No Agenda Episode 1123 - "Cancel Culture"

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No Agenda Episode 1123 - "Cancel Culture"
  No Agenda Episode 1123 - "Cancel Culture"
    Cancel Culture
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  Credits
    "Cancel Culture"
    Where The C Stands For
    Executive Producers:
      Sir Chuck, The Oracle of Oswego
      Viscount of Marin
      Anonymous
      Viscount Rodger Boots
      Sir Chase McCarthy Baron at Large
    Associate Executive Producers:
      Anonymous
      Sam Garcia
      Gary Phares
      Sir Jonathan of the Double-Bladed Paddle
      Richard Plug
      Knight of the Blue Water Area
    1123 Club Members:
      Sir Chuck, The Oracle of Oswego
      Viscount of Marin
    Become a member of the 1124 Club, support the show here
    Title Changes
      Sir Chase McCarthy -> Baron at Large
      Sir Roger Boots -> Viscount of Marin
    Knights & Dames
      Chuch Oberfranc -> Sir Chuck, The Oracle of Oswego
    Art By: Adam at Sea
    End of Show Mixes: - UKPMX - Gx2 -Oh My Bosh - Danny Loos-Secret Agent Paul-Stepford Wives-PlaceBoing- Dave Courbanou - Able Kirby - Jungle Jones - Chris Wilson - Tom Starkweather - Conan Salada - Future Trash - Phantomville Billy Bon3s
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  Cover Art
    Art By: Adam at Sea
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    Mueller Report
      Opinion | We Don't Need to Read the Mueller Report - The New York Times
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 10:14
        Opinion | We Don't Need to Read the Mueller Report Even if it is never released, the public already knows enough.
        By Caroline Fredrickson
        Ms. Fredrickson is the president of the American Constitution Society.
        March 22, 2019 Image The exterior of the Department of Justice. The special counsel submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on Friday. Credit Credit Joshua Roberts/Reuters People lie to hide the truth. They lie to hide crimes. And while everyone is dying for a peek at Robert Mueller's bombshell report to see if he says any crimes were committed by the Trump campaign in 2016, the truth is actually already out there, hidden in plain sight.
        Mr. Mueller's report may never go public, but we don't need a peek at the recommendations he delivered on Friday to Attorney General William Barr to credibly assess that something unethical and likely illegal went on in 2016. The repeated lies told by Trump campaign staff members '-- lies about their connections to Russian figures '-- already spin a grand tale of conspiracy and deceit. And it's a tale so suspect and sordid that President Trump and his associates felt the need to lie to hide it from law enforcement.
        This is not conjecture; some of Mr. Trump's people are already in jail, having been convicted in federal court for lying to investigators about their connections to and interactions with Russians during the 2016 campaign. Others have pleaded guilty to similar crimes, which '-- it bears repeating '-- is what one does when presented with overwhelming evidence of one's guilt. Still others await trial. Many more have been indicted.
        There's the top Trump campaign official Paul Manafort, who is serving time for lying about his history of lobbying for Russian interests and sharing Trump campaign polling data with a Russian intelligence asset during the campaign.
        And there's the close Trump associate Roger Stone, recently indicted on charges of lying about communications he had with Wikileaks before it released damaging information about Hillary Clinton that law enforcement believes was stolen by Russian hackers.
        The former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen is headed to jail after admitting that he lied to Congress about a business deal Mr. Trump was pursuing with Russian figures throughout the 2016 campaign, lies Mr. Trump himself echoed on the campaign trail.
        Michael Flynn, the president's former national security adviser, will soon be doing time after admitting to making false statements to the F.B.I. to conceal December 2016 communications with Russia regarding the sanctions on Russia imposed by the Obama administration.
        Lastly, there is George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the campaign, who arguably helped precipitate the investigation when he bragged about his knowledge of Russian ''dirt'' on Mrs. Clinton to an Australian diplomat who then alerted the F.B.I. Mr. Papadopoulos subsequently pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and served time in prison.
        Then there is the president himself.
        From the outset, Mr. Trump's approach to the Mueller investigation has been characterized by paranoia and fear. With his increasingly shrill denials, the president comes across more as someone who fears he will be found out than someone convinced of his innocence.
        And he has lied to the American people.
        The president's version of events regarding his campaign's interactions with Russia has changed repeatedly since the investigation began. From early assertions during his campaign that he had no business interests in Russia, to claims about his role in issuing false statements about the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russians, the president has been caught in numerous, verifiable lies on this issue. It just remains to be seen whether he lied to cover up actual criminal activity, including conspiring with a foreign power to sway an election, or working to obstruct investigations into those ties.
        Ideally, Mr. Barr will share Mr. Mueller's report with the country. But if he elects to withhold it, President Trump will no doubt claim victory. He will no doubt treat the absence of an indictment as full vindication. But here's a truth for the president: He was never going to be indicted. The Department of Justice has a longstanding policy against indicting a sitting president, and the absence of an indictment does not mean no evidence of conspiracy or obstruction was found.
        Image Robert Mueller Credit Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call Indeed, Mr. Mueller's report may not be the end of the president's legal peril, only the beginning. That's because report or no report, through his prosecutions, referrals, indictments, convictions and subpoenas, Mr. Mueller has already provided the House of Representative with some very clear paths for investigation.
        So even if the Mueller report simply gets tossed in a drawer in Mr. Barr's desk for all eternity, there is already sufficient material out there to let the House exercise its newly rediscovered oversight responsibilities and get to the bottom of what happened between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.
        Remember, Richard Nixon was not indicted, and there was no commensurate special counsel report in the Watergate scandal. There doesn't need to be one here to right wrongs so egregious they were apparently worth lying about.
        Correction:March 22, 2019An earlier version of this essay misstated the status of George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser during Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. He served 12 days in prison for lying to the F.B.I. and was released; he is not currently behind bars.
        A version of this article appears in print on
        , on Page
        A
        25
        of the New York edition
        with the headline:
        Who Really Needs to Read the Mueller Report?
        . Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe
      American Constitution Society - Wikipedia
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 10:17
        The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) is a progressive legal organization. The group's stated mission is to "promote the vitality of the U.S. Constitution and the fundamental values it expresses: individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, access to justice, democracy and the rule of law."[2]
        ACS was created as a counterweight to, and is modeled after, the Federalist Society, and is often described as its progressive counterpart.[3][4][5][6][7]
        Founded in 2001, ACS is headquartered in Washington, D.C.[1] The organization promotes and facilitates discussion and debate of progressive public policy ideas and issues, providing forums for legal scholars, lawmakers, judges, lawyers, public policy advocates, law students, and members of the media. ACS reports that it has approximately 200 law school student chapters and 40 lawyer chapters around the country.[8]
        On November 14 The American Constitution Society released a letter signed by over 1,600 attorneys nationwide calling for lawmakers and Justice Department officials to protect the special counsel's Russia probe in light of Matthew Whitaker's appointment as acting attorney general.[9][10] The signatories call for Whitaker to recuse himself or "otherwise be removed from overseeing the Mueller investigation as a result of his profound ethical conflicts."[9]
        History [ edit ] The American Constitution Society was founded in 2001 by Peter Rubin, a Georgetown Law School professor who served as counsel to Al Gore in the legal battle over the 2000 election. The group was originally known as the Madison Society for Law and Policy. The organization was formed as a counterweight to the conservative Federalist Society. It was founded in order to build a network of progressive lawyers and foster new avenues of progressive legal thought.[1][11] ACS received its initial funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.[1][12] The Democracy Alliance lists ACS as a recommended funding recipient.[13][14]
        Board of directors [ edit ] Members of the organization's board of directors have included David Halperin, a speechwriter in the Bill Clinton administration who also served as the organization's founding executive director from 2001 to 2003; and Eric Holder, former Attorney General of the United States.[1][12]
        Activities [ edit ] ACS hosts press and Capitol Hill briefings and public policy debates as well as an annual convention where an array of legal and public policy issues are discussed and debated.
        The organization disseminates ACS Issue Briefs, the ACSBlog, a journal titled Harvard Law and Policy Review, and Advance: The Journal of the ACS Issue Groups.
        In 2008, ACS's executive director, Lisa Brown, went on leave to serve on the Barack Obama transition team. She headed the president-elect's agency review team and later served as the first White House Staff Secretary in the Obama White House.[15]
        In 2009, ACS published Keeping Faith with the Constitution by Pamela S. Karlan, Goodwin Liu, and Christopher H. Schroeder. It was re-issued by Oxford University Press in 2010. The book serves as a primer for progressives interested in promoting liberal constitutionalism.[16]
        Since 2009, ACS has given an annual award to a rising star in public interest law named in memory of David Carliner. The Carliner award comes with a $10,000 prize for the winner, plus money for the winner's organization and for a finalist.[17]
        See also [ edit ] Alliance for JusticeBrennan Center for JusticeFederalist SocietyJustice at StakeNational Lawyers GuildReferences [ edit ] ^ a b c d e Savage, Charlie (December 10, 2008). "Liberal Legal Group Is Following New Administration's Path to Power". New York Times . Retrieved January 29, 2015 . ^ a b "Mission". American Constitution Society . Retrieved January 29, 2015 . ^ Michael McGough, Supreme Court nomination battle spotlights legal societies and their divergent views: Newer American Constitution Society modeled on more conservative Federalist Society (August 14, 2005), Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. ^ Jonathan H. Adler, FedSoc v. ACS (June 19, 2010). Volokh Conspiracy. ^ Leslie A. Gordon, Left Turn Permitted (May 1, 2011), ABA Journal. ^ Stephanie Mencimer, The Tea Party Wants to Teach Your Kids About the Constitution (May 12, 2011). Mother Jones. ^ Douglas W. Kmiec, Let Dawn Do It (April 13, 2009). Legal Times. ^ "Chapters". American Constitution Society . Retrieved January 29, 2015 . ^ a b Axelrod, Tal (2018-11-14). "Over 1,600 lawyers sign letter saying Mueller probe must be protected". The Hill . Retrieved 2018-11-16 . ^ "Sign On to Protect the Special Counsel's Investigation | ACS". American Constitution Society. 2018-11-09 . Retrieved 2018-11-16 . ^ Fletcher, Michael (December 7, 2008). "Legal Organization May Become Influential Beyond Its Dreams". Washington Post . Retrieved January 29, 2015 . ^ a b Nix Hines, Crystal (June 1, 2001). "Young Liberal Law Group Is Expanding". New York Times . Retrieved January 29, 2015 . ^ Prokop, Andrew (November 24, 2014). "The Democracy Alliance: How a secretive group of donors helps set the progressive agenda". Vox . Retrieved January 29, 2015 . ^ Gold, Matea (September 8, 2014). "New Koch offensive puts spotlight on Democracy Alliance". Washington Post . Retrieved January 29, 2015 . ^ Jeffrey, Jeff (November 17, 2008). "Critical moment for liberal law group" (PDF) . Legal Times. ^ "Keeping Faith with the Constitution". Oxford University Press . Retrieved January 29, 2015 . ^ "The American Constitution Society's David Carliner Public Interest Award". External links [ edit ] Official websiteJudicialNominations.org
      Leadership | ACS
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 10:21
        Nicole G. BernerGeneral Counsel to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
        Elise BoddieProfessor of Law, Henry Rutgers University Professor, Robert L. Carter Scholar, Rutgers Law School
        Mark CalifanoChief Legal Officer and Regional Managing Director of the Americas at Nardello and Company
        Erwin ChemerinskyDean and the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at Berkeley Law
        Andrew DeVoreVice President and Associate General Counsel at Amazon.com, Inc.
        Garrett EppsProfessor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law; Supreme Court Correspondent, The Atlantic
        Holly FechnerPartner and co-chair of the Technology Industry group, Covington & Burling LLP; Visiting Adjunct Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
        Steve FinemanManaging Partner of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP
        Ruben GarciaAssociate Dean for Faculty Development and Research and Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law
        Daniel S. GoldmanFormer Deputy Chief of the Organized Crimes Unit of the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York
        Peter KaranjiaCo-chair of the Appellate Practice Group and Partner at Davis Wright Tremaine
        Brad S. KarpChair of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
        Philippa ScarlettFormer Deputy Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator during the Obama Administration
        Neil S. SiegelDavid W. Ichel Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science, Duke Law School
        Cliff SloanPartner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
        Franita TolsonProfessor of Law, University of Southern California Gould School of Law
        Aziz Z. HuqFrank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law and Mark Claster Mamolen Teaching Scholar, University of Chicago Law School
        Myron M. CherryFounder and Managing Partner of Myron M. Cherry & Associates, LLC
        Karen DunnPartner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP
        Peter B. EdelmanCarmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center
        Linda GreenhouseJoseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law and Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence and at Yale Law School
        Dawn JohnsenWalter W. Foskett Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law
        Ronald KlainExecutive Vice President and General Counsel at Revolution
        Judith LichtmanSenior Advisor for National Partnership for Women & Families and ACS Board of Advisors Member
        Spencer OvertonPresident of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
        Robert PostSterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School
        Ted ShawOf Counsel at Norton Rose Fulbright
        Reva SiegelNicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School
        Paul M. SmithVice President of Litigation and Strategy at the Campaign Legal Center
        Geoffrey StoneEdward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago
        David A. StraussGerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
        Daniel TokajiAssociate Dean for Faculty at Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law
        Kate AndriasAssistant Professor of Law at the University of Michigan
        Erwin ChemerinskyDean and the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at Berkeley Law
        Justin DriverHarry N. Wyatt Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School
        Ruben GarciaAssociate Dean for Faculty Development and Research and Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law
        Linda GreenhouseJoseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law and Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence and at Yale Law School
        Dawn JohnsenWalter W. Foskett Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law
        Leah LitmanAssistant Professor of Law, University of California, Irvine School of Law
        Micah SchwartzmanJoseph W. Dorn Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
        Neil S. SiegelDavid W. Ichel Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science, Duke Law School
        Reva SiegelNicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School
        David A. StraussGerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
        Mark TushnetWilliam Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
        Stephen I. VladeckA. Dalton Cross Professor in Law at the University of Texas School of Law
      The Presidential Investigation Education Project | ACS
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 10:37
        The Presidential Investigation Education Project
        The American Constitution Society (ACS) and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) are partnering to promote informed public evaluation of the investigations by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and others into Russian interference in the 2016 election and related matters. The joint effort is called the ACS-CREW Presidential Investigation Education Project. It includes developing and disseminating legal analysis of key issues that emerge as the inquiries unfold. The project also connects the press and members of the public with ACS and CREW experts and other legal scholars who are writing on these matters.
        NEW ACS/CREW Report: The Implications for the Mueller Investigation of Confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh
        Professor Neil Kinkopf examines the consequences that confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump's nominee to be Associate Justice of the United States, would have for the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the last presidential election. Because Judge Kavanaugh is an ardent proponent of the Unitary Executive Theory, the implications of Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation are reasonably clear: the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh would significantly undermine the ability of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, or any other authority, to conduct a credible, independent investigation of the President or the President's campaign. This paper begins by setting forth the meaning of the Unitary Executive Theory of presidential power as well as Judge Kavanaugh's advocacy of the theory. The paper then examines a number of the specific ramifications of this theory for the Mueller probe.
        For a review of primary project reports and op-eds, find our resource page here. Below are links to recent writing concerning the investigations by experts associated with our two organizations and others; select relevant documents; recent news developments; and other events. If you have questions about any of these materials or would like to consult with our experts on unfolding events, please contact Kristin Amerling, kamerling@acslaw.org. For press questions please contact Wil Lutz, wlutz@acslaw.org or Jordan Libowitz, jlibowitz@citizensforethics.org.
        Impediments to Trump Firing the Special CounselLegality and Effects of Attempts to Fire the Special CounselACS-CREW Report: Why Trump Can't (Easi...
        Read MorePossible Federal and State CrimesObstruction of Justice, Money Laundering, Campaign Finance, and moreObstruction of JusticeThe Br...
        Read MorePardon PowerOverview of Pardon PowersACS-CREW Report: Why President Trump Can't Pardon His Way Out of the S...
        Read More
      From Beginning of the End to End of the Beginning
      Swing Left on Twitter: "Mueller's gotten a lot done so far. It's up to us to do the rest: https://t.co/uELptP7QoN'... "
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Mar 2019 22:44
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      Mueller levert eindrapport over Russische inmenging Amerikaanse presidentsverkiezingen in | De Volkskrant
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 16:21
        Beeld AFPBarr moet eerst besluiten hoeveel van het rapport hij vrij kan geven. Daarover zal hij, zo deelde hij mee in een brief aan het Congres, overleggen met onderminister Rod Rosenstein en met Mueller zelf.
        Waarschijnlijk zal de minister de Democraten en Republikeinen in de commissie voor justitie van het Congres dit weekend al op de hoogte stellen van zijn belangrijkste bevindingen. Hij 'verwacht dat ik dit weekend in de positie zal zijn u over de belangrijkste conclusies te berichten', aldus de brief.
        Mueller heeft 22 maanden lang onderzocht of het campagneteam van toenmalig presidentskandidaat Donald Trump heeft samengewerkt met Moskou om de verkiezingen van november 2016 te be¯nvloeden. Ook heeft hij onderzocht of Trump heeft geprobeerd zijn onderzoek te belemmeren.
        Trump zei vrijdag eerder op de dag tegen journalisten dat hij 'geen probleem' heeft met het openbaar maken van het rapport 'Laat het maar naar buiten komen. Laat het zien aan de mensen', zei hij. Tegelijkertijd deed hij het onderzoek af als 'onzin'.
        Hackers AIVD leverden cruciaal bewijs over Russische inmenging in Amerikaanse verkiezingenDigitale agenten van de AIVD infiltreren in de zomer van 2014 in de beruchte Russische hackgroep Cozy Bear. Ze zien zo als eersten hoe Russische hackers in verkiezingstijd doelen in de VS bestoken: de Democratische Partij, het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken en zelfs het Witte Huis. Het is cruciaal bewijs en aanleiding voor de FBI om een onderzoek te beginnen. Dit FBI-onderzoek is na de verkiezing van Trump in mei 2017 overgenomen door speciaal aanklager Robert Mueller en richt zich ook op contacten tussen de presidentile campagnestaf van Trump en de Russische overheid. Lees ons onderzoeksverhaal naar deze operatie hier.
    Green New Deal
      Hiroshima Bombs from Eric
        This Hiroshima atomic bombs global warming meme keeps coming
        up so I finally got curious enough to do some back of the napkin calculations.
        I am not a meteorologist so I am not an expert on this but I am a chemical
        engineer so I do have some standing in these types of calculations. See
        attached screenshot for what I came up with, hopefully my annotations make
        enough sense. I did have to make some assumptions with a constant heat capacity
        for air but with the temp and pressure variation in the atmosphere, this
        doesn't change much. Basically, Al Gore is full of crap and by his
        fearmongering estimates we would be increasing 2-3 degrees Celsius per year!
        Curiously, the estimate on Madam Secretary of 20,000 bombs per day actually
        fits perfectly with the IPCC estimate of 1.5 degrees Celsius in 12 years. That
        seems like too much of a coincidence to me. Al Gore thinks we will be more than
        30 degrees Celsius hotter in 12 years BTW. I think these calculations are good
        estimates but I could be off so take it for what it's worth, I'm sure there are
        producers out there that know more about this than I do.
      Madam Secretary Storm Calculation from J42
        Hi
        Adam,
        Enjoyed
        the show today as usual. Insert all the usual accolades here. 🤪
        The
        segment that you all did on the Madam Secretary show and the hurricane BS
        tickled my engineer brain so I took to the Googles to check some numbers.
        About
        5 minutes worth of clicking later I came up with these.
        Method 1) - Total energy released through cloud/rain
        formation:
        An average hurricane produces
        1.5 cm/day (0.6 inches/day) of rain inside a circle of radius 665 km (360 n.mi)
        (Gray 1981). (More rain falls in the inner portion of hurricane around the
        eyewall, less in the outer rainbands.) Converting this to a volume of rain
        gives 2.1 x 1016 cm3/day. A cubic cm of rain weighs 1 gm. Using
        the latent heat of condensation, this amount of rain produced gives
        5.2 x 1019 Joules/day
        or
        6.0 x 1014 Watts.
        This is equivalent to 200 times
        the world-wide electrical generating capacity - an incredible amount of energy
        produced!
        Method 2) - Total kinetic energy (wind energy)
        generated:
        For a mature hurricane, the
        amount of kinetic energy generated is equal to that being dissipated due to
        friction. The dissipation rate per unit area is air density times the drag
        coefficient times the windspeed cubed (See Emanuel 1999 for
        details). One could either integrate a typical wind profile over a range of
        radii from the hurricane's center to the outer radius encompassing the storm,
        or assume an average windspeed for the inner core of the hurricane. Doing the
        latter and using 40 m/s (90 mph) winds on a scale of radius 60 km (40 n.mi.),
        one gets a wind dissipation rate (wind generation rate) of
        1.3 x 1017 Joules/day
        or
        1.5 x 1012Watts.
        https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html
        The
        Little Boy atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on
        August 6, 1945, exploded with an energy of about 15 kilotons
        of TNT (63 TJ), and the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on
        Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, exploded with an energy of about
        20 kilotons of TNT (84 TJ).
        TNT equivalent - Wikipedia
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix
        Tera.
        1,000,000,000,000 or 10^12
        Using
        NOAA’s calculations based on hurricanes from 1981 and 1999, a “typical”
        hurricane releases between 4 and 6 orders of magnitude (depending on
        calculation method) or put another way between 10 thousand and 1 million times
        more energy then Little Boy did.
        So,
        a hurricane that released 20,000 times more energy then Hiroshima would be a
        fairly typical storm. I am not sure what if any conclusions to draw from this
        other than, as usual TV and Al Gore don’t seem to have bothered to do much
        actual research before throwing around “facts” and that math can be fun, at
        least when you are using it to assassinate the media.
        Thanks
        for all that you and John do to keep us sane.
        J42
      Amy Schumer, Amy Poehler and Other Stars Stand Up for Waitresses. The Response: No, Thanks. - The New York Times
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 18:02
        Image Amy Poehler, left, listening to a discussion about wages in New York. Ms. Poehler is among the celebrities who have been pressing the state to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers, arguing that it would make them less vulnerable to harassment. Credit Credit Seth Wenig/Associated Press [What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.]
        For more than a year, a group of Hollywood actresses waving the banner of the Time's Up movement have been pressing Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to apply New York's minimum wage to workers who earn tips, arguing that it would make waitresses less vulnerable to sexual harassment.
        Among the celebrities weighing in are Sarah Jessica Parker, Michelle Williams, Amy Poehler and Amy Schumer.
        Not surprisingly, the restaurant industry is pushing back, saying the proposed change would spell doom for many businesses.
        But it has also created an unexpected divide: Waitresses and other servers are resisting the proposal, saying they can make more money from tips and do not need celebrities to help protect them from harassment.
        Harassment is a real concern, they say, but so is the need to earn a living.
        ''The resounding message from servers in New York to these actresses in Hollywood is to just leave us alone,'' said Maggie Raczynski, a bartender at an Outback Steakhouse in upstate New York. ''These celebrities have literally no idea. I feel like they need to butt out.''
        In the middle stands Mr. Cuomo, who proposed eliminating the subminimum wage early last year, setting off the debate. Ms. Schumer recently spoke with the governor to try persuade him to stop letting businesses pay their tipped workers less.
        The state Department of Labor has held public hearings around the state that were supposed to inform the governor's choice.
        But eight months after the last hearing, Mr. Cuomo has made no announcement. A spokeswoman for the governor said the Labor Department was ''the only regulatory agency legally permitted to review this issue and they are currently in the review process.''
        The labor commissioner, Roberta Reardon, a former actress and union leader who once supported herself as a waitress, said in a statement that ''this issue affects multiple industries, thousands of workers, large and small businesses alike and every region of the state.''
        Image Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's administration has spent more than a year considering whether to apply the state's minimum wage to tipped workers. Credit Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press ''We have a responsibility to make sure we do this correctly, not quickly,'' she continued.
        A spokeswoman for Ms. Reardon said the department had taken 40 hours of testimony on the issue, which could affect all sorts of businesses, including carwashes, nail salons and food delivery.
        But activists pushing for uniform, higher minimum wages for all workers are losing their patience and have made Mr. Cuomo a prime target. ''He says he wants to be a progressive leader, then he should take this executive action now, rather than let the U.S. House beat him to it,'' said Saru Jayaraman, president of Restaurant Opportunities Center United, which began as an advocacy group for restaurant workers in New York City.
        Ms. Jayaraman was alluding to the Raise the Wage Act pending in Congress, which would gradually lift the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and eliminate the lower wage for tipped workers. The government has traditionally allowed employers to pay less to workers who receive tips, like waitresses, bartenders and valets. The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 an hour for nearly 10 years, but the federal minimum for tipped workers is just $2.13 an hour.
        The Democrats who control the House may pass the Raise the Wage Act, but it stands almost no chance in the Republican-controlled Senate. That is why advocates like Ms. Jayaraman and celebrity activists are focused on state-by-state battles.
        Last week, Hillary Clinton wrote to Mr. Cuomo and other leaders in Albany, calling on them to eliminate the lower wage for tipped workers, Ms. Jayaraman said.
        Only seven states, including California, Washington and Minnesota, bar employers from paying tipped workers less than the minimum wage, a practice known as a tip credit. Tips are expected to cover the gap and, if they do not, employers are supposed to make up the difference.
        In Michigan, after voters approved the adoption of a One Fair Wage proposal, lawmakers drew up a plan to gradually raise the state's minimum wages for tipped and nontipped workers to $12 an hour, eventually eliminating the gap between the two. But in November, the Republican-controlled Legislature revised the bill to increase the minimum wage for nontipped workers more slowly and to raise the minimum for tipped workers to only $4.58 by 2030. The current minimums in Michigan are $9.25 for nontipped workers and $3.52 for tipped workers.
        In New York City, many servers at busy restaurants and bars earn more than enough in tips to push their hourly wage well above the $15 minimum. ''The best-paid people in the restaurant are the servers and the bartenders,'' said Jeremy Merrin, the owner of four Havana Central restaurants, including one in Times Square. ''My servers make well in excess of $20 an hour.''
        Tending tables or mixing drinks has traditionally been a reliable means of survival for aspiring actors and actresses or a steady way to pay the bills between gigs. Raising wages for tipped workers, many waitresses say, could threaten an economic lifesaver if it forces restaurants to change tipping policies or, worse, puts them out of business.
        An aspiring young actress who has worked as a waitress in a Manhattan restaurant for the last three years said she worried that restaurants would raise menu prices and switch to a nontipping model if they had to pay servers $15 an hour. The actress, who just landed a role in an independent horror film but declined to be identified to avoid upsetting her employer, said she would not continue as a waitress without the chance to earn tips.
        Image Jeremy Merrin, who owns the Havana Central restaurant in Times Square, said servers often earn enough in tips to push their wages well above the minimum wage. Credit James Estrin/The New York Times D. Sweeney, a former actor who said he made a ''very comfortable living'' as a bartender in New York, was adamant about his opposition to the proposed change. ''I'm telling you that I don't want my wage raised,'' Mr. Sweeney said. ''Why am I saying that? Am I an idiot?''
        Raising restaurant labor costs any further, he said, could trigger several changes in the business model that would hurt workers more than they would help. ''Immigrant support staff will be the first to be fired,'' he said.
        The initial backlash against Mr. Cuomo's plan to eliminate the tip credit came from a group of servers led by Ms. Raczynski, the Outback Steakhouse bartender, who lives in Speigletown, N.Y.
        Ms. Raczynski said she was angered by a letter sent to Mr. Cuomo by Hollywood celebrities including Ms. Poehler, Reese Witherspoon and Natalie Portman. The actresses urged the governor to eliminate the lower minimum wage for servers because they said it created a ''work environment where customers feel entitled to abuse women in exchange for service.''
        The servers fired back in a letter to the actresses, saying, ''Thank you for your concern. But we don't need your help and we're not asking to be saved.''
