenewcivilrightsmovement" type="external">RSS</a>.</p>
<p>Also, please&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-New-Civil-Rights-Movement/358168880614" type="external">like us on Facebook</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/gaycivilrights" type="external">follow us on Twitter</a>!</p> | Watch: Two Men ‘Trade’ Their Homosexuality In For Chick-Fil-A Sandwiches | true | http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/watch-two-men-trade-their-homosexuality-in-for-chick-fil-a-sandwiches/marriage/2013/01/07/57888 | 2013-01-07 | 4 |
<p>Raleigh News &amp; Observer The fired Daily Tar Heel columnist who <a href="" type="internal">wants all Arabs to be stripped</a> and cavity-searched at airports was all over talk radio on Thursday and featured on many conservative websites, including Ann Coulter's. Jillian Bandes says: "I essentially was committing an act of freedom of speech. I was fired because of the reaction to my piece. ...The way I made my point was offensive, but some people appreciated it." &gt; <a href="http://www.dailytarheel.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/09/16/432a48430b655" type="external">Daily Tar Heel public editor supports editor's dismissal of Bandes (DTH)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.dailytarheel.com/vnews/display.v/ART/432a4ce19fe9e" type="external">"I'm extremely resentful for being called racist," says Bandes (DTH)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com/orange/10-647166.html" type="external">" "It's disappointing to see them collapse under public opinion" (DHS)</a></p> | Bandes: "The way I made my point was offensive, but..." | false | https://poynter.org/news/bandes-way-i-made-my-point-was-offensive | 2005-09-16 | 2 |
<p>The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit</p>
<p />
<p>Second only to the Supreme Court, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals is considered the most important federal court. It’s the body that hears the challenges to every unpopular regulation proposed by a federal agency. For instance, the court of appeals&#160;is currently hearing a spate of lawsuits&#160;from private companies arguing that they should be exempt from providing contraception coverage to workers because of their&#160;religious views. Right now, this key appellate&#160;court has more vacancies than it’s had&#160;in a decade—and congressional Republicans are hoping to keep it that way.&#160;</p>
<p>Authorized for 11 judgeships, the court presently has only eight judges. Republicans claim that the court is “evenly divided” among judges appointed by Republicans and Democrats. But the court also has six semi-retired senior judges who still hear cases. When they’re included, Republicans have a 9-5 majority. Many of those GOP nominees are also hardcore conservative&#160;ideologues. Among them: Janice Rogers Brown, who almost didn’t get confirmed during the George W. Bush administration because of her <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/09/politics/09brown.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0" type="external">extreme libertarian views.</a> An Ayn Rand fan, Brown&#160;considered Supreme Court decisions upholding minimum-wage&#160;laws “the triumph of our socialist revolution.”</p>
<p>The Republican majority on this court has been able to advance aspects of the&#160;GOP’s anti-regulatory agenda that the party has failed&#160;to accomplish legislatively. Last year, for instance, the DC Circuit <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/10/17/1022531/how-george-w-bush-is-still-killing-environmental-protection-four-years-later/" type="external">struck down a set of environmental rules</a> 20 years in the making that would have held states responsible for pollution that leaked across their borders. The DC Circuit’s conservative majority would shrink considerably should Obama succeed in getting all of his nominees confirmed. That’s why&#160;Republicans have been blocking&#160;Obama from filling those three slots. (Overall, Obama’s judicial nominees have waited&#160;an average of 277 days before getting a confirmation vote, compared with 175 during the&#160;George W. Bush administration.)</p>
<p>Along with&#160;trying to filibuster Obama’s&#160;nominees, the GOP has come up with a clever&#160;scheme to shrink the number of judges on the appeals&#160;court to deny Obama vacancies to fill. Congressional&#160;Republicans have claimed that the DC appeals court is under-worked and thus the shrinkage is justified. And they&#160;have repeatedly accused Obama of “court packing” simply for trying to fill the existing vacancies on the DC Circuit, comparing the president&#160;unfavorably to F.D.R., who attempted to expand the number of Supreme Court seats to shift the balance of power. The talking point is a nifty dodge for Republicans who can’t really come up with a good reason why they won’t confirm Obama’s otherwise uncontroversial and qualified nominees. It allows them to say to the nominees whose judgeships they’re holding up, “Hey, we really&#160;think you’re great. The court just doesn’t need any more judges.”&#160;</p>
<p>With Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) leading the charge, the Senate took up a bill, the Court Efficiency Act, to downsize the DC Circuit earlier this year. (Kevin Drum has covered this extensively <a href="" type="internal">here</a>.)&#160;That legislation&#160;has been co-sponsored by the party’s newest stars, Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), along with other tea party Republicans including Utah’s Mike Lee. The House held&#160;a hearing on Tuesday to consider its version of this bill, introduced by Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), which is called the Stop Court-Packing Act.&#160;The idea that nominating judges for ordinary federal vacancies is a form of court-packing is a disingenuous claim&#160;that has&#160;been dismissed even by conservatives. Fox News contributor Byron York, author of The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, tweeted in May, “It doesn’t strike me as ‘packing’ to nominate candidates for available seats.”</p>
<p>One of the co-sponsors of Grassley’s bill is Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). While Hatch&#160;and his fellow Republicans are now trying to shrink the appeals court, in 2003 he&#160; <a href="http://theusconstitution.org/sites/default/wp-content/uploads/briefs/CAC_Testimony_for_HJC_Oct_2013.pdf" type="external">gave a speech</a>decrying&#160;the number of&#160;DC Circuit vacancies.&#160;Hatch&#160;noted then that the court was down to only eight judges (which at that time hadn’t happened since 1980), and he called the judicial vacancies “a crisis situation” because of the court’s workload.&#160;</p>
<p>As the House and Senate versions of the appeals-court-shrinking legislation wind their way to a vote, Senate Republicans are resorting to more tried and true methods for obstructing the president’s nominees.&#160;On Monday night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) moved to bring the&#160;nomination of Patricia Millet to the DC Circuit to the floor for a vote, a move Senate Republicans are vowing to filibuster. (South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham even promised to hold up every judicial nomination until Democrats <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/dc-circuit-patricia-millett-filibuster-reform" type="external">present Benghazi survivors</a>for congressional questioning.) Millet’s prospects don’t look particularly good, though even&#160; <a href="http://theusconstitution.org/text-history/2294/senator-ted-cruz-praises-dc-circuit-nominee-patricia-millett" type="external">Ted Cruz has acknowledged her “fine professional qualifications.</a>” The last woman Obama nominated to the DC Circuit, Caitlin Halligan,&#160;finally withdrew her name in March after waiting almost two and a half years for the Senate to confirm her.&#160;</p>
<p /> | The New GOP Plan to Block Obama’s Judicial Nominees | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/house-republicans-accuse-obama-court-packing/ | 2013-10-30 | 4 |
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<p>It was a hot 102 degrees&#160;last Thursday in&#160;San Bernardino — perfect weather for a city bankruptcy “cramdown.”&#160;Federal Bankruptcy Court&#160;Judge Meredith Jury&#160;ruled the city, as <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/11/us-usa-municipals-bernardino-idUSKBN0H62N320140911" type="external">Reuters reported</a>, “may impose cuts to its firefighters’ overtime and pension benefits in a bid to reach a bankruptcy exit plan.”</p>
<p>In bankruptcy law parlance,&#160;according to <a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cramdown.asp" type="external">Investopedia</a>:</p>
<p>“Cramdown allows the bankruptcy courts to modify loan terms subject to certain conditions in an attempt to have all parties come out better than they would have without such modifications. The conditions are mainly that the new terms are fair and equitable to all parties involved.”</p>
<p>The city wants keep vacant&#160;positions for firefighters <a href="http://www.sbsun.com/government-and-politics/20140911/san-bernardino-wins-2-victories-against-firefighters-union-in-bankruptcy-court" type="external">who don’t show up for work</a>. That would cut $4 million&#160;&#160;in overtime costs. And firefighters would have to <a href="http://www.sbsun.com/government-and-politics/20140911/san-bernardino-wins-2-victories-against-firefighters-union-in-bankruptcy-court" type="external">pick up the former city contribution</a> to their pensions, which amounts to 14 percent of their net pay.</p>
<p>Jury said&#160;the city was persuasive in proving the current pensions and benefits contributed to the city’s bad finances.&#160;She now is&#160;allowing the city to reject the firefighters’ collective bargaining agreement.</p>
<p>In the bankruptcies of private businesses, federal bankruptcy courts have near-total discretion in disposing of assets and liabilities. But the San Bernardino and Detroit bankruptcies are testing whether judges have similar powers in municipal bankruptcies, in particular involving union contracts and pension obligations.</p>
<p>San Bernardino’s <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/11/us-usa-municipals-bernardino-idUSKBN0H62N320140911" type="external">city charter</a> expressly forbids imposing pay cuts on police or firefighters’ salaries, so the cuts have to be made to overtime and pension benefits.&#160; The city is pursuing an amendment to its charter in a ballot initiative in November that would allow cuts in police and firefighters salaries as well.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.sbsun.com/government-and-politics/20140911/san-bernardino-wins-2-victories-against-firefighters-union-in-bankruptcy-court" type="external">firefighters’ union</a> wants to appeal the judge’s decision based on allegations the city didn’t follow state law in its negotiations. <a href="http://www.sbsun.com/government-and-politics/20140911/san-bernardino-wins-2-victories-against-firefighters-union-in-bankruptcy-court" type="external">Judge Jury</a>&#160;said&#160;their claim was mostly not legitimate.</p>
<p>The bankruptcy proceedings have brought forth the reason the city went bust.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/11/us-usa-municipals-bernardino-idUSKBN0H62N320140911" type="external">Annual pay</a> for the top 40 San Bernardino firefighters averages&#160;$190,000. And it averages&#160;$166,000 even for the bottom 40 firefighters.</p>
<p>If the court-ordered changes are enacted, those amounts would be reduced, respectively,&#160;to about $163,400 and $142,760. &#160;The latter number&#160;still would be 3.6 times the city’s <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/0665000.html" type="external">median income of $39,097</a>.&#160;Moreover, San Bernardino remains one of the least expensive places to live in California, with the median price of a home $166,100, less than half the <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/0665000.html" type="external">state price of $383,900.</a></p>
<p>San Bernardino filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 9 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code in <a href="http://www.cacb.uscourts.gov/case-of-interest/city-san-bernardino" type="external">August 2012</a>. At that time the city was running a $45 million annual operating budget deficit. &#160;As of January 7, 2013, the City General Fund had an $ <a href="http://www.sbcity.org/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?blobid=14665" type="external">18,730,274 operating deficit</a>.</p>
<p>San Bernardino reached an agreement with the California Public Employee’s Retirement System in <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/18/usa-municipality-sanbernardino-idUSL2N0OZ26Q20140618" type="external">June</a>&#160;this year that cannot be disclosed due to a judicial gag order.&#160; The city already has started making back payments to CalPERS for pension contributions.&#160; Another undisclosed deal with the city’s police union was reached in <a href="http://www.pe.com/common/templates/post-article.php?post_url=/news/2014/08/14/san-bernardino-bankrupt-city-police-union-reach-agreement/" type="external">August</a>.</p>
<p>The immediate <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/15/san-bernardino-bankruptcy-political-feuds-denial_n_1674936.html" type="external">cause</a> of the bankruptcy was the city’s establishment of pension benefits equivalent to wealthier cities its own size, rather than pegged to its economic and tax base. Although the city’s economy finally has begun recovering from the Great Recession, it enjoys nothing near the productivity of such wealthy California coastal areas as Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>Even before the Great Recession, the city was hit with&#160;the closure of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Air_Force_Base" type="external">Norton Air Base</a>.&#160;The city lost its economic base and has become a magnet for lower-end housing.</p>
<p>The city’s unemployment rate was <a href="http://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/CES/Labor_Force_Unemployment_Data_for_Cities_and_Census_Areas.html" type="external">12.2 percent</a> as of July 2014. And&#160; <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06071.html" type="external">17.6 percent</a> of the population was below the poverty level in 2012.</p>
<p>Building permits were down from 537 in 2005 to 23 in 2012. &#160;Burglaries are running at an all-time high of 1,306 per 100,000 of population as of 2012.</p>
<p>The city lost 32,937 in population from <a href="http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk" type="external">2000</a> to <a href="http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk" type="external">2012</a>. &#160; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bernardino,_California" type="external">San Bernardino</a> is the poorest city of its size in California and the second poorest in the United States after&#160;Detroit, which also gave its employees lavish pay and benefits that could not be sustained.</p>
<p>Strangely, the bankruptcy has not advanced consideration of one source of income for the city: groundwater. It is especially valuable during this time of drought.</p>
<p>The city is unique in arid Southern California because it has more groundwater than it needs. &#160;It has so much groundwater that <a href="http://www.sbcity.org/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?blobid=8042" type="external">1.5 million acre-feet are potentially extractable</a>.</p>
<p>Plans have been in the works for decades to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bernardino,_California" type="external">sell some of its excess groundwater</a> to other water agencies, but this has never happened&#160;due the <a href="http://www.sbcity.org/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?blobid=8042" type="external">quality of the groundwater</a>, local problems&#160;and California’s bureaucratic water transfer process.</p>
<p>The huge regional <a href="http://www.tunneltalk.com/images/ArrowheadSuccess/Arrowhead-replacement-map.jpg" type="external">Inland Feeder</a> water pipeline is about 10 miles east, but the city has never capitalized on its proximity as a potential economic resource.</p> | Bankruptcy could cut San Bernardino fire pensions | false | https://calwatchdog.com/2014/09/15/bankruptcy-could-cut-san-bernardino-fire-pensions/ | 2018-09-20 | 3 |
<p>The Emperor’s New Clothes, adapted from the novel The Death of Napoleon by Simon Leys and directed by Alan Taylor is a charming “counterfactual” history so cleverly written and so competently acted you are likely to find that it almost makes you forget the sheer preposterousness of its premiss. This is that the Emperor Napoleon, in exile on St. Helena, manages to change places with a double, an ordinary seaman called Eugène Lenormand who is serving on a French merchant vessel carrying molasses to Brest. The plan is for him to land at Brest, proclaim his arrival as the imposter on St. Helena simultaneously unmasks himself and proceed to put forth the call for his loyal troops to rally around him once again.</p>
<p>But it all goes wrong. Instead of landing at Brest, the master of the ship goes on to Brussels where he can get a better price for his molasses. Napoleon is left to make his way by stagecoach back to France while the double finds that he rather likes being Napoleon and decides not to unmask himself after all. “That man was emperor for 18 years while I was scrubbing the decks of his ships,” he tells the Emperor’s horrified flunkies and hangers on. “Well now it’s my turn.” And so it is that Napoleon arrives in Paris indistinguishable from the madmen, of whom we see a whole asylum-full, who only believe themselves to be Napoleon.</p>
<p>This raises the very interesting philosophical question of just what it is that distinguishes a former Emperor who thinks he’s Napoleon from anyone else who thinks he’s Napoleon. And, slightly less interesting, is the question of what makes one man a Napoleon and another a common sailor — and whether whatever it is is repeatable or only the result of historical accident. There is some attention paid to the latter question, especially in a marvelously comic account of how the Emperor’s strategic genius and powers of leadership are employed in organizing his neighbors to sell off an over-supply of Provençal watermelons at a profit. But on the whole the film avoids its more serious implications to concentrate instead on pushing what is in my view the rather dubious proposition that if Napoleon had been happily married to a good wife he’d have lost his desire to conquer the world and settled down to contentment as a Parisian costermonger.</p>
<p>That summary is a bit of an oversimplification, but not much. The movie takes a typically modern and uncomprehending attitude to traditional ideas of honor and glory, the thirst for which it imagines as an emanation of some anomalous and unhappy psychological state. There are also a couple of very large holes in the narrative. The sailor could hardly have been put ashore at St. Helena and the Emperor put in his place without the knowledge of the ship’s master, for instance. Nor is it credible to suppose that Napoleon could have appeared in Paris after only six years of exile, without any disguise, and been recognized by no one.</p>
<p>Yet I did not find any of these doubts or shortcomings insuperable difficulties in the way of my enjoyment of the movie. This is mainly on account of the performance of the great Ian Holm in the roles both of Napoleon and Lenormand and the lovely Iben Hjejle (High Fidelity, Mifune) as Pumpkin, the young widow with whom the quondam Emperor finds happiness at last. Or at first, one supposes, since the film seems to imply that his career as Emperor was the result not only of talent, ambition and opportunity but also of domestic discontent. Josephine loved her jewels, he comments ruefully.</p>
<p>This is one of the many small pleasures in which the film has decided to specialize. There are many others, including Napoleon’s first sight of Lenormand — upon which he remarks to his aide: “What are we going to do? He looks nothing like me” — and the idiot grin on the sailor’s face as he is given the imperial treatment. I also found it funny rather than off-putting that the sailor is able to take up where Napoleon left off in the dictation of his memoirs without missing a beat. Each is as much of a fantasist as the other, in his own way, and an echo of the Emperor’s refusal to acknowledge the similarity in their appearances comes as he sees a copy of the bogus memoir in a bookshop and begins tearing it up in fury.</p>
<p>I even found it genuinely touching when the Emperor revealed himself to Pumpkin and she refused to believe him. “I offer you a world and you do not believe me?” he asks her.</p>
<p>“I believe in you, Eugène,” she cries.</p>
<p>“Eugène Lenormand is nothing!”</p>
<p>“He is everything to me.”</p>
<p>“I am Napoleon!”</p>
<p>“No. I hate Napoleon. He has filled France with widows and orphans. He took my husband. I won’t let him take you.”</p>
<p>There is a real note of feminine authenticity in this flare-up of resentment against the whole male world that must always cost women such heartache. So much so, indeed, as to make you wish that there were, as there is not, a corresponding sense of authenticity about the Emperor’s ultimate abdication in favor of such a charming and delightful creature as this.</p> | Emperor’s New Clothes, The | false | https://eppc.org/publications/emperors-new-clothes-the/ | 1 |
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<p>Shares of risk management company RPX Corp. (NASDAQ: RPXC) popped as much as 15% in trading Wednesday after buyout rumors started to swirl in the market. At 2:55 p.m. EST, shares had settled down to an 11.2% gain on the day.</p>
<p>Rumors from IAM Media have circulated that a private equity firm is interested in buying RPX, and Baird analyst Jeffrey Meuler gave that some credence, pointing out thatIAM <a href="https://www.streetinsider.com/Analyst+Comments/UPDATE%3A+RPX+Corporation+(RPXC)+Gains+on+Rumors+of+Interest+from+Private+Equity,+Analyst+Comments/12645034.html" type="external">previously reported Opens a New Window.</a> former CEO John Amster's departure before an official announcement.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
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<p>Management has officially said it has no comment about the rumor but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't true. But no one in the market really knows or is going to comment publicly on what's going on behind closed doors with any RPX transaction.</p>
<p>Buying on rumors can be risky, and until we know more, this isn't a stock I would be jumping into. If it turns out the rumors aren't true or the buyer backs out, we could see shares fall back to where they traded on Tuesday or worse. And with a trailing P/E ratio of 34, the stock isn't exactly cheap for investors to be speculating on.</p>
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<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFlushDraw/info.aspx" type="external">Travis Hoium Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends RPX. 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> | Why RPX Corp.'s Shares Popped 15% Today | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/08/why-rpx-corp-shares-popped-15-today.html | 2017-03-17 | 0 |
<p>Hope is fading for a feel-good ending at the U.S. box office.</p>
<p>After several months of flops like Warner Bros.’ “King Arthur” and EuropaCorp’s “Valerian,” movie studios and theaters are beginning to acknowledge that their streak of record-setting ticket sales may be coming to an end.&#160;AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the world’s biggest cinema chain, laid out a worse-than-projected outlook for the North American box office this week.</p>
<p>That announcement dragged down shares of theater stocks, wiping out $1.3 billion from the value of the top four cinema operators in North America since Aug. 1. Even with a new “Star Wars,” a Marvel superhero movie and the sequel to “Blade Runner” on the docket for the holiday season, the box office is unlikely to make up for a “severe hit” in the third quarter, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. To date, receipts are down 2 percent in 2017, and AMC is projecting a 1.5 percent decline for the full year.</p>
<p>The concern is that the slump isn’t just a run of bad luck. Cinema operators have managed for years to keep increasing sales by raising ticket prices amid stagnant attendance, but a sharp drop in filmgoing would make that harder to sustain. And the tried-and-true formula of churning out big-budget sequels and cinematic universes populated with superbeings seems to be wearing on filmgoers. Movies featuring once-reliable draws Jack Sparrow, the Transformers and the Mummy did poorly in the U.S.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, competition is heating up. Netflix Inc. and other digital distributors are creating more original movies, and consumers have more demands on their attention than ever, from Snapchat to YouTube. Further exacerbating the trend, studios are expected to push for a new premium video-on-demand window this year.</p>
<p>It’s possible that Hollywood could reverse the trend next year, when a new movie about Han Solo, an Avengers film, and sequels to “Deadpool” and “Jurassic World” are scheduled.</p>
<p>“This is very typical of the movie business,” said Paul Sweeney, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “You could make the argument that the slate for next year looks really good, which should grow the market next year in North America. That part’s a cyclical thing, and it’s likely to come back.”</p>
<p>And movie-theater operators Regal Entertainment Group, Cinemark Holdings Inc. and Imax Corp. aren’t facing the same level of pressure as AMC, which is carrying almost $5 billion in debt after expanding its empire to Europe, with acquisitions in the U.K. and Sweden.</p>
<p>Controlled by Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wanda Group Co., AMC has become the poster child for China’s incursion into Hollywood. Concern that Dalian Wanda’s international investments may wane is adding to AMC’s troubles. “With China cracking down on funding for AMC’s majority shareholder, Dalian Wanda, the cinema chain faces murky prospects given its high debt level and appetite for global M&amp;A,” wrote Geetha Ranganathan, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.</p>
<p>As an expression of confidence in its future, the theater operator late Thursday announced its board approved as much as $100 million in repurchases of its Class A stock, or about 5 percent of its total equity market value, which includes Class B shares held by Wanda.</p>
<p>Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron said he also plans to buy shares personally over the next 60 days.</p>
<p>Click here for a BI analysis of summer movie profits.</p>
<p>AMC said Tuesday it will cut jobs and plans to write off its investment in National CineMedia LLC, resulting in a loss of as much as $178.5 million. The company will also pursue “strategic pricing” — possibly selectively charging more for hot tickets or offering discounts to fill seats — and cut back on investments in improvements to its theaters, such as reclining seats.</p>
<p>The revised outlook means AMC’s indebtedness is likely to be higher by the end of the year, though probably not enough to lead to a downgrade, said Jason Cuomo, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service. Dialing back on investments will help the company weather the storm, he said.</p>
<p>“They have some levers they can pull and manage, and they’re not going to stand still,” Cuomo said.</p>
<p>Canada’s Cineplex Inc. also reported poor second-quarter results as movie fans grow tired of franchises, so-called “sequel-itis.” It too will cut spending and jobs, even as it considers price hikes to offset higher minimum wages in Canada. Regal’s earnings missed estimates, while Imax’s were in line with analysts’ projections. Cinemark is scheduled to report second-quarter results on Friday.</p>
<p>The big shadow hanging over the industry is whether studios will push to shorten the time between theater and home release of their movies, from the standard three months to within weeks after theater attendance has dropped off. The concern is that such a premium video-on-demand offering would give consumers less incentive to go see a movie in theaters, knowing they could watch it at home within weeks.</p>
<p>The studios are negotiating with cinema operators over the matter, pushing for an agreement as soon as the end of this year. Reaching a deal may be tricky. Studios are restricted from coordinating among themselves because of antitrust rules — while exhibitors have said they will only agree to deals that boost their bottom line.</p>
<p>Meantime, the industry is counting on Walt Disney Co.’s “Thor: Ragnarok,” opening Nov. 3, and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” on Dec. 15, to make the picture brighter.</p>
<p>“Until you see box office turn, people have to assume the worst for everything and that is why see people stay relatively concerned on the space until you get to Q4,” said Eric Wold, an analyst at B. Riley &amp; Co. While he has a buy rating on the stock, he says in the past he may have been too positive. “You have got zero opportunity for positive news until maybe November of Q4 when the slate looks a little bit better.”</p> | After $1.3 Billion Stock Collapse, Hollywood's Picture Blurs | false | https://newsline.com/after-1-3-billion-stock-collapse-hollywoods-picture-blurs/ | 2017-08-04 | 1 |
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<p>Thinking Inside the BoxFour contestants experience a time warp.</p>
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<p>Can’t Stand It“Footbed of Nails” defeats a Survivor survivor.</p>
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<p>Sold to the Lady in the Blue PodIn a twisted auction, Tyler wins punishment for JP, and mommies vie to call home.</p>
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<p>Flowers for AlgernonA freedom walk to release contestants’ rodent companions</p>
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<p>Having a BallGagged and humiliated, Phu Pham aims to quench his thirst.</p>
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<p>The Peanut GalleryPlayers search vainly for a way out of bondage.</p>
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<p /> | Solitary: Clips from the Fox Reality Channel Show | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2008/02/solitary-clips-fox-reality-channel-show/ | 2008-02-22 | 4 |
<p>People always ask when Veterans Day rolls around, what it stands for or what it means to me personally.</p>
<p>Is it just a day off of work or an event or family gathering? Is it a parade with floats and fire engines blazing their sirens, clowns on trikes adorning flags, or old men and women waving from classic sports cars and sporting a flat-billed hat with web netting in the back?</p>
<p>This is how I remember it. And of course I remember the candy and music and dancing. As a kid, this is all I knew. I knew that it was a day that those men and women in uniform were like Gods–towering in formations and stepping in unison through the streets of my neighborhood–keeping their own beat with the sounds of their heels striking the pavement.</p>
<p>I knew nothing of the day’s meaning or why they were there, but I loved the military because that’s what we do–and there was a connection to this significant day.</p>
<p>I remember the parades like they were yesterday–vivid and real. But more clearly now, I remember when Veterans Day became something I would never forget–something more than an event and something that became a part of my entire existence.</p>
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<p>I woke up one Veterans Day and didn’t get the day off. I was now wearing the uniform that I remember passing by in formations growing up back home. Standing in the mean streets of Fallujah, Iraq on this special day in 2004, I could only wish I were back home watching a parade instead of being a part of one–one in a foreign land, on foreign streets littered with trash and the call to rise against the infidels blaring instead of friendly sirens and clowns. We marched through the streets in unison–tactical formations flanking the enemy and covering our buddies as they moved; I could almost hear the music and see the floats pulled by Humvees, and we passed out candy from MREs to the Iraqi children who were eager to meet us while we cleared buildings and fought for their freedoms. It was a parade people didn’t watch.</p>
<p>All of a sudden, Veterans Day had a new meaning for me–I understood in an instant, where those men and women in uniform came from as a child. The day was still full of all of the great things I remembered growing up, but now it meant more coming from the other side of the parade line. I was fighting for others, fighting for my loved ones back home, and mostly fighting for the men and women beside me.</p>
<p>Today, for me, it is a day of reflection; a day to remember where I’ve been and what I’ve done for my country–what we’ve done. It’s a day to celebrate the camaraderie that we share as brothers and sisters in arms–a collective cultural mindset that we are a part of something greater than ourselves.</p>
<p>It is a day to remember our fallen–the men and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice so that we may live on. And it is a day to remember those who came before us–the warriors who fought for our freedoms throughout history and paved the way for where we are today.</p>
<p>Veterans Day is all of these things and more. It is everything it means to a child and everything it means to a child no more. It is what we make it, and it is our day as those who have served. We are a select few, who stand when needed, and who go places no one else will go when called, and we are the heroes of freedom–take pride in who we are–for We are United.</p>
<p>I never thought I would have such a perspective on what this day means to me. I never thought about having to answer those questions about what it stands for having come from both sides of the parade.</p>
<p>Today I will walk with pride, in New York City, in the largest Veterans Day parade in our nation, and the first parade for me since those streets in Iraq. And I am thankful for the experience, for the men and women who walked that walk in war with me, for those who walk today, and those who walk no more, let us celebrate and honor our service, our sacrifice, and our heroes.</p>
<p>Happy Veterans Day to all.</p>
<p>Note: Information about Veterans Day events can be found at http://iava.org/vetsday2013. Veterans and supporters who can’t make an event in person, can show support by joining the march online by using the hashtag #UniteWithVets on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.</p>
<p>Ryan Weemer served as a U.S. Marine in Iraq. He was wounded in action in Fallujah in 2004, and was awarded the Purple Heart and Navy Commendation medal with combat distinguishing device for valor under fire. Today he is an education case manager at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA.org). He recently co-founded the War Writers’ Campaign (WarWritersCampaign.org). He can be followed on Twitter at @RyanWeemer.</p> | Both Sides of the Parade | true | http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/both-sides-of-the-parade | 4 |
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<p>Austin-based rock band The Band of Heathens is currently working on a new album.</p>
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. - Gordy Quist is a little fried after getting no sleep. That's because he's been staying late in the studio producing an album for a friend.</p>
<p>That, and he's still got dad duties in the morning.</p>
<p>"I don't feel like I'm quite awake yet," he says during a recent phone interview. "But I love everything I'm doing and it makes it worth it."</p>
<p>Quist is one of the founding members of rock outfit The Band of Heathens. Along with Ed Jurdi, Trevor Nealon, Richard Millsap and Scott Davis, Quist has been making music for 10 years.</p>
<p>There have been lineup changes over the years, but the sound remains the same.</p>
<p>The band hasn't released an album since 2013's "Sunday Morning Record." But Quist says there is new music on the way.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"We've been working on some songs and there are a few that are being played in the shows right now," he says. "We're taking our time with the new record."</p>
<p>Quist says each member has been balancing a few projects at a time for the past few years. In fact, Quist has been producing for a few artists over the years. He says having another outlet for music helps him learn more about music.</p>
<p>"I think it's been great to know how both sides of recording works," he says. "It's helped me to pull some songs out of myself that I wouldn't normally do. I remember when I'm producing, I'm trying to push bigger things out of the artists I'm working with. It's been really helpful to have that knowledge."</p>
<p>For the last six months, The Band of Heathens has been touring sparingly as it tries to focus on a new record. Quist says there are a few tracks completely done and the band has been road testing them in the shows.</p>
<p>"It's nice to get the immediate feedback on the new songs," he says. "It helps us gauge what we're doing."</p>
<p /> | Heathen rockers: Three NM shows slated for The Band of Heathens | false | https://abqjournal.com/591459/heathen-rockers.html | 2 |
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<p>As the nation struggles with a serious doctor shortage, a study recently released by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) found that health care reform legislation will likely worsen the situation. Prior to health care reform becoming law, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68T67120100930" type="external">projections</a> showed a shortage of nearly 37,000 doctors. However, with 32 million newly covered Americans having access to the health care system by 2014, coupled with millions of baby boomers soon eligible for Medicare, the shortage of doctors will increase 50 percent – to nearly 63,000 – by 2015. The AAMC projects that number to double to 130,000 by 2025.</p>
<p>Specifically, the AAMC projects a shortage of 33,100 physicians in specialties such as cardiology, oncology and emergency medicine in 2015. By 2020, the AAMC projects a shortage of 45,000 primary care physicians and 46,000 surgeons and other medical specialists. &#160;</p>
<p>&#160;While the number of medical school graduates continues to increase each year, the AAMC says even more are needed to meet the health care demands of an older and sicker population. In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates an increase of 36 percent of people over 65 over the next ten years. Simultaneously, more than one-third of doctors will retire during the next decade.</p>
<p>The AAMC’s findings are not unique. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) projected that the number of primary care physicians (PCPs) will be adequate until 2020. However,&#160; after that point, HRSA <a href="https://www.aamc.org/newsroom/presskits/mdShortage1.pdf" type="external">expects</a> more than 65,000 too few PCPs.&#160;</p>
<p>The chief advocacy officer of the AAMC, Dr. Atul Grover was quoted in the Los Angeles Times <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/health/la-he-doctor-shortage-20100607,0,7762076.story" type="external">saying</a> that:</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; “This will be the first time since the 1930s that the ratio of physicians to the population will start to decline. The number of people over 65 will double between 2000 and 2030, and the amount of medical services they require is two to three times higher than many other adults. Not only will these individuals seek preventive care, but they will need specialists — cardiologists, urologists, endocrinologists&#160; – to deal with issues such as heart disease, diabetes and respiratory problems.”&#160;</p>
<p>The AAMC is calling for a substantial increase in the percentage of students graduating from medical school to help alleviate the growing problem. But will that be enough? It is not just a shortage of doctors, but shortages in the kind of doctors. Simply put, a PCP or family physician earns considerably less than a student who chooses a specialty, making specialty medicine more attractive to a medical student saddled with tremendous debt. In fact, a Duke University study found that PCPs makes <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/05/primary_care_docs_earn_less_th.html" type="external">$100,000 less</a> annually than a specialty physician.&#160;</p>
<p>As discouraging as this information is, additional options are being explored and enacted to help alleviate the looming shortage.&#160; Telemedicine (accessing doctors through audio-visual equipment) is becoming more available and could be particularly useful for underserved populations where doctors are scarce. Moreover, nurse practitioners and physician assistants can provide preventative routine care that is currently provided by PCPs. Currently, 28 states are considering expanding the duties nurse practitioners, and health care reform invests heavily into expanding nurse practitioners’ work. <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/sns-ap-us-med-dr-nurse,0,5159022.story" type="external">&#160;</a></p>
<p>Specifically, health care reform:</p>
<p />
<p>·&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Allocates $50 million to nurse-managed health clinics providing primary care to low-income individuals</p>
<p />
<p>·&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Allocates $50 million annually from 2012 to 2015 for hospitals to train nurses with advanced degrees on how to care for Medicare beneficiaries</p>
<p />
<p>·&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Boosts nurse midwives’ Medicare reimbursement to the physician level</p>
<p />
<p>·&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Provides 10% Medicare bonuses to primary care providers, including nurse practitioners, who practice in areas with few physicians.</p>
<p>Whether the physician shortage becomes a reality remains to be seen. That said, seeking alternative ways to care for people’s health care needs is a step in the right direction.</p> | Health care reform and aging boomers expected to exacerbate existing doctor shortage | false | https://ivn.us/2010/10/11/health-care-reform-and-aging-boomers-expected-exacerbate-existing-doctor-shortage/ | 2010-10-11 | 2 |
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<p>Sometimes an artist dies who has burrowed so deeply into our consciousness, we feel more than a tangible sense of loss; we feel pain. I felt this way when Miles Davis died. I felt this way when Sarah Vaughn died. I felt this way when comedian Bill Hicks died. And I feel this way right now, thinking about the death of playwright August Wilson at the all too young age of 60. Please read elsewhere for a full accounting of Wilson,s artistic canon and contributions. My knowledge of the dramatic arts would fit comfortably on an index card. I suppose I know Wilson won every award from the Tony to the Pulitzer. I know Wilson wrote each of his plays to represent a decade of the 20th century Black experience in the United States. I know all of this now.</p>
<p>But in 1988 when I saw Fences on Broadway, all I knew was that I was 14 years old and thought going to a play would be as much fun as a shot glass of morphine. At the time, I was far more interested in [NY Mets Centerfielder] Mookie Wilson than August Wilson. I settled into my seat and assumed what anthropologists call “the slouch of the sulking brat, I had no idea that my every conception of theater, sports, and racism was about to be turned on its head.</p>
<p>Fences takes place in the 1950s and revolves around the larger than life personality of Troy Maxson. Troy is a 53 year old garbage collector in Pittsburgh, fiercely proud of his ability to put food on his family,s table and a humble roof over their head. He is also someone whose life has been deeply scarred by the world of professional sports. Troy was a great Negro League baseball star who looks back on his experience with pride but also with a pulsing, breathing, resentment that he was locked out of Major League Baseball,s money and fame</p>
<p>His friend Bono says, “Ain,t but two men ever played baseball as good as you. That,s Babe Ruth and [Negro League legend] Josh Gibson. Them,s the only two men ever hit more home runs than you. Troy responds by saying, “What it ever get me? Ain,t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out ofTake that fellow playing right field for the Yankees back then Selkirk. Man batting .269. What kind of sense that make? I was hitting .432 with 37 home runs. Man batting .269 and playing right field for the Yankees! I saw Josh Gibson,s daughter yesterday, she walking around with raggedy shoes on her feet. Now I bet you Selkirk,s daughter ain,t walking around with raggedy shoes on her feet! I bet you that!</p>
<p>Troy was strangled by the Major League color line and wears those scars proudly, but he also beats those around him with his sense of failure, turning his scars into whips. He reserves special abuse for his seventeen-year-old son, Cory, who has the opportunity to get a college football scholarship. While everyone else encourages Cory, Troy refuses to sign off on his own son,s scholarship. When Cory begs him to change his mind Troy says, “The white man ain,t gonna let you get no where with that football no way. You go on and get your book learning so you can work yourself up in that A&amp;P or learn how to fix cars or build houses or something, get you a trade. That way you have something can,t nobody take away from you,. You go on and learn how to put your hands to some good use, besides hauling people,s garbage.</p>
<p>As Cory exits, choking back tears, Rose, asks, “Why don,t you let that boy go ahead and play football. Troy? Ain,t no harm in that. He,s just trying to be like you with the sports. “I don,t want him to be like me!” Troy answers in a rage. “I want him to move as far away from my life as he can get. You the only decent thing that ever happened to me. I wish him that. But I don,t wish a thing else from my life. I decided seventeen years ago that boy wasn,t getting involved in no sports. Not after what they did to me in the sports.</p>
<p>Eventually Troy, an absolute black hole of bitterness, almost swallows the Maxson family whole, pushing away his wife, child and friends. Troy can,t overcome the contradiction in his life: the journey from superstar to picking up trash for nickels and dimes. He can,t stand the thought of Cory getting abused by the athletic industrial complex in the same way. But he also can,t stand the thought of Cory succeeding where he failed just because he happened to be born “twenty years too early.” He also cheats on his wife Rose because he hates the idea that she could love him for who he is and that she is the best he could do, describing his marriage to her as “living for eighteen years on first base.”</p>
<p>The title of the play is illustrative of Wilson,s brilliance. Troy spends considerable time on stage building a fence for their modest home at the constant prodding of Rose. Her desire to see it built becomes an openly symbolic issue that the characters comment on with insight and sadness which rescues it from being a ham-handed symbolic device. His friend Bono remarks that “Some people build fences to keep people out. Others build fences to keep people in. Rose wants to hold onto you all. She loves you. Troy also makes direct reference to the fence. To him it,s the last line of defense against the hellhounds nipping at his heels.</p>
<p>But the word “fences recalls something else, never mentioned explicitly in the play. “Fences is baseball slang for the outfield wall that must be cleared for a home run. The phrase “swing for the fences or “clear the fences is derived from this. Troy, who could clear the fences with ease on the field, feels trapped by them in his life. Sports, which held the promise of escape, instead fenced him in and swallowed him whole, and he attempts to take his family with him. In the play,s final scenes, we see that his family has more strength than Troy ever gave them credit for strength to withstand even his pull toward self destruction.</p>
<p>I can see this now. But in 1988, all I saw was that sports were not all fun and games: that they could invoke a kind of permanent howl of pain, especially when the “level playing field proved for many to be anything but. I also saw that there was blood on the batting gloves of Major League Baseball whose stains were never discussed on NBC,s Game of the Week.</p>