        In an interview this week, Ms. Raczynski said her employer had already trimmed staff to offset the steady rise in wages that Mr. Cuomo championed a few years ago. The minimum wage rose at the end of last year to $15 an hour in New York City and $11.10 upstate. But employers can pay tipped workers $10 an hour in New York City and $7.50 an hour upstate.
        ''We didn't ask for an increase in our wage because we do rely on our tips,'' Ms. Raczynski said. She was not worried about getting harassed by customers.
        ''I would not let anyone harass anyone in my restaurant,'' she said, adding that she believed some of the actresses involved in the campaign lacked legitimacy to try to protect other women from boorish behavior.
        ''For an actress who was on a show called 'Sex and the City' to say she is worried about other women getting harassed seems strange to me,'' she said, referring to Ms. Parker. ''Actresses helped immensely in sexualizing women and the role they play in this world.''
        Still, the One Fair Wage campaign has continued to enlist celebrities in its pleas to Mr. Cuomo to eliminate the lower wage for tipped workers. Seven actresses, including Ms. Schumer, Ms. Williams and Jane Fonda, signed a letter to the governor in late December that said, ''We need you to stand with women in the work force today. We have been patient and we appreciate the thorough review, but the time to act is now.''
        A version of this article appears in print on
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        Waitresses to Actresses Urging Wage Increase: Back Off
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      Stijging zeespiegel 'valt mee' | Binnenland | Telegraaf.nl
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 21:08
        Uit de Zeespiegelmonitor 2018 blijkt dat de gemiddelde stijging van het zeewater voor onze kust over de afgelopen 127 jaar 1.86 mm per jaar bedroeg. En - frappant genoeg - die stijging is in de laatste 25 jaar niet versneld. Als die lijn zou worden voortgezet zou het zeewater aan het eind van deze eeuw minder dan 20 centimeter hoger staan dan nu. Wereldwijd steeg de zeespiegel sneller dan voor de Nederlandse kust.
        Die conclusie wijkt af van de KNMI-scenario's die wel op een versnelde zeespiegelstijging duidden. Deltares en HKV werkten in de afgelopen periode aan een nauwkeuriger meting van de zeespiegel. Die nauwkeuriger meting leidde tot deze nieuwe conclusies.
        Zeespiegelstanden kunnen per jaar enorm verschillen. Fedor Baart (kustexpert Deltares): 'žIn het jaar 2018 daalde de gemiddelde zeespiegel langs de Nederlandse kust met 7,2 cm ten opzichte van de gemiddelde stand in 2017. Dat is de grootste daling sinds 1996. In 2017 stond de zeespiegel relatief hoog vanwege twee grote noordwesterstormen (half januari en eind oktober), die het zeeniveau opstuwden richting de kust. In 2018 hadden we twee lange periodes met oostenwind, waardoor de waterstand lager werd. Robin Nicolai (senior adviseur HKV): 'žOnze methode haalt dit verband tussen wind en zeewaterstand feilloos uit de gegevens''.
        Het klimaatpanel van de Verenigde Naties IPCC houdt voor het jaar 2100 rekening met een zeespiegelstand die tot 80 centimeter hoger is dan de huidige zeespiegel. In hun conclusies houden overigens ook Deltares en HKV rekening met een grotere stijging. Alle modellen wijzen er volgens de onderzoekers op dat de zeespiegelstijging zal versnellen.
        Het onderzoeksrapport is hier te vinden.
        Dagelijks tijdens de lunch het laatste nieuws in je inbox?Ongeldig e-mailadres. Vul nogmaals in aub.
        Uitschrijven kan met 1 klik
      Michael Douglas Discusses Upcoming Nuclear-Themed Projects | Hollywood Reporter
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 12:24
        CULTURE6:44 PM PDT 3/21/2019 by Kristin Vartan
        The actor joined Rep. Ted Lieu, Ben Rhodes, Kennette Benedict, Yasmeen Silva and others to discuss how entertainment plays a role in preventing the spread and use of deadly force.One of Michael Douglas' first films, China Syndrome, questioned the safety and validity of nuclear power plants. That fact is something that Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione '-- who heads up the organization's mission of supporting initiatives that seek to prevent the use and expansion of nuclear weapons '-- was quick to mention during the event ''A New Nuclear Arms Race? Hollywood's Role in Building Momentum for a Safer World," which featured Douglas as a speaker, at the Pacific Design Center Monday night.
        Was the timing of the event meant to coincide with the film's 40th anniversary, which is this weekend? Cirincione told The Hollywood Reporter the fortuitous timing was just a coincidence. ''Eleven days after that movie opened, it had a lot of criticism from the nuclear power industry. Then Three Mile Island happened and that alerted Michael to the real danger," Cirincione told THR. ''This wasn't just a script element. It was a real danger, and he started feeling responsibility to get involved and do something about it.''
        Douglas, who is now an advisory board member of the Ploughshares Fund as well as a supporter of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a UN messenger of Peace since 1998, joined Cirincione on a trip to Geneva two years ago to meet with NGOs and get them to ''cooperate rather than compete,'' Cirincione told The Hollywood Reporter.
        During the event, Douglas '--who spoke alongside fellow panelists Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, nuclear expert Kennette Benedict and Beyond the Bomb organizer Yasmeen Silva '-- said that he is currently working on story outlines for two films concerning nuclear subject matter, too. One is about former leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and former U.S. president Ronald Reagan's diplomacy in Reykjavik; the second is based on Seven Days in May (1964), which his father, Kirk Douglas, starred in. ''Hopefully, other people are working on others, too, but it's a tough subject,'' he told THR. Douglas will be producing and acting in these upcoming motion pictures, he said.
        When asked if he believes Hollywood has a responsibility to communicate the message of peace, Douglas told THR: ''I never think Hollywood has a responsibility to make a message. They have their responsibilities to make good movies and if some of those movies are good and happen to have a message, then so much the better, but people are not going to go see a message."
        Douglas added, "I learned a lot going way back with China Syndrome and how that evolves '-- you just have to have a good story and good characters.''
        Paul Redford, television writer and producer behind The West Wing and Madame Secretary, echoed that need for humanizing the issues through characters in politically based television and film at the event.
        ''It doesn't have to be Morgan Freeman as president. It doesn't have to be somebody larger than life,'' Redford told THR. "It's somebody who's a great character but is still utterly relatable and someone that you feel you can have in your living room in the way you can't have a real president. Hopefully you have his or her problems in your living room as well. The more you can identify with what a Martin Sheen [The West Wing] or what a T(C)a Leoni [Madam Secretary] goes through, the more empathy and respect it gives you for the people actually doing that job.''
        Another member of the night's Hollywood attendees was David Grae, the executive producer and writer of CBS' Madam Secretary. Grae won the Norman Lear Center 2018 Sentinel Award for Madam Secretary (alongside creator/showrunner Barbara Hall) for season four's final episode, ''Night Watch.'' The episode depicted ''what could happen if there's a mistake made during a nuclear hair trigger alert,'' Grae told THR.
        But with the dramatization of a nuke narrative came the need for accuracy and objectivity, the showrunner told THR. The show's creators worked with the Norman Lear Center's Hollywood Health and Society's program, which recruited more advisers and experts than the show ever had on any other episode, he said. One of those advisers was Cirincione, but Grae emphasized that the consultants came from both sides of the issue.
        ''We don't look at issues as Democratic issues or Republican issues,'' Grae told THR. ''We look at them as American issues, and I think we all believe that a stable, rational steady hand should hold the presidency when that person wields this kind of power.''
        Redford echoed this importance: "The challenge of writing a Madam Secretary or a West Wing is it's not reality, but it's only two degrees away from reality. We want to make sure it's not a science fiction world because nuclear weapons are doomsday weapons, they seem fantastic, but in sort of the day-to-day reality,'' Redford told THR.
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      Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen to step down
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 13:46
        CLOSE
        What we know about SPLC's firing of co-founder Morris Dees Nate Chute, USA Today Network
        Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen said in a statement Friday he has asked the board of the troubled organization to "to immediately launch a search for an interim president in order to give the organization the best chance to heal," and took responsibility for problems that have swept out the senior leadership of the group in just a week.
        Buy Photo Richard Cohen, president of Southern Poverty Law Center, speaks as the Southern Poverty Law Center holds a press conference to update the status of their lawsuit against the Alabama Department of Corrections, dealing with the medical and mental health needs of inmates, on the steps of the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Ala., on Friday February 8, 2019. (Photo: Mickey Welsh / Advertiser)
        More: Southern Poverty Law Center fires co-founder Morris Dees
        Cohen, who has worked at the SPLC since 1986 and served as president since 2003, said in the statement that "we'll emerge stronger" after an audit of the organization's practices by Tina Tchen, a former White House official and Chicago-based lawyer.
        "Given my long tenure as the SPLC president, however, I do not think I should be involved in that process beyond cooperating with Tina, her team, and the board in any way that may be helpful," the statement said. "Whatever problems exist at the SPLC happened on my watch, so I take responsibility for them."
        When reached for comment on Friday evening, an SPLC spokesperson said the center cannot comment on the specifics of individual personnel decisions.
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        Last SlideNext SlideCohen's statement follow's last week termination of SPLC co-founder Morris Dees. Cohen last week said Dees failed to adhere to the organization's "values," hinting broadly at misconduct. The Los Angeles Times reported the resignation of an assistant legal director in recent weeks over race and gender equity concerns may have acted as a catalyst for Dees' removal.
        On Thursday, Rhonda Brownstein, SPLC legal director and a member of its senior leadership staff, also resigned, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to the Advertiser.
        The center has grown from a three-man legal organization to a mammoth, $450-million advocacy organization with offices across the Southeast.
        Since Dees' termination, the Advertiser has reached out to more than a dozen current or former center employees. The majority either did not return comment or declined to speak, but four former employees agreed to outline their experiences to an Advertiser reporter.
        All four employees requested anonymity due to the center's sterling reputation in the progressive nonprofit and political realms, where all continue to work.
        Several of the employees described high staff turnover and a "toxic" workplace riddled with conflicting priorities and interoffice politics.
        All four independently spoke of racial equity concerns in senior leadership, describing a disproportionate amount of people of color serving in entry-level administrative positions compared to the rest of the workforce. Two former employees said they were disconcerted by what they viewed as sluggish responses to high-profile cases of deadly police force in recent years, as well as prioritization of marketing and fundraising over on-the-ground civil rights work.
        A review of the center's 2019 board and senior staff reveals that senior leadership at SPLC remains largely white.
        Dees had weathered criticism for decades, with a 1994 Montgomery Advertiser series citing concerns about racial discrimination against back employees. Staffers at the time ''accused Morris Dees, the center's driving force, of being a racist and black employees have 'felt threatened and banded together.''' Dees strenuously denied the accusation at the time.
        Critics of the center in recent years have drawn attention to SPLC's behemoth fundraising mechanism.
        "His obsession has really been with fundraising," said Stephen Bright, a Yale law professor and former director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta.
        "And the fundraising really promotes him. It's brought in millions and millions and millions of dollars. It's enabled him in some ways to overcome whatever bad press he got. When you're sending out mail to hundreds of thousands of people, most of them don't live in Alabama. The bad press just didn't compare to the fundraising appeals. Morris is a genius of fundraising solicitations. He's the king of junk mail. He did it better than anybody else."
        Bright, a longtime critic of Dees, said the SPLC continues to do good work but, "If you have $430 million, do you really need people to give you more money at that point?"
        Dees personally raked in nearly $5.7 million in compensation since 2001 according to a review of publicly available tax documents.
        Over the years, the SPLC has continued to amass massive funds from donors amid differing levels of scrutiny. The nonprofit has hundreds of employees and offices in four states.
        Its $450-million coffers easily dwarf other civil rights groups '-- such as the Equal Justice Initiative and the NAACP '-- during the same time frame. The Montgomery-based EJI had about $57 million in net assets at that time and the NAACP had about $3.8 million.
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        Last SlideNext SlideCohen in the statement called it an "incredible honor" to serve. According to a biography on the SPLC website, Cohen joined the center as legal director in 1986 after practicing law in Washington, D.C. He was later promoted to vice president of SPLC programs before he was named as president in 2003.
        "I hope everyone participates in the transformational process that Tina will be leading with an open heart and an open mind," the statement said. "And I hope that everyone will let the process play out before jumping to conclusions. We can't be calling for a review and simultaneously casting blame before that review is complete."
        Brian Edwards contributed to this report.
        Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Melissa Brown at 334-240-0132 or mabrown@gannett.com.
        Read or Share this story: https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2019/03/22/southern-poverty-law-center-president-richard-cohen-step-down/3251224002/
      Correction on Footie Player
        Tot mijn ontzetting (en ongetwijfeld van de Aussie luisteraars) noemde je Tayla
        Harris een 'soccer' speelster.
        Ze is natuurlijk een Australian Rules Football speelster. Niet te vergelijken!
        Er is dit jaar trouwens een nieuwe regel in
        Australian Rules Football, wat ze de '666 rule' noemen.
        Houdt in dat er in de 3 zones van het veld (aanval, middenveld en verdediging)
        bij de aftrap (dus na elke goal)
        van beide teams 6 spelers moeten zijn. Het idee is dat er zo meer ruimte komt
        en dat er meer gescoord wordt.
        Tijdens de wedstrijd wordt hier regelmatig aan gerefereerd. Dus voordurend
        vliegt '666' je om de oren.
        Creepy!
        OK dat was het.
        vriendelijke groet
        'douchebag' BoerJack
      Urban Dictionary: edgelord
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Mar 2019 18:37
        A poster on an Internet forum, (particularly 4chan) who expresses opinions which are either strongly
        nihilistic, ("life has no meaning," or
        Tyler Durden's special snowflake speech from the film Fight Club being probably the two main examples) or contain references to Hitler, Nazism, fascism, or other taboo topics which are deliberately intended to shock or offend readers.
        The term "edgelord," is a noun, which came from the previous adjective, "edgy," which described the above behaviour.
        Get a edgelord mug for your Uncle Manley.
        Someone, especially posting on the internet, who uses
        shocking and
        nihilistic speech and opinions that they themselves may or may not actually believe to gain attention and come across as a more dangerous and unique person. Most Edgelords are teenagers trying to seem overly cool and/or over-casually
        apathetic.
        "
        The human race is a
        blight upon the world, what's wrong with all you people? Honestly I'm just waiting for the next
        plague to happen," -Johnny Edge
        " Oh shut the hell up you whiny edgelord" -Johnny Everyone
        Get a edgelord mug for your barber Riley.
        Goteph/FacemannMcHomme/HommeAuxVisages.
        Tries (and fails) to randomly insert edgy shock value content (often in the forms of extreme nihilism, feigned sociopathy, and all-around pisspoor attempts to look cool and brooding when he wants attention) into conversations either edgy content or he himself has no part in, or otherwise does so randomly because he feels the conversation is dead and he wants attention to be focused on him for a change.
        Talks a big game and tries very hard to one-up anyone who (rightly) gives him grief for acting like an idiot, but seems to fail at it every single time because he lacks the spine and stomach to uphold or otherwise back up any of the crap he spews.
        Probably does all of this in an ongoing and vain attempt to make others miserable with shock value, so as to bring them down to whatever level of misery he likely deals with. If he can successfully do this, then someone's as equally miserable as he seems to be AND he'll have the "superiority" at having brought them down there all on his own. Ergo, it all looks to be an attempt to feed into his ego so that he can feel a bit better about himself.
        Would probably be a swell dude if he wasn't trying way too hard to be a Nietzsche wannabe, but he doesn't seem willing or able to examine whatever personal flaws he has in his system and overcome them despite having the exact problems explained to him on multiple occasions. Really a shame, all things considered.
        Goteph is a
        tryhard edgelord who really needs to get it through his head that
        nobody's impressed or shocked at his antics.
        by
        D9AC November 05, 2017
        Get a Edgelord mug for your guy Vivek.
        Commonly describes
        a person on the internet who seemingly goes out of their way to be as
        polarizing as possible without adding any substance or reason. For example, people who frequently share "offensive" memes and intentionally use racial slurs outside of their own race (read: white people). Usually, this behavior can be explained as a psychological need for attention in a place where they can remain anonymous and not be personally held accountable for their activities. Such activities can be more innocent in nature, but most edgelords rely on shock value and pretentiousness to satisfy an unbalanced ego or past neglect. Attempts to "
        go against the grain" or appear "non-conformist" are universal criteria. As such, feelings of cringe may be experienced.
        Edgelords can also be found outside of the internet, albeit with much more public scrutiny.
        Get a Edgelord mug for your girlfriend Larisa.
        Someone very insecure about who they are that they must at all times appear to be 'edgy' with shock value in order to stay relevant. This often means someone who thinks excessive violence and guns are cool, plays way too much GTA and goes out of their way to be an annoying
        hipster douchebag, often excusing their pretty disgusting selfish behaviour and toxic conceited attitudes by quoting "
        Beyond Good and Evil" by Neitzsche. They will also find other Edgelords to create cliques with in order to maintain their comfortable
        Groupthink dynamics and will malign those who do not share their miserable hipster world view.
        The most toxic of all Edgelords is an Edgelord Boss. This is someone fortunate enough to have significant power in an organisation due to their Edgelordliness, meaning that any possibility of introspection or change is zero. Working for an Edgelord Boss is the most soul destroying thing you can do in life, and they can often be found sucking the life out of the music, film and videogame industries. It is advised to seek alternative employment if you find yourself working for an Edgelord, or cabal of Edgelords.
        The key difference between an Edgelord and Punk is sincerity. Many Edgelords are Faux-Punk because it's a way to make a lot of money selling offensive counter-culture products to young naive adults.
        The videogame character Shadow The Hedgehog is the best example of the redundant Edgelord mentality.
        "I play videogames like School Shooter and GTA, obsessed with guns
        and I quote Nietzsche but deep down I'm a cynical
        corporate pawn with
        no spine. I am an insufferable Edgelord."
        Get a Edgelord mug for your buddy Callisto.
      In Y.A., Where Is the Line Between Criticism and Cancel Culture? | The New Yorker
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Mar 2019 21:29
        When it comes to young-adult novels, what, precisely, is the difference between the marketplace of ideas and a Twitter mob?
        Illustration by Golden CosmosLate last month, the author Kosoko Jackson withdrew the publication of his d(C)but young-adult novel, ''A Place for Wolves,'' which had been slated for a March 26th release. The book, which follows two American boys as they fall in love against the backdrop of the Kosovo War, had garnered advance praise (''a tension-filled war setting, beautiful young love, family strength and all heart,'' one blurb enthused). It also had the imprimatur of the #ownvoices hashtag, in which the main characters of a book share a marginalized identity with the writer'--Jackson is black and queer. But a disparaging Goodreads review, which took issue with Jackson's treatment of the war and his portrayal of Muslims, had a snowball effect, particularly on Twitter. Eventually, Jackson tweeted a letter of apology to ''the Book Community,'' stating, ''I failed to fully understand the people and the conflict that I set around my characters. I have done a disservice to the history and to the people who suffered.''
        The Jackson fracas came just weeks after another d(C)but Y.A. author, Am(C)lie Wen Zhao, pulled her novel before it was published, also due to excoriating criticisms of it on Twitter and Goodreads. The book, a fantasy tale called ''Blood Heir,'' depicts an empire that enslaves magical minorities, known as Affinites, and where ''oppression is blind to skin color,'' as the promotional material phrased it. Critics felt that Zhao's slavery narrative had erased a specifically African-American experience, and they objected to a scene in which an apparently black slave girl dies in an apparently white character's arms, in an act of self-sacrifice. Zhao, who emigrated from China when she was eighteen, said that her book drew on ''the epidemic of indentured labor and human trafficking prevalent in many industries across Asia, including in my own home country.''
        Like Jackson, Zhao tweeted an apology to ''the Book Community,'' writing, ''It was never my intention to bring harm to any reader of this valued community, particularly those for whom I seek to write and empower. As such, I have decided to ask my publisher not to publish 'Blood Heir' at this time.''
        Jackson and Zhao are peers'--both members of a Facebook group, the Novel Nineteens, for kid-lit and Y.A. creators publishing their d(C)buts in 2019. Ironically, Jackson was one of the louder voices speaking out against Zhao; also ironically, he has worked as a sensitivity reader for Big Five publishers, vetting manuscripts featuring characters from marginalized communities. ''Now, Jackson has been demonized by the community he once helped police,'' the writer Ruth Graham noted in Slate.
        Even casual observers of Y.A. controversies might have seen the Jackson and Zhao incidents, coming so close together, as an acceleration of an already established trend. In 2017, Keira Drake pushed back the release date of her d(C)but, ''The Continent,'' when a groundswell of Twitter critics accused the book of racism. That same year, Laurie Forest's Y.A. fantasy d(C)but, ''The Black Witch,'' likewise became the object of intense scrutiny, weeks ahead of its publication, after detractors slammed it as a white-savior tale. The writer Kat Rosenfield's New York magazine piece ''The Toxic Drama of YA Twitter,'' which centered on the ''Black Witch'' outcry, revealed that many of Forest's fiercest critics had not read her novel, and others conflated the perspectives of racist characters with that of the author herself. (The review that set off the cancel campaign against ''The Black Witch,'' by the blogger and bookseller Shauna Sinyard, ''consisted largely of pull quotes featuring the book's racist characters saying or doing racist things,'' Rosenfield wrote.)
        The Y.A. world is often credibly depicted as a censorious, woker-than-thou hothouse, and never more vividly than in Rosenfield's piece; the article has become a Rosetta stone for anyone seeking purchase on Y.A.'s callout-and-cancel culture. The community gadfly and bªte noire Jesse Singal's recap of the Zhao controversy in Tablet carried the headline ''How a Twitter Mob Derailed an Immigrant Female Author's Budding Career.'' ''From the outside, this is starting to look like a conversation focused less on literature than obedience,'' Graham wrote in Slate. The Times commissioned two first-person essays, one from Drake, on the ''shameful stain'' of these eruptions and the ''tyrannical coddling of overly sensitive readers.''
        ''What happened to Jackson is frightening,'' the author Jennifer Senior wrote, also in the Times. ''Purity tests are the tools of fanatics, and the quest for purity ultimately becomes indistinguishable from the quest for power.'' ''A Place for Wolves,'' Senior continued, ''should have failed or succeeded in the marketplace of ideas. But it was never given the chance. The mob got to it first.''
        Senior is right that the ongoing Y.A. wars are about power'--about who has traditionally wielded power in publishing, and how that balance is shifting, for better or worse. A group of unpaid readers'--one with an undeniable personal investment in the Y.A. community'--seems to be doing much of the work of critique that is usually first the task of agents and editors, and then that of booksellers and critics. But, when these particular readers do that work, they are derided as pitchfork-wielding hysterics. When it comes to Y.A., what, precisely, is the difference between the marketplace of ideas and a Twitter mob?
        Part of the job of the editor'--part of the process of vetting and critique, from the submission stage through publication'--is to anticipate the many possible reactions to a project, such as a romance that trivializes the Kosovo War. A kerfuffle like the one over ''Wolves'' ''is a good immediate trigger point for me to look at the titles on my list and the products I'm considering and to take that beat of introspection,'' an editor at a major publishing house, who works on Y.A. and children's books, told me. ''Even if you disagree with the way a critique is delivered, or with the results of the critique, there's something there to be unpacked.''
        ''Everything that bubbles up online is the tip of the iceberg in terms of all of the conversations had in-house,'' the editor continued. ''I think every author should be allowed to make mistakes, and they should be given the opportunity to correct those mistakes before publication.''
        A major contributor to blowups like those around Zhao and Jackson, according to many observers I spoke with, is the homogeneity of the publishing world, which remains, on the editorial side, eighty-two per cent white and less than two per cent black, according to a 2015 survey by Lee & Low Books. People of color face economic and racial barriers to breaking into the industry: entry-level positions in editing or literary agenting, which are mostly situated in New York City, offer barely sustainable wages that favor those with existing support systems and family wealth. The result is that the people who are most qualified to weigh in on a text's treatment of marginalized identities are often the least likely to do so.
        A digital-marketing manager at a major publisher, who used to work in kid lit, wrote to me in a Facebook message, ''The majority of those who make the editorial and marketing decisions about Y.A. books are not within the typical Y.A. reading range, don't regularly consume the content beyond what their work would demand (this is in contrast to the people lower down who are genuine fans of the genre), and, most importantly, don't trust the people lower down when they give them advice about both problematic content and content that audiences are hungry for.'' This person says that she witnessed multiple instances of co¶rdinators, managers, and assistants getting shot down after they'd approached their bosses with concerns about offensive material. When, several times, she e-mailed editors about what she saw as problematic passages in manuscripts she'd read, she did not receive a response. At a meeting about a story that portrayed ''a marginalized perspective/religion,'' she recalled, ''I asked if there were any readers of color on the project, meaning readers of that specific marginalization.'' The higher-ups ''pointed to the one black woman in the room, an assistant, and said she read it.'' The book in question was not written by a black author, and the characters in question weren't black.
        The marketing manager is concerned, she said, that a skittish industry will turn its back on literature by or about minorities, deeming such projects too dangerous to sign. ''I could see a world where the people in power start to become afraid that acquiring diversely means they are more at risk,'' she wrote. The editor sounded a similar note. ''I worry that my colleagues are just shying away completely from publishing anything that might attract controversy or negative attention,'' she said. ''We don't want to censor authors, to only publish from a place of fear and reaction.''
        Arising from the dust cloud of these conflicts is the question of whether the readers scorching various Y.A. novels have legitimate reason to take offense, and, if so, what form the offense should take. After all, the vast majority of books that are published in any given year'--in any genre, and of a vast range in quality'--are effectively ignored by reviewers and the general public. Instead of airing their grievances, a title's detractors might wish to deny its author any free publicity, much less the opportunity to become a free-speech martyr. ''If a book is offensive, it seems best to discuss it rationally, learn from the experience, and give attention to books they want young people to read,'' Karen Yingling, a middle-school librarian, said. She added that her students either don't know or don't care about ''all the politics'' of the Y.A. ecosystem: ''They just want to read 'The Maze Runner.' ''
        This framing, however, may misread the intentions of the loudest kid-lit agitators, who view their critiques as constructive, not destructive. When Zhao apologized and withdrew her book, Y.A. stakeholders largely greeted her words with support and encouragement, seeing them as the result of being ''called in'''--reminded of one's values as a community member'--rather than ''called out.'' ''This is a beautiful apology,'' the author Ellen Oh, who had used Twitter to challenge ''Blood Heir'' 's ''colorblindedness'' and ''lack of awareness,'' tweeted. Oh and another author, L. L. McKinney, are often cited as the ringleaders of the online pushback against ''Blood Heir,'' but, as the reviewer Gin Jenny pointed out, neither of them ''were calling for the book to be pulled . . . They both flagged problems; that's all they did.'' In a post, the blogger recapped the Zhao drama: ''From my perspective, this was a successful interaction!'' she wrote. ''Some people identified problems in a book that had not yet been published. Not wanting to publish the book with those heretofore unnoticed problems, the author has opted to delay publication. But the coverage of the incident has been very 'gasp! Censorship!' '' (After the controversy went viral, Oh, facing a flood of harassment, deleted her Twitter account'--her and McKinney's perceived excesses met a swift and brutal backlash, which itself reveals something about the underlying power dynamics of these tempests.)
        Young-adult writers see themselves as educators, and they are hyperconscious that this generation of Y.A. readers is the most diverse ever. The author Heidi Heilig likens stereotyping in Y.A. books to outmoded technology: ''It's a huge disservice to the kids to teach them wrong, to give them all this old crap that they don't want to use'--why would you give your kid a shitty microwave, a crappy broken CD player?'' she asked. Ellen Oh told me that Y.A. ''is one of the few places that so many women of color and writers from marginalized communities have been able to be heard.'' Many of the people I talked to pointed out that this makes the subculture vulnerable to sexism and racism masquerading as concern for free speech. A combination of protectiveness and idealism has produced a slash-and-burn ethos that, in holding artists to high standards, may reflect a desire to do what has not been done in the past: take young-adult fiction seriously.