<p>August Wilson gave me – and countless others this gift of elemental insight. He challenged my conceptions of sports, the Black athletic experience, and how to understand these two aspects so central to our popular culture. We should weep for August Wilson, his family and friends. But we should also weep for every play that won,t be written, every Troy Maxson never brought to life, every lesson that will go untaught and by extension unlearned. Thank goodness we can cherish the body of work he left us. Thank goodness for August Wilson.</p>
<p>DAVE ZIRIN’s new book “ <a href="" type="internal">What’s My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States”</a> is published by Haymarket Books. Check out his revamped website <a href="mailto:edgeofsports.com." type="external">edgeofsports.com.</a> You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. Contact him at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>.</p>
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<p>CLARIFICATION</p>
<p>ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH</p>
<p>We published an article entitled “A Saudiless Arabia” by Wayne Madsen dated October 22, 2002 (the “Article”), on the website of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org (the “Website”).</p>
<p>Although it was not our intention, counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.</p>
<p>We do not have any evidence connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism.</p>
<p>As a result of an exchange of communications with Mr Al Amoudi’s lawyers, we have removed the Article from the Website.</p>
<p>We are pleased to clarify the position.</p>
<p>August 17, 2005</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | A Tribute to August Wilson | true | https://counterpunch.org/2005/10/13/a-tribute-to-august-wilson/ | 2005-10-13 | 4 |
<p>Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan, two suspected terrorists, plead not guilty Saturday in a Connecticut courtroom.&#160;</p>
<p>The two suspects were extradited from the UK to the United States Friday along with Islamic cleric Abu Hamza and&#160;two other men, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled al-Fawwaz, to face charges of conspiracy to support terrorists, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19857517" type="external">BBC News reported</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>Judges John Thomas and Duncan Ouseley ruled Friday to reject the last-ditch appeals from the five men, some of whom have been fighting their extraditions for up to 14 years, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/10/20121069740464923.html" type="external">Al Jazeera reported</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>Ahmad was indicted in 2004 and Ahsan in 2006 for raising money and recruiting militant fighters from a website on a Connecticut-based internet service provider, according to BBC.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/121006/abu-hamza-appear-new-york-court-following-extradition" type="external">Abu Hamza to appear in New York court following extradition</a></p>
<p>Abu Hamza is currently jailed in Manhattan as he waits to face charges for setting up a training camp Oregon as well as abducting hostages; Khaled al-Fawwaz and Adel Abdul Bary are also in the same prison awaiting their trials for bombing two American embassies in Africa in 1998, <a href="http://www.registercitizen.com/articles/2012/10/06/news/doc50702718c4361676657351.txt" type="external">the Associated Press reported</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>"It seems that the Metropolitan police, the CPS and the court have colluded to implement a pre-determined decision which was made in Washington," Ahmad's father Ishfaq said in a statement about his son's extradition, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9590353/Babar-Ahmads-father-slams-shameful-US-extradition.html" type="external">the Telegraph reported</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>"I'm absolutely delighted that Abu Hamza is now out of this country," British Prime Minister David Cameron said of the extradition, <a href="http://www.news.com.au/world/uk-court-rules-abu-hamza-can-be-extradited-to-us/story-fndir2ev-1226489548088" type="external">Agence France Presse reported</a>. "Like the rest of the public, I'm sick to the back teeth of people who come here, threaten our country, who stay at vast expense to the taxpayer and we can't get rid of them."</p>
<p>It was not immediately clear when the other three men would be tried.&#160;</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/united-kingdom/120925/bbc-apologizes-queen-elizabeth-abu-hamza-al-masri" type="external">BBC apologizes to Queen Elizabeth for revealing involvement in Abu Hamza case</a></p>
<p /> | Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan, extradited terror suspects, plead not guilty (VIDEO) | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-10-06/babar-ahmad-and-syed-talha-ahsan-extradited-terror-suspects-plead-not-guilty | 2012-10-06 | 3 |
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<p>Photo by Toxic5 | DeviantArt</p>
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<p>Powerful elites are using the credibility of the US Intelligence agencies to demonize Russia and prepare the country for war. This is the real meaning of the “Russia hacking” story which, as yet, has not produced any hard evidence of Russian complicity.</p>
<p>Last week’s 25-page report, that was released by the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, illustrates to what extent intelligence is being “fixed around the policy”.&#160;&#160;Just as the CIA generated false information related to Weapons of Mass Destruction to soften public resistance to war with Iraq, so too, the spurious allegations in the DNI’s politically-motivated report are designed to depict Russia as a growing threat to US national security. The timing of the report has less to do with the election of Donald Trump as President than it does with critical developments in Syria where the Russian military has defeated US-proxies in Syria’s industrial hub, Aleppo, rolling back Washington’s 15-year War of Terror and derailing the imperialist plan to control vital resources and pipeline corridors across the Middle East and Central Asia. Russia has become the main obstacle to Washington achieving its strategic vision of pivoting to Asia and maintaining its dominant role into the next century. The Intelligence Community has been coerced into compromising its credibility to incite fear of Russia and to advance the geopolitical ambitions of&#160;deep state powerbrokers.</p>
<p>The “Russia hacking” flap shows how far the Intel agencies have&#160;veered from their original mandate, which is to impartially gather and analyze information that may be&#160;vital to US&#160;national security. As we have seen in the last two weeks, the leaders of these organizations&#160;feel free to&#160;offer opinions on&#160; issues that clearly conflict with those of the new&#160;President-elect. Trump has stated repeatedly that he wants to reduce tensions and&#160;reset relations with Russia,&#160;but that policy is being sabotaged by members of the intelligence community, particularly CIA Director John Brennan who appeared just last week on PBS Newshour with Judy Woodruff. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:</p>
<p>“We see that there are still a lot of actions that Russia is undertaking that undermine the principles of democracy in so many countries. What has happened in our recent election is not new. The Russians have engaged in trying to manipulate elections in Europe for a number of years…</p>
<p>the Russians tried to interfere in our electoral process recently, and were actively involved in that. And that is something that we can’t countenance.” (“Interview with CIA Director John Brennan”, &#160;PBS Newshour)</p>
<p>Brennan, of course, provided no evidence for his claims nor did he mention the hundreds of CIA interventions around the world. But Brennan’s accusations are less important than the fact that his appearance on a nationwide broadcast identifies him as a political advocate for policies that conflict with those of the new president. Do we really want unelected intelligence officials — whose job it is to provide the president with sensitive information related to national security– to assume a partisan role in shaping policy? And why would Brennan –whose is supposed to “serve at the pleasure of the president”– accept an invitation to offer his views on Russia when he knew they would be damaging to the new administration?</p>
<p>Powerful people behind the scenes are obviously pushing the heads of these intelligence agencies to stick to their ‘anti-Moscow’&#160;narrative to force&#160;Trump&#160;to abandon&#160;his plan for&#160;peaceful relations with Moscow.&#160; Brennan isn’t calling the shots and neither are Clapper or Comey. They’re all merely agents serving the interests of&#160;establishment plutocrats&#160;whose geopolitical agenda&#160;doesn’t jibe&#160;with that of the incoming administration. If that wasn’t the case, then why would the Intelligence Community stake its reputation on such thin gruel as this Russian hacking gibberish? It doesn’t make any sense. The people who launched this campaign are either supremely arrogant or extremely desperate. Which is it?&#160;&#160;Here’s an excerpt from an article by veteran journalist&#160;Robert Parry sums it up like this in&#160;an article at Consortium News:</p>
<p>“The DNI report amounted to a compendium of reasons to suspect that Russia was the source of the information – built largely on the argument that Russia had a motive for doing so because of its disdain for Democratic nominee Clinton and the potential for friendlier relations with Republican nominee Trump.</p>
<p>But the case, as presented, is one-sided and lacks any actual proof. Further, the continued use of the word “assesses” – as in the U.S. intelligence community “assesses” that Russia is guilty – suggests that the underlying classified information also may be less than conclusive because, in intelligence-world-speak, “assesses” often means “guesses.” (“US Report Still Lacks Proof on Russia ‘Hack’”, Robert Parry, Consortium News)</p>
<p>Bottom line: Brennan and his fellow spooks have nothing. The report is little more than a catalogue of&#160;unfounded assumptions, baseless speculation and uncorroborated conjecture. In colloquial parlance,&#160;it’s&#160;bullshit, 100 percent, unalloyed Russophobic horse-manure. In fact, the authors admit as much in the transcript itself when they say:</p>
<p>&#160;“Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents.”</p>
<p>What kind of kooky admission is that?&#160; So the entire report could be BS but we’re supposed to believe that Putin flipped the election? Is that it???</p>
<p>What’s really going on here?&#160; Why have the Intelligence agencies savaged their credibility&#160;just to convince&#160;people that Russia is up to no good?</p>
<p>The Russia hacking story has more to do with recent developments in Syria than it does with delegitimizing Donald Trump. Aleppo was a real wake up call for the US foreign policy establishment which is beginning to realize that their plans for the next century have been gravely undermined by Russia’s military&#160;involvement in Syria. Aleppo represents the first time that an armed coalition of allied states (Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah) have actively engaged US jihadist-proxies and soundly beat them to a pulp.&#160;The stunning triumph in Aleppo has spurred hope among the vassal states that Washington’s bloody military&#160;juggernaut can be repelled, rolled back and defeated. And if Washington’s CIA-armed, trained and funded jihadists can be repelled, then the elitist plan to project US power into Central Asia&#160;to dominate the world’s most populous and prosperous region, will probably fail. In other words, the outcome in Aleppo has cast doubts on Uncle Sam’s ability to&#160;successfully execute its pivot to Asia.</p>
<p>That’s why the Intel agencies have been employed to shape public perceptions on Russia.&#160;&#160;Their job is to&#160;prepare the American people for an escalation of hostilities between the two nuclear-armed superpowers. US powerbrokers are determined to intensify&#160;the&#160;conflict&#160;and reverse&#160;facts on the ground. (Recent articles by&#160;elites at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institute reveal that they are as&#160;committed&#160;to partitioning Syria as ever.)&#160; Washington wants to&#160; reassert its exceptional role as the uncontested steward of global security and the lone ‘unipolar’ world power.</p>
<p>That’s what this whole “hacking” fiasco is about. The big shots who run the country are trying to strong-arm ‘the Donald’ into carrying their water so the depredations&#160;can continue and Central Asia can be transformed into&#160;a&#160;gigantic Washington-dominated corporate free trade zone where the Big Money calls the shots and Capital reigns supreme. That’s their dreamstate, Capitalist Valhalla.</p>
<p>They just need Trump to get-with-the-program so the bloodletting can continue apace.</p> | US Intel Agencies Try to Strong-Arm Trump into War With Russia | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/01/10/us-intel-agencies-try-to-strong-arm-trump-into-war-with-russia/ | 2017-01-10 | 4 |
<p>Every year, about one million Americans and tens of millions of people worldwide suffer the debilitating effects of salmonella poisoning, episodes sometimes serious enough for hospitalization. Cholera, while rare in the United States, has been increasing steadily in other countries for the last decade, with up to 5 million cases annually, and poses a real threat after natural disasters.</p>
<p>For the two bacteria that cause these gastrointestinal diseases, and possibly for other infectious agents like malaria, global warming presents a real opportunity.</p>
<p>They like it hot.</p>
<p>In recent years, atmospheric climate change has prompted a growing number of extreme weather events, including heat waves, prolonged drought, heavy precipitation, and superstorms, which, in turn, have encouraged shifts in the delicate balance of the planet’s ecosystems. These weather events, which already kill tens of thousands of people annually, also indirectly encourage the spread of infections when food and water become contaminated, a scenario that almost certainly will increase the prevalence of such infections as salmonella and cholera.</p>
<p>Moreover, human migration and the loss of health infrastructure, as well as malnutrition caused by food insecurity, could make humans more susceptible to infections. All of these could exacerbate the spread of infectious diseases if global warming continues unabated.</p>
<p>“Infectious diseases involve interactions with humans’ environment and microbes, and it’s a complicated interrelationship,” said Dr. Robert Hall, a program officer in the division of microbiology and infectious diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). “Climate has an impact on both the environment and on humans.”</p>
<p>Outbreaks of cholera, for example, typically stop in winter and reemerge in summer, making it a major global concern, since hot days are getting hotter and their seasons are lasting longer. Natural disasters can exacerbate cholera when drinking water and food become contaminated. Cholera kills more than 100,000 people globally every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</p>
<p>“I would put cholera highest on my list to worry about with respect to climate change,” said Dr. David M. Morens, senior advisor to the director of NIAID. “Cholera likes warm weather, so the warmer the Earth gets and the warmer the water gets, the more it’s going to like it. Climate change will likely make cholera much worse.”</p>
<p>The impact of climate change on salmonella poisoning also is worrisome, experts say. Extreme heat and precipitation — which will intensify if global warming continues at its current pace — will increase the danger, particularly among those living on the coast. A <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412015001361" type="external">recent study</a>, in fact, published in the journal Environmental International, found that such events escalate the risk of salmonella infections among people living in coastal communities. These likely will rise if global warming worsens, according to the study.</p>
<p>Coastlines are especially vulnerable to the ravages of climate change, which include sea rise and flooding, and which, in turn, can result in contaminated water and the growth of salmonella. This could put millions at risk, as coastal communities are <a href="http://stateofthecoast.noaa.gov/population/welcome.html" type="external">vastly more crowded</a> than the United States as a whole, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). More than 123 million people, or 39 percent of the nation’s population, live on the coast, according to 2010 figures.</p>
<p>Although the study focused on coastal communities in Maryland, the scientists plan to expand into more national coastal settings to see if the results are the same.</p>
<p>“Salmonella is food- and water-borne, and warmth helps it replicate,” said Amir Sapkota, study author and associate professor at the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health at the University of Maryland. “Salmonella reproduces more in higher temperatures. Heat facilitates its growth. That’s why we see a lot more salmonella cases in the summer. Extreme temperature and extreme precipitation increases salmonella, and climate change is causing them to become more intense and frequent. Under those conditions, we can expect cases of salmonella to go up.”</p>
<p>Similarly, cholera “can have an impact on low-lying settings,” said the NIAID’s Hall. “Coastal areas in the world generally have poor sanitation — the intensification of the fecal/oral cycle — which runs the risk of increased exposure to cholera. Storm surges and increased rainfall can increase the risk.”</p>
<p>Perhaps paradoxically, prolonged drought also can result in cholera outbreaks, he said. “If you have an extremely dry cycle, and the sub-surface is dry and cracking up, water can channel from the latrines and pull from the same places as drinking water,” he said.</p>
<p>Malaria is a parasitic disease that is a major killer of children, especially in Africa. It is also a warm weather opportunist, afflicting 198 million people in 2013, with 500,000 deaths, according to the CDC. The connection between malaria and climate has long been studied in India, where epidemics occurred linked to excessive monsoon rainfall and high humidity. These conditions enhance mosquito breeding and survival, according to the <a href="http://www.who.int/en/" type="external">World Health Organization</a>.</p>
<p>Furthermore, WHO says, the risk of a malaria outbreak increases about five-fold in the year following an El Niño event. “Malaria is a disease of warm weather,” Morens says.</p>
<p>While other infectious pathogens also are sensitive to climate, the outlook for them in a heat-driven scenario is less certain. Mosquito-borne diseases — dengue, West Nile, and encephalitis, for example — and other vectors that carry diseases — ticks, tsetse flies, rodents — respond in various ways to temperature increases and to sea level rise. Climate affects the factors that influence transmission, reproduction and geographic range. But the dynamics can be complex, and not always predictable.</p>
<p>Most scientists agree that global warming will have an impact; they just are not sure how bad it will be. When climate causes one factor to change, other factors change too, they point out. Cold weather, for example, hurts mosquitoes, so they may do better as it gets warmer. But heat has the potential to kill viruses mosquitoes carry. At the same time, warmth may cause more plants to grow in certain regions, providing mosquitoes more places to hide from birds that eat them.</p>
<p>“When climate change occurs, you can’t isolate one thing and say: this is what it’s going to do to mosquitoes and birds,” Morens said. “If you move one thing, everything else moves too. It’s bound to be true that climate change over time will upset the apple cart and change the variables, but how it’s going to play out, we just don’t know.”</p>
<p>Also, they note, while some diseases — dengue, for example, a viral disease carried by mosquitoes — may be on the rise, “it may have more to do with population growth, rubber tires [where mosquitoes breed] moving around the world, and things humans do that change their environment, such as moving into crowded areas and letting garbage pile up,’’ Morens said.</p>
<p>“That’s not to say that climate change won’t be a player in all of this,” he added. “Certainly, as the world gets warmer, it’s bound to shake up the whole ecosystem in which that virus exists. But, again, there are many variables that interact with one another.”</p>
<p>The most worrisome effects of climate change on infectious diseases likely will be the ability to respond, experts say. “We have the answers of how to prevent and treat most infectious diseases” Hall said. “But in a storm situation, when you have flooding, for example, it could become difficult to access health care options and facilities.</p>
<p>“We have everything we need, we just have to ensure it is effective and responsive,” he added. “The problem with climate change is that it will make access more expensive, more difficult and sometimes impossible.”</p>
<p>Marlene Cimons, a former Los Angeles Times Washington reporter, is a freelance writer who specializes in science, health, and the environment.</p> | Infectious Diseases Like It Hot: How Climate Change Helps Cholera and Salmonella Outbreaks | true | http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/08/14/3691515/warmer-infectious-diseases/ | 2015-08-14 | 4 |
<p>RICHMOND, Va. — A proposed task force report to be considered by the <a href="http://www.thefellowship.info/Home" type="external">Cooperative Baptist Fellowship</a> this summer will clarify the group’s identity and more effectively mobilize grassroots involvement, agree CBF leaders in the Mid-Atlantic, who said the changes will significantly expand support for the 20-year-old network of churches.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thefellowship.info/2012taskforce" type="external">Recommendations</a> from the 14-member task force — appointed two years ago to in an effort to revitalize the CBF for the next 20 years — were considered by the organization’s Coordinating Council Feb. 23-24. The council largely affirmed the proposal, though some adjustments will be made before presenting a final product at the CBF’s general assembly June 20-23 in Fort Worth, Texas.</p>
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<p>Key parts of the task force’s report — based on more than 100 listening sessions around the country — would replace the CBF’s 64-member Coordinating Council with three smaller councils; offer more funding flexibility to both churches and the CBF’s state and regional affiliates; and, for the first time, provide a process for congregations to intentionally identify with the CBF.</p>
<p>“This proposal answers the question, ‘How can churches embrace their identity as CBF?’ ” said Larry Hovis, executive coordinator of the <a href="http://www.cbfnc.org/" type="external">CBF of North Carolina</a> and a member of the task force. “What I discovered in the listening sessions was that people love CBF. People describe CBF as a family to which they belong, which helps make them who they are. The issues of identity are very pronounced.”</p>
<p>Rob Fox, field coordinator for the <a href="http://www.cbfva.org/" type="external">CBF of Virginia,</a> said the recommendations “will allow churches and partners to both clarify their identity with CBF and fund mission and ministry opportunities that offer them value locally and globally.”</p>
<p>“Collaboration within community is the theme of their [the task force’s] work and that theme will shape the next chapter of CBF,” Fox added.</p>
<p>Kasey Jones, moderator of the <a href="http://www.macbf.org/" type="external">Mid-Atlantic CBF,</a> which includes churches in Maryland, the District of Columbia, Delaware and West Virginia, called the report’s section on identity “one of the most significant parts.”</p>
<p>“This section give the CBF community common language to claim who we are and it is based on what the task force heard during our listening sessions,” said Kasey, also a task force member.</p>
<p>Hovis added a clarified identity won’t place limits on participating churches. “We’ve not tried in any way to prescribe some particular expression of identity but to capture what people say about our identity,” he said. “This is descriptive, not prescriptive. We want to do this not as a way of binding individuals or churches, but as a way to embrace and include them.”</p>
<p>That goal will be undergirded by the proposed shift in the CBF’s governing structure, the Mid-Atlantic leaders agreed.</p>
<p>Under the plan, the 64-member Coordinating Council would be replaced with a smaller Governing Council of 16 members which would focus narrowly on governance and work closely with the CBF national staff.</p>
<p>Two new councils would focus attention on missions and ministries. The largest, named Ministries Council, would include one representative from each CBF state or region. Non-voting ex-officio members would include coordinators of each state and region, a representative of each partner included in the CBF funding plan and a representative of the CBF consortium of theological schools.</p>
<p>“A smaller governing body along with two new councils allows more involvement from the grassroots level,” said Jones, who is pastor of <a href="http://nbmchurchdc.org/" type="external">National Baptist Memorial Baptist Church</a> in Washington. “The new structure would increase the organization’s effectiveness because people will give leadership in their areas of passion and giftedness.”</p>
<p>Fox, who also is pastor of Mount Hermon Baptist Church in Milford, Va., agreed the governing changes “speak to a greater grassroots collaboration that is already taking place within the CBF community.”</p>
<p>Bill Carrell, pastor of <a href="http://www.ubcbaltimore.org/" type="external">University Baptist Church</a> in Baltimore and a member of the Mid-Atlantic CBF’s Coordinating Council, said the proposed changes will provide greater focus on ministry.</p>
<p>“We need a leadership team that can focus on the identity, image, marketing and funding of the CBF as a whole and not one that gets too overwhelmed by all the diverse ministries,” he said. “So it makes sense to me to have a three-fold structure.” &#160; That change in “clarity and focus should lead to identity and ultimately to support and funding,” Carrell said.</p>
<p>The mission and ministries councils are “critical to our restructuring because these are the ones whose areas of focus really get at the heart of what Fellowship Baptists care about most,” said Stephen Cook, a member of the task force and pastor of <a href="http://www.2ndmemphis.org/" type="external">Second Baptist Church</a> in Memphis, Tenn.</p>
<p>Cook, a former pastor of <a href="http://fbcdanville.com/fbc/" type="external">First Baptist Church</a> in Danville, Va., and former moderator-elect of the CBF of Virginia, said the two councils will be where the CBF’s “best and brightest mission and ministry-minded folks come together to cast vision, set strategic priorities and point us all to the places in CBF’s life where we can see our life together flourish.”</p>
<p>At its February meeting, the Coordinating Council raised several questions about proposed changes in the way the CBF collects money from churches. Currently national CBF and state regional organizations make funding decisions independently. Under the new plan, division of funds would be made at the state level or by the local church.</p>
<p>The plan would allow state and regional CBF organizations to determine percentages of funds to be divided among national and state missions and ministries and various partners. Individual churches could support the plan adopted by their state CBF or adjust their giving to better reflect individual spending priorities. Those funding agreements would be shared in the Ministries Council and then passed on to the Governing Council to be used in developing a CBF budget.</p>
<p>“We tried to craft a recommendation that allows for higher levels of engagement among congregations, states/regions, and partners that is customizable and specific to the individual churches,” said Cook. “We recognize that there is some risk associated with this and that it has the potential for messiness.&#160; But what else are Baptists by our very nature but risk-takers who recognize that faithfulness to the mission of God in the world is sometimes messy business?”</p>
<p>The funding recommendation is consistent with the CBF’s continuing shift from an all-encompassing provider of resources to a “network of networks,” said Hovis.</p>
<p>“We realized that CBF national doesn’t have the capacity to meet the needs of every church and every partner entity,” he said. “But we have tremendous assets that reside not only in Atlanta but in state and regional organizations and especially in both ministry partners and congregations. What we envision is trying to discover the assets and strengths and gifts that exist in the CBF community, and develop the networks to assist one another.”</p>
<p>Robert Dilday ( <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>) is managing editor of the Religious Herald. Contributing to this story was Bob Allen ( <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>) managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.</p>
<p>Related:</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Task force proposes new CBF funding plan</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">CBF leaders unpack task force report</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">CBF council affirms task force report</a></p> | CBF proposals clarify identity, say Mid-Atlantic leaders | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/cbfproposalsclarifyidentitysaymid-atlanticleaders-4/ | 3 |
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<p>July 31 (UPI) — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Wells_Fargo/" type="external">Wells Fargo</a>‘s community banking division will cut 70 senior executive positions amid weaker profits months facing fines for the creation of fake customer accounts, the company announced Friday.</p>
<p>Mary Mack, head of Wells Fargo &amp; Co., the retail bank division of the banking conglomerate, said the number of regional and area presidents will be reduced to 91, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-28/wells-fargo-to-cut-70-senior-executive-jobs-in-community-bank" type="external">Bloomberg reported</a>.</p>
<p>“Change is hard, yet change is necessary to make sure we are well positioned for the future,” Mack wrote in a company memo to staff. “In order to truly be better, we must put the right structure in place.”</p>
<p>The employees affected by the cuts will continue working at the company for 60 days until further details are ironed out. Some will retire with benefits, while others may continue at Wells Fargo in different positions.</p>
<p>In September, <a href="https://www.upi.com/Business_News/2016/09/08/Wells-Fargo-fined-185M-for-bonus-scam-5300-employees-fired/7961473355994/" type="external">federal regulators fined</a> Wells Fargo $185 million for illegally opening fake deposit and credit card accounts under the names of real customers. The fine included $100 million paid to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and $50 million to the City and County of Los Angeles.</p>
<p>“Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-fines-wells-fargo-100-million-widespread-illegal-practice-secretly-opening-unauthorized-accounts/" type="external">said at the time</a>. “Because of the severity of these violations, Wells Fargo is paying the largest penalty the CFPB has ever imposed.”</p>
<p>Since that scandal, Wells Fargo &amp; Co. has generated low profits, leading to the widespread job cuts.</p>
<p>Last week, the company took another public relations hit <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/story/14248599/1/wells-fargo-axes-70-senior-managers-in-retail-following-accounts-scandal.html" type="external">when it announced</a> that it had charged 500,000 people for auto insurance they didn’t need.</p> | Wells Fargo cuts 70 senior manager positions amid weak profits | false | https://newsline.com/wells-fargo-cuts-70-senior-manager-positions-amid-weak-profits/ | 2017-07-31 | 1 |
<p>Life. Death. Birth.</p>
<p>Two years ago I went on a forestry tour. I hated it. It was cold, damp, and painfully forgettable – until the end.</p>
<p>The forester came out of his professorial role and said, “The reason why forests show longevity is because they produce that which is needed to survive. The dying leaves sustain the trees.”</p>
<p>He didn’t say it, but it’s as if I heard him say, “Death is a natural a part of the cycle that springs forth life. If your church wants to thrive, it must hold in harmony life, death, and birth. Without this cycle, the ecosystem dies.”</p>
<p>Within my church community, we’ve experienced a lot of death. Each funeral changed us, forever. In light of these deaths (and the good word from the forester), we prepare a Blue Christmas Service each year to focus on the fallen trees of our church community, to name and grieve our pain together.</p>
<p>In the midst of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, we’re pausing to honor the lives of the people who won’t be joining us for Christmas dinner. We’re naming our frustrations (and regrets) to God.</p>
<p>None of us (at least in my church) have enough holiday cheer to mask life’s pain. We’re all grieving something while trying to find room for the joy of Jesus. So instead of faking it, we’re taking time to name and offer our pain to God.</p>
<p>This single act of worship brings together the same tension found in the forest. It allows us to grow closer to our Creator by honoring the passing of what was while still anticipating the birth of something new.</p>
<p>So, this Christmas, I hope everyone finds the time and space to experience life’s cycles. Deaths occur. Leaves fall. Traditions die. Naming these deaths matters. And in the midst of doing so, something new is born.</p>
<p>If our churches can be more like forests (community of believers) sharing leaves (burdens, talents, dreams, hopes, money, regrets, gifts, energy, time, and loves), then we’ll learn to appreciate, even more, just how game-changing the Incarnation is. We’ll understand the magnitude of Jesus stepping into our dying and decaying world offering the newness of life. We’ll have the eyes to see that through birth; we’re gifted the joy that makes our souls complete.</p>
<p>Life. Death. Birth.</p> | A Blue Christmas Service to grieve together | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/a-blue-christmas-service-to-grieve-together/ | 3 |
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<p>The majority of educators across the United States are not adequately trained to deal with a crisis such as a school gunman, experts say, in a week when another school shooting — and the teacher who prevented it from being worse — made headlines.</p>
<p>John Masterson, a social studies teacher at Berrendo Middle School, in Roswell, N.M., talked a 12-year-old student who had shot and injured two students into putting down his shotgun before the boy fired any more shots. His actions were praised by officials as heroic, and a sobering reminder that teachers need to be prepared for the worst.</p>
<p>Again and again, teachers have been put in the line of fire. Masterson is the third example in as many months: His bravery comes less than three months after a <a href="" type="internal">Nevada middle school teacher was fatally shot</a> apparently trying to shield students from a gunman; and a month after a <a href="" type="internal">Colorado student burst into his school wielding a gun</a>, targeting his debate team coach.</p>
<p>Not nearly all teachers are trained in confronting such danger.</p>
<p>"There are very few mandated requirements that teachers receive this kind of training," said Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center. "They're certainly getting more, but probably not anywhere close to enough."</p>
<p>"You could go to a million different trainings and I don't think it would ever prepare you for the experience you're going to have and the intensity of the experience."</p>
<p>While some states have laws requiring training for situations beyond fire drills, including active shooters, there is not yet a federal mandate for teachers nationwide.</p>
<p>Even schools that are doing drills for active shooters vary in how much training they provide.</p>
<p>"Most schools across the country are now doing drills for lockdown situations, which would be active shooters, but what we're seeing is inconsistencies in how well they're doing those," said Chris Dorn, an analyst for Safe Havens International, a non-profit that helps schools improve crisis preparedness.</p>
<p>And a lack of legislation on the issue means officials can't force schools to do more drills.</p>
<p>"They can suggest best practices, but unless there is specific funding tied to that school or district that comes from the government, they can't really mandate that," he said.</p>
<p>Ryan Heber, 41, a science teacher at Taft Union High School in Woodland Hills, Calif., knows first-hand what it feels like to be face to face with a gunman, with little training: He confronted a 16-year-old student gunman who entered his classroom in January 2013. Coincidentally, his high school had given training on active shooters for the very first time just hours before.</p>
<p>Despite being grazed in the head with a bullet, Heber managed to talk with the student and get him to surrender — but it wasn't due to the brief training he had had, which he said wasn't on his mind at the time.</p>
<p>"You could go to a million different trainings and I don't think it would ever prepare you for the experience you're going to have and the intensity of the experience," he told NBC News.</p>
<p>"That being said, I always think it's good to have training because in those moments of chaos, maybe you can find some clarity in some things you learned and maybe along the way some of that would help save somebody."</p>
<p>One classmate was injured in the incident. Having lived through the experience, Heber is a proponent of educators being armed — with the knowledge of what to do if they are in similar situations.</p>
<p>"I definitely think schools should have a plan," he said. "Even law enforcement, they're trained, and they still struggle with some of these issues. So to think that assuming teachers are ready for an incident like this would be really hard to do."</p>
<p>Factoring in teacher-student relationships</p>
<p>Two states that are leading the way in crisis preparedness at schools are New Jersey, which requires schools do lockdowns and drills for various emergencies throughout the year, and Virginia, which requires schools to have threat assessment teams trained by the state — teams that provide a centralized system for reporting students who are showing signs of potentially becoming violent.</p>
<p>"Schools need to be prepared for a wide variety of crisis situations. In preparing for a wide variety of situations, they usually are more prepared for gunman and active shooters," Dorn said. "It's very, very statistically unlikely that the average school will have a shooting, but we know pretty much every school has problems with custody disputes or allergic reactions."</p>
<p>It is not clear whether Masterson, the New Mexico teacher, received training or did drills before Tuesday's shooting. Calls to his school and the superintendent were not immediately returned.</p>
<p>"You want to look at your tone of voice. You want to try to talk some reason and judgment into the person."</p>
<p>Heber and Masterson's method of diffusing the situation — engaging the shooter — was a brave and risky one, the experts said. While police officers, members of the military and hostage negotiators get hundreds of hours of training on how to talk with violent suspects, teachers are unlikely to have that kind of background.</p>
<p>When dealing with a student gunman, a teacher's natural skill set at talking to students may not necessarily translate into them being able to talk the violent student off the ledge, said Joel Dvoskin, a psychologist with the Threat Assessment Group, an organization dedicated to workplace and campus violence prevention.</p>
<p>"If the student likes a teacher, it's not the skill set, it's the relationship that would give the teacher an advantage. If the student doesn't like the teacher, it would go the other way," he said. "Further, in the face of a gun, people are not very well able to predict their behaviors, especially if they haven't received explicit training on how to remain calm in a crisis."</p>
<p>He cited research that found police often shoot less accurately at suspects than they do during target practice.</p>
<p>But Heber and Masterson are not the first educator who has gotten a gunman to relinquish a weapon simply through words. In August, a Georgia <a href="" type="internal">elementary school bookkeeper spent 20 minutes talking with a suicidal gunman</a>, ultimately getting him to surrender without hurting anyone.</p>
<p>Faculty and staff who successfully engage shooters are "very careful" about what they say, and take a non-confrontational stance, said Stephens, of the National School Safety Center.</p>
<p>"You certainly don't want to ever be blocking a door," he said. "You want to take a look at how close you are to the individual; you don't want to invade their privacy. You want to look at your tone of voice. You want to try to talk some reason and judgment into the person."</p>
<p>Heber said his conversation with the gunman followed those rules, and he brought up experiences he and the student had shared in the past to change the 16-year-old's mindset away harming more people.</p>
<p>But with so many factors unique to each situation, including whether a shooter is suicidal, placing them on the highest end of the violence spectrum, teachers should not be expected to confront gunmen.</p>
<p>"It's a high-risk, high-stakes situation that requires a lot of finesse and a lot of grace, and certainly a good deal of judgment," Stephens said.</p> | School Safety Scare: Not Every Teacher Is Going to Be a Hero | false | http://nbcnews.com/storyline/new-mexico-school-shooting/school-safety-scare-not-every-teacher-going-be-hero-n10331 | 2014-01-16 | 3 |
<p>When a tour group of LGBTQ youth visited Oklahoma’s Capitol on Monday, a House staffer warned young staffers to use other private bathrooms because there were “cross-dressers in the building.”</p>
<p>On Monday afternoon, a staffer with pro-LGBTQ group Oklahomans for Equality began filming a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/OklahomansforEquality/videos/1436976576375916/" type="external">Facebook Live video</a> from inside the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Capitol building. High school students, dressed up for their field trip to the Capitol, talked excitedly among themselves. They had come to the Capitol to speak with legislators on issues facing Oklahoma’s LGBTQ youth. But on their way through the building, the group came to a halt as their leader made an announcement.</p>
<p>“Every year we bring LGBTQ youth to the Capitol. This year we came again to advocate for LGBTQ youth, especially school funding because that’s a real issue this year,” Toby Jenkins, the group’s executive director announced in the video. “But this year we got here, and we’re just going about our business visiting our legislators when we were told that there had been a message sent to all of the legislators in the building to be warned: ‘Be aware that there are cross-dressers in the building, and you can use private bathrooms if you need to.’”</p>
<p>Jenkins was referring to an email later surfaced by the <a href="http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/capitol_report/lgbtq-group-s-capitol-visit-prompts-mass-email-about-cross/article_0f0c4a48-7e67-5440-8668-5e27168cd2d2.html" type="external">Tulsa World</a>. The email, titled “Ladies Restroom,” went out to multiple offices in the Capitol while the LGBTQ students toured the building.</p>
<p>“As per the Speaker’s office, Pages are being allowed access to the ladies restroom across from 401, for today,” read an email from Karen Kipgen, a supervisor for the House’s Page Program. “Again, there are cross-dressers in the building.”</p>
<p>The Page Program is a week-long pseudo-internship in which high school students sit in on House proceedings and run errands for staff. The pages are the same age or older than the students who toured the Capitol on Monday.</p>
<p>But Kipgen’s email implied that the visiting children might be dangerous predators with whom pages should not share a bathroom. The email also implied that Kipgen’s orders had come from the office of House Speaker Charles McCall.</p>
<p>In a statement, McCall’s office denied having called the children “cross-dressers” or arranging alternate bathrooms for pages.</p>
<p>“The email was not authorized by me, my staff or my office,” McCall said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “It was sent unilaterally by a House staff member without any input or permission. I was unaware that such an email was being sent, and the remarks contained in the email are not condoned by me or the Office of the Speaker. As Speaker, all Oklahomans should feel welcome in the Oklahoma Capitol building. We are looking into this matter, and it will be taken seriously.”</p>
<p>Kipgen did not return a request for comment.</p>
<p>But shortly after the email went out, McCall’s office appeared less contrite. In their livestream, the Oklahomans for Equality group walked to McCall’s office to confront the legislator in person.</p>
<p>“That’s what bigots call us: ‘cross-dressers,’” Jenkins told a staffer in McCall’s office when the group arrived to request a meeting with McCall. “That is not the language you use to describe children… That is insulting and I am embarrassed that the state would do something like that.”</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>“OK,” the staffer said, declining to offer any further comment. She appeared to have been stifling laughter earlier during Jenkins’s speech. When Jenkins asked to meet with McCall, the staffer told him the speaker was unavailable. “Do you have a business card with you?” the staffer asked Jenkins, who was leading approximately 70 students on a scheduled tour of the building.</p>
<p>Another staffer intervened, telling Jenkins he would look into the incident, but that Jenkins’s request to hear an answer before the group left at 1 p.m. might be unreasonable.</p>
<p>“We’ll see what we can do,” the second staffer said on the video. “One o’clock is kind of a tight deadline, especially with lunch, when we’re at caucus.”</p> | Oklahoma Capitol Warned of ‘Cross-Dressers in the Building’ When LGBTQ Kids Visited | true | https://thedailybeast.com/oklahoma-capitol-warned-of-cross-dressers-in-the-building-when-lgbtq-kids-visited | 2018-10-02 | 4 |
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<p>Reports by the Conference of Mayors and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development show that Albuquerque’s experience has mirrored that of many cities in seeing reductions, particularly for certain populations. HUD estimates revealed, nationally, a 24 percent drop among veterans and a 16 percent reduction among individuals experiencing long-term homelessness since 2010.</p>
<p>I’m concerned however that it is too soon to celebrate and that the article written by my friend Dennis Plummer will inadvertently lead some readers to conclude that we are on the verge of ending homelessness. If anything, now is the time to make sure we learn the right lessons so that we can realize the original vision of the initiative and leverage this progress into further and sustained reductions in homelessness.</p>
<p>Heading Home was never meant to be a program by a sole nonprofit organization but rather envisioned to be a broad community wide initiative, modeling what we know to be effective and to be a springboard for a fundamental transformation of how we tackle the seemingly intractable problem of homelessness.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>As heartened as I am by the people who have secured housing, this has largely been a result of a reprioritization of people who get existing units. To the extent that residents occupy homes that would have gone to others experiencing homelessness, it is the same game of musical chairs.</p>