        A serious consideration of ''Blood Heir,'' for one, yields mixed results. The book lingers obsessively over skin color; in the first fifty or so pages, we are told of the main character Ana's ''dust-gold skin,'' of her ''fawn skin,'' of the ''dusty olive of her skin,'' and that ''she was a mix of the pale-skinned Northern Cyrilians and the tawny-skinned Southern Cyrilians who dwelled in the Dzyhvekha Mountains.'' The slave girl, with her ''bronze'' coloring and ''startling aquamarine'' eyes, at first seems an unlikely vehicle for anti-blackness (although in a since-deleted tweet, Zhao posted a mood board for ''Blood Heir'' where the slave girl appeared to be represented by the black actor Amandla Stenberg, in character as Rue from ''The Hunger Games''). The slave girl is definitely coded as darker than Ana, and she exists only as a vehicle for the protagonist to suffer and rage and decide whether to unleash her devastating power. What prevents her from being more troubling is the fact that almost all of the characters in ''Blood Heir'' exist only so that the protagonist can suffer and rage and decide whether to unleash her devastating power. Another youth, with similar skin to Ana, is hardly developed at all before he bleeds out in her arms moments after we've met him.
        On Twitter, critics cited a slave auction that plays a central role in the book's plot as evidence that ''Blood Heir'' borrows the tropes of chattel slavery without fully engaging with them. But the auction is a masked ball crossed with a gladiatorial show in a secret basement. Archers patrol the balconies. Nobles sip cocktails on the floor. In context, the scene does not feel evocative of United States history or suggest an analogy between the Affinites, with their dangerous powers, and black people. The book's allegories seem mythic, not historical. They are about discovering one's hidden potential, celebrating the liberation of the self. If anything, the damning readings of ''Blood Heir'' seem guilty of something that the Y.A. community mitigates against: the misapprehension of a cultural context unfamiliar to one's own.
        Reports of the demise of ''Blood Heir'' may be greatly exaggerated. Its publisher, Delacorte, a division of Random House, told the Times in January that it still plans to publish the three novels it bought from Zhao, if and when she decides to move forward with the series. And many Y.A. titles that passed through the social-media wringer have fared perfectly fine. ''The Black Witch'' arrived, on schedule, to positive reviews and a No. 1 ranking in Amazon's department of ''Teen & Young Adult Wizards & Witches Fantasy.'' Forest has since written a popular sequel, ''The Iron Flower,'' and two prequels. ''The Continent'' came out in March, 2018, after Drake made revisions, and its sequel hits shelves in July. (Both Forest and Drake declined to comment for this article.)
        But, with its gauzy romance unscrolling over a scrim of historical trauma, ''A Place for Wolves'' could prove too problematic to salvage. This possibility is causing some anguish in the Y.A. community, especially because, as a black and queer writer, Jackson is exactly the type of voice that many people want to lift up. Heilig, who offered ''A Place For Wolves'' a glowing early review'--and then apologized for her praise on Twitter'--told me that she agonized over her decision to withdraw support for the book. Jackson's identity puts him ''on a very short list,'' she said. ''I didn't want to make him a lightning rod.''
        At a recent PEN America panel on ''callouts, correctness, and culture wars,'' the former New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma seemed to suggest that marginalized people's desire for authentic representation had a propagandistic edge. Sensitivity readers, he said, forced authors to create ennobled images'--to describe an idealized world, not a real one. But the task of a sensitivity reader, properly understood, is to evaluate whether a given portrayal rings true or false, the Y.A. editor said. Depicting a character accurately and resonantly is literary work, a matter of craft. Too often, she continued, publishers insist on a false dichotomy between social justice and aesthetics, construing ''sensitivity readers as troubleshooting, as something additional, rather than something that is intrinsic to characterization.''
        Criticism from outside of the Y.A. Twitterverse corroborates this more integrated vision. The Y.A. editor told me that ''A Place for Wolves'' was ''a failure at the level of conception.'' Ostensibly writing in support of Jackson, Senior called his book ''painfully clumsy and poorly placed.'' In this light, the outrage that advance readers of Jackson's book came to negative conclusions about it seems rooted in who gets to speak, and when, and how much power their words can wield'--and, as it happens, these are all stated priorities of the Y.A. community.
        VideoA Damn Fine Cup of Coffee
        From a twenty-nine-dollar cup of coffee to competitions for roasting beans and tasting notes of flavor, specialty-coffee culture is attracting coffee lovers and hard-core connoisseurs.
      K-pop scandal widens as singer admits sharing secretly filmed sex videos | Music | The Guardian
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        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Mar 2019 17:33
        Jung Joon-young apologises and says he will retire, one day after singer Seungri was charged with running a prostitution ring
        K-pop star Jung Joon-young is surrounded by reporters as he arrives at Incheon airport amid the sex scandalPhotograph: AFP/Getty ImagesA sex scandal swirling around South Korea's K-pop industry has deepened after a singer and TV celebrity admitted he had secretly filmed himself having sex with women and sharing the footage online without their consent.
        Jung Joon-young, who rose to fame after coming second in a TV talent show, said he would retire from show business and admitted he had shared footage of several women in a group chatroom.
        Members of the chatroom allegedly included Seungri, a K-pop star who was charged this week over allegations that he ran an illegal prostitution ring.
        ''I admit to all my crimes,'' Jung, 30, said in a statement, according to Yonhap news agency.
        ''I filmed women without their consent and shared it in a chatroom, and while I was doing so I didn't feel a great sense of guilt.''
        ''Most of all, I kneel down to apologise to the women who appear in the videos and all those who might be disappointed and upset at this shocking incident.''
        On Tuesday evening, police charged him with illegal filming and leaking visual material.
        Jung was one of three male artists in the chatroom, where some members shared secretly filmed footage of a sexual nature of at least 10 women, according to broadcaster SBS.
        The talent agency SM Entertainment dismissed speculation that one of its stars, a member of the boy band EXO, was part of the chatroom group. ''It is a groundless rumour,'' it said, adding, ''We'll take all legal measures against those who are found to have committed unlawful acts.''
        JYP Entertainment, meanwhile, denied rumours that a member of its girl group, TWICE, was among the women shown in the sex videos.
        Molka - secretly filmed images of a sexual nature that often end up online '' has reached epidemic proportions in South Korea.
        Last summer, tens of thousands of women held demonstrations in Seoul demanding that the police take tougher action against offenders.
        The allegations against Jung and Seungri have rocked K-pop, whose global appeal generates billions of dollars for the South Korean economy.
        ''This case just shows that male K-pop stars are no exception when it comes to being part of this very disturbing reality that exploits women,'' said Bae Bok-ju, a women's rights activist.
        Jung was charged in 2016 with filming a partner during sex without her consent, but prosecutors dropped the case after the alleged victim withdrew her accusation. Police in Seoul said they would question him over the new allegations later this week.
        Seungri, a member of the K-pop quintet Big Bang, announced his retirement this week, but denied allegations that he had procured prostitutes for potential foreign investors at nightclubs in the Gangnam district of Seoul.
        Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
    Brexit
      Uri Geller calls on Britons to help telepathically stop Brexit | Politics | The Guardian
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        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 10:53
        Following his open letter to Theresa May, the illusionist wants people to transmit psychic energy at the same 'very mystical time'
        Uri Geller with a spoon he claims to have bent using supernatural powers.Photograph: AFP/GettyThe illusionist Uri Geller has called on the British people to help him in his efforts to telepathically stop Brexit by sending their own telepathic messages to Theresa May's mind, compelling her to revoke article 50.
        Geller wrote an open letter to the prime minister on Friday warning her he will use the powers of his mind to stop her from leading Britain into Brexit.
        He plans to transmit his psychic energy into May's brain at the ''very mystical time'' of 11.11 in the morning and evening every day from a secret location near his home in Israel.
        He will visualise her signing a document revoking article 50 and, separately, he will also visualise her deciding to hold a second referendum '' but this, he says, is his ''second choice''.
        ''I urge and plea with the people to think '' even if it's for a few seconds '' at 11.11am and 11.11pm, to send Theresa May that message to revoke article 50 and remain in the EU,'' he said. ''Energy can be transmitted, energy can be received and the collective energy of people who want to achieve something is massive.''
        He has no problem with the ethics of his decision. ''I don't see this as interfering with [May's] mind. I'm giving her a scenario to understand better the situation. I'm opening up her mind to listen to messages from the people.
        ''As far as I'm concerned, if we leave the EU, that is going to be a catastrophic event,'' the psychic warned.
        He has already successfully penetrated May's mind, he added, when she visited his home three years before she became prime minister. ''I bombarded her mind to be the prime minister '' and she became the prime minister,'' he said.
      Watch again: Over 1 million rally in London to demand second Brexit referendum | Euronews
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        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 11:37
        Over one million protestors marched in London yesterday to demand a second Brexit referendum, according to organisers of the event.
        The massive rally of people from the United Kingdom flooded London's main streets and marched towards the parliament building on Saturday, March 23.
        It comes in a tumultuous week for Brexit that saw UK Prime Minister Theresa May ask Brussels to extend the UK's deadline for leaving the EU.
        Huge crowds opposed to Britain's current trajectory marched from Marble Arch to outside the UK parliament in Westminster.
        Marchers in the British capital carried European Union flags and placards praising the longstanding relationship between Britain and continental Europe.
        The protest drew people from all across Britain who are determined to force Prime Minister Theresa May's government to alter its march toward Brexit.
        This outcry coincides with a record-breaking petition '' which is approaching five million signatures in under four days '' to call on the UK to revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU.
        According to the relevant laws and regulations of the United Kingdom, once a petition exceeds 10,000 signatures the government must respond publicly and if the number of signatories surpasses 100,000 then parliament must conduct an open debate on the matter.
        Joining the protest was First Minister Nicola Sturgeon who says Scotland '-- which voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU '-- has been ignored by the UK government.
        London's mayor, Sadiq Khan, also participated in the march and has made it clear he supports revoking Article 50 to end this "Brexit disaster".
        Last Saturday, Brexiteers begun the "March to Leave" from Sunderland to London to stop what they see as "Brexit betrayal". Encouraged by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, around 200 Brexit supporters began a 270-mile march from Tyne and Wear to the British capital.
        A week in, the walk is nearing the Midlands city of Nottingham and leavers are expected to arrive in Westminster on Friday, March 29, the original date the UK was meant to leave the EU.
        The European Union on Thursday extended the original March 29 Brexit deadline after a series of meetings in Brussels with PM May.
        The EU has offered the UK a choice of two possible extensions to Article 50, which sets out the process for leaving the EU:
        April 12: the date the UK is set to leave if MPs do not approve the exit deal. The date has been chosen because April 11 is the UK's own legal deadline for taking steps to take part in EU elections. By then, the UK will have had to say what it intends to do: perhaps request a further delay which would mean holding EU elections, or leave the EU without a deal.
        May 22: the date the UK will leave the EU if parliament approves the deal. This is to allow time for ratification and is the day before voting begins in the European Parliament elections.
      Brexit news: Germany MOCKS no deal Brexit by sending emergency supply of loo roll to Queen | Politics | News | Express.co.uk
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        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 12:09
        Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. GERMANY has sent hundreds of toilet rolls to the Queen in a bizarre act to mock a no deal Brexit. PUBLISHED: 18:18, Tue, Mar 19, 2019 | UPDATED: 18:33, Tue, Mar 19, 2019
        \\ ');$('.gig-button-container',commentIco).append($('#spotCommentCounter .spot-im-replies-count').clone(!0));$('#componentDiv .gig-share-bar-container > table > tbody > tr').append(commentIco)},onShareButtonClicked:function(e){ExpressApp.GoogleAnalytics.TrackEvent('social','intent','https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1102412/brexit-news-germany-hakle-toilet-roll-the-queen-buckingham-palace-theresa-may-deal');(window.utag_add_event||function(){})({"call_type":"event","events":{"category":"Social","action":"Intent","event":"socialIntent"},social:{"platform":e.shareItem.provider}});if(e.shareItem.provider=='comments'){$('html, body').animate({scrollTop:$('#gigyacomments').offset().top},'slow','easeOutExpo')}}};gigya.socialize.showShareBarUI(showShareBarUI_params)
        German company Hakle sent 90 16-roll packs to Buckingham Palace (Image: GETTY)
        German company Hakle sent 90 16-roll packs to Buckingham Palace in a bid to ensure the Monarch has access to some in case of a Brexit-related shortage. But after the bulk was turned away from the Palace due to safety and security fears, the Dusseldorf-based firm passed the 1,440 rolls of premium paper to Woodcote High School, in Coulsdon, south London. Deputy Headteacher Peter Mack said: "It's been a slightly confusing series of events, but in the end we've ended up with a helpful stock of high quality loo roll. "While it was done as a publicity stunt, there is a serious element to it.
        "In case of a no deal Brexit there is a real chance the UK could run out quickly, since we import far more than we produce."
        Hakle sent the "spontaneous delivery of relief" of four-ply loo roll last Monday as part of a stunt covered widely in German newspapers.
        Headteacher Mark Southworth said he was "flushed with joy to receive this delivery" according to a school spokesman.
        The spokesman added: "If project fear comes to fruition, we won't be going down the pan at Woodcote."
        Announcing the shipment's final destination a spokesman for the company said: "As you have already noticed, our palette with Hakle 'Dream Soft' was not accepted despite the threatening toilet paper scarcity from Buckingham Palace.
        "Instead, we donated our 90 packs to Woodcote High School in Coulsdon, which was very happy about the large stock of a total of 1.440 rolls of our soft toilet paper.
        Michel Barnier has told Prime Minister Theresa May she ''must offer something new'' (Image: GETTY)
        "So our 'Dream Soft' has yet found its way and is now serving the British common good."
        The toilet rolls were sold off by the school to raise money for Comic Relief last week.
        Lynda Allen, Mr Southworth's personal assistant said: "The loo rolls sold out incredibly fast.
        "We raised £270 which all went to Comic Relief."
        In 2018 former minister for Europe Denis McShane warned of a possible crisis if the UK leaves without a deal on March 29.
        The UK is Europe's largest importer toilet paper, and it is said that daily supply levels are only ever enough to last a single day.
        Germany has mocked the UK (Image: GETTY)
        Meanwhile, Brussels' chief negotiator Michel Barnier has told Prime Minister Theresa May she ''must offer something new'' in order to get a long Brexit extension.
        His warning comes a day after House of Commons Speaker John Bercow intervened and blocked a third meaningful vote on her deal with the EU, unless the agreement is changed significantly.
      'One MILLION' take to the streets of London to demand a People's Vote | Daily Mail Online
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        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 13:51
        Anti-Brexit protesters have travelled from all over the country to London for the 'Put it to the People March' as the online petition urging the government to cancel Brexit passed four and a half million signatures.
        Opponents of Britain's departure from the European Union began gathering in Hyde Park from 12pm before converging on Westminster and organisers claim a million people turned up to voice their concerns over the decision to leave the EU.
        If true, today's demonstration would be the biggest since 2003 when an estimated one million people protested against the Iraq War in the streets of London.
        Speakers who addressed a rally outside Parliament included Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and opposition Labour deputy leader Tom Watson.
        Other speakers included former Conservative cabinet minister Justine Greening and ex-attorney general Dominic Grieve, former Tory turned independent MP Anna Soubry, Lib Dem deputy leader Jo Swinson, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas and SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford.
        Organisers claimed that one million protesters came to the protest, after previously saying they were confident that the size of the crowd would exceed a similar rally held in October, where 700,000 people turned up.
        The Metropolitan Police refused to comment on the size of the march.
        Scroll for video
        People attended the march in London carrying signs we read 'we are European' and 'this doesn't seem very well thought through' while other carried a sign with the poo emoji
        Thousands of people gathered in Hyde Park from 12pm before converging on Westminster to take part in the Put It To The People march
        Independent Group MPs Chuka Umunna and Anna Soubry have a selfie taken with actress Tracey Ullman as they join anti-Brexit campaigners taking part in the People's Vote March
        Organisers of the march claim a million people joined in on the 'People's Vote' demonstration through the streets of London
        Prime Minister Theresa May was unsurprisingly the target of many of the protests, with some coming up with some creative ways to show their anger
        The exact number of people at the march has yet to be determined but photos show large crowds and organisers are confident the final number will be more than 700,000
        A demonstrator sits on one of the lions in Trafalgar Square during the march. The young man holds an 'I love Europe' sign
        Addressing the crowd in Parliament Square, Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson said: 'We are one million strong.'
        He said he was there on behalf of his 10-year-old daughter.
        'She has told me to thank you for campaigning for her future,' he said.
        Mr Watson said the Prime Minister's deal 'pleases no-one'.
        'If you voted remain it's a rubbish deal, if you voted leave it's a lousy deal. There are no winners, only losers,' he said.
        He added: 'Brexit is stuck in the parliamentary pipeworks and it's not going to find a way out.'
        Addressing his comments to Theresa May, he said: 'I can only vote for a deal if you let the people vote on it too.
        'Prime Minister, you've lost control of this process, you're plunging the country into chaos, let the people take control.'
        Trains, coaches and buses were chartered to bring as many people as possible, from all around the country to today's anti-Brexit march in London
        A demonstrator paste an anti-Brexit sticker by the entrance of the UK government's Cabinet Office during today's protest
        Anti-Brexit placards are placed outside the entrance to the Cabinet Office on Whitehall during march. The march was organised to go from Park Lane to Parliament Square
        EU supporters, calling on the government to give Britons a vote on the final Brexit deal or reverse Brexit entirely, descend on the capital to protest
        An anti-Brexit protester carries his child on his back during today's protest, while she holds up a sign saying 'May I have my future back please'
        One protester holds a placard which says 'IKEA has better cabinets' and another reads 'too young to vote... not too young to remember'
        'Brexit is a complete and utter mess,' Khan said on the eve of the event.
        'I'll be marching on Saturday with people from every part of our country - from every walk of life - to demand that the British people get the final say.'
        Labour's Jess Phillips also attended the march with her son.
        Following the event, the Birmingham Yardley MP tweeted: 'I was worried about taking my kid to #PutItToThePeople I have to consider his safety and our security but there was not even the tiniest sign of trouble.
        'The nicest march I ever attended.'
        Earlier, former Ukip leader Nigel Farage joined the counter March to Leave in Linby, Nottinghamshire, telling around 200 Brexit supporters that Theresa May had reduced the nation 'to a state of humiliation'.
        The 'People's vote' protest - expected to be one of the largest in the capital in decades - was hosted by the People's Vote pressure group.
        Organisers arranged hundreds of coaches and even chartered a train to bring protesters from all corners of the country to the capital.
        Among those in attendance was Stephen Goodall, a 96-year-old World War II veteran, who travelled 200 miles by train from southwest England alongside four generations of his family including his great-granddaughter.
        Organisers have arranged hundreds of coaches and even chartered a train to bring protesters from all corners of the country to the capital
        This seven-year-old boy joined in with today's protests and was one of many young people to take part and march towards Parliament
        A placard has an image of Jacob Rees Mogg, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson made up as clowns on it and has surrounded them with EU flags
        Aerial shots of the protests show the thousands marching through central London to demonstrate against Britain's decision to leave the EU
        There was a huge turnout at the march and campaigners arrived in the capital from across the country, with one taking on a 715-mile journey on ferries, trains and buses from Orkney in Scotland
        An unnamed protester was pictured wearing a European Union flag on her top and waving a flag during the march
        The protest officially started at Park Lane but people from several locations all over London joined up with the main march as it descended on Parliament
        A general view of Anti-Brexit campaigners as they take part in the People's Vote March in London and wave pro-EU banners
        Three protesters on the march wear blue and yellow-coloured clothing to show their support for the European Union in the face of Brexit
        There were a sea of flags and banners at today's march, with organisers claiming a million people turned out - though police have yet to confirm
        Two men draped in EU flags look at a mass of placards outside the Cabinet Office in Whitehall during the march through the capital
        'I am an old man and the outcome won't affect me - but it will affect my family and many people that I know for years to come,' he said in a statement released by organisers.
        The marchers also included 63-year-old Edmund Sides, who spent the last three weeks walking from Wales to London in order to take part.
        Mr Sides, a geologist, said he wanted to be able to speak to people along the way, encouraging families that have been split between Leave and Remain to mend fences and talk.
        'The whole country isn't doing enough of that,' he said.
        Mr Sides is worried about the vicious tone that arguments have started to take and worries about national cohesion. Walking gave him a chance to talk to people along the way, and see what others were thinking.
        'People fear the atmosphere is very dangerous in this country,' he said.
        Campaigners arrived in the capital from across the country, with one taking on a 715-mile journey on ferries, trains and buses from Orkney in Scotland.
        Student Sorcha Kirker, 27, was joined by about 30 other students from the University of the Highlands and Islands.
        Young members of the Conservative party also turned out to protest against Brexit, joining in with socialists and others to protest against Brexit
        The 'People's vote' protest - set to be one of the largest in the capital in decades - is hosted by the People's Vote pressure group
        People hold up placards and European flags as they attend a march and rally organised by the pro-European People's Vote campaign for a second referendum
        Saturday's protest follows a similar demonstration in October that drew an estimated half a million people, as an online petition urging the government to cancel Brexit passes four million
        The protest comes after EU leaders this week granted a delay to Brexit, prompting Theresa May to make another attempt to get her Brexit deal through
        This dachshund, or sausage dog, wears a banner on its coat with the words 'Brexit is the wurst' as it joins in on the protest in London today
        The protest comes after EU leaders this week granted a delay to Brexit, prompting Prime Minister Theresa May to make a renewed bid to win MPs' backing for her divorce deal.
        However, she faces daunting odds with lawmakers deadlocked for months over how to implement the 2016 referendum vote to leave, reflecting bitter divisions nationwide.
        If she succeeds, Britain - which was staring at a cliff-edge deadline of March 29 for leaving the EU - will depart on May 22 under the terms of the withdrawal agreement the prime minister struck with Brussels last year.
        But if lawmakers defeat the accord again, as expected, London must outline a new plan or face a no-deal Brexit as early as April 12 - unless it decides to request another extension and hold European Parliament elections in May.
        Protesters on the Put It To The People March, demanding the public is given a final say on Brexit as they make their way through Piccadilly
        Young girls join the protest against Brexit in London today, holding signs in favour of the EU and lending their voices to calls for another referendum
        An anti-Brexit and pro-socialist banner is unfurled and hung from Westminster Bridge before today's march in London started
        People young and old turned out for the anti-Brexit march and rally, including actor Eddie Marsan and his family who are all wearing T-shirts supporting the EU
        Chuka Umunna and Anna Soubry took centre stage during the protest, wearing shirts expressing their support for the march as they were surrounded by anti-Brexit campaigners
        A demonstrator leads a dog wearing a suit in the EU colors during the Peoples Vote and anti-Brexit march that started at noon today
        A man wrapped in an EU flag watches on as the thousands of people in the crowd make their way through London during the march
        This woman was one of many holding up banners and signs calling for Article 50 to be revoked and Brexit to be cancelled
        Organisers of the march claim a million took to the streets of central London six days before the UK is due to leave the EU
        This teenager was one of many young people to take part in today's march and defend another referendum from the government
        Any further delay would likely prompt further calls for another referendum as the only way out of the impasse.
        The prime minister has repeatedly ruled out holding another poll on the issue, claiming it would be divisive and renege on promises to honour the 2016 referendum result.
        Meanwhile the main opposition Labour Party appears divided on the issue.
        At its 2018 conference, it backed holding another poll as a last resort, while advocating staying in a customs union with the EU together with close alignment with its single market.
        Anna Soubry MP taking part in today's march and being enthusiastically greeted by a fellow protester, who is wearing a 'Stop Brexit' hoodie
        Protesters brought homemade banners and placards to the march with one saying 'pull out doesn't work' referring to the country's decision to leave the EU
        Anti-Brexit marchers said the decision will affect future generations while others brought placards saying 'Cats against Brexit'
        This protester is calling for the nation to be 'given a final say'. Using the famous catchphrase of the famous Star Trek character Spock, he believes that Britain should 'remain and prosper'
        As well as campaigning against Brexit, this protester took the time out to express his dissatisfaction with the leaders of both of the UK's main parties
        Thousands of people pictured taking part in the march while waving pro-EU slogans, EU flags and anti-Brexit placards
        One protester waved a placard bearing Edvard Munch's iconic painting of The Scream with the word Brexit! emblazoned above it while another had a picture of Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg saying 'Mogg off'
        A girl with a placard 'We Shall NOT be MOGGed!' attends the 'Put it to the People' march in London, in criticism of Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg
        One protester referred to Theresa May's slogan in the run-up to the 2017 election referring to her 'strong and stable' government
        Dogs seemed to be present at the march in abundance, with this one also wearing a sign that is critical of Brexit
        A woman with yet another dog and banner which reads 'No Hard Borders! They're not nice' attends the 'Put it to the People' march in Trafalgar Square
        But some MPs are fierce advocates of putting it back to the people, while others representing Leave-supporting areas in central and northern England, are bitterly opposed.
        In a sign of the splits, at least half a dozen Labour shadow ministers were expected to join deputy leader Tom Watson at Saturday's march, while the party itself asked activists instead to help campaign for local elections due on May 2.
        Watson said he had now decided to campaign for a referendum 'reluctantly' and would back May's deal if it was also put to the people.
        'It can only begin to bring the country back together again if we all have a final say - and then live with the result,' he said.
        'I trust the people I represent. And only they can sort this mess out.'
      March Volunteers - People's Vote
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 13:54
        On 23 March 2019 large numbers of people will take to the streets of London for the Put It To The People march - an event that is central to our campaign for a People's Vote on the Brexit deal.
        Our previous marches in London have been huge, and volunteers were key in the smooth operation of the events. That is where you come in!
        Do you want to be part of the team that makes the march a success? We are looking for a team of 150 people to help us on the day as volunteer marshals.
        The role of a marshal will include:
        - Arriving early on the day to be given a briefing - Directing people towards the assembly area - Helping people with limited mobility- Leading / walking alongside the march- Reporting problems to the event management team - Answering questions about the march - Helping people to feel safe
        CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP AS A VOLUNTEER
        We are particularly interested in hearing from people with previous events experience, including at a previous pro-European demonstration, or experience working with people with accessibility needs, but we welcome applications from anybody who would like to help.
        If you can help, please click here to sign up.
        Alternatively, if you have any questions, have specialist skills to offer, or need to get in contact with the Volunteer Manager (Scott) for any other reason, please email peoplesvotevolunteers@gmail.com
      About - Open Britain
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 13:55
        Open Britain is leading the fight against a hard, destructive Brexit. The Government have made a choice. This was not an inevitability. They have made political decisions to take the hardest of hard lines on immigration and the European Court of Justice; to take us out of the Single Market and the Customs Union while pretending we can enjoy the 'exact same benefits'; to squander good will among EU leaders and instead put all our eggs in the basket of a special relationship with Donald Trump. The Government have opted for a hard Brexit, with no mandate to do so.
        Open Britain believe that by letting immigration policy dictate economic policy, the Government are running the risk of damaging our economy for generations to come and of leaving people poorer. We will continue to hold them to account for the decisions they have taken and Leave campaigners for the promises they made.
        There is still a lot to fight for. People voted to leave the EU but not to be poorer, weaker or more isolated. Open Britain will fight against the hard, destructive and potentially chaotic Brexit path the Government has chosen.
        Open Britain believe we are stronger with Europe. We will continue to campaign for a close relationship with Europe and for the Government to change its hard Brexit course. Open Britain is campaigning for Britain to be open and inclusive, open for business, open to trade and investment, open to talent and hard work, open to Europe and to the world. Open Britain believe the best deal in the negotiations would be one which protects our prosperity, people, and partnerships across the continent. Hard Brexit puts these all at risk.
        Protect our prosperity by highlighting the benefits of Single Market and the Customs Union and campaigning against defaulting to World Trade Organisation rules.
        Protect people by supporting Europe-wide reform of the free movement of labour works and by ensuring the rights of EU nationals in the UK and Brits in the EU are fully guaranteed.
        Protect our partnerships by working closely with Europe on security, science and the environment; and by promoting our common values of tolerance, openness and inclusiveness.
        Open Britain will campaign for the Government to provide the country with more than just a 'bad deal or no deal' offer to Parliament. Open Britain does not believe the Government has a mandate for a hard Brexit and should not be given a blank cheque to pursue one. It is unacceptable for the Government to try and side-line our sovereign parliament. If the deal is not good enough, the Government should go back to the negotiating table. The Government, on their own, cannot take Britain out of the EU with no deal at all. We cannot be offered an ultimatum at the end of the Article 50 process between a bad deal and no deal '' the hardest and most destructive Brexit of all. The country should be entitled, in some form, to make a real judgement about the deal on offer.
        Making a positive case for EuropeAs our relationship with Europe shifts, so too must our public discourse. 'Europe' has too often been seen as 'over there', not as a vital partner and extension of our home market that is critical for our national interest.
        Europe is not perfect, but over decades its advocates have been far too reticent about making a positive case. The rancour of the referendum debate risks this becoming a permanent mind-set, but we must now champion the power, prosperity and influence it gives us.
        We want to be part of a culture-shift that values and promotes a close relationship, which also means defending an open, inclusive society. We will make the positive case for immigration, while also arguing that the system as a whole can be fairer.
        Growing the grassrootsOpen Britain only exists thanks to the contribution and commitment of our supporter base across the country. Together we want to campaign on our values and priorities in every town and city across the country, working collaboratively with pro-European organisations of all shapes and sizes.
        We will seek to maintain and grow our network of supporters, working not just with those who voted Remain but by starting open conversations with those who voted Leave. We believe Leave and Remain voters seek the same things '' security, opportunity, a confident, outward-facing country '' and we want to help find common ground across Britain.
      Open Britain - Wikipedia
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 13:56
        Open BritainMottoKeep Britain in the European Union Single marketPredecessorBritain Stronger in EuropeHeadquartersMillbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, London, England, SW1P 4QPExecutive Director
        James McGrory[1]Directors
        Joseph Carberry, Trevor Phillips, Richard Reed, Lord Peter Mandelson, Roland Rudd, June Sarpong, William Straw, Daniel Gieve, Sir Michael Rake [2]AffiliationsPeople's VoteWebsite www.open-britain.co.uk Open Britain is British pro-European Union campaign group set up in the aftermath of the 2016 European Union referendum.[3]
        Background [ edit ] Open Britain defines itself as campaigning for the United Kingdom to be open and inclusive, open for business, open to trade and investment, open to talent and hard work, open to Europe and to the world.[4] It is also campaigning for Britain to remain in the Single Market as part of the outcome of the Brexit negotiations.[5]
        In October 2016, Open Britain launched a 'Write to Remain' letter-writing campaign directed at Theresa May asking her to guarantee the right of EU nationals to stay in the UK.[6]
        The individuals involved in the campaign group include former Ministers Pat McFadden (Labour) and Norman Lamb (Liberal Democrat).[7] Conservatives Anna Soubry, Nicky Morgan, and Dominic Grieve cut their ties with Open Britain in April 2017 after it began to campaign against the re-election of anti-EU members of parliament, mostly Conservatives.[8]
        Open Britain continues to campaign in collaboration with other major pro-European campaign groups such as Britain for Europe and European Movement UK. It joined People's Vote in April 2018 to campaign for another referendum.[9][10]
        Further reading [ edit ] McGrory, James (14 June 2018). "No one voted for a bad deal on Brexit - People's Vote gives us a chance to do something about it". HuffPost. References [ edit ] ^ Prynn, Jonathan (26 October 2017). "Outer London families hit by Brexit squeeze as pay rises just 1.2 per cent". London Evening Standard . Retrieved 5 November 2017 . ^ Companies House https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09641190/officers ^ Dallison, Paul (2 September 2016). "Remain MPs launch pro-Europe campaign group". Politico . Retrieved 27 August 2018 . ^ Open Britain. "About". open-britain.co.uk. Open Britain . Retrieved 13 December 2016 . ^ Asthana, Anushka; Mason, Rowena; Syal, Rajeev (11 October 2016). "Brexit adviser: leaving EU customs union will cost UK £25bn a year". The Guardian . Retrieved 13 July 2017 . ^ Mason, Rowena (13 October 2016). "Letter-writing campaign urges Theresa May to let EU nationals stay in UK". The Guardian . Retrieved 13 July 2017 . ^ Open Britain. "New campaign group, Open Britain, launches to fight for best possible EU deal for Britain". open-britain.co.uk. Open Britain . Retrieved 17 November 2016 . ^ Walker, Peter (25 April 2017). "Pro-EU Tories quit Open Britain over plans to oust Brexit-backing MPs". The Guardian . Retrieved 13 July 2017 . ^ Porritt, Richard (15 April 2018). "Campaign launched to push for People's Vote". The New European . Retrieved 17 April 2018 . ^ Staff writer (15 April 2018). "Launch of the new national People's Vote campaign". open-britain.co.uk. Open Britain . Retrieved 17 April 2018 . External links [ edit ] Official website
    737 Max
      From Captain Jack
        Adam, I am a retired airline pilot, with 30 years experience
        flying commercial aircraft. I identified the problem when the m5m described
        Boeings MCAS system. The problem was “runaway stabilizer trim,” and every
        Boeing aircraft has a procedure to follow for this potentially fatal problem. I
        say “potentially” because of the reports of this happening on previous flights
        with both the Lion Air and Ethiopian Air 737 max crash. You mentioned in the
        last NA podcast that a jump seat pilot identified the problem and solution on
        the previous Ethiopian Air flight. In the case of Lion Air that aircraft had
        been written up four times for erratic pitch. As you know there are multiple
        layers of aircraft safety.
        In these two cases ALL the layers failed.
        Boeing designed the MCAS system with
        A single sensor source
        even when a second AOA was available on the aircraft. This design is
        unusual for Boeing.
        Boeing did not give the
        pilots a display of the AOA sensor so the pilots could not check it
        before or during flight.
        Boeing assumed this
        MCAS system would be triggered once and solve the problem of an
        inexperienced pilot getting to slow. What they never considered was the
        system could be triggered multiple times.
        The FAA did not verify
        Boeings MCAS design which was able to move a flight control surface
        without pilot knowledge or authority.
        Ethiopian and Lion Air
        maintenance failed to correct the problem which should have included
        verifying the solution. They failed, multiple times.
        The pilots on previous
        flights of the same aircraft correctly identified the problem and turned
        the stabilizer trim off, manually trimmed the stabilizer and landed
        normally.
        The pilot is always the final safety system for any aircraft
        flight. Nobody has asked why there were not 737 Max accidents in the
        USA, Canada or Europe. Highly experienced pilots and mechanics can identify and
        correct these problems. The failure was the inexperienced mechanics and pilots
        not recognizing or identifying the runaway stabilizer trim failure. The
        procedure for this failure has been in every Boeing jet for over 60 years.
        The 737 MAX is safe to fly, but just like any other aircraft
        it must be properly maintained and flown. In these two accidents every layer of
        the aviation safety net failed the flying public.
        Your producer
        Captain Jack.
      Data Recorder Shows Crashed Boeing 737 Max Had Airspeed Issues on Last 4 Flights
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Mar 2019 20:12
        The Lion Air plane that crashed in the Java Sea last week had faulty airspeed readings during its last four flights and Indonesian investigators called on planemaker Boeing Co. and U.S. authorities to ensure there aren't fleet-wide issues.
        The Southeast Asian country's National Transportation Safety Committee, which is charged with finding the cause of the crash that killed 189 people, is collecting data on what happened during the three prior malfunctions and the flight crew's actions prior to the accident, it said in a statement Monday. The agency gleaned the information on the plane's previous trips from the flight data recorder retrieved from the wreckage last week.
        The body asked the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board ''and Boeing to take necessary steps to prevent similar incidents, especially on the Boeing 737 Max, which number 200 aircraft all over the world,'' it said in the statement.
        So far, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which certificated the 737 Max, hasn't taken any steps to require inspections of the plane. ''Any action that the FAA would take regarding that incident would have to wait until we have findings,'' agency acting Administrator Daniel Elwell said Monday after a speaking engagement in Washington.
        Investigators haven't disclosed any reports of other airspeed failures on 737 Max aircraft. The FAA, which regulates the U.S. aviation industry, hasn't received any reports of airspeed issues occurring on the model in the U.S., said a person familiar with the agency's reviews. The person asked not to be named because he wasn't authorized to speak about the issue.
        A spokeswoman for Boeing in Singapore declined to comment. The NTSB, which conducts accident investigations and is assisting Indonesia in the probe, didn't respond to a request for comment.
        The latest information released by investigators still doesn't answer why the pilots on three previous flights were able to handle the problem while the crew on Oct. 29 ended up diving at high speed into the sea, said John Cox, president of consulting company Safety Operating Systems and a former airline pilot.
        ''I'm still of the opinion that losing airspeed on the airplane shouldn't result in losing the airplane,'' Cox said.
        Pilots are trained to deal with faulty airspeed readings. There are three separate systems to calculate speed and altitude, and there are a variety of measures pilots can take when speed readings become unreliable.
        An area that investigators will want to explore is how Lion Air addressed a recurring problem on the plane. If malfunctions continue to occur on a component and routine maintenance procedures don't solve it, airlines are supposed to have a process to bring greater scrutiny to the issue, Cox said.
        ''When you see recurring problems, it says the normal easy fixes aren't solving it,'' he said.
        While search teams scouring the waters managed to bring up the flight data recorder, a separate recorder that captures cockpit conversations and background noise is still buried in the seabed where the plane plunged. The audio device may be crucial to unraveling what happened during the flight's final moments. In particular, it may help explain why the crew asked to return to base minutes into the journey.
        ''We have said there's a technical problem but we also want to know what they were discussing in the cockpit and what they were doing,'' Soerjanto Tjahjono, chief of Indonesia's NTSC, told reporters on Monday. ''Cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are both important to reveal the truth in this case.''
        The initial readings from the data recorder showing an airspeed malfunction offer the first solid explanation for why the flight appeared to vary its speeds and altitude starting shortly after takeoff.
        The plane's altitude was mostly about 5,000 feet (1,524 meters), but rose and fell repeatedly within a range of a few hundred feet, according to flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24. The speed also fluctuated in a range of roughly 320 to 375 miles (515 to 604 kilometers) an hour, according to FlightRadar24's data.
        With the data recorder in the hands of investigators, the NTSC has recovered about 69 hours of flying data by the crashed jet during its last 19 trips.
        Because Flight JT610 lasted only a few minutes, the voice recorder may also include at least some audio from the previous night's trip from Denpasar, Bali to Jakarta. The aircraft experienced problems on the flight from Bali with sensors used to calculate altitude and speed.
        The instruments were checked by maintenance workers overnight and the plane was cleared to fly, according to Lion Air.
        Even with modern GPS tracking, planes need to calculate their precise speed through the air. To determine airspeed '-- which can vary substantially compared to the speed over the ground due to winds '-- aircraft rely on Pitot tubes which measure the air rushing into them.
        By comparing that pressure against the ambient air pressure obtained from what are known as static ports, the aircraft can determine airspeed. If either of the pressure sensors are blocked, it can cause erroneous readings.
        Indonesia's rescue agency said Sunday that wreckage spotted by divers had turned out to be only pieces of skin of the Boeing Co. jet rather than the main fuselage. Strong underwater currents in the Java Sea off Jakarta and a muddy seabed have complicated a week-long hunt that's involved dozens of ships and hundreds of specialist personnel.
        As the 270-square-mile search for debris widened over the weekend, Indonesian authorities broadened a review of Lion Air's operations, including the airline's standard operating procedures and flight-crew qualifications. That followed the discovery of defects on two other Boeing 737 Max 8 planes '-- both operated by Lion Mentari Airlines '-- during checks on six aircraft of that type. Neither of the faults appeared related to the accident.
        The inspection of plane debris indicated the aircraft didn't explode mid-air before plunging into the Java Sea, Tjahjono said earlier on Monday.
        ''The aircraft broke apart under the impact of hitting the water at high speed and it didn't break apart mid-air,'' Tjahjono said. ''The engines were still running at high RPM.''
        President Joko Widodo has asked airlines to make passenger safety the highest priority, and the government had already ordered a review of Lion's repair and maintenance unit and suspended several managers.
        The transport ministry is coordinating with airport authorities, navigation operators and airlines among others to ensure airworthiness at all airports in Indonesia is well maintained, according to Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi.
        ''With assistance from Tassia Sipahutar, Kyunghee Park, Fathiya Dahrul, Julie Johnsson and Shaun Courtney.
        Related:
        Lion Air Jet's Audio Black Box Could Hold Key to Mystery of Doomed FlightUpdate: Divers Resume Search for 2nd Black Box from Crashed Lion Air JetCrashed Lion Air Boeing Jet Previously Had Problems with Altitude, Speed SensorsBlack Box from Crashed Lion Air Jet Retrieved from Wreckage by DiversSearch Team May Have Located Main Wreckage of Lion Air's Crashed JetUpdate: Lion Air Jet Plunged at 350 Miles Per Hour Before Crash, Data ShowBoeing 737 Max, Operated by Indonesia's Lion Air, Crashes with 189 on BoardCopyright 2019 Bloomberg.
      Insurers face large claims after second Boeing 737 MAX crash | Reuters
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 14:07
        (Reuters) - Boeing Co's insurers face big claims from families of the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash, coming less than six months after the crash of the same type of Boeing aircraft in Indonesia, insurance and aviation sources said.
        Relatives and friends of Sara Gebremichael, 38, a senior hostess and a crew leader on the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane that crashed, mourn at her house in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Maheder Haileselassie
        An Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet bound for Nairobi crashed minutes after take-off on Sunday, killing all 157 people on board, raising questions about the safety of the Boeing 737 MAX 8, a new model that also crashed in Indonesia in October.
        While the initial insurance payments will be made by Ethiopian Airlines' insurers, they may look to recoup their money from Boeing's insurers if they can prove that the aircraft was faulty, the sources said.
        Initial payments to the passengers' families are bound by the Warsaw and Montreal conventions, but those payouts could be much higher if families pursue legal claims, particularly through U.S. courts, said Clive Garner, head of law firm Irwin Mitchell's travel litigation group in London.
        ''If there were to be anything defective in terms of the plane or any of its components, then it would be possible to bring a claim against the manufacturer as well as the airline,'' he added.
        Insurers typically form a consortium to share the risks of large claims, with the lead insurer taking a larger proportion of the risk. The insured value of the plane itself was likely around $50 million, according to industry sources.
        Willis Towers Watson was the insurance broker for Ethiopian Airlines, while Chubb was the lead insurer, a Willis spokeswoman said on Monday. A Chubb spokesman declined to comment.
        Britain's Global Aerospace was the lead insurer for Boeing and also for Lion Air, which operated the plane that crashed in October, said Global Aerospace Chief Executive Nick Brown.
        Marsh was Boeing's insurance broker, two sources told Reuters. None of the sources gave financial details of the policies.
        Boeing shares fell 5.6 percent on Monday.
        U.S. LAWSUITS POSSIBLE Boeing self-insures an initial layer of coverage before the Global Aerospace coverage kicks in, said Justin Green, a New York-based aviation lawyer who has represented families in cases against Boeing. Boeing declined comment on its insurance cover.
        It is not uncommon for the planemaker, which is headquartered in Chicago, to face lawsuits in the United States, where legal compensation payments for the crash victims could run around $2 million to $3 million per person, depending on the law applied, compared to about $200,000 in Ethiopia, said Green.
        U.S. courts often throw out such lawsuits, given the difficulty of finding witnesses overseas, but the fact that eight U.S. citizens were killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash increases the likelihood that litigation on behalf of all victims' families could be heard by a U.S. court, Green said.
        Initial compensation costs for all 157 passengers who died on the flight could be around $25 million, according to Reuters calculations based on the terms of the Montreal convention.
        The Montreal convention provides for a maximum of 113,100 special drawing rights, currently worth $1.39, for death or injury of each passenger, although not all countries are joined up to the convention.
        Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Carolyn Cohn in London and Suzanne Barlyn in New York; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Bill Rigby
    OTG
      Facebook Did Not Securely Store Passwords. Here's What You Need to Know. - The New York Times
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Mar 2019 22:19
        Personal Tech | Facebook Did Not Securely Store Passwords. Here's What You Need to Know. Tech Fix
        Image Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook. The company said millions of user account passwords had been stored insecurely. Credit Credit Stephen Lam/Reuters SAN FRANCISCO '-- Facebook said on Thursday that millions of user account passwords had been stored insecurely, potentially allowing employees to gain access to people's accounts without their knowledge.
        The Silicon Valley company publicized the security failure around the same time that Brian Krebs, a cybersecurity writer, reported the password vulnerability. Mr. Krebs said an audit by Facebook had found that hundreds of millions of user passwords dating to 2012 were stored in a format known as plain text, which makes the passwords readable to more than 20,000 of the company's employees.
        Facebook said that it had found no evidence of abuse and that it would begin alerting millions of its users and thousands of Instagram users about the issue. The company said it would not require people to reset their passwords.
        The security failure is another embarrassment for Facebook, a $470 billion colossus that employs some of the most sought-after cybersecurity experts in the industry. It adds to a growing list of data scandals that have tarnished Facebook's reputation over the last few years. Last year, amid revelations that a political consulting firm improperly gained access to the data of millions, Facebook also revealed that an attack on its network had exposed the personal information of tens of millions of users.
        In response, the company has repeatedly said it plans to improve how it safeguards people's data.
        ''There is nothing more important to us than protecting people's information, and we will continue making improvements as part of our ongoing security efforts at Facebook,'' Pedro Canahuati, Facebook's vice president of engineering in security and privacy, said in a blog post on Thursday.
        Here's a rundown of what you need to know about the password vulnerability and what you can do.
        What's the problem?Storing passwords in plain text is a poor security practice. It leaves passwords wide open to cyberattacks or potential employee abuse. A better security practice would have been to keep the passwords in a scrambled format that is indecipherable.
        Facebook said it had not found evidence of abuse, but that does not mean it did not occur. Citing a Facebook insider, Mr. Krebs said access records revealed that 2,000 engineers or developers had made nine million queries for data that included plain-text user passwords.
        A Facebook employee could have shared your password with someone else who would then have improper access to your account, for instance. Or an employee could have read your password and used it to log on to a different site where you used the same password. There are plenty of possibilities.
        Ultimately, a company as large, rich and well staffed as Facebook should have known better.
        How do I know whether someone had access my account?There's no easy way to know. Facebook is still investigating, and will begin alerting people who might have had their passwords stored in the plain text format.
        What should I do?Facebook is not requiring users to change their passwords, but you should do it anyway.
        There are many methods for setting strong passwords '-- for example, do not use the same password across multiple sites, and do not use your Social Security number as a username or a password. You can set up security features such as two-step verification as well.
        There are a few other steps to take. I recommend also setting up your Facebook account to receive alerts in the event that an unrecognized device logs in to the account. To do so, go to your Facebook app settings, tap Security and Login, and then tap Get alerts about unrecognized logins. From here, you can choose to receive the alerts via messages, email or notifications.
        An audit of devices that are logged in to your account may also be in order, so that you know what laptops, phones and other gadgets are already accessing your account. On Facebook's Security and Login page, under the tab labeled ''Where You're Logged In,'' you can see a list of devices that are signed in to your account, as well as their locations.
        If you see an unfamiliar gadget or a device signed in from an odd location, you can click the ''Remove'' button to boot the device out of your account.
        Follow Brian X. Chen on Twitter: @bxchen.
      Driverless vehicles do not understand Dutch cyclists - IoT Tech News
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 13:32
        The Dutch government is running into problems with its autonomous vehicle plans; namely, the automobiles can't understand cyclists.
        According to 'I Amsterdam', there are 881,000 bikes in Amsterdam alone. 58 percent of Amsterdammers older than 12 cycles daily. That's a big problem if driverless cars are unable to understand and react to cyclists.
        Under the Dutch government's plans, 100 driverless trucks would drive the so-called 'tulip corridors' at night. A human driver would lead a pack of autonomous vehicles on major roads crossing neighbouring countries including Germany and Belgium.
        A report by KPMG ranks the Netherlands number one in its Autonomous Vehicles Readiness Index (PDF).
        ''We have a lot of bicycles,'' points out Stijn de Groen, Manager Digital Advisory, Executive for Automotive, KPMG in the Netherlands. ''In urban, crowded areas it will be very difficult to start autonomous driving.''
        Current autonomous driving software is struggling with the variances of cyclists in terms of appearance and their individual abilities.
        The report has the UK in seventh place in autonomous vehicle readiness. KPMG knocks the Brits down the leaderboard due to lagging ''behind other countries in 4G coverage, global connectivity, quality of roads (especially smaller roads), and logistics infrastructure."
        To conclude: If you're a cyclist, steer clear of the road wherever possible.
        (Photo by Rafael Lodos on Unsplash)
        Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this? Attend the IoT Tech Expo World Series events with upcoming shows in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam.</
        Related Stories>> Google is building a smart city from the (under)ground up>> Study: A hack affecting 20 percent of driverless cars would halt Manhattan>> New report shows how IoT devices remain under 'constant' attack>> Sprint launches new IoT tool to give businesses simpler pricing options>> How IoTium has found a key gap in the market for industrial automation and is planning for growth
      Nokia 7 Plus found sending data to a Chinese server - Android Community
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 09:39
        Phones sending out data and information to outside servers are nothing new. We've heard similar incidents already most notably involving OEMs and China. There is a reason why Huawei isn't allowed in the US but we won't dwell on that. This time, Nokia is said to be sending special information to China. It's been happening for months so investigations are underway concerning the Nokia 7 Plus. The new phone is believed to be sending personal data to a server and that is not good news.
        NRK, a Norwegian website, shared the news that the OnePlus 7 phone is sending out traffic. Reader Henrik Austad noticed a server is being contacted. Data packets are sent out frequently even if not encrypted.
        The kind of data being sent and shared start when the device is switched. Once it starts, information like SIM card number, phone's serial number, geographical position, and screen activated or unlocked are sent out.
        The recipient of data is China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) as listed in the register. Specifically, China Telecom, a state-owned telecommunications company, is the owner of the domain.
        What has been discovered, although not definite, is that a code from Qualcomm that is similar to what's being used by the Nokia 7 Plus, is collecting data about the phone and sends them to a server that was produced by China Telecom.
        Security researcher Dirk Wetter also did his own investigation and discovered the same thing when analyzing network traffic to his Nokia 7 Plus phone. He noted the same packages. They are the same and it is possible HMD Global doesn't know about it.
        The Finnish Data Inspectorate is considering opening investigations after receiving information. Many other issues are being mentioned like it's a possible violation of the GDPR legislation and data being sent can monitor and identify people. It is also possible that the OEM didn't know about the problem until now.
        The information must be related to the customers and that such deviations should be corrected. HMD Global has been asked several times to explain a lot of things but no response has been given yet.
        VIA: NRK
    5G
      Bristol University Dodge Safety Questions and Mislead about 5G - Has Testing Increased Suicides? | Smombie Gate | 5G | EMF
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Mar 2019 14:14
        We decided to ask Bristol University about their 5G experiments and how safe the students are from exposure due to the massive increase of suicides there since 2015 when the testing began. The answers from the FOI that was sent to Bristol university is patchy as to whether informed consent being attained by students and members of the public who are involved in the trials or are innocent bystanders of the 5G military grade transmissions that Bristol University is testing. Apparently, 'post grads' choose to participate meaning that undergraduates cannot be involved? This is not true, as if you look at any part of Bristol's 5G 'Smart Internet Lab' microsite, it illustrates quite clearly the level of participation from unaware students and members of the public. Also, Bristol university states:
        ''The antennas used for transmission are within the test labs. There are no permanent installations of 5G research hardware and no hardware is currently on test.''
        This statement is intended to be utterly misleading. There are a whole host of videos that have been uploaded by Bristol University that clearly show cars being driven around the campus using 5G and other huge 5G trials exposing unwitting students and general public to what could be dangerous even deadly levels of 5G RF. Seriously '' How can 5G experiments be conducted in Public and on Campus without the informed consent of all those being exposed is given? Bristol University are regularly breaking the Nuremberg Code and they have filmed themselves doing it. Bristol's 5G scientists are either ignoring the safety of the Public and themselves or they really do not know except for their own experiences whether or not 5G is safe. When British and American soldier suicides are increasing by the year since they've been using these 5G frequencies, I wonder if MOD sold off these frequencies to Telecoms companies because suicide and death was too high?
        The University state they are using, 'CE marked test and measurement equipment for our experiments that's tested and certified for relevant UK and EU standards and specific health and safety risk assessments', but they didn't go into detail what these standards are. If we go by ICNIRP, the levels I'm assuming they are operating within from watching their promotional 5G videos, it's WAY LONGER THAN 6 MINUTES, meaning they're breaking the insanely modest International Standards. We know from watching Live Blood Analysis videos that it's clear how much EMF and RF exposure destroys healthy blood within 2 minutes making it clump together, which is also seen in this Live Blood video on the effects of Smart Meters. Bristol's 5G lab is using guidelines for EMF and RF protection that is horrendously outdated i.e. assessing damage caused by a fire based solely on how hot it feels and not looking at underlying DNA and cell damage, which there is plenty of proof of within Smombie Gate's archives. The official negative health effects of 5G seem to be ignored under the guide of it being an 'experimental technology'. Where does Bristol University's duty of care come into play or have they signed off all students as live guinea pigs?
        Bristol University continues to keep 5G information secret:
        Bristol University Continues to Withhold Critical Info on 5G to the UK Public
        We believe the next step in the evolution of Legislation will have to be recognising that all Humans are on a sensitivity range for EMF and RF, some are fine, whilst others literally go insane and commit suicide because they hear voices in their heads '' Yes, it's proven that EMF and RF can produce these effects in the Human brain.
        Closer to Bristol, Plymouth Live reported: The Cornish group Villagers Against Masts (VAM) call for greater scrutiny of mobile phone technology and coverage, citing serious concerns over health risks including mental health. Jane Harvey, founding member of VAM, says she has deep concerns about the amount of masts needed for 5G network. She said:
        ''Since researching the health effects, I have a real concern over masts, but also Wi-Fi and the looming 5g technology. Unfortunately Cornwall and Cumbria have been chosen to trial 5g in rural areas. Also, once they get permission for one mast on an AONB, a precedent is set and it would be very tricky to stop more. 5g is a weapons grade frequency. There is no knowing the future implications for us '' we are the guinea pigs. Jane cites a spate of suicides at Bristol University. Over the last year or so, they have had an unprecedented number of students committing suicide.''
        It seems that only when mass 5G illegal Human experiments have been conducted that people Hell-bent on making money who are pushing agendas for control and surveillance may stop and listen in places like China and the USA, but we really believe there's a fighting chance in the UK and Europe to STOP 5G before it starts. We cannot help but speculate that the increase of suicides at Bristol University are in-line with Biological effects from exposure to electromagnetic radiation emitted by cell tower base stations and other antenna arrays.
        12 Bristol University students either found dead or committed suicide since 2016:
        Miranda Williams, 19. Philosophy student found dead in Bristol Royal Infirmary on October 13, 2016, three weeks after the start of term.Daniel Green, 18. The fresher, studying history, was found dead in his room in university halls of residence on October 21, 2016.Kim Long, 18. Was in the first term of his law degree when he died at his halls of residence on November 10, 2016.Lara Nosiru, 23. Neuroscience student found dead in the Avon Gorge on January 30, 2017. Inquest ruled she took her own life.Elsa Scaburri, 21. Third-year languages student was found dead near her Wiltshire home on March 20, 2017. Verdict: Suicide.James Thomson, 20. Second-year maths student was found dead in his room on October 25, 2017. Verdict: Suicide.Justin Cheng The University of Bristol confirmed that Cheng, from Canada, had been found dead away from Bristol on the evening of 12 January 2018.Omojola Ogundipe, 20, was in the second year of an economics undergraduate degree at Bristol University. 14 March 2018.Alex Elsmore, 23. The electrical and engineering student was found dead on April 21, 2018, near Clifton Suspension Bridge.Natasha Abrahart, 20. Second-year physics student died on April 30 2018. She was found dead in her flat in Bristol.Ben Murray. Was in the first year of an English degree when he died ''suddenly and unexpectedly'' on May 5 2018.Bertram Crawford, a second-year English student at the University of Bristol, committed suicide on 17th November 2018.Here's the FOI in all its glory:Freedom of Information Request (our reference FOI18-541)
        We refer to your Freedom of Information request dated 22 November 2018. We apologise for the delay in responding to your request. We are currently short-staffed and have a backlog of requests that we are working through as quickly as we can.