<p>While it makes good sense to prioritize limited resources for the most vulnerable, there are thousands of others that aren’t on the list. Albuquerque Public Schools, for example, identified 7,000 homeless children in 2012.</p>
<p>We ultimately need to define success as solutions that include all those experiencing homelessness by addressing the larger and more fundamental issues of affordable housing, a living wage and health care.</p>
<p>The premise of the national model upon which Heading Home was based is that by focusing on the highest users of expensive systems communities could demonstrate cost savings, something Heading Home has done.</p>
<p>That evidence must then be translated into the political will to not only rededicate savings but to increase investments so that the proven strategies can be expanded to scale benefiting all experiencing homelessness. While Heading Home provides us with important confirmation that we are moving in the right direction, without this next, critical step more people than not will be heading someplace other than home.</p>
<p>Our research at the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows that there is a deficit of 18,300 rental homes for households with extremely low incomes in Albuquerque. Yet the city has reduced its commitment to the very kinds of housing that have contributed to the progress we are seeing. The workforce housing bond initiative, now down to $2.5 million from $10 million, needs to be restored.</p>
<p>And while city budgets continue to face challenges, why not now talk about infusing significant new local dollars, public and private, to a broader initiative for housing vouchers and services coordination?</p>
<p>Nationally, capitalization of the National Housing Trust Fund would provide millions of dollars to Albuquerque to create affordable homes.</p>
<p>The lessons of the reports are that additional housing and services resources and better coordination make the difference. Knowing what we now know, not putting additional resources towards these efforts would be a tragic lost opportunity. Disinvesting would be even worse.</p>
<p>Our happiness for those who have been able to escape homelessness must be tempered by sadness and outrage that so many others are still left out in the cold. Unless the success demonstrated by this initial group prompts us to do more for the thousands of others, it will be a bittersweet celebration indeed.</p>
<p /> | Still many more homeless in need | false | https://abqjournal.com/333328/still-many-more-homeless-in-need.html | 2 |
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<p>Home Depot said Wednesday it was set to hire more than 80,000 employees ahead of its busiest selling season, on par with last year's seasonal hiring.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The home improvement retailer is bulking up its staff before spring, when consumers start work on lawns and other projects as the weather warms.</p>
<p>Home Depot, which has nearly 2,000 stores nationwide, has received more than 1 million applications in the past. The jobs include sales, operations and cashier positions across all departments, from the lumber aisle to its outside gardens.</p>
<p>The home improvement sector has benefited in recent quarters from higher home values and more people moving into new homes--which both spur spending on home projects.</p>
<p>Home Depot's shares are up nearly 17% over the past 12 months and closed Tuesday at $125.27.</p>
<p>Write to Joshua Jamerson at [email protected]</p> | Home Depot to Hire 80,000 Ahead of Spring Season | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/02/03/home-depot-to-hire-80000-ahead-spring-season.html | 2016-07-06 | 0 |
<p>For the second time in a week, Chris Christie will hit the road for some GOP fundraisers. And for the second time in a week, the Republicans for whom he's raising money will avoid being seen with him.</p>
<p />
<p>Christie will head to Chicago on Tuesday for Republican Governors Association fundraisers - but <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/25453134-452/illinois-gop-gov-hopefuls-keeping-their-distance-from-christie.html" type="external">none of the four GOP gubernatorial hopefuls in Illinois will join him.</a></p>
<p>The New Jersey governor is embarking on a nationwide fundraising tour amid the ongoing scandal surrounding lane closures on the George Washington Bridge, but so far he hasn't been warmly embraced by his fellow Republicans.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Neither Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) nor</a> <a href="" type="internal">Greg Abbott,</a> the expected GOP nominee in Texas' gubernatorial race this year, attended Christie's fundraising events in Dallas and Ft. Worth on Thursday.</p> | Now It's Illinois Republicans Who Want Nothing To Do With Christie | true | http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/chris-christie-republican-fundraisers | 4 |
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<p>By Ellen Brown, Web of DebtThis piece originally appeared at <a href="http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/indentured-servitude-for-seniors-social-security-garnished-for-student-debts/" type="external">Web of Debt</a>.</p>
<p>The Social Security program … represents our commitment as a society to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute. – President Jimmy Carter, December 20, 1977</p>
<p>[This law] assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half century ago … . [The Social Security Amendments of 1983 are] a monument to the spirit of compassion and commitment that unites us as a people. – President Ronald Reagan, April 20, 1983</p>
<p>So said Presidents Carter and Regan, but that was before 1996, when Congress voted to allow federal agencies to offset portions of Social Security payments to collect debts owed to those agencies. (31 U.S.C. §3716). Now we read of <a href="http://getoutofdebt.org/6328/im-a-grandmother-and-getting-my-social-security-check-garnished-for-student-loans-janis" type="external">horror stories like this</a>:</p>
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<p>I’m a 68 year old grandma of 2 young grandchildren. I went to college to upgrade my employment status in 1998 or 1999. I finished in 2000 and at that time had a student loan balance of about 3500.00.</p>
<p>Could not find a job and had to request forbearance to carry me. Over the years I forgot about the loan, dealt with poor health, had brain surgery in 2006 and the collection agents decided to collect for the loan in 2008.</p>
<p>At no time during the 6-7 year gap did anyone remind me or let me know that I could make a minimum payment on the loan. Now that I am on Social Security (have been since I was 62), they have decided to garnishee my SS check to the tune of 15%.</p>
<p>I have not been employed since 2004 and have the two dependents . … I don’t dispute that I owed them the $3500.00 but am wondering why they let it build up to somewhere around $17,000/20,000 before they attempted to collect.</p>
<p>Her debt went from $3500 to over $17,000 in 10 years?! How could that be?</p>
<p>It seems that Congress has <a href="http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/bankruptcy/" type="external">removed nearly every consumer protection</a> from student loans, including not only standard bankruptcy protections, statutes of limitations, and truth in lending requirements, but protection from usury (excessive interest). Lenders can vary the interest rates, and some borrowers are reporting <a href="http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/112_HR_2028.html" type="external">rates as high as 18-20%</a>. At 20%, debt doubles in just 3-1/2 years; and in 7 years, it quadruples. Congress has also given lenders draconian collection powers to extort not just the original principal and interest on student loans but huge sums in penalties, fees, and collection costs.</p>
<p>The majority of these debts are being imposed on young people, who have a potential 40 years of gainful employment ahead of them to pay the debt off. But a sizeable chunk of U.S. student loan debt is <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/02/student-loan-debt-senior-citizens_n_1396713.html" type="external">held by senior citizens</a>, many of whom are not only unemployed but unemployable. According to the New York Federal Reserve, two million U.S. seniors age 60 and over have student loan debt, on which they owe a collective $36.5 billion; and 11.2 percent of this debt is in default. Almost a third of all student loan debt is held by people aged 40 and over, and 4.2% is held by people over the age of 60. The total student debt is now over $1 trillion, more even than credit card debt. The sum is unsustainable and threatens to be the next debt tsunami.</p>
<p>Some of this debt is for loans taken out years earlier on their own schooling, and some is from co-signing student loans for children or grandchildren. But much of it has been incurred by middle-aged people going back to school in the hope of finding employment in a bad job market. What they have wound up with is something much worse: no job, an exponentially mounting debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, and the prospect of old age without a social security check adequate to survive on.</p>
<p>Gone is the promise of earlier presidents of a “commitment to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute.” The plight of the indebted elderly is reminiscent of the Irish immigrants who came to America after a potato famine in the 19th century, who were looked upon in some places as actually lower than slaves. Plantation owners kept their slaves fed, clothed and cared for, because they were valuable property. The Irish were expendable, and they were on their own.It is obviously not a good time to raise interest rates on student debt, but they are <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/student-loan-rates-double-congress-090900901.html" type="external">set to double</a> on July 1, 2012, to 6.8%. Many lawmakers in both parties agree that the current 3.4% rates should be extended for another year, but they can’t agree on how to find the $6 billion that this would cost. Republicans want to take the money from a health care fund that promotes preventive care; Democrats want to eliminate some tax benefits for small business owners.</p>
<p>Congress cannot agree on $6 billion to save the students, yet they managed to agree in a matter of days in September 2008 to come up with $700 billion to save the banks; and the Federal Reserve found many trillions more. Estimates are that <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/167690/end-student-debt" type="external">tuition could be provided free</a> to students for a mere $30 billion annually. The government has the power to find $30 billion — or $300 billion or $3 trillion — in the same place the Federal Reserve found it: it can simply issue the money.</p>
<p>Congress is empowered by the Constitution to “coin money” and “regulate the value thereof,” and no limit is set on the face amount of the coins it creates. It could issue a few one-billion dollar coins, deposit them in an account, and start writing checks.</p>
<p>But wouldn’t that be inflationary? No. The Fed’s own figures show that the money supply (M3) has <a href="http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr458.html" type="external">shrunk by $3 trillion</a> since 2008. That sum could be added back into the economy without inflating prices. Gas and food are going up today, but the whole range of prices must be considered in order to determine whether price inflation is occurring. Housing and wages are significantly larger components of the price structure than commodities, and they remain severely depressed.</p>
<p>There is another way the government could find needed funds without raising taxes, slashing services, or going further into debt: Congress could re-finance the federal debt through the Federal Reserve, interest-free. <a href="http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/canada.php" type="external">Canada did this</a> from 1939 to 1974, keeping its national debt low and sustainable while funding massive programs including seaways, roadways, pensions, and national health care. The national debt shot up only when the government switched from borrowing from its own central bank to borrowing from private lenders at interest. The rationale was that borrowing bank-created money from the government’s own central bank inflated the money supply, while borrowing existing funds from private banks did not. But even the Federal Reserve <a href="http://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/educate/everyday/money.pdf" type="external">acknowledges</a> that private banks create the money they lend on their books, just as central banks do.</p>
<p>U.S. taxpayers now pay nearly half a trillion dollars annually to finance our federal debt. The cumulative figure comes to $8.2 trillion paid in interest just in the last 24 years. By financing the debt itself rather than paying interest to private parties, the government could divert what it would have paid in interest into tuition, jobs, infrastructure and social services, allowing us to keep the social contract while at the same time stimulating the economy.</p>
<p>For students, at the very least the bankruptcy option needs to be reinstated, usury laws restored, predatory practices eliminated, and the cost of education brought back down to earth. One possibility for relieving the burden on students would be to give them interest-free loans. The government of New Zealand now offers <a href="http://www.ird.govt.nz/studentloans/owing/interest/" type="external">0% loans to New Zealand students</a>, with repayment to be made from their income after they graduate. For the past twenty years, the Australian government has also successfully funded students by giving out what are in effect interest-free loans. The loans in the Australian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Australia" type="external">Higher Education Loan Programme</a> (or HELP) do not bear interest, but the government gets back more than it lends, because the principal is indexed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which goes up every year.</p>
<p>Predatory lenders are keeping us in debt peonage through misguided economics and bank-captured legislators. We have people who desperately want to work, to the point of going back to school to try to improve their chances; and we have mountains of work that needs to be done. The only thing keeping them apart is that artificial constraint called “money”, which we have allowed to be created by banks and let out at interest when it could have been created by public institutions for public purposes, either by direct issuance or through publicly-owned banks. We just need to recognize our oppressors and throw off their yoke, and the good times can roll again.</p>
<p /> | Social Security Checks Garnisheed for Student Debt | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/social-security-checks-garnisheed-for-student-debt/ | 2012-05-11 | 4 |
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/woody-allen/" type="external">Woody Allen</a> has cast <a href="http://variety.com/t/liev-schreiber/" type="external">Liev Schreiber</a> and <a href="http://variety.com/t/diego-luna/" type="external">Diego Luna</a> in his next movie, joining the previously announced <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/news/elle-fanning-selena-gomez-timothee-chalamet-to-star-in-woody-allen-film-1202519847/" type="external">Selena Gomez, Elle Fanning, and&#160;Timothée Chalamet</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/news/jude-law-woody-allen-elle-fanning-selena-gomez-1202549176/" type="external">Jude Law also recently boarded the film</a>. Also co-starring are Annaleigh Ashford, Rebecca Hall, Cherry Jones, Will Rogers, and Kelly Rohrbach. Amazon Studios will release the movie theatrically.</p>
<p>Allen’s latest completed theatrical film is “Wonder Wheel,” starring James Belushi, Juno Temple, Justin Timberlake, and Kate Winslet, which will have its world premiere as the closing night film of the New York Film Festival next month.</p>
<p>“Wonder Wheel” is produced by Letty Aronson, Erika Aronson, and Ed Walson, and financed by Amazon Studios. It’s set in Coney Island during the 1950s. Amazon will release the film in select markets on Dec. 1 with a national theatrical expansion to follow. After the theatrical run, “Wonder Wheel” will be available exclusively to Amazon Prime members.</p>
<p>Allen also collaborated with Amazon on the film “Cafe Society” and his first foray into television, “Crisis in Six Scenes.”</p>
<p>“Cafe Society” starred Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively, and Steve Carell. It was set in 1930s Hollywood and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016. Released by Amazon Studios and Lionsgate, the film earned $47 million worldwide.</p> | Liev Schreiber, Diego Luna Join Woody Allen’s Next Movie | false | https://newsline.com/liev-schreiber-diego-luna-join-woody-allens-next-movie/ | 2017-09-11 | 1 |
<p>Ever since the fall of deposed president Hosni Mubarak last Feb. 11, the unity the Egyptian people had displayed during the previous 18 days has been slowly eroding.</p>
<p>This fracture began to emerge during the nationwide referendum on March 19. Shortly after assuming power, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) formed a committee of constitutional scholars to propose a roadmap towards the transition to democracy. Within two weeks, the committee drafted a popular referendum that proposed to hold parliamentary elections, empowered the new parliament to select a hundred-person assembly to write the new constitution, to be followed by presidential elections.</p>
<p>Almost immediately, Egyptian society was sharply divided into two main camps. One was led by the Islamist forces, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which embraced this plan. Meanwhile, the liberal and secular forces opposed it for fear that their Islamist rivals were better organized and better positioned to dictate the composition of the constitution-writing assembly. This “elections or constitution first” approach – as dubbed in the press — was settled when Egyptians overwhelmingly voted in favor of the March referendum with 77 per cent support. Having been defeated at the polls, the secular and liberal forces have since been attempting to circumvent this process by pressuring SCAF to limit the authority of the future parliament.</p>
<p>Despite its initial promise last February to limit the transitional period to six months, SCAF has been slow in instituting many of the steps that were needed to carry out the elections, the first step towards the end of military rule. Under pressure from the secular and liberal parties, SCAF tried throughout the summer to impose a set of “supra-constitutional principles” that could not be amended, even by popular will. When that effort failed due to its undemocratic nature and strong public opposition, the SCAF-appointed government, through former Deputy Prime Minister Ali Al-Silmi, proposed an even bolder document before the November elections. Although Islamic and liberal groups had previously agreed on a set of core constitutional principles, the negotiations failed due to the insistence of SCAF to insert extra-constitutional powers to the military.</p>
<p>To be clear, the major political forces, religious and secular, agree that the emerging Egyptian state will be a civil state. But the Islamic parties argue that the Egyptian people want the frame of reference of that state to be the Islamic law or Shari‘ah, while liberal and secular forces argue that such a reference would undermine basic individual liberties. The MB, which rejects the concept of a religious state along the lines of the Iranian model, argues that this fundamental choice should be subject to the will of the Egyptian people. Secular forces, on the other hand, fear that due to the religious nature of Egyptian society, the model espoused by the Islamic parties would win over a majority of Egyptians and hence the attempt to establish a modernist-secularist state in Egypt hangs by a thin thread.</p>
<p>Throughout this debate, SCAF was not only tilting towards the liberal and secular forces, but was also quietly pushing to preserve as well as expand its authorities and privileges under the new constitution. For example, the SCAF-supported Al-Silmi’s document tried to slip through several provisions that would have greatly increased the powers of the military at the expense of the democratically elected parliament and president.</p>
<p>The draft included: no parliamentary oversight of the military’s defense budget; a provision that would require parliament to obtain the military’s approval prior to issuing any laws affecting its budget or functions; authority for the military to refer the new constitution to the Supreme Constitutional Court if it is thought to violate any of the constitutional declarations issued by the military,&#160; in essence casting a veto over the new constitution before the people even cast a single vote; a provision that would allow the military to appoint 80 of the 100 members of the constitution-writing assembly, thus deeming the whole elections process a farce; and claiming authority to appoint a new constitution-writing assembly if the first one does not agree on a constitution within six months.</p>
<p>Needles to say, this power grab was totally rejected and mass protests took place on November 18 demanding the withdrawal of the document and the resignation of the government. After bloody confrontations with the security forces that resulted in at least 42 deaths and 3,000 injuries, SCAF accepted the resignation of the government, resolved to hold the parliamentary elections on time, and for the first time promised to hold presidential elections and end military rule by the end of next June.</p>
<p>Ironically, a sizable number of youth-led revolutionary activists who challenged the authority of the military council in the streets, do not see eye-to-eye with Egypt’s Islamic parties. Their main concern was to end military rule after losing confidence in its ability to transition the country to democratic rule. They called for escalations with SCAF and sit-ins in Tahrir Square until a national salvation government is established. Meanwhile, confident of their abilities to win the elections, the Islamic parties refused to go back to the streets after the collapse of the government and the death of Al-Silmi’s document.</p>
<p>U.S. Policy Towards Egypt</p>
<p>Throughout this tumultuous period, the United States government has been a quiet but active player. According to the Dec. 1 report of Campaign and Elections, the U.S. government has allocated “some $200 million, as a baseline, for democracy building in Egypt,” in a bid to “counteract the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party.” It also reported that groups such as the neocon-inspired International Republican Institute “focused on building up the country’s nascent Western-leaning political parties.”</p>
<p>After giving Egypt almost $70 billion in the past three decades as a payoff for its peace treaty with Israel, U.S. policy towards Egypt has been wobbly of late. A report submitted to the U.S. Congress by the Congressional Research Service on Nov. 18, details the contentious issues facing the U.S. government as it determines its policy towards Egypt.</p>
<p>On the one hand, the U.S. purports to support the transition towards democracy, even while it loathes the anticipated victory by the Islamic parties. It wants to preserve its historic relations with Egypt’s military without being seen as overtly endorsing SCAF’s tactics to undermine democratic transitions. The report warns that many Egyptians are “highly critical of the U.S. [previous] support of the Mubarak regime” and that a revolutionary Egypt shows “resentment toward Israel.”</p>
<p>Moreover, continuous meddling by Congress, especially the Republican-led House, has been hampering this relationship because of its one-dimensional approach. It only views U.S-Egyptian relations through the Israeli prism. Recently a House Committee voted to provide a $1.55 billion aid package to Egypt next year, contingent upon the President’s certification that the Egyptian government “is not directly or indirectly controlled by a foreign terrorist organization,” and it is “fully implementing the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty,” as well as “it is detecting and destroying the smuggling network and tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.”</p>
<p>In a recent address to the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington D.C, Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-TX), the chairperson of the Appropriations Subcommittee on State-Foreign Operations in the House that initiated this bill said that she “was proud of that provision on the aid bill” and that “if the MB formed the future government of Egypt, then Egypt would be run by a terrorist organization.” When her statement was challenged by a member of the audience who pointed out that the MB was not on the State Department “terrorist list,” her answer was that it should be since the “Muslim Brotherhood opposed the peace treaty with Israel.”</p>
<p>In short, as long as the U.S. policy in Egypt and the entire Middle East is controlled by what is best for Israel, regardless of the broader U.S. interests and political implications in the region, such policy will continue to be perceived as contradictory, confusing, and suspect by ordinary Egyptians and Arabs.</p>
<p>Egyptians Go to the Polls</p>
<p>Egyptian parliamentary elections are unique because constitutionally they have to be supervised by Egypt’s judiciary. With only ten thousand judges to oversee the millions of votes cast, SCAF determined to hold the election over three stages, each covering nine of Egypt’s twenty-seven provinces. In addition, because of the fear that Mubarak’s banned National Democratic Party (NDP) members might dominate the elections in a system of single representation of districts, SCAF agreed to hold parliamentary elections that will allocate two-thirds of the 498 member lower-house People’s Assembly (PA), to party lists, while one-third would be allocated to individual candidates. In addition, ten other members will be appointed by SCAF to cover minorities such as the Copts, for a total of 508 members. The law also dictates that at lease half of the elected members must be farmers or workers.&#160; Of the 270 member upper-house Shura Council, 120 will be elected on party lists, 60 in individual districts, and 90 appointed by SCAF. According to the constitutional decree issued by SCAF last March, these 778 members (of which 100 members are appointed by SCAF) will select the assembly of 100 empowered to draft the new Egyptian constitution.</p>
<p>The staggered system of elections is designed to be held over a period of four months, from the end of November to early January for the lower-house and from mid January to early March for the upper-house. If SCAF fulfills its promise of holding the presidential elections by June, in all likelihood the new constitution will not be in place and the presidential elections will then be held under the old system.</p>
<p>On Nov. 28 and 29 voters across nine Egyptian provinces including the main population centers of Cairo and Alexandria, swarmed election precincts. There were 168 contested seats, 112 reserved for party lists and 56 for individual members. According to the Egyptian High Commission on Elections (HCE), the turnout was unprecedented and the highest recorded in Egyptian history. Out of 13.6 million registered voters in the nine provinces, more than 9.7 million cast their votes for the party lists (71 per cent) and 8.5 million voted for individual candidates (62 per cent.) Moreover, there were more than 90 parties contesting the elections.</p>
<p>Many coalitions were formed to contest the elections. Some small parties joined into a coalition with the Justice and Freedom Party (FJP), the political wing of the MB, to broaden their appeal. The MB initiated this coalition back in April to form a united front against the remnants of Mubarak’s former NDP. Eventually, most parties (Islamic and secular) left the FJP-led coalition to form their own, accusing the MB candidates of dominating the lists in most districts.</p>
<p>Here is a list of the major blocs and parties contesting the Egyptian elections:</p>
<p>The Democratic Alliance consists of the FJP (the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood). Established in 1928, the MB is one of the oldest social movements in the Middle East. Since its reconstitution in the early 1970s, it is now considered a moderate Islamic movement employing pragmatic politics despite accusations that it had a radical past. It is also the most organized and well-financed group in the country, and its membership is thought to number over one million. The alliance also includes smaller parties including the Karama Party (Socialist-Nasserist), led by presidential candidate Hamdein Sabbahi, and the New Ghad Party, led by politician Ayman Nour. The FJP calls for a civil state with Islamic Shari‘ah as a frame of reference for legislation and governance.</p>
<p>The Islamist Alliance consists of mostly Salafist (religious-literalist) parties that broke away from the Democratic Alliance. It includes the Nour Party, the largest in the alliance, the Asala (Authenticity) Party, the Salafist Current, and the Construction and Development Party, which is the political arm of Al Gamaa Al Islamiya, the former militant group accused of fomenting violence in the 1980s. Most of these groups insist on the application of Islamic laws in society over time, although they give assurances for the protection of minority rights and personal freedoms.</p>
<p>The Egyptian Bloc consists of liberal and leftist parties dominated by the Free Egyptians Party led by billionaire businessman Naguib Sawiris, the most prominent Christian Copt in Egypt. It also includes the Egyptian Social Democratic Party (liberal), and the Tagammu Party (one of the oldest socialist parties in Egypt). Although the Coptic Church denies this, the Islamic parties claim that the Church instructed Egyptian Copts to vote for this bloc. This alliance is considered a nemesis of the Salafist parties and rejects any alliance with them in any future government.</p>
<p>The Revolution Continues consists of mainly revolutionary activists such as Socialist Popular Alliance Party, the Egyptian Socialist Party, Free Egypt Party, Equality and Development, the Egyptian Current (a liberal off-shoot of Muslim Brotherhood youth) and the Revolution Youth Coalition. Some of these parties were originally part of the Egyptian bloc but they left it to form their own list.</p>
<p>The New Wafd is an extension of Egypt’s oldest political party as it was formed in 1919 in the midst of the struggle against the British occupation of Egypt. It had been part of the Democratic Alliance but it broke off after disagreements with the Brotherhood over the allocation of seats on their unified list. As an established party, it is considered one of the most prominent secular-liberal parties that can compete with the Islamic parties, but its checkered past as a token opposition during the Mubarak regime eroded its popularity, especially among the younger generations.</p>
<p>Other Islamic Parties such as the Wasat (Center) and ’Adl (Justice) Parties. These much smaller parties were established recently by former members of the MB to promote moderate and progressive Islamic politics in a modernist civil state.</p>
<p>Reconstituted NDP remnants. Although SCAF belatedly issued a law that bans those who corrupted the political life during the Mubarak regime in reference to the remnants of NDP members, many of these same individuals established over ten parties to run for elections including the Egyptian Citizen Party, Egyptian Nationalism Party, and the Freedom Party.</p>
<p>So who won the first stage of the elections?</p>
<p>Although the HCE announced the raw results in the nine provinces that held the elections, the final count per party was not announced pending the conclusion of the elections of the lower-house in January. According to the raw data, the FJP won almost 37 per cent of the vote garnering almost 3.6 million votes, followed by the Salafist alliance at 2.4 million votes or 24 per cent. The liberal Egyptian Bloc was third with 1.3 million votes or 13 per cent, while the Wafd party was a disappointing fourth with about 700,000 votes or 7 per cent. The Wasat and Revolution Continues parties came next at 415,000 (4 per cent) and 335,000 (3 per cent) votes, respectively.</p>
<p>Twenty-two other parties received the remaining votes, the highest of which was the Construction and Development Party (part of the Islamic Alliance but running separately in one of the provinces) at 2 per cent. In Cairo’s first district, the HCE invalidated the votes, affecting 12 seats (2 individual and 10 party list) for violations by elections workers. It announced that the elections in that district will be held again in mid-January. Thus the total number of allocated seats in this round of elections was 156.</p>
<p>In the individual elections, only four seats were initially determined while fifty went into runoffs the following week. After the runoffs, the victories by Islamist parties were even more impressive. Out of a total of 54 contested seats the FJP won 36, the Nour Party won 5, the Egyptian Bloc won 1, the Wafd Party won 1, ‘Adl Islamic Party won 1, the liberal Free Egypt won 1, independents won 6, and NDP remnants received 3 seats.</p>
<p>With regards to the party lists, each seat was allocated in each province to the party according to its vote totals (each seat equals the total number of votes cast divided by the total number of seats in the province). The remaining seats then follow a remainder formula for allocation, according to the highest vote getter until all seats are allocated. According to conventional wisdom, the total seats that the Islamic parties won in this election was 60-65 per cent. But this author has analyzed the vote results and determined that the total of seats (both individually and party list) that Islamic parties won was in fact 75 per cent as follows:</p>
<p>Islamic Parties: FJP (MB): 77 seats or 50 per cent (36 individual-41 list); Salafist Parties: 33 seats (5 individual-28 list); Wasat and ‘Adl Parties: 7 seats (1 individual-6 lists). Total: 117 (75 per cent).</p>
<p>Other parties: Egyptian Bloc: 13 seats (2 individual-11 list); Wafd Party: 10 seats (1 individual-9 list); Revolution Continues: 2 seats (list); NDP remnants: 8 seats (3 individual-5 list); Independents: 6 seats (individual). Total: 39 seats (25 per cent).</p>
<p>When the scope of the victory by the Islamic parties was announced, the liberal and secular parties sounded the alarm and vowed to unite together in the next rounds. It is not clear what they will do differently since the secular elites and most Copts live in urban areas. Cairo and Alexandria would have given them their best showing.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, SCAF has seen the writing on the wall. It quickly appointed a new Advisory Council consisting of 30 people to advise SCAF and the newly appointed government headed by Dr. Kamal Al-Ganzouri, a former Prime Minister under Mubarak in the late 1990s. The majority of the members in this council represent liberals and secularists. It also included two potential presidential candidates including former Foreign Minister and Arab League Secretary General Amr Mousa, heads of political parties including Wafd, Free Egyptians Party, Wasat, and Al-Nour, as well as other prominent Egyptians. Initially, the FJP agreed to serve but it quickly withdrew claiming that this was an attempt to get around the will of the Egyptian people as expressed in the elections.</p>
<p>This misgiving was not unfounded. The MB was infuriated by the statement of one of the major figures of the military council. As reported in the New York Times, Gen. Mukhtar Al-Mulla, a SCAF member, told Western journalists on Dec. 7 that to “limit the power of the new Parliament that could be dominated by the Islamic parties,” the military planned to “give the newly constituted Advisory Council and the military-appointed cabinet major roles in forming the constitution-writing assembly.” In a major rebuke of the will of the Egyptian people as expressed in their unprecedented high turn-out, and free and fair elections, he declared during the briefing that, “the newly elected Parliament does not represent the will of the broader Egyptian public.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, senior leaders of the MB including General Guide Dr. Muhammad Badie and his Deputy Khairat Al-Shater declared that the next government must be formed by the largest party in the elected parliament. Yet earlier, SCAF head Field Marshal Muhammad Hussein Tantawi declared that the military would control the government until the presidential elections are held in June.</p>
<p>If after the elections conclude in January, and the final results hold true as most experts foresee, then a major confrontation in Egyptian streets between SCAF and the Islamic and revolutionary parties is quite possible. If the military takes away the right of the Parliament to appoint the constitution-writing assembly as well as its right to form a new government that was elected by the people, then what exactly was the purpose of the popular elections?</p>
<p>ESAM AL-AMIN can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>&#160;</p> | Islamic Parties Win 75 Per Cent of Seats in Egyptian Elections | true | https://counterpunch.org/2011/12/09/islamic-parties-win-75-per-cent-of-seats-in-egyptian-elections/ | 2011-12-09 | 4 |
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<p>PressTV News Videos / YouTube</p>
<p>Saudi Arabia has drawn condemnation from Iran and its allies in the region for executing a prominent Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr (above), a vocal critic of the kingdom’s ruling royal family. He was one of 47 men put to death under accusations that included holding radical ideology and having joined terrorist organizations.</p>
<p>Saturday’s executions, which were the first of 2016, follow a year in which at least 157 people were put to death by the government, Saudi Arabia’s highest yearly total in two decades.</p>
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<p>Hundreds of Shiite Muslims marched through the Qatif district of Saudi Arabia’s eastern province in protest over the execution of the cleric, according to an eyewitness. They chanted “Down with the Al Saud,” the name of the ruling Saudi royal family.</p>
<p>The Guardian reports:</p>
<p>Nimr, 56, promoted peaceful protest among his followers. He had been held since 2012, prompting a high-profile campaign for his release backed by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and Amnesty International.</p>
<p>Yemen yesterday called the execution a flagrant violation of human rights and there was further criticism from Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. Lebanon’s Supreme Islamic Shia Council condemned Riyadh’s action as a grave mistake. Protest rallies were held in Bahrain, where police used tear gas on the crowds, India, in Saudi’s Eastern Province and outside the Saudi embassy in London. Further demonstrations were being planned for Sunday in Lebanon and Tehran, where the majority of outrage is expected to be focussed.</p>
<p>The cleric’s brother, Muhammad al-Nimr, whose son Ali is also a political prisoner, appealed for calm, saying the late ayatollah would have wanted only “peaceful protests”. Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, said Saudi Arabia was profoundly wrong to have carried out the execution. “Amnesty International expressed serious concerns about the charges and his trial,” he said, “and we are opposed to the use of the death penalty in all circumstances.”</p>
<p>Iran, which had made frequent requests to the Saudis to pardon Nimr, responded with anger, saying Saudi Arabia will pay “a high price” for the execution. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaber Ansari, strongly attacked Saudi Arabia for ramping up sectarian tensions in the region. “The Saudi government supports terrorist movements and takfiri [radical Sunni extremists], but confronts domestic critics with oppression and execution … the Saudi government will pay a high price for following these policies,” he said, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.</p>
<p>“The execution of a figure like Sheikh al-Nimr, who had no means to follow his political and religious goals but through speaking out, merely shows the extent of irresponsibility and imprudence.” The former prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, said that he believed the execution would herald the downfall of the Gulf kingdom’s government.</p>
<p>Read more <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/02/suadi-arabia-cleric-execution-unrest-predicted-shia-areas" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p>SEE ALSO: <a href="" type="internal">Where’s the Outrage Over the Beheadings in Saudi Arabia?</a></p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Roisin Davis</a></p> | Saudi Arabia Executes 47, Including Prominent Shiite Cleric | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/saudi-arabia-executes-47-including-prominent-shiite-cleric/ | 2016-01-02 | 4 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosengrant/2977674446/sizes/m/in/photostream/"&gt;B Rosen&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
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<p>The Bureau of Land Management issued a determination on Wednesday that turning the Grand Canyon into a giant uranium mine would be a bad idea.</p>
<p>Interior Secretary Ken Salazar <a href="" type="internal">said earlier this year</a> that he thought there should be a 20-year moratorium on mining in the iconic canyon, so the decision isn’t really a surprise. The Final Environmental Impact Statement called for extending the moratorium on mining on the 1 million acres land under the management of the US Forest Service and BLM. Here’s what BLM <a href="http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/newsroom/2011/october/NR_10_26_2011.html" type="external">had to say in a statement</a>:</p>
<p>“The Grand Canyon is an iconic place for all Americans and visitors from around the world,” said BLM Director Bob Abbey. “Uranium remains an important part of our nation’s comprehensive energy resources, but it is appropriate to pause, identify what the predicted level of mining and its impacts on the Grand Canyon would be, and decide what level of risk is acceptable to take with this national treasure. The preferred alternative would allow for cautious, continued development with strong oversight that could help us fill critical gaps in our knowledge about water quality and environmental impacts of uranium mining in the area.”</p>
<p>But it’s sure to annoy the Republicans in the <a href="" type="internal">House</a> and <a href="http://cronkitenewsonline.com/2011/10/lawmakers-push-to-lift-northern-arizona-uranium-mining-ban/" type="external">Senate</a> who have been gunning to open it up. For now they’ll have to wait. At least until the Perry/Bachmann administration reverses the decision in a few years.</p>
<p /> | Let’s Not Mine Uranium in the Grand Canyon | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/lets-not-mine-uranium-grand-canyon/ | 2011-10-27 | 4 |
<p>Dec. 14 (UPI) — The state of California filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education Thursday, saying it failed to process thousands of debt-relief claims from students who took out federal loans to pay for Corinthian Colleges, a now-defunct, for-profit school.</p>
<p>California Attorney General <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Xavier_Becerra/" type="external">Xavier Becerra</a> accused Education Secretary Betsy DeVos of violating the Administrative Procedures Act by delaying the claims. Since President <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Donald_Trump/" type="external">Donald Trump</a> took office in January, an <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/12/12/IG-Report-Trump-DeVos-stopped-forgiving-student-loans-for-college-scam-victims/9791513059589/" type="external">Inspector General report found</a> that 26,000 claims have been submitted and two have been processed. Those two were denied relief.</p>
<p>“The department’s ongoing delay in approving the pending claims of defrauded Corinthian students is unlawful under the APA,” the <a href="https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press_releases/People%20v.%20US%20Dept.%20of%20Educ.%20FILED.pdf" type="external">lawsuit says</a>. “This delay — 11 months and counting — is unreasonable and illegal because the department has already determined that these students qualify for specific, expedited relief. The department has no justification for its delay — a delay that unquestionably harms students.”</p>
<p>The lawsuit also accused the Department of Education of using “draconian debt-collection tactics” against students who are awaiting an answer on their debt-relief claims.</p>
<p>“The department has seized these students’ tax refunds and garnished their wages in violation of the APA,” the lawsuit says.</p>
<p>DeVos paused the debt relief program for victims of for-profit colleges earlier this year pending further review, but has not announced whether it will be continued.</p>
<p>“What Secretary DeVos is doing is unconscionable,” Becerra <a href="https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-becerra-takes-education-secretary-devos-court-withholding" type="external">said in a statement</a>. “After having their American dreams stolen by a so-called higher education institution, Corinthian students are now being denied critical relief by a secretary of Education hostile to their plight. It is hard to believe that we are forced to sue the Department of Education to compel Secretary DeVos to carry out the department’s legal duty and help these students rebuild their lives.”</p> | California sues Dept. of Education over student debt relief claims | false | https://newsline.com/california-sues-dept-of-education-over-student-debt-relief-claims/ | 2017-12-14 | 1 |
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<p>Photo by Ged Carroll | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
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<p>“There are two ways by which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first—the Orwellian—culture becomes a prison. In the second—the Huxleyan—culture becomes a burlesque. No one needs to be reminded that our world is now marred by many prison-cultures…. it makes little difference if our wardens are inspired by right- or left-wing ideologies. The gates of the prison are equally impenetrable, surveillance equally rigorous, icon-worship pervasive…. <a href="http://thinkorbebeaten.com/ao2d/amusing-ourselves-to-death.pdf" type="external">Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours</a>…. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”</p>
<p>— &#160;Neil Postman</p>
<p>Donald Trump no longer needs to <a href="" type="internal">launch Trump TV</a>.</p>
<p>He’s already the star of his own political reality show.</p>
<p>Americans have a voracious appetite for TV entertainment, and the Trump reality show—guest starring outraged Democrats with a newly awakened conscience for immigrants and the poor, power-hungry Republicans eager to take advantage of their return to power, and a hodgepodge of other special interest groups with dubious motives—feeds that <a href="" type="internal">appetite for titillating, soap opera drama</a>.</p>
<p>After all, who needs the insults, narcissism and power plays that are hallmarks of reality shows such as Celebrity Apprentice or Keeping Up with the Kardashians when you can have all that and more delivered up by the likes of Donald Trump and his cohorts?</p>
<p>Yet as John Lennon reminds us, “nothing is real,” especially not in the world of politics.</p>
<p>Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir’s 1998 film <a href="" type="internal">The Truman Show</a>, in which a man’s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.</p>
<p>Indeed, Donald Trump may be the smartest move yet by the powers-that-be to keep the citizenry divided and at each other’s throats, because as long as we’re busy fighting each other, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny in any form.</p>
<p>This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.</p>
<p>It allows us to be distracted, entertained, occasionally a little bit outraged but overall largely uninvolved, content to remain in the viewer’s seat.</p>
<p>The more that is beamed at us, the more inclined we are to settle back in our comfy recliners and become passive viewers rather than active participants as unsettling, frightening events unfold.</p>