        University's Response
        You requested information regarding testing of 5G technology by the University of Bristol. Further to Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the ''Act'') we confirm that the information requested is held by the University of Bristol (the ''University'').
        The University's Smart Internet Lab has provided the following response:
        Current defined frequencies from OFOM and 5G specifications are 3.5GHz, 26GHz/28GHz bands.
        When did you start testing 5G on campus?From 2015 research addressing candidate technologies has been ongoing, but not product testing.
        What types of antennas, masts and arrays are you using in experiments and on Campus (include specifications)?For sub 6GHz Massive MIMO 0.5Î>> linear array of sleeve dipoles and 32 x 4 patch antenna array. For millimetre wave Flann horn antenna.
        Do students have the choice of being exposed to the 5G tests?Yes, postgraduate students can choose to actively participate in 5G research. See also answer to Q6.
        How often are the 5G and wavelength tests?Several measurements per month.
        What wavelength RF spectrums do your experiments operate at and historically when have they been broadcast?3.51GHz and 24.25 to 27.5GHz. See answer to Q4 regarding when the tests are conducted.
        Have you done any health impact assessments or observations?University operates under health and safety at work procedures with associated risk assessment. All research activities are carried out by appropriately trained staff, within their respective laboratories or in the University's anechoic chamber.
        A full risk assessment is undertaken by those engaged in the measurements, addressing risks to themselves and others who may be nearby. These risk assessments are approved in accordance with University health and safety processes.
        Have you any health and safety guidelines you're following?See answer to Q6.
        What standards and guidelines are you operating within for the 5G hardware, antennas, arrays and masts?We operate CE marked test and measurement equipment for our experiments. All the equipment is tested and certified for relevant UK and EU standards.
        Have you asked students for releases forms or their full informed consent to be tested on with 5G and other wavelengths?See answers to Q3 and Q6.
        I'd like to see a Birdseye plan of the University and where the antennas, arrays and masts are situated, please include a key for all the departments shown on the map/plan.The antennas used for transmission are within the test labs. There are no permanent installations of 5G research hardware and no hardware is currently on test.
    Vaccines$
      Opting Out of Vaccines Should Opt You Out of American Society - Scientific American Blog Network
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Mar 2019 17:37
        People who are able to take vaccines but refuse to do so are the moral equivalent of drunk drivers
        Credit: Sean Gallup Getty Images The ongoing measles outbreaks across the United States and Europe prove definitively that our personal choices affect everybody around us. Although you have a right to your own body, your choice to willfully be sick ends where another's right to be healthy begins. For that reason, people who ''opt out'' of vaccines should be opted out of American society.
        This is America, the Land of the Free. That freedom, however, doesn't mean ''I can do whatever I want, whenever I want.'' When we choose to live in a society, there are certain obligations'--both moral and legal'--to which we are bound. You cannot inflict harm or infringe on the rights and liberties of those around you.
        Those obligations extend even to your constitutional rights. Although we have a First Amendment, you are not allowed to play music as loudly as you want in your apartment. Your neighbors have a legal right to peace and quiet. Even though we have a Second Amendment, you are not allowed to shoot a gun for sport in the middle of a city or town. Stray bullets are not only scary, they're hazardous, and often inadvertently kill people.
        Finally, your moral and legal obligations to the safety of others can even curtail combinations of your rights. Even though consuming alcohol and driving are both legal activities, they are not legal when performed together. Nearly 11,000 people die every year because people choose to exercise their ''rights'' inappropriately.
        The exact same reasoning applies to vaccination. There is no moral difference between a drunk driver and a willfully unvaccinated person. Both are selfishly, recklessly and knowingly putting the lives of everyone they encounter at risk. Their behavior endangers the health, safety and livelihood of the innocent bystanders who happen to have the misfortune of being in their path.
        The reasons why are simple and straightforward. Vaccines aren't perfect (e.g., they can wear off over time) and not everyone can be vaccinated. There is one and only one legitimate reason to skip a vaccine: being immunocompromised. Some individuals, because of genetic deficiencies or diseases like cancer, cannot receive vaccines. Other people are too young. Vaccines such as MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) cannot be administered before 12 months of age. These vulnerable people rely on the responsible actions of everyone else in society to protect them, a concept known as ''herd immunity.''
        For their sake, we have a moral'--and there should also be a legal'--obligation to protect them. Everyone who can be vaccinated must be vaccinated in order to prevent the spread of disease. This is a protection we demand even for our animals: kennels will turn your pet away if they aren't properly vaccinated and on an accepted flea treatment. There are rules we all have to play by and responsibilities we have to live up to if we want to live in a society together.
        If this isn't enough to convince a person to become fully vaccinated, then perhaps there is a solution that maintains everybody's freedom: Anti-vaxxers can opt out of American society. No public or private school, workplace or other institution should allow a non-exempt, unvaccinated person through their doors. A basic concern for the health and safety of others is the price it costs to participate.
        Is that too harsh? We don't think so. If a person wants to blast their music loudly, shoot guns aimlessly, and drink and drive, they should be allowed to do exactly as they please: so long as it's on their own property, sufficiently isolated from everyone else. Similarly, if you don't want to be vaccinated, perhaps that should be allowed too, so long as you agree to permanently live out in the middle of nowhere.
        It is inexcusable that society has reached this point. Many of the deadliest diseases known to mankind are due to bacteria and viruses, and dozens of them are now entirely preventable thanks to the sciences of microbiology and immunology.
        People falsely believe that diseases like measles have ''gone away,'' but they have not. They're always there, waiting to strike as soon as our collective guard goes down. Not so long ago, smallpox ran the risk of obliterating entire cities, while polio paralyzed large fractions of a generation. We have forgotten this morbid history because public health has been a victim of its own success.
        But misinformation abounds. The internet, both a blessing and a curse, has allowed devilish lies, propaganda and a discredited fraud masquerading as science to infect the minds of millions of people. Unfortunately, there's no vaccine that can inoculate someone against a counterfactual, unscientific mindset.
        There are, however, vaccines that can prevent dozens of harmful diseases. Those who refuse, and recklessly endanger others, should be put in quarantine.
        The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
        ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)Ethan SiegelEthan Siegel, PhD, is a theoretical astrophysicist and author of Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive.
        Alex BerezowAlex Berezow, PhD, is a microbiologist and vice president of scientific affairs at the American Council on Science and Health.
        Latest News
      PrEP user diagnosed with HIV in Sydney
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Mar 2019 18:57
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        Roughly half a million people worldwide take the medication, which is more than 99 per cent effective in preventing HIV when taken correctly.
        The sexual health and gay community advocate has chosen to share his story to prevent misinformation that could devalue the effectiveness of PrEP.
        "What happened to me doesn't change the fact that PrEP is still the most powerful HIV preventative we have ever had," said Mr Spencer, one of the first men in Australia to start taking the medication more than five years ago.
        Multiple international clinical trials have demonstrated that PrEP effectively prevents HIV transmission.
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        "It is protecting hundreds of thousands of people from HIV in an empowering way, alongside effective treatment for people living with HIV," Mr Spencer said.
        The PrEP drug Truvada has been available in Australia on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme since April 2018. Thousands of gay men previously had access to the drug via clinical trials or by importing it from overseas.
        ACON chief executive Nicolas Parkhill said, "What we do not want to see happen is people doubting the effectiveness of PrEP in preventing HIV and stop taking their pills."
        Andrew Grulich, program head of HIV Epidemiology and Prevention at the University of NSW's Kirby Institute, said PrEP had been a "game-changer for HIV prevention in Australia".
        Kirby Institute data showed HIV infections declined by almost one-third following the EPIC-NSW PrEP trial.
        Professor Grulich said most of the HIV seroconversion cases identified had involved a virus that is resistant to the anti-viral medication contained in PrEP.
        "PrEP only works if it is taken correctly, so non-adherence is certainly a factor in some cases," he said.
        Professor Grulich said the extremely rare cases did not contradict the global scientific consensus that PrEP was an extremely effective HIV prevention tool.
        "Individuals should remain confident of PrEP's effectiveness," he said.
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        Mr Spencer started HIV treatment immediately after diagnoses and within six weeks achieved an "undetectable viral load" meaning he cannot transmit HIV to anyone.
        He said it was "one of the toughest periods of my life".
        Today Mr Spencer lives "happily and healthily with HIV", confident that he can protect others from the virus and safeguard his health for years to come.
        Darren Russell, clinical adviser for Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine - which authored Australia's PrEP clinical guidelines - said a growing body of evidence supported taking PrEP on demand (a dosing strategy involving taking PrEP pills in line with a carefully-timed schedule before and after sex).
        "Taking PrEP only around the time of sexual events allows for fewer tablets to be taken overall, resulting in less exposure to medication, potentially fewer side-effects, and lower costs," Dr Russell said.
        He advised individuals to discuss dosing with their doctors to ensure they were taking PrEP appropriately.
        Kate Aubusson is Health Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.
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    Muslim Mosque in Christ Church
      Second man charged with sharing live stream of Christchurch massacre, Australia/NZ News & Top Stories - The Straits Times
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Mar 2019 03:21
        CHRISTCHURCH (AFP) - A 44-year-old man has become the second person charged with sharing a gruesome live-stream video of the deadly attack at a Christchurch mosque.
        Philip Arps, 44, was arrested by New Zealand Police on Tuesday (March 19), four days after 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant allegedly went on a rampage at two mosques in the southern city, killing 50 people and injuring dozens more.
        Arps was charged with two counts of distributing objectionable material under the Films Act, and was remanded in custody after appearing in Christchurch District Court.
        He is due back in court on April 15.
        A teenager appeared in court earlier this week on the same charge.
        The live-stream video was shot by alleged gunman Tarrant, who is currently facing one charge of murder for the killings at Al Noor and Linwood mosques.
        The funerals of the first victims started on Wednesday, with more expected to take place later on Wednesday and Thursday as officials release the victims' bodies to their families.
      Live: 'Destroy it now' - accused gunman's manifesto banned by Chief Censor
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 03:57
        A manifesto believed to have been written by the alleged Christchurch gunman has been officially classified as objectional and banned, the Office of Film & Literature Classification has confirmed.
        Chief censor David Shanks confirmed the move on Saturday, urging anyone who had copies of it to destroy them.
        It is now an offence, with Shanks describing the document as "a crude booklet that promotes murder and terrorism".
        Article continues below blog
        A glowing editorial in the New York Times last night heaped praise on the way Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has handled the fallout from the shocking events of last week in Christchurch.
        In the wake of last Friday's terror attack on two mosques which killed 50 people, the actions of Ardern in swiftly moving to ban semi-automatic guns as well as her sympathetic response to the Muslim community has garnered worldwide attention.
        The Times editorial entitled 'America Deserves a Leader as Good as Jacinda Ardern' said "the world should learn from the way Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand's prime minister, has responded to the horror".
        In particular, Ardern's handling of the issues around gun control have struck a chord with the newspaper's editorial board.
        "Ardern listened to her constituents' outrage and declared that within days her government would introduce new controls on the military-style weapons that the Christchurch shooter and many of the mass killers in the United States have used on their rampages," the editorial said. "And she delivered ... 'It's about all of us,' she said, 'it's in the national interest and it's about safety'."
        The original photo: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hugs a mosque-goer at the Kilbirnie Mosque on Monday. Photo / GettyThe editorial also praised Ardern for the measured response to social media concerns after the video of the accused gunman's rampage appeared live on Facebook and other platforms.
        "Earlier in the week, she told Parliament that social media sites must address the ease with which the internet can be used to spew hate and images of violence. 'We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and that what is said on them is not the responsibility of the place where they are published,' she said. 'It cannot be a case of all profit, no responsibility'.
        "She made clear that she believed that those social media platforms, like gun manufacturers and dealers, bore some responsibility for the carnage visited on Christchurch and so many communities in recent years."
        The issue of gun control - and the different ways the US and New Zealand approach the debate - also resonated.
      Over 130 dead, village 'devastated' after apparent ethnic attack in Mali '-- RT World News
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 11:00
        At least 134 people have been killed in an apparent ethnically-motivated attack on a village in southern Mali. Another village was also attacked, according to local officials, and the body count is expected to grow even further.
        The village of Ogossagou, inhabited by Fulani herders, was attacked by a group of gunmen early in the morning. The attackers sported the outfits of another tribe, the Donzo hunters, according to the mayor of the nearby town of Bankass, Moulaye Guindo.
        Read more
        The attack left at least 134 people dead and the village was completely "devastated," the official added. The death toll is not final, as local law enforcement officers continue to examine the scene of the brutal attack.
        "We are provisionally at 134 bodies recovered by the gendarmes," Guindo told Reuters.
        Another nearby Fulani village, Welingara, also came under attack, leading to an as-yet-unspecified number of deaths, the official said. The attack appears to be one of the deadliest the country has seen, despite experiencing years of ethnic and religious violence.
        France intervened in the affairs of Mali ''its former colony'' in 2013, in an attempt to push back jihadist groups who at the time were rampant in the country's north. The militants, however, have since established themselves in central Mali and neighboring countries. All in all, France has some 4,500 troops deployed to the Sahel region, the majority of them stationed in Mali.
        Also on rt.com Macron's concern over China's presence in Africa is about keeping riches in the West Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
      New Zealand mosque killings spark debate over free speech
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 14:26
        DUNEDIN, New Zealand (AP) '-- New Zealanders are debating the limits of free speech after their chief censor banned a 74-page manifesto written by the man accused of slaughtering 50 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch.
        The ban, issued Saturday, means anybody caught with the document on their computer could face up to 10 years in prison, while anyone caught sending it could face 14 years. Some say the ban goes too far and risks lending both the document and the gunman mystique.
        At the same time, many local media organizations are debating whether to even name the Australian man charged with murder in the March 15 attacks, 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant, after New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed she would never mention him by name.
        In some ways, Tarrant's manifesto provides the greatest insight into his character and thinking, with neighbors and those he met in a gym in the sleepy seaside town of Dunedin recalling nothing particularly remarkable about him.
        Chief Censor David Shanks said Tarrant's manifesto contains justifications for acts of tremendous cruelty like killing children and encourages acts of terrorism, even outlining specific places to target and methods to carry out attacks.
        He said that in banning the document, he and his staff worried about drawing more attention to it. But in the end, he said, they decided they needed to treat it the same way as propaganda from groups like the Islamic State, which they have also banned.
        Shanks had earlier placed a similar ban on the 17-minute livestream video the killer filmed from a camera mounted on his helmet during the shootings. He said researchers and journalists could apply for exemptions from both bans.
        But while free speech advocates haven't questioned banning the graphic video, they said banning the manifesto is a step too far.
        ''People are more confident of each other and their leaders when there is no room left for conspiracy theories, when nothing is hidden,'' said Stephen Franks, a constitutional lawyer and spokesman for the Free Speech Coalition. ''The damage and risks are greater from suppressing these things than they are from trusting people to form their own conclusions and to see evil or madness for what it is.''
        Franks said he had no interest in reading the manifesto until it was banned. He now is curious because it is ''forbidden fruit,'' he said, and he worries others may feel the same way. He said the ban makes no sense when New Zealanders remain free to read Adolf Hitler's autobiography, ''Mein Kampf.''
        Ardern told Parliament last week that she wouldn't give the gunman anything he wanted.
        ''He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety,'' she said. ''And that is why you will never hear me mention his name.''
        She said people should instead remember the names of the victims.
        Some media organizations appear to be taking up her call. News website Stuff on Saturday published an 1,800-word profile on Tarrant without once naming him.
        ''Our view at the moment is that we're dialing back on naming him, unless it's pertinent or important,'' said Mark Stevens, the editorial director at Stuff.
        The New Zealand Herald also published a profile on Tarrant with an accompanying editorial that mentions Ardern's stance. The editorial says, ''Our piece keeps the mention of his name to a minimum.''
        News organizations fear Tarrant will use his trial as a soapbox to promote his white nationalist views, especially after he fired his lawyer and said he'd represent himself.
        But Danish journalist Claus Blok Thomsen, who works for the Politiken newspaper and covered the trial of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, said there are dangers in censoring Tarrant. He said that during the Breivik trial, many media outlets, including his own, were careful to report only what happened in court without discussing Breivik's far-right ideology.
        He said it was an approach favored by intellectuals and so-called experts, but when he interviewed the families of the victims, he found many of them were angry.
        ''They said when we start to censor ourselves, we just make him into a martyr,'' Thomsen said. ''We are not able to learn how mad this guy was, what his thinking was, until everything is out in the light.''
        In his manifesto, Tarrant describes himself as being born into a working-class family and not being interested in university. He says he made some money investing, although in other internet posts he talks about getting an inheritance when his father died.
        In Dunedin, about a five-hour drive south of Christchurch, Tarrant lived in a modest pale-green wooden apartment. His neighbors said they'd see him out running sometimes, but that he mostly kept to himself. At the Anytime Fitness gym, those who knew him described him as polite and interested mainly in pumping weights that build upper-body strength.
        Tarrant was also a member of the Bruce Rifle Club, which has a shooting range down a dusty forest road that's used mostly by hunters and loggers, about a 45-minute drive southwest of Dunedin near the rural town of Milton.
        Dozens of boxes of bowling pins stacked in teetering towers and a few fluorescent vests are all there is inside a simple hut at the range. The club closed indefinitely last week after it emerged that Tarrant was a member.
        But like much of his life in Dunedin, Tarrant was something of a ghost at the club. Polite, low-key, helpful, normal. Club vice president Scott Williams told the Otago Daily Times that Tarrant seemed ''as normal as anyone else'' and never mentioned anything about his white supremacist beliefs.
        ''I think we're feeling a bit stunned and shocked and a bit betrayed, perhaps, that we've had this person in our club who has ended up doing these horrible things,'' he told the newspaper.
        Williams said Tarrant was always helping out around the club, including setting up and packing down the range. He said Tarrant used a hunting rifle and an AR-15, which wasn't unusual.
        One of the few people who has publicly said he had concerns about Tarrant before the attacks is hunting guide Pete Breidahl. He said he complained in 2017 to a local police officer who monitors gun licenses about the disturbing behavior of some members of the rifle club.
        In a Facebook video and comments posted online, Breidahl said some club members had Confederate flags, wore camouflage clothing with rank insignia, vilified Muslims and had homicidal fantasies. He claimed to have met Tarrant, calling him ''not right.'' Police said they had no record of a complaint but were looking into Breidahl's claims.
        In his manifesto, Tarrant claims he got approval for his attack from Breivik, who killed 77 people in Oslo and a nearby island in 2011. Breivik's lawyer has said that's very unlikely because his client has limited contact with the outside world from his prison cell.
        Thomsen, the journalist, said the biggest fear he and other reporters had when they were covering Breivik was that he would inspire a copycat killer. Now he's traveled to Christchurch to learn more about what happened there.
        ''I think it's safe to say that this is what we feared,'' he said.
    EuroLand
      Zorg om nieuwbouwplannen Europees Parlement | Binnenland | Telegraaf.nl
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Mar 2019 18:06
        Extra Het beste van De Telegraaf
        'Ze zijn hier gevoelig voor pracht en praal'
        Door Ruud Mikkers
        Updated Vandaag, 10:15
        Vandaag, 10:00 in BINNENLAND
        Brussel - Megalomaan vindt de (C)(C)n, pure noodzaak vindt de ander. Het Europees Parlement '' dat ook in Straatsburg nog een dependance heeft '' wikt en weegt de mogelijkheden voor een nieuw hoofdgebouw in Brussel. In de loop van het voorjaar moet er duidelijkheid komen. Het is zeker niet het enige gebouw van het parlement dat leidt tot zorgen over de financile handel en wandel. De Europese Rekenkamer is kritisch.
        Bekijk meer vanparlementbrusseleuropees parlementCorrespondent Brussel
        RMikkers
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      Article 13: Why are people protesting over copyright in Europe today? | Euronews explains
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 17:05
        Europe-wide protests to 'save the internet' have been called on Saturday ahead of an EU vote next week which could overhaul web copyright laws.
        The proposed changes would force Google and other online platforms to sign licensing agreements with musicians, performers, authors, and journalists so they can use their work.
        The European Parliament will vote on Tuesday on whether it wants to approve a proposal started by the European Commission two years ago to protect the bloc's cultural heritage and ensure publishers and artists get fair compensation from web giants like YouTube.
        But Google and internet activists have taken issue at the potential copyright filters and say it could pose a threat to the free exchange of opinions and culture online.
        What reforms are being put to vote?Article 13 of the copyright directive could mean sharing platforms such as the likes of Google, YouTube, and Facebook's Instagram would have to take more responsibility for copyrighted material being shared illegally on their platforms.
        That means they would be liable if their users upload or publish unlicensed content, such as photos, videos, source code or music, on their website. Such actions would require a licence fee to be paid, or for the content to be pre-filtered or automatically censored.
        Why the controversy?Critics say the filters are expensive and could lead to mistaken blocking. The campaign platform, Save the Internet, which called for Saturday's protests, said such filters would "block legal expressions of opinion and creative content, as automatic systems cannot accurately distinguish legitimate uses from copyright infringements".
        The group, which has received about five million signatures for its online petition, also argues the filters would not just tackle large companies, but smaller platforms too.
        Wikipedia meanwhile has said the EU rules would police all platforms, which could harm free expression.
        Some EU countries have also voiced concern. Last month, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland refused to support the internet reforms.
        Who supports the law?But artists have voiced their support for the online overhaul.
        Film director Pedro Almodovar and Abba's Benny Andersson are among some of those who favour Article 13.
        Writing in The Guardian, Debbie Harry, the lead singer of Blondie said the law would "significantly improve the ability of the creative community to secure fair deals for the use of their work by user-uploaded content services such as YouTube."
        Harry added that companies such as Google and YouTube "have used their financial power and reach" to lobby a law that would "secure" musicians' futures.
        The online group Europe for Creators, argues platforms such as YouTube can at the moment "pretty much do whatever it wants" but if Article 13 became law, "a wider variety of artists will be able to monetise the use of their work" as platforms like YouTube will have to negotiate licensing deals with authors and creators.
        Watch: Big tech companies stand to win on Article 13 copyright issue
      Linkse 'anti-racisten' roepen openlijk op Thierry Baudet dood te schieten, in demonstratie met GroenLinks | ThePostOnline
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 21:04
        Update: videobeelden niet eerder dan zondagochtend, aldus Roopram.
        Demonstranten in #Amsterdam vandaag: ''Als je Thierry dood wil schieten, dan zeg je PAF'' Walgelijk. Aanzetten tot haat en geweld en media belagen. Linkse haat viert hoogtij! #antifa #antiracisme
        '-- Shashi (@ShashiRoopram) 23 maart 2019
        Bij de #antiracisme demonstratie is het team van @upnetworknl belaagd door #antifa. Betogers roepen op om @thierrybaudet neer te schieten! Walgelijk. Politieke partijen zoals @groenlinks@SPnl en @PartijvdDieren lopen mee en laten dit toe. Laf! Spreek je uit tegen deze waanzin!
        '-- Shashi (@ShashiRoopram) 23 maart 2019
    Armageddon
      Thousands of California families living in RVs as exorbitant rents leave many facing homelessness | Daily Mail Online
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 14:05
        RVs are everywhere and anywhere around Los Angeles '' clusters of them on residential streets, in industrial parks, near high schools and church parking lots.
        There are thousands of them, dotted around the city and the county, in a trend that's impossible to miss '' and one that extends across the Golden State. From Palo Alto to Sacramento and San Francisco, the proliferation of RV and vehicle living has become more and more obvious in recent years against a backdrop of complex socioeconomic issues.
        Many of these are not holidaymakers or pleasure seekers; in fact, thousands of RV dwellers are homeless. And their numbers are actually difficult to quantify.
        California, which is home to 12 percent of the US population, also hosts a disproportionate amount of the nation's homeless at 22 percent. But many do not fit the stereotype of homelessness; they don't have drug or alcohol or psychiatric problems. They are employed, just not making enough to afford the state's still-rising rental prices. Some don't consider themselves homeless at all, simply viewing the unorthodox housing choice as just that '' a choice, and a cheaper one.
        An entirely new cottage industry of RV and vehicle landlords has cropped up to fill the demand, renting out everything from bunk beds to box trucks to people who earn far more than minimum wage.
        Scroll down for video
        PALO ALTO: A line of RVs is parked near the entrance to Stanford University along El Camino Real, which has long been a popular spot for people living in mobile homes. California is home to about 12 percent of the US population but a disproportionate number of the nation's homeless at 22 percent
        LOS ANGELES: The city's iconic palm trees and distant mountains form the backdrop for a string of camper vans on the streets of the West Rancho Dominguez/Compton area of the City of Angels
        LOS ANGELES: One homeless resident, who gave his name as Joe, pushes some of his possessions near a line of RVs on the streets of the Canoga Park area of the City of Angels
        It is illegal in many parts of California to sleep in vehicles on the streets, with occupants subject to fines and tickets and action by police, so lines and clusters of RVs tend to be relatively small and move often - fueled by the complaints of locals who consider their presence a nuisance or an eyesore
        Getting accurate data in cities like Los Angeles and across the entire state has its complications, says Russ Heimerich, deputy secretary of communications for California's Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. The figures are usually based on point and time counts, when staff go out in January to 'look for people who are demonstrably homeless.' 'They go to the shelters, but you're not going to stop and knock on somebody's RV necessarily and say, ''Are you here because you're camping in a Walmart parking lot because you're cruising the country, or are you here because you got placed out of your home?'' Those point in time counts probably wouldn't catch those'
        And a growing wave of resentment is spreading across the state just as quickly as the trend in vehicle living itself. The topic is ubiquitous at town council meetings from San Diego to San Francisco, as residents toss out a variety of complaints '' everything from trash and unsanitary conditions to drug dealing and, simply, the fact that they consider parked campers in residential areas to be eyesores that bring down the value of their suburban communities.
        The reality, however, cannot be ignored.
        In Los Angeles, 2018 data recorded 45,043 homeless people last year, according to the city's Homeless Services Authority. Seventy-five percent of those people were in unsheltered accommodation, with 3,814 people in cars, 3,554 people in vans and 8,380 in RVs and Campers.
        But getting accurate data in cities like Los Angeles and across the entire state has its complications, says Russ Heimerich, deputy secretary of communications for California's Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. The figures are usually based on point and time counts, when staff go out in January to 'look for people who are demonstrably homeless.'
        'They go to the shelters, but you're not going to stop and knock on somebody's RV necessarily and say, ''Are you here because you're camping in a Walmart parking lot because you're cruising the country, or are you here because you got placed out of your home?'' Those point in time counts probably wouldn't catch those.'
        He tells DailyMail.com: 'One of the major causes of homelessness is, frankly, the high cost of housing in California, and so we are working on initiatives to get local governments to approve and plan for housing and make it easier to plan for developers who want to build housing to do so.'
        The state has 'almost six million households that pay rent as opposed to owning; of those, more than three million households pay more than 30 percent of their income towards rent, which is a very large percent,' Heimerich tells DailyMail.com. 'And more than 1.7million households pay more than 50 percent of their income toward rent.'
        He adds: 'Many, many families in California are one pay check away from being homeless. They lose a job or they have a sudden medical emergency where they have to use the money for hospitalization or doctors or whatever, instead of paying the rent '... in California, anyway, and I suspect elsewhere, there is a large percentage of the homeless who are those people who have had that one disaster and can no longer afford to pay rent.
        'It's not that they're without a job; in some cases, it's just that they're priced out of their homes or somehow economically forced out of their homes. We have a large number of people here that, if you were looking at them on the street, you would never guess that they were homeless, that they're sleeping in cars, RVs, or there are a lot of people couch surfing with friends, that sort of thing.'