<p>Reality and fiction merge as everything around us becomes entertainment fodder.</p>
<p>We don’t even have to change the channel when the subject matter becomes too monotonous. That’s taken care of for us by the programmers (the corporate media).</p>
<p>For instance, before we could get too worked up over government surveillance, the programmers changed the channels on us and switched us over to breaking news about militarized police. Before our outrage could be transformed into action over police misconduct, they changed the channel once again to reports of ISIS beheadings and terrorist shootings. Before we had a chance to challenge what was staged or real, the programming switched to the 2016 presidential election.</p>
<p>“Living is easy with eyes closed,” says Lennon, and that’s exactly what reality TV that masquerades as American politics programs the citizenry to do: navigate the world with their eyes shut.</p>
<p>As long as we’re viewers, we’ll never be doers.</p>
<p>Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch—and I would posit that it’s all reality TV—the <a href="" type="internal">more difficult it becomes to distinguish</a> between what is real and what is carefully crafted farce.</p>
<p>“We the people” are watching a lot of TV.</p>
<p>On average, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/average-american-watches-5-hours-tv-day-article-1.1711954" type="external">Americans spend five hours a day</a> watching television. By the time we reach age 65, we’re watching <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/average-american-watches-5-hours-tv-day-article-1.1711954" type="external">more than 50 hours of television a week</a>, and that number increases as we get older. And reality TV programming consistently captures the <a href="" type="internal">largest percentage of TV watchers</a> every season by an almost 2-1 ratio.</p>
<p>This doesn’t bode well for a citizenry able to sift through masterfully-produced propaganda in order to think critically about the issues of the day, whether it’s fake news peddled by government agencies or foreign entities.</p>
<p>Those who watch reality shows tend to view what they see as the “ <a href="" type="internal">norm</a>.” Thus, those who watch shows characterized by lying, aggression and meanness not only come to <a href="" type="internal">see such behavior as acceptable</a> and entertaining but also <a href="" type="internal">mimic the medium</a>.</p>
<p>This holds true whether the reality programming is about the antics of celebrities in the White House, in the board room, or in the bedroom.</p>
<p>It’s a phenomenon called “ <a href="" type="internal">humilitainment</a>.”</p>
<p>A term coined by media scholars Brad Waite and Sara Booker, “ <a href="" type="internal">humilitainment</a>” refers to the tendency for viewers to take pleasure in someone else’s humiliation, suffering and pain.</p>
<p>“ <a href="" type="internal">Humilitainment</a>” largely explains not only <a href="" type="internal">why American TV watchers are so fixated</a> on reality TV programming but how American citizens, largely insulated from what is really happening in the world around them by layers of technology, entertainment, and other distractions, are being <a href="" type="internal">programmed to accept the brutality</a>, surveillance and dehumanizing treatment of the American police state as things happening to other people.</p>
<p>The ramifications for the future of civic engagement, political discourse and self-government are incredibly depressing and demoralizing.</p>
<p>This not only explains how a candidate like Donald Trump with a reputation for being rude, egotistical and narcissistic <a href="" type="internal">could get elected</a>, but it also says a lot about how a politician like Barack Obama—whose tenure in the White House was characterized by drone killings, a weakening of the Constitution at the expense of Americans’ civil liberties, and an expansion of the police state—could be hailed as “ <a href="" type="internal">one of the greatest presidents of all times</a>.”</p>
<p>This is what happens when an entire nation—bombarded by reality TV programming, government propaganda and entertainment news—becomes systematically desensitized and acclimated to the trappings of a government that operates by fiat and speaks in a language of force.</p>
<p>Ultimately, as I make clear in my book <a href="" type="internal">Battlefield America: The War on the American People</a>, the reality shows, the entertainment news, the surveillance society, the militarized police, and the political spectacles have one common objective: to keep us divided, distracted, imprisoned, and incapable of taking an active role in the business of self-government.</p>
<p>If “we the people” feel powerless and apathetic, it is only because we have allowed ourselves to be convinced that the duties of citizenship begin and end at the ballot box.</p>
<p>Marching and protests have certainly been used with great success by past movements to foment real change, but if those marches and protests are merely outpourings of discontent because a particular politician won or lost with no solid plan of action or follow-through, then what’s the point?</p>
<p>Martin Luther King Jr. understood that politics could never be the answer to what ailed the country. That’s why he spearheaded a <a href="" type="internal">movement of mass-action strategy</a> that employed boycotts, sit-ins and marches. Yet King didn’t march against a particular politician or merely to express discontent. He marched against injustice, government corruption, war, and inequality, and he leveraged discontent with the status quo into an activist movement that transformed the face of America.</p>
<p>When all is said and done, it won’t matter who you voted for in the presidential election. What will matter is where you stand in the face of the injustices that continue to ravage our nation: the endless wars, the police shootings, the overcriminalization, the corruption, the graft, the roadside strip searches, the private prisons, the surveillance state, etc.</p>
<p>Will you tune out the reality TV show and join with your fellow citizens to push back against the real menace of the police state, or will you merely sit back and lose yourself in the political programming aimed at keeping you imprisoned in the police state?</p> | Nothing is Real: When Reality TV Programming Masquerades as Politics | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/01/19/nothing-is-real-when-reality-tv-programming-masquerades-as-politics/ | 2017-01-19 | 4 |
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<p>The trend is based on an ancient practice called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuman_Thong" type="external">Kuman Thong</a>. In Kuman Thong, real fetuses were worshiped and treated as real children to aid in the practice of black magic by witch doctors. Though the practice was thought to have died out long ago, a man was caught with six fetuses he intended to sell in 2012.</p>
<p>Thankfully, the Luk Thep may be lifelike, but they are manufactured and bought from a store. Still some businesses in Thailand treat them as real children. Smile Airways allows the doll to sit in a seat like a real child, as long as they have a ticket. The Luk Thep aren't allowed to sit in the exit seats, and they must buckle their seat belts on take off and landing. The airline also serves the dolls snacks and drinks on the flights.</p>
<p>A buffet restaurant in Bangkok called Neta Grill also treats the Luk Thep as real children. They allow the doll to purchase a meal at the child rate, as long as any food they get is eaten.</p>
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<p>Many people <a href="http://thailandchatter.com/showthread.php?7130-Thailand-quot-Look-Thep-quot" type="external">claim</a> that the dolls have brought them good luck and fortune, and post pictures of themselves with the Luk Thep and stories about what the doll did for them. Some of the things attributed to the Luk Thep are winning the lottery and getting a better job.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Supernatural Dolls Can Now Buy Seats On Thai Airline | true | http://offthemainpage.com/2016/01/30/supernatural-dolls-can-now-buy-seats-on-thai-airline/ | 2016-01-30 | 4 |
<p>I’ve already told you the <a href="" type="internal">30 things that women love that men just don’t understand</a>, but it’s the lesser sex that really has women scratching their heads. Here are the 30 things MEN love that women just don’t understand (with exceptions, obvi — there must be a woman or two out there who loves Paris Hilton).</p>
<p>1. Crotch grabbing 2. AC/DC 3. Skid marks 4. Nascar 5. Fake breasts 6. Scars 7. Car shows 8. The WWE 9. Fart jokes 10. Titty-twisters 11. Sports bars 12. Mowing the lawn/washing the car 13. Collecting weapons 14. Explosions/Fire 15. Pimping out their sound system 16. Paris Hilton 17. Taking long poops 18. Listening to everything at a really high volume 19. Videogames 20. “Ninja Warrior” 21. Martial arts movies 22. Classic rock 23. Dimeslots 24. Fantasy Football and Baseball 25. Anal sex 26. Any movie starring Jean Claude Van Damme or Sylvester Stallone 27. Chicken wings 28. Watches/time pieces 29. Ribs 30. Binoculars</p> | 30 Things Men Love That Women Just Don’t Understand | true | http://thefrisky.com/post/246-30-things-men-love-that-women-just-dont-understand/ | 2018-10-02 | 4 |
<p>After two decades spinning power from the gusts that sweep Europe's North Sea, the offshore wind industry is finally turning to the U.S. A big hurdle: getting its giant turbines to American waters.</p>
<p>No one in the U.S. currently makes turbine towers sizable enough for use in deep waters -- one of the many challenges impeding the buildup of offshore wind on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The first offshore wind installation in the U.S., a $300 million, 30-megawatt project off Rhode Island, began turning six months ago. Companies including Denmark's Dong Energy AS, Norway's Statoil ASA and Spain's Iberdrola SA are now pursuing more than a dozen projects that would dwarf it.</p>
<p>But the Block Island wind farm in the U.S. currently generates power for 24.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, while offshore wind projects in Europe can come in well under 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. Developers are optimistic that, as occurred in Europe, prices will go down as more projects begin and a supplier network takes shape in the U.S.</p>
<p>"They are really viewing this as a real market if you are attracting players like Dong and Iberdrola and Statoil," said Maxwell Cohen, a senior research analyst at IHS Markit. "I've heard some pretty major companies that are not in offshore at least being asked, 'Why not?'"</p>
<p>If all 17 of the proposed farms are built, the wave of U.S. offshore wind projects, primarily concentrated in the Northeast, would add 9.1 gigawatts of generating capacity, according to the American Wind Energy Association. That is enough to power 3 million homes.</p>
<p>Offshore wind farms require hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to construct depending on their scale, and analysts say not all of the proposed U.S. farms will be built. But state-level policies that promote renewable energy are providing momentum.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Earlier this year, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, called for 2.4 gigawatts of offshore wind to be developed by 2030. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, signed legislation last year to have the state add 1.6 gigawatts of wind power offshore by June 2027.</p>
<p>Statoil won an auction late last year for the right to build a wind farm 14 miles off the New York coastline. Dong, meanwhile, has two proposed U.S. projects: one about 15 miles off Martha's Vineyard that it has teamed with Eversource Energy, a Northeast utility, to build; and another off the coast of New Jersey.</p>
<p>"I can really feel the appetite and the interest in the market now," said Thomas Brostrom, president of North American operations at Dong, which has built 22 offshore wind farms in Europe. "This is the moment."</p>
<p>Avangrid Renewables, an Iberdrola subsidiary, has joined with developer Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners to also build a separate wind farm off Martha's Vineyard.</p>
<p>Most of the 17 proposed projects are in federally designated wind energy areas. Such zones were created to help cut through some of the red-tape and community opposition that for more than a decade has blocked Cape Wind, a more than 400-megawatt project proposed for federal waters off Martha's Vineyard.</p>
<p>Jim Gordon, the man behind Cape Wind, is unwilling to concede defeat, saying the wind farm's lease is still active and that he hopes to see it built one day.</p>
<p>Block Island didn't have the same troubles, in part because it was much smaller and developer Deepwater Wind built it in state waters, which required fewer federal permits. But hurdles remain for large offshore wind projects in the U.S., including how to build out a supply chain that can regularly ship giant turbine towers from Europe.</p>
<p>Components like the enormous stands that anchor offshore turbines will have to be brought up from places like the Gulf Coast. That is because many U.S. Atlantic ports are small, and large vessels need to navigate busy shipping lanes, hurricane barriers and bridges.</p>
<p>This proved a challenge for the Block Island farm, said Meaghan Wims, a spokeswoman for Deepwater Wind. Its stands were brought up on barges from the Gulf Coast. The turbine towers and blades were shipped from France.</p>
<p>A Norwegian ship carrying the nacelles -- the housing that holds the main generating machinery -- couldn't fit under the Newport Pell Bridge that spans Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, so it skipped coming into port and went straight to the construction site offshore.</p>
<p>It can also still take considerable time to get the necessary permits and approvals for offshore wind farms from state and federal regulators. Mr. Cohen of IHS Markit said he doesn't expect to see the industry really ramp up in the U.S. until the mid-2020s.</p>
<p>Still, developers are confident that manufacturers and other suppliers will set up shop in the U.S., and costs will come down, once sizable projects are built.</p>
<p>"We've done this in Europe and we have absolutely the same opportunity in the U.S.," said Stephen Bull, Statoil's senior vice president for offshore wind.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>July 09, 2017 16:00 ET (20:00 GMT)</p> | Plans for U.S. Wind Farms Run Into Headwinds | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/07/09/plans-for-u-s-wind-farms-run-into-headwinds.html | 2017-07-09 | 0 |
<p>your email</p>
<p>your name</p>
<p>recipient(s) email (comma separated)</p>
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<p>message</p>
<p>captcha</p>
<p />
<p>Ever since Occupy Wall Street's dramatic Nov. 15 eviction, the group has recommitted itself to global outreach. While the OWS motto has always been "Occupy Everywhere," there was previously an unspoken preferential goal to, first and foremost, protect their respective parochial camps. With those villages now razed to the ground by police, Occupy is free to wholly focus on issues of international solidarity.</p>
<p>Occupy already exists in places like <a href="http://www.occupytogether.org/actions/" type="external">Spain, Australia, Nigeria, and Denmark</a>, but now media attention is shifting away from Wall Street and Oakland to these countries where acts of solidarity have been playing out for months, but got little play when competing with the dramatic police actions on the US coasts (even though, comparatively, US protesters didn't have to deal with things like being shot at by police with live ammunition.)&#160;</p>
<p>Protesters recently announced their intention to visit the <a href="http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE80F11B20120116?irpc=932" type="external">World Economic Forum</a>, an annual gathering of the rich and powerful, that kicks off this Wednesday, which also happens to be the anniversary of the Egyptian revolution.</p>
<p>Camp Igloo includes two heated teepees and a field kitchen alongside the ice houses to shelter about 50 people in the frigid temperatures, Reuters reports.</p>
<p>"It is the decisions of the few which have led us into the crisis of recent years and now the same people are posing as the solution to these problems," David Roth, president of the youth wing of the Swiss Social Democrats, told reporters at Camp Igloo, near the Davos train station.</p>
<p>"This is the wrong solution as it is undemocratic and cynical. Democracy is not only the right path for the Arab states but is also urgently needed again in the West."</p>
<p>The Swiss campaigners invited activists from around the world to join them at the camp, being set up with permission in a car park outside the tight security cordon that surrounds the World Economic Forum meeting.</p>
<p>Now that most of the major camps are gone, US Occupiers are also free to focus on global acts of solidarity. I recently sat in on a meeting where activists discussed their intentions to raise money and travel to Latin America and Spain to participate in the resistances there.</p>
<p>In addition to travelling the globe as ambassadors of Occupy, protesters also have actions planned for the upcoming anniversary of the Egyptian revolution in chapters such as Detroit, Portland, and New York City*.</p>
<p>Portland's flyer for the event reads, "Come rally with #OccupyPortland as we peacefully reflect on our fallen brothers and sisters across the world then peacefully celebrate our freedom and struggle of decolonization with a march around downtown Portland."</p>
<p>Detroit also has an event planned for Jan. 25 at Grand Circus Park with a march scheduled to the McNamara Federal Building to "protest U.S. military aid to Egypt's brutal and oppressive military dictatorship."</p>
<p>Egypt is the second largest recipient of US aid after Israel, receiving <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/8290133/Most-US-aid-to-Egypt-goes-to-military.html" type="external">$2 billion annually</a>. In 2010, $1.3 billion went to strengthen Egyptian forces compared to $250 million in economic aid.&#160;</p>
<p>Last year, Congress <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/20/world/la-fg-us-egypt-20120121" type="external">passed legislation</a> that says the money can only be released if the White House certifies that Egypt is complying with democratic principles, but it remains to be seen what the standards for "democratic principles" are.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/world/middleeast/mohamed-elbaradei-pulls-out-of-egypts-presidential-race.html" type="external">Mohamed ElBaradei</a>, the Nobel-Prize winning diplomat who was a high-profile player in the Egyptian uprising, announced earlier in the month that he would drop his presidential bid in protest over "the military's continued hold on power nearly a ear after the ouster of the strongman Hosni Mubarak," the New York Times reports.</p>
<p>“The former regime did not fall,” Mr. ElBaradei said in a statement, arguing that the military council that took power in the name of the revolution had instead proved to be an extension of the Mubarak government. “My conscience does not permit me to run for the presidency or any other official position unless it is within a real democratic system.”</p>
<p>As the Armed Forces' blatant violation of "democratic principles" continues, Occupy and Egyptian freedom fighters recognize this injustice and share a sense of solidarity in struggle.&#160;</p>
<p>*This is by no means a full list. These are simply planned solidarity events I've heard about.</p> | Occupy Goes Global…Again | true | http://inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/12603/occupy_goes_globalagain/ | 2012-01-23 | 4 |
<p>FRANKLIN, Neb. (AP) — A south-central Nebraska man accused of injuring his 2-month-old daughter has been sent to prison.</p>
<p>Court records say 21-year-old Dalton Howard, of Upland, was sentenced Tuesday in Franklin to eight to 10 years in prison and given credit for 182 days already served. He'd pleaded guilty to attempted intentional child abuse. Prosecutors had lowered the charge in exchange for his plea.</p>
<p>Howard was arrested in February 2016 after the girl was taken by her mother to a Minden hospital, where the baby was found to have bruising and a brain bleed. The little girl eventually was taken to an Omaha hospital for treatment.</p>
<p>FRANKLIN, Neb. (AP) — A south-central Nebraska man accused of injuring his 2-month-old daughter has been sent to prison.</p>
<p>Court records say 21-year-old Dalton Howard, of Upland, was sentenced Tuesday in Franklin to eight to 10 years in prison and given credit for 182 days already served. He'd pleaded guilty to attempted intentional child abuse. Prosecutors had lowered the charge in exchange for his plea.</p>
<p>Howard was arrested in February 2016 after the girl was taken by her mother to a Minden hospital, where the baby was found to have bruising and a brain bleed. The little girl eventually was taken to an Omaha hospital for treatment.</p> | Man accused of injuring 2-month-old daughter gets 8-10 years | false | https://apnews.com/amp/8334d264ae2147628c55c56917045a5a | 2018-01-11 | 2 |
<p>Where on earth does hummus come from? And how about the falafel? Well they have one main ingredient in common: chickpeas. Hummus is a chickpea dip, the falafel a fried chickpea ball.</p>
<p>chickpeaschickpeas</p>
<p>"Falafel" comes from the word for "pepper" in Arabic. And it's been part of the Arab and Jewish diet for centuries.</p>
<p>In fact it's so old; no one is really sure where it got started. But it's spread all over the Middle East and around the world.</p>
<p>One man says the falafel, along with other delicacies such as tabouleh and babaganoush, should be brand names owned by his country.</p>
<p>And why not? France did it with Champagne, and Greece did it with feta cheese.</p>
<p>fetafeta</p>
<p>So where does this food nationalist come from?</p>
<p>One clue - his country shares its biggest border with Syria...</p>
<p>For today's Geo Quiz, we were looking for a Middle-Eastern country which shares its largest border with Syria.</p>
<p>That country is Lebanon, today's answer to our Geo Quiz.</p>
<p>One enterprising Lebanese want to brand food like falafel and hummus as his nation's original creation.</p>
<p>The World's Aaron Schachter reports from Beirut. Listen:</p> | Geo answer | false | https://pri.org/stories/2008-10-09/geo-answer | 2008-10-09 | 3 |
<p>Sept. 21 (UPI) — Bernie Casey, the actor and former NFL player who starred in several of the most well known films of the past 40 years, has died at the age of 78.</p>
<p>Casey passed away after a brief illness at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to the <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bernie-casey-dead-actor-nfl-910749" type="external">Hollywood Reporter</a>.</p>
<p>Bor nin West Virginia in 1939 and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Casey was a standout athlete and earned an athletic scholarship to Bowling Green State University, where he helped the team win a national championship in 1959.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/San-Francisco-49ers/" type="external">San Francisco 49ers</a> scooped up Casey by making him the ninth overall pick in the 1961 NFL Draft. He went on to have an impressive pro <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a> career with 359 catches, 5,444 yards and 40 touchdowns before hanging up the cleats at the age of 30 to focus on acting, poetry and painting.</p>
<p>“I was big, agile, fast and a dedicated athlete,” Casey <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/arts/bernie-casey-dead-actor-football.html?mcubz=1" type="external">said in 1999</a>. “But I always wanted to be a painter.”</p>
<p>As he pursued his visual art, Casey also excelled in performance art by acting in dozens of movies over the next few decades, including some of the most heralded in their genre, such as blaxploitation classic Cleopatra Jones and 80’s comedy classic Revenge of the Nerds.</p>
<p>He also starred in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, a comedic parody of blaxploitation movies that helped launch the careers of Kennan Ivory Wayans and <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chris_Rock/" type="external">Chris Rock</a>.</p>
<p>Regarding the switch from athlete to artist, Casey once said he had too much life to live to be pegged only as a jock.</p>
<p>“When that sojourn is over and you’re 32 or something, when most people are just beginning to understand who they are, what they can do and what life is all about, you have been considered in the world of sports a dinosaur,” he said during an interview for NFL Films. “From that point on, it’s a downward spiral into the abyss of non-consideration and obscurity and a lot of other things that they never recover from. I want to think in my instance, it’s the beginning. There’s a lot of life left after 32.”</p> | Bernie Casey, actor and former NFL player, dies at 78 | false | https://newsline.com/bernie-casey-actor-and-former-nfl-player-dies-at-78/ | 2017-09-21 | 1 |
<p>“I know you’re a Christian, but who are you a Christian against.”</p>
<p>Kenneth Burke</p>
<p>In Apocalypse, a patient study of Christian fundamentalism based on extensive interviews over a five year period with members of apocalyptic communities Charles Strozier identifies four basic beliefs as fundamental to Christian fundamentalism. (1) Inerrancy or biblical literalism, the belief that every word of the Bible is to be taken literally as the word of God; (2) conversion or the experience of being reborn in Christ; (3) evangelicalism or the duty of the saved to spread the gospel; and (4) Apocalypticism or Endism, the belief that The Book of Revelations describes the events that must come to pass for God’s plan to be fulfilled. [1] Revelations thus becomes an object of longing as well as the key to understanding contemporary history, to reading the news of the day and keeping a handle on an otherwise overwhelming world. Each of these categories, Strozier adds, must be understood not doctrinally but psychologically. What follows attempts to constitute such an understanding by analyzing each category as the progression of a disorder that finds the end it seeks in Apocalyptic destructiveness.</p>
<p>Before undertaking that examination a note on method. My goal is not to number the streaks of the tulip with respect to Christian fundamentalism but to get to the essence of the thing by offering a psychoanalytic version of the method Hegel formulated in the Phenomenology of Mind. My effort will be to describe the inner structure of the psyche implied by fundamentalist beliefs by examining those beliefs in terms of the psychological needs they fulfill. The examination of each belief will reveal its function in an evolving “logic” that traces the sequence of internal operations required for the fundamentalist psyche to achieve the form required to resolve the conflicts that define its inner world. The difference between my method and Hegel’s is this: Hegel’s effort was to describe the sequence of rational self-mediations required for the attainment of absolute knowledge. Mine is to record the sequence of psychological transformations that must take place for another kind of certainty to be achieved: one in which, as we’ll see, thanatos and not reason attains an absolute status, freed of anything within that would oppose it. In effect, my goal is to offer fundamentalists a self-knowledge they cannot have since it is precisely the function of the belief structure we shall examine to render it unconscious and all the more powerful and certain of itself by virtue of that fact. What after all is religion but a desire displacing itself into dogmas all the better to assure the flock that what they desire is writ into the nature of things?</p>
<p>Who does the structure we’ll examine describe? George W. Bush and some of those closest to him? The 42% or 51% of those Americans who now call themselves fundamentalists? The 80 or 90% of practicing Christians, the over 1 billion viewers worldwide, who found Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ a singularly compelling expression of their faith and who are thus already far more fundamentalist in their hearts than they realize? The power of any religious belief system derives from how deeply it taps into collective needs and discontents. In this regard we may already be living in a fundamentalist Zeitgeist with the collective Amerikan psyche now defined, even among those who have never (or seldom) seen the inside of a church, by the emotional needs and principles of operation that find their most seductive realization in fundamentalism. We may in fact find the same “faith” informing a project that initially appears to have nothing to do with fundamentalism–global capitalism.</p>
<p>Though he does not share their beliefs Strozier often comments on the charity and gentleness of his interviewees seeing in that a sign that we should always temper any criticism of fundamentalism by acknowledging the good things it does for people, many of whom would be lost or miserable without it. Be that as it may, in terms of the psyche a far different condition might maintain with a pronounced dissonance between the sincerity of the surface and the depths where something quite different has taken hold of the psyche. Moreover, in the psychoanalysis of a belief system the primary concern must be not with the sheep but with the Grand Inquisitors. Or, to put it in psychoanalytic terms, with those who fashion the Super-ego which is the agency essential to the hold that any religion assumes over its followers. Our concern, in short, must be with fundamentalism not as a pathetic phenomena, a halfway house for drug addicts and a panacea for those who find in it the infantalization they seek, but for those who have fashioned in it what Nietzsche would call (though with horror) a strong valuation, an attempt to take up the fundamental problems of the psyche and fashion a will to power out of one’s resentment by developing a faith that will make one strong and righteous in that resentment, like Falwell, smug in its smug certitudes like Dubya, confident in the right to rule over those it reduces to the status of sheep, dumb and blissful in their blind obedience to the will that is collectively imposed on them.</p>
<p>Religion remains of course the one thing we are enjoined to treat with kid gloves as if this is the one area of life where criticism and a rhetoric that tries to energize the force of criticism is verboten. Violating this rule is also the quickest way to lose what current statistics indicate will be the 93% of one’s audience who say they believe in God. It is thus important that I indicate up front that this is not a contract I can honor. Like Freud, I think it can be demonstrated that religion is a collective neurosis. In fact one implication of the following examination is that Freud didn’t go far enough. But let me reformulate this hypothesis in a more convivial spirit. Let’s bracket the whole question of whether religion has an object. On second thought, let me concede it, the utter ontological truth of all the basic beliefs, ever each one. Only then perhaps can we focus on the question that constitutes the inherent and lasting fascination of religion. Not what people believe, but why. The consideration of religion as a psychological phenomenon-and as such perhaps the one that offers the deepest insight into the nature of the psyche and its needs.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>I. Literalism</p>
<p>“I don’t do nuance.”</p>
<p>Dubya</p>
<p>Literalism is the linchpin of fundamentalism; the literalization, if you will, of the founding psychological need. For an absolute certitude that can be established at the level of facts that will admit of no ambiguity or interpretation. (Fundamentalists, ironically, are the true positivists.) But to eliminate ambiguity and confusion one must attack its source. Figurative language. That is the danger that must be avoided at all costs because in place of the literal figurative language introduces the play of meaning. The need to sustain complex connections at the level of thought (not fact) through the evolution of mental abilities that are necessarily connected with developing all the metaphoric resources of language. The literal in contrast puts an end to thought. It offers the mind a way to shut down, to reify itself. It thereby exorcises the greatest fear: interpretation and its inevitable result, the conflict of interpretations and with it the terror of being forever bereft of dogmatic certitudes. A metaphor is the lighting flash of an intelligence that sees, as Aristotle asserts, connections that can only be sustained by a thought that thereby liberates itself from the immediate.</p>
<p>Literalism is the attempt to arrest all of this before it takes hold. It’s innermost necessity is the resistance to metaphor. For with metaphor one enters a world that has the power to unravel the literal mind. Let me offer one example. “There is no God and Mary is his mother.” In this great aphorism Santayana asserts an ontological impossibility and a psychological necessity. I once tried it out on some fundamentalist friends. They were at first puzzled by the unintelligibility of the statement then amazed that Santayana and I were so dumb we couldn’t see the contradiction. Finally the light went on, almost in chorus, the literalist deconstruction of the statement: “If he wasn’t a God how could she be a mother?” All attempts to suggest that the statement wasn’t meant to be taken literally only produced further confusion then frustration then anger. Santayana’s statement made no sense precisely because it was a koan, a paradox intended to produce reflection, even introspection. It was there I suggested that one would find the key to its meaning; not in the assertion that its meaningless constituted evidence that Santayana was perverse or mentally unbalanced. We were, of course, talking at irretrievable cross-purposes with no way to bridge the gulf between us. Which was, of course, the point of the exercise.</p>
<p>Literalism is the first line of defense of a mind that wants to put itself to sleep. A sensibility that like Nietzsche’s last man can only blink in blank incomprehension at anything that can’t be immediately understood. It is the great protection against a world teeming with complexities. Literalism offers a way out, a way to keep the mind fixed and fixated at its first condition. The way: the refusal to comprehend anything that exceeds the limits of the simple declarative sentence. Two reductions thereby feed on one another: the world is reduced to facts and simples; the mind reduced to a permanently blank slate.</p>
<p>Fundamentalism feeds on and fosters this reduction of the mind to the conditions of the immediate. For in fundamentalism literalism is raised to the status of a categorical imperative. It is the law that assures deliverance from all confusion. There is a single text, the Holy Bible. It contains clear, simple direct messages-proclamations-that establish the Truth once and for all. All of life’s questions and contingencies are resolved by statements that are beyond change and interpretation. Literalism reduces reading and interpretation to the Cratylean dream: one need only point to the appropriate passage and “Pouf” all doubt and ambiguity about what one should think, believe, or desire on a given situation vanishes. One need no longer wrack one’s brain or one’s heart or live in the terror that the world exceeds one’s grasp. The Book’s unequivocal meaning and Life are adequated to one another in a relationship of stark and simple imposition. You see God has a plan for us and unlike secularists and post-structuralists He speaks in clear and unmistakable terms.</p>
<p>When approached literally the Book of necessity takes on a number of other characteristics. Everything in it must be factual and nothing outside the book can contradict those facts. The very possibility of scientific investigation is sacrificed a priori to the need to proclaim the text’s inerrancy. Every word of it must be the unalterable and unchanging word of God, which of course can contain no contradictions. One of the ironies of fundamentalist reading is the rather considerable constraints it places on the deity. He proclaims and what he says remains so forever, beyond growth, development, change, revision. Whatever abomination of sex hatred one unearths from Leviticus must remain gospel today. The Book cannot be read progressively or retroactively, despite Christ’s repeated claims to cancel the old law. An eye for an eye remains true for all time however out of keeping with the law of charity. After all, “It’s in the Bible.” That repeated assertion expresses the essence and fundamental paralysis of the literal mind. The idea of reading the Book along the pop-Hegelian lines pursued by Jack Miles as the story of how as He develops God changes his mind, softening his prematurely hardened heart is anathema. God’s role is set by the limitations of the literal “imagination.” His job is to lay down the law, once and for all, and in no uncertain terms; to be that super-ego who operates by the only logic that literalism permits-binary opposition. All conflicts and confusions must be resolved into a sharp, simple, and comprehensive opposition between Good and Evil. Else comes again the fit of contingency and ambiguity. Binarism is the realization in logic of the literalist attitude toward language. The reduction of language to the declarative statement is matched in binarism by a logic that turns everything into an abstract allegory.</p>
<p>The most interesting reach of literalism comes, however, in the interpretation of the prophetic writings, especially Revelations. Here confronting what even it must see as image and metaphor, literalism performs the only operation that makes sense to it. The metaphoric is literalized. Armageddon must takes place on the plain of Jezreel near the ancient military fortification of Megiddo (35 miles southeast of Haifa), even though this patch of land “is not tomb enough and continent to hide the slain.” Gorbachev must be the Beast (how else account for that red swath on his forehead); Saddam Hussein must be the Antichrist-or Arafat or Bill Clinton. Anything and everything that happens in the Middle East must be scanned as a sign that we are indeed moving toward the Tribulation. When he speaks prophetically God is playing a little game with us, to activate what in fundamentalism passes as the exercise of imagination. To make sense of the text requires the precise matching of its ornate and expressionist images to persons, places and events which are thereby assigned the only meaning they can have. Mapped onto history the Bible offers us an absolute certitude about history, thereby vanquishing the greatest contingency. In dealing with the Middle East , for example, we need not confuse ourselves with the messy details of political history or develop a nuanced appreciation of Islam. Such things only breed confusion. All we have to do is literally match a prophecy to a contingency and Voila! we have attained literal certitude or, what amounts to the same thing, the fantasmatic imposition upon reality of what we want to believe. [2]</p>
<p>In all these operations sustaining a literal interpretation of the Bible is a desperate necessity. Once let go of that and the Book slips away into the hands of those who eventually will find anything in it-liberation theology, Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity, a searing message of love-since they will be guided in their reading by nothing but the attempt to sustain a heart in conflict with itself using a book to pry open the deepest and most conflicted registers of its own interiority. Who can tell, perhaps this approach could even lead to the discovery that the Book hates the simple minded; that it is indeed Kafkaesque in offering parables and prophecies that only deepen our burden by demanding an intelligence equal to the complexity of the human heart.</p>
<p>Literalism is a cardinal necessity of the fundamentalist because it guarantees the primary psychological need. For a certitude that in its simplicity puts an end to all doubt, even to the possibility of doubt. That is what one must have and once attained what nothing can be permitted to alter. The literal meaning of words one need only point to for that meaning to be established must be imposed on the world without a blink of hesitation, a shadow of doubt, and when necessary beyond any appeal to the simplest claims of our humanity. Two examples. Perhaps the most chilling moment in a recent CNN special on fundamentalism occurs at the end of an interview with a young girl-between 8 and 10-who was saved at an earlier age (3) and is now so firm in every article of the faith that she is no longer in need of her parents or teachers. Earlier when the mother was asked if she’d ever let the children watch South Park the young girl chimed in: “I wouldn’t want to watch a program like that.” The interview ends with this question: “what happens to those who don’t believe?” Like a trumpet call, in the blinking of an eye, even less, without batting an eyelash the child answers: “They go to hell” What made this statement so chilling was the absence of the slightest sign of doubt or pity. If there is an innocence left here it lies in the possibility that, unlike her parents, the child has not yet started to feast on images of the damned. She is however already in league with where fundamentalism will take her because she’s attained the correct posture: the assumption of an absolute certitude in which there is and can be no conflict of the heart with what it is told to believe, no possibility of wondering about a God who is capable of the titanic condemnation she’s just asserted as an assured article of faith. Nor of course is there the possibility of the only legitimate choice such a “truth” would demand-the rejection of such a God. 2 +2=5. Whatever one is told the Book says becomes the truth. One then clutches it to one’s bosom with literal precision, locking in step to its every command, Kadavergehorsamkeit. My second example comes from poor Mel Gibson who judging from a TV interview accepts with apparent indifference the belief that barring conversion to Catholicism his own wife (mother of his 7 Catholic children) will suffer eternal damnation. Such is the literal nature of his faith and the ability of that literalism to seal off everything else in him so that we need not fear that Gibson will ever find himself in the place of Milton’s Adam who choose death because he couldn’t bear the thought of an eternity apart from the woman he loves. Literalism protects the heart from everything, even its own deepest urgings.</p>
<p>There is something terrifying in our first example; something appalling in our second. Together they reveal the emotion in which the literalist passion is grounded. Hatred–of all complexities; of anything that can’t be reduced to the simplicity of absolute dogmas and the need to impose that hatred upon the world in a totalizing way. It is sometimes alleged that fundamentalists are just like the rest of us, confused by the world and seeking something to hang onto as a portal in the storm. This view is invalidated by the nature of the answers that the fundamentalist finds: answers that annihilate the problem, turn the desire for knowledge into a farce, and make of confusion the motive for self-infantalization. (By their answers ye shall know them.) Literalism is the way, but hatred is the through line. That is why fundamentalist certitude always becomes rectitude with the Bible mined for all the things one can label abomination. Thereby a sensibility that wants to have nothing to do with the world takes revenge upon it. On the surface literalism looks like a characteristic of fundamentalism free of psychological motives; on investigation it reveals itself as one of the clearest signs of the psychological need in which the entire project is grounded. Literalism is the first realization of the psychological root of fundamentalism: a fear and hatred of the contingencies that constitute being in the world. That is the first threat that must be vanquished. The second is found at a more intimate register.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>II. Conversion</p>
<p>“But if a man is to become not merely legally but morally a good manthis cannot be brought about through gradual reformationbut must be effected through a revolution in the man’s dispositionHe can become a new man only by a kind of rebirth, as it were a new creation.”</p>
<p>Immanuel Kant</p>
<p>This category is best approached through narrative. Fundamentalism is in love with a single and common story it never tires of telling. This story is the key to the nature of the transformation it celebrates and the absolute split that transformation produces. A subject finds itself lost in a world of sin, prey to all the evils that have taken control of one’s life. A despair seizes the soul. One is powerless to deal with one’s problems or heal oneself because there is nothing within the self that one can draw on to make that project possible. The inner world is a foul and pestilent congregation of sin and sinfulness. And there’s no way out. One has hit rock bottom and (so the story goes when it’s told best) teeters on the brink of suicide. And then in darkest night one lets Him into one’s life. And all is transformed. Changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born. Before one was a sinner doing the bidding of Satan. Now one is saved and does the work of the Lord. The old self is extinguished. Utterly. One has achieved a new identity, a oneness with Christ that persists as long as one follows one condition: one must let him take over one’s life. Totally. All decisions are now in Jesus’ hands. He tells one what to do and one’s fealty to his plan must be absolute. There can be no questioning, no doubt. For that would be the sign of only one thing-the voice of Satan and with it the danger of slipping back into those ways of being that one has, through one’s conversion, put an end to forever. The person or self one once was is no more so complete is the power of conversion. A psyche has been delivered from itself. And it’s all so simple finally, a matter of delivering oneself into His will, of following His plan as set forth in the Book and of letting nothing be within oneself but the voice of Jesus spreading peace and love throughout one’s being.</p>
<p>The most striking thing about this narrative is the transparent nature of the psychological defense mechanism from which it derives and the rigidity with which it employs that mechanism. Splitting. Which as Freud and Klein show is the most primitive mechanism of defense employed by a psyche terrified of its inner world. The conversion story raises that mechanism to the status of a theological pathos. Though the story depends on recounting how sinful one’s life once was(often in great even “loving” detail) the psychological meaning of conversion lies in its power to wipe all of that away. Magically one attains a totally new psyche, cleansed, pristine, and impermeable. One has, in fact, attained a totally new self-reference. The self is a function of one’s total identification with Jesus. Consciousness is bathed in his presence. It has become the scene in which his love expresses itself in the beatific smile that fills ones face whenever one thinks of one’s redemption, the tears that flood one’s blessed cheeks, the saccharine tone that raises the voice to an eerie self-hypnotizing pitch whenever one finds another opportunity to express the joyous emotions that one must pump up at every opportunity in order to keep up the hyperconsciousness required to sustain the assurance of one’s redemption. The whole process is a monument to the power of magical thinking to blow away inner reality, and as such a further sign of the primitive nature of the psychological mechanisms on which conversion depends.</p>
<p>The power of conversion to produce a saved self makes the Catholic confessional the operation of rank amateurs. There through forgiveness one gets temporary relief from sins that in all likelihood both priest and penitent know one will commit again. One gets a momentarily cleansed psyche but not a lasting transformation. Through conversion, however, one achieves an absolutely new beginning. One’s life is divided in half. Split between B.C. and A.D. Everything one once was is washed away. Everything one now is is its antithesis. Such was the miracle that came upon Dubya by the end of his walk along the beach with Billy Graham. The man George W. Bush was is no more. It was merely the stuff the dream of conversion was built on and now has vanished leaving not a rack behind. Dubya is reborn to the very depths of his being. And everything that follows becomes a pure expression of the new self he now has. Thanks to Jesus. For that’s the key both to conversion and its aftermath. One has finally little or nothing to do with the transformation. Agency is the Lord’s. He enters one’s psyche and performs precisely what the psyche could not do for itself. Moreover, the new agency that results from conversion is also his. All that one now does derives from his Will. One has become the medium through which the Diety achieves its purpose. One’s own will finally has nothing to do with it. One is but the servant of his Will, doing what he tells one to do as He makes that purpose known. That’s also why errror is inconceivable, when when asked Dubya is unable to discover any mistake he’s made as President. And of course that must be so in service to a deeper exigency. It is His will that put one in the position of the most powerful man in the world and He must have done so because He had something special in mind.</p>
<p>Such for the fundamentalist is what it means to have a self. To live an abstract allegory. Devil before, god after. With the self dissolved under the force of the one agent or the other. And never the twain shall meet. Except as absolute antagonists. One could say that conversion transforms the self, but it would be more appropriate to say that it annihilates it. That is in fact its function. For salvation to occur the self is precisely that which must be rendered powerless then transcended through a transformation that can only come from without. That transformation accordingly produces a split that is absolute and must be maintained at all costs. For it is what the psyche depends on to deliver it from everything disruptive and unstable in itself. Even if at times one finds oneself again a sinner, that sinfulness is all the work of the Big Other, Satan. Salvation is deliverance and such is the fundamentalist despair over the self that deliverance must be total.</p>
<p>Conversion is thus the antithesis of what happens in an authentic psychoanalysis. A contrast between the two will bring out what happens within the psyche when it embraces conversion. The key to an authentic analysis is the assumption of full responsibility for who one is through the attainment of a concrete and intimate knowledge of one’s psyche, of the unconscious desires and conflicts that have structured the history of one’s life. Attaining such knowledge entails three steps. (1) Recognition that one is the author of one’s condition; not Satan, not the parents, not demon rum in its effects on a pre-existing physiological condition. The state of one’s psyche in its bankruptcy is the function and fruition of a desire. That is why, as Freud said, one must listen to the details of one’s illness-not the appeal of remote and general causes-because it is in those details that much that is of value to one’s future life must be derived. (2) Through the second recognition: that the problem of the psyche is not to extinguish desire but to reclaim it by freeing oneself from the self-defeating ways one has lied to oneself about it. To do that one must see that the trauma or traumatic event that has produced a crisis or breakdown in the psyche is the fulfillment of its own plan for itself. It is the thing one has brought upon oneself, like Oedipus, through one’s effort to avoid it. As such it is what first puts one in the position to know oneself. As a being defined by conflicts that cannot be transcended but must be sustained.. The task is not to escape them but to enter into them in the right way. Conflict is and remains the reality ­and burden-of the psyche. (3) Which begets the third recognition. The recognition that one never escapes one’s psyche nor achieves some form of ego-identity that guarantees a stability outside or beyond conflict. Change requires a radically different discipline-and change is what psychoanalysis is all about. What it teaches is that the possibility of change involves taking on a total responsibility for one’s psyche. One does so not by fleeing one’s conflicts but by deepening one’s engagement in them. Life is a process of becoming responsible for oneself by deepening one’s awareness of all that within oneself for which one must assume responsibility. A genuine analysis turns on the assumption of a tragic agency; it “ends” when that agency has become the relationship that one lives to oneself. One is not freed from one’s disorder but delivered over to it. The depth of the interrogation one continues to pursue about one’s psyche becomes the basis of the agon one continues to have with oneself. That is the ethic that psychoanalysis makes possible, an ethic of existential change that is terminated only with one’s death. To exist is to be in the difficulty of what it is to be a subject burdened with itself.</p>
<p>Working through (Durcharbeit), the most important part of any analysis, is essentially an education in the process of assuming a tragic relationship to oneself. It is the art of learning to sustain tragic emotions-the kind we’re told we must avoid or shed as quickly as possible since all they can do is made us sad-as the emotions that put the subject in touch with its inner world. Depressive melancholy must become, for example, what Keats saw it as: “the wakeful anguish of the soul.” The route to self-knowledge is a progressive deepening of a knowledge of one’s disorder through the suffering of it. This possibility depends on a single circumstance: the concrete and bitter immersion in the particulars of one’s life and one’s responsibility for those particulars. No satanic agency caused one’s condition and no messianic agency will come to blow it away. One must know and accept the concrete causes in oneself that have shaped the self-lacerating history of one’s heart. One is not delivered from it; one is delivered over into it. There is only one source of inner strength and it is found in a full acceptance of relating to oneself in depth by sustaining the suffering that relationship entails. The answer to the problem of the psyche lies in the maximization of the problem. Self-analysis is based on the recognition that there is no deliverance from desire and inner conflict. Satan, in contrast, is the blank check that puts an end to that process before it can begin. Consider the contrast between two statements. ” I was a lustful man and a fornicator who worshipped the Beast within me.” “I was a man who hated women and used sex to injure them psychologically in order to feed the emotional conflicts of my relationship with my mother.” The difference between the two statements is enormous. The first obliterates the need for further description, exorcising the possibility of self-knowledge and genuine responsibility. The second is but the overture to the painful problem of taking on responsibility for every word of it.</p>
<p>Conversion is the flight from that action. The psyche is safely delivered into the hands of abstraction. One was under Satan’s power when one did all those terrible things. That’s how He works. He invades a soul like a thief in the night and under his power we do all sorts of things that are against our nature. But once we let Jesus in we are cleansed. Born again. All before was the work of an otherness that invaded us. It is now burnt and purged away. We can of course feel remorse but at the same time those we harmed should know it was not really our doing. The cause is not in ourselves but in the virus that invaded our soul.</p>
<p>Psychoanalysis delivers the subject over to itself as the one relationship that cannot be transcended. Conversion delivers the subject from itself. What one was is not the depth of a disorder one must plumb concretely in the full horror of all one must come to know about oneself as author. It is rather all that one can blow away through one’s conversion! Such is the power and pleasure of splitting as a mechanism of defense. In the absolute reliance on that mechanism fundamentalism renders up its secret.</p>
<p>Here, then, is the real truth of conversion. Fear and hatred of the psyche and a desperate desire to be rid of it. The psyche is that which one must find a way to escape and then to deny. Any sign of its continued presence after conversion produces panic anxiety. That is why for conversion to work one must maintain a carefully limited subjectivity given over to the self-hypnotic iteration of all the signs or behaviors one maintains in order to reassure oneself of one’s salvation. The presence of anything else within fills the fundamentalist with terror and loathing and the need for a fresh exorcism. The psyche is the problem in fundamentalism not because it’s sinful but because it’s exacting. Sustaining a relationship with it requires the constant opening of oneself to the suffering of truths not about the devil but about oneself; not about evil but about the actual things one has done to other’s harm, which is the bottomless discovery that psychoanalysis inflicts on us as the price of remaining human. Such a tragic discipline can have no meaning for the fundamentalist except as the condition one must be delivered from. How perfect then to find a way to be done with the whole thing, to shed one’s former life the way a snake sheds its skin and then be reborn in the conviction that one has consigned it to the past. But the only way to sustain that state is by living the life of a subjectivity under surveillance needing and giving itself constant reassurance that it is saved by pumping up all the positive emotions (and happy talk) that witness one’s oneness with the Lord while guarding against the expression of any of the old, negative emotions that would suggest the opposite. Expressing the emotions of the saved has become an obsessional necessity. One thing alone is needful. Giving the proof at all times-especially to oneself-that one is on God’s side.</p>
<p>To be saved is to enter a condition in which one only has “positive” emotions, Christian emotions, which are always played “over the top” because the primary purpose of the performance is to engage in an ongoing act of self-hypnosis. In keeping with a duty that cannot be shirked: one must become the walking embodiment of one’s simplest version of the love that God has for you since any other kind of love would be exacting whereas this one offers the bliss of self-infantalization. That’s the source of the monotonous sameness of the fundamentalist congregation, the aping and mimicking of one another; the identical smile of mindless bliss, the tearful displays, the saccharine tone in the prosletyizing voice, the need to constantly proclaim how wonderful it feels to be saved and to bear witness to that fact by turning every possible occasion into a chance to inflict a bevy of dimensionless emotions and sentiments on others as if being a Christian amounted to being a walking Hallmark card. In all this one labors under a manic necessity. But it isn’t enough. That mania must find a practice that will offer lasting reassurance by enabling one to repeat (as it were) the process and content of one’s conversion.</p>
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<p>III. Evangelicalism</p>
<p>” This is deadly work.”</p>
<p>Clov in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame</p>
<p>Evangelicalism is the manic activity whereby the split in the psyche that conversion creates is projected onto the world. Thereby one confirms the identity one has attained through a fresh exorcism of the one that conversion vanquished. Evangelicism offers the fundamentalist the only way to sustain the reborn self: by trying to recreate the experience of one’s conversion in others in order to reenact an unending exorcism. In the other one locates the split off self one once was now placed totally outside oneself. It becomes the fantasm of what must be the condition of one’s auditors, of those who, whether they know it or not, are lost, wallowing in error and sin, their minds awash in the torrents of secularism, dumb to the clarity that comes from the Words one now speaks to bring them enlightenment, could they but hear. This is the root cause of the frustration that quickly comes if we make the mistake of bidding entry when the fundamentalist knocks on the door. We offer discourse in vain to those who are seized by a necessity. It’s not just the repeated literal citation of the Bible as absolute truth (“do you know that satan was once an angel close to God; that’s why he’s so powerful”) or the repeated refrain that puts an end to all discussion (“well I believe the Bible and the Bible says”); or the inability to hear anything we say except as a sign that we’ve not yet grasped the truth that’s galling. It’s the recognition that despite the charitable demeanor, evangelical activity is based on a total lack of respect for the minds of those they are trying to convert.</p>
<p>That lack of respect is, however, necessary. Anything less would be a confession of doubt. Which would make the other a threat when they can only be one thing: an image of what one was prior to conversion, of what the world in its unregenerate condition represents. Namely, the place where one projects all that conversion supposedly removed from the psyche. Through evangelicalism one engages in the repetition compulsion that has become one’s innermost necessity. The only way to prevent a return of the projections is through their continued projection. By locating them outside oneself and waging an “attack” on that externalization one is delivered from the fear of what can no longer be within. Everything bad is now outside oneself and one must do everything to keep it there. One can share with one’s auditor the confession in the abstract that one is a “sinner” too but the discussion better shift quickly to the evils of the world: to homosexuals and abortion and the entertainment industry and best of all the imperiled state of a nation bereft of “moral values.” One is well tuned then. The manic drive has been unlocked and sweeps to a revenge upon anything that can be even remotely associated with one’s former self; for one has entered a dream state and readies desire for wrathful discharge upon a world drenched in sin. Evangelicalism offers the psyche a chance to be cleansed again of everything that may still fester deep within somewhere, longing to break out. This is an operation fundamentalism shares with its most famous offshoot-Alcoholics Anonymous. Though splitting and projection produce denial, one is always in danger of slipping. One needs a ritual to reestablish who one is by again exorcising what one was. What the meeting does for the alcoholic proselytizing does for the fundamentalist.</p>
<p>It should now be evident that what looks at first like the least important of the four characteristics of fundamentalism fulfills perhaps the deepest psychological necessity. Without this activity the fundamentalist psyche would implode. The obsessional need to preach the gospel, to find a way as soon as possible to let every stranger one meets know that one is a Christian, born again, are practices that derive not from a lack of social skills but from a manic necessity. For the saved there is and can be nothing but the story of their salvation. It is the master narrative to which all lives must conform, the tale one must tell as often and ardently as the Ancient Mariner tells his. Though for antithetical reasons. The Mariner tells his tale to relieve an inner pain by injecting it into the consciousness of listeners who will be existentially individuated by the tale. Evangelists tell theirs to reassure themselves about their “identity” by trying to compel others to participate in it. Structurally and psychologically, however, both tellers labor under the same necessity. Repetition as the attempt to retain an identity in order to flee something else-in the Mariner’s case a suicidal depression; in the fundamentalist perhaps the same thing — that is of necessity buried deep in the unconscious. One piece of evidence in support of this hypothesis: without the chance to engage in evangelical activity the fundamentalist psyche sinks into a state of empty boredom.</p>
<p>Thus the lassitude of Dubya before 9-11 and the hectic messianic energy that has defined him since. 9-11 gave him what he needed-the chance to transform a stalled Presidency by adopting an evangelical stance toward the entire world. Preemptive unilateralism is not just a political credo. It’s an evangelical article of faith. The world must of necessity be divided into Good and Evil. And one must bring that message to the world in the same way the fundamentalist visits the doorstep of the unconverted. If those one addresses-the United Nations, other countries, members of the Republican party-aren’t converted to the Word that can only be a sign of their error. Or worse. As Ashcroft never lost an opportunity to remind us, their complicity with the enemy. The whole world is either with us or against us. And nothing anyone says can have any other meaning. We cannot let our message be altered by doubts or fears. The fundamentalist mind, closed off from discourse by its own certitude can only project itself upon the global stage in the way demanded by inner psychological necessity. Manic activity under the guise of certainty as the proof that one has triumphed over all inner conflicts. And thus the beckoning of a new necessity. The need to extend the opposition between Good and Evil as far as possible-from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Axis of Evil to the 60 nations identified as supporters of terror-in the assurance that God has chosen one for a mission not just to convert the World but to wage war on whatever one labels evil, the only certainty being that one will always find fresh targets because doing so has now become the projective necessity of a mania that drives toward the omnipotence it seeks by pushing the war on terror toward an ultimate realization. Moreover, whatever one must do in waging this war is justified without the possibility of any appeal to conscience. Thus another doctrinal innovation that distinguishes Dubya from all previous Presidents: the assertion of the right for a first strike use of nuclear weapons and with it the developments now under way to create a host of new “tactical” nuclear weapons. To deliver the world from the spectre of nuclear war we must ready ourselves to wage a nuclear war on the world. (Paranoia thus projects the possibility of an omnipotence beyond MAD as policy.) And so we should all indeed be trembling in our boots to know the mind-set that now has its finger on the nuclear trigger. Happiness is a warm gun.</p>
<p>The war on terror has many meanings, not the least of which the blank check to disseminate an Orwellian fear whenever the Adminstration desires. Perhaps its deepest meaning, however, is to mark the founding moment in which politics in Amerika becomes inseparable from the projection of a religious ideology. 9-11 told Dubya that the time was ripe for a mission that the Diety elected him to perform. A seamless transition thus offers itself to us, from an evangelical presidency to the fourth characteristic of fundamentalism, the one that, as we’ll see, informs and completes the others taking us to the heart of the disorder, the innermost necessity that hallows all its dreams.</p>
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<p>IV. Apocalypticism-The Heart of the Ulcer</p>
<p>“Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing the personal one.”</p>
<p>Freud</p>
<p>Apocalypticism is the capstone that completes the process of fundamentalist self-fashioning. Without it, as we’ll see, the entire edifice would crumble. In the Apocalpytic moment the disorder at the core of the fundamentalist psyche achieves a final form, thereby passing over to the register of the sublime. The sublime is the register of the psyche that is reached when the informing desire is given an unbounded expression. All conflicts are then resolved in a release of tension that is total and constitutes what Lacan means by jouissance. The psyche has found a way to fulfill and complete the desire that structures its inner constitution. As we’ll see, each structure described in the previous sections requires Apocalypticism and achieves completion in it. In the Apocalyptic fantasm an ultimate expression is given to the conflicts that define the fundamentalist psyche through an action that brings an end to those conflicts.</p>
<p>The necessity of Apocalypticism is a direct outgrowth of the psychological mechanism on which fundamentalist relies to structure the world. The only way to prevent a return of the projections is through a final evacuation. This desire can only come to fruition with the picturing of a world beyond redemption held under the brand of an all-consuming wrath. That image finalizes the split that defines the psyche by giving sublime expression to the way one must view the world when seeing it from the standpoint of one’s salvation. Apocalypticism thus brings to completion the psychological operation that has been employed repeatedly from the beginning. First, one cleanses oneself by projecting one’s disowned desires unto the world. The resulting split must then be maintained rigorously with nothing allowed to fall outside its scope. The psyche must be voided of everything save the serenities of the saved. For that to happen, however, the world must become the object of an unstinting attack on all that one has externalized there. This act must be endless lest the projections return. By its internal logic fundamentalism is thus driven ineluctably to a need for quantitative expansion through the discovery of greater, more insidious forms of evil. The mathematical sublime beckons, the need to produce greater and greater magnitudes. The world becomes the polluted chamber of one’s foulest imaginings with no way to check the demands of that vision. Within the psyche an even greater transformation occurs. One craves the constant exercise of an emotion that one must just as strenuously disclaim. Hatred. One needs fresh supplies of it as badly as the U.S. needs to ransack the globe for fresh supplies of oil. No matter how loudly one proclaims one’s salvation, purified in the blood of the lamb, hatred has become the innermost necessity to which one is wedded. And that necessity has now broken lose of any containment. Hatred of one’s former self is no longer sufficient. One now hates the world and is driven to seek out everything in it that one can claim caused or can cause an inner condition other than the purity of the saved. One hates, that is, everything that resists surrender and absolute obedience to the system of literalism and literal commands to which one has committed oneself. As the scope of what one hates grows apace it finds fruition in the binary opposition that is essential to it. Good and Evil divide the world in two, giving ontological form to the rigidity of the split that defines the fundamentalist psyche. All differences, all particularities, all complexities must give way to the demands of a comprehensive abstraction. And the fury of that abstraction can and will brook no exceptions. Everything thus resolves itself into the ultimate necessity required by the informing hatred. One longs for and demands an end to all the contingencies that have from the beginning been sources of fear and confusion. It is what one has always sought. To be done with all of it. With the contingency of the human. To be done with all ambiguity and complexity and confusion. Done with the feeling that history has no purpose other than chaos or meaningless repetition. Done with embodiment itself- and all the unwelcome desires it imposes on us. Done with the very sources of all that one hates and fears. To locate it all ontologically in a single principle-evil-and then be rid of it all once and for all through the triumph of that force that has the power to extinguish it all.</p>
<p>Literalism tried to keep the world at bay by reducing everything to the simplest formulas, the mind itself to the most unproblematic blink of consciousness in stupified adherence to the narrow fixations needed to banish metaphor, ambiguity, and uncertainty. But it wasn’t enough. The world keeps seeping it. There must be a way to be done with it, once and for all. To find what one has craved from the beginning. The end. And a proper end-one that will give sublime expression to the desire that has fed the whole thing. Death. The longing for death transformed into a sublime celebration of death. Life in its complexity demands too much of us. That in a nutshell is the fundamentalist message. Only death can deliver one from the threat life poses. Only when life is done is one safe from a return of the projections and an eruption of the repressed. One has always longed for deliverance into a realm free of desire and all its temptations. Death alone offers the comfort one seeks. The resentment in which the psyche has centered itself demands no less. One must work one’s hatred of the world into a frenzy and feed that hatred with sublime images of evil in order to bring it to a fevered pitch. Release and satisfaction then come with the delivery of that world over to the hands of an angry God expressing his wrath in an orgy of pure destructiveness. Thank God for The Book of Revelations. For the only way both to satisfy and to purge one’s hatred is to express it on a massive world-shattering scale. The death one seeks projected into the death one delivers. The self is thereby done with life and freed for transport of the saved split off self to a realm of bliss freed from all cares. A psyche wedded to thanatos has found in thanatos the final solution. One’s resentment against life has been turned into a righteous and of necessity cosmic attack upon it.</p>
<p>In Transformations Wilfred Bion tries to conceptualize a destructiveness “that goes on working after it destroys personality, time, and existence.” Such is the desire that feeds the fundamentalist fixation on The Book of Revelations. A psyche wedded to thanatos seeks sublime expression of that desire. It finds it satisfied repeatedly in Revelations, as if its author, like the director of the next disaster movie, keeps seeking the perfect image to feed the underlying venom or to bring it, with each repetition, closer to that image in which destructiveness will find its objective correlative. One makes allowances of course for the author of Revelations, what with his people under genocidal persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire. But how account for the fixation on such images, as if they were the only real source of pleasure, of those whose greatest fear is that their wife will find the G spot or that Mommie’s little darlings will see MTV before the V chip is installed? How account for the persistent unscratable itch for picturing the great Whore of Bablyon and anticipate the delicious synesthesia of the golden cup “in her hand filled with abominable things and the filth of her fornications? How account for the thrill that comes as one reads again the rich description of all the plagues that will be visited upon the earth? And how else account for the necessity of the grand crescendo to which it all moves as the enraptured reader approaches Armageddon and the final battle that will put an end to that folly, human history, giving the reader the true pleasure of the text since one has known all along that history could have no purpose or meaning other than its destruction? One loves this book and longs to see the coming to pass of all it promises in fulfilling on a cosmic stage the very process that has given structure to one’s psyche, as if the apocalypse one suffered on the little stage were but a prefigurement meant to whet one’s appetite for the Big One.</p>
<p>Here then a reading of the function that Revelations plays in the fundamentalist psyche. In the depths of its psyche fundamentalism is ruled by catastrophic anxiety, a self tottering on the brink of a dissolution in which it will fragment imprisoned in a world that will impose all of its terrors and evils upon it. We will fail to understand fundamentalism as long as we resist seeing how close it is to a psychosis. Fundamentalist rage is the attempt of a subject to hold itself together in the only way it can: by waging war on all that terrifies it. The psyche commits itself to destructiveness to allay a destruction that already threatens it from within. That condition results in a paradoxical situation that finds its only possible solution in Revelations. Destructiveness must be given a full, unchecked expression and the psyche must somehow survive that act. The drive toward death repeats itself in increasing magnitudes as it moves toward a final conflict that obliterates all future conflict and transports the self to a realm of unending bliss. The slight textual support (1 Thessalonians 4:17) notwithstanding, the Rapture is a psychological necessity. It embodies the magical thought that the coming of global destruction is also the coming of salvation. One has always longed for a feast of destructiveness as the signal for one’s transport to a condition free of the world. That’s why when that moment comes it is impossible to prevent the surfacing of a long suppressed and twisted sexual desire. As destruction approaches so too does ascent to a realm in which one is free to project a marriage consummated in the sky with Christ serving as the Bride. The delights of that image should not prevent us from seeing what has happened here. The longing for death has been turned into an ecstatic embrace of it; a rapture so complete in its jouissance that one can no longer disguise the fact that all of ones libidinal energies have gone into the quest for such a complete and final unbinding, an extinction within consciousness of all save the ecstatic recognition that one is saved and that all the connections that once bound one to the world have been severed once and for all. The psychotic attack on linking finds its apotheosis in Apocalypticism. The Rapture must be interpolated into Revelations at precisely this point because one’s salvation corresponds with the arrival of something else-the dawning of the cataclysmic aggressions that must be vented in order to bring destruction upon the earth and usher in the millenium. In the clouds, safe with Jesus, one can continue to rejoice free of life or cast a cold eye upon it from time to time like one looking back on the moment just before one’s conception but free now (an angelic Onan) to nip it in the bud. Or to spend the 1000 years millenium assured that though peace reigns it will come again, one last time, the dead themselves resurrected so that they can be slain again in a greater destruction than has ever been visited upon the earth ( Revs. 19-20) and then, as if that isn’t enough, consigned to torment day and night forever. Only then is the rage that informs John’s text discharged. And only then can love be expressed without leading to a new burst of rage. [3] Only then can a new heaven and a new earth be celebrated in language admittedly of great beauty with God himself wiping away all tears, putting an end to death, pain, and sorrow, making all things new, delivering believers from realities that they could never see as anything but arguments against life, Revelations confirming this fact long before Nietzsche conceptualized it. The great love feast–it’s a pretty fantasy. As if once rage fashions its masterpiece the heart will open and what has been frozen for so long will become a warm and virgin spring.</p>
<p>Historically the great transformation in the use of Apocalypticism to incite fundamentalist believers to political action came in the 1980’s, during the Reagan years, when Jerry Falwell (to cite but one example) shifted from the pre-millenarian belief that the faithful can do nothing but spread the gospel and wait as the modernist evil that will bring about the Tribulation runs its course to the activist position that fundamentalism must become a political force, indeed take over the country if possible, and make it a Christian Nation worthy of being spared as well as the one chosen to advance the movement toward that long sought, long delayed, deeply longed for and blessed Apocalyptic event. George Herbert Walker Bush was finally a man of restraint with a keen appreciation of the realities of global politics. Dubya labors under no such restraints. His is a mind unencumbered by an countervailing pressure that the world might offer to his singleness of vision. Thus there’s no telling where the faith will lead now that Dubya has his mandate and must deliver to satisfy the grandiose conception of what God himself elected him to do. Even perhaps find a straight shining path from the cataclysmic future that defines that paranoic present that constantly recedes before us unless, that is, the Apocalyptic future can become the Evangelical present? Under Dubya that is now one term for reading what is going on in the Middle East.</p>
<p>It is hard to conceive the extent of the contempt for life that informs fundamentalism. As a final example, however, a testimonial to the environmental policies of the Bush Administration, consider the quaint piece of fundamentalist folklore known as “dominion theology.” This tenet of the faith was openly professed by former Secretary of the Interior James Watt, the mentor of the current Secretary Gale Norton. Dominion theology holds that the Bible commands us to use up the earth’s resources. We glut ourselves not just for capitalist greed but by biblical mandate. Indeed, as the end approaches it is our duty to do so globally since there’s little time remaining to complete the job and thereby bring that final day ever closer. Besides, why bother preserving the planet. After the Second Coming none of it is going to matter. And so with each new success-the hole in the ozone, the melting of the ice caps, drilling in the national wildlife refuge, the Alaska pipeline – we give further proof that history is moving in the right direction. Since all is yellow to the jaundiced eye, the only thing the fundamentalist, like the capitalist, can see in Nature is that which must be conquered, used up, then subjected to disposal. The oft-chronicled battle of fundamentalists against environmentalism is dictated by the demands of the manic triad. Triumph, contempt, dismissal. Thereby destructiveness is projected onto life itself. The sublime for the fundamentalist is not found in the rain forest, but in its ravaging. Through such acts one finds another way to project one’s hatred of life onto another object that has the power to deepen our entry into and love of it.</p>
<p>It is hard to know which is colder, crueler: the logic of fundamentalism or the logic of capitalism? But then that question assumes they are different in some fundamental way. And let’s face it we want to hang on to that difference because it offers reassurance, even a guarantee, that we can play the two off against each other. Those currently in charge of our country suffer from no such illusion. Maybe that’s because they know the secret we need to fathom if we’re to historicize the connection that Max Weber saw between Christianity and Capitalism and thereby learn that Christian fundamentalism and Global Capitalism correspond to one another because they derive from the same seedbed and feed on the same destructive violence.</p>
<p>In concluding I offer a summary of how thanatos works in the fundamentalist psyche binding everything to the necessity for a sublime discharge. Apocalypticism expresses both the final evacuation needed to prevent a return of the projections and the jouissance required to fulfill the demand of thanatos for that complete unbinding that can only come by putting an end to everything. The hatred in which the psyche is grounded requires no less: it is total in its control over the inner world and thus demands a matching totalization. In the images of destruction that warm its heart one sees externalized the process that has ravaged the inner world. In that sense fundamentalism is the most extreme act of sado-masochism toward oneself that has yet been devised. As such it offers us perhaps the deepest insight into the super-ego as the force of death in the psyche, as an agency that is satisfied with no less than soul-murder, the bending of the entire psyche in blind service to its commands. Literal obedience to literal commands is merely the tip of that iceberg. It is within that the true process of soul-murder takes place. In a psyche that is willing to sacrifice everything in itself in order to placate an authority that is vindictively cruel in the wrath it directs on the slightest opposition to its will. In an attempt to achieve identification with that force the psyche wages war first on itself and then upon the world. The former act reveals the power of the super-ego; the latter act offers a way to confirm one’s identification with it. In sacrificing everything in oneself to the super-ego one attains the right to become the walking embodiment of its wrath. The fundamentalist can loudly proclaim his or her love of God but the fact of the matter is that one fears Him because terror is the only relationship He permits. Fear-that is the thing one has never been able to overcome. That is why all transgression or the mere thought of transgression unleashes an overpowering guilt under which the psyche unravels. That guilt is the power of the super-ego to maintain control over the psyche. Super-ego guilt is thanatos in its immediacy ravaging the psyche by punishing it with the loss of a “love” that is indistinguishable from hate so absolute is the sacrifice it requires.</p>
<p>But how does such an agency come into being? On what must it draw to create the enormous energy that gives it such power over/within the psyche. Could it be that this too has and must have its beginnings in love? We have traced the effects of the destructiveness to which the fundamentalist psyche is wedded but we have not yet considered the cause. Sections 1-4 trace the dialectical progression of a disorder that we must now consider in its genesis. To do that we need to strike through the sound and fury of fundamentalist rage and get at what Ahab called “the little lower layer” by showing how thanatos first takes root in a soul and why it continues to ulcer there until it finds fulfillment in Apocalyptic expression.</p>
<p>Before turning to that examination a brief summary of the psychoanalytic understanding we’ve developed of the four characteristics that Charles Strozier isolates as fundamental to fundamentalism. (1) Inerrancy as the need to reduce all complexities to the literal in order to confine the mind to its simplest operations; (2) Conversion or the use of the primitive psychological defense known as splitting to establish an absolute separation of the saved psyche from the damned; (3)Evangelicalism or manic activity as the way to sustain and project that split; (4) Apocalypticism or thanatos incarnate as the desire for an event that will satisfy the hatred and the death-drive that has come to define the fundamentalist psyche. In discussing these characteristics I deliberately withheld the issue of sexuality until now not in order to minimize its importance but to maximize it by creating the context of characteristics that only make sense once we grasp the sexual disorder that informs them. Fundamentalism will then emerge in its proper meaning, as one of the clearest examples of the old and oft forgotten Freudian insight that sexuality is at the center of the human psyche and the dialectical opposition of eros and thanatos at the center of culture.The previous sections describe a super-ego “morality” grounded in thanatos. The following section attempts to describe the sexual roots of the disorder and thereby offer an explanation of how thanatos can take over the life of the psyche and channel all energies into its service.</p>
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<p>V. Sexual Roots of the Fundamentalist Psyche</p>
<p>“Think of the depressing contrast between the radiant intelligence of a healthy child and the feeble intellectual powers of the average adult. Can we be quite certain that it is not precisely religious education which bears a large share of the blame for this relative atrophy?” — Freud</p>
<p>My goal is to plumb the root cause of phenomena that are well-known. Fundamentalists live in a world obsessed with sexuality. It provides the primary texts of Biblical citation. It’s the concrete referent of the fulminations against secularism, secular humanism, post-modernism, ethical relativism, feminism, deconstructionism, etc. It’s also what the vaunted claim of “moral values” is all about. Morality is not about a life of charity, or the pursuit of justice, or the opening of oneself to the depth of human suffering. It’s about avoiding certain sexual sins and fixating on that dimension of life to the virtual exclusion of everything else. Battling sex is apparently what life is all about as if the primary plan of the creator were to put us on earth so that we’ll be tempted by that in us that we must condemn in order to win salvation. By the same token, each new scandal reveals the consequences of sexual repression: the brutal abuse of young boys by a legion of pedophile priests; the sexual license of Jim Jones and David Koresh; the sadomasochistic bondage rituals that Jimmy Swaggart significantly could only enact with prostitutes; the epidemic of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse that is the untold story of the fundamentalist family. The repression of sexuality has as a necessary consequence the brutalization of the other.</p>
<p>All such phenomena are variations on the same tired story. Sexual repression breeds foul imaginings. Which of necessity fixate on the sexual. What has been rendered foul within runs amuck in the world. Following the dictates of a punitive super-ego the psyche becomes obsessed with the attack on sexuality. The purpose is to render evil virtually everything connected with sex until life itself is reduced to an allegory in which the battle of good and evil is all about the temptations of the flesh, as if nothing else in life matters so complete is the vindictive fixation of the Deity on the human genitals.</p>
<p>The eroticization of thanatos necessarily has a flip side: the demonization of eros. The libidinal economy on which fundamentalism rests is as simple as it is devastating. Eros must be turned into evil, sin, pollution. So that all of one’s desire can go into thanatos. Or vice-versa. Once destructiveness has been eroticized all one’s energies become fixated on the erotic since it poses the greatest threat to the resentment one feels toward life in general. The chicken-egg question of temporal priority misses the necessary dialectical connection. The only way to triumph over eros is by eroticizing death. And the only way to secure that eroticization is by projecting guilt, sin, resentment and punishment into every aspect of human sexuality. Such is the basic logic to which the fundamentalist project is wedded.</p>
<p>To understand why that is so, however, requires answering two questions.</p>
<p>(1)What must sex be for it to assume such importance?</p>
<p>(2)And what must happen to it for the fundamentalist mind set to assume control over the psyche?</p>
<p>What is needed is an account of the genesis of fundamentalism through a description of the sequence of formative experiences through which thanatos by invading sexuality assumes control over a psyche.</p>
<p>Fundamentalism fixates on sex not by accident or divine decree but by the exigencies of immediate experience. Eros is that force which binds us to life as that blessing which can be lived and loved as an end in itself. It is the spontaneity that weds the child to an innocent and unbridled curiosity; the vitality that resists any restraints imposed on the outpouring of an affective embrace of life in all its forms; the ability to experience the natural prior to and free of the ethical, as a matter of fascination and exploration. Eros is that in us which wants to incarnate itself fully, to expend oneself in investing all of one’s energies into life. And when all of this becomes overtly sexual it discovers its innermost meaning: to open oneself to another and incarnate in the body the depth of feeling that two subjects can have toward each other. Sexual pleasure is the temple of a holiness that neither wants nor needs other worlds so completely has it found fulfillment in this one. Such an erotic valuation becomes in poets like Whitman and Blake the prime agent of all human perception; it is in Plato the source of noble laws and institutions; and in Freud it is that which pits itself against the forces of death. It is also, of course, that which rises up at puberty and at crucial crises throughout life in rebellion against the controls that those who hate and fear it have placed upon desire.</p>
<p>Because it poses a comprehensive threat to the fundamentalist project eros must be poisoned at early as possible. Ironically there is, however, only one way this project can succeed. Through love. To summarize briefly a concept I’ve developed at length elsewhere, parenting is the act through which the parent’s conscious and unconscious conflicts and desires become the psyche of the child. This transmission is the act through which the child’s psyche is born. The child’s unconditional love is the condition that makes it all possible. To put it in more concrete terms, from an early age one must be indoctrinated by those one trusts and loves in the primary lesson: that obedience is the price one must pay to retain love. And so deep must become one’s need for this love that one becomes willing to make any sacrifice it requires. Thereby the condition is set for the greatest transformation. The energy from which the very life of the psyche springs has been invaded by a virus that attacks the subject from within. The process that will issue in the super-ego has taken root. In Lacanian terms, one’s desire has become the desire of the other with that condition set as the way one will experience both oneself and the world. Good and evil can now be bred into everything. The body has become the scene of ethical instruction. All natural functions are turned into matters of intense preoccupation. All innocent curiosities nipped in the bud. Spontaneity itself becomes a source of inhibition. The reign of the literal is born. That which most intimately attaches us to life becomes the thing upon which a ceaseless attack is waged. All natural instincts must become evidence that the only way to experience the body is as a site of sinful desires. Embodiment itself must become something one hates and fears, a condition in which something evil and disgusting is always at work. Everything that desire opens up in the subject must be turned back against itself. Sin, shame, and guilt must come to define the relationship that the subject lives to itself. The goal of fundamentalist child-rearing is to create a subject preoccupied with waging war on itself, with battling against its own desires under the gaze of a judgmental, punitive super-ego. [4]</p>
<p>The super-ego maintains this power because internally a fundamental transformation has occurred. All of one’s desire has been channeled into one’s service to the super-ego. It is thereby empowered to wage an attack on anything in the subject that would oppose or threaten its reign. The super-ego is as Freud noted harsher than the actual parents. It is so because it fuses prohibition with the quest for love. What is the first and perhaps the deepest attachment of one’s life is bound to a force opposed to the very thing from which it draws its energy. Sexuality of necessity brings this conflict to a head. For in it one experiences at its greatest intensity the clash of the two principles that constitute the psyche: (1) that in us that would break free of the super-ego and constitute a desire independent of it and (2) the power of the super-ego, as a result of the love one has invested in it, to crush the opponent. This conflict is inescapable for the simplest of reasons. Operating upon sexuality was precisely how the super-ego was formed. It is in one’s sexuality, accordingly, that one experiences the true virulence of a force that has the power to turn the inner world into a place of self-torture. All one has to do is desire what it forbids. One then learns the truth. That capitulation under the unrelenting pressure of that self-torture is the triumph of a fundamentalist education. In the war on sex the process of formation completes itself. Its product is a subject living a relationship to itself defined by self-contempt, self-punishment, and self-unraveling. Any attempt to break with the super-ego only serves to increase its power. Appearances to the contrary, the super-ego isn’t about morality. It’s about power-and the irresistible privilege that comes with power: to torture, in fact to erect torture as the relationship the subject lives to itself.</p>