        Above, a map that shows where RVs in Palo Alto line up along El Camino Real, near the entrance to Stanford University, which has long been a popular spot for people living in mobile homes
        In addition to RVs, many people have resorted to living in vehicles. In Los Angeles, 2018 data recorded 45,043 homeless people last year, according to the city's Homeless Services Authority. Seventy-five percent of those people were in unsheltered accommodation, with 3,814 people in cars, 3,554 people in vans and 8,380 in RVs and campers
        One car resident, who gave her name as Mariola, sits near a luxury apartment complex in the Canoga Park area of Los Angeles. According to Russ Heimerich, deputy secretary of communications for California's Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency, in the state there are 'almost six million households that pay rent as opposed to owning; of those, more than three million households pay more than 30 percent of their income towards rent, which is a very large percent. And more than 1.7million households pay more than 50 percent of their income toward rent'
        RVs and camper vans are parked everywhere from church lots to residential streets to industrial parks - and councils across the state have received complaints from locals who allege trash discarding, lack of sanitary conditions, illicit activity and other problems
        The scale of the problem has become so large that grassroots organizations and other efforts have sprung up to get RVs and vehicles off the streets and instead allow them to park in designated, guarded, often secret locations
        The homeless crisis has sparked something of a cottage industry for opportunistic landlords who buy RVs, vans and box trucks to rent out to desperate tenants
        One problem with ascertaining accurate numbers is that it's hard to distinguish between people actually living in camper vans and people on vacation; on top of that, many people might not want to admit that they are homeless, and others con't consider themselves homeless at all, instead calling their transiency a lifestyle choice
        Above, a line of RVs parked near the entrance to Stanford University is seen along El Camino Real road in Palo Alto. This has long been a popular spot for mobile homes
        Above, a map showing where in Compton that RVs tend to park, which is along S. Broadway from Rosecrans Ave. to 133rd St. California, which is home to 12 percent of the US population, also hosts a disproportionate amount of the nation's homeless at 22 percent
        The problem has become so widespread that grassroots organizations and other efforts have sprung up to provide safe parking places for such displaced individuals. It's actually illegal in many parts of California to sleep on the street in a parked vehicle, so many of the working homeless face fines, tickets and being moved on by police '' contributing to the mobile nature of parking sites and the fact that rarely more than a dozen vehicles are parked together at any one time.
        Emily Uyeda Kantrim is a program director for SafeParkingLA, a non-profit which accepts applications daily from people looking for guarded, specifically identified and often secret locations to park and sleep. In a 30-day period, she tells DailyMail.com, her organization gets about 250 applications.
        'Of those, about 100 are homeless for the first time and not connected to any other services,' she says. 'They don't know about homeless services; maybe to them that means going to a physical shelter and having to stay there for whatever reason. Out of that 100, 60 are under the age of 40 and have a job '' so that was a new statistic that no one else has really dialled down into before.'
        She says: 'We've seen '' and this is born out in other statistics as well '' more young people who are just excluded from the rental market due to the cost, as well as seniors who are on a fixed income and who are being displaced from their historic communities.'
        She tells DailyMail.com: 'I can tell you that out of the number of people who contact us who are in RVs, these are people who primarily have felt they have no way back into housing. A family will call and say, ''What do you have out here, because we have been displaced from our neighbourhood; we can't afford it anymore. So we bought this RV so our kids can go to the same school.''
        'People are trying to make peace with the reality of their situation by trying to do something; they don't realize it's not legal to park your RV on a regular city street and sleep in it.'
        Another issue with figuring out the scale of the problem '' and fixing it '' is that many people do not want to admit they are homeless or even think of themselves as homeless in the first place, instead considering their transient living a lifestyle choice and a true home.
        Uyeda Kantrim emphasises that people need to be more educated about services available to them, while Heimerich points to the fact that the state government is increasingly trying to allocate funds for more services and more affordable housing.
        Examples of initiatives, for example, include legislation last year that put $500million in the hands of local jurisdictions specifically to help with homelessness. Another half a billion dollars has been earmarked similarly for homeless initiatives, he tells DailyMail.com.
        Above, a map that shows where mobile homes line up in Canoga Park, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, on Erwin St., and in the area of Canoga Ave. and Osborne St.
        'Many, many families in California are one pay check away from being homeless. They lose a job or they have a sudden medical emergency where they have to use the money for hospitalization or doctors or whatever, instead of paying the rent '... in California, anyway, and I suspect elsewhere, there is a large percentage of the homeless who are those people who have had that one disaster and can no longer afford to pay rent. 'It's not that they're without a job; in some cases, it's just that they're priced out of their homes or somehow economically forced out of their homes. We have a large number of people here that, if you were looking at them on the street, you would never guess that they were homeless, that they're sleeping in cars, RVs, or there are a lot of people couch surfing with friends, that sort of thing'
        General views show RVs parked near Stanford; across California, community responses to the growing number of camper vans and other vehicles has varied wildly. Some homeowners befriend the homeless and working displaced, even offering facilities such as showers in their homes, while others complain to councils and even fight with neighbors who help the itinerant newcomers, accusing them of facilitating the trend
        Official figures - or as close as possible - are usually obtained annually in January, when Heimerich says staff go out to 'look for people who are demonstrably homeless.' He adds: 'They go to the shelters, but you're not going to stop and knock on somebody's RV necessarily and say, ''Are you here because you're camping in a Walmart parking lot because you're cruising the country, or are you here because you got placed out of your home?'' Those point in time counts probably wouldn't catch those'
        Emily Uyeda Kantrim is a program director for SafeParkingLA, a non-profit which accepts applications daily from people looking for guarded, specifically identified and often secret locations to park and sleep. In a 30-day period, she tells DailyMail.com, her organization gets about 250 applications. 'Of those, about 100 are homeless for the first time and not connected to any other services,' she says. 'They don't know about homeless services; maybe to them that means going to a physical shelter and having to stay there for whatever reason. Out of that 100, 60 are under the age of 40 and have a job '' so that was a new statistic that no one else has really dialled down into before'
        Uyeda Kantrim tells DailyMail.com: 'I can tell you that out of the number of people who contact us who are in RVs, these are people who primarily have felt they have no way back into housing. A family will call and say, ''What do you have out here, because we have been displaced from our neighbourhood; we can't afford it anymore. So we bought this RV so our kids can go to the same school'''
        At a meeting last year at City Hall, the Los Angeles Times reported how multilple residents of a South LA neighbhorhood 'pleaded for new restrictions on trucks and RVs' parking in the area, with one woman alleging 'the street across from her church had become an eyesore over the last year, cluttered with trash and sewage dumped by people living there in campers and buses.' Others claimed to have seen drug deals taking place openly.
        RV communities have been moved on from industrial parks where business people claim they're losing clientele, and suburban residents '' however true or not '' have insisted they've seen needles in public parks and evidence of drug use. Neighborhood tensions have even risen when some homeowners let vehicle dwellers use their home showers or other facilities, with locals opposed arguing that such altruism makes the areas more attractive to itinerant riff-raff
        'Even walking down the street to pick up my newspaper I'm getting complaints,' Councilman Bob Blumenfield told the LA Times last year. 'We don't want our neighborhoods to become campsites'
        That doesn't mean that the more widespread and home-owning communities are exactly thrilled with the situation. Palo Alto may see swathes of well-maintained, high-end RVs, but there's no denying that decrepit camper vans with non-working residents, often involved in questionable activities, take up residence in neighborhoods where they are not wanted. There have been complaints of trash, filth, drugs and other illicit activities.
        At a meeting last year at City Hall, the Los Angeles Times reported how multiple residents of a South LA neighborhood 'pleaded for new restrictions on trucks and RVs' parking in the area, with one woman alleging 'the street across from her church had become an eyesore over the last year, cluttered with trash and sewage dumped by people living there in campers and buses.' Others claimed to have seen drug deals taking place openly.
        'Even walking down the street to pick up my newspaper I'm getting complaints,' Councilman Bob Blumenfield told the LA Times. 'We don't want our neighborhoods to become campsites.'
        RV communities have been moved on from industrial parks where business people claim they're losing clientele, and suburban residents '' however true or not '' have insisted they've seen needles in public parks and evidence of drug use. Neighborhood tensions have even risen when some homeowners let vehicle dwellers use their home showers or other facilities, with locals opposed arguing that such altruism makes the areas more attractive to itinerant riff-raff.
        Cities such as Berkeley have moved larger encampments from public areas such as the local marina, only to worsen the reactions of residents when the RVs and vans re-appear in different regional spots.
        'The Chamber said it has received a range of complaints from local businesses due to deteriorating conditions in the neighborhood,' local publication Berkeleyside reported last autumn. 'Such negative impacts include making parking spots rare for employees and residents, waste containers getting poured down storm drains, evidence of campers urinating and defecating on public sidewalks and/or private property, and feeling unsafe around campers who are exhibiting mentally ill or otherwise aggressive behaviors.'
        Some proposed solutions in similar cities have been to issue permits for varying periods of time, as well as designated sanitary and other humanitarian facilities.
        The California government is attempting to funnel more funds towards homelessness and services, but many people remain unaware of options available to them or unwilling to engage with services. While new trends show growing numbers of families and working professionals simply priced out of the housing market, traditional issues with some homeless involving addiction and other illnesses also still remain
        There is an upcoming safe parking conference in May, and Uyeda Kantrim describes a 'sense of urgency' '' telling DailyMail.com that a way must be figured out 'to specifically serve RVs and make sure people are not just looking for this to the be lowest level of housing '' that it actually becomes temporary in nature
        The caliber of RVs and camper vans varies wildly, with some expensive models such as these pictured in Canoga Park in Los Angeles and others decrepit and badly in need of repair
        Cities such as Berkeley have moved larger encampments from public areas such as the local marina, only to worsen the reactions of residents when the RVs and vans re-appear in different regional spots
        Heimerich tells DailyMail.com: 'One of the major causes of homelessness is, frankly, the high cost of housing in California, and so we are working on initiatives to get local governments to approve and plan for housing and make it easier to plan for developers who want to build housing to do so'
        Heimerich tells DailyMail.com that, when it comes to many people living in RVs or vehicles: 'It's not that they're without a job; in some cases, it's just that they're priced out of their homes or somehow economically forced out of their homes. We have a large number of people here that, if you were looking at them on the street, you would never guess that they were homeless, that they're sleeping in cars, RVs, or there are a lot of people couch surfing with friends, that sort of thing'
        'The Chamber said it has received a range of complaints from local businesses due to deteriorating conditions in the neighborhood,' local publication Berkeleyside reported last autumn. 'Such negative impacts include making parking spots rare for employees and residents, waste containers getting poured down storm drains, evidence of campers urinating and defecating on public sidewalks and/or private property, and feeling unsafe around campers who are exhibiting mentally ill or otherwise aggressive behaviors'
        Uyeda Kantrim says there is an upcoming convention in May 'with all the Southern California State parking vendors' from places like San Diego and Santa Barbara '... really trying to understand how to do this at scale. There's 'a lot of statewide movement on this, and we feel very privileged to be able to have figured out a very nimble way of trying to build programs at a neighborhood level '... and have people picking up this model and do it wherever they live. Because it's definitely doable,' she tells DailyMail.com
        Above, a look at motor homes lining the road in Palo Alto. California is grappling with an uptick of those living in RVs, and Uyeda Kantrim, who is working on the front lines and seeing everyone from families and students to senior citizens, describes a 'sense of urgency' '' telling DailyMail.com that a way must be figured out 'to specifically serve RVs and make sure people are not just looking for this to the be lowest level of housing '' that it actually becomes temporary in nature'
        But the needs and the situations of the occupants of vehicle dwellers across the state genuinely vary wildly. One newfound landlord included Russell Savala, who shared his story in 2017 with Marketplace.org '' which described his 'growing fleet of box trucks and RVs for rent in the [Silver Lake] neighbourhood that he and his business partner, an electrician, have bought for cheap and cleaned up.
        One of his tenants at the time was Melody Groundflyer, who rented a box truck from him '' despite bringing home $45,000 a year as a cable technician.
        'I don't have a minimum wage job, but it's a struggle to find a place you can afford,' she told Marketplace.org.
        Savala described one of his other 'properties,' an RV which he was renting out bunk by bunk.
        'Two beds, shared living section,' he told Marketplace.org, which added that the bunk '' two years ago '' was going for $200 per a week, the whole RV for $1,000 a month and box trucks for $500 per month.
        'Which is insane, honestly,' Savala told Marketplace.org. 'But you don't have a contract, you don't have a deposit or anything. So it works for some people.'
        But Uyeda Kantrim, working on the front lines and seeing everyone from families and students to senior citizens, describes a 'sense of urgency' '' telling DailyMail.com that a way must be figured out 'to specifically serve RVs and make sure people are not just looking for this to the be lowest level of housing '' that it actually becomes temporary in nature.'
        She mentions an upcoming convention in May 'with all the Southern California State parking vendors' from places like San Diego and Santa Barbara '... really trying to understand how to do this at scale.'
        There's 'a lot of statewide movement on this, and we feel very privileged to be able to have figured out a very nimble way of trying to build programs at a neighborhood level '... and have people picking up this model and do it wherever they live.
        'Because it's definitely doable,' she says.
        How 'Medieval' diseases, like typhus, have resurfaced among California's homeless due to unhygienic conditions California has seen a rise in infectious diseases, like typhus, because of the growth of unsanitary conditions '' garbage, needles, feces and urine '' that are often tied to homeless encampments. The state currently has 22 percent of the nation's homeless population.
        'Our homeless crisis is increasingly becoming a public health crisis,' California Governor Gavin Newsom said in his State of the State speech in February, according to a Scientific American article.
        'Typhus,' he said. 'A medieval disease. In California. In 2019.'
        The governor was referring to an outbreak of typhus that recently happened in Los Angeles that necessitated briefly shutting down City Hall after rats had gotten into the building. According to the California Public Health Department, there were 13 cases of typhus in 2008, which jumped to 125 in 2013 to 167 from January last year through February 1st this year.
        Typhus 'spreads by infected fleas on rates and other animals,' and the recent proliferation of the bacterial infection started last fall 'when health officials reported clusters of the flea-borne disease in downtown Los Angeles and Compton,' according to the March 15 article.
        The disease, which typically causes rashes, fevers and headaches, can be treated with antibiotics, and, according to the article, outbreaks are more likely to occur in 'overcrowded and trash-filled areas that attract rats.'
        Nor is typhus the only diseases on the rise: San Diego County had an outbreak of hepatitis A, which is spread by feces, and syphilis in Sonoma County, according to the article.
        The homeless have been hard hit by these infectious diseases, with Dr. Glenn Lopez, who treats L.A. County's homeless, telling Scientific American that ''the hygiene situation is just horrendous'' for people living on the streets.'
        'It becomes just like a Third World environment where their human feces contaminate the areas where they are eating and sleeping.'
    The Long Bets
      One America News Network - Wikipedia
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Mar 2019 20:20
        Formation The formation of the organization was announced on March 14, 2013 by Herring Networks, Inc., an independent and family-owned national video programming company owns and operates OAN and sister channel AWE (formerly WealthTV; the initialism being an acronym for "A Wealth of Entertainment"). When the network began in 2013 it had a limited partnership with The Washington Times.[2]
        The network launched with the intention of targeting a conservative-leaning audience with OAN President Charles Herring telling CPAC that, ''Fox News has done a great job serving the center-right and independent audiences...But those who consider themselves liberal have a half dozen or more choices on TV each day from which to get their news.''[11] Herring also stressed the network's separation of news and opinion content, with straight news reporting throughout the day and limited opinion commentary from evening talk shows, including The Daily Ledger hosted by Graham Ledger and The Tipping Point hosted by Liz Wheeler. Early advertisements for the channel touted the network's lack of commentary and focus on straight news reporting.[12] The channel was formally launched on July 4, 2013.
        In July 2014, OAN relocated its news and production studios out of The Washington Times Building to its new location at 101 Constitution Avenue NW, near the United States Capitol. The move ended OAN's relationship with The Washington Times, which provided news and analysis,[13] as well as a lease space arrangement, for the network. While its Washington Bureau was previously located within the Times building, OAN remains solely owned and operated, including all editorial control, by Herring Networks, Inc.
        In August 2014, OAN launched the show On Point with Tomi Lahren. Many clips of the program later went viral, and Lahren gained widespread attention for her commentaries in 2015. On August 19, 2015, Lahren completed her final show at OAN.[14][15] On the week of August 24, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin guest hosted a program on the network.[16][17]
        As of August 2017, One America News Network reached 35 million homes[citation needed ] and had nationwide distribution from DirecTV, Verizon Fios, AT&T U-verse, CenturyLink PRISM TV, and numerous regional video distributors.[18] OAN can also now be streamed through KlowdTV and their current subscription models which include Russia Today (RT), A Wealth of Entertainment (AWE) and other various programming.[19]
        Pro-Trump content The channel is known for its pro-Trump coverage.[8][20] Robert Herring, Sr., founder and CEO of the network, has ordered producers to promote certain types of content, such as pro-Trump stories, anti-Clinton stories and anti-abortion stories, and minimize stories about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.[8] According to a number of former and current employees at the channel, as well as internal e-mails, the executives of the channel have "directed his channel to push Trump's candidacy, scuttle stories about police shootings, encourage antiabortion stories, minimize coverage of Russian aggression, and steer away from the new president's troubles."[8] During the 2016 presidential campaign, the channel ran a special titled "Betrayal at Benghazi: The Cost of Hillary Clinton's Dereliction and Greed."[8] Herring, the owner of the channel, sent producers at the channel a report falsely claiming that Hillary Clinton had a brain tumor, and asked them to check up on it.[8] He also shared a report with producers that claimed that Planned Parenthood had promoted abortion, and ordered them to minimize coverage of Pope Francis's US visit due to the Pope's calls for action on global warming. (see Laudato si')[8] Herring repeatedly ordered his producers not to cover stories pertaining to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.[8]
        In October 2017, the channel said without any evidence that a "report" had been published which showed "U.K. Crime Rises 13% Annually Amid Spread of Radical Islamic Terror".[21] President Trump later repeated this falsehood, suggesting that he learned of it from OAN.[22][23]
        In June 2017, One America News was granted a permanent seat in the White House's James Brady briefing room.[24] The network's Chief White House Correspondent, Trey Yingst, was one of the top five most called upon reporters covering the Trump Administration.[25] One America News has been repeatedly called on by President Trump during Presidential press conferences, including one in February 2017 when Yingst asked the President about his campaign's contacts with the Russian government.[26] Also in February 2017, One America News was invited to a network lunch with President Trump.[27] In August 2017, President Trump praised One America News, saying "It's a great network." In response, OANN CEO Robert Herring stated that One America News considers itself a tough but fair presence in the White House press corps.[28]
        OAN supported the Trump administration's revoking of CNN reporter Jim Acosta's press credentials. Most major media outlets, including the conservative Fox News, opposed the Trump administration's decision. In a statement, OAN CEO Robert Herring attacked Fox News, saying he "can't believe Fox is on the other side."[29][30][31]
        Murder of Seth Rich conspiracy theories OANN promoted conspiracy theories about the murder of Seth Rich.[10]
        Roy Moore sexual misconduct report controversy After the Washington Post reported allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore that he had molested or made inappropriate sexual contact with a number of women under the age of 18 (including a 14-year old), One America News "became a source of both positive coverage and stories that could cast doubt on his accusers."[32] In November 2017, One America News aired a segment citing a false rumor by an anonymous Twitter account that the Washington Post had offered $1,000 to Roy Moore's accusers.[33][34][35] One America News described the tweet as a "report" and described the tweeter as a "former Secret Service agent and Navy veteran".[33][34] The Twitter account had a history of tweeting falsehoods and conspiracy theories; the Twitter account had also made repeated and inconsistent lies about its identity, including appropriating the identity of a Navy serviceman who died in 2007.[34] After it was revealed that the story was a hoax, One America News did not retract its report.[33]
        During his Senate campaign, Roy Moore cited One America News when he defended himself against the accusations.[36] Moore cited a One America News story that alleged that his "Accusers Have Ties to Drug Dealers & Washington Post".[36][37][38]
        During the night of the election, OANN announced that Moore had swept the election "by a large margin" when in actuality, Moore ended up losing the race.[39] In its announcement, the network cited "unofficial polling" and the news anchor then extended the OAN CEO Robert Herring's congratulations to Moore on having run a "fine campaign."[39] OAN's website also published an erroneous article claiming that Moore had won, writing that he won "despite attacks from Democrats about unverified allegations."[39] During election night, OAN also said that it had "reports that a number of people have been caught trying to sneak into voting booths and vote illegally"; however, Alabama Secretary of State's office said that it had no credible reports of voter fraud.[40]
        Conspiracy theory about David Hogg In February 2018, one of the hosts on OAN tweeted a conspiracy theory that a 17-year old survivor in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting had been coached to speak out against Trump by his retired FBI agent father and that Hogg was "running cover" for his FBI agent father.[41][42] Donald Trump Jr. liked the OAN host's tweet.[42] The 17-year old responded, describing the conspiracy theory as "immature, rude, and inhuman".[43]
        Syria chemical attack In April 2018, while on an al-Assad regime-led tour of the area of the Douma chemical attack, a OAN correspondent said that there was no evidence that a chemical attack had occurred.[44] The correspondent said, "Not one of the people that I spoke to in that neighborhood said that they had seen anything or heard anything about a chemical attack on that day" and that residents "loved Bashar al-Assad."[44]
        Hiring of far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec In 2018, OANN hired far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec as a political correspondent.[45][46][47][48]
        False story about Bible ban In April 2018, OANN ran a segment where it falsely claimed that a California bill would ban the sale of Bibles.[49] Within 24 hours, the OANN video was viewed 2.4 million times on Facebook.[49] Snopes found that the claim was false, and noted that the bill targeted gay conversion therapy.[49]
        Unsubstantiated claims about Ammar Campa-Najjar During the 2018 mid-term campaign, OANN ran a segment where it claimed that Democratic congressional candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar's "father praised the deaths of the Israelis, saying they deserved to die." The Washington Post fact-checker noted that there is no attribution to this statement in the OANN segment. An OANN commentator also claimed that groups connected to the Muslim Brotherhood donated to Campa-Najjar's campaign and that the FEC website showed this. The Washington Post fact-checker said it "couldn't find evidence of this after searching Campa-Najjar's filings with the Federal Election Commission." The OANN segment was used in attack ads by Campa-Najjar's Republican opponent Duncan Hunter where Campa-Najjar was falsely tied to terrorism.[50]
    Trump Rotation
      Trump Didn't Call Neo-Nazis 'Fine People.' Here's Proof. | RealClearPolitics
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Mar 2019 14:50
        News anchors and pundits have repeated lies about Donald Trump and race so often that some of these narratives seem true, even to Americans who embrace the fruits of the president's policies. The most pernicious and pervasive of these lies is the ''Charlottesville Hoax,'' the fake-news fabrication that he described the neo-Nazis who rallied in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 as ''fine people.''
        Just last week I exposed this falsehood, yet again, when CNN contributor Keith Boykin falsely stated, ''When violent people were marching with tiki torches in Charlottesville, the president said they were 'very fine people.''' When I objected and detailed that Trump's ''fine people on both sides'' observation clearly related to those on both sides of the Confederate monument debate, and specifically excluded the violent supremacists, anchor Erin Burnett interjected, ''He [Trump] didn't say it was on the monument debate at all. No, they didn't even try to use that defense. It's a good one, but no one's even tried to use it, so you just used it now.''
        My colleagues seem prepared to dispute our own network's correct contemporaneous reporting and the very clear transcripts of the now-infamous Trump Tower presser on the tragic events of Charlottesville. Here are the unambiguous actual words of President Trump:
        ''Excuse me, they didn't put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group '' excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.''
        After another question at that press conference, Trump became even more explicit:
        ''I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.''
        As a man charged with publicly explaining Donald Trump's often meandering and colloquial vernacular in highly adversarial TV settings, I appreciate more than most the sometimes-murky nature of his off-script commentaries. But these Charlottesville statements leave little room for interpretation. For any honest person, therefore, to conclude that the president somehow praised the very people he actually derided, reveals a blatant and blinding level of bias.
        Nonetheless, countless so-called journalists have furthered this damnable lie. For example, MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace responded that Trump had ''given safe harbor to Nazis, to white supremacists.'' Her NBC colleague Chuck Todd claimed Trump ''gave me the wrong kind of chills. Honestly, I'm a bit shaken from what I just heard.'' Not to be outdone, print also got in on the act, with the New York Times spewing the blatantly propagandist headline: ''Trump Gives White Supremacists Unequivocal Boost.'' How could the Times possibly reconcile that Trump, who admonished that the supremacists should be ''condemned totally'' somehow also delivered an ''unequivocal boost'' to those very same miscreants?
        But like many fake news narratives, repetition has helped cement this one into a reasonably plausible storyline for all but the most skeptical consumers of news. In fact, over the weekend, Fox News host Chris Wallace pressed White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on why Trump has not given a speech ''condemning '... white supremacist bigotry.'' Well, Chris, he has, and more than once. The most powerful version was from the White House following Charlottesville and the heartbreaking death of Heather Heyer. President Trump's succinct and direct words:
        ''Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.''
        Despite the clear evidence of Trump's statements regarding Charlottesville, major media figures insist on spreading the calumny that Trump called neo-Nazis ''fine people.'' The only explanation for such a repeated falsehood is abject laziness or willful deception. Either way, the duplicity on this topic perhaps encapsulates the depressingly low trust most Americans place in major media, with 77 percent stating in a Monmouth University 2018 poll that traditional TV and newspapers report fake news. In addition, such lies as the Charlottesville Hoax needlessly further divide our already-polarized society.
        Instead of hyper-partisan, distorted narratives, as American citizens we should demand adherence to truth -- and adherence to the common values that bind us regardless of politics. In the words of our president: ''No matter the color of our skin, we all live under the same laws, we all salute the same great flag, and we are all made by the same almighty God.''
        Steve Cortes is a contributor to RealClearPolitics and a CNN political commentator. His Twitter handle is @CortesSteve.
    2020
      Constitutional Topic: The Electoral College - The U.S. Constitution Online - USConstitution.net
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Mar 2019 23:03
        The Constitutional Topics pages at the USConstitution.net site are presentedto delve deeper into topics than can be provided on the Glossary Page or in the FAQpages. This Topic Page concerns the Electoral College. The ElectoralCollege is embodied in the Constitution in Article2, Section 1, and in the 12th Amendment.
        The Framers were wary of giving the people the power to directly elect thePresident '-- some felt the citizenry too beholden to local interests, tooeasily duped by promises or shenanigans, or simply because a national election,in the time of oil lamps and quill pens, was just impractical. Some proposalsgave the power to the Congress, but this did not sit well with those who wantedto see true separation of the branches of the new government. Still others feltthe state legislatures should decide, but this was thought to make thePresident too beholden to state interests. The Electoral College, proposed byJames Wilson, was the compromise that the Constitutional Conventionreached.
        Though the term is never used in the Constitution itself, the electors thatchoose the President at each election are traditionally called a College. Inthe context of the Constitution, the meaning of college is not that ofa school, but of a group of people organized toward a common goal.
        The Electoral College insulates the election of the President from thepeople by having the people elect not the person of the President, but theperson of an Elector who is pledged to vote for a specific person forPresident. Though the ballot may read "John McCain" or "Barack Obama," you'rereally voting for "John Smith" who is a McCain supporter or "Jack Jones" who isan Obama supporter.
        The function and details of how the Electoral College meets and how theyvote was changed in the 12th Amendment. First, adiscussion of the original plan, outlined in Article 2, Section 1, Clauses 2 and 3, then whatis different today:
        Each state chose a number of electors equal to the number of congress peoplethat state had. Each state, then, got at least three electors (two Senators andat least one Representative). Electors may not be an employee or electedrepresentative of the Federal Government. Each state was allowed to otherwisechoose whomever they wish to be the Electors for that state.