<p>How could it be otherwise? What else could child-rearing be for the parents but the chance to prove themselves to the Lord by taking whatever measures are required to assure that His commands assume total control over the child’s psyche. Getting the child to internalize a super-ego that makes guilt over one’s desires the primary relationship the subject has to itself assumes in fundamentalism the status of a categorical imperative. Life must be filled up with inhibitions and prohibitions in order to assure that sexuality will always be experienced as a fall into sin. Internally that experience is guaranteed by the condition that lays in wait to assault the transgressive psyche, even when the transgression is only in thought or fantasy. Transgression, one discovers, floods the psyche with guilt, shame, and the conviction of a fundamental badness that can only be purged by an attack on oneself. That attack is the nuptial offering that seals one’s marriage to the super-ego. It is the way one restores one’s communion with it. In punishing oneself one experiences the joy, the libidinal pleasure, of a union that feeds on destructiveness. Thereby one reveals the truth: that thanatos has taken control of the psyche. A subject at war with itself has been created, one that will experience desire itself as a sign of guilt and will loathe it as that within oneself that one must strive to extinguish. Thanatos has created a psyche dedicated to soul murder-to the murder of one’s own soul. The power that death-work has assumed in the psyche now ravages the psyche. In three interconnected ways. (1) So great is the power guilt has assumed that any opposition to the super-ego unleashes an attack that threatens with psyche with self-dissolution. Such is the true power of the super-ego: unending torment with no exit save suicide or psychotic self-fragmentation. (2)Ego identity thus becomes the active, constant effort to spy out and combat everything in itself that could be labeled a source or occasion of sin. (3) In the body consequently a condition now maintains in which every desire becomes the overture to a war that must be waged until the very sources of desire have been conquered, until everything that might once have been natural has been rendered thoroughly unnatural. Sado-masochism has come to define the subject’s relationship to itself. The only pleasure lies in the coldness and cruelty of an unrelenting attack upon one’s sinfulness and the pleasure one gets from making oneself the abject object of that wrath. A world of perfect self-hatred has been created. A culture of pure thanatos has been installed as the unity of a psyche that must project good and evil, sin and punishment, damnation and salvation into everything until life itself becomes the doleful and guilty passage of a shriveled and shrunken (but saved!) subjectivity toward the only thing it can desire. The End-the death of desire itself, the unending struggle against it, and the ever-present danger that one will slip and find oneself in the clutches of the damned. The Apocalyptic desire is born.</p>
<p>Sexuality has been transformed into the festering wound out of which resentment is born. For every time desire rises up one experiences again one’s powerlessness to break the strangle-hold the super-ego has over one’s sexuality. A jaundiced eye then casts its gaze on all who have succeeded where one failed Envy rises up, offering one the only exit from inner conflict–hatred of the sexual and an unending war upon it. That war has become one’s deepest necessity. Envy begets hatred begets rage. The only way to relieve that rage is by projecting it onto the world. That act has an added charm: it is the way one achieves identification with that super-ego that has never stopped assaulting one from within. As avenging angel damning a sinful world one reclaims as resentment what one has had to sacrifice as desire. The transformation is complete. One is no longer a child tortured into submission by a punitive super-ego. One has become an adult projecting that destructiveness upon the world. For a psyche so bound to hatred requires a constant supply of fresh objects and occasions on which to vent itself. It is wedded to the search for a sublime fulfillment of the rage that defines it. And because everything within the psyche opposed to this project has been killed there is no way to halt it. Death has become absolute and craves that total unbinding that can come only with a totalizing Apocalyptic projection. (The destructiveness analyzed in section 4 is the necessary outgrowth of the sexual condition this section describes. That inversion is the circle the fundamentalist psyche is unable to break out of.)</p>
<p>The process I’ve just described is not a disorder restricted to the reddest neck in the reddest state. It is a portrait drawn from what also typified a Roman Catholic childhood in the late fifties and early sixties. What Freud struggled to comprehend Roman Catholicism throughout its history has known instinctively and with a thoroughness that enabled it to raise the whole thing to the level of a system based on the most fundamental of recognitions: that working upon human sexuality is the way to attain complete dominance over the psyche. The systematic perfection of that labor depends on a single insight : wounding someone in their “soul” is the way one gains the greatest power over them; and one does it best when one takes what is most open, vulnerable, and loving in a child and exploits it to forge the bonds that will enslave that psyche, perhaps forever. The super-ego draws its force from that desperate love it has solicited so that it can appropriate the energies invested in that love in order to wage an attack upon the psyche and thereby eventually on life itself.</p>
<p>Given the genius of Catholicism it should come as no surprise that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is the most popular fundamentalist work of our time, hailed and promoted by fundamentalist preachers. What seems odd at first given the fact that Gibson is not strictly speaking a fundamentalist but a reactionary Catholic on the warpath against Vatican II makes perfect sense when seen in terms of the libidinal structure of Gibson’s film and the psychological needs it fuels. The long standing fundamentalist hatred of Catholicism is misplaced. Equally misplaced is the attempt to confine fundamentalism to preachers in the Bible-belt. Fundamentalism is on the rise today and takes many forms because it speaks to something that has long been active in Christianity, something that the old Church exemplified and that we may find impossible to expunge from Judeo-Christianity in general because the truth of the matter is the existence of a contiuum that finds fundamentalism in the position of the Hegelian Notion, the telos and immanent logos that develops through the course of Judeo-Christianity until it achieves in fundamentalism its proper and final form. Orwell offers the following definition of liberty: “Liberty is telling people what they don’t want to hear.” Is it time to extend that principle to religious belief in all its forms? A New Year’s Resolution.</p>
<p>WALTER A. DAVIS is professor emeritus of English at Ohio State University. He is the author of <a href="" type="internal">Deracination: Historiocity, Hiroshima and the Tragic Imperative</a>. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
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<p>ENDNOTES:</p>
<p>(1) Charles Strozier, Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).</p>
<p>(2) Fundamentalist readings of Revelations are an exercise in interpretive ingenuity in service to an ox-like stupidity. Every image in the text must be literalized and attached to a specific event or person. So that in the grandest feat of fundamentalist interpretation everything in Revelations squares with specific details of contemporary history. But of course this effort requires its own revisionism since this operation must be performed repeatedly, as it has been in America by fundamentalists since the 1840’s. The same drama, ever approaching, ever delayed (and more’s the pity), with history and its participants made stock figures in an abstract allegory. In service to the fundamentalist dream: that grand day when it will all finally fall into place, no more disappointing prefigurements, but the real thing. The act of interpretation in such a framework is both mechanical and mad. The frantic search is always on for events that will tie down and confirm the bizarre images of Revelations since they provide the secret code to the meaning of history. Thus the fundamentalist as reader driven half-mad in the constant mental gymnastics required to puzzle the whole thing out then just as constantly revise the thing, as events dictate, with no way to stop playing this game.</p>
<p>(3) It would be interesting to do a complete reading of Revelations as a psychological text; that is, one where the psyche of the author projects in the action of the text the inner drama that defines it. In John’s case we have a repetition compulsion in which each attempt to express love is overcome by an eruption of rage. This rage, however, can never be successfully discharged. As a result it expands with each repetition. Only with a cataclysmic projection of total destruction can John finally rid himself of it in a way that enables him to end his book with an expression of love. But that love exacts a terrible price: it is only possible after this world has been destroyed.</p>
<p>(4) Often for this to work a lot of sex is necessary. Under one condition : it must always be experienced as a fall into sinfulness, the disgust that the fornicator must feel toward him or herself as well as the other with whom one performs the act of darkness. This also offers an explanation of a new mutation in fundamentalism: the young college age fundamentalist who reportedly are also enjoying a frequent if not lively sex life on campus. Since their conversion came before they had a chance to sin, they must experience both sin and salvation at one and the same time in an idyllic space that is beyond the principle of contradiction. Thereby they become all the more fervent in their saved status the more they experience the mindlessness of a sinfulness they cannot permit to enter their consciousness the way genuine eros always does-as that which shatters all else with the demand to affirm and live out all that it puts one in touch with within oneself.</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | The Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism | true | https://counterpunch.org/2005/01/08/the-psychology-of-christian-fundamentalism/ | 2005-01-08 | 4 |
<p>Since taking office, Barack Hussein Obama has indeed brought change to this country. This page will bring you daily highlights of exactly what type of change he has brought. So ask yourself this - are we as a nation, with Obama as president, better, richer, stronger or more respected? Is this the America that our parents left us? Or has it become something quite different? "Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time. Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?"</p> WAIT! There's a lot more... | true | http://nowtheendbegins.com/pages/today-in-obamas-america.htm | 0 |
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<p>TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Many of Alabama’s nonconference games have a similar theme: The Crimson Tide try to compliment a lesser opponent while not coming off overly confident, while the lesser opponent gushes over Alabama but tries to show it isn’t afraid of the task at hand.</p>
<p>No. 1 Alabama vs. Colorado State is no different.</p>
<p>The Crimson Tide hosts the Rams on Saturday at Bryant-Denny Stadium at 7 p.m. ET.</p>
<p>In Tuscaloosa, Alabama coach <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Nick_Saban/" type="external">Nick Saban</a>‘s goal is to make sure his players respect every opponent.</p>
<p>“Colorado State is a really good <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/John_Walker/" type="external">football</a> team,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said.</p>
<p>“I think Mike Bobo has done a really good job there. These guys play hard, they’re physical, they’re very aggressive in their style. They can run the ball; they can throw the ball. They’ve got a good quarterback. They’ve got a lot of balance in what they do.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile in Colorado, Rams coach Mike Bobo assessed the Crimson Tide’s defensive front by saying it looks like “an NFL front four.”</p>
<p>“The more tape you watch, the scarier it gets,” Bobo said in his Monday press conference.</p>
<p>Bobo made sure to stress that his team wouldn’t back down from the challenge of facing the No. 1 team in the country. Bobo, a former assistant coach at Georgia — including as offensive coordinator — has seen Alabama up close during the Saban era.</p>
<p>“It’s a great, great program,” Bobo said.</p>
<p>“It always has been a great program. Everybody says that they get the best players in the country, and they do get a lot of the best players in the country. But when you watch this team on tape, offensively, defensively and special teams, it’s probably the best-coached football team that I’ve seen in a long time.”</p>
<p>Colorado State (2-1) provides Alabama (2-0) with its final tune-up before SEC play. Alabama downed Florida State in a physical opener before pounding Fresno State in its home opener last Saturday. Due to injuries, Alabama is piecing together parts of its defense — especially at linebacker — on the fly.</p>
<p>Young players and freshmen who likely would have redshirted have been thrust into key roles. Linebacker Keith Holcombe got his first career start Saturday with Rashaan Evans out. Holcombe, who has eight tackles and two pass break-ups, could get his second start this Saturday as Evans was considered questionable early in the week due to a groin injury.</p>
<p>Alabama has lost two outside linebackers to season-ending injuries, and another, Anfernee Jennings, is questionable because of an ankle problem. Jamey Mosley, a former walk-on and the brother of former Tide standout linebacker <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/CJ-Mosley/" type="external">C.J. Mosley</a>, earned his first start against Fresno State.</p>
<p>There isn’t much time left before the competition ramps up, so Saban has stressed the importance of individual improvement.</p>
<p>“The one thing if you’re any player and you ask yourself, ‘If I was a stock, has my stock gone up based on the way I’ve played in the first two games or are there things I need to work on to get better?'” Saban said.</p>
<p>“I think that hopefully most of the players would say at this point we need to be working to get better. And that’s certainly how I feel as a coach and what I would like our players to try to do.”</p>
<p>On offense, the big numbers haven’t been there for quarterback <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jalen-Hurts/" type="external">Jalen Hurts</a>, but the sophomore has shown improvement as a passer this season. Hurts has thrown for two touchdowns, completing 24 of 36 passes for 224 yards. Wide receiver Calvin Ridley has, not surprisingly, been Hurts favorite target with 12 catches.</p>
<p>Alabama’s running game features a four-head monster with running backs Damien Harris, Bo Scarbrough and freshman Najee Harris, plus Hurts, who has a team-high 209 yards on the ground. Scarbrough was thought to be a preseason Heisman candidate, but he has just 21 carries for 76 yards in the crowded backfield.</p>
<p>Colorado State comes in on the heels of a 38-10 win over Abilene Christian. The Rams opened with a 58-27 victory over Oregon State but fell to Colorado, 17-3, in their other game against a Pac-12 foe.</p>
<p>Rams quarterback Nick Stevens is 14th nationally with 328.3 passing yards per game. Wide receiver Michael Gallup is a real threat, rated fifth among senior wideouts by NFLDraftScout.com. Gallup has 26 catches for 309 yards in three games.</p>
<p>“We’re at a good place right now as a football team,” Bobo said. “I feel like we’re where we’re supposed to be.”</p>
<p>Alabama is 29-1 in nonconference home games under Saban, who is in his 11th season with the Tide. The only loss came back in 2007 against Louisiana-Monroe.</p> | Alabama Crimson Tide stresses improvement vs. Colorado State Rams | false | https://newsline.com/alabama-crimson-tide-stresses-improvement-vs-colorado-state-rams/ | 2017-09-12 | 1 |
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<p>GENEVA — Police in southwestern Switzerland have found in an Alpine glacier the remains of a German hiker who went missing almost exactly three decades ago.</p>
<p>The regional Valais police department said Wednesday the remains of the unidentified man were found after two hikers last week happened upon a hand and a pair of shoes sticking out of the Hohlaub Glacier, 10 kilometers (6 miles) east of the famed Matterhorn.</p>
<p>Lab tests identified the deceased man, who was in his mid-40s when he went missing on Aug. 11, 1987. Valais police spokesman Markus Rieder said the victim’s family has been informed.</p>
<p>Swiss authorities recently have been finding the bodies of adventurers who have gone missing in Alpine ice and snow. Rieder said authorities believe global warming has increasingly caused glaciers to retreat, raising the likelihood of finding more such human remains.</p>
<p>Last month, authorities found the bodies of a Swiss couple nearly 75 years after they went missing on the Tsanfleuron glacier, 70 kilometers (45 miles) away from Hohlaub.</p>
<p>Marceline Udry-Dumoulin, the 79-year-old surviving daughter of Marcelin Dumoulin and his wife Francine, said her parents had set off on foot to feed their animals on Aug. 15, 1942, but never returned.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | German hiker missing since 1987 found in Swiss glacier | false | https://abqjournal.com/1042096/german-hiker-missing-since-1987-found-in-swiss-glacier.html | 2017-08-02 | 2 |
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<p>Warren Buffett is among the best investors in stock market history, and millions of people follow his picks closely to try to find ideas for their own portfolios. Even though the overall stock market hasn't made much headway so far in 2016, the Oracle of Omaha has managed to include some solid year-to-date performers within his own holdings, as <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/05/26/why-berkshire-hathaway-bought-into-apple.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Buffett recently reported to the SEC on Form 13-F Opens a New Window.</a>. In particular, four of Buffett's stocks have given investors strong double-digit returns in 2016, and shareholders want to know if the Buffett magic will continue. Let's take a look at these four top stocks from the Buffett list.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/KHC/total_return_price" type="external">KHC Total Return Price</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Energy giant Kinder Morgan is one of the <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/20/3-things-warren-buffett-sees-in-kinder-morgan-inc.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">newer additions to Buffett's portfolio Opens a New Window.</a>, with the Oracle revealing the pick in his 13-F filing for the fourth quarter of 2015. The company sports an unparalleled network of oil and natural gas pipelines and terminals as well as carbon-dioxide transport and storage, giving it competitive advantages over smaller rivals. Yet Kinder Morgan has seen its shares slump in response to energy price declines, despite the fact that its cash flow has stayed relatively constant.</p>
<p>In many investors' eyes, Kinder Morgan combines good value with lucrative income opportunities, as the stock pays a healthy dividend of almost 3%. With the company having just gotten federal approval to move forward with a plan to export liquefied natural gas, Kinder Morgan also has growth opportunities. That mix provides a timely buy opportunity, and even though <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/18/warren-buffett-didnt-buy-shares-of-kinder-morgan-f.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">some doubt whether Buffett himself authorized the purchase Opens a New Window.</a>, Kinder Morgan is worth a closer look even after its recent run-up.</p>
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<p>Food giant Kraft Heinz is a newly formed company, and <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/03/26/kraft-heinz-why-warren-buffett-loves-doing-deals-w.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Buffett's position stems from his purchase of Heinz Opens a New Window.</a> alongside partner 3G Capital. The latest move upward follows a highly successful result from the merger of Heinz with Kraft. As Buffett described it, when you look at what he paid for Heinz and also consider the money used to pay Kraft shareholders a special dividend, his cost basis on his shares of Kraft Heinz shares was less than half their value even when the merger was first completed early last year.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Buffett is about to get cashed out of another lucrative investment in Kraft Heinz. This month, the food company can redeem about $8 billion in preferred shares that Buffett owns, and given their 9% interest rate, it's almost certain that Kraft Heinz will do so. Nevertheless, Buffett will retain his common stock holding, and its nearly 20% gain this year points to the health of the company and its management under 3G.</p>
<p>In contrast to the two picks above, Wal-Mart is a longtime Buffett pick. It has also been a source of funds for Buffett, who <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/19/3-reasons-warren-buffett-would-walk-away-from-a-st.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">sold off some of his Wal-Mart shares Opens a New Window.</a> recently in order to raise cash for other purchases that he considered to be more lucrative.</p>
<p>Much of the share-price gains in 2016 have come in the wake of solid performance in the company's first quarter, which included earnings that topped consensus forecasts by a dime per share. Interestingly, <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/05/27/will-wal-marts-profit-margins-ever-bounce-back.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Wal-Mart has warned that profits could remain under pressure Opens a New Window.</a> for some time, because the retailer is investing heavily in moves designed to boost longer-term prospects and keep competitors at bay. For now, shareholders are happy with Wal-Mart, but a full turnaround will take a lot longer to complete.</p>
<p>Gypsum wallboard maker USG is another longtime Buffett holding. The company makes Sheetrock drywall and other building materials, such as ceiling tile, roofing, and insulation. Having boosted his position by investing in USG corporate debt during the financial crisis, Buffett has benefited from USG's recovery since the financial crisis.</p>
<p>This year, USG has responded favorably to the healthy U.S. economy, which has overcome global pressures that have held back construction and building activity throughout much of the rest of the world. With the company reporting increasing demand for its products in its most recent quarter, USG is still looking like a smart Buffett pick with long-term potential.</p>
<p>Buffett doesn't pay much attention to short-term results, so the fact that these four stocks are doing so well for him in 2016 won't really mean much to him. Yet these stocks are worth a closer look to see if you want to add them to your investment portfolio going forward.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/06/warren-buffetts-best-stocks-of-2016-so-far.aspx" type="external">Warren Buffett's Best Stocks of 2016 So Far Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Kinder Morgan. The Motley Fool has the following options: short June 2016 $12 puts on Kinder Morgan. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Warren Buffett's Best Stocks of 2016 So Far | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/06/06/warren-buffett-best-stocks-2016-so-far.html | 2016-06-06 | 0 |
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<p>I had an idea how they were going to turn out and I wanted to get a feel for the crowd. There is a deep divide in this country, and I want to understand how it is going to play out.</p>
<p>When I arrived, I was met with jeers and insults – and I wasn’t there to support Trump.</p>
<p>I was called racist and even inbred. The insults stopped when it was clear that I wasn’t going to react, but they continued for people going into the rally. A lot of the people going into the rally smiled at them. Others scowled and others ignored them.</p>
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<p>I would describe this crowd as one of the most hateful that I’ve ever been around, and it was preaching anti-hate.</p>
<p>As the event trudged on, things became worse. Cars started clogging the streets of Downtown Albuquerque. They then started doing tire burnouts to the point that it was impossible to see across the street due to the smoke. Mexican flags were hung out while people were chanting, “Mexico! Mexico! Mexico!”</p>
<p>Barricades were moved and protesters tried to get into the Convention Center to “shut it down!” Their words, not mine.</p>
<p>Later, I watched as a man not more than five feet from me was punched and then ganged up on by multiple others who were punching and kicking him. This was in front of about 20 cops, who had the manpower only to break it up, but not to arrest anybody for battery.</p>
<p>I had talked to that man earlier. He was on the fence when it came to voting for Trump before the rally. I bet he voted for Trump after that.</p>
<p>I also watched as protesters jumped on and damaged police cruisers. Say what you want about the Albuquerque Police Department, but if you live in Albuquerque, you, the taxpayer, are paying for that. It was uncivil. It was mob violence verging on turning into a full blown riot.</p>
<p>Thankfully, APD’s Horse Mounted Unit was able to break the mob up without cracking a lot of heads and things died out.</p>
<p>Fast forward to today, and we’re going to have a President Trump. It is bizarro world. But how did we get here?</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Trump had a powerful message to his voters. “Make America Great Again.” If you remember the times prior to the 2008 financial crisis, that is powerful. If you remember the ’80s and ’90s, that is powerful.</p>
<p>He is calling for a return to the economic conditions of those times, when life was better for a lot of people. I don’t think he can do it, but maybe he does, and his supporters are hopeful.</p>
<p>But there is more than just Trump’s message. His opponents had a lot to do with his victory.</p>
<p>Trump is a loud-mouthed demagogue. His opponent was corruption incarnate. Hillary Clinton’s supporters, along with Trump’s other detractors, used every trick in the book to shame his supporters. If you count yourself among that crowd, you probably think that Trump supporters are a racist, xenophobic, misogynistic basket of deplorables.</p>
<p>But when talking about the bulk of his supporters, you are wrong. You have been (vulgarly insulting them), and you only steeled their resolve to vote for Trump. People who went to the May 24th Trump rally who were on the fence probably got pushed firmly into Trump’s camp because of the behavior of the protesters.</p>
<p>Trump supporters have been treated poorly and unjustly. If opponents continue with this treatment, they will create a self fulfilling prophecy and get a real right wing backlash.</p>
<p>They will create the monster that they fear.</p>
<p>If you count yourself in the hard-core anti-Trump crowd, say it with me: “President Trump.” You helped push people to vote for him with your hateful rhetoric and behavior.</p>
<p>You own this, just as much as his supporters do.</p>
<p /> | Protest helped to create President Trump | false | https://abqjournal.com/888311/protest-helped-to-create-president-trump.html | 2 |
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<p>MELBOURNE, Australia--Charter Hall Group (CHC.AU) has broken off talks to buy Westpac Banking Corp.'s(WBC.AU) Hastings Management unit, a global infrastructure-assets business with about 14.3 billion Australian dollars (US$11.3 billion) in funds under management.</p>
<p>In a one-sentence statement Thursday, Charter Hall said it had elected not to proceed with further due diligence on the proposed acquisition. Westpac confirmed discussions with Charter Hall had ceased.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The companies disclosed last month they were in exclusive talks on a potential deal, subject to the commercial property investor going over Hastings' books, as well as regulatory and board approvals. No financial details were disclosed.</p>
<p>Westpac said it would continue to assess sale options, and remained committed to Hastings' clients and the business.</p>
<p>Goldman Sachs had estimated the business could fetch as much as A$520 million, based on similar historical deals.</p>
<p>Although Hastings is a relatively small business within Westpac, a disposal would have helped the bank build capital at a time when industry regulators have called for lenders to build their capital buffers against the risk of future crises. Morgan Stanley estimated Hastings accounts for less than 0.5% of Westpac's overall earnings.</p>
<p>Hastings invests on behalf of institutional investors in a broad range of infrastructure equity and debt, including interests in owners of airports including toll roads, airports including Melbourne Airport, seaports such as Port of Newcastle in eastern Australia and Northern Ireland gas distribution company Phoenix Natural Gas.</p>
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<p>In February, Hastings bought the outstanding 50% stake in British utility South East Water on behalf of clients including investors within Canada's Desjardins Group. A month later it agreed a secured a debt-investment agreement with Development Bank of Japan Inc. and its DBJ Asset Management Co. arm to target investments in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.</p>
<p>Founded in Melbourne in 1994, Hastings now also has offices in Sydney, London, New York, Singapore and Seoul. Westpac bought 51% of the company in October 2002 and the remaining 49% in November 2005.</p>
<p>Write to Robb M. Stewart at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 16, 2017 22:33 ET (02:33 GMT)</p> | Charter Hall, Westpac End Talks on Hastings Deal -- Update | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/16/charter-hall-westpac-end-talks-on-hastings-deal-update.html | 2017-08-16 | 0 |
<p>OTTUMWA, Iowa (AP) — New charges have been filed against a man accused of fatally shooting an Ottumwa teenager.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ottumwacourier.com/news/new-charges-for-murder-defendant/article_83c85d24-ea81-11e7-8f85-0fdc589e1cd6.html" type="external">The Ottumwa Courier reports</a> that Venhure Tsegay was charged last week with a robbery and burglary that occurred on Oct. 30, 2015. Tsegay is accused of shooting 16-year-old Christian Madueno in the face on Nov. 29, 2016. Authorities say Madueno died nearly a month later, on Christmas Day last year.</p>
<p>The 19-year-old Tsegay has not yet entered pleas on the new charges but has pleaded not guilty to charges of robbery and first-degree murder in the slaying of Madueno. Tsegay's trial on those charges is scheduled to begin March 6.</p>
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<p>Information from: The Ottumwa Courier, <a href="http://www.ottumwacourier.com" type="external">http://www.ottumwacourier.com</a></p>
<p>OTTUMWA, Iowa (AP) — New charges have been filed against a man accused of fatally shooting an Ottumwa teenager.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ottumwacourier.com/news/new-charges-for-murder-defendant/article_83c85d24-ea81-11e7-8f85-0fdc589e1cd6.html" type="external">The Ottumwa Courier reports</a> that Venhure Tsegay was charged last week with a robbery and burglary that occurred on Oct. 30, 2015. Tsegay is accused of shooting 16-year-old Christian Madueno in the face on Nov. 29, 2016. Authorities say Madueno died nearly a month later, on Christmas Day last year.</p>
<p>The 19-year-old Tsegay has not yet entered pleas on the new charges but has pleaded not guilty to charges of robbery and first-degree murder in the slaying of Madueno. Tsegay's trial on those charges is scheduled to begin March 6.</p>
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<p>Information from: The Ottumwa Courier, <a href="http://www.ottumwacourier.com" type="external">http://www.ottumwacourier.com</a></p> | New charges against man accused of killing teen in Ottumwa | false | https://apnews.com/amp/d214d9d559bb46ad87de7686cde26e4e | 2017-12-27 | 2 |
<p>According to Naomi Wolf, author of “Vagina: A New Biography,” we are undergoing an “unprecedented struggle” among women, their bodies and sexuality. Citing recent examples such as Russian punk band Pussy Riot, the frenzy over Kate Middleton being photographed sunbathing topless, “virginity tests” in Egypt and recent efforts in the U.S. to legislate the female body, Wolf writes that female sexuality is being targeted around the world.</p>
<p>But why is that so?</p>
<p>Well, according to Wolf, it is because of the brain-vagina link that she cites in her new book. As Wolf writes on CNN, by “traumatizing the vagina, you can intimidate women on multiple other levels.” In other words, sexuality under the aforementioned circumstances represents a bigger threat: power.</p>
<p>As a result, what passes for scandalous isn’t a staged strip show, but a public display in which a female shows she’s in control of her own body.</p>
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<p>Naomi Wolf via CNN:</p>
<p>Porn 24-7 doesn’t threaten social control. Indeed, its addictive effects, in terms of new neuroscientific discoveries, actually turns out to be a kind of drug or sedative. This turns a potentially liberating sexual revolution into yet another marketable consumer product that hypnotizes people and is creating new health and sexual problems around libido, rather than setting them free.</p>
<p>In the struggle over sex, these choices are where the struggle lies: Who decides reproductive rights; who decides when and how breasts might be exposed; who decides who can say vagina and where; who decides who is a slut; and who must be punished with hard labor for asserting their right to define their own sexual and artistic identities.</p>
<p>The sexual revolution came and went, and yet women are still not as truly sexually free as they deserve to be — here or around the world. They are not yet, as these struggles show, fully free to define the meanings of their bodies and their desire, to assert their sexual wishes without punishment — including punishment by the state. And they are not yet fully free to claim the right to sexual pleasure and autonomy without enduring public shaming.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/19/living/women-bodies-public-perception/index.html?hpt=hp_c1" type="external">Read more</a></p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Tracy Bloom</a>.</p> | Naomi Wolf on Kate Middleton Topless, Pussy Riot, and the Sexualized Female Body | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/naomi-wolf-on-kate-middleton-topless-pussy-riot-and-the-sexualized-female-body/ | 2012-09-20 | 4 |
<p>RENO — <a href="" type="internal">Washoe County Sheriff Chuck Allen</a> has decided not to run for re-election in 2018.</p>
<p>Allen notified department employees of his plans in an email last week based, saying the decision was motivated primarily by a desire to spend more time with his family. He said it was a very difficult decision but the bottom line is that his wife, Teresa, doesn’t want him working seven days a week anymore.</p>
<p>A former state trooper who has worked more than two decades in law enforcement, Allen says he also wants to give other potential candidates time to prepare for the next election.</p>
<p>Allen was narrowly elected in 2014 during a sometimes bitter campaign against Washoe County Undersheriff Tim Kuzanek.</p>
<p>Former Assistant Sheriff Darin Balaam, the son of ex-Sheriff Dennis Balaam, says he plans to seek the position in 2018.</p> | Washoe County sheriff says he will not seek re-election | false | https://reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/washoe-county-sheriff-says-he-will-not-seek-re-election/ | 2016-12-20 | 1 |
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<p>It seems pretty clear, if Virginia is any measure, that if states&#160;rewarded people driving hybrid cars by allowing them into the HOV lanes,&#160;folks would flock to the idea. Maybe the idea would be so popular that it could congest HOV lanes (see below). States might consider&#160;that a gift because hybrid cars emit so much less pollution. <a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.325.IH:" type="external">But Congress is slow-walking the permission</a> that would allow such access. The same bill would allow states to enact legislation&#160;so that&#160;motorcycles&#160;could use HOV lanes.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&amp;languageId=1&amp;contentId=30153" type="external">Stateline reports:</a></p>
<p>The hybrids can't gain special access to high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes until Congress flashes a green light because the rush-hour lanes are built and maintained with federal gas tax dollars and are governed by the federal Department of Transportation. A bill that would transfer discretion for hybrids on HOV lanes to the states passed the U.S. House in March and is tucked into a long-delayed transportation bill now creeping through the Senate.</p>
<p>Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida and Georgia have passed legislation to allow single-occupant hybrids, which are powered by an electric motor and traditional gasoline engine for greater fuel efficiency and lower harmful emissions, to use the express lanes typically reserved for vehicles carrying at least two or three passengers. Lawmakers in Massachusetts and New York are considering similar legislation.</p>
<p>For now, Virginia is the only state where hybrids&#160;-- no matter how many occupants&#160;-- are free to roam the HOV lanes under a special waiver granted by the federal DOT five years ago.</p>
<p>The practice has been popular in Virginia, especially on the clogged highways near Washington, D.C. In fact, critics say it has worked too well, making HOV lanes just as congested as regular lanes. The Virginia Legislature this session confronted a proposal to take away hybrids' special access to HOV lanes by letting the state's special exemption expire in July 2006, but no action has been taken.</p>
<p>Of course there is the question about whether states should provide any incentive for hybrid car sales. Stateline points out:</p>
<p>All together, 20 states offer incentives to purchase environmentally friendly hybrid vehicles, according to the <a href="http://www.electricdrive.org/index.php" type="external">Electric Drive Transportation Association</a>, an industry association based in Washington, D.C. For example, hybrids are exempt from Connecticut's&#160;six percent sales tax, can garner up to $1,500 in state income tax credit in Oklahoma, and must be purchased for state employee use in Minnesota if the vehicles are reasonably priced. Other states exempt hybrids from emissions testing.</p>
<p>Given the popularity of the vehicles and with demand outpacing production, do states need to offer the incentive at all?</p>
<p>It's impossible to predict what effect removing government incentives would have on hybrid sales, said Matthew Brown, energy program director for the <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/" type="external">National Conference of State Legislatures</a>.</p>
<p>Florida had the fourth most hybrid registrations in 2004, even without an HOV or financial incentive.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.sptimes.com/2005/05/15/State/_Safe__drug_a_leading.shtml" type="external">The St. Petersburg Times</a> included a story that surprised me. The story said:</p>
<p>Deaths from methadone, considered by many a "safe" painkiller, are spiraling upward so fast it has become the leading drug killer in the state of Florida.</p>
<p>In the first six months of last year, methadone overdoses killed 264 Floridians, tied with cocaine as the leading cause of overdose deaths. That was a 50 percent increase over the previous six months for the drug that most people associate with clinics to help addicts kick heroin.</p>
<p>But methadone is a powerful narcotic, too&#160;-- one that, these days, is killing far more people than heroin. It's also a bigger killer than more notorious prescription drugs, such as OxyContin and Vicodin.</p>
<p>"This can be a very deadly drug," said Jim McDonough, Florida's drug czar. "It can also be a very helpful drug, but if abused, it's very deadly."</p>
<p>Methadone's reputation for safety contributes to its danger.</p>
<p>Over the past few years, doctors worried about the publicized abuse of OxyContin and similar painkillers have prescribed methadone instead. U.S. methadone prescriptions more than tripled between 1998 and 2003, to 1.8-million. That has made it easier for abusers and drug dealers to obtain it.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/news/press05/051805.html" type="external">The Office of National Drug Control Policy came out swinging this week with some interesting new data</a>. The release is trying to fight the notion that small time pot pushers are filling up our jails and prisons. The release said:</p>
<p>..."Who's Really in Prison for Marijuana" ...&#160;de-bunks the myth that our prisons are filled with low-level, non-violent marijuana users. Misinformation about the number of people in prison for marijuana has appeared in many news accounts in recent years, and have been actively spread by pro-drug advocates.</p>
<p>The reality is that people are not routinely sent to prison for simply possessing small amounts of marijuana. Most people in prison for marijuana are violent criminals, repeat offenders, traffickers, or all of the above. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the number of people in state prison solely for marijuana offenses is quite low, and only a fraction of that number are first-time offenders.</p>
<p>The numbers on the Federal level reflect the same trend. Of all drug defendants sentenced in Federal courts for marijuana crimes in 2001, the overwhelming majority were convicted for trafficking, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.speakwire.com/feeds.php" type="external">Listen to a newspaper's Podcast.</a> Interesting idea, hard to listen to for long, but it is a start.</p>
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<p>" <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7844269/" type="external">Dateline NBC</a>" ran five years of data looking at 100,000 accident reports to try&#160;and identify the deadliest roads in America. The investigation produced some interesting results that Dateline posted online. <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/modules/tvnews/dtl_dangerousroads2005/form.asp" type="external">You can submit your county and state and find what "Dateline" says are the deadliest roads near you.</a></p>
<p>To those of us who regularly drive on US-19 here in south Florida, we are not surprised to see it as the nation's leader in fatalities. "Dateline" calls it "a six-lane meat grinder running 30 miles up Florida's Gulf Coast."</p>
<p>I suspect you won't see that description in the Chamber of Commerce brochures.</p>
<p>"Dateline" found that rural, often two-lane, roads only carry 28 percent&#160;of the nation's traffic but account for more than half of all fatal accidents. The story included an expert that said for too long the federal government has poured money into our interstate system while our dangerous rural roads have not been upgraded.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.tia.org/Press/pressrec.asp?Item=367" type="external">The Travel Industry Association claims</a> that despite gas prices we are going to do a lot of traveling this summer. Keep in mind the organization itself promotes and facilities increased travel. <a href="http://www.tia.org/Press/pressrec.asp?Item=367" type="external">See the results of the survey.</a>&#160;This is where the&#160;Travel Industry Association (TIA)&#160;says you are going this summer:</p>
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<p>When you come here to Florida, spend a lot please. Remember, vacations are no time to be cheap.</p>
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<p>Thirty-five percent of the software installed on personal computers worldwide was pirated in 2004, which cost software makers about $33 billion. <a href="http://www.bsa.org/usa/press/newsreleases/Global-Piracy-Study-05-18-2005.cfm" type="external">The Business Software Alliance just released a new study about all of this.</a>&#160;In 24 countries, 75 percent&#160;of the software in use is pirated. The study says that about one-fifth of the software used in the U.S. is pirated.</p>
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<p>My Poynter buddy Larry Larsen pointed me to <a href="http://www.chicagocrime.org/2005/mar/02/2pm/" type="external">ChicagoCrime.org, a new Web site</a> that uses Google maps to track criminal activity in the city.</p>
<p>The crimes are listed by city block, not individual address, to protect the privacy of the crime victims. The crimes listed are a week old and the database is 90 days deep. The mapping and data updates daily.This clearly has application in other cities. I wonder why city police departments themselves do not post this data.</p>
<p>The site says it now includes free RSS feeds for every police beat and every city block in Chicago. <a href="http://www.chicagocrime.org/rss/" type="external">See the RSS page</a> for more information. The site also provides a disclaimer:</p>
<p>This site is not affiliated with the Chicago Police Department. This site uses crime data obtained from the CPD's <a href="http://12.17.79.6/" type="external">Citizen ICAM Web site</a>, which is a publicly available database of reported crime. Please read the <a href="http://12.17.79.6/" type="external">Citizen ICAM disclaimer</a> to understand the data fully.</p>
<p><a href="http://crimetracker.tbo.com/" type="external">For a lot of years, TBO.com here in Tampa Bay has produced a "Crime Tracker" site</a>&#160;based on&#160;the same idea. The Chicago site seems to take it a little further using the Google Maps technology.</p>
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<p>What is it with the German language spam in my e-mail box this week? I have a great filter, Postini, and it still got through by the dozens. Now I know, thanks to an e-mail from Al's Morning Meeting reader Sandi Pullen, that I am not alone. Apparently a lot of you are getting German spam.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,120846,00.asp" type="external">PC World reported</a> that it is all connected to the latest version of the Sober mass mailing worm. The latest Sober variant is known as a "propaganda spam," which is meant to spread political messages rather than to sell products.</p>
<p>Something big happened this week in the earth science world. <a href="http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/step/" type="external">Scientists launched a Web site</a> that purports to calculate the probability of strong ground-shaking at specific locations (in California only for the time being) over a 24-hour period.</p>
<p>The site might not be so much for forecasting initial tremblers, but rather for the aftershocks that follow a significant quake. <a href="http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/prepare/factsheets/QuakeForecasts/" type="external">The U.S. Geological Survey</a> says quake forecasting has been under development for years.</p>
<p>Earthquake forecasts declare that a temblor has a certain probability of occurring within a given time, not that one will definitely strike. In this way they are similar to weather forecasts. Scientists are able to make earthquake forecasts because quakes tend to occur in clusters that strike the same area within a limited time period. The largest quake in a cluster is called the mainshock, those before it are called foreshocks, and those after it are called aftershocks.</p>
<p><a href="http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050518/ap/d8a5qg7ga.html" type="external">An AP story said:</a></p>
<p>The earthquake forecast maps are created by considering a variety of factors, including seismic monitoring of the San Andreas Fault and other active faults in California. Scientists also factor in any recent history of small and large temblors and aftershocks on those same faults.</p>
<p>In an accompanying commentary, Duncan Agnew of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, noted that the latest forecast maps give earthquake victims a "much more precise answer" about the risk of aftershocks after a strong tremor. Agnew, who was not part of the project, also said he would like to see the same method used in other countries that are vulnerable to earthquakes.</p>
<p>Here are <a href="http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-08,GGLD:en&amp;tab=wn&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;ncl=http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20050519-9999-1n19quake.html" type="external">tons of other stories</a> about the new system.</p>
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<p>We are always looking for your great ideas. <a href="" type="internal">Send Al</a> a few sentences and hot links.</p>
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<p>Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts, and other materials from a variety of websites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed, and a link will be provided, whenever possible.</p> | Friday Edition: Legislation Stalled That Would Allow Hybrids in Fast Lane | false | https://poynter.org/news/friday-edition-legislation-stalled-would-allow-hybrids-fast-lane | 2005-05-19 | 2 |
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<p>TAYLOR: Appeared on “Designing Women</p>
<p>Taylor died Saturday at his home near Los Angeles, according to agent Dede Binder.</p>
<p>Taylor got an Emmy nod for his portrayal of Anthony Bouvier on “Designing Women” from 1986 to 1993. Then he co-starred for four seasons on another successful comedy, “Dave’s World,” as the best friend of a newspaper humor columnist played by the series’ star, Harry Anderson.</p>
<p>Other series included the cult favorite “Buffalo Bill” and the popular Nickelodeon comedy “Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Taylor’s movie roles included a flamboyant window dresser in the 1987 comedy-romance “Mannequin” as well as “Damien: Omen II.”</p>
<p>He guest starred on many series including “Hannah Montana,” “The Unit,” “Hill Street Blues,” “Barney Miller,” “Lou Grant,” “The Drew Carey Show,” and, in an episode that aired in January, “Criminal Minds,” which stars Joe Montegna, with whom Taylor performed early in his career as a fellow member of Chicago’s Organic Theater Company.</p>
<p>Taylor played the assistant director in “Buffalo Bill,” the short-lived NBC sitcom about an arrogant and self-centered talk show host played by Dabney Coleman. It lasted just one season, 1983-84, disappointing its small but fervent following.</p>
<p>Seemingly his gig on “Designing Women” could have been even more short-lived. It was initially a one-shot.</p>
<p>“It was for the Thanksgiving show, about halfway through the first season,” Taylor said. But producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason told him if the character clicked with audiences he could stay.</p>
<p>It did. He spun comic gold with co-stars Jean Smart, Dixie Carter, Annie Potts and Delta Burke, and never left.</p>
<p>Taylor is survived by his four children and his wife, Bianca Ferguson.</p>
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<p /> | Actor Meshach Taylor dies at age 67 | false | https://abqjournal.com/422787/actor-meshach-taylor-dies-at-age-67.html | 2 |
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<p>The head of Egypt's ruling military council promised a cabinet reshuffle within 48 hours, an apparent concession to parliament hours after lawmakers announced a strike meant to pressure authorities over the issue, Egypt's state news agency reported, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/29/us-egypt-government-katatni-idUSBRE83S0AV20120429" type="external">according to Reuters</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi's announcement Sunday came after parliament speaker Saad el-Katatni said lawmakers would suspend activities to protest the ruling military and "safeguard the chamber's dignity and that of its members,"&#160; <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-04-29/egypt-islamists-military/54626134/1" type="external">reported The Associated Press</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>Parliament has been locked in a dispute with Egypt's ruling military over changes to the government appointed by the generals after they took power following the overthrow of longtime leader Hosni Mubarak by popular protest a year ago, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/29/us-egypt-government-idUSBRE83S0AB20120429" type="external">according to Reuters</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/chatter/reforming-egypts-military-form-within" type="external">Reforming Egypt's military from within</a></p>
<p>It was not immediately clear whether the move would placate parliament.&#160;Lawmakers demand that they be a part of the formation of a new cabinet, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-04-29/egypt-islamists-military/54626134/1" type="external">according to AP</a>, making it unclear whether the reshuffle reportedly promised by Tantawi would suffice.&#160;</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/egypt/120428/mohamed-elbaradei-launches-new-egyptian-political-par" type="external">Mohamed ElBaradei launches new Egyptian political party</a></p>
<p>The generals <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/egypt/111124/egyptian-army-appoints-kamal-ganzouri-new-pm" type="external">in November installed Prime Minister Kamal Ganzouri</a>, who served as prime minister under Mubarak from 1996-1999, as the new head of the civilian government -- an appointment that was met with <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15900768" type="external">widespread fury</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>Tensions between the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and the Islamist-dominated legislature have been growing since Egypt held historic parliamentary elections three months ago, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-04-29/egypt-islamists-military/54626134/1" type="external">according to AP</a>.&#160;</p>
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<p>.</p> | Egypt leaders promise cabinet change after lawmakers threaten strike: report | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-04-29/egypt-leaders-promise-cabinet-change-after-lawmakers-threaten-strike-report | 2012-04-29 | 3 |
<p>President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress has been widely regarded as excellent, but it's worth noting that Trump advocated for a number of policies that are not conservative. Here are five of them.</p>
<p>1. Trade. Trump's protectionist rhetoric has long been a sticking point for conservatives, and Tuesday's address was no different. The president touted the country's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and made the case for tariffs:</p>
<p>I just met with officials and workers from a great American company, Harley-Davidson. In fact, they proudly displayed five of their magnificent motorcycles, made in the USA, on the front lawn of the White House.</p>
<p>At our meeting, I asked them, how are you doing, how is business? They said that it's good. I asked them further how they are doing with other countries, mainly international sales. They told me -- without even complaining because they have been mistreated for so long that they have become used to it -- that it is very hard to do business with other countries because they tax our goods at such a high rate. They said that in one case another country taxed their motorcycles at 100 percent.</p>
<p>They weren't even asking for change. But I am.</p>
<p>I believe strongly in free trade but it also has to be FAIR TRADE.</p>
<p>The first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, warned that the "abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government [will] produce want and ruin among our people."</p>
<p>Lincoln was right -- and it is time we heeded his words. I am not going to let America and its great companies and workers, be taken advantage of anymore.</p>
<p>2. Infrastructure spending. Trump re-iterated his call for a trillion-dollar infrastructure spending bill, stating, "The time has come for a new program of national rebuilding."</p>
<p>"America has spent approximately six trillion dollars in the Middle East, all this while our infrastructure at home is crumbling. With this six trillion dollars we could have rebuilt our country –- twice. And maybe even three times if we had people who had the ability to negotiate," Trump said. "To launch our national rebuilding, I will be asking the Congress to approve legislation that produces a $1 trillion investment in the infrastructure of the United States -- financed through both public and private capital –- creating millions of new jobs."</p>
<p>3. Immigration reform. Trump's hardline immigration rhetoric has been a staple of his, but <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/28/politics/trump-immigration-bill/" type="external">reports</a> have indicated that the president would like to sign some sort of compromise bill that would grant amnesty to some illegals, and Trump's address seemed to buttress those reports.</p>
<p>"I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus on the following goals: to improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nation’s security, and to restore respect for our laws," Trump said. "If we are guided by the well-being of American citizens then I believe Republicans and Democrats can work together to achieve an outcome that has eluded our country for decades."</p>
<p>4. Paid family leave. "My administration wants to work with members in both parties to make childcare accessible and affordable, to help ensure new parents have paid family leave, to invest in women's health, and to promote clean air and clear water, and to rebuild our military and our infrastructure," Trump said.</p>
<p>5. Pre-existing conditions. Trump seemed to indicate that he would leave Obamacare's pre-existing conditions mandate in place, describing his outline of an Obamacare replacement plan, he stated, "We should ensure that Americans with pre-existing conditions have access to coverage."</p>
<p>That statement is vague enough to leave room for speculation as to what Trump meant, but he has previously <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Donald_Trump_Health_Care.htm" type="external">supported the pre-existing conditions mandate</a>; Trump's aforementioned statement is in line with this.</p>
<p>Quotes provided by a transcript from <a href="http://time.com/4686621/trump-congress-address-transcript/" type="external">Time</a>.</p>
<p>Follow Aaron Bandler on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/bandlersbanter" type="external">@bandlersbanter</a>.</p> | 5 Most Non-Conservative Policies Trump Pushed In His Speech To Congress | true | https://dailywire.com/news/13989/5-most-non-conservative-policies-trump-pushed-his-aaron-bandler | 2017-03-01 | 0 |
<p>NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center recently discovered the existence of a new planet about 57 light years away from Earth. Known as GJ 504b, the planet is about the size of Jupiter—although several times its mass—and is the smallest planet ever to be directly imaged by a telescope. Not to mention it also happens to be colored a deep magenta, a sign of its relative planetary youth.</p>
<p>Yet its unique hue is not the primary reason astronomers are so puzzled by this planet. GJ 504b’s distance from its star—which is about 44 times the distance between Earth and the Sun—and its massive size are inconsistent with current planetary formation theories.</p>
<p>Core accretion theory, which models the formation of Jupiter-like planets such as GJ 504b, states that the gravitational force created by mass collisions of debris in space attracts gas-rich particles, eventually leading to a large planetary formation.</p>
<p>However, GJ 504b is well outside of the threshold in which Jupiter-like planets typically form, in a region where the density of debris is not thought to be significant enough to create a planet. Many astronomers are now worried that the basic assumptions of core accretion theory may require reexamination.</p>
<p>Whether or not the discovery of GJ 504b leads to new and revolutionary astronomical theories is a question for the astrophysicists. For the rest of us, this pretty pink planet is just another reminder of the infinite awesomeness of the universe.</p> | Isn't she pretty in pink: NASA discovers a new planet | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-08-12/isnt-she-pretty-pink-nasa-discovers-new-planet | 2013-08-12 | 3 |
<p>During an appearance Tuesday night on The Tonight Show, President Obama told Jay Leno that he condemns Russia’s new anti-gay laws banning “gay propaganda” — i.e. any public display that supports or promotes homosexuality. He has “no patience” for countries that target the LGBT community because he believes that people should be treated “fairly and justly”:</p>
<p>OBAMA: I’ve been very clear that when it comes to universal rights, when it comes to people’s basic freedoms, that whether you are discriminating on the basis of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, you are violating the basic morality that I think should transcend every country. And I have no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them.</p>
<p>Now, what’s happening in Russia is not unique. When I traveled to Africa, there were some countries that are doing a lot of good things for their people, who we’re working with and helping on development issues, but in some cases have persecuted gays and lesbians. And it makes for some uncomfortable press conferences sometimes. But one of the things that I think is very important for me to speak out on is making sure that people are treated fairly and justly, because that’s what we stand for. And I believe that that’s a precept that’s not unique to America, that’s something that should apply everywhere.</p>
<p>Watch it:</p>
<p>Obama went on to say that if Russia wants to “uphold the Olympic spirit,” then people’s sexual orientation shouldn’t have any impact on their ability to participate in the games.</p>
<p>The President joins 83 members of Congress who have <a href="http://www.outsports.com/2013/8/4/4589652/congress-letter-kerry-russia-olympics-sochi-gay-laws" type="external">expressed concern</a> for the safety of LGBT athletes and fans who might attend next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, they expressed hope that diplomatic measures would be taken to prevent anyone from being arrested, detained, or otherwise penalized.</p>
<p>The New York Times’ Frank Bruni has suggested that the Olympics will be an important opportunity for Americans to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/opinion/bruni-striking-olympic-gold.html" type="external">show their support for LGBT equality</a>.</p> | Obama: Russia’s Anti-Gay Laws ‘Are Violating The Basic Morality’ Every Country Should Uphold | true | http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/08/07/2425861/obama-russia-anti-gay/ | 2013-08-07 | 4 |
<p>As part of Huffington Post’s Sex Heroes Q&amp;A series, the website <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tykables-adult-baby-storefront_us_58d127f7e4b0be71dcf7e9ba" type="external">interviewed</a> a man who runs a store in Mount Prospect, Illinois, that caters to adults who want to wear diapers.</p>
<p><a href="https://tykables.com/" type="external">Tykables</a>’ owner John-Michael Williams admitted his store doesn’t just supply diapers for people who are incontinent or autistic, but also those who have a fetish or sexual interest in dressing like or pretending to be a baby, known as the ABDL community.</p>
<p>The interview featured repeated statements claiming that those in the ABDL community are not interested in sexual contact with children or babies.</p>
<p>Williams described the ambience of the store: “It’s designed in a very playful way. It looks very much like a nursery, with oversize baby items, like a seven-and-a-half-foot crib and an oversize rocking horse, among our other things around the store. And we have our diapers and our full line of clothing items: our <a href="https://tykables.com/collections/snappies" type="external">Snappies bodysuits</a>, <a href="https://tykables.com/collections/pants" type="external">our denim jeans</a> that we make, our <a href="https://tykables.com/collections/padded-briefs" type="external">padded briefs</a> and <a href="https://tykables.com/collections/diapers" type="external">our diaper line</a>.”</p>
<p>Williams, who is gay, also pontificated about the shame people feel about sex: “Whether you look at it from a fetish aspect or not, a lot of people feel shamed by having sex that is not the traditional, missionary man and woman — or man and man or woman and woman, perhaps — style sex. I find that odd. I find it strange that you can feel shame in something that makes you feel pleasure. I can’t understand that mentality.”</p>
<p>Then came the moment when Williams was asked about “the distinction between those who are interested in adult baby diapers for a sexual or fetish reason and those who are into them for other reasons.” Williams answered, “From a fetish or sexual standpoint, it’s pretty self-explanatory. They are aroused sexually, either through role play or from the product itself — the sound, texture or feeling. Or, for some people, there’s a humiliation aspect. It could be any one of those things, or something else I haven’t mentioned.”</p>
<p>The HuffPo interviewer insisted, “But it has nothing to do with children. I want to make sure we’re making that very clear. This is about wanting to act like or be children, not wanting to be with children, correct?”</p>
<p>Williams, gratified by the clarification, replied, “Absolutely. It has nothing to do with actual children. The gratification comes from the objects or the role play and the persons themselves “being” the child. From a fetish standpoint it could be like… being treated as a child can be a degrading thing. If someone has a sexual response to being degraded, then being treated as an infant can be very embarrassing.”</p>
<p>Williams cited gay advocate Dan Savage to support his view of sex:</p>
<p>About four years ago Dan Savage was talking about one of the companies that I owned at the time, it was a social networking site, and I think he said it best: whether straight or gay, mainstream or not, sex is bizarre. We all look silly doing it. We all look silly in the pursuit of it. We do silly and stupid things in the pursuit of it. But when it comes down to the enjoyment of pleasure and sex, it doesn’t matter if we look funny or not.</p>
<p>Look funny or not, wearing diapers because it’s a fetish seems rather regressive.</p> | This Store Caters To Adults With A Fetish For Wearing Diapers | true | https://dailywire.com/news/14867/store-caters-adults-fetish-wearing-diapers-hank-berrien | 2017-03-28 | 0 |
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<p>SHERMAN, Texas - Police in the North Texas town of Sherman say four people - including two children - have been found dead in a home.</p>
<p>Police say they were called Monday for a welfare check. Authorities say all four of the people found dead lived in the home. They were a 36-year-old male, a 39-year-old female, and two boys, ages 10 and 7.</p>
<p>Police Sgt. D.M. Hampton tells KXII-TV ( <a href="http://bit.ly/1ZlVY2c" type="external">http://bit.ly/1ZlVY2c</a> ) they are not yet releasing any information on how the four died. He says it's still an active investigation and officials are looking the evidence and marking it.</p>
<p>Police said they are not looking for any suspects at this time.</p>
<p>Sherman is located about 65 miles north of Dallas.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Four found dead in Sherman, Texas home | false | https://abqjournal.com/744070/four-found-dead-in-sherman-texas-home.html | 2 |
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<p>SEATTLE (AP) — A yearlong Associated Press analysis found more than a dozen firearms sold by law enforcement agencies in Washington since 2010 later became evidence in new criminal investigations.</p>
<p>Identifying guns sold by law enforcement and matching them to new crimes required extensive research and dozens of public records requests to individual agencies. Using those records, the AP created a database of almost 6,000 firearms sold by law enforcement since 2010.</p>
<p>The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives declined to release tracking information on guns associated with crimes, so the AP collected crime-gun databases from individual agencies and compared them with the sold-gun database to find guns with matching make, model, caliber and serial numbers.</p>
<p>Below is a look at <a href="" type="internal">guns sold by law enforcement</a> that were later picked up at crime scenes:</p>
<p>BABY SHOT IN CAR SEAT</p>
<p>On May 17, 2009, a Washington State Patrol trooper tried to stop a speeding Jeep Cherokee. When the driver refused to pull over, troopers put a spike strip across the road. The driver swerved to avoid it and lost control, causing the Jeep to roll over.</p>
<p>As the trooper approached, the driver threw a gun out the window. A child and baby were in the back seat but suffered only minor injuries. Troopers also found a backpack containing marijuana, scales and Valium. The driver was a convicted felon, so he was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm — a Lorcin L380 semi-automatic pistol, reckless endangerment and possession of marijuana.</p>
<p>On June 22, 2010, the State Patrol traded a batch of weapons, including the Lorcin pistol, with a firearms dealer who sold it to the public.</p>
<p>On April 19, 2015, in Kent, a vehicle pulled up next to another car carrying a couple and their 1-year-old daughter and opened fire, killing the child. The gun used in the shooting was a Smith &amp; Wesson .40-caliber firearm.</p>
<p>DeMartrae "Marty" Kime, a member of the street gang "Low Profile," was charged with the killing. Prosecutors say he was targeting the child's father, a member of an opposing gang, "Deuce 8," in retaliation for another death.</p>
<p>While investigating Kime, Kent police searched an apartment that Kime "had been associated with." A detective said the apartment was frequented by gang members. During the search, police found the Lorcin L380 semi-automatic pistol - the firearm traded by the State Patrol.</p>
<p>Detective Jarod Kasner said the Lorcin was a stolen firearm from Des Moines, Washington. The Lorcin was not the gun that killed the 1-year-old, but was linked to the man charged in her death.</p>
<p>TEXT THREATS</p>
<p>The Pierce County Sheriff's Office sold a batch of guns at auction in April 2014 that included a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun.</p>
<p>In early October 2016, Jaylen Bolar, 22, sent text messages to his mother, threatening to kill her and others, according to police reports. His mother, Angela Almo, contacted a behavioral health center instead of the police because she knew her son had firearms, including a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun, and she feared he'd be killed in a standoff with authorities.</p>
<p>When the Tacoma police became involved, he denied sending threatening messages, but his aunt pulled up to the house and confirmed that she, too, received threats.</p>
<p>Bolar also threatened to kill a woman who used to be his boss. She had fired him, and "the text message stated that the persons receiving the message should not be surprised if they found Rhonda Brannun's dead body," the police report said.</p>
<p>Bolar was taken into custody, and a search of his home found two firearms leaning next to the dresser in his bedroom. One was the Mossberg shotgun sold by the sheriff's office.</p>
<p>JUVENILES IN STOLEN CAR</p>
<p>The Aberdeen Police Department sold a Lorcin Model L380 pistol on Feb. 1, 2011.</p>
<p>On May 24, 2016, an officer with the Kent Police Department located a stolen vehicle parked at an apartment complex in Kent. He pulled up behind the Honda and saw a lot of movement inside by three people.</p>
<p>The officer placed all three juveniles in handcuffs and searched the vehicle. He found a loaded Lorcin Model L380 pistol — the one sold by the Aberdeen police — under the driver's seat. Based on where one of the juveniles was sitting, the officer determined it was his. The young man was arrested for possession of a stolen vehicle and unlawful possession of a firearm.</p>
<p>All three juveniles were convicted felons for stealing cars and one for attempting to elude an officer.</p>
<p>DRUNKEN FELON</p>
<p>The Kitsap County Sheriff's Office sold a Hi Point 9mm pistol on March 6, 2014.</p>
<p>On Oct. 24, 2015, the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office responded to a 911 call from a woman who said she heard what she thought was a gunshot and went outside to find her daughter's intoxicated boyfriend passed out on the front porch.</p>
<p>When deputies arrived they found a handgun, the Hi Point 9 mm pistol, on the ground next to the man. It was the gun sold by the Kitsap sheriff's office.</p>
<p>The man was a convicted felon who wasn't permitted to have a gun. The deputy put the man in handcuffs and called for medical help.</p>
<p>PROHIBITED FROM HAVING A GUN</p>
<p>The Washington State Patrol traded a batch of weapons, including a Taurus semi-automatic 22-caliber pistol, with a firearms dealer on June 22, 2010.</p>
<p>On May 30, 2015, the Kent Police Department responded to a 911 call. No one spoke, but dispatch could hear rustling noises and a male voice in the background.</p>
<p>Officers arrived and found three men and a woman in front of a house. Police suspected they were burglarizing the home.</p>
<p>Police found a Taurus .22 caliber pistol — the same gun sold by the State Patrol — in one of the suspect's pockets. A search of records revealed Angelino Ramirez was the subject of a no-contact order out of the King County Sheriff's Office that stated he was prohibited from possessing a firearm. He was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm.</p>
<p>Another search revealed the previous owner of the weapon reported he was the victim of a burglary and the pistol was stolen.</p>
<p>DRUG HOUSE</p>
<p>The Aberdeen Police Department traded a JC Higgins .22-caliber rifle to a firearms dealer on Feb. 1, 2011, and it was then sold to the public.</p>
<p>On April 25, 2015, the Yakima Police Department responded to a domestic violence assault involving a JC Higgins .22-caliber rifle — the gun sold by the Aberdeen police. The dispute involved an elderly man who had handled his wife roughly and made threats against her sister. The man was charged, and police took his firearm. It ended up back on the street.</p>
<p>On Oct. 28, 2015, the Kent Police Department, a SWAT team and special investigations unit served a search warrant on a house in Kent believe to be a drug house. Immediately arrested were several people who were wanted on felony warrants.</p>
<p>The search found a list of firearms and a lot of drugs, including methamphetamine. One of the firearms found in bedroom No. 1 was a JC Higgins .22-caliber rifle with the same serial number as the gun taken in the domestic violence assault and sold by Aberdeen police. The man who was staying in that room was a felon and was prohibited from having guns.</p>
<p>FACEBOOK POSTS ABOUT KILLING</p>
<p>The Thurston County Narcotics Task Force sold a Smith &amp; Wesson pistol on Aug. 1, 2012, for $100.</p>
<p>Officers with the Tacoma Police Department went to the University of Washington, Tacoma, security office on Oct. 17, 2013, after receiving an email from a security officer who was contacted by a student regarding some disturbing Facebook posts.</p>
<p>The female student said another student recently split with his girlfriend and began posting pictures of a gun and his dreams about killing people.</p>
<p>A screen shot of his Facebook page said he "had vivid, colorful dreams of shooting and killing lots of people last night."</p>
<p>The officers made contact with a man on the UW campus, and they asked if he was carrying a weapon. He said he had a knife in his pocket. A search of his backpack found a loaded Smith &amp; Wesson handgun — the same gun sold by the Thurston County task force — with 13 rounds in the magazine.</p>
<p>The man had a permit to carry a concealed weapon but acknowledged he knew UWT prohibits people from having guns without a university permit. He said he carried the weapons out of safety concerns.</p>
<p>Officers issued a citation for the illegal knife and took him into custody. He was booked into a mental health center for an evaluation.</p>
<p>COCAINE PARTY FAVORS</p>
<p>On March 24, 2011, the Bonney Lake Police Department traded a batch of weapons with a firearms dealer to get store credit for police equipment. The trade included a Davis Industries .380-caliber handgun.</p>
<p>On Feb. 10, 2012, the Kent Police Department stopped a vehicle for having an expired registration. The driver also had a suspended license. He said he had a concealed weapons permit for the firearm found in the center console. The gun was the Davis Industries .380-caliber handgun sold by Bonney Lake police.</p>
<p>A search also found marijuana and two baggies containing a white powder believed to be cocaine.</p>
<p>The man said he was on his way to a party, and the drugs were "party favors." A search of his clothing and car found more baggies of cocaine.</p>
<p>The man was taken to the Kent Correctional Facility.</p>
<p>THREATS TO KILL</p>
<p>Longview Police Department sold a Davis Industries .22 caliber pistol on Aug. 7, 2016. The department generally sells its forfeited firearms at a public auction run.</p>
<p>On May 5, 2017, James Brown called 911 to report that his father, Jesse, and another man "loaded up three different firearms" and talked about teaching a couple of guys a lesson. Jesse Brown believed the targets of his anger were selling drugs, and he didn't want his daughter going to their house.</p>
<p>James Brown said his father, who used to brag about controlling Thurston County with his violence, was drunk. "I think he was nostalgic. ... He just wanted to relive the glory days where he was kicking down doors and pointing guns at people."</p>
<p>Jesse Brown and his friend went to the house and parked in front. Jesse yelled for the occupants to come out. The two men said Jesse was drunk and had trouble walking and speaking.</p>
<p>The two men inside said they feared for their lives. Jesse Brown was charged with one count of felony harassment; threats to kill.</p>
<p>The gun he carried was Davis Industries .22 caliber pistol — the one sold by Longview police. The sheriff's office also confiscated 15 other guns from his home.</p>
<p>FATHER MAKES THREATS</p>
<p>In December 2014, the Thurston County Sheriff's Office sold a Mossberg, Model 590, 12-gauge shotgun for $160.</p>
<p>Just after midnight on March 10, 2016, Tacoma police officers responded to a call from a 12-year-old girl who said she and her sister fled their residence because their father "was threatening to shoot someone and beat up (one of the girls) for not knowing where the gun was."</p>
<p>The girls were in the street without jackets or shoes. Police said they "appeared to be visibly in fear" and frantically explained what happened.</p>
<p>The girls were visiting their father, who had joint custody. He and his live-in girlfriend had been at a bar, where they argued. The fight began again when they returned, and the father confronted his daughters asking where his gun was and making statements about wanting "to put a hole in her," referring to his girlfriend.</p>
<p>The father pulled up as police spoke with the girls. They were taken to their mother's home, and police conducted a sobriety test on the man, who failed.</p>
<p>He claimed his girlfriend had assaulted him by grabbing him around his neck, and he said he was afraid her family would come over and attack him, so he wanted to arm himself.</p>
<p>The man was charged with assault and driving under the influence of alcohol. Police found the loaded shotgun in the bathtub. It was a Mossberg, Model 590, 12-gauge shotgun, the gun sold by the sheriff's office.</p>
<p>MAN'S SUICIDE</p>
<p>The Washington State Patrol traded a batch of guns to a firearms vendor on June 22, 2010, that included a Smith and Wesson handgun.</p>
<p>On Sept. 16, 2014, the Yakima Police Department responded to a report of a <a href="" type="internal">suicidal man with a gun</a> . They arrived to find 24-year-old Kyle Juhl with a gunshot wound to the head.</p>
<p>His former girlfriend told police they had lived together but recently separated. She was at the apartment picking up some belongings when Juhl came home.</p>
<p>He held a Smith and Wesson handgun — the one previously sold by the State Patrol — to his head and threatened to kill himself, and the girlfriend and her mother ran out the front door as the gun went off.</p>
<p>Juhl had shot himself in the head. The bullet went through the wall in the bathroom and into the next-door apartment, "barely missing the neighbors and her kids," the police report said.</p>
<p>MENTAL HEALTH EMERGENCY</p>
<p>In August 2013, officers with the Thurston County Narcotics Task Force searched the home of suspected drug dealer Ted V. Hall Jr., of Spanaway. They found $33,000, heroin, meth and 19 firearms, including a Springfield Armory .40-caliber pistol. Hall was convicted on drug and firearms charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison.</p>
<p>The task force sold most of the firearms Dec. 1, 2013, in a trade with Surplus Ammo &amp; Arms in Tacoma.</p>
<p>On Feb. 21, 2014, a Seattle Police officer met with King County Prosecutor Ann Mizuta about Dan Callan. His son, Robert, was at the Involuntary Treatment Act court for a potential mental health hearing. He had been delivered to a health care facility for "bizarre behavior and was believed to be experiencing a mental health emergency," the police report said.</p>
<p>Dan Callan knew his son, who lived in Federal Way, had several firearms, but he didn't know where they were. He feared his son may have "left the guns around somewhere," due to his "present disorganized state of mind." Callan later found the guns and asked to meet with the police so he could turn them over to them for safekeeping.</p>
<p>They met on Feb. 24, 2014, at Callan's office. He said his son had opted to remain voluntarily committed. He gave police a black plastic case containing two loaded pistols, a 9 mm and a .40 caliber, along with three loaded magazines. The .40-caliber gun was the pistol sold by the task force.</p>
<p>When contacted, Callan said he "felt much safer to have him not have the guns." He said he wasn't aware a law enforcement agency had sold the gun after it was involved in a crime.</p>
<p>"I don't get it," he said. "The more we can do to get rid of them, the better. I think it's crazy that they would sell them. Totally crazy."</p>
<p>SEATTLE (AP) — A yearlong Associated Press analysis found more than a dozen firearms sold by law enforcement agencies in Washington since 2010 later became evidence in new criminal investigations.</p>
<p>Identifying guns sold by law enforcement and matching them to new crimes required extensive research and dozens of public records requests to individual agencies. Using those records, the AP created a database of almost 6,000 firearms sold by law enforcement since 2010.</p>
<p>The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives declined to release tracking information on guns associated with crimes, so the AP collected crime-gun databases from individual agencies and compared them with the sold-gun database to find guns with matching make, model, caliber and serial numbers.</p>
<p>Below is a look at <a href="" type="internal">guns sold by law enforcement</a> that were later picked up at crime scenes:</p>
<p>BABY SHOT IN CAR SEAT</p>
<p>On May 17, 2009, a Washington State Patrol trooper tried to stop a speeding Jeep Cherokee. When the driver refused to pull over, troopers put a spike strip across the road. The driver swerved to avoid it and lost control, causing the Jeep to roll over.</p>
<p>As the trooper approached, the driver threw a gun out the window. A child and baby were in the back seat but suffered only minor injuries. Troopers also found a backpack containing marijuana, scales and Valium. The driver was a convicted felon, so he was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm — a Lorcin L380 semi-automatic pistol, reckless endangerment and possession of marijuana.</p>
<p>On June 22, 2010, the State Patrol traded a batch of weapons, including the Lorcin pistol, with a firearms dealer who sold it to the public.</p>
<p>On April 19, 2015, in Kent, a vehicle pulled up next to another car carrying a couple and their 1-year-old daughter and opened fire, killing the child. The gun used in the shooting was a Smith &amp; Wesson .40-caliber firearm.</p>
<p>DeMartrae "Marty" Kime, a member of the street gang "Low Profile," was charged with the killing. Prosecutors say he was targeting the child's father, a member of an opposing gang, "Deuce 8," in retaliation for another death.</p>
<p>While investigating Kime, Kent police searched an apartment that Kime "had been associated with." A detective said the apartment was frequented by gang members. During the search, police found the Lorcin L380 semi-automatic pistol - the firearm traded by the State Patrol.</p>
<p>Detective Jarod Kasner said the Lorcin was a stolen firearm from Des Moines, Washington. The Lorcin was not the gun that killed the 1-year-old, but was linked to the man charged in her death.</p>
<p>TEXT THREATS</p>
<p>The Pierce County Sheriff's Office sold a batch of guns at auction in April 2014 that included a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun.</p>
<p>In early October 2016, Jaylen Bolar, 22, sent text messages to his mother, threatening to kill her and others, according to police reports. His mother, Angela Almo, contacted a behavioral health center instead of the police because she knew her son had firearms, including a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun, and she feared he'd be killed in a standoff with authorities.</p>
<p>When the Tacoma police became involved, he denied sending threatening messages, but his aunt pulled up to the house and confirmed that she, too, received threats.</p>
<p>Bolar also threatened to kill a woman who used to be his boss. She had fired him, and "the text message stated that the persons receiving the message should not be surprised if they found Rhonda Brannun's dead body," the police report said.</p>
<p>Bolar was taken into custody, and a search of his home found two firearms leaning next to the dresser in his bedroom. One was the Mossberg shotgun sold by the sheriff's office.</p>
<p>JUVENILES IN STOLEN CAR</p>
<p>The Aberdeen Police Department sold a Lorcin Model L380 pistol on Feb. 1, 2011.</p>
<p>On May 24, 2016, an officer with the Kent Police Department located a stolen vehicle parked at an apartment complex in Kent. He pulled up behind the Honda and saw a lot of movement inside by three people.</p>
<p>The officer placed all three juveniles in handcuffs and searched the vehicle. He found a loaded Lorcin Model L380 pistol — the one sold by the Aberdeen police — under the driver's seat. Based on where one of the juveniles was sitting, the officer determined it was his. The young man was arrested for possession of a stolen vehicle and unlawful possession of a firearm.</p>
<p>All three juveniles were convicted felons for stealing cars and one for attempting to elude an officer.</p>
<p>DRUNKEN FELON</p>
<p>The Kitsap County Sheriff's Office sold a Hi Point 9mm pistol on March 6, 2014.</p>
<p>On Oct. 24, 2015, the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office responded to a 911 call from a woman who said she heard what she thought was a gunshot and went outside to find her daughter's intoxicated boyfriend passed out on the front porch.</p>
<p>When deputies arrived they found a handgun, the Hi Point 9 mm pistol, on the ground next to the man. It was the gun sold by the Kitsap sheriff's office.</p>
<p>The man was a convicted felon who wasn't permitted to have a gun. The deputy put the man in handcuffs and called for medical help.</p>
<p>PROHIBITED FROM HAVING A GUN</p>
<p>The Washington State Patrol traded a batch of weapons, including a Taurus semi-automatic 22-caliber pistol, with a firearms dealer on June 22, 2010.</p>
<p>On May 30, 2015, the Kent Police Department responded to a 911 call. No one spoke, but dispatch could hear rustling noises and a male voice in the background.</p>
<p>Officers arrived and found three men and a woman in front of a house. Police suspected they were burglarizing the home.</p>
<p>Police found a Taurus .22 caliber pistol — the same gun sold by the State Patrol — in one of the suspect's pockets. A search of records revealed Angelino Ramirez was the subject of a no-contact order out of the King County Sheriff's Office that stated he was prohibited from possessing a firearm. He was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm.</p>
<p>Another search revealed the previous owner of the weapon reported he was the victim of a burglary and the pistol was stolen.</p>
<p>DRUG HOUSE</p>
<p>The Aberdeen Police Department traded a JC Higgins .22-caliber rifle to a firearms dealer on Feb. 1, 2011, and it was then sold to the public.</p>
<p>On April 25, 2015, the Yakima Police Department responded to a domestic violence assault involving a JC Higgins .22-caliber rifle — the gun sold by the Aberdeen police. The dispute involved an elderly man who had handled his wife roughly and made threats against her sister. The man was charged, and police took his firearm. It ended up back on the street.</p>
<p>On Oct. 28, 2015, the Kent Police Department, a SWAT team and special investigations unit served a search warrant on a house in Kent believe to be a drug house. Immediately arrested were several people who were wanted on felony warrants.</p>
<p>The search found a list of firearms and a lot of drugs, including methamphetamine. One of the firearms found in bedroom No. 1 was a JC Higgins .22-caliber rifle with the same serial number as the gun taken in the domestic violence assault and sold by Aberdeen police. The man who was staying in that room was a felon and was prohibited from having guns.</p>
<p>FACEBOOK POSTS ABOUT KILLING</p>
<p>The Thurston County Narcotics Task Force sold a Smith &amp; Wesson pistol on Aug. 1, 2012, for $100.</p>
<p>Officers with the Tacoma Police Department went to the University of Washington, Tacoma, security office on Oct. 17, 2013, after receiving an email from a security officer who was contacted by a student regarding some disturbing Facebook posts.</p>
<p>The female student said another student recently split with his girlfriend and began posting pictures of a gun and his dreams about killing people.</p>
<p>A screen shot of his Facebook page said he "had vivid, colorful dreams of shooting and killing lots of people last night."</p>
<p>The officers made contact with a man on the UW campus, and they asked if he was carrying a weapon. He said he had a knife in his pocket. A search of his backpack found a loaded Smith &amp; Wesson handgun — the same gun sold by the Thurston County task force — with 13 rounds in the magazine.</p>
<p>The man had a permit to carry a concealed weapon but acknowledged he knew UWT prohibits people from having guns without a university permit. He said he carried the weapons out of safety concerns.</p>
<p>Officers issued a citation for the illegal knife and took him into custody. He was booked into a mental health center for an evaluation.</p>
<p>COCAINE PARTY FAVORS</p>
<p>On March 24, 2011, the Bonney Lake Police Department traded a batch of weapons with a firearms dealer to get store credit for police equipment. The trade included a Davis Industries .380-caliber handgun.</p>
<p>On Feb. 10, 2012, the Kent Police Department stopped a vehicle for having an expired registration. The driver also had a suspended license. He said he had a concealed weapons permit for the firearm found in the center console. The gun was the Davis Industries .380-caliber handgun sold by Bonney Lake police.</p>
<p>A search also found marijuana and two baggies containing a white powder believed to be cocaine.</p>
<p>The man said he was on his way to a party, and the drugs were "party favors." A search of his clothing and car found more baggies of cocaine.</p>
<p>The man was taken to the Kent Correctional Facility.</p>
<p>THREATS TO KILL</p>
<p>Longview Police Department sold a Davis Industries .22 caliber pistol on Aug. 7, 2016. The department generally sells its forfeited firearms at a public auction run.</p>
<p>On May 5, 2017, James Brown called 911 to report that his father, Jesse, and another man "loaded up three different firearms" and talked about teaching a couple of guys a lesson. Jesse Brown believed the targets of his anger were selling drugs, and he didn't want his daughter going to their house.</p>
<p>James Brown said his father, who used to brag about controlling Thurston County with his violence, was drunk. "I think he was nostalgic. ... He just wanted to relive the glory days where he was kicking down doors and pointing guns at people."</p>
<p>Jesse Brown and his friend went to the house and parked in front. Jesse yelled for the occupants to come out. The two men said Jesse was drunk and had trouble walking and speaking.</p>
<p>The two men inside said they feared for their lives. Jesse Brown was charged with one count of felony harassment; threats to kill.</p>
<p>The gun he carried was Davis Industries .22 caliber pistol — the one sold by Longview police. The sheriff's office also confiscated 15 other guns from his home.</p>
<p>FATHER MAKES THREATS</p>
<p>In December 2014, the Thurston County Sheriff's Office sold a Mossberg, Model 590, 12-gauge shotgun for $160.</p>
<p>Just after midnight on March 10, 2016, Tacoma police officers responded to a call from a 12-year-old girl who said she and her sister fled their residence because their father "was threatening to shoot someone and beat up (one of the girls) for not knowing where the gun was."</p>
<p>The girls were in the street without jackets or shoes. Police said they "appeared to be visibly in fear" and frantically explained what happened.</p>
<p>The girls were visiting their father, who had joint custody. He and his live-in girlfriend had been at a bar, where they argued. The fight began again when they returned, and the father confronted his daughters asking where his gun was and making statements about wanting "to put a hole in her," referring to his girlfriend.</p>
<p>The father pulled up as police spoke with the girls. They were taken to their mother's home, and police conducted a sobriety test on the man, who failed.</p>
<p>He claimed his girlfriend had assaulted him by grabbing him around his neck, and he said he was afraid her family would come over and attack him, so he wanted to arm himself.</p>
<p>The man was charged with assault and driving under the influence of alcohol. Police found the loaded shotgun in the bathtub. It was a Mossberg, Model 590, 12-gauge shotgun, the gun sold by the sheriff's office.</p>
<p>MAN'S SUICIDE</p>
<p>The Washington State Patrol traded a batch of guns to a firearms vendor on June 22, 2010, that included a Smith and Wesson handgun.</p>
<p>On Sept. 16, 2014, the Yakima Police Department responded to a report of a <a href="" type="internal">suicidal man with a gun</a> . They arrived to find 24-year-old Kyle Juhl with a gunshot wound to the head.</p>
<p>His former girlfriend told police they had lived together but recently separated. She was at the apartment picking up some belongings when Juhl came home.</p>
<p>He held a Smith and Wesson handgun — the one previously sold by the State Patrol — to his head and threatened to kill himself, and the girlfriend and her mother ran out the front door as the gun went off.</p>
<p>Juhl had shot himself in the head. The bullet went through the wall in the bathroom and into the next-door apartment, "barely missing the neighbors and her kids," the police report said.</p>
<p>MENTAL HEALTH EMERGENCY</p>
<p>In August 2013, officers with the Thurston County Narcotics Task Force searched the home of suspected drug dealer Ted V. Hall Jr., of Spanaway. They found $33,000, heroin, meth and 19 firearms, including a Springfield Armory .40-caliber pistol. Hall was convicted on drug and firearms charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison.</p>
<p>The task force sold most of the firearms Dec. 1, 2013, in a trade with Surplus Ammo &amp; Arms in Tacoma.</p>
<p>On Feb. 21, 2014, a Seattle Police officer met with King County Prosecutor Ann Mizuta about Dan Callan. His son, Robert, was at the Involuntary Treatment Act court for a potential mental health hearing. He had been delivered to a health care facility for "bizarre behavior and was believed to be experiencing a mental health emergency," the police report said.</p>