        Today, Electors are chosen by popular election, but the Constitution doesnot mandate a popular election. The 14thAmendment does mention the choosing of Electors, but is relevant only whenElectors are elected by popular vote. There is similar mention in the 24th Amendment. In other words, Electors could beappointed by a state's legislature, or the legislature could empower thegovernor to choose electors. In some cases, state law allows for suchappointments if the popular vote cannot be used to determine a winner, such asif election results are contested up to federally-mandated deadlines.
        Regardless of the method used to choose Electors, they all met, in theirstates, on one day set by law. Each voted for two people, at least one of whomwas not a citizen of their state. Those votes were then counted, and a list ofeach name and the number of votes was signed and certified and sent to thePresident of the Senate. Then, in front of a joint session of Congress, thePresident of the Senate opened the vote counts from each state. These weretotaled, and the President was the person with the most votes, if the count isa majority. If there was a tie, then the members of the House ofRepresentatives immediately took a vote and that winner was the President.
        If there was no tie, and no majority, then the top five vote-getters werevoted on by the House as above.
        When the vote devolved to the House, two-thirds of all states must have hadat least one Representative present for the vote to proceed. TheRepresentatives present from each state voted as a single state. The winner hadto win by a majority of the states.
        The Vice-President was a bit easier. In any case, that person who had thesecond highest number of Electoral votes was Vice-President (if there was atie, the winner of the House vote was President; the loser was Vice-President).If the second-highest vote count was shared by two or more people, the Senatechose between those people.
        Pretty complicated, right? The Framers thought for sure that they hadcovered all their bases. But they did not foresee certain things, the mostimportant of which is the formation of political parties. For example, say eachstate votes Republican, and every elector votes for George Bush for Presidentand Dick Cheney for Vice-President. When the votes are counted, Bush and Cheneywill have equal votes, throwing the election into the House, regardless of thefact that the will of the Electors is, or should be, clear. Once in the House,anything can happen.
        Not plausible, you might think, but precisely this happened in the 1800election of the Jefferson/Burr ticket. The ticket had the highest number ofElectoral votes, and because their electors wrote both Jefferson and Burr ontheir ballots, there was a tie. The House was thrown into a fit, and it took 36votes to finally elect Jefferson as President.
        The 12th Amendment was ratified four years later to avert any recurrence ofthese events. The 12th changes the Electoral process in a few small, butimportant ways.
        First, instead of voting for two people, Electors vote for a President and aVice-President. From there, the names are totaled at the state level, in twocolumns this time (one for the President and one for the Vice President), andsent along to the President of the Senate. Then, in joint session, all votesare opened and counted, again in two columns. The person with the majority ofvotes for President is then President. If there is no majority, then the topthree vote-getters are voted on by the House (with the same restrictions asbefore). The choice must be made by January 20th (originally March 4th in the12th Amendment, but altered by the 20th Amendment), or the Vice Presidentbecomes the Acting President, until such time as the House can finallyagree.
        The choice for Vice President moves along similarly, with the majority votegetter becoming VP. If there is no majority, the top two vote-getters are votedon by the Senate. In the case of the Senate, the Senators are not grouped bystate, though there must still be a two-thirds quorum to take the vote. Alsonote that because only the top two vote-getters are placed in the mix, thechoice for Vice President should be an easier one. Also note that in the caseof a tie, the current Vice President, as President of the Senate, may cast avote for himself (if the current Vice President is running forre-election).
        Today, the day of choosing the electors is set at the first Tuesday afterthe first Monday in November, and the date the Electors meet is set at thefirst Monday following the second Wednesday in December '-- in 2008, thesedates are November 4 and December 15. These dates are set in the US Code, at 3USC 7.
        In most states, the winner of the state election gets all of the state'selectoral votes. In two states, Maine and Nebraska, however, the winner of thestate only gets two votes, one representing each Senator. The other electoralvotes are distributed according to the winner of each congressional district inthe state.
        That's the process. Electors are chosen by the states and the Electorselect the President and Vice-President.
        But, of course, there is much more to it than that, when the inconvenienceof details slip in. But that's another topic.
        The election of 2000, as did several electionsbefore it, called the wisdom of the Electoral College system into question.Will there be changes to this uniquely American institution? The answer tothat question remains to be seen.
        William Kimberling, Deputy Director of the Federal Election Commission,wrote a very interesting treatise on the Electoral College, that includes lotsof great historical information and anecdotes about the College. The documentcan be found on the FEC's website in Adobe Acrobat format.
        The following site has an interesting Electoral College calculator (whichrequires Java). Using it, it was interesting to note that with the currentcensus, a president can win by carrying only 11 states.
        The Electoral CollegeCalculator
        Below are some other sites that concentrate on the Electoral College:
        President Elect ElectionsCentralURL: //www.usconstitution.net/consttop_elec.html
      The Supreme Court Is Not The Final Say On The Constitution
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Mar 2019 14:26
        Several 2020 candidates are determined to mainstream the perverse idea of expanding the Supreme Court to achieve policy victories. Such court-packing defies the intent, function, and ideals of the American judiciary.
        Americans have been told a lie about the constitutional balance of power. Despite activist assertions to the contrary, the Supreme Court is not a supreme constitutional council with the sole and final say on legal matters. We have accepted a larger than life picture of the judiciary, and it is slowly destroying individual liberty and the constitutional order laid down by the founders.
        The Constitution outlines the role of the courts, but for some time they have been operating beyond their proper function. We must change how we see them, understand their appropriate role, and stop allowing the growth of power. Each new interpretation of plain text that widens the judiciary's authority is a dangerous violation of the separation of powers. If executive overreach concerns you, judicial overreach doubly should.
        To correct a few common misconceptions, the judiciary's rulings are not the supreme law of the land, even rulings from the Supreme Court. The judiciary is not the only or even final arbiter on the Constitution. And the judiciary is not a truly co-equal branch of government.
        Court Opinions Are Not Supreme LawArticle VI of the Constitution describes what qualifies as the law of the land.
        This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land'...
        The only national laws are the Constitution, congressional law, and treaties. Conspicuously missing are Supreme Court decisions. While the court is known for deciding the constitutionality of laws, its decisions are not themselves laws. In the strictest sense, the opinions rendered by the Supreme Court are binding only on the parties before it.
        The Supreme Court is just that, a court. It was established to adjudicate cases and controversies before it. Courts cannot make general pronouncements of law; they exist to settle disputes.
        In fact, the Supreme Court is prohibited from issuing advisory opinions or ruling on laws that do not arise through litigation. Justices are not consultant scholars but arbiters in the limited setting of a legal case, not general legal or public policy matters. Courts issue their rulings in the form of judicial opinions, laying out the holding and the rationale.
        Holdings are decision on legal issues, and the commentary around it is history, legal reasoning, or dicta. Sometimes dicta matters and sometimes it is pontification. That is, not all of an opinion is legally binding, and what is binding is a settlement of a particular, and often limited, legal issue.
        Supreme Court opinions are commonly viewed as the law of the land because they often involve decisions on the constitutionality of government actions. We assume when the high court rules, it is articulating what the Constitution says. The Constitution is the supreme law, but it is also a plain text. That text is the law, the ruling is not. As Justice Story said of judicial opinions in Swift v. Tyson, ''They are, at most, only evidence of what the laws are, and are not, of themselves, laws.''
        Further, if the Supreme Court rules one way, it is likely to rule that way again, so continuing to push a law or policy that contradicted a previous decision may be futile. The precedent the court sets effectively prevents the same issue from arising, because lower courts will rule in accordance with that precedent.
        Still, what the Court produces is not law, but a determination on how it interpreted an existing law for the purpose of settling a specific case or controversy. When the same issues and facts arise, they can be settled based on that precedent. These rulings are legitimate and important, but are not the final word on policy matters for the whole country.
        Supreme Court Not Final ArbiterFor all its power and influence, the Supreme Court is still just a court. It cannot decide which laws to rule on, because it can only make decisions about the case before it. It cannot revisit old cases unless new parties bring a similar issue before it. It cannot make unsolicited rulings nor advise on constitutionality to the President or Congress. Despite our modern picture, the court sits in judgment of cases. It is not a philosophical reservoir of wisdom.
        It is not even the exclusive entity with the power to interpret the Constitution. Madison wrote in Federalist 49, ''The several departments being perfectly co-ordinate by the terms of their common commission, none of them, it is evident, can pretend to an exclusive or superior right of settling the boundaries between their respective powers.'' Thomas Jefferson further noted in a letter to William Jarvis, ''to consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions'...would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.''
        It is clear from the Constitution itself and the founders' writing that each branch can and must interpret the Constitution and its own powers. Jefferson also explained why the courts deal in constitutional interpretation the most, writing: ''judges certainly have more frequent occasion to act on constitutional questions, because'...the great mass of the system of law, constitute their particular department.'' It happens to be their work, but that does not grant them exclusive or ultimate power over it.
        When legislating, Congress debates whether prospective legislation is constitutional, and the president makes a similar determination about whether to sign or veto. In unilateral action, the president interprets his authority and the constitutional framework. Article II Section I requires the president to swear an oath to ''preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'' How else can he do this without interpreting it? Indeed, his loyalty is to the Constitution itself, not necessarily the opinions of the Court or certain laws of Congress.
        Because each branch relies on the others to carry out their directives, the judiciary cannot enforce its rulings. That is up to the executive. When the judiciary rules, the president may have a different view and theoretically choose not to legitimize quasi-legislative action by not enforcing the court's decision. The prudence of this depends on the circumstances, and while institutional legitimacy is best served by following court orders, objectively illegitimate ruling may demand rejection. Consider Dred Scott or Plessy v. Ferguson.
        The Supreme Court Is Not Co-Equal The three branches of government are often described as co-equal, each with powers that check and balance perfectly. They are equal in constitutional legitimacy, but not in power. The American judiciary was initially conceived to be the least powerful. The Constitution even describes it last and shortest among branches.
        The courts are not intended to legislate, execute, craft, or decide policy.
        The courts are not intended to legislate, execute, craft, or decide policy. They are meant to provide citizens an avenue for recourse to reconcile wrongs for which they have causes of action. Explaining the role of the judiciary, Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78 that the judiciary would possess ''neither force nor will, but merely judgment.'' He goes on to say, ''It proves incontestably, that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power'...''
        The judiciary holds one small but distinct power. If the Framers were not so keen on separation of powers, the judicial power may have been included with the legislature or executive. Rather than this, they placed the small power in its own branch, not to empower judges over legislators or citizens, but to prevent abuse of justice by the other branches. It is independent because the small authority is important, not because the duty requires or instills great power.
        When written and ratified, the Constitution only called for a judiciary made up of one supreme court, on which only one chief justice was required. It was not conceived as a large or powerful branch of government, but an institutional check on the others compactly maintaining the judicial power of the United States.
        Of course the judiciary is larger today, and its growth has mostly been legitimate by deliberate congressional action. But the minimal scale and scope of the constitutionally mandated judiciary shows it was never conceived of as a body laying down the law of the land on policy position and impacting the entire country.
        Growth through acquiesce should be viewed with great skepticism as a violation of separation of powers. And certainly growth through packing the Supreme Court with additional justices should be abhorrent to liberty-loving Americans.
        The Courts Should Be Respected, Not PraisedIt is past time to clarify what the American judiciary is and how it was intended to operate. The courts are legitimate and necessary, but are not meant to create or shape policy. They were designed settle disputes, and that means ruling for the parties before them.
        Rulings from the Supreme Court should not affect the whole country''and certainly not rulings from district courts.
        The national obsession with the Supreme Court, and accompanying acceptance of its power grab, is anti-republican. If we continue down this road, our politics will grow uglier as fights to replace justices become further embittered, and our law will be held captive by an oligarchy.
        We have grown to view the court as a body of philosopher kings rather than civil servants who settle specific arguments. Rulings from the Supreme Court should not affect the whole country''and certainly not rulings from district courts.
        You don't go to the courts to solve general matters; for that, you go to the legislature. You go to the court to resolve particular disputes. For the health of the nation and the rule of law, it is critical that we stop using courts as weapons to shape law and view them as avenues of recourse to resolve limited cases and controversies.
        Benjamin Dierker is a law student at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. He holds a master's degree in public administration and a bachelor's degree in economics, both from Texas A&M University. He is a Christian and a Texan and loves to talk about both.
        Copyright (C) 2019 The Federalist, a wholly independent division of FDRLST Media, All Rights Reserved.
      Progressive Strategy for 2020: Change the Rules of Engagement | Belmont Club
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Mar 2019 18:39
        The news cycle is so unnaturally shrill, as if the status quo itself is screaming. From unenacted policies to the automatic assignment of blame to Western civilization, the news cycle has become one continuous rant. Referring to the root causes of the Christchurch mosque massacre, a Slate article argued: "we are a nation born of shame. A white-majority Australia exists only as the result of a genocidal invasion."
        Speech has never been more dangerous nor points of view more opposed. When the demand isn't "why didn't you denounce this" or "why didn't you apologize for that" it may be "why did you misgender me?" You can go to jail for saying "he" instead of "she."
        Caroline Farrow, a broadcaster and writer for Roman Catholic newspapers, said she had a phone call from an officer on Monday asking her to attend an interview. Mrs Farrow, 44, said she may have posted the suspect tweet following an appearance on Good Morning Britain last September, during which she took part in a debate on transgender children. ...She added the officer said her tweets had 'misgendered' an individual by using the wrong pronoun, which could be an offence under the Malicious Communications Act. Sentences for those found guilty under this act can be as long as two years.
        Gessler's hat is now perched in every Internet Square. All must bow before the pole or face sanction. Cambridge University withdrew the visiting fellowship of academic Jordan Peterson, who refused to refer to transgender people by their chosen pronouns. One tweet explains why: "@Cambridge_Uni by hiring Jordan Peterson, you are giving a platform to anti-trans speech. Instead of making this campus safe(r) for trans folks & those that fall under your so-called 'diversity' mission, you are actively supporting their oppression. So shameful." These events are no coincidence. According to NBC News, the hot new progressive strategy for 2020 is to "change the rules."
        The biggest policy-related fight roiling the 2020 Democratic field may not be over any of the increasingly ambitious proposals flooding the race, but the ways progressives would like to turn some of them into reality.With the Senate and Supreme Court landscapes looking like a roadblock to legislative wins, a growing number of candidates are looking to change the rules of engagement should they win unified control of government.
        A new network of progressive activists want the next Democratic president and Senate majority to make changes that would leave Republican lawmakers unable to block their bills and give Republican-appointed judges fewer opportunities to overturn them. And that's just the beginning.
        The trend toward changing the rules is not confined to the U.S. The EU's chief negotiator suggested that "the price of a long Brexit delay ... would be ... a 'new event' such as a second referendum or general election." Countries don't have to pay for common defense if they don't want to. According to the NYT, Germany is not going to meet its spending commitment to NATO.
        Chancellor Angela Merkel's government had a falling-out with the Trump administration last year when it said that, despite signing a commitment to work toward spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense by 2024, its target would instead be 1.5 percent.Now, projected spending levels are expected to fall below even that lower path in a three-year budget plan due to be announced on Wednesday, portending another confrontation with Washington. ... ''Trump? Europe is the answer.'' ... ''Donald Trump has made it more difficult ... it's become a liability to stand shoulder to shoulder with this guy.''
        NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Arden said in reference to a neo-Nazi attack on a mosque, ''On 15 March, our history changed forever. Now, our laws will too."
        Now, six days after this attack, we are announcing a ban on all military style semi-automatics (MSSA) and assault rifles in New Zealand. Related parts used to convert these guns into MSSAs are also being banned, along with all high-capacity magazines. An amnesty will be put in place for weapons to be handed in, and Cabinet has directed officials to develop a buyback scheme. Further details will be announced on the buyback in due course. All semi-automatic weapons used during the terrorist attack on Friday 15 March will be banned.But changing the rules is a tacit admission that Plan A has failed. Nobody's talking about a "rules-based international system" anymore because changing the rules is Plan B. The progressives are already creating their own world order to replace the old world order. The system Hillary hoped to lead is gone.
        As world leaders gathered in Munich again for their annual summit, the Europeans in attendance admitted that Putin had been right. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel put on Feb. 16, the global order had ''collapsed into many tiny parts.'' ...Iran also got in on the action, with Mohammed Javad Zarif, its top diplomat, urging Europe's leaders not to ''succumb'' to the bullying of the Trump Administration.
        Zarif's most immediate goal in Munich was to salvage the nuclear agreement that Trump withdrew from last year. Despite intense pressure from the White House, the Europeans have stood with Iran on that issue. France, Germany and the U.K. have even continued to trade with Iran in circumvention of U.S. sanctions. ...
        Despite fierce U.S. objections, the Europeans have continued building bridges to the East. Russia's new gas pipeline to Germany '' North Stream 2 '' is expected to make Europeans even more reliant on Russia for energy. China's global infrastructure project '' known as the Belt and Road initiative '' will soon bind its economy much more closely to that of Europe, an aim that Merkel intends to promote when her country holds the European Union presidency next year.
        In this context, the spate of proposals to change the rules -- lower the voting age, abolish the Electoral College, expand the Supreme Court, and spend trillions on a Green New Deal -- should come as no surprise. They are the domestic equivalent of building a brand new America. Although they come at a destabilizing price, it is one the ideologues are willing to pay since their vision is imperative enough. After all, to paraphrase Recep Erdogan, "The rules are like a tram ride: when you reach your stop, you get off."
        If the tram's not going to your stop, you change trams. Bernie Sanders is going to explain socialism again, more slowly this time for those dullards who didn't see what a great idea it was in the first place: "I think what we have to do, and I will be doing it, is to do a better job maybe in explaining what we mean by socialism '-- democratic socialism. Obviously, my right-wing colleagues here want to paint that as authoritarianism and communism and Venezuela, and that's nonsense." And then you'll see it or there will be a second or third explanation until you get it.
        If one were to predict between comity and authoritarianism in the coming years the odds would favor authoritarianism. Never has so much naked ambition disguised itself as virtue, and the more loudly political factions proclaim they're out to save the world, the more ruthless they are likely to be. Liberty will come under assault from the banner of tolerance; fascism will advance in the guise of grievance.
        One challenge in the coming years will be to reconcile the effects of divergent evolution with the demand for risk pooling. Politicians will change the rules and many of them will make things worse. "Imagine... a process like the flowing of a river... If however a big enough boulder were to stand in between its path, the river would split into two and give rise to two new smaller rivers, each of which would meet its separate fates as it flowed down the mountain. This is exactly what divergent evolution is all about. The boulder represents 'natural selection.'" The future will winnow out the choices. Perhaps Donald Trump will regret his wall, Arden her gun ban, Merkel her dependence on Putin, and Sanders his socialism. But at all events, there will be a demand by the losers for the winners to bail them out.
        There's no denying that the future will be uncertain, rife with both great danger and opportunity. Yet that is a comforting thought, for while the true believers are convinced they know how the story ends just as surely as they knew how the present would, the rest of us know the tale is not yet finished. Until then:
        Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. To many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days - the greatest days we have ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making them.
        Follow Wretchard on Twitter
        Support the Belmont Club by purchasing from Amazon through the links below.
        Books:
        The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership, by Fred Kofman. Kofman argues that our most deep-seated and unspoken anxiety stems from our fear that our life is being wasted -- that the end of life will overtake us when our song is still unsung. Material incentives account for perhaps 15 percent of employees' motivation at work. The other 85 percent is driven by a need to belong, a feeling that what we do day in and day out makes a difference, and that how we spend our time on earth serves a larger purpose beyond just ourselves.
        Democracy: A Case Study, by David Moss. Through nineteen case studies, Harvard Business School professor David Moss delivers not only a first-rate history of the United States but also reveals that the nation has often thrived on conflict. Each case presents readers with a pivotal moment in U.S. history, asks them to weigh the choices and consequences, wrestle with momentous decisions, and come to their own conclusions. The reader comes away from this engaging book with a new appreciation of the country's extraordinary resilience.
        The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour, by James D. Hornfischer. A must-read.
        The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, by Kevin Kelly. Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces already in motion. These deep trends - interacting, cognifying, flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning '-- will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to navigate these changes in ways that will benefit us. For those who seek guidance on where their business, industry, or life is heading - what to invent, where to work, what to invest in, how to better reach customers, and what to begin to put in place - this book is indispensable.
        For a list of books most frequently purchased by readers, visit my homepage.
        Did you know that you can purchase some of these books and pamphlets by Richard Fernandez and share them with your friends? They will receive a link in their email and it will automatically give them access to a Kindle reader on their smartphone, computer or even as a web-readable document.
        The War of the Words, Understanding the crisis of the early 21st century in terms of information corruption in the financial, security and political spheres
        Rebranding Christianity, or why the truth shall make you free
        The Three Conjectures, reflections on terrorism and the nuclear age
        Storming the Castle, why government should get small
        No Way In at Amazon Kindle. Fiction. A flight into peril, flashbacks to underground action.
        Storm Over the South China Sea, how China is restarting history in the Pacific.
    Venezuela
      Huge Defeat for Imperialists: The U.S. Broke Its Teeth in Venezuela - Global ResearchGlobal Research - Centre for Research on Globalization
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Mar 2019 18:04
        The miserably failed ''humanitarian aid'' delivery into Venezuela on February 23 is another nail in the coffin of the U.S. government's coup attempt against President Nicolas Maduro and the Bolivarian revolutionary process in Venezuela.
        Before this day, the U.S. government and their allies, including Canada, thought that their puppet, self-declared ''interim President'' Juan Guaid", still had a chance. The U.S. government made a callous bet that the installation of Guaid", together with a cruel and illegal sanctions campaign against Venezuela would be enough to force the people of Venezuela to overthrow the democratically elected government of President Nicolas Maduro. However, they were badly wrong. The heroic people of Venezuela have stood up in defence of their sovereignty, self-determination, and their President, Nicolas Maduro. Together, they have defeated the imperialist attempted coup.
        Was the ''Humanitarian Aid'' Ever Humanitarian?
        The U.S. government and Guaid", together with major mainstream media, have been spreading lies and manipulations about Venezuela and President Maduro to justify their illegal and anti-democratic intervention. It was especially clear when it came to how they built the case for the ''humanitarian aid'' delivery into Venezuela scheduled for February 23, 2019.
        A good place to start to uncover this deception is to ask the question '' was the ''humanitarian aid'' ever humanitarian?
        Before the ''aid'' was loaded onto U.S. military aircraft and flown into Colombia, it was already a disaster in the making. The aid was to be provided and delivered by the USAID (United States Agency for International Development). Both the Red Cross and the United Nations rejected the humanitarian aid scheme of the U.S. government. As a United Nations spokesperson reminded reporters in New York City, ''Humanitarian action needs to be independent of political, military or other objectives.'' Undoubtedly this was not the case with the USAID delivery. The ''humanitarian aid'' was nothing but a thinly veiled pretext for furthering the U.S. backed coup against President Maduro.
        And what about the claim that the government of President Maduro is not accepting international aid?
        The week before the U.S. government's attempted ''aid'' delivery, Venezuela's Health Ministry reported that 64 containers, amounting to 933-tons of medicine and medical aid arrived in Venezuela, mostly from China and Cuba. Also, in February the Red Cross increased its budget in Venezuela to $18 million. The United Nations continues to work with the government of Venezuela to provide food, clothing and services to people in Venezuela. This includes $9.2 million in health and nutritional aid which the government of Venezuela requested at the end of November 2018 to alleviate some of the devastating impacts of increasing U.S. sanctions. The government of Venezuela also receives support from the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) on immunization campaigns and disease control. These few examples alone are much more than the 200 tons of ''humanitarian aid'' that the USAID was planning on delivering on February 23. The claim that President Maduro does not accept international aid is also lie intended to demonize President Maduro to win favour for U.S. intervention.
        On February 23, the people of Venezuela were not fooled by the USAID ''humanitarian aid'' scheme. U.S. government stooge Guaid" failed to bring enough supporters to the border to create the ''aid avalanche'' he promised. The Venezuelan army stood with the democratically elected government of President Maduro and refused to accept ''humanitarian aid'' into Venezuelan territory at the Colombia/Venezuela border, and rejected a similar stunt at the Brazil/Venezuela border. They recognized the ''aid'' for what it was '' a provocation by the U.S. government and their counter-revolutionary right-wing allies in Colombia and Venezuela.
        What About Sanctions?
        The omission is just another form of lying. And, yes, there is a glaring omission when it comes to the imperialist rhetoric and reporting about Venezuela and Venezuela's struggling economy. Sanctions.
        As Alfred de Zayas, Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order from the United Nations said in an interview on the Empire Files (@EmpireFiles)
        ''What is particularly cynical is to cause an economic crisis that threatens to become a humanitarian crisis. That is what the United States has done through the financial blockade, through the sanctions.''
        U.S., Canada, European Union and Swiss sanctions are so pervasive that even to call the USAID ''humanitarian aid,'' a band-aid is an overstatement. The U.S. government offered $20 million of aid to Venezuela, while at the same time these crippling sanctions rob the people of Venezuela of more than $30 million a day.
        Since January 23, 2019, the U.S. government has further increased the already devastating sanctions to enforce its coup effort. The new restriction includes imposing strict sanctions against Venezuela's state-owned oil company Petr"leos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). As the U.S. government has consciously planned, this will dramatically impact Venezuela's imports and exports and continue to drain their economy of the U.S. dollars which are required for Venezuela to participate in international trade.
        Additionally, sanctions have enabled the U.S. government and their allies to steal billions of dollars that belong to Venezuela, which they are attempting to redirect to their appointed ''interim President'' Guaido. The stolen money includes $1.2 billion in gold that the Bank of England refuses to give back to Venezuela, as well as billions of dollars in profits from Citgo '' the U.S.-based distribution arm of the PDSVA oil company.
        Even before the PDVSA sanctions were implemented, Venezuela's imports had dropped from $60 billion a year in 2013 to $12 billion in 2017. At the same time, the Financial Crimes Control Network (FINCEN) of the U.S. Treasury has also been ordered to monitor any financial transactions that the government of Venezuela makes. In this way, the U.S. and their imperialist allies prevent Venezuela from paying for imports, even when it has the funds. For example, when the government of Venezuela went to purchase 300,000 doses of insulin, Citibank closed all their accounts and refused to complete the transaction.
        Is There an International Consensus Against President Maduro?
        No, there is not an ''international consensus'' against the government of President Maduro. Although the U.S government claims to have the support of 50 countries, that means that they do not have the support of the other 143 countries that are recognized by the United Nations. Most of the world continues to stand with Venezuela and the democratically elected government of Maduro. Maduro's support includes almost the entire continent of Africa, except Morocco, and the entire region of Asia and Oceania, except Australia. There is, in fact, not even a consensus in support of the coup from Europe, where Italy, Greece, Norway, Slovakia, Cyprus and Belarus have all refused to join with the United States. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.S. government and Canada were even forced to create the so-called Lima Group of countries because they could not convince enough member-states in the Organization of American States to support their campaign to overthrow the government of President Maduro.
        As just one example of international solidarity with Venezuela, CARICOM, an organization that represents 15 states in the Caribbean released a statement on February 25. The statement read, ''The Community maintains that the solution must come from among the Venezuelan people and abides by the internationally recognized and accepted principles of non-interference and non-intervention in the affairs of states, respect for sovereignty, adherence to the rule of law, and respect for human rights and democracy.''
        If No One Supports President Maduro How is He Still President?
        When was the last time you saw photos and videos tens of thousands of people mobilizing in the streets of cities all over Venezuela in support of President Maduro? When was the last time you heard an interview with someone in Venezuela calling for an end to cruel U.S. sanctions?
        However, if there is one thing that can be shown from the failed U.S.-led coup in Venezuela, it is that the democratically elected government of President Maduro continues to be very popular. The coup against Venezuela has failed because the mass majority of people in Venezuela support the government, and want to defend, and continue to extend, the gains they have made in the 20 years of the Bolivarian revolutionary process.
        What are some of these gains? By redirecting Venezuela's wealth from the pockets of international corporations and the wealthiest Venezuelans into social programs, the Bolivarian revolutionary process has brought millions of people out of extreme poverty. There have been remarkable gains in housing, healthcare, and education. Including, the eradication of illiteracy and the Great Housing Mission (GMVV) which has constructed and delivered 2.5 million homes to Venezuela's poorest and most marginalized people since 2011.