<p>Dan Callan knew his son, who lived in Federal Way, had several firearms, but he didn't know where they were. He feared his son may have "left the guns around somewhere," due to his "present disorganized state of mind." Callan later found the guns and asked to meet with the police so he could turn them over to them for safekeeping.</p>
<p>They met on Feb. 24, 2014, at Callan's office. He said his son had opted to remain voluntarily committed. He gave police a black plastic case containing two loaded pistols, a 9 mm and a .40 caliber, along with three loaded magazines. The .40-caliber gun was the pistol sold by the task force.</p>
<p>When contacted, Callan said he "felt much safer to have him not have the guns." He said he wasn't aware a law enforcement agency had sold the gun after it was involved in a crime.</p>
<p>"I don't get it," he said. "The more we can do to get rid of them, the better. I think it's crazy that they would sell them. Totally crazy."</p> | Some guns sold by law enforcement end up at new crime scenes | false | https://apnews.com/amp/c21820b3faa5429bb52fb44138be2e7d | 2018-01-08 | 2 |
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<p />
<p>The thought of staying at home with my son first crossed my mind after my wife and I concluded that I needed to resign from my job for the sake of my sanity. After her maternity leave ended and she returned to full-time work, I agreed to care for my 4-month-old son while I was unemployed. It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement.</p>
<p>Leaving work to become his primary caregiver felt like a death blow to my male ego. I consider myself an open-minded person, but my progressive views were no match for the residue of a tradition that expects men to work outside the home. I was a young man with a career, ambition and professional dreams, and the critical voice within reminded me that the choice to care for my son did not match the version of masculinity that had formed me.</p>
<p>During those first few months, I learned to prepare bottles of breast milk and insert rectal thermometers and bounce my son to sleep. It was demanding work; different from a 9-to-5 job but exhausting in its own way. In those first months, I didn’t have a clue if I was competent or not, and my self-esteem plummeted.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>However, as I learned to balance the daily routine of child care and to understand my son’s particular needs, I had an illuminating realization. I wish I could point to a moment – a diaper change or a doctor’s appointment that revealed my new insight – but I can’t. It was an intuitive feeling, a signal in my gut that told me I was good at caring for him. My temperament is suited to the work. Despite my initial reservations and concerns, my calmness and patience matched the needs of an unpredictable baby. Even my wife, who wondered how long the arrangement would last, noticed how well I fit my new role.</p>
<p>What did this discovery mean?</p>
<p>It was confusing. I did not seek this role, and I was caught off-guard by my ability to perform it well. I didn’t know if I should embrace or resist this newfound knowledge. My discovery made sense in some ways, because I’ve never been the type of guy to identify with traditional masculinity. I’ve just imitated it. I am sensitive, feeling-oriented and nurturing. Tough guys do not appeal to me, and when I have tried to imitate them, I have failed miserably (and believe me, I’ve tried).</p>
<p>Looking back on that first year, I realize that caring for my son helped me access my capacity to nurture. It gave me an opportunity to grow into this side of myself and in so doing, to become more whole. What felt like a downturn in my personal and professional life – a moment of shame and unemployment – led to plenty of good. It gave me the chance to become my true self.</p>
<p>I’ve experienced joy in moving closer to my authentic nature, but I still fear announcing this discovery to the world. I know how our macho culture treats men who reveal a nurturing and sensitive side. It definitely does not celebrate them and often, they are ostracized for expressing something that makes other men uncomfortable.</p>
<p>This insecurity makes me worry about how other men will view me. I’ve experienced their bewildered stares as I carried my son in a cloth wrap, strapped to my chest. Will they call me a pansy, or a wimp? I’m sure some will, and that many will project their insecurities on me. I’ve done the same.</p>
<p>The thing I’m most terrified to admit out loud is how completely I’ve embraced my nurturing side. I find myself wondering what it would be like to carry a baby full-term, and labor to deliver it. I find myself wondering what it would be like to breast-feed. The thoughts are rooted in envy, because as a male I will never be able to achieve the same bond with my child that a mother develops because of biological features.</p>
<p>Becoming a stay-at-home father has been a blessing for me, but I don’t want to romanticize daily child care; at times, it is mind-numbing. There are beautiful moments, but there are also brutal days when you want to lie in a dark room and cry because you feel so overwhelmed. It has heightened my struggle with anxiety and depression and sleeplessness.</p>
<p>Yet, despite the grueling work, I have fallen in love with caring for my son. I find deep joy in nurturing him. The role given to me as his father is a natural and safe relationship that allows me to explore my nurturing side. It’s one of the richest blessings of my life.</p>
<p>If you had told me the day I left my job that I would love caring for my son every day, I would have scoffed. If you had asked me what good could come from a man with a master’s degree leaving work to care for a baby who slept half the day, I would have told you not much. But if you ask me now what good has come from me caring for my son, I would say everything.</p>
<p>– – –</p>
<p>Kilgore is a native Southerner, ordained minister and stay-at-home father. He lives with his family in Nashville and blogs at billykilgore.com. Follow him on Twitter @billydkilgore.</p> | I never expected to be a stay-at-home dad, but here’s why it works | false | https://abqjournal.com/946440/i-never-expected-to-be-a-stay-at-home-dad-but-heres-why-it-works.html | 2 |
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<p>The Daily Californian, a University of California, Berkeley student newspaper, has retracted and apologized for an anti-Semitic cartoon featuring legal scholar Alan Dershowitz.</p>
<p>The cartoon, as <a href="" type="internal">The Daily Wire</a> previously reported, features "Dershowitz sticking his head through a cardboard cutout. On display above him is the title of his recent speech: ‘The Liberal Case for Israel.’ Behind the cardboard wall, Dershowitz is stomping on a Palestinian and holding up an Israeli soldier who is shooting what appears to be an unarmed man."</p>
<p>On Friday, Editor-in-Chief Karim Doumar released a <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2017/10/27/editors-note-retraction-and-apology-for-anti-semitic-editorial-cartoon/" type="external">statement</a> apologizing for the cartoon:</p>
<p>The editorial cartoon that ran in our opinion page Oct. 13 failed to meet our editorial standards and has been retracted. The cartoon hearkened to clearly anti-Semitic tropes. It should not have been published, and we sincerely apologize that it was. ...</p>
<p>We apologize to our readers and members of our staff who were hurt by the cartoon. We especially apologize to Alan Dershowitz for the ways it negatively impacted him both personally and professionally.</p>
<p>As is clear in the outpouring of criticisms and condemnations by community members both in Berkeley and beyond, the cartoon was unacceptable. The thoughts of several community members have since been published in the form of letters to the editor.</p>
<p>Covering a community means listening to that community and reflecting its beliefs, feelings, fears and opinions.</p>
<p>As part of our ongoing education, we will be meeting with local religious leaders and experts to improve our understanding of the historical context behind these types of images and contemporary manifestations of anti-Semitism. Additionally, we are ensuring that a detailed knowledge of the history of harmful visual propaganda becomes an integral part of how we train our staff.</p>
<p>We understand and take responsibility for the harm we have caused our readers and our staff. We hear you, we accept your criticism, and we will learn from our errors.</p>
<p>Two things should be noted:</p>
<p>First, on Wednesday, Doumar half-defended the cartoon, <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2017/10/25/editors-note-regarding-editorial-cartoon-depicting-alan-dershowitz/" type="external">writing</a> in part:</p>
<p>The artist’s intent was to argue that the contents of civil liberties lawyer and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School Alan Dershowitz’s recent lecture at UC Berkeley were hypocritical. We regret that the artistic rendering distracted from the discussion the artist was trying to start.</p>
<p>The criticism we have received reaffirms for us a need for a more critical editing eye, and a stronger understanding of the violent history and contemporary manifestations of anti-Semitism. ...</p>
<p>Second, Doumar’s apology never explicitly states that the message of the cartoon was anti-Semitic, only that the way it was drawn "hearkened to clearly anti-Semitic tropes."</p>
<p>Intentional or not, Doumar did not apologize for the idea that the cartoon promoted — that the defense of Israel by Alan Dershowitz is disingenuous, driven primarily by his ethnic heritage — which is a deeply troubling perspective.</p> | Berkeley Student Newspaper Retracts Anti-Semitic Cartoon Targeting Alan Dershowitz, And Issues Apology ... Sort Of | true | https://dailywire.com/news/22857/berkeley-student-newspaper-retracts-anti-semitic-frank-camp | 2017-10-27 | 0 |
<p>NEW YORK, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Wall Street paused its rally on Tuesday, weighed down by weakness in General Electric shares and as lower oil prices dragged down the energy sector.</p>
<p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 10.33 points, or 0.04 percent, to 25,792.86, the S&amp;P 500 lost 9.82 points, or 0.35 percent, to 2,776.42 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 37.38 points, or 0.51 percent, to 7,223.69. (Reporting by April Joyner; Editing by James Dalgleish)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - General Electric Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GE.N" type="external">GE.N</a>) posted quarterly results that topped expectations on Friday, as earnings from aviation, healthcare and transportation offset weak power and oil-and-gas profits, sending shares sharply higher.</p> FILE PHOTO: A pedestrian walks past a General Electric (GE) facility in Medford, Massachusetts, U.S., April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo
<p>GE affirmed its forecast for 2018 earnings and cash flow, and said it expects to book as much as $10 billion in proceeds from divesting industrial assets this year. Those comments eased concern that GE would post poor results.</p>
<p>GE's profit reflected 7-percent revenue growth and vigorous cost cutting. Revenue rose in aviation, oil-and-gas and healthcare, offsetting declines in power, transportation, lighting and renewable energy. GE sliced $1 billion in costs, including $800 million in industrial structural costs.</p>
<p>GE's shares were up 3.8 percent to $14.52 on Thursday. The stock has lost more than half its value in the past last year.</p>
<p>But GE also took a $1.5-billion reserve charge for potential costs associated with its discontinued WMC mortgage business, formerly part GE Capital.</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Justice has been investigating the activities of GE's former mortgage unit during the subprime mortgage crisis, since 2015. GE said settlement discussions with the DOJ in March and analysis of other banks' reserves prompted it to take the charge, but it sees limited impact to results.</p>
<p>"We do not expect this to change our view on GE Capital with regards to cash and liquidity," GE Chief Financial Officer Jamie Miller said on a conference call with analysts.</p>
<p>Excluding adjustments, GE earned $369 million, or 4 cents a share, on revenue of $28.7 billion. That compared with 1 cent a share a year ago.</p>
<p>While several analysts thought GE handily beat forecasts, others cited the unadjusted earnings as being more telling.</p>
<p>"I'm looking at it as coming in as expected," analyst Jeff Windau at Edward Jones, said of the results and the adjustments. "And expectations were low."</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GE.N" type="external">General Electric Co</a> 14.54 GE.N New York Stock Exchange +0.55 (+3.93%) GE.N
<p>JPMorgan analyst Steve Tusa was among those who said GE may cut its full-year earnings forecast in coming months. While results were "not that bad" compared with other quarters, Tusa said, negative free cash flow of $1.68 billion was weaker than he expected. GE typically reports negative cash flow early in the year as it spends on inventory shipped later in the year.</p>
<p>GE earned an adjusted 16 cents per share, up from a restated 14 cents a share a year earlier. Analysts on average had expected 11 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. GE recently restated 2017 results to reflect changes in accounting standards.</p>
<p>Analysts had forecast GE's profit to decline in the first quarter and some thought Friday's results might fail to meet even those diminished expectations.</p>
<p>But the company's aviation, transportation and healthcare businesses produced double-digit profit growth in the quarter, boosting overall results.</p>
<p>Profit at GE's power business fell 38 percent on a 9 percent decline in sales; orders dropped 29 percent.</p>
<p>"The industry continues to be challenging and is trending softer than our forecast," GE said of the power business.</p>
<p>Profit in GE's oil and gas unit fell 30 percent, excluding restructuring and other charges, GE said.</p>
<p>Reporting by Alwyn Scott in New York and Rachit Vats in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. has opened a probe into alleged coordination by AT&amp;T Inc, Verizon Communications and a telecommunications standards organization to hinder consumers from easily switching wireless carriers, a person briefed on the matter said on Friday.</p> FILE PHOTO: An AT&amp;T logo is pictured in Pasadena, California, U.S., January 24, 2018. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo
<p>Verizon and AT&amp;T acknowledged the government probe and said they were working with regulators.</p>
<p>At issue is a technology that could make carriers' business more volatile. Called eSIM, it allows consumers to switch wireless providers without having to insert a new physical SIM card, an identifying microchip. That makes it easier to compare wireless networks and easily select a new service when desired.</p>
<p>Verizon called the probe "much ado about nothing," adding that it has been working with the Justice Department for several months "regarding the inquiry," according to spokesman Rich Young.</p>
<p>The New York Times reported on Friday that the Justice Department had opened an investigation about five months ago after at least one device maker and one wireless carrier filed formal complaints with the Justice Department.</p>
<p>The Justice Department sent demands to AT&amp;T, Verizon and the GSMA, an industry standards-setting group, on efforts to thwart eSIM.</p>
<p>Apple Inc and other equipment makers have complained to the Justice Department about wireless carrier practices related to eSIM technology, two sources familiar with the matter said. Apple declined to comment.</p>
<p>"The reality is that we have a difference of opinion with a couple of phone equipment manufacturers regarding the development of e-SIM standards. Nothing more," Verizon's Young said.</p>
<p>An AT&amp;T spokesman said in an email: "Along with other GSMA members, we have provided information to the government in response to their requests and will continue to work proactively within GSMA, including with those who might disagree with the proposed standards."</p>
<p>News of the probe comes at a critical time for AT&amp;T which is being sued by the Justice Department to stop its deal to buy media company Time Warner Inc.</p>
<p>The U.S. government has argued in a trial that is nearing completion that the proposed deal would spur AT&amp;T to charge its pay TV rivals more for Time Warner content.</p>
<p>However, Judge Richard Leon, who will decide if AT&amp;T will be allowed to buy Time Warner, is unlikely to consider a report of potential wrongdoing by the wireless giant because it is irrelevant to the merger trial under way in Washington, said Seth Bloom, a veteran of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division.</p>
<p>The Department of Justice and the GSMA, the telecommunications standard setting group, declined to comment on news of the investigation.</p> FILE PHOTO: The Verizon logo is seen on the side of a truck in New York City, U.S., October 13, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
<p>Shares of AT&amp;T and Verizon dipped after the initial Times report, with AT&amp;T closing down 0.4 percent at $34.67, and Verizon ending off 1.1 percent, at $47.90.</p>
<p>The person briefed on the matter told Reuters that other wireless operators potentially received inquiries from the government.</p>
<p>It is common practice for the Justice Department to send CIDs, the civil equivalent of a subpoena, to all major players in the industry because the agency wants evidence from companies that allegedly participate in any conspiracy as well as those outside of it, according to Ethan Glass, a former trial attorney with the Justice Department now at the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart &amp; Sullivan LLP.</p>
<p>The source said the Obama administration had investigated similar claims in 2016 but did not take any action.</p>
<p>Consumer advocates learned in February that Verizon was apparently planning to lock phones as an anti-theft measure, and later were told by industry participants that Verizon was working with AT&amp;T in hopes of convincing the GSMA to create a standard for locking the phones, according to Harold Feld, a senior vice president at Public Knowledge.</p>
<p>Consumer advocates support the idea of an electronic SIM card, which is in the process of being rolled out, since it allows phone owners to bargain hunt and contract with any network or to shift networks easily while traveling, said Feld.</p>
<p>"I am very happy that the DOJ is taking its job as a cop on the beat very seriously," said Feld.</p>
<p>Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru, Sheila Dang in New York and David Shepardson and Diane Bartz in Washington; Writing by Chris Sanders; Editing by Dan Grebler, Peter Henderson and Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON/JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump accused OPEC on Friday of "artificially" boosting oil prices, drawing rebukes from some of the world's top energy exporters.</p>
<p>"Looks like OPEC is at it again. With record amounts of Oil all over the place, including the fully loaded ships at sea. Oil prices are artificially Very High! No good and will not be accepted!" Trump wrote on Twitter.</p>
<p>It was unclear what triggered the tweet, Trump's first mention of OPEC on social media during his term.</p>
<p>U.S. oil prices are near a three-year high, at close to $70 a barrel, and have been rising since OPEC and non-OPEC producers including Russia cut supply in January 2017 to end a global oil glut and price collapse.</p>
<p>Trump's tweet came shortly after officials from top oil exporter Saudi Arabia said they would like to see prices climb even higher and that they were still far from their goal of ending the supply glut.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-usa-trump-oil-opec/trumps-tweet-gatecrashes-opecs-celebration-idUSKBN1HR2OA" type="external">Trump's tweet gatecrashes OPEC's celebration</a>
<p>The cartel is expected to restrain supply through the end of this year, and possibly into 2019.</p>
<p>Three Saudi officials told Reuters this week they would be happy to see oil hit $80 or $100 a barrel. Higher prices drive up gasoline prices for motorists worldwide and rising energy costs feed inflation. But higher oil prices have also benefited the U.S. energy industry, feeding rapid growth in output from shale fields. U.S. oil output is at record levels.</p>
<p>Despite Trump's comments, oil benchmarks ended the day modestly higher, rebounding from early losses.</p>
<p>Several members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries responded to the tweet, saying prices were not artificially inflated.</p>
<p>Delegates at an OPEC/non-OPEC monitoring committee meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia said oil prices were higher partially because of global political tensions, mentioning sanctions on Venezuela, threats to the Iran nuclear agreement, strikes on Syria and saber-rattling over North Korea.</p>
<p>OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo said the output cut agreement halted the collapse in global oil prices, and is "on course to restore stability on a sustainable basis in the interest of producers, consumers and the global economy."</p>
<p>"We don't have any price objective in OPEC, and not in this joint endeavor with non-OPEC," Barkindo said on Friday, in response to Trump's tweet.</p>
<p>The group is next slated to meet in June to discuss output policy. Ministers from both Iraq and the United Arab Emirates also disagreed with Trump on Friday, with Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi saying prices are "not very high" and that the market is stabilizing.</p>
<p>Trump gave no details on what action his administration might take regarding oil or OPEC, and the White House did not respond to elaborate on the issue on the record.</p>
<p>"We have a difficult time seeing how OPEC would in any way be swayed here in terms of changing course, in terms of policy," said Michael Tran, commodity strategist at RBC.</p>
<p>OPEC's output fell in March to an 11-month low, according to a Reuters survey. The cartel has targeted the five-year average of inventories in 35 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries as a barometer for the deal's success.</p>
<p>As of mid-April, those inventories were 2.85 billion barrels, or 43 million more than the five-year average; a year ago, it was 268 million barrels above that benchmark.</p>
<p>This week, crude futures benchmarks Brent LCOc1 and U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) CLc1 hit their highest since November 2014, with Brent touching $74.75 and U.S. crude $69.56 per barrel. [O/R]</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump departs the White House for a trip to Miami, Florida, in Washington D.C., U.S. April 16, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
<p>That has raised fuel costs, with average U.S. prices for gasoline hitting $2.75 a gallon on Wednesday, according to motorist advocacy group AAA, up more than 30 cents from a year earlier and at their highest since July 2015.</p>
<p>Trump is "just trying to relate to his base when it comes to the retail gasoline prices, so he's blaming OPEC for this," said Josh Graves, senior market strategist at RJO Futures in Chicago.</p>
<p>Beyond OPEC's supply management, crude prices have been supported by expectations that Washington will re-introduce sanctions on OPEC-member Iran, and might expand sanctions against Venezuela after that country's presidential election next month.</p>
<p>"If one concern about reinstating sanctions on Iranian oil is the impact that it could have on oil prices, then it could be a preemptive measure to blame OPEC instead," said Antoine Halff, senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.</p>
<p>Hedge funds and other speculators hold a record level of bullish bets on Brent, on expectations of further price rises.</p> Slideshow (2 Images)
<p>The U.S. government cannot legally influence oil prices other than through releasing oil from its strategic reserve which it does occasionally.</p>
<p>This year's budget agreement includes the sale of about 100 million barrels of crude oil - about 15 percent of the reserve - as U.S. oil production recently hit a record at more than 10 million barrels a day. That release is not related to high oil prices, and analysts said it signaled Washington was not concerned about the potential for future global shortages.</p>
<p>"Washington has fully given up this idea of scarcity. You don't get to the point of selling your strategic reserves to balance your budget if you think the world is short," said Kevin Book, managing director at Clearview Energy Partners.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Alex Lawler in London and Stephanie Kelly, Ayenat Mersie and Scott DiSavino in New York, and Roberta Rampton in West Palm Beach, Florida; Writing by David Gaffen; Editing by Simon Webb and Tom Brown</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - SunTrust Banks Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=STI.N" type="external">STI.N</a>) said on Friday it discovered that a former employee may have attempted to download some information on nearly 1.5 million clients and share it with a criminal third-party.</p>
<p>The company said it believes the information included names and account balances, but not personally identifiable information, such as social security numbers, account numbers, pins, user IDs, passwords or driver's license numbers.</p>
<p>The Atlanta, Georgia-based regional bank's shares fell 0.5 percent to $66.69.</p>
<p>Chief Executive Officer William Rogers brought the incident to light on a post-earnings call with analysts on Friday. He said the attempt to download client information was made six to eight weeks ago.</p>
<p>"We began our own internal investigation and through that process, approximately 6 to 8 weeks ago, we discovered that the former employee attempted to download client information," Rogers said.</p>
<p>No significant fraudulent activity has been identified, Rogers said.</p>
<p>A SunTrust spokeswoman, Sue Mallino, refused to disclose the location of the branch where the employee attempted to steal data. She also declined to disclose the identity of the criminal third-party and said the matter was under investigation.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=STI.N" type="external">SunTrust Banks Inc</a> 66.84 STI.N New York Stock Exchange -0.19 (-0.28%) STI.N
<p>SunTrust also said that as of last week, it believed the stolen information had not left the bank.</p>
<p>Rogers said this was not a data breach, adding the employee was not authorized to get that level of information, and that the company was reviewing its systems and capabilities.</p>
<p>In a press release shortly after the call, the bank said it was proactively notifying the 1.5 million affected clients that certain information, such as address, phone number and certain account balances may have been exposed, and said it is working with outside experts and coordinating with law enforcement on the matter.</p>
<p>"While management appears to be proactively addressing the data issue, we expect a degree of uncertainty to persist as the duration, breadth, and financial impact of any related investigations (both internal and external) are not yet known," Evercore analysts wrote in a client note.</p>
<p>The incident will not result in any material impact to earnings, the bank said.</p>
<p>SunTrust said it will offer identity protection services to all of its clients free of charge, not just those potentially impacted.</p>
<p>SunTrust reported a 36 percent rise in quarterly profit helped by a rise in net interest income and lower expenses.</p>
<p>Reporting By Aparajita Saxena and Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | US STOCKS SNAPSHOT-Wall Street indexes fall with oil prices, General Electric GE profit tops estimates as cost-cutting kicks in U.S. said to investigate AT&T, Verizon over wireless collusion claim: source Trump rails against high oil prices, OPEC pushes back SunTrust says ex-employee may have shared info on 1.5 million clients | false | https://reuters.com/article/usa-stocks/us-stocks-snapshot-wall-street-indexes-fall-with-oil-prices-general-electric-idUSZXN0R7H2I | 2018-01-16 | 2 |
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<p>HOUSTON — State authorities say a prominent chef and restaurateur was involved in a scheme to illegally catch nearly 28,000 pounds of fish that was sold in Houston restaurants.</p>
<p>The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department says 59-year-old Bruce Molzan purchased and then sold red snapper, grouper and other fish at two restaurants with which he’s been associated.</p>
<p>The agency said Wednesday the operation netted more than $400,000 in profit.</p>
<p>Authorities contend the network had been operating for at least four years and the illegal catch is one of the largest in state history.</p>
<p>They say about a dozen unlicensed commercial fishermen were involved and that more than 200 misdemeanor citations have been issued.</p>
<p>An attorney for Molzan told the Houston Chronicle that he’s challenging the charges and expects them to be dismissed.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Houston chef accused of backing illegal fishing operation | false | https://abqjournal.com/983617/houston-chef-accused-of-backing-illegal-fishing-operation.html | 2 |
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<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Scores of low-flying planes circling American cities are part of a civilian air force operated by the FBI and obscured behind fictitious companies, The Associated Press has learned.</p>
<p>The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights in 11 states over a 30-day period since late April, orbiting both major cities and rural areas. At least 115 planes, including 90 Cessna aircraft, were mentioned in a federal budget document from 2009.</p>
<p>For decades, the planes have provided support to FBI surveillance operations on the ground. But now the aircraft are equipped with high-tech cameras, and in rare circumstances, technology capable of tracking thousands of cellphones, raising questions about how these surveillance flights affect Americans’ privacy.</p>
<p>“It’s important that federal law enforcement personnel have the tools they need to find and catch criminals,” said Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “But whenever an operation may also monitor the activities of Americans who are not the intended target, we must make darn sure that safeguards are in place to protect the civil liberties of innocent Americans.”</p>
<p>The FBI says the planes are not equipped or used for bulk collection activities or mass surveillance. The surveillance equipment is used for ongoing investigations, the FBI says, generally without a judge’s approval.</p>
<p>The FBI confirmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the aircraft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake companies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services.</p>
<p>“The FBI’s aviation program is not secret,” spokesman Christopher Allen said in a statement. “Specific aircraft and their capabilities are protected for operational security purposes.”</p>
<p>The front companies are used to protect the safety of the pilots, the agency said. That setup also shields the identity of the aircraft so that suspects on the ground don’t know they’re being followed.</p>
<p>The FBI is not the only federal law enforcement agency to take such measures.</p>
<p>The Drug Enforcement Administration has its own planes, also registered to fake companies, according to a 2011 Justice Department inspector general report. At the time, the DEA had 92 aircraft in its fleet. And since 2007, the U.S. Marshals Service has operated an aerial surveillance program with its own fleet equipped with technology that can capture data from thousands of cellphones, the Wall Street Journal reported last year.</p>
<p>In the FBI’s case, one of its fake companies shares a post office box with the Justice Department, creating a link between the companies and the FBI through publicly available Federal Aviation Administration records.</p>
<p>Basic aspects of the FBI’s program are withheld from the public in censored versions of official reports from the Justice Department’s inspector general, and the FBI also has been careful not to reveal its surveillance flights in court documents. The agency will not say how many planes are currently in its fleet.</p>
<p>The planes are equipped with technology that can capture video of unrelated criminal activity on the ground that could be handed over to prosecutions. One of the planes, photographed in flight last week by the AP in northern Virginia, bristled with unusual antennas under its fuselage and a camera on its left side.</p>
<p>Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they’re not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics cell towers and gets phones to reveal basic subscriber information, is used in only limited situations.</p>
<p>“These are not your grandparents’ surveillance aircraft,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union. Stanley said the flights are significant “if the federal government is maintaining a fleet of aircraft whose purpose is to circle over American cities, especially with the technology we know can be attached to those aircraft.”</p>
<p>The Justice Department recently published a privacy policy for its agencies’ use of drones and unmanned aircraft systems. But that policy does not apply to piloted aircraft. An FBI spokesman said the FBI’s flights comply with agency rules.</p>
<p>Those rules, which are heavily redacted in publicly available documents, limit the types of equipment the agency can use, as well as the justifications and duration of the surveillance.</p>
<p>Evolving technology can record higher-quality video from long distances, even at night, and can capture certain identifying information from cellphones using a device known as a “cell-site simulator” — or Stingray, to use one of the product’s brand names. These can trick pinpointed cellphones into revealing identification numbers of subscribers, including those not suspected of a crime.</p>
<p>The FBI has recently begun obtaining court orders to use this technology. Previously, the Obama administration had been directing local authorities through secret agreements not to reveal their own use of the devices, even encouraging prosecutors to drop cases rather than disclose the technology’s use in open court.</p>
<p>Officials say cellphone surveillance from FBI aircraft was rarely used.</p>
<p>Details confirmed by the FBI about its air force track closely with published reports since at least 2003 that a government surveillance program might be behind suspicious-looking planes slowly circling neighborhoods.</p>
<p>One such plane was spotted during the recent disturbance in Baltimore that followed the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who sustained grievous injuries while in police custody. In that instance, the FBI was helping local police with aerial support, which it occasionally does when asked. Those types of requests are reviewed by senior FBI officials.</p>
<p>During the past few weeks, the AP tracked planes from the FBI’s fleet on more than 100 flights over at least 11 states plus the District of Columbia, most with Cessna 182T Skylane aircraft. These included parts of Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Seattle and Southern California.</p>
<p>Some flights orbited large, enclosed buildings for extended periods where aerial photography would be less effective than electronic signals collection. Those included above Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.</p>
<p>David Gomez, a former FBI agent who oversaw parts of the aviation surveillance program over the course of his career, said the FBI surveillance aircraft are used to assist surveillance on the ground. For example, if a plane is following a suspect in a vehicle, an FBI ground surveillance team can lag behind so as not to blow their cover, Gomez said.</p>
<p>After The Washington Post revealed flights by two planes circling over Baltimore in early May, the AP began analyzing detailed flight data and aircraft-ownership registrations that shared similar addresses and flight patterns. That review found that some FBI missions circled above at least 40,000 residents during a single flight over Anaheim, California, in late May, according to Census data and records provided by the website FlightRadar24.com.</p>
<p>Most flight patterns occurred in counter-clockwise orbits up to several miles wide and roughly one mile above the ground at slow speeds. A 2003 newsletter from the company FLIR Systems Inc., which makes camera technology such as seen on the planes, described flying slowly in left-handed patterns.</p>
<p>Gomez said the aircraft circle to the left because the pilot sits on the left side. He said different flight formations are used depending on circumstances on the ground, such as whether a suspect is on the move.</p>
<p>The FBI asked the AP not to disclose the names of the fake companies it uncovered, saying that would saddle taxpayers with the expense of creating new cover companies to shield the government’s involvement, and could endanger the planes and integrity of the surveillance missions. The AP declined the FBI’s request because the companies’ names — as well as common addresses linked to the Justice Department — are listed on public documents and in government databases.</p>
<p>Recently, independent journalists and websites have cited companies traced to post office boxes in Virginia, including one shared with the Justice Department.</p>
<p>Included on most aircraft registrations is a mysterious name, Robert Lindley. He is listed as chief executive and has at least three distinct signatures among the companies. Two documents include a signature for Robert Taylor, which is strikingly similar to one of Lindley’s three handwriting patterns.</p>
<p>The FBI would not say whether Lindley is a U.S. government employee. The AP unsuccessfully tried to reach Lindley at phone numbers registered to people of the same name in the Washington area.</p>
<p>Law enforcement officials said Justice Department lawyers approved the decision to create fictitious companies and that the Federal Aviation Administration was aware of the practice. The FBI has been doing this since at least the late 1980s, according to a 1990 report by the then-General Accounting Office.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writers Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Joan Lowy and Ted Bridis in Washington; Randall Chase in Wilmington, Delaware; and news researchers Monika Mathur in Washington and Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>View documents: <a href="http://apne.ws/1HEyP0t" type="external">http://apne.ws/1HEyP0t</a></p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow on Twitter: Jack Gillum at <a href="https://twitter.com/jackgillum," type="external">https://twitter.com/jackgillum,</a> Eileen Sullivan at <a href="https://twitter.com/esullivanap" type="external">https://twitter.com/esullivanap</a> and Eric Tucker at <a href="https://twitter.com/etuckerap" type="external">https://twitter.com/etuckerap</a></p>
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Scores of low-flying planes circling American cities are part of a civilian air force operated by the FBI and obscured behind fictitious companies, The Associated Press has learned.</p>
<p>The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights in 11 states over a 30-day period since late April, orbiting both major cities and rural areas. At least 115 planes, including 90 Cessna aircraft, were mentioned in a federal budget document from 2009.</p>
<p>For decades, the planes have provided support to FBI surveillance operations on the ground. But now the aircraft are equipped with high-tech cameras, and in rare circumstances, technology capable of tracking thousands of cellphones, raising questions about how these surveillance flights affect Americans’ privacy.</p>
<p>“It’s important that federal law enforcement personnel have the tools they need to find and catch criminals,” said Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “But whenever an operation may also monitor the activities of Americans who are not the intended target, we must make darn sure that safeguards are in place to protect the civil liberties of innocent Americans.”</p>
<p>The FBI says the planes are not equipped or used for bulk collection activities or mass surveillance. The surveillance equipment is used for ongoing investigations, the FBI says, generally without a judge’s approval.</p>
<p>The FBI confirmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the aircraft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake companies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services.</p>
<p>“The FBI’s aviation program is not secret,” spokesman Christopher Allen said in a statement. “Specific aircraft and their capabilities are protected for operational security purposes.”</p>
<p>The front companies are used to protect the safety of the pilots, the agency said. That setup also shields the identity of the aircraft so that suspects on the ground don’t know they’re being followed.</p>
<p>The FBI is not the only federal law enforcement agency to take such measures.</p>
<p>The Drug Enforcement Administration has its own planes, also registered to fake companies, according to a 2011 Justice Department inspector general report. At the time, the DEA had 92 aircraft in its fleet. And since 2007, the U.S. Marshals Service has operated an aerial surveillance program with its own fleet equipped with technology that can capture data from thousands of cellphones, the Wall Street Journal reported last year.</p>
<p>In the FBI’s case, one of its fake companies shares a post office box with the Justice Department, creating a link between the companies and the FBI through publicly available Federal Aviation Administration records.</p>
<p>Basic aspects of the FBI’s program are withheld from the public in censored versions of official reports from the Justice Department’s inspector general, and the FBI also has been careful not to reveal its surveillance flights in court documents. The agency will not say how many planes are currently in its fleet.</p>
<p>The planes are equipped with technology that can capture video of unrelated criminal activity on the ground that could be handed over to prosecutions. One of the planes, photographed in flight last week by the AP in northern Virginia, bristled with unusual antennas under its fuselage and a camera on its left side.</p>
<p>Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they’re not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics cell towers and gets phones to reveal basic subscriber information, is used in only limited situations.</p>
<p>“These are not your grandparents’ surveillance aircraft,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union. Stanley said the flights are significant “if the federal government is maintaining a fleet of aircraft whose purpose is to circle over American cities, especially with the technology we know can be attached to those aircraft.”</p>
<p>The Justice Department recently published a privacy policy for its agencies’ use of drones and unmanned aircraft systems. But that policy does not apply to piloted aircraft. An FBI spokesman said the FBI’s flights comply with agency rules.</p>
<p>Those rules, which are heavily redacted in publicly available documents, limit the types of equipment the agency can use, as well as the justifications and duration of the surveillance.</p>
<p>Evolving technology can record higher-quality video from long distances, even at night, and can capture certain identifying information from cellphones using a device known as a “cell-site simulator” — or Stingray, to use one of the product’s brand names. These can trick pinpointed cellphones into revealing identification numbers of subscribers, including those not suspected of a crime.</p>
<p>The FBI has recently begun obtaining court orders to use this technology. Previously, the Obama administration had been directing local authorities through secret agreements not to reveal their own use of the devices, even encouraging prosecutors to drop cases rather than disclose the technology’s use in open court.</p>
<p>Officials say cellphone surveillance from FBI aircraft was rarely used.</p>
<p>Details confirmed by the FBI about its air force track closely with published reports since at least 2003 that a government surveillance program might be behind suspicious-looking planes slowly circling neighborhoods.</p>
<p>One such plane was spotted during the recent disturbance in Baltimore that followed the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who sustained grievous injuries while in police custody. In that instance, the FBI was helping local police with aerial support, which it occasionally does when asked. Those types of requests are reviewed by senior FBI officials.</p>
<p>During the past few weeks, the AP tracked planes from the FBI’s fleet on more than 100 flights over at least 11 states plus the District of Columbia, most with Cessna 182T Skylane aircraft. These included parts of Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Seattle and Southern California.</p>
<p>Some flights orbited large, enclosed buildings for extended periods where aerial photography would be less effective than electronic signals collection. Those included above Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.</p>
<p>David Gomez, a former FBI agent who oversaw parts of the aviation surveillance program over the course of his career, said the FBI surveillance aircraft are used to assist surveillance on the ground. For example, if a plane is following a suspect in a vehicle, an FBI ground surveillance team can lag behind so as not to blow their cover, Gomez said.</p>
<p>After The Washington Post revealed flights by two planes circling over Baltimore in early May, the AP began analyzing detailed flight data and aircraft-ownership registrations that shared similar addresses and flight patterns. That review found that some FBI missions circled above at least 40,000 residents during a single flight over Anaheim, California, in late May, according to Census data and records provided by the website FlightRadar24.com.</p>
<p>Most flight patterns occurred in counter-clockwise orbits up to several miles wide and roughly one mile above the ground at slow speeds. A 2003 newsletter from the company FLIR Systems Inc., which makes camera technology such as seen on the planes, described flying slowly in left-handed patterns.</p>
<p>Gomez said the aircraft circle to the left because the pilot sits on the left side. He said different flight formations are used depending on circumstances on the ground, such as whether a suspect is on the move.</p>
<p>The FBI asked the AP not to disclose the names of the fake companies it uncovered, saying that would saddle taxpayers with the expense of creating new cover companies to shield the government’s involvement, and could endanger the planes and integrity of the surveillance missions. The AP declined the FBI’s request because the companies’ names — as well as common addresses linked to the Justice Department — are listed on public documents and in government databases.</p>
<p>Recently, independent journalists and websites have cited companies traced to post office boxes in Virginia, including one shared with the Justice Department.</p>
<p>Included on most aircraft registrations is a mysterious name, Robert Lindley. He is listed as chief executive and has at least three distinct signatures among the companies. Two documents include a signature for Robert Taylor, which is strikingly similar to one of Lindley’s three handwriting patterns.</p>
<p>The FBI would not say whether Lindley is a U.S. government employee. The AP unsuccessfully tried to reach Lindley at phone numbers registered to people of the same name in the Washington area.</p>
<p>Law enforcement officials said Justice Department lawyers approved the decision to create fictitious companies and that the Federal Aviation Administration was aware of the practice. The FBI has been doing this since at least the late 1980s, according to a 1990 report by the then-General Accounting Office.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writers Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Joan Lowy and Ted Bridis in Washington; Randall Chase in Wilmington, Delaware; and news researchers Monika Mathur in Washington and Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>View documents: <a href="http://apne.ws/1HEyP0t" type="external">http://apne.ws/1HEyP0t</a></p>
<p>___</p>
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