        Despite the imperialist attempt to strangle their economy and starve the people of Venezuela, Venezuela continues to rank high on the Human Development Index (HDI). Based on 2017 data, the 2018 HDI reports that Venezuela has a ''high human development,'' putting the country 78th of 189 countries. It means Venezuela has a higher HDI then both Brazil and Colombia which are key right-wing allies in the U.S. war drive.
        Because these well-established statistics do not fit into the false narrative of the U.S. government, they have been almost completely left out of mainstream media reporting on Venezuela. It's a media blackout. The gains of the Bolivarian revolutionary process and the voices of people in Venezuela that support President Maduro have been silenced by imperialist governments and their lackeys in mainstream media.
        Do the Governments of the US and Canada Care About People in Venezuela?
        To answer this, let's follow some of what the U.S. has said and done since the February 23 ''humanitarian aid'' failure. On February 25, the U.S. government organized a summit in Colombia to maintain momentum for puppet Guaid" and their attempted coup. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was there, along with countries of the Lima Group, including Canada and 11 Latin American right-wing governments. Although the Lima Group stopped short of supporting U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, this summit further exposed that the U.S. government and their allies have no interest in the ''human rights'' of the people of Venezuela.
        To which, the Foreign Minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland replied, ''We are discussing with our partners now ways that sanctions list can be expanded in order to have even more bite.'' The government of Canada's quick support for U.S. sanctions and aggression against Venezuela is of no surprise. As with the United States, the government of Canada could care less about the human rights of people in Venezuela. Take a look at the Twitter accounts of Chrystia Freeland or U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton; they are all too happy to share evidence that the people of Venezuela are struggling under their sanctions and brutality.
        The government of Canada is every bit as interested as the United States in overthrowing President Maduro and reversing the gains of the Bolivarian revolutionary process. How else can the government of Canada protect the interests of Canadian mining and resource extraction companies in Venezuela and throughout Latin America? Surely, letting a country like Venezuela nationalize its natural resources and use those profits to build social services instead of lining the pockets of foreign corporations is out of the question.
        To support the U.S. government in this dangerous proposal, Juan Guaid" and his coup supporters promoted the concept of the ''Responsibility to Protect.'' Most recently, ''Responsibility to Protect'' was used for the bloody imperialist assault against Haiti in 2004 and Libya in 2011. Right-wing U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, in fact, made the direct connection between Venezuela and Libya when on February 24 he tweeted a photo of the murder of Gadhafi within a long line of tweets on Venezuela.
        The people of Haiti, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and every other country that the U.S. government has destroyed with invasions, sanctions, bombing, and covert and overt military operations would certainly disagree that the United States cared at all for their ''human rights'' and ''freedom.''
        Build a United Movement in Solidarity with Venezuela
        No lie from the mouth of anyone in the government of the U.S. or Canada and no amount of media disinformation can erase the simple fact the people of Venezuela have withstood a tremendous imperialist assault and continue to stand up for President Maduro and the Bolivarian revolutionary process.
        This defeat, however, does not mean that the U.S. government and their allies, including the government of Canada, will stop their attempts to overthrow the government of President Maduro and reverse the gains made by poor, working and oppressed people in the last 20 years of the Bolivarian revolutionary process. Far from it.
        As people living in the U.S. and Canada and around the world, it is our responsibility to stand against imperialist war and sanctions against Venezuela. We must build a stronger and more united movement to face this ongoing assault. We must continue to show the world that Venezuela is not alone.
        *
        Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
        This article was originally published on Fire This Time!
        Alison Bodine is Coordinator of Fire This Time Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. Follow Alison on Twitter: @alisoncolette
        Featured image is from Sky News
    Clips
      VIDEO - TANTRUM continues: Rep. Eric Swalwell makes an even bigger A*S of himself over the Mueller Report on Bill Maher (watch) '' twitchy.com
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        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 13:22
        Rep. Eric Swalwell is officially in denial.
        That or he's just so wrapped up in his own conspiracies and realizes he's made a gigantic a*s of himself over the past two years pretending that Mueller was going to end Trump's presidency that he just can't help himself.
        As Twitchy reported, his reaction on Friday was something else. We're honestly shocked he shared this because it's just so cringy.
        We want to hear it from Mueller, himself. pic.twitter.com/eCQ9GCKCJk
        '-- Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) March 24, 2019
        Fine, let's hear it from Mueller himself.
        See, this is what Democrats are doing now that they realize the report is just a dud. They're trying to pretend Trump doesn't want the report out and that somehow proves there's something MORE THERE and that Mueller will fulfill all of Democrats' doomsday promises about the president.
        It's really sad and super annoying.
        We'll soon see what's in the #MuellerReport. But it's already accomplished something no one else has: silencing @realDonaldTrump's Twitter. ðŸ‘ðŸ>>
        '-- Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) March 24, 2019
        He's trying so hard.
        Look at him on Maher:
        Want to know what's actually in that report? Let's subpoena Mueller and find out. pic.twitter.com/Tuyj6F4pg2
        '-- Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) March 23, 2019
        Again, nobody is saying the American people shouldn't see the report. And look at him being all big and bad about Schiff subpoenaing Mueller and acting like Trump would want to edit his report and they have to STOP HIM.
        Pathetic, right?
        The Congressman seemed really uncomfortable. Made me uncomfortable.
        '-- Still a ''Œ¸crook''Œ¸ (@LeslieK71897297) March 24, 2019
        Swalwell shouldn't do TV interviews OR he desperately needs some media training. Not even being mean, he's just really awkward and makes the viewer uncomfortable.
        Honestly, this is all just incredibly cruel because there are many on the Left who are on the verge of truly losing it, and pretending there is something Mueller is hiding for Trump (wait for them to accuse him of being a Russian plant next) is really horrible.
        Look at this.
        DO. IT. PLEASE.
        '-- Vashti Vale (@pruden108) March 23, 2019
        Subpoena!! Do it!!
        '-- Hallie B. Rhoat (@hbethr71) March 23, 2019
        Yes, let's find out whats in that report. Don't let tRump get his grubby little fingers on it
        '-- Betty Ritchie (@b_betty) March 23, 2019
        He's feeding their desperation and paranoia '... for votes.
        As we said, it's cruel.
        Then again, he is a Democrat.
        Report:
        'OMG are those TEARS'?! Rep. Eric Swalwell just basically had a total MELTDOWN over the Mueller report on CNN (watch)
        WASSAMATTA Chuckles?! Chuck Schumer's reaction to Mueller report is the BEST THING EVER (watch)
        'No more b*tchy pills for YOU!' AOC gets snippy with POLITICO after she misreads their tweet on Rep. Pramila Jayapal
      VIDEO - Former US President Barack Obama arrives in New Zealand - NZ Herald
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        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 12:40
        Barack Obama landed in New Zealand early this morning - and our own former Prime Minister, John Key, and his family are already on their way north for a golfing rendezvous with the former president.
        Obama is on his first visit to New Zealand and organisers are pulling out all the stops - from actor Sam Neill as one of his hosts, to flying in chef Peter Gordon from London to cook for him.
        The 44th president of the United States of America landed in a private Gulfstream jet at Auckland International Airport at 12.13am on Wednesday after spending two days in Singapore. There was a heavy police presence.
        At 7.45 this morning, John Key, wife Bronagh and son Max arrived at the Mechanics Bay heliport in central Auckland, with their golf clubs.
        Police officers were milling outside a hotel in Auckland's city centre about 7am today, where former Obama is said to be staying. He was expected to also head to the heliport.
        Three officers were stationed outside the hotel's front doors this morning.
        A worker at the hotel maintained to the Herald the heavy police presence was because a police conference was being held at the venue this week. All the officers are wearing stab-proof vests.
        Obama is expected to fly to Northland by helicopter for golf with former Prime Minister Sir John Key and others, believed to be at Kauri Cliffs and possibly the Tara Iti Golf Club at Te Arai.
        Obama is tipped to stay at The Landing luxury home in Northland tonight before returning to Auckland tomorrow for an official welcome at Government House.
        There he will experience his first powhiri and hongi - it is understood officials have been asked to send detailed information about the process and meaning of the hongi for him.
        He will also meet Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern before an invite-only dinner and speaking event with about 1000 people, organised by the NZ-US Council and paid for by Air NZ, Mastercard and Westpac.
        Air NZ has flown New Zealand-born chef Peter Gordon from London to oversee that dinner and it will also include a range of fine New Zealand wines such as Te Mata Estate and Craggy Range.
        Obama has been brought to New Zealand by the NZ-US Council to promote the relationship between the two countries which was icy for many years over New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy. Obama will be interviewed by actor Sam Neill and the MC for the evening will be poet laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh.
        There are few opportunities for the public to see Obama - the only event media can film is the powhiri and hongi at Government House.
        The former US President's visit has been kept very under wraps, with some engagements made public. National Party leader Simon Bridges is to attend Obama's event on Thursday night, saying the novelty factor of meeting a US president was the drawcard.
        "I'm not saying I'm a devotee but I've never met a US president and so I'm pretty excited. I'm looking forward to hopefully getting a chance to briefly meet him."
        However, the invite list did raise some eyebrows - while some backbenchers are on it Trade Minister David Parker did not make the cut despite the trade and export focus of the NZ-US.
        Parker's lack of an invite was possibly an oversight or because of political sensitivities around the TPP, which Obama had championed and brought the US in to before Trump withdrew from it.
        Those who turned down invites included Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who was to meet Obama earlier and Green Party co-leader James Shaw who had another appointment in his climate-change portfolio.
        NZ First leader and Foreign Minister Winston Peters was also going to be a no-show '' he was staying in Wellington at Parliament '' but MP Shane Jones is attending. Speaker Trevor Mallard was also attending as were National MPs Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi and Alfred Ngaro.
        It is understood about 35 MPs were invited by the NZ-US Council and its co-sponsors Air NZ, Mastercard and Westpac.
        Those companies are footing Obama's appearance fee, which has not been divulged.
        Of those 21 were from Government parties, Labour, NZ First and the Greens.
        However, more National MPs were invited than Labour MPs '' perhaps because of its larger caucus.
        US Ambassador Scott Brown is also likely to be at the speaking event - although he was the appointee of Obama's successor, Donald Trump.
        A spokeswoman for the US Embassy said it was security policy not to comment in advance on the Ambassador's plans. "What I can say is that it would be natural for the Ambassador to be invited and attend this kind of event."
        Former US Ambassador Mark Gilbert '' a friend of the Obamas '' has also travelled over from the US for the golf games. Gilbert and wife Nancy helped organise the Obama Foundation event with Maori women leaders '' Nancy Gilbert had set up the "wahine toa" programme to meet those leaders in her time in New Zealand.
        Despite the secrecy surrounding the trip and lack of public opportunities, the Government is providing some support for the visit because of Obama's status.
        About $50,000 is expected to be spent from a fund to host VIP visitors for things such as transport in the Crown limos, airport facilitation and some security.
        Police are likely to be involved in security around the locations Obama will be at. A spokesman said they did not comment on individuals.
        "New Zealand police has extensive experience of policing visits by a wide range of high-profile individuals, however we do not discuss specific security matters regarding those individuals."
      VIDEO - Yellow Vests: 'We lock ourselves inside,' says Champs-‰lys(C)es concierge
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        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 11:41
        When the Yellow Vests movement began in November, Ana*, a concierge working by the Champs-‰lys(C)es boulevard, says she supported the protests that played out on her doorstep. But that support has now turned to fear.
        ''Every Saturday we lock ourselves inside," the 42-year-old warden told FRANCE 24.
        For 15 years, Ana and her family have lived in a beautiful, neo-classical building on one of the leafy avenues lining the glamorous Champs-‰lys(C)es boulevard in the heart of Paris. Although Ana might share the same high-end address as the other tenants, her lifestyle '' and income - are worlds apart.
        ''Yes, most of the residents here have a lot of money, but they work hard for it and they don't take anything for granted. And they're generous,'' Ana says, while showing FRANCE 24 around the 40-square-metre ground floor apartment that she shares with her husband and their two children. Ana and her husband sleep on a pull-out couch in the living room -- which also serves as the dining room -- while the children occupy one small room each.
        Up until about four months ago, Ana says she felt safe in her home, and lucky to be able to bring up her children in such a secure neighbourhood. But then the Yellow Vest protests started. To make matters worse Ana has health problems, including depression.
        ''When they staged the first demonstration, I was like 'yes, there are clearly things that aren't working [in this country], so I support their right to protest','' she recalls, noting that with her low salary of '‚¬1,083 per month, she could identify with the Yellow Vests demands for reform.
        ''Life's not easy. We always have food on the table, but I don't buy new clothes or shoes for example. We go to a restaurant about once a month, but it's not always possible,'' she says, adding that her husband already holds down two jobs, but in order to make ends meet, she is also looking for a second job.
        'Our front door was shaking'
        However, when the Yellow Vest protestors returned to her neighbourhood the very next Saturday, Ana began to feel uneasy.
        ''That's when things started to get really scary'... There were rubber bullets being fired and, at one point, even our front door was shaking,'' she recalls.
        The Soci(C)t(C) G(C)n(C)rale's Champs-‰lys(C)es branch had its' windows smashed during an especially violent protest. Photo: Louise Nordstrom, FRANCE 24 Ana told us that the protests have now impacted both her work and private life.
        ''When I go to get bread at 7am on Saturdays, I need to bring my identity card, otherwise I can't return home,'' she says, in reference to the police barriers that now surround her neighbourhood. ''Two weeks ago I left the house at 7.30 in the morning, But I wasn't able to get home until 11.30 at night because I had my car outside [of the perimeter].''
        ''We're under intense police surveillance, but at the same time that is quite reassuring. The police officers are really nice and I talk to them all the time.''
        The security parameter surrounding the Champs-‰lys(C)es district stretches several kilometres. On protest days, no cars are allowed, and the metro and bus stops are closed.
        ''We have to walk between 1-2 kilometres to get to the nearest stop. Sometimes more,'' she says.
        New routines
        Ana says she used to do her weekly grocery shopping on Saturdays, but says she now has to do so online '' with deliveries on either Thursdays or Fridays -- to make sure the family has enough food to last the weekend. She has also had to change some aspects of her work, including arranging when to coordinate the recycling and garbage as the trucks can no longer circulate as they used to.
        Aside from the inconvenience, Ana says it is the violence that is the most worrying.
        ''I'm worried about the safety of my children. My daughter is turning 18 and she has driving lessons on Saturday, but I don't let my youngest outside anymore,'' she says, referring to her 12-year-old son.
        ''After more than four months of this, it wears you down. It's not helping with my depression. If I want to go out into one of the gardens to try to get some sunshine, I can't, because everything is blocked off.''
        The Tarnaud bank was set on fire during 'Act 18' of the Yellow Vest protests. Photo: Louise Nordstrom, FRANCE 24 'Rich people work'
        Although Ana did sympathise with the Yellow Vest movement initially, she now feels it has gone too far. Especially after President Emmanuel Macron presented a '‚¬10 billion package to help improve the lives of France's disadvantaged.
        ''I don't understand what they want anymore,'' she says. ''I mean, there was a political response, and at some point you just have to work for it. Money doesn't just fall from the skies.''
        Ana says she also fears for the safety of the wealthy patrons living in her building.
        ''The people out there are unforgiving, and I'm afraid that the violence will reach our building and that the people living here will be attacked ['...] But these are people who work hard. They work incredibly hard in fact. They don't just sit around and wait for the money to come to them.''
        The famed Le Fouquet restaurant undergoes restoration after it was destroyed in a fire during riots on the Champs-‰lys(C)es boulevard. Photo: Louise Nordstrom, FRANCE 24 Ana says that she can sense that there is increased animosity against those who are perceived to be wealthy.
        To underscore this, Ana recounts how just a few days earlier she went shopping to buy a birthday present for a friend in one of the luxury boutiques on the Champs-‰lys(C)es, and which typically caters for ''well-to-do'' customers.
        ''I bought a watch, and after I bought it, the sales lady offered me a white bag to carry it in '' to make the purchase incognito so that no one would see that I had shopped there. I was shocked; is that what we have come to?!''
        Ana is supposed to celebrate her friend's birthday in the Paris suburbs this Saturday, but as the Yellow Vests stage their 19th consecutive protests on the Champs-‰lys(C)es, she doesn't yet know how, or if, she will be able to go.
        ''I probably won't be able to make it,'' she says sadly.
        *Ana is not her real name
      VIDEO - Mueller submits report on alleged Russian involvement in Trump election - YouTube
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        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 11:32
      VIDEO - Hammond: Second Referendum Should Be Considered - YouTube
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        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 11:17
      VIDEO - China's Belt and Road plan: Why did Italy sign it and why is Brussels worried? | Euronews Answers - YouTube
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        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 11:05
      VIDEO - James Woods on Twitter: "In light of Trump's slam dunk victory yesterday, please watch this Cavalcade of Clowns burping up the same #Democrat talking points ad nauseum. Now tell me the liberal press isn't a stockyard of mooing, biased cattle!
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      VIDEO - Liveleak.com - Brexit: What's the f**k is going on?
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        Sun, 24 Mar 2019 03:34
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        Tags: brexit, politicians, fail
        Location: London
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      VIDEO - Director of 'Leaving Neverland' Dan Reed Discusses Controversial Documentary | Good Morning Britain - YouTube
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        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 23:38
      VIDEO - Korea Tourism Organization TV Commercial, 'DMZ: A Symbol of Peace' - iSpot.tv
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        About Korea Tourism Organization TV Commercial, 'DMZ: A Symbol of Peace'The Korea Tourism Organization invites you to explore the sights of Korea's demilitarized zone, otherwise known as the DMZ, which it has dubbed the "Land of Peace."
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      VIDEO - Petition to stop Brexit reaches 2 million signatures in under 24 hours | #TheCube - YouTube
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        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 16:54
      VIDEO - Overtime: Irshad Manji, Larry Charles, Eric Swalwell, Evelyn Farkas, Kristen Soltis Anderson (HBO) - YouTube
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        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 16:47
      VIDEO - Monologue: Whiny Little Witch | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) - YouTube
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      VIDEO - Trump-Russia: Special counsel Robert Mueller delivers report - BBC News
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        Sat, 23 Mar 2019 16:25
        Image copyright AFP/Getty Image caption President Donald Trump (left) has criticised Robert Mueller's (right) investigation as a "witch hunt" Special Counsel Robert Mueller has submitted his long-awaited report on alleged collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
        A justice department official said Mr Mueller's report did not recommend any further indictments.
        The special counsel has already charged six former Trump aides and dozens of Russians.
        The Attorney General William Barr will now summarise the report and decide how much to share with Congress.
        Mr Barr told congressional leaders in a letter that he anticipated being able to inform them of the report's key findings over the weekend.
        The report is intended to explain any prosecutorial decisions the special counsel has made in the 22 months since his appointment by deputy US Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
        Mr Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly condemned the probe as a "witch hunt".
        Media playback is unsupported on your device
        Media caption Mueller is done... this is what we knowIn his letter to Congress' judiciary committee leaders - Senators Lindsey Graham and Dianne Feinstein and Congressmen Jerrold Nadler and Doug Collins - Mr Barr confirmed there were no instances during the investigation where the Department of Justice had interfered with Mr Mueller's work.
        The attorney general said he will now consult with Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein - who managed the inquiry prior to Mr Barr's appointment - and Mr Mueller "to determine what other information from the report can be released to Congress and the public".
        "I remain committed to as much transparency as possible, and I will keep you informed as to the status of my review," he said.
        Over the past 22 months, the special counsel has revealed how Russian agents and operatives allegedly obtained information about US elections to initiate a campaign to influence Americans, fund political activities in the US and hack emails of top Democrats to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign.
        Mr Mueller was also investigating whether Mr Trump obstructed justice with his firing of FBI director James Comey, or by trying to mislead or end the inquiry.
        Mr Trump has repeatedly said there was "no collusion" with Russia and "no obstruction".
        The president refused to sit for an interview with Mr Mueller's team during the inquiry, but his lawyers submitted written answers to questions after months of negotiating terms.
        Out with a letter, not a bang? Is this how the Mueller investigation ends? Not with a bang, but with a letter?
        The details of the final report have yet to be disclosed, but because Attorney General Barr has said there were no instances where he or his predecessors overrode the special counsel's prosecutorial decisions - and no new indictments have been announced - it seems possible that what we have seen with the criminal portion of the probe is what we're going to get.
        There may still be politically damaging revelations to come, but Donald Trump has shrugged off many a political threat in his rise to the White House.
        Without a criminal caseload directly related to "collusion" by members of the Trump campaign - the central thrust of the investigation - it seems certain the president and his White House surrogates will shout from the hilltops that their side has been exonerated.
        This is far from the end of legal jeopardy for the president, his family, his aides and his business empire, of course.
        Investigations at both the state and federal level into various financial and campaign finance violations grind on, not to mention the aggressive oversight coming down the pipe from the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.
        After today's developments, however, the president will continue to claim he is the victim of an unfounded "witch hunt".
        His political adversaries, who were hoping for a courtroom coup de grace, will be left searching for a new silver bullet.
        What's the reaction? Media playback is unsupported on your device
        Media caption How US networks reacted to Mueller newsWhite House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement: "The next steps are up to Attorney General Barr and we look forward to the process taking its course. The White House has not received or been briefed on the Special Counsel's report."
        Mr Trump's personal lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow echoed a similar sentiment, saying they were "pleased" the report had been delivered and trust Mr Barr to "determine the appropriate next steps".
        Mr Nadler, a New York Democrat, acknowledged the investigation had concluded on Twitter, saying: "We look forward to getting the full Mueller report and related materials."
        Earlier this month, the House of Representatives voted unanimously for a resolution demanding the Department of Justice release the full report to the public, signalling support within both parties to find out whether Mr Mueller discovered any criminal wrongdoing.
        Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer also called for transparency in a joint statement, adding that the White House "must not be allowed to interfere".
        "The Special Counsel's investigation focused on questions that go to the integrity of our democracy itself: whether foreign powers corruptly interfered in our elections, and whether unlawful means were used to hinder that investigation. The American people have a right to the truth."
        Mr Graham, a South Carolina Republican and vocal Trump supporter, said he "always believed it was important that Mr Mueller be allowed to do his job without interference, and that has been accomplished".
        What comes next?What happens next is in Mr Barr's hands. Legally, the attorney general is under no obligation to release the report publicly, and his copy to Congress could contain redactions, but during his confirmation hearings before senators he vowed to release as much as he could.
        And if he does provide Congress with the full details, members could leak the report to the public.
        With the 2020 presidential elections looming, candidates are expected to campaign with promises of making the full report public. Many of the Democratic hopefuls - Beto O'Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Julian Castro - have called for the full release of the report.
        The House of Representatives will also continue to investigate the administration, and they could ask Mr Mueller to testify or demand that Mr Barr provide relevant materials.
      VIDEO - The Brains Behind AOC Part II - YouTube
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      VIDEO - US media suffers panic attack after Mueller fails to deliver on much-anticipated Trump indictment '-- RT USA News
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        Important pundits and news networks have served up an impressive display of denials, evasions and on-air strokes after learning that Robert Mueller has ended his probe without issuing a single collusion-related indictment.
        The Special Counsel delivered his final report to Attorney General William Barr for review on Friday, with the Justice Department confirming that there will be no further indictments related to the probe. The news dealt a devastating blow to the sensational prophesies of journalists, analysts and entire news networks, who for nearly two years reported ad nauseam that President Donald Trump and his inner circle were just days away from being carted off to prison for conspiring with the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
        Showing true integrity, journalists and television anchors took to Twitter and the airwaves on Friday night to acknowledge that the media severely misreported Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia, as well as what Mueller's probe was likely to find. They are, after all, true professionals.
        Also on rt.com No new indictments!? Mueller concludes Russiagate probe, Dems demand 'underlying evidence' "How could they let Trump off the hook?" an inconsolable Chris Matthews asked NBC reporter Ken Dilanian during a segment on MSNBC's 'Hardball'.
        Dilanian tried to comfort the MSNBC host with some of his signature punditry.
        "My only conclusion is that the president transmitted to Mueller that he would take the Fifth. He would never talk to him and therefore, Mueller decided it wasn't worth the subpoena fight," he expertly mused.
        Actually, there were several Serious Journalists who used their unsurpassed analytical abilities to conjure up a reason why Mueller didn't throw the book at Trump, even though the president is clearly a Putin puppet.
        "It's certainly possible that Trump may emerge from this better than many anticipated. However! Consensus has been that Mueller would follow DOJ rules and not indict a sitting president. I.e. it's also possible his report could be very bad for Trump, despite 'no more indictments,'" concluded Mark Follman, national affairs editor at Mother Jones, who presumably, and very sadly, was not being facetious.
        It's certainly possible that Trump may emerge from this better than many anticipated. However! Consensus has been that Mueller would follow DOJ rules and not indict a sitting president. I.e. it's also possible his report could be very bad for Trump, despite ''no more indictments''
        '-- Mark Follman (@markfollman) March 23, 2019Revered news organs were quick to artfully modify their expectations regarding Mueller's findings.
        "What is collusion and why is Robert Mueller unlikely to mention it in his report on Trump and Russia?" a Newsweek headline asked following Friday's tragic announcement.
        Three months earlier, Newsweek had meticulously documented all the terrible "collusion" committed by Donald Trump and his inner circle.
        But perhaps the most sobering reactions to the no-indictment news came from those who seemed completely unfazed by the fact that Mueller's investigation, aimed at uncovering a criminal conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin, ended without digging up a single case of "collusion."
        This is scary. Hope she finds some help
        '-- Chad Wensloff (@cwens70) March 23, 2019None for colluding with Russia
        '-- Troy Pallotto ðŸ‡ºðŸ‡¸ '­¸'­¸'­¸ (@TroyPallotto) March 22, 2019For the last two years your network has engaged in a ceaseless, error-ridden, and unhinged effort to tie Trump to a conspiracy w/ Russia. It hasn't panned out. If you're not going to own up to that, why say anything?
        '-- Aaron Mat(C) (@aaronjmate) March 22, 2019The denials, evasions and bizarre hot takes are made even more poignant by the fact that just days ago, there was still serious talk about Trump's entire family being hauled off to prison.
        "You can't blame MSNBC viewers for being confused. They largely kept dissenters from their Trump/Russia spy tale off the air for 2 years. As recently as 2 weeks ago, they had @JohnBrennan strongly suggesting Mueller would indict Trump family members on collusion as his last act," journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted.
        You can't blame MSNBC viewers for being confused. They largely kept dissenters from their Trump/Russia spy tale off the air for 2 years. As recently as 2 weeks ago, they had @JohnBrennan strongly suggesting Mueller would indict Trump family members on collusion as his last act: pic.twitter.com/nPlaq5YVxf
        '-- Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 23, 2019While the Mueller report has yet to be released to the public, the lack of indictments makes it clear that whatever was found, nothing came close to the vast criminal conspiracy alleged by virtually the entire American media establishment.
        "You have been lied to for 2 years by the MSM. No Russian collusion by Trump or anyone else. Who lied? Head of the CIA, NSA,FBI,DOJ, every pundit every anchor. All lies," wrote conservative activist Chuck Woolery.
        The Mueller report is in and there will be no more indictments. You have been lied to for 2 years by the MSM. No Russian collusion by Trump or anyone else. Who lied? Head of the CIA, NSA,FBI,DOJ, every pundit every anchor. All lies.
        '-- Chuck Woolery (@chuckwoolery) March 23, 2019Internet mogul Kim Dotcom was more blunt, but said it all: "Mueller '' The name that ended all mainstream media credibility."
        Mueller - The name that ended all mainstream media credibility.No matter what you think of Donald Trump. His unexpected rise to power has educated the entire world about what's wrong with US politics, the fake news media and the deep state.
        '-- Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) March 23, 2019Like this story? Share it with a friend!
      VIDEO - Conservative Millennial on Twitter: "Rachel Maddow (@maddow) is literally crying ðŸ‚ðŸ‚ðŸ‚ #LiberalismIsAMentalDisease #MuellerReport'... "
